Thoughts from Our Bridge Pastor
Rev. Barbara K. Peronteau
When I was going through my year-long Clinical Pastoral Care as a resident chaplain, my friend James shared with the class a wisdom teaching from the Buddhist tradition. The teaching goes something like this:
Thinking your cupboards and refrigerator is empty, you plan on stopping at the grocery store on the way home after work for some groceries for dinner. Your day seemed longer and more difficult than usual and by the end of the day you’re tired and your feet hurt. There is just no energy for standing in the checkout line. You drive past the grocery. You just want to be home.
When you finally get home, you begin to get hungry. It’s dinner time after all. Thinking there’s nothing to eat, you start poking around the kitchen anyway. In the back of the freezer you find some chicken, and some frozen veggies. There’s a half a bag of rice in the pantry. In the cupboard you find some parsley, sage rosemary, and thyme. And voila! You had the ingredients for dinner all along.
The moral of the story is that each of us has what we need for any given moment. We just need to learn to poke around inside our own internal cupboards to access our emotions, thoughts, feelings, and inner wisdom as we move through the various moments and seasons of our lives.
Indeed, this is a great teaching from the Buddhist tradition. But then, as I’m reading about Pelagius, an early Christian theologian from Scotland, I came across the following story about Pelagius from the late 300s.
“A young woman, named Celantia, asked Pelagius for a rule of life. “Tell me how to live,” she begged. Pelagius replied, “Don’t ask me, the source of such a rule is inside your own heart.”*
Why hadn’t I known this until now? This same wonderful Buddhist insight has also been in our own Christian cupboards and pantries all along.
There seems to be some universal wisdom about our hopes and dreams, joys and sadness, fears and courage, words and deeds, ethics and morals, and our own personal truths all residing in the center of our own being. The place where Christ resides is where our truth resides.
Peace and wonder,
Rev. Barbara K. Peronteau, Bridge Pastor
*“Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul,” by John Phillip Newell. (page 37)