Frenzy

It is not that I eschew parents exposing their children to things such as ballet, soccer and music to name a few.  It is the frenzy with which they go about it.  There is no time to learn about solitude, stillness and silence and its giftedness.  My contemplative dimension was born in the Bronx as a boy when my Mom told me to go out and play even though there might be no one about and nothing to do.  I knew that I was not alone.  The Catholic church taught me this.  Not the nuns and the catechism, but the building itself.  We had tabernacles.  When I walked into that vast empty space in the middle of a weekday, I knew it was not empty.  God was there in the tabernacle.  Now Protestants were more optimistic about people while Catholics were not.  The Protestants thought we could read the bible and just know God was everywhere.  We Catholics know we are dunces and we follow our Jewish ancestors who knew they were dunces.  See The Exodus.  When the Israelites wandered in the desert after they left Egypt, they would whine when they were hungry and thirsty, thinking God had abandoned them.  So God and/or Moses decided to build a tabernacle and have the people carry it wherever they wandered, to remind them that God was with them.  Tabernacles are to help ween us from the false notion that silence and solitude mean nothing is here but me and abject loneliness and boredom.  God is present.  Be still and know this presence without tabernacles.  Come to think of it the great ballet dancers and musicians already practice this.  Escape mediocrity and its frenzy.