Flexible.
The affirmation and its challenge by circumstances and life and the working of our own inner obstacles to grace—when that is fully accepted, consented, here’s the value of the present moment.
~ Thomas Keating
rooted, 3.
I love to travel. But travel is inherently uncertain and often stressful.
Kellie and I flew to Europe for the holidays to visit our daughters and their families. With two of our three grown children (and only grandchild) living in the Netherlands now, we’re burning up the SkyMiles to see them as often as possible. Europe is different than America in many ways—many of them charming—and one of the things we’re getting used to is riding the trains. When they work, trains are charming; when they don’t, not so much.
Our train left yesterday out of Heerlen amidst notices that other trains had been cancelled entirely. Ours had a sign that said it was delayed 15 minutes. No problem, we went upstairs to get out of the cold and grab a coffee. After 10 minutes, Kellie went downstairs to doublecheck and the sign was just blank. My phone said it had departed on time. Argh, seriously?
Back we went and noticed a train just sitting there. Mercifully, it was ours after all! We got on and sat another 10 minutes until a message in Dutch and then German announced something we didn’t understand… but we followed everyone off that train and onto another train sitting just behind the first one. Hmm, okay. But eventually it started rolling, and it appeared we were on the right one. Whew!
Thirty minutes later it rolled into our transfer station just over the border into Germany. We had missed our connection, but not to worry, once I found someone who could speak English, she confirmed that we were on the right platform for the next train to Dusseldorf, where we were to fly out. We waited, somewhat tensely, to see if that would be true… and it was!
Did I mention that travel is often stressful? It takes a resilient soul and a good attitude to navigate the vacillations that come with mass transportation.
I write this from a plane that is supposed to be flying out of Dusseldorf right now, except that it was delayed an hour due to snow. And we’ve been sitting on the tarmac for another hour. Our connection in Heathrow is a definite miss. We’ll have to see whether they put us another flight today or make us wait until tomorrow. (It was tomorrow.)
We have done this enough now that we are starting to get better at relaxing at travel problems and not expecting everything to go as planned. But it still takes a conscious decision to surrender!
Which reminds me of our theme this month: Rooted. Seems to me that it’s the trees that are most flexible, who can bend with the flow of external forces and then bounce back, that have the strongest, most sustaining roots. As the homespun beatitude goes, “Blessed are the flexible for they shall not be broken.” Maybe not Holy Writ, but true nonetheless. This is my deepest prayer for you and for me both in 2025: Deeply-grown roots and flexible souls.
growing your soul
This morning Kellie and I went back to one of our standby’s: The Welcome Prayer. It is a classic prayer of surrender and trust when you feel out of control. Give it a try this week!
serving our world
For yourself and for others, take a fresh perspective on your “problems,” just as Thomas Keating encourages us in the video below. If you don’t have time for all 19 minutes, jump ahead to 11:40 for my favorite part.
takeaway
Resilient soul. Good attitude.