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This Week
Being Faithful in Small Things
June 17, 2001
Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.
-- Mother Teresa of Calcutta
What a pleasure and blessing it is to live in New England during these late spring days! The peonies and roses are at full bloom in my garden; the summer with its long, lazy days lies all ahead; vacation plans loom on the mind’s horizon; the opportunity for rest and relaxation beckons to us; the warm days and nights and the gentle sea breezes provide a much needed respite to our weary souls after the short, cold days and dark nights of winter and early spring. Truly, it is good to be alive at a time such as this.
How many of us fail in our appreciation of the many small pleasures that surround us at this, or any other time of year? I know that, too often, I do. I fail to live enough in the moment to appreciate what I am and what I have. Too often, I let the big things get in the way of really seeing the small and simple things. I let the Big Picture spoil all the little ones. I do not take the time to savor the moment and to experience all of life’s wonderful possibilities.
I think this is what Mother Teresa meant when she warned us to “Be faithful in small things because it is in them that [our] strength lies.” Too often we are so intent on saving the world that we fail to protect even our little corner of it. Being faithful in small things means that we bring things back down to a human scale. I may not be able to save the world--certainly not all by myself--but I can certainly save a part of it, the part of it that is within my reach, be it only a plot of earth or even a single human being.
Mother Teresa received an honorary degree from Harvard in 1982, the year I graduated from Harvard Divinity School. I remember being struck by her absolute lack of profundity. Her acceptance speech was quite ordinary, pedestrian even, and not memorable. It is what she did, not what she said, that matters.
But in the little quotation I have chosen for the focus of my reflection this morning she is on to something. For she says that it is in the small things that our strength lies. She says we must be faithful in those small things, that is, we must have trust in them. We will find our strength by trusting in the small things.
Think about what those small things might be: waves upon the shore; the sunset, or better yet, the sunrise; the warmth of the sun; the stars overhead at night; the love of our families and friends; the accomplishment of every simple duty of our busy days. These are the things which give us strength and courage for the journey. These are what allow us to get out of bed, and take another step. Without them, we can accomplish no great thing. We might as well not even try.
All of the great religious thinkers and mystics urge us to be awake to the commonplace and the ordinary. Thoreau said it, in his “infinite expectation of the dawn,” but so did the Buddha, and Jesus who urged us to behold the lilies of the field which neither toil nor spin. “Wake up, and stay awake, to the beauty that surrounds us on every hand,” they, and many like them, say.
The contemporary poet Robert Francis speaks of it in his poem, “Summons”:
Keep me from going to sleep too soonOur strength lies in the recognition and appreciation of such common things and in their ability to transform us. Trust in the little kindnesses, both our own and those of others. Take the time to see and listen. We say “don’t sweat the small stuff,” but perhaps it is the big stuff that really gets in the way of our seeing what is important.
Or if I go to sleep to soon
Come and wake me up. Come any hour
Of night. Come whistling up the road.
Stomp on the porch. Bang on the door.
Make me get out of bed and come
And let you in and light a light.
Tell me the northern lights are on
And make me look. Or tell me clouds
Are doing something to the moon
They never did before, and show me.
See that I see. Talk to me till
I’m half as wide awake as you
And start to dress wondering why
I ever went to bed at all.
Tell me the walking is superb.
Not only tell me but persuade me.
You know I’m not too hard persuaded.
What better time than summer to concentrate our attention on the small things? The Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore wrote,
Be still, my heart, these great trees are prayers.
He said,
How can we expect to carry on the work of the world, to love the world and to solve its great problems, to overturn its vast injustices, if we cannot pay attention even to the little things, like human love, like kindness, like trees that are our prayers? It is in these simple yet profound things that we will find our strength and our will to live and to carry on and to survive. And it is in these that we will find the courage to change the world.
and dawn in my awakening.
currents of my own love.
and give it back to You at last with my life.
Henry James said that “Three things in human life are important: The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. The third is to be kind.” I have had that quotation pinned on my bulletin board this year to remind myself of what really matters in this life. I do not always remember to remember it.
Mother Teresa once made a comment to the effect that she knew she could never hope to help all the people of Calcutta who needed help. But she could help one. And so she began by helping those she could, one person at a time. Did her work really make any difference in the big scheme of things? Ask those whom she helped.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the English author of “The Ancient Mariner” and “Kubla Khan,” was also a Unitarian. His spiritual character and what he felt to be important in life can be illustrated by a sonnet he wrote in his later years:
To NatureGod, the Divine, Ultimate Reality, he seems to be saying, is in the common stuff of life, the small things that surround us every day of our lives, the little, quickly forgotten acts of kindness we perform. Our salvation--that is, our wholeness and our health--is to be found in those very same acts, in that very same stuff. And so is the salvation of the world. Thoreau said it not so very differently: “In wildness is the preservation of the world.” We need no mighty cathedrals nor heavy theological tomes in order to understand and worship God. What we call God is in the very things that lie all about us, the trees, the grasses, the insects and animals, which we did not create and do not control. That is all we really need.It may indeed be phantasy, when I
Essay to draw from all created things
Deep, heartfelt, inward joy that closely clings;
And trace in leaves and flowers that round me lie
Lessons of love and piety.
So let it be; and if the wide world rings
In mock of this belief, it brings
Not fear, nor grief, nor vain perplexity.
So will I build my altar in the fields,
And blue sky my fretted dome shall be,
And the sweet fragrance that the wild flower yields
Shall be the incense I will yield to Thee,
Thee only God! And thou shalt not despise
Even me, the priest of this poor sacrifice.
Vincent Van Gogh, when not slicing off his own ear in a fit of misplaced passion, once made the statement that “The best way to know God is to love many things.” According to Hinduism, God is in all things and all people; therefore we must love all things and all people in order to love God. God is those things and people and they are God--or ultimate reality, or the ground of our being. It matters not what we call it. Imagine if the world acted from such a view, how different things might be?
To love many things is not always easy. But that is what we must do. That is what life asks us to do, and what if we did it?
Ellen Bass, in Prayers for a Thousand Years, writes,
My message to you this morning, then, is to pay attention to the small stuff. “Think globally,” as the slogan goes, “but act locally.” Love globally, too, but say your love locally, to those with whom you spend your days, those who are closest to you, those who are nearest and dearest to you. In loving them you are also loving the world.
- The thing is
- to love life
- to love it even when you have no stomach for it, when everything
you’ve held
- dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands
- and your throat is filled with the silt of it.
- When grief sits with you so heavily
- it’s like heat, tropical, moist
- thickening the air so it’s heavy like water
- more fit for gills than lungs.
- When grief weights you like your own flesh
- only more of it, an obesity of grief.
- How long can a body withstand this? you think,
- and yet you hold life like a face between your palms,
- a plain face, with no charming smile
- or twinkle in her eye,
- and you say, yes, I will take you
- I will love you again.
Remember what Mother Teresa said: “Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.” Sweat the small stuff. You can make a difference, and you do.
So when the weight of the world gets you down, when life seems too much to bear, and injustice too great to endure, when grief overwhelms you, have faith in the power of the ordinary to pull you through. The little things of life have a saving power, and that power can be ours. Trust in the small things, and you will find your strength growing.
May the days of this summer be bright, and may they be filled with promise for the life abundant. God bless.
Amen.
The Rev. Harold E. Babcock
