Rahner and Remainders

"When the totals of your plans and of your life’s experiences do not balance out evenly, I am the unsolved remainder. And I know that this remainder, which makes you so frantic, is in reality my love, that you do not yet understand. " (from a Christmas meditation by Karl Rahner)

I have been thinking about this snippet of Rahner's ever since reading it anew this year at a prayer during a Christmas Day gathering. I am the unsolved remainder...how complete enticing to me...the idea that there is always more...there is between God and God's people an "again," there is hope, there is mystery...there is the difficult honor of love... and oddly, I find that lack of precise clarity somewhat reassuring...rather freeing...accommodating. It accommodates me and my curves and my quirks...my questions and dreams and wonderings...my faults, my glory, my greatness, and my weakness. It accommodates humanity...embraces humanity...inhabits humanity.

So often it is that my life experiences have outstripped my own plans by miles, pages, continents...coffee spoons (thank you, T.S. Eliot, for that useful unit of measure...)...and it is a gift to know that unsolved, unexpected, extra, as love...whether it comes as a challenge or as ease of heart. It makes all the difference...and I fear little would otherwise make sense.

I was also thinking about Rahner this afternoon while in the kitchen...these last days of feasting have meant leftovers...remainders...in the kitchen. A fit of hungry creativity led to satisfied delight as I mused my way through shelves and containers.

2 slices of leftover bacon...fine dice in a bowl

Some leftover potatoes, cut into 1/2 inch pieces...in the bowl.

1/2 an onion...thin thin slices...in the bowl

a bundle of skinny green beans...in the bowl...

A dribble of olive oil over all

A little hit of chili flakes

Stir...dump on a jelly roll pan...400 degrees until the beans start to get brown

Delicious...

 

The Glory of what Remains

If I was writing

with an oil inked spatula,

gathering into verse

the syllables mingling in the bowl,

slick with the whispering spice

of adventures past,

 

I'd like to think that those stanzas would sound--

after 400 fresh degrees of small talk--

like my kitchen now smells--

 

Of bacon and garlic,

beans, and potatoes,

who leave in their steamy wake

an unspoken shimmy

of well comported joy,

a feast about to be read.

 

Kimberly M. King rscj

 

Advent IV, 2013

Advent IV, 2013

Your nearness crackles,

Love, and I sing for want

of a way to contain

certain joy

swishing her cape

at the awe of it all.

 

Kimberly M. King, rscj

 

 

Decorations of a different sort

I am sitting at a heavy wooden table as I write this...

Two cookbooks are open; a recently emptied coffee canister with a label I found pleasing is sitting by the cookbooks and it is also open...just in case there is any more scent it would care to offer up. I am sipping on a mug of lightly honeyed peppermint tea that I made with water that had been poured over an orange rind and left steeping. Directly in front of me are two spice jars...one of chili flakes--some few of which will be sprinkled over roasted green beans and garlic with a light squirt of lime and sprinkle of salt for a Christmas dinner pot-luck...and the other is of turmeric. I don't know yet what I will do with it, but it was too beautiful to pass by in its clear glass jar. It is $1.67 worth of pleasing and possibility at the moment and I look forward to learning how it best likes to dance.

Christmas music plays in the background, I have a stocking hung at my door, and I just heard Canada geese fly by...

This open, aching, fullness of my senses makes me think about the poetics of decoration...how important it is to me to take the time now and then to create this sort of environment...to find beauty in acts of creativity and preparation...to give myself the time to savor and steep...And in so doing, to Encounter.

To savor and steep myself in the place where all converges...all senses, all Word, all Story, all flavors, all experience, all glory and humanity...

To savor and steep myself in Love, rising and wailing, kneading and needy...Chaotic, like the pleasing mess around me, bright as the bowl of a spoon.

 

Advent III, 2013

(Image is courtesy of ESA and NASA. Acknowledgment: E. Olszewski, U. Arizona)

Advent III, 2013

 

Birth and life...

neither is a muted affair.

 

The effort to quiet

or contain them

would snatch at starlight

and whisper away the edge

of awe's flame,

leaving mystery to sputter.

 

Kimberly M. King, RSCJ

 

 

Advent II, 2013

Advent II, 2013

 

It is within me to seek you,

alive and encompassing.

 

It is in my soul to ache with beauty,

to sigh while believing

that nothing can come

between the flame and the wick.

 

It is within me to be radiant

with you.

 

It is in my soul to yes

to you, to love.

 

Kimberly M. King, rscj