大象传媒

A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Father Luigi Gioia.

Good morning.

I will always remember the day I chanced upon Thomas Merton鈥檚 autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain, flicked through the first pages, and was sucked in the stream of the narration.

He was a secluded American monk who became a world famous writer. His life heaped contradictions, his pen moulded them into a meaningful narrative.

One of the greatest tasks of our lives is honing the story we tell about ourselves. It is a bit like knitting: we construct our identities by weaving together isolated events and memories.

Misfortunes, tragedies, love stories, failures, successes, skills, friendships, travels are like many coloured threads.

Red, blue, indigo are just as necessary as black and white threads. Whether or not they combine to form an arresting image depends on how skilfully we weave them together.

We soon discover that this does not depend only on us.

As we start sifting through our memories they coalesce into something that has a life of its own.

Writers find the same with their novels: initially their characters are imaginary, but soon they somehow take the lead, and plots take unforeseeable turns.

As we weave together a version of our lives, we might discover that, in fact, our identity is woven by someone else.

We weave and are woven.

Composing the tale of our lives is not just a challenge to our imagination.

It is a life-long endeavour to discern which of the many voices in us tells the truth about who we really are.

Let us pray.

Give us imagination and patience, Lord, to find beauty and meaning in the story of our lives.

Amen

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