February 24th, 2024
The sun is setting.
The moon is letting us know.
In order to allow a song to beat at the rhythm it is longing for, we must slow down enough to remember the sun, and the moon.
While cooking dinner for a mutual aid group, a friend pointed out that my life, in community, is very rhythmic, perhaps more so than others. This was after I told him the “proper” place to put the dinner recipe away. There’s no well-thought-out reason for why I place the recipe where I do, it’s just how I do it every week, week after week.
The rhythm of life and of work are essential: they connect us more closely to the way in which the earth moves through time, sunrise and sunset. I have felt this ebb and flow through community life—as though we function as one living organism, moving and grooving together to get work done without too much discord.On a good day.
Of course community life is not perfect. As Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky reminds us, “Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams.” Sometimes, when our rhythms become set in stone, they can get in the way of opening our hearts to others. When rhythms are stuck in place, so much so that the person who set them originally does not remember the intention, is it not time to question the rhythm and interrogate ourselves to see if there is a better way to live together?
This is why I’m often skeptical of people who say “This is the way it’s done.” This seems to be an answer that brushes off personal commitment to the rhythm in question, and places the responsibility on a larger, vaguer, group.
So when I hear Jesus say in our gospel passage today “You have heard that it was said…” I feel that he is challenging “The way it’s always been done.” In speaking to the disciples, Jesus brings up a common saying they knew: “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy” in order to refute it—or rather to go beyond it, as he speaks about how we must love our enemies as well.
Through Jesus’ prophetic challenge in today’s gospel I hear him questioning the unhelpful rhythms ingrained within each of us, in order to realign ourselves into community, into earth, and into Jesus himself.
As a songwriter, I’m learning that sinking into the rhythms around me are what will allow the song to flow authentically through me. The following words, lyrics, are part of a song I’m writing in that spirit, but also a mantra I am repeating to myself this lenten season:
The sun is setting.
The moon is letting us know.
Liam Myers is a freelance writer, an adjunct professor of religious studies at Iona University, and member of the Catholic Worker Maryhouse in NYC