Monday Morning Meditation #68: Ecclesiastes - All of It

I think I can do this, write a Monday Morning Meditation post on this borrowed laptop with all its slowness, quirks, and lack of computing power and limited access to imagery. At least, I am going to try and see how it all works out. I do have access to the previous MMM posts, which gives me access to the images and links I need. Hurray for important things! Slowness and borrowedness is mostly an irritation and curtails quantity and frequency, not quality. (My computer is still being repaired -- the prognosis of weeks looks to be quite accurate -- and therefore I still invite followers to use this opportunity to introduce themselves and share their blogs by sending me a guest post via enote to elizabeth.mahlou@gmail.com.

This week I finished Proverbs, which, for some reason, brought nothing to mind about which to post. Then, I read Ecclesiastes, all of it. I find that I can never read Ecclesiastes, which I have read more frequently than any other book in the Bible, without going through it from start to finish because it is very rich in touching on seemingly all the philosophical questions of life. It was an important component in my coming to faith, so rather than a meditation per se this week, I will reprint a small portion of my new book in progress, A Believer-in-Waiting's First Encounters with God.


Reading: Ecclesiastes.

Excerpt: I continued to fight the Presence, not wanting to believe that God really existed. My mind, memory, and previous reading provided me with many rationalizations of my long-time acceptance of atheism. That is when I was encouraged to read about Solomon and his mistakes. Neither believing nor disbelieving, feeling more trapped than entranced, I felt a growing need to follow these promptings that were clearly leading me somewhere. On a conscious level, the direction was one in which I did not want to go. Perhaps I was afraid of learning that the Presence was truly real because of what that would mean for the rest of my life. Nonetheless, the intellectual curiosity that had taken me from rural Maine farm girl to international educational advisor propelled me to pursue any new information that came my way, and this information was both new and personalized. As such, the promptings were compelling. I did not want to listen, but I could not help listening. After all, these were answers to the “big” questions of life, and I found them seductive. Had I not been seduced by intellectual curiosity, however, I would still have found myself following the clues on the treasure hunt placed before me for I was truly helpless during that early period of divine occupation.
The reference to Solomon turned out to be more enigmatic and challenging to hunt down than was Job’s life. I quickly found out that there is no Book of Solomon, so I read what seemed to come closest: The Song of Solomon. I was surprised to find such lyrical, sensual poetry in the Bible. Obviously, though, these pre-sonnet love songs were not the message I was supposed to be seeking.
Then, I remembered something about the wisdom of Solomon and how he determined who was the true mother of a child by suggesting that the child be divided in half between the two mothers who each claimed it to be her own. Thanks to the search feature of the Internet, I was able to locate the passage about Solomon’s wisdom quickly, but the content of the passage did nothing to enlighten me.
So, I returned to the Internet, this time searching for the life of Solomon. There I found the message. Tucked away in Ecclesiastes was a description of Solomon’s life that in many ways paralleled mine, especially the part of being too smart for his own good. How often Ma had said to me, “You are too smart for your own good.” In this particular case, she was probably right. King Solomon had rejected God and worshipped false gods. That hit home. I did not worship traditional false gods, but what is atheism if it is not an adherence to a belief system? It just happens to be a non-theistic belief system. Here was a guy, then, not unlike me, who had been given even more wisdom than me and who then parlayed that gift into avid materialism, turning away from God. Hmm. I read Ecclesiastes many times. I still read it. I saw myself in Solomon, thinking that I had all the right answers. The danger in intellectual arrogance—that was one message I got from Ecclesiastes.

Contemplation: That is far as I can go with you this Monday morning. I now retire to private prayer to repent any occurrences of intellectual arrogance, to praise God for sending just the right message at just the right time not just to me but to so many throughout history, to thank God for not giving up on me, and to ask God to keep me from "chasing the wind" (as described in Ecclesiastes) and help me stay focused on chasing God and what God sends me after . Then I will move on to contemplation, my favorite part of the day, letting God take over the direction in which my relationship with Him moves.

I will leave you now to your prayer and contemplation. First, though, I would like to bring to your attention a Monday morning prayer post that you might enjoy:

Fr. Austin Fleming, priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and pastor in Concord, Massachusetts, posts a prayer each Monday morning that he calls "Monday Morning Offering." I enjoy his prayers very much. I think you also will find them inspirational. He has graciously given me permission to include a link to his blog on my Monday Morning Meditation posts. (During the week, he also posts great homilies and other thoughtful discussions. I enjoy reading those, too, as do readers of this blog who have taken the stroll over to his blog.)

For additional inspiration throughout the week, I would point out two sets of blogs: (1) the list of devotional blogs on my sidebar and (2) my blogroll, where I am following a number of inspirational priests and writers about spiritual matters. I learn so very much from all these people. I highly recommend them to you.