You are Invited
Daily Passage
Reflections
Two tables have been set in Proverbs 9. Choice is underscored in this passage. There are two invitations. Shall we enter into the house of Lady Wisdom or the foolish woman? Both call and provide abundantly. Both offer an invitation to all. However, while those who eat of the feast provided by Lady Wisdom “live, and walk in the way of insight” (6), those who enter in to the house of the foolish woman wind up dead in her closet (18).
In the play The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde, Algernon chides his best friend Jack, the protagonist of the play, with the retort, “Nothing annoys people so much as not receiving invitations.”
I laugh at this and relate to the truth in it. Yes, we all like to be invited to the party, included in the group. When we are not included, a natural feeling of lack begins to fill us. This feeling of lack seems to abound with the social media of the day. The content is posted. Why is this friend getting more likes than me? Why am I not included in that group chat? And through media, we are often told, that we don’t measure up. We are shown these images of who we are and who we should be, and we are invited to look and gather up all that we need to become acceptable to the group so that we can join in the party, and we WANT to become. Through this search to be what we are shown we should be, some of us escape behind masks, some of us seek escape and isolate, and some see the facade and continue unshaped. But Lady Wisdom invites us just as we are. Even if we are “simple,” even if we are “naive,” we are invited as we are ( 4).
I really like that play The Importance of Being Ernest. It is a play about invitations in a way — the invitation to be who we are - really, authentically.
Through witty dialogue as the play opens, the audience discovers that Jack supposedly hasn’t been telling the truth. He has invented a younger brother, whom he calls Ernest, so that he has an excuse to leave his weighty affairs in his home of Hertfordshire and go off to London to have some fun. And not only that, while in London, he goes by the name Ernest and ironically takes on the less serious personality of this fictional younger brother, who often gets in to trouble and requires his help.
In Act One, his London friend, Algernon, grows to suspect this Jack, who he knows as Ernest, to be leading a double life and forces the reveal. Algernon thinks this double life idea is great. In fact, he himself has created an imaginary uncle and uses this relation as his excuse to escape even when it’s to go to imaginary dinner parties that he has not yet been invited to. Complicated? This is only the beginning.
As the play progresses, Jack explains to Algernon, who has discovered two names—Jack and Cecily-inscribed on a personal item belonging to his friend, that his name is not Ernest, but Jack. Cecily, he says is his ward, the granddaughter of his late adoptive father. As Jack speaks of Cecily, he says that she has been really wanting to meet his younger brother, Ernest, and that he might need to “kill this Ernest off” because she has become much too interested. Algernon likes what he hears about his friend’s ward and goes quickly to Hertfordshire to meet her. To gain access to the estate without introduction, he introduces himself as Ernest, Jack’s younger brother. It is love at first sight, and Algernon, now known as Ernest, and Cecily decide to get married.
And then Jack returns home. He is dressed in mourning clothes. His brother, Ernest, he says is dead. Of course with this , there is a lot of confusion which is often the case when people are not being entirely honest. Especially when they are not being honest about who they are. To make things even more complicated, Jack has proposed as Ernest to Gwendolyn, and she and her mother, Lady Bracknell have also arrived in Hertfordshire. Lady Bracknell does not approve of Jack because he is a man of no connections. However, finding out that her nephew, Algernon, is engaged to Cecily, she interrogates Jack, questioning him of Cecily.
As an added tension, both Gwendolen and Cecily have made it clear that the name Ernest is most important, even going so far to say that without the name of Ernest, there would not be a marriage. Because of this, both Jack and Algernon have seperately seen a priest, inquiring about changing their name officially.
After much confusions, interactions, reveals, returns, a minor charter, Cecily’s governess, Miss Prisim, becomes the pivotal point of the play. (I think it is neat that her name is Miss Prism. Light is refracted by prisms, and it is through her, our epiphany comes. In this play, I guess, she is the foolish woman in Proverbs, and simultaneously, Lady Wisdom.) She has not always served in Jack’s household but in fact had a shady past where when entrusted with a baby, lost that baby and then ran away from her employer. In Act Three, she is recognized by Lady Bracknell and forced to explain herself. Twenty-eight years before, she left with a baby and never returned. What happened to that baby? She says that the last that she remembers, she, thinking the baby to be the manuscript for a novel she had written, absentmindedly placed him in a handbag which she left in the cloakroom of a railway station. She says that when she returned, the handbag was gone and she had no idea where it went. The story sounding strangely familiar to Jack, he runs offstage and returns shortly with a very large handbag. Miss Prisim recognizes it at once as the very one she had left in the station years before! After the work of sorting out another cloud of confusion, Jack now knows the truth about who he is and it is most amusing. Everyone discovers that Jack is the son of Lady Bracknell’s sister and was christened as Ernest John before he was lost. Unknowingly, for these long years, Jack has been telling the truth: Ernest is his name, and he does have a younger brother: Algernon! He already was who he was trying to be!
In Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Anne Dillard writes, “Something is already here, and more is coming.” I think that is something that we need to really understand. Before the “more is coming,” we have to recognize, “something is already here.” We have to have gratitude for where we are in the moment. Jack was already the person he was trying to be. And so are we. Yes - once we know that - then, in the moment, we are perfect. We need to realize that in all that we are and all that we have, we are enough and we have enough and more than enough. When we are aware of this, it will always be so - there will be no more longing. Our eyes will no longer be the craving eyes of the hungry ghost. We will be full and overflowing with the happiness. Our lives are not lives of lacking - we are the children of wisdom. We are invited to her feast. We are Lady Wisdom and have built our own house and have provided a banquet for all who will come! We have much to receive, and we have much to offer. It is a cycle—this giving and receiving. The law of opposites is in this flow. The table is set- it’s set! We are invited and we invite! All we need to do is to respond - respond to the invitation please - let’s be all that we already are and enjoy who it is we are - to celebrate the house that is warm and spacious and the feast that is nourishing - that is life ~
accept
“Something is already here, and more is coming.”
— Anne Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Eight Affirmations of Gratitude
I am grateful for invitations.
I am thankful that I am included.
An give thanks for all of the times people have invited me into their homes, welcomed me, and served me, and fellowshipped with me.
I am thankful for all of the times that I have been able to invite others into my home, and serve them, and fellowship with them.
I am thankful for tables of abundance that I have contributed to and received from.
I give thanks for feasts of celebration.
I am thankful for community.
I am grateful that I have chosen to live life and not flurt with death.
Questions to Consider
What invitations am I being offered currently, and how should I respond?
Are there thoughts I am entertaining regarding lack, and how can I let go?
How can I be even more gracious in giving and receiving invitations?
Blessings
Thank you for joining me. May you feast well today in the knowledge of fullness and overflowing. Love and light to you my friends. Namaste.