Beginning Again – A Reflection

Life can often times be challenging. I know that many times in my own life, there is a temptation when I mess up to move to another course of action. When I was facing a dark night of the soul late in my Air Force Chaplain career I thought that changing jobs would be the answer. God thought otherwise and called me back to ministry. This time it was a calling to ministry after the Air Force and back in the parish. These words of Thomas Merton speak to me of the wisdom of God and my/our calling to actually listen when the Spirit speaks.

The thing to do, when you have made a mistake, is not to give up doing what you were doing and start something altogether new, but to start over again with the thing you began badly and try, for the love of God, to do it well. — Entering the Silence: The Journals of Thomas Merton, vol 2 – October 7, 1949,