Yes Pixie, I can relate to that as can your Mommy. Life and ministry can often leave one feeling exhausted at the end of the day. As you snooze on my lap your Mommy is working hard in Florence to settle Opa and Oma’s final affairs.
Somehow I neglected to reflect on this particular anniversary. I was ordained on September 27th, 1987. Little did I know back then where the Lord would take me. A friend of mine was commemorating their Ordversary and it caused me to look back. This past year in terms of ordained ministry has been a challenge to say the least. Yet in the midst of it all, Spirit offered grace, sustenance, strength, and peace for the journey.
Our vocation and calling can indeed be tricky. As I reflect on this calling and life itself, I find comfort in the words of my mentor and friend Fr. Louis, Thomas Merton.
We know when we are following our vocation when our soul is set free from preoccupation with itself and is able to seek God and even to find Him, even though it may not appear to find Him. Gratitude and confidence and freedom from ourselves: these are signs that we have found our vocation and are living up to it even though everything else may seem to have gone wrong. They give us peace in any suffering. They teach us to laugh at despair. And we may have to. — No Man is an Island, p. 147.
So with faith and hope I continue this journey with your counsel and guidance Fr. Louis. And with you I offer this prayer:
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you
does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that, if I do this,
You will lead me by the right road,
though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore I will trust you always
though I may seem to be lost
and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. — Thoughts in Solitude
“Justice. To be ever ready to admit that another person is something quite different from what we read when [she or] he is there (or when we think about [her or] him). Or rather, to read in [her or] him that [she or] he is certainly something different, perhaps something completely different from what we read in [her or] him. Every being cries out silently to be read differently.”—Simone Weil
I got up to the hermitage about nightfall. Wonderful silence, saying Compline gently and slowly with a candle burning before the icon of our Lady. A deep sense of peace and truth, that this was the way things are supposed to be… (Thomas Merton’s Journals, Dancing in the Waters of Life, vol V, October 13, 1964)
Tonight was one of those nights where I sought the peace and presence of God… God did not disappoint ❤️🌹 My prayer for you, dear reader, is that you too will find that peace and presence of God…
The sun has long ago set and the Vesper Lights flicker and glow
Today has been a day of sorting through papers
As both of us organize and make sense of so much paperwork
It is a humble honor to walk with my sweetheart through this time
Life is so precious
Life is so fragile
To walk this road with my sweetheart is such a blessing
Now as my eyelids grow heavy
I lift this humble prayer to you
Dona Nobis Pacem
Grant Us Peace
A wee prayer from the heart of your Padre…
The warblers are coming through now. Very hard to identify them all, even with field glasses and a bird book. (Have seen at least one that is definitely not in the bird book.) Watching one which I took to be a Tennessee warbler. A beautiful, neat, prim little thing—seeing this beautiful thing which people do not usually see, looking into this world of birds, which is not concerned with us or with our problems, I felt very close to God or felt religious anyway. Watching those birds was as food for meditation, or as mystical reading. Perhaps better. — A Search for Solitude: Pursuing the Monk’s True LifeThe Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume 3: 1952-1960
The warbler in the photo and I spent some time together this past summer while my dad was in rehab in Minnesota. It was one of those moments where I truly felt God’s presence as we walked this particular journey with him. I often feel Spirit’s presence when my feathered friends visit. Especially when our mother’s favorite birds, the Cardinals, visit us and share a love and peace with us which is a balm for our souls.
“There is always a moment in any kind of struggle when one feels in full bloom. Vivid. Alive. One might be blown to bits in such a moment and still be at peace. Martin Luther King Jr. at the mountaintop. Gandhi dying with the name of God on his lips . . . . To be such a person or to witness anyone at this moment of transcendent presence is to know that what is human is linked, by a daring comparison, to what is divine.”—Alice Walker
My impatience is felt as an upheaval of resentment, disgust, depression. Yet I am joyful. I like life. I am happy with it. I have nothing to complain of. But a little of the chill, a little of the darkness, the sense of void in the midst of myself, and I say to my body: “Okay, all right then, die, you idiot!” But it is not really trying to die, it just wants to slow down. — Journal entry from October 2, 1962–Turning Towards the World: Thomas Merton’s Journals (vol. IV)
At almost forty-eight, Merton wrote the above words. I chuckled a bit because I tried to remember age forty-eight… I had been deployed and then returned from England to the US for my final Air Force assignment. I had no clue what was coming or how wonderful things would turn out after the storm of my own making. Then I realized that at the age of sixty-one I have lived longer than Merton.
My body too isn’t trying to die (sometimes it feels like it though 😉), it is indeed telling me to slow down. It made that especially loud and clear when we returned home after 14,000 miles of driving over two months caring for family and walking with my father-in-law and our good friend and Denise’s former mother-in-law through The Valley of the Shadows. Denise is still on the road every week between home and Alabama as she goes through the long process of settling her parent’s estate.
Besides a somewhat morbid sense of humor on my part (channeling my inner Merton?), I can see the delicate balance he described in his journal. The darkness and the light are very real. I do like life and am very happy with the life Denise and I continue to build together. I need to do a better job of remembering that when the dark days occur. At that point I can think of my favorite picture of Thomas Merton!
Lord, help me to listen to my soul and my body. Help me to embrace the joy that is in life while acknowledging (not denying) the darkness that is also present. And finally, Lord, may I always choose love. Amen.
Verse of the day
And do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.
– Nehemiah 8:10
Voice of the day
This place could be beautiful, / right? You could make this place beautiful.
– Maggie Smith, “Good Bones”
Prayer of the day Strengthen us as we lift one another up and repair your creation.
“One cannot remain immobile where the political and aesthetic customs and potentialities are so conspicuous and compelling: one must take another step.” — a letter from Boris Pasternak to Kurt Wolff discussing Merton’s letters to Pasternak shared in Merton’s Journal, A Search for Solitude: Pursuing the Monk’s Life (October 31, 1958)
So, how can we remain immobile, paralyzed by the political, ideological, and theological crisis we are facing today? We cannot remain immobile! To be honest, there are days when I want to escape to some sort of sanctuary (a place of solitude, or a hermitage) with Denise. Especially as so much of the church at large is imploding into itself instead of bravely embracing the new potential that we are being called to as Christ-followers. Looking not to the past with longing but to the future with hope and expectation is, I believe, taking the next step.
Verse of the day
One night the Lord said to Paul in a vision, “Do not be afraid, but speak and do not be silent; for I am with you, and no one will lay a hand on you to harm you, for there are many in this city who are my people.”
– Acts 18:9-10
Voice of the day
What’s the point of having a voice if you’re gonna be silent in those moments you shouldn’t be?
– Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give (2017)
Prayer of the day Amid threats and terror, inspire us to never be silent, but instead to act as witnesses of truth and justice.
