New Journal Decisions
Orienting the next season
For most of my life, I was an aspirational journaler. The people I admired were all journalers. Sharing a common way, the rule of life, with a group of other people has turned me into a regular journaler. Most mornings and many evenings, the Psalms, Moravian Daily Text with Shepherd’s Voice and daily T.R.I.P. and Lectio Divina on Tuesday nights and the Examen on Thursday nights fills up journals far more quickly than my sporadic days. It always feels like a moment of decision when one journal is closed and another is opened. I’m getting close to that moment again. I always write some orienting statements and quotes in the front leaf of my journal and have to decide if the same statements move me where I believe the Spirit is moving me. Here is what has been consistent for some time.
Longing Statement
I believe that the single most determinative question in charting our path is, “What do you love? What do you long for?” My longing statement is more important to me than a mission, a vision, or a personal creed. It has remained consistent for many journals.
I want to be an abbot
and an apostle
I want to pay attention
to speak hope
and a future
a destiny
and a warm welcome
into the hearts
the lives
of spiritual sons and daughters and
I want to relate to
and cultivate
a movement
of abbeys
of houses
where the culture of God's kingdom
is desired
and displayed.Attunement
Attune me O God
to the reality of your
attentiveness and
affection.
Questions:
—Where are you?
—What are you feeling?
—Where are you feeling?
(breathe into that place).
Asculta
Paying attention
without intention - Nouwen
Today I find that I am
the person who has left home
and lost the key
to get myself back there
Benedict, your message
is an invitation to interiority
Your experience is that of
a person who regains
their sense of themselves
Benedict, teach us to
return to the heart.
- Prayer at the shrine of Benedict at Fleury, St. Benoît sur Loire, trans. Esther de Waal.
“On this scene there appeared the man who built an ark to survive the rising storm, an ark not made with hands, into which by two and two human and eternal values might enter, to be kept until the water assuaged, an ark moreover which lasted not only for one troubled century but for fifteen, and which has sitll the capacity to bring many safe to land (15). The ark which he was building was to contain a family. So for St. Benedict the monastery has become a community of love and the abbot a man who is expected not to be infallible or omniscient, but a man who will exercise his discretion as the circumstances demand.” (19).
- Seeking God: The Way of St. Benedict. Esther de Waal; Liturgical Press. 1984.
“Quiet”
Our latest guest, a common loon,
Arrived this winter unannounced
And bringing gifts – guests do that,
Bring gifts – filling heart and home
With beauty: wild, elusive, sleek,
Low in the water, this contemplative
Loon is an icon for living present
But detached. I rarely see him fly
But he can fly. This loon dives, dives
Long and deep. No mere surface
Bird, he goes for the depths. When he dives
I think he prays, searching deep waters
For what keeps him and us alive,
Grace and quiet, buoyant with Presence.
- Eugene Peterson, poem from Holy Luck.
In the night of our technological barbarism,
monks must be as trees which exist
silently in the dark
and by their vital presence
purify the air.”
- Merton, Basic Principles of Monastic Spirituality
What is contemplation?
It is spiritual wonder
It is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being.
It is a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent, and infinitely abundant Source.
- Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation
What do you put in the front of your journal?
What orienting statements, quotes, verses, or poems do you live by?
Blessings on the next season...