I am writing these lines in my 'cell', i.e. my cozy room in the guesthouse / monastery Montmirail. I didn't have any particular plan for my 2.5-day time-out with God, the second already this year. To come to rest, to read a bit, to talk with God, to go for some walks and to participate in the hourly prayers of the monastic community, that was the plan. And it worked quite well. I found time to rest, read, pray, and talk to God. And I enjoyed the afternoon walks by the lake.
And now, suddenly, questions arise that I know are important but not quick and easy to answer:
- Who am I?
- Who do I want to be?
- How do I want to live so that I can be who I want to be?
- How should I realign and reorder my life, in order to live more purposefully?
I believe that God doesn't give quick answers, certainly not to these kinds of questions. He is probably more concerned with the process together than with the solutions anyway.
We don't get answers to these questions automatically or by accident. We get them only when we take time for solitude (i.e., time with God, and God alone) and silence, and try to hear and understand the voice of the Holy Spirit (see Romans 8,16).
"The things we most need to know, solve and figure out will be heard at the listening level, that place within us where Holy Spirit witnesses with our spirit." – Ruth Haley Barton
Eventually, I have found some answers here in my little 'cell'. Or while walking by the lake, respectively. For example God's wonderful assurance "You are my beloved".
Other questions have not been answered yet. That's ok. These questions wait patiently for us, they 'have no the right to go away' as David Whyte writes in his little poem "Sometimes":
Sometimes if you move carefully through the forest,
breathing like the ones in the old stories,
who could cross a shimmering bed of leaves without a sound,
you come to a place whose only task is to trouble you
with tiny but frightening requests, conceived out of nowhere
but in this place beginning to lead everywhere.
Requests to stop what you are doing right now,
and to stop what you are becoming while you do it,
questions that can make or unmake a life,
questions that have patiently waited for you,
questions that have no right to go away.
Prompt: Do you ask yourself questions of meaning and life? How does God answer you?
