I don't know...

My heart feels grief and sorrow at times fills my eyes. The steps don't feel laborsome though. They feel magnetic.  The pull forward towards more... towards Him.  It is away from the known, the safe, that which has been and it is a journey into an unknowning and an unchartered place.

I am so utterly reminded of Thomas Merton's prayer and my dear Episcopal priest friend who has read it to me often.

“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 that 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 will I 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.”

― Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude

I love when we sit in his office and converse on all things transitional.  And I love when he has pulled out the little card that sits upon his desk and reads this prayer to me, over me, into me... And we sit in silence as the words echo into the recesses of my being.  

But I believe  that the desire to please you does  in fact please you.  

I let those words sit upon my being and bring their peace.  It is reminiscent of my own daily prayer/ pleas of asking Holy Spirit to lead me into all truth.  

The answers to those prayers aren't taking me where I thought or anticipated they would.  At times they have led me down paths that feel quite opposite to the directions I would take on my own.  

So I check myself throughout each day.

Pray to Holy Spirit again and cling to the reality that I must believe His capacity to lead me is greater than any power existing that could deceive me.  Including self and religion.

I daily examin my steps.  Ignatian tradition has taught me well. And upon examining the infantile fruit, trying to peer through soil at baby seeds and seedlings that have yet to sprout, I feel different.  Empowered. More like Him.  Less full of religious fear and more full of holy awe and reverence.

I want to see Christ as He is, undressed from the imposed Westernization of who He was and is and what the ideas of what a follower of Him looks like.  

In His own time He was called everything from insane to demonic.. accused (accurately) of consorting with all the wrong types of people and doing all sorts of inappropriate things.  In the end He would not live up to but far exceed everybody's thoughts of who He was. 

I do not desire to be wise in my own eyes just His.  Childlike exploration. His wisdom is imploring me and pulling me into Him. Into higher places that are full of wonder and beauty and a majestic nature that knows no boundaries. 

I long to discover Him ever deeper... It isn't that the deep darknesses of Moses or the unknowing isn't terrifying at times, it's just that I am more terrified of not taking the journey. I am more terrified of who or what I would become without the pilgrimage into the deepest darknesses of our Lord.

I can't or don't want to remember who I was even upon the more recent of yesterdays, for each day pulls me in closer, deeper...and each day I find myself both more and less afraid.  

I don't know and find myself frightened often at the bends in the path.. then He reminds me of Samaria (it His favorite thing to recall to my mind.. He went to the places He was not supposed to go.. that no good Jew would go.. That no rabbi would go...  He does remind me of that daily these days and seemingly delights in doing so.)  He talks to me about the lepers, those healed upon the sabbath, tables being toppled, women touching His cloak, loving Matthew, the tax-collector.  He talks to me about Peter's vision and the removal of unclean towards any food.  He reminds me of the angst felt over the removal of circumcision for an entrance and prerequisite into salvation and faith. 

He reminds me of the road He walked and how the religious judged Him voraciously and then He reminds me that it was for freedom that He came and to show us all the very heart of the Father...

And then that is all I need...  And my prayer, even if through trembling lips, becomes .. May I do the same in my lifetime....