I Love School

Half dreading the often monotonous and overly detailed and lengthy assignments of my American Religious History class' (a class I really like) main textbook American Religions: A Documentary History, I pulled the book off my shelf and plopped it open to the right page, and my mood shifted dramatically-- Thomas Merton assigned for my history class? No questions asked, I dove right in and let's just say I've added New Seeds of Contemplation to my "books I should try to acquire and read" post-it note.

Here's the passage the grabbed me:

"Fickleness and indecision are signs of self-love. If you can never make up your mind what God wills for you... it may be an indication that you are trying to get around God's will and do your own with a quiet conscience."

He adds, "As soon as God gets you in one monastery you want to be in another" or "As soon as you taste one way of prayer, you want to try another". "You are always making resolutions and breaking them by counter-resolutions... Soon you will have no interior life at all".

Whoa. Wow.

Today at Adoration, my mind was running wild--notsomuch with the hecticness of a busy schedule or looming tests or projects but with emotions and anxiety. Leave it to Jesus to help me. I definitely did not come close to the silence I have often been able to find before the Lord, but Jesus helped me focus the traffic within me to reflect and think.

It's what I like to call "good noise". Sometimes in the quest for silence, the silence is seen as the end. Instead, I think the silence is a means to the end of what is found there. Beyond that even, I think the quest for silence can be a means to the end I call "good noise"--it is the "noise" in your head that comes as a result of that quest for silence. It can be new things that come with the diminishing activity inside you or the very things you are trying to quiet becoming more apparent to you.

Anyway, I had copied down the Merton text for my blog before Adoration and did not really consider it again until tonight when writing this. The only thing I wrote in my reflection journal today from Adoration was, "You're there. Just do it. TAKE THE LEAP." Talk about exhortation to love generously!

In this case, specific things in my life merited my taking more direct action and being more generous with my love; perhaps even adding a new aspect Vickey helped point out to me: loving instantaneously--moving to love before considering reasons not to love. But the overall message I drew from this clarity before the Lord was to move beyond deeper spiritual reflection of the call to love generously and to act on what I had found so far. I have to keep searching for the ways to love and what keeps me from doing so, but in the meantime, I have the leap headlong into love based on what I have found so far.

You're there. Just do it. TAKE THE LEAP.