Decluttering Life for God

At the Benedictine Center

St. Paul's Monastery in St. Paul, MN 

 

For details, click here

 

and

 

Everyday Spirituality for the Frazzled

 

At Holy Wisdom Monastery 

Madison, WI

 

For details click here.

 

 

 

In the Rule Benedict reminds us that God's presence is everywhere (RB 19.1). He also assures us that in God's great love we are shown the way of life (Prologue 20). The voice of God is calling to us all the time! (Prologue 19). How can we be alert for this constant Presence? As Benedict established a school for the Lord's service (Prologue 45) perhaps you and I can use life as this school and be intentional about looking for God and what God is teaching us through all the experiences of life.

 

I have found that travel offers abundant experiences of the Holy when I take the time to notice and reflect. When we travel you and I can bring home not just great memories and stunning photos but also experiences of God's presence along the way by asking a couple simple questions:

 

    Where and how is God present here?

    What might God be teaching me in what I experience in my 

           travels?

 

 

My husband John, his mother Ruth and I took a trip several years ago to the White Mountains in New Hampshire. Wonderful memories abound but it was through Coco, the dog of our marvelous innkeepers at the Notchland Inn, that God brought insight to me.

 

 

Mostly black with touches of white and with brown legs and feet, Coco was a Bernese Mountain Dog with a lovely and engaging personality. Coco had a meal routine. After the main course she was allowed to visit the guests at the dinner tables. (We were told she knew when these visits were to begin because she smelled  

the coffee!) Coco would come up to each table, sit back on her hind end, raise herself up with front legs dangling before her chest, and beg for food. Any morsel will do, thank you very much. With wide-open mouth and dangling tongue in a huge and difficult to resist grin, she laid on the perfected "aren't-I-cute-and-irresistible-and-don't-you-want-to-give-me-treat" look which, of course, we all had to resist. Loping from table to table in persistent hopefulness, never giving up, she would ask again and again for the same thing...anything edible!!

 

One night she even trotted to the back of the room, stood in the exact center, assumed her "beg position" and surveyed the entire room at once. Her grinning face turned from left to right and right to left, back and forth, giving a general appeal to the whole room. We all thought she was great and would have happily shared morsels with her had an understandably sensible appeal not to do so was voiced by innkeepers Les and Ed. Yet undeterred by the absence of response, she was cheerful and persistent in her begging.

 

 

I reflected on Coco and her begging. We tend to think that God doesn't want us to beg. Yet Jesus told a parable about the need to pray always and not to lose heart (Luke 18:1-8). A woman persistently came before the judge seeking justice until, finally, in exasperation, he granted her what she desired. How much more, Jesus says, will God grant justice and help those who call out day and night?

 

"Ask, and it will be given you; search and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened." Luke 11:9-10

 

It is okay to beg to God. I think that God looks forward to our prayers of begging. In these prayers, many of which are deep with pain, longing or grief, God holds out the hand of love to us. As we beg, like Coco, again and again, our soul opens to the touch of the One Creator. The prayer is a door to God's love. Each time God reaches yet another corner of our being. And with each cry and with each petition, we empty ourselves and are filled a little more with the inner healing of Christ.

 

Benedict encourages the monastics to perform the Work of God as best as they can while away from the monastery. Perhaps our Work of God could be to look carefully at life before us and search for God and God's instruction in all the happenings of our life. We could even beg to learn to do this!

 

I wish you blessings as our summer draws to a close.

 

 Jane

 

  © August 2012 The Rev. Dr. Jane A. Tomaine

 

 

Anyway, I'm not quite clear what the delight is in straying outside the bounds of home. I like it here. But Target tells me that he heard Jane and John talking about boarding us cats in September for a week while they're both away. I don't know what they're thinking!! We usually have this REALLY nice woman who comes to feeds us twice a day. She talks to us, gives us brushes and brings toys and treats, too, and is very Benedictine, e.g., "Distribution was made to each one as they had need" (RB 34.1). I'd like her for an abbess instead of Jane. Truth is, I'm worried because several of our members are going to be tough to catch. Ricky is a feral cat and Rudy, he's just ornery. Both of them should learn that life would be much simpler for them if they would just let John pick them up and put them gently in a cat carrier.

Well, I guess I sometimes dig in my paws when something is not to my liking, even if it would make life easier and less stressful. Do you ever do that, resist things that may be different from what you're used to but that, in the end, could really be better? Could it be a change of some sort? I hear that humans aren't good with change; us felines either. Or maybe it's another way of doing things that you don't agree with. We encounter things every day that can be opportunities to learn and grow, but instead we dig in our heels, or paws as the case may be, and staunchly refuse to even consider something different from what has been or from our way.  

 

Sr. Scholastica says growth and transformation is the key and that "the greatest folly of all...is to forget that above us and beyond us...there is a voice that calls us all the time to a change of heart, and to a new beginning...There is in each one of us a divine spark, never totally extinguished, but always in need of rekindling...[we are] made for God."  [1]

I know I've got a long way to go here. Lots of transformation needs to happen before I can let Charlotte have the chair all to herself without crowding in on her, or before I mew my opinion without listening to Jane's explanation first, or before I supervise Marcy and Smokey even though it seems that they need it, or before I eat Ricky's food, or complain about Jane to Mickey. Since I'm on a roll here, I think Jane needs to stop thinking she can do everything! What are your transformation challenges?

Nice to be with you and thanks for reading this.

 

  

                             Your friend,

 

 "There is a gentle breeze if we can but catch it, which blows all the time to help us on our journey through life to our final destination. That breeze is the Holy Spirit.  But the wind cannot be caught or used unless the sail is hoisted, and the hoisting is our task.  We must be on the watch, ready to recognize it and play our part.  God does hold us, and will lead us, if we want it; but we must want it."  

 - Cardinal Basil Hume, O.S.B.

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