Every Carmelite, in living their vocation encounters tension between what is and what might be. …as secular Carmelites are you able to live with that tension?
Can the fact of your living with it transfigure the world? How?
Group #24 responded:
The fact that we are in the world, as God fills our being, is such that what we do lets other people see who God is in our everyday life as long as we let Him work through us. That is so in making breakfast or in working with someone who is having trouble breathing as a respiratory therapist.
In day to day life there is always a tension between wanting ideally to let God work through us and having to strive for that in dealing with other people, and working together with other people, who do not share those values, may even be antagonistic towards Christians, and may not want the same things. Sometimes finding the right balance between the ideal of loving another person and at the same time wanting to be zealous for a client or produce the ideal quality in work, sometime require moment by moment decisions. The right thing to do may only be apparent after the time has passed.
St Therese – allowing the day to bring what it brought. At some point you make a decision, with the best of intentions, and the result may not square with what we think life ought to be, but this has to be left to God.
The Lord makes straight with crooked ways. God’s love flows even if you don’t do things correctly.
Sometimes you just have to let it be and let God decide.
The tension of time is the nature of our life. Those book-ends of time are needed to let God’s Spirit guide us in doing or not doing something. That can transfigure the world. There is a beauty in different things occurring at the same time when in the midst of all that, the Holy Spirit is taking control.
Internally, it is possible to be somewhat at peace amid constant interruptions by phone calls, emails, and people at the door. There is a certain pruning that God is asking in putting us in this tension which is beautiful.
That tension is an awareness of who we want to be, who we are and the wish to let God work in us.
Sometimes you have to stick with tension, and sometimes let it go.
We are in good company, considering that St Paul wrote about this. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. Knowing that one is not meeting all the things the order is calling us to (prayer times etc) is transfiguring what we are doing in the world can be a mustard seed. We are building up an artillery warehouse for future spiritual battle in the prayers that we do now. The tension is an offering that we can give toward that spiritual warfare.
Allowing our selves to be transformed is part of what we contribute to transfiguration of the world.
Sometimes instead of being open and listening, we may have a specific thing we want a child to do but the other child wants to do it. In the same way, we sometimes may have something that we want to do for God that He wants someone else to do. Instead, we need to listen to what God wants from us – doing our own work and not doing someone else’s. Sometimes we are doing other people’s work and not doing our own.
Sometimes when one of us needs to do something that she does not want to do, God turns it around. His love and ideas are so much great. “Suit up and show up and then shut up.” No matter how much one does not want to do something, it is important to do what we are called to do and let God work in it.
You have to speak the word so that it can go into our hearts and transform us. When we offer our speaking God’s word, for the transformation of the world, it can change and transfigure.
Life has to be handled in a Carmelite spirit, letting that wisdom and simplicity shine through us in handling the difficulties of life.
We are in the process of becoming who God wants. It is the way it is going to be at this moment. God is not fast. He is love.
Sometimes you have to step back. If something is meant to be, someone will, step forward and do it. God’s work will get done. We need to sometimes get out of the way.
Mother Teresa was a tiny person. God takes those who are the most incapable so that it shows that He is doing the work.
St Therese of Lisieux wrote about accepting who we are with all of our inadequacies and temptations, and accepting that the person God made us to be and wants us to be. It is important to accept God working through those limitations in who He chose for us to be. We are all the people who are incapable, and God uses that to show that He is doing through each of us what He wants to do through us.
No comments:
Post a Comment