Blanketed by a dense fog that completely masked the massive ocean view in front of our two beach houses we began our 5th Annual St. Martha Beach Retreat for Young Professionals. Driving to get their was the first step in trusting God and His will for you to make it safe and sound because you literally could not see the road ahead. Ironically we began the retreat with Thomas Merton’s prayer:
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 I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that my desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope that 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 (1915-1968)
We say this prayer in the beginning of the Catholics Returning Home meetings. It has always held special meaning to me when I pray it, but to have a visual as intense as the fog we had this weekend truly puts the prayer into a new perspective. I am a visual learner and often I find a heightened sense of spiritual understanding when I correlate it with something I can ‘see’ in my mind.
Which leads to the greatest gift I was given this weekend. Being that I help lead this retreat I do not hold any expectation of going home at the end of the weekend with more than the gift of spiritual renewal. When you are working a retreat you often don’t have time to listen to the other presenters and or find a moment of silence to focus on what nugget of wisdom was shared. However, this retreat proved otherwise and I was given the gift to sit, listen and soak in the theme of the ‘Revolution of the Heart’. We studied the life of Dorothy Day and focused a deep conversion of faith and trust in God.
Fr. Arthur Curillo, a Passionist priest who now lives in Chicago has joined us every year for the past five years to offer the Sacraments and give personal spiritual direction. This year, in his talk, he gave me another gift of grace by offering another visual. He was discussing the moment when he was a young man in seminary in Chicago and was left in an external predicament. I won’t go into the details of his story but the general idea was he was alone and for the first time in his life he realized that no one was around to confer his decisions with to make sure he was doing the ‘right thing’. Instead, in order to survive he had to rely on the wisdom and gifts God had given him with no looking back. He knew in that moment (a 12 hour period of time) that he needed to assert himself and become an adult.
“Do you watn to be a timid person waiting to be told what to do? Or an assertive adult who can make your own decisions and choices and accept the consequences?”
I am an adult. When I am on my own in situations I have no issue being assertive and making choices and accepting those consequences…but what hit me was how I do not remain that ‘assertive’ adult when I am in a ‘team’ situation with others that intimidate me. This understanding is not new to me and I’ve been struggling with this need to try to be ‘as good as’ for quite some time. In many ways it has hindered what should have been my ‘best’. What I heard in Fr. Arthur’s talk last night (and saw in his visual story) was ‘Why wait for others approval? If you are walking with God then you have His approval – you don’t need to wait for others. Do what you know to be true in the gifts He has given you.’
I have taught this lesson to so many and it is one we learn as a child, as a teen and on into our struggling 20’s…but it held on to me in the work place and I didn’t even realize it. I couldn’t put my finger on why I was struggling internally in certain ‘team’ circumstances and this brought great clarity to me. Call me silly – it was a nice ‘a ha’ moment. 😉
Fr. Arthur ended his segment with this statement. “What is your word worth? Lives are changed because of choice – good or bad. Within us lies the power to change the universe based on a single choice.”
My choice is to be the assertive adult I can be on my own – to show this to others, regardless of who they are, what talent they’ve been given, or experience they have obtained.
Blessings
Shannon