Dear All,

In our search for some reflections on journeying for last week, we found so many that we thought contained important truths.  So we are sending you a few more this week, hoping you will find something helpful amongst them.

The blessing this week is ‘Let the Peace’ from Sacred Weave.  Let’s include all those we know who are finding their ‘journey’ a difficult one at this time.

With love

 

 

Journeys

David Fleming SJ

 

We, humans, are on our way to the house of God.  The God we come to know on our journeying is not just a good God but a forgiving God, a compassionate God – the God of the prodigal son.  Like the prodigal, we are all on the road leading home.  We may, again like the prodigal, have mixed feelings about the life-choices we have made & the values we have lived.  In the midst of our evaluating our life we sometimes find ourselves needing to throw ourselves on God’s mercy.  Most important, though, is our coming to the ever new & deepening understanding of the reality of God’s relationship with us – the One who keeps watching out for us whenever we approach, but, at the same time, is always with us on the journey.

 

 

Hard Road

Hard road

My child,

I see you weary and weighed

in the slow catastrophe,

carrying the wreckage with you.

I know your longing,

the loneliness, the empty place.

Beloved, you are doing a hard thing.

Try to be as kind to yourself as I am.

Forgive yourself.  Appreciate your resilience.

Give thanks for what has sustained you.

You are weary, as you ought to be.

Give yourself permission

to savour what renews you.

You are grieving, for a horizon

that always walks ahead of you,

for a touch you can’t have.

Let yourself mourn, let the sky hear.

The earth knows your song.

Be gentle with yourself, Beloved.

You are doing a hard thing.

I am with you.  I believe in you.

This is my word to you, on this long road:

we will make it through.

We will make it through.

 

Steve Garnaas-Holmes

 

 

Thoughts in Solitude – Thomas Merton prays:

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 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 I will 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.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

In one sense we are always travelling.

Travelling as if we didn’t know where we were going.

In another sense we have already arrived.

We cannot arrive at the perfect possession of God in this life:

That is why we are travelling and in darkness.

But we already possess God by grace.

Therefore, in that sense, we have arrived and are dwelling in the light.

But, oh!  How far have I to go to find you

In whom I have already arrived.