By Sister Mary Scholastica, O.C.D
A little birdie told me that someone was inquiring about our “Carmelite Musings” and wondering when we’d be starting up again. How neat! Someone reads these. 🙂
I suppose this short reflection should be on consistency and follow-through as we had noted to you that we’d be re-starting up our Musings a few months ago when we lapsed the first time. Mostly as a reminder to self. Best practice is to always “own your own stuff”. Excuses are just that, excuses. However, we have some great ones. 🙂
This past summer was extremely full. From all our sisters coming home for the summer, our annual retreats, a massively amazing Jubilee celebration for our sisters celebrating 25, 50, 60, 70 years in Carmel, community meetings, a musical recording project, other hosted events, attendance at a Catholic conference, more gatherings and of course, daily life. So you see, a little mercy is appreciated!
More seriously now…the random musing for today has to do with our natural narrowness, our turning inward, the limits we put on ourselves. I’ve been thinking about this for some time now. Even physically as we age, unless we take good care of ourselves and consciously work on our posture, our bodies start stooping and we curve inwards. With our thoughts, if we don’t broaden our thinking, it becomes “narrow”. We hang on to what we know and do not allow new ideas, new insights to seep in to disrupt our comfortable thought patterns. We naturally limit ourselves on so many levels. We think and say, “I can’t do that. I’ve never done that. I’m bad at this, I’m bad at that when I’ve never even tried. I’ve never been good at that.” It’s interesting. We can stunt our growth and that of others all throughout one single day. We move in this space more often than we think we do. It’s a sobering thought.
Anything good in life, even life itself, has a jarring quality about it if moving in the direction of growth. Caterpillars can stay very comfortable in their cocoons where it’s nice and safe but will never reach its full potential until it fights its way out. It then transforms into a beautiful butterfly. Same goes for new life. The pain of childbirth. The joy of your son, daughter being held in your arms for the first time. For muscles to grow, you must apply a load of stress greater than what your body or muscles had previously adapted too. Any new groundbreaking idea meets with stiff resistance as it often goes against the status quo, it goes against what “we’ve always done”. When seeking to grow in vulnerability-based trust where there is little trust, basic conversations about issues can feel like ruptures in the relationship. But continued engagement leads to personal growth and deeper trust.
We were watching the National Geographic episode on explorers and the gentleman who was accompanying the explorers to the ends of the earth noted that he would never have done the things he did if his explorer companions hadn’t pushed him into areas he didn’t know were possible. His own limited way of seeing the situations would have immediately closed him off to experiencing the world wonders that he did. Growth. Wideness of horizon. Broadness of vision. Space. Huge skies with no limits.
I think this has been a source of reflection for me simply because it is so easy to stay in a comfortable place. My goodness, it’s so easy. Life feels simpler. No one rocks the boat. Little or no challenges. Nothing to disrupt my equilibrium. Peace. Peace?
If you look deep within, really look within, it never lands in a place of true peace. It just can’t. It’s more rightly called denial and not living life fully. Mostly because we follow our Lord Jesus Christ, and to follow Him means that we don’t have a place to lay our head, we need to put out into the deep, get out of the boat and walk on water, die to live, take up our cross and follow Him. Just to name a few.
This spirit of discipleship is all about widening our horizons, broadness of vision, growth. It’s the eternal long view. There is no limit, and we can’t see it on our own. We also need to fight against the natural tendencies that, like gravity, weigh us down and anchor us to this world when the Lord is asking us to seek heaven. Seek the things that are above. Run so as to win for we seek an imperishable prize!
All this to say…growth. It’s all around you. Seek it. Think it. Live it.
