A Beautiful Day Apart
Monday was my monthly retreat day. The idea of a retreat day, a day apart to pray, study, meditate and simply be with God, was born out of my experience of the Academy. I’ve come to appreciate more and more the time that I spend alone with God. This last retreat day was the most powerful yet. Each one of these experiences adds to my understanding of spiritual formation and deepens my relationship with God and the cumulative affect is blowing me away.
The human condition is stressful; that is a given. Regardless of our chosen vocation, family structure or lifestyle, stress goes with the territory. There are few days that go by when we don’t encounter hurt feelings, broken relationships, pain, shame, guilt, regrets or anger in some way, shape or form. These could be our feelings or they could be someone else’s feelings projected toward us. This is not meant to be a “woe is me” attitude; this is an observed reality. It is an observation. Given the likelihood of encountering stress in our life it is a wonder that any of us get anything done.
If you browse the self-help shelf of your local bookstore you’ll notice that they are crammed with a wide variety of options for dealing with the stresses of life in the skin of humanity. From the academics to Dr. Phil everyone has an opinion and a regimen for handling stresses. I don’t know if it is stubbornness, self-reliance or something else, but I don’t often put a lot of stock in the growth industry that is the current self-help phenomenon.
In dealing with the stresses of life, other people’s and my own, I’ve had a tendency to internalize them. I have such deep empathy for other people that I can easily carry their pain as my own. This sort of internalizing of other people’s pain is an engraved invitation to any number of psychological problems. Over the years, I’ve learned how to be empathetic but not so deeply internalize the pain that is shared with me. In the last few months, I’ve learned more about my empathy and how to care for people who share their pain with me. I’ve learned more fully that I am not the source of another person’s healing. I may be an instrument of healing through my love and my empathy, but it is God who brings the healing. Through my own growth in the spirit, through prayer, silence, Sabbath, worship, study and intentionality, I’ve learned how to be present and care for people without letting their hurts become so internalized that it paralyzes me and diminishes my ability to serve for the long haul.
So now on to Monday…As I sat in the empty monastery chapel to do my morning worship I could feel the presence of the Spirit wash over me. Wave after wave, with each deep breath, through prayer, scripture, silence and journaling I could feel God’s Spirit washing me clean. For what must have been an hour this experience continued. I came to recognize that all of the stresses that had stuck to me and could have rooted like weeds in my spirit were still at the surface of my spirit and were easily washed away. Likes scales they fell off around my feet and I found myself refreshed. The things that caused the stress, the hurts, the failures, the anxieties were still present. I didn’t care less about the people or the hurts that had been shared with me. There was no thought of cutting and running from these sources of stress. Instead, this experience of being washed clean empowered me and strengthened my compassion for all of the situations. As I have grown in grace and spirit, through the disciplines I’ve learned through the Academy, I’ve discovered a new understanding of myself as an instrument rather than the source. I’ve learned new levels of trust in God. The taproot of my spirit runs more deeply into the nourishing wellspring of God’s grace.