Lost and Found

A few years ago I met a man who was completing his seminary studies and was about to be ordained, I believe, as a Jesuit priest.  His order very much wanted him to continue his studies for a Ph.D, but he was convinced that God was calling him first to the desert, to accept the invitation to "come die" with a brother who was doing some missionary work in the American Southwest.  I keep returning to this conversation, and I recognize that it planted the seed of one of my beliefs about trying to walk a Christian path - that it must be taken in humility, and to achieve that humility can sometimes require a great struggle with our very tenacious egos. Letting go of at least some of our ego's expectations (what Henri Nouwen describes as the hunger to make ourselves relevant, spectacular, and powerful) can feel very much like dying.  However, in that struggle we might actually hear how God is calling us to live.          

 Most religions acknowledge a time for fasting and for feasting.  Tomorrow, after the celebrations of Mardi Gras have ended, Ash Wednesday ushers in the great time of Lent - a time of fasting from what may be getting in one's way of accepting God's love.  A time of preparation.  A time to learn to die.  A time of learning to surrender to the vast What Is.  A time of learning to turn and continually return to God, to consciously seek God's help.  A time of learning that we are more than what our egos want so desperately to hang on to.  We learn we are more than just hangers-on.  We are those who can actually grow into God.  We can trade in our desperation for love.       

 

When Jesus struggled in the desert, he relied on scripture to foil the illusions and temptations of power, wealth, and  independence that were placed before him.  In the wonderful hymn, Love Divine, All Love Excelling, we sing of finding our place where we cast our crowns before Jesus, lost in wonder, love, and praise.  When we dare to take off the  trappings of this world (they will be taken away from us sooner or later anyway so we might as well get used to offering them up now), we may indeed feel a little lost.   But we will also be very much found.  

 

In the desert, Jesus found himself tended to by angels.  May you also know that as you try to give something up, or take on a new spiritual practice, or to simply feel God's grace in a current loss or transition, you do not travel alone.  We are blessed to journey together.  What are we seeking?  To find God where we have been all along.   

   

When we do not run away in fear, but patiently stay with our struggles, the outer space of solitude gradually becomes an inner space, a space in our heart where we come to know the presence of the Spirit who has already been given to us.   In the solitude of our heart we can listen to our questions and - as the German poet Rilke says so beautifully - gradually grow, without even noticing it, into the answer.

                        - Henri Nouwen, The Selfless Way of Christ      

    

Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.  

                                                                  -  Matthew 4:11