CosmicCoincidence

Or is it? I should expect these sorts of supernatural affirmations by now ...

After returning from retreat in Trinidad, there is cloud cover while we run our errands (madly, since we're supposedly leaving for the interior tomorrow at 6am), which means it's slightly less sweltering; we navigate both our tasks and the city like pros, asking for help (ie. directions/advice) when we needed and receiving what we need; and to top it all off, coincidence brought the following essay to our attention this morning. Would that I had written it, instead of just identified with it through every fiber of my being. Thank God it found me. Its quotes are in bold, my resonance follows.


The Courage to Answer the Call (By Sarah Ban Breathnach)

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face ... You must do the thing you cannot do.
~Eleanor Roosevelt

"No coward soul is mine/No trembler in the world's stormtroubled sphere," Emily Bronte wrote just before her death in 1848. She was only thirty. At her end, which is really only the beginning for many of us, came the inner awareness that she had lived courageously. She had lived authentically.

At the heart of my decision to come here were the desires to continue living courageously, and to plunge into the challenge of living authentically. For me at home, I felt a bit of a disconnect from what my heart wanted. This disconnect first expressed itself in a difficult decision that I made a little over a year ago. When I made it, I thought I knew what my reasons were. Later, I came to wonder, and with wondering, I realized that I have not sorted out my core values just yet.

My heart wants deep, loving relationships. Yet I spent an absurd amount of time shopping and exercising and getting coffee alone, looking for things and activities to satisfy that longing. My heart wants challenges that pull at my core and define me. I looked for leisure and spent time on the computer (doing what?!?). My heart wanted a deepening and constant awareness of God in and around me. I committed to going to church on Sunday, and have struggled since high school with faith and religion in my life. Through both insights and despair, no answers were forthcoming.

Of course, she had known dark moments, but in the darkness she'd come to trust that a Power greater than her own would never leave nor forsake her. This Love was so transformative ...

This is one thing that I have at my center that allowed me to leave my family, my home, my friends and my comforts to embark on an adventure to serve others, and in doing so, learn about myself. I really discovered it in an intimate way while hiking in 2004. Nature spoke to me about the greatness and splendor of a power that moves in simple beauty. I want to reflect that, at least; at best, I want to glow it from within.

Love will change you, transforming your life in countless ways... you'll know that miracles are taking place. Love will sustain you when passion's path takes unexpected twists and turns. Love will dissolve you fears by creating opportunities you couldn't have imagined before you began the search to discover and recover your authentic self. And when doubt, despair, and denial threaten to dismantle your dreams, Love will rear up in your defense. The next time you feel frightened and fragile, stand very still. If you do, you might feel the tip of an angel's wing brush against your shoulder.

This just about made me cry. I have many fears, here. The biggest one is that I will never really change the world. This would sound like foolish idealism to me if I didn't know its history. It is a dream I have had since my small days, conjuring visions of how my offerings, my very presence, would lift people from their sorrows and bring them to a fuller life. Sometimes I was a ninja, defending the good and kicking villains where it counts. Sometimes I was an evil queen who relented in the end and let love conquer all. Sometimes I was a doctor with the power to heal, others an amazed astronaut or archaeologist, and many times, a photojournalist for National Geographic, exploring obsure corners of the earth and sharing their wealth and beauty with those at home. All of these characters are inside me. All still wish to really come to life, somehow. Especially that photojournalist.

I'm also scared that it is not my passion which has brought me here, but my vanity. I think that may have been the reason in the beginning, but it's not why I stay. Indeed, if my desire to be great or do great were my primary reason for being here, I would have left long ago. I am not great here. I am infinitely small and broken. I am not doing great here. I am doing whatever needs to be done without complaint. If I were not here for something more, I would certainly not survive.

I think I am here for love. I am here out of love, and I stay here in love. As the quote says, it has transformed me in small ways, and has reared its head in my defense nearly daily. Eileen and I have a saying, that when it gets too hot, you just stand very still and wait a minute, and a breeze will come. I couldn't believe the other level to that metaphor staring out at me from this piece of prose. It's not just a solution for the heat; it's a solution for the heart.

You wouldn't have come this far if you were a coward. Feeling afraid is Spirit's signal to ask for grace and Power ... Courage is fear that has said her prayers.

Fear says her prayers daily. I have never thought myself a coward, though I perhaps have made decisions based on fear before. The asking, though - this is what allows all that love to transform me. Asking for the grace to be without my family. Asking for the power and strength to be humble, and not to move mountains, not to create brilliant initiatives, and only to tend to society's ills in small ways that help the others around me to be their best. I ask for the grace to have moments of brilliance in this humbled state, and occasionally, very occasionally, I find it.

The closer we get to giving our dream to the world, the fiercer the struggle becomes to bring it forth. Why should this be so?

I suppose my struggles here, my fierce struggles that manifest themselves in dark dreams, are another way of forcing me to choose love. Choose passion. Choose to fight. Choose to want it, and choose to go after it. This is what I was really missing before I left - the will to make a choice and accept the associated risks.

We will be inexorably changed, and life can never return to the way it once was.

Truly.

How many exquisite, glorious dreams sent to heal the world has Heaven mourned because the dreamer, weary and discouraged, relied only on her own strength and could do no more?

So let there be love in my heart, and let the power I ask for be with me - and with you, too.

Dreams are gifts of the Spirit meant to alter us. Trust that the same Power that gifted you with your dream knows how to help you make it come true.

tran - si - tion = process with centered trust.

The MVC 2006 Transition Retreat splashed along this past weekend at the Emmaus Retreat Centre in Arima, Trinidad.

Ingredients were as follows: 2 drivers/self-appointed tour guides, 16 scrumptious meals, 122 bug bites (pobrecitas!), 7 leftover "potential lice" eggs, 5 feisty Sisters of St. Joseph, 54 frisbee tosses, 4 loopy international volunteers, 23 interesting new plant species, 7 GIANT snails, 2 regional coordinators, several fishy-smelling nets, 1 UNBELIEVABLY BEAUTIFUL beach, 1 international director, 1 executive director, 1 stop at a local fire station (complete with a uniform race!), 1 flat Catherine, 1 frog prince (and one kiss to find out).

My Hollow Spot


You may or may not remember that in the final battle of The Hobbitt, the way Smaug the dragon was finally brought down and defeated was a well-placed arrow to a soft hollow on one side of his massive, thickly-scaled belly.

I hope I have no battles to fight, as my hollow spot has grown from the center of my chest, and is quite large and obvious in anticipation of my sister's graduation and the ensuing family reunion (held the same weekend as my retreat in Trinidad). I love my family to a fault. It hurts not to be there for this. I just need to express the depth of this love and missing.


"It comforts me exceedingly to know you are happy."

~Catherine McAuley

With love untold across the miles .... Kate.

Second Helpings

You know when something is just too good to stay away from? My friend and co-worker Indera invited me to her big sister's wedding. After a delerious set of escapades and tomfoolery, I made it ... wet, muddied, and so excited!

It was a beautiful ceremony. I am most impressed by two things. First is the sensory overload of an Indian wedding. Bright colors make your eyes open wide. Smells of tallow and incense burning, rain in the distance and enough food cooking to feed an army fill you. The sounds of the chanting and the sounds of the band punctuate the ceremony and keep your ears alert. It is a full-body experience.

The second thing that impresses me are the ritual offerings and requests to many of the gods to bless the union happening before us, and the sense of something being physically and spiritually joined and created anew. It was really a spiritual experience - even for me, a bystander.

The second helping was just as delicious as the first. I didn't even mind the mud, or the beetle-throwing (yes, tomfoolery, I said!), the pouring rain, or anti-fog-on-the-windshield duty. Thank you, Indera and Nadeira! Just BEAUTIFUL!!