Integration

Another journal post - still nothing but my own self exploration to offer the world.

For Lent this year, I am exploring what it means to do things from my own sense of desire rather than obligation. I still do things from obligation, but being able to notice and own the differences between things that I do that come out of my own desire or the movement of my soul towards some activity or goal and the things I do because I feel someone is going to judge me for not having done it.

This, so far, seems to revolve around a lot of laundry. And the fact that I am married to, perhaps, the most perfect person for me, makes this whole exercise somewhat absurd. His answer, "Well, just have the dry cleaner do it, whatever." It brings home to me just how much of what I do every day I am no longer doing because I derive satisfaction from it but because I was doing it before and so people expect me to keep doing it.

This flies in the face of so much of how I live my life when I am being intentional. I'm amazed at how much of my life feels as grounded as a butterfly or plastic bag these days - and even more surprised to discover that the break happened when I started seminary, not after. When we engage in recollection, when I engage in recollection, I am continually finding that there is this breaking point between 2008 and whenever now is - and it has been that way for a couple of years, which is how I have realized that I have never integrated a whole section of my life into "my life."

The other thing I have been doing lately is reading all those Benedictine Spirituality books I've bought over the years, some I am re-reading and some, I never got around to. And I am coming to the realization that it meant more to me than I thought that I had a one-sheet reminder of the Rule of Benedict in my office. I started reading the Rule by some chance, found that it resonated with how I was living my life or wanted to live my life, and I think I am only just barely beginning to see how profoundly that Rule has shaped me and how it has colored my understanding of my call.

I think, for the very first time, I am starting to see the glimmer of what people meant when they said my call wasn't clear - that the priesthood didn't seem to fit. And I am starting to see why church is so chafing to me. I thought that it was rejection and a whole associated mess of childish push back on my part, but I think I actually didn't go through my spiritual formation in what churches actually are, and so the fact that this tiny, presumed dying (because as a church it was in fact dying) community that formed me, and that I miss and I long for and I go back and forth about how to stay in connection with people I feel rejected me is because I have in fact confused the very monastic community we did have with what a church is.

Some days, I think I am living the whole history of Christianity in my own person.

But mostly, I think that I am going to have to find that old one-page shorthand of the Rule of Benedict and post it back up. Because I think I am very word-centric, and I think I need to see the words to remember why they are so important and how the living of those ideas is what give me peace and what makes me feel whole.