These thoughts came from a passage I read to begin our Friday morning Lenten contemplative services. I will offer them to you as something to ponder this first weekend of Lent and will post again on Monday.
Inner quietude is not something that we can create. We can be by ourselves. Enjoy relaxing music. Be reflective. But our inner world may be more like an untamed beast than a deer that pants for streams of living water.
In the midst of our stillness, we can be very distracted. For we never quite know what may happen when we move to being still. The gift of peace may come our way. Or a troubled roar from the abyss. Or a pain from our wounded past. Or anxious fears regarding an uncertain future. The list may be endless but the distractions are real.
Yet none of this should surprise or discourage us. Inner quietude only comes as a gift after the storm. A healing after the purging. A grateful acceptance after relinquishment…
But struggles are not without blessings. If grace is found for our struggles then we ware in fact called forward by the very things that we fear may pull us back.
So while we may wish that our inner beings would be temples of freedom and light, we should still enter even though they be stormy seas, whirlpools of pain, boardrooms of debate, confusing journeys and grottoes of uncertainty. For in the midst of all of that, especially when the opposite was expected, we may well be surprised that God will cleanse the temple. And peace comes as the undeserved gift from the God who enters our journeys and surprises us along the way.
—Charles Ringma, Seek the Silences with Thomas Merton, p. 32
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