Sister Doreen’s Reflections
You will seek me and find me when you seek me wholeheartedly. (Jeremiah 29:13)
O God you have come searching for me. You know me inside and out. So, God, search my life, investigate everything about me: discern the ambiguity of thought and motive that lies within me. Help me understand and then guide me on the road to eternal life. (Psalm 139:1, 23 – 24)
To really find God, these verses are saying that we must seek God with all our heart. We can’t casually try to seek God a little here and there and expect to really find God. We must dive in and seek God with everything we have, to really find and get to know God. In my heart meditations of long ago it was a time of real searching: the mystery of myself; the mystery of life in community; the mystery of living in the world.
I also found that I wanted to be found, searched out and found in all the fullness of who I am and who I want to be. I found psalm 139 to be one of great tenderness and of profound honesty as I looked at some of the roots of my own behaviours and condition, and of my own deep longings and desires. It was while pondering this psalm that I knew more clearly of the gift of God’s nearness when I found myself feeling so alienated and alone in the aftermath of the trauma of open-heart surgery. It became a new way of discovering that in my aloneness, my loneliness I felt known and understood by God. It was the gift of humility.
Both thoughts from Jeremiah and Psalm 139 became important touch points that I found I needed to return to many times throughout my journey in the wilderness as I searched for understanding. Today I find that something David Steindl-Rast wrote in his book “You are Here” about understanding to be an important addition to the musings done so long ago about a searching heart. He wrote: “in sloppy colloquial speech we often use ‘understanding’ and ‘comprehending’ interchangeably. In fact, however, these are two quite different forms of intellectual perception. They spring from two diametrically opposed attitudes. To comprehend, we must reach out and take hold of the content we want to grasp. To understand, we make the opposite gesture, as it were, and allow ourselves to be grasped or moved. We are no longer in control.” As I look back, I can see how important the struggle of the searching heart was in trying to wrestle with both grasping and being grasped, and during the struggle, trying to integrate these two. I wanted to be in control, to comprehend, and I needed to learn to allow myself to be grasped, lose control, let it be and be held or moved into a new place of understanding. It was a time of learning more clearly that there are forces and powers far greater than me that had taken over. With a searching heart came the realization that I couldn’t fix things, I couldn’t change things. Searching welcomed me into a real waiting time that I discovered was holy and grace filled.
I found during this time that Macrina Wiederkehr’s book ‘A Tree Full of Angels’ became a wonderful companion. Her understanding of us as the great little ones became a healing balm for my soul as I trudged through the wilderness. Wanting to have a searching heart, wanting to know myself both inside and out and wanting to be known inside and out, I knew was the hard journey of accepting myself (finding myself) and letting my real self be found by God. Powerlessness placed in the hands of God, honesty amid the company of others became a gift. Looking back today, it is still an ongoing and perhaps life-long journey to admit that we are not in charge, not in control. To be open to the gift of humility, to discover that we can lean on God, that we can lean on each other, and that we can move into that blessing place that changes everything. I found and I still find that a searching heart opens that blessing place by providing relief and renewal and an ability to embrace those unknown outcomes we would never have believed possible.
Looking back today I am reminded of a quote from Robert Morris’ book ‘Meek as Moses’ when he wrote: “While boasting may be the opposite of humility, true humility is not the result of self-depreciation. It is, rather, the fruit of a keen-eyed ability to see oneself realistically, as a flawed and gifted creature like all other human beings.”
It is the searching heart that uncovers those places in our lives where we love darkness rather than light. It opens for us opportunities for understanding in a deeper way why we think what we think, feel what we feel, desire what we desire, and behave the way we do. The searching heart gives us the gift, then, of truly being able to change. The searching heart stretches us by humility (truth), and in doing so supports us by openness, generosity, and compassion – towards ourselves and also enables these same strengths in our relationships with others.
In looking back at my experiences and my heart meditation, it was a searching heart that gave me those blessed moments when I was not so busy doing, that I had a chance to realize who I really was and had the opportunity to work to become my own best friend! Today as I look back, I realize that in those moments of humble awareness it is love that is more lasting than achievements, my priorities slowly began to change. The gift of the searching heart reaffirmed and deepened how much we need each other on our journey, how we are bound together in our common humanity, how each of us has a value and worth beyond anything we could ask for or imagine, gifted to us by God who loves us.
One of the chapters in the Rule of Benedict is devoted to Humility and says, “that in the spiritual life up is down and down is up: we descend by exaltation, and we ascend by humility”. Joan Chittister’s commentary on it in her book ‘The Rule of Benedict: Insights for the Ages’: “the goals and values of the spiritual life, in other words, are just plain different from the goals and values we’ve been taught by the world around us. Winning, owning, having, consuming, and controlling are not the high posts of spiritual life. And this is the basis for social revolution in the modern world.”
One of the most helpful songs that I was introduced to during this long-ago period of wilderness walking was an old Shaker Song, one that we sometimes sing even today:
“’Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free. ‘Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right, ’twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gained, To bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed,
To turn, turn will be our delight, Till by turning, turning we come ’round right.
The searching heart knows, as we all wander through our own wilderness and journey in the spiritual life, that it is not perfection that leads us to God, it is perseverance. It is dealing with the difficult things of life and growing from them that lead us to God and to each other. Looking back and pondering today it is the searching heart that most opens us to this grace of God.
