Author: Sr. Dorcee, beloved

I am the one whom Jesus loves.

Am I grumbling?

Sr. Dorcee, beloved3 Comments

I know I said I was “out of town”. . . but I just had to share this excerpt following up on my post from yesterday.  It’s from Never Give Up by John Janaro:

Am I grumbling?

I think it is important to distinguish between the grumble and the lament.  Both can express themselves as “God, why are you doing this to me?”  But they mean two different things.  The lament is a prayer; read the Psalms.  It is a cry of pain–the pain that a creature feels under the weight of the transforming pressure of the divine Creator and Lover, who carries out his mysterious plan in my life via an incomprehensible suffering.  The grumble, on the other hand, is a loss of trust in God motivated by my own misery.  It gets me forty more years in the desert–read the book of Exodus. (p.70)

I have both written about and spoken about lament.  It really is important to know the difference between a grumble and a lament.  If not, we run the risk of either not speaking to God of our troubles, of deciding to just bottle them up deep inside or of running on and on complaining to Him but not really expressing our trust in Him.  God wants to be with us in our suffering.

Suffering must be endured not because life is less important than we had hoped but because it is more important than we can imagine. It is the place where God is with us. (p. 52)

We are called to endure suffering not with stoic resignation but with abandonment to his loving presence.  We endure in the conviction that God offers us his love–the only fulfillment of the human heart–here and now, in the midst of our sufferings and the plodding of our daily lives.  We are called to put our hearts on the line, to allow ourselves to be wounded by the hope that even in this darkness it is possible to love and to be loved, because he is with us and he loves us now.  And we know that love–in the end–is always worth the risk. (p. 53)

The abyss is the hollow of the hands of God. (p. 53)

To one in trouble

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

Life is busy; it’s still too hot for me; I’m not sleeping well; my internet connection is spotty; I’m “leaving town” for a week and a half and have a lot to do before and afterwards; and I have no inspiration. I don’t mean to complain, just to explain. This meditation from Amy Carmichael is for me–but you can read it as well.

I want to give you a word that helped me all yesterday and will help me today.  It is the ‘through’ of Psalm 84.6 [“Passing through the valley of Weeping they make it a place of springs”] and of Isaiah 43.2 [“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overcome you”] taken with Song of Songs 8.5 [“Who is this coming up from the wilderness, leaning upon her beloved?”].

We are never staying in the valley or the rough waters; we are always only passing through them, just as the bride in the Song of Songs is seen coming up from the wilderness leaning upon her Beloved.

So whatever the valley is, or however rough the waters are, we won’t fear.  Leaning upon our Beloved we shall come up from the wilderness and, as Psalm 84.6 says, even use the valley as a well, make it a well.  We shall find the living waters there and drink of them. (Candles in the Dark, p. 78)

As I said, I’m “out of town” for the next while. Dip into some old posts. There is still some good stuff there! (Just click on “Amy Carmichael” under “Categories”–that will keep you going for awhile!)

God will make the space

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So . . . back to Fr. Matthew’s book, Impact of God.   (Sorry about the delay . . . lots going on the past few days.)  So how do we make the space for God to come fully into us.  We all know how we are attached to so many things, and we also know all too well how often our efforts to detach ourselves fail miserably.  Fr. Matthew shares with us the good news that John of the Cross makes so clear in his writings: God will make the space in us if we will let Him.  (You all know little words can be big words . . .)  If we will just keep saying yes to what He is doing–and many times that may manifest itself as dry, distracted prayer, untoward events in our lives, etc.–things we naturally shrink from, but ways God uses to clear out those detachments in our lives.  Our part is “simply” to keep saying yes, and God who is continually pursuing us will indeed bring us into full union with Him.

If God is a self-bestowing God, then his gift is liable to engage us.  If he is active, then, in prayer, provided we stay around, he is liable to act.

Night: if God is beyond us, his approach is also liable to leave us feeling out of our depth.  When the divine engages us more deeply, our minds and feelings will have less to take hold of, accustomed as they are to controlling the agenda, to meeting God on their terms and in portions they can handle.  A deeper gifts will feel like no gift at all.  His ‘loving inflow’ is ‘hidden’; it is night.

If anything is felt it will probably be our own selfishness and narrowness (wood crackling and twisting as the fire makes progress).  When God approaches as who he is, I am liable to feel myself for what I am.  As a physical sign of growth is growing pains, so a sign of God gift is the pain of being widened.  This is the blessedness of night, that God, who wants to give, undertakes to make space in us for his gift. (Fr. Iain Matthew, emphasis added)

Wherever He finds space

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Continuing on from yesterday: Fr. Matthew emphasizes over and over how much initiative God takes in His relationship with us.  God pours out His love like the sunlight, “wherever he finds space, like a ray of sunlight, and joyfully disclos[ing] himself to people on the footpaths and the highways.”  Our response is to be not so much “forging a way, but on our getting out of the way.  Progress will be measured, less by ground covered, more by the amount of room God is given to manoeuvre.”  That is where He will give Himself–where He finds space. So how do we make that space for Him?

To be continued.

God is all for you alone

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Earlier this week, a good friend of mine read out loud to me excerpts from one of my favorite books (and now hers), Impact of God, by Fr. Iain Matthew.  I don’t think I’ve ever shared anything from that book with all of you.  The book’s purpose is to introduce the reader to St. John of the Cross, but even more importantly, I think, to gain a deeper understanding of God’s desire for relationship with us, especially when prayer is dark and dry.  Here’s a little taste from one of the first chapters of the book:

[God] does not give in a general way only, like rays of sunlight shining above a mountain, but leaving me-in-particular shadowed in the valley.  John’s God enters to confront the other person as if there were no other.  It seems to her that God has no other concern, ‘but that he is all for her alone.’  God comes in strength, capable of reconciling opposites, ‘giving life for death’s distress.’  His embrace is as wide as Good Friday to Sunday, and nothing in the person is too much for him.  He finds in the soul, not a burden, or a disappointment, but a cause for ‘glad celebration.’  John dares to place on the lips of his God the words:

‘I am yours, and for you, and I am pleased to be as I am that I may be yours and give myself to you.’

Ponder that.

More to come . . .

Laying bricks

Sr. Dorcee, beloved3 Comments

We run two small homes for older adults who are no longer capable of living alone and who have limited support and no resources.  We are only able to house 6-7 residents at one time.  There are many more elderly who could use our help.  We also do foster care for children in need.  We have cared for 26 children since we began this endeavor in 1992.  But there are millions of children around the world who are in great need.

“People say, ‘What is the sense of our small effort?’  They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time.'” (Servant of God Dorothy Day)

“The whole work is only a drop in the ocean.  But if we don’t put the drop in, the ocean would be one drop less.” (Bl Teresa of Calcutta)

So we just lay our bricks, take our steps, and put in our drops one at a time day by day . . .

Gold is gold

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I have a good friend who said to me years ago when I was going through a rough time: “Gold is gold before it goes into the fire.”  That gave me a lot of hope, because I sure didn’t feel like gold at the moment!

This selection from Amy Carmichael’s Thou Givest . . . They Gather makes a similar point:

Num 31.23 Everything that can stand the fire, you shall pass through the fire, and it shall be clean.

Is it not a tremendous comfort that a test of any sort proves that our God knows the soul can stand the test?  Things that could not stand the fire were to be put into water–a much less fierce test of the stuff of which the thing was made.  Our God is as tender with souls as with things.  He will not put us through the fire unless He knows that we can “stand the fire.”

Thy way, not mine, O Lord

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Today’s Sunday-poem:

Thy way, not mine, O Lord,
However dark it be;
Lead me by thine own hand,
Choose out the path for me.

Smooth let it be or rough,
It will be still the best;
Winding or straight, it leads
Right onward to thy rest.

I dare not choose my lot;
I would not if I might:
Choose thou for me, my God,
So I shall walk aright.

The Kingdom that I seek
Is thine; so let the way
That leads to it be thine,
Else I must surely stray.

Take thou my cup, and it
With joy or sorrow fill,
As best to thee may seem;
Choose thou my good and ill.

Choose thou for me my friends,
My sickness or my health;
Choose thou my cares for me,
My poverty or wealth.

Not mine, not mine, the choice
In things or great or small;
Be thou my guide, my strength,
My wisdom, and my all.

H. Bonar

Just holding on to a rosary

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

On this Saturday, Mary’s day, I want to share this beautiful excerpt from one of Caryll Houselander’s letters (quoted in Magnificat today):

Your own troubles are really very sad indeed; I do feel very deeply for you.  It certainly seems that prayer is the only help–that and taking each trial separately, trying not to look miles ahead with the overwhelming picture of years of succeeding crises to weigh you down.  Prayer does bring such amazing answers that it is reasonable to hope that every separate crisis may be the last: and happiness may come very suddenly, when you least expect it . . .

Do you find help from the rosary?  I find just holding on to it, even, helps.  Of course, some would say that is mere superstition, but it isn’t if it symbolizes holding on to God, as it does for me.  I have been visiting a girl once a week for a doctor; the girl was a baffling nerve case.  She used to have about three attacks a day resembling acute attacks of Saint Vitus’ dance, and followed by palpitations of so violent a nature that the doctors marveled that her heart could stand up to it . . . She had been previously two years in hospital and had seen every specialist, but no one could diagnose her case and she just went on getting worse.  She had no religion, and her only reaction to God–a very vague idea to her–was fear and aversion.

I gave her a rosary and told her to try to say something with it in her hand–her own prayer–or say nothing, but mean to hold on to God.  From the hour she took the rosary into her hand she has been better, and is now almost cured. . . . Her mind has flowered too, literally changed from a narrow self-obsessed mind to a big, objective, clever and loving one.