On Wandering, a Counsel from Abbot Chapman, and Enduring the Desert
A Note from Me
I was rereading through last year’s diary and realizing how often I described my soul as a wasteland. I was more consumed with work than usual that year. Plus, I was struggling to change my parenting approach, right at the moment my teens needed me to change.
It was a dry and exposed season—no shade, no stream.
I wrote about previous seasons of refreshment, when my soul felt more ordered. The more I thought about it, though, the more I began to doubt it. Was it just wishful thinking? What was the old reality of my soul? Was it as water-rich as I remember? Or had I been living an illusion all along? I don’t know.
Time has a way of uncovering illusions.
If I could just see things clearly, I wrote, then maybe I could chart a better way forward.
Making our transformational journey across the Threefold Way feels a lot like that: Wandering, wondering, waiting—without knowing how long.
Nowadays I’m trying to learn to live in the wondering, not rushing to trade it for something more certain.
A Voice from the Past
“We must not worry about our souls. We can’t do much. We must remove obstacles (chiefly by continually humbling ourselves and being little) and God does the rest ...
You are on the look out for ‘consolation’ (that is, a felt sense of God’s presence, sweetness, or encouragement), merely because you still imagine that you are not serving God properly when you are in dryness.
Make up your mind once for all that dryness is best, and you will find that you are frightened at having anything else!
Embrace aridities (periods of dryness or seeming barrenness) and distractions and temptations, and you will find you love to be in darkness, and that there is a super sensible light (a hidden, non-sensory communion with God) that is simply extinguished by consolation!”
–Abbot John Chapman, Spiritual Letters.
A Question to Carry
What helps you keep walking when the path feels aimless?
Wondering and wandering,
—Jon
P.S. Only 10 days left to sign up for the three-hour virtual workshop I’ll be leading with Renovaré on Cultivating a Rule of Life!
The workshop is offered twice—Thursday, January 29 (6–9 PM EST) and Saturday, January 31 (12–3 PM EST).
Oh, my, Jonathan: "Time has a way of uncovering illusions." I am experiencing this to be true and it's both painful, embarrassing, and also freeing. We're reading "Let Go" by Winn Collier right now through the Renovaré book club and his voice echoes your posture and this Abbot Chapman. It could sound like bad news but it's actually pretty good.