Happy New Year to you. I am writing this letter from a personal retreat I try to take each year at St. Francis Springs Prayer Center about 30 miles north of Greensboro. I take three days and three nights there beginning on January 2nd. The purpose is at least two-fold. First and foremost it is a time of reflection and writing concerning the year that has passed: a chronicle, an evaluation (or examen as Ignatius puts it) and a report on that year in all the spheres of life.
As I reflect and write, it is a time to celebrate the amazing things brought our way in family, ministry, relationship, spiritual growth and physical health. As I record these multiple times of blessing it is almost overwhelming. Gratitude just poured forth as I would re-experience them in reflection. Then, I just as carefully seek to re-visit and record the places of sorrow, hurt and conflict; also, times of frustration, fear and anger that move me to find peace and forgiveness often of myself and others. It is a cleansing time for moving into the New Year.
Thus, reflection looms large in this space. In my devotions I am struck by how often Mary's journey is mentioned by commentators encouraging reflection. Two writings follow which encourage a pause at the beginning of the year and may still encourage you to do so. One commenter says this:
In the midst of all this looking ahead, I take great comfort in the
example that Mary gives at the start of it all. After the birth of Jesus
and the visit of the shepherds, Luke tells us Mary "kept all these
things, reflecting on them in her heart (Luke 2:19). The New Year
begins not with Mary straining forward or "leaning in", but "bending
back". It begins in reflection from (flectere, "to bend"). Instead of our
secular ritual of the New Year's resolution - those well-intentioned
promises that we know we will never keep - Mary models a different
practice: prayerful consideration of what has already taken place.
Hahnenberg, Give us this Day (January 2019, p.5).
Another author puts it this way in relation to a "yes" to what God’s call may be us to in the new year:
The dawning of a new year causes many of us to reflect in our heart.
We have turned the page on the old calendar with gratitude, with
some Auld Lang Syne wistfulness, or with regrets or even deep remorse
over things we have done or failed to do. For some of us the old
year brought crushing sorrow- or incandescent joy. The new year
may bring either or both of these extremes, or it may simply bring
a normal ebb and flow of life's disappointments and delights....
Mary carried an equanimity and an unfolding wisdom born of saying
"yes" to the new. May we follow her example and notice in this new
year where God is offering opportunities for us to offer a "yes" of our own.
This brings us to my second purpose for drawing aside at this time, namely in prayer for growth in discernment and listening and an attentive ear for this new year while I am alone and in solitude. It so helps to reconcile with the joys and sorrows of the prior year as we pray for wisdom and a growth in love, compassion and thanksgiving in this present one. So I want to share with you a prayer I came across in relation to the year opening up before us. I pray this for myself, my family, for you and for the many constituencies of the Verbena vision and invite you to join in on all those levels as we pray.
Prayer for Guidance
Steer the ship of my life Lord, to your quiet harbor,
where I can be safe from the storms of sin and conflict.
Show me the course I should take.
Renew in me the gift of discernment
So that I can always see the right direction in which I should go.
And give me the strength and the courage to choose the
right course, even when the seas are rough and the waves high,
Knowing that through enduring hardship and danger we
shall find comfort and peace.
-- St. Basil of Caesarea.
Now, I am moved to pray for healing and wholeness for the folks who come for prayer this year and those God brings to you. And a deepening prayer of mine for is for healing and unity in the whole body of Christ - the Church. Just as intentionally, I pray for a renewal and increase in the gift of hospitality as Laurie and I welcome people into our home before an intensive and as I receive each one for prayer the days they are here, the warmth of hospitality being critical to a sense of safety and connection. I pray the same for your home and for every gathering we host, large or small. This is a prayer on those two fronts that it would be powerful to pray in unity together this year:
Prayer for Wholeness and Healing
We come together,
broken, shaken, shattered, barely standing.
As a church and a people
we are holding tight to a reality that we are
struggling to understand.
We come together as the People of God,
simply together, without rank or hierarchy,
seeking a glimpse of the
Divine that is Love.
We come together to pray
Words cannot utter our heart.
Images constrain our mind.
God knows what is deepest in our hearts.
We sit open to this understanding.
God show each of us what is needed.
We gather as the people of God
angry, distraught, called to action.
We gather
seeking a unifying love that can only come from the
presence of the Divine One.
Love's greatest design
is for wholeness and healing.
We gather as the people of God,
called to incarnate this
great design to whom all we encounter.
-- Sr. Linda Buck, CSJ
Another source of my devotions here is a book that Henri Nouwen wrote, his last book before he died: Can You Drink The Cup?. It is meditative and slim and weaves in the stories and companions of those last years in the community of L'Arche Dayspring in Canada. The unfolding meditation tracks the gestures in engaging a cup, holding, lifting, drinking and the application to the follower of Jesus as only Nouwen in profound simplicity can express it. Consider this one thought on drinking the cup and the accompanying commentary from the introduction by Ron Hansen in pursuing authenticity in who we are and in our vocational obedience:
Drinking the cup of life is fully appropriating and internalizing
our own unique existence with all its sorrows and joys. (Nouwen p. 13)
It is the challenge to forthrightly acknowledge who we are, to
forsake the entrapments of our addictions, compulsions and sins,
and to be as fully trusting in God as Jesus was when he, in a
spirit of unconditional love accepted his ministry with all its con-
sequences. (Hansen, p. 13).
Nouwen explores this and so much more for a life in discipleship and contemplation. For those wanting and walking this way of love, he says this about lifting the cup, namely the absolute need for community which we heartily affirm in our ministry and through Verbena:
Lifting our cup means sharing our life so we can celebrate it. When
we truly believe we are called to lay down our lives for our friends,
we must dare to take the risk to let others know what we are living.
The important question is, "Do we have a circle of trustworthy friends
where we feel safe enough to be intimately known and called to an
always greater maturity?"
May it be so among us with you and you with us. It is so affirming and encouraging and life giving to be able to answer that question "Yes" we have such a circle as we enter our 22nd year of praying with people.
Finally, after quoting so much for you to pray and consider from my time away, it is fitting and necessary to conclude with a blessing to you which I receive in my life and vocation in solitude that is straight from Scripture. I pass on to you that which I receive:
The Lord said to Moses: "Speak to Aaron and his sons and tell them:
This is how you shall bless the Israelites. Say to them:/ The Lord let
his face shine upon you, and be gracious to you!/ The Lord look upon
you kindly and give you peace./ So shall they invoke my name upon
the Israelites, and I will bless them.
Much love and blessing in this New Year.
Trip and Laurie