I have had some crazy, vivid
dreams lately. Sometimes I will only remember one image, one person, or one
event in the dream, but I’ve been trying to write down words in my journal of
whatever I do remember. The other day I woke up with only one line, “This is a
new country, what shall we name it?”
It made me laugh out loud.
It reminds me of what I wrote some time ago about my physical condition and its limitations:
I feel a layer of anger swimming right below the surface of my awareness, like a layer of fat that needs to be discarded from a great soup. I feel betrayed by my body, and I am angry about it and angry with me. It’s a crazy circle, and I know that it’s not productive, let alone healthy.
When I shared these ponderings with my spiritual director Joanne, a wise and beautiful woman, she just smiled at me and said, “Maria, you are learning to take care of yourself, and you’re taking it to other areas of your life! What I hear is calmness, trusting, a certainty that allows you to name the anger. Things are okay. I am so proud of you, your faithfulness to do the healing work. God will show you what’s next.”
The healing work that I am
committed to do involves all of me—my physical being, yes, but also my
emotional and spiritual being. I may not, but God sees how good it already is.
It frequently does feel like
traveling in a new and undiscovered country, a place where I’ve never been,
where I don’t know anyone, and where I don’t recognize the language. But this
is a journey of a lifetime and not one that I have to conquer right now. The
real challenge is whether I will be true to the journey, and faithful to the work it brings to me today.
Via Dolorosa, Jerusalem, 2012
Simply beautiful... true to the journey and to the work it brings. These words will remind me of my own journey and work today, and how I might be true to such things. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Fran! I'm enjoying sharing the journey with you through my blog :-)
ReplyDeleteI do understand. I sometimes have the feeling that my life is over. Not necessarily my physical life, but life as I have known it. And what the new life will look like is not seen.
ReplyDeleteI agree, Woodeene! it reminds me of that R.E.M song, "it's the end of the world as we know it... and I feel fine" Except I don't always feel fine about not knowing :-)
ReplyDelete