I wrote this during some Good Friday reflection time. I will be posting again regularly after Easter. Blessings!
My time away from this space during these last two weeks of Lent has been good and full of reflection. I have been reading, praying, and generally trying to discern priorities during this season of my life. I took another look at Margaret Silf’s Inner Compass, which is a wonderful interpretation of the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius. I went through the book several years ago with my spiritual director. It is interesting to notice how much has changed in me and in my life in just a few short years.
Silf asks us to picture our lives and selves as concentric circles. I am a visual person, so it was helpful to me to create these with felt.
As you can see here, the central layer is our who or who we truly are. This is where God lives in us, communes with us in his love, changes us internally, and plants his dreams for us in the broken soil of our hearts.
The middle circle is our how circle. This is where we exercise the most control over our lives. The monumental choices that we make such as spouse, job, where to live, or smaller daily decisions on how to spend our hours and minutes have bearing on both our who and our where. Whether we make choices that are in accord with God’s dream for us depends on our listening and trusting.
The outermost circle is our where circle. The things that make up our where circle are those that are most unchangeable, or at least not easily alterable. Our families of origin, our basic temperaments, where we are from, and our family status would go here. This is where we learn to stand in what is, and not whatever external circumstances we would envision.
In the simplest terms, Silf’s circles are a visual of Reinhold Neibuhr‘s serenity prayer.
I am learning to honor all of these areas, and listen for the dreams that have been given as a gift to me by my Creator. Not the easiest of tasks, even for an introvert who spends a good deal of time in stillness.
I am listening for ways that I can make a difference in the global and local community that I live in. The family that I live in. The self that I live in.
Specifically, this means that I am embracing a much slower life in reality and not just in theory. Spending time in loving communion with God shapes my inner and outer life more than anything else, and helps me to love others in a meaningful way. Although we are called to love everyone in a universal sense, I am speaking here of the very real daily pouring out our life kind of love. “Others” right now would be primarily my family and a few folks that I am specifically called to walk along side. I am learning not to feel guilty about saying no to things that would spread me too thin so that I am less than loving to those to whom I can most make a difference, and this includes myself.
Because it is starting to soak into my understanding that God’s best dream for us is to love and be loved. This is what Christ was broken for, and all that really matters. When I allow his love to take root in my heart, I am participating in the divine life and transformation of the world.
“so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” Ephesians 3:17-19
Linked to Emily’s “Love Dare.”
