A Long Climb to Yes

Desiring to live within the boundaries of God's will, I am reminded of the following letter.  

This was written to a cloistered nun around twenty years ago (this is not a current situation, and I apologize to anyone who thought it was!).  

At that time, Sister and I were both facing medical tests.....

Sometimes I wonder how a person so bent upon the Will of God that she accepts it as her 'enclosure' can so struggle against it over and over!  Every new situation seems to bring me to a deeper crossroads at which I find two parts of me struggling.  I am at this spot again of late; perhaps I'm always there.

This time it involves some upcoming medical examinations that I dread with every fiber of my flesh.  I grow quite weary of being poked, prodded, sliced, diced, scanned, stuck, frowned over, charted.  It's like my mind and body are absolutely quaking, going 'white with fear,' while my heart is at peace and knows that I want nothing other than the will of God, no matter what that should ever entail.  This is incredibly hard to describe, but somehow I think you will know what I mean.

I felt such a resonance with your words:  'I feel so ashamed that my feelings seem to have gotten the better of me.  Yet deep in my heart I do accept, embrace, and love God's will for me.'  Yes, that's it exactly.  You have put words to what I cannot, and I don't feel so confused anymore about this constant struggle, nor so alone.

Sometimes I feel I am embracing God's Good Will with nothing more than raw decision, a decision often made amidst my own terrified screams.

I wonder if it might be when we feel our flesh quaking that our 'yes' to God can reach the heights...

Painting: Carl Gustav Carus



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A Saint Speaks of our Boundaries

 

"Take the holy, gentle will of God as your spouse, 

wedded each moment by the ring of faith 

in which are set all the jewels of hope and love." 

St. Paul of the Cross 

This post is part of our "New Cloistered Adventure."  For an explanation of what that means, click this line.   

Painting:  George Hitchcock,  in US public domain due to age 



For a further look inside our 'walls,' click here

Just Shadows

“As the wall remains the same however many shadows pass across it, and as the looking glass remains the same however many changes of expression it reflects, so the soul that is held fast in God remains uninfluenced by the waving shapes and images that come and go.” (Dom Hubert Van Zeller, The Yoke of Divine Love, Templegate, Springfield IL, 1957, p. 226)
 
Sin casts shadows.  Living in the world as I do, I can't help but see them.  Shadows of sin wave daily across my enclosure walls.  I walk into a room with a TV and I might hear them.  I step into a store and they are there. 

Wanting to live enclosed in the will of God, I choose the boundaries of that will in circumstance after circumstance.  Yet unless I run away from everything in the world - unless I run away from my very own self, and my selfishness, and my memories - the shadows of sin remain. 

"Be intent on things above rather than on things of earth," Scripture tells me, and I want to do exactly that. "Put to death whatever in your nature is rooted in earth:  fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desires, and that lust which is called idolatry.  These are the sins which provoke God's wrath.  Your own conduct was once of this sort, when these sins were your very life.  You must put that aside now:  all the anger and quick temper, the malice, the insults, the foul language.  Stop lying to one another.  What you have done is put aside your old self with its past deeds and put on a new man, one who grows in knowledge as he is formed anew in the image of his Creator."   (Colossians 3:2-10)

'Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, so that you may judge what is God’s will, what is good, pleasing and perfect.'  Romans 12:2

"The way we can be sure of our knowledge of Him is to keep His commandments.... The way we can be sure we are in union with Him is for the man who claims to abide in Him to conduct himself just as He did."  (1 John 2:5-6) 

Today I make the choice to live within the boundaries of God's will.  In this time, in this place, I make the choice.

And the shadows?  They will be there.  They will tempt and remind and whisper; they'll try to frighten and condemn.  But when it comes right down to it, they do not bring anything into the enclosure.  They are only reflections of things outside.

Shadows are just shadows, after all.    


Public domain photo 

Text not in quotes © 2014 Nancy Shuman.  All Rights Reserved.

thecloisteredheart.org     


To look further inside our 'walls,' click here

Walls Within

When a potential postulant enters a monastery, she is shown the boundaries within which she's to live.  These have already been defined; she does not have to bring her own bricks and mortar and build them herself.  

As a Catholic Christian, I also have boundaries.  I do not have to map them out; they are clearly provided for me in Scripture and in 2,000 years of authentic Church discernment.

I know I've been repeating myself on this point.  Probably I'm beginning to sound like a cloistered parrot, mimicking my own words over and over.  But this is something the culture around does not tell us.  We won't switch on television and hear it; in fact, often we'll be shown its very opposite.  

In order to recognize the walls of God's truth and thus be able to live within their protection, we must be able to see them.  This seeing is not always easy, especially when the "walls" are viewed against a backdrop of cultural norms.  

There is goodness outside the walls as well as within, and we can participate in the goodness.  Still, we must learn to discern where the walls within are rising up to warn us: "this is good, but not that."  

God's intention is not to wall us off from people.  His intention is to protect us (and them) from temporal and eternal harm.

Life inside the walls of a monastery is counter-cultural.  If we live inside the boundaries of God's revealed will, our lives are often counter-cultural as well.  

"Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you: and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you."  (Matthew 5:44) 

"Blest shall you be when men hate you, when they ostracize you and insult you and proscribe your name as evil because of the Son of Man.  On the day they do so, rejoice and exult, for your reward shall be great in heaven." (Luke 6:22-23)

"Whosoever shall look on a woman to lust after her, has already committed adultery with her in his heart."  (Matthew 5:28)

"We demolish sophistries and every proud pretension that raises itself against the knowledge of God; we likewise bring every thought into captivity to make it obedient to Christ."  (2 Corinthians 10:5)

"Be on guard lest your spirits become bloated with indulgence and drunkeness and worldly cares."  (Luke 21:34)

"Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."  (Romans 12:20) 

"Count it all joy, my brethren, when you meet various trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness."  (James 1:2)

"Rejoice in the Lord always!  I say it again.  Rejoice!" (Philippians 4:4)  

Photos on this post © Nancy Shuman

Test not in quotes © 2014 Nancy Shuman.  All Rights Reserved.
thecloisteredheart.org    



To look further inside our 'walls,' click here 

 

Apart from the World, Inside Boundaries

A potential nun does not march into the monastery announcing which boundaries she will or will not accept.

"This wall of the enclosure suits me, but I'm not comfortable with that one..."  No, she does not say it.  

Or if she does, she is told that her vocation is elsewhere.  These are the boundaries of this monastery, she is told; these are the walls beyond which those called to serve God here do not go.  

The boundaries are important to those in a physical monastery.  They are important to those in a "spiritual" one as well, which we will discuss next time.  

For now, let's take another swift glance at the physical enclosure.  

"If Christ's love is the enclosure wall... He encloses you; He IS the enclosure.  So it is the most spacious place in all the world." 

"And whereas some think that we are immured behind walls, we know the walls as simply a beautiful expression of our immersion in Christ our Lord."

Above quotes from Mother Mary Francis PCC, from the booklet "Walls Around the World"

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A beautiful link:
A Divine Enclosure Set Round Our Hearts 

Photo at top of post:  Visitation Monastery Mobile, Alabama; public domain photo, digitally enhanced




For a look at our own boundaries, click this line