A Line Drawn

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. All she must do is decide: shall I live within these walls... or not?  

'You recognize that you have arrived at a limit, a barrier-line. Turn, then, and direct your steps, if you choose, to some other quarter. You cannot penetrate the sacred enclosure of the convent. It is a line drawn, a barrier set up, between the loose, miscellaneous world and the things of God.' (A Story of Courage, p. 8) 

In the analogy of the Cloistered Heart, we view our enclosure as the will of God. We do not have to map the boundaries of such 'enclosure' for ourselves; they are clearly marked out for us in Scripture and 2,000 years of authentic Church discernment. We may welcome such boundaries, or we may choose to turn and direct our steps to some other quarter. But these are the boundaries God has given us; they reveal His will, in which He wants us to live. If we decide to tear down a wall here and move a fence there, then ours will not be the enclosure God has built for us. 'If you believe what you like in the Gospel,' wrote St. Augustine, 'and reject what you don't like, it is not the Gospel you believe, but yourself.'

Have we seen what happens when we try to make boundaries apart from God? We grasp for moral guidelines that, if we find them at all, are contrived and artificial. Using mere human efforts, we try to make peace happen - and it doesn't. The world outside of God's will is a loose mix of miscellany, and we can be hard pressed to make sense of it all.    

Because God loves us, He has set boundaries in place for our security. 'Live in My will,' God tells me. 'Live in My will when you understand it and when you do not. Trust ME.'  In the face of such an invitation, I have a choice to make. Yet God does not force me. I have been given free will, and I can choose whether to live as God asks, or to direct my steps to some other quarter. 

Will I dwell in the security of God’s will? 

Or must I insist on stumbling about in the hazards of my own.   

"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)



Text not in quotes © 2016 N Shuman thecloisteredheart.org  

Photo: N Shuman, Wall at Georgetown Visitation Monastery, DC, 1990s 


This post is part of our series 'A Story of Courage.' To continue in chronological order, click this line.

Revisiting 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 own self with my sinful inclinations, memories, and attitudes - 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

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.    





This is a repost from 2014. It is being linked with Theology Is A Verb and Reconciled To You for 'It’s Worth Revisiting Wednesday'   
 
Text not in quotes © 2014 Nancy Shuman. 
thecloisteredheart.org    

Ooops. Another Wall.

I have to laugh. I have to thank God for whatever He's doing in my most recent computer-snag. He has allowed the snag to happen, and I trust He is somehow working with it.

The problem? I haven't been able to post here, and still the situation remains a bit iffy (will you see this? I wonder). I had similar difficulties once before - also in Lent, two years ago. At that time, we were looking at various "walls" that can crop up as we journey more deeply into living for God.

Interesting.

Now, while trying to find a "door," I've run smack into a wall. I can choose how to respond to this sudden obstacle. I can panic, be angry, fret, complain (I may or may not have had any of these reactions earlier today).

Or I could, in cloistered heart terminology, "look at this through the grille."

The truth is: this wall has cropped up between me and a computer; it is not a wall between me and God. 

I could PUT it between God and myself, however, and I think a few good rounds of complaining and fussing might just start pushing it in that direction.

With grace, I choose not to let this wall come between God and me.

With grace, I choose to embrace the grille.