Live in the Light

I just returned from a week at Linwood Spiritual Center in Rhinebeck, NY.  It was a week of silence, broken only by a brief meeting with a director and Eucharist each day.  Each year vowed Companions spend one week in a directed retreat and another 5-6 days in a silent house retreat.  This gives us a chance to listen deeply for God, and for whatever in us is blocking the connection - or responding to the call!

I entered this retreat after recently beginning a new round of psychotherapy, of a sort different from anything I've done before.  It's opening up some places that have been locked down for years, making a safe space for remembering and integrating aspects of my life that I didn't want to face.  And with the remembering comes the questioning: Where was God?    When I was 11 I gave up on God, because I had no one to ask that question with.  Now I'm much older, I believe in God, but I return to the question:  Where were you?

I grew up hearing that God was all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving.  I took that to mean that God could have intervened to stop my pain.  Since God did not (at least not in any way I could recognize), I concluded that God either didn't exist, or didn't care, or didn't see, or couldn't help.  That's logical, but limited - just like the pubescent thinker I was.

Today I think God's goodness includes our freedom, even when God would like us to behave differently.
Where was God?  God was crying in the basement with me.
God was sitting next to me in school while I was zoning out, drawing at least a shield of wool around my bruised psyche.
God was pedaling along, trying to keep me safe while I was endangering my life with alcohol and drugs and sex and cigarettes and . . .
God was whispering in my ear at key moments, and speaking through the occasional voice of adult understanding and compassion.
God did not perform magic, God did not miraculously leave me unscarred by my experiences, but God did choose to share in those experiences through the life of Jesus and so many others.  God led me on to this place, where I can be with others on the journey to new life.

My retreat was huge, giving me an agenda for the next several months of spiritual reflection.  But in the end, God gives the growth.  My job is to be gentle, to let the work be done in me, to let God be God rather than demanding my picture of God - or myself!

If you are mad at God, if the state of the world has you wondering where God is or if God is, take some time to look - not just for the "bright spots," but for the compassionate presence in the darkness.  The light shines there.  Some day we will see it fill the universe.  Live in the light.

Peace be with you.