For Ourselves and Others
What does it mean to "take the journey ourselves”? Remember that we have free will: We can refuse to move, to explore, to take the trip. God's love always surrounds us and invites us, but God's full healing seems to wait for our longing and consent, for the inner YES that indicates that our center of consent is engaged. We are not helpless puppets but are created to be children, heirs, partners, co-creators with God.
Let me insert one caveat here... I'm not saying that once we pause to focus on exploring and nurturing our inner life, that we make a narcissistic career out of self-knowledge and succumb to intellectual navel-gazing. Ideally, we do not allow the "flow of living water" to stop with me, mine, my development. One of the hallmarks of the Christian tradition is the notion that we are transformed for the sake of the
world---it's a sacred, cyclical process. Service to others is part of the journey, too.
--Linda R. Douty
from “"Getting From Sunday to Monday:
Moving from belief to experience,
from
information to transformation"”
|