Being the Beloved - A Monthly Blog from CFDM Northwest
By Rev. Terry Tripp, Co-Director CFDM NW
I remember the first conference that CFDM NW held for spiritual direction training. It was retreat based and we were together for a week. It was twenty years ago and two days into our retreat, 9/11 happened.
As we sat together in grief and stunned silence, we began to learn about discernment. We also began to learn about hope. Gerald May writes about John of the Cross in “The Dark Night of the Soul” saying in John’s thinking, “memory is not just a storehouse for experience; based on the past, it also fuels the imagination in looking to the future. Memory is the ground of dreaming.”
We dreamed that God was doing something outside of our understanding and yet we would be held. Remembering faithfulness in the past that fuels our imagination of a future in which God is still the same – active and present, will love us into the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.
Our task was not to summon God, but to experience God interiorly, actively working to will in us God’s good pleasure (Philippians 2:13). All airports were closed and getting calls to loved ones was spotty. The way forward was not automatic, but fraught with concern for our families and the nation. How was this God’s good pleasure? Discernment needs time.
So, our discernment was to ask, should we stay in retreat when the country was attacked, and our vulnerability revealed? How did our own vulnerability get ignited and our hope for light in the darkness show us how to be in community learning spiritual direction when our own direction seemed perilous?
Remembering God’s work in each of us, to put us at that place, at that time, helped confirm that we were exactly where we ought to be in that moment. We each had weighed the confidence we had in choosing this direction at this time.
As we sat with that remembering, we began to tell stories of how God had led us in the past, so that we might see the path in front of us now. And as it always seems to be, moving forward is not without loss or grief, but hope that our faithful God who is in relationship with us, holds and leads us on right paths for His name’s sake (Psalm 23:3). And that we were not alone, but together in community experiencing the devastation of that moment and loving one another as God loves us.
It was in community that we discerned to stay and proceed with our training while communicating with our families.
It was in community that we kept remembering God’s faithfulness and God’s light that would lead us into a wide and open plain of God’s freedom and relinquishment of what we thought ought to happen.
It was in community that we remembered what hope is about.
Hope is that discernment that “all is well, and every kind of thing will be well.” (Julian of Norwich). Bringing memory into the future.
We as a nation, the world, and our own communities need to remember God’s faithfulness that does not diminish in darkness but shines even brighter by comparison. Enter this remembering and discern the hope that is in front of you right now.
Congratulations CFDM NW for twenty years of remembering that leads to discernment and hope for the future that is yet to be revealed.
What books, media, activities are nurturing your heart, soul, mind, strength in this season as we are loving God and our neighbor as ourselves? Post in the comments below or hop on over to our Facebook page and share with one another.