Being the Beloved - A Monthly Blog from CFDM Northwest
By Katrina Obata, CFDM Northwest Co-Director
It started out as, “I need to order my day(s) & week better.” This was prompted because there are a couple things that I’ve really wanted to make a regular part of my life, but since I don’t “have” to do them, they don’t consistently happen.
It makes sense for me to take an inventory and reassess my days at this time. I moved this summer from Tacoma WA to Bend OR. My life is very different here. I find myself needing to accommodate new responsibilities, and adjust to a void from previous responsibilities I no longer have.
To me, giving myself a schedule, “ordering my days,” is not energizing and actually makes my stomach anxious with dread. But it was a necessary evil so that I could fit in the things I had a desire to do, so I set out to work on it.
Then I had a thought that completely changed my perspective… “As an artist of my life, how do I want to compose it? What pieces go where, what gets trimmed or removed, what gets added? How can this life be more my song, my poem, my unique God given life, not one formed for the eyes of another? How can my life be in service to others?”
I love to create, in fact that’s one of the things I want to make a regular part of my life - so looking at my day/week as something to be created – that was energizing! Then it dawned on me – I’m reworking my “Rule of Life!” I want to create, with God’s help and guidance, my life, my “Rhythm of Life.”
What came next was the realization that it wasn’t enough to just recognize that there were activities that I wanted to do. It was important for me to ask myself prayerfully – what is it about these activities that draws me to them? What makes them so important that I’d be willing to make room in my life for them? What desire does this activity fulfill, and where is God in that desire?
As I gathered my notes and books to reform my Rule of Life, I found much encouragement reading these words from Ruth Haley Barton’s Sacred Rhythms:
“When we pay attention to our longing and allow questions about our longing to strip away the outer layers of self-definition, we are tapping into the deepest dynamics of the spiritual life. The stirring of spiritual desire indicates that God’s Spirit is already at work within us, drawing us to himself. We love God because he first loved us. We long for God because he first longed for us. We reach for God because he first reached for us. Nothing in the spiritual life originates with us. It all originates with God.”
What started out feeling like a chore has become a process of discovery. It’s the difference between being driven and working in my own power versus being open and listening to what God is doing in me, with me, and for me.
As is most often God’s way, this has been a slow, gradual, unfolding process. Not something that happened in one morning, but it is continuing over the course of weeks. Listening to my desires and letting them open up takes space and time.
In this Holy Season when all of our schedules are more full than usual, I encourage you to pay attention to your frustrations, your longings, your desires, and talk with God about them, remembering Jesus’s words:
“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” (Matthew 11:28-30, The Message)
I’m looking forward to having additional space to keep listening at St. Andrew’s House in January where I’ll be co-leading a retreat with Mona Chicks. If you’d like to join me and others in listening to what’s stirring in you and discerning God’s invitation to you in that stirring, you can find more information here:
Breathe: Creating Space for the Unfolding of a New Rhythm with God
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.