Responses and retreats

Dear friends
Thank you for the comments. Keep them coming. Here are some thoughts I have around your comments.

I truly understand what is being said about Angela. She has a harder time than most dealing with change and being a child who was not raised by her parents and who has faced the "loss" of many people in her life, significant adults who moved on, the farm and I have been her only stability. I have certainly been told a number of times that I should simply shove her out the door and tell her to be a grown up and get a life. But she is only 18 and just out of high school. My concern is that at 18, with the unreliability of roommates and the current economy, if she goes out and signs a lease with her minimum wage job that typically affords her less than 40 hours a week she will be an early candidate for a bad credit record, and I really don't want to see her go down that road.

That said, she is planning on starting college and will be eligible for the maximum in financial aid. That along with some that I would budget out of the sale of the house could set her up in her first apartment with several months paid. I think that is the best I can offer.

I have made some inquiries into some of the legal/financial aspects but I am sure there are others that I have not thought about. I have a friend who will let me use his address as a permanent address and I have a great relationship with my credit union and would certainly keep them up to date. I do need to in any case rewrite my will and my end of life/extreme measures document. That I should do anyway. I don't have any stocks or IRA's or anything like that (which I know is making Alison wince) and there is something to be said for having nothing to lose.

It has crossed my mind a few times to lease the farm for a year or two until I see how it goes or to do a lease option if it comes to that with an agreement that after a specified time I could opt to take it back or the other party could buy it if I don't want if back with the rent paid so far a down payment. In fact that is how I was able to buy the farm in the first place. But again, that leaves me with the current mortgage to pay while traveling and that limits the money I have to travel on.

I am going to look into the cost of some local storage units as I will undoubtedly want to keep some things. I won't travel forever and it would be nice to have a few things to move into a new place with. But the smaller the unit the better. Anyone want an antique piano? My tuner says it's the best piano of all the ones he tunes.

The second part of today's blog is going to be about the effect of the past weekend on my thoughts.

I went to my Monastery (yes I think of it as mine), the Monastery of St. Gertrude in Cottonwood. I am an Oblate member of that community and we had an Oblate retreat this past weekend with Norvene Vest as our leader. She is a theologian and author who has wrtitten several books on St. Benedict and living the Rule of St. Benedict in modern times, which is the goal of the Oblates. Our topic for the weekend was "Desiring Life: The Benedictine Habit of Wisdom" I will give you a few of the highlights of this retreat and then tell you the thoughts and feelings they brought up in me.

One of the first things she said was that the Benedictine life is meant to be the "fulfillment of the soul's desire". She said that God plants desire in us for a purpose and quotes the psalm which says "God's will is my delight". So much for those whose theology is centered on the idea that if it's fun or makes you happy it's a sin. Anyway!

What interferes with our fulfilling our desire? The state of the world. materialism, when what we own becomes our identity, or when we fragment our desire, so that there is no integration.

We are conditioned to try to deny or sublimate our desires. Addicition is often the result of us shutting ourselves off from God's desire for us. God wants our joy.

The things, adventures, etc. that we desire in this world are rooted in our desire for God (my words - and God is in everything that is, so our desire for the experiences of this world is desire to find God). Desire carries us beyond self-control and self management, beyond what we already see and know. It is not a thirst for that which satisfies us but for that which enlarges our capacity to be satisfied.

Our delight and God's will are the same thing.

Wisdom comes from deep discernment and accumulated learning. Each of the Wisdom books of the Bible presents wisdom in a different light. Proverbs presents wisdom as what the wise do vs. what the foolish do. Job addresses the questions: why do bad things happen to good people? Where is God in the world? It allows us to ask important questions even when no clear answers or solutions emerge. The dark night of the soul is not suffering itself, but happens when the God I knew who was comfortable and known is gone and we are invited to know God for God's self. Ecclesiastes questions the notion of salvation history and asks if it is possible to live well

Wisdom invites us to the place where we are not in control (Scary, huh?)

So where does that take us? To our habits of thought. Augustus says there are 3 steps to thought. First, we become aware and decide will I or won't I pay attention to the thought. Second we may consent to the impulse, and third is intention, we take pleasure in the thought. It becomes a habit. At each stage we have a choice At each stage the thought becomes more embedded and more difficult to cast off. So we are called to examine what our most frequent thoughts are about. So by directing them, our thoughts can become virtues rather than habits. Virtue defined as seeing something desirable but out of reach and being willing to risk trying to reach that goal. Risking to follow our true desire. A gift of grace.

Using themes from the Gospels she asked us to answer these questions, which were posed to the disciples by Jesus. From John 1:38 "What are you looking for?" and from Mark 10:36 "What is it you want from me.?" Here were my answers. I am lookng for purpose, for meaning for my life. And I want guidance, to be pointed in a direction. Then I went a little further and wrote "Help me find what is within me that will give me what I need so that I can live a puposeful life." Pretty big order, Huh? I thought I was done. Well that exercise was easy. I put down my pen. And then the voice in my head (yes I have one of those) said "Give me a name" Whoa! That one will take some really deep meditation, I think. I never wanted to be famous. I really don't care if I am remembered when I die. I just want to know that my being here somehow added positive enrgy to the universe. So I find myself asking, will this pilgrimage that I am dreaming of add positive energy to the universe? In another blog I will addrss that one a little more. I do have some thoughts about that that have been rolling around in my mind.

Skip to the last session of the retreat. We were given a handout entitled "Questions to strengthen and focus desire" She ask d us to particulary focus on the first and last questions. The first "What are my dreams, my longings, my deep desires, What is my deepest call to being? My sense of the underlying purpose of my life?" Well, as I continued to ponder this question I kept coming back to the answer Brain Swimme and Thomas Berry give to the question "What is the purpose of the human?". Their answer is "to be in awe!" If this is my purpose I have to say with no humility whatsoever, I am very good at being in awe. I don't think I will ever get over how beautiful the world is, how magnificent the universe is, how fascinating life is, how wonderful it is to have this gift of being a human on this planet in this time and place. I am really good at awe.

The last question was "What are those most sacred and compelling hopes and purposes in my life?" I haven't had an answer to that in the past but after this weekend I wonder if my hope and purpose is to bring that sense of awe to as many people as I can. To get humanity past the hatred, the fear, the greed, the competitiveness, the focus on the ugliness of life and to, one person at a time, replace all of that with a sense of awe.

Now my life question seems to be: can I best fulfill that purpose here on the farm in Spokane County, WA or on the road, in the National Parks, or as Jeneva quotes, "to infinity and beyond"?

So what do you think?