My Lovely Littered Life
by Elouise
The Lost Drachma, by James Tissot (French, 1836-1902), Brooklyn Museum
Spiritual formation is an up and down journey for me. An unrecorded map of possibilities, choices, decisions, practices, good intentions, getting lost and forgetfulness.
I’m a fairly organized person, though not allergic to clutter. When it comes to spiritual practices, however, it’s difficult for me to remain on task. Sometimes I grasp at practices that promise structure for my spiritual life. My intention? To practice them regularly, for as long as it takes for me to arrive. A finished product!
Despite my best intentions, I slack off, or life intrudes and interrupts. Not as new spiritual practices, but as circumstances that demand time and energy. Things I can’t ignore.
This year is already full of interruptions I can’t ignore. Especially health events that derail and distract me from what I thought would be regular habits and disciplines of my retired life.
To complicate the picture, I frequently compare my spiritual formation with the real and imaged spiritual formation of others. For example, if I meet someone who has kept a prayer diary full of requests and answers for the last unnumbered years, I feel at least delinquent if not guilty.
It isn’t as though I’ve never tried things like this. I have. And though I know my spiritual formation isn’t just about what I do, I’ve often felt uneasy about myself.
One of the most wonderful gifts of this past year was a simple realization: my job isn’t now and hasn’t ever been to grow or orchestrate my spiritual formation.
Rather, my job is to go with the flow! To listen and respond with my heart to what’s happening in and around me. Which is, of course, a way of being active, not passive. And also more in keeping with my personality and the way I interact with my surroundings.
Instead of feeling guilty about yesterday, I listen for what God’s heart might whisper to my heart today. Not according to a pre-arranged script. Instead, God deviates regularly, sometimes drastically, to seek me out. Just think about the parables of the lost coin and the lost sheep (Luke 15).
Today, interruptions are my new normal. Instead of trying to run away or ignore them, I’m learning to listen for God’s voice and the movement of God’s Spirit in them. How do they invite me to respond to life as it is right now?
My life remains littered with practices I thought might be the solution to my spiritual formation. It’s also littered with scores of ways God’s Spirit has interrupted me, trying to get my attention. Not in order to destroy me, but to invite me to God’s table set and waiting for my thirsty heart.
Sometimes the table includes strangers who might help me. Often it’s a table at which I did not plan or want to sit, especially not with ‘those people.’ Always, it’s a table that leads me to my next spiritual growth opportunity, whatever that might be.
© Elouise Renich Fraser, 1 October 2016
Painting of The Lost Drachma found at 4catholiceducators.com
Telling the Truth 
I love this most especially-
My life remains littered with practices I thought might be the solution to my spiritual formation. It’s also littered with scores of ways God’s Spirit has interrupted me, trying to get my attention. Not in order to destroy me, but to invite me to God’s table set and waiting for my thirsty heart.
You always put the beautiful spin on the way you live your life, what you learn and how things make you feel. Wonderful enlightenment Elouise. Hey Lucy ❤ peace and blessings to you both ❤
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Hi, Kim! Overall, my life has been beautiful (never thought I’d say that), though it has its not-so-beautiful parts. Finding a way to be faithful to God’s ways of relating to and with me as girl/woman made in God’s image has been a long, rewarding process. Also painful and sometimes lonely, yet always coming out on the side of grace. Not because God overlooks the not-so-beautiful pieces, but because God looks through and beyond them, sees beauty, and offers me a way to see that as well. I love your comment. So does Lucy who, right now, is resting peacefully. 🙂
Elouise
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Here in Redwoods Presbytery we’ve had these “cohort groups” of ministers, looking at a few hospitality texts, books, case study and yes, spiritual practices. Most of us struggle. I struggle more than most, finding it contrived to pursue a spiritual “practice.” It always felt like an oxymoron to me, practicing being present? And that is where I stand, being present to myself and others. Often music helps me more than others, bypassing my over rational mind and getting me to feel what I am feeling. Other times stories like Friedman’s Fables or the parables. But that gets me back to work and then I’m not present. Sigh.
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David, Thanks for sharing your experience. I resonate with it, especially your comment about music. It always reaches into places out minds can’t or won’t go. I also find walking outside can do this–nothing like hearing early morning bird-song, or seeing a gorgeous sunset! Maybe when you’re present to yourself and to others, you’re ‘practicing’ being present–focusing on what’s happening right now, not on yesterday or tomorrow or you too-long to-do list or next Sunday’s sermon…? I think it’s difficult for a pastor to break away from the pastor mode–much less the impulse to look for sermons everywhere. But then, I’ve never been a pastor! I do wonder how pastors and other church leaders take care of their own spiritual formation needs. It isn’t quite the same as taking time away to work on sermon preparation, or getting ready for the next youth group meeting. Thanks again for your thoughtful comments.
Elouise
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Music, and singing, are wonderful ways to bypass our rational objections,aren’t they! Kids learn through singing nursery rhymes which they remember for always. 🙂
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Absolutely! It is odd that we put ‘spiritual practice’ into a box, apart from our lives. Then God comes along and tips over the box and says, ‘how about now? Can you practice now?’ It’s easy to be spiritual, isn’t it, when there are no people around, and when life is easy. But to keep believing, that is the challenge.
And then, maybe, one day, the river flows, and we flow with it.
So much love to you!
Fran xxxx
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🙂 Thanks for this lovely comment, Fran! Yes indeed. If we need patience, God will certainly provide more than enough opportunities to practice it! I don’t find thinking or talking about patience much help–unless my conversation partner is willing to share his or her experiences of being impatient, which does help me get real about my own practice of patience! Speaking as a true believer….
Elouise
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We are here to learn patience and endurance.
Feel free to edit this comment, as I don’t know how else to contact you, and today was a weird day. I had a riding lesson all to myself and it was lovely and peaceful. I went out in a short string with two other unsaddled horses, and we clopped peacefully under the great trees in the estate.
But I was feeling so sad yesterday afternoon.
At three o’clock today my mom phoned to say my brother Pieter Hintjens had died. (Look him up on line, and you’ll have a fairly good idea what I look like too. His wikimedia photos are lovely.) He was unconscious at the end, couldn’t get enough air, though his heart was trying so hard! Mum was with him this morning. Two months before his 54th birthday. If it weren’t for the fact that cancer is a cruel way to die, I would say this is probably the saddest day of my life.
Love you lots, and sorry to burden you. 😀
Fran XXXXXXXXXXXXX
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Dearest Fran, You are never a burden. Thank you 1000 times over for sharing this. I’m praying for you and your dear family. So much sadness and anguish. I’ll contact you later today via email. Blessings of peace and love, Elouise 🙂
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Thank you 🙂 xxx
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This summer our rector preached a sermon the gist of which was that God often meets us in life’s interruptions, despite the fact that most of us perceive interruptions as unwanted intrusions into our carefully planned life. I can’t remember the text, but it stuck with me, probably because I so detest interruptions of my little routines!
I try to have regular times for prayer and meditation, but these tend to quickly fall away, so you’re certainly not alone there!
Blessings,
Nancy
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Hi, Nancy. Thanks for your comments. I agree with your rector. It makes great sense that God often is in life’s interruptions. And, as you point out, can be most difficult to accept! Here’s to more wonderful interruptions! 🙂
Elouise
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