Je Ne Regrette Rien

It was maybe a couple of months ago that a blog was posted on Facebook urging people to follow their dreams rather than end up in their 70s regretting what they hadn’t done. Shortly afterwards, another blogger wrote of the ambitions of her youth. I am happier with “dreams” than I am with “ambitions” just as I find God’s dream for me more attractive than God’s plans, yet I could identify no more with the first blog than with the second.

I have never had much ambition. I know that for some, maybe for many, this is a defect in me. They could be right but, if it is, I feel no sense of inadequacy for its lack. From a very early age I knew I wanted to teach and by the age of 11 I wanted to specialise in languages. When I started teaching, I didn’t have even half a thought about climbing the career ladder and eventually gaining a headship. I was 32 before it occurred to me to apply for a post with more responsibility and, thereafter, I was content to remain at that level, which wasn’t very exalted.

And what about dreams? As a child I was an inveterate dreamer. I lived in my imagination but my dreams were centered on circumstances in which I would be accepted, liked, and where I was carefree. Later I dreamed of being married and having 6 sons (!). When my path moved in another direction, I dreamed of being the perfect religious. When neither of those dreams came to fruition, and I spent some years aiming simply at surviving, I had some crazy dreams which were an attempt to escape from my reality and completely unrealistic.

Towards the end of my teaching career, that which had been constant in my life, my relationship with God, led me into working in Ignatian Spirituality. Yes, when I retired, I dreamed of spending more time in retreat giving and spiritual direction but, when I realised I was trying to twist God’s arm to make this happen, I drew back and resolved to leave it to God while I didn’t lift a finger to reach my dream. As soon as I did this the invitations began to come and there followed a happy and fulfilling period for which I can never be sufficiently grateful.

Now I am in my second retirement. Life is very ordinary. It is evident that many of my youthful dreams were not fulfilled. It would be possible for me to write a gloomy account of my present circumstances. But I have no regrets. I can say there are things I would like to have done and places I would like to have visited. However, I do not feel regretful about these things. In my early twenties, I came upon a prayer of Blessed John Henry Newman: “Lord, make me your blind instrument. I ask not to see, I ask not to know, I ask simply to be used”. It has stayed with me over the ensuing 50 years and more and maybe sums up my philosophy. I can’t know what use is served by my current existence but, were I to waste time thinking about it, or even praying about it, I would be fruitlessly focussing on myself instead of on God. God knows the answer, and that is enough for me. As an introvert who has spend too much time already in introspection, I was graced to realise about 10 years ago that prayer is not about me but about God. Obviously, I have to come into it in some degree, especially in the early years, but, as Richard Rohr wrote this week “All you can do is become quieter, smaller, and less filled with your own self and your constant flurry of ideas and feelings. Then God will be obvious in the very now of things, and the simplicity of things.”

I noticed, when I did this, how free I felt. I could spend time working out how this fits with my Ignatian Spirituality, but why? To do so would be just another way of not being focussed on God as would be spending time with regrets. I hope that, at the end of my life, it will be God that will preoccupy me and not myself. Regrets are about self and how I have not lived up to my image of myself. What does that image matter in the grand scheme of things?

I have said that that prayer of Newman which I quoted sums up my philosophy – or what I want to be my philosophy. It is also expressed in the words of a song by Estelle White. It is not the greatest poetry but I love it:

O, my Lord, within my heart,
pride will have no home,
ev’ry talent that I have
comes from you alone.

Response
And like a child at rest,
close to its mother’s breast,
Safe in your arms,
my soul is calmed.

Lord my eyes do not look high,
nor my thoughts take wings,
I can find such treasures in
ordinary things.

Great affairs are not for me,
deeds beyond my scope.
In the simple things I do
I find joy and hope.

VULNERABLE GOD

Do you ever look back to that Sabbath in Nazareth and wonder? Young as you were, you stood up without a CV, a degree, even a certificate. You couldn’t claim the support of influential backers. The fact that the teachers in Jerusalem had been impressed by your questions when you were twelve wasn’t going to get you very far. Your cousin had spoken up for you but that seemed only to result in some other unknowns asking about you. Neither do you appear to have had an action plan. Yet you stood there in your naked insecurity and, without saying so, challenged your hearers to look at you, judge you on what they saw and make up their own minds about you. You set a pattern which would be repeated so often in the ensuing three years,

Those years are now at an end. You are still very young. Some would say it’s amazing you’ve lasted this long. We know how idealistic the young can be but you took this to a new level, a level that has never been surpassed. As you stand on the threshold of seeming disaster, do you wonder if you got it all wrong? Should you have acted differently? Are you anxious about the people who threw in their lot with you, who left everything to follow you? Do you feel you have failed? Are you wondering about the ones you didn’t win over, maybe the ones who weren’t healed?

You seem very alone. You have always seemed very alone. Yes, you had friends, you had followers, people came to you in their numbers but how many were more interested in what they could get from you than in you yourself? Time and again even your closest friends showed that they didn’t really get you. To some extent they believed what they wanted to believe. There was so much you longed for them to understand. How dispiriting when so little went in. Yet you continued to believe in them.

It must have felt very lonely to have nobody to turn to for support. Crowds came to you and you gave of yourself but where were your advisors, counsellors, spiritual directors? Each morning you would turn to the support which was always available. You turned to your God and your Father. You showed us that we are never alone because you had told us that your Father was also our Father, always with us, always loving us. You showed us that God is enough for us. You even showed us that God is with us in the times when God feels absent.

As you move forward to your Passion, I know you both want and need me with you. You have experienced so much of what pains me and I need to share what pains you. Only by doing this will I truly learn to lean on God alone and always remember that God is enough.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

POVERTY

God is being very surprising this Lent. This morning the message sprang from two programmes I watched last night in which 4 rich and famous people spent three days living with a poor person or family. There is nothing new about the concept. It has been done before and I very nearly didn’t bother to see it. However, something I had read beforehand in which one of the rich visitors commented on the fact that the amount of money, £3, which was all her host had to buy food for three days, was the same as she would spend on a flat white coffee, prodded me to tune in. At the very end, in conversation with the adults in the second family she visited, she told them she paid £6 to have her groceries delivered to her home. They were astounded. £6 for them was a small fortune. 

As someone who also has her groceries delivered, although I don’t pay as much for delivery, I was led to think long and hard about the issues raised. I have long questioned some aspects of the way we religious/spiritual people approach money. Seeing the people on my TV struggling to survive on meagre benefits, caught in a multiplicity of poverty traps, having to justify claiming food from food banks, existing on one meal a day, unable to heat their homes or provide themselves with hot water on tap, parents going without so that the children could eat, I thought of the money I spent on online Lenten retreats, how easily I press the One Click button on Amazon and download yet another ebook on spirituality. I think of all the retreats and conferences I have attended over the years at which I have been fed abundantly both physically and spirituality. Can they all be justified in a world I share with sisters and brothers who are in such need? 

I remember what Pope Francis said about pastors needing to share the smell of the sheep and his constant references to being a Church of the poor. I ask myself if our focus on spirituality can be a form of self-obsession. As I indulge my own pursuit of greater spiritual depth, how much though do I give to those who would love to have the money that I spend on such things just to be able to live a life without hunger? 

I’m not able to provide any answers to the questions which are coming up for me but I sit with the questions. Is it valid for a Church of the poor to hold so many lavish conferences attended by the comfortably off? What do such events do for the many who are in need? I often express my indignation about social inequality and unjust systems. How far do I collude with them? Those making the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius these days are asked to spend time praying about social sin and their part in it but it is much easier to hold a seminar on other aspects of the Exercises and debate the exact meaning of Ignatius’s instructions than to invite people to a radical review of our collusion with sinful structures. 

The more I reflect on these matters, the more uncomfortable I become. In the parents I saw on TV going without food for the sake of the children, I see my own Mother who had to do the same when my siblings were small. I need to sit for a long time with my discomfort and pray for both a personal conversion and a conversion for our Church.

Take, Lord

On Christmas Day my friend Lil, aged 99, said to me: “I need to accept all the limitations I have these days. I mean really accept them. Saying I just have to get on with them just isn’t enough.” Once again I thanked God for the immense privilege of so many opportunities to listen to and be enriched by the openness and wisdom of this great woman. Our spiritual conversations are pure gift.

In my life, growing older has highlighted so much for me. One of the revelations is that it is only when it is actually happening that I can fully appreciate the offering I have prayed to make to God so often in saying prayers such as the Suscipe of St Ignatius Loyola, asking God to take everything I have and am because God’s grace is enough for me.

I well remember being young and full of fervour and feeling I wanted to give my all to God. This was maybe best illustrated in the singing of the hymn of St Francis Xavier in which he protests that he was doing everything purely out of love of God. Francis meant it. I didn’t. How could I? I really had no idea what it truly meant or what it had to cost. The wonderful feelings I experienced when belting out the hymn had nothing to do with the reality of its words.

I did do things for God in my youth. I entered religious life, believing that was what God wanted of me and, thinking I was safeguarding my vocation, I turned down my place at university. Because I was suffering from depression, it seemed to me that I had a better chance of recovery being active in teaching rather than in the solitary life of a student. Since then I have made other choices for God. But that is the point I am making. I chose. I felt I was giving. And that was good. Please don’t think I am saying otherwise. The first glimmering of how this wasn’t enough came in my 20s with the realisation that I was prepared to carry any cross – except the ones which God wanted me to carry.

I am obviously a slow learner in the spiritual sense! It wasn’t until some time after I had made the full Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius twice and I began to experience a series of losses in my life which came unbidden, that I focused on that first word of the Suscipe – TAKE. I don’t pray to give all the things Ignatius lists. I pray to have them removed.

Of course it is admirable and pleasing to God when, with youthful – or not so youthful – enthusiasm a person embarks on some good work or makes an altruistic decision to act in a certain way. It seems to me, however, that, in my case at least, there is a lot of “I” in these actions. I choose, I will do, I plan. When the time comes and things, people, places, activities, gifts are taken from us for whatever reason, when I can’t claim any initiative, how will I react? I notice that age seems to affect many of the parts of my life and personality in which I used to take pride. I had a good memory. I never forgot birthdays or things I had promised to do. This made me reliable. These days, if I say I will do something, it is as if I have already completed the task. I am no longer reliable. I used to be a morning person. I was up early and could achieve much before lunch time. Now, early is much later, it takes me a long time to get moving and many tasks remain undone. I won’t bore you with the rest of the list!

Over the past four years so much has changed in the circumstances of my life and few of these changes have been my choice. Can I now in sincerity ask God to strip me yet further? I don’t know. What I do know is that despite the losses of the recent past and another big one which will happen soon, my world hasn’t ended, God still is and I am closer to the full acceptance that all I need is God’s love and grace, which are and will be always with me.

God Has Given Me Another Way

I once heard Sr Wendy Becket being asked being interviewed about her life as a hermit. On being asked “But aren’t human beings meant to live in company with others?” She replied: “Yes, but I am one of those inadequate people who can’t do that, so God has given me another way.” I was impressed with the serenity of her response and the seeming total lack of self-pity. It struck me because I could relate  to her experience and it encouraged me not to be concerned about not conforming to a norm.

I was reminded of this on Christmas Day when I was talking with a friend after I had given her Holy Communion, about listening to Carols From Kings the previous evening. I said I enjoyed the peace of entering into its spirit as a preparation for celebrating the Nativity. My friend told me I was lucky to be able to do that. She has a very large family and it is more than probable that if she settles down to watch any programme, her phone will ring. I will admit to feeling a little irritated by her response. However, I simply said: “Well, everything has it’s upside and it’s downside. We can’t have it both ways.” Being an open minded and wise woman, my friend understood and agreed. We both know she wouldn’t exchange places with me.

Would I exchange places with her? I don’t believe so. I would be dishonest if I claimed to be completely without wistfulness when I think of families at Christmas but it isn’t a big issue for me. I can find the prelude  to the day very depressing in the secular sphere. I hate the crowds and the buying mania and many of what have become customs seem to me to be somewhat pointless. My mood changes on Christmas Eve as I enter into the spirit of the music, readings and prayers from Cambridge. I feel I can put aside the agitation. I have absorbed from the general mania which has prevailed over previous weeks and I find peace. 

In the coming days I will be asked: “Did you have a good Christmas?”. I used to dread that question, but not any more. Yes, I had a very happy Christmas. I enjoyed the warmth of the love of my parish community at Mass on Christmas morning and taking Communion to my friend. (The weather was too inclement for a 99 year old to venture out.) After that, I delighted in time for quiet, reflection, prayer which lasted for a few days. I was content. I was in touch with what really matters to me. I had time to read so many beautiful posts that I had saved for this time. I wasn’t pressurised into joining in the excesses which have nothing to do with the Child of Bethlehem but I celebrated his birth with a few simple treats which I don’t have the rest of the year. I was happy because, although my celebration is not what most people imagine Christmas should be as Wendy Becket said “God has given me another way.”

Did You Have A Wonderful Holiday?

This time my answer was a prompt “no”. Previously I had avoided a direct response to questions about my holiday but I could do nothing but be honest when faced with this one. I have been embarrassed not to be able to enthuse but now I’ve had time to digest my experience, I understand why I am so ambiguous about it.

I had left home after a good period of being in equilibrium, at peace. I had prayed to maintain this while I was away. My prayer was answered in that I remained cheerful. I would have hated to have been a misery for my travel companions who, with only two exceptions – not bad in a party of 60 – we’re delightful. And this blog is not a long drawn out complaint. Rather, it is an explanation, as much to myself as to anyone else, of why I didn’t return from America on cloud nine.

Studying Ignatian spirituality, I soon recognised a cause of desolation which can all too easily occur I my life. I call it the “tears before bedtime syndrome”. It has never been a good thing for me to become excited or even a little high. My equilibrium depends on my not having too much going on. I need a life with time to withdraw, be silent, to reflect. Without this I become jagged and am dragged away from what St John of the Cross calls my “true centre”.

The logistics of my holiday were not in my favour. We were on the coach at 8am every morning, our breaks for visiting restrooms and grabbing something to eat were never longer than 30 minutes and I, who value solitude, was closely surrounded by people for hours on end. Even on the coach there was a sense of rush. At least fifty per cent of our sight seeing was done while on the road. I had so looked forward to seeing the fall colours but had to be satisfied with viewing them through tinted windows. I longed for time and space to stand and stare.

Many years ago I was on the Waltzer in a fairground and one of he attendants insisted on spinning our car around. I was reminded of the resulting sensation by our schedule. I couldn’t think straight and, on returning home, it has taken me weeks to recover.

I’m glad I had to courage to make this journey. I was delighted to meet Fran, a Facebook friend, with whom I spent four wonderful hours. I was grateful for my lovely companions who were so kind. I loved Boston, Rhode Island, Kentucky in general and Colonial Williamsburg and the Shenandoah Museum and Gardens in particular. I will be writing more about the places I visited later. However, in future I shall, I think, try to ensure that I remain where my inner peace can be maintained. Nothing is more important. I am who I am and only flourish where I am meant to be.

The Back Story

When I had written my first blog about setting off for America I felt very disatisfied. Later I realised why. In my nervousness about venturing forth into a sphere in which I have found such jewels from inspirational writers, I had remained on the surface. Facts abounded, feelings were barely evident. Many will perhaps have wondered what all the fuss is about. Transatlantic travel is no big deal in the 21st century. I agree. For me, however, it has never been on the radar. When I was young foreign travel didn’t feature in the lives of my family and friends. The first person I remember holidaying abroad was a college friend who went to the Canaries. My own first visit to another country was a trip to Austria when I was almost 33. After that, during my summer break from teaching, I used to go on retreat and maybe some sort of course which left neither the time nor the money for anything else. Apart from a couple of pilgrimages to Lourdes and educational journeys to France, I was very much home based. 

The result of all this was that I would listen to friends speaking of their annual sojourns in the US while happily accepting it was somewhere I would never go. Then, at the end of 2012, I was looking at brochures about holidays by train which looked as if they were well suited for a solo traveller. Some of these were in America and I wondered; but not very seriously. In February of 2013, I mentioned this to a friend as we had coffee together. She said she was determined that I would go to America. I laughed it off as a pipe dream.

Not long after I looked again at organised tours to the USA. The idea of going freelance was too scarey. I’m too old for that. My eyes lighted upon a tour entitled “Following The Fall Colours”. I love autumn and the prospect of being in New England in the fall was very attractive. I filled in an application form at which I stared for a very long time before plucking up the couragw to press “send”.

It seemed a long time from February until October so my plans were tucked well away at the back of my mind as did other things. The, suddenly, it was no longer a vaue, somewhat unbelievable project. It was upon me. But it still didn’t feel real. I was excited and nervous in equal measure but of something I felt at some level wan’t going to happen.

Where Was God in America?

I have been home from my first visit to America for 10 days. I have said little about my trip because my mind is still in a whirl and it feels as if it didn’t happen. I have held back from commenting on Facebook lest I give the impression that I spent a miserable week, which wouldn’t be true. What is true, is that the tour I was on was very rushed. There  wasn’t the space to absorb what I experienced. Add to this the fact that I had health problems from day 3 and the result was my feeling disorientated.

I am very aware of the good things about my holiday. First among these were my companions. I was blessed to happen upon the first of these as we waited to board our plane from Manchester to Heathrow and among them was a couple who would be with me  on the flight to Boston and, on the return journey as far as Manchester. As a lone and inexperienced traveller, it was reassuring to make contact with people with whom I felt comfortable and who knew what they were doing. Apart from two people of the 60 in our party, all were as congenial as Paul and Glenys.

The flight across the Atlantic wasn’t as tedious as I had feared and passed reasonably quickly. I was glad to go on board after the bustle of the airport. I had heard all sorts of horror stories about the US security checks but we went through them very smoothly, collected luggage with no problem and were greeted by tour guide, Paula, and driver, Larry. The long drive to the hotel in the semi-dark and amidst heavy traffic was the most tiring part of the journey. I had dinner in  my room before showering and falling, very gratefully, into bed.