A Day Reflecting a Lifetime: Wisdom from the End of the Third Decade

As I lifted my canoe to my shoulder and walked with it down to the lake, I had no thought of finding spiritual reflection.  I wanted simply to enjoy time spent in nature as a way to celebrate reaching the completion of three decades in this mortal coil.  Yet somehow that connection back to creation could not help but stir the soul toward connection with the Creator and that connection must needs shed light upon our wandering journey upon this earth.

Dipping my paddle in the lake first on one side of the canoe and then the other, I made my wending way across its surface, not knowing where I would end up or how long I could go on while the sun beat hot upon me.  I could have grown discouraged at my lack of progress as I struggled on, watching kayaks pass me with bows straight while my canoe's bow turned back and forth, floundering about a bit like a dying fish.  The delightful thing about a piece of plastic folded into a canoe—I call it my origami canoe—is its lightness, but of course that very lightness means it takes little to send it back and forth from side to side as if it had no clear sense of direction.  Each stroke of my paddle as I knelt in its center moved me as much to right or left as it did forward.  Every wave, no mater how small, and every breath of wind pushed me about in some direction or other.

Instead of growing discouraged as I do when things go awry in the minutiae of daily life I found my mind turned to reflection.  My journey across the lake became an analogy for life.

I tend to think that one ought to set one's sight on a goal and head directly toward it without turning to one side or the other, pursuing one's vocation and life purpose with unfailing success.  Yet somehow the path across the years seems rather to wend back and forth across the waters of life.

Alone in the canoe I could not keep a straight course.  It would have been easier with a companion, for we would have balanced each other's paddle strokes, working in unison toward that goal.  A companion too would have broken the silence that hung about me and seemed to wrap me about in a strange sort of contemplation.

It was not the doing that mattered even though the working of my muscles to send the canoe skimming across the waters gave me a feeling of strength, of belonging, of doing what I was created to do.  It was being that mattered more.  Instead of needing, seeking, striving, and a hundred other verbs describing our efforts to take control, I was responding gently to what came to me, breathing in the fresh air, as free as the proverbial child.

Why do we not live so?  Why do we fret and worry ourselves into illness or misery on account of the littlest things?

Sometimes I wonder whether this lack of peace and the rampant anxiety and depression in our society comes solely from this frenzied life that we live in this modern world we like to consider progressive and advanced and enlightened.  Have we achieved these seemingly-good adjectives only at the expense of our inner peace?  Perhaps even at the expense of contemplation?

Then I must wonder how much we would give up to regain that peace. Would we surrender all that we hold dear in order to cross the void of emptiness into that great work of the soul that is God's gift of contemplation?

Perhaps then we might forget our faltering footsteps and breathe in unison with a deeper force: the breath that stirred the waters at creation.

Veni Sancte Spiritus!

Prayer Against Depression

On this feast of a most admirable man converted by reading of the saints before him, I would like to share with you one of his lesser-known prayers that I find very beautiful:

O Christ Jesus
When all is darkness

And we feel our weakness and helplessness,

Give us the sense of Your Presence,

Your Love and Your Strength.

Help us to have perfect trust

In Your protecting love

And strengthening power,

So that nothing may frighten or worry us,

For, living close to You,

We shall see Your Hand, Your Purpose,

Your Will through all things.

By Saint Ignatius of Loyola

May any who struggle with difficulties or challenges find in this prayer, and in the intercession of its author, new hope and strength.  He was a warrior of incomparable ability in the service of God and I pray that his example may inspire you to dedicate yourselves to that same life of sacrifice however our Lord may call you.

Ad majorem Dei gloriam! For the greater glory of God!