Finding our Faith Part 2

 

We continue today with the quote from Ronald Rolheiser.  Yesterday, we paid attention to what fills us with life, puts fire in our veins, lets our souls loose in this world…not because we “have to” but because life is about participation and practice and playfulness.  This was the first part of a healthy soul.  Rolheiser continues, “Second, a healthy soul has to keep us fixed together.  It has to continually give us a sense of who we are, where we come from, where we are going, and what sense there is in all of this.  When we stand looking at ourselves, confusedly, in a mirror and ask ourselves what sense, if any, there is to our lives, it is this other part of the soul, our principle of integration, that is limping.”

When cynicism, despair (recall from Easter that despair tells you that you already know the end of the story and it isn’t good!), and bitterness pay a visit, it often picks and pulls us apart.  Rolheiser is talking about wholeness (not perfection…it isn’t that I am supposed to get it right all the time, rather I can see beauty even in my amateur watercolors and crooked photography).  Rolheiser says that wholeness is putting together the puzzle of

~ who we are

~ where we come from

~ where we are going

~ what sense/meaning/hope/love there is in all of this

~ I would add…who is around us because faith is a group project!

The above are life-long questions.  You don’t answer them once, you return day-by-day, week-by-week, month-by-month.  I invite you today to sit with those five prompts.  You don’t have to answer them all at once.  As a matter of fact, I would love for you to take all summer to hold those questions.  You may want to get out five sheets of paper, write one question at the top of each page, then take time each week to write down a few sentences.  If you do this, date your writing, so that you might notice how your responses in June are different than May and how by September something new is still stirring within you.  I pray that the writing prompts over the last few weeks have opened you to God’s presence and participation in your life.  That you will continue to reflect and write your faith, letting God co-author and edit and revise and redeem the story you tell yourself…for that is the story you are living…and I pray, deep desire, that your story is overflowing with good news of God’s love every day.  Amen.