sharing

Every once in a while, or perhaps more often than that, I find myself wondering .... why on earth am I sharing my journey on this blog.

For one thing, it is very hard to share my story without sharing the details of the lives of the people I live with. Now that I'm a Novice, there's also a certain feeling of responsibility. Yes I have a disclaimer, but in a way I represent "the Church." Hence there's a fair amount of self-censoring that takes place here.

At times it seems like pointless navel gazing. And perhaps dangerous in another way ... who am I to think that people want to read my random musings? So it's a struggle. Today in particular I was wondering ... how do I share the real inner journey without scaring people? How do I explain the transformation that I don't understand myself. And why do I want to even try?

Then I checked my e-mail. In my experience, God often works through strangers in our lives. And wouldn't you know it, I received an answer to the questions I hadn't articulated from someone I don't even know who has been reading the blog for a while. She is discerning a vocation to a different community and is drawn to a more traditional devotional spiritual practice than this self-described groovy novice.

She said a few things that really spoke to me. One was that I have helped her to gain an appreciation for richness of spiritual expressions in our Catholic tradition and the wide variety of women's religious communities. My own experience at the intercommunity novitiate has reinforced this. I love that our Church is big enough to hold jeans wearing feminist nuns like myself and habit wearing more traditional nuns. More than that I am becoming convinced that our church NEEDS both/and. (That's a post for another day.)

But there was something else she said in her e-mail that I really needed to hear today. Hope you don't mind my friend, but I'm going to quote you here: "More by what you don't say in your blog(these days) than by what you do, I recognize the wrenching experience of self-knowledge that the discernment process brings to my life is also happening (even more deeply) in yours. And this encourages me and gives me hope for the future of religious life."

The wrenching experience of self-knowledge. That so encapsulates the nonbloggable thoughts I've been having. I wish I could share them but I can't. But that's ok ... Maybe someday I will be able to.

I feel so blessed to be on this difficult and challenging journey. This invitation to get to know God more deeply, to get to know myself more deeply. And as to this crazy blog experiment, maybe there is a reason for it other than my own ego. I hope so anyway.

We are relational people. It is by sharing our stories that we get in touch with our human journey and our journey home to God. And so I write ... but for now, it's time for bed. Prayers are bright & early in the morning!!