THE LAST BLOG I EVER WRITE

The title suggests that the blog you now read is the last one I will ever write. I don’t mean that. My Lectio Divina (Philippians 2:5) meditation is “If you could write one short paragraph, summing up everything you have learned about the purpose of life and your purpose within it, what would that be?”

Everything I know moves from simplicity to complexity. As I approach the end of my life, I bear the weight of all those crosses I have lifted each day as I tried to have in me the mind of Christ Jesus (Philippians 2:5). I carry on my body and my spirit the many cuts and bruises that come from struggling against the Devil. I am a flawed person who is redeemed by the sign of the cross. It is heavy, and I am tired of carrying my cross (even with the help of Christ). It dawned on me that all I have been doing is what the world says I should do, even denying myself and taking up my cross daily to follow Christ. I realized that I should have been seeking simplicity, the simplicity of Christ, who gives glory to the Father eternally with the energy of the Holy Spirit.

In all my studies about God and being busy with God stuff, it was always right in front of me. My Lectio Divina is critically important because I choose to sit on a bench in the middle of winter and wait for Jesus. Yes, I know that Jesus is there. What I wait for is for me to show up to be in the presence of the heart of Christ and hear that heartbeat.

There is simplicity in being a Lay Cistercian or any approach that places THE WAY, THE TRUTH, and THE LIFE as your center, The Christ Principle, then just waiting in the stillness of spiritual time. Humans are not built to wait. We must do something or be something. We must fill all empty holes with everything but the one thing that fills us and makes us realize what it means to be human and why I am loved. This is waiting to be completely human.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, now and forever. The God who is, who was, and who will be, at the end of the ages. –Cistercian doxology