NEW WINE IN OLD SKINS

Christ is, and always will be the new wine in my life each day. I have a choice to be an old skin or make the inconvenient switch to that of a new skin. In terms of my Lay Cistercian Way, I think of this as dying to self each day to rise to the newness of Christ. It is a perfect way to describe the process of making my wineskins new each day.

In my personal way, my blogs are the new wine that I receive from Christ through the energy of the Holy Spirit each day in Lectio Divina and other Lay Cistercian practices applicable to me. Ever mindful that I must decrease while Christ increases (capacitas dei), I have a problem with the Holy Spirit. It is a problem that is the Holy Spirit’s, but the inability of my human capability and capacity to receive what the Holy Spirit rains down on me in the forms of knowledge (Father), love (Son), and service to all reality (Holy Spirit), that keeps me up at night. My plea is “Enough!” About three years ago (or was it four), I asked the Holy Spirit to overshadow me with more than I could handle. Little did I know what I had asked. What happened, since that fateful day, is my problem. I can’t write down or assimilate all of the interrelated ideas that the Holy Spirit presents to me. It just doesn’t stop, in and out of season, day or night, sleeping or awake. Since 2017, when I began to write down my Lectio Divina encounters, I have over 1000 blogs (I stopped counting) on the subject of what it means to be a Lay Cistercian. Herein lies the rub. It can be compared to trying to take a simple drink of water from a gushing fire hydrant. I can’t turn on the spigot. https://thecenterforcontemlativepractice.org

As my human bones begin to weaken, my spiritual self has bloomed into a renaissance that I could never have imagined. All I did was ask the Holy Spirit to give me a drip of more energy. Wow! Now, at 83 on September 24, 2023, I am going to slow down my blog writing. But, typical of the Holy Spirit, I am being gently nudged to take my extra time (which doesn’t exist) and use my spiritual energies to do a PowerPoint presentation with a video series which I will put on YouTube. As usual, I don’t have a lot of experience or expertise to do this but it is what I am consistently and persistently being nudged to do. A nudge from the Holy Spirit is not trifling. So far, I still have my faculties, although my wife would challenge that statement. My body is failing due to lack of balance and I am prone to fall. Everything says, “Don’t do this. Just curl up in a chair and watch the plastic flowers grow and pray you don’t see one of them bloom.”

In addition, as if that alone was not enough, I got the orders from the Holy Spirit to put all of my blogs into print. This is no small task. I have no idea how to use YouTube, other than fumble around pressing this or that, and I don’t know WHY. I admit, that I don’t know how I am going to do all of this, but at least that is my operational goal until I die or just plain can’t use my brain anymore. In any event, the words of St. Benedict will be true: “That in all things, may God be glorified.”

Next: Contemplative PowerPoints on my YouTube Channel.