Good morning…
Our Last Friday monthly spiritual direction group met for the first time yesterday. I had not invited a group of women to our home since COVID closed everything down in March. Meeting outside beneath our back porch, face to face felt so good. Face to face and soul to soul felt even better. Trusting the Lord to choose our opening reading, I was amazed at the two pages of wisdom God handpicked for us.
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Keep Returning to the Road to Freedom in Henri Nouwen’s The Inner Voice of Love (38-39)
When you seem to lose all you thought you had gained, do not despair. Your healing is not a straight line. You must expect setbacks and regressions. Don’t say to yourself, “All is lost. I have to start all over again.” This is not true. What you have gained, you have gained.
Sometimes little things build up and make you lose ground for a moment. Fatigue, a seemingly cold remark, someone’s inability to hear you, someone’s innocent forgetfulness, which feels like rejection – when all these come together, they can make you feel as if you are right back where you started. But try to think about it instead as being pulled off the road for a while. When you return to the road, you return to the place you left it, not to where you started.
It is important not to dwell on the small moments when you feel pulled away from your progress. Try to return home, to the solid place within you, immediately. Otherwise, these moments start connecting with similar moments, and together they become powerful enough to pull you far away from the road. Try to remain alert to seemingly innocuous distractions. It is easier to return to the road when you are on the shoulder than when you are pulled all the way into a nearby swamp.
In everything keep trusting that God is with you, that God has given you companions on the journey. Keep returning to the road of freedom.
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“Shoulder” is the first word we unpacked together. When a car pulls off onto the shoulder of the highway, it is a time to regroup, recharge, receive help. One stays on the shoulder for a breather, briefly, before returning to the road to freedom.
“Swamp” is the next word grabbing our attention. A swamp sucks us in far away from freedom’s road. The swamp is like “quicksand” pulling us down, leaving us stuck. “Quick” is a worldly value. “Sand” constantly shifts. Some people are born into the swampy quicksand of prejudice, poverty, powerlessness. These messy conditions make it more challenging to find one’s way onto the road to freedom for all. As we unpacked our thoughts, our feelings, our hopes, one of the women shared the details of the YouTube video below and immediately sent me the link (now I share it with you).
Symbolically resting together on the shoulder, we journaled quietly then shared our responses to these three reflective questions: “What am I losing?” “What am I loving?” “What am I learning?” After a life-giving ninety minutes, we walked out to the road more keenly attuned to the inner voice of Love.
Plant your feet firmly therefore within the freedom that Christ has won for us, and do not let yourselves be caught again in the shackles of slavery (Galatians 5:1, PHILLIPS).
…Sue…
P.S. Planting our feet firmly on the road to freedom for all, here are two opportunities: 1) today’s prayer march and 2) the powerful video below.
