I was telling a friend today, "I think I need a spiritual nap." That comes from feeling like I've been running an ecclesiastical and spiritual cross-country race for the last few months. I think I'm realizing that I'm kind of worn out. Things are slowing down but this has, as I look at it now, really been a fairly stressful time for me. Now, some of that may be due to my overly analytical nature. Liz gets on me about this often. I know, I know, but it's not all that. Part of it is actually working through, thinking through this big shift.
I see a lot of people on the internet publicize their conversions or reversions to Catholicism from another Christian expression that they've been involved in for some time in very glowing and shiny terms. It would seem, if you only read stories like this, that there's nothing hard about it, nothing stressful or painful about it. I doubt that's the case for most of these folks. I wonder why we see so little of the nitty-gritty of these processes. You'd think it would be helpful for people to know how it really can be.
And this is not to say that the Catholic Church has put me through anything. That's not it at all. On that end it really hasn't been very difficult thus far. It's not even, in my case, that a bunch of family members or friends have disowned us or anything - not happening. I thank God for that. I'm talking about the internal struggle and the possible relational fallout that can and does happen many times. It has started to be a little awkward to navigate already, just a little. You'd think I'd be use to having awkward interchanges about church and theology by now. Oh well. Not sure you ever get totally use to that kind of thing. Hard to explain.
As I said, things are slowing down a little but that only means you've started to arrive at the city limits. Now it's time to get settled in a new town, and that's really super-easy, we all know that, right? Mmmmmmmmmmm, well, ok. Anyway, the "nap" line is about needing a retreat. I think that's it. I need spiritual rest. Gethsemani calls me name. Time to make that call and pray they have something available relatively soon. In the mean time, I try to rest as much as I can where I am. I continue to pray and live and do what I need to do.
"Then, if we cannot as yet think alike in all things, at least we may love alike. Herein we cannot possibly do amiss." John Wesley
"Keep your eyes on the crucifix, for Jesus without the cross
is a man without a mission, and the cross without Jesus
is a burden without a reliever." Fulton J. Sheen
"...I am deeply convinced that the Christian leader of the future is called to be
completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self." Henri Nouwen
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