Some thoughts on the last day of the year 2009.

Moonstruck.
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I came across a letter from a monk friend of mine - it was written 20 years ago.  I have letters - important letters - all over the house; in books, in folios, in drawers, in journals, in sketchbooks, in boxes - all over the place.  Fr. Tom's letter was interesting, deeply moving really.  I lost contact with him after a letter to the editor at NCR I had written several years ago had been published.  The letter was about a monk who had died young.  Without going into detail - the letter was misunderstood by the monks and I defended myself wretchedly and contemptuously - albeit apologizing shortly after.  I've always been something of a hot-head.  Eventually - mostly out of embarrassment - I just stopped writing or visiting.  (Things I say and write are often misunderstood, as my long time readers can attest.)

The interesting aspect of Father's letter was that in 1989 I evidently was still discerning - that is, considering religious life - 13 years after I had left monastic life, having lived in a Carmelite novitiate, a Trappist novitiate, a Carthusian lay-brother's cell for a month, and visiting numerous abbeys and convents in Italy, France, and Spain.  I had even been professed in Assisi as a Third Order Franciscan, yet in 1989 I was invited to join the Secular Discalced Carmelites - while still wondering if I should be a Carthusian.
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Obviously I wanted to belong somewhere, to be someone or something.  Titles and letters of association behind a name, a habit - such things can become a type of status-symbol for people like me.  (I'm just talking about me here.)  I was looking outside of myself however, looking outside of my reality... learning much in the process of course.  But I wasted a lot of time in what most people today refer to as discernment - I spent years doing that - which is why I can at times adopt a rather imperious tone regarding others who seem to constantly spin their wheels anguishing over vocation.  I mean no harm, I would simply like to somehow relieve their anguish so they could get on with their lives.  Yet each life is a journey, each person's sanctification is a process - oftentimes very painful at that.
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Anyway, Fr. Tom patiently wrote to me with kind advice and suggestions - appearing to be speculating with me.  (In fact - good spiritual direction is often that - not dictating behavior.)  Fr. Tom always seemed to know I was meant to be doing exactly what I was doing - except my worrying about a vocation was distracting me from the present moment - the reality that I was already in the will of God - just as I am in this moment.  A line from his letter impressed me deeply, and affirmed what I've come to understand about my state in life;  "... You will find, as did Catherine of Genoa, that associations do not help you, and it is better for you to be alone.  Only experience will tell you what is best for you."
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There is another amazing paragraph in his letter as well.  I had mentioned to him one of my confessions - what a priest told me.  The priest was an ancient Jesuit - he had to be about 90 years old.  Fr. Andrew had been a missionary in China before the revolution.  He had been in Japan too.  He was a classic Jesuit - very holy.  I went to confession to him regularly at St. Olaf's.
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I was struggling with a particular sin - and so I was confessing pretty much the same thing over and over - at the time I was going to confession 3 or 4 times a week.  One particular confession Fr. Andrew stopped speaking abruptly, looked up as if lost in thought, then he looked at me and said, "Yes.  Yes, I think you will make it."  I asked him what he meant, and he said, "You are going to overcome this."
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Evidently I wrote to Fr. Tom about it and he responded; "Your meeting Fr. Andrew at St. Olaf's was certainly a signal grace.  Like him, I too sense that sooner or later your problems will disappear, or at least not be as intense.  I have known others who struggle for years and then one day the grace is there if they want to accept it.  As Julian of Norwich said, 'All will be well.'"
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That actually happened, suddenly at adoration just over 10 years ago.
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I write this - I don't know why - maybe someone can be encouraged?  Maybe just to praise and thank the Mercy of God.  I'm not sure.
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Keep praying and seeking the will of God - even if you fail every hour - keep trying.  In the end, "All will be well."
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Photo:  "The full moon setting over the west ridge this morning after Lauds." - Our Lady of Spring Bank Abbey, Br. Stephen, O. Cist.   Thanksgiving, prayers and heartfelt best wishes for Stephen - he recently made first profession.
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If you really want to be edified - visit New Liturgical Movement - particularly Shawn Tribe's post on Monasticism.