I found a helpful quote in Ruth Burrow's spiritual autobiography that captures a great deal about the journey of faith. I have pondered again what the following quote means for our lives:
"What we cannot do God is not asking. God asks what we can do. I could not - and cannot - follow what seems the classical spiritual journey. God does not ask it of me. He has provided another for me. It may appear a port sort of way, even a cowardly way, but it is my way and God's choice for me. More than that, I know that, ultimately, in its essence, it is the only way. Sooner or later everyone must be brought by God to this deep poverty, and everything depends on acceptance of it. Personalities, temperments differ and God leads all according to their own character. Roads may appear different but ultimately they converge. Sooner or later we must take the narrow path and leave behind all spiritual riches. We have to go to God with empty hands. We have to let him be wholly and totally God. How hard this is. We want to feel good, want to feel we have something to offer him of our own. We want to be spiritually beautiful, to have an interesting, beautiful spiritual life. In God's mercy he deprived me of all from the beginning. He has kept me in a state of poverty and helplessness. Now he has given me the grace to want this, to choose it" (pp. 114-115).
It is, of course, difficult to grasp what Burrows is saying without full awareness of the rest of the text. However, given what she states above I am drawn to the way she shares how God works in us according to who we are. This, it seems to me, is the way of grace.
No comments:
Post a Comment