Taking flight~
The feelings that make us want to run away are buried treasure, full of energy and inspiration if we are willing to look.
Madisyn Taylor
I’m at St Walburg Monastery this morning. Writing from a corner desk in my corner room in this three-story house; the original of the sister’s home when they established themselves here.
They have since moved into a much larger space, with more modern amenities and space consideration, yet this beautiful house still allows for visitors to spend time on the campus of the monastic community.
Today begins the third in this series of monthly contemplative retreats. It is the first in which I am not right there in the thick of the community; residing in the same building.
Here feels more like being at home; yet completely ungrounded.
And it is tossing me a bit.
I have nothing clear to grasp onto for my five days in solitude. No bells ringing the call to prayer like at Gesthemani. No warm, gentle presence of sisters coming and going in the hallways, about their community business, like at St Benedict’s The Dome.
No preexisting habit to step into and (hold me accountable to) keep me present.
I’m in the place where unmet expectations-did I yet again carry them in?! I thought I’d left expectations far behind…-stir up unease. My mind swirls around ‘shoulds’ while my spirit pops in to remind me there is nothing.
I am here for nothing, so cease.
I think I need to go for a walk. A long one to clear the twist of cobwebs my mind is weaving around common sense.
I think I need a deep-breathing sit to ground my butt in the presence of here and now.
I think I need to go grab some donuts from the local shop I saw driving in, and sink my teeth into the satisfaction of old comforts….
I think
I am wise enough to know the best choice.
Or at least how to manage the choice I do make so as to maintain wisdom….
I am not alone in these dark, throwing-off feelings and energies, I remind myself.
The rest of humankind faces them as well. Always.
Alongside me, even now. Not all in selected solitude-some are as varied and deep and high and wide as anywhere and anything imaginable. Humanity is this way…
I’m taken aback that these old solutions (donuts!) rise once again. I thought I was long over them.
It would appear I have unmet emotions to fetter out.
And this may be why I am here.
The anxiety steps back a bit…
These emotions arise under the moon in Pisces, and Mercury retrograde there as well. I know near-nothing of these astrological energies but alongside solitude, and seeking a soul-spirit-universal self I know is behind it all, I turn to astrological experts who do know something, to realize the intense implications behind a universal energy, God in all, and the miniscule movements and moments in myself. It makes one very little. It makes one very big. We are this way…
We are all. Sun, tree, fish, bear, rock, you, moon, me. There is no way around it.
So I type, and realize the anxiety rising, trying to hide behind an old pattern, is seeking a new expression. The moon in Pisces and Mercury retrograde, alongside my devotional readings and the day being Lenten, bundle neatly together to the physical place-this particular monastery-and my interior place-battling of will with wisdom-to tell me what’s real.
- I am not alone.
- There are choices and I can choose.
- There is a small story.
- There is a big one as well.
This struggle in which I arose ‘blaming’ myself, and my inability to ground, settle, release, and not ‘expect’, is part of it, not outside of it or a result of it. It is meant to be here going on too; just as I am. I am meant to be here in this physical space that at first disappointed for its different, as well as this interior space, where I can see it is alright.
There are choices.
And I choose.
I am going out for a walk.
To glance down at the river above which this monastery is perched.
To listen for the animals amidst the students in the adjoining Catholic school.
To wander into the monastery proper, when my insides have settled down, and join in the midday prayer.
It is still there. It is all there.
I get to choose; to experience this place too in a new way, and call it insight.
Get to know it’s wisdom, anew.
Part of me still wants to take flight; call it not right, giving it names and definitions based only on comparisons to what I have known, limitedly, before, and to pack up and depart back to the familiarity of my home.
Thanks to typing fingers on the keyboard without wifi, an airplane and a bird both singing out the window, I know my choice is to calmly proceed in the commitment I have given myself, and enter into this third retreat, come what may.
It is my choice; to honor the commitment, not the anxiety.
In this I pray, I’ve chosen the best way~
In this I know, I’ve chosen the best way.