(winter at the Franciscan Prayer Fraternity)
PRAYING WITH THE SEASONS
The spiritual life is more than doctrine. It is coming to see God in the works of God.
Realize that mysticism is the gift of learning to see Life under life, behind life, and beyond life. Nature teaches us many things. It is coming to hear this language, that is beyond language, which is the language of the soul.
SPRING teaches us patience. Things -- and we, as well -- grow slowly. Do not overvalue the speed that races to produce what the heart is not yet wise enough to use well.
SUMMER teaches us that to have the fullness of life -- great tastes, good fun, warm sun and wild abandon -- we must have less of it than we expect. Too much of anything sears the soul.
FALL teaches us the value of resting our minds as well as our bodies, the value of readiness, the value of transition. In all the in-between phases and places of life, we are given the time to allow our souls to catch up with our restless energies, to take stock of the present, to get sight of all our possible futures and choose between them.
WINTER teaches us what it means to close one phase of life so that we can begin something else, totally different, totally new. It gives us the joy of beginning over and over again throughout the whole of life.
To live in rhythm with the seasons was natural in an agricultural society. Now in the technological age, it has become a spiritual discipline, a sign of maturity yet to be developed. Everything that grows in us in life is an experience from which we are meant to grow.
(taken from FOR A LISTENING HEART, June's reflections for THE MONASTIC WAY by Sr. Joan Chittister, OSB)
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