Be Transformed!

     Hello Everyone.  Remember me?  I have to apologize for not getting a newsletter out for a few months but things have been a wee bit hectic around here.  My first big news is that I finished my doctoral dissertation!  I now have to wait until I get the news that I passed.  Once I hear that I did (and I’m very confident that I will), I will then be able to say that I have my Doctorate in Metaphysical Science.  And I’m proud to say that it only took me 55 years to get it!

     The other huge activity around here was that after 27 years we re-shingled our entire geodesic dome house, the entry, garage, my office, and my husband Al’s workshop and studio.  We had a wonderful crew who worked with Al (he took a month off of work) and got it done in five very long and noisy weeks.  We had cedar shake shingles on everything, which were absolutely beautiful and fit well in the woods here, but were extremely high maintenance and falling apart.  We decided to go with maintenance free aluminum shingles.  We just love the look of these too. It totally transformed our entire place and makes our house look brand new again. 

     Unfortunately, the inside also needs a real face lift.  After 27 years, things began falling apart in just the last few weeks.  Two of the burners on my stove stopped working, my washing machine broke down, the kitchen sink plugged up, the ceiling fan makes a horrendous noise and so does my dryer, the seams on my linoleum floors are all pulling up and the nails underneath have rusted and caused funky looking orange spots all over the place. 

     Isn’t that just like life?  We go through such effort and expense to keep the outside appearance of our body looking good.  We are constantly “re-shingling.”  We might buy new clothes that are more in style, dye our hair to cover up the gray, have surgery or use expensive creams to reduce wrinkles, go on a multitude of diets, join health clubs, get manicures and pedicures, do hair transplants, etc.  The list goes on and on.  But those are all exterior things.  How are we doing at maintaining our interior souls and spirits?  Just like the things inside my house, our souls and spirits can begin to wear down and burn out for a multitude of reasons.  And because these are the things that are eternal and not temporary, we need to spend just as much loving care on them as our physical bodies, or I guarantee you that they will fall apart. 

     But is that bad?  In Christianity, those times are called the “dark night of the soul” or “the desert experience.”  These are the times that knock us clear out of our comfort zone and cause us to look much deeper inside of ourselves, and eventually surrender to God and let the Spirit move within us to guide us to a deeper, richer, fuller life.  It’s part of our spiritual growth. 

     In our culture, this desert experience or dark night of the soul can be mistaken for depression and off we go to be put on an anti-depressant to “fix” the problem.  But does it?  How can a person be “fixed” without addressing the issue that caused the problem?  If I try to convince myself that I don’t need four burners on my stove, that I can get by just as well with only two, how long do you think I can fool myself?  Or what if I told myself that I could do my wash by hand like people did for thousands of years instead of using a machine?  Or that those noises from the fan and dryer aren’t really all that bad?  At some point, I’m going to have to address the issue, replace the old with something new, and my life will be better because of it. 

     Our souls and spirits are no different.  They cannot be fooled into thinking that they’re better.  And fixing up the outside might make things look good from an exterior perspective, but we have to live on the inside, where absolutely everything matters.  Our new shingles make our house look nice, but it’s what’s on the inside that make it my home. 

     From June 1st – 10th I will be working on my own transformation.  I will be spending 10 days at St. Benedict’s Monastery participating in an intensive silent (yup, 10 days of silence and no talking) retreat of meditation, centering prayer, Lectio Divina, and contemplative prayer.  It will be a time of deep reflection, listening, and spiritual growth.  No phone, no TV, no computer, no day to day responsibilities.  Just me and God.  Ahhhh, I can hear Him calling me already.  Can you hear Him calling?  If not, I would encourage you to spend the next few minutes in silence somewhere.  It’s time to go home. 

It’s only in silence that we can truly hear.