“You will show me the path to life, abounding joy in your presence, the delights at your right hand forever.” (Psalm 16.11 NAB)
A Reflection by Sharon Nelsen
In my younger years, I frequently prayed that God would
show me my path to life. I prayed,
thinking God would show me a numbered path, like “Walkway #38,” and even put me
on it, just as He had set the planets in orbital paths. Later, I believed that it was my job to find
the right path. Once I found it, (because there could only be one right one) I knew I would have peace. I would be able to move
ahead in my life’s journey with confidence— I am on the (legally) right path!
God is always challenging me to grow up; to move beyond legalism,
literalism and its easy answers. Jesus’
words in Matthew 7.14, affect me: “How narrow the gate and constricted the road
that leads to life. And those who find
it are few.” But somewhere in my thinking
a wisp wonders if the Divine One is playing some kind of game with me, having selected
MY path and now is watching closely to see if I find it. What kind of image of God is that?
It is the Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi, my patron and
good friend who bumbled a bit finding his path to life. I think about him, his various paths, and
write:
Well-worn
is the path of suffering
Thorny
is the path of doubt
Delightful
is the path of praise
Challenging
is the path of justice
Wearying
is the path to peace
Joyful
is the path to wholeness, to holiness
Smooth
is the path to acceptance of God’s Good Way
I recall from years ago the words of a woman in our
faith-sharing group: “You know, sometimes
we think that God is saying, ‘I wonder if she will find the path I have picked
out for her?’ But, I think the truth is
that God is looking at our lives and asking, ‘I wonder which path she will
choose out of all of the many options before her?’”
I think about how I looked at the choices our children made
as emerging adults. When one declared a
triple major upon entering university, I thought, ‘Now, that’s a challenge.’ Yet, I respected his right to choose his path
even as I wondered about his choice.
We can be certain that God knows the life-giving path for
us in each situation in our lives. We
can be equally certain that God respects our free will, the God-given freedom
to choose that the Deity will not take away-- even if we make it harder on
ourselves, even if we are setting ourselves up for failure, even if we don’t do
it right.
One of the most difficult challenges in our walk to become
adult Christians, mature followers of Jesus, the Master Teacher, is the act of
choosing. It is much easier if someone
tells us what to do. Why? Because now it is not our responsibility—we
are just doing what we have been told.
And if we are told by an ordained clergy person -- all the better, for
now it’s someone else’s fault if things go wrong (as we intend to explain to
God on the day of judgment).
My pre-Vatican II religious formation reflected the times –
it was the adult’s job to tell us what to do:
The doctor told us what we needed to know about our bodies; the teacher
told us what we needed to study and learn; the priest told us what we needed to
know about God, and our parents told us everything else we needed to know--except
about sex. I am grateful for the healthy, foundational formation of my
childhood that existed because a wiser, experienced generation told me what to
do. The wounding began when the being
told didn’t stop. Guidance became a
method of control that hampered growth and abandoned us not only to figure out
how to choose, but to assimilate the fact that we had the right and the duty to
choose. That process of accepting
choice, especially in religious matters, took many years of struggle. In order to move healthily into the adult
arena of making real choices and taking responsibility for them, we need awareness—the
conscious examination of our childish ways, thoughts and behaviors. Wise guidance in that process, especially in
learning to hear the word of God within, is not only helpful, but necessary to nurture
our growth as a mature people of God.
One day, while praying about this dilemma in my theological
thinking (which at the time only the rebels seemed to be addressing in our
Church) I heard God say to me: “Sharon,
the pope has responsibility for pope things; the pastor has responsibility for
parish things; and Sharon has responsibility for Sharon things.”
Well, that was a welcome relief and, yet now I had something
else to ponder: Exactly what are my
things? Fortunately, by that time I had acquired
some tools (searched for diligently by seeking out mature guidance) that helped
me recognize and honor questions arising from within. Those tools were prayer, contemplation, studying
God’s Word, sharing my real life situations with a listening faith community,
reflecting on what was life-giving in my day’s events, and, learning to recognize
manifestations of God’s Power and Presence in a word of knowledge, a dream, or
through a special anointing.
I looked at my domain --the “things” God had given me:
family, friends, neighbors, communities of believers, resources, talents,
skills, a healthy body and mind, an education, political freedom, opportunities,
inspirations and, most importantly, the Holy Spirit, empowerment to choose what
is good, what is life-giving in my domain--for immediate situations and for the
long journey.
I began to grasp the narrow way as very specific to my
life.
Preceding Jesus’ words about the narrow way, is his
proclamation that “the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to
destruction, and those who enter through it are many.” (Matthew 7.13 NAB) Those
words summarized what we did as teenagers-- we sought to discover life by
grouping on a wide road with our peers. We
wanted to be grown up and we thought the best way to accomplish that was to swarm
together. We were quite concerned about
appearances, our possessions, how we were compared to our peers and what those
peers thought of us, and, we tended to discount any input (especially the
unasked for variety) of wisdom from our elders or ages past. It was a wide and crowded road. If we didn’t step off of it as we progressed
through our teen years, putting the childish behaviors behind us, we could not step
into maturity. Rather, we morphed into a
kind of empowered teenager with enough religion to tinge our selfish desires
with pious thoughts and guilt without actually transforming them.
The seeds of many behaviors planted in childhood are good
seeds, but like all seeds, they have to mature into the fruitful plant. For example, when we were children, we often
felt sorry for another’s plight. It was
our response to seeing hurt. That is a
seed, a beginning. But if the same
response persists into adulthood, it ends up diminishing self and others,
labeling all as helpless victims. Those
seeds of caring that began as feeling sorry for someone need to grow into the
mature Christian gift of compassion, a gift that focuses on the person, not on
the circumstances. Compassion
strengthens the giver and the receiver; it communicates and shares love through
appropriate assistance, aware of each person’s struggle and the challenge to grow
in the midst of difficult and challenging situations. Compassionate Christians trust in God and in
every person’s ability to make conscious choices within the milieu of grace
without diminishing the person who is suffering.
God asks us to be grown-up Christians and shows us how to
get there, asking only our cooperation in the process. God gives us Jesus, who sets us free and heals
our crushed spirits; God sends us the Holy Spirit to empower us and enlighten us
so that we are able to recognize our options and to make informed choices; God
gives us each other in the Church that He promises to be with until the end of
time; God entrusts us to make choices
that are life-giving for us, for each other, and for our world.
