CLM Graced Crossroads
Reflection 1
“Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”
Joshua 1:9
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Opening Hymn
Reading: Exodus 16:1-3
The whole Israelite community set out from Elim and came to the Desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had come out of Egypt. In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.”
“Lost in the Forest”
Begin by finding a comfortable position sitting or lying down. Allow your body to begin to relax as you start to create a picture in your mind.
Imagine yourself alone and lost in a huge forest. Take some time to look around you. The trees and undergrowth are not familiar. It is a vast forest, and you feel very uncertain about which direction to go. Stay with the feelings and images which emerge from within you.
The trees and bushes beside you are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here. You may treat the forest as a powerful stranger. Ask permission to know it and be known by it.
Although true solitude can be challenging, it is often the necessary gateway to our deepest passions, and the discovery of what we must do to live them. The Wanderer learns to look deeply into the face of her/his aloneness and discover what truly brings her/him alive and what doesn’t……You discover ease, inspiration, belonging, and wisdom in your own company. When wandering, there is immense value in “finding yourself lost” because we can find something when we are lost, we can find ourselves….
Imagine yourself lost in your life as a Columban Lay Missionary at this time. You have goals, a place you want to be, but you don’t know how to reach that place. Maybe you don’t know exactly what you want, you just have a vague desire for a better place. Although it may not seem like it, you are on the threshold of a great opportunity.
Begin to trust that place of not knowing. Surrender to it. You’re lost. There will be grief. A cherished outcome appears to be unobtainable or undefinable. In order to make the shift from being lost to
being present, admit to yourself that your goal may never be reached. Though perhaps difficult, doing so will create entirely new possibilities for fulfilment.
Surrender fully to being lost and you will discover that, in addition to not knowing how to get where you wanted to go, you are no longer sure of the ultimate rightness of that goal. By trusting your unknowing, your old standards of progress dissolve and you become eligible to be chosen by new, larger standards, those that come not from your mind or old story or other people, but from the depths of your soul.
You become attentive to an utterly new guidance system… This kind of being lost and then found is one form of ego death and rebirth, one form of entering the tomb-womb of the cocoon…
In order to live your soul into the world, you must continuously loosen your beliefs about who you are…about what Columban Lay Mission is.
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Adaptation of a reflection by Richard Rohr
Personal Reflection and Journaling
Communal Transition
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Offer a headline that captures our CLM’s work of transition.
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What is happening within us now?
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What are we losing that is out of our control?
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What do we need to let go?
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What sustains us when we are uncertain about the way forward? What keeps us steady?
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What moves us out of a lost place (a forest)?
Closing Prayer: Prayer for Strength and Guidance
Lord, I reach out to you for your guidance.
Please show me which way to turn.
Calm my anxious thoughts, come speak into my mind.
Strengthen me as I falter and feel weary.
May I feel strength rising up within my heart.
Bring clarity into my visions and dreams.
I trust that you are with me, no matter where I go,
or what I decide to do.
You journey with me always. Amen.
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(Spiritual Life Prayer from St Theresa of Avila)