I found Tish Harrison Warren's recent article in Christianity Today, "As a Pandemic Parent, God Calls Me to This Loud and Lonely Life | Christianity Today, to be both encouraging and challenging as she invites us to look for God in our lives today.
Warren shares how Nouwen retells, in The Genesee Diary, how he longs for God to show up
“in such an intensive and convincing way” that Nouwen would let go of his idols and commit himself unconditionally to God. In response, the abbot is neither surprised nor impressed. “You want God to appear to you in the way your passions desire,” he says, “but these passions make you blind to his presence now.” He calls Nouwen—and me—to find God’s presence in the only place where it can be found: in our actual lives."
I find this challenging, because I find being present in my actual life hard at times. It's easier to imagine that - if only ' circumstances changed, I'd be able to be as holy and loving as I imagine I can be.
Yet, I also find it encouraging because I find it comforting to know that I'm not alone in my spiritual 'fantasies.' I also find it encouraging to be reminded that I do not have to wait for circumstances to be perfect to experience God's presence in my life. God is already here in the middle of my messy and imperfect life.
In fact, as Warren notes, my messy and complicated life is an invitation to a different kind of spiritual discipline:
"Typically, when I forsake spiritual practices like silence or solitude, I tend to conceive of it as a failure of discipline—like skipping a workout and eating a pint of Ben & Jerry’s instead. But during Covidtide, having to frequently surrender these practices is its own kind of suffering. The call to notice God in the actual moment I’m in is therefore a call to meet him in suffering, however quotidian that pain may appear."
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