| my beloved Celtic journal |
Towards the end of his second month at Genesee, after spending much time in solitude, Nouwen realizes that solitude leads him to think often about his past. He remembers some significant memories but he is greatly mystified by the long stretches of time that seem void of memorable events. Nouwen admits: "I do not want to live it all again, but I would like to remember more, so that my own little history could be a book to reflect on and learn from."
Like Nouwen, I often wonder if I am really listening carefully enough to the God of history, the God of my history, the God who whispers my name. Have I really been living in the here and now?
The other day I decided to walk down to the river nearby to do some reading on the dock. By the time I got halfway there it started to drizzle a little despite the sun being out. As the rain began to slowly dampen my hair to my forehead, I wanted to turn back but no matter what direction I turned I was still going to get wet so I decided to see this as one of those occasional, inspirational "God moments" (I use quotations because I believe as soon as we identify God with any specific event or situation, we play God and distort the truth....our human minds are simply too finite for this kind of understanding). I felt like this moment was the perfect metaphor that reflected my life right now -I tend to stay so focused on my destination that I forget to enjoy the journey -no matter what the weather brings -I need to take one day at a time, to thoroughly enjoy each day instead of continuously looking ahead to when I am further along in this five year grad program. As hard as it is to not naturally look ahead to where I am not in such a transitional phase of life, I don't want to just fly through or waste these five precious years of my life.
Nouwen later talks about his time in Ireland how he remembers Donegal better than Kerry and Killarney -he also wrote a lot while in Donegal.
I think writing is a very powerful tool, an inexhaustible resource....and perhaps one of the greatest gifts God has given us to help preserve our memories, to learn from the past, to reflect upon it, to live more in the here and now.
As I think about the four months when I lived in Ireland, I remember most vividly Derry, Belfast and Galway more than Sligo, Cork and Armagh....and I think this has a lot to do with how much more I wrote while in those places.
Most of us cannot retrieve events that happened to us before age three (infantile amnesia)....one theory to explain this is the inability to verbally encode information.
I am beginning to see writing as a more sacred spiritual discipline than ever before.
