This Lent, without actually planning to, I have been in a process of reconciliation with myself.

After years of neglect I began going through a stack of journals I’ve kept since 1970. It’s been a humbling and revelatory experience.  When I began I thought it would be a simple exercise in ripping and shredding. But then I would start to read something I wrote many years ago and it was like I was catching the light from an ancient star just now arriving and catching my attention for the first time.

Humbling because I recognize the same person addressing and struggling with the same issues decade by decade. It seems my life has been progressing in spirals rather than in straight lines.

How is it possible that I had that insight about myself so long ago? (I was so wise then—how come I didn’t listen to myself then! It would have saved so much time!)

I begin to regard this person with a new sense of perspective and understanding. I regard this younger (and seemingly wiser) rendition of myself with tenderness and compassion.

Revelatory in the realization that in God’s economy nothing, absolutely nothing is lost or wasted.  Everything fits together. Everything had a reason for happening. All the broken pieces fit into place. It’s a mosaic that only God could have created.

I’d like to share one entry from the journals and then a quotation taken from the wall of the chapel where the reflection was written:

August 27th, 1991

Sitting in the Zen prayer room (zendo) at the Catholic retreat center in Amarillo, Texas. A clean, well-lighted space. No images. All purposeful with no purpose. Wood clackers. A bronze bell. Incense. Meditation pillow. Mat.

And there, after thirty minutes, something emerged from me. The deeper, more aware self emerges. The self that is always present. The self that is self-less, fearless, Christ-like. It is not hidden—that is—this self does not hide, rather it is hidden by things, by concepts, by illusion. After sitting, all of that disappears and what is real—which is no-thing, no-idea—remains. The one thing necessary.

This experience taught me something. It was a lesson. A lesson not in obtaining or acquiring but in letting go.

It is not you that shapes God.
It is God who shapes you.
If you are the work of God
wait for the hand of the Artist
who does all things in due season.
Offer him your heart,
soft and tractable,
and keep the form
in which the artist has fashioned you.
Let your clay be moist,
lest you grow hard
and lose the imprint of His fingers.

~Saint Irenaeus