You Can Only Do What You Have Been Given Power To Do

You can only do what you have been given power to do.  I definitely do not have the grace to be celibate, so I am in the process of transitioning out of being a monk.  

I have been struggling with this question for years.  This is not a brash decision.  In consultation with my spiritual director I arrived at this point.  All things considered, it is not surprising to be leaving for this reason.  

In addition to spiritual direction, I've read quite a bit about celibacy and sexuality.  In that reading, I found the confirmation that celibacy is not something you can live if you don't have the grace for it.  

Consequently, after I move out of the hermitage, which will probably be in a few weeks, I expect to return to dating.  Someday I hope and pray that I'll get married.  

In the meantime, I have been well supported by my fellow monks who are wishing me well.  While they have said they're disappointed I'm leaving, they're supporting me in the discernment decision I've made.  

I've also been marvelously supported by the community of oblates.  These lay people who live out contemplative practices in their everyday lives are warmly encouraging me to become an oblate, which I plan to do.  

It's a tremendous help knowing I will be part of the extended spiritual community of the hermitage.  I had been dreading giving up so many of the benefits of living here, namely the spiritual community, the communal prayer, the silence, and the solitude, among so many other blessings.  However, now I realize that God still will be bestowing so many of these blessings on me, partly through the oblate community, and partly since I will be coming back to visit the hermitage.  

I'm also immensely comforted knowing, in the midst of my final discernment decision to stop being a monk, that God loves me after this decision I am making.  In today's Gospel, Jesus looked with love at the rich young man who told Jesus that he had kept all of the commandments and who asked what else he needed to do.  Then Jesus told him that he lacked one thing; He told the rich young man that if he wished to be perfect, to go and sell all he had and he would have treasure in Heaven.  Then Jesus told the rich young man to follow Him, but the rich young man went away sad.*  Yet Jesus still loved him.  And Jesus loves me after this decision I am making to stop being a monk.  

After the rich young man went away sad, Jesus remarked about how hard it was for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God.  Jesus noted that it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God.  Then Jesus explained that what is impossible for people, is possible for God.  What you can't do without grace, you can do with grace.  However, you have to be given that grace, and I have not been given the grace to be celibate, so it's impossible for me to be a monk.  However, I am still loved, by my fellow monks, by the extended spiritual community including the oblates, and most of all by God.  Therefore I will be leaving the hermitage full of love.  

* Mark 10:17-27 

Cut It Off

Earlier this week in the Gospel we heard Jesus urge us that if our hand is what ails, cut it off.  Similarly, He directs us if our foot is what would be our downfall, cut it off.  

I can boldly and brashly assert that I can do this or that, but at what cost?  Am I insisting on stretching myself to do something that I am not equipped to do, that is going to cause harm in the end?  

If my pride would result in my ruin, I need to have it ripped out of me.  In the end, it's not what we accomplish, but what we admit of the truth about ourselves and our limitations that matters.  

One Follows Another

Approaching the bookstore was a tall young monk in the garb of his full monastic habit.  Relaxed and quite sure of himself, moving slowly and smoothly, he glided gradually toward the store as he brought someone with him.  A little one decades younger than him, perhaps seven years old, the daughter of an employee of the hermitage, followed behind him.  Her hair tied up into a ponytail, she was sporting blue-rimmed sunglasses with the lenses shaped into exceptionally large hearts.  She walked along serene and self-assured, with poise surprising for one so young.  In her strikingly collected demeanor, she seemed to be saying, "Yeah, I'm rockin' these heart-rimmed sunglasses.  And I KNOW I'm rockin' them."  

These two individuals walked along one after the other, so far apart in age and yet so similar in their confident and calm composure.  They resembled each other.  They had found each other, and now one followed the other.  

As they entered the store, I noted the considerable resemblance in the comportment of each of them.  I remarked to the monk, "You see, this is an example of how two super-cool people are just naturally drawn to each other."  

Find Joy Now

We are called out of ourselves.  We are called into new life.  We are called to become our true selves.  When we step out of being the people we thought we were, as we become our true selves, we find a joy we find nowhere else.  We find such joy because we have found new life, since we have been born into true life.  Then we feel great joy because we've become who we've always been meant to be, opening our hearts to expand.  

If we're awake then we recognize new life walking right through the door.  Recently when I was working in the bookstore here at the hermitage, in walked someone who, I later learned, ventured out into the world to find her true self.  She traveled to another country where she learned the art and practice of yoga.  She returned to the states applying the new knowledge she learned as she became a yoga teacher.  

When we reach a certain point in life, we reach a crossroads.  At some moments we must admit that the life we have been living has not been feeding us with the sustenance we need for the journey we are making.  Although it might seem unthinkable to continue while malnourished, nevertheless at times we do so.  Sometimes the thought of making a change can produce such fear in us that we become paralyzed.  Yet we're called to have the courage to step out of ourselves.  

There's making the change so we can start being fed how we need to be.  For some of us, we hear a call to learn a new trade, or to hone a talent we've been given but not been using.  When we start risking for the sake of our development, and moreso when we do so with love of others, we grow into who we're meant to become.  If our lives are not about evolving, if our lives are not about becoming more than we have been, then our lives are about nothing at all.  

Then there's the question of whether we're making a change that will only benefit ourselves, or whether we're shifting in a way that helps others.  It's easy to run off to another country for pleasure; it's a very different matter to go abroad to learn, then return and apply the knowledge gained for the sake of others' health, as with the yoga teacher I mentioned.  We are called to develop ourselves not only for our own sakes, but also so that we can apply our skills with love of our neighbor.  

When we give while providing a service which helps others come to fuller health, we help others to live in the way we're meant to live.  When we're channels through which life flows, we find joy.  When we help bring new life, we find the joy we've been meant to have, since God made us to take care of each other.  We were made to show each other the love we would like to receive.  When we embrace this duty of love, we find joy.  

We find this joy here, right now, in this life.  In this life as a monk that I've been living, I was privileged to have the joy of having Brother Joshua as one of my brother monks.  Some of you know that Brother Joshua unexpectedly passed away last month.  He had stressed that whenever he passed away, he wanted the celebration of his passing away to be an occasion not of sorrow and tears but of joy and laughter.  

Given his spirituality and his enthusiasm and enjoyment of life, Brother Joshua viewed his passing out of this life as an opportunity to rejoice, to revel in the countless blessings he enjoyed while he was alive.  Accordingly, not only during the funeral Mass yesterday, but also during the remembrances of him we shared after Mass, we happily and joyously recalled fond memories of him.  We celebrated his life here and the new life into which he has just been born.  

When we die, we're born into new life, a life that never ends, a life of joy since we are born into the eternity of the love of God, Who we will then finally see face to Face.  Yet we get glimpses of that great love now, when we open our hearts to become who God made us to be, taking the risk to become our true selves, to become conduits of God's love, as God loves our neighbor through us with the love God pours into our hearts.*  

* Romans 5:5