A Moment of Confession

By chance, or maybe it was really providential leading, I came across a word reminding me of something I never would have known.  Twenty-five years ago John O'Donohue wrote "Anam Cara."  Twenty five years ago I would have thought, "so what,' which speaks volumes about who I was back then. I allowed my memory to show me myself back then and what I saw was a guy running around like a chicken with its head cut off doing the work of the institutional church.  I would like to say it was the work of the Lord and maybe some of it was that kind of work, but I know, too, too much of that work of the Lord was being done for the wrong reasons.    

"Anam Cara"  is not a book about doing, or bullding new building, or enlarging memberships, or monitoring the financial health of the church, or about a clergy pathway for success, but a book about being.  Being is something I have not done well.  Sometimes I must confess to hardly givng the being part of my life any attention.  It is hard to be when doing is the prime directive of life or ministry.    

Maybe this sounds like a confession and if so, so be it.  I look back at where I have come and then see the man in my past and I often want to get his attention for a moment, but of course, such is not how life is lived.  All we can do is to allow the collective experiences of our past to be held in the gentle hands of the Holy Spirit and listen to what He is saying about living now in the present so that it, as an important moment, is not squandered with the things that cluttered up the past with regret.  May it be that we all find such blessings as we look gently at our past and hopefully at what is still to come to us.