Seasons of the Heart

There are times when I wonder about myself.  This afternoon as I was reading the biography of Ignatius, the 16th century founder of the Jesuits, I had such a moment.  The question turned into an even larger question as I thought about recent readings.  In these recent years since leaving the pulpit, I have been turning the pages, reading about spiritual saints like St. Francis,  Claire of Assisi, the Desert Fathers, Pelagius, John of the Cross, St Patrick, Eriugena, Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, Richard Rohr,  John O' Donohue,and Esther de Waal.    

I wonder what I am doing.  I wonder who I am becoming.  Most of the people mentioned were people I would never have read before retiring and now I devour anything attached to their names.  They were not on my radar.  Certainly life is profoundly different since I traded the pulpit for a tractor.   My ministry is more about writing than preaching and the spiritual food which once fed my soul no longer satisfies me.  This is not to say that I am at a better place, but instead, that I am at a different place.     

Ecclesiastes tells us "For every thing there is a season, and a time for every matter under the sun."  (Ecclesiastes 3:1)  We all move through different seasons of our life and the seasons are not just four in number symbolized by such words as Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter.  In fact, there are a multitude of seasons to be experienced in our living.  There are seasons of new beginnings, seasons of letting go, seasons of unexpected joy, and seasons of grief.  What is obvious is that there are many others and they may be seasons that are mostly peculiar to the way we experience our own life.  What works at one time in our life may not be what works for the whole journey, but the God of Creation not only knows the seasons of the creation, but the seasons of the heart as well.