CALLINGS

When I was younger, I wanted to be a nun. Not because I was pious or loved God or anything but rather because I thought nuns didn’t have any worries. I thought they didn’t work and were taken care of for life. It was the perfect life for security. Of course, I was very wrong. Everyone has worries, no one is secure, and nuns work very hard. I doubt anyone who entered the novitiate to become a nun with my motives would have lasted long.

So, why am I telling you this? Beginning next week, I will be working with my spiritual director to do Ignatian Spiritual Exercises. (You are all joining me, sort of.) In preparing for these exercises, which will need about an hour a day of meditation, I have been upping my meditation time in the morning. I was meditating on Jesus for 20 minutes a day and am now up to 40.

Each morning before the sun comes up, I turn off the lights, light my candles – the wax, plastic, and digital candles – and play soft music. It turns our living room into a softly glowing sanctuary. Then, I sit in my comfy recliner chair, my shoes off and legs crossed and try to focus on Jesus. I suck at it. My mind gets filled with plans, projects, ideas, and well, I don’t want to say I have visions, but an image comes to me when meditating on Jesus.

It is a woman sitting down. I cannot see her face. I can see she’s wearing blue and red. The vision includes mountains in the background and a building next to the woman. What can I say? My Jesus is a woman. This vision has been remarkably clear and unchanging for almost two decades. This week, I’ve been asking myself why this vision is coming to me.

The answer is Land.

Okay, part of the answer is land. See, the house next door to us was torn down two years ago this month. Now it is an empty plot of land, dumping water into our basement and into the sewers. Cleveland has a program enabling people to take possession of abandoned land located next door to their home. Last week, my husband and I began the process to acquire this land. We want to bring some native plants and trees, maybe grow a few crops on raised beds, and perhaps a bench. Restore it to something better than grass; something that could bring our neighbors together. Something that will attract wildlife like butterflies, insects, deer, birds. Maybe even groundhogs. Oh wait, we already have those!

I think this project and my Spiritual Exercises journey are being birthed together for a reason. Obviously, I can’t know what that reason is. Yet, it feels very much like a time for renewal; a new morning, fresh and full of promise. Even as we walk in the night of COVID, fascism, and war.

Unlike my childhood ideas about nun-hood, both the land and my journey will require a lot of work. Work that I feel called to and that I am happy to do.

Where is the work God is calling you to do? Where is your morning?

B