“Don’t let me ever think, dear God," author Flannery O'Connor writes, "that I was anything but the instrument for Your story.”
I came across this quote the other day when searching for books to read on amazon.com. Somehow I had managed to get a degree in Literature without ever having read Flannery O'Connor. I knew the name. I knew some of her most famous titles. But I didn't know that she had kept a prayer journal, that she was Catholic and intensely spiritual.
All I knew was the quote above and that was enough to get me to buy the recently released prayer journal. Something about her, about the need for story, about the need to be God's instrument, about the humility shown, resonated with me and I thought I had found a kindred spirit.
Last night when I sat down with the prayer journal and read the introduction, I discovered that Ms. O'Connor and I had something else in common. She suffered from Lupus. And in fact, she died from Lupus related complications when she was thirty-nine.
I began crying, and because of my own autoimmune issues, my eyes were so dry that no tears would come. I sat there in my recliner, crying tearless cries, cries that came from somewhere deep inside and hurt like a pulsing wound with each gasp.
I wasn't crying because I feared a young death like O'Connor's. I was crying because I knew that I had found that kindred spirit, someone who had felt distinctly called to serve God, someone who was flawed, who was imperfect, but strived despite those imperfections to get closer to God, to feel that kinship with Him.
She wrote because she loved to write, but she wrote knowing that what she wrote was owed to God. She wrote even during her illness. She struggled, but she wrote.
365 Days of Hope is my prayer journal. Prayer is, even in silence, making yourself accessible to God (thank you Father Keating). And this is what I do every morning.
This morning, the same rabbit I had seen yesterday was back in his spot munching grass. He looked like he might bolt if I stepped too close, but I stepped lightly and when I was close enough, I said to him, gently, "You know me."
And there I stood, a few feet away and watched him eat.
I watched the birds too, these tiny birds that refuse to stay in any one place for longer than a second. They are so quick, they might as well be butterflies. I would call them mockingbirds but for the mysterious streaks of yellow on their feathers. They are unique and flighty and wonderful and if I stand still enough, they will come, because they know me.
God comes to us and for whatever reason, we frequently back away or fly away or disappear completely.
When what we should do is hold our breath and trust, because we know Him. He is not so mysterious really. He is part of us and that part of us is always yearning to find its missing half, its missing whole, the stardust from which it was created.
We know Him.
Now's the time not to run away.
I came across this quote the other day when searching for books to read on amazon.com. Somehow I had managed to get a degree in Literature without ever having read Flannery O'Connor. I knew the name. I knew some of her most famous titles. But I didn't know that she had kept a prayer journal, that she was Catholic and intensely spiritual.
All I knew was the quote above and that was enough to get me to buy the recently released prayer journal. Something about her, about the need for story, about the need to be God's instrument, about the humility shown, resonated with me and I thought I had found a kindred spirit.
Last night when I sat down with the prayer journal and read the introduction, I discovered that Ms. O'Connor and I had something else in common. She suffered from Lupus. And in fact, she died from Lupus related complications when she was thirty-nine.
I began crying, and because of my own autoimmune issues, my eyes were so dry that no tears would come. I sat there in my recliner, crying tearless cries, cries that came from somewhere deep inside and hurt like a pulsing wound with each gasp.
I wasn't crying because I feared a young death like O'Connor's. I was crying because I knew that I had found that kindred spirit, someone who had felt distinctly called to serve God, someone who was flawed, who was imperfect, but strived despite those imperfections to get closer to God, to feel that kinship with Him.
She wrote because she loved to write, but she wrote knowing that what she wrote was owed to God. She wrote even during her illness. She struggled, but she wrote.
365 Days of Hope is my prayer journal. Prayer is, even in silence, making yourself accessible to God (thank you Father Keating). And this is what I do every morning.
This morning, the same rabbit I had seen yesterday was back in his spot munching grass. He looked like he might bolt if I stepped too close, but I stepped lightly and when I was close enough, I said to him, gently, "You know me."
And there I stood, a few feet away and watched him eat.
I watched the birds too, these tiny birds that refuse to stay in any one place for longer than a second. They are so quick, they might as well be butterflies. I would call them mockingbirds but for the mysterious streaks of yellow on their feathers. They are unique and flighty and wonderful and if I stand still enough, they will come, because they know me.
God comes to us and for whatever reason, we frequently back away or fly away or disappear completely.
When what we should do is hold our breath and trust, because we know Him. He is not so mysterious really. He is part of us and that part of us is always yearning to find its missing half, its missing whole, the stardust from which it was created.
We know Him.
Now's the time not to run away.
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