Not so this past summer! Ninety days marked by some real hard work, surprises...and changed plans…those months may not have been very relaxing but they have left me breathless!
Instead of mountain hiking in Colorado and a month studying Italian in Florence I found myself giving an enthusiastic yes to Fr. Perry Henry's request that I work in Kenya for two months. I'd never before been in Africa, much less in Nairobi where American Vincentians had labored in our own seminary for over a decade. These two months were a marvelous opportunity to see a new world and what we CMs were doing there. So, really, it was an easy “yes” for me. I felt as if it was “trading up” for something new, probably very challenging. Indeed, this has been a summer memorable for new experiences and new friends, and in a word, delightful! It was refreshing to be among young men preparing for priesthood in a part of the world bursting with new life (along with plenty of old problems!), to be made to feel welcome in unfamiliar surroundings and to be really needed for formation work. It all worked wonders for my flagging self-esteem, having been without a job for over a year now....
Still, during this time I was also startled by Fr. Greg Gay’s request to accept a new assignment to join our International Formation Center (CIF) in Paris. That conversation has since left me with mixed feelings. Of course it is exciting to be sent to reside in France, to learn first hand of our Vincentian history, to live at the historic heart of our Congregation, all yes. To be able to feel free enough to agree to a five-year sojourn in France, well, this too is satisfying. This will be an adventure!
But demanding too. That new “yes” implies a series of “no’s” and “good-bye’s” as I leave behind my country, my culture, my comfort zone.
Packing up 35 years of stuff in two suitcases is excruciating!
I’m uncomfortably aware now that my life has gotten heavy with all sorts of baggage. Put in another way, to be truly open to this life and work (truly new to me), I have had to put aside many things: giving away some of them, discarding a few, letting go of the lot.
Finally, I find myself mourning what now feels lost or gone:
Packing up 35 years of stuff in two suitcases is excruciating!
I’m uncomfortably aware now that my life has gotten heavy with all sorts of baggage. Put in another way, to be truly open to this life and work (truly new to me), I have had to put aside many things: giving away some of them, discarding a few, letting go of the lot.
Finally, I find myself mourning what now feels lost or gone:
a promising ministry position I had developed in Santa Barbara, recently renewed family ties and friendships on the West Coast, boxes of books, memorabilia, clothes, ideas, and countless other State-side relationships, routines, expectations and comfortable habits. Attachments can be felt quite deeply, I'm finding out!
Perhaps it is true that to receive anything really new in our lives each of has to do some letting go -- even some mourning -- of that which can be no longer part of us. How else could we welcome and hold the new?
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by things you didn't do than by the things you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
Mark Twain, 1835 - 1910
