There is Renewed Life

My last blog here was in April of 2009.  I was then 58 years old, or almost.  I am now 62, and much more content.  Funny, how that is so.  My last blog here was about dealing with the loss of our store, and remembering what's important.  Now, over 4 years later, at the end of the day, I cling to what is important more than ever.

A great deal happens in people's lives over the course of 4 years.  Good things and less good.  Happy and sad.  There are highs and lows.  At the end of the day, we either learn from it all, or live our lives wasting time waiting to die.  That becomes more real as we age!  Well, I'm determined to cling to joy even when troubled by challenges or sorrow.  Joy goes beyond sorrow to focus on what I believe, what is really real to me...what is eternal, and that, I believe is Love.

These years have been and continue to be a time of fine-tuning our lives.  Retired from full-time work, we have deliberately chosen a quiet life of prayer.  We've welcomed into our house of prayer one of our sisters from the religious order to which I belong (The Order of the Merciful Christ), and living in intentional community brings my husband, Joe, and me full circle in life.  We each began our adult lives as religious, and now, at the end of the day, we recognize our lives have always been lived as such, with marriage, family, and work.   St Francis created his Third Order for people like us.  The early Celtic Church with its model of monastic life was open to house Church as well as male/female monastic houses, and that indeed is what we have lived since our marriage.  Growing old in our house Church, as religious, is comfortable for us, is who we are. 

Tomorrow I am going with Joe, to look at a location to reopen our little shop, not as a huge store, but as a small shop within a community market.  Many vendors there have gone through what we experienced, closed shops and life changes.  We've considered this before, but have not made the leap.  We may decide not to now, again.  However, we are open to the movement of the Spirit within us, the Spirit in Whom we live, move, and have our being.  That is an exciting place to be spiritually--open to the guidance of the Spirit.  Finding our peace after the storm of closing our shop by taking time apart to pray, and plan, and find our current form of community and ministry has given us some renewed spiritual energy, even as we've aged, and juggle the physical limitations we now have.  At the end of the day life in this physical realm, you know, is brief and sacred.  We embrace it, and live.  Where there is life, there is hope, and we believe in life eternal!