All that I write here, and all thinking that precedes and accompanies this writing, is part of my constant struggle to work out and to understand what it is that I actually do think. I have an ongoing need to straighten my various strands of thought into a form of words before I can say to myself - let alone to anyone else - that I know my own mind.
My need to sift my own thoughts and words has meant that talking silently within myself has become natural to me: soliloquy is now a part of me.
I have said that the words of George Eliot (23.4.07 post) partially describe my feelings while working in this way.
It is only since my faith came alive within me, and since my focus shifted markedly towards a desire to immerse myself in spiritual matters, and to cloak my other interests in the light found in that immersion, that I have felt this need.
I believe the tendency had always been there, but not sufficient awareness of the subject matter that would call forth its practice.
It was an inbuilt but buried part of me: one facet of the inbuilt, buried but now quickening version of me that, through my increasing faith, was being brought to light and to life.
It was, and is, part of the real me: the person I was made to be: the person I am meant to be.
The lifelong habits of my worldly self are not discarded easily, and it is this part of me that continues to produce ‘chaff and grain together’.
The ‘faithful hand’ that now sifts my thoughts and words, and gives me ‘the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person’, is my inner self: the enkindled reality of my existence; the person who is learning to discern the will of God, and who shadows, encourages, and limits the amount of chaff produced by his wayward twin. That the two of us get on so well together is a blessing, but I must trust that I can be transformed completely into my true self. I shall then be in an unbroken communication with God, and not, as at present, in a tentative contact with Him only through a form of discussion with my inner voice.
I am as the young Elisha, having not long left behind my earthly labours, and having (as it were) seen a glimpse of where I am required to go.
As Elijah was to him, so my inner self now seems to me.
Summarizing the feeling in that way suggests to me that I may already have been given more than I realize.
There are echoes here of my early awareness of my journey: that long-remembered sense of having been given far more than I ever knew I wanted. (see 07.02.07 post).
I have to quickly dismiss my first reaction: that disappointed-in-myself feeling that mutters “I should have known!”
Instead, I must relax and rejoice in the increased light of yet another dawning: the continuing wonder of moving through the layers of mist that separate me from the very edge of ultimate truth.
That I sometimes feel myself to be depressingly slow to recognize, to understand, to respond, to react and to act, must be accepted as a possible facet of my undeclared, and even unconscious desires to be something other than that which God wants me to be.
At the very least it is a manifestation of my impatience, and of my reluctance to accept and believe that I am good enough for God’s purpose exactly as I am.
In all things may His will be done, not mine; and in His time not mine.
Deep within each one of us is a longing to become our true selves, and this is blended with the will of God; the two are inseparable.
None of us is beyond His love, with all that it contains.
None of us is beyond the potential for doing His will.
However far we have strayed from Him, however long we have been away, however late we may feel we have left it, we have only to stop, to turn and to face Him.
We only have to follow.
Quoting George Eliot again, - “It is never too late to be what you might have been.”
My need to sift my own thoughts and words has meant that talking silently within myself has become natural to me: soliloquy is now a part of me.
I have said that the words of George Eliot (23.4.07 post) partially describe my feelings while working in this way.
It is only since my faith came alive within me, and since my focus shifted markedly towards a desire to immerse myself in spiritual matters, and to cloak my other interests in the light found in that immersion, that I have felt this need.
I believe the tendency had always been there, but not sufficient awareness of the subject matter that would call forth its practice.
It was an inbuilt but buried part of me: one facet of the inbuilt, buried but now quickening version of me that, through my increasing faith, was being brought to light and to life.
It was, and is, part of the real me: the person I was made to be: the person I am meant to be.
The lifelong habits of my worldly self are not discarded easily, and it is this part of me that continues to produce ‘chaff and grain together’.
The ‘faithful hand’ that now sifts my thoughts and words, and gives me ‘the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person’, is my inner self: the enkindled reality of my existence; the person who is learning to discern the will of God, and who shadows, encourages, and limits the amount of chaff produced by his wayward twin. That the two of us get on so well together is a blessing, but I must trust that I can be transformed completely into my true self. I shall then be in an unbroken communication with God, and not, as at present, in a tentative contact with Him only through a form of discussion with my inner voice.
I am as the young Elisha, having not long left behind my earthly labours, and having (as it were) seen a glimpse of where I am required to go.
As Elijah was to him, so my inner self now seems to me.
Summarizing the feeling in that way suggests to me that I may already have been given more than I realize.
There are echoes here of my early awareness of my journey: that long-remembered sense of having been given far more than I ever knew I wanted. (see 07.02.07 post).
I have to quickly dismiss my first reaction: that disappointed-in-myself feeling that mutters “I should have known!”
Instead, I must relax and rejoice in the increased light of yet another dawning: the continuing wonder of moving through the layers of mist that separate me from the very edge of ultimate truth.
That I sometimes feel myself to be depressingly slow to recognize, to understand, to respond, to react and to act, must be accepted as a possible facet of my undeclared, and even unconscious desires to be something other than that which God wants me to be.
At the very least it is a manifestation of my impatience, and of my reluctance to accept and believe that I am good enough for God’s purpose exactly as I am.
In all things may His will be done, not mine; and in His time not mine.
Deep within each one of us is a longing to become our true selves, and this is blended with the will of God; the two are inseparable.
None of us is beyond His love, with all that it contains.
None of us is beyond the potential for doing His will.
However far we have strayed from Him, however long we have been away, however late we may feel we have left it, we have only to stop, to turn and to face Him.
We only have to follow.
Quoting George Eliot again, - “It is never too late to be what you might have been.”
.
