I had been anticipating starting a new "monastic day" here as September gets underway. I think, however, that God is changing my mind. There is much to think and pray about on the world stage at present. I don't have to get into specifics (which is good, for that sort of writing is well beyond my abilities), and anyway - we all know the world is filled with unrest. It always has been. It's just that every now and then something comes along to, frankly, pull us out of our denial of that fact. Something calls us to our knees.
Personally, I feel a nudge to be ready to pray and sacrifice and be "on call" to write what God places before me at any given time. So I'm going with that, and we'll just see where it leads us here in this cloistered space. And no (to answer your possible question), I do not feel a sense of doom and gloom. Quite the contrary! I am permeated with the peace and hope and joy and love of God.
I look at the picture on this post and have no idea what's on the other side of that grille. It reminds me that I must see situations in the world around me, for as a cloistered heart I'm behind grillwork - not walled in windowless brick. But always - there is the grille.
As we may recall, the grille in Cloistered Heart terminology represents the will of God. As some monasteries have grillwork through which those in the cloister interact with the world outside, we can have spiritual “grillwork.” We can practice seeing and responding to every person and every situation through the will of God. We know His will through Scripture and the teachings of the Church - these make up the "bars" of our "grille."
Always there is the grille. Always there is the will of God around me, enclosing me.
I am enclosed in love.
Special thanks to Anita Guariglia for her grille photo
Other selected posts about the "grille":
Finding the Grille View
To Face the Dark
Positively, Grillwork
