Clock Watching

This morning we were back to spiritual formation.  The focus of our contemplation, listening prayer and conversation was “attachments”.

“We should not fix our desires on health or sickness, wealth or poverty, success or failure, a long life or a short one…Our only desire and our one choice should be this: I want and I choose what better leads to God’s deepening life in me.” - from Principle & Foundation, The Spiritual Exercises

We all form attachments.  They can be healthy.  But there has to be an order to our attachments.  Disordered attachments will lead us away from God or at the very least become an obstacle between our want to discern and our ability to hear.  As we took time to listen this morning I felt God illuminate some of my ‘disordered attachments’, my “I can only be happy if…” places that need to be picked up and put back on their appropriate shelf, or tossed out or redeemed in some way that God only knows.

One of the attachments I became acutely aware of was my attachment to this course and this group of modulites.  As class went on I found myself watching the clock and waiting for a moment like Joshua had where time stands still.  I've had moments like that.  But not today.  Not this week.  I love and hate that we’re coming to the end of this experience.  Not that I am, but that WE are.

Like Martin Sheen’s unlikely band of companions on the Camino de Santiago in the movie, The Way, we modulites have become a tribe as we've walked out this pilgrimage together.  They've become an attachment.  And so I watch the clock and squint my eyes and wish for the sun to stand still.  But it doesn't   Life isn't like that.

So I come to a place of acceptance.  What happens next will be what God wills and the journey will continue.  When we first landed here it was the last module for some but the story continued with us and in our going the story will continue with us but it will also continue here.  But we will continue to be attached to each other.  Whenever we hear someone talk about St. Francis or hear someone order Irish whiskey or talk about the pyramids or refer to C.S. Lewis as whiny, the clock will stop for us and in a moment between seconds that only we will be aware of we’ll return to this time, this place and these friends because sometimes attachments make us stronger.

How do you order your attachments?  Are you able to hear the symphony or does that toe tapper in the row in front of you have all of your attention?  What attachments give meaning to your story?