In my first session, I told Sister Vinnery, my spiritual director for this summer internship, about a specific moment I recall from childhood. I was in the 4th grade and I was around 10 years old (because I stayed back a year in kindergarten to play). For the first time, the work I was doing in school was not only challenging me but not interesting to me. I remember distinctly the thought I had upon passing in my homework: “If ‘I’ didn’t do it, it wasn’t going to get done. I realized I had a conscious choice to do the homework or not. It was a very uncomfortable feeling. I chose to do the homework. From that moment onward I continued doing things with the underlying feeling that it was all up to me to get them done or not. I took the control, I took the independence, I took the weight of that realization I had when I was ten and I have been carrying it.

I also told Sister Vinney about a piece of artwork on my childhood bedroom wall that I remember. It depicted a squirrel smiling with its eyes shut hanging from a branch. Underneath the suspended squirrel read the word, “Faith”

I said to sister Vinney I wish I’d had that realization about faith then that I do now. She said, “But you weren’t ready” I am grateful that now I recognize the support I receive in all my undertakings from source. And its okay, if things don’t get done. The most important aspect is maintaining a space to listen and just be.

A few days later, I was reading the book “Centering Prayer” by Cynthia Bourgeault. The quote directly relates to my conversation with Sister Vinney:

“Our cultural conditioning tells us that we must be in charge, that we must carry out our own agendas, that we must make sure our affairs are in order, that we have to invest in our retirement plan, because if we don’t, who will take care of us?

If I don’t, who will? This is the attitude often referred to as ‘taking care of number 1’ self-reliance.” (page 2)

The issue at stake here is trust. I trust that I am reliant on source for all the abundance in my life. Credit for all my accomplishments goes to that source of creativity. Out of trust and letting go, the strength will come and the insight about what to do.

The book goes on to say: “Our spiritual journey as a whole has the same fatal flaw – seeking God as if [s]he were absent. God is always within us. To assume that we must do it all is the major obstacle to spiritual development. Spiritual surrender is not passive, but, rather, the active exercise of a receptive power” (page 3)

“The cure for this willful wrongheadedness is an opening of the heart that softens us into willingness. It can come about by hitting ‘rock bottom’ or, if we are lucky, it can come about through contemplative practice.” (page 10)

I am reliant on God to stay connected with God and to soften my heart.

Then, I opened the page of the book “Letters of the Scattered Brotherhood” I was also reading. And the line that jumped out at me was, “The greatest thing to help you is the habit of being in the presence of God” (168).

I told sister Vinney that I felt like a wobbly baby deer. She reminded me that the mother deer is always there to nudge the baby back up when it falls.