'Listening and Journeying Together’.

At the time of celebrating Laudato Si' week, the importance of fostering right relationships is the focal point for our Catholic communities. Fostering quality relationships challenges us to examine the gift of our spirituality that allows an exchange, as Pope Francis names the ‘integral ecology’. This is done by listening and journeying together. 

A working definition of spirituality is that which views as our inner core, made up of lived experiences and from which come motivations, commitments and actions that emerge. …. One may say it is the shape in which the Holy Spirit finds a place in our lives. 

This definition allows us to connect spirit to the “here and now", the mistakes that lead to learning, the learning that moves us to new places, the places at which we arrive, that provide our environment for living. It allows us to integrate spirit within our operating world. It allows us to access greater insight, awareness, and presence in our relationships.

A famous cartoon once appeared in the “New Yorker” magazine depicting a man faced with two options - a door accessing heaven and another door - getting to books about heaven. It's a clever depiction of the world we live in today - an information age that allows us access to learning about anything we seek! The challenge though is to reflect on whether we really get to experience life- in the present, awakened, and intentional. Are we actively choosing the door to heaven or are we content with reading about it?

The Trappist monk and mystic, Thomas Merton had a similar message for a group of scholars visiting him at the Gethsemane Hermitage. Armed with books and pens ready to take notes from Merton, he asked them to put their books down, went to the fridge, took out bottles of beer for the small group, and told them they were going out into the woods, their books and pens wouldn’t help them there. Being out in the forest with one another was all they needed to experience. 

The Pulitzer prize winning poet, Mary Oliver also challenges our awareness of a listening presence in her poem I wake close to morning…

“Why do people keep asking to see God’s identity papers when the darkness opening into morning is more than enough? Certainly, any God might turn away in disgust. Think of Sheba approaching the Kingdom of Solomon. Do you think she had to ask, “Is this the place?”

The two mystics challenge the notion of a Laudato Si' “week” to preferring a Laudato Si' practice and formation - a day in, day out knowing and valuing. The magic of this week is the opportunity it gives us to make that choice. This then helps us to engage with the ‘integral-ecology’’ the work, practice, and intention of making a ‘wholeness’ complete, a pathway forward to an ecology that embeds peace within the inner life with others we meet on our journey, and a peace where we rest with our God.