★ Messed up
Scotland and Ireland really messed me up. I mean that in a good way, but it’s completely true.
My trip in early August to Scotland and Northern Ireland for a Bakke class, Following the Celtic Trail, was the kind of thing that, at the time, was great; but I’m having a really hard time processing.
It’s been hard enough that I basically haven’t made any progress synthesizing it and writing a paper for my class, and had to file for an extension. On one hand, I feel bad about that; on the other hand, I really don’t want to rush this one.
There’s some major things that came out of that trip for me that I hope to be able to process through. Frankly, I’m not gonna explain these, and mostly I’m writing them down to get my brain churching a bit more:
- Monastic vs. churchy
- Organic life
- Politics and conflict
- the missional monastic movements
- dispersed community
- the voyage of the coracle
-Â living amongst the people
- fixed hour prayer
- prayer in the various spiritual traditions
- suburban and monastic
Please pray for focus, wisdom, and that the Lord leads my coracle.
We are praying for you. Would it help to talk it out at Ohana Project? Matt and I would also love to sit down and hear about some of what your thinking especially, the community and prayer stuff.
Yeah, that'd be cool.
I've been describing this to people as feeling like there's a huge column before me – it's wider than I can see, higher than I can see, and deeper than I can dig. And I feel like I need to explore it a lot, like it's important to touch and feel and dig up dirt around.
Today at Off-The-Map I realized what you call such a thing: A cornerstone.
pat, these are the very things i wrestle with in the night watches…i think God is at work!