Golden Years Posted December 31, 2013 Share Posted December 31, 2013 Have spent all of the past year trying my hardest to find a path that leads to Carmel, or elsewhere, as a cloistered or extern nun, and praying to know God's will. Events of the past couple of weeks have made it abundantly clear (like getting hit over the head with a 2x4 clear) that this is not God's will. So, it is time to close that volume and move on to the next in the series, which is tentatively entitled "Unaffiliated Hermit Sometimes Prays at Home Sometimes Cares for Disabled Family Member and Sometimes Works at the Office." Gotta work on that title. But you get the idea. Peace ya'll and Happy New Year! (And please pray for me.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnneLine Posted December 31, 2013 Share Posted December 31, 2013 Prayers and :console: follow you, Golden Years. There are a LOT of us here, and we form community for each other, too. If/as you are interested, you might want to explore something like a secular order.... sometimes that adds a missing piece. But take it one step at a time, and trust that God will lead you.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SilentJoy Posted January 1, 2014 Share Posted January 1, 2014 "Unaffiliated Hermit Sometimes Prays at Home Sometimes Cares for Disabled Family Member and Sometimes Works at the Office." Gotta work on that title. But you get the idea. I love it... :hehe2: Prayers for you that you will find wherever it is that you belong and that you will have peace. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eowyn Posted January 1, 2014 Share Posted January 1, 2014 Golden Years, I hope this new year is a blessed one for you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheresaThoma Posted January 1, 2014 Share Posted January 1, 2014 Prayers during this transition time I love your current "title"! My this next year be a blessed one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nikita92 Posted January 1, 2014 Share Posted January 1, 2014 My prayers are with you Gy! Be with us here! Offer what you know! Do what is in your heart! You are a "Sister" to us!! Have a blessed New Year! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BarbTherese Posted January 1, 2014 Share Posted January 1, 2014 I like very much indeed your title too! I read somewhere that someone was thanking God for putting them "outside the square", and the ingredients for trail blazering :) Thankfully, nowadays The Church does appreciate those who are outside "the square" and determining and living their vocation simply as God is calling them. I know that 2x4 feeling........... takes a while to recover. Blessings in 2014 and prayer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnneLine Posted January 1, 2014 Share Posted January 1, 2014 I also love your new title/vocation... and you know what... the fact that there are MANY of us who identify with this -- on and off Phatmass I might add! -- tells me perhaps the Holy Spirit is busilyl at work doing something new. May we be open to the Spirit's Call!!! Please do continue to stay here with us -- there is place for us here at VS, if nothing else, to help keep the fire burning and the soup pot ready for our sisters and brothers who are going in, working through the discernment of a vocation, andcoming out in response to God's prompting. There is a role for us here, and there is a role for us as the ultimate 'stay at home moms and dads' in God's world... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BarbTherese Posted January 1, 2014 Share Posted January 1, 2014 Props to your post, AL! Lovely post. Under private vows, I can now do what I could never do in religious life simply because we had a quite specific Rule of Life to follow in RL with a quite specific ministry and I needed the authority of leadership in all things. I have no other ministry now but Jesus and His Gospel (and my own Rule and spiritual director - both of whom understand the call re the latter two) and can move wherever, however and whenever The Gospel and The Lord might indicate and at any time day or night. I am not disputing religious life in any way as The Holy Spirit has called these religious families into existence and with a quite specific Rule and ministry - and leadership - and for quite specific holy and important reasons to The Church and the world. But as you so well indicated, there is a place for us 'outside the square' of the currently accepted more traditional roles and for many reasons - and possibly an indication of a work of The Holy Spirit. I am always encouraged by just how long it took for The Church to affirm that religious did not have to be always fully enclosed. Thank you for the well worded and important post, AL - it struck chords with me and I am hopeful prayerfully with Golden Years too. PS I am 68yrs old in a few days and a 'more mature lady' (elderly) ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnneLine Posted January 1, 2014 Share Posted January 1, 2014 Thank you, BarbaaraTherese, for your kind words. If they are well-worded it is only because the Spirit can use a sleepy AnneLine with a glass of Champagne in her (!) and because I have been giving this SO MUCH thought in recent months. If I put into one room all the women (and men!) who fit my description, we'd have enough to fill a convention hall. All of us are people who would LOVE to be religious, but God seems to have had a different idea in mind. I have no idea, yet, what that might be.... but I trust His guidance. For many people living as you do, Barbara, or as I do in a Secular Order, gives us enough structure to not be total amoebas (formless masses that get pulled this way and that!) while still being very, very free to respond to His call. I think of Bl. Charles de Foucault..... who did not live to see his own envisioning of a new and vastly different form of religious life take shape. But he was convinced, absolutely convinced, that God was doing something, and he was part of it. I don't know what it means, but I do sense that the Holy Spirit is doing something... and that there are so many of us that He must have some big plans. It will be interesting to see where God goes with this!!!! And it is wonderful to have so much company!!!!! Holding you all in prayer... and thank you for articulating this discernment, GoldenYears. You are NOT alone. Many have not had the courage to just state it that simply. nd to do so, in my mind, is a huge gift. Praying for all of you.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maximillion Posted January 1, 2014 Share Posted January 1, 2014 Fantastic way of expressing it GY! Thanks. So I guess I am one of you too. I am in my sixties now, and while I still love to support and revel in the plenitude of the Spirit as manifesting in RL in community, I too think there is a bigger picture. I no longer yearn for RL, He has shown me that is not where He desires me to be. Nor do I have a specific calling to be a CV or a hermit or even like BT, under private vows. However, I have striven and strive to keep the vows I made, like BT I follow the promptings of the Spirit, the Gospel and the Church, and 'blow where He wills'. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brandelynmarie Posted January 1, 2014 Share Posted January 1, 2014 And this is why I love VS on PM so much...so many people doing their best to hear His voice & follow Him....& so many people willing to share their journies, struggles, &/or what they have learned...so many beautiful ways of authentically living out our Catholic vocation... Peace be with you Golden Years :console: ...do your best to continue to be open to the Holy Spirit...to stay put or go where He leads... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IgnatiusofLoyola Posted January 1, 2014 Share Posted January 1, 2014 Golden Years--That was a very difficult decision to make. I hope that making it gives you peace. Like you, I live outside any form of life with a known title. Mine would be something like "A very Catholic non-Catholic who lives essentially as a hermit, but under the rule of a benign and loving, but firm cat who sets my hours and tasks for me. I have found myself in the role of a supporter of women discerning religious life and in religious life. I have never been called to religious life, although I have been fascinated by it since I was a child and I find some aspects of it very attractive. God knows me well--I would not have made a good religious.* The disabled person I take care of is myself. I have to make decisions about moving in the next year because I can no longer take care of my house, and I have no idea what God wants for me. My current life reminds me of growing up near San Francisco and sometimes walking to school in a fog so thick I literally couldn't see a foot ahead of me. Yet, I knew the way to school, so I just kept walking, one step at a time, and sure enough I got to school. As a kid, I thought that was fun. As an adult, it's scary, because this time I don't know where I am being led." Your title is far more concise than mine. I continue to try to work on being concise, but my posts are almost always too long. :paperbag: I hope you stick with us, Golden Years. There are a number of us here who act as "supporters," and I like to think/hope that we have a purpose here, both to pray, and also to provide what we hope are helpful and caring words. *I was raised as an Anglican, and there are Anglican Religious Orders, as well as Catholic ones. So, being called to religious life could have been an option for me. However, despite my interest in religious life, I was never called. My call was very clearly to marriage, and I did marry, and was married in the Catholic church. However, at age 40, my ex-husband decided unilaterally to end our marriage, with no option for counseling, etc., so I found myself divorced, something I had never even considered an option. I expected to remarry, but have never yet found the right man, so here I am, walking in the thick fog, alone. God knows where I am going, but I don't. Perhaps that can also be considered a form of "discernment." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maximillion Posted January 1, 2014 Share Posted January 1, 2014 God does not just ask people in formal RL to walk a path blindly with Him.......this is the deepest trust. Prayers to you Ignatious..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Feankie Posted January 1, 2014 Share Posted January 1, 2014 Golden Years. Blessings and Peace to you this new year of 2014! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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