Keeps on going

Third week of Lent. No TV for some time now. Still missing it. It's been quite an interesting seven days. Much of it I cannot write about yet. The woman whose hand I held died this week. I helped with her funeral and that was a gentle blessing. The gift I got, though, has the possibility of great things. I met an ex-Benedictine nun, a Methodist and several other women whose lives just entered into my heart deeply and quickly. I can't write about it now, except to say that God is paying attention to what I am offering Him, and I think, just maybe, I am pleasing Him somehow...maybe not by what I am doing particularly, but by how I continually surrender my heart to Him. It's a cross between living and dying. Each day, I die a bit more to my self and yet, when I do my examen, I see so much that I have yet to let go. But it doesn't make me sad, as it might have done in the past. It is more like it is almost exciting to discover what I need to do next.
I am learning what it really means to love. I had no idea that the human heart could love as I am learning it. I never dreamed I could do what I am allowed to do now. Each person I encountered this morning pretty much took me down, I think I mean that the walls between us were just gone and I found people being so real with me. Does that make any sense? They tell me the truth because they know they can. And I get to tell the truth back to them.
And this morning just seemed to set me up for this afternoon. I found myself brought into some new and 'perfect' worlds of strangers I had met only for moments. I could see the beginnings and middle and endings of things. I saw reconciliation and great grief and the love was so thick, it was like butter...but not as you might think of love traditionally. I wish I could explain it. The daughter placed her hand on her father...and if I explained more I might be violating a trust, but I saw healing...not completed, but beginning. And I felt so blessed to be awake enough to see it. And yet, I may have found so much more. Time will tell.
I have never felt so much joy as just being with people as they muddle their ways through their lives. It's all so beautiful, even when it hurts.
I cannot get out of my mind the young man I sat with last Saturday, not even 30, with a load so heavy on his shoulders, I wished I could have given him some kind of absolution. I did the best to listen. He cried for about an hour. I pray that I was only a empty shell and God did the work that needed doing. I felt like I was in sacred space. Like I did today. Like I did yesterday.

The trouble with sacred space is that, when you find it, you don't want to leave it. You want to build a tent and stay forever. But what you don't realize is that God has even more sacred places for you to enter. In fact, there are so many, one lifetime could not hold them all. So we'll get them later, in heaven, too.

I am just rambling I know. But I need to get the ideas down while they are still fresh.

The Bible Study tonight was icing on the cake.
And He breathed on them
Receive the Holy Spirit
Those sins on earth you forgive are forgiven in heaven
Those sins on earth you retain they are retained.

I told my class tonight: This is why He came. This is why he matters. This is because He loved us first. To show us how to love each other. Forgiving and being forgiven. Now that truly is heaven.

Love, Cindy