Inner resources

Now that I am almost fifty, I’m beginning to remember more things that my parents told me when they were in their middle years. Or should I say, I am beginning to understand more what some of the things they said actually mean. My father was always one to say how important it was to put resources into the spiritual bank (as he called it).

When my parents were in their 50s, they faced the need to rebuild their lives, and they needed as much inner strength as possible. Over the years, I saw my parents go on many personal retreats, spend more time in prayer, and also engage in psychological processes. Slowly, my father became less angry, even though he always had a moodiness to him that could flare up, and my mother became less angry, and her spiritual life blossomed.

“Build your inner resources,” my parents would say. “They will come in handy as you get older.”

And how true that has already become for me — with this toe tendonitis, I have had to go inward and seek perseverance, acceptance and patience. As well as seeking out appropriate treatments, there are many moments when there is nothing to do but ‘let go,’ and be in what is.

Just this morning I was reading some passages from a book my Thomas Keating, the contemporary American monk, who revitalized a Christian form of meditation called centering prayer. He states: Divine union is not the achievement of some perfection of our own or an escape from our external problems, but is the radical change of attitude that enables us to deal effectively with our weaknesses and our problems.

It struck me how he asserts that relating to many aspects of our lives takes a radical change of attitude. But it has to start from a turning inside of us, in our hearts, with complete openness to accepting and loving ourselves, totally, with grace.