1. Do you remember the first time you got a glimpse of the revelation of this Great Mystery described in Chapter 2? Describe the place and time you first remember 'knowing' you were part of something you could not fully comprehend and felt it pulling at your heart.
2. Do you let the Great Mystery touch your heart or have you been hiding from it? Sometimes this tug at our hearts makes us feel unfulfilled, alone, or insignificant in the world because we long for a deeper connection to it that easily escapes us. What ways have you tried to hide the calling or mask the emptiness that this yearning can sometimes bring?
3. Think about it. . . when was the last time you felt the calling and stopped to listen? How did it make you feel?
1. The first place I truly connected with this Great Mystery was in the woods down the street from my parent's house. We used to run wild in the woods and when I would stop to catch my breath it would just hit me, there is something to this. There is something out here that is calling to me. I couldn't describe it but I could feel it.
ReplyDelete2. I remember the frustration of trying to really connect with people on a level that revealed what I felt in the woods. I felt very alone in the world the day I realized that I would never be able to. I wrote poetry and tried to express it and would have my mom read it. She would say, "That's nice," and sometimes, "That's very nice." But I knew in my heart she couldn't connect with the part of my soul that I was trying to express in those words. I couldn't connect with people on the level I felt desparate to. I thought when we were all drinking alcohol and laughing and partying, especially at remote wooded locations that we were really connecting on that otherwise untouchable level but it didn't take long to realize that I was only numbing the calling of my heart.
3. The last time I really felt connected to the calling, I was tromping around in the snow. It was a struggle trying to walk through the yard to the end of the water pipe with a hose. I caught a glimpse of something shimmering and just stopped in amazement at the silence as the whole place was so bright, even though the sun was not shining. I got this intense feeling that God was hiding something out there for me under that three foot blanket of snow. It was the hope of spring, of life that was waiting to burst out from underneath. I did quietly stop and listen. I felt renewed with a sense of hope that I haven't felt in a long time. Almost a release of anxiety about the future, peace.