Do Whatever He Tells You
- Mar 22, 2018
- 4 min read
Day 8. Once again, I woke up in time to see the sunrise. Our schedule was rather packed since we were ending the retreat with late morning Mass, my director wanted all of the women to spend time praying together, and I really wanted to have enough time to spend on my final meditation: the Wedding at Cana. So I wasn't planning on going out to see the sunrise, but I kept feeling a tugging towards it and eventually even an articulation "you don't have to stay out for very long, I just want you to see this." So I bundled up and went outside. As I walked out into a driving wind, all I could see for a while were thick grey clouds. But as I rounded the corner of the building, I saw a band of clouds down by the horizon that were bright pink. I walked across the street to stand by the lake and went to go sit on a bench that was silhouetted against the coming sunrise. It was very shortly after I arrived that the sun came up over the horizon, and the tiny skyline of Milwaukee to the north was lit with the sun and was the brightest most blazing gold. Every good and beautiful thing from retreat (and honestly, from my life in general) was weaving and dancing through my memory and prayer as I watched as the "dawn from on high broke upon me". Everything was drawn together, making more and more sense, a fitting final day of retreat, although clearly all that had happened would continue to play out in my life for long after. The sun was only between the horizon and the stormy clouds for a very brief time, but He wanted me to see the beauty. As I walked back, I reflected on the color of gold - how it had come to represent for me ordered and surrendered desires that are all the more themselves for being submitted to His will and how fitting it is that it is the reflection of the Sunlight that had come to represent, so beautifully, His Love.
And then I prayed with the Wedding Feast at Cana. (John 2:1-11) I found that, like my previous series of meditations, Mary was going to continue to teach me how to be her, but this time she would be also in the scene with me. I began my meditation by conversing with her and found that my long struggle to have a personal connection with her was over and that I now sincerely and with my whole self, loved her. I asked her about the fear that had been the topic of much wrestling in prayer. She told me to take it out and look at it. Just as I was getting discouraged by my inability to do anything about it and was ready to just ignore it and move on, it dawned on me that although I was a character in the scene, the Wedding at which we were present was also, in some sense, representing me. Thus, the lack of wine at the wedding was a symbol of the way that fear has dampened or taken away my delight in the Lord and all His works. And so when Mary and I went to tell Jesus there was no more wine, I amended "I have no more wine." In the meditation, His response didn't really make sense to me, but it made sense to Mary and that was enough for me. She in turn told me the phrase that had been running through my prayer all morning, the instructions on how to be a bride, and how to wear the golden garments of a daughter of the Most High: "do whatever He tells you". Jesus and I went over to the six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification. It seemed clear to me that these were representative of all the ways that my perfectionist/scrupulous self tried to do everything myself. "Fill them with water" every good thing in my life so far seemed to be what the water was representing and it filled those jars to the brim. My story so far has been good and beautiful, but He has much more in store. I was then instructed to take some out and bring it to the steward and it took me a little while to figure out who the steward was - my Spiritual Director? no. The retreat director? no. A couple more tries and then I almost laughed out loud as I realized it was truth. My constant touchstone and recourse throughout retreat had been to test everything I experienced against everything I knew to be objectively and intellectually true. And so the steward (Truth), tasted the water that had become wine by the free gift of Christ and said "You have kept the good wine until now."
and my mind was blown.
P.S. what each piece of the story represented, was something I prayed through in the colloquy afterwards - I first lived the scene, then analyzed the symbolism.
The four women on retreat and our spiritual director spent the next two hours praying out loud together. It was an utterly incredible experience of the power of the Holy Spirit and one that I'm not going to try to detail.
We closed with a final conference followed by Mass. Fr. preached about the importance of keeping what has happened in our hearts - like Mary who "kept all these things, pondering them in her heart."
As I returned to my seat after Communion, I had a profoundly beautiful, but also hilariously characteristic consolation. In a sudden and tumbling realization, the Disney movie Tangled became an accurate and beautiful image of my whole life. Most striking of the images were: the Sun as an image of His Love (a stylized sun is one of the most important motifs of the whole movie), Mother Gothel as a creepily accurate portrayal of the way the devil works in my life, and the floating lanterns as the Beauty which has always been there to draw me back towards my true identity as the beloved daughter. (If that still doesn't make sense to you, don't worry! Maybe I'll write a post on that image sometime)
Thank you so much for joining me in reflecting on my retreat - I'll be praying for you!
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