Learning to Be Irrelevant

This weekend I had the opportunity to spend some time in silent prayer and reflection as a part of a retreat with Springhill College, the local Jesuit college in Mobile, which overviewed St.Ignatius's spiritual exercises. Spending time in silence is challenging to me, and in some ways I think the weekend of silence reflected some of the ways I have spent time in silence in my new work place, which hasn't been the most comfortable thing. However, I found this particular silence to be clarifying - just what I had been looking for in a sea of distraction I have recently been facing.

                           Thankful for this group including three incredible Springhill students and two of my fellow JV housemates!

As a Jesuit Volunteer, I commit to living out four values during my year of service - one of them being simple living or simplicity. I've spent some time reflecting about what simplicity truly means. I live on a very modest stipend, eat simple meals, spend less of my personal time consuming in general and am aiming to be more sustainable in my lifestyle. But are these actions or circumstances that I have essentially been forced into truly the definition of living simply?

I have always been the type of person whose mind never stops moving, always wandering from place to place, thought to thought, often stumbling into places it ought not to. These past two months my mind has been particularly racing...

"Where will I be in a year from now? Should I apply to graduate school? When should I get married? What graduate program is right for me? Should I move home after JVC? Go somewhere new? In what direction is my life headed?"

I've only just gotten to Mobile and yet my heart is flooded with constant questions of worry, wondering what comes next.

One of the themes of the retreat was the obstacles we can face to living a life with God. As I sat in a rocking chair, silently overlooking the shimmering water of Mobile Bay, I recognized this was it, the obstacle to God in my life. My lack of presence. 

My view during my silent prayer time

I'm learning now the ways in which simplicity is more. More than just a check list of ways to live right, more than just the actions you can take to simplify your life. At its core, it is the power of being present, the way of coming into your life each day with awareness and awe for where you currently stand.

I've been missing out on this. In my community life, in my work days at L'Arche, in my quiet moments with God. I am physically present each day but in all honesty, some days my mind has been anywhere but. I have become so wrapped up in whats next that I've seemingly forgotten what is right in front of me. The circumstances God has crafted for me in the present are waiting for me to enjoy them, learn from them and love them. And I'm ignoring it, searching for fulfillment in what my life might be someday. 

                                           community L'Arche dinner                                       After serving lunch at a Little Sisters of the Poor home

For one of the first times in my life, I've been slowed down. My days no longer move from class to meetings to homework to more class but have been replaced with eight hour days at the L'Arche Activity Center (AC), surrounded by eighteen individuals living with varying intellectual and physical ability - tasked with simply loving, caring for, and being with them. The days be slow and mundane. I often spend time sitting in silence, sometimes because core members are unable to communicate with words, sometimes because they would rather not speak. I come home and have time to rest, to unwind, something I almost forgot existed. I've been forced out of my comfort of busyness into a new space of an almost unrecognizable pace - an opportunity screaming for presence where instead most days I've chosen absence.

                                                  AC days on the porch swing                         Taking a break from the AC for a dairy queen run

What is striking me most is the sometimes overwhelming feeling of unproductivity that comes with the quietness of my everyday life. I am craving to get things done, to move from task to task and seeking the satisfaction that comes with making decisions, accomplishing tasks and moving.

Henri Nouwen writes about his own experience moving into a L'Arche community in his book In The Name of Jesus,

"I was suddenly faced with my naked self, open for affirmations and rejections, hugs and punches, smiles and tears, all dependent simply on how I was perceived at the moment. In a way, it seemed as though I was starting my life all over again. Relationships, connections, reputations could no longer be counted on"

As I leave my old life behind and enter into the L'Arche Mobile community as a Jesuit Volunteer, my old self has become irrelevant. Core members and team members alike do not know my story, and I am not here to tell it. It is almost a feeling of uncomfortableness, to become irrelevant in a society that thrives on our individual success and establishment of self.

So my mind has been wandering to find my own self-worth . I've been looking for opportunities to feel relevant, productive, successful - to avoid becoming vulnerable and feeling useless.  I'm looking to my future wondering what it holds, looking to make these big decisions, not necessarily because I feel called to but because the world has told me it is what is right or natural. That this is how life works - we must always be seeking to make it bigger and better and bolder.

The truth is God isn't calling us to be successful. He only calls us to be faithful in Him.

I think God is inviting us into a life of complete irrelevancy, into simplicity and into true, unromanticized presence. Because a life that is lived for others isn't rooted in successes and it isn't grounded in achievement. It is a life that seeks to strip away the things that society deems important to make room for the importance of people.

At my community spirituality night this week we discussed a quote from a Jesuit priest Dean Brackley which speaks to the vulnerability it takes to live simply and be present. 

“I invite you to discover your vocation in downward mobility.  It’s a scary request… The world is obsessed with wealth and security and upward mobility and prestige. But let us teach solidarity, walking with the victims, serving and loving.  I offer this for you to consider – downward mobility. And I would say in this enterprise there is a great deal of hope. Have the courage to lose control. Have the courage to feel useless. Have the courage to listen. Have the courage to receive. Have the courage to let your heart be broken. Have the courage to feel. Have the courage to fall in love. Have the courage to get ruined for life. Have the courage to make a friend.”

It takes courage to be irrelevant, to consider downward mobility, to lose control, to feel useless, to listen and receive, to be broken and to feel in a society that tells you to do anything but. I can tell you that when you start to lose whatever mask it is you may be hiding beneath and be fully alive and present in who you are, you will fully see people for who they are. And when you see others, you can love and serve them more fully.

When we learn to accept our irrelevant selves, learn to find our self worth in God and God alone instead of our successes and learn that God loves us no matter what we do or accomplish, we can finally stop seeking to be productive, to keep doing and going - and simply offer ourselves, simply just be where we are called to.

It isn't an easy task. I've spent most of my life looking to please, to live up to the impossible standards of the perfection of living a "successful" and "meaningful" life. But now I'm coming to find more meaning in who I am, my true identity behind the stuff that sometimes clouds it. I'm learning to be present in this time and in each moment because God brought me to it, for a reason much larger than to worry about the next step after.

Sunrise over Mobile Bay

Maybe I will apply to graduate school, move to a new place, get married, and do all these things that have sped through my mind in the last few weeks. But I'm trying not to pursue them for success, or my own desire to be better, or because I feel that the world is telling me this is what is next for me. I am trying to be faithful that God is leading me into a life I belong to, a life where things don't matter but the way I live and work for people does, a life I can only experience with simplicity at its core, a present heart and mind - offering my vulnerable self.