Profession Day

June 13, 2011

This is it, the last day. We will make our Profession tonight around six o'clock. I woke up thinking about this blog.

I started it to share the journey of a Candidate. I'm not sure if I succeeded because toward the end I couldn't seem to find words to say. Also, what I wrote sounds stiff and uncertain--maybe too heady, always looking for answers, meaning and maybe not always finding any. Right now, looking at the words feels like looking at the surface of a pool, transparent, the top layer of something endlessly deep. As if I might fall in through the words and go... where? I've never had this feeling before.

I don't know if anyone read anything I wrote for a long time, except JoAnne, who likes to read my stuff. Our journey is still together, as it should be. I certainly didn't draw a crowd--probably what I was after but not necessary. I know that God reads all the words. Maybe that's the real reason for writing. Maybe God wants to know what's on my mind. Anyway, I'm no Thomas Merton.

So, the words are here, for what they're worth. The journey is complete. Step One. Today we become Franciscans and we will be Franciscans forever. I really believe Mary was behind this, since yesterday, standing in Saint Mary's for our rehearsal I realized where we ended up. She's a really cool person, still working for Jesus, still bringing people in.

How have I changed?

I'm not sure. More peaceful about stuff, certainly. More sure about God and his plan. More committed. More willing to listen to other people and find out what they need, as opposed to rushing in and dumping on them what I think they need. More willing to wait before I judge. More willing, overall. Willing to let the Holy Spirit come in and... do what the Holy Spirit does. I'm still just learning about that. More willing to share, to participate, to work as a team, to be part of other people's lives. Whatever it is God wants, whatever he is trying to accomplish by helping me to be Franciscan, that's what I'm more willing to embrace. I hope sharing words helps.

A lot happened in the days when I was quiet that will probably come out in words later. I don't know. It's not like somebody is out there beating a drum to announce me. I don't mind. I hope I am becoming like the Franciscans I've come to know. I hope that wherever I go, whatever I do, people know that I'm different. I hope they see the Franciscan things, and overlook whatever doesn't measure up.

Most of all, I hope that I will be helpful wherever I go and whatever I do. Making a difference means a lot. So it's not surprising that I keep falling in with people and groups who are doing just that, or at least trying. I've been busy, though I haven't written about it. And I'm wondering this morning what to do with this blog. Will I begin a new one, something with a different name? Or will this one become the cover for a new story, a new journey?

We took three years to get to this point. I can't remember at the moment when I began writing about it. Somewhere in the middle, I think. Whether I'll find anything to say after today I can't even guess. I'm going to spend the hours being quiet. It's like we're holding our breath until this evening. We want this so much, we can't even say...

I think most about the people we've met along the way...

Rosmarie, who took the job walking with me during candidacy and became Director of our Fraternity just last month. I'm betting I keep working for her now, whatever she asks. I'm betting she keeps walking with me forever...

Father Joe, who said to me at the very beginning when I told him we were discerning about becoming Seculars, "Why are you discerning? Just do it!" (Always with a big grin...)

Lynn, who told us at the Easter Vigil that she is entering the Franciscan convent. I don't know why it touched me so strongly, but I know it was a mighty important moment, and it has shaped my journey like nothing else. GO FOR IT, LYNN! We're with you all the way.

There is a Franciscan Secular I sat down and talked to just a week ago last Sunday. I won't mention her name because she is elderly now and her thoughts are beginning to slip into the repeating circles of old age. Most of the time she sits alone, perhaps by her own choice. All I know is how real she is, how she always smiles and is happy, how it feels to sit with her and listen as she says the same things over and over, as if they are really important, as if the most important thing is to make certain someone hears. I want to be the person who hears such words. To me they are Gospel...

There are also people we've met who are not Seculars, but they seemed to know what it means. A doctor last Sunday who is third-order Carmelite and told us if not for her Community she wouldn't have gotten through the hard times. That was important to hear.

Brother Damian, my friend from high school who is a Benedictine Monk at his home in Shawnee. He was there more years ago to introduce us to the Holy Spirit at Saint Gregory's and to share a bit of his life, long before we ever knew there was anything like the Seculars... of anything.

Brother Bob, our friend up in Santa Barbara province who knew us even before that, when we were making the first Engaged Encounter ever held in Arizona. He was working at the Franciscan Renewal Center in 1975 and had that same Franciscan wit, that same grin and same openness we meet everywhere, even then. He's always been part of the journey, in that way that can't be explained.

It all says to me that the journey will go on. We will meet new people--we ARE meeting new people, all the time, everywhere we go. The diffence is, we've got a lot we can share now, like planting seeds. Through us, God will light lamps in other people's lives, as we journey toward that "unity among all believers" that is in our prayers.

May God take the good work he has begun in our lives, and bring it to completion.

Peace and Good!

Tom