“It’s going to be a big year!” – this is what I planned to write today.  

I planned to write about the event that will change our household – Will’s graduation from high school, his move to college and our impending transition to parenting as ‘empty nesters’. 

I planned to write about my change in appointment – from half-time at Pine Valley UMC and half-time at Duke Medicine’s Partners in Caring to full-time at Pine Valley.  I give thanks for my time at Partners in Caring but I am excited and grateful to concentrate ministry at PVUMC, my appointment for 10 years.

I planned to write about my preparations as a delegate to General Conference in April and Jurisdictional Conference in July.  I’ll be doing pages and pages of reading and study in preparation for the quadrennial General Conference. 

I planned to write about the possibilities of a new year but then I turned to the weekly “Readings for Reflection” in “A Guide to Prayer for All Who Seek God” and thought differently. 

From Richard Rohr’s Everything Belongs:   “Religion has not tended to create seekers or searchers, has not tended to create honest humble people who trust that God is always beyond them.  We aren’t focused on the great mystery.  Religion has, rather, tended to create people who think they have God in their pockets, people with quick, easy, glib answers . . . People know the great mystery cannot be that simple and facile.  If the great mystery is indeed the Great Mystery, it will lead us into paradox, into darkness, into journeys that never cease . . . That is what prayer is about.”

God . . . the Great Mystery . . . moving us to new possibilities not yet imagined . . .

It’s true that I’m planning to be involved in all of these activities.   What is not known is all of the unplanned points on my journey with God in 2012.  Too often I tell God what I’m planning to do.  Too often I don’t listen and instead go my own way.

Maybe I need to pray more like Thomas Merton in Thoughts in Solitude:

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.  I do not see the road ahead of me.  I cannot know for certain where it will end.  Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.  But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.  And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.  I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.  And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it.  Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost in the shadow of death.  I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. “

Amen.

The above was taken from Trish's blog page at: http:web.me.com/patriciaarcher