The Beauty of An Unraveled Life
If I stop long enough to listen to my own sighing over the way the world is today, I can recognize a desire that it all somehow be different, that it be something that it is not. Most days I’m reminded, like everyone else, that I’ve lost the texture woven into my ordinary days — those brightly colored threads connecting and interweaving people, places, and activities into one solid tapestry of life. Today those threads unravel, fly loose, leaving me with the barest, worn bit of frayed cloth to hang on to. But as much as I try to re-weave life back into what it used to be, it simply cannot be done. So I’m left with simplest elements — working, resting, cooking, reading, watching, gathering food for the next day. I lay these few strands of simple life before God and pray, “Now what?”
I remember several years ago going through a time of transition and waking up one morning with my mind and heart calling out to “The God of my Undoing.” Only this undoing, or unraveling wasn’t a disorienting or frustrating sort of undoing. This was me inviting God to undo anything in me that needed to be unknotted, to remove the bindings that held me hostage to the past. It was a relief to encounter this God of my Undoing.
It’s a prayer I’m grateful to remember for days like today when I’m feeling like life is “less than” — less engaged, less touching, less hugging, less bumping into people by accident. This prayer draws me out of my small perspective into the eternal, expansive fullness of God. This is the call to trust and ask God to undo the tattered, loose-end, to help me let go of what no longer exists and to trust the Divine purpose in it all. It requires a yielding, an emptying of self and a prayer that says I’m willing (or at least “make me willing”) to concede with a “holy indifference” to what is, and this, paradoxically, leads to freedom.
Indifference? No this is not the same as not caring. It isn’t about giving up on life or losing hope or diminishing the fire of passion. Rather, as St. Ignatius taught, holy indifference simply says I’m not tied to any specific outcome or bound up by empty nostalgia. I’m not controlled by my own stubborn views or obsessive needs for control or security. Instead I focus my attention, body, mind, and spirit, on the love of God that never ceases to cover me and always equips me for whatever lies ahead. I hold loosely the notion of “normal life.” I hold loosely yesterday’s truths. I hold loosely, today’s challenge. And I defer to the transforming holy work of yielding and participating in the Divine nature as the Spirit weaves new mercies into my days until I see the beauty of this unraveled life.
How has the tapestry of your life been unraveled? Have you identified those areas where you are clinging too tightly or working too hard to try to mend the tapestry into the old patterns? What are the invitations to yield to new ways of being? What has been redefined in you in recent days? How does the prayer for “holy indifference” strike you?
As always, I have a spot open for you to connect through one-on-one spiritual direction via Zoom. Send me a message to set up an initial meeting to explore the possibility. Until then, may the unraveled edges of life become the golden threads of new mercies woven by the hand of God.
