Receiving God’s Love
FROM POET AND SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR, JENNIFER DRUMMOND
I enrolled for the Spiritual Formation Certificate program with PAX last summer, intending to learn for the sake of others. As a spiritual director, I work with many different people both individually and in groups, and I assumed this class would increase my knowledge: I would learn about spiritual formation so I could lead others deeper into it; I would learn about racial identity so that I could guide others as they discovered their own stories and values; I would learn about Sabbath, and confession, and soul care groups all for the sake of then helping others as they sorted out their own practices and thoughts and relationship with God.
Yet, as I opened that first book I heard a whisper from God saying, Yes, you will be able to lead, guide, help others, but you will only be able to do these things as you let me lead, guide, and help you first.
Reading Invitation to a Journey, I began to realize that God was not primarily interested in my learning more about Him, but that he was first and foremost inviting me into a journey. A journey where he was leading me, and asking what it might look like for me to trust Him more deeply. For several months last fall, my life felt like low-tide. I really wanted to be floating on an inner tube, drinking a pina colada in the sunshine, but instead as I prayed and walked through difficult circumstances, I found myself on an empty beach, water feeling miles away, clouds and wind blowing across the sandy muck, and all I could see were broken sea shells.
Through several of the books we read that fall, through our class times (both the teaching and the listening exercises) and through the blog where I was posting monthly reflections, I was able to interact with God directly. Rama and the members of my cohort gave me plenty of space to ask God what this low-tide season was like; I was encouraged not to try to “figure it out” but to gently “stay with” the image of the beach that kept surfacing each month. I was able to recognize and then participate in my own ongoing spiritual formation, which God was leading.
As winter began to overtake fall, the holidays came and went and my journey with God continued. During one session, we were led in a guided meditation where we imagined ourselves clinging desperately to a hook from the ceiling. As I prayed through this image, I realized I was deathly afraid of letting go, because I thought below me were churning waves, waves that would swallow and consume me. It was during this meditation, and the gentle space that Rama and my cohort held for me, that I realized I could let go of this fear, and trust God who surely was not dangling me over deathly waters! Rather, he was catching me in the wide open space of low-tide. God was leading me still.
In the depths of winter, we read Our Unforming, about racial identity and spiritual formation. I was anxious as I began to read, wondering how I would feel as a white woman. Would I be portrayed as a perpetrator, accused of abusing my privilege, or labeled as uncaring and complicit in problems too large to bear? As I began reading however, I was aware of such a generous sense of hospitality and welcome. The author invited me in from the first page of the introduction to be part of a conversation; I felt that spacious invitation from God himself as he reminded me through her words that he was guiding me.
He was helping me through difficult topics and allowing me to experience safety and welcome when I originally held anxiety. It was again through class discussion and blog reflections where Rama was able to point out that through this experience, God was guiding me safely and that this new perspective might allow me to have a more open heart to my sisters of color who regularly experience anxiety when they step into places that may not be or feel safe. My capacity for understanding and compassion was growing as I let God guide me into difficult topics.
This spring, as tender shoots began poking through the frozen ground, we practiced learning how to receive God’s love through the disciplines of Sabbath, confession and soul care groups. Each month as I was encouraged to create and hold space for God, he poured out his love richly. Through the many poems in the book Sabbath, through the exercise of writing and sharing our own confession with the cohort, and through the opportunity to implement these practices in a church group I am leading, God has helped me to receive his love.
Receiving God’s love is not easy - and yet from the books, the conversations and exercises during class, and the opportunity to put a practice in action each month, I have indeed received from God. He has helped me both to receive his love and to then be a vessel as that love overflows into the people in my life.
Participating in this course through PAX has transformed my life with God. He has led me through low-tide times, he has guided me through difficult topics, and he has helped me to become a receiver of his love. From those experiences of being led, guided and helped, I am now full and eager to see how God will use me to lead and guide others in their own journeys, and in what beautiful and unexpected ways he will use me to help others know God’s love in deeper ways.
Are you a spiritual director or graduate of our Transformational Listening 1 program? We’d love to have you join our Certificate in Spiritual Formation cohort!