The Week 4 guide for the Online Retreat in Everyday Life is here.
I have always enjoyed stepping back to consider who my heroes are. This week, as I reflected about harmony and balance, I was also inspired anew by those around me. There are so many people who have influenced my life, and when I look at the ways I’m inspired by my heroes, it does, often, come back to their harmony and balance with their own lives.
I made a list and all week, I kept finding it – it wasn’t intentional on my part, but when I was using the kitchen table as a desk, it was bound to happen. Whenever I moved the card I jotted the names on, I would think – sometimes in passing, sometimes with real effort – about the lives they lived, the examples they set for me. Inevitably, as I’d think, and sometimes out of nowhere, a new name would come to me.
What about these people made me strive? What exactly inspired me to more? How did their lives point to God, to creation, to harmony?
Harmony is not something I feel very confident about – much of my past seems discordant as I look back. Harmony, rhythm, peace – doing what God intends seems to yield these outcomes, but how, exactly, does HARMONY tie in with a list of people whose lives inspire me?
To do God’s will, to be in harmony, requires accepting God as the “driver” of the car of my life. In the guide, they refer to it as St. Ignatius did, as detachment. I have to let go of what Sarah wants, of what Sarah thinks is best. I have to be free of Sarah-who-I’ve-created so that I can be Sarah-who-God-has-in-mind.
Going back to my list of inspirational people, I have a new thought. How do they teach me to be more free to let go, to be detached? How do they live lives of praise, glorifying God by letting him be in charge? How do they point me toward God’s will for my life?
