Rooted in the God of Movement

I will soon be moving to a new office in the monastery, so my spring cleaning this year will involve some heavy lifting (mostly by Sr. Elaine and Bill and Nathaniel from her maintenance crew!). Even with help, this move is a chore that involves finding and packing boxes, sorting through catch-all drawers, examining the contents of files I inherited from previous editors and oblate directors, and making decisions about what to keep or pass on to someone else.

I’ve had plenty of practice in moving over the years, having lived in three different dorms at Benedictine College in Atchison and then bouncing from Kansas City, Mo., to Columbia, Md., to Newport News, Va., to St. Louis, Mo., to Easton, Ks., back to St. Louis, and then on to Lawrence, Ks., to Leavenworth, Ks., and back to Atchison. It’s no wonder I’m ready to take a permanent vow of stability!

St. Benedict has a lot to say about the value of stability. Still, there is something about physical movement that is holy too. As Neale Donald Walsch observes, “Movement is one of the most ignored or unused Instruments of the Holy Experience. Many people don’t see it as a pathway to God. Yet Movement is God…and God is Movement.” A God who is continually making all things new must be a God of movement.

Perhaps the way to resolve the tension between stability and movement is to find our stability not necessarily in a geographical place but in God. When we are grounded in God, we are rooted in the fertile soil of the Spirit wherever our path may lead. Then, as Teresa of Avila said, we can trust God that we are exactly where we are meant to be.