Venturing Through Open Doors

I recently came across a prayer for the new year by Debbie McDaniel that included these lines: “We ask that you open doors needing to be opened and close the ones needing to be shut tight. We ask that you help us release our grip on the things to which you’ve said ‘no,’ ‘not yet,’ or ‘wait.’”

Sister Wendy Beckett understood this prayer well. She spent many years as a teacher while longing for the contemplative life. Eventually she was able to live as a hermit, only to have God open an unusual door for her late in her life as the host of a BBC television series about art called Sister Wendy’s Odyssey. This experience gave Sister Wendy the following insight: “We will never find Him completely if we only want to engage with Him on the level we have chosen.”

The beginning of a new year is a good time to ask for the grace to venture through unexpected doors that open for us and stop rattling the handles of doors that are closed. If we want to meet God only on our own terms, we will cut ourselves off from the richness of the divine imagination that would infuse our lives with wonder, vitality, and sacred purpose. As Rainer Maria Rilke said, “And now let us welcome the year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been.”