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| Bench in the rear garden--Church of the Covenant |
“What have I gotten myself into?”—one of the questions
running through my head as I take up the agenda of the first meeting of our
Transforming Community #7. I had driven
through a section of Maryland I’d never seen—north on Route 29, through
suburban strip malls and eventually into the rolling hills west of Baltimore,
through what was probably once heavily cultivated tobacco fields, now sprouting
mcmansions. The countryside was still
barely rural when I turned off Marriottsville Road onto the property of the BonSecours Retreat Center, that would house our 2-day retreat meeting.
I’m now committed to this quarterly program for the next two
and one-half years. Every three months I
will withdraw completely from all outside communications—email, telephone,
newspapers, internet—and spend time with God and a few other folks who are
doing the same thing.
The setting is beautiful—landscaped gardens and a pond, a
large labyrinth under some majestic trees.
The buildings are laid out in the shape of a cross. The food is good. The sisters who live and work there are
nearly invisible; they do their hospitality tasks without drawing any attention
to themselves whatsoever, except for the “no admittance—private residence”
signs at the end of the hallway.
This is all I know right now: In our life as
Christ-followers, God invites us into ever-deeper discipleship. “Christian formation,” if you will, is the
process by which we are being conformed/transformed into the image of Christ,
for the sake of others (a definition from M. Robert Mulholland Jr. in Invitation to a
Journey, one of our required readings.)
All of us are on this journey. It
is a work that God does (not we ourselves) through the Holy Spirit, and it is
happening in us from the moment of our baptismal birth. The co-operating work we can do involves
opening ourselves to such transformative experiences that invite us to
contemplate in quiet and solitude, calming and surrendering ourselves to listen
for what God may be saying to the deepest places in our hearts.
I know that I long for renewal. No matter how fulfilling my Christian walk has
been so far, I can tell that I long for more.
So the best leadership I can offer to Church of the Covenant—a
transforming community—is my own ‘being-transformed’ self. And for this I have gotten myself (or rather,
God has gotten me) into the “Transforming Community #7,” meeting quarterly at
the Bon Secours Retreat Center. I can’t
predict what will happen. I can only
trust that the God to whom I have entrusted myself is
trustworthy.
