intentions

Living with intention

I've long admired my students who seem to live their life with much more intention than I did at such a formative age.  I don't recall knowing my life path until long after I graduated from college.  I don't even recall considering that I could/should pave my own path.

I remember my childhood being filled with down time, play, and siblings.  It wasn't until I was in high school that I remember my mother carting us from one activity to the next.  Even still, the hustle and bustle of my youth seems to pale in comparison to the life of a teen today.

Some of life's greatest lessons I've learned from students.  For fifteen years, I've followed their example to search for the right path. The one that would surely lead me to happiness.  The one that would make me successful.  Funny how the one question I've asked of them - what happiness and success are you seeking? - I've failed to ask myself.

A question I've asked myself recently, however.  And I wonder if seeking answers intentionally is really the right path.  I know in my own mind seeking answers - reading, praying, meditating with the idea that I can find them - sends me running in circles and chasing my tail.  The harder I look to find inner peace and happiness, the farther away it seems.  The harder I try to know my spiritual self, the less defined she seems to be.

I've long valued the worship traditions of Holy Week - contemplation, reflection, introspection, turned to hope.  There have been many powerful expressions of these messages in worship.  One year, we hammered a nail into the cross to emphasize our role in Christ's death.  Other years, presiding pastors have washed the feet of the people to show God's love.  This year, the pastor encouraged us to write down a burden on a post-it note stuck to our bulletins with the promise that there would be a point during the service to free ourselves of that burden.  When the cross was brought into the sanctuary, we each brought our note, our burden, and laid it at the feet of the cross.

It seems to me that laying our burdens at the feet of the cross contradicts our human desire to live with intention.  Intention, to me, implies control - control over our own destiny, shaping each endeavor to maximize success and minimize failure.  Laying down our burdens - letting go - frees us to simply live. 

Perhaps this is the lesson for me at this time in my life. To live.  Simply. to. live.

Perhaps it is time to throw away the adverb - to live fully, to live purposefully, to live with intention.

"I meet you in the stillness of your soul."  This phrase found in a daily devotional given to me by a very special woman hones this idea of simply living.  Being still, simply being requires no movement on my part.  It encourages me to stop being intentional, purposeful, to stop seeking and finding myself.  It gives me permission to let the Universe do the work.

My burden, my sin, which I left at the foot of the cross, was this . . .

Being absorbed in my pursuit of self, in my desire to connect myself with my greater purpose. 

I've been fooling myself that being fully present in this pursuit is the same as being present in the moment.  I've failed to see that the present moment is often not about me.  The present moment is where life is - with the people I love, with someone else in control.  Not by my intention.  

The present moment is in living!