By Connie Krautkremer, MM
Is there anything in this month’s reflection that resonated for you? Do you still vision a future that you can then follow as your guide into this next stage of life like you did when you decided on Maryknoll or a family, education, career or other major roles you have played? Have you ever envisioned the future or is this a different time, a time for stillness to speak to you? The following questions are offered to create a context to test these waters and see what speaks to you.
You are still here. Why are you still here? What will call you into the future to play your unique part that no one else can play? Do you want to live from that deep center of your authenticity that fulfills and evolves you while also gifting others?
- Does visioning work for you? Do you even want to try?
- To what extent are you satisfied with things just the way they are?
- Is that satisfaction helpful? Or does it impede what is seeking life within you and for you?
- How do you make space? How do you let go and let be, let come, see what wants to come?
- Do you have a closet where stuff is stuffed, to get it out of the way, to keep other places tidy, or because you are not ready to throw something out? Stuff like habits, self understandings, ways of doing things.
- So how to go about sorting through that closet to make space?
- And, when there is space, what will come to fill it?
- What is the natural order of growth and expansion, reaching for the light through the cracks, at this stage of life?
- Is it up to me to create a vision or does my vision emerge, break through the cracks as ideas, curiosity and interests, like little blades of grass who offer me new possibility and a new aliveness?
- Does a vision that can unfold the future start with an idea, a question, a feeling of curiosity, interest or excitement that are the subtler “inner yes” at this stage of life?
- How does the future unfold differently at this stage than it did in my younger years?
- If the future is “not more of the same” with the purpose being to produce or succeed, but is more relational, what would that be like?
- Does the outer vision of my future to follow at this stage of life more often come from being with the young who will actually be living it out and building it but are asking for that relational stability and guidance from elders?
- At this stage of life, does “the vision”, as I have known it, transform into “letting everyone and everything be” encouraging them just as they are?
- Is my calling now to listen to the “stirrings inside and callings from here and there”, that enable me to nurture and guide those that ask?
- Is “the asking” the gift of the young, who are seeking to build the future, offered to the elders whose aliveness then comes forth from deep within when guiding them from Wisdom?
- Am I now more part of strengthening the roots for youth to move forward and blossom by creating something new and enjoying their success and producing?
- Is my vision for the future now simply to “sit and let be, listening to stirrings inside and callings from here and there” and then answering when moved to?