Still don’t know

In just six days it’ll be three years since I started blogging. My first post on January 9, 2006 contained this quote from Thomas Merton.

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end.Nor do I re ally know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.- Thomas Merton, “Thoughts in Solitude

I still have no real idea of where I’m going and it really doesn’t matter. The more open I am to change the more successful I am. Openness and flexibility are signs of life while stiffness and rigidity are symptomatic of death and dying. I pray always to be open and in the words of the St. Irenaeus,

It is not thou that shapest God
it is God that shapest thee.
If thou art the work of God
await the hand of the artist
who does all things in due season.
Offer Him thy heart,
soft and tractable,
and keep the form
in which the artist has fashioned thee.
Let thy clay be moist,
lest thou grow hard
and lose the imprint of his fingers.

– St. Irenaeus