Turning Back

 Listen carefully, my child, to my instructions, and attend to them with the ear of your heart. This is advice from one who loves you; welcome it, and faithfully put it into practice. The labor of obedience will bring you back to God from whom you had drifted through the sloth of disobedience.

Today we turn back to the beginning.  We return to listen and to hear the voice of God – “to attend them with the ear of our heart.”  So today, we joined together in our recommitment to the discipline of reading and prayer and obedience.  We admit there are times when we have faltered – drifted -- from our labors, and so we encourage one another as we turn back, so that in the turning back we move forward in our spiritual journey.

We turn back as both an act of repentance and an act of conversion.  In repentance we turn away and leave behind the sloth and the distractions and the way of the world; we leave behind the excuses. And, our intention is to listen for voice of God as we read scripture and the Psalms, as we read the words of St. Benedict and Sr. Joan, as we gather together as a community. In an act of ongoing conversion, we respond to the voice of God: we obey.   To each word, to each prayer, to each day, we will choose to obey and to “faithfully put into practice.”  Or so we will try