My Path Home—To My People
My Path Home—To My People
By: By Laurie Sandblom (Launch & Lead student, Spring 2018 cohort)
“…stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high— …and they were continually in the temple blessing God.” Luke 24:49, 53
Pentecost! Finally. Fifty days take forever when the red outfit is ready to celebrate the birthday of the church. This year was an even more challenging spiritual discipline of patience as I waited for Missional Wisdom Foundation pilgrims to return from Iona. What was taking them so long? All of my questions were bursting at the seams, including the big ones, “What is the next step? When is the next step? Who will tell me about the next step?” The National Gathering April 2018 answered decades of questions and became a destination blessing after miles and miles of seeking God. And yet it is the beginning. As profound as the first Pentecost when “Awe came upon everyone…. All who believed were together….” Acts 2:43-44.
My faith journey with Des Moines, Iowa United Methodist Church beginnings of baptism, confirmation, and marriage, would appear to be all about stability and sameness. Since that simplicity, however, my path veered and climbed, dipped and turned through fourteen cities, two countries, five denominations, discernment with an ecumenical Benedictine monastery nestled in the Appalachian Mountains of Eastern Kentucky, and vowed membership with a dispersed monastic community. God continued to weave everything into the tapestry called My Story. It was not until I googled “new monasticism, Dallas” and found Missional Wisdom Foundation that I saw God transforming My Story into “My Path Home—To My People.”
It seems the MWF website words jumped from my journal. Many of MWF booklist books already sit on my shelves. I desperately want to meet all who have heard God’s Call and arrived at MWF’s doorstep. Plus! I was still in time for the National Gathering 36 days away. Dallas is also where my newly engaged daughter lives—hence the Google search. Certainly it is indeed “a time such as this!” And as only God can organize, every person I met during the National Gathering spoke the same God Speak, even with such beautifully various interests and gifts. Pentecost indeed, we all understood each other even though we are from near and far.
More waiting, of course. More listening. Last week I was living out Psalm 130’s “My soul waits for the LORD more than those who watch for the morning,” with Kentucky Trappists and surrounded by every Thomas Merton book ever written. But, guess what? I absolutely had to finish Credulous by Andrea Lingle first because she shares the precious perspective I have lived (mom of three) and loved for years—motherhood as mission field. Other missional joys I have combined with it. What’s next, God? Here I am. I come to do Your Will.