Inner Life

Inner Life
In the small blue and white chapel, with soft candle light, we sit in silence before The Eucharist. Worry of future career, desire for a demanding, meaningful job just falls away. My sisters are successful and educated, but their careers don’t make them.
What matters is here; whether in a blue or a yellow or a pink chapel, whether by candle light, solar lamp, electricity, or kerosene. It is here, before the Eucharist. It is in prayer, in meditation, in silence. I once read that if the inner life is a abundant, it will spill into the outer. So, whether I join the Foreign Service or USAID, or go for a higher degree, or just go back to my hometown and become a social worker, it doesn’t really matter. If my inner life is abundant, it will spill out. “My cup overfloweth”
Sometimes, I am disappointed by what I’ve done since high school. I know I would have been able to do anything I wanted. At other times, I am extremely grateful. Save a few instances (including some time in grad school…), I have been following not a career but a life. I have not been pursuing the thing I want to be but the person. I’ve been pursuing the inner life.
II. Today, I was distressed by my inability to play volleyball or football well; frustrated by my inability to integrate into St. Catherine’s the way I think I should, my inability to know everyone in town, my lack of fluency in Runyancore. Today, I was ashamed of my lack of expertise, knowledge and know- how. Some say we are like clay pots. Although shiny, perfect, manufactured jerry cans are more popular, I, alas, find myself to be degradable, heavy, and awkward. The valuable thing is not the pot but what is inside. If inside my awkwardness, lack of knowledge, lack of perfection there is light: peace, joy, love, hope: then it will be valuable.