Please welcome today’s guest blogger, Lisa Burke, and join in conversation by responding to Lisa’s reflection using the comment box below.

God and Me – A Relationship that takes work
by Lisa Burke

Have you ever found yourself prompted to be more deliberate about your relationship with God? I have.  In fact, that is exactly where I find myself right now.

God is with us at every moment, in fact from before we were conceived until long after we take our last breath.  With God ever present, we are always in the presence of God.  Yet are we always mindful of God’s presence around us and within us?

For me, the short answer is “no.”  Yes, I know that God is there and here, but I am not always mindful about it.  So it’s important that periodically I refocus my attention on this essential relationship.

Sometimes, when I experience these promptings –- you might call them movements of the heart — I feel that it’s not just me recognizing that I need to be deliberate about my relationship with God, but rather God taps me on the shoulder or puts a hand to my heart and says “I’m here. I’d like for us to spend time together.”

This deliberateness about the God-me relationship doesn’t happen as a result of some magic formula or combination of religious rituals or actions. It happens over time, and each time it happens it happens in different ways and through different encounters.  The invitation usually manifests itself not through a major conversion event but through a series of opportunities.

The invitation to focus on OUR relationship (and yes, the God and me relationship is a mutual, two-sided relationship) is an invitation to sit and spend time, to be conscious of each other’s presence, to recognize the signs of each other’s love in everyday life, to hear the voice of God revealed through the voice, words, and silence of other people on one’s life.

Sometimes I achieve this refocus on “God & me” through a retreat, or a day of recollection and renewal, or seasonal spiritual practices or devotions such as are offered during Advent and Lent, but most often I experience this process of once again being deliberate about my God and me relationship by taking time to be conscious of God within and around me, by seeking and seeing God in the communities in which I find myself, by recognizing that God wants to be in a deeply intimate relationship with me and intimate relationships involve work and are worthy of work.

With the start of the season of Lent on the horizon, just a few weeks away, this seems like the perfect time (then again isn’t God’s time always perfect?) to be engaging with God about OUR relationship.

Long ago I realized that “God and me” is a lifelong relationship that is constantly (and thankfully) in progress or under construction – and that’s a good thing.  I am thankful that God periodically offers a direct invitation to “sit and stay a while!”

What are some of the ways you experience God’s invitation to deeper intimacy?

What are some ways that you re-focus on the “God and me” relationship in your own life?

Lisa Burke, a native of New Jersey, is an Associate of the Sisters of Christian Charity and recently commemorated her 15th anniversary with them.

She is grateful that God deigned to include in the recipe of who she is the rich flavors of the daughters of Blessed Pauline von Mallinckrodt, the Sisters of Christian Charity; the daughters of Blessed Fr. James Alberione, the Daughters of Saint Paul; the daughters of St. Dominic, the Dominican Sisters of Caldwell; the daughters of Blessed Mary Angela Truskowska, the Felician Sisters; and the sons of St. Marcellin Champagnat, the Marist Brothers of the Schools.

Her personal spiritual charism embodies a little bit of each of these religious congregations and the three dimensions common to each of them: Eucharistic, Marian, Ecclesial/Missionary. Her life interests are broad, rich, and enhanced by many interesting paradoxes.

For prayer today, visit our Praying with the Sisters page for a recording of today’s readings and reflection.

From my Ask Sister page …

I’m stepping into religious life… or at least I think I am. I was wondering – do you ever feel lonely and alone? I really hate travelling alone and I yearn for the physical presence of a man – not sexual – just the ‘being there’. Jesus is my spouse, yes, but there are times when He just isnt there – and you just want someone to lean on or to hold you or to just pick you up from the airport.

I dont know if you know what I mean. Is this normal? And how can we deal with it? Or do we just accept it and learn to suffer it?

Thank you for the question, Rosemary. It’s a good one, one that I certainly wondered about when I was considering religious life. The answer has many dimensions, so I’ll just give you my thoughts (hopefully in some semblance of order) on loneliness.

Feeling lonely is something everyone feels at one time or another, nuns included. But do nuns feel it more acutely because they make a vow to be celibate, that is, nuns choose to not have 1) sex or 2) romantic or exclusive relationships? (NOTE: the vow of celibacy is actually not about the “have not’s” but about being free to love all and go where God calls us to … but that’s the subject of a future post). Because of this vow, it may seem like women who become nuns are going to be physically lonely — like you said, not necessarily in a sexual way, but just having someone physically present to you.

This is a question that I too had when I was discerning religious life. I wondered about how intimacy (not talking sexual here) could be expressed as a nun — physical intimacy, emotional intimacy, spiritual intimacy. I didn’t know if the vow of celibacy and just the general life of being a nun prohibited any kind of close connection with others. I treasured my relationships with close friends, siblings, etc. What was going to happen?

Now, I’m not exactly sure how this all worked itself out (probably by living into it and trusting God), but I do know that I came to realize that God did not desire that I be cut off from everyone, that I be isolated and therefore alone. It’s just that my primary relationships were now with my religious community, and (as it always had been) with God. My community of nuns is my family. They’ve got my back — always. And I’m there for them. I’d drop just about anything (short of someone else’s welfare) in a heartbeat for any one of my nuns. So in this sense, I am never lonely or alone.

In another sense, however, there is a kind of loneliness that I and others (not just nuns) experience. The source of such loneliness is not necessarily lack of another person, but that ultimate realization (conscious or otherwise) that only God can fulfill us. Saint Augustine wrote, “Our souls are restless, O Lord, until they rest in you.” Even with our closest relationships, we feel this radical loneliness because we long to dwell with God. Don’t mean to go existential on you here, but it’s an important understanding of loneliness. It’s what helps people not suffer loneliness, but embrace loneliness as an experience of God.

A little while back I wrote a post called, Do Nuns Know How to Love? You might check that out to for a response to your question here.

Do respond and let’s have a conversation about this. And I know others will have insight into this question too.