KristyWes

The Road Ahead

Pilgrims in Portomarin, Spain

During my fourth year of college, I was required to take a seminar for my Religious Studies major. Several seminars were offered, but I chose to take one called "American Religious Autobiography." Not out of burning interest for the subject, but because it was taught by one of my favorite professors, a woman with whom I had taken two previous classes. 

I pretty much thought she was the *coolest*.  She was one of few professors I encountered in the Religion department who actually had a personal faith.  Sometimes she wore cowboy boots to class.  Once she brought in a guitar, and sang "Little Boxes" to 250 of us gathered in the lecture hall.  Her son was named "Benedict," after Saint Benedict and his Rule.  She was irreverant and sarcastic and approachable and caring. The *coolest.*

In the Autobiography seminar, we were assigned Thomas Merton's The Sign of Jonas, and during the discussion on Merton's life and writing, this professor passed out postcards with the following prayer printed on them.

I still have that postcard (...somewhere...) and I go back to this prayer periodically throughout my life.  It gives me a lot of comfort.  It's my go-to prayer when I don't know what/how else to pray.

Just thought I'd share today :)

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 really know myself, and the fact that I think 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 I will 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"