12 Comments

I'm excited about this Jack. I am hoping it will render me happily redundant ;-)

I think that it is very clear whether you are a friar or a frier (geddit?) and that you know that too. I wish you much luck with the trip to the monastery!

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Beautiful writing Jack! To fully enjoy reading Paul’s and now your Substack, including all the enticing appendices and recommended authors, I suspect I may have to give up my day job. But that may be where God is leading me. All the best on your journey - I understand you want certainty about your life’s plan, but as Robert Burns tells us, “the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft a-gley”.

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May 4, 2022Liked by Jack Leahy

I'm so glad you mentioned this to me. I love seeing the photo of your wooded place of prayer. Now about the fast food -- a hardware store or something would be less traumatic.

Clara

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Great post! From Benedictine monasteries to fast food—that pretty much covers the universe, I’d say, from the sublime all the way down.

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Since I invited you to have a look a my page, I'll have to forgive you for not returning the attention :)

I had actually looked at your profile a couple of times to make sure you didn't have a page of your own, because if you did I didn't want to miss it. So here I am, happy that you ended up starting one. Let's journey on!

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I hope it isn't bad form to comment on a post nearly a year old. I came to your Substack more recently and have really enjoyed and resonated with everything I've read thus far. I found myself curious how it all started.

"My problem, which is hardly new, is that I want to figure things out, to be certain, to know where I am headed."

It's as if you've been reading my imaginary diary. I go through these cycles of needing and searching for certainty and the dispelling of all ambiguity until I realize it's a pipe-dream. 'We see through a glass darkly...". Then I try to return to myself and, as you said, stop going out to the forest to pray with only goal of finding that unassailable certainty and what I should be doing and realizing that prayer is the way. Until, of course, I come full circle again to the felt need for certainty and repeat the process ad nauseam. I find myself currently in the arc of the loop that calls me back to myself, back to the present moment and inner stillness before God. I suspect that's in no small part due to the season of Great Lent and it's focus on my own repentance and return modeled by the Prodigal Son. The song "Ulysses" by Josh Garrels is a frequent flyer on my playlist.

Thanks for the conversation you're having here and the aid it's offering in my own journey.

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