The question is . . . how are we to understand ourselves as sendees? What does it mean to be a sendee? To be a sent one means that we can look back at a time in our life where we began to be interiorly awakened to a desire to move into a deeper, more interior experience of oneness with God. Although it was not quite clear how to understand what was happening to us—and certainly not clear exactly how to articulate it—the gift of this yearning was there. When we heard about or would read the sayings of the mystics, we could tell that they were talking about and bearing witness to the desire that was stirring in our hearts. The very fact that we resonated with the eloquence, the beauty of what they were saying named us as being drawn along the path that the mystic teachers are inviting us to follow. . . .
To me this is then the gift of being sent. It is the gift of life itself, of being asked to be a contemplative woman or a contemplative man in the midst of the world, as one in the process of transformation, so that you can become someone in whose presence others are better able to be awakened in the unique way they’re being called to be awakened, and to invite and encourage them to be faithful in that.
(Click here for Jim, Richard, and Cynthia’s post-election reflections.)
