My Thoughts Today on CL

So next week there is a little to-do where I have been asked to talk for a few minutes about my experience with Communion and Liberation. This morning our fearless leader put a bug in my ear about possibly writing out what I wanted to say. Whether this is what I want to say or not will be debatable, but sometimes the suggestion to write fuels my urge to write, so here I am.

I've written here and there about my experiences thus far with CL. What I find to be most true in participating in the School of Community is that I am simultaneously exercising my greater strengths and my greater weaknesses. Living in the land of strength, if unchallenged by weakness, breeds pride. Living only in the land of weakness is crushing. God is merciful in making it possible to experience both and to come through it with deeper peace, and greater knowledge of my need for Him. That seems to be what Guissani always speaks of -- our need to know the finitude of our own hearts and to find the only true fullness, the only true happiness, the only true answer in life in our total dependence on God, who is both our origin and our goal.

So CL offers hefty intellectual fodder to chew on (which is so welcomed for this brain that spends more reading time with Barney and Captain Underpants). Reading Guissani my attention is riveted; I'm not distracted by 1,000 other thoughts because I feel like "oh, I know this already." I am to love God with my intellect and ever deepen and refine and understand my commitment of faith, and Guissani's writings help me do those things. Oh, and CL has great music, too. :)

But then there's all the stuff that brings the tears to my eyes. There's the courage to accept who I am with my limitations and uniquities. There is trying to talk to other human beings to bring that inward stuff outward. There is trying to talk to other human beings without rehearsing for several days before. There is trying to talk to others without replaying the conversation and cringing for several days afterwards. There is sometimes just sitting in a room of people and not stressing. All of it is a challenge, especially when it's new.

Being a part of CL has helped me realize that it's all OK, that we all are only humans after all. Knowing and facing my limitations is so much better than not knowing and not facing them. I am freed to be me, but also freed from worries over who I'm not. I don't need to get my life clogged up with attempts to be all the other wonderful people in my life: God has already assigned those jobs. I just want to walk forward with Him, with CL, with life, and see what happens next.