Application of Knowledge


As I read through Come and See, or the excellent biography of St Francis by Omer Englebert, or various periodicals and other resources, it becomes very apparent that I need to remind myself that the Secular Franciscan path is not just reading and study. This is not a college course. As a voracious reader, I sometimes get into the habit of skimming, or gleaning things here and there; with this I need to slow down, digest, think, and most important, apply.

It’s easy to relegate it to the intellectual realm—it’s paper (real or virtual), after all, and stashed somewhere in the brain. But taking all that knowledge and applying it, making Francis’ life relevant to me and my experiences, my responses more akin to his and more Christ-centered, rather than id-centered or societally dictated. More Christian, more Catholic, more Francis.

That's not to dismiss the volumes of resources out there; study is a form of dialogue. But in this instance, I'm talking about the practical exam like the ones I took to receive my EMT certification all those years ago. Pete Jankowski gave us the tools to work with, then came the time to apply all the things we had learned in that course of study. Once you could apply the methodology, you were cleared to go and be in the field.

As I've gone along, and to continue to use the EMT cert example, it's kind of like my first day in the ER: jumping into the unknown, exposed to things one has never been exposed to: an AIDS patient, a partial scalping from a car accident (that was a fun one), the hypochondriac claiming that one bedpan will not be enough--everything ranging from the terrifying to the hilarious.

And really, this is no different, except that it's intense and personal and highly spiritual--and in many ways much more exhausting. It's not fun sometimes to peel the onion layers away. It's exhilarating to find huge leaps in progress. I'm awestricken as to the beauty and the privilege of faith. It's hard not to flinch sometimes when digging deeper. However, as anyone on the Journey knows, the ends to this are always worth the means.

I think the kernel of the Journey is the question "How am I willing to change?" I cannot use 'when'--there is no option; turning to Franciscan spirituality (or any other, i.e. Benedictine, Dominican, etc.) is not a matter of 'when,' as the initial commitment to this indicates the need, the want, to change. It is the way I need to change, what I need to change, the glasses that I need to see clearly. If I do not change, morph, evolve in my spiritual journey, then I have made this a superficial exercise, made the study and discussion akin to a simple reading assignment.

Tonight I am going to reread the Englebert bio, mark the passages that speak to me, note how Francis responded to things, make his life relevant to mine. Things have changed in the almost 800 years since his death, yet some things never change--man is notorious for not learning from history and experience.

God, all powerful, most holy, sublime ruler of all, you alone are good - supremely, fully, completely good, may we render to you all praise, all honour and all blessing: may we always ascribe to you alone everything that is good!
Amen