The audacity to trust (Tom Shriver on Fr. Thomas Keating)

   In our last conversation [two months before his death, Fr. Thomas Keating] emphasized trust. He heard my confession and stopped me when I said I was struggling to trust in these times of fear and violence and division. Focus on trust, he said. When you trust that we are all part of something beautiful beyond our wildest imagination, you will find healing. 

   As we neared the end of our time, he gave me an instruction in prayer: Keep returning to silence. It’s God’s first language, and everything else is a poor translation. And say just one Hail Mary, but say it slowly so you can feel the unconditional trust that made it possible for Mary to allow God’s love to take over her life.... Meet her and understand her model of trust in God and let her heal you.

   I left him moments later. Til we meet again were his final words to me, yet another expression of a man who trusted in the totality of God’s love and who taught prayer as an act of surrender, an act of presence, an act of love. Have the audacity to trust that we all belong to God: It may seem like an unlikely call to action in 2018, but it may be the only call that can start the healing in our divisive and fearful times. 

--Tom Shriver 

Image source: Bartholomé Esteban Murillo, The Virgin of the Annunciation (ca. 1670-80), https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bartolom%C3%A9_Esteban_Murillo_-_The_Virgin_of_the_Annunciation_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg
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