On January the 14th, the magazine “Vida Religiosa” published an article by Dolores Aleixandre, whose title was “Composure” that, probably, is not alien to us and can help us to think if we really live this same reality in our own person and in our communities. We have just celebrated the Day of Consecrated Life on February the 2nd and we consider interesting to facilitate this reflection in our webpage. Let us fully live the mutual accompaniment we are working on in our «Growth and Transformation» Project; undoubtedly that will make easier for us the effort to intuit what is happening in the depth of the hearts of those who live by our side, beyond appearances, the fulfillment of norms and that «composure» about which the author refers. Below it is Dolores Aleixandre who speaks:
«I went with my community to a recollection day to elaborate the community project of the year and in the outskirts of the town where we were, there was a huge fallen aspen next to the road. Probably it had fallen the day before because its branches were still full of green leaves, although the trunk was hollow and the roots were exposed. This image came to my when I heard a comment about the departure of a young sister: «And her community was surprised, because they had noticed nothing that would suggest that she was in crisis». The association with the fallen tree seems obvious: this young religious looked like a hollow trunk that since it was not getting sap from its roots, had no consistency and collapsed. And so we think that there is nothing more to do.
Did we ask ourselves whether there were other possible but more uncomfortable explanations? We could ask ourselves, for example, if the empty trunk would not be her community, so myopic that it could not detect any alarm signal in one of its members. Another possible variant: we should be able to detect in us the symptoms of that composure (today it would be the «posture») always lurking in consecrated life: an ability generated under the protection of structures that allows us to behave externally with correctness, according to «agreed codes» acquired habits, fulfilled schedules and a few stereotypical phrases. A plastic life, adapted and well organized life the stretched ribbon marking the page of Vespers of the second week. And that is said «from the outside». But inside, perhaps a parallel world bustles: what we really think, feel and desire, hidden in the most secret part of the heart until the day when it «comes out of the closet» and others can see it. That is such a «usual» possibility that the New Testament uses the adjective dipsichós, «person of two minds», double, divided (James 1,8).
This threat is accentuated in the stage we are living, amid many processes of restructuration, fusions and readjustments we are carrying on. Immersed in this turmoil, an essential question arises: what is actually happening with the restructured, reconfigured, united, grouped, fused or re-justified subjects that we are? In all this process, the most important is that each one receive the sap of life and significance so necessary to live.
In Zacchaeus’ encounter with Jesus, we can discover a kind of double appears: «Lord, I will give to the poor half of my goods…». At the beginning of the year each one could ask himself what he is doing with that other reserved “half». Because, throughout our lives, we have surely been handing over keeping an edifying composure, half of what we are and we own but let us ask ourselves whether, there be any other “half” we still hide in the deepest of ourselves.
The presence of the Guest “sneaking” into our house, makes possible, for us, to confidently welcome the «agents of diminution» knocking at our door and getting down through our roof. As soon as we consent, they will undertake the task of clearing the corners where we take refuge, and they will urge us to hand over that “other half” we so eagerly try to retain.
Let us hope to decide throwing it out the window, together with it the remains of so much deceptive and silly composure ».
(Translated from: Dolores Aleixandre – Magazine “Vida Religiosa”, 14 of january 2021)