Do you remember...?

Do you remember the call...

Can you remember the word that you heard,
When the story began in you?

Can you remember the vision, the dream
And the courage to love for life...

From In the Name of Love by Jennifer Corlett OSU and Mark Hobson

I first heard this song years ago, but more or less forgot it; then, this this afternoon one of my sisters used it whilst leading a session on living in a discerning way. Yes, I remembered the song... and yes, I can remember the call to love for life. Or rather, I can remember a specific 'moment'; a moment when a story began in me... but it was not the beginning. I know now that God's call to union and to love had been in me since forever, whether or not I heeded or recognised it as such.

Do you remember...?

And what I found myself remembering were the subsequent moments which clarified or affirmed that call. 

That moment when I started to read St John of the Cross, and there was a familiarity in his words. A moment of exhilaration on a desolate moor came back to me, and for the first time I saw it as an experience of the divine; a part of my journey with God, before I had recognised it as such, or even known I was on a journey.

That moment, reading Dominique Sadoux RSCJ, when I had a sudden memory of standing in a crowded street and knowing, with crystal clarity, than the Heart of God was here, at the heart of the world... I had never shared it with anyone, imagining it would seem too fanciful; now, with just a few words, it became an affirmation of the rightness of having joined the Society. 

And those many moments, whether on retreat or in daily life, in prayer, reading or encounter, when something is brought into sharp focus; when layers are added, and that initial call is widened, deepened, renewed. And each time, I re-member, and am re-called.

Yes, I remember... And you; do you remember...?