Stepping Into The Unknown

A Short Story Of Faith And Courage

 ‘Ten years of teaching is enough for me,’ my late wife, Cushla, said to me one day. She was referring to her permanent teaching post at the prestigious Clongowes Wood College, where she taught English and French. (Clongowes is a private boys’ secondary boarding school in County Kildare. Run by the Jesuit order, it is one of Ireland’s oldest Catholic schools. It featured prominently in James Joyce’s semi-autobiographical novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man).

She had never complained once about teaching. It was a role she enjoyed, and her students and colleagues greatly respected her. Although she had never been ambitious, she was always a hard worker and a conscientious teacher. But she wanted to move on. The advantages of the long holidays and the security of her position, including a full retirement pension, weren’t for her. She knew it wasn’t her destiny to continue teaching.

A new business I had cofounded was only beginning to take off, but I had learned the hard way from a previous venture that business success could be short-lived. I wanted what was best for my wife, but still, I panicked a bit. I asked her to consider the secure salary and the benefits she would be giving up.

 ‘Don’t worry. Everything will work out,’ Cushla said with confidence. She had such an evident trust in God that I believed her and began to relax. A week later, she calmly ‘stepped out of the boat’ and duly handed in her notice at Clongowes. She hadn’t even looked for another job beforehand.

After the summer holidays, she got a job in a pizza takeaway, working unsociable hours and earning a small wage with little to no benefits. She had moved from a respected teaching position in a privileged school to making pizzas. But status had never meant much to her. Despite the many mundane tasks involved, she had decided early on that she would enjoy working hard at the new job.

As the business expanded rapidly, I needed a marketing assistant. ‘How about Cushla?’ my business partner suggested. He had been impressed with her diligence and the tenacity she demonstrated while working part-time in my last company.

Less than a year after she started at the pizza takeaway, Cushla left the job and joined our company. She quickly adapted to her new role. Eventually, she took over the day-to-day marketing of the group, leaving me free for new business development.

It wasn’t long before she proved herself in the business world, helping me increase sales dramatically with her hard work and gift of knowing the right thing to do. I don’t mean knowing in the ordinary sense of the word. Cushla’s knowings were, instead, a higher form of knowledge she drew from deep within her soul. It was a gift she shared with well-known mystics:

In her book, Interior Castle Explored, the contemporary Carmelite nun and spiritual author Ruth Burrows writes of St. Teresa of Avila: ‘Here is a woman who surely knows. She isn’t merely speculating—relying on what others have said. Here is one with a well of living knowledge within her, and it is from this that she is drawing all the time.’ This was also the case with Cushla. I would also add that the frequency of her knowings was accelerating because of her deepening faith and spiritual discipline.

Despite being in awe of her spiritual progress, I didn’t have the same faith as Cushla. Sometimes I thought that her knowings might lead her to take a course of action, which seemed to me to defy common sense. But, I’m proud to admit that in all the time I knew her, all of her decisions or prophecies, which were based on her knowings, including the time she planned to resign from her secure teaching job, turned out to be the right ones in the end.

Look At The Star And Walk

‘That’s all very well, but I don’t receive knowings.’ you might be saying to yourself. So what to do? Pope Francis said the Magi leave us with concrete advice:

‘The Magi began their journey looking at a star, and they found Jesus. They walked a lot. Today, we can take this piece of advice: look at the star and walk. Never stop walking, but do not stop looking at the star. This is the strong advice for today: look at the star and walk, look at the star and walk’.

This uplifting counsel especially applies when we are going through dark times. Someone once asked a man how he was. He replied, ‘I’m going through hell!’

‘Well, keep on going. That is no place to stop!’ his friend replied.

 It’s an instruction  I took on board when Cushla died. By moving towards the light and following her example of never giving up practising spiritual disciplines, I  discerned a tiny spark within me that increasingly guided me in the right direction.

Miracles will manifest in your life if you have faith and take that step into the unknown. Inspired by Cushla’s faith, I now attempt to  ‘step out of the boat’ when a situation calls for it. For example, I started working on this website without fully knowing why. But, I know I must carry on without knowing where it’s all leading.

Even when situations seemed dire and bleak, faith carried me through. The worst thing that ever happened to me was when Cushla died. But, she had left me an amazing legacy of faith and hope that  I would see her again.

Not everything works out the way we want, at least not from our limited human perspective. Cushla had borne a debilitating illness for 17 years, and after getting better for only a year or so, she finally succumbed to cancer at age 51. But, while she was on the earth, she had lived an extraordinary and fearless life, imbued with value and meaning. Her faith had shaped her to feel things, think things, see things and do things that wouldn’t have been possible if she hadn’t trusted in a higher power.