Gaudete

I am utterly immersed in Advent’s charms this year. The anticipation of Christmas to me has everything to do with the season leading up—the slow build up week by week, if I choose this over the hustle of commerce first, forces me to reckon with the words which shout fear not, peace, praise, and generally show wonderment: how can this be?

Case in point:

Have no anxiety at all, but in everything,
by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving,
make your requests known to God.
Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding
will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.


or

The crowds asked John the Baptist,
“What should we do?”
He said to them in reply,
“Whoever has two cloaks
should share with the person who has none.
And whoever has food should do likewise.”


The scripture holds part of this charm, especially Isaiah, Zephaniah, Jeremiah, and here the New testament passages from this past Sunday, Gaudete Sunday in the Catholic tradition: rejoice. Rejoice because you can’t possibly know how good this truly is, but you will eventually know in your soul. Here and now.

This joy I see directly in my littlest’s eyes lately, as she takes leaps of developmental growth. I watch her take careful bites and large, enthusiastic ones out of new favorite foods, and work through her dislikes, and consider the music and the waiting and the decorations appearing little by little. She enjoys the story and sees it fresh, and I realize that I see Christmas four decades on, with the cloak of adulthood sitting precariously on my shoulders, yet her mother still (somehow the adult in charge). And my oldest is hyper-aware of all things Christmas and the monotony of daily life, but I marveled the other day in her continued belief in Santa and Elves. Her eyes tell me that there’s still belief there, and it’s not so much that the existence needs proving, but that she has the heart of belief within her fueling her, making her happy from within that there’s something in the world which does stand true, in spite of all its sorrow.

I lament only not having that beginner’s mind, sometimes, when I see the gut of this world on daily display. When I know the same passages I meditate upon are willfully misread and misinterpreted for gain. When I wonder not at wonder, but at the gall of this world.

Still, there’s room for that newness of belief, if we choose to look toward it. Mind you, not ignore the wrong—oh no, quite the contrary, to look deep into the darkness with eyes of light. To see the peace of God that surpasses all understanding and to believe. To make belief come to life in the way we treat one another, waiting for no permission to love.

Wrong Way Right

Most mornings my littlest comes up to me with her shoes, laid at the sides of her feet, and looks up and me and asks, “Mama, is this the wrong way?”

And there’s so much to think about in this question, isn’t there? I mean, first of all, she’s cute as can be, and no matter how irritated I am that we’re still not ready to go out the door to start the day, I pause and consider it for her. She’s getting it right more often, but still has them reversed sometimes, and so I tell her to switch them, and she proceeds confidently to do so, and goes  on her merry way.

Perhaps we wish we could have the same kind of life moment? When we could ask more directly and get that direct answer—is this the wrong way?—so that we might feel a little more secure, a little more assured that God heard the question. God hears us, of course, and most of us know by now that we often do not get the answer we’re expecting. In fact, at least speaking for myself, I find myself more often grappling with the answer and what it means to me. There are times, though, where I can see clearly which is the wrong and which is the right way, in spite of the world’s cacophony of answers, in spite of the press of wrong coming in at us from all sides lately.

My meditation this morning comes in the realization that all around me I have friends working for the good, and bringing that into the world, combating the wrong—each of us in our own uniquely, even small ways. And I am so glad that I have you to ask the questions sometimes, to see the guidance that shows us God working through each other, a community of believers in the good, a cloud of witnesses. This week I am so grateful for you all, and wish you the best, wish you the secure knowing that your hopes and your work, whatever you give, is something to be thankful for, something that will offer you the answers you need when you’re wondering and wandering about your way.

Look Inside

I have been a moderate person in many ways for probably most of my life. Don’t get me wrong—I admit I have certain kinds of things I will take a decided stance on, especially when it involves the true well-being of others. Nonetheless, I am not and never have been a person of extremes, and anyone who really knows me knows this to be true.

I find myself living in a world currently calculable in its extremes at best, chaotic at worst, and it is both exhausting and utterly dismaying to deal with this on a daily basis now. On a daily basis: confrontation, hatred, skepticism, and an unhealthy disregard for the Other, for those marginalized, for those struggling with burdens the average person might find hard to understand or reconcile.

I’ve decided to sit and meditate with this a bit, and this is what I have discovered, looking inside myself first—something I would recommend anyone do. In my life I have moved from a place where immigrants were, for better and worse, an accepted part of society, to a place that lately expresses a deep and abiding hatred for immigrants. I have moved from a place where I was openly Catholic to a place that has held me in skepticism at worst and shown me a true investment in faith at best. I have made friends with people in every place I have gone, and live in a town that is a constant shift of people from everywhere, and I have encountered all kinds of struggle, hurt, and triumph in these individuals—they have taught me year to year how to be more human.

What I am struggling with—and perhaps you are, too—is this daily living in extremes, in a state (both literal and figurative) that goes by extremity rather than moderation. What I am grateful for are groups like the Franciscans who are at the heart of moderation means to me. St. Francis’s way is the way I long to and strive to live daily, the well from which I will draw to draw closer to God’s vision of this world. It may feel like only one drop of peace that I contribute into the vast abyss of darkness daily, but I will contribute that one drop—and I hope you will yours, too. Whatever your drop of peace is, it matters. Look inside yourself for it. Then add it to the million others into the darkness to see the light.

Enough for Me

St. Ignatius’s Suscipe prayer calls for a complete reliance on God when push comes to shove, when things are ordinary—a reminder that in the end, we’re co-creators but we rely on help when we’re weak, that we’re not superheroes capable of all things—but sometimes, like angels, we are capable of amazing things. The mystery is in the balance of vulnerability with agency—the two must go hand in hand for us to remain human. Take my memory, understanding, my entire will is an offering to the one who made us, a perplexing list of directives that seem to run counter to human culture that recently has ramped up its self-reliance factor to the nth degree, and then we find ourselves surprised when we cannot go forward, when we feel alone and defeated.

Strength so ironically comes from weakness, or our perception of weakness. isn’t that a good thing? I don’t know about you, but I often these days find myself feeling helpless, vulnerable, at a loss. I live for the things in my life that have been entrusted to me because in these I know I can offer my talents and live my vocation. I am a mother to two and a teacher for 76—surely each year I have done this has contributed something to my soul, my mind, and theirs?

My prayer lately is for  freedom from expectations—the ones we have put on each other, that I have put on myself or others, rightly or wrongly—in favor of an expansive vision, that of God’s as he sees us in his mercy, and takes us where we need to be. For my spiritual practice I meditate on the set daily readings of the church, and love that I am in solidarity with so many others who hear it or read it at the same time as a community focused on the nature of faith. I hope that those reading aren’t attaching their own expectations to the words that come to us from an ancient and different place altogether, but do see and honor the value of those words. Lately I have focused in on how Jesus responds—he doesn't react so much as he responds, with a real focus on the heart of any matter presented him. I want to be that, strive for it, and am getting better little by little.

There’s a passage in Corinthians that reminds readers “a little yeast leavens the dough,” and I want to start thinking about the effect of my life, my words, my relationships and interactions, the ways in which I share thing—all these to be the little bit of yeast in the world we’re kneading. All to feed the greater good, as it were.

Observe the Pause

On the first day of school I am always in awe and hyper-aware of the ways in which community can have a massive impact on your outlook—on the ways our interactions can make us. Sometimes break us. Mostly create our future selves, but only if we tend to our present ones. This morning, upon delivering my freshly minted third grader, I drove my toddler home to finish breakfast; we then went to get stamps and mail thank you notes and generally start our day. We were to go later to a city park, one of the many good ones in Athens, GA, and in the meantime to the YMCA, another staple of community formation, a place in which I have found people of vast differences in opinion somehow still in each other’s company. I thought as I do often of all the privileges we have, even what seem like the smallest ones: transport, education, food resources, housing. Things the majority of us take for granted.

Often I notice, especially in the heat of summer and the cold of winter, those souls awaiting the city bus I often take myself too, even now that I have a reliable car. I recall the year I spent in the city’s center, taking the bus where I needed to go, hauling bags of groceries down blocks to get to the bus stops and then to yank up my stairwell to my apartment. I recall the debts of my post-graduate school years, the humility I learned through these.  I feel so much specifically for those who spent time patiently awaiting resources, like the bus at the bus stop—individuals, usually, but equally whole families, standing in the deep heat of a Southern August, lunch bag in hand or grocery and supply bags in tow, crossing major highways since few areas outside city center have sidewalks or even walkable roadsides. I wince at those quickly crossing a busy thoroughfare like Atlanta Highway to ensure catching the hourly bus on time. I want to stop my car and take some of them along to where they need to be, but I know I can’t, most practically because I don’t have room in my relatively small vehicle brimming with child car seats. But I put my mind to them, wish them a good day, swift passage, the same hopes I had when I waited at those bus stops.

I told you briefly that on our trip to Buffalo, NY we encountered a parking lot attendant complaining about hearing every other language than English, and his subtext was indeed Nativist—his entire manner showed this. I wanted, then, to look at him and asked him why he’d said that, but I didn’t, out of fear. In retrospect I even wished I’d started speaking Portuguese to confound him after he’d asked my husband where he was from and, satisfied that he’d said Georgia and looked like him, that he could reveal his opinions of the international visitors. But I can’t go back now. I can, in the future, perhaps pause long enough to consider what the right question would be to pose to someone who might make such a statement.

This is America—good and bad wrapped together, by perception. One person’s bad (or sense of it) isn’t really another’s, and privilege is real in a country obsessed more with attainment and merit than with compassion and connection. Daily I see some walls coming down in this respect, and some going right back up, but I await a time when more people will witness to the experience of each other, to the realness of human connection that often opens our eyes to what is necessary and good in a troubled world.

Ordain

Journeys have a way of creating moments of opportunity, and for twenty years in my travels I have rarely been disappointed. Dismayed, perhaps—alarmed, even—but I more often walk away with a perspective I didn’t see coming, and this typically is anything but disappointing. In spite of my anxiety about packing (especially for three)  I am learning my modus operandi is to pack little things as I go along, physical ones and then mental ones, things to trigger or surface memory at a later time.

On this last trip I have too many of these little things to mention in this short space, but perhaps a couple stand out worth sharing. Of course one has to do with my brother’s ordination as a Conventual Franciscan friar, an event which gives me much hope. To see the young submit themselves to a greater cause and do real work and sacrifice in a real way should be a source of hope for many, and an inspiration to pick up and do our own parts, to be sure. That by itself is meaningful. During the ordination, though, I was able to see the ways in which my brother’s chosen community stands for others. There was a moment during the ordination in which every friar in the place came and laid hands in prayer over the young men who stepped up to the front of the church to submit themselves. If you were standing there you could actually feel  a presence of goodness and compassion in waves overwhelming. The word ordain’s etymology means to put in order,  and that’s compelling to me: I think—what is placed in order? So many think it’s just about the status quo order or hierarchical order, but this moment of still and relative quiet suggested to anyone standing there that being for one another has a massive, reverberating impact not to be underestimated. What’s put in order is the heart and soul of each beloved, and advocates who will stand for each of these souls on the battlefield of life.

There’s so much more to say about this trip, but I will leave you with my last moment instead (though I do want to write here about, say, the awesome surge of Niagara Falls, the kind people we met there that day, the contrast of the parking lot attendant who complained vocally about non-English speaking peoples—but I leave this for another time). I think the relative frustrations of family life can create ordinary extraordinary moments, as I am fond of pointing out on social media. In fact, I’ve made encounters and images of these my meditative go-to lately, alongside daily prayer and meditation. Still, nothing like coming face to face with your weakness and vulnerability to learn some lessons, right?  I am sure some of you have stories to tell. My recent one is this: ten minutes before we leave to get to the airport this time, my littlest falls flat on her face, hitting her nose and bleeding well, with a pool full of blood in her mouth to boot. It was, like the times I dealt with my eldest’s surgeries, a moment of scare and of helplessness. As I find is typical, family swooped in to help: my sister’s strong and sure, calm approach to both of us, my brother-in-law’s in-a-pinch swift trip to the pharmacy for incidentals, a little cousin’s calming presence, everyone carrying luggage and offering prayers—all swooped us in a wave to the plane to which we arrived, just at the end of the line, and managed to continue our journey. Perhaps the same is true in the ordinary day—those who with just one word or action might set you on your way, and in turn perhaps help someone else along it.

Every day in this current news cycle is a sigh for me and for many—so much hatred and illogical thinking hurting real people in real ways. So little use of real knowledge and actual encounter and experience, and so much more generalization of entire groups of people. Daily I find news that runs absolutely counter to every experience I have had, and knowledge I have formed through others who are experts in their fields or active in the world assisting those affected. Everyone’s journeying, trying to find that home space, that place, physical or not, in which acceptance and compassion are givens. For me now, home is wherever my spiritual self has and does grow, and I will remain in that presence. My take away now is that presence isn’t manifest in only one way, one place. When we are for one other, we create a home for each other—and that makes the world our home. Certainly there will be disagreement and tousling in that space just as much as compassion, but the hope is we’ll walk away from either instance renewed, with the perspective we need to continue on the way.

Visitas

Part of what I find missing in the world today is a desire to be with others--to really just be with them and to see them as they are and not how you wish them to be. I spent a great deal of time as a child getting in the car and going on visitas with Mom and Dad, resenting it, wishing I were home reading a book or taping my favorite song off the radio airwaves. Sometimes weddings were interesting, because all the kids got to play any which way, and not just sit around and talk, but as many of those as I attended in the 80s, they were still not as often as weekly visitas,  as regular as Mass, wrapped up in a cultural experience. The immigrant experience of sharing was one of saudade, of revisiting (the lost experiences of youth, of another country, of family far away)--not just the visit at hand, so sometimes it really wasn't about the present moment, which was what I think frustrated me as a youth, made me desire to be elsewhere, perhaps the opposite of saudade. Still, it was formative.

All those weddings, all those homes we were dragged to as kids—all of it had impact.  The imprint left on me runs the range of values—how to entertain yourself; how to respect elders; how to observe in situations you don’t really know what’s going on; what’s inherent to the culture of a language; what’s important to those old versus those young; the ways in which we share; the ways in which we accept—things and people—or not.  So much more, really.  I realize now in my 40s that there’s something that resides in me of that memory, something that touches who I am in this moment, even so many years gone. Somewhere in that tangle of memory there is  a piece of myself that remains omnipresent, the girl measuring her imagination. Could I have imagined it as it measures thus far? Did the pieces of the puzzle I set down then have an impact on the now?  I am in fact an observer, one who then uses the observation in some way creative or which will bring new perspective in matters of faith. I have absorbed the lessons of compassion through the lived experiences of those young and old, those unlike and like me. I think of my cousin who went to bat for me when I was made fun of as a preteen—the justice of that act. I think of the ways my parents spoke to others at wakes and funerals as much as weddings or church gatherings. Of the way my friends observed the differences between us. Of the weird worlds and lives of others in their homes and amongst their families.

I keep reaching for the lessons, like worn and loved books on the shelf, to review and remember and enact again. To be more human with each visit to myself. To cherish the ways in which the Spirit prods me on, ever onward. To reconcile presence with saudade,  with that bittersweet understanding that life is in fact guided in the moment by so much more than what we think is the sum of our parts. Of course I see that now that I am a migrant on my way. The comfort comes in knowing I always have the disparate elements of those gifts I received and rejected as a child--finding them still attached, ready, springing up even as I pray for guidance in any given moment, in any place. I am hoping I can always cherish these unseen and unappreciated gifts and perhaps pass them along. Then my faith can become a living thing, not a static ritual--something shared and accepted, not buried and resurfaced without intention.

On Earth as it is in Heaven

On earth as it is in heaven.

That line has always gotten me. It’s the point in the prayer where I have, since a child, thought about what that line between heaven and earth is—and so many images have come to mind, images that slip into my dreams and into my writings. Is the line that moment the sky opens up on a highway, and the sky and tree line become distinct?  Or the first steps onto a beach, clumsy, enchanted, the sound of the surf entering deep into my head? The taste of something truly delicious and taking time to savor it, really tasting what’s good? Or perhaps the moment of understanding between loved ones, a feeling present?

There are too many to describe, and even words fail—you know these moments because many of you have experienced them, even just one.  And for the most part we can all experience them if we find a way, given who we are as individuals, to see what’s before our eyes: the ones in our head and the ones in our barely perceptible self, that soul eye.

That requires an incredible amount of energy, a willingness to be humble and humiliated and willing to surrender desire sometimes, in favor of the bigger thing, of the greater beauty. Such an excruciating and exquisite thing, all at once, this search for God, who is always searching for us.

Persistence of Memory

If you look long enough—say, for 20 years—you might find a place that feels like home, even if it isn’t. This place might fill your own memories and experiences in a way unexpected, maybe even catch you off-guard with its charm: a place where you can find your favorite foods from at least three different cultures, though not quite your own. A place where your friends come and go with such frequency you don’t realize how much you’re learning from this until years later when you feel their loss with a keener sense. A place where you can count on seeing others commit themselves to something good and where you actually know each other by face—small enough for this. This place also has its faults: its ego, its backwardness, a lifestyle you’re unaccustomed to but willing to put up with just to be close to the beauty and to the goodness that’s left when you finally find a way to look past the bullshit.

But you’re cheating on this hometown, visiting with other cities, dreaming of other places to be, if only to get away from the cloying personality, the obsessiveness, the strangeness of home. But there’s no other, really; it’s always a comparison point. It’s always there, at the back of your memory, persistent.

Maybe it will always be the real start, even though there have been so many. Maybe home really is in every start. It’s more under your skin, something that exists inside you and was there with each new iteration of time and space. Another creation.

Anger as a Gift

I am not sure what to say about guns and children and killing that has not already been said.  I can say that it’s beyond frustrating—indeed, disheartening—to see the kinds of immoral arguments for the maiming of life that those who stand for clearly believe without questioning. I feel myself challenged in my faith to accept these individuals as brother and sisters—and yet I do, and I desire deeply for their conversation of heart. For us to see the same Gospel with the same eyes, not with the dubious trust in metal and commerce, not with this self-interest, not with murder and malice and maiming, but with the same heart these children exhibit when they see a wrong and know it to be wrong (and speak out against the wrong unabashedly).  I am still, at the age of 45, astounded at the ways to which we can disagree as human beings on things that should be clear-cut, that matter most.


It’s a God-send, I think, that into my hands—right now— came Arun Gandhi’s book The Gift of Anger. My surprise came in finding the same message Christ offers us, too, about the nature of living and dying by the sword, but there’s more even to this. Gandhi’s grandson echoes the message of anger as a sign of something more, and a place to start seeking grace. Grace is in the way which Christ sees the adulterer, the betrayer, the tax collector, the prostitute, the ne’er-do-wells as we design them, seeing beyond them and into God’s mercy. Arun Gandhi writes about anger as a starting point, a place for us to begin a new story which moves away from that anger.  Anger, if we recognize it for what it is, need not remain that way—if we guide it to something which will bring light into the world.


But it starts with recognizing the anger in that way: as a starting point. Not the thing itself. Then we can look past our own narratives, the stories we tell ourselves, and see what is real, what touches our souls and risks our lives, and makes us human. The we can act as one, and our actions can begin to look like what God has called us to do through the ages: to put down the violence of our choices and choose radical accompaniment.

The Unnameable Grace

How many times have you found yourself wondering where you got the strength or ability or fortitude to get through something that seems impossible?  I’m seeing this pattern in my life more and more, and part of it comes from taking time for meditation to create awareness of what’s already there.

In my middle age I find it striking to learn some things later than my peers, even as I have made it a personal life goal to study the soul and the spirit.  What’s happened is that God sent my way a bevy of people doing the same, challenging me and making me even better, and calling me to make them better by turn. Little by little we’re heightening each other’s creativity and awareness, and that’s meant for me perhaps the best birthday present ever: this sense that my age is a gift in itself. It comes with so many things, this full package.

I’ve been hyperaware, until recently, about the kind of things that just make me paranoid and worried about the slightest. I’m trying to insert into my life a hyperawareness of God in everyday, ordinary moments—how amazing that feels in all my senses once I have gotten away from allowing paranoia to take over that awareness, gotten away from the need (though not always— I’m human) to control things. When I don’t— as soon as I let go— I see a flourishing, a flowering, a goodness that I could not have imagined or created myself. The hyperawareness of God in my daily living allows me to relish in such a way that everything seems to have a light, something internal wanting out, wanting and waiting to become more present.

Wonder

The morning back from Christmas break, in spite of all the whining and general malaise not having a schedule can bring, is always a little heartbreaking for me. I get something from my oldest’s excitement about rejoining her friends at school, and my littlest’s joy in play—they’re clearly not worried about the passage of time.

But I am.

In a way, I consider too closely the passage of time, mark its moments and wonder, when next? What next?

Why not just be in the moment completely and touch what God is handing me now?

I know what you’re thinking: there are many reasons why. Daily any one of us gets caught up in the hustle and bustle of what we perceive as life. You’re right.  My point, though, is that when we pause for any holiday—that actual making time for time—we realize we are, many of us, creatures of habit and control, unable to be still until given the opportunity to understand the richness of stillness.  I found this year stillness to be more valuable than any present anyone could have given me, and now I seek it like I do when I’m craving Jingle Jangle after New Year’s Day: all but gone, the memory of desire left to prove its enticement.  I’m finding stillness in unexpected ways, and straining sometimes to grasp it, to cherish the smallest moments shared with family and friends, knowing that in the past I would be resentful of not having more time, more everything—and now knowing more isn’t everything.

If there’s anything like a resolution in any of this, I’m reaching and striving for it this year. I’m inserting into my life more pause.  I hope your year goes well and that you find the same pleasant surprise in that moment when you notice the truth about time, about those you love, about what you cherish and value. And Happy New Year to you!