Just Faith, Everyday

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...

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 ...

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 soci...

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 bee...

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 ci...

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 ...

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 f...

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...

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 ...

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. ...

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 int...

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 p...