Just Faith, Everyday

Grief is of the moment, but grief is also a lifetime of negotiating an empty spot. And grief looks like many things right now. If you’re like me, you’re grieving the loss of some true and real things hard-earned: community, trust, understanding. Compassion.  It’s not all gone, but there’s a dearth of it right now in some places—and then, by God’s grace, there’s an uprising of compassion, a calling of many to do the right thing that stems only from something planted deep within each of us. To rise up, truly love, be genuine in our faith.  This alone gives me great hope in this time of toxicity. I still desperately miss my spiritual director Fr. Tom, who would have had much to say, ways to guide, even just a word, sometimes—to heal, coax in the right direction, touch the soul. My soul at times feels too far away from the ways he was able to bring people together, but I know he planted in me the smallest of mustard seeds and that growth begins. If you’re like me, perhaps you were...

January is this clean slate we created by marking time, and it always feels a bit cold emotionally, with the hard follow-up to the Christmas season, to the warmth of so many holiday celebrations in which families gather, commemorate, acknowledge life in its fullness and glory. January feels like a slap in the face by comparison. I resent this a little because my birthday is in January, and I joke and say that’s a holiday, too. In fact, there are nine shopping days until my birthday, in case you needed to know. I’m pretty easy to shop for. But seriously, back to this January thing: time is time. Time has continued, as have the ills and misfortunes we left, it seemed, in 2016. These follow, trail behind us ever-so-slightly as we continue. The gate of time is only an indicator for humans; beyond the gate we have to recognize the work that continues to call our attention. Whatever your work is, however you contribute something to this world, make it wholehearted and inspiring, make it coun...

Being over 40 means having every commercial addressed at you, begging money-spending, hoarding of all kinds of material goods.  It’s both funny and depressing. The music is the touch point, I have noticed: artists which seemed avant-garde in the time past currently hawking some kind of ware.  The online, media version of selling wares, anyhow.  It’s unnerving in part because the target is my middle age, my time when supposedly I am in the flush, in the black, willing to spend. Except I am not all these things. Oh, I’ll buy this and that, to be sure—I’m no angel.  But I choose to live a life more simply, to be Franciscan in my outlook on things, on daily decisions, ordinary, everyday. These commercials do nothing for me, and for this I am grateful and, at worst, annoyed. No, I do not think that Lexus will make me happier, or the new iPhone (I only now just got one, and even so I am skeptical of all this power in my hands).  I equally take joy in knowing that what...

What do I want to be new in my life? What do I need to leave behind? A meditation. I think it might be necessary, as the New Year approaches, to leave quite a bit behind. This has been a miserable year for so many, and certainly a miserable year for our collective consciousness. There is indeed much to fear, much to fight for, much to revile. Leaving behind and letting go does not mean ignoring. Don’t get me wrong on this matter: there’s much harder work yet to do because of the position we are in. It starts with changing minds and hearts on what matters most, and with meeting people where they are, with understanding while holding fast to belief. I have worked too long and too hard on social justice, on true connection with the God who made us, on openness to all as a way toward common good; I cannot and will not let that go simply because the new world order deems ignorance and cruelty and evil, or dismissiveness of others’ held beliefs and cherished rights, permissible. None of this...

How am I to write about these things I have stood for always, in some way; how am I to acknowledge and then help those suffering in fear?  Listen to them.  Listen without prejudice to the truly vulnerable. Place myself *near* the truly vulnerable.  I can certainly take the lessons of direction I’ve received, think through ways to ask the right questions, just as my greatest teachers have for me, to allow others to see their own unique path. Theirs is not mine, after all. Where I have to draw a line is in deliberate and hateful acts of racism, discrimination of any sort which cuts off or degrades human life.  I am appalled that there are people I know who don’t care about or even acknowledge this everyday reality. There can be love even if you don’t agree, even if you don’t share experiences or ways of life. Love is this at least. I think of children and how loved they can be, and how easily they can accept others in that love.  There’s naiveness in this, o...

Every leaf falls at its own pace. Accidents happen, and turn our lives upside down.  We become aware more often in the sudden and unexpected, unless we take time to listen to our everydayness, take time with the pace, not get paced. Recently returning to the Examen , I've found myself far more in touch with something internal and less disconnected from my family, far less likely to jump ahead in time, make assumptions, and let my emotions lead me. Instead, I am slowly relearning how to read myself, my daily situations, and others, pausing long enough to do this, and become more aware. I find so many think their own realities are the real ones, and others fake or wrong, but that’s our human problem—that we cannot see and won’t acknowledge the many facets of truth in reality, and have chosen to live for so long in surreality that it’s too hard to step out of it. That is, until you do step out, and then spend some time being in that space, not counting on the cues and tools that set y...

Getting lost within yourself is an unsettling feeling. What matters is counting on faith that things will happen, and people will get through. That there will be spirit enough to conquer the bad within and without, to cut through chaotic sound and fury, and lead in good ways.  What’s maybe most disheartening is when those around you give up on you.  Then it’s about really counting on the one who created you, trying to know, to grasp at not being alone in the struggle.  Words for me have always been my sanity point—writing itself as a way to make sense of the chaos and reach toward God. When I write, I find a way to draw out of me the many mixed emotions and ideas I have, all tangled together.  It’s extreme mess, this tangle, and all that I love and is important to me is in this mess, so I must, feel compelled, to disentangle. To look at the mess and see it for what it is.  It’s unsettling to see this mess, and feel helpless as to what to do with it.  I feel...