Trust Walk

Unlike so many of us who fret about what our future holds, St. Mary Elizabeth Hesselblad prayed, “Dear Lord, I do not ask to see the path….” How can we learn that sense of trust?

Fr. John Kavanaugh gives us a clue in a meditation on the story of the road to Emmaus, when he observes, “And then Jesus meets them on the way. He doesn’t come to them in Jerusalem. He doesn’t wait for them at home. Rather, he meets them where they are—on the road, amid their journey, right smack in the middle of all the pain, frustration, and despair that threatens to overwhelm them.”

As St. Mary Elizabeth knew, it is not necessary to see the path, because no matter what path we find ourselves on, Christ is already there. The same understanding is expressed in Psalm 139: “…from your presence, where can I flee? If I go to the heavens, you are there; if I sink to the nether world, you are present there. If I take the wings of the dawn, if I settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall guide me….”

Antonio Machado said, “Traveler, there is no path. You make the path by walking.” And so we walk in trust, knowing that whatever path we traverse will be blessed because we never walk alone.

Seasonal Impatience

Last night the temperature got as low as 37 degrees in Atchison, and snow is in the forecast in some northern regions of the United States. Doesn't the earth know we are ready to plant tomatoes? Nature gives us the opportunity to learn patience and to accept what each day brings, as described in the following poem.

Late Winter Canticle

We need spring, we need it desperately,

and usually, we need it before God is 
willing to give it to us. —Peter Gzowski

Enough of this sniveling snow

How long, O God, until you return

with your thunder and lightning?

I set forth a springtime sacrifice—

daffodil bulbs

the finest compost

            butter crunch lettuce seed

            O God, to you I cry,

            to you I make supplication

The bird feeders are filled,

the garden hose reconnected

            I know you uphold the afflicted;

            O God, make haste to answer me!

In search of the light

we turn our clocks ahead

            Be exalted, O God, above the heavens;

            let your glory be over all the earth!

And the wise ones

keep a bag of ice melt handy

            This is the day the Lord has made;

            let us rejoice and be glad in it

A Musical Model of Community

The Fountain City Brass Band provided not only a wonderful concert at the Mount on Sunday but a meditation on the Body of Christ in action:

• This band was indeed many parts—soprano cornet, solo cornet, repiano cornet, 2nd cornet, 3rd cornet, flugelhorn, tenor horn, baritone, trombone, bass trombone, euphonium, E-flat bass, B-flat bass, various percussion instruments, and conductor—that melded together into one body to create beautiful music.

• Had any members of the band been missing, the sound wouldn’t have been as rich and stirring.

• Different instruments came to the forefront in different pieces of music, and opportunities existed for soloists to shine.

• A few musicians played more than one instrument when the need existed.

• The audience became a part of this musical body through our attentive listening and applause, and this connection was honored when the band played “Happy Birthday” for Sr. Rosann Eckart, who was called forth to conduct the band as they played for her.

• The band members aren’t paid but are volunteers who perform out of love for the music.

I’m grateful that the members of the Fountain City Brass Band responded to the invitation to become part of this exceptional body of musicians, and for reminding us, as we sometimes sing, “What can be sweeter to us than the voice of the Lord inviting us? Behold in his loving kindness, the Lord shows us the way to life.” The way to life entails learning to live in community, and when we do, we will have beautiful music to accompany us on the way.

Anticipatory Thanks

Intercessory prayer is a bit of a conundrum. If “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him (Mt 6:8),” why do we need to ask? Yes, intercessory prayer can remind us of our reliance on God for all things, which fosters humility. However, it also seems to focus our attention on what we lack and implies an uncertainty that God will provide unless we remind him of our needs. As demonstrated by the story of the Israelites who bemoaned the seeming absence of water and food in the desert, a lack of trust that God will provide is damaging to our relationship with God.

Instead of asking God to give us what we need, a different approach is thank God in advance for meeting our needs—which, incidentally, also fosters humility as we recognize that all gifts come from God. Thus, instead of praying that a friend’s house would sell, I thanked God for sending the perfect buyer for the house. Instead of praying for healing for a friend’s jaw pain, I thanked God for relieving her pain. And within the past two weeks, a contract was placed on the house and an abscessed wisdom tooth was diagnosed and removed.

Is thanking God in advance for gifts received an attempt to manipulate God into giving us what we want? I don’t think so. God’s timing and God’s manner of responding to our needs are still in God’s hands. However, anticipatory thanks signals trust that God knows us intimately, knows what we need on our path, and will provide it, instilling in us a stance of gratitude. What would happen at the Mount if we stopped asking God to send us new community members and instead thanked God for sending new members to join us? At the very least, I believe it would help diminish our worry about the future, which is in God’s hands anyway—thanks be to God!

Sharpening Our Vision

Many of the psalms refer to “Sheol,” a place where, it was believed, people go after death to exist in a state of suspended animation—no thought, no feeling, no presence of God. However, in Psalm 139, we see a dramatic shift in the concept of Sheol, for “…if I sink to the nether world, you are present there (Ps 139:8).” Now God is understood to be present even in Sheol! If that is the case, what is the difference between Sheol and heaven? It seems to comes down to our ability to see, to perceive, God’s presence. We will experience a place very differently if we believe God does not exist there, even when God is in fact there.

The scriptures give us several examples of people who failed to recognize Jesus after his resurrection, including Mary of Magdala, who thought he was a gardener, and Cleopas and his companion, who did not see Jesus in the stranger who joined them on the road to Emmaus. Thomas declared he would not believe Jesus had returned until he put his finger into the nailmarks. Through these appearances, Jesus gave us a guide for how to recognize him—through his voice when he calls our name, through the breaking of the bread, and through his wounds. It’s tricky, though; did I recognize Jesus in the voice of my convalescing grandmother when she called me to help her with the bedpan, or in my most recent meal in the dining room, or in the incision that caused my father so much pain after his lung surgery?

God appears to us unexpectedly, so even with the guidebook provided by Jesus, we need to work on sharpening our vision. Perhaps we should just assume, as Psalm 139 proclaims, that there is nowhere God is not present. How would that change the way we experience life and respond to what each day brings?

The Master Gardener

It is not surprising that, in John’s account of the first appearance of the risen Jesus to Mary of Magdala, she mistook him for a gardener. Christine Valtner Painter has noted that, before Jesus’ arrest, “The garden was the container for his deepest prayer.” Now Jesus himself has experienced the complete life cycle of the garden: birth, flowering, harvest, death, and rebirth. He has dwelled for a time in the darkness of the earth and knows its secrets. He is truly the Master Gardener!

Painter also notes that “Earth is the primordial sacrament,” a means of divine grace that has existed since the beginning of human life. Flowering dogwoods and lilacs and sprouting seeds certainly are signs of the spiritual reality that life follows death, a reality that has been personified in the person of Jesus. Therefore, our Easter season wardrobe should include a flower tucked behind our ear and dirt under our fingernails, as we meditate on the earth that once contained the body of Jesus and blooms now with the joy of the resurrection. 

A Model of Surrender

I once heard a story of a six-year-old boy, a non-Catholic, who was sent to a parochial school. Upon going to church for the first time and seeing the suffering Jesus hanging on the crucifix, he started to cry and said, “What happened to him?” An older child put his arm around him and said, “Don’t worry. It comes out okay in the end.”

It is not easy to remember the death of Jesus. However, commemorating his death is important, because just as Jesus modeled how to serve through washing the disciples’ feet, he modeled how to surrender to death. As Ronald Rolheiser notes, “In his passivity and dying he was able to give us something deeper than what he gave us through his strength and activity.” For some mysterious reason, human life ends in death, which makes it all the more astounding that God chose to become human in the person of Jesus. Perhaps one reason we must die is because it is the only way to learn how to totally surrender our lives to our Creator. Jesus came to show us that doing so leads to new life beyond our imagining.

When we were children, it was always easier to do something brave, like jump into the deep end of the swimming pool, after we saw someone else do it. Thanks to Jesus, letting go of our attachments, loves, work, and the pleasures of being human when we die will be a little easier because he showed us the way, and because we now know it will be okay in the end. 

The Holy Thursday Call to Companionship

The inmates at Lansing Correctional Facility don’t have the opportunity to participate in Holy Week liturgies, so I developed a prayer service in which we walk through Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday at our regular gathering on Wednesday night. In past years a priest was not available to preside at mass on this night, so I obtained permission to bring in a loaf of bread to break and share as part of our remembrance of Holy Thursday. This ritual makes a deep impression on the inmates; they thank me profusely for bringing the bread and mention it often throughout the year.

I believe this ritual means so much to them because they hunger both for “real” bread and for affirmation that they are included in the Body of Christ. In Spanish, the word “companion” means “with bread,” so by sharing Christ’s body in the form of bread, we become companions on the journey.

As we anticipate our celebration of Holy Thursday at the Mount, I’m grateful for the companionship of the community. It is easy to take that companionship for granted. This Holy Thursday, I will pray especially for those who hunger for the bread of life and someone to share it with.

A Call to Listen During Holy Week

Recently I attended an insightful presentation by Kathryn Damiano on “A Quaker Spirituality of Listening.” St. Benedict valued the practice of listening so highly that the word “listen” (an anagram of “silent,” by the way) is the first word of his rule. Listening seems like a simple activity, but consider what needs to happen for us to truly listen:

• We need to be awake and open to the presence of Christ in the person to whom we are listening

• We need to let go of what we think we know to be able to hear what is really being said

• We need to let go of impatience and trust that the Spirit will provide insight at her own pace

• We need to be quiet and practice listening to God within for guidance

Listening is crucial to our observance of Holy Week, as we attempt to empty ourselves of judgment, of separateness, and of the compulsive need for activity, as Jesus did, to hear the call to love and service at this moment in our lives. Jane Hirshfield said, “Attention alters what it touches.” May our attentive listening during Holy Week transfuse these days of remembrance and help us enter more deeply into the mystery of God-with-us who suffers, dies, and rises to new life.

Springtime Splendor

Springtime is unfolding beautifully here at the Mount, with a lush landscape of blooming redbud, crabapple, and dogwood trees, greening grass, and vibrant tulips. Here is a poem in honor of the exuberance triggered by the sights, smells, and sensations of the season. No matter what your day brings, treat yourself to some time outside to infuse yourself with the splendors of early spring!





Ring Bearer

If you were

to hew me down like a tree

you could trace

my years of drought and plenty,

but whether

the rings be thick or thin

you’ll notice

jagged spikes in the same spot

on each circle,

bursts of exuberance

prompted

by the smell of freshly tilled soil,

the season’s

first impossibly yellow daffodil,

and birdsong—

first fruits of a spring we

weren’t sure

would ever arrive,

and though the

year’s provenance has yet

to unfurl,

I know for certain it’s time

to plant peas

and turn the compost pile,

groundwork

for whatever life presents

in another

circle around the sun.

Right Relationship and the Slow, Slow Work of God

In a recent conversation with my friend Kate, she mentioned that during her years as a student she was arrested while protesting her university’s investments in South Africa. She was frustrated at the time because it seemed as though the protest didn’t have any effect. It was only years later that the University divested its holdings and the system of apartheid in South Africa was dismantled in response to global pressure. Thus, we should not be discouraged when our actions for justice do not yield immediate results. As Teilhard de Chardin said, “Above all, trust in the slow, slow work of God.”

I believe one reason God’s work is slow is because, as the Book of Wisdom indicates, justice/righteousness is based on relationship, not law, and among humans, acknowledging, building, and honoring relationships takes time. However, justice/righteousness is undying (Wisdom 1:15), so our actions on behalf of right relationship will always bear fruit, though it may not be visible until many years later. As Aesop, another chronicler of wisdom, noted, “No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.”

As Christians, we are called to be in relationship with the entire body of Christ, which includes not only our family, friends, and colleagues but persons throughout the world. That can feel daunting. One way to answer this call without being overwhelmed is by trying to live in right relationship with others in our day-to-day interactions. No act of kindness, no refusal to consume gossip posted on social media, no letter written to a congressional leader in support of health insurance coverage for the poor is ever wasted—for justice is undying.

Dignity and the Work of God

In his Rule, St. Benedict refers to prayer as “the work of God.” This term is unfamiliar to me, but it makes sense in many ways. Because both work and prayer are repetitive, they are sometimes soothing and sometimes tedious. At times work and prayer engage and stimulate the mind, and at other times the repetitiveness frees the mind to rest and be open to new insights. Perhaps most importantly, both work and prayer help us claim our dignity.

Pope Francis said, “Work is fundamental to the dignity of the person. Work, to use an image, ‘anoints’ with dignity, fills us with dignity, makes us similar to God who has worked and still works, who always acts.” That work makes us similar to God is an awesome thought. Perhaps even more awesome is that in praying we claim a relationship with God. The psalmist asks, “What is man that you should be mindful of him, or the son of man that you should care for him?” And yet, when we pray, God listens and enters into dialogue with us. What can confer more dignity than having the Almighty acknowledge our worth by being present to us?

Being anointed with dignity through work and prayer helps us be open to the promptings of the Spirit and act with courage to be agents of God’s justice and mercy. In the book of Daniel, we hear that Susanna, who was convicted of a crime she did not commit, cried aloud to God, with whom she clearly had a relationship. In response, “God stirred up the holy spirit of a young boy named Daniel,” who responded by speaking out on behalf of Susanna and proving her innocence. Prayer requires tenacity and devotion, but through the dignity it provides, we are given the power to participate in the marvelous works of God.