Creating a New World

I recently saw a sign posted on Facebook that said, “If you feel like you don’t fit in this world, it’s because you are here to help create a new one.” Disciples of Jesus view the world as a place to experience and practice love, gratitude, and oneness, so it’s not surprising we are distressed when refugees seeking asylum are treated as a threat, when women and children are abused and devalued, and when the earth’s resources are plundered. At such times, we need to put our faith in the indomitability of wisdom that is woven into the fabric of the universe and always bends toward love.

Let us take to heart these words of Dorothy Day: “A pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions. Each one of our thoughts, words and deeds is like that. No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There's too much work to do.” It might seem that our prayer and small acts of kindness don’t make much of a difference, but we are called to sow the seed, not judge its effectiveness. To participate in the life of God is by definition to create a new world, because God constantly makes all things new. Don’t fret if you feel like you don’t fit in this world, for many of its ways are false and will not endure. The spirit of wisdom will help us live into a new way of being.

Healing Through Presence

Jesus made it clear that those who follow him will be able to continue his works: “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father” (Jn 14: 12). Indeed, some of the saints were known for being great healers, including St. Walburga, whose feast we celebrate today. Yet in today’s gospel reading, Jesus’ disciples were unable to drive a destructive spirit from a young boy, and when they asked Jesus why, he said, “This kind can only come out through prayer and fasting.”

Most of us can’t imagine ourselves performing miraculous cures or driving demons out of a person. Upon contemplation, though, we can recall times when our presence soothed the troubled spirit of a friend or a family member recovered fully from a difficult surgery after we prayed intently for them. The key to these occasions of healing appears to be presence.

Recently I was touched by a scene from the movie Inside Out, in which our emotions are personified. When one character was grieving, the character Joy tried to make him feel better by distracting him and trying to fix his problem. The character Sadness, on the other hand, sat down next to him and said, “I’m sorry you lost something you loved. It’s gone. Forever.” She then let him reminisce about the good times he had with the thing he had lost, touched him gently on the shoulder, and let him cry. He was then able to pick himself up and move on with life.

The skill of being present that prayer teaches and the emptying of self that provides room for compassion does seem miraculous, but only because so few people practice it. If we all engaged in deep prayer and self emptying, the miraculous would seem commonplace because we would offer each other the healing gift of presence through Christ, who lives in us.

Listening and the Good Life

When we practice selective listening, the Bible can provide any type of guidance we desire. Consider the following observations from scripture:

                    • How foolish to rise early (Ps 127)

                    • Money answers for everything (Eccl 10:19)

                    • There is nothing better for humans than to eat or drink (Eccl 2:24)

The temptation to hear only what we want to hear cuts us off from wisdom, which is what leads us to the good life. If no one rises early, who will plow snowy streets and attend to the sick in hospitals? If money answers for everything, how many nonmonetary gifts from God and the poor will we miss out on? If there is nothing better for us than to eat or drink, how can we avoid weighty health issues?

To “listen and incline the ear of your heart,” as St. Benedict advises, entails having the patience (and inclination) to listen to the whole story. The good life hangs in the balance.

God the Midwife

Most of us are familiar with the line from Psalm 139 in which the psalmist says to God, “You knit me in my mother’s womb.” However, it appears that God is not only creator but midwife, because in Psalm 71, the psalmist says, “…it was you who took me from my mother’s womb.”

What a wonderfully intimate and feminine image: God as a midwife who guides us through the narrow passage into new life and catches us when we emerge. Yet somehow that sense of intimacy fades as we grow out of childhood and feel the need to assert our independence—making our own decisions, forging our own path. God the midwife waits patiently for us to remember that early partnership when it was we who made the journey but She who facilitated our passage.

Whether we accept or resist God’s guidance throughout adulthood, at the end of our earthly life, God the midwife assists us again in the journey everyone must make—this time through the passageway of death that leads to a new world beyond our understanding. When it is our turn to make that journey, may we proceed with trust that God will be there to catch us when we emerge into new life.

Looking for Signs

This morning, Sr. Janelle came to the breakfast table in an exultant mood. “Look! My bread is toasted perfectly! On both sides! I am favored this day by the Lord!”

Although she was talking with tongue firmly in cheek, we do have an often unconscious tendency to interpret the happenings of our day as signs from God. A perfectly cooked egg at breakfast? I’m going to have a great day! Tepid water in the shower? What did I do to offend you, O God?

In today’s Gospel (Mk 8: 11-12), Jesus “sighed deeply in his spirit” when the Pharisees asked him for a sign. The truth is, we are constantly surrounded by signs within and about us. Traditionally, they have been referred to as the fruits of the Spirit. When we treat others as vessels of Christ, when our actions are an extension of God’s love, when we live in a constant state of gratitude for the blessings of creation—these are signs that we are in alignment with God within us. On the other hand, being self-absorbed, being overly concerned with the things of the world, and and feeling slighted and dissatisfied are signs that we are on the wrong track.

God is not a micromanager or a short-order cook; it is up to us to make choices about how we will live each day, regardless of the palatability of our morning eggs and toast. We can trust the fruits of our lives and our inner barometer to keep us on the right path. If nothing else, we can say to God with Thomas Merton, “I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road.”

Invitation to Silence

One of the gifts snow gives us (after the rumble of plows and scraping of shovels have ceased) is a hush—an invitation to silence. It is a gift we can give to each other as well, as this poem I recently wrote illustrates. 

Belonging

Words belong to each other.

—Virginia Woolf

                                                                  If words belong

                                                                  to each other,

                                                                  And if over the years

                                                                  you and I ingest words

                                                                  by teething on the book

                                                                  Goodnight Moon,

                                                                  eating the “Happy”

                                                                  on our birthday cake,

                                                                  slurping down alphabet 

                                                                  soup, and taking the words

                                                                  out of each other's mouths,

                                                                  Then we ourselves become

                                                                  words made flesh with all

                                                                  the consequences that

                                                                  belonging to someone brings,

                                                                  Entering into a holy pact

                                                                  to feed each other silence

                                                                  so we may come into 

                                                                  being and be heard.

                                                                             —Jennifer Halling, OSB

How God Speaks

In her book From the Tools of Good Works to the Heart of Humility, Aquinata Bockman, OSB, notes that God speaks to us through different channels. In actuality, God can and does use everything as a channel—that is, a means of communication or expression. Thus gray skies or brilliant sunrises, music or silence, and smooth pathways or bumps in the road are all channels God uses to speak to us. The message is remarkably consistent: “I am with you. Do not be afraid. Come experience new life with me.”

Often we don’t receive the message, despite the many ways it is communicated to us. It may be that we are too busy with our own agendas to listen. It may be that we are expecting a different message (typically something we want to hear), so we don’t recognize the message that is actually being sent. It may be that we believe God doesn’t speak to us when we make mistakes or are experiencing pain or difficult times.

The song Open My Eyes by Jesse Manibusen (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbihOyKIvi8) provides a simple meditation to help us be open to God's channels of communication. When we ask God to open our eyes, our ears, and our heart, we can come to the conclusion reached in the song:

I live within you
Deep in your heart, oh, love
I live within you
Rest now in me

The More Loving One

On the feast of St. Scholastica, we celebrate a triumph of will between siblings, of sorts. Scholastica was granted a favor from God—a storm that prevented her brother, Benedict, from leaving her and returning to his monastery, thus enabling them to spend more time together—because, as St. Gregory the Great noted in book two of his Dialogues, “she loved more.”

How would the world be different if we competed to be the one who loved more instead of the one who had more money or more power? In his poem The More Loving One, W. H. Auden notes,

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

The paradox of a competition regarding who can be the most loving is that no one loses, for love begets love. As our societal celebration of love—St. Valentine’s Day—approaches, may this be our mantra: Let the more loving one be me.

Abram and the Love of Money

At morning prayer these days our scripture readings are following the saga of Abram/Abraham. It’s such a familiar story that sometimes I feel like there is nothing new to glean from it. Then, this morning, the following line about Abram and Lot caught my attention: “…their possessions were so great that they could not live together.”And how did Abram acquire all these possessions? When he and Sarai fled into Egypt to escape famine, Abram passed off Sarai as his sister rather than his wife. Because of her beauty Pharoah took Sarai as his wife, and “Abram fared well on her account, and he acquired sheep, oxen, male and female servants, male and female donkeys, and camels.”

Abram let his desire for wealth imperil his relationships with his closest family members. Somewhere in his transformation into our holy father Abraham, however, he learned the wisdom expressed in Hebrews 13:5: “Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have; for God has said, “I will never leave you or forsake you.”

Clearly, Abraham’s story continues to offer new food for meditation. This time, it has led me to the following question: What transformation will I undergo when I learn to trust that God will never leave me or forsake me, in spite of my faults and failings?

Be My Guest

The psalms provide a litany of praising God, thanking God, and acknowledging God’s great works. Yet all too often, when we close our prayer books, our awareness of God fades into the background of our day-to-day lives. As a result, we are missing out on a great source of comfort, guidance, and joy. What, then, can we do to increase our awareness of God’s presence in our lives?

The following sentence from 74 Tools for Good Living by Michael Casey caught my attention: “The monastic life is a training in living in the presence of God.” How is that so? It is certainly true that monastics turn their attention to God through communal and private prayer several times a day, which is helpful, but that still leaves a lot of time when we are engaged in other activities. I suspect that the monastic key to living in the presence of God is actually the insistence on offering hospitality at all times, as St. Benedict says in Chapter 53 of the Rule: “All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ.”

                                   

It might be that we operate under too narrow a definition of “guest.” If, as the Merriam-Webster dictionary indicates, one definition of guest is “an organism sharing the dwelling of another”—and if we all share a dwelling in the body of Christ—then everyone we meet should be treated as a guest who reveals Christ to us. A simple way to remember that God is present in everyone is to make a conscious effort to smile at them, just as we would smile at Jesus if he were to appear to us with his radiance and the wounds marking his love.

Perhaps we who are training to live in the presence of God need a new motto: Smile, and God who is in your presence will smile back! :)

Belonging To Each Other

In the one recording we have of the writer Virginia Woolf, she said, “Words belong to each other.” So then, by extension:

• If Jesus is the Word made flesh, and

• In the Eucharistic celebration we eat    of this Word, then

• Through membership in the body of    Christ we too become the Word          made flesh, which means

• We belong to each other. 

What does it mean to belong to each other? The risen Christ summarized it in a command to Peter: “Feed my sheep.” We are responsible for sustaining each other, physically and spiritually. On a physical level, we need to provide food for those who are hungry. Spiritually, we need to offer each other the hospitality of silence that creates a space for God’s Word as it exists in others to come into being.

When we listen to others, then, the Word of God comes to us through them. Let us incline the ear of our hearts to those to whom we belong.

Refreshing Our Spiritual Practices

I have found that concluding my day by jotting down answers to a series of “examen” questions is a helpful contemplation tool. Some of the questions remain constant, such as:

• How did I encounter Christ today?

• What was I most grateful for?

• What was I least grateful for?

• What delighted me?

I continue to tinker with other questions. For example, “What did I learn by listening today?” too often led to a response such as “Sister Eugenia broke a fingernail.” Recasting it as “How did God speak to me today?” has proven to be much more fruitful.

It is interesting to consider how God might be talking to us through other people. For example, recently I was asked if I would make a presentation at a conference, and my immediate inclination was to say no. However, considering the possibility that God might be speaking to me through this invitation—saying, in effect, that I need to challenge myself to go outside my comfort zone—provides a different perspective and makes me more open to new creative endeavors.

It’s easy to get in a rut with our spiritual practices. When they become rote and no longer bear fruit, a little tinkering can open us to sacred surprises.