Do Something for Others

At morning prayer on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we listened to the following stirring words by Dr. King. He clearly was a man who “listened and inclined the ear of his heart” to scripture and used it as a guide for how to live. When I heard these words, I thought, “This is what it means to be a Christian”—though somehow, we tend to lose sight of Jesus’ call to service and sacrifice as we get wrapped up in our own day-to-day world.

Dr. King’s words lead me to ask myself, “Who do I choose to identify with? Who do I choose to give my life to? What way am I going? How am I going to respond to the voice I myself have heard saying, ‘Do something for others’?” It’s a worthwhile examination of conscious at the midpoint of the first month of the year—the setting of an intention that can transcend the preoccupations and focus on self that often fill our days.

I choose to identify with the underprivileged.

I choose to identify with the poor.

I choose to give my life for the hungry.

I choose to give my life for those

     who have been left out of the sunlight of opportunity.

I choose to live for and with those who find themselves

     seeing life as a long, desolate corridor with no exit sign.

This is the way I’m going.

If it means suffering a little bit,

     I’m going that way.

If it means sacrificing,

     I’m going that way.

If it means dying for them,

     I’m going that way,

     because I heard a voice saying,

     “Do something for others.”

                                            

                                                                                                                      — Martin Luther King Jr.

Tuning Our Ear to the Truth

At evening prayer on Thursday, a line from Psalm 49 caught my attention: “I tune my ear to the truth.” The best tuning fork at our disposal is the gospel, because when we attempt to live as Jesus did—forgiving, serving, being in relationship with God—we know we are walking the way of truth. As Joan Chittister says in Wisdom Distilled From the Daily, “Listen with a critical ear for the sound of the gospel in everything you do. And don’t do what isn’t a gospel act, no matter who says so, no matter who orders it, no matter how sacred the institution that demands it.”

In our complex world, it takes a lot of effort to tune our ear to the truth—to make sure we aren’t purchasing shoes that were made in a sweatshop or drinking coffee made from beans that were harvested with child labor or investing in the stock of companies that trash the earth. Tuning our ear to the truth often requires living simply as a way of avoiding the affronts to the gospel that are engrained in much of life in our society.

We can take comfort in knowing that if we keep our ears and hearts open, God promises to lead us in the way of truth. Let us pray that we and our world will be willing to undergo the tune-up we need to live more harmoniously in 2018.

Coming to Our Senses

As with so many things in life, we tend to take our senses for granted until illness or aging diminishes our ability to see, hear, smell, taste, or touch. I’m currently contending with an eye infection, which means I will be wearing glasses instead of contact lenses for a couple of weeks. As a result, my depth perception has changed, and I need to be careful when going down stairs or stepping off curbs.  Although this infection is a nuisance, it does offer the unexpected gift of heightened gratitude for the awesome gift of sight—a gift of which I am rarely cognizant.

At one time in human history, the senses were uniformly seen as gateways to sin rather than gifts from a God who meets us through our interactions with the world. However, as the mystic Meister Eckhart said, “If humankind could have known God without the world, God would never have created the world.” We know the world, and thus God, through our senses. Indeed, Richard Rohr suggests that Jesus came as a human being to teach us how to be a fully alive human being here on this earth—Jesus, who enjoyed eating and drinking, who healed the sick and injured through touch, who heard God’s voice say that he was God’s beloved son.

We all have the impression that time passes more quickly the older we get. Our senses offer us the great gift of slowing down to contemplate and savor what we see, hear, taste, smell, and feel. May we not wait until diminishment sets in to be aware of the gifts of our senses and use them to know God and enjoy being with God in the world.

The Work of Christmas

I have mixed feelings about the end of the Christmas season. The Myers-Briggs personality test shows that I am an “INFJ,” and as an introvert, I have had a surfeit of feasting and socializing. My intuition says it is high time to focus on the big picture again instead of the concrete details of holiday decorating and baking. My judgmental, organized self is ready to get back to the predictability of our regular prayer and meal schedule. On the other hand, the part of me that prefers feeling to thinking will miss the warmth of the Christmas lights and the good spirits generated by our daily reminders in prayer and song that God came to dwell among us and is here to stay.

Howard Thurman says that after Epiphany, “The work of Christmas begins: To find the lost, to heal the broken, to feed the hungry, to release the prisoner, to rebuild the nations, to bring peace among people, to make music in the heart.” I don’t think we are able to do that work capably unless we somehow find a way to instill in ourselves a perpetual awareness of and gratitude for the wonder of the incarnation. Then we can participate in the life of God among us by doing the work of God. As Richard Rohr suggests, “When you get up in the morning, ask yourself, ‘What aspect of God, what aspect of love, am I being called to incarnate in the world today?’”

Illuminating God’s presence in the world may seem like a presumptuous task, but as Sr. Mary Faith said in her poem During the Night, once God became flesh “All flesh sees / its own glory too. / Wherever we are on the journey / to Him, we all feel better / about our path and love it as it is.” Christ was born for us, and that’s just as true for us in the ordinary time of January as it was in December’s season of Christmas.

The Light of Christ Surrounds Us

In our Christmas scripture readings, we hear John the Evangelist proclaim that “The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.” Indeed, Christ the light infuses not just everyone but everything, as demonstrated in the lights from our Christmas creche that dance in the pitcher of wine on our altar table. The light of Christ brings life through the melding of Jesus’ incarnation and surrender to death, leading to the resurrection in which we all share.

With the feast of Epiphany approaching, we are invited to open our eyes to God’s light wherever it appears, even in the most unusual of places—for example, a glint on the bumper of a car, the silver hairs we see in the mirror, a golden thread unraveling from the edge of a towel. The light has come into the world. It is now up to us to develop the insight to recognize it and respond to this gift with joy and gratitude.

God's Magnetic Personality

I remember playing with magnets as a child and being fascinated by the strong attraction between the north and south poles that made them snap together and resist being separated. This memory surfaced because of a line in an article by Patty Fawkner, SGS, in which she compared God to a magnet.

When it comes to magnetic personalities, you might say that God is unparalleled! A magnet produces its own magnetic field that then interacts with other magnetic fields. The magnetic field produced by God is so powerful that it attracts all of us, even atheists (who, after all, spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about God).

Although we are made in the image of God, we are not God, so when we try to approach God as an equal (south pole to south pole), the action is repellant and we are distanced from God. However, when we go “true north” and remember who we are—persons who came into being through God’s love—our fields become aligned and we and God become a strong, almost inseparable force.

I like the idea of being attracted to God instead of being pursued by God (as with the “hound of heaven” image). God always extends the invitation to “come ‘round right” and be united in love. Stanley Mooneyham noted, “Love talked about can be easily turned aside, but love demonstrated is irresistible,” and God is constantly displaying love for us, most notably through the incarnation we celebrate during the Christmas season. May we enjoy the fruits of alignment with God in the year to come!

The Grace of Holy Perseverance

Instead of making New Year’s resolutions, one way to contemplate how we want to be in the world in the year ahead is to think of a word we can use as sort of a mantra to echo through the year. In a way, my word was given to me by the community when I began my canonical novice year, as sister after sister told me, “I wish you the grace of holy perseverance.”

In 2018, my main focus needs to be perseverance in my monastic studies and prayer. If Anna, the prophetess mentioned in the story of the presentation of Jesus in the temple, can withdraw from the world and pray for more than 50 years, I can certainly do it for another six months!

Perseverance is also a quality greatly needed in our society today—especially perseverance in advocacy for persons without health care, for children facing deportation because they were brought to the US illegally (“Dreamers”), and for the earth itself as it is endangered by global warming and overconsump-tion. As Elie Wiesel said, “There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”

At a time when the world is greatly in need of squeaky wheels, may we all be blessed with the grace of holy perseverance.