Home Ground

Like all farmers, my paternal grand-parents, my dad, and my aunts and uncles instinctively practiced phenology—the study of plants and animals’ seasonal life cycles. Their observations guided their decisions about when to plant and harvest, when to breed animals and set beaver traps, and when to look for mushrooms and wild berries. They knew the land intimately, respected its rhythms, and worked with it instead of trying to bend it to their will.

Most of us today are too distracted by our many activities to pay attention to the plants and critters around us. However, the pandemic has changed that. Now that we need to stay close to home to safeguard our health and that of others, we have an ideal opportunity to study the plants, animals, and insects that surround us.

Why should we bother? Closely observing our immediate environment helps us stay grounded in the present instead of worrying about what the future will bring. It feeds our wonder about the diversity of life God has created. It sharpens our vision and fosters humility through the reminder that we rely on plants and animals to sustain us with oxygen and food and that we too are subject to the cycle of life, death, and resurrection.

In the book The Color Purple, a character says, “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.” I don’t know if our inattention angers God, but I suspect God is sad that we fail to nourish our spirits with the marvels of creation that are literally everywhere around us.

Dispelling Our Resentments

The Gospel reading for mass yesterday (Mt. 18: 21-35) was centered on forgiveness, as a servant received dispensation of a huge debt by his king but then refused to extend the same grace to a fellow servant who owed him a much smaller sum.

I suspect that on a day-to-day basis, most of us aren’t challenged to forgive major offenses relating to betrayal, theft, physical injury, and the like. Rather, we are more often faced with letting go of irritations relating to the thoughtlessness, selfishness, and carelessness of others.

Interestingly, in one of our prayers at mass yesterday, we asked this of God: “Keep alive in us the memory of your mercy, that our angers may be calmed and our resentments dispelled.” How can our resentments be dispelled? I imagined them being blown away like dandelion seeds, but that image didn’t quite work, because then the seeds could take root elsewhere. I thought about our resentments being burned up and dispelled like smoke, but then the particles would still be hanging in the air. Dissolving our resentments like lemon juice in a glass of water doesn’t work either, because the water takes on the bitter flavor of the lemon.

To dispel resentments, it would appear that alchemy is required—that is, “a power or process that changes or transforms something in a mysterious or impressive way.” Mercy is the mysterious, impressive power that transforms our resentment into understanding and compassion—specifically, God’s unfailing mercy for our many offenses and failings. How does God’s mercy achieve this transformation? It makes us grateful, humble, and able to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes.

It would seem that yesterday’s prayer needs just a little tweaking: “Keep alive in us the memory of your mercy, O God, that our angers may be calmed and our resentments transformed into understanding and compassion.”

Abounding Goodness

About a week ago, Sr. Patricia Seipel collected some of the multitudinous zinnias from the Mount gardens and arranged them in small vases to grace our dining room tables. It was striking how this simple (albeit time consuming) act lifted our spirits.

We don’t know yet what wisdom we will gain from living through the current pandemic, because we are smack dab in the middle of it. However, one thing we already can say with confidence is that small acts of kindness and a focus on our blessings can help us counter the anxiety and negativity generated by this crisis.

Instead of commiserating about the day’s bad news, we can choose to be spreaders of good news that is just as real but often overlooked: Food banks are springing up to assist people who have lost their jobs. Students are attending online classes due to the ingenuity of their teachers. Musicians are forming virtual choirs so people don’t have to risk coming to concert halls. We can see acts of compassion and creativity all around us when our vision is not clouded by negativity.

Goodness still abounds in our world, and we can help it spread by drawing on our own gifts, whether that means entertaining children, writing notes to those who are quarantined, making music, or arranging flowers. As Dorothy Day said, “No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There is too much work to do.”

God's Perfect Mercy

Here is a syllogism for your consideration:

(A) God is perfect (Mt 5:48).

(B) God’s mercy endures forever (Ps 136:1).

Therefore,

(C) God who is perfect does not reject that which is imperfect, and because Jesus calls us to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect, neither should we.

Richard Rohr explains it this way: “God’s brightness does not exclude or deny anything. Divine perfection is precisely the ability to include imper-fection, whereas we think we must exclude, deny, and even punish it!”

When viewed in this light, Jesus’ insistence that we not judge makes a great deal of sense. God apparently views flaws as a part of creation that, when acknowledged and for-given, lead to a greater fullness of life. When we instead judge our imperfections and try to ignore or hide them, we cut ourselves off from the mercy and love that God offers us. We also cut other people off from the mercy and acceptance that God can provide through us, because if we can’t accept our own flaws, how can we accept flaws in others?

It is comforting to think that God’s brightness does not exclude or deny anything. We can accept who we are and trust that even our imperfections, and those of others, will mysteriously serve God’s way of love and inclusion. As Sr. Mary Faith Schuster says in her poem Pre-Dawn, God smiles at us and says,

I didn’t make you Me,

an image is all

I had in mind.

I’ll touch up all

authenticity

when you come home.

What It's All About

American jazz musician Sonny Rollins once said, “I’ve got a gift, a musical gift, fine. But I want to be a human being, a good human being…. Everybody can have a gift. That’s a gift. But then we have to be good human beings. So that’s what it’s all about.”

Labor Day offers us the opportunity to be grateful for our gifts and consider how we are using them. Are we too scared or timid to move outside our intimate circle of family and friends and offer our talents to the wider world? Are we willing to follow the lead of Senator John Lewis and “Get in good trouble” by using our voices and our energy to advocate for those treated unjustly? What is keeping us from putting in the hard work to develop and refine our gifts so they can give light and hope to others?

Jesus, a gifted healer and preacher, moved in ever widening circles—even to the land of the despised Samaritans—to bring healing and God’s word to others. He got in “good trouble” by speaking the truth and befriending sinners. He moved tirelessly from community to community, learning how to speak a word to comfort people and heal  their troubled souls. He was endowed with many gifts and used them not for his own profit but to be a good human being.

More than 2000 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection, that’s still what it’s all about.

We Are All Teachers

Pope Gregory the Great wrote this about St. Benedict: “He wrote a Rule for monks that is remarkable for its discretion and its clarity of language. Anyone who wishes to know more about his life and character can discover in his Rule exactly what he was like as an abbot, for his life could not have differed from his teaching.”

Although few of us have been an abbot or written a rule, we are all teachers, for our lives teach others what we believe, what we value, and how we expect others to treat us.

• Our acts of kindness and charity teach others that we believe Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, because he said, “Whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me.”

• Our efforts to live lightly on the earth and protect trees, water, air, and soil teach others that we value our common home and the resources we share with all other beings.

• Our refusal to be ignored, taken for granted, or disenfranchised teaches others that we have value and dignity and are worthy of respect, as demonstrated by the Canaanite woman with an ailing daughter who insisted that Jesus respond to her plea for healing (Mt 15: 21-28).

Good teachers periodically re-examine their lesson plans to make sure they are still effective. Just so, we need to review our lives on a regular basis to ensure that they still reflect what we wish to teach others. St. Francis of Assisi is quoted as saying, “Preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words.” We should not underestimate the power of our actions to teach others about God’s love, generosity, and patience.

Revealing Our True Self

A story is told about Michelango’s encounter with a man at the unveiling of his sculpture David. “How in God’s name could you have achieved a masterpiece like this from a crude slab of marble?” the man asked. “It was easy,” Michelangelo replied. “All I did was chip away everything that didn’t look like David.”

Is this a true story? As Sr. Lillian Harrington used to say, “All stories are true. Some actually happened.” Whether or not it actually happened, this story has something to tell us about how to chip away the stony parts of ourselves that aren’t who we really are to reveal our true self.

As children, we are raised to adopt the values of our families and society. That often means that we want to be wealthy, powerful, successful, attractive, intelligent, entertaining, or famous. Over time, these veneers harden and hide the parts of us that reflect God—our instincts to be kind, compassionate, forgiving, generous, and humble.

Feelings of being overlooked, offended, disrespected, or disliked are generally signs that we need to chip away the parts of ourselves that care about such things, because our true self knows we are loved and have inherent worth because we are children of God.

In this life, we are all sculptors who are given lots of opportunities to chisel away what obscures our life in God. Let’s encourage each other to trust in the beauty and truth that lies within each of us and be vulnerable enough to reveal it. It is what God wants for us, for as St. Irenaeus said, “The glory of God is a person fully alive.”