Seeing God in Our Ordinary Lives

In Paris in the 1940s, a “Worker Priest” movement was started, in which priests applied for factory jobs so they could enter into the daily lives of the working class and understand better how to serve them. In this way, they affirmed the value of the ordinariness of most people’s lives.

Now that we have completed our celebration of the Easter season and Pentecost, in a liturgical sense, we are all settling back into our ordinary lives in what the Church terms “ordinary time.” It is perhaps more difficult to connect with God outside the dramatic events of Jesus’ birth, passion, death, resurrection, and ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit, for now we need to seek God in the ordinariness of our daily lives.

Yet God comes to us within the ordinary as well as the extraordinary. Consider this prayer by Fr. Edward Hays, from his book Prayers for a Planetary Pilgrim:

“O Divine Giver of Life, you in whom we breathe and live, show yourself to me this day in countless ways. And grant me the grace to bow in wonder and in joy wherever and whenever I discover you.”

When we dare to ask God to appear to us in countless ways, how will God respond? Are we prepared to bow to raindrops as they fall on thirsty ground, to the person who restores our power after an electrical outage, or to the family pet that shows us unconditional love? Can we dare believe that God is present in our very ordinary lives and respond in wonder and joy?

What a pity it would be if, after we die and see God face to face, it turns out that God looks very familiar because we have caught glimpses of that beloved face throughout our life but didn’t realize who we were seeing.

Are We Listening?

The French author André Gide said, “Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.”

I thought of this quote in light of the scripture readings during the last two weeks of the Easter season. How many times did Jesus tell us he loves us and that we should love others? “As the Father loves me, so I love you. Remain in my love.” “This is my commandment: Love one another as I love you.” “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.”

Like any good teacher, Jesus used repetition to get his message across. He expressed his love (and by extension, his Abba’s love) by healing others, forgiving them, and befriending them. He told parables about love (for example, the prodigal son and the good Samaritan), he used images (“I am the vine, you are the branches”), and he spoke of his love directly. Ultimately, he gave up his life so we might know that God is not distant but, out of love, suffers with us and raises us to new life.

The question remains: Are we listening? I daresay that a great many people are not listening to Jesus’ message of love, given the greed, judgment, disregard for the needs of others, and exploitation rampant in our world today. Yet every act of generosity, kindness, and self-sacrifice that we encounter reminds us that Jesus’ message lives on and that we, his followers, have been charged to make God’s love manifest in the world.

Listen — do you hear the love of Christ echoing through the ages? If so, how will you live in that love?

The Challenge of the Ascension

My favorite depiction of the Ascension of Christ is by the German painter Hans Süss von Kulmbach. All we see of Christ are his feet dangling from the top of the frame as he ascends; I am amazed that the disciples below were able to stifle the urge to jump up and grab his ankles — either to try to pull him back down to earth or catch an express flight to heaven! Only Mary has her hand half lifted, as if to wave goodbye to this son of hers who is always flitting off somewhere.

In his book The Holy Longing, Ronald Rolheiser describes the importance of ascension in the paschal cycle. After an experience of death and the reception of new life, we undergo a time of readjustment to the new and grieving the old, but then we must let go of the old so we can receive a new spirit for the new life we are already living. The challenge of ascension for us is this: “Do not cling to the old, let it ascend and give you its blessing.”

Although Jesus’ disciples often didn’t understand what he was trying to teach them, it appears that they trusted Jesus’ promise that his Spirit would always be with them, because they didn’t try to cling to him as he ascended. We, too, are challenged to trust that when we let go of the things that die, no matter how much we loved them, we will receive a new spirit of life that will bring us joy, purpose, and wisdom. May we follow the example of Jesus’ first disciples in supporting each other in our grief and periods of readjustment and trusting that we will receive the new spirit that has been promised to us.

Sticking To Our Job

On one occasion in the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, 6-year-old Calvin makes this observation: “It’s hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.”

Most of us believe that God must surely judge others as we do: bad people deserve punishment and good people merit a reward. It can be infuriating when God offers mercy to one who has done wrong — just ask the brother of the Prodigal Son. In fact, God has quite a reputation for being merciful. In Psalm 69, after detailing the evil deeds of his enemies, the psalmist implores God, “Keep a full record of their guilt; none of your mercy for them!”

Thomas Merton observed, “Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody’s business. What we are asked to do is love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbor worthy.” This is what Jesus did, and that is what he called us to do.

It’s hard to overcome our tendency to be judgmental, but God doesn’t need our input in that regard. God wants us to be “religious” in the root sense of religio — which, as Fr. Richard Rohr points out, means to connect, to bind back together. And that can only be achieved through love, not through bolts of lightning.

Biding Our Time

It’s easy to understand why many people name Spring as their favorite season. Every day new sprouts emerge from the ground, trees wear a misty light green halo, and pops of yellow, pink, and purple flowers draw the eye and cheer the heart. Earth is entering its fecund season as we marvel at baby turtles, bee swarms, and thunder showers. New life is at a crescendo.

Where was all this new life during the quiet, dreary days of late fall and winter? It’s difficult for us to feel the drumbeat of life when browns and grays dominate the landscape and the songs of birds and insects are hushed. Yet nature accepts that it must bide its time in the tomb of the earth, just as Jesus did, just as we all must do one day, before we can rise to new life.

Periods of drought, darkness, and fallowness may affect us at any time, regardless of the season of the year. Although we find these episodes trying, they teach us how to bide our time and provide reassurance that new life always emerges in God’s time and often in unexpected ways. As Peter Gzowski wrote, “We need spring. We need it desperately and, usually, we need it before God is willing to give it to us.” Yet spring always comes, and the grooves that patience carves into our souls create reservoirs of hope to nourish us when death approaches.

As trees and plants produce seeds with trust that they will result in new life, and as Jesus was confident that he would rise three days after his death, we too can trust that our life will ever continue in a new form — we who were created in God’s everlasting image. Every year, Spring reminds us of this. Let us rejoice and be glad!

Eastertime Incarnational Wisdom

We generally focus on the incarnation of God at Christmas, when we celebrate the birth of Jesus. However, Easter is also filled with stories about God’s physical being as Christ, in the form of the resurrected Jesus.

This physical manifestation of God walked, talked, and broke bread with two people on the road to Emmaus. He was taken to be a gardener by Mary Magdalene. He appeared to a group of his disciples and said, “Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have….” He then asked them if they had anything to eat, and upon giving him a piece of broiled fish, he took it and ate it in their presence (Luke 24: 36-43). Later, this incarnated Christ cooked breakfast on the beach for his friends.

Why was it so important that, after the death of Jesus, he should again take on flesh after his resurrection? Why not appear as a disembodied spirit, a voice from a cloud, or an image in a dream?

In his book The Holy Longing, Fr. Ronald Rolheiser sheds some light on this question. He explains that God took on flesh because God, having created our nature, respects how it operates and thus deals with us through our senses. Therefore “God takes on flesh so that every home becomes a church, every child becomes the Christ-child, and all food and drink become a sacrament. God’s many faces are now everywhere, in flesh, tempered and turned down, so our human eyes can see him.”

If God respects the fact that we humans interact with the world through the senses, through our physical body, then we should do the same. Often it seems like we try to approach life through our mind alone, but the body offers us wisdom we can only attain when we pray through our breath, attend to others through our listening, appreciate beauty through our eyes, recall memories through smells, and comfort others through our touch. As we age and our body becomes less functional, we should still honor the lessons it offers about humility, endurance, diminishment, and gratitude.

The first creation story in Genesis says that after God created humans, he looked at what he had made and found it “very good.” It is very good that we are physical beings, at least during our short time on earth. Let’s take advantage of every opportunity to know God through the taste of a ripe peach, the smell of the soil in spring, the sight of a loved one’s face, the sound of the wind, and the way our hands can create art, food, and music. It makes good sense, after all.

And the Award Goes To....

Our world is consumed by “Top Ten,” “Hall of Fame,” and “Best of” lists. Millions of people watch popular shows such as the Academy Awards, Emmy Awards, Grammy Awards, and Tony Awards, not to mention the Olympics; colleges and universities vie to be on U.S. News and World Report’s annual list of the best educational institutions; a select number of athletes are admitted to their sport’s respective hall of fame annually; and newspapers are full of cultural “best of” lists at year’s end.

Given that St. Benedict says, “Your way of acting should be different from the world’s way” (RB 4:20), it follows that Benedictine monastics and oblates don’t share the world’s preoccupation with receiving recognition or landing on a “best of” list. However, I recently discovered an exception to the Rule. Every year, the Global Listening Centre compiles a list of the Top 25 Outstanding Women Listeners. Now, being on a list of the top outstanding listeners is an achievement all followers of St. Benedict’s Rule should strive for!

The very first word of the Rule is “Listen,” which indicates its importance in a Benedictine life of prayer, community, hospitality, and discipleship. Although the Global Listening Centre’s most recent list of outstanding women listeners doesn’t include any Benedictine women, those on the list nonetheless are living out Benedictine values of peacebuilding, wise leadership, communal prayer, welcoming the stranger, human rights, care of earth’s resources, education, and artisanship. Listening is key to creating a world where the practice of love of God and love of neighbor leads to peace and fullness of life for all.

St. Benedict quotes Romans 12:10 in saying that monastics “should each try to be the first to show respect to the other.” And because the best way to show respect is to listen, becoming an exceptional listener is something we should all aspire to.