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Archived entries from the Cenacle Journal: meditations for finding God in everyday life.
Another version of the archives, arranged according to categories, is found at the Archives Blog.

Living Water

Winter is the dry season on the Florida peninsula, with abundant sunshine and also the threat of drought and wildfires.  Last Sunday, though, was one of those days when it seemed as if the whole world was running with water. 

On the way to church, we held our umbrellas close as we sloshed through puddles and peered through the downpour.  We wouldn’t have been surprised to see an ark under construction.  Everything was saturated, dripping, sodden, or swimming, and at times it seemed as if we were viewing buildings and cars and each other from under the sea.

After Mass began, we listened to the Sunday readings.  The first reading and the Gospel were:

·       Exodus 17, where the people were thirsting, and God told Moses, “Strike the rock, and the water will flow from it for the people to drink.”

·       John 4, where Jesus says to the Samaritan woman, "If you knew the gift of God and who is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,'
you would have asked him  and he would have given you living water."
And...
"Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again;
but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst;
the water I shall give will become in him
a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

Water everywhere!  And we sang:

·       “Crashing Waters at Creation” (Sylvia Dunstan)

·       “Come to the Feast,” with the words, “Ho, ev’ryone who thrists: Come to the waters!” (Marty Haugen, © 1991, GIA Publications, Inc.)

·       “O Healing River”: “O healing river, send down your waters…” (Fran Minkoff)

The church seemed to be awash.  At the end of the celebration, we rose from our pews and slogged back to the car.

God is never stingy with the living water.  Even when our hearts feel barren and dusty, the water is there for the asking.  When we ask and still feel dry, the living water is with us nevertheless, permeating the truest, deepest part of ourselves, nurturing us, filling us, nourishing us, and bringing forth life — sometimes in spite of ourselves.  Like the unborn child in its mother’s womb, we are surrounded by the waters of God.  It is so much our element that we may not even notice that we float in it. 

O God, may I never try to shut myself off from your living water.  Grant me the grace to know the gift of God and to receive with joyful heart your “spring of water welling up to eternal life."  Amen.

March 2005

Spirits

My great-grandmother was inclined to see spirits.  One afternoon, on an otherwise ordinary day, she glimpsed one that was casting a baleful eye on her small grandson (my mother’s brother).  Consequently, like any good grandmother, she took action.  “Run, Baby, run!” she yelled from the porch. “Run, Baby, run!”

I have an image of little Robert taking off across the yard, heart pounding, bare feet churning up the sandy soil amid a flutter of guinea hens, racing for his very life and soul until the screen door slammed behind him.

There are indeed forces contrary to God in our world.  That becomes evident just by reading the newspaper or watching the evening news on television.  I am convinced, however, that most of those forces do not bother to chase either adults or children across the yard, because there is something much more efficacious they can do to. 

If the wiles of evil were obvious, we would be likely to run, like Robert, for the safety of grandmother's arms.  On the contrary, evil's methods tend to work on us so subtly that we may not even be aware that we’ve changed sides.  For example, we may find ourselves convinced that God does not have our welfare at heart, and that the will of God is simply a series of arbitrary commands and painful events.  Who would want to draw near to such a God? 

Evil may also try to persuade us that we are worthless in God’s eyes, and lead us to despair of the love and mercy of God. “What you have done is so heinous that you are unforgivable,” we hear.  And in our distress we may forget that it is never the Spirit of God who speaks this word in us.

Evil tries to harden our hearts by specious arguments that may nevertheless sound logical:

• “Look around you,” say spirits opposed to the Spirit of Christ. “It is obvious that money and worldly esteem are more valuable than love and mercy.  To be happy, seek riches and fame.”
• “Of course the end justifies the means!  Violence is permissible to the followers of the Prince of Peace, as long as it is for a good cause.”
• “If the poor weren’t so lazy, if they just worked harder, there wouldn’t be any poverty.”
• “So what if those people are being ostracized?  They deserve it, after all.”
• “God casts off unbelievers and those who don’t believe the way you and I do, so why should you go out of your way to show them kindness?”

These are the spirits of which we should be afraid.  Like little Robert's mad dash for the house, we must flee them as if our very life and soul depended on it.  We flee, though, not by scattering the guinea hens, but by taking the time to be still with God and by learning to recognize the deceit of whatever would draw us away from God.  

Then we refuse to listen to any voices in our world which suggest that God does not love us (or anyone else).  We oppose these forces by allowing the love of God to fill us and by receiving the blessed mercy of God shown to us in Jesus.  And we defeat them through the death and resurrection of Jesus, when we allow God to transform us into the merciful and welcoming presence of Christ for the world.

Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? ...

If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday.

(Isaiah 58:6, 9b-10)

February 2005

Continually Turned Toward God

This year is the bicentennial of the birth of Saint Therese Couderc, co-founder of the Cenacle Sisters.  My group (five of us) entered the pre-novitiate on February 1, the birthday of the saint we call Mother Therese, but about whom I knew precious little then. 

Oh, I had read a romantically pious biography of her, and knew that an important element in her spirituality was surrendering oneself* to God.  On that winter day in Saint Louis , though, the ground covered with a foot of snow, I had no idea of what this concept required — of both how difficult it is in real life (and how easy – see the whole meditation of Saint Therese at “To Surrender Oneself”).

I had not yet learned what Mother Therese knew — that there is nothing we can call our own.  She spoke of “my extreme poverty” (in French, ma misère).  She was conscious of having no virtue of her own: whatever goodness she had was from God, and even her spiritual life was more God’s affair than it was hers.  She said that if she were called to account for her deeds, she would find herself with empty hands, her only recourse being the great mercy of God.  But for her, as for us, this great mercy of God is sufficient. 

I did not yet know that all-sufficiency of God’s grace.  I knew it in my head, of course, having been well taught.  But when I entered the Cenacle, not having grown into a spiritually mature daughter of Mother Therese (and who can ever claim to be entirely mature?), I was still afraid of what God might do when I failed in faith or devotion or human virtue.  I was well aware of my own lukewarmness.  I knew the pitiful state of my prayer.  Would God abandon me because of that?   And what if I made a terrible mistake or committed a dreadful sin?  Was it possible to be so evil that I would not be forgiven? 

How miserable I made myself! 

Mother Therese wrote:

In a word, to surrender oneself is to die to everything and to self, to be no longer concerned with self except to keep it continually turned toward God.

To surrender oneself is, moreover, no longer to seek oneself in anything, either for the spiritual or the physical, that is to say, no longer to seek one's own satisfaction, but solely the divine good pleasure.  

To be “no longer concerned with self except to keep it continually turned toward God” and “no longer to seek oneself in anything, either for the spiritual or the physical” — I realized that this stance must also include the way I dealt with my failings.  In other words, how could I be continually turned toward the good God and at the same time constantly focused on my own inadequacy?  How could I be no longer concerned with self, if I were always berating myself, rather than praising God for the divine mercy freely poured out in Jesus Christ who died for me? 

What about my prayer?  What about other areas of my life?  Here, too, it is impossible to be continually turned toward God if my primary concern is the quality of my own prayer — or the state of my faith, or my relationships, or my work, or anything else that I consider mine.  A certain discipline is important, certainly, but even the discipline is not to be my primary focus.  My focus must be God.

This turning toward God means handing over the results of my prayer or of any other undertaking.  The fruits are important of course.  Am I growing in faith, hope, and love? Does my life witness to what Paul calls, in Galatians 5, the “fruit of the Spirit”: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control”?  If not, something is askew.

Success or failure, however, is another matter altogether.  In the life of Mother Therese there were certainly what we would call failures — the most startling being that she was deposed from her role as superior general — in other words, she was fired.  But what we human beings consider failure is not necessarily failure in God’s eyes.  Just consider the colossal “failure” of the mission of Jesus as it seemed to end on the cross. 

In the Spirit of this same Jesus, Mother Therese handed herself over to the one she knew as the Good God.  Through grace, she answered the call to entrust herself to a Mystery she could not see, but whom she experienced as Mercy, Love, and Peace.

Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 

__________

* Se livrer in the original French, which doesn’t really mean to surrender oneself so much as to hand oneself over freely, to give oneself as Jesus gave himself totally to God.

(Back to Text)

February 2005

Helpless

This past week I had to change planes in Atlanta, and on the way to the gate I decided to buy a frozen yogurt cone.  It turned out to be a work of art: the young woman who made it for me beamed when I complimented her on its height and symmetry.  So I headed contentedly toward the gate, licking my yogurt — until for some unexplained reason, the yogurt fell out of the cone. 

“What do I do now?” I asked myself, as crowds of travelers made their way around both me and the chocolate blob on the carpet.  I considered trying to get it up with the flimsy napkin from the yogurt vendor, but knew this would be hopeless.  So I stood there, gazing at the blob and feeling foolish.

Finally, unsure what else to do, I walked on.  Before going very far, I saw three women whose uniforms made me think they were part of the cleaning staff, so I confessed to them.  “Oh,” one of them said with a dismissive wave, “they’ll get it.”  I didn’t know who “they” could be, but was more than happy to leave it in their capable hands, as I was obviously incapable of dealing with it myself.

But what about major disasters?

When I consider how helpless I felt before a simple blob of yogurt — not a catastrophe by any stretch of the imagination — I can’t even imagine the helplessness of those stricken by the tsunami disaster.   Even those of us not directly affected have been trying to ease our own sense of helplessness, sometimes by donating to the relief efforts (a healthy response), other times by trying to assign blame.   When a blob of yogurt can throw us off-kilter, an event that literally shakes the earth leaves us groping for answers.  If we can find an answer, it seems, we will be less out of control.

Some people use any unexplainable and unmerited suffering — and especially that of children — as a reason for not believing in God. Others are convinced that God sent the tsunami as punishment for specific sins — generally someone else’s sins.  Still others are blaming a nuclear test gone awry, the United States as a whole, or karma.

It is not wrong to ask why.  It is not wrong to cry out with the Psalmist, “I suffer your terrors; I am helpless!” (88:15), or “All your waves and your billows have gone over me!” (Psalm 42:7).  When we do this, we are praying out of our anguish.  

Too confidently coming up with answers, however, is a different matter.  While assigning blame may make us feel less vulnerable, a wiser response might well be to accept the reality of our helplessness before the mystery, just as we must do when faced with the suffering of a loved one or with the mystery of our own death.

From what we know of God in Christ, we can never conclude that God wills the suffering of innocent children.  We can always trust, though, that the loving and compassionate God is present with us — for us — in the inexplicable mystery of great suffering.

And this is probably as far as we can proceed and where we must humbly remain.

January 2005

God-Borne

Tucked in the birthday card from Sister Elizabeth was a small slip of heavy paper, a few words printed on it in ornate type.  The printing was obviously done in the pre-computer days of real printing presses, because I could feel the words when I ran my finger over either the front or the back of the paper.  Sister Elizabeth told me that it was given to her in 1954 by Sister Edith Robinson, who had a small press in her office.  These are the words on the paper:

The Light that leads
To Jesus is His Own.
- St. Ambrose -

If it is true that we are all called to be God-bearers in this world, it is also true that we are God-borne – carried, held, sustained, and brought to birth by God.  At times I am aware of being borne, sometimes through the desert and often in spite of myself.  In these moments I am shown how my life’s journey has been bringing me to a holy freedom in Christ.  Other times I grope about in the darkness, feeling more bound than free, and can only beg to trust that I am being led by a Star I cannot see to a Coming that remains totally mysterious and that I pray to recognize.

Yes, Jesus has indeed come.  Emmanuel is closer to us than our small minds can grasp.  Yet we always live in the paradox of the here and the not yet. On the one hand, what we most long for is already and always ours.  On the other hand, what we long for is still to come.

We are always waiting and longing — for the Second Coming, of course, but also for our own fulfillment in the Mystery of God-with-us.

But our waiting is doubly blessed.  Even as we wait, we are being led toward what we are waiting for, as the Magi were led toward the infant Jesus.  Even as we say, “Come,” we are being borne toward the One who is here and is to come.  

Not only that, but we are led by the Light that is Christ, and we are borne by the very One for whom we are longing — who is right here with us, breathing the divine Spirit into us, carrying us, transforming our hearts and minds into the heart and mind of that Jesus to whom and in whom we journey.

In the words of St. Ambrose, "The Light that leads to Jesus is his own."

Sister Rose Hoover

'I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star.’ 
(Revelation 22:16b)

God-Bearer

The angel said to [Mary], 
"The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God."      (Luke 1:35)

In the Eastern Church, Mary the mother of Jesus is honored by the Greek word Theotokos, which means “God-bearer.”  The word comes down to us in large part through the Council of Ephesus (held in the year 431), which had been struggling with the theology of Nestorius.  

Nestorius was the devout, though doctrinally challenged, patriarch of Constantinople. He did not believe in the total union of the divine and human natures of Christ and insisted that Mary was the mother only of the human nature of Jesus.  He is reported to have said, “I can never allow that a child of three months old was God.”

In response, the Council emphasized that there could be no division in Christ, and that Mary was the mother of Emmanuel (which means “God with us”).  By using the term Theotokos, they were pointing out that the child which Mary had borne in her womb was indeed God.  The following wonderful but mind-boggling thought comes from a letter Cyril of Alexandria wrote to Nestorius: 

For although visible and a child in swaddling clothes, and even in the bosom of his Virgin Mother, he filled all creation as God, and was a fellow-ruler with him who begat him, for the Godhead is without quantity and dimension, and cannot have limits.

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/ephesus.html

What does all this ancient history have to do with us?  

Besides the doctrinal issue, there is an important sense in which we are called to be God-bearers, too — though of course in a different way from that of Mary.  Baptized into Christ, we dwell in him and carry the presence of God with us always, that same God who is "without quantity and dimension, and cannot have limits."  We are to be so totally turned toward God that our lives, radiating mercy and compassion, may bring forth Christ for a world desperately in need of hope.  

As Meister Eckhart said, “The seed of God is in us… Pear seeds grow into pear trees, nut seeds into nut trees, and God-seed into God” — assuming, of course, that we cooperate with the Spirit of God as Mary did. 

"Here am I, the servant of the Lord;
let it be with me according to your word."
(Luke 1:38)

December 2004

O Joyful Rest!

There seems to be a thriving internet market for posters, bumper stickers, lapel buttons, and refrigerator magnets emblazoned with the caption:

JESUS IS COMING
LOOK BUSY

As tongue-in-cheek as these may be, I fear that the “look busy” injunction taps into something deeply ingrained in the human (or at least the American) psyche.  If we are not noticeably industrious, so we are told, then our lives are worthless. 

Consider the spirit of the old hymn by Anna L. Coghill (not an American, but an Englishwoman):

Work, for the night is coming,
Work through the morning hours;
Work while the dew is sparkling,
Work ’mid springing flowers…

In the second verse the work continues through noon, and even, in the third verse, “under the sunset skies.”  God is never mentioned in this call to ceaseless labor.

The look-busy and keep-busy approach can extend also to the human spirit.  I am lax – even perhaps in mortal danger – if I relax for a moment in my interior toil directed toward my virtue and well-being or that of my loved ones. This often translates into constant worry. I must make myself worthy of salvation, lest by negligence I be lost forever. What is more, if I notice that I am not worrying about something, I become anxious that I am not doing enough to satisfy the demanding will of God.  

My refrigerator magnet

If I were to promote a refrigerator magnet or button, my choice would be one that proclaims, 

JESUS IS COMING
O JOYFUL REST!

The One to whom we say, “Come,” says also to us, “Come to me... and I will give you rest” (Mt 11:28). It is because Jesus comes, because Jesus is in fact always here, that I can rest.

What is rest?

But what is rest?  Collapsing in front of the television?  More than that, surely.

Rest is knowing that if I could make myself worthy of salvation, I wouldn’t need Jesus.  But I cannot – and I don’t have to!

At home in God with Jesus, rest is freedom from all that fatigues: from fear, from trying to be God.  

Rest is being enfolded in the arms of my heavenly parent, at peace with knowing I am too small to deal with my own mistakes and sins all by myself.  

Rest is knowing that, as Julian of Norwich says, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”  Sin is real, and so is pain, but all shall be well.

Rest is trusting that God is working out the divine purpose in the universe and in my own heart, although it is obvious that neither is finished yet, according to human time.  Rest is knowing that the fulfillment of God’s cosmic plan is not up to me, although I do have a role to play in it. 

Rest is knowing that there is a time for waiting, and that waiting bears fruit, whether it is waiting for crops, waiting for the birth of a child, or waiting for God’s good pleasure in God’s own time.

So we say, not frantic, not fearful, but in peaceful expectation, “Come, Lord Jesus!”

‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’

(Matthew 11:28-30)

December 2004

Clearing Out the Vines

Halloween is past, and Thanksgiving is upon us.  With the return of Standard Time and the increasing tilt of the northern hemisphere away from the sun, darkness falls early.  In some parts of the country, trees are bare, and the days are chilly.  

Here in North Central Florida, too, we see signs of approaching winter, but these tend to be subtle.  If you pay attention, you will notice a thinning-out of the jungle: vines are dying, spaces opening up to reveal neighbors’ houses across the way.  More sky is visible through our heavy tree cover.  It is as if nature were undergoing a sort of emptying, abandoning herself to the new season.

The Kenosis of God

The last Sunday of the liturgical year (November 21 in 2004) is the Feast of Christ the King — not a king like other kings, as the gospel reading (Luke 23:35-43 this year) makes apparent.  We see the rulers and soldiers sneering at Jesus on the cross, while above him a sign proclaims, "This is the King of the Jews."  We hear one of the criminals crucified alongside Jesus saying to him, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom."

Pope John Paul II, in the encyclical Fides et Ratio, writes that “the prime commitment of theology is seen to be the understanding of God’s kenosis” (93).  Kenosis comes from the Greek word meaning “to make empty.”   The reference, of course, is to the Incarnation of Christ, who “emptied himself.” 

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross.  (Philippians 2:5-8)

If an understanding of the mystery of God’s kenosis is “the prime commitment of theology,” could we not also say that an expression of the prime commitment of the Christian is to enter into that kenosis of God?  “Let the same mind be in you…,” as Paul says.  The society in which we live, on the other hand, incites us to fill up:

to fill up CDs, DVDs, compact flash cards (remember floppy disks, which seemed to hold so much just a years ago?)

to fill up the house and rent a self-storage room for the surplus

to fill myself up with fast food or with a constant barrage of information

to fill up the earth with trash, toxic waste, and greenhouse gases

to fill up my spirit with fear — fear that I am not acceptable, not forgivable, or in constant danger from my own inadequacies, or from people not like me.

Making space

Indeed we are filled with much that is not God.  I pray to allow God to clear out my interior vines, to thin the tangles of my psychic jungle, so that I may see my neighbors and be more and more one with the love of Christ. 

What does this emptying entail in practice?  I suspect that the living-out will look somewhat different for each one of us.  A certain discipline and a simplification may be required, but not a gritting of the teeth and taking on a super-asceticism in the mistaken belief that this will unite us with the kenosis of Jesus.  Instead, our own emptying means saying yes to the Holy Spirit at work in us, creating space in us, moving us into peace. 

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

(When I think of a holy emptying, I am reminded of a poem by Rabindranath Tagore, the Indian poet who won the 1913 Nobel Prize for literature.)

Time after time I came to your gate with raised hands, asking for more and yet more.

You gave and gave, now in slow measure, now in sudden excess.

I took some, and some things I let drop; some lay heavy on my hands; some I made into playthings and broke them when tired; till the wrecks and the hoard of your gifts grew immense, hiding you, and the ceaseless expectation wore my heart out.

Take, oh take—has now become my cry.

Shatter all from this beggar's bowl: put out this lamp of the importunate watcher: hold my hands, raise me from the still-gathering heap of your gifts into the bare infinity of your uncrowded presence.

Fruit-Gathering, XXVIII (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1916).

November 2004

I Never Knew Them

I once watched a television interview with a member of a major crime family.  He had been involved in thirty-six murders, including the killing of two young businessmen.

“Do you have any regrets?” he was asked.

“No,” he replied, “no regrets.  It was just business.”

“What about the families of those people?” persisted the interviewer.

“I never knew their wives and children.”

Since he didn’t know them, they meant nothing to him.  Perhaps they were not even human.  

Even for those of us who would not consider committing a crime, it can be far too easy to slip into a similar attitude.  For example, we know in our bones that it is tragic when our own soldiers are killed or injured in war; while the death of soldiers on the other side may be “just business” (or whatever the military term is), and the death of their civilians simply “collateral damage.” 

How different this is from the approach of Jesus, who says to us, “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you” (Mt 5:44 ); or of Paul, who tells us, “If your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink” (Romans 12:20 ).  Since all human beings are precious in the eyes of God, the suffering of anyone — known or unknown to us — can never be treated as negligible.  God suffers in the pain of the creatures made in the divine image. 

As a matter of fact, Jesus went still further in the radical notion of loving.  He prayed for us — for all of us — “that they may be one, as we are one” (John 17:11 ).  What an amazing prayer!  That we may be one, as Jesus and the God he calls Father are one!  He continues:

I ask not only on behalf of these [that is, his disciples], but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  (17:20-21)

Considering the backbiting and divisions among Christians, is it any wonder that the world finds it so difficult to believe?  Is it any wonder that the world is far from claiming and living out of this oneness with each other and in God for which Jesus was praying?

November 2004

Trick-or-Treat

Before we moved into this house three years ago, the former owner warned us that there would be a lot of trick-or-treaters.  In fact, “a lot” turned out to be an understatement, as the first year we counted almost two hundred.  As the evening wore on we were scrambling about the pantry. searching for any forgotten stores of candy.  Finally, at 9:00 , we simply abandoned ship, turned out the lights, and retreated upstairs.

The trick-or-treaters in our neighborhood range from bored babies whose young parents are the ones enthusiastic about Halloween, to expensively costumed children with specially designed trick-or-treat bags, to poor children with makeshift costumes and plastic grocery bags.  Some have never seen a convent, and when we open the door, revealing a wooden Cenacle cross and the statue of our co-founder, Saint Therese Couderc, their eyes widen and they say with awe and simple courtesy, “I like your house!” 

Somewhere around 8:00 , the teenagers begin to arrive.  Year before last, they were mostly un-costumed and armed with a vaguely threatening air and gaping school backpacks as candy receptacles.  This past year, however, brought a shift.  The teenagers no longer seemed world-weary or menacing.  They were dressed as butterflies and angels and other unidentifiable but innocent-looking creatures and seemed to be saying from their six-foot height, “We’re children, too!”  They were delighting in the evening, and we delighted in their delight.

How many of them know, I wonder, that Halloween is the Eve of All Saints’ Day, their feast day, the feast of all God’s holy people, recognized and unrecognized?  Of course, some of us seem to have a harder time with sanctity than others do, but the communion of saints links us all in companionship through the love of God.  As the hymn puts it:

O blest communion, fellowship divine!
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
yet all are one in thee, for all are thine.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

William W. How, “For All the Saints”

We are a motley crew, to be sure, but we who are still feebly struggling are just as beloved of God as those who are shining in glory.  In a sense it is true that we all shine, even in the midst of the struggle. Thus the children with painted faces and sparkly or scary outfits, the teenagers still radiant with childhood or slouching to the door with their backpacks — all receive their treats and head back to the street, to borrow Wordsworth’s expression, “trailing clouds of glory.”

Sister Rose Hoover

Sing praises to the Lord,
O you his saints,
and give thanks to his holy name.

October 2004

Peace of Mind

Flipping through the Sunday paper a couple of weeks ago, I was struck by something poking out from the top of the Parade magazine.  In large letters it proclaimed:

PEACE OF MIND $34.95

The cover of the magazine, featuring soldiers trudging through a rugged landscape beneath the headline, “Hunting Down Al-Qaeda: A Report from Afghanistan,” did an effective job of putting me in touch with my own need for release from anxiety, so I thought it might be worthwhile to save the Peace of Mind offer.  I carried the magazine upstairs to my desk for safekeeping, where it immediately got buried beneath more urgent tasks.

Today, with Hurricane Jeanne bearing down on us (yet another hurricane hitting Florida!), it seemed time to examine the offer seriously.  So I plowed through the stacks of papers on my desk and retrieved the Parade magazine.  Yes, there it was, Peace of Mind proposed, at low cost, in the midst of the threat of terrorist attacks and an impending storm whose outermost bands are, even as I write, beginning to blow the live oaks, the palms, and the golden rain trees in our yard. 

As realists are fond of reminding us, if something appears too good to be true, it usually is.  I opened the magazine to the ad and found that the only peace of mind available for $34.95 turned out to be vehicular — serenity owing to an inspection of my vehicle by Ford mechanics. Relief of the disquiet provoked by a possible terrorist attack or an imminent storm — or poor health or job insecurity or anything else unrelated to an automobile — was not included in the $34.95.

I am left turning, as always, to the One who is only true source of peace of mind, the God of Jesus, who says to us,

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.  (John 14:27)  

This is surely a peace that Ford mechanics cannot give, that neither good health nor wealth can assure.  This is a peace of mind that comes from knowing that we are infinitely cherished, that our existence is rooted in God, and that our future is secure, because our future is the God who loves us.

September 2004

Jesus Coming Soon! Have a Blessed Day!

It was almost a week after Hurricane Frances, and Sister Elizabeth and I were coming out of the grocery store, where some of the shelves were still bare.  A woman entering just as we walked out greeted us with a broad smile.

“Jesus coming soon!” she said.  “Have a blessed day!”

With two hurricanes already having hit the state, and a third seeming to be on the way, one’s thoughts may indeed turn toward the Endtime.  Is the Second Coming imminent?  Should we put on white garments and go up to the mountain?  Or since we have no mountains in Florida, should we at least repent in sackcloth and ashes?

Jesus is indeed coming soon, but perhaps not yet as the Second Coming, of which we are told that we know neither the day nor the hour. 

Our call, therefore, is not to go up on the mountain, but to be attentive. “Watch therefore,” Jesus tells us (Matthew 25:13). And we are to watch not only for the Second Coming, but for the coming of Christ in each moment of our lives.

We are to pay attention to how he comes to us in the storms of life, in the moments of calm, in the people we meet, in the depths of our heart. He comes to us as Presence, and sometimes he comes in what we perceive as Absence. While Christ is always there whether or not we cry, “Come, Lord Jesus,” we may not notice unless we are alert. 

Should we repent in sackcloth and ashes?

God does not send terrible events to punish us.  Nevertheless, it is always appropriate to pray with the tax collector in the Gospel of Luke, “God, be merciful to me a sinner.” We are continually being called to repentance — to metanoia — that complete turning of our whole lives to God.  

And here again, we are to be attentive, both to our constant need for mercy and to God’s free gift of the mercy we need. We walk through the day bathed in mercy.  We sleep wrapped in the tender mercy of God.  God’s mercy is there when the tree comes crashing through the roof and when the electricity goes out and when it comes back on.  

We do not understand why natural disasters happen.  We can be assured that God does not take revenge on us by sending hurricanes (or earthquakes or disease or any other sorrow), but does work in them – as in everything else – to draw us to the divine and, if we are willing, to make us more like the Christ for whom we wait.

Be merciful to me, O God, 
be merciful to me, for in you my soul takes refuge; 
in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge, 
till the storms of destruction pass by. 
I cry to God Most High, to God who fulfils his purpose for me.  

Psalm 57:1-2

September 2004

Listening In... 

Like many people who talk on cell phones in public places, the fortyish woman at the gate in the Nashville airport didn’t seem to care who heard her conversation.  Here are snatches of what I overheard as we waited for our plane:

“She’s just like you and me; she’s still thinking about it, and he’s dead and gone.”

Pause. 

Whoever the person dead and gone was — a husband or father or unfaithful lover — the woman to whom she is referring obviously regrets something about her life.  But the speaker herself, I find, is wasting no tears on her unfulfilled dreams.

“If I’d done what I wanted to do,” she continues, “I would’ve been a doctor, but you can’t go back to when you’re eighteen.”

At this point, I want to jump up and yell, “Go for it!  Apply to medical school!  It’s not too late!”

As the conversation proceeds, I learn that the speaker’s husband owns a music studio.  Moreover, he composes bluegrass and has even written a hit, the name of which I do not catch.  She has flown up to Nashville to take care of company affairs.  I imagine the husband happily picking his five-string banjo, while his dutiful wife engages in the dull business end of the studio, suppressing her longing to be a doctor.

We begin moving toward the plane, and after we board, I find her seated just across the aisle from me.  The cell phone is still attached to her ear.

“I’m just now buckling my seat belt, so I’m gonna turn it off,” she says.

The conversation, though, continues with her seatmate.  It turns out that she used to teach school, but quit to have babies.  When she talks about teaching — handicapped children, it appears — the excitement in her voice makes me realize that if she should move out of the music business, it would not be to practice medicine, but to teach.  I revise my interior encouragement to chuck it all for medical school. And as she reveals more about her life and the family business and her husband’s music, I abandon altogether the thought of a different life for her — at least for now. 

Sometimes we may indeed be called to make a radical change — to surprise everyone by announcing, “I’ve just applied to medical school [or to drama school, or to the convent].”  Other times, if we truly ponder the course of our lives, we may find that what looked at the time like a failed dream has turned out to be a path to fulfillment.  Through it all, we have been becoming the person we are now, and are being guided in the lifelong process of growing into the person we are meant to be in God’s love.

For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.

Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you.
You will seek me and find me; when you seek me with all your heart,

I will be found by you, says the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.

Jeremiah 29:11-14 (RSV)

August 2004

Rocking and Bobbing

As you approach New Orleans on Interstate 10, as I did a couple of weeks ago, you begin to notice that the land has changed.  The ground has become unstable, and with it the surface of the highway, creating a pavement that rises and dips. 

No matter how hard the highway engineers work to make the road flat, it doesn’t stay that way for long.  Eventually the shifting earth itself takes over, and you find yourself rocking and bobbing along at 70 miles an hour, while all around you the other vehicles — cars, SUVs, 18-wheelers, motorcycles — rock and bob like boats on the water.  When you reach the city streets, the rocking and bobbing continues, but slows down to 30 miles an hour or so.

So while I drove toward the city, lifting and dropping more or less rhythmically, I pondered the unsteadiness of human life and how human beings dip and fall and bob again to the surface.  I thought of Carol, the mentally ill homeless lady who comes to our door from time to time and who had recently been staying at the house of someone she called the “old lady.”  The last time Carol came to the door, I asked her if she was still there.  “No,” she said, “the old lady and her boyfriend were fighting all the time, so I left.”  Knowing Carol, I imagine it is more likely that she lost control of herself and was told to leave.  In any case, she was back on the street.   Somehow, though, whatever happens, and in spite of the ignorance of government officials who have told her she is not ill and should just get a job, she manages to surface, buoyant, rocking and bobbing by the grace of God.

And in our own more privileged lives, we too move ahead – not smoothly, but by fits and starts, and not on a surface that is entirely smooth and flat.  We dip and go under and then come up for air; we rock and bob along in the company of others who share the uneven path we are given to follow.  And through it all, we are sustained by God’s grace, held up so that in spite of everything, we may take in life and be transformed in the breath of God’s Spirit.

The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want;
he makes me lie down in green pastures. 

He leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul. 

He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil; 
for you are with me; your rod and your staff — they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

- Psalm 23

August 2004

On the Road Again

I have sometimes said that insights come to me more easily when I am on the road.  Perhaps the fact of being in between two places — being neither here nor there, so to speak — frees the mind and the heart to receive what is offered.  But on the road or not, insights do not always come just because I am available to receive them, nor do consolations or whatever else I think I need at a particular moment.  As often as not, my highway time presents me with nothing more than trees, trucks, circling turkey vultures, or heat shimmering on the pavement — only what you would normally expect on a Florida road. 

During one of those empty drives back from the Jacksonville airport, I realized (an insight breaking into the emptiness?) that this minor nothingness could be reminding me of a profound truth of the spiritual life, which is that joy resides in loving God more than we love God’s gifts.  

Saint Therese Couderc, for example, the co-founder of the Cenacle, was a mystic whose whole life was given over to God.  Even those among us who are most holy, however, have places deep in their hearts where God continues to call them closer, so that they may not cling to anything less than God.  According to Abbé André Combes (“The Four Offerings of Blessed Therese Couderc”), this is what happened to St. Therese:

One day, finally given over without reserve to God, Mother Therese became aware that there was something abnormal in the fact that she continued to be filled with divine consolations.  Immediately she said to Our Lord: “I would follow you just as well without that!” 

Whether or not this is literally the way it happened, we do know that Mother Therese had reached the point where she loved God more than she loved the spiritual experiences God had given her.  It was not that she was refusing God’s gifts – far from that, for to refuse what God wants to share with us would be the height of ingratitude – on the contrary, she accepted to move into a new stage in her life with God.  This stage was marked by fewer consolations, but also by a deeper union in the Paschal Mystery with the One who was All in All for her.

Boring Prayer?
Our own prayer time may seem like an ordinary road revealing nothing beyond the hard pavement, the passing cars, and the swampy vegetation.  We may find ourselves bored to tears and longing to come to the end.  But brilliant insights and tangible spiritual experiences are not the confirmation of our prayer.  It is rather the transformation in love that God is working in us, to bring us into union with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, for our own sanctification and for that of the world in which we live.

 

The more we draw near to God, the more we desire to draw near; the more we are united with God, the more we desire this union, because we understand more and more that God is the center of our hearts and that God alone can fill them and make them happy.

Saint Therese Couderc, Letter to Mother de Larochenégly, August 7, 1867

July 2004

The Wilderness Is Never Far

We have been driving regularly from our house to Saint Augustine Church for more than three years now.  On the way we comment on the Mexican restaurant that has just opened where the bagel shop used to be, or on how popular the portable ice-skating rink was last winter, even though the ice was awfully mushy on the days the temperature went up to 80 degrees.  Usually we approach the church by way of University Avenue, a busy four-lane thoroughfare.  The most exciting part of the trip is usually trying not to run down the students, who tend to cross randomly through the traffic. 

In other words, going to church is a routine drive through a tame stretch of twenty-first century civilization.

One day, something unusual came into view: a parking place on University Avenue right in front of the church.  I braked, preparing to parallel park, but with a city bus right right behind us, I was eager to get out of the way.  As I hurried to back into the space, the rear wheels hit the curb.  The bus waited, although I think it could have easily gotten past, and the driver’s courtesy made me more anxious.  I cut the wheels and went forward, tapping the bumper of the expensive-looking car ahead of us.  

Under the car there happened to be a squirrel.  Startled by the thump, the squirrel ran out into the street and was immediately run over.  I was rattled, but I finally managed to park, and the bus continued on its way.  A close inspection of the car ahead of us showed no damage, but I felt terrible about the squirrel, which by the end of Mass had been completely flattened. 

Wilderness breaking through

These were on the surface minor events, hardly worth mentioning, in spite of the squirrel’s demise, but as I reflect on them I am put in touch with a truth that humanity spends a lot of energy trying not to notice.  

Just beneath the surface of civilization lurks the wilderness.  Not the wilderness in the sense of lions and tigers, but the fact that reality is not domesticated.  In the midst of the city, the desert (or in our subtropical climate, the swamp or the jungle) is never totally absent.  Life is unpredictable, and we are not in control.  Hints of the wilderness are everywhere. We glimpse it whenever grass pushes through what we have carefully paved over. We are invited to nod before the wilderness when the computer crashes at an inopportune moment, or a squirrel runs out into a busy street and is squashed as we head for Mass. The wilderness embraces us when we are surprised by beauty. And it crashes in on us when health fails, or a loved one dies, or a hurricane turns toward a coastal town where the forecaster had assured us that it would not go. 

Choices

It seems to me that we have two choices when faced with the wilderness.  One is to moan, like the Hebrew people just freed from slavery in Egypt :

“Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us, bringing us out of Egypt ?   Is this not the very thing we told you in Egypt, ‘Let us alone and let us serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.”  
 (Exodus 14:11-12). 

The other is to listen for the voice of God saying to us:

Therefore, I will now allure her,
and bring her into the wilderness,
and speak tenderly to her.
(Hosea 2:14)

In the wilderness we are freed from the false securities of Egypt .  There it finally becomes evident that we are not God, and that God is all-sufficient. 

July 2004

With Christ in God

I have just returned from a month in Rome, where I had the honor of being a delegate to the Cenacle General Chapter, held every six years.  My bedroom while I was there was on the top floor of the house and looked out on our garden, the neighboring apartment buildings, and in the distance, the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica. 

With every change of the hour and the weather, this same scene took on a different tone: sometimes serene (if a crowded Roman street can ever be called serene), sometimes frantic, and sometimes, when a storm was approaching, menacing.  Nights, too, were anything but boring.  Usually, after the midnight run of the garbage trucks, they were peaceful, but occasionally there was amplified music until 4:00 A.M., blasting unimpeded through the open window (no air conditioning, of course).   Weekends often meant fireworks, with particularly spectacular ones when President Bush was in town early in the month.  I grew to cherish the scene from the window, even as I made my way bleary-eyed to morning prayer after a night of garbage trucks, fireworks, or loud music.

On the feast of the Ascension, the homily at Mass included a reference to Karl Rahner, who pointed out that when Jesus ascended into heaven, he took with him what he had assumed — in other words, human flesh, human existence.  For some reason I had never really considered this aspect of the Ascension.  Already, in some mysterious way, God has raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:6).  I found myself imagining our celebration in the Cenacle chapel not only taking place on earth, but also held safe by God in heaven.  

As John S. McClure says, Jesus in ascending brought “all of human life … into the very heart of God”:

We grow and change. We move from one place to another. We endure disease and violence. We live with the sometimes painful rhythm of suffering and death. We make mistakes and we commit sins, knowingly and unknowingly. But through it all, we carry with us a vision of our humanity being taken up by Christ into God, caught up within an ultimate, redemptive purpose for our lives.  
"The Ascension — a promise of great things to come"
www.pcusa.org/today/believe/past/may02/ascension.htm

All that I could see from my window, all I will never be able to see — and myself standing by the window — all have been carried by Christ to the heart of God.  This is true no matter what is happening to us, whether the sky of our lives is serene or threatening, whether there is noise that keeps us from sleeping, fireworks that cause us to gasp with wonder, or only the simple sounds of the everyday to and fro of human life.

But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 

Ephesians 2:4-7 (RSV)

June 2004

Not My Favorite Food

When I was in graduate school, an acquaintance of mine was stranded with no place to stay, so I offered to let her sleep on my sofa for several days.  Yes, it would have been more hospitable to have given her the bed, but in retrospect, it’s probably just as well that I didn’t, because she might have stayed longer. 

Carrie was not the ideal guest.  In the first place, she had been sunburned and was now pulling off large pieces of skin and dropping them on the furniture and the living room rug.  In the second place, she squirreled away bits of food in unlikely spots. I would find a partially drunk Coke on the shelf with the plates and cups, or half a milkshake among the cans of soup. 

What I remember most vividly, however, was that she wasn't satisfied with anything that I prepared for her to eat.  “It’s not my favorite food,” was the refrain. 

For example —

 “Carrie, I’ve made tuna fish salad for lunch.”

“Well, it’s not my favorite food.”

 “There’s omelette for supper.”

“It’s not my favorite food.”

— after which she would sit down and eat whatever it was. 

In some ways – I’m ashamed to admit it – Carrie’s ingratitude as a guest reminds me of my own ingratitude toward God.  Sitting here, surrounded by the blessings that have been poured on me, I still complain.

“I give you the bread of life,” says God.

“But I’m really in the mood for pizza today.”

“My loving mercy is always with you.”

“Actually, I'd rather not be in need of mercy.” 

“I have given you life and intellect and good friends and fascinating work – not to mention the promise of resurrection.”

“That’s good of you, but what about adding [or taking away] _______?”  [Fill in the blank according to the circumstance.]

So I pray:

Loving God, turn my ungrateful heart to you, so that I may rest in the deep knowledge that you yourself are the greatest gift and the most to be desired. Increase my love for you who are my life, my health, my peace, and my all, through Jesus Christ. Amen.

May 2004

With You Always

After the Resurrection, we hear Jesus both instructing and encouraging his disciples. When he ascends into heaven, he will no longer be with them in the flesh, but he assures them that he will never be absent. "I am with you always," he says, "yes, to the end of time" (Matthew 28:20 NJB).

Jesus is indeed present to us in many ways: through the sacraments, in our prayer, through the Holy Spirit dwelling in our hearts — and also through the people we meet every day. As Paul tells us, "Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it" (1 Corinthians 12:27 RSV). We are called both to reveal Christ to each other and to see Jesus in other people — and act accordingly (see Matthew 25:31-46).

Sometimes when we glimpse Jesus in others, we experience him as healer; sometimes as Prince of Peace, or Divine Mercy, or the Wisdom of God. Other times we see Jesus as the vulnerable child or as the Crucified One, broken and wounded.

Here are some of the people who have revealed Jesus to me recently:

• My community, as always, who accept me in my foibles and weaknesses.
• The man with only one leg who, after struggling to open the heavy glass door of the bank, waited for me and with gentle courtesy held the door for me.
• The Vietnam veteran who introduced himself on the sidewalk and added, "I have such pain in my heart. I did terrible things over there."
• The new Catholics who were received into the Church during Holy Week, and who are radiant in the Risen Christ.

If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you. 

(Romans 8:11)

April 2004

Easter Quotations

Through the Resurrection, God has said to Jesus, "You are my beloved Son, and my love is everlasting."  And to us God has said, "You indeed are my beloved children, and my love is everlasting."  The Resurrection is God's way of revealing to us that nothing that belongs to God will ever go to waste. What belongs to God will never get lost—not even our mortal bodies.

Henri J. M. Nouwen, Our Greatest Gift: A Meditation on Dying and Caring

The Easter faith recognizes that the raising of the crucified Christ from the dead provides the great alternative to this world of death.  This faith sees the raising of Christ as God's protest against death, and against all the people who work for death; for the Easter faith recognizes God's passion for the life of the person who is threatened by death and with death.

Jürgen Moltmann, “The Feast of Freedom,” from The Power of the Powerless. English translation copyright © 1983 by SCM Press Ltd. http://www.bruderhof.com/articles/FeastOfFreedom.htm

The New Testament never simply says “remember Jesus Christ.” That is a half-finished sentence. It says “remember Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.”

Robert Runcie, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1980 Easter sermon, recalled in Seasons of the Spirit, http://www.bartleby.com/63/60/4260.html

April 2004

Saint Dismas and the Cross of Christ

I had never noticed before that the Feast of the Annunciation and the Feast of Saint Dismas were both on March 25.  Dismas is the name tradition gives to the penitent thief who died on the cross with Jesus, the one who implored, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom."  

It seems somehow fitting that we should remember him on the same day as we remember the proclamation of the Incarnation to Mary.  Thus we commemorate:

• the very beginning of the earthly life of Jesus – and the very end; 

• Mary who was always open to God’s grace – and Dismas who, as far as we know, became open to grace only at the very last moment of his life.  

Opening the Heart of Jesus?  

I have come across two prayers to Saint Dismas.  The first is not only burdened with awkward images, but it implies that Dismas brought about his own salvation.  It addresses him this way:

...you who by the direct sword thrust of your love and repentance did open the Heart of Jesus in mercy and forgiveness even before the centurion's spear tore it asunder…

By suggesting that Dismas’ own love was what opened the heart of Jesus to him, the prayer reinforces the nagging suspicion many of us have that we must earn our salvation.  Of course we sinners can never earn salvation, no matter how hard we work at it.  This, after all, is why Jesus was up there on the cross in the first place.  

The Free Gift of God

While the openheartedness of Dismas to Christ must have allowed the dying thief to accept the mercy of God, the truth is that mercy had been there for him all along, always waiting for him to receive it as a gift.  The loving heart of God revealed in Christ had always been open to him, even before his appeal to Jesus, just as the heart of God is always open to us.   

We don’t have to merit God’s love, and we don't have to save ourselves.  We have a Savior – the very one that Dismas turned to on the cross.  

The other prayer, more theologically sound, begins:

Dear Saint Dismas, you cooperated with the grace that was yours in suffering the same fate as the Divine Master. You repented for your sins and believed, and you heard the Savior say:  “Today you will be with me in paradise.”  

Let us pray that we also may cooperate with the grace of God which sustains us at every moment.  Let us pray to share, like Dismas, in the life-giving mystery of the One who is Love, now and forever.

(Romans 5:6-8)

March 2004

Wrapped in Mercy

A golden dust has been sprinkled over everything in our part of Florida. We move through it. We walk on it. We breathe it in. 

OK, so it is really yellow, not gold, and it is ordinary oak pollen. But ordinary though it may be, it is ubiquitous, and it is insidious. You may first become aware of it when you notice the yellow coating on the car and the garbage can lid, or perhaps when you begin sneezing and your eyes start itching and your nose starts running. (I am writing with a wad of Kleenex next to the computer keyboard.)

Even more pervasive — and far more precious than this golden dust that brings tears to our swollen eyes — is the mercy of God. Like the pollen, we walk through it and breathe it in. Not only that, but it fills every atom of our being. We sleep wrapped in mercy, and we wake refreshed by it. And God's mercy, unlike the oak pollen, doesn’t make our nose run, but instead heals what is raw in us and calms what is troubled. Rather than clouding our eyes, it gives us clearer vision.

Contrary to what society would have us believe, mercy is not a feeble virtue.  It is a mighty force, stronger than wrath or threats or vengeance, which are ineffective as incentives to righteousness.  But the power of mercy claims us, directs us, and sometimes surprises us into goodness.  

(Lamentations 3:22-24)

March 2004

Final Chance?

Two signs, from a recent trip, read something like this:

1. Tacked on a tree by the side of the highway:

REPENT!
FINAL CHANCE!

2. Stuck on the back window of an SUV:

The first one may have been put there with good intentions, but it revealed, I believe, a flawed knowledge of God. 

The second impressed me as being a tad on the defensive side. But it reminded me, as Lent begins, that God never says to us, "I don’t like you either," even when we are at our most hostile toward God and all that is good. Of course God doesn’t like our sins: God doesn’t like anything that hurts either us or others — which brings me back to the first sign:

Repent! Final chance!

Could this really be the last chance? I suppose it is conceivable that it could be, if we have so hardened ourselves to God’s loving mercy that we refuse it in a way that is total and irrevocable. But that would be our choice, not God’s.

God keeps reaching out to us and calling us back, over and over, tenderly, out of that love that is so deep and wide and all-encompassing that we cannot begin to understand it.

Repent? 

Yes, indeed! 

Now? 

Yes! Not out of fear that it may be the last chance — because, rather, it is the way to blessed life, and any delay would be a pitiful waste of what is most valuable and most joy-bringing.

Here are signs that I can more easily imagine God tacking on a tree or sticking on the rear window of an angelic vehicle:

REPENT!
REJOICE!

and

YOU ARE MINE, NO MATTER WHAT.

For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.
Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.....
Wretched person that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! ...
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

February 2004

Oscar the Buzzard

Whenever I see buzzards circling in a clear sky, I think of Oscar.

Many years ago, a colleague of my father’s found an abandoned baby buzzard (a turkey vulture, to be exact), took him home, and named him Oscar. Cared for with tenderness, Oscar grew up and learned to fly. During the day he would go out and socialize with other buzzards, but he would always come home again every afternoon.

Bereft of a mother, however, Oscar had never learned an essential trick of buzzardhood — to lock his wings in a dihedral angle so as to soar on the warm air currents. While the other turkey vultures were lazily gliding, poor Oscar was flapping and flapping, working hard to stay aloft. By the time he returned home, he was exhausted.

This went on for some time, Oscar going out every day, flap-flapping to keep up with the others, and coming home worn out, until one day — he got it. Oscar finally learned what most of his vulture companions had known from youth, to fix his wings at the proper angle and simply soar. He was so ecstatic at this discovery that he stayed out for hours, soaring and gliding, catching the updrafts of the earth-warmed air.

Like Oscar, we often work unnecessarily hard just to keep aloft. We battle to succeed, we strain to make people like us, and in the realm of faith we struggle to lift ourselves to God.  In the long run what we really need to do is learn to be still and rest on the currents of God’s love.

Someone who knew this was Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), a remarkable woman, an artist, scientist, musician, writer, and composer. If anyone could rely on her own resources, it would seem to have been Hildegard. Nevertheless, she was aware that it was not her own flapping that would allow her to soar, and she described herself as "a feather on the breath of God."

Our own efforts amount to nothing unless we are borne by the Spirit of God who breathes in us, surrounds us, supports us, and raises us up.

I have calmed and quieted my soul, 
like a child quieted at its mother's breast; 
like a child that is quieted is my soul.
(Psalm 131:2 RSV)

February 2004

In Search of the Turkey Oak

On the way home from a Cenacle celebration on the east coast this past October, Sister Elizabeth and I decided to take a detour by way of the Okefenokee Swamp. We headed inland, thinking to spend the night in Waycross, Georgia, then zip over to the swamp the following morning.

"Should we call ahead and make a reservation?" we asked each other. We finally decided that with several motels in Waycross, which is not exactly the tourist capital of the Southeast, it was more than likely that vacancies would be a dime a dozen.

We arrived in Waycross about 7:00 p.m., and the first motel we approached simply waved us away with no explanation. At the second one we were told that everything in town was booked, with the possible exception of one suspiciously timeworn place.

"Why," I asked, "are all the motel rooms in Waycross, Georgia, filled on a Tuesday night?"

It appeared that there was some sort of housing convention going on. Who would have thought?

The two employees at the desk asked if we would like them to call ahead and make a reservation for us in a nearby town.

"Where would you suggest?"

Two small towns were mentioned, and we settled on Jesup, which turned out to be not so near at all — about an hour away from Waycross and on a different highway from the one on which we had come. By this time Sister Elizabeth and I were both tired, but off we went toward Jesup, trying to look on the positive side of events.

Between Waycross and Jesup we glimpsed a small sign on the left side of the road. "CHAMPION TURKEY OAK," it read, with an arrow pointing to the left. What was a turkey oak? I made a vague resolution to check it out.

To make a long story short, we arrived in Jesup, where the motel was spotlessly clean, where lights had been turned on to welcome us, where the small staff was exceptionally caring, where we tumbled into our beds exhausted, and where the next morning we had a complementary breakfast better than any I’ve ever eaten in a motel.

On the road again, backtracking toward Waycross and the Okefenokee, we passed through a town called Screven. There we saw the sign pointing toward the champion turkey oak, so we made a sharp turn in the direction of the arrow. 

However, after proceeding for some way, no turkey oak was to be found (assuming we would have recognized one had we seen it), so we stopped to ask directions from an elderly woman coming out of a school building. We headed off again, soon to find ourselves wandering fruitlessly around the quiet streets of Screven. 

As we were beginning to despair of finding the turkey oak, along came a car which to our surprise turned out to be driven by the woman we had met outside the school.  Having realized that she had given us the wrong directions, she had chased us down. She called out, "If you’ll follow me, I’ll lead you to the turkey oak" — which she did.

It was not a beautiful tree, although it is the largest of its kind in the country. Nevertheless we were duly impressed and took pictures to record the event. (Later we learned that this tree is called a turkey oak because its leaves resemble a turkey’s foot.)

The night before, we had been sure that not calling ahead to make a motel reservation had been a mistake. We had traveled more than two hours out of the way by the time we finally got to the Okefenokee. But despite everything, I am certain that we were on the right road.

In Jesup, we had the consolation of tender loving care by the operators of the motel, and they had the consolation of providing that care for us and receiving our gratitude. The Screven resident had the consolation of showing us kindness beyond the call of duty, and we had the consolation of receiving her kindness. What was bestowed on us was of far greater value than the ordinary comfort of stopping early in the evening without fatigue and without incident.

It is important not to forget moments like this: occasions when we seem to be off course, only to discover that we are just where we were meant to be. Perhaps we had been on the right road all along. Or perhaps we really had made a mess of things, and God, always eager to do good for us, transformed what could well have been a road fraught with peril into a path radiant with grace. Those who have eyes to see, let them see.

Having eyes do you not see, and having ears do you not hear? And do you not remember?     (Mark 8:18)

January 2004

Love Me!

My niece has a dog named Raven, a mixed-breed Labrador Retriever and Pit Bull. Although Raven had been abused in her youth, she has now found a happy home. She seems blissfully unaware of the pit bull’s reputation for fierceness, and her primary stance toward human beings is "Love me! Validate my existence!"

She expresses this first by sitting in front of you and gazing at you politely. If you do not respond appropriately, she raises a paw and offers it to you. Then if you are the kind of hard-hearted creature who can ignore the paw, she will eventually sit back on her rear and offer you both paws. Few people can resist this last-ditch effort at friendship.

We too need to be loved and to have our existence validated. However, the fundamental authentication of our lives is something amazing: the Incarnation of God in Christ. The God who created all things loved us enough and considered us valuable enough to become one of us. What is more, God doesn’t wait for us to reach out a paw, but on the contrary, always reaches out to us first, even before we have become aware of our need and desire for God.

Like Raven, we may have been abused by life, bruised by the voices of society that tell us we are worthless (because our body is not the right size or shape or color, because our cell-phone does nothing except make phone calls, because we are not perfect,  . . .). Through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, we find our true place in the world and in the family of God as we are drawn into the very life of Christ.

In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us
and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins. 
Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.  (1 John 4:10-11)

January 2004

He's Real and He Comes!

In the pew ahead of us on Sunday was a little boy about 6 or 7 years old. Oblivious to what was going on at the altar, and oppressed by the injunction to behave, he paused in mid-wiggle to proclaim,

"Santa’s real, Mama!"

Mother shook her head and said nothing.

The little boy persevered: "Yes, he’s real, but he’s dead."

Mama ignored him.

"He’s dead, but he still comes," the child insisted.

Was he confusing Santa with Jesus?  (We adults, on the other hand, too often confuse Jesus with Santa, as in, "He’s making a list, checking it twice...")

Yes, Jesus is real. He died, but he lives, and he still comes. He came as a baby on that first Christmas, and he comes still.

I am reminded of the inscription over the entrance to Carl Jung’s home (the same words are carved on the family gravestone): "Vocatus atque non vocatus, Deus aderit" (Bidden or not bidden, God will be present). It is true indeed ― God loves us far too much to stay away.

The word became flesh and dwelt among us, 
full of grace and truth.  
(John 1:14)

December 2003

The Path of Waiting

We have all experienced excruciating times of waiting, as if life were stuck in an impossible traffic jam and going nowhere. I think, though, that waiting is more like moving along a path than being stuck in traffic.  This is especially true when we are waiting on God.

Waiting, however, is a path with particular characteristics, with a movement that is often nearly imperceptible.

• First, waiting requires confident hope, even when we can see no farther than one step ahead — and sometimes that first step is unclear as well.  It means letting ourselves focus on what we cannot see.
• The journey of waiting makes it imperative to lighten the load, allowing ourselves to be emptied of all that is unsuited for the road, all that would weigh us down and prevent our receiving the gifts of the expedition.
• Sometimes we may stop and kick our toes in the dust out of frustration, because just when when thought the end was in sight, we find the horizon has disappeared and there is another bend in the road.  
• If we are present to the journey and attentive to the change of seasons, we will be able to gather the fruit that ripens only along the path of waiting.
• And finally, to wait on Emmanuel means walking in the faith that Jesus is not only the destination but also the path.  The Christ to whom we cry, “Come, Lord Jesus!” is both with us now and is waiting for us at the end of our journey. 

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. . . . The one who testifies to these things says, "Surely I am coming soon." Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!  
(Revelation 22:13, 20)  

December 2003

Seeing by Not Seeing

Last week my brother and sister-in-law, who live in Orange Park, flew to Gainesville and picked me up for a trip to Panama City to visit an uncle who is very ill.  Although I have flown many times in small aircraft — before I entered the Cenacle, my brother gave me a few flying lessons — this trip made a strong impression on me.  

Perhaps it was because I was in the back of the four-seater, which along with the engine noise and my earplugs made conversation difficult.  Perhaps it was because we flew higher than I am accustomed to in a little airplane. Whatever the reason, I became very conscious of our smallness and our fragility in the vast expanse of the sky. 

We were supported only by air.  Anything solid was 7500 feet below us, but even the Florida coastline seemed to be more marshland than firm earth.  Before long the clouds thickened and nothing of earth was visible.  I was not frightened, but awed by our weakness combined with our audacity to venture into the sky in this little fabric-covered Maule aircraft. 

So it is with our spiritual journey, which can be much more spine-tingling than flight. A humble audacity is required, as it is when taking off in a single-engine plane.  While all may seem clear at first when we are feeling our feet solidly planted on what we think we know, there comes a time when we have to trust God entirely even though we can see nothing and perhaps feel nothing. 

Here is what Saint Gregory of Nyssa says in his Life of Moses:

Leaving behind everything that is observed, not only what sense comprehends but also what the intelligence thinks it sees, it keeps on penetrating deeper until . . . it gains access to the invisible and incomprehensible, and there it sees God.  This is the true knowledge of what is sought; this is the seeing that consists in not seeing, because that which is sought transcends all knowledge, being separated on all sides by incomprehensibility as by a kind of darkness [163].  

Dwelling in Mystery beyond our comprehension, we have no choice but to rely on God-with-us — Emmanuel — who is more present to us than the air and a support infinitely more firm.  Upheld by what we cannot see, God is teaching us to see by not seeing and to know "the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge" (Eph 3:19). 

Isaiah 42:16

December 2003

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Except where noted, all Cenacle Journal entries are by Sister Rose Hoover
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