The Heaven Before Us

Sometimes, what I read is just too good to keep to myself. This is D’Arcy’s refection for the 3^rd Sunday in Advent. It says everything I want to but in such a beautiful way; I could never hope to do it better. Enjoy.

“I have a favorite walking path in Louisiana that leads through a towering arbor of oaks. When I enter its richness, I am in another time and space. Street noises diminish. My breaths lengthen. It’s a secret wood. A small oasis. A place of stillness that causes my thinking to shift from the automatic, analytical process to a flow and fullness from deep within. And if you were to ask me, in the center of the path, what I really think the Christ child came to reveal, I would say, “Just what I am experiencing right now. This. This recognition of spirit in life, far removed from a deity defined by the mind, or by the adherence to a set of beliefs.”

                Cynthia Bourgeault describes it by saying that Jesus came to give us a totally different operating system. Over and over again he repeats that the kingdom of heaven is here. But is is not an earthly kingdom. And not a heaven in a different location. This. Here  Now. A way of seeing. He wanted to catapult us into a different way of relating to life and the spirit in life. He wanted to awaken something within us that would set us free. He called it forth, inviting us to look out from the perspective of vine and branches, not subject and object. He invited us to the place where we no longer see things apart from ourselves, a place where the only thing that can possible benefit me is what benefits the words. A place where I understand that harming you harms me. A place where my identity doesn’t not come from my separateness, but from the awareness that separation is an illusion. There is only one spirit in its infinite expressions.

                But we have taken the story in a different direction and made that direction our truth. We emphasize celebrations of the birth, remembrances of the journey, A blessed virgin. The stable. Shepherds in the field. Christmas trees. Gifts. Exchanging cards. Vacations. We risk avoiding the message by endlessly repeating our customs until we’ve missed the shift in consciousness that would take us from logic and memory to the deeper truth: The day of God is at hand. Here. This. Right now. The spirit within will show you. You don’t have to wait for heaven-just see the one in front of you.”

Enough said.

Amen.

Truely Seeing

In C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce the author imagine life on earth from the perspective of heaven. As each new soul arrives it is paired with a heavenly guide and together they watch the events on earth unfold. The soul is far now standing at a distance from the events that seemed so important at the time. With this new perspective, the soul watches the world. But it does so with the knowledge of the gift such a crisis may ultimately reveal.

                So often, when we are in the trenches of a situation or a problem we do not have the ability to see things from another vantage point. We can only see the surface. When we are only seeing the surface it is nearly impossible to notice any work of love let alone to imagine that this current pain might be a vehicle for something greater.

                How often have I failed to see the gifts around me because of the view I have? What is, instead of being angry and outraged when I experience setbacks, I found the power within myself to trust that this darkness will soon bring a new light into my life?

Belonging to the Wind

The wind is uaually followed by a change. I thought of this yesterday when we were hit with the first real snow of the year. This is the sign. We are entering into a new season and the wind carried it to us.Consenting to innder love is alot like the scattering of leaves that comes with a gust of wind. Something new comes through and shakes everything up. I might strip the leaves from the trees or cover the earth with a blaket of snow. Either way, it is a change. It challenges the old, familiar patterns.

It's the same with our souls. Change comes and blows everything around and suddenly the way things used to be, the familiar scenary, is gone and we are left with an entirely new inner environment. We are awakened to a new life. If this newly awakened spirit is to rmain open however, it must learn how to survive. It must adapt to the changes around it. It must continue to move forward. It is intentional and it is committed. The spirit within challenges our old, familiar patterns.

The Gift of Presence

It’s funny how thoughts can come to you. I was just reflecting on the gift of presence in one of the women I work with and into my head came the image of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. Today’s reflection is about the effortless expression of love that has the power to change lives. Anne Marrow Lindbergh, who D’Arcy discussed in her writing for today, goes out and literally washes the feet of the people; the elderly in this community.

“Most of them were thoroughly embarrassed, however, and they apologized profusely before removing their shoes. Many could no longer bend over to give themselves foot care and were extremely grateful to have their nails clipped. But at the same time, they felt ashamed to have her see the condition of their feet. Her gentle spirit won them over. Soon she was clipping their nails while another companion rubbed the scaly, worn feet with oil and creams. Before long, the weary faces had changed, and the old men and women were telling stories and reminiscing about their lives” (D’Arcy).

                How often do we come to God like these elderly? Broken and ashamed but knowing that we can no longer manage this on our own. God sent us the example of Jesus to show us not only the care He offers each one of us but the loving way to be present to one another. When Jesus stooped to wash the feet of his disciples he was doing so much more than giving them the gift of clean feet. This one seemingly simple act of love paved the way for so many other things. Like Anne, Jesus probably understood that love is not about the actual gift that is given but rather it’s about the ability for that gift to create new life.

                When I was young, my parents would always take Maria and I to Holy Thursday mass on the east side in the home of Fr. Jim O’Donnell. We would squeeze into his cramped living room and when the time came each person would take a basin of water and a towel and wash the feet of their neighbor. Everyone participated. If you came here, you knew what you were getting into and it was not for the faint of heart. It never failed to make me cry to see children washing the feet of grandmas and grandmas washing the feet of their grown children. I never really understood why this simple act made me so emotional. I think what D’Arcy wrote hits the nail on the head though. “Love, in fact, isn’t the actual gift that’s given, but rather the force that makes it possible for other things, such as strength or hope, to be found.” This simple act of washing one another’s feet was and continues to be one of the most visible signs of God’s love in the world for me. This Advent, I want to widen the margins of love in my life.

The Journey Towards Love

Throughout my life, I have learned that often times love is a journey. It is not always easy or rewarding. It is a deliberate decision. Love, in its most honest form, is a challenge. I am considering those relationships in my life that are not always the easiest. In today’s refection, D’Arcy talks about her relationship with her dad and about how coming to a place of true love with him was a journey.

“For a period of time before my father’s death, I committed myself to a weekly practice. Our relationship had always been uneasy, but I wanted to reach a place of love within myself-whether or not he and I would ever reach an understanding. So I began driving to see him once a week, trying to open my heart. As I drove, I gently remembered the rejections and confusing series of memories that had been our relationship. The drive took me an hour. Halfway there, I opened the widows and let the memories go. In the remaining minutes, I consciously filled the car with hope and love” (D’Arcy).

                This particular reflection really resonated with me because I have been in that place in my life. If I am honest, I am still at that place in my life. I have any number of relationships that are yearning to be healed. Not for the sake of the other person but for my own well-being. Anger and resentment can eat a person alive. They take up so much space that they leave little room for anything life giving. Often times I don’t want to forgive because I want to make the other person suffer for what they have done but the fact is that usually I am the only one suffering. It’s difficult for me to even imagine how incredible my life would be if I were able to completely and honestly let go of all of the negative energy I have. Even if I drove from here to California and made a conscious choice to release all of that tension I don’t think the drive would be long enough. I have some deep rooted resentments in my life that I will not go into in a public blog but God knows what they are and this Advent, I hope He can help me to let all of those feelings go. I want to make the decision to fill my heart with love and joy and push out the darkness.

Accepting the Unknown

                I just want to start out by saying that I should have known keeping a daily blog would be harder than it looks. The past few days have been hectic and all that jazz but that should not be an excuse. This, after all, was the whole point of doing this: to make a deliberate decision to devote time to reflection during Advent, even when that is difficult to do. I did manage to scribble down some notes the past few days so I will now spend time updating my blog from these thoughts I gathered.

Okay. Let’s get started.

                This entry is all about accepting the unknown path and what better examples of this during Advent then Mary and Joseph.  

 “Was the nature of the challenge any different for those two figures making their way to Bethlehem on a donkey? What else did they have to go on but a strange sense that they would be directed from within? The outcome was an impossible mystery. What could they have relied on except an experience of this power? They didn’t know the course of their lives, or the course of human life, was about to change forever. But surely they recognized something. And they were moved enough to become bold, to move beyond tradition and convention” (Daybreaks).

                I am thinking of all of the times when I have faced an unknown path like Mary and Joseph. Remembering how I felt in those moments, I can only begin to imagine how those two were feeling on the path to Bethlehem. Mary and Joseph are the perfect role models for the power of surrendering to God and the Holy Spirit.

                When I imagine the two of them, even though I know they were just normal people, I cannot really comprehend them this way. I always assumed there must have been something incredible about them that helped to make this process easier. They must have understood the magnitude of what they were saying yes to right? How could a person follow God’s plan with so much unknown ground before them? But, when I examine this idea more closely, I think we each are called to venture into unknown territory with our faith everyday even if it is not all that dignified. The only thing that we need to do is say "yes".

                It makes me wonder how often we live our lives with a trust like Mary and Joseph had. How often do we feel that stirring in our soul and respond, without even really knowing what we are agreeing to, with a “yes”?

                This weekend I was in Michigan taking a course in a two-year certification in youth ministry program and after reflecting on this reading I decided I wanted to try and live this courageous boldness over the weekend in some small way. It seemed like the perfect time to practice so I said “yes” to whatever God had in store for me and prayed for an open heart. As a result, I opened myself up to forming some really great relationships with a group from Traverse City. They had all been there in the first session in October but I don’t think I was open to the experience of putting myself out there and making new friends;  I was not willing to say "yes". I really do believe that this was my opportunity to be bold and listen to that stirring in my soul. Now, I look forward to two years of sharing my faith with this wonderful group of people.

As if I needed more proof of God's presence in my life at this very moment, here I am typing this entry on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception when we celebrate and thank Mary for saying "yes"! (and Joseph too, for being a pretty incredible man)

               

Looking Past Our Expectations

                One of the things my family would do during our evenings in our Advent corner was read the Christmas story. My mom, ever the children’s teacher at heart, took the time to print out the story, cut it into strips, glue those strips to purple construction paper and laminate that construction paper. The end result was the Christmas story broken up into sections and every night Maria and I would fight over who got to read the latest installment. After it was read, we would paper clip it to the previous purple strip and by Christmas we had a long chain which we would find different ways to display.

                Today’s Advent reflection is all about listening nd looking past our expectations.

“I think about the way our expectations dominate our faith and especially how they dominate the Christmas story. Its familiarity renders it almost impossible to hear with a new, radical listening, the way it needs to be heard. We know the ending so we impose that on the listening. What a challenge to hear it as if for the first time, letting the story of hope cause everything in us to change” (Daybreaks).

                Nothing in our life is what we expect it to be and our experience of Christmas should be no exception. This idea makes me think about how my expectations of Christmas have changed over the years.  When Maria and I were little, Christmas morning just seemed so much more exciting. I was always up first because Maria, even as a small child, is NOT a morning person. I would pester Maria is get up and then we would go together to pester my parents to get moving. Eventually, to save their sanity, my parents started leaving little gifts from Santa outside our bedroom doors so when we woke at 5:00am we would have something to occupy us for at least an hour. Then there was the usual rush downstairs and exclamations over all of the presents. Maria and I would sit at the foot of the tree and carefully select the first present we would open while mom shuffled around making everything even more perfect and dad brewed the coffee or started a fire. 

                Now, Christmas looks very different. I am still the first one up but I gave up on pestering Maria and instead get myself a cup of coffee, turn on the radio and sit downstairs by myself for awhile just soaking in the moment. Eventually, the rest of the family joins me and there is some time spent on last minute gift preparation and then we exchange our simple gifts.

For the first few years, this change in my expectation of Christmas morning was pretty depressing. I really wanted that excitement and joy I felt as a child and, as a result, missed alot of special moments. 

                But when I actually take the time to think about it, looking past my expectations of that day has resulted in a wonderful, beautiful, honest happiness. I now love Christmas for entirely different reasons than I did as a child and my expectations of the day have completly changed.

I am blessed because I have another year to celebrate the birth of my amazing mom.

I am blessed because I have another year to take the annual family photos in front of the fireplace at grandma’s house and pose for the yearly grandkids picture on the couch.

I am blessed with another year of listening to the men in my family joke about being in grandmas Glenfiddich club (the non-so- secret society my grandmother created in order to ration out her whiskey. You have to have known her for 30 years to even get a glass).

I am blessed to have another year to celebrate the growth in our family with the addition of Mike. I can’t wait to see who else joins our clan in the future.

I am blessed to have another year to sit at the kids table for dinner (and now I can drink wine!) and then retreat into the kitchen to carefully wash grandmas Country Rose china and catch up with my cousins about school, jobs, boys/husbands and the struggles that come along with those three things.

I am blessed with another year of a house full of people I have no actual blood relation to but I still consider to be my family.

                Occasionally, I feel sad when I look at how much Christmas has changed and all of the ways it no longer meets my childhood expectations but I try not to even think about it because waiting for something to fulfill your expectations is dangerous. More often than not, while you are waiting for that moment to come, you are missing out on the incredible moments happening all around you.

                I don’t want to live my faith with these expectation either. I don’t want to miss out on the beautiful things happening in my relationship with God because I am too busy thinking about how it is not living up to my expectations. Today, my prayer is to always look past my expectations of God and allow the reality to change me entirely.

Crabby Stork

“A man in Eastern Europe told me he found a stork at his front door early one morning. The stork was pecking at the glass with his bill. The man followed the stork into the yard and saw that the stork’s nest had been toppled by high winds during the night. A baby stork had a broken wing, which he set.

                Three weeks later the same stork again knocked at his door. This time the old man returned to the nest and carefully removed the splint from the baby’s wing. Then the injured bird flapped his wings and slowly lifted into the air. Suddenly the sky was thick with dozens of storks who’s been waiting nearby. They’d delayed migration until the baby healed-only then did they take flight. Magnificent flight. It was the nature of the birds to wait. To wait expectantly, open to the old man’s skills, intents on finding a way. How different that morning would have been if they’d concluded instead, this small bird cannot be saved “(Daybreaks).

                When I read this story I found myself wondering what I would have done in this situation. I thought about which character I related with the most and instantly knew what the answer was.

I would be in the group of storks waiting to leave and I would be annoyed.

I would be bothered that I had to wait around for this baby bird to heal and “get its act together” so to speak. Again, I come to the point of patience and my lack of it. I would have probably tried to convince all of the other storks that this was not our problem and we needed to simply move on.

I would be one very crabby stork.

                Most of the time, when someone is called to patience with another it requires opening your heart to the other persons needs and quieting your own. Sometimes, all that person requires is time to heal and a little bit of compassion and those are often two very difficult things for me to give.

                Then I think of all of the hundreds of times I needed that time and compassionate patience from another person. I tend to make demands on others but when the time comes for them to need something from me I can be incredibly selfish. I also don’t think we live in a culture that encourages behaviors like these storks practiced. We can’t be bothered with the struggles of another when we have so many struggles in our own lives. We don’t want to be seen as weak. We don’t want to be taken advantage of. We are taught to keep our heads down and plow ahead. If people want our help then they need to accept it on our terms and if they can’t then, oh well, it’s no longer our problem.

 I found myself thinking about this today when I was driving to work and I saw a teenage girl running down the street and wondered to myself what she was running to or from. What if she was running away from a person who was trying to hurt her? What if she were running from an abusive parent? I will never know because I just kept driving. It stuck with me how easily we close our hearts to the needs of the people around us and take flight without them and then tell ourselves “this is for the best.”

                Now, I know I cannot run out and help every person I ever encounter who needs something from me but, this Advent, what are the ways I CAN open my heart? I can practice patience with others. I can wait for the injured storks in my life instead of squawk and ruffle my feathers and demand that they get it together already! I have most certainly been an injured stork before in my life and it’s only a matter of time before I am again. This Advent, I want to emulate the old man and leave my crabby stork-like tendencies behind me.  

A New Experience of God, Finally

“We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the life that is waiting for us.”

Wise words from Joseph Campbell.

Today, my Advent reflection is all about journeys.

 Life is full of comings and goings and every journey we take requires us to leave something behind in order to move towards something new.

We can handle this leaving behind with peace and acceptance or we can go kicking and screaming.

Maria tends to go kicking and screaming. My sister hates change and every year for a long time she would cry on or around her birthday because she never wanted to grow up. Growing up means things have to change in life and change is a very scary thing for her. However I, for one, am so happy for these changes in her life maybe because, since I am older, I know how much she has to look forward to. Yes, she did have to let go of many things as she grew up but the experience of my 20-year-old sister is, honestly, much better than my 16-year-old sister (no offense to 16-year-old Maria).

It is much easier for me to encourage others such as Maria to let go than it is for me to do so in my own life. Most of you know that in August I ended a 3 year relationship. This was by far the biggest thing I have had to let go of so far. Yes, I let go of an individual and all of the things that come along with a relationship but the most challenging piece was letting go of the life I had planned for myself.

 I like plans.

 I like having things mapped out.

I had a plan for my life and it did not involve saying goodbye to the person who really had become my best friend. Yes, it was for the best and yes, it needed to happen but, despite the fact that the end was necessary and mutual, I was still clinging to the illusion of what my life was supposed to be.

After we ended things, I spent a long time fighting, with every bone in my body, the reality of my actual life. I still had MY plan and I was NOT going to let that plan go no matter what. Letting it go meant letting go of the security blanket my world with Mark had become and venturing out on my own. My expectations for what my life should be were making my miserable because the reality of the situation was things were not the same anymore.

I needed to let go of the way I wanted my life to be or I would never be able to life the life that was waiting for me.

Advent calls me to bring this same understanding to my relationship with God. I thought God and I have a fairly good relationship most of the time but when I said goodbye to my relationship with Mark I was making a lot of demands of God and myself and, as a result, was overlooking the way He was ACTUALLY working in my life.

It took me a long time to even begin to understand that all of these requests and expectations were clogging my system ad weighing me down. I was like the person who refuses to say they are sorry even when they know for certain that they were wrong and then develops an ulcer from all of the negativity they are holding on to. I decided I would just wait miserably for God to hand me the life I wanted because, clearly, He got it wrong and I would just sulk until He and I were on the same page and that page was in MY book.

Clinging to these desires was keeping me from seeing the blessings in my life which, really, are abounding. In reality, even though I like to think I have a good relationship with God, my faith was very limited during this time. Once I began to widen my view I was almost embarrassed by how tunneled my vision had become.

“My black-and-white, right-and-wrong version of faith shattered into a million pieces. It was a narrow faith that wasn’t leading me to fullness or joy. Once I gave up my old ways of looking at things, something began to shift. Being willing to experience God in a new way created an opening” (Daybreaks).

I want to be willing to experience God in a new way. I am still a long way off from really “letting go and letting God” but I think I am beginning to get back on the right path. True, I have had to leave a number of things behind but, like Maria and saying goodbye to childhood, who I am becoming and what I have waiting for me is going to be much, much better.  

New Year's Resolution

Let me just start by saying this:

I love Advent.

Something about the imagery of staying awake and moving towards Bethlehem is so beautiful to me. Plus, as a child, my parents made a big deal out of the Advent season. Every evening, sometimes willingly often reluctantly, we would gather at out "Advent corner" and pray together. We had some really wonderful moments together around that "Jesse tree". As we got older, it got more and more difficult to keep this tradition going. I remember one comical night when I brought a guy over for dinner and afterwards my parents invited him to join us for our Advent prayer. I will let you guess what his decision was. Needless to say, things didn't workout with this boy and I. Someday, I will find someone who values this Advent commitment as much as I do and marry him on the spot.

 Since this is my "New Year" I am going to make a resolution:

This Advent, I resolve to learn how to wait which, for anyone who knows me, is an extremely difficult thing for me to do.

I hate to wait.

I want everything now.

I have always been this way; constantly thinking ahead and moving forward. To my families annoyence, I spent most of my teenage years complaining about how everyone in my life is constantly late. Though this is an annoying trait to have, I think my frustration with their late tendencies had less to do with wanting to be socially polite and more to do with my intense discomfort with waiting for anything or anyone.

I don't do waiting well and, ironically, God is in the waiting.

It looks like I need to get used to it.

This blog is a way to practice the discipline of waiting for me. I am always in such a rush that I don't even like to sit down and think let alone write down my thoughts. I like to confine my "thinking time" to when I am in the car driving from one thing to another and then, quite comically actually, I am frustrated that it is taking so long for me to hear the answers I seek. Here's the thing about answers, they hardly ever operate on the same clock as I would like them to. In order to really "think" I need to allow myself to stop moving in every aspect and that includes driving.

So here I am, forcing myself to stop moving and start listening.

I received an Advent reflection book recently called "Daybreaks" by Paula D'arcy. When I got it in the mail I almost threw it away.thinking to myself "these things are all the same and they never work. I don't need someone elses thoughts to make my Advent better. I have got this under control."

Of course, I was wrong. I most definitely do NOT have it "under control"

This is, by far, the best compilations of reflections I have ever read. I sat down this morning just intending to glace at the text and was overwhelmed by how much it spoke to me. This is perfect for me at this exact moment.

Currently, I am not in the best place mentally, spiritually or physically. This is ironic because I am in love with SO many aspects of my life at the moment but I am followed by this annoying cloud that likes to form when I am alone. This cloud and I are old friends. It's the same cloud that I am usually avoiding when I am keeping myself busy refusing to wait and yelling at my family to be on time. When I stop and wait for anything that cloud looms larger and larger so what do I do? I just keep moving.

But it's Advent,  and Advent is the season dedicated to waiting.

It's funny that a chronic busy-body such as myself loves this time so much. It's almost like every fiber in my being is trying to tell me I need to learn how to wait and seek God even though I have no patience at all for the tedious process. In the book"Eat, Pray, Love" there is a wonderful quote about how to look for God that I often think of:

"Look for God. Look for God like a man with his head on fire looks for water."

This Advent, that is exactly what I plan on doing because the reality is my head is on fire a little bit and my soul is very, very restless.

In "Daybreaks" the author reflects on learning how to wait while she watches a cluster of deer and thinking of how long it has taken them to be comfortable enough to simply exist around her:

"We're learning to be together. They're teaching me how to wait. How to let things be. I wonder if it is this way, or could be this way, when God and an individual soul approach one another, each of them moving just as tentatively, yet respectfully. Maybe they circle one another with no intention on the part of God to alter anything, only a will to bring something into being-to awaken the hidden core of life. And what might it be for the soul f she took the time to approach slowly, aware that this solitary approach was the very thing she came to do? What i the soul approached with no demands? No fists raised against unanswered prayer. No expectations. Just walking toward something with the intention of knowing it, abandoning herself to it, as well as she could. I think it makes a difference. I think how you walk toward something determines what you're able to see. I consider these days of Advent to be days of impending birth. What if I made a resolve to approach them as I approach the deer, alert to their power to direct me?"

Bam. There it is. My New Year's Resolution.

I will come to God, in intentional stillness, and simply wait. No demands, just awareness that it is in these challenging moments of my waiting that God is bringing to life a new creation in me. 

God is in the waiting.