The Wind

     Last week we helped the kids in our classroom make kites and then took them out to the playground to make them fly. There had been a series of big storms blowing through, one after another for weeks. The sky was jumping alive so, as always, as soon as we got outdoors the breeze faded to teases and whispers, hardly enough to fly a napkin. So with ten kids and plenty of string to get tangled, we formed a line and faced what was left of the winter wind--and took off running.
     Kids don't really need much. They have faith. It is like "I have this kite in my hand, there WILL be wind!"
     And if the wind fails they make their own...

     In spiritual terms, Easter was alive with wind. We could barely keep our hats! Now we are moving into the quiet days when God seems to have moved away, or at least the wind has died. In fact, it is quiet outside this morning: sounds of traffic far away, moon gone over the horizon, not even the birds are awake yet. We go out to the open places to fly our hearts and... everything is quiet. No wind.
     So we pray. Like children running madly across the lawn we cling to the string of faith and run, knowing that we have what it takes. There will be wind. God will come, attracted by our hope.

    It can't all be pie and cakes. We wait for the return of the Wind.

Ready

Early in the morning. Cool outdoors, quiet. I'm waiting to see the blue fires. You have to be there watching because they come so quickly and then it's morning. Teapot on the stove, heating. It's just a step from the kitchen to the patio, which is like my balconey seat for the show, but it hasn't begun yet. The sky is a bowl of jelly bean stars, with the bright flavors of jetliner lights mixed in. Jumping beans. Today I'm making squash tacos for breakfast. I've been changing my diet, post-hospital. Exercising too, sort of. Today I must see the fires.

It's a cosmic world we live in and we rarely take time to adjust our perspective. Perhaps it's just too much to hold in mind, to pay attention, but sometimes, when we take the time to stretch, we can reach so much farther with our hearts and our thoughts... I wonder sometimes about the blog, who will read it, what they will think. Behind such thoughts is the conviction there is someone out there, waiting perhaps in the shadows of their own porch, watching for a single new light to appear on the horizon. That's what the blog will be: the light of a thought shining out from far away, flying straight as an arrow across the space until it hits home, thunk! And there we are, connected.

I think that's how heaven might be. Filled with infinite connections, the nights alive with thoughts, questions, wonder.

The tea is ready. The light is rising. The curtain of this day is about to go up. I'm ready.

The Resurrection of Christ

     Throughout the celebration of the Triduum I have been consumed with desire for God. JoAnne feels the same fire. But as it burned I became afraid that nothing could ever satisfy this desire, because we are weakened by sin and subject to death. Faith tells me that he can do everything, that he has defeated both sin and death, but where does it leave us when we are cast adrift on the sea of our longing, when flesh itself remains imperfect, a fragile vessel for the miracle he wishes to endow?
     Jesus told me to reflect on his conversation with the Pharisees, who criticized him for eating with sinners. He replied that it was for such people that he came, not for the righteous. But he was also explaining their own faith crisis: as long as they were trying to make themselves righteous through ritual and worship, they were impeding the work of grace. They could not know God until they entrusted their righteousness to him...

     None of us can be saved by what we think, do or say. Even when we proclaim him in faith, it is his action, the faith he gives us, that saves us. How, then, do we surrender our self-made faith and accept the faith he gives, every moment, every day? 
     The secret is to love, not the way the world loves, which is always with a price. We must learn to love with power and abandon, for the love we receive from God, is God. He gives himself to us as the answer to every challenge, the tool for every job. The secret is to abandon our weak, imperfect love for his infinite, total love. The secret to any good work, indeed the source and origin of every good work, is God/Love. Having one, we have the other. Having Love, we have everything.

     A teacher once told me that life is like an hourglass. It slowly closes in to a single point, and then, when we pass through that narrow gate, it begins to open and everything that comes is defined by what we discover in the passage. For me it must be Love. Not my old, small love, as hopeful as it ever could be, but the Love that is God himself, alive in me. The Resurrection of Christ is born into my own flesh and I expect things will begin to change. Reading the stories, I couldn't imagine what had happened to the apostles, how they could be so changed after the Resurrection. Now I think I am beginning to understand, and with the same passion that I wanted Christ, I now hope for what he will do.

The Wind

     The wind has been blowing for two days. It rushes like water around the house, sifting, sorting, overturning--taking away whatever is loose. In some ways it's a pain, but it keeps things fresh.
     I realized during the night that this blog really is a journal. It's not simply a place for recording daily events, like a diary, but a place for working out meanings, relationships, significance. And once again God demonstrates that if I show willingness, he won't wait. He sends the wind to sift and sort me, to take away what I don't need.
     Now it's self-righteousness. In Mark 2:17 Jesus tells the Pharisees that he didn't come for those who are just, but rather he came for sinners. To send me to that verse right now, only days after Easter, was a bold move. I don't like having to look at things like a Pharisee, like somebody who doesn't get it, but that's where I am. That's where I've been stuck.
     Because until I get over self-righteousness, I'm going to be stuck. And I can't get over it because I can't make myself righteous. It has to come from beyond me. Everything I long for, all the passion of the Triduum, lays dead on the ground going nowhere if I try to make it go by myself. Somewhere along the line I have to let it go, and let God take over.

    But he may have given me a clue. Easter Sunday was remarkably quiet. All the liturgies were over for us after the Easter Vigil. It gives us the whole day to stay at home and meet people at their convenience: family, friends, neighbors. No effort, really. Just some food on the stove, some chairs at the table and whoever comes, comes. So a member of our family came. She sat at our table the whole day and we spent the hours catching up, talking about politics, the neighborhood, our past year. I learned with some astonishment that she knows someone who is living on ten dollars a week for groceries.
    Ten dollars a week, in my own neighborhood. I did some calculating and realized how little that is. It was hard to imagine. My Catholic Alert System went on immediate alert. How can this be? Right under my own nose! Why wasn't anyone doing anything? How might I cruise in and intervene?
     I started making lists. (I always make lists.) Maybe if I shifted this expense for a week I could get to the grocery for a box of canned foods. Or maybe if I cut out that expense I could add a category to buy food. Maybe I could get a truck and start a small charity, yeah. Pretty soon I was lost in the thicket of self-righteousness. That's when God sent me to look in the Gospel for His word on the matter.
    
     We desire God. Our passion blinds us. We are like Peter on the mountain cutting sticks to build a tent for God. We don't see it. We don't understand. He has to put a hand on our heart, slow us down, get our attention. The desire is righteous, but the response is all wrong...
     The person in my life who suffers want is on a journey. I am on a journey too. Our paths intersect and when I awaken to their need, my heart, the new heart given to me for loving, opens to them. Can I help? Of course I can. Does helping make me holy? No. Holiness comes first. It comes from God through Jesus and it is God's doing, first, last, and always. He comes like the wind, searching for what is loose, what is free to pick up and move. Where will the wind take this bit of loose heart? Will it take me to my neighbor who needs food to eat? Will it take me to the one who lives in the street? Will it find a way to help? Will it only drop me there so that I can see and know that my family is out there, in the world, suffering in so many ways, hoping, as I do, that the Lord will come and find them? He will come. That is assured. But when He comes, will he find us there with them, hearts open and ready? Will he be able to do what He hopes to do through us? Will he be able to help through our hands?

    If there's a rusty truck filled with groceries in my future, God will take me to it. My job is to let go of what I've been holding onto, what's been holding me back when the wind comes blowing. I've had it backwards I guess. I've been trying to catch the wind, when I need to be letting the wind catch me.

The Triduum

Holy Thursday

It's hard to give you a sense for what happens in our Church over the next three days without a lot of explanation. When we worship together as Catholic Christians we celebrate what we call "liturgy" which means "a work of the people". This doesn't imply doing something independently of God. Rather, our worship is about relationship. God has done something to and for us, and it gives us power to do something with him in response. It might take a lifetime to understand, if my experience is a simple measure. Anyway, each year it is a new experience, spread over three days, and our worship is called the Triduum, a liturgy that takes three days.
     I can only give you a snapshot here. There is a moment while the priest reads the Gospel story of Jesus washing the feet of his apostles, that we pause to wash each other's feet. It is an optional experience that I have declined. Until last night. It was all I wanted to do, so I went forward and sat on a bench and took off my shoes and let a man wash my feet.
     It was an intensely private and intimate experience, though we were surrounded by hundreds of people, outdoors in candlight. The water was warm (thank you, hospitality ministers!) the towel was soft and my "servant" both vigorous and thourough. I sat with my head forward as he scrubbed and... it was like going through another door, conversion, finding a truth and following it. I haven't been able to shake that feeling. As soon as he was finished I got up from the bench and turned to wash the feet of the man behind me in line, and though I felt like the most inept servant and I may have sent him off squishing in his shoes, I was at last part of the work of the Church, the Liturgy that never ends. And I knew that while I might not wander the earth with a basin and towel tied to my waist, whatever I put my hand to in loving service is indeed a cleansing gift for the world.
    Wrapping it up, I couldn't find one of my dark socks and had to grope around under the bench while people changed seats. I walked back across the clipped-grass lawn under the palm trees and glistening candles, with my shoes and socks in my hand to where JoAnne waited among the seats. There is so much more to this first evening of celebration, but as I was lost in memories of other places and moments I haven't a place to begin. Just to say that after the washing of feet Father continued the story of Jesus, we celebrated Communion with much singing, and then very quietly folowed the Eucharist out into the desert where a small altar had been erected. The people would remain there, praying, until late in the evening and finally disperse into the darkness, not glumly or despairing, but holding our breath, spiritually as it were, for this is just the first night of our hope. The beginning of everything we live for...


Good Friday

     Watching the weather with a cautious eye. Last year it turned bad over the weekend, but this year we seem to be blessed. A large storm coming from the west split in the middle and passed by, north and south, with hardly more than breezes...
     Last night we stayed late, following the crowd from Palm Court out into the desert where a small altar had been built. We sang and prayed in the darkness in front of the Eucharist, and then, late at night, went home through the same expectant darkness to wait for dawn.
     In the morning we returned to the desert and prayed together. Morning is my favorite time on the desert. It is very lovely in the Springtime, without a hint of the harshness so typical of our area. The desert is covered with wildflowers. All the trees are green. The cacti are bursting with buds, soon to be blooms. The desert greets the springtime with passion, and similar feelings come to heart during the Triduum. It isn't simply a time for mourning Christ's passion and death, but also for celebrating the gift that comes through these events. "Unless the seed falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a seed." On our way back to the parking lot after morning prayers, we notice where all the seed that blew from the brittle bush last summer have sprouted in the bare gravel. Rosemary, our spritual companion from the Franciscans, tells us that the groundskeepers will gather these seedlings carefully and transplant them around the property. Someday the land will be filled with flowers.
     Friday passes quietly. We are off work and I try to keep busy with small projects. JoAnne spends her time around the house and visiting the chapel, shopping for groceries and sitting in quiet prayer. As the sun sets we head out again, back to the outdoor chapel at Our Lady of the Angels. The hospitality ministers need a hand so we agree to help pass baskets for the collection. It is a mix of feelings tonight, sorrow blended with excitement, remorse with expectation. It's hard to participate in the rituals without also admitting our role in Jesus' sufferings. It is personal, painful, hopeful, hungry. This year I feel different, quieter than usual for Good Friday, yet filled again with the same desire, like a flame in dry brush, just beginning to catch... What will he do next? What will he ask for...?

     A little boat on a big ocean sails far enough that it loses sight of the shore. Experience, however, teaches us to keep the compass point steady on the mark, and the boat will cross over the distance to a place where land can be seen ahead. This is how it's done in the spiritual journey as well. We spend a lot of days learning how to steer our boat--years perhaps--and then one day it is real. The crossing has begun. There is no going back, no looking back. All that matters is the steady, daily rhythm of the waves. In the same way my own journey is settling into the rhythm of the Holy Spirit. No big excitements, just daily progress toward the goal. Going home again, late in the night, we look forward to Saturday and the completion of the crossing...


Holy Saturday, Completing the Vigil

     We get up early and begin the tasks of preparing for Easter. At home it is about cooking, cleaning, getting out extra chairs, making and receiving phone calls as our family gets itself straightened out for Easter Sunday. We alse get ourselves straight, for tonight, after sunset, we return to Our Lady's to complete the liturgy of the Easter Triduum.
    Liturgy, this "work of the people" is worship. It is rich with color and meaning, sound and fragrance. At Our Lady's there are always surprises. Last night during a quiet moment I recognized an Irish tune, played behind the motion. Perhaps that's what got me thinking about boats and sailing. I long to visit Ireland, home of my ancestors, and walk the places of stories and legend. I feel the same way about the Kingdom of Heaven, only much more strongly.
    The Mass we are going to is often itself called the Easter Vigil, since it is celebrated in the night before Easter morning. Vigil means watchful waiting and is one of the charisms of Christianity. All things considered, we are a people waiting and preparing for the return of Christ, who has not left us, but will come in a way that allows everyone to know him. I think he comes through our hands and our hearts, so that the world will know him "by our love". It's a thought that shapes Franciscans profoundly.
     I think of all the people I love and miss, how I can love more freely in the days to come. That's our task: to liberate love in our daily lives, to let it's power run rampant in ways that reflect the Gospels--healing the sick, saving the poor, liberating the captives... raising the dead. This is big stuff in little lives, the way God likes to do things.
     Though we are continuing the same journey of celebration, tonight's Mass is as different from Thursday and Friday as can be. We begin in darkness, sitting under the palm trees while the ministers read, sing, dance and proclaim scripture after scripture, telling over the course of hours the great story of our Salvation. All I can do is to sit quietly and rejoice. It's like Rosemary said, "We already know the story. It doesn't matter where we sit."
    We have journeyed inside the heart of Christ and found ourselves. The passion of many years, many miles of wandering is completed. We are His now, and the only thing we know how to say is "Yes!"
     Out on the desert a faint breeze is moving, hardly a breath. It brings with it the smells of bursage and wildflowers. Now a chorus of coyotes, running amok in the darkness. We stand for a blessing and I feel the roots from my feet reaching down into the Holy Earth. The choir is singing a Native song. I do not know the words, but I recognize the blessing. It pours over us like soft rain. We reach out and drink it. We are planted in the earth like the first Creation. Everything is blessed. Everything is whole.
     Tonight we baptize new Christians and we bless and annoint new members. The journey of belonging takes many forms and we celebrate all of them. Our life is celebration. We take a step across the darkness of Christ's passion and come into the light of God's love and providence. We, the poorest of servants, are called forward to the table of his delight where differences melt away. The celebration is beautiful, made so by the care of many hands and hearts. At the end the ministers gather in the center and dance for the assembly: priests, friars, lectors, musicians, a troupe of women dressed in white, and among them are the shining candles of those newly baptized. Later over coffee and cake, these are the faces who catch my eye and heart. They are rejoicing adamantly in what God has done for them. They are the faces of our destiney.

    Someday, when the Journey is done, we will dance together in the presence of God. We will be home.

Happy Easter!

New Heart

Over the last weekend I went to the hospital where the doctors put stents into the arteries of my heart. We had discussed it and planned for it. It wasn't even the first time. But something about it put me on edge... it isn't exactly a vacation trip. Now I carry a card in my pocket in case I ever need to go to the hospital. Apparently before I get an MRI the technicians must fine-tune their machines.
     Sometimes we go on retreats, which means to take a few days to go off to a place apart and be with the Lord, the object being to let him talk while we listen and learn. I haven't been able to do that for awhile, so God sent me to the hospital and spoke to me through the experience. For the most part, it was a quiet time well-suited for contemplating things like mortality. Scriptures are firm on the point. Nobody gets out of this life in the body they started with. But we are told to live as people who expect good things, the best being the Company of God. What it must be like to stretch out our hand and let him take hold of us, leading us out into the night, into the quiet of the stars, to go wherever he is going. Apparently it is too much for us to imagine, but not too much for us to hope.
     Which brings me to an interesting point. We were created in goodness and meant to live our lives in goodness, but we weren't meant (as far as I can tell) to live in this physical form, but perhaps to be transformed to live a greater life. There are three things we can have right now that we will be able to take with us when we cross over into "the land of the living". We take our faith, as much of it as we can hold. We take our hope, whatever way it is. And we take love.
     These three things are forever. They are like the bag of gear we take when we go camping. They have everything we need. This life right now is about learning them and how to use them. It's taken me a long time to understand that they can all be used wrongly. We can put our faith in the wrong things, we can hope for the wrong things, and we can certainly love the wrong things. Misdirected, they become warped and harmful, not only to ourselves but to people around us and to our world.
     But when we understand these three eternal gifts and learn to use them well, marvelous things happen. The world and the people around us begin to change. I think this is what God always wanted. He wants us to participate in the work of filling out and completing creation, bringing it to its true potential. And this impacts everything we care about and do: politics, economics, ecology, technology, science--it all has a purpose in God's plan. It all has potential for good, for uplifting and transforming life.
     It's like, if you light a candle in the darkness then you can go a long way and see the light. If you get to a place where you can almost not see the light and light another candle, then you can go much farther and walk much longer in sight of the light. Imagine covering the world with candles, all placed closely enough that nomatter where you walk you will see the light. That is what God is doing, one life at a time.
     We walk with faith in God. We fill our hearts with hope for his work and we let his love shine forth like light. Everywhere we go we bring the light and when we look for it we see the light in others. It is a beautiful sight, to see the whole world glowing like one big Birthday Cake as it goes cruising through the cosmos. That's what God wants. He wants a light in the world...

BTW: I'm fine now. I have to take it easy for a few more days. I must watch what I eat and daily exercise--lots of it--is the plan. It's hard to describe what it's like... I really feel as if I've been given a new heart, or like I've been to the shop for an overhaul. But the real work comes from God's hand, who says "I will place new hearts in you, hearts made for loving."

That's a pretty good deal, don't you think?

God's Footprints

We have been offline for about two weeks because of a computer problem. We seem to have come out alright and are getting back up to speed, but it has been quite an experience in an unfamiliar world. These things tend to shake up my complacency. Trust me when I say a lot of praying was involved.

But the demands of solving this problem also made me reflect on whether or not I need so much technology in my life, particularly when I have to spend money maintaining it. How do I ask God to provide in this area? I am now fifty-six years old. On Friday night a woman called me "elderly". That was a bit of a shock, but fair enough, I guess. I'm certainly not a teen and by default, don't have a young person's facility where computers are concerned. If I could blog with my Royal typewriter, I'd do it in a flash.

Moses and Abraham and Isaac all knew what it was like to move from their homeland into unfamiliar territory. That seems like a running theme in the Bible and in Christian life as well. When we give our hearts to God, he may very well move us to new ground, and as I had to make choices about whether or not to proceed with technology in my life, I had to think about whether or not God had a purpose for it.

Because that's what conversion really means. We have finally, at last, "after many wanderings, many years of absence", come to a place where we can see into new country. We are seeing into God's country, God's kingdom, God's world. It's not whether God does or doesn't like computers. They are here. We have to learn to use them with the same faithfulness that we use money or power. God, of course, can figure a way--like this blog. Our modern tools belong to our time. We are meant to use them well. So, if you're there, I'm back. A little chastened, a little more humble (hopefully), and still willing to tell you about our journey.