So of Course You Know What Happens Next...

     I have a temper. It's not like, always out there, bashing and crashing into things. But lately it's really been making itself felt, especially in situations where I'm given a job to do and no directions. Like most everything in the Fraternity, lately. To make it more complicated, everyone in leadership is doing double and triple-duty, so it gets confused. I'm thinking we should begin every conversation with "What are we talking about...?"
     The Holy Spirit goes ahead regardless of whether or not we have our head on straight. God's work gets done and we can either be there for it, or we can stand in the corner sulking. I prefer to do it well, but that's not always how it gets done. So, as we slide into the week before Christmas we are able to duck out of the mayhem and do other things: clean house, bake cookies, decorate the Christmas Tree. Thank goodness for holidays! They get me off the front lines and let other people have a vacation from me.

     At our last Fraternity meeting we received new Candidates. A year or so ago that was us, standing up in front of the community, making a (small) promise to embrace the period of learning and formation. It was a happy day for JoAnne and I, and it was the start of wonderful things. I say that the simple discipline of daily prayer worked a great transformation. I've found strength and willingness to work on my shortcomings. I've been given a lot of insight into God's will and his Gospel, as much as I can handle, really. And I've been able to sort myself out better than any other time in my life. I think that's another Gospel effect. Looking ahead, I can see where the life of service brings much change, in our attitudes, our desires, and especially our understanding and awareness of God's presence. I love my Fraternity. It is like any family where you wouldn't trade them for the world, but sometimes you could just brain them! Well, God has his way and his purpose. Here is where I stand, so this is where I serve.
     My hope then, is to grow as a servant, putting others first, learning patience and how to see things from other people's perspective. It's not all about me, and that's a good thing, really. It gets me off the hook. But there is a temptation to let service become something on the surface, with no substance, no real giving underneath. I would say that if it isn't driving you crazy now and then, you're probably not committing yourself. I know that God loves me and from love he has given me this path to walk, and I do love it. But there are so many things I can't say, I just don't have words for. So I search among the lives of the saints, finding new friends all the time. Ours is a big, eternal family. We should get to know each other.

     So I came here today to set up a new blog, actually, a place where I can talk about my brother, Pat, maybe tell his story, share his quirky brand of goodness with others. He lives like a parable--there is much to learn from knowing him. But I want you to know that even with the busy holidays, with all the distractions, this blog is my first love and I intend to see it through. It's all about the journey, like walking to Emmaus. Out here on the road, we can expect to meet God...

Feast of Saint Lucy

     Saint Lucy is the patron saint of the blind. Her name means “light” and comes from the Latin word for “lucid”, which means “full of light, clear and understandable.” Lucy lived in Syracuse, Sicily and brought her mother Eutychia to visit the relics of Saint Agatha in Catania. While there, Eutychia was cured of a bleeding illness. When Lucy came home, she refused to marry a pagan, who exposed her as a Christian. According to one tradition the governor ordered her to be blinded, but God restored her sight. Lucy was then martyred around the year 300.

SAINT LUCY,
     Whose beautiful name
Signifies light, By the light of Faith
Which God bestowed upon you,
Increase and preserve His light in my soul,
So that I may avoid evil,
Be zealous in the performance of good works,
And abhor nothing so much as the blindness
And the darkness of evil and sin.
     Obtain for me,
By your intercession with God,
Perfect vision for my bodily eyes
And the grace to use them
For God’s greater honor and glory
And the salvation of souls.
St. Lucy, Virgin and martyr,
Hear my prayers and obtain my petitions.
Amen.

     Last night JoAnne and I celebrated Reconciliation at Our Lady of the Angels. It was a very beautiful liturgy, shared by the community, in which we acknowledged before God our own weaknesses and asked for his help to change. Speaking to the priest, I realized it was time for me to make a commitment, and I placed everything into the light of God's judgment. I told Jesus I was ready to be his disciple, to give him all that he seeks, to follow in the footsteps of Saint Francis and to live my life for him in the manner of love.
     I sat down, then, in the midst of the Community and waited. It wasn’t long before God came to me and said,
     “I accept.”

     It was December 13, the Feast of Saint Lucy. In our Catholic community we love and honor the Saints. We pray for their help and devote ourselves to imitating their virtues. It’s a way of growing stronger in faith in Jesus, who is King of all Saints. Each one of these honored people showed in some way their devotion to Christ while they lived on earth, and all of them have the common charism of living the Gospel; all of them gave themselves completely to the will of God. I’ve known this tradition all of my life. It doesn’t matter so much when one decides, but it matters to God that one decides. He waits for it, sometimes our entire lifetime, and he honors our choice because we make it freely.
     I make note of the time, place and date of this story because of its sacramental context. Cleansed and absolved of my many sins, wrapped in the loving arms of my community, filled with hope, I made my declaration and I am noting it here with the same feelings of faith, hope and love. My decision is signed and sealed with his own affirmation. On December 13, 2010, I have become a disciple and have embraced Saint Lucy as my patroness. I think it’s wonderful that she was once Sicilian, like JoAnne. And like Saint Lucy, I hope Jesus will use me to bring light into the world. For I am one who, even in love with Christ, have been blind for such a long time…

     We settle into the Advent season with quiet comfort. It has been busy around us, but not too crazy. Since we need to be frugal, many of the plans and activities that used to drain us are no longer attractive, which gives us time to clean house and pray. Both seem suited to the season. I miss the old rush, the round of parties, the late nights wrapping gifts, but it's nice to get to bed on time, rest well and enjoy the days in simple ways. Most of all, we seem to gravitate to church, taking classes, going to special liturgies, we even signed up for an "evening retreat" with a favorite teacher.
     On Sunday mornings we are hospitality ministers. We greet people as they come into church and pass out song sheets. We scan the assembly to look for empty seats so those who come a little late don't have to stand in the back. We help take up the collection. We guide the lines to Communion and after Mass we pass out bulletins. People seem to like it. One man thanked me "for being here". I wonder sometimes if people, in their everyday lives, ever hear someone say "hello".
     The Advent season has its prayers and liturgies, and it's always been a favorite of mine. But I'm not sure if I prefer Christmas or Easter. Easter is preceded by the season of Lent, during which we pray and reflect, seeking to know our weaknesses and ways to improve ourselves. During Advent we also pray and reflect, but this is in anticipation of the great Feast of Christmas. In Advent we prepare for the celebration. At Easter, we celebrate our preparations.
     They tell us that Saint Francis loved Christmas and that Christmas is a day beloved among Franciscans. But Easter somehow seems more real to me, I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because Easter celebrates the promise of our Lord's return, when all the world will be set right and peace will reign forever. Our hope is in the Lord and in his second coming. Christmas is the story of his wonderful gift of self while Easter is the promise of the fulfillment of his final promise, the one thing we still wait for. So while we live, we work to prepare for his return, and when he comes again, we will celebrate that work with him in his kingdom.
     I think that as my heart changes, my celebrations will change. Christmas, I suspect, will take on new meaning for me as the wrappings and glitter fall away. How do people celebrate when they find they are in love with God? For JoAnne and I, we go to church, and enter once again into the quiet joy, the songs and prayers, the faces and hearts around us. We take the Eucharist and once more we are made into one Body with all the others. These are truly our mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers through Christ. At church, we are at home.

     And God is taking that and stretching it to fit the whole world...

Sailing the Sea of Faith

     At work during the week someone pinned a large piece of paper to the lunchroom wall. At the top of the paper they wrote "Things I Am Thankful For", and left it there, an invitation, or a challenge, perhaps, for the rest of us to contemplate and comment. It was an unexpected holiday greeting, a letter from everyone to everyone, or to be more exact, it was a letter from a few, to the rest of us.
     Just as unexpected, I am awake now wishing I could go back in the anonymity of the darkness and pin a list to that poster because in truth I found it difficult to be spontaneous. I needed to mull it over. It isn't that I find it difficult to be thankful, but that it seems too important to speak in haste. The comments that appeared during the week (there weren't many) were spoken from the surface of life: "I am thankful for my job...", "I'm thankful for my family..." and "I'm thankful that I am healthy..." All good sentiments, of course, but I didn't get the feeling anybody had lost any sleep thinking about it.
     For me, thankfulness opens the door to a great sea of understanding that we don't often risk. The ocean makes us nervous, and rightfully so, because we neither own it nor control it. It is big. To live on the sea means to go with great humility because pride embarks, but never returns. Thankfulness is like that. Pursuing it, following it, tracking it means going out among shifting waters. Our path disappears behind us. Past the horizon, we must find new signposts. We chart our course, but it is only lines on paper--looking up, there is nothing but the sea. That is the life of thankfulness. We go out into the immense heart of God and live in faith and trust.
     The journey of conversion is like making small trips. At first we stay inside the harbor learning the rigging and tackle. We practice our reckoning. We go from end to end and get our balance. We grow used to the sliding, rolling gate of the boat. But eventually we grow eager, dissatisfied, almost hungry for the sea. And so, one day, we head out of the harbor.
     Now we are in open water, but we hang close to the shore, keeping it always at our shoulder, like a walking companion. Day after day we venture farther out to sea, out on the rolling waves, still learning the wind, the currents, the heft of tides. It's a wonderful freedom but on the other side, the outside, there is vast emptiness, and it's scary. But over time cruising the shoreline loses its glamour. This boat is made for making journeys, and at last, as before, we leave the harbor well-provisioned and turn our back on the shore.
     I've never sailed, but I can imagine how it feels, pushing out directly onto the breast of the sea. Now everything is changed, everything is sea and seafaring, and though one is "green" at first, seasoning comes with time. We proceed according to our best skills and understandings and discover that while isolated we are never alone (radios are good metaphor for the connectedness of grace). All things working together bring us safely across the waters to our destination, land, always land. Nobody sails to arrive in the middle of nowhere. And the value of landfall is increased by the journey. We have crossed the open waters. We can now call ourselves sailors. But here's the catch. Once crossed, we are no longer in "our" country. The world has grown.

     I have come to understand, by sailing the sea of faith, that "catholic" is not the whole Christian world. Perhaps it's the contrast of new country, but I have found, across these waters, people who are better Christians than myself. It's not the card you carry that makes you a disciple, it's the years you spend sailing. There are storms out here, dangers and yes, sometimes loneliness. But we embrace them all for the chance to be free of the land, to stand the dancing road for a time until distance and the compass bring us someplace new. We go ashore on unsteady feet. We smell strange smells, taste new foods, listen to new stories, new angles, new perspectives and realize that we know the stories--we take out our own stories from our sea bag and swap them with those we meet and there, in a handshake or in a kiss, we recognize someone familiar. We know these people, and they are us.
     Perhaps we stay awhile, sharing. Perhaps it's just a tip of the hat and wave of the hand before we shove off to new destinations. But as we go from shore to shore across the great waters, we are stitching the many pieces of our world together in a cover that spans everything. Building the body of Christ one heart at a time. Making faith grow.

     Though most of my journeys happen right here at the keyboard of my computer, and though in most respects I have been a timid sailor, I can say this morning that I am grateful for the sea... and I am thankful for all those who have taught me how to sail.

Tom McNamara, Thanksgiving Day, 2010

     On Sunday, at our Fraternity meeting, we saw a short video about Medjogorie. I'm sorry if I haven't spelled it correctly but it's pretty new to me. I didn't know how big it is, or how long the visions have been occuring, or how the area has suffered through the wars and the visionaries and their priests and people have suffered. I didn't know that the whole town is Catholic and I didn't know that the shrine is under Franciscan stewardship. It's about Mary and about her message of God's love for all people, and that's the message Francis taught and we who would walk in his footsteps have the same vocation.
     But I also read this weekend that we are to find the way that is ours to accomplish this mission. Some teach, some proclaim the gospel, some serve, some create, some discover, some plant, some harvest. Some raise families. Some raise nations or raise the conscience of nations. Everyone is given the same message and the same job to bring it to all nations. We don't have to do big things. Sometimes small things have big results and maybe the best result is the change of a single heart.
     I have no great thoughts tonight, only the quiet hope and longing to be of service. My job as a Franciscan is to find out who I am and what I can do in this time of waiting for Christ's return. We are to wait like a bridesmaid with her lamp prepared, ready to run outside at His call. That's the nature of every Christian life. Preparation for what is certain. He will come, soon and very soon. And when he does we will all go out to meet him.

The Rock is Our Faith

     I don't know why I always think of these things at night. Maybe it's easier for the Holy Spirit to get my attention. In the day I am rushing, like a river in a hurry to get down a mountain. By night I am a single raindrop high on the peak, on a granite stone that never moves, just me, the earth, the sky, the wind which is Spirit all around and... light.
     This is a quiet place I've been searching for. I suppose I always knew where it was. Maybe I never turned inward long enough to feel the breeze on my face. But slowly, over time, Jesus has led me here, to sit on the stone and be still. There can be much life, much activity in stillness. I suppose the difference is that this isn't my activity, it's his. And so I take the time to step into the quiet and see what he is doing, and he shows me the Fraternity.
     From the visitor who enters our door for the very first time, to the oldest, most experienced member about to launch on the adventure of a lifetime, we are all desired and honored by God, each and every one of us. As is true in the full community of His own heart, nobody is without value, and our value is equal--the great blessing of his Heart. Some of us are conservative, some liberal, some in transition from one to the other and back again. All of us are on a journey, even if, for the moment, we are sitting quietly on the firm stone of his divine heart. That's what I was trying to understand. I was trying to figure out where I've found myself, why the storms swirl around me even here, how to still myself enough to hear and feel and see. The Fraternity is woven of people like myself, all of us blustered and driven by this current life--disturbed like the surface of a wind-blown pond. Yet this wind we so often seek shelter from is the breath of the Spirit, creating us new each moment. Even our quiet silence breathes with the passion of his close touch. It is all so profoundly intimate that even as we struggle and strive to touch him, we are changed.

     Outside the weather is changing. They say a large storm is coming. My daughter, traveling in Colorado, says it is already snowing. Here in the desert we might get some rain, chilly days, a freshening of the land, relief for the parched cactus, warm food indoors. Just in time for the holiday. But outward change is nothing compared to the change he brings to our hearts. From stony hearts to hearts made for loving--it is the answer to our prayer: that we might come to a place where we can see and know, beyond our individual weaknesses, the power he brings, the power to be united in faith, one Body in Christ where all are welcome, all are valued, all are loved. And every one of us can find Peace.

The Rule of Love

     It's one-thirty in the morning and I've been awake for at least an hour. I was going to catch up on sleep, but...
     I took four days off work for some surgery and recovery and thought Friday would be a quiet day back, just to get into the swing of things. Before noon I'd helped get one kid suspended and another well on his way to similar difficulties. It's not that they were little angels, of course. Like teetering rocks at the brink of a cliff they just needed a little push... and I was there to lean on them.
     So the Holy Spirit wakes me up for a little reflection time and I realize how easily I'm pushed over the edge myself, how easily a kid with an attitude sets me off. It's why I work in Special Education--my students have plenty of problems, but they don't have attitudes. So after tossing and turning and realizing sleep has fled, I came here to try and work things out.
    
     I've come to a conclusion that the difference between myself and what I consider a successful teacher must be love. I don't mean ordinary love, an affection for children and belief in their potential. I mean real, converted, Gospel love that changes everything--an avid sense of purpose and direction that engages the world proactively and makes change happen. It's the love of Christ who changed Zaccheus and Matthew and Simon and the leper. It's the love that set the thief free forever, even as he was dying on a cross. It's the love I need if I am to continue following Him...
     There's nothing sappy about this love. There is also nothing weak or timid or uncertain or confused. Even more difficult, there is nothing independent about this love, for it is never my work. It is profoundly surrendered to the will of God, and if there was any identifiable mistake in my choices and actions this long day, it was that I failed to go first to God, to seek and to know His will.
     People who are not on the journey of conversion will never understand that last sentence. I never understood, and even now I have to read it over and over again because the light is only beginning to break through. Francis and Clare's great love was the love of surrender and conversion to love itself, more than a way of life. They accepted love as identity. Like Jesus on Calvary, they became love--and it was all God's doing. Well, it was like getting married: two people deciding to do it together.

     Today was God's proposal. Francis found it when he turned to look back at the leper and "discovered a heart of mercy". Clare found it when she rejected her family's plans for her life and followed the one who occupied all her senses. Both of them found, like me, that it was a life-work. A conscious decision to be converted, with all it brings.
     There will always be difficult children at school, kids on the brink of failure at life. My challenge, I suppose, will be to patrol the edge with ropes of love, to go out and rescue, to intervene, to draw them back, to show them a path of life by the expedient of modeling love. It's not a romantic idea--that would be my weakness. "Love," I heard myself whispering in the darkness, "is patient, kind, does not put on airs." It is meek, tolerant, willing to see more than one side of an issue, slow to anger, rich in mercy, building slowly on respect, never threatened by the long haul. It gets better with age. Love converts. It walks with the truth in its hands. It brings liberty to captives. It sets prisoners free. There is no distance love cannot go, no trial it cannot endure, no burden it cannot take onto its own shoulders. I understand now why God has chosen for me to work in public education. So many opportunities to love. So many opportunities to be converted.
    
     At two a.m. on Saturday morning, I don't have a clue how I will proceed, only faith that yesterday will not be wasted, that the difficulties I experienced are no match to God's will, no match to real love. That what he sees, knows and plans for all of us will come to fulfillment. God rules. Creation follows. That's the plan. And God, Jesus tells us, is love.