THURSDAY MORNING DISCIPLINE

This morning I placed my writing upon the altar at Mass.  One of my daughters was singing in the choir for the first time while the elder one was an altar server.  My youngest daughter had asked me last evening to come to their Thursday morning Mass but I did not want to.  Today has been the coldest day of the year so far and I really, really wanted to stay home by the warmth of the fireplace and study.  God wanted me to go and in my thoughts reminded me that I had planned on going Thursday mornings after the busyness of the holidays ended so that I could be present at worship.  I made myself go through the motions of a shower and bundling up so that I didn’t acquire frostbite on my way.  It was seconds in the car as the heater was running that I began to feel at peace.  I was disciplining myself and God was pleased. 

As I sat through the beginning prayers of Mass and saw my two girls learning to praise God through song and service  I began to think of my own service to the Church that God has called me to.  He has asked me to take a risky leap of faith and write about Him and His desire for us human beings to be in an active, ongoing, full relationship with Him that will bring us peace and tranquility, a word that seems to be used these days only when someone is dying “well”.  I have always had faith in my life and I love the Catholic traditions I have been raised in.  This does not mean that I have not sinned for I have sinned on more than one occasion and when I do sin, I usually sin with a gusto that exceeds most any other thing that I do in my life.  But I have learned as I have grown older that faith is a journey that includes all choices of a real life.  I am just grateful that in this second half of my life that I have been graced with the desire to wake with God on my lips, in my mind, and in my heart and that I lay myself down at night to God on my lips, in my mind, and in my heart.  As you can see and as I learned this morning, the need for discipline remains.

Many people think that doing service for God consists of being willing to be on the Parish Council, serving rolls and coffee on Sunday morning, saying “hello” to strangers, etc.  I have found that the service options are narrow and usually come about from a request from others instead of a conversation with God.  I think this has played a part in the difficulty I have had in understanding that writing books or articles about God and about the integration of faith in everyday living can be a service to God and to the faith community.  Soon I will begin interviewing Seniors about their faith in the hope of gathering information for a second book on the “Catholic Legacy of Faith”.  My relationship with God and the Holy Spirit has led me to this.  Sometimes I get afraid when the money is scarce but today, at Mass, I was strengthened beyond my wildest yearnings.  I saw in my mind my papers of research strewn upon the altar.  I wanted God to have them, to bless them, and to help me find a way to bless my family with them.  I felt the “rightness” of doing this for God felt the authentic desire in my heart to do His Will. 

After Mass was over I ran into a woman that I have met before.  She is a senior in our faith community and in the course of our conversation I asked her if she would be willing to be interviewed by me.  She has said “yes”.  I am to contact her when my interview questions are complete.  She then said she knew of someone else who should be interviewed and I can see how the loaves and fishes just keep multiplying.  As we were speaking my daughters both came up to me with arms about me and telling me of their love for me.  Then the younger one danced her way into the forming line and headed off to be educated for the next 6 hours.  I was left amazed at how my disciplining of myself has left me so blessed this Thursday morning. 

IDENTITY

What makes up your identity?  Yesterday on MPR I was listening to a program on underemployed people.  During the course of the conversation between the program anchor and the professionals involved it was stated that in our country, the United States, “we are what job we have”.  I stopped the cleaning I was doing and stood for a few moments letting that statement settle itself within my brain. 

I knew exactly what was being talked about because it was one of the disturbing emotional things that happened to me after I was laid off from my 10-year position working with the homeless.  I found myself questioning more and more “Who am I without a professional job?”  I had lost the relationships with my clients that I had cherished so.  I had lost the professional committees that I had been a part of and the relationships that came with those, and I had lost the conversations and challenges of days filled with schedules and justice issues and ministerial practices.  I found myself left with a quiet home, unending house chores, and a sadness that was increasing as the “thank you, no thank you” letters came in or as I waited for letters or contacts that never arrived.  I began to realize that I had bought into this systematic portrayal of identity and needed to search for the Truth.

In my search for God’s Truth, since His is the final Truth of our existence, I discovered that I had to take off the cloak of professionalism; in fact, I had to strip down to my creation in His eyes.  Scripture tells us that we are “known” before we are born and I began to wonder who it was that He had formed me to be.  My spiritual sense acknowledged to me that I had to venture that deeply to unmask what secular thinking had given me.  Just as the U.S. banking system has had to reevaluate its mission, motives, and procedures so did I.  What I discovered was the need to do some cleaning of the “stink’n think’n” that had settled on my shoulders that comes with the propaganda of selling the “need” for professionalism as the ultimate saving grace to the American people.  Whether or not we do our jobs well seems to have been developed into a commodity when originally in the dignity of my creation my professionalism is the care and respect that I show others, the care and respect I give to the “work” that I do that helps provide for my needs and the needs of my community, and the care and respect I show as steward of God’s creations.  Professional behavior just stands for educated, ethical behavior.  It says more about the attainment of knowledge that leads one to be able to maneuver through the expectations of a particular cultural system than it does about the person attaining it.

To re-discover my identity I had to take a look at my autobiography.  Where did I come from?  Who was my family?  What had impacted my life along the journey I have taken?  I needed to see that being a professional was only a part of my life.  I was also a daughter, a sister, a Christian, a friend, an aunt, a mother, a wife, a Nana, and someone who has always been drawn to knowledge.  Asking “why?” has been one of my lifelong mantras.  In doing this my life themes began to emerge and I was drawn out of the depression of having lost my identity and drawn within the wonder of where else it was that God had wanted me to journey to. 

Having to look deeper at my own identity has been a gift from God.  He has given me insight into myself and into what many other unemployed and underemployed individuals could benefit from doing.  Also, I have found myself drawn towards the depression felt by so many of our country’s senior citizens who also feel the loss of their identity as they retire and have their fill of relaxation and never ending entertainment.  Maybe the next part of my journey will be with them.  If I find employment seeking the wisdom of our beautiful elders, I will once again be a professional.  If I sit among them doing what they may need me to do but do not receive pay, I will not.  Ultimately I have chosen to be God’s daughter and look to Him for I will be able to maneuver in and out of these positions and never lose a bit of my identity.

Oh, Christmas Tree

A tree has been living in our Living Room for the past 5 weeks.  It is a beautiful fir tree that our family cut down together at a Christmas tree farm 2 hours from home.  This has become a tradition for our family and each one looks forward to it for differing reasons.

I am very grateful to our tree for bringing the smell of Northern Minnesota woods into our home.  Every day it has graced the room with its fragrance and I, in return, needed to either speak to it and thank it for its beauty or stroke its branches while sitting quietly beside it reading something having to do with the Christmas holiday season.  My husband said it was still taking in water and we could keep it longer but I felt the Christmas season had to come to an end in some way or I would be tempted to replace it with another and another and another until all the ritual passings of the new year would find a fresh fir standing tall and green within our home. 

I never used to pay this much attention to trees boughten for the holidays; it was more about where I bought them then what I bought.  I always tried to find some kind of charity with my purchase but as the years went by the pungent smell of the town boughten firs also seemed to disappear.  We would put it up and before you knew it it was time to take it down.  Somewhere in there we would enjoy the beauty of the decorations and lights but mostly it would be too little and border on too much work for that amount of time.  It stayed this way until my focus of Christmas expanded even more than it had been before.

The more I looked for God so that I could do my part in deepening our relationship the more I began to “see” and “hear” and “smell” and “taste”.  God’s outpouring of love to me has awakened all of my senses and it is through this that I have begun to appreciate the loveliness of the fir.  It has always been there.  It was me that wasn’t present.  I was always ½ a day behind what I really wanted to do or multi-tasking to the point of not enjoying things I was making preparations for.  I will remember the smell of this wonderful tree and hopefully smile as I think of God’s love for me.

We recycle our Christmas trees by making ornaments out of their branches, or by covering plants when there is a chance of a sudden frost, or by shaking the pine needles over the strawberries as a natural fertilizer.  Its life is a full one.  When it makes its way out of our living room this evening, it will be set up in the front of the house as shelter for the birds until Spring.  My daughters will make popcorn strings or seed balls to feed the animals for the next few months.  It will continue to stand tall and straight giving neighbors a reason to take a second look and wonder when we planted that tree and they never noticed it before now.

The Feast of the Epiphany

My cat, Kitty, is not allowed to be on the Dining table.  I tell her this daily as she struts on its wooden surface with slow steps as if it is a game between her and I.  Today, as I walked into the Dining Room to write this message I find her laying on the knitted centerpiece in front of the baby Jesus’ crèche watching me as I watch her.  She is comfortable laying there and makes no attempt to move from her private viewing space.  It is as if she is telling me that it is Epiphany and she has been welcomed to lay in adoring comfort at the feet of the baby Jesus.  Who am I to shoo her away?  I can hear her purrs as I type.

Two thousand years ago men who watched the stars for answers to earthly happenings came together for a journey of magnificent proportions.  For them it must have been quite an undertaking to plan this trip to a place known only by the brilliant, heavenly activity occurring above it.  There have been many romantic depictions of this “Star of Bethlehem” that even today bring me wonder at how the spiritual realm couldn’t help but impact the natural world when the God of all came from one to the other.  His conception was Spiritually mysterious, his birth was followed by light, and the angels had to rejoice in a way that filled the night skies surrounding this Holy event with song.  For those like the “3 Kings” who were intentionally watching and “seeing” something majestically happening it was cause to leave the comfort of their homes and nations to follow unfailingly towards the birth of a king in lands unknown.  God called in a way most likely unknown to them to be witnesses that would inspire history and they answered that call despite its uncertainties.

I am not shooing my cat away from this Nativity scene.  There is something within the air today that speaks to radical faith and following one’s spiritual nature to some new understanding of living the human life.  There is transformation in the air and the background music is that of European Christmas music with its hauntingly majestic Cathedral tones.  I am part of something in this scene and I have to discover its fullness and with that I am not to do much more than to witness to its activity surrounding me.

The Feast of the Epiphany is traditionally the last day of the Christmas Season.  It is a day to remember our blessings and give final gifts of love if that is what we choose to do.  It is also a day when others have baked special cakes with coins or baubles hidden within them for one hopeful person to discover and know that the new year will hold wondrous things for him or her.  For me it is the day of formally saying “thank you” to the beautiful fir tree that has adorned our living room for 5 weeks and now will be placed in the yard for the birds to find refuge in until Spring requires its recycling as wooden ornaments or warmth for the plants during a surprise frost.  The Santa collection will be carefully wrapped and preserved for the excitement of Christmas’ return and the empty stockings will once again be placed among the bulbs for safe keeping.  The Nativity figures will also be lovingly wrapped and placed carefully among the rest as I wonder about Mary and Joseph’s sad and sudden trek to Egypt as the political world around them responded to the fear of a baby born to be our King.  Many didn’t hear the angel singing, nor saw the shepherds’ amazement at being presented with such news, nor cared whether or not these men from distant lands found this mysterious event worthy of their journey, and only saw a Jewish mother and father struggling to give birth to their new son among the animals.  The heavens rejoiced and only few heard.  The night skies lit up but only a few saw.  The lullaby of a grateful mother and father cradled the stillness of the night but few cared to be moved by the Holiness.

Today, as we follow whatever traditions grace our homes, may we wonder as we enter this new year as to how Jesus’ life was meant to impact our lives.  The spiritual world beckons us to see and hear more within our existence.  God calls each of us to the transformation of the Wise Men and cradles us with the comfort of saying “Do not be afraid.  I am with you.”  Emmanuel with us, forever with us.

Call to Vocational Changes

Recently I watched a program on Public Television that reported on the life and work of an area art teacher whose paintings have become fashionable enough to elevate him to area artistic fame.  In the midst of his interview he made a comment about how enthusiastic his students are to begin learning the artistic process only to simmer out and grow cold and disillusioned when they realize how much time they will have to spend alone perfecting their craft.  There is an illusion of a some sort of social and celebratory environment for artists that does not tell the true story of the need for diligence, determination, and discipline.

Today, I am in the midst of a vocational transformation from social service worker to writer.  On one level this is not too much of a stretch for I have always written through the years of social service positions.  On another level, the level of what fills my days and stirs my creative passions, it is a complete change…a change from being surrounded by people and need to writing about people and need within the more silent world of thought.  My prayer is that within this new framework that God will give me continued opportunities of being merciful to others.  My prior profession has educated me immensely about social systems and how to maneuver through their sometimes unjust and ineffectual natures.  I was able to see the strength it gave someone to be able to let them know realistically in all its good and bad what to expect; this armored them and kept many from retreating and fading into the margins of our society.

But I am in the midst of a different spiritual season.  God has called and I answered.  As Mary asks Joseph in the movie, The Nativity Story, “Are you scared?” and he replies with a humble chuckle “Yes, are you?” so am I.  It is scary to head down unknown roads without a living, breathing mentor; someone I could go to coffee with and talk about how the book(s) are coming along and get trusted feedback; someone whose knowledge of the profession would help me to miss obstacles.   So, I have been placing this more and more upon the altar of my prayers and thinking about the need for a religious community that shares in the gift of the written word.  My concern is that I would given their opinions too much weight and lose site of the direction that the Holy Spirit has ordained.  I was brought up to respect the words of the religious and ordained, not discard it.  So there would need to be growth in this.

Today I continue my “Query Letter” requirements and working on my personal lamentation that will be incorporated into the endings of the book’s chapters.  This is integration and I challenge all who read this to look at their lives and “wonder” about God’s Will and if there is anything that they have had a “nagging” sense of throughout their lifetimes and feel free to share for integration of our faith can only lead to a more peaceful acceptance of who we, as individuals, were authentically created to be.  God Bless…