Live The Fourth

Coincidence?

2010-06-19T12:50:00.004-07:00

K: Why do you always attribute answers to your prayers to God? Couldn't it be just coincidence?

L: If I said to you, "You know that wonderful bread you always bring to our dinners? I would like to take that to a dinner I am going to tonight. Could you please get me a loaf and drop it at my house this afternoon on your way home from work, please? Let me know how much it cost so I can reimburse you. If I am not in yet when you come by, could you please just set it inside the screen door. Thank you!" And when I got home I found the loaf inside the screen door, would I think it was a coincidence or would I not logically conclude that you granted me the favor I asked you?

The 5th Commandment and Abortion

2010-06-19T12:47:00.000-07:00

"How do you square abortion with the the commandment, 'Thou shalt not kill.'"

"It's not a baby. It's just tissue."

"If it's not a baby, then it doesn't need to be aborted, does it?"

How has my life changed since Jesus came into it?

2009-08-05T18:03:00.000-07:00

How has my life changed since Jesus came into my life? What unexpected places do I find myself in because of this personal encounter with Jesus?

He came into my life 64 years ago so that means my life has been one continual change ever since. The more I learn to love, the more loving He calls me to.

It also means a constant emptying so that there will be more room for Him. It is a single ongoing effort to divest myself of ego which is like shoveling the sidewalk while it is still snowing.

I find myself being called to be kind when I would enjoy being mean much more. I find myself being asked at regular intervals to put my Isaac on the altar. I find people seeing in me qualities I do not possess like compassion and non-judgmentalness. I assume He put them there for others to see so that He might become more real to them.

I find myself freer in the way I live. Very many issues are no longer issues to me. Things that triggered anger in me like spontaneous combustion fizzle for lack of oxygen.

Everywhere I turn I find grace being poured on me like showers in April. Grace is the only way I can account for every change I manage. I believe becoming a more authentic follower of Jesus comes from what He does with me than what I do at all just as a piece of play or a block of marble becomes a sculpture because of what the sculptor does with it, not because of what it does with itself.

Ultimately, I trust He will make so transparent that all anyone will be able to see is His Light shining through. With Paul, I would like to be able to say, "I live, no not I. Christ lives in me."

Where does the Holy Spirit come in? It is His power that will make this happen.

When I was a little girl we lived in a house with shining, highly polished mahogany floors. My grandmother always wore a saya and now and then she would drop the train of her saya on the floor. My sister and I would take turns sitting on the train. Then when she walked she would take us to wherever she was going. All we had to do was sit.

I think that is how God transforms us. We sit us on the train of His saya and He takes us wherever He wishes.

Who Jesus Is To Me

2009-08-05T17:58:00.000-07:00

The friend who originally asked the question "Who Is Jesus To Me?" answered his own question this way:

I haven't really articulated in any way like you have. I don't think Tessie has, either (although I will ask her).

All I know is that when I come to prayer, God (my notion of Him) is the great God, the Creator of everything; whose Wisdom I see in every created "miracle" around me (especially my body); and Jesus is the Word (God) Made Flesh so that he (Jesus) can communicate this mysterious Love of God for me in a way that I can understand. And He died for me in a way (in the way He suffered, was scorned, reviled, crucified) that maybe I cannot fully understand because I have not suffered that way (nut which maybe the poor and marginalized and near-desperate can better understand).

God loves me--and "plays" with me--in somewhat an analogous way to the way I love and play with our dog. And that's alright. He wants me to cuddle up to Him, and I do.

But Jesus I still have to get to know in a more personal way.

That's why--as I said in my "original" e-mail that started all of this--I turned to resolving to study more of Jesus's life . . . as expressed in the Gospels, as I must try to "interiorize" for myself.

My Response:

Yes, I love the way the Father plays with us and the way we can cuddle up to Him. When life gets too much for me, God Papa (that's how the Papua New Guineans call Him) sits on His rocking chair, pats His lap motioning me to climb on. I lean my head against His heart. He rubs my back and pats my hair while I "suck my thumb" and He croons a soothing song to quiet my heart.

To Jesus, I say, "Bend over, Lord, I want to ride piggy back." And He does and I climb on. I used to think that was just a whimsical thought I came up with until I found this line from Deuteronomy, "The one the Lord loves rests between His shoulders."

We often hear of prayer as communication with God. I believe it goes deeper - it is the entire relationship with God. After all we "communicate" with the cashier at the store or people we work with. Prayer is the relationship with God that is on a par with the relationship we have with our spouses, children, closest friends.

When we go to the Gospels to learn more about Him, we do because we see the way He relates to others, the way He deals with circumstances, His responses to the way others treat Him. We get the hang of Him, so to speak. But that is just one way.

As time passes, we realize there are other ways of "knowing" Him. In His relentless pursuit of us, the Hound Of Heaven reveals Himself to us in every possible way He can use. If we are paying the slightest bit of attention, we will notice that He "leaps" at us from every vantage point.

Nature: when I see a bird on the wing, I marvel at the gift it is from Him just to delight me. A totally blue sky without a cloud I count as a loveletter from Him. The stars at night are all jewels from His bounty just for me! I feel so loved by Him then. As Hopkins says, "The world is charged with the grandeur of God!" "Earth's crammed with heaven and every common bush is afire with God" agrees Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Add to that the Edna St. Vincent Millay line you gave me 61 years ago, "Oh God, I could push the grass apart and lay my finger on Your heart."

Other people: I come to understand His love when others love me as He does. Jack made God's love for me real by the way he loved me. I didn't realize how deep it went before. I understood God's compassion when a priest said to me in confession, "Why are you so hard on yourself? God isn't."

Scripture - just as you said.

The Sacraments - Receiving Him in the Eucharist is about as close as we can get to Him this side of heaven. Experiencing His mercy and forgiveness in Reconciliation is like being hugged by Him outright.

The Lives of Saints - reading about His friendships with the likes of Francis, Therese, Peter and the rest of them gives me perspectives of Him I might not have discovered by myself. When I observed how other couples related to each other, I learned more felicitous ways of relating to Jack.

Myself - I think this is what you mean by interiority. I finally understood how God loves us when I became a grandmother because though a bratty grandchild exasperated me beyond endurance, I still thought he was cute. When I hurt, it brings to mind that He was willing to assume humanity and also feel that pain; He didn't have to. When I watched "The Passion Of The Christ" and saw what He went through, all I could think of was "You loved us that much?" "You loved us that much?"

It is true that Jesus relates to us as individuals. All relationships are individual to individual. There is no one we relate to in exactly the same way we relate to another for the pure and simple reason that no one is ever any other. But when a friend tells me about how she and Jesus relate to each other, I learn a new way of seeing Jesus I had never seen before. When you tell me that He plays with you, it affirms His playfulness with me. It assures me that that isn't a figment of my imagination.

Thank you for starting all this because I find that I have been thinking of little else since and they are wonderful thoughts to think about.

How Am I Known By Jesus?

2009-08-05T17:25:00.000-07:00

Someone who was asked "Who Is Jesus To You" countered with this question "How Am I Known By Jesus?" I invite you to answer that one too, please.

My response:

He knows me in my unexpurgated, unedited draft. There is no hiding anything from Him. Surely, He sees through every mask I might consider putting on which I don't like to do anyway. He sees me at my ugliest: mean, petty, cruel, vain, proud, selfish, lazy, show-offy, manipulative, and even those flaws I have not even admitted to myself yet.

My students used to say that I was color-blind. I think Jesus is sin-blind. Because He has washed away our sins with His own blood, He doesn't see them anymore in His mercy. He sees me as He meant me to be and by so doing invites me to be all that and encourages me every inch of the way. When I fall, which is often, He simply picks me up, dusts me off, and sends me on my way again.

He sees all the wonderful things I can be and am sometimes and totally delights in me! Knowing myself as I do I find it hard to fathom how He can do that. I exasperate myself. But I find that if I look at myself with His eyes I am able to actually enjoy myself. And even praise and thank God for me!

I love the freedom to be who I am at any given moment knowing that I don't have to be, act or think in any particular way for Him to love me. I love being able to tell Him my darkest thoughts and most unworthy feelings without having to pretend I don't have them. I am the child whom he holds close to Him and listens to with complete attention. And affection.

It is such a happy grace to be loved unmitigatedly, totally, unconditionally, non-stop, tenderly, dellghtedly, unequivocally, without judgment. How I would love to be able to love like that!

Who is Jesus to you?

2009-08-05T16:50:00.000-07:00

I received this question from an old friend which I am now passing on to you. My answer comes after his note. I invite you to post your answers on my blog. Many thanks!

THIS idea came to me--which I hope, pray, trust, you will join in. Namely, to ask of you, my friends, who I think bear in your hearts a personal love and experience of Jesus, your own sharing, expression, essay on WHAT JESUS MEANS TO YOU YOURSELF.

"Many years ago, someone accused me of using Jesus as a crutch.
And I said, "Oh, no! He is not my crutch. He is my bone, my muscle,
my every nerve and every sinew, every vein and artery.
He is my very leg itself and every inch of me as well!"
He is the air I breathe, every drop of water I drink, the food that I eat - He is my Life!
My first prayer every morning is, "Let there be nothing about me that You are not Lord of.
Grant only that everything that has to do with me will ever redound to Your glory."
I often imagine us standing with a table between us and He says to me, smiling,
as He slams His fist on the table, "My all for your all!
I follow suit doing the same and say, "My all for Your All!
He is the depth of my peace, the wideness of my love and the height of my joy!
He is the Song my heart sings at every moment.
He knows my every thought and desire, all that is good in me and every sin I have committed.
He cherishes me infinitely, nonetheless, and I want to get even with Him.
I want to love Him with a burning so white-heat
that whoever comes near me will be ignited with Love's own fire.
He is my Passion and the very Essence of my being.
He is my God and my All!"

Finding God

2009-08-05T15:45:00.000-07:00

Alex A, you asked a while ago how to find God in others and this morning you asked how to find Him in the things that happen to us. I think 1) we ask the Holy Spirit to give us the singular grace of finding God everywhere and in everyone and everything. When my son, Joe, was a little boy, He asked, "Mom, where is God?" We were outdoors at the time.

I said, "Everywhere!" He said,

"Is He sitting on my nose?" He was probably 3 or 4 at the time.

I said, "No - we are in God as fish are in water. Not only that - He is also inside us."

He said, "Huh uh. He won't fit. He's too big and I'm too small."

Fast forward to 34 years later. I am having a similar conversation with his son, Matthew, around the same age as he was when he asked the above questions.

I said, "Matt, do you know that God is inside you?"

"Oh, man," he spluttered, "He's gonna get stuck! I've got bones in there!"

I think all of us, children and grown people, have a hard time visualizing the whereness of God. I like to ponder on that a lot.
He is easy to see in the beauty of nature. We get an idea of His power when we see nature manifesting that power. We can also see Him and His goodness in those who love us or are good to us; and in those whom we love and serve. We read about Him in Scripture and get an idea of how He was when He walked the earth and how He is now. Those of us who believe in the Real Presence cherish Him in the Eucharist though some of us find tedium in the Liturgy.

As in all things we wish to find, first we have to look for Him. If we do not look for something we want, the likelihood is we won't find it. That is why we find Hiin beauty, in love, in the the Word, in the sacred. There's no problem there. The trick is how do we find Him everywhere.

I find that when one is in love, one finds the Beloved absolutely everywhere. Everything at all reminds one of the Beloved. That is what happens with God. When we have fallen in love with Him, he occupies our consciousness non-stop. We see Him in a bird on the wing overhead, in the squirrel running across the power lines, in the fat baby of our friend, the fragile old lady crossing the street. We see His goodness in our favorite food being served in the cafeteria and Mom picking us up at school as a surprise. We see all these things as loveletters from God. We know Him and we recognize His gestures easily.

Okay, so 1) Pray for the grace. 2) Know what He looks like: good, loving, giving, beautiful, kind. 3) Look for Him 4) Fall in love with Him and recognize His loveletters.

The difficult part is finding Him in difficult people and tough circumstances. When there is someone in my life whom I find difficult to love, I tell myself that Jesus is hiding in that person and the game is Hide-and-Seek and I have to find Him hiding in some obscure part of that person. Did I tell you about the homeless man who used to come to my house last summer? He drove me crazy until I remembered what Mother Teresa said, "We have to love Jesus in His most distressing disguise." It was only after I learned to do that and treat the man as if he were Jesus did he stop coming.

The problem is we forget that God is present in everyone and everything that happens to us - even the things we wished were not happening. One of my favorite quotes is, "Nothing is by chance. No detail has been forgotten in the Father's plans, already perfect." As in your Navy/Villanova deal. And even if that had not come through, whatever would have happened was designed by God for your utmost good. The problem is we don't trust Him to do right by us. We want Him to do what we ask Him to as if we were He, God, and He, our creature. When we get it right - that He is Lord - and we the ones he loves, can you imagine how much stress would fall off our shoulders?

So the last 2 steps are: 5) Love Him in His most distressing disguise. 6) Trust Him!

Did I deliver what you were looking for, Alex?

Forgiveness

2008-04-16T18:31:00.000-07:00

Though relationships with the important people in our lives can be difficult, even harrowing, the efforts we invest in resolving them are never lost and will bear fruit.

Forgiving is very hard especially when the other person keeps hurting us. But not forgiving is even harder because it is toxic and pollutes every other area in our emotional life. Booker T. Washington said, "I will permit no man to narrow or degrade my spirit by making me hate him."

If we cannot find it in our heart to forgive then we must pray for the grace of forgiveness. God will give it to us in time. One morning, we wake up and discover that the bitterness is finally gone. As my spiritual director suggested, "Fake it until you make it." When you don't have the emotion to back the action, you will find that by doing the action habitually, the emotion will follow. In this matter, it is the willing, not the feeling, that matters. Whenever we choose to do the kind thing every time we have the choice to make, ultimately it will make us become kind people. When we do not make room for unkindness in our scheme of things, eventually it will have to go away.

When we simply cannot muster the will to forgive someone, let us just ask God to bless that person. We don't have to talk to them or relate to these people who sorely grieve us. Just bless them. Simply say, "Lord, please bless her/him." All that means is you no longer wish them ill. That is the seed of forgiveness.

Over the years, I have collected passages on various and sundry things. Remember how I used to ask you to collect quotes? Here are some on forgiveness and healing relationships.

"Holding on to your anger, resentment, and hurt only gives you tense muscles, a headache and a sore jaw from clenching your teeth. Forgiveness gives you back the laughter and lightness in your life." - Joan Lunden

"Peace begins with a smile - smile five times a day at someone you really don't want to smile at. Do it for peace." Mother Teresa

"Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding." Albert Einstein

"The love of our neighbor in its fullness simply means being able to say to him, 'What are you going through?'" - Simone Weil

"We have to forgive each other...for being so infinitely less than we ought to be. We have to learn to give where we had hoped to get and to understand where we had hoped to be understood." - Harold Loukes

"The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong." - Mahatma Gandhi

"It isn't life that weighs us down - it's the way we carry it." - Elizabeth Potier

"Mercy does not indicate one incident, but a constant attitude to everyone." - Simeon the New Theologian

"It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust." - Samuel Johnson

"It is never easy to live with other people; it is much simpler to be a saint alone." - Esther de Waal

There is one by Martin Luther King which I cannot find at this moment which says something to the effect that Forgiveness is a habitual attitude, not random actions.

Peace, Little One

What to do when your faith starts wavering?

2007-11-18T18:13:00.000-08:00

What does one do when one's faith starts wavering? The same thing one does when something that is supposed to be stable starts to waver - shore it up.

Someone else asked a similar question recently - what do you do when you have drifted away from God? Drift right back.

First, what do "waver" and "drift" mean? Does it mean that you no longer feel as tight with God as you once did? Does He feel very distant?

Feelings are not very reliable you know. They can be affected by barometric pressure, the amount of sleep you got, the time of the month, your digestive system, fatigue, stress, any number of things. Often, how you feel and the objective reality do not match at all.

Once, when I hadn't thought about God at all the entire day, I said to Him, "I'm so sorry, Lord. I've been so far from You all day," and He replied, "I don't know about you but I've been by your elbow all day long." In other words, feeling distant from God doesn't mean He IS distant.

There's a saying, "If God seems distant, who moved?" If it was you, then all you have to do is move closer back. He never moves away from us. If saints fervently sought union with God, then believe me, He even more fervently seeks union with us.

But here's another thing: sometimes, God steps into the shadows so that you can plumb the depth of your faith. A young friend responded to that by saying that God doesn't do that; He isn't that capricious. It isn't caprice. To believe in God when He is obviously there isn't faith. It is logic. I think it was Richard Rohr who said: "Faith is not the absence of doubt. It is commitment in the face of uncertainty."

It consoles me greatly that many of the great saints and mystics experienced this "distance" of God. St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila called it the "dark night of the soul." You may have read recently that Mother Teresa no longer felt God's consolations towards the end of her life but she never stopped loving or serving Him. One saint, (it may have been St. Therese) had such doubts that she wrote down the beliefs she doubted in her own blood. I guess what I am saying is we do not lose our faith without our permission.

When I was much younger I told a priest-friend of mine that I had so many doubts, losing my faith would have been as easy as rolling off a log. He said, "That is why your faith is so strong - you have fought for it." Feed your faith, starve your doubts.

A young soldier once prayed, "Lord, when I no longer have the strength to cling to You, just You cling to me." And He will because He does not ever want to lose us.

So there you are:

Feelings and reality do not often match. God may feel distant but He is always right there beside you.

Faith is precisely believing in the sun when it isn't shining; in the Son when He seems absent.

Faith is lost only when we allow it to be lost.

Our faith is as strong as our desire to keep it.

We feed our faith with prayer, the Eucharist, hanging out with faith-filled people, more prayer, the tenacity to hang on to God, still more prayer, looking to the saints' struggles to stay faithful, harassing the Holy Spirit for grace.

Basically, we will fight for Whom we love!

Papa and the Kids (as requested by Gonzo)

2007-11-13T17:16:00.000-08:00

Papa was an "old country" Papa. And why not? He was from the old country. He came to the U.S. when he was twenty. We deferred to him, doted on him and took care of him. His word was final. Papa was also big in both senses of the word. When he realized he was wrong, he was quick to apologize. He also forgave. He was lavish with his affection and our children never doubted that he cherished them. But he was also like the nursery rhyme little girl with a curl on her forehead: "When she was good, she was very, very good. When she was bad she was horrid."

Once during an extended period of Papa-grumpiness, someone asked, "Mom, what's with Papa? He's not fit to live with!"

"He's under a lot of pressure at work and he's very stressed."

Annie said, "Okay, you guys, let's make him feel better and make a big fuss over him." She went to the kitchen and began making his favorite dinner. Joe went to the store and bought his favorite ice cream. Mary straightened up our room. Chip started making tea. Rob did a quick job of making the house look extra nice. When they heard the car coming, they all ran out and raced to meet him just the way they did when they were little. But Joe was then 18, Annie 16, Mary 14, Chip 12 and Rob, 11. Two of them hooked their arms around his and led him to his chair in the dining room and sat him down for his cup of tea while another massaged his shoulders. How could anyone persist in being cranky in the face of that?

Watching my children deal with life and people taught me so very much all along, God bless them! I learned more from them than they did from me. Instead of resenting him or holding his dark side and bad moods against him, they understood how it came from a place of internal pain and rose to meet his need to be understood and accepted and loved no matter what. They made no room for blame or accusations, complaints or grudges.

As Bim, my second daughter, once pointed out during a family crisis, "Mom, a good family isn't one where no one makes mistakes. A good family is one where mistakes are made and forgiven and we continue to love, uphold and be there for each other." Amen! Alleluia!

Listening to God (3)

2007-09-05T18:19:00.000-07:00

When my son, Rob, was about 4 years old, I found him lying on the floor between our bed and the wall with a very pensive look on his face. I asked him what was the matter and he said, "I have a problem." Now what possible problem could a 4-year-old have? So I asked. He said, "When I talk to God, He doesn't answer me."

"Oh, that's because you listen to Him with your ears. If you want to hear Him, you have to listen with your heart," fully expecting him to retort, "How do you listen with your heart?"

But what he said was, "I see."

Hearing God is not like hearing people. His words form in your thoughts and feelings. And as I said in the earlier entries, the words are His, not ours.

If you really want to hear Him, I assure you it won't be while you're watching TV or istening to your i-pod. Because you wouldn't be listening or paying attention to Him then. You wouldn't even hear what humans would be saying to you if you were that occupied and preoccupied. You will hear Him if you have your heart cocked in the silence and the quiet. You will hear Him if you habitually listen for the sound of His voice.

Where would you hear Him? Somewhere I read, "Everything is ablaze with God." When you are looking for Him, you find Him everywhere, in anything and everything. As St. Paul said, "In Him we live and move and have our being." Your heart will hear Him the same way a mother hears her child's voice, however faint it may be. He will speak in beauty. He will speak through others. You will hear Him in music and the laughter of children. You will find Him even in grief as you would in joy. I often say that God's theme song is, "You'll never get away from me/though you climb the highest tree/I'll be there somehow."

Why listen? Because we want to hear. When we don't want to hear, we don't listen. When my daughter, Bim, would remonstrate with her daughter, Casey, the five-year-old would say, "I'm not listening!" It is the same with us.

God speaks and when we listen, we will hear. We speak and He listens. He always does. The prayer goes, "Speak, Lord. Your servant is listening." Often our prayer is, "Listen, Lord. I am speaking."

When we find ourselves in a bind or when we are confused, that's a good time to ask God what He would want us to do. What He wants is what is best for us and while we don't know what that might be, He does. Businesses hire consultants and experts to help them make the best decisions. God will do it for us for free and from a position of pure and simple love.

"How do we know it is God talking to us and not us talking to ourselves?"

2007-08-31T18:13:00.000-07:00

One of the reasons we don't realize God is talking to us is because we think we are simply talking to ourselves. So how do we distinguish whether it is He or ourselves? When I call you on the phone how do you know it is I and not Sr. Grace? You say, "Because you sound like you and not Sr. Grace." It's the same way with God. He sounds like Himself.

One night I was so mad at Papa that when I got into bed I lay as far away from him as I could short of not falling off the bed outright because I didn't want my body touching his body. He was already asleep by then. As I always do before going to sleep, I began to pray. "Good night, Lord. I love You."

"Do you really love Me?" (John 21:15b)

"Yes, Lord, I do."

"Put your arms around him."

"What's that got to do with anything?

"Do you really love Me?" (John 21: 16)

"Yes, Lord, I do."

"Then put your arms around him."

"Lord, I said I love You, not him."

"Do you love Me?" (John 21:17)

"Lord, You know I do."

"Forgive him. Whatever you do to him, you do to me." ( Matthew 18:21) (Matthew 25:40)

Then I realized that I had two choices: the next time He asked if I loved Him, I could say, "No" and be done with it OR do as He asked. Since saying I didn't love Him would have been a lie, I did as He asked.

Now if that were me talking to myself, it would have sounded like this:

"Good night, Lord. I love You."

"I love you too. He doesn't love you. Teach him a lesson and don't speak to him until he behaves better. He's such a jerk."

That sounds like me, not Jesus. The same way I sound like me instead of Sr. Grace. Jesus sounds like Himself.

To be continued....

Listening to God

2007-08-28T17:47:00.000-07:00

The phone would ring and my daughter, Chrissy, would answer it. She'd say "Hello," and would stand there for quite a while not saying a word. Every time that happened, I knew it would be her friend, Sally. The pattern was unmistakable. I think when we call God and He picks up His phone, we launch into our prayers and He stands there like Chrissy listening to what we have to say. There is very little exchange, if any.

I grew up before Vatican II and prayer, as we knew it then, was the recitation of prayers we had memorized. Or, if we used our own words, we would talk to God. As with Sally, there was no exchange. It was one-way prayer. When I was in my forties, my spiritual director, Fr.Bob McCreary asked, after I had shared a difficulty with him, "What did Jesus say to you about that?" I did not know what Fr.Bob meant. "What do you mean, 'What did Jesus say?' I didn't know He said anything." No one had ever told me that God speaks to us in prayer. I thought that happened only with saints and mystics.

Fr. Bob then proceeded to teach me Listening Prayer just as I taught it to some of you. First, we ask our Lady to help us. Then we quiet ourselves down, taking deep breaths, and call to mind that Jesus is truly present to us. Visualize Him standing in front of you because He is. Look into His face, especially His eyes and the love there as He gently asks you, "What would you like me to do for you?" At this point you give Him the things that are at the top of your heart - those things that concern you the most: you relationships, your main difficulties, your health issues, your fears, your worries, such. When you are done giving them over to Him, you give Him what is at the bottom of your heart which would be your sin.

Your sin is whatever it is that keeps you from being closer to God. It may be something as simple as not giving Him time or attention. It could be clinging to a behavior that separates you from Him. Or just not giving Him any room in your life. After you give that to Him, find a story in the Gospels to read.

As you read this gospel, put yourself in the scene so that you become part of the story. As an example, I will share with you my first experience with this. The story Fr. Bob picked was from St. John's gospel: Chapter 21, verse 7. Fr. Bob asked, "Who are you in this story? Peter? John? Another apostle? Jesus?"

I answered immediately, "I am Peter."

Father said, "You decided that too fast. Think some more."

And I said, "I am Peter. I feel great kinship with him because we have the same tendencies. We are impulsive, rash, quick to anger, and we stick our limbs into our mouths habitually."

"Okay," Father said, "what is happening now?"

"I just jumped off the boat and I am swimming furiously towards Jesus."

"Whar are your feelings?"

"I am very excited! That's why I jumped off the boat. I want to be with Jesus the soonest possible."

"Now what's happening?"

"It is shallow enough now for me to be walking towards Jesus and as the water comes to my ankles I run towards Him."

"Has He seen you? What is He doing?"

"He is hurrying towards me."

FLASHBACK: Just before coming to see Fr. Bob, I had gone to Mass and as I stood in line to receive Communion, the prayer that popped into my head was, "Lord, help me not to be so cuckoo."

Back to the gospel scene. As I run up to Jesus, He reaches out, tousles my hair and says with great tenderness, "But you ARE cuckoo. I made you cuckoo, I love you cuckoo. Be cuckoo!"

All my life, I had wanted to be other than who I was. Now, Jesus Himself was giving me permission to be who I really am. You have no idea how liberated I felt.

Fr. Bob said, "I think you've got it!"

We then thanked our Lady for her help.

To be continued... "How do we know it is God talking to us and not us talking to ourselves?"

Favorite Scriptures

2007-08-22T17:48:00.000-07:00

The Vine and the Branches - John 15: 1-17

"For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain." Philippians 1:21

"Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I say, Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. - Philippians 4: 4-7

"I can do all things in Christ Who strengthens me." - Philippians 4:13

"And my God will meet all your needs according to His glorious riche in Christ Jesus." Philippians 4:19

"Let rejoicing in the Lord be your strength" Nehemiah 8:10

"And what does the Lord require of you? To act justlyand to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." Micah 6:8

"Be still and know that I am God." Psalm 46:10

"Let the beloved of the Lord rest secure in Him for He shields him all day long,
AND THE ONE THE LORD LOVES RESTS BETWEEN HIS SHOULDERS." (Piggyback) - Deuteronomy 33:12

"The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms." - Deuteronomy 33:27

How do you stay committed when you are just sick and tired of your family? ?

2007-08-22T17:27:00.000-07:00

For years, we tooled along with our ups and downs, coping as best we could and then one day I said to myself, “That’s it. I have no love left to love this man with.” But I hung in there because I said I would. Those were the days when one’s word was a matter of honor. I couldn’t help thinking though, “What a bleak future. Thirty, forty more years of just hanging in here!”

One morning, however, dawn broke within me. I realized that I wasn’t at the end of my capacity to love; I was on the threshold of a deeper capacity to love. It was morning in our life once more. And so we tooled merrily along again with the highs and lows of daily life until I came to that same edge. This time I thought, “This time, it’s the real end!” But I hung in
again for the same reason as before. It was a stark and bone-freezing emotional winter. But only until spring came. I finally understood that this edges were simply thresholds of an increasing capacity to love. I learned at last why Louis Evely said that “The purpose of marriage is to love all the love you are capable of.” And that takes a lifetime.

I felt like a little ant who thought the surface of the book was its universe and as it fell off the book onto the desk it thought that was the end. As it explored the top of the desk, it realized the universe was much bigger than it thought. Then it fell off the desk and plummeted to the floor. “Surely, this is the end!” it thought. As it started to explore the room, it couldn’t believe the enormity of this new world until it ran right into the threshold at the door. As it climbed over the threshold, it
found itself in the world outside. “Oh my, the universe is vast!” For the human heart that vast universe is Love!

Love must be refreshed.

I am fully convinced that the most insidious enemy of Married Love is FATIGUE. It is insidious because it has no face of its own like Sickness, In-laws, Sex, Money, Lack of Communication but it inflitrates everything. And what two people could work out with just a little effort looms large in the wake of fatigue. When one is exhausted, one sees life and the world with jaundiced eyes through dark glasses. Nothing can be solved. All things are irritants. All guns have hair-triggers. Every situation is explosive. All landscapes are bleak. We think there is something direly wrong with our marriage when the reality is we are simply, unmitigatedly, defeatedly tired!

Wisdom eventually comes so that eventually, whenever I began to hate life, I dropped everything and took a nap. Or I would go and read something soothing. I found receptacles for negative feelings and threw them into these receptacles. Running was one. Playing the piano with vigor was another - once I played it with so much vigor in great anger that I bruised all my fingertips. I also had my angry song: Peggy Lee’s “Pass Me By” which I would sing at the top of my lungs. That was somehow pleasanter than a primal scream.

Praying is a sure-fire help - I would just bend the Lord’s ear with complaints. Better still I said to Him, “Bend down, Lord, I need to ride piggyback.” Best of all, I asked the Father to sit on His rocking chair and I would climb on His lap, lean on His chest and suck my thumb and He would rock me gently, stroke my hair and rub my back. That was infinitely better than playing demolition games with Jack’s feelings.

Jack’s favorite tactic was to leave the house and go to the woods, staying there for as long as it took him to cool down. The kids used to say, “Mom is like a geyser - she goes off every hour on the hour. Dad is a volcano. He lies quiet for a very long time but when he explodes, he lays waste the country-side.” It helped us greatly to understand each other’s pattern

Jack’s original pattern was the silent treatment, driving all his negatives into his body and then suffer from stomach problems. So I took it upon myself to provoke him deliberately into an outburst so that the negatives would be out in the universe instead of bottled up inside him making him sick. Once, he went into the bathroom to get away from me and I followed him right in. He must have thought then, “No wonder they voted her the girl they least wanted to marry.”

Our anger was a big bugaboo in our marriage for a long time. The kids and I used to laughingly say that Jack had only one negative emotion - anger.When he was tired, he got angry. When he was confused, he got angry. When he was frustrated, he got angry. When he was hurt, he got angry. When he was sad, he got angry. One negative emotion fits all.

As time passed, I mellowed. Young Jack said, “Mom, you have gotten so mellow - what happened?”

“Well, I don’t know which of these two caused it. In 1972, I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit in October and had a hysterectomy in December.”

“Oh, it had to be both,” he said. “One alone couldn’t have done it.”

The trick is not to give up. The problem is that we quit before the miracle happens. It is so easy to give up, to take the path of least resistance. Just throw in the towel and make the pain stop. Why struggle? If I just put distance between the cause of my stress, my hassle, my pain and me, I can relax, breathe easy and start over. The hitch to that is that the easy way out is not necessarily the most loving way. I have been accused of a great many things but I never want to be accused of not truly loving because that would mean that I had chosen to not truly love.

My appearance, my metabolism, my basic, uncompensated-for personality, my gifts or lack thereof are what I am - things I was born with. Who I am is the sum total of the choices I make and I want to love fully - with all that I am, all of my life, no matter what. I will fail in this often for I am flawed but it will not be for lack of trying and this is what keeps me going, moment to moment.

In time, I have come to believe what Marianne Williamson says: "Relationships are assignments. The Holy Spirit knows who will make us grow the most and assigns us to each other." Jack was God¹s perfect instrument to smooth my rough edges off and vice versa. I¹m glad I came to see this. Without this insight, we might simply have broken each other into pieces instead of polishing each other into the precious stones God meant to create out of the pebbles that we were.

Stages of Love

2007-08-17T20:24:00.000-07:00

In the musical, "Showboat," Captain Andy tells his daughter, Magnolia, who is madly in love with her hero, Gaylord Ravenal, that yes, it is Saturday night and rejoices with her. Then he says, "Then Monday morning comes." It was his way of saying that life is also real; that at some time, however high we go, we will come down.

I once said, "If I had known marriage was this wonderful, I would have gotten married sooner," and I had married soon enough. The flip side of the coin, however, is that marriage is where we grow and many times, that engenders growing pains.

I have seen marriages that seem to flow more smoothly; where the Monday mornings are as simple as doing the laundry. And there are marriages that are more turbulent than hanging the wash. We were to discover that ours was not as simple as hanging the wash on a sunny Monday morn. The laundry I had brought into the marriage needed much work and I had brought in a lot of baggage.

What a Monday morning we awakened to! I now know that we had married at the first stage of love: "You are the most wonderful creature God ever made!" Everything about the other is totally delightful - even the way he sneezed was exquisite. Most celebrities marry at this stage which is why they divorce as soon as they hit the second stage shortly after.

The second stage is: "You have got to be the worst crumb God ever made!" That is when we discover the clay feet, the warts, the flaws, the dark side and don't want to have anything to do with any of it. No one ever wants to marry during this stage. In relationships where the love is unconditional even when we don¹t realize it, we somehow work through this dark tunnel to emerge into the third stage.

The third stage is: "You are the most wonderful crumb God ever made!" We have seen the clay feet, the warts, the flaws, the dark side and we love the Other anyway. We still want to spend the rest of our life with them. We know that the difficult side is the other side of the coin and we wish to keep the whole coin. When they announced their engagement I asked my then daughter-in-law-to-be, Bridget, "What will you do when you meet Chip¹s dark side?" Her answer was, "What I see of his good side makes me willing to live with his dark side."

I am not sure we would have moved on to the third stage had we not gone through our second stage inside marriage. I fully understand why many mariages don't take - for the majority of us, it is so very hard. Our son, Rob, was a Navy Seal and an adventure racer. He has been put in many very risky and life-endangering situations which demanded his utmost, both in body and spirit. Once, he said, "Mom, do you know what it's like when you are totally spent and you don't have an ounce of energy left to keep going and you dig deep inside you and pull out one last vestige of strength and make it and you realize you are more than you thought?²"

"Yes, I do," I said. "Marriage is like that."

Happily, there is a fourth stage to love which is exactly like the first. But this time it is based on reality instead of fantasy. We have seen the whole of our Other and can say, "Yes! You are the most wonderful creature God ever made! I know."

Love has no scripts

2007-08-15T21:54:00.000-07:00

Love Has No Scripts

One of the major problems, if not THE major one, all relationships have to work through is EXPECTATIONS. This seems to be a universal component, though in varying degrees. The higher the expectations, the bigger the disappointment when we discover that this person we prize so much is, alas, a simple human being. The full-blown relationships in fiction and the movies help little. Even the most sensible of us go into friendships believing that this Special Someone will love us, at least, as much as we love them. And of course, our idea of what "being loved" means anything from "He will call me/she will confide in me" to "She will understand how I feel without my saying anything/He will comfort me when I am sad without my telling him that I need him to."

The expectations will differ according to the relationship. The relationship can be husband and wife, child and parent, sibling and sibling. lover and lover, teacher and student, boss and employee, friend and friend, teammate and teammate, coach and athlete and whatever other combination life puts together. In most of these, we expect mutuality, affection, loyalty, desire to be together, understanding, patience, acceptance, sharing, honesty, respect, love, of course, willingness to help, caring, affirmation, appreciation, gratitude, warmth, mutual enjoyment, commitment, fidelity,forgiveness - the list goes on.

We expect more of some relationships than we do of others. We don't necessarily expect affection from our bosses though we sure would like it from our family members. Parents and teachers expect respect and obedience form their children and students but teammates and classmates don't from each other.

Expectations, of themselves, are natural offshoots when people relate to each other. Trouble begins when we write scripts for each other. You are my friend; therefore you will never say anything to hurt my feelings. You are my parent, therefore you will support every decision I make regardless of what that might be. You are my spouse, therefore you will forgive whatever I do: infidelity, abuse, neglect. You are my child, therefore you will excel in everything.

The first time I became keenly aware of scripts was when a close friend said to me, "Why did you say this instead of that?" "Why didn't you do that instead of this?" I said, "I didn't know there was a script."

Papa expected a serene, cheerful mature woman who would keep his house immaculate, cook him delicious meals like his mom did, domestic to the bone, always pleasant. Hah! He thought he could get a pussycat out of a tigress, a lily out of a dandelion. What he had gotten, in the illusions he had spun out of his fancy, was a temperamental, emotionally needy brat who didn¹t know the first thing about housekeeping or cooking, fancied herself a bluestocking, and in her own words, was "mean as hell and lazy as sin."

I, in turn, expected this romantic hero, this true-to-life Prince Charming who would sweep me off my feet every single day. After all, it was precisely this that I fell in love with. He would read me poems and keep me bedazzled with his impassioned declarations of love. Instead, I found him much quieter than I realized; he did not have the compulsive need to communicate that I did.

It is bad enough when we write scripts for each other. The really crazy part is that we do not show these scripts to the ones we wrote them for and when they do not perform according to those scripts, we get upset and hold that against them. One script, common to young friendships, goes, "You will invite me to go out with you on weekends and you may not go out with other friends. If you go out with others and not invite me, I will be very hurt."

The problem with scripts is they make us overlook a basic reality: THE OTHER PERSON IS TOTALLY FREE! There is nothing that says that if you are my friend then I have to do everything you want and vice versa. When we get angry at our friends for not doing, thinking or being what we expected them to, what we are saying is they do not have the freedom to be who they are or to think and act according to their lights. We are saying that they are there to suit our fancy, period. To do, think, say and be what WE think best. In that we case, it is we who are failing the friendship.

If you like to spend money on the gifts you give your friend, that does not oblige him/her to give you one back of the same value. You may have different budgets. For that matter your giving him/her a gift doesn't even oblige your friend to reciprocate. A gift means "no strings attached."

We extend friendship and all that entails to the other because we want to; they respond because they want to. Good friendships are built on mutual love and RESPECT; we leave each other's freedom intact. A bad friendship is an oxymoron. An ugly friendship is one that has been polluted by egos and scripts, where "love" is quite conditional and forgiveness not in the picture.

I have friends I love dearly who do not need me in their lives as much as I need them in mine. Before I understood friendship more clearly, I would feel quite hurt by that. Eventually, I understood that I had scripts for them and therefore tore them up. It is much easier to love free people than actors I haven't even given my scripts to. An even more interesting reality is this: script-writers do not like to be given scripts themselves.

One of my favorite lines is: "I love you not for who you are but for what I am when I am with you." Only scriptless friendships allow that to happen. No control, no dominance, no power-struggles, no drama, no one-upmanship, no agendas. Just clear, simple, unadulterated love.

You Are My Friend

2007-08-11T13:11:00.000-07:00

You are my Friend

Of all the possible relationships between human beings: lovers, spouses, parent-child, siblings, teacher-student, healer-patient etc., perhaps the sweetest and freest is that of friendship because it demands and expects the least from the other. A friend is someone we freely choose to have in our lives, not someone placed there by life or circumstances. A friend can also be someone given to us by life or circumstances: lover, spouse, parent, child, sibling, teacher, student, healer, patient, employer, employee, colleague - whom we delight in so that we are bound by heart, not by prescription.

A friend is someone whose spirit resonates with ours. Being with a friend makes our pleasure in life keener. Our friend's presence makes the moment richer and fuller. In our friend's presence, we are more; we become closer to all we can truly be: nobler, kinder, wiser, more beautiful in every sense of that word, and therefore, happier. Being with a friend is surely one of the sweetest joys in life.

Paradoxically, with a friend, we can be who we are at the moment: mean, petty, immature, unlovable and still be truly accepted and loved because our friend sees us whole. With a friend we do not have to wear masks nor shield; we can lay down our weapons for there is nothing to hide or defend ourselves from - we are safe. We can be who we truly are for that is who our friend loves - not someone we conjure up that he might accept because our friend loves us as we uniquely are.

Of all the possible relationships between us, I am glad that it is friendship. I am grateful that Life gave us to each other in this way. You make one¹s pleasure in life keener. Being with you makes the moments richer and fuller. When I am with you, I am more and I am safe. I thank you from my deepest heart for being my Friend....

How to custom-design a husband

2007-08-05T20:17:00.001-07:00

Take a sheet of paper and write down 10 of your strengths. Beside that, list 10 of your weaknesses. Beneath your strengths, write 10 of your hopes and dreams. Beside them, list 10 fears. Under all that, ennumerate 10 values: what you consider both essential and/or importantfor a good life.

For example:

STRENGTHS
Intelligence
Good looks
Creativity
Friendliness
Sense of Humor
Spontaneity
Spirituality
Enthusiastic
Risk-taker
Leadership

WEAKNESSES
Laziness
Vanity
Moodiness
Intensiy
Silliness
Disorganization
Unreal
Loud
Impulsive
Bossiness

HOPES AND DREAMS
Graduate School
Travel
Success in career
Good marriage
Four chidren
Staying fit
Keep my friendships
Prosperity
Make the world better
Strong family life

FEARS
Failure
Rejection
Bad breaks
Divorce
Infertility
Poor health
Loneliness
Dire Poverty
Becoming bitter
Losing loved ones

VALUES
Faith in God
Love of Family
Good, strong relationships
Peace/Harmony/Mercy
Joy, Excitement/Fun
Service to Others/Justice
Wisdom
Making a difference
Good health

Now take another sheet of paper and write down 10 strengths you would like your husband to possess. You may have the same strengths like he can be intelligent and good-looking too. But include qualities that would address your weaknesses. For example, since you are moody, it would be nice if he were even-keeled. Since you are disorganized, it would help if he were organized. His strengths should also address your fears. Like patience and fidelity would make divorce unlikely. Good healthy habits would make it less likely for you to be a widow.

Under Weaknesses, list weaknesses in him that you are willing to live with: He has no sense of style. He can't dance. He's not very handy. He forgets special dates. He snores. Stuff like that. I can't imagine your listing addiction, abusiveness, can't hold a job, uncommunicative, dishonesty.

Finally, your hopes and dreams, and values should match because if they don't then you'll spend your life together at cross-purposes. You want to travel; he wants to stay at home. You want children; he doesn't like kids. You get the picture.

When you are done with his profile, take a third piece of paper and write a prayer: "Lord, please send me a man who will love me as much as I will love him....and weave in the rest of his qualties. Make sure that this prayer will reflect a mutuality in your relationship instead of being simply a list of requests containing only what you want this man will do for you. Marriage is very much a two-way street.

Good luck with this and if you are so inclined, do share your prayer for a husband with us.

Grief

2007-07-28T18:55:00.000-07:00

Just as it is unrealistic for us to believe that we have anything to say about when someone we love should die, it is equally unrealistic for us to think that if we believe death is graduation into eternity that will take its sting away. The reality is nothing quite compares with the pain that comes when someone we are close to dies.

When Papa was dying, I prepared myself for what was to come: his physical absence, the loneliness, the missing, how different life without him would be and everything else I thought I should brace myself for. Well, I had absolutely no clue as to what the desolation was going to be. The briefest description I can give it is: I felt excavated. Where my heart was was a huge, cavernous hole.

God was my strength. The memories of our life together sustained me. But the pain didn't stop. My therapy was to write and write and write.

Grief is like childbirth
It will not be hurried,
It will not be stopped.
You simply have to ride it through.
The hurting waxes and wanes
Like labor pains
And at the end you find
Life all new.

Grief is not a river
That moves on to one space
From another
Leaving what is passed behind.
It is a whirlpool
One tries to swim away from
With one¹s full might
Only to find
In one unguarded flash of time
It can suck you back and down
To almost drowning
Losing all you had gained
In time and space
Making struggle almost vain.
Grief is treacherous
And deep
Tumultuous, turbulent
Swallowing
As the sea sometimes -
Can it ever be left behind?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Unlike morning
Which happens everyday,
Grief appears when it chooses
And looses
Its tempest without warning,
Without your knowing
The storm will blow, going
Only when it¹s finally spent.

Grief is a thief
Who sneaks up behind you
And knocks you down
Running off with your peace.
You have not a whit of control
It simply snatches your soul
And tosses it where it pleases.

You have nothing to say
About when grief comes and goes
You are at the throes
Of its mercy
The onslaughts happening
Without rhyme nor reason,
Have no season.

I do not understand any of this
I only know I cannot go through life
Bracing myself for these encounters
Sometimes protracted,
Sometimes brief,
So from now on, when you happen,
I¹ll just welcome you, Grief!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Grief is having your insides excavated.
No, not your heart taken out
For that is instant death.

Rather, it is disembowelment -
Having your innards ripped out
While remaining alive....

Grief is having an anvil
Where your heart should be
So heavy you can barely breathe.

Grief is purgatory or hell
Catharsis or damnation -
You decide.

Grief is a roller-coaster ride
A climbing, a plunging, a levelling-off
Grief is very rough.

I keep thinking that if I could dissect grief,
If I could take it apart,
It might stop tearing up my heart.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Losing someone you love in death
Is like having the car you¹re in
Plunge off a bridge
Into the rapids below
And have the current take you
Down river, hitting the rocks
While the waters rush to engulf you
Leaving no air for breath -
Drown to death....

Except for this:
God "reached down from on high
And takes hold of me,
Draws me out of the water
And brings me into a spacious place.
He rescues me because
He delights in me."
Praise Him!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Grief is heavy
A burden I cannot lay down
Nor unload
For it is the anvil where my heart
Is supposed to be.

Grief is unrelentingly there
Day after day.
It is not intermittent
Giving one pauses of rest now and then.
It never goes away.

Grief saps one¹s strength
Leaving one too weak to tackle
What one once could.
Incapacitating one from enjoying
What one once would.

One is helpless in the face of Grief -
Defenseless, fully at its mercy, at a loss....
One places one foot in front of the other,
Living what is less than life,
Trying to understand the Cross.

One goes through the motions
Of daily living seemingly oblivious
Of what is going on deep down within -
I suppose that is why I am so tired.
Grief is doing me in.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My depression is simply the garden-variety kind,
not clinical, needing medical intervention.
It is nonetheless real and experiencing it, I find:

Depression defeats, deprives. It is drought.
The source of life is shut off,
the springs no longer flowing, the river bed bone dry.

Depression is darkness -
no sunlight to grow or see by,
no sun for warmth, no glow.

Depression is decline
No energy, no stamina, no drive
Just malaise, a falling, a going down.

Depression is death-dealing -
no more desire to live,
no hopes, no plans, no dreams.

I have also discovered
depression is a call to prayer -
the occasion to approach

God's rocking chair and climb
onto His lap
for Him to soothe me there:

He is the Source of life and light
Strength and hope, the Thrust
that gives me the impulse to

sing and wing and fling
my arms to embrace the universe
and reclaim my life again!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lord, enter everything in my life!
Enter my sorrow and my peace.
For my heartache, be surcease.
Enter my endeavors and my dreams,
my machinations and my schemes.
Enter my sins, redeem me;
my striving, sanctify me.
Enter my strengths, my flaws,
my sharing in Your Cross.
Enter my illusions, my realities.
Enter and stretch my capacities.
Enter my singing and winging,
my struggles, my falls,
the erratic way I answer your calls.
Enter my relationships, the way I love.
Enter every step, every nudge, every shove towards You.
Enter my darkness, be my Light.
Enter my absolutely everything
until every thing that has to do with me
Is You!

Loveletters (requested by Michelle Jackson)

2007-07-28T17:24:00.000-07:00

Are there times when God seems so far away you wonder if He were not just a figment of your imagination?

It is like having a childhood neighbor who was your very best friend. But she moved to Australia. At first, you would write to each other as fast as the mails allowed. This was before e-mail. Then you wrote to each other every other month. As time passed, you sent cards on special occasions such as birthdays, Christmas, Valentines... It eventually dwindled to once a
year, then every other year and now it has become so sporadic you catch yourself thinking, "Was she just a figment of my imagination?"

When my relationship with God comes to that, I say to Him, "Lord, I need a loveletter from You."

Once, He said, "And what might you consider a loveletter from Me?"

I said, "Coffee Heath Bar Crunch ice cream."

That afternoon, my daughter, Annie dropped by apropos of nothing bringing TWO pints of, yes, Coffee Heath Bar crunch ice cream!

I was recounting this to my friend, Gloria, who said, "He might send you loveletters but not me."

I countered, "Do you check your mailbox?"

"What do you mean?"

"God could be sending a loveletter every hour on the hour. But if you don't check your mailbox, you wouldn't know that, would you?"

Eventually, I made this an assignment in our Religion classes. The students were to note down the loveletters God sent them. A loveletter was anything that happened to them that made them feel loved by God. A cloudless blue sky, a bird on the wing, a ride from a friend while I was waiting at a bus stop - these were all loveletters from God for me. I wanted my students to
get in the habit of finding God everywhere. They learned to find Him in their favorite supper awaiting them at home, a game victory, a phone call from someone they hadn't heard from in a while, a grade higher than they expected. The more loveletters they found, the more they found.

One day, one of the girls said, "I haven't gotten a loveletter from God and I've been looking."

"Keep looking. He always sends one."

The day was almost over - "I still haven't gotten one!" she moaned.

She was about four feet from me. I asked her, "Can you see me?"

She said, "Yes, of course."

"Come here," I said as I beckoned her over and she approached.

"That's two letters, Baby: You are not blind; you can see. You are not paralyzed, you can walk."

And those days when even I can't find a loveletter, I tell God it is my turn to send Him one by being gracious about not getting one from Him. Sending loveletters is a two-way street so I send Him loveletters too even if He knows I am not a figment of His imagination!

Spiritual Kung Fu

2007-07-28T16:26:00.000-07:00

Recently, I came across a quote I thought was powerful: "So much more suffering comes into the world from people taking offense than from people giving offense." (Ken Keyes) I have also discovered that when one doesn't take offense at a remark that was meant to offend, the bomb meant to destroy is defused. Mr. Spock of Star Trek once said something to the effect that if you did not accept a dagger directed against you as hostile it would not have the power to penetrate you. Eleanor Roosevelt said, "No one can make you feel inferior without your permission." These beliefs give us a lot of power to deflect hurt so that we do not have to enclose ourselves behind walls to protect ourselves.

I have heard people often remark that Jesus' teaching about turning the other cheek is totally stupid. I think that's because they think that Jesus means, "Let yourself be abused." Jesus is not stupid. I call His strategy Spiritual Kung Fu where you let your adversary's momentum against you be used against himself.

Ordinarily, when we see someone advancing upon us to attack us, figuratively speaking, we do unto him before he does unto us. Jesus says not to. As the adversary advances and is practically upon us, we step aside and he runs straight into the wall behind us and knocks himself out. It's already been said: "Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who persecute you. Do not repay evil for evil...(Romans 12)" It's the heart's adventure race!

One of my favorite images about this is a scene from the movie, "The Next Karate Kid." It is the young girl Julie's 18th birthday and Mr. Miyagi's gift to her is a karate demonstration. He stands at one end of the long Buddhist monastery hall and to Julie's dismay, a monk sends an arrow flying straight towards Mr. Miyagi. Just as the arrow reaches him, Mr. Miyagi catches it in his fist and is untouched by it. This is the skill I have been trying to learn in dealing with relationships. Spiritual self-defense.

This is not an easy concept to assimilate so here's another illustration. Mr. Wong had an established restaurant in Chinatown and enjoyed many regular customers. Then, accross the street from him a Mr. Foo opens another Chinese restaurant. Some of Mr. Wong's customers went over to try the new one. They returned to Mr. Wong and told him that Mr. Foo had told them that Mr. Wong's kitchen was unsanitary and vermin-infested, that he used trans-fats and generally tried to discredit him. Mr. Wong responded by saying, "You must have misunderstood him. Mr. Foo is too honorable to malign me like that." Naturally that statement got back to Mr. Foo who, shame-faced, went over to Mr. Wong to apologize for what he had done.

To fight hostility with hostility is like trying to wash a dirty car with mud. We remove dirt with clean water. Repel the darkness with light. We catch the arrow with our hand before it pierces us. We deflect the spears. We love our enemy as Jesus enjoined us. To be hostile to our enemy is to become like him. To deflect the hostility is to remain untouched.

Death is Graduation

2007-07-23T13:02:00.000-07:00

" Anyways, we really need to talk about death because I'm struggling with understanding it." - LTF'er

Over the years, I have come to the conclusion that perhaps the easiest way to understand death is to see it as our graduation to Eternity. When we finish 8th grade, we graduate and move on to high school. Then college, graduate school, and on to what you call "real life." When we graduate into eternity, we pass on to real "real life."

Here are a few things to remember about death. No one escapes it. Everyone that was ever born dies eventually. We all have our turns. Psalm 139:16 says, "All the days ordained for me were written in Your book before one of them came to be." Do we expect our loved ones not to die? Do we get to call the shots as to when they die? If we answered "Yes" to these questions then we are dodging reality. Reality has proven time and again that we and our loved ones will all die. And we don't really have anything to say about when, where, who, why and how. I work on the premise that I can't really tell God how to God when I can't even Lolita Lolita.

Those of us who believe in the teachings of Jesus know this much about what happens when we slip into eternity: "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him." (1 Cor. 2:9) In other words not even our wildest imaginings can come close to the joys our Father has in store for our Homecoming. So death is not a fearsome thing. It is fearsome only when we focus on our separation from our dying loved one. When you marry, will you look forward to your new life with your spouse or will you look upon your marriage as the sorrowful separation from your parents? It is also desolate if we see God as a Cosmic Sadist who is bent on making us miserable instead of the loving Father who cannot do enough for us.

When Papa knew his days were numbered, he threw himself into enjoying these last days to the hilt. He encouraged us to gather as often as we could. He would plan pizza parties at 11:00 p.m. He loved having the grandkids all around him and chit-chat with them. No lamenting that the end was near. He just made sure that he was filling every remaining moment savoring what he loved most: family, food, fishing... Three weeks before he died, our 5 sons and 2 sons-in-law took him big bass fishing at Lake Kissimmee in Florida. At our last New Year's eve together, 7 weeks before his Homegoing, we waltzed to Guy Lombardo's "Auld Lang Syne" though he was already having a hard time just moving around. I never saw anyone put all his energies into cramming so much life into his last days. He taught us so much about how to transition from life to Life!

I look forward to that moment in my life when I step over the threshold of death and enter Eternity. And when I do, I shall sprint for Jesus and give Him a body hug which will take some doing because I won't have my body. We are also blessed in that we believe in the Resurrection; that death is not the end of all. We believe that someday we will all be reunited in our Father's house. The only fear I have left is that not all of us will be there; that some of us will be missing. I earnestly pray that we shall all be there! Please make sure we will all be there.

If you get to heaven before I do, please meet me at the Gate. If I get there before you do you can bet that I will be there at the Gate ready to give you my biggest hug. Jesus is the Resurrction and the Life and we who believe in Him will live even though we die. Though we will be separated, we will reunite. In a little while we will see them no more, and then after a little while we will see them because they are going to the Father. We will grieve but our grief will turn to joy. (John 16:17, 20)

"Death is turning out the lights because dawn has arrived."

Prayer Book Guidelines

2007-07-18T21:29:00.000-07:00

If I taught you as a freshman then you kept this Prayer Book. I thought the least I could do was keep one right along with you. Just in case you might want to keep it again, I'm posting the guidelines. Happy Praying!

Prayer Book Guidelines

We keep this prayerbook to serve as our telephone to God. Every time we use
it we are making a connection with Him. Just as it is one thing to learn
all about celebrities, we know it is quite another to know them personally.
So it is with God. It is not enough just to learn all about Him. It is very
important that we we get to know Him enough to have a real relationship
with Him.

1. Get a notebook where you will write your prayers.

2. There will be 10 different ways of praying we will go into. We can do
all 10 in one day or take turns using each one once a day.

a) Praise
b) Repentance
c) Petitions
d) Thanksgiving
e) Listening
f) Quotes
g) New Testament
h) Old Testament
i) Proverbs
j) Loveletters

3. What each kind of prayer means:

a) PRAISE - In this prayer, we praise God for Himself not for what He
does. “Lord, you are so good and wonderful! Everything about You is about
kindness, love and compassion. I want to love you more.” Praising Him for
what He does comes under Thanksgiving. If you want to get the hang of
Praise, check out the psalms of Praise and model your prayers after them.
Praising God opens up a whole new world of wonder.

b) REPENTANCE - In this prayer, reflect on all the things you have been
or done that were less than loving and consider how that affects your
relationship with God and others. “Lord, today, I was very unkind to
someone and I really hurt her feelings. I am very sorry for having done
that. Please teach me to be as kind as You.” When we keep track of the
times we refuse to love (which is what sin is) it helps us to love more and
refuse less..

c) PETITIONS - This is the prayer we all know how to say. “Lord, please
help my grandmother to get well. Please help me to have better grades.
Please help me to get along with my parents. Please help the homeless and
the hungry. Please help me as I deal with this overwhelming grief.” This
prayer helps us to remember how much we need God’s help and how eager He is
to help us.

d) THANKSGIVING - This is simply thanking God for everything in our
lives: “Lord, thank you for my health and well-being. Thank you for my
family and friends who love me. Thank you even for my problems because they
help me to grow.” The habit of being thankful will make us happier people
because it helps us to see all the good things we have.

e) LISTENING - Prayer is much more than just saying things to God. It
is also listening to what He says to us. This is not easy to do. It
involves being very quiet, focusing, reading a Gospel story, placing
ourselves in the scene of that Gospel story, interacting with Jesus as if we
were right there with Him and hearing what He may have to say. This takes a
while to learn but practice does make perfect.

f) QUOTES - This involves loooking for and writing down significant
quotes that will help us become wiser people. Example “All that has to
happen for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.” (Edmund
Burke) You then add why you consider this significant.

g) NEW TESTAMENT - Read the New Testament and copy a quote you find
particularly meaningful. Example - “I can do all things in Christ Who
strengthens me.” (Philippians 4: 13). Going through the New Testament will
familiarize you with Jesus’ mindset.

h) OLD TESTAMENT - Now, read the Old Testament and find a significant
quote to copy. The Psalms and Isaiah are particularly good sources. Here’s
one: “Let rejoicing in the Lord be your strength.” (Nehemiah 8:10) Looking
through the Old Testament will help you see how God always wanted human
beings to be in a close relationship with Him.

i) PROVERBS - Go through the Book of Proverbs and copy the wise sayings
you find meaningful. For example, “Hatred stirs up disputes, but love
covers all offenses.” Chapter 10, verse 12. These last three prayers will
teach you how to pray with the Bible.

j) LOVELETTERS - Think on what has happened to you most recently that
made you feel very loved by God. Example: “I have been feeling very
discouraged lately and today I got a letter from a friend I hadn’t heard
from in a long time telling me how my presence in her life had made her a
better person and she wanted me to know that.” This prayer teaches us to
always look for and find all the wonderful things God is constantly sending
us. “Earth’s crammed with heaven and every common bush is afire with God.”
(Elizabeth Barrett Browning)

YOU CAN DO A PRAYER A NIGHT FOLLOWED BY A BRIEF REFLECTION ON YOUR DAY.
THIS GIVES YOU A BITE-SIZE PRAYER TIME THAT WILL KEEP YOUR PRAYER LIFE IN
TOP FORM FROM DAY TO DAY. YOU WILL BE SURPRISED HOW MUCH IT WILL DE-STRESS
YOU.

REFLECTION QUESTIONS:

1. What do you want most from life?

2. How are you going to achieve in a foll-proof way?

3. What are the variable that could keep you from achieving them?

4. What are you going to do with these variables?

5. On a scale of 0 to 10, how much does God figure in your life?

6. How much do you want Him to figure in your life?

7. If your answers to 5 and 6 don’t match, how come?

When things get out of control

2007-07-15T13:50:00.000-07:00

Last week, one of the 2001 girls asked, "What does one do when things get out of control?

All I could think of to say was, "Surf!" as in "Surf in the Lord." Many years ago when things in my life were out of control, (they tend to do that a lot in a big family) I wrote this short verse:

"Life in the Lord
is surfing free
without fear of falling
and when you fall, to discover:
God is the Sea!"

Trying to control our lives is probably the biggest stress-inducer because it defies reality. We try to make life fit the streetcar tracks we want to assign it too. But life is never that tidy. What we need to navigate life with are the abilities of a skilled surf-rider. As we all well know the distance between where the waves begin and the shore is not a straight line. We ride with the wave. The thrill comes from believing we can do it. (I have never surfed ever and won't be likely to - I just love to watch surfers on TV) So it is with life - riding on God, we will make it. It isn't all up to us. He is a big part of the game! He is the Wave!

I used to ask you, "If your life were a bus, who's driving?" Is God riding in your bus? Where is He seated? Do you backseat- drive? I used to backseat-drive a lot. "Don't turn there, Lord. Go straight." "Why are we heading this way?" And so forth and so on. At those times, He would stop and gently ask, "Who's driving? You or I?" And I would say, "You are, Lord." And He would kindly respond, "Then please let Me."

Now that I am older and have learned to trust Him more, I don't backseat-drive anymore. I go to the back of the car, lie down and take a nap, totally willing for Him to take me wherever He wants us to go. That trust, that willingness is the key to my peace.

My grandmother always wore long skirts that had a train. We lived in a house with highly polished mahogany floors. She would drop the train to her skirt and my sister and I took turns riding on the train. When she walked, we would glide over the floors smoothly. We can live like that - riding on God's train as it were. Ot to fit the image better, our Blessed Mother's train. What it entails is realizing that they are FOR us, LOVE us and can be trusted to take us where we need to go. As Jesus said, "My food is to do the Will of the Father." (John 4:34)

Happy surfing, Little One! Happy riding on our Mother's train! Enjoy the bus ride- the Bus Driver loves us!

Why This Blog ?

2007-06-30T17:09:00.000-07:00

It has been years now that the AHC girls have been asking for "Mrs. J-isms." I just got another request last night. They want to have down on paper the various and sundry things we discussed in our classes over time: true love, "Pet your dog, not your date," Spiritual Kung Fu, Experiment in Loving (Krist Kindl), the Prayerbook, death, friendship, the stages of love, romance, courtship and marriage, a relationship with God.

This is the way I would like to work it: ask your particular question, request your particular subject and I shall respond. Then we can have our dialogues on said subjects. This will be different from the LTF in that these will address particular subjects like the ones above. Deal?

When the children were little we used to play an Advent game we learned from Mary Reed Newland called Krist Kindl. Krist Kindl is German for "Christ Child." We would put our names in a hat and the person whose name we got was to be our Krist Kindl for Advent. We were to treat this person as if s/he were the Christ Child. Invariably we got the name of the person we were having trouble with that particular year. There was someone in our extended family whom I had troubles with for years. So, in 1967, I decided to make this person my Krist Kindl all year long. This worked out so well that when I started teaching in 1984 I made it an assignment in my class for six consecutive weeks. The results were astonishing!

KRIST KINDL GUIDELINES - "EXPERIMENT IN LOVING"

1. Pick the most difficult relationship you have or the one that needs the most healing or the one you most want to improve. This person is your KRIST KINDL. (CHRIST CHILD) You are to treat this person as if s/he were the Christ Child.

2. Copy Luke 6:27-31, 35-36 on a 3 x 5 card and tape it to your mirror so you can read it every morning, when you get home, and before you go to bed so that you will get into the rhythm of Jesus' mindset.

3. Pray for your Krist Kindl everytime you read this. Ask God to bless him and cover Him with His love, peace and joy. It is very hard to keep being negative about someone you are praying for day in and day out.

4. Walk a mile in this person's shoes. Look at life and the world with your KK's eyes. Find out what makes him/her tick, where s/he is coming from. Ask them how they feel; what their childhood was like, their hopes, dreams and fears. LISTEN without judgment. WE CAN LISTEN PEOPLE INTO BEING.

5. Empathize because when we do, we will begin to understand. If we try to understand our KK, it will be easier to be compassionate than judgmental. Instead of focusing on our pain, try to see hers/his.

6. FORGIVE! To forgive is not to hold other people's sins against them. If you keep judging your KK, this experiment will not work.

7. Cover your KK with love. Do at least one loving thing for him/her a day. Keep a log of these loving things and note your KK's reactions.

8. Ask the Holy Spirit to help you with this - it is very difficult. Here's a prayer that helps: "LORD, I SURRENDER OUR RELATIONSHIP TO YOU. HELP ME TO SEE MY KRIST KINDL WITH YOUR EYES. HELP ME TO SEE YOU IN MY KRIST KINDL."

9. If your heart is too small and puny and tight to love and forgive your Krist Kindl, ask Jesus to take your heart and stretch it and lend you His in the meantime to love and forgive your KK with.

10. When your KK moves to hurt you, deflect his/her criticisms with good cheer. Remember, no one can make you feel bad without your permission. So never give it.

11. At the end of six weeks, turn in your log with a reflection on what you learned from doing this.

My students wrote that the atmosphere in their homes changed and shifted when the assignment was underway. Many of them complained about how difficult it was but they persevered. Frequently, they chose bratty siblings for their Krist Kindls. Their efforts were downright heroic. When their efforts didn't seem to have any effect, I told them it took me 12 years before I heard my Krist Kindl say to me tearfully when I was going home after taking care of her during an illness, "I am so sorry you are leaving. You have made me feel so loved." Love never fails!