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September 2001

What Has Shaped My Life?

In writing to his friends, Beethoven was fond of saying, "I would have written you a shorter letter, but I did not have time."

Four times a year, the writers among us gather their thoughts in preparation for meeting the deadline of our Journey and The Joy. We ask ourselves, "What is upon me? What is it I feel called to share with others?" While the articles may begin with some kind of sketchy title, the substance of the article always begins with a blank page, with the author wondering if there will be enough to fill that page. Paradoxically, the end result is a word count that exceeds the accepted limit.

Recently, this happened with my own contribution. The article took on its own journey and its own life. In a published journal, I had found two fascinating questions that I used to introduce my own thoughts: "What are four beliefs that have shaped your life?" it read, "Have they served you well?"(*)

Later, as I shared these questions with others, I found my listeners to be immediately intrigued, and quite eager to enter into dialogue. As a result, my own beliefs became not only more refined, but affirmed. The following reflects some of the beliefs that came into focus.

I believe that true prayer calls for a great personal honesty. Indeed, it is a challenge to be oneself before God. How do I really feel? What is it that I really believe about the subject at hand? What is the bottom line deep within my heart where the Spirit always resides, holding that light St. John of the Cross speaks of in his poem, The Dark Night?

I believe that the saints are in a position to help us, and that their spirit and message live on in the world and in us. I also believe that we may well be living with saints and do not know it and that, if we could peer into the hearts of others, we would view them differently. I mostly believe that people are basically good.

I believe that even though I may have many questions, life ultimately has meaning.

Lastly, and probably most importantly, I believe that at the center of all that is, there is a gracious and kindly Presence who continually arranges things for our good, a Presence who loves us and helps us to grow in love, into whose life and embrace I am continually being drawn.

* Heron Dance, Issue 29, Rod Maclver (Middlebury, VT: Heron Dance, 2000) p.5

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July 2001

Hidden Ways of God

Although we may not know it, most of us, deep down, are mystics. Along this line, Carmel today raises our awareness that we are to take the ordinariness of everyday life, seriously.

Mysticism has many sides to it. There is the mysticism of joy, those moments when we experience ourselves beyond ourselves, the times when we are caught up in the goodness of life. As a type of balance to this, there is the mysticism of darkness, in which our constant companion is that of wondering if the night is absurdity and a void, or possibly the nearness of God.

Then, too, there is a type of prophetic mysticism, that still small voice telling us that things should be different from the way they are. Lastly, there is the mysticism of the restless heart. In this mysticism, intuitively we know that we have already tasted God, but not fully. Thus, the inner ache and longing.

(Based on "Grace and Religious Experience" by Donald Buggert, included in Master of the Sacred Page, The Carmelite Institute, Washington, D.C., 1997, pp.201-204.)

June 2001

One Light Is Enough

He loved ice cream. In fact, two weeks before he died, he invited his friends down to the corner store for a treat. He wrote many books, and many other people wrote commentaries on his writings. Serious readers found that any one of his German sentences filled most of the page. In order to grasp what he was saying, one had to hold one's head on both sides, start at the beginning of the sentence and trudge through many complicated words to get to the end of the sentence.

Still, Karl Rahner stated that his little book on prayer was just as important to him as all his other scholarly works.

In this book(1), Fr. Rahner talks about getting in touch with that shy little voice in the depths of one's heart. He tells the reader that we are to pray everyday and to make everyday life a prayer. If we return to prayer, again and again, we will never be completely overcome by what everyday life brings.

We are to pray our happiness, our joys, our friendships. We are to pray our sadness, our disappointments, our frustrated plans, our moods, our tears, as well as our bodily aches and pains. This means that somehow we are to touch and experience God in these events that come upon all of us.

On his 80th birthday, Fr. Rahner, with a friend, made a mini pilgrimage to the former experiences of his life, including Schloss Trazberg, where he had been put under house arrest after the Nazis had closed the Innsbruck Faculty of Theology, in 1939. In a mining town near there, he and his friend visited a parish church where dozens of votive candles were burning in front of an image of Mary. As they approached this setting, Fr. Rahner took a coin from his purse and lit a candle. His friend began to do the same. Fr. Rahner beckoned the other to refrain from lighting another candle. "One light is enough," he said.(2)

There is a sense that life really does not ask big accomplishments from any one of us. Just faithfully showing up each day, with all our well-meant needs and desires, is indeed lighting a candle. Truly, this one light is enough.

1. Karl Rahner, S.J., On Prayer, Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1993. 2. Ibid., "The Light of a Life," Leo J. O'Donovan, S.J., p.5.

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Easter 2001

Living From One's Joy

I once heard of some one who gave away umbrellas. She even sent an umbrella to a place where it seldom rained. The one who received it used it as decoration in her home and said that looking at it made her feel loved.

This "umbrella lady" brought not only umbrellas but also joy to strangers, to the person who lost a job, to the farmer selling tomatoes along the roadside and joy even to the passerby who seemed to need encouragement more than protection from the rain. It all began when she herself had received an umbrella, unexpectedly. Truly, this is a nice warm Chicken Soup story.¹

Theologian, Karl Rahner, stated that Easter and joy are two words that mean the same. For a brief time, the burden of life seems to be lifted with the presence of spring, most especially spring in the soul, cheery pastels, jubilant organ music and the color green, all so full of promise. The challenge, of course, comes in finding a way to keep in touch with, and to draw from, this hidden source of life.

Do we make our own joy, or do we just draw from what is already there? I also ask myself the question: How does one bring joy to a situation that seems to need it? How does one help open the springs of joy in another? Probably by listening to them with attention. It also seems that sometimes tears need to be shed before joy can rise up within us. Maybe this is what Good Friday is all about.

A long time ago, Thomas Merton said that the tears we shed are the tears of God, since both spring from the same source. So, Easter is really underneath all those tears. Almost always, we are called not to walk around the tears but through them. Some people tell themselves that tomorrow will be a better day. I prefer to believe that the better day can start right now.

The Risen Jesus is now the heart of the world, our world, and the abiding love that promises never to leave us, no matter what it may look like. This same Jesus somehow finds a way into every heart, effecting there a gentle restlessness that eventually leads the person to the very heart of God.

This Easter, I plan to ponder what my umbrella might be. What is it that is likely to help release my own sense of joy, and what is it that I would most like to keep on giving to others?

¹Chicken Soup for the Golden Soul, Canfield and Hansen, Chicken Soup for the Soul Enterprises, Inc., 2000, Jan 26, Roberta Messner. Year In A Box, Cullman Ventures, Inc., 2000.