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December 2001

Sometimes, the spiritual life seems like it is unreal. St. Teresa of Avila had trouble with this. In fact she writes that, oftentimes, she shook the hourglass to make the hour of prayer go faster. She also writes about wanting to stop praying.

In my own experience, when I am tempted to walk away from too much piety and to become immersed in the real, I find that the spiritual life follows me into the real. I have come to believe that dryness in prayer, and in life, is nothing more than an invitation from God to experience life, differently.

William Barry, S.J., in a recent America, asks the question: "Does God communicate with me?" Of course, he answers yes and goes on to speak of God's creative desire for us.

In dealing with others, it often seems that we are experiencing God's feeling for the other through us. Fr. Barry relates that recently he acted spontaneously without a lot of thought or premeditation. In fact, he felt that he could not even take credit for his good act. It was a spontaneous act of self-forgetfulness. Barry had a gift certificate, with which he had planned to buy books for himself. At lunch one day, he asked a fellow elderly Jesuit if he could use some classical CD's. Fr. Barry went out and purchased the CD's with the certificate. It seemed like his generosity came from his truer self and was an experience of God acting through him for the other. In other words, we can experience the feelings of God toward this world of ours, and toward us. We could also ask ourselves how we think God feels toward us, personally. It would be a great act of bravery to share these thoughts with another person.

In our community, we have an infirm Sister at a health care facility about 45 minutes from us. Since we go there often, we have formed another community with the residents and staff at the center. I have often wondered why I feel so attracted to these people and why I see such deep human beauty in them. After I read William Barry's article, I was inclined to think that perhaps I was experiencing God's own warmth and love toward these people. There are probably many experiences in which God visits us, and which we miss, simply because we fail to take the time to reflect.

Early in the morning, I like to make muffins for the community. Recently, I rekindled this early dawn ritual. However, the process involved experimenting, again, with finding just the right recipe, and reshaping it. Then, one morning, the muffins came out golden brown, most delicious, and just right. What a delight! Was this also God's delight?

What does all this have to do with Christmas? For me, it means that God is constantly and continuously coming into all those ordinary events of our lives. When we take time to reflect on these happenings, we have another experience of God. Donald Nicholl says that, at the center of the universe, there is a Love whose longing is the same as ours. It is for us to believe that we can touch this longing.

October 2001

Each morning, after I have figured out what day it is, I ask myself what word God might be asking me to ponder. Along a similar line, I wonder what word God might be speaking to the world and would like to have passed along. It seems that this is the way the word gets around, one person speaking the good word to another. Theologian Karl Rahner writes that even when we do a somewhat poor job of proclaiming the Resurrection, the Resurrection still gets proclaimed. So maybe this is the way it is with passing the good word along.

As I listened to how different people thought our nation should respond to the recent tragedy, I was struck by the fact that what most people thought was pretty much how they responded to life events in general. Truthfully, I feel that our responses to life mostly come from what we believe.

These days, there are many emails written as open letters to the world. Early on, Deepak Chopra spoke about the fact that terrorism springs from a wound that people carry, oftentimes a wound that has come from without and which is not the person's fault or doing. I asked myself, "Is there a wound that has shaped my life responses? What is it?"

The Dalai Lama points out that there is a teaching common to most religious traditions: What you wish to experience yourself, provide for another. Do you wish to experience peace? Then provide peace for another. With this thought in mind, I meditated long on what I might wish to experience.

Although the movements of my own heart change from day to day and from morning to morning, at the moment of this writing, it seems like what I most wish is to be more and more convinced that good is more powerful than evil and that good will do its own work. Very likely, good is most powerful when I step out of the way, believe in it, trust it, and let go of any undue worry. It seems to me that, to the degree I really believe this, the power of good is set free in the world. Concretely, this is something I can do to help the world situation at this moment. Furthermore, it is the nature of good to show itself when looked upon by someone who really wants to see it.

When people asked Mother Teresa of Calcutta how they could help her overcome poverty, she told them to go home and to work in their own corner of the world. If the teaching about providing an experience for the other is correct, then a likely action that could follow would be to help another believe that good is always more powerful than any darkness and that all of us are surrounded with an invincible and loving shield and a protecting embrace present at the moment of our conception. It's in the air. God wants to do this for us and is doing it without our asking. The first step in the process would be to listen with an undistracted heart to the fears and concerns of another. Having listened, the second step would be to speak the quiet and encouraging word about the power of good and the abiding protection of God. It might even be good to bring in the idea of God's angels. Psalm 91 is most comforting in this. It speaks of God spreading wings over us providing a place of refuge. No evil shall befall us, nor affliction come near our tent, for God has given us angels to guard us in all our ways. There is a school of thought that states that even a nation has its own Guardian Angel.

Although we are to work in our own corner of the world, I have become convinced that it is a very good thing to pray for the bigger things. Here at the monastery, we prayed that the people of Afghanistan would be given supplies, and that the refugees would find shelter, protection and education. This is happening. There are times when it is a good thing to expect that what we pray for will happen. This is one of those times.