The Examined Life

Socrates gave us the great axiom in his Apology 38a: "...the unexamined life is not worth living..." - and yet it seems to me that most of us live just such a life. I have been haphazard at best in critically reviewing my daily goings-on. I might take a stab at it when I celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation, but up until a couple of months ago, that was the only discipline I applied to such a task. That has changed. I was reading about St. Ignatius of Loyola and his Examen which he made a daily requirement of his priests, and I decided to try it. It has been life-changing on several levels. The Examen consists of 5 steps, and practitioners are encouraged to process through these once or better twice a day: 1/ recall that you are in the presence of God 2/ look at the day with gratitude 3/ ask for the guidance of the Spirit 4/ review the day, looking for places where God may have been communicating with you; begin with the morning (or when you last did this) up until where you are at this point in the day 5/ reconcile and resolve to make changes where necessary; speak to God openly about what you have reviewed. You may end with Lord’s Prayer. This process can take as few as 10-15 minutes, or much longer, depending on one’s availability. The greatest gift of this process for me, at least at this point, is to slow down my life – recognizing that every single day is a gift to be opened, and being grateful for this gift. I ask myself at night what I did with this gift – did I waste it or move forward with it. It used to be that life just went on, with my thinking about what I had to do in the coming week, or a project due in a month or two, or whatever. But now I have come to appreciate the gift of today, and to treat it with all of the awe and respect which it deserves. Ignatius was on to something here. See what you think.
[For a more complete explanatian of the Examen, go to: http://norprov.org/spirituality/ignatianprayer.htm]
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED IN THIS BLOG ARE MINE ALONE AND DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THOSE OF MY EMPLOYER.

From Gratitude to Greed

We heard in Sunday’s gospel about the dangers of greed – of storing up wealth to deceive oneself into a false sense of security. Greed is a tricky business; it seems like the password for today’s culture – especially in the USA. It’s hard to live in our neighborhoods and work in our offices without looking left and right once in a while. I had an occasion to experience first-hand how greed can creep into our vocabulary, almost unobserved. I hate to bring this up yet again, but yes, we were on vacation a few years ago on a cruise ship. After dinner we strolled into the casino, each with a fistful of quarters. I spotted the Wheel-of-Fortune slot and made a dash toward it. The best part about that machine is that when you get the wheel icon, you get to spin for how much you’ll win. It can probably go up to a hundred or two, maybe more. After a few frustrating minutes I got three ducks – disappointment – no wheel icon. But then the bell and light started going off and I was just kind of stunned into wondering what this was all about. Pretty soon a crowd had gathered around me and I saw the ticker counting up how many quarters I had won. Ohmygosh…it was up past two hundred! That’s what – 50, 75 dollars I am thinking? But it just kept going – 300, 400, 500 700, 1000 quarters. Whoa – that’s $250!! But it kept going! My son was one who had gathered and said to me that he thought I might have won the jackpot – whatever that was. By now my eyes were wide open and watching the ticker go – now past 2,000 quarters! My heart was racing; I was in this thing now! Keep going – keep going I’m thinking! And then it got to 3,000 quarters!!! – and then it STOPPED!! I was DEVASTATED!! Stopped!! How could you STOP you crazy ticker?! More more MORE I’m thinking…wow…$50 seemed exciting at first and now $750 was a disappointment. Greed is seductive; I have never forgotten that lesson. In talking about living with less, James Martin describes the “surprising freedom of downward mobility.” But that’s another blog.
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED IN THIS BLOG ARE MINE ALONE AND DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THOSE OF MY EMPLOYER.

Affirmation

I just returned from a beach vacation where I luxuriated in reading 6 books. The most memorable was Tattoos on the Heart, a Jesuit priest’s experiences in working with the gangs of Los Angeles. Fr. Greg Boyle relates one remarkable story about gratitude, from his early days as a priest. Shortly after his ordination he was assigned to a small village in Bolivia where he was to learn Spanish along with his priestly duties. One day a lay worker asked him to go up to a Quechuan mountain village where they had not had Mass for over a decade. He was to say Mass in Spanish; laypeople would do the readings and deliver the homily in Quechuan. Partway up the mountain he discovered that he had forgotten his missal, and was too new at being a priest to be able to say the Mass from memory. He frantically began looking through his Spanish dictionary for the words of consecration, and wrote them on a slip of paper. When it came to his part of the Mass, he panicked and just kept holding up the bread and wine, repeating, poorly, those written words. He writes that it would be hard to imagine a Mass going worse, and he felt like the most miserable priest who had ever walked the earth! By the time he was set to leave he found that his ride down the mountain had already gone, and he was left with his backpack to make his own long way home on foot. Then a campesino, an old, wrinkled Quechuan, short of stature, poorly clothed and with brown, leathery skin, came to him and said in Spanish, “Thank you for coming.” And Fr. Greg writes, “Before I can speak, the old campesino reaches into the pockets of his coat and retrieves two fistfuls of multicolored rose petals. He’s on the tip of his toes and gestures that I might assist with the inclination of my head. And so he drops the petals over my head, and I am without words. He digs into his pockets again and manages two more fistfuls of petals. He does this again and again, and the store of red, pink and yellow rose petals seems infinite. I just stand there and let him do this, staring at my own huaraches, now moistened with my tears, covered with rose petals. Finally he takes his leave and I am left there alone, with only the bright aroma of roses…The God, who is greater than God, has only one thing on Her mind, and that is to drop, endlessly, rose petals on our heads. Behold the One who can’t take His eyes off of you.” Talk about affirmation! This is a God who loves us beyond our ability to imagine, and who brings people into our lives to remind us of that every day. Be that reminder for someone in your life.

Salute to Joy

My husband and I were recently on vacation in Florida. We went out to dinner one evening and among the primarily younger couples was a couple, probably in their
80's, sitting close to us. They had their heads bent toward each other conspiratorially, laughing and touching each other's arm occasionally, a glass of wine in front of each of their plates. I was totally captivated by the scene, both because of their age and their obvious enjoyment in each other. As they passed by our table on their way out, I told them that it was a delight to see them having such fun and they told us they were newlyweds - just been married 6 months! Her husband had died from a heart attack; he had lost 2 wives to cancer and one to a heart attack. When I told them we were celebrating our 40th wedding anniversary, the gentleman said, "I can't imagine being married to the same woman for 40 years!" I don't know why I found it important to write about this, but I keep seeing in my mind's eye the joy that this couple expressed. I think we're meant to be joyful people, and I think experiencing joy in the presence of another is truly an experience of God.

Makhloket

An interesting bit of information from the article, “Religion Needs Atheism”, is that Rabbis of old regarded the highest form of discourse as Makhloket, or disagreement. In this form, participants recognize their own limits and then proceed to clarify their positions as best they can. “When we sustain the tension between us, each pulling our own way, we create emptiness between us. In this emptiness…God creates…In the presence of one another, in the moment when our positions of clarity are matched with humility, the possibility of a truly new idea emerges, a solution, a way forward.” (This immediately puts me in mind of Cardinal Bernardin’s Common Ground Project.) It seems to me though that too often we’re missing that most crucial ingredient: humility. I am trying to recreate in my mind some of my recent ‘stand-offs’; I have to admit that I don’t always bring humility into the equation and hold, somewhat tenuously but with fierce pride, my own positions. But this visual description of makhloket makes tremendous sense – opening a space for God to enter in and create a new way – a way that unites rather than divides. Obviously there are situations in which there’s no room for compromise, but there are plenty of places in my life where that would have been just the right approach.
The views expressed in this blog are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

Cape May Caper

When you were younger you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go. John 21:18
I just had occasion to spend a few days with my 94-year-old dad at his seashore home in Cape May, New Jersey. The two of us went there for our own vacation. At 94, dad doesn’t really get vacations, but he remembers the ones he used to take, and the fun he and mom and all of the family had in Cape May over the last 35 years. As his health is failing, I thought this might be the last opportunity for him to get there, and so we drove the 11 hours each way. He sleeps all day long in his chair at home, but he didn’t even close his eyes during the car rides; he was more like a child on a big adventure. Once there, dad wanted to do everything. He knew he could walk the 6 blocks to the beach, but I talked him out of that and we drove instead. After carrying all of the equipment – umbrella, two chairs, beach bag, beach tags, towels – and dad on my arm, we got as far as the edge of the sand. I set up one of the chairs and sat him down while I went out, set up the umbrella, the other chair, paraphernalia, and went back for dad. He only made it about 10 feet onto the sand when he gave up; the footing wasn’t secure enough for him. Another day we tried going to the shops in town. He was sure he could sit in the shade while I moseyed around, but the bench was too hard and the heat was too high; that lasted about 15 minutes. He thought one night we should go bar hopping! Thinking about the logistics of this, I convinced him that a trip to the Rusty Nail might be just the thing; we could park right in front and sit in there for a beer. It was magic; don’t you know there were lots of people but we got lucky enough to sit facing a big screen TV and the Reds were playing the Phillies – and the Reds were killing them! A couple of trips to the Dry Dock for ice cream and the Lobster House for clams rounded out our 3 days. As we were leaving, I had dad look into my camera as he was closing the door on his condo – the end of an era, I thought to myself.
The quote from John’s gospel above is a prediction of the death of Peter, but as I watch my dad grow older and feebler, I think it is a reference to us all. In our minds we’re still young and able, but bit by bit we become more dependent on other, and come to realize that our entire life has been totally dependent on Other.
The views expressed on this blog are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

Champaign Memories

This Thursday, June 24, we celebrate the birth of John the Baptist. Permit me to roll back my personal calendar to 1968 and share some poignant memories. I was between my junior and senior years at University of Dayton, and involved in The Conference on Inter-American Student Projects. That summer, 11 of us had traveled to the tiny village of Lerdo de Tejada, Mexico, on a missionary trip. We each lived with a local family, and mine was extremely poor; I slept on a narrow cot covered with a mosquito net, we had no indoor plumbing, ants crawled across our plates as we sat on hard wooden benches to eat our tortillas, and pigs and chickens roamed through the kitchen and into the sitting room and out again during the heat of the day. My family and I began to bond after a fashion, but I was terribly homesick and miserable with Montezuma’s revenge. June 24th approached and they began to talk about a party in honor of my birthday – wasn’t I born in March?? – but the Mexican custom was to name the baby for the saint on whose feast s/he was born, and no matter how I objected, I had to have been born on the feast of John the Baptist given my name of Joan! They gathered all of the “gringos” on that day, and filled our tiny house with music, a very lopsided cake, and – how did they get this?? – a bottle of champaign! That was the day that my Mexican family really came into my heart, and it was on that day that I adopted John the Baptist as my patron, and fittingly so. I didn’t know at the time that my life’s work would be in the Church, and that my job would be to get out of the way and point to Jesus. Patrons can be powerful superheroes in our lives, continually encouraging us in the right direction, cheering us on, being constant reminders of how a saint lives, and calling us to that path. If you have not taken seriously the call of your patron, or have forgotten the saint you chose at your confirmation, chose one now! Read My Life With the Saints and get in touch with the power of witness.
[The views expressed in this blog are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.]