sit still...and turn your eyes around

Golden leaves carpet the woodland floor 

And the branches of the trees,  

With colours ranging from gold leaf 

To rustic copper is something to adore.

~Autumn leaves by David Wood

Read the whole poem here.

Go, sit upon the lofty hill, 

And turn your eyes around, 

Where waving woods and waters wild 

Do hymn an autumn sound. 

The summer sun is faint on them — 

The summer flowers depart — 

Sit still — as all transform’d to stone, 

Except your musing heart.

~The Autumn by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Read the whole poem here.

I have a blanket of giant, sycamore leaves covering our front yard.

I love taking walks in the neighborhood on days like today, right after a strong and windy cold front comes through town. No one’s had a chance to “clean things up,” giving me a chance to kick the overflowing leaves covering the sidewalks!

                                                  

There is something intuitively contemplative about this time of year.

The brilliant colors. The shorter and shorter daylight.  The sounds of wind and crispy dry leaves. The expanding barren landscape.

Nature’s rhythmic transition seems to demand that I stop and take notice. It creates in me a mood of introspection, reflection, and wonder.

I’m being invited to make time to be, not just do. Wishing the same for you!

Elenita reminds me to stop, notice, and play!

orienting my heart

“When Paul says that God has chosen the weak, the foolish, and the rejected, or when Jesus, in Matthew’s Gospel, describes the Kingdom of God as a wedding feast to which all the poor, the lame, the sick, and the blind are invited, they confirm that the weak have a preferential place in the hart of God. Jesus himself was rejected and outcast; he identifies with the rejected, the outcasts. Is that not the Gospel’s new order that replaces the old? We in L’Arche are beginning to touch something of the mystery that people like Saint Vincent de Paul grasped when he said: ‘The poor are our teachers.’”

~Jean Vanier

“One can write reams about the poverty of Christ—drawing conclusions about what an imitation of that poverty would be like and what kind of implications this might have for us. What is beyond discussion is that whatever our life it must, if it is to be Christian, protect a place for Christ in our flesh and blood encounters—our meetings, our welcomes, our ways of relating—to the poor. The poor man by reason of poverty itself often repels us (cf. Francis kissing the leper). He brings into our way of life the very contradiction that is Christ. It is the real presence of Christ in the poor man, when this is really believed and the poor man is known as a person, that can transform the encounter with him from a purely ‘social problem’ into something essentially and authentically Christian. The poor must not be someone who is tolerated and put up with, but someone who is waited for and expected.”

~Madeleine Delbrél

“Saint Vincent de Paul saw that one truly intelligent way to follow Christ is to recognize our own spiritual poverty and to serve that poverty in ‘the least of these.’ He recognized that one truly intelligent way to practice theology was to tend to galley convicts, untouchables, and incurables. [A]t the end of the day the question for each of us, is: What was my orientation of heart toward the people with whom I came in contact over the last twenty-four hours? How am I treating the people who can do nothing for me? Is my work for my glory or for God’s?”

~Heather King

+   +   +   +   +

I’ve spent most of the past three days hanging out with my holy trinity of grandkids, Elena and her little brother and sister, twins Ignacio and Cecilia.

In a house full of adults, these beautiful little voices are simultaneously the center of attention—and the voiceless who “can do nothing for me,” helplessly needing care and nurture.

Sometimes the poor in our lives are, literally, the homeless, poor, and forgotten. Sometimes the poor in our day are those who need our help and attention, and can’t give us anything tangible in return, the children, the sick, the elderly.

How can I change the world always comes back to me. How did I respond to the people in my life today? What was my “orientation of heart,” my attitude?

what reminds me to be real

“Peace comes about through acceptance of truth; if we accept the truth of ourselves—the shifting truth of what we are from moment to moment—and constantly give it over into the truth of peace and wholeness in Christ, to which we have access in the church, then we shall be in fact in peace, whether or not we feel ourselves to be at peace. Peace is, then something which enfolds us rather than something which we grasp. Peace is being what you are, what you really are, what you are in God, what you are in obedience to the creative Word of God, the ‘implanted Word’ which is the law of your freedom.”

~Father Simon Tugwell, O.P.

[as published in Magnificat,

May 5, 2013]

  

I get called Beautiful all day long.

I’m not kidding. Here’s how it came to pass. When two and a half year old Elena started talking, she began to call me “Buela,” from Abuela, or Grandma in Spanish.

Except what Elena said sounded exactly like “Bella,” which means beautiful in Spanish! I hope I never stop smiling when I hear her call out for me across the room, “Hey Bella!”

A few weeks ago I listened to a TED talk by author Brené Brown on “the power of vulnerability.”

Imagine this academic researcher setting to study and collect data on our neurobiological design to “connect” with one another in order to predict and control how this takes place—only to find out after six years of gathering thousands of stories, that her premise was all wrong. What leads people to feel connection, this genuine love and sense of belonging, was actually not only intrinsically connected, but also a result of, authenticity. And authenticity is based on vulnerability.

Brown points out that this discovery led to a personal “spiritual awakening” that transformed her personal and professional perspective, and reoriented her research.

Vulnerable people become what Brown calls whole-hearted people, people courageous enough to be imperfect.

More often than I care to admit, all I can see is the things about me that I don’t like, all the ways that I fail constantly at loving the people in my life. But here was another reminder that, even fixing myself is out of my power. Rather than numbing myself or denying my feelings, my task is to turn over to God my imperfections—and practice the grace of vulnerability, letting myself “be seen” as I am. This is authenticity. 

I think this is part of what Fr. Tugwell describes when he says the “truth of ourselves,” the “shifting truth of what we are from moment to moment." Because "peace is being what you are, what you really are, what you are in God…”

Thank God I have Elena to remind me simply by calling my name.

when emotions outlast memory

Continuing yesterday’s theme of mindfulness, learning attentiveness to the here and now, and living in the present moment. Since our grandchildren moved near us last month I have been very aware of the blessings intrinsic to allowing yourself to be present to small children.

When I was a young, I confess that I was often too busy taking care of the practical realities that come with becoming a mother to our awesome foursome in our first six years of marriage.

Being a grandmother, on the other hand, lets me have a certain distance and space that is new to me, and allows the grace present, for example, in completely surrendering my attention (and self) to the baby girl blowing bubbles in my face!

But this week I’m also pondering how to live in the moment with someone who suffers from memory loss, be it because of stroke, aging dementia, or as in my case, Alzheimer’s disease. After all, why does it matter spending time with someone if that person may not even remember that we were together?

I have a dear friend in her early 60s who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s four years ago, and it’s truly painful to watch this person whom I love dearly diminishing with each visit. In a very real way it feels like my friend is dying, even though physically she’s in better shape than I am.

When I’m with her, I try very hard to be deliberate about how I say things, but above all, how I respond to her, especially when she repeatedly asks the same question only minutes apart. I find that it’s not so much an exercise in mindfulness as it is a loving act, rooted in living the moment, each se-pa-ra-te mo-ment, without concerning myself with the connectedness of the whole conversation.

Two Peasant Women and a Child Seen from Behind, from the Foresteria Guesthouse 1757

By Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (1727-1804)

It’s also been very helpful to remember that although she may not remember the details of our time together, my friend will remember the emotions, how she felt when we were together.

According to scientists, for people like my friend whose short-term memory is fading, the feelings (good as well as bad feelings) that are triggered by meaningful events actually linger. They are captured by a different part of the brain.

So, if the “good feeling” that my friend feels during our visits outlasts her memory, then, I pray for the grace to simply love on her from moment to moment, to let myself laugh long and hard—every time, and to find deep joy in what we’re doing, even when the story repeats itself several times in one night.

This, too, must be what Jean-Pierre de Caussade meant when he said: 

“Our only satisfaction must be to live in the present moment as if there were nothing to expect beyond it.”

I'll see you soon

Jesus said, “Let the children come to me, 

and do not prevent them; 

for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”   

~Gospel of Matthew, chapter 19, verse 14

Elena Clare is in town... 

so you won't be hearing from me for a few days! 

the way of Love

“The intimacy that exists between soul and body is a marvel of creation and a mystery of human existence. Yet we do wrong to think, because the soul will be judged after death while the body crumbles to the grave, that this mortal handful of dust is any less a gift of God, any less noble or beautiful than the immortal soul. It is in the body that we exist and work out our salvation. It is in the body that we see and take delight in the beauties of God’s created universe, and in the body that we ourselves bear the marks of Christ’s passion… We are constantly, day in and day out, hour after hour, under the influence of these mysterious workings of soul on body and body on soul.” 

~Fr. Walter J. Ciszek, S.J., in He Leadeth Me 

[Note: more on Ciszek and the body here] 

“Sing, my tongue; sing, my hand; sing, my feet, my knee, my loins, my whole body. Indeed I am His choir,” wrote Saint Thomas Aquinas, one of the great teachers of the medieval Catholic Church, honored with the titles Doctor of the Church and Angelic Doctor. 

Although I am doing well overall, I feel physically zapped today. So reading Aquinas' dramatic, passionate statement recognizing his body as God's masterful creation, frankly overwhelms me more than inspires me!

Yet when God proclaims, 

"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you”  [Jer 1:5]

 God means this creaky and tender body of mine, as it is today.

Elenita, looking at herself in mirror

My friend Pat, who is undergoing treatment for brain cancer, recently reminded me that spiritual maturity requires that we not only merely accept, but to look in the mirror and downright acknowledge just how beautiful we are, physically.

I have a ways to go in learning, believing that I am God’s work of art, that I am God’s choir. It’s that different level of “understanding” that St. Ignatius of Loyola termed “knowing.”

I do want to “know” that all that I am, as I am, God created with specific and deliberate purpose and love so that I may claim my place in God’s choir in this world. This is the “more excellent way,” the way of Love that gives God glory and praise through my life.

There is not greater reality—and in truth, there is no greater challenge.

Cecilia, one month old

“You formed my inmost being;

you knit me in my mother’s womb.

I praise you, because I am wonderfully made;

wonderful are your works!

My very self you know.

My bones are not hidden from you,

When I was being made in secret,

fashioned in the depths of the earth.”

~Psalm 139:13-15