the body remembers

"To keep our bodies less defended, to live in our body right now, to be present to others in a cellular way, is also the work of healing of past hurts and the many memories that seem to store themselves in the body. The body seems to never stop offering its messages; but fortunately, the body never lies, even though the mind will deceive you constantly... It is very telling that Jesus usually physically touched people when he healed them; he knew where the memory and hurt was lodged, and it was in the body itself."

~Richard Rohr, 

"Breathing Under Water: 

Spirituality and the Twelve Steps"

"God comes to us disguised as our life" 

~Paula D'Arcy

“And people brought to him a deaf man who had a speech impediment and begged him to lay his hand on him. He took him off by himself away from the crowd. He put his finger into the man’s ears and, spitting, touched his tongue; then he looked up to heaven and groaned, and said to him, ‘Ephphaltha!’ (that is, ‘Be opened!’).” 

~Gospel of Mark 7:33

There are many stories of healing and cures in the Gospels. My former pastor often reminded us to pay attention to the details of a story because those specific details help us to better understand Jesus. 

As I read the passage from the Gospel of Mark about the deaf man, I am profoundly struck by the way Jesus physically touched the deaf man with the speech impediment. Since St. Mark doesn’t tell us the deaf man’s name, I’m going to call him David.

We’ve all heard the importance of touch, how babies who are given food but not touch or affection will literally fade and die, and how hospitals use therapy dogs to heighten the healing of patients, especially those with long-term conditions. 

When recovering from surgery I was perplexed by how much I craved physical touch—and how physically distant people became. It felt like a direct correlation—the more I desired the gentle touch of another human being, the more that well-meaning person would step back and say, “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Jesus knew how much David craved this physical contact. He took him aside, away from the crowd, to give him his full attention. 

I can imagine Jesus holding his hand, looking into David’s eyes with compassion and love. I picture him giving David a reassuring hug to communicate his intent, and waiting until David nodded his consent. Jesus didn’t need to touch David to cure his deafness or his speech impediment, but he did! 

He put his fingers into David’s ears. He spit. He touched David’s tongue. He went out of his way to touch him, and by doing so, he nursed David’s emotional and spiritual needs as well. 

David was cured of all his physical impediments, but above all, David was touched by Love.

Elena loving on baby Ignacio

[A modified original of this was published first here]

dear readers, estoy agradecida...

Our family's Thanks-giving tree, 2013

“The answer lies in understanding that it is these things - and these things alone, here and now, at this moment – that truly constitute the will of God. The challenge lies in learning to accept this truth and act upon it, every moment of every day. The trouble is that like all great truths it seems too simple. It is there before our noses all the time, while we look elsewhere for subtle answers. It bears the hallmark of all divine truths, simplicity, and yet it is precisely because it seems so simple that we are prone to overlook it or ignore it in our daily lives.”

 

~ Walter J. Ciszek, S.J., “He Leadeth Me”

“The almost embarrassingly common recurrence of barren—but favored—women in the Old Testament is a brilliant metaphor for “I can’t do it, but God can—and will!” This is summed up and personified in the Virgin Mary, but it is still the same Jewish symbol. In Mary, and in us, we see our own incapacity to make spiritual things happen by our own devices, by our own intelligence, and with our own bodies; but I can receive, trust, and allow God to do it in me and through me. Many translations of Luke’s “Magnificat” (Luke 1:46-55) use the wonderful phrase “God has regarded me in my lowliness” (1:48). This French-based word regardez means to look at twice, or look at again, or look at deeply. Mary allows herself to be looked at with God’s deeper and more considered gaze. When we do that, God’s eyes always become more compassionate and merciful. And so do ours if we regard anything.”

~ Richard Rohr, 

talk given in Tucson, Arizona, 

 “Yes,and…Daily Meditations” 

I have been pondering, in the “regardez” sense of the word, the idea of gratefulness.

In a recent post I noted the important practice of gratitude, and how, 

“Being grateful requires me to pay attention, to be present to the moment. Or in my current favorite word, it compels me to notice!” 

This post on gratefulness prompted a rich conversation with one of my favorite readers, my insightful father-in-law Anthony Scaperlanda (yes, the leader and organizer of our phenomenal French pilgrimage earlier this year).

Tony pointed out that realizing a blessing or a gift is insufficient. In other words, just noticing and appreciating something or someone that we’re thankful for is not enough, at least in the attitude that Meister Eckhart proclaims, “if the only prayer you said in your whole life was, ‘thank you,’ that would suffice.”

In Tony’s own words, “I think that in addition to counting our blessings and noticing actions or gifts that we receive it is also necessary to follow Meister Eckhart and explicitly recognize what we notice or receive with a ‘thank you’.”

Because English is my second-learned language, any attempt to “gaze upon” the word gratitude, trying to look at it a second time with deeper eyes, must begin by looking at it’s equivalent in Spanish.

In Spanish, the word for gratefulness and thankfulness is the same, agradecida, an adjective that implicitly includes the person speaking (I/female am…).

This means that agradecida can describe both a current feeling (estoy agradecida = to be grateful), as well as describe a person’s essence (es muy agradecida = she’s an appreciate person, small things can make her happy).

That was interesting, but it didn’t clear things up for me any better.

Then I decided to look at the definitions for the word gratitude in Spanish and in English—and my “aha!” moment came to be.

The word gratitude translates as gratitud, which in Spanish grammar is a “sustantivo femenino,” a (female) noun.

Here’s the Spanish translation for gratitude:

“Sentimiento que nos obliga a agradecer el favor recibido y corresponder a él.” 

Which literally means, a “feeling that forces us to acknowledge the favor received and respond to it.”

By contrast, the word “gratitude” in English is defined as, 

“the quality or feeling of being grateful or thankful.”

That’s what I’ve been missing!  While the heart of the English definition is the feeling of being grateful, in the Spanish definition of gratitude, the feeling is intrinsically connected to an act.

In other words, in the Spanish definition, the feeling of gratitude obliges one to acknowledge, and respond!

Which, of course, simply brings me back to the very beginning--where all Truths come into being.

My takeaway from all this grammar talk? That Tony is clearly right: it is not enough to notice and be thankful.  Whether speaking English or Spanish, an attitude of gratitude demands an explicit act of “thank you”!

my dear readers, 

thank you for your faithfulness! I remain ever grateful to be walking this pilgrimage together, day by day.

blessings and love,

maría

dream day: confirming the goodness already there

What a beautiful and powerful connection between yesterday's feast of St. Monica, patron of mothers, and today's feast of St. Augustine--the son for whom she prayed, cried, and no doubt, begged heaven. 

Even the liturgical readings for today follow immediately yesterday's verses, in both Paul's letter to the Thessalonians and the Gospel of Matthew. And once again, we repeat Psalm 139:

You have searched me and you know me, Lord.

Motherhood affects the very fabric of a person. Not only is a woman’s physical appearance modified forever by pregnancy and childbirth, but there is also an invisible yet undeniable mark left on her spirit by that experience. 

A human life, known by God even before the moment of conception, is born of her, through her, making her all at once and forever a mother. Much like Mother Mary's connection to Jesus, blessed Monica recognized Augustine's good heart as only a mother can know the child she carries within her womb.

It reminds me of something I read this morning:

Job is described at the outset as a good and just man. It seems fair to say that this saga does not create Job's faith; rather, it identifies and names it. His troubles don't make Job into a saint. They confirm the goodness already there. (Holiness = reunited to the whole = goodness = what is.)

~Richard Rohr, 

"Job and the Mystery of Suffering, Spiritual Reflections"

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[word cloud of Martin Luther King's full text, via wjla.com]

I have a dream today. 

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. 

This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

Read full text of Martin Luther King's  "I have a dream" speech here.

jump into the river baby

I was barely halfway listening to the indie rock band Local Natives playing in the background, concentrating on the never-ending task of clearing my inbox. Then unexpectedly, a line caught my attention:

“Jump into the river baby

Easy as it sounds

It's never quite as easily done”

jumping into Rio Frio, Leakey, TX

I was so intrigued and thankful for the worthwhile excuse to procrastinate even further, that I took the time to look up the rest of the lyrics to “Who knows, Who Cares.” I found it impossible to resist the insight of the tune and its cleverly misleading title:

“You could let it down

Jump into the river baby

Easy as it sounds

It's never quite as easily done

The current has us now, it's okay

Take into account that it's all about to change

Who knows, who cares”

What a great metaphor for life, and in particular, for our spiritual journey. Easy as it sounds, it's never quite as easily done...

Yet faith is surely the ability to trust the river of life, to trust our loving Father, or paraphrasing Franciscan Richard Rohr, to trust the Flow, and the Lover.

Local Natives, "Who knows, who cares"

recorded live in Stockholm, 2013

reevaluating, Lent, and resolutions

Via Dolorosa, Jerusalem

“As to your Lent… I can only tell you my own experience. A mass of good resolutions, I think, are apt to end up in disappointment and to make one depressed. Also direct fault-uprooting: it makes one concentrate too much on self, and that can be so depressing. The only resolution I have ever found works is: ‘Whenever I want to think of myself, I will think of God.’ Now, this does not mean, ‘I will make meditation on God,’ but just some short sharp answer, so to speak, to my thought of self, in God. For example:

‘I am lonely, misunderstood, etc.’‘The loneliness of Christ at his trial; the misunderstanding even of his closest friends.’

…This practice becomes a habit, and it is the habit which has saved me from despair!” 

~Caryll Houselander

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“Prayer is not about changing God, but being willing to let God change us, or as Step 11 in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous says: “Praying only for the knowledge of his will”… True prayer is always about getting the “who” right. Who is doing the praying, you or God-in-you, “little old you” or the Eternal Christ Consciousness? Basically prayer is an exercise in divine participation—you opting in and God always there!” 

~Richard Rohr,  Daily Meditations 

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It’s been a long day—and, already, a long Lent.

Lake Thunderbird, Oklahoma

Here we are on the third week of Lent, and I could not tell you how well I’m doing with my Lenten resolutions. The honest to God truth is that I’m having a hard time remembering those well balanced and thought-out decisions that I came up with on Fat Tuesday as our family sat around the table and shared out loud our Lenten resolutions.

Please don’t misunderstand me. It’s not that I don’t believe in making them, or that I don’t think having resolutions is an important part of Lent.

It’s more that, in these simultaneously short and very long first three weeks of Lent, I have found myself operating and managing life events around me with very little of me available to give.  Like the widow’s mite, I’m giving from where it “hurts,” if you will.

The blessing of being aware of my own lack, of my diminished supply of self, is, of course, that I know without a doubt that anything that I am able to do or able to give, all I have to offer, is clearly not mine—it’s all God’s grace. 

It reminds me of a memorable story about Catholic author Flannery O’Connor that I read recently. A young writer once asked O’Connor to look over an article that the young woman was writing on O’Connor’s short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find.”

The young woman wrote that O’Connor’s work merely notes that it is impossible to know how to be one [a good man], but O’ Connor disputed the writer's reasoning.

“Not at all,” Flannery O’Connor said in her characteristic matter-of-fact blunt honesty. “It is possible to know how to be one. God became man partly in order to teach us, but it is impossible to be one without the help of grace.”

~Jonathan Rogers, 

The Terrible Speed of Mercy