life + prayer = writing

The awareness that for me there’s an intricate connection between writing and life was a pivotal moment in my faith journey. 

But I often need reminding!

When I say connection, I’m not talking about balancing the hours of the day, or how to handle interruptions, or the necessity to often shift gears, or even my response to family demands. 

Certainly, all of those are skills and values that I’ve learned over the years. And how I react to “life” makes an enormous difference to the quality and the quantity of my writing. That is true. And for someone working out of a home office perhaps doubly so.

Yet there’s a weaving from my writing to my life and from my life to my writing—a back and forth flow, that is both indisputable and difficult to describe.

I’ve written here about my latest book project, the biography of Father Stanley Rother, Oklahoma martyr.  You can see some specific blog entries and read more about it here, here, and here.

And—you will be hearing a LOT more about the book and about Father Stanley’s story in the next few months, because it is in the final stages of production (woo hoo!) with a publication date of September 2015!

What you may not know is that I consider this book somewhat of a miracle, or at the very least, full of Divine interventions.

During the year that (under contract) I agreed to complete the book manuscript—and the six-month extension I requested, the “events” of my life included:

• ·      Multiple stays at the hospital with and for my dad and countless doctor visits as his health issues became more and more complicated;
• ·      The decline and death of my close friend and fellow writer Carrie Swearingen;
• ·      The diagnosis of brain cancer and death of my best friend and Camino de Santiago partner Pat Stankus—as well as
• ·      The births of THREE glorious grandchildren

That’s a lot of emotions, all intense ones – and to my weird, creative temperament—all energy sucking emotions. Or is there any other kind?!

There was one point as I saw my deadline looming closer and closer when I remember saying to a close friend, “I am certain that I was meant to write the biography of Father Stanley right now… so what is God telling me by what is happening in my life?  I honestly have no time, let alone any energy, to actually complete this book!”

My friend Patricia was silent for a moment, before replying, “María, it’s like prayer. You have to trust that the events of your life are meant to be incorporated into your writing, into the telling of Father Stanley’s story. Don’t separate the two… let one guide you to the other.”

That’s how I got from this:

To this!

you can pre-order the book on Amazon by clicking here

stress and anxiety at Christmas: open up your life

“We must go through the stages of feeling, not only in the last death of anything, but all the earlier little deaths. If we abort these emotional stages by easy answers, all they do is take a deeper form of disguise and come out in another way. So many people learn that the hard way—by getting ulcers, by all kinds of psychosomatic diseases, depression, chronic irritability, and misdirected anger—because they refuse to let their emotions run their course, honor them consciously, or find some appropriate place to share them.  Emotions are not right or wrong, good or bad. They are merely indicators of what is happening, and must be listened to, usually in the body. People who do not feel deeply finally do not know or love deeply either. It is the price we pay for loving. Like Job we must be willing to feel our emotions and come to grips with the mystery in our head, our heart, and, yes, our body too. To be honest, that takes our entire life. My emotions are still a mystery to me, and without contemplation they would control me.” ~Richard Rohr, adapted from Job and the Mystery of Suffering: Spiritual Reflections “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.” ~John 14:27 “How better to celebrate again the presence of God among us than by learning from Joseph how to be free, fearless, and faithful, prudent, and wise? Faith for Joseph was an adventure that allowed him to walk with confidence into the unknown. He did not just open his home, he first opened his life. Three days before Christmas, the Church invites us to do the same.” ~Fr. Thomas Boyer

I’ve had a couple of days recently where waves of assorted emotions sweep over me, like an artic blast blowing into town. Often without warning, I feel a shift, followed by an immediate flow of feelings and tears.

I’ve written about anxiety and stress before. But this is different. I don’t know how to explain it better other than to say that something as simple as a song, a card, an email, even an image, reaches into my heart and I flinch. It seems to be frequently connected to a memory or a person, sometimes not.

Experts tell us that anxiety and being overwhelmed by memories and emotions is not unusual during holidays, especially at Christmas time. But this is new and unfamiliar territory for me.

I tried to describe to my friend Patricia the depth of emotions and how they have surprised me lately, and she wisely pointed out that, as we get older, the sensations and reactions at this time of year run deeper. 

Putting up the tree is no longer just about the task, but about the memories and emotions that each ornament brings. Setting out the nativity is not just setting out the pieces, but more about our unfolding understanding into this incarnational event that has changed us, and what it means to us now, as well as its significance in our pilgrimage towards eternal Life.

In Pat’s words,

“What is different now is that thru my life and my living I am in conversion.   I know now that I am a part of incarnation.  Christmas was Jesus becoming carnate, flesh, a baby.  A miraculous, difficult squeeze for God, for The Holy Spirit!  It is at Christmas that I realize I am becoming Spirit and that, thru my memories, loves and griefs, re-experienced thru reliving the traditions of the season, I a leaving my human life behind and squeezing slowly—oh, so slowly, into spirit.  We followers of Jesus, we adopted sons and daughters of God; have a difficult job trying to balance life in two worlds, working thru our life-long Rebirth.  Exhausting.  And in Advent the walls between seem thinner, the consequences clearer, and our joyful but breaking hearts speak to us out loud.”

In case it helps any of you facing similar moments over the holydays—especially when it feels like too much... here are my action steps:

#1, I let myself cry. The tears are my prayer.

#2, I tell a friend (and also my husband. Doing both helped a lot this week!)

#3, I go to daily Mass (where, of course, I inevitably tear up at communion ;-)

#4, I turn on all the Christmas lights, especially the new white tinkling ones I hung this year over the backyard French doors and across the mantle.

#5, I take a long walk with my hubby and my Siberian Husky Diego. There is nothing like physical activity to settle down the mind and the heart.

Yes, the walls between the here and the hereafter feel thinner during Advent... So go ahead: feel deep, breathe deep, sing and dance to music, laugh a lot… let this be your prayer of openness.

[photos around my house this weekend, following a very impressive ice storm!]

our hearts are burning

Super at Emmaus by Caravaggio

Something miraculous happens when we open up and speak from the heart in complete vulnerability. It’s combustible, a downright explosion of intimacy!

Recalling this encounter of hearts at the “Writing as Prayer” retreat last weekend, my new friend Pat Daniels (Professor of Acting at the University of Texas at Austin) described it perfectly as: 

“the Emmaus model. Christ is here. Our hearts are burning. We are loving each other.” 

This disarming honestly is nothing less than Eucharistic. It is the breaking of the bread —breaking ourselves open to nourish one another. 

My sincere thanks to Pat for allowing me to post her beautiful writing here! 

 PSALM 

by Patricia Daniels

I live restless, disconnected, lost.
The world though ordinary and blessed is upside down and turned around.
What is true is called false.
Doubt and shame are cataracts to light.
The bones of faith are filled with no living marrow.
The landscape outside the gates of Eden stretches barren, lifeless, pathless.
There is no comfortable history or protection of family.
The drug of my created world has vanished. 

Am I being born again, a babe in an older body,
Acquainting myself with what is now,
Letting go of what was then?
Oh God, is this my soul learning to walk?
Was what I thought growth, merely learning to stand?
Is this falling, failing, merely the initiation of a first step to you?
Can the air support me? 

Is your real name the Unknowable?
Is Your real face shadow as well as light?
Is my confusion, sorrow, Your embrace
                     Or
Is it the death of our communion?
Can I let go of longing and be empty? 

God, I find You so difficult to hold.
I fear to open my hand and lose You to nothingness.
And yet I cannot hold You to have You.
You Permeate All. 

Is all that is, only a fraction of all that is?
Oh God, You are too much for me. 

Can you make your home in my fearful, mortal, selfish heart?
Or is my heart already Your heart? 

Heal me. 

Give me strength to live and let go.
Falling let me find my foundation.
My Grace, My Breath, My Beloved,
Save me from death or if not
Be my new Life. 

 ©Patricia Daniels