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Lord, Love Me out of the Darkness of Exile

Posted in Lent, Reflections from Other Writers and Speakers, Reflections on Scripture, tagged , , , , , , , , on March 10, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Photo by I.am_nah on Unsplash

This week’s readings:

  1. 2 Chronicles 36:14–16, 19–23
  2. Psalm 137:1–2, 3, 4–5, 6
  3. Ephesians 2:4–10
  4. John 3:14–21

What this week’s readings say to me:

This week’s readings are about being in exile — far from home, the place where one belongs. The first reading and the psalm teach that God can work, even through those in exile — perhaps especially through the exiled, provided that those in exile don’t lose sight of who they are and where they come from. God works through those in exile precisely because while they hopefully can live in harmony with the people native to the place they now find themselves, they stand out. They can use their visibility to be examples of authenticity and charity. Humility is necessary for authenticity, and authenticity makes room for charity, which is service toward and cooperation with others.

The third reading teaches that we can be neither authentic nor humble if we’re under the illusion that anything we are or anything we do comes from us alone. Setting aside any environmental factors that contribute to who each of us is, none of us would exist without the combined DNA of other people, and none of the people who make up who we are would exist without God’s life giving, sustaining, and restoring love. All that is exists to magnify and to be a channel for that love.

Unfortunately, the magnifying glass or prism that each of us is meant to be gets clouded by things we get tricked into thinking are God. These idols block our ability to see God’s light, to feel its warmth, through and beyond them. Blockers of God’s light that come to my mind are fear, shame, anger, and envy.

This week’s Gospel reading reassures us that Jesus didn’t come into the world to condemn us for the very human experiences that I just listed. He came into the world to bear the weight of all our sins, our weaknesses and our pain, to surrender himself entirely to these, going so far as to engage with death itself so that He could neutralize its power and along with it, the power of every other human frailty. The key to experiencing that, as evidenced by His victory over death, He’s stronger than every idol is to hand over the imposters to His custody so they don’t take custody of us. This handing over is so much harder to do than the writing about it was. The imposters still feel powerful, no matter how many times we hear that God has rescued us from them. We let ourselves get trapped by them into believing we should hide from the light because we belong to the seemingly stronger darkness, and that we’ll be set adrift and alone if we come into the light’s embrace and expose the distortions darkness creates as the illusions they are.

What someone else is sharing about this week’s readings:

Click here to find out how Ogechi Akalegebere sees connections between this week’s readings and the work of Thea Bowman.

Beyond this week’s readings:

It’s one thing to write about not hiding from the light and instead moving forward into its healing rays. It’s another matter to take the risk of coming out of hiding and to trust. One step toward allowing God to embrace me in my weakness and with all the I’m ashamed of is to bring what I’m tempted to hide to God in prayer. Doing this feels like coming to God and asking God to put a spotlight on me. In this situation, I may confront what I’d rather hide, even from myself. But I’ve also been known in times like this to be confused about what God wants me to bring to light. These tendencies are the reason why I need at least one other person to help me lift to God what I’d rather not acknowledge. The first three readings support my need for healing to have a relational component I can perceive with my physical senses.

And yet it’s so hard to seek this help, to put into words what fear warns me keep silent. After all, everyone else is imperfect too, and no one has the unlimited perspective of God. Will my frailty, my failings be understood if I share them? Will they be judged? Can I even put them into words? Will doing so ever bring me closer to spiritual wellness? After years of struggling in the same ways, believing I can be spiritually free and comfortable in the light is so difficult.

Nonetheless, “I do believe,” Lord, [H]elp my unbelief. (Mark 9-24). Help me not to carry burdens you are waiting to take from me. Grant me the grace to seek and to find refuge in Your light along with and in the sight of all your children. Amen.

Work cited

The New American Bible Revised Edition, Kindle edition, Fairbrother, 2011.

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God’s Love Has More Power than Fear and Pain

Posted in Ordinary Time, Reflections from Other Writers and Speakers, Reflections on Scripture, tagged , , , , , , , on August 12, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Sara Fairbanks, OP, reflects through this week’s readings on love’s power to sustain us in the midst of fear and pain.

Yet pain can feel consuming and take so many forms – physical and emotional, yes. But emotional pain can be named more specifically. I tend to name it resentment, envy, anger, frustration, anxiety, and negativity-filled longing. These are the names I’ve learned to give my spiritual struggles. So that these struggles don’t overwhelm me, I need clarity, renewal, and strength the Holy Spirit can provide when I’m open to receiving these gifts.

I’m going to turn to Fr. Mark E. Thibodeaux’s God: I have Issues: 50 Ways to Pray No Matter How You Feel to shine the light of the Holy Spirit on the feelings I listed above. In doing so, I trust that with time and persistence, I will more often recognize light and love as more powerful than any emotion darkness tries to use to make me unable to recognize its opposite.

I also trust that making this book a companion to this blog for the time being will remind me to invite God into and recognize God’s presence in my pleasant, joyful, and simply routine experiences as well as my unpleasant ones.

Fr. Thibodeaux’s book is a guide to living and praying through the gamut of human emotions. Each chapter is dedicated to a different emotion or life experience and begins with a story from the author’s life about when he experienced or shared in someone else’s experience of that emotion.

After each introductory story, which is imbued with relatability and often humor. comes a long list of related scripture passages taken from both the Old and New Testaments.

After this list comes the “Prayer Pointers” section. I’ve consulted this book on and off for years, and while I’m not offering a professional perspective here, I would say that this section combines the wisdom of counseling, meditative, and pastoral approaches. Fr. Thibodeaux often suggests imaginative prayer and visualizations. This section also makes clear that the issues each chapter touches on are not resolved in one day. They are wrestled with in a healthy way by praying to be open to a shift in perspective and practice and by giving helpful habits a chance to become deeply rooted in daily life.

After the “Prayer Pointers” come inspirational or thought-provoking quotes. These are from sources other than scripture.

At the end of each chapter is a list of other chapters that might be related to the one I’ve just worked through. This section acknowledges that emotions are complex. (For example, grief can involve a mixture of sadness, anger, and guilt.) The index is also helpful when I’m not sure which chapter is most relatable to whatever I’m currently experiencing. In it I can look up experiences that weren’t used in the chapter titles.

Maybe in some future posts I’ll share a story of my own that the author’s story made me think of. Maybe I’ll share how his story got me thinking. Maybe I’ll reflect on one of the suggested scripture passages using approaches similar to those of used in the past. Or maybe I’ll share my experience with a visualization. Whatever happens, I’m eager to see where the Spirit leads and to hear what God has to tell me — and us.

Work cited

Thibodeaux, Mark E. God, I Have Issues: 50 Ways to Pray No Matter How You Feel, St. Anthony Messenger Press, 2005.

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Watch Out for Ruts and Weeds That Flower

Posted in Reflections on Scripture, tagged , , , , , , , , , on July 15, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Photo by Flash Dantz on Unsplash

This Week’s Readings:

  1. Isaiah 55:10–11
  2. Psalm 65:10, 11, 12–13, 14
  3. Romans 8:18–23
  4. Matthew 13:1–23

I found myself conversing with what stood out to me in each of this week’s readings, and the conversation felt familiar. The familiarity wasn’t comfortable. It was boring, and the boredom I experienced in response to each reading was a bit anxiety-inducing.

Now that I’ve been writing this blog for a year and a half, I worry I’m the responding to these passages the same way I did the last time I wrote about each one here. And I want to receive and share new insights — for my own sake and for yours.

Nonetheless, I trust that the Spirit is working on me, in me, and through me even when I feel like I’m following the same old tracks and in doing so, may be getting stuck in the same ruts over and over.

The first reading reassures me:

my word shall not return to me void,
but shall do my will,
achieving the end for which I sent it.

Isaiah 55:11

This reading suggests that at least I can’t totally stop the ability of Love’s winds from re-forming creation, I said to myself as I read this verse. I can only force these Winds to choose a different tunnel. Yet when I interrupt their course, I miss out on being enlivened by them — maybe more often than I don’t miss out on this gift.

Fortunately, for me, God, I want to be the dirt in the second stanza of this week’s psalm, and I suppose I am. This isn’t as bad as it sounds. The stanza speaks to God as follows:

Thus have you prepared the land: drenching its furrows,
breaking up its clods,
softening it with showers,
blessing its yield.

Psalm 65:11

The question for me is, will I appreciate what it takes to break up or to avoid the unhelpful knots in my life, what the psalm characterizes as clods of dirt? Will I appreciate what it takes to soften what has hardened within me so that it can yield growth? Often not, because spiritual clods and hardness, like muscular hardness, develop over time and in uncomfortable, sometimes extreme conditions. Going through the softening process is no different. This process might mean taking a pounding, like meat that needs tenderizing. It definitely means experiencing rebirth and changing my world.

The concept of rebirth sounds nice. It sounds like a sudden shift, something that happens in between blinks, but the third reading’s characterization of the process provides a reality check. It says:

We know that all creation is groaning in labor pains even until now; and not only that, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, we also groan within ourselves as we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.

Romans 18:22-23

This excerpt tells me that spiritual restoration is a process, a laborious and often painful one. It also tells me that I’m undergoing the process here and now, but I will also be undergoing it, in what, to me, is the future. To God, everything is happening now and all at once in a way I can’t comprehend.

Because I can’t comprehend not being bound by time, in the reading from Matthew, Jesus uses a parable to compare the process of spiritual growth to the process by which a crop grows — or doesn’t.

In the reading, Jesus gives an interpretation of the parable, and I’m grappling with how to apply this parable and its interpretation my life. I know that, to grow, a seed needs a certain depth of soil that isn’t too rocky for the plant to put down roots. It also needs room to grow. To me, this means the seed that is me needs a deep trust in God to grow. Having such trust would keep the often difficult conditions of life from stunting my growth. Reaching out to God in the midst of difficulties just might transform them from obstacles to opportunities. Spiritual fertilizers, I might call these experiences.

For me, the weeds in the parable are the distractions that take up time I could be using to love God, myself, and others as God loves me. Sometimes these distractions are unpleasant. They feel like the anxieties Jesus says the weeds represent. Other times, they’re harder recognize as weeds because they’re activities I enjoy and use to forget about feelings I don’t want to feel and to put off doing what I don’t want to do.

It’s useful for me to distract myself sometimes, to break myself out of a pattern of unhelpful thinking, a pattern of replaying unpleasant past experiences or of dreading a future experience that I anticipate will be difficult. But there are questions I know I’d benefit from asking myself about my favorite distractions:

  • How often am I turning to these distractions?
  • How long do the benefits I get from these activities last, and how satisfying are they? Can I do them in moderation, or do they leave me only wanting more?
  • How much time are these enjoyable activities taking away from activities that have longer-lasting benefits for me and others?
  • What activities with longer-lasting and broader benefits could I use instead to break myself out of unhelpful thinking? (For the record, no, memorizing comforting or inspiring Bible verses hasn’t served this purpose for me, though I’ve tried this approach and won’t rule out trying it again. Getting outside and/or getting exercise have helped.)
  • What do I want to avoid dealing with, and how much better have I felt in the past when I dealt with whatever I didn’t want to rather than distracting myself from it?

Lord, open the ears of my heart and mind to hear and listen to Your answers to these questions. Thank You for hearing me. Amen.

Work cited

Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc. “Sunday 16 July 2023: Readings at Mass.” The New American Bible, 2001. Universalis for Windows, Version 2.180, Universalis Publishing Ltd., 29 June 2023, https://universalis.com/n-app-windows.htm.

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Who I Am, Meet Who I Want to Be

Posted in Reflections on Scripture, tagged , , , , on October 28, 2022| Leave a Comment »

Photo by Joeyy Lee on Unsplash

The one who serves God willingly is heard.

Sirach 35:16

Uh oh.

I almost never serve God entirely willingly. Starting to draft this post is a drag. The thought of going back to watching a baking competition is much more pleasant than the thought of having to come up with my own content. Yet I always enjoy having written here, and the thought that someone else might be encouraged by something I’ve written keeps me coming back.

Too often when I’m at church, my mind isn’t there with my body. My mind is either on a hamster wheel of anxiety or wandering in a daydream. I’m most inclined to pray alone, outside, and in my own words—the fewer the better.

Yet I recognize that while some moments of practicing faith can and should be solitary, faith isn’t living if it’s not a group activity as well as an individual one. Liturgies and formal prayers are part of that group activity. The more fully I engage in such group activities, with their ancient, traditional prayers, the more they have the power to put the movements of my heart, mind, and will into perspective and to unite them to the mind, heart, and will of Christ. To the extent that we all experience this transformation into communion, we’re united to each other. This communion spanning time and space and joining God and creation is what liturgy offers, Showing up for it each week is part of my commitment each week to wrestle with getting out of my own head.

Do I think God doesn’t hear my prayers because I struggle with being present in the moment and with choosing to participate in life? No. God doesn’t need me to pray. Prayer is for my benefit and for the benefit of all creation. The more space I have in my mind, my heart, and my will for this benefit, the better I’ll able to receive it and the more good it can do me and the world around me. This is what the verse from Sirach means to me.

But I’m far from being able to fully receive this benefit — and not just because my faith often isn’t as alive as it might appear. I don’t feel as courageous as friends seem to think I am. My default approach to life is not to rock the proverbial boat, not to bring disapproval on myself, and not to disrupt my routines — because disruption triggers anxiety. My default approach is to follow my inclinations. I don’t write this blog because my faith, hope, and love are mature. I write this blog because I want these virtues and others to mature in me.

I constantly fall into the trap of comparing myself to others. I either focus on how my life doesn’t measure up to theirs or how their lives fall short of the ideals I wish we both lived up to. This tendency toward comparison makes me sinful and unwise, and it steals my joy, the very joy God brought me into being to share. And for that reason, the prayer of the tax collector in Luke 18:13 is also my own: “O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc. “Sunday July, 2 2023: Readings at Mass.” The New American Bible, 2001. Universalis for Windows, Version 2.179, Universalis Publishing Ltd., 26 Feb. 2023, https://universalis.com/n-app-windows.htm

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