Walking with Pope St. John XXIII - Lord, May Your Will be Done

The Will of God, for me, is to do His work.  We are each called whether in great ways or small, to do His Will.  Even Jesus acknowledged that he was sent to do the Father's Will, not just his own (John 6:30)

To follow His Will is to love. How imperfect our love and actions are when we stumble in our efforts.  But, we are human; how could we not stumble?  Fear, the great weapon of Satan, is always there waiting to block our efforts to serve.  Prayer, only prayer and communion with He who loves us without restriction can help us to overcome and defeat Fear.

When we feed on the food of God (John 4:34) we consume the food which is His Love and Will.  Our work, however small, is complete and completed when we do the work in God's name.

A recent viewing of the movie "Of Gods and Men" is the perfect illustration of men called to serve in a way that might end in their deaths.  They struggled with their personal fears privately, with each other, and they prayed, at times desperately.  They had no way of knowing their fate but they suspected and then accepted the Will of God.  With acceptance came peace.  They trusted in His love to sustain them as they continued to obey His Will and serve.

Not all of us will  be called to martyrdom but each act of service teaches us more of love and God's Will for us.  And, we are strengthened.  With this strength, we are enabled to follow in Jesus' footsteps to the knee of God, the Father of us all.

In the words of John XXIII, from his diary in 1947, we read, " . . . liv(ing) in continual obedience gives me courage and dispels my fears".

Dear Father,

Help me to greet each day without fear and with the expectation that you will show me opportunities to serve others in your name.  Amen.

Benchmarks - Haiku My Heart

Yesterday, July 11th, I read the date, July 12th.  I was reading something; I don't remember what and the date was part of whatever it was that had captured my attention.  I stopped and pondered for a moment as I tried to remember what July 12th meant to me.

This morning I found shade still laying across the front porch and my book and the chair met with me nestled in between them.  I was reading Vivian Swift's When Wanderers Cease to Roam and since it was July, I turned to July and started reading.  July 12th floated before my eyes.  Again.  And today is July 12th.  What odd bits of memories were forcing their way to the surface?  What was the significance of this date in my memory?

My parents were married on January 12th.  My mother's birthday was July 21st.  Were the threads of my memories rewiring themselves?  Did I have something to worry about?  July 12th was beginning to annoy me.

I settled into reading again, engrossed in Vivian's love affair with pretty dresses, her sweet memory of a Tunisian night at the age of 20, making me think of my own daughter's Tunisian adventure at a similar age.  We shared a love of birds and butterflies and a love of relaxed, comfortable, uncluttered clothes.  I was especially charmed by her unique solution to shaking off the blues of a failed engagement or marriage.  And there it was.  July 12th.  45 years ago

Hovering flashback

An ill-fated, marriage

Painless memory

Black confetti bed

Scattered Marriage vows

Lost in healing time

There was a time when this date never passed unnoticed.  It is a benchmark from my youth that offered up lessons long after the date had become meaningless.  Eventually the date started to slide passed and when I did think of that date, it was gone, farther away by another year.  Odd that it popped up again today but perhaps really not so odd after all.  I struggled to remember why this date was important at one time.  It took me 24 hours to remember.  I like that.

Fear and Loathing in the Valley

I spoke with Sr. A today.  I gave her a brief but complete review of the fear, loathing, and total lack of trust I feel for Muslims.  I told her how I hoped that Mission would help me but on the face of it, it only made things worse.  A little knowledge of history and clear information about Islam can be dangerous to the soul.  Prayer and struggling with this fear can come through only one Healer.

Sr. A told me she struggles with the same troubling feelings.  She sits before the cross and is speechless.  In her anger and pain she asked “why is this happening”?  She knows the sisters kidnapped from Mosul, Iraq.  One especially is her good friend.  It is deeply personal for her.  For me – I am more distant – I pray they are  saved and fear for them as a Catholic, as a woman, and as a fellow human being.

I told her that I had gotten to the point that my only solution for my inability to love as God tells us to love is to simply tell myself – as I react to persecution stories – that I love, that I will love.  Even if I am not feeling it, I will tell myself that I love.  Thus, I open my heart to love and with time, it will fill with real love.

It is so hard to consider the distance between a Muslim who is just an ordinary person, perhaps my neighbor, and a Muslim who bombs, crucifies, desecrates holy places, kills other Muslims, and persecutes and/or kills all Christians and Jews.  The list is endless.

In growing up in Baghdad, Sr. A was in the only Christian household in her neighborhood, surrounded by Muslims.  Interestingly, they were respected, were treated well, and one woman would only allow Sr. A (as a girl) to care for her children.  She did not trust her Muslim sisters of the neighborhood.

Once, when asked by a man, why Christians did not respect Mohammed even though Muslims respected Jesus, Sr. A told him he was looking at it from the wrong direction.  If he thought Mohammed was not respected, it was because of his followers’ own actions as taught to them in their Koran.  Jesus taught us to love all.  No exceptions.  

That cannot be said of Mohammed and Islam.  By your actions, you will be known.  Faith and works are inexorably connected.  There can be no love without the backup of actions that show love.

I went to Sr. A sensing that she would have the words to help me.  Remarkably, I had words that also helped her.  This was so unexpected that I realized that perhaps I was farther down the road to what God requires of me of loving and accepting than I knew.  So, as I close, I say this prayer:

Dear God –

Protect all suffering people, feed the hungry, free the religious prisoners guilty of nothing but holding their faith to their hearts.  Protect and free Miriam and her family in the Sudan, protect and free the kidnapped orphan children and nuns of Mosul, Iraq.  Open the hearts of men to allow Christian refugees to leave exile for the West.  Protect all children from the Hamas/Israeli conflict so that there are no more kidnaps and killings. 

In Christ’s name,

Amen.

Walking with Pope St. John XXIII - Increasing Goodness within Myself

Only one man, in the entire history of the world, has obeyed  every commandment of goodness found in the Old Testament.  God and his son are the only good and we are called to be good as they are -   Romans 8:28 and Luke 6:31.

We are told (John 6:38) that Christ was sent by His Father to do His Will.  Doing the Will of God is not easy and even Christ suffered and asked for His cup of suffering to pass Him by (Matt 26:39).  His humanity begged to be released from this final act that would renew man to salvation.  But, knowing He was called to die for our sake, He did so.  His glorious resurrection put His followers and all of humanity on a firm path to God and salvation.  Serving Him helps us, then, to work out our own salvation (Matt 7:21).

As I read Pope Francis' book, The Way of Humility, I am overwhelmed by the depth and breadth of true humility.  His words, so simple and direct, flow against our world today, pushing like hardening sap.  If Jesus can humble Himself before His destiny of physical death (Phil 2:7-8) how much easier it should be for me to bear my call to humbleness before God.  I am not being asked to die physically (not at this moment in any event) but I am  being asked to die to myself.  If we are to follow Christ fully, we need to ask ourselves what cross it is we are meant to bear for His sake.  In recognizing our own cross, we are more fully prepared to serve, in all humility, others, in His name.

Serving is no chore done out of duty or obligation.  We may feel duty and obligation but, done in love, there is no effort.  In fact, the act itself is so freeing that communion with God can only increase. Obeying a call to serve and love are the same thing but the road to that union of service and love can offer up unexpected roadblocks.

The road to a practice of good acts through service and love is fertile ground for Satan's minions - Doubt, Rear, Revulsion, Shame, and Embarrassment.  The struggle through these barriers to goodness and into the light of God's waiting love and companionship is a deeply personal road, a steep climb out of a dark pit that is always waiting there for us.  Holding to the hem of His robe, I cling to His love to stay on the path of doing His Will.

Pope St. John XXIII's motto was "Obedience and Peace".  There is no clearer road for me to follow.  The dark minions are held at bey as I look up to Him and ask His Will for me.  Once known, once answered, peace in His love becomes my shelter.  My sight becomes clear. My heart opens to receive His Grace.

A Quiet Time

It has been a quiet time for me.  I'm been preparing my first book of haiku's based on the Book of James.  This week I will print a sample copy.  Meanwhile, my meditations of St. John XXII continues.  The first one will appear here shortly.  There will be nine all together.

Haiku My Heart

I had no idea, when I took the photograph (at the bottom of this post) in West Virginia's Hatfield & McCoy country, that I was capturing a butterfly dance of life.  

We arrived, late in the day, at one of the Hatfield cemeteries, this particular one was at the top of a steep slope.  I was tired and left this one to Don.  We had already seen at least four others though this particular one was especially historic as it held the remains of the most brutal and famous of the Hatfields, Devil Anse Hatfield.  He was also the leader of the clan.

There is a rough beauty in the mountains of West Virginia.  Coal, tradition, and poverty run deep in the veins and blood of that  world.  Life courses on with a persistence to rival the rivers that cut and flow through the wilderness.  And in that world, tiny beauties appear, unexpected, unselfconscious, and driven by the timeless urge to re-create the next generation.

Butterflies dancing

Wings entwined still flutter

Delicate balance

All's Quiet in Paradise

It has been a quiet week; in fact, it's been a quiet two weeks.  I attribute it to health issues and making adjustments to changes and looking forward to some outpatient surgery (for him) and radical food changes for me (thank you whacked out sugar levels).  Fortunately, neither are anything that can't be corrected with discipline and paying attention to life's little details.  

I think the slump of coming off of mission and so much time away is now setting in as well.  I sort of feel like this.

Hanging Moon in Night Rain

There are people I need to call who need attention.  There is a small project to finish.  A drive to the next town up the road is needed.  There are blogs to catch up with and letters to write.  But . . . have you ever felt like your feet were stuck in goo and you butt fused to the sofa?  Yeah, that's pretty much how I'm feeling.

Oddly, it's not a tired feeling.  Not a depressed feeling, either. 

 It's more like I'm waiting.  

For something.

Perhaps this malaise is simply a search direction.  Mortality came knocking at my door twice in the last ten days.  Sometimes, a person just has to sit back and wait.