by Liz | Mar 7, 2008 | main
How often it seems that we are relegated to the status of a “one trick pony.” Sometimes it’s a really great trick, for sure. But, there are times I’d like to learn another trick, or have someone else recognize more than one dimension of my life.
I’m, once again, working on Music for the Women’s Cursillo. Don’t get me wrong – I love to play (guitar) and I’m pretty good at it, and I sing acceptably. When people tell me I play well, it is not false humility that makes me shrug — it’s that I really want to play like Eric Clapton. I’m good enough to know that there are plenty who are better.
Of all the weekends I’ve worked, only once was I not on the music team. That time I gave a talk. I struggled with that talk – I fought with that talk – and when I gave that talk, it came from the inside. It wasn’t read – it was delivered. The struggle was worth it.
I have a friend who remarked the other night that she is really a one trick pony. All she really tries to do is to bring people closer to God — faith tradition doesn’t really matter. If I think of it that way, then perhaps I can learn to embrace this idea.
by Liz | Feb 17, 2008 | main
I have a plaque on the wall in my kitchen that reads “Bloom where God plants you.” This morning that struck me as not quite something that rings true for me right now. Where I am is not necessarily God’s fault or God’s plan. I have free will (that’s what makes me a human being, I think). However, what I am totally convinced of is this: Wherever I am, whatever I have done or been, God’s response is “I can work with that.”
There are relationships in my life that I question whether getting into them was God’s will or God’s plan. I’ve held resentments about them for a long time. But once I admit this unpleasant reality to myself and God, we have a place to start to make things right and better.
There are places I’ve been, things I’ve done, that would never have been had I always lived and trusted. Again, I have a very strong sense that God says something along the lines of: “Now, that wouldn’t have been my first choice, but we can work with this. You can still learn to love, and forgive and grow and heal, even from this spot.”
And that’s a part of my Lenten journey for 2008 — be honest about where and who I am, and give the relationship with God a chance to work for good in all things. And remember that God draws straight with crooked lines.
by Liz | Jan 13, 2008 | main
God, grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the thing I am
And Wisdom to know the difference.
I first learned that prayer – those words as a teenager. I’ve repeated them and prayed them frequently since that time. But, they meant something quite different to me then than they do now.
At the time, my mother had found us support — an AlaTeen group. That’s for children/teenagers living with an alcoholic parent. Understandably, my comprehension of that prayer was aimed at the external: I couldn’t change my father, I really couldn’t change where I lived. I understood that what I could work with was my external reactions to the situation. Try not to scream and cry, try to remain calm and try to find a way out. And Wisdom – that was just knowing where to draw the line.
Fortunately I went away to college. I look at students today in amazement. So many go home more weekends than not. “Helicopter parents” who hover over them are not uncommon. When I left, my mother and I think grandmother drove me down, helped me move into my dorm room, and I reluctantly got myself home for Thanksgiving break. I made a break for it.
But the world was a confusing place. I did learn that there was a layer beneath that I could work with (here goes the first layer of the onion skin peeling off.) I discovered the Catholic Student Center — I began to make a break with my protestant, Calvinist, background. One of the scariest decisions I realized I would be making was that I was going to join the Roman Catholic Church. Some folk may not understand the radical nature of that decision in my life. I can still return to the spot where I was sitting, on a small hill, next to a fig tree (isn’t God poetic?) when it occurred to me that I was really going to do this. I recall thinking, like Moses, “not me God, take Aaron!” because it was such a tremendous step for me. A fundamental type of change that I could make – not just in how I reacted to someone else, but an internal change in the way I saw the world.
Courage to change is no sweet little prayer. Courage to change is a powerful, life changing request. Courage to change means really being open to what can be changed and what should be changed. Courage to change means facing your demons, your fears, your addictions, yourself. Courage to change means having to walk into the unknown into a way of being that has been heretofore hidden from your sight. Courage to change implies willingness to die to old ways. Courage to change means admitting that there are things that need to be changed.
Sometimes I’m ready for that prayer. Sometimes I say the words but I don’t mean them. Sometimes, I’m just too tired to even think about it. Often it is just easier to pretend that something can’t be changed, or maybe just doesn’t need to be changed. That’s when the Wisdom piece comes into play.
Wisdom – I see her as that stirring that shows me, often gently, that there are somethings that you just have to accept. I’m really not going to change how tall I am, the real color of my eyes or my hair, or the past. Or even my preference for introverted, thinking approaches to life. I’m not going to change the fact that I was a bottle baby and not a breast-fed one. I’m not going to change events like falling off of the porch into the forsythia bush (which still invokes terror 50 years later) or listening to my sister scream in the dentist’s office after she fell and broke off her two front teeth (I was not quite 4, she was about 18 months old). I’ve learned that the emotions these things invoke are signs and can tell me where change is needed.
And so, I pray these words cautiously. Very cautiously. Precisely because the answer to that prayer can be so earthshaking.
by Liz | Dec 1, 2007 | main
My mother has remarked more than once that I always wanted to succeed at things I’m not good at and ignore the things that come naturally. Leave it to Mama to see through you…
The comment has also been made that I’m a bit like Groucho Marx: “I refuse to be a member of any club that will accept me as a member.” If I’m good enough to belong, they must not be worth joining.
And, I look at the ministries of others, and wish that was mine. And yet I back away from participating many times. Tell me that the music as mass was wonderful and I’ll smile and say “Thank you” but inside I’m thinking that “the angels must have blocked your ears from hearing the off-key notes and the rather less than mediocre voice.”
One of my friends refers to this desire to have a different ministry, to want some glory (but avoid the pain of leadership) as “Holy envy.” Yup – I want someone else’s gifts. Someone else’s call.
Looking deeper, I see that maybe it’s not that I have so much envy: sometimes I fear failure. If I really go for the A and fall short, I’m a failure. If I settle for the sure B, then I could’ve done the A if I had wanted to. Nobody is the wiser.
Another friend has tried to console me by reminding me that I am perfect – perfectly me. I gave that talk, once. It is the Ideals talk for a Cursillo weekend. Know yourself. Know that you are perfect in who your are. You are created perfectly in the image and likeness of the Creator (Even though you can’t use those words in that talk.) I even used the example that my dog, Grace, is perfect – perfect in her very “dogginess.” She’s not a cat, or a rabbit or a human. She is perfectly dog.
It seems easier for me to love another person through the rough edges, the broken parts and the little quirks than it is to respect those same quirks in myself. When will I learn that the mirror I must look into is my own — not the mirror of comparison to others?
One of the scripture passages that seems to haunt me in these times is where Paul says something along the lines of: “For now we see in a mirror darkly, but then we shall see face to face.” I think I need to clean the mirror so I can see more clearly. Let the light shine into the corners a bit more brightly. And look in my own mirror, not keep trying to peek in everybody else’s.
by Liz | Sep 7, 2007 | main
Compassion seems to be the recent recurring theme in my thoughts and prayers. It was in the forefront of ideas in one of my recent reads – “Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain” by Sharon Begley, which reports on a meeting of neuroscientists, buddhist scholars and the Dalai Lama. One story related in the book has stayed with me for a couple of weeks. It is the story of a Tibetan Buddhist monk who was imprisoned by the Chinese for 18 years with all that entails – toture included. Upon his release he made is way to Dharamsala, the current home of the Dalai Lama where he seemed happy, peaceful and amazingly unscarred by the previous 18 years. When asked what he feared most in prison, his response was almost startling – “I feared most that I would lose my compassion for the Chinese.”
How does one develop such compassion? It is evident in so few of us – in this monk, in Jesus on the cross, Mother Teresa… The Buddhists get there by meditating for many hours. I suspect that Jesus and Mother Teresa and others got (or will get) there by similar routes. The world would be a better place if more people were able to develop this compassion – it might actually look more like the Kingdom of God that Christians strive for.
This compassion is a desire to relieve the suffering of all of God’s creatures. It does not require that the object conform to my standards of behavior or belief. It calls to mind the outlook of Vincent de Paul – to see Christ in the face of the poor. But beyond that, it calls one to action to relieve that suffering. Not just think about it, but to act.
There have been times when I have been there – not a often as I would like, but often enough to have a small taste of it, and know that it is a call to holiness, a call to wholeness, a call to oneness with the world and the creator.
Now, it seems I am back to Thomas Merton and Active Contemplation. And somehow, I must move beyond just pondering this idea and actually practice.
