On Gratitude

As you may have realized, I only update this blog once every few months or so because it usually takes that long for me to be taught something new about my relationship with God. Typically, I learn something, and (I'll blame it on my temperament) the revelation demands to be put down on paper-- er-- virtual paper. I'm an external processor by nature and a teacher by trade. I have to talk or write things out to fully understand them, and teaching helps that process. If I really understand something, then I can teach it. If I can't teach it... well, it's time to keep studying.

A few months ago, I was learning my next very important life lesson, and I was naturally all excited about it and wanting to share it. But for some reason, the words weren't coming out right. Maybe I hadn't really understood it yet. Anyway, I've been attempting to write this blog post off and on for about three months since then. This "thing" that I was learning could be got at from so many different angles, and I couldn't figure out which one was most effective-- most important. Today, I woke up and it was Thanksgiving Day. Eureka! Or rather, Eucharistia! All of the sudden, I had it.

This is a blog about gratitude. That is the most practical and important lesson I was (and am) being taught the latter half of this year. That is the angle with which I needed to express all these prayers and thoughts and experiences and emotions I've been chasing 'round and 'round in my head and heart for the past six months or so.

Outside, winter has nearly arrived. In my spiritual life, however, spring has just mustered the strength to poke its sleepy head up through the heavy snow which has lain across my soul like a blanket for the past two or so years. Before, I talked of the seasons. That was the lesson I was being taught at the beginning half of this year-- the natural cycle of life, the ups lead to downs and the downs back to ups again. In prayer, the steady rhythm of consolation and desolation-- never solidly one or the other, never one or the other lasting forever, always one and the other pregnant with lessons to be learned and a love to be fostered and grown.

There is so much movement in this life-- so much change. Nothing in the world ever stays entirely the same. This is natural, but this is quite possibly the hardest thing in life for me to accept. We are a people who crave stability, whether we want to admit it or not. In some circumstances, I love change-- changes in scenery (eg. my love for road trips), changes in direction (dreams and new possibilities for careers or enterprises), changes in every-day activities ("let's try a new restaurant!"), etc. However, no matter how much I want to travel or to experience new things, I am always craving some sort of stability-- typically in the form of the people who surround me as family and friends.

When family changes, when friends change, when all of my surroundings change permanently, that is difficult for me to handle. It always takes me a long while to settle back in.

Since I graduated from high school, I've moved to a new state about every two years. There have been so many blessings that have come from this movement but so many difficulties as well. I think this is something that many people in my current state in life are experiencing-- young twenty- and thirty-somethings still trying to figure out their careers, their vocations, etc. Where will I settle? Will I ever settle? Where will I call home? Will I ever have a family of my own? Can I ever get comfortable in a house or apartment, or will I just have to move again next year? Is this job the one I'm supposed to stay in, or do I need to be looking for something else? These are the questions that race through my head at high speeds every time something less than comfortable happens to shake up my daily routine.

Because I so crave stability, I tend to grasp at things and people who I love. But the problem with grasping, though, I've learned so many times the hard way, is that you can't truly enjoy whatever blessing it is you're grasping at. If I grasp and hold tight to a flower, I can't properly enjoy the flower. In my fist, I speed up the aging process, I rob it of sun and nutrients, I obstruct my view of its beauty, I try to control it and then I lose it before I've ever really appreciated it. The idea of possessing the flower becomes more important to me than the flower itself. And this is true of any gift in my life. If I grasp so tightly to it, always fearful of losing it, I never truly enjoy it like it was meant to be enjoyed.

Late this summer, I made a discovery about my favorite band, Switchfoot. I found a common thread in the majority of their songs. It's a theme on every album, it's a theme in their autobiographical documentary, it's the underlying theme of their lives. The message is this:

This life and everything in it is passing; only God is stable.

I enjoy Switchfoot's songs because they walk the precarious middle line so well-- a perfect balance between reality and hope. Many artists focus so much on the reality of sin, death, change, and insecurity in this life that they end up despairing. Other artists focus so much on the good in this life that it becomes an idol. The members of Switchfoot fully and completely acknowledge the brokenness of this world while all the time keeping their bearings because they are solidly rooted in a deeper hope that this world is passing-- that this world is not the one we were made for and not the one that we are stuck in forever. In doing so, they are able to enjoy the things of this world immensely by staying prudent and somewhat unattached to them.

My favorite saint, John Bosco, once remarked, "Walk with your feet on the Earth, but in your heart, be in Heaven." I also read something once that G.K. Chesterton said, although I can't find the quote now. He said something about how, before he believed, he grasped at the good things of the world as his greatest happiness-- held them tightly for fear of losing them, but when he became a believer and realized that this world was passing and that nothing in it could bring him the ultimate happiness he sought, he was able to enjoy those same things that he had formerly grasped at so much more, precisely because he wasn't afraid of losing them.

How did his mindset change? How does our mindset need to change?

The answer is gratitude. We become depressed and despair when change comes only when we feel ourselves entitled to the things that we have lost. The reality is that everything we have-- even our very selves-- is gift. Nothing good we experience comes from ourselves. Everything comes from God and nothing is necessary to be given us. We don't deserve life. We don't deserve existence. Not because we are bad or evil by nature and somehow deserve bad things, but because nothing at all-- good or bad-- was ever owed to us. We were thought into existence because of another. Everything he gives us is free and undeserved gift.

If we see the world like that, we can't help but cry tears of joy at every good thing we experience. Everything is the icing on the cake. Everything is the cherry on top. Everything is lagniappe.

As the saints have said, "everything is grace."

If I have a friend, he is gift. If he is taken away from me, my heart should still rejoice for the time we were given together, for even that time was more than was deserved.

If I have an experience and it ends, I should rejoice at the opportunity to have experienced it at all.

I can only do this, though, if I am firmly rooted in the idea that God is my security and nothing else. I need nothing else forever because only God, "the giver of every good and perfect gift," can satisfy me forever. I should not love any gift more than its giver. That is the most common of sense that we so often forget.

Job, the man who literally lost it all, declared, "The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away;
blessed be the name of the LORD!” (Job 1:21). Only a man who loves and trusts the giver, can rejoice even when the gift is taken away.

Jesus made an important distinction between blessedness and our popular understanding of "happiness," when he delivered the first few lines of his Sermon on the Mount, the beatitudes:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,

for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are they who mourn,

for they will be comforted.

Blessed are the meek,

for they will inherit the land.

Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness,

for they will be satisfied.

Blessed are the merciful,

for they will be shown mercy.

Blessed are the clean of heart,

for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers,

for they will be called children of God.

Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness,

for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you 

and utter every kind of evil against you [falsely] because of me.

Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven.

Thus they persecuted the prophets who were before you..."

(Matthew 5:3-12)

Blessedness-- true happiness, true fulfillment-- comes not from the material things, the good experiences of this world, but from knowing Christ, from being in intimate communion with the maker of all things. As Switchfoot cries out (I believe they are echoing Dylan), "'Happy' is a yuppie word!" and when I realize that true happiness (blessedness) has nothing to do with the things of this world, "nothing in the world can fail me now."

When our comfort is taken away, we should actually be rejoicing, because it will teach us not to grasp at the comforts of the world in lieu of reaching out to our creator, the true source of comfort, in love. St. Paul says, "in all circumstances, give thanks" (1 Thess. 5:8, emphasis added). That means even in the terrible circumstances we sometimes find ourselves in, we should be rejoicing and giving thanks.

I started thinking about this strange and counter-intuitive call to rejoicing when I first heard a particular Switchfoot song about six years ago. The song is called "The Beautiful Letdown," and it's all about how the things of this world are passing and only God is stable. When we first realize this, it can be a huge letdown, because more often than not, we have been counting on some things in this world as our safety, or meaning, our security. But the letdown is beautiful because we are letdown only to be raised up to meet the truth-- the truth that God, our creator, is what and who will satisfy us-- and not just for this lifetime but for eternity.

At the end of the song, Jon Foreman, the front man, prays a peculiar prayer:

"Easy living, you're not much like the name.

Easy dying, hey, you look just about the same.

Won't you please take me off your list.

Easy living, please, come on and let me down."

Why would anyone in his right mind pray that the comforts of this world would keep letting him down? Precisely because he recognizes that to trust in them is folly. Just like the cycle of seasons, nothing is stable in this life. We experience life and death, gain and loss, over and over and over again. It matters not who you are or what you've done, whether you're a great saint or the most vile of sinners, every person will experience sadness and every person will experience joy.

This is the predicament that the author of Ecclesiastes wrestles with throughout his book. He cries out, "Vanity of vanities! All things are vanity!" (1:2). He recognizes that nothing on earth will ever satisfy us, but then he recognizes that all is gift:

I recognized that there is nothing better than to rejoice and to do well during life.

Moreover, that all can eat and drink and enjoy the good of all their toil—this is a gift of God.

I recognized that whatever God does will endure forever; there is no adding to it, or taking from it. 

Thus has God done that he may be revered.

What now is has already been; what is to be, already is: God retrieves what has gone by.

(3:12-15)

We can be tempted to despair in the recognition that nothing in this world will ever satisfy us, but we shouldn't despair, because there is something that will satisfy us. God himself will satisfy us. He feeds us with his very self. Our celebration of this is called eucharistia, thanksgiving. He is not of this world, and as beings made in his image and likeness with intellect, will, and the capacity to love him, neither are we.

To live this life filled with the humility of gratitude is the necessary starting point for true and lasting happiness. If we can accomplish this by grace, nothing in this world can ever shake us. Our houses will be built on the Rock and not on the changing sands of time (see Matthew 7:24-27). Only then can we can say peacefully amidst the most trying of circumstances with the psalmist,

Many say, “May we see better times!

LORD, show us the light of your face!”

But you have given my heart more joy

than they have when grain and wine abound.

In peace I will lie down and fall asleep,

for you alone, LORD, make me secure.

(Psalm 4:7-9)

For Erik

"Three dogs at a party on a boat at night."
The water was calm and the moon shone bright.
Not a care in the world. Not a care, not a care.
Just three best friends with a breeze in their hair
And a song on their lips,
As the waves gently rolled,
And a glimpse of a heavenly peace in their souls.

Content for a moment, content for a night,
For a brief, flashing second the world was all right.
Lazy camaraderie, checkers and stars,
Newspaper hats, and a banjo guitar.

You understood all when I showed it to you,
As I spoke of it wistfully, wishing it true.
Nineteen and restless, the world then so new,
But you knew then exactly what you had to do.

Five years have passed, and oh my, how they've flown!
But so much has happened, so much in me has grown.
Yet, despite changes, new worries, and different tears,
Your thoughtfulness stayed with me these last five years.

A simple book called up from my childhood
Meant more with your notes only we understood.
This gift, so much greater than any before
Or any since up to this year twenty-four.

Sometimes I go back to that time and that place--
All the hurts long have healed by time and by grace.
In place of the storm, now, a fond memory,
Quiet and tranquil like the three dogs at sea.

A week in back Vacherie

"It's opener dere
In de wide-open air,"
I heard de Doctor say.

I found dat line
To be trut'ful in rhyme
In a town call' back Vacherie.

De moon was red,
An' de kids was fed;
I sat alone in de parking lot gazin'

De stars was bright
In de cool, clea' night
As de worries o' life got to fadin'

De breeze blew over de corn fields slow
Saturn and Mars in de sout'ern sky glowed
An' a grand silhouette in de fo'ground stood
Dat ol' church as de crux o' de ol' neighborhood.

Back Vacherie, flat as de ocean is deep
An' as peaceful an' quiet as de mountains is steep.
A man who sits rockin' in a rickety chair
Who knows what is poverty, pain, and a pray'r

Yet his smile is big
As he surveys a fig
An' invites you inside a' his song

Wit dat slow Cajun dance
An' dat cane field romance
Sha, you cain't help but sing right a-long.

Even the Winter: Reflections on faithfulness in times of spiritual desolation

The EP covers for Jon Foreman's solo project. From left to right: Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter.

Seasons. They pervade every aspect of life. Without them, there is no change, no movement, no growth. Without them, the world is dead. We are dead.

This is the lesson the Lord has been trying to teach me over the past two years, and I am only just now beginning to understand:

Life, especially our interpersonal relationships, is made up of seasons-- of movement, of change, of growth. These seasons, in many ways, mirror the seasons of nature. Spring brings the joy of discovery and newness of life, summer the heat and the stamina of youth, fall the harvest of maturity, and winter the death of certain elements of the old in anticipation and hope of the new. The more we come to understand the beauty and the necessity of each one of the seasons (and the more we come to know their divine author), the more we will know peace in our relationships with both God and man. 

Why? Because our love, our promise of faithfulness to the beloved, will not be rooted in the joy we find in the seasons of comfort and youth. Rather, we will find faithfulness and perseverance through all the seasons, whether they bring consolation or desolation, by being rooted in the unchanging author of the seasons-- the God who alone makes us secure (Psalm 4).

+++

The last two years of my life have been filled with moments of joy, to be sure, but they have also been colored by a pervading sense of desolation, a spiritual dryness, and a lack of spiritual vigor. For a long time, I blamed a myriad of life circumstances and events for this desolation, but something in me knew that these couldn't be the root cause. So I kept looking for the answer, and I eventually found it in the seasons.

About five years ago, I experienced a springtime of faith so vibrant, so refreshing, that the whole course of my life was changed. I discovered-- I mean really discovered-- the Eucharist, was welcomed into a new family of friends, transferred schools, changed majors, and began my journey as a life-long student of theology and catechetics. Since then, I've experienced extreme highs and extreme lows, I've made mistakes (and lots of them), learned lessons, laughed, cried, dreamed, schemed, traveled, grown, been stretched, fallen, risen, hurt, been hurt, forgiven, and been forgiven.

The last two years, I now realize, must have been a natural movement into a spiritual fall and winter. The joy of discovery that came with the springtime of my faith and the youthful stamina that came with summer started to wear off, and at first, that scared the heck out of me. All of the sudden, it seemed, the once-zealous "Jesus girl" was experiencing desolation in prayer, spiritual exhaustion, loss of zeal, and a falling away from spiritual routines. I now realize it was because I didn't recognize the desolation, the exhaustion, and the loss of that fiery emotion as a natural winter season of spirituality, and I didn't know how to handle it. The remedy, however, came in a rather unexpected way: through prayers and reflections on the indissolubility of marriage.

I don't recall when I first started to make the connection between the seasons, the marital relationship, and our relationship with God, but maybe it began with the difficulty of dealing with the deep wound of divorce in my family. The recent experience of witnessing my parents' marriage fall apart is truly indescribable. In short, I felt utterly helpless, my ability to trust was deeply wounded, and I began to fear marriage, the very thing I have desired for so long. When it happened, I was already experiencing spiritual autumn, and winter was just around the corner. It was only when, in hindsight, I looked at my spiritual winter alongside my thoughts and fears about marriage, that God taught me something profound:

Marriage and a personal relationship with God are very similar concepts, similar covenants. In each, we make a commitment to love the other despite emotions, feelings, fights, struggles, hardships, etc. And there are seasons in a marital relationship just as there are in our relationship with God-- spring, summer, fall, and winter-- the good and the bad, the rich and the poor, the sick and the healthy. We say this in our wedding vows, secretly and naively hoping that the bad, the poor, and the sick will never come, or if they do, only in small ways that we can keep under control and work through easily.

What I've come to realize is that these moments (of hardship, of lack of emotion, of temptation to apathy, of a feeling of distance) will come, but to abandon the beloved during these moments is really to abandon love itself. Love is not love if it only loves when it is comfortable, if it is only faithful when it feels good.

In both marriage and spirituality, we cannot abandon the beloved because we are experiencing a long, harsh winter. Winter is a season, but it is not the only one.

When we experience the winter season of desolation, we must commit ourselves to the beloved even more than we did when we first felt his love. We must work to renew and revive our commitment to him by returning often to those moments in which we experienced consolation. In marriage, to the memories of the springtime of love. In faith, to the same!

How did I first fall in love with God? How did He romance me? What moments, what places, what circumstances, what words, what gifts, what songs, what prayers? If we cannot return physically to these, we must return to them in our memories as if on pilgrimage to the holy sites of our conversion.

If we find ourselves in winter, let us know that spring will come. And let us prepare ourselves actively for spring by developing non-emotion-based habits and spiritual disciplines that will bring us even more to life when we are once more given the gift of consolation or emotion. Let us allow the Lord to sleep in our little boats, as St. Therese said, because he must be exhausted from answering all our prayers, while we continue to serve. When He is silent and feels distant, we must let Him sleep knowing that he is near, and trusting that He will awaken to console us once more.

Conversion is on-going. It never ends in this life. It is a process. It has seasons. And seasons bring change, growth, and life! Matthew Kelly said, "You cannot become more like Jesus Christ and at the same time stay as you are." If we are to grow more and more into Christ, we have to experience the cycle of death and resurrection until finally we reach perfection, that total union with Christ, that final resurrection, heaven. "For these seeds to give birth to life, first they must die" (Jon Foreman, "Baptize My Mind", Spring).

We have to experience the full cycle of seasons in order to be brought to life. The sooner we accept this reality and embrace it, the sooner we will be able to put our trust in the One who is unchanging-- the God who will be by our side throughout all of life's joys and hardships. After all, it is he who "gives and takes away. Blessed be the Name of the Lord!" He is the one who breathes the breath of life into us and draws us silently near to Him, even in the darkest night of our souls. In clinging to Him, we are able to "walk through the valley of the shadow of death and fear no evil, for He is at our side" (Psalm 23). Without Him, we build castles on the sand which will crush us when they fall to the waves, and we scatter seeds in a rocky soil that will take root only until hardship comes along and destroys them (see Mt 7, 13).

Love is faithfulness, in relationship with man as with God. If you, like me, are single but believe you are called to marriage, you can prepare yourself for this great mystery by growing your relationship with God... by staying faithful to Him most especially in the winters of desolation and lack of emotional zeal. You can learn to stay faithful to God in big things by first staying faithful in small disciplines like daily prayer (see Lk 16). If you are married, let your marriage be further preparation for your own faithfulness to God and let your faithfulness to God inform your marriage. Really, we cannot be faithful in one without being faithful in the other.

+++

I'll leave you with a song that has helped me to reflect on this beautiful mystery of the seasons of love and spirituality:

"Even the Winter" by Audrey Assad

What if we find ourselves beneath the snow,

Our warmest words all frozen in our throats,

And all we feel is left out in the cold,

You and I?

What if the days grow short and lose their light?

What if the coals burn black and the embers die,

And we can't find each other in the night,

You and I?

Even the winter won't last forever.

We'll see the morning, we'll feel the sun.

We'll wake up in April, ready and able,

Holding the seeds in the soil of our love.

What if the ice we tread is just too thin?

What if we can't escape the squall we're in?

What if our hearts of stone are permanent,

You and I?

What if the spring comes soon,

And we're surprised?

What if the seasons help us realize,

Some things are only proven over time,

You know?

Even the darkness cannot disarm us.

We'll see the morning, we'll feel the sun.

We'll break up the earth, 

'Cause we know that it's worth it,

Sowing the seeds in the soil of our love.

Memories

This couch.
This room.
This life.
How far I've traveled...
How far I've still yet to go.
I know I can't do it without You.

When I look back
At all the pictures, the pages, the quotes, the notes,
The memories that float in and out of my brain...
The pain...
I can't help but see You there
In the midst of it all
Watching
Moving
Waiting patiently
For me to notice You.
For me to let You love me.

I've been a bad lover...
A miserable, distracted, silly school girl who chases after boys like waves on the sand...
Like a girl who friend-zone's the best guy for her
Because she is blind
And yet accuses all of her crushes of being blind to her.
And pitching a fit. And taking it personally.
Yeah, that's me
To a tee.

But You just... wait.
And pursue.
And pursue.
And wait.
And gently love me back to You.

You know You will win.

You have already won my heart
Long, long ago in my room in the dark.
When a little girl turned on her bedside light
Late at night
And looked at the saints
And read the words of the Mass
And prayed the rosary as best she knew how
And knew You.

I knew peace then.
In the warm, cozy hours of the late, dark night
In the lamplight. I knew You.
Docile and wide-eyed and ready.
I knew holiness.
I knew prayer.
I knew life.

Teach me. Teach me. Teach me again
To love You like I loved You then,
Before falsity, fear, and the frightening world crept in.
I knew reality better back then
Even in my naivety, I knew You.
And You know me still.
Teach me again.
Teach me again.

Morning in St. Peter's Square

A poem inspired by a certain Roman pontiff and this photograph from my June 2013 pilgrimage to Italy.


As dark is giving way to dawn,
Pigeons coo and pilgrims yawn
And stumble up the cobblestone
Too gripped with excitement to wince or groan
On their way to seven Mass.

Here, the shadows fall and fade
And dance along the colonnade
Revealing grandeur hidden deep
Past Roman eyes, still thick with sleep.

But close, across the grounds does stand
The room, home to a simple man,
Who doubtless rose before the night
Gave way to morning's first clear light,
Swift and quiet like a prayer,
So humble, no one saw him there.

As businessmen their coffee take,
He reads the news and has a cake
In a simple room alongside guests
And Swiss who do not dare protest
And says hello to all who pass,
And learns of hap'nings near and far.

Deliberately he chooses dates
With strangers far beyond his gates,
This man who topples bigger walls
Than saintly Karol witnessed fall
With simple words and simpler acts
Not even enemies attack.
Their minds befuddled by his smile,
Confused and taken far aback.
Not one knows how quite to react.

Each man breathing heavy breath,
Cold and dark and close to death,
Could not have fathomed what it would take
To jerk their weary souls awake.
Afflicting comfort-built malaise,
This man's words cut through walls of haze
That clouded vision, thick for years,
And caused us to have deafened ears
To Truth the other pontiffs spake.

Outside the square, the Romans rise
And wipe their sleep from rested eyes
Feeling somehow new today
But as to why, not one can say.

In the distance, gleaming gold,
The great façade looks grand and bold
And beckons artists, poets, priests
To come inside from off the streets
And warm their souls with precious light
Streaming in from lofty heights,
Allowing them to flee from night
And stand upright and reach for heaven.

Every day and every year
And every night and every tear
That's fall'n upon her marble floors
And passed through her wooden doors
Tells tales of grace which lies within--
Sheer power to forgive their sin.
The Word, though, falls on closed ears
Filled with tours about the art
And passes by the quick and smart
Too far away to see Him near.

Even now the axe is laid
By trees grown tall and dead and grey
Refusing to be pruned or stemmed
Thus blocking light from feeding them.

Fear is strong and causes death.
The man prays fervently for Breath
To come and fill the lungs of she
So cold and wrapped in misery:
A bride who from a wicked Fall
Could not remember Him at all
Who first spoke words of love to her.

And judging by his gentle smile,
His jarring words that travel miles
Through voice and print and cyberspace,
We dare not turn away our face
Or faint or fail or fear or fawn
But wait and watch night turn to dawn
And witness what will soon transpire:
Something very like a fire
Starting small but catching quick
The darkness, soon, no match for it.

The shadows rise, but then they fall,
Just as they do on Peter's wall
In morning when the Roman sun
Has run the race and all but won
The battle with the moon and stars.

A greater battle soon will come--
Will still be fought and still be won--
With gentle eyes and gentle acts,
Causing stony walls to crack,
And turning stony hearts to flesh,
And putting silent wars to rest.

Our cue we take from a simple man
Who, with firm resolve, his ground he stands,
Yet never violent-- roaring, storming.
His methods are more like the morning.

from Psalm 23 (Or, Surprise Blessings on a Friday Afternoon)

You spread a table before me
(and sometimes fill it with hot dogs and board games)
(and sometimes surround me with little ones who giggle
And yell
And snuggle
And tell me random things that have no meaning,
Except in their big minds,
And merrily interrupt theological conversation
To show me a dance)
In the sight of my foes
(who lurk in the dark places and shout down reality,
Trying to convince me
That I am alone).
You anoint my head with oil
(and fill my mouth with laughter
And my belly with brownies
And the living room with people
And my heart with joy);
My cup overflows
(with the whole milk of genuine friendship
And a thousand other good things that go unseen
Whilst they nourish heart and soul...
these things which
are often under-appreciated.

So, I will try
To better appreciate them).

(Thank You).

Dedicated to Craig & Christina