Tag: humanity

Tangible

Tangible

The Lord understands the need we have for the tangible.

We have a soul gifted with intellect and free will.  In this way, we share in the likeness of God.  Yet we also have bodies and this is no small part of who we are.  We are not to have a Puritanical mindset that declares the body is bad.  Our bodies matter.  This physical world matters.  And God reaches out to us in the midst of what we know and understand.

Over the past few days, I have soaked in the beauty of the tangible in the Catholic faith.  On Ash Wednesday, we have a cross of ashes inscribed on our foreheads.  We hear, “You are dust and to dust you shall return.”  Remember, remember the brevity of life.  It is hard to miss the symbolism–our bodies will return to dust, like the dust from which Adam was formed.  Our life is fleeting and we do not hold within ourselves the meaning for our own existence.  Civilizations and generations will return to nothing.  We are called to remember that our treasure should rest in something other than these earthen vessels, something that will survive time.

Even as we are told to look beyond the physical, the very means of this heavenly gaze is found in the physically tangible.  The black ashes that seal your forehead.  The words we hear that speak of the end for our physical bodies.  Physical signs point to spiritual realities and truths.

That evening I went to a funeral home for my uncle’s wake.  My four year old nephew wanted to touch my ashes and so I tried to keep him at an arm’s length.  When he saw me the next day at the funeral, he noted that the thing on my forehead was gone.  Sometimes kids have the appropriate response.  Familiarity leads adults to see the ashes as commonplace, but my nephew was intrigued by the smudge on my face.  In a way, he saw that the ashes said something significant.

At the funeral there were numerous tangible elements.  The body is reverenced in a way that might surprise us if we pause to think about it.  No longer is this the person we knew, but yet we bring the body into the church.  The casket enclosing the body is nearest the altar, as we hope that this person is nearest the throne of God, participating in the eternal Wedding Banquet of the Lamb.  We cover the casket with a white cloth, remembering their baptism into the death of Christ and into His everlasting life.  The pallbearers, an honor given to a few friends or relatives of the deceased, carry or follow the body from the church to the hearse and from the hearse to the grave site.  This isn’t a task relegated to people paid to help with the funeral, but rather is seen as an honor.  The importance of the body causes us to have a committal ceremony where we place the body into the ground.  We mark it and return to visit this place even though the body will return to dust and the person as we knew them does not remain.

Our physical body matters.  The physical world matters.  The Catholic Church has a beautiful tradition of keeping this in mind.  Whether it is investing in beautiful basilicas or commissioning great works of art, the Church sees the beauty in calling to mind the spiritual through the physical.  Other churches see it, too, but I would say the Church has a deeper understanding.  Weekly, we come together to be nourish by the Bread of Life, by the Body of Christ.  We enter a room or a box and we hear the words that declare that our sins are forgiven.  In entering the the mystical Body of Christ, we are plunged into water as a sign of the cleansing of our soul.

The Catholic Church is all about the incarnational.  Jesus Christ entered into the physical and the tangible.  Of course, we can say that God would completely understand human nature even if He never took it on because He is all-knowing.  But it adds a depth when we acknowledge that He chose to take on human nature so that His knowledge would be experiential and His experience salvific.  

By doing this, He shows us that holiness is pursued through the physical and the spiritual realms.  It isn’t only about the soul and deep meditative prayer.  It isn’t necessary to retire to a desert cave to live on little food and spend days in ecstasy, although He does call some to that life.  The Church has the spiritual and the corporal works of mercy.  It is not enough to admonish the sinner, we must also give drink to the thirsty.  It is insufficient to teach/instruct the ignorant (although important and, technically, my job) but we must also bury the dead.  In the Catholic tradition, we have the great both/and.  We are called to pursue the delicate balance of body and soul, both seen as important aspects of who we are as human beings.

At times, we want to accuse God of being silent or distant.  We ask Him why He does not reveal more of Himself to us or why He requires such faith to believe in Him.  Yet He gives us many signs of His presence with us.  The sanctuary candle that burns in every Catholic church, indicating that the King of Kings is present.  A hand raised in absolution also involves a voice audibly telling you that all is forgiven.  The nearly scandalous declaration of love and sacrifice found in each depiction of the crucifixion.  We belong to a church that firmly declares that Christ walked with us yesterday and still walks with us today in a very concrete way.

God knows what we need.  We have one foot on earth and one in heaven.  And He meets us in both ways.  He is a God who is tangibly with us.  Emmanuel.  God with us.  Our foreheads have been sealed with ashes where we declare that we have sinned and that we are destined to return to dust.  He encounters us, mercifully, in that declaration.  We seek Christ in this desert walk, in these forty days of sacrifice.  How will we tangibly encounter Him?  How will our body and soul be in the union they were created to live in?  

Tireless

The Lord isn’t tired of you.

If He hasn’t tired of me, then I know He isn’t tired of you.

Don’t we sometimes assume He is, though?

I apply human attributes to God and figure He must want to respond to me as I want to respond: grabbing me by the shoulders, slightly shaking me, and telling me to snap out of it.  Or something along those lines, sometimes more or less intense.

He is unfailingly patient.  God is able to endure our imperfections better than we are.  Where we can be short-tempered and over hasty, God is slow and long-suffering.  I think I am a fairly patient person, but at times I am the most impatient with myself.

He waits for us.

It is a struggle to extend that same act of kindness to myself.  To wait for my heart to catch up, to wait for my mind to grasp the concept, to wait for my body to gain the strength.  We want it right now and we think we should be able to conquer all now.  Sometimes, though, we need to accept that we are in a specific place.  Instead of being angry with my heart, I can acknowledge where it is struggling and be patient with it.  Instead of frustration over what my body can’t now accomplish, I can see the difficulties and move forward gradually.

The heart is probably the most difficult for me to wait for.  I want it to quickly recover or never get wounded.  The Lord, in His inscrutable wisdom, gave me a heart that is very tender.  And life can be pretty rough on such a heart.  Having a tender heart isn’t a coveted aspect in our culture.  Instead, we are taught to not care what others think, to do our own thing, and to take whatever doesn’t kill you and let it make you stronger.  But sometimes it just hurts.  So I find myself fighting against the desire to shield my heart behind indifference or coldness.  Or I use my best-learned defense: sarcasm.

I will fight, nearly to the death, in defense of sarcasm being a valid sense of humor.  When used in the right situations, I think it is fantastic.  However, I will admit that I use it to shield my little heart all too often.  If my heart can’t handle the pain of honesty or sincerity, it will hide behind quick remarks and witty comebacks.  In the moment, it is a fight or flight instinct and I guess I choose both: fly away with the tender heart and fight with words of steel.  I know that it will not help my heart, but sometimes the conditioning takes over with little regard to what I should do.

The goal is to tell myself, “Trish, today you will not hide your hurt behind sarcasm.  You will be sincere and meaningful in your words.  And you, impatient one, will be patient with your own heart.  It is a gift.”  Perhaps, someday, I will listen to myself.

I need to be reminded that God sees me in a way that is different than I would initially imagine.  In Isaiah 43: 4-5a, God speaks to Israel of a love that is unsurpassed by any other.  It can be helpful to remember that this covenantal love also extends to us today.

Because you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you, I give people in return for you, nations in exchange for your life.  Do not fear, for I am with you…

He is present, long-suffering, patient, and waiting for you.  Not for you to drag your feet, but for you to let all the many conflicted parts of yourself come together.  To wait for your heart to catch up to where the situation requires it be and to not be frustrated that it isn’t there yet.  To remind the head that there is more to life than what makes complete sense.  God is working in the midst of your broken chaos right now and He isn’t letting it stop Him from doing what needs to be done.

Though He is moving forward in your life, He isn’t leaving any part of you behind.  Because despite all of it (the situations, the emotions, the problems, the pride, etc.), He isn’t tired of you.

A Lesson from Snow

I like to think of driving in the winter as a lesson in teamwork.  Usually, I don’t like to drive in the winter, but sometimes I get surprisingly excited after a new snowfall or some slick ice.  I go out to my car and think, “Alright, Humanity!!!  You can do it!  If you don’t get impatient when I turn slowly around a corner, I won’t get mad when you slide through a red light because you are afraid to hit your brakes.  We will all work together and it will be OK!”

Yesterday, I was able to live that experience out again.  I was slipping and sliding up to a stoplight, praying that Jesus would stop my car before it went into the back of the vehicle ahead of me.  Then I looked in my rear view mirror to see a car careening towards mine.  It isn’t going to stop in time.  I just knew it.  Sure enough, almost in a dream-like way, she slid into the back of my car.

Put car into park, activate flashers, and open car door to confront the person who played bumper cars.  She was apologetic and young while I was surprised to see no damage.  I got her information and carried on my way to school.  No yelling (not really my style, anyway) and no attempts to make her feel bad.  Besides, I had so very nearly done the same thing to the car in front of me.

The rest of the day, I was willing humanity to be patient with one another.  Yes, it is going to take longer to get anywhere.  But, if we work together, we can all get home in one piece.  At times it leads me to inordinate pride in the human race: no honking horns, no dramatic zooming away, and no freaking out over slight delays.

You did it, Humanity!!!!  You treated other humans like they mattered!  

Like I said, sometimes new snow makes me a bit excited.  It gives us the chance to show a little patience and see the needs of others as important.  And we could always use a little bit more of that.

To Be or Not To Be….All is a Gift

It was the end of the day and one of my students was posing one of my least favorite questions.  The question is mildly manageable if I sense that the student is asking this question out of sincerity and a desire to understand God in a deeper way.

That wasn’t how he asked the question.

His question was posed more in opposition to God.  It was meant to hurt our perception of God as loving and merciful.  And I find that attitude very difficult to tolerate.

“Did God use Satan to strike the people down in Egypt at the Passover?  Or did He use one of His angels?  And if it was one of His angels, how come God decided to kill so many people?”

In a certain sense, it is a fair enough question.

In another sense, it tears at my heart.

So perhaps my reply was a little more abrupt then necessary, but it was to illustrate a point.  I didn’t directly answer the question at first, but I attempted to answer the incorrect aspects surrounding his perception of God.

“God doesn’t owe us anything.  God doesn’t even owe us life.”

I think they were surprised by that response, in all its bluntness.  I reassured them of God’s great love for them, but spoke of how it is never our “right” to exist.  Existence, in its entirety for humanity, is a gift.  God, in His great love and mercy, never blots out our existence.  For mere mortals, death will come.  For even the God-man, death came.  But life continues beyond the grave.

We are a people who expect that certain things are our due.  It seems an injustice to us that bad things happen, that we are not treated as we wish, and that death will come to us all.  How many people have expressed, in the throes of sorrow after the death of loved one, that it was so unfair to lose them as they did, when they did?  I do not disagree that death can be tragic or that we will be left with many, many unanswered questions and seemingly unheard prayers.  Yet isn’t it the natural course of life?

I am not owed this next breath.

It is not my due that tomorrow will dawn and I will be alive to see it.

It is not my right to live until an old age, surrounded by loved ones.

In reality, God owes me nothing, because He has given me all I have in an act of extreme generosity.  It is not necessary that I am alive, but He wills it to be so, for now.

God gives life and God can take that gift away, too.  It doesn’t make Him a murderer, as the question my student posed seemed to imply.  A murderer is one who does not have the right to take a life and yet does.

Let’s say each month you receive $100 in the mail from a close friend.  If that friend should stop sending that money, would you then call them a thief?  Of course not!  They were generous to give the money, but as a gift, it must be freely given.  And as a gift, it can end.

All of this is not to make you question the tenderness or faithfulness of God.  He cares about you with a fierceness that is intense to behold.  Yet His ways are so often not our ways.  It can be confusing to muddle through the events that befall us and see how God is working in the midst of devastation.  It won’t always be easy and we often won’t understand.

But this is necessary to know: If God removes a gift, it is because He is offering a different kind of gift.  

It may not always be easy to see the beauty in that new gift, though.  When we are no longer healthy, we can experience the gift God offers in suffering.  When we experience a death, we can see the gift God offers in grief.  The gifts never cease to flow abundantly from His hands, but they may look other than we would wish.

To a generation that thinks they are owed so many things, I told them God has never been beholden to them.  Everything they have and everything they are can be chalked entirely up to the mercy and love of God.  They did not have to exist and yet they do.  And it is very good.

You are here because God desires you to be here right now.  It would not be less loving of Him for you to no longer be alive; He would simply be offering you a different kind of gift.  However, since you are here right now, God has a purpose and a mission for you.  Throughout this life, He will offer you many gifts.  You might not like them all.  But in the end, He will offer you one of the greatest gifts, life everlasting with Him.  I see that not as robbing me of something that is my due (how pale this life will seem in comparison to the Beatific Vision), but inviting me into a mysteriously beautiful gift that is entirely undeserved.

So breath in and breath out.    

Those were gifts.  Handcrafted, uniquely given to you.  Not because He had to, but because He chose to.  Someday that won’t happen.  And that will be a gift, too.

Thank You, Lord, Giver of all Good Gifts.

A Reflection of Authenticity

A Reflection of Authenticity
A Reflection written in France
 

Among the swarms of people, residents and visitors, that bustle through Paris, I am merely a face.  Living in a city causes people to think and act in different ways.  Just being with the people, riding in the Metro with them, traversing their streets, I began to feel how closed off they are to the world.  Everyone is wearing a mask–to protect themselves, to not let others see their true selves.

img_4004
At one point, I was deeply frustrated with it.  I feel like the quest of the last few months has been to learn authenticity.  Who am I really?  Who is God really?  How is our relationship doing?  It has been all about not staying on the surface but delving deeper.  “Become who you are!”  I was in Paris meeting peoples’ eyes and smiling, but then I remembered city people don’t do that and it could send a message I don’t want.
Riding on the Metro I knew I stood out with my large hiking backpack, but I felt like I fit in more when I acted bored, had a blank look on my face, and appeared to care little about the stops.  We encountered young ladies near the Eiffel Tower who wanted signatures to help the deaf and the mute.  I’m not entirely sure how their attempt to target only English-speakers would actually help the deaf and the mute of France, but that was their mission.  The beggars at the churches–are they actually poor or is it all a ruse?
It bothered me to be living in a world of masks when I was striving for authenticity.  I hate trying to evaluate people’s motives when my innate desire is to trust.  I want to believe in people.  At one point I looked at the crowd and thought of how each person is a well, their depths cannot be plumbed.  Yet if we cut off the deeper parts of ourselves, if we live as masks instead of just hiding behind them, if we live so long in the superficial and shallow, we will begin to lose our ability to go deep, we will lose our belief that we even have depth.  We will become the masks we wear.
Perhaps this is why the faith appears to be dying.  People are tired of masks of holiness.  They, whether they know it or not, crave authenticity.  And the pagan world presents at least one thing authentically–I want to live without rules or morals but simply in the pursuit of pleasure.

How does one live authenticity in a world of masks?  I don’t know exactly but I have some ideas.  Don’t feign indifference when you actually care.  Care less about appearance and more about actuality.  Live deeply.  Penetrate the inner depths you have and seek to know others at a deeper level, too.  Refuse to be content with living in the shallow end, but rather put out into the deep!

One airport smile at a time

I love the sea of humanity that is found swimming in airports across the world.  People remain far more interesting than we give them credit for.  Most of the time I claim to be too busy to people-watch and oftentimes I don’t go to places swarming with people, so as to keep with my hermit-like tendencies.  But the airport is one of the very best places to watch people.

There is a strange joy that fills me when I am able to be smiley and joyful in a sea of people.  Some are walking by, oblivious to the world around them, others look harried and rushed, others couldn’t care less that you exist, and the categories stretch onward.  Yet I am struck by their humanity.  Perhaps that doesn’t explain anything at all.

Let me see.  There was the woman with the small child that sat next to me briefly at one of the gates.  She was beautiful, in a tired, motherly sort of way and looked a bit older than I would have expected.  Her daughter was gorgeous, smiling and capturing the attention of others around her.  Her mother was attentive to her, making certain that she didn’t wander into the dangerous traffic flowing past the different gates.  The girl was learning to walk and would run from her mother….fall on the floor…begin again with as quick of steps as she could muster…fall to the floor…start crawling away.

Then there was the man who took a seat in a corner on the ground.  He arranged his electronics in front of himself and seemed fairly absorbed in them.  The little girl saw him from a few feet away, looked at him with interest, and began the journey to him.  Stopping a little bit away from him, she looked at him until he noticed her.  The smile spread quickly across his face and she mirrored him.

A woman stops in the middle of the walkway, trying to figure out where she is going.  She is completely unaware that a little car that transports the elderly/disabled around the airport is right behind her.  And is laying on its horn.  For a couple seconds she is completely still, lost within herself, and the man is beeping the horn, mere inches behind her.  Finally she notices and steps out of the way.

The three men seated next to me at the gate in Chicago are discussing their line of work.  It revolves around computer or system programming for some company.  They travel often.  Most of the time is spent complaining about their bosses or comparing hotel rooms that they are set up in.  One man often stays at the Marriott and another gets the Country Inn and Suites.  Apparently the Holiday Inn is considered low class, too.

A young woman is bound for Tennessee to visit a college.  She briefly inquires if she is at the right gate to a middle-aged woman near her.  That was the entrance into a conversation that lead to the couple’s little girl chattering away to the young lady and talking until their seats in the airplane disrupted them.

Pilots walk by in uniform, pulling behind them expertly packed luggage.  A flock of flight attendants regroup before heading to their next destination.  A worker sweeps up some debris from the carpet and smiles at me when I catch her eye.  A couple walks by, each pushing a stroller, trying to get where they need to go on time.  A woman gazes critically at the ticket counter and remarks about the poor design to me…and to the lady at the desk when she finally gets there.  The lady says a man probably designed it.

Over the intercom a voice announces that first class passengers can now board.  Brian Regan quotes flood my mind as I watch people crushing each other to run out of the plane, as a fervor fills people to get to where they need to go with no mind for what others may be doing, as the desk asks for people to check their oversized luggage planeside.

A man behind me keeps cooing to something/someone and I narrow the options down to a dog or a child.  He has a dog.  I smile at the airport security and anticipate what they will ask of me.  Trying to catch her eye, I smile at the lady at the desk who seems to be a little frazzled yet kind.  I inquire about how his/her day is going when a security officer asks how my day is.

The days I spent in the airport I felt happy and kind.  With this joy, I felt a desire to spread it and be kind to others.  At different points I realized that while I wasn’t changing the world in some huge way, hopefully my mere smile was encouraging someone or speaking words I didn’t know or have.  I often wonder, “Do they know I follow Christ?  Can they tell?  Do they think something is different about me?  Do they notice?”  This should be me every day, not just when I feel like being happy or kind.  But it is a good reminder.  I need to look for the humanity dwelling within the crowd teeming with people.  And in seeing the person, to affirm their individuality and their personhood with the only thing I can in a one second encounter: a smile.