Tag: little

A House Divided

A House Divided

Satan, the father of lies, loves division.

It matters very little what the division is actually over.  In fact, I think the more religious-oriented the division, the more it pleases Satan.  But he will take any dispute, so long as it seeks to divide.

Knock down drag out brawls over the liturgy?  Disputes over the placement of the altar?  Feuding over Lenten fasting?  Frustrations with priests and bishops?  Sides forming over who is more Catholic than the pope?

Satan is delighted.

We spend our time considering what we think is best and we tend to lose sight of the Lord.  I’m not arguing for an “anything goes” mentality.  Far from it, I am encouraging us to focus on what is the most important rather than repeatedly increasing the divisions within humanity.

For the bonds which unite the faithful are mightier than anything dividing them. Hence, let there be unity in what is necessary; freedom in what is unsettled, and charity in any case.

(Gaudium Et Spes)

In The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis portrays Hell as a place of isolation.  The opening pages start in a town that is approaching the evening hours but seems empty of people.  Yet the narrator finds people waiting in line at a bus stop.  As the minutes pass, people leave the line because they keep quarreling with each other about one thing or another.  The town is empty because the inhabitants cannot bear to be in such close proximity to other people with all their flaws and imperfections.  So they keep moving, distancing themselves from others until they find themselves in complete isolation. Continue reading “A House Divided” →

Why I Will Drink Coffee on Sundays

Why I Will Drink Coffee on Sundays

In my youth, giving something up for Lent meant you didn’t have it from Ash Wednesday until Easter Sunday.  When one of my sisters came home from college, she revealed a secret: you can have the things you gave up for Lent on Sundays.  She claimed it was a “mini-Easter.”  At the time, though, it seemed like cheating and an excuse for people who couldn’t handle giving something up for the entirety of Lent.  I didn’t need a cheat day, I reasoned, I was strong enough to last all of Lent.

Over the past few years, I have come to realize the wisdom in allowing Sunday to be a relaxed day in the midst of a penitential season.  There is a particular wisdom found when I remember my own temperament.

I like a good challenge.  Tell me I can’t do something and I will probably try to do that thing (if I care enough).  I’m stubborn and prideful to a fault.  So when I tell myself that I can go without coffee for the entirety of Lent, I start to feel a little smug.  It sounds challenging and I can already feel a sense of pride within myself.  Of course, it is a sacrifice for the Lord and yet I am quick to make it about what I can do.

However, if I acknowledge that I will go six days without coffee and then break that fast on Sunday, it is hard to get overly prideful about that.  Really?  That’s it?  Six days?  And I find myself almost convincing myself to “be strong” and go through all of Lent without it.

The purpose of Lent, though, is not to build up my ego and pat myself on the back for all of the difficult things I did.  Hopefully, Lent is a time of challenging ourselves and saying no to our own habits and desires.  Yet if I walk into Mass on Easter Sunday, bursting at the seams that I was able to forego a long list of comforts, I might miss the fact that Jesus is the one saving me. Continue reading “Why I Will Drink Coffee on Sundays” →

He Meets Me in My Poverty

He Meets Me in My Poverty

Mountain passes are closed.

I’m not from a mountainous region; rather, I live in the vast plains of the Midwest.  The prospect of driving nearly three hours through a mountain snowstorm seemed daunting.  Yet with the mountain passes all closed, it seemed impossible.

So I thought about it often, prayed for things to work out, and nearly obsessively checked the weather and mountain pass website.  The people I was traveling with didn’t seem particularly concerned, so I felt a need to worry for all of us.  Also, I had rented the vehicle and was to drive through these mountains.  I wanted to trust that the Lord would make all things work out, but I also wanted to not stupidly walk into a bad situation.

Generally, I like flying, but the flight from Denver to Seattle was riddled with turbulence.  The uneasiness about the drive was only exacerbated by the bumpy flight.  A headache developed, probably a combination of too much stress and a lack of sleep, coffee, and food.

Arriving in Seattle, my sister and I checked the mountain passes and, thankfully, one of them was completely open with no road restrictions.  I was grateful, but the tension of the past week could not be unraveled so quickly.

After picking up our third traveling companion, we started the trek through the mountains.  The roads were clear and open.  The scenery was beautiful.  Yet my stomach remained in knots and I felt sick.  A few days of worry was wrecking havoc on me physically.  We journeyed into the mountains and it started to snow a bit.  The snow piled on either side of the road reached higher than the semis that surrounded us.  Then we came to a complete standstill due to an accident.  Sitting there, with snow starting to fall and stressed despite the fact that everything had gone well so far, I had to admit defeat.

As we waited, I had been close on multiple occasions to stepping outside the car, confident that I would embarrassingly get sick on the side of the road.  “I think I’m going to be sick,” I told my sister.  I switched places with our third traveler and slid into the back seat.

For the next 1.5-2 hours I sat there with my eyes closed as we flew around curves and over mountains.  At first, I was angry with myself.  I don’t like to view myself as weak and I am generally a very stubborn person.  The driving wasn’t difficult and I knew I could do it.  Yet there I was, unable to continue driving because I had let my fears and worries take their toll on me physically.

Instead of being annoyed with myself, I tried to do something fairly new–I accepted my humanity.  I recently began reading The Way of the Disciple by Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis.  The rest of the drive I reflected and prayed with one section of that book.

Our business, then, as Christians and as contemplatives-perhaps our only business-is to work tirelessly at becoming destitute and needy orphans and widows who rely only on the mercy, goodness, and power of God….The Cistercian John of Ford, for one, exclaimed that he desired nothing other than to rest with Jesus as the center of his own poverty, the special place where Jesus had chosen to meet him.

And so I rested in my poverty. Continue reading “He Meets Me in My Poverty” →

When God Wills the Ordinary

When God Wills the Ordinary

It is incredibly easy for me to think that everyone else has a far better job than I do.  Over the past few years, I seem to have perfected the skill of viewing the neat ways that everyone else can live out their job as an apostolate for Jesus.  Yet I seem to miss the ways in which I can do the same thing…in a Catholic school…teaching Theology.

Parked outside the Cathedral the other day, I thought of how neat it would be to show up to such a place for work.  Wouldn’t it be neat to work for the Diocese?  Or I’ll go to a restaurant and think about how wonderful it could be to subtly evangelize while serving people their food.  Just a few weeks ago I had my students make lists of different secular jobs and then brainstorm ways to live the Gospel in the midst of such work.  And I can give you a decent list for most jobs that are not immoral.  I miss, however, the ability to live it out in the midst of a job that is so clearly evangelistic.

Because, so often, I want something else.  Something easy.  Something challenging.  Just something different than the lot I have been given. Continue reading “When God Wills the Ordinary” →

Nothing Wasted

Nothing Wasted

“Gather the fragments left over,
so that nothing will be wasted.”

At Mass yesterday, this verse from John’s Gospel struck me.  I heard it that morning when a group of students and faculty gathered in the chapel to open the day with prayer. Once again, it stood out to me during Mass.

Nothing will be wasted.

What a beautiful promise the Lord makes to us in that one verse.  He was speaking of the bread that had been multiplied to feed the hungry who had come together to hear Him preach.  If He says this about bread, how much more would He say it about my life? Continue reading “Nothing Wasted” →

George Bailey

I never really associated myself with George Bailey.  “It’s a Wonderful Life” is a classic movie, but I’ve always viewed it as a movie, not something that seemed to speak into my own life.  A couple days ago I re-watched it.  Apparently, the wanderlust desire to see the world and do incredible things is more an aspect of the human condition rather than my generation.  So I watched the classic film, shed some tears, and realized that the longing George Bailey had was fiercely beating within my own heart.

I’m shakin’ the dust of this crummy little town off my feet and I’m gonna see the world. Italy, Greece, the Parthenon, the Colosseum. Then, I’m comin’ back here to go to college and see what they know. And then I’m gonna build things. I’m gonna build airfields, I’m gonna build skyscrapers a hundred stories high, I’m gonna build bridges a mile long…

As high school neared its end, I was never one of the students who couldn’t wait to get out of the small town.  It just happened to be that I chose a school hundreds of miles away from home and was only able to come back for Christmas and summer breaks.  When college was finished, I moved back home because moving far away for a job seemed strange to me.  Now I’m in my fourth year of teaching high school and I live about thirty minutes from where I spent my childhood.

Young adult life is filled with many different experiences, but I keep coming back to a desire to pursue greatness, a desire that filled George Bailey his entire life.  He wanted to see the world, to travel, to build structures that will last years, and to pursue adventure.  Yet he ends up spending his life in Bedford Falls, a seemingly idyllic town that feels like a prison if one doesn’t want to spend the entirety of one’s life there.

Any place can feel like a prison, though, if one is constantly desiring to be elsewhere.  The greatness found in the little and the simple can be overlooked so quickly.  St. John Vianney would spend hour after hour in the confessional.  Looking at his life from my vantage point, I can see how much fruit his life of simple faithfulness bore.  Yet in that moment of waking up early to say Mass and then spend the whole day in the confessional, he might not have felt this aura of greatness surrounding himself.  St. John Bosco rallied together the poor street children from Turin and taught them how to be men.  In the daily grind of loving them in the midst of their flaws, he might not have recognized the monumental work he was doing.

And I teach.  It isn’t much.  My younger sister was watching “Freedom Writers” with me and she said each time she watched the movie, she thought of me as the teacher.  I am laughably not like Mrs. Gruwell.  I’m not taking on extra jobs to buy supplies for my students or going to bat for them against a racist administration or devoting all my time to helping them graduate from high school.  There are many teachers who spend hours with their students after school as they guide them through problems (academic or otherwise) and leave this deep impression on their very beings as an adult who cared and sacrificed for them.  I am not that teacher.

During finals, one of my students walked into my classroom with a card.  She told me she was giving me this card because she was thankful that I would go over the study guides with her before tests.  All I did was spend fifteen to twenty minutes after school with her the day before the test to review her answers and go over any questions she had.  But the gesture she made was worth ten cards.  Hidden within that quiet exchange, one done without any fanfare or balloons, was the greatness I am seeking.

Greatness is found in the simple, in the little.  I’ve written about this before.  I write about it again not to convince you, but to convince myself.  As a teacher, affirmations are few and far between.  Even if administration affirms your work, you want to hear it from those you spend day after day with.  Students are unaware how powerful their words are about their teachers.  I don’t need their support or affirmation, but I love it when I receive it.  It means something is sinking in, something is being passed from my soul to theirs.  I don’t have state standardized tests to rely on as a Theology teacher.  I want to know if they know the Lord, rather than if they can ace my tests.  That is when I know that I am successful.

George Bailey wanted a blazing kind of greatness, one that tears through towns and astounds people.  What he finds instead is the greatness of enduring friendships, believing in the dreams of others, helping others pursue human dignity, and building a family that bands together.  A greatness that his father pursued in that very town.

There is greatness in simplicity.  There is simple greatness.  There is unassuming greatness.  Perhaps greatness is found not in doing wild things or going to exotic places but in doing what you do to the best of your ability.  Maybe greatness is simply living your own life well, even if you remain unaware of the impact it makes on the lives of others.

Pa Bailey: I know it’s soon to talk about it.
George Bailey: Oh, now Pop, I couldn’t. I couldn’t face being cooped up for the rest of my life in a shabby little office… Oh, I’m sorry Pop, I didn’t mean that, but this business of nickels and dimes and spending all your life trying to figure out how to save three cents on a length of pipe… I’d go crazy. I want to do something big and something important.
Pa Bailey: You know, George, I feel that in a small way we are doing something important. Satisfying a fundamental urge. It’s deep in the race for a man to want his own roof and walls and fireplace, and we’re helping him get those things in our shabby little office.
George Bailey: I know, Dad. I wish I felt… But I’ve been hoarding pennies like a miser in order to… Most of my friends have already finished college. I just feel like if I don’t get away, I’d bust.
Pa Bailey: Yes… yes… You’re right son.
George Bailey: You see what I mean, don’t you, Pop?
Pa Bailey: This town is no place for any man unless he’s willing to crawl to Potter. You’ve got talent, son. I’ve seen it. You get yourself an education. Then get out of here.
George Bailey: Pop, you want a shock? I think you’re a great guy.

The Gift of a Little Heart

There is a bit of my heart in everything I write.  It is how I express my heart.  Spoken words are never quite as useful for me, but if you give me some time (perhaps the most crucial element) and paper and pen (or a computer), I can describe (to an extent) the workings of this heart.

Writing allows me the chance to tidy the messiness of a heat that feels.  Too often I rail against my own heart, how the feelings it has do not line up with logic, how I cannot control where my heart is pulled, or how the heart has a power that the head finds difficult to contest.  When I write, I give my head the chance to make sense of this little heart.  I am able to wrap up some loose ends and to really consider what is occurring deep within.

Once upon a time, way back in college, I was on the verge of dating.  In the process of trying to understand my own heart, I wasn’t very good at letting this man know what the internal conflict was over.  He wrote me a letter to say that perhaps it was best if we didn’t date.  Although I didn’t like the contents of the letter, it gave me the freedom to respond in the way that is most natural for me: in writing.  After reading through my letter, a few pages long and filled with heartfelt attempts to give a brief glimpse into my inner chaos, he said that he was able to understand me better.  Apparently, what was going on inside of me wasn’t what he had thought from his outside perspective.  Granted, in any relationship you need to have the capability to sit down and have a conversation (one cannot always be stopping the conversation to pen a lovely piece of prose about what one actually wants to say), but it can be helpful to take a step back and write it out.

As self-centered as this may seem to be, this blog has always been about me.  Well, it is about Jesus, but it has always been for me.  I need to write out the workings of my heart.  I find solutions and solace when I can express myself in this way.  Yet I’m very protective of my writings, as though they are my little children.  I am detailing the movements of my heart in words that anyone with the correct web address can access.  I try not to think about it too much, but sometimes I will see where blog views come from and I wonder, what does that person in China/Russia/Germany think about this little heart way far away?  Does a heart that feels these same emotions beat within them, too?  Do they read a few lines and then scroll away, uninterested by a heart of such meanness?  (Ahem–meaning: “poor in quality and appearance; shabby“)

Yet while this blog started and continues to be for my own benefit, I am led to wonder if perhaps, like healing, the Lord is asking for it to be about you, too.  He has this interesting way of dealing with me.  The Lord knows I am slow, so slow.  He knows He must gently ease me into anything or else I will fall into a melancholic heap and pray for death (ask my parents about my first year of teaching).  Perhaps this is what He is doing in this situation, too.  He shows my heart how to express itself and then reminds me that it is not for me alone.  And who knows what He will do with that?  I don’t, but I am beginning to get used to the idea that my littleness might be useful when placed in the shadow of His greatness.  Because isn’t that what I’ve always wanted?  To somehow have a great mission even though I am little?  Perhaps He has a plan for all this littleness.

No.  Not perhaps.  He does.  

Maybe God will change the world through each of us by utilizing something within us that seems commonplace and ordinary, but can be fantastic and wonderful when in the light of His Majesty.

Perhaps all He ever wanted anyway was our littleness.  Our hearts scribbled on paper, unadorned by anything but the Truth.  A vulnerable, sincere gift of self.

“For in sacrifice you take no delight, burnt offering from me you would refuse; my sacrifice, a contrite spirit. A humbled, contrite heart you will not spurn.”  -Psalm 51

A New Reference Point

College seems to be my constant reference point for things.  At times I have to remind myself that I am not going back to my undergraduate years, that this isn’t an extremely long vacation, that this life that I am living right now is, in fact, reality.  My memories of college are so vivid and life seemed to be filled with so much learning, wonder, and beauty.  These days are filled with those things, too, they just happen to filled with a lot more day-in-day-out routine.  Some of the best stories that I tell for classes are ones where I was gallavanting around Europe for a semester or feeling hard-core praying outside an abortion clinic in downtown Pittsburgh.  Now I look up and realize I have been teaching high school for nearly two years.  In some ways, it feels like forever.  Yet it also feels like it has happened so fast.  Was it really two years ago that I was preparing to graduate?  That I was living on a campus teeming with young Catholics?  These days I am invigorated to spot another person below 40 at daily Mass.

This Palm Sunday four years ago, I was soaking up the sun from the steps of the basilica in Fatima.  It was the start of a ten-day break and I would then travel to Madrid to work with the Missionaries of Charity during Holy Week.  I experienced vividly the providence of the Lord on that trip.  While the Lord provides for me everyday, I recognized it and relished it more at that time.  It seemed to be in such magnificent ways.  The Lord provided a train at the appropriate time.  He provided a kind Portuguese family that drove us from the train stop to the town of Fatima.  He was constantly looking out for us and giving us glimpses of beauty along the way.

The same is true for my life today but it seems to be less spectacular.  My students participated in a discussion I tried to lead.  My meeting with my principal went better than expected.  I didn’t feel like dropping into my bed at 3:30.  I managed to stay awake for a whole holy hour.  Little things.  Things that don’t feel extraordinary or all that spectacular.  That is my life.

It is easy to feel a little trapped.  I teach high school students in a not-too-small town but one that seems a bit stifling anyway.  My heart doesn’t long for a metropolis or an accolade laden teaching career.  I simply desire to be fulfilled.  In many ways I feel fulfilled but in many ways I feel a lack. I cannot help but at times looking around me and wondering when it will be my turn…for so many things.  I’m young but I feel so old sometimes.

I need a new reference point.  College continues to fall further into the past with each passing day.  I cannot go back there, as much as I may wish to some days.  The future I imagine may not be at all as I expect when it finally comes around.  All I truly have is the present and even that I do not really possess.  Christ needs to be my new reference point.  Friends will come and go, family members will pass away, gifts will fade, and abilities will be lost.  But Christ is ever-new.