This past Saturday my assignment at our Community’s “Beehive” was to cut holes for new supports in a concrete basement. “Beehive” is a time when all of our community family participate in projects around the monastery. Being one of the youngest members of my particular team, I had the task of crawling in a four-foot dusty crawl space to cut holes in concrete from the inside. Cutting a concrete wall is most challenging at the start. Concrete’s strength is in the bonding together of the materials that comprise it. An eight-inch thick wall is very strong, but once a hole is cut, it becomes easier to widen the hole and possibly disintegrate an entire wall to rubble.

We had three holes to cut form the basement to the outside. The first one was done in about an hour. After small holes are drilled along the outline of the space to be cut, the outline is cut with a saw and lastly, we break the pieces out with a hammer.

Sitting down in the crawl space I was aware of how much brighter the basement space felt with just a small stream of light beaming in from the outside. There were so many qualities to the shaft of light illuminating the basement. The light itself is very bright and gives warmth equally to everything it touches. Its glow is vibrant, glistening, and creates many patterns and shadows that reflect about the room.

As our team preps for the second hole on the outside, I sit in the quiet basement awaiting the signal to start cutting again. I can’t help but think of the parallels between my morning’s work and my spiritual life. Cutting a hole in a concrete wall requires effort, intention, and tools. But cutting a “whole” in the spiritual walls of our beings also requires effort, intention, and proper tools! Like the wall that has been put up between a friend and me over a disagreement, or a wall of fear, or a wall of anything, really, that keeps me from being fully my truest-self in Christ.

Whatever these walls may be, and no matter how strong they might appear, it’s possible to have them broken down and allow light to penetrate. Sometimes we may have to choose to crawl down in a dusty basement with intent and proper tools to break down these walls. I’ll need to remind myself that like this concrete wall, often extra effort and motivation are needed at the start to allow light to enter. With the light comes the possibility to expand the fabricated opening to allow in more light, until the time when the whole wall can be knocked down.

Here at our monastery different ones of us take turns giving regular tours of our church to anyone who wishes to see it. In the winter months visitors are less frequent, and so on my one day a week of tour duty, I often have a few extra minutes to browse the bookstore for new authors. Last week I picked up a beautifully covered book by Ann Voskamp, not an unknown name, but one I haven’t read. Feeling a bit depressed that day, the sub-title “Reflections on finding everyday graces” caught my attention as something I’d like to find today!

Recently I’ve started the habit of starting and ending each day with things for which I’m grateful. I jot down 10 things I was grateful for from the day, especially on days I feel down. In Voskamp’s first reflection, Surprising Grace, she writes, “To bring the sacrifice of thanksgiving means to sacrifice our understanding of what is beneficial and thank God for everything because He is benevolent. A sacrifice of thanks lays down our perspective and raises hands in praise anyways—always.”

Laying down my perspective is the challenge for me-always. I know God to be only good, but some days, like this particular day, when something I really want doesn’t happen, I don’t want to remain grateful to God. I’d rather blame him, be angry at him and cry out why aren’t things different? Why can’t my perspective work? Laying down and giving thanks-always, doesn’t naturally come to practice. But in His grace he always answers us and is always patient with us.

Voskamp sums it up more eloquently, “We give thanks to God not because of how we feel but because of who He is.” Amen to that—and thank God for his never changing nature which always only has our truest and best intentions in mind.

Saints Timothy & Titus

On January 26^th, we celebrate the feasts of St. Timothy and St. Titus, two men best known for their companionship and commitment to the Apostle Paul. They were converted to the Christian faith at an early age by St. Paul, and spent their lives serving the Gospel and assisting Paul in his missionary work. Their lives remind us that we are strengthened by each other and that few, if any, can carry out God’s purposes alone. Timothy and Titus inspire me to ask God, who am I meant to be companion to and what missions are you asking me to assist or encourage? In a culture that stresses the importance of “do-it-yourself” or “make it you own,” Saints Timothy and Titus exemplify our need for companions and trusted friends to help us on our journey.

Night-Light

It was cold and cloudy with little moon and no stars as I walked home late in the evening. The wind lofted the cow barn smell pungently into the air. Seeing the barn reminded me of choir earlier in the day when sang a setting of Richard Crawshaw’s poem In the Holy Nativity of our Lord.

In the Crawshaw poem the shepherds sing of this blest night: Gloomy night embrac’d the place Where the Noble Infant Lay; The Babe look’d up and show’d his face, in spite of darkness, it was day. It was thy day, Sweet! And did rise Not from the east, but from thine eyes. Great little one, whose all-embracing birth Lifts earth to heaven, stoops heav’n to earth.

With the fresh smell of the stable and the shepherd’s song running through my mind, I imagine what it was like for Mary, Joseph, and the shepherds that night. I wonder how the shepherds felt seeing the Christ-child. I wonder how I would have felt being a shepherd. Would I have recognized His light, would I have been excited, or afraid?

As I continued home, I cast prayers into the night. Prayers of things I don’t understand and questions longing for answers. I hope for healing in broken relationships, and courage to make bold choices when I feel afraid. I ask Jesus what to do with my many wants and desires. And then my heart smiles remembering how bright and sweet Your face is. I smile knowing that as sure as anything, Jesus will come again this season.  And in His coming, His all-embracing birth will bring sweet light into any place we will welcome it.

In this passage about prayer from Ronald Rolheiser’s book, Sacred Fire, the words seem to articulate unconscious thoughts swirling in the back regions of my brain. It’s from a section of the book about prayer in which Fr. Rolheiser poses a question we all face from time to time. He writes:

“We all have our moments of chaos and crisis. Loss, death, sickness, disappointment, hurt, loneliness, hatred, jealousy, obsession, fear—these come into our lives and often we find ourselves overwhelmed by the darkness they cause….How can we pull ourselves out of the dark chaos they put us into?”

I’m sure most of us can relate on some level to this dark chaos, the slippery slope that seems to have no ladder out, only pathways to more darkness. Fr. Rolheiser suggests we too naturally try to climb out or resolve the chaos ourselves, often to our detriment:

“Sometimes when we try to pray when hurting, the prayer serves not to uproot the hurt and obsession, but to root them even more deeply in self-pity, self-preoccupation, and over-concentration. We end up further letting go of God’s Spirit and, instead, giving in to more panic, fear, chaos, bitterness, obsession, and resentment…it is important that our prayer be focused upon God and not upon ourselves…we must force ourselves to focus upon God or Jesus or upon some aspect of transcendent mystery.”

I find hope in Fr. Rolheiser’s simple wisdom to “force” my prayers away from myself and onto God. However large or small my prayer offering may be, in the difficult choice to force my thoughts upon Jesus, this becomes a way of letting go of darkness and a way of recognizing His transcendence. In recognizing my inability to save myself, I’m given a path in which Jesus promises to carry me out of my dark chaos.

The last few weeks have provided ample evidence of God’s power. I’m reminded of how precious life is. The creator of life and the weather can far out-wit and out-muscle even our greatest ambitions.  We truly are helpless as to the timing of these events, either death or the weather. Not that there ever isn’t evidence, but it has been more at the forefront of my daily activities and therefore more on my mind.  We just celebrated the fourth funeral in our Monastery since the first of 2018. Yes, celebrated, is the purposefully chosen word. Each funeral rite has been a rich celebration of life and a pointed reminder of how uniquely precious all life is.

Over the last six weeks, our neck of the woods has experienced three nor’easters. These destructive storms force trees down, power outages, injuries, and even take lives. Sitting inside during a powerful storm is a helpless feeling. We sit helpless against dangerous rising tides, and wind powerful enough to drop a giant tree flat on its back- helpless to stop it, but in awe of its power.

I hope I can start each day with this helpless feeling so as to be reminded of the gift that life is.  To be reminded just how precious, unique and awfully special each day we are given can be.