Steve

Pope Francis’ encyclical a call for dialogue and compassion

Steve · January 25, 2021 · 1 Comment

This also appeared in today’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch as a “Faith Perspectives” commentary. If you’re a subscriber (or want to answer a few questions) you can view the Post online version here.

This past October, Pope Francis signed his third encyclical, “Fratelli Tutti,” on the tomb of St. Francis of Assisi, his inspiration and namesake. In this message, he spoke to the entire world — not just Catholics — reinforcing the ideas and teachings of Jesus about how imperative it is to care for one another. In that sense, this encyclical is nothing new, but it perhaps could not have come at a better time.

In a country and world plagued by individualism, partisanship and violence, Francis invites us into dialogue. He invites us to embrace the message of the Gospel and a love that transcends physical and ideological geography and distance. He invites us to be open and accepting of others and especially those who seem most distant. For those who know and accept the teachings of Jesus, Francis’ words represent a commonsense application of Gospel values.

And yet, this call to love without borders in a polarized world is anything but common, even within the universal church. His message is a radical invitation to love as we have been loved by God. Such talk can often be heard in the general but not the specific. We love and care for the poor, of course, but we all too easily discard and dismiss them — the stranger, the immigrant, the “other.” There are “shadows over a closed world,” to quote the encyclical, and yet there is also hope.

There is hope in the parable of the Good Samaritan the Pope uses to illustrate and underline his letter. In this story, a man is beaten, robbed and left for dead at the side of a road. After being ignored by some leading citizens, the man is saved by a foreigner who finds the compassion required when it would have been easier to just look the other way. The point? Jesus teaches that “our neighbors” are not only those with whom we agree or politically align ourselves. Our neighbors are not just those who live in our neighborhoods and on our side of the artificial divides we have erected. Our neighbor, as Jesus taught so succinctly, is whoever is in need.

For true compassion does not care where the person in need comes from or what he or she believes. It does not stoop to judge before stooping to help. It just reaches down and picks up. It pays out of its own pocket without pausing to count the cost.

“Fratelli Tutti” asks us to begin to envision a world where every person is deemed worthy and valuable, where each can live in dignity because they are seen as integral and valuable parts of the whole. The encyclical asks us to think and act as one community, battling the structural causes of inequality and poverty, caring for the most vulnerable among us. It asks us to be fundamentally open to each other and especially to those on the margins of society. It invites us into the realization that we will be saved together or not at all.

Sitting at the crux of all this is a call to genuine dialogue and friendship, the kind that approaches, speaks, listens, sees, comes to know and finds common ground with the other. At that meeting point, we might come to know that both sides benefit from the exchange. We might learn in this encounter that no one is expendable. We might learn to integrate our differences instead of standing on them and not allowing the other to pass. We might learn that aggression and monologues get us nowhere.

Instead, in dialogue we learn to create paths forward toward peace and healing. Inspired not only by Francis of Assisi but also by Martin Luther King Jr. of America, Desmond Tutu of South Africa and Mahatma Gandhi of India, Pope Francis’ hope for his encyclical is that it becomes a “splendid secret that shows us how to dream and turn our life into a wonderful adventure.”

In a concluding ecumenical prayer, the Pope prays that we all may be seen as, “important and necessary, different faces of the one humanity that God so loves.” That’s a good dream for 2021.

A (Very) Short Story: The Impossible Night

Steve · December 19, 2020 · 4 Comments

The old couple lowered themselves into their chairs by the fire on Christmas eve, the tree lit up and twinkling to the right of the flaming logs. The small manger scene, carved by a Bethlehem artisan and purchased at their parish church years ago, was nestled in its traditional place beneath the tree, surrounded by just a few small presents. They sighed at the same time.

“It‘s just not the same,” she said, pondering this pandemic Christmas and the absence of children and grandchildren. They had shipped the presents a week ago and made arrangements for a Zoom call in the morning. It would have to be enough.

“No, it’s not,” he said, “but he’s still there, waiting.” He pointed to the manger, at the little carved figure of Jesus he had just placed into the scene a moment ago. That was the family tradition — no Jesus until Christmas Eve. She put down the book she had just picked up to read and stared at the tree.

“So much has changed this year, so much of life put on hold,” she said. “But this story never changes and somehow never gets old. The star, the shepherds, the Magi, the poor young couple and their baby. It’s all so hard to believe and, yet, here we are once again pinning our hopes and lives on what happened so long ago.”

“The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight…” he sang, his once-vibrant voice now cracking and shallow.

She smiled sadly at his attempt at singing, remembering earlier days when his booming voice would fill the house and draw the children toward the tree for the annual reading of the Christmas story. The Bible, opened to Luke 2, sat on the table nearby, as always.

“Everything changed after that night,” she said. “It had to. For the world, for us, for anyone brave enough to believe in all these impossible things — incarnation, virgin birth, angel choirs. It would be easier to not believe, of course, but it would be oh so boring. It would make everything else we do seem meaningless, wouldn’t it?”

He nodded and slowly hauled himself out of the chair. He crossed himself and then crossed the room, lifted the Bible from its cradle and held it in his arms.

“In those days,” he read, “a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed…”

She closed her eyes. She knew the scene. She believed. It was enough.

+ + +

Merry Christmas to you all, and thanks for reading and sharing this year. Below is a brand-new song and video, “After This Night,” created just this week with my musical collaborators John Caravelli and Phil Cooper. I hope this story and this video will both serve as moments of quiet contemplation for you in the days leading up to Christmas. See you in 2021.

A (Very) Short Story: To See Thee More Clearly

Steve · December 5, 2020 · 10 Comments

She sat on the porch, the air around her turning colder, reminding her that the cool days of fall and the memories of even warmer summer days were drawing to a close. It saddened her, as the thought of winter did just about every year. Another year older, another trip around the sun without seemingly much to show for it. What’s the point after so many years, she wondered?

Her eyes turned to the trees. With the exception of a few tough hangers on, the leaves had all fallen, the branches barren and brown and gray. Ugh. She closed her eyes and dreamed of green. “Make it a short winter, Lord,” she prayed.

And then they arrived, birds by the dozens. Or were they already there and she hadn’t noticed? Sweet brown and black sparrows flitting from limb to limb. A pair of cardinals flashing red as they rounded the corner of the house and came to rest on a branch near the feeder. A lone blue jay lurking nearby, his cobalt hue enough to take the woman’s breath away. A red-breasted robin dug for worms in the soggy soil, while a small downy woodpecker worked his or her way up and down the trunk of the maple at the center of the yard. Through the bare branches, high above, a flock of Canada geese noisily made their way to the Missouri River flyway nearby.

So much to see, she thought, even in the deadness of early winter. And the voice deep within her said: “You see so much now because the leaves are gone, because the cycle of life and death continues, because sometimes to see more clearly you must die to yourself. You need to declutter your life once every so often, must set aside for a while the busy-ness of green summer and immerse yourself in the quiet of something sparse and clear. By leaving behind what you think you most want, you open up the possibility of all you need and can only find in the stark beauty of right now. Enjoy my birds. You’re welcome.”

And the woman smiled, pushing away the thoughts of green for the moment, relishing now a quiet moment with a friend, and she sang: “To see thee more clearly, love thee more dearly, follow thee more nearly. Day by day.” Even in winter. Even now.

Ask yourself in silence:

+ What is something new or surprising I saw today?
+ What might it mean?
+ Am I grateful?

And here’s a video that reminds us to pay attention to the ordinary so as to discover the extraordinary and overwhelming glory of God in the world around us. Enjoy.

Advent 2020: Welcome to the ‘Demented Inn’

Steve · November 28, 2020 · 2 Comments

We Christians are entering into what will likely be one of the strangest and most distracted Advent and Christmas seasons that most of us will ever experience. Many of us will hunker down and stay apart from our loved ones, unable to celebrate and gather as we usually do. Advent and Christmas services will stream online or occur with just a fraction of carefully spaced church members.

Many will grieve the loss of the season and the ability to embrace those we love, even as we grieve those who have been lost to us during this strange and pandemic year. And yet, for those who celebrate the season of Advent as prayerful preparatory to the celebration of the birth of Jesus two millennia ago, this time — even in the midst of a pandemic spike — might just be the opportunity we need to reconnect with the God who, so we believe, stooped to become one of us.

“Advent may be the best time of year to consider what will come out of the pandemic we are suffering through, for this liturgical season reminds us of our time of hope at a time when it can be difficult to find hope in the world,” writes Fr. Joe Tetlow, SJ, in the current issue of Jesuits Central and Southern. “As the virus seeps everywhere, nothing could make us more hopeful than remembering that our Creator and Lord has come into our flesh.”

Advent is traditionally seen as a time of hope for Christians who celebrate the season. Even in such a seemingly hopeless time as now, we wait and hope to welcome Christ once again into the world. It’s a time to challenge ourselves to consider whether we might, unlike the innkeepers in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago, make room for a wandering, poor, seemingly homeless young couple looking for a place to get warm and bring a new life into the world. That’s the question we get to ask ourselves: Do we have the courage to open the door and make room?

In his 1965 essay, “The Time of the End is the Time of No Room,” the late poet, author, mystic and Trappist monk Thomas Merton wrote:

“Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for Him at all, Christ has come uninvited. But because He cannot be at home in it, because He is out of place in it, and yet must be in it, His place is with those others for whom there is no room. His place is with those who do not belong, who are rejected by power because they are regarded as weak, those who are discredited, who are denied status as persons, who are tortured, bombed, and exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in the world.”

I’m not sure there has been another time in my 60 years that I have felt so much like I was living in a “demented inn.” The world seems wracked in pain — in disease, in social and political unrest, and in every conceivable kind of violence. And yet, we believe, Christ comes — has come and continues to come — to those who believe. Whether we invite him or not, whether we are aware or not, Christ is present. He is not far away, waiting on a high mountain for us to struggle up to him. He is not buried deep in the rubble of history waiting for us to excavate him. Rather, he is present to us in the warmth and safety of our quarantine.

And if we really believe that, we must be willing to become aware of all the others to whom he has come as well. Our faith compels us to respond and lift up — now more than ever and in unimaginably charitable and just ways — the poor, the homeless, the wandering young families looking for shelter and warmth. We must be willing to provide safe spaces in the demented inn.

If during Advent we welcome Jesus and turn away the stranger at the door, we fail to live up to the promise of hope that we say stirs in us at Christmas. If we want to show the world the “true meaning of Christmas,” if we want to really “keep Christ in Christmas,” then we must let it find us loving and caring for each other.

Watching for Wisdom

Steve · November 8, 2020 · 10 Comments

I don’t know about you, but I could use a little wisdom. I’m sitting on my back porch this Sunday morning, enjoying the last remnants of warmer weather, relishing the chance to sit out here just a little longer before the days get colder and I have to stay inside for my time of morning coffee, reading and prayer.

It’s the day after the national election results and, no matter which side you were on or how your candidate did, you’re likely feeling some of the same uneasiness I’m feeling today. The battle will likely go on for a while. Social, racial and political unrest will continue. Violence and war rage. COVID continues its march across the world and seems to be resurging in some areas, including mine. My 29-year-old daughter, Jenny, and her husband and nine-month-old baby tested positive this week and are making their way through it. Sue and I would appreciate your prayers for Jenny, Zach and little Jason, who came into the world prematurely back in January and has been making steady progress ever since. He’s a fighter.

The world just seems a little disheveled these days. Maybe it always has been. But eight months of masking up and hunkering down are taking their toll on us all in myriad ways. I awoke (thankfully) this morning from a dream in which I had lost all control of my ability to make my own way through the world, and I’m still a little shaken by the whole ordeal. You don’t have to be Freud to figure out where those kinds of dreams come from.

No politician on either side of the aisle is going to make our lives right. Scientists, given time and the freedom to do their work, will ultimately bring us a vaccine, but it’s going to take some time. The country and the world can heal, but no one person or party is going to get us there. That job of healing belongs to us, and it is found in the ways each of us arise each day and set about our own work of moving and working in the world.

And where do we begin? Today’s reading from the Book of Wisdom is a start. Wisdom — deep understanding and knowledge — is not as elusive as we might believe. Rather, presented as a woman, she is ”resplendent, unfading and readily perceived”:

Resplendent and unfading is wisdom,
and she is readily perceived by those who love her,
and found by those who seek her.
She hastens to make herself known in anticipation of their desire;
Whoever watches for her at dawn shall not be disappointed,
for he shall find her sitting by his gate.

I don’t have a “gate” these days but sitting on my back porch on this warm autumn day, I can yet imagine her out there among the falling leaves, beckoning for me to come a little closer. As I do, she offers me a seat beside her and gently reminds me where wisdom lies. For it is not the wisdom of the world and its leaders that we yearn and thirst for. That wisdom is always flawed and fleeting. Rather, her wisdom is a “knowing” that that lies deep within and comes only from the Creator. Wisdom lies in the beauty and truth of ancient scripture, yes, but also and perhaps more importantly in our deepest selves and in the sacredness of quiet times of solitude and prayer. Wisdom is not earned, nor can it be bought, sold or elected.

Wisdom is a gift that, like the peace in William Butler Yeats’ poem, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” comes, “dropping slow” for those wise enough to pause and wait.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

Wisdom is not to be found in the flurry of social media and a 24-hour news cycle, but it can be found by those who look for it in faith and in the knowledge that we are not it. It’s right there by the garden gate, next to the pile of red and yellow leaves.