vocation

Book Review: One young Jesuit’s journey along “A Purposeful Path”

Steve · August 27, 2015 · 2 Comments

A Purposeful Path: How Far Can You Go with $30, a Bus Ticket and a Dream?
Casey Beaumier, SJ
Loyola Press, 2015

The answer to the question in the title, first of all, is “pretty far, and the journey’s more important than the destination.” And that’s almost always true in life, yes?

Beaumier’s book is a brief memoir of his 1994 Jesuit pilgrimage, an experiment each young Jesuit novice undertakes, during which time he is sent out from his community with only $30 and a one-way bus ticket. The purpose? He must survive by begging, and the point of the experiment, he writes, is to “receive a very special grace of profound trust that the Father will always provide, precisely through the kindness and generosity of other people.”

I had never heard of this pilgrimage until a few years ago when I met a couple of novices in a class I was taking at Aquinas Institute of Theology, and I’ve been intrigued by the notion ever since. So I opened the book with curiosity and wondered what it might have to teach a 55-year-old lay spiritual director and writer. The answer I received was, “a lot,” and so I highly recommend the book to anyone looking for reassurance about his or her own life journeys. We are, after all, all pilgrims.

Beaumier’s journey, fueled by a desire to meet famed writer and teacher Maya Angelou, takes him from St. Paul, Minnesota, to the Appalachian Trail, on to Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and then to Washington, DC, and New York City and finally to New Orleans. Along the way he learns important lessons from both likely and unlikely mentors, including from Fr. Henry Hasking, SJ, who gives him this sage advice on the meaning and purpose of the generosity of others. He tells Beaumier: “You need the courage to ask for what you need in life, and that starts by believing that you are worthy of what it is that you seek. If you weren’t, then you wouldn’t even think of asking for it. Everything is here to help you on the journey. That’s God’s design and plan.”

Reading this, I thought of how many times I felt that I wasn’t worthy to ask God for what I desired, and I recalled many times when those I was directing felt exactly the same. So this is wonderful advice for all of our journeys.

Later, kneeling before an altar as another priest prayed for and with him for the success of his journey, he receives these simple and perfect words of truth: “Be kind. Be kind. Be kind. Remember to be kind to people. Don’t forget to be kind.”

And all the people said, “Amen.” Whatever we do and wherever we go, let us remember to begin and end our days with kindness. The rest will fall into place.

Beaumier receives many good lessons along the way and has numerous encounters with kindness and grace received from God and others. But the hanging question, you are likely asking is, “Did he ever meet Angelou?” Ah, that’s the question. I could tell you the answer but it just wouldn’t be fair to you or the author. Buy the book, for it’s worth the answer. I can only say, please don’t stop before reading the afterword. Like the rest of the book, it’s a story of pure, unexpected thanksgiving, a celebration of grace and the kindness of strangers who are open to becoming friends.

The Creative Spirit: Finding the Extraordinary in the Ordinary

Steve · May 10, 2015 · 5 Comments

scarecrow — Scarecrow: Folk art or innovation? Faust Historical Park, St. Louis. SJG photo.

I’m up early this Sunday morning, searching the quiet of the new day for a spark of inspiration; not only inspiration for writing this — although that’s part of it — but inspiration for the day, the week, the moments that lie ahead. Inspiration to not just get through these times but to actually live through and with them, to embrace the gift of the ordinary that fills our lives and do something productive and creative with what I see and experience.

And isn’t that often how creativity and innovation occurs? I hear birdsong outside my door and think of flutes and the trills of a violin. I hear the natural rhythm of the birds and the crickets and the frogs and I sense not just noise but the percussion of the world around me. Noise becomes music, as it has for so many composers and musicians throughout the ages. From great classical composers to jazz innovators to those who carry forward the folk traditions of aboriginal and old-world music as it reflects the beauty and intricacy of the world around them, the ordinary becomes extraordinary when we put our hands and our minds to work. Do we hear birdsong in the flute or the flute in the birdsong?

The green of the leaves on the trees out my back door is radiant with the early sun’s glancing blows and the lingering wetness of last night’s rain, and although trees don’t move from their rooted stations they move before our eyes, of course, whether slow and subtle in a gentle breeze or ecstatic and tortured in a storm. Ordinary? Of course, but don’t tell that to Monet and so many other artists who made the trees and gardens and their movement come alive for us.

“The world is charged with the grandeur of God,” as Hopkins wrote, but within the ordinary grandeur of our lives are the seeds of our own human innovation and art. Flowers are flowers, spores are spores, but they also contain multitudes — healing medicines and hope for cures when creative scientific minds look beyond the ordinary in search of extraordinary ways to improve our lives. Someone saw a bird fly and began to wonder how we could fly ourselves. And we eventually did.

leaf — The radiance of nature. SJG photo.

Our DNA hasn’t changed all that much in thousands of years, but we know now how to look closely enough to notice the changes that bring about disease, so we can begin to bring about healing. A miracle? Perhaps, but only in the sense that we have learned to capture the ordinary to bring about the extraordinary. Perhaps that’s what the writer of Genesis had in mind when he said that God gave man dominion over the earth. We have far too often used that Biblical narrative as an excuse to do whatever we wanted to the earth around us — often to the detriment of the world we are called to protect and nurture — when, perhaps, we should have just been paying closer attention.

And, indeed, many have been doing this for a long time. The history of our art, our music, our science and engineering breakthroughs more often than not springs from our ability to pay attention to the world around us. The ordinary world, from its molecules and atoms to the grandest of canyons and the vastness of oceans, continues to inspire and motivate change, innovation and art.

So what is our response? How do we fit in? What contribution do we have to make? Don’t be confused or disheartened by my examples. We all don’t have the training and the wherewithal to find a cure for cancer, to paint a masterpiece worthy of Monet, to compose music that will reflect the beauty of the world back to its Maker. Or maybe we do.

We all have the ability to transform the ordinary in extraordinary ways. We plant and fertilize and nurture and a garden is born, a gift to those who see it even at a glance or taste its fruits. We write a poem or a letter to a friend who needs to hear that they are remembered and extraordinary. We sketch, we draw, we doodle. We make up stories and games to keep our children amused. We hum an old hymn in the ear of an elderly friend and we cradle a newborn and calm her tears with a whispered lullaby. We solve a business or societal problem by emulating how nature takes care of itself. We pay attention. We get off our duffs and act. We believe we have something to contribute.

Last week, one of my reflections appeared in the Living Faith daily devotional, and I ended it with this:

Einstein said, “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” We can see each sunrise, each newborn child, each encounter with beauty and chalk them all up to chance, or we can stand back in wonder at these daily miracles and choose to see the hand of God. The first option is a yawn; the second is a gasp. You choose.”

Ask yourself in silence: What one thing can you do today to pay attention and act, to respond to your call as creator and reflector of the divine, creative spark?

Challenge: Write and tell me what you did!

Today’s Word: Available

Steve · March 21, 2015 · 1 Comment

clock — Chronos. St. Louis Cathedral, New Orleans. SJG photo.

Evidently, the vast majority of Americans believe that the phrase “God helps those who help themselves” comes from the Bible. In fact, it was uttered by the wise old founding father Ben Franklin who, although clever and all that, is hardly a reliable source for Christian social teaching. For Franklin’s witticism is not only non-biblical; it’s counter-biblical. Indeed, it could not be further from the call to service and love that we find in the gospels.

For if we profess to be Christian, we have no choice but to love and care for those around us. And who is “around us?” Who is our neighbor? As the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10) teaches us, our neighbor is anyone who is in need. So we must ask ourselves today: Is there anyone in need around us? If we say no, we’re either looking with half-closed eyes or our world is far too narrow.

We are called to make ourselves available to others. In Ignatian spirituality, this is referred to as “apostolic availability.” We must be there for others. We must be the healing and comforting Christ for others. We are called to bring the “good news” of the Gospel to others, but with the knowledge that salvation comes in different forms. We tell of a Jesus who saves and promises life to come, yes. But we are also called to bring the good news of the here and now. I love this from Dean Brackley, SJ:

Jesus proclaims “Good News to the poor.” What is this Good News? Ask  the poor — you will get clear and immediate answers: health, shelter, food, opportunity, jobs, education.

The challenge of responding to this call to service is that our lives often make us so UN-available. We fill our lives with so many things — including many good things — that we leave no time to just be available if someone needs us, no time to go looking for someone who might need us, no time to call someone up and say, “do you need anything?”

art — Kairos. Jackson Square, New Orleans. SJG photo.

This is the difference between the Greek ideas of chronos time and kairos time. Chronos time rules our days. It is ordered time — seconds, minutes, hours — and it is a demanding taskmaster from the moment the clock goes off in the morning. It’s necessary, of course. But it is not all. Kairos, on the other hand, lies outside of this sequential time of clocks and calendars. It is the time that slips by in moments of quiet contemplation and prayer. It passes without notice in moments of service to others. It is fleeting in moments of creation and joy, when time seems to stand still. It is time outside of time.

We need chronos, of course, or nothing would run on time and the world would run amok. But we need times of kairos in a chronos world. We need big chunks of time when we’re not watching the clock, when we’re not worried about the next appointment. We need this time to be available to God and available to others. This availability — this love — doesn’t come free or even cheap. It will cost us something. As Sarah Thebarge, author of The Invisible Girls, writes:

Love will cost you dearly.
And it will break your heart.
But in the end, it will save the world.

Ask yourself in silence: To whom can I be available today? What will it cost me? Will it be worth it?

Sitting at the Feet of Elders

Steve · March 1, 2015 · 11 Comments

LoveYou — Memorial Stone in New Orleans cemetery. SJG photo.

About a month ago at St. Francis Xavier (College) Church at Saint Louis University, I had the opportunity to attend an event for the L’Arche community in St. Louis featuring Sue Mosteller, CSJ, a sister of St. Joseph for 65 years and a long-time friend, colleague and literary executrix of Henri Nouwen. Nouwen, who died in 1996, was one of the great spiritual writers of the 20th century and one of my own personal inspirations and heroes, although I never had the opportunity to meet him.

So when I had the opportunity to hear Sue Mosteller, who has done so much to preserve and continue to publish Nouwen’s work, I knew this might be as close as I ever might get to Nouwen. And I was not disappointed. Sitting on a folding chair with a few hundred others, I was reminded of something I recently read (wish I could remember where!), that “sitting at the feet of wise elders is like listening to the Holy Spirit.”

Although I took notes while I was there, I wasn’t sure I would ever do anything with them. But as I reviewed those notes yesterday, I realized the depth of the wisdom and knew I needed to share it. So with apologies to Sue if I get anything a little wrong from faulty note taking, here are a few things I learned sitting before this particular elder, this person willing to allow the Spirit to work through her as she told us about listening for the “inner voice of love.” I didn’t put quote marks around everything below because I wasn’t sure of my accuracy, but be assured that the thoughts and ideas are hers, not mine…

She began by telling a story of accompanying Nouwen to a museum, where he placed himself before a Van Gogh painting. She waited with him…5 minutes…10 minutes…15 minutes until finally she asked him, “What are you doing?”

His nonchalant reply: “I’m walking around in the south of France, aren’t you?” He had stepped into the painting, was appreciating it. And the lesson: We cannot be spectators when it comes to our faith.

220px-Sue_Mosteller — Sue Mosteller, from Wikipedia.

So where is this “inner voice of love?” First of all, she urged us to be careful about those words, for there is no “voice.” The inner voice of love, the voice of God, comes to us through others, and often from the most unlikely of teachers. John the Baptist, one unlikely teacher [just think about what he must have looked and smelled like!] came to point to the light of the world. “Not me, it’s him,” he said. “There is the lamb of God.” We need John the Baptists who will point us in the right direction. We hear that voice, but it is Jesus we follow and encounter, and it is with Jesus that we abide. In that encounter we are transformed. In that encounter we discover the voice of love.

When God wanted to save us he didn’t send a book; he sent a person, Jesus. And this Jesus is delicate and respectful. He doesn’t begin by saying, “repent and be saved.” He says, gently, “What are you looking for? Can you give me a drink? Would you like to be healed?” This is the voice of love. The voice of love asks questions of the other.

Jesus says, “As the Father has loved me, so I love you.” We have to claim this. We have to say, “yes.” We are beloved, with all of our beauty and darkness. The earth has seen 34.5 billion years of evolution and…then…there was the perfect time for you and me to be born. So that we could be here right now, doing what we are doing. Jesus came to “pitch his tent among us.”

We need to stay close to the wise voices that are guiding us, that are telling us that we are loved. For the call of love is to become like Jesus. Our call is to become what we are — mothers and fathers of whatever kind — and take responsibility to show and guide others to the realization that they are beloved.

Jesus was vulnerable to others — he kneels and washes their feet. So we need to ask: What is my role, my primary name? Do we give people a moment of heaven in the midst of their hell? To do so, we must be aware of what is happening around us.

Sue ended by telling the story of a prostitute in Paris, depressed and suicidal, who stopped by a church to pray one last time before going off to kill herself. A minister saw her there and sat beside her while she wept.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“No,” she replied. “I’m on my way to die. There is no redemption for me and I hate men.”

“Could I say one thing?” the minister asked. “I hear you and I know you are suffering. But do you know that you are a virgin?”

She scoffed.

“There is a secret place in your heart, a hidden, privileged chapel, a place to which only you and God have access. In that place, you are a virgin.”

She wept more.

Can we believe there is such a place for all of us? A place where God dwells and waits for our return? A place where God says, “I have loved you with an everlasting love?” We need to claim this truth. We are beloved. We are all broken and waiting to be transformed.

Ask yourself in silence: Do I believe I am beloved, that there is a place where God and I can meet, a place where God awaits my return, no matter what I’ve done?

One more question: Leave a comment and tell me about a time you sat at the feet of an elder and felt the pull of the Holy Spirit. Who was it and what did you learn?

The Creative Spirit: What If?

Steve · February 14, 2015 · 14 Comments

reflection — What if I missed this moment? SJG photo.

Asking “what if” is one of the most creative and contemplative questions we can ask ourselves. How many books, poems, paintings, songs, plays or other creative works have come to life because the artist dared to ask, “what if?”

“What if” is how we find meaning. It is how we begin to make sense of the senseless and read between the lines of reality and the mundane to discover something new and rare. “What if I created an imaginary world of dragons and elves and hobbits, of secret doors and alternative worlds?” ask imaginative and deeply spiritual writers like J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. “What might that world teach us about ourselves? About God?”

What if I created a seamless and perfect form from a rough block of marble or brought to stage the complexities of life, family, addiction, love, hate, sin, God? What if I put paint to canvas or paper (or clicked the shutter at just the right moment of time, color and light) and captured the sacred in the midst of ordinary existence? What if I could make it seem like dancers were flying through the air or sang a song that would speak to your heart and your very real human condition?

And what if I could do all these things and didn’t? This is the call of the artist, and for those of us who hold and share a belief in a Creator-God, it is a call to holiness. It is a call that must be answered and responded to. Ask most artists why they create and you are likely to hear some version of, “because I have to…because I wouldn’t know how NOT to…because it’s who I am.”

But asking “what if” is also a call to us all to think and imagine more broadly. It is “yes and” and “no but” instead of “either/or.” Whether we consider ourselves creative or not (and I believe we all are and can be), to ask this question is to step outside our own little worlds for a brief time and consider the alternative. Whether we are seeking to create a work of art or a healed relationship, asking “what if” is a place to start and a place to pray.

mystery — On the corner of Mystery and...SJG photo.

To end, I wanted to share with you a poem written by my friend and fellow spiritual director, Jeanne Baer. Jeanne asked “what if?” in dealing with the pain and confusion of her father’s death and in seeking to make some spiritual sense of loss. Read carefully. For this is more than a list of “what if” questions. In these few poignant lines, Jeanne gives us the privilege of listening in to a painful and personal internal dialogue leading to revelation and the presence of God.

What If

What if I never forgave my Dad?
What if God helped me to forgive him?
What if I never spoke to him again?
What if God helped me to find the words?
What if I carried the pain of memories to his death?
What if God healed me of those memories?
What if I couldn’t forget our differences?
What if God showed me our commonalities?
What if I always wished he done things differently?
What if God showed me he was doing the best he could?
What if I could only see him through my eyes?
What if God showed me how to see him through God’s eyes?
What if I carried all the pain and hurt to his death bed?
What if God allowed me to be the one to lovingly lead him into the arms of Jesus?
As you can see, I am human.
As you can see, “with God, all things are possible.”

– Jeanne M. Baer

Ask yourself in silence: What if I responded today to a call I have been ignoring?