When My Feet Hit the Pavement

I went for a run this morning.

That sentence still sounds strange each time I write or speak it. Before this summer, I never went for a run “just because.” (If you don’t believe me, ask my mom.) I saw exercise as a miserable activity, an activity that didn’t do anything but put my body in pain for a portion of the day. In middle school, surrounded by my friends and excited by the progress of learning new strokes and conquering different events, I probably enjoyed swim team. But at the end of the day, exercise was not something I loved or sought. Exercise was something I endured.

Over the last few years, particularly through playing floor hockey and Ultimate Frisbee with my friends, my attitude towards exercise has taken a 180. Not only have I delighted in the games I was playing, I have also experienced the community of a sports team and the reward of pushing my body to greater endurance. Besides, the endorphins were also a plus.

This summer, when I was restless and tired of being cooped up in a house or office for hours on end, I began to go out to the local cemetery to go running, usually a couple times a week. It wasn’t that I was particularly fond of running, but I noticed that I was a happier person after I would go for a run. My patience with others was greater; the quality of my sleep was better; focusing on my work was easier.

I began to understand that exercise is something that I need, whether I enjoy it at the moment or not. In striving to become the best version of myself, how can I exercise my mind and my soul and fail to exercise my body?

Living a healthy life involves all aspects of my spiritual and corporeal person.

Living a healthy life glorifies God, Who dwells within me.

St. Paul teaches this when he writes:

“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own; you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” 

– 1 Cor 6:19-20

I'm a happier person when I go running. And I desire to glorify God not simply in my words, but also through my actions. That's why I went running this morning.

I Have Set My Hand to the Plow

Once again another semester has come and gone, and I, standing at this crossroads that is Christmas break, am given a chance to reflect on the whirlwind that was my life for the last four months. This past semester may have been the most difficult one ever, but because it was difficult it was also rewarding—spiritually and intellectually.

In October, I learned what it is like to be confronted with something that turns you bitter against the Lord and to choose that bitterness and to pretend that everything is still okay even when it isn’t. Losing both of my grandmothers three months apart from each other was not exactly my ideal plan for how life was going to go this year. And I refused to acknowledge for a couple weeks that I was angry with the Lord for taking them both so quickly. In a sense, I didn’t want Him to heal this grief in me. I told myself that I was okay with their deaths. I just didn’t want anyone to be involved—even God. And then one day, wondering why I was having such a difficult time praying, I realized that I had put this wall up.

I asked myself: What kind of disciple would I be if I stopped here, dropped the cross, and turned back now? I knew then that I couldn’t drop the cross, that I didn’t want to drop the cross. I knew I had to be faithful, to move forward, to allow this piece of the cross to shape me towards sainthood. I knew that I had already set my hand to the plow and that I could not look back. I wanted to be fit for the Kingdom of God.

Another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” 

– Luke 9:61–62

This image of plowing was one that continued with me through the rest of the semester, as I struggled with the difficulties of researching and writing my thesis, trying to complete my reading homework, and saying “no” to numerous opportunities that I would have taken if I didn’t have work to do. The image of plowing is one that will probably continue with me through the rest of my life. Why?

Plowing is an image that speaks to me of choice. It reminds me that I have chosen. I have chosen Christ. I have chosen holiness. I have chosen to plow until I reach the Kingdom. I have chosen to write. I have chosen to love.

Deliberately I have set my hand to work, knowing that it will be difficult—the soil is heavy, the plow is clumsy, my grip is slippery. I am going to sweat. There is going to be struggle, exhaustion. Perhaps sometimes I will fall.

And when I am overwhelmed in the midst of a furrow, I can abandon the field, leaving it unfinished and unable to bear abundant fruit. I can look back. But then my work will be unfit for the Kingdom of God.

Or I can plow ever onwards, ever so slowly, in the path I have already chosen, towards the Kingdom of Heaven. Christ Himself waits at the end of the furrow with open arms. All I need is to keep my eyes on Him—to persevere—and He will allow my plowing to make the field fertile.

Constancy that nothing can shake. That’s what you need. Ask God for it, and do what you can to obtain it: for it is a great safeguard against your ever turning from the fruitful way you have chosen. 

- St. Josemaria Escriva

Shifting Pictures of Ourselves

You know those little 4 x 4 sliding tile puzzles that people sometimes give out as party favors or in the fish pond at parish festivals? Well, I'm really bad at solving them. But nevertheless, they're so popular that I have an electronic one on my computer desktop, with a picture of a lion's face.

But the face is all jumbled up and out of order. The cat's whiskers appear on its head and its eyes slide off the right side of its face. As much as I try to rearrange the tiles and restore the picture, I can never seem to figure out quite the right order. The lion's face is still distorted and incomplete.

Some days my face looks messed up too. I slide the tiles of my life around, searching for the proper arrangement that will reflect a balanced and beautiful face back into my eyes. 

At times I do this confidently, certain of where to position the eyes, but if only I could just get the chin in the right position…

At other times I go to the puzzle and mix all the tiles up at random. Then I can start over with the picture. Each piece is on an even playing field and no one tile is more important than another, at least for a brief time.

Sometimes a piece that I have so boldly placed at the center of the picture will hinder a piece that needs to go to the other side. This piece cannot remain rigidly in its place, but must move around, working in conjunction with the others to form the picture. And so the pieces of my life must give a little and gain a little. In order to solve this puzzle, I must discover flexibility within a small but appropriately sized frame.

There are times when I become discouraged and walk away from the picture. Who cares if the face ever comes out right? I'm tired of trying to solve this riddle of my life.

But my Friend takes me back to the puzzle. He shows me a sketch of what the final portrait will look like. It's just a cartoon, He says, of what the real thing will look like when we're finished.

It's so hard, I grumble.

Try moving this. He points to a piece in the upper left-hand corner. Try putting it here. A place in mid-right side. I'll be here if you need me.

And I begin to work at the puzzle again.

The Best of Me

Yesterday morning, I drove into nearby Pittsburgh in an attempt to attend a talk that I thought would inspire and influence me. It was called “Writing as Vocation.” All week (more or less) I asked people if they wanted to go with me and even succeeded in finding someone willing to drive into the city with me. Unfortunately, that fell through about twenty-four hours before hand, as she found out about a meeting she was required to attend. I decided that I would go to the talk anyways, even if that meant driving by myself.

Despite the fact that I am typically okay with driving in traffic, I got flustered in the light traffic that I encountered coming through the tunnel on Saturday morning. The short version of this story is that I ended up driving around downtown Pitt in search of St. Paul’s Cathedral, certain that I would find it. But my twenty-minute cushion time quickly dwindled as I realized that I was nowhere near the cathedral. 

In a last effort to get to the talk on time, I got back onto the highway that I had come from. The highway only took me back to the tunnel and so I drove out of the city, fifteen minutes after the start time of the lecture, frustrated with my spoiled plans.

“This is stupid.”

“Lord, bring good out of this.”

The two phrases alternated in my head for the next five minutes. Then I made up my mind to enjoy myself and drove to a little French café that I discovered over the summer, deciding that well, if I couldn’t attend a lecture about the vocation of writing, I could at least write.

Maybe that is what I really needed that morning—a sort of retreat from familiar faces and places, a time to recollect myself and to think about how writing is a vocation and what that means for my life.

Maybe there are times in our lives when we don’t need conversation. Times to pause and think. Times to enjoy a smooth cup of black coffee. Times to fill the cream colored spaces between notebook lines with dark loops and swirls.

Writing is something I can throw myself into—with my heart, my mind, my short experience, and my faulty wisdom—and become better for it.

Writing requires endless learning. Not simply learning in the sense of research, but in a deepening disposition of wonder towards the world. 

In the development of a critical eye for culture and for my own writing. 

In the discovery of my own relationship with the Infinite. 

In an understanding of how particular circumstances relate to the universal situation of man. 

In a tuning of my rhythmic ear. 

In a ripening sense of humor. 

In a sharpening of my notice of small intimate details. 

In a deepening ability to relate to all types of people simply because they are people and I am a person. In a discipline and passion for the gritty revision of my own words. 

In a vocabulary that expands to become more precise.

At this moment, looking at all these ways that writing will continue to demand the best of me and to sharpen what exists of me now, I have great hope! It is a work that will not be futile, a calling that will stretch me beyond the narrow limits that I set for myself.

Writing about writing—what a stereotype! But it’s necessary sometimes to step back from what we are doing and to think about why we do those things.

So why do I write? I write because it’s how I discover the world. It’s how I discover myself. And it’s how I discover God.

If the glory of God is man fully alive, I pray that the Holy Spirit comes to animate me, to inebriate my writing, so that my person and my words may be a spring of water welling up to eternal life; so that through my work, I may be refined into the sanctity that the Lord requires of me.

Reflections on Mercy

In this is mercy: that our suffering is not wasted if we unite it to Christ's. There is always reason for it, be it our own purification or the reparation of sins - ours or those of another.

We are never left abandoned to suffering without recourse. God is always present and always provides the grace necessary to carry the cross in union with His Son. Perhaps this is why so many crosses, so many sorrows, in my own life have occured around these great feasts - the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts - because there is abundant grace available to those who venerate the two Hearts.

"I will comfort them in their trials," the Lord says of those who are devoted to His Most Sacred Heart. And in the Diary of Divine Mercy He speaks words of comfort, reminding me that He alone is the Savior: "My daughter, let nothing frighten or disconcert you. Remain deeply at peace. Everything is in My Hands."

The Gift of a Penny

Because I'm a Catholic nerd and my housemate is a Catholic nerd, one of the items on our summer bucket list is to visit every parish within a twenty mile radius of our house. (At this point, we've been to Mass at six of them.)

This past Sunday, we went to Mass at Blessed Sacrament parish. Bry was driving, so I didn't bother to bring anything along with me and blissfully walked out of the house - purse, key, and cell phone free. When we reached the stop sign at the end of the block, I realized that because I hadn't brought my purse, I didn't have my wallet. Which meant that I couldn't tithe. I had no money.

I was disappointed in myself. Earlier in the week I was thinking about the fact that I want to get back into the habit of tithing (the Biblical concept of giving ten percent of your income to the Lord) now that I get a regular paycheck. But I forgot.

When we arrived at the church and knelt down in the pew, I noticed something shiny on the floor, so I bent to pick it up. It was a brand new penny. God provided me with one little penny to put in the offering basket. I placed the penny on the bench beside me to wait until the offertory. As I placed the nearly worthless coin into the basket, I felt like the widow in the Gospel who put all that she had into the Temple offering. It was a humbling experience.

This penny was a sign to me that my Father was pleased with the desire of my heart to give Him a gift. And when I had nothing to give Him, He provided me with the gift. Truly, He will not be outdone in generosity!

"His blessing covers the dry land like a river, and drenches it like a flood."

-Sirach 39:22

Adventures - Part One

Spending your summer in the same city as your university, a city that pretends to be a college town but really isn’t and that is known only by one of two things—your university or the rape case that made national news—doesn’t sound very promising. But really, it’s not that bad. There are adventures to be had here…

At the beginning, the small adventures of starting utilities, paying rent, and figuring out how much food to buy at the grocery store were enough to keep me occupied and overwhelmed for a week or two. Now that these grown-up adventures are a regular part of the schedule of work, eat, and sleep, I’ve had some time to realize that the best adventures so far have come not from being an adult, but simply from being young, wild, and free with plenty of time and very little money on my hands.

A local hiking trail in a West Virginia state park has become one of my favorite refuges, and although I’ve only ever walked to the mile and a half point—a swimming hole in the next-door creek—I fully intend to walk further down the trail before the end of the summer.

Or sometimes when Bry, my housemate, and I get restless and neither of us feels like driving the seven minutes to the trail, we will drive three minutes to one of the nearby cemeteries and go walking or jogging there. “It’s so weird to me that cemeteries are something beautiful to walk through around here,” she says. Apparently Southern Californian cemeteries lack the beauty of small town Ohio cemeteries.

I laugh at Bry’s comment and soak up the beauty of the peach-colored sunset between three sentinel oak trees that are probably older than the town itself. The cemetery is enchanting in the dim dusk-light and I can almost imagine little fairies dancing in the woods over there or hear goblin men’s footsteps as they come to hawk their fruits.

But the “scope for imagination” isn’t why I like coming here. No. It’s a fondness for thinking about the people who are buried here and whispering a small and childish prayer that they are sleeping peacefully. I read their names, turning them over like a hard strawberry candy in my mouth, and the joyful hope rises in my chest that one day I will meet them all, that I will see their beautiful and ugly faces, and that I will hear their stories of life and the road to heaven. When I’m here they seem very near to me. It’s like visiting long-lost friends.