All Is Gift

I don't remember this morning's Mass readings. But I remember that Father's homily was about gift.

He defined a gift as "something you don't deserve that is freely bestowed on you." The giver does not expect to receive anything in return, but gives from the abundant generosity in his heart.

Father went on to ask us: "What gift has God given you? How does He want you to use it?"

Often, I forget that I even have a gift. I forget that God has given me the capability to understand and express ideas through words. The gift of writing. 

I just write. I don't think about it. 

Last week, we received two responses to the monthly newsletter that I write for the company I work for. Both were positive comments on the quality of the email. This morning, another person responded to a different email campaign I wrote, saying they were grateful for our prayers and support. 

I wrote those emails. 

God gave me the gift to touch others through words and that happened. They were moved. They saw a glimpse of His goodness.

How thankful I am for this gift! 

What gift has God given you to change the world with? Ask Him to help you use it!

How that One Random Shoe Ended Up in the Road

For the last few months I've been going to Art Club, an informal gathering of artists that my friend MAK started. Now, Art Club isn't exactly what it sounds like. We look at art and talk about it; or we have a discussion question like, "What does it mean to be an artist?" We had never made art—until this past Wednesday.

Since no one had volunteered to facilitate our discussion for this week, MAK decided that it would be fun to do a little free writing with jazz music playing in the background. I've always been terrible at free writing. Maybe because my perfectionist side has trouble relaxing and letting the thoughts flow. My inner editor gets overly focused on the details of sentence structure, diction, and punctuation, which makes free writing more like torture than riding a roller coaster.

But on Wednesday night at Art Club, I let my thoughts carry me away. The result? I wrote fiction for the first time in about two years! It was exhilarating. I'd forgotten how much fun it is to make up stories.

Just for fun, here is one of the fictional scenes I wrote this week. The only edits I made were to add paragraphs. Enjoy! 

"How that One Random Shoe Ended Up in the Road" 

Even when you think your day cannot get any more awful, it will. Trust me. I've been there.

My boyfriend dumped me that morning. I spilled red Kool-aid all over my new white shorts. And then, as I was crossing the street to get in my car, I stepped in a pothole, with a car coming down the road toward me, and I couldn't get my foot back out. It wasn't a particularly large pothole, but it was large enough that my foot (and I have big feet) could go in it. Why my foot wouldn't come out, I have no freaking idea, but that car wasn't slowing down and I was like, "Holy crap, I'm going to die."

So I bent over, untied my shoe, and booked it across the street without it. And what do you know, that damn car hit the pothole and my shoe sailed through the air at least 25 yards and landed in somebody's driveway. He was just backing out and squashed my tennis shoe flat as a pancake. 

I swear this all happened in the space of 75 seconds.

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

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.

You've Gotta Talk About It!

"Today we need a Church capable of walking at people's side, of doing more than simply listening to them..." - Pope Francis 

Throughout the ages people have asked questions of great importance to their lives, such as: is there a God? Who is He and what is He like? What reasons are there for believing in Him? When you do come to believe in Him, where do you go from there?  Is religion really necessary? Many people are still asking these questions and just because you or I may have already sufficiently answered these questions for ourselves does not mean that we can't or that we shouldn't discuss these questions with those who have not answered them.  In fact, it seems vital that this discussion should happen, because often people are drawn to faith in Christ through the witness of faithful and authentic Christians. 

Discussion about the divine, faith, and religion can be called "dialogue." A dialogue is a conversation between two or more people. That means listening to what another person says, but it also means responding. As Christians, we are called to dialogue with other people. This is the heart of the New Evangelization!  This is what it means to preach the Gospel. It means we cannot stand on a soap box on the street corner like the Pharisees and speak just for the sake of hearing ourselves talk without any real understanding of who we are talking to. No, we must engage people in the grocery store, at the gas station, at the bar, and on the internet.  We must listen to their stories, but we must, as Pope Francis says, do more than simply listen. As Christians we must reply in charity to the questions and lives of the persons we encounter every day. We must not be afraid to engage in casual conversation about the topic of faith. The faith of others may be sparked by this and our own faith can only be sharpened and strengthened by the challenges presented to it by the culture.

In order to be able to enter into conversation with other people, we have to meet them where they are at. We need to be able to enter into the culture and encounter people right where they are and still remain faithful in our witness to Christ. One way in which we can begin to meet people where they are at is through the social media. It is something that a vast number of people use everyday. Blogging, as Mark Shea points out in the chapter on blogging in The Church and New Media, has a great potential to begin dialogue because of its conversational tone and interactive possibilities. Readers can engage and respond to the material they are reading and authors can continue the discussion almost immediately. (It is a far cry from when you wrote a letter to the newspaper and waited weeks for a response...that is, if you ever got a response.)  There are some great Catholic bloggers out there who do just this: write for the purpose of engaging people in conversation about topics of faith. Check out Marc Barnes, for example. 

However potent social media may be, I have found in my own short life that face to face interactions with other human persons are the most fruitful form of dialogue. No matter what, there is a disconnect that happens when a social medium is used to communicate. Much is lost without the tone of voice and the facial and body expressions that are part of a face to face interaction between persons. So while I firmly believe that social media can be used effectively in the New Evangelization and that it should be used, I also believe that it is only a springboard. Nothing can beat a conversation with that person on the airplane or in the driver's license bureau. Do not be afraid! Go out into the streets and proclaim the love of Christ present in your heart! But don't forget to listen. This is not a soap box or a "holier than thou" competition...it is an opportunity to walk together with other persons up the mountain of faith.

A Poem: On Poetry

Poetry: fusion.

Emotion and will

tumbled together

balanced on the precipice

of insanity

begging for the strength

of inspiration

to pull itself up again.

Poetry: creation.

Strange animal

devouring wildly

the ambiguities of language

in attempt

to clarify the depth

of desire

which ravishes men.

(Please note: this is my own original work.  Use or reprinting without permission is a copyright infringement.  Thank you!)