So check it: I'm from St. Louis and therefore am a faithful client of the First National Bank of St. Louis. In my past home of New York, Chase Bank is on every block. Here in Philly, it's Wachovia that's famous. So yesterday one of the items on my "To Do" list was a bullet point with "Open Wachovia account."
I walked into the bank, thinking I'd be there for 10 minutes... little did I know the Lord had something else in mind. I was introduced to one of the personal bankers, a middle-aged man who had a picture of his wife and two daughters on his desk. After the pleasantries of "good afternoon" and "how are you?" were exchanged, and I brought out my Missouri driver's license, he asked what brought me to Philadelphia. I told him about Villanova's Theology and Ministry program, and then he slowly said, "So... you are a ....God person."
Not really sure how to respond, I think I laughed and said something like, "You could say that, I suppose." He then asked, "So, how do you explain suffering in the world? How could a loving God allow such things to happen?" Hm. Not exactly the kind of discussion I had in mind for an escapade in the world of checking accounts and online banking. But, disponibilita, right? :) Go with it.
For the next hour and a half, our conversation ranged from his experience being raised in the Jewish faith (that he has now abandoned), the nature of free will, faith-based dietary restrictions, creationism and evolutionism (as not necessarily mutually exclusive) & both accounts of the Creation Story in Genesis, the Spirit of the Law (with comments from Paul & the Dali Lama!), liturgical rituals, the importance of relationship, and all things in between. I also remembered the two truths common in all religions and this would make my Religion 101 teacher proud: 1) Religions develop historically and 2) There is diversity in all religions. These helped immensely. Somehow, simply listing the topics doesn't adequately convey the amount of agression in his questions, nor the quality of those questions. All his questions (as probing or as accusatory as they were) were really good ones that I think any spiritually mature individual would face in his/her journey. He also commented on how young I was to think I know what life's all about (which I didn't appreciate-- age-ism, right there), but I did take that point to heart: I do have much to learn and wisdom does come from experience. So he helped me, too. In the end (God knows how!), we got around to opening a checking and savings account. Welcome to Philadelphia-- I'm official.
Here's what I'd like to say, though-- God gives you what you need when you need it, that is for certain-- and at that meeting at one of the many Wachovia's on Lancaster Ave, God delivered. What was amazing to me was that in previous conversations I had about matters like this with complete strangers, I would often feel targeted and attacked. However, this time, even though some questions were purposely meant to be agressive, as I sensed anger from his tone, I had a sense of peace, composure, and light-heartedness in my responses and musings. About 45 minutes into it, I realized, "Hey! As serious as these questions are, I'm having a good time!" God provided the openness and calmness in this experience. But perhaps most of all, God provided the opportunity for me to slow down from my busy list of "To Do's" and get in touch with what really matters: working through the tough questions IN COMMUNITY with others-- even complete strangers named Hal.
So... after One week of camping in Missouri, One week of visiting my Godmother and cousin up by Lake Superior in Wisconsin, One week of relaxing at home...
Here are a few things that I was reminded of during my time with my family. I have 7 brothers and sisters (so I'm the second-oldest of eight) and being so far away from them for 6 years has made me feel incredibly distant at times, but when I am home, I eat it up! :) I was especially reminded of them when my best friend from college, Liz, came to visit. She would comment on the things our family did and it made me pause and say, "Yeah. I really like that, too. Thanks for reminding me." :)
1) My mom is so funny. And I mean SUPER HYSTERICAL! The way she tells stories and recounts seemingly simple episodes, complete with accents, motions, and suspenseful pauses is simply amazing. I've missed that. With all the medical problems she's had this year, it's really something that she brings her unique sense of humor to share with those around her.
2) My parents are really affectionate towards each other. People will often tell me how cute it is that they always hold hands, go on walks after dinner, and hug--I guess growing up, I always just thought all parents were like that, so I didn't pay much attention to it. But it's so true! :) And I love it! Even more than the physical contact, I love the times when they are talking, and you can just tell that whatever the other is saying is THE most important thing for the other. They're really examples of GOOD LISTENERS!
3) Praying together as a family. I admit it-- growing up, I often wouldn't enjoy praying the family rosary. We would pray it every day as a family, either after dinner or in the car if we had someplace to go that day. As a kid, it seemed so gosh-darn LOOOONNNNGGGG! (In contrast, I loved when we did the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, because that went so FAST!) I think I've really missed that. There is something really special about a family lifestyle that is intentional about putting aside time for prayer together, even if it is not always appreciated.
4) Eating together. This is one thing that Liz brought to my attention. She had said that she enjoyed eating with my family because people would come in from work, and everyone would share about their day. I guess I always took this for granted.
5) The amount of stress that my mom places on wellness, recycling, buying local grocery items, using less (especially water and electricity!), and health foods ("Don't even THINK of bringing high fructose corn syrup, MSG, nitrates, aspartame, or hydrogenated oils into this house!"). There's that saying that goes, "Live simply so that others may simply live."-- my mom really embodies this.
6) My dad's many small sacrifices are ways of showing that he loves us. He barely ever buys things for himself. He flies planes for a commercial airline, and as part of the job, pilots are given a Per Diem stipend while on trips. Instead of using the money for food, he'll save it. When he is at home, he'll take so much time with us, teaching us how to change oil in the cars, work the embroidery machine, start up bank accounts, critiquing Stephen's violin playing, packing bikes, giving directions, etc... there really is no end to this list. There will be days when it's clear that he's exhausted, but he'll still take time to play cards with us or sit on the porch and enjoy a beer-- with those of us that are old enough :).
7) My brothers joking with each other-- it's like watching a reality TV show. Really, all four of them have completely different interests and personalities. It's kinda like Big Brother meets The Partridge Family meets Friends meets MadTV. Yeah.
So here's to appreciating family, and me trying to do a better job of it. :)
Family Picture taken many moons ago... 5 years ago(?) (This was the summer I had purple highlights in my hair... don't ask.)
So here I am, a mere five hours away from when I need to get up, shower, and drive to the airport for a flight to Chicago and then Philadelphia... and what am I doing? Blogging. That's right. The excitement is not allowing me to sleep. :) I realized that I hadn't posted this yet, so here it is! :)
At the end of the CMC year, missioners write reflections on the experience. Below is mine. I tried not to have a self-imposed length limit-- so hopefully that comes across. No amount of words could adequately express it all, but here's a small piece for how grateful I am for this experience. So, thanks, Mother Cabrini, for making this all possible. We are, as she said, "merely spectators of God's wonderful works." :)
God has a way of giving us exactly what we need when we need it. (In fact… God is SO good at that!) My first year with Cabrini Mission Corps, I learned in a very tangible way that Ministry is Relationship— the heart of ministry and mission is the acceptance of God’s love for us and sharing in the lives of others. This second year, I believe that God opened my heart to receive this gift of relationship even more. The gift of relationships is really all I have, when I think about it. It’s like in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, when Lena’s grandmother says, “In this life, family is the most precious gift we are given, the most sacred. Turn your back on them and that is when you truly have nothing.” Our interactions with others are just that—precious gifts that cannot be taken for granted. Time and time again I was reminded by those in my community and those at my mission site to look at every day and every encounter with another with a spirit of gratitude. Even the most simple interactions with students, people on the NYC subway, and the workers at Lyric Diner at the corner 3rd Ave and 22nd Street were sources of joy for us. Most especially, I was reminded to see God’s invitations of grace and relationship with him as the summit of this gift of relationship.
I was led by joy to Mother Cabrini High School in New York City, where I spent two incredible years. At the beginning of this year, I had my students re-write the words to John Bell’s “The Summons.” All of the students’ papers touched me as I read their own interpretations of the lyrics. One, in particular, still stands out to me. Ashley Garcia revised one question to be: ‘Will you let me be the most important person in your life?’ I feel that this simple question is precisely what God asks of us every day. My relationship with God is the single most important relationship in my life and all others contribute to that foundation.
Many times, I feel like God has continually invited me into this question. Who am I to you, and who are you? What do you stand for? As part of the debriefing process, missioners give mission appeals at parishes in the Philadelphia area—the money raised during the collections go toward Catholic missions around the world. I had to laugh when I saw the reading for the Gospel for that Sunday. I felt that they returned to the exact theme of coming to know who God is for me. See, the reading for the day was from Luke’s ninth chapter, where Jesus practically grills his apostles by asking: “WHO do people say that I am?!” What a question. Jesus looks into our eyes and still asks today: “Who am I to you?” Whether we are full-time missionaries or not, this question is inherently linked to discovering who we are and answering the call to be who God created us to be.
In the same spirit, my spiritual director this year had told me to ask myself: Who is Jesus to me? Where do I see the face of God? Where do I feel God’s presence? These years as a missioner have revealed to me Jesus in the marginalized, the forgotten, the misunderstood, and the underestimated, but also Jesus the dreamer and Jesus the faithful one. From the Midnight Runs where we would spend the day preparing toiletries, clothing, and bag lunches to distribute to the homeless; to retreats and prayer groups with the students; to mourning with a student who had a miscarriage and healing with another after her abortion; to celebrating college acceptances; to teaching how to serve a Mass—these relationships revealed to me the hope and resilience found in God’s people and the power of community found in sharing our faith with one another, and what sacred gifts these are!
Speaking of community— Mary, Crystal, and the sisters we lived with were my heroes this year. Living in a Cabrinian community of diverse, accomplished, well-traveled, intelligent, caring, warm, supportive, and spirit-filled women helped me in so many ways. We laughed, cried, and shared in the daily joys and struggles of life. When friends and family of the missioners came to visit, there were the MSC’s, eager to welcome and get to know our visitors. When I did not receive my first choice internship for graduate school, I was heartbroken. Mary and Crystal creatively cheered me up and said, “If you thought that was the perfect match for you, think of how awesome the next step will be—because God always makes sure things work out in our best interest.” And they were right—the internship that I was offered the very next day matched me even better than the first. It was truly a Spirit-thing that Mary, Crystal, and I went through CMC together. I have never felt more supported, more challenged, and more present in my spiritual journey than with these two young women. Whether we were pursuing the sacred in the many young adult programs that NYC offers, to salsa dancing at night, to visiting with other volunteers and missioners, to blog sessions in the community room, to staying up late cleaning, to sharing about our days at the mission sites, to singing and dancing for the Senior MSC’s, Mary and Crystal kept it real—they were sources of constant inspiration for me, yet we all saw each other as equals. These relationships with the CMC’s and MSC’s continue to impress upon me the importance of gratitude within relationships.
On my last Sunday in New York City, Mary and I went to Sacred Heart Convent to celebrate Sr. Claudia’s birthday with Mass and lunch. Fr. Benedict’s homily was a reflection on the nature of freedom, love, and vocation. He said, "What keeps you from love—that is your slavery. Where you can love most—that is your vocation." To include this quotation at this point may seem off-topic from the subject of this reflection as a whole, but I once again was filled with such a sense of gratitude as I heard Fr. Benedict share his thoughts on the Gospel. What a great way to close these two years as a missioner—with a spirit of thankfulness for my vocation to love as well as my personal slaveries of self-doubt and struggle (at times) to love myself. There is no doubt in my mind that the relationships I have been gifted with these years have greatly helped me name and claim my vocation and slaveries. I will take these joyful moments of relational and spiritual growth with me to the next phase of my life. I hope and pray that I will continue to live the values of Mother Cabrini (especially disponibilitá!) as I go forward from life as a missioner. Thank you!
*And Thank You! to Mary, Sr. Arlene, Crystal, and Gina for their pictures! :)
So it's true-- I rarely quote Pope Benedict XVI/ Il Papa/ P-Benny. It's not for lack of reading or hearing what he has to say-- I scoured a shop behind the Vatican in Rome for an English copy of Deus Caritas Est when it hit the religious bookstores, only to realize I had been walking past it for a good 15 minutes. I suppose I just never read anything of his that made me look up and say, "Wow. Now, THAT hit me!" in a way that made me want to jump up and down and instantly email, text, and Tweet it to everyone on my contacts list... until now.
I follow the blog for one of the religious congregations that sponsored me at Saint Mary's College. I met with three in their cloistered community last month, a few days before I left NY, because I wanted to meet in person some of the beautiful souls who opened themselves to sponsor a complete stranger in higher education. So, I hopped on a train from Penn Station and headed out to visit the Dominican Sisters of Summit, NJ. (I believe I Tweeted this experience.) I brought pictures of the Cabrini Sisters, CMC, and ministry at the high school. We had a wonderful time sharing in the presence of each other for a couple of hours. During this time, we shared our blog information and I've been following them ever since.
Tonight, after returning home from a 12-hour drive from Washburn, WI to St. Louis, MO, I logged on and started catching up on emails. I made a pass at all of the blog updates I'd missed and saw that the Dominican Sisters had this golden nugget of vocational goodness on their blog. After reading it, I and simply HAD to share it! (The Spirit made me do it!!!) I am retaining their emphasis from the quotation of the pope. This he shared with young people at the Cathedral of Sulmona, Italy (which is a town that I visited back in my sophomore year of college while traveling with my dear friend, Laura Lucci, on a pilgrimage to her father's town of Pacentro!).
"You have just asked me: how does one recognize God's call? Well, the secret of the vocation lies in the capacity for and joy of distinguishing, listening to, and obeying his voice. But to do this it is necessary to accustom our hearts to recognizing the Lord and to having an awareness of him as a Person who is close to me and loves me. As I said this morning, it is important to learn to live in our days moments of inner silence in order to hear the Lord's voice. You may be sure that if we learn to listen to this voice and to follow it generously, we have nothing to fear, we know and feel that God is with us, that God is Friend, Father and Brother. In a word: the secret of the vocation lies in the relationship with God, in prayer that develops, precisely, in inner silence, in the capacity for listening, hearing that God is close. And this is true both before the decision, that is, at the time of deciding and setting out, and afterward, if one wants to be faithful and to persevere on the way."
My experience as a writing tutor reminds me what bad manners it is to have a dropped quote-- a quotation from another source that is simply left dangling within your essay/paper/written work without any additional commentary on the subject of that quote. It is simply seen as improper because the whole point of writing is to expand on ideas and share your reactions to ones previously stated. In a worst-case scenario, a dropped quotation can be seen as an act of laziness. However, in this case, I believe that the inscription above can hold its own. I leave it up to the reader to ingest the words at his/her pace without my commentary. Think about it. Pray about it.Let it marinade and ferment in your heart and mind. I know I'll be thinking about it for quite a while.
Thanks, Holy Spirit. :)
Speaking of vocation, this is an excellent book on the subject. It was recommended to CMC by our good friends Gina and Luke. It reads as a scholarly study of how our deepest desires and vocation can be stirred by our surroundings, histories, and needs in the world today. It took me a while to finish (Read one chapter, process for a week. Read another chapter, reflect for two weeks. Lost the book. Found the book. Etc...), but in the end, I was glad I did. :)
