The Lord is Truly Our Source of Refreshment

Help! I lost my car and we are on the verge of losing our sanity on this wild ride called wedding planning and marriage preparation. When we make it to the altar, we are going to be throwing our arms up in the air and shouting “Victory! We did it!” Well, okay, not really, but our hearts will be that jubilant at least! We’ve waited, hoped, dreamed, waited some more, planned and learned to share everything with one another so that now what remains is one thing:

  “Set me as a seal on your heart, as a seal on your arm” (Song of Songs 8:6)

  “And the two shall become one flesh” (Mark 10:8)

  “Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate,” (Mark 10:9)

  “Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it,” (Genesis 1:28)

And this weekend’s Gospel charges us with our continued and now joint mission as disciples of Jesus Christ by rite of our baptism. Christ sends his apostles out in pairs and reminds us of our duty as citizens of the eternal kingdom to spread the light of Christ into our families, city, our nation and our world: 

  “The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few,” (Luke 10:2)

  “I am sending you like lambs among wolves” (3)

  “Carry no money bag, no sack, no sandals” (4)

  “Whatever town you enter…say to them, ‘The kingdom of God is at hand for you.’” (8)

Yes, God is HERE among us! In fire, in wind, in water, in air. His is the light of love we share, the inspiration that guides us to create new things each day, the refreshment of our souls and the life that we breathe, that sustains us. He is our comfort amidst the daily stress of work and planning and responsibilities. 

That the Lord is our source of refreshment became evident this weekend as we sat in church, hugged round by the beautiful columns and held up in the structure, listening to the Word of God. Here God's holy humor and happiness attacked us on every side, and try as we might to suppress laughter, it seeped through anyway in our radiant smiles, a sign of the pure joy it is to just "be" together, as Robert said, without any "doing." The sacred chant of the choir and bellowing organ, our dear Dominican priest preacher, and the bliss of Holy Communion provided a nonstop flow of inspiration and peace flooding through my heart. “As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you,” our Lord reassured us in the 1^st reading from Isaiah 66.

We’ve been moving Robert into our soon-to-be home. One night after moving some furniture with his buddies, he picked me up for an impromptu late night date in a flatbed truck he was borrowing. He walked up to my door wearing his leather shoes, jeans and leather belt, jean jacket and Kavu baseball cap. Off we drove with the radio turned up and the manual windows rolled down, and I fell in love all over again… As we stopped at a gas station to fill up the tank, he leaned into the open passenger side window and declared with a grin, “You are a country girl. I can tell!”

Yes, my roots are in the country, but since losing my car, I have become one acquainted with the city via the Metro bus, Uber, rides from friends and dependence on my own two legs to get to the places I need to go. It’s afforded me the necessity to walk the city more. It’s the full initiation into Seattle city life before I leave it, and I am grateful for that. It's the culminating factor in dissolving my fears of living in the city as God has stripped me of my last security blanket of the car, of my independence, and I have had to become brave and do things that scare me because I wouldn’t choose them otherwise. It’s the Lord showing me how to go the right way on the bus (for more about that, click here) and to depend on Him. 

This Sunday's Scriptures are reassuring for us all, for although the disciples had nothing – no money, no car, no traveling bag – they had each other, and they had the power and zeal of the Gospel. That was all they needed. It was enough. They had the power to become all they were meant to be in Christ their strength, Christ their hope, and Christ their place of rest. 

In the end, my friends, God's behind the wheel. Let him do the driving. If we still have Him, we haven't lost anything.

"All My Life’s a Circle"

With the car windows rolled down and the volume cranked up on the tape player, my mom, sister and I would sing our hearts out down the highway: 

“All my life’s a circle, sunrise and sundown. / The moon rose through the nighttime / till the daybreak comes around. / All my life’s a circle, but I can’t tell you why. / The seasons spinning round again. The years keep rolling by.” ("All My Life's a Circle" by Harry Chapin)

It’s fitting that this rousing song should go round and round in my head this month, as our family recalls Dad’s passing away on April 27, 1990. Harry Chapin was one of Dad’s favorite songwriters, and listening to his music during our long, summer road trips up north to see Dad's side of the family, I always felt there was a special message to me from Dad in his lyrics.

At 27 years of age and having just endured one of the coldest, harshest winters in Wisconsin, I have come to realize yet again that all my life’s a circle. The coming of spring couldn't be more welcome and more miraculous. There was a point in February and March where I just didn't think spring was possible. I thought we’d be stuck in winter forever. But then surprise, surprise, spring returns!

Saturday a friend and I took a six-and-a-half-mile hike through the village where I live and out along a trail that runs beside a certain Fox River, underneath a canopy of trees. How wonderful to my ears to hear the rushing of water, running, spilling, gurgling over the rocks, foaming at the dam, rising high up on the banks of the creek-ways and river-ways everywhere in the village! Truly, this is the miracle of spring, this power to set free what once was solid ice, immoveable. Dad would love to be here, underneath the canopy of trees, where green shoots are springing out of the ground, and yellow daffodils, yellow tulips and purple wildflowers have just begun to soften the world with their color.

A rabbit hops into my view, a few feet in front of me on the path, and then a second later is gone, suddenly lost in the camouflage of woody undergrowth. It’s a phenomenon of nature that Annie Dillard in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek defines as “now you see me, now you don’t.”

“I found you a thousand times / I guess you’ve done the same. / But then we lose each other / It’s just like a children’s game / And as I find you here again / The thought runs through my mind / Our love is like a circle / Let’s go around one more time.” (Harry Chapin)

This song always reminds me how we weave in and out of different places and people's lives at different times. We wave goodbye to one opportunity to embrace a new one and then return to it one day. A recently re-discovered newspaper article I forgot I wrote four years ago reveals I was writing about the parish that I now attend, never dreaming I’d be in this city one day!

And this month, I find myself at familiar crossroads as I'm given the opportunity to move back to the city from whence I came and into a house that I had first hoped to live in a year and a half ago. I find myself, thus, caught "in the middle of a move.” While my place here goes up for rent, waiting for the right person to come along and find it, on the other side, a room awaits me and old friends eagerly anticipate for me to return and move in with them in another city. Like so many things in life, I am in the middle of a guessing game. I am ready to pick up and go at any moment, but when? Is this it, now?

 

I can't help thinking that maybe this will be heaven: to find ourselves come full circle, and to know for the first time the reason why.

Life is More Like a Meat Pasty than a Fruit Pie

I wish life was a piece of apple pie – always golden brown on the outside and lusciously sweet on the inside, with a picture-perfect whisk of whipped cream on top. Yum… 

But life, especially messy human relationships, is not so often perfect and kind as pie. No, life more often resembles my Grandma Novak’s Polish pasties, stuffed with hearty meat and potatoes “to build character,” onions and salt, and although this meal is certainly good and filling, it is not dessert.
 

A few years ago, I was struggling to overcome the loneliness my heart felt after losing a friend. “After tomorrow,” I told myself, “it’s completely over” - even though I knew it was already over, whatever “it” was. And while I told myself to move on, I just couldn’t seem to drag my heart to do so.

Maybe you, too, have found yourself in the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. As the story goes, “But Lot’s wife looked back, and she was turned into a pillar of salt.” (Genesis 19:26). Looking back and wishing for what "is no more" gets us nowhere. In fact, getting stuck looking back and wishing for the past can immobilize us and paralyze us from being fully alive in the present and doing what we are meant to do.

In my journal a few years ago, I recounted about the loss of a friend: “It’s my own fault for getting so caught up about him. I just had so much joy from the beginnings of a new friendship. He gave me a lift in my step, put a smile on my face, and gave me a reason to get up each morning. Friends do that, you know, they inspire and motivate you to pursue your goals and continue to grow. Friendship can be this simple and this profound at the same time. That’s why it hurts so much to lose it, and why I’m sitting here, thinking about him."

So how are we to respond? Are we not supposed to be open and searching for Christian love in others? How can I guard my heart but not close my heart? How can I hope without also being disappointed? How can I love without being hurt? How can I accept the past as enriching my life today? These paradoxes are part of the human heart, a battleground of sorrow and joy. 

So again we roll back our shoulders, pick ourselves up and walk on. What’s to keep being muddled in the past for? It can take our whole will to stretch our limbs forward and make sure our heart doesn’t get left behind. It takes all our faith in God to keep our eyes ahead and not on the broken city being destroyed behind us. God reminds us not ever to become too attached to the things of this earth, for “this too shall pass away.” 

It is only by the mercy of God that we can ever walk on and leave our past. In the case of the hesitating (and stalling) Lot and his wife, God had to order his angels to grab them by the hands and lead them out of the city so they would be saved (Genesis 19). So it is with us sometimes, who hold out as long as possible, saying “What if? But what about my family, God? What about those I’m leaving behind? Why must I move now?” It’s necessary that we stop asking questions and instead obey and trust in the Lord. 

Lord, I know that the plans you have for me are great and demand all my strength. It’s hard to let go of relationships, of home, of family, or a job and the hopes we had in the past, but I know that the future of whatever is ahead of me is always better and brighter than the past. Help me to believe that the best is yet to come. Thank you for the joys of the past, thank you for the hope of a future, thank you for the trial of the present moment. Please command your angels, Lord, to take my hand.

...I suppose, if we ate fruit pie all the time, eventually a deeper hunger would consume us for something more substantial. I’m hoping for heaven, wishing for paradise, and missing out on the good stuff around me. I’m missing the meat, the salt, the onion, the spice that goes into living in the moment, being satisfied and grateful for the here and now.  

What's at Stake in the Marriage Debate

We were in church, and he was standing there so firmly rooted, so solid, letting her sway freely in his arms. Her blond hair flowed down to her shoulders. Her eyes sparkled. She was wearing a jumper dress with white tights. And she was SOOOO happy! You could tell by the way she was playfully rocking back and forth in her daddy’s arms, stroking her daddy’s face and mouth with her hands, and throwing her head back with carefree abandon. His eyes and his mind were obviously trying to focus on the Mass more than on her, but he was letting her continue touching and stroking his face, while he held her in his grip.

She was probably not more than two or three years old, and suddenly I saw myself in that little girl. It hit me. I WAS that little girl once.

I felt the stab of loss. What would she feel, if the next day, she was ripped out of his embrace forever?

Blood splattered all over the front seat. Broken glass. The side of the car looked like a smashed soda can. A woman moaned, knowing intuitively that her husband’s life had just been snatched away. And the little girl in the back of the car lost her daddy that day.

What marks would be left chiseled on the young girl’s face? I am familiar with the marks. I see them in photographs of myself soon after that tragic day, a little girl just three years old with lips pursed so serious from the taste of grief, and eyes looking so sad and lonesome. It breaks my heart.

I see the marks in a growing child who’s hiding somewhere deep inside herself when uncles are roughhousing with her cousins. I see the marks in the teenage girl, insecure and uncertain about her body, wondering why isn’t her father here to notice her, to coach her, to teach her about the world. I see the marks in a college-bound girl finding her way out there, wondering and wanting to know what kind of man her father really was. 

Fatherlessness. It’s more common than ever today and very unfortunate. Yet part of our society tries to tell us that this condition is normal and okay. We get a mixed message that young girls don’t need a father. Young boys don’t need to be raised by a dad to learn about manhood. In fact, we can do away with this institution called marriage that unites kids with their moms and dads. We can do away with recognizing this and protecting this for the sake of redefining marriage to be between any two people who love each other.

  

Really? This hurts. Today, the U.S. Supreme Court heard cases challenging California’s Proposition 8 (the ban on redefining marriage) and arguments on the Defense of Marriage Act. Marriage is hanging in the balance and many people don't even know what is at stake. Some think it's just about letting same-sex couples "participate" in marriage. But the problem with redefining marriage (by removing "man and woman" from the law and inserting "two people") is that it eliminates the only institution that unites kids with their moms and dads.

When either a child’s mom or dad is taken out of the picture, replaced by someone else or not, the child suffers. Roger Scruton said in his essay from “The Meaning of Marriage”:

“Take away marriage and you expose children to the risk of coming into the world as strangers, untutored by fathers or abandoned by mothers; a condition of abandonment in which they may remain for the rest of their lives.”

Fatherless and single-parent homes produce children who are more likely to be arrested for juvenile crime and treated for emotional and behavioral problems, as well as more likely to be sexually, emotionally and physically abused and neglected. There is a physical poverty in this that has its effects on society - 71% of poor families are unmarried, while marriage alone drops the probability of childhood poverty by 82% - but there is also a huge emotional poverty here that books like Fatherless Daughters and Motherless Daughters so keenly address.

We should ask ourselves, how is the obliteration of marriage between men and women contributing to a safer and healthier community and society? After reading a short, eye-opening little book called Getting the Marriage Conversation Right: a guide for effective dialogue by Bill May, I have begun to see marriage through the eyes of a child. I recommend reading it if you want to know how to to talk respectfully on the subject. Seriously, read it.

If we stopped viewing marriage as an adult-centric thing and started seeing the good of marriage for children and for society – the public good – we would realize that marriage essentially is not just a public pledge of love between two committed persons but that it is in essence an institution of procreative and unitive forces. It exists to unite a man and woman with each other and any children born of their union.

Every child has a biological mom and dad. And every person has a common desire to know, love and relate with their biological mom and dad. We carry our parents traits and the traits of those who came before them. We have a family history running through our blood. We want to know where we came from, because it’s part of our identity.

Where do I get this head full of strawberry blonde hair from?...This writerly way of looking at things?...This connection with all things growing in nature?...This courageous spirit?...Namely, who's history is written into my very DNA? To intentionally deprive a person of having these questions answered is to close off a part of the human experience to them.

  

Let’s stand up for children, marry and be witnesses that the family is the first school of love, discipline and justice. Building stable and healthy families means building a stable and healthy America. 

Love that little girl and her daddy for witnessing to me in a simple moment the beauty of the father-daughter relationship.