My image of the week...

Brancusi's sleeping Muse...

It's not that I feel unfruitful, but I do think that besides Jesus sleeping in the boat, sometimes one's own creative spirit needs to take a break...slow down, take a break, ruminate, let it lie, unfold or sleep...for something new (or old) to emerge.

Let's see...

If you focus on the problem, you'll never see the solution

“Ad primum ergo dicendum quod finis, etsi sit postremus in executione, est tamen primus in intentione agentis. Et hoc modo habet rationem causæ.” ST. THOMAS AQUINAS, Summa Theologiæ I- II, 1, 1.

...my favourite (or at least most quoted) Thomas Aquinas quotation. Because it is all about where we are going. If you know where you're going, and what your aim is, then the rest will follow. So I find myself asking: where to, Lord? What next, personally and perhaps especially, lately, as community and Church? Open my heart in the direction of yours and I will be there...and I do think it is about learning to see as God sees. I watched an old but amazing film the other day:

"See what nobody else sees; see what everyone else chooses not to see, out of fear or conformity or laziness. See the whole world anew..."

And that's scary, but it's what I'm asking for. we have one life. Many gifts, many challenges, many lights...and one life to do it in. I pray Lord, it won't be fear or conformity that stops us.

I'm not sure I'm looking for greatness but I do know we are called to great things, and that in order to do them, God needs us free and creative. 

Who are we for each other?

I wonder sometimes, thinking about those of us called to religious life: "who are we to each other?"

Maybe I am naive, in that I came into the world through a very blessed and beautiful family, so it seems to me that the commitment to another person as a couple or to one's children, although difficult, is at least clearer. But those of us who have given our lives to and for God - is it not too easy to become trapped in ourselves? Loving everyone, we risk loving no one? and in any case: who is the other person for me? Where and how do I bond? What do I give? What do I receive? What is friendship and love for a person whose heart is called to love Jesus, fully and wholly, and through him, others? Even having blessed relationships and friends, for whom I thank God daily, at times this question haunts me, as I look at the Church, near and far.

My soul is flooded with Sadness…

My soul is flooded with Sadness…

and I think it’s not all mine.

As the water rises, Lord,

Drench memories

            Darken corners

                    Drown the past in your still-breathing presence…

that I may die, forget, let go

and rise

different and new…

My soul is flooding with Sadness and it’s not all mine.

Nowhere else on earth that I would rather be…

Today I said goodbye to San Francisco sailing under the Bay Bridge in order to see the production of the musical “My Fair Lady” at the San Francisco Playhouse. A small theatre – only two pianos to accompany the singing - a wonderful production, which had me in tears. It was the first musical I ever sang in (high-school production – all-girl cast, but the Eliza in me sang her heart out), and each and every tune replayed the sensibility of an age in which I was awakening to life, dreams and possibilities.

What is it about tears that they can express both that which makes and breaks the human heart? Tears have welled up inside me a lot in this past week, as I attempt to say farewell to people and places which have been my home for this year…and it is only a year, right? Time is a strange beast! Augustine was right about us knowing what it is until we are asked about it. Nothing to do with past and future; everything to do with what fills our every present moment. And this year has been dense and intense with ‘moments’, and feelings, and encounters… I never knew when signing up for the adventure of missionary life, at the tender age of seventeen, that one of the hardest things Jesus would continually ask of me would be to love deeply and yet let go so often - and this year feels particularly deep, in both loving and losing. To paraphrase another ‘classic’: sorry is not the hardest word – the hardest, by far, is goodbye. (Future title of a song!)

And yet…one phrase of the musical hit me with unusual strength: “There is nowhere else on earth that I would rather be”, and it echoed as truth. As I cut my heart free from the people it loves, and feel the absence and the gap life’s circumstances (read complex!) provoke, it is his wounded hand I sense guiding my own, and his clear as crystal presence flavours the tears that fill my eyes – salty, like the way love tastes when it’s worth it. So if this is the cost and the price to pay, so be it...Then there is no where else I want to be, but where you placed me, and when you placed me there.

Thank you, Lord.