The first day of “clinicals” for CNA training (Certified Nurse Aide) my class showed up to the nursing home in our white scrubs at 6am. We would do this for three days in a row. We were to shadow the established CNA’s and sometimes follow our teacher around with the class, observe and also try out our skills we had learned in school.
I changed my first few adult diapers that day, with an acute realization of how embarrassing it must be for a patient to have that done until they were used to it. My teacher observed and made suggestions. I tried to make conversation with the people as I served them. It was awkward and weird and I think my face sweated with nervousness but I suppose that’s normal.
One guy I changed was aware and oriented but nonverbal. He graciously let me change him for practice but apparently I made a big mistake. Later in the day I noticed he glared at me whenever he saw me. I found out later that this was because the next time he had peed after I changed him pee went up out of the top of his diaper and got his shirt all wet. With a male patient you have to make sure – er – that there is a downward course for pee. I found him and told him I was sorry about that but he mean mugged me the rest of the time I was there. Oh well.
Later in the break room we had a chance to chat with the CNA’s that worked in the nursing home. To our complete surprise they urged us not to go through with doing this. “She broke her arm,” they said, nudging one of the group, who said, “My arm’s broke, my hearts’ broke, my backs’ broke. It ain’t worth it. It ain’t worth it.” They explained that they loved the patients, and that they each had at least one they were very close to that among themselves they referred to as their baby. “Of course you love them. You have to love them but when they die, it about kills you. “
It was really too late to turn back and we had done too much work and paid our tuition. All of us stayed on and finished our training.
I met some interesting people. There was a married couple who were able to room together. I remember their room had regular furniture in it and looked really cozy. There was a man who had filled his room with books and loved talking to us. There wasn’t time though. There never is. One caregiver has ten patients. By the time you finish getting everyone up and dressed fed changed and cleaned up in the morning it’s time for lunch. I didn’t like how even if one of them was crying there was no time to talk to them and try to help. Someone else in the next room had a physical need to be met. You had to keep going.
i remember one lady liked to play rap on her radio with the volume all the way up. She sat in her wheel chair with her forehead on the speaker with the music blaring all morning until lunch. Sometimes she would really get her head moving. It was impossible not to smile watching her.
Some of the people there were very tragic, very disabled, helpless and alone. It was hard to see that. I wanted to track their families down and yell at them when I heard they seemed to have no one.
Institutions always feel like timeless, placeless places to me, impersonal and eerie in a sense. There’s a lot going on but seemingly little warmth or connectedness. However if you’re there long enough they start to seem more human. Such was the case at the nursing home. I have heard the denizens of nursing homes described as “limp, faceless people in wheel chairs.” It really offended me. It isn’t true. The first time you see someone wheeled into the lobby who seems listless and unaware maybe it seems scary. Maybe they seem practically dead to some people? Lean into the experience, move toward them and not away and like me maybe you’ll find out there is a person there with a lot more going on than you thought. Maybe they are nonverbal or have trouble holding their head up or they’re babbling but that doesn’t mean they can’t receive or even express love. In fact a lot of them had such a need to love that the staff gave them baby dolls to hold. I saw several people carrying baby dolls.
A lady stopped me in the hall and told me how tired she was. “Please I’m so tired. Can you find me a bed?” I didn’t know where her room was and nobody around me knew. So I led her to a vacant room and tucked her into bed. She thanked me. “I worked so hard today,” she said. I said, “I know. You rest now.” I thought to myself that she had probably worked hard all of her life.
One day at lunch I was told to go and hand feed the people at a certain table if they needed it. I sat next to one lady who seemed pretty out of it. I greeted her but I couldn’t get her attention. So I scooped up some food in a spoon and held it up to her mouth. She looked at me and then grabbed a spoon, scooped up some food, and held it up to my mouth. I laughed. “Well you showd ME,” I told her. Apparently she could eat on her own if she wanted to.
I met a saintly man during that few days who became a friend. His name was Jim. I’ve written about him before.
I decided during those days that I was not going to work in a nursing home. The pay was only a couple dollars more an hour than minimum wage. I wanted the opportunity to spend more time with people I helped. I also like a less rushed kind of day. However, I would go back many times to that nursing home. I took my final exam there. But I also spontaneously went over there to visit because it made me happy. if I was in a sad mood I would stop by and hang out in the lobby and watch a checker game. Or just hug people. Or go pray a rosary and have some coffee with my friend Jim. Going there always made my day.
Something Zane loved to do was make cookies. This is something we did nearly every day. I used to hold his hand to help him crack an egg and make sound effects for him. He liked that. He used to try to eat the butter and show his enthusiasm for our baking activity by mouthing the bowl. His very favorite part was pouring the mix into the bowl. I used to say, “Here comes your favorite part!” I bought the same cookie mix today and I’m in my kitchen making cookies in spirit with Zane, smiling and chuckling at the parts of our process that I remember.
Well. my granddaughter will be happy and surprised to see cookies when she gets home from school.
Zane was a young nonverbal autistic guy with cerebral palsy that I took care of for the last four years of his life. He died at 20 years old on August 22.
700 years ago in Ireland a young girl left her home in the middle of the night as swiftly and silently as she could. She left with a priest, two household servants and a court jester who were her friends. She was not fleeing a forced marriage to a foreign prince or running away to a convent. She was running from her own father who seemed to have lost his mind after her mothers’ death and was trying to make his daughter marry him in her place.
Dymphna and her friends were able to make it to a Belgian town called Gheel.
She must have been a hard worker and had a compassionate heart. She and her friends established themselves in the town and Dymphna began caring for the sick and the poor. She had a special sympathy for people suffering from mental illness. She still shows that sympathy now through her intercession.
Eventually her father, who was a minor Irish king, found out where she was. He had her priest executed as soon as he arrived and demanded Dymphna return home. When she refused he beheaded her on the spot. She was 15.
The people of Gheel eventually built a church over where Dymphna was buried. Over the years it began to be noticed that healings happened at her tomb, especially healing from mental illness.
Inspired by St. Dymphna’s special concern for the mentally ill the people of Gheel began to take into their homes the pilgrims who came to visit Dymphna’s tomb. In a time when the mentally ill were chained, beaten and locked away the families of Gheel made these sufferers part of their households with acceptance, freedom, dignity and whatever level of responsibility they could handle. Some stayed for a short time, some for the rest of their lives becoming members of the family.
Gheel became famous for this model of family care that seemed to work so well. This tradition is still ongoing though now combined with a hospital that is only used when absolutely necessary, and with modern medicine as part of overall treatment.
Gheel’s example makes us want to rethink the way we treat the mentally ill, especially those whose conditions are severe. Gheel shows us how it could be.
Among us here the mentally unwell often end up without homes or anyone to assist them. Federal and state agencies set up to help these people are understaffed and overwhelmed. It is a testament to serious failures on our society’s part. To see some poor emaciated sufferer shouting and waving his arms at traffic with toilet paper wrapped around his legs as I did last week breaks the heart. It’s wrong and we know it. Unfortunately our state is last in mental health access in the country.
Gheel and St. Dymphna challenge us. How can we as people of faith contribute in a respectful and merciful way to necessary change, to the well being of people who suffer mental, emotional or neurological difficulties? Our society is not set up for them. How can we help? How can we change that?
Perhaps we can begin by asking for St. Dymphna’s intercession and inspiration.
St. Dymphna, healer of mental and emotional suffering, pray for us. Pray for everyone in mental or emotional pain, especially those left on the outskirts without resources. You inspired a whole town to take people with mental suffering into their homes so that they might live near you and the place you are buried. They still come and stay with you and the people of your town today. Help us build a culture of compassion and acceptance so these children of God can live with dignity among us as the people they are and so that the rest of us don’t miss out on what they can give, on their potential part in building community. Show us the way. Amen.
St. Dymphna’s feast day is May 15th. She is the patron saint of the mentally ill, victims of incest and domestic abuse, and runaways.
During this little slice of Ordinary Time after Christmas and before Lent we might begin to feel spiritually unenthused. Maybe we were already. Maybe we even avoid prayer and the practice of our faith. Maybe we have an aversion to our daily duties. Maybe we’re bored and drawn mostly to distractions. What’s going on? St. Evagrius (AD 385-399) who lived in the Egyptian desert as an early monastic wrote about something called acedia.
What is acedia? The Catechism of the Catholic Church (2733) calls it a form of depression caused by giving in to spiritual laxity or presumption. The Desert Fathers thought of it as a spiritual condition people can fall into with a complex set of symptoms, a spiritual malady, or even as a demon.
[Acedia is] a hatred of industriousness, a battle against stillness, stormy weather for psalmody, laziness in prayer, a slackening of ascesis, untimely drowsiness, revolving sleep, the oppressiveness of solitude, hatred of one’s cell, an adversary of ascetic works, an opponent of perseverance, muzzling of meditation, ignorance of the scriptures, a partaker in sorrow, a clock for hunger.
St. Evagrius
Yikes.
St. Evagrious of Pontus says the real roots of acedia are self centeredness, anger and misdirected desire. When oppressed by acedia we tend to seek comfort and pleasure to counteract the restlessness we feel, and in response to our aversion to spiritual practice. We avoid the tasks we are responsible for. We withdraw from charitable activity and are more prone to gab with others for our own entertainment and distraction than to be useful to them. We fill our lives with surface busy-ness, avoiding prayer and study. We lack spiritual desire and quietly long for things and activities that will draw us away from the spiritual. We are both restless and exhausted. We want to sleep, we want to pace the floor. We feel at once angry and dissatisfied as well as listless, staring at nothing. This sounds terrible. No wonder Evagrious called it “the most oppressive of demons.’
All of this reminds me of a passage from one of my favorite books, The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster.
“There once was a boy named Milo who didn’t know what to do with himself; not just sometimes but always. When he was in school he longed to be out, and when he was out he longed to be in. On the way he thought about coming home, and coming home he thought about going. Wherever he was he wished he were somewhere else, and when he got there he wondered why he’d bothered. Nothing really interested him- least of all the things that should have. “It seems to me that almost everything is a waste of time,” he remarked as he walked dejectedly home from school.”
And “… while he was never anxious to be where he was going, he liked to get there as soon as possible.”
Had Milo been a monk he would have been diagnosed by the Desert Fathers like Evagrius, as suffering from, and indulging in acedia.
If we find ourselves troubled by acedia, what is the remedy? What should we do?
Master your thoughts.
Notice when your thoughts are going into that irritable, lazy restless lane again, and change course as soon as you notice. Something that helps me is to repeat the names of Jesus and Mary; “Jesus Maria Jesus Maria Jesus Maria” each time I find myself on that negative track again. Be patient with yourself. It doesn’t help to be mad or disappointed in yourself. Simply move on and persevere.
“Whether or not all these thoughts trouble the soul is not within our power; but it is for us to decide if they are to linger within us or not and whether or not they stir up the passions.”
St. Evagrius
Resist. If you want to sleep or run away or indulge in compulsive activity, persevere in what you are actually supposed to be doing in spite of how you feel. If you are avoiding prayer, pray. If you are avoiding your duties, get back on track. If you’ve lost sight of your routines, get back to them. I suggest working on one thing at a time so you aren’t overwhelmed. When you are stuck in acedia even one of these things can be hard enough to change.
Gratitude. Write down five things you are grateful for when everything is getting on your nerves. It works surprisingly well.
Manual labor. Nothing helps me as much as some vigorous sweeping, mopping or dragging things around outside. According to the Fathers, acedia is both mental and physical. This is why it’s so hard to kick.
Meditate on the Passion and Death of Jesus. Maybe praying the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary or The Way of the Cross can assist you in this. This is uniquely grounding for us as Christians.
Ask God for the gift of tears. According to Evagrius, the gift of tears in prayer, and tears of repentance are indispensable for liberation from acedia. So have a good holy cry, it cleanses the soul.
Preach the Psalms to your own soul. As Dorothy Day wrote, “My strength returns to me with my cup of coffee and the reading of the psalms. ”
Engage your intellect. I learned this from Fr. Gregory McLaughlin who taught me that when I was being ruled too much by my emotions, I should study, especially religious study such as Scripture or good spiritual reading. It works.
Go to confession. This may seem obvious but remember the Sacrament of Reconciliation is healing and restorative. God gave us Confession so we can receive his mercy, overcome our sins and begin anew which is exactly what we need to be free of acedia and free for God.
Good deeds. Go through the day quietly tucking in small kindnesses wherever you can. This is a remedy for almost any malady of any kind. When you are ready, throw yourself into working for others in some way.
Gently fold these things into your life and you will soon sense a clear fine spiritual love reclaiming its place in your heart.
I dress kind of shabbily, or so I’ve been told; not in a mean way. I don’t mind hearing that. In fact my bandanas and old jeans and t-shirts with worn out shoes have allowed me to gain some insight into something going on in the churches that is or should be of great concern to us.
Not too long ago I stepped into an adoration chapel at a church I don’t attend as often as my own parish. I was looking at some pamphlets and holy cards near the front door in the foyer. There were some people who had just finished an event that seamed to have ended. One of them came over to me. “Can I HELP you?” She asked pointedly. I was dumbfounded which is funny because this isn’t the first time this has happened to me at church ( I do attempt to dress more nicely for mass). One time when this happened, I had said, truthfully, “Yeah I’m looking for the ministry schedule.” This time I could think of nothing to say for myself. We continued to stare at one another. Suddenly she looked at my Immaculate Heart of Mary shirt and seamed embarrassed. It was OK. I wasn’t mad. I didn’t want her to feel bad. But because of experiences like these I have had and that others tell me they have had or have seen I am worried about something.
I’m worried that we don’t seam to have contact with the poor at our actual Catholic parishes generally. In my area and also in Lubbock the Catholic Churches have kind of “contracted out” that experience to a Diocesan charity all the parishes contribute to. I’m sure it’s not intentionally in order not to have the poor and homeless around our churches. However that is mostly the result. Furthermore it appears everyday Catholics don’t want the poor and the homeless around. Some have police or security guards at the door during mass. There could be a lot of reasons for this. I have asked around but never gotten a satisfactory answer, only vague or seemingly evasive ones or else the people I asked didn’t know.
I just have to wonder what message we give an outsider who may be nervous about coming in. Some people are comforted by the presence of the police but I don’t know any low or no income people who are. Having grown up in an alternative or “subculture” style household I don’t like seeing police around either. No hard feelings I just don’t. Their presence doesn’t mean anything good to me. So I imagine anyone needing help or community but hesitant to enter a church even though they want to may interpret a police presence as unwelcoming and frightening. It’s a great deterrent but is that what we want? How necessary is it to have that? I’m open to answers. I honestly don’t know.
In Austin I attended mass at a parish that has a little attached building in the back of the church where the homeless can come and get something to eat, something to wear, a blanket, whatever. When you come to the church during the day there are unhoused people sitting at picnic tables drinking battled water, maybe eating sandwiches. Some of them come to mass. I like that a lot. There is a chance to get to know them, an opportunity to learn what their lives are like, what their problems are, and in what ways they want to be helped in contrast to how we want to help them. Not everyone stops to say hi to them but some do. What a great idea.
By seeing the unhoused at mass with us we receive the message that we are one with them, that we are all in God’s eyes, on the same level. This is so much better than having them be out of sight.
It seems to me that the more contact we have with people in need and get to know what they’re about and what chronically troubles them, and what they think they need, we would be better able to deal with these problems on a larger scale.
Another time I was coming out of mass with everyone else in an Austin church on a very cold night. A young woman was waiting outside. She looked very young and very scared. She had two little kids with her. She was asking for bus money or anything anyone could do. Most people filed past her as if she were not there. Others looked at her as if they smelled something bad. I didn’t smell anything but winter air and unkindness. What are we all doing here worshipping Jesus and then ignoring him outside of mass?
That’s shabby.
Sometimes I have looked away from someone in need when I knew I didn’t have any money or any way to help. I had to learn to cut that out. It’s a shabby reaction. I can at least greet people like this and talk to them, try to find out what’s going on, let them feel cared about. I may even be able to help them in some other way than what I thought they would ask.
In the same parish where some people have treated me like I don’t belong, I was scolded years ago by a long gone priest at a local parish about having been late to mass because a woman with a baby was standing out in the cold asking for help and I tried to help her… which made me late. He said they didn’t want to encourage this kind of thing (people coming up to the church asking parishioners for help) and also that I should prioritize being punctual for mass. This was another time I had no idea what to say so I just looked at him. I said, “Oh.” I wanted to tell him I didn’t think I could do that, just couldn’t. On the way home I prayed about it. “Am I really supposed to do that?” I didn’t know. But it has never made sense to me.
A pertinate Catholic social teaching is the Preferential Option for the Poor. How can we practice that as Church if we are only sending money to some charity we know little about, or random collection of faceless (to us) poor? To me love should be more personal if at all possible.
If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship… but do not have love, I gain nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:3, a &c)
It does seem as if just giving money isn’t enough.
How can we as Church encourage our government leaders to enact policy that is really helpful to the needy if we don’t know what goes on for them or even know any of them at all? When we don’t know we tend to make things up, assume things we shouldn’t, or just believe other people who may have their own agendas concerning the issue at hand. I think we should find out if a politician speaking about these things knows any low income or no income or mentally ill or unhoused people personally before we consider their ideas about what should be done or not done.
I often hear, “We should let the charities take care of that.” The problem with that is that the need is overwhelming. Donations are low. Local charities in my area are out of money almost as soon I they get it. One I’m fairly knowledgeable about only takes calls on Fridays. On Fridays about twenty people can get through and then they’re out of donations again and can help no one else. I usually advise those in need of their help to invite all their friends over and have everyone call repeatedly starting early in the morning. Then maybe somebody will get through.
A good friend of mine who had to resort to food stamps when her husband was ill and needed constant care was only able to get $23 per month in assistance. Sometimes I talked to her and she hadn’t eaten for several days. She lives eight hours away or I would have taken her our dinner. The food bank where she lives is out of food all the time. Charities do amazing work. But we can’t always think we don’t have to help because they’re doing all that on our behalf.
On behalf of another family I was trying to help I called and I drove all over town and could only get a Wal-mart card for $50 from Catholic Charities. They were out of money. Everyone was. The clinic said they couldn’t help the very ill mother either because her extremely painful illness was not on their list of illnesses they could help with. The family, the very sick mom and her two sons only got $11 of food stamps per month. Yes you read that right. Eleven dollars.
I have learned so much about what really goes on by getting to know people who live in survival mode and have to depend on charities, churches and government agencies for the necessities of life either all or some of the time. I learned enough to know I don’t know anything about anything and that I need to make an effort to find out for myself what they go through.
What I’m hoping to do here is make a case for Catholic Churches to stop merely farming out their work for the poor and welcome them instead. As parishioners we are missing out not having the poor around. We are also getting the message that the practice of our faith and worship is separate from helping the poor. Nobody says that but isn’t that the way it is playing out? We want to go to mass and not be bothered with them. We think it is a nuisance. Maybe it is but I don’t think Jesus has prioritized that.
One area parish I called on behalf of someone needing help does refer everyone to that charity the churches here contribute to. However they also have someone in the office who calls and talks to the person and sees what else the parish can do. The person I was calling for had just lost her boyfriend to a tragic event she had witnessed. He had died a few weeks prior. I hadn’t even thought of grief counseling for her I was just trying to get her help with her bills. The woman who called from the church got this girl hooked up with free grief counseling.
All the parishes can do that. Maybe they do. However in my experience of trying to be of help people, what they get when they call a local Catholic Church is sent away with yet another phone number to call or list or a brochure to check out. Sometimes these are outdated and the places on the list don’t even exist anymore. We can do better than that. We can be more personal. We can make sure they don’t feel stupid or unwanted or unwelcome when they come to us. We could have a little food pantry or clothes closet or some diapers on hand at least. Some of our churches do.
We can keep somebody on staff whose job is to truly connect with compassion and respect, to walk people through what they need to do next, help them fill out a form or make a call. Maybe that person can be you. Maybe we can all take turns being there. We can ask questions kindly, really wanting to know; not because we are worried they are going to pull a fast one on us, but because we want to see if there are any other ways we can help.
Yeah I dress shabby. But what’s really shabby? This. It’s shabby. There is no need for it. Sure dress nicely for mass as expected. But first, as a community, let us be resplendent in charity.
“Orare est Laborare, Laborare est Orare—to pray is to work, to work is to pray” – St. Benedict
St. Joseph you knew this and it was your way of life, your “skin religion” to pray by hand, to instill love into all you did. For you concentration on your work was consecration of your work as you lived continually aware of the presence of your God, and of Jesus and Mary’s physical presence with you.
You taught Jesus your trade and way of life and prayer, the dignity love and beauty of work.
Teach us your special brand of the practice of the presence of God, of the holiness of work and how it changes the world as we dedicate it to you in ways we can’t imagine. Be with us in our daily work and help us to bless our fellow human beings with our work and prayer, our ora et labora. We pray with you for all who work, especially those who do hard labor. May their burdens be lightened today. May they find joy in their prayer and work. Amen.
What is Christian love? After my conversion to Catholicism (quite a leap from the way I was raised which was without religion,) my family had adjusting to do. My brother was the person I was closest to. We were symbiotic and as my mom said, “joined at the hip.” For me to make such a radical change in my world view seemed like a kind of betrayal by me. In the beginning we argued. I would say I loved him, which wasn’t especially well received when he was mad. Once he said, “I don’t want your ‘Christian love.‘ I just want you and YOUR love.” This upset me. I thought “What’s the difference?”
Pondering this interaction on the drive home, I realized what he meant and what his fear was. When we were kids my parents were very young, idealistic and nonconformist. We looked different. Our Hippie family was ill treated in the small Texas town my parents had moved to for school in 1968. It was a college town, yes, but unbelievably conservative. They did not allow women into the University unless they were married to a male student until 1972.
A lot of people who said they were Christian didn’t let us play with their kids, talked mess about our parents right in front of us, were harsh and cold with my brother and me and we didn’t understand why. We saw them as alienating people with fake smiles, and vacant eyes who were prone to heartlessness. When they said anything about loving us for Jesus’ sake it just sounded like they didn’t want to “love us” (whatever that meant) but Jesus wanted them to play nice. Which they didn’t.
My brother was afraid I would now love him in some generalized fake way, judging him as a person the whole time. It took him time and experience with me as a Catholic to disabuse him of that notion.
What does Christian love really mean? What does it mean to love someone for Jesus’ sake? I do think sometimes people don’t go very far with this. Maybe sometimes we do think it means to play nice.
Someone on social media told me he was tired of the Church being “the Church of nice.” I said I knew we weren’t supposed to be “the Church of Nice.” No we are supposed to be the Church of radical love.
I’m still working this out. All of us are, as my granny used to say, “full of prunes.” We don’t know what we’re talking about and we think we do. We think better of ourselves sometimes than we really are. We can wake up feeling like we love everybody and we hate everybody by 2 O’clock, or at least we hate several people. Some people. I’m no different. Sometimes I tell Jesus, “I know I’m not allowed to hate that guy. I know you love him, I know.” I tell him all about it. Then there is a glimmer, a hint, of what Jesus feels for that person, and I can’t go on with my tirade or hot headed attitude. I can perceive my self both as the fool I am and the affection and love God has for me. Most of the time peace comes to me pretty quickly if I’m willing. Life is so hard and I don’t know why it has to be so hard. It just is.
In that glimmer of understanding and touch of peace, I think lies the answer of the beginning of Christian love, real love, personal love for a unique and unrepeatable human being we may not know as well as we could, or a transformed love for someone we know as we know ourselves.
Christian love comes from union with Christ, the transforming love of “putting on the new self.” (Eph. 4:24. This is how we begin to love others as Jesus loves us. (See Jn. 13:34.) I don’t think this ability comes from baptism alone. I think it comes from prayer and time spent consciously in God’s presence. It is prayer that taught me how to love more fully, to examine my inner motivations and attitudes toward others and myself. Prayer and fledgling love of God inspired me to own up to my character defects and wrongheaded, prideful or selfish way of loving- even my brother.
With prayer and being with God we receive a new clarity and freedom of heart. This doesn’t happen right away. It takes so much time that often I get frustrated with myself. I have to remember that God will “complete the good work he has begun in [me.]”
For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will complete it by the day of Christ Jesus.
Philippians 1:6
Teresa of Avila wrote about detachment in relationships, especially in Chapter 7 on spiritual friendship in her book The Way of Perfection. “Detachment” sounds cold to us today. Based on my own experience I think I know what she means a little bit that we can apply here. This doesn’t mean less love for someone! It really means a detachment from self, from selfishness in our relationships.
How do we do that? Admittedly I don’t have this figured out yet. However, there is a lot of mystery involved so I don’t blame myself for that!
Similar to our efforts and experience of prayer there is an active part to this new kind of human love, and a mystical part.
The active part is more obvious. We decide to be more self aware to notice what to let go of in our ways of relating. Some of this is simple. Let’s have a look at my brother and me. When he went to rehab at age 16, we learned from the staff there how to better communicate. At first we felt silly like we had to learn to talk all over again and we would get tired of it sometimes and revert to old ways. Or we lost our tempers and had outbursts. We talked about this. We decided to see our progress. The progress was we noticed what we were doing wrong. Then with practice we got where we noticed even before we were mean and stopped ourselves. Then later, we didn’t even think about being mean anymore. Or controlling. Or selfish anymore. This is basic stuff for some people but to us it was a whole new fish bowl.
In the mean time I was learning to pray. I must have been quite an emergency to God because he set about teaching me what real love felt like right away. It was the way he loved me, and the way I learned to love him back. His love is simple and tender and clear. It stops the thoughts and worries running through your mind and you don’t even think “Hey I’m being loved.” It just is.
My own love started to simplify itself, both my love for God and my love and regard for other people. I learned to listen to people in the same way I was learning to listen to God. This took work and came from an urging I think was from him, that I do so. But the transformation took time.
My brother decided I was still me and that he didn’t have to worry about me turning into someone else or loving him in some impersonal creepily fake way. He noticed me growing as a person and that he could translate my new language of spirituality into his own understandings about life and his pragmatic view of spiritual things. He noticed I judged him less, not more. Sometimes, like his early sober days, we reverted to old fears in our relationship, both of us afraid of not being accepted as were were. We both learned, we both grew. We learned to accept one another.
And that’s how it is. What do you know? When we are able to love someone in a Christly way, they don’t just experience Jesus through us, we experience Jesus through them as well, whether they are Christian or not. We want to know a person better when we meet them and we know that every one of them belongs. We may not know how we know, but we know.
And pretty soon the whole thing gets out of control and our way of loving grows a new dimension. The world opens up and the possibilities are endless.
What does God say about this?
Beloved, we are God’s children now. What we shall be has not yet been revealed. However, we do know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he really is.
1John 3:2
Applied to learning to love others, I take this to mean in this case that we are already God’s children, but we ourselves are a mystery unfolding, known only to God. The closer we get to the Lord, the more we are transformed as we come to know him and love him as he is, which is for himself; the way he loves us. We will not be perfect at this in this life. However we can cultivate God’s kind of love through prayer, self awareness, God awareness, and the service he inspires. In his mysterious way he will work his beautiful will in us all our lives more and more in pathways of love.
And then we have so much to look forward to: the absolute fullness of love, the fullness of God and union with him.
“Turn not to the easiest, but to the most difficult,” wrote St. John of the Cross.This principle has been my inspiration for my project for Lent 2022.
By nature I am somewhat reclusive. Solitude, prayer, and reflection come far more easily to me than leaving the house. Leaving the house requires an urgent duty such as work, the request of someone who needs me, or maybe a crowbar.
When people ask me to go to events I usually say no. Sometimes I say maybe and then don’t go. Even events I want to go to I start to dread as the time draws near, and I wish there was a way out of them.
St. Teresa of Avila wrote that the perfect soul is a sublime balance between Mary of Bethany who listened at Jesus’ feet and her sister Martha who served his needs. (See Luke 10:38-42) This soul would be an ellipse dedicated to both prayer and service. If we don’t serve, then have we prayed in a way that allowed Christ to transform us? How can we keep what we have with Jesus if we don’t give it away? How can we grow if we don’t change? Well we can’t.
St. Teresa said the life of prayer should always lead us to “good works, my daughters, good works.” I don’t mind “good works,” and in spite of my love of solitude, I have a full and busy life.
When I am with someone they are the only person in the world to me. However, group interaction with people I don’t know tends to overwhelm me. Make it something official like a meeting for an organization and I am automatically miserable and feel socially inept.
For Jesus this Lent I have been trying to show up anyway, go against my natural inclinations, and expand into new territory. Doing this I have found new dreams and new vistas where Jesus is leading me. I am even on the board now of a new organization to help those in need in our community. (More on that new endeavor at another time.) I have never been on the board of anything and would never have thought that I would be competent to do so. I’m still uncertain but am trying anyway.
In the past I have helped people in a “vigilante” kind of way, just on my own. I thought this was because organizations have so many of what I considered “annoying rules” such as “don’t let random people you help into your car or home, and avoid getting involved in their lives,” etc. I like to be free to let someone take a shower at my house if they need to. I have wanted to be a friend more than to feel like an agent of some kind. I don’t want to have to fill out forms or be impersonal with someone in any way. At least this is what I thought my disinclination was about. It was partly that.
However, through this Lenten project of “going to things” like meetings for charitable concerns, I have come to see that some of my aversion to rules and organizations comes also from the fact that I am willful and kind of flakey, or I have been in the past. I didn’t want to be accountable. I didn’t want to have to help every day or on a schedule. I liked to do whatever I wanted when I wanted and the way I wanted, mostly as opportunities to help naturally came my way. Well that is a new insight into my selfish nature I had not looked at before.
What I am learning now by experience is that collaboration with other people and organizations on behalf of a person or people in need, is one of the most powerful forces for change in the world. You probably already knew that but I didn’t. I am continually surprised how much can be done when people put their heads together to do something good.
I am learning that showing up makes even my home life and my prayer life more fruitful and creative. I feel inspired. I even feel like my life has taken a turn down a new path and all I did was go to things. While there, I tried to keep an honest, open and willing heart even if I was nervous and uncomfortable. Maybe the Martha and Mary parts of my soul are influencing one another and working together in new ways. Maybe they can be friends.
I’m still a hermit type. I’m still nervous at meetings and I still wish I could stay home. But I’m excited too that Jesus is doing something new with me even though it is still somewhat unknown. For me, following him into this new adventure is a big step.
And what about you? What are you doing or what can you do that may be new or come less easily for you? Where might Jesus be taking you?
Whether your journey with the Lord this Lent is inward or out into the world, may the same love of Christ urge us on.
Yesterday I walked in a peaceful (though good and loud) Black Lives Matter protest in Houston in response to the murder by police of George Floyd and by the long list of black men and women who have also been killed by police.
It was a powerful experience.
My daughter drove us so even though traffic was slow and she didn’t know where she could park, I jumped out of the car right away with my sign, my phone in my back pocket and joined the chanting throng streaming into the street from Discovery Green.
It felt so good to be able to do something, to show support at this time along with so many others of every possible race and ethnicity. I saw “Arabs for Black Lives” t-shirts. I saw Jewish men with their prayer shawls on. I saw Hispanic people, Asian people, and plenty of other white people. There were families with their children too. Mostly I saw everywhere beautiful black people standing up for themselves, and for their murdered brothers and sisters and their families, supporting one another, demanding righteous change. It was awe inspiring.
One of the chants were the last words of George Floyd, “I can’t breathe!” He also had said to please let him up and that they were killing him. And he called out for his mother. There was so much heartbreak that day at the protest that at times it seemed like a funeral. Sure enough that is partly what it was. As the leaders of the March said, “We are here to lift up his name.”
That was another chant: “SAY HIS NAME!” And the response, “GEORGE FLOYD!” Over and over they said this and I think it is so important. We should not forget the individual people who have died in the seemingly never ending stream of police violence against people of color. They were people, individuals. We are standing up for them specifically, as well as the entire African American community.
“BLACK LIVES MATTER,” of course, was shouted throughout.
*For the “all lives matter” crowd, maybe I can be of some help as to what “Black Lives Matter” means and why it is a non starter to keep saying that.
My friend, here is what I gather about this: black people are telling us they feel their lives don’t matter to us. Can you blame them? They are not trying to tell us other people’s lives don’t matter. They are asking us to notice what’s happening when they say that. And they are reminding themselves that their lives matter in the face of all this. When people say back “all lives matter” it sounds like “you aren’t suffering from this,” “It’s all in your head,” or worse, “We don’t care.”
Suppose a fire truck arrives at your home as it is burning and begins to fight the flames; and a neighbor runs up yelling at the firemen, “all homes matter.” Think about it, or better yet, pray about it.
-Julian Mcmurrey
We marched to the courthouse where there were speeches I couldn’t hear very well. I understood that at least one woman who spoke was a mother of another black man killed by police. The drift of what a lot of the speakers were saying, though was that we should not stop here with this protest, that there is a lot of work to be done once we got back to our lives.
There were signs about different organizations and their websites so people could follow up on their commitment. I will include a couple of these at the end of this post.
It annoyed me that there were drones buzzing around close enough we could have swatted them. Helicopters flew overhead constantly. Eventually we noticed snipers on the roof of the court house and on other nearby buildings.
“See?” a woman said to me, “They don’t even care about us. We’re trying to speak out but they aren’t listening. This is how they do.” It was over kill, I thought. And so many children in the crowd too.
I texted my daughter who had her little one with her, and told her about the snipers. That was her cue to head in another direction. (By the way I also told other people coming into the area who had children with them as well.)
I stayed a while longer. Eventually, after a couple of hours, I started to head back to the car.
A couple of women from the march stopped me and wanted to take a picture of me with my sign. I said sure I would be honored. My sign was a quote from Pope Francis, “Racism is the greatest evil in our world today.” I had a bright red rosary wrapped around my wrist. Its dangling cross against my hand reminded me constantly of what I was doing there. I absolutely considered it my Christian duty to be there. I wanted to bring Jesus and Mary with me to love the people and stand with them, to try to radiate their love and solidarity. Also I was there as a Catholic. If anybody noticed my rosary maybe they would know “Catholics (some Catholics) “are with you.”
That was my idea anyway.
Volunteers were on corners handing out masks (I already had one) and water bottles. It was so hot so I took one. Im glad I did because after that my phone went dead and my daughter and I had a harrowing few hours where we couldn’t find each other.
I also couldn’t find my way back to the car although I had a general idea where it was.
I got kind of lost but then I managed to get back to the courthouse. There was a group of women on a corner there talking about prayer not being enough, and how God expects us to take action too. (I have noticed this too about God.)
“Its the Holy Spirit,” another woman said. “This is the Holy Spirit.”
I asked if they could point me back to Discovery Green because I hadn’t paid attention to the route we all took earlier, having been too excited to do so. They laughed kindly about that and said all we had done is go straight down the street behind them. It would take me straight to Discovery Green.
They liked my sign and I told them I had carried it in the Richard Spencer protest at Texas A & M too. One lady asked if I knew my daughter’s number. No I did not. She asked if Roise was on Social Media, and eventually she found her and sent her an instagram message for me that I was headed to the car.
Expressing my gratitude I started to pick up my sign and go. An older lady said she had an assignment for me once I got safe home. I was eager to hear it. She said, “Memorize. Your daughter’s. Number!” “I know right? Thanks ya’ll, for telling my daughter her ridiculous mother is headed her way.”
They thanked me earnestly for being there that day. I hadn’t expected that and I didn’t feel I really deserved it since it was something I wanted to do. But I knew what she meant. And I said thanks for having me.
Actually my daughter and I got that all day from people, “Thank you for being here.” Silly us! We hadn’t been quite sure we would be welcome or if it was appropriate. We know this is a black lead movement and we want to support that. Sometimes it just isn’t clear to us as white allies learning on the job, what we should do. I feel like I understand a little better now.
A long, tired, hot time later, I finally found the car. Two other people let me use their phones to try to call my daughter on social media along the way. “This is mom. I’m at the car.” I also had good conversations with them.
Of course my girl had the keys. Exhausted, I climbed on top of the car with my sign and prayed the rosary. After a while though, I started to get scared. Where was she? Did she get held up? What should I do if she never came back? What if something bad happened to her or the baby? My other daughter, I reflected, was going to kill me if anything happened. She had been very upset and scared that we were coming to this, given what happened in Minneapolis. I started to get that cold feeling you get in your stomach when you are really worried.
I saw a group of police officers getting out of a car near me. One of them pulled his baton out and said, “Yeah now we’re going to have some fun.” He caught my eye and looked (appropriately) a little embarrassed. As far as I know he never got to have any “fun.” For which I am grateful. I should say though that the police I saw around yesterday were trying to be relaxed and non intrusive.
On I waited. I checked nearby restaurants. No luck. I went back to my car.
I think I had been sitting on the car for an hour and a half before I happened to look up at the right time and see my daughter, pushing the stroller a couple blocks down. I was astonished when she didn’t turn to come down the street where the car was.
After thinking about why she would do that, I scrambled down from the car and took off running. When I got to the street she was on, she seemed hopelessly far away. So I put on the mom voice I used to call my daughters home with when they were out playing in the neighborhood as kids. “ROSAAAAAAAAAAAAY!” A man nearby resting with his sign on his lap chuckled.
To my relief she turned around and started coming toward me. I jogged toward her and was surprised to see she had been crying. She started crying when I hugged her and said she had gotten lost and her GPS was acting crazy, sending her all over the place. She had gotten overheated and collapsed and some people from the protest had helped her up, some talking brightly to her daughter as other people gave her water and stood by until she had drunk the entire bottle. They had her sit on a curb with them until she was better. Someone called her phone and helped her find it. They gave her directions to Discovery Green but she stopped to get a soda at a pub which made her sick and she promptly forgot the way. My granddaughter, Arelani, was glad to see me. She started chattering like the loquacious little being she is.
I walked them back to the car and drove us out of the city and toward home.
We were kind of in awe about the day, grateful there was at least something we could do, and so glad of all the kind people we had met, and how amazing the solidarity and unity had been. So many people, thousands of people, coming together to do a good thing, a holy thing, really. It had felt sacred to me, as well as sad and angry and hopeful too. It was motivating and we intend to do whatever we can to help out in future.
I want to say that our dearest black friends were very supportive. LeeAnne and her husband said “God bless you.” Mel told me to play Bob Marley on the way there for him. Between Mel and me this is how I keep him present at special times, like when I am making his birthday spice cake every year. He and his wife Lilly sent pictures of themselves to me too so I could carry them with me. My daughter’s best friend wept when she told her where we were going. “Why are you crying?” “I just feel thankful that y’all are doing this.” We hadn’t expected that but I think it is worth noting.
I remembered an article I had seen, and the photo in it of a big sign that said, “White people. Do Something.” Maybe it felt to them that we were responding. And that is what the black community wants from us, y’all. That’s what they want. For us to listen to what they want to say to us, to care and respond and be willing to help the way they want to be helped with this.
I’m slow but I am learning.
In the car, my four year old granddaughter, who is half African American, started chanting “BLACK YIVES MATTER! BLACK YIVES MATTER!” And “GEORGE FYOYD! GEORGE FYOYD!” Well, she had heard those things a lot today. We took video of her doing this and sent it to her dad (who is black.) It was adorable but also touching to see her do that. This is all also about her and her future.
On the way home we got a flat tire. I had forgotten my spare had been stolen so we were in a pickle. A friend picked us up and we are home safe and incredibly tired today. But it is a “good tired.”
In spite of the trouble, we are both profoundly glad we went, honored to have been there, to have been a part of it.
*photos not taken by my daughter, Roise Manning-Pauc, have been used with permission from the photographers.
Think Twice (Before you call the police, consider these alternatives.)
Bethany Hang Out 