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An Honor Walk


Today I did something I have never done before. I took part in an “honor walk” for someone I love very much who has died- just yesterday in fact.
I had never heard of an honor walk before. This is something that was done today for this person so beloved by so many. I can’t tell you who this person is to me because the family has not shared anything on line as far as I know so I won’t either.

However I thought this honor walk was pretty touching. Everyone came at such short notice and it was a lot of people!

It had to be carried out quickly due to the family’s decision to donate the organs “so he can be the answer to another family’s prayers.”

His body would be flown to Dallas for this purpose.

This death was sudden and tragic. Everyone I saw there in the ICU was still dazed from the shock of it. Hospital staff had us line the halls. Some of the people had signs with pictures of him saying “We love you.”

We seemed to stand there a long time. I didn’t know many of the others though I could guess who many of them were. I introduced myself to some I had heard the most about. I regretted that I somehow forgot my rosary. I always have one in my pocket but I didn’t remember today. I made desultory conversation with an interesting young person next to me whom I had met several times before. It was awkward or I worried it was.

I repeated “Jesus Maria” in my head as I tried not to let my emotions or my social anxiety overwhelm me.

In High School my best friend, Philip, was killed in a car accident. I remembered vividly watching his mother, Helen, go stoically through all of the necessary procedures. Afterwards I tried to stay close to her through the varying stages of her grief and mine.

A lot of feelings from my past came up standing there because I felt so terrible for the family. I remembered the last time I would ever see my first husband’s face after he had died in a car crash when he was twenty-eight. I had to ask my dad and brother to remove me so the funeral home people could close his casket because I just couldn’t leave Marc’s side. Standing and waiting today I kept thinking of the trauma, shock and horror this family must feel in these last moments with the body. I felt those feelings of horror and bottomless darkness from my past that I wish I could save them from.

I had to sort things out. I didn’t want to avoid my own grief for this person now. But I also needed to be present and remind myself that this is not my trauma. This is their trauma. This is their day, his day. I wanted to pray and to be there. I wanted to grieve this person and not my other people I’ve lost. I so wanted to strengthen the family and love them. As someone who is all full of trauma and loss myself this was hard to do.

Staff handed out water bottles and tissue. I noticed I was crying a little bit. That’s a sign of healing for me because I did not have that ability for many years. It is a recent development.

Finally the hospital bed carrying our person was pushed between the two lines of people from the other end of the hall. Everyone stood in silence. After the family had passed we followed. He was propped up on pillows. His eyes had some kind of shiny stuff on his closed eyelids. There was a ventilator tube coming out of his mouth. There was the face I loved, empty of expression now. He didn’t even look that empty when he was sleeping. He was definitely gone. Still I mentally told him I loved him knowing he could spiritually hear. I asked him to look after his family.

Finally we came to an open door leading to a kind of dock. A chaplain invited us to pray together which we all did. A hospital staff member of some kind read out some words of gratitude for what the family was about to do, and a blessing. She cried while she did it. The mother of our person spoke to him for a while some loving words. I couldn’t hear them exactly. And he was sent out.

I saw a beloved grandmother in the hall and hugged her and the weeping grandfather too.

The parents hugged me. I so wanted to be a comfort to them. I think I was. It seemed that way.

We were all guided back out to the lobby where I joined my step mom and daughter who had come with me, having known him too. I had stood with the family and close friends. My step mom had pushed me over there. I hadn’t been sure I should be so forward but it worked out.

I thought the honor walk was beautiful. It was fitting. It was just like the family, who are so loving, to do this.

I will think about it for a long time.

This is not my trauma but the family’s. However, I grieve. I do grieve terribly.


Now that the family has openly shared about Zane’s death I can too. I was his care giver since he was 16. I loved him – I do love him- very much.


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That’s Shabby

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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.

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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.

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6

Triumph of the Cross

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“The Sovereign Lord has opened my ears;
    I have not been rebellious,
    I have not turned away.
 I offered my back to those who beat me,
    my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard;
I did not hide my face
    from mocking and spitting.
 Because the Sovereign Lord helps me,
    I will not be disgraced.
Therefore have I set my face like flint,
    and I know I will not be put to shame.”

(Isaiah 50:5-7)

Anyone can give intellectual assent to Christ’s existence, his nature and purpose. Anyone can quote Scripture. Satan did both of those things. When the devil tempted Jesus in the desert he quoted Scripture just fine. The demons exorcised by Jesus proclaimed his truth screaming, “You are the Christ the Som of God!” as they left the scene at his command.. So it isn’t enough to know the Bible or to acknowledge Jesus in order to belong to him. Following him, identifying with him, seeking unity with him, living as he did, loving him in all of his mystery, that is what being Christian is.

His triumph was all of the things that most confound the forces of hell: sacrifice, obedience, love, surrender, acceptance, humility, non-violence, abandonment to God, suffering and losing a fight in front of the whole world, and on purpose.

Even we don’t understand it unless we console ourselves that he was resurrected on the third day, which he was. But in that moment he died with trust and abandonment. He gave himself over and faced his enemies in silence.

This throws Satan, and sadly it throws us too.

Even we Christians hold a deep attachment to violence and revenge. We cannot let go of the exhilarating high of vainglorious triumph.

And yet the Beautiful One admonished us to take up our crosses and follow him.

I don’t think that is simply putting up with the hardships of life hoping for reward though I know that is part of it. I think we need to respond to the violent world as he did.

Turning the other cheek to me means, “I will not be turned back from love.” That kind of power can only come from God and we have to want it.

We have to renounce ourselves and follow Jesus. That’s how we find life and even find ourselves.

I haven’t gotten there yet. I have been there sometimes but it is not yet my home, my way of being. Not yet. I suppose that is how it is for most of us.

I still want to win. I want to win, I tell myself, for others; for the poor, for those on the margins, for immigrants. However, like anyone, my motivations are mixed. There is still a selfishness and pride in it. We all want to force things, to feel powerful. It is the effect of the fall of humanity in us.

The real battle we have is against ourselves, as St. Teresa of Avila says. And this is hard, she points out, “because we love ourselves very much.”

God gave us an innate sense of justice and right. There is nothing wrong with this. We go wrong when we stray from the Gospel. A line in the Oscar Romero movie, Romero got to me. St. Oscar said to a fellow priest and advocate for justice, who tried to talk him into joining the rebels with him on behalf of the suffering people of El Salvador, “If you do this you will lose God just as they [those he would take up arms against] have.” Whether these were St. Romero’s exact words or not it is an incredibly powerful statement. It rings utterly true. If we persist in our attachment to violence we will lose God. Nothing, absolutely nothing is worth that. And we will “lie down in torment.” (Isaiah 50:11)

I have read that some people are starting to complain to their pastors when they preach on the Beatitudes, that the preaching was too left leaning. When confronted with the fact that these are the words of Jesus Christ, they retort that this is outdated, doesn’t work, is “weak.” Look at us. We haven’t changed. The Cross, the Gospel, is still a scandal, still makes no sense.

However, When he was insulted, he returned no insult; when he suffered, he did not threaten; instead, he handed himself over to the one who judges justly. (1 Peter 2:23)

“For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps” (1 Peter 2:21).

There is really no way around that.

Even those of us who know and accept the teachings of Jesus have parts of ourselves still attached to violence and our own ideas of justice. We still hope Jesus will clear the world of bad people on his return.. Not us though because we are nice people, right?

St. John of the Cross said that even if the only thing keeping a little bird tied to a tree branch is the thinnest of threads, the bird is still tethered, still not free.

We have to cut the thread.

On this Triumph of the Cross in 2023, in this era of mass shootings, unkindness and cruelty, and the promotion of a lack of compassion as a good thing by a significant portion of society, even by a good number of our fellow Christians, lets renounce violence in the Name of Christ, embracing instead the way of Jesus.

We can’t belong to the Christ of Revelation unless we belong to the Jesus of the Gospels with all that he showed us.

Thank God he is with us to help us with his endless grace.

He who has begun the work in us will complete it. (Philippians 1:6)

We have only to decide, every day, and trust that he will triumph in us.

“I have promised it and I will do it, says the Lord.” (Ezekiel 37:14b)

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1

Red


Red had an easy laugh; open and free 

He laughed at himself because he was funny, 

And at the world because it was his playground and he loved when it surprised him.

At The Eagle Newspaper pressroom

Red was irreplaceable 

Ingenious 

An out of the box thinker who loved to save the day. 

He liked telling pressman history and showed me how to fold the paper hats they used to wear in the old days to protect their hair from ink. 

He was proud of his work. 

Red had endurance


Working long hours until the job was done. 

I hardly ever saw him not covered with grease and ink. 

He was often seen eating refied beans out of the front pocket of his uniform. 

Red was a hard worker but a rebel 

Full of mischief although he understood honor 

A little crazy though he had his own wisdom. 

He would have made a good pirate. 

Great in an emergency Red had the presence of mind to laugh and take a sweeping bow when his hat caught on fire. 

He was a gentleman who smiled at the ladies, opened doors for us, always ready with a compliment “You smell good!” 

Red was kind, believing in love. 

Red was a wild man.

Red could fix anything 

Blow up anything

Get into anything 

Race anything. 

He had a theatrical sense of humor; coming to work dressed in a sarape and sombrero, maracas in hand.

It was a national immigrant walk out day but those in the mail room were not allowed to participate under threat being fired. Red and Bob harassed the manager all day yelling “No worky Monday” on their behalf. Loudly they sang in fake Spanish their made up Tejano music making said employees screech with laughter and take pictures.

And who could forget Bob and Red’s mock strip tease routine in their tool belts when they popped out of a cardboard cake for that mail room crumudgen on his birthday? 

Red was accident prone.

Once accidentally peeling off the top of an Eagle truck under a bridge. We had a picture of him shrugging dramatically at the scene, smile intact.

Red was the most believable Gun Smoke cowboy and on alternate years, tie dye hippie, at The Eagle Halloween parties, always in character with memorable lines off the cuff

Red always had something inappropriate to say to make us shake our heads and laugh.

Red believed in peace but he didn’t mind stirring up a little trouble now and then.

Red was a dare devil we were sure would go out in a blaze of glory one day.

Red loved his six Yorkies with all his heart maybe especially Chester the rattlesnake fighter. 

He loved his kids and spoke of them often. 

He married in his teens and stayed with his wife until her death, often writing on face book afterward, that he would love her forever.  

Red tattle tailed on my daughter but also defended her to me, reminding me she was a good girl. 

Red made everything he touched and every place he inhabited into art. Things that dangled, things that drove, things you weren’t sure about. He was an unusual yet somehow traditional decorator. Odd keepsakes and knick knacks you couldn’t mistake for anyone else’s’ filled every available space of his house. 

Red had a quick mind and a ready wit.

Once he fixed a dirt bike in the woods with a rock.

At The Eagle Red is legend, someone we’re proud we knew. 

Red repaired my rosaries with love though he made cracks about it the whole time. 

Red loved the press crew as his brothers. 

He was there for my husband when he was dying, racing him around in his wheelchair for “one last ride.” 

He said he and the press crew wanted to heal my broken heart. 

Well they did. 

You helped a lot Red.

Red was a good friend to all of us. 

Red was reckless, adventurous, a lover of danger but he could be a sage at times, cautioning me against resentment. 

If he left us with a message maybe it would be a kindly but funny warning like the one he spray painted on a barrel of toxic waste the guys were stacking on the dock to be taken away; bad shit do not eat.” 

Red would tell us to forgive, to let things go and not to ever let hate settle in our hearts to embitter us. 

He would tell us to live, love and be free.

Don’t eat  bad shit that will damage your well being and the priceless gift of joy. 

I don’t think Red  will just “rest in peace.”

Too much to do.

God will have to start breaking stuff to keep Red occupied. 

We love you Red. 

In the great beyond

You do you. 

3

St. Joseph Novena Day 7

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God of my fathers, Lord of mercy,
you who have made all things by your word
and in your wisdom have established man
to rule the creatures produced by you,
to govern the world in holiness and justice,
and to render judgment in integrity of heart:

Give me Wisdom, the attendant at your throne,
and reject me not from among your children:
for I am your servant, the son of your handmaid,
a man weak and short-lived
and lacking in comprehension of judgment and of laws.

Indeed, though one be perfect among the sons of men,
if Wisdom, who comes from you, be not with him,
he shall be held in no esteem.

Now with you is Wisdom who knows your works
and was present when you made the world;
who understands what is pleasing in your eyes
and what is conformable with your commands.

Send her forth from your holy heavens
and from your glorious throne dispatch her
that she may be with me and work with me,
that I may know what is your pleasure.

For she knows and understands all things,
and will guide me discreetly in my affairs
and safeguard me by her glory.”
(Wisdom 9:1-6, 9-11)

St. Joseph I can only imagine how overwhelming the prospect of being a father to Jesus the Son of God would have been for you. And Mary would have said, ”Joey you were made for this! God will give you everything you need!” And you believed. You were a strong good and kind man, humble and wise. Wisdom was with you, beautiful father. All the love and the example you gave Jesus made him able to do what he came to do and be what he came to be. Today we ask you also to be a father to each of us. And we thank you for every hug, every talk, every lesson, every game you played with Jesus when he was growing up, and most of all for just being there and filling his life with your love.

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Moments of peace with the animals

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Some of the most focussed and peaceful moments of my day are with my cat, Annie. She is whole heartedly affectionate and usually demands at least a few minutes of my attention in the morning. She appears in my path on my way to get my coffee and waits. When I take a moment to connect with her she pours her whole self into showing her love for me as if she just can’t get close enough.  She expects me to love her back enthusiastically. If I don’t she will gently pull my wrist with her paw or press her face to mine. Annie tunes me in to mindfulness presence and love before anything else even coffee. When I look back on my day that little bit of time connecting with Annie is often my favorite thing that happened. 

I remember putting the chickens away on a stressful evening after a scary and difficult day during the time my husband was fighting cancer. I noticed my dog, Gracie, standing by my knee being supportive. I leaned over and hugged her. I could hear her breathing change to that slow, satisfied dog breathing in my ear. This was 12 years ago but I still remember that peaceful moment and the breeze that ruffled our hair making me think of the Holy Spirit coming to lift our hearts. I think the Holy Spirit did come and renew our strength. 

Our dogs, Gracie and Flower understood what was going on with my husband. When he had trouble walking they flanked him on each side protectively. The night he was dying they came and checked on him every hour. They loved us. We weren’t alone. And they gave me chances to stop to breathe and pray, looking at their faces, seeing their silent steadfast love. 

One busy day I changed gears and sat down in the hay with Gertrude, my red hen. We looked at each other for a while. “Chicken gaze” will make you feel strange. I think it is because their eyes are on the sides of their heads so when you make full eye contact with a chicken it feels like the universe is catywampus for a second. The again that feeling may be chickens transmitting their psychedelic world view to us somehow. Chickens are all crazy as anyone who has spent time with them knows. Gertrude and I had a moment. And then suddenly she violently tried to pull out my nose ring. After that I shared an apple with her. I took a bite, she stabbed her beak into it and took a bite too. It was cool.

As a teen I sometimes got into pastures full of cows to take pictures. I learned to be still enough they would  all came close to have a look at me. I used to smile at them and talk to them a little. We would regard one another. Slowly they would move closer to me. One group after deciding I was OK came and started licking my arms and shoulders and even my face while I giggled. Maybe I was salty or maybe they were just curious. Or maybe they knew I had given up eating meat. Who knows? 

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Some years ago I was looking out of a window at night thinking about this and that. I noticed an owl staring at me from a branch outside. I stared back. I sat down and we kept it up. “Hey let’s pray,” I said. And I can say I meditated with an owl. 

As a young angry teen I was scribbling angry stuff in my journal with the window open. I felt eyes on me so I looked up and there was a praying mantis on my window sill. As we looked at one another it slowly cocked his head continuing to gaze at me. I felt connected to the universe for a second as if I got a glimpse of something beyond myself. I still remember that strange peaceful feeling. 

And at a time I really needed it a butterfly came and kissed my nose. Who could forget a moment like that?

I have heard little stories of encounters like this from so many other people. Maybe you have some stories too.

There is something spiritual about connecting with animals, about allowing them to connect with us. I think of all the saints who could communicate with animals, and of Adam and Eve who seemed able to as well. 

Maybe part of the Fall and the disorder in nature that it brought, was a barrier between us and nature, between us and the animals.  Maybe we were once in harmony and peace with God’s other creatures. Maybe sometimes part of us remembers, times when we are able to open our hearts to them. Maybe it’s a kind of prayer or maybe it is a gift of grace or both. The Saints often broke through the veil of separation from God. Maybe they stepped through the barrier of separateness with nature, with animals too. Sometimes when we connect with animals we get a glimpse of that world. 

I still look for it every day. 

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Christian love: is it fake?

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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.

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He has put into my heart a marvelous love

– Psalm 16:3a

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.

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Our Lady of Sorrows

The profound suffering of another person is frightening to be present to. When my husband’s cancerous brain tumor came back after two years of remission, he asked to be alone for a while. When he wanted me there I came and got into his chair with him and held him. I listened to him talk about his feelings of raw desolation, anger, and even shame, of terror, of feeling there was no comfort anywhere.

I had no mitigating words to say. Even if I had they would have been inappropriate and insensitive. Even with the intense devotion and deep bond I had with him, there were moments I wanted to run out in the back yard away from the enormity of what he was expressing. So I prayed as I listened; just the names of Jesus and Mary every time that urge came up. That simple effort made me able to share that space with him.

When he eventually asked how I felt about this on a spiritual level, all I had was the fact of Christ’s suffering. At least as we went through this we had a God who didn’t die in a shower of rose petals but naked and bleeding like an animal, nailed to a cross, with a cry of spiritual abandonment only just having died on his lips.

My husband nodded gravely.

I thought of Mary, surrounded by mockers, violent men, her weeping friends, silently sharing the space with her Son.

I believe she was near to me as I tried to open my heart to its fullest in the weeks that followed; through Bobs creeping paralysis, his growing confusion, his final inability to speak. She was close, I know, when I tried to surrender with love at the right time to set my husband free when he was ready.

Mary was the face of love to Jesus as he suffered. I tried to be that too, to lay my own grief aside. I have no doubt that is what she did at the Cross. I am sure she thought to herself, “I will grieve later. Right now I have to be here for him, I want to look at his beautiful living face as long as I can in these last moments.” I am sure about this because when you love, that is what you do.

May Our Lady pray for us when we are called to walk with someone who suffers terribly, which all of us are in some way at some time. May she companion us when we must find a way to love more than we feel able, to seek the true meaning of profound compassion that she embodied at the scene of her Son’s execution.

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Love in a time of fear and uncertainty

My late husband, Bob Chapman, was diagnosed with Stage 4 Glioblastoma Multiforme, an aggressive Brain Cancer, in February 2010 while we were still engaged and dreaming about our wedding. We married in May that year just after he finished his initial treatment, a period of simultaneous radiation and chemotherapy.

He lived 2 ½ years. The course of his illness was hands down the most terrifying thing I have ever had to go through. If you know me, you know this is saying a lot.

However it was also the most beautiful time of all my life. He said the same for himself too. My daughters remember it as the happiest of times for them.

We had to make a daily decision not to live in fear and sorrow every minute. This does not mean we didn’t cry sometimes, or that we pretended not to be afraid. We were scared to death. Of course we were. But who wants to live like that? We decided to live happily as long as we could, and to “lovingly eat the bread of the will of God,” as St. Elizabeth of the Trinity expressed holy acceptance.

We thought if we did go down, we would go down swinging. We did all we could as enthusiastically as we could to fight cancer. We strove to leave the rest up to God. It was empowering.

We knew that things might not work out the way we wanted which was a horrifying prospect. We also knew that sometimes people did survive it. We ignored the statistics and tried to live in the hope; not with false expectations, but real hope. We knew that Bob would not be taken from this world without God’s permission. We decided remaining positive but without stifling our feelings when we were sad, angry or afraid seemed best. And we looked to God. As Bob said to me the week he died, “God is IT!”

We decided to love and to serve as much as we could. After a frightening MRI result we were really scared. All we could do for a while was hold one another. When he was ready to talk, he said. “Well, what do we do? We love, we walk on.”

And we did.

We learned to allow others to love and serve us. We grew in our appreciation of community.

We grew to understand that each day could be seen as an entire life -time, being born in the morning and dying in the Father’s arms at night. Getting dressed for work one morning, Bob said, “I’m alive today. That’s all anybody’s got.”

Living like this begins to bring out the beauty in all things. Life becomes more vivid. Connection with people and all living things becomes profound. The heart expands.

When we were overwhelmed we had a designated spot we pretended was our “clubhouse” where cancer could not go. We needed to take time out in that spot sometimes.

As a family we learned that almost anything is funny. Bob had speech problems that came and went for a long time. They were hilarious! One of his more famous utterances then was when he said, “What time do we eat the kids? 6:30?”

Trying to talk to someone on the phone about a bill, he explained to her, “My voice is broken but my THINK is fine!”

At M.D. Anderson, the staff seemed horrified that I kept laughing at Bob’s speech mistakes. I told one of them, “Hey we can laugh all day or we could cry all the time!” And anyway, he was laughing too! “What!?” he would say, “I speak the King’s English!”

We tried to make scary things fun. Bob took his guitar to the hospital with him and played it from his bed. The nurses loved it.

One time he went to a scary appointment with half his mustache and half his beard shaved so he had a perfect half and half face. The doctor did such a double take! It was so funny!

At chemotherapy we used to sit and blow bubbles together in the treatment room. He brought his guitar there too and played for everyone with the I.V. in his arm.

Bob was a do-er. He was always moving. One month almost to the day before his death he was mowing the lawn, pushing his crazy big mower uphill. I took a picture. Well that was Bob. He was unstoppable. Bob was into helping. Even when we went out to eat he would end up fixing the cook’s car in the parking lot or something like that. Once he saw a young woman having to put back her purchases at the grocery store so he went behind her putting the same items in his own basket. He bought them all for her and sent me to give them to her outside.

He fixed things for the elderly he saw struggling with something. He was all about service and not creating hardship or work for others. He called this his “skin religion.”

He brought me breakfast in bed on Saturdays and put on Bugs Bunny for me. He did everything he could for all of us for as long as he could.

Being able to serve was important to him as a person.

Eventually, he began to be paralized on one side. Still he dragged himself by one arm horizontally out the back door to work on a drainage project. Sometimes he got tired and had to lay down in the grass for a while.

He was a do-er and he was tenacious. We called him “The Atomic Bob.”

He was an artist but he began to lose his ability to paint. He couldn’t play guitar. He started dropping dishes so he couldn’t do them for me anymore. He got where any speaking at all was very difficult. He had trouble at work and finally took that extended sick leave he had not taken yet. He could no longer play guitar.

He was confined to his chair for a lot of the day. One afternoon he called me to him and said,
“Shawn! I can’t DO anymore.” I nodded, tears in my eyes. Then he said, “I can’t DO!” Here he put his hand on his heart, sobbing, “but I STILL LOVE!”

I knew what he meant.

He realized his love, doing or not, was valuable. He was reaching out to everyone, loving them, and that in his very inactivity, his great big heart was active and spreading love on a whole new level. “Hey,” I told him, between kisses, “you’re speaking like the great mystics of the Church now!”

We are such do-ers in this world and often this is a great thing. Through the history of our faith, though, some Christians have felt called to withdraw into holy seclusion to live a hermits’ life and to pray.

To us this looks like not helping, not doing. But as Servant of God Catherine Doherty wrote, “Look at the Man on the Cross. He is not doing anything because He is crucified.” Ah but He was doing EVERYTHING, wasn’t He?

Our family found humor and beauty, mindfulness, joy in service, acceptance, courage, tenacity, renewed faith, a closer bond, community and the spiritual gift of understanding right in our crisis. In the midst of sorrow, loss of control, uncertainty and intense fear we found the Kingdom of Heaven. When the situation was “down to the wire,” we found the true power of love.

God is with us. There are jewels in the rubble that are there for us to find and to share as we deal with Covid-19 as a community. If we seek this treasure we will find all we need and more. It is there for every one of us.

This is my husband’s painting of us praying together during his fight with Brain Cancer. He called it “Miracle.”

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* This piece originally ran as my column in The Bryan College Station Eagle

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