Mother Teresa, Saturday Plans, and Early Morning Musings

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It's 8:10 a.m.

I've been awake, unable to sleep, for nearly two hours already.

50 minutes from now, my alarm will go off, reminding me that I need to wake up, and be at mom and dad's house 45 minutes after that.

Today is the feast day for Mother Teresa. I suppose the fact that I pay attention to such things makes me slightly odd in the world of protestant christians that I mostly inhabit. Then again, I wear a bracelet with saints around my wrist, collect quotes from them, and wear a medal with St. Clare of Assisi on it around my neck most days, so I suppose all of those things also make me odd in that world.

In any case, Mother Teresa is one of those saints that has profoundly moved and impacted me. You can read about her here.

I sent a dear friend this e-card this morning, and was struck by the memories that came as I read that bit of a prayer.

Many years ago, in my last year of high school, I encountered Lent for the first time. A friend who in many ways profoundly shaped my life challenged me to practice the discipline of giving up something I loved, and replacing it with time spent meditating on Jesus. That year I gave up reading fiction and magazines (a challenge, since at that stage in my life I generally plowed through 2-3 novels a week). I replaced the fiction with classic Christian works, and works written by those whose faith I admired.

Mother Teresa had died a few years before that, and I'd been deeply moved as I'd watched the outpouring of emotion that came with her death. Emotion so different from that which had come only days early with the death of Princess Diana.

One of the first books I read during that Lenten period was one of Mother Teresa's. "No Greater Love." The book challenged and moved me deeply, and I'll never forget encountering the prayer I linked to above, in it's full form. It ushered in a period in my life where nearly daily I revisited that prayer, crying out the words to Jesus, and asking him to form them in my life. I prayed it alone, and, in a few precious and difficult moments where we were struggling, with friends.

As I lay in bed this morning, reading the email that reminded me that today was the feast day of Mother Teresa, I was thinking again of that prayer, and of how, years later, I am beginning to see how praying it formed my heart. How I have met people who truly glowed with Christ, and how I continue to pray that glow will be within me as well.

I have varied plans for today. Helping my mom with a cleaning and organization project. Errands. Some cleaning and sorting around my own house. Likely church. But the day is being formed in these early hours, as I am remembering the prayer written by John Henry Newman, loved by Mother Teresa, and prayed daily by her and the sisters of charity. I am remembering these words, and praying them again today...

Dear Lord:
Help me to spread your fragrance wherever I go.
Flood my soul with your spirit and life.
Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly that all my life may only be a radiance of yours.
Shine through me, and be so in me that every soul I come in contact with may feel your presene in my soul.
Let them look up and see no longer me, but only you, O Lord!
Stay with me, then I shall begin to shine as you do; so to shine as to be a light to others.
The light, O Lord, will be all from you; none of it will be mine; it will be you shining on others through me.
Let me thus praise you in the way you love best, by shining on those around me.
Let me preach you without preaching, not by words, but by my example, by the catching force, the sympathetic influence of what I do, the evident fullness of the love my heart bears to you.
Amen.

Rolling Around...

So I have this question rolling around in my head... well, maybe two actually, and they're causing some thought and some dreams...

What if there was a way to take the stories of everyday living, the crazy experiences and the mundane, and use them to really communicate the beauty and ugliness and challenges and stunning ways of life, the ways that God is intertwined in all of that?

And what if I tried to do that?

Daily 5 - Day 24

Today's Daily 5:

1. Wearing jeans to work
2. The beginning of a long weekend
3. listening to a great sermon
4. roasted baby potatoes, farmer sausage, and asparagus for dinner
5. an evening spent accomplishing some long needed cleaning tasks, and a few creative side tasks, while letting my mind wander through some dreams (the waking kind) that have come up recently.
   

Thoughts from Henri on Choosing Life

It's been a little while since I've shared any thoughts from Henri Nouwen, but there have been several this week that felt extremely timely, given what I've been thinking and praying about the last while, and I thought I'd share them with all of you...

Choosing Life

God says, "I am offering you life or death, blessing or curse. Choose life, then, so that you and your descendants may live" (Deuteronomy 30:19).

"Choose life." That's God's call for us, and there is not a moment in which we do not have to make that choice. Life and death are always before us. In our imaginations, our thoughts, our words, our gestures, our actions ... even in our nonactions. This choice for life starts in a deep interior place. Underneath very life-affirming behaviour I can still harbour death-thoughts and death-feelings. The most important question is not "Do I kill?" but "Do I carry a blessing in my heart or a curse?" The bullet that kills is only the final instrument of the hatred that began being nurtured in the heart long before the gun was picked up.

A Choice Calling for Discipline

When we look critically at the many thoughts and feelings that fill our minds and hearts, we may come to the horrifying discovery that we often choose death instead of life, curse instead of blessing. Jealousy, envy, anger, resentment, greed, lust, vindictiveness, revenge, hatred ... they all float in that large reservoir of our inner life. Often we take them for granted and allow them to be there and do their destructive work.

But God asks us to choose life and to choose blessing. This choice requires an immense inner discipline. It requires a great attentiveness to the death-forces within us and a great commitment to let the forces of life come to dominate our thoughts and feelings. We cannot always do this alone; often we need a caring guide or a loving community to support us. But it is important that we both make the inner effort and seek the support we need from others to help us choose life.

Claiming Our God Given Selves

When we have been deeply hurt by another person, it is nearly impossible not to have hostile thoughts, feelings of anger or hatred, and even a desire to take revenge. All of this often happens spontaneously, without much inner control. We simply find ourselves brooding about what we are going to say or do to pay back the person who has hurt us. To choose blessings instead of curses in such a situation asks for an enormous leap of faith. It calls for a willingness to go beyond all our urges to get even and to choose a life-giving response.

Sometimes this seems impossible. Still, whenever we move beyond our wounded selves and claim our God-given selves, we give life not just to ourselves but also to the ones who have offended us.

Mastering Evil with Good

The apostle Paul writes to the Romans: "Bless your persecutors; never curse them, bless them. ... Never pay back evil with evil. ... Never try to get revenge. ... If your enemy is hungry, give him something to eat; if thirsty, something to drink. ... Do not be mastered by evil, but master evil with good" (Romans 12:14-21). These words cut to the heart of the spiritual life. They make it clear what it means to choose life, not death, to choose blessings not curses. But what is asked of us here goes against the grain of our human nature. We will only be able to act according to Paul's words by knowing with our whole beings that what we are asked to do for others is what God has done for us.

Waiting with Our Response

Choosing life instead of death demands an act of will that often contradicts our impulses. Our impulses want to take revenge, while our wills want to offer forgiveness. Our impulses push us to an immediate response: When someone hits us in the face, we impulsively want to hit back.

How then can we let our wills dominate our impulses? The key word is wait. Whatever happens, we must put some space between the hostile act directed toward us and our response. We must distance ourselves, take time to think, talk it over with friends, and wait until we are ready to respond in a life-giving way. Impulsive responses allow evil to master us, something we always will regret. But a well thought-through response will help us to "master evil with good" (Romans 12.21).

Friday!

I have an incredibly busy day ahead of me.

But, it's Friday, and I'm wearing jeans at work, so that make's everything just a little bit better.

It's also a long weekend. Whatever you think about labor unions (and to clarify, I have no particular opinion on the matter) you've got to love a movement that gets you an extra paid day off work!

And, with that, I have a long list of "must be accomplished before I leave the office", so I'd better dive in!

See ya later today!