On The Way Through The Love Of Our Neighbor

In the last week of June and the first week of July, I went back east to visit my family.  As a monk of the hermitage, I get to visit my family once a year.  However, due to the coronavirus, this visit was delayed.  I hadn't seen my parents in a couple years; it had been more than a couple years since I'd seen my sister, as well as my brother and sister-in-law with my niece and my nephew.  It was wonderful finally to see them again.  

The day I flew out of California, I met up with Karen and Maureen, former co-workers; we worked together when I was a attorney.  It was fun to catch up with them.  They both were raised Catholic, so they understand various aspects of life at the hermitage.  That day I took off from California, I also gladly got to see Susan and Aurora.  We lived together at the Catholic Worker House; they're still Catholic Workers.  

When I was planning the trip, it had seemed like a great idea to leave the hermitage early in the day so I could see friends I hadn't seen in years.  Finally when I was on the redeye flight from San Francisco to New York and was getting almost no sleep, I began to see the consequences of that itinerary.  Again on the subway from JFK to Penn Station, I kept nodding off, immediately waking up after a few seconds.  

Once I got into Penn Station, I happily got a cup of Blue Bottle Coffee.  I was also happy to pop into Magnolia Bakery and get a blueberry muffin.  With a little sustenance, I headed over to the Amtrak ticket counter.  I told the clerk I was booked on the 11:25 a.m. train to Albany.  He asked me where my ticket was.  I'm so used to showing up at an airport and entering my frequent flyer number that I told him I didn't have a ticket.  

He asked me if I had it on my phone.  I pulled out the flip phone I was borrowing from another monk.  He noted, "Well, you won't have it on there."  I admitted, "This isn't even my phone.  I'm borrowing this just so I'd have a phone on this trip."  He asked me, "How can you not have a phone?"  I explained, "I live in an area with no cell phone signal."  He asked, "Where's that?"  I told him, "Big Sur, on the California coast."  

He printed my ticket to Albany to see my brother and his family, and the ticket back to Manhattan.  As I struggled to arrange my coffee, muffin, train tickets, backpack and rolling luggage, he wondered aloud, "How will you manage all that?"  I was able to negotiate it all and navigate my way due to his merciful, kind, caring nature.  Before I walked off, I thanked him for being patient with me amidst my disorganization.  

Enjoy The Strawberries

This afternoon I was walking on the sidewalk behind the church here at the hermitage.  I was walking to look for James, the other man in formation here at the hermitage.  We share duties in the Sacristy, sometimes helping to set up for Mass.  I wanted to talk with him about which of us was going to set up for Mass, which was combined with Vespers today.  I was absorbed in these thoughts as I walked along.  

As I went where I thought James might be, Edson, who is one of our cooks, excitedly asked me if I had eaten any strawberries.  I didn't know what he meant.  I asked him.  He explained that in one of the garden plots right behind the church, little strawberries were growing.  He showed me; I saw that each of them was only a quarter of the size of my smallest fingernail.  I picked one and ate it; it was delicious.  

We can be going along wrapped up in our own little world.  Meanwhile, God is gently reaching toward us with presents of delectable delicacies.  If we look carefully, we find God showing us love in what is right next to us.  We pass up the nourishment God wants to give us.  Since God loves us, God doesn't force anything on us, even what is good for us.  God patiently waits for us with love.  When we're ready, we find God's love.  

Let Us Let God Remake Us

Today in his homily Fr. Cyprian really got to the core of my basic orientation toward the coronavirus. Indeed, when the idea came into my head to blog expounding a little on what he'd said in his sermon, I stopped to consider that perhaps he'd already fully expressed it.  

Fr. Cyprian referred back to the first reading we heard at Mass tonight.  In that reading, we heard 

This word came to Jeremiah from the LORD:
Rise up, be off to the potter’s house;
there I will give you my message.
I went down to the potter’s house and there he was,
working at the wheel.
Whenever the object of clay which he was making
turned out badly in his hand,
he tried again,
making of the clay another object of whatever sort he pleased.
Then the word of the LORD came to me:
Can I not do to you, house of Israel,
as this potter has done? says the LORD.
Indeed, like clay in the hand of the potter,
so are you in my hand, house of Israel.*  

Fr. Cyprian explained that perhaps God is trying to remake us now.  Maybe we are being called right now to unlearn maladaptive habits which have become very comfortable.  Just because we're used to a certain way of thinking or acting, it doesn't mean it serves us well.  

Fr. Cyprian described that when we're addicted, we are overflowing with our addictions.  He continued that recovering addicts are told to visualize their addictions as being in a cup.  They're told to overturn the cup and let its contents spill out.  

Yet when we are emptied, then what do we do?  How can we fill ourselves?  How can we know what we need to fill us in a healthy way?  How can we nourish ourselves?  How can we provide the source of our own life?  

Instead of trying to fill ourselves, we can sit and wait.  We can practice patience.  We can develop the skill of sitting still.  We can learn to be silent.  We could listen instead of talking. We can try to be attentive to God.  

We embrace all of these difficult endeavors, they suddenly begin to happen, through the working of God's grace, when we're removed from the world.  If we give our consent, we give God free rein to work miracles in and through us.  Having stepped out of ourselves, God steps into us.  

Indeed, we have been extricated from our usual routines.  We have been given the blessing of being helped to step out of our maladaptive patterns.  

It wasn't until I quit my job as an attorney, accepted an invitation into the Peace Corps, moved to northern Morocco, and then went even deeper, moving into the Sahara Desert, that I had sufficiently departed from distractions to be able to consider a new way of being.  It was time.  
Sometimes we willingly choose to go into the desert.  The dry, arid expanse of the physical desert can be a good analogy for the metaphorical desert in which we feel deprived of all we had found so comforting.  

Yet if we stay where we are not challenged, how will we ever grow?  If we never step out of what is familiar to us, we will never step into the territory in which we find that we have been capable of more than we have ever been.  

Right now we have been picked up and dropped into a landscape where we have never been. How we will emerge from it is up to us.  Are we going to accept the invitation to become what we have never been, or stay right where we have always been?  

* Jeremiah 18:1-6