My Response to the Contemplation on the Kingdom of God

 My Lord and Savior, I come to you with all that I am and offer it for your service.  In partnership with you and your disciples, I lay my gifts at your feet to be used as you deem important in the work of spreading Your Goodness and love throughout the world.  I wish to follow your model in trusting in God's protection that I might conquer the fear of bearing personal pain as I stand beside you in the work ahead.  I offer you unending praise, glory, and love to magnify Your being.  I offer you my YES if that is what you desire.  If I can be of service in the work at hand, I ask You to use my words, my prayers, and my actions in order to fulfill the purpose for which I was created.  

Contemplation on the Incarnation

 At the beginning of what's known as the Second Week of the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, I entered into the Contemplation of the Incarnation. It has found a home in my heart and head and given me new ways of looking at others and moving in the world.

In this meditation, St. Ignatius invites us to imagine the Trinity looking down upon the earth and seeing it filled with human beings. We are invited to use our imaginations to ponder what the Trinity sees and notices in gazing upon all the people. Ignatius adds a few thoughts on what we might see: some healthy, others sick, some weeping, and others laughing. He invites us to notice the blindness and aimlessness and to hear how people are talking to each other. Finally, he invites us to hear the Trinity say, “Let us work the redemption of the human race,” as God plans to send the angel to Mary and then watches as the Incarnation is set into motion.

As I began this contemplation, I envisioned the Trinity looking down at the world and all they survey. They are first struck by the beauty of it all. This creation is still absolutely stunning to witness. The zoomed out lens which they are viewing is that familiar sight that today we recognize as The Blue Marble, the picture taken by the Apollo 17 crew of Earth from space. As their focus narrows, they take in the forests, mountains and oceans still teaming with the flora and fauna that came into being so long ago. Their view continues to come into focus and they take in the glory of the abundant colors - the colors of people - fair-skinned and dark-skinned, the colors of their clothing, brightly hued. As they rest in this moment these human beings create an amazing tapestry beyond description. As their vision comes closer and closer, the sounds of these beautiful people become audible. There is the joyful laughter of children playing and the gentle hum of people working together for the greater good. But soon, those harmonious sounds are overpowered by loud and coercive voices. These are the sounds of adults yelling at one another, calling each other names. The Divine soon realize that what appeared to be diversity has now revealed itself to be division. People are not listening to each other and so many are being led by greed and power. The new god of worship is domination over rather than loving with.

As the gaze of the Trinity takes it all in, they realize that this is something that is not going to fix itself. Somehow, they are going to have to intervene. They need a plan and the time is now. They are Divine Love and they soon realize that they must start again and create the rebirth of love in this, Their beloved people. What better way could love be reborn than in the incarnation of God in the Baby Jesus? They agree that Jesus will be sent with the Holy Spirit to guide Him in his human form. In this way, God's people can once again know Him, love Him and come to serve Him through their love for one another.

While They are deeply distraught at all They have seen, They are also reassured that love will win in the end. Each person on Earth has been born with the spark of God's being. It is always there and can never be extinguished. As each of us loves into existence all that we can be, so will each person with whom we come in contact. This is hope in its truest sense. You and I and everyone living has the power of one. As I encounter God's presence within me and I become my best self, my love and service emanates into the world and it ripples outward to my friends, family, and strangers with whom I interact.

So, as the Trinity take in the beauty and brokenness of the world They are confident that Their love will overpower greed and division. Jesus will be born in the lowest possible form and will save the world.  

Morning Offering

 Dear God, thank you for the gift of this new day.  I pray that whatever waits for me will serve as a blessing to you.  Lord, I offer everything that I will think, do , or say and dedicate it to your service.  Please protect me and keep me close to your side.  Help me keep your commandments and seek divine goodness.  Guide me in sharing all that I have with those who may be in need in order that I might see your face in everyone that I encounter.  At the end of the day, may I return to you in gratitude with open hands and a loving heart so that all I have been given is returned to you. 

Amen

The First Principle and Foundation

 As is every other human being, I am the incarnate image of God and as such, am God’s beloved.  My greatest desire is to live in that love forever.  In an effort to return that infinite love, I promise to praise, honor, and serve God.  

Everything I have is created by God and has been gifted for my use and protection.  God has given me access to anything that might be of assistance in honoring my creator.  I yearn to know God more fully and to continually return that great love with the  help of the gifts that have been bestowed upon me.  

Hence as a steward of creation, I promise to protect the earth and everything in it so these gifts can be used to glorify God.  However, no part of creation can ever take the place of God nor impede me from returning God’s love.  Everything must work toward the single goal of praising God.  

It is important that I keep all of creation in balance so that I can seek and return God’s love.  Everything in creation has value only to the extent that it can be used by all of humanity to serve God.  There is no preference for health or sickness, wealth or poverty, success or failure, life or death as each of these can be conducive to searching out God’s love and calling forth our loving response.  The only choice that needs to be made is the determination of what will deepen God’s love in me.  

Neither can I be the obstacle that  stands in the way of responding to God’s love.  I cannot hide behind my ego and self-will or the walls of protection that I have built to make myself believe that I am serving God when in actuality I have replaced God’s will with my own.  

God is alive in me and together we will work to co-create the earthly journey of my human existence so that I might be the voice and hands of God at work in the world.  As God’s love is revealed to me, my response will be to live out the love of God that surrounds and protects me.  

My Spiritual Autobiography

 I have no memory of when I was introduced to God by my family.  I was baptized at Grace Presbyterian Church as an infant, the third of four children,  but I don't recall ever going  back there again after my younger brother's baptism.  God seemed to be more of an assumption or an idea in our house than an actual being to which I could be introduced.  I remember being told to thank God, to say my prayers, and that God could answer my prayers. God seemed to be more present at my grandparents' house.  He was in the conversation there like God was an additional person in the house.  There was a cross on the wall, a picture of Jesus in the bedroom, and a devotional on the end table by Grandma's chair that fascinated me.  It was called "The Upper Room."   I had no idea of the meaning of the title until many years later.

So God just was.  It seemed that I was left to my own devises to determine the role he was to play in my life.  My prayer life was limited as a child.  I learned the "Our Father" but I don't remember how.  And it seemed that when you really wanted something and there was no other way to get it, you could ask God for it.  And maybe it would happen.  I remember have a warm feeling when I thought about God.  It was reassuring to know that I wasn't alone in life. 

Then an unimaginable event occurred that thrust our entire family into church and the consoling arms of God.  A tragic accident happened.  My younger brother drowned in a creek.  Suddenly God was everywhere and surrounded everyone.  I heard his name coming from everyone I met.  People talked about God having taken Davey, and that God needed him more than we did.  So now I was more confused than ever.  I began to live in fear.  If God had taken my younger brother, then I must be next. 

Just before this event, we had joined a wonderful country church where everybody knew everybody.  It is a mystery as to how Hardin Presbyterian Church entered our lives.  I've asked my parents and my aunt and uncle and no one can seem to recall how we started attending services there.  But it was closely aligned with Davey's death.  In my child's mind these two things are connected.  Church and God came into my life with the most awful grief a child can imagine.  This was juxtaposed with the infinite consolation of friends and family and became the only thing that allowed me to continue growing in my relationship with God.  So here was the beginning of my spiritual education.  We attended church and Sunday School every Sunday.  I learned to read , memorize, and interpret the Bible, I went to summer camp.  However, I still wasn't spiritually connected to God; I definitely held a grudge about losing my brother and somehow He was to blame.  There was a picture of Jesus in the church that held my attention every week.  He was sitting on a tree stump surrounded by a wooded area and he had the most loving eyes.  Jesus became my friend and confidant; my favorite song was "Jesus Loves Me" and my favorite Christmas carol was "Away in a Manger."  Jesus made sense to me.  I knew that God was his father so for many years, God was the old bearded man in a long robe that lived in heaven.  According to my calculations heaven was located just above the clouds.  I didn't really have a place for the Holy Spirit.  I knew its first earthly appearance was at the first Pentecost and Paul wrote a lot about it but in my mind it would just come around when needed. 

My beliefs as taught by the Presbyterian church stayed very concrete for many years.  As I aged into my teen years I struggled with the idea of predestination but I also did not completely understand it.  Confirmand me wondered, what was the use?  If my life was preordained by God, what was the purpose of me simply following the plan?  This would be a conundrum for my entire life.  How do I know what is God's plan and what is my plan? This was the beginning of my curiosity about faith and organized religion and the difficulty of finding its intersection.  It was also about this time that  a junior high English teacher saw something in me that no one else had.  He started recommending books to me and meeting with me to discuss them afterwards.  Move fast forward to a conversation that we found ourselves in about evolution/creationism.  This was my first introduction to a different translation of the Bible.  I don't blame the Presbyterian belief system but my own concretism for this missing piece.  I began looking at authors of the books of the Bible in a completely different light.  And it changed everything.  Now it all became a slurry of who was writing, who was the audience, what was the intention?  This was added to my interpretation of a story written 2 thousand years ago and how it might be helpful to a teenager in the 1960s. 

Although my faith often confused me, it was something that I never wanted to be without.  There was never a time that I rebelled against it or felt the urge to set it aside.  I went to church weekly with my family until high school graduation and continued the practice when I went off to college.  While I didn't become an active member of a church community at that time, I enjoyed dipping my toe into other religions and coming back home to the local Presbyterian church.  The Bible also continued to be a close companion.  I loved returning to the old memorized passages from my childhood.  It brought comfort during difficult times. 

After marriage, my commitment to my identification of being a Protestant was deeply challenged by marrying a devout Catholic.  We were married in the Catholic church which included a promise on my part to raise any children in the Catholic faith.  We talked for hours about this topic.  We both agreed that we had the advantage of being able to expose our children to both faiths and they would be so much the better for it.  But that never happened.  I attempted to find a Presbyterian home in Santa Clara but to no avail.  We started attending the Mission in Santa Clara and I was swallowed up, hook, line, and sinker.  The more I learned about Catholicism, the more I realized the differences were few.  I began taking classes from Fr. Phelan and he had the skill of making those differences disappear.  We worked our way through The Confessions of St. Augustine and before I knew it, I was being confirmed and was a born again Catholic.  I could not have been more content in my spiritual life.  We were a family in the most real sense of the word; praying together, everyone on the same page with the spiritual development of our children as our focus.  I was finding time to learn more about the saints, and icons and rites and rituals of the Catholic church.  I loved them all.  Before you knew it, I was finding peace and grace in daily mass.  It was just me and the old people but I was at peace with my God,  my brother Jesus, and Mother Mary. 

As time went on, I went back to school to get my credential and I had my first face to face introduction to the Jesuits at Santa Clara University.  I didn't know it at the time but this was another fork in my spiritual development road.  I learned to see God in all things and began to contemplate in action.  I got my credential and went to work in the Diocese.  Now I was truly living and breathing my faith in the every day world.  My faith grew through everyone I was associated with; principals, teachers, parents, religion coordinators, Directors of Religious Education.  I was in constant communication with my God throughout the day.  This became a prayer structure that would stay with me the rest of my life.  God, help this child, Oh God, look at that beautiful flower, God help me understand.  School became my church home 5 days a week and then as a family we worshipped at the actual church on Sundays.  Life would take me away from Diocesan education for a while but I was destined to return bigger and better than ever.  As the kids got older, we struggled to keep everyone content at the diocesan church and returned once again to The Mission.  It was there that we would all come to understand how everyone fits under the umbrella of love and acceptance of christianity.  It wasn't every week but when I was there, it was very good.  This is the church that would forever be home to me.  Later, when I would move away and was searching for a church home, this was the thing for which I was yearning - the rites and rituals along with a broader way of thinking of what it means to be Catholic, to be human. Even after my divorce when I grappled with the church's teaching on divorce I hung onto the icons and symbols of Catholicism. But that didn't keep me from doubting; was I still welcome?  During those darker days, I sat in the back of the Mission Church, clearly ashamed of being a divorced Catholic,  but still I was there, waiting to be fed and loved and accepted.  Gradually, the loving took hold and I came to understand that I would always be a child of God and that whether the teaching of the church accepted me or not, God did.  And God wanted me right there.

Eventually, I found my way back to Jesuit education.  But this time I was the educator and later the administrator.  Now, once again, I was living my faith in the everyday, the every minute of the day.  I discovered El Retiro Retreat Center and the joy of meeting God face to face in silent retreats and bringing that feeling of peace, love, and grace back with me to the real world.  Forever, I will remember God coming to me in the silence of prayer in my cell and calling me his beloved.  I was filled with a deep warmth from my head to my toes and could feel his love consume me.  I was his beloved.  From that day forward, I would carry God with me in a new and deeper way.

The next fork in the road was my retirement and moving away from The Santa Clara Mission.  After my move to Vancouver, Washington, I searched and searched for something close to that but my arbitrary rules got in the way.   As I look back there actually were a couple Jesuit churches that I had toyed around with but I wasn't willing to commit to the weekly drive to find what I needed.  In my search, I found my way back to the church of my birth.  I once again became a member of the Presbyterian church and was worshiping with my sister.  That brought many other gifts of which I am deeply aware but I always felt a tad out of sync.  One of those gifts was connecting with a spiritual director and her leading me to the writings of Richard Rohr.  This was a missing piece, quiet contemplation to spend time with my God.  I took on this habit with joy.  This also led me to another spiritual practice (in my mind) of the Morning Pages.  I wrote every morning and it was prayer being spewed out on the page.  I felt glorious.  But so often my practices begin glorious and then suddenly life gets in the way and the habit is lost, restarted and lost again.  I still miss finding the time for the Morning Pages.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to stay in Vancouver as this was followed by a move to Florida to support my parents.  I am now three years into life in the south and there is nothing close to Jesuit spirituality here.  I tried out the Presbyterian church again, I have also tried the local Catholic church.  But what has filled me on this leg of my journey is reading and podcasts- Richard Rohr and others from the  Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, Barbara Brown Taylor - she gave me permission to leave church and find God in the woods, and others who can fill my head, heart and spirit with a new way of thinking about God, about Jesus, and finally about the Holy Spirit.  I finally understand that the Holy Spirit is in me.  It is God's core that resides in my core.  It is my soul.

I live 100 miles away from my mother and my recently departed father as they requested, and know only a few people in the neighborhood.  I am becoming more and more protective of my quiet time.  I am alone most of the time and have ample opportunity for my running monologue with God that continues to ground me while lifting me up.  Look God, what a beautiful cardinal, Please, God, help my mom stay strong, God, what is next?  I am finding my place volunteering at the food pantry and seeing Jesus at every turn.  My contemplative prayer is back strong, I am praying the examen, and am now looking forward to once again discovering God as my beloved in the Ignatian Exercises Adventure.  I can't wait to begin. I can't wait to feel God's loving embrace.  

A Journey Inward

  I am preparing to take off on a new journey inside.  For several years I had yearned to do the Spiritual Exercises, a 30 day Ignatian retreat at El Retiro in Los Altos, California.  But while teaching, preparing to teach, and learning what to teach, it never fit into my summer schedule.  Now that I was retired there was time, but I could no longer get to El Retiro for 30 days.  Then it fell into my lap.  My friend, Nancy told me about an at-home retreat that was sponsored by Santa Clara University.  It is an hour of prayer a day for  9 months along with weekly spiritual direction.  So I am taking off on an inward journey.  I know it will be enlightening, joyful, painful, and difficult.  I also know that I will be a fuller, more complete person when May comes.  Pray for me.