Choose Life- Choose Death.

Choose Life- Choose Death

 - Today’s meditation from Fr. Richard Rohr of the Center for Action and Contemplation -

How have I learned to walk through the stages of dying?
We must learn how to walk through the stages of dying. We have to grieve over lost friends, relatives, and loves. Death cannot be dealt with through quick answers, religious platitudes, or a stiff upper lip. Dying must be allowed to happen over time, in predictable and necessary stages, both in those who die graciously and in those who love them. Grief is a time where God can fill the tragic gap with something new and totally unexpected. Yet the process cannot be rushed.

It is not only the loss of persons that leads to grief, but also the loss of ideals, visions, plans, places, and our very youth. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross helped us name those stages as denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance. Grief work might be one of the most redemptive, and yet still unappreciated, ministries in the church. Thank God, it is being discovered as a time of spacious grace and painful gift.

A Year Later: Staying at the Table.

I need courage to put my

whole self in the chair,

pick up a glass of wine

and take a drink.

 

I’ve been edging away, a finger

here or there, lately my

legs outside the room,

just leaving a set of eyes to watch.

 

Scan right – left

dry turkey, tense conversation

at the end of the table.

Slow blink,

all of our legs are dancing

in separate rooms, disconnected

from our bodies.

 

Inhale 1- 5, exhale the same,

bring one leg back and then the other

underneath me, connecting tendons,

bones to muscle until I am

there in one piece.

 

Scan right- left

we’re all here. Let’s eat.

Dry turkey. Still edible.

How You Gonna?

One time Cesia wrote me a text that said “How u gonna leave without saying bye?! ”  haha. But I know how she felt in that moment.

It’s hard to say goodbye. Today I don’t like loving people so much or living in a community. How do you let people go in and out of your life and keep your heart soft to love them?

Weddings In Review.

Three weddings. Five weeks. Three states. Three up-dos (all to the side). Three dresses. Three bachelorette parties, three wedding ceremonies – so different, four receptions. Cinnabuns, dessert smorgasbord, cupcakes. Three amazing bridal parties, love Caroline, Marie F, Sally, and all of Jara’s witnesses. Reconnecting with old friends. Crying and laughing. Two head colds. Lots of laughing. Dancing, dancing, dancing.

 

I need to start journaling and not stop until I can get all the beautiful memories of each wedding down on paper. Write it down for goodness’ sake!

Social 1.

This is what it’s like to be a Social 1 with a 2 wing:

• You are always guilty. It’s always your fault.
• You always have an opinion. Even if you’ve never heard of the topic at hand, you just make up an opinion and commit to it. Then you debate people on it.
• When you are mad or sad at someone you find a political cause and get really focused on it or write an angry blog post about short term missions.
• You have to win like a 3 and are as loud as an 8, and you feel really guilty for both of those things.
• You are evangelical about something or many things, but you are always converting people to things. And good at it.
• You love the party. I mean LOVE the party. (But you also feel guilty for having fun.)
• You are so focused on your cause(s) or work that you forget to eat and sleep.
• You define yourself by affiliations with causes; I AM a Republican, I AM a pro-lifer, I AM a Democrat, I AM a Fleshie, I AM a liberal, etc.
• There is no such thing as an understatement, everything is very dramatic.
• You project anger and intensity without realizing it.
• You can make change.
• You are passionate about a lot of things.
• You are fun.
• You are intuitive about people.

Ah, Enneagram, how I love you.

The Jarry.

I love my Jarry. She got married this weekend, it was (in a word) flawless. By flawless I mean too full of good people, good food, parties, love, and laughing! I will write an ode to the fabulous people soon: (Jason aka “Jansen”, Crockie, all my running club women & Chad, Heuertz’s!, Brent, Amey and Leia, Kenley’s UN crew from NYC, Amanda, Noemi!, Amina the non-spiritual director, Marci formerly known as Marcia’s father, Chuli Bulie Julie!, Daph/Caleb, so many more) … but this post is all about the Jara.

Father Ron, the sweet priest who married Kenley and Jara at St Martin’s got to the middle of the service. After they said their vows to each other, Father Ron said “blah blah blah Kenley Davis and Sarah Brooks.”  I started laughing uncontrollably. I love my Jarry because she laughed about it, and she laughed afterward when we started calling her Sarah Brooks, and she’ll still be laughing about it tonight when we hang out.

Weddings are a good time to cry and a good time to laugh, and a great time to reflect on how much you love someone. I love my Jarry.

OCR Pictures.

I know, I know, I said you couldn’t see OCR pics. But just one?

Omaha Community Retreat

Rummaging for God.

Last night Fr. Dennis Hamm spoke to the Ignatian Associates about “rummaging for God” in our days. I like the word rummaging. I like rummage sales, I like looking for special deals, and I really like this new (to me) idea of the Ignatian style examen of conscience. He explained that the word for conscience in English doesn’t fully grasp the meaning of what conscience is- conscience being also consciousness, awareness, thoughts, events, and ideas, not just sins or feelings of guilt. I actually don’t really like doing examinations of conscience because I feel like I’m already living with the inner critic inside my head “That was stupid Elizabeth.” “REALLY?” “You just totally embarrassed yourself.” “What would JESUS do?” He (yes, the man in my head) says to me. I felt a little drop in my stomach when my Spiritual Director said “You should do an examen each night for twenty minutes.” That’ll be, uh, fun. But she went to explain what she meant, and this is what it looked like:

1) Ask for light : “Jesus, help me to see through the events of this day and know where you were with me, where I was with myself, and what I felt, experienced and saw that should stick with me.”

2) Look with gratitude at all the events of your day from beginning to end: Hmmm… woke up this morning, rode to the airport in Michigan. Got to spend time with my best friend Lara, ate the BEST QUIZNOS sandwich ever, finished Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, was in Minneapolis airport – I love that place! Home smelled like cookies and was so beautiful to me after three weeks on and off the road. I love snow on the streets and cold weather, riding my bike around. Home, thanks God for all the good and such a great home.

3) Find feelings that affected you throughout your day. Tired, hungry, back hurt, happy, sad to leave, happy to be home, safe. Very safe at the end of the day in my own bed.

4) Pray from one feeling. Thanks God for places of safety and rest. I want to find more safety throughout my work days, my vacations, my time with friends and family… I rest in that good feeling of being home and at peace and long for it more.

5) Pray for the events of the next day. Back to work after a hectic three weeks means e-mail. I hate e-mail Jesus, order my day, help me to pace myself, help me to retain a sense of being home and being safe throughout the day tomorrow.

Things That Are Yours.

I am at work and taking a quick second to write you because in several hours I’m headed to Michigan for a wedding and so won’t be writing for at least another week.

This weekend we had our Omaha Community Retreat, and I helped coordinate it. One of the things that we did was get a bunch of disposable cameras for people to use during the retreat. Jara said that in relationships you need mystery, and Facebook is slowly killing that mystery. I am an over-inviter and I’m learning that sometimes in community and in friendships you should be a bit slow to invite. I feel selfish for these people, especially as a group of people constantly working for others, hosting others, and being in touch with others. I want us to have something that is just our own. I think in community sometimes to have good hospitality you also need to have things that are just yours, and then when people come around you can be more inviting because you don’t have to use that time as a time for inside jokes or stories that only the 12 of us ‘get.’

So I got these cameras and when I develop the pics we’ll put them in a scrapbook and keep them here at the office, we won’t post them on Facebook or tweet them, they’ll just be ours. I was there, so were Mandy, Cesia, Marcia, Jara, Phileena, Chris, Randy, Kim, Chad, Amanda, Adia, Priya, Jedi, Elijah, & Hilary. It was special, it was hard and good and we cried, laughed and prayed together. It was ours.

Indifferent, but how?

Indifference does not have to mean apathy. Well, Ignatian indifference is not apathy.

So I learned this Sunday, at the beginning of unpacking a new start in my life with the Ignatian Associates. Ignatian Associates are a lay group of people connected to the Jesuit community. They make three public promises, which I’ve tried to translate a bit for you.  Simplicity of Life (seeking to be available to hear the Spirit), Fidelity to the Gospel and to our Associate and Jesuit Companions (intentional Christian community), and Apostolic Availability (saying yes to God whatever the Spirit asks and leads.) All of this as far as I’ve deciphered is (very typically Jesuit) Catholic mumbo-jumbo for a really intense, committed small group. Kind of. Except more intense. Did I mention yet that it’s intense?

For example, the process just to be in formation involved several interviews (group and alone), a psychological evaluation, application with references, and discernment process. Now I’m in formation for two years before I’ll be asked (or not asked) to make those three promises I mentioned above. We’re supposed to be doing like an hour of prayer a day, meet with a spiritual director once a week, and meet three times a month as a group. We’ll also have various retreats and celebrate the sacraments together as a formation community. The formation process is based around St. Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises, which we’ll do in a year instead of in the month that religious folk like brothers, priests, or sisters do.

Phew! Ignatian Talk 101. You’re caught up, and now on to the good stuff.

Sunday we talked about indifference… Indifference being the ability to release control of the outcomes of a decision. Not being apathetic or uninterested in the world or in your process, but being able to step outside of your preference and truly trusting God that God knows best. I love this idea, it seems so freeing. It especially feels freeing because I always have an opinion. I imagine that if a Social 1 (me) could make a roadmap of her false self, all the landmarks would be opinions. Seriously. So this idea of having an opinion but working to not make the end result what my opinion about it should be… liberation is at hand!

The practice of indifference allows you to be freed from things that keep you from your end which is “created to praise, reverence and serve God our Lord.” as Ignatius says. Brilliant, awesome, love it.

Now the important question… how do you DO it??