The Feast of All the Saints

"I want to be a saint!"

I was standing in an elevator with a bishop when I made this announcement almost 40 years ago.

"I think you would make a very good saint," the bishop responded, though he had never met me before this moment. Was he just being polite? How was he supposed to respond to this odd young woman, bedecked in her sweatshirt and patched blue jeans, making such a declaration to him?

I smile when I remember that woman, my younger self. She was so enthusiastic and full of longing to share God with the world.

It seemed, at the time, that being in college was like the opening of doors into a life where I could choose who I was to be and how I was going to live.

I wanted to be a saint because God's love and healing could then flow to others through me for all eternity. I saw that this was what the saints did for me - and I wanted to join that club. What could bring me greater joy?

Looking back on this moment with older eyes, it now seems so pretentious, so naive.

Does one become a saint just by wishing it, proclaiming it? Am I so special that generations of people over the centuries will know of me to ask for my prayers?

The answer to both questions: hardly.

At that young age, I knew nothing of the hardships of life. I had no idea how hard it could be to remain faithful when afflicted in body or mind. Even now, my understanding is limited in that my own afflictions have been relatively few.

I knew that I was in love with God but I had no way of knowing how many detours there would be on the path of staying in love. I was familiar with the detour of doubt but had no perspective to see how even my wish was part of a much more dangerous detour: ego (aka the wrong sort of pride).

While reading a delightful book on Russian Orthodox monasticism recently, I came upon a powerful reminder of what the path of Love really entails:

"...a monk must have no powerful desire for anything except God. There are no exceptions. It doesn't matter what that desire might be, whether for higher rank, or more knowledge, or better health, or for some material thing, or even to become an elder, or to obtain spiritual gifts. Everything will come of itself, if such be God's will." (from Everyday Saints and Other Stories by Archimandrite Tikhon Shevkunov).

While we may all be heaving a sigh of relief now that we are not Orthodox monks (!), we are not really "off the hook" all that much. Very few if any of us will be the sort of saint that is recognized by canonization, a formal declaration of the church. However, we are all summoned to be "everyday saints", no matter how ordinary or limited our lives may be.

To be an "everyday saint" is to take my own little corner of being and allow it to be filled with God. And to be "filled" with God means that there is not room for much else - certainly not things that I want for myself - only God and whatever unexpected gifts He brings.

I cannot even bring my desire for sainthood there. Only the desire for God.

Thus, even if it is my destiny to die in obscurity, a shriveled up old woman with dementia lying in a nursing home bed, remembered by no one, that is all right. As long as God fills that little corner of space that is me, my desire is fulfilled.

(Though I would be unaware of much, I can only hope that whoever had the unfortunate task of taking care of my body at that point might detect a little brightness there because of the One who dwelt within.)

It is easy to write these words - but a far different thing to live them. I did not know that when I was an enthusiastic young college student. But I know it now.

I am so far from that Way now that I might despair - if there were no grace and no community of saints to carry me with their prayers into the safety of their fold.

It is this that I celebrate today - the "communion of saints" - the eternal community of both the canonized and the everyday saints who dwell in the presence of God and want nothing more than for you and me to join them.

...I had a vision of a great multitude,

which no one could count,

from every nation, race, people, and tongue.

They stood before the throne and before the Lamb,

wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands.

They cried out in a loud voice:

“Salvation comes from our God, who is seated on the throne,

and from the Lamb.”

...

Then one of the elders spoke up and said to me, 

“Who are these wearing white robes, 

and where did they come from?”
I said to him,  “My lord, you are the one who knows.” 

He said to me, “These are the ones 

who have survived the time of great distress.

(Revelation 7:  9, 14)

            St. Francis of Assisi



      St. Clare of Assisi

    St. Catherine of Genoa



    St. Elizabeth of Hungary




   St. Therese of the Child Jesus




                 St. Teresa of Avila




     St. John of the Cross




   St. Mary Magdalene




   St. Maximilian Kolbe




  St. Kateri Tekakwitha

St. Charles Lwanga & companions




St. Paul Miki & companions (26 martyrs of Japan)

  Oscar Romero (not yet canonized)              


(These are only a few of the many, many saints who are part of the eternal community. Most will never be formally named by the church - but they still love us and pray for us.)

forgiveness

This evening, as I sat down to reflect on the Scripture for the day, these were the words that greeted me:

I know of nothing good living in me - living, that is, in my unspiritual self - for though the will to do what is good is in me, the performance is not, with the result that instead of doing the good things I want to do, I carry out the sinful things I do not want. When I act against my will, then, it is not my true self doing it, but sin which lives in me.

In fact, this seems to be the rule, that every single time I want to do good it is something evil that comes to hand. In my inmost self I dearly love God's Law, but I can see that my body follows a different law that battles against the law which my reason dictates. This is what makes me a prisoner of that law of sin which lives inside my body.

What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body doomed to death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 7: 18-25)

I suspect that most of us can relate to this passage. We want to do good. We plan to do what is right but often find ourselves not carrying out these intentions nearly so well as we had hoped. It is rather consoling that St. Paul wrote this about himself. If one of the greatest of the apostles felt this way, perhaps there is hope for someone like me. 

What I am about to write next, however, is much harder for most of us to relate to.

Many years ago, a man I knew mailed these very words to me, painstakingly copied in his own hand. He was writing to me from prison - where he was incarcerated for molesting little girls. 

The crime of which he was accused and convicted is considered among the most heinous in our society. To prey upon the innocence of children seems unforgivable to most of us and many of us might label such a man "a monster". 

Yet here he was writing words that any one of us might have written, "instead of doing the good things I want to do, I carry out the sinful things I do not want." And I believe that he meant those words quite sincerely.

For him to copy this passage from the Bible was a great deal more work than it would have been for most of us. He was unable to read and write. He had to look at every letter of every word, one by one, and copy its shape. I suspect it took him hours.

The tragic childhoods he most likely contributed to only reflected the one he himself had lived. He was an abused child in an adult body, a severely damaged human being who could not be permitted to live freely in society.

And yet he was a person, created in the image and likeness of God. It was not his desire to hurt children nor was it his desire to offend God. And yet undoubtedly his behavior did both.

Can God's forgiveness be granted even to someone like this? Should God's forgiveness extend to a person who does such things? If I were one of his victims, could I forgive him?

These questions drive us deep into the heart of great mystery. The mystery of  forgiveness, what it is, what it means. The mystery of God's love for his broken people. The mystery of Jesus' teaching that, in our prayers, we should ask to be forgiven as we forgive others...

On a human level, forgiveness is often defined as a cessation of anger or resentment toward another. In psychological terms, it is often regarded as a process - but also a conscious decision. If I want to hold onto my anger, most assuredly I will not let it go. If I want to renounce it, I begin the process.

It also interesting to note that, on that same human level, there is research evidence that people who forgive tend to be happier and physically healthier. (And this research was done with people who had some pretty big things to forgive, such as murder of family members in political violence.)

And yet, forgiving is so hard for us to do.

It may not be quite as hard for me to forgive the people I love. It may not be so hard to forgive offenses that I could imagine myself doing in a moment of weakness...But what about those other ones? The acts so horrible that I could never, ever imagine doing that to another human being...

And this is where the forgiveness of God enters in. Not just that God forgives me - but that, if I accept that forgiveness, truly embrace it, I become empowered to forgive on a level transcending my own very limited goodness.

It is here, in this place, that we truly meet God and begin to understand.

I myself have never faced a challenge anywhere close to this and therefore it would seem false for me to try to explain. But I can share with you someone who has.

Corrie ten Boom and her sister, Betsie, were imprisoned during World War II at the Ravensbruck, a concentration camp for women. Their crime? Concealing Jews in their home in Holland. Betsie died in the camp. Corrie survived - and went on to preach to people around the world about God's forgiveness.

In the short video that follows, she tells of a meeting of a man following one of her talks in Germany. Listen with me:





(Excerpt from Corrie ten Boom's autobiography, The Hiding Place):

It was in a church in Munich that I saw him, a balding heavy-set man in a gray overcoat, a brown felt hat clutched between his hands. People were filing out of the basement room where I had just spoken. It was 1947 and I had come from Holland to defeated Germany with the message that God forgives. ...

And that's when I saw him, working his way forward against the others. One moment I saw the overcoat and the brown hat; the next, a blue uniform and a visored cap with its skull and crossbones. It came back with a rush: the huge room with its harsh overhead lights, the pathetic pile of dresses and shoes in the center of the floor, the shame of walking naked past this man. I could see my sister's frail form ahead of me, ribs sharp beneath the parchment skin. Betsie, how thin you were!

Betsie and I had been arrested for concealing Jews in our home during the Nazi occupation of Holland; this man had been a guard at Ravensbruck concentration camp where we were sent. ...

"You mentioned Ravensbruck in your talk," he was saying. "I was a guard in there." No, he did not remember me. "But since that time," he went on, "I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. Fraulein, ..." his hand came out, ... "will you forgive me?"

And I stood there — I whose sins had every day to be forgiven — and could not. Betsie had died in that place — could he erase her slow terrible death simply for the asking?

It could not have been many seconds that he stood there, hand held out, but to me it seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do.

For I had to do it — I knew that. The message that God forgives has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us. "If you do not forgive men their trespasses," Jesus says, "neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses." ...

And still I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is not an emotion — I knew that too. Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. "Jesus, help me!" I prayed silently. "I can lift my hand, I can do that much. You supply the feeling."

And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.

"I forgive you, brother!" I cried. "With all my heart!"

For a long moment we grasped each other's hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God's love so intensely as I did then. 

Week of Light: Day 7

It is with a heart full of gratitude that I approach my blog tonight to wrap up the Week of Light and the project of the 7 holy pauses. I have learned and grown so much.

Those who have been reading regularly may recall that in July, as an act of contrition for having neglected my blog for over a month, I made a commitment to post every day for a week on one of 7 words: hope, peace, grace, mercy, love, joy and light. Then I invited readers to share any art, poetry, photos, etc. on these topics and promised to post them two weeks later.

When I found that I had very few contributions by early August, I decided that I would post the ones submitted and make up the difference myself - 7 days straight for each of the holy pauses.

It seemed almost an impossible challenge to lay upon myself. Where would I get the time? How would I think of enough to write about - that would add up to 49 posts - more than twice the number I had done in any previous year?

I did not have the answers to these questions. And that is perhaps one of the most important lessons I have learned. I did not need to have the answers. What I needed to do was make a commitment based on faith and then live it out one day at a time.

The faith that fueled my leap into this frenzy of blogging certainly wasn't faith in myself. As I have commented on and off throughout, I have most often not had any idea what I was going to write and sometimes sat down feeling too exhausted to write anything.

A second important lesson learned was that often this was a good thing. When I was feeling empty and depleted, I was best able to recognize my dependence on God. If I thought for a moment that I was full of good ideas or poetry or art, I would not feel such a need to turn to Him. And that would have been a great loss - surely for me and likely for you as well.

Turning to God to help me blog - it sounds so silly - as though the Creator of the universe would be concerned about what I posted on the Internet! And yet, time after time, it has been made clear to me that I was not alone in this endeavor, that the holy One used my keystrokes to express His love for you and me.

If that should sound grandiose, please know that my intent is quite the opposite: I feel very humbled by this entire process. A friend commented to me today about some of the late hours at which I posted. I found that often I couldn't stop until I was finished.

(And it wasn't just me being compulsive about my commitment to get it done on the same day, though I don't deny that factor!).

When I was writing The Broken Wing, part 2, for example, I needed to find out how the story was going to end. How was this painful question of God allowing the little one to suffer going to be resolved? I truly didn't know. But I kept typing until the resolution made itself known.

There have been many times when I have been stuck in the middle of a post, not knowing where it was going, and paused to ask God for help. And help always came. That does not mean, of course, that I think that everything posted here is brilliant and divinely inspired. Certainly not!

It does means that I have learned more profoundly how much I need and want to turn to God for help in all that I do. There is much greater hope, peace, love and joy in my life when I rely on His grace and mercy, bringing my confusions and dilemmas into His light.

I am not sure that I ever explained why I have referred to these words as "holy pauses". If I have forgotten, perhaps you have as well. I first heard the phrase from Christine at Abbey of the Arts. While it more than I can explain here, I learned through a number of online retreats with her the importance of "pausing" to remember the holy in the midst of our busy days.

The Catholic church accepts the exhortation to "pray without ceasing" (1 Thessalonians 5:17), with seven pauses for prayer each day. Most people outside of religious life do not have the time to incorporate all of these prayers as they are written in the Divine Office. However, we can all "pause" for a minute or two 7 times a day to remember God - and these words became the themes of my pausing.

So...let us pause once more with the Light. I would like to share with you a poem and an image.

I wrote the poem earlier this year as part of an online class through the Abbey. We were offered the first line of a famous poem to use as the beginning our own poem. Thus, the first line of the following poem was first penned by William Carlos Williams.

(I am offering the option for you to listen to my poem if you prefer that to reading it - or do both. Just click on the little arrow and it will play.)

so much depends upon

me – or so i had imagined –

until one day, i was no more.

it is hard to say just how it happened.

it was a gentle, loving sort of thing

hardly noticed for all its power –

much like morning dew

imperceptibly drawn into

sun’s warming rays

or like summer’s long shadows

sinking with setting sun

into peaceful darkness.

once gone, all the longings,

needs and rages of old

seemed but a bit of dust.

it was, in the end,

only the Light that mattered –

glory upon glory to Him.

amen.

Many blessings...I will be taking a bit of a break but plan to be back posting about something or other before too long. Remember that you can sign up for e-mail notification (upper left corner) if you would like to know when I have posted.

Week of Light: Day 6

I am beginning this post rather late because I just finished watching a captivating 60 minute video on prayer. The speaker (Anthony Bloom) had many interesting reflections but one thing in particular caught my attention at the beginning of his talk: his use of the phrase, "to see in a new light".

This familiar idiom, of course, stood out to me because I have been reflecting on light all week.

What does that mean, "to see in a new light"?

While I don't know the origins of the saying, my imagination stirs up an image. I am straining to see an something in a dark or dusky location and, being unsuccessful, turn on a light (or take the item somewhere else) to see it in a "new light".

In other words, if I can't see clearly where I am, I'll try a new light and perhaps I shall see more clearly.

(Of course, as an idiom, it means more than this. The phrase is typically used to suggest rethinking, re-evaluating or gaining a new perspective.)

Ironically, quite a number of things he said about prayer caused me to see it "in a new light". For example, he told a rather amusing story about how he had a bad quarrel with his good friend as an adolescent and he decided that he was never going to forgive him.

However, this created a problem for him every time he tried to say the Lord's prayer and he got to the part about "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us". He brought his dilemma to his priest and was told that he should not say anything in prayer that isn't true.

He tried out some alternatives, such asking God to heap burning coals on his own head since he wanted to heap them on the head of his friend. But that didn't work for him because he wanted to be forgiven. For the same reason, it didn't work when he tried to skip over that part of the prayer.

Finally, he was able to say the Lord's prayer, with his priest's approval, as "forgive me as much as I wish I could forgive my friend". After a year of saying it this way, he and his friend finally reconciled.

Although it doesn't seem like this should be so surprising, the speaker's emphasis on the importance of truth in prayer caused me to see it in a different light. Certainly it is not as though, prior to hearing this message, I was in the habit of lying to God. But, often enough, prayer can come from somewhere other than the deepest truth of one's heart.

Prayers can be recited because we were taught them. We may say them because we have been told that it is "good" to do so. They may be expected of us in certain situations or we participate because we don't want to be left out. But no prayer is good for me if I cannot say it and have it be true.

This small example causes me to consider how many things I routinely look at in "an old light".

I may have an established way of looking at myself that has been with me for so long that I consider it to be "true" and not open to a different perspective.

I may have a certain way of looking at the world, religion, politics, other people (and countless other things) because that is how I have always seen them. It doesn't occur to me that I might not be seeing them clearly and should try a new light.

And, of course, I may have a particular way of looking at - or thinking about - God.

I may conceive of God as an angry old man sitting on a throne, deciding moment by moment who gets to live and who gets to die. Or I might view him an amorphous spirit who brought everything into being but has now lost interest. Or I might even think of him as a myth, a fairy tale invented to make people feel better about their pointless existence.

Regardless of what my "old light" may be regarding God, it is very likely that I have one. Very few of us have grown up without any images or ideas about God, whether positive or negative. As with our other well-established views, it may not occur to us that there may different "lights" than the one in which we currently view things.

As the saying goes, it is what it is.

Or is it?

If you are at all like me, you have had experiences like the one I just described about truth and prayer. I wasn't conscious that I didn't demand that my prayers be true. I just hadn't really thought of it that way before. So my perspective on the "what it is" was modified a bit when I viewed it in a different light.

But there is even more here.

It has been written:

"God is light; in Him there is no darkness at all." 

(1 John 1:5). 

The meaning here is not that God is like the sun - only bigger. Rather, in God, there is nothing hidden. Truth is revealed in His presence. And it is a truth that loves and desires to help us - to see what we cannot otherwise see, to understand what we cannot otherwise understand.

In Him, there is no more being confused or lost or afraid.

My spiritual brother, Rodger, was again kind enough to share an image and reflection for this week of Light. He too apparently loves the evening light, having received the image of this grand old tree as it was illumined by the setting sun.

(photo by Rodger, used with permission; minor editing by me.)

He sent me an e-mail today to say that the image helped him remember "how God shows his brilliance right before or after a dark night".

Indeed. There is no denying that life holds its "dark nights" - some of them very dark. So dark that we cannot see. And we may not even know that there is any alternative to the darkness.

Come along with me, you who are in dark nights.

Step out of the "old light" and into the brilliance of His new light. Do not be afraid.

Allow the light of His truth to love you and lead you, right now, tonight. And forever...for, even if you slip back into darkness, His truth is always waiting for you to come back.

Week of Light: Day 5

Yesterday, in my ramblings, I extolled the glories of morning light. While evening light is also a great blessing, October in Ohio doesn't not offer us very much evening. The hours of daylight seem to shrink at an alarming rate each week. 

But how I love that evening light! 

There is something about the light cast by the setting sun that gives even the simplest blossom a resplendence befitting a rare treasure. It is as though the sun, as its parting gift to the earth before it slips away, bathes all things in its own radiant joy.

And so it was that, just over two weeks ago, my camera and I walked to the park down the street to be so bathed in evening light. I brought with me a book of the Scripture readings, marked for the feast day: Guardian Angels. (Even the printed word seemed more alive in the light.)

Allowing the Light to wash over me, I read: 

"See, I am sending an angel before you,

to guard you on the way

and bring you to the place I have prepared."

(Exodus 23: 20)

This is extraordinarily consoling news to those of us travelling through the darkness. The One Who is Himself Light has dispatched a guardian to guide us and illumine the treacherous path each of us travels on our journey Home to Him. We are not alone or lost. We are protected and led by messengers of Light. 

It is sad that so few of us believe this anymore. 

We live in a world that tells us it is foolish to believe in things we cannot see or prove. And yet so much of what gives our life depth or meaning cannot be seen or proven.

Can anyone see love? Can anyone prove beauty? While science may be able to describe light in photons and wavelengths, can it tell me why evening light brings me joy? 

Probably somewhere there is scientific study that tries to explain it - but I do not care. 

I do not disregard science but neither do I not turn to it for any of the answers that really matter. I no longer march with that army. Rather, I am marching in the Light of God.*

As has been happening to me more and more of late, some words joined with one of the images that I received on that evening walk on the feast of the Angels. Please allow me to share it with you:

Let us allow ourselves to bathed in His light. May it cleanse us of whatever darknesses remain, in or around us, that keep us from seeing His great love. 

Let us march on in His light...


* I have embedded for you a YouTube rendition of the Zulu hymn, "Siyahamba". Whether you've heard it a million times before - or never - I suggest you click on the little arrow and listen - or even sing or dance along.

Week of Light: Day 4

I woke to a pleasant surprise this morning. All of the weather forecasts I had seen the night before had little pictures of rain pouring down from storm clouds. I hadn't expected much.

When I opened my eyes and saw that my surroundings were still gray and dull, I resigned myself to clouds. Yuck. However, when I walked into my dining room for a better view, I could see that bright sunlight was inching its way past the tree and roof tops, so as to brighten my little garden.

I looked up to the sky. Not a cloud to be seen.

And it just so happened that, although there is always work to do, I did not have any patients to see until late afternoon. This has not happened recently and I had even been feeling a bit disappointed that my schedule was so light.

However, when I saw this "uncloudy" morning unfolding before me, all thoughts of disappointment evaporated. Before the weather changed its mind, my camera and I were going to take a walk.

Although the fall foliage has not yet peaked here in northeast Ohio, I knew that one street on my walking route typically has breath-taking beauty before all of the others. If I waited too long, as I had some years, I would miss some of the richest hues of the season.

After a bit of breakfast, I bundled up - it was a brisk morning - and we locked up the house to begin our sojourn. However, as my camera and I ventured out, I reminded myself that we were not going to take pictures or capture beauty but receive whatever images we were given.

I wanted this to be a contemplative walk, an opening of my heart to God - not a venture to collect photos so as to impress (as though I had created the beauty).

There is something about the morning light that is absolutely luscious. It has a vibrancy that is somehow sharp and soft at the same time. It defines every detail, in both light and shadow, but has a joyous aliveness that prevents any impression of being cold or hard.

As we made our way down the sidewalk, I almost immediately encountered a simple little leaf that had fallen onto my path at some earlier time. I saw its beauty in the illumination of the sun's fresh rays. I accepted its image with gratitude.

As I continued on through the neighborhood, I was blessed with many images, some quite colorful. Late-blooming roses held their own against the chill. The anticipated foliage was indeed stunning against bright blue sky.

But it was for the unexpected gifts that I felt a deep surge of gratitude: the images of the very ordinary fallen leaves as they encountered the Light.

Each fallen leaf, no matter how withered and worn, seemed to have a singular beauty of its own - a beauty that could only be revealed when exposed by the fresh morning light. I wanted to accept - no, embrace - each and every one, to experience its ordinary but unique story made manifest before me.

Even now...

I can relate to these leaves...

Each one is fallen...

Most are broken.

Each finds its beauty

Not in itself...

but in and through the Light...

given to it from Above.

Let us welcome the Light, humbly. Let us surrender ourselves to Its holiness and be enlightened by It.

All glory be to Him Who is our Light. Amen.