Wednesday, May 21, 2014

To Sister Barbara -- Wherever you are . . . .

A long time ago, I took a class, called The Art of Spiritual Direction. It was the first class I took when I returned to graduate school, and I was scared. What if I failed? What if grad school was really for academics, and not for regular everyday sorts of people like me? 
Who did I think I was? 

Classes were wonderful.  Invigorating. Mind bending -- in the best sense of that word. Often, I was paired up with Sister Barbara, a nun from Cincinnati who had spent her adult life ministering in Guatemala.She was back in the US on a 6-month sabbatical, and came to Loyola to take classes. Again I felt those nagging questions. Who was I, to aspire to learning the craft of spiritual direction in the company of one such as this? 

We became friends. Before class and during class breaks, we'd sit and talk and she'd idly sketch.  She sketched the most clear and pristine drawings of the most ordinary objects: the blackboard erasers, someone's notebook, the chipped window sill in that ancient classroom. I marveled at our friendship. Where had her experiences as a celibate Roman Catholic nun living in Central America intersected with mine, an Episcopal suburbanite? She was so pure, so holy, so grace-filled, and here I was: a flappable, distracted American mom picking finger-paint out from under my fingernails during class.  

One image (spiritual direction classes pay very close attention to imagery!) that rested upon my shoulders that semester was an image of myself as a chipped and cracked clay pot holding a bunch of dark gooey stuff inside. One night, after I had shared the image with my classmates in a reflection, we were on a break, and Barb was sketching, and I asked her to sketch my clay pot as I had described it to the class that evening. She asked me more about my clay pot image. What shape was it? How big was it? And, soon, class resumed. 



Two weeks later, I came rushing into class, flapped, late, and muttering about the traffic.  Barb smiled and set a wrapped package on my desk.
It was perfect. 
Too perfect. 

"For you," she said.
"But where are the cracks and the chips and the brown, gooey ooze of my sins?" I protested. 
"This is how God sees you," she replied. 

That picture still hangs in my office, a testament to peace and grace, and quiet calm. 

Thank you Sister Barbara, wherever you are.  



Thursday, May 8, 2014

I Am Coming to You

"I am coming to you."  John 14:18


                                                                                     - August Swanson

In the Gospel, Jesus promises his disciples that even though he is going away for a while, He will not leave them orphaned.  
He promises that He will return to them.
Isn't this all we need?
If we can't trust Jesus, who can we trust?

"I am coming to you." 

We have God's word on it. 
How does God come to you?  

For me, its when I hold a brand new baby, and when the shy smile of a stranger acknowledges that we have shared a common understanding, and when a dew drop on a blade of grass in the early morning catches my eye. Jesus comes to me in the Holy Eucharist, when beautiful music deepens my grasp of life, or when an adult child calls, "just to check in."  In other words, Jesus comes to me in the everyday course of life. And still I am surprised. 

How does He come to you?