June 30, 2014

Dear  Friends,

Summer offers us leisure hours to talk with one another, be it over a campfire, a glass of wine, on the porch , in the coach travelling to a distant destination. These are the perfect times to tell stories.

You and I are storytellers. Before we are thinkers, analysts, philosophers, we are storytellers.

Often, we underestimate the value of the stories we tell, because we think the are uninteresting, colorless, ordinary. But our stories are full of daydreams, fears and hopes,   memories and experiences. The themes of our stories, whether we know it or not,  are big themes: the dimensions of love, the pursuit of life to the full, the search for meaning, how evil is conquered. We tell stories that are sad, or full of humor. Sometimes we tell the same story over and over again until we are satisfied that we got the nuance and timing   right.

My mother’s father, Casimir, was short. Maybe  4’11’. He was mild, a man of prayer, old when I was little, with a thousand wrinkles on his face and neck. Grandma told me how he got to America. As a youth in Poland, he was involuntarily conscripted into the Russian army. He deserted, fled across multiple borders and came here. My  little Grandpa.  He grew to be a giant in my mind because of what he did.

This cherished story is more than a memory.  It is a source of invaluable lessons about gentleness and courage, about a sense of what life is for, about what it means to stand up to tyranny.

As we listen to one another’s stories, we clarify our convictions and reexamine the shape and texture of our lives.

We need to give one another permission to tell our stories, otherwise, they will dry up within us. We need to give one another permission to tell our stories without editorializing or asking distracting questions.

Slowly, we might come to realize that we are redeemed by discovering God in our human story… not that God is captured in our stories, but that God is revealed in our stories.

A look at Scripture shows us that God is revealed more in stories than in discourses.

In the Hebrew Bible, we read about how God spoke, wrestled,  loved, challenged. The parables of Jesus – the stories of Jesus- grip us, disarm us, uplift us, puzzle us. We find ourselves in these parables.

Then there is Jesus’ story. It’s told in the New Testament in a way that occasionally frustrates people who have no taste for stories, but who demand chronology and explanations. A lifetime isn’t long enough to probe the stories about Jesus.

Stories can be idle chatter. They can be used to manipulate people These stories do not enhance life. So we need to be discerning about the stories we value.

Our best models for life-giving stories are the disciples on the way to Emmaus. They walked with Jesus and only recognized him in the walk and talk and meal they shared.

On to the stories the summer will offer us.

The Game of Life

Dear Friends,

I entitle this piece “The Game of Life.”

To begin, playing games is not just for children. As adults, how utterly refreshing it is to abdicate adult ways to play as children. We do this best when we play with people who do not scorn, devalue such play. The characteristics of children’s play are total absorption, sheer enjoyment and exuberance.  No cell phones to interrupt.

In the game of life, we can choose some players but not all. How do we treat people who play the game of life with us: as members of the team, spectators, negotiators, cooperators, competitors that lead to winners and losers?  Do we ask what’s winnable for all?  

For all who know the world’s history, it’s clear that some games people play are positive. Others are not. The negative ones include dirty tricks, manipulation, brinksmanship, addiction to playing games of chance, destruction by mind games or war games, and sex games that are predicated on body use, inequality and no loving commitment. If this represents how we play, there will be no dreaming, no seeing connections, no risk-taking for the common good, no delight in common victories .For people who play negative games, whoever has the most toys wins.

·         

      What are the games that Jesus would not play?

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• He never backed off from what he said, and he meant what he said.
• In John 6, Jesus would not back down from saying He would give His Body and Blood as food.
• He would not deny who he was.  Remember Jesus and Pilate: Are you a king?
• He was not impressed with the wealth and class that people used to gain prominence.
• He refused to play word games with the Pharisees who tried to trap him, as they did before the adulterous woman in John 8. He put no one down not the rich young man who went away or the thief crucified with him.

Christianity has its own way of knowing who has won the game of life. By the fruits of what we are and do, we know we have won, not when others are in shambles.

The important ingredient in the enriching game of life is that we try to be the consistent person of integrity: life-giving in action and attitude, faithful to the Lord and to who we are, becoming all that we can be.

Saint John XXIII told this about himself: “I believe that when I stand before God, God will simply ask of me “How did you use the gift of life I gave you?’ “

Did John XXIII play well? Do we?

~Joan Sobala, SSJ

A Menu for Life

Dear Friends,

We don’t have to be foodies to appreciate the meaning of food in our lives. Sure, there’s food for our bodies, but also food for our spirits, our minds, our hearts.

I played in a foursome with a Dutch man on a golf course in Florida one winter. If he hit a particularly good shot, he would say: “I am satisfied.” Occasionally, after an outstanding shot, the Dutchman was more expansive: “I am very satisfied.” Food for this man’s spirit of play!

Next weekend, the liturgical calendar marks The Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ,

what was, years ago called Corpus Christi. The Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday evening brings us together for the giving of the Eucharist by Jesus on the night before He died. That liturgy was the first part of the Triduum, three days when we were absorbed in the whole meaning of Jesus’ self-giving and His being raised up. Next weekend, we thank God once more and with renewed focus for this gift beyond all gifts. With Christ’s Body and Blood, we are daily nourished for our life’s journey, with its ups and downs, its victories and defeats, its delights and challenges, Recognizing the strength and confidence that comes though sharing in this sacred meal, we can say: “I am satisfied. I am very satisfied.”

But satisfaction is not all. For being one with Christ in this singularly remarkable way stirs up hungers in our hearts for the same sort of world reconciled to God that Jesus desired.

So here are some questions that invite you to make up a menu for your life going forward. Think beyond bodily food, and ask yourself:

            What do I have an appetite for?

            What do I want to taste again and again, or for the first time?

            What do I not want to stomach any longer?

            What can I contribute to for the health of the world?

            For what am I hungry to see? To hear? To witness?

On the mountain, before Jesus fed the multitudes, the disciples cam to Jesus with the fear that there was not enough  food among those gathered. Jesus said to them: "Feed them yourselves.”(Mark 6.37)

In what ways, with what resources are we called upon to feed the multitudes?

~Joan Sobala, SSJ

Generosity - A Way of Life

Dear friends,

            25 years ago June 4, one lone man stood down the tanks that had rolled into Tieneman Square. This man could have lost his life because of his unwillingness to move. Many men did lose their lives on June 6, 1944. D-Day. It is written that, after he gave the signal to commence the operation, General Eisenhower turned away and wept.  Volumes have been written about this bloody, courageous day when evil was confronted – a day that was judged to be the turning point of history. Many words have been used to describe the remarkable gifts of those marines, airmen, sailors and soldiers. Today, I choose one word.  Generous. They were generous.

            The generous sharing of who we are and what we have is no simple matter. It is a complex thing to know how much to share, how, when and why share life’s treasures at all. Our own generosity affects and sometimes changes drastically the lives of others, including our loved ones.

            Take the lone man in Tieneman Square. We don’t remember what happened to him. We do know what happened to a significant number of those who stormed the beaches of Normandy. They stayed, tucked away under white crosses, forever to be a sign to visitors of their remarkable generosity that others might live.

            Watching the sundrenched ceremonies from Normandy last  Friday, I wondered what these D-Day heroes thought as they went off to confront tanks or howitzers. Did they wonder whether what they shared would be wasted, misused to build religious or political empires rather than the lives of people?

            Similar questions tug at our lives when we creatively try to hold seriously the relationship between achievement and responsibility, between pleasure and loyalty, between having and sharing. For those who try to hear the word of God and keep it, Jesus gives examples of generosity – his own as well as the generosity of  others, like the poor woman who put in the temple coffers all she possibly could, without  knowing how her gift would be used. Her attitude mirrored his.

            For followers of the Risen Lord, generosity is a way of life. Some of us are called to give up our very lives for others. Many more of us are called to live our lives so that others may live graciously. Sometimes, generosity calls us “to live in the world, to sanctify the world, to not be afraid of living in the world by our presence in it.” (Pope Francis)

            In the face of life, in the face of death, I invite us all to reconsider and re-appropriate the generosity of Jesus and His followers of all time as a way of life.

~Joan Sobala, SSJ

O Spirit, Stir Our Passion Again!

Dear Friends,

Think about the Pentecost story in Acts 2.1-12 as the counterpoint to Babel in Genesis 11. 1-9.

When the people created the tower of Babel, when our contemporaries and we attempt to build a massive superstructure without a relationship to God as its foundation, the result is confusion, division, disharmony, chaos and bewilderment. As a result of building a tower of Babel, people cannot understand each other. “You are babbling!” Separation is inevitable, if not immediate.

What happened at Pentecost we really don’t  know. We are certain though that the disciples had an experience of the power of the Spirit flooding their being such as they had never had before.

The power of the Holy Spirit gave the disciples a message and an utterance that could reach every heart. Those who heard the disciples on that first Pentecost could understand them, each in his/her own tongue. Unity happened, where none was expected.

When we are linked with the Holy Spirit, we, too, are powerful, because the Holy Spirit is powerful. We have the power to be and do with a life force that moves in us, above us, around us, under us, and we have the power to receive and embody the gifts of the Spirit (Galatians 5.22)

We are given the power of clear speaking and convinced hearts. Without doubt,  Pentecost is the Feast of Conviction.

Conviction means:    I will. I will believe. I will go.  I will do it. I will link my efforts with those of others.   I will say yes. I will say no.

This week, as we anticipate the bright, brilliant flame. the Holy Breath, the Holy Wind of Pentecost, let’s use the words of Sister Pat Schnapp, believer and poet:

O Spirit,
stir our passion again!
Light wildfires
and spin them past
our tame intentions.

Huff and puff till you blow down
the shutters we hide in.

~Joan Sobala, SSJ

Make Room For Laughter

Dear Friends,
   
I hope our spiritual practice this summer might include becoming more keenly conscious of God’s gift of laughter. With so much pain and suffering as a daily portion of the world’s news, sadness over tragedy  threatens to overcome us. True, we need to be attentive to the world’s pain. But laughter takes the edge off our troubles. It offers a distraction and sometimes even relief from pain and grief.

Norman Cousins, a longtime editor of The Saturday Review, learned the power of laughter during a battle with a debilitating illness. He discovered that his condition improved when he enjoyed himself. Laughter, Cousins wrote, is like inner jogging. It helps us heal by activating our immune system.

One day at the end of January 1992, I found myself sitting in an outpatient cancer center, hooked up to an intervenous system, ready to receive my first drop of chemotherapy for ovarian cancer. Other women and men were there, too, likewise hooked up, each absorbed in their own dealings with cancer.

There, above the tube leading to my vein, was the first drop of chemo. I closed my eyes, waiting for some sort of soothing, encouraging spiritual image to come to my aid. What I heard in my inner being was “Hi Ho! Hi Ho! It’s off to work we go!”

I started to laugh out loud. Other people wanted to know what I was laughing at. I told them. They laughed, too.

Like prayer, shared laughter tears down walls and binds us together.

Laughter, according to the theologian Karl Barth, is the closest thing to the grace of God. Laughter is as sacred as music, stained-glass windows and silence.

The first time we hear about laughter in the Scriptures is in Genesis, when Sara is told that she, ancient though she was, and her equally ancient husband, Abraham, would conceive and bear a son.(Genesis18.12 -15) She laughed. From then on, in various parts of the Hebrew Bible, laughter is named as the best response to the situation. “There is a time to weep and a time to laugh."(Eccl.3.4) “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, then we thought we were dreaming. Then, our mouths were filled with laughter and our tongues sang for joy.”(Ps.126 1-2)

Sometimes the laughter described in the Hebrew Bible is derisive, taunting, lacking in a shared sense of delight in the incongruous. Jesus is laughed at in each of the Synoptic Gospels by bystanders who use laughter to ridicule Him. (Mt.9.24, Mk. 5.40,
Lk. 8. 53)

Of all God’s creatures, only human beings can laugh. What about hyenas, we say? A natural response that doesn’t arise from recognizing incongruity. Cultivate the laughter of humor. Give up the laughter that diminishes the other. Enjoy oxymorons like working vacation, plastic glasses, definite maybe and exact estimate.

Laugh at bloopers like the famous “Ladies and Gentlemen, the President of the United States, Hoobert Heever.”

Laugh at ourselves when a mighty swing on the tee of the first golf hole produces a dribble, or when the chicken on our plate flies across the room as we attempt to cut off a piece.

Make a place in our faith for lightness, merriment and joy in simple pleasures – especially in the face of the world’s lack of ability to do so.

~Joan Sobala, SSJ

Take a Chance on God

Dear Friends,

You know as well as I do that change is a staple of life. Just look in the mirror and think of yourself five years ago.

India has a new prime minister. Crimea has moved to become a Russian annex. The obituary pages of the newspaper tell of people who have crossed over. Death. Divorce. Job loss or gain. Last weekend area colleges graduated students into the public sphere. A fork in the road. A new possibility.

As native Hawaiians grow through adolescence, they are free to change their names to match their emerging self-understanding.

The people who died in the capsizing of the South Korean ferry did not will to die. They were taken down a path they would not have chosen. Life went askew that day for more people than those who died. Unwilled change. Costly change. God was holding them close.

The forest fires that keep eating away at the West are also costly. Then, new growth appears one day, much later. New growth means life bursts forth where there was once only death. It happens. God is there.

Next week, our liturgical calendar celebrates the Ascension of Christ. No longer would the Risen One be visible and tangible to His followers. Jesus, the Risen One, will hand over His community to be shaped by the Holy Spirit. The Ascension begins the process . The Holy Spirit will be given at Pentecost. Will I recognize You then?

Personally, I can choose to change- or I can say No. I won’t. And die.

God. Are You in the change? I always thought You were an unchangeable God. Do You change? Will you pass through the changes of my life with me. Will I recognize you when You are there?

Sometimes, when I want to change in a particular way, I find I cannot. I cannot lose weight, break a pattern, begin to read Scripture daily with understanding. My will, not Yours.

But when it’s Your will, not mine, then change becomes real though not immediately apparent. You offer me discovery, exploration into life, the stretching of myself beyond myself.

We don’t always change for the better, but we can. What it takes is clinging to God, trusting the Risen One, taking a risk that God is sufficient.

~Joan Sobala, SSJ