Listening for God in Unexpected Conversations

Dear Friends,

Two stories of chance encounters at places of refreshment teach us the need for both speaking up and listening.

In today’s gospel, Jesus showed a lot of imagination and took a big risk in talking with the Samaritan woman at the well, asking her for a drink of water. It was not the done thing. The woman was dumbfounded that he would talk to her. The disciples were dumbfounded too.

A number of years ago, Bill, a young medical student at Cornell and recently engaged to Anna, was assigned to an extended research project at Yale. Understandably, he was not happy about being away from Anna for three months. Without enthusiasm, Bill boarded a bus for New Haven.

Somewhere along the way, a short layover found him dejectedly seated at the lunch counter in the terminal, drinking coffee.

Sitting next to him was a middle-aged Black woman. She looked at his unsmiling face and said to him. “Honey, what’s wrong? You look so unhappy!” “I am," he said. She pushed on. “What’s wrong, honey?”

He told her the sad story of needing to leave behind his fiancé for three months. The woman said, "Show me her picture.” Bill obliged. “Oh, she’s beautiful,” the woman exuded. “Honey, marriage is wonderful. You’re going to have a long and happy life together. Now you just gotta do what you gotta do.”

Bill watched her board her bus, having taken in her message. Thinking back to that moment after being a compassionate physician for many years, Bill knew that that single encounter changed his attitude, his outlook, his sense of God’s presence.

We have a lot in common with the Samaritan woman and Bill. One came to fill her bucket with water, the other wanted a cup of coffee. Each was wrapped up in their own concerns: she with the scars of five marriages, he with the youthful loneliness of Anna’s absence. In a moment of grace, the Samaritan woman met the one who is the source of life and hope. Bill met the messenger of the one who is the source of life and hope. In their chance encounters, each met God in a whole new way. It changed them for the better.

This third week of Lent, beginning today, will we be ready to meet God or the messenger of God? Will we accept the potential the encounter offers?

~ Sister Joan Sobala

It is Good to Be Here

Dear Friends,

This Sunday’s gospel reading is Matthew’s account of the transfiguration.

Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother,
and led them up a high mountain by themselves.
And he was transfigured before them;
his face shone like the sun
and his clothes became white as light.
And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them,
conversing with him.
Then Peter said to Jesus in reply,
“Lord, it is good that we are here.
If you wish, I will make three tents here,
one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”

                                                                        Matthew 17:1-9

Peter’s suggestion sprang from the instinct to mark a site of spiritual struggle and revelation with a sacred artifact. As I read this week’s gospel story, I remembered the story of a simple chapel on the Scottish island of Orkney. It commemorates the faith experience of WWII military prisoners. Even in crisis, they experienced God and realized the holiness of the site.

During World War II, several hundred Italian prisoners of war were transported from North Africa to the sparsely populated Scottish Isles. They were forced to erect sea barriers to block invading Axis navy vessels. The prisoners were exhausted, cold, and lonely. They wondered if they would ever return to their lives in Italy. Their military chaplain had been captured with them and the men gathered regularly to pray.

Soon they had the idea of building a small chapel. They received permission to work after hours, using scrap materials. The men salvaged scraps of metal and wood. The camp commander gave them two Nissen huts to create a chapel body. They made cement to fashion walls and a church entrance. Pieces of glass were painted for windows. A fresco replicated a prayer card carried from Italy by one of the soldiers.

For the prisoners, their exile was a time of deep community. Together they experienced God and the island was a holy place. Like Peter in the gospel, they may have prayed, “Lord, it is good for us to be here.”

~ Susan Schantz, SSJ

Rescuing God from Smallness

Dear Friends, 

Many years ago, when I was a fledgling in religious life, I came across a slim volume by the biblical theologian J.B. Phillips entitled “Your God Is Too Small!" In it, Phillips described the many ways people have reduced God to a manageable size and then ended up not liking this crafted God very much.

The title and the challenge of J.B. Phillips’ book have stayed with me all these years and I find wrestling with God to release God from smallness an apt Lenten practice. Since Lent is a preparation time for Easter and the full-blooming of the Risen Lord, it’s only appropriate that our own Lenten practice should lead us to a new depth of relationship with Jesus who has conquered sin and death, and with the God he incarnated.

True, on Ash Wednesday, we are encouraged to fast, pray and give alms, but to what end? To be able to say at the end of Lent, “I’ve done it!”? In our spiritual growth, learning to let God be God – learning to treasure and love this God who is beyond all our designs – is an indispensable work on our part. 

Recently, Ron Rolheiser offered his readers some understandings that help us treasure the God who is and not the one of our own making.

Writing in Insane for the Light (a strange title for a book unless you know that phrase is a line from Goethe’s poem “The Holy Longing"), Rolheiser encourages his readers to rescue God from narrowness – or on the language of Phillips, a God who is too small.

As we fast from confining ideas, pray for wisdom, and give away all we can so as to travel lightly toward God, we might want to employ our energies to understanding a bit more the attributes of our very big God. Rolheiser says, first of all, that “our God has no favorites. No one person, race, gender or nation is favored more than others by God. All are privileged. Secondly, God is scandalously understanding and compassionate, especially toward the weak and sinners…Moreover, God asks us to be compassionate in the same way. God does not have a preferential option for the virtuous. In addition, God is critical of those who, whatever their sincerity, try to block access to God…Finally and centrally, God is good news for the poor…These are the attributes of God, whom Jesus incarnated. We need to work always at rescuing God from narrowness, even as we are sensitive to proper boundaries and the demands of orthodox teaching.” (pp102-103)

In these six Lenten weeks before us, let’s enlarge our hearts to embrace the God who is: big, generous, compassionate lover of all creation, all people without exception. Let us bless God for all God is and let us open ourselves to God’s companionship even more.

~ Sister Joan Sobala

Chocolate in Lent

Dear Friends,

On a spring Saturday morning in the early 1960’s, at the four corners in Pittsford, a man in his late 60s boarded the East Avenue bus. Within a half hour, he was in Sibley’s Bakery picking up a seven-layer mocha cake. Outside Sibley’s he caught a #10 Dewey bus. Carefully balancing the cake on his lap, he traveled another half hour to a bus stop in the Maplewood neighborhood. He walked to the Schantz home at 380 Seneca Parkway, walked up the porch steps, and rang the front doorbell. “Is your dad home?” he said to my brother who opened the door. “I’m his Uncle Herb.”

Herb had never met me or any of my seven siblings. His brother Rupert died when my dad was seven. Grandpa’s family became estranged from my dad’s mother due to their cultural and financial differences. After thirty years’ separation, Herb had recently reached out to my dad, but this first visit was a surprise. Herb became a beloved part of our family, along with his sister Irene. 

This winter I am identifying with Uncle Herb and his desire to reconnect. I reflect on my own family bonds. They have been weakened in recent years by geographical distance, family deaths, and infrequent gatherings. As Lent begins, I am drawn to find ways to reconnect. What can I do to strengthen loving connections?     

Is there anyone you are missing in your own life? Do you feel drawn to make a journey, too, carrying the sweet gift of connection?

In hope, 

Susan Schantz SSJ

A Season of Choosing Love

Dear Friends,

In anticipation of Valentine’s Day and the season of Lent, beginning on February 15, here are some ideas for celebrating both:

                                                                       

Mend a quarrel. Search out a forgotten friend.

Dismiss suspicion and replace it with trust.

Write a love letter. Share some treasure. Give a soft answer.

Encourage youth. Manifest your loyalty in a word or deed.

                                                                       

Keep a promise. Find the time. Forego a grudge.

Forgive an enemy. Listen. Apologize if you were wrong.

Try to understand. Flout envy. Examine your demands of others.

Think first of someone else.

Appreciate, be kind, be gentle. Laugh a little more.

                                                                       

Deserve confidence. Take up arms against malice.

Decry complacency. Express your gratitude.

Worship your God. Gladden the birth of a child.

Take pleasure in the beauty and wonder of the earth.

Speak your love. Speak it to God. Speak it to your neighbor.

Speak it again. Speak it again. Speak it again.

Speak it still once again.

                                                                     

Author unknown, but a worthy challenge to live out the valuable little things in the ever-growing life God has given us. Live it. Pass it on. Happy Valentine’s Day. Expand your sense of Lent.

~ Sister Joan Sobala

Living Words

Dear Friends,

Emily Dickinson, the nineteenth century American poet, wrote about the power of the word. Here is her poem:

A word is dead

when it is said,

some say.

I say it just

begins to live

that day.

In recent weeks of violence, dissent, and challenged faith, many words have been written, and many words have been spoken. When we believers gather in weekend worship, we hear sacred scriptures proclaimed. Some of us have heard preachers relate the bible passages with current events. Some of us are still waiting for such preaching.

This weekend’s gospel passage begs for proclamation and preaching and lived response. The reading for Sunday, February 1 is this familiar passage from Matthew 5:

When he saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he had sat down, his disciples came to him.
He began to teach them, saying:
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land.
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you because of me.
Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven.

If you are reading this post, take the time to read it aloud. Join the Sunday preachers in speaking this living word. Join the Sunday preachers in speaking aloud the words that call us all to a reign of God’s justice, peace, and mercy. Identify God at work bringing a reign of justice, peace, and mercy, the word once said, beginning to live this day.

With hope,

Susan Schantz SSJ

The Small Gestures of Life

Dear Friends,

Have you ever been encouraged by others to “think big?" I have. Thinking big is a worldview, an attitude that can lead to success in the world’s estimation.

Thinking big involves expecting more, better, larger physical, mental, spiritual amounts of everything. The creators of the concept leading to self-storage units strewn across the landscape understood what it means to think big. They knew that people had long ago internalized this concept and were in need of more space for everything they had accumulated.

Today, let’s spend time with what “thinking small” might offer us.

Small pleasures, small blessings, small gifts, small steps, small realizations.

Our everyday spiritual lives are most often one of these “smalls” or a combination of them. Jesus, in the Gospel, paid great attention to the power of the small: a cup of cold water, the lilies of the field, the sparrow, one fig tree that didn’t bear fruit, the poor, the sick, the lame and the children who were too small to be considered important. In the Magnificat, Jesus’ Mother, Mary sang of God who has lifted up the lowly.

There are a few saints in the history of the church who did remarkable things. Most were faithful to their call from God in small ways. Therese of Lisieux, the Little Flower, wrote often of the power of the small: “Miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice, here by a smiling look, there by a kindly word…" and elsewhere “Remember that nothing is small in the eyes of God. Do small things with great love.”

Sometimes, in a gesture of universal recognition, something enters the public awareness as remarkably important. Such was the case in 1954 when Kitty Kallen introduced a song which has endure to today: “Little Things Mean A Lot.” This song had only one message: the power of the small.

                “Give me your arm when we cross the street.
                A line a day when you’re far away.
                Give me your hand when I’ve lost the way
                Give me your shoulder to cry on.
                Whether the day is bright or gray,
                Give me your heart to rely on.
                Little things mean a lot.”

As winter deepens and the darkness still falls early, as Valentine’s Day approaches and we prepare to celebrate the loves of our lives, express God’s presence to all we meet in the small gestures that every day can hold. 

~ Sister Joan Sobala