God Talk and Tea

Nourishing faith thoughout the Easter season

 

St. Leo the Great reminds us that “the days which passed between the Lord’s resurrection and his ascension were by no means uneventful …” and neither should they be for us.

 

My newest book, “Things My Father Taught Me About Love,” is a small reflection journal containing 20 stories, some you may have read on this blog, grouped in fours followed by prayers and reflection questions suitable for personal or group reflection or faith sharing. Read a reflection excerpt below.

This  8 1/2 x 5 1/2, paperback, 54 pp., is $7.95 plus $1.90 each for shipping for 1-2 books, or $5 for 3-12 books. Discounts apply to orders for 10 or more, or parishes and schools. Send email to mary.wellspring@yahoo.com to inquire, or to order.

Or to order now, use Pay Pal Buy Now button at top right of page, or send a check or money order made out to Mary Morrell (with the word LOVE and #s of copies noted in the Memo) to Wellspring Communications, PMB 167, 1162 St. Georges Avenue, Avenel, NJ  07001.  Please don't forget to include return address.  

EXCERPT

 

“If you surrender completely to the moments as they pass, you live more richly those moments.” – Anne Morrow Lindbergh

 My mother loved soap operas, so she was happy that her job allowed her to get home in time for her favorites. I rarely watched them myself, but I did learn something valuable from one of them none-the-less: “Like sands through the hour glass, so are the days of our lives.”

To keep that image alive in our minds is to become aware of the need to embrace each moment as God’s flowing gift of Grace. To live in the past or for the future is to deny the gift of now, and the love embodied in the present moment.

What soul work do you need to do to learn to surrender to the present moment? How will your love and your life change as you embrace the gift of now?

What others think of the book:

“If you want to find God, know love, and truly understand these are the same, read this beautiful book. But be prepared to have your heart opened up, to laugh and to cry, to take many deep breaths of awe and wonder, and to shout out to the Heavens and to the people in your life, Thank You! Hallelujah!  What a perfect dose of grace this book is for people of all backgrounds!"  Rabbi Irwin Kula, author of “Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life”

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

Going where God leads means Calvary, then Resurrection

For me, April has always been the herald of newness, recalling memories of childhood Easters when there was still a visual litany of delight present in the “Easter parade” at church; where young girls wore crisp white gloves, patent leather shoes and the traditional flowered bonnet, and young boys squirmed under restrictive suit jackets with collars buttoned tight at the neck. Then there was always the tie, a sign of maturity for some and a convenient source of distraction, or disruption, for others.

Buds just beginning on forsythia bushes, Easter lilies near the altar and tulips on the kitchen table were a sign of the season of life, and a reminder that we would soon be visiting the local nursery to buy our annuals for planting in flower beds and boxes, bringing color, and butterflies, to our family backyard.

Dressed in my Easter finery I always felt a little like the butterfly just emerging from my cocoon, transformed from the ordinary to the extraordinary. Even after a long day of family visits and lengthy meals, I almost hated to change out of my new clothes and return to my pre-Easter self. Little did I know the experience would become a lesson of faith for me as I matured.

Somehow it seems that Christ’s Resurrection could not have taken place at any other time of the year but spring, this time of new growth and promise, of miracles and transformations.

During my life, this season of beginnings has often offered consolation and peace in those moments when, especially as a young woman, I was haunted by a great fear of death. To watch the mystery of spring unfold, to experience the beauty of life’s emergence from the cold ground of winter was to hear God’s assurance that ‘there is nothing to fear – all is life, all has its purpose, even death.”

Our Catholic faith reaffirms that death is not the end, teaching that “just as Christ is truly risen from the dead and lives forever, so after death the righteous will live for-ever with the risen Christ and he will raise them up on the last day” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 989).

But what does it mean to be raised up?

Again, our faith says, “In death, the separation of the soul from the body, the human body decays and the soul goes to meet God, while awaiting its reunion with its glorified body. God, in his almighty power, will definitively grant incorruptible life to our bodies by reuniting them with our souls, through the power of Jesus’ Resurrection” (CCC, 997).

This is the resurrection of the “last day,” an event not bound by time or space and certainly beyond our full human comprehension, but God gives us glimpses of this mystery in the little resurrections of daily life. We only need watch for them, in the same way that we watch for the crocus, the robin, the early morning light which follows the dark of night.

Our Holy Father, Blessed John Paul II, wrote in Novo Millennio Ineunte, “The truth of Christ’s Resurrection is the original fact upon which Christian faith is based, an event set at the center of the mystery of time, prefiguring the last day when Christ will return in glory. We do not know what the new millennium has in store for us, but we are certain that it is safe in the hands of Christ, the ‘King of kings and Lord of lords’” (no. 35).

Safe in the hands of Christ – can any thought be more comforting as we face our uncertain futures, and ultimately, our deaths? Certainly, this is reason enough to celebrate Christ’s Passover, not only on Easter, but on every Sunday, with gratitude and the reassurance of what it means to emerge from the cocoon of human existence to the freedom of resurrected life.

One day my Lord said to me: “Believe me, my daughter, trials are the heaviest for those my father loves the best. It is difficult to accept whatever suffering comes our way … but this is the cost of going where God leads us … into the Garden of Gethsemane and on to Calvary. And only then to Easter morning.”        “That You May Have Life,” excerpt based on writings of St. Teresa of Avila

 

There's no fool like an old fool

Saturdays were my favorite day as a child. It meant time spent with my mom, or dad, or both, usually shopping for groceries, buying the latest Nancy Drew volume and, eventually, grabbing a bite to eat at the local diner.

Looking back, I realize how much of my time with them was filled with lessons, not only taught on-purpose, but caught from listening to their spirited conversations.

As with most couples, there were lots of stories about people they knew – relatives, friends and co-workers. Sentences often began with “Did you know….” or “Can you believe…” or “It’s a shame …,” especially when the topic was a lost job or a failed marriage. My father rarely said anything that smacked of passing judgment, but occasionally, and not unexpectedly for an Irishman, he was known to make one of two pronouncements – he’s “a good man” or he’s “an old fool.”

For the good man, the bottom line was always a heart that meant well, in spite of shortcomings and mistakes. The old fool, on the other hand, took his missteps on the road of life by failing to see the good, and in the omission, leaving the gift of gratitude unopened. The good man, in most moments, was focused on others; the old fool, on himself.

Undoubtedly, we have all been, or will be, the old fool at one point or another, differing only by degrees.  The danger lies in foolishness that becomes a habit, a way of life that destroys our willingness to seek forgiveness for what we have done, or, what we have failed to do – or even admit to ourselves that we have fallen short of our responsibilities and promises to God.

Perhaps no one in Scripture was more a fool than Jonah, who found out the hard way the folly of running from God. Not only did Jonah attempt to flee from God’s request, he was confident enough in his decision to sleep soundly in the hold of the ship while the waters raged around him.  Even his Phoenician shipmates had insight enough to know that running from God has consequences, so, to protect themselves, they threw a once cocky Jonah overboard and then prayed for mercy.

God was merciful, not only to them but to Jonah as well, giving him a place to reflect and recollect his senses for a few days – in the belly of a big fish. This was a well-timed crisis for Jonah, the reluctant prophet, one with the potential of a turning point; an experience common to us all, but not always so fruitful.

Interestingly, the Hebrew word for crisis, mashber, means the moment of birth. It is both a promising and challenging perspective to see new life in the most frightening or painful of experiences, but Jonah’s prayer from inside the fish shows his heart moving in the right direction. He recounts his descent to the deep, the teeming, swirling waters pushing him down to the ocean floor, his head wrapped in seaweed, his soul fainting in fear, until the God of mercy rescues him in a wondrous way. He acknowledges, “Those who worship vain idols forsake their source of mercy. But I, with resounding praise, will sacrifice to you: What I have vowed I will pay: deliverance is from the Lord.”

And the fish spat Jonah up on the shore … where he would soon forget his earlier predicament, confront God in anger and be afflicted with yet another lesson, this one on selfishness.

It seems foolishness is a hard habit to break.

God’s stories are powerfully told in the hospital

Every writer needs a favorite place where they can scribble notes on napkins or complete
manuscripts while the noise of living plays in the background.

Hemingway had La Closerie des Lilas, his favorite restaurant in Montparnasse, Paris.

I have the Terrace Café in JFK Hospital, Edison, New Jersey.

Certainly, a smoke-filled café on the left bank of Paris, where such artistic geniuses as Pablo Picasso, William Faulkner, Salvador Dali and Dorothy Parker gathered to create and exchange ideas, cannot be compared to my little hospital café.

But for me, spending close to two months in the hospital within a year while doctors and nurses worked to heal my son and then my husband, this flourescent and formica restaurant overlooking the hospital parking lot has provided a much appreciated place of respite with plenty of coffee, the daily newspaper and really great soup.

Simple blessings are often the most meaningful.

My fellow patrons may not have included the literary or artistic giants of our time, but their conversations—their tears, their frustration, their laughter, their resiliency—revealed the stuff of inspirational writing.

One afternoon, when I was too tired to even write a word, I took a table near the window with my back to most of the room. Even a smile would have been too much to muster. But the noise of living crept in behind me where a very elderly dad sat eating at a small table across from his senior son.

While they ate their voices rose in anger and accusation.

“You’re a useless son!”

“You’re a terrible father!”

“You’re a drunk!”

“You’re selfish!!

It went on for 30 minutes before the son stormed out and left the father holding his head in his hands. What became clear to me, in his face and beneath all the anger, was an unspoken fear—of pain and dying or, maybe, of being alone or unloved. Certainly these two men loved each other, but for some reason had just not learned how to do it well.

Theirs was a story of the human condition, taking one step toward love and two steps back in our weakness and frailty. Jesus understood this condition and shared the secret, “Love one another as I have loved you.” But dying to self is not a challenge easily met.

Any stay in the hospital, as a patient or a loved one, will confirm a basic truth—being human is not easy. We suffer physically because we are mortal, but we suffer more deeply because we love. It was these stories of love’s suffering and giving and rising above fear that filled my brown stenographer’s notebook every day when I visited the Terrace Café, drank my coffee and was warmed by my soup. Every visit brought new opportunities to consider what was really important in life and how I could do it all better.

Someday I may have the chance to create something meaningful with the notes I scribbled, but for now I’m just grateful for the lessons and the not so simple blessings of health for my family, good doctors, caring nurses and the unfailing support of my friends.

Above all I am grateful for the glimpses of God caught through the human stories encountered each day and the light of hope that shines through the indomitable human spirit.

Navigating the seas of change with faith

When my second son began preschool, an experience relished by his five brothers, his reaction was
 less than enthusiastic. As we approached the brightly painted door that led to his classroom, I felt myself being pulled backward by the pressure of his tiny hand tugging on mine.

Looking down I saw the big brown eyes welling up with tears, a look of fear crossing his flushed face. A kindly, gray-haired lady came out and wrapped her arm around his shoulder, ushering him in to join the other children. As he turned to look at me with wide doe-eyes, I was sure the lump in my throat would choke me. I waited for the inevitable with baited breath.

“MOMEEE!” came the blood-curdling scream. It wasn’t so much the word as the impassioned, gut-wrenching way in which it was delivered that pierced my guilty-mother heart as I tore myself away, leaving him there in the obviously adequate care of his new teacher.

New beginnings were not his cup of tea.

And so it is for many of us, even as adults. New beginnings, while often exciting and challenging, also signify endings. With each new beginning we are called to give up the security and comfortableness of old ways to move forward into the unknown. Even routine, boring or painful daily experiences may be difficult to relinquish because they have become an anchor holding us in place.

New beginnings require a trust in the Lord and acknowledgement that he is the author of both beginnings and endings. Moving forward is sure to be difficult without the hand of the Lord to lead us.

Talking to a young man who wished to follow Jesus, but only after he had returned home to say good-bye to his family, Jesus explained the importance of letting go of the past: “No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Jesus was not saying, as many believe, that the past is something that should be forgotten or ignored, but rather, that when the time comes for a decision to be made for the future, the past must take its place as the port from which one sails.

To continue to look back may prevent us from making what one Bible commentary refers to as an “instant decision of purpose” – the kind we must make when God calls us to something new and, often, something frightening.

My experience with decisions of “purpose” has taught me a lesson I try hard to remember—when the challenges of any new beginning bring cries for help, recall the words of Jesus as he rebuked the storm, saying, “Quiet! Be still!” and his remonstration of the Apostles, of whom he asked, “Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?”

I want to answer assuredly, “You know I do!” But sometimes, my behavior belies my shaky faith, and I wonder, almost hopefully, if Noah’s first response to God – not recorded in Scripture – might have been along the lines of a muffled, “Seriously?”

I would feel so much better knowing someone who navigated so well the stormy sea of change through faith in God, also had his moments of doubt.

 “Then David said to his son, Solomon. ‘Be firm and steadfast. Go to work without fear or discouragement, for the Lord, my God, is with you. He will not fail you or abandon you before you have completed all the work for the service of the house of the Lord.’”  1 Chronicles 28:20

Humility of the Nativity is the heart of Christmas

I was first introduced to Harry Emerson Fosdick through a quote: “…real Christians do not carry their religion, their religion carries them. It is not weight, it is wings. It lifts them up, it sees them over hard places. It makes the universe seem friendly, life purposeful, hope real, sacrifice worthwhile. It sets them free from fear, futility, discouragement, and sin — the great enslaver of men's souls. You can know a real Christian when you see him, by his bouyancy.”

What a powerful description of our faith, I thought, and what an amazing image, as I considered looking down over the rail at a mall full of Christmas shoppers to see a large number of them walking with a spring in their step, propelled upward and forward like Neil Armstrong walking on the moon.

I wanted to know more about this man, who I would discover was an American clergyman, a Baptist minister who often preached in the Presbyterian Church. He was a proponent of liberal Protestanism, and felt the Christian faith had room for people of many opinions regarding Christian doctrine.

While surely, Harry and I would have disagreed about many things, I was certain I would have enjoyed the conversations and the opportunity to gain his insights on what weighs a Christian down, taking the spring out of his step.

I think we would have been in agreement that one of the greatest impediments to being lifted up by faith is a lack of humility and our tendency toward self-absorption.

In fact, in his influential book in the emerging field of pastoral counseling, “On Being a Real Person,” Fosdick wrote, “At very best, a person wrapped up in himself makes a small package.”

How different is such a person – swaddled in pride and enamored only of his own opinion and enjoyment – from our Lord, a babe swaddled in the simple clothes of humble birth, whose life was a sacrificial offering of love for each one of us.

The power of Christmas is the humility of the Nativity; God, the creator of all things, born a vulnerable infant into a stable full of animals and the care of a young, inexperienced mother chosen by God.

It was this paradoxical love of our Creator that Paul tried to explain to the Corinthians: ‘God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong, and God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something, so that no human being might boast before God” (1 Corinthians 1:27-29).

Paul’s words remain a gift to us today, and not only at Christmas, reminding us to wrap ourselves in humility, living only in God and for God.

“Whoever boasts, should boast in the Lord.” 1Corinthian 1:31

When miracles become ordinary

As a Catholic, I have a confession to make. I sometimes watch televangelists.

While there are many things that make me uncomfortable about this style of evangelizing, I have always felt it would be arrogant, and foolish, of me to suggest that God limits the wisdom of the Holy Spirit to only those of one particular faith tradition. And very often I am edified by a particular insight.

Today’s bit of wisdom centered on our tendency, as human beings, to allow the miracles in our lives to become ordinary.

God fills our lives with miracles every day; someone to love us, the birth of a child, a new job, a promotion, a return to health, or good friends.  At first, our hearts are full of gratitude and love for God’s gift, but too often, when love demands something of us, or work becomes a challenge, the miracle becomes ordinary, routine, not worth the effort or fullness of heart with which we once embraced the gift.

This preacher used the example of the birth of a child, a miracle that fills us with love so profound it’s hard to even describe. And then, the child becomes a teenager and we ask, “God, why did you do this to me??”

I laughed, having had to deal with six teenagers during my lifetime.

The preacher followed this analogy with a Scripture passage, and that’s when I really started paying attention, because it was the same passage that had come across my desk three times in the past three days, and one I had never read before.

“But I have this against you, that you have turned away from your first love. So keep in mind where you were at first, and be changed in heart and do the first works; or I will come to you, and will take away your light from its place, if your heart is not changed.”  Revelations 2:4-5

Today would be a good day to remember the miracles, so “ordinary” doesn’t become a way of life and we find ourselves grieving the loss of God's gifts to us.

Three small, powerful words -- "It is good"

Imagine a scene in the labor and delivery floor of the local hospital. A young wife and her husband have just delivered their first child. They look down with love at the tiny infant wrapped in a small pink blanket. Beaming, the mother says, “Isn’t she just the most mediocre baby you have ever seen?”

 Imagine if the creation story in Genesis read in similar fashion:

 On the third day, God created every kind of plant and fruit and he looked at what he had created and said, “Ehh … so, so.”

 And on the fourth day God created the sun and moon and all the lights in the sky, and he looked at what he had created and said, “Well, this is pretty mediocre.”

Then God saw every thing he had made and said, “Hmmm, I could probably do better, but who’s going to know?” 

Somehow the story would just lose something.

 But, as we should keep in mind, God’s reaction to creation was considerably different. With every new day and every new creation God saw that “it was good.”

 And if we were to give God a 21^st century vocabulary and demeanor, he would cross some very large arms over a similarly large chest, look around with a big grin on his radiant face and pronounce, “This is good! This is DAMN good!”

 Each of us has been endowed by God with the ability to create; to bring something into existence that wasn’t there before through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit working in our hearts, our bodies and our minds. Whether we create an environment of love or hospitality in our homes, build friendships or meaningful moments for others; whether we create with words or music, our voices or our hands, when the work is for God and God's people, we can take our cue from our God, stand back and exclaim, “This is damn good!”

A putz by any other name...

What’s in a word?                                                                                                                                        

A lot, as I was reminded during my first holiday trip to Bethlehem, Pa., last year.

A day in historic Bethlehem during the Christmas season is an experience that bears repeating. The shops, the lights, the horse drawn carriage rides around the 240 year old city while Christmas music fills the air were all steps back in time. While wandering in and out of book stores and gift shops, we were treated to marvelous decorations, wonderful smells and shop keepers dressed in the period costumes of Bethlehem’s original founders, the Moravians.

I also discovered a tradition unique to the Moravian culture—putz. Signs for ‘putz’ were everywhere, both in the stores and outside along the streets. Unfortunately, I had no idea what ‘putz’ meant.

So, in one particular Christmas shop which seemed to have an overabundance of ‘putz’ signs, I leaned over the counter where a slender, silver-haired lady with shaky hands stood next to a tall, dashing gray-haired gentleman and rang up the purchases of a line of shoppers.

“May I help you?” the lady asked with a bright smile.

“I was just wondering if you could tell me what a putz is,” I asked, pronouncing putz with an ‘uh’ sound.

She hesitated, “I think you mean ‘pootz.’ ”

Always happy to be corrected in front of a dozen people, I forced a smile. Suddenly, the dashing gentleman chimed in matter-of-factly, “Yes, it’s pronounced pootz, because putz is a Yiddish word for a certain part of the male anatomy.”

Unfortunately for the silver-haired lady, he then punctuated the sentence with ‘the word’—penis!  She quickly turned a stunning shade of red. The chortles from customers around me seemed much louder than they probably were and my traveling companion could barely keep her composure.

The distorted look on my face took hold as an image of a street poster flashed through my mind: This year’s tour also features an extraordinary display of 150 putzes in the Sisters house on Church Street.

“Yes, that would certainly be extraordinary,” I thought, pursing my lips to maintain control.

I wasn’t asking any more questions. I thanked the gentlemen for the explanation and we left the store with a memory that keeps us laughing even today. Later that evening I did some research and discovered that Moravian Putz was actually the building of miniature scenes to retell the nativity story, and that the word putz comes from the German word putzen which means to decorate.

Interesting certainly, but, for me, the whole experience was more than a language lesson. It was a reminder of something I was always told as a child: watch your words.

Words are like my friend Ruthie—always pregnant; always full of life and potential, including the potential to hurt or heal.

What we do with them is up to us.

“Words, once they are printed, have a life of their own.”  Carol Burnett

 

See, I am doing something new

Whenever a major change in life catches me off-guard and I focus too much on loss, I try to re-frame it within the words of Isaiah who reminds us of God’s promise of rebirth. While I am not always successful, it is always encouraging to read the words of the Lord who said, “Remember not the events of the past, the things of long ago consider not; see, I am doing something new!”

Through Isaiah, God reminds us, “It is I, I, who wipe out for my own sake, your offenses; your sins I remember no more.”

Whenever I read this Scripture passage, I think of that beautiful hymn, Blessed Assurance, for certainly, assured is what I feel when I hear God say, “Your sins I remember no more.”

There is an interesting story relayed in Ira David Sankey’s book, “My Life and the Story of the Gospel Hymns.” He writes, “‘During the recent war in the Transvaal,’ said a gentleman at my meeting in Exeter Hall, London, in 1900, ‘when the soldiers going to the front were passing another body of soldiers whom they recognized, their greetings used to be, ‘Four-nine-four, boys; four-nine-four,’ and the salute would invariably be answered with ‘six further on, boys; six further on.’

The significance of this was that in ‘Sacred Songs and Solos,’ a number of copies of the small edition of which had been sent to the front, number 494 was ‘God be with you until we meet again,’ and six further on that 494, or number 500, was ‘Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mine.’”

 We can always find assurance in the truth that Jesus is ours and will find his way to us by whatever means possible, even through coded messages and in spite of the bonds of death.

 

Growing a garden with God

There is a story of a pastor who decided to hire a gardener for the parish grounds. From spring to summer the man worked diligently until one fine day the pastor strolled out into the flower garden with a neighboring priest, anxious to show off the new creation.

Gesturing toward the many different plants and flowers, the pastor said, "I praise God for all of his handiwork!" Stepping out from behind a bush with clippers in his hand, the gardener chastised the pastor, saying, "Don't you go giving all the credit to God. Just remember what this place looked like before I got here and God had it all to himself!"

There is much to be said about the teaching that we are co-creators with God, working in communion with the God who made us to create all that is good and beautiful, or working without God or in spite of God, to create all that is not of God.

When we stroll through the gardens of our lives and take a hard look at what is growing there it will become obvious whether or not we are partnering with God.