Today I set before you two choices: life and death--which will you choose?

As a result of this, many of his disciples
returned to their former way of life and no longer
accompanied him. Jesus then said to the Twelve:
Do you also want to leave?   --John 6: 66-67

How often does life come down to commitment? One question: are you committed or not? Are you all in or just dabbling?  Are we committed or not?  Or the alternative question might be: What are we committed to?  In the words of the old folk song, “Which side are you on?”

First, I will say that I am –I think—someone with commitment issues.  I am always (and much too easily) tempted to just blow things off; it’s kind of my go to reaction to almost any interruption or snag in my plans.

“Dad, we’re out of dental floss!” 

“Honey, cancel those airline tickets; looks like I’ll be heading to HEB this weekend.”

Thursday evening I was planning to go the hospital and volunteer, but by the time I got home from work, I was tired and looking for any excuse to “have to stay home.” This isn’t something I’m proud of, but it is something I live with. I don’t know how much of it is simple laziness and/or how much is a deep-seated psychological problem with commitment. Regardless, it is not always easy to get myself going. But it is always good for me when I do.

When I got to the hospital, I found that the chaplain had forgotten to leave me a list.  My first thought was that this must be a sign from God: Return thou to thy grilled cheese and Dr. Pepper and regular Thursday evening TV viewing habits.  But, something inside me said: probably not. SO,  I walked over to the business office and asked the cashier, showed her my badge, explained the situation and after a brief wait, she gave me a 6-page list of about 40 names (and room numbers). Of course, I couldn’t do them all, but I could do some. So I sat down and looked the list over to see if there were any names I recognized; people I know, or people I have visited before. Nada.  After whispering a prayer, I crossed myself and headed to the elevator. First stop, 3^rd floor; ICU.

Walking through the ICU, you see faces of exhaustion, fear, confusion, resignation; family and friends standing around the edges of a bed, watching a sleeping body, uncertain what to do. Hungering for a word of reassurance.  And in the beds the almost lifeless look of the sleeping patient with the tubes and cables strapped to them, blinking and flashing monitors hovering close by.  As they awaken you a kind of frightened emptiness fills their eyes; an emptiness that seeks only to be filled with comfort, consolation--hope. I have a lot of respect for ICU nurses.

The first two rooms I visit are empty. The beds have been cleared and remade and they await the next round of fear and hope and help.  But in the third, the patient is turned away from the door with her back to me.  She is motionless. Maybe asleep.  And then I notice a sign on the door asking visitors to speak to a nurse before entering.  Of course, this too could be a sign from God. So, I go find a nurse. Instead of telling me that I need to turn back and go home (that Dr. Pepper is still waiting for me…), she smiles and says: It’s okay. Go on in. 

In my heart I was still thinking: it is possible this woman is asleep.   At this rate I could get through all 40 names in less than an hour. Coming back to her door though, I found the patient had turned over and she was looking straight at me. Entering the room, I introduced myself and that was when I noticed the tube coming out of her throat.  Stopping at her bedside, I put my hands on the rail and spoke her name, intending to ask if there was anything I could do for her. But, before I could finish she had reached up and taken my hand in hers and held it so tight it hurt. Her nails digging into my palm, she clutched my hand and waved it slowly in small circles above her. I stood there, just gazing into her eyes, stunned by their fear, their desperation.  She clung to me and I let myself be clung to –there was nothing else I could give her.  We were like that for several minutes. Just staring at each other, holding onto each other; just being there—together—so that we weren’t alone.  And of course, that was when I knew –this is where I am supposed to be. This is exactly where I am supposed to be. Right here. Right now. With this frightened and lonely person, letting her cling to my hand and not saying a word. I was made for this.

As the intensity of her grasp subsided, I could see a calm fill her eyes and asked if she would like me to say a prayer.  In response, the circling became more intense and her head nodded slightly.  So, I did. I can’t remember exactly what I said, but I know I asked the Lord to let His healing and His blessing be ever present through the hands and the words and the touch of the nurses and doctors and all who entered that room. And I asked that the Lord open our hearts to the grace of His love; His will. And then we prayed the Lord’s Prayer together. I saw her lips moving silently softly forming the words.  We were together maybe 20 minutes. I had never met her before, and will probably never see her again; and she never said a word –but she spoke to me like a prophet with her anguished eyes and that desperate grip and those fierce nails.

Too often when life gets hard, or inconvenient, I retreat to safety, sink into the couch of routine: what I know and what makes me feel comfortable.  Too often, I turn away from the challenges and the difficulties; the places where Christ hopes to meet me.  That night I didn’t.  And thanks to that woman, and her wordless message, I hope to change not just my habits, but my heart.  I hope to…

Over the past couple of weeks the Church’s sex abuse scandal has returned to the news.  And now for two Sundays in a row I have waited for the priest to say something about it, and for two Sundays –nothing; instead we have heard bad jokes and spiritual platitudes… I understand that priests are human, and they get anxious and fearful and even lazy at times; much like me.  But, I think when there is a scandal of this magnitude, we --the people in the pews—are in a kind of ICU moment.  We are confused and frightened –like we are awakening from a nightmare—and we need someone to offer us a hand to hold, to offer us a word of comfort, to tell us that they too are confused by it and they too are frightened, but that they aren’t going to avoid it. They aren’t going to go back to their former life and their old ways and pretend like nothing happened.   As Pope Francis made clear, the best way to heal such a wound is not to cover it up but to open our hearts, our lives, our eyes and get it out into the open and let the sunlight and the Lord begin the healing.

For me, that is the real challenge in life –to face it, to open your heart, to open your eyes and to go forth and face the life God gives you, to receive and be nourished by the bread that God gives you to eat each day, and to find in it the Love of God.  Don’t turn away and go back to your former life; that road leads to the couch, and a kind of living death… 

As Peter said when Jesus asked the apostles if they planned to leave Him:

“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” (John 6:68)

We are called to be alive; not to be safe, not to be cautious, but to be alive. Yes, life can be hard, the times can be tough.  But a life worth living requires a little effort, and a lot of commitment. Get off the couch and go out into the world and be alive; be a living witness to the love of God.  Don’t hide.  Don’t take the easy way… Don’t play it safe. Each day we have set before us two choices: life and death, blessing and curse…  I say take a risk; make a commitment; choose life. (cf. Deuteronomy 30: 19)

The bread the Lord has given you to eat

“Moses said: that is the bread which

the Lord has given you to eat.”

--Exodus 16:15

“Moses then said: No one may keep any of it for tomorrow.

But some of them took no notice of Moses and kept part of it

for the following day; it bred maggots and the smell grew foul.”

--Exodus 16:19-20

“Jesus said to them: I am the bread of life;

whoever comes to me will never hunger,

and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”

--John 6:35

   

I’ve been thinking about the “bread of life.” I’ve been thinking about it in a literal sense: as a way of thinking about life as the bread (or food) that God gives us each day. I’ve been thinking about the joys and difficulties that come in daily life: friends, community, praise, but also labor, discomfort, hurt feelings, intentional cruelties, as well as annoying interruptions and simple day to day tedium. It seems easy enough to see the friend who offers an encouraging word or helping hand as a kind of manna from Heaven.  A friend like that can lift your spirit, ease your tensed brow, lighten your load and leave you feeling refreshed and renewed. Sometimes all they do is stop by your office and make you laugh for a few minutes; it is amazing how renewed I can feel. Truly fed.

But what about the difficulties? How are those food?  They feel more like punishments, than nourishment.  How do they embody the bread God has given us to eat this day?  I don’t know exactly, but I keep looking for the paradox and wondering if that might give us a clue; a clue to how God might feed us through our very hunger, nourish us through that particularly difficult relationship. Or refresh our spirit through even an injury or disease?  Or even a leaky roof or a clogged drain?

What I am saying is… well, not so much saying as proposing… Actually, not so much proposing, as considering, is this: what if the food of each day is the events and people we meet each day? And what if they all (pleasant and unpleasant) are meant to bless us, to nourish us, but not necessarily to make our lives easier or more pleasent (at least not in any measurable way).  What if (for example) the clogged bathtub drain which a few minutes ago stopped my writing and demanded my attention is at least part of the food God has given me to eat this day?  If I believed that to be true, how would it affect my reaction to it?  Would I stand up in a huff (or maybe a minute and a huff?) sighing resentfully and stomping down the hall, Liquid Plumber in hand?  Or would I sigh gratefully and whisper to myself: Thank you Lord, I was feeling a little pekish?  Disclaimer: I certainly did not do the latter.  And when someone mentioned that perhaps we should call a plumber, I reacted not with gentle considered words but with an interior monologue that went something like: Yeah! Maybe someone should do that. Maybe the someone who keeps clogging the drain every time she shaves!

And I know it’s not easy nor is it something our culture considers natural or even admirable.  But that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. The Lord feeds us through His body and blood –and sometimes that body and blood show up in our door looking a lot like that neighbor who is always complaining about our lawn: we never edge, we don’t water enough, and some of my favorite flowers are actually weeds! And yes, I might want to tell him to mind his own business, but –is that how I want to greet Christ when He comes to my door?

Here is the other part: just because we have been given something for our daily food, doesn’t determine how we are supposed to receive it.  You see, we might receive something very difficult for our daily bread because God wants us not to simply accept it—but to grapple with it. We are (perhaps) being called to struggle with a difficult neighbor not because we are to become a doormat, but because we are to witness to that neighbor the presence of God; through our willingness to receive him and our willingness to treat him with compassion, to be loving, to be sincere and respectful toward him. Sometimes our daily bread may be an unfair law or an unjust attitude, and we are being asked to receive that daily bread through working to change the law or change the attitude; through witnessing against it. Perhaps our daily bread is simply a child who wants our attention just when we sit down to write the great American novel.  Both are goods; and to choose one is not necessarily to demean the other.  And es, our daily bread might have been time to write or our daily bread could be the child’s love; but what if the bread is actually that conflict: what if the real bread from Heaven comes not necessarily from one or the other, but in making the choice.  The real nourishment comes not necessarily from the artistic effort (or success) or even from the child who takes your hand and pulls you away from the desk, but in making the choice to go with the child, the choice to put someone else first?  The real food is in the choice to put your own wants or desires aside and give yourself (your time; literally a piece of your life) to another.  To do that feeds our soul, and that is something to chew on.

As I was writing this, I find myself seated at an old school table with too many books on it (only half of them mine) and a cup of cold coffee perched carefully just in reach toward the edge so it won’t get knocked and spilled as I open books and turn pages. This is a place I like to sit in the mornings with my Bible and read a little and then write in my notebook. And most of what I write here, comes out of that notebook.  Anyway, I was sitting there bending over the notebook and scribbling away when I reached for my coffee and knocked my little blue Bible off to the floor. Picking it up I noticed a couple of holy cards (used as bookmarks) had fallen out. As I was putting them back into the Bible I noticed writing on the back of one and thought: I don’t know if I’ve ever read this. The card was a black and white photograph of Therese of Lisieux. I think I picked it up in a church because I liked the picture, and I had probably stuck it right into a book without even reading it.  Anyway, turning it over, this is what I read: 

Everything is a grace, everything is the direct effect of our Father’s love; difficulties, contradictions, humiliations, all the soul’s miseries, her burdens, her needs, everything; because through them she learns humility, realizes her weakness.  Everything is a grace because everything is God’s gift. Whatever be the character of life or its unexpected events, to the heart that loves, all is well.

And I thought—yes. That’s what I meant to say. And much more concise... Everything is grace.

Be nourished by it. Be nourished by your husband’s love.  Be nourished by your wife’s tears.  Be nourished by your child’s laughter.  Be nourished by the litter box that needs cleaning.  Be nourished by the tub that won’t drain.  Be nourished by the quiet moment with the cold coffee and the spilled book.  Be nourished by your needs that go unmet, be nourished by the contradictions and humiliations… not because they are goods, but because they are opportunities for us to be fed by God.  Learn humility by accepting “whatever be the character of [your] life”  meekly and with love.  And remember Moses’ warning about holding onto the manna.  Don’t hold onto the hurts and slights and humiliations. Don’t cling to them, because even manna from Heaven turns sour and breeds maggots when we hold onto it and store it up for tomorrow.

Lord, open my heart to the gift of this day.

let me receive it and be fed by it, nourished

by Your grace descending like bread from Heaven.

Through Your gift, let me be renewed in hope,

Strengthened in faith, and consoled by Your love.

Amen.

Manna from Heaven

 “Moses said: that is the bread which

the Lord has given you to eat.”

--Exodus 16:15

The story of the manna in the desert has always pleased me.  It is one of those wonderful miracle stories of God’s care for His children: like Noah and ark, or the parting of the Red Sea, or even Jonah and whale; it is a story that speaks to me but has never really concerned me. Never caught my attention in any serious way. Yes, I have wondered about the dietary details (the flavor, consistency, --was there enough fiber, any high fructose corn syrup? that kind of thing…) but I have never sat down and considered what it means. There are people who have looked into it. I had a professor tell me that he had tasted manna once while he was in the Holy Land.  He said it still shows up.  Claimed it was something to do with the dew and some plants over there.  Maybe… I don’t know. I just never even thought about whether it was real.  Not in any meaningful way.

Then, I heard that story again recently (one of the Mass readings last Sunday) and something about it snagged my attention and I was hooked. Caught on it –like a splinter on a red-wood fence; it catches your sleeve and the rest of the day you are wondering, pondering that fence; why did I have to climb Mrs. Jensen’s fence? Why didn’t I just go around?  Or choose that end post where I know it’s safe? And why would I do it when I was wearing my new school shirt? Mom is going to kill me!  Especially when Mrs. Jensen calls about her flower bed and those vines that looked like weeds!  I could have at least taken the shirt off. David did. I had it already unbuttoned! But no, I wanted to show off and… Never mind. 

On the other hand, it is an interesting story; the manna in the desert, that is. Not my shirt. My Mom didn’t even find that one interesting as she paid to have the sleeve sewn up, and I am certain Mrs. Jensen didn’t either –standing at her back door –curlers still in her hair-- yelling at us to stop cutting through her backyard. And we better stop stealing her pomegranates, or she was going to… But, by that point we were over the next fence and laughing the way only a couple of nine-year-olds can laugh, clutching our stolen pomegranate.  She never did call our Moms, that I know of.  Hmmm…It’s funny what sticks with you.

Anyway, this manna thing… I was sitting there in Mass and the Word of God was the last thing on my mind. I was too distracted by the week to come: the in-service meetings at school (I’m a school librarian & teacher by day), our new and very confusing bell-schedule, one of my daughters had just left for graduate school in Minnesota and another was about to move into the dormitory and start college, the third continues to suffer from a sickness no doctor seems able to diagnose (and she’s about to age out of our insurance!); my Mom is becoming more and more confused and requires extra attention, which is putting a strain on sibling relations (we have never been a particularly close family, before now…); and I keep wondering: What am I going to do?  What if she can’t take care of herself? What if she has to move in with us? What if I can’t take care of her? What if she falls? What if… what if… What if I was 35 again and had cute little kids in jumpers and knee socks like that family sitting in front of us? I think I was pretty good at that. And the kids even stand when it’s time to sing.  Like little angels. My kids never did that! What hymn is this? … Good Lord! Who chooses the music around here?

You see…the last thing on my mind was being present to what was happening at that moment. I was too busy worrying about what might happen or what should happen or even what could have happened if I had been a different person with a better job and a thinner waistline and a thicker hairline… Instead of just being present to the blessings I have, I was –in a way-- looking for a short cut around the parts of life I find less pleasant. Isn’t that what worrying really amounts to?  We worry over something that might happen in the hopes that we can jump a fence and cut through a neighbor’s yard and avoid it.  If we worry enough, we might not have to experience it. 

Of course, consciously, we know that isn’t true. But unconsciously or subconsciously or half consciously we hope it is. We hope that worrying about something will work like a kind of talisman to help us avoid it.  And (I think) it also works in reverse.  If we worry about something that has already happened, if we dwell on it and replay it over and over again, we unconsciously are striving to get control of it and resolve it and make it (the memory, the regret, the sting of remorse) go away. 

But in this wonderful ancient story from Exodus we learn two things: first, that God gives us each day our daily bread (sound familiar?); He gives us what we need, so we should receive it and let it nourish us as it will; as He wills; and second, the day’s bread is meant for that day.  In Exodus 16:19, Moses warns the Israelites about trying to save some of the day’s bread for the next day.  Not only is this a vey important piece of dietary advice, but it is good psychological advice as well. We have to learn not to store up and hold onto our miseries or successes to be chewed and rechewed like cud.  God gives us the bread for each day and that is the food we are to be eating.  That applies not only to bread, and days, but to joys and sorrows and times of life.  I think what Moses is telling us here is echoed by Jesus when He says: Do not worry about what you will eat or drink; sufficient unto the day are the evils therein… (cf. Mt 6: 27-34). However, I don’t simply hear this (or Moses) as a warning. I hear this message as a directive, I hear it as a word of guidance.  I hear in it the way God would have us live; trusting in Him, eating His bread –whatever He sets before you each day—in other words, living the life He gives you without worrying about yesterday or tomorrow. Just receive the bread of each day, the challenges and the joys, as a gift.  Yes, the future is uncertain and a little daunting, perhaps. Yes, my Mom might suddenly need a lot of care, and yes, if she came to live with us, that could cause some dramatic changes in our household; but will worrying about it add a hair to my thinning head? No. 

This is the bread the Lord has given me to eat: the bread of a sick daughter and an aging mother and a troubled family and though it seems to me God is giving me too many vegetables to eat and not enough ice cream, this is the food God gives me each day: my daughters, my mother, my wife, my work… This is the spiritual bread God gives me to eat.  Just as the body is fed by a bowl of Shredded Wheat and a glass of Ovaltine, so is the spirit fed by the presence of God in the people we meet and live and work with each day.  Sometimes I look at my life and I want to send the plate back. I want to say: waiter, I think you brought me the wrong order.

But the fact is this waiter never gets it wrong.  Because what He always bring us, each plate heaped up high with it, is the chance to meet Him through love.  Through patience. Through charity. Forbearance. Humility… The chance to receive the bread of life through kindness to another.  The food of God isn’t in the sickness or the suffering so much as it is in the opportunity for us to serve; to set aside our own needs and wants and put someone else first. That opportunity is the gift; that opportunity is the manna God gives us each day. Best not try to take a short cut around that.  In the flesh of the people you live with, meet or work with each day, the Lord has come to meet you.  He is standing at the door… and He’s brought dinner.  Don’t ask if there are anchovies on the pizza, just open the door and invite Him in; ask Him to sit down.

The other thing that occurred to me was this:  Moses’ advice to the Israelites about not saving the manna for the next day. He warns them that if they do, it will grow sour and breed maggots.  I wonder if that’s what my Aunt Betty meant when she talked about borrowing troubles?  If you hold onto hurts and slights and frets and worries they will fester and grow sour inside of you, and breed maggots in your soul.  Perhaps that is a good spiritual way to think about being anxious.  Remember what the Lord said: sufficient unto the day… (Or something like that.)  Anyway, it’s kind of amazing what you can learn when you pay attention to the readings at Mass. Even by accident.