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I hope you are all doing well. Well, I finished up year 3 at the seminary – first year of graduate school, and have 4 more years to go. Academically, the classes went very well, pulled great grades and the yearly review time came and went very smoothly. Right now I’m in the light (summer break) at the end of the tunnel. The reason this year was interesting wasn’t just because of school; but because it’s been the most demanding time spiritually and emotionally. All the nonstop summer activity back-to-back with my first semester of grad school gave me a serious case of burnout the first semester, and since then I had to learn my limits, take a step back, and slow the pace. As in all things, times of challenge can be a great impetus to grow – and that has certainly been happening. This has been a time of the most interesting spiritual and self-knowledge growth spurts of my life; which includes all the pains that go with them. Mostly in realizing that I can’t push myself as hard as I did when I was in college the first time; and how close one must constantly keep to the Lord in all things. For the summer, I’ll be going to a Spanish immersion program in Puebla, Mexico with one of the other guys from my diocese. I’ll be there 7 weeks in June and July, and the format will probably be classes for half the day, and the rest of the day studying or ‘practicing’ our Spanish on unsuspecting and unlucky locals. At the end of the time, we’ll spend a week on a trip doing some sort of mission/work project. I must say that I’m a bit apprehensive because I’m not so confident in my language skills; but trust God has his hands on the wheel. Puebla is supposedly known for its fantastic architecture, and I’m planning on taking my camera along. I’ll have two blocks of time off in May and July/Aug. I’d love to spend some time with you locals and you should expect an email to go out for a bite, go biking, etc. Let me know if you’ll be free and want to catch up. I will be home in Indiana May 20-June 3 for those who would like to meet up then – let me know as soon as you can. At this point, it also looks like I’ll be doing a big camping/roadtrip through the southwest later this summer (July/August). I’ll be visiting friends old and new – email me if you’d like to be included! The summer is arriving and the trees and flowers are in full bloom here in Oregon. I must say that all this new life is very uplifting. I made it to the Woodburn tulip fields again this year with my camera, and the results came out pretty good; some of which will be on my web site shorty. The seminary holds an art contest and this year I won first place with one of my pictures. You can also find it on my web site. This has to be one of the biggest times of change between any of my updates. We have seen some powerful events. I’m thinking of not only Mel Gibson’s ‘The Passion’ movie (I saw it), but also the recent issuance of marriage licenses to same-sex couples here in Oregon. I wrote a reflection on same-sex marriage; but it was too long for one of my emails. You’ll find it in the ramblings section of my web site when I get it finished. Speaking of which, I have a
new web address. I shut off my older Purdue address. I’ve also put some
more updates and pictures on the site. There will be more coming over the
next week or so: End of update, now for a
not-so-little reflection: And I’ve started learning my limitations more, and that those limitations are only bound to get bigger with age. Physically, I learned that I can’t push all-nighters anymore like I used to. Hurts more and takes longer to recover. Even emotionally, I can’t do things at the pace I did as a teen or early 20-something. But I realized that it wasn’t so much I can’t do or ‘take’ as much of this activity, as it was is that I’m realizing that I want to be more present and live those experiences more fully – and that takes more time. Instead of surfing over the waves of life, I wish to swim to its depths – and that means you cover less ground (do less) but experience the beauty and mysteries that lie under the surface. All these realizations got me reflecting on the fact that so often all the things we do in life are because of or for others. Even if we are just trying to impress others, by get prestige or position; we are really just trying to impress someone else. In my early 20’s I was trying to earn the approval/acceptance of others. How often are we really just trying to look good or better than the rest in someone else’s eyes? Yet even when we accomplish something big, we still can go home and feel empty or alone. What is the force that drives us to seek this broken kind of approval? I’ve realized that in the end it’s really just our desire to belong to someone, to know someone cares about us - to be loved. And I’ve learned that love isn’t about impressing, being better, looking good, or showing your superiority. Everyone has something they can be better at than others. But that make us competitors and opponents. Competition is a good thing and lots of fun at times. It helps us get better and push our limits and grow in abilities. But when the end is just to feel superior or earn someone else’s approval, it will be empty. No, we do things in this world because we desire to be loved; because we don’t want to be alone. Each of us, at some point in our lives, will come face to face with our own inadequacy. Each of us is given lots of talents and abilities; yet for each of those, there are areas we all know we aren’t good at. In fact, there are areas that the slighted push can bring us to tears. Yet even more than this, especially when we are taught to solve our own problems or pull ourselves up with more work, there is a deeper kind of fooling we do to ourselves. We like to fool ourselves when we can conquer the world ourselves – and perhaps we do - for a time. We destroy ourselves by this mistake in a number of ways. One way is that we see others as holding us back or preventing us from being happy - we soon resent and destroy our relationship with them. The other way was as I came to know a great deal of success in my life; a curious thing started to happen. The pace of living that way seemed to get to be too much. I began to realize that I didn’t have the energy to just keep everything going by myself all the time mostly in just the little daily struggles and worries of living life. All the things that seemed easy to do at first started to get harder as I did them over time. I thought maybe I was just slipping or failing; but what really was happening was that I started to learn my limitations. I was trying to put up a façade that I had everything under control – and the sad part is that NOBODY can have everything under control. When we really come to know our limitations and inadequacies, we also learn we can’t hide these things from others forever. Eventually, all that hiding, make everyone think we a great, or trying to compensate wears us down even faster and we inevitably collapse – sometimes with disastrous results. No, in order for us to get better, we need to learn to see ourselves and others in a new way – one that recognizes that each of us is broken in some way – starting with our own brokenness and weakness. The most difficult part is that we must stop putting up a façade, let other’s see and know about our limitations; and trust each other to help us in those weaknesses. This is very hard, embarrassing, and makes us vulnerable and feel like a failure for not being able to handle things alone. Yet, this is exactly the way God has made each of us. None of us are meant to go through life alone - we simply aren’t built that way. Instead, if we trust, find those that care and support us, we can openly display these vulnerabilities and ask them to help us with them; while we do the exact same thing for them. We ask others to help us move into those ‘holes’ in our life to help heal, grow and support us. This is what it means to be vulnerable, and how we open ourselves to being loved. The world vulnerable comes from the Latin root vulnus which means a wound. Instead of relationships that work against each other; we work with each other. And this is what it means to love maturely. It means that we have the courage, strength and dedication to those around us to step into or live with that person’s inadequacies – even when we don’t have to. It also means we must let the person into and know our broken places too. This doesn’t mean that it’s going to be pretty or fun – most of the time it is not. It also means that we are going to have to stop trying to live for own desires, but start living in the wounds of others. Love is messy and sometimes costs us dearly, this is the message of the cross. Don’t believe that this is what love is? Scripture (1 Corintians 13) tells us that “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.” It’s really about giving oneself to others. But it’s more than that, it actually allows you to losing yourself in it. It’s important to know this isn’t some harsh life you deny yourself of all pleasures and just give stuff up for others. That isn’t love, its masochism and self-punishment. No, love means that you really desire to give something of yourself to another. You desire to give your gifts to fill others wounds because you care about them, while at the same time opening yourself for them to enter and help heal yours. Not just because you have to; but because you want to. It doesn’t matter if what you give is flawed or isn’t quite right, because you are opening that up for someone else to live in it and with you more closely. This kind of giving of self, this understanding of love, is one of the really difficult things I’ve had to address and work on in my own life. It’s clear to me that I would have to learn this if I was single, married or if I’m a celibate priest. It makes no difference. It really requires a complete change in the way one looks at the world. Instead of looking at how I can feel better than others, impress someone, or whatever, our focus turns towards relationships with others, how I can contribute to the good. When this goes well, I’ve experienced that you can ‘lose’ yourself in it – lose your self in love. This makes sense: self-giving = giving yourself away = loss of self that gives real freedom. The only other times I’ve had this experience is when I got into a really intense and fun bit of coding and realized that 8 hours just passed. Psychologist have named this kind of thing a state of ‘flow’. Love can end up being like this too. But often it is very difficult, hard and most of the time doesn’t work this smoothly. It’s an amazing thing when it does turn into this because you bring your whole self to the table – it’s not just a feeling; but an experience, a new lens within which to look at the world. You dwell in that state of being – of giving – of living in the needs of others and they in yours. It’s like living in light. It’s like being able to stand in front of the world and feel no shame because what you are doing is not motivated by your own desires; but something far more beautiful. The lens of love means you think about what would help others, do the things that they need to see, be creative in coming up with ideas and systems that would help a situation, all for the joy of sharing these gifts and helping them live more fully. You use all your talents – music, art, intelligence, organization, humor, tears, etc – to try and bring this kind of love about. You can even *become* what that other person needs to grow for them. This should be qualified by saying that you don’t find your identity in them (codependence) or hurt yourself; but you are so free, so unattached to the need to be the center of attention; that someone else can be the center of your attention. Parents do this all the time by changing to be a good example for their children. But in all of this, it always comes from and returns to God. The only reason we can love others is because we see them as valuable; and worthy of this kind of self-sacrifice. And the only way to see that kind of worth in another is because we see the love God has for us, and the presence of God in them – even if it is covered over by thick, sinful mud of the past or like a shattered jar on the ground – even when that person cannot see the beauty in themselves. But most importantly, we can love like this because we know that love first-hand from our relationship with God and what He wants for us. This is how we can avoid falling into the traps of co-dependent relationships or unhealthy giving in which the other abuses. It’s because we first see ourselves as God sees us – infinitely worthy of love and valued over all things by Him – then we can give ourselves to the right degree to others. Sometimes love consists of only taking a homeless guy out to dinner, other times it involves laying down your life for another. The degree we give self is dictated by the needs of the other and the gifts we were given to change the situation – which requires we can see needs clearly. We cannot just love people on our own. Simply doing ‘nice things’ won’t work and will fall apart. This kind of love cannot be a human invention; because we’ll just fall into selfishness and wanting our needs met, or letting others walk on us. We pray about our lives, pray about the things going on in our lives, and use the gospels to guide us in knowing and using our gifts – from money to our intellect to our humor to our joys and sorrows. In this way, we experience a true transformation of our lives. We use all our skills; but in a complete new way, learn things we didn’t know we could do. Don’t sell ourselves short, but become truly free and full of life. Well, this keeps going but
I’ll cut it off here. Lord, help us with our lives, our relationships,
and our gifts. |