Just Walking

There is a piece in the current issue of America Magazine titled The Walking Cure. In it, Michael Rossmann, S.J., talks about the benefits of walking, such as our increased openness to pleasant surprises and simple beauties we would easily miss if we were driving, the opportunities to engage in conversation with others, and the way it puts us in a more relaxed state.

I read the piece with pleasure because walking is a favorite pastime of mine. I love long hikes in the woods, but also afternoon or early evening walks in a nearby park or just around my neighborhood. Apart from the physical exercise, and the part my daily walks play in my training for the Camino I will walk this fall, walking clears my mind, slows me down and allow me to be mindful.

I also resonate with Rossmann’s discussion of walking and productivity. He writes

More than this, walking like prayer, makes me feel more like a human being, rather than a human doing. Sure, I could travel in a way that is far faster or spend my time producing more, but I often feel more liberated when I realize that I don’t always have to produce. I don’t always have to rush form place to place. I slowly learn with each step that life is not about efficiency or productivity.

Rossmann observes that people sometimes ask him where he is going during his evening walks, and seem perplexed when he responds, “I’m just walking.” When I read that, I was reminded of my time in Bali many years ago. In Indonesia, “jalan, jalan” – just walking – is a common evening pastime. The people in Indonesia see nothing at all perplexing about it.

It would be good if more people here could enjoy just walking, doing nothing but appreciating God’s creation.

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We Choose Who We Let Walk Away and Who We Let Stay

During a particularly difficult semester in college, I went to see someone at Georgetown’s Counseling Center. After a few sessions, I decided I didn’t like the advice the counselor was giving me and so cancelled my last appointment. After I did, I got a short letter from the counselor, which said, “You can lead a horse to water, but…”

You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink. That – to drink, the horse has to choose.

As I was driving home the other day, it occurred to me that “you can lead a horse to water…” is a different, more secular, version of something someone had posted online recently:

God determines who walks into your life….
It’s up to you to decide who you let walk away,
who you let stay, and who you refuse to let go.

It is an important thing to remember. I think of all of the people God has put in my path at different times in my life. Some I have let stay, and they have been real blessing. Others, like the Georgetown counselor, who I probably could have benefitted from, I pushed away. God put them in my path, but gave me the choice whether to welcome them or reject them.

I have to remember the words in a different way as well – a way that is actually harder for me. Just as God puts people in my path, God puts me in the path of others, people who could benefit from their encounter with me. Some of those people will welcome my presence. We will grow in relationship and learn from each other, and they will benefit from my presence in their lives.

Others, however, will push me away, and when it happens, it is a really hard thing for me to accept. I need to remind myself that the fact that I think I have something to contribute to their lives doesn’t take away the fact that it is their choice whether to let me do so. I can’t force my presence on them any more than one can force a horse to drink (or any more than the Georgetown counselor could have forced me to take his advice). And I remind myself that even Jesus let the rich young man (and others) walk away from him. He always let it be their choice whether to go or stay.

God determines who walks into our lives. It is our choice who we let stay and who we push away.

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Love Like God

In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells his disciples “As the Father loves me, so I also love you.” He then commands them to “love one another as I love you.”

If we put those two statements together, Jesus’ instruction is that we love like God loves. So it is worth thinking about what that means.

We can say a lot of things about God’s love. God loves unconditionally. God loves universally. God loves endlessly. That itself asks a lot of us: to love everyone as fully and unconditionally as God does.

But I don’t think even that fully capture it. The First Letter of John tells us that “God is love.” It doesn’t say God loves, but that God is love. That says to me that we are not asked simply to love.

Rather loving like God means being love. Not just showing love. Not just loving sometimes. But emptying ourselves of everything that is not love. That is a pretty tall order, but it is what Jesus asks of us.

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Ordinary and Extraordinary

People sometimes have difficulty with the idea of experiencing God in the ordinary. They think that a “real” religious experience has to be extraordinary – said in a way that precludes there being anything ordinary about it.

I read a line in my draft manuscript the other day in which I described something as being “at the same time, ordinary and extraordinary.” When I read the line (which I hadn’t read in a long time), I was immediately reminded of one of Thomas Merton’s foundational religious experiences (which he describes in Seven-Storey Mountain). Although I don’t have the book with me here at St. Benedict’s, I recall the passage well, since I often use it with people as a way of talking about the characteristics of special religious experiences. Merton’s experience was a quite extraordinary one, yet he writes in two places that what he saw was also quite ordinary.

Still ruminating on this, I picked up the galleys of a forthcoming book about which I’ve been asked to write a review essay. By coincidence (is anything ever a coincidence?) I started reading the author’s description of a deep experience of God he had, in which he said that the experience was extraordinary by definition, and yet absolutely ordinary.

This all leads me to think that the mistake people sometimes make is thinking of ordinary and extraordinary as two mutually exclusive categories. But with God, I think ordinary and extraordinary collide. And that means if one rules out God in the ordinary, there may be no extraordinary in which to find God.

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Dwelling Places in My Father’s House

I’ve heard many variations of a joke about a man who arrives at the gates of Heaven (each one with a different religion as the punch line).

St. Peter asks his religion and the man replies that he is a Methodist. St. Peter looked down his list and said,” Go to Room 24, but be very quiet as you pass Room 8.” Another man arrived at the gates of Heaven. When asked his religion, he replies Catholic. St. Peter says, “Go to Room 18, but be very quiet as you pass Room 8.” A third man arrived at the gates and when asked his religion, replied Jewish. St. Peter tells him, “Go to Room 11 but be very quiet as you pass Room 8.” The man tells St. Peter he understands putting people of different religions in different rooms, but asks why he should be quiet when passing Room 8. St. Peter told him, “Well, the Baptists are in Room 8, and they think they’re the only ones here.”

In today’s Gospel from St. John, Jesus tells his disciples “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God; have faith also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?

Jesus’ statement that there are many dwellings in His Father’s house promises room for everyone; and not just room for everyone, but room for everyone. For me, the statement is a reminder not just that there is plenty of space, but that those welcomed will not all look the same. Not everyone for whom there is room necessarily fits someone else’s picture of who deserves to be in heaven.

There are some (perhaps) many people who think only they and their kind will be in heaven. I decided a long time ago that the question of who is in heaven is one that is way above my pay grade. But I do take seriously – and take solace in – what Jesus told his disciples: there are many dwellings in his Father’s house, and there is room for many different sorts of people.

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I Shall Dwell in the House of the Lord

The Responsorial Psalm for today’s Mass is excerpted from Psalm 27, one of those that always brings me comfort.

The Lord is my light and my salvation;
whom should I fear?
The Lord is my life’s refuge;
of whom should I be afraid?

Do not be afraid, says the Angel Gabriel to Mary. Do not be afraid, says Jesus to his disciples. In moments when I experience fear, this is the line that comes almost unbidden to my mind. The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom should I fear? Saying the words – even just hearing them in my mind – is enough to calm me, to strengthen me. We need fear no one and nothing.

One thing I ask of the Lord
this I seek:
To dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
That I may gaze on the loveliness of the Lord
and contemplate his temple.

In the law we say of certain things res ispa loquitor – the thing speaks for itself. So it is with this line. It speaks for itself; it says it all, in conveying in such simple terms our aspiration – to be in full union with our God.

I believe that I shall see the bounty of the Lord
in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord with courage;
be stouthearted, and wait for the Lord.

Whatever reason the Psalmist had for his security, we are an Easter people. For Christians, it is Jesus death, resurrection, followed by his ascension and sending of the Spirit, that allows us to assert with absolute confidence that we shall see the bounty of the Lord in the land of the living. That allows us to wait with courge, able to face whatever difficulties come our way.

I love this Psalm. I hear the words – I feel them – and they bring me strength and peace.

Pray the words today. Feel them. And be strengthened by them.

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Not Whether, But How God is Present

The other day, the priest celebrating a Mass I attended began his homily with the story of a man seeking God. The man climbed to the top of a mountain and cried out loudly, “Lord, let me hear you.” A bird flew by singing.

Still longing for God, the man cried out loudly, “Lord, let me see you.” He noticed some children playing nearby.

Still longing for God, the man cried out loudly, “Lord let me feel your presence.” A gentle wind caressed his face.

Still longing for God, the man cried out loudly, “Lord, let me know you are present.” A beautiful butterfly passed immediately in front of him.

The man came down from the mountain bitterly disappointed that he had not experienced God. He came home to the daughters he loved, and still did not recognize the presence of God.

My spirituality is heavily Ignatian, an approach that presupposes that all of our experience has a religious dimension. All the world – all that exists – is suffused with the reality of God’s presence. This is not pantheism. I’m not saying the world is God or the trees outside are God, the way a pantheist would. Rather, that God’s spirit impregnates everything. This is sacramentality at its fullest; in the words of the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.”

For me the Incarnation is about a God that desires to be united with us in our entire experience of life. Meaning that God is present in every human experience. That means we are never listening for whether God is present but for how God is present.

In each moment of our existence, God is communicating to us who God is, trying to draw us into an awareness, a consciousness of his presence. Whether or not we are aware of it, at every moment of our existence, we are encountering this God who is continually trying to draw our attention to relationship with God.

Our task is to become more aware of the presence of God in our live so that we can deepen our conscious relationship with God who is always present in everything.

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Either It Means Everything Or It Means Nothing

I had never phrased it exactly that way before, but that’s the way it came out of my mouth in a recent book talk.

We had been talking about relationship with God and finding time to nurture that. I don’t remember the comment or question that preceded it, but I stopped, looked around at the audience and said, “Either it means everything or it means nothing.”

And I think that is an absolutely correct phrasing, that there is no in between. Either our relationship with God is everything, motivating everything about who we are in the world or doesn’t. And if it doesn’t, I can’t see what meaning it has.

God is not one thing among many, one priority on a par with others. Nothing else matters the way our relationship with God does. And that means that we have to make time to nurture the relationship. We can’t be satisfied with a once a week observance or treat God like a “get out of jail free” card to be pulled out in time of need.

We can nurture the relationship in many ways. Individual prayer. Group prayer and worship. Bible and other spiritual reading. Conversation with spiritual friends. But, however we do so, there can’t be anything as (let alone more) important as that.

Either it means everything, or it means nothing.

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Home in the Heart of Jesus

I just spent the weekend giving a women’s Lent retreat at St. Ignatius Retreat House, the Jesuit retreat house in New York of which I was a member of the adjunct ministerial staff before my move to the Twin Cities five years ago. Not only was it the hub of my ministry in New York, but also St. Ignatius was my spiritual home for many years. The weekend was a bittersweet occasion – joy in a wonderful time with 45 women, many of whom have come on a number of retreats I’ve given there, and sadness because the retreat house is closing in June and this was my last retreat (and, indeed, last visit) there.

One of the great tensions in my life is that between the desire to be ready to pick up and go wherever I am led by the Spirit (the “life as pilgrimage” part of me) and the desire to feel a sense of home, to feel like I belong somewhere. In most periods of my life I have not felt a sense of home and belonging. Despite having a house and a husband and daughter, both of whom I love dearly, I often experience feelings of rootlessness and homelessness.

St. Ignatius, though, was a place the felt like home to me – my spiritual home for many years, the site of so many of my deepest religious experiences, the place out of which I ministered, a place I felt a sense of belonging.

I shared all of this at the retreat house with Fr. Bill Walsh, formerly my spiritual director and still a trusted friend and advisofr, telling him that with the closing of the retreat house, I felt like the home I had was being taken away from me. I would now be homeless.

Bill’s response was swift and direct (as he has always been with me): “Your home is in the heart of Jesus.” And, through my sadness, I knew he was right. That any other home is only a facsimile of my one true home, the only real home I have and really have ever had, the only home I really need – the heart of Jesus.

St. Ignatius Retreat House was a special place and it will always occupy a treasured place in my heart for all that happened there. But it is not about the physical house – or any physical house. As homelike as it felt, the retreat house was never really my home.

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Do You Believe in Hell?

In my talks in various places about Growing in Love and Wisdom, my conversion from Catholicism to Buddhism and back to Catholicism, and the continuing influence of my years as a Buddhist on my Christian prayer practice, there are certain questions that I get with some frequency. One of those questions that I am often asked is, “Do you believe in hell?”

My answer to that question depends on what we mean by hell.

Wen I was a child, the image of hell I had was of a fiery pit with Satan (who in my childhood was red with horns) holding a pitchfork to keep everyone in flames. Hell was an awful place you got locked up forever as punishment if you died with moral sin on your soul.

If that is the Hell someone has in mind when they ask do you believe in Hell, my answer is no. I don’t believe there is a place (or places – Tibetan Buddhist cosmology has a number of hell realms) somewhere where we get locked up to experience torture for all of eternity because of the sins we have committed. But that just says I don’t believe in a grade school or metaphorical understanding of Hell.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines hell as “The state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed, reserved for those who refuse by their own free choice to believe and be converted from sin, even to the end of their lives.”

A state of self-exclusion. A state of remaining separated from God forever by our own free choice.

In that sense of hell, the answer to the question is that I believe in hell to the extent that I accept the theoretical possibility that someone could irrevocably reject God and God’s love. I accept the possibility that one could choose separation from God. I have to understand that – because God has given us freedom – it is possible that someone could make that choice.

That is how I answer the question, with this addition: I’d like to think no one inhabits that hell. That because God keeps trying to bring us back, hell is an empty place.

And that is a happy hope: For me, the banquet just won’t be the same if we’re not all there.

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