HELLO, I SAY

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Neither I nor the poets I love found the keys to the kingdom of prayer and we cannot force God to stumble over us where we sit. But I know that it’s a good idea to sit anyway. So every morning I sit, I kneel, waiting, making friends with the habit of listening, hoping that I’m being listened to.

There, I greet God in my own disorder. I say hello to my chaos, my unmade decisions, my unmade bed, my desire and my trouble. I say hello to distraction and privilege, I greet the day and I greet my beloved and bewildering Jesus.

I recognize and greet my burdens, my luck, my controlled and uncontrollable story. I greet my untold stories, my unfolding story, my unloved body, my own love, my own body. I greet the things I think will happen and I say hello to everything I do not know about the day. I greet my own small world and I hope that I can meet the bigger world that day.

I greet my story and hope that I can forget my story during the day, and hope that I can hear some stories, and greet some surprising stories during the long day ahead. I greet God, and I greet the God who is more God than the God I greet.

Hello to you all, I say, as the sun rises above the chimneys of North Belfast.

Hello.

Padraig O'Tuama

HERE IS THE WORLD

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The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you.

Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It's for you I created the universe. I love you.

There's only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you'll reach out and take it. Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too.

Frederick Buechner

AT THE POOL WE'VE ALL GOT BODIES

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At the pool we’ve all got bodies.
Elsewhere we’ve got brands
we’ve got fabrications
we’ve got lulu lemon butt lifting pants.

At the pool we’ve all got bodies
in trunks and clam shells—
some working with flaps and pleats pleading
to conceal, others an experiment in Swiss minimalism

and risk management—
all of us dealing with the unalterable fact
that we’ve all got what we’ve got, that
at the pool

we’ve all got bodies:
bouncy bodies
bodies that need brushing
fluorescent white, white bodies
energized child bodies
hot-tubbed tired bodies
bodies

all of them absorbed in being here!—
not spiritual ghosts,
not online avatars,
but us, at the pool
with splashing, floating,
leaping bodies.

Lance Odegard

THE FIRST PRINCIPLE & FOUNDATION

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The Goal of our life is to live with God forever. God, who loves us, gave us life.
Our own response of love allows God’s life to flow into us without limit.

All the things in this world are gifts from God, presented to us so that we can know God more easily and make a return of love more readily. We appreciate and use all these gifts of God insofar as they help us to develop as loving persons. If any of these gifts become the center of our lives, they displace God and hinder our growth toward our goal.

In everyday life, then, we must hold ourselves in balance before all of these created gifts insofar as we have a choice and are not bound by some obligation. We should not fix our desires on health or sickness, wealth or poverty, success or failure, a long life or a short one. For everything has the potential of calling forth in us a deeper response to our life in God.

Our only desire and our one choice should be this: I want and I choose what better leads to God’s deepening his life and love in me.

St. Ignatius of Loyola
paraphrased by David L. Fleming, S.J.

A TESTAMENT

in , ,

I imagine that today I am to die. I ask for time to be alone and write down for my friends a sort of testament for which the points that follow could serve as chapter titles.

1. These things I have loved in life: things I have tasted, looked at, smelled, heard, touched.
2. These experiences I have cherished:
3. These ideas have brought me liberation:
4. These beliefs I have outgrown:
5. These convictions I have lived by:
6. These are the things I have lived for:
7. These insights I have gained in the school of life: insights into God, the world, human nature, Jesus Christ, love, religion, prayer.
8. These risks I took, these dangers I have courted:
9. These sufferings have seasoned me:
10. These lessons life has taught me:
11. These influences have shaped my life: persons, occupations, books, events.
12. These Scripture texts have lit my path:
13. These things I regret about my life:
14. These are my life’s achievements:
15. These persons are enshrined within my heart:
16. These are my unfulfilled desires:

I choose an ending for this document: A poem—my own or someone else’s; or a prayer; a sketch or a picture from a magazine; a Scripture text; or anything that I judge would be an apt conclusion to my testament.

Anthony De Mello, S.J.
Hearts on Fire, Praying with Jesuits

WHEN DEATH COMES

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When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

Mary Oliver

GRACE

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After centuries of handling and mishandling, most religious words have become so shopworn nobody's much interested anymore. Not so with grace, for some reason. Mysteriously, even derivatives like gracious and graceful still have some of the bloom left.

Grace is something you can never get but can only be given. There's no way to earn it or deserve it or bring it about any more than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream or earn good looks or bring about your own birth.

A good sleep is grace and so are good dreams. Most tears are grace. The smell of rain is grace. Somebody loving you is grace. Loving somebody is grace. Have you ever tried to love somebody?

A crucial eccentricity of the Christian faith is the assertion that people are saved by grace. There's nothing you have to do. There's nothing you have to do. There's nothing you have to do.

The grace of God means something like: "Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are, because the party wouldn't have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It's for you I created the universe. I love you."

There's only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you'll reach out and take it.

Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too.

 Frederick Buechner
Wishful Thinking