Here is your life… Enjoy!

Are you living your life? I mean really living it? Taking time to enjoy the sunshine or savor every moment you have with the people around you?

See, right now I’m reading Eat, Pray, Love it’s a story of a woman who tries to find herself, heal and find God in her travels to three different countries. It’s funny to me reading about her travels and experiences in the first country how jealous I am! Her first journey is to Italy where she wants to experience nothing but pleasure.

She describes Italian food enough to make your mouth water and her pure pleasure in enjoying every bit of it makes my life seem so mundane and boring. It got me thinking about how often – or how easy it is – to completely forget about simple pleasures in life. I’m not saying to live a completely hedonistic lifestyle.. Christ himself endured quite a bit of suffering that lead to redemption so there definitely is something to be considered there. But I think to live a full life we need to enjoy each other and the things that we do have. I think that’s maybe why people were so drawn to Christ. I imagine him to be sitting around a fire every night just enjoying every good thing there is on the earth. The company of his friends, the warmth of the fire they sat around at night, the fish that they caught to eat… whatever it is.

So I’m only going to offer some questions for personal reflection, maybe it’s something to think about this week and maybe try to do some things differently. These are things that I enjoy and they very well may be different person-to-person but I think that most people will find some pleasure in these things:

• When is the last time you read a book completely for the fun of it?
• How many hours a day do you spend looking at a computer screen? How may of those hours do you spend looking deep into someone’s eyes?
• When is the last completely inspiring conversation you had with someone?
• When is the last time you sat and were completely silent for 5 minutes?
• Think about the pace you walk. Do you take time to notice the sky, the clouds, the people around you?
• How often do you stop and smell the air?
• How quickly do you eat your food? Do you enjoy every bite?
• Do you sing at the top of your lungs with the radio turned up?
• Have you hugged someone today? And not the whimpy, flimsy kind…

What else?

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth

Wouldn’t it be great if churches didn’t have to worry about money?

If we never thought twice about giving ten percent of our wages away?

If Christians, by being good Christians were somehow saved not only from Hell, but from the “hell” of financial woes?!

I’m convinced that I’m getting at least a couple days off my time in Purgatory for how much crap I’ve had to struggle with.

*smirk* Now, I’m kinda kidding, but what if that’s true??

We’re told that all of our suffering here on earth unites us to Christ’s suffering and makes us not only better people while we’re alive, but better prepares us to be welcomed into the Kingdom of Heaven. So many of the saints went through extreme physical pain and suffering, from torture to terminal disease. So what about the mental strife and stress the modern person goes through? Doesn’t that give us some “points” in the afterlife?

 (Sidenote: I explained the idea of the importance of doing good works to my fifth grade PSR class by a sort of “point” system that God has. We don’t know how many points we need, and we have no idea how many points each act is worth, so we just have to keep adding up points by doing good things for others and being as holy as we can. It’s sort of a me-centered way of looking at it, I guess, but they really seemed to grasp the idea of Purgatory/indulgences that way, and also the idea that we don’t know who has how many points and such, so therefore we shouldn’t judge each other and should try to help each other also get these cosmic points. Hey, it’s not a perfect analogy, but they’re in fifth grade, and it’s a foundation to build upon.)

 I could be completely off-base, but I think that it’s not the size, importance, or gravity of the suffering that matters so much as how you deal with it, and if you take the pain to the Lord. We are each given suffering that our souls can handle, experiences that can bring us to Christ if that’s the choice (always the right choice, btw) we make with our free will.

 So I’m going to take my financial burdens to the Lord and see if I can trade it in for some *real* treasure.

And hopefully, by the grace of God, make it through these stupid stupid money issues — along with a great majority of my generation.

On Changing the World

How am I going to change the world?

I ask myself that question a lot. Sometimes it sounds more like, “What am I doing to change the world?” But to be honest, some days, I wonder if I am really doing anything. Life can sometimes seem so mundane. Sometimes I get caught up in spending a ridiculously large amount of time watching trashy “reality” TV shows.

I think about all the political issues, the poverty both in the U.S. and abroad, the spiritual poverty that continues to rot all of our morals… and I feel incredibly guilty that I am not at the frontlines of the fight. When Mary said yes, she gave up everything. For all she knew, she was setting herself up to be killed by being pregnant before she was actually married, ruining her plans for marriage with Joseph… and if she even had an inkling of what Jesus was called to accomplish setting herself up for a great deal of emotional suffering to watch her little baby be spat upon and killed pretty brutally.

My yes? Sometimes seems so incredibly easy comparatively. My biggest complaint is that people look at me weird when they realize that I actually go to Mass every week and that I actually practice chastity. Or when I stand up for the undocumented people in our country, or take a stand against racism. It feels weird to be different and I don’t always like being different. Cue the violin.

Maybe my yes isn’t the same as Mary’s. Two Sundays ago was the Baptism of the Lord. Jesus didn’t need to be Baptized physically. But he went through it because we’re all called to birth in Christ. Ok, great, so what does that mean? Being part of a family. Part of a community of believers. But once we’re baptized… we’re supposed to stay in the waters and be fishers of men. (Matt 4:19) Meaning: go out and bring in more people.

So that’s generally everyone’s calling. That’s how we’re going to change the world. Now specifically, that could look different individually. And even though I’m only one woman… Jesus was only one man. And H.G. Wells said (a non-Christian) about Jesus and why he chose him as the greatest person who ever lived:

That place is his by virtue of the… profound ideas which he released – the profound importance of the individual under the Fatherhood of God and the conception of the kingdom of heaven. It is one of the most revolutionary changes of outlook that has ever stirred and changed human thought… The historian’s test of an individual’s greatness is “What did he leave to grow?” Did he start men to thinking along fresh lines with vigor that persisted after him? By this test Jesus stands first.

So to change the world, means to change hearts. Sometimes that means to change my own heart… To not be so worried about being different than the world and to be more concerned at how alike I am to Jesus. Then figuring out how I can help change others’ hearts to want to be like Jesus as well.

Under pressure, pressin’ down on me…

Why is it that it’s easiest to pray when I am supposed to be doing something else? (i.e. leaving, working…)

Even more confusing: How is it that even the slightest bit of pressure that I “should” be doing it paralyzes me so that I can pretty much do everything BUT pray??

 I got some great advice from my spiritual director: Schedule your prayer. And then when that time comes, you have to drop EVERYTHING and pray right then and there, with whomever you’re with, wherever you are. Don’t give yourself the option NOT to pray. Then you’ll find yourself just habitually doing it and not giving excuses.

That’s SO hard though! I don’t do well with schedules because I try to pack too many things into them — making me late for everything, pretty much. But then, I’m being particularly called by the Carmelites to simplify my life and cutting things out that do not glorify God, and which get in the way of my prayer life.

But I have a lot of baggage, ha ha. I’m not talkin’ emotional, friends. I’m talking like LIFE baggage: So many responsibilities and cares that I carry around with me everywhere.

So here’s to structure and getting rid of some baggage leading to more holiness…

What kind of obstacles do you have to prayer in your daily life?

What *baggage* do you need to get rid of?

Conscience, Regret & Forgiveness

Sometimes I hear myself and people around me (and even characters in movies) say something like, “What’s in the past is in the past. I refuse to live my life in regret.” Sometimes I think we use this as an excuse to not let our conscience do it’s job. God built within us, part of Himself that tells us right from wrong. The First Reading from January 11th (that’s when I started writing this post) even talks about it:

This is how we know that we remain in him and he in us,
that he has given us of his Spirit.
Moreover, we have seen and testify
that the Father sent his Son as savior of the world.
Whoever acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God,
God remains in him and he in God.
We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us.

God remains in us. I love the musical, Rent. There is a line from a song in this musical that says, “Forget regret. Or life is yours to miss.” It’s so true that sometimes we are so worried about making a mistake that we miss out on all the joys that life can bring. But what about the other way? When we just ignore our consciences or God’s laws because we’re afraid we’ll miss out or that we don’t want to regret it if we hadn’t.

And then, why is it that when people do something wrong they do not want to feel guilty for it? Now, granted, I’m not saying live your life in deep regret never being able to forgive yourself. No! But instead of turning to God for forgiveness, it seems we have this desire to just explain it away. To say, “it’s in the past now and I cannot do anything about it.”

The beautiful thing is that we don’t have to live in regret. Not because it’s just how we are. Not because we can’t live in regret so we might as well buck up and move on. I am guilty of this. Sometimes I get into this mindset that I don’t need to go to Confession. That I can just say “I’m sorry” and move on. And sometimes we can.

But the true reason that we can be forgiven is because Christ died. Because he offers us the beautiful Sacrament of Reconciliation and forgiveness of your sins, of my sins. It’s sometimes too deep to even grasp. We would all be damned if it weren’t for Jesus’ sacrifice. That should be our true freedom from regret and guilt.