For Now is Enough

For the last week, I have been with a group of students in Appalachia doing service work for their spring break.  The week was full of blessings, providing a chance to serve during this Lenten season and the opportunity to reflect on the space for God that is created when we are in relationship with others.  While I was away, my latest column was posted on the Global Sisters Report. Entitled "For Now", this is my 10th column for the site. Writing for GSR has been a blessing, giving a space to share my reflections more widely and the grace of having regular deadlines to meet.  My latest column looks at the call to be present to the current moment. We say yes for now in the hope of forever. Sometimes that is as far as we are able to commit; being able to engage the present moment deepens our relationship with God and reveals the eternal life we are striving for. Lent gives us a special opportunity to be intentional about strengthening our faith. Living for now strengthens our trust in God and challenges us to grow in the present moment. I hope the the words I share help to deepen your Lenten journey and that we all may be able to say yes for now... 
___________________________________________________

Every morning you have to wake up and say yes!

That’s one of the single most quoted pieces of advice I got in the lead up to my first profession of vows. No one promised me the road ahead would be smooth, nor did they say that my first year of profession would be easy. To be honest, among all the other pieces of advice I received, the admonition that I’d need to say yes everyday seemed like a euphemistic response to the question of what it means to live a vowed life. Yet, just six months later I found myself sitting across the table from an acquaintance saying just that: “Every day I have to choose to say yes.”

I was visiting my alma mater as part of an annual gathering of religious studies alumnae. Over drinks, we caught up about the last year of our lives: friends, new and old, creating connections. We began talking about the struggles of our everyday lives as young women in the church and the situations of life we find ourselves in. Engaging a woman I didn't know particularly well, I named my struggle as well as you can to a relative stranger.

“Every day I have to choose to say yes,” I heard myself say as I explained my struggle with certain structures. Earlier in the afternoon, I had stood in the campus chapel and spoke the words of my vows aloud. I needed to say those words there. There, in a place that had been so formative to my journey, they made sense. In that moment and in that place, I could say yes . . . in that moment . . . for now.

A week later, on Valentine’s Day, I found myself gathered together once again with a group of young women. This time, though, those gathered were all younger women religious. Over dinner, we shared honestly the struggles, the gifts, the graces, and the foibles of religious life as younger members. After an extended period of time, one of my friends who had been markedly quiet during our discussion of the hope of years to come spoke up: “I don’t know,” she said genuinely. “I hear what you are all saying, but I don’t know if I can agree. When I think about renewing my vows for another year, I don’t know if I can – it seems like too much time; I have to break it down – I have to think to myself, ‘I can say yes to this for now.’”

Her comment was honest. For now, I can say yes. Here in this moment, I can keep on going. It’s not the most hope-filled or inspiring of sentiments, but it is one that comes from lived experience. In a world that can be rough and a landscape that is constantly shifting and changing, sometimes the deepest commitment you can make is for now.

The only moment we truly have is right now. Breaking down time in a way that focuses on living for now offers us the rare opportunity to cast aside what is unnecessary for this moment, while at the same time allowing us to embrace the glimpse of forever – the promise and hope of eternal life – present in each and every experience. 

Living “for now” offers us a brief glimpse of the long view, a microcosm of the promises of our faith. It breaks down the complexity of the journey, causing us to ask, “How does each moment echo eternity?” We act for now in the hope of forever, living salvation on the small scale of each moment, so that a lifetime of faithfulness might emerge...

Read the rest of the column here

Poem: For Now

As I move my way through Lent, poetry seems to be emerging all the more and so here I am to share it. This poem surfaced in the course of writing my forthcoming column for the Global Sisters Report, a piece entitled "For Now"... more on that later this week...

remember what it means to go out into the desert

remember what can happen when you invite the Spirit in

 like a fire in the night

 everything will burn

 stripped bare

 the only light remaining is the one to guide you home.

Take Nothing for the Journey

Reflecting this morning on the beginning of Lent, I found myself savoring the beginning of what is a season that I love.  There is something to the wandering of these forty days, the purification, the intentionality that wraps me in its unique warmth, like a warm woolen mitten in the winter cold.

To mark the beginning of this Lenten journey, I wrote a poem for the Sister of St. Joseph's blog Sharing the Joy of Vocation. May it help you to enter into this season and may we all journey together in faithfulness and grace. Peace+ 

Take nothing for the journey
he said
and I realized
all I was carrying.

And slowly I began to wander
a journey that had already begun
And like a bird I flew free
no arms to hold what could hold me back

Go slow
Be open
See the sights
and see to the fact
that you only pick up what you need

And so I went
the journey deep
the darkness dark
the steepness steep

Seeing what
was there to see
in time
with grace
deep inside of me.

Like the crop circles of my soul
conveying a message
I am still figuring out
how to read.

You pinned me down
by the heart
so I could see the beautiful
markings on my wings
stopped still from the frantic beat

Take nothing for the journey
they said
Take nothing but who you are.

Seeing Trees

As many of you know, I am columnist for the Global Sisters Report's Horizons column. It is a joy for me to be able to write and reflect on the current reality of my own life and the state of religious life as I experience it. My latest column is entitled "To Be Visionary" and looks at the call for all people of faith to see in a different light. Sometimes that mean facing uncertainty, other times it means looking long and hard to discover the beauty in your midst. Either way it is a blessing to be able to look and to discern what might be to come. We all have to be visionary, we have to see trees, see hope, and embrace the grace we're being offered here and now to see.

Here's the beginning of the column:

“Look for the tree.” I would tell friends and family when they first came to visit me in Philadelphia. “It’s the only one for blocks.”

In 2010, I moved to Philadelphia to serve as a full-time volunteer, leaving a full-time job behind to serve as a parish outreach minister in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia. The tree in front of our volunteer house was a point of reference. It was a marker, rising above the row homes and trash-strewn streets of the neighborhood. As it came into focus, it guided others to us, while also serving as a sign of what had been and a signal of what could be.

A few weeks ago, I sat in the campus ministry office where I now work looking at a picture of that tree projected on the wall. I was preparing a presentation for a group of students who would return early from break for an urban service immersion trip to the neighborhood. A 30-minute drive from our campus, it might as well have been a different world.

Projecting images of local sights, empty factories, vacant lots and street art on my office wall, I looked at a neighborhood in which I, like the tree in in front of my house, had set my roots. It is a place I love. A neighborhood full of stories and cast in contrast. The place where I found myself called to actively pursue a call to religious life.

Scrolling through pictures, I looked up to find one of the college’s housekeepers in my office. I greeted her and we made small talk as she emptied the trash cans in the office. “Wait a second,” she paused as she saw the pictures on the wall, “Is that Kensington?” I nodded.

“That’s my neighborhood!” she exclaimed with pride. We talked about our mutual love of the neighborhood and what it means to us. “I can’t imagine living anywhere else,” she added.

“Kensington is just one of those places,” I agreed, knowing from experience it had the power to capture hearts. “Is there anything you want me to tell the students about the neighborhood?”

She nodded slowly as she stopped to think. And then she offered a statement that has sat with me for weeks. “Yeah, tell them it’s beautiful. You just have to be a visionary to see it.”

You have to be a visionary. I made sure to tell the students. You have to be a visionary – to see the beauty, to hold the truth, to see in a way others don’t.  And they did.

Yet, even after the trip was over, I couldn’t seem to shake that phrase.

You have to be a visionary.

That’s a statement bigger than one neighborhood. It’s a lesson for life; it’s a phrase that applies to our life as a church and our call as believers. We have to be visionary.  We believe in what we cannot see and, through faith, we learn to see in ways unknown and unclear.  In time, vision progresses. We cannot know what tomorrow holds, but we can learn to see the signs of the times and anticipate what may be to come... [Read the rest of the article here]