Casseroles and Community

Read this really excellent blog post written over on Luce's corner.  It's about a good, old-fashioned way to cooperate with grace.

The beatitudes and the works of mercy spelled out by our Lord in Mt 25, as well as those detailed in the subsequent tradition of the Church, are very much personal responsibilities... every bit as much as the Ten Commandments are.  The Law is not superseded by the Beatitudes, but transcended by them.  The Law provides a foundation, a bare minimum for civility and peace, within which the Beatitudes and the works of mercy can operate and transform hearts to resemble more closely the Sacred Heart that wrought them.

Bishop Allen Vigneron's "10 Rules for Handling Disagreement Like a Christian"

If you've never encountered these rules, please read them.  Memorize any that are not intuitive to you.  I recently read a suggestion that Christians brainstorm a set of rules for internet-based discourse, rules like, "Assume the best intention and good faith of those with whom you are corresponding."  A noble idea.

A new prayer...

Eternal Father, grant me the serenity not to know
Your will and to love it anyway. Please give me
what I need to serve You. Please help me
not to worry about anything, but in
everything to
trust
You.

Resquiat

We must pray that the memory of the events of this day in 2001 do not bring us to demands of vengeance, but to a national life of justice, and to prayer for the deceased, and for our enemies.

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and may perpetual Light shine upon them; may their souls and all souls, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

Last Night in the Woods

So last night my (re-)scheduled long-steady-distance run was down to 10 miles, as a sort of recovery period. I had intended to go on Sunday night, as scheduled, but then did homework and stayed late at a party instead. Anyhow, I decided to run on the C & O Canal Trail. It's really beautiful, and also a very easy run on packed gravel at a very slight incline, laden with beautiful scenery. I aimed to get there about 7 p.m., and calculated that if I got running pretty quickly, I'd finish before the park closed at dark. Since the distance was shorter and the path easier, I decided to run it a little faster and budgeted 80 minutes for the run. I putzed around though, and got there a few minutes late. While I was stretching, a friend of mine walked up out of the blue (well, actually off of the Canal Trail) and so we had to catch up a bit. Long story short, it was almost 7:30 when I started my run. That meant it would be darker when I finished, and on top of that, since the park closes at dark, I would officially be an outlaw. It sounded enticing, so off I went, first running north 2.5 miles, then back to the start where I picked up a pack of calorie gel I had planted for myself, and then south 2.5 miles, and then back to the beginning again.

It tasted tolerable, and didn't seem to give me any stomach problems (my main concern), but at a mere 100 calories (about enough for 1 mile) I couldn't imagine how it could keep me from "hitting the wall." Maybe eating a pack every few miles on a longer run, but for just ten miles. Well, the experiment was to test the effects it would have on my stomach, acid reflux, cramping, etc. Happily it seems to have had none.

Now, running at night in a closed park was a new experience for me. The gravel path is white, which was literally the difference between running on the path and running off a cliff into the Potomac or into the Canal. For the first quarter of my run, it was dusk. The middle half, it was progressively more twighlight. During the darker part of this stage, as I moved into the second half of the run, I passed a utility road turnoff from the trail, at the end of which there was some vehicle with its lights on. The vehicle itself was too buried in the dark and woods to be visible, but the headlights were very clear. Seeing them through the trees as I ran by created the illusion that it was moving slowly, almost in circles. Then it occured to me, "Might I not be the only person in this park illegally?" The thought was, as you can imagine, a bit unnerving.

The last quarter, even though I was running northwest toward where the sun had been, at 8:30 p.m. in September, it was just plain dark. Signs standing on double posts looked like sturdy men at the path's side until I was very close. Dark spots in my field of vision looked like strangers in the shadows up ahead. A number of times I became suddenly unsure of my footing and slowed down to reorient myself. I took my headphones out of my ears so I could "run aware." The soothing sounds of folk music or my favorite quirky bands gave way to the rhythmic sounds of my feet scraping the gravel, and to the woodland noises I've grown up with, but that now sounded menacing and eerie for the first time since my childhood. Prayers for protection floated into my heart. Even the white gravel path melted into the river and the woods only four or five yards ahead of my feet. I found myself running faster and faster, developing self-defense plans. As I passed by the utility road again, I saw the headlights still down at the bottom of the hill, through the trees that were themselves now blotted out by night. "What are they DOING down there?" Faster and faster, until suddenly a new thought entered into my mind. "I went to confession yesterday. What am I worried about?"

Immediately, even unintentionally, my pace relaxed again. The earphones found their way back into my ears, and were singing one of my favorite songs. Within a few more minutes I came back to my starting point, ten miles done. I stretched for a few minutes and ate a bagel and drank the liter of water I'd left for myself in the car. A milkshake pit-stop at McDonald's kicked things up another notch on the pleasantness scale. After getting home I made myself dinner - chicken on Spanish rice, and while eating I studied for my Syriac class.

Last night, I learned to write the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary in Ancient Syriac, one of the first scripts to write those names in the Christian era. That made me immensely happy. After studying, a warm shower and my rosary made things even better. I conked out and, as you will imagine, slept very, very well.

Bittersweet Memory

Yesterday I had struggled with bitterness. Then last night while I was running, I recalled that I had felt bitterly, and noticed that I no longer did. God had answered my prayer and lifted, gradually or at some unnoticed point in the day, the bitterness that had been choking my heart. Observing that fact was a pleasant sensation. So here is what I learned in that experience: feeling bitter tastes, as it were, bitter; but the memory of having felt bitter, coupled with the observation that one no longer so feels, is something sweet.

Question from the Late JPII

"But I ask you, is it better to be resigned to a life

without ideals, or rather to seek truth, goodness, justice,

working for a world that reflects the beauty of God,

even at the cost of facing the trials it may involve?"

- Servant of God, John Paul II (pp 1978-2005)

Fork in the Road

So I am at a crossroads in life, or at least am approaching one, and one that will probably more or less give shape to the day-to-day for much of the rest of my life. I am trying to weigh two possible career choices that I have seriously considered... there may be others that I have inadvertently neglected. What the moves would be is incidental to this piece.

What catches my interest now is that almost everyone I know thinks they know exactly what I should do. It helps that they mostly agree with each other. In fact, they all agree with each other, except for two close family members, who alone seem to dissent.

Happily the crossroads isn't yet encountered - not for a few more months, and even then I'll have the option of putting off the thing, of sitting at the intersection for a while and watching the traffic go by. I bring the thing to prayer, and our Lord, without having yet given me confidence in any particular path, gives me confidence and peace in Him. "Lord, tell me now," I yearn, "what I should do to please you, to be happy, to serve my neighbors." And He responds, "Patience. Have patience. I know - that's enough for now."

So I wait, sort of in a holding pattern. When I have grace to let go, to wait on the Lord, it is not so unpleasant.

Judas, Peter, and John

I want to look back to last Tuesday's (Tues after Palm Sunday; Isa 49:1-6; Ps 71; Jn 13:21-38) Gospel reading from St. John's Gospel. Our Lord predicted that Peter would betray Him, and He was right. Our Lord made the same prediction about Judas, and was also right. Perhaps our Lord made these predictions so that, after they had accomplished their respective villanies, Peter and Judas would remember what our Lord had said. Judas began to understand with horror some of the gravity of what he had done and attempted, in a kind of childish way, to undo his folly. When the reality of the situation became apparently hopeless, Judas murdered himself (Mt 27:3-5). Peter, after his treachery, remembered the words of the Teacher (Mt 26:75) and the memory of our Lord's gentle prediction caused him to weep bitterly.

Of the apostles, only one was present, perhaps having followed at a distance, at the Crucifixion itself. The Beloved Disciple, St. John, stood with the Blessed Virgin Mary at the foot of the Cross (Jn 19:25-26). She was unweakened by sin and so could stand faithful. But how could he stand with her in that dark hour, when all others fled? The answer is buried, I think, in a much earlier chapter that recounts the events of the evening before. During the Last Supper, it was St. John, the Beloved Disciple, who "was lying close to the breast of Jesus," (Jn 13:23) resting upon him, listening quietly to the beating of His Strong and Sacred Heart.

Let us bury ourselves in Jesus in prayer, resting our heads upon His breast, and our hearts close to His. Let us listen quietly for Jesus, and be strengthened by Him, so that we can stand with the Blessed Virgin at the foot of the Cross, though every other friend betray us and all Hell array against us.

St. John, the Beloved Disciple, pray for us.

My Unbelief

How many times, yesterday alone, did I become anxious and frustrated about how life would go or whether it was going my way? Probably about twelve or fifteen times, concerning three different subjects. Each time, our Father in his mercy led me to prayer, gave me a measure of peace to deal with the situation, and resolved it for me better than I ever could have done myself.

Thank you, Father. "Lord, I believe! Help my unbelief," (Mk 9:24).