"The Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak." (Matthew 26:41)
But I've been wondering. . .isthe spirit willing? Lately, I think not.
Deep down, the commitment is there, but in the day to day, I'm just plain tired.
Tired of the way things are. Tired of trying to figure out what the next step is. Tired of trying to change things when all my efforts are met with failure.
Disappointment and frustration cloud my view of all that I should be grateful for and all the ways I can live more fully where I am.
My sins suck me down, and others around me are beginning to feel my anger and frustration since I no longer have the energy to hide it--or am I even trying anymore?
People notice, and their humbling comments bring me to my knees, and once again, Mercy intervenes.
* * *
"I am dead to sin and now living in Christ Jesus."
The preacher let the words sink in, then repeated them, "We must remember and live that truth: I am dead to sin and now living in Christ Jesus."
I want to remember. I want to live like this, to believe it in my heart, to let it pulse through my veins.
But I get in my own way. I let the darkness of my sin, of my fear consume me--fear of my self, of who I think I should be, of who I actually am, of who I want to be, of my constant state of failure at trying to be a woman of Love.
But if I amtrulydead to sin, I need not fear my weaknesses or my failings. I will still fall, because I'm human. But I am now living in Christ Jesus, and He will make up for all I lack, in His mercy, His grace, His goodness, His love.
* * *
I always have such high hopes when the New Year rolls around. This year was no different, and even though the first week was as boring as a pile of dirt and colder and more miserable than I can really handle without turning into a monster, I still have hope.
My reflections and ponderings of last year (and my attitude this past week) provided me with some ugly truths about myself, leading me to think that quite possibly the changes I need to make are not so much in my external circumstances, but in my soul. I can't just keep holding on to a superficial optimism that if I endure the difficulties with a glued-on smile, that's doing God's will for my life, and everything will turn out okay.
I need to actually open my heart and soul and life up wide to His promised Grace and Mercy and let Him do something new in me. And I think part of opening myself up to that is letting go of my old self, the comfortable self that likes to be cozy and comfortable and watch lots of cheesy wholesome movies. Last year I developed better habits, one being a routine of reading the Bible and praying in the morning before I go to work. This prayer life is a good foundation, but I find myself now at a crossroads--it's time to actually live. That means that I need to do things that scare me, but that are good for me (like doing more yoga and exercising to get into shape, like cooking healthy meals, like finding friends nearby who share my faith).
Because as I've written before, in order to love others as we love ourselves, we have to first love ourselves, to take care of ourselves, to allow ourselves to be loved by God and formed into new creations by His merciful touch.
I want to believe with every fiber of my being that I am dead to sin and now living in Christ Jesus, and to let His Love transform me from the inside out so that with every breath I take, I am living life to the full in His Love.
As this short season of Advent swirls around us in a flurry of busyness, the word fiat has been on my heart. It is after all, thanks to Mary's fiat, her "yes" to God's will, that the whole Incarnation came about as it did. She said yes to something that could cause scandal, yes to bringing up the Son of God, yes to carrying Him in her body for nine months, yes to giving birth to Him.
She probably didn't know when she said "yes" that she'd have to give birth to Him after more than a week of bumbling along on a donkey while nine months pregnant, or that she'd have to give birth to Him in a cold, dark, dirty stable, or that after His birth they'd have to hide out in the desert for two years. She probably didn't know when she said "yes" that she would have to watch him suffer and die at the hands of the people He loved so dearly. But she said "yes" to God, and though it caused her times of pain and suffering, she allowed God to use her to help bring about the salvation of the world, through the miracle of a tiny baby.
In a way, this is how God uses all of our fiats. Every time we place our trust in God, we say "yes" to His will for the salvation of the world. Most of the time we don't have any idea how His plans will unfold, but we know that it likely won't be easy. There will be sacrifice, pain, and suffering along the way, but it is through this sanctifying grace that we are transformed to become whatever God wants us to be. It is through our fiats that He brings about the most glorious things!
This year, my greatest desire is for us all to appreciate more fully the love that God has for us. He came to earth to be one of us, to share in our human experience, to be treated horribly and executed so that our sins will not be held against us.
The miracle of the Incarnation becomes more real for me every year, and when I close my eyes, I find myself on my knees. I kneel beside the manger, holding Mary's hand as she rests and recovers from the difficult journey and the birth. While she sleeps, I watch over her baby, my brother, my King. I want to touch the soft cheek of the baby Jesus, because I know that with only a touch, I can be healed of my petty, whiny, selfishness.
O heal me, Jesus, and help me to embrace fully the plans You have for my life. Help me to focus on the love and blessings I do have and not be so worried and anxious about what I don't have. And thank You for coming to save us.
May the joy and peace of the infant Jesus fill our hearts this Christmas season!
(To see the sweetest interpretation of how God's ways are beyond our wildest imaginings,
Coffee coffee coffee is my mantra. I love coffee. I love trying new coffees, making coffee, sharing coffee. When a co-worker/coffee friend gave me a delicious bag of beans from a recent trip, I thanked her for sharing the coffee with me, and she replied, "Of course, that's what coffee is for."
Communion. Every cup is a communion. It is the sharing, the community, the relationships between co-workers and customers that have grown and evolved over the years that I love the most.
Still, I don't necessarily want to be a barista forever. And in the restlessness of wondering, the aching for more than pouring coffee and making lattes and being constantly sucked dry of all energy from being on my feet and socializing all day (which let me tell you, for this introvert, is exhausting), I find peace only in the One who made the stars and the sea and the coffee trees.
Gratitude is too shallow a word to describe the depth of joy I find at the gift of His peace, manifested in His mercy and grace, especially in the darkness that has recently visited. In the exhaustion that cannot be cured by coffee (yeah, I said it), He picks up my weary soul and carries me through it all.
Just after the recent canonization of my beloved Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta, I picked up a free copy from church of With Great Love, a book of reflections on Mother Teresa by Susan Conroy, who spent time working with the saint. Saint Mother Teresa and her patron, Saint Therese of Lisieux have always been close to my heart, and I aspire to follow their examples of putting great love into the every little action, no matter how simple.
In this looooong week of work full of too many too-early mornings, God, in His mercy and grace, graced me with the perfect reflection on this very subject from Susan Conroy. It's a lesson I have heard so many times throughout my life, and a lesson I have attempted to apply to my time working in coffee over the years. But as I recently heard, our spiritual lives are not linear. They are not gradual uphill climbs, but rather, they are paths full of stumbling and falling and, by the grace of God, persevering toward that seemingly ever elusive holiness and perfect communion with Him.
Every cup is a communion. Not a perfect communion, but a communion of all our broken humanity scooped up into a mug, a chalice, a hug, a smile.
"Let every action of mine be something beautiful for God," said Saint Mother Teresa. As she wandered the streets of Calcutta, she and her sisters performed simple tasks, such as sitting with the dying so they didn't have to die alone, or providing a blanket to someone who was shivering, or giving a glass of water to someone who was thirsty. As Conroy describes:
"It was not the work that was extraordinary, but rather, the way in which it was done. It was the spirit of the work that made it extraordinary: the spirit of love, humility, tenderness and respect with which each human being was touched and held and cared for. It was precisely this spirit of love and humility that made Mother Teresa a saint and made every action of hers 'something beautiful for God.'
"It is always about the love. Love, love, love. Mother Teresa said that this is the reason we exist--to love and serve God by loving and serving one another....
"It doesn't matter how much we give, but rather how much love we put in the giving. [Mother Teresa] encouraged us to 'put love into everything you do, and you will be fulfilling your vocation.'
"'God is Love,' Saint John the apostle tells us. Do everything with God. Do everything with 'the fullness of charity' in your heart, and you will be fulfilling your duty and your destiny in a way that is most pleasing to God."
No matter what I do, even as I search for work beyond barista-ing, I can put love into each little action, into each cup of coffee I pour, into each dish I wash, into each person I meet.
Yes, coffee coffee coffee is my mantra, but what is coffee all about? It is about the people, the communion, the love.
I thirst--I want to be good, I want to love as Jesus would have me love. I want to forget all my fears and live for Him and Him alone. I often feel as though I am not doing enough, like I should be doing more with my life.
I admit that at times I have been ashamed to tell people what I do for a living. I'm in my late twenties and when asked about my profession my answer is, "I'm a barista." If you were to ask me ten years ago where I would be today, my answer certainly wouldn't have been that. But I am not the same person I was ten years ago.
Life happens, and in the last ten years, I feel I have lived a dozen lifetimes. Each lifetime was necessary for me to be who and where I am today. Each experience has been full of lessons, riddled with joy and pain and mistakes and victories. Perhaps the greatest lesson that I have learned, the one I continue to learn each day, is one I have written about many times here:
Every cup is a communion.
I would like to say that every cup I serve is one of love, one of humble self-giving. But the occasional demanding, hateful people I encounter make my job painful, make me feel like dirt, and I know that I shouldn't let it get to me, but I do. It does. Because I'm human.
*sigh*
And I would like to say that every day I go to work thinking of how I can share the love of Christ with others, how I can be kind to everyone, how I can bite my tongue from gossip and only speak about the good stuff. But I don't, because I'm human. And it's 4:30 in the morning.
But seriously, I thirst. I desire to be holy, but it's so easy to be distracted: by drama at work, by silly TV shows on Netflix, by the comforts of home.
In His typical mysterious ways, God brought me back to attention this past Sunday.
My husband and I both had to work, so we went to the early Mass together. Though neither of us was happy that we had to work all day, it seemed that there could be no better way to begin our work day than by participating in the sacrifice of the Mass together. (Is there really a better way to begin any day? Of course not, but we're human, so we often fool ourselves into thinking otherwise.)
At communion, I recognized one of the Eucharistic ministers offering the cup as a regular customer from work. Many early mornings during the week he comes in to our coffee bar to start his day with a cup of coffee: a large light roast with room for cream.
And that Sunday morning, there he was, offering the cup, the Blood of Christ, at communion. I was struck by how small the world is, by how we are all connected someway or another in the Body of Christ, by how every cup is a communion.
Certainly, the cups of coffee I serve in the early mornings are not in any way the same substance as the Blood of Christ, but if I offer them with love, if I am able to die to my self to offer them humbly, even to the hateful, demanding people of the world who belittle me, if I can serve them with a smile, they are, in a sense, cups of communion.
As a human, I fail and I will continue to fail, but I will keep trying. I know that God thirsts for me, thirsts for all of us. If we can learn to come to Him, even when we don't feel like it, even when we don't feel worthy, He will pour down His mercy and grace to fill our cups, and we can share that with others.
"I thirst for You. Yes, that is the only way to even begin to describe My love for you. I THIRST FOR YOU. I thirst to love you and to be loved by you--that is how precious you are to Me. I THIRST FOR YOU. Come to Me, and I will fill your heart and heal your wounds. I will make you a new creation, and give you peace, even in all your trials I THIRST FOR YOU. You must never doubt My mercy, My acceptance of you, My desire to forgive, My longing to bless you and live My life in you. I THIRST FOR YOU. If you feel unimportant in the eyes of the world, that matters not at all. For Me, there is no one any more important in the entire world than you. I THIRST FOR YOU. Open to Me, come to Me, thirst for Me, give Me your life--and I will prove to you how important you are to My Heart." ~from the "I Thirst" meditation, Blessed Mother Teresa
After a morning of making countless $1 Pumpkin Spice Lattes, you might think that I wouldn't want to spend my afternoon writing about it. HOWEVER, I drank a PSL myself and have that caffeine and sugar coursing through my veins and sparking inspiration all up in my heart and soul.
I came home and finally looked up this 20/20 story my mom has been telling me about, about baristas and the horrible things they do to people's drinks. I found it fascinating. I can relate to these bitter baristas. In fact, just yesterday I had a moment of understanding as I realized the reason we get so frustrated with customers and they get so frustrated with us is that we are not speaking the same language.
The language we speak is that of well-trained and experienced baristas. We know where these coffees come from, the altitude at which they are grown, the anatomy of a coffee plant, the names of the farmers who grow it, how the coffees are processed, what each step in the process entails, and what each step means for how that coffee will ultimately taste when we brew it, not to mention what all the variables are in the brewing process and how they affect the taste of the coffee.
The language our customers speak, on the other hand, is often (not always, but often) a twisted mess of coffee terms made popular by places from McDonald's to Starbucks to Intelligentsia. They often know only that they need something to wake them up, or that they like caramel frappes, or that they hate coffee and want a coffee drink that doesn't taste like coffee.
The biggest challenge of our jobs as baristas is to pick through and translate the layers of this language in order to discern the unique palates of our many customers so that we can find the right drink for them--all in the most fast-paced, efficient, and pleasant way possible.
In general, baristas are grossly underpaid and undervalued for these intricate skills. This only causes more bitterness and frustration as they attempt to read their customers minds, create personalized, handcrafted beverages, and navigate the crowds of zombie-like people dying for their daily caffeine fix on their way to work and school--all before 8 am.
In the 20/20 interview, the baristas spoke of decaffeinating rude people's coffee, or adding extra charges to their drinks. I understand the desire to do these things--it's extremely tempting sometimes! As anyone who has ever worked in customer service will tell you, people can be downright nasty. It can be very disheartening, especially for those of us with the determined Anne Frank-attitude to see the good in humanity.
Thankfully, there are plenty of really wonderful people we encounter every day too! These wonderful souls of grace who very clearly recognize us not as machines but as humans like themselves, are often what get us through the seemingly never-ending days.
I actually started writing a coffee shop musical back in college, based on my experiences. It was a sad little story line, but this video beautifully portrays (*minus the bit of vulgarity*) the plight of the modern barista, set to a familiar musical:
What stuck out to me most was their question "When will I be redeemed?"
Well, here's what I've learned: they have already been redeemed. We all have. It's a matter of accepting the sacrifice that paid our way out of this "hell" we're living.
We can't always change our situation (especially in this economy) and land our dream jobs right out of college (or even four years out of college), and in the meantime, we have to pay rent somehow. We can't change how people act towards us, but we can change how we act toward them. Instead of being the pretentious coffee know-it-alls we are stereotyped to be, we can adopt a servant's heart.
We can serve coffee with genuine joy and love. We can be kind even to the rudest customers (you never know what horrible experiences someone might be going through!). We can swallow our own opinions of what makes a good coffee and instead maintain the attitude that everyone has different tastes.
I have worked in coffee for 6 years, which is 4 more than I ever anticipated (trust me, I never anticipated being in management, but here I am). As a whole, I have loved my experiences. I love the people that I've met, the skills and knowledge that I've gained, the free coffee I've been allowed to drink, and even the work itself. It's fun! Some days I look around in gratitude and shake my head in wonder thinking, "They actually pay me to do this!"
Other days though, I shake my head thinking, "There is not enough money in the world. . ." I find myself struggling through the daily grind to be happy and nice to people when I just want to sit in a corner and be angry and frustrated. I get so tired (the kind of tired that is beyond caffeine's reach) of being outgoing (I'm an extreme introvert) on a daily basis and being up for hours before the sun. It's these days that make me ask the question: what am I even doing here?
What I have come to understand through it all, is that I am exactly where I am supposed to be. In all my vain attempts to get out, I still sought God's will for my life. My ultimate goal, after all, is not a successful career, but holiness. God gave me glimpses of what may lay ahead, and with those glimpses, reminders that as much as I want to be, I am not ready for the next step.
Even though I have days where I curse the ground I work on (by the way, we actually call the ground we work on the IBG, because we believe our bar was built on an Indian burial ground), and want to cry at the sad state of humanity, and then I spill brown mocha powder all over my black pants, I believe it is all part of the process. It is part of growing up, yes, but most importantly, a part of being humbled, of dying to myself.
If we are to be redeemed, we must first die to ourselves, so that we may rise again with Christ:
And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. [Luke 9: 23-24)
The particular slow and painful death God has chosen for me just happens to be death by mocha.
I still fail and fall frequently, but I am reminded over and over again of His redeeming love, mercy, and faithfulness. I encourage you, wherever you are, to accept your form of "death" as the grace to participate in the fullness of your redemption. It's all we can do, really.
I think most people who ask that question are referring to Christmas shopping--have I gotten my shopping done? Yes, because I didn't really do gifts this year. It's not that I didn't want to give gifts--I generally enjoy giving them much more than receiving them. It's that I can't really afford it this year, so I'm making Christmas breakfast for the fam instead.
When I get this question though, I hear--are you ready for this retail nightmare to end? The answer to that is YES. I look forward to spending 24 hours with my family and not having to worry that I'll get a call from work. I am SO ready for that.
The real question though should be--am I ready for Christ? I wonder if I've done enough this Advent to prepare for the coming of Jesus. My holy hours were limited, my prayers barely formed, my Advent reading only a third finished, so it would seem that I haven't done nearly enough to prepare. But when I think about the infant Jesus coming to save me from my sins, coming to love the lonely, to comfort the suffering--I know that my tired eyes and weary bones and exhausted spirit are more than ready to kneel beside the manger and welcome Jesus.
It's because I have nothing left to give--no gifts, no more effort to put into my work, nothing but my weak and weary self. And the really humbling thing is that that is enough. That is all He wants. For me, for you, for the impatient and frantic last-minute customers, for us all to come to Him. He is the Gift, and He wants to give Himself to us.
It's an awe-inspiring and humbling love. Come, let us adore Him!
It was a scene in Jesus of Nazareth that struck me to the core:when the sinful woman came and washed the feet of Jesus with expensive ointment and her tears. That woman was me. That was me on the chapel floor letting my tears fall at the foot of the cross because I am unworthy.
And yet, I am loved.
I am loved to an unimaginable degree. Loved beyond comprehension. Though I stumble, though I sin again and again, I am loved. We all are.
It is a redeeming love that pursues each of us. A knocking at our hearts to be opened.
Jesus came for the sinners, not the righteous. To the would-be killers of the adulteress he says,"Let he who is sinless cast the first stone."
No stones were thrown that day. Why? Because no one is perfect. We are full of weaknesses, struggles, fears. We make mistakes and bad decisions. Therefore, Jesus came for all of us. He died for all of us. As he hung on the cross, in the last breaths before his death, he forgave all of us. By his blood, we are forgiven, and redeemed, no matter how grave our sins.
I've learned that this redemption is not exactly passive on our end. God has done all the work, yes, but it comes down to a movement of the will to believe. Often this is the hardest part--getting over ourselves enough to be humbled to the point of of accepting that we need Him.
Sometimes we believe that we are righteous enough, that our sins are not so great that we really need him. I really am a good person, and that's enough. It's not enough. Heaven isn't earned--it is desired with the whole will, with all heart and soul. You have to really want it.
When we want it, we find ourselves confessing our sins regularly. I find that I confess the same sins over and over, and Jesus says "Go and sin no more," and I wonder how that's possible. I wonder if I've really even been set free. If I were truly set free, wouldn't I be able to stop doing the same stupid things? Why can't I make it out of the church parking lot before sinning again?
"Forgiveness is only real for those who have discovered the weakness of their friends and the sins of their enemies in their own hearts, and are willing to call each human being their sister and brother." (Henri J. M. Nouwen)
I'll be honest--I'm generally not willing to call the angry, hateful customer my brother. I'm not willing to call the obnoxious woman in line in front of me my sister. I'm not willing to acknowledge that I have neglected to use my turn signal before too. I'm not willing to let other people have their bad days. I am not willing to forgive, but I expect to be forgiven.
"To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you." (C.S. Lewis)
It all comes down to a movement of the will to believe. And maybe the truth is that I don't want to believe. Maybe there's a part of me resisting, because I know that to go and sin no more is going to be extremely painful--the death of my pride and my self. Maybe I believe the fact that I am forgiven just as much as I believe the fact that I will sin again. That is where the problem lies--when I focus too much on my own faults (or even too much on the faults of others), and weaknesses, and sins, and not nearly enough on Jesus.
His grace is enough.
He does not condemn us. Neither should we condemn each other, or judge each other, or even criticize each other. We need to try to understand each other, because "To understand all is to forgive all." (Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited)
I believe that this is key to learning how to love our neighbors as Christ loves us. To try to understand where they are coming from, and to meet them where they are at is what we are called to do. It's what Jesus does for us. It requires patience, and the constant swallowing of our pride, and often we fail, but that's what confession is for--to receive that kiss from Jesus on the forehead, to hear him say, "Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more."
I aspire.
And I'm finding that the best way to do all of this, is to come to know Jesus better, through the gospels, the sacraments, the liturgy, prayer. The more I seek him, the more I find him. He's often in the most unlikely places, but he's always there, waiting with open arms for us to come to him.
