I Thirst

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

Related posts: The Best Latte, Grace You Can Taste, Thankfully, Taste of Heaven, and So Much Love in the Club.

To the Misbehaved Kid In the Pew Behind Me

Thank you.

I admit that I dreaded when you came and sat behind me in the middle of the opening prayer.  I was exhausted after a long day in customer service, and I picked that isolated corner at the front of the church for a reason:  I thought it would be peaceful.

Instead, you sat behind me and crunched loudly on your church-time snack.  You wiped your sticky fingers on the pew behind me.  I felt a slight tug on my hair and heard your mom say, "Stop touching her hair."  I smiled.  But then she kept saying it, and I started to get annoyed and wondered if I was going to find boogers in there later.

I kept seeing you out of the corners of my eyes and I learned that 1)  your name is Marcus and 2)  no matter how many times your parents told you to stand still or sit down, you refused.

I lost track of the second reading and the Gospel as I planned in my head how me and my future husband will teach our future kids to sit quietly in church and not wipe boogers in people's hair.

Then I heard the paper glide back and forth, back and forth across the back of the pew.  I heard you making weird noises with your tongue, and talking about wanting to leave.  I was sad that you didn't understand the beauty of what was going on in front of you.

And as the second part of Mass went on and your mom was still "Shhsh"ing you and telling you repeatedly to sit down, I learned the lesson you were there to teach me:  I am you.

I don't understand the beauty of what is going on in front of me.

In my spiritual life, in my relationship with God, I constantly find myself talking and talking and talking--telling Him what I want, that I am tired, stressed, overwhelmed, happy, uncertain--and all the while He's telling me "Shhh. . ."  Because He just wants to shower His love on me.

I wander away, back and forth, back and forth, to where I get lost in the darkness until God grabs my hand with grace and pulls me back to the light.

I do the same stupid things over and over and He has to keep gently reminding me not to do them.  I annoy the people around me who are striving to be holy by pointing out the ugly that I see rather than the beautiful.

As much as I like to think I understand the beauty of the Mystery of God, I know nothing.

Thanks for the reminder, Marcus.

The Alchemy of the Cross

I read this in my Magnificat one day:

"The Lord gathers up the tears of humanity and transforms them into the waters of life by the alchemy of the cross, where suffering and death are changed into joy and life by the self-gift of love."

And then I read it again:

 "The Lord gathers up the tears of humanity and transforms them into the waters of life by the alchemy of the cross, where suffering and death are changed into joy and life by the self-gift of love."

I see it:  the Lord walks among us, teaching, healing, collecting our salty tears--the blood of our souls.

I see him, Christ, drink the tears, swallowing our tears for us, being brave and strong for us like we can't be for ourselves.  He sits with his friends and drinks, sits in the garden and begs his Father to find another way.  He knows, though, that this is the only way.

He takes up the cross, and they beat him until he bleeds--the blood of the Lord, spilled out and given for us.  He carries his cross and they nail him to it.

He takes his last breath, and they pierce his side.  Blood and water pour out--baptism.  They lay him in the tomb and on the third day, he is gone.

He is risen, and he brings with him salvation and new life for us.

All this is the result of a gift of self for love.

In my study of Theology of the Body, this is a recurring theme:  self-gift of love.  It points to the sacrifice of Christ on the cross.  He did that for us, and if we are to follow him, we must be faithful in every aspect of our lives.

After Mass on Holy Thursday, Jesus' question to his disciples kept coming back to me:  "Do you know what I have done for you?"

On Good Friday I watched the priest and deacon process in in silence, and then lay face down on the ground in front of the altar. It struck me that this is what Christ has done--he laid his life down for us.  And the priests have done this in his example.

"Do you know what I have done for you?"

At the Easter vigil I counted my blessings, looking back at the many ways I could see how God saved me in grace, how he brought me where I am instead of taking me where I wanted to go for a specific reason--to give me new life.

The hard part now consists in dying to my old self, and giving myself completely out of love for him.

That reminds me of a funny experience I had about two years ago:  I was praying, and meditating on the Institution of the Eucharist when I suddenly heard John Cusack as Lloyd Dobler (from the 80s film Say Anything) in the back of my mind saying, "I gave her my heart and she gave me a pen."  I realized that it was the same with me and God.  I had given him the pen to write my story, but he had given me his whole heart.  He didn't just want my pen, to be the narrator of my story in an Emma Thompson from Stranger Than Fiction kind of way.  He wanted all of me.  Just as he gives himself to us in the Eucharist every single day, he wants all of us, not just a part of us.

He wants us to let him love us, just as we are.  Only when we let him love us can he turn our pain and sorrow into joy.

Eat the Mystery

When we find ourselves groping along, famished for more, we can choose.  When we are despairing, we can choose to live as Israelites gathering manna.  For forty long years, God's people daily eat manna--a substance whose name literally means "What is it?"  Hungry, they choose to gather up that which is baffling.  They fill on that which has no meaning.  More than 14,600 days they take their daily nourishment from that which they don't comprehend.  They find soul-filling in the inexplicable.

 They eat the mystery.   ~One Thousand Gifts, Ann Voskamp

We are wandering like the Israelites in the desert of faith on our journey to the Promised Land.  We have the choice to continue following the path of love to Truth, to continue participating in the Mass and eating the mystery that is the Eucharist, and letting that be enough for now.

I know that for those of us who have recently graduated from college in this economy, mystery is often the only answer we know.  It can be frustrating while we strive to figure out where to go, what to do next--unless we embrace the mystery that is this life, eat this mystery, and savor it.  Savor the bitterness that comes with the sugar and spice, because it is all part of the gift.

Thankfully

A dare to live fully right where you are.  I took that dare in the form of One Thousand Gifts, a book by Ann Voskamp.  As I read through the book, I was in awe--it was exactly the kind of book that I would want to write.  The rich, poetic style of her writing speaks the longings in my heart and gives a name to that 'thing' I've been grasping at--gratitude.

She takes a challenge to write down one thousand things she's thankful for, and the result is this book.  It is not a list of her gifts, but her spiritual journey laid out in raw honesty as she discovers the beauty in the ordinary (which is what I aim to do with this blog) and never pretends that it's easy.

Last week I kept reflecting on a certain section of the book as I ate too much food and thought about how the Amish believe that every day is a day of thanksgiving.  We even sing that every year at Thanksgiving Eve mass, "Every day is a day of thanksgiving," but I struggle to live it.  Most of the time I act like a spoiled brat and complain about everything, but I aspire.  I guess I have this idea that if I remind myself enough, and if I can share these aspirations with even one other person who might read this blog, eventually, I will be able to live fully in true thanksgiving.  Until then, I am going to reread this book, and share a bit of it for you here.

Ann refers to Luke 17: 15-19 when Jesus heals the ten lepers, and only one returns to thank him.  Jesus says, "Your faith has made you whole."  But wait, hasn't Jesus already healed them?  Yes, physically.  But only the grateful man was saved wholly, because he returned to God in thanksgiving.

"We only enter into the full life if our faith gives thanks.
. . .Thanksgiving is the evidence of our acceptance of whatever He gives.  Thanksgiving is the manifestation of our Yes! to His grace.
. . .At the Eucharist, Christ breaks His heart to heal ours..." 

Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life (John 6:54)
We must receive the Eucharist every day, but not just by going through the motions of daily mass.  Yes, we should absolutely receive the actual Eucharist at mass as often as possible, but we must also receive the Eucharist, the grace of salvation, with open hearts all day every day.  True worship is living the mass in our daily lives, receiving all that comes to us and giving it back to God, and in turn, giving it back to others--communion.

"All those years thinking I was saved and had said my yes to God, but was really living the no. . .Because I wasn't taking everything in my life and returning to Jesus, falling at His feet and thanking Him.  I sit still, blinded.  This is why I sat all those years in church but my soul holes had never fully healed.
     Eucharisteo, the Greek word with the hard meaning and the harder meaning to live--this is the only way from empty to full.
     I have just one word.  A word to seize and haul up out of a terminal nightmare, a word for fearless dying, for saved, fully healed living, a word that works the miracle that heals the soul and raises the very dead to life. . .Eucharisteo."

 Still what sticks out most, "Christ breaks His heart to heal ours."  That's selfless love.  I aspire.

See You In The Eucharist

It was my first road trip in My Little Red Car, and I was itching to escape Ohio.

I headed North and wondered again why it is that the sky seems so much closer in Michigan than it does in Ohio.  The countryside I fell in love with a few years ago--the green and gold and blue that stretched forever, dotted by red barns and silver silos and fluffy white clouds so close it seemed you could touch them--was less romantic this time around, more worn, yet still just as loved.  Nothing had changed but me.

In Michigan and Illinois, I explored small towns and churches and coffee shops--Ugly Mugs and Cheeky Monkeys and All Chocolate Kitchens--with some of my best friends.  We talked and laughed and my heart healed from all the time in-between our last goodbye and this hello.

The goodbyes came around again, like they always do, and  most of us didn't know when the next time we'd say hello would be.  The last goodbye was to a dear friend after morning Mass, and then I hit the road home.

It was a long road, full of traffic and construction (and a really slow Megabus hogging the left lane for way too long).  But the sun was shining and the trees were swaying and I stopped at Fair Oaks Farm in somewhere, Indiana just because their advertisement "dairy-ed" me.  And then they "double dairy-ed" me.  I can't resist a good play on words, or a latte made with super-fresh whole milk, or cows.

I let the joy and laughter and memories of the weekend follow me home.  I was so thankful for my adventure, and so glad to be back.

I can't help but wonder again at how different it is, those three or four or five years of life at college compared to the rest of our lives. How unfair it all seems that the people we grow and experience so much with suddenly aren't there anymore, at least not as often.  Still, I hold these people in my heart--anyone I have ever loved or have ever come across, I hold them in my heart.

When I went to Mass the day after I came home, and my heart was bursting with thanks for the last few days and for the re-connections it had made, I felt my friends with me, and it's no surprise really.

My household sisters say goodbye with the phrase "I'll see you in the Eucharist."  And it's true.  When we participate in Mass, we participate in the heavenly feast, with all the angels and saints and souls.  When we receive the Body and Blood of Christ, we receive His whole Body.  We are the Body, and so we receive one another.  The love that binds us--Love Itself--is there on the altar, ours for the taking, for the receiving for the giving.  When we receive Communion, we are in communion.

So, though I miss you all, my dear friends, I will see you in the Eucharist.