Speak to Me Sunday: Spiritual Promptings

On this rainy morning, the third Sunday of Advent, I made a New Year’s Resolution. And it stemmed from a chance encounter in the Christmas aisle in Target.

Last week I took a deep breath and went to Target around lunchtime. Not the best time during this time of year. As I wandered the Christmas aisles, several times I crossed paths with a mother with two toddlers in a shopping cart. The mother looked harried while the toddlers behaved just how you would imagine toddlers would act at lunchtime: they were loud, whiney, and periodically threw things out of the shopping cart. The mother picked things up from the ground, told them to stop, and gave them a fruit snack, all while trying to shop. The whining and pushing worsened.

At one point I heard her whisper fiercely to her children that they’d better sit their “asses down” or else.

Listening from one aisle over, I was equal parts horrified (the cursing) and bemused (I remember those days), but quickly settled more on horrified. Who uses that language with such young children?  I mean, how horrible! The drama from the shopping cart escalated. I saw an elderly lady roll her eyes, and another customer grew exasperated as she maneuvered her cart around the chaos.

It was at this moment I realized how the problem was not with the young mother and her children, but with how Grinch-like the rest of us were behaving—judging, assuming and, yes, mom-shaming.

I then felt a spiritual prompting. I remembered the $5 Starbucks gift card in my wallet, and this is what I thought I should do: find the woman, commiserate how we have all had “those days” with our children and that things do get better. I could tell her how my two older boys once got into a scuffle at the checkout lane. I could say, “Here, from one mom to another, have a cup of coffee on me.”

That was what I felt prompted to do, but by nature I am not an impulsive person. I live in my head. Sometimes too much. By the time I acted on the spiritual prompting, the woman and her children had disappeared. I wandered around the store looking for them, but they were gone.

I had missed an opportunity to change the course of someone’s day.

Several times this week I sat down to write about this episode but was not sure what I wanted to say. Don’t judge, maybe. Offer some grace, perhaps.

Then, as I reread my clumsy attempts to put the episode into words, I recognized the heart of the story: spiritual promptings are a call to do something more, something bigger than we may be comfortable doing which, for me, means recognizing when to get out of my head. And out of my comfort zone. After all, a spiritual prompt is more than a thought. It is a gentle nudge to spur us into action with the knowledge that God does not call the trained, he trains the called.

And this is why, on a rainy third Sunday of Advent, I made a New Year’s resolution.

When Opposites Complete One Another

 In many ways, we are completely opposite.

Joe is all about math, numbers, and facts.

I am all about literature, art, and imagination.

 

Joe, who thinks procrastination is a Cardinal Sin, always does things yesterday.

I think procrastination is a helpful tool to get things done just in time.

Joe does not drink coffee.

I think not drinking coffee is a Cardinal Sin. 

 

Joe is super organized.

I am somewhat, haphazardly organized.

 

Joe thinks just enough is plenty.

I always think just enough needs more.   

 

Joe reads two books a year.

I read two books a week.

 

So, yes, we are opposite in many ways, but in all the ways that matter we are not: faith, family,

 parenthood. And standing on those foundations, not only do we respect and celebrate each other’s

 oppositeness, but embrace it as a way to share our two worlds with one another. To grow individually

 and as a couple. So, I go to football games with Joe, he walks through art museums with me; I watch a

 documentary on WWII, he sits through a Hallmark Christmas movie; he puts up 500 lights on the

 Christmas tree, I add 200 more.

It is said opposites attract, but maybe it is more that opposites complete one another. Like pieces of a

 puzzle that make a whole.

And what a wonderful thing.

 

Happy Anniversary, Joey!

O Captain! My Captain!

Teaching in an inner-city high school was my first job out of college, and I was bursting with unbridled enthusiasm as I planned lessons on British literature that would set my students' world on fire. I wanted to be like Robin Williams' movie character in Dead Poets Society where life lessons are found between the pages of a book, nestled in a poem, or acted from a play. Except it did not quite happen that way, and my O Captain! My Captain! moment was more along the lines of students asking, "Why do we even have to read this crap?" 

But after that year of being baptized in a monsoon of reality, a year in which I learned more than I taught, I recognized the fundamental truth about the vocations of teacher and student. Namely, they are one and the same.  

During a lifetime one may take on any number of roles, but when it is all said and done there are but two roles of which we all play a part: that of student and teacher. At any given moment we are either a Student of Life or a Teacher of Life. One moment a student, the next a teacher. Or a teacher today, and a student tomorrow. From minute to minute, day to day. Year to year.

It is an awareness of these roles which give depth and meaning to our lives. Sometimes we bravely say I know and then with generosity step forward to say let me teach you; sometimes we vulnerably acknowledge I do not know and with humbleness say teach me. 

This is what makes the world function. We learn, then teach. We learn something new and then go out and teach that one thing. And we must be both. To be solely a teacher means you never learn anything new; to be forever a student means that knowledge is simply collected. 

Last week I came across a photo of our son, Jonathan, flipping through a deck of Pokémon cards and teaching his baby brother, Timothy, the names of all the Pokémon characters: This is Pikachu who evolves into Raichu. This guy is Snorlax and he has a big belly. As Jonathan introduced his brother to the fantastical world of Pokémon, Timothy smiled and wiggled and was thoroughly entertained. 

Then, later that evening (and almost 17 years from the photo mentioned above), we watched our son Timothy as he showed a novice altar server what to do during Mass. Once Upon a Time, Timothy's older brothers had walked him through this role, so now it was his turn to do the same.

And so it goes.  

We are born to be students. We are born to be teachers. It is not a choice, but vocations to which we are all called. 

Upon thinking back to my first year of teaching, I remembered a box of battered paperback copies of Arthur Miller's play, The Crucible. The box had been stuffed into the corner of the teacher's lounge and destined for the trash can. But I had a feeling that those ragged, tattered paperbacks would reach my students. Every day I lugged that box to the classroom so we could read the play aloud, and I watched my students come alive. There is no other way to describe the transformation. No longer did they loiter in the hallway until the bell rang for class to begin; instead, they rushed in excited to see what happens next. For the first time, they interacted with each other, offered comments, asked questions, and stayed after class to talk with me. Together, we were students teaching one another in the classroom of life.  

So maybe, perhaps, I had my O Captain! My Captain! moment after all. 

First Sunday of Advent: Where is Baby Jesus?

One of my favorite Christmas carols is "People Look East" because it calls forth images of hearth and home and Christmas anticipation. This afternoon, as I unpacked a Fontanini nativity while listening to the carol, I was reminded how the repeated theme of looking ahead, of seeking and preparing, is such an integral part of an Italian presepio, or nativity scene.

A traditional presepio in Italy includes so much more than the figures of Joseph, Mary, and the infant Jesus. There is often a water feature, and dramatic lighting mimics the transition from day to night and back again. There are mountains, valleys, caves. Entire villages are constructed, as are farm fields and barns. There are shepherds and villagers and children. It is a busy scene, incredibly elaborate and detailed, so much so that it takes a few minutes to even find the infant Jesus. He is not front and center, as one would expect, but hidden.

The fact he is not immediately spotted is precisely the point.

In the nativity story, everyone is looking: the Wise Men studied the star to guide them, the shepherds looked for the babe in a manger, and even Joseph searched for shelter as one Inn after another closed its doors. And in a presepio, the viewer is invited into the tableau and, like the shepherds and villagers and children, is meant to look for Jesus, to seek him out, to look up and down and around the villages and fields and barns until he is found.

As we journey into Advent, that is the theme we are living: one of seeking, for a presepio does not depict a legendary event from ancient Palestine; instead, it is a mirror of the known world today reminding us to look for Christ in our everyday life. In our homes. At church. Among crowds and the homeless. Even amidst our busyness.

He is hidden in plain sight, waiting for you to find him.

(The following photos were taken last October in Naples, Italy on Via San Gregorio Armeno, known as the Christmas Alley.

This pedestrian street in Naples' historic center is filled with artisan workshops and hundreds of nativity scenes, each one more elaborate than the next. The nativities are busy, meant to reflect everyday life, and as your eyes wander over the scenes the question arises: Where is baby Jesus?)