Venite a vedere

There's the vocation you want, and the vocation you're given

Silly creatures that we are, we think that we can call ourselves. We think that we choose ourselves.

We can be machines for generating interpretations.

We think that when we do wrong, to recognize it would be a curse.

Then we generate more interpretations to cover up the most recent batch of mistakes.

But there is something outside of me -- radically outside of me -- that generates me. The interpretations that originate in me are mere words. If I want the truth, then I must look outside of myself to the Something that generates me. What do I see outside of myself?

Facts.

An interpretation that does not take into account ALL the facts is just my own wish masquerading as a truth.

And how is it possible for a small, ornery human being, trapped in a particular point of view and without access to any other pair of eyes or set of ears, possibly take ALL the facts into consideration?

Yep, you heard it here: it's impossible. Any interpretation that originates with me is false.

I cannot even say, "Well, this is the truth for me."

I do not have a 360º view of myself. I cannot even decide the truth of my own self.

I did not make myself. I was not the one who gave me life. And I am not the one who decides that I may continue to take up space on this planet.

But I am intensely grateful to discover that I have been made, I do have life, and Someone does decide that I, in all my minuscule insignificance, should find a pocket of space just large enough for my body to inhabit, at any and every given moment.

So, I do not decide that I am here and that I am I. I discover it.

Life is a quest and an adventure, not a series of interpretations.

Wherever do we find the nerve to pronounce, to define, to put forward the products of our thought? How do we ever dare to presume to have an answer??

I have been given this body, these eyes, this particular space from which to view the world, these hands, this mouth, this heart; and they have all been given for only one reason: to help me seek.

Let's stop wasting our lives -- our mysteriously beautiful existence here -- in the fantasy of making up our lives, generating millions of false little answers. The only rational way to live is in asking and listening, asking and listening...and then following.

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Responsibility

Over on Cahiers Péguy, Sharon posted a question about blogging that has generated several interesting responses. Most of all, I have been thinking about responsibility. To whom and to what am I responsible?

God, obviously! In fact, everything I do or say is a response to God, whether I am aware of this fact or not. I don't remember how old I was when it occurred to me that if God sees everything I do and hears everything I say, then prayer cannot be contained between the parentheses of "Dear God..." and "...Amen." Folding our hands is not like picking up a telephone; when we say, "Amen," the line doesn't go dead. What I say to my children, I am saying in the presence of the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. What I do or don't do happens under the watchful gaze of the one who counts all the hairs on my head.

What does it mean to respond to God? Unlike Samuel, I don't hear any disembodied voice, calling my name. Unlike Mary, I have not received any strange greetings from the angel Gabriel. God summons me with the voices of my children, my husband, my friends and neighbors, and even with the voices of strangers I meet. Everyone he places in my path bears his face.

What is my responsibility, in light of this awareness? First, I must discern what God is saying or asking. What he requires of me doesn't match up neatly with the requests and demands that those around me are making. In many cases, a "no" to the person in front of me constitutes a "yes" to God -- and sometimes it's cruel to be kind.

So, the regular responsibilities that I have in front of me come from many places -- many of them are things that I've said yes to, and now I need to follow through. Other things are spoken or unspoken expectations -- some of which I ought to question, or even neglect.

Do I have a responsibility to this blog? Only to the extent that it requires certain of my capabilities that I don't or can't exercise while carrying out any of my ordinary duties; in other words, I have a moral responsibility to use the gifts I've been given or risk burying them in the ground.

In fact, an example of an activity that eats up a significant amount of my time and carries no duty, whatsoever, is gardening. How can I justify the time I spend gardening? Anyone who visits our home can see in a moment that the plantings have gone way beyond what is necessary to keep the property maintained and attractive. There is a riot of flowers out there! What's the point? My house (on the inside) is messy and disorganized, I'm using family funds to support this habit, and most importantly, my children have all sorts of interests that don't involve digging in the dirt.

And yet, I learn valuable things from watching a plant start from a seed and develop into something miraculously other. Weeding and pruning resolve inner dilemmas that no amount of talk or thinking can seem to touch. But more important, something inside of me blooms when I spend time with my plants. These benefits spread to all other areas of my life and become an inseparable part of the way I approach my duties -- with greater joy, openness and perhaps even wisdom. Before I began to spend time in the garden, I was a different, poorer person, and this poverty was evident in how I lived all my responses in daily life. By fostering this relationship with botanical life and with beauty, my heart has become richer. Am I not responsible for seeing that my children and the life that I encourage within my house will grow and bloom?

Likewise, time spent with this blog has expanded my horizons, helped to deepen and enliven the questions that accompany me as a parent and a person, and made me happy.

I think that the adage, "If Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy," is a cop out, and most of what parenting entails is sacrifice -- deeper and deeper sacrifice with each passing year. But I also know that sacrifice made without joy is a dead thing that kills whatever it intends to build.

If I look at the blog (and my garden) this way, there is no dichotomy between my responsibility in front of God and my "responsibilities."

And thinking, "Well, if I were a better person, I could take care of all my duties and not need blogging or gardening..." is like insulting God, who gave me this life, this self, these needs. Why did he make me this way if he didn't want me to learn and live in this way?

 

More on openness, unity

While talking with a friend, I was reminded of a letter in Traces that I had read several years ago. I'm going to reprint it here. I think that it shows a concrete example of untiring openness and most faithful unity:

Working for Life
Dearest Fr Giussani: For 37 years, I was in charge of the instruments in an operating room in the Obstetrics and Gynecology ward. In my region, Molise, the rate of recourse to voluntary interruption of pregnancy has always been very high compared to the total population. Because of my affection for Jesus, I applied to be an objector, but I did not wash my hands of things just because of this. Quite the contrary. I tried to make Jesus present in those circumstances in every way my creativity could invent. I would talk with the women to open them up to welcoming the little seed that was already inside them; many times I would sterilize the instruments that others should have checked so that the operation would not result in more pain; I would debate with my non-objector coworkers to show them the lack of sense in their choice, and above all I would talk with the doctors who performed abortions. In so many years, the Lord has given me the grace of seeing many babies saved through me. But the greatest gift the Lord gave me came the day the abortion doctor on my ward phoned to tell me that after so many years of my witness, his heart had been touched, and he had decided to apply to be an objector. He had understood that my admonishing him, urging him, was born of a real affection for him, of a real desire for his good. The Lord has used me so that the creature He loved could discover the love of his Creator. Now I have retired, and in the hospital where I worked, as a consequence of this doctor’s objection, abortions are no longer performed. I have learned from this experience that what counts in man is the task each one has in life, but no one is ever alone in this task, because God’s Mercy always makes itself our Companion. Thank you, Fr Giussani, because the Yes that you said one day has made the Lord’s embrace possible for me in a way that responded so fully to my heart.
Enza, Termoli

Angelo's Witness

Given at the Washington, D.C. Communion and Liberation Summer Vacation, 2007:

• I asked myself, what is the thing that is most precious -- either I was the owner of my life, or someone else was the owner.
• I had a conception of happiness according to an image.
• But the pearl of my life, for which I would sell everything, was Christ.
• I have been put very close to the Mystery in a not very discreet way.
• I am only in peace if I am faithful to him.
• He is the one who is my happiness, not my ideas.
• Since Christ is the one who is giving my life everything, I have to give it to him.
• Vocation is the modality with which Christ wants you to enter into relationship with him.
• There is a great battle for Christ and your freedom.
• Nothing corresponds as much as following him.
• There is a total coincidence between my life and my vocation.
• Christ is Life and Life is Christ.
• In any case, Don Giuss told us once at a Memoris retreat: "I love Christ because I love life and not vice versa."
• There is the possibility to love life.
• Allow the flourishing of what I want.
• Love of life is in my bones -- I was born for it.
• Either Christ coincides with my life or -- it is not possible -- take away the gladness and joy that is promised to a child.
• I'm aware that I carry within me this secret of the world -- because he is what everything else strives for.
• Love of money, success, everything cries out for him.
• To be chosen to be one who says "Yes, everything cries for it."
• To carry the awareness of this is something that makes me cry -- I'm unworthy and I did nothing.
• To serve the All is to be aware of the meaning of everything in daily life.
• This kind of awareness can become visible in moments.
• The quality of life in Rimini, for example. I had to start the cultural center.
• To be educated to stay in front of things that happen -- a positive hypothesis.
• Everything that happens and only in what happens is the place where I meet Christ.
• Have to be a little more open to correction.
• Nothing that cannot be for you -- you embrace more, live more. You see more things. Why? because if Christ is the center of your life, what I need everyday is to see signs of his victory -- waiting to see his presence and to speak with him.
• You live from miracle to miracle -- it doesn't matter if they happen because of you. You enjoy it more -- you are more able to live.
• You start really to love -- 2 aspects of this love: 1) you have been preferred, and 2) precisely because you have been so preferred, you recognize that the other is infinitely other.
• What was existing in me was the reactions others provoke in me.
• My reactions to others are one billionth of what they are.
• Exactly because they are different -- keep the right distance -- not too close.
• What you see that is lovable is the need for Christ. Less afraid of the fact that others need.
• Precisely because someone looks at me and is not afraid of my need, I am finally myself.
• To affirm them in their need.
• Impossible unity -- it is possible to love.
• Is it possible to live this way? Yes, and beautiful.