Tag Archives: Despair

Craving God 🔥

Craving God 🔥

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Dale and I were on a hike yesterday and as usual, when I am in motion, I get loose lips.  “I feel guilty.  I’m working from home.  No makeup.  No dress up.  No gas expenditures.  And I’m pulling in a good salary.  So are you.  This shelter in place has been sort of nice for us.  But not for others.  I feel guilty.”

Dale’s response? “It’s the Catholic in you.”

I was grateful for his comment.  He noticed.  Even though my Sunday Mass attendance has been abysmal and at times I can cuss like a sailor.  You can take the girl out of the Catholic but you can’t take the Catholic out of the girl.  Maybe I’m still going to heaven.  Who knows.

On the downhill, Dale wants to run.  I say go ahead.  I’d rather walk.  And walk in silence with this beautiful sky.  It’s Holy Thursday and I am craving God.

It’s true.  I do Catholic everyday.  I work for a Catholic high school.  We pray.  We sing.  We work on being in community.  All the things that are meaningful for me.  But with all the controversy in the Catholic church and my growing concern that women will never be priests- it’s all caught up with me.  Some despair.  Some dissatisfaction.  Some disbelief.  Did Jesus really wash the feet of the apostles?  Did they really nail him to a cross?  Did he really rise from the dead?

I do like to believe that the women were the first to see that the stone had been rolled away at the tomb.  That might be my favorite part of the Easter story.  And Veronica.. how she wiped the face of Jesus and it left an impression of his face on her veil.  I love that..

Later, over a home cooked meal of pot roast and salad with Dale’s favorite dressing, blue cheese, we agree on a news station to watch.  (That’s a challenge for us.. )  PBS is covering how people are practicing their faith during this holy week.  There is a spotlight on the Muslim religion and how they celebrate Ramadan- fasting from dawn till sunset- it’s a time of prayer, giving, and self evaluation.  Prayer together is so essential to this community and not being able to be together in prayer at the mosque is very sad for Muslims.  When they break the fast, there is much celebration and food and people who are not as fortunate are invited and included.  And there is so much joy.

I’m thinking of my own Catholic traditions.  Tonight at 7pm, Holy Thursday services will be streamed from Bellarmine College Prep, the high school my three sons attended.  Regardless of my doubts and my reservations, I want to be on the other side of that screen.

I feel spiritually depleted.

I am craving God 🔥

 

 

 

Christmas Gifts… Try Trust

Christmas Gifts… Try Trust

Madeleine and Isabella

These are my two beautiful great nieces at our annual Shaheen family Christmas party.  Can you see the anticipation in their eyes as they wait for one of the grown ups to holler “Time to open presents!”

Do you remember those days?   You know… when Christmas was all done for you and all you had to do was wake up and be surprised?  And you knew that your mom and dad would get you dressed and make sure you had good healthy food to eat.  They protected you and nurtured you and if life rolled out the way it was supposed to and you were very lucky you developed this thing called TRUST.

We trust the mailman to come.  We trust that Nob Hill will have fresh turkeys the day before Christmas.  We trust that a good friend will be there for us.

But sometimes things don’t go the way we plan and our trust wavers.  We worry about our kids having jobs after we’ve paid for the exorbitant cost of their college.  We worry about how long an aging parent will be able to live alone in their own home.  We worry about our health care or whether the plumber is going to overcharge us or if that mole on our back is going to pass inspection with the dermatologist.

As we get older we find more things to not trust and then we become mistrustful.

Try taking a break from worry today.

Try trust.

Rest in the Grace of the World

When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

~Wendall Berry