A Burden and Prayers Answered

When I first traveled to El Salvador three years ago, I fell in love with the country, with the culture, and with the people.  My trip and my learning about El Salvador deeply impacted my faith and the way I look at the world.  Going to El Salvador started a chain of changes within me that have led me down a road on which I have come to better understand the realities of the world and I have grown as a person and as a Christian.

Since I first went to El Salvador I have had the great desire to share this incredible experience with others.  My eyes were opened, my faith was challenged, and my perspective of the world was disturbed (in a good way…if that makes any sense).  The first time I went to El Salvador and every time since has been an odd mixture of incredible and devastating.  It is this odd mixture of incredible and devastating that I want to share with others.

I have also felt a burden.  A burden to make others go and see the injustice that so many people in the world have to live with.  A burden to make people understand.  I prayed for God to show me how to and help me do what God was calling me to do.

I tried a year ago to get together a group of people from my church to go to El Salvador, but God had other plans.  So, I tried again this year to put together a mission trip to El Salvador and there will be 8 people from my church who will be joining me in El Salvador this July!

The main purpose of this trip is to learn about El Salvador and explore if and how our church could potentially partner with a church or ministry in El Salvador.  We will learn about the culture, visit historical sites and museums, learn about the Lutheran Church in El Salvador, visit a few churches, and reflect on our experience.

I am excited that I will get to share my passion and knowledge about El Salvador with others.  I am excited for the people who will be joining me- I hope and pray that this trip will be a blessing for each of them and that they will grow in their faith.  We have a great and diverse group (and I think we are going to have some fun!).  And I am excited for what this trip will mean for my church-- potential long-term partnership and opportunities for growth.

Today the plane tickets for our group to go to El Salvador were purchased, and now it all seems so much more real and exciting!

73 days until we leave! 

Spiritual Exercises: Part 3

This third essay is a reflection on the second week of the Spiritual Exercises, a period in our spiritual journey when we learn how to follow Christ as his disciples.  During this part of the journey we are drawn to make decisions to respond to God’s love by loving God more fully and doing God’s work in the world.

Note: Updating this essay would have required a complete rewriting, so rather than doing this I have left the essay as I wrote it a year and a half ago and I included a short update at the end.

As a young person quickly approaching being a “real adult” (i.e. completing my schooling), friends and family continuously ask me what I’m going to do when I graduate or what kind of a job I will get when I graduate.  I have reluctantly developed answers that will satisfy those who are asking me.  I say something like “I’m going to work for an international faith-based justice organization or I’ll work in a faith-based setting in the US educating people about injustice.”  However, these answers that I’m giving make me uncomfortable in part because I have no idea if or where I’ll get a job, but more importantly this response makes me uncomfortable because it is not a true answer to the deeper question I long to answer: what is my call? 

The place where I have most clearly felt the call of Christ is among my friends in El Salvador.  The call I have understood is to love, to be loved, and to have compassion.  More specifically the call is to love, to be loved by, and to have compassion on those who are on the margins of society: the poor, the oppressed, the voiceless.  Love and compassion are emotions, but I think of these words primarily as verbs.  In this regard my call is clear to me: I am called to be a person who loves, is loved, and has compassion on others.  I still struggle to understand exactly how I am to live out that call, but I rest on the fact that I am called to follow Jesus’ example and love my neighbor as myself.

           

I think I have felt the call so clearly among my Salvadoran friends because they set an incredible example of living out the call of Christ in their own lives and because Jesus is so present among and within the Salvadorans.  Through forming relationships with my Salvadoran friends I have come to understand what it means to be a human, a child of God, and I learned about the responsibilities that come along with being connected to people all over the globe.  Through finding Christ in the Salvadorans, I have come to better understand Jesus and recognize him working in the world and in my life. 

           

This call in my life induces uncertainty and fear in me, but at the same time it brings about certainty and peace.  The uncertainty comes because I have no idea where such a call will lead.  The call creates fear because I know I will have to give up things and people in my life that have brought me comfort.  I also fear that a call to love and have compassion on the marginalized will bring me great pain and perhaps suffering.  Even to get this far in understanding and living out my call has required me to put my safety in God’s hands as I spent time in El Salvador where violence is far too common.  I can only imagine that living out my call will require more sacrifice, and yet this is sacrifice that I welcome. 

My call brings me certainty because even if I do not understand it completely, I know that if I ever lose my way all I need to do is return to following the example of Christ by showing and receiving his love and by having compassion on Christ in the world.  As broad as my understanding of my call is, it still provides clear and certain guidance.  No matter how scary my call seems, it does come with peace.  In my call I feel Jesus walking along side me providing guidance and strength to me.  I am not alone.

Despite my efforts to listen to the call I know I have not listened as well as I should have.  Too often I let the expectations and norms of my friends, family, and culture get in the way of my call.  I let my own expectations and opinions as well as those of others manipulate my call.  I find myself wanting to live a life where I know I will be safe and comfortable, but the call tells me to live a life where safety is not guaranteed and I will be asked to step out of my comfort zone again and again.  

Update: This essay discusses many of the same themes I wrote about in my recent post: Reevaluating.  The call I understood for myself when I wrote this essay above and the call I understand for myself now are very similar, really I just use different words now.  This similarity over time is either is a good thing or a bad thing, hopefully good.  Like I did a year and a half ago, I still struggle to completely understand how exactly God wants me to live out my call, but I think now I am doing a better job of listening and being willing to follow what I hear from God, no matter what it’s going to cost me.

In this essay, I wrote that I have most clearly felt the call of Christ while in El Salvador.  It is still the case that El Salvador is where I have most strongly felt Christ calling me, but in the past year I have frequently experienced moments at my jobs and in other parts of my life that have reassured me that I am doing what Christ has called me to do and being what Christ has called me to be.

Spiritual Exercises Reflection: Part 2

This reflection is a reflection on the First Week (or the first stage of the spiritual journey) grace in my life.  According to IgnatianSpirituality.com, “the first week of the Exercises is a time of reflection on our lives in light of God’s boundless love for us. We see that our response to God’s love has been hindered by patterns of sin. We face these sins knowing that God wants to free us of everything that gets in the way of our loving response to him.”

The time when I most clearly experienced the grace of the First Week, was as I was learning about the injustices in El Salvador, about my indirect and direct role in those injustices and as I tried to discern what to do with this information that I had learned.  In a class I took at Augustana, I learned about the Salvadoran Civil War, the atrocities of massacres, assassinations, rapes, and the countless other injustices created by a lack of food, shelter, medical care, and education for Salvadorans during the war.  Then I learned about the role the U.S. played in these atrocities through sending weapons and funds and standing idly by while thousands were killed. 

This information deeply disturbed me in part because this was perhaps the first time that I fully realized my country’s participation in violence, in sinfulness.  I was also disturbed to learn that similar policies of violence continue today and I am essentially complicit in this manifestation of sinfulness.  What further disturbed and upset me were the questions about God that flooded my head after I learned about the Salvadoran civil war.  I questioned how God could have let such horrible things happen and I questioned if God was really present in me and if God had been present in El Salvador.

For a while I tried my hardest to keep the information about the violence in El Salvador abstract.  I tried not to think of it as anything more than something I read in a book about a far away place where people very different from me lived.  I did everything I could to question what I had learned in hopes that maybe it wasn’t true.  I also made every effort to keep this information and the questions it brought up about God separate from the rest of my life.  I compartmentalized this as academic and when I closed the books or left class I tried to leave these things behind.  This went on for a couple of weeks and for the whole time I was in such a state of inner-turmoil, marked by guilt and stress but I didn’t realize the source at that time.

It wasn’t very long before I stopped struggling to ignore and reject the sinfulness that I learned about and my complicity in that sinfulness.  I came to accept that the evils of the Salvadoran civil war happened and similar things continue to happen today and will continue to happen until the evil of the world is overcome by the coming of the Reign of God.  I accepted that the world is a very broken place and my heart will be broken again and again by this brokenness.  What truly helped me to embrace this fact is that I recognized that one day the Reign of God will be present on earth and we as humans are God’s hands and feet in bringing about that Reign.  There is nothing that we as humans can do of our own will to bring about the Reign of God, but through God’s mercy, grace, and love God will bring about that Reign on earth.

I still recognize my sin and my complicity in many manifestations of sinfulness in the world, but I no longer feel plagued by guilt because of this sinfulness.  Guilt is such a negative feeling and leads to little except more guilt.  I can’t honestly say that I feel completely forgiven by God for my complicit participation in the continuing violence in the world, but I do feel moved and motivated to work to change what I can while accepting those things that I know I cannot change.  I think that the part of me that does not feel forgiven is the part of me that feels that I must do something to be forgiven.  Intellectually I know that this is not true, but I still feel somewhat unworthy of God’s love and acceptance because of my personal sinfulness and because of the sins I have been collectively involved in.  I know I have been forgiven by God, but I do not yet feel completely forgiven, so I still have more to receive of the First Week grace.

My professor wrote a comment at the end of my essay.  He asked, “If God were to address you with these feelings about being “somewhat unworthy of God’s love and acceptance because of my personal sinfulness” etc., what might God say to you?”

I know exactly what God would say.  Well… really I don’t know exactly what God would say to me but I think I have a pretty good idea of what God would say to me about all this.

For some reason I went all out in imagining how God would respond to me.

I imagine God and I sitting down in a nice cozy place, in a couple of comfy chairs next to a warm crackling fire.  We each have a drink- I have a cup of hot chocolate and God is drinking tea (I’m not sure why but it just seems that God would drink tea, but now I’m starting to wonder if really we would be drinking some really good wine…).  We begin with small talk.  “How was your day?”  “Fine. And your day?”

And then the conversation gets to the point where we both know it’s time to start talking about the thing we are meeting to discuss.  I open my mouth to tell God what I have written in the essay above, but before I even have the chance to say one word, God already knows all this and spares me the task of explaining it all.

Then God says something like this to me:

“Melissa, you’re being ridiculous.  I don’t know why you feel unworthy and unforgiven.  There is absolutely no reason to fear that I haven’t or won’t forgive you or love you.  Of course I love you, I made you.  Of course I forgive you, my son Jesus died for your forgiveness.”

And then Jesus walks in, pulls up a chair to join us, and I know that it is true. 

Spiritual Exercises Reflection: Part 1

This first reflection is a reflection on the first part of the Spiritual Exercises, the Principle and Foundation.  During this part of the spiritual journey, we become aware of who we are, we gain a sense of being loved and accepted and go on to love others, we come to understand life as a gift and accept all that is there, and we open up to the mystery of the mystery that is God.  A person in this part of the spiritual journey is growing more dependent on God, has a greater acceptance of gifts and limits, is open to the unknown, and desires more (more life, more of his or her deepest desires).

When I was in El Salvador a couple of summers ago, I spent some time with a group of a few other young women from the U.S. and we spent quite a bit of time talking about a “something” that the Salvadorans have that we do not.  The Salvadorans do not have many material possessions, yet they seemed to be full of laughter, joy, love, and happiness.  As we spent time with the Salvadorans we were able to recognize this “something” and then even experience it for ourselves.  This something made me feel truly alive, genuinely happy, and full of hope.  As our group talked about our experience, we struggled to label that “something”.  It could be love, happiness, appreciation of life, feeling the presence of God.  But none of what we talked about seemed to fully express or capture that “something.” 

           

I have come to the understanding that this “something” is grace and complete acceptance.  I have come to understand that this “something” that I was feeling is the grace of the Principle and Foundation, the grace of being loved and accepted just as I have been created.   

My Salvadoran friends, those I met in passing, and those who welcomed me into their homes accepted me just as I am.  There is absolutely no reason why the Salvadorans should have accepted me, welcomed me into their homes, and showed me such gracious hospitality.  If anything, there were far more reasons why the Salvadorans should have just continued on their way and ignored me rather than showering me with the love and hospitality they did.  For one, their hospitality cost them time, food, and money- all things that most Salvadorans don't have a lot to spare.  Second, I was a complete stranger (at least at the beginning) and they had no reason to trust me, and they no obligation to even take a second look at me.  Third, as an American I represent an entity that has created and intensified a number of things that have been very harmful for the Salvadorans.  The U.S. played a huge role in funding and providing weapons to the Salvadoran government during the civil war in which tens of thousands of Salvadoran were killed and far more were injured and otherwise detrimentally affected.  Today, the U.S. dominates the international trade system in which the average Salvadoran has practically no chance of making a fair wage much less a chance to get ahead.  Our immigration system and our war on drugs add more reasons why Salvadorans should not have embraced and accepted me.  Yet all these reasons and more did not deter the Salvadorans from showing me the grace they have received from God. 

There are hundreds more reasons why God should not accept my sinful self, and yet God does and always will.  I think that because I experienced the grace of acceptance through the relationships with Salvadorans, I got a taste of what true acceptance feels like.  It is through the grace of God that God accepts me just as I am.  This taste of complete, unconditional acceptance and love from the Salvadorans helped me imagine just how much more I am completely and unconditionally accepted by God.  That "something" that I felt in El Salvador was the grace of Salvadorans but even more the grace of God. 

While I was in El Salvador and now, I have been trying to figure out how I can continue to feel that “something”, that grace that I felt so strongly while I was in El Salvador.  It has been difficult to continue to feel and recognize the grace of complete acceptance and love without my Salvadoran friends giving me that grace and acceptance they so graciously give.  However, I think now that I better understand what that “something” is and how it connects with God’s unconditional love and acceptance of me I can (maybe) learn to find that grace and acceptance within myself rather than depending on my Salvadoran friends to refresh my sense of God’s grace.  And maybe it’s one of those things that I have to give before I even realize I have it.  Perhaps I need to begin simply giving this unconditional acceptance and grace in order to realize that I do indeed have it in abundance.

Ignatian Spirituality

During the fall of my second year at Loyola, I took a class on Ignatian Spirituality and the Spiritual Exercises created by St. Ignatius of Loyola.  St. Ignatius was born in Spain in 1491, and he was the founder of the Society of Jesus, otherwise know as the Jesuits.  Among many other impressive things that Ignatius did in his short life, he wrote the Spiritual Exercises.  Basically the Spiritual Exercises is a collection of guidelines and suggestions to help people deepen their faith, find God’s will for their life, and then have the courage and strength to follow that will.  There are rules to be followed, readings to read, meditations to meditate on, and prayers to be prayed.  If you want to learn more about the Spiritual Exercises check out this website.

For this class I took, we wrote a series of five essays reflecting on how our personal experiences related to or helped us understand the different parts of the Spiritual Exercises.  Writing these essays was very helpful for me.  They helped me understand the class material, the Spiritual Exercises, and perhaps most importantly they helped me better understand my spiritual journey.  I have gone back and reread these essays a few times since I wrote them, and each time I find that these reflections continue to speak truthfully about my spiritual journey and expose areas where I still struggle as well as areas where I have grown.  I’d like to share these essays with you to help you better understand my spiritual journey and encourage you to think about your own spiritual journey.

You’ll notice that my reflections include a lot about El Salvador.  In these assignments we were instructed to use personal experience to illustrate our understanding of the Spiritual Exercises, and my time in El Salvador has provided me with many experiences that have shaped me as a person- spiritually and otherwise- so it only made sense that El Salvador be a part of these reflections.

I’m going to edit my original essays a little.  Some editing will be to include more background and information so that someone who hasn’t taken the class the essays were written for will easily understand the essays.  Other revisions will reflect any changes over the past year in the way I see things.  And I’ll take a few things out that I’m not ready to share with the whole world.

I’ll post these five essays, one at a time, over the next few weeks.  And I’m also working on a conclusion to these essays.

Enjoy.

(And now you have to wait in suspense.  Sorry.)

30 Acts of Beauty

You may be wondering what happened with my Lent challenge to complete 40 acts of beauty, one act for each day.  Well, it was pretty much a failure.  I didn’t complete 40 acts of beauty.

There were a number of factors that contributed to my failure:

Part of the trouble was I got lazy and busy and just didn’t take the time to complete acts of beauty.

Part of the trouble was I had difficulty thinking up creative beautiful things to do.

Part of the trouble was I found myself wanting to record beautiful things that I noticed or that I wanted to claim that I did beautiful things when in reality I was just happened to be in the right place and got to be a part of something beautiful.  Sure, it does take some initiative and effort on my part to consent to being a part of a beautiful situation God places me in, but this wasn’t the point of my Lent challenge.

And part of the trouble was I struggled to do beautiful things when I kept noticing all the incredibly beautiful things that God does in this world: the sunsets, the sunrises, the flowers, the trees, the birds, the people, the way things always seem to work out even if it’s not as I would have imagined they would.  Nothing I can do will ever compare to the beauty that God has created and will create.  I often found myself thinking it was futile to try to do anything beautiful because it couldn’t ever compare to the beautiful things God does.  More than once I found myself frustrated that I couldn’t do great acts of beauty and frustrated that I was failing in my Lenten challenge.

But my Lenten journey to complete 40 acts of beauty wasn’t a complete failure…

My frustration and realization that I had failed show me that I did learn something about myself and I learned something about God.

I learned that God is the maker of all things beautiful: the physical, the immaterial, everything (I guess I knew this all along, but now I know it on a much deeper level.). 

Nothing and I mean nothing I do or make or say or create will ever come anywhere close to being able to compare to the beautiful things God has done and will continue to do in the world.

I learned to look for and appreciate the beauty in life. 

I learned that I sometimes think I can do more than I really can.  And I often think that I can do far more on my own without relying on God.

Anne Lamott says a beautiful truthful thing in a few of her books: If you want to make God laugh, tell Her your plans.  Yep, I’m sure God was up in Heaven laughing at me when I told God about my plans for Lent.  And now God and I are laughing together as we both see that I have learned and re-learned some important lessons.

Here’s the remainder of the kinda close to 40 acts of beauty that I did complete:

 9.   I did my best to ensure that a former co-worker's last evening at work was beautiful.  

10.  Spent a couple of hours working on a knitting project- something I’m knitting for a friend. 

11.  I went for a run.  The gorgeous spring weather just drew me outside.

12.  Started seeds for my vegetable garden

13.  Completed my art project

14.  Decorated my office

15.  Brought my bike up from the basement and got it in outdoor riding condition

16.  Went biking outside!

17.  Got out and set up my rain barrel (already full of water and ready to water my vegetable garden)

18.  Set up my clothes drying rack

19.  Dried clothes outside numerous times

20.  Went to see and meet Anne Lamott

21.  Decided I’m going to be a writer

22.  Kept the house somewhat clean and under control while my mom was away on spring break vacation

23.  Made this delicious pie: Peanut Butter Pie with Pretzel Crust

24.  Wrote a lot

25.  Read more than I have been over the past few months

26.  Had patience and understanding in a difficult situation

27.  Completed a knitting project that I have been working on for far too long

28.  Made some delicious minestrone soup.  The only change I made was to use veggie broth instead of chicken broth.

29.  Found a pattern for my next knitting project…a baby blanket

30.  Did some planning and work for the church community garden  

God's Sense of Humor

I decided to go to the Easter sunrise worship service this morning at my church.  I’ve never been to an Easter sunrise service, and I thought it might be nice to experience and see what happens at a worship service so early in the morning (6:30 am).

My only reservation about going to the sunrise service was that it was so early.  I’m not the biggest morning person, so I was a bit reluctant to set my alarm clock for such an early hour when I could have easily slept in.

But I set my alarm clock, got up when it went off, and got ready for church.  However, my hair wouldn’t cooperate.  I had to slightly modify my planned outfit because it was too chilly outside to wear the late spring/summer outfit I had planned.  I couldn’t decide which shoes to wear and when I had decided I had trouble locating them.  All this wouldn’t normally be a big deal, but my brain takes a while to wake up and wasn’t up to full functioning mode at this point.

When I finally grabbed my purse and turned to walk out the door, I saw the clock: 6:29.  I live close to my church, but not that close.  So I was going to be late.  Out the door.  I turned the key in the ignition, my car dinged at me impatiently to tell me to put my seatbelt on, I flipped on the wipers to remove the morning dew from my front and rear windows.

Car in reverse.  Car in drive.  Left turn.  Right turn.

Then another right turn to the east, and there it was.  The sun rising.  Bright and beautiful coming up above the horizon.

I had the urge to pull the car over, jump out of the car, and stand in the middle of the street and look in wonder at that sun rising.  But I was already 2 minutes late and standing in the middle of the street seemed like a bad idea, so I kept driving.  But I smiled a big smile and drove on in a state of astonishment at that sun rising.  I kept looking through the houses to catch a glimpse of the sun.

I’ve seen the sun rise before, but seeing the sun rise this morning just had a different feel in the midst of my hectic efforts to try to wake up and get to church on time looking halfway decent.

I had a little conversation with God during the rest of my drive to church.  (And just for the record, God didn’t speak to me in audible way like God does to Moses in the 10 Commandments movie.)

I said to God with the excitement and wonder of a three year old, “The sun is rising!!!”

God replied to me in a strong, calm, and collected voice, “Of course the sun is rising, Melissa.  It rises every single day.  Did you doubt it would rise today?”

I replied, still with that wonder and eagerness of a three year old, “Well, I guess I figured it would rise today.  But it’s rising right now and I get to see it!!!”

God replied to me “Of course the sun is rising now on your way to church.  That’s why they call it the Easter Sunrise service.”

God has a real sense of humor sometimes (perhaps most of the time).  With this sense of humor and with all the knowledge and wisdom of God, God knew what I needed this morning.  A simple (yet profound) sunrise, the perfect timing to see it, and enough lucidness (at 6:30 in the morning) to recognize the beauty and miracle of the sunrise on this Easter morning and on the first Easter morning two millenniums ago.