Striving towards the goal

“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” (2 Timothy 4:7). Being a runner, this verse has always captivated me. In fact, all competition captivates me. I’ve been glued to the TV/Internet these past couple weeks watching every possible Olympic event (Biathlon? Skeleton? Curling anyone?) These athletes throw themselves completely, body, mind, and some might say even soul into their sport. While it seems an unlikely place to find faith inspiration, I think we can learn from these Olympic athletes. We can ask ourselves the same questions they are faced with every day:

What am I working toward? (Is it Heaven?)

How much does this goal mean to me? (Does how I spend my time reflect that?)

Is what I do today going to get me closer or farther away from that goal?

We might even have to ask ourselves, “Am I even in the race?”

When we reach the end of our lives we want to be able to say we have fought the good fight, finished the race, and kept the faith. The bottom line is, you have to be in the race to win.

Allison Walter is the Campus Ministry REST (Retreat) Intern.

LOVE

Do you ever feel like this?  

You know, that moment when nothing seems to be going your way...when all you really want is that peanut butter and jelly sandwich but your mama can't seem to make it fast enough?

Or perhaps like this? 

You know, that moment when your world has just simply gone nuts....and you have too?

Me too.  Sometimes, I feel so frustrated and defeated in my little world as a mama of two little people.  They may be little, but their demands can feel big.  They may be just barely learning about their world, but their discoveries are huge.  They may be the sweetest little things that love to read and snuggle and play trains with their mama....but sometimes mama needs to do laundry, clean the bathroom, do the dishes, vacuum, make dinner, go to work, maintain friendships and relationships, and keep smiling because life is oozing with blessings. 

Sometimes I place so much pressure on myself to arrive at work with a smile on my face, looking fresh and beautiful, with sparkling eyes that are ready to listen and mentor and answer emails and be creative and be oh-so-present....forgetting of course that I just spent the day changing diapers, wiping little noses, kissing boo-boos, teaching little people how to say letters and share toys and cover their mouth when they cough...forgetting that I just read The Lorax for the umpteenth millionth time, so proud of the excitement I maintained each time we snuggled up with their well loved, torn and tattered, favorite book. 

Sometimes I place so much pressure on myself to be the best wife, with dinner ready, house cleaned and my level of patience and delight with my little world still as strong at 5pm as it was at 7am...forgetting of course that these don't matter a single bit to my awesome husband...that all he wants is a happy, healthy wife and happy, healthy kiddos who just spent a day together playing, laughing and learning....forgetting of course that this pressure I feel is mine alone. 

In recent reflections with my beloved CLC (Christian Life Community), I have been able to articulate my need to look good and my FEAR of REALLY being known, flaws and all.  While I'm not one to wear much makeup, or dye my hair or sport all the highest clothing fashions hot off the rack, I NEED to look good.  I need to look like I've got myself together.  I need to look like I'm an awesome mama and an amazing wife with a life fresh out of Pinterest.  I need to look like I'm a rock solid campus minister with an incredible prayer life and a perfect sense of perspective. 

And recently, I fell apart.

The last 2 years have been difficult and beautiful all at once.  You can read more about that HERE: http://slucampusministry.blogspot.com/2013/09/images-of-god.html

I spent the last 2 years LOVING and LOVING and LOVING.  I spent the last 2 years LOVING my husband and our beautiful babies.   I spent the last 2 years LOVING my co-workers and my vocation to ministry and the details of my work.  I spent the last 2 years LOVING my beautiful mama, dad and brothers from 8 hours away.  And if I'm honest, I think I hid behind that love, distracted myself with it. 

And it finally caught up with me.  In my quest for perfection, I busied myself so much loving other people and things, that I forgot to be truly honest, vulnerable, broken.  I forgot to let myself be loved.  I forgot that my honesty, my brokenness, my vulnerability....even THOSE are loveable.  Recently, all of this pressure I put on myself to look good, finally burst and, much to my delight, I found myself surrounded by people so full of love, all saying “YES” to my brokenness....all saying “YES” to the vulnerability I desired to share...all saying “YES” to the raw honesty I finally let spill from my lips...all saying “YES” to the REAL me...the mama, wife, daughter, sister, friend, minister who deconstructed walls and fell apart a little. 

Valentine's Day is the day we celebrate love.  It's the day we do our best to show our love to others.  But.....what if this year, we allow ourselves to be known, to be accepted, to be loved?  What if this year, we discard our masks, deconstruct our walls and stop hiding behind our busyness, our electronics, our need to look good?  What if this year, we stop hiding behind alcohol, sex, food, religion, schoolwork, exercise, politics or whatever we name the walls we put up around ourselves?  What if this year, we have the GUMPTION (one of my favorite words) to say, “I'm ready to be honest with myself”, “I'm ready to be vulnerable”, “I'm ready to be known and loved”? 

Even Jesus, in his own blessed and broken place of vulnerability, allowed Veronica to wipe away his sweat and blood and tears and on his way to the cross.  What if this Valentine's Day, we believe so much in our own belovedness that we are honest about the walls we construct to protect our vulnerability and invite those around us to deconstruct their walls too?  What if this Valentine's Day, we whisper our truth to the God who loves us recklessly and pray for the courage to be loved....for REAL?

Julie McCourt is the campus minister for CLC.

Love in Action...

A mantra that resonates throughout my whole being these days was written in the book The Brothers Karamazov by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Dorothy Day was a big fan of Dostoyevsky’s work, and her words have also been stewing within me as I reflect upon the words of Jesus and the challenge to live the Gospel. Dostoyevsky writes that “love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.”

It occurs to me from time to time that life is work, and loving requires a “long apprenticeship”, as Dostoyevsky also notes in the The Brothers Karamazov. The easy roads are rarely sustainable, for they are often destructive and tend to be self-focused. On these journeys our attention is often diverted as we look for pleasure rather than joy. But, it is true that I am oversimplifying a bit, for each of us are guilty of seeking what is comfortable in our day to day lives, and avoiding what is painful or difficult. There are few people I know who would intentionally walk into a lion’s den, and this is a very good thing.

Yet, learning to love requires that we begin to see the beauty beyond the agony and brokenness in our brothers and sisters in Christ. We are invited to enter both the agony and the ecstasy of one another—the joys and sorrows of those who suffer with us on our journey to God.

To look at reality as it is, then, is to begin to see what is both terrifyingly beautiful and completely broken. The old nursery rhyme “Humpty Dumpty” goes like this: “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall/Humpty Dumpty had a great fall/All the kings horses and all the kings me/Could not put Humpty Dumpty back together again”.

The precise origin of the rhyme is relatively unknown, and it’s meaning is also uncertain. Without doing extensive research on this egg character developed within the last few hundred years in Great Britain, I will posit that it came from a place of sight—where one person noted that some brokenness

cannot be fixed by us and the systems that we create.

And so it is with us if we truly see reality as it is. We love the broken in our world and find that each member of the broken body is singing to us of ourselves. Their brokenness is rarely neat or pretty. The great temptation is to be indifferent to it all and seek our own interests. But, if we are honest with ourselves, we begin to know that we are Humpty Dumpty, and that the systems in our lives cannot piece us back together again. We need each other to be whole.

So we look to a person—Jesus, the Christ who is our hope, the One who promises to make us into “new creations” and invites us to love one another. Let us be on our way, though “learning to love is hard and we pay dearly for it. It takes hard work and a long apprenticeship, for it is not just for a moment that we must learn to love, but forever” (The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky).

Christy Hicks is a Campus Minister in Griesedieck Complex.

My simple prayer

I have had a strong desire to play an instrument for quite a long time. I’m a soccer player and salsa dancer by trade, but this winter I finally picked up a guitar and have since been awkwardly plucking away at my guitar strings, trying to learn a few chords and figure out a few strumming patterns. Right now, my repertoire consists of a whopping two songs! One of them is a song that my mother would often sing to me when I was a little boy. It is called, “Abba, Father.”

And so as I have been familiarizing my fingers with the D chord and the G chord, I also have been mouthing over and over again these two words.

Jesus once invoked his Father in the same way in the garden of Gethsemane when he’s “overwhelmed with sorrow,” and “deeply distressed.” He begins his passion with a desperate gasp for help:  Abba, Father.

I’ve realized recently that all the burdens and moments of sorrow of my four years at SLU have been God’s invitation for me to gasp this same prayer that Jesus gasped.

And so now, as I come to a close in my time at SLU, I have found out what a great gift it is to rise each morning with this whisper of a prayer, to sweetly call upon the One who loves me. It focuses me; it centers my heart. I can rest in Him. So when I don't know what to say or how to say it, I simply call in his direction.  

Abba, Father.

Sito Sasieta is the Campus Ministry GROW Intern.

CONVERSION

January 25 marks the celebration of the Conversion of St. Paul – from a devout Jew named Saul whose only wish is to annihilate the early Christian Church to an influential Christian named Paul who desired that others know the joys and responsibilities of salvation in and through Jesus Christ.  What brought about this drastic change or conversion in Saul?  A real experience of the risen Christ that he could not ignore for it opened his eyes to the truth of the human condition and our need for right relationship with God, others, our self, and creation.

So close to our celebration of the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, it is interesting to note the observations of Michael Gorman in his book Reading Paul:
            “…one Sunday, on the January weekend when Americans commemorate Dr. King, the children’s sermon at church rehearsed the life of the civil rights leader, and I could not help but notice the similarities between his story and Paul’s.  Like Dr. King, Paul knew himself to be commissioned by God to preach and live a socially and politically charged message that

·         focused on the justice of God;

·         called for the inclusion of outsiders in the beloved community;

·         necessitated the rejection of violence;

·         implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, challenged imperial power;

·         meant living in the shadow of the cross and the power of the resurrection; and

·         resulted in much persecution, and eventually death.

This list suggests both the parallels between Paul and Dr. King and the shape of Paul’s life itself after his encounter with the resurrected Jesus.  Prior to that experience, Paul was a far cry from either Dr. King or the man that the encounter birthed.” (10-11)

So in the living memories of St. Paul and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. this week, I encourage us all to think about how we have encountered the risen Christ in our lives.  Have we allowed this encounter to bring about our own conversion for the greater glory of God and in service of humanity?  Do we continue to open our eyes to the many ways the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ is trying to shape us into men and women for and with others?  Do we accept hardships as our part in the cross of Christ knowing that we who have died with Christ will also rise with him?  Let this be our prayer.

Erin Schmidt is the Campus Ministry Liturgy Coordinator.

HEY YOU...

This is from a web page I found that spoke a lot, very simple……

                                             Hey You.

yes, you. stop being unhappy with yourself. you are perfect,

stop wishing you looked like someone else or wishing people

liked you as much as they like someone else, stop trying to get

attention from those who hurt you. stop hating your body, your

face, your personality, your quirks. love them. without those

things you wouldn’t be you. and why would you want to be

anyone else? be confident with who you are. smile. it’ll draw

people in. if anyone hates on you because you are happy with

yourself then you say forget it. my happiness will not depend

on  others anymore.  i’m happy because I love who I am. i love

my flaws. I love my imperfections. they make me me. and “me”

is pretty amazing.

Br. Don Lee, S.J. is the Campus Minister in Fusz Hall. 

New Year, New Me

As a dedicated gym rat for over 20 years, I have gotten used to the same pattern happening every January: for the first few weeks of the new year, the gym is packed with people who made New Year’s resolutions to get in shape: people crowding around all the equipment (especially the water fountains), desperately trying to make it look like they know what they are doing, all the while leaving pools of sweat on everything they touch. By around the middle of February, though, most of these folks have figured out that this is hard work, and taking a day off to recover turns into taking three or four days off, and the crowd thins back out to its usual size. Gym owners everywhere love the new year because so many people buy memberships and never walk through the door again. They like the IDEA of getting in shape more than they like what it actually takes to get there.

The same things happen in all the usual areas of our lives: fitness, school, keeping up with friends, volunteering, keeping up with our spiritual lives. In particular, the first 9pm Mass each year is crammed to the gills – of course, we do have ice cream afterwards, so maybe that’s our fault – but I think that even going to church more regularly can be a hard pattern to form. Once a week is too infrequent to really ingrain the habit of setting time and space aside to refocus our lives. That doesn’t mean I am saying NOT to go to church, just that if the real goal is to be more mindful or to stay alert to the presence and action of God in our day-to-day lives, one hour once a week just won’t cut it any more than going to the gym once a week for an hour will make any substantial difference in your physical well-being.

I participate in a meditation group in town, and today the leader invited us to tie strings around our wrists in recognition of the new year. The strings stay there until they fall off in a few months, but in the meantime, those strings are long enough and in the way enough that a few times a day they bring us back to what we told ourselves we want to do differently this year. There’s the thing – becoming a new you is not a sprint. It’s a slow and steady articulation of reminders and pushing against ingrained habits and falling into old patterns and trying again.

If, like me, you take New Year’s resolutions with a serious grain of salt but you would like to make some changes in your life, try making a commitment to something simple, regular, and easily attainable. Do a quick exercise routine in your room or your apartment each morning so that you have at least done a few minutes of exercise per day. Commit to writing one email each day to someone you don’t connect with as often as you like. Download an app to make your phone beep every couple of hours, and each time it does, take a few minutes of mindful breathing.  Better yet, ask a friend to join you and hold one another accountable. Forming good habits is a challenge, which is why so many of us try and fail each year, but we can make small and lasting routines into the stuff of a new me, a new you, a new us.

Patrick Cousins is a member of the Department of Campus Ministry.