He Is Enough

Have faith in God, for He is good.
Nothing troubles nor frighten those
who seek God, they lack nothing.
For God alone is enough.

Seemingly so extreme
that God alone is enough.
Nothing else required.
Nothing else to be desired.

But alas how else are we to seek?
Unless we use the gifts in the world
that God has given us so that
we may come to know Him better.

To know Him? To know? Him?
How can one even comprehend
when life itself is filled
with the complex rhythms of God?

Ah and that is when we are called
to have faith in what we know not.
It is through that lens that we
the temporal, come to know the eternal.

It is in the very DNA of creation
the very mystique of interaction
the shining immortal diamond
buried in the core of who we are.

It is there God reveals Himself.
It is there God reaches out to us.
For God's language is love
and He speaks in the dialect of experience.

Thus we must not mistakenly place are faith
in the gifts God has given us, but in Him.
That is the challenge, tragedy, and beauty
of our human lives.

To struggle and to wrestle trusting in
an awesome God beyond our imagination.
To have faith in Him who we struggle to know
and yet, consequently, lack nothing.

For God alone is enough.

Killing Time

Some call me insensitive.
Others shout and say,
Look, a murder!
Look, a killer!

And they speak the truth.
For I am insensitive to,
a murder and killer of
Time.

Oh how I am insensitive to it!
I meander so long in the past.
I wander so far into the future.
I fail to be present to it now.

I look at what I cannot control
and try to wrestle it from the hands of God.
Rather than look at what is already in my hands
and do what I can at the present moment.

And Time passes on to the grave.
It makes its temporality known.
As it drags the present through my hands like sand
as I look off towards a distant horizon.

I am too impatient to wait and see what unfolds
to trust in the slow work of God.
I am too focused on what has happened
to be aware of God's tender touch now.

Yet Jesus did not kill Time but rather,
he brought it to life, with his own life.
Then what am I to do but struggle to be Christ-like
and bring Time alive by being present to it with my own life?

Then I must take my gaze off the horizon
and be aware of what is present in my hands.
But giving Time the life it deserves
requires attempting one of the hardest tasks of all.

Trusting God.

The Discernment of Goods...and Honestly It Sucks

As I sit in our common space, the only one awake in our house, since that's when I blog the most, I'm finding myself in quite the conundrum...and...I have to blame Re-O (Re-Orientation - a halfway orientation/retreat for JVs). While Re-O really rocked me and I rode the struggle bus for a while for a number of reasons, it was still wicked awesome and I really enjoyed going and being challenged, learning, and of course seeing tons of people and spending time with them. However, that learning/being challenged part...messed with me pretty hard and now discernment is something I'm wading through again...except this time it isn't priesthood vs married life...

So we learned about the pastoral cycle which starts with experience which is then looked at through the lens of social analysis which reveals various structures that cause injustices and what not and that is followed by theological reflection in which one's faith (both religious and personal) is applied as an additional lens. This is then followed up with discernment which is trying to figure out what we are supposed to do in regards to that theological reflection which finally leads to action which I think is pretty self-explanatory. 

So in the discernment piece we had to talk about vocations (for those who know my vocational struggles in college...no I'm not reconsidering the priesthood/joining the Edmundites...although they are awesome and recommend anyone feeling called to priesthood/religious life to check 'em out) and were given a couple of excellent definitions which I wish I came across earlier,

"God's dream for your life developing in your imagination."

and

"God calls you to the place where your deep gladness and the world's hunger meet"

~Fredrich Buechner

So those make sense and so far so good. And then as I was talking with a friend of mine about thoughts we had at that point in the retreat and I realized something...something that never occurred to me before in the context of social justice and this pastoral cycle. My brother is a part of a population, a community of people, who are not only oppressed and experience injustice but are considered total outcasts in society...all because that community (and they truly are a community, united in hardship) struggles with Autism. That felt like a sucker punch in the gut. I had left home, traveled almost 2000 miles to put my faith into action when I could have been (SHOULD have been) doing that in my fucking backyard. Immediately, I felt guilt and rightfully so. Granted I had grown up with my brother for almost my entire life considering we are only a year and a half a part in age. Consequently, living in the presence of Autism was all I knew, that was normal and as a result didn't even think twice of all the difficulties my family experienced with that both socially and structurally (in education, services, government, health, etc). In the words of the band Rehab in their song Guilty, 

"...If being dirty is a crime

I am filthy, I am guilty

Of everything I've ever said or done

I am filthy, I am guilty

And I am guilty."

I'm guilty of being shaped, formed, and transformed by my brother and those with Autism in such a positive way and I've hardly given back. I've shared the insight and compassion they've given me on retreats in college, with others I've encountered, but I've hardly given back to the Autism community...and that's because I didn't want to acknowledge that part of my life and all of the struggles that are associated with it that I can't even begin to explain...but at Re-O this realization occurred...I've read a number of excellent books of people working with people they are passionate about, who they truly love and want to help. In Tattoos on the Heart, Gregory Boyle works with gang members and those who've faced the American Incarceration system. In Irresistible Revolution the author works with a variety of people in his community in Philadelphia, and in Mitch Albom's have a little faith: a true story a pastor with a past, Henry Covington works with the homeless in Detroit. All of these people of God, just everyday people stepping up to the call of Christ and emulating Christ in such a beautiful way. Not saying I'm Christ-like or anything even remotely close to that (cause I'm definitely not...far from actually) but the people I am passionate about, those whose hurt I understand in a very real way...is the Autism Community. 

And now I'm stuck in a hard but good place. Ever since I was student rector on the Emmaus Retreat my senior year of college I wanted to be a Campus Minister. I had such a passion for helping my peers find God in their lives...and now...at the same time...I want to work with the Autism Community. And their is a feather-weights difference between the two...and my scales are not tuned enough to detect the difference. So I'm having trouble discerning between two goods so to some degree there is no "bad" choice which is nice. But that doesn't change the fact that the discernment is difficult and I'd love to do both but I don't see how I can perform both options to their full potential at the same time. But hey no one ever said discernment was easy...so I guess this is the beginning of Discernment Part II where I try to find my deep gladness and use it to feed the world's hunger.

Anger. Courage. Hope.

Open your eyes and leave your slumber,

And rest your gaze upon the weight that is reality.

Don't you see it sinking, weighing down,

Crushing whatever falls beneath it?

Glance upwards and stop looking at your feet,

Watch the rain that is life fall and pour down.

Don't you see it polluted, diluted,

Pureness and innocence corrupted by filth?

Look straight ahead and stop averting your eyes,

And look at the tree of society standing there.

Don't you see its leaves shriveling and branches cracking,

Families and Communities suffering from disease?

How does one have hope at such a sight?

Where does one feel relief?

Where does one see clarity?

Where does one see healing?

Take a moment and be still,

Gaze inward and become aware.

Don't you feel that shaking and the clenching,

Anger at what your eyes see and ears hear?

Slow down and reflect,

Find what truly matters in this life.

Don't you feel that burning and the swelling,

Courage to do what must be done?

Look! For it is here!

Where Anger arises at the injustices seen in the world.

Where Courage stands up to address the weight, filth, and disease.

Oh, how these two work together!

For Anger calls out to his sister and Courage calls out to her brother.

They are siblings who grow and work together.

And they are both children, children of Hope.

Children of the Mother we have all been looking for.

So understand your Anger and befriend your Courage!

Find Hope and grasp the rope she has cast out,

And with your new siblings pull hard and bring about a future of change.

So we can see justice, dignity, and love preside once again.

Desire, Limits, and Love

I want to help.
I want to be able to sit down for hours and listen their stories.
I want to be there for the children who are just looking for someone to play with.
I want to teach students something valuable and I want to see them grow.
I want to bring Christ into the lives of the elderly.
I want to be present in times of suffering and remembering those who have passed on.
I want to pray with the children in the way I was taught.
I want to pray with the adults in the way they were taught.
I want to see Christ in all of them.
I want my love to go beyond myself. I want it to reach out to everyone.
I want to help. I want to love...and I try so hard.

However, the imperfect human in me awakes.
I want to help but there are times I can't.
There are times I'm too busy.
There are times I'm too tired and I need rest.
There are times I feel like I have nothing to offer.
Times where the children are thirsty, but my soul is parched like the desert crying for rain.
Times where the elders are hungry, but my body is like a field that has been over harvested and neglected.
Times when the history is screaming, wanting to be heard, and I'm still digesting what it had to say yesterday.
Times when the culture is reaching out to shake my hand, and I'm too busy holding my head trying to keep it together.
Times when a child is calling my name asking a question, and all I can do is sadly smile and say, "I'm sorry, I don't know."

And so I sit in guilt asking, "Why can't I do it?"
I sit in shame asking, "Why am I not more Christ-like?"
I sit in confusion asking, "Why is it so hard?"
I ask and ask and find myself being human with limits.
Limits that I pretend are normal and okay, but it doesn't feel right.
Thus this is the reality that I face. I am limited. I am human.

And while I sit there struggling with this.
The elders share their love by telling me about their life and culture.
The adults who befriend me share their culture and spirituality.
The children who I teach share their innocent love in the pictures and hugs they give me.
The kids down the block teach me how to enjoy the simple things in life.
The community allows me to be present.
The family allows me to show my respect to the member no longer here.
The pole bearers allow me to bury their friend who I never met yet morn for.
The men I've never met before allow me to pray in the dark with them.
And they lift their prayers with mine in the heat.

I receive more love than I could ever return.
I learn more than I could ever teach.
They all help me grow more than I could even begin to help them.
That's when I realize, I'm not out here to change anything.
Yet I'm out here to change everything.

So as much as I cannot do as much as I want to do.
As much as I am far more limited than I'd like.
This is a time for preparation.
For what exactly I do not know.
All I do know is, it is preparation for love.
For we are called to love.
And in the end this is all I want to do.
Is Love.

A Reflection on Family

Last week I returned home for the first time in four months for Christmas. After this extended absence in which there was quite a bit of self discovery I was a little nervous of returning home. I wasn't sure how my past relationships were going to hold up, or how I would be received after finally being grounded in myself. To my pleasant surprise, it was the most rejuvenating experience I've had with my family in a very long time. In short it seemed all of my family relations were enhanced. Even spending time with friends and their families gave me this new sense of...something. Something positive. Although I"m not sure I can quite find a word for it. Now that's not to say all was perfect for it never is. However, upon returning to SoDak and having to go to Mass on Sunday, the homily was focused all about family which helped me sort out my thoughts.

Family is a beautiful thing in itself. It is living with our family that we are taught how to live with others. We are taught how to look at someone has a whole person with their strengths and weaknesses, their high moments and their lows, their love and their failures to love and accept them as they are. We are called to the great task of loving them not just for their positive traits, but to love our family members because of their positive and negative traits in the same way that God fully loves us. It's just as St. Paul calls the Colossians to do,

"...Put on, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if one has a grievance against another; as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do. And over all these put on love, that is, the bond of perfection. And let the peace of Christ control your hearts, the peace into which you were also called in one body. And be thankful... And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him" (Colossians 3: 12-15, 17).

Thus the foundation for family is fidelity. When this fidelity and love is coupled with gratitude towards one another and towards God I've experience so much joy, even though there can be episodes of frustration (Some of you are probably thinking what about relationships outside of family? Well...hang on, we're getting there...). "Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins" (1 Peter 4:8). 

Honestly, I'll say that none of this is exactly new and it also, unfortunately, isn't everyone's experience. As for the later, thankfully that's why the family is only the beginning and we are called to be Christ-like and bring these kind of relationships outside of our families. I mean how else to new families start? But it's more than just starting one's own family (if one is called to that) since one doesn't go out to start a family as much as one goes out to find someone to love. That is what we are all called to do whether that vocation is family life or not. That's because the core of our very being is grounded in God who is nothing but love. That and we are all members of God's family and although it's tough, we gotta act like it. Whether that's going out and volunteering one's time for the disenfranchised, the outcast, the lonely...those who want to fulfill the ground of their being of just loving and being loved in return. That's what family trains us for, is being Christ-like people in a world in need of, "heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another...as the Lord has forgiven you...And over all these put on love, that is, the bond of perfection. And let the peace of Christ control your hearts, the peace into which you were also called in one body. And be thankful."

Thus I think it is important to reflect on the gifts that God has given every single one of us through our families. Whether that is our biological family, our family that we've committed to having with our spouse, our family of brothers and sisters in religious life, our family of volunteers whether the be Jesuit Volunteers, Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, or TFAs, our family of faith whom we worship and serve with, and of course our family of God that is so expansive that we could possibly never know all of its diverse members who include the homeless, the forgotten, the oppressed...but also the privileged, the wealth corporate CEO, the well off middle-class guy down the street, and even the person who hates and insults our being...all of whom are our neighbors. And we are called to love all of them equally. As the wise Franciscan Richard Rohr said, "We are love, and we are made for love, and our natural abiding place is love." God's a tough dad, but he's pretty clear that in his family we are judged for our fidelity not how close we get to perfection. 

Acceptance of the Overwhelming True-Self

It’s been a while since I've done of these posts. Probably because all of the stuff I could have blogged about I've journaled about instead, primarily because well that stuff is really just too personal for the interwebs…that and I’m pretty sure no one really wants to hear about those things, they’re honestly pretty much whining.

However, there was something…or somethings which are somehow in a complex yet not complex way related. In short I’m just gunna spew some stuff out and it may or may not be coherent.

So our spiritual envoy, a Jesuit Priest (Fathah J), gave us a set of reflections that he compiled for a spiritual dinner conversation. Basically we had to read and reflect on them before the dinner. That’s a minor detail; the more important detail is they’re by Richard Rohr, a Franciscan. Now, I know that people have mixed feelings about Rohr and that’s fine, but I ask that no conclusions are made yet. Aight, setting the stage. The first part of these reflections (which are both theologically deep and personally applicable) focuses on what Rohr calls, “The Immortal Diamond of the True Self.” Sounds pretty mystical to me, totes dig it. In a nutshell, Rohr talks about discovering one’s “True Self” which is, “…our souls, our inner destiny, our true identity. Your True Self is that part of you that knows who you are and whose you are, although largely unconsciously.” Rohr makes the valid point that we are very much afraid of our True Self as we cling to a false self that is primarily comprised of our thoughts of who we think we are. However, just as Rohr says, “…but thinking doesn't make it so.”

So we have to mine for that Immortal Diamond of our True Self. It’s kinda like the resurrection where we ask who will roll this rock away? This rock being our egos, specific life experience, culture, etc. It’s a rock that prevents us from seeing our True Self who we are called to become…who we are called to change ourselves into. This True Self is beyond temporal categories such as country, race, sex, etc. But is founded, grounded if you will, in the divine. Rohr sums this up nicely saying, “I believe that Christ is the archetypal True Self offered to history, where matter and spirit finally operate as one, where divine and human are held in one container.” Aquinas and Jon Duns Scotus both argue that God is not merely a Being but Being itself. This has a pretty significant implication for our True Selves. If God is Being itself, that means we by the mere fact exist, are a part of that Being and that Being is a part of us. That, consequently, means that our True Selves isn’t just a discovery of who we are a part from who we are told to be but also the recognition of the presence of God within us. “The True Self is both at the same time, and both are a total gift.” Thus we shouldn’t let anything compromise it, “What will it profit you if you gain the whole world and lose your own soul?” (Matt. 16:26). What is really cool about the True Self is something early Christian writers understood from the beginning, “…this discovery of our True Self is also at the same time a discovery of God…The two encounters with a True God and a True Self are largely experienced simultaneously and grow in parallel fashion.”

Bangin’.

So being out in SoDak, where nothing is familiar, where nothing and no one has expectations of who Mike O’Neill is, has allowed me to really go deep and engage with the search for that True Self. Part of that has been the overcoming of a great personal challenge: the desire for perfection and control of things to draw them closer to that perfection. When it comes to accepting one’s True Self there is only acceptance of what is and forgiveness of shortcomings. This is where God is found. Rohr notes,

“We don’t come to God (or truth or love) by insisting on some ideal worldly order or so-called perfection, but in fact we come “to knowledge of salvation by the experience of forgiveness” (Luke 1:77)—of reality, of others, of ourselves. One reason why I am so attracted to Jesus and then to Francis is that they found God in disorder, in imperfection, in the ordinary, and in the world – not in any idealized concepts. They were more into losing than winning.”

Once again…Bangin’.

This art of acceptance (and of letting go) leads to a much greater sense of gratitude and seeing the good and God in the world. Basically it makes it easier to see Being itself in Being. Granted this isn't like a pair of glasses you throw on and then forever see the world that way, of course it’s a struggle but when you've got that perception…damn life is good. Yeah, may not be ideal, but that’s fine cause otherwise it’s still pretty damn good.

Which leads me (yes, it ain't over yet) to kind of a real life rock removal (remember the whole ego, life experience stuff?). My good JV buddy Mike wrote a pretty bangin’ blog post which I will share: http://michaelprate.blogspot.com/2013/12/holy-longings.html. Basically it’s awesome and we were talking about it in the car on the way home from the radio. He had mentioned that he was talking with his mom who had called him, “overwhelming but in a good way.” He told me that he had thought, “That’s Mike O’Neill in a nutshell.” I was a little perplexed at what he was saying but in the end it made sense. He went off to explain that (and I say this not as an ego self-confidence booster thing, I honestly can’t stand that kinda stuff) he believed that I was overwhelming in the sense that I’m so vulnerable, genuine, and loving that sometimes people just can’t handle it. Like it’s almost too much all at once that maybe they don’t know what to do with it or perhaps even be intimidated by it. And that, in a vocational sense, it would take a special kind of person to be able to handle all of that love. My only thought…shit…never thought about it that way before. Positively Overwhelming. Is that even a thing? Guess so.

Now I say this again not to say how great I am or anything remotely close to that. I’m much more instinctively going to be critical of myself than proclaim how great I am. All that I am is who I am and that’s it. I’ll admit that I have a huge desire to love and in particular those close to me. I just want to pour myself out to them. I just want to do anything I can to make them happy and express my love for them. Now thinking about that, I can see how that can make people uncomfortable and I can think of many particular examples. Just part of being overwhelming in a good way. I also want to love people I don’t know as well, but my introvert-tendencies make that very difficult and I’m stuck with a desire to love rather than loving itself. Like that drunk person in the orchard behind our house, or that elder who has an hour long story to tell. I want to show them love, but, it’s just so draining that I just find myself saying, “I can’t do this right now.” In fact I rarely find myself saying, “I can do this right now.” But hey I’m human and its part of who I am. That’s not to say it’s not something to work on but it is an acceptance of who I am, of my True Self. God gives everyone gifts that are unique and talking and showing love to those whom I don’t know is just not the greatest gift God gave me as a human being. That doesn't mean I shouldn't try, but it isn't where I’ll do the most good and it isn't where I’ll connect with God the most (again not to say that I can’t find God in those interactions). Rather, I’d have to say that God has gifted me with the ability to love those who I am close to. It is truly a grace that my person is all about close, deep, inter-personal relationships. They pretty much sustain me and tend to be the least draining of interactions, if not life-giving. It’s where I recognize, in a subconscious way, that I am a part of Being itself and Being itself is a part of me.

So to kind of wrap up and connect (admittedly in a half-assed sort of way) these themes of the True Self and being an overwhelming person in a good way…I’d have to say that accepting and acknowledging that I am an overwhelming person is just a part of who I am and a part of my True Self, it is God working through me I guess. Perhaps? Not entirely sure. But that’s a thought. Either way I feel a final quote will sum up all this nicely,

“We are love, and we are made for love, and our natural abiding place is love.” –Richard Rohr

Also if you've made it this far in this post, thank you. I know this is long and normally I’d apologize for that, however, I’m a long winded talker, a circular thinker and I take forever to express myself, and that’s okay, it’s just me. So as always thanks for reading! Prayers for Jessica, Mike and myself are always appreciated! Also for those from home, I’ll be home from December 21^st to the 28^th and I couldn’t be more excited!