Friday, August 2, 2013

Alberta's Defiant Faith

I would like to share my friend Alberta's vocation story. An accomplished violinist, she climbs mountains in Europe...falls at the foot of crosses...faces her mother's unexpected terminal illness on her way to discovering God's call for her life. 

You'll have to read to get the full story. 

It has been just over a year since Alberta joined the Poor Clares in Chicago, and I have been thinking of her and praying for her recently. What an honor and delight it was to live with her during her year in Ann Arbor. I was in the midst of the very stressful first year of my two-year master degree program. I am still grateful for her witness of perseverance, particularly in prayer, which challenged me to pursue holiness and to live with great faith in the midst of the trials I was experiencing at the time. 

Alberta created this blog before she entered the monastery, wanting to have a way to share with others after she had entered this cloistered community the great things God had done for her. 


Blessings!

Monday, May 20, 2013

Spring Freedom

It's spring! I have graduated from the master degree program. I feel free! Free to be outside, free to not work 12 hour days, free to exist, free to walk, run, enjoy ice cream, and mystery novels. Praise God! I've been doing a lot more reading, thinking, and "tree hugging" since school finished. For example...

...It's fitting that I would finish the last chapter - "The Wind Blows Where It Pleases" - of Thomas Merton's No Man Is an Island the day after Pentecost. When Merton is on, he is on! Amazing what he can do with language. What I appreciate is his precision of word selection. In this book, for him, every word counts. A writer, a philosopher, writing prose like a poet - but not writing prose poetry. All glorifying God. I love it. This quote is from that last chapter:

His love cannot be at peace in a soul that is content with a little. For to be content with a little is to will to continue in need.

This is from the chapter on "Vocation." A friend gave this text to me five years ago, and it changed my life. Today, it's still bringing clarity and challenge to my life: 

In planning the course of our lives, we must remember the importance and the dignity of our own freedom. A man who fears to settle his future by a good act of his own free choice does not understand the love of God. For our freedom is a gift God has given us in order that He may be able to love us more perfectly, and be loved by us more perfectly in return.

Love is perfect in proportion to its freedom. It is free in proportion to its purity. We act most freely when we act purely in response to the love of God. But the purest love of God is not servile, not blind, not limited by fear. Pure charity is fully aware of the power of its own freedom. Perfectly confident of being loved by God, the soul that loves Him dares to make a choice of its own, knowing that its own choice will be acceptable to love.

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Have you hopped on the Josh Garrels fan train? I think of "Farther Along" when I think about freedom these days!

I hope these words of Merton also challenge and encourage others to seek more freedom in Jesus Christ!

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Something I have learned in school

Radical Empathy

I have heard the word "radical" more in the past 7 years than I ever had before in my life. When I joined UCO, I heard a lot about "radical discipleship." The adjective, meaning "rooted," is used to describe a kind of discipleship that is deeply rooted in Jesus Christ. 

Several weeks ago, I heard this adjective tied to empathy. In a class about counseling children and youth who have been abused or traumatized, our professor spoke passionately about the need to "radically come alongside the client," to exhibit what my instructor called "radical empathy" - be with the client as they shared about what had happened, their problems, pain, and experience. The teacher spoke of this as being proven to be very "therapeutic" for the child or youth. We have learned about some counselors who come alongside their clients to the degree that they will seek to mirror their client's, especially if it is a young child, affect - facial expression, voice tone, etc. as the client shares in sessions. Children are helped by such radical empathy expressions because of the way they process and experience life at a young age. As the client shares, the counselor is to do whatever it takes to let the client know that they are with the client in their narrative of their experience of trauma or abuse. This is itself an intervention, we say, because trauma and abuse isolate and create a sense of abandonment for the client. The antidote is radical empathy, being a relational presence to the client. 

I love the concept of "radical empathy" - is this not what Jesus Christ asks us to do when he asks us to care for those around us and especially to "love [our] enemies"? Radical empathy is something we can all practice in all of our relationships - can we have radical empathy towards our family, friends, co-workers, the cashier at our local gas station or clerk in the grocery store? The driver who we are sure is driving too slow in-front of us? Can we have a degree of compassion and empathy - charity - toward everyone in our lives? The Lord asks this of us. He asks us to have radical empathy toward all those who we encounter. Radical empathy is the cousin of radical discipleship; we are called to radical love of neighbor. 

I have a friend who lives by what they they call "the discipleship principle" which states that: Jesus Christ does not ask us to do anything that he himself has not already done. Their principle is upheld in this regard; Jesus Christ has poured out on us "radical empathy." He has come alongside us in such a radical way as to have become one of us. He has done just what I've been instructed to do; he has done whatever it takes to communicate to me that he is with me. This has meant he has died on a cross for me. He has done this to break through and heal my loneliness, isolation, my traumas and abuses big and small which are ultimately, Satan's attacks. Most importantly, his radical empathy, his love for me, has restored me to relationship with the Father. Now having studied counseling, the title that we give him as "Wonderful Counselor" seems all the more apt.