Oreo

The weather outside is frightful...to some.  I am a person who loves 'weather' weather. I love thunderstorms most of all. I love being in church during thunderstorms...because the buildings are big and the sounds echo though them as if God Himself was speaking to us in a language we have yet to understand.  The only time I was truly frightened by one was in 2006, when I had rented a beach house in Florida. After my daughter and her husband left, I took the top bedroom and just stared out the window one night.  Big lightning bolts hit the water out at sea.  Big thick bolts. And I imagined what it might be like to be on a boat at sea when a storm hit. How the sky would be upset and the ground was not solid and would react to the violence in the air in very dramatic ways.  I wondered if I would be brave.  How can you be brave with nothing solid around you?

I muse on this perhaps because yesterday was another day of surprise. I asked God to make me a priest. I think perhaps he did...long ago. Only now, I have people in my life who are helping me claim it. And no, I'm not talking about anything like ordination in the Catholic Church. I write there words for someone who still thinks I want that. For you my dear: "I don't need that anymore. I have what I need: God's approval." I have no interest in being some sort of feminist or liberation theologist. I have no desire to be a martyr for something that will not make things better for everyone. It's taken a long time, but I'm just here to do the work. I don't desire that kind of power. From what I have observed and been through this year, any power I have is not mine anyway. I'm just a messenger.

The last rites thing last week, a test that I failed...but because I failed, I will never make that mistake again. Like Peter...and I have never felt more blessed than when a priest once compared my suffering to Peter's...like Peter, when confronted with a big issue...he shrunk back, he denied his Christ. And I suppose I did that last week also.  Like Peter, I did it out of fear of what the establishment would do to me.  And like Peter, I have wept and I have asked for forgiveness.  Now I know better who I am. 

The woman who tried to be a Methodist minister. The woman who wanted to be a priest, the woman who thought she could be a nun. Last week, in the crisis, I was given my name. And yesterday, I was given my name again. 

I thought if I went to Ireland, I might find a husband.  I joked with God that only a tall, intelligent man with blue eyes and an Irish brogue might turn my heart from celibacy.  I imagined drinking a lot of beer and using that as my excuse for letting down my guard.  But God had other plans. I really wasn't hurt when I was told that I was 'too intellectual' for the trip. Any professor of English would tell you, if he read my writings, that my intellect is somewhat limited. But I received the unfortunate news without any real sadness, and no feeling of rejection. That surprised me. One reason is, because the priest I was told by God to "do what he tells you," suggested that it was not the trip for me. But of course, it is so much more complicated than that. I am trusting the process.  I see that God has things and people placed in my path in certain ways to help me and the persons in my life.

Can you see that in your own lives? I hope so. I hope you are looking. I promise you it is there. And if I am in your life, it is because God put me there. For better or worse.

The short (ahem) story is that I'll be heading to Spain and Rome instead. At least I think I will. I never count on anything. I never look too far forward. I plan to go.  For the moment, planning to go is part of my story.  The actual being there...ah, well, we shall see. And I'll be going with a very intelligent octogenarian priest. And who knows who else!  But I will have someone who can definitely trump me in intellect and won't take any of my bull.  On a pilgrimage. Of prayer. Of discernment. Of call.  God closed a door...and opened up a balcony...a whole new world. 

And that's not the end of it. I was invited to go to Poland with a friend.  Don't know if I can, but it is the invitation that matters. And Poland. My father and my aunt (both Polish) are plotting against me. I would never have considered seminary in the Methodist Church if my father had been alive.  Even though he fought with every priest he ever came in contact with, he was Catholic to the marrow.  And my sweet Aunt, who kept telling me I should marry a plumber, tolerated my stories of seminary as she sat in her chair.  That was an act of deep love, because she wanted me to be Catholic.  How interesting that it was she who has made my life possible today.  She and dad are up there, sitting on the end of pier, drinking beer and Bloody Marys (if its morning), in their ridiculously old fishing hats, casting out their lines and laughing at me. Polish priest who said I needed an 80 year old spiritual director and I looked at him and asked, "what old priest is actually going to listen to anything I have to say?"  Polish supervisor who tells me I'm barking up the wrong tree and reminds me almost daily of the good parts of my life.  An offer of a trip to Poland, where my grandparents were born.
Going through seminary without any debt.
Being employed when I needed to be employed.
Preaching. Creating ministries. Listening to hurting people. Holding hands.
Proclaiming the good news.  Becoming an instrument of healing. Shedding light in dark places.
Baptizing. Marrying. Burying.
Birthing children. Raising them. Letting them go.
Finding love and losing it. Finding it again.
Falling down and getting up.  Sometimes slowly.
Teaching math.  Teaching religion. Teaching theology.
Coaching theater. Coaching speech. Leading Girl Scouts.
Writing plays.  Studying music with a genius.
Playing golf with the boys and with the men.
Getting a husband through his PhD.
Sitting in an F-4 and and F-15...go fighter pilots!
Watching my children's grandfather getting sworn in as a State Rep
Watching my children from the balcony of the US House of Representatives
as their grandfather became a Congressman six(?) years later...
Being kissed by Buzz Aldrin at the airport.

These are some of the good things. My rosary of the glorious mysteries of my life. There are more. I need to remember them when the bad things  (when the sorrowful mysteries are the only ones I can see)  try to enter my head and tell me I'm not good enough.

Yes, we have the beads, the markers of our lives. We pray them as we pray through the mysteries of Jesus. We become one with Him in those times. My life is His life. His life is my life. Peter, James, John...Thomas, Mary, Martha...All together...in the circle, on the beads...connected...We are not alone.

Are you connecting your own threads?  Making your own rosary? Do you see God's hand in your lives?  The joyful, the sorrowful...and all the rest?  Are your beginning to understand that there really is a plan and you are part of it? 

Black and white. And all the colors in between.  That's our cookie.

I guess I'm done for now.

Love, Cindy