Hope in Thin Places

Well, friends, here we are at the start of the best month of the year: November! Actually, it’s not my favorite… but it’s birthday season. So, a happy birthday month to: Brittany, Michael, Diesel, Katharine, Zak, Crunchy, Jillian, and all you other Valentine’s Day babies! I celebrate with you.

Here’s the highlight reel:

1. We have now converted from regular yogurt to Greek yogurt. I highly suggest grape nuts and a bit of honey with the plain yogurt. Yum.

2. I got to Skype with Britt! Of course, after catching up on her travels to Barcelona and Portugal, I now find myself behind again. She’s already come and gone again—to Paris, this time! I’m jealous, though I am awfully excited to visit her this month!

3. Jenna has been gone all week for med school interviews out east. We miss her! The house doesn’t seem the same when one of us is gone for this long. Still, we’re all sure she’s dominating her interviews. In her absence, some of the more vehement carnivores in our house planned a Meat Lovers’ meal at Crunchy’s last night (he happily joined in as our host and head chef). We had bacon-wrapped meat loaf, macaroni’n’cheese’n’bacon, and a salad…which we brought. I didn’t eat too much meatloaf. I don’t eat too much meat these days in general, though I still find it hard to pass up a good chicken salad.

4. I facilitated a spirituality night recently. We made prayer flags (in the Tibetan tradition). It went over really well! A big thank you to FJV Molly Wolk for the supplies and the support!

5. Youth Ministry has been going really well. It’s a good commitment for me in my “spare” time. Last week, I was able to channel some of the kids’ energy through a few dynamic activities I had planned, and they were really receptive. I’ll have to keep getting creative and dreaming up games that teach our lessons. It’s been fun talking to 8th-graders about things like social justice, peace-making, social sin, community, human dignity, and other important issues. It has also made me really grateful for the many people in my life who have shaped my spiritual journey… especially those high-school youth ministers who worked SO HARD. Our youth ministry program is nothing compared to the LIFETEEN of my high school days, but it’s a good program nonetheless and a good use of my time and talents.

6. After a busy morning last Friday (we had an All-Staff meeting at the Catholic Charities office in Portland), I helped Sandra finish putting together a baby shower for two of our staff members, Sara and Carmen. I came up with game ideas and facilitated those, which was an interesting experience since I’ve never actually attended a baby shower before! Anyway, it was fun. Which reminds me: congratulations to Greg and Mary… and welcome, Mia Marie! You’re beautiful!

7. The book I’ve been waiting for has finally arrived! I have been so patient!! It was incredibly tempting to go on amazon.com and buy it, have it shipped, and read it when I wanted to. Still, I’m trying to use the library whenever possible and, on occasion, purchase a used book. So I waited. Patiently. Forever! And I’m finally reading—slowly so as to savor!—Let the Great World Spin. I love it so far!

8. We are famous in Gresham. The guy at the front desk at LA Fitness knows us by name, as does Ginger, our favorite person ever from our local bank. She’s the only one who knows what to do with a “community bank account” that has nine signers.

9. MUEX XXIII, I prayed for you and thought of you this past weekend. I can’t wait to hear from some of you retreatants and leaders. I sincerely hope you had a wonderful Marquette Experience!

10. Halloween was a hit. We attended Crunchy’s/St. Henry’s Halloween parish party, held in our parking lot, and participated in Trunk-or-Treat (handing out candy from your car trunk). And then we went to the big kids’ party at Morris House and danced the night away. Oh yeah, and we had the best costume ever. See photo.

And now for a bit of elaboration on a handful of topics.

Primero (I typed that before I could even realize I was turning this into a Spanglish blog), I’ll tell you a bit about our JVC retreat, which was the weekend before last. We left on Friday afternoon, after having the day off, and met everyone at the retreat center near Molalla, OR. The grounds were lovely but small, featuring a few hiking trails and some beautiful fall colors. One of my favorite things about the Northwest continues to be the vibrant green moss that climbs all over the tree trunks, branches, and logs alongside the trails. It’s such a gorgeous color and it’s so different from the woods at home. Anyway, the retreat was for all of the JVs in our “Cascades region,” so there were some 75 of us in a cozy lodge. Sleeping was tough the first night because I was the first bed inside an oblong room full of bunks so I heard everybody walking past me to go to sleep. The next two nights, though, my body adjusted and I got some decent rest in my sleeping bag.

The best part about the retreat was seeing Beth and hanging out with Lizzie. I miss Beth, and I don’t see Lizzie as much as I wish I did even though we’re so close, so it was really wonderful to be able to catch up with them at a more leisurely pace. In addition, I got to hang out and chat with a bunch of other JVs, some of whom I hadn’t really gotten a chance to know at Orientation. The pace of the retreat was a lot slower than Orientation, too, which I appreciated. There was ample free time, allowing Lindsay and I to go on a 5.5-mile morning run, which was absolutely beautiful. We also had plenty of time to hang out as a community, and we even made dinner (for everybody!) and put on a skit, so we had a lot of laughs together throughout the weekend—as well as several important conversations.

The central “curriculum” of this retreat was about Right Relationships, and the tool we used to discuss this theme was a personality test known as the Enneagram. It’s a pretty popular test and you may have heard of it or perhaps you’ve taken it. Anyway, it’s a test that puts you into one of nine different personality groups, all of which have their individual strengths and areas for growth. There’s a lot of room for movement within the Enneagram structure as well; each personality group, when stressed, has a tendency to move toward another particular group, and the same is true when one is particularly healthy or “evolved.” So, it was interesting to find out what we all are, to talk about the way our diversity impacts our communication and the house dynamic, and to spend some time doing a bit of introspection. My housemates reiterated messages I’ve heard all my life from my parents and they echoed some of my own sentiments from recent conversations with Molly, so it wasn’t too tough to believe them when they all looked at me and said, “You’re an 8. You’re definitely, absolutely an 8.” Get ready to laugh…

Some of the EPH women before the baby shower.

Eights are the most intense of all personality types. They are most passionate about justice, fair use of power, and leveling the playing field so that the underdogs and the oppressed are no longer. They are assertive and opinionated, though sometimes this comes across as a bit intimidating or domineering. Some people don’t know how to respond to an Eight, which frustrates an Eight more than almost anything (aside from inaction). In addition, Eights are challengers. They push people to do better and to be more, but sometimes this seems overly-critical and perhaps a bit sharp. Eights need to watch the way they say things. They need to slow down. They need to be aware of their impact on others and seek to be a bit more gentle and patient in their presentation. I can already hear my mom laughing her butt off. Anyway, Eights are natural leaders, good friends and protectors, and extremely strong people. My housemates are not Eights. In fact, pretty much no one else on retreat was an Eight! Anyway, pretty interesting that Enneagram…

 Secondly, a bit of a reflection. On Friday, at our all-staff meeting, Fr. Byrne was the featured speaker. He is a Jesuit and actually said the Mass on our JVCNW retreat recently, so it was nice to see him again. He spoke mainly on the topic of hope, something that keeps coming up in my life! It has been an important theme, from the Camp Hope/Chile mine story to the poems, books, songs, art, and headlines that are catching my eye lately. It’s a bit puzzling, actually. But again this word came up when Fr. Byrne spoke to us at our meeting about continuing to look for beauty, joy, and gratitude—even after you’ve “considered all the facts” (Wendell Berry). I think this is a particularly important point for me right now, especially regarding my service this year. It can be really hard not to get bogged down by the pain and suffering, the injustice, and the struggle that I see on a daily basis. Sometimes it seems overwhelming. Stifling, even. It seems that my piece—whatever it is that I am doing this year or will do in my entire life—is too small.

But then I am reminded of my favorite prayer, often attributed to Oscar Romero, called “The Long View,” in which I am reminded that “we plant the seeds that someday will grow… we cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in that—this enables us to do something and to do it very well… we are prophets of a future not our own.” Fr. Byrne read us something else, called “Letter To a Young Activist During Troubled Times” by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. (Please read and enjoy at your leisure.) The point is, there’s a whole lot that can get a person down these days. But somewhere in all of that pain and suffering, there is a space for joy. For gratitude. And for hope. In fact, it is in these moments and in people who are experiencing these hardships that hope, gratitude, and joy are sometimes the most palpable to me.

Fr. Byrne put this perfectly into words when he spoke of a Celtic notion of “thin places,” physical places—and I suppose you can extend this concept to people and even moments—where the veil between our world and the realm of the Divine is so thin that the Divine leaks through. Often, the Celts believed, births and deaths are thin places. The Celtic cross was one marker of thin places, which is why it is used on so many grave markers. I think my world is full of thin places, but maybe I go looking for them—on hikes, in the mail, and on my dinner plate even. And surely my work is a place full of them… I have no other way to explain the way my clients’ hurt touches my own heart and the pain in their eyes makes me want to cry. Fr. Byrne said that the poor, vulnerable, and marginalized are particularly close to the heart of Jesus (and thus particularly important to the Church) precisely because of their suffering. So, it is no wonder that thin places are often also the places, moments, and faces where we encounter these suffering hearts, these downtrodden and bent-over people (the anawim in the Sciptures), those who are loved by God in a very special way.

Today was an incredibly intense day at work. Perhaps I should title this blog post “Things that are not in my job description” because today was a parade of unexpected duties. I laughed when Sandra reminded me that, in fact, I am also here to perform “other duties as needed,” and that little clause means that everything and anything is in my job description! Today I created an agreement for a tenant and her landlord to sign. I advocated for a woman whose jerkface of a landlord is overcharging her. I am particularly frustrated with said jerkface because he leaves messages in English on my client’s cell phone and, knowing she can’t understand him, mutters things at the end of them like “These people are so retarded” that are clearly supposed to be heard by whoever translates these messages for her (me). This sets my little Eight self ablaze. Anyway, I also did some notarizing, facilitated another Dental Van clinic, argued with the electric company about one of my clients’ recent disconnections, and—here’s the big one—told someone that his brother was killed in a really ugly car accident yesterday and then proceeded to help make arrangements for shipping the body to Mexico (not cheap).

I am reminded again and again that there is a balance that must be struck. I cannot help but internalize things at work. Why? Because it’s not just work. This is what was so jolting to me when I was at L.A. Fitness and saw the résumé I had made for a client lying there on the desk. Suddenly, try as I might to pretend that I was in “my non-work world,” I became aware of the fact that there was never any separation between this world and my “work world.” The two realities coexist, and while I do have to leave some of the emotions, frustrations, and stories behind when I leave the office in order to preserve my own sanity, it’s impossible for me to leave it all behind. Is there any way to NOT think about this guy and his family today, for example, after I was told by the funeral director that the corpse is in awful condition? After I discussed embalming and death certificates and caskets all afternoon? I am not seeking to completely numb myself to the people and things I encounter everyday from 9-5. And I’m also not seeking to be so rattled by it all that my other relationships, or my self-care, suffers.

Somewhere, there’s a balance, and I think achieving balance in our lives is a two-step process (I should probably write a book about this). First, admitting that there’s no way we can do everything allows us to humble ourselves before a bigger, greater power of some sort. So, I need to continue to remind myself that I am a vessel (and a broken one at that) through which God can do God’s work. My job is to make my hands, my heart, my head, my time, my energy, and my talents available to God and to be patient and persevering even as I continually mess up the opportunities God gives me. Secondly, I think a lot of it has to do with something that Fr. Byrne also mentioned: seeking beauty and making sure that we keep beauty in our lives. Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker movement allegedly listened to Mozart every Sunday and this was refreshing and rejuvenating for her in her difficult work with the poor.

The good news is that I see beauty all over the place. The world is dripping with it, and the people in my life are soaking wet with clear blue beauty. For example, the Sufjan Stevens concert on Friday was so incredibly moving and so astonishingly lovely, and I sat in a beautiful concert hall between Lizzie and Erin and let my spirit fill itself up—no, gorge itself—on Sufjan’s delicious melodies. And Saturday, I slept until 10, read for an hour in bed, went to the gym, took a nice shower, talked to Molly for two beautiful hours, and then prepared myself for Halloween festivities and dwarfiness. Then I danced all night with Lizzie (AKA “Easy Mac”… she woke up with bruises on her arms from dancing in a box) and spent the night in Portland. I woke up in time to go to St. Andrew’s with Lizzie, which is my favorite parish to visit when I’m in the area (it’s a hike from Gresham and pretty tough to make it for the 9:30 service unless I’m already positioned a bit more conveniently). There were so many families and cute kids at Mass, and the community is so warm and hospitable. Plus, St. Andrew’s is really close to Alberta St., so Lizzie and I treated ourselves to tea from our favorite place, Townshend, and then had gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches—mine had brie and red peppers, hers had artichoke and mushrooms—which we ate in a gutted out school bus. And then I came home and watched the Vikings [lose] and went to dinner with my community at Crunchy and Margaret’s. Beauty beauty beauty, gratitude gratitude gratitude, joy joy joy. Ahhhhh.

We ran into some Hillsboro friends before the Sufjan show.

I told my Spiritual Director that my spiritual life seems to be sort of flat and in a bit of a tizzy because everything around me is so new. I miss the infrastructure of Marquette—the built-in opportunities for faith enrichment and the strong faith community there. She asked me to expand my understanding of what prayer encompasses. “Isn’t all of this feeling and festering also prayer?” she challenged me. Indeed. And she suggested that, to help myself realize it, I try to include a Morning Offering of some sort in my daily routine so that one of my first thoughts is an intentional moment of offering the joys, the gifts, the pain, and the suffering of this day to God, entrusting God with all of it. That is perhaps the exact suggestion I needed.

Happy Feast of All Saints & All Souls. And, in solidarity with the feast many of my clients and staff members are celebrating, Feliz Día de los Muertos! Today I remember especially my beautiful grandmothers Mardel and Pat, whom I miss each and every day. The Celts often recognized death as a “thin place,” and I think it’s true. I feel the presence of the Divine whenever I think about my grandmas, and I know that wherever they are is a particularly thin place. As one poet says, the door to the Divine is surely cracked in that space and the light is escaping into this realm a bit more than in other places. Today, with much hope, joy, and gratitude, and knowing that the Divine is within and without me at all times, I remember also this man, the brother of my client, who has passed through that vaporous curtain, from this world to the next.

I'll never get sick of this mountain. Look at it now!!

Much love to you all. Happy November.

Amanda

PS Speaking of thin places, thank you to Mom for another lovely package (cookies perfectly intact!) and to Jill for sending me several copies of the Marquette Tribune. I can see the face of Christ right through you…