Lunch With a Contemplative, by Mary Lou Logsdon

But ask the animals, and they will teach you;  the birds of the air, and they will tell you;  ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you;  and the fish of the sea will declare to you.  Job 12: 7-8

 Mary Rose O’Reilley was the guest speaker at Sacred Ground’s Eat, Pray, Give luncheon on May 12.  She described in lyrical prose her recent four month experience in the wilderness, a journey into environmental spirituality.

Her small borrowed cabin was on an island on Puget Sound.  She spent the winter months there—with the rain. At night she listened to the sounds of prey.  The cabin’s floor-to-ceiling windows looked out onto the “edge of the abyss”.

Like many seekers before her, she fled to the wilderness to pray.  The isolation of her location, without car, television, or radio, and limited internet and phone service, was further from home than a Washington state address would imply.

A portion of her time included work at an intentional community that shared the island.  She assisted in the clearing of invasive species.  The seasonal rain, gray skies, and deep silence led to an experience “downward,” like going into the sea, where, in the deep, creatures live without sight and without light.  An encounter with earth is an encounter with death, desolation, and recycled compost.  All earth returns to earth.

Initially, she was nagged by questions that she had packed along for the journey.  What to do about house and home?  Answers were slow in coming and the ever-present questions nagged.   She finally put them down.

Her initial panic, the jarring reality of the wild of the wilderness, gave way to a deep silence, a silence where there is lots of nothing. In retreat time we let go of the foreground of our lives.  We know where we’ve been, we don’t know where we’re going. In that silent space, without doing something, eventually something shifts.

Mary Rose’s retreat experience was interrupted when her partner, Robin, brought his fiddle and came for a visit.  The initial plans for a week’s stay expanded to a month, and then to six weeks.  Like a she-bear awakened, Mary Rose met her intruder with a fierce protection for space and silence.  She admitted that it is true that you can be a contemplative and a jerk.

Robin challenged Mary Rose’s ideas of who she was, what God wants, and what is next.  Conflict that was easy enough to manage at home took on a new immediacy.  Within their thirty-year relationship, Mary Rose had learned to speak out in conflicts that used to make her mute.  Now she practiced quiet, not in the original muteness of the victim, but in the thoughtful wisdom that reins in that which need not be voiced.  In such close confines, it was necessary to look underneath these wild feelings to see what was truly going on.  No easy escape.  And then surrender.  The last two week’s of Robin’s stay were calm.

After Robin left, loneliness, archetypal loneliness, set in, existential loneliness that is an inescapable part of life;  the loneliness from which we learn to breathe, expand and let go.  The third stage of her retreat experience arrived, and with it, grace.  She reminded us that one knows grace when it happens.

The universal religious experience is one of unconditional love.   We have to find out what it is we are in love with.  We slide in and out of two ways of being:  we can look with the eyes of the mind, or we can look with the eyes of love.  The latter transforms us.  In that, love is a place where something can be born.  How to see with the eyes of love and be grounded in the real?    We need to embrace the world like a lover, moving in and out of contemplative space.  We are created to be environed, to sense a ring around us, connected and protected.

The loneliness gave way to a sense of wild freedom.   She became indifferent to the big decisions she had packed along.  She felt entitled to pitiful stability.  Modern life isolates us.  Living amidst trees is like a child with elders, a secure knowing that deepens silence.

Speak to the earth and it will lead you.  Ask the animals and they will teach you.

Mary Lou Logsdon guides people into the silence through Spiritual Direction and Retreat.  She is located in the Twin Cities and can be reached at logsdon.marylou@gmail.com . 

Pause More, by Mary Lou Logsdon

Pause more.

I probably didnʼt need to go to Boston and the SDI (Spiritual Directors International) conference to know that, yet it is what rang out so clearly over the three days. Pause more.

The speakers and rituals centered on Cultivating Compassion. We can cultivate compassion through listening, practicing mindfulness, recognizing the interrelatedness of the whole of life, daring to heal the rifts that divide us. In our hurried, fragmented world we need the gift of compassion desperately.

The conference plenary sessions were led by John Phillip Newell. Our very own Rabbi Amy Eilberg was the conference spiritual director. Rabbi Amy paused with us to savor and break open Newellʼs picturesque words and story-filled wisdom.

Relationship, harmony, and love are the yearnings of the universe, as well as universal longings present in all of creation. We are all interconnected, interwoven, interdependent. The actions and reactions of each of us ripple well beyond what we imagine to be our limited sphere of influence. We are becoming aware of the interconnectedness of the universe. A new consciousness is breaking through many fields of study, including physics, biology, psychology, cosmology, and theology.

Newell paraphrased Aung San Suu Kyi from Myanmar (Burma). In order for us to help compassion grow, we must have the courage to see, the courage to feel, and the courage to act.

We must have the courage to see our interrelatedness even in the midst of the fragmentation that dominates so much of our world. This fragmentation is driven by: fundamentalism, which defines truth in hard-edged terms; the enormous changes we are experiencing; and a world view that sees the sacred as separate from creation.

We must have the courage to feel the pain that is a part of life. We must recover songs of lament, to feel the brokenness that is a part of life. Life is shrouded in pain. We cannot hide from it. We must name the falseness of which we have been a part.

We must have the courage to act. We must not give up hope. Hope and action belong together. The future has not been decided. We can be a part of that future. We pretend that we can love God and not the earth or each other.

To call upon this courage, we must have a spaciousness to our lives, a place of calm from which to see, to feel, to move into action.

What can I do today? Pause more.
Mary Lou Logsdon is a Spiritual Director and Retreat Leader in private practice in the Twin Cities. She can be reached at logsdon.marylou@gmail.com.

 

First Light, by Ammie Gronert

Spring is a time of increasing daylight.  TPT has been playing “Chased by the Light,” a program featuring the photography of James Brandenburg.  Hearing him talk about his photography and capturing the light is a contemplative experience.  It started me thinking about light.

Spring is a time of light. I look forward to longer days and more light!

I associate Easter with sunrise services.  Two decades ago, Holy Week began to include an Easter service on Holy Saturday, really an ancient service revived by churches that used liturgy.  I remember the first Easter Vigil service I attended.   The church was filled with flowers and the scent of Easter was there .  There was solemnity and beauty, and many readings not used at other services.  I loved it in theory, but it never seemed like Easter.  After the evening service, when I came out of the church, it was dark!  There was no morning light.

Perhaps I had been programmed as a kid to think of Easter as an early service.  I remember being a teen and going with friends to a sunrise service or singing in choir at all the services, the first being early.  That was Easter. It is also about the light.

First light… that is when we are told the women went to the tomb of Jesus.  Matthew says,   “after the Sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning.”  Luke says, “at early dawn they came to the tomb,” and Mark says, “very early, when the sun had risen”.  It’s about light, but it’s about more than light.  It is about something new, something happening.  Nature symbolizes it again and again.  For me the symbol is first light.

The women at the tomb weren’t expecting what they found.  That

First light, seeing your way in what had been dark

Seeing your way in a way that had been no way

Seeing possibility when there seems to be nothing

Having expectations shifted and shifted again

To a new reality.

I am including a picture of Spider lilies, taken in Glacier at the break of day.  The black water surrounds the white flowers.  When I saw the picture I called it “Resurrection.  “ The photographer is my husband’s uncle who has taken many pictures in natural settings.  Spend time with it and see what this photo has to say to you.

 

Ammie Gronert, MA/PS is a spiritual director with Sacred Ground. 

Trying To Happen, by Jan Stanton

Recently, I spoke to a group on the topic, “Affirming Our Gifts.”  Gifts, I suggested, are more than talents.  Gifts include our passions, dreams, beliefs, values, wounds, strengths, limitations, energy, intuition, creativity, relationships, and hopes. The list could go on; all that we are and have experienced are gifts.

I asked participants to take a few moments to get in touch with their own giftedness, and share a gift or two with the rest of the group.  One participant shared her love of reading.  After she reads a good book, she shares her recommendations with others.  Another woman talked about the gift of encouragement, a gift she acquired when, at a difficult time in her life, she needed encouragement.   Now, she readily reaches out to encourage others.

Then one participant asked, “Do our gifts change as we get older?”  She raised an interesting point, and after some discussion, the group and I concluded that yes, our gifts can—and do—change over time.   As we age, we learn from life and acquire new gifts that were simply not available to us at a younger age.   Then I thought:  If we understood this, could it change the way we typically view aging?  I think it can.

We usually think of aging as primarily—or only—a time of loss, and it is true that there are many losses that accompany aging.  Some losses may not affect our lifestyles significantly; others are more serious, even heartbreaking.  But are there gifts we own now that we didn’t have when we were younger?  If so, might we perceive aging as not just loss but also gain?

So I was thinking:  Suppose I take a piece of paper and set up two columns.  The first column could be called “I could and now I can’t” and the second “I couldn’t and now I can.”    In the first column I might write:  I used to run eight miles.  I used to have more energy.  In the second column I might say:  I have more appreciation for the beauty of nature.  I’m a better listener.

Yes, I thought, our gifts change because we change.  In fact, I like to think that we change into our most authentic selves, and as we grow, our vocation—the sharing of who we are—changes as well.   I like the words of James and Evelyn Whitehead, who said that vocation “is who we are trying to happen.”

How long does it take “to happen”?  I’m certain it’s a lifelong journey.

 

Jan Stanton is a Sacred Ground board member, chaplain, spiritual director, and speaker to various groups on the topics of grief and loss, aging, caregiving and spiritual health.  She can be visited at www.jan-stanton.com.

Glimpses of the Divine, by Barb Keffer

In the Hebrew scriptures, mountain tops were usually a symbol of a meeting place with God.  In Mark 9:2-10, Jesus leads Peter, James, and John up a high mountain. The dazzling white of Jesus’ clothes, the meeting with Elijah and Moses, and the cloud, a symbol of divine presence, all would have indicated that God was communicating that Jesus was indeed the Messiah they were expecting.

We, too, catch glimpses of the divine, even if we don’t literally climb the mountain–holding our newborn child, an experience of liturgy or nature that helps us know we are connected with something or someone larger than ourselves, a call out of the blue from a friend precisely when we needed it the most.  One man, an engineer I knew, had an experience that didn’t fit into his logical categories so he forgot it for fifty years until he was in his eighties, and he shared it with me. Having the background of scripture with which to interpret our experiences does give us some categories or metaphors to help us understand our experience, and perhaps read between the lines a bit to see signs of God.

Before my husband and I moved to St. Paul in 1973, I had a mountain top experience that lasted about six months. In prayer and in community, I had a profound experience of being loved by God. With that experience, I became bolder in expressing love myself, and was in kind of a honeymoon experience with God, willing to go wherever God might lead us. I still, thirty-nine years later, speak of that time, and of our move to St. Paul, as almost magical.  I had the sense of God guiding our next steps as my husband Charlie was hired by St. Thomas College as Academic Vice President at the young age of thirty-one. Our move in a month was easy.  We cleaned out the attic in one night, and had fun doing it. We said goodbye to dear friends with deep affection, and left nothing unsaid. The day the moving van loaded our furniture  and we started our trip, the scripture readings at Mass were about Abraham’s call to a new land. We left our home with a real-estate agent to sell with complete trust it would be sold. And with what I could only call a miracle at the time, we drove from Scranton PA to St. Paul in two days, with four children under six in a Dodge Dart, with no one getting crabby. I can still remember the joy and excitement we all felt as we rounded Spaghetti Junction in St. Paul, and saw the sun glistening on the buildings of our new hometown.  We were welcomed by St. Thomas folks and allowed to rent a home owned by Macalester College until we sold our home in Scranton, and could find another here. Everything was easy.  It was the profound experience of love, joy, trust, and ease that said to me this must be of God.   Like Peter in the story of the transfiguration, I didn’t fully understand what was happening, but I wanted to build a tent, or do whatever it took, to hold on to this state. I thought perhaps it was a new state of being that comes from regular meditation.

Jesus tells Peter, John, and James not to tell anyone about the experience.  Before the mountain top experience Jesus had made his first of three predictions of his passion, only to find resistance in the disciples. They were still immersed in their cultural expectations of a Messiah who would come in power and glory. Only when they traveled the road to the cross and beyond would they have a chance of understanding what kind of a Messiah Jesus was.  Likewise, I had a resistance to the message that Disciples of Jesus need to be willing to take up our cross and embrace suffering. I could say the right words, of course, but I wouldn’t have been expecting this glimpse of the divine to be a permanent state if I, too, wasn’t resisting the message of the cross.

After getting a glimpse of the divine, Peter, James, and John had to come down from the mountain.  We do too.  My mountain top experience ended when the normal grieving that comes with a move set in, and I realized it would take time to build the depth of relationships with people that I had left behind.  Charlie’s work took him away from home more than his old job had, and the second move into a house we bought happened just as the fall semester started and his work load picked up. The work of unpacking all of those boxes amid four small children with no one to talk to started to get the best of me.  I remember knocking on a neighbor’s door, who I didn’t know but I saw had kids, and asking, “Will you talk to me?”  God doesn’t save us from being human.

Though Peter, James, and John didn’t fully understand what happened on the mountain, I suspect at some level it strengthened them for the road ahead.  I wonder if it also strengthened Jesus, or at least confirmed for him that he was on the right path.

And though I had to deal with the realities of grief, loneliness, and the sheer exhaustion of unpacking all of those boxes while caring for four young children, the memory of those six months of profound love and joy sustained me through the hard parts, and I never doubted we had made the right choice.   St. Ignatius says, when you are in consolation remember the desolation, and when you are in desolation remember the consolation.   One follows the other. God doesn’t save us from the human experience, but those glimpses of the divine can provide the hope that we are going somewhere good, helping us move through the suffering to be transformed by it.

Barb Keffer is a spiritual director and licensed psychologist. She is married with four adult children and five grandchildren.  She helps people reflect on their spiritual journey in her home in Roseville.  She can be reached at barb@keffermail.com

Praying With Your Eyes, by Diane Gardner

Once again, Lent snuck up on me.  We’re already a week into the season, and I’m still casting about for a way to mark this special time.  As I sat at my computer, staring into space and wondering what to write for this blog, I remembered a practice offered by a publication of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet several years ago.  It’s a quiet, gentle and yet profound way to be in the world and I decided this would be my practice this season.  I share it with you in hopes it may be fruitful for you as well.

There is an ancient form of prayer called benevolent gazing.  It is a wordless prayer and consists merely in looking with love wherever we look – at morning rising in ribbons, at neighborhood streets, at sun peeking through clouds.  Most of all, it means to look with love into human faces, those close to us whose every frown and smile we know, and those whose face we see but once this side of heaven.  Bathe the mail carrier, the grocery store check-out clerk, your partner, your neighbor, fellow drivers, and all you see with the benevolence of your caring.

Pray with your eyes today.  Bless the day freely given you and all manner of people you see wherever you go.  Bless every gift this day of, O amazing grace.  When night comes, sit a little with your heart and the blessing eyes of God.

Diane Gardner is a certified spiritual director and a Commissioned Minister for Spiritual Direction in the United Church of Christ.  She is Sacred Ground’s teacher coordinator.  She welcomes new people to her spiritual direction practice and can be reached at dianegardner@comcast.net

Driven Into Lent, by Mary Lou Logsdon

“And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.”      (Mark 1:12-13, NRSV)

The Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness. This was no limo ride with plush seats and oversized windows. This drive feels more like a can of hydrogen strapped to His body, propelling Him forward. Immediately. Now.

Iʼve been driven, dragged, and disciplined into Lent. I donʼt get a limo either.   I remember Lents when it felt like I was driven by an old rattletrap car, like the Studebaker Lark I drove the summer after my freshman year in college. It leaked oil and often overheated. The ride was slow, worrisome, and given to frequent stops and re-starts.

There were too many years when I was driven by a self-improvement list that was longer than a five-year-oldʼs letter to Santa. I have had years when the drive resembled a carousel, round and round and going nowhere.  While we are in the amusement park,
I can see the roller coaster drive too, lots of ups and downs with great relief as it comes to an end.

I have been driven into the Lenten wilderness by the mournful bugle call of “Taps.”  Someone or something has died and I am lost, sad, and alone. The dark welcomes me.  It is just what my soul needs.

I have even scheduled my own ride into the wilderness, like a taxi that picks me up for an early morning flight. I know I have decisions to make or demons to meet or fears to challenge. As Ash Wednesday approaches I reconsider, but the cab is on its way and I canʼt find the phone number to cancel. As I enter the wild, I slowly get out, pay the fare, and watch my cab turn into a pumpkin. No escape now.

Once I am in the wilderness, I start to notice signs of new life. Little green shoots appear under decaying leaves, rotting tree trunks, or lingering snow. As my soul adjusts, I sense new life elsewhere. The buds on the branches swell, the birds call for a mate, the streams gather melting waters. The winds bring fresh smells of renewal.

None of us escape time in the wilderness. It doesnʼt always match the liturgical season; it isnʼt often convenient. Sometimes we are accompanied by others. Sometimes we go alone. We do know since the Spirit is driving, the Spirit is with us, just as the Spirit waswith Jesus. I wonder how the Spirit will drive me into the wilderness this year. How might the Spirit be driving you?

Mary Lou Logsdon companions people through their wilderness times in spiritual direction. She also leads retreats focused on liturgical seasons and other topics. She can be reached at logsdon.marylou@gmail.com or 651-583-1802.

A Gesture from the Heart by Laurel Breustedt

When a gesture from the heart comes full circle, one might wonder at the mystery and delight of how God’s work unfolds.

It was 1980, and a typical day at work, when I received a call that my dad was going to need open heart surgery.  I felt a wave of shock move through me.  ”How could this be?” I thought.  He was only fifty-three years old, and I was twenty-four.  I wondered what I could give or do to help my dad.

I pondered this question as I walked through Rosedale looking for something meaningful, some small gesture that would tell him how much I loved him and how deeply I cared.  A small plaque caught my attention.  It had a small human figure holding a heart in its hands.  It was offering the heart outward with a gesture, and had the words, “I give my heart to you.”  Immediately I thought this would be a meaningful gift.

When my dad was at Miller Hospital after his surgery, I presented this plaque to him.  In his profound wisdom, he signed and dated the back of it, and wrote, “From heart to heart, with best wishes and good luck.”  He then passed it on to the next person who was recovering from open heart surgery.

It was nine years after the first surgery that my dad needed a second open heart surgery.  I reflected back on the gift I had given him nine years earlier.  When I was visiting him at St Luke’s Hospital, I told the nurse about this plaque.  She looked at me with amazement, and said she knew where it was, then offered to go get it.  She came back carrying the plaque and presented it to my dad and me.  We read in amazement all the names of the people who had signed and dated the back, passing on their best wishes to the next person in the recovery room.

It had been carefully moved when Miller and St Luke’s hospitals merged to form United Hospital.  Eventually, it was hanging on the wall near the front of the cardiac unit.

My father and I were very surprised and delighted to see and experience this gesture of the heart coming full circle.

It’s been over fifteen years since my dad’s passing, and, as I ponder this event, I feel gratitude for sharing this heartfelt experience, and a deep sense of wonder for how the mystery of God’s work continues to unfold through the language of the heart.

 

Laurel Breustedt is a Healing Touch Spiritual Ministry practitioner.  You may reach her directly at laurel.b@usfamily.net

 

My Old Dog Is Teaching Me New Tricks by Merry Sawdey

You know that bumper sticker that says “Dog is My Co-Pilot”? I don’t laugh when I see that, because, for me, it’s totally true. We have two dogs and we also foster dogs for Pet Haven, a Twin Cities rescue organization. One of our foster dogs, Mikey, became our forever dog and because of what I learned from him, I will be a far better spiritual director than I might have been otherwise.

When he came to us, Mikey was constantly anxious and didn’t know when he was being a good boy or when he was doing something wrong. For him, there was always a chance that he was doing something wrong and he didn’t know what he needed to do to change it. He is a sensitive dog and was frightened by all kinds of noises: the washing machine on spin cycle, the furnace going on, a plane going over the house. Anytime he heard something that upset him, he would go in the bathroom and shake uncontrollably. I think he left his body at those times as well, because when you looked in his eyes, there was nobody in there. He pushed the bathroom door shut, but then panicked because he was closed in. At night, we had to put him in his kennel because if he was left out, he would spend the night closing doors, then scratching incessantly on them.

The wider world made him nervous, as well. We’d take Mikey outside to do his business but if he heard a truck in the neighborhood, or a plane flew overhead, he would come running back in the house, running low to the ground as if he were scared of being hit. When we put him in the car, he shook during the whole ride. And at meet-and-greet events, he could only stay with the people and dogs for a little while. We figured out that if we took him to the back of the store, he could hide in one of the doghouses and get a little relief.

It broke my heart to see him so scared, and to realize that he had no coping skills or sense of safety. I wanted to give him the love and security he needed, and consulted with animal healers and behaviorists to get ideas and advice for how to help Mikey. Nothing much worked and I felt like a failure when his behavior continued for weeks with no change. We took him to a class for shy dogs and they told us he couldn’t come back because he made the other dogs too nervous. He got into a couple of serious fights with our dog, Geordie, in which both dogs received severe bite wounds and we were worried we were going to have to give up.

At some point, I wondered if Mikey felt pressured by our desire for his healing. We wanted him to be a happy dog who could hang out with the family and enjoy himself as most dogs do. With all the things we were trying to do to help him, I began to wonder if our message to him was that he wasn’t acceptable as he was and that he needed to be change in order to be considered a good dog. I wondered what it would be like if we accepted Mikey as he was and didn’t count on any changes. At the time, I attended a workshop at Sacred Ground on heart meditation, and learned to quiet my breath and slow my heartbeat. I also learned that people (and dogs, I thought!) could be influenced by someone else’s calm and steady heartbeat. After that, when Mikey was in one of his panics, I just sat near him and did heart meditation. I closed my eyes and didn’t look at Mikey, because I didn’t want my own hopes for him to get in the way. It seemed like sometimes he was able to quiet, but I tried not to notice or count on that. I didn’t want to be focused on results in any way.

During that time, I was also taking the Ignatian Exercises at Sacred Ground. At one point, an image came to me. God and I are sitting on a beautiful hillside on a warm, sunny day – the kind of day you dream of in February. God is sitting next to me in a lawn chair, legs stretched out, arms resting on the arms of the chair. I’m also comfortably ensconced in my chair. There’s no place we need to go, nothing we need to do. It’s enough to sit and enjoy the beauty and peace of the day. I don’t have to prove anything, earn anything, justify anything, explain anything. I felt a molecular change come over me as I felt this image move through me – that God loves me, in each and every moment. It was like I started to breathe again.

I only came to that image when I understood that I could take anything to God. Anything. My anger, frustration, complaining and whining, my judgments, blame and finger-pointing, my know-it-allness, my resistance and stuckness, my arrogance and bullheadedness. All of it. I didn’t have to clean myself up and put on my perfectly ironed prettiest ruffly dress in order to get an audience. This image is one of grace and blasts away my beliefs about having to earn God’s love by good behavior.

This learning intertwined with my relationship with Mikey. It helped me understand what true presence and love is. Mikey could stay in the bathroom if that helped him. He could sleep in his kennel, and he didn’t have to share his toys and bones if he didn’t want to. We adjusted the rhythms of our household to accommodate him. It wasn’t a big deal – we just accepted that we never went to the bathroom alone! We took measures so that his actions weren’t destructive to the house. Mikey and Geordie ate in their kennels and all bones and toys were picked up unless the dogs were separated by the baby gate. We checked on Mikey when he was shaking, but we accepted his behavior as natural for him. Our sense of what was “ordinary” adapted to these new circumstances. I tried to let go of all the voices in me that wanted to fix Mikey – that wanted to make him better and that wanted him to be a “normal” dog.

Sitting with him and letting go of any hopes I had on Mikey’s behalf was a good muscle to strengthen. Truthfully, I did hope for improvement, that some magic would be worked. But I imagined each of those kinds of thoughts floating away on the string of a balloon. I tried to just focus on being the possibility of love for Mikey. He could accept it or not but I would be present for him no matter what happened and there was nothing he could do that would make me give up on him.

Little by little, Mikey has begun to find some peace and happiness in the world. He hangs out with the family more and only sometimes finds it necessary goes in the bathroom. And if he does get scared, he comes and asks for company to comfort him in the bathroom. Even when he gets scared, he stays in his body. We learned that Mikey knows he’s a good boy when he gets treats so he gets lots of treats because he is a very good boy. He goes to the dog park with our other dogs and tells us when he’s had enough, so we can put him in the car. One great gift of Mikey is his ears. At first, his ears were always pinned on the back of his head. As time went on, we learned what Mikey loved because when something pleases him, his ears come up and his eyes twinkle. That’s how we learned to use pastrami when we needed to clip his nails or give him medicine! I have watched him unfold and bloom as he figures out for himself what love and safety feels like and as we let him teach us Mikey’s Way.

My journey with Mikey continues as I learn to go at his speed instead of my own. He is still a sensitive dog who gets scared sometimes. But we’re a team now and he knows he can trust us to stand by him. His journey is as unique as anyone else’s – human or animal – and through my time with him, I’ve been able to learn and practice the profound gift of simply being with someone in acceptance and love. I’m deeply grateful for his bravery, willingness, and patience as he teaches me. Sometimes the face of Jesus in the world has whiskers and wet nose.

Merry Sawdey is in the Spiritual Director Formation Program at Sacred Ground.

What Bell Ringing Taught Me About Christmas, by Matt Linn, SJ

Last year for three hours in a blizzard, I rang the Salvation Army bell outside Cub foods, and collected only forty dollars.  This year, I was smart enough to choose a protected skyway outside of Macy’s and next to US Bank, where people had to go through me to get to ATM machines.   My kettle also had a sign that a donor would triple every dollar given.  So having business clientele with three times the income of my poor Cub food migrants, I was ready to do a booming business.But nothing boomed.  I had six times as many people as last year, but collected only forty dollars in two hours, as only one in twenty stopped.   Many came right from the ATM machines with cash in their hands, but only one person gave.   The bigger the pile of cash, the tighter the hand that held it.   The more nicely dressed a man, the more likely he was to hurry by without eye contact or any response to my greeting, as if hurting and in numb survival mode.  Twenty people went by listening to their iPods, but not one gave.  I do the same disappearing act.  It is easy to listen to Christmas music in my warm car and ignore mothers with kids huddling at bus stops in the wintry gale and wanting a warm ride down Lake Street, to where I am already going.

Why do the one in twenty stop and give?   When I asked, “Why did you stop to give?”  almost always the answer had something to do with gratitude.  One lady holding her Starbuck’s answered, “This warm coffee was so good I just wanted to share with those who don’t have anything warm.”  Another gaunt lady said, “I have enough now but I have slept under bridges.”   When I thanked an arthritic grandmother for hobbling over to give, she answered, “I want to help because we too have a family member without work.”   She’d miraculously turned family pain into compassion.  An eighty-four year old Korean vet unable to walk came riding up on his cart with an American flag and a Santa hat.  For him, this giving was nothing special.  “I gave two years in Korea, was always cold, but came home while my buddies didn’t.”   His smile said how happy he was that he was alive to give the thirty-five cents he could dig out of his pocket to keep someone alive and warm.

Best of all was a grizzled, gray African-American who passed me by and then whirled around and returned.  I asked, ‘Why did you come back to give?”

“The Lord told me to!”

“What did he say?”

“Say?  Not say, it what he DONE for me.”

“What did he do for you?”

“He done give me EVERYTHING I have.”  This man gave me everything he had — two quarters and a smile that stretched off his face to embrace those twenty feet away.  They gave too.

Gratitude is infectious and I fed the kettle too.   All the givers taught me that Christ comes not when I dutifully give gifts but each day when I gratefully remember “He done give me EVERYTHING I have.”

So why did I stop to give three hours at 7 a.m.?   The times I had less, have left me grateful.   Last year I lived mostly on rice and beans for a month while ministering to those in the Dominican Republic who often had only rice.   Living alone in our empty novitiate with neither heat nor community made me grateful for a roof over my head and friends that I had taken for granted but now needed.   So this Christmas it’s the times for which I am not so grateful that make me grateful and remembering, “He done give me EVERYTHING I have!”

Father Matt Linn, SJ, teaches and ministers around the world, and teaches in Sacred Ground’s Spiritual Director Formation Program.  He is the co-author of several books, and can be reached directly at mlinnsj@yahoo.com