I have a dear friend who has been a Servite sister for many decades.  Last week she mentioned in passing that in her community they have a tradition that she called “Go gracefully.”  It means that before someone goes on a trip she gets everything done ahead of time.  Laundry is done, suitcase packed, driving directions printed off or boarding pass ready.   “Go Gracefully” means that the night before the trip or the morning of the excursion, there is a peaceful readiness about everything and no last-minute panic.

I have thought of that a number of times in the days since I have seen her and pondered what a gentle and sensible tradition that is.  When we are running around excitedly trying to get our last-minute things done, our urgency is imposed on everyone around us.  My panic becomes the prominent emotion in the house.  My problem becomes everyone else’s problem.

It’s bad enough in a family, but if I project that kind of alarming behavior on a whole community of people, I can create quite a disturbance simply because I did not plan ahead.  What a sensible tradition for people who live in community – and for the rest of us!

I even think about workplace panic.  If I have a big meeting that I am procrastinating preparing for, my last minute fear and anxiety will fill the office and disturb my colleagues.  My disquiet will seep into those around me at work or at home.

This is a good time of year for all of us to remember to go gracefully.  It is a special way we can love those around us by remaining at peace and turning our fretting over to our loving God.

“The LORD will guard your coming and going both now and forever.”
Psalm 121

It is with the somber feel of Holy Week that I write that our old friend, Fr. Dennis, has died.  Last April I wrote about visiting him with my husband as he said Mass in his apartment.  His tears as he tried to get through the Mass with his increasingly debilitating disease was so sad.

Fr. Dennis moved to assisted living shortly after we were there.  By Easter Week he was cruising around his new place on a scooter, happily giving us a tour of the chapel where he could offer Mass for the residents.  He introduced us to the resident Protestant chaplain and the easy affection and respect between them was apparent.  Clearly, they were brothers in ministry.

He still ministered to us on that visit, laughing out loud as I complained about something at church.  Then, with another laugh, he recounted for my son how I had come to him at other times with my “injustices.”  He made it all better with his laugh.  None of it really mattered.

We kept up on him, but heard he had to stop presiding at Mass at his rehabilitation center and that talking had become quite difficult for him.  Then about a week ago, we were told that he had been moved to hospice.  We knew many people who had stopped in to see him.  He was exhausted, they said.  There was a 5 minute limit.  Wait a day or two before you go.  And then he died.

We miss him very much.  He has been with us in some close family tragedies and served as a sounding board for other things.  We were on committees with him and could watch the great administrator at work.  He was smart and funny and his laugh filled a room.

This week, as we attended the services for this wonderful priest and minister, I realized that a priest is not just “my” priest.  We were there grieving.  But so were dozens – hundreds? – of other families where he has been with them in their own losses. He has listened to many others besides us and let others share their difficulties.  He has shared his with them.

Our family is one small family in his lifelong ministry, in one of many parishes and other places he has served.  He knew we loved him, but I wish I had said Thank You more loudly and clearly.

Last weekend, my husband, Jim and I had dinner at a Chinese restaurant.  At the end, we opened our fortune cookies.  Mine was bland and offered lucky numbers.  But Jim’s fortune was specific and intriguing:  “Three months from this date, good things will happen.”

We laughed and calculated the date in mid-May when good things will happen.  I went home and marked it on the calendar in the kitchen.  Good things will happen to us!

The next day, I went for a long walk, taking advantage of our 40 degree winter and enjoying the sunshine, pondering the fortune of “good things” that will come this Spring.  I strolled through the park, nodding and smiling at everyone else who was so happy to have this warm mid-winter day.

I noticed the canopy of huge old trees that hang over the road in the park.  In February, they look like fabulous sculptures of brown against a blue sky.  I thought of the many times our family has walked, biked, or driven along this road.  I savored my memories of the beautiful green canopy of trees in the summer, when they bend down over the road.  The weather is so warm right now that the birds are even chattering and singing, completely out of season.

“Well this could be a day when ‘good things happen,’” I thought to myself.  Then I realized that this day was already exactly this way and I likely would not have noticed any of it — smiling joggers, birds singing, trees arching —  if I hadn’t tucked the idea of “good things happening” into my consciousness.

There are more than 80 days between now and the “good things will happen” day on our kitchen calendar–days for me to remember that every day good things happen, just as a simple gift.  I have decided to make a list for the next 80 days of the daily good things that happen in my everyday life.  It’s an exercise in paying attention.  I will let you know what I find.

Now that seems to be my good fortune!

I was walking through the parking lot at work this week, getting to campus early to catch up on a few things.  I zipped in and parked at the far end of the lot to get a little exercise  on my way into the office.  While I made mental lists of things to do for the day, I strode purposefully across the lot for several minutes.  Then I passed a young woman, a student, who was stopping to take a picture.  I glanced up at what she was seeing.

Only then did I notice the spectacular sky, the colorful sunrise and the horizon we could see across into Iowa.  It was a wonderful sunrise, with a balmy winter’s day to enjoy it.

When will I learn to watch the gifts God is offering me every day? Why do I get so caught up in things that I don’t notice what is going on around me?

What return can I make for all the Lord has given me?

Image by Vertigogen under Creative Commons license

This week we are republishing some of the most popular posts from dotMagis.

It was a momentof grace on a Sunday afternoon. My husband, Jim, and I were walking through the crowd into a Creighton U basketball game. In the middle of the throng on the sidewalk ahead of us, we spotted a little girl, about 5 years old, wearing a spectacular fluffy ballet tutu in game day colors, blue and white. Her special skirt bounced with her as she walked proudly along next to her father. I smiled at the difference in their sizes, her father a huge man, tall and beefy, carefully holding her miniature hand in his.

I saw that in his other hand he carefully held a tiny canvas bag—and out of the top of it peeked a Barbie doll. I loved the image of this large man carrying his daughter’s doll, unselfconscious in his desire to keep her happy.

As we passed them I complimented her on her skirt. They both smiled and she thanked me. “My mom made it for me to wear to the games,” she said proudly twirling in it. Her father looked down at her with such love then reached his hand down to reconnect with her and I saw it. The fingernails on his massive hand were painted a bright pink.

This was truly a father, a dad in all respects, whose love of his daughter gave him the freedom to not only allow his daughter to paint his nails, but to wear them publicly with pride and happiness or to forget he even had them done. Father and daughter joined hands again, their nails matching in color and their joy in each other, clear.

When we hear the story of Martha and Mary, the sisters who were such close friends of Jesus’, we most likely know which one we are.

I have always been a Martha, and like most Marthas, perhaps a little smug about it.  We Marthas might roll our eyes when this gospel comes up, picturing Mary sitting on the floor listening to Jesus and feeling Martha’s slow burn at her unhelpful sister.  Martha was the one who got things done.  Those of us who are Marthas suspect deep down that they somehow translated the ancient words incorrectly and that instead of stopping Martha from her frantic pace in the kitchen, Jesus was really saying to her, “Way to go, Martha.  If you weren’t running around getting things done, we wouldn’t have dinner tonight or a place to gather.”

Martha was the one who would argue with her dear friend, Jesus, and complain to him about things that seemed unfair.  She had a spark to her that I admire.

My Martha life has always been guided by To-Do lists and priorities.  I am all about productivity, tidying things up and closing the cupboard doors that stand open.  I am efficient and self-reliant.

And then I got sick.

This summer, after a small but nagging headache that lasted a few weeks, I found myself in the emergency room of the hospital.  I had a bleeding on my brain.  I was in intensive care for six days.  My head was shaved and I had surgery and was sent home … to do nothing.

I have spent the last four months at home, recovering, waiting for my energy to return.  For the first time in 36 years, I don’t go into an office every day. I don’t “do” much of anything.

Day by day, week by week, I can feel my energy slowly returning, but in the meantime I have been cared for tirelessly by my dear husband.  I had meals delivered by a dozen people in our parish – some I hardly knew.  People sent flowers and cards, letters and plants.  For the first time, I wasn’t the Do-er but the Receiver.

And for these past months, I have been Mary.  Sitting quietly.  Reading.  Watching my husband put together every meal. Seeing my colleague at the office carry on with our work.  Receiving.

It has been a wonderful experience not to be rushing all the time; to take naps a few times a day and to be what I might have called “unproductive.” Now I have a new respect for the art of “restoring” the depleted resource of my energy.  I pay more attention now. I watched my summer garden in fascination and have really noticed the spectacular fall leaves.

Mary listened to Jesus as she sat on the floor, while Martha just picked up the general ideas — she was so very busy with her preparations.  Now, after all of these months at home and contemplating that story, I understand that I didn’t get it right.

I don’t think Jesus was telling Martha to stop everything she did.  I think he just missed her.  He loved her fiery intelligence but wanted her not to be so distracted.  He invited her to sit next to him and simply be with him.  He wasn’t looking for her productivity or her finished To-Do list.

And he isn’t checking my list either.  I won’t find a higher place in heaven because I have finished more or been more productive.  Jesus is simply calling me to sit next to him and listen and not be distracted by Doing.  He wants me to notice how much he loves me and to relax deeply into that love.

I know that as my energy returns, so will my To-Do lists.  But I want to keep my life a little slower.  I want to pay more attention to the world around me.  And I want to sit on the floor next to Jesus and to lean back comfortably on his shoulder, basking in his love, his stories and his laugh, and remember what a graced life this is.

A while ago I sent this as my first blog posting for dotMagis.  Today there is an update.

In December of 2009, I wrote:

I went to a funeral Monday morning; the mother of a friend.  She was about 95 and left behind a grieving husband who will turn 99 next month.  They had been married for 73 years.  I sat in church and pondered that kind of love and commitment.  Seventy-three years?  For those of us who have been married a long time, there are days you wonder if you will make it seven years, then you wonder if you can make it to 12, then 25.  Marriage is so hard on some days and so glorious on most of the other ones.  By far the joyful days outnumber the bad days, but you have to marry your spouse every single morning when you get out of bed.  You have to make that promise to love and cherish all over again for the next 24 hours.

I think we are attracted to people we marry because they are different than we are – they fill in things we don’t have in ourselves.  Those who are hard-driving might find themselves married to a soft-spoken, gentle sort.  The extroverts to the introverts.  The joyfully fun-loving to the serious and determined.  Later, on the hard days, it’s probably the very things that attracted us to each other that are the things that drive us crazy.  It’s not always easy to see the sacred in each other on the bad days.

You marry for your entire life, but each day is a new commitment.  Day by day, week by week, decade by decade, until the young woman you met in your village in Italy, the “prettiest girl in town,” has been your companion in life for 73 years.  The loss of that person leads to the kind of sorrow and grief and emptiness that only our faith can fill and the hope of salvation we have been promised for so long.

Yesterday, I received an e-mail from the daughter who said that her father had died.  She wrote, “My dad died this morning at 11:05 at Hospice House. Peaceful. I think if he was sending this message he would wave goodbye and say:

God has been good.  I have had a good life.  I wish you a good life; God’s blessing.  And now I am on my way to be with the “prettiest girl in town.”

My husband, Jim, and I had traveled to another town and called an old friend – Fr. Dennis, a priest we had known for a long time.  He had been forced into retirement by a debilitating disease. He invited us to his home for Mass.

He had a brand new altar in his living room, a beloved gift that is at the center of his home, and his heart.  It’s too late. He used to say Mass at the dining room table and now stands in front of this altar that he loves, but he can’t stand well.

He sat in his push-up chair and did the Liturgy of the Word from there. When he needed the readings, he opened his iPad and had an audio version of the readings read from there. He said his voice didn’t hold well and this was a long gospel.

Then took his walker to the altar and did the Eucharistic Prayer. His voice quavered a lot. We are not in the same town often, but I wondered that his voice was not as strong as it is over the phone. Then I realized he was crying. He sobbed through the Eucharistic Prayer and at one point just stood, crying. I found myself saying under my breath the next words, “Do this in memory of me,” as if to prompt him.

I thought of this very good man, this wonderful minister and the burden he has to bear with a disease that has already taken the ministry he has dedicated his life to and in the years to come, will take everything.

After Mass, he apologized and said he had a few bad days. He said he could track the progression of the disease in the last two days and he knows now that he will have to move to assisted living. He cried as he talked. It was yet another loss in this process.

As we ate the breakfast we had brought with us, Jim reminded him of a powerful experience of Mass we had once with Dennis on the night of September 11.  I echoed that. I said in a packed church that night, Dennis had used the Mass in time of War and he had announced that it was the first time he had ever used it in all of his years in the priesthood. Dennis didn’t remember it.  I tried to prompt his memory with one of the songs a choir had sung that night.  I sang, “I will not be afraid at all, my stronghold, my savior, I will not be moved.” Dennis just crumpled into tears and I could see how afraid he was.

He talked about the anxiety and fear of what is ahead and all we could do was be with him, listening — our poor ministry to this man who had ministered to thousands over the decades.

We went into the living room and talked for a little bit and he cried more. When we went to the door, not wanting to overstay our welcome, he dissolved into tears again. I put my hand on his shoulder and Jim, with an unerring sense of what is right, began to pray for Fr. Dennis out loud, while he held Dennis’ other shoulder. We asked if he wanted us to stay but he said, no, he would be alright.

What a good man, who must be looking at the cup and asking that it pass him by.

Perhaps because I feel as if I have been brought back to life after a 12-day siege with the flu, I have been thinking a lot about Lazarus.  It’s such a deep and wonderful Gospel with Jesus standing at the end of the tomb, peering into the darkness and calling us back to life: “Lazarus, Come out!”

It’s that kind of summoning back to life, the invitation to unbind ourselves from the things that tie us up that gives such power to our relationship with God.  Lent is a time of becoming aware of how much God longs for a deeper relationship with us, one where we realize that God is not in our minds, but deeply settled in our hearts, just waiting for us to notice.  It’s a gift of faith that I deeply wish for those I love the most.

My dad, who died about 9 years ago, was always terrified of death.  He actually dwelled on it a lot, but it was often in kind of a maudlin way and it was clear he was afraid of it.

Now, when I think back on his life, I can also see that he was raised to be terrified of God.  He knew that at the end, he was going to be punished for his bad life.

My dad was a hard man in many ways but finally, toward end of his life, I had the grace to see him with new eyes, maybe looking at him as Jesus does. He had lived a good life, raised six children and did his best. In his faith life, he never missed Mass. He read a number of Catholic magazines and lots of books and in retirement often had long conversations with his pastor about church issues, church politics, and reform.

But perhaps he could never move his relationship with God from his head to his heart.  It was rare for him to talk about his relationship with God, but when he did, it was clearly one of fear with God as a judge.  It didn’t seem to be a warm relationship but more cautious and leery.

He never had the sense that at the end, he would be falling into the arms of a loving God.

He didn’t know he would hear Jesus saying, “Cletus, come out!”

Sometimes we are blind to what is right in front of us.  Recently at our parish, we watched two altar servers who had fun all through Mass.  It may have been the first time they had served Mass.  Or maybe they had just gotten really comfortable.

They talked.  They laughed.  They slapped their legs with the cords of their server garments.  They pointed to their friends.  At one remarkable moment, one of them half stood and shot a wave over his head to a pal he spotted in the back of the Church.

They thought that because they sat behind the priest, he couldn’t see them, which is true.  Our presider had no idea.  But they were blind to the fact that the entire congregation was facing them—including their parents.  That is a particular kind of blindness, but I suspect the kind you only have once.

All of us are blind to things from time to time, but I suspect the biggest thing we don’t see and can’t always feel is how God delights in us.  Fr. Greg Boyle, S.J., quotes Anthony de Mello, who wrote about how we might meditate on how much God loves us:  “Behold the one beholding you, and smiling.”  Fr. Greg adds, “It is precisely because we have such overactive disapproval glands ourselves, that we tend to create God in our own image.  It is truly hard for us to see the truth that disapproval does not seem to be any part of God’s DNA.  God is just too busy loving us to have any time for disappointment.”

And, God may be still chuckling about the altar servers at Mass last week.