Healing out of Hurt

Be grateful for your sins...they are carriers of grace.

~ Anthony de Mello, S.J.

Low self-esteem and glass-half-empty thinking runs in my family, as in so many, and I have been struggling with it my whole life.  Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose.  The past couple months, thanks to the inclement weather, my impending graduation, and other factors, I seem to be losing this struggle more often than winning.  I can be hindered by self doubt when I am challenged to grow and move forward, and sometimes lose sight of my own goodness.  In those dark moments I sometimes feel alone, though I am surrounded by goodness and by good people who love me.  

Thankfully, amid these difficult feelings, I have found great consolation not only in my loving wife Joy as well as family and friends, but in a "holy conversation" I had today with the ever-affirming and wonderful Terry Devino, S.J. at BC.  In our conversation, I was reminded of the potential value of suffering, of how one's pain can be a source of grace for others.  For my part I think my pain has given me depth, made me more sensitive to the sufferings of others, and motivated me to affirm others.  For instance, I find meaning in telling others they are awesome precisely because I know what it's like to feel anything but awesome.  I want to help them dwell in their own goodness because I know how it feels to doubt or deny that goodness.  And I feel like I "get it" when others share their sufferings with me.  In a word, these experiences of "wounded healing" (to borrow from Henri Nouwen) have shown me that healing can come from suffering, and that my own healing is bound up with that of others. 

We all hurt in some way.  We all suffer somehow.  Some hide it better than others, but that does not change this human fact.  The only question is how to deal with it.  Do we curse it or use it?   Do we let it kill us, or move us to give life to others?  Do we let it imprison us in self, or do we let it impel us outward?  This is rarely a simple choice to make, and for my own part I very often choose wrongly.  Indeed, it is much more easily said than done, yet the more often we can choose the upside of the downside and find redemptive meaning and power in suffering, the better life is for ourselves and others.  

REM is right: "everybody hurts sometime," and therefore, everybody can heal sometime, too.  Here's hoping we make that choice more frequently in this world of hurt that can sure use our healing.  

God Said We are Good...and We Said No

Behold God beholding you...and smiling.

~ Anthony De Mello, S.J.

Tonight I went to a talk by my friend Terry Devino, S.J., a wonderful Jesuit priest at BC whom I first met back in the day as an undergrad and who married my wife and I in May 2011 (I should say "officiated," as we are not married to him).  Terry's talk, titled "You're Kinda a Big Deal," focused on the essential goodness within each of us, the God-given goodness that forms the core of our unique personhood and makes every one of us lovable at heart.  Terry shared some very cool insights about getting in touch with that goodness, seeing it in others and ourselves, and letting it shine.  

One of the things he shared that struck me and stuck with me was his take on Genesis 3: 8-11, when God looked for Adam and Eve in the garden, but they hid from God because they realized they were naked.  Terry focused on God's response: "Who told you that you were naked?" and interpreted it as God's way of saying "Who said you weren't good enough as you are, as I made you?"  In the Genesis story, God said of creation, including humanity, that "it is good" - and we said no.  

Terry's imaginative interpretation of that passage got me thinking.  Setting aside disputes about whether the Genesis account was "true" and how it should be understood, I am struck by the notion that the first sin was rooted not in pride but in shame, the flip side of pride.  Adam and Eve rejected their own God-given goodness and refused to believe that they were good enough as they were, and so they succumbed to the serpent's temptation "to be like gods."  And we do the same thing today, time and again.

The reasons we reject our own goodness are legion.  We are devalued by a relentlessly degrading consumer culture that constantly tells us we're not good enough unless we look a certain way, have certain things, or make enough money.  We are condemned by Pharisaical judges and judgments within our religious traditions.  And we are robbed of our dignity by haters who affix negative labels to us and reduce us to the stereotypes associated with those labels.  

Worst of all, however, is when we ourselves reject our own goodness.  A character in The Princess Diaries (yes, I did see that movie) said something that stuck with me: "Oh look at me, I'm a princess!  Wow, I'm so pretty!  Me, me, me, me, me!"  Okay, not that quote, but this one: "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."  Damn straight.  Unfortunately, the painful fact of human existence is that we so often give this consent; we so often reject and hate ourselves; and wish we were someone else.

I am intimately familiar with such self-hatred, having struggled with depression and seen many family members and friends do the same.  It breaks my heart when I see others punish themselves this way.  I want to shake them and tell them to refuse to submit to undue shame, but instead to get in touch with their own goodness, to believe in it and make it the starting point for all thought and behavior.  The well-worn saying "if you can't say something nice, don't say it at all" applies not only to the way we treat others, but also the way we treat ourselves.

So, in closing, I pray that we can accept God's invitation of love, calling us to know that we are loved, to rediscover our indelible goodness, and to live from this core conviction.  I hope that we can remove barriers to receiving God's love and that of others, and instead let ourselves be touched and changed by that love.  And I pray that we come to know how good we really are, and to live into that knowledge.  

God said we are good, and it's high time we agreed.  

Puebla Immersion Trip 2013

The Puebla peeps, hanging out at the Jesuit university in Cholula

I believe experience is the ultimate teacher, and there is no substitute for it.  I can learn about the great mysteries of life in classes, books, movies, and television programs, but until I leave my front door to go out and experience them, it is only academic, and I am only going halfway.

Such was the case with my recent trip to Puebla, Mexico, which I made from January 4-12 as part of the Boston College Arrupe International Immersion Program.  This trip presented me with a wonderful experience so rich with blessings that it defies summary.  If a picture is worth 1,000 words, this experience is worth 1,000 times 1,000.  Nonetheless, I will share a few impressions from the trip, before they leak from my sieve of a memory and are buried beneath the weeks ahead.

Wild van rides from place to place: that's how we roll.

I served as mentor on the trip with my co-mentor and fellow BC STM student Katie, offering what support we could to student leaders Meghan and Edwin, and walking on this journey with a symmetrical group of 12 BC undergraduates: 6 sophomores, 6 seniors; 6 male, 6 female.  Yet, though my ostensible role was that of mentor, I soon found that they were my teachers, and in many ways were more advanced in wisdom and depth than I.  I enjoyed sharing deep conversation on life while we worked, reflections at the end of the day, and laughter during games at night (Celebrity, Mafia, Assassin, etc, all of which were new to this old man).  

Hanging out with the corn we husked.

It was a wonderful privilege to watch them grow, and witness their unique personalities and passions shine forth. They really stepped up to the plate and made sacrifices unheard of for most BC students. Plus, I learned some cool things about Millennial culture: FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), YOLO (You Only Live Once), "selfies" (photos one takes of oneself), "photobombs" (jumping into another's photo), "sick" (which does not refer to illness), and "the Drop" (the pause before sick beats in house music).

Showing Francisco how to break the rock.

We met some really cool people in Mexico.  We grew to love our hosts Miguel and Ena, staff of Community Links International, who coordinated our lodging, itinerary, transportation, and activities - in short, our entire experience.  Miguel offered presentations on water conservation (click here for video on bottled water), materialism and consumption (click here for a video on "the story of stuff") that really shook us up and taught us about the poverty and justice realities in Mexico.  Ena and her husband Manuel offered their awesome home (made of all natural, recycled materials, complete with a dry composting outdoor toilet...best toilet ever!) as our home base from 

Playing with Israel...very tiring!

which we broke off into groups doing different activities during the day.  Finally, and best of all, people from a nearby village welcomed us into their homes and into their lives.  For example, I stayed two nights in the home of Francisco and Nico, who were very patient with my complete lack of Spanish (total gringo) and let me play with their adorable kids Israel and Naphthalie.  The best part was the second night, when my fellow trip member Pete and I enjoyed a community gathering of 40+ people praying the Rosary (great chants, flowers laid at the foot of a makeshift shrine of the Sacred Heart of Jesus) and sharing a homecooked meal together (Pete and I even got to help Francisco's family serve their guests, though I made for a lousy waiter!).  In short, we were blessed with good people every step of the way, and they touched our hearts more than they will ever know.

Manure men

Finally, a word about some of the places we went and things we did.  Since this was an intensive service 

immersion trip designed to promote solidarity with the people there, we not only walked with them, we worked with them.  Our tasks were diverse: husking corn and picking the kernels off the cobs, pulling weeds in the cornfield (hard work!), mixing organic materials into a potent fertilizer (yours truly shoveled heaps of manure...perhaps in punishment for previous sins!), helping build a dry composting bathroom using

Run, run, from the scary monster!

"coping" (one of the many cool indigenous technologies we learned, mixing mud and straw into very strong bricks), and playing with the village kids at an afterschool program.  Again, I was very impressed with the way my BC mates worked so hard and did everything asked of them.  These and other activities reached a wonderful crescendo near the end of the trip, when we shared corn tortillas (made from the corn we processed) with our village friends, and then played with the kids one last time.  As the sun set on the day and on our trip, the blessings and lessons of our trip were sealed in our minds and hearts.

Making tortillas on our final afternoon in the village

In closing, I look back at these impressions and consider their lasting lessons.  I, the whitest of white boys, discovered how very difficult it was to be a stranger in a strange land, unable to speak the language - now I know how immigrants to the US feel, and it's not easy.  I learned the hard way how hard the villagers worked every day, and indeed I would have fainted had I worked as they did much longer! I saw how much they cared for each other, for us, and for their land - it may sound cliche, but they knew a lot that we did not, and they seemed more fulfilled in spite of material poverty, scarcity of resources, and simple living than we did in our affluent, busy, techno-crazy First World lives.  Finally, I realized that we owe it to them, and to our experience, to remember the people, remain in solidarity with them, and share it with people on this end.

To that end, though it only scratched the surface, 

I nonetheless hope this sketch was helpful, that it conveyed in some small way the richness of this experience; and that when our Arrupe group shares our Solidarity Project this spring, people take interest and experience in some small way the "falling in love" that we did.  

Nothing is more practical than 

The active volcano steaming near the village.

finding God, 

than 

falling in Love 

in a quite absolute, final way.

What you are in love with, 

what seizes your imagination, will affect everything.

It will decide 

what will get you out of bed 

in the morning,

what you do with your evenings,

how you spend your weekends,

what you read, whom you know,

what breaks your heart,

and what amazes you 

with joy and gratitude.

Fall in Love, stay in love, 

and it will decide everything.

~ Pedro Arrupe, S.J.

Rereading LOTR: a Good Hobbit for Good Living in 2013

My flight to Cleveland this afternoon was canceled due to inclement weather, delaying my holiday visit with family there.  Fortunately, I found out about the cancellation before I'd left for Logan Airport, so I did not have to languish in that miserable purgatory of discontented travelers.  Instead, I followed the loving advice of my wife Joy, the nurse who always has the right prescription for me, and sat back to enjoy several hours of Middle Earth by watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  

Good advice: in fact, it's just what the doctor, or better yet, the nurse ordered!  While killing time before heading to Logan for the late flight, then, I kicked back in my recliner, lit the Christmas lights on our tree, and watched the second and third movies of the trilogy: the Two Towers and Return of the King.  Great stuff.  While I did not go so far as to dress in costume or speak Elvish - I am, after all, only part nerd - I did enjoy entering into the story, a story that, like all the great ones, stands the test of time.  Indeed, watching these movies, plus the Hobbit last weekend, has made me not only want to read the books again, but has reminded me just how good, true, and beautiful the best stories are.  

I grew up on stories like Lord of the Rings, the Chronicles of Narnia, the Dark is Rising, Star Wars, and later, Harry Potter.  I owe this to my mom - in spite of the numerous Transformers I begged for on my endless Christmas lists in childhood, she stubbornly insisted on buying these book series for me, and I have been all the better for it.  They are what I continue to enjoy, even as my Transformers collected dust and found themselves in boxes over time.

So, what is it that makes these stories special to me?  For one thing, they give me a break from the tedium of everyday life, which does not always feel anything like adventure.  Secondly, I have always had an active, imagination hungry for good books and movies to devour, loving nothing better than a well-told story.  It's just the way I've always been.  Thirdly, and most importantly, I think the greatest stories touch upon the images, truths, memories, and dreams that animate humanity.  Joseph Campbell explored this line of inquiry far better than I could, but suffice it to say that I have found narrative most powerful in communicating the deeper truths in life and igniting one's spirit to seek them.  Stories don't just tell us what is true, good, and beautiful - or their opposites - but show us.  This is "show and tell" at its best; or, rather, tell and show - a story well told shows us the unsayable, that which cannot be said but can be apprehended and experienced.  

Returning to Lord of the Rings, then, I savor the movies and books, enjoying the characters, plot, and world hatched from the ingenious head of Tolkien.  I have not read the books in a good decade or so, so this winter I will refresh my memory and relish the stories once again, knowing that every rereading of inexhaustible classics such as these shows me something new.  And if there's a better way to get through the long, cold, nasty winter than curling up with a good book, I haven't heard it.

LeBron James and Ignatian Indifference

Last night, when I found out the Miami Heat won the NBA championship and LeBron James finally got his coveted ring, a number of bitter thoughts surfaced and swirled in my mind:

• He's still - putting it politely - an unpleasant person who has given new meaning to self-love.  
• He couldn't win without an all-star cast and outstanding role players surrounding him.
• He should have done it in Cleveland, but instead this is yet another punch in the stomach for us.
• Sports publications and commentators will fall over themselves with unbridled adulation for James.  
• Ugh, yuck, @#$@%!!!

This morning, however, I woke up with a new clarity dominated by one thought: who cares? Does this really change my life in any way?  No.  It's just sports, it's just a game, and as a good friend once said, "it doesn't have an impact on my life."

That may be going a bit too far.  Sports are a terrific diversion, a break from the real cares of life, and a well-played game by creative, gifted players like James is a work of art unto itself.  I've grown up rooting for my Cleveland teams, buying posters, collecting trading cards, and playing pickup games with friends, imagining I was Bernie Kosar, Jerry Rice, Larry Nance, and other greats.  In short, the sporting world has always been important to me, and I would be lying if I said I could simply dismiss it with mental sleight of hand.  

Nonetheless, I must put sports in proper perspective, and here I am reminded of the principle of "indifference" articulated by St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits.  For Ignatius, indifference referred not to "not caring," but to the cultivation of an interior stance of freedom by detaching from disordered affections.  As I understand it, that means letting go of the things which are not really important, things that get in the way of real living and loving, so that I can focus instead on the things that count, that really matter to me: my wife, family, friends, and the pursuit of meaning, happiness, and love.  

I will always enjoy my diversions - books, online articles, Facebook, movies, the outdoors, and of course sports - but as soon as I make any of these as the center of my universe, I'm lost.  I'm not free, I'm not myself, and I'm certainly not happy.  

So to hell with LeBron and his overrated, overpaid, prima donna brethren in the professional sporting world.  Let them have their rings, let them count their money, and let them hug their trophies.  I will never dismiss them entirely.  I will never turn them off completely.  I will never not watch the games.  But the more I can put them in their proper place and remind myself that they really don't matter, make a real difference, or deserve an inordinate amount of attention or devotion, the better off I and the people around me will be.