YOKED

After months of attempting to clearly articulate my sense of ministry for a handful of graduate school applications, I have arrived at a few running definitions that satisfy me- for the moment.   They are all purposefully abstract, intimating that the underlying gospel dynamic is one of liberation that leads to abundant, joyful self-giving. But if the refrain is that simple, that adaptable, how could I begin to put parameters on when and where “ministry” takes place? Throughout my life I have encountered exquisitely refined ministry from the people you would expect- keen professors, embracing campus ministers, and doting Jesuit priests who have made the title “father” more fitting than a pair of worn-in jeans.   But I’ve also seen a different variety of ministry flourish outside of the Catholic mileau.   For instance, ministry was unwaveringly honest and direct for the alcohol and drug counselors I worked beside at Friendship House.   There, they had different names for God (a po...

“Faith should not make your life simple.   It should make it even more complex,” a friend once said to me.   It is a statement I have been wrestling with for some time.   On the one hand, I am tempted to reply that life is already dizzyingly complex, full of existential and interpersonal puzzles to sort through; shouldn’t one’s faith help to ease this complicated frenzy?   Simultaneously, I am relieved to hear my friend speak these words, because they acknowledge and do not attempt to reduce the complexity I confront daily in this world.   If, in the words of Jon Sobrino, we “must be faithful to reality,” then we are also compelled to admit that reality does not always play into theological paradigms as neatly as one might hope.   To cram them into religious narratives uncritically, would be to violate truth as it impinges upon us in the varied, situational contexts of our lives.   It would mean denying, or short-circuiting some aspect of our humanity, a humanity within which God ...

Fresh The scent of a baby Clings to a sweater, A shoulder, Arms, lucky enough to have held His sweetly swaddled body, If only for a while. And there is a freshness found There, In the fragrant folds Of newborn skin Fresh,   Like the smell of clouds Ready to burst with Tiny drops of   enormous life. The sweat of heaven Pours forth from my God-baby’s skin And all I can think - Or deeply remember- Is that Jesus came In this way And in this skin That we might know Freshness once more. I cannot help but cling to a scent like that.     Christmas 2009

“ I remember exasperating my piano teacher(s) as a child by flying through Chopin at breakneck speed, ignoring rests and fermatas in furious pursuit of fini.   I knew the notes but they never sounded very musical when I finished them.   I learned later from a maestro counseling his orchestra, “The music is in between the notes.”   Faith, like music, needs rest. After all it started in a womb, and there is no such thing as instant incubation.   Americans have pronounced a pox on waiting.   Yet Sabbaths punctuate the Godbearing life.   Godbearers live through Advents and dark nights of the soul in which Jesus tells us: “Sit here while I pray.”” (Kenda Creasy Dean; The Godbearing Life ) Do you know what it is like to wake in the middle of the night, cheeks flushed from the perfect dream, to a room filled with silence? You are suspended between your multicolored dream and the opaque moonlight falling across the sheets.   It is then, in that oddly lucid moment that you have to decide wh...

Today I volunteered at Loaves & Fishes, a soup kitchen in Santa Ana that serves a number of homeless men and woman, struggling families and a diverse group of people that could be classified as the “working poor.” After serving a number of nacho and bean plates, I found myself at a shaded lunch table, across from a woman who appeared to be eating alone.   Her name was Gloria – or around those parts, “Outspoken Gloria” as I would shortly find out.   She was open enough to conversing with a total stranger, and we began talking about her working union and the medical benefits she was hoping would be extended throughout her retirement.   This led her to the point that she spent many a conversations making: young people, such as myself, do not understand the world and what is worth fighting for.   Gloria protested the war, she grew up with Kennedy’s hopeful voice booming from the television, she knows what it means to take a stand in defense of life’s most precious goods.   “You...

It is a humid summer day and I am on my way to visit my Dad.  He lives in an apartment complex where people stick miniature flamingoes and spinning windstars in their planters.  A few kids splash around the community pool in floaties and ruffly swim suits, as their parents turn up the mariachi station on a handheld radio.  Approaching his patio steps, I notice how much his once modest array of plants has sprawled into a lavishly overgrown garden.  I enter the antechamber of hanging plants and wild shoots and part a ripened curtain of tomato vines that dangles from the surrounding lattice. The amount of green here is astounding.  It catches my eye from all different angles and when it meets the light, bursts into the color it was destined for.  I remember when my Dad first began planting his patio garden.  It started out looking very potted and contained- a rose bush in the corner, a few spongy leaves, and the exotic stalks I would have to ask him to name. But now all that has ch...

Needles.   There is little else that terrifies me like needles.   I am not sure how or why the phobia began in my life, only that from an early age I have been hysterically fearful of white lab coats, the quick dab of a wet sterilizing pad, tourniquets, and the idea of anything sharper than a pencil nearing me. Before entering sixth grade I was required to complete another dreaded round of childhood immunizations.   My mom knew what an ordeal this could be, how it would take forty minutes to coerce me from the car, and another twenty to pry my white-knuckled hands from the wooden trim running along the walls of the office corridor.   With the hope of avoiding such a scene and relieving me of these anticipatory tears, she simply stopped telling me where we were going.   Or she’d make something else up.   A ‘sale at the neighboring shopping mall’ always seemed to do the trick. Sometimes she would inch me in with little half lies.   “Yes, we are at the doctor, Maggi, but all you h...