Community not Comfort

We had our immersion experience yesterday, visiting Isaiah House in Santa Ana (A Catholic Worker House).  I have wondered about Catholic Worker houses since I read a book about Dorothy Day.  I was intrigued by it.  Who are these people that give up so much to live in community with others?  Sharing everything with them and sacrificing their privacy.  I need my "me" time, my privacy.  I think this would be the biggest sacrifice to me.

I found our visit a bit nerve wracking at first.  We were just there, no job to do, no items to be handed out.  We had only ourselves and it left me feeling exposed and inadequate.  The ladies I was able to talk to you were nice and fairly open.  These were not people you would expect to be living on the street.

I was able to speak a little with Leah, one of the Catholic Workers living there.  She spoke of community and as not seeing these women as "a problem to be solved.".  Isn't that what we always want to do?  We want to solve the problem.  How much harder is it to get to know them??  How much easier is it to assign blame and pass judgment when we don't know them?

Our Session 5 meeting is this morning.  The week is a little fast-tracked since we had session 4 on Thursday.  Doesn't leave a lot of time to get the reading done.  But thanks to the 10 teenage boys at my house overnight I was up at 5 AM and was able to get my reading done.

The Compassion book is really getting to me.  Last week's reading about community left me a little confused.. I wasn't sure how to bring together what they were telling me. "Compassion reveals itself in community" was one of the quotes.  I wasn't sure what that meant - can I not be compassionate on my own?  Do I need to be acting only in community?  Now, I see that I didn't really get it at all.

I just finished the chapter "Displacement" and it is beginning to take shape in my head now.  This notion that when we are displaced we are "gaining distance from the world".  As long as we are motivated by what people in this world find interesting or important than we cannot truly live a life of compassion.

Of course, then I start thinking about where am I supposed to go?  Am I supposed to pack it all up and move somewhere else?  Live a radically different life?.... Maybe..  Maybe not-.  It seems I need to be attentive to what God is calling me to in the here and now.  What is He saying for me to do today?  What does he want me to notice today?  What can I learn today about what God is doing in my life and all around me?

I want to know it all right now.  What is God's plan for my life?  He doesn't work like that, so, I guess I'll have to be patient... and quiet,,,  so I can hear His voice.

Narrow my Focus

I wrote this post early Saturday morning the day of our retreat:

I’m finding this process so interesting.  In the time that I am spending reading, praying, during our meetings – some things are starting to come to the surface for me.  What is really sticking with me is that it is about relationship.  This isn’t really a new revelation.  I have known for as long as I can remember that God is calling us into relationship with Him.  But this knowing has changed and evolved.

I think right now God is really driving home to me this relationship with others.  Of course, the most important commandment is to love God and to love others.  So, if God defines loving Him as being in right relationship with Him then loving others must require a right relationship.  It seems that Jesus’ compassion stemmed from this.  He was compassionate and moved by those that he encountered.  He took time to know them and to learn their hurts.

From the movie, “Portrait of a Radical-The Jesus Movement” they talk about living a simple life.  They reference that we can’t see clearly through the murky water, the mud isn’t settling at the bottom because we are under an avalanche of distraction.  What am I not seeing through my own avalanche of distraction?  How can I be attentive to others and be in right relationship with them if I can’t even see them or be attentive to when they are in need?

Then it seems to circle around to what I read in “Tattoos on the Heart” about narrowing our focus.   Here is what he wrote:  “Jesus, in Matthew’s gospel says, ‘How narrow is the gate that leads to life.”  Mistakenly, I think, we’ve come to believe that this is about restriction.  The way is narrow.  But it really wants us to see that narrowness is the way.” “Our choice is not to focus on the narrow but to narrow our focus.  The gate leads to life is not about restriction at all.  It is about an entry into the expansive.”

What if I learned to live more simply?  If my focus were narrowed in on that – to live simply so I could focus on being in right relationship.  What if I learned to not cram so much in the day that I was always in a hurry?  If I took time to nurture the relationships that I have and allow room for new ones?  What would I learn about others and what they need?  Would I find ways that I could fill that need?

I’m always looking for that big way that I could be compassionate.  What program or ministry is calling to me?  Where can I do something big?  Maybe, it starts here by doing something small - by doing less so we can be more to those around us.  By quieting our lives so we can hear God and hear the needs of others. 

The journey has begun

Our JustFaith group is formed and we have begun the journey.

I thought it might be helpful to start a blog about our group.  I have wanted to take part in JustFaith for years and am excited as well as anxious that we have begun.

I long to imrpove my relationship with God and my hope is that through this process I would be humbled and vulnerable because that is the place where God always meets me.  Now that I think of it, God meets me always but it is when I am vulnerable and uncomfortable that I meet Him.

He is always faithful.  He never changes but at the same times is always changing in the ways he reaches me. He uses different people, different events, the extraordinary, the every day...  If I am willing to listen, willing to quiet my own thoughts, willing to put aside my own self-absorption and self-doubt then I can fully hear Him.

So, I guess that is my prayer for our group that we would fully hear God on this journey.  That we would find ways to quiet our busy, distracted lives so that we may seek Him.  I'm anxious to learn from the people that have been put in this group.  It is not a mistake that we have been placed together and I am thankful for each of them.