I’ve been having quite a few conversations lately about why Life Teen Missions is focused on learning how to “be” instead of “doing”—admittedly, this is something that’s a little hard to grasp onto (after almost two years, I’m still trying to figure it out!). That doesn’t necessarily mean that, as missionaries, we don’t “do” anything…it’s more like focusing on the WHY behind the “what” we’re doing.
The longer I’ve been a missionary with Life Teen, the more God has invited me to know that in order to be a missionary (to do) I have to learn how to BE missionary. There really is no separating the two. Being missionary is something that involves every part of me; it is the wrapping up of the whole of my life into God’s life. The question is no longer “God, are you calling me to be a missionary or not?” but rather, “God, WHERE and HOW are you calling me to be missionary?” I suppose that may look like the same question, but there is a huge difference in both how I ask the question, and how it’s answered. The reality is, I can “go and do” as much as I want, but if my motivation isn’t Jesus, then I’m missing the point…I’m not necessarily being missionary, I’m doing good things (which is not bad, just not the fullness).
As I started to realize that mission is above all a way of life, a posture of heart, a demeanor of readiness, the activities I defined as “missionary” became different as well. EVERYTHING became about serving God: changing the toilet paper for the 1,000th time during summer camp, making beds for other people to sleep in, washing one million spoons, leading a small group of 8th graders through Stations of the Cross, repairing drywall, coming up with ridiculous skits, learning German, pulling weeds, making dinner for someone, praying the Our Father in Dutch, talking with a teenager about music, cooking with a woman who’s feeling lonely because all her children have moved out of the house. If I can do all THAT with love…well, then, that’s something. Learning how to do those small, everyday things with love is infinitely harder—for me at least—than hopping on a plane and flying over to Botswana to teach English. But as I am being refined in the fire of God’s love, I’m learning that it is in just those small, everyday things where I grow much more in holiness, and grow much closer to understanding what being a missionary means.
I will paraphrase two great Theresa’s here: “We cannot do great things; only small things with great love” (Bl. Mother Teresa)… “If you feel too lazy to pick up a bit of thread, and yet do so for love of Jesus, you acquire more merit than for a much nobler action done in a moment of fervor.” (St. Therese of Lisieux)
Missionary life is crazy. I’ve done things like operate a chainsaw and drive vehicles way too big for me. I speak German (like a 5-year-old. We’re called to be like little children, right?). I am in multiple countries in any given week. I’ve written blogs and emails and shared my life with people who are practically strangers. I’ve been part of a support system to people who are losing hope. I laugh and cry with people. I work so that people can have a place and a space to come together and pray again. I’ve told people hard things. I freak people out because I don’t have a regular job or because I’m in the church every day, or because I know German when they don’t expect me to, or because I do “risky” things like moving 6,000 miles away from family or buying a plane ticket to Poland without a place to stay.
Do I know what’s going to happen next year or 5 years from now? Absolutely not. I really don’t even know what’s going to happen tomorrow. That is both unsettling and comforting—I am completely dependent on God. And so, right now, I TRUST that if I walk forward in faith, desiring nothing but to follow God, He will bring about His will in me and through me. Do I know what He’s doing? ABSOLUTELY NOT. But I trust that He does.
I am still not completely “sure” what God wants me to “do” with my life. I do know this: God is completely and utterly moving in my life, he is actively bringing me into a deeper relationship with him, he is molding my heart and shaping my desires to mirror his plan for me. There are things I’m learning here that I would never be able to learn anywhere else–about myself, about God, about these people I suddenly find myself surrounded by. I am different in every single way from everyone else here, except for our relationship with this person called Jesus. And THAT is mind-blowing. The unity of the Church is miraculous, and something I’ve only come close to understanding because of my experience here—fumbling through Mass in German, Dutch, French, and Czech and KNOWING that Jesus still comes. Seeing how He is uniting people in community, how He is about the work of restoring and renewing the Church here. It brings tears to my eyes to see the faithfulness of people who hang on to Christ when there are comparatively few who know that relationship with Him matters.
I can see some fruits (however small they might be) in our presence here; in the times we gather and pray, in the relationships we’re building with people, in the unexpected desire for other people to know Christ more fully. And THAT is what I believe in, what I hope for, what I rely on–that wherever God “calls” me, whatever I “do,” He will bring about His fullness.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Revelations
I don’t even know how to start this blog. I feel like I have SO MANY thoughts from the last few weeks, I can’t even begin to string them into coherent sentences (which I could use as an excuse for my only blogging once a month, instead of the promised once a week…but that’s just a lame excuse). So I’ll just jump right in and talk about something that I think is rather essential in understanding me, and how God speaks to me.
I have a lot of what have come to be known as “revelations.”
Last year, the other missionaries would all sort of laugh when we’d talk about something in formation and I would start off, “So, today, I had a revelation…” It would usually be something I was really excited about, an instance where God spoke to me very clearly or powerfully, and I would usually cry at some point during the explanation. It became a typical “Danielle” thing.
Now, I don’t claim to have any new insights—I haven’t come to know anything that tons of people before me haven’t already known about our faith, or a relationship with God. My revelations—or, rather, God’s revelations to me—mostly consist of understanding the simplest things in new ways, or with a new intensity. It’s like the difference between looking at a blueprint of something and then actually experiencing the building. The drawing of a building and the building in completed form may be, for all intents and purposes, the “same thing;” but there’s quite a big difference between the pencil lines on a piece of paper which make up the idea and the wood beams, stone, plaster, insulation, electric wiring, tile flooring, water pipes and so forth that make the real thing. Looking at a picture of the Dom in Cologne is one thing; it’s nice, you can appreciate it for how beautiful it is, you can read some interesting facts about it and wonder at how long it took to make and whatnot. You can even appreciate other people telling you about their experiences inside. But the whole thing comes crashing into your reality in a completely different way when you’re there—walking across floors that people have been walking across for centuries, climbing the hundreds of stairs to the bell tower that once-upon-a-time ago, someone had to climb for real (and not for a fun tourist attraction). You no longer only have the “idea” of being able to go in—something that’s rather nebulous and intangible—but you have the concrete, personal experience of actually going into the building. Looking at it. Touching it. Smelling it. Kneeling in front of the Lord in the Eucharistic chapel. Hearing the cacophony of shuffling feet and whispers of awe in all sorts of different languages and the bells going off and hundreds of camera shutters snapping. Sweating your way up the bell tower stairs.
You have, in a word: REALITY.
And, after all, when you really think about it, that is what the thing was designed for in the first place! Imagine if we always stopped with the blueprints! What would our world be like with only ideas?
The fact of the matter is we are a flesh and blood people—a laughing and crying, an eating and drinking, a sight and sound and touch and taste and hearing folk. We were made to experience things, with our whole selves, not just to think about them.
That is the Incarnation—God becoming flesh, taking on our reality, becoming tangible. In the person of Jesus, God is no longer just an “idea” or a conceptualization, but flesh and blood. People touched Him, spoke with Him, ate meals with Him. He is a “God who is with us.” And that challenges us to engage with our whole selves in return. Christian life is about KNOWING GOD: “this is eternal life, that [we] should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ” (John 17:3). Jesus—God Incarnate—came so that we would live in the reality that is his life. It is not enough to know things about Him; Jesus made that clear in everything He said to the Scribes and Pharisees. They knew tons about God, but were unable to recognize Him when He was in their midst (“Woe to you Pharisees! You pay tithes [...] but you pay no attention to judgment and to love for God.” Luke 11:42). The people who did know Jesus were the people who ripped open a roof to be near Him, who clamored through a great crowd of people just to touch the tassel on His cloak, who bathed His feet with tears and wiped them with their hair, who yelled at Him from the side of the road to get His attention, who climbed up trees just to catch a glimpse of Him.
And so, these “revelation” moments are much more than me finally understanding things I’ve always known (the beauty of the Mass, the truth of Scripture, the mystery of God becoming flesh, the reality of evil in the world…). I am climbing the tree, running along the road, obsessively following Him from place to place—just to see, to feel…to know.
I am becoming a disciple.
“We shall never have finished plumbing the mystery of the personality of Jesus. We shall never have finished listening to Him as Master, imitating Him as an example, loving Him as Savior. We shall never have finished discovering His relevance, His importance for all the great questions of our times; we shall never have finished sensing the birth in us, as a unique spiritual experience, of the desire, the torment, the hope to be able finally to see Him, to meet Him, to understand and taste to the point of supreme happiness that He is our new and true life and our salvation…we must live in the hope of meeting Jesus as we meet a traveling pilgrim on the way, a friend we know, a brother of our own blood, a Master of our own tongue, a liberator who can accomplish everything, a Savior.” (Pope Paul VI)
I have a lot of what have come to be known as “revelations.”
Last year, the other missionaries would all sort of laugh when we’d talk about something in formation and I would start off, “So, today, I had a revelation…” It would usually be something I was really excited about, an instance where God spoke to me very clearly or powerfully, and I would usually cry at some point during the explanation. It became a typical “Danielle” thing.
Now, I don’t claim to have any new insights—I haven’t come to know anything that tons of people before me haven’t already known about our faith, or a relationship with God. My revelations—or, rather, God’s revelations to me—mostly consist of understanding the simplest things in new ways, or with a new intensity. It’s like the difference between looking at a blueprint of something and then actually experiencing the building. The drawing of a building and the building in completed form may be, for all intents and purposes, the “same thing;” but there’s quite a big difference between the pencil lines on a piece of paper which make up the idea and the wood beams, stone, plaster, insulation, electric wiring, tile flooring, water pipes and so forth that make the real thing. Looking at a picture of the Dom in Cologne is one thing; it’s nice, you can appreciate it for how beautiful it is, you can read some interesting facts about it and wonder at how long it took to make and whatnot. You can even appreciate other people telling you about their experiences inside. But the whole thing comes crashing into your reality in a completely different way when you’re there—walking across floors that people have been walking across for centuries, climbing the hundreds of stairs to the bell tower that once-upon-a-time ago, someone had to climb for real (and not for a fun tourist attraction). You no longer only have the “idea” of being able to go in—something that’s rather nebulous and intangible—but you have the concrete, personal experience of actually going into the building. Looking at it. Touching it. Smelling it. Kneeling in front of the Lord in the Eucharistic chapel. Hearing the cacophony of shuffling feet and whispers of awe in all sorts of different languages and the bells going off and hundreds of camera shutters snapping. Sweating your way up the bell tower stairs.
You have, in a word: REALITY.
And, after all, when you really think about it, that is what the thing was designed for in the first place! Imagine if we always stopped with the blueprints! What would our world be like with only ideas?
The fact of the matter is we are a flesh and blood people—a laughing and crying, an eating and drinking, a sight and sound and touch and taste and hearing folk. We were made to experience things, with our whole selves, not just to think about them.
That is the Incarnation—God becoming flesh, taking on our reality, becoming tangible. In the person of Jesus, God is no longer just an “idea” or a conceptualization, but flesh and blood. People touched Him, spoke with Him, ate meals with Him. He is a “God who is with us.” And that challenges us to engage with our whole selves in return. Christian life is about KNOWING GOD: “this is eternal life, that [we] should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ” (John 17:3). Jesus—God Incarnate—came so that we would live in the reality that is his life. It is not enough to know things about Him; Jesus made that clear in everything He said to the Scribes and Pharisees. They knew tons about God, but were unable to recognize Him when He was in their midst (“Woe to you Pharisees! You pay tithes [...] but you pay no attention to judgment and to love for God.” Luke 11:42). The people who did know Jesus were the people who ripped open a roof to be near Him, who clamored through a great crowd of people just to touch the tassel on His cloak, who bathed His feet with tears and wiped them with their hair, who yelled at Him from the side of the road to get His attention, who climbed up trees just to catch a glimpse of Him.
And so, these “revelation” moments are much more than me finally understanding things I’ve always known (the beauty of the Mass, the truth of Scripture, the mystery of God becoming flesh, the reality of evil in the world…). I am climbing the tree, running along the road, obsessively following Him from place to place—just to see, to feel…to know.
I am becoming a disciple.
“We shall never have finished plumbing the mystery of the personality of Jesus. We shall never have finished listening to Him as Master, imitating Him as an example, loving Him as Savior. We shall never have finished discovering His relevance, His importance for all the great questions of our times; we shall never have finished sensing the birth in us, as a unique spiritual experience, of the desire, the torment, the hope to be able finally to see Him, to meet Him, to understand and taste to the point of supreme happiness that He is our new and true life and our salvation…we must live in the hope of meeting Jesus as we meet a traveling pilgrim on the way, a friend we know, a brother of our own blood, a Master of our own tongue, a liberator who can accomplish everything, a Savior.” (Pope Paul VI)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)