Knock. Knock.

Come, Father, Creator.

Come, Son, Redeemer.

Come, Spirit, Sanctifier. 

Lent helped draw us in relationship with Jesus Christ the Redeemer. Easter fills us with the Love of our Father, recreating us in our the waters of our baptism. We now approach Pentecost and prepare ourselves to be set on fire by the Spirit. Do we allow the Spirit to transform our inner environment, the space around our relationships, to be fertile soil for creation, mercy, and God’s transformation? What barriers do we face?

Guiding Reflections:

We become like those we love. 

In our relationship with Christ, He is always the initiator. 

We can only love others as much we allow ourselves to be in love with Jesus Christ. 

Central to this week’s reflection is whether we are aware of the movements of the Spirit in our homes and classroom and that we are responding to them at all times. It is so easy to think that God is responding to us and our needs. Not so. 

Think of some really cool things you’ve accomplished this past week. Those moments that felt really satisfying. Do you see God’s role in their success? Are you aware of the Spirit’s movements?

Richard Hauser writes in his book, In His Spirit, that, “The Spirit initiates all good desires and we listen and respond (19)”.

If you are like me, your first mistake may be that you do not allow Christ to be the initiator or in some ways simply give him credit for being the initiator when it's most obvious. 

In our culture, we expect certain things to come to us or to be a direct result of the actions we take. Yes, it is by intentional and repeated effort we grow in virtue and develop our skills and talents, define our neural pathways, and change habits. However, these deeds and efforts and the desire to accomplish them are driven by God. 

We must prepare the interior fertile soil of our hearts so He can lead these efforts, direct them, and steer them toward the eternal place He has prepared for us. 

Think about the environment in which you teach or live. Your mind might drift to your crucifix with fresh palm branches tucked behind it, the scripture you’ve incorporated on your walls, or your classroom prayer space. These are physical signs in which we have control that create our environment. 

Yet, even more so is our body language, our presence, our spoken and unspoken words. Do your daily actions and how you present yourself (even on our most needy mental health days!) create a space for our children and colleagues that makes them feel in the presence of Christ, so they can clearly see and feel his role directing their actions and ours? 

Here is one great example I remember from one of those “feel good” keynotes at the beginning of year Professional Development for teachers. 

Standing at the door and greeting your students when they enter. 

What does this say to your disciples?

I care about you.

I care about what happens to you when you enter this door.

I am here for you with whatever challenges you face today and to celebrate your victories.

As a representative of Jesus Christ, it also says:

God cares about you.

He cares about what happens to you when enter this door.

He is here for you with whatever challenges you face today and to celebrate your victories.

A simple action. Yet, it is so tempting to be at your desk, getting one last thing entered into the grade book, or organizing the parent driver list for the field trip, details for whatever latest service project or student assembly you’re chairing, etc…As a principal, I am guilty of this too because uninterrupted moments before school starts are like liquid gold to me. 

I am often saddened when I miss the morning greeting because this is a time when teachers or parents often try to grab me to put things on my radar for the day. As a principal this is important too! It would be equally detrimental if I “put off” these encounters. The key is allowing the Spirit to lead and initiate where I place myself and that it is the best place for an encounter in which God can do His work. 

At one of my schools, our maintenance director opens the door every morning for each student and greets them too. He is right outside my door and I know that each day by this action the students are entering into a space where they know they are loved and cared about. 

Think about the rest of your day? Are you exhausted at the end of the day from trying to initiate virtue in your students and they just don’t seem to get it? Maybe you’re coming at it from the wrong angle? Maybe it is not ours to initiate, but rather nurture. 

We become like those we love. 

Your children (students) love you and desire to become like you. 

You love Jesus and desire to become like Him.

In our relationship with Christ, He is always the initiator. 

Are you trying to mold your students to your expectation of what learning should look like and sound like?

Or, are you allowing Christ to initiate what learning should look like and sound like by molding yourself to Him and them?

We can only love others as much we allow ourselves to be in love with Jesus Christ. 

Did Lent help discipline you in spending more time growing in relationship with God? Keep it up! Or, start now…

He’s waiting at the door to greet you. 

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter!

He is risen!

Alleluia! Alleluia!

Jesus Christ - the perfection of all temperaments, all science, all Life! 

The perfection of LOVE.

Reinforcements

Why am I here?

What is my purpose?

Where am I going?

These three questions posed by Fr. Roy during the funeral homily of the father of a second grade student will stay with me forever. How did he summarize in under six minutes everything I would like to spend the rest of my life writing about, meditating on, evangelizing, and using as a source of inspiration for my art? It was six minutes that will frame and change the way I make choices and how I live.

At first, the questions just sort of glaze over because they're too big and don't seem to require an immediate answer. Minds drift, as he suspects. Then he continues...

(Side note: I kind of feel like a cheater just publishing someone else’s divinely inspired thoughts, but when great evangelization happens in our lost generation...as he calls it, it’s necessary to pass it along. I don’t think he’ll mind since his words so perfectly express the ultimate purpose of this blog. They were kind of like the reinforcement I needed and I hope you feel the same as well.)

Fr. Roy challenged everyone sitting at the funeral to be honest with themselves about how often they had become distracted in the previous 25 minutes…thinking about what else they had going on that day or that weekend. 

I mean, there we were, in the midst of absolute grief of the immediate family with the total and unique possibility of totally giving ourselves to be used as instruments of grace and comfort…or to at least be in committed, intentional prayer for the souls of the faithfully departed…

It reminded me of Jesus writing in the sand while all of the onlookers and accusers dropped their stones as they slipped away into shadows, staring silently into the ugliness of their own sins. 

No one gathered had any greater purpose than to be praying for the deceased and offering sincere comfort to the immediate family - yet no one, I’m sure of it, could say that they had not been distracted from that purpose by something arbitrary in the past 25 minutes.

I remembered having titled a blog post “distractions” and thought to myself that I should revisit it. Then I mentally scolded myself for again becoming distracted while Fr. Roy continued his homily.

We don’t do it “on purpose.” (I sound like a child!) We were of course gathered in love. But my loving Father says what any good parent would say, “I know little one…but you need to work on it.”

Bad habits are hard to break. 

If you were to die an hour from leaving here, how many of those things you’ve allowed yourself to be distracted by would remain important?

Only two things are important: Your relationship with God and your relationships with those around you. 

Relationships. 

Yes, I thought. That is the whole purpose of Fixed on God, Growing in Virtue - to open ourselves up to the tools in front of us to mend, grow, discover, challenge, and simply be in relationships with those around us in a way that will ultimately lead us to sainthood. 

Yet, how often do we find ourselves looking for a scapegoat? An excuse? How often do we find ourselves just simply lacking “mindfulness.” For me it is far too often and the subject of a different post. 

Why am I here?

What is my purpose?

Where am I going?

Do our honest answers lead us to greater fulfillment in relationship with Christ and with others by way of virtue? Or, if you follow the footsteps long enough do they lead to isolation, fear, anxiety, and loneliness? 

It’s Holy Week. What is still distracting you from a full renewal of your baptism promise on Sunday? When you join in pilgrimage these final days of Jesus’ Passion and Death, where are you going? What will you find? The empty tomb or one filled up with the dust, bones, and remnants of lost opportunities to be in healthy relationship with our Lord and those we love. 

Is your head spinning like mine was? Lay it down. Let it go. Reevaluate as many times as you must until you peel away all the layers and find at the core the truth - HIM.

Spring Gardening

My friend Jeanne just dropped off the roots of some wild raspberries for us to plant. "They will spread on their own," she said.  (I silently doubted her claim knowing that my thumb has never been green.)

Nonetheless, I became excited at the thought of the boys having the experience of picking their own fruit, and I started to investigate where I might plant them. The thought of having to trim them back one day or prune them seems nearly impossible as they sit like barren branches in a box, the roots tangled together in little clumps of soil.

One of the most fascinating aspects of science on the neuroplasticity of the brain is that our brain naturally prunes itself. The following Edutopia article gives a wonderful explanation of how meaningful the process of learning can be through repeated activity as “neurons that wire together fire together.” 

https://www.edutopia.org/neuroscience-brain-based-learning-neuroplasticity

Similarly, our brain will eventually eliminate or prune pathways that we no longer use. The implications for this have been applied by passionate educators who have the transformed the morale and culture of their classrooms as students become motivated to learn with a growth mindset, believing in the science that their intelligence is not fixed. 

As Catholics we know that our bodies, mind, and spirit are intricately woven in God’s design. Often times the mystery and order of the physical world helps us to transcend the spiritual through contemplative reflection. What then does this science mean for us in our spiritual growth?

John 15: 1-5,11

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower.  He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit, and every one that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit.

You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you.

Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me.

I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing…

“I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.”

It is no surprise that scientists in the 1990’s discovered with new technologies at their disposal what Jesus Christ told us two thousand plus years ago. True joy is only attainable when connected to the vine of Truth. 

He himself prunes our spirit (and in fact has already done so through our baptism!) so our joy may be complete. Yet, this is not a passive gift from our Creator. If science informs us that we must work diligently through repetitive action to create synapses that widen the highway of our intellect and move us toward mastery of learning targets, so then we must work that much harder at intentional, repetitive habits that lead us to our unknowable potential, a virtuous life, and sainthood. 

On the contrary, imagine the tangled mess that our lives become when we let our vices take over and sin begins to grow the sense of anxiety, stress, and helplessness we feel. It is wild and suffocating and separates us from the radiance of the "Son." We can all put a finger on periods in our past in which we have not taken the time to actively, intentionally prune our Spirit and chaos disrupts our lives. 

Imagine if in unison, collaborating with God’s grace through our baptismal call, how we might transform ourselves, our joy, our relationships, and our world if we became intentional about designing our unique roadmap, intellectual and spiritual, and then open our eyes to God’s will in our lives. 

We have less than two weeks until we enter into the Triduum - the passion, death, and resurrection of our Lord. Two weeks until we renew our baptismal promises and become renewed in His glory. Let’s be intentional with these remaining days, focusing on our habits, our thoughts, and our repeated efforts.

 If you are like me, then you might see yourself as the barren raspberry branch, with tangled roots waiting to have the master gardener choose the best place that you might be planted. What fruit will you yield? Let's get busy preparing the soil to plant the seeds of God's grace.  

“I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.”