"Beauty will save the world."

Today I came to a (rather) profound realization--the closer one is to God, the better one can see beauty.  This understanding came as I was driving home from work and contemplating my seniors rather immediate rejection of the "Argument from Beauty" that was presented to them today.  Many of them argued that beauty wouldn't sway anybody.  I asked them if they had ever seen a sunrise or a sunset and been moved with feeling that there must be more.  One class in particular seemed to indicate that it had never happened to them.  I was amazed.  I could think of a couple dozen times over the past few months that the sunrise or sunset alone had filled me with joy and gladness.  Often it leads me to break into spontaneous praise.  As I drove home, I was surveying a gorgeous sunset.  How could they not understand this beauty? 

Then it came to me--because they weren't very close to Beauty.  The more that I thought about it, the more sense it seemed to make.  These past few years I had grown closer to God and thus I rejoice more in God's creation.  My semester in Austria was one of constant beauty and wonder.  That is when I first realized that God loves me through beauty.  In particular, I was in Iseltwald, Switzerland.  I saw a breathtaking scenery that words fail to describe and I knew that in that moment God was fiercely loving me.  In fact, a friend and I walked around the lake, belting out praise and worship songs.  My feeling from the entire day was one of amazement that I could experience such beauty.  And that was linked closely to the understanding that I was experiencing Beauty. 

 

Experience some beauty for yourself!

 

  The view from the hostel...

 

Or there have been times when I have experienced the depth of beauty found in a book.  I Believe in Love, for example, or some passages of Scripture that just speak to my heart.  See Psalm 63.  Or when I listen to a beautiful song that moves my heart.  There are times when I am with my family and my nephew gives that irresistible smile that speaks volumes of beauty.  The time that you can spend with really close friends--when you have deep conversations and the silence is never awkward but always filled with time to ponder the depths of goodness.  Or that moment of silence in which you can rest despite the surrounding chaos.  The sweet moments spent before Our Eucharistic King.  I have experienced so much beauty!  In my mind it makes so much sense to know God through the different experiences of beauty.  

Now here was a classroom full of students so willing to dismiss beauty and say that it was just a matter of preference.  I wanted to argue that beauty isn't always subjective but I didn't know how I would confront their arguments.  I already had students sitting there with "This is so stupid" written over their faces.  Does beauty mean so little?

The closer we draw to Beauty, the more we are capable of seeing Him in the world around us.  If we are living in sin or have no desire to know Him, then our ability to see beauty diminishes.  The atheist could very well see beautiful things and call them such.  But it is the contemplative nun who sacrificed her life for God that can see beauty in every moment.  It is the sacrificing father that can see the beauty in life.  The one who is running after Christ can see beauty amidst the suffering of life. 

I don't want to say that beauty is a matter of perspective, but how you are living and what you value can transform what is beautiful.  I wish I could claim to see beauty perfectly, but I do not.  Too often I will admit the beauty of the sunrise but fail to see the beauty in my student or in that stranger that just cut me off on the interstate.  Yet how more beautiful is the person than the rest of creation?  Google images even proves it.  I googled "beauty" and I saw pages and pages of women.  They weren't the most modestly covered women, but it seemed to indicate that we know where true beauty lies, even if we misuse beauty.

How do you teach someone to love beauty?  I showed them 30 pictures of landscapes, sunrises, and children.  Many of them seemed to think I was wasting their time.  Just pictures.  Just beauty?  I am beginning to see the truth of the quote by Fyodor Dostoevsky:

"Beauty will save the world."

Book Mountain, Gaming, Austria

It is true.  Beauty will save the world.  If we cannot accept Beauty, if we cannot see Him, then we can never experience the utter beauty that is Heaven or understand the beauty of Earth.  I don't know how I can teach this understanding of beauty to my students.  They have so much and yet they have so little.  If only I could give them some of my experiences of beauty and make them not be simply my stories but rather their own experiences.  They see a Church of rules and strictness.  But they are missing the Church of ineffable beauty and unsurpassed joy.  This must be a thing that only God can work in their hearts through the power of His mercy and love.

 Love does take us and transfigure and torture us. It does break our hearts with an unbearable beauty, like the unbearable beauty of music.                   ~G.K. Chesterton

Lord, take us and transfigure us with Your Beauty.

 

 

Veni, Sancte Spiritus

There are times when I am teaching and I realize that the different experiences I have had in my life have greatly shaped what and how I teach.  The other day we were talking about the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River and the descent of the Holy Spirit.  This naturally led to thinking about different places in the Bible where the Spirit has descended.  Pentecost was one of the first answers--probably because it is the most used example and because most of my sophomores are going through Confirmation right now. 

Whenever I speak about the Holy Spirit I think of one of my friends from college and how they would laugh at me now.  My time in college greatly changed my relationship with the Holy Spirit.  There is still much work to be done but I would never have had the conversation I had with my students if not for different people in my life.  I told one of my classes that what happened at Pentecost still happens today.  That people actually do speak in different languages and that people are still being healed.  My example of people speaking in different languages didn't seem to impact them but when I told a story of someone I knew who was healed, that was an altogether different story. 

"You know her?" 
"Yes."  I went on to tell them that I was pretty good friends with this person.
"Whoa!  Like you really know her?"
"Yes!"

There was more that I wanted to share with them but I didn't want them to begin to disbelieve.  Even as I was telling them about the power of the Holy Spirit I could feel their disbelief reconfirm my belief.  So often we are willing to chalk up the incredible and miraculous to untrue or mere exaggerations.  It was as I was telling my students that miracles do happen that I began to ponder if I still believed it.  Not that I doubt miracles but I think too often I have the tendency of not giving the chance for the miraculous the credibility it deserves. 

I desire to invite the Holy Spirit back into the classroom.  As a Catholic school we have little problem talking about Jesus.  But what if we allowed the Holy Spirit to become more than a little dove that descends upon Old and New Testament figures but rather is living and active in our daily lives?  What if the students could know that the Holy Spirit can radically transform their lives if they are open?  Perhaps for this to happen their teacher needs to reach for an even deeper relationship with the Holy Spirit and allow Him to revolutionize her teaching. 

What if we taught in such a way that conversion was the primary goal and that the necessary consequence of that would be learning the material.  I don't understand how this can happen exactly or what would be necessary for this to take place, but I desire for it to happen.  If I taught English I would still pray for my students, but as a Theology teacher my main prayer is for their conversion and then secondarily for them to learn the material.  The battle is breaking into their world and showing them the importance of their faith now.  That must be a task that only the Holy Spirit can accomplish.

Veni, Sancte Spiritus.

the soundtrack to my life

Time for a milestone, time to begin again
Re-evaluate who I really am
Am I doing everything to follow Your will
Or just climbing aimlessly over these hills?
So show me what it is You want from me
I give everything, I surrender

To whatever You're doing inside of me
It feels like chaos but somehow there's peace
And though it's hard to surrender to what I can't see
I'm giving in to something Heavenly, something Heavenly

                         -"Whatever you're doing (something Heavenly)"
                                           Sanctus Real

Roots

I've never read the book but I am in love with the title of a book that goes to the effect of "The Appalling Strangeness of the Mercy of God."  That seems to be my life.  I am convinced that if God gave me everything I asked for, I would be extremely miserable.  Yet I still ask for things, unsure if they are desires of my own or of God.  He has shielded me from many injuries and pains because He alone understands my tender heart.  There are experiences that I have never had because of God in His wisdom and mercy.  While I often criticize God for holding out on me, I know He has my best interests in mind.  Even now as I am treading water wondering where I am to go or do, I know He has a beautiful plan.  But this heart of mine is quick to doubt and worry.  I find myself feeling very alone and isolated.  I live at home but I feel that I don't have a home at times. 

Where am I to be?  Where do I plant roots? 

For some reason the answer for me doesn't seem to simply be to build a foundation where I lived the first eighteen years of my life.  Home isn't home.  While I don't want to leave, I'm not certain how much I want to stay.  I know that "no man is an island" but I feel as though I am a fish swimming in the river, joining up with one school before transitioning to another.  Not forsaken or alone but not tied down.  I am beginning to understand the great desire my heart has to be bound to something or someone.  The media portrays women as independent and never desiring to be anybody's anything.  Yet how deeply I do!  I want a promise of forever.  My mind and heart long for marriage but I think my truest heart is calling out for Jesus.

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

If God were to lead me to a different school every year then I would need to rely solely on God.  The problem is that it is tiring.  Life is a constant battle and I often love that idea and relish the thought of fighting.  But then I get tired and what I long for most ardently is eternal rest.  Perhaps all of these desires are true and natural, maybe even desired by God.  The necessary aspect is to submit to God's will.  My identity is rooted most securely in Him.  Regardless of what may come, I can always be convinced of being His daughter, His creation, His love.  This is where I am right now and I cannot know what the future holds.  Despite the plethora of uncertainties, I can assuredly know that I have a home that will never be taken from me--nestled in the Eucharistic heart of my Lord.

Logically Speaking, of course

Yesterday I taught my seniors about conditional and disjunctive syllogisms.  It was basic logic and easy enough for them to grasp.  Perusing some of the syllogisms that they wrote as an assignment caused me to think of a couple of my own. 

If I desire holiness, then I will be uncomfortable.

I desire holiness.

Therefore, I will be uncomfortable.

OR

Either I will be pursuing a life of virtue and holiness

Or I will not be pursuing a life of virtue and holiness.

Living in God's Will

Last Saturday I really missed college.  Perhaps it was the fact that my sister just headed back to school or maybe it was due to a longing for good community.  Or because I would like to be the student again and not the teacher, despite the satisfaction I get from job at times.  Every now and then I have to stop and remind myself that I am not on a break from college but that I will never go back to college, at least I will never return to where I was before.  I've tossed around the idea several times of getting my Master's degree but I know it won't be the same as my undergrad.  There is a sadness that comes with that repeated realization.  That phase of my life is completed and it is a place to which I can never return.

I find myself missing things that I didn't plan on missing along with things I knew I would miss.  Now I live in a house but I find myself missing the dorms and being able to walk across the hall to talk to someone.  I didn't love going to the abortion clinic on Saturday mornings, yet I find myself missing that mission field and the people that I prayed alongside.  I miss beautiful lectures by brilliant professors that just feed my soul.  While I don't miss paying for them, I miss the feeling of picking of a new stack of books at the beginning of the semester.  Perhaps I miss writing papers and I try to live vicariously through my students by assigning frequent 1-page papers.  I miss campus and walking around through the changing seasons.  Oddly enough, I miss the adult-like feeling I had of going to Mass off-campus.  It made me feel so grown-up to be going to Mass with adults who have jobs.  The odd factor is that I do this now but I think it is because I am going to parishes I went to before college that I don't feel so adult-like.  My heart misses the adoration chapel and the beautiful peace found there.  I miss my schedule and the mode of college life.  Yeah, I miss many things.  I didn't realize this so much the first semester because I felt so overwhelmed with work.  But now I am able to look up a little bit more and I find myself looking into the future, wondering what else could be in store.

What beautiful plan does God have for me?  And what is He doing with me in the meantime?  He has never failed me but I am so quick to fall back into fear.  I miss college and that is natural because it was an important part of my life in which I grew substantially.  Yet I would be amiss to spend this next phase mourning over the last one.  My goal is to recommit to live in the present with joy, embracing as fully as I am able every aspect of my present life.  God is loving me in so many ways right now.  Right here is living in God's will.   

Thy Will Be Done

Perhaps I am not alone in feeling this way, but I desire a great mission for my life.  I want to do big things and transform society.  When I look at the different passions in my life, I wonder how I will ever be able to use them all, how will God be the fulfillment of all of my desires.  Taking a look at where I am at the present moment can cause me to feel impatient and claustrophobic.  I want to travel, to live life, to have adventures, to be incandescently happy.  There are moments, like on Thursday, when I look at my life as a teacher and I wonder what in the world I am doing.  Some people are able to say that every day they go to work they are filled with a desire to go to work and that because of that, they never feel like it is work.  Unfortunately, I cannot say that the same is always true with me.  There have been several times over the past few months that I didn't want to go to work, that the thing I wanted most was to extend the weekend.  My heart desires something grand and beautiful.  Yet when I look at where I am in my life, I begin to wonder if it is ever possible to attain that.  Am I simply missing God's will in my life?  Will I be my own worst enemy?  Everyone desires a great love and a great adventure and too quickly I begin to wonder where mine is.  I've spent half of the past semester longing to live life fully and the other half praying to enter into eternal life.  At times I am filled with a passion for teaching and with gratitude that I am able to do what I wanted to do right out of college.  Nevertheless, I wonder what else there is for me and how the plan will unfold. 

Maybe much of this is natural--the transition years after college, the quest to find stable footing, the desire to be a saint, the longings to be fulfilled.  Yet some of this is perhaps the temptation of the evil one.  If he can make God's will for me now seem to be unimportant or too little, then he is winning in a sense.  God could have a grand mission for me next year but His will for me is to be a teacher now.  If I focus on the future grandeur and fail to do my duty in the present moment, then I am effectively not doing God's will out of a misappropriated desire to do His will in the future.  I need to learn patience without succumbing to passivity.  How will I know if God is asking me to step out in faith or if it is my own desire for the grand that will cause me to run contrary to the will of God.  I have this desire to be a saint and although I know there are many saints of the ordinary, I don't want to be ordinary.  While I don't want to stand out especially, I long for a great mission, something where all of my desires are fulfilled.  Maybe this is just my melancholic nature coming out and longing for the ideals that can only truly be found in Heaven.  All I know is that I long for a beautiful adventure that will be personally transforming and will transform others.  A little daisy wants to be a bouquet of roses.

What a different view of me my students would have if they read this blog.  I know they don't think I'm perfect but I like to think I look generally put together and collected.  At times I wish I could tell them how ridiculous and confused I truly am.  The facade would be destroyed.  What does God want me to do now?  He has placed me here for a reason.  I forget that reason, though, in moments of frantic worry and a desire for my will to be done.  So, Lord, if Your desire is for me to be here now, please teach me how to do Your will in the present moment--and to love doing it.  

The Quest: To Be a Saint

A new year, some new classes, and nearly 80 new students.  Some interesting things have already transpired, some for which I suppose I asked.  I thought it would be neat if my students took a temperament test and then I could review the results and try to discover some of their characteristics quickly.  So in class I gave them the web address that I wanted them to go to take the test and it just happened to be one for Catholic Match.  I didn't fully understand what I was setting myself up for until I was preparing to write the address on the board.  When I did, the response was typical--some chuckling, a few muffled remarks, and the overall questioning air that seemed to compel me to confess or deny their silent accusation.  I did neither, for the most part.  Perhaps the next embarrassing thing was telling them that they couldn't do this assignment at school either, because the school had blocked the address.  At times I forget about the person of the high schooler and fail to remember that many trivial things can be made ridiculous when presented to a group of teenagers.  Another interesting thing occurred when I reviewed the syllabus and mentioned the school policy on cell phones.  In order to make it absolutely clear to them, I added a line that said that failure to comply with the rules would result in harsher penalties.  My seniors primarily glazed over that but my sophomore classes picked up on it and some wanted to know what the penalty was.  I hedged and simply told them that they didn't really want to find out.

As I was speaking to my seniors today I tried to present the idea of sanctity to them.  I called them to become saints and to not wait for later or to assume that knowing the answers is sufficient.  As I spoke to them I realized how much of this I need to remember.  I cannot simply spend my day talking about Jesus, I must talk to Him.  The more I interact with my students, the more I realize how much further I have to grow in sanctity.  The thought came to me today that God is using this job as a way to draw me closer to Himself, that all of the challenges and problems are His way of perfecting me.  There is a lot of perfecting that needs to take place.  Today I considered my deficiency in love.  I want to love only those who like me.  Praying outside the abortion clinic in college was my initial experience of forcing myself to love in the face of intense adversity.  However, school is different.  It is much more of a marathon.  It isn't exhilarating or enlightening to love my students in the midst of their utter humanity.  It doesn't seem heroic, it doesn't fill me with warm feelings, and I don't have someone to talk to about how much I feel like I grew in the process.  Instead, it is just hard.  I don't want to do it and I can feel myself rebel.  Loving to the point of pain.  That is my calling and yet I fail to do it so often.  I was serious when I told them that I would help sanctify them and they will help sanctify me.  Then I realize that if I truly desired to be a saint above all other desires, if my holiness was what I was concerned about more than my physical or mental health, how much more I would do to further that goal.  It is often surprising how lukewarm we can be while mistakenly thinking we are so zealous and hard-core.  How good it is that we have a God who knows the trappings of human nature because He took them on Himself.  But our desire to please Him and live for Him does please Him.  And if we are serious, we will accept the grace He offers to live out His will.

MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
                                                                                         --Thomas Merton