Close your eyes for just a moment. In your minds eye picture the Christmas tree up, decorated with lights, popcorn & cranberries strung on thread, paper chains. Excited children waiting for their parents to wake up so that gifts can be opened. Do you see it? The gift with your name on it! There are two gifts taped together. One thinner, rectangular. The other shorter, deeper and not quite as wide. You giggle excitedly thinking you already know what it is! Where! are! your! parents! Shouldn’t they be awake already? Down the stairs they come, finally. They really want you to wait until they make tea or coffee, or at the very least, pee. But oh! look! Santa was here! Just a few more moments and you get to open it. The larger one first, it is! it is! It’s a coloring book! Squeeeeeeeeeeeeee. You already know what it is, but the excitement is already more than your little body can take. You dance around while opening the box. It’s the big box of crayons. Flipping it over to see if it has the sharpener. It does! It does! Look everyone, it has the sharpener. And in that moment the lid opens, sticking your nose in you inhale deeply that scent of crayons, opening to door to imagination and wonder. Oh the things you’ll color, bunnies and trees and mountains and birds afar off in the sky and some semblance of people.
This is the imagery spoken, with the eyes of my students closed, opening wide the doors to creativity, wind blowing in, clearing the cobwebs of daily living. Most of the time it evokes delightful childhood (our most creatively flexible times) memories where the possibilities were all there, the joy of discovery brought joy and mud pies and snowballs were still legit (pretend) foods. Sometimes in the telling there is the fragrance of cinnamon wafting through the air as the rolls bake in the oven, nearly ready when the gifts are opened, joy fills the air, and first use of gifts is in full swing.
I’ll be back in a few minutes. Somehow I sprained my wrist and needed to give my hands a bit of a break before going on.
The other day I was either praying Liturgy of the Hours or reading the Mass readings where Paul is telling the Churches that we have everything we need to understand the teachings and mysteries of Christ. One of the most profound experiences I’ve had in spiritual direction has to be the day that while a directee talked the revelation I had is that this person in front of me, no matter what is shared, no matter how long this person and I are in direction, she is and will remain this side of heaven, a mystery to me and I to her. Mystery in this sense, and in the sense of contemplating the mysteries of Christ, is that these are meant to treasure rather than solve. Complete understanding is not necessary.
This teased out to the sweet realization that while my Sweetie and I are married over three decades there is still more to treasure, onder, enjoy, hold, behold, savor, each for the other.
I’m going to plot twist here. This week we celebrated the Feast of St Teresa of Calcutta. On a shelf, right behind me as I write, are two Miraculous Medals that she gave me and my Sweetie when we met her in 1997 in the South Bronx. Yes dear readers I held Mother Teresa’s hand. I could tell you how that almost didn’t happen or of two profound moments that day. Those are both interesting indeed. Rather I’m going to share this quote from the Varanasi Letter:
“I worry some of you still have not really met Jesus — one to one — you and Jesus alone. We may spend time in chapel —but have you seen with the eyes of your soul how He looks at you with love? Do you really know the living Jesus — not from books but from being with Him in your heart? Have you heard the loving words He speaks to you?”
Sometimes I wonder this myself and realize that this meeting and knowing happen over time, in the intimate, painful, joyfilled places of my heart (intellect, will, emotional core) and in the relationship with myself and with others. St Teresa writes this to her sisters holding both her surety of Jesus and who God is and a profound “dark night of the soul” where there is seemingly no consolation from God. I get this holding of two seemingly contrary experiences embodied in the same person. This surety and this dryness lived in her being for years. Generally we think that there is something wrong when a person holds two opposing, differing experiences like this. Yet she embodied this surety and this dryness in a way that offers hope. Mother embodies the spiritual gift of fortitude, in a way that permits us to see that steadiness in this earthly walk with God (no matter what comes our way) is a possibility, and is a candle in the darkness for others to see even when the light of the candle is obscured to the person carrying it.
I can bring this plot twist to the “whole box of crayons” of it all by sharing one of my favorite things about color. Each color has a direct complement or opposite, or contrasting color. These two colors have a fascinating interaction with one another: they can show the other off in a way that no other color can; they can also (in painting and thread work) dull the other down. In needles and thread pairings there’s the whole “opposites attract” that works for example pairing a 100 weight (fine) thread with a size 70/10 (fine) works every time or a 12 weight thread (thick) with a 110/18 needle.
And as a final word here today on this 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time each of us is unique and unrepeatable, with the need for Community and the need for solitude. It is hard to live both well, and yet, like Mother Teresa and the color wheel show us, it’s possible
Fr Mike Schmitz Homily 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time.
A Quilter's Heart 