Letters of Love

“These were the words that Jesus spoke when He gave us His body and blood to partake of and commune with; He gave of Himself in this extraordinary way at His last supper on earth; when He was with His friends, his followers.

“Take and eat,” he said.

He made a complete self-offering of all that He had, giving His very self over to us.

In thinking about what Jesus was giving over to us: Jesus was handing over His very self, His entire life, the very substance of His life, body, blood, humanity, and divinity—his very essence, over to us, to partake of, to commune with, and to become one with.

As a human being, He suffered. At the Last Supper, even before His bitter passion began, He already knew and fully accepted the fact that He was going to suffer.

All the shame, and degradation of this disgraceful suffering, He transformed by giving His life to us in a tangible way.

He took this fact of His murder, His annihilation, his utterly being destroyed, and made this terrible unspeakable suffering, something that would feed all humanity.

We can do the very same.

When disappointments, rejections, pains, abandonments, helplessness, and “crucifixions” of all kinds come to us, instead of hoarding our pain, and suffering inside, holding our anguish tightly within us, we can offer it to God for all humanity with open hands.

We can say to God: “here is my suffering; here is the pain, physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual, that I am living through. I offer it to You, God, with open hands. You know the searing, persistent, gnawing, destruction of this unceasing pain—the pain of hunger (of all kinds) the pain of sickness, addiction, failure, rejection, misunderstandings, and of despair; I offer to you God, with open hands.

Use it as you will to feed others.

Others who are in need can take what we offer and be fed by it.

Some tangible examples of how we can do this: (we see them all the time, but may not recognize them—; we may not recognize the courage it takes to transform suffering into bread for the world; we may not recognize Christ in our midst. married couples who have lived through troubled times, becoming a part of marriage encounter, so that they can help to strengthen other marriages; persons suffering cancer, encouraging others who are starting the arduous journey of treatment and healing; people in twelve step programs, recovering through addictions, disabled persons, using their disability as a way of inspiring others, not in allowing themselves to sink into self-pity or discouragement—all these people are offering what they have, they are transforming their sufferings into bread for the hungry, and into water for thirsty souls.

We may encounter an event or circumstance of suffering in life we do not understand; we can fight against it, insisting on our own way, or we can open our hearts to its message, and see what it has to teach us and what we can offer to others because of all that it has brought and taught us.

We can say and do with our sufferings, just as Jesus did; we can say to others and give to others all we have, in imitation of Christ we say: “take and eat; take and eat..”Take and Eat”

“I will say to God, my rock, why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? As with a sword in my bones, my enemy taunts me all day long and says to me: where is your God? ..Yet my song shall be to the Lord at night, and by day, my prayer shall be with Him..”(Psalm 42.)

When spring came this year, I marveled, as never before, at all the splendid beauty that surrounded me.

I made a specific intention each day of looking at all the flowers, of standing by them, touching their delicate leaves, of smelling their delicate fragrance, of breathing in deeply whenever I was near them; of listening to what they might say, imagining that they sing to God, in harmony, and in joyful bliss!

I know that flowers sing, and that flowers and trees speak.

They say: “love God! Praise God! Rejoice in God! He is alive! God is arisen! Life is new!

Even when flowers start to wilt and gently fade, and wither and die, , they sing. They sing: “Praise God for life after death, for my dying, for my beauty, for my life and all it has meant and will mean.

The life of the flower goes back into the earth, disintegrates, and fades; crumbles, under foot, sinks down into the dust of the earth, but germinates again, and bursts forth in another spring; shoots up from the ground, and blooms!

Looking at the flowers kept me alive this spring.

When all around me, I saw nothing but struggling humanity, poverty, pain and suffering, the flowers reminded me that there is the life of God going on and moving in and through everything on this tired earth, even when it seems like all is superficial, and like nothing real is happening anywhere.

When people show courage, patience, love, and selfless strength, the kingdom of God is coming to us; when people comfort the sick, sing to them, read their mail, bring them flowers, when mothers make supper, and father’s play ball with their sons,

When checkers in grocery lines, stand at the register all day and smile at hurried customers, when they are gracious, the kingdom comes.

Flowers remind us of what is real; they help us to keep our focus.

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“Why are you cast down o my soul? Hope in God for I shall yet praise Him, my Savior and my God..”

(Psalm 42.) “I shall yet praise Him”

It is an interesting thing how all types of different feelings can be going on inside a person all at once.

There can be feelings of gratitude, feelings, of despair, feelings, of failure, feelings of hope in God, feelings of praise, and feelings of determination all at once, working in the soul. It is as if a person’s soul is like fertile ground, in which the mystery of seeds germinating and growing wondrously takes place. So much happens under-ground, not visible to our eyes, yet miracles occur with perseverance.

In another place in Scripture, we read in Isaiah: “I have set my face like flint; I shall not turn back..”

That was what Isaiah prophesied about what Jesus would say when going into His passion.

“I did not shield my face from buffets and spitting, and I gave my back to those who beat me, and my face to those who plucked my bearde. .”

Something inside Jesus let Him go forward into the most brutal of sufferings; he did not try to avoid them or shield Himself in anyway, but faced His sufferings head on with determination and with a sense of purpose.

In my own life and ministry, (which I certainly cannot compare to the sufferings of Jesus,) suffering seems to be in and all around me. Desperate people come to me every day, and yet, when they do not like the suggestions I offer them in trying to help them to build a new life, they become hostile, vindictive, rude, abusive, and ungrateful.

I have been left alone so many times after giving all I have, materially and spiritually, with the person I have tried to help blaming me for their problems, saying I have failed them. It is like picking up the pieces of wreckage after one tries to help a drowning person who has sunken, and in the process, I have also become suffocated and injured by their pain. How many bags of left over belongings have I packed up and put on the back porch, after an alcoholic or drug addict has been asked to leave here for not following the rules? It is a very sad thing to have to do. There is something very poignant and haunting about it all, sorting through another person’s personal belongings; (the things they used to live with in daily life, because their belongings contain their very essence, and yet, the person I loved so much is no longer here. All that is left is their stuff, their pictures(of their kids) their stuffed animals, their sneakers, their clothes, their make-up, and good gold watch, all this, and (it seems) their very life, stuffed in a garbage bag for pick up.

It must be like a mother who grieves over her children who are going astray; she can do nothing except to let them go; she has to watch them suffer and to let them find their own way.

She has to risk being strong enough to tell them things they will resent, and to do things they will not understand.

She has to be willing to be misunderstood, hated, and she often has to stand alone.

I am sure Jesus did all this for us, and in contemplating His example, I gain strength.

How solitary His journey must have been, when He had absolutely no one who was really in His shoes.

No one could say to Him that they had walked on the roadon which He was walking before, and no one could tell Him how to walk it.

I always get a sick, chilling feeling when I hear that old Spiritual called This Lonesome Valley: “He had to walk it by Himself; oh, nobody else could walk it for Him” Oh!

the cold realism of that song! It is gripping, because in the end, we are all alone. We must face our trials alone, just as the song says, we must answer and step up to the plate of our testings, whatever form they may take, on our own. During the time of trial, we will be sifted like wheat, and ground in the wine-press of suffering; we will have to face ourselves and God honestly. It is there that we discover what we are made of.

In the end, will we have been faithful to all we promised, will we have been sincere about our commitments, and honorable in the way we have carried our cross and lived our lives?!

In spite of the difficulties and loneliness I face daily, I praise God.

I see Christ in the emptiness as well as in the beautiful things around me, and as I agonize about every soul that is traveling on wrong paths, looking for peace,

I am with Christ.

Christ knows the path we all take, and is aware of what is right and what is wrong.

Some day, He will make all things come to light, the good and those who are faithful He will take unto Himself, and He will settle the score for all that has not been just in this world.

Oh, God, I praise and thank you and I hope in your merciful love.

In your love is my hope and my joy.

..My delight..

“Hope in God, for I will praise Him still; my Savior and my God!”aleluiah.

“Like a lonely bird upon the rooftop..” (or “like a broken dish” the Psalmist says. “My bones are out of joint..” “You have picked me up and thrown me down…”

All these images I ponder from the Psalms, but most of all, that of Jesus hanging there naked, exposed, helpless, desperately alone, wretched, made a fool of, mocked, beaten nearly to death, and oh! So hurting!

There is no way to describe how I feel. In trying to live my life, to accept its blessings and its limits, but more importantly, to live the plight of the poor of this world, to be poor in body mind and spirit, to feel their plight, my plight and to be helpless, to have nothing except God.

This is my experience, just to hang here, to wait here in this empty sometimes hellish space of pain and poverty.

I do it in the name of all helpless hopeless people who suffer without a remedy.

No one comes to the aid of the hungry, the sick, the old, and the dying.

They are left alone to freeze, to starve, to ask why.

Just hearing about a bad accident on the street today—I pictured it in my mind, a car with a person or two just going along in their day, but all of a sudden, a crash up, terrible injury, the burning up of their car, with them trying to escape from it, blood all over, panic, pain! Loss, fire trucks, trauma, and perhaps even death; all in an instant, and life is ever changed for good.

Oh! The impermanence of this life; oh! Its frailty! And yet, we delude ourselves and think it will last.

The last time we saw our sister, our brother, or went out for coffee or a movie, or went for a walk with a friend, would be the last, but we did not notice or think that; did not hug them tight enough; did not appreciate the moment!

All these things I carry with me throughout the empty days and nights, and in those days, there is God.

God, who hangs high above this world, naked on the cross, bleeding and dying, agonizing with us and loving us.

Yet, He is helpless, just hanging there, unnoticed, unwanted, spurned!

The grief that fills my heart at all these thoughts!

There is no way to describe it.

Sometimes at Mass, I see all the people going up to Communion in a line, one after another, after another; all thirsty hungry souls, panting in desperate longing for life, for hope, for peace, for love.

At least, they are coming to the Source, even if they do not know it.

There will be a hidden strength, a hidden light that will sustain and guide them, but what about all the souls that cover the earth like ants or like a multitude of flies, that swarm all over the earth in massive numbers, with aimlessness in their eyes and emptiness in their hearts.

If we try to give them the Living Water, sometimes they do not want it.

They spit in our face; they tell you they already know how to find peace, when they do not have any.

Things like this tear at my soul, crush me and kill me all day long.

My last experience of taking someone to live here, Carol, (sixty-six year old woman, drug and alcohol addicted) coming here virtually from a homeless shelter, desperate, pleading for help, and yet, so argumentative, so full of answers that got her nowhere; up to her neck in debt and trouble, yet in denial about her addictions, her responsibilities, and her needs.

How is it, God, that people who are dying and drowning, choke the person who tries to help, and think they know just how to save themselves?

It reminds me of that story about the rowboat, and ladder, the plane, and all the things that came to help a person in a flood that reached the top of his house, but he wouldn’t go with any of them, so he drowned, because he thought he knew a better way.

Right now, I carry all these things and people in my mind with tremendous longing and pain.

Jesus who is hanging there can extend His grace and mercy to a broken little sparrow on the ground, to a worn out thirsty sparrow who is falling.

Tired bones ache in the night

To be freed from Supremacy by the snake’s horrid grasp.

Fear and sadness, abominable woe,

I creep to my warm refuge.

As the bird feebly flies,

A song of restoration rises high above the trees–

As I climb from mire to rock,

To a firm foundation.

Shattered glass cannot be mended;

It must be melted in the fire.

Comfort heals the broken heart;

Faith keeps comfort flowing.

Lindy

Lindy Morelli

Spiritual Director, Counselor

www.alabasterheart.org

570 341-5858

In the middle of a rainy day, it is good to walk outside, to smell the rain, to feel it soft cascade upon one’s shoulders, to smell the sweetness of it in the early evening, as I walk among the trees or in the grass. Sometimes I try to hold out my hands, extend my fingers, or cup my hands in such a way so that no rain can slip through; I would like to try to catch each little drop, but the droplets are elusive and slip through my feeble fingers, even before I have had time to notice they have been here!

Each drop comes down, (each blessing) so fine, so delicate, and then just melts away!

Oh, I don’t want to miss them, but to savor them for as long as they linger on my fingers and in my hands!

If the rain is cold and coming down fast, it is harder to stand out in as it drenches the earth, but it is watering the earth in such a thorough way, I just like to stand out in it, all bundled up and absorb it and see what it is doing for the earth and what it teaches. It does not really matter if it is cold or gusty outside, because the rain is coming nonetheless, and in it, so are the blessings; in the stormy weather, blessings come as well. I don’t want to miss them, even though I do not like the cold. .

The blessings of goodness and the loving kindness of God are like the rain!

I have the sense the blessings are cascading down, and are falling all around me, piling up at my feet, constantly coming down in a great shower, falling into my open hands, my open ears, my open eyes.

They are everywhere! do I see them or miss them?

The blessing of food and how it is made, the blessing of human interaction; the blessing of hearing what people struggle to say; the blessing of waiting long enough to listen?

The blessing of time in which I can explore ideas, contemplate, and read,

The blessing of frustration, fear, pain, and even of resentment;

All things, and even negative feelings bring a message to me as well, a summons, and a call to hope and to a renewal of love.

It is a blessing to be able to move slowly and deliberately through the day, the moment, and to listen carefully to it.

Even if the moment is filled with stress, or duress, it is saying something to me, beckoning me, teaching me, and embracing me.

Sometimes the moment might feel like icy chilling fingers clawing at my hair, heart and throat, but I want to taste that moment, and feel what it brings.

I want to notice what is in it.

Sometimes the moment can feel deadly boring, like when I am waiting in a car in traffic, or like when I am listening to the same old “ordinary” story from the same person for the fifteenth time in the last two days.

It can feel boring when the themes don’t vary, but underneath that boredom or deadening suffocation, there is a message, something the person is trying to communicate, by repeating the same story over and over If the day seems the same, with the same activities, which I repeat over and over, I must slow down, and do each little thing carefully, deliberately, with full presence of mind and listen carefully. Folding clothes can be a time to learn to love, or waiting in a grocery line..or suffering pain! .

In desperately painful situations and moments, there is a blessing; even in hell, (the Psalmist says) “your Spirit will not leave me—(a paraphrase of Psalm 139) because in the depths of suffering, God is!

God, may I be attentive to the moments filled with messages, to the days filled with blessings, as You pour them out, cascading in torrents from the heavens.

May my hands be open, my ears, my eyes my heart.

(Poem, written 1981)

This poem was sort of prophetic for my life’s work and outlook. It is interesting to look back on it and to realize there was a part of me that knew what I wanted to do with my time and energy, even before I did it.

I think it is a type of paradigm for human intuition, interesting and noteworthy to observe, that we often know what we want or how we feel deep inside ourselves, even before we live it out, or before it actually becomes conscious.

I walk past you every day on my way to work;

You stand there with your frail arm extended,

Your bony fingers curled around an empty tin cup.

When I get to the prison,

I see you thrashing around behind the glass–

never coming out for meals,

You eat the tastelessness behind the bars.

On my way home, I notice the dirt in the streets,

The smell, the scum, the bums on park benches,

Flocking to garbage cans, the spoiled food their nurture,

Fighting for that worm-infected apple.

On my way, I hear the chapel bells sing of peace–

Listening, they signal our direction toward home.

April 28, 2010

“Why are you cast down o my soul? Hope in God for I shall yet praise Him, my Savior and my God..”

(Psalm 42.) “I shall yet praise Him”

It is an interesting thing how all types of different feelings can be going on inside a person all at once.

There can be feelings of gratitude, feelings, of despair, feelings, of failure, feelings of hope in God, feelings of praise, and feelings of determination all at once, working in the soul. It is as if a person’s soul is like fertile ground, in which the mystery of seeds germinating and growing wondrously takes place. So much happens under-ground, not visible to our eyes, yet miracles occur with perseverance.

In another place in Scripture, we read in Isaiah: “I have set my face like flint; I shall not turn back..”

That was what Isaiah prophesied about what Jesus would say when going into His passion.

“I did not shield my face from buffets and spitting, and I gave my back to those who beat me, and my face to those who plucked my bearde. .”

Something inside Jesus let Him go forward into the most brutal of sufferings; he did not try to avoid them or shield Himself in anyway, but faced His sufferings head on with determination and with a sense of purpose.

In my own life and ministry, (which I certainly cannot compare to the sufferings of Jesus,) suffering seems to be in and all around me. Desperate people come to me every day, and yet, when they do not like the suggestions I offer them in trying to help them to build a new life, they become hostile, vindictive, rude, abusive, and ungrateful.

I have been left alone so many times after giving all I have, materially and spiritually, with the person I have tried to help blaming me for their problems, saying I have failed them. It is like picking up the pieces of wreckage after one tries to help a drowning person who has sunken, and in the process, I have also become suffocated and injured by their pain. How many bags of left over belongings have I packed up and put on the back porch, after an alcoholic or drug addict has been asked to leave here for not following the rules? It is a very sad thing to have to do. There is something very poignant and haunting about it all, sorting through another person’s personal belongings; (the things they used to live with in daily life, because their belongings contain their very essence, and yet, the person I loved so much is no longer here. All that is left is their stuff, their pictures(of their kids) their stuffed animals, their sneakers, their clothes, their make-up, and good gold watch, all this, and (it seems) their very life, stuffed in a garbage bag for pick up.

It must be like a mother who grieves over her children who are going astray; she can do nothing except to let them go; she has to watch them suffer and to let them find their own way.

She has to risk being strong enough to tell them things they will resent, and to do things they will not understand.

She has to be willing to be misunderstood, hated, and she often has to stand alone.

I am sure Jesus did all this for us, and in contemplating His example, I gain strength.

How solitary His journey must have been, when He had absolutely no one who was really in His shoes.

No one could say to Him that they had walked on the roadon which He was walking before, and no one could tell Him how to walk it.

I always get a sick, chilling feeling when I hear that old Spiritual called This Lonesome Valley: “He had to walk it by Himself; oh, nobody else could walk it for Him” Oh!

The cold realism of that song! It is gripping, because in the end, we are all alone. We must face our trials alone, just as the song says, we must answer and step up to the plate of our testings, whatever form they may take, on our own. During the time of trial, we will be sifted like wheat, and ground in the wine-press of suffering; we will have to face ourselves and God honestly. It is there that we discover what we are made of.

In the end, will we have been faithful to all we promised, will we have been sincere about our commitments, and honorable in the way we have carried our cross and lived our lives?!

In spite of the difficulties and loneliness I face daily, I praise God.

I see Christ in the emptiness as well as in the beautiful things around me, and as I agonize about every soul that is traveling on wrong paths, looking for peace,

I am with Christ.

Christ knows the path we all take, and is aware of what is right and what is wrong.

Some day, He will make all things come to light, the good and those who are faithful He will take unto Himself, and He will settle the score for all that has not been just in this world.

Oh, God, I praise and thank you and I hope in your merciful love.

In your love is my hope and my joy.

..My delight..

“Hope in God, for I will praise Him still; my Savior and my God!”aleluiah.

April 15, 2010

Walking out side in the spring, sitting on the bleachers to watch an inning of a little league game;(not because I am particularly interested in it, but because someone I am with wants to do so) seeing the life of little children, touching all the flowers, and listening to the birds.

It is all so beautiful, but the longing for life is overwhelming it is like a longing that can stop me from breathing, or it is like it will actually kill me.

I feel, in a way like I am on the sidelines of life, looking in on everyone’s vitality, and it is all so fleeting, so precious, so real, but so passing, and not so real, like it is all pointing to something I cannot see or touch.

“Even the greatest joys on earth, like love shared, children laughing, spring time, new life, all points to heaven and to god which I cannot have.

It all makes me mourn and long and feel utterly displaced.

Would I feel better if I had a family of my own? Children, a husband to love through the long and lonely days and nights,(all kinds of questions and aching comes in utter desolation and exile)

But no, that also only points to the real life with God ahead, marriage and family are a foreshadowing, a preparation for life ahead.

It all seems so permanent when I think of families so busy with schoolwork, dinner preparations, soccer, and getting up in the morning, but it is all a letting go, a preparation for what lies ahead.

Everyone must face change; growing up of children, and they leave the nest, growing older, and getting more tired and full of years, full of experiences, easy and hard, all beautiful, all life, but oh, so very passing.

My life is not just an observer on the sidelines, but is at the very heart of everything.

Everywhere I turn, there are longing people who are thirsty for a little bit of life and love, always looking, always hoping for brighter, more sunny days, but we can never find enough to fill our thirsty empty souls.

People get excited when they win the lottery, win at bingo, go on a trip, see something new, but these are all temporal things.

Sometimes, especially in the spring, I want to see the beautiful colors, or the flowers or the birds in flight, but I know in heaven, I will see it all, and all the pain of this passing world will be no more.

All the people with all their busy lives will be no more also, and all there will be is eternity, and endless life, abundance and peace and everlasting joy.

Every day, in whatever I do, I offer it to God.

I don’t have a family to take care of, but I have needy people who depend on me for warmth, home, encouragement, friendship andlove.

My life is set aside to care for those no one else may want, those who are cast aside, forgotten.

Someone left a message on my machine today and said: Sister, please don’t leave me; everyone in my life whom I have loved has left me in one way or another.

Sometimes I wish just for one day or afternoon, that this pain in my heart would stop, this incessant longing for life and love for the fulfillment of everything. It must be a longing for heaven, since everything beautiful makes me ache with longing.

It fills me with sadness to just think for a second that I am here on earth like a lonely bird on a housetop,(as the Psalmist has said) crying out in the desert for something or someone, like an owl in the desert, all alone, waiting, watching for the sun to come for the new and final day.

Sometimes this pain is so great, I cannot contain it. It burns in me like a fire, a voracious thirst, a river of joy, a mountain of pain, an ocean of painful love and longing.

I look outside and see children playing across the street;I wonder what their lives will be, how much pain they already carry in their fragile hearts; I think about their lives, and all the carefree lives we all might have had as children, and yet, not carefree, some so burdened by hunger, starvation, abuse, war, and yet, the thing it symbolizes to be so carefree like a child, when all you have to think about is how you do not want the sun to go down, because you wish you could play outside in the spring evening forever.

The shadows fall though, and night time comes.

Day dawns again, and when one is young, he/she may think days last forever, but they do not, they pass away in a vapor until all life is gone.

All the old people I visited throughout the years, so frail, eating pureed food from hospital trays, talking to me as I held each of their frail crippled hands in mine, about their lives, and about the aching in their bodies and hearts to just have this temporal life thrown off.

It seems like in my life, all I can ever do for anyone is give them a little drink of water; it can ease thirst temporarily, but the thirst for love comes back with a vengeance.

People are so thirsty and so hungry.

I pray God may help me to be faithful while I live on this earth.

It feels like I am cut off from everyone, even those I love, because my mind is longing for eternity; I am longing, I am empty; I am restless; I am alone, so utterly alone.

Now I am not frightened by this loneliness as much, just in pain from it.

I am with all humanity.f