First Stirrings of Spring

The last couple of days have been cloudy, but before that--on a bright sunny afternoon--I got some photographs of the first signs of the real Spring that will begin to bloom all around us in the next few weeks.

This is what we are seeing in mid-March:

The Forsythia bushes have just begun to show their first tentative yellow shoots.

Elsewhere, green buds bathe in the sunshine.

Reepicheep also gets her fair share of afternoon sun. She is glad to see the warmer weather here to stay.

The big maple trees are still bare except for their early red tips. Hard to believe this will be a green canopy soon!

We see and hear lots of birds in the early evening. The starlings are all about in the bare branches.

And the robins are all around, scouting for places to build nests when the trees are green.

Mourning into Dancing

This text of Psalm 30 caught my attention recently:

As for me, I said in my prosperity,

    “I shall never be moved.”

By your favor, O Lord,
    you had established me as a strong mountain;
you hid your face;
    I was dismayed.

 To you, O Lord, I cried,
    and to the Lord I made supplication:

“What profit is there in my death,
    if I go down to the Pit?
Will the dust praise you?
    Will it tell of your faithfulness?
 Hear, O Lord, and be gracious to me!
    O Lord, be my helper!”

You have turned my mourning into dancing;
    you have taken off my sackcloth
    and clothed me with joy,
 so that my soul may praise you and not be silent.
    O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever.

Psalm 30:6-12

Tweets of Mercy

The only way to get Pope Francis and a laptop together is by photoshopping (badly here)

Okay you know that picture is a joke. I don't think the Pope even uses a computer. So I did a sloppy cut-and-paste with PaintNet, and...well... that's my fun for the day!

Seriously, even though the Pope has someone else do the actual posting, he's been giving us plenty to ponder recently on his Twitter account. I wonder what would happen if we took up and prayed about the theme of the daily tweet that Pope Francis sends out in seven languages (including Arabic). What if we allowed it to guide even a few moments of prayerful consideration and comparison with our own lives and priorities?

This brief meditation could bear much fruit.

Here are some of his recent offerings that I have collected in no special order:

Breathe!

Look here: I posted on the BLOG!

I'm bursting with things to say and reflections to articulate and share, and I can't get them out. But here is one small thing for the day--one achievement--and for this I am grateful.

It's important, if possible, to set at least one goal and accomplish it every day. It's part of living with chronic illness. Even if it's a really, really, really small accomplishment. Find one thing you can do, one challenge (tiny, tiny challenge, don't freak out, don't overdo it, a "baby step"). Do that. Or if you try but fail, find something smaller. Make a half step.

When you achieve something during the day, rejoice and be grateful. You have grown as a human being. It's humiliating, I know, but the "measure" for growing as a human person is a mystery to us. The measure is in the hands of Someone Else.

As I said in my book, there were days when my goal was to get from my bed to the chair in the living room so as to be closer to Eileen and the kids.

Of course, I never felt satisfied with that (just as I don't feel satisfied with this blog post right now). But what I'm talking about here is not satisfaction. It's living, growing, moving forward, becoming more human according to the rhythm of the mysterious journey that each of us has been given in this life.

If and when we find ourselves in circumstances where we are immobilized, where all we can do is lay there and breathe, then let's breathe! Breathing, if we think about it, is a living image of so many things. But never mind that now. Breathe. Say "yes" to the gift of existence, go forward from breath to breath with trust in that gift, and let each breath speak its own gratitude.

This is the stuff of which real heroism is made.

The Dawn Will Come

Sometimes I find it helpful to "switch gears" in the brain. So when I'm worn out with writing, I'll shift over to making graphic memes using PaintNet. I'm just a hack at this, learning as I go along, but I enjoy it (until it, too, exhausts me, which is like... now).

So here's what I came up with, from the Psalm in today's Liturgy. It gives me hope as I pass through this long night. Hope, because the dawn will come.

Happy Birthday to My Great Lady

Eileen's birthday was on Saturday. It was a lovely day, especially because John Paul is home on Spring Break.

Here's to my great lady! I can't imagine life without her.

Eileen in her classroom watching her students work.

Hypocrisy and Humility

Here is a short reflection on the Gospel that I wrote for today's MAGNIFICAT Lenten Companion. Please do click on the link to learn more about our monthly magazine and other publications of this excellent resource.

Meanwhile, I'll take advantage of my previous writing by using it for today's blog post:

Let's Not Tear One Another Apart

I haven't been moving around very well lately, and I don't exactly feel inspired to write. But that doesn't mean I have stopped thinking. I wanted to say something about these difficult days in the U.S.A. and our world, to take the approach of addressing the larger context of problems many of us are wrestling with right now.

So I made a video.

The quality is not very good. Except for a few edits, it's just a straight spoken reflection. Anyway, I decided to just post it.

Perhaps there is some value in it.

Leaping Toward the Future

I hope I'm not the only one getting "life coaching" from Facebook.

Why don't y'all just be a social media platform. We'll take care of the content. Sheesh. One day I logged onto Facebook and was greeted with this message:

Uh... "Good afternoon, Facebook algorhithm. So... can you bring me a cup of coffee?"

Anyway, I made the most of it. Indeed, it was a beautiful day without any help from me. Sunsets are after 6:00 PM by now, and traveling back up along the Ridge.

It would appear that March is coming in like a lamb.

"Oldies but Goodies" Part 1

One thing I can do on this blog right now is represent some fun "Oldies" that pop up in places like Timehop. The Never Give Up BLOG--after all--goes back five years. One thing that strikes me in reading old entries is how much the kids have grown.

Josefina may still be pretty small physically but she has grown so much as a person. Here is a blog entry from four years ago, when she was age five.

Not that she doesn't still do things like this, but it's ...different now. Just read it and you'll see:

Brother Against Brother

Soon after posting about the centenary of the beginning of the Battle of Verdun, I remembered a reflection I had written that recently appeared in the MAGNIFICAT Lenten Companion. The film footage described below was not from Verdun, but from another stretch of the Western front.

Still, it makes for an appropriate followup as we try to put war in perspective:

1916: The Killing Fields of Verdun

We have another date to mark in our Centennial of Infamy: February 21, 1916 (the English newspaper reports first appeared a hundred years ago today).

I have neither the energy nor the disposition at present to say much about the German offensive that began on the Western Front in these strange days. The Germans advanced into an historic region in the valley along the Meuse river, in a place that had been one of the "crossroads" of Europe for over a thousand years.

Ten months and nearly a million casualties later, the Germans and the French had traded back and forth about five miles of territory. Today we remember this monstrous nightmare of blood, fire, and madness as "the Battle of Verdun." We must bare our heads and weep for the multitude of men and boys from both sides who were ground up by the relentless machine of death.

Eyewitness descriptions of these days, weeks, and months of chaos are terrifying even to read. Let these words from the journal of a French officer suffice: "What a massacre! What scenes of horror and carnage! I cannot find words to translate my impressions. Hell cannot be so terrible. Men are mad!"

Even after the greater and more destructive war of 1939-1945, the killing fields of Verdun remain a singular monument to the violence, futility, and stupidity of human pride.

I Need to Listen More

I've been having a hard time over the past month. A very hard time.
Please pray for me.

This blog may slow down for awhile. I don't know. My faith remains firm. I'm still on Twitter:

I've been through all this before. I need to listen more. I shall listen to other people and music.

I shall listen to the Pope:

Everything is Present in Hope

Some things seem always the same.

Thirty years ago, I commuted between the Valley and Washington DC, where I had just begun graduate studies. I was 23 years old in February of 1986, and yet much was the same as it is now. I saw this same sky on a winter's afternoon. I breathed this same air and felt the same fading warmth of the waning sun.

And yet, the people whom I care most about in the world, the people with whom I now share every day, were unknown to me.

Thirty years ago, I had not yet met Eileen. I could not even imagine her or the life we would share together. So much that makes up who I am simply did not exist. The children did not exist.

The sky looked just as it does now, but I was alone.

And in another generation, the sky will again glow as it does now. What kind of turmoil will the world have endured between now and then? Where will we all be?

I will have continued, and perhaps completed, my part in this story. There is nothing vivid about the future, except what I have learned up to this moment, which convinces me that everything is already present in hope. I know that there is a story, and that I am not meant to be alone.

Mercy and the Odd Ways that Books Get Written

If you're still looking for some good resources for living this extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy, it's not too late to get a copy of this very fine Year of Mercy Companion.

This is a special Magnificat publication of readings, prayers, and devotions that are worth holding onto even after the year is over.

Click HERE to learn more. Paper copies are still available, as well as ebooks in your favorite format.

A team of excellent writers and editors worked very hard to put this beautiful collection together. Since I only contributed a few entries to its 448 pages, I am saying this in recognition of the work of many others.

I am reproducing below one of my entries that appeared on February 11. It's hard to believe that it's been six years since my book Never Give Up: My Life and God's Mercy was published by Servant and Franciscan Media (the BOOK is still very timely and worth reading, and it is still in print and ebook - click HERE to get a copy for yourself or someone you care about).

I'm glad I had wonderful editors for the book who corrected my funky sentences (like that last one).

The Never Give Up book and its ongoing "sequel," the Never Give Up blog, are projects that were never on my bucket list. They were and remain surprising and fruitful things in my own life and, I've been told, in the lives of others.

Here's my reflection on how it all came about:

An Event That Gives Us Hope

Pope Francis prays before Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe at her Basilica in Mexico, at the center of the land that stretches from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego (Screen shots from CTV broadcast).

Here she is, the real Virgin of Guadalupe
in her "house" of nearly five hundred years.
She came in those days to one poor man
(and yesterday another poor man went to see her).
Then and now, her presence—however incomprehensible and wonderful
to our understanding and science—is simple in its meaning:
She wants to stay with us.

This event gives me hope.
Hope for eternal life, for glory,
for victory in the resurrection of the Man
who was born from the tiny space beneath those folded hands.

This event gives me hope.
Hope for our poor world,
for the building up of goodness and true freedom,
even as we journey through our time of sorrows.
Hope against violence, cruelty, and lies.
Hope for the reconciliation of peoples.

Hope for the land in which I live,
where there is a trail of earth and soil
from my doorstep to her threshold.
Hope for "all the people" in what she called "the land,"
this land upon which we are blessed to live,
entrusted to us by God
and specially blessed by this miracle,
this enduring sign of her presence.

The times are evil, indeed,
and the children of God are in distress.
The world so much needs a mother's tenderness and closeness.

Our land and all its peoples—ancient, old, and new—cry out
with so many pains,
so much suffering,
so much confusion.
We do not know how to go forward.

All the more reason to turn to Mary.

She comes, our mother, with consolation, counsel, compassion.
She brings Jesus, our only hope
who belongs to all of us,
to those who know Him,
and those who have forgotten Him,
and those who do not know Him yet.

She wants us to open our eyes,
to show us how we must love one another,
not only as a "solution,"
but above all to be true to who we are...

All people are her children,
all of us are the little brothers and sisters of Jesus,
and therefore
brothers and sisters of each other,
of one family,
a human family
so greatly loved that Love Himself
became her child, and our brother.

Mary's Plan to Meet with Francis in Mexico

Pope Francis is in Mexico after his historic meeting with Moscow Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church (more on this historic meeting in a future blog).

We know that Francis wants to spend personal, one-on-one time with the Virgin of Guadalupe, who is present at the Basilica in Mexico City in what can only be called the second most amazing image in the universe.

He expressed this particular desire before embarking on this trip.

The great news is that his "personal audience" has been arranged for Saturday. Vatican Radio had this report:

This "sort of secret room," as they call it, is a very small private chapel. The frame that holds the tilma can be turned around so that it faces the interior of this chapel.

We know well about this, because during his five (five!) visits to Mexico, Saint John Paul II spent long periods of time in this place. He would go during the night (after the Basilica closed to pilgrims) and pray long hours alone with Mary.

I have been told that security cameras in the chapel revealed some of these intimate moments (I have never seen any footage; I don't think they keep that sort of thing.) Supposedly, John Paul II would spend long periods of time with his face pressed to the glass, near the Blessed Mother's feet.

He prayed for the Church and for the world.

Dear friends, have confidence in Jesus and His holy mother Mary. Have confidence, whatever the storms of these times may bring.

Let us join Pope Francis in renewing our hope for our salvation, for the life of the Church, for a witness to the world.

The frame holding the tilma and its image as seen in the Basilica. The small chapel is behind this wall, and the frame can turn.

Loaves and Fishes

What are we, O Lord?
Five loaves and two fish.
Take us, Lord,
and make us new
according to the measure of Your love.

Francis's Pilgrimage to Mexico and Mary

Pope Francis spoke by teleconference with Mexicans preparing for his upcoming trip to their country. There are many important elements of this trip, but I want to focus on just one here. The Pope's desire to meet with the Virgin of Guadalupe is absolutely real.

Jorge Bergoglio is no stranger to Guadalupe. He has been to "Mary's house," but this will be his first visit since his dramatic and unexpected transfer from Latin America to Rome three years ago.

I have no doubt that these words of the Pope, and this great desire of his "to visit the maternal house, and to feel the tenderness of her kind presence," are profoundly rooted in his experience, which is the experience of countless Guadalupan pilgrims (myself included).

Through the inexplicable phenomenon of the image on Saint Juan Diego's tilma, Mary "lives there." The whole miracle of Guadalupe has a purpose, and that purpose is the possibility of encountering Mary personally, with a kind of physical "presence," a tenderness, a hospitality, and eyes that look upon you before you think to look at her.

Pope Francis gets it. He knows this place. He knows that she has asked to see him "as one more son," and that he needs to see her, to bring to her all the suffering of our times.

Let us join him in placing our confidence in her.

"Do you want me to confide in you [one] of my greatest desires?

To be able to visit the Virgin Mary’s house.

As one more son, I will approach our Mother

and place at her feet all that I bear in my heart.

It is lovely to be able to visit the maternal house,

and to feel the tenderness of her kind presence.

There, I will look at her in her eyes

and implore that she not fail to look at us with mercy,

as she is our Heavenly Mother."

Here's How Virginia "Does" Blizzards!

The pictures really say it all:

Mountains of snow have been reduced to ... well, that, along with lots of soggy ground:

Meanwhile the melted snow has turned drainage paths into roaring streams: