The Rest of My Life, The Best of My Life

I recently took my daughter to a music lesson with her new saxophone teacher.  We went downstairs into his music studio, and I sat down at a table to work while they continued on into the next room for the lesson.  I fully intended to be productive for the next half hour. 

It wasn’t so much the sound of horns and laughter coming from the next room that distracted me (I’m used to that!).  It was the collection of newspaper clippings, inspirational messages, jokes and pictures of Snoopy that hung all around on the walls of the studio.  Everywhere I looked, something interesting caught my eye.  After I had read and enjoyed some of them, I got out my work and tried to focus.  But one more message was propped up on the table, printed on a block of wood.  It said:  I’m going to make THE REST of my life THE BEST of my life.

Now some of you older folks will laugh at me or protest, but let me say it – I will soon be entering (if I haven’t already!) the second half of my life.  And I don’t care if you’re pushing 40, 70 or 95 – at some point in your life, a little voice in your head begins to whisper the words:  My best years are behind me. 

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with looking at the past with joy and nostalgia.  There’s nothing wrong with recognizing the beauty of youth or yearning a bit for the days when we had more energy and a higher metabolism.  But no matter how wistful we may be for the good things of the past, the future will always lay ahead of us as gift.  The future is unknown, and with this comes great possibility – the possibility that the best may actually be yet to come. 

But the best years won’t come by chance.  As we get older, it is easy to just settle in and “be ourselves” and “do what we always do.”  It is easy to maintain the status quo.  But the life we really want to lead before our God and before each other requires so much more than that.

Our future lies ahead as a merging of God’s grace and our own free will, a melding of God’s plans and our own, a partnership between human and divine that can lead to amazing things.  Maybe God wants us to accomplish something great.  Maybe he wants us to give some profound service.  Or maybe he just wants us to be totally devoted to someone who needs us. 

You know the bumper sticker:  God isn’t finished with me yet.  Well, he isn’t.  And that’s kind of exciting.  The future lies ahead as gift.  I’m going to make the rest of my life the best of my life.

Upcoming Program for Women

Women's Day of Reflection:  "In the Company of Faithful Women"

Please join me at a women's day of reflection sponsored by the West Shore Deanery on Sat., Sep. 12th at St. John Vianney Church in West Haven, CT.  I will give a talk on the life and spirituality of Servant of God Catherine Doherty and will be sharing some of her beautiful ideas on prayer.  Regina Cram of the Catholic Transcript will also speak.  The day will also include Mass, breakfast, time for prayer, opportunity for Reconciliation, recitation of the rosary, and lunch.  Please click here for a flyer with event details and registration information.

A Definition of Prayer

I like to begin classes on Prayer by asking participants:  “What is prayer?”  I don’t do this to trick them into saying the wrong thing or because I’m fishing for a particular answer.  I do it because I want to hear – and I want them to hear – the variety and the depth of one another's answers.  I have never heard a wrong answer to this question, but I have heard some quite beautiful ones.  They are all based on the genuine experience and the spiritual personalities of the "pray-ers" giving the answers.

One of my favorite “definitions” of prayer was written by Servant of God Catherine Doherty in her typical down-to-earth and straight-to-the-heart style.  It captures both the stillness and the movement of prayer, the way prayer can be both vibrant conversation and quiet being.  As Catherine knew very well, sometimes prayer is just being in a meaningful moment with the One you love.  It is a meeting of two loves.

“How can you define prayer, except by saying that it is love? It is love expressed in speech, and love expressed in silence. To put it another way, prayer is the meeting of two loves: the love of God and our love. That’s all there is to prayer.”

— Catherine Doherty, "Soul of my Soul: Reflections from a Life of Prayer"

This is a photo of Catherine in her nursing uniform.  Catherine served as an army nurse on the front lines during the first World War.

The First Follower

Today I watched a TED talk entitled “How to Start a Movement.”  It was thought-provoking and funny.  The speaker’s main point was that it takes guts to be a leader, but it might take even more guts to be the leader’s first follower.  Movements, he said, are started when some brave person decides to follow a “lone nut.”  The first follower is the one who makes a solitary evaluation and takes a massive personal risk.  But this follower is the one that makes it safer and easier for another person to follow, and then another and another.  The first follower is the hinge of the movement.

The video shown by the speaker to illustrate this point is hilarious and has nothing to do with “the Christian movement.”  And I certainly wouldn’t refer to Jesus Christ as a “lone nut” (though he’s been called worse).  But I was struck by the importance of the “first follower.”  It made me think of you.

We might identify Jesus’ “first follower” as Mary or one of the disciples.  But somewhere and at some time, you will need to be this “first follower.”  Whether in your home, or in a friendship, or in your workplace or in some other public arena, you will be the one who stands by Christ when he looks like a “lone nut.”  You will be the one who has to go over and look nutty with him!  You will make an evaluation and take a risk.  You might look like a fool.  But you will be the hinge that starts a movement. 

"Have the courage to follow and show others how to follow."

Is Petitionary Prayer Childish?

A very dear friend of mine – and one much older and wiser than myself – once told me that she had been praying to God to help her find a used car.  She had something very particular in mind, and she had found exactly the right thing, except that it cost about $500 too much.  “But that’s my fault,” she said.  “I forgot to tell God my budget.  In prayer, you have to be very specific.”  At the time, I thought she was being silly and simplistic.  But in truth, Maria was light years ahead of me in prayer.  Maria is what you might call a friend of God.  I should be sitting at her feet, saying as the disciples did to Jesus, “Teach me to pray.”

Many of us feel that it is naïve and unsophisticated to ask God for specific things.  He already knows what we want, so why waste the time and mental energy?  Isn’t our time better spent in adoration or contemplation?  And if we’re really being honest, aren’t we afraid that we will doubt or resent God if we ask for “specifics” and then don’t get them?  Petitionary prayer, it seems, can lead us into an intellectual quagmire of questions, objections and spiritual pitfalls.

That’s why Maria and those like her have so much to teach me.  As much as I may have wondered at Maria’s “brand” of faith, I deeply admired her.  The simplicity of her prayer was not born of simplicity of mind.  Maria was clever, uncommonly clever.  Rather, the simplicity of Maria’s prayer came from the simplicity of her heart, a heart that was focused like a laser on one thing:  God’s magnificent providence.  The way Maria saw things, God was both utterly transcendent and entirely involved in her life.  He was the One Seated on the Throne and the one who was right beside her.  He was the One in whom we live and move and have our being, and he was the one who would help her purchase just the right used car. 

Maria did not waste her time with intellectual questions about petitionary prayer.  Instead, she followed the command of Christ and asked God for every little thing (Mt. 7:7-11).  And how did God respond to Maria?  Not by answering each prayer with a miracle (though he did do amazing things for her!).  But he responded by being her lifelong companion, her constant friend.  He responded by giving her a peace that was the natural reward for her trust. 

When I looked into Maria’s eyes, I saw an ocean of calm and a confidence that took me aback.  It was prayer that did this.  Childlike?  Perhaps.  And to such as these belongs the Kingdom of God.