Grow up in one place

Live in another

Work here

Work there

Visit plenty of other places

What does it mean

To feel at home?

So subjective

It can be about

A place

Or the presence

Of certain people

Dislocation

Discomfort

Can help some people

Or make others feel

‘All at sea’

The truth

As is frequently the case

Lies within

If I am enough

Then so will my world be

Are you at home

Today?

“Be merciful just as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36)

As we conclude the Year of Mercy, one of the strengths of this time has been to focus upon showing compassion, tending the wounds of others. Such a pastoral focus is a great starting point for our relationships. We don’t know of other’s wounds – they are not always obvious. Such mercy, such compassion towards others can be grace – for all concerned.

Young people, encouraged by society, can think that painful, difficult situations are to be avoided at all costs. The truth is that such situations happen. We have a choice of how we deal with such situations. Once the pain has stopped and the tears have ceased, life can emerge from wounds that have been tended. Whether we tend the wounds of others or have our own wounds tended, our God-given dignity has been affirmed. The dignity that flows from being an image of God.

Have a great week!
Patrick

Jesus taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes. (Matt 7:29)

In today’s world, there are many public (and not-so-public) voices who would have us listen to them. They can use or abuse statistics; they can claim to want to make us happy – or better still, safe. As much as we may be drawn to one or more of such voices, they may not satisfy us at the deepest level. Who do I look to in my life? What or who guides me or has authority in my life, especially when times are tough?

Young people, like many of us, want to be assured that they are ‘doing the right thing’. The message of Jesus – we are creatures of God; we are one family; love, compassion and forgiveness are vital to everyone’s flourishing, including our own – has authority because it is the truth. It speaks to our heart’s deepest longings. By following the message of Jesus, we can assure young people that they are doing the right thing. That is the path of wholeness and holiness…for all.

Have a great week!
Patrick

Written and reproduced with permission from Jennifer and Lauren

Roses aren’t always red,
Violets aren’t exactly blue,
The society that we live in,
Never seems to speak the truth,
Smiles aren’t always happy,
Frowns aren’t always upset,
people judge too quickly,
And our feelings are what they forget,
The realm of spirituality is mystical and mysterious,
Humankind has woven words into the creations of beauty,
Sometimes our world opposes and sometimes it concurs,
We cannot control other’s emotions,

We can only wish for good to be upon us,
Only God knows our true intentions,
We can only pray for him to hear us,
Spirituality is within us and lives within us,

There is a voice inside of you,
That whispers what is right and wrong,
What should be acted upon or not,
Just listen to what’s inside of you,

Your spirit is only found in your heart,
Have your mind to be positive,
Only think optimistically,
Like a rainbow after a storm

For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be. (Matt 6:21)

In other words, what really matters to me? I can say the words that I think will make others happy – ’toe the company line’ – but we need to be able to answer the question: ‘what is truly important to me?’ For a variety of reasons, it is possible to live a life disconnected from ourselves where I feel that there is nothing to treasure. I may no longer trust my heart or life can seem generally grey. Also, if I put my store in things, I will not build and maintain healthy relationships with family and friends.

Part of our task with the young people in our care is to remind them to value people and use things – not the other way around. Another facet of our role is to help young people discover what matters to them – to follow their heart. Their happiness lies there, since the God who loved them into life placed that goodness in them. That goodness when harnessed which adds a unique and delicate thread to the great tapestry of humanity.

Have a great week!
Patrick

Lead me in your truth, and teach me (Ps 25:5)

As human beings, we always have limited knowledge, understanding and wisdom. No-one has the truth ’sewn up’. Over time we may grow in our comprehension of the truth. We are taught and led, by God’s grace, through the scriptures, Church teaching, as well as people and events of our lives. A particular combination of events can prepare us, draw us to a greater appreciation of an aspect of truth – about ourselves, others or God.

Clearly we have a role to play in leading and teaching the young people in our care. We can help young people young people discern the truth from that which just advances a product, brand, or someone’s ‘bottom line’. Another significant part that we can play is to help young people to understand that, as much as they are learning about themselves now, they do not ‘arrive’ at 18, 28 or any other age. Over time, our enthusiasm to do so may wane but as long as we remain open, we can continue to learn and grow as individuals.

Have a great week!
Patrick

I heard part of the story

Of Nigethan

A Tamil man.

He spent months moving around

In Sri Lanka

Enduring persecution

Witnessing traumatic events.

Eventually he decided

To leave

Without his wife and child.

A long and circuitous journey

Brought him to Christmas Island.

He was in detention

For over 6 years.

Now he has a bridging visa.

So he can’t leave Australia

And his family can’t come here.

Eight years apart.

I have not lived his life

But it seems like

Torture

To me.

Yet he is grateful

To the Australian people

for their welcome and help.

What a shame

That bureaucracies

Are not guided by

Love and compassion.

My Year 11 class recently has been sharing music that has meaning to them. They have played songs that noted the world’s difficulties. While affirming that, I asked them to take time outside on a sunny Melbourne day and call to mind what makes them happy

Smiling

Laughing young people

Under an azure sky

Savouring their release from ‘captivity’

We are filled with the sights and smells of spring.

Despite the wind

A camaraderie

Is shared

Goodness flows

Happiness is glimpsed

May we keep our focus

On the good

Remembering that joy

Is the infallible sign of

The presence of God

He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly (Luke 1:52)

The world contains injustice. Some of it is very difficult to bear. People of faith cry out for some relief – for justice. The question can and should be put to each of us: ‘What are you doing to help?’ Our faith is not in a ‘magical God’ who ‘fixes everything’ but much closer to that described by Teresa of Avila, Doctor of the Church who said that we are ‘God’s heart and hands’.

Young people thirst for justice. Working with young people, as you do, you already know that. Our role is to remind young people that when they see injustice, they are not powerless. Using Cardijn’s ‘ see-judge-act’ tool (or something similar) like-minded people of faith can gather and reflect upon a situation in the light of the scriptures and Church teaching. Armed with this they can act as a force for good, doing their part to help this scripture passage become a reality.

Have a great week!
Patrick

Shared with permission from my friend and author, Brian Doyle

Do we take them for granted? Yes, we take them for granted. We nod to them in friendly fashion when we see them here and there, and then we forge ahead to the bank or the bakery, and we do not stop for a long moment to consider that this quiet woman swore to devote her entire life to light and love and mercy and epiphany and kindness and tenderness and the battle against arrogance and greed and cruelty and lies and violence. Probably she made that vow when she was all of eighteen or twenty or twenty-two, and she kept that vow ever since, in a world where vows are shattered so often that you can see the shards in the street like slush in the gutter.

These women are the objects of amusement and derision on stage and screen. They are quite often a cliché or a trope in current culture. They are quite often said to be collectively in precipitate decline. Every story about them, few as such stories are, mentions their average age of seventy or so, and their wan trickle of new recruits, and the fact that fifty years ago there were three times as many of them in America as there are today. No stories about them ever note that collectively they donated their creative and diligent labor to Catholic education for two hundred years without being paid a penny. No stories about them note that they arguably had a greater effect for good on millions of American Catholic children than priests and brothers and bishops and cardinals ever did.

For every one who is remembered as mean and testy and stern and quick to anger there are a hundred who were very much like aunts and grandmothers to children whose home lives were scarred and painful and dark and fearful and lonely. For every one pilloried on stage and screen there were a hundred who gently quietly tenderly showered attentiveness and witness and love and empathy on the children in her care. For every one remembered as hard and cold in class there were a hundred who served as nurses and cooks and managers of the shelter, the food bank, the clothing drive, the fundraiser, the fifth-grade basketball team, the wake and funeral of a fellow pilgrim on the road to light. They ran schools, they counseled those who asked the loan of their considerable wisdom, they ran hospitals and clinics and hospices, they wrote lovely books and columns and essays and poems and songs, they succored those who were ill and imprisoned and crushed by despair, they ran libraries and monasteries and companies and colleges and museums, they did uncountable other things small and huge that no one can account but the Chief Accountant, who must often look upon them with unimaginable tenderness and pride and gratitude.

Do we take them for granted? Yes, we do. We always have. By rights we ought to pause once a day at least, every one of us who speaks and sings Catholicism, and bow our heads, and in the silence of our hearts thank the fifty thousand American nuns brilliantly at work today, and the hundreds of thousands who worked so hard for love and light during their lives and then went home to the Love itself. They were and are extraordinary women. They are beacons and pillars and exemplars and walking enfleshed evidence of what we say we believe when we say that we are Catholic. If you say that you are Catholic then you believe that light will defeat darkness, hope defeat despair, love defeat the sneer of hate; and when your belief wavers, when you wonder if your faith is foolish, I might suggest that you do as I do, and seek out a nun, and gaze in wonder at a living promise, a woman who gave her whole life to the idea that Christ was absolutely right. And if you are like me you will then wander away refreshed and restored and once again filled with a wild and irrepressible faith.

Brian Doyle