Sometimes opportunities come into your life which are not only unexpected, but transformative. Sometimes it’s a new job, a powerful retreat,
service to others, or time spent with the sick or dying.

Sometimes, it’s as simple as spending time reading.

This year I was blessed to be a part, in a very small way, of the canonization process for Servant of God Dorothy Day.  As part of a global team, it was my role to transcribe some pages from her personal diaries.

Dorothy was a woman, a journalist and a Catholic I have long admired. I’ve quoted her throughout my life, particularly in matters of social justice and non-violence. She founded the Catholic Worker movement with Peter Maurin in NYC in 1933, opening houses of hospitality to serve those living in poverty.

When the first ten pages of her 1961 diary arrived in an emailed document, I sat and stared at the handwritten pages, noticed the cross-outs and little bits of thoughts written in the margin.

It took a few days of simply scrolling through the pages before I could fully grasp that I actually had in my digital possession the journal entries of a

woman who would, undoubtedly, be named a saint. Somehow it didn’t seem reasonable that I, with so many shortcomings, should be allowed to undertake the task.

Eventually, my awe was transformed into a real desire to read her words and, hopefully, come to a richer understanding of her. I didn’t realize the task would soon become a challenge. After several days of working on just one page, and getting nowhere fast, I found myself muttering, ‘You know, Dorothy, this would be so much easier if you just had better handwriting!”

I think Dorothy would be understanding of my slip into familiarity. It was her very humanity, so obvious to me now in her recounting of each day’s journey, the trials and joys of dealing with so many people in varying states of distress, which allowed me the freedom to feel as if we were on comfortable terms.

As I read more of her writings and more about her, particularly the writings of Robert Ellsberg, a former editor for the Catholic Worker, I came across his description of her on a path where “she created a new model of discipleship, a new model of holiness, a new way of being a saint that combines what [Charles] Peguy called the mystical and the political.  Dorothy did more than anyone to win credibility for this path.  In so doing, she represented an aspect of the saintliness demanded by the present moment.”

Ellsberg also shared Dorothy Day’s own thoughts on society’s need for a new kind of saint: “Whatever I had read as a child about the saints had thrilled me.  I could see the nobility of giving one’s life for the sick, the maimed, the leper.  Priests and Sisters the world over could be working for the littlest ones of Christ, and my heart stirred at their work.  But there was another question in my mind. Why was so much done in remedying the evil instead of avoiding it in the first place?… Where were the saints to try to change the social order, not just to minister to the slaves, but to do away with slavery?”

Today, we are still in need of this new kind of saint. Fortunately, I believe, they are here among us, from every race and every faith tradition, doing the work that needs to be done to create a better world.

Today I received an email in my inbox entitled “Being Human is Hard.”                                                                                                                                                                

Every time I see or hear those words I still think back to the day of my father’s wake, more than 20 years ago.

On that night, my youngest son chose to express his grief and love by drawing pictures and writing “I love you, Poppy,” on little pieces of paper and placing them around my father’s body as it lay in repose. Crosses, hearts and crooked XXXs and OOOs were lined up with as much importance as the American flag, folded and resting on the casket.

His demonstrations of love brought most of the adults in the funeral parlor to tears, and one elderly on-looker was heard to say, “Oh look, he’s just like a little person.”

With that, my son crawled up on my lap and said stoically, “I don’t like being a little person. It hurts too much.”

I hugged him tightly to myself and whispered in his ear, “I know. It hurts to be a big person, too.”

In an incredibly touching moment he looked up at me and brushed large tears off my cheeks. We understood each other. We shared in the grief. He reminded me of a painful truth – it’s hard to be human.

It’s hard to be human because it hurts to be human, and it hurts for the same reason that it’s a joy – because we love. And it seems the more we love, the more we are open to hurt from loving and the experience may leave us wondering if love is worth it; if the vulnerability that is required of real love isn’t more something to be feared than something to be valued.

There were times in my own life when the pain of losing someone I loved was so overwhelming that I determined I would build walls around my heart so as not to be hurt the next time. But in the midst of the pain, I soon learned something professed by Irish author Enid Starkie: “Unhurt people are not much good in the world.”

The greatest model for us was our own Christ who loved to what others considered excess, who painfully lamented that his love was neither accepted nor returned, crying, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem . . . how many times I yearned to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were unwilling!”

It was this bruised and wounded Jesus, rejected, denied and spat upon, who continued to love none-the-less – enough to die for all of us, not just for some of us.

So great a love is difficult to understand, and perhaps more difficult to accept, because it often engenders the fear of expectation – what do I have to give in return?

For Jesus, who brought about and experienced the transformative power of love, the cost of being human was suffering and death – and Resurrection.

Surely, loving requires a sacrifice, but what is the cost to humanity if we are not willing to love?

Photo by juan pablo rodriguez on Unsplash

As children, there is something powerful about the stories told to us by our fathers.

My time with my dad was always filled with family stories, made up stories, Bible stories or ancient myths and they all left an impression on my young heart.

My dad was especially fond of sharing his love of Native Americans, who had a deep spirituality and special relationship with creation born of respect and gratitude.

One of my favorite stories was the Iroquois tale of the Great Peacemaker, the Great Law of Peace and the Peace Tree.

Years later I would learn how instrumental the Iroquois and the Great Law of Peace would be in American history, but, as a child, I was enamored of the image of a great peace hero and the roots of the peace tree reaching out to join all people in unity.

It is no surprise that, as a teen graduating from high school, I chose a Beatitude as the verse that would appear under my yearbook photo: “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God.”

When my youthful, naïve, romantic vision of peacemaking came face-to- face with the actual violence and cruelty that existed in the world, even among Native American tribes, I discovered that peacemaking wasn’t as easy I believed it to be.

What I have come to understand over many years is that peace needs to be cultivated. It is a task that needs to be undertaken interiorly, in our hearts, and exteriorly, through our actions.

For us, as children of God, peace must be something more than simply the absence of war. Peace must flow from our relationships – with God, with creation, and with others.

Years ago, during an annual conference for Catholic school teachers and catechists, I gave a workshop entitled, “Is Peace the Piece that is Missing?”

During the presentation I offered a few questions for reflection: How many of you have spoken about peace to your students in the last week; given a homework assignment relating to peace; offered prayers for peace with your class; undertaken some action for peace with your class; have a peace bulletin board; have the word peace visible somewhere in your classroom?

The most provocative question, apparently, was, “How many of you know, without a doubt, where you stand on the issue of peace and the need for war?”

The answers were not encouraging. One teacher walked out.

She had lost a brother in the Twin Towers attack and was very angry with me and the ideas I was sharing regarding the way of peace.

Two years later, a woman stopped me at the same annual conference and asked if I had given a peace workshop a few years prior. When I acknowledged that I had, she said, “I am the woman who walked out. It took me a long time, more than a year, but I finally got it.” Then she hugged me.

Servant of God Dorothy Day once said, “The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us.”

For many, that personal challenge is very difficult because, sometimes, the most troubling reality is the one we come face-to-face with in our own hearts.

So, how are we to take up the great task of peacemaking?

I am encouraged always by prayer and, again, by the words of Dorothy Day: “We must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time; we can be responsible only for the one action of the present moment. But we can beg for an increase of love in our hearts that will vitalize and transform all our individual actions, and know that God will take them and multiply them, as Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes.”

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

Mary Morrell is the author of “Let Go and Live,” and “Things My Father Taught Me About Love,” both available as ebooks on Amazon.

In a recent Facebook exchange about our treatment of immigrants at the border, I wrote, “America will suffer for the mistreatment of God’s
children.” A Christian gentleman replied, asking, “How are we mistreating God’s children?” saying they have no right to feel mistreated if they come into this country illegally, and shared the story of his grandparent's legal entry into the country.

First, I would preface my answer with my belief, as a Catholic and an American citizen, that we certainly need a well-thought out, well-structured and well-financed immigration plan that will process immigrants quickly while providing safety for them, and for us.

However, any time we deprive people of their dignity, inflict fear and degradation, and deprive them of necessities to meet their basic human needs, we are hurting God’s children.

How does separating children, as young as infants, from their parents, or taking fathers or mothers from their families, whether new immigrants or established families living in the US, ensure our safety?  It doesn’t.  How does it make our lives better? It doesn’t.  

We are actively dehumanizing people. That can never be the goal of a great nation or a great people.

My grandparents on both sides were also immigrants who came here legally, but at that time, throughout the history of Ellis Island, only 2% of immigrants were deported.  While they were sometimes detained, usually for medical reasons, none were kept in cages, denied basic necessities or had their children taken away.

 Upwards of 10,000 immigrants a day were processed at Ellis Island, and though it was opened more than 100 years ago, they managed to do a better job than we do today. A writer in 1905, describing the process at Ellis Island, and other points of entry wrote: “Not only are the laws for our protection strictly enforced, but their enforcement is marked by humane and kindly treatment of the Alien.” We could learn a lesson from that.

Sadly, all was never gold when it came to our immigration policies, when, so often, there was an attempt to curtail immigration of those who were not “white.”

But most disturbing to me was the ideal of eugenics, which today would be, or should be, an anathema to American values.

The eugenic ideal was widely embraced in America, particularly in the early 20th century. This attempt to improve the genetic pool by excluding those who were considered inferior was practiced in our immigration policy by excluding those immigrants who were believed to have physical (those that couldn’t be healed), mental or moral defects.

My fear is that, with a  sitting president who has no qualms about sowing seeds of hatred and division among those he is meant to serve, and who has blatantly given evidence to his racism and obvious belief that those of other nationalities and cultures are somehow inferior,  it won’t be long before an attempt is made to malign and endanger those who are mentally or physically challenged.

The value of history is that we have the opportunity to study it and learn what ideals we should hold on to, and those we absolutely need to replace for the growth and well-being of our country.

But we are prone to boiling frog syndrome, expressed in the figurative tale about a frog dropped into boiling water but immediately jumps out. When the frog is dropped into cold water which is slowly brought to a boil, the frog will stay in the water until it dies.

As people of faith, and as citizens, we must continue to be vigilant, to be attentive to what is really happening, to work and to pray for a country that evolves into the unified, inclusive, spiritually diverse and welcoming country it was meant to be. That is where our strength lies.

Annie Spratt photo on Unsplash

As a child I grew up in a house without air-conditioning, a small, three-bedroom ranch with few windows. Air-conditioning made my mom sick, so there was no chance we would have any in the house. One year my dad finally convinced her to let him put a window unit in the garage, which, in the warm weather, became our summer room.  When my mom said, “Yes,” my dad and I could barely contain our excitement.

The comfortable, cool times lasted about a month before my mom came down with bronchitis. So, we went back to wet towels around our necks and cold drinks on the shaded patio, aware that comfort is relative, and many times our feelings of being physically uncomfortable are more minor inconveniences than serious problems.

I forgot that lesson when the air-conditioner in my car stopped working last fall. Navigating the cooler weather was fine, but with summer upon us, I found myself whining every day:  “I am so uncomfortable!,” bemoaning the fact that I could not afford to fix the problem or buy another car.

In those times of feeling sorry for myself, I felt my conscience being challenged by the reality of so many people who live everyday with a level of discomfort that I will likely never experience, those whom Pope Francis has described as “faces marked by suffering, marginalization, oppression, violence, torture and imprisonment, war, deprivation of freedom and dignity, ignorance and illiteracy, medical emergencies and shortage of work, trafficking and slavery, exile, extreme poverty and forced migration.”

For the rest of us, if we are lucky, our occasional discomforts lead us to a state of spiritual discomfort necessary for our growth in faith. Scripture was clear that Jesus was a master at making people feel uncomfortable, especially those who needed a radical change of heart and mind.

Years ago, one of my adult students reminded me that in life, as in faith, there is nothing more dangerous to our development than being comfortable.

A small group of my students had gathered to discuss conversion and view the movie, “Romero,” the powerful story of Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero of El Salvador and his commitment to social justice and the poor. It is a disturbing movie, not only because of the violence, which was an historical reality, but because it challenges us as Christians to a moral vision that moves us from complacency and calls us, as Church, to live what Jesus lived and preached through a preferential option for the poor.

A timid, orthodox, predictable bookworm, Bishop Romero was elected as archbishop by conservative bishops who believed he would not make waves in a land ravished by conflict in the struggle for land reform.  Just one month later, following the brutal death of his friend, Father Rutilio Grande, along with two parishioners, Archbishop Romero experienced a turning point that would stir up its own storm leading to his assassination on the altar three years later as he raised the consecrated host and prayed.

Soon after Father Grande’s death, the archbishop would say, prophetically, “We must learn this invitation of Christ: ‘Those who wish to come after me must renounce themselves.’ Let them renounce themselves, renounce their comforts, renounce their personal opinions, and follow only the mind of Christ, which can lead us to death but will surely also lead us to resurrection.”

When the movie was over, I found one of my students sitting in silence, tears streaming down her face. I sat down next to her and asked if she was OK. She took my hand and said, “I hate when you do that. I was comfortable with the way I lived my faith. Now I’m not.”

The cost of discipleship.

Mary Morrell is the author of “Let Go and Live,” and “Things My Father Taught Me About Love,” both available as ebooks on Amazon.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash