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Take the Risk

Written by Abby Braun on Good Friday

“ My soul is sorrowful even to death.  Remain here and keep watch.” –Mark 14:34

I didn’t answer the first time the phone rang.  It was 11:00 p.m. on a weeknight and I was getting ready for bed, so I let my friend Sara’s call go to voice mail.  When she called again two minutes later, I knew it was important so I picked up.  Sara had just learned that her dad, who was in the middle of what was supposed to be a relatively minor heart surgery, was probably going to die before we saw the sun rise again.  She called to ask for my prayers and also to ask for something more tangible of me.  Would I travel home to Philadelphia with her (we were both living in St. Louis at the time) and spend the week with her and her family as they walked the difficult road of burying her dad?

I often think about that week that I spent with my friend Sara. Sitting in the funeral home for hours while people filed through to pay their respects and say goodbyes.  Standing in the cemetery on a crisp fall day, holding my friend’s hand. Lots of tears and laughter and meals and stories shared. It was a week of profound grace for me.  Sara asked me to go with her because my own father died when I was in high school, so she knew I understood something about what her heart needed without having to say anything.

Certainly that was part of the grace of that week for me, that I was able to offer love and my simple presence in a way that was helpful to her and her family, because I had been there.  But the other grace – the one that has stayed with me even more – was the fact that my friend took the risk to invite me into one of the most sacred, most painful, most vulnerable moments of her life.  It was an act of courage on her part, to ask so much of me.  And in the end, that act of courage and vulnerability was remarkably transformative for us both: our lives and our friendship were blessed and enriched beyond measure because of it.

That week is on my mind in a particular way as we keep watch this Good Friday and walk with Jesus through his own suffering, death, and burial. I have often been inspired by the witness of the disciples who stay with Jesus to the bitter end, when all hope seems lost.  But as I heard the Passion story last Sunday, with ears fresh from having fumbled through another Lent, what hit my heart most was the image of Jesus in the garden, admitting to his friends that he is sad and afraid, asking them to stay with him.  How vulnerable he must have been, admitting this to the ones he had been leading, asking them to give what he knew they could not give.   And yet that did not stop him from taking the risk to be fully human and to share his whole self.

All of this leaves me asking myself the question, am I willing to be like Jesus and my friend Sara, to take that same risk, to share my whole self and invite others into my own darkest hours?  Am I willing to walk the long road with Jesus, and also to ask him to walk my long road with me? After all, that’s the only way we get to the resurrection. Now is the time, right?

Questions for Reflection:
When have you been invited into a vulnerable place in someone else’s life?  How did this experience transform you?
What are the dark places in your own life and your own heart right now?  Ask Jesus to enter into those places with you.

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Abby Braun
Abby has served as a campus minister at St. Mary’s since 2012.  After studying theology at the University of Notre Dame (BA ’05) and Pastoral Ministry at the University of Dayton (MA ’08), Abby spent four years as a Campus Minister at Saint Louis University where she met her husband, Bob.  She is especially grateful to be a part of a Jesuit Parish that serves a University community.  Abby works part-time at St. Mary’s and spends the rest of her days at home/toddling around Ann Arbor with her one-year-old daughter, Eleanor.
Email: aabraun@umich.edu

“I Blew it Off”

Written by Sarah Paquet on Tuesday of the Third Week of Lent

A Lenten riddle: what is by your side night and day, always wanting to help you out, connecting you to a world you’ve never seen and ready with answers to any question?

I wish I could say my answer is ‘God,’ but unfortunately in my case, the answer is ‘my phone.’

We’re all familiar with the way technology has become a concrete part of our lives, and whether we find it sinister or benevolent is really up to us, I suppose. I know that in my case, my phone is my number one tool for distraction and procrastination. If I’m bored in class, I turn to it without hesitation. When I don’t want to finish an assignment, I check Facebook. Lately I’ll spend a few minutes checking my phone when I park my car just because I don’t want to walk out into the cold.

What complicates my relationship with my phone is the people it connects me to. Taking Buzzfeed quizzes at my convenience is one thing, but responding to every single email and text can be a little exhausting. So, I tend to filter what I respond to, responding quickly to things I deem “important” and slowly (if at all) to things I don’t value. Yes, technology connects us, but it also makes it a lot easier to blow things off than if contact were made face-to-face.

I’ve spent some time away from my phone this Lent. The phone-free world offers a few uncomfortable things: people I find a bit difficult, classes I find a little boring, and silences that would otherwise be filled by thumbs clicking away. The interesting thing is not these daily challenges, which certainly everyone experiences, but what we choose to do with them. Uncomfortable situations don’t go away when we avoid them, and it turns out confronting them is a significantly richer experience. Further, confronting them often forces us to act – a boring class isn’t so boring if you participate, and silence leaves space for attempts at meaningful conversation.

It turns out life is more interesting when you’re paying attention.

Questions for Reflection and Suggestion for Prayer:
Consider your own relationship with technology. Does it distract you? Do you feel like it better connects you to the world?
The next time your phone or computer requests your attention, see what happens if you ignore it.
The Punch Brothers have a lot of interesting things to say about the role technology plays in our lives on their recent album The Phosphorescent Blues. This song is a good starting place:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zkiiJBXq8I]

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Sarah Paquet
Sarah is a 1^st year master’s student in the choral conducting program at Yale University. She graduated from the University of Michigan in 2012 and spent the following year serving as a Peer Minister at St. Mary Student Parish.
Email: slpaquet@gmail.com

Joy in the Desert

Written by Sharon Diotte on Monday of the Third Week of Lent

We focus a lot on the suffering of Lenten sacrifice, but this season also offers special gifts of joy. The benefits of giving up something that does not serve your highest good are boundless.

Some years ago, when living on Easter Island, I became addicted to cigarettes. Everyone around me smoked, all day long. I was unable to kick the habit while I was in that environment, but when I walked the tarmac and climbed the stairs into the plane that would carry me back to the US where no one in my social circle smoked, I was filled with a delirious glee in knowing that I no longer needed to feel controlled by the sickening addiction. A great weight was lifted. I felt light and buoyant. Of course there were endless benefits to being freed from the addiction.

Each Lent, Jesus asks me to follow him into the desert of my own vision quest, inviting me to give up something that does not serve my highest good. Sometimes it is a addictive habit that is stagnating me – worry, jealousy, doubt, insecurity, fear, pride; there are many. Sometimes I need to give up eating sugar or white flour because those things are sapping my physical strength. It’s hard to resist addictions all by myself. But the beauty of Lent is that I am not alone. Jesus sits here with me in the desert.

My St Mary’s family is also here with me. I am comforted and inspired by so many of you who share your experience with me through this Lenten blog. In this loving space, we travel the Lenten journey together, learning from each other. Here, the work of freeing myself from my addictions becomes joyous. I feel light and buoyant.

I am blessed to be a member of this spiritual family.

Questions for Reflection:
In what ways do you feel our spiritual family supporting your Lenten experience?
Is there someone among us that needs your personal support? What might that look like?

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Sharon Diotte
Sharon is a retired parishioner at St. Mary Student Parish.
Contact: sharondiotte@hotmail.com

Taking the Polar Express to Alternative Spring Break

Written by Omar Mahmood on Tuesday of the First Week of Lent

There is a train called the Polar Express that only those who believe in Santa can see or hear or ride. Chris Van Allsburg tells in his book of little Billy, who boards that train to the North Pole.

When he finally meets Santa, Billy wants nothing fancy. So Santa gives him a sliver bell from his sleigh. Billy is honored, but ends up losing it as it slips out of his ripped pocket. After so many misadventures, Billy makes it home for Christmas morning. He is surprised to find the bell under his Christmas tree. When he rings it, his parents hear nothing. Only Billy and his little sister can hear the tinkling of the bell. Only those who believe, only those who listen, can hear it. By the end of Billy’s long life, he has still held onto his faith. His friends and his sister no longer can hear the bell. But he believes, and so he can hear it tinkle still.

I have been honored in the past few months to have been welcomed into the folds of St. Mary, no less as a Muslim student on campus. The climate here in Ann Arbor, at least among students, is overwhelmingly rebellious, disdainful of traditional institutions like religion. And yet here we strive for God. In everyone there is a holy spirit, the very breath of God, and we all breathe it.

As we prepare for ASB, I remind myself and my friends that we must listen too to those whom we help. They are helping us too, maybe more than we can ever help them. I have spent some time working with eye patients in impoverished parts of the world, with Unite for Sight. Their stories move me still, and remind me that I am nothing before God, and they break my heart in the best of ways. I share here one conversation with a lady in Honduras, that I wrote about in a blog I kept there:

I sat down with a thin woman of a smaller frame. She was 47, but I would have guessed her to be at least 60. She had never been to school. I felt that at some time long ago she must have been pretty. Her smile was soft, but gave way to a glint of silver on her right canine, as much of the women here kept a casing of sorts for dental fashion.

Her boyfriend had left her some years ago. I asked about her house. She explained that she had none, and that she would get by renting rooms day by day if she could. Her water came from the river. She washed clothes in that river, she said. I asked her what she had to eat yesterday. “Nothing,” she said in a soft tone that was blunt in its own way. I would have liked to think she was exaggerating, but she said it over and over again, softer each time. “Somos pobres.”

I could muster nothing but “Que Dios le ayude”.

To know our weakness is to know God’s greatness. In those moments of knowledge, of heartbreak, Billy’s bell rings still.

Questions for Reflection:
If you were in The Polar Express, would the bell still ring for you?
Do you ever feel that your religious identity is in conflict with the campus culture?  What is your response?

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 Syed Omar Mahmood
Omar is an alumnus of Detroit Country Day School. He wishes he lived two hundred years ago, although a log cabin in God’s Country does have its merits.  He is a junior studying Comparative Literature & Evolutionary Anthropology.
Email: syedom@umich.edu