Updates

“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