April Update: Enemies, Idols & Appearances

You may have noticed that the blog has gone a bit quiet lately, but that is not for lack of writing! I’ve been writing (and presenting) around the internet and in some new places and spaces!

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Some years ago, sickened by scandals and disturbed by the deepening division even among people “of good will”—in sacred as well as merely social settings—I lamented that we as Christians were not taking seriously enough the call to prayer for our enemies. A pious thought, no doubt—but was it practical? What would it look like if we really prayed, sincerely and truly, for the person(s) we most despised? (Or, ahem, “had a harder time loving?”) Was that even possible?

I began to craft what I called at the time “The Hater’s Challenge” and suggested making a list of those most likely to fill one with rage: “The politician whose win or loss animates your despair for the state of America. His/her supporters whom you’ve unfollowed or blocked on social media. The friends you’ve banned from your Facebook wall; the relatives you’ve banned (or wanted to) from your living room and holiday events. The boss or coworkers who have made your job miserable, or impossible, or even non-existent. The persons in your life, past or present, who have most hurt you and those whom you most care about. The ones whose words, or silence, have caused the most pain, or have cost the most financially, professionally, personally…”

I’ll be honest—I had someone at the top of my list. I am not proud of this, but there was a specific person in an ongoing position of power over my family whose choices caused direct harm to me and to those I loved. And I knew that I did not want to pray for this person.

And so I made this person my list “representative.” And I challenged myself to pray for this person like Marietta Jaeger ultimately prayed for her daughter’s killer—that this person would be the beneficiary not merely of God’s justice, but also of His love and goodness. My goal was not just to pray that God fix or change or convert that person, or that He zap them and bring them quickly to Himself in eternity (which was a real temptation). But rather, to pray for that person as I would for a friend, or a person I actually loved—for blessings.  This became the heart of a challenge described in This Lent: Dare to Love Your Enemies published in the National Catholic Register.

Note: A key part of this prayer rests on the trust that we can safely leave to God the sorting out of what must change, be transformed or punished, or in some way rectified and brought to justice. (He will not neglect this, so there is no need to worry or fear that such prayer will perpetuate further evil). And this does not preclude our acting to lessen or counteract evil we see being done. But it does focus the heart on loving that person as Jesus does, and as He asks us to do.

I would be lying if I said this challenge was something I enjoyed or found easy. It was actually one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. And I will also admit, that I was not unhappy when a few months later this person’s power to hurt us was taken away. [NB: The person is still alive and well, just not able to inflict the harm that was ongoing at the time.]

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Speaking of the toppling of idols, my recent post The Idols of Ought was published by Spiritual Direction.com. There I discuss the journey of letting go my own ideas as to what I thought my life ought to look like, and learning to let Jesus the Way be the One to show me the way. This will likely have some follow-up posts at some point, delving deeper into these Idols of Ought and perhaps even some of their origin stories.

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While my life as a caregiver is certainly more quiet that my former life in the city, I’ve recently begun speaking again, in some new formats (some of which have involved a bit of a learning curve)!

I gave my first live Zoom talk to a women’s group in North Carolina on March 20^th. And for the first time I was invited to be a guest on a podcast, Persistence in Prayer with Kylie Hein. Our conversation is titled Stop Trying So Hard: Prayer and Prophecy Reexamined with Grace Abruzzo and is Episode #98. That was a fun discussion, and I’ve enjoyed listening to Kylie’s podcast in general—she has close to 100 episodes on a variety of powerful topics!

I also recorded a talk for the Ecce Homo retreat put on by the Avila Institute scheduled for April 10^th-12^th. This is a free online retreat on Our Lady of Sorrows, which you can sign up for here. There will be some live speakers, and then many more like me with recorded talks that you can listen to at your leisure. The working title of my talk was Mary Mother of the Gift: How Her Mother’s Heart Taught Me to Receive the Father’s Love. It was my first time recording a talk by myself, and first time without an audience, and there was a bit of a learning curve which shows a bit in the final product. But it was a powerful experience contemplating the content—content that I’m hoping to expand on in upcoming posts. (Part of the learning curve was the discovery that I had written about 20 times more content than I could actually cover in that amount of time…)

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Which is in part why I’ve started work on a book. I will elaborate more on that later, but I realize that I have a lot of story still to tell, and a lot of lessons learned that need to be unpacked and not just hinted at here or there. To that end, if you have questions or comments, I would love to hear them! Please feel free to use the Contact page to email me if you’d like. (If you don’t hear back from me within the week, check your spam, as I do try to answer everyone).

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Last but not least, we still have some room on the pilgrimages I am leading to Italy in September for the Jubilee year, and to Portugal to visit Fatima, Madeira (one of the world’s most beautiful islands!) and Lisbon. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask!