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Spirituality

What do you want for Christmas?

Christine Eberle

If I asked you what you want for Christmas this year, what would your answer be?

How would the answer change if I asked you what you long for this Christmas?

While the question of want carries images of glittery store windows, digital shopping carts waiting to be filled at the touch of a track pad, and lists that can be made of items that can be purchased for a price, the question of longing is different . . . deeper . . . more personal . . . less tangible . . . more real.

What are the deepest longings of your heart?

Our culture has no investment in answering that question, because our deepest longings can’t be packaged, marketed, and put on special sale.  And so the “Christmas shopping season” caters to our transient desires as though they were ultimate, and hopes we won’t notice.

The “Christmas shopping season” caters to our transient desires as though they were ultimate, and hopes we won’t notice.

I know what I want for Christmas this year, but it’s not sold in stores.

I want Advent.

The neighborhood may already be awash in blow-up snowmen, while carols play overhead incessantly in every store, but in my heart I know that the remedy for all that fails to satisfy in the hustle and bustle of December lies in the quiet longing of Advent.

Isn’t there something in your soul that longs for stillness instead of frenzy?  For a few lit candles instead of a few thousand blinking lights?  For the chance to sit in darkened silence long enough to sense God’s approach?

Advent is a season of waiting.

Advent is a season of waiting.  That is probably not your favorite thing to do.  It’s certainly not mine.

This December I am waiting for my book contract to be finalized, waiting for my brother to settle on his new house and, most anxiously, waiting to find out Porter’s chemotherapy schedule.  My sweetheart was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma in November; everyone says we should expect a cure, but still, this is a new road of uncertain length and terrain.  I’d be much more comfortable if we had a good map (even as I acknowledge that control is the last illusion to go).

We are all waiting for something–probably more than one something.  But waiting does not have to be passive and fruitless and frustrating.  It can be creative, expectant, full of hope and even joy.

Think of Mary in the long months between Gabriel’s astounding announcement and the birth of Jesus.  I imagine that she was eager to hold this miraculous child in her arms.  Yet I also imagine that there was a stillness to her waiting, as she pondered the ways of God in her heart.  And I imagine she learned something that only time could teach her.  That lesson can be ours as well, if we embrace what Fr. Tim Lyons recently called “the gift of deepening darkness in these December days.”

The gift of deepening darkness in these December days

And so this is my prayer–for you, for me, for all of us:  May we carve out some Advent time for ourselves this year.  Seize it.  Sneak off with it.  Whatever it takes. For I am sure of this much:

God’s gift will be better than anything we find under our tree.

Scripture, Writing

Many Paths Up the Mountain

Christine Eberle

To all who have been waiting for the news (and with apologies for my 24-hour lack of internet access), here it is: Jen Epstein is the winner of Pitch Week X at When Words Count.  Jen’s edgy, insightful, hilarious essays about life as a young(ish) Brooklynite struggling with OCD are collected in her book Don’t Get Too Excited: It’s Just a Pair of Shoes and Other Laments from My Life.  This is an amazing opportunity for Jen, and I’m truly happy for her.

So what about Finding God in Ordinary Time?  

I am excited to announce that I have been offered a publishing contract from Green Writers Press with an anticipated launch next fall!  I’m going to take a beat to ponder and pray, and to consult with people who know the publishing world better than I do.  But I’m thinking that this thing may have God’s fingerprints all over it.  Curious?

Read on . . .

Three summers ago I went on retreat at the Jesuit Center for Spiritual Growth in Wernersville, PA (or God’s country house, as I like to call it).  I spent many hours praying with a book of poetry: Mary Oliver’s Thirst. The poem I savored most is called “Praying;” I even tucked it in at the end of my manuscript as an homage, because it says in just a few precious words (the poet’s gift!) what I have tried to express throughout my book. When I met the judges in August I discovered that Thirst (as well as three of Mary Oliver’s other books) actually had been designed by . . . wait for it . . . Dede Cummings, founder of Green Writers Press and one of the judges for Pitch Week X.

(As I say in the book, I can’t make this stuff up!)

I went into Pitch Week not knowing how it would end but holding the outcome lightly, trusting that good would unfold.  And as I said at the beginning of this journey, there are many roads up the mountain, many paths to God.

Stay tuned!

 

Spirituality, Writing

Holding it Lightly . . .

Christine Eberle

Sunday, September 24 (Mercy Day), 2017

Four weeks from today I will be back on The Vermonter, headed home from Pitch Week X. I will know the outcome of a competition for which I’ve been preparing since February. Perhaps I will have won, and Finding God in Ordinary Time will have a publisher and a publicist and be hastening out into the world. Or perhaps one of my warm, wonderful, whimsical competitors will have been the one to enjoy her Cinderella moment, and I’ll be using the Amtrak wifi to research Catholic publishers and prepare my next pitch.

“Are you SO nervous?” a friend asked me recently.

Actually, I’m not. Continue reading “Holding it Lightly . . .” →

Spirituality, Writing

Finding God on the Horizon

Christine Eberle

Finding God jpegFriends, I am getting closer to having a completed manuscript of my first book, Finding God in Ordinary Time.  The process has been fascinating; I’ve been working with Peggy Moran, a gifted editor in New York, who has been helping me to make sure that every word counts, that my thoughts flow freely, and that no “insider” jargon jars the reader’s experience.  On the other side of the country, Asha Hossein has designed a beautiful cover that I will post here as soon as it’s not a violation of any copyright.  I head back to Vermont on August 22 to meet the judges for Pitch Week X.  But meanwhile, this word cloud reveals the heart of the book.  Enjoy!

Uncategorized

A Mother’s Day Prayer

Christine Eberle

Although I have a complicated relationship with Mother’s Day (Mom thought it was silly and now she’s gone), I wrote the following blessing for Mother’s Day at St. Vincent DePaul last year, and offer it again today for the amazing mothers I know on this on earth as well as the dear ones in heaven.  Special thanks to the great women who raised me (but whose taste in hats I did not inherit).

IMG_6028 2

Blessings to all the women to whom this day applies.  You know who you are.

A Mother’s Day Prayer

Loving God, you have graced the women we honor today
with the gift and the awesome responsibility of motherhood.

Their children are young and old, near and far.
Many are living; some have gone home to you.

Some have been theirs from the very beginning;
others were welcomed when a young person’s need
met a generous heart.

Bless these mothers today, we beg you, with every grace they need.
Equip their hearts for the love that never ends, but always changes.

Fill them with the gifts of your Spirit, that they may be wise and understanding,
fortified with courage and with wonder all their days.

We pray in a special way for all those for whom this day is a source of pain.
Wash their grief in the gentle rain of your love.

Bless all our mothers, living and deceased.
Keep us grateful for their gifts and forgiving of their flaws.

Renew in each of us a commitment to peacemaking,
and a ferocious, protective love:
the true gifts of motherhood.

We ask all this through the intercession of Mary our Mother,
and in the name of Jesus her Son.
Amen.

Happy Mother’s Day.

Spirituality, Writing

Exciting News!

Christine Eberle

Friends, I am delighted to announce that I have been selected as a finalist in a writing competition held at the When Words Count Retreat in Rochester, VT.  (Click here to see all six finalists!)  No matter who wins “Pitch Week X,” I am certain that I will emerge a better writer–with a manuscript ready for publication!  Stay tuned for progress on Finding God in Ordinary Time.

Scripture, Spirituality

Help Our Unbelief!

Christine Eberle

Of all the Gospel stories, none illustrates the poignant chasm between one’s professed and operative theologies better than this Sunday’s account of the raising of Lazarus.

I have been intrigued by those technical terms since grad school.  Professed Theology: that which we say we believe–what we even believe we believe.  And Operative Theology: that which–when push comes to shove–it turns out we actually believe.

Martha, in today’s Gospel, articulates a magnificent professed theology.  Confronting Jesus after the death of her brother, she boldly proclaims, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.  But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.”  Amen, sister; preach!

But as soon as they get to the tomb, she changes her tune.  “Take away the stone,” Jesus instructs.  And Martha protests, “Lord, by now there will be a stench; he has been dead for four days!”

So which is it, sister?  Do you really believe that God will give Jesus whatever he asks?  Or is the inside of that tomb the last thing you want to see . . . or smell?

There’s nothing like a little genuine distress to bring our operative theology zooming to the surface.  That truth is summed up even more succinctly by the father of a possessed boy in Mark’s Gospel (9:14-29) who cries out “I do believe; help my unbelief!”

Which honestly is okay.

People of faith are supposed to be lifelong learners.  We are taught things, and we memorize things, and we repeat things, and often there is no need to examine whether or not we really believe these things–until there is.  The awful beauty of being backed into a theological corner is that we might need to confront what we really believe for the very first time.  (Hence my trouble with the phrase everything happens for a reason!)

But the good news–for Martha today, for the possessed boy’s father another day, and for us every day–is that God doesn’t need our faith in order to work wonders.  Jesus rolled away the stone despite Martha’s apparent disbelief.  He healed the possessed boy despite his father’s acknowledged disbelief.  And God moves in our lives, no matter how far apart our professed and operative theologies may be.

We do believe, Lord.  Help our unbelief!

 

 

Spirituality

Surrounded by the Serenity Prayer

Christine Eberle

Placeholder ImageI don’t usually write about my day anywhere but in my own journal.  But this morning I am making an exception to share the remarkable bookends of a rough 24 hours.

On Monday evening a group of faculty and staff women met for our monthly book group dinner in the Campus Ministry center, Visitation House.  It had been a full and hectic day, and if I had not been the host, pausing to reflect over soup and bread would not have come anywhere near the top of my to-do list.

And yet of course we did gather, and had such a rich and meaningful conversation about Eileen Flanagan’s book about the Serenity Prayer, called The Wisdom to Know the Difference: When to Make a Change, and When to Let Go.  Our chapter for this month was Letting Go of Outcomes, and we talked about how suffering is compounded by the way we cling to the conviction that things should be different.  We ended by acknowledging how hard it is to be on the receiving end of generosity, but sometimes we just need to let go and let others be as good to us as we wish to be to them.

The women left, and I went back to my office to do a couple hours of work organizing the gift cards that had been donated for this Friday night’s BINGO fundraiser.

That’s when I discovered the theft.

Several hundred dollars worth of donations had disappeared from my desk drawer, as well as from what I thought was a carefully concealed (by which I mean piled among many other things) shopping bag on my office floor.

Our Public Safety officers responded to my call at once, took my report, returned the next morning and called the police, who also came at once, took a more complete report, and promised to begin an investigation.  Did I mention this was a busy and hectic week getting ready for a major fundraiser?  I was losing not only dollars but also hours I could not afford to replace.

And yet something amazing happened yesterday afternoon.  As word of the theft began to spread on campus, people rushed in to help us.  All day long, people called or showed up to ask, What can I do?  What do you need?  People dropped off gift cards.  They wrote checks. They stopped by just to ask if we were okay.  And at a time of the semester when most students are stressed beyond the breaking point, several appeared out of the blue to volunteer to help with other pressing tasks.  Marissa and Brianna decorated cupcakes for a Take Back the Night promotional event; Emily and Kate helped organize merchandise we are selling for disaster relief in Peru this morning; Allison inventoried the kitchen for baking supplies so we will have plenty of treats at the BINGO food table.  Visitation House was abuzz with life.

I worked until I had to walk out the door for choir practice at church.  We worked on several songs for the coming Easter Triduum then ended with . . . wait for it . . . a musical setting of the Serenity Prayer.

The very last thing we did was to sing it acapella in three-part harmony, and I marveled at the peace I felt, not just during the song, but really all throughout the day.  Grounding the beginning of those 24 hours in a profound conversation about serenity and letting go really had helped me enter the fray without falling apart.  Being a victim of a crime (albeit a non-violent one) was discouraging and embarrassing, but the wave of kindness that came in its wake was so very moving and humbling.  There is so much goodness on our Mercy campus. There is so much goodness in our world.  Sometimes we have to stand in need of it in order to perceive it.