I absolutely loved my conversation with Eric Clayton. On the AMDG podcast, Jesuits and friends come together to look at the world through Ignatian eyes, always striving to live Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam: For the Greater Glory of God. I’m delighted to share it with you on the eve of the publication of Finding God Abiding.
The Deputy Director of Communications for the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States, Eric is the author of a wonderful new book called Cannonball Moments: Telling Your Story, Deepening Your Faith. In addition to guest hosting the AMDG podcast, Eric sends weekly email with stories and reflections on finding God in everyday life. It is consistently good; consider subscribing!
We had such fun talking about our approach to Ignatian storytelling: how to identify the stories in our lives that point to the presence of God and then share those stories for others’ benefit. We also compared notes on our beloved grandmothers and explored the notion of service immersion experiences as “working pilgrimages.”
Host Glen Binger’s motto is “Docendo discimus,” a Latin proverb that means “By teaching, we learn.” In this interview, we discuss the inner work behind writing/editing, the value of solitude, and how to embrace mindful moments in our day-to-day lives.
Click the image below to listen on Anchor, or search for Betterism wherever you get your podcats.
Enjoy!
Listen to Glen Binger’s interview with Christine Eberle interview on “Betterism.”
Many of you have heard the story of how this shy English major got involved in Campus Ministry. At the beginning of my sophomore year in college, my advisor introduced me to Jim Karustis, the editor of the literary magazine, who also happened to be on the SEARCH retreat team. Boom. Life changed.
I tell the story of that pivotal encounter in Chapter Nine of Finding God Abiding, entitled “Finding God for All the Wrong Reasons.” I’ll share the chapter below as a little sneak peek in advance of Tuesday’s publication, but first, an unexpected addendum and a very unusual request.
My favorite bit in the chapter is this: “No, if you’re wondering: girl met boy, but girl didn’t even come close to getting boy.Jim was already dating the love of his life and is married to her still.”
This week, I learned that Jim’s beloved wife is in kidney failure. Cindy (Lucinda)–a vibrant, cheerful soul, adored by her husband and their two daughters, Anjali and Simone–needs a kidney transplant if she is to live to become the feisty Italian grandmother she was born to be. The Karustis family is searching for a living donor to save Cindy’s life.
When Jim reached out to ask if I would consider being that living donor, my reluctance and slate of excuses saddened me, in a way I’ll probably be praying about for some time. But I know that there are many good and generous people out there who might have a different initial reaction. If you would consider this life-saving gift, visit Penn Medicine’s Living Donor Program to learn more. (For example, did you know that donating a kidney through the Penn transplant service guarantees a top-of-the-waiting-list slot if you OR one of the five people closest to you should need a kidney one day?) You can also go straight to their donor screening site to see if you might be a match. Key info: the woman in need is Lucinda Karustis, DOB 2/25/63, YES on dialysis and YES in the Penn Transplant system. Kindly share this info widely; you never know who will prove to be an angel in disguise.
UPDATE: Eventually, Cindy received a kidney from their daughter and is doing very well! I’m keeping this post up, however, for the good info it conveys!
SEARCH Retreat, Christine & Cindy, Fall 1984
Cindy & Jim’s First Dance, July 16, 1988
Karustis Family, Easter 2022
Finding God for All the Wrong Reasons
For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. — Jeremiah 29:11
Despite wondering about a religious vocation at the end of eighth grade, nothing about my teenage years suggested a career in ministry. In high school, I didn’t join the community service corps, sing in the choir, or serve as a chapel aide like some of my friends. All I ever wanted to do was read and write. I chose English as my college major, hoping that editing books by day and crafting them by night could leverage my two loves into one modest income—at least until I published my first bestselling novel.
Unfortunately, my freshman year was fairly miserable. I was an introverted commuter, working part-time at a bakery and driving my little brother to nursery school each day so I could have the car. I didn’t join any activities or make a single friend.
At the beginning of sophomore year, however, I was chatting with my advisor outside his office when the editor of the literary magazine walked by. “You two should know each other,” Dr. Gilman said, so I exchanged pleasantries with a dreamy-looking senior named Jim. A few days later, I spotted Jim outside the cafeteria, working the sign-up table for a weekend getaway in beautiful Cape May, New Jersey. He was dashing. I loved the shore. And oh, by the way, it was a religious retreat. Motivated by those three things—in that order—I registered on the spot.
No, if you’re wondering: girl met boy, but girl didn’t even come close to getting boy. Jim was already dating the love of his life and is married to her still. Cheesy as it sounds, however, that retreat changed my life. It introduced me to campus ministry, plunged me into a community of like-minded friends, and began to transform my understanding of faith. As a junior, I began double-majoring in theology. By senior year, I was researching graduate schools and re-imagining my career trajectory, eventually spending twenty-six years as a campus minister. Writing continued to be an essential component of my work, but in a context more satisfying than I’d ever envisioned.
In the movie Sliding Doors, Gwyneth Paltrow’s character experiences two dramatically different futures based on the simple happenstance of catching or missing one train. What would my future have held, had a random hallway encounter not drawn me through the doorway to ministry? When I think of that passing crush now, I picture God delightedly plotting how to capture my attention. I’m not suggesting that I was tricked into pursuing a path I never would have chosen, like a striped bass chasing a nice minnow and winding up in a nice lemon garlic sauce instead. It’s just that I’d been following the only road I knew, until an attractive stranger (sent by God, I believe) turned my head and set me off in a in a new direction.
If we believe that God created us, it makes sense that God would know how best to lead us toward our true vocation—a full and fulfilling life. In order to get us to bite, however, God may have to lure us with a tasty morsel or two. This is not trickery and deceit, but simply a manifestation of love from the One who knows us far better than we know ourselves.
Did you get where you are today by any curious twists or turns? What first lured you in that direction? Smile at the loving cleverness of our God, whose handiwork is most often visible in retrospect.
It’s podcast season! I’ve been interviewed for several, and will post them as they drop. Each one is different; click the image below to listen to Leah Jones’ “Finding Favorites” podcast, in which we learn why fire sirens are among my favorite things.
You’ll also get to hear two women of faith–one Catholic, one Jewish–discuss worship in pandemic, the importance of blessing the heck out of everything, and learning to speak Ignatian.
Finding God in Ordinary Time has been out for almost three weeks now. It truly is a dream come true. When I sat down in the cafeteria of St. Monica in Berwyn to sign books after my first event, I opened the cover, picked up my blue ballpoint pen, and thought, “This is my life now!” I have wanted to have a book in the world since before I could spell, and now it’s out there.
Where will it go? I’ve been delighted to see the Facebook posts of friends and former students around the country receiving their books in the mail. And my (modest) book tour will soon be bringing me to Arlington, VA, Wernersville PA, and even Morgantown WV, where I will have the pleasure of placing signed copies in the hands of people I meet out there.
But it’s “out there” in another way as well. Thanks in large part to the creative hustle of Ben Tanzer, (whom I’ve been calling my Marketing Guy but who might be more accurately be called my Champion), news of the book has reached niches I didn’t even know existed–places that are not part of the “Catholic world.”
It has always been my hope that Finding God would connect with people who didn’t already speak the language of faith. And that’s what I’m hearing from people like my friend George Allen, who had this to say:
Marketed astutely at least in part towards those “skeptical or weary of religion”–which is to say, right at devout agnostics just like yours truly!–the book is a brief-but-powerful series of essays about how the presence of the “divine” (including however those of us often compelled to put that word in quotes might define it) can be located and appreciated in everyday moments and challenges.
I am so grateful for George’s affirmation. But this latest round of publicity is reaching the eyeballs (and eardrums) of people who do not already know and love me. How will they respond? I may never know–though presumably book sales will tell.
Here are some of the intriguing places that word of my book has gone:
The Rumpus. This online magazine describes itself as ” a place where people come to be themselves through their writing, to tell their stories or speak their minds in the most artful and authentic way they know how.” They invited me to contribute an article to their weekly “What to Read When” feature, and on 10/5 published my “What to Read When You’ve Lost Your Spiritual Flashlight,” a curated list of books they call “a go-to list for refreshing, down-to-earth, spot-on spiritual reading.” This was so much fun to write, and it may give you some ideas for what to read next!
Hypertext Magazine. This “social justice teaching and publishing non-profit” invited me to contribute to their “One Question” feature, whereby an author gets to answer one question of his or her own choosing. Check out my answer to this question: Your stories are all from real life; which one are you most anxious about having “out there?”
This Podcast Will Change Your Life. Recorded live via Skype, my one-hour, unedited conversation with Ben Tanzer ranges all over the place, from how I organized my chapters to the current state of immigration in our country, all under the umbrella of “The Power of Stories.”
Spiritual Directors International. This vibrant association of more than six thousand individuals on six continents representing more than fifty spiritual traditions graciously accepted one of my chapters as a guest blog post. It’s the chapter where I get most explicit about the Ignatian grounding of my book: Finding God on the Oncology Floor.
Lancaster County Woman. Freelance writer Susan Beam interviewed me for a feature in the Health and Wellness section of this magazine, in anticipation of the weekend retreat that I am giving later this month, called Healing Encounters: A Retreat for Everyone in the Company of Contemporary and Biblical Women.
Speaking of which, it is not too late to sign up for that retreat, held October 19-21 at the Jesuit Center for Spiritual Growth in beautiful Wernersville, PA. We’ll be praying with all sorts of stories and leaning in to our own healing encounters. You can find out more and register here!
Thank you to everyone who has helped spread the word, within communities of faith and well beyond them. I appreciate all forwards, comments, and shares–anything that gets the algorithms of search engine optimization whirring!
Oh wait, speaking of computer algorithms, this cracks me up . . . in mid-September, Amazon named Finding God in Ordinary Time its “#1 New Release in Religious Humor.” I’m sorry; what?!? While I do describe the writing as “surprisingly funny,” this is no book of Jesus knock-knock jokes, people. Let’s hope it’s true what they say: there’s no such thing as bad publicity.
May your ordinary days be extraordinarily blessed . . . and touched with a bit of divine humor!
“What is saving your life right now?” That question, routinely asked by Jen Hatmaker at the end each of her podcast interviews, comes from Barbara Brown Taylor’sLeaving Church: a Memoir of Faith. If I were to answer it today, I’d have to say “5:00 a.m.”
Five and I have been friends for a long time. Left to its own devices, my circadian rhythm always has me up at five o’clock–no matter what time zone I went to sleep in. When I was in my mid-20’s, working as an executive secretary at US Healthcare, I spent six weeks writing my master’s thesis from five to seven each morning, watching the sky lighten outside the big picture window that was our high-rise apartment’s only redeeming feature.
Now 5 a.m. is saving my life again, for the first time since those thesis-writing days.
The last few months have been my “summer of self-promotion,” as I searched for ways to get Finding God in Ordinary Timein front of the eyeballs of people who would read it, recommend it, and otherwise help me market it. Now the school year has started, and I’m just a few days away from book launch, and there are SO MANY THINGS I could be doing on any given day, both to promote Finding God and to prepare for the many speaking engagements on my horizon. And so, most days, 5 a.m. finds me in my rocking chair with coffee and laptop, doing whatever I can to move this work forward. (At 7:00–at the urging of my doctor–I strap on my Keens and go for a walk before heading to work. This backfired recently, as my beloved old Keens had worn down so unevenly that they actually threw my back out. But that’s a blog post for another day.)
As a multi-decade devotee of 5:00 a.m., I would have thought I knew everything there was to know about the hour. But last month, down the shore (as we say in Philly), I discovered something remarkable.
I have long been a fan of the complicated sunrise, especially over the ocean. I love watching the sky go through all its vibrant color changes as the sun lights the clouds from below before easing over the horizon; in my book I use it as a metaphor for college campus ministry–witnessing the effects of students’ dawning spiritual adulthood, being grateful each time I am awake to see it.
But in Wildwood, in early August, sunrise is just after six o’clock. Do you know what it is at five? Dark. Can’t-see-the-ocean dark. Why-am-I-sitting-on-the-deck-with-coffee dark.
You know what else it is? Fascinating.
It turns out that–and I am so sorry to know this–the sky is compellingly beautiful a whole hour before sunrise. The colors keep shifting, but instead of the red-orange-yellow end of the Crayola box, we get a black-navy-purple crayon sky. I couldn’t get enough of it this year. I didn’t want to look down–which was okay, because it was too dark to read or write. I didn’t even want to go inside to refill my coffee, because the sky changed so much from minute to minute.
View from the deck at 5:00 a.m., early August, Wildwood NJ
This is how God works, I used to say about the sunrise. And I still do. Butthis is also how God works, I now say about the well-pre-dawn sky.
So many people I know are waiting right now. Waiting for an employer to call with a job offer. Waiting for a safe time to break away from a bad relationship. Waiting for a child to go into recovery, this time for good. Waiting for discernment to become clear enough for action. Waiting for healing in body, mind, or spirit. It’s dark. Really dark. Can’t-see-the-ocean dark. And yet things are happening, well out of sight. God is at work in each of those situations, I do believe. The predawn sky has become for me a metaphor for all the spiritual movement that is happening within and around each of us, all the stars slowly aligning, all the things we cannot see that are nevertheless working together for our good.
My hours staring at the black-navy-purple sky in Wildwood reminded me that God is at work in me right now in ways I cannot yet see. This coming Monday, September 17, the sun is going to rise on Finding God in Ordinary Time. I will go from being a person who has a book coming out to being an author on book tour (or as much tour as a busy campus minister can muster). Instead of writing, writing, writing, I’m going to be speaking, speaking, speaking.
Just yesterday, while mentally rehearsing my talk for my first book event (at St. Monica in Berwyn), I felt God say, “So, are you going to talk about you, or are you going to talk about me?” (Whoops! YOU, Lord. Thanks for the reminder.) And that’s why the 5:00 hours will remain essential. No matter how busy this season gets, I have to stay grounded in prayer, to allow the message people most need to hear to flow through me, without making it about me.
The days ahead will be anything but ordinary. If you find yourself awake before sunrise, please pray that they will be extraordinarily blessed!
Christine Marie Eberle 