Tag: Beatitudes

Poor in Spirit

Palm Sunday ashes being burned for Ash Wednesday ashes

I live on the largesse of the One

Who breathed life into me

even when I forget it and credit

my own hard work instead.

I may congratulate myself

on daily exercise and a nutritious diet,

but this body is a blessing,

good health a gift.

My blind mother and deaf friend

show me how lucky I am

to see and hear a willow tree

billowing in wind-blustered rain.

I walk miles in the storm,

lungs and legs doing the work

they evolved for,

unlike my friend with COPD,

my father with arthritic knees.

Waning moon and winter’s empty fields

tell me my own story.

I am earth

for a little while

breathing Spirit,

ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Let my repentance be surrender

to this wild fragility,

let me be humble as an acorn in oak duff

at home in the Kingdom of Enough.

Photo courtesy of Sylvia Deck

Exaltation of the Cross

For many years now I have become increasingly reluctant to wear a cross necklace in public, not because I am ashamed of my Christian faith but because I’m afraid it will mark me as something I am not –- one of those people, as David Brooks put it, who “have crosses on their chest but Nietzsche in their heart—or, to be more precise, a high-school sophomore’s version of Nietzsche.”

Today, September 14th, the Catholic Church (along with Anglican and Eastern Orthodox Churches, I learned from Wikipedia) celebrates the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, a special feast day for my home parish of Holy Cross in Santa Cruz, California. My non-Christian friends may find it strange to exalt what they see as an instrument of torture and death, and I can’t blame them. In the Roman Empire crucifixion was a brutal method of execution meant to instill fear, and the cross was a symbol of their power. But for early Christians it came to represent the great love story that was the origin of the Church: the love of Jesus who laid down His life for his friends.

No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. – Jesus (John 15:13)

To say that the cross symbolizes love might seem simplistic and vague, so I’m turning to Jesus’s own words for insight on how to be a little more specific. When I read the Gospel, it seems that for Jesus, love meant solidarity with the poor in spirit and pure of heart, with the meek and merciful, and with peacemakers (Matthew 5: 1-12). He asked his followers to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and look after the sick, even to invite the stranger in and visit those in prison (Matthew 25: 34).

I confess to you, dear reader, that I am far from living up to this call, but that’s what I aspire to. If you notice the Brigid cross in my garden or see me wearing one around my neck, please know that it’s not a political statement. It simply means that I am choosing love over fear.