If You Would Come Back Home

This past weekend I had the opportunity to visit my alma mater. Though I was only a student there about eight months ago, it feels like a lifetime ago. As I sat in mass over the weekend I looked around and realized that I recognized only a handful of faces. The other hundreds were new, yet very much the same as the ones I knew there. It was as if everything had changed, yet also as if nothing had changed at all. Or maybe it was just that I had changed.

In the reunions I had with friends, in the beauty of the mass, in the buildings I called 'home' for four years I found myself again this weekend. For months now I have felt so stuck and stifled, so lost at home. It has less to do with living at home and working at the same job I've had since I was fifteen and more to do with a sick feeling that I had left a part of myself back at school. In all of the experiences I had in my four years at college, I did a lot of growing up and self-discovering. I began to really become me. But then I grew comfortable, bored. I stopped stretching myself and challenging myself to do more. I found my comfort zone and I stayed there, collecting dust, branching out only when absolutely necessary. By the time I realized what I had done, I tried to break free and get on with my life, but I found that I had forgotten who I was, and who I was becoming. I had forgotten where I came from.

In the past few months, I've been able to see that my parents planted all kinds of seeds of faith in me, but it wasn't until I reached Franciscan and chose to let God nurture them that they really began to bloom. Then when there were so many distractions around me, I tried to ask Him to stop. I told Him that I had had enough growing, that I was content to just stick with what I had. It's like asking the surgeon to stop stitching you up when he's only partially finished: "I can take it from here," you might slur under the anesthesia. Then you'd get up from the table with a gushing, gaping wound in your side, stumble and fall to floor. That is basically what I did.

I think all I really wanted was more time. I wanted more time with my friends, one more round of bowling, one more late night study party at Tim Horton's, one more adventure in the city. This weekend, I didn't exactly get what I would consider my dying wish, but it was definitely my living wish. I wanted to reconnect with the 'home' where I made so many mistakes, where I did not do perhaps as much as I could or should have done to prepare for my future. The place where I realized that my parents are wonderful, but they are only human. The place where I realized that love is not as simple as it seems. The place where I glimpsed all I could be and I tried to hide from it.

I went back to that place. Jesus came into my heart in the Eucharist, Mary held my hand as I walked down memory lane, the Holy Spirit moved in me to forgive and let go of the lingering hurts and regrets. When I drove away from campus yesterday, I was suddenly whole again. I felt complete. Even in the polluted air along the Ohio River, I breathed easier than I had in years. Suddenly, I was back where I left off in my becoming process, almost as if nothing had ever happened to disrupt it. Except that now there was a mysterious, incredible strength inside me that I had not known I could possess. I know that strength comes from God alone. I am certain that even when I was that stubborn patient lying weakly on the floor, oblivious to everything except my own pain, He was mending the pieces with such a gentle hand that I could not feel it.

But I felt it yesterday. I felt it like a warmth all the way through me, a light that I had not seen before, a strength and determination that I had never known. When I pulled into my parents' driveway yesterday, I think I truly came home for the first time. It's good to be back.

Breaking Down the Dream

"Woe to the complacent..." The words struck me at Mass today. The theme of all the readings was a call to action. It seemed that a passionate homily should follow, something that would inspire me into action. Instead, two men stood up to talk for Stewardship Sunday. The first one spoke about the parish budget. He assured us that the parish is financially stable, and that we can finally start raising money for the playground "we have wanted for years." Really?

I have been thinking lately about how comfortable my life has been. I have always had everything I needed and more. Food, shelter, education, a loving family. For a long time, I complained about not having the one thing I wanted most--the love of a man. When I saw the negative implications of this dream and the unhealthy mindset, I woke myself up. I have come a long way, but now I see that that was only a dream within a dream. My whole life has been a dream, a false security. Don't get me wrong, I am incredibly thankful for the life I was born into and the many blessings I have received. But now that I am fairly grown up, I can see that it is no longer enough.

Every once in awhile on retreats or at spiritual gatherings, I felt a fire, a burning passion inside me. But the mundane, lukewarm routine of my life always seemed to douse the flame down to a tiny flicker, part of the natural course of spiritual highs and lows. The flicker remains, a tiny burst of thirst inside of me that can never be quenched, even in my deepest sleep. I want to make a change in the world, but how?

My mother in all her wit always says jokingly, "Who cares about apathy anyway?" I think her joke has truth in it, though. More and more these days I see people care about their nice homes, their yards, the playgrounds at their children's schools, even celebrity gossip. But no one seems to care that there is no passion. No one cares that we live lifestyles of apathy to the world's needs. Death is merely a far off inevitability. We do everything in our power to prolong our dreaming lives. We live in security, taking no real risks for the good of our souls. We press snooze: "Yes, I should stop watching this TV show because it makes a mockery of everything I believe in, but I want to see what happens in the next episode...and the next episode...and the next season..." "Yes, I should get out of this unhealthy relationship, but then I'll be alone..."

The Church is even at a standstill, full of complacent people who "don't need God" because they have everything necessary for a comfortable life. Church has become an obligation, rather than a passion. Last weekend, I went to a Matt Maher/Tenth Avenue North concert, shortly after finishing Francis Chan's book Crazy Love. I found more passion and heard more truth at that concert and in that book than I have in years at my home parish. They spoke of faith in a positive way. We shouldn't do things to avoid hell or to achieve heaven, but because we want to out of love for God. The tiny flicker in my heart began burning brighter.

Life is short, and I don't want to spend what I have left of it wasting away on Facebook or withering away in front of the TV. I want everything I do to be for the glory of God. I want to live a life of crazy love. I cannot be complacent knowing that women my age and younger are being sold into prostitution. I cannot be complacent knowing that 4,000 babies are murdered in the U.S. daily. I cannot be complacent knowing that God died for me so that I can be saved from the sinful life I have been leading: “If we come to the point of comprehending that we are loved to a supreme, unimaginable degree, unto silent, gratuitous, cruel death, to the point of total immolation by Him whom we do not even know, or if we have known Him, whom we have denied and offended; if we come to the point of comprehending that we are the objects of such a love, of so great a love, we cannot remain complacent…” I Believe in Love.