Paul Mitchell

Earning the Miracle?

Our family is fairly in love with the movie Encanto. Every time we (routinely) listen to the soundtrack, this bit from the introductory “meet the family” song catches my attention.

It’s when the grandma tells us about how the family can “earn the miracle that somehow found us.”

The trouble, as they all learn, is that we can’t earn a miracle.

The compulsion to try to earn the miracle of our lives, though, is deeply human and imminently understandable. If I were to earn it, the logic goes, then I would have some control over it. And how does my ego love to control!

But the wonder of the sacramentality of our lives… the grace woven through our being, the natural world, our relationships, the unfolding of our vocations… is already ours. No earning necessary. It’s taken care of.

The task, then, is to receive these things whole-heartedly and without pretense, as a child. So freed, we can respond to this abundance with wild generosity.

Four or More?

I went to the doctor for a routine check up last month. One of the questions on the intake questionnaire was:

“Have you participated in the gather of a religious or civic organization at least four times in the past year?”

Fascinating.

Fascinating that four per year is the threshold chosen.

Fascinating that the medical community listens to this data.

Rooting in a reality larger than ourselves is good for us, on multiple levels. How can we create a world where the number on this questionnaire is much higher than four?

The First Task

The first time that I met with a spiritual director, he gave me a simple practice to do every day.

Each morning, I was to go into the chapel for 15 minutes, be quiet, and experience how much I was loved by God.

(And the word might not have been experience… it might have been listen or contemplate or the like… but the point was to know that I am loved.)

Predictably, I immediately fell short on multiple levels. I did not wake up early enough. The chatter in my mind never quieted. I exerted way too much effort. I became attached to my evaluation of each session.

Seventeen years later, I see this practice, to know that we are loved just as we are, is the practice of a lifetime. This experience anchors us, roots us, and enables a bold life lived out of this love.

I still show up to the practice, however imperfectly, knowing that I do not control the experience. The result is not up to me. My job is show up consistently… to ready the sails for whenever the wind would blow.

Hiding Under the Mess

When our sons can’t find the toy or the book that they are looking for, we’ve learned that the most productive thing to do is to start cleaning up the mess. When we clean up, we inevitably find the thing we were looking for.

The mess is where things go to hide.

In our church and world, there is plenty of mess. And by mess, I do not mean conflict. Conflict can be healthy and will always be with us.

The mess I mean is what happens when we do not practice empathy on the “other side” of the conflict, choosing instead to whip up the indignation of “our side” against the other. This failure of empathy creates a mess: layers of wrecked communication, triggered egos, activated amygdalas. This mess confuses the important issue at hand and barricades us more deeply on our illusory moral high ground.

Too often, the mess is where we go to hide, and almost always unconsciously. Hide from our own vocation, our own capacity for connection, commitment, and contribution.

It is far easier to focus on someone else’s mess than to do the hard work we are meant to do.

Holiness, I think, consists in realizing that we are not better than anyone else and all need grace in a profound way. This humility frees us to begin to clean up the mess and find the love we were seeking in the first place.

Opening the Next Door

I am a big fan of our realtor, particularly in how she introduces us to a home on the market.

She is calm and kind as she walks with us through a new space, attentive to any question that we might have. And while offering this warm presence, she also seems to be one step ahead. Somehow she is always able to turn on the lights in the next room and to open the doors, closets, and cabinets.

Her seasoned attentiveness frees us to see more than we might, and act, free of pressure, from this expanded vision.

Folks who are skilled at accompaniment do something similar, I think. They are able to tune in, freed from their own inner chatter. Their attentive, generous presence helps us see our own experience in better light. Their questions open doors and turn on the light switch that we couldn’t quite reach.

What would it take for the church to be a network of people who accompany each other like this?

Isolated Conscience

We know the conscience to be the “most secret core and sanctuary of a [person]. There [we are] alone with God, Whose voice echoes in [our] depths.” (Gaudium et Spes, 16)

The capacity of conscience, though, is not automatic. It needs certain things to grow. Grace, certainly, and particularly in the form of encounter with people of varied experience as well as space to reflectively integrate this encounter. Conscience thus formed leads us to a life animated by and in the service to deep love.

The silos of our world (often ideological, reinforced by social media algorithms and the pesky confirmation bias) hem in our consciences, and make the above ideal hard to experience.

Pope Francis names this as the isolated conscience, and calls out its contours in Let Us Dream.

“The indignation of the isolated conscience begins in unreality, passes through Manichaean fantasies that divide the world into good and bad (with themselves always on the good side), and ends in different kinds of violence: verbal, physical, and so on.”

Oof.

Isolated conscience is no joke. And it is often subtle, leading to barricading oneself on the moral high ground and limiting one’s love.

How do I participate in the un-silo-ing of my own conscience?

How might I approach another so that they feel freed to participate in their un-silo-ing?

Same Team!

When I was around seven years old, I started playing YMCA soccer. Soccer is a tough sport for kids that young and we were, predictably, not very good.

I recall that we would often be so scattered on the field that, without realizing it, we would try to take the ball from our own players.

When this would happen, our beleaguered coach would yell across the field: “Same team! Same team!”

He hoped that we would stop, understand what is going on around us, and play with more awareness and teamwork.

In work, in family, and in the church, we could use someone calling out that we are on the same team. If we are mired in pettiness or turf battles, recalling that we are on the same team can give us the energy we need to get close enough to love.

Abandon, as in Love or Sleep

This is one of my favorite poems.

And my favorite bit in the poem is:

“Abandon, as in love or sleep, holds them to their way…”

And the word I’ve wondered the most about in that line is

Abandon.

Does it mean “with abandon,” like how a child engages a beloved task?

Or is there an actual abandoning of something non-essential? A relinquishing?

Perhaps both.

And if so: What must we relinquish to live into our vocations with abandon?

Laying Out the Pieces

A few weeks ago, when we were together for Easter, my sister’s son did the following for our older son.

As our son was putting his lego set together, his cousin carefully laid out the remaining pieces.

Good spiritual direction does something similar, I think. From a tangle of experience, a loving director is capable of mirroring back our experience in such a way that invites us into clarity.

Show Me the Way

In a poignant scene from the movie Romero, the saint is kneeling in prayer and says the following:

I can’t.

You must.

I’m yours.

Show me the way.

The first time I heard it, I assumed that each line was a prayer uttered by Romero. So:

I can’t. (as prayer uttered)

You must. (as prayer uttered)

I’m yours. (as prayer uttered)

Show me the way. (as prayer uttered)

I have since wondered if this understanding is also possible:

I can’t. (as prayer uttered)

You must. (as answer received)

I’m yours. (as prayer uttered)

Show me the way. (as prayer received)

Or also, if this understanding is possible:

I can’t. (as answer received)

You must. (as answer received)

I’m yours. (as answer received)

Show me the way. (as answer received)

Other understandings are also conceivable, I think. Each is a remarkable thing to consider as we take charge of the weight of reality.