The word “feedback” is my new favorite euphemism.  It is uttered by bosses, managers, executives, and supervisors all around the world with their positivity, professional demeanor, and lists of talking points.  It’s meant to take the sting out of a critique, to make the delivery more palatable, yet it quickly becomes a patronizing tactic, office mumbo-jumbo that, as the name itself suggests, is just a bunch of noise.  Let’s have the humility to ask Jesus to teach us how to speak honestly and kindly at the same time.  Let’s pray for the integrity to say what we mean and mean what we say in any situation.  Let’s trust so deeply in the truth that we no longer feel the need to dress it up and disguise it in our daily conversations.  Let’s simply feed back to others what the Word is constantly feeding us in our depths.  Ave Crux, Spes Unica.

Is there a more poetic word than “yesterday”?  To even utter those syllables places my heart at that psychological boundary marker where the past meets the present.  My mind is indeed faced with the sobering and haunting reality that there is no way to fix or change what has happened, that the only way forward in life is, in fact, the bold and daring decision to enter into the unknown.  Jesus, interestingly, does not speak the word “yesterday” even one time.  Perhaps his eyes were too fixed on his heavenly father and his divine mission to look back into the past.  It is also possible, however, that Jesus was so integrated and comfortable with the reality of death and the risk of living authentically that letting go and surrendering was just a way of life for him.  During this season of falling leaves and fading sunlight, let’s lean into the drama of being human with Jesus.  We shall discover not despite, but precisely through our grief, that our yesterdays become our todays and our todays become our forevers (Heb 13:8). 

Ave Crux, Spes Unica.

It’s dusk, and there’s a vehicle headed down the highway in my direction without its lights on, but when I go to flash my brights, I realize that my lights aren’t on either!  This is always an embarrassing and humbling experience for me, yet, isn’t this simply the way of being human?  My wounds and insecurities are so deep that they escape my limited scope of self-awareness, and so I must learn to depend on other people to reveal me to myself.  For instance, my people-pleasing tendency is just my way of operating, yet, when I witness, with compassion and not judgment, how another person is spread thin and overwhelmed with anxiety as a result of such a behavior, a flash of insight comes over me, and all of a sudden I realize that this is how I have been living and why my life has felt so stressful all along.  Let’s therefore have the courage to join the community of wounded-healers (Is 53:4) who trust that even our so-called defects of character serve some greater purpose.  Let’s celebrate the splinters and beams (Mt 7:4) that make us human.  Ave Crux, Spes Unica.

The word “God,” from its ancient root, simply means something like “the one who is worshiped.”  It’s a generic term, a placeholder for some mystery that we cannot quite grasp, but, by intuition, know is there.  Our human experience tells us, however, that the space being held by the word “God” can be hijacked by all sorts of unsavory visitors: ideology, power, arrogance, sentimentality, etc.  How our hearts ache, indeed, when we hear about a crime done “in the name of God”!  It is thus not enough to believe in “God,” we must have a more disciplined approach that allows us to unerringly encounter the mystery behind our language (Ex 3:14).  This is why Jesus commands us to “put out into the deep” (Lk 5:4).  He has, in fact, made the eternal decision to stand guard as our Good Shepherd (Jn 10:11) so we too can taste and see the goodness of the Lord (Ps 34:8).  Let’s therefore stop hiding behind the word “God” as some kind of spiritual shield for our lack of faith.  Let’s actually take the quiet risk of entering into life with “the one whom our hearts love” (Song 3:1).  Let’s “God” and rejoice. 

Ave Crux, Spes Unica.

“Dark Night of the Soul” by Juan de la Cruz