It would have been so great to have grown up in the 1960s.  Decades of repression had finally matured to the point of a cultural explosion: artists, musicians, politicians, intellectuals, and religious folks taking risks on new expressions of meaning and transcendence; cross-generational pollination; untapped springs of love and compassion bubbling up to the surface; a glimpse of the infinite horizon; optimism about the human race; openness to possibilities; and despite the nuclear storm cloud, a future full of hope.  The geyser that erupted in those years certainly had the potential to burn the skin, drown out the excitement, and inflict pain, but the collective memory of the 1960s is, instead, one of warmth and dazzling displays of beauty, the still point of the national timeline and the water that slaked an impossible thirst.  Let’s call forth the spirit of the 60s along our daily path.  Let’s make a commitment to an inner revolution.  Let’s lead with authenticity and trust that everything is groovy, has been groovy all along, and will be groovy forever, world without end. Amen.  Ave Crux, Spes Unica.

My friend Helen was waiting for me after the meeting.  She handed me a folded up piece of computer paper and explained how the poem she had just composed captured the essence of her current emotional state.  The first line just popped, “Stubbing my toe on reality, IT HURTS!”  After I had finished reading the poem aloud, we smiled at each other, I thanked her, and we departed.  This elderly blind woman humbled me that evening with her unmistakable spirituality.  Instead of being a source of frustration and resentment, her lack of eyesight apparently served as an analogy for her inner life.  During our conversations, she proudly shared how she depended upon a chauffeur and an escort to get to and from meetings as well as a myriad of little helpers at home, at work, and at church.  She had somehow learned to not just tolerate, but, in fact, befriend and rejoice in the darkness, which brought her a deep and contagious peace.  Let’s be gracious like Helen today.  Let’s trust and walk and stub our toes on reality, then have the grace to smile and carry on.  Ave Crux, Spes Unica.

Have you ever been to Amish country?  It’s a marvelous place where buggies with bearded drivers and bonneted passengers coexist on paved roads with SUVs, V6s, and 4x4s.  The Amish community does not reject the world (according to Jn 3:16, God so loved the world, he gave his only Son), but chooses instead to keep things simple and slow things down so as to not miss the point of it all.  This vision of life might be especially attractive to those of us who experience the constant emotional whiplash of a fully blown phone-screen-to-face society that gets increasingly complex with each passing day, but consider the perspective from the front porch of the farmhouse—instant communication, boundless information, up-to-date maps, and weather forecasts in a low-cost, tiny electronic device that fits in your front pocket.  Let’s not waste too much energy trying to figure out who’s right or obsess about converting.  Let’s just meet in the middle, where innovation and tradition coincide.  There we will find Christ, who was both rural rabbi and street preacher, and who just wants us to be integrated people, comfortable with horses and cars, with this life and the next.  Ave Crux, Spes Unica.

Greenhouses can be exotic places.  Beautiful trees and plants from all around the world—even in the middle of winter!—teeming with blossoms, flowers and life.  These “forcing houses,” as they are called across the ocean, are designed to pressure seeds and saplings into maturity.  While conditions that are too hot, too sunny, too humid, or without attentive watering, pruning and fertilizing, can subvert the whole operation, generally, the adversity is good for growth, and literally fruitful.  The next time, therefore, we complain about the conditions of our own lives—too intense, too much pressure, too many responsibilities, etc.—maybe we should pause and consider that the divine gardener only constructs circumstances for our human thriving and ultimate transformation.  If only we would allow our roots to take hold, instead of holding back; if only we would trust the Lord, instead of thinking we know it all; if only we would face the heat, instead of running away, our spiritual seeds would sprout, our hearts would be made open, and we would finally grow up, and into the unique person we have been called to be all along.  Ave Crux, Spes Unica

“When I pray, I pray; and when I eat, I eat!”  This is apparently how 16th century Carmelite mystic Teresa of Avila responded when some sisters found her in the convent kitchen devouring partridge one day.  She was a woman who was keenly aware of but not ashamed of her human desires.  After her interior conversion, around the age of forty, she learned that in order to avoid the extremes of indulgence and renunciation, she simply needed to befriend those desires.  In her famous text, The Interior Castle, she explains that when the various chambers of our souls – memory, intellect, will, etc. – have been cleared of lizards and snakes and any other pests that cause us spiritual confusion, we can relax and proceed progressively, room by room, to our center, where we meet the one who is the wellspring of all desire, the Beloved, in whose love all of our desires make sense and in whom we find peace.  Let’s be Avilitas this day by resisting the temptation to repress.  Let’s take a risk on having desires.  Let’s rejoice when we hear the Lord saying “I love you” through the simple act of enjoying a plate of partridge.  Ave Crux, Spes Unica.