Peacemakers in a New Year

New possibilities unfold with a new year. Beginning with the first month, it’s as if we could hear January say, “Let’s begin anew.” Or as Venerable Bruno Lanteri, who founded the Oblates of the Virgin Mary, advised, Nunc Coepi — now I begin. Ahora empiezo nuevamente.

So as we begin a New Year, Pope Francis urges us to be peacemakers. In his message for World Day of Peace, observed each year on Jan. 1, the Holy Father focuses on “Peace as a journey of hope: dialogue, reconciliation, and ecological conversion.”

His five points are ones we can apply close to home in our families, work and communities.

1.         Peace, a journey of hope in the face of obstacles and trial.

2.         Peace, a journey of listening based on memory, solidarity and fraternity.

3.         Peace, a journey of reconciliation in fraternal communion.

4.         Peace, a journey of ecological conversion; and

5.         We obtain all that we hope for”

Pope Francis in his fifth point notes, “Peace will not be obtained unless it is hoped for.” We have to want peace in our lives in order to work for it.

“The desire for peace lies deep within the human heart,” he said, “and we should not resign ourselves to seeking anything less than this.”

He adds, “The world does not need empty words but convinced witnesses, peacemakers who are open to a dialogue that rejects exclusion or manipulation. … Peace ‘must be built up continually;’ it is a journey made together in constant pursuit of the common good, truthfulness and respect for law. Listening to one another can lead to mutual understanding and esteem, and even to seeing in an enemy the face of a brother or sister.”

He said it is an enduring commitment, “an ongoing work in which each individual makes his or her contribution responsibly, at every level of the local, national and global community.”

W each have a small garden to tend

While there is much happening around the world that is out of our control, we can focus on what is within our reach, close to home. Father Tad Pacholczyk, in his column on “Pushing back against evil,” said, “We need to recognize how God has entrusted to each of us a small garden that he asks us to tend. If we tend that plot well, he will extend the reach of his grace in ways we cannot foresee or imagine, and we will actually contribute to stemming the tide of error and evil well beyond the limited confines of our particular plot.

“This implies that each of us has different responsibilities, depending upon our particular state in life, our commitments, and our employment and family situations. By attending carefully to those responsibilities and conscientiously tending our gardens, the air around us can indeed begin to change.”

Thus, we can each be agents of change, peacemakers. As the Holy Father tells us, “Day by day, the Holy Spirit prompts in us ways of thinking and speaking that can make us artisans of justice and peace.”

Let’s remember, we walk together on the journey of peace building. As Bishop Daniel E. Flores reminds us often, “Si no caminamos juntos, no vamos a llegar.” (If we do not walk together, we are not going to get to where we are going.)

Being peacemakers close to home

Easier said than done, you might say. How can we practice this close to home?

As we consider the Holy Father’s words, it’s about listening, about working collaboratively, about forgiveness. Some forces in the world try to bully us into creating divisions and breeding competition. As the Holy Father has said in previous talks on unity, “divisions wound Christ’s body (and) they impair the witness which we are called to give him before the world.”

But when we recognize God’s abundance and his saving grace, we learn to celebrate each other and encourage each other on the journey. Stephen Covey in his book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, talks about creating win-win situations. When we shift our paradigms away from individualism and competition, we can create environments in which we support one another, neighbor helping neighbor, as God calls us to do.

God guides us at every step. He fortifies us through the sacraments. He invites us to keep him at the center of everything.

As we greet each day and month this year, we can also think of ways of finding peace within ourselves. Recently I visited the Poor Clare Sisters at their monastery in Alamo. As we paused in the prayer garden, Sister Martha invited us to “listen to the sound of peace.” You could also hear peace inside the Adoration Chapel before the Eucharist. The visit with the sisters in the chapel was a strong reminder that making time to spend with God is essential, especially if we are to fulfill our role as peacemakers.

(Originally published in January 2020 edition of The Valley Catholic newspaper)

Confessions of a pack rat on a journey to less

Mind map by Paul Foreman and link to article “De-clutter your life”

 http://blog.iqmatrix.com/de-clutter-your-life

The truth is I prefer an uncluttered space. My attempts, however, fall short. I have a tendency to save everything because I believe that it may be useful later. This habit is exasperated by my growing collection of books and research material for different writing projects along with my collection of supplies for sewing, crocheting, mix-media art and scrap booking.

I have closets, cabinets and shelves stuffed with fabrics, threads, yarns, paints, craft paper. I tell friends, my entire home is an art studio. You can find a creative work underway in almost every room of my home. The mixed-media arts are a magnet for all sorts of items, some of which most people would discard. The artist in me knows even an empty box or piece of wood can be repurposed for one of my nicho shrine projects.

But the art and craft supplies are not alone in taking space in my home. When my husband and I bought our home 21 years ago, it took us several years to purchase furniture and fill the rooms. As a young couple with two young children we never imagined that our once spacious home would be filled with an excess of accumulated possessions we hold on to. It is easy for this excess to clutter our living spaces and such clutter is not conducive to a healthy home or work space.

We have fallen prey to overindulgence and the trap of consumerism. When we first got married 27 years ago I made the ornaments for our first Christmas tree. The day after Christmas we started a tradition of going to the half-off sales to buy decorations for future Christmases. We have since amassed boxes full that sit in our attic 11 months of the year. We have accumulated so much that we started putting up a second tree.

Pope Francis in his encyclical Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home appealed to everyone to consider how we are caring for our environment. In his appeal, he even addressed what he calls the “ecology of daily life,” the setting in which we live our lives.

In the section “Joy and Peace,” he notes Christian spirituality “encourages a prophetic and contemplative lifestyle, one capable of deep enjoyment free of the obsession with consumption.” He said, “We need to take up an ancient lesson, found in different religious traditions and also in the Bible. It is the conviction that “less is more”. A constant flood of new consumer goods can baffle the heart and prevent us from cherishing each thing and each moment.”

My husband asked me for my Christmas list in November. The truth is I don’t need anything. What I need is to let go. I am embarrassed by my weakness for sales, the excess we’ve accumulated, and my failure to purge what I do not need.

The Holy Father’s words resonate as I commit myself to simplify and create a healthy space to work and to live. He said, “Christian spirituality proposes a growth marked by moderation and the capacity to be happy with little. It is a return to that simplicity which allows us to stop and appreciate the small things, to be grateful for the opportunities which life affords us, to be spiritually detached from what we possess… This implies avoiding the dynamic of dominion and the mere accumulation of pleasures.”

My father died in August this year, and my siblings and I have the task now to go through what he left behind. It pains me to see how much he held on to after my mother’s death 23 years ago. He still had boxes of her costume jewelry. The truth is I still have boxes of some of her craft items. I call them “las cajitas de posibilidades” (boxes of possibilities). 

I believe my father would have lived his last years with less stress if he had gotten rid of roomfuls of furniture and possessions he no longer needed.

As I continue on my pilgrimage, I want to change my pack rat ways and let go by purging myself of the excess in my life. I realize too, it’s about making time to organize and make decisions on what stays and what goes; what are the essentials. Sometimes we have to evaluate how much value we assign to possessions.  After all, when we die we’re not taking anything with us. One of my biggest fears is the clutter I will leave behind when I die.

Susan V. Vogt in her book “Blessed by Less: Clearing Your Life of Clutter by Living Lightly” gives some practical tips to what she calls “living lightly.” She started her journey of letting go one Lent when she decided to give away an item a day. This Advent leading into Christmas, I plan to do the same.

We are each called to be good stewards. As December moves us into a new year, I look forward to the possibilities that living lightly will create, including making more space to focus on what is important starting with spiritual growth. Already I see the difference with the small steps we have taken in our office where a cleaner, uncluttered environment allows us room to concentrate on the work before us.

Moving forward, this prayer from St. Ignatius Loyola offers us some focus on letting go of not just material possessions but of other tendencies as well.

Take Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will, all that I have and possess. Thou hast given all to me. To Thee, O lord, I return it. All is Thine, dispose of it wholly according to Thy will. Give me Thy love and thy grace, for this is sufficient for me.

(Originally published in December 2015 edition of The Valley Catholic newspaper)