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| Salzburg, Austria |
I went on silent retreat at Loyola last year, and while there I had this remarkable prayer experience where I started spiritually connecting to Jesus through our hands. It sounds bizarre, I know. But I was reading the book Jesus: A Pilgrimmage by Father James Martin, S.J. (SO good, don't let the 500 pages scare you) which gives a pretty strong picture of the humanity of Jesus. I had struggled to connect to Jesus before, but as I found myself reading about his upbringing and his occupation as carpenter, I thought something crazy: Jesus & I aren't all that different.
Did I just commit blasphemy? Maybe. But this realization started me on a path of imaginative prayer, something very common in Ignatian Spirituality. You see, I always kind of saw Jesus as this distant figure - maybe overly philosophical, too old to be my friend, too young to be a father figure, too male to bond with woman-to-woman, too holy to really care about me (sorry for being so picky, Jesus) - I couldn't find any way to relate to him. But finally, I got it: Jesus is creative. I mean, he made up the parables to teach people in ways they would understand - and some of the parables are even funny if you learn the historical context. He also spent most of his life as a carpenter, using his hands to create something new and beautiful from raw materials. Kind of like knitting...
I started picturing myself sitting on a nice wooden bench (that Jesus made, naturally) knitting, while Jesus was working on some new carpentry project a few feet away. Sometimes we talk, sometimes we just sit there.
It's now my favorite way to pray. After a lifetime of working so hard to connect to Jesus, I've finally just stopped trying and have presented myself as I am, and accepted Jesus for who he is. I can sit on that bench for hours, voicing all of my problems, talking about my hopes and dreams, or just simply being.
I let myself slip into this state of peace while in Salzburg, and it was bliss. I was working on a cabled hat for a dear friend back home, praying for her and her family, and just hanging out with Jesus. It was the end of my Spring Break, and I was traveling alone, and I was physically and emotionally exhausted - but sitting and knitting in silence in this church gave me life. I felt recharged and reconnected to my faith and myself.
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It's kind of fascinating to be in Europe, a place that has so much religious history and still standing traditions rooted in Christianity, yet the people are almost remarkably unreligious. Sure, people (mostly tourists) are visiting the big churches, but Masses are far from packed. Although I probably shouldn't be making such hasty generalizations (but not really so hasty, check out the interesting graph in this article), as I've barely been to Mass this semester.
Sure, I could make excuses - it's in German, I don't understand anything, I'm traveling a lot of the weekends... Please. I guarantee I could look up an English Mass in a heartbeat, but for some reason I just haven't.
I'm not proud of this. I feel pretty weird about it. But it's not like I've had a faithless semester. I've had the same ups and downs that I have all the time, because study abroad is real life. And real life is sometimes pretty spectacular, and sometimes honestly pretty sucky.
I've had a tough, emotional week, and it's made me think a lot - about what my life has been here, about what I'm proud of and what I wish I would have done differently, about the most powerful, awe-inspiring experiences I've had while abroad and also the most frustrating ones... truly I've been a bit of a mess. But it's been good to let myself wallow a little bit and evaluate where I'm at.
Unsurprisingly, it was while watching a video that was part of this years' John Courtney Murray Forum - an annual event put on by the Catholic Studies minors at Loyola that is near and dear to my heart - that I got a bit of peace during this stressful time (check it out here if you're interested - I highly recommend it!).
This year's forum focused on being Catholic & Millennial. It was a massive topic that I am positive was explored to its fullest because the people that worked on the forum are some of the coolest, smartest, most inspiring people I know. This video is a compilation of interviews with campus students and staff all talking about what it means to be a Catholic millennial. At the end of this video, the always lovely Lauren Schwer gives some advice to the busy young Catholics of the world: "Find silence".
And then, of course, she sent me an email while I was writing this post packed with all kinds of needed goodness. Typical Lauren Schwer psychic telepathy wonderfulness.
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Like my life lately (always), this post has been a little bit all over the place, but it boils down to this: finding silence anywhere is hard. Finding silence abroad is particularly difficult. I'm guilty as ever of overprogramming myself - trying to cram in too many weekend trips, freaking out about class scheduling and graduating on time back home, and thinking I have to handle all of this on my own.
But it's times like this when I pick up my knitting needles and go back to that bench, in search of a little silence, peace, and quality time with my pal Jesus. Maybe it's weird, but it works for me. And isn't that the beauty of faith? The uniqueness of your own experience, balanced with the wonderful connectedness to other people of faith - a connection that I have felt across the ocean as I watched the Catholic Studies minors kill it at the forum, as I have received messages of love and support from my friends and family back home, and as I have formed fast friendships with girls from all different faiths (many who, of course, attend other Jesuit schools) here in Vienna.
And, because it's so great (& remarkably relevant), I want to end with a Papa Francesco quote Lauren sent me today:
"There are Christians whose lives seem like Lent without Easer. I realize of course that joy is not expressed the same way at all times of life, especially at moments of great difficulty. Joy adapts and changes, but it always endures, even as a flicker of light born of our personal certainty that, when everything is said and done, we are infinitely loved."
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