Category: musings

Posted in musings, quotes

happiness

Posted on by kristinabean

“Happiness is being rooted in Love. Original happiness speaks to us about the ‘beginning’ of man, who emerged from love and initiated love. And this happened irrevocably, despite the subsequent sin and death.” – Saint Pope John Paul II, Theology of the Body

That word “irrevocably” jumps out at me from the page. The gift of love from God to us in our creation and in the creation of the world is given, once and for all, despite our sin that hides us from Him and the death that mars His perfect creation. We are still creatures meant for love, meant to be loved, meant to know love, and eminently loved by the One who is Love. And it is in that love – in the giving of love to the created world, to other people, and to God, and in the receiving of love from others and from God – that our happiness springs forth. Living in the constant sway of giving and receiving love, letting it move back and forth through the conduits of our bodies and our souls, we find happiness and abundant life – the fullness promised in the Psalms and in Christ’s last words to His disciples, in the restoration of creation to the original glory and reciprocity of love. No matter how far we run, the love that is our true home and purpose is calling for us to return, irrevocably written into the core of our being.

Posted in musings

My Prayer

Posted on by kristinabean

That peace would make his dwelling in this home –

That anxieties and fears would fade away.

That love might write the music of our hearts,

And shape the words our lips will come to say.

That faith would guide our footsteps through the years –

That in hard times our hearts would seek God’s light.

That hope would give us strength to run with courage

In the beauty of the day or the sorrow of the night.

Posted in musings

which way? thoughts on blind bartimaeus

Posted on by kristinabean

“And as He was leaving Jericho with His disciples and a great crowd, Bartimaeus, a blind beggar, the son of Timaeus, was sitting by the roadside. And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’ And many rebuked him, telling him to be silent. But he cried out all the more, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’ And Jesus stopped and said, ‘Call him.’ And they called the blind man, saying to him, ‘Take heart. Get up; he is calling you.’ And throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. And Jesus said to him, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ And the blind man said to Him, ‘Rabbi, let me recover my sight.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Go your way; your faith has made you well.’ And immediately he recovered his sight and followed him on the way.” – Mark 10:46-52

Blindness was an incredible limitation in the ancient world; Bartimaeus would have been unable to learn a trade or seek employment, and was reduced to begging on the side of the road, likely without family or close friends, marginalized, on the edge of society. It’s no wonder he cried out so passionately for Jesus to show him mercy and heal him! And even his pleas were hushed up by the crowd, who, perceiving him as less valuable than a seeing person, thought his cries for mercy irritating, embarrassing, or simply not important enough to bother Jesus with. (Do we still do that today? Yes, of course, for a plethora of reasons – we shunt away the pleas of the poor, the oppressed, those who tax our resources or drain us emotionally, telling them to stop bothering us with their cries for mercy. We could stand to be a lot more like Jesus and less like the crowd…)

What really stood out to me in this passage, though, was Bartimaeus’s choice following his miraculous healing. Surely he had been holding onto cherished, impossible dreams through all his years of exclusion and inability – surely there were things he had been longing to do and to see his whole life, as he did the best he could in his poverty and loneliness! But with the whole world of opportunity opened up before him by the gift of sight, with the open invitation of Jesus to go his own way and follow his own dreams, what did Bartimaeus do? He followed Jesus on his way.

Right in the midst of the great crowd who had been silencing his pleas for mercy only minutes earlier.

Jesus was greater to him than all the hopes and dreams he’d held of a restored and normal life. Jesus was greater to him than all the condescension and bigotry of the people following him. So he decided that his way would be Jesus’s way, and he went with him on the road.

Posted in musings

the reception of love

Posted on by kristinabean

When I’m closest and most intimate with my husband, my mind ponders the nature and essence of woman as woman and of man as man. I believe that our bodies and our souls were both designed by God for function and beauty, and that as a result our bodies reflect truth about the nature of our being. Put another way, our bodies are gendered, so some aspect at least of our being is gendered, and understanding our femininity or masculinity is necessary to understanding the fullness of our being. Our bodies of course are broken and subject to sin, and the image of ourselves and of God that we see in them is faulty and incomplete. But even in the beginning, when the world was unstained, “God made them male and female.”

I’ve never come across another definition of the essence of masculinity and femininity (and the difference between them) quite as beautiful and succinct as Leila Lawler’s over at Like Mother, Like Daughter, where she describes the man as the one whose vocation is to give and the woman as the one whose vocation is to receive that she might give in return. So in marriage the man gives his love and the woman receives it, and in the receiving gives back the love in the creation of the child. (Read her post for more depth – I don’t want to take her ideas and anyway, she expresses them more beautifully and clearly than I ever could).

This understanding of man and woman then becomes my springboard for understanding the church. For the church is the bride of Christ. We are all, in the cosmic sense, in our relation to God, feminine. A church that relies solely on the masculine image of God, that sees the good only in the initiating, powerful, authoritative things, will fail to understand who God is (God in whose image both male and female were created) but will even more completely fail to understand its own nature and purpose as the Bride. We, the church, are intended like the woman to receive love that we might pour it back out in return. God bestows, we receive; and our reception is not the end of our love and vocation, but the beginning. The church gestates within herself the new life that God is preparing for His children and for all creation, and it is through the church – through our labor of love, through our suffering in childbirth, that the new life will finally come into its own. It is of course His life in us, His love in us, that is making it all happen. But He has chosen to make it happen in us and through us, just as He chose the new life of the baby to come about in the woman and through the woman, though without the life-giving seed of the man it could never have come to be at all.

Posted in family life, musings, quotes

our world

Posted on by kristinabean

we are a little family in a big world.

ours is a little home in a big city.

but if our family and our home can be a little drop of peace in the ocean of chaos

or a little oasis of grace and renewal in the parched and barren desert

or a little open window into the great wide expanse of beauty and wonder

then we will have done well.

“The splendor of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not rob the little violet of its scent nor the daisy of its simple charm. I realized that if every tiny flower wanted to be a rose, spring would lose its loveliness and there would be no wild flowers to make the meadows gay… Perfection consists in doing His will, in being that which He wants us to be.” – St. Therese of Lisieux