Lives in a Light

Yesterday evening, I looked out my bedroom window and saw a plane beginning its descent into the Santa Ana airport a few miles away. The plane was a blinking white particle, coming down from the dark sky to merge with the nighttime city lights of southern California, and it amazed me to think that there were hundreds of lives in that little glistening speck. It had been so long since I'd taken any time to love God's people from a distance.

When I was very little, I used to watch the airplanes descend every night and worry about them. I was supposed to be asleep, but I'd sit near the window at the foot of my bed and trace each plane's progress westward and downward until it disappeared behind some low buildings. If the night sky was clear, I could see the planes coming in from miles and miles away and I would pray for each of the incoming pilots as they lined up for landing. Since I spent so many hours staring out the window, I knew exactly when the planes should start losing altitude and what downward angle they should take. And if a pilot seemed to wait longer than normal before starting down or seemed to be taking an unusually steep decline, I'd get very nervous and hold my breath. The planes always made it, but I still hated to go to sleep because there was always one more plane approaching on the horizon, and I felt like I needed to sit up with God to help him will those lives towards a safe landing.

I don't know how many years I did that, but eventually I stopped during 9th grade because it seemed silly. Wasn't God capable of guiding the planes whether or not I kept my eyes on them? And what did it matter to the people in the planes that some random girl they didn't know was praying in a distant house they couldn't see? Life was suddenly very fast-paced while I went to high school, learned to drive, took my SATs, went off to college in St. Louis.... And this whole time the planes have been landing quite successfully without a thought from me!

But last night I watched a plane come in for landing like I did as a child, and it was simply beautiful to witness the vulnerable arrival of a little light holding so many lives. No, God didn't need me to help the planes land. And no, those people had no clue I was thinking about their airplane. But it felt right, and I decided that I would watch the plane because, for some reason, it mattered to me that they arrived safely... maybe just because the blinking light seemed to represent the vulnerability of all humanity.

It's so easy to be unconcerned for humanity when, close up, it seems impervious to all harm. For example, I seldom feel concerned for the person who cuts me off on the freeway or who edges in front of me in the grocery line since, after all, they seem to be looking out for themselves perfectly fine. But everybody's lives are hanging mid-air in some way or another. Maybe that woman on the freeway is really hoping to find a job, and that man in the grocery store needs resolution to an argument with his wife. We never know what's going to happen.

It seems to me that the people we think we see in our everyday lives aren't so different from those hanging in the air. It may be easier to love and pray for a tiny, distant plane since we don't know anything but hope for the people's safe landing . But all the people we encounter on the ground are mysteries too, and it's important to hold our breath and care and hope and sit up and wait and pray for their well-being. Maybe it's because we're all on the same planet or because we're part of a Communion of Saints or even just because we're all human.... but somehow it matters.

- Stephanie

Rowing a Conversation Towards God

(Hi! Just to introduce myself quickly... I'm Stephanie Wong, a junior at Wash. U studying English, Writing and Music. Last year, I went through RCIA and got confirmed Catholic on Easter Vigil, and this year I am a sponsor. I'm glad for the opportunity to post and I hope I can be semi-coherent! God bless you and have a Merry Christmas! - Stephanie)

Rowing a Conversation Towards God:

Have you ever had a really blah conversation? A conversation after which you felt tired and confused and, strangely, unsuccessful? A conversation after which you sat down and doubted whether you really learned anything at all from what came out of your or the other person's mouth?

I had one of those today, and I was surprised it turned out that way because I was talking with my father about God, and I thought all things related to God are supposed to be life-giving. We were having a fairly typical discussion in which my Dad emphasized a God of justice who judges a sinful world that needs saving, while I emphasized a God of grace who became incarnate for our sake and treated those around him with compassion and humility.

God is a mystery, so I wasn't worried that we didn't come to any conclusion about who exactly God is. But it did bother me that, by the end of the conversation, both my father and I had adopted a quiet but frustrated attitude of resignation: Well, it's clear that you and I have two very different gods, and there's nothing to be done about that.

But that kind of thinking is fallacious, and so afterwards I felt unsettled because Christianity shouldn't have anything to do with a "your God/ my God" paradigm. My father and I had painted our separate pictures of God, shown them to each other, and then retreated into silence when we saw that the other's was different - a conversation that went nowhere, built no meaning, and led to no greater understanding of the one God for either of us.

I realized what was missing from the conversation when I remembered something from my experience with the Carmelites this summer in Iowa. When I first got there, I wondered why, during the Liturgy of the Hours, we had to recite the psalms switching back and forth across the chapel; the left side would say one stanza of a psalm and then the right side would say the next - back and forth - and it seemed like a lot of arbitrary distraction to me.

But then the prioress explained that it was like a conversation and, therefore, like rowing a boat! The two halves of the chapel were like rowers in a boat pulling us all towards Jesus in front of us, and we needed both sides to work in turn, one after the other, to keep us moving and keep us on course to God.

It's a beautiful metaphor of cooperation and necessity, and it struck me today that all conversations should have that kind of momentum. Instead of staring across the table at my Dad and inwardly marveling that two Christians could have such opposite understandings of God... I should have sat down in the chair next to my dad and laid a cross on the table in front of us. You take up that oar, and I'll take up this one, and together lets paddle towards Him.

We still wouldn't have "figured out" God, but we would have been living more as the Communion of Saints is supposed to. I hope that I can become better at rowing towards God through conversation with other people. Today I didn't even see myself in a boat until the conversation was already sunk, but tomorrow I'd like to hop in the boat and learning how to paddle in sync with others toward God, who is much bigger than I could ever imagine.

Introduction

I just wanted to start this blog off with a quick introductory entry. I'm Jamey Stegmaier, the Director of Operations at the Catholic Student Center. Recently I realized that the CSC community could benefit from a blog written by the staff, students, and community members, so I've been trying to contact all interested parties to get some writers. So far I have about six people signed up, but the more, the merrier. I'm looking for people intersted in jotting down their thoughts on faith, values, religion, spirituality, community, and the CSC on a weekly or monthly basis. Contact me at stegmaier@washucsc.org. If you're not interested in writing, but you want to read the blog, you can check back on this page from time to time or subscribe in a reader using this address: washucsc.org/blog/rss.xml