Won over to the Little Way

St. Therese of Lisieux.... she's like the popular girl at school.  Everyone talks about her, everyone gets her class picture.  It would be comforting if she would at least be a mean girl, and then you would be justified in your envious dislike of her - but she is among other things, the kindest, most loving person in the room.

Throughout my faith journey, St. Therese has been the one fly in the saint ointment for me.  I did not care to read Story of a Soul.  In college, I felt obligated to be inspired by her "little way," but instead I felt irritated.  She seemed so coddled, so perfect.  So loved and admired.  Her journey to God seemed too easy, too...little, for my taste.

Instead, I preferred saints of a stronger mettle - St. Teresa of Avila, who bravely discoursed with kings and popes, who spoke plainly and honestly and often made me laugh.  I preferred Mother Theresa of Calcutta, who got in and DID something.  St. Therese of Lisieux in a convent... my real, honest wondering was, what did she DO?

"We cannot do great things, but we can do small things with great love." - Mother Theresa

The funny thing is, that sometimes I have a sense that St. Therese adopted me somewhere along the way.  It would be just like her to choose the person who liked her least, and choose to love and pray for her, wouldn't it?  How annoying.  And yet, over the past several years, my opinion of her has begun to change. 

I was initially turned off by the "little" way, and how small the returns would be.  I looked for a grand design, a big plan.  Early in my faith, I wanted God's call for my life to be something BIG.  Ordinary things didn't inspire me.  I could see the need to love my brothers and sisters halfway across the world and just as easily ignore my brothers and sisters before me. 

Sometimes I think one of the greatest catchphrases that influenced my advent into the Catholic Christian lifestyle was "God has a big plan for your life." To quote Anne of Green Gables, this phrase has a lot of 'scope for the imagination.' In my imaginings, this plan would be monumental - a career as a Christian singer/songwriter, perhaps.  It would be fueled with important encounters with people in which hearts were changed, lives won over, in which everything grew in significance.  Life would be one long succession of great moments.

"Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin." 

  Mother Theresa   



Throughout my 20s, the more I searched for these moments, these evidences of a "big plan," the more frustrated I became.  Life was not moving along as expected.  Something must have gone wrong.  Either the phrase about God's "big plan" was just a flashy embellishment on the truth, or I had done something wrong because I didn't feel I was living according to a big plan. 

"Mother Theresa always said, "Calcuttas are everywhere if only we have eyes to see. Find your Calcutta." Shane Claiborne

And this is where, after years of pushing her away, St. Therese has reentered my life.  Where the hope of largeness and significance has left me disappointed, now the Little Way has begun to inspire me to a different kind of greatness.  Because, according to the Little Way, all that we do is important.

“It is love alone that gives worth to all things.”  St. Teresa of Avila 

According to the Little Way, where I live and work is not the point.  My success in God's plan has nothing to do with my success in "the real world." Whether I live in a convent, a cluttered apartment, or a large mansion, I can live the Little Way. 

According to the Little Way, my status, either single, married, a nun, does not matter.  I can love God and others in any one of these vocations, and if I love Him faithfully, I am a success in God's plan. 

According to the Little Way, my possessions, my career, the good and difficult things that happen to me - these are all useful, are all resources leading to the success of God's plan.  I can use anything in this world as material with which to love God, serve Him, follow Him.

“Christ has no body now on earth but yours,
no hands but yours,
no feet but yours,
Yours are the eyes through which to look out
Christ's compassion to the world
Yours are the feet with which he is to go about
doing good;
Yours are the hands with which he is to bless men now.” 

St. Teresa of Avila 



According to the Little Way, it doesn't matter if I share my music with a crowd of 5,000 people, 50,000, or 5.  If I play this music with love, I am a success in God's plan.

So, washing the dishes for my roommates is not just a chore, it's an act of love.  Smiling at the person who hurt my feelings, though hard, is an act of love.  Giving someone a glass of water, a kind word, when I could be doing something else, has value.  Making my own bed in the morning can be an act of love. 

"Miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice, here by a smiling look, there by a kindly word; always doing the smallest right and doing it all for love." 

St. Therese of Lisieux           



I no longer resent St. Therese of Lisieux.  Her Little Way has been a saving grace, a reminder of what really matters, in my 30th year. 

What are you practicing for?

"See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop, patiently waiting for the autumn and spring rains" James 5:7

My parish priest pointed out this week, that one drop of rain seems to do very little, and even one day of rain hardly makes a difference for a crop.  But in the end, all of these drops of rain together have led to the production of the crop, and have a hand in its harvest.  How is a plant built then? Drop by drop by drop.

If we look for a result from each drop, we will experience frustration and annoyance.  It is the collective effort that matters, and the collective effort takes time, a larger vision, and patience.

This morning it occurred to me that I practice a skill every day that I am hardly aware of.

Every day, I spend a few hours looking over the shoulder of a piano student at a music book, somewhat like this guy here:

 I am focused on teaching in those moments, translating symbols on a page into beautiful music for the student to enjoy.



But in the meantime, all those hours and hours of practice have led me to develop a skill.  Now I am able to glance at a piece of music for five minutes and memorize the entire thing. I have memorized Fur Elise, Minuet in G, and lots of other fun little pieces, just by watching the music over my student's shoulder. 

I have been practicing reading.  I have been practicing synthesizing patterns of music and generating large-scale plans from them.  Today, I wrote out Carol of the Bells for a student, using triangles and squares to represent musical patterns that repeated.  Without needing to notate on the staff, the student walked away with a clear picture of the music in an easy way to understand. 

The point of this isn't to brag about this skill, although I was amazed to realize I now have an ability to do something complex without really focusing, or trying to develop it.  Nonetheless, I have practiced it every day.

When we aren't counting each single drop of rain in our lives, we tend not to notice the collective effort, the overall development.  We practice many habits without thinking of what they will one day become for us.  Sometimes it helps to think about what positive daily habits will create for our lives in general. 

-Doing household chores each day eventually leads you to find creative ways to make big jobs more efficient.

-Practicing kind words of affirmation for family members leads to harmony and good spirit in the household

-Remembering to see and thank people for the little things they do to make your life easier leads to good friendships

-Habits of decorating the house for each season leads to your children developing an excitement about each season of life

-Practicing an awareness of the needs of those around you leads to a life of generosity and love

-Practicing getting up at the same time each morning leads to greater discipline in your life, which leads to regularity and a sense of purpose. 

-Practicing making your bed and keeping your space tidy leads to a sense of your own worth and value

-Practicing thinking kindly toward yourself as a friend leads you to patience with yourself and room for you to be who you are and grow to who you are meant to be. 

Rejoice always

"Rejoice, Rejoice, Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel."

I have heard these lines my entire life, and played them on the piano for almost as long.  I know that the moment in the song calls for a nice big forte, and sometimes it feels exciting to stumble on the triumphant major chord after all those mournful minor chords. 

But this morning I had a new realization:

The Rejoicing in the Song precedes Christ's coming.

I've always sung O Come O Come Emmanuel safely on the other side of the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus.  After everything is clear and everything is obvious.  Duh, of course Emmanuel will come to thee, O Israel - how could you ever have doubted that?

But today I realized - this song is written from the perspective of before all that.  It is written from the vantage of a waiting time, a time before gifts received.  It is written from a time of doubt, chaos, confusion. 

By this point, Israel was long past the hopeful image of descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky.  Moses had come to lead them to the Promised land, and they ended up wandering for 40 years, and then they fell in with all sorts of other people, and many lost their beliefs.  And then Israel totally split into Northern and Southern kingdoms - which certainly must have filled many hearts with doubt about where all this was leading.  God may have promised something great to begin with, but then there came schisms, and corruption, and acts of treachery. 

I kind of laugh at the term "hot mess." Israel was in a pretty hot mess at this point. 

And STILL, in the midst of it, are these words: REJOICE!

And not because they had seen the great king they were looking for, but because they had hope that He WOULD come. 

Sometimes when I am waiting, I find it hard to rejoice.  Instead, I find it easier to worry.  And if I rejoice, it's half-hearted, because for all that, I'm really not sure it will all be okay in the end.

Why is it easier NOT to rejoice when we haven't seen the answer we seek?  Why is it easier to resort to, "It will never happen.  I'm crazy to hope for this,"  rather than to give ourselves fully to joyful expectation?

And why might it be good to rejoice when our hands are empty?

Rejoicing - - - opens my eyes to receive.  It welcomes answers in whatever form they will come. 
Rejoicing - - - predisposes me for hope, and good things are drawn in.
Rejoicing - - - keeps the lines of communication open between me and God, rather than turning God
                        into my enemy.