salt and light

JMJ
AMDG

When I was ten, I wanted to be an astronaut. I was going to be the first person to land on Jupiter, until I learned that Jupiter is a gaseous planet and can't be landed upon. 

I'm eighteen now. I have absolutely no idea what my future will look like. There are dreams of being a youth minister and being married and or/ possibly maybe also a princess or a professional ice cream/mozzarella stick taster but I don't really know. I really have no idea what I'm doing beyond May 21, 2017, the finish date for 2016-17 NET.

I know I want to do something great. I know I want to live greatness.

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Doing something great scares the crap out of me. Living greatness can't mean living normally. Living greatness means I can't keep my head down and be nobody. Living greatness means that I can't disappear. Even if I work the most boring job in the world with the most boring people in the world, as a Christian I must be salt and light, and those are not things which can be hidden. Those are things I must not allow myself to hide. 

You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Men do not light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket. They set it on a stand where it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, your light must shine before men so that they may see goodness in your acts and give praise to your heavenly Father. (Matthew 5:14-16)

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People tell me, I'm so proud of you.

I'm not.
I don't know quite why I'm here, why I've been called, and while I don't want to turn from the path I have started down, I do not feel worthy to walk it.

I am not proud of myself because I can see all the cracks in my beat-up heart and I know where my flaws lie, as I'm sure plenty of other people do too, but in spite of all my brokenness, sometimes I stop and it's like the pause before the drop at the top of the roller coaster and I think--maybe this is greatness. maybe this is exactly what I am meant to be doing right now. 

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Sometimes--a lot of times, really--I don't want greatness. I want not to have to explain my crazy gap year-mission trip-Jesus adventure every time people ask me where I'm going to college in the fall. I wish I were your average eighteen year old, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, except that's not my personal path to greatness, and deep down, it isn't what I really want.

The world offers you comfort. You were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness.~Benedict XVI.

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 I discovered a poem the other day, one of those things you keep referring back to and maybe want to get tattooed on the inside of your eyelids because of the beauty of it--Starlings in Winter, by Mary Oliver. The last lines read:

Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,

even in the leafless winter,

even in the ashy city.

I am thinking now

of grief, and of getting past it;

I feel my boots

trying to leave the ground,

I feel my heart

pumping hard. I want

to think again of dangerous and noble things.

I want to be light and frolicsome. 

I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,

as though I had wings.

I want to dream of greatness and not be afraid of the vastness of it. I want to be loud, to be bright and flaming and do things that maybe people won't talk about but which will leave something behind in my heart, glimmering afterimages of pain and laughter and friendship and love that are realer than anything else in the world. I want to do things that make my soul sing. 

I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.

I long for greatness. I'm terrified of it. God makes me feel like I've got wings. I need to remember to stop looking down.

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The past few months, I've been struggling to come to terms with myself and the mission I am undertaking, not just NET, but Christian life. Youth ministry. Daring to share things in small groups and to lector at Mass. To see and be seen, to lead and be led. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.

I was prayed over the other night, by a group of people I'd never met before. 
What would you like to pray for? one of them asked.

I want to pray for the courage to be the person God wants me to be and not the person I've been telling myself I am.

I'm still praying for that every day. I keep reminding myself not to despise myself, to accept my weaknesses, fix what I can, and move on.

I keep staring at the words I have taped next to my bed: Consult not your fears but your hopes and dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do. ~St. Pope John XXIII

I keep remembering salt and light, salt and light, you are strong enough for whatever comes.

I keep praying, and thinking, and sometimes crying. I think that's all I can do for right now--hold on and try not to be afraid. I keep trying to be salt and light, and maybe--I dare to hope--it's working.

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syrup is great.

This is a lot of rambling. I think maybe it's just what I needed to write though, or maybe it's what someone needs to read. 

Reading back through this I think maybe I sound negative, and I'm not, I just have All The Feelings About Everything and I'm trying to process them while doing things like buy plane tickets(whaaat?) and think about packing and alklaksfkjas;ldfkjalksfj.

Yes, I'm a mess. Mostly a happy mess, but pray for me.

Also I have no real relevant pictures for this post. Here, have a picture I took of the syrup shelf at Wal-mart. It's a long story why. 

concerning hobbits

JMJ
AMDG

He shows up at your door one day, and he knows you, though you don't recognize him at first. You remember him from your childhood--remember all the glittering light that seemed to follow him wherever he went.

But he is different now--or maybe it is you who is different. Nowadays, you aren't so sure that you like the sound of "adventure" in your ears.
He makes you flustered, and that makes you guilty, because once upon a time, you would have liked the sound of an adventure, but there are letters to read and you don't want to be late to dinner, so sorry, but you don't want any adventures, thank you.

But you, flustered, let him come to tea; you write it down in your engagement book: Adoration, Wednesday @ 6 sorry, Gandalf Tea Wednesday.

And then things start to happen; people start popping up into your life, and you find your patience being stretched very thin and what is happening? they're singing, and something in it moves you, but it's all rather silly and you go to bed---

---but the next morning, you're running down the lane and to the end of your days you will not remember how you found yourself outside, without a hat, a walking stick or any money, or anything you usually take when you go out. You're leaving your keys with someone else and running as fast as you can, pocket-handkerchiefs be damned.

Don't be precise, and don't worry, someone tells you.

(source)

This journey you go on is not an easy one. There are trolls and goblins and spiders and a dragon. There are people who glare at you and people who will hurt your friends. There will be riddles and fear and strange things. There will be death and blood and pain before it is over.

Someone will tell you that you do not belong, and you will feel that deep in your bones--you do not belong; you are too small, too weak; too inexperienced--but you are chosen and you are too far to turn back now.

Besides, there will be milk and honey in great houses; there will be elves singing in the trees and there will be the greatness of the mountains. There will be friendships and sacrifices; there will be the wonderment of the wind in your hair. There will be good days and bad ones, and you will not be the same when it is over.

At the end, when it is over, you will have lost the respect of the most respectable of your neighbors.

You will find you don't mind so much.

You remain very happy to the end of your days, which are extraordinarily long.

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Tolkien did not intend for his writing to be allegorical, but I think it fits so well with vocation, with the universal call to holiness, with my own personal decision to serve with NET.

Life with Christ is a wonderful adventure.--St. John Paul II

Here's to forgetting pocket handkerchiefs.