A Spirit of Service and Protection

For those of you have been following my blog, you know that I am a Catholic Christian who often writes about things in light of the Catholic tradition.  However,  I hope that my tone is always one of love and openness to any and all people.  We, as humans, all long for joy and meaning in our lives, and I try to focus my posts on this in some way for the benefit of all of us.  I believe we are all brothers and sisters regardless of our affiliations.  This being said, I've been very intrigued so far by the comments of the new elected Pope Francis.  I recommend this article based on his homily (or sermon) from his inauguration mass today.  I know we all can appreciate his call "to serve and protect."

http://catholicmoraltheology.com/to-serve-and-protect/

Also, given how I feel about our universality as a human community, I thought this quote from Pope Francis fits quite well.  As he was leaving a group of people, he was apt to leave them with a blessing, so this is what he said:

I told you I was cordially imparting my blessing. Since many of you are not members of the Catholic Church, and others are not believers, I cordially give this blessing silently, to each of you, respecting the conscience of each, but in the knowledge that each of you is a child of God. May God bless you!

I hope you all have a blessed day, and remember to follow me on Twitter @DrewHaro, on Facebook, or through Feedfinder.

May we be ever-faithful, ever-mindful, and ever-joyful.

A New Papal Spirit

Hey Yall,
As you may know by now, the Catholic Church has a new pope.  The college of cardinals has elected Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio from Argentina as the new Bishop of Rome.  Cardinal Bergoglio has chosen the name Francis in honor of St. Francis Assisi.  This time is a great opportunity for us to renew ourselves in our commitment to faith just as the new pope will likely renew his own faith as he takes the next step in his and our own faith lives.

What I like best about this papal election is that it seems to bring the church a much needed balance.  Being a bishop and cardinal, Bergoglio represents the hierarchical element of the church. As a Jesuit priest, he represents the many religious communities in constant pursuit of God through lives of poverty, chastity, and obedience. And through his humble living and strong care for the poor, he has a very direct relationship with those of us who sit in the pews each week looking for guidance amid the harsh realities our world shows us sometimes.  I look forward to seeing where his leadership brings the church, but let's also remember that we are just as important and necessary contributors to the development of the church as our new pope is.  We may have a new Vicar of Christ (representative of Christ) in Rome, but we are also called to be our vicars of Christ to our own communities.

We are the Body of Christ so let us also be the church!  In light of today, let us cherish the understanding that the Spirit moves where it will but is always guiding us toward the love of God through joy and peace.

May we be ever-faithful, ever-mindful, and ever-joyful.

Hope from the Rough

Over the last couple of days, I have been reminded of a very important fact of life:  It can be messy!  We might even go as far as to say that sometimes life just sucks.  I know we all have faced rough patches in our lives that leave us wondering, "Why me?"  Well, while I wish I could say that this post would provide the right answer to this question, I can not.  However, what I can say is that in the midst of all of our "mess" we can always find a glimmer of something that points us toward hope.  A story:

The other day, I ventured out to play a round of golf.  The day was beautiful!  While I would not claim to be a good golfer by any means, I enjoy being out on the course and experiencing the rhythm of the game.  Well after finishing the round, I took some time to look back over my score card.  Upon doing this, I recalled the all too numerous "rough patches" I faced throughout the 18-hole round (multiple bunker shots, errant drives, slices, dribblers, hunting for lost balls in thick woods and grass, etc).  One hole in particular, though, was about as bad as it gets in golf -- I shot a 9 on a par 4.  I did not think I would ever find the hole the way I was hitting the ball.  Feeling terribly dejected at this point, I moved on to the next hole trying to shake off what was in the past with the hope that things might turn around.  Well, in this case, they did.  I wound up having the best hole of the day with a birdie on one of the toughest holes of the course!  My confidence was back. This glimmer of hope reminded me why I keep coming back to this sport.  Over the rest of the round I settle back into a state of normalcy, but at least now I had regained my hope that better things would come in the future if I just kept playing.

Now, I know this golf story is simply a metaphor for life.  However, I believe metaphors and anecdotes like this one can be just what we need when looking for strength amid the seriousness of real life.  As a Christian, I can use the glimmer of hope from Jesus' example of sacrificial love on the cross to help me along.  Wherever you find your glimmer of hope there, too, you will find the Spirit.

"All shall be well and all shall be well.  In every manner of things, all shall be well." - St. Julian of Norwich

May we be ever-faithful, ever-mindful, and ever-joyful.

A Glass of the Spirit

Hello everyone,
Let me take a moment to thank all of you for reading and supporting my blog over that past ten months.  I have come to really enjoy using this forum as a way to reflect on my life in the midst of others' lives.  This process of reflecting, writing, and sharing has truly encouraged me on my own spiritual journey, and I hope that perhaps I've been able to encourage you even a little bit.  After all, while we are individuals, we are nothing without each other.

Now, as you can see, I have made some aesthetic changes to my blog that I hope you like.  Over the next couple of months, I may begin to widen my scope of "stories that help us sense the Spirit."  I may explore the use of separate pages, which would act kind of like newspaper sections, to better organize my writings into categories such as spiritual and physical exercise (since I enjoy running so much!) and perhaps a "classified" page for other miscellaneous resources.  As always, I am open to your suggestions!  This being said, I want to encourage you to use the social media toolbar on the right side of the page to follow me through FeedFinder (which allows you to receive direct communication when I update the blog), Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+.  Also, I'd love to make this blog more interactive, so I encourage you to comment directly on the posts so that others can share in our conversations about things.  Don't forget to share this information with others.  Thanks!

I'll leave you with this for today:
My mom, who has a great heart for service, sent me this quote below, and I challenge all of us to reflect on the how this quote can motivate us daily.

"A pessimist, they say, sees a glass of water as being half empty; an optimist sees the same glass as half full.  However, a giving person sees a glass of water and starts looking for someone who might be thirsty." - G. Thomas Gale

For your enjoyment, check out how this man shares the joy of how he sees that same glass (or glasses) of water.

Street Performer

May we be ever-faithful, ever-mindful, and ever-joyful.

Be Awesome!

This morning as I was reflecting on the day's scripture readings (Leviticus 19: 1-2, 11-18 and Matthew 25: 31-46), several phrases emerged for me from my thoughts and readings: be somebody, be holy, be authentic, and be awesome.  The more I thought about these phrases the more I realized that these have been some recurring themes for me over the past month or so.  I'd like to share some of the most recent experiences with you.

The first experience goes back to a "Pep Talk" video from Kid President around the time of the Super Bowl (if you still have not met him, go find him on YouTube him right now!).  I shared this video in a previous post called "Super Spirit."  In this pep talk as well as in his other videos, Kid President reminds all of us that if we truly want the world to be a better place then we must first commit ourselves to "being awesome."  This simple message could not be more true.  Kid President's simple, charming, and light-hearted wisdom speaks volumes to an idealism that we seem to forget as we get older.  I believe that if we really try to "be awesome," then we will inspire others to find their own awesomeness.  Oh, and he would say that we can't forget to dance, too!

The second experience is actually a combination of two things: a book and a conversation.  The book is Dating God by Fr. Dan Horan, ofm.  In this book, Fr. Dan references Thomas Merton and other spiritual thinkers and the idea of becoming our "true selves."  The idea is that since God created us, God knows who we are at our best.  When we stray from being as God created us, we have trouble knowing God who similarly may have trouble knowing us.  So, when we are our most true selves, we are closest to God.  The conversation part of this experience was with a friend with whom I reconnected recently.  This friend, fairly recently out of a long relationship, recognized that part of the process of moving forward must be based on rediscovering true identity.  The fact that this friend recognized this need to be true to self makes me confident that all shall be well here.

The third and final experience comes as recently as yesterday.  At the Catholic Center at UGA we had our annual Black History Month Celebration.  This wonderful celebration consisted of fifteen or so performers.  The performers were folks from several different backgrounds.  There were African Americans, Caucasian Americans, and Brazilian Americans.  These folks provided wonderful glimpses of the history of Africa and African Americans through instrumental music, vocal music, poetry readings, folktale sharing, and personal revelations.  Our closing speaker, Dr. Deryl Bailey from the University of Georgia provided a wonderful conclusion to our program.  He shared with us great yet simple lessons on life that he learned from his grandmother some time ago.  These lessons listed here have continued to shape his mission in life: 1.  Do things right or don't do them at all.  2.  Treat other people's children the way you would treat your own children.  3.  Leave the world better than you found it.  This last lesson speaks volumes in our current day and age.  Not only do we live in a world that continues to waste material goods and resources, but we also seem to waste our own potential.  We should all be striving to "be authentic" as Dr. Bailey also told us.  For if we are authentic to ourselves and to others, then we should find that we have influenced someone's life in a positive way that makes them better than they were before we met that person.  Leave a legacy worth following.

To conclude, I go back to today's scripture readings and, in particular, to a devotional by Fr. Thomas J. Connery.  The readings challenge us to "be holy" and to do for the least of our brothers and sisters.  In light of these readings, Fr. Connery reminds us that our drive in life should be to "be holy."  This does not mean to be overly pious or religious or anything like that.  Rather, I think, this means that we should aim to try to be like God.  How do we do this?  That's simple: love one another as we would love ourselves.  The beautiful part about this is that it is not specific to Christianity.  It is something that all people of all faiths from all parts of the world can subscribe to.  In doing this, I'm confident that we will become somebody, we will become holy, we will become authentic, and we will become awesome!

Thank you to all who have inspired me to be true to myself.

May we be ever-faithful, ever-mindful, and ever-joyful.

A Lenten Carnival

As many of you know, today is Ash Wednesday in the life of the Church.  What you may also know is that in many places across the globe yesterday was Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday.  Being from New Orleans, LA, I know Mardi Gras very well.  Mardi Gras in New Orleans is not just a one day event.  It is a season of festivities commonly referred to as Carnival Season.  While the history of Mardi Gras consists of both religious and secular ties to politics, satire, and protest, at its best I believe the season results in a vibrant environment of joy and celebration.  This celebration gives us the best that life has to offer: friends, family, food, art, music, dance, and other forms of self-expression.  What a testament to the human spirit!

I find it fitting that Carnival Season ends the day before the season of Lent begins. What better way is there to begin a period of retreat, reflection, reconciliation, renewal, etc. than after a heightened experience of excitement?  We are more likely to notice the significance of this shift from a time of grand celebration to a time of humble reflection when the two are seemingly quite different.  Mind you, though, Lent is still a time of joy.  This joy, however, should be one that focuses on our person growth in the midst of others working toward the same thing.  Lent is a time of solitary solidarity, if you will.  By this, I simply mean that if we can spend much of these next forty days uniting with others, then I believe we will find that individual growth we seek.  Of course, I recommend doing these communal things in addition to quite reflection, scripture devotion, and other individual means of spiritual formation.  The Catholic Church teaches that during Lent we should make more conscious efforts to give alms, to pray, and to fast.  See today's gospel reading (Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18) for Jesus' take on these things.  Regardless of your faith tradition, I challenge us to find time to give alms or aid to those in need, pray for one another, and fast from our selfishness.  If we can pursue these things with peace and reconciliation in our hearts then we just might find better versions of ourselves blossoming in time for the Easter Season.

This morning, as I reflected on what I would include in today's post, one of my favorite Lenten songs came to mind.  I invite you to listen to the song and reflect on the lyrics as you begin your season of solitary solidarity.  God bless.

40 Days by Matt Mahr
Lyrics

Family Solidarity at Mardi Gras!

May we be ever-faithful, ever-mindful, and ever-joyful.

Super Spirit

In light or dark (insert shameless blackout joke) of the Super Bowl this weekend, I've chosen to focus this post on where I've recognized the Spirit acting through our mainstream media this past week.  Starting with the Super Bowl, I'd first like to encourage you to go back and read my "Tailgating with the Spirit" series regarding football season.  One of the biggest questions that I have after a big event like the Super Bowl is whether or not we really care about football or if we ultimately care more about the opportunity come together and celebrate with one another?  I tend to believe the latter.  We are a communal people, so the Super Bowl is simply another excuse to unify diverse groups of people.  Events like this happen often enough to continue to remind us of our need to be in community with one another to share in each other's joy and excitement.  After all, the same thing happens at each Super Bowl: one team wins and one team loses. However, though we may never remember the outcomes of these games (unless your team happens to be playing, of course), I bet that we remember the people and the conversations that were present at the time making that game watching experience much more special.

Now, as I digest much of the commentary and analysis of the big game this weekend, I keep hearing a lot about the leaders and motivators in these games.  The biggest name that everyone is talking about is Ray Lewis from the Baltimore Ravens.  Through ESPN, Facebook, and Twitter, I seem to notice that for every person who was pulling for Ray Lewis there was at least one person pulling against him (vehemently, I might add) because of his criminal history from twelve years ago.  Here is my take.  As a Christian, I firmly believe in God's love, forgiveness, and mercy.  I also believe that God freely gives these things to every single human being.  God's love and forgiveness applies just as much to murderers and people who cheat on their taxes as it does for little kids telling fibs to get themselves out of trouble with their parents.  Whether or not a man like Ray Lewis committed an evil act some years ago,  his actions since have shown us that people are able to have deep conversions of heart.  The faith in God that he seemingly has developed over his career in the NFL has only helped motivate and encourage the other men with whom he has shared the football field.  When I hear him speak now, I hear a man who seems very focused on giving credit to God and his teammates before ever commending himself.  I do not think we can ignore this.  So, before we turn up our noses in disgust (dare I say, in judgement) of another person, let us remember that the Spirit moves where it will and is capable of leading and motivating even the least likely of people to do great things for the Kingdom of God.

This past week, the cyber world graced us with a spectacular example of such motivation and encouragement that comes from the Spirit.  This example is the pep talk by the inspiring boy known to us as Kid President.  If you have not seen this video or even if you have already, please watch it keeping in mind the simple message Kid President shares with us: We are all on the same team, so let us make the world awesome!  Enjoy.

Kid President's Pep Talk

May we be ever-faithful, ever-mindful, and ever-joyful.