For twenty years, Charleston, SC, has been on my travel wish list, and I finially visited this past week. The Festival of Houses and Gardens was in full swing, and I attended two events–a harbor history tour and a lunch/lecture on the gardens of Charleston.
On a walking tour the first day, I learned about the history of Charleston and archeticture of the houses and commercial buildings. It will take me a while to process all that information, but what immediately attracted my attention were the flowers in boxes and planters. Here are a few.
“You always have to be making new friends,” a friend said the other day. This friend was one of the first people I met when I moved to Michigan ten years ago; we become friends and have remained friends.
Her observation stems from some recent changes in her life—a life-long friend moved out of state, and another died—and the holes that those kinds of big changes create.
I relate to her recent experience because when I moved here, I needed to make new friends.
Making new friends requires an openness on both sides—as the new person, I need to put myself out there and be willing to try new things; and the people I am meeting need to be willing to create a space for me in their lives.
When I moved here, I tried to keep my expectations of others realistic because I knew everyone I was meeting already had full lives. I was the one who was looking for new friends, so I had to be willing to be flexible and adapt to the ways of new people. I had brought with me an understanding that it would take time to build new relationships and that no one owed me anything; I was willing to put in the time and effort necessary to create a new life.
Above all, I was grateful to and for every person who created a space for me, who reached out to me, who invited me and included me. I have been so fortunate over these past ten years to have been befriended by so many warm and welcoming people.
My friend’s comment the other day was in response to my telling her about a new friend I met on my trip last fall and how this new friend and I are planning a trip together.
One of the gifts of travel, especially on a tour, is meeting like-minded people. We share a love of travel, and shared interests are a good starting point for friendship.
New friends offer many gifts, including the invitation to look at myself through new eyes.
I remember one of the men on my tour last spring saying to me, “I don’t imagine that you are afraid of anything.”
“You don’t know me,” I replied, and I thought of some of the things I fear—starting with my fear of disappointing people and moving through my fears about being out of control and feeling vulnerable. This man, who did not know me well, saw my strength, but he did not see how my strong personality can be a mask for my insecurities.
His comment, though, made me more aware of the masks I wear and was an invitation to make myself vulnerable. I shared some of my story with him.
We often become comfortable with our current state of friendships and are rocked when something changes—a move or death or divorce. Being open to making new friends along the way can create a cushion.
My nephew and his wife began teaching their daughter basic sign language when she was just an infant, and the sign my great-niece uses most frequently is the sign for more.
At fifteen months, she signs for more at mealtimes (she has a good appetite), and she also signs for more when she is delighted by something. At the end of a song or book, she wants more. When we finish a dance, she wants more. When I make a silly face or strange sound, she copies me and then signs for more.
Whatever makes her smile or laugh, she wants more.
I think she is modeling for me what God wants for me, and that is to experience in abundance those things that delight me, that bring me joy, that show me the goodness of my life.
I recently visited a friend who is in his late eighties. As he talked about different periods of his life, what he seemed to cherish most were memories of people and experiences. He spoke lovingly of his mother’s sacrifices for her children after her husband died (when my friend was still young) and how extended family stepped in to help her.
He talked of how fortunate he was to go to Cooper Union and then to get into a good company that provided for his family. He spoke with deep gratitude of people along his path and memories from family trips and holiday celebrations.
Relationships enriched his life, and whether he was talking about people from eighty years ago or what his children and grandchildren are doing now, each person and memory brought joy to him. His gratitude shone through every memory, and he reminded me of the importance of relationships and the value of spending time with family and friends.
The struggles during the early years of building his career barely got mentioned in his life narrative, even though I know there were some lean years in the beginning of his career. Those struggles seem to have faded into the background and what he speaks of now are all those experiences that brought joy to his life.
Perhaps I came back from that visit with a heightened awareness of what enriches life, and so am more aware of great-niece’s signing for more. She wants more experiences that bring her joy, the joy that seems to settle in her belly and causes her to erupt in spontaneous movement, arms swinging and feed stomping. It is as though joy fills her to the point of overflowing, and then she gives into that joy and moves with abandon.
That, I think, is what God wants for each of us—to be so free that we can embody joy and let it pour out of us. I think my great-niece is modeling for me a way to live more spontaneously, more exuberantly.
What a great gift to the world it would be if each of us brought more joy to every encounter of every day.
Ten years ago this month, I started this blog; my dashboard says I have posted 668 times. At the beginning, I committed to posting once a week. A few years ago, my spiritual director suggested I try writing poetry, and I added a second weekly post. Recently, I have been sharing pictures of my garden and reflections from my travel.
I like that my blog has evolved and continues to evolve, that I can be free enough to let the Spirit lead me, because that is how it feels—like I am being led in what I write and share.
Before I published my first piece, I sent it to a friend who was a newspaper editor and asked for his advice. He said that people want to read what is real and raw. He encouraged me to hit “publish,” and I did. Those first few months, I asked for his approval before each posting, until finally he told me I didn’t need his approval and I should just publish.
Several times over the years, I have thought of stopping, because of other commitments in my life or because I was tired of the discipline of writing/posting each week, but every time I entertained those thoughts, someone would reach out to tell me how helpful my writing was. So, I continued.
Writing and sharing requires courage. I have shared many personal parts of my life—my grief when someone has died, my history of abuse, my prayer life, my spiritual journey, my loves (travel, gardening, reading, knitting, etc.); and each time I share something that feels “private” (or as my friend Ted would say, “too private”), I have felt freer.
My life goal is to have nothing to fear, nothing to prove and nothing to hide. This blog has moved the needle and helped me become more transparent. It is because I have shared so much here that I was able to become a Survivor Speaker at our local domestic abuse/sexual assault resource center.
I have overcome many challenges and obstacles in my life and have come through them all with a deep sense of gratitude. I feel so blessed, even by the adversity, because through adversity, I have come to know my own resilience.
One of the greatest gifts of blogging, and one I did not expect, is the connection with other bloggers. Before I began, it did not occur to me that I would get to know people from around the world who share their thoughts, photos, hobbies and passions. Yet I have a feel for so many of you. I know I don’t have the whole picture, in the same way you are only getting a slice of who I am, but I am grateful for what you share, for your willingness to put yourselves out there.
Writing this blog has helped me see strengths I did not know I possessed, and your comments have helped me persevere. Thank you for sharing this journey with me.
Our Christmas homily included the advice: Don’t be an innkeeper; be a Joseph.
The innkeeper in the Nativity story, the guy who said there was no room and turned Joseph and Mary out, was probably a realist—all his rooms were filled (Luke 2:7). Granted, he may have been inundated with people seeking shelter because of the census so he had no empty rooms, but the priest wondered if the innkeeper had considered all his options? Had he thought of giving up his bed so that a pregnant woman could rest comfortably?
We don’t know. Maybe another pregnant woman had arrived earlier. Maybe…. Well, we just don’t know. The story handed down to us is not a first-person account, so we can only guess at what really happened that night.
The more important thing to consider, though, are our own actions.
We don’t have to go far to find people in need, people facing difficulties, struggling with illness or life’s challenges.
How are we like the innkeeper, turning people away when we feel we are at our limit and they are asking us to make room for them?
Do we do things a certain way because we have always done them that way? Are we so focused on one course of action that we cannot see alternatives?
When life seems full, do we shut the door and say enough? Or do we make room for one more?
Compare that to Joseph, who had already made up his mind to divorce Mary, until he had a dream suggesting a different course of action. Then he pivots and does as the angel in the dream instructed (Matthew 1:19-24).
I wondered if the innkeeper might have had a dream that night after turning Joseph and Mary away, a dream when an angel told him to go find Joseph and Mary and offer them his bed. But upon waking from the dream, he only said, “I had the weirdest dream last night,” and went about his day as usual. Haven’t most of us done that?
We are all invited to change course from time to time, to reframe a situation, get a different perspective.
Can we be like Joseph and be willing to rethink our decisions, to make new decisions based on new information? Can we be guided by the whispers of the Spirit when we feel a nudge to reach out to someone, to offer assistance or comfort? Can we hear the voice of God in our dreams and gain insight into a new direction for our lives?
As I review my journals from this year and remember different events, I am aware of how often I am like the innkeeper, choosing to be comfortable rather than stretching to meet another’s need.
My friend Steve (who died ten years ago) used to start each year by choosing a word or phrase to guide him through the year, something that the Spirit had whispered to him.
More light seems to be the theme of this time of year. The winter solstice was the other day, so every day will now get longer; the four candles of the Advent wreath are lit; the Menorah is getting brighter every day; and tomorrow, we celebrate Christmas—more light.
Thinking about the light of this season makes me think of where I have experienced light throughout the past year.
The first thing that comes to mind is my sister and her two grandbabies. When these babies were born in 2021 (one in November and the other in December), my sister offered to mind them two days a week. Her children took her up on her offer. She asked me to be a back-up, and I happily agreed. Spending Mondays and Wednesdays with my sister and her two grandbabies has brought a great deal of light into my life. The babies are pure joy, and my sister’s generosity inspires me. Every time I see the babies, I see some new development, and they remind me that God is always doing something new—in them and in me.
Was there something new in your life this year that was a bright spot?
This year has been one of abundant travel, starting in January with a trip to Arizona to hike in Sedona and to visit family. Then in spring, I spent a month in Europe, and then I spent a second month in Europe this fall. In between those European trips, I visited friends in Pennsylvania, and a friend from Delaware visited me. Travel expands me and reminds me of the importance of taking risks in order to keep growing.
Did you have any adventures this year?
I also completed an Internship in Ignatian Spirituality this year, a program that began in 2020. The program was intensive and arduous, and there were times when I wanted to drop out, but I persisted, and I am glad I did. I learned a lot through all the readings and lectures, and now I have joined a peer supervision group for on-going support and to continue developing my listening skills and ability to accompany people on their spiritual journeys.
What is helping you to grow spiritually?
Recently, I have been noticing how often I use the word invitation, as in “I got invited to be the guest speaker for a nonprofit fundraiser,” and “I was invited to meet with a nonprofit consulting firm,” and “I got invited to be one of the dancers in a nonprofit’s version of DWTS.” I said yes to all three of these invitations, each of which was a surprise invitation, and each of which challenges me in some way. These invitations remind me that God is still shaping me and that I am still growing into the person I was meant to be, doing what I was meant to be doing. And each invitation reminds me that the best is yet to come.
“Piano, piano,” our tour guide Giacomo advised our group of ten as we navigated the cobblestone streets of medieval towns in Tuscany and Umbria. “Piano, piano,” he repeated as we climbed stone steps that have been worn down by centuries of use and had no handrails to steady us.
Piano, piano means slowly, slowly in Italian.
Good advice, I thought. Not just for traversing medieval towns in Italy, but for me, good advice for daily life, because I tend to move too fast, rushing as though I was always running late.
Travel makes me slow down, because I am aware of how dangerous rushing across cobblestones can be.
Traveling with a group makes me slow down because I sometimes need to wait for those who can’t move as quickly as I do.
It is good for me to slow down, and every time I had to stop and wait for someone to catch up, I felt invited to look up and take in the sights around me (walking on cobblestones requires lots of looking down). Those moments of waiting were invitations to notice what was in front of me, like little carvings in walls or unique shapes of doorknockers.
Slowly, slowly invites me to appreciate the here and now.
Travel also shakes things up. It is like a snow globe where I am tossed around a bit and when the snow settles, everything looks different. The people, places and food are unfamiliar, and my equilibrium is off. I join Dorothy in saying, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.
A man at church recently toured the Holy Land. Before he left, he told me he had been nervous about traveling to such a potentially dangerous place until he learned they were staying in a Westin Hotel and then he thought, “If I didn’t know any different, I could still be at home.”
“Then what is the point of going?” I asked.
When I travel, I want to be shaken up and to experience what is different. I want to know how it is for people who live in that place and to have my assumptions and stereotypes challenged. I want to be changed by my experiences, to learn something about another people and place—and about myself.
One of the features of touring with Overseas Adventure Travel (O.A.T.) is that we visit people in their homes. On this tour, our group was split up among three homes in Carrera (after a tour of the nearby marble quarry). My small group had lunch with a couple and one of their sons.
Later in the tour, we visited Spello and were entertained by an Umbrian folk music group in the home of one of the musicians.
Massimo Liberatori & La Società dei Musici
During my two weeks in Italy, slowly, slowly became my go-to gear, and I pledged to myself that when I got home, I would try harder to stay in slow gear, to remind myself every day (and even multiple times a day), piano, piano.
Our Overseas Adventure Travel Group Tour Leader, Giacomo, aka Captain America
Mother Teresa has been speaking to me recently. Not directly, of course, but through a daily reflection book I have been reading this year, Do Something Beautiful for God.
Sometimes, they are pithy sayings like the entry for October 19:
Life is an adventure; dare it.
I, too, believe that life is an adventure, and I am doing my best to dare it, by taking risks, traveling, saying yes to opportunities. I am doing things I love and enjoying life. I wonder, though, if that is what Mother Teresa meant. Her life seemed totally devoted to service, so when she says adventure, what does she mean?
Last month, I participated in two opportunities to serve meals at two churches in the city, and I was reminded of the importance of direct contact with people who live closer to the edge than I do. Most of the volunteer work I do now is organizational (boards and committees), so cooking and serving meals felt like an invitation to return to the kind of service I used to do. A different kind of adventure.
Other times, Mother Teresa’s words seem to be inviting me to a movement in prayer. The entry for October 14: Every moment of prayer, especially before our Lord in the tabernacle, is a sure, positive gain. The time we spend each day sitting with God is the most precious part of the whole day.
This one spoke to me on several levels. First, I don’t tend to spend time before our Lord in the tabernacle, perhaps because it was not part of my religious upbringing and because I have to go someplace to find a tabernacle. I pray in the morning at home, but I know that when I have prayed in chapel (on retreat mostly), I have found it peaceful. When I read this reflection, I wondered why I don’t go to chapel more often.
That led me to reflect on my time in prayer every morning and if it is the most precious part of the whole day. I know that when I am on retreat, spending a whole week in silence and focused on God 24/7, my prayer seems to be deeper and more precious. Perhaps the invitation is to be more attentive to God throughout the day—on retreat or not.
The entry for October 16: If you were to die today, what would others say about you? What was in you that was beautiful, that was Christlike, that helped others to pray better? Face yourself, with Jesus at our side, and do not be satisfied with just any answer. Go deep into the question. Examine your life.
When I left Pennsylvania nine years ago—after having lived there for twenty-eight years—friends had a going-away party for me and one after another, people said all kinds of wonderful things about me. My friend Ted said it was like being at my own wake, and I still smile when I recall that party. One thing that stood out to me was how many people thanked me for doing some small thing that I did not even remember doing—a kind word or some small favor that meant little to me but had a big impact on them.
That reminded me of Mother Teresa’s saying: Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.
Ever since I was eight years old, I knew that God had called me in some special way. I didn’t know how the “call” happened. I just knew that God had chosen me, and I could see that I was different from my brothers and friends in certain ways—mostly in my desire to spend time in church and to talk to God.
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I felt a closeness to Jesus, and I knew instinctively that he was with me. I thought of him as a brother who “got me,” who related to my vulnerability and my feelings of helplessness.
When he cried out from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” I heard an echo of my own cry. Like me, Jesus was an innocent victim. And even though I felt chosen by God and closely connected to God, I still went through my life experiences on my own.
Knowing that God was with me was a comfort, but I understood that God was not going to take away the difficulties of my life. God was not going to make my dad stop drinking or make my mom protect me. God was not going to change my “bad-touch” uncle or prevent my being abused.
Yes, God was with me, Jesus was with me, and I was also on my own. It was a mystery.
Why God had chosen me was a mystery, too. Why me? A poor girl from the east side of Detroit who had no special talents or skills.
At one point, I thought I could escape to a convent, but I have a lousy singing voice and I thought being able to sing was a requirement of being a nun. (I did not go to Catholic school, so I had no first-hand experience with nuns.) I was stuck living the life I had, playing the hand I had been dealt.
I envied Jesus because he had a clear sense of his mission, of why God had sent him. Me? I had no sense of my mission.
Finding the path I was meant to walk has been a life-long quest.
When I read St. Paul’s letters about our different gifts (Romans 12:6) I could hardly relate. What gifts did I have that could help build God’s kingdom? I wasn’t a teacher, a healer, a prophet or a preacher. What was my gift? Another mystery.
Now, here I am at seventy years old, looking back on the path I have walked. Over time, my gifts and talents revealed themselves through the events of everyday life. Over time, I have been able to let go of unrealistic expectations, the “shoulds” and “oughts,” and accepted what is.
I am now comfortable in my own skin and grateful for my life.
I recently completed an Internship in Ignatian Spirituality and hope to help others discern the path God is inviting them to walk, to help identify their gifts and to affirm that God can be found in all things.
At Mass last Sunday, we heard the story of the Prodigal Son with intro parables about the lost sheep and the lost coin. (Luke 15:1-32) These stories introduce us to at least nine (9) characters:
a shepherd whose one sheep has strayed
a woman who lost a coin
the friends and neighbors who rejoice when the sheep and coin are found
a man who has two sons
the older son
the younger son
the pig farmer who starved his workers
the father’s servants and
the older son’s friends
Nine different personalities inviting me to step into the stories and imagine myself in each role.
All week, I have engaged in imaginative prayer with the scenes in this Scripture, placing myself in each of the roles portrayed, letting the scene play out and looking at how I am like the person or how I am different.
For example, when am I put myself in the place of the shepherd, I wondered if I would be willing to leave what I have in search for something lost. It is a risk to leave the safety of the known, and I wondered if I would take the risk.
My opportunities to take risk don’t usually involve sheep, but as I let this image play out, I thought about the safety and security of my circle of friends, and I wondered if I am willing to take the risk of inviting someone into my circle of friends or even just to reach out to someone who seems to be on the outside. Do I tend to play it safe or am I willing to stretch beyond my comfort zone?
The woman who searches for something precious that has been lost is an easy one for me to imagine because I frequently lose things (mostly earrings, which is why I had an extra hole pierced in one ear so I can still wear the remaining earring). I tend to tear the house apart and retrace my steps looking for a lost earring. But what about other things? Do I persevere or give up? Do I persevere in prayer? In hope?
How am I like the forgiving father? The rebellious son? Or the dutiful son? When am I like the servant who has to prepare something for others to enjoy while I just look on? Or like the local pig farmer who cares more for his pigs than the people who work for hm? How do I react when a friend complains about unfair treatment from a parent?
Each of the people in these stories help me to see myself in relation to God and to others. Each invites me to imagine myself inside the Scripture passage and learn something about myself, others and God.
On my walk one day, I realized that each person represents a different character trait, and it reminded me of the words stenciled at my neighborhood school—incoming messages through different avenues.
Madeline Bialecki 