“My spiritual life has never come in neat little packages. No, the packages usually come somewhat damaged, despite the handle-with-care warning labels. And the contents are often not what I expected, maybe a chipped, algae green colored ceramic frog instead of that colorful tapestry of the Madonna and child I had ordered. Or some other sort of cosmic mishap that forces me to think, as cliché as it sounds, “outside the box.” Thus, the need to make connections. It takes some work to figure out why I’ve received the frog with the yellow underbelly instead of that intricately woven Blessed Mother and child. There is some spiritual lesson in this awkward amphibian that I’m meant to discover!
But to do so I need to see things in a different way.
This book will help you discover this new way of seeing. It’s not meant to instruct you how to see the way that I see. You have your own unique way of making spiritual connections and it is my hope that something, perhaps many things in this book will put you in touch with that. Therefore, what you will not find here is a step-by-step formula for spiritual success. That’s not to say my book has no structure. It’s just that instead of steps you’ll find that the book is organized around one key recognition: Whether we like it or not, each of us has a past, present and future. And that, as you might have guessed, they’re connected.
Steps don’t work for me because, if anything, my spiritual life has progressed in missteps, and not without stepping on a few toes—unfortunately, not just my own—along the way. Indeed, if I told you my life story, I expect you would say, ‘Boy, that was random,’ or, if you were less kind, you might cringe and say, ‘Boy, that was messy.’ But, perhaps you can relate to life being messy. And, perhaps like me, you are convinced (or want to be) that there is some meaning to all that messiness, some reason why I keep running into frogs instead of the Mother of God . . .”
On Sunday evening, I attended a Theology on Tap talk at Old St. Pat's. Fr. Ed Foley, a Capuchin priest and professor at CTU gave a great talk called Which Jesus Table? Starting Points Make a Difference. In it, he invited us to look at the Eucharist from the perspective of Jesus' table ministry rather than simply by beginning with the Last Supper. In that light, the Last Supper, and the Eucharistic liturgy that we celebrate today, are a continuation of Jesus' building up of community by eating and drinking with all sorts of people.
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