Prayer: Sustaining Our Passion

Every Sunday night, we tell our new group of volunteers about the cornerstones. “We pray a lot here at the Farm,” we say. And the list of prayer times really is…extended, I suppose you could say: When we wake up. Before breakfast. Before we leave for the worksite. When we arrive at the worksite. Before lunch. Before we leave the worksite. Before dinner. In the evenings. There are eight formal prayer times every single day.

But our cornerstone of prayer is about more than just saying a lot of words. We incorporate these prayer times into our schedule in order to remind us that our lives are to be a constant prayer. We are to find God in all things, to see God’s presence all around us and to make that recognition a prayer. We are to listen as well as talk, to create a relationship with Christ that sustains our service.

Most people come to Nazareth Farm in order to do service. The other cornerstones are either pleasant surprises or abstract distractions. But often, the service might be difficult, or even unfulfilling. The day is long, or cold, or hot. Perhaps we mess something up and have to start over, or we just don’t make as much progress as we had hoped. Or we have a great day, but it’s exhausting, leaving us sapped of energy.

Service cannot be sustained without prayer. That’s what gives us the motivation to go out every day, to overcome difficult conditions or rough days. As Mother Teresa says,
“The fruit of prayer is faith, The fruit of faith is love, The fruit of love is service, The fruit of service is peace.”

We are all called to be holy. It’s not just a vocation for the saints – all of us can aspire to live a sanctified life. This week, let us commit ourselves to prayer and the pursuit of holiness. To seeing God all around us. To talk with God. To listen to God. And to make all of our actions prayerful and loving.

-by Jessica Mayo

Community: Extending the Table

I was musing on what it would be like to meet every person on earth.

Imagine that you could meet one person per second until you had met all of the (roughly) 6.7 billion people on the planet. From the very first hello to the final goodbye, you would spend somewhere around 212 (and a half) years, which is, as it happens, a good deal longer than you will likely live. And yet as our economies and technologies globalize, we keep hearing buzz words like “global community” and “shrinking planet”. Global community? How can we identify with a community of billions of people, the majority of which we clearly will never meet?

These questions began swarming in my brain earlier today when I came across some of the several hundred photographs I took of last year’s lunar eclipse on February 20. This eclipse stands out for a couple reasons: first, I was so captivated by its beauty that I stood outside in zero degree weather for at least an hour and a half taking pictures, and when I finally went inside I realized that my camera lens had literally frozen over. And if you know me, you know that I had to be really interested to voluntarily remain in the cold for that long. Second, and more to the point, I specifically recall mentioning the event during that week’s shared prayer. Lunar eclipses so fascinate me because of those moments before and after totality when the edge of the earth is projected onto the moon’s surface. For a few minutes we glimpse a shadow of God’s vantage point. In the perfect stillness of our holler I could see the outline of our planet (albeit cloaked in penumbral darkness) and I could envision all the beauty that our world contains. For a few minutes I could look at our shadow on the moon and see our global community.

All these romanticized notions might merely remain a collection of warm fuzzies were it not for our firm grounding in the understanding of community. While community certainly speaks about all the people in our lives whom we know and with whom we interact—family, friends, teachers, co-workers—the true challenge of community is to think beyond our immediate surroundings. Some community-derived jargon we throw around at the Farm comes from the principles of Catholic Social Teaching. One of my favorite principles, but one that is difficult to grasp, is solidarity. I like to describe solidarity as prayerfully seeking to understand another’s trials through a commitment to a certain sacrifice or through an intentional action that spiritually connects us to that person. One of our most concrete examples of solidarity at the Farm is bucket showers, which scale back the amount of water we use to place us in solidarity with those who have limited access to clean, safe water. By living in solidarity, we begin to authentically investigate our global community. Who must live with limited access to safe water? What historical, geographical, economic, political, and environmental factors create this limited access? How is the community responding to this form of poverty, and what more needs to be accomplished? As a member of the global community, in what way can I respond, either through direct action or through actions of solidarity?

Of course, we cannot meet every person on earth. But we can begin to meet our global community through our intentional efforts to seek justice.

-by Adam Austin

(Our apologies for our tardiness this week... check back on Sunday for another update).

Simplicity Post-Christmas

When volunteers come to the Farm they are immediately immersed in a simpler culture and lifestyle, encouraged to put aside anything that may distract them from forming stronger relationships with God, themselves and those joining them on this immersion experience. Usually those distractions include things such as e-mail, iPods, music, cell phones, TV, and other technological advances. But they also expand to any expectation or stressor that may be hindering their ability to open up to what God has in store and grow.

As we officially close the Christmas season today with the Baptism of the Lord Jesus, we reflect upon the new life that Christmas brought us this year. It can be difficult to not think of all the physical gifts we may have received and lose sight of all the relationships that we formed and developed this season. It can be even more difficult to continue this aspect of simplicity when we are given so much, especially when those gifts are things we not only enjoy but things we need. (Most people say things like socks are a tacky and not so exciting gift, but I definitely asked for them this year because I really needed some nice wool socks to get through the cold winter - one example). However, it is still possible to life simply among all these gifts. In the spring time we often hear the phrase "spring cleaning," but sometimes I wonder if it is really necessary to wait until the spring. Having received so much this Christmas, why don't we reflect on those who may have so little, or who would much more appreciate those things that we may not need or use? I'd encourage you to reflect upon that question. Then take some time to look through all your belongings, your clothes especially. Lay them all out even and ask yourself which of the items just sit in your closet all year. Gather those items together that you may not often use or even need in the first place and donate them. Call a local jail or shelter, or even St. Vincent DePaul or Goodwill. Not only can this help out locally, but it also reaches out to those in need while also simplifying your own life.

We are frequently reminded that the most important part of Christmas is our relationships with our family and friends. However, it is too easy to only focus especially on that during the Christmas season. But Christmas is a time of birth, a time of new life - not of life and death. And so then we must extend the new life of Christmas beyond the Christmas season and into our daily lives all year long. Jesus begins that process by being baptized by John the Baptist and we can too by living simply.