What Is The Message?

Waking up on October 10, on October 12 and again yesterday, October 14, to a covering of snow on the ground is not my idea of Fall in Iowa! If this were December or January, it would be beautiful with the light, fluffy, white stuff gently drifting down and decorating the trees in the yard. But this is just too early!

I think of my Uncle Norbert, with his wonderful sense of humor, saying: "There must be somebody new at the weather controls up there. You know, we had that funeral last week of ___________, and I'll be they're the one in charge now!" It surely seems like things are "out of control" lately as we note the weather happenings all around the world.

Whether you subscribe to the global warming position or not, it is difficult not to see the extremely unusual weather occurrences and begin to wonder what is happening. From a faith perspective, I believe that God is trying to get our attention. From God's viewpoint, it is not nature that is "out of control". It is we humans who seem to have "lost it". Once God has our attention, if we are ready to listen, there will be Good News awaiting us.

Does God have your ear yet?

Touched By The Holy

From 1974 to 1996, I was blessed with opportunities to travel in foreign countries. In Africa, India and the Philippines, I interacted with native priests, gave them retreats, lived in their homes and moved about in their parishes. Although I was handicapped by a lack of knowledge of their native languages, yet we were able to communicate in English and so we could establish some bonds.

This inability to converse in a native tongue led me to Bolivia where I studied Spanish and spent nearly a year in the Bolivian culture. What a great difference in understanding a people when you can "speak their language"!

Now these many years later, in reflecting on those experiences, several things have become very clear to me. Once a person has been graced by being picked up by the hair and transported out of their comfort zone, nothing is ever the same. When that transport includes living in another culture, life is changed forever because one has been Touched by the Holy (like Isaiah 6). Only the Holy is God's People experienced in that other culture.

Or to put it in another Biblical image, like Moses before the Burning Bush, one learns to "take off your shoes, for the ground on which you walk is holy ground" (Exodus 3:5). When we learn to approach another person, another people, another culture as we approach the Holy, then our lives are changed, we are transformed, we are blessed.

Fortunately, it is not necessary to leave this country to experience the Holy in this manner. This grace is available each time we meet another person, whether on the street, in the grocery store or in our own family. God is present, desiring to lift us out of our comfort zone and move us into the Divine Presence in every personal encounter we have. Only our own prejudices and fixed mindsets can prevent us from recognizing the Holy One standing before us.

Are you ready to be transported out of your comfort zone so you can be touched by Holy?