One of my favorite podcasts is Faith to Go, put together by some Episcopal priests in the Diocese of San Diego. Each week they look at the gospel reading for the week and share their interpretations of the text. But before they do that, one of them always reports on where they saw God in the previous week. By seeing God I don't mean literally, but rather, when you have an experience that you feel particularly blessed by, and when you feel the experience is an expression of God's grace and bounty, that is what I think is meant by "seeing God." It kind of makes you feel like the smiling angel above.
Most weeks, I am not paying enough attention to recognize God when I see him/her. But thinking back over the past month, I can remember two such occasions. Both were meals shared with a friend after many months apart. These friends I number among those whose company I most enjoy, and, because of the pandemic, I have been unable to get together with them. Things have gotten better in New York, so at least I was able to sit at the same table with both of them this July.
First I had lunch al fresco with Brother Ray, a 92-year-old Maryknoll Brother who in the past few years I have become very close to. Before the pandemic, we would meet for lunch every two or three months, but the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers (F&B) were particularly hard hit by the virus, and their building has remained shut to visitors and other non-staff people. But now that both Ray and I have been vaccinated, and the F&B have relaxed some restrictions on residents, we were able to get together. I scurried around to the back of their building, and Ray and I secured an outdoor table to share a meal. Ray is in excellent shape, physically, mentally and spiritually. His life was marked by a number of struggles, and he received no theological training (brothers were seen as servants to the priests, so the training a priest would receive was considered unnecessary), but now he is one of the most spiritually advanced people I know. I learn so much from him and about him whenever we together, and I am glad to say that he tells me that he feels happier now than he has ever felt before. I can't begin to express how much it means to me to spend time with such a thoughtful and loving person. I hope we have many more lunches in our future.
My second encounter with God was a dinner I was able to share with my friend Jean, one of my dearest and most valued friends. Jean and her late husband Joe played a large part in my Spiritual Autobiography (see the immediately previous post), but since she no longer works at Maryknoll, we have only rarely been able to get together in person. With the arrival of the pandemic, the opportunities shut down entirely. Jean is a chaplain at Columbia Presbyterian hospital, so with the impact of the virus and the needs of her family, she has been pushed to exhaustion with no free time. Yet there has been some easing, and it has been so long, we managed to squeeze in a couple of hours for a dinner and time to check up with each other. Materially, the meal was not particularly noteworthy, a salad and a frozen pizza, but being able to spend this time together was so rare and so rewarding, I'm sure God was at the table with us.
Any time I am able to spend with people I admire and love is a gift from God. I hope you are able to connect with those you love. Where have you seen God lately? I would love to hear about it.
May God bless you, and may you bless God!
