staying in love (march 2017 NL)

MissionYear asks it team members to write out a newsletter each month as a way of raising support and connecting with the communities people come from. It creates an opportunity to share stories and reflect on what one is experiencing and learning. Below is the text from my March 2017 newsletter.

       “Nothing is more practical than
finding God, than
falling in Love
in a quite absolute, final way.
What you are in love with,
what seizes your imagination, will affect everything
It will decide
what will get you out of bed in the morning,
what you do with your evenings,
how you spend your weekends,
what you read, whom you know,
what breaks your heart,
and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.
Fall in Love, stay in Love,
and it will decide everything.”

–Father Pedro Arrupe

I was first introduced to this prayer last year when my city director read it the Philly team members during our weekly time together. I can’t recall the specific intention, only the powerful way that the words struck me and then remained with me long after that first hearing. I remember observing how closely it aligned with this program we were doing, this life it had opened up for us to live. At that point in the year, there were elements that had become more challenging than exciting, and we needed something more significant than the allure of newness to engage with our rigorously structured weeks.

I needed love to get me out of bed for those dreadfully early 4:50 am mornings — love for my housemates waiting to share Quiet Hour with me, love for the opportunity to serve students who deserved a quality education, love for the God who kept showing up to meet me at the start of each day. I needed love to guide the way I spent my evenings after long days, choosing to have intentional conversations with my housemates or risking the knock on a neighbor’s door over the choice to hole up in my room with my phone or a book. I needed love to shape my weekends, allowing me to be fully present for fun family nights on Friday evenings and snow shoveling or community gardening on Saturday afternoons. Love is what ensured I kept showing up to the table, a figure of speech often referenced for our long, heavy team meetings in the living room on Friday afternoons after grocery shopping, but also literally for meal after meal after meal shared with neighbors, filled with laughter and hospitality and connection and care. It was love for the people I was meeting and their realities I was being exposed to that determined the the books that I read, both those chosen by MissionYear to read and discuss with my team and those I sought out myself to keep me company on the long bus rides to and from work, offering me perspectives and voices different than the ones I’d been hearing from for years before. Love was opening doors and crossing boundaries to introduce me to the people I was beginning to not just know of but know, and they began to know me back, offering me a home away from the only one I’d ever known. It was love for my neighbors and students and neighborhood that broke my heart for the hard world they have to grow up in so unlike God’s promised shalom, the systemic injustices they faced because of the unchecked sins of others, the stigmas that blinded them from their identities as bearers of the image of God. And it was love that awakened joy and gratitude at the resilience, hope, faith, generosity, and interconnected care I witnessed all the time in spite of all of that, the way that the Spirit of redemption and resurrection was so relentlessly on the move in resistance to the threat of death around it.

Every week or two I’d google something like “Father Arrupe prayer” or “nothing more practical than…” in order to find the full text, and after each read through it seemed to affirm me: “Yes, you are finding God. You are falling in Love.” After this went from being a possibility to reality –one that anchored me here for the coming year to serve in my current position as an alum leader– I stopped seeking out the prayer only to come across it again a few weeks ago (this time shared by Ra on Facebook). And this time around, what moved me was the line I hadn’t paid much attention to last year — not the exhortation to “Fall in Love” but the one just after: “stay in Love.” And in the thick of this second year here, which has been so much about remaining, continuing, and staying, those were the exact words I needed to hear. The sparkling excitement of newness has been gone for some time and any glittering inklings about life here being sexy or spectacular have long been put to rest, but what remains is an enduring love, more a whisper now than a shout. May I continue to have ears to hear its quieter voice and allow it continue to decide everything for me, my housemates, my students, my neighbors, and you.

Thanks for reading!
-Luke