It is Sunday afternoon, and I feel myself cycling back to the beginning of this Bolivian journey, surrounded by the loving kindness of God; maybe separated from many of the people and places I remember fondly, but not alone, not apart from them; and filled with divine light. May the heavenly colors shine through for others to see. How will it go from here, after nearly one hundred days on this Latin American journey? Will I be wiser than before, than yesterday, or today, for that matter?
Like many of you, I turn to books when I seek wisdom … and diversions. Currently, I am finishing a book by the late American biblical scholar Raymond E. Brown, The Critical Meaning of the Bible. Brother Lake sent three books with Brother Scott for us to enjoy when we need to return to the comforting, familiar space of English thought-forms. Brother Scott has put them in my custody while he finishes his own reading list. The first is a novel by Anthony Doerr titled All the Light We Cannot See. Are any of you bibliophiles familiar with this title? It’s a Pulitzer Prize winner, and that’s all I know from perusing the cover. The second is written by our dear late Capuchin brother, Fr. Michael Crosby. It’s titled Spirituality of the Beatitudes: Matthew’s Challenge for First World Christians. I read this book six years ago when I was in novitiate in Santa Ynez, Calif. I was going to say that you could get my impression of it by going back to my 2013 blog entries. Alas, I read the book in February-March 2013, while on a two-month hiatus from the blog! Well, I shall re-read it and give you a proper review this time around. Maybe the second impression will be more revealing than the first would have been.
But it’s the third title that I will read first. It’s by the spiritual writer Henri Nouwen. It’s his renowned book ¡Gracias! A Latin American Journal, first published in 1983. It’s about his six-month journey in Bolivia and Peru. For a long time I have known about this volume by Nouwen, and now may be just the right time to gain from it. Having been to some of the places he has been and experienced some of what he has experienced, I will have a built-in empathy for the narrator. Having gone before me, Nouwen will surely provide a perspective that I am now more than kindly disposed to receive. I am glad and grateful to let him accompany me on my way through the next twelve weeks until I am returned safely to the United States. Where he went, I will go; his God is my God.
And what does this God show us? What words of wisdom and light does this God “speak” to us? It all goes back to Jesus’ tender words at his last supper with his disciples, his friends: “I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35). This is all I need to know, isn’t it? This is all I have to do to be the person I am to be.
I am looking now at the prayer cards on my desk. One of them is a prayer for the canonization of our Capuchin brother, Blessed Solanus Casey. I close with these words, taken from the beginning of that prayer, as a way of rededicating myself to my Capuchin vocation and to the journey ahead of me.
O God, I adore you. I give myself to you.
May I be the person you want me to be,
and may your will be done in my life today.
“Blessed be God in all His designs” (Blessed Solanus Casey).
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