“Well, at least we can agree on Truth, Freedom, and Justice, yes?”

There was a chorus of nods. Everyone wanted those. They didn’t cost anything.

Terry Pratchett, Night Watch

“Slave is an Ephebian word. In Om we have no word for slave,” said Vorbis.

“So I understand,” said the Tyrant. “I imagine that fish have no word for water.”

Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

I have never used my account for political purposes, I tried to avoid it. I know that my account is followed by over 100,000 people. And I know that most of we have your own life, we live in different parts of the world and the war in Ukraine does not matter much to you. However, I would like to write that such a fate may befall each of us. Each of us may face war, loss of loved ones, suffering. The world is on the brink of the worst crisis since World War II. Putin sick ambitions will not stop only in Ukraine. He wants to take over and enslave the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The world must unite and stop Putin, it must stop this aggression. The Ukrainian people have the right to freedom and sovereignty. I know my words won’t change anything, but I’d like to express my anger with what is happening. I would like to help defenseless people in Ukraine. I would like help even with these insignificant words. I am asking you for your support for Ukraine. I am please for the slightest gesture, even in the form of simple words, that we are together with Ukraine!

Stop the war! Stop Putin!

Putin is a psychopath! The world cannot be indifferent to all of this. Stop the war! We are together with Ukraine!

12:30 A.M. thoughts

I live a great fortunate life and am so appriciative of all the opportunity and experiences I have and have had, traveling, concerts, exciting high school, furthering education, friends and family who love and support me and keep me grounded and sane, I am so lucky. Things get hard, not everything is perfect and exciting all the time. I feel sad, scarred, hopeless, but over all I’m incredibly lucky. Life has handed me a stack of cards to build myself from, experiences that gave me perspective, shown a light on the view of others, forced me to see out of my little hometown box. My parents gave/give me so much to be thankful for, they came from not so perfect of backgrounds and worked to give my siblings and I the best life they could. I have seen beautiful places, I’ve seen the sad and run down. Shown to care for the rich and loved down to the poor and unknown. Taught to see the world around me through an objective view, the world owes you nothing, you however owe the world more than you can fathom. I have been blessed with knowledge, experience, compassion, the ability to do the things i enjoy. For all of this I am thankful.

I was talking to a buddy of mine the other day and he told me, “The best decision I made in my life was to pick up a guitar and learn how to play it.” Just within the 3 months that I have been playing, I can completely see where he is coming from. I love playing so much that I look forward to practicing every day.  When I’m bored, instead of wasting time like I used to, I pick up the guitar and strum away.  It’s a new release for me, something to do to free my mind, but I enjoy it at the same time. It makes me look at music differently and respect it so much more than I already did. I can’t wait until I get good enough to be able to learn songs by ear. I’ve already learned Saving Amy by Brantley Gilbert, most of Sweet Home Alabama and I’ve come up with a few things of my own.

Confession: I only began thinking of my goals for 2014 a couple of days ago. I’m not a big New Year’s Resolution person, but I do like to take stock of the past year and think of concrete steps I can take to become a more loving, and therefore more truly beautiful, woman. I call them New Year’s Intentions, because what I’m really doing is asking the Lord for the grace to become more and more the woman he created me to be.

This past year, the Lord has brought me to places I never could have imagined in terms of trusting and loving Him: he freed me from my shopping addiction, (nothing short of a miracle), gave me the grace to become more financially responsible and less selfish with my blessings, and gave me the gift of being truly happy about my 30th birthday…and that’s just for starters! I only want to continue to grow in love and freedom and generosity this year, and thanks to a conversation with a friend (thanks, Meg!) this past Saturday and reading the short little book The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness by Timothy Keller (thanks, Rachie!) on Monday, I know now what my two primary intentions are for 2014:

1. Live the grace.

By “live the grace,” I mean live in response to the grace God gives you each moment to do what he is asking you to do in that moment. Whenever I get caught up in thinking about the future–you know, how much longer I will live in my current house or how long I will live in DC or how many more years I will be single, or a myriad of other pointless worries–I get anxious and/or depressed because Ican’t see the future! The only thing that is actually given to me, and the only place where I can encounter Christ is in the present.

It may sound trite, but it is so very true. When I was 25, I remember crying the the Lord in prayer that I couldn’t imaginemaking it until 30 (happily) without getting married. I have to laugh when I think back to that time, because of course I couldn’t imagine a reality that I was not actually living! The grace I was given at that time was the grace to be a 25-year-old daughter, sister, friend, and teacher. And here I am, five years later, doing what I once thought impossible: being 30 years old, single, and happy! The fact is that you don’t get the grace to be happy at 30 when you’re freaking out at 25; you don’t get the grace to be successful post-college until after you graduate; you don’t get the grace to bind your life to another’s till death do you part until you get married to him; you don’t get the grace to be a mom until you have your first child; you don’t get the grace to get up in front of 100+ teenagers and share your knowledge with them until you become a teacher…you get the point. Living the grace simply means saying “yes” to Christ right here and now and trusting Him with the rest, whatever the “rest” may be.

Easier said than done, right?

That’s why I call this an intention, not a resolution. No matter how hard I try, I will NEVER be able to live completely in the present every moment of every day, because 1) I’m choleric, 2) I’m anxiety-prone, 3) I’mhuman. Paradoxically, I need, we all need, grace to live the grace given to me each day. And the only way to receive the grace to live the grace is to pray for it. I highly recommend memorizing Matthew 6:26-34 and reciting it to yourself each time you are tempted to live in the future or the past; I’ve been doing so for about a month now and cannot tell you how much it has helped me not to get ahead of or behind the Holy Spirit:

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat [or drink], or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds in the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you more important than they? Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your life-span? Why are you anxious about clothes? Learn from the way the wild flowers grow. They do not work or spin. But I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was clothed like one of them. If God so clothes the grass of the field, which grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, will he not much more provide for you, O you of little faith? So do not worry and say, ‘What are we to eat?’ or ‘What are we to drink?’ or ‘What are we to wear?’ All these things the pagans seek. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.Butseek first the kingdom (of God) and his righteousness,and all these things will be given you besides. Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day is its own evil.

Listen to Jesus. Live the grace. Seek first the kingdom. Everything else is gravy.

2. Forget myself.

In his chapter on pride in Mere Christianity, CS Lewis has this to say about the truly humble person:

“Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call ‘humble’ nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.”

We all know people like this. When you’re with them, it’s as though you are the only person in the world because they are so focused on knowing youand appreciating your presence in that moment. Encountering a person like this, being gazed upon with sincere interest and appreciation, is an incarnate experience of Christ’s love.

This is the kind of person I want to be. I want to think of myself less, refer to myself less, be less concerned with what others (or even I) think of me, and simply LOVE each person I encounter with Christ’s love. In the rare moments when I’ve been truly self-forgetful (paradoxically my 30th birthday party, pictured above, was one of those moments), I experienced unspeakable joy–a joy that comes only when you realize that life isn’t about you. And that’s a good thing.

Again: Easier said than done.

Remember, this is an intention, not a resolution. The only One who can give me the grace to love as Christ loves is Christ himself. But each of us can cooperate with the grace he desires to give us to develop habits of self-forgetfulness. Practically speaking, one of the ways I personally could work on forgetting myself is to ask more questions of others when we’re in conversation. I often get so excited to share whatever it is I want to share with someone that I forget to ask about them. Not good.

The second practical change I want to make is the way that I pray: instead of beginning with my needs, I’m going to try to first bring the needs of others to Christ. This is not because the order of my prayers matters to God (he has time for them all and can answer them all, regardless of the order), but because since the vast majority of my prayers include the words “I” and “me”, my prayers sometimes contribute to my self-centeredness.

Yikes.

Of course, it is essential to bring ALL of our personal needs before the Lord, but I have a feeling that if I pray for others first, I will be more likely to think of others first and consider the needs of others first and love others more fully. That’s the way prayer works (to paraphrase CS Lewis): it doesn’t change God. Through prayer, God changes us.

So, there you have it. Two New Year’s intentions that will no doubt be my intentions for the rest of my life. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the above, any suggestions you have for “living the grace” or growing in self-forgetfulness, or any intentions that you personally have for the upcoming year, so that I can join you in prayer! Please share in the comments, or feel free to email me! 

Blessings,

Christina Grace

St. Mary Magdalene, El Greco

Yesterday was the feast of St. Mary Magdalene, one of my all-time favorite human beings. I rediscovered this beautiful excerpt from an Easter homily of Pope Benedict’s and had to share it, if only because it dovetails so nicely with yesterday’s post. If you haven’t encountered Christ in a concrete way in your life, ask for that grace! It is only in the encounter with Him that we can truly begin to trust in His love. St. Mary Magdalene, teach us the love of Christ! 

Every Christian relieves the experience of Mary Magdalene.  It involves an encounter which changes our lives: the encounter with a unique man who lets us experience all God’s goodness and truth, who frees us from evil not in a superficial and fleeting way, but sets us free radically, heals us completely and restores our dignity. This is why Mary Magdalene calls Jesus “my hope”: he was the one who allowed her to be reborn, who gave her a new future, a life of goodness and freedom from evil. “Christ my hope” means that all my yearnings for goodness find in him a real possibility of fulfillment: with him I can hope for a life that is good, full, and eternal, for God himself has drawn near to us, even sharing our humanity.  

But Mary Magdalene, like the other disciples, was to see Jesus rejected by the leaders of the people, arrested, scourged, condemned to death and crucified.  It must have been unbearable to see Goodness in person subjected to human malice, truth derided by falsehood, mercy abused by vengeance.  With Jesus’ death, the hope of all those who had put their trust in him seemed doomed. But that faith never completely failed: especially in the heart of the Virgin Mary, Jesus’ Mother, its flame burned even in the dark of night.  In this world, hope cannot avoid confronting the harshness of evil. It is not thwarted by the wall of death alone, but even more by the barbs of envy and pride, falsehood and violence.  Jesus passed through this mortal mesh in order to open a path to the kingdom of life.  For a moment Jesus seemed vanquished: darkness had invaded the land, the silence of God was complete, hope a seemingly empty word.  

     And lo, on the dawn of the day after the Sabbath, the tomb is found empty.  Jesus then shows himself to Mary Magdalene, to the other women, to his disciples.  Faith is born anew, more alive and strong than ever, now invincible since it is based on a decisive experience…

     If Jesus is risen, then–and only then–has something truly new happened, something that changes the state of humanity and the world.  Then he, Jesus, is someone in whom we can put absolute trust; we can put our trust not only in his message but in Jesus himself, for the Risen One does not belong to the past, but is present today, alive.  

–Pope Benedict XVI