May We Be as Free as Simeon and Anna

Ring Around the Rosie, by Edward Henry Potthast

By Suzanne M. Lewis

Step into any Catholic church, early on a weekday morning, and you will observe a ragtag contingent of volunteers reporting for duty. Many of these, with gray heads and bent backs, will shuffle or limp, often with the help of a cane. Their presence is easy to overlook in the Sunday crowd, who arrive to fulfill an obligation; but at daily Mass we can clearly see the faces of the free men and women in our midst. And most of those faces are wrinkled.

If God were to come to earth and mix his life into ours, according to a schedule, at precise addresses in every city and town across America, could you imagine any appointment more important for you to keep? Could you imagine wanting anything more than to show up each day for this stupendous, recurring miracle?

* * *

When my Grandma was in her eighties, one of her daughters noticed dust bunnies lurking in the corners of her house. In a shaming tone, my aunt said, "Mom, I remember when you used to get down on your hands and knees to scrub the baseboards with a toothbrush! Now look at what's become of your home. How could you let it get like this?" Grandma replied, "Did it ever occur to you that I was out of my mind when I did that?" Then she broke into gales of laughter at the very thought of her past lunacy.

* * *

As I grow older, I'm struck by the elderly people who play a part in the stories surrounding Jesus's birth and earliest life: Elizabeth and Zechariah, Gaspard (the grizzled magus), and then Simeon and Anna. A long established tradition in the Church also imagines St. Joseph as an old man.

These Gospel figures remind us of Abraham and Sarah, who followed God's challenge to "count the stars," while each† laughed in delighted wonder at the astonishment of an "impossible" child.

Simeon and Anna bear a gift for the rest of us. When given a choice between the busyness and demands of ordinary life, they each chose instead, day in and day out, to keep their appointment with wonder. We can follow their example. This is freedom.

* * *

One morning, as our motley band filed out after daily Mass, some small children noticed that it had rained while we were inside. My friend Wayne, who was 93, stopped dead in his tracks as the kids ran past him to jump in the puddles. Wayne stood and stared, his mouth open with surprise and his eyes full of joy as the happy children stomped and splashed water with abandon. He stayed like that until the game was over and the kids had been bundled away to their car. Then he turned to me, laughed, and said, "God must feel as delighted when he looks at us as I feel when I see those children play in the puddles! He loves us and enjoys us so much!"

* * *

February 2, 2021 marks the five year anniversary of 501(c)3 nonprofit status for Revolution of Tenderness. On this day, we renew our pledge to take up God's challenge to count the stars, and we are dead earnest in our commitment to laugh at the wonder of new life and light that Christ constantly pours out and leaves puddled everywhere around us.

Most of all, we promise never to let dust bunnies disturb our sanity.

† Please see: Genesis 17:17: "Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed..." and also Genesis 21:6: “Then Sarah said, 'God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me.'"

You Won’t Miss the Burgers

Annunciation (detail), by Matthias Stom

by Suzanne M. Lewis

In 2017, I noticed a sore on my tongue.

By Sunday, October 1, 2017 (the feast of St Thérèse, my Confirmation namesake and special friend), my oral pain was intense as I had the joyful task of thanking each of our speakers and volunteers for their rich contributions and gifts of self throughout that beautiful long weekend at Pittsburgh’s St. Paul Cathedral, where we’d just held our 6th annual Festival of Friendship. I didn’t suspect, then, that two weeks later, on October 15 (Teresa of Avila’s feast), I would call my husband from outside an oncologist’s office to say the three-word sentence that no one wants to speak or hear: “I have cancer.”

In the waiting room before one of my chemo infusions, I met a woman wearing a wide apron, in which she carried her own IV bag that provided a slow drip and allowed her to live at home while receiving treatment. She had arrived for her periodic changing of the bag, and began to explain to me how the medicine she was receiving had changed the flavors of food: “A hamburger just isn’t a hamburger anymore, you know? It tastes funny, like. And forget nachos! I can’t enjoy the taste of my favorite meals. I tell you, if the cancer comes back after this, I’m going to refuse treatment. I’d rather die than live like this.”

This past year, on October 1st, it felt particularly gratifying to kick off the month-long online 2020 Festival of Friendship by offering a panel discussion honoring St. Thérèse and St. Teresa, as well as Edith Stein and Mother Teresa, four “boss” saints who have had such an enormous impact on the world. Only two weeks earlier, my cancer doctors at Cleveland Clinic had pronounced that marvelous and golden word: remission. I knew these four women were at least partly responsible for my healing. 

But I’ve also wondered about that woman, whose life meant so little to her that she would trade it for the taste of a Big Mac. Meanwhile, throughout this year, our society’s many failures to respond generously to the exigencies of the pandemic have uncovered a different sort of cancer: despite our stated belief in the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” there are numerous signs that the particular human lives of our fellow citizens do not matter to many of us. This year’s Festival of Friendship addressed this problem from multiple angles, including a focus on the inestimable value of elderly persons; ethical concerns arising from the pandemic; restorative justice in Brazil; and music produced by Black female composers, poets, and vocal artists. These events each revealed a common root cause for the evident disinterest in the lives and well-being of our fellow citizens: a fundamental apathy toward one’s own, unique, God-given life.

At some point, in the experience of each and every authentically religious person, a luminous question arises. This question carries with it all the wonder, all the longing, and all the curious hope expressed in Mary’s query to the angel, “How can this be?” (Lk 1:34). The same astonishment reverberates in Elizabeth’s amazed exclamation, “Who am I that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Lk 1:43).  

Who am I that You are mindful of me? (cf. Ps 8:4). If you have never asked God some version of this question, then you’ve also never allowed Christ’s own question ­– Are not all the hairs of your head counted? (cf. Lk 12: 6-7) – to sink down into the roots of your being and startle you out of your petty worldliness. You may engage in all sorts of religious practices, but you haven’t yet embarked on the adventure of a truly religious life. Only after you’ve made a habit of viewing yourself with the esteem God has for you, can you turn your gaze to others and recognize that the Lord cherishes each human life as fiercely and as wholly and as astonishingly as he loves you. Without this intuition, you cannot fulfill Christ’s commandment to love one another as he has loved you.

When you – one lone person – begin to ask this question (“Who am I that You are mindful of me?”), your life becomes something new, something exceptional. Christ refers to this as an “abundant life” (cf. Jn 10:10) or as “the hundredfold here below” (cf. Mt 19:29). With this hundredfold, you develop an endurance you can’t explain and discover a patience you could not produce through force of will. Your creativity grows as you see an increase in your desire to address the predicaments and wounds of others.  Soon, another person, unbidden, joins with you. One by one, others see and are magnetically attracted to the two of you. Together you will each roll up your sleeves and take the small, possible steps indicated by the boundless esteem for life you share. You will “start by doing what's necessary, then do what's possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible” (St. Francis of Assisi). Believe me, you will not miss the hamburgers when this happens. 

Welcome to your one wild and precious life.