A Reflection for Monday of the Twenty-first Week in Unusual Time
“Proclaim God’s marvelous deeds to all of the nations.” (Psalm 96)
“Here, shuffle these.”
Certainly one of my friends passed me a thick stack of cards. We were on vacation they usually were wanting to share with me something that that they had been obsessing over. There have been 4 of us, and I used to be the just one who didn’t live in Los Angeles and who hadn’t explored alternative modes of spirituality in any meaningful way.
The cards were longer than an odd deck of playing cards they usually felt significantly heavier. One side was uniform, an intricate black and white design, with the within each card illustrated with a novel drawing of a special animal. There should have been dozens, though the precise details escape me.
I shuffled the cards after which followed a series of directions. I sorted them into piles, selected some at random after which the moment of truth arrived. I chosen one card and handed it back to my friend.
“Ohhh, otter,” she said. “Very interesting.”
She then consulted an accompanying booklet, found the page with the otter on it and browse the outline to me. The otter’s energy is silly and childlike, which, she informed me, meant that my mood that day was also silly and childlike.
I raised an eyebrow. I’m not known to be silly or childlike.
“Well,” one other friend said, “you were making lots of jokes earlier?”
I should have made one other skeptical look, because everyone piled on.
“No, these are spot on.”
“Your mood changes day-to-day, and the cards can assist make sense of it.”
“I’m telling you, they work!”
“Perhaps tomorrow, I’ll be a scorpion, or an eagle,” I teased, gently ridiculing their Southern California-infused spiritual outlooks.
While Pope Francis has warned against proselytizing, Christians are nonetheless called to share the fantastic thing about our faith with others. Or, put one other way, we must always be proclaiming God’s marvelous deeds.
The conversation moved on from animal spirit cards to crystals and astrology. Because I’m a faith reporter, and a Catholic, they asked me my thoughts about all things spiritual.
I can’t say I offered any particularly meaningful contributions to the conversation. I could have easily talked about trends within the church or ecclesial politics, but I type of clam up when people ask about my very own spirituality.
Which is why this verse from today’s psalm stuck out to me: “Proclaim God’s marvelous deeds to all of the nations.”
While Pope Francis has warned against proselytizing, Christians are nonetheless called to share the fantastic thing about our faith with others. Or, put one other way, we must always be proclaiming God’s marvelous deeds. So it form of bugged me that my friends had no hesitation talking about why they loved horoscopes and even animal spirit cards, but I wasn’t in a position to speak articulately about my very own faith. Perhaps it’s because we’re not given the chance to debate deeply personal problems with faith too often. Or possibly it’s just that my kind of spirituality is more private. But that won’t cut it, no less than not if I take the psalms seriously.
I don’t put much stock within the animal spirit cards, even when it was fun reading the descriptions and attempting to persuade ourselves that, just possibly, there was something to them. But I did admire the power of my friends to speak candidly about all things spiritual. They weren’t exactly proclaiming God’s marvelous deeds. But they were offering me a lesson about not shying away from discussing spirituality, even when it makes me a tad self-conscious.
