Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

A spiritual director told me once that it’s a good idea to “gather the graces” from one experience before transitioning to another. 

And so, since I am moving in a week, I wrote some words on index cards -- the major themes and defining moments of the last five years, the movements of the Holy Spirit in my heart, the fruits grown in this season -- and I laid them on my bedroom floor. 

Words like Community. Prayer. Fear. Anxiety. Trust. Peace. Joy. 

And I saw in this smattering something I never did before, in all the time I spent feeling like I didn’t have my life together. I saw that becoming isn’t something that just happens to you all at once, when you attain the degree or find the right job or move to a new state. I saw that becoming isn’t an accomplishment you can wear; it doesn’t arrive in a StitchFix box on your doorstep.

Becoming, I realized, is not the destination; it’s the method of traveling. You don’t get from Point A to Point B without a whole lot of becoming in between, the kind that takes time and prayer and openness to what the Spirit is doing in your life, even if -- especially if -- you don’t understand it. 

This is all very good for me to remember, because, like so many others of my generation, I can’t help but feel that I should be Somewhere Else by now -- married, maybe, with a promotion or two under my belt in my chosen career. But Somewhere Else is a traveling circus that is very difficult to pin down. It thrives in imaginary expectations and has no basis in lived reality. I shame myself so readily for not having discovered my vocation at the end of college, afraid I wasted all those in-between years, without ever stopping to consider that maybe those dreams needed time to mature -- and so did I.

While a friend of mine reflected on her own life recently, she said to me, “If someone had told me the plan five years ago, I wouldn’t have been ready for it.” And I have been clinging to that lately when I need a reminder that my life is right on time. 

If someone had told me to move to Washington, D.C. and pursue my doctorate in English five years ago, I wouldn’t have been ready for it. I hadn’t yet become the kind of person who desired that. It took every experience I had in Colorado -- and all the ones that came before -- to rouse and shape these longings, and to help me excavate the yearnings I didn’t realize were buried in first grade phonics, in the eighth grade academic decathlon, in my Intro to Shakespeare midterm, in my post-college publishing ambitions.  

Becoming is slow work. It’s conversation and side-splitting laughter. It’s chai tea lattes and favorite cookie recipes. It’s your first job. It’s a master’s degree program. It’s renting your first solo apartment and drinking wine out of paper cups with your best friend when you haven’t unpacked your glasses yet. It’s writing papers and revising them. It’s going to therapy. It's early-morning prayer and afternoons in the Adoration chapel. It’s singing your favorite song at the top of your lungs, and breaking it down in dance class. It’s fruitful new friendships and awkward first dates. It’s your first year teaching elementary school. It’s desperation and jubilation, exhaustion and exhilaration. 

But mostly, becoming is simply this: showing up for your life, one day at a time. You can’t do that and remain unchanged. 

You cannot show up to your life, one day at a time, and remain unchanged. 

When I moved to Colorado, I thought it was just a place to be on the way to something else. I was sure I’d be here two weeks -- a month, max -- before going wherever it was I felt I really needed to be. And then I thought I would become someone. 

But looking at all those words I spread out on the floor, I think I finally “got it,” that these five years were a season of becoming. That they were necessary. That this wasn’t wasted time, waiting for something else to start. That, to paraphrase a favorite quote by Fr. Mike Schmitz: Who I became while I was waiting, was every bit as important as what I was waiting for. 

Hannah Brencher calls this consistent and mostly unremarkable unraveling, “slow magic.” I think I might just call it perspective.

All this to say, if you feel like nothing is happening for you in your life right now, I promise you this: something is happening. Something is happening.

Show up. Stay the course. Press on. And gather all those graces. Gather them often. Scoop them up and press them to your heart. 

One day you will see it, if you don’t already: that you’re not the same person today that you were then. That you were becoming, too. You still are.

And that’s the best part.

Thank You for the beginning.

Photo by Vanessa Bucceri on Unsplash

Lord, thank You for the beginning.

Thank You for the darkness ahead, yet to be illumined by the wild ways You're going to blaze through it, with a fire that torches everything I think I am, for the sake of refining, for the slow, deep work of continued becoming.

Thank You for the million unknowns, splintering in all directions from the flimsy rod of certainty. I am afraid to touch them, but You know better. You know that Your rod and staff promise a different kind of certainty, promise comfort in the valley. And You know that the uncertainties are invitations that offer the Holy Spirit space to breathe in and through and around me.

Thank You for the fiat, for the yes that's said in the fog. I could choose to fear that fog, or I could see in it the unmistakeable breath of the Spirit, overshadowing me as it did a girl from Nazareth 2000 years ago, who was given nothing in the face of her unknown except the promise that You would be with her.

And that was enough for her.

In her uncertainty, she praised Him. She gave thanks. She sang for joy. "My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my savior... The Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name" (Lk 1:46-47, 49).

My good friend Kat, paraphrasing Fr. Michael Gaitley, who was probably inspired by Our Lady's example, once explained to me that gratitude begets trust. She told me about an exercise she did in which she gave thanks for everything she couldn't understand. One thing after another, her heart poured forth a litany of thanksgiving, turning reasons to fear into subversive joy, into daring confidence, into bold trust in a faithful God who keeps His promises and shows up for us, every time -- even if we can't see how just yet.

And so, I thank You for the beginning. I thank You because I know that someday, my yes, this tiny, brave step forward, will make miraculous sense in the context of the glorious unfolding before me.

Retrospect assures me that I can trust You, that You're always at work connecting dots, making a bigger picture, asking only that I move my pencil from one to the next in humble submission to Your gentle hand. You've done this before. You know how it will end. You have never failed me yet.

And so, I breathe deep.

And I thank You for the beginning.

The Real Magic of "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child": Takeaways From the Play

I remember hearing once -- in a monologue given during the acting class I took in my first year of college -- that there are only two stories: a man goes on a journey, or a stranger comes to town.

But the more I consume quality entertainment -- which I define as that which leads us to what's true, good, and beautiful -- the more I am convinced that there is really only one story: the longing to be seen, known, and loved -- and the desires for relationship or achievement that drive that longing.


A Father's Love

I saw Harry Potter and the Cursed Child: Parts I and II in San Francisco last weekend, and, without spoiling anything for those who wish to see the play, I will say that it certainly lived up to the hype. To use a pun that is both one hundred percent intended and undoubtedly trite in this context -- the effects, the music, the costuming, the sheer wonder of realizing Harry Potter's world on the stage were all just so... magical. 

And yet, as impressive as all of those elements might have been, I believe that what makes the play so resonant is, first, that it points to something true: the longing to be in relationship, to be seen, known, and loved.

This sensational piece of theatre is really just about a father and a son who are yearning to be in relationship with one another.

Albus Potter, feeling inferior to and resentful of his father's fame, decides to steal the only remaining Time Turner and endeavor, along with his best friend Scorpius Malfoy, to save Cedric Diggory from dying in the Triwizard Tournament during Harry's fourth year at school. Ostensibly presented by Albus as a desire to do good for its own sake, to right an unnecessary wrong, to "spare the spare," it's also a bid for acclaim and renown of Albus's own.

And though he never claims he wants to do any of that to earn his father's approval (if anything, Albus seems to want to spite his father by correcting what he considers Harry's negligence) the show is filled with missed connections between the two characters.

Before Albus leaves for his fourth year, Harry gives him the blanket he was wrapped in when he was dropped on the Dursleys' doorstep, telling his son (on page 40 of the official script book) that he thinks it "could be good for the two of us..." On the same page, the stage directions reveal that he "looks at his son, desperate to reach out."

Though he gave James his Invisibility Cloak, and Lily a pair of wings -- gifts intended to delight and amuse -- his bequest to Albus is rooted in a desire for relationship, which Albus is quick to spurn: "What did you think would happen? We'd hug. I'd tell you I always loved you. What? What?" (Rowling et al. 41). The scene reaches a heartbreaking climax when Albus and Harry mutually wish they weren't related to each other -- and the rupture that ensues is one they each spend the rest of the play trying to repair. Albus gets in trouble. Harry chases after him.

Until finally, they reach an understanding and "melt together" on the last page of the script. The search comes to a satisfying end.


The Will of God

I've also been thinking a great deal over this last week about the moral of this story; what is the lesson we are meant to walk away with at the end? What else is the play about?

Answering these questions has led me to one of the play's final scenes (spoilers ahead):

Albus's and Scorpius's time-traveling exploits eventually lead them and their families to Godric's Hollow on the night Voldemort kills Harry's parents. As they stand at the edge of the stage, staring straight ahead, waiting and listening for the horror that is soon to unfold before them, Harry laments not being able to stop it. Albus points out that Harry technically is able to stop it, but won't choose to do so. And it's Draco who finally says, "That's heroic" (295).

I've been turning this over in my head all week, wondering what it is about Harry's choice to refrain from acting that makes it a heroic decision, when failing to do good in the face of evil is what we Catholics would call a sin of omission. When I recite the Confiteor at Mass, don't I apologize for "what I have done, and for what I have failed to do"? From that perspective, it seems that if any event were worth intervening in, this would be the one.

We could begin to justify Harry’s inaction by saying, "everything happens for a reason" and things that have already been done happened that way because they were supposed to. If Harry had decided to stop Voldemort from killing his parents, Voldemort would never have tried to kill baby Harry that night, which both reduced Voldemort to a shadow of his former self and gave Harry what he needed to destroy the dark wizard for good someday. But I think that Christian theology leads us to a still more satisfying conclusion here, too.

It wasn't just that "everything happened for a reason," as if James's and Lily's deaths were arbitrary events. Rather, Lily, in particular, had to die that night in Godric's Hollow, and she had to die out of love, out of sacrifice, while she was protecting Harry, in order to leave an indelible mark on his soul that would protect him in the years to come -- in order to give him the tools he needed to conquer the darkness. If events hadn't unfolded exactly as they did in Godric's Hollow, as Harry realizes just pages before, "[Voldemort would] have only got more powerful -- the darkness would have got darker" (279).

Lily's sacrifice mirrors Christ's ultimate sacrifice on the Cross, to save us from our sins and give us what we need to overcome the darkness in our own lives. If Christ hadn't died for us, the darkness would have continued to spread. Instead, the greatest evil -- the Crucifixion of God Himself -- led to a far, far greater good: our salvation. He had to die so we could be free.

I don't think the lesson in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is that "everything happens for a reason" so much as it is that "all things work for good for those who love God" (Rom 8:28), and that suffering always leads to a greater good when it is surrendered -- as it is when Harry realizes that he could act, but won't do it.

***

Special effects and costuming and staging and music aside, there's real magic in this show, and it ushers us toward what's true, good, and beautiful. I'm still blown away. Go see it if you can!!