A Reflection for Stirring the Fire

Today I had the privilege of offering the reflection at the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet’s Stirring the Fire retreat. I was asked to speak for 5-8 minutes about how I live the CSJ mission.

My Story

My name is Eric Celeste and I am a Friend of St. Joseph. Someone asked me last week whether Friends make any vow or pledge. We do not. We simply gather to pray, reflect, and support each other in living the CSJ charism of unifying love. We embrace the CSJ mission of moving always toward the profound love of God and love of neighbor without distinction.

One way I embrace the mission is simply thinking about it almost every day. One practice I have is to listen to the voice of God. You may think I am being abstract when I say this, but I am not. I have a condition called tinnitus, a constant ringing in my ears. I have decided that this ringing is the voice of God, it is constantly present, extremely annoying at times, and utterly impenetrable. I cannot understand God, yet the ring of God’s voice accompanies me every moment.

The CSJ mission has given me a way to understand what this voice is saying. Without distinction, I can look to my neighbor with love, the same profound love with which I hold God, and listen to what my neighbor is saying. Theirs is the voice of God, theirs is the presence of God. When my neice asks impossible questions about Gaza, I hear this voice. When I meet a homeless woman weeping for her lost dog, I hear this voice. When our beloved circle of Bread & Roses Friends undo the knots of our lives together, I hear this voice.

I hear this voice now, in this circle with you today. You, the CSJ Community, are my neighbor. Occasionally, being with you can be as annoying as the tinnitus in my ear. But you have the charming quality of being much more comprehensible. Not to mention easier to hug!

So oddly enough, the CSJ mission leads me right to this circle. Standing here with you today I am moving toward the profound love of God and love of neighbor without distinction.

I have also been thinking about how I use the word “love”. I am pretty stingy with it, actually. I use it to describe my feelings for family, to sign notes to girlfriends and now my partner Mary. But with my friends, with most of you, I’ll choose a safer salutation, maybe “blessings” or “peace”.

Yet it appears not only in the CSJ mission, but also even more prominently in the CSJ charism of “unifying love.”

Let me play you a clip I ran across a few weeks ago. This is Ian McKellen, an actor some of you may have seen play the wise old wizard Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings.

If you ever arrive in Manchester, if you are lucky enough to be able to afford the train fare, you come down the steps at Piccadilly, and if you’re lucky enough to be able to afford a taxi, you get in the back of one, and the taxi driver, usually a man, but not always says, ‘where you going to luv?’ Oh, and I feel I’m home. Where grown men call strangers love. I think if we all did that it would be a rather better place, wouldn’t it?

And when people have got problems with gender, and pronouns, and so on, love covers everything really. Just call everyone love.

That’s why I chose love.

That made me think. He is a lot less shy with love than I am!

So another way I plan to bring the CSJ mission and charism into my life this year is to make my theme for the year “love.” I want to use the word more freely and see how it may shift my view a bit, how it may discomfort me, how it may help me to understand “unifying love.”

I’d like to wrap up by sharing a poem with you. Really, this is a song by a local songwriter named Ellis Delaney. I’d be happy to play the whole song for you some time, but for now I will just read it, because this song has helped me meditate on part of the CSJ mission that I often overlook: “moving always toward.” The mission asks us to change, to move. Ellis’ song is called “How would it be?”

How would it be if everything that you thought you knew
Was turned upside down, opposite from your point of view?
How would you feel if the ground was really the sky
And all of this time you’ve been walking
When you could have been flying?

If you run a thousand miles a minute, you can expect
To wear out a few pairs of shoes.
If you forget how to love and take it for granted,
You can expect to wear out people close to you.

What if all the birds were flying just to show us
And all the trees were really holding the sky up?
Everything that you do matters, somehow.
What if heaven and hell was right now?

How would it be if you really created your life,
Stories you told, the good and bad, that they come alive.
And how would it change if your words were like nails and wood?
You build your house, but you forget that it’s just a house,
You can rebuild it.

What if all the birds were flying just to show us,
And all the trees were really holding the sky up?
Everything that you do matters in the end.
What if all of our mistakes are forgiven?

What if love is a lot of listening,
A little bit of time not pretending?
We are caught up in a world of daydreams.
What if loving what you have is everything?

What if all the birds were flying just to show us,
And all the trees were really holding the sky up,
And everything that you do matters so much?

How would you change your life?

This is the essence of the CSJ charism and mission in my life: love is a lot of listening, not pretending, everything I do matters so much, how will I move forward, how will I change my life?

Notes

There is a recording of this reflection on YouTube.

The Ian McKellen quote came from a YouTube video. There is a version of the video with just the quote I used and another with more context.

The Ellis Delany song “How would it be” can be found on most streaming services. But it, too, can also be found on YouTube.