Gifted Back

(We are grateful to have guest bloggers during our Lenten season who we will feature each week. Today, we are fortunate to have Theresa Tensuan-Eli  (Ardmore, PA) and Mira Tensuan-Eli (Chicago, IL) who are part of our virtual Spiritus community. Thank you both for this reflection!)

In reading today’s Gospel for today, Matthew 7:7-12  I was happy to find a familiar passage, indeed, what I think of as perhaps one of Jesus’ greatest hits:

Jesus said to his disciples: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.  Which one of you would hand his son a stone when he asked for a loaf of bread, or a snake when he asked for a fish? If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children,how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him.“

I’ve always read this text as an illustration of God’s divine capacity to meet our foundational needs; this time, I found myself dwelling on the passage, “which one of you would hand his son….a snake when he asked for a fish?” The line caught my attention because I have, in fact, “given” my own daughter a snake. As a six year old, she asked if she could have one as a pet, and had to wait a full decade before I grudgingly relented (it was COVID, she was a responsible teenager, we had a neighbor identified as a potential adoptive parent should this whole thing not work out, etc.). I started to think more about what the passage might suggest about the role we are to play as members of a beloved community—in attending to and addressing one another’s needs, acknowledging that as humans we carry with us our human biases, shortcomings, and seemingly inexhaustible capacity to make really questionable decisions.

In my own experience, I’ve often discovered that at precisely the times I think I am ministering to others, I discover that others are ministering to me. In my early twenties when I was a volunteer at the House of Grace Catholic Worker Free Clinic in the Kensington section of Philadelphia, a regular patient – who had spent weeks observing me systematically passing off the task of taking a blood pressure reading to another volunteer – took me aside, assured me that I could learn how to take an accurate reading, and let me practice on him for about 45 minutes. I left with a boost in my own confidence and a growing understanding of the beauty and complexity of interdependent communities.

More recently, I took a long flight west to visit a dear friend  in the end stages of a long struggle with esophageal cancer. In preparation I spent a lot of time in a fair-trade gift shop looking at shawls to make sure that I didn’t arrive empty handed, trying to find something soft and warm to give her comfort in the hospital.  When I actually made it to her bedside, I realized that the present I was so proud of was wildly impractical –  it would only get tangled in the clusters of cords and tubes attached to the equipment that was enabling Lauren to receive oxygen and get nourishment and was feeling that I could add this moment to my long list of epic fails.  

In that moment, Lauren offered me a radiant smile and asked for details of my day and news of my family. I realized that Lauren was giving me the extraordinary gift of being fully present to me even as each breath took its own toll.  I had interpreted the passage “seek, and you shall find” as directive to throw all my energy into relentless searching and activity, but that time with Lauren helped me understand how to be still, attentive, and present as a means of becoming more fully attuned to those gifts of grace that are showered upon us each day.

It is truly a mystery to me the ways in which others are able to discern and address needs that I haven’t been able to articulate to myself, but in those moments, if I’m paying attention, I am able to get a glimpse of the divine in and through these acts of simple kindness and care.   In sharing these thoughts with my daughter, Mira (baptized in the Spiritus Christi community by Reverend Mary Ramerman), the one who waited patiently for 10 years to introduce Topaz, an 11 inch corn snake, to the household, she offered me the following reflection: 

“You sought to do good, and became vulnerable in that way, opening the door to divinity. You were gifted back, unexpectedly, and in a far greater way than you could ever imagine. When you move and act in kindness, when you ask, you will receive, because you asked with love, and why would the Lord bring you anything else? How simple it all is. How simple it is for us to do well by each other, and give to each other. When we open ourselves up in this way to God, to be vulnerable and ask for a happy gift (bravely! for how else can we believe we deserve it?), so too will God bring us wonder and joy.”