Tent pole
on discerning who you (really) are
Hi friend. I’m so glad you’re here.
As we transition together from the Raised Catholic podcast community to the My Little Epiphanies Substack community, here are some of the elements you can expect from each week’s newsletter moving forward: a reflection, some photographs that I hope will serve as mini-meditations, some recommended resources, a prayer, and a replay of a Raised Catholic podcast episode or some earlier writing of mine. I hope it’s all helpful, and I’m so grateful that you’re here. Let me know in the comments what you’d like to see more or less of as we move forward, and please tell me a bit about yourself, too. I’d love to hear from you.
Tent pole
When my kids were little, we’d take daily walks and bike rides through the college campus near our neighborhood, and for one exciting and shining week late each spring, we’d walk or ride through an enormous white tent. It was a tent the college rented for graduation, the same school from which my husband and I had graduated years before, but in the setup period, there’d be stacks of chairs not yet set out, the scaffolding of a stage, and day by day you’d see the space become the graduation venue it was to be. But for a few days each spring, that space was a shell and a sort of surreal play space for the neighborhood kids.
My kids loved riding their bikes through that tent on the quad’s paved walkways. They noticed the stark difference in temperature in the shady confines of the tent as compared to the sun outside. They zipped around corners and sometimes took time to sit or lay in the grass and look up. I was always fascinated by the physics and engineering of it, this massive thing that looked permanent and solid, but which in actuality was heavy canvas held aloft only temporarily by steel poles dug deep into the ground – one massive pole in the center and more on the periphery.
As we move into the aftermath of both the recent American election and the Synod on Synodality, it is clearer to me more now than ever the responsibility we have as individual citizens and as people of faith, because no matter which way we voted or what we hoped for in the Synod, we are living in a chaotic time that seems to get crazier by the day, and there is no person or movement who’s coming to “save” us. Because we’re all connected, whatever happens in this next chapter for the Church and the country will happen to us all1.
It's just true that no one person or party is going to sweep in and make this country a better place for everyone. No one organization or gathering is going to miraculously bring clarity and accountability to our Church. At the end of the day, what was always true still is. Who we are as individuals matters, and what we believe matters, and what we do matters, and if we’re in a habit of blindly following a political figure, a media personality, or a cleric as the source of our own opinion or action, I believe that’s something that each of us will need to identify and rectify, and quick.
No matter who we voted for or any of our leanings, I believe it’s time to dig deep and with the help of the Holy Spirit, ask ourselves some big questions:
What do I believe?
On what principle or value do I stand?
What legacy do I want to leave behind when I’m gone?
What is my tent’s center pole?2
We people of faith might claim our center pole as Jesus, but if that’s our first response, I’d urge us – don’t stop there. Since many of us who profess Jesus have something very different in mind when we use His name, let’s ask ourselves, what about Jesus compels us? What words would we use to describe Him? Can we point to an encounter we’ve had with Him? Something He said or did in the Gospels that we love and need to hold on to?
With the scourge of Christian nationalism roaring in our country, it’s no longer sufficient to claim Jesus in word but not in deed. No longer enough to sit pleasantly in a church or faith organization without thinking critically as to its mission and its action, words and deeds, and how it treats our brothers and sisters on the margins. When it comes to the groups we associate with and belong to, we should be asking ourselves in this time about each one: what is its center tent pole? And does it align with mine?
In the setup of the graduation tent each year, we’d notice the huge machines they’d bring in to get those tent poles deep and secure in the ground. The deeper they dug in, the safer for everyone who would gather under the tent’s protective enclosure. And the same is true for we who profess faith and the organizations we support. When it comes to understanding just where and on what we stand, if we seek to live our lives in the name of Jesus and become a place of flourishing and shade for all of His people, it’s time to dig deep.
Raised Catholic rewind
Who Are You? - Raised Catholic #2 - transcript with link to episode
You Are Seen - Raised Catholic #159 - transcript with link to episode
Where Are You? - Raised Catholic #95 - transcript with link to episode
What I’m listening to/watching/recommending/thinking about:
Quote by C.S. Lewis:
“You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn't you then first discover how much you really trusted it?”
Video: an example of someone who knows their center tent pole and lives from it: Fr. Greg Boyle of Homeboy Industries
Song: If Ye Love Me, by Thomas Tallis, performed by The Cambridge Singers
Video song performance: Kingdom of God, by Jon Guerra
Practice: reading a psalm a day, out loud
Children’s book: The Three Questions (Based on a story by Leo Tolstoy), by Jon Muth
Prayer
Oh God who knows and loves us more than we can know, help us to lean in and listen to the whisper of your Holy Spirit for your clear direction in this time. For us and our dear ones, we pray in the name of Jesus and wrapped in the mantle of Our Mother Mary, amen.
give or take a few billionaires ;)
I thought this was a good exercise to undertake. Here’s mine if it’s helpful: I’m a Daughter of a living God who made me, every person, and this world with inherent dignity, intention and purpose. I claim Jesus Christ as my savior, and I rely on His teachings, mercy, and example along with the move of the Holy Spirit to help steer my course as I walk through my life. I use my gifts the best I can, imperfect and wobbly, known and held by God who deeply loves me and each one of my brothers and sisters more than I can imagine.