Prayer and Love

Just a day ago I was cancelling all sorts of pleasant outings so I could get two rush jobs in... now I have an entire free morning to do whatever it is I might want. Like eat and make up things to write about.

While I was home for Easter I didn't want to pray alone so my Mom and I prayed the Rosary every night (which I haven't done in a long time) and I realized, yet again and of course, why the Rosary is such a good prayer. It takes me out of the egocentricism that so much of my own personal prayer brings about. During the Rosary I can pray through my problems and fears in light of the life of Jesus and Mary, which helps me pull back and listen to what the Lord wants to tell me. The Rosary is a really imaginative prayer, so instead of letting my imagination run wild the way it does when I just wing it, it orders and directs my imagination in a more fruitful way. For instance, today is the Feast of the Annunciation when Mary receives the beautiful news from the Angel that she is to bear the son of God. That happens to be one of the mysteries you meditate on in The Rosary. Last week when I prayed and repeated the Hail Mary, I imagined seeing and feeling what Mary must have been feeling and the weight of what she was being asked, and then I imagined myself being called by God, and so I had to face the fears that came along with that, but not before seeing Mary's strength which gave me strength, so it made the whole thing a lot easier.

As in an prayer, sometimes it is visibly fruitful and sometimes it is not, but it has been awhile since I felt such peace after prayer, and I am thankful for that.

~

I also found a lovely passage about what it means to Love by John Paul II, enjoy!

What does it mean to love? One of you asks me, in your judgement, what does it mean for us young people to love?" I wanted to address these questions together with others, more complex, in which I have found your unease with exaggerated hedonism, widespread pornography, a permissive mentality, which fatally lead to "forgetting the highest and most indispensable values." So then, I agree with you: to love authentically as Christians today often means going against the grain, being straightforward people who call evil evil and good good, and courageously decide against the common practice of equating love with sex, validity with success, authenticity with appearance. To love as Christians is this miracle: to center ourselves on God through the person of Christ, and give ourselves to others in an attitude of openness, of welcome, of assistance. Within this context, vocations to marriage, as to consecrated life, will be vocations of love. By loving seriously, you will acquire the understanding and culture of love, correctness in seeing the demands and concreteness of self-donation. I confess to you in simplicity that I feel  real disturbance over the future of the world, when I see young generations incapable of real love, or who reduce their self-donation to exchange of gratification between equals, incapable of seeing sexuality as a call, an invitation to a higher and more universal form of love.

In My Apricot Room

For the past few months I have been putting together a book dummy to send to publishers. If you know me personally you know this, because I talk of little else, since it's what I've been doing day in and day out. I've been scrambling words and pictures together mostly in my little apricot room, with my fluffy cat pawing at my legs or jumping on my lap to "help" me get the job done. When I decided to go on this rather risky enterprise, putting all other forms of job hunting to rest, I tried to fend off all of the anxious feelings welling up inside me; so many things could go wrong. I could end up feeling completely isolated, lonely, and creating something that I would be bored with by the second week.

For the past few years I've had a two major stories rolling around in my head, one about the early life about John Paul II, the other a rewrite of a Russian fairytale with fantastic characters flitting in and out of an ordinary girl's life. I knew that the fairytale had more public appeal, and might pay more than the former. Friends and family both pushed me to write the story of John Paul II, but I had a little more conversing with God before I went for it. I decided that if I was about to launch a career of personal work writing a story about a saint I dearly love would prepare me in a real way to live and draw for God, and be at his complete mercy when it came to trying to publish my first book. And whether it gets published remains to be seen, but more than the joy of putting this all together I have received double the gifts than I thought I would by going with my gut and writing the story of a little Polish boy who would one day be a great Pontiff. For one, as I read books about his life I couldn't help but feel completely overwhelmed and constantly inspired, so much so that sometimes I had to stop between pages and pray. Then when I began to write, my entire family wanted to pitch in and help and edit, and even friends of mine took up my amateur phrases and helped me make something I think is lovely, but even lovelier for all the love that went into it.  Family and friends, continue to be present and attentive to my next crazy email when I can't decide between a purple color scheme or a slightly more blue, but still quite purple one.

Sometimes I get anxious, and I have to turn back to prayer and ask Blessed Pope John Paul if he likes it and God my Father to bless it. This time has really been a time of love and even though I will be disappointed if it never gets published, I don't think one moment was ill spent on this project. And thanks be to Heaven, I'm still so far from bored, it's ridiculous. I'm just about to draw out of the cover, the finishing touch to the pitch, and then it will be a whole other game as I knock on publishers doors. This time has made me realize how truly blessed I am in this little apricot room with my fluffy cat and my crucifix hanging above my bed.

Ignitum Today: The Flowers of Surrender

New post at Ignitum Today

As some of you know St. Therese’s Feast day is today. St. Therese, known as the Little Flower was known for a simple life lived with great love and her promise to “spend heaven doing good on earth” and “let fall a shower of roses”. I’ve always had an interesting relationship with her and her spirituality. And I know why, because her spirituality involves being overlooked and humble and misunderstood and taking it for the love of God. My pride has yet to get to a place where I want to be like that. And I know I have to be the saint I’m called to be, not St. Therese but there was something that made me want to take her up again, at this time as a prayer partner and intercessor and I didn’t even know exactly why, but she did and here is the story so far...

Sky High

I am greatly blessed.

I just resumed my study of the life of Pope John Paul II for a little book I’m writing and illustrating. God has given me a really sweet reason to immerse myself in Him through someone who loved Him dearly. In only a few hours of spending my time reading his biography and discourses I feel infected by that love and close to Jesus. Few things are more moving to me that the love of God winning over tragedy.

I have a book called “A Year with John Paul II” and there are meditations for each day taken from the Pope’s writings and Prayers. Today, on a whim I opened it up to August 10 and this section cut me straight through!

“The consumer society in which we live and the fear of an uncertain future drive one to seek immediate gratification for oneself. One becomes, introverted, falling back on one’s small personal happiness, on one’s emotions, in a circle where aroused feeling is incessantly on the look out for new sensations, which quickly fade away, where there is no reference but to self and to one’s pleasures. This is no way to live. This is not the world you want: it would be a world without hope, one that empties man’s life of meaning.” - Discourse to the Youth of Fribourg, Switzerland, June 13, 1983

I tried to find the rest of the discourse online, but couldn’t so I’m no the hunt for the rest. There is a danger, at least for me at the moment, when I am focused on job hunting and working on my personal art to become oh so self-centered! To become more excited about “the next new thing” than God and the people he calls me to serve. Compliments, fame, fads, movies, etc come quick, strike high and then they are gone. But God’s love and the deep connection with neighbor is so much deeper and lasting I pray that even when I am working on my own I am drawn out of myself to something greater. That my heart might expand. And that is what I hope for you too! Whatever your creature comforts may be that they will not become crutches in your life but sweet nectar to add to your daily romance with our Lord and his people!

Disney Dreams and St. Joseph

So I survived my third portfolio review with Disney recruiters. I just came back from a mad dash to new york to show my portfolio... again.  I had a lot of people praying for me, including St. Joseph who is the saint in heaven I recruited to pray for me during unemployment. Anytime there is something big in my life that I don't know how to handle or even get my mind around what it is I really want to ask for my dad tells me to pick a saint in heaven who can pray more perfectly for my situation to help me out. When I didn't know if I should live in Providence or away from it I asked Mother Theresa to be praying for me, and low and behold Providence has been an insanely fruitful time and my apartment and surroundings have been a blessing I couldn't imagine then. When I told my Dad how I'd picked her he said it was a great idea since she'd looked for so long for a home for the poor herself. I didn't know that and I came to realize sometimes your prayer partners pick you because they are compassionate to your situation. I'm always in awe when I realize that Jesus loves me and that ALL of heaven is rooting me on. I still don't understand to the letter how this whole communion of saints things works, all I know is that I've been a humble witness to it's reality, being daily blessed by the saints in heaven and on earth. The family of God is a great, great comfort...

Read the Rest at Ignitum Today Here!

Ignitum Today: Ballet Diaries

"And then skipping along home I began to connect this whole experience to my spiritual life. Not because I’m just that holy, but because I often hear how diligence in both your prayer and exercise bring great results. Sometimes people forget to say that you build up to it and that it might take a long time before you see any changes in your life so you give up early and settle for a mediocre relationship with God and being out of shape."

Read about my time on the barre @ Ignitum Today

Lost and Found

God, The Devil and My Inferiority Complex Part 2

Most sorrow, particularly the despairing type makes it’s home in my heart when I forget who I am and what I was born to be. However, it is in this pit of muck and grim and self-pity that I often rediscover some very precious truths and discover some new joys as well.

The disquieting of my heart begins when I befriend an idol with which I’ve now decided I will measure the value of my life. Today it might be my art, tomorrow my popularity, but it doesn’t matter which one I pick the result is the same: despair. Inevitably I fail at one of my pursuits or am outshone or I realize I'm just normal. I mindlessly go through a list of things I could measure my worth against, grasping at air. You would think I’d snap out of it or at least not fall into the same snare twice, but I’m simple and the weaknesses I fight are usually the same day in and day out.

Despair comes when I decide I’m not good enough; I am not valuable.

I realize there is some kind of lie in all of this matter at some point. I look at the people around me and see how valuable they are. I don’t understand why I can’t see my own value.

The devil is fighting really hard at this point to keep me in darkness. St. Michael is whacking him on the head.

Finally, as usual I ask Jesus a question: “Lord, what have I forgotten?”

That I love you with a burning Love so great that all those little things that burden you are consumed, if you only had eyes to see.

All of a sudden I start getting a vision of this girl that God loves. The only thing about the image that matters is that God loves her and that she loves.

And then I remember: My only lot in life is to allow God to consume me so that it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me. Everything else is detail.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.

~
Update:
So right after I finished this entry I went over to my kitchen counter to go through my mail. I received a sweet letter from my friend, M and she tucked in a prayer card that says: "God wants to reach out to others through your hands. He wants to speak to others through your lips, and God wants others to look into your eyes and see Him...Give God persmission..."- John Cardinal O'Connor. Tangible confirmation. Just the way I like it.

The Baby Jesus

I know Catholics are known for loving on baby Jesus a lot and not just during Christmas… I mean He’s all grown up now and our King of Kings, mighty in heaven, etc right? But I believe it so important we remember that in His humanity he was God and that each stage of his life expressed his full divinity just as we all as babies were fully ourselves and our mothers remember us tenderly, vividly and love on that image of us in a way that almost plays back those very moments before their eyes. And Jesus was the most beautiful of children, a living image of what it was to be child-like and not childish. He was perfect when he cried, when he slept, when he peered out those wee eyes in confusion! So how much more should we meditate on that divine little babe! Jesus in his perfection never lost childlike goodness because He is all things good. That is why I do not find it strange to see depictions of Jesus as a child with deep, knowing eyes because it so wonderfully symbolizes his essence in two ways- That he is all the good of a little boy and all the good of a man, that innocence and wisdom can coexist in one being. As He grew He never stopped being a child. We were the ones that forgot because we see a man with our eyes and so we expect his manliness, but not his divine childishness. We see the courage of a King when he dies upon the cross for the love of His Queen, but forget the unfailing trust of a small child who still believes every word his father tells him even at the threshold of death. And so I find it natural to call upon His Divine Childishness to help me preserve all the good of my youth, because it is inextricably bound to helping me invite all the good of adulthood.

How beautiful is my Lord in every single light, in the morning or in the night, in my memory or here in sight, it is you and so I rejoice in everything you touch, all the things that you are are are. For he is who he is whether he is big or small in a manger or on the cross.

Have a Blessed Christmas my friends.


Keep me in your prayers and I’ll keep you in mine. Send your prayer requests over the next couple weeks to fgarza@g.risd.edu.

With Hope,

Fabi

Be Silent or Be Lost

For a young woman the season of her mid-twenties is a time of adventure. Whether it’s marriage, travel, the first big job there is nothing so strange as leaving that familiar time of homework and test taking to place that is so unstructured. This of course doesn’t mean the end of school, but it is a the time when the things you are expected to do: school then college are done and there are a myriad of acceptable (and non-acceptable things to do).

Occasionally, there is regret about the adventure taken. A young wife regrets not traveling or working before she married. A career-driven girl sighs at the big “0” on her answering machine. The young woman trying to get her masters regretfully declines another invitation to go home for the holidays. The free spirit wonders what life would be like if she’d settled down with her old beau.

As with everything it is never too late to begin listening. When you invite God’s insight and love into your life he begins to work with you and work with what you’ve got despite all the bumps in the road.

The young wife is inspired to take a part time job at the local bakery whipping up croissants she learned to make because her husband fell in love with them during their honeymoon in Paris.

Miss. My Job Is My Life starts to say ‘yes’ when Lucy, her co-worker asks her to go out with the girls for a drink, and soon comes to realize she’s learned to care for each one of them.

The life-long student lets go of her pride and calls her stepdad for some help on her paper on [some big topic I never wrote about] and ends up deciding to buy a ticket to go home the next weekend for some R&R.

I Go Where the Wind Takes Me, faces her fear of being the one left behind and decides to stay in Tokyo, Japan for at least a year to think about what she really wants at the end of the day… to really listen.

Every girl feels the fear of not living up to the picture of the loved, successful, smart and adventurous woman in their head. This woman has it all together, she beams. She is so unlike the girl that hits the snooze button three times and can’t remember if she watered the plants this week.

If there is one thing I’ve learned about life with God is the ability to listen to Him is built up with prayer and prayer can only happen in silence and that silence is unwelcome. Silence is unwelcome by many things. It is unwelcome by the Devil because he knows that in silence you will be forced to look at your life and that means you will run to God for help. Silence is unwelcome by our hip modern time that allows us to be plugged in 24/7 so that we don’t fall behind of all the hip stuff that our friends have probably already heard about.

And Silence in unwelcome by me, because it makes me uncomfortable to see the things I’m ashamed of and the things that bring me pain. The first step to become free of those things is acknowledging them and it is the hardest part. Once you have given it all to God it’s all much more pleasant.

A couple of days ago I resolved to go cleaning about my apartment in silence, which is very hard for me. I live alone and I like noise in the background. I go through many, many audiobooks, movies and music throughout the week. I realized that it was partially because I enjoyed it but also because it numbed parts of my heart that hurt and because there was an was uncomfortable uncertainty about how my life was going and where it was headed. Not unlike those four women I talked about earlier. Sure I prayed for few times a day but I never let God seep in through a long silence. Seeing how Jesus is the Lord of my life and I’d been telling him how much more I wished to love Him I figured I’d do the brave thing and create some quiet where I could listen and just be with Him so I figured housework time was a good place to start.

It was very uncomfortable for the first ten minutes. I wanted the noise back. I focused on the way I picked things up and their correct placement. That brought me pleasure, straightening things out. I liked the idea of having a clean home. I looked out the window and focused on the outline of the clouds and the rooftops that blurred together as the sun set behind them. ‘How lovely, Lord’ I thought. And then I felt peace, with a few words here and there as I cleaned I loved Him and I loved the task He had given me. I was His servant and He was my King.

When you listen things change, but when you rest more time in that silence you begin to have the courage to live because you feel loved.


Whether you are one or a combination of the wife, working girl, eternal student or freedom-seeker you will at times feel like there is something lacking in your life, like you aren’t whole because others have gifts and people in their lives that you don’t but if you take the time to listen to the deepest desires of your hearts you will find peace in what you have been given and courage to keep hoping for what you don’t. But even better you will get to know Him, who sees you with more love than you will ever be able to see yourself.


-Fabi