Yesterday, Saturday, I wandered over to Lake Forest College to join a small group of educators around a table, where we wrote about and considered the issue of Voice in writing. It was a quick three hours ... and inspiring. I'm not sure that I learned any new tricks, as such; but it was good to write and reflect with other teachers. That explains the opening page for this February journal. And then there is Robinson Crusoe. And his cat. On his island, which leads me to think about...

...this thing we call religious life - and wonder about the real and the ideal. I hate it when people criticize the way we live - the way we are. I hate it because I recognize more truth in the criticism than the critic knows. He or she doesn't know the half of it.

Excuse me while I purge.

We have it too easy. We don't adhere to the vows as we should. We spend too much on ourselves. We don't pray enough. We wink at addictions of one kind or another. We go our own ways. We don't inspire others to follow us. We don't measure up to the great religious men and women of the recent or distant past. We talk too much and too little about God. We think too much about sex and say so little about it that's honest. We accept without question the rotten values of the dominant culture. We don't pray enough. We don't interact as a healthy, loving community. We are too fat. We are too complacent. We are too frightened. We do not do as Jesus would have done. We are too comfortable. We don't know how to explain ourselves to others. We do not believe strongly enough or act decisively enough. We are full of shoulds and oughts and mustn'ts. We are lukewarm. We are too careful. We cannot shed this middle-class skin we so secretly despise. We are not happy as all good Christians should be happy. We don't pray enough ... or as well as we should as we should as we should.

Nobody knows better than a "religious person" the distance he or she or we have landed from the ideal. We are broken, screwed up, ordinary human beings. How could our communities be anything other than that? In the midst of this mess, however, we remain open to the possibilities of change and growth. I open my copy of Carmelite Constitutions 1995 at random and read, "Daily conversion to the Gospel is essential if we are to remain faithful to our vocation to fraternal life." And I know this is true. And I know this is difficult. And I know that on most days it just doesn't happen. Because I am too busy, too blind, too tired, too scared, too co-opted, too lazy. But sometimes it does. That book goes on, "We must seek concrete forms of conversion, above all through a constant discernment of life in the light of the Gospel, of the signs of the times, and the experience of the poor; and through the faithful fulfillment of our ministries..." Noble words. Bright light to shine on our darkness and emptiness. And the Gospel itself is the brightest light by which to explore our shame.

Again randomly I open that book and find in John 11, "So the chief priests and the Pharisees convened the Sanhedrin and said, 'What are we going to do? This man is performing many signs.'" And I wonder what signs I have performed and doubt that there have been many, certainly none that would get me in the hot water Jesus found himself in. Then I remember Therese's Little Way and resolve to do the small things well - like reading through a pile of sophomore papers with a pretty crummy headache? Like showing up for community prayer in the morning? And is this enough, can it ever be enough? Will it make me the "good religious" I'd like to be - do I want to be? When I put it that way, no. I don't care to be a good religious. I desperately want to become a good person and have chosen (or been chosen for) this life as the space for that becoming.

Now I could probably say more, but I won't. Just this last thing from an old teacher: