Cami Kasmerchak got me connected with Alex when she was in Sacramento with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in 2015-2016. She’s in a class with me now, These are a Few of Our Favorite Things. She wrote the following in the spirit of Thich Nhat Hanh encouraging people to recover “the jewels of your own tradition.” I am pleased to share Alex’s writing with you!
“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a person took and planted in their field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.” (Matthew 13:31–32).
The Kindom of Heaven Is dusty sunlight streaming through towering cathedral, stained-glass windows
The Kindom of Heaven Is voices gathering in song with familiar lyrics that we’ve been singing since we knew how to speak
The Kindom of Heaven Is mass on a porch with shared homilies
The Kindom of Heaven Is the kitchen of the Catholic Worker, where hands have toiled for decades doing the gritty works of mercy
The Kindom of Heaven Is Loaves & Fishes: where no one is turned away and the bank of faith provides and sustains in abundance
The Kindom of Heaven Is late night student masses at Jesuit universities
The Kindom of Heaven Is the joy and serendipity of meeting others also enmeshed in this complicated interconnected world of “radical social justice Catholics”
The Kindom of Heaven is to the hungry you give food, the rich who are sent away empty
The Kindom of Heaven Is the teachers and mystics who love, follow, and are ever searching for the expansive capital-G God
The Kingdom of Heaven Is those among us who see the work of the “dirty rotten system” and seek to change it, with Jesus as their muse
The Kindom of Heaven Is humble chapels filled with people who put their trust in God, instead of the fallible human institution church
The Kindom of Heaven Is the feisty monasticism of the Benincasa community and the body of co-conspirators they’ve built through a house church
The Kindom of Heaven Is rituals–some to embrace, some to discard–that ground us in holiness
The Kindom of Heaven Is a God that turns tables and turns hearts
The Kindom of Heaven Is the radical, socialist, Jesus of the gospels
The Kindom of Heaven Is female liberation theologians
The Kindom of Heaven Is the radical hospitality spaces outside of the institutional church
The Kindom of Heaven Is the sacrificial legacy of Romero and the Martyrs
The Kindom of Heaven Is Dorothy Day and her rabble-rousing counter-cultural spiritual vision
The Kindom of Heaven Is the springtime joy of Easter and a faith rooted in the power of hope, new life, redemption, forgiveness, and resurrection
The Kindom of Heaven Is washing the feet of another, humbly taking in their pure inherent goodness as a human being without judgment
The Kindom of Heaven Is “do this in memory of me” and what that inspires
The Kindom of Heaven Is the idea that breaking bread together is a sacred act
The Kindom of Heaven Is God as the Tender One, whose friendship is always waiting whether I am able to accept it or not
