A Prayer that I love and I reflected on tonight.

Let nothing disturb you.

Let nothing dismay you.

All things are passing.

God never changes.

Patience attains all things that I strive for.

He who has God finds he lacks nothing.

God alone suffices.

-St. Theresa of Avila

Challenged to See the World Differently

"Labor with Love" by CCayon
2010
30" x 40" Acrylic on Canvas

As a Catholic and as a designer, I am challenged to see and experience the world radically differently.  In my daily life I am tethered to the routines and demands of being a wife and a mother, as well as to my responsibilities as a citizen of my town, a colleague in my work, a neighbor in my community.  The more time I reflect and seek  God, and the more time I absorb myself in my creative work,  the more I realize that “being religious” is a very positive phrase that means  experiencing my reality with an awareness  that there is more to life and to my inspired work than what I am able to understand.    The great Jewish philosopher, Abraham Joshua Herchel said, “In our religious situation we do not comprehend the transcendent; we are present at it, we witness it. Whatever we know is inadequate; whatever we say is an understatement…Concepts, words must not become screens; they must be regarded as windows.”

It is easy for an artistic or an inventive person to understand the religious experience. For the imaginative person, religious moments are like those times  one is so absorbed in one’s  imagination that we “lose” our awareness of place and time; we become absorbed into our work and our work becomes absorbed into our being.   I love it when I close myself off inside my  room, away from all other distractions,  knowing that I am going to work on some project and then be surprised by the fact that what seemed like ½ hour was really 3 hours. Sometimes this experience of creativity and productivity cannot be described adequately, only those who allow themselves to go through it understand the awesomeness of this kind of “losing oneself”. 

In my Catholic experience, when this happens it is an encounter with the Mystery of God, not a psychological occurrence, but a real “losing of oneself” to a within and beyond experience of the divine; meaning that I became aware that God is within me and beyond me.  It inspires in me a sense of reverence and wonder. The more deeply I become aware of this, the more I am motivated to transforming myself. In our celebration of Eucharist, our Catholic community expresses what we believe and what we think, and we are challenged to transform ourselves;  to act out what we believe and think in our world. Actually, more than just acting it out, we are to become the action, to “lose our self” in the work of becoming holy.  This kind of work becomes creative and holy work, meaning that we become partners with God in his creation of our world. Lumen Gentium notes, “The eternal Father, by a free and hidden plan of His own wisdom and goodness, created the whole world. His plan was to raise men to a participation of the divine life.” (LG2) We are all called, we were born,  to take part in God’s holy work.

Those religious and artistic experiences inspire me to be more Catholic, to be more holy, and in doing so, my deeds become holy deeds.  Heschel notes, “He is asked to do more than he understands in order to understand more than he does.” 

Every time Catholics celebrate Mass, we are getting away from those distractions of our week, we are to become open and  to prepare ourselves to encounter this mystery through hearing God’s word and through the mystery of the sharing of a Eucharist meal.  Lumen Gentium continues “Really partaking of the body of the Lord in the breaking of the Eucharistic bread, we are taken up into communion with Him and with one another. "Because the bread is one, we though many, are one body, all of us who partake of the one bread".  In this way all of us are made members of His Body, "but severally members one of another".(LG 7) The challenge is to take this mystery and become and live this mystery in everything I do and with everyone I meet.

Recommended reading:

Lumen Gentium- The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church

http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html

City of Hope-Reflection 2

When my second daughter Caren turned 15, her wish was to visit NYC, so that trip was planned in 2003. Since her birthday is near Christmas, we took a flight out to NY on the 26^th. It was a very cold winter in the city that month. As usual, NY received us warmly. My friend came to pick us up and that evening as we settled in her cozy bungalow in Queens with her family and friends around her dinner table, we all noticed that outside her big picture window in contrast to the black evening sky, big white snowflakes were falling.  Perhaps they were excited that we Floridians rarely experience the joy of new fallen snow; they encouraged us to put on our jackets and go outside in order to walk on the crisp layer of white that was starting to form on the concrete driveway and to look up into the sky and have the sensation of the flurry landing softly on our faces.  While we all enjoyed this frozen interaction in her front yard, oblivious to the delicious homemade Spanish bean soup (Favada) that was sitting patiently on the table inside, we relished in this unexpected gift from mother nature. These kinds of moments are heaven sent!

The next day, we went into the city with my friend, who following the same ritual we had established last time I was there with Cris; she would get off from the train in Wall Street (She now practiced law for the NY Stock Exchange) and we would have planned our day so that Caren and I would meet her after work for a late dinner in the city, before heading back home to Queens in a taxi or on a bus.

Now, 9-11 had already taken place just 2 years prior and I knew that this trip would have a different flavor.  There is no doubt that just the journey through the airport had changed.  Before 9-11, we didn’t have to think about what we carried in our bags, for example.  Now we were scanned and re-scanned. Everything we carried was inspected. Everyone was suspicious of each other. We were considered guilty and had to prove our innocence in order to board our plane.  I found that I couldn’t wait at the gate without imagining who the other people were. I realized how much my mindset had changed, I had become a bit paranoid.  Reason told me that with all the heightened security I should not worry. I also told myself that you couldn’t necessarily know a terrorist by their attire or their nationality. But the irrational side of my brain could easily look at each person and find a quirk in their dress or in their body language and it would make me uneasy. 

Aside from NYC, we knew our friends would have changed too. Obviously, they not only lived through that horrific day; they had lost loved ones too in the towers that day, and they were living through the renewal of their home place spiritually as well as physically.  My friend and her family all worked in Manhattan and so their lives were a new daily encounter with a city that had been wounded and was painfully holding on to its soul.  I am not in position to know what that would be like. I can only speak from the perspective of someone who lived near MacDill Air Force Base, which became Command Central. I remember our Tampa International Airport being hauntingly silent for many days after 9-11 and the only flights were the military jets that would squeal through the air, annoying me each time, as though my mind preferred to be in denial. Aside from those daily intrusions from the air, I had the ability to escape that reality, unless I turned on the TV or radio. My friends did not have that advantage. 

The first thing Caren and I did in the city that following morning, was go visit the what had become known as, the Ground Zero site. What struck me by surprise was the amount of tour buses and tourists that were vying for competition to visit this site.  On the one hand, it is impressive to see how many people find it meaningful to visit what had become a national tourist destination.  However, what comes with tourists? Souvenirs!  And one couldn’t take a few steps without someone trying to sell you a relic or a postcard retelling you the story of this sacred site.  This is our human story;  it is our nature to always want a tangible way to connect to these experiences. (This phenomenon exists at every holy shrine around the world).   We pried our way through crowds, many who had stopped  to read all the notes with photos of lost ones and posters in memoriam to the dead left along the chain link fence that protected this part of scarred earth from the onlookers.  My daughter and I found a place where we could gaze into the depressed plane of what had once been the one of the tallest building in the world, World Trade Center Plaza.  A landmark and icon for this city had vanished. The place that had brought me so many wonderful memories from my last trip had disappeared and all that remained was a big, dark, ugly hole in the ground enclosed  by other injured buildings that appeared to be gasping for breath.

Peering through from the edge, I lowered my view, and I could see the huge cranes and the semblance of life working hard to transform itself.  Looking down into this site was like focusing my vision through a microscope and observing the beauty of a complex micro world that even though I don’t understand what the intricate movements of the examined organisms are providing, one is mesmerized by its resolve and flexibility to accomplish whatever job it is intending on doing. This for me was the first glimmer of optimism I evidenced.  In spite of confronting the ugly side of consumerism earlier in the day and the  hatred spewed by some people who wanted revenge for this occurrence, I found it comforting listening to sound of the persistent hammering, murmuring, and buzzing that those city workers imposed vigorously on this holy ground on that day.  This was the NY I remembered-hope had not died despite the attempt to kill it on 9-11!  Like the glorious time shared intimately with our friends the prior evening, enjoying God’s gift of fresh snow without reserve, this moment was also divine!   God reveals himself through the unexpected.   NYC revealed its beauty once again to me.  Wherever I visited that week, the cityscape was different, the people had changed; there was an expectation that goodness would prevail.  This is what New York City represents! Where God exists, the good thrives and is seen often through the unexpected. That trip I learned to  always expect the unexpected in NYC!

New York City-City of Hope

New York City-The City of Hope
My New York Reflection on the eve of the 10 year anniversary of 9-11

In 1969, my family visited New York City for the first time. I remember our nuclear group of four being transported from our laid back hometown of Indianapolis (where we had only lived three years after our departure from Cuba) to the ultra modern John F. Kennedy terminal, via TWA airlines. I treasured my little TWA wings in my jewelry box for years afterwards. Designed by one of my favorite designers, Eero Saarinen; my encounter with this space in this great crossroads of a city laid a seed in my spirit that later in life would lead me to study the design of interior environments.

As an "almost" 10 year old, I still remember the sense of place this terminal had on me.  It was a contrast of cool lights and warm colors, open and closed forms, shiny and matte textures, shadows and luminosity that penetrated and accentuated the “space age” lines and shapes. As we moved through this terminal the space seemed to speak to me, “Welcome to The Modernest City”….my young mind was engaged and ready for more of what NYC would offer!  From that point on, my trip with our friends who had already established this radiant location as their home was a wonderful mix of Multi National/American/Cuban flavor; a kind of blend that could only happen in a cutting edge reality  that existed in NYC as it prepared itself to greet the decade of the 70’s. Hope seemed to permeate everything.  

As I have realized, Cubans thrive everywhere thanks to the diaspora that took place after the Castro revolution.  That year in NYC, it seemed we were welcomed by every exiled Cuban that lived in NY. We visited Elizabeth, NJ, which was another haven for exiled Cubans; Boston, Massachusetts to visit Cuban family members.  Friends of friends of our friends had networked together and although none of us had any substantial financial means, my parents and their adult friends all seemed to live and  dream like the future was open to even us.  NYC seemed to be the place to be to start over again in another culture.  My impressionable mind understood this unspoken truth. We visited the Empire State building, United Nations, Rockefeller Center, the Statue of Liberty, the museums, Central Park, and each landmark impressed in my psyche, that NYC was an excellent blend of all that is good about being American, being modern, and being a Cuban in exile.  The city was exciting and deliciously fast. 

Even though I was just a kid, I could still recall experiencing the urban side of Havana, Cuba with my family.  I remembered visiting El malecon, Copelia and eating ice cream, walking down the main boulevards, going to Mass in dimly lit Baroque  style churches, my abuelo's second floor aparment,  taking pictures next to huge monuments and fountains. Havana was a big city too, with much more history than NYC but all the energy of what had come to be a very cosmopolitan capital that impressed itself on a little girl like me before it was destroyed by a communist dictator.  This journey to NYC awakened in me a little of what I had lost after I left my family and my birth place of Havana, and that experience of NYC has never left me.

Years later, I would again experience this gateway city with my husband when we visited as honeymooners on our way north to Canada.  We stayed at the Waldorf Astoria and we were upgraded to a corner apartment suite when they discovered our new status.  What a impressive moment that was to stand in the corner of our temporary living room and from one window be able to look down all of Park Avenue and then standing from the same spot, look out the other window and do the same of 50^th Street. This was as awesome of a corner as any corner I have ever experienced.  Looking down on taxi’s, limo’s, buses, people, lights, all moving; was exhilarating. I remember the coolness of that evening that came in through the open windows, the sharp smell of the unusually brisk summer air, and the din of the interchanges taking place between mechanical and human creatures below. NYC seemed at its best when viewed from above, like a bird.  That weekend we visited many of the touristy places that I had gone as a child, plus the WTC, which did not exist when I was younger.  We stood in awe at the top of this incredible structural monument; in the expansiveness of that panorama, NYC seemed to  be welcoming me again.

There was one more experience I had of NYC before the fateful 9-11 day.  That was when I took my oldest daughter for her 13^th birthday.  Like all great cities, it has to be experienced and I knew she would love it.  Again, through the hospitality of our Cuban friends we were warmly greeted back. Even though it was April, it snowed the morning we arrived.  I had not experienced this aspect of this great city, the light brush of white roof tops and cold gusts of air made us more excited to be in the city.  Being the typical teenager, my daughter’s idea of getting to know a city is to shop in its stores.  By the end of the week, we had scoped out every Claire’s jewelry store in NYC, as well, as the ever- friendly, never changing McDonald’s restaurants that she craved.  Despite my desire for her to try authentic NY-Chinese, NY-Italian, or even the famous NY-Jewish bagel, my Cuban-American daughter’s taste buds were not yet matured. 

One unforgettable part of this trip was our every day juncture at the World Trade Center Tower.  This she savored…..probably becuase in the busy underground Mall of the WTC, there happened to be a Claire’s shop that compelled her to stop in daily. Here she purchased many souvenirs for herself and her sisters (despite the fact that Tampa also had Claire’s).  As I recall, in the WTC, she got her first pair of adult trendy dark sunglasses which she wore it the whole trip, lending her a very fashionable look in every picture she posed for.

The Towers became an important landmark for us, whenever we got lost (which happened a lot) we would reorient ourselves by figuring out where we were in relation to it.  My friend who was at that time, an assistant district attorney, worked not too far from the World Trade Center, in the federal district area.  Cris and I would take the train to work with her every morning, watch her get off at her stop in the city and spend the day exploring a new part, always meeting her after work at the WTC. This building became our sanctuary; we knew once we got there, we would find our way back to Queens, the burough where she lived.  In such a frenetic city, the WTC was our harbor.  Yes, we did get to the very top of the World Trade Center tower. My child was beside herself with the beauty this view offered us that afternoon.  Immediately she ran to the side of the rail and looked down, while I stayed safely along the inside center of the roof top plaza, allowing her the opportunity to pose for a picture and gasp in awe at every cardinal point. 
Only 4 years later, these became pictures that we would treasure for the unique moment in history that it documented. Standing up so many feet above the earth, how could the two of us ever imagine that a few years later that view would not exist from this precise point in space in such a city that seemed so full of hope for me and my daughter on that day? 

A vimeo metaphor on being a dad...

My aunt in Texas sent me this video to describe what my husband has gone through. Seen through the eyes of nature, yes, this is exactly what happened to him only 2 weeks ago.  (Except that 3 little birds are still in our nest.)  Thanks Tia for sharing!! 

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=9479342&server=vime

Reflection 2-The Mystery of the Wedding Sacrament

There’s a spontaneous moment captured digitally as my husband is seen running after the newlywed’s limo as it drove away from the reception.  What a contrast: the father of the bride processed his daughter in happily and proudly earlier, and yet at the end of the day, he is frantically catching up to them as though he’s rethought this and wants back his “little girl”.  Even though he did that in fun, it is easy to appreciate that moment when you realize that transformation has occurred and we must respond in a new way.  Sometimes our response is to “freak out”. Our little girl is not “ours” anymore.  She looks the same, but through this covenant, she is now one with her husband.  This is the mystery of the sacrament of marriage.  The world teaches us that this is all baloney that marriage is only a contract between two people, but my heart chooses to believe in what I don’t see and what I know. Jesus said, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be jointed to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together let no man separate.” (Matt 19:4-7)

This is what happens when you embrace a life of Christian faith; you are challenged to see through new eyes, to be holy, to embrace change, and to remember that no matter how difficult that change can be, God promises us to be there with us every step of the way.

Reflection 1-A Day Set Aside

Their wedding was only 2 weeks ago, and still during some quiet moments my mind will wander back to their ceremony. I can’t help but dwell on the vision of Cristina being walked into the church by her very proud papa.  I felt very sentimental as I saw her passing through the church doors, around the baptismal pool where I was reminded of the promises we made when we brought her into God’s temple to be made a “new creature in Christ” (2 Corin 5) and thus initiated her journey into her Christian faith. Past that gently spilling pool, they walked joyfully towards the sanctuary.  Similarly he walked her in as an infant many years before, that morning he presented her in front of our community once again, where she freely kissed him goodbye and took Justin’s arm in a holy place; the place where God makes himself present in a mysterious way every time we gather as a community to share his body in the breaking of bread. A place where his presence is when we hear God speak to us (his community) through our sacred family stories; stories and practices that have been ardently guarded and passed down to us for many generations. What a better place to profess nuptial love than in such a sacred place? Their wedding ceremony was a very simple Catholic liturgy, the kind of tradition that scriptures speak of when we read how the early Christians worshiped, “they devoted themselves to the apostle’s teachings and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and prayers” (Acts 2:42)  Just about two thousand years ago, this is what followers of “The Way” did. Before there was even a “Bible”, early believers gathered to worship a Trinitarian God. They gathered as a community of love, transforming themselves into love through the breaking of bread, of saying together prayers and learning from what the apostles’ had passed on to them.  Jesus instructed us to remember him through this ritual, in doing so, unity is created and service to one another is consecrated. What a better symbol for married love?  Of course, in order to appreciate this custom, one has to be able to see with the eyes of “faith, hope, and love”.  A marriage ceremony is centered on these virtues; in fact, the second reading Cris and Justin selected was St. Paul’s writing addressed to the church of Corinth on the excellence of love. (1 Corin. 13) “…But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.” 

The fact that the couple carefully chose their own readings, selected their own symbols to exchange in the form of rings, (another beautiful tradition), prepared for that day through marriage prep classes, serves to remind them that this is their holy day, a day that has been set aside. Our Faith teaches us that in this sacrament, the two individuals are the ministers of this sacrament.  In other words, they are the ones who directly administer this grace to themselves. No one else can do this, not even the priest.  The priest is simply the official witness of the church. In Hebrew, the word for holy is kiddushin-literally means to “set aside”. In fact, it can also mean “wedding”.  Just like the temple is set aside from other ordinary buildings, their wedding bands are set aside from other ordinary rings, and the bride has set herself aside for her groom, everything of that day reminded me of Gods’ call for us to be holy.