Lenten Longing

Lent sneaks up on us this year, starting in less than a week. I have lots of resources to share with you, but I want to start by thanking you for your love and support of your neighbors in Minnesota. Yesterday it was announced that ICE will be ending its campaign of terror in Minneapolis, but 1) I’ll believe it when I see it, 2) I am terribly worried they will simply go elsewhere, and 3) even if they do depart, the harm inflicted upon this community will reverberate for years, the trauma will be passed down to future generations, and there is still so much need for aid and support.

My dear friend Laura Kelly Fanucci is organizing aid and providing information on where to give on her Substack, and she’s preaching into this time and space every day on Instagram—talk about approaching the lectern with the Scriptures in one hand and the newspaper in the other. You can also watch and listen to her recent episode of America’s Preach podcast here.

Checking my phone each day feels like a whiplash of nine terrible things happening, followed by at least one beautiful example of human beings reaching out to one another, protecting one another, providing for one another. It never fails to bring me to tears. Thank you for being part of this holy whiplash.

Now, on to Lenten resources!

1. I was deeply honored to be asked to write this year’s Lent retreat for Pray As You Go. They’ve been creating daily contemplative audio prayer offerings and retreats for twenty years, which kind of boggles the mind! I started listening about ten years ago, immediately taken in by the beautiful music, the space to reflect, and, not gonna lie, the soothing British accents of the speakers.

   

   When Emma Hudson, the director of Pray As You Go, asked me if I had a sense of the theme, I immediately answered, “Holy longing.” That’s where I feel like I am these days, and maybe where you find yourself too.

   

   The retreat will be released on the app and website week by week, starting on Ash Wednesday. There are six sessions, each one featuring a Scripture passage, beautiful music, and questions for contemplation and reflection. The sessions are titled “Leaning into Our Longing,” “Longing for Healing,” “Longing in Grief and Loss,” “Longing for the Kingdom of God,” “Longing for Rest,” and “God’s Longing for Us.” Hopefully there is something there for everyone, no matter where you find yourself this Lent. And the best part? It’s entirely free.

2. Over the past year, I’ve been helping to develop and edit this year’s Lenten offering for the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States, “In Praise Of: Letters of Recommendation for the Spiritual Life.” The idea was inspired by the New York Times column “Letters of Recommendation,” in which people expound upon the glories of some overlooked or under-appreciated place or thing (a few of my favorite examples: the New Jersey Turnpike, rotisserie chicken, tap water). As I read these essays each week, I was struck by the way the authors were able to take a simple object or an ordinary place and use it as a doorway into meaning, a starting point for storytelling and reflection.

   

   And I thought to myself, “What if we could do that, but for the spiritual life?” And thus “In Praise Of” was born, featuring thirty-three reflections from Jesuit Media Lab creatives and the greater Ignatian family, with original art by Erin Buckley and Allison Beyer.

   Some essays are about a place, some about a prayer or practice, still others about a chance encounter that proved profoundly moving. What all of these essays have in common is a powerful sense of story, of passing on something of value from one person to another. And isn’t the passing on of stories the foundation of our faith?

   Our writers have brought forth wisdom from the moments in their lives when they’ve caught sight of a holy glimmer, and our Lenten journey will carry us from a recycling plant in Pennsylvania to a lilac bush in Cleveland, from a mourning dove in Los Angeles to a rescued tree in Manhattan. We’ll consider the sacredness of kayaking, of pesto, of libraries and estate sales, and so much more. Each essay is an invitation to consider anew the core of Ignatian spirituality, not only that we find God in all things, but that God is at work in all things, in our lives and in the world around us. At the end of the Lenten season, we will make the series available as a free eBook that you can download and return to throughout the year. You can sign up here. Totally free!

   
   I’ll be on the AMDG podcast on Ash Wednesday, talking with the JCCU’s Mike Jordan Laskey and Eric Clayton about the project and about Lent in general if you’d like to tune in.

3. I’ve been working more with Catholic justice organizations these past few months, and I was delighted to contribute to the Ignatian Solidarity Network’s long-running and deeply inspiring Lenten reflection series. This year’s theme is Stubborn Hope, and don’t we need it!

   

   It’s an honor to be a contributor to this daily reflection series alongside some of my heroes, like Fr. Greg Boyle, Ellie Hidalgo, and Fr. James Martin. You can sign up here to receive these daily reflections in your inbox, and they will also be available as a podcast you can listen to. Also free!

4. Okay, this last one is not free, but that’s because it’s an in-person event! Chicago-area friends (or any friends who like to travel for retreats!), I’ll be leading a Lenten day of reflection at Bellarmine Jesuit Retreat House on Monday, March 30th.

   

   We’ll be reflecting on sacred attention, drawing from the work of artists, mystics, and poets to get to the heart of how we are called to pay attention to God, ourselves, and the world around us. I hope you will join us! You can register here.

A Few Hopeful Things

-In the midst of the horrors of these past few months, there have been some real joys, for which I’m deeply grateful. One of them was that I gave the first public reading of material from my book, The Sacrament of Paying Attention, as part of my Seattle Public Library Writers’ Room Residency program.

I read from the chapter on, wait for it, the glories of the library. Hometown crowd! It was a delight to hear work from people I’ve smiled at and passed by in the writers’ room, and so encouraging to get such great feedback. We don’t have a firm release date on the book yet, but it looks like early 2027. Excited!

-It was a tremendous gift to join the inaugural cohort of the Geno Baroni Fellowship for Catholic Justice Leadership on their opening retreat in January. It’s a beautiful project of the Collaborative for Catholic Organizing.

They’re incredible people, representing Jesuit Refugee Service, Ignatian Solidarity Network, Catholic Relief Services, Discerning Deacons, Catholic Climate Covenant, the Josephites, Jesuits West, The Sisters of St. Joseph, Network Lobby, and more. I learned so much from them and was deeply moved to share with them about ritual and belonging in justice work.

-Last weekend I was so happy to join the retreat team for “Light for the Journey,” the Seattle University faculty and staff silent Ignatian retreat.

I spoke on the fourth week of the Spiritual Exercises, directed four tremendously lovely people, and wrote our closing prayer. I’m including it here, just in case you, too, need some light for the journey.

“Light for the Journey”

The thing about the light is
That it doesn’t always come all at once.
It’s not always a halogen bulb
Bright enough to illuminate a whole house,
Not always a vibrant bonfire
You can see from a mile away.

The thing about the light is
That sometimes it’s just a tiny point,
A pinprick of starlight in the night sky.
Sometimes it’s a just a narrow beam,
A flicker from a weak flashlight.
Sometimes the light is dim enough to give you pause.

Sometimes there is just enough light
To see your next step by—
Not enough to brighten the whole map,
Only enough of a glow to show you
The next turn, the next crossing.

Pilgrim on the journey,
Fear not, as you stand under the light of the moon.
You are not alone. You have not been forgotten.

Take the next step. The light will come.
The light is always alongside you.
The light is always within you.
Amen.

-If you’ve made it this far, pat yourself on the back! Here’s one more thought—in all the hectic rush of the holidays and January, I never got around to sharing my favorite books from last year. I am approximately never not reading, and this practice shapes so much of who I am and how I see and move through the world. Instead of inundating you with umpteen recommendations in one post, I’m thinking about including a new “three good reads” section at the end of my Substack posts. If I can pull it off, the first three recs will be a study of the working homeless in America, an immersive report on the Bosnian war in Sarajevo in the 1990s, and an exploration of a racial justice program at a majority-white evangelical church in Cincinnati. Good stuff!

In the meantime, I know that an inbox is a sacred thing. Thanks for inviting me in to yours.

Looking forward to journeying through Lent with you,
Cameron