What’s happening with the mail?
For the past few months, many people have asked “what’s going on with the mail?” Good question! People have offered a lot of opinions.
Of course, there are also the unprintable words uttered when a Christmas card sent in early December finally arrived in late January. Or worse, a Social Security check that did not arrive before food supplies ran out or rent was due.
What I do know is that we have come a long way from the 1914 inscription on the New York City General Post Office. “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds” The words have long been associated with the American postal worker.
Another thing I know is that we have inherited many ways of speaking that have their origins in the United States Postal Service.
- “Return to sender”
- “Damaged in transit”
- “Returned for insufficient postage”
- “Undeliverable at this address”
- “First class mail”
- “Junk mail”
- “Priority mail”
- “Receipt requested”
- “Special delivery”
Some of these are actually used as a kind of shorthand to describe aspects of communication. Think of “special delivery”.
The God Game
Then I remembered one of my former colleagues in the Theology Department at St. John’s University. Jim Reese, a Sulpician, was a top tier scripture scholar. But I will always remember him as a profoundly spiritual person.
He once shared with me a game he played in prayer. He used his dictionary as an aid to prayer! Opening up to a random page, he would choose a random word and think about what aspect of God it expressed. When I thought about it I realized it was a way rooted in Scripture. The scriptures are filled with phrases like “God is a “rock”, “fortress” etc.
I invite you to play this game with me.
A different kind of Gmail
Right off the bat, I thought of a different kind of Gmail… God’s mail. That sent me on a journey through the corridors of postal language.
Who delivers God’s mail? Of course, the biblical prophets came to mind. But Jesus himself was the ultimate mail from God. He was also God’s personally chosen delivery person!.
But let’s go further…
- Aren’t the words of scripture God’s mail?
- How often do we check for mail from God?
- Would we recognize God’s mail in the example of another person’ life… and suffering?
- Do we just let it pile up in our mailbox?
- How often do we treat God’s mail as bothersome “third class mail” or “junk mail” to be discarded without opening?
- How often is God’s mail returned to the sender?
- How often does God’s mail get mangled in transit?
- Why do we miss God’s “telegrams” or “instant messages”?
Then there is the mail we send to God. We call them prayers.
- Why are we so much better at sending God mail?
- Are we Christmas-card Catholics who send generic “Season’s Greetings”?
Finally, do we think of ourselves as God’s delivery persons? Are we the reason God’s mail gets damaged in transit?
When it comes to being God’s delivery persons for “good News” would people think of us in terms of the unofficial Postal service motto…
“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds”
I invite you to spend some time thinking about how you receive God’s mail… and how you are God’s mail
PS Just this morning I heard another scripture scholar, Fr. Pat Griffin, CM, give a marvelous presentation on The Psalms: 150 Conversations with God. It will shortly be available on the website of the Vincentian Center for Church and Society.
Click below for and audio version of this Vincentian Mindwalk
The best and definitive Courier, of course, is Jesus. And he is, at the same time, the most important and final Mail of all.
True appreciation and embrace of this Courier and this Mail lead to the conviction that “neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God.”
And if I may add, Jesus, too, is the best Mail that we humans can send to God.
I remember George Regan (I think he taught at the CM-run or -sponsored Seminary in Albany, NY) saying in a book on fundamental moral theology something to the effect that Jesus is God’s perfect word to human beings and, at the same time, human beings’ perfect word to God.
And I’m reminded also that the best Mail God sends us, –an invitation to be one with God–, and the best Mail we send God in reply to the invitation, –a pledge to be human to the human–, points to what Piet Fransen, S.J., said many years ago, in order to put to rest or away the false dilemma that one has no choice but to pick either humanity or divinity: “Jesus is divine precisely because he is human to the utmost” (which did not please, I don’t think, some guardians of orthodoxy then).