[00:00:05] Speaker A: This is Faith Break, a podcast about recognizing God moments in our everyday lives, with hosts Karen, Luke and Anne Gallagher.
This week, Karen and Anne reflect on how change can be both uncomfortable and exciting.
God can give us a glimpse of what is possible if only we're brave enough to step out of our comfort zones in trust.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: Hi, everyone.
[00:00:39] Speaker C: Welcome to Faith Break. I am Karen Luke.
[00:00:41] Speaker B: And I'm Anne Gallagher.
[00:00:42] Speaker C: And we are here to figure out or help you figure out your God moments of the day and to continue
[00:00:50] Speaker B: our conversations about Lent and changing our
[00:00:53] Speaker C: hearts and changing our hearts in the weekend Mass readings.
A little bit of everything wrapped into a nice little package.
[00:01:01] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:01:03] Speaker C: And as we always begin with our God moments, and we were just saying it is a little difficult because we're recording early, so bear with us with our God moments. They might not tie into Lent that
[00:01:19] Speaker B: much, but I think I have one that kind of does. Okay, perfect. I think I have one that kind of does.
[00:01:23] Speaker C: Start us off.
[00:01:23] Speaker B: My God moment today is I was practicing with some of our teens, and by the time this. This lands, it'll be weeks past. But our teens are going to get up in front of the congregation at all the masses in a few days to share their experience of NCYC and to thank our parish for their support. And so, I mean, and we've talked so many times about how wonderful the National Youth Conference was, but what was special about this God moment was how our teens were articulating the change of heart that they had.
Right. So, I mean, what a model for our parishes to have these young people get up and be able to say, like, I, you know, my experience of who God is has been completely blown open, and now I'm committing my life to sharing that with everybody and just to have them say that. So that was my God moment this week was working with them. And I can't wait for all of you to be able to experience that, too.
And actually, by now, you have probably seen them on an episode of our podcast a few weeks ago, but if you missed that one, go back and check it out because they are just so inspiring.
[00:02:42] Speaker C: I was watching their interviews and I was texting you. I was like, oh, my gosh. They made me cry. Oh, my gosh. And it was just so cool to relive it through their eyes. Oh, okay.
[00:02:56] Speaker B: It was so good. All right, how about yours?
[00:02:57] Speaker C: Mine is really cheesy. I'm sorry, but my car is in the shop, and so I had to drop Jeremy off at work.
So my God moment was we actually drove to work Together.
[00:03:10] Speaker B: How cute.
[00:03:11] Speaker C: I know, it's so silly, but it was like, it was little extra time in the morning, start the day, and we just chit chatted and I get to pick him up. So it'll be interesting how that how our day goes.
We can decompress in the car together instead of at home at different times.
[00:03:32] Speaker B: No kids around, no screens around. No.
[00:03:34] Speaker C: Just usually.
[00:03:35] Speaker B: That's cool. So awesome.
[00:03:37] Speaker C: All right, we're in the second week of Lent.
[00:03:40] Speaker B: Second week of Lent. So this is Transfiguration Sunday.
[00:03:44] Speaker C: Yay.
[00:03:46] Speaker B: So the gospel reading is the transfiguration, and the first reading is God's promise to Abram.
It's even before he's given the name Abraham, but God promising, you know, that he will make his name great, make his name be a blessing, and you know the covenant that God formed with him.
So these are great readings. There's so many ways we can take this, but we're looking at things through the lens of change this Lent. So I don't know. Do you have any first thoughts you want to get out there about either of these readings?
[00:04:25] Speaker C: I have another quote from my book that I started to read.
[00:04:28] Speaker B: Give it to me.
[00:04:29] Speaker C: Great callings.
And when I read this, I was like, oh, my gosh. Yes, I am exhausted by the way things have been.
Do I have the courage to let go of the comfortable weight that I no longer wish to carry and change how they might someday be?
And I just. I.
[00:04:49] Speaker B: Can you say that one more time? Yes.
[00:04:51] Speaker C: Yes.
I am exhausted by the way things have been.
Do I have the courage to let go go of the comfortable weight that I no longer wish to carry and change how they might someday be?
[00:05:03] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:05:04] Speaker C: The comfortable weight.
[00:05:05] Speaker B: Because these readings are all about comfort zones, right?
God makes a promise to Abraham, but he also says, like, go forth from the land of your kinsfolk. Right? He's like, leave your home uncomfortable and go to a new place. And then in the transfiguration reading, of course, they're like, oh, we're gonna put up tents.
[00:05:27] Speaker C: We're gonna have a party.
[00:05:28] Speaker B: This is so good for us to be here. Let's just stay.
And, you know, Jesus sends him down from the mountain. It's all about leaving the place where you're comfortable and having the courage to follow where God is leading.
That's perfect.
[00:05:49] Speaker C: The uncomfortable weight or.
[00:05:52] Speaker B: No, not comfortable weight.
[00:05:53] Speaker C: The comfortable weight.
[00:05:54] Speaker B: I'm carrying this and I'm exhausted and I hate it. But it's comfortable.
[00:05:58] Speaker C: But it's comfortable because I don't know what I would do if I left.
[00:06:02] Speaker B: What would I do if I wasn't carrying this anymore?
[00:06:06] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:06:06] Speaker B: That's a lot to think about. It's so true.
[00:06:09] Speaker C: And it just. I don't know. The comfortability of things, even though it's exhausting, is more comfortable.
Sometimes it's more comfortable to be exhausted with the.
[00:06:21] Speaker B: The known.
[00:06:22] Speaker C: The known.
[00:06:23] Speaker B: Right.
[00:06:24] Speaker C: Than the unknown and the uncomfortability that brings.
[00:06:29] Speaker B: Right.
[00:06:30] Speaker C: But if you look back at our lives, everything we've done has been unknown.
[00:06:37] Speaker B: Like, even, like, just, like, dating, getting
[00:06:40] Speaker C: married, having kids, going to college, moving out of the house.
[00:06:44] Speaker B: Right.
[00:06:45] Speaker C: You know?
[00:06:47] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:06:47] Speaker C: I remember the first.
Well, I was at college and I hated it. And I came home after a semester, but I remember the first night that I moved into my apartment, and my sister.
Hey, sister.
She gave me the best advice. She says, live by yourself.
Don't live with a roommate or a friend or anybody.
Live by yourself before you get married.
[00:07:16] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:07:16] Speaker C: And it was the best advice.
But I remember that first night, I'm by myself and I'm in my apartment, and I'm like, what do I do?
I don't have anybody to talk to. And you know me, I'm a talker. I was like, what do I do? And I remember just being there.
[00:07:38] Speaker B: I remember my. I had a studio apartment. My first apartment.
Yeah. Being all alone. I had, like a TV that was this big.
But now I look back on it.
[00:07:49] Speaker C: You look back like, man, I was.
[00:07:51] Speaker B: I know. I know.
[00:07:52] Speaker C: So we know we can do it.
[00:07:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:56] Speaker C: You know, we know we have the strength to do it. We have the face to do it. We have the mindset, everything about it. But it's just.
It's like what Lindsay said when she was here, when she was here a few weeks ago. You know, one foot in, two out.
[00:08:09] Speaker B: Right.
[00:08:09] Speaker C: You know, you're just, like, testing the water, seeing if you can. And sometimes we just need to take that plunge.
[00:08:15] Speaker B: I know. And I think maybe it has to do, too. We talk all the time about the season of our lives that we're in, where we're like. We've got kids and a job and. But, like, we're like midlife. We can see that there's another chapter coming, but we're so in this one right now that we can't really embrace. Yeah. We have to be here now. We have to be here now, and we have to hopefully enjoy being here now. But I do think that I feel like I'm in a point in my life where it's like, yeah, I could be comfortable where I am for the foreseeable future.
But it's possible that there might be a deepening of the call or a change coming or even if it's just an internal change and not, like, moving. I'm not going to move out of state or do anything like that. Don't worry.
But do you know what I mean? This idea that God calls us beyond. God is always calling us beyond.
And in these readings, too, he promises, God shows us that things are possible that seems. Can seem impossible now. Right. Like, that's what the transfiguration, like, was assigned to them, that they knew Jesus one way and this was him showing his divinity to them in a more complete way than they had experienced before. Like, they knew him, but they didn't know all of him yet. And similarly with Abram, like, he just, you know. Yeah, he didn't have children, but God was gonna make him the promise. The father of a whole new nation. Right, right. Who was a childless old man. It didn't seem possible, but, like, that's what God shows us. It's like the, you know, just the vision of what could be.
[00:10:05] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:10:06] Speaker B: And the courage that it takes us to let go of the comfortable and take a step towards what could be, what God could be doing.
[00:10:15] Speaker C: And it's interesting.
[00:10:17] Speaker B: I don't know.
[00:10:17] Speaker C: I look at these readings and I was like, wow, that's really cool what happened so many years ago. And how does this relate now?
But it does, right. Like, God has shown to us that change needed to happen. I mean, last week we talked about Adam and Eve. That was a huge change.
You know, Jesus needed to change
[00:10:43] Speaker B: or
[00:10:43] Speaker C: the world needed to change. So Jesus was born. I mean, it was just like, okay, yeah, it seemed impossible then.
And Jesus lived the impossible.
And look what. You know, it's so.
[00:10:57] Speaker B: You know, I think, especially as Catholics, like, we have rituals so important to us. And I think even in my own spirituality and faith life, like, I have a lot of little daily rituals in my life. I open up all the blinds in the morning or at night. I close them all, and I turn the lamb. Just little things throughout my day that I just always do the same way. And it's like, there's a comfort in that and a beauty in that. But every so often when I go to take one of my walks for many, many years, I always went left.
I would go to the canal path and I would go left for two miles. And then I would turn around and come home. And then one day I was like, you know what? I'm gonna Go right.
[00:11:41] Speaker C: Oh, my gosh.
[00:11:42] Speaker B: I'm just gonna go two miles to the right and see what happens then. But then, now I always go to the right, so I just think sometimes
[00:11:50] Speaker C: it just don't go straight,
[00:11:54] Speaker B: but do you know what I mean? Like, making a small, intentional choice to just switch things up a little bit, drive home a different way. Or do you know, it can be very refreshing and surprising to just shake things up a little bit and see what happens.
[00:12:10] Speaker C: When I get to the point that I get home and I can't remember my ride home, I know is when I need to do a new route.
[00:12:17] Speaker B: You've come home in, like, just days, right?
[00:12:20] Speaker C: How do I. I'm home already. That.
[00:12:22] Speaker B: It freaks me out.
[00:12:23] Speaker C: But again, it's that comfortability.
[00:12:25] Speaker B: You.
[00:12:27] Speaker C: You knew you needed to get home. You took that road, and I.
It's. It's like my favorite quote. God doesn't call the qualified. He qualifies the call.
And we need to be able to quiet our hearts and quiet our minds. That we can hear that. And it's not always going to be as loud as it was with Abram or, you know, on the mountaintop. Experience.
[00:12:56] Speaker B: To be nimble enough to respond in a way that might. That you might not have been prepared for.
[00:13:03] Speaker C: Right.
[00:13:04] Speaker B: Or expecting.
[00:13:05] Speaker C: Right.
[00:13:06] Speaker B: You know? Nope. We're not putting up tents.
[00:13:09] Speaker C: Me, I was never gonna work for the Catholic Church.
[00:13:11] Speaker B: Right.
[00:13:12] Speaker C: Like, you just have that.
[00:13:14] Speaker B: That's part of changing our hearts, too, is just.
It's coming to the quiet to listen, but it's also acting.
[00:13:22] Speaker C: Action.
[00:13:23] Speaker B: Acting on it.
[00:13:23] Speaker C: That's why we love our team so much.
Cause it's not something where it's a word that is out there or, you know, abstract.
[00:13:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:37] Speaker C: This is a verb. You must do something at the end.
[00:13:41] Speaker B: Right. So, like, what would it look like if we let God take us on this adventure that we can't see more than, like, the next step ahead?
I feel like the word courage is coming up for us a lot. This Lent so far.
[00:13:54] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:13:55] Speaker B: I wasn't expecting that, but here we are.
[00:13:57] Speaker C: Here we are.
[00:13:58] Speaker B: The courage, huh?
The courage to change.
[00:14:03] Speaker C: Yeah.
I don't know. Life has become so comfortable.
And, you know, especially Father Rob always.
I love him when it's like, super cold, and I'm like, oh, I'm cold. He's like, well, at least she got a coat to wear, you know, Or.
I'm really starving.
[00:14:27] Speaker B: I'm starving.
[00:14:27] Speaker C: Well, at least she had breakfast this morning.
But, I mean, that's the comfortability of it. And, you know, to Step back and say, hey, I'm comfortable.
But what about all the people that are uncomfortable physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually?
And then if we take a step back from that, am I.
Am I really comfortable, or am I just pretending that it's comfortable? Because I don't want that you're carrying
[00:15:01] Speaker B: a comfortable burden or whatever your coat said.
[00:15:04] Speaker C: Yeah.
Oh, wow.
[00:15:07] Speaker B: I'm gonna be thinking about that all week.
You know what's weird is, like.
[00:15:11] Speaker C: It's like.
[00:15:12] Speaker B: Like, what are. The thing. I feel really. I feel like I complain about a lot of things.
Yeah, but I meant.
[00:15:19] Speaker C: Yeah for me.
[00:15:20] Speaker B: But I kind of like that I can.
[00:15:23] Speaker C: I didn't mean
[00:15:26] Speaker B: I like that I can complain about those things. I can reliably complain about the same things every day.
[00:15:37] Speaker C: Well, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and just expecting a different result.
So we can't just expect a different result by doing the same thing. We do need to have that change.
[00:15:52] Speaker B: All right, So I think that's.
[00:15:53] Speaker C: But, yeah, we always have these conversations which lead to more questions than actually answers.
But I think it's good. I mean, it raises a lot of emotions and possibilities of where it can
[00:16:07] Speaker B: lead us just to leave people with a challenge or a question for their week. Maybe something to think about would be, you know, what is that comfortable burden that you can set down this week? Or what is that one step you can take in a different direction out of your comfort zone so that you can be brave and courageous. Yeah. Move where God is leading you to.
[00:16:31] Speaker C: Go.
[00:16:31] Speaker B: Get out of the nest.
Fly. Fly, little bird.
[00:16:36] Speaker C: Okay. We can all fly. Well, we can because we have God with us.
So even though we don't think we can, we can.
[00:16:44] Speaker B: Yeah. God does the impossible.
[00:16:45] Speaker C: God does the impossible.
[00:16:46] Speaker B: Yep. All right, everyone.
[00:16:47] Speaker C: Okay, everyone, I think that was.
[00:16:48] Speaker B: We did it.
[00:16:49] Speaker C: We did it.
[00:16:49] Speaker B: We did it. All right, guys, have a great week. We'll see you next time.
[00:16:52] Speaker C: Bye.
[00:16:55] Speaker A: Thanks for taking a faith break with us today.
Karen Luke and Anne Gallagher are lay ministers with the parishes of Saint Catherine of Siena in Menden, New York, and Church of the Transfiguration in Pittsford, New York.
More about our parishes, including weekly live streamed Sunday mass, can be
[email protected] Faith Break is engineered by Jeff Beckett.
Join us for new episodes of Faith Break each week in Studio on YouTube or on your favorite audience audio podcast or music applied.
