A short story by Tim O’Brien, “The Things They Carried,” centers on items that soldiers in Viet Nam stuffed into their pockets while on patrol: Bibles, cigarettes, tooth picks, letters from home. Sometimes, something as simple as a pack of Planters Peanuts helped those grunts remember where they came from and who they were. The things they carried, in a sense, carried them.
          Last week, a seminarian from Ohio visited me. Josh was just a kid when I transferred from my native place to a mission diocese out West. As soon as he arrived, memories of home started to flit through my mind like sparrows in a barn. Throughout his stay, as we talked at table, on long drives and even while praying the Office, I found myself reliving days of baling hay, butchering hogs and playing CYO basketball. One moment, I would be on my grandmother’s porch, the next, I’d be tending her sheep.
          Josh stepped into my world like a nephew, so similar was his upbringing, accent and demeanor.
          He hung around for a week. We explored the neighborhoods of my rural towns and the lay of the land. I shared with him my joy and fulfillment in being involved in the lives of so many people: teenagers, parents, the addicted, the elderly, immigrants, inmates, factory workers, ranch hands, maids, lawyers, and on and on. I introduced him many of them, hoping he would notice the longing for God in the gleam in their eyes, their trembling hands and the worries that keep them awake at night.
          I love sharing the life that I love yet, in the midst of my gushing, I sensed a bit of apprehension in Josh. That evening, after prayers, we spoke about it.
          Drawn to a life of service as a priest, Josh also finds marriage and family appealing. This, of course, comes as no surprise. Vocation discernment is arduous. Josh seemed particularly perplexed with the questions, Why me? and What for? In the silence that followed, I recalled something that a spiritual director once told me: “Look for the grace,” he said to me. “In everything, look for the grace.”
          So, I looked at Josh and said, “Ease up on the why’s and the what’s. Focus on the wows!”
          This only deepened his confusion, but what I meant was cultivate an attitude of gratitude.
          “In all walks of life, Josh, gratitude is key. When a soldier carries a family picture in his wallet, he keeps marching. So too with priesthood.”
          When I am alert to signs of grace, it shows up all over the place. Some days, I can hardly heft my pastoral backpack to my shoulders, so full it is with blessings: star-filled skies and red rock canyons; mariachi bands and country music, dented trucks and hardware stores, friends as close as family and, now, a seminarian toting a care package of memories from Ohio.
          I am convinced that the memories we carry will carry us home…to Him. Indeed, life is a plunge into the river of God, its current as soft as a woodland creek, its rapids as thrilling as a mountain run.