So Chilliwack is an island, and there’s no escape. Hopefully, by the time this is printed things will have changed, but as I type, the roads are closed and the water is rising. God protect all of those working to help people in need.

The gas stations are closed, and people are on grocery runs. Scott went to the store yesterday to get eggs, and he sent me a picture of the line-up of people outside. On the inside people were filling their baskets with whatever was left on the shelves.

Today I had to get a prescription filled, and the poor people at the pharmacy were overloaded with requests for refills. I noticed the lack of certain oddities: cotton swabs, acetaminophen, diapers, bacon. Even nasty things like soy milk were out of stock. Desperate times.

I stopped into the grocery store to get some pasta noodles and after browsing around made my way into the line. The elderly man in front of me was unloading his cart, and a friendly woman was chatting with him. She exclaimed, with all sincerity, “My, you sure are a healthy eater!”

Now, I like to think that I respect other people’s privacy, but the exclamation coupled with the fact that he was unloading right in front of me meant that I ended up scanning through his future fridge contents.

I had to smile, because the man was loading two containers of powdered doughnuts onto a pile of processed lasagnas, and chips. There may have been bananas, and those would indeed count as healthy, but the rest of his purchase was not what I would typically consider wholesome. I had two boxes of ice cream in my cart, so I wasn’t being judgmental. I just found the woman’s definition of health curious.

I looked beside me and there too was a young mom with her cart full of sugary cereals, chips, and pop. It seemed to be a theme that people in a panic for groceries felt led to snacks and sugar. Maybe for comfort.

But as I was driving home I was thinking about our times, and the madness around us. I wondered at people’s desperate fear of sickness and death. How we work so hard to avoid sickness while not working very hard at actually being healthy. I know people who run for antibacterial mouthwash whenever they hear someone cough, and yet their baskets are still full of potato chips and soda pop – desperate to live, but not concerned with health. I think that’s called irony.

More importantly, it led me to think about how this applies to the soul, the spiritual life. I know the reality of hell. I believe in it. I would say that I desperately do not want to go there. But is my focus on avoiding hell, or is it on true spiritual health, on loving God and joining him in heaven? Am I just getting by, going to Mass on Sundays but still living as one with the world? Do I make any effort in true piety: prayer, adoration, confession, acts of mercy, the Eucharist? These are the superfoods of the soul. They are what will take us out of spiritual lethargy and bring us into a true relationship of love with God.

I know that many mornings my prayer time is rushed and distracted, but I soothe myself by saying, “At least I got it done.” It’s as though I filled some kind of a quota, I did what was necessary to survive spiritually. And then I go on with my day, convinced that my “obligation” has been fulfilled. But focusing on obligation is not the way of love.

Love of God, like love of life, cannot grow in fear. I cannot give my heart to God and truly love him, truly know and serve him, when my efforts are spent on just avoiding hell. My soul is meant for more than just a slow-pulsed but still breathing existence.

It takes a certain type of courage to love and live fully, but I believe God desires this fullness of life for each of us. I have a sense of awe when I meet someone who has given themselves so completely to God. There is just something different about them, something that comes with abandonment in such a great, trusting love. But that ability to abandon oneself is only possible when there is a commitment, made in love, to do more than the minimum. A soul truly alive makes the most out of all the ways God reaches out and reveals himself to us.

God asks that we give ourselves entirely to him as he has given himself entirely to us. And out of that gift of self, we will grow in his abundant love.