Seeking Persephone

I watched Seeking Persephone over this last weekend because I kept seeing ads for it on Facebook, and because I remembered I have a Roku account.

I really enjoyed it. It's a sweet love story, it's British (or at least it tries to be; apparently the actors are Americans and it was shot in the UK with an American production team). It plays on the general theme of Beauty and the Beast. The rich but reclusive duke marries the beautiful maiden from a poor family, and the storyline is how they come to terms with each other.

She is a strong woman, determined to help her family and transform her husband by the power of her love. He has quiet, gentle character buried away under his gruff exterior. Love prevails and their hearts meet and melt into each other. It's all very beautiful, and as an added plus the whole movie is very clean, emotive, and sweet.

And of course the fantasy is totally not the way anything works. Persephone is a traumatized, parentified daughter (we learn her mother's death left her raising her siblings at age 12, and we see that her father is "a scholar" which basically means he is checked out of reality and does nothing to provide for his family). And yet, she is devoted, generous and strong, and completely capable of holding her own in relationship with the wealthy duke. And the duke's experience since childhood was feeling abandoned by his mother by behavior and father by death, and being filled with shame due to a physical defect. And yet one confession by his mother quickly corrects all of that and renders his heart completely open to the vulnerability his bride's beauty is working inside him. It's a beautiful fantasy that love reaches in and conquers all that -- ever so quickly -- but of course that's completely unrealistic. But it is so nice spend a few hours dreaming that marriage sight unseen can bring such beautiful things in the course of a few weeks. And that tenderness and courage to be vulnerable are simply waiting for the right breeze to blow to turn our hearts to lasting bliss. I mean, I have some oceanfront property to sell you in Nebraska. But that's why watching the movie feels good. We like magic to feel possible.

Every Ending is a Beginning

My heart is full. Today was the major ending of my Spiritual Direction Formation Program. There are a few more minor endings; two more things to hand in, two more meetings. Then finalizing of grades in September and the graduation pilgrimage in October. But today was the last time for meeting as the large group online. The last formation sessions. The first goodbyes.

And one theme of the day was how every ending is a beginning. 

And like the program has been, consistently, there was the structured theme and the theme that bubbled up during the discussions. So much gratitude. So many reports of how the course has absolutely transformed lives and has ran parallel to huge life upheavals.

During these two years (26 months, if you count from the time of my initial interview for joining), I've experienced a lot of endings and beginnings, none of which I saw coming. As I've been saying to my cohort for the last few months, there has been the formation course, and then there's been the Lord's formation work. Today I heard that this was a common experience for many. In May of 2024 I would not have believed that my journey would have taken the path that it has. But for both the sorrows and joys of it, I am extremely grateful. The Lord looked at my life and smiled and set about a process of transformation that I could not have dreamed up, even though I see all of my dreams reflected in it. For me it has been proof that He knows me, that He is good, that He is all powerful, and that He sees the burdens I have struggled to carry without yielding to His help for way, way, way too long. 

One thing stated today that more or less cinched up everything for me was this statement about what Carmelite spiritual direction is: It isn't about helping someone figure out which path to take. It is about unveiling the One who leads. Once you see the One who leads, you don't need the map. You trust the One who is leading. 

And that is where I am. Spatially, on the map of my life, to be honest, there's plenty I don't see about exactly where I am going. But I know Who is leading the way. And my job is to sing along with the Sister Act choir -- I Will Follow Him. No matter where He goes. No matter what it asks of me. No matter what anyone else thinks of it. I Will Follow Him. That is true freedom. And that is the only way to accompany people, because that frees me to walk with anyone the Lord brings to me in whatever way He is leading them. 

To journey with people from all over the world, under the leadership of an incredibly faith-filled group of Carmelite friars has been a particular gift. I love my adopted hometown of Steubenville, but it has been a real growth opportunity to have imput from outside of this Catholic bubble. It is wonderful to know that for as long as I've lived in my neighborhood, most of my neighbors have been Catholic and would pray for me in any need. But it is also a joy and a deep, cleansing breath to know that the Holy Spirit is so much bigger than the Us Four and No More feeling a local community can become over the course of years. It has reminded me that the presence of God is not dependent on only certain people or relationships. 

It is easy for me to grieve endings rather than see them as beginnings of a new stage. Life has taught me that. But God has taught me that hope is a theological virtue -- a supernatural gift of God oriented towards what He has in store. A vulnerable stance before new life, in new vistas. "Now to him who is able to accomplish far more than we can ask or imagine, by the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen." (Eph. 3:20-21) 

An Unsuspecting Turn Towards Poetry

This morning I was looking in my Liturgy of the Hours book for a Marian hymn and randomly opened to a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins called "My Own Heart Let Me More Have Pity On." 

I was what I suppose you would call dumbfounded by this poem. So many thoughts crowding in, like children eager to see the cool thing and ask a hundred questions about it. 

I've been on a journey lately that has taken a decided turn towards lessons of self-compassion. When these lessons started, I was suspicious of the Holy Spirit. Self-compassion just didn't fit the schema I had unwittingly marinated in for so long. Finding this in my breviary (ok, yes, the same book that also contains Morning Has Broken, which makes me roll my eyes, which possibly also is a fault) made me realize that perhaps I am not the only one that the Holy Spirit has taken through this course. And perhaps, just perhaps, I ought to acknowledge that this has been a holy journey, and treat it accordingly.

That was the first thought.

I thought of how many priests I've heard quote Hopkins in homilies over the years, especially at my first parish, Gesu. Come to think of it, I was suspicious then, too.

Charitable. That word just tumbles out like its own sermon. One does not argue with a call to be charitable. Not even with oneself. 

I thought of how in the Psalms the author is often talking to his own soul just like Hopkins does here. "Let be!" Today this struck me gently, almost playfully, but I know there are other days when I have to say it more sternly.

This line made so much hope rise up in me: "let joy size At God knows when to God knows what." It's like peeling back the normal sarcasm or jadedness to hear the actual truth underneath. Because God does know when and God does know what, and I can trust Him with that.

And then the crescendo for me: "whose smile 's not wrung" -- isn't that just the longing of every human heart. A genuine smile, directed at me. Not forced or contrived or uncomfortable or awkward or apologetic or announcing departure. But a smile that stays and gazes. At me.

I love how Hopkins makes up words. His soul is saying something and to come close he has to jumble through his verbal workshop and jimmy something together. Hah! I guess you normally jimmy something apart, but you get the idea.

Then the last kicker. I read the poem and I had tears in my eyes thinking about how I used to love poetry. I used to love literature. Back in college, studying English, really losing myself in authors and finding myself in the emotion of it all. And I thought, where did she go? It was before I joined the charismatic fellowship and significantly before I became Catholic. I wasn't consumed in how a certain practice of Christianity had to define how I related to others in this world, I, a young adult who was so incredibly unsure of so much, and wanted doctrine to be a fortress that protected me because I wasn't sure how to be a person and doctrine was the only thing that had ever presented itself as absolute. I thought about how many layers of skin I've shed since then, about how my conversion to Catholicism happened on the Feast of the Nativity, the celebration of the Incarnation, when God became Man to teach man to become God. And when mystic lovers like John of the Cross try to speak about the soul and God, they have to resort to poetry, because mere words can't do it. 

It's like I became reacquainted with a certain part of My Own Heart, of which perhaps I should say Let Me More Have Pity On. Perhaps I have squashed too much down too hard because I thought what God wanted was a certain brand of religiosity, like forcing myself into a pizzelle press, instead of being

what was that word?

Charitable.

Therese, again

So, it's about time for a "shoot from the hip" post from me. Why the heck not.

I'm in the middle of writing an essay on St. Therese and the Little Way. I've told the story several times within my Carmelite community about how I was never really a fan of St. Therese before entering Carmel, and when I first approached the community, I figured I should see what all the fuss was about, and actually read Story of a Soul. I read it, and was duly unimpressed. What I saw was a perfect little girl from a perfect family who loved Jesus perfectly and then she died. It took me a few years to really understand her life, and to comprehend that she actually has a lot to say to people of this generation who deal with things like abandonment wounds, depression, and anxiety. I realized she is not at all a bit of pious fluff, despite the popular images of her with her roses and gentle smile and her beautiful, fresh face. 

But this Spring, she ripped into me. Her Little Way hits like Marine Corps boot camp. Forget picking up pins for the love of God. She is after taking one's whole life and throwing it with wreckless abandon into the arms of the Merciful God -- whom she knew with every fiber of her being was true and real, but whom she often experienced as sleeping, and whom she could not feel at all for the last stretch of her life as she died a miserable death from tuberculosis. She had delighted in heaven all her life, and when she came to her end, she wasn't even sure heaven would be there -- perhaps it was all going to be a black void on the other side. She was happy to sit at the table with the atheists, not as one of them, but to understand how some people might actually not believe there is a God; and to "share their bread" so that they could come to believe. She was incredibly brave. When she struggled to feel her faith, she wrote out the Creed in her own blood and kept the copy on her heart. She loved God and neighbor palpably to the end, but she could not feel faith. It was like God surrounded her so profoundly that she had no sense of faith, like not being able to taste your tongue. 

Her physical suffering was horrendous, and the treatments, such as mercury, were almost worse than the illness. That alone was enough to drive her nearly mad. She struggled with suicidal thoughts and advised the Sisters in the future to keep medicines away from suffering patients, because the temptation to end it all was quite strong. And in the midst of all this, she wrote about her Little Way.

And no, it isn't about picking up pins for the love of God because you are too inept to do anything else. (No Holy Spirit for you!) Ultimately it is about embracing your poverty, your littleness, your vulnerability. Not trying to fix it, not trying to be an ascetic super hero, not trying to be impressive for God, but to embrace that you are a little nothing. But here's the key that I'm talking about in my paper: Therese knew that because God revealed it to her. And here's how that hits me. God did not come and say "Therese, you are a little nothing." He came and said, Therese, here I am, and I am yours. And she corresponded to this grace, and saw herself as she actually is. God's magnificence revealed to her her vulnerability, her need. And therefore, she felt absolutely no drive to stop being small. In fact, it was her whole identity, because it was her correspondence to God's Almighty power.

What she received by a special grace, she teaches the rest of us to embrace by faith.

So when I feel my vulnerability: my trauma, the way people I have loved have left me, they way I feel my powerlessness to change situations that cannot be changed, my material needs, my emotional needs, my relational needs, my own volitility, my own realities in a thousand ways -- Therese says, yes, love that. Delight to see yourself just like that. And know that God loves you just like that. It's not that he wants us to suffer or be exploited or stuck. But just as we are -- just as we are -- that's how He loves us. And that's how He bids us come to Him. That's how He embraces us. 

In Therese's day, people were under the pressure of Jansenism. It really isn't so much different today, in many quarters. Try really hard to be good for God, to prove your love, to prove your worthiness, to prove your repentance, to prove yourself to God. Trytrytrytrytrytry. For Therese, cooperating with grace means surrendering, abandoning the whole thing to the Father and trusting that He wants nothing more than to love His little one. 

The little one, dying a painful, horrid death with no spiritual feelings in her at all. So little. United to Christ. And fruitful beyond measure in her death for the conversion of souls and poured out graces. 

So in my ripped open state, I'm hearing the call of faith to fling myself trustingly into the waiting arms of the Father. With trust and gratitude. With the pure expectation of finding Him and being immersed in His love. 

It's not a matter of first decision, or even the thousandth decision to trust Him. It's the decision to do give all, every moment, holding nothing back, with confidence that he's given me vulnerability. He's not given me perfect healing, perfect mental health, perfect relationships, perfect composure, peace, trust, or serenity. I'm a mess; a little nothing, and Therese says, "believe that is exactly who God loves. And run to Him."

One of my fellow Carmelites who also had some frustration with Therese once commented, "This is just the gospel. She didn't discover something new!" That's true enough, in a way. But all I can say is there comes a moment when God calls YOU to an act of total abandonment through a young French woman who taps you on the shoulder, and then it just hits different. It's not new; it's personal.

Infilling of Love

Over the last year I have been actively grappling with the Scripture verse which was the Communion Antiphon of today's Mass. It's a verse I have tripped over interiorly for decades, and I've written about it before: "Whoever wishes to come after me, must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me, says the Lord." (Matthew 16:24). 

It's that phrase "deny himself" that I have struggled with without being able to put words on the struggle until recently. 

I wrote my essay on St. John of the Cross in my third term of my Spiritual Direction Formation Program on what this verse does and does not mean. It does not mean self-abandonment, where one perpetuates the denial of one's own needs. John's context for climbing Mount Carmel and desiring "nada" is the overwhelming love of God.

This term, I am writing an essay on St. Therese and the Little Way, and again my theme is that it was God Himself in revealing Himself to her who caused her to understand that the embrace of her littleness, her vulnerability as they key to sanctity, not as something to be ashamed of or to try to overcome through effort. 

When I heard this verse recited this morning, my mind immediately translated it in a very new way for me: "If you want to follow me, you had better be convinced that I am God Almighty, full of love and compassion, even in the cross." In other words, if you want to follow Jesus but aren't sure He's Love, you are going to be very disappointed here, because the Christian life is designed to empty you. And you're only going to go for that if you believe God will fill you beyond what you lose in the emptying. 

It puts an entirely different light on the matter for me. God is not applauding when we make ourselves suffer by believing our basic needs don't matter. Suffering doesn't sanctify. Suffering is an evil. Making space for the infilling of Love is in a completely different category.