Naru Hodo

Christians in Relationship: What Gives?

2012-01-30T14:22:00.000-05:00

Tell me the truth: Does this describe the relationships you experience within your parish, your diocese?

We thank God constantly that in receiving his message from us you took it, not as the word of men, but as it truly is, the word of God at work within you who believe.

Brothers, you have been made like the churches of God in Judea which are in Christ Jesus. You suffered the same treatment from your fellow countrymen as they did from the Jews who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and persecuted us. Displeasing to God and hostile to all mankind, they try to keep us from preaching salvation to the Gentiles. All this time they have been “filling up their quota of sins,” but the wrath has descended upon them at last.

Brothers, when we were orphaned by separation from you for a time—in sight, not in mind—we were seized with the greatest longing to see you. So we tried to come to you—I, Paul, tried more than once—but Satan blocked the way. Who, after all, if not you, will be our hope or joy, or the crown we exult in, before our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming? You are our boast and our delight.

That is why, when we could endure it no longer, we decided to remain alone at Athens and send you Timothy. He is our brother and God’s fellow worker in preaching the gospel of Christ, and so we sent him to strengthen and encourage you in regard to your faith lest any of you be shaken by these trials. You know well enough that such trials are our common lot. When we were still with you, we used to warn you that we would undergo trial; now it has happened, and you know what we meant.

That is why I sent to find out about your faith when I could stand the suspense no longer, fearing that the tempter had put you to the test and all our labor might have gone for nothing.

But now, brothers, since Timothy has returned to us from you reporting the good news of your faith and love, and telling us that you constantly remember us and are as desirous to see us as we are to see you, we have been much consoled by your faith throughout our distress and trial—so much so that we shall continue to flourish only if you stand firm in the Lord!

What thanks can we give to God for all the joy we feel in his presence because of you, as we ask him fervently night and day that we may see you face to face and remedy any shortcomings in your faith?

May God himself, who is our Father, and our Lord Jesus make our path to you a straight one! And may the Lord increase you and make you overflow with love for one another and for all, even as our love does for you. May he strengthen your hearts, making them blameless and holy before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his holy ones. (1 Thess. 2:13 - 3:13, Grail Translation)

What has happened to the ability of Christians to have a holy ardor one for another, the type of which St. Paul bears witness to in his letter to a church he birthed through his preaching. What stake to we have in each other's lives?

Sin separates us from God, within ourselves, and from our neighbor. It almost seems we seek comfort in this separation. Everyone knows some horror story of relationships between Christians gone crazy, whether it is an account of a pedophile or of a preacher's thinly veiled attraction to adultery disguised as a new revelation to lead his congregation to greater "spiritual intimacy" with one another. Wild stories scare us perhaps because our own propensity to sin scares us. After all, we don't want to fall into some sort of horrendous sin, right?

Such "fear of sin" might simply be a cloak for sin itself. Fear might simply confirm one in spiritual torpor and sloth. Remember what Bl. Teresa of Calcutta said of the West:

“You, in the West, have millions of people who suffer such terrible loneliness and emptiness. They feel unloved and unwanted. These people are not hungry in the physical sense, but they are in another way. They know they need something more than money, yet they don't know what it is.
“What they are missing, really, is a living relationship with God.”

We cannot hope to share the gospel of Christ in any meaningful way without sharing our lives. We cannot share our lives with the sin that separates us left as an obstacle which we avoid rather than address. Forget preaching to others unless in the first place we bend our knees and fling our hearts open to radiance of the Blessed Trinity. Let the ardor of Christ captivate and transform you. Then, live the reality He has shown you.

Because Your Love is Better than Life

2012-01-26T14:35:00.001-05:00

Dear Jesus,

At different times in my life you have called to me. You've called to me through the presence, the concern, the service, the love of a lot of people. I've not noticed them all, I'm sure. But that didn't stop you from sending me more people who've helped me to see your face and know your heart. Now I know for sure that you love me and I can trust you, even when I don't understand.

What's more, Jesus, I know You do this sort of thing for everyone. And you can do this through everyone. I know that, just as I wouldn't have the exact certainty of Your love that I have, were it not for certain people I've known, so You've worked it out that other people out there are not going to have their certainty of Your love for them without me.

So, for the people who need me in order to see You, I pray, dear Jesus. I pray for me: help me to stay extremely sensitive to You and Your movements and Your love for all. I pray for them: help them to open their hearts to You in love and trust.

For your love, oh Lord, is better than life! (Ps. 63:4)

Amen.

Overture to Carmel?

2012-01-22T23:43:00.000-05:00

It's been a little shocking to me to realize how intricately my life has been wound around working on my CD. In one way or another, either the question or the reality of this project has been etching itself into my heart and soul for over a year. I suppose etching is one of those things one might not notice is actually happening while it happens. I mean, I did, but... It's like a sound that is constant, and all of a sudden there is silence. There's a little bit something death-like to having that part of this process be complete. And yet it is not so much a grieving type of death. It feels maybe more like the end of one movement of something and the silence before the next movement starts.

It just feels weird.

I feel like I have done everything I need to do. Yes, I have 1,000 of these puppies coming my way in a few weeks, and I will need to do what I can to sell them and reassure my husband that I have not wasted a couple thousand dollars. But already I know the money is not wasted. I did not make this CD because I think I have this amazing, stellar talent that needs attention and showcasing. Gag. I did not make this CD because of a desire to "minister to people." God does that. Really, I made this CD out of a sense of obedience to God, and out of a sense -- now I see how accurate that sense was -- that I needed this process for the salvation of my own soul.

I have no idea what happens next, and frankly if nothing much happens next other than a few people buying CDs and saying "oh, that's nice," I'm perfectly fine with that. But I know that God is doing something interiorly in me. I know it is good. So many times I get this aching sense of God doing something, I usually can't say what, but I want to say something about it. And I usually can't, so why do I try? Why? I guess because I want to understand! I want to know where I am and where I am going.

That's reasonable, right?

All I know is that my heart is very drawn to Carmel. This is not strange. The Carmelite saints have made my heart burn since the first time I met them. I was writing a paper for my Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy class on Christian Mysticism, and as I read St. Theresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, as well as Hugh of St. Victor and others, I was bowled over. My heart had longed for a place it felt at home spiritually, and even though I was in a Lutheran college and attending a non-denom fellowship, I remember dropping the book on the table and praying emphatically, "Lord, if there is anyone left on the face of the earth who lives and believes like these folks, these are the people I want to be with."

A couple of years later when I first started talking with my friend who had returned to his Catholic faith and upset my whole life by it, I asked him, "are there people around still like St. Theresa of Avila?" I expected him to say no, of course not, but he not only assured me there were but later provided me with a little book about Teresian prayer. I spent lots of time at Holy Hill during my conversion process and afterwards.

And then a couple years ago, after my parish choir started messing with my life in divine ways, St. John of the Cross seemed to start resounding in my life powerfully again, especially through the book Impact of God, which I wrote about here. And on it has gone from there. I've been in touch with the local Carmelite community. It makes sense.

Being drawn to Carmel isn't about playing around, though. I discovered, for example, that recording is hard work. It is not only singing and deciding and doing musical things, there was a lot of emotional investment and a lot of working out being free interiorly so that the music could come out. It is hard work of every sort, body, soul and spirit. And I saw my weaknesses, for example in playing guitar -- I wished I'd spent more of the last 20 years playing guitar and not getting so dreadfully rusty. (God supplied the help I needed, thankfully, for I don't need to have all abilities myself!) But hard work demonstrates the need for hard work. If one doesn't work hard, one believes it doesn't matter, and the doors that could open otherwise stay shut. I have the same sense about being drawn to the commitment of prayer. Prayer can't be about giving me warm fuzzies of one sort or another. I don't, I mustn't love God nor people in order to please myself or get happy.

Really, being drawn to Carmel is really being drawn to Christ. He has so many ways to call to us and draw us and teach us and lead us on, but the goal is all the same: union with the Blessed Trinity in Christ. Part and parcel of that is being the frail, weak and sinful human beings we are and opening ourselves to the grace which infills and transforms.

I don't know what comes tomorrow. But this is what I see today.

What is God Whispering to You?

2012-01-16T00:01:00.000-05:00

In the last few years it seems to me that the Lord takes about a year or so to communicate to me one sentence, one thought. And I don't mean that the Lord says the same thing over and over again to me for a year. It is more like the one thought takes that long to reach from His heart to mine.

Just today I read someone quoting Pope Benedict in asking "What is God whispering to you?" I didn't see the context of this quote, but I like it just the way it stands because it presumes rather than proposes this kind of Divine Whisper. Of course God whispers to our souls. Whispers can be easily overlooked when we are distracted, and I think they can be scary when we perceive them. At least I think of that when a human being near me whispers to me. I used to tend to ignore the first whisper I'd hear probably out of fear of looking too eager to respond, and worrying that it was just my wishful thinking that someone wanted my "secret" attention. I think I have treated God's whispers that way too sometimes. Couldn't be God. Wish it were. But why would God want my attention?!

What is God whispering to me? It takes courage to consider it. It takes faith; it takes trust. I am wanted by God. When I face that fact it makes me glow with joy.

What is God whispering to me? Right now?

This CD I've been working on is nearly complete, and soon I'll have 1000 copies (!) to try to pawn off on people. This project has been a work of faith from the very beginning. The only reason I undertook it was that I felt God call me to do so. It has been His desire. It has been like a large work of penance for me, and God has provided for all that I have needed along the way. I've learned a lot in many ways, and I've watched God prove His faithfulness once again. I feel my many shortcomings and I have a much more realistic view of myself. I've learned how good and pleasant it is to rely on other people for help, and how to value them rightly. I've changed a lot.

But through all that good stuff, what is God whispering to me? I think of the song Daughter which appears as the final track. This song spoke to me powerfully -- dramatically -- when I first heard it. The song in and of itself was an encounter with the Lord, coming as it does right from Scripture, and from the voice one whom God had already used in a powerful way in my life. This song ministered life to me, pure and simple. What God is whispering to me is that I've come full circle, and now He ministers life through me. I was a broken mess when that song reached me in 1986. I had "broken mess" as my identity for quite some time, too. What God is whispering to me is that long ago He crumpled up that identity and blew it away, and that something new has emerged.

I suppose the act of recording music for others to hear is itself an offering of healing to the world. That's my concept behind the CD cover art (which unfortunately I can't figure out how to post just now). The image is supposed to communicate one who receives from God, and in dramatic surrender to God extends himself to the viewer/listener for that healing to touch him/her, too. One could say that's the theme behind all of the songs, too.

But I know it is about so much more than singing, music, or these songs. These are just tangible markers for something God is doing deep within me. It is quite simple. God is love. He bestows love, Himself, on us His creatures. Experiencing God's love, I am drawn to love in return not only Him but in Him, all He has created -- primarily other human souls. My love extended out draws that which I love back to God, because there is this one rhythm of love that God breathes: I give to you, you give to Me, I give to you, you give to Me. When we love, we give that which we love back to God. Therefore we should never ever be afraid of love or afraid to love. The trick lies in the purification of our souls so that we are not calling "love" something which is simply the indulgence of our carnality and pride.

What is God whispering to me? Love. Go and love. It's not a feeling; it is definitely not an indulgence. It is giving back to God (by giving to others) that which He has given to me. It takes deliberate choice, courage, faith, humility. This is how I worship God.

Lord, graciously help me to walk in the light You have given.

The Meaning Series: Deliberate

2012-01-15T15:58:00.000-05:00

This is the last of the songs from Unleashed I have to write about. It was also the last one to be recorded, because I had intended to use a different song called Song of the Bride, but I couldn't get that one to come together the way I wanted it to. I wrote this one October 26, 2011 at the direction of my friend Br. Neven Pesa, who had challenged me to write a song every week last fall. My particular assignment when I wrote this song was to get out my father's keyboard (which has been mine since he passed 10 years ago) and write a song entirely on keyboard. Despite the fact that I don't play the keyboard. It seemed an impossible task even simply on the emotional level of taking something of my father's and really making it mine in the intimate way one must to write music. Then of course there was the minor detail of having not seriously played piano, even to play around with it, for three decades. Then there was the time frame of one week. Then there was the need for inspiration for lyrics.

But, he had challenged me, and nothing motivates me like trying to live up to an agreement made to a friend. The result was a song that I really like (and Neven really liked to, and was impressed with) that just dug like a shovel right into my guts at the time. It is not complicated musically, as one might expect, and the song depends on the vocals for color and interest.

Here are the lyrics:

Can you tell me what you do to crack an egg
Do you tap-tap-tap that thing just a little bit
Oh no, no, no
But you can’t lose control
You can’t smash it with your fist

You gotta make the break deliberate
Uh huh huh
Make the break deliberate
Uh huh huh
Make the break deliberate
Make the break deliberate

Now you see I’ve got a heart that’s like an egg
What it holds down deep inside I gotta give if I will live
Oh yeah yeah yeah
Why do I resist the hand that comes to bring me life

I gotta make the break deliberate (etc)

I trust you
I trust You
I trust You

So in my life I choose to lay it all on the line
I will die with you so that my heart can truly live
Uh yeah yeah yeah
Taken blessed broken given now to feed a hungry world

This song speaks to me where I am right now. To serve Christ, we must make conscious choices for Him. This song goes through my mind, for example, when I wake in the morning and have to climb out of my warm bed in order to pray instead of sleep some more. Simple example, but most of our decisions to die to ourselves are of this order.

My friend Joe Zamberlan stepped in to play the piano for me as my own keyboard skills might be enough to create the music, but not to play it without lots of stops and starts. The whole song was rehearsed and recorded all on January 4. Finally, after six months of recording, I have gotten to the point where I can sing a song the way I mean for it to sound in just one or two takes. I think in reality I'm just about ready now to start recording!

The Meaning Series: Sunday Morning

2012-01-15T15:34:00.000-05:00

Unleashed is now finished, in terms of recording. Tomorrow we do the mastering, and then it is done! And I have two songs that I haven't written about yet.

I wrote Sunday Morning on November 16, 1986 when I was a few days shy of 19. (It was so long ago I was still Lutheran!) This song came to me as sort of a surprise, and for that reason I've always had a unique kind of respect for it. That is to say, I remember vividly starting out to write this song primarily as an expression of self-pity. It is about a lonely person who goes to church. But as I wrote about my fictionalized self in the third person, it was as if in my prayer the Lord met me, right there, and asked me to look at my situation with different eyes. As a result, the ending of the song literally surprised me as I wrote it, and spoke to me at a very deep level of my need. Jesus essentially told me that I was not the real lonely one in a religious, communal, or social setting; it is He. He is lonely and aching for us to see Him.

Here are the lyrics:

Sunday morning and he walks into your church
He sits in a pew towards the back
He listens to the sermon and he sings the hymns and he praysthe prayers
Why still does he feel like no one here really cares

We go to church and we sit in our separate private clans
Unaware of the need our brother has
Do you see a tear trickle down his face
Or are you trying to soak up all God’s grace for you

Don’t you know that Jesus died for that one you’ve refusedto see
Jesus’ love isn’t only for you and me

Back in church again, and yes I see him sitting there
But tell me please, what should I say
I say “good morning” look at him and I even shake his hand
I’ve done my duty, now I can be through with this man

Just like that I left him in my church today
Never meaning to give him a second thought
Then I looked into the hand that I shook with his a
And I saw the blood from the wounds of the nails that heldhim high

Through the eyes of the least of them
Jesus searches us
What answer will you give when he asks “where is your love.”

I changed some of the phrases in the lyrics some years ago to better express the theological truth of the song (my original ending sounded rather harsh). But essentially the message is that the real measure of a Christian is his love for the forgotten ones who are right in our midst. For years and years I was quite invested in different avenues of spiritual pride, in making sure I looked very holy to myself and others. But acts of real love done in secret for needy ones? That kind of thinking or behaving wasn't even on my radar screen. There is truly nothing scarier than a loveless Christian. It is such a contradiction in terms. But if Christian formation is all about right doctrine, right information, and right experiences, and holiness is seen primarily in terms of keeping away from contaminants (namely, other people whose thoughts and experiences are not up to par with mine) -- that is pretty much a recipe for loveless Christians. The call to follow Christ has to be all about Him ravishing our souls, alluring us, awakening such a desire within us that we can no longer be satisfied with anything but more of Him. Let right doctrine follow, but let us not be skeletal and unenfleshed. Let us hang on His every word and cast ourselves into every one of His precepts not out of a prideful desire to be right, but out of a lover's abandon to her beloved: I don't care what you ask of me; everything and anything you say is the only place my heart can dwell in peace, but You who are all Good say nothing but that which makes me fully myself, so I also trust you completely....

The popular video of late by the young man who claims to hate religion but love Jesus has reminded me of this song. When I wrote this, I was quite in the thick of his thinking, and it was precisely because I was experiencing loveless Christianity. Catholics might rightly point out that going to church is not a social situation but a communal one; we are not there to love on each other, but to commune with Christ. As a Catholic, I know that now. But the missing factor is that if we do not have an experience of loving on each other we will not be able to enter into communion with Christ in the way He intends. Yes, God can and does supernaturally overcome all of our sin-created barriers, but His standard way of operating is using the love of the Body of Christ to bring sinners to repentance. Once upon a time, families came standard with a sense of communal love. In our culture I don't believe one should ever presume that today, even among "church" families. We can argue doctrine (and I believe fully that right doctrine is absolutely essential), but love must be the alpha and the omega. To love is to be holy. Period. St. John of the Cross reminds us that our final judgment will be based on how we have loved. Period. And it is futile to think we can adequately love other people without surrendering our hearts in love to the Lover who seeks us and waits for access to our hearts, who awaits our surrender.

Anyway, these are some thoughts generated in me by this song today.

Outspoken

2012-01-09T22:48:00.000-05:00

Been thinking lately about why I write. This blog has undergone several shifts in focus since I started it almost five years ago. Heck, I've undergone several shifts during that time! I'm not really sure if I have "regular" readers anymore. And I certainly haven't been that regular with writing, myself. No complaints on either account, though. Life ebbs and flows and it is all good.

Writing has always been necessary for me on one level. That is to say, there have been many times when I've needed to express something but could not speak it. Writing therefore is more natural to me than speaking. It gives me time to decide what I want to say, and to "unsay" it if necessary.

Really, I think what has been on my mind is this: On the short list of meaningful things that God has spoken to my heart was something back about 20 years ago now, give or take. These were the words: "I have called you to be an outspoken person." That was about as bizarre as Jesus saying to the dead girl, "Little girl I say to you, arise!" At the time this happened, I had a hard enough time saying anything to anyone, let alone being outspoken, frank, blunt about anything. And yet, there it was. Bizarre.

As I look back I see that God has had a process going. What does it all take within a person to be outspoken? I can only answer for myself. As a very intuitive person, I often can "see" or sense things in a sort of entirety without being able to put a whit of it into words. Words, in that case, become like a second language that I have to learn first. So, part of being outspoken means to spend a long time in meditation, in soaking, in marinating in something. I have the words when the thing itself has sunk into me and arises as if of its own accord. And I think bluntness comes from experience of a thing to such a degree that I could not deny it without betraying my soul. I am by nature pretty flexible and open-ended, but if I have, for example, suffered from listening to a certain song too many times I will tell you bluntly I can't stand it. Or if I've suffered interiorly over someone I can tell them bluntly that I love them. Does bluntness always come from a passionate experience of the soul? Isn't one of the greatest maladies of our time this tendency to keep our lives neutral, numb to passionate feelings of joy or pain, free from the suffering that passion produces? Of fear of those intense sort of experiences?

This is all on my mind lately because more and more I feel myself being drawn to actually be outspoken. I spent decades of my life hearing the internal tape say "shut up and go away." That tape has been dismantled, but from habit there are times when I think "should I say something, really?" and always this echo comes back to my heart "I've called you to be an outspoken person," and so more often than not I tend to speak up. Now, I know there is a time to speak and a time for silences. No one enjoys a pontificater, or a know-it-all, or a self-centered blabber. Least of all myself. Dead horses need not be beaten. That's not the type of speaking out I'm talking about. And to be honest, right now some of the "speaking" I'm speaking about is writing. But it is also spilling over in my life to those I communicate with mostly by talking. I have to sort of look and marvel at this, because I know myself and my history, and I have to see this as a development in grace. Like all development in grace, every new step is like the very first one, just at the starting gate. And the grace is there to serve God's grander designs and purposes. Don't claim to have all that figured out. But, there's something going on here that is a new thing.

Accept Heaven's Peace

2012-01-01T17:47:00.002-05:00

On the first of every month, our Lord gives Anne a new message about His call to service.
For more information, see www.directionforourtimes.org.

January 1, 2012

Jesus

May the peace of heaven continually surround each of my beloved apostles. My friends, there are times when the peace of heaven must pursue you, because, despite its best efforts, you elude peace. My peace then follows you, waiting for you to pause long enough to accept it. When you bring yourself into My presence, then My peace can absorb you and saturate you so that where you go, it can follow. If you are alert to Me, you will see that others are blessed by Me through you. Dear apostles, please accept that this is happening and be reverent about what I am seeking to do. Are you with Me in this effort of renewal? Do you seriously consider that I am determined to bring light to others through you? If you will accept this more fully, I can work more freely. If you move too quickly through your days, convinced that you are not achieving as many actions and tasks as you would like, then you may be missing what is obvious to heaven, that is, that you are surrounded by grace and protected by light. When you rest into this reality, you will see how effectively I am serving the world through you. Truly, I am loving people and comforting them through your soul because each day, Heaven moves into the world through the souls of those who are willing to serve. Allow Me please, to continue, and allow Me please, to sustain you personally. It is not My plan that you become dispirited and hopeless. It is My plan that if you suffer, you suffer peacefully, confident about My presence in your cross. I want you to work calmly, confident of My effectiveness in your work. You must be brave enough to love completely, confident of the benefit the world feels because of your decision to serve Me in whatever place you have found yourself on each day. Rejoice, dear apostles. Look forward with Me to greater holiness. I will protect My plan for you, but you must make a decision to accept heaven’s peace.

Advent 2011, Morning Prayer, and Feasting

2011-12-23T09:48:00.000-05:00

I love Advent. A handful of years ago I really had no better clue than a church-going 8-year-old might why celebrating Advent was significant, but in recent years, the Lord has expanded my heart to hold more and more. This year I feel like I have taken a quantum leap, not so much in "understanding" Advent as being inside it, experiencing it, if that makes any sense to you. And this leap has been facilitated to a great extent by regularly joining some of my neighbors to pray morning prayer.

Here's how I can explain it. I've shared in another place about my conversion to Catholicism which had its apex at a Christmas Eve midnight Mass. I liken it to being invited to a huge banquet. The first year, all I could do was walk in the room and look at the banquet with my mouth hanging open in shock. The next few years, I came in and stood quietly in the back of the room. Year by year, in celebrating the banquet that is the feast of the Nativity, I was seated, pulled up a plate, ate some of the food, looked around at the other guests, began chatting, enjoying, and really celebrating. Even exploding with joy.

This year the image that fills my heart, largely growing out of my experience of praying the Liturgy of the Hours in community, is that I am witnessing, am in on, all of the feast's preparations. I see the prayers, the longing, the penances, the sacrifices, the seeds sown by God in and through His Church, that made that banquet something that I could "see," something that I could walk in on in shock 20 years ago. I realize that prayer that has been ascending through His Church for the salvation of my soul. I realize the gift that other Christians have given to me, someone nameless and unknown to them. The love, the longing, the sacrifices of others called down God's graces onto me.

Suddenly I feel myself as if in a kitchen buzzing with cooks and surrounded by mounds of potatoes and flour, raw meat, and ingredients of every sort. Advent is about the preparation of a feast of grace for the world, the poor, starving world. And picking up those potatoes to peel makes me want to weep with gratitude for being not only among those God feeds, but among those called to feed others with His life. None of this belongs to me. It is lavished on us by our Father who generously provides even for those who can only gape at Him in disbelief in return.

I've prayed the Liturgy of the Hours on and off for those 20 years. A breviary was the first thing I purchased after deciding to become a Catholic on December 26, 1991. But I've not regularly prayed it in community. For me, this is an incredible grace that surpasses anything about aesthetics. Our particular group was often made up largely of children. That probably sounds romantic to those of you who are not currently parenting children. Children teach adults so much about ourselves: one day one might say something spiritually profound, and the next might slap the one sitting next to him or be obnoxious in some other way. If we cannot see that until we learn to accept the Lord's discipline, we are all like this (only usually in more restrained, socially-polished ways that hide our obnoxiousness and suppress our profundity) then I think we never grow beyond a sterile sort of community experience where everyone is more concerned about being nice than being holy. Community life teaches us that we need each other and challenges pride which would have us believe we are better off standing alone, or with a group of me-clones. I cannot say why this community experience has been such a huge grace for me, other than to say that praying this way is simply God's will.

Here we are during one of our first gatherings.
My heartfelt gratitude to Keith and Iwona Major for opening their home and their family prayer time to all who gathered.

Love, joy, suffering, miscarriage

2011-12-15T15:04:00.000-05:00

I am struggling. Embedded deep within me, it seems I have a calendar which does not allow me to forget that during this week three years ago we learned I was pregnant, and then learned I had lost the baby before I had even gotten used to the idea of being pregnant.

Today had the same Mass reading that hit me so hard last year when I wrote about this anniversary. That was striking.

Raise a glad cry, you barren one who did not bear, break forth in jubilant song, you who were not in labor, For more numerous are the children of the deserted wife than the children of her who has a husband, says the LORD. Enlarge the space for your tent, spread out your tent cloths unsparingly; lengthen your ropes and make firm your stakes. For you shall spread abroad to the right and to the left; Your descendants shall dispossess the nations and shall people the desolate cities. Fear not, you shall not be put to shame; you need not blush, for you shall not be disgraced. The shame of your youth you shall forget, the reproach of your widowhood no longer remember. For he who has become your husband is your Maker; his name is the LORD of hosts; Your redeemer is the Holy One of Israel, called God of all the earth. The LORD calls you back, like a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit, A wife married in youth and then cast off, says your God. For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with great tenderness I will take you back. In an outburst of wrath, for a moment I hid my face from you; But with enduring love I take pity on you, says the LORD, your redeemer. This is for me like the days of Noah, when I swore that the waters of Noah should never again deluge the earth; So I have sworn not to be angry with you, or to rebuke you. Though the mountains leave their place and the hills be shaken, My love shall never leave you nor my covenant of peace be shaken, says the LORD, who has mercy on you.

How it hits me this year is that during this season of Advent that always stirs me so deeply with hope and then Christmas which has been an annual reminder to me of the flood, the torrent of love God has for me that has totally reshaped my life... during this powerful time, I have a poignant reminder that I cannot fulfill my own desires for myself. Infertility and the loss of two pregnancies has taught me that. I can't give myself God's gifts. Every good thing that comes to me comes from the hand of God, and what He doesn't drop right into my soul He gives directly into the hands of other people, with the directive to be faithful to Him, thereby giving to me what I so desperately need. In the same way, He puts into my heart and hands things that belong to others, with the same charge to live faithfully to Him, thereby spreading His gifts adequately. We all fail each other. But God is so generous; He doesn't seem to mind working with our failures and still accomplishing His will. In the midst of all the beauty with which God floods me, I have also this reminder: I am not the Author of this. Neither great joy nor suffering are evidence of some kind of merit on my part, some kind of trick that I've performed to win God's favor. Rather, His love IS. That's the fact. I am a creature. That is also the fact. A creature drawn to union with the Creator will experience both joy and suffering, but neither joy nor suffering amount to anything apart from that union. I can try and struggle to get myself happy, but it is futile unless what I seek is whatever union with God in Christ calls for.

"To reach satisfaction in all, desire satisfaction in nothing." -- St. John of the Cross.

The Meaning Series: Psalm 51

2011-12-11T21:26:00.001-05:00

Recording Unleashed is coming to a close, so I guess I'd better get this self-imposed project of writing about the meaning of each song wrapped up, too.

Psalm 51 is the only song I wrote while in the process of rehearsing to record, in May of this year, so it is the johnny-come-lately to the project. One night I was rehearsing "Led By the Spirit of the Lord" with Joey and Aaron (drummer and bassist, respectively) and we were joking about how the song reminded me of Linda Ronstadt's version of Mike Nesmith's tune "Different Drum". I tend to get songs stuck in my head, so that night I came home and listened to both Linda's and Mike's version of that song several times. The next morning, with Mike's tune still reverberating in my head, I was impressed with the words again and again "a clean heart create for me, Oh God." I tried going various directions with lyrics, but Psalm 51 asserted itself in my heart. The result is a general paraphrase of Psalm 51 with a country sound. There is something about this type of music that speaks to me of the humility, of earthiness, and of our rightful position before God as accountable, yet empty handed and with nothing at all that can impress Him, but our readiness to turn to Him completely trusting in and anticipating His mercy, His love and forgiveness.

A bit of trivia: (as if it isn't all trivia!) I wrote this song very early in the morning and so it has some very low notes in it. It took me a similar morning recording session to be able to pull off these notes.

Proverbs 31 and "Did You Just Look at my Chest?"

2011-12-10T10:41:00.001-05:00

Recently on Facebook I saw both of these videos. I am posting them both here, because I think they work great in context with each other. You might think I mean they contrast each other, but I don't. Women and men both need to understand and appreciate both the biology of attraction and the spirituality of relationship. Leave one or the other out, and you end up with something less than human.

and the Glory of the Lord Shall be Revealed

2011-12-05T17:28:00.001-05:00

Today's Mass readings blew me away. I had the feeling I was hearing the story of my own life read back to me from the pulpit.

Here's the feeling I got: Imagine someone plans a surprise party for you. The plans are extensive, and you don't have a clue what is afoot, but you do get terribly suspicious of the activities of the one doing the planning. You notice things you can't explain, and you devise in your head the worst possible scenario(s) to explain what you see. You get your whole psyche wrapped up around these terrible thoughts. Then the party is sprung on you. And long, long afterwards (how about years) you are still unpacking those terrible thoughts and realizing that what you thought was suspicious activity was really deep evidence of love. You go through layer after layer of the realization that when you thought the world was against you, you were actually deeply loved, despite the fact that the only one being awful was yourself.

That's how those readings hit me today. God has sprung the best surprise on me of all -- my whole life has meaning! Isaiah has always moved me, especially all the passages about restoration and the deserts blooming. These promises echoed through my heart since my childhood. What struck me today was what seems like a progression. The desert will bloom, God will restore, God will come to save you... then... the blind shall see, the deaf hear, and the lame walk. It's one thing if we see this just as a Messianic prophecy (as if that weren't enough!). But what about our lives? God restores us so that we can be His Messianic people -- and bring His healing to others. As they say in the Hokey Pokey, that's what it's all about.

Then that gospel. I have never before seen myself so clearly as the paralyzed man being let down through the roof as today. It's Advent, and I was just meditating on those Isaiah promises, so my mind went to Christmas Eve and my being called to the Catholic Church -- a major moment of conversion. I was paralyzed when God called me, spiritually speaking, because I had hated and judged Catholics for so long. (Read the whole story here.) I was "let down" into the Mass by a friend and his friends who brought me there. And just like Jesus did in this gospel, the first thing He addressed me with was the offer of forgiveness of my sins (which, of course, from my perspective, was my being faced with my sins by Him.) And this was not just a spiritual healing, but a complete reorientation of his life. But just like in the first reading, I realized that this man's healing (and my conversion) aren't just about that man, or just about me. It is all about God's glory as accusations, astonishment and awe strike other people when they see what Jesus has done. This is why our lives are to show forth His glory. This is simply the way Jesus works!

Jesus' Hope

2011-12-01T12:45:00.001-05:00

December 1, 2011 Monthly Message

On the first of every month, our Lord gives Anne a new message about His call to service.

December 1, 2011

Jesus

Dear apostles, it is with hope that I come to you today, speaking these words to your heart. I am hoping that the plans I have for your life will come to fruition. Do I require that you be powerful? Important? Do I need you to be people of great wealth or great influence in the eyes of the world? Will My plan be threatened by your imperfection or your difficulty maintaining holiness in every moment? Do I need only angels? Or do I need apostles of good will serving exactly where I have placed them? You were created to persevere and even flourish with limited understanding of all that is happening around you and through you. Yes, dear apostles, I am filled with hope. I am hoping that you accept My love. I am hoping that you allow Me to bring you healing, daily. I am hoping that through you I can love and heal others whom you will encounter in your daily experience. I bring you so many gifts of knowing Me, both directly and indirectly. Sometimes, I bring these gifts directly into your soul. Sometimes I send these gifts to you through the soul of another. I am saying that sometimes you will be the recipient of My gifts and sometimes you will be the one delivering My gifts. We are so united, you and I. We are together now and when you are finished on earth you will understand how closely I worked with you. You will be so happy when you understand the extent to which I blessed others through you. Dear friends, I come at Christmas as an infant in a manger and you rejoice. Truly, understand, that each time you cooperate with Me in your day, you are bringing Me into the world. When you see how others were blessed through your fidelity, you will understand the fullness of rejoicing. Yes, today, your Infant King comes to you with heavenly hope. Beloved apostles, I instruct you to bring this hope to others, regardless of the circumstances around you.

(See www.directionforourtimes.org for more information about these messages.)

For the Brothers of St. Cecilia

2011-11-18T06:42:00.001-05:00

This is the song I wrote for week five of my Autumn Songwriting Challenge.This represents my having learned to use a Grace Tape2USB machine, multi-track recording with Audacity, composing songs on keyboard (when I hadn't significantly played it at all since I was about 13 -- that was only hunting and pecking to play hymns -- and never when writing music) and using drum tracks from Looperman.com.

None of these undertakings considered alone was all that difficult, although combining them together in a short amount of time along with the commitment of writing an entirely new song every week has left me feel like I've been running hurdles. Hard work can be exhilarating, though!

The recording is very rough; timing with Audacity on my oldish computer is imprecise, and everything is done "live" with tape-recorder quality to the sound.. But writing the song made me very happy indeed.

This song is called "For the Brothers of St. Cecilia," with St. Cecilia referring to the Catholic patron saint of musicians. The lyrics are these:

When God in His holy will
Desired my life to fill
With love, mercy, peace and grace
He required a human face
Hands He'd taught to play His song
And a voice enough to sing along
So His melody could reach my heart
And I could sing my part

And I sing: ba nah nah nah nah nah nah....

Ten virgins waiting for their lord
They fell asleep 'cuz they were bored
When the moment came to be on task
Half had no oil in their flask

Gold refined in the fire takes time
Precious oil it buys is fine
God's the author of this whole plan
Saying, "Turn to me while you can."

That fire we walk into is love
But what fool would be fool enough
To live inside a burning flame
But this is where we find our life again

Holy Spirit come inflame our hearts
enkindle the fire of love
Recreate us all like you
This whole earth you renew

And so

When God in His holy will
Desired my life to fill
With love, mercy, peace and grace
He required a human face
Your hands He'd taught to play His song
And your voice enough to sing along
So His melody could reach my heart
And I could sing my part

And I sing: ba nah nah nah nah nah nah....

A special "thank you" to Neven Pesa for providing me with the right amount of pushiness to clear the cobwebs from my dormant songwriting creativity. Check out his music at http://www.youtube.com/user/BlueArmyfication?ob=5

Why Don't the Wise Virgins Share?

2011-11-10T07:56:00.000-05:00

I love it when a homily gives me a good answer to something I've been wondering about. This particular wondering in question was actually raised again in Sunday's homily, and answered by another priest (who was wondering about the same thing) a few days later.

Remember that parable of the ten virgins in Mt. 25, where five are wise and have their lamps stocked with oil and five are foolish and want to mooch off the others? And the wise ones tell the others to buzz off and get their own? So, what is that, anyway? Is Jesus' point something about non-equal distribution of goods and how if you don't work for something, you're screwed, and don't expect me to come along and bail you out? Would it be so hard for the wise virgins to simply say, "Fine, here's a little bit of my oil. Because I'm wise, I'm filled with generosity. We can share." But that's not what Jesus has them say. What is Jesus really advocating here?

That was the issue raised, briefly, in the first homily I heard on this gospel. The second priest, a few days later, preaching on another text, said he had been pondering on this in light of the other Scripture at hand and shared what I thought was a brilliant insight.

Don't forget, of course, that it's a parable. Stuff of this earth is important, but all of it has a sign value: it points to something greater, something eternal, something ultimate. This priest pointed out that the oil the wise virgins have does not represent something tangible that one person can literally be given by another. When the foolish virgins say "Give us some oil!" they aren't being denied because the wise women are stingy. They don't get what they want because getting what they want the way they are wanting it is impossible. It is like a couple who in a troubled marriage looking at a happily married couple and saying, "We want your kind of love." Or a lazy man looking at a hard working man and saying "I want your self-discipline and initiative." Or a pilgrim in the journey of faith looking at a humble saint and saying "I want your relationship with God."

It is all well and good to want these things. In fact, these desires lurk in our hearts all along, and it is seeing the glory of God manifested in its various forms in other people that really brings these desires out and makes us feel them. But it is too late to start acknowledging them when the Bridegroom is at the gate and the jig is almost up. The whole point of the parable is that we have to start being honest with ourselves about our desires and our needs and our shortcomings right now. Confess these desires and needs to God right now, and enter into His process for getting from Him, the giver of all good things, what you need. He is the only source! When the moment of judgment comes (and God in His great mercy gives us many moments of judgment, of exposure of our junk, throughout our lives) it is too late to turn to someone and say, "You know, you seem to have it together with God. Why didn't you force me into what you have before this?" Is it not so easy to always blame someone else for my failing? Is it not easy to delude myself into thinking that all I have to do is loosely associate with some group I think is good to be counted as good? I don't actually have to invest my own self, do I? I can lose weight by watching Biggest Loser, right? I don't actually have to admit I am powerless and turn to God, do I?

In Revelation, Jesus says to the church Laodicea that they are to buy from him "gold refined in the fire" so that they can become rich. It is the same thing. 'Tis the season to review our lives as if we were to die next week. If you knew your jig was almost up, what would you wish you had done differently? Tell God. Talk with Him about a reasonable plan, and start doing it today.

Feeling Abandoned

2011-11-01T21:19:00.000-04:00

On the first of every month, our Lord gives Anne a new message about His call to service.

November 1, 2011

Jesus

My dear apostles, I am with you. I am with you when you are working, and I am with you when you are resting. I am with you when you are at peace, and I am with you when you are unsettled. You are unsettled less and less, though. As I watch you, struggling for holiness and struggling for My will, I can see that you are advancing. You are becoming stronger and more sure of Me. Even allowing for your human doubts, I can see that you are accepting My comfort daily, which makes it easier for you to come through your trials with less suffering. The greatest suffering is, after all, abandonment. The greatest cross is that of being left alone while craving the comfort and love of someone who is dear to you. My friends, often there is confusion in human relationships which causes terrible suffering. This part of the cross is heavy, indeed, and I, Myself, suffered this. It is during these times that I comfort you with the greatest and most tender graces because I understand the confusion which accompanies abandonment. For Me, it was important to remind myself that My Father would not abandon Me. For you, this is also important. I will never leave you. If you feel that you have been abandoned by someone you love, either through death or rejection, then you must come to Me for comfort. I will remind you that in heaven there will be no tears, no grieving, no heartbreak. In heaven you will be reunited in love with those who also love Me. Never worry about those who have gone before you. Pray for them and trust Me. The family of God is vast and includes people you know and people you do not know. You will rejoice in heaven and, even now, heaven rejoices in you. Dear apostles, heaven rejoices in you at this moment, as you read these words and acknowledge Me as your King. In the world, the cross was My throne and you, too, are celebrated by heaven in your suffering. You will not be forsaken and you will not be forgotten. I will be with you and we will move forward with heaven’s goals for your life. Have courage, apostles. All of heaven assists you and protects you.

The Meaning Series: Daughter

2011-10-22T23:19:00.000-04:00

"Daughter" is the one song on this upcoming CD that I did not write. As soon as I had fully committed myself to creating this project, though, I knew this was the one song I absolutely had to record. It has been deeply meaningful to me for many years. It tells the story of the woman with the hemorrhage and her healing encounter with Jesus, and is performed as a duet between Jesus and the woman.

It was written in February, 1986 by Julie Reuel and Michael Turriff. I always refer to Pastor Turriff as the man who saved my life when I was a teenager, and I've told that story before on this blog more than once. You can read it here. The song was written (or completed, at least) in the chapel of my college, where I just happened to have been lurking about when they were working on it.

When I first heard "Daughter" it blew me away. It was the gospel in full and living color, as if I were in the scene with Jesus Himself addressing me as the woman being healed. Deciding to record it scared me at first, frankly, because of the intensity with which it always gripped me. But when I approached it this year I quickly realized that it is now my turn to pass on this gospel at it was delivered to me. I can only pray that God will use it for others as He did for me.

Death and Power

2011-10-19T21:01:00.000-04:00

I prefer death in Christ Jesus to power over the farthest limits of the earth. -- St. Ignatius of Antioch

This quote from Monday's Office of Readings for that day's feast struck me like a ton of bricks. It was like a light coming on, like suddenly finding a valuable tool in my hand. Death and power. The clarity was astounding.

St. Ignatius was a Bishop who died a martyr's death less than a century after the time of Christ. When you read the entirety of his letter, it is clear that his flock was intent on rescuing him from the death he knew awaited him. St. Ignatius was intent on blocking their rescue. It was his strong desire, which he knew to be in union with the desire of the Holy Spirit for him, to give his life in the Coliseum. He spoke of his death in Eucharistic terms, famously stating "I am God’s wheat and shall be ground by their teeth so that I may become Christ’s pure bread." St. Ignatius was not depressed; he was not suicidal. He was living his priesthood and knew himself as a sacrificial offering, in union with Christ's own self-offering. He preferred death not because of despair, but because of his hope in Christ and of his deep love for those he served. The sacrifice the Father called him to was to sanctify his Bride, the Church.

And this offering is contrasted with power on earth. His congregation loved him, apparently, and grieved at the thought of losing his presence with them. They wanted to employ whatever they could to keep him with them. St. Ignatius also speaks of the temptation he faced in having his attention turned aside from God. Power over earthly kingdoms was one of the devil's temptations Jesus faced as well (Lk. 4:5-7).

How clearly these things contrasted in my mind when I read St. Ignatius' words. I prefer death to power, because this is the way of Christ. What are the tantalizations of power that draw me, or give me the opportunity to choose the way of sacrificial self-offering instead? Perhaps I am itching to blast some music and drift off into its beautiful comfort, but my daughter wishes instead to tell me her plans for a princess party. Perhaps I have dishes to clean, even though I want to use that ten minute window of time to check my email. Maybe my friend's opinion just begs for the bit of information I have that she seems to be missing. I think what registers as a self-serving power play can only be detected by one's own heart. But the key is that music, email and information are not bad things. They are goods. So are attention given to one's children, domestic service, and humility or restraint. This is not a matter of rejecting sin and choosing good. This is a matter of preferring death to power. With my whole being, I want that music. But I can choose to lay aside what I have the power to give myself to give life and attention to one who asks it of me. I want to communicate with my friends -- this gives me life. But laying aside what I have the power to give myself to offer quickly-forgotten loving service is worship of God. My knowledge can bless, but my invisible gift of respect and forbearance is a sacrifice of love done in secret.

The truth is the way of death, the preference for death in Christ, is true Eucharistic power. What I want to call worldly power is a good, and has to do with conditions and outcomes that are reasonably within my control. Eucharistic power relies entirely on God because it involves giving unto death, with a focus not on what I desire to produce, but in it I am entirely entrusted to the will of Another. I cannot have an agenda in the realm of Eucharistic power, I can only entrust myself because of love. Struggle and strife is the result of anything less.

"I prefer death in Christ Jesus to power over the farthest limits of the earth." St. Ignatius was fully conformed to the image of Christ. May I too live that way.

Sacrifice and Happiness (From "The City of God" by St. Augustine)

2011-10-14T08:06:00.001-04:00

This quote from St. Augustine strikes me today because it defines so clearly that sacrifice, or true religious worship, is not simply about doing good to others because doing good to others is so good. I mean, God is not up in heaven issuing his primary directive into our lives thus: "Now kids, get along together; play nice and share." That's not what He's about in the first place. That's what He about in the second place. The first place is our ultimate end, and the absolute only thing that brings happiness to us: union with God. No amount of do-gooding, or riding the "Good Ship Fellowship" will ever make us happy. Only our hearts covenanted to the Blessed Trinity will make us happy. Therefore, let every movement of our lives "effect" that in us.

Every work that effects our union with God in a holy fellowship is a true sacrifice; every work, that is, which is referred to that final end, that ultimate good, by which we are able to be in the true sense happy. As a consequence even that mercy by which aid is given to man is not a sacrifice unless it is done for the sake of God. Sacrifice, though performed or offered by man, is something divine; that is why the ancient Latins gave it this name of "sacrifice," of something sacred. Man himself, consecrated in the name of God and vowed to God, is therefore a sacrifice insofar as he dies to the world in order to live for God. This too is part of mercy, the mercy that each one has for himself. Scripture tells us: Have mercy on your soul by pleasing God.

The Meaning Series: Come Into My Heart

2011-10-09T14:39:00.000-04:00

I wrote the song "Come Into My Heart" over the course of three days, from March 30 to April 1, 1992. This was between the time I had committed to enter the Catholic Church, but about a year before I actually did so. The song was inspired, oddly enough, by a vivid and intense dream I'd had. It involved soldiers wreaking destruction on everything around me, except for when I stood in front of them and said (in German) "I am Christian. Jesus Christ." As soon as I said that, the soldiers dropped their weapons and walked away, powerless. What struck me in the dream was the incredible peace I had, despite the danger and despite the complete ravaging that my familiar surroundings had endured.

The song is written in the voice of Jesus, calling to an individual. So often evangelistic outreaches emphasize our asking Jesus to enter our hearts and be Lord there, but in this song Jesus asks for something different: He asks us to enter His heart and hide there.

Musically it is a very simple song, and quite plain. As with most of my music, my focus is not so much on crafting beautiful melodies or instrumentals, but on the lyrics. I hope the simplicity of the accompaniment draws attention to the sense of yearning Our Lord has for each of our hearts to belong to Him.

Bringing that 'Flying Crap' into the Light

2011-10-05T08:00:00.003-04:00

Lately I have been just flat out making myself want to gag. When I go to say something, write something, my underlying feeling is: "Truly, who gives a flying crap, anyway?!" That's not to say that I'm going through a bout of poor self-esteem where all I need is a pat on the back of assurance of my worth. I think at the base of my feeling is an awareness of the profundity of Truth, of Reality, and my paltriness in comparison. Well, that and one other thing that seems to have come to light just this morning.

The vehicle of that realization was the song "In the Light" by Charlie Peacock. I like his album version so much better than what is on this video, but here's the best I can find on YouTube:

There was one line in this song as it played in my head this morning that caught my attention: "If I'm to lay down... then I'll lay down my life for my brothers and sisters. I will need your help" This line triggered a paradigm shift; it nudged me over from a natural to a supernatural perspective.

Let's see if I can explain.

When I was a child, God made me a promise. Or, to make that mystical statement seem less ethereal, I'll specify that a verse I was reading in the Bible seemed to leap off the page, grab my soul, and promise never ever to fail me. The whole of Psalm 10 gives the context, and is what I read, but it was verse 18 that grabbed me: "defending the fatherless and the oppressed, in order that man, who is of the earth, may terrify no more." The psalm speaks, of course, of God's action on behalf of the downtrodden. But the specific way that this promise grabbed me, and what I wrote in the margin of my Bible, was that God would "break the cycle of pain." What that meant to me was not just that God would keep other people's evil actions from bothering me but, specifically, He would take me out of the inevitable pattern of being an oppressed person that went on to oppress others.

This morning as Charlie Peacock's lyrics about laying down one's life sang in my heart, a contrasting iconic image from my childhood was conjured up as well, which speaks to me of having security stripped away. Like so many of my generation, my parents were divorced when I was in the single digits, and the image symbolized that: we were hiding in the dark in our neighbor's house, watching my father making phone calls in our house. That memory has come to hold all the terrifying anxiety, all the unexplained confusion, all of the loss of security, safety, peace, protection and hope that my loss of family coherence was for me. That experience and that memory have cast a pall over many, many episodes of loss, real or perceived, in my life.

And this is where the paradigm shift comes in. I did have something taken away from me as a child. It hurt, and I didn't know how to deal with it. But the redemption of Christ has taken firm root in my life. Yes, He restores that which I lost, but He is not simply about making me fat where once I was starving. He never comes to rip my security out from under me, but He does ask me to give... to abandon all to Him. And He does not ask me to terrorize myself, destroying my own security. He draws me by love, empowers me supernaturally by "the light," to give my life for others, for what they need. As Jesus did.

So, I go to say something and I feel like "who gives a flying crap?" Well, perhaps no one. But I know and have experienced when just a scrap of someone else's life shared with mine has meant all the world to me, has filled me with the courage and determination to live and persevere through something hard. I know that there are people in the world, maybe even on my block, maybe even in my house, who are famished for love. And if each day with my morning offering I present my life to God, and He loves these folks with a dire urgency and has designed us to make real His love to other people, then surely even if it seems that no one gives a flying crap, surely I can persevere with His plan of being His love in this world, whether I ever see results of it or not. I know God wastes nothing. I trust Him with my life completely. I don't get to pick which good things He does on account of my cooperation, but I know that by definition of Who God is, He does the absolute best for us all.

So Lord, help me to persevere in sharing this life you've given me, even when I feel my insignificance. And help me to realize the profound significance and dignity of being your tabernacle in my daily life. Amen.

__________________________________________________

P.S. I realize now that the version of Charlie's song I posted here doesn't even have the lyrics in it that drew my attention this morning! Hah! I do wish someone would post his recorded, full-band version. So cool.

The Meaning Series: Led By the Spirit of the Lord

2011-10-02T17:04:00.000-04:00

"Led By the Spirit of the Lord" is a song I wrote in October of 1990, during an interesting time in my spiritual journey. I had been out of college for a year and a half and had just started my second "real" job post-graduation. I was happily and heavily involved at Risen Savior Fellowship, a charismatic non-denominational, independent, tiny church in Milwaukee which I had joined about three years prior to that.

A question had formed in my soul, a niggling, a prayer, a desire. (Deliciously dangerous, these kind are.) I truly adored the worship music and more so worship experience at Risen Savior. It was truly healing, and it was the deepest thing I'd known at the time. Certainly it was deeper than my experience with liturgy in my Lutheran church before that, which had come to feel like chains holding me down. But the niggling in my soul that would not be silent said to me that we were following a formula with our worship music, too. There was a predictable progression, and what was more, it was just as possible to go through the motions in this type of worship without any deep encounter with God.

That really bothered me.

Just a short time after I wrote this song, a matter of a few months at most, I was met with the impossible situation of three friends of mine converting to the Catholic faith, which made me begin to question all sorts of things. But for the moment, this song came to me as a series of questions about what it really means to follow the Holy Spirit. What would be left when self-effort was left behind? It speaks of a hopeful sense that a real answer to these questions existed, and that I would discover it.

Musically, what I've tried to capture is that while the Holy Spirit challenges us essentially to die to our own selves and our own ideas, He leads us to the fullness of life and joy. So this is a fun song. For me this means it is in the pop style of the 1960s. As I write, it is in mid-production, but I already love the sound. One thing I am learning in this process of recording is that the gifts of so many people contribute to a real transformation of the little song I offer.

Relying on your own energies will wear you out

2011-10-02T16:31:00.001-04:00

On the first of every month, our Lord gives Anne a new message about His call to service.

October 1, 2011

Jesus

All is well, dear apostles. Does this statement console you, even as you look at the changes occurring in the world? Why do I tell you that all is well when you can see clearly that difficulties have arisen in many areas? I hear the prayers of My children asking that I send relief from the sufferings that afflict them and cause them to question their security and even their faith. How often I have to teach mankind that I am the only true security and that reliance on Me will bring peace and all possible benefit to each man and to the intentions of each man. In heaven's eyes, all is well, even as many suffer. Are God's children suffering with the benefit of the truth? Do they understand that I am with them and that I have overcome even death? My friends, if there are those remaining who do not understand the extent of My love, then your work is not finished. If there are those remaining who do not understand that joy is possible, even in suffering, and indeed especially in suffering, then your work is not finished. If there are times when you are afraid, then you must come to Me. I will protect you from anything that is outside of My will for you and for your work. Will you be overcome? Consider My authority, dear apostles, and do not consider the extent of your weakness. Never be distracted by the strength of your enemy because the enemy's strength is an illusion and even the illusion is fleeting. Be assured that I will compensate for your weaknesses as I compensate for your beautiful humanity which so endears you to Me. Where you are weak, I am strong. Where you are frail in your humanity, I add my divinity and what goes out from you is blessed and protected, but only if you are relying on Me. You will know when you are relying on yourself because you will be afraid. Consider how I conducted Myself on earth. I trusted the Father and I was gentle, going about My tasks in the day with conviction. If the Father willed it for Me, then I accepted it and saw to it as best I could. When I was rejected, I quietly moved on. When I was accepted, I offered the Father's love and gave to the fullest extent of the Father's will. Do the same, beloved ones. Do the same. I am with you and all is well.

Having Compassion for Oneself

2011-09-03T21:37:00.000-04:00

On the first of every month, our Lord gives Anne a new message about His call to service.

September 1, 2011

Dear apostles, it is with joy that I speak with you today. When I contemplate your fidelity to My plan for mercy, I feel joy. When I contemplate your fidelity to holiness, I feel joy. Do not pause in your commitment to becoming holier. This calm movement into the Spirit of gentleness and kindness should help you to view others with compassion, yes, but also yourself. Do you view yourself with compassion? Do you offer kindness and mercy toward yourself when you contemplate your condition? My friends, My dearest friends, be careful to view yourself as I view you. Be careful not to view yourself in harsh light that seeks to condemn. If you are tempted against mercy for yourself, then truly, you are tempted against truth. Because it is only with mercy and love that I greet your present condition and your attempts to advance in holiness. I am love. I could hardly ask you to love others and then withhold love from you. That would be a flawed plan, destined to fail. My plan is perfect. I give you a receptive heart, you receive My love in abundance, and then stand for Heaven to be a well on earth which both stores and distributes love. Beloved apostle, search your heart today. If you do not find mercy and compassion for yourself in your heart, come to Me at once and ask Me to give these things to you. My plan for you and for the world will not advance as quickly as necessary if you do not accept your present condition and understand My perfect love for you. Your potential for holiness has not yet been fully achieved, of course, and I want you to advance. And I ask that you do so in confidence, joy and hope. Rejoice. I am with you.

Motherhood is a Calling (But What About Those Who Don't Get the Call?)

2011-08-30T08:08:00.000-04:00

It's early in the morning, I woke even earlier, and I feel like shooting from the hip.

I just read this very good, very true article which has been floating around among several of my Facebook friends. Read it here so you know what I'm talking about: Motherhood is a Calling (And Where Your Children Rank)

Every time I read something that starts into the refrain of derisive comments heard by mothers of many (that means more than three) I can't help but think about the other women -- the ones who long to have children but struggle, either because they are single against their choice or because they have low or impaired fertility in their marriage. I've felt both pains, but it is especially the second that always rises in my heart when I read about the crosses of motherhood.

Maybe what got to me was this line from the article: Do we believe that we want children because there is some biological urge, or the phantom “baby itch”? "Itch" is too casual a term, but those who have never agonized for years with the unfulfilled desire for children may not be able to understand the painful yearning in the soul of a married Christian woman who knows her union is to mirror that of Christ and the Church -- it is meant to bear fruit and to give life. Rarely does such a woman need a theology lecture to realize this. It is written in her nature, and that of her husband.

The article goes on to say "Motherhood is... what God gave you time for." Well, ok. The article is being addressed to mothers, and so, yeah, for those women, it is what God called them to. But the truer part comes later in the article, where the author talks about death and resurrection: the paschal mystery. THAT is what God gave us time for. Many married women are called to motherhood, even to be mothers of many. But let's look at another cross some women bear.

See that couple who come to church Sunday after Sunday, and you with your busy family aren't even sure if they are married or engaged or just dating? Or cohabiting? They have no kids, so you have no common ground to actually talk with them. They look like they have some money. They both work. Hmm... I suppose they're just one of those couples who think they need to travel and own a house and three cars before they have a family. I wonder if she knows how bad contraception is for her body. I guess I'll just pray for them that they can get over their selfishness and that God will turn their hearts...

Isolation. Judgment. Friendlessness. Misunderstanding. Misdirected "jealousy" by those who truly aren't open to life. These are real crosses, too, but many women have no words to express them without opening up the privacy of their hearts and then sounding like whiners. They might not get comments in the grocery store, but might it be even more painful to be stopped on the church steps and be given a lecture about why for the good of their souls they need to be open to life? Or "Relax. It will happen in time." (Yes, the infertile also have their list of painfully annoying comments far too oft repeated.) Instead of relaxing, they spend their time doing medical research, traipsing from visit to disappointing doctor visit, usually being ridiculed by doctors for not "being serious" and trying artificial reproductive technologies and being offered little other hope or understanding for what is impairing their fertility.

This paragraph is striking:

But a Christian should have a different paradigm. We should run to to the cross. To death. So lay down your hopes. Lay down your future. Lay down your petty annoyances. Lay down your desire to be recognized. Lay down your fussiness at your children. Lay down your perfectly clean house. Lay down your grievances about the life you are living. Lay down the imaginary life you could have had by yourself. Let it go.

Now, I know from experience how painful this can be when the "hope" you are laying down grinds down to the very core of your meaning as a woman. Oh, I wanted so badly at one point to be recognized as a "real Catholic woman" because I had six or more kids in tow. But, that was an imaginary life. I couldn't for the life of me understand why God wasn't giving it to me, and I yelled and screamed at Him to let Him know it, too.

There ain't nothing we can hide behind in this Christian journey. What St. Paul said is true, women are saved through childbearing (1 Tim. 2:15). That's like saying women are saved while being women. A woman is saved by being who she is designed to be. But let's not wrench that out of the context of all else we know to be true in Christ. We are saved by the cross of Christ, by His death and resurrection, by being incorporated into Him in His death and raised to life in the Trinity, a communion of persons. For some women, united with the will of God for their lives, this experience of childbearing is very fruitful, and this then is how they meet the cross. For other women, also united with the will of God for their lives, the experience of childbearing is not fruitful, or takes on forms that are not physical. This is how they meet the cross. Pumping out a half dozen babies does not per se produce sanctity. We can't hide behind our many children or our sorrows and griefs at why we have none (or few), propping these up and trying to get these to be our union with Christ. No, nothing can replace my heart following Christ, not even my own (martyr-complex?) notion of my vocation.

There is joy to find, and it is in Christ. He is available to each and every person, regardless of the circumstances of your life.

My Visit to Rich Mullin's Gravesite

2011-08-28T21:53:00.000-04:00

Last week, on our way home from Wisconsin, we stopped into the cemetery in the tiny town of Hollansburg, Ohio so that I could pay my respects at the grave of musician Rich Mullins. Hollansburg is just a couple of miles over the western border with Indiana, which is the area where he grew up.

Take a look at this picture:

I took this perspective of his family grave plot to try to give the feeling of how we were in the middle of flat corn country. Just to the other side of the cemetery road there were kids playing in their back yard swimming pool. I walked the whole four or five block length of town to capture another picture that, while not typical of what the town looked like, felt typical of the sort of beauty... yes, beauty... of the area.

I couldn't help but think of one of Rich's songs when I was here that he wrote about his parents. It goes "Never picture perfect/just a plain man and his wife/who somehow knew the value of hard work, good love and real life." I could feel here what he expresses in this song, that through his very human and imperfect family, his faith and love grew wings.

While listening to his music, in my head while I was there and on recordings since returning home, I have been struck by how deeply Rich experienced a sort of natural sense of the sacramental, of the incarnational. He looked at nature and knew it was evidence of God's powerful love for his life. He observed human interaction and saw how it both witnessed to the majesty of God and the travesty of sin. He got it, intuitively, it seems. It is no wonder that he was attracted to the sacramental life of the Church, even while it was hard for him to embrace the institutionalism.

Sometimes words just fail me. His music just makes my heart ache and throb with the beauty of God manifested in what He has created. To capture that in beautiful melodies and poetic lyrics and that beautiful hammered dulcimer is such a gift to us all.

Requiescat in Pace, Rich.

The Meaning Series: Deep Inside

2011-08-28T13:52:00.000-04:00

When I heard the readings at Mass this morning, I knew I had to write about the song "Deep Inside" today. The first line of the first reading, in another translation, posted by a Facebook friend one morning, was this song's initial inspiration. Here's that reading from Jeremiah as we heard it:

You duped me, O LORD, and I let myself be duped;
you were too strong for me, and you triumphed.
All the day I am an object of laughter;
everyone mocks me.

Whenever I speak, I must cry out,
violence and outrage is my message;
the word of the LORD has brought me
derision and reproach all the day.

I say to myself, I will not mention him,
I will speak in his name no more.
But then it becomes like fire burning in my heart,
imprisoned in my bones;
I grow weary holding it in, I cannot endure it.

The alternate translation which my friend posted gives an entirely different feel to the reading: "You seduced me, Lord, and I allowed myself to be led astray."

The second major influence for this song is a homily by St. Peter Chrysologus which is found in the Office of Readings during Advent. (You can read it here, Sermon 147.)

This was the one song that I wrote in the early part of this year, knowing that I would record it. Most songs I finish in a matter of hours, but this one evolved over a few months and with much wrestling, both with the music and the words. That is fitting, because it really reflects the spiritual evolution in my heart over the last few years. I don't relate to the portions of the Jeremiah reading that speak of his persecution, and seems to reflect anger. Rather, I see it as more a triumph of passion, both of God's and of Jeremiah's: God's to make His Word known and Jeremiah to stay with God in that mission, despite what felt like destruction and confusion and basic bad stuff in his life. Passion gives staying power through bad stuff, and an experience of God's passion in one's soul is at times the only thing that will preserve one on a path that seems filled with contradiction.

St. Peter spells out clearly how God draws, or seduces the soul. God doesn't just give commands for us to "do," He works side by side with us, calling us into a sharing of His own work. In this way God intoxicates us with the fire of His love, and we are consumed with the desire to see God everywhere. Latin scholars tell me this love that St. Peter speaks of reshaping our lives is the Eros of God:

Love refuses to be consoled when its goal proves impossible, despises all hindrances to the attainment of its object. Love destroys the lover if he cannot obtain what he loves; love follows its own promptings, and does not think of right and wrong. Love inflames desire which impels it toward things that are forbidden. But why continue?

It is intolerable for love not to see the object of its longing. That is why whatever reward they merited was nothing to the saints if they could not see the Lord. A love that desires to see God may not have reasonableness on its side, but it is the evidence of filial love.

The refrain of this song is my testimony to what God has done in my life as a result of the strange fires He lights, and in a way it summarizes the whole message of the CD: "Deep inside my heart you broke away the chains."

As I write, the recording of this song is not finished yet, but I do hope when someday it is you will give it a listen.

Incarnation, Sacraments, and the Power for a Changed Life

2011-08-25T08:52:00.000-04:00

At the moment my heart is overflowing with the one theme the Lord has been immersing me into for at least the last 20 years of my life -- the Incarnation.

Directly tied to the reality of the Incarnation (which, for clarity's sake, means the fact that the Eternal, the Almighty God, the Word, became flesh and dwelt among us in the conception of Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit within the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary) is the reality of sacramentality. Sacramentality means that God uses created things for supernatural ends.

This is as clear as day to me right now, but there was a time in my Christian journey when I thought I was defending truth, right and good by rejecting the very concept of a sacrament. Of course I didn't understand what a sacrament was, and I was correct in rejecting what I thought it was: a "magic ticket" that excused people from needing to personally encounter Jesus. For there are many people who have received sacraments who do not live them out in faith. What am I saying, I am one of those who do not fully live out the sacraments I have received. But the sacraments are not a blockage; they are a door into the divine. I still need the understanding, the formation, and the virtue to move through the door. Jesus leads, nurtures and feeds but He won't force me through.

I am speaking here of the seven sacraments of the Church. But all of what God has fashioned is now imbued with this sacramental reality. That, I think, is the meaning of Christ's redemption not just of souls for heaven (thanks be to God for that alone!) but of all of creation. Scripture speaks of this repeatedly. The psalms are filled with exhortations to creation to praise God. The earth has no voice, but those who are in Christ and who see with sacramental vision begin to see the purpose of God in creation when we experience it calling us to contemplate Christ, to contemplate Truth, Beauty and Goodness.

For so long I was afraid that "the world" was going to pollute me, destroy my spiritual good, and pull me away from God. That term in the Bible can be confusing. It cannot mean that which God created. Yes, sin has entered the world and creation itself is affected by human sin. But when Jesus came into the world, He touched the lepers, the unclean, the hemorrhaging woman, the dead. Instead of becoming ritually unclean as the Law stipulated, He brought healing and restoration. We who are in Christ are as Christ in this world. We do not become unclean by living in this world -- we are part of restoring all things in Christ. Music, art, sports, environment, even (gasp) politics... we make our way through the things of this world and we are called to restore, not retreat from. I sin, you sin, they sin: it's true. Defilement comes not from things into us, but out of our hearts (Mt. 15:10-20). It is our hearts that need to be purified, and not only in the initial moment when we are united with Christ by faith in baptism, but again and again by constant conversion and awareness of Christ with us. Daily. Hourly. Every Moment.

And so we are back at the sacramental reality, because we need for everything to remind us to turn again to Our Lord. Humility tells us that though we possess everything, we have nothing. Our nature is neediness: complete dependence upon God and interdependence with one another. Yet we are united with Him who is Almighty and Providence itself, so we have no need for fear or insecurity in the face of anything. We are rich in Him in every way.

Our model for this kind of Christian life is none other than the Blessed Virgin Mary. I was struck this last Monday while celebrating the feast of the Queenship of Mary to be reminded that the Scripture reading at Mass is exactly the same as the Midnight Mass of Christmas. The Incarnation made Mary who she is. She is completely insignificant except for the monumental fact of her unique vocation as the mother of God Himself. We each are completely insignificant, except for our vocation to respond to the fact of the Incarnation by uniting ourselves in faith to Love who calls us to belong to Him forever, and to live our lives announcing that call to our fellow sojourners and to all of creation by everything we are, everything we do, by our very existence and our every breath.

Our Lady of the Incarnation, pray for us. It's all about Jesus coming into this world.

The Meaning Series: Holy Mary

2011-08-17T15:49:00.002-04:00

I'm really in the habit of laying my heart on the line in this blog, and why stop now?! Doing so helps me try to be honest with myself -- to at least swing the bat in that direction.

So the other day at adoration I had an idea form that felt pretty meet, right and salutary (what, you don't speak Lutheran?), which was to write about the meaning of/testimony behind each of the songs I am in the process of recording for the CD to be entitled "Unleashed."

I'm going to start with the song I worked on most recently, called "Holy Mary."

I wrote this song on April 12, 1995 while I lived in Minoo, Japan. On the surface, I wrote it because each Friday evening I had dinner with one of the communities of Sisters who ran the school I taught in. I prayed evening prayer with them, which they did partially in English for my benefit. As evening prayer traditionally ends with a Marian hymn, they asked me to come up with a Marian song in English that had the word "Alleluia" in it, for the Easter season. It's quite rare for me to have written a song based on someone else's request, but this is one of them.

Of course, there is a much deeper story than that. My time in Japan had a huge impact in my life, as is reflected in the title of this blog, for example. But it is not an impact I write or talk about directly very often because frankly the experience was painful with a type of pain that is hard to work into a conversation. When I arrived in Japan, I had been a Catholic for about 18 months. I went with an idealistic notion of what it meant to be a missionary that was disconnected from the reality of the person I actually was at the time. I had very little sense of community, of belonging, in any tangible way to the Church, the Body of Christ, and more importantly I didn't think it mattered. I thought I'd be just fine not being able to communicate, having no friends or even acquaintances, and being rather alone -- and that I'd still be able to reach out effectively with Christ's love to the people around me. I was supposed to be a teacher. I was told I'd be teaching in a Junior College, and this appealed to my vain notions of discussing literature and having interested students excited about bookish ideas. The books would bond us, I presumed.

Reality: I was assigned to the elementary school. We used Sesame Street curriculum; no one understood me at all, and I was essentially there as a Caucasian sound-bite-offerer, managed by the native-speaking teacher, so that wealthy parents felt their daughters' English would sound impressive, if ever they decided to speak a word of it.

My spiritual reality was far worse. I was like an old table with layer after ugly layer of paint, and God was out to refinish me. It felt more like He was trying to finish me off. Slop on stripper. Scrape off gunk. Repeat liberally. The stuff that was getting purged and stripped from me was so much of the religious trappings and ideas I had clung to for my identity. It was confusing. I remember sitting in my tiny apartment and looking at the religious art on my walls and screaming in anger. Everything religious in my life felt empty, like so many meaningless shells. Reading my Bible left me tormented. My prayers while alone bounced off the ceiling back to me. Mass and prayer in common left me aching, because it was all in Japanese and it was so hard to engage my heart. I felt deeply unholy, because I had nothing that I had relied on to feel holy, either as a Protestant or a Catholic. And it didn't help that in my desperate loneliness I had gotten into a relationship with a man who, surprise, spoke English. He was a very interesting character, but given my state, the relationship was not healthy for me at all. I was not physically healthy, either. Stripped bare. This process lasted two and a half years.

But, God was not out to leave me like that. During all this time spiritually I kept bumping up against the Blessed Mother. Recall that I had not been a Catholic very long at this time. Even though I had intellectually accepted the truths of who Mary is, I can't say I had any experience of her at all. She was a doctrinal category, not a Mother for me.

This bumping up against Mary eventually required me to learn from Jesus how to contemplate who she is. It was in the midst of this that I wrote "Holy Mary." A statue of Our Lady of Sorrows compelled me so that I had a photo of it blown up. I thought of her as Our Lady of Utter Boredom, because when I looked at her

face, I felt divine empathy with the painful emptiness inside me. Several other experiences drew my heart to understand Jesus' words to John "behold your mother." One of these was a dream I had just before I left Japan. I'm not saying it was a dream of divine revelation, but it certainly summarized my "take home message" from the experience. In it, I saw Mary, and I fainted from the sheer radiance and power of her beauty and purity. She pointed out my window, showing me my place next to an unidentified person (whom I think of as simply "humanity" or human community) with whom I was to walk forward from there.

And that was exactly God's point in refinishing me. I had barnacled myself over with a do-it-yourself, me-and-Jesus spirituality where others were not necessary to my salvation, nor I to theirs. God employed His Mother to teach me that this is not His will. God saves us in community with everyone whom the Holy Spirit has called, and sends us to all whom He will call. This is the great communion of saints. This is our family as Church. This is our call as disciples and our mission as evangelists.

Mary is with the Redeemer at the cross, pointing out our Salvation. We do well to learn from her how to behold her Son.

Pretty Much the Whole Enchilada

2011-08-14T18:05:00.000-04:00

So, back several days ago now I wrote a "part one" post on leadership which sorta begs for a "part two." But after I wrote the part one part I realized I didn't really feel I was capturing my gut with what I wrote. There was this elusive thing I wasn't able to turn into words. Then, I was (of all things) talking with my husband, and managed to pull out of my gut what it was I really needed to articulate. I say "of all things" like that, because for years and years I've relied on writing to be able to come to certain understandings. The ability to converse about said understandings came later.

So, that's a new and very good thing, both the understanding and how it came about. It makes me happy.

Now, though, I want to go back and wrestle it out into written words so that I can meditate on it some more, not lose anything, and integrate it into everything else which has been going on in my thoughts and my heart.

All of the complex ruminations I wrote about in my last blog lead me to one very simple truth: God is challenging me to be, fully, who I am. See, that's the problem with really profound things. They are too darn simple sounding when you put them into words. It reminds me of those effects one sees in commercials or movies or whatever where you have 20 billion tiny images, like a huge overview of a giant city in all its intricate detail, and then with a crescendo, followed by silence, it gets all sucked into one tiny focal point -- like a fiber optic cable or something.

Here it is. You know why it bugs the heck out of me to see timid worship leaders? Worship leaders who don't realize they are supposed to be heard, they are supposed to give clear, reasonably skilled direction to their congregations? Because that has been exactly my weakness, too. Except not in the area of worship leading, but in living out of my heart. Acknowledging to myself, and acting out of, what is in my own heart. The most important thing I am leading is my own life, bringing into the social setting around me the soul, the being, the person I am, the person God created me to be. And so often I have been like that *+$&%! irritating person who whispers or mumbles hymn numbers or plays her instrument so quietly that singers drown her out and everyone goes off key. And I am so encouraged by people who show they know what they are doing in leading worship because they shout to me: "Damn the lies, Marie -- LIVE!"

The message that has tormented me from a very early age is this hissing, insidious demand: shut up and go away. It infected me so deeply on so many levels, enchanting me with death in its many forms. This is simply not God's message to me.

There are many practical ways in which I am called to give clear, reasonably skilled direction in my life. Much of this is even non-verbal. Since I had this conversation with my husband I've seen almost every day the difference this revelation makes. It's hard to put into words, but I've had an interior habit of sort of shrinking out of existence when in the presence of others, to one degree or another. I used to think of it as holding my breath. When I was with other people, I would "hold my breath" until such a time as I could be alone and breathe again. It was like I felt living was a zero-sum game. That if I lived, I was causing another's death, and therefore it was selfish of me to live, and killing myself was an act of generosity. (Are you getting a feel for this diabolical message yet?) So, instead of shrinking away from life, I see that simply living, simply interacting without "holding my breath" is how I am called to "lead."

I'll give you an example. Last week a guy came to our house to diagnose our broken dishwasher. There was a time when I would have instinctively been very quiet while he was there, staying out of his way in the kitchen, and speaking to him cursorily when he was done. Not because of shyness, but because I felt it was somehow more right to be this way, more respectful, more moral. And because of habit. But this time I kept right on with the activity I was in, and talked with the man as appropriate while he worked, asking questions, sharing information, etc. In other words, I stayed alive while he was there. And the thing was, I didn't preach to the man, but I knew I was bearing witness with my life to the Truth. Even if he didn't.

I found this sort of different thing happening every day. And just like I get a deeper sense of peace from being around a competent leader, I could feel that others around me, especially the various children in my life (mine, and their friends) experienced the same peace as they got clear answers to their concerns. I saw people simply succeed more and be happier when I was clear and forthcoming about my needs, my wants, my thoughts, my intentions, and with my attention.

Contrary to the lie that my life means death to others, and therefore I can't bear to inflict it on them, the truth is that my life (which is in Christ) means life for others, and I can bless people. For decades now, the Lord has been patiently tutoring me to be myself. He has been specifically contradicting the lie that says being myself will destroy others. This has just been like a big flood-light recently.

One other related thought. I wrote this in my last post:

I once thought of, and lived out "following" as a sort of self-subjugation. That is, I had the sense that to follow meant to place myself under another's control. Usually, that control was of the nicest sort, you know, a "letting them make the rules for the game" sort of thing. But still there was this element, born probably of poor religious formation, that understood "surrender" to Christ as a kind of slavery, a sacrifice of my dignity, my very self. Lord have mercy, I attributed to God the desires of the devil himself -- my annihilation.

It occurred to me to no longer use the phrase "to surrender to God's will" but rather "to be in union with God's will." I don't propose this for anyone but myself, but to me it clarifies the problem I've had with confusing surrender with subjugation. (This, by the way, is one of the main difficulties with the spirituality of Islam -- and to a degree certain forms of Protestantism -- it proposes a relationship with God that is definitely not familial or filial, let alone spousal. To be in union with the will of God speaks to me of a surrender that is proper to lovers, in which any sense of harshness or cruelty is unspeakable.

Which leads me to yet another thought in closing, which is really a completely new starting place: It seems to me that what God has been leading me through in the last few years has been a personal, in-depth lesson in what John Paul II called the Theology of the Body.

Leadership, Part One

2011-08-07T23:15:00.000-04:00

Another theme I am compelled to ruminate on further these days involves leadership. I think of a post I wrote some months ago entitled Thoughts on a Vocation of Music Ministry. I talked about a few different people whose musical leadership I've experienced, but finished the post with this sense of not being able to put my finger on the quality I was trying to describe. And now I think simply that quality is called leadership ability. This is something that I find my spirit extremely sensitive to, and something that, for lack of a better word, does stuff in me that is so deep that it has been very hard for me even access it to bring it into my conscious thought.

What provokes my thinking about this so frequently is attending Mass at Franciscan University where there is a steady stream of different music ministers. (I was nit-pickingly critical of them until I led a group myself some 13 years ago. Then, one day when I came to the gospel acclamation and went completely blank and could not remember the word "Alleluia," I learned that it is harder than it looked to be able to adequately lead a congregation in the music of worship.) But the simple truth is that most music ministry leaders have only a few years' experience playing their instrument, let alone leading a congregation. Unless something has changed that I don't know about, there is not really much formation the teams go through. So while they generally all get an A for effort and the desire to worship God, many simply are not skilled as leaders.

I can feel the pain of every single one of them, too. Some seem to feel that they are being humble and unobtrusive by speaking quietly, playing quietly, and singing quietly. These folks completely miss the fact that their job is to be loud and clear enough for everyone to hear and follow them. If I can't understand what you are mumbling, I have no idea which hymn to turn to. Quiet music is fine when you are in your own meditative time. But when the congregation is straining to hear you, no one is free to join in worship because the attempt to hear you is too distracting.

There are other folks who also give the sense that they are leading a personal worship time, but they want others to join them. Sorry guys, this is Mass. That psalm rendition you created with five part harmony is nice, but no one can follow you. You and fifty of your friends know that new praise song you did, but it's not in the hymnals and no one else can join in or understand what you are singing. And when you do sing from the hymnals, please do the music as written instead of with unusual musical flourishes or just random changing of notes, rests and tempos. This isn't your personal concert where we get to hear how you like to do things. This is Mass, and the congregation has work to do. To lead well in this work, we need to be able to reasonably predict where you are taking us.

Ok, this much I have hashed over before. I've gone over how much ineffective leadership frustrates me. But there are two other aspects of this matter that I've been less eager to go full-face into. They seem related, and of course the cost involved is the cross, in one way or another. Let me see if I can wade into this and come back out alive.

On the flip side of my frustration is my need. My need leaves me deeply vulnerable, as need does for all of us. My new realization is how much I need to experience good leadership. When I encounter good leadership, it feels like finding water in the desert, a banquet when I'm starving, a blanket when I'm frozen or a shelter in a storm. I can feel my spirit filling up. It's like a taste of heaven.

Like I said, though, this is a very vulnerable thing. In the course of my life I have gone from dreadful experiences of insecurity from having no sure guide ahead of me to following those who were simply full of themselves and using me. As a result of this mixed bag of bad experiences, I developed a very strong tendency to depend on myself to be able to do everything. I needed this, too, because at one stage of my life I was afflicted with a crippling passivity. God writes straight with our crooked lines; it has all served His purposes with appropriate pruning times. But what I see right now is a new grace in my life. It has been in formation for a few years, really, but it has taken me this long to be comfortable acknowledging it. There is a certain strength, a certain grace, a certain beauty that I can only tap into when I am following. And I can only follow when those given the gift of leadership are being faithful to what God has given them.

I once thought of, and lived out "following" as a sort of self-subjugation. That is, I had the sense that to follow meant to place myself under another's control. Usually, that control was of the nicest sort, you know, a "letting them make the rules for the game" sort of thing. But still there was this element, born probably of poor religious formation, that understood "surrender" to Christ as a kind of slavery, a sacrifice of my dignity, my very self. Lord have mercy, I attributed to God the desires of the devil himself -- my annihilation.

Following is about the beauty of becoming fully who I am. It is about rejoicing fully in who someone else is. It is about being fully alive in Christ. There is something very feminine in this, both personally and spiritually. In all of my efforts to do everything myself as a younger person I admit I was never all that comfortable with my femininity. Being a woman struck me as like wearing clothes that weren't fitting me just right. In some odd way, my inner vision of myself was always male. I wrote stories with main characters patterned after myself; they were always male. I think while I was gravitating toward desiring the leadership qualities natural to a man, my inability to either find or appreciate them in others caused me to think I had to develop them within myself, where perhaps they were not entirely natural.

Now, I don't want to go talking about "women" and "men" in general -- that would take me away from the point of my own need. But I did grow up in the generation of "Free To Be You and Me" where sex stereotypes were deliberately dismantled, leaving us all rather confused why God bothered with creating two genders in the first place. Maybe this is a topic for another post. Suffice it to say, for now, that responding to God's gift of leadership frees me in a way that feels very feminine. Among other things, this involves knowing that I am not responsible for the management of everything. I sense strength, I sense purpose, I sense direction, and I am free to move because I know the path is blazed ahead of me. Sensing hesitation and timidity fill me with frustration and a feeling of burden.

But I did say there were two aspects I was less than eager to examine. This need for strong leadership is one. The call to lead in my own way is the other. But I think for now this post is long enough, and it is late enough. I will continue this thought in a future post.

Don't Know Much About.... Music

2011-08-07T17:01:00.000-04:00

It has been quite humbling to me to realize how little I really know about music. What I mean by that is I have been fixated, without quite realizing it, on the certain aspects of music that have come to resonate with me (and I'll get to exactly what those are) while not even realizing that other more technical aspects exist, practically.

The way I look at it, if I were in a room filled with the "general population," I would probably know a bit more about music than other folks. But if I were in a room filled with musicians, I would know far less than most everyone else. And I'm fine with that. It does make me just a little sad that I didn't pursue more formal study when I was a child. But then again I get a little sad when I think of all the other major career paths I would have liked to perfect in this life but haven't started in on. There is something in common to all of them, and I am on the right path to distilling that in the life I do actually have.

So, this realization of what I am not, and of what I know not, is really a means to help me realize who I am and what I have, and what the value of music is for me. Or what it is about it that drives me, that makes me love it -- not necessarily understand it or analyze it or perfect it -- but love it. I realize I am only going to love something if it draws me to my Beloved, to God, to the mystical reality behind all that is. To me, the experience of music is about the experience of healing, which is none other than the experience, the reality of being loved by the Most Holy Trinity.

Mystical theologians talk about how God created the world with music, and how music is made to speak a language of the redemption we find in Christ, with its harmony, its patterns, even its dissonances and non-resolutions. So I suppose I'd say that while I don't excel in the technical aspects of music, I delight in the mystical aspects of it. The fact that I cannot produce gorgeous music on an instrument myself only serves to amplify the comparison to the kingdom of God. (I can produce adequate music on guitar; as a pastor-friend of mine used to say "It's close enough for jazz.") What I mean is that the best music is created in community, with many parts, many gifts joining together. In the Church, although we can pray for our own healing and enlightenment, the biblical paradigm is to seek others to pray and minister healing to us (see James 5:14, for example). God has created us to be totally dependent on Him and interdependent on one another.

God has used music again and again to bring healing into my life. Finally, I'm seeing the trend, and it blows my mind. It seems God loves to sing to me. How can I keep from doing anything less in response? Music can make my spirit soar, my soul ache with a beauty beheld, my will firm in its choice to follow Christ, my heart happy to be a living, breathing woman. To me, these are all aspects of healing. Hearing music reminds me I am not alone; I have companions traveling the road to Zion with me. That is healing. Music gives me the courage to love. That is a grace. These are all immeasurable gifts that I can never give myself. God gives me these, through His children. And I am very happy to be one of His children through whom He can give gifts to others. When I cantor at my parish and people stop and thank me, I am very much aware that God has given them something through my instrumentation. This seems to be God's way: first He fills us in a certain way, then He gives through us to others in that way. All I can say is thank you, Lord, for using me to bless others like you have used others to bless me. Lord, you don't need any of us, but the fact that you make us your co-workers is yet another sign of your incredible love.

Memorial to my Sister

2011-08-05T17:16:00.001-04:00

I'm trying to blog again about what has been in my heart since starting the recording of my CD Unleashed, but first I see I need to write about my sister.

My sister passed away a week ago today. She was 53 years old. She had cancer and had been battling it on and off for about 15 years. She also had schizophrenia from her early adulthood, which is nearly the first that I remember her.

I can't say that we were that close, what with her being nine-and-a-half years older than myself, and what with her having moved away as an older teen, and what with her mental illness causing it to be somewhat difficult to form what I tend to think of as a sisterly relationship. There's one big caveat to that, and that's the fact that my husband and I adopted the baby she bore ten years ago.

That was her idea, at first at least. The way we heard of our son's existence was in an email from my mother which read "Bonnie says she's pregnant and she wants you to raise the baby." Now, this wasn't the first time in her life she had claimed she was pregnant, but it was the first time that the claim came with the verification that her social worker also said it was so. My husband and I had been praying for a baby and had just begun investigating our own apparent infertility at the time. We were excited, but cautious. I had a feeling it would not be an easy ride.

And I was right. By the time my son was born, my sister had decided she would parent. Children's Services hovered over her like a hawk, and by six weeks our son was in foster care. After much kafluffle, he came to live with us when he was eight months old, first as a "visitor," eventually as a foster child, and when he was a few months short of four years, we legally adopted him. That added a special dimension to our relationship, one that was in no way magical or easy, nor was it a burden. It was a grace for me; a hard grace though.

Bonnie was the most naturally outgoing person in our family. Just like my son will do, she was always striking up conversations with people, and strangers were simply friends she hadn't yet met. She was generous to a fault (if there can be such a thing), always giving away practically anything anyone gave her. Although when we cleaned out her apartment we did find lots of stuff, her mind was constantly filled with what she could give to other people.

My favorite memories of Bonnie were of her as one of my earliest musical inspirations. The first experience I can recall of "rocking out" on a song with someone else was with her, to this song, when I was about 7 years old, I'm guessing. I can still see the scene of me cranking up the radio and us both dancing.

It was her guitar that I first snuck off with and learned to play when she moved back home with us when I was 11. Songs she wrote and songs she played were the first ones I learned.

She and I also got serious about Christianity at about the same time. I was 10, she was 20. She was living in Hawaii at the time, and began sending lots of Christian comic books and whatnot that I read voraciously. She also sent me my first New International Version Bible, which made me a progressive among Lutheran kids. It sure helped me understand what I was memorizing in catechism class.

What I didn't understand was when her mental illness kicked in. I was so young, and didn't understand at all what has happening. It has been a multi-dimensional learning process to this very day to really grasp what it means to live with schizophrenia.

Her life was very difficult in many ways, and I thought more than once that death would be a blessed relief for her. That still doesn't make her absence any easier. All I know is that every human being has intrinsic dignity, and none should ever be treated without respect, without honor, or with disdain, regardless of how much they challenge our comfort.

Through the eyes of the least of them, Jesus searches us. What answer will you give when He asks 'Where is your love?'

"Concentrate Seriously on Becoming Holier"

2011-08-05T15:33:00.000-04:00

On the first of every month, our Lord gives Anne a new message about His call to service.

August 1, 2011

Dear apostles,

You are friends of My heart. As such, please be patient with Me as I bring you along in holiness. Would you like to be holier? Perhaps you identify My teachings as good but you feel frustrated because you see that you fall short on some days. This is when you must be truly patient and trust that I am bringing you along as quickly as is needed. Remember that you may see very little progress on some days, but your decision to remain with Me in the process of becoming holier creates a disposition for heaven that keeps the light where it should be, that is, on the need to examine yourself for failure instead of examining others. How easy it is to see the flaws of another. How much more difficult it is to identify which pain in you creates the disposition for repeating a mistake, perhaps again and again. Yes, patience is necessary, both with oneself and with others. I, Jesus, am patient with you. And so you must be patient with yourself. And then you must be patient with others. Do not be distracted by events around you. Do not be drawn into thinking that many events or big events mean that you can take your eyes off of the process of becoming holier. No, dear apostles. I speak gravely when I say to you that you must concentrate seriously on becoming holier because your holiness and your commitment to holiness is a crucial part of My plan to bring comfort to others. Allow Me to see to the world. If you see daily to the condition of your soul and if you love others then you will have fulfilled My plan for you. Rejoice. You are committed to Me and I am eternally committed to you.

Feast of St. Martha: Serving and Feelings

2011-07-29T12:03:00.000-04:00

There are some gospels or themes about which I imagine I might never hear a new or original thought in a homily. One of these themes is that of St. Martha. Of course, one does not need to hear a "new" thought in order to meditate on Scripture, but it helps me to hear something I don't expect to hear. A new connection makes meditation more productive for me. And Father's homily this morning presented one of these opportunities to me.

He said, as if talking to Martha, "When you are busy serving this person and that person and doing these charitable things, do you stop and think, 'How do I feel about the person I am serving?'?" That really struck me. His point was drawn out of Martha's words, "Lord, if you would have been here, my brother wouldn't have died" and the sense that we, like Martha, can be busy serving and miss Jesus present with us. But it really struck me, this notion of being present to one's emotions in the midst of working, of service. I thought of the conversation that brought about this post ("I Need to Trust my WHAT?!"), when last Fall I faced how I have habitually handled emotion. I immediately saw the wisdom in what Father was saying this morning, and what the other Father had said to me last November (Marie, you need to learn to trust your feelings.)

I thought of times when I had followed certain courses of action, not just for a moment but for a long time, while trying to ignore my emotional cues that something was wrong. I don't for a moment believe that when one is doing God's will it feels good 100% of the time. Sometimes doing God's will is terrifying. But that's just one feeling. Choosing to compromise one's soul, choosing to cheat, choosing to be lazy, choosing to vent anger, choosing to go all boneless chicken and let someone else call shots I should be calling -- these all come with feelings, too. And it's so easy to rationalize away one's sins by calling objectivity as one's defense. I'm being friendly; that's a morally good thing. I'm serving Jesus dinner; how could there possibly be any fault in that? Well, but where's that heart? Hmm? And how can you tell if your feelings, if your self-awareness is anesthetized?

The soul can be a very confusing place, a very disordered place. It is when we bring it to Christ that order is possible and starts becoming a reality. Part of that process of bringing our souls to Christ is to be aware of those emotions, acknowledge them, and start being honest about them before the Lord. You know, Lord, when I'm trying to be friendly to this person, I can't escape a sense of being used/prostituting myself/cowardice, etc. What is that, Lord?

The very cool thing about being in a relationship with Christ is that this question doesn't just reverberate back to me. I pray, I read and hear His Word. I live. I'm open. He leads me. He teaches me. He speaks to me. He answers the question. It isn't navel gazing; it's living with Jesus.

Jesus with us. That's what He was trying to say to Martha. I'm with you; does that register in your soul?

In Which She Goes on a Rant about Language

2011-07-26T17:01:00.000-04:00

Here's a random rant that has not been precipitated by anything in particular today but reverberating thoughts (and perhaps a few reverberating hormone chemicals).

I don't mind what language people speak. Speak English, speak Spanish, speak Danish or Hindi. I don't care. But please, oh please, talk like a human being.

I have friends who are poetic. I have friends who are funny. I have friends who are blunt and who have dry humor. Well, maybe I can't think of a dry humor friend right now, but I have dry humor and that counts. These are all ways people talk like human beings, and human beings are all different.

It creeps me out to no end when people talk using someone else's stilted lingo. I can't stand it when people want to get all "professional" sounding, using jargon their listeners don't. There's this sense of "high and mighty" that comes wafting down when people are afraid to simply talk using normal language.

Oh, I'm really only griping about myself, of course. This used to be me through and through. Doesn't mean it still doesn't grate on me. I suppose getting really infuriated about something is the only way one ever drop kicks junk out of one's life.

A lot of times when people cling to weird talk (religious people do this all the time, and it makes me cringe the worst! No, really, it makes me want to vomit.) it seems that the key is the person has not learned how to integrate what they profess with who they really are. Ok, it's a process. I understand. You're allowed. But the worst thing is that when people are trying to give answers to the world, but they can't talk from the heart. I want to just say, SHUT UP then! You know what? I don't want a bunch of pre-packaged answers. Show me your heart, and I will be very interested. I promise. I like hearts. I hate pre-packaged stuff though.Get down here on level ground with the rest of us schlunks and talk from your heart.

There. End of rant.

Perfectionism

2011-07-24T23:07:00.000-04:00

Now that I have started recording this CD, I have so many thoughts breeding like rabbits in my mind. It's like an explosion of insight, this experience. I owe each facet attention, in turn, but for now I'm trying to think about just this one: perfectionism.

Perhaps I start here because it seems a relatively easy aspect. I have never considered myself a perfectionist. Perfectionists, in my mind, are people who are uptight, never pleased -- impossible, really to please. And detail oriented. Every detail has to be just so, or they can't be comfortable.

Maybe it is easy for me to characterize perfectionism this way because that's not me. I'm pretty laid back, and I'm not particularly detail oriented.

But then I listen to my voice blaring over the speakers, and I hear the foibles, the missed notes. I hear myself speeding up and slowing down like some kind of 1905 hand-cranked motion picture.

And here's how I don't react. I don't think Lord, that's awful. Gotta do that again. I have to do better. I have to get this perfect.

No, my initial reaction, my feeling, is something more akin to "Wow, is that really the best I can do?"

Herein lies the rub. I really could do with a tiny dose of what I'm calling perfectionism. Because what I'm facing instead is a lifelong tendency to be happy with "good enough." To figure that whatever I do off the cuff is actually the best I can do.

I've known that this recording project was in part about the Lord's call to me to meet Him and have Him challenge some old ways in my emotional and mental processing. He's not disappointed me. I don't have any blueprint or agenda from Him, though, so everything comes as a surprise as we go along. And with this one particular facet I am reminded of something I wrote in this blog long ago about my schooling experiences. (It was in this post about Alfie Kohn's book Punished By Rewards.) Essentially what I'm driving at is that in school, I often just aimed low, for the grade, and not high, for actual learning, growing, changing, gleaning education. Most of the time I was able to get As or Bs at least without exuding a lot of effort, and if I had to put forth too much effort, I usually just avoided those subjects (like sciences in college). There were some exceptions, notably Alegbra/Trig in 10th grade. I remember lying in bed at night crying about that class, and being overcome with anxiety over it. I ultimately managed an A, but I also had to pay a book fine at the end of the year because I significantly abused that book in my frustration. It was horrible. And why? I think I didn't really know how to learn when I didn't understand something, and I didn't know how to be taught. I didn't know that being able to be taught has something to do with loving. The New Yorker author David Brooks has said, "We've spent a generation trying to reorganize schools to make them better, but the truth is that people learn from the people they love." My Trig teacher was an interesting character, but I can't say he inspired love in me. My 8th grade Algebra teacher, Mr. Blum, now he inspired love. And what I mean is that I knew he was teaching me. It wasn't because of any individual attention, because there wasn't any. But he taught the whole class in a way that conveyed that he wasn't focused on a textbook; he was focused on the students' grasping Algebra. It probably had to do with the fact that he was teaching a then-experimental "advance placement" group in a newly merged Middle School. But for whatever reason, I personally felt taught. I knew it mattered to him personally whether or not I understood. He wanted all of us to succeed. And -- he seemed to love math. That's gotta help.

But that was a unique experience for me. Most of the time, as I said, I just put forth whatever effort I felt like mustering, and I usually got good grades as a result. I learned to identify the things I naturally liked, but I had very little actual education because I was never really being drawn out, challenged, inspired, by anyone I felt any human connection to. I produced good grades but I never learned much. In college this changed I think, but there I was primarily exercising myself in my areas of strength (writing, literature and philosophy), areas that gave me an adrenaline rush but not anxiety when I had to essentially prove I was learning from my own reading and study and share this with my classes and my professors.

So what's the point? It's just this: with the exception of a rather narrow corridor of strength, I've been very slow to learn to try to do things excellently. That corridor was just enough to make me into an arrogant such-and-so. And since I'm no longer pursuing arrogance, all I find myself left with is the "good enough" approach. You know, hey, whatever.

The plan to muck through life this way has never particularly bothered me. But now, I listen to my voice, my guitar-playing. Music is supposed to mean so much to me. I'm thinking, this is how I convey my soul... no... this is how I give myself to love God. How? "Good enough?"

It's a mistake to believe one's acceptability is rooted in how well one can do things. God loves us because we are. No, He loves us because He is love. He couldn't be anything else. But His love, touching us, begs a response. Love begs for love in return. As St. John Chrysostom said in today's Office of Readings: "nothing so much wins love as the knowledge that one’s lover desires most of all to be himself loved."

So, this is something that is going on for me right now. Jesus calls to me: Love me back. Don't be afraid, and don't be selfish. Give me more. Strive to be perfect. But it's all about love.

How to Be Yourself

2011-07-17T15:38:00.001-04:00

Yesterday when I woke up it was all crystal clear to me. This is something I've been hearing and grappling with for years -- ever since God called me to the Catholic Church at the end of 1991. I used to hear or sense God say to me that what He wanted was for me to be myself, and it would frighten me, because I didn't know how to do that. I didn't know just what that meant. In some ways, it has been at the crux of my spiritual journey for the last three years, constantly. And yesterday when I woke up, it was so obvious to me that I could delineate it in steps.

How to Be Yourself

Step One: God calls to you.
You don't make this happen; this is God's initiative. But it is universal. God calls to everyone.

Step Two: Acknowledge the call
The response you give to God ("Yes, Lord?") opens and begins to align your heart to your Creator, your Origin, your Meaning.

Step Three: Receive
I'm picturing this in somewhat abstract artistic terms of one movable piece of creation lining up "under" so to speak a fount or source of something flowing into it. That piece of creation which you are can of course choose to move out of alignment, and sometimes changes in the force of flow can require some movements to stay in alignment. But the key is to constantly remain in/seek out that subordinate relationship with the vitality of the flow of the divine. You do not control this flow or make it happen. You must receive it.

Step Four: Live the Glory

As that vitality of God reaches you, it transforms you. It purges, cleanses, reshapes, cuts away, refreshes, enlightens and revitalizes you. In this state, you live and carry out your normal daily business. This is the presence of the glory of God in you. This is you being yourself: the self God has created and is creating, the self through which God brings His presence into the world and multiplies this on-going process in the lives of others, without you trying or even noticing.

You are not going to be without flaw, without weakness, without sin until we are fully purified and finally in the presence of the Lord Himself in eternity. But we live in hope, with the first-fruits of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, longing for heaven and loving our brothers and sisters, for we are all somewhere in the process all the time. God calls to all. Not all hear. Let us love and make His call easier for those lost in pain to hear.

Blathering about my CD

2011-07-13T22:22:00.000-04:00

I have been in high processing gear for the last day or so. I'm getting ready to start recording my CD this coming Saturday. I blathered on about how this came about once before. I had an intuition or premonition when I first set out on this path that there would come a point where instead of being my haven from anxiety, my own music would become an occasion for anxiety. That's been playing out now that I'm actually having the rubber hit the road, so to speak.

I get into these situations from time to time where, as I tell my husband, I find it extremely difficult to put into words what is actually happening internally. My brain thrives on understanding, on being able to make connections between what I know and what I don't know. When I find this difficult or elusive, I really can find no rest. I will rehearse in my mind the things I've experienced, searching for this understanding. Often during these times, even the things I know for certain no longer feel like they make any sense. And in all these regards I am speaking of spiritual realities, inner understandings -- that sort of thing. I know the sky is blue and food is fuel and putting the car in drive makes it go forward. But these types of things hardly ever interest me in the first place.

So tonight I'm just blathering for the sheer joy of working these thoughts out of my brain. What I notice developing, what I notice striking me (with staying power) is a sense I pull from a poor exegetical rendering of Ephesians 2:14: "For he is our peace, he who made both one and broke down the dividing wall of enmity, through his flesh." The actual context of the "both" in this Scripture is talking about the Gentiles being engrafted into Israel in the Church. But this verse strikes me with a more personal meaning. Because of factors in my early life, I have always carried about this sense I'd call having two lives: an inner life and an outer life. I suppose if I thought long and hard I could describe how this came about, but that's not really my concern at the moment. Earlier on my "inner" life was weaker and often ignored, and I considered my "outer" life the most worthy of development. Then, say as a later teen, I wanted to honor my inner life but felt my outer life was my master, my reality, the reality everyone else considered important. It is significant that my relationship with God (though not always my religious observance) was something I very much counted as part of my inner life. But the most important aspect of this inner life was that I carefully hid it. I habitually kept it protected from whatever hurt, misunderstanding, or intrusion I felt coming at me from others.

As I matured, my deeper held values seeped down into my inner life, and to some extent, I began living my life more out of this place. My "outer" life, meaning those things I did or followed more extrinsically, I more and more allowed to fall away. I began to live my own views about things like health, education, and parenting.

But I remember clearly one time I went to confession early on in my marriage. I mentioned this sense that I've had this private life that involved my faith, and the fact that I was frustrated with my inability to undo it now in my relationship with my husband and my in-laws. I had practiced this separation for so long that I was unable to do anything else but keep certain intimate parts of myself locked away.

The one thing that has always played a part in both of my "worlds" is music. And I think what I am realizing is that right now, this music project and all of the inner swirls it sends me on is all about breaking down the wall in me that has created these two different worlds. I had a very strange experience last night of relating a deeply formative, deeply personal story to a friend of mine, verbally. I do this all the time in writing. But I rarely do this (especially with this person in question) verbally. I didn't for a minute regret sharing it (I've already blogged the story ad nauseum), but I think the unlabeled feeling was there that I had breached the wall. Even though I have gotten very fluent at living out of my inner life, I had nurtured certain... limitations, I guess, that kept the division in place. It seems that God's business at hand is to finally do away from this distinction: to make me but one person. That my inner life is my inner life that I share in the world because it is who I am, and not my secret life that I hide in subtle ways.

One thing I am doing with this music is taking my innermost soul and putting it on display for strangers. Yeah, that's a little weird, a little freaky. I suppose it is what I've been doing with blogging for years now to some degree. But this music thing feels like it has a much bigger obedience factor. I write as a catharsis and a way to hear myself think. Music has long since stopped being that for me. Music, my music, is now a gift of self. I'm not polished nor professional nor the most talented person in the world, but these things are not really my concern. I am producing this cd because I feel that to not do it would be stepping out of obeying the Holy Spirit. It's quite literally like this picture:

I don't have any real ambition for this gift, though I would like for it to be received by people of course. What I want most in life is to be an agent of healing for those in pain. But I know full well I have no power to heal. I don't say this in any dejected way at all. It simply is the reality. God is the healer; Love is the healer. I pray and have prayed continuously that God would use the little gift I offer for the purposes He desires.

And I know his first desire is that I live with a full, undivided heart before Him. I can't make choices for you or for anyone. I can choose faithfulness to Christ for myself, and choose I must (2 Cor. 5:15 -- the love of Christ compels me).

The Pain of Being Healed

2011-07-13T08:31:00.000-04:00

The gospels' accounts of Jesus healing people have always intrigued me. Most homilies I hear focus on what Jesus is doing in these scenes, and I suppose that's all well and good. But I am always drawn to think about the person being healed.

Take for example the man with the withered hand in Luke 6. However it was that he earned his livelihood, he had an inherent life struggle where others took full functionality for granted. What was his social standing like? The Pharisees are picking a fight over religious rules, and what does Jesus do? He tells the man, "'Come up and stand before us.' And he rose and stood there." Was Jesus just using this man to make a statement about the Sabbath? Hardly. There was something in Jesus' presence that drew this disabled man. That something filled him with the confidence of being called, loved and freed to stand up in front of everyone and, at Jesus' request, hold up for everyone to see this part of him that had caused him his life's frustration. "Looking around at them all, he then said to him, 'Stretch out your hand.' He did so and his hand was restored" (Luke 6:10).

But think. What happened to the man later? He suddenly had the functional use of both his hands. We don't know how long he had had his problem, whether it had been life-long or not, and we don't know how his muscle function was right off. There was going to be an adjustment period for him, a re-learning, a clumsiness in learning to live with two hands. If he went on living at his former mastery level, what would this say about how he integrated into his life what Jesus had given him? Healing itself causes more challenges to be worked through. Perhaps he had only begged before. What would become of his standing in the community? Would people be willing to give alms to a man who now appeared, on the outside at least, to be completely whole?

Another healing story I love is in John 5 -- the man at the pool of Bethesda . This was a spot where the chronically ill and disabled gathered. Jesus sees this man, knows he has been sick for a long time (38 years), and approaches him with a question: "Do you want to be well?" It is a very telling question. When we have a chronic condition or situation we lose a sense of power, of choice, and the situation can become our identity. I am sick. I am blind. I am sinful. I am bitter. I am afraid. I am lonely. I am proud. I am disorganized. You get the picture. Jesus doesn't ask the man about his problem. He asks him if he wants change. The man's response is equally telling: "Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; while I am on my way, someone else gets down there before me." I am powerless. Even among us cripples, other people are more powerful than I am. No one helps me. No one loves me enough to put my needs before theirs. I've been abandoned. I won't say it's funny -- ironic is a better word I suppose. Here is the Son of God personally singling out this man to help him, trying to provoke him, to awaken a desire in his soul, and the man is stuck on how he has no help. Jesus is so humble, so patient with the man. He blows no trumpet, doesn't announce how of course the poor schmuck has no help, but Jesus the Do-Gooder is now here, so he should stop his miserable whining, realize in Whose presence he actually is, get a grip, and receive this wonderful magic trick He was about to do over him. No. Jesus, humble, but with all the power the man lacks, speaks the word of command, and instructs the man to be the instrument of his own healing. "Rise, take up your mat, and walk."

Now, there's a guy who was going to face a hugely different life the next day! Talk about learning to live all over again!

Step one: God heals us. Step two: we have to learn all over again who we are. We are changed by encounters with Christ, and that change can indeed happen instantaneously. But there is an organic process, too, a growing process, and I think that happens more in a pace with the rest of the unfolding of life. The foolish thing, though, is to lose sight of the healing we have, especially in the Sacraments. We are foolish to live as if we have no power when we have been given divine life itself. It is foolish to sink into believing we have no hope of transformation when the Church lays out for us all of the riches of grace. If we look to someone other than Christ to figure out who we are, we will be lost and hopeless. Follow the presence of Christ, and you find the path to Life.

As By a ... New Pentecost?

2011-06-25T22:48:00.001-04:00

My old friend Mike Bogdanovich wrote a song once that says:

Something's going on
Deep inside of me
Something very precious
Something's going to set me free

That chorus has been going through my mind of late, because something is going on inside me. There is a certain ironic twist that it is Mike's song I'm thinking of since this something has to do with Pentecost and he is a friend from my pentecostal days.

I was, as I sometimes put it, a "non-denominational small-p-pentecostal charismatic" before I became a Catholic, even though I was raised Lutheran. It was a formative time for me; I was 19-24 years old and I was expanding my horizons spiritually, mostly in ways that were good. My experience with what I learned to call the baptism in the Holy Spirit, which I experienced alone in my college dorm room with a Don Basham book in hand, was my first experiential encounter with Jesus Christ as Emmanuel, as God who wanted to interact with me. Before that I had let Him be primarily the God in heaven I believed in and prayed to. But with that introduction to "things charismatic" as I understood them, Jesus showed me He is a Person, that the Holy Spirit is a Person, and that our relationship could have elements of an actual, tangible exchange if I but came asking and expecting to receive.

Because I had learned to identify and develop this living and growing relationship with God, I kept hungering for more and more until my feeling that I had "eaten through" everything available to me left me restless. This was because God was leading me to enter the Catholic Church, an adventure I've written about several times on this blog, like here. I've never felt I've foresworn my charismatic formation or experience, although I have felt that what was once a great source of growth for me became far less edifying. I remember attending a lecture by a Carmelite priest while I was in the process of entering the Church. I asked him what he thought of the charismatic movement as a spirituality. I was shocked by his response. It was something to the effect that it was fine as a starting place for some people, but the real fruit was to be found in contemplative prayer. In my youthful egotism and spiritual inexperience, I felt as if I'd been standing on the spiritual Mount Everest in my charismatic fellowship. He was telling me I'd barely hit the foothills.

I share all this to say that when I've thought of Pentecost, the feast, for all these years as a Catholic (18 years, now) I've still held on to some sense of how we used to pray for a "move of the Holy Spirit." Back then it seemed we always believed that God was just on the verge of doing something new, something great, something unprecedented. The next revival was always right around the corner. Sometimes people would then start seeing these things, or convincing themselves that they did. This leaves people open, frankly, to mind games that aren't healthy.

Just before this year's feast of Pentecost, I was praying the Pentecost mystery of the rosary, and I realized I was praying with a yearning that my mind couldn't figure out how to package. I was still carrying around this sense that to pray for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit was to pray for large, bizarre things to happen of one sort or another. But my overarching sense was that I was praying open-endedly for something from the unknown to be made known. That's the best I can do to describe it.

Then on Pentecost Sunday at Mass, whether it was actually from the prayers of the liturgy or from the comments of the priest I'm not sure, but I heard that Pentecost is the fulfillment of the paschal mystery. Yes! The sufferings of Christ we shared in Lent, His death we witnessed in the Triduum, His resurrection celebrated for forty days, His ascension into glory where our humanity is raised up -- and now His Spirit is poured out, sealing His covenant with us, quickening us, filling us with life, and sending us forth: it is all one. That struck me as very significant.

What I have experienced, I think, is encapsulated in this truth. I have been experiencing a new Pentecost in my own life, and it is a large, bizarre thing in a way. And yet it is also the flowering of the things the Lord asked of me during Lent, during the Triduum, the things that first "sprouted" in Easter. It is about serving Him with power, it is about grace flooding through my soul and from me. It is also rooted in the "charismatic" reality I learned of actual, tangible exchange with my living Lord who knows every detail of my life and who opens Himself to me. And many, many would find it mystifying. This powerful move of the Holy Spirit has been about me.... cleaning my house. Yep. Sweeping those floors, doing housework.

I am in no way kidding. This is a deep thing. It makes me marvel all over again at the work of the Holy Trinity in human hearts.

I love this adventure of living with the Lord. There is always new growth, new directives, new calls to obedience and love. It is like continuously traveling and continuously arriving at the starting gate.

On the Duties of our State of Life

2011-06-18T08:58:00.000-04:00

Written by St. Claude de la Colombière (1641-1682)

"The good order of things in the world depends upon the fidelity with which each one performs the duties of his state in life. All disorder originates in negligence upon this point. What a grand thing it would be if everyone acquitted himself of his duties! It is, perhaps, the thing that is most neglected even among pious people, indeed probably more often among those than among others. Yet people do not accuse themselves of it. Charles V said to his confessor: 'I accuse myself of the sins of Charles, not of those of the Emperor.'

"More souls are lost for this reason than for any other. Half are damned for not having performed the duties of their state, the other half because others have neglected their duties with regard to them. The duties of one's state take precedence of private duties: for instance, a magistrate must not consider relationship or friendship. Public good must prevail over private good. Jesus Christ, who came into this world to teach us and save us, did not think of his Mother when it was a question of his office as Redeemer: he looked upon others only in so far as they concerned this work of Redemption. Those who cooperated with him are his brothers; those to whom his Precious Blood gives new life are his children; his Mother is she who is perfectly submissive to the will of his Father.

"A man who neglects the duties of his state is a discordant voice in the harmony of the world, no matter what else he does. Those we are faithful to all other duties often neglect these; those who do not omit them perform them negligently or through human motives and self-interest. This is not fulfilling their duty.

"In choosing a state of life, the human advantages are considered but not the duties. It is impossible to neglect these duties without injuring others, and as God has their interests at heart even more than his own, such neglect is very dangerous.

"People would consider it strange for a man to become a religious without knowing to what he was going to bind himself. But what of a secular who has been married for twenty years, or who has held some responsible post in his profession, without knowing the duties these states of life entail.

"Sins of omission on this point are easily committed. They are hardly noticed, and consequently reparation is rarely made for them. These are sins that are committed by doing nothing; sins that do not consist in bad actions but which are often the consequence of some good work.

"By neglecting your duties, you condemn both yourself and others to punishment: others because you do not teach them their duty and make them fulfill it; and yourself because you do not fulfill your own. The less wicked will be damned for what they have done; the most wicked for what they have omitted to do."

The Purity of a Child

2011-06-07T17:21:00.000-04:00

I love to observe children's unabashed sentiments of friendship. My son is a popular, outgoing boy that everyone seems to love to be around. I've witnessed boys debating one another about which one of them was my son's best friend. And the disappointment on the face and in the voice of a boy who comes to our house to play, only to learn that my son is at someone else's house playing, tugs at the heart. The way my children will beg to spend more time with their friends and vice versa -- it's all so free and uncalculated. If I listen closely I hear a yearning in innocence for communion that makes my own soul glow in mystery.

What happens when we cease to be children? Or is it just me? Was it just me? I'm not entirely sure I was ever a child in the way I'm thinking about it here.

When we grow and mature, we become aware of more of what we were made for. And yes, it is communion. Profound communion. Mature hormones kick in to tell us we are made for a type of communion in which we give ourselves completely to one who is able to receive us completely, and we are meant to spiritually and physically reproduce ourselves in this world. Those drives can perfect us, and they can muck us up seriously, as well. We can become calculating. The pain of disappointment can become too much to bear, or feel, so we can start to push them down and divert ourselves from what we are made for.

But hold it. Kids can do that, too. I did. But just today I witnessed that purity I wrote about earlier -- that pure longing for friendship expressed by a child. Purity is possible, just like deformation is.

We're made for more than sex, more than marriage. The only one we can give ourselves to completely and the only one who is able to receive us completely is the One who made us, the One who holds us in life. We are made for God, for union, for unity with Him through the absorption of ourselves in Him, which makes us most perfectly the unique individuals we were created to be, free from calculations, from self-conceit.

But God has gone and created this as a sacramental universe. He comes to us, not despising created means, but embracing them, employing creation to woo us, to show us His face, to pour His grace upon us: the Incarnation.

Which is why I can look at the child at my door and feel my heart bursting with the mystery of God present with us, calling me to Himself.

Big City, Little Town

2011-06-03T15:59:00.001-04:00

Last month my family went on a trip to visit relatives, and in the course of that trip we visited Toronto, Ontario. Toronto is a city of roughly five million people, once you take in all of the burbs.

I've done my share of traveling, and frankly I'm not a huge fan of it anymore. But there was something uniquely jarring to me about the day we spent in Toronto. Riding the subway into the heart of the city, I was struck by a difference between that culture and the one in which I currently reside.

I should explain that subways and big cities are nothing new to me. I grew up in Madison, Wisconsin; at the time the population was about 140,000. It has grown significantly since then. In college I moved to Milwaukee, which I think was something like 300,000 at the time. My next residence was in Takamatsu, Japan, on the island of Shikoku. This city was considered a quiet, backwater village of only about 600,000. Then I moved to Osaka, home to about three million people. Subways and trains were common fare to me then. In Japan everyone learns how to build a bubble of privacy around them in the midst of hundreds of strangers, even in the public baths.

And then I moved to Steubenville with its population of just under 18,000 and shrinking by the day.

This is my home in every emotional sense of that word. That means that I find great comfort here, even while occasionally feeling annoyed or amused by some aspects of the experience. I am annoyed, for example, at how drivers seem to constantly disregard the sirens of emergency vehicles (I once saw four cars pass in front of a fire truck at an intersection), and I am amused, in a slightly irritated way, at the pronunciation to which some words are subjected. But, as I think happens when one is very comfortable someplace, I didn't realize just how this place that is my home has formed me with certain expectations, certain assumptions about how people interact with each other.

On the subway in Toronto I was struck by a North American version of the Japanese privacy bubble. The Toronto bubble, however, didn't feel like a cultural understanding of respect-by-distance. It felt more like mutual alienation. Everyone avoided others, except if they traveled as a group, and then the entire group interacted in such a way that communicated avoidance of others. Just an example: in one group of young men, a coffee spilled on one man's backpack. They all groaned over the disgustingness of this while the young man wiped his backpack on the seat between him and another person, as if no one but they were present.

Then I think of life here, where it is not uncommon for drivers who pass each other on country roads to wave to each other, just because. It's not that everyone makes eye contact with every stranger here, but I routinely have strangers greet me. It's just sort of common courtesy that we say hello to whomever we meet when out walking. I've done quite a bit of petition work, and I've found nearly every stranger I've stopped willing to chat. I love the feeling that when I go grocery shopping I usually run into an acquaintance at the store.

I know from my husband, who grew up in a town much smaller than this one, that small town life can instill a sense that one has no private life, because everyone knows everything about everyone, and is probably talking about it with everyone else. Perhaps I just have the best of both worlds: I presume that everyone is minding his or her own business and ignoring everyone else, while experiencing that people are relatively aware of each other. I also have a relatively low level of gossip paranoia.

One might claim the the level of friendliness experienced here is limited in its value because it only goes so far: there are people who are suffering, lonely, abused, and even murdered right in our neighborhoods. A wave and a howdy isn't going to prevent that. But it does do something for me. I have a sense of peace and safety. I have a sense of belonging, knowing that neighbors would help each other in case of any kind of emergency need.

The feeling I had in the big city was by far more one of self-protection, guarding against strangers, mistrust, suspicion. I had forgotten, or not realized, just how much I had moved out of that mindset. I have had to coach my son in the proper application of self-protection and mistrust in public, when he had a gift card stolen from him last Christmas. But I would rather teach him to constantly keep his wallet in his hand than to watch him have to pry his heart open as an adult, constantly and routinely on guard with friend and foe alike.

I do think that human need brings out the neighborliness in most of us, regardless of our culture. I guess what it boils down to is that it makes me sad to think of all of the varieties of loneliness there are in the world -- and especially how it can crush the soul while people are crushing in on you from all sides.

Watch What I can do with Your Yes

2011-06-01T15:17:00.000-04:00

On the first of every month, our Lord gives Anne a new message about His call to service.

June 1, 2011

Jesus

Dear apostles, humanity suffers. If you have eyes to see, then you will see that all around you there are children of God who have become disconnected from their Father. When a child suffers, that child is consoled if his Father is nearby and engaged with him. The child feels understood, even in his great pain. The child feels that there is ultimate safety, even when he faces temporary risk. To know that one is destined for ultimate safety provides for a disposition that withstands any difficulty, even the prospect of death. Beloved apostles, so close to Me, do you see that you have something that most do not? Do you see that your anticipation of ultimate safety provides you with a solid wall at your back which will, someday, absorb you into Itself? At that time, you will never be at risk again. You will be one of those who rejoices completely, not only in your own safety, but in the safety of all those around you. You will be absorbed into the Communion of Saints who now so perfectly understand the struggle of humanity that they work tirelessly and joyfully for the salvation of their brothers and sisters remaining on earth. When you finish your time on earth, you, too, will understand the great things that I accomplished through the little yes answers you gave Me on your journey through time on earth. You will say, yes, it was worth everything. You will say this, dear friends, regardless of the amount of suffering or sacrifice you endured. But, even as I rejoice in your heavenly heading, I urge you to strain forward in My service. Others should possess this confidence and security. If I told you that there was one person who was lost and that he could be found, would you rejoice with Me? If I told you that this person, currently suffering, could be claimed for heaven through your allegiance to Me on this day, would you give Me that allegiance? For one more day? This is what I am asking of you. Answer yes to Me. Give Me this day today. Watch, dear apostle, what I can do with your yes answer today. Look back and see what I have done with your yes answers in the past. You will see, in looking back, the barest truth about what I accomplished through you. Only in heaven will you see the full extent of what the Father has gained through your presence in His heart. Trust Me, while I obtain peace for you and peace for others through you.

Humility

2011-05-17T10:34:00.001-04:00

Lately the Holy Spirit seems to be teaching me often about humility. I recall several months ago, while reading Lessons in Love by Anne, a lay apostle, her reference to the litany of humility, below.

O Jesus! meek and humble of heart, Hear me.
From the desire of being esteemed, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being loved... Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being extolled ...
From the desire of being honored ...
From the desire of being praised ...
From the desire of being preferred to others...
From the desire of being consulted ...
From the desire of being approved ...
From the fear of being humiliated ...
From the fear of being despised...
From the fear of suffering rebukes ...
From the fear of being calumniated ...
From the fear of being forgotten ...
From the fear of being ridiculed ...
From the fear of being wronged ...
From the fear of being suspected ...
That others may be loved more than I, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be esteemed more than I ...
That, in the opinion of the world, others may increase and I may decrease ...
That others may be chosen and I set aside ...
That others may be praised and I unnoticed ...
That others may be preferred to me in everything...
That others may become holier than I, provided that I may become as holy as I should…
by Rafael Cardinal Merry del Val (1865-1930),Secretary of State for Pope Saint Pius X

At first, when I tried to pray this prayer, I found it actually unpleasant, even painful to pray. Who wants to be "delivered" from the desire of being loved? I thought. Love is what we are made for. I was confused by this.

But over the course of praying the rosary, and especially the third joyful mystery, the birth of Jesus, my divine Tutor began to show me that the Incarnation, which one could look at as Jesus' great act of humility, is the doorway for intimacy with God. All of mankind has longed to see God's face, and in Christ, we do. It is humility that makes intimacy possible.

Long ago my Protestant pastor taught me that pride is self-protection. We are hurt, and in an effort to never be hurt again, we cover ourselves with a hard sort of shell. It works. The hurt stays farther away from our ability to feel. But it has the unintended consequence of its also blocking our ability to feel, to receive, and to give love. Pride is isolating. We are left only with calculated means of responding to others and measuring their response to us. We dam up love's movement to a trickle, and because we are made for love, we are left unsatisfied on a very deep level.

Well, in the last several weeks, I started praying the litany of humility. At first I took it up as a way of interceding for someone else whom I figured needed it more than I did! (Hardy har har.) But very quickly I realized that was not the Holy Spirit's intention. And I also realized that to pray for humility is to pray for a deeper means of receiving and giving love. It is to pray for the means to be more deeply happy and satisfied.

And this is exactly what God wants for us.

Lately, every time I do something, or think of something I've done, that leaves me feeling vulnerable, embarrassed, foolish or weak, the Holy Spirit reminds me, "There's enough love here to cover that." The fact that God loves me, the fact that He surrounds me with love through people -- it is enough to cover where I am silly. Love is enough that nothing else matters, and it is to Love I must always go.

The Sacred Heart of Jesus

2011-04-27T19:35:00.000-04:00

Every time I turn around lately I am confronted with the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

A brief survey: The moments that gave birth to the CD project I'm undertaking came while I was playing/praying at Sacred Heart parish in nearby Hopedale. When I was the most stalled-out (thus far) and confused about what God was asking of me about the music, it was the Blue Army song Sacred Heart that revived my love and courage again. (Take a listen... it's great!) In seeking an intercessor for this project, The Saint's Name Generator gave me St. Claude de la Colombiere, the spiritual director of St. Margaret Mary. It was through them that the modern devotion of the Sacred Heart came into our world. Even one of the songs I'm recording, written before I was in the Church and even all that aware of the devotion, is written as a call from Jesus for humanity to enter His heart. As I write, we are in the midst of the Divine Mercy novena, yet another call of Jesus to us to approach His Heart and bring Its mercy to others.

Today the connections strike me as overwhelming.

Just this morning a long-forgotten incident came back to mind. During the first few months of 1992, about the same time that I wrote the aforementioned song "Come Into My Heart," I would occasionally visit a popular shrine near Milwaukee called Holy Hill. The shrine is home to a Carmelite monastery with a beautiful basilica, set in park-like grounds in the middle of the countryside. I came to walk and wander and ponder, because I knew God had called me to be a Catholic, and yet I was very much alone. The friends who had been instrumental in my initial moment of conversion were then far away, and I had no one. My mind was anxious and racing with the changes swirling in my heart and soul.

I remember finding a statue of the Sacred Heart in the church (though I only understood it to be a statue of Jesus -- the kind easiest for me to handle, and recognize, then. Such a sea of strangers those statues were at first!) I stood in front of that grey statue and told the Lord of my confused heart. I stared for a long time into those eyes. It was consoling in the sense that the unchanging gaze reminded me that the Lord is constant, while I felt much the opposite. But it was frustrating to me as well, because looking at a lifeless form made me sad. I did not wish for Jesus to be removed from me like this. It was a flicker of longing for true communion with Him rising in my heart.

Today, as I wrote this post initially with pen and paper, I was back in Sacred Heart parish, sitting, literally, under the gaze of a Sacred Heart Statue. Fittingly enough, this one is in full color. When I first approached the statue and gazed into those eyes, I said back to Jesus, "You want to be my love!" I saw the wound in His Heart, and knew it was for me, to make a place for me to be with Him. And I saw that as He points to His heart and extends His hand to me, so He wants me to point to His heart and extend His loving hand for others to hold as well.

Of course I know it's just a statue, lest anyone misunderstand as I once did. It is not a hunk of plaster that I adore and worship, nor do I worship any creature by whom God chooses to make me aware of His reality and presence.

May all that I see and all that I love serve only to make the flame of love in my heart for my Lord burn ever brighter.

Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, for His mercy endureth forever!

God Desires No Puppets

2011-04-26T23:46:00.000-04:00

To prefer man to God: A strange and unhappy slavery is that of a man who seeks to please other men. I vow never to do anything nor to leave anything undone because of what people think. This will set up in me a great interior peace. -- St. Claude de la Colombiere

I posted this quote recently on Facebook and a very thought-provoking discussion followed. One question that was raised is how one knows when one is crossing the line into slavery of another person.

I remembered some thoughts I pondered a year ago, namely this post (Idolatry, Dignity, Authority and Worship) and this one (The Fear of the Lord). At the time I wrote these, the Lord was dealing with my heart about the sin of habitually holding, as it were, my dignity under the water, to try to drown it, because of a warped notion that this is what it would take to please others and therefore be acceptable. That I did this was by no means as conscious as I am able to write about it now, but it retrospect I see that's exactly what the Lord was trying to free me from.

But I saw today, in pondering my friends' discussion of slavery to the opinions of others, that my sin of how I reacted to others was actually rooted in a deeper misunderstanding, not just of my relationship with people, but with God Himself.

I thought of this old song: I'm Your Puppet. Check out these lyrics:

Pull the string and I'll wink at you, I'm your puppet
I'll do funny things if you want me to, I'm your puppet
Mm. I'm yours to have and to hold
Darling, you've got full control of your puppet ....
Mm, your every wish is my command
All you got to do is wiggle your little hand
I'm your puppet, I'm your puppet
I'm just a toy, just a funny boy
That makes you laugh when you're blue
I'll be wonderful, do just what I'm told
I'll do anything for you .....

This has got to be the most vile notion that ever passed for a love song. This is not about love at all, but about someone eagerly surrendering their dignity, longing to be controlled, and understanding that as a sense of "belonging" in love to another person.

Balderdash.

What I realized today is that at one time, I prized myself on thinking this way towards God. Of course I wanted to belong to God, wholly and entirely. I craved it. I wanted Him to be in control of every aspect of my life. I wanted to do anything He told me to do, including anything difficult or painful. I wanted to do anything at all that God desired that would please Him. Really, I couldn't believe that He would simply love me, so like the prophets of Baal, I had to resort to violence -- to my very nature as a human being. After all, aren't we suppose to sacrifice ourselves?

This "puppet" way of being is not the sacrifice of myself in any holy sense of the word -- it's whoredom. It's idolatry. God's way of sacrifice is to treasuring what God has given to me -- and through me to the greater community -- and raising it up with joy in dedication back to the Lord for His purposes. This puppet way of being is asking God to trash me if He has to, if only to give a few scraps of attention.

We deeply and unceasingly yearn for love, for belonging, for the warmth of another human heart. But we end up submitting ourselves to control, and controlling others. Which way do we go to get free?

I belong to God, not because of my great effort to get Him to love me. He loves me because I am lovable, because Love Himself has created me. Everything about me, about my existence, is because of Him who created me, who gives me His very life in Christ. With the firm assurance that He is everything to me, it makes sense that I cannot be a slave to pleasing another. I cannot be a whore when the Lamb claims me as His Bride. When I act that way, I am falling out of who I truly am, in Christ. Always He extends His arms to receive me back. And when my falling days are done, those arms will draw me in for eternity.

The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom should I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? Ps. 27:1

God Whispers

2011-04-24T13:32:00.002-04:00

Coming into Holy Week and the Triduum I was struck with a sense of God pressing in close to me. It was like when someone leans over to you and you realize they are doing so to say something to you. There is something both awesome and dreadful in a moment like this. It denotes something new, something that I need that I probably don't realize yet that I need; something I lack. And yet, anything He might share is a gift beyond price; that much I know. But what will it mean, I wondered.

Holy Thursday I recognized a tendency, and old tendency, kicking in to life. Rather than leaning over and waiting to hear, I began to try to find my lack myself, to dig around in my heart until I could find the problem and come up with the solution as well. As if I could keep God from putting Himself out on my behalf. How ridiculously silly.

On Good Friday the message came through to me clear enough: following Jesus is about giving a gift of self. Jesus didn't try to be neat about His gift of self. He was not and is not discriminating. His blood fell where it fell, and He didn't even really control that. In His humanity, He was far too consumed with His offering to be orchestrating. His life is for "whosoever."

And then, between Good Friday and Holy Saturday, God gave me the most amazing gift. Some weeks ago I felt moved to seek out an intercessor, a patron saint, for the CD recording project I have underway, and I was led to St. Claude de la Columbiere. I had read a bit of his life at the time, and saw how there were some striking ways he was very fitting. (He was the spiritual director of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, to whom Jesus revealed the devotion of the Sacred Heart.) But on these days, I was again inspired to seek out some quotations from him. I found that he wrote a book, which fortunately has been edited and translated into English, which is basically a collection of gems of spiritual direction. You can read excerpts here.

As I read, I found wisdom that spoke into secret places in my heart, answering questions I had not even been able to formulate into words. And in some mysterious way, God used those words to speak to me those words I knew He had leaned over to whisper to me. It was dreadful. And awesome. And once again, life-changing.

Every day with the Lord is an adventure. As long as I cling to Him, my hope is sure.

An Act of Hope and Confidence in God

by St. Claude de la Columbiere

My God, I believe most firmly that Thou watchest over all who hope in Thee, and that we can want for nothing when we rely upon Thee in all things; therefore I am resolved for the future to have no anxieties, and to cast all my cares upon Thee.

People may deprive me of worldly goods and of honors; sickness may take from me my strength and the means of serving Thee; I may even lose Thy grace by sin; but my trust shall never leave me. I will preserve it to the last moment of my life, and the powers of hell shall seek in vain to wrestle it from me.

Let others seek happiness in their wealth, in their talents; let them trust to the purity of their lives, the severity of their mortifications, to the number of their good works, the fervor of their prayers; as for me, O my God, in my very confidence lies all my hope. "For Thou, O Lord, singularly has settled me in hope." This confidence can never be in vain. "No one has hoped in the Lord and has been confounded."

I am assured, therefore, of my eternal happiness, for I firmly hope for it, and all my hope is in Thee. "In Thee, O Lord, I have hoped; let me never be confounded."

I know, alas! I know but too well that I am frail and changeable; I know the power of temptation against the strongest virtue. I have seen stars fall from heaven, and pillars of firmament totter; but these things alarm me not. While I hope in Thee I am sheltered from all misfortune, and I am sure that my trust shall endure, for I rely upon Thee to sustain this unfailing hope.

Finally, I know that my confidence cannot exceed Thy bounty, and that I shall never receive less than I have hoped for from Thee. Therefore I hope that Thou wilt sustain me against my evil inclinations; that Thou wilt protect me against the most furious assaults of the evil one, and that Thou wilt cause my weakness to triumph over my most powerful enemies. I hope that Thou wilt never cease to love me, and that I shall love Thee unceasingly. "In Thee, O Lord, have I hoped; let me never be confounded."

St. Claude (1641-1682)

Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at Hand

2011-04-16T18:01:00.001-04:00

"Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand."

This Lent, that phrase has struck me several times in a way it hasn't struck me before. If I have to come up with a reason for the difference, I'd choose to say it is because of how I've been learning to process my emotions differently, feeling them and figuring out how to work with them instead of against them.

It's the "at hand" part that strikes me. If the kingdom of God is "at hand," then that means that what I really want, what my desire is really aiming at, is right here with me, unfolding. This good thing is ready, poised, to fill my life. So, what am I called to? Repent! I always remember the phrase in Japanese used here: kaishin shite. The kanji looks like this: 回心 And if you can read kanji and translate the thought into English, the sense is "turn your heart all the way around." It makes me think of those lids that you find on some spice containers: you keep turning the lid around until you get the big, wide opening to show. If that good thing that I desire is at hand, I need to turn my heart to be open and to face the good thing. The point of repentance is to get ready to transact, to live with an openness.

I think this is why Lent hurts, to the point it does. We are called to get ready, to be open, to be poised ourselves, and then to wait. And to feel our emptiness apart from "the kingdom of God," that thing, that presence, that reality that our desire is turned toward. I cannot fill myself. I cannot satisfy myself. I cannot complete myself. I cannot heal myself. I need. I'm waiting, I'm open, and I need.

Perhaps that will make me panic. So easy, it is, to allow other things to fill me up, or to find reasons to shut myself back off, to turn around again, to not want to look like the fool holding the bucket when nothing is raining down into it.

I guess the great surprise for me has been to realize how this thing that I long for is right here, with me. I don't know about you, but I have sometimes had the experience of missing someone I was with, or longing to be somewhere that I already was. It sounds bizarre, but it comes from the ability to disassociate oneself from what is right in front of me.

Knowing that that which fills me is right before me causes me not to worry about looking like a fool or even consider shutting myself off or to bother with other fillers. When I really feel my desire and know what it is aiming at, when I have those two things working together, then this phrase hits me like an invitation to the most heart-breakingly joyful celebration ever: Repent! For the kingdom of God is at hand!

Learning to be Happy

2011-04-02T15:19:00.000-04:00

I have a hard time being happy.

That's not to say that I'm usually sad; that's not what I mean. See, I've heard people say that they go through life just fine, everything is smooth, and then something comes that makes them suffer, and they get derailed, they begin to mistrust everything, mistrust God, mistrust themselves, question everything. Everything gets messed up and life sort of stalls for them while they try to figure out how to move forward.

I feel like an avowed contrarian, not just in my choices but in my very essence. Because this is how I start to feel when I am very happy. It messes me up.

A mental snapshot went through my mind today: years ago I was at a bridal shower, and the bride-to-be had been truly showered with a lot of gifts. After opening them all and sitting with a huge pile of stuff in front of her, she made this motion with her whole body, with sound effects as well, a sort of reaching out, arms, legs and torso, and pulling all the gifts towards her with a sort of all-enveloping slurp. It struck me with a sort of shock, a negative sense. It is hard to explain the exact flavor of negativity I felt, but it was rooted in how foreign it was to me to trust joys, pleasures, that were actually tangible. Joy, to me, had to be invisible. As I revisit that scene today, I think she was just very pleased that she was being affirmed by friends with gifts and she wanted to be "filled up" with this happiness. True, happiness over shower gifts is not an ultimate happiness; it doesn't last. But I don't think for that reason it has to be rejected outright.

This week during Mass, one of the prayers said something about turning from "false joys." It immediately struck me that I have always taken the adjective "false" to be permanently wedded to the word "joy." This view really cuts into one's ability to freely feel joy, that's for sure! And, it certainly takes me back to the days when joy had to be invisible. But, this is a firm denial of the Incarnation of Christ. There is such a thing as a true joy, because Christ has come into the world.

So, back to my struggle and to my friend at the shower. I remember what I learned as a Theology student: how the life we live as Christians is not one of rejecting "worldly" things in preference for the heavenly (ouch, been there, done that until I practically died from it.) We are not called to reject creation as evil, we are called to know that all that is created is good, but that it is not our ultimate Good. We sacrifice "a good" for The Good. The penultimate for the ultimate. We don't give up meat during Lent because meat is bad; we give up meat to declare that we desire God more than anything. The Christian life is about passion, desire, longing... it's a love affair. So there is something completely fitting about reaching out with arms, legs, torso and voice to embrace the Good. The trick is, the Good is the Eternal. It is "in" the sign, the shower gifts, the thing that enthralls, the person I love, but it is not the gift, the thing, the person itself, as an end unto itself.

Happiness. It seems to me the key is embrace with full gusto that which brings the happiness, but not with the eye to keeping, to hoarding, to grasping so tight so that I don't drop or lose anything of what seems to be making me happy. Or trying to grasp it as it fades, rusts, ends, moves away. Instead, sharing, serving, giving. Doing penance. If I can bear to give away from that which makes me happy, I am acknowledging the Something Bigger, the source. I am not addicted, focused on keeping myself happy at all costs. I am receiving this happy moment from the eternal source of happiness and good.

Living this way, I think maybe I can finally learn to be comfortable and safe with being really, really happy.

Through Suffering, Self-Mastery

2011-04-01T15:29:00.000-04:00

On the first of every month, Our Lord gives Anne a new message about His call to service.

April 1, 2011

Jesus

Dearest apostles, you are serving Me despite trials and temptations. That is why you are called apostles, because you follow Me and serve Me. No life is easy or without strife, and I know, dear apostles, that you experience your share of difficulty. These difficulties are important for you because through the suffering of them you gain mastery over yourself. When you conquer a difficulty, using the holiness you have received from Me, you become stronger spiritually and then when the next difficulty comes, you both view it differently and treat it differently. You view it as expected, because your experience tells you that life in general, and service to Me specifically, will include these difficulties. You treat it differently because you know that I am with you today as I have been with you in the past. Additionally, you understand that all difficulty passes. What is it that remains, dear apostles, when the difficulty passes? Your commitment to Me remains and the work I will for you remains. You are not overcome and I need your help. And so we go on, Jesus and His apostles. The work continues and comfort and salvation are brought to God’s children. Be at peace, dear friends. I am with you and I am factoring in your presence as I plan for the advancement of the Renewal.

Announcing My Plans for a CD

2011-03-25T20:54:00.001-04:00

Today is the Feast of the Annunciation, one of my very favorite of all feasts. The Incarnation of Christ has been the theme of my Christian conversion journey since the moment Christ called me to become a Catholic on December 25, 1991. I am blown away, every time, when I think of the profundity of God taking on human flesh and living the same life I live, minus the sin. That He came to show me how to be myself, the way the Father intended, and to actually make real transformation possible.... blows me away.

It seems a fitting day to publicly acknowledge a recent way that I have said yes to God. Another step along my conversion journey. I am planning to record an album, a little music CD.

I did some recording long ago, when I was writing songs left and right. And I've thought about the prospect of recording again from time to time. But this possibility arose afresh in my mind on Christmas Day last year, amidst a discussion with a friend about digitizing old cassette tapes. I'd long been concerned that the music I recorded in my younger days, all on cassette or giant reel-to-reel, would soon become unplayable, but I hadn't known where to turn with it. I turned to the business my friend mentioned, and then got to talking with said business owner about my dormant idea of recording new music.

It was fun to think about it, but I didn't think too much of it. When I was asked to sing for my daughter's club, a few unexpected powerful moments with my guitar in an "empty" church sent sparks flying in my soul. That led me to writing a new song, something I hadn't done in 16 years. Something was coming to life in me, and I had to start paying attention. I wrestled. I had a premonition, a sense of something a little scary calling my name. I prayed for clarity. Then it turned into a fight. I fought in my heart with why this should possibly be a good idea. It got to the point where peace was elusive, and I saw I had to face and answer whatever this was that was asking for a resolution, even if it was a little scary.

My mind told me that recording more songs was not necessary. It costs money. It's just me. More songs are not going to make any difference in the world. Why should this matter. What's the necessity here.

A tiny little peep in my heart spoke up and said I'd really like to do this. But "liking" didn't hold much sway, faced with all the rational reasons. Yet I had no peace. My husband and I discussed a budget, one of the foremost rational reasons staring me down. And yet I told him I knew there was something blocking my way, something I was needing to address before I could conclude what I needed to do.

Then I had one of the weirdest days in recent years.

It was a Tuesday. My children and I headed off to daily Mass at Franciscan University, and I was feeling scattered and distracted by this unresolved question in my head. I also felt just generally weak and unsure and needy. Before Mass began I asked the Lord again, a bit brusquely, what this insistent question in my soul was all about. Suddenly I remembered a time about a year ago when I similarly felt a strong, compelling call from God to do something. In that case, it was to invite a certain priest to our house for dinner. This isn't something I do easily, and it took considerable courage and about two missed opportunities. The intensity of the tug in my soul to do this was undeniable and unusual. And as it turned out, after embarrassing-to-me rounds of telephone tag, the priest ended up leaving town (he was here on sabbatical) and we never had that dinner. So, in my prayer (with just a hint of accusation) I reminded the Lord of that occurrence. I was so sure I had to do that then, Lord, and what ever became of that?!

About 20 seconds later, the entrance procession began, and that very priest, whom I'd neither seen nor spoken to nor thought of for almost a year, walked right passed me. It was a Twilight Zone moment. But somehow it still felt completely predictable, considering this is my life we're talking about. I didn't really even snap-to until I heard him reading the gospel:

Do you not yet understand or comprehend?
Are your hearts hardened?
Do you have eyes and not see, ears and not hear?
And do you not remember,
when I broke the five loaves for the five thousand,
how many wicker baskets full of fragments you picked up?”
They answered him, “Twelve.”
“When I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand,
how many full baskets of fragments did you pick up?”
They answered him, “Seven.”
He said to them, “Do you still not understand?”

The message seemed very clear to me. I had met that priest and been moved enough to invite him to dinner in the midst of a lot of powerful things God was doing in my life. God does things. He calls. He asks us to follow. Get it? He was saying.

I was very stunned by this occurrence, so of course I came home and posted about it on Facebook. (I just love Facebook.) I was writing while in the midst of making and eating lunch. I had just finished writing about this and began eating my lunch (I feed myself last) when my son burst through the door from playing outside, calling me to come quick because there was an emergency. A woman had fallen and was having a seizure.

I was still a bit dazed and scattered, but because it was my son prompting me I grabbed my coat and followed him to where he had been playing. There, down a hill away from the road, lay a woman, seizing. I went down to her, asked, somewhat unnecessarily, if she needed help. I called an ambulance, the called the woman's home with the number she provided. And then I stood there. The woman was saying she couldn't breathe well, and couldn't see. Every once in a while she started seizing again. I stood there. A neighbor came running down the hill (my son the extrovert told everyone what was happening), began to talk to the woman (whom she recognized as a former neighbor of hers), helped her with her dog she'd been walking, and chatted with her. Another neighbor, a nun, came running down the hill and began to comfort the woman, talking with her. The ambulance arrived. The paramedics began working on her. I was still standing there. The Sister announced that the woman was in good hands and began to leave, so I thought I'd leave, too. My son and other kids who had gathered were farther up the hill, and the neighbor began congratulating me (and my son when I mentioned it was he who found her) on saving her life. Everyone seemed very relieved. I stood there some more. Then I walked home.

One thing deeply disturbed me: I had absolutely no emotional reaction to this happening at all. All the while I was there with the woman, it was as if I was waiting for a bus. I felt no panic and sensed no emergency and no danger at all. The woman's elderly mother called me a week later to thank me, and said the woman had suffered a concussion and two hematoma, along with her seizures, but was better. Other people pointed out to me that my son had not seen her, since she was in a secluded area, she might possibly have died.

By the time I picked up my husband that evening, I was well aware that my ability to react with a normal adrenaline rush was skewed. I knew that I had been impacted, but the normal flow of my response was stuck somewhere. I sensed it was due to erupt sometime later. It was like witnessing "live" what I'd known in my head about my tendency to not process my emotions. It was disturbing and strange. But I told my husband during dinner, "I know this has something to do with this music thing."

That night I went to choir rehearsal, and I joked with my friend, who noticed I didn't seem normal, that I was experiencing PTSD. Still laughing, I told her, "actually, I'm serious, and it's not funny." After rehearsal finished she asked me about what happened, and I began to tell her about the seizing woman. "I just stood there," I told her. "Oh, you didn't know what to do." she said. I started to tell her, no, I knew exactly what to do... My next honest words would have been "It was a traumatic situation, so I clamp the panic tight and suck it down deep, far away from me." But instead, all the clamps began to burst in my soul, and I ran out of the church. By the time I got to the doors, I could barely walk, could barely breathe, and I began sobbing. I made it to my car, and hyperventilated there for a good long while. I managed to drive home, and sat in the driveway and hyperventilated some more. I went inside, ran upstairs and flopped on my bed. My husband came in, and I began to explain what had just transpired. As he held me, I completely went to pieces. The next day my lungs hurt and my body ached from hyperventilating and shaking. I scared my husband pretty good, too. It was as if every traumatic thing I'd ever experienced but never felt was erupting out of the place in which my body had held it, in hopes I'd forget they happened.

It's an intuitive leap to fit this together with my decision about the recording, but a few days later I could see that while the world may not need to hear my songs, I need to sing them. I need to record them and go through what it will take to do so. I'm thinking of calling the album (albumette, really) Unleashed, because it is about living in the healing that God has indeed given me in Christ. It is about embracing the fullness of who God has made me, the fullness of His redemption, and leaving behind cutting off and turning aside and squashing down aspects of my own humanity that I find difficult to deal with.

I am excited about this. If you are so inclined, please pray for me and everyone who will be involved with this. One lesson I faced early on is that I can't pull this off alone -- recording no less than on-going conversion and healing! I would appreciate your partnership in praying this into being. I'll keep you all posted on the progress!

Helpful Homilies: Figure it out yourself, and Suck it up

2011-03-23T23:47:00.000-04:00

Every once in a while I hear a homily that peels me to the core. Most don't, which I suppose is good, since being peeled to one's core isn't something one can take that often. Many homilies leave me unscathed. Recently I heard two homilies that fell into yet another category for me: the "good insight" sort.

The first of these was last Saturday, on the Feast of St. Joseph. The priest who preached was a last-minute substitute, and the nature of his rather rambling homily betrayed that fact. (Truth told, he normally rambles, but this is something that endears him to me because I could imagine myself doing the same.) The helpful insight there was that God told St. Joseph, for example, to take the Child and His mother to Egypt. Period. No other instructions were given, like which route to take, exactly when to leave, what to take along, what to do when they got there, exactly where to live, etc. God gave St. Joseph the Big Picture command, and apparently trusted him to work out the details himself, trusting him to pray for wisdom and guidance.

This was good for me to hear. Spiritual insecurity, personal insecurity, has at times paralyzed me because I felt that I needed divine revelation or divine permission in all details to keep me safe. At times I have thought that following Christ meant waiting for Him to direct me literally in all things. But if I were St. Joseph's shoes, this mistaken notion of what it meant to follow the will of God may have looked like this: Ok, yesterday I thought God told me to go to Egypt, but then I said, "But Lord, which road should I take?", and since I didn't get an answer, I can conclude that it wasn't God telling me to go to Egypt, so I'm just going to stay right here.

I think this kind of notion, that the Father would trust St. Joseph with working out the details of how to get the Holy Family to Egypt (just a little prophecy fulfillment, that's all) is what has always struck me as Delightful Catholic Spiritual Common Sense. God wants the glorious to become common place in our lives. We work with Him in working out our salvation and in ushering in the Kingdom of God. We are not slaves ordered around by a master, or a micro-manager. God truly respects the humanity with which He created us, and wants us fully functioning.

Helpful insight number two was in a homily I heard today. This time a different priest was talking about how certain relationships with people can get tense when people argue and feel the need to be right. He said, simply, it really doesn't matter who is right, it matters who is loving. Suck it up, he said.

Now there's advice that would have made me go absolutely mad at one point in my life. Do you have any idea how psychologically damaging it is to suck it up? Don't you believe in truth? Doesn't truth count for anything?!? But today I realized that what he was saying was that one can choose to "suck it up." And this implies, of course, that one can also choose not to. That requires freedom. In valuing loving over being right, he was not asking for us to commit the suicide of our souls nor to disregard what we know is right. He was asking us to take a higher road, and not insist on our own way, even when we are certain our own way is right. St. Paul reminds us that this is part of the definition of love: seeks not its own way.

These homilies constitute helpful and necessary formation of one's thinking.

Un-Sticking My Anger (Or, Why I Need a God who gets Pissed Off)

2011-03-13T23:10:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking a lot lately about this post that I wrote back in November, about being told I needed to learn to trust my feelings. Actually, it wasn't so much the post I've been thinking about as the conversation and its pretty profound and lasting impact on me.

It's Lent now, of course. So I suppose its about time for a blogpost where I reach in my guts and fish around for that thing that's irritating me. This is what I do. Ok, here we go.

Lately, when I've been in silence doing my daily chores and such, I have found myself noticing something unusual for me. Memories of things past, some long past, have come bubbling up to the surface. They all seem to have a theme, and I know I need to pay attention. The memories are of people who have either treated me badly, or who have treated someone close to me badly. More specifically, the memories are of my responses to these experiences. The one memorable case of someone close to me being treated badly made me quite angry at the time, and it is still able to elicit that feeling of anger. But the thing about all of the other cases, in which the bad treatment was against me personally, is that I have been unable, or somehow unwilling, to feel anger about them.

There's something wrong with that, I know.

Now, I don't think that there is great virtue, either, in storming around, demanding justice for oneself, as if I were the sinless center of the universe, owed all recompense. But my gut tells me that unless one is able to experience anger, one is never really "fired up" to assertively move in a direction that is positive and aimed at accomplishing the attainment of some good that should indeed be within one's power to do.

I can't even seem to bring myself to write an example. What bothers me the most is that the emotion I associate with these occasions of being treated badly -- mostly by various men and their objectification of me -- is a feeling at the time of a sort of relief. Being treated like crap was a high price to pay, but at least I wasn't being ignored. I guess it reminds me of the line from The Boxer: "I do declare, there were times when I was so lonesome/ I took some comfort there."

Wow. Now I am remembering how a certain Scripture passage struck me as I read it the other day. It was Psalm 78, recounting the flight from Egypt. Verses like these reverberated in my spirit:

He unleashed against them his fiery breath, roar, fury, and distress, storming messengers of death. He cleared a path for his anger; he did not spare them from death; he delivered their beasts to the plague. (Ps. 78:49-50)

And then this, speaking of Israel: "He led them on secure and unafraid" (Ps. 78:53). That's pretty amazing. It speaks of God unleashing His fury, and yet Israel followed "secure and unafraid." Obviously, if the Israelites were unafraid of God, they knew something of their position in relationship to Him.

And I see now exactly what my soul's need has been. In none of these instances did I feel I had any recourse to tell anyone in my life these people treated me like shit. That man treated me like a thing, took advantage of me, etc. with any expectation that this would rouse anyone to anger on my behalf. And it is a very scary feeling to have no one who could be provoked to anger on one's behalf.

But I see now that I do.

It is not that I want God to strike down people who have hurt me, no more than I want Him to strike me down for the way I've hurt others. But I see how deeply I need a God who gets pissed off on my behalf.

Pardon my French.

You have no idea how much I needed what I just wrote!

Evangelization, Spiritual Gifts and Community

2011-03-10T23:36:00.000-05:00

"To be Christian is to be human correctly."

Or so states one blogger, synthesizing the teaching of then-Cardinal Ratzinger on the New Evangelization: To evangelize is to teach the art of living; to be be Christian is to be human correctly.

We follow Christ as His disciples, learning from Him not only what to do but how to be. We are to be like Him. We are not to be pollyannas or plasticine people, because each of us is unique and unrepeatable. It is logical and beautifully amazing that as we each turn our gaze to the one Way, the penetrating light of the one who made us, we find freedom to love in the way that is unique to ourselves.

How does that work?

It seems to me that the key is the process of discovering and developing our spiritual gifts. St. Paul invests quite a bit of ink (in 1 Cor. 12, Eph. 4 and Rom. 12) in teaching that we are not all the same, and that the Holy Spirit graces each of us in different but complementary and interdependent ways.

When I was a Lutheran, we talked quite a bit about discovering our spiritual gifts. It may have been because it was the mid-80s, and we were responding to the uproarious changes happening all around us because of the charismatic renewal. While doctrinally rejecting the reality of "charismatic gifts" of speaking in tongues and prophecy, and any other such phenomenon as experienced as the renewal spread throughout the Church, my denomination was still open to the fact that the Bible had lots to say about gifts. I just share that because it seems ironic: it was not my pentecostal nor Catholic brothers who first taught me to think in terms of operating in gifts as a mode of discipleship and stewardship.

But in those days, I never really got beyond filling out a spiritual gifts inventory form and filing away whatever bits of insight it may have given me into the back of my mind somewhere. And I can see now why it never took me anywhere. Spiritual gifts really need to be discerned, developed, and lived out in the midst of Christian community.

Community is something I didn't have and "didn't get" in those days. Indeed, many Catholics today are in the same boat.

When I took a Catechetics class with Barbara Morgan at Franciscan University back these 12 or so years ago, I remember her calling upon the adult converts in the group (myself included) to testify to the truth of her assertion that Catholics don't really get what "fellowship" is. (She could have used the term "community" as well.) That was one of those moments for me that I've never forgotten. How do I put it into words. She recognized, on one hand, something that is central, key, vital, vibrant, crucial, and EXISTING, in the faith life of many, many a non-Catholic Christian. On the other hand, she recognized that many, many a Catholic Christian, has not a clue what is even being referred to when one says this.

But this is the premise around which the New Testament needs to be understood: that we live our faith in community. Because living faith in community is part of what it means to be human correctly.

Now, I honestly believe that many good things have happened since the late 1990s when this conversation in class with Barbara Morgan took place. In my own experience and in what I see all around me, I believe that for some, community does exist in a Catholic setting. But I don't believe that every parish lives this with a fraction of the vibrancy that is possible.

What am I talking about, anyway?

I mean that each Catholic should find, preferably within his own parish, a setting where he finds his faith, hope and charity sparked to life by encounters with other believers. A setting where people are free to share their hearts, friendship, daily joys and sorrows, needs, and service to one another, and together to share with others outside the group -- to reach out in service. And in the process, to undergo ongoing conversion.

For this to happen, parish life must be more than attending Mass together and praying for each other. That is of course indispensable, but it is not interpersonal. As a friend of mine often puts it, Mass is communal but not social. It also cannot simply be a matter of working together, as, say, a Women's Group might cook for fundraisers. It also isn't simply a group of friends who go out for coffee. All of those things are great, but community, koinonia, is a spiritual sharing that isn't purely social or service-oriented. I like the definition of koinonia: "communion by intimate participation." This word is used in the New Testament to describe how those early Christians shared life together. I am blessed to have an experience of this within my own parish. But it shouldn't be unique or rare. It should be the normative experience of every Catholic.

When we move toward this kind of living with each other, it becomes more and more clear that people's unique gifts have a place, a fitting role to fulfill, in the life of the community at large. No one needs to feel guilty because they aren't like someone else, and Mary/Martha judgments can calm down as we learn to appreciate both our own gifts and those of others, and to accept our own and others' limitations. This is the only context in which discerning spiritual gifts makes any sense.

The Catherine of Siena Institute has a program called Called and Gifted which I very much want to be a part of some day. It focuses on equipping average Catholics to discern their charisms and to begin changing the world!

There are so many different aspects to the art of living, and God graces us with the means for each of us to do so in a way that brings us life. Each of us needs to learn how to best make a sincere gift of self, and to teach others how to do this as well. This IS what it means to evangelize, to spread the gospel.

The Ministry of Remaining at Peace

2011-03-01T13:33:00.002-05:00

On the first of every month, Our Lord gives Anne a new message about His call to service.

March 1, 2011

Jesus

Be at peace, dear apostles. I urge you to strive daily to be at peace. All that surrounds you will benefit from your understanding that while the world changes, God remains the same. I am the same. I am with you and the reason I urge you toward a peaceful countenance is because the enemy of peace sows fear in God’s children. You may think that I am asking you to be at peace but that this is too difficult. Dear friend of My heart, consider for a moment. What diminishes your peace? Which people? Which habits? Which activities? Ask yourself why these people or things diminish your peace? You must find these answers in contemplation of Me and contemplation of heavenly concepts. Only then will you be able to readily identify the contrast between the feeling of peace that heaven offers to you and the feeling of agitation that the world offers to you. The Spirit within you directs you to quiet, even in the midst of what might necessarily be a busy life. If you work from Me, you will retain your peace in activity and interaction with others because you will be giving and receiving Me. When you are with someone who is unable to accept My love, My love will surround that person until that person can receive it and you will not have wasted love because My love blesses you even as it moves through you. By working from Me, you are disciplining yourself to remain peaceful because I am peace. I am calm. I am love. How often I ask you to provide the world with a contrast and it is in remaining peaceful that you will do so. Be alert to My presence and you will spread peace.

Thoughts on a Vocation of Music Ministry

2011-02-02T23:16:00.000-05:00

For a long time now I've been marinating various thoughts about worship. New bits keep getting added in, but I've struggled to synthesize it all. Today I'm going to take another stab at it, because I was inspired by the group that was leading worship at Mass today at Christ the King chapel.

By habit, my children and I usually sit near the music ministry when we go to Mass at Franciscan University (which is where Christ the King chapel is). So I had a bird's eye view of the group, especially of the leader.

I noticed lots of little things that told me he was aware of his purpose in leading the congregation. He was intent on the priests, watching for his cues. Intros were not belabored, and served well as cues for the congregation to join in. His musical skill was developed to the point that he lacked self-consciousness and instead was watching to see if the music was serving the need well. For example, the guitars began picking the Agnus Dei accompaniment, but as the congregation joined in and the guitar was drowned out, he switched to strumming and got the severely lagging congregation moving together again. At one point he flubbed an entrance (I believe it was to the Sanctus), but he carried on in such a way that it really didn't detract from the experience of worship. We were almost all of the way through Mass before it dawned on me that all of his song selections were modern praise and worship style songs. I am pretty comfortable with this style (and he chose songs I've known for decades), but what I am noting is that there was a sort of seamlessness between the experience of worship and the specific pieces chosen to aid that worship. The group also did a beautiful and unpretentiously Latin and modern Anima Christi as a communion meditation. It was a delight to pray this Mass with capable music ministers freeing me to express my prayer to God with joy, and I specifically hovered around after Mass to be able to thank and encourage the guy.

I note these details in mental contrast to those experienced a week or so ago in the same context with another leader. This young man was leading alone, probably because at the beginning of the semester before music ministry groups are formed, they take whom they can. Painfully different. He announced all the songs as "not found in" either pew hymnal. His style was much more of a soloist than of a leader, to the point where the feeling was conveyed to me that the music and the liturgy were like two separate experiences. He would play music; we'd go back to the liturgy. He'd play more music; we'd hear Scripture. He'd play more music; the priest offered prayer. It felt disjointed. I didn't for a moment doubt this man's sincerity or his desire to worship God. But it was clear to me that something was missing there.

That something is what I've been meditating on and marinating in for who knows how long now. Intuitive person that I am, it is far easier for me to say "There it is!" than to be able to describe what "it" is. But I think it is fair to say that there is a personal quality, a spiritual quality to leading worship that is vital, or integral to the call to do so. And I also know I'm not writing about this because I'm all that interested in worship theory. Well, not true. I am, actually. But only because I realize this is a personal call God extends to me, to change my life. All theory is really a personal call to conversion for practictioners, or it's meaningless. Don'tcha think?

As a worshiper in the pew, I know the value of this unnamed quality in a leader. The analogy always in my mind is music ministry as a vehicle. It is there to gather worshipers together and bring them to the throne of God so that they may encounter Him there. It does not exist for the musician's self-gratification, in a sort of otherwise-pointless trip all over town so that everyone can see how cool the inside of the vehicle is. However, it is also a disservice to God's people if the vehicle is so broken down that they would be better served by walking on their own. Keeping in mind that Mass at Franciscan University has exposed me to literally hundreds of music ministry teams over the last 14 years, I would say that the vast majority of my experiences of Catholic music ministry has reminded me of an ox cart or a lumber wagon that God's people were asked to get out of and help push up the hill to the throne of God. I do not say that as a complaint, because far be it from me to not prefer that to having no access to the Sacrifice of the Mass at all. In fact, there is a certain strength and humility that is built up inside of me from this "pushing."

But the fact is, there are times when I am weak and I am tired. If I have to help push, my spirit feels sad and it languishes. Sometimes I feel too crushed to be able to try. I vividly remember one such time I came to Mass in this state. This was at my own parish where my friend Joe plays the organ and directs our choir. After an extremely painful day that left me feeling I wanted nothing more to do with people ever again, I deposited myself in my pew. It felt strange for me to be there, actually, because of how often I am either singing with the choir or cantoring, but it happened to be a day off from both for me. Thank God, there was no ox cart I had to push. As I heard Joe play, and heard the cantor's voice, it was like stepping into a very quiet, very powerful Porsche and being zipped right to God's throne where I could *splat* land in a heap before Him and spend the entire hour being loved back to life. I came home healed and ready to risk again, aware that I had been like the man lowered in front of Jesus by his four friends through the roof of the house, entirely powerless to help myself that day to what I most direly needed.

It's not about excellent music. Or, if it is about excellent music, then we have to define what excellent music is. I'm not the person to judge excellent music in any technical sense because I have no musical training beyond a middle school strings program and the basic music class required of all Lutheran high school freshmen. So I tend to glaze over at high-brow debates over what makes good music good. I don't even do so well in the sacred music cat fight arena. I know and respect the fact that the Church has given us certain parameters, but for the most part I am a Transcendence-Utilitarian. In my mind, if music takes us to a place of transcendence, takes us to the throne of God, or at least does not block us from it, then it is good. There's not going to be some insanely intense peak moment with every musical experience of worship, and that's ok. Because just like strength is built up by pushing ox carts, so faith is built up in the presence of God by living in a reality we know rather than feel, sometimes. There is also an inherent danger for music ministers if there is an expectation that they have to deliver something to make worship worthwhile. I have occasionally found this a difficulty in my experience of charismatic worship, especially in Protestant circles where there is no certain sacramental and liturgical pinnacle for which to aim. In such a case, sticking with the vehicle analogy, worship leaders are under more pressure to make the trip go somewhere significant. I used to believe that liturgy was like shackles, but in reality it is our freedom as worshipers. It's the encounter is at the throne of God where He speaks and gives us Himself. We do need to be filled with expectation for this, but it is an expectation of Another, not the self; it is of something we experience through where we are all going together.

So, what does it take? What is that unnamed quality? What did I witness today in that music ministry team? What have I experienced in my own parish, and most importantly, how is God calling me to conversion right now through this long marinading process?

Well, I don't have the one word label. I wish I did. If you know it, don't keep it a secret from me.

But like everything that comes from God, I think it is very simple to grasp, and a life-long process to carry out. Maybe this Scripture summarizes it: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself" (Mk. 12:30-31). Here's how I'd explicate that. You cannot love with something you do not have, so the first call is to be in command over one's heart, soul, mind and strength, over oneself. That's self-mastery, or freedom. A person with true freedom knows belonging: he was created by and for Another who is Love, total affirmation. It is the paradox that we do not really have ourselves if we have not given ourselves completely away in surrender to the One who made us. ("Whoever seeks to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it." Lk. 17:33) The second call follows from the first: We give to others what we have received. Freedom knows belonging; and the free person loves and invites others to belonging and freedom, just as he has received it as a gift.

With this Scripture as a springboard, it seems to me the first call, the first need of a music minister is to be a worshiper. This rightfully acknowledges the gift given, directs the freedom one has attained back to God. This presumes all of the musical ability and practice that frees him/her to worship with voice or instrument. (I am reminded now of the simplicity of the one-sentence tutorial I was given to prepare me for the first time I lead worship by myself at my pre-Catholic fellowship. It was "Just stand up [in front of everyone] and worship God!") The second need is for the minister to invite the congregation to enter into the experience of worship with him. In other words, the minister needs to know where he is going and beckon "come with me." And that place needs to be the throne of God, the presence of Christ in Word and sacrament. The music minister is like John the Baptist, not pointing to himself nor mumbling something inarticulately, but clearly pronouncing "Behold, the Lamb of God!" so that the people can respond with their hearts to the only One who can give life.

But of course this is not just about music at Mass, because I don't believe God gives compartmentalized gifts or calls, and worship is about living, not only liturgy. It seems that each aspect of our vocation shapes all of who we are. "I am going to the throne of God; Come with me" is to exude, does exude, begins to exude, from everything we are and what we do. We don't just issue a call, we become the call. And we cannot of course compel anyone to follow, because the Holy Spirit fuels that response from within the sanctuary of the individual soul.That's a completely separate domain.

How then does this call "exude"? I think there is another key word in that passage from Luke: your. As in, Love the Lord your God with all YOUR heart, soul, mind and strength. We are unique individuals, and that is exactly how God wants us to love and serve. We cannot compare ourselves with others for any sense of direction for ourselves. This is part of freedom, I believe. One of my favorite quotations is from Msgr. Lorenzo Albacete: "When you are no longer afraid to be yourself in front of other people, then you are really free. Otherwise, others determine you." In the individual/community balance, the fulcrum is love. And the circle is complete.

We can trust His divine orchestration to meet all of our needs. Maybe what it boils down to for me is the reality of the cliche that what we are given, we are given to share. Because part of how God meets all the needs out there is for me to return freely to Him all He has put inside me.

An apostle views his vocation as a prism through which opportunities for holiness and joy splash out in countless beautiful and varied ways.

2011-02-01T22:40:00.000-05:00

On the first of every month, Our Lord gives Anne a new message about His call to service.

February 1, 2011

Jesus

Dearest apostles, I am here, waiting to listen to your pleas. I hear your hearts as they groan in the loneliness of serving heaven when around you others do not serve heaven. You serve alongside those who either live according to the standards of the world or live serving out a call that is different from yours. Truly, I know that there are times when you wonder why I have placed you where I have placed you. I hope, dear apostles, that these times are brief. I hope that you will spend less time wondering why you are serving in a given role and more time wondering how to serve more completely in the role given to you. You see, comparisons to others will never bear fruit. You are unique. The work I have for you is unique and you must beware of the habit of dragging your vocation behind you as though it were something so heavy that it destroyed your joy. This is not how an apostle lives out a vocation. An apostle views his vocation as a prism through which opportunities for holiness and joy splash out in countless beautiful and varied ways. Truly, others should view you and your vocation as inseparable. You should become your vocation. Oh dear apostles, I know that you carry crosses associated with your holy vocations, but do you not see that these crosses, carried with dignity, illustrate My presence in your life and indeed in the world more than anything else? In every circumstance, I bless you and receive you into My heart where you find the direction and reassurance you require. In every moment there is grace available for you and for others through you. The more grace I flow through you, the more the world is blessed and the more you are sanctified. Move toward Me, closer and closer in your hearts and in your actions and, truly, the world will find the love it craves. Look at how God’s children drink in kindness, as though they were parched for want of it. Yes, you are sacrificing in order to answer My call but the plan is working and the world is being renewed through the efforts of all men of good will. Rejoice then, despite your cross. We are advancing the one righteous cause, that is, the cause of love.

"I love you Steve," turns into "You failed me, Steve"

2011-01-28T23:23:00.000-05:00

I seem to be on a kick lately of watching movies about mentally ill musicians. I just finished watching the movie The Soloist. The plot involves a newspaper reporter, Steve Lopez, who tells the story of a homeless man, Nathaniel Ayers, who had once attended Julliard School of Music and who was a gifted cellist. It was interesting, but not what I would call profoundly moving, with the exception of one scene. Nathaniel had just told Steve that he loved him, and Steve was feeling the pressure of being the only positive human contact Nathaniel knew. Steve tells another character, "I don't want him to love me. 'I love you Steve,' turns into 'You failed me, Steve.'" And this potential of failing in yet another relationship (as we get hints of the failed relationship with his ex-wife and son) is more than Steve can bear.

That admission struck me like a ton of bricks. It was at once so obvious that he might feel that way (I immediately understood his emotional logic) and yet it was such a completely foreign idea to me (I don't believe it has ever occurred to me that anyone would think that way).

I had many thoughts at once upon processing this bit of dialogue. I thought of how I would consider anyone I love as a reflection of God, of human love as a taste of the transcendent, and therefore demanding or expecting something from another limited human being that I would expect to satisfy me fully doesn't seem logically consistent in the least. Holding out a worry as this character does seems to indicate the pride of feeling he really was all that was operative in the good that was happening. He was no instrument, in his own mind. I can understand that this is a terrifying feeling. There is only peace in knowing there is One who is greater who fills and animates us, who is closer than our own breath and is the Meaning of everything. Otherwise, my goodness, the pressure on anyone's back to be the All for another! Yikes!

But then I also thought of how my own love for God went through a phase where this exact sort of thing was involved: "God I love you" did become "God, you failed me." For example, when I was in the throes of dealing with my infertility, I did get very angry at God and didn't understand where His love was in all of the pain. I remember going to confession and identifying with the older son of the prodigal parable. Here I am, doing everything right, and you don't even give me a goat to celebrate with my friends!! But at that point I wasn't really relating to God at all; I was sorting out my own heart to be able to relate to Him again not as an idea, but as a Person. A personal God with a desire for a personal journey with me. With a will of His own, with things of His own to share with me. I was missing out on that completely and just fishing for things I wanted. God's goods; His products, things He could do for me. But not God Himself. Same is true with people. If I'm just fishing for what I want in a relationship with another person, I'm going to be missing that person completely.

In the movie, we do see that Steve was sorting out his own heart to be able to relate to Nathaniel as a person instead of a story or a project or an annoyance. I guess there is quite a journey we need to make sometimes, just to be able to meet another person as a person, rather than as a tool, a toy, or an obstacle. Without an admission, an acknowledgment, an awareness, an experience of Transcendence, what is the hope for any sort of personal relationship at all?

Each Catholic, Called to be a Missionary

2011-01-26T08:45:00.000-05:00

I respect my son as an extremely reliable barometer in my life. He is very good at picking up on things and allowing me to become aware of them when I otherwise probably would not, at least no where near as quickly.

So when as a family we were going through our little Q&A catechism, and I read a question in the section on Sacraments about whether the Church is necessary for salvation, an alarm went off in me with his answer. At first he adamantly said No. Because, he said, what about all those people who don't have the Church, who don't have Sacraments. Surely God wants them to have a chance to be saved, too!

My alarm wasn't first and foremost about the gap in my son's understanding. Good heavens, we all have those. My alarm was that I saw clearly that he was reflecting back to me the lived experience of Catholics that he has experienced. He has been very blessed in the community with which we live. It has great riches and vibrancy, and he has many spiritual opportunities that are not so easily had in other areas of the country. For example, we have Franciscan University of Steubenville in our backyard and often go to hear outstanding speakers who come here. My son has heard many admonitions: to pray, to serve, to help the poor, to speak out for justice, to defend truth, to give one's life to God, to embrace one's vocation. But apparently he has not so often heard it emphasized that each Catholic is obligated to participate in the missionary endeavor of the Church by preaching the truth and explicitly leading people to embrace Her Sacraments. In other words, we act like the eternal salvation of the souls of others has absolutely nothing to do with us, our witness, with preaching, with the Church.

If the Church is not missionary, then what is it? A feel-good club for us? One of many generic service organizations by which humanitarian good is done, if you happen to like the brand we offer?

Then today I read this article on Catholic.org: Church Exists to Evangelize! Pope Calls every Catholic to Become a Missionary. The New Evangelization is no new idea. But I am so grateful to Pope Benedict XVI for sounding this call again. Especially in the West, and in the United States, this is a radical call, meaning it is one that takes us back down to the root of who we are. Evangelizing is not synonymous with obnoxiously arguing or manipulating or venting our religious spleen on unwitting victims. Evangelization is the fruit of conversion and penance and the following of God's call. It is not a program we can implement. I think of it in terms of living a healthy marriage relationship. Programs don't work where relationships must lead, but systematic teaching can be of assistance to us to discover common pitfalls that harm our relationships. I believe that one of these common pitfalls that stop us from evangelizing is the religious relativism that says as long as people are good, it doesn't really matter what they believe. Another pitfall is that of fundamentalism that says if you don't know all of the answers according to the book, there's no way you are good. Catholics are squeezed by both into staying in the pews, praying, and hoping that all those seekers of truth who want to become Catholics somehow wander in the right direction and find us.

The answer seems simple enough: Fall in love with Jesus Christ, give Him all your life, then follow where He leads. He's going to lead you to His People, and He's going to send you out to love others with a message written into your life. Live that life!! There are specific truths, and they make people deeply happy and free. Be deeply happy and free, and others will see and want this too.

I can't help but think of the St. Catherine of Siena Institute which helps people discern and employ their spiritual gifts, so that they can understand God's call to them. On their blog, they also share lots of good information about the state of Christianity in the world that should shake us out of our pew-sitting ways to realize God doesn't have another normative plan for the salvation of the world but us.

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, and kindle in us the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created, and You shall renew the face of the earth.

Conversion

2011-01-25T22:06:00.000-05:00

Sometimes when I clean my house, in an effort to do a quick and efficient job, I get a large box and pick up all of the scattered bits and just toss them in. It makes for a quick tidy, and there's always a chance to sort later.

Today my brain is a bit like that, or my thoughts, rather. I've spent the day picking up significant bits and tossing them into one big hopper. So part of my evening cool-down now is to go back and sort and articulate the theme.

Because the day, after all, is the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul. Conversion is one of my favorite things to think about, even to dream affectionately about. Love this feast.

This morning I heard a really wonderful homily by the missionary priest who is helping at my parish these days. He spoke about his conversion that led him to embrace the priesthood, and about the events that jar us and move us and cause us, like St. Paul, to have a major course change. He spoke about the song "Here I am, Lord" which was instrumental in his conversion. This struck me, because a hymn (similar in theme, at least) called "Hark the Voice of Jesus Crying" had a role in my initial conversion to God as well, because it gave me the words to phrase my response to God's call.

Also early this morning, a friend happened to comment on a 10-year-old picture I had posted on Facebook, saying that she didn't think I had aged. This was one of those comments that banged around in my head all day on many different levels. What I thought about the most was how, as a child of perhaps nine or ten, I had decided that on the inside I had always been, and always would be, 33 years old. I have always been a serious-hearted person, so it seemed strangely fitting to me. But there is a nuance to this that I think can only be captured in the idea expressed in this Rich Mullins song, Growing Young.

The refrain perhaps says it best:

And everybody used to tell me big boys don't cry
Well I've been around enough to know that that was the lie
That held back the tears in the eyes of a thousand prodigal sons
Well we are children no more, we have sinned and grown old
And our Father still waits and He watches down the road
To see the crying boys come running back to His arms
And be growing young
Growing young

So, in my convoluted thought process, I hope the fact that I now don't seem to be aging (in the picture my friend referenced I was in my early 30s) stems from the fact that I'm now growing young instead of growing old. Because of my commitment to on-going conversion.

Another random bit: There is something that has happened in me within the last month. It's very, very significant, but of course I don't have all the words for it yet. I have a degree of freedom that I didn't have before. And I know this because I am more able to focus on what is immediately in my hand to do, and I'm able to know it has profound meaning. It's more real to me now that meaning is not off somewhere else in another time, another place, another circumstance, another ideal. The hidden, seemingly meaningless, and potentially irritating tasks I undertake each day, like sweeping up spilled cat litter or picking up socks, are truly my sharing in building the Kingdom of God, because they are bits of my life, which I am called to live with love, and united to Christ, my Lover. This, too, has been conversion.

Recently I wrote a song, which I used to do a lot of, but haven't done since about 1994. And I like it. Last night I was thinking of something else I want to write about, something I think holds a lot of people back from flinging their hearts open wide to conversion. And it is our difficulty in trusting God with our pleasures. We derive a certain pleasure from our own will, from our own agenda, and I think we tend to fear surrendering our will and our agenda because we fear conversion will remove that pleasure and there will be nothing suitable in its place that we will actually relish. In other words, I think we hesitate to trust that the way of Jesus can please us more than our own. Isn't this how we tend to face Lent? Oh my gosh, I don't want to give up xyz for Lent because I love it so much... Why not go into Lent thinking I really want to be a happier person, and I know God loves me more than I could ever love myself, so why not turn my full face to Him, and let Him burn Himself deeply into me, barriers be damned! And let me share this adventure of passion with everyone my life touches, barriers be damned! Yeah, now there's a Lenten theme!

So. I guess the theme in my thought-hopper tonight is conversion. This is always my prayer for myself, for those I love, for those near to me, and for everyone who has ever touched my life. So it is my prayer for you, too.

Week of Prayer for Christian Unity

2011-01-19T23:10:00.000-05:00

January 18 through 25 is the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. In its honor, I thought I would "replay" a recent post on the subject.

Yesterday my children and I had the opportunity to attend Mass at St. Patrick's in Pittsburgh's Strip District. The structure of the interior of this church is a bit unusual as the seating area for Mass is at the second floor level. The entry level of the church seems to be primarily an area of devotional prayer. The prominent feature that catches your eye immediately upon entering through the front door is the Holy Stairs, a replica of the 28 steps in the Church of the Holy Stairs in Rome. (Read the rest here.)

When "Family" Becomes Bondage

2011-01-09T23:07:00.000-05:00

Several weeks ago while driving through town I saw a bumper sticker which said something like "My Family is Everything To Me." I had a complex and multi-layered negative reaction to this simple statement. I have complex and multi-layered negative reactions to all sorts of things, but this one I've been thinking about just a bit, so I think it is time to unwrap it a bit.

What first sprang to mind was the "hard saying" from Jesus that "whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me" (Mt. 10:37). Now, was a day when I would have been inclined to understand this verse to have come from the heart of a heartless, sledgehammer God who simple demanded servile subjection from His adherents, humanity be damned, and who cares about tender feelings towards family. I wouldn't have actually described God as proposing these sentiments because, well, it wouldn't make Him seem very nice. But when you look at the literal words, what else can you do with it if you take the Word of God seriously, right?

This certainly is a radical word from Jesus, but fortunately we have the wisdom of the Church Fathers who have followed the Lord radically and therefore understand His heart and can instruct us. In my experience, it is John Michael Talbot who has gleaned these things and passed them down to me in recent teachings. And the instruction is this: When Jesus calls us to surrender our lives to Him, He is asking that everything we hold dear be placed under His Lordship. This includes the relationships which make us human. When Jesus becomes our Lord in these areas, He gives His order to all things, including our relationships. It is a process of transformation. When He is Lord, we are free, in this example, to enter into our relationships of family without them controlling us or being themselves our master and lord.

So, the bumper sticker. Family indeed cannot "be everything to me" without it also holding me in bondage. If family is everything to me, then it is my Lord, my Master, and not Jesus. Therefore, I will have no freedom.

But it sounds very moral, doesn't it? Isn't "family values" at the core of what decent people are made of?

I think there is a danger of many these days confusing conservative social values with the message of Christianity. If Christians don't differentiate we will soon wake up to having lost both!

Why did Jesus insist that we cannot love our family members more than Him and still follow Him? What does He have against family?

He has nothing against family, per se, but He has every concern for our true need, which is to realize the One who gives us our life, our self, our meaning, our existence, our purpose. We are made for the Infinite, and only He satisfies us. It is dangerously easy for one to look at a loved one, a person God Himself has place into one's life, and to declare "You are why I exist!" You, my newborn baby, you my wife, my husband, you my very dear mother.... my life revolves around you! In doing this we run the risk of forgetting God and ultimately replacing Him and idolizing a creature. We run the risk of forgetting that the vocation to marriage is about bringing one's spouse, children and the friends that surround us to heaven! Jesus does not come to break apart family relationships, He comes to preserve them. They can only be preserved if grace remains to keep the relationship with the Blessed Trinity preeminent for each one. When by our mutual prayer and evangelization my heart and your heart draw near to the cross of Christ, then our hearts also draw near to each other. This is how families stay united.

If I make an idol of my family, I am actually destroying it. And instead of my sacrament of marriage being an oasis of grace, a unit of mission into the world for Jesus Christ and His Church, I am actually sending out a message of despair to the world. I am really saying: Settle for something finite, and pretend it actually is enough to fulfill your soul! And if your family is actually a crushing source of pain, well, you must simply really be a loser! (How's that for a great bumper sticker?!)

In this light, does it not seem that "My Family is Everything to Me" is a downright anti-Christian statement?

2010: Prayer Evolution

2011-01-06T08:49:00.001-05:00

At the turn of the year, it seems a natural thing to ask myself whether anything has changed for me in over the last 365 days. Actually, to be honest, it just seems like a natural time for me to write about that subject; I am very aware of changes that occur in my life because they have always seemed to flood in on me. Stopping to take stock of just what those changes are over a nice chunk of time like a calendar year seems very helpful to benchmark where I am as opposed to where I was.

I think the most significant change in my interior life has been with regard to prayer. I've always been a deeply interior person, but stewing around in my awareness, while it has value, is not exactly the same as the traditional Catholic practice of prayer. I guess what I mean to say is that there are many types of prayer, and my life has changed the most in regards to what sort of prayer I have practiced. Very early last year I took up the practice of the daily rosary. It wasn't exactly a New Year's resolution; it was more like a fitting time to embark on a quest for light and answers that I needed at that point. Saints and Popes for centuries have advocated praying the rosary daily, but I must admit that it was a devotion I had sparse attempts with before this year. In the past it felt clunky and awkward and frustrating to me. But when I started praying with a desire for light fueling me, I not only received light but developed a love for the rosary and a great deepening of meaning in meditating on the mysteries. In short, it started really working for me.

This prayer led me to a renewed mindset with regards to intercessory prayer. As a pre-Catholic pentecostal believer, I attended many intercessory prayer meetings, and found that, for this young believer, intercession was a lot about airing one's personal beefs and troubles to others while directing words to God. Sometimes it was venting anger at or hopelessness in the world, sometimes it was expressing delight, but it was always rather detailed and complex. And complicated. I gleaned that God required a lot of our words to get anything done. Now, I do hold that our prayer plays a definite role in the out-working of the Kingdom, and I believe it is good to be specific in petitioning God. But when friends attended a Mass with me where the intercessions took less than five minutes and all we said was "Lord, hear our prayer," my friend quipped to his wife that he would much rather have our pastor's wife intercede for him (complete with full emotionality, detail, and a good 15 minutes spent on one request)!

While I can understand that kind of intercession, it seems to me that if one has real power in prayer, hardly a word is necessary. That is, I do not have to invent a formula and then work myself up to a place of feeling something so that I have access to prayer power. I do need to tap into reality. Reality is God's love for me and for the world, my need or the need of my neighbor that I lift in prayer, and the love of all God's people "agreeing" with me (Mt. 18:19). And then my trust in God's will to accomplish the good, which He desires far more than I do. For these reasons I have found novena prayers and requests for the intercession of certain saints to have also found a prominent place in my prayer life. I see that intercession is a bit like housework: it is best done on a daily basis, with some general sort of system to it, based on the on-going needs closest to my heart and life. A daily offering has been part of my life for several years now, and this opens the door for grace to enter every moment of every day, making all of my activities prayer, or an offering lifted to God, for the salvation of souls.

Towards the end of the year I found myself drawn to return to praying the Divine Office. This is something I have puttered with on and off since the very first day I decided to become a Catholic. It too felt dry most of the time. But lately I sense the power in uniting myself to the Word of God in the fellowship of the Church in this way.

Writing about this reminds me that I am looking forward to reading John Michael Talbot's new book The Universal Monk: The Way of the New Monastics. I remember reading in one of his books that he wrote long ago that God had given him a vision that one day when his hair was white and flowing, a new thing would be emerging: the heart of monastic life lived by lay people in the world. The fire that destroyed their beautiful monastery in Arkansas a few years ago seems to have been a signal from God that the day of the new thing is dawning.

New things, a new year. We are always just beginning!

New Book by Anne, a Lay Apostle: Lessons In Love

2011-01-03T22:53:00.000-05:00

I've just finished reading the latest book, Lessons in Love, written by Anne of the Direction for our Times apostolate. Anne is the public name used by the woman who receives locutions and a variety of mystical experiences from Our Lord. I always post on this blog the monthly messages she receives, and you can read all about the apostolate on this website. I've heard her speak a handful of times now and, while of course leaving all final judgment to the Church, I am convinced that what she receives and passes on is of divine origin.

But back to this book. I've read not only the messages she's received, but the books she's written, and this one I've found the most moving by far. That's not to say the others were pedestrian; it's to say that this one was breathtaking.

For some time now I have found the messages that Anne receives to echo what the Lord is doing in my own life right at the time I read them. But this entire book seems to echo a place God has been taking me over the last few years. It touches on matters of what holy relationships look like: intimacy with God, intimacy with other people, sins to avoid and virtues to pursue in step with growing in intimacy, and then a slew of issues related to marriage and sexuality. From these bare-bones words of description of the book's contents, it might not seem that one could expect more than some worn-out words of advice about the spiritual life and morality. No way. What I experienced in reading this book was Jesus Himself looking into my soul with His gaze of love, and my realizing that He knew everything about me, my life, and my experiences. He encouraged me to continue with Him, even closer. It's impossible to adequately put into words, really. But reading this book was an experience of Christ. It both affirmed and challenged me. At one point I simply broke into the hardest sobs of relief I have known in a long time as I knew His affirmation of my longing for Him. At another I was challenged to open my grasp and let Him rearrange things I have not been able to budge on my own. And throughout I saw how His merciful love and truth is extended to everyone on earth -- and how much He longs for His Church to imitate Him in this as well.

It seems to me that the reason why this apostolate exists at all was summed up in the message for January 1, 2011: "I want to assure you that I am present. I desire to assure you of this so that you can be confident about the plan I have chosen for your life." The plan Jesus has for us is that through us, He wants to make His love known to every person on the face of the earth, and to call them to make Him welcome as King of our hearts.

If you are someone who wants more of God, I recommend that you read this book. You can find it at this link.

What Would Christianity Be Without Christ's Suffering?

2011-01-01T10:04:00.000-05:00

On the first of every month, Our Lord gives Anne a new message about His call to service.

January 1, 2011

Jesus

My friends, do you hear My voice? Can you feel My presence? I want to assure you that I am present. I desire to assure you of this so that you can be confident about the plan I have chosen for your life. I know that you feel temptations against the plan I have arranged for you. Perhaps not today, but on other days, or perhaps you experience this temptation every day. Perhaps you are suffering and you wonder why I allow this for you given that you feel you would be more productive without the crosses in your life. Consider for a moment what would have happened if I had rejected the cross and went on to preach. What would have remained after My life? Consider the absence of the Passion in the faith life that exists today. How can we preach the Gospel if we are unwilling to accept the crosses which inevitably accompany it? No, dearest friends. In order to accurately represent the Kingdom of God to others, we have to be willing to sacrifice, even to death in some cases. The glory of your work is seen in the souls of those whom you have touched directly or those who have been touched by others because you have agreed to My plan. My plan for you will bring the greatest benefit to those suffering loneliness and separation from joy. Such sadness! If you are serving Me, I thank you. If you are considering service to Me, I need you. If you are suffering great crosses because of your commitment to heaven, I rejoice in you. In all cases, I am with you. I urge you to believe this and live this truth. When you are finished with your time on earth you will gaze at My kingdom and view the benefits that you brought to it through your service. Life is not easy for any person and temptations come to all. Be assured that you can use My strength when you feel weak. You will not always feel conviction but you must live conviction. I will ignite fires of love through you if you do this for Me. Do not be afraid of your human struggle because it is through this struggle that others see the force of the One who works through you.

Praying for Unity

2010-12-31T21:52:00.000-05:00

Yesterday my children and I had the opportunity to attend Mass at St. Patrick's in Pittsburgh's Strip District. The structure of the interior of this church is a bit unusual as the seating area for Mass is at the second floor level. The entry level of the church seems to be primarily an area of devotional prayer. The prominent feature that catches your eye immediately upon entering through the front door is the Holy Stairs, a replica of the 28 steps in the Church of the Holy Stairs in Rome. Those steps were brought from Jerusalem to Rome by St. Helena and were said to be the very ones that lay between Christ and Pontius Pilate when Christ was condemned to death.

The custom, in Rome and in Pittsburgh, is to climb these steps on one's knees, praying as one ascends. In 1993 when I visited Rome, I did this with the vast crowd there present, and yesterday I did this with my children. It was a powerful moment. As we started up the steps, I remembered distinctly how I prayed back in 1993. As a brand new Catholic, so new I could almost still smell the chrism on my forehead, with each step I prayed for people of various Christian denominations to return to union with Rome. At first yesterday I began to pray the same way, but it struck me that differentiating people this way, by denomination, touched nothing of the depth of need we all have. Instead I prayed for the grace of conversion for those who have been repulsed by Christianity and organized religion because of the sins of Christians and those acting in the name of the Church.

Christian unity comes as we all repent of our sin and embrace the cross. Only in the cross will we all be drawn together.

May this be our aim in the coming year. May the world know that we are Christians because of our love for one another.

Reflecting on "The Big Silence"

2010-12-28T22:39:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, a Facebook friend posted the first of 12 parts of a BBC documentary entitled "The Big Silence." It is the story of an endeavor of a Benedictine monk to teach five ordinary people the value of integrating silence into their daily lives.

There were enough buzz words in just the short introduction to the clip to have me completely hooked into the story, and by this morning I had spent the requisite three hours to watch the entire documentary. It was the most interesting thing I've seen in ages. I was completely intrigued by the experiences of these volunteers as they entered first into a monastic "dry run" of silence, experimented with trying silence on their own, and then as they dove into, and subsequently came "down off of" the meat of the experiment, which was an eight day silent retreat at a Jesuit retreat center. Their encounters with themselves, with God, with each other, were all fascinating to me.

Silence is fascinating to me. Like many things, I have this intuition that my relationship with silence is somewhat inverse to that of most people. It seems that many people fear silence. They fear facing themselves in silence; they fear what demons and dragons may emerge if they are alone with no distractions by which to dodge reality. I normally consider silence my friend, even though sometimes it goes by the name Darkness, that Simon and Garfunkel once sang about. I get wiggy if I spend too much time without silence. Far from fearing silence, I often crave silence. But I do experience a related difficulty. There are times when I try to take refuge in silence when I really need to speak out. And sometimes, that speaking is exactly what I fear. There are occasions where I fear what demons and dragons may emerge if I speak my mind too freely to someone. And there are times when Jeremiah's words are my own: "I say to myself, I will not mention him, I will speak in his name no more. But then it becomes like fire burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones; I grow weary holding it in, I cannot endure it." (Jer. 20:9) I have discovered that sometimes, in order to return to my peaceful quiet, I absolutely must say, or write, something.

Yesterday, before I started watching this documentary, I was pondering hard on a comment made by the friend of a Facebook friend (or, in other words, a total stranger). She had commented to me that sharing my conversion testimony (the post I wrote on Christmas Eve) must have taken a lot of courage. I suppose, in a way, it does require courage to share something from the depth of my heart. But I realize that I have practiced doing this for years. Starting when I was barely 11, I would write letters to my best friend almost every day, and I quickly discovered that writing was a way I find understanding, and that understanding brings relief to my soul. So, I hardly think about it any longer, the courage it might take to use my pen (keyboard, these days) to dig out my heart for another. The thing I struggle with is not the digging out, but choosing, or desiring, or (ouch) really needing to say to another person "I need you to hear this. I need you to read this. I need to say this to you." But I have discovered that there are times when I cannot get back to my fertile silence unless I purposefully make my voice heard to others. That thing of making my voice heard, of moving out of the silence with the word that burns in my heart, that is where my heart quakes.

I am left strongly challenged by the experiences these five individuals shared in this documentary. I am curious about the quality of my own relationship with silence. Though I love it, there are times when I am stung by how silence rhymes with violence, because indeed there have been times when the silence I keep is the silence that kills, as Rich Mullins wrote about. I have always been moved by a sequence of songs on John Michael Talbot's album The Regathering. The song "Keep Silence" (Keep silence/before the Lord/And wait for Him...) is followed by the fiery song "For Zion's Sake" (For Zion's Sake I will not keep silent/For Jerusalem's sake I will not be still/until her vindication shines forth/like dawning/and her victory like the flame of the Lord). There clearly is a time for silence and a time to speak (Ecc. 3:7). It seems, though, that there is a fine point of discernment here to know when each is appropriate. Or perhaps more accurately, both silence and speech that are open to the power of the Most High require courage that is born only of grace.

To explore the BBC series, check out The Big Silence, Growing Into Silence, or simply start watching the first portion of the program below:

The Impact of Liturgy Celebrated Well

2010-12-26T18:48:00.001-05:00

A few weeks ago, I happened to be listening to a CD by Scott Hahn on Advent, which is available from Lighthouse Catholic Media. Some of you who read this blog may realize that I used to work for Scott several years ago. So you'll understand when I say that this is the first recording of his that I've listened to in a long time! In fact, I was listening, and at a certain point I got a little bored with it, and I put in on pause and went about other business. But the next day, I realized it was still on pause, and I hit play. It just happened to be at this following section. Listening to it was one of those "peeling the paint off my soul" moments. It struck me so hard that I went back to listen to it over again, and then went back again and transcribed it all.

I share it here as I continue to ponder it. He is talking about what Pope Pius XI wrote on the occasion of establishing the Feast of Christ the King.

"There is no better way to establish Christ's kingship than to institute this special feast in honor of Christ the King. For people are better instructed in the truths of faith and brought to appreciate the interior joys of religion far more effectively by the annual celebration of our sacred mysteries than by even the weightiest pronouncements of the teaching of the Church." Catch that? We learn the truth of Christ more profoundly, more personally, in a more life-changing way through entering authentically into the liturgy and the liturgical calendar whereby we celebrate the Mass, the glorious sacrifice, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in the different seasons that correspond to the redemptive work and the cycles of Christ. He says that this is more profound and lasting, the changes this brings, than if the Church made all of these weighty pronouncements. "For such pronouncements," Pius XI says, "reach only the few, and these generally the more learned. Whereas the faithful are stirred by the celebrations and feasts." Amen. Especially if they are done well. Pronouncements speak only once; celebrations, he says, speak annually and forever. Pronouncements affect the mind primarily, celebrations have a salutary, a saving, influence on the mind and the heart, on the whole man. Man, being composed of body and soul is so moved and stimulated by the external solemnities of festivals and such is the variety of beauty of the sacred rites that he drinks more deeply of divine doctrine, he assimilates it into his very system and makes it a source of strength for progress in the spiritual life.

I'd encourage you to throw yourself, body and soul, not only into the spontaneous worship that the Holy Spirit inspires but into the liturgical worship of the Church, which the Holy Spirit has also inspired. The Holy Spirit can inspire you in the moment and the Holy Spirit can inspire us through the ages, according to the natural cycles and the seasonal festivals that our fathers established. For what family grows strong that doesn't celebrate anniversaries and birthdays with a lot of vim and vigor? When we enter into the season of Advent, this is the greatest birthday celebration of all....

My Christmas Eve Conversion Story

2010-12-24T21:21:00.004-05:00

I have a rare opportunity this Christmas Eve evening to sit down in silence and write. Tonight my heart is pounding against what contains me to mull over what I think of as my major conversion experience. So, let me tell the story.

It was 1991 or so, I don't remember the exact month. I had a very good friend who was married to a man attending Lutheran seminary. For some time he had been toying with the idea of becoming Catholic. His wife, my good friend, was not thrilled with the idea, and I commiserated with her. In fact I suggested that he was being attacked by demons to wish such a thing. This drama went on for several months, and finally my friend announced to me that rather than fight with her husband about it, she had agreed that they would become Catholics. Gulp.

About the same time, a man who attended my charismatic fellowship who had been raised Catholic announced to me, somewhat privately, that he was going to receive Confirmation and return to the Church. I was agitated by my married friends' announcement, but I was dumbfounded by his. I had always considered him the most intelligent, theologically correct person in the whole fellowship. And besides that, I was in love with him. In my confused way, yes, I was in love with him.

These announcements hit me within a very short time of each other. I was left very confused and very compelled to start some serious thinking about Catholicism. Growing up as a conservative Lutheran, in a church which taught that the papacy is the anti-christ, I nurtured a strong anti-Catholic sentiment. It was somehow a strong part of my own spiritual understanding of my world that I was not only not Catholic, but I was opposed to Catholicism. Why? Because I honestly believed that God was opposed to Catholicism. I believed it was an evil religious system. I remember earnestly and honestly praying this way: "Lord, I know that you hate Catholicism. But when I think about hating my friends, I get confused. Lord, if you don't want me to hate Catholics, then you have to show me why not."

It took me a long time to emotionally calm down enough to get to the point of grasping that I knew nothing about Catholicism except what I had been taught as a Lutheran. Well, it wasn't only a matter of calming down emotionally, it was also a matter of surrendering my pride. I truly thought I knew it all. I truly thought I was superior. It took me several months to come to see that if I wanted to understand the Catholic paradigm, if I wanted to understand what made Catholics different, I had to start investigating Catholic sources. I remembered that I had read Medieval mystics in college and my heart had caught fire, so to speak. I just didn't believe that anyone knew about them anymore (because, of course, I didn't, before then). That little spark of hope awoke. I bought a Catholic Bible, a copy of the documents of Vatican II, and later the book Catholic and Christian by Alan Schreck. And tapes by John Michael Talbot and the Brothers and Sisters of Charity.

I read. I studied. I prayed. I was shocked. Catholics quoted the Bible. They talked about evangelism. They talked about the supernatural power of God to change lives. The arguments for doctrines like Apostolic Succession and the Marian dogmas were logical, and Biblical. I began to discover valuable riches. Things began to make sense.

Some time before this, I had been experiencing a sort of hunger for something in the worship I had loved so much in our charismatic fellowship. I had thought of liturgical worship as a ball and chain, but more and more I saw that what we did had a similar kind of planned format. I felt as if I were experiencing nothing but the "dead religion" we railed against in the mainline churches. I had been musing that surely, Lord, there was something deeper than this. I wanted to be free of "dead religion" at all cost. But it seemed to cling to me.

And here I was now, discovering riches. This process had taken all of 1991. This man who I was so in love with had left Milwaukee for seminary in London (there is so much to that story; don't know if I'll ever write about that one!). But he wrote to let me know he was coming home for Christmas. We had arranged to go out for lunch on the 23rd. On the 22nd, my grandmother passed away, and we decided that our family would not celebrate Christmas until after her funeral, which would be the 27th. This left me in Milwaukee on my own for Christmas. Keith (yes, he has a name) therefore invited me to go to the Midnight Mass with him and some friends on Christmas Eve. I was ready to say yes. In fact, it had been going through my head that attending a Mass probably would be fitting for me at some point, as another step in my investigation of Catholicism.

Before the Mass that night, we gathered at his friends' house. One of them tried to show me his rosary that had turned gold, but I couldn't look at it or even touch it. I wasn't that comfortable with Catholic things! All that stuff that had to do with saints and people and humanity turning holy -- that was just still unfathomable to me.

We walked in the church, which was named for St. Anthony of Padua. There was a large statue of him in the foyer, and I instinctively recoiled from it. I was trying to be open, but those saints were the hardest for me to stomach. We went into the church to sit down, and I saw another statue of some other Catholic guy I didn't recognize. I grumbled to Keith, "Who is that?!" "Marie!" he answered, somewhat shocked at me, "That's Jesus!"

We sat there in silence for a good long time. Other than the fact that I vaguely recognized the liturgy (it had been only four years or so since I had been at a Lutheran service), I remember only two main things striking me. (Well, the one really odd thing was how at the beginning of the gospel reading the entire congregation developed an itch on their foreheads at the same time!) The first was the penitential rite. The way I heard it, the priest was asking his people, the Catholics, to repent of their sin. It reeked of humility. And I was undone. I thought to myself, "No, Lord, it's not these people that need to repent -- it's me! I have spent years and years belittling them, hating them, making fun of them, judging them, using them to make me feel superior... They don't need to repent, Lord, I do." If that moment brought me to my knees, the next profound moment put a state of awe into me, and literally I have never been the same. Keith and his friends went forward to receive the Eucharist, and we were sitting in the very front pew. As they came back and sat down around me, my eyes were drawn to the Eucharist at the altar and I suddenly was aware that this was Jesus. This was the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, giving Himself away right there. And what, my heart shouted, was Jesus doing in a Catholic Church?

Keith dropped me off at home and I sat up until at least 4am, mostly just staring. I can't even say I was trying to take in what happened. I was so shocked. I read a magazine Keith's friend had given me, and I stared some more. Finally, I slept. I spent the next day with friends from my church, and the following day at work. But internally I was still in this moment of complete shock. I couldn't even pray, or ask the Lord about what had happened. Finally, on the evening of the 26th, I was doing some envelope stuffing at home and listening to yet another John Michael Talbot tape a friend had given me. His voice sounded so peaceful. I had to turn it off. I yelled at the tape player: "You're a Catholic, and you're supposed to be wrong. I'm a Protestant, and I'm supposed to be the one with all the peace!!"

I had finally broken the ice to sort of speak about what had happened to me at that Mass. I felt the Lord Jesus, as real as if I could see Him, sort of tap me on the shoulder and say "When you're ready to talk about this, I'll be right over there" (on my couch, where I often went to pray). I went over to the couch and began sadly lamenting and complaining to the Lord that I didn't know what to do or what this was all about. I had a lot of lament to pour out. When I was done, the Lord showed me a sort of mental vision. There were two roads. One road was wide open, and empty. I knew that this represented my life as it was right then, and I knew that one option for me was to continue on just as I had been. Then I saw the next road. A short ways down it, there was a cross standing in the road. I immediately knew three things. The cross meant that that's where Jesus was. The cross meant the Catholic Church. And I knew that I would choose to go that way.

More lamenting. (I did a lot of that in those days! No joy.) I told the Lord, in a martyrish sort of way "Oh Lord, Ok, if you want me to become a Catholic, I will. I'll become a Catholic." The Lord answered me clearly. "I don't want you to say it. I want you to sing it." The Lord was after no less than my heart. No surfacy response would do. Suddenly I sprang up. "But Lord, what about that thing about saint intercession. If I could just find that Bible verse again and ask you how that really speaks of the saints praying for us?! I'm just not sure about that yet." The Lord was stern, but kind. "Sing."

Somehow I knew exactly what to sing, so I did:

I have decided to follow Jesus, I have decided to follow Jesus, I have decided to follow Jesus
No turning back, No turning back

The cross before me, the world behind me; The cross before me, the world behind me; The cross before me, the world behind me
No turning back, No turning back

Though none go with me, still I will follow; Though none go with me, still I will follow; Though none go with me, still I will follow
No turning back, No turning back

Well, no, come to think of it, that isn't what I sang, but it was in what I sang which was this: "I have decided to become a Catholic. I have decided to become a Catholic. I have decided to become a Catholic. No turning back, No turning back."

I am still unpacking this experience. I realize now that it was absolutely no mistake that this happened at a Midnight Mass of Christmas. The message that has been sinking into my heart ever since that night is that in the Incarnation, God proclaims that holiness and humanity have wedded. In Christ, the way is open for holiness to enter the frailty of our human existence. This does a drop kick to the notion that humanity is, in its essence, depraved and capable only of depravity. The goodness of creation is once again restored and proclaimed and affirmed, and in it I too am restored and proclaimed good, and affirmed. We humans are made for the lofty purpose of receiving from the Lord glory, and bearing it forth to all the world. We are made for transformation unto holiness. We are not only loved by God because we are have been cleaned up by Jesus' blood. While we were yet sinners, Christ loved us, unto death! He loves us because of who we are, even in our sin! I think my notion of Christianity had been that our sin had messed things up so badly that Jesus had to fix us and then God let us into heaven simply because he agreed to forget about who we really are. But all along it was really only Himself that He loved. No! The Incarnation proves that Jesus loved us enough to live among us in our sin, and to patiently love us until we are made hungry for His love.

The Incarnation continues, of course, in the Body of Christ, His Church. I love being Catholic, but more importantly, I love Catholics! I love non-Catholics too, but I have a special love for the very type of Catholic I once judged myself superior to. Every time I see a ~~run-of-the-mill Catholic~~ (no, wait. I decided just recently these don't exist. Each Catholic is a miracle.) Every time I witness a certain flame of the love of God in the heart of a Catholic person, I well up with awe inside my soul, and a wave of unworthiness to be in their presence washes over me. There are moments when I kneel in Mass and I am so overcome with gratitude for the privilege of just being there. God has filled me with great joy, great peace, and great delight.

Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift! (2 Cor. 915)

Post Script:
After I wrote this post, at Midnight Mass, the priest in his homily commented on a quotation from St. Leo the Great that sums up succinctly what is in my heart: the key of what we are given in the Incarnation is our own dignity, restored. The quote:

"Christian, remember your dignity, and now that you share in God's own nature, do not return by sin to your former base condition. Bear in mind who is your head and of whose body you are a member. Do not forget that you have been rescued from the power of darkness and brought into the light of God's kingdom. Through the sacrament of baptism you have become a temple of the Holy Spirit."

A Miscarriage Anniversary... Gift

2010-12-17T00:21:00.000-05:00

Some days simply have so many joyful bits and deep important things happening in them that I feel like I go around with my arms full of jewels, dropping them all over as I go.

Today I had an experience that left me feeling God wrapping me in His strong arms, pulling me close to Him, and whispering in my ear, "It's OK. I understand." Even if I write it out sloppily I wanted to try to capture it in words before I drop it, too.

This morning I had about 25 minutes to work on learning some music we will sing in choir for Christmas. It's in Latin and sort of polyphonic, which is not the sort of thing I can just belt out at first sight-reading. It requires work. My attempts to work on it thus far have not gone well at all. While it is true that my brain does not learn music well when the piece is in Latin, in the past I have been able to learn such things by putting in a lot of effort. It just wasn't working for me, now nor did it last year when we practiced it (but ended up setting it aside as it wasn't coming together). Today, attacking the work with great determination, I realized the hurdle I wasn't clearing was precisely the memory of last year's effort. Though I tried then, I was simply too depressed last year to do this type of work because I was overwhelmed by the first anniversary of a baby we lost, two years ago tomorrow. And until I faced that haunting memory I emotionally associated with this piece, my attempts to work at learning it were futile. But face it I did, and I was finally able to make great strides in learning it today.

Right after this realization, I gathered my children and we were off to Mass. When we go to Franciscan University I always drop them off near the door of the chapel so that they don't have to walk with me up the big hill where I park. While I walked I thought of how I had struggled so hard against singing my alto part for this song. The tenor part sunk into my mind, but I just couldn't focus on my part. I thought to myself, part of my grief of losing this baby is this experience of my part as a woman, of my body becoming a graveyard. It felt even a bit too melodramatic as I thought it, but thought it I did, and I shed a few tears in the quick moment up the hill. I realize that sometimes when life hurts, I really don't want to be a woman!

I was seated as Mass, and heard the reading from Isaiah:

Raise a glad cry, you barren one who did not bear, break forth in jubilant song, you who were not in labor, For more numerous are the children of the deserted wife than the children of her who has a husband, says the LORD. Enlarge the space for your tent, spread out your tent cloths unsparingly; lengthen your ropes and make firm your stakes. For you shall spread abroad to the right and to the left; Your descendants shall dispossess the nations and shall people the desolate cities. Fear not, you shall not be put to shame; you need not blush, for you shall not be disgraced. The shame of your youth you shall forget, the reproach of your widowhood no longer remember. For he who has become your husband is your Maker; his name is the LORD of hosts; Your redeemer is the Holy One of Israel, called God of all the earth. The LORD calls you back, like a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit, A wife married in youth and then cast off, says your God. For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with great tenderness I will take you back. In an outburst of wrath, for a moment I hid my face from you; But with enduring love I take pity on you, says the LORD, your redeemer. This is for me like the days of Noah, when I swore that the waters of Noah should never again deluge the earth; So I have sworn not to be angry with you, or to rebuke you. Though the mountains leave their place and the hills be shaken, My love shall never leave you nor my covenant of peace be shaken, says the LORD, who has mercy on you.

The priest in his homily talked about how the kingdom of God belongs to the small, to the forgotten ones, and does not come in glitz and glamor. The all powerful one comes, how? As a baby. What could be more vulnerable, he asked, than a newborn baby. (I can tell you, I thought. A newly conceived baby.)
As I continued to pray in that Mass, I sensed small ways the Lord has been nudging at my heart, and just as had happened with the first baby I miscarried, I had a sudden insight into the significance of the name we had chosen for this baby. (It was really my children who chose the name; I could not bring myself to be involved.)

All of these things floating through the hour and a half I've talked about here were like one flowing conversation with the Lord. I was washed over again by the mystery of His presence with me, the tenderness of His love toward me, and His persistent yet mysterious leading.

"Please Be Joyful"!

2010-12-01T11:32:00.000-05:00

On the first of every month, Our Lord gives Anne a new message about His call to service.

December 1, 2010

Jesus

My dear apostles, together, we are making advances. Humanity groans with the changes coming upon them and yet heaven’s servants become holier and holier. The project that is your holiness is on track. Dear apostles, this is the most important thing and this should be your greatest concern. I want you to be aware of your progress. Instead of being distracted by the changes occurring in the world, you are actively participating in the changes through your personal commitment to remain connected to My will in each day. You are offering your service through your allegiance prayer and I am accepting your service and using you to teach others what true holiness looks like. From the outside, you probably look as though you are working hard. From the outside, it is probably evident that your commitment has cost you something, meaning, your own plan. You have submitted your plan to Me and I have handed you My plan in return. Accepting My plan for your life is not easy and some moments are more difficult than other moments, and yet, you continue. You strive for total acceptance of My will. This is what I am asking of you and this is what the Father asked of Me. Abandonment. If you want to learn about abandonment, simply look to My figure on the cross. My Passion offers you a glimpse of where abandonment took Me. Your joy in service offers others a glimpse of where abandonment has taken you. Please be joyful. Your joy offers the world hope. Joy is infectious. And hope is infectious. Suffering passes away and what remains is your offering. I am returning. I tell you this because it is true and I want you to be prepared and to help others to be prepared. All is well. The infant King looks out upon a world which craves Him. Bring Me to others, that they may also herald My return.

Yearning For Advent

2010-11-30T13:55:00.000-05:00

With this post I have successfully completed a full month's blogging. And with a quick pat on my own back, I shall now forget about it until next November, maybe. Not that I won't blog, of course... There is something nice about setting a goal and fulfilling it, and there was something helpful to me in requiring the discipline to write daily. But it is an effort that sometimes left me feeling I was sacrificing more important things. I suppose part of the value in doing it is embracing those more important things with greater intention.

But, enough of this writing about writing about writing.

Where my heart finds me right now is longing for Advent. Oh, we're in it all right, but that doesn't mean that my heart can't still be longing. More and more I find Christ calling me right in the midst of laundry and cat litter, history and letter sounds, dinner prep and brushing my teeth. It is a strange sense, because sometimes I even think I want to fly from these in order to pray, or think. But then I realize that my dinner prep, offered with a longing in my heart for Him, is prayer, and makes meaningful the words when I do say them, or the thoughts when I meditate on them.

I am challenged, too, by something John Michael Talbot often repeats about what it means, for example, to forsake even one's family for the kingdom of God. He emphasizes that it isn't some cult-flavored hatred or shunning or forsaking we are to do, but a Christ-flavored surrendering we are to do. When I surrender my whole reality, especially those who are closest to me, to Christ's lordship, then Christ returns into my life my reality imbued with His Spirit. In Christ, family is no longer my slave or master, my judge or my whipping-boy. My family becomes the call of Christ to me to follow Him, and to be free. When I follow Him, my world widens, my heart widens, my family widens. I think those old Coke commercials appeal to us ("I'd like to teach the world to sing/in perfect harmony") because there is a yearning in our hearts for a communion that is beyond our power to create. It is the communion that is created only as we follow Christ. We fear following Christ, I think, like we fear death and pain. But as we keep our eyes on heaven, on what lies beyond the death and pain, on the love Christ bears for us right here and right now... yeah, we are empowered and en-couraged to go where He is, to follow after Him in hot pursuit.

So, a Blessed Advent to all. May you following the yearning in your heart for peace, for unity, for love. He is real. You aren't yearning in vain.

Laziness is Unsexy

2010-11-29T21:28:00.000-05:00

On Saturday I was at a wedding and heard a fairly good homily. The focus was on the term "passion" as suffering, and how love is truly love to the extent that it costs. The priest talked about how the phrase "this is my body, given for you," is fitting in not only the sexual context of marriage, but in every aspect of the physical giving that we do. Of course, this would include work, childbearing, care taking, and etc.

It strikes me that for this reason perhaps, laziness is a very unsexy characteristic! If I am to demonstrate love for my husband, but do not wish to sweep the floor because it seems like too much work, then I am not particularly embracing the passion of married life. That is not to relegate certain tasks to certain gender roles, of course. My point is that being willing to give of oneself must be enfleshed. The passion of life, the fire, the love, the excitement, does not come in great waves of emotional exaltation (or perhaps I should say not only in great waves of emotional exaltation) but also in the free and decided gift of my effort, my sweat. And perhaps especially when this goes mostly unseen, unapplauded. I think this is not only sexy, but grace-filled! I'm actually not sure there is a real need to differentiate between the two adjectives.

Choosing Happiness

2010-11-28T22:47:00.000-05:00

I'm still feeling a bit stunned by an experience I had tonight while watching a movie. I want to just hold on to that for now, so that's all I'll say about the movie. But in response to it, my heart feels like making a sort of declaration: I am going to be happy.

Now, this isn't a statement of a future plan, as if I'm feeling unhappy, currently. It is more of an assertion that I deserve to be happy. Maybe it feels more theologically comfortable for me to say that God created me for happiness, and I will live as God created me to live. Maybe that's just too complicated. For the moment, I'll stay with "I deserve to be happy."

Seems weird, doesn't it, for someone to struggle against their own happiness. We are made for happiness. I once wrote a whole blog post about what the Catholic Catechism has to say about it. All I can say is that I have been at war against my natural desire for happiness for as long as I can remember. Maybe we all do that? I don't know enough about every other person on this planet to answer that. (Tell me if you think it's true for you. I'm interested.) I think that somehow I felt that my happiness would hurt others around me, especially those who were not happy. Happiness became something I had to hide, squelch, sneak, or deny in an attempt to... keep others happy! How stupid! But how perfectly descriptive of how I have lived! This has really affected my spiritual life over many years, because I "had to be" so private about my happiness. So many life decisions I hesitated over because I feared that the happiness I found in my decision would wound someone close to me. Or, because I was so bound up worrying about disappointing or upsetting someone, I failed to put energy into discerning well the decisions that were in front of me.

I think this all goes back to a child's wish to be able to wave a magic wand and to make all the world's problems go away. To make all my world's problems go away. I remember several years ago, maybe ten now, watching Shirley Jackson's The Lottery (the movie version, obviously). I remember that two things struck me: First, the people were performing a sacrifice, a horrible, unthinkable, and deeply anti-Christian sacrifice, in order to keep the world as they knew it in orbit. Second, this mirrored something in my life. It was deeply disturbing, and I remember going to Mass soon afterward as if I were waking up from a bad dream, and thinking about the sacrifice of Christ and how it was for me... as if I were meeting this truth for the first time all over again. Grace works deeply, and God is so patient to see His work accomplished. To seek to kill off one's own desire for happiness to accomplish the "salvation" of someone else is anti-Christian. My desire for happiness is my desire for God. Unhappy people in my life do not need more misery to surround them. Just like I do, they need God, the One they, in their unhappiness, are seeking.

It's hard to be happy around an unhappy person. I'll never forget a brief exchange I had with a priest, my former spiritual director, Fr. John Campbell, S.J. He wasn't my spiritual director at the time, but it was a few weeks before the first time we met in that context. We had already been introduced and I'd been attending his daily Mass for many months, so we knew each other to a degree. It was after a Sunday Mass, and for some reason I don't remember, after Mass I was sobbing my little eyes out. I was standing in the main aisle of the church when he passed by me and said, purposefully, "Have a good day." It seemed such a strange thing to say to someone who was so obviously sad. But it struck me that rather than him trying to wallow down into my sadness, he was trying to invite me to come out into something better.

Is it not so much better to feel one's powerlessness in changing another person but stay united with Christ in hope than it is to gain some sort of twisted sense of power by making of oneself a pagan holocaust? If I just make myself miserable, that will help you! How silly. The only good I can ever offer anyone will come from Christ through my relationship to Him. That relationship comes first, at all cost.

Even the cost of finally accepting that God wishes for me to be happy, and therefore I must embrace that wish of His as my own.

Few-Worded Weekend: Copying Beethoven

2010-11-27T17:35:00.000-05:00

Watched this movie tonight for the third time.

I Need to Trust my WHAT?! (Part Two)

2010-11-26T13:54:00.000-05:00

I've been allowing the challenge recently brought to me by Fr. X to soak in a bit. I'll tell you how it hits me. I could imagine myself bravely taking a bullet for the Lord in a firing squad, but the prospect of feeling and expressing my emotion reflexively makes me want to run and hide. Yes! I admit it. I'm a chicken.

Here's what I typically do: I identify an emotion within myself, and then I treat it as a puzzle to solve, to connect it with meaning, to see how it calls me to think about my life and reality. But I skip over the part of actually feeling it. Or, if I find I cannot skip over it because of its power, I feel like someone being dragged behind a powerful force, which in and of itself is really frightening.

I couldn't help but think at Mass today how each time we receive the Lord in communion we "proclaim the Lord's death until He comes." Or, as Scott Hahn said, we "swear an oath," giving our lives completely to the Lord unto the death. At that point in the Mass we have just witnessed what our salvation cost Christ, and now we are called to respond with the pledge of our own lives, fueled and empowered by the grace our response to receive Him gives us. So, while today my call is not to take a bullet from a firing squad, my call is to heed where the Lord in our relationship is pointing me. We are never called to what is theoretically heroic or virtuous, but to what counts -- where the rubber hits the road!

I realize I've developed quite a "talent" if you will for talking about deep and personal things, and even doing so expressively, but with my emotions at a distance from me. I think this makes writing a double-edged sword, because even though it does allow me more freedom to get my thoughts out than speaking does, I also know it doesn't always require emotional processing. I think it is a sort of personal meditative type work, really. It takes silence. I need to manage my use of silence differently, I see.

But acknowledging that I can sit in silence with my emotions tells me that God who holds my life is bigger. Him, I trust. Why haven't I trusted my emotions? Well, I suppose having felt like they were dragging me like someone chained to a pick up would be a good starting clue!

Ok, I will venture to write about something and actually feel it. With Thanksgiving at hand, I've realized how much I looked forward to, longed for, felt comforted by, getting together with my extended family when I was a kid. Even then, though, there was an element of longing for other times. I remember seeing pictures and hearing people talk about when the gatherings were bigger, and were not just by aunt, uncle, cousins and grandparents, along with my family, and any stragglers-in or hangers-on in the mix. (My aunt and uncle provided adult foster care for many years, and besides those folks it seemed we often had other random people in the mix that I didn't know.) Even as a kid I had a sense of nostalgia for a time I never personally knew, when my grandparents' siblings and their families would also gather. They are all dead now, and I haven't seen my two cousins in twenty years. Entering these feelings now, I can be happy that my children can experience this same sense of comfort when we come together as a family, though we are much smaller now. I can also see I have grief in my heart for the death and the loss in my family of origin.

There they are -- my feelings. It is unusual for me to not follow up with "and this is what it means" and "here's the spiritual reality that heals it" and "here's the good that comes from pain." For now,these are all a bit tired. Peace does come in giving up the fight against feeling.

It's Thanksgiving; I'm Taking the Easy Way Out

2010-11-25T18:09:00.000-05:00

A list of ten things I am thankful for this Thanksgiving:

1. sunshine
2. gardens
3. my daughter's voice
4. my son's willingness
5. laughter with friends
6. food
7. my computer
8. warm blankets and warm showers
9. music
10. Daily Mass!!

Practical Wednesday: product review!

2010-11-24T17:07:00.001-05:00

Time for a nice, practical post in the midst of holiday preparations.

Product review!

I recently purchased a bottle of Ecover Limescale Remover, and I give it a big thumbs up. We have pretty horrendous water in our little town, and an old tub that has never seemed clean regardless of what I've used (which has included bleach, Comet, Barkeeper's Friend, and a variety of cleaning soaps). I sprayed down the tub with this, let it soak, and then scrubbed and reapplied. (Truth be told, I let the stuff dry on because I forgot about it for a few hours.) It looks so much better. I like the fact that it isn't toxic, doesn't stink, and is safe enough to let my daughter help me. It's not dirt cheap, and I suspect the active agents could be purchased and assembled for much less, but sometimes an easy clean is simply worth the price to me.

On another note, I have given up on the idea of alternative cat litter. I like to try alternative just-about-anything, so when I read about pine I gave it a try. I got a 40 lb bundle of pine shavings, and then one of pine pellets, from the local feed store. While the cats enjoyed it fine, and it did actually seem to cut down on the odor and it was scads cheaper, the mess factor, in the end, ultimately has driven me back to the conventional junk you poor in the pan. However, we are trying to train the cats to go outside, which is the next best thing to teaching them to use and flush a toilet.

I Need to Trust my WHAT?!

2010-11-23T00:04:00.001-05:00

Recently as I was talking with a priest friend, he said something that really stunned me. He said, "Marie, you need to learn to trust your feelings." I think I physically jerked my neck back. I repeated the words out loud. It was as if he'd told me I'd look great with a rose bush blooming out of my nose.

I have done a lot of things with my feelings over the years, but it struck me then that using the verb "trust" in relation to them is completely foreign to me. Doesn't trusting one's feelings lead to irrational decisions? Doesn't it mean one is carrying around by whims of fancy, today going one way, tomorrow some other way? Don't feelings always lead us to baser desires, to laziness, to gluttony? Don't we have minds to free us from the tyranny of doing what we feel like doing by choosing what is right instead?

Thoughts like these sprang up immediately as I pondered his statement.

But I realized he was not speaking in general terms, he was speaking to me. Obviously he was not advising living based on emotion, only to allow emotions to stand on proverbial level ground with all of the other facets that make up my soul, and to no longer be made to sit crouching outside the back door, whimpering for table scraps and hoping for a chance to come in a get warm now and then.

This prospect is so fascinating that I can't help but write about it.

I am rather cerebral and logical. If I can see how a series of facts lines up in logical order, it gives me a sense of peace. But I do, I know, run the risk of shutting out my heart, my gut, my feelings from this process. And this makes my sense of peace, of completion, incomplete. I see that now.

Trust my feelings. I almost need to say this over and over to myself, just to get used to the feeling of the words in my mouth and the concept in my heart. They are not the final boss. They do not contradict reason. Jesus is far surer than my reason, my feelings or my heart. He is Certainty. I am finite, and shifting. But within my finite, shifting, growing, imperfect little heart, I need to trust my feelings, this capacity which Christ Himself created within me, so that the mechanism He has created for me to discern His will and follow it can function smoothly.

Fascinating.

Love refuses to be consoled when its goal proves impossible, despises all hindrances to the attainment of its object. Love destroys the lover if he cannot obtain what he loves; love follows its own promptings, and does not think of right and wrong. Love inflames desire which impels it toward things that are forbidden. But why continue?
It is intolerable for love not to see the object of its longing. That is why whatever reward they merited was nothing to the saints if they could not see the Lord. A love that desires to see God may not have reasonableness on its side, but it is the evidence of filial love.