Such a Thing As Glory

This morning, new pieces are coming together in a naru hodo moment, so here I am. It's more accurate to say that old pieces are coming together with new clarity.

I was driving home from the airport this morning, enjoying a beautiful, bright sunny fall sky and getting inspired for my own turn to be dropped off there just several days from now. I was genuinely feeling this is good as I hummed down the highway. My this is good neural pathways are, frankly, about as frequently used as is the airport highway for me. I know where it is, but it is far from a daily or regular trip.

A decades-old memory popped up as I drove. One fine May Sunday in the early 90s I strolled through downtown Milwaukee in a state of being fairly drunk on the Holy Spirit. It was a rare moment, but it fit with a collection of graced moments I experienced when I was on my way into the Catholic Church. I did not really have a human companion in my life to encourage me on that path, but the Lord did it directly, with this collection. I remember that the weather was perfect and the sky was blue. I had gone to an earlier Mass, but returned to Gesu just to hear the thunderous pipe organ bathe the entire block with its beauty. Further up Wisconsin Avenue I stopped into a Taco Bell for a quick lunch, and I was overcome at the sight of a somewhat harried mother and her toddler. Again, it was the beauty that awed me. It was like that quote from C. S. Lewis about how an average person has the potential to appear to us as a goddess that we might be tempted to worship. The third panel in this memory was of returning home and looking down at the bricks that comprised the building I was passing. I nearly wept at the beauty of it, aware that I was beholding the work of a human being -- and even as a faint reflection of human dignity, those bricks spoke to me of the beauty and grandeur of God, shining through His human creation.

The glory of God is man fully alive, and the life of man is the vision of God. So quoth St. Irenaeus.

So this morning, my neural pathways leaned into this is good with the delight of a human, safe in a world made by a God who loves not only this human, but all of us. And safe not only in a world made by God. Safe in a world impacted by other human beings. Flawed as we are, we are still the means through which God's glory is expressed in time and space. In fact, that expression of glory is not dependent on our perfection. It is dependent on our humanity. Our humanity is a given, but our acceptance and expression of it hinges on the degree to which we hum with the vision of God.

Then I had another memory. 

I belonged to a church -- we called it a non-denominational charismatic fellowship -- in the late 80s and early 90s with a pastor named Skip. Skip preached a sermon one Sunday which stayed with me, not in a good way. He made reference to a verse that was trending in that culture in those days -- 2 Chronicles 7:14 -- which reads:

If my people who are called by my name, shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. 

We were all about healing our land, understood to be the United States, and it specifically needed healing from the sin of abortion, and also homosexuality. 

Skip said what we really needed to do was to re-understand this verse by removing the word "wicked" and replacing it with "pleasurable." So he repeated it multiple times, that what we needed to do was to turn from our "pleasurable ways." He went on further to explain that he felt this meant giving up ice cream, and limiting his news intake to only include The Jerusalem Times. His sermon was really some kind of private rumination that he shared as a teaching.

I never held Skip to be a good or convincing preacher, and this was in fact one of the reasons I joined this fellowship. I had heard too many stories of people in charismatic circles following their pastors like brainless sheep, and I thought because I knew he was a bit off, that I would be protected in that regard. But I was more impressionable than I realized, and even though this sermon struck me as off, it lodged in my soul like the Satan's tare that it was. Evil boils down to anything that gives pleasure. Pleasure is wicked. It is my duty for the salvation of the world to live without pleasure. I knew it.

The glory of God is man fully alive. It is pleasant to be fully alive. 

It is pleasant to have a well constructed road that makes travel safe. It is pleasant to have a modest car that moves down the highway, with temperature controls that make me comfortable. It is pleasant to encounter another person and smile at them. So many things that we experience in this world are pleasant. When by grace we enter the vision of God, we in fact gain this pleasure. And the vision of God teaches us that we don't grow in aliveness by stockpiling pleasures like a filthy hoarder, clutching them to ourselves for dear life so they keep us alive. We also understand that part of the human vocation is the common good, where we are all entrusted with the goods of this world mutually. 

But my healing journey has taught me that many people operate as I have -- fearful on a deep level that this created world is wicked and untrustworthy, and that the only people we can trust are the ones who tell us that our misery deeply pleases God. Every bit of happiness feels stolen, or compromising. Many others angrily reject even a mention of God, because of people who represent Him this way.

We know that there is evil, but Satan is a clever bugger and he likes to switch labels. This world is God's world. Human beings are God's beloved creatures, who reflect Him. The center of the universe is not more power and money to get more goods to give us more pleasures, nor secret, shameful, slavish addictions that promise a few fleeting moments of pleasure -- until they can't. 

The glory of God is man fully alive, and the life of man is the vision of God. 

God who died on a cross, and rose again. And we follow by faith that same path. 

And as Rich Mullins said, there is such a thing as glory.

So, This Finally Made Some Sense...

I'm going to share about something now that I've hardly thought about for ages, and I don't know that I have ever discussed with anyone in my life. But I thought about it this morning. Because it is no longer the 1970s and 80s and I can pull up any bit of information with my interwebs box, I was able to reclassify a bit of my life's experience in a way that was both a bit surprising, and very not surprising at all.  

Maybe you have experienced the same thing. 

I'm literally reorganizing this information in my brain as I write, so please track with me as I move these boxes around a bit.

From the time I was a child of at least ten (I really have no memory of a "first time" of this) I rather frequently experienced a kind of electric sensation that would seem to radiate from my core, through my body. It registered as pleasant and restful -- a sort of momentary rejuvenation. Sometimes it would accompany someone saying something to me, or perhaps a nice song, or a thought. But sometimes it would happen more or less unaccompanied. 

Because I am me, my mind set to to try to figure out what was happening. I was a child; I had no interwebs, and (this is significant) never in a million years would I have told anyone about this type of experience happening in my body. Never, ever. I concluded at one point that this happened because it was how God was speaking to me. This is definitely a moment where adult spiritual director me steps in and says No, that is not how God communicates. But it felt good, and, like I said, it was often connected to a response to something happening outside me. So I thought it was what God did when He wanted to clear His throat and make me pay attention. 

I also had some issues with deception in my younger days, precisely because of my mind working like this. I remember saying to God, "So, if we get five pieces of mail today, I'll take it as a sign that you want xyz." Lo and behold, we did get five pieces of mail. How I approached this was a bit like divination, and I heartily don't recommend it. We need good formation. But I'm getting a little ahead of my story.

At some later date, I thought better of considering my electric shudders to be God's voice, and I set that idea aside. I just sort of vacated the need to understand what was happening, and just let it happen when it did without giving any thought to it at all. But it also didn't happen quite as often in later years.

This morning at Mass it happened, though.

And it dawned on me that I could hop on Google and ask it several probing questions and maybe I could learn something about what this actually is. Like, maybe this is simply a normal human phenomenon. 

And it is, more or less.

According to Dr. Peter Levine, it is the discharge of left over "fight or flight" energy in the body that never got used. It happens when you enter a moment of safety after being on high arousal, and the nervous system essentially sends this spontaneous rush of pleasant energy through the arms or neck or wherever. It is the body discharging stress or trauma. When stuck for a good long time in hyperarousal, the nervous system sometimes down regulates, and this little energy burst happens. And when it doesn't, well, you end up in trauma therapy in your 50s, and then you deal with it. 😬

So, I understand now why I felt this feeling was a divine intervention. In a way it is, as a natural stress reset. But even as a child I could not fathom that God created the human body with a means to simply feel good. I figured it had to be a secret, cryptic message, and one that I apparently had to work really hard to comprehend. But I also have to realize that even as a child I was under a considerable amount of chronic stress. And this was clearly compounded by a decision that was rock solid long before age ten, that I would not go to any adult in my life and talk to them about something happening inside me, or in my thoughts. I feel like I had that decided probably by age five. I realize that my childhood conversion to embrace faith in God came in part because I desperately needed to know that there was something bigger than myself that I could turn to. It was confusing for awhile, though, and so I did things like reading the tea leaves of my shivers. 

One of the things I've been working on in my therapy is to learn to accompany by own frightened little self as she still turns up. And to make sure she knows the real Jesus (ooh, must share my picture). And now I realize she also needs to understand some real science, too. It's ok little one. You can rest now. God is good, and you can shudder and shake and rest in His arms.

I bought this painting in March of this year, 
and not a moment too soon. It has been a well-timed
focal point of meditation for me. 

You Can't Make God Happy

I regularly take BIG breaks from posting on this blog, generally because I am processing my thoughts in writing elsewhere. But like a cat out for a prowl, I always come back eventually.

I have indeed been processing some big life things, as I've been involved in formation to become a spiritual director. I've realized I owe it to the process to engage with all of my heart, mind, soul, and strength, and I've had significant help in that regard from the Lord who holds my life in His hand, and has brought some major shifts into this life of ours.

One of the results of that is that I have been going to counseling to address some things that I realized I've not addressed before, and that I can see have formed me, and not in healthy ways. 

One of the things that has come up is the concept of codependency. When the therapist mentioned that term, I instinctively knew by how I bristled at it that there was something there I needed to look at. When I was in college, I was involved in a local ACOA group (Adult Children of Alcoholics) with a few friends, and codependency was quite the buzzword. These friends were finding codependency in their every movement and breath, and the whole thing made me roll my eyes. Under the bristling I felt more recently I found an angry reaction -- one that insisted that codependency meant weakness, and weakness is hateful and no way buster am I that person. That sounded way too much like my angry teen self, the same way I was angry and hateful with the term alcoholic, which at that time was synonymous in my mind with my Dad. I was so angry with that term that I didn't learn to spell it correctly until I was nearly an adult. I wouldn't think about it long enough to do so. I realized I had been that way, in a buried sort of way, with the concept of codependency. 

So, I knew I needed to look there.

I am seeing how it has perhaps influenced my closer relationships to a degree. But the relationship that I am writing about here is my relationship with God. Is it possible I have inserted codependency into my relationship with God? That's today's question.

A priest once told me he used to approach prayer as if it were a daily dose of medicine that he had to administer to God, so that God would be okay. That struck me both in its ludicrousness and in its relatability. I should back up by saying that the definitions I have found for codependency settle in on the idea that the codependent lacks a firm sense of identity within herself. She doesn't know who she is without the responses and affirmation of other people. What she does in relationship to others, she does to learn who she is, not to express who she is. She is always motivated to make other people happy, because then she knows she is ok. If other people are not happy with her, then her identity tanks.

So I'm thinking about this: is it possible to go around "trying to make God happy?" How do I know when I've succeeded? What if I never can? What if God is so demanding that I'll just stay in constant stress, because He tolerates me, but constantly points me to the need of the world and to saints who converted thousands. I'm accepted (begrudgingly) but I have so far to go until He's actually delighted. Maybe even in heaven I'll just squeak in to some lowly place because I'll simply never measure up. 

Newsflash: God is perfect beatitude. I can't "make Him happy." Maybe, just maybe, that striving comes from a) poor formation in theology, Christian anthropology, and worship, and b) a codependent attitude. What if I am actually called to find my identity in Christ, to grow up into Him who is the head (Eph. 4:15) and from that place, express what God has put in me (namely, my created nature, deified in Him; the life of the Holy Spirit) into the world. What if building my entire moral life on some other foundation, even the most exacting religious standard, is going to fall apart, because it isn't built on the rock of Jesus Christ himself? 

Well, wouldn't that just blow your mind?

What if my sense of jangled nervousness comes from a lack of faith that God delights in me, that I am His child, that He has covenanted with me in my baptism, giving me new life, and that He is never going to let me go or require me to earn His favor? What if He eagerly awaits the slightest invitation from us to fill us to our current capacity with every good grace He has. What if these are new every morning, and we can constantly be filled with His goodness when we call upon Him? "How much more" will our heavenly Father give to those who ask? 

What if the thing that destroys my peace is believing that I need to give God just the right formula to get Him to be ok with me, so that I can be ok. What if that's just not the way any of this works?

Honestly, I think we could change the world overnight if this lie could be wiped clean from the depths of our hearts. 

Seeking God, or Self-Harm?

This morning as I settled into my prayer time, I picked up Divine Intimacy and flipped to the entry for Tuesday of the Second Week of Advent. In a few pages, I realized I have found the key to something I wrestled with for years, and have struggled to put in to words, even after the struggle subsided.

The text asks, essentially, why is it hard to know God is present with me? The answer is that God hides. The method put forth to deal with that hiding is "to detach oneself, deprive oneself, renounce oneself, annihilate oneself, to die spiritually to oneself and to all things" (p. 32).

Leaving it at that is where I stumbled for years. As a teen, and even as an adult in some circumstances, I was pretty adept at things like going without food or water because I was too shy, hesitant, feeling-like-a-bother to ask for what I needed. Subtly I was firm in my opposition to my flourishing and even my existence. Is that the kind of detachment and self-deprivation that brings about revelation of God? Is that death to self? It never felt right to believe that was what Jesus was talking about, but my mind didn't know what else to do with that. 

The quote from St. John of the Cross there is actually this: 

It is to be observed that the Word, the Son of God, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, is hidden, in essence and in presence, in the inmost being of the soul. Wherefore, the soul that would find Him must go forth from all things according to the affection and will, and enter within itself in deepest recollection, so that all things are to it as though they were not... God, then, is hidden within the soul and there the good contemplative must seek Him with love (Spiritual Canticle, 1, 6)

There's that huge, important missing piece: God is hidden in the inmost being of the soul. God is not hiding in a box or behind a garbage can somewhere. He hides within the soul, at least by His capacity to dwell there, if not through the indwelling presence given in baptism. 

The text goes on:

St. John of the Cross continues, "He that has to find some hidden thing must enter very secretly even into the same hidden place where it is, and when he finds it, he too is hidden like that which he has found. ... This is a new invitation to detachment -- to forget everything, to withdraw from everything -- in order to enter into the depths of your soul, the place where God hides Himself (p. 33)

I'm not meant to learn to deprive myself of food; I'm mean to deprive myself of what restrains me from eating. I'm not meant to go a day without water while staring for hours at a spare water bottle my friend has in the car (true story). I'm meant to forget the knots I tie myself into instead of caring for my need. The true physical, emotional, psychological needs I have are in fact needs because I am a spiritual being designed to seek and find God. They serve my ultimate end, which is union for God. They are meant to be met, and posthaste, but not for their own sake. 

Along with God being hidden in the inmost being of my soul, all the enemy territory is also there. All those lying beliefs about how it would be better if I didn't exist. All of those subtle motivations to pride and self-harm. This is why it can be such a battle to even go within in the first place. God hides among our mess.

But, the beautiful journey is to go within, and there to "forget all that is thine, withdraw thyself from all creatures, and hide in the interior closet of thy spirit" (Spiritual Canticle 1, 9). There it is that no one, and nothing else matters, but seeking the One alone, because He alone suffices. Finding Him, my spouse, my children, my friends, my achievements, my talents, my possessions, my health -- they all fade there. There I embrace the nada. There I flee what is superficial and external, and cling wholly and completely to what is God.

This actually sharpens our love for all persons and created goods, because we can see more clearly what they are all for, and their preciousness.

There God defeats our enemies and unfurls the flag of His love, now planted firm in territory fully ceded to Him. 

The Urgency and Simplicity of Love

It seems that the Lord enjoys inviting me to go spelunking with Him. I am one of those people who, if an invitation seems too good, like too much fun, I panic and turn it down, thinking surely if I enjoy it, there must be something wrong with it. I'm silly, I know. 

This morning as I was reading, something caught my attention, and it feels like a spelunking invitation, so I'm here for it.

I was reading Temptation and Discernment by Segundo Galilea, and the section that caught my attention was from Part III, The Demons of Prayer, under the heading "Not Being Sufficiently Motivated." The author says that this distraction is all about being primarily motivated by felt need, whether emotional  psychological. Then, the part that caught my attention: "Above all... the ultimate, persisten motivation for prayer and its solid foundation is the conviction that God loves us and offers us the gift of liberating friendship. If this truth of faith does not genuinely persuade us, our motives will remain shallow... (p. 48, bold in the original).

When I read this, I immediately saw myself as an intense 20-something, sitting in my apartment in Milwaukee, interiorly clawing myself something fierce. I desired God. I had the example of my charismatic fellowship which taught me to throw myself whole hog into studying the Bible and pouring out my soul, keen to confront every painful, broken thing in me. I had a collection of books dealing with "healing the inner man" which focused a lot of forgiving those who had done us wrong and exposing these hurts to God to fix them. I was in the habit of going to church and crying buckets of tears in those days, because I was aware of lots of pains, past and present. My family felt very broken, and I was verging on desperation for God to "bring me a husband," because I felt certain that having a husband was to experience being loved and having proof that I was worthy of love. 

Ah, what would I say to young Marie if I were to meet her today...

I had some close relationships in those days, and honestly almost all of them netted more pain than good for me. One clear exception was my friend Ann (may she rest in peace) who was my prayer partner. We heard and supported one another, and she was even more interiorly quiet than myself. The others were men, and all of these were fraught with problems. My contribution to these problems I can trace back to one theme that I turned over and over in my mind in those days: I felt that I turned to God for fellowship and hanging out, and I turned to people to find my meaning and stability. In other words, I used God for what people are for, and I used people for what God is for. I did a lot of using, and not a lot of relating. 

I was doing Christianity as hard and as well as I knew how. But I really missed the basics. We had a discipleship class that I took in order to get dunked in the pool at the YMCA (which I later repudiated as a "re-baptism"). I heard it constantly, but I was unable to take it in that the foundation of life is prayer, and the foundation of prayer is that God loves us. And that prayer is receiving the liberating gift of God's friendship. To the best of my ability, I was wanting to give myself to God, but in reality I was terribly bound up in myself. I constantly betrayed and beat myself up verbally and emotionally. 

So, when this book Temptation and Discernment talks about the trap of going to God because of felt needs, I can testify that the danger is real. The enemy knew that my weak point was the desire for the love of a man (a natural good), and that I was not averse to putting a condition on God: if He would "bring me a husband" I would believe He loved me. Until then, I was going to agonize constantly and find reason to doubt whether what He says in Scripture is true.

And you know what? The enemy will use other misguided Christians. There came a point where my pastor at that time, who knew a small drama I was facing with one of the only single young men in the church, delivered what he said was "a word from the Lord" for me about God having a husband for me, and I in my deeply wounded credulity took it as gospel truth and affixed it to literally the first person who sat down next to me, who also happened to be the only other single young man in the church at that time. What ensued was several months, stretching into years, of me learning the very, very hard way the difference between standing on the Word of God and standing on foolishness. It's a long story.

But where sin abounds (and people's pastors mislead out of misguided compassion), grace abounds all the more. In the end, this became part of the grace that brought me into the Catholic Church, and back to the basics of the Incarnation of Christ -- the mindblowing reality that God came to live among us because of love. Because He loves us and wanted to live a human life so that we could share His life. 

When we come to discover and grow in our relationship to God it is so vitally important to be rooted correctly. And correctly, here, means in the conviction of the truth that God is love. The He loves me. That he offers the gift of liberating friendship. Some of us get so entangled with so many other things, and they all seem so dire or so important or so pressing or so distressing. The wounds yell. But when they are silent, and God gets a silent Word in edgewise, it always will be, "I love you."

Dance, Child. Dance

One of my favorite rules I had for my kids (ok, maybe it was more my son) when they were growing up (right after, yes, you may sing about poop, but not using a hymn tune) was that they were not allowed to berate and say nasty things about themselves. It was more or less a given that they were not to be mean and rude about or to other people, but they seemed to need some help with doing this with regard to themselves. To be honest, the echo of teaching them that rule still helps me occasionally.

Like when I sit down to write this blog post. 

I can be so serious and heavy and complicated, but you know what -- that's just the reality of me facing challenges. So here, serious Marie, have some flowers. 🎕

I mentioned my winter's work of dealing with something or the other in my last post, but to that I respond with James 4:15, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that." Cuz' maybe the Lord just doesn't want to waste any time. In the last, oh, 48 hours I've had this image of a hose, laying calmly and quietly on the floor of a basement. If water comes steadily out of that hose, what a difference it will be for that basement.

Ok, so imagine a metaphor where a flooded basement is a greatly desired thing. Work with me, here.

God bless Margaret Vasquez. I just want to say that. And God bless God who knows how to give me exactly what I need, when I need it. 

It's not actually anything new, as in intellectually new: new ideas, insights, truth, revelation. I think it is like Psalm 1 says: "That person is like a tree planted by steams of water (ah -- see, there it is) which yields its fruit in due season."

Right now is, apparently, a due season for me. 

In Margaret's book and in her podcasts she talks about basic principles of how the Lord relates to us, of how we are called to relate to ourselves, back to God, and with others. I am chosen, known, and valued, I have boundaries and openness. I'm not going to go into all of what is going on subterraneanly for me at the moment, but this is definitely one of those moments of cohesion, or "the big click" or, -- of course! --a giant Naru Hodo. Now I get it. 

Yesterday at Mass I had handed all the broken bits that I couldn't quite make any sense of to the Lord at the consecration. This morning I took advantage of early morning confession (which was in itself a victory. I am an expert of talking myself out of going.) And back at home after Mass this morning I had the luxury of a good old fashioned dance party. Two songs. Because the most joyful answers don't always come in eloquent theological explanations the way I sometimes try to force them to come. Sometimes they just come in feeling the connection through space and time and through my whole soul and body, including whatever cells might be left of me that were still around when I was a child, to being a loved daughter of God. And God knows this daughter of His still feels joy at hearing songs I heard when I was 6 or 7. I think every joy I feel with them integrates another layer of my life's experiences. Almost like pulling more of me out of the freezer. I don't know. I'll understand it later. For now, maybe I'll dance some more. Sure glad I'm doing that hip strengthening workout!

Good Morning, and Welcome to my Anxiety

Writing has always been a key way for me to access and relieve the pressure built up in me by feelings and thoughts that develop as I journey through life. I am still meta-surprised to find I am human (surprised that I am still learning and encountering new chapters). And right now I am poking at my experience of anxiety, learning what is in it and listening for what the Holy Spirit is saying to me about it. 

And since it is a story, I'll back this up a bit and narrate from my last three blog posts as a starting point.

This little phrase that spoke to me on Good Friday has been growing into a strong, tall sapling: Everyone suffers. About a week after I began mulling on that, I was scrolling Facebook and found that a Carmelite friend of mine had posted about a conference he attended called (drumroll) "Everyone Suffers." I didn't need twenty nudges to check out the website, and saw that it was about praying the Seven Sorrows rosary or the daily prayer* which focuses on virtues and beatitudes. This linking of virtues and the Beatitudes sounded so much like what my OCDS formation group is working on right now that I immediately incorporated that prayer into my daily meditation. I also contacted a friend who makes rosaries and asked her to make me a Seven Sorrows rosary. 

My observation here is that I normally hesitate over moves like this. On a rare occasion, I listen to a speaker who is excited about something and I mesh with that excitement enough to go "rah rah" over whatever s/he is promoting, but those bursts of learning or practice are usually short-lived. This involved no one speaking, just seeing something concrete in front of me that had an undeniable connection to a word I heard God speak interiorly. I hesitate at the still, small voice sometimes because of a fear of getting burned. I know I have a capacity to get super excited over things, and it can make me feel unglued, scattered, and lost. I know that if I never follow any leads, I'll never end up feeling unglued, scattered, and lost. But there's a high price to pay interiorly for not following any leads.

So my friend finished my rosary, and it is beautiful. Oh, I have a picture:

One day, out for a walk, learning to pray this rosary, I had a foundational revelation about the grace I was being given. I'd say the Blessed Mother was teaching me that her sorrows, or the sorrows of Jesus, were not a place to camp. They passed through their sorrows on the way to glory. And I was to realize the same. My sorrows are not a place for me to camp or get stuck. And to the extent that I am stuck, what I need is the practice of virtues, according to the Beatitudes, which is basically Jesus' road map to the kingdom. One way that I repeatedly get stuck is that I measure my life by my own standard, and that standard is usually impossibly high, unrealistic, constantly shifting, or trying to be at peace with those who are not holy (including myself). It doesn't really matter which of these is the resulting mess -- the core problem is that I put myself in a wrestling lock against Jesus' Lordship. And it's usually because of my innate tendency to suspect incompetence everywhere, even in God. And because I'm a fool.

Basically the Blessed Mother has invited me to walk with her and learn to release my sorrows to the Lord.

And lo and behold, I find that my sorrows seem to be wrapped up in anxiety. More on that later.

When I started learning to pray the Seven Sorrows rosary, I remembered that somewhere in my vast collection of printed materials in my house, I had a booklet on how to pray it. I dug it out, and while I have not yet been able to really connect with those prayers (I tend to focus more on Carl Brown's prayer linked above), the booklet was by Immaculee Ilibagiza, whom I have known of by reputation and an occasional mention by my elderly Nigerian friend. I knew she was the woman who survived the Rwandan genocide by hiding in a bathroom, but I didn't know much more than that. 

Once again I did not squash an inspiration with excessive hesitancy, but went to Immaculee's website and ordered a copy of every book she's written. I have finished the first three, am in the middle of the fourth, and have three more that I have yet to start. 

Now, I had actually thought to write here earlier about this journey that began for me on Good Friday, but part of me wanted to wait to digest everything Immaculee wrote first. Clearly I've decided that it is ok to write while in process -- I mean, when am I not "in process." If there was ever a life which speaks to what the Blessed Mother is teaching me -- that sorrows are to lead us to glory -- then it is Immaculee's life and testimony. In brief, it seems that a big part of getting stuck is refusing to face or accept the suffering while still trusting in a Good God. Holding both. I can't summarize the intensity of her experience here, but if it intrigues you I certainly recommend you read her books. The scope of them is more than personal, because he also deals with the Marian apparitions of Kibeho which effectively predicted the genocide. It's huge, and more than I can even touch on right now. But it isn't strange to realize that any one of our little lives, in God, touches all of eternity. 

So, all of that is how I've gotten to the place today. For the last couple of months I have occasionally been experiencing unusual physical symptoms of anxiety, I mean, much more than is typical for me. As I look back on my life, I realize I have had chronic anxiety, even from childhood. But it was so normal for me that I didn't know there was another way to be. I recall a physical exam in my 30s where the doctor was trying to test reflexes in my elbow. He wanted me to raise my arm in an L-shape, letting my forearm dangle downward. I held my arm out like a concrete L. "Just relax," he said. "I am relaxed," I replied. I really could not tell the difference between tension and relaxation in my body.

I used to only notice anxiety when a new situation tested it, but that was pretty much all the time. Later, I started to only notice anxiety when I was able to feel rested inside; I began to notice a contrast. There's some strange looping going on there. In the last fifteen years or so the rest has greatly increased, and my ability to cope with new situations has increased. But down in between all of this, there is still more freedom that the Lord wishes for me.

Ah, another piece. A few days ago as I deep-cleaned my "cooktop," I listned to my favorite Carmelite, Fr. Iain Matthew, OCD give this talk: Making Life an Offering: Teresa's Experience of Life in the Trinity. In fact, I listened to it about four times in a row. The word that I needed to glean from it at the time was this notion of spaciousness in God. That St. Teresa's experience of God shaped how she related with people, and it was that there was space for her to be her. She could be playful. She could be a tad audacious. She could be free. She could be herself -- when she prayed and as she lived. The nature of God draws us to this. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom" (2 Cor. 3:17). 

This word reverberated around and around in me. Physically, anxiety makes me contract and pull in on myself, and it hurts my muscles and my back. This notion of space, spaciousness, of opening wide to God... it's all in the opposite direction of anxiety. No creature opens wide where there is no trust.

All of these things, physical, emotional, spiritual, mental... these are all where I'm at right now. It's good. It's in process. I see a lifetime yet of practicing these things ahead of me, though. Maybe this is wisdom of age starting to take root. 

*August 2023 Edit: Carl has taken down his old website, and the new one does not include that prayer. The text of it is below.

Seven Sorrows Prayer

Mary, by your example in hearing and accepting the prophecy of Simeon, may I learn the virtue of humility, and live the Beatitude: Blessed are the poor in spirit, the kingdom of God is theirs.

Through your example of selflessness in the flight into Egypt, may I learn the virtue of generosity, and live the Beatitude: Blessed are the sorrowful, they shall be consoled.

As you were single-hearted in searching for Jesus when you lost him for three days, may I learn the virtue of purity, and live the Beatitude: Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.

When things don’t go my way, may I practice the virtue of patience as you did, while watching Jesus carry his cross to Calvary, and live the Beatitude: Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

When I’m tempted to escape difficulties through self-indulgence, may I be inspired to practice temperance as you did when you stood at the foot of the cross with your son, Jesus, and live the Beatitude: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for holiness, they shall have their fill.

When others harm me or those I love, may I grow in the virtue of the kindness that you demonstrated in receiving the dead body of your Son into your arms, and live the Beatitude: Blessed are the merciful, for mercy shall be theirs.

When I’m tempted to despair or become despondent may I recall your diligence at the burial of Jesus, and live the Beatitude: Blessed are those persecuted for holiness, the kingdom of God is theirs.

Amen.

Following up on Things Previously Said

Clearly I don't blog much anymore, so when I do write something, it helps me keep track of my interior landscape all the better. On April 14 I wrote about my Lenten gleanings and noticed a grace that seemed like God was "reaching in to heal a blockage." And then last week I wrote out of a place of mounting burn-out and frustration. 

And then it happened.

I had a panic attack.

I rarely have anything remotely like a panic attack, although I have had low grade consistent anxiety for a lot longer than I've actually been aware of. And I haven't experienced an actual panic attack for roughly ten years. So this was WEIRD and I firmly noted it as such as it began happening...

But I realize I got into this place with this interior forewarning, and it makes me really happy to say I emerged from that place having avoided certain knee-jerk go-tos. The first thing I did was I let it happen. I didn't go to the "this isn't happening" place. I accepted that I was losing it and I let it be lost. Then I went to my prayer spot and I just "was." I didn't try to form words or thoughts, but I just shared my "letting it happen" with Jesus. No trying to manage or understand. If there is something to "Jesus take the wheel" I suppose it is that surrender of things sometimes looks more about acceptance than it does like trying to dig a deeper ditch. When I hear people talk about "a deeper place of surrender" it often sounds to me like I need to put more work into it. But I do think it is more about acceptance: here's the reality. My eyes are wide open, and I'm seeing it. And I'm seeing it with Jesus. He's seeing it with me. That's where I was.

Then I refrained from making it a spectacle. Sometimes in the past I have shared things with people as a replacement for accepting these things. Maybe that sounds strange, but I think that's the truth. If I tell someone else, it sure SOUNDS like I'm embracing this enough, owning it enough to share. But I think somewhere in there sharing has been a step in self-rejection. Like telling on myself. Gossiping about myself. "You wouldn't believe what I just did...." There's a judgment, a lack of mercy in that. I held myself back from it in several directions, several times. It feels good to have chosen differently.

And then, because thanks be to God I had a previously scheduled spiritual direction appointment, in the right time and in the right setting and in the right way, I unpacked the whole thing, from the interior forewarning, through the event, and down to the terrifying question lurking underneath. And into that place of acceptance that turns a threat into an opportunity for compassion. 

I know that this spot will get poked at and tested in the days to come. It doesn't take any interior knowing to realize that; I can look at my calendar. But this was a concrete event of life, healing other concrete events in life. This is why life in God is not boring. This is a testimony to God's faithfulness and the reality that GRACE HEALS.

Integration

 I became a Catholic when I was 25. (I shared my conversion story here, if you haven't read it.) In my first fifteen or so years as a Catholic, I would occasionally catch a glimpse of a flickering and deeply attractive beauty in the heart of another Catholic. I didn't have a word for it. Whenever I encountered it, I felt like a dry sponge encountering something that I wanted to immediately sop up and take into myself. It felt like quality humanity. I always got the sense that the person who manifested it had no idea they were manifesting it. I sensed, especially early on, that this was something that had been fairly foreign in my experience of Christians in my pre-Catholic days. When I encountered this flickering beauty, I felt instinctively I could trust the person who possessed it.

And now I think I finally have a word for it: integration. The beauty I perceived in such a person was the beauty of being a well-integrated person.

Lately I've been listening to a podcast called Interior Integration for Catholics, which is all about the psychology of the interior life. I highly recommend it. I also listened to the audiobook Boundaries for Your Soul over Holy Week, which is a practical look at how to get all the warring parts of yourself to both work together and to come before the Lord. How to make the bossy bits of you calm down and listen, and how to draw out the parts of you that hide in shame, and how to give your overworked bits a break. It's good.

It is interesting to me that the Catechism says this in paragraph 2114: 

The commandment to worship the Lord alone integrates man and saves him from an endless disintegration.

 And then there is this, in paragraph 2338:

The chaste person maintains the integrity of the powers of life and love placed in him. This integrity ensures the unity of the person; it is opposed to any behavior that would impair it. It tolerates neither a double life nor duplicity in speech.

When I think about these two things:  worship, and loving with all one's power, I basically see my vocation in life, especially as a Carmelite. It makes me understand why, when I would encounter this grace present in another person, that my antennae would stand up and twitch. 

It seems to me that God calls us not so much according to our great ability, but according to our great wounds. At least, that's how it seems to me with my Carmelite eyes. We are to be the Great Empty before the God who is present to In-Fill. 

I mean, I just think of my college-age self, and I just have to shake my head in amazement at God. Even though I considered myself a devout Christian -- and I was, to the extent I was -- I was also an avowed misanthrope. Chastity, a commitment to Christian love, to create community? Like, what are you smoking? No, I was completely incapable. Nada. 

So for all of those years, slowly, I encountered grace, and God fed me by placing a longing in me. He broke me apart to put me together -- all of the pieces. He put my pieces together, to make me whole. At least now I am on the other side, where I can know what it is I long for. And I know that He will complete what He has begun. 

Lessons from the Mystics for Normal People

Last weekend was the annual retreat for my Secular Carmelite community, and for the first time since I have been involved we had a Carmelite friar as retreat master. I loved our previous retreat master who preached the last three I attended; his messages moved my heart and have stayed alive with me all this time. But there was something uniquely wonderful about having a Father of my own charism teaching this time. It was not so much the things he said that have stayed with me (although I gleaned much) as it was his lived witness of being a Carmelite.

The Lord taught me many years ago that a key component in evangelizing a soul is to reveal to that soul, by the grace of God, who he or she is, deeply, in the truth and reality that is God Himself. In other words, when God uses me to tell someone else who they truly are, an encounter with Christ has taken place.

So I'd say I encountered Christ last weekend.

And he reminded me of reality: You are a Carmelite. You are a mystic. And here's what it means for you.

Now, hold the phone. Mystics are weird, right? They have bizarre experiences and it is probably either psychological delusion supported by the ignorant, pious blindness of those around them, and probably half the stories about them are prideful, desperate, embellished daydreams to wield power over simple people, or blah blah blah.

Well, no. Although we spent the weekend learning about a mystic of recent times who would have to push the envelope of skeptics to the breaking point very quickly: St. Mary of Jesus Crucified. She had experiences that make the mystical phenomenon of St. Padre Pio look tame.

Mystical prayer simply means prayer that is the Holy Spirit's that happens in us humans. It is not necessarily accompanied by unusual experiences, though it can be. It is not necessarily a sensibly powerful experience, though it can be.

Secular Carmelites make a promise to spend a half hour each day in this type of prayer. This promised prayer is not for personal benefit or growth, but for the Church. Friars and nuns promise two hours of this type of prayer every day.

I've known this for years now, but I had a moment this last weekend where this simply clicked for me on a deeper level. A "naru hodo" moment. And in conjunction with this whole retreat, I found an incredible joy in being able to stretch out my whole being into this vocation and exclaim "This is who I am. This is where I belong."

St. Mary of Jesus Crucified (1846-1878)

As we studied the life of St. Mary of Jesus Crucified, we learned this means sharing the gloriously joyful delights of union with God, as well as the crushing pains and sufferings of union with Jesus. But it also means simply living the normal life we have as normal secular Carmelites, by faith.

And that is what normal people can glean from mystics who levitate, have visions of heaven and hell, converse with saints and angels, have the stigmata which bleed onto sheets in drops that spell out words, who persuade Popes of things by letters someone else has to transcribe because of being illiterate, being martyred but surviving because the Blessed Virgin comes to personally nurse her back to life for a month (and on, and on, and on). We hear the testimony of the mystic, of the Carmelite, whose call, according to our rule, is to bear witness to the experience of God. The vast majority of mystical phenomenon may be things we never experience, but by faith we can acknowledge the things mystics see face to face, and live in the light of their reality.

So, yes, I believe the testimony of a mystic to whom it was given to see how many angels are crowded into an empty church, and how many more guardian angels are present during a Mass. I can't see them, but I remember when I enter a church that they are there (sometimes, I do), and I respond accordingly.

Yes, I believe the testimony of many, many mystics who have seen visions of many souls falling into hell, because I know it is a possibility and I am called to pray that it not happen.

Yes, I believe the experience of the mystics who suffer interior torments when people think they are crazy, but then they find that this is typical of a process of purification Jesus often employs for souls with this vocation. I use this insight to face my own blander struggles with courage, offer them to God, and then refocus my attention away from my own needs and onto what is going on in the heart of Jesus, trusting that Jesus will care for me and I don't have to obsess.

And when mysterious things happen in my own life, I am not surprised but simply realize this is evidence God is real, which is exactly what I should expect, and that he uses these things to purify souls and draw them away from the baubles and distractions of the world. So I take courage and thank God for drawing me.

So don't bristle at the term mystic. Like many words it has experienced abuse, but it is a genuine stream of Catholic spirituality that is indispensable for our time.

Learning to Pray: Still, Yet, Again

I am learning. I'm not exactly sure of the chicken-egg sequence involved, but I am learning that when I have a question for the Lord about how to do what He's asked me to do, the question just might exist because He wants to teach me about it.

In general terms, the thrust of my prayer is always the conversion of souls. For years it has just seemed to me that there really isn't anything else that matters all that much. Yes, that could be argued, but basically it seems now that it is just indicative of personal vocation.

But in these days I have a specific situation for which I am praying for particular people, connected to a particular event at a particular time. And suddenly to simply say, "Lord, grant graces of conversion" just doesn't seem to cut it. Or rather, it stirs a deeper question in me: Lord, how do I pray? What is this, anyway?

And two answers come.


The first was a teaching, a fact, that I had previously taken in my head and heart as information, but struck me with a much more personal force today: "[T]he prayer of the Church is at the same time 'the prayer of Christ and his body to the Father.' We must recognize, therefore, as we celebrate the Office, our own voices echoing in Christ, his voice echoing in ours." (from the Apostolic Constitution on The Divine Office, 8.)

This refers specifically to praying the Liturgy of the Hours, but it highlights some truths about prayer. When we pray with the Church, and hence when we pray with Scripture, it is not our will or our heart we pray, but God's. And when we voice human misery in this context (as we do so often in the Psalms), we don't do it on our personal behalf, but on behalf of God's people. We are literally praying for the people, saying the words of God confessing human misery for those who may or may not be calling out to God on behalf of their own misery.

Turning that same truth over, there's this facet to highlight: God desperately wants to pour Himself out in mercy over our misery. He wants to enfold His people with His healing love, and He will, in response to His Church calling out to Him. Now I see why it is such an honor to pray the Liturgy of the Hours: to lift the voice of the Church before God calls down, as St. Therese saw it, the love pent up in the heart of God for lack of someone asking for it to be unleashed.

The second answer was a reminder of a truth God has put a lot of energy into my getting: the power of a daily offering scooping up all of our work during the day, offering it to Him for the salvation of souls, with an ever watchful eye on acting with love for God and love for the people in my life that I serve. The fact that this strikes me has a lot to do with how my mind was war turf for years over the doctrine of total depravity and whether human action have any worth before God at all. But it is true: the Holy Spirit does indeed flow through us by grace in our souls through our actions, even our attitudes. And so we can indeed offer that flow as prayer for souls. This is why, for example, saints tell us that for the love of God we occasionally (or more than occasionally, depending on our vocation and circumstances) need to leave our prayer to serve the people who come to us. Moms usually get this. But to be honest, everything about this offering-of-actions facet of spiritual life I've had to learn like a second language due to my early formation.

Pray and work. Offer it up. Pray God's word.

Pithy sayings like this generally do nothing for me to actually teach me. But they encapsulate truth. Naru hodo.

And This is Why I Love Epiphany

God frequently seems to use the liturgy and liturgical feasts to teach me personal things. Sometimes the nature of how this works is that something significant will happen in conjunction with a liturgical celebration of a feast day, but the significance of it will only dawn on me several years down the road. My initial conversion to Catholicism at a Christmas Eve midnight Mass is the most obvious example.

And another such thing is connected to the Epiphany.

The liturgy of the hours for Epiphany preserves the tradition that it has, in the past, encompassed the Visit of the Magi, the Baptism of Jesus, and the Wedding at Cana: the Illuminatio, Manifestatio, and Declaratio. The message is clear: Jesus is on the scene with power and He's changing things.

It took me quite a long time to realize how that applied to this thing that happened to me six years ago tomorrow, on Epiphany Sunday.

That would have been one of those moments that if I had been able to see into the future, I probably would have turned and run away as fast as I could.

I'm glad I didn't. I think.

No, no: I'm sure. And I have the scars to prove it. 

It had been a quiet life for Jesus, Mary and Joseph (as long has he lasted) until the time of Jesus' public manifestation and His first miracle. I can only imagine Mary's heart at the moment when she knew it was time for Him to move on. We make a lot of her request that moved Him to His first public miracle. I'm convinced it was not a giddy moment for her, but one of surrender to the Father. Her statement "Do whatever He tells you," besides the other volumes it speaks, I believe was her fiat to the Messiah's mission which any student of the prophecies must have known would lead to His death.


The rest of us see these glory moments and think Cool! Dude, I want in on this! She realizes that the glory of God comes at the price of suffering and death. Which hearkens back to celebrating martyrs right smack after Christmas Day. Did the Church make some awful blunder in scheduling St. Stephen and the Holy Innocents? Of course not. We make the blunder in forgetting that Christmas flows into Epiphany which flows into Lent which flows into Holy Week, Easter, Ascension and Pentecost. Jesus' birth is the beginning of the pascal mystery.

Christmas is often presented as a sugar-coated fairy tale. But God is born into a world where there is also a great deal of suffering and misery. -- Pope Francis 

And God came to live that suffering and misery with us, as one of us.

And, you know, in my book, when there's suffering and misery and God shows up, that suffering and misery suddenly get changed. Where God is, there is delight. Even when the glory points to a cross, which points to glory.

Funny. Seems like I wandered far away from the purpose I started writing with, which was to remember that Epiphany six years ago when God used the liturgy to show me something I didn't understand yet.

But this is how it works. And that's all I've been talking about.

An INTP Contemplates a Social Invitation

This morning I received an invitation from a friend to a get-together. The invitation was extended to a group of women who make up pretty much the closest friends I have. We would pray, we would eat, we would chat and spend a few hours soaking up each others' friendship to heal our souls.

I read it and I felt the cold chill go down my back. My muscles tensed. I breathed deeply.

I was just about to email the friend back with a question, not exactly a commitment, but trying to work my way there, when I read it again. Carpooling strongly suggested? Escape routes blocked! I put my phone down. Ok. Calm down. You can do this.

Had to stop for a moment of self-awareness. It helps me to step back and look at personal situations objectively. I imagined myself explaining what I felt at the moment to someone else. I imagined what contrast I could paint to put someone into my shoes.

Suppose I orchestrated an event that would foster bonds of friendship, something that would bring a deep sense of value and meaning to me and help me look at those other women as comrades-in-arms. What would it look like?

Marie invites you to a prayer solidarity gathering. We will gather from 2-4 am in the garden beside the Cathedral downtown. We will kneel on the ground outside, mostly in silence, with the exception of perhaps chanting a psalm or two together. We will pray silently for each other's needs, but especially in reparation for sins committed in the downtown at night and for the conversion of the town.

As I ran that over in my head, my first thought was "They would think I was being sarcastic." But I knew I wasn't. I imagined what words would spring forth from people to describe such a thing.

Dangerous. Difficult. Painful. Brave. Sacrificial. Unreasonable. (unvoiced: Weird)

So I kind of smiled inside. Yes, Imaginary Voice of my friend. You understand. You understand what it feels like for me to go to a women's chitchat lunch.

But no, I thought, I couldn't really take myself seriously, so why should anyone else, unless I was really prepared to do such a thing. I mulled this over in my head awhile.

And then it struck me. I already do this. Except I don't pray outside at the Cathedral. (Yet. I like this idea.) I pray in a Eucharistic chapel once a week at 2am. And it is only for an hour, an hour that always seems to go by way too fast. And it dawned on me that I could invite people to join me, and we could indeed work on growing this type of bond as we intercede for mutual needs and for conversion.

This would totally work for me as "friendship that heals the soul." To me, bonds really form through sacrifice, and good bonds form through mutual sacrifice. Ironically, it doesn't feel like quite as much of a sacrifice to pray in the middle of the night as it does to do the chitchat thing, and this probably has something to do with why I have a sense of a bond with some of these women in the first place, regardless of whether it is reciprocated, because it costs me something to "chat".

But there's something about that sacrifice. It needs to be an act freely chosen and carried out, not just an act I survive because I can't avoid it. That doesn't build up love. And sometimes I treat social settings like things I survive, because it feels like I imagine people would feel about kneeling outside in the middle of the night in silence. I can easily think of 300 things I'd rather do!

An act of love really has to come from inside me. There's no use any of us pretending, and there's no use any of us being afraid to love in the ways peculiar to us.

So, maybe I will go to the chatfest. (I haven't firmly decided yet.) After all, I can study how it all works. But maybe I will invite them to join my holy hour once a month, too. And who knows; someone might even seriously think about it.

Steppin' out of the Ghetto

Just recently I had one of those interesting experiences that made me realize how much time I spend in the "Catholic ghetto." I met someone whose family had experienced something difficult, and I said, sincerely but without a bunch of self-conscious thought, "I am praying for your family."

Now, I don't personally know the person I said this to at all, but his response to me was interesting. Subtly, he communicated I don't need you to pray for me. Somehow, it was simply an uncomfortable thought to him, or so it seemed. And stood in contrast to me to how this exchange usually goes among Christians, whether any of the words are genuinely meant, or not:

I'm praying for you.

Oh, thank you so much.

Somehow, instead of this ritual exchange, there registered some sort of sense that I was telling this person he was a mess, and seriously in need of help.

Come to think of it, I once heard a similar conversation between a religious order priest and a man I knew actually had some significant issues and who was not practicing his faith in the slightest. In that case, the mere fact that this man was talking to the priest made him assert how righteous he was and how untroubled his life.

So really, in both cases, it probably was a case of the person feeling subconsciously very aware of his misery, but feeling the need to duck behind something quickly to avoid it.

And now it occurs to me that this response to "I'm praying for your family" might have been the most genuine thing I experienced that whole day.

Relationship With... Whom?

Last week I was in a setting where I was listening to a person, though we were not exactly in a conversation. And this person to whom I was listening began to speak of "one's relationship with God." As I listened, I suddenly became aware that this person wasn't speaking of a relationship with God at all, but rather of a relationship with one's interiority.

The tip-off was how the whole content of this relationship was things like frustration over failures to achieve self-improvement goals and disappointment that overcoming sin wasn't easier to accomplish.

I was a little bit stunned putting this 2+2 together, but just as quickly it became a naru hodo moment where I understood why when I have heard this person talk about God in the past, it seemed something big was missing.

Like an experience of a personal God.

Oh, I can't say of course that this person hasn't experienced God in a real way; in fact I would guess that quite the opposite is true. However, it seems entirely possible that one can experience something without thinking about it sufficiently to be able to articulate it, or to understand that crucial value of experience. And perhaps one has had a long and deep formation in ways that have served to reinforce this idea that since prayer is interior, therefore anything that happens interiorly is equivalent to meeting God.

But a relationship with God, like a relationship with a human person, is going to involve interaction with Him in ways that simply are not part of me, myself & I. God is Other, and He comes to me, revealing to me myself and all things, but first and foremost, Himself.

And this made me wonder.... How many other religious people of Christian background misunderstand this basic Christian truth when they hear or use the phrase "relationship with God"?

A Pissed Off, Cranky Post (which makes me feel better)

I am cranky. I feel like I need to shoot from the hip just now, verbally, if nothing else to just try to loosen my crankihood out.

Honestly, sometimes understanding things is worse than not understanding things. I mean, I have a certain comfort level with the anguish of wondering. That's weird in and of itself. But there are times, like I feel right now, where it is the things I understand that make life less pleasant.

I'm feeling a very high level of frustration with my way of social interaction. I feel like God is bound and determined to sequester me in certain ways. Lately, about the only time I feel deeply and profoundly accompanied is when I am immersed in reading the lives or works of the Carmelite saints. I feel more certain of my Carmelite vocation than I am of my name or my desire for my next breath. But when it comes to dealing with flesh and blood human beings, it seems the more I try to put myself into it, the more I feel myself cocooning. Reflexively. Then there are the people who seem to be to my life like a stick in my eye. Then, I see people turning to me for a comfort, a refuge, and I clunkily am about as comforting and refuge-like as a chain link fence. I am so bad at faking "consoling."

Faking is not something I want to get good at. But it seems clear to me that I must exude something like porcupine bristles to people. Maybe it is just my perception, but I feel like I propel people away from me.

Humor and happiness attract people, and you know what, I usually am filled with these, visibly. I don't feel particularly depressed or upset or angry. I just feel.... sequestered. It seems my efforts at moving towards people just don't work, and haven't worked. I know that I am called to pray. I'm still in the midst of that novena that I started January 1. I have to say, if there is anything that makes me mad right now, it is praying for that person. Maybe that is the source of all my upset. I am now in the stage of thanking God for all the graces He has poured out -- and I know they are many -- but man, I have just never felt so upset about praying for someone. This someone doesn't know it, of course.

Just yesterday, and the day before as well, I was at meetings where I heard Dr. Mary Healy talk about the coming "tsunami of the Spirit" in the Church, and about her experiences of miracles of healing, as well as a prophetic convocation she attended where leaders in the Catholic charismatic renewal came together simply to listen to God speak to them. Again and again as she spoke I knew God was giving me nods of confirmation about things I've been hearing and experiencing over the last couple years. This novena prayer is not disconnected from all that. On the one hand, I've heard "it is coming" (in reference to some move of God) all my adult life as a charismatic. On the other hand, I do get the feeling this is different, because God has found ways to hook my own personal life into this "it". I think my problem is that I am lousy at waiting for God.

Just remembering now something that happened this morning. My son and daughter were getting ready for Mass, and on my instruction one was in the shower while the other was taking a bath. Well, drawing two things of water at once caused a bad situation for my son in the shower. And, since I have trained him well in how to completely freak out and be intolerant of momentary discomfort, he was screaming at the top of his lungs for us to turn the water off. Repeatedly. To be heard clearly up two flights of stairs. I saw myself in his reaction, and realized that when I encounter something that could be handled by some patient endurance of unpleasantness, I tend to respond with pouring out all my energy, and then when that doesn't work, I pour out even more, and then even more until I am completely and totally exhausted, drained, and hurting.

Maybe this is what I am doing. I am facing something that does cause me significant discomfort. I have every reason to believe that God will change it, and I know the only thing I can do is pray. So maybe instead of pray AND drain myself AND exhaust and hurt myself, I can pray and ask God to heal me and to give me joy or at least diverting occupation while I wait for Him to do what only He can do.

Sometimes it's just a pisser to not be the one in control, to not be able to make people respond to me in what seems like nice ways. To not be able to surround myself with the friendship I need but don't even know what it looks like.

Whose Responsibility is My Happiness?

Earlier this week, a friend of mine shared the article "10 Things Happy Families Do Differently." The picture with it caught my eye, and I was in a browsy mood, so I checked it out.

One particular statement from this article has stayed with me since I read it: "Everyone takes responsibility for their own happiness."

Now, I'm not usually one who gets a lot of out people's pithy lists of tips for how to make life all better. And my response to this was not along the lines of "Gee, thanks. I'll try that." But seeing this concept expressed in just this way in this context some something of a little naru hodo moment for me.

Two memories stood out as I've thought about this. The first involved the formation of my sense about where happiness comes from. And the fact that, in this formation, happiness was a commodity for other people. This happiness was supposed to come from me.

Oh, I would never have explicitly articulated it this way in my earlier years, but growing up in a post-alcoholic-divorced home taught me that it was my job to make the people around me happy. (Or stated conversely, everyone's unhappiness was my fault.) I decided that the easiest way for me to try to bring happiness was to "not bother anyone" and so I perfected my ability to lay no burden on others. Still, of course, others weren't happy. My eventual conclusion: my mere existence was the problem.

It never really entered into my calculations, this notion of where my happiness was supposed to come from.

The second memory involved my children when they were very small. On one particular night a common bedtime scene was being played out where my tired daughter was crying over some tiny nothing, consuming all my ability to be present to her and calm her so she could go to sleep. At that moment, my son entered her room, seemingly totally oblivious to the emotional drama unfolding, and asked me to intervene with some need of his that involved something like finding just the right lego to make his creation look just right. I can still see exactly where I was when this thought formulated inside me. It was sarcastic at first, but the reality of what I said impacted me shortly thereafter : "Boy, I wish I could consider my needs so dang important that I could overlook everything around me to get them met!"

My son did nothing wrong; he merely had no sense of timing (at age 5 or 6 or whatever). I, on the other hand, had a gut instinct that needs and desires are always supposed to be sacrificed on the pyre of someone else's issues.

In 1993, right after I came into the Church, I went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land with a group. In one of the many gift shops I saw what struck me as the most beautiful t-shirt I had ever seen. I literally gasped as I said, "Oh, I want one of those!" Now, this is not a normal comment coming from me because I don't care about shopping and care even less about "stuff." It was the beauty of the metallic gold embellishments that made me exclaim this in something like awe. I'll never forget an older woman from my group saying to me, "Well, you just go ahead and get it, then." I think I triggered something in her maternal heart that prompted her to "give me permission" to buy it. I did, and I still have it. Perhaps it is telling that this was an unusually memorable experience from my earlier days of seeing and pursuing something that brought me spontaneous happiness. I don't remember making choices like this on any regular basis until recent years.

Pursuing my own happiness used to leave me with a sense of guilt. If it was my job to get out of everyone's way so they could be happy, being as small and non-existent as possible, well, it didn't make sense for me to be filled up and big with happiness. Geez, the more I write about this the more diabolical it sounds.

Each person has the vocation, the duty, and the need to pursue happiness, beatitude, God. It is true that no one finds it alone, in isolation from others. But I am responsible for my pursuit of God, and you are responsible for yours. I am not responsible for yours, although mine actually can inspire yours, and yours, mine.

Of course children need adult wisdom to learn what will mess up their pursuit of happiness. Or better put, children and adults need biblical and saintly wisdom to learn how to pursue true happiness. Without it, we end up indulging ourselves with idolatry and filling ourselves up with not-god, at the expense of other things and/or objectified people whom we appoint to be god to us and make us happy. It ain't gonna happen. Nothing other than God satisfies the quest for happiness. Yes, created things can help us; we require their help. But idolatry not only leaves us unfulfilled, it actually empties us of whatever happiness we have found.

Personal responsibility for happiness means that I seek truth, beauty and goodness with all my heart, through every aspect of my life, and that I open my entire life to interact with the One I find. Yeah, I imagine if everyone in a family did that it would make for a happy life together indeed.

Just Shoot Me

I have learned so much in the last week that, once again, I am just about ready to pop.

Back in my 20s I went through several years where every day seemed the same. I was piddling along, feeling alone and miserable most of the time, amusing myself as I knew how, and pretty much waiting for it all to change. Occasionally I would become vaguely aware that I might just be wasting some time.

How loudly can I say duh?

I used to love to do things like scrape the paint off my woodwork or clean little detaily things in my apartment and just think and muse and wonder and wish.

And I spent a lot of time with a very macabre image: Marie going through a meat grinder.

Yeah, seriously.

I can look back and see it as a way I was crying out for God's mercy on my messed-up-edness. I would think of everything that was wrong with me or hard for me or hopeless and unconquerable, and I would mentally send myself through the meat grinder. I somehow vaguely hoped that I would come out purer. That somehow that I wanted to be purged of all those things, and some day break free.

As I came to know Christ in a new way in becoming Catholic, I stopped thinking about that just like that. I realized that God was indeed purging me. Maybe I started having enough real life struggle that I didn't have to imagine it so much any more. My cry for being purged started happening in reality.

Which isn't much fun either, but it is emotionally much healthier than constantly feeling one should be crushed.

But occasionally, over the years, I would feel a stab of deep remorse, of meeting something in myself that I desperately want changed but have no power to change. And what would slip either out of my thoughts or out of my mouth would be this weird prayer:  Lord, just shoot me.

It's that flash of shame, that flash of realizing how deeply hopeless I am apart from the Lord.

But it can also be a sense of harshness on myself, a lack of mercy, which is not right. I certainly cannot have any real mercy or understanding for any other person if I do not fully receive God's mercy for myself, and refrain from even a reflexive beating up on myself.

Sometime over the last week, when once again my soul was found raw and open, I suddenly had these words slip out of my internal prayer: Lord, just shoot me.

For a split second, I thought, oh, no Lord. I can't go back there.

But suddenly I had an image come to mind, and a Scripture:

Before birth the LORD called me,

from my mother’s womb he gave me my name.

He made my mouth like a sharp-edged sword,

concealed me, shielded by his hand.

He made me a sharpened arrow,

in his quiver he hid me.

(Isaiah 49:1-2)

And then I said it again.

Lord, just shoot me.

And the rest of what I learned this week, well, I'll have to process that another time.

St. Therese and the Vocation to be Love

St. Therese strikes again.

I have to admit that in many ways I have more of a personal affinity for St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross as I relate to her intellectual nature more than to St. Therese's sweetness. However that does not stop God from using the Little Flower in my life in consistent ways all her own. Today is her feast day, and this morning I was once again blown away by her. I am not a huge novena-prayer, but I have now prayed several novenas for her intercession. Not once have I been left without a surprising answer.

This morning in the Office of Readings I read this famous passage from St. Therese:

Then, nearly ecstatic with the supreme joy of my soul, I proclaimed: O Jesus, my love, at last I have found my calling: my call is love. Certainly I have found my proper place in the Church, and you gave me that very place, my God. In the heart of the Church, my mother, I will be love, and thus I will be all things, as my desire finds its direction.

When I read those words "I will be love," something went kablam inside me. My soul staggered to be able to stand upright and catch its breath. That's it.

It is hard to explain how God communicates to a soul, but it isn't as hard to say that it happens.

At Mass as well I was overwhelmingly walloped with this realization -- I have found my call, too, where God has placed me: to be love. Oh, I'm not the same as St. Therese by any means, nor are my life, vocation, or circumstances like hers. But the call is the same. My path to realizing this has been my own, too. I've written a lot about the struggle of the last two years, the dark and hard path when it seemed that God had ripped my interior life into confusing shreds and made everything nonsensical. Now I see. It has all been for this: to teach me to be love. So I could know better what love is and what it isn't, what it costs, how it is designed to withstand and endure suffering, how it is to shape everything. How it is of God. Mostly this.

At Mass, I realized that I am giving what I have received. I have known great natural obstacles to love, but they are not too much for God. And I realize that not even I can destroy love in my own heart, as long as I'm willing to keep putting my hand back in the Lord's hand, even when I think perhaps He only wants to destroy something that I thought is good.

God is Love, and He simply desires our hearts to so belong to Him that He can be Himself and be at home in us.

As the Psalm response said today so simply, "God is with us."

I have struggled with doubt about this call because deep down I have thought I was only capable of that which is shameful. "Love," was for me as I was growing up always a dirty word, subconsciously. The word was not spoken in my home. I learned its meaning from TV and from music, so it was always connected to shame. So when God started His tutoring of me in recent years, He had some interesting obstacles to undo. But He does all things well. What can I say but may God be praised. Here I am, Lord. I am all Yours. Love through me, and I will love as you will.

The Evangelical Counsel of Poverty, for Laity

As I mentioned in my post-of-intention, I have been contemplating what living the evangelical counsels actually entails for a lay person. No, not really "for a lay person," but for me. I've been mulling over what the Lord has been teaching me about poverty, chastity, and obedience. Of course, He seems to teach me most things without my realizing what it is about until much later when I get a word to package the lesson in, and I say .... (guess what).... naru hodo!

And then I often find much later, when I am in a more practical stage of life where I am actually required to make choices and decisions based on the lessons I have been taught, that I read something I wrote, and I suddenly realize it was meant to be carried out very concretely, not just in the realm of "having wisdom." Sometimes that's a bit of a bummer... But it is then valuable to realize that pretty words have all their value in being applied.

So, yeah, that's my warm up for why I'm writing this.


Here's what the OCDS Constitutions have to say about poverty:

By the promise of poverty the Secular Carmelite expresses the desire to live in accordance with the Gospel and its values. In evangelical poverty there is a wealth of generosity, self-denial, and interior liberty and a dependence on Him who “Though rich, yet for our sake, became poor” (2 Co 8:9), and who “emptied Himself” (Ph 2:7), to be at the service of His brothers and sisters. The promise of poverty seeks an evangelical use of the goods of this world and of personal talents, as well as the exercise of personal responsibilities in society, in family, and work, confidently placing all in the hands of God. It also implies a commitment to the cause of justice so that the world itself responds to God’s plan. In combination with these, evangelical poverty recognizes personal limitations and surrenders them to God with confidence in His goodness and fidelity.

Now, here's what I have been learning.

I've always had a thin line to walk about this business of denying oneself, and of poverty of spirit. I think that is because to counter each of the evangelical counsels, the devil throws out a different pack a lies to distort God's image and make Him look hateful. By desiring us to have poverty of spirit God is not communicating You are nothing, but rather You are mine. And that is not in some violently possessive way. In being God's, we are made completely free -- not possessed by things or goods.

One of my biggest struggles has been poverty in my thinking. I can remember right where I was sitting when the Lord impressed on me that I had a big need to meditate more on Scripture. Actually, that message came through to me more than once. At first I tried just randomly reading a book of Scripture, but soon drifted away from that. Slowly I moved back towards praying the Liturgy of the Hours, which I've done in fits and starts since the day I decided to become a Catholic. I discovered that the more I did that, the more my meditation started picking up steam. Now I simply can't believe how beautiful and packed with meaning it is (because I remember how boring it felt when I first started).

But my point is there that it is very natural for me to ruminate and reason and just sit and think (sometimes quite unreasonably!). Poverty of spirit in terms of thinking, for me means allowing the Word of God to so fill my mind that when I ponder a situation or person or event, I can let Him infill my own thoughts, rather than being carried away simply by my inclinations, my reactions, my emotions, my mood, or the state of my indigestion.

And so with any good or gift that comes to me. I can receive it, not accepting lies about it or worrying or getting defensive over attacks on the said good, but I hold it in an open hand, offering it. I place it entirely in the presence/at the disposal of God. If I have it, that's good. If I don't have it, that's good too. It is my place to make anything I am or have available to God. It is God's action to create the dynamic that makes for poverty of spirit. He will wedge one into the place where one's offering turns into a sacrifice.

For me this has happened when I have been in the midst of change I completely did not understand. My own thoughts turning over events only found pain. In those moments, turning to Scripture to delve into God's thoughts, to repeat His promises, His commands, the history of how He interacted with His people -- all this sunk down into the crevasses formed by my own soul splitting open. In this way, God was able to float out more things in me that bore no resemblance to Him. It stung, like death always does. Sometimes we really do prefer the general anesthesia of our dullness to either real life or real death. But along with that sting of death, one finds oneself looking into the face of the Savior, the Redeemer, the One with all the power, the One who speaks those powerful words that seem at the time to only have terrible power. We know that He holds in His hands all that we lack. And we only feel that lack. But we know that as long as we are with Him, He has all we need. If we trust, we know that at the right time it will be ours.

That is the blessed state of poverty: feeling our lack keenly, but knowing we are with the One who holds all we need. This is the state of the anawim, or Mary who rejoices in God her Savior who has done to her great things. Poor, yet possessing everything, because He is Everything.