Therese, again

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Re-defining Safety

This morning, Fr. A. preached about how, when you are going through a seriously trying time (like with his sister who just lost her son) you cannot rely on what you think or what you feel about God or anything. You have to rely on what you know. (The reading from 1 John used the phrase "we know" several times.)

That's true for me right now. 

I can't even put into words what the last three weeks or so have brought to pass to make me feel like What the hell just hit me? I know that these are the days that I will look back on in the future as a major transition for the positive. I know it because I know God is good. I know it because of the conversations we have back and forth and that He has never, ever brought me anything but good. 

But for now, I am sitting with a new light shining. It feels dark. Like practically blinding. My heart is suddenly incredibly exposed to myself and all of my judgmental bearings are sort of in free-fall. I feel like every trauma I've ever known is retriggered, though because I'm aware of it, it's also true that in real time I am learning how to regulate, and that I need to. It's not optional. I just feel incredibly vulnerable, especially in the interior and exterior settings that had felt the most solid and secure just not that terribly long ago.

But at the same time, I am more surrounded with support than I ever have been in my life. Honestly, I chalk much of this spiritual movement up to the Spiritual Direction formation program I'm in. My life has become the curriculum and my Interior Teacher is hard at work. I have people. But there's no way through but through. My core is at peace but my nervous system is in massive flight mode. It's not pretty and frankly it is scary to mentally be back in places I left long ago.

I remember vividly one of the last sessions of my SDFP training in September, when a group of five of us were doing a contemplative practice together. We were given various passages to read, 20 minutes of solitude, then we were to come back together and share about what had struck us. I did not even get the entire first sentence of the first passage read, and it had hit me like a ton of bricks, and even after the 20 minutes and into sharing about it, it was still powerfully rocking me, and the line was this: "At the heart of the Carmelite Rule there is a call for us to commit ourselves to Jesus..." It hit me like an intensely personal call, and I thought of Aslan, how the child asks if he is safe. Oh, no. No one said anything about safe. He's not a tame lion -- but he is good. 

I have maintained myself in a kind of safety. For sanity, we all need safety. But humanly-built safety can smother and suffocate. I think God is calling me to something more akin to His definition of safety, which is going to take a lot of faith, trust, letting go and hanging on. And just simple openness to that which I don't know. 

But it is worth it, isn't it. To be with the King. It's worth anything.

A New (Leg of the) Journey

 New years and new things may suggest each other, but I'm not one to choose some big newness project on January 1. Gosh, even writing that feels exhausting. Life is exhausting enough normally; I don't need to resolve myself any further.

This new leg is more something I am sensing I need and agreeing to. 

I think it just follows on what the Holy Spirit nudged me with last Good Friday with this line "everybody suffers." The second biggest take-away I had after I started praying the Seven Sorrows Rosary was that the suffering we experience is not meant to be a place to camp in, but a place to pass through, on our way to the glory of God. This little revelation came to me as I was out for a walk one Spring day, and I think these little revelations are like slow-blooming flowers, and they are meant to hold my attention for a long time, because they are gonna need awhile to really sink in.

I slipped into a blog post here and there last year that I've been dealing with anxiety more frequently than ... well, more frequently than I'd like to be the case, and more frequently than I'd like to admit. And more intensely than what has been normal for me. In fact, one Spring day I had a full blown panic attack, which hasn't happened for years, and really only happened to me one other time in my life, to my recollection. In the same time period I also had two episodes of anxiety hives, which was completely new. This got my attention and both by plan and sort of by happenstance I made some health changes, including ditching my exercise plan which was itself stressful and taking up one that fit me so much better, and was more demanding in good ways. I also completely gave up drinking coffee. I can't tell you how much good that did me. Between the two of these, my cortisol belly has all but disappeared, and my clothes fit me happily again. I'm also not completely freezing and interiorly curling up into a ball all of the time, despite the fact that our furnace has been functioning questionably for a solid month.

So all these are good things. But I know they aren't all that I need to address. I don't know -- yet, completely -- what I don't know, but I recognize certain sticking points in my life that don't just come out of nowhere. 

One tell-tale thing happened New Year's Eve. I read a friend's Facebook post that was a list of "23 ways I have seen Jesus' love in 2023," with the challenge to follow suit and post your own. I tried it. I started, but I couldn't finish it. I found myself focused on, Oh, that thing -- it wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been and I was worried about this, but it turned out ok and This really sad thing we survived ... It was all so heavy. And I thought of a few uplifting things but found myself afraid to share them publicly. Now, that's kind of a new one for me. I didn't like how this whole thing felt. 

Normally I pray about stuff like this, but I've really got nothing, there. No gush of words tumbling from the heart faucet. But I've been going back to St. Ivo and thinking of the Holy Spirit as the Advocate. So, I've prayed the Veni, Sancte Spiritus. Come, Holy Spirit. 

My favorite Carmelite, Fr. Iain Matthew, OCD, mentioned in one of his talks that, when it comes to allowing God to love us, one of our biggest difficulties is that 90% of us is in the deep freeze. It's there, we have it, but we can't really access this part of ourselves. This image and phrase has been tumbling around a bit, in this process. I want to love God with more of me. I want access to more of me to love God with. He deserves it.

So, I'm praying this way, and as I'm working through my used book inventory, getting stuff listed, I come across the book More Than Words: the Freedom to Thrive after Trauma by Margaret Vasquez (who just happens to be a regular at my parish). I set it aside to read, because it look valuable -- for someone else I know and what they are going through. (heh) 

So, I read it.

We pause here for the classic peanut butter and chocolate collision meme, signifying the creation of a new wonderful reality.

So I've ordered her second book, Fearless: Abundant Life through Infinite Love, and I've begun listening to her podcast about the integration of spirituality and human formation. This is a theme that Dr. Peter Malinowski also speaks and writes on at Souls and Hearts.com that I've been loosely following for a couple of years. But I know there is something for me to address, and I'm going to guess I'm going to discover it as I kind of make this my winter's work. 

One line that struck me from one of her videos was to the effect that God has more love for me than I need to heal my trauma symptoms. 

I think new avenues of growth await me. These often involve a good deal of falling apart, but I figure I'm gonna do that, regardless; or if I don't fall apart I'll just get stony and unfeeling, and I really don't want that. I really don't. 

So, here's to the journey.

Let Advent In

Tomorrow I'm singing in a community choir Christmas concert, and today was our dress rehearsal. Somewhere along the line this morning I finally became present to the words we were singing. I mean, this is perhaps an unusual community choir, where, for Christmas at least, we are singing almost all sacred music, or traditional carols, so almost every single song is actually about Jesus Christ. I confess I really haven't been tuned into that fact at all.

I confess I've gotten fairly comfortable with distracting myself pretty heavily from my interior life. Did you know that an easy way to do that is to get really busy with church stuff? At least six days out of the week I am leading music in one way or another. I found myself this week getting really bothered and ever so slightly confrontational with the sacristans about small things I noticed that went awry at Mass. Standing around the coffee pot after Mass I suddenly realized there were cobwebs in a corner of the ceiling right there. I confessed aloud to my daughter and a friend who was with us that I thought occasionally I should go to a different parish for Mass so I wouldn't be so distracted with being such a Church Lady.

And we won't even discuss hours passing through my fingers like water as I watch mindless reels on Facebook. Geez. Every day seems to go so fast, and I keep thinking about how I'm never going to get any of these days back. And yet, if I stop to ponder, even sometimes if I think I need to pull out that blog and write so I can actually dig down into it, I reprimand myself with Other Stuff I could be doing. Something supposedly more important. 

Distraction. Everything and anything except...

Reality. 

It's Advent.

Once upon a time, on a Christmas Eve night, a shockwave of grace went off in my soul that reverberated for, oh, something like 20 years. This shockwave taught me that becoming a human being was good enough for the Eternal Son of God. It isn't that I didn't know the doctrinal tenet of the Incarnation. But it wasn't so real to me until then. I can't explain the revelation except to say that Jesus embraced my humanity and said, "It is good. I made this." It was that night that, in my heart, I became a Catholic (followed be being received into the Church about 16 months later), and my Christian identity shifted from Luther's "poor, miserable sinner" who would never change, to a daughter who is redeemed, restored, and healed by the love of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit. 

But there was another shockwave that followed some 20 years later, and it was the Epiphany. Just search the blog for the word, and you'll see. 

And yeah, so here I am, in 2023, singing Christmas songs and just barely allowing the words to touch my heart. How did I get so controlling? What's the threat, here? 

There's a scary word in those Ephiphay posts: risk. I can't even write more about that right now, other than to say I need to bring my risk PTDS to the Lord. What I know to the marrow of my being is that God is good and there is nothing He cannot fill with His glory. The more cracked and broken it is, the bettter to showcase His glory. Honestly, I am eligible to be a massive, mighty showcase.

You know what? I don't want to be anxious and controlling. I know, better than I know my own name, that there is absolutely nothing for me to fear in God. I've spent my life feeling a fool to myself, so if there's new territory for me to scout there, hey, who doesn't love an adventure. I can set a daily intention to feel what is happening inside, and if I need to stop and smile, or stop and cry, or stop and write a blog post -- all are fine. All are just different verses I sing to the Lord, calling out, "Where have you hidden?" I can learn and I can change. I've been doing it for years. Any worthwhile endeavor takes some work, and I love work, as long as I also have hope and companionship.

This is the path of contemplation. How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is giv'n...

St. Ivo, pray for me.

Greater Safety

Back in July of this year, I wrote a post about a line in the Anima Christi that struck me. And around that time, I had entered a period of detoxing from anxieties that had been too much with me. 

It's time, apparently, for another layer of to be attended to. 

This year I have found a wholistic approach both necessary and useful in addressing things I may have tried to approach only spiritually in the past. That in and of itself can create spiritual problems and anxieties. 

So, physical exercise really and truly has taken up a place in my life disciplines. (In my younger days I liked to think I could ignore my body and it would always serve me fine. Hah.) One phrase I hear in my exercise programs has also been helpful in my discernment: What is coming up for you? Can you just be with it? As in, this stretch is uncomfortable! But if I stay with it (no pain lasts forever, as St. Teresa reminds me) it will be easier to do next time. 

Well, right now I feel something coming up for me, and I've learned that what I need to do is bring it into prayer. Allow it into my honest attention, and bring myself before the Lord without trying to hide from the fear and discomfort it brings up. And not to try to handle it myself (which almost always is going to mean giving myself an easy pass on an immoral path, or even more likely for me, to judge and beat myself mercilessly for struggling in the first place, and to end up a ball of anxiety.)

Bring it to the Lord, and be with it. Honestly. Openly.

A somewhat suprising interaction the other day sent up an immediate flair of anxiety. On the surface, it could have been considered obvious why it was so, but of course surface level answers are wholly untrustworthy and porous. Easy answers like control, and they fear getting deposed by the pursuit of hard truths.

Fortuantely I have many people in my life who have set themselves to pursue God's presence, where truth is love, and love is truth: namely my Carmelite community, and my daily Mass community. They help me bring this anxiety flair before the Lord, honestly and openly, to be defused.

And the Lord says, behold! I am your safety, but I need to you know me as your place of safety more deeply than you do now. For you to live in this world in peace, not reactive, not fearful, facing real and actual dangers, facing real and actual temptations, I need you to hide yourself in Me more deeply. I am the only place where you are going to find serenity, strength, courage, and clarity.

I'm going to quote myself for my own record, from last July:

What I see now is that I had always been separated from God to a degree by my anxious clinging, my fear of abandonment, my lack of ability to trust that He would keep me safe. He was doing a series of surguries in my soul. Really, before each painful one in that series there was an implant of joy and safety. Hard to explain, but in retrospect, it's extremely clear. 

And then he basically crushed the deformed measure I had made for Him. 

And it took time, but a new thing grew in its place, and is still growing. It is vibrant, and it is beautiful. 

Separated from You, let me never be. 

It is sin that separates us, and it is His love that unites us to Him. But it isn't only our active, personal sins that separate us. It is also these areas of weakness due to woundings which have never gotten full Son exposure. It's the ways we have responded in our own power to our wounds. Our flaws and cracks from mishandling can be not just sealed up, but completely transformed to bear the glory of God. And the more we know that we are weak, the more Christ's power can rest on us. Lord, teach me really what it is to delight in my weaknesses. 

It would seem this is a call to delight in my weakness. Right now the only safe place for that is in the secret of prayer. I guess that's why I'm a Carmelite. My design is to live from that place, lest I completely fall apart. 

Only in God is my soul at rest; in Him comes my salvation.

 

A Woman in a Woman's World

Yesterday I had, well, let's call it an interesting experience. You know how you can be going through life, facing forward, living in the present, dealing, coping, stretching, learning. Doing the little advances that successful day-to-day life is all about. Then suddenly something comes along that has you stopping and looking back, looking far around you at places you once traveled through. Small thickets of confusion that are familiar in a distant way. That's what I did yesterday.

But it wasn't just in my memory. It was a concrete thing in front of me, invading my present. 

My parish is running a women's Bible study this fall. 

Now here's the funny thing. Maybe a year ago I visited a parish across the river for confession, and I saw that it was offering the same women's Bible study. I shared it on my Facebook page, being ever the promoter of things. I'm all for it, in theory, and I think I even momentarily looked into what it would take to offer it in my town. 

And I was asked to take a leadership role, similar to what I had done in our parish ChristLife, which satisfied my inclusion needs (aka ego. I was sought out. Thank you.). But ultimately I passed on it. Because to be honest, just the idea of being part of a women's Bible study sends me into the small thickets of confusion.

And I spent a chunk of yesterday spinning this around in my mind and checking out some interesting emotions that it conjured. 

It is intended not only as a Bible study but also as a community building thing. And this is where I needed to admit to myself what, for me, makes for community building. That would be work. That's why I liked the feeling of being offered the logistics and communication job. I even asked if I could do that part without actually going to the Bible study, but no, that wasn't the vision. That's ok. 

Shared work is probably my primary "love language" if you buy that expression. This is something I like about choirs and music; it requires that everyone work together. This is why I tend to take on huge tasks with a lot of excitement -- like the year our Bishop gifted our parish (and every parish) with hundreds of copies of one of Matthew Kelley's books, and my daughter and I gift wrapped every single one. I questioned the size of that undertaking, but my (then 8 or so year old) daughter proclaimed it "a labor of love," and so there was no turning back for me then. When parishes were reopened after our short COVID shutdown, I was asked to buy some rope from Lowes to make the required social distancing thingies look somewhat dignified. Oh no. My daughter and I braided ropes out of white tshirts and figured out a way to keep them firmly on the pews but also made them easily adjustable. That felt so good to be able to do that, whatever your thoughts on social distancing. 

Yeah, so what I don't find a helpful way to give myself is to sit in a group of women chatting about how Scripture impacts my day-to-day life, or study guide questions. Spiritual direction; yes. Theological discussion; yes. Lexical study, historical study; yes, yes. Pretty tablecloths, conversations where words fly fast and emotions fly faster, or women connect emotions to sensible things in attempts to "feel comfortable sharing..." I don't even know how to do that. And generally it makes me feel the opposite of community-built. I tend to sit there with my mouth shut, trying to track (or tuning out, depending on how my day has gone) and mostly feeling a thousand miles away. These days, my thoughts just dash to other things I could be doing. In the past, I sat there wondering why I did not know how to be a woman. Because I figured A Woman's World was what I was looking at.

Yes, yesterday I felt again that jab of feeling like an unwomanly woman. Like maybe I should try harder. Like maybe I was being weak or selfish or inadequate or unholy or rebellious or (insert more) for not wanting to participate. Like I really should. I thought of, and even played, that song by Wendy Talbot from the 80s "Woman of the Word" where she asked questions popular of the day about what women "should" do. It dawns on me now: we think the question "What is a woman?" is newly controversial. (Some) Christians have been making it difficult to answer that question, on a non-biological level, for decades.

In the midst of questioning myself yesterday, I found it extremely difficult to do the work that was actually in front of me. Suddenly I wasn't sure I could do anything.

If you diligently read this blog (😂) you'll realize I've been sinking deeply into the Seven Sorrows rosary in the last few months. After all these years as a Catholic, I am *just starting to sink deeper into understanding the Blessed Virgin Mary as woman par excellence. And as I've been meditating on her sorrows, I realize she has a lot of strength, born of emotional and spiritual pain. She probably did enjoy beautiful objects and she probably did chat with women friends. But there was only one Blessed Mother. In a common way, there is also only one of each of us. I have never been given to conformity, but I haven't always been at peace with being myself, either. It has struck me with terror; it has confused me. But humility says, I am who God made me, no more, no less. I will be me, because it is God's will for me.

This morning, as happens to me occasionally after a day on mental frappe setting, I woke with everything clear in my mind. Following the Lord is not a path full of should. Or as one priest once quipped, "Stop should-ing all over me." One must not should oneself, either. Jesus says, "Follow me and live." He commands, he invites, he speaks to us about reality, but he doesn't guilt us into things, so we need to refrain from responding to that kind of motivation. Ok, I need to stop it. Respecting freedom is super important, and it is grossly counter-productive to Christian life to not respect freedom.

I'm not guilty of being me; I'm responsible to be me, and to learn how to do it well. I need people in my life in order for me to be me well, but I also need space from people, and I can't expect that anyone is going to understand what I need unless I understand my own needs and make them known as necessary. I'm actually responsible to God to invest well the raw material of myself He's given me to work with, to try to gain a return. 

See -- it all boils down to shared work! 😉

*Everything in the spiritual life is always just beginning.

St. Joseph and the Desperation for Consolation

I was chatting with a priest friend recently about praying the Liturgy of the Hours, and I found that something poked at me like when a metal bra underwire cuts through the fabric and jabs you in the tender underside. So let's draw that out a bit and see what that was all about.

We were discussing the obligatory nature of praying the hours (for priests, same as for Secular Carmelites such as myself), and how he rarely or never finds priests remotely interested in or planning for praying the Office in common. Apparently he finds the norm to be priests always pray this privately, individually. He also mentioned how it takes time to pray this everyday, especially if one is to do so prayerfully, reflectively, with the freedom to pause and ponder, to take it in contemplatively, etc. I know he had mentioned in another conversation having been given the advice to prayerfully pray at least one section of the hours daily, and to be content with recitation of the other hours. The thought of praying all seven hours, for someone who is busy with apostolic life, is just nuts, basically.

Granted. Obviously the Church changed the structure of the Hours at the Council precisely because of the onerosity of an obligation to "make it through" huge chunks of Scripture daily, and how it became a burden to crank it out and plow through it all. Prayer, clearly, it not to be about merely cranking through.

What I found myself taking umbrage with, as one who daily drags myself out of bed to lead public chanting of Morning Prayer, at a consistent hour that I KNOW I would never keep up with, were I not committed to this small group who meets, is the notion that prayerful is consonant with comfortable. Something occurs to my mind, and I want to stop and nest on it, sucking the sweetness out, delighting in my mind, allowing it to speak to me. Vibe: suck it up, buttercup. Sometimes I am delighting in my rest, my thoughts, my privacy, and I don't want to discomfort myself by driving in the morning to meet people at church. Sometimes I'm physically not ready. Sometimes I don't want to sing. I switch it on so that other people can enter into prayer, and to help others with the discipline.

Sometimes a beautiful contemplative thought has struck me during the day, and then a child yells for homework help. Or the doorbell rings. Or there is no lovely thought, but there are whiny children who have required me to step out of the worship space during Mass and I have to set my will like a diamond stylus to engage in what is happening in the consecration -- and this happens more often than not for months or years. I learn prayer ain't all about me and my thoughts and feelings. Sometimes I can't access either of them. It is an act of my will, and it is joining to something larger than myself. Sometimes every step forward for years feels like a sheer act of will against tremendous pressure pushing me the other way.

The Liturgy of the Hours definitely is not mere private prayer. It is the public prayer of the Church. Yes, it can validly be prayed privately, but ultimately participating in it is giving voice to Christ present in His Church, for His Church, as a vehicle of salvation for the world. Ok, objective subject covered.

Ok, then screaming interior stuff. I'm tired. I'm tired of chronic responsibility, and I'm tired of feeling alone in it. I'm tired from a sense of trauma as a child, sensing the adults were falling apart, and I should step up to put them back together. I'm tired from having such a keen eye for every problem in the room and working out how I could solve it before other people are aware of it. I'm tired from being good at things and jumping into serving, and thereby training others to expect me to do things. I'm tired from taking a break and then finding the problems growing weightier and weightier when I step away from them. I'm tired from feeling like it is impossible for me to stop being responsible.

As a Carmelite, I'm called to pray for priests. I've got some anger stuck in there somewhere. I don't feel sorry for someone looking for a few seconds of mental or spiritual consolation. Maybe that's because I am desperate for a few seconds of mental or spiritual consolation. Maybe it is because I would really appreciate someone seeing my need, anticipating my need, and taking up my need as his own. 

I had this meditation the other day about St. Joseph, at the Presentation. The rite of purification was for the mother of the child. But the NAB mentions "when the days were completed for their purification," "they took him to Jerusalem." The law required it of Mary, but Joseph made it his. And it wasn't only because he was a wonderful husband and cared about Mary; he did, but more than that, he understood that this was God's will. It was an act of worship, an act of consecration to God. How he treated Mary was about how he obeyed God. Everything about St. Joseph is not just gratuitous fru-fru care, a nice but technically unnecesary extra, even though it strikes me like that. St. Joseph is absolutely necessary for Jesus' humanity, and for Mary's life, even though she is the sinless Virgin and the Queen of Heaven. God provided Mary and Jesus with Joseph. But Joseph had a human will of his own; he obeyed. He gave his own fiat. 

St. Teresa was of course an ardent devotee of St. Joseph, and taught her nuns to be rooted in, focused on, the humanity of Jesus. I'm seeing those two as inseparable. I don't think you can separate the humanity of Jesus from the person of St. Joseph. All I know right now is that is the antidote to the anger I've felt poking me. 

And maybe I want priests especially to see themselves like St. Joseph. 

What is Prayer

 

As a Secular Carmelite, I have committed myself to a 30 minute slot of mental/silent/interior prayer every day. Let me tell you what this feels like much of the time.

I sit down, and the main thing I am aware of is that I don't even know what it means to pray. I come with purpose, with intentionality, to open my heart, to listen to the Lord in Scripture, to bring all and everyone that is in my heart and present them before the Lord, all this yearning love, but mostly I feel like I don't even know what prayer is. 

I said that once at an OCDS community meeting, and one of the women just reflexively blurted out, "Oh, of course you do." I mean, I just described it above. So yes, I do know what it is. But it feels bewildering. Sometimes it feels like a force field that I'm pressing into. Sometimes the image that comes to mind is someone who hates winter, but is heading out into a wintery night to go to the outhouse, because the interior pressure cannot be withstood.

Sometimes I think prayer should feel like sunshine and roses and the delight of a conversation between lovers. I think even when prayer is consoling, it is never quite that. And I think that speaks to my questionable experience of sunshine, roses, and lovers more than to the reality of prayer.

When it is sweetest the time flies, and I am most aware of Emmanuel: God with... me. At times like that, I find myself suggesting that He deflect his love: Lord, what about xyz and this other person. Surely what I need to be doing is reminding you about them and "praying for them." While the reality that is going on is that God's immense love in seeking out me. 

Always start prayer at your place of felt need. That's where God is going. 

It took me a few years as a Carmelite to lose this idea that long lists of the intentions of others were all there was to prayer. What God wants is to transform me into a saint. To do that, I have to open all the secret hatches, at least the ones I have keys to. And point to the others where I've lost the keys and ask Jesus to access them through other means. In prayer, I soak in God, so that when I leave prayer and interact, I am not wearing myself out over the weight of the world with my own limited energies, but instead I learn to love and give from what I've soaked in. 

I think I have a long habit of feeling that I am poor when in fact I am rich. For the longest time, I truly believed that I was the single most messed up person who existed. The self-centered egotism of youth, no doubt. The voice of an isolated person who didn't realize that everyone has problems. 

Someone said to me yesterday that she has begun having a little interior jubilation when she sees another Catholic out in public, because it reminds her how she isn't alone and that others are walking the same path and fighting the same fight that she is. That was a lovely statement, really. We need to acknowledge the gift we have from God, that we share, that belong to each one, and to one another. 

So, where is this going. Maybe instead of going in to prayer and being overwhelmed with what I feel I don't know, I can go, knowing that I belong, and that my prayer belongs, and my time belongs, not just to me, but to the Church. And I a praying with her for all people. 

That consecration on March 25 -- what a wonderful feeling it was to be in a large crowd of people all praying, and I was one voice among many. It is a great feeling to be one voice, lifted to God, among many. And even when I pray alone, I know that's what I am -- one voice among many. It's just that I can't see or hear the others. 

Birthing Grace

I had frankly forgotten how well writing serves me. Life has seasons, and like anything organically growing, seasons change and all that. But this Lent I realize that writing helps me take seriously the path of discovery to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit, and to not forget significant moments. It isn't so much about memory, actually, as it is about faith. "Remembering" isn't "not forgetting" as much as it is believing that God loves me, is with me, that I hear His voice, and therefore can follow with confidence.

What I'm seeing taking shape on the horizon is the absolutely incredible reality of the incarnation of the Son of God, and how that changes everything. And how full of folly it is to act like God becoming man, coming to earth, dying for us to remove every blockage we have to the divine, and then sending His divine power to reside within our persons, by which miracles of transforming grace happen --- is all a normal, run of the mill, human religious idea. The thing that throws it all off is transforming grace. Miraculous power. 

My Psychology prof in college stood there one day explaining how, once someone has a dysfunction, a problem, whatever, it never really goes away. There is no healing, essentially, he said. Now, I'm not sure what he meant to say, because he was a Christian man in a Lutheran school. But I know what I heard. And I sat there with a hot, defiant tear going down my cheek. If God has no ability to heal, then I don't want anything to do with him was what I raged, interiorly. Hope and despair were wrestling hard.

My Catholic theology prof stood there one day about ten years later explaining how grace does not destroy nature but elevates and perfects it, and I knew I was hearing THE truth whose lack I felt so keenly in Protestantism. Grace is power. It is real. God does things in us, with our yes, that we are not able to produce within ourselves. He doesn't invade and sort of abuse our freedom to give us life, like a woman being drugged and date raped, and thereby impregnated -- which we are supposed to somehow be grateful for later because the gift of life is so great.  Grace builds us as a people. We are made for community, and when parents bring their children to receive sacraments, they are doing what they can to avail them to all the aspects of life, not only the natural life they have co-created, but the supernatural life in which they also partake. But to live as the community of grace, that child must activate the gifts received. This is both so necessary and so often reduced to a meaningless formula. In fact it is right here at this point that my heart groans like a woman in labor. Sometimes I just want to, I dunno, sit on people and groan until they open their hearts to the Lord, and say "Yes! Yes, to what you want, Lord. Yes to all of it. I will live my life in the fellowship of believers seeking your grace and moving with every word you speak!"

The sense that I get is that this groaning, this kind of spiritual/physical/emotional frustrated yearning, is actually a gift of grace, too. When Elijah prayed for rain in 1 Kings 18 it says this: "Elijah went up to the top of Carmel, crouched down to the earth, and put his head between his knees." Seven times he had his servant to look for rain, and only on the seventh was there a small cloud. He was in the position of birthing. As mothers and prophets know, birthing is a work of grace. No one conceives a child all by herself; she must receive and co-create. And once the process in begun, there is a dynamism there which will call forth all the mother's energy, and yet is not controlled by her. Her reactions can stall it, but her cooperation in availability will see that child born. And yet who that child is that is driving the dynamism is a complete mystery unto him or herself, also a gift of the Creator. 

So there's something like this going on in me. For years and years I have had this call to pray for conversion of souls, and the awareness that so many people need to know how to ratify their baptism. Not just a sinner's prayer, leaving one anxious if one "really meant it" this time, so that it really took, or leaving one feeling absolved from actually doing anything Jesus commanded. Not just a perfunctory mumbling of the renewal of baptismal promises during the Easter season and a vague sense of relief that I can pretty much do whatever, because I can always go say it in the confessional. Not just the assurance that I'm basically a decent person, like many other secular folks, and frankly better than those five religious people I knew. 

Rather, the experience of God. God who is present, the outpouring God. The God who acts. The God who hears. The God who responds. Who "is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness."

Carmelites are called to be witnesses to the experience of God, as Elijah was. If I weren't one already, I know I would need to become one.

* TIL: as I searched for an image of Elijah crouching on the ground with his head between his knees, I first observed that I can't find any depictions that are completely faithful to this description, and I second observed that there is a name for this postion in Sanskrit, which translates to: garland, necklace, or..... rosary..... position. You just can't make this stuff up.

When Evil Overwhelms

My heart is aching. My spirit is troubled, and my prayer is heavy. News of the war in Ukraine, Putin's relentless barrage that seems very unlikely to stop at the boarders of Ukraine draws my heart out in solidarity with especially with women and children fleeing, or staying. Even amidst so many accounts of beauty, of love, like so many Poles opening their homes and welcoming refugees, reports of divine interventions, and demonstrations of faithfulness of believers turning to God in earnest -- even amidst all these, there are the other stories, the other cries:war, hatred, lies, destruction, death, accusations, greed, arguments, blame, complaint, pride, fear, evil, disregard. 

And then locally there was another priest sentanced in a horrible case of sexual battery and spiritual abuse. It stikes close to home, because it is close to home, literally. This is a priest I was acquainted with and at one time thought well of. I read the victim's horrific statement. The psychological, physical, and sexual abuse was bad enough, but the abuse of spiritual authority was perhaps the most devastating. It left me gazing into my own abyss.

So it is from this place that I am trying to write and pray today, to find a coherent thread.

To be honest, when I read of the sentencing of that priest (five years' probation), I was left with a feeling of responsibility to fix this horror. There was such a failure of human formation, such a mistaking of what is human, what is spiritual. Such an ignorant and evil response to human brokenness. My husband had to remind me that brokenness is the human condition. And I recognized in myself the "trigger" if you will of seeing the failings of those I don't want to have failings, and scrambling -- for the sake of my own sanity -- to figure out how to fix their failings. It's "I need you to not have failings so that I can be at peace." And that simply can never be. It is a perverted longing for "holiness."

Jesus on the cross sure looked like a failure, a scandal. He sure as hell did not look like someone one desires union with. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. (Is. 53:3). We know that God is love. Love was despised. Love was rejected. Love was acquainted with grief. Why? Because of how deeply those whom He had created turned away from what they were made for. "Yet it was our pain He bore, our sufferings He endured. He was pierced for our sins, crushed for our iniquity. He bore the punishment that made us whole, by his wounds we were healed."

Where is God in all of the suffering? Somehow, He is the one who is suffering; that's how close. 

We have a grave responsibility to the vulnerable. Because the pain in this world is so exhausting, and we humans are so limited, this must include in a primary way our own vulnerable hearts and souls. We must not forge new armor of hard hearts; we must turn these hearts to the Lord in His own agony. Look closely and weep with Him, and He with us. Then our first duty is to weep with those other people who weep, stepping into the Lord's own love and strength and not hesitating to hear and listen, and feel, all the while handing it all back to the Lord. 

At the end of the day, being the Lord's good servant means that He is in charge. It is a relief not to be God. To make our home in God means that we have an eternal refuge, a place of rest to which all are invited. We become the message: there is a place of rest and healing for you. Do not grow deaf to your own heart, and do not fear, but turn with trust to Love. 

While You are Dealing With Your Issues

This is an exercise in "I write, therefore I understand."

Recently I caught a clear view of something inside me in the process of being "triggered," to use the popular expression. By that, I mean I felt a strong, unpleasant emotional reaction to the behavior of another, which used to leave me feeling turned loose into a chaos-spiral. But this time, I was able to see more clearly the launch, the pre-launch, and the space where I could mentally re-position myself so as to not feel out of control.

Specifically, I had been watching a person in my life deal with a mental health struggle. When someone is far enough away from me, relationally, I have been fairly good at observing boundaries that kept their situation firmly in their court, with my well-wishes that it would go well for them. This time, though, that wasn't so fitting, nor so natural to do.

Soon there were these triggered feelings springing to life. I could not remember concrete situations, experiences, days when such and such happened which elicited these past feelings. But I could tell you well enough that as a child, I experienced both of my parents manifesting what I now recognize as depression, anxiety, or both. I myself lived in this territory for decades. It is well-traveled land.

But I found myself in a very different place in relation to these emotions. I have learned how to re-wire my thinking processes, as well as what my body needs in terms of nutrients and rest, to support a healthy functioning brain. I have not developed as many relational skills, other than boundaries which don't tend to draw in.... or... really it is probably true to say, that repel people who are habitually depressed. 

So suddenly I see I am faced with speaking and acting in the face of one of the biggest drains of my life: someone else's mental health challenge. When I was a child, I felt obligated, without realizing it, to bear my parents' troubles, to solve them by virtue of being me. I am called to love my parents, love heals, therefore I must heal my parents' troubles. This is something of the logic of a child. It is not only a bit faulty, it is all wrong. It buys into the idea that I myself am God, I am the Savior, I am the Almighty. And if I'm not, I'm guilty. Not good enough. A failure.

But while none of that is true, I also realize that I cannot resort to the kind of prayer that feels like, "If I just pray enough, the person will get healthy." While I believe in supernatural healing, I also believe that God is after our hearts. He wants us to entrust them to Him. And a big part of that is looking smack into the reality of our own pain, which we then realize is actually held in the crucified Jesus.

I had a dream about Mary doing that, and calling me to do it with her. 

Just turn, and look at Jesus on the cross. In my dream, she had a very, very difficult time trying to encourage people to do it. She was crying. She was in pain.

What else does that say?

How do I belong to people who are struggling with their issues? What I've learned is that embodying hope myself tells them that hope is possible and stability exists. I know that their issues give me something else to hand over to the Lord (Ps. 130: like a child at rest on his mother's knee, not setting my eyes on things beyond me). I think St. Paul testifies to feeling within himself the struggle of Christians being formed. So, I need to be open to feel what I feel, even while recognizing that life of said other person belongs to them. I can speak in faith about the good God holds out for them. I can throw out practical ideas. I can speak up when the frustration of another person comes out towards me in hurtful ways. I can entrust them to the Lord who knows all of what they need in every way.

The Prodigal, The Fatherless, and St. Joseph

This morning's Mass has shaken loose quite a bit of useful thought fodder, so here I am to sort it all out.

The gospel reading was the parable of the Prodigal Son, famous of course for the son who squanders wealth, the father who compassionately welcomes him back after long expectation, and the brother who resents both of them. 

The homily I heard, though, was one of those ripping the needle off the record moments that backhandedly spoke into my personal situation and also has me pondering this year of St. Joseph.

Father mentioned, reminiscent of the writer to the Hebrews, that "we have all had that moment where we did something wrong, and we awaited that moment of how our fathers were going to deal with us about it." As Hebrews 12:9-10 puts it, "we have all had earthly fathers to discipline us and we respect them...they disciplined us for a short time at their pleasure, but [God] disciplines us for our good..."

The needle ripped off the record because, no, I don't have any childhood memories like that. In fact, the first thing I thought of was my experience of being corrected for singing harmonies out of turn when I joined our parish choir. I was ... 41 at the time. 

What felt so odd was to have this discussed as a universal human experience from which we all learned something about God. I went to that same category interiorly, and came up empty. That's not to say that God hasn't abundantly compensated that emptiness for me, because He has.

 My second thought went to the 23% of American households with children that are currently headed by single parents. And the divorce rate in the era of the childhoods of my generation (1970s and 1980s) that was at nearly 50%. And the trend, also prevalent within my generation of what Dr. Jonice Webb calls Childhood Emotional Neglect, where even physically present parents can be emotionally absent to their children. All of this is so much a given in my awareness of life around me that frankly Father's comments struck me like data from a different planet.

But my concern is not really with sociological trends, nor with Family Privilege, my personal experience or anyone else's per se. The direction these thoughts have taken me have been about human formation, and how that impacts spiritual formation.

I love what my Secular Carmelite Constitutions have to say about this: 

Both initial and ongoing formation in the teachings of Teresa and John of the Cross, help to develop in the Carmelite Secular a human, Christian and spiritual maturity for service to the Church. Human formation develops the ability for interpersonal dialogue, mutual respect and tolerance, the possibility of being corrected and correcting with serenity, and the capacity to persevere commitments. (OCDS Constitutions, No. 34)

Pope Francis has been insistent on reminding us that God meets us with His great spiritual riches on the peripheries of society and on the peripheries of our own hearts. The more clearly we see our poverty, our need, our lack, our misery, the more immediately God bestows His abundant grace. This is exactly why I say God has abundantly compensated me for the empty category I have felt in my human formation; though it did not always feel a blessing, I realize I have been tremendously blessed in being solidly in touch with my misery and crying out to God over it. It has taken me a few decades, but here I am!

I am now vigorously curious to learn how to help others in their human formation in this regard. Human formation happens when my human experience butts up against your human experience, and we both act with the graces God has given us. There is plentious room for correction and being corrected, for learning respect, to learn to tolerate persons and accept them as they are, not as we want them to be. The end result is to be that we both learn to persevere in our baptismal commitments, having been refined by the other. Multiply this by many people, many human experiences, much grace. This is an element that dare not be missing from spiritual formation (entailing learning Scriptural, doctrinal and spiritual truths). For dry bones to live we need both spirit and flesh to take part in resurrection.

And then my thoughts went to Our Lord Jesus. At the beginning of his life, he went straight for our vulnerable edges, in the persons of Mary and Joseph. Biblical scholars still debate over the nature of their legal and moral status at the time of Jesus' conception. They were betrothed but had not lived together as husband and wife; did this mean that Jesus' birth was legitimate or illegitimate? Regardless of how the eyes of the law looked upon them, or what people thought of Mary and Joseph, I can't imagine that Joseph avoided a dark night of faith. He knew that Jesus was not his child. Scripture clearly says he was of a mind to divorce Mary quietly. Some scholars say this was only because Joseph knew he was not worthy to be the father of the Son of God, and not that he doubted Mary or didn't know or believe that she was the mother of the Messiah until this was revealed by the angel (as if human Joseph having merely human thoughts somehow detracts from his holiness or vocation.) Mary also had to have needed to exercise dark faith in what the angel told her. I remember those early weeks of pregnancy where, in my case, I was sure I had lost my baby because I felt absolutely nothing. Mary had no advantage of seeing the blue line show up on her pregnancy test. In this very intimate, unprecidented and singular event of the pregnancy with the Son of God, both Mary and Joseph were pressed to the human limits of faith that God's word is to be believed above all else, including the entire natural order. I highly doubt that there were not intense conversations during that time that shaped and prepared them to live in their society in a radically, profoundly different way from anyone else. Their bond had to be a profound solitude that God transformed with every manner of compassion, wisdom, worship, and strength.

Jesus did not come to remove troubles by sanitizing humanity. He came to sanctify us by redeeming our broken humanity, and making sons of those whom sin had completely alienated. He entered into our human experience, sharing everything but sin, in order to drink the dregs and fill all with his healing and powerful presence, to make of us a people who witness to his presence in a broken world. As he raises us up to share in his divine nature, he fulfills through human beings what he promised in Psalm 10:18, "to vindicate the fatherless and the oppressed, that the men of the earth may strike terror no more."

Salvation Is From The Jews

When the pandemic was just getting into full swing in the United States, I joined a now-closed theological discussion forum on Facebook. Can anything good come from a Facebook discussion group? you ask. And I answer, yes, it can. 

The exchanges were fascinating. For one thing, my sense that true unity and acceptance among Christians is growing and deepening received two charlie horses and fell over, frantically moaning in pain and rubbing its legs for relief. There are plenty of people who at all costs avoid conflict or disagreement over anything. There are plenty of people who will lock and load their theology and let you have it. But, there are also plenty of people who, given enough time on their hands due to a pandemic, will pull up a chair, present a position, and pick it apart with others who may have varying degrees of agreement. I find that kind of discussion fruitful, enjoyable, and edifying.

One challenging discussion I had was with a Messianic believer who took strong issue with St. John Chrysostom and his rantings against Jews. I happened to share a glowing quote from SJC, supporting some completely disconnected point, and this man in the forum upbraided me and found it easy grounds to dismiss my Catholic theology. 

In the ensuing discussion, I shared extensive quotes from the documents of Vatican II on the Catholic teaching regarding the role of Judiam. My interlocutor was somewhat shocked, because he could find nothing at all objectionable in it. He couldn't believe it came from a Catholic document.

There was much we still disagreed on, but he challenged me to read and dig deeper. I messaged a Jewish Catholic friend of mine, asked for her input about St. John Chrysostom and some of the discussions we were having, and asked her for a suggestion for how I could educate myself. She recommended Roy H. Schoeman's book Salvation is From the Jews. 

I had other books to finish, I'm slow, and it's 350+ pages, so I just finally finished it recently. I highly recommend it to my fellow Catholics.

Judism and Jewish people were never on my radar screen in my younger days; I grew up in Wisconsin where the debate was Lutheran vs. Catholic. For five years I belonged to a non-denominational charismatic fellowship whose strongest institutional connection was with the Christ For the Nations Bible school in Texas, which flies the flag of Israel on its campus. While it was in the order of a minor footnote, escatology that touched on the political state of Israel got an occasional mention. But my biggest take away (like so much of helpful religious formation) was a subliminal, intuitive, and delicate sense of awe about the Jewish people, because obviously Jesus was Jewish. I vividly recall the first time (well into my 20s) I ever saw men dressed in the style of Orthodox Jews. We were in the post office. I gave a little interior gasp like one would at suddenly finding a huge diamond. 

But I had never really grappled with questions theological or social about Jews, Judaism, or the intersection of Christianity or modernity with them. Oh, I knew the Shoah was a deeply repulsive moment in history and that antisemitism was wrong. Right after I became a Catholic, I did ask John Michael Talbot, during the pilgrimage to the Holy Land for which he was a guide, to elaborate on what the Church taught about Israel. He asked, "theologically, or politically?" to which I replied, "Yes." I don't recall what he said about the theology, but what did stick with me was his statement that Evangelical Christianity's political embrace of modern Israel was theologically in error, and stemmed from a lack of understanding of the Church. Since most of what I had ever heard regarding theology and Israel had to do with unconditional support for Israel militarily, I thought I had a grasp on all there was to know there.

Enter Roy Schoeman's book. To begin with, he does an overview of Scripture, and the Messianic claims of the Old Testament which was all thoroughly familiar territory to me. A big chunk of his book covers the historical and spiritual roots of antisemitism, the roots of Nazism, anti-semitism after World War II, and the impact all of this has had on Judaism. 

Let me stop right there a second.

We are not made in such a way as to be able to gain a view of pain and suffering and walk away unchanged. Right here was the place of change for me.

During the time I was reading this section, I was engaged in a days-long process of recording all seven sections of the Liturgy of the Hours for Advent. I spent a few whole days listening to the Psalms being prayed. With this view into pain and suffering that I had gained, I listened to the Word of God cry out the pain, anguish, confusion, terror, the hope and praise, of God's people. The pleading for the Messiah to come. 

Later I recounted this tectonic movement within my soul to my spiritual director with tears. There is something very deep going on here. 

St. John of the Cross teaches us about the dark nights, how we move forward only by faith, having lost all supports. The Catechism teaches us that there is a movement like this through which the entire Church must pass.

He also writes about the mystical life. The dark nights aren't designed to grind us to nothing. They capacitate us for living in union with God.

Schoeman's final sections include discussion of the mystical revelation to many Jews of Jesus the Messiah. Of how Catholicism was viewed by them not as a new religion, but as the completion of Judaism. (As an aside here, I am shocked to learn that in the Evangelical world, Jews are told they need to "break the chains of Judaism" and renounce it in order to become Christians.) 

He also discusses his views, based on Scripture and Church teaching, how the second coming of Christ will be preceded by an influx of Jews believing in the Messiah. And there I am, back with my Messianic believer Facebook aquaintance. One of his chief complaints was the lack of evangelistic outreach to ethnic or believing Jews. Why does no one care?

This Carmelite right here has a strong sense of connection to both the prophet Elijah and St. Edith Stein, also to St. John of the Cross, and the call to meditate on the law of the Lord day and night. The landscape of my heart shifted here. 

More than that I cannot now say.

But, this is why I write.   

Epiphany 2018

I'm going to try to write part two, following on from the Encounter Ministries conference.

I decided in advance to leave the conference early because I knew that today is Epiphany, and I felt it important to be back in my parish, and dutifully in my choir spot for this feast.

It was Epiphany Sunday in 2009 when I first sang with this choir, and it suffices to say that I captured an authentic experience of God in that blog post. In fact, next to the Christmas Eve Midnight Mass which sparked my conversion to Catholicism, that Epiphany Sunday was one of the single most significant moments in my Catholic life.

Just like Christmas coming around yearly was a true and dramatic re-meeting of the grace I experienced on the night of my conversion for years and years, I have found that Epiphany has been the same for this other experience of God. I didn't want to miss being where God could reveal something more to me.

Snapshots:

I remember the moment in Japan when I was at a parish Bible study, unable to understand much of what was going on, but having a burning sense that God's call to me had to do with parish life.

I remember despondantly watching people go up to recieve communion when I was not yet confirmed as a Catholic. I wanted so much to do what they were doing, but I also judged them for not loving God as much as I did. God impressed on me: "These are the people I have called you to love."

I recall hearing at Christmas that the shepherds who watched their flocks were those who were raising sacrificial lambs for the temple, as we sang "The First Nowell" as a prelude. Suddenly, I felt like I was filling in the blank form I saw last year at Epiphany, about how Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, and Pentecost all lead from one into the next. As we sang the opening hymn, We Three Kings, it made complete sense that the gifts the Kings brought spoke of Jesus' death, and burial. Epiphany does announce the whole Paschal Mystery.

And in this grace that the Lord has led me into, I have had the cycle of joyful mysteries, the cycle of sorrowful mysteries, and the cycle of luminous mysteries. I heard the bells ringing years ago, announcing Pentecost. I heard them ringing again months ago, announcing Pentecost. I saw it happening over the weekend. It is dawning; it has dawned. The glorious mysteries. God is not done.

And where it happens, the glorious, mysterious, unfolding of my very own vocation, is right there, right here, in my normal life, and in my parish. That which leads is mysterious, but my need is daily to seek and ask and look for Jesus, to plead to see Him more clearly, to plead for clear revelation. The glory is Jesus, and only Jesus. It is a perilous, dangerous moment, when Herod seeks to destroy, and utter discretion, mature wisdom, complete mistrust of evil intent must prevail.

I suppose none of this makes a shred of sense, but this is because it is alive.

I came back from the conference early because the place where God speaks powerfully into my life is in my own parish, and in the ministry I'm a part of there. That part is easy. What God speaks and how I respond... that part has never been easy, and it is always simple, because it is about one thing: Seek Jesus, Follow Jesus, Trust Jesus, and Only Jesus.

One thing the conference reminded me of is to constantly seek more. I think this was hard for me, because I can habitually ask more of myself always, and it wears me out. In fact, I've been learning not to ask so much of myself. I need to put into practice the reality that asking more of God is not to push myself into work mode, or to expect more "output" from me. It is to desire Him. Maybe I am a bit afraid of, as Teresa put it, "I die because I do not die." To desire -- ah, it can be so painful. And to desire without picturing how God is supposed to answer. Oy!

I think there is something here. I think I fear the pain of desiring, of longing. But this really was what Fr. Riccardo spoke of. I also intuit that there is more purification to be had.

"More, Lord. More." How many times did someone pray that over the weekend. At one point, I think it was Fr. Matthias who asked everyone to pray that, like a small child. Praying from the place is a purifying thing, too.

I think all this is another reason why I feel frightened to be losing my spiritual director, even if I never really sought his help as one to show me where to go. But I knew I had a safe port, and accountability, and someone knew.

What the Lord showed me was that running into the Lord's embrace, I drop the worries, even the fear of the pain, because the embrace of the Lord dwarfs all that.

And, that really is what Epiphany tells me today, too. It is all about pointing out Jesus, and going full throttle to seek Him.  Sometimes I get stuck standing with amazement staring up at the star.

Just like I was getting grumpy at those folks for being to amazed and excited and all that, I see that it is really that I need to deal with my own over-amazement, or having mercy on myself in it.

Or just bring it to Jesus like everything else.

Encounter Ministries Conference 2018

I spent the last few days at the Encounter 2018 conference in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I am writing this to help digest my own experience of it.

I almost ended up not going because of a glitch which I admit I had a hard time letting go of. I registered very early on, following a sudden impulse, in a way I rarely do. Because of family logistics, I knew I'd be needing to bring my daughter along. As I went through the registration, I found that there was a registration for kids under 13, and that they were admitted at no charge. Great! I was ready to pay for her, regardless, but this was even better.

But the night before the conference started, I was told my daughter had no registration, free registration never existed, the conference was full, and that was that. Previous communications had not helped one bit.

So, up until about two hours before we had planned to leave, I was no longer certain I would go, or what my daughter would do. Then, I was told a space had opened up, and I could bring her. My daughter (who can become completely unreadable when faced with circumstances like this) was evidently pleased that she was not being left behind or forced out. We went, I payed her registration, as I was happy to do. But it bugged me to no end that my assertion that I was not lying about free registration went unanswered. In between time, the venue had changed to another state, and everyone's registration was help open to refund if needed. I have a feeling the website was re-done at that point, eliminating the option. It just really, really bugged me that I was left to feel like a liar that was being mercifully accomodated instead of someone whose registration was unjustly cancelled.

It is a little unusual for me to get bugged by things like this, but it didn't completely end there. When we arrived, I realized that basically all the staff of the conference was young enough to be my children, biologically speaking at least. I realized I have issues with this generation. There, I said it. As we walked into the church building, I noted people with staff t-shirts shouting and squeeling to each other, hugging, laughing, chatting, singing with each other -- but not really attentive to the people they were there to greet and welcome at all. I questioned one young man about something; he didn't know the answer, but walked off to a seperate room (passing 6-10 other staff) to find someone who knew. He gave us an answer, which we pursued, only to find that we had been incorrectly directed. It worked out, but my frustration grew. I really value competence and serious mindedness. I realized I was in sanguine happy land. Isn't administration a spiritual gift, too?

To be honest, this was not an easy conference for me to settle down into, but this wasn't for any of the reasons that those who know what this was might guess. The whole thing was focused on welcoming the supernatural experience of God into average Catholic life. I am 100%, wholeheartedly in agreement with this premise. Signs, wonders, healing, miracles, words from God: it is all normative Christianity, and it is clearly a way which God is opening up all around us, through a multitude of avenues. God is coming on the scene with Pentecost.

But, I struggled to settle down into it all. I'm writing to understand this.

I think first I need to just write about what happened there. Then, I think I need to write about what happened at Mass this morning. (My daughter and I left yesterday afternoon before the Vigil Mass in order to be home for my parish Mass this morning, for reasons I'll have to write about later.)

First, there's the praise and worship. I've realized for a few years now that I have a hard time with this form of prayer these days. It is what I cut my teeth on in my 20s, and it was a huge staple in my life for decades. Musically, I am not opposed to guitar, drums, or any of that. What I find I struggled with was two-fold. Musically, modern praise and worship is insipid. Forget three chords; these songs are comprised largely of only three notes. Second, lyrically, almost none of it was Scripture, but vapid rhyming phrases about God. Occasionally, there was a nugget of something that could be meditated on. In some of the worship sessions, I knew none of the songs; nevertheless I could sing the whole thing after hearing half a verse, because it was that predictable. It was very, very difficult for me to focus, worship, and pray with this as my platform. There was nothing to lift mind or soul. For one group, I had to go into distracting-voice-deflection mode, but fortunately I've honed that skill in 25+ years in Catholic parishes.

The talks were awesome, and by that I mean they reflected normal Christianity, and by that I mean they were designed to build faith in the love and the action of God in our lives. The buzzword is "activation," and clearly that is something we all need; we need to stop and pray for God to come and draw us in as active participants into the things the speakers spoke on.

I had no idea, honestly, that so many people carried so much physical pain and brokenness. There were 1,000 people present, and I think it is fair to say that hundreds of people reported healing of significant physical issues. For this we rightly give God thanks.

At this particular point in my life, thanks be to God, I do not carry physical pain. I did stand up at one point, to receive healing prayer, because I told my daughter the night before that if they offered prayer for this certain thing, I would receive it. Two things, actually, although for the second I was standing to pray over someone else, too. It fitting the irony of the whole experience: the circumstance when I asked for prayer, people were instructed to come around and pray over those who stood. Not a single person came to pray over me, even though I must have been in eye shot of at least 50 people. Still, I felt the embrace of God's healing heat. I can't tell you if anything changed, because these are genetic things I know I am predisposed to, and I was really praying into the future.

There was plenty of time for prayer and soaking in God's love and receiving His powerful presence. In the midst of these, I was able to acknowledge the sadness in my heart over the fact that my spiritual director is at death's door. He is 87 years old, and very ready to meet the Lord. For my part, I think of the bittersweetness of laying bear one's soul to another human being, and then being left alone by that person. I have gone through this is various ways multiple times over the last decade, and while God has never left me abandonded and without help, a series of experiences like this is simply not easy. It hurts. This hurts.

The one moment in the conference when I really felt my spirit dance was on Friday evening, when Fr. John Riccardo delivered a word he called a scalpel. Essentially he called us to receive God's gift of a broken heart, so that we would love as God loves, including suffering the pain His heart feels. He spoke of St. Francis and St. Faustina, but in them I heard echos of St. Therese's Oblation of Merciful Love, and my Carmelite vocation, to be love in the heart of the Church. Ironically, when he spoke of suffering love, my heart wanted to dance. It is not that I enjoy suffering. The Lord knows that if I could feel only pleasure for the rest of my life, I would be delighted. But in this I heard my vocation that God is already teaching me to live. It is not the delight of suffering; it is the delight of hearing God call my name. And I realized that my Carmelite vocation, my vocation to be a hidden, contemplative lover of God and one who lives a life of prayer, never knowing exactly what the fruits are: this vocation is vital to the Body of Christ.

I was also reviewing some notes that I had actually recorded in this blog, about the Carmelite Congress I attended in November (complete, night and day difference from my response to this Encounter conference in terms of ease of communion with God). One thing that struck me was the thought of peaceful confidence. The Carmelite vocation is one of inner peace, of confidence and courage arising from affirmation of the one we know loves us. Peace.  Frankly, I did not feel peaceful at the Encounter conference -- not because of anything not of God, but because everyone was so dang excited, amazed, astounded. I get it -- these are signs of the Holy Spirit being present. It's in the Scripture. I have been there. I've been there in living my Carmelite vocation. But, there is a process by which we come to accept the glorious move of God as commonplace to our lives, or normal. This was something God spoke to me way, way back, when I was about two or three weeks into my call to become a Catholic. He told me, "I want the glorious to become commonplace in your life." To be at peace, and to radiate peace, communicates God in a certain way. To radiate excitement is necessary, mind you, to wake people up from sleep and to announce a new day.

Really what I am left with is a realization that God has actually called me to a vocation, and that this vocation determines how I respond and interact with other members of the Body. It helps me, but sometimes it helps me in a backhanded way, precisely because we are not all the same. Yet, we all need each other. I need them; they need me.

I have a desire to discuss these things with some of my Carmelite community members who have spent long years in the charismatic renewal. (Fr. Matthias, however, made the point-well-taken that he does not like to associate himself with the term "charismatic," due to all the baggage is has accumulated over the years, and because he prefers to think not of a group but of the reality of God. This I applaud and I feel the same.) I will never forget that one of my first exposures to Catholicism was at the Carmelite parish in West Milwaukee where for some reason I stumbled into some discussion. I asked the priest something about the charismatic movement, and he responded with something like, "That's very nice for beginners in the spiritual life. If you want something more substantive, check out Carmel." I was so, so, so offended and thought he was incredibly arrogant, which I'm sure was simply me looking into the mirror.

But, I guess the point I'm getting to is that God does many good things, and He uses all His people, but not in the same ways. I am responsible for living what He has given me.

And I guess that's why I need to write about what happened at Mass this morning, next.

Football, Fasting, and the Love of God

I am agitated.

I opened Facebook yesterday and found that everyone was all upset, again. This time everyone was upset by athletes who did not present themselves for the National Anthem.

The athletes did this because they were upset at words used about them by their President in response to a political or moral position taken by some, which clearly the President objected to.

I read that many of my friends were going to give up watching their beloved Steelers because they felt the players were immature in how they communicated their views and disrespectful to the USA by not standing for the anthem.

My agitation:

• I welcome the fast from football, and encourage those who are giving it up to gather and pray for revival instead.
• I am honestly shocked, because I know how deep the love for football goes in the hearts of many. 
• I'm not interested in football.
• I am surprised that I haven't heard one single, solitary person object to the President of the United States calling citizens an objectionable name which I would reprimand my teenage son from using, even if he were justly upset with someone. And yet there is much concern expressed for proper respect being shown. I'm tired of Christians giving the President a pass on immature and immoral behavior.
• Standing for the National Anthem is a respectful ritual which I support. 
• If someone is making a protest that strikes at the heart of a respectful ritual, I immediate want to ask "why?", and I mean that literally. I want to know their reasons, not jump to judgments. It's a small, but symbolic gesture. Tell me why it is chosen. I will listen.
• I suggest that one way to honor American military veterans is to make sure that none are homeless, unemployed, or left with an inadequate Veterans health care system. Symbolic acts warm the heart and then pass. Real honor gives care.

• Most importantly, as my friend Cookie put it, for Christians who believe there is a hell, why is such fiery energy expended and acts of mortification taken over THIS, but not over the consideration that souls may die today without Christ? Do we just yawn and say, "Yeah, whatever...." Why do football and national symbols stir people where the gospel can't? Where is our love?

Division, hatred, wrath, and anger are not of God, and neither are sloth, complacency, or pride. The love of God is a consuming fire, and when the immensity of God's love comes in contact with sin, the result is pain in the heart of the one who loves. I believe the heart of God is pained over how Americans treat each other in general, and over how little love is returned to Him by His own children.

• If we do not feel pain over souls who live without Christ, how can we say the love of God lives in us? 
• If we do not feel the putridness of idolatry, may God have mercy on us and draw us clear from love of the works of death.
• If we are not willing to listen to the pain of another human being, and instead shout him down and ridicule him, how can we demonstrate to them the love of Christ? Do we even want to be at square one of evangelizing?

I want to be part of the solution. I'm deeply sick of the problem. Division is the devil's game. When Jesus prayed for unity in John 17, primarily he was speaking about a unity of love; that human beings who have met the Father in Jesus Christ would, by the power of the Holy Spirit, receive and give the very love of God, so that the world would know Jesus and know they too are loved.

I don't care if you think it sounds trite and silly that I care about God's love. If you do, I assure you, you don't know the reality of it.

Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, so that it will give grace to those who hear. Ephesians 4:29

But now you also, put them all aside: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth. Colossians 3:8

and there must be no filthiness and silly talk, or coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks. Ephesians 5:4

and keep a good conscience so that in the thing in which you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ will be put to shame. 1 Peter 3:16

For I am afraid that perhaps when I come I may find you to be not what I wish and may be found by you to be not what you wish; that perhaps there will be strife, jealousy, angry tempers, disputes, slanders, gossip, arrogance, disturbances; 2 Corinthians 12:20

And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them. Romans 1:28-32

Time to Stop Being a Baby

I don't generally make big penitential plans for myself during Lent. It seems the Lord likes to introduce His own program for me, and for my part I try to enter that. Right now it seems a big theme is to examine why I interact with people the way I do. This post is not a report; it is a dive. I'm going to dive into it and see where I end up.

Recently I heard a news report about the rising percentage of kids who show up in college and have significant difficulty dealing with stresses. Everything just seems to be "too much" and they don't have the coping skills to handle things and they come unglued.

Since my son has entered high school, I have thought to myself repeatedly how stress and anxiety became my motivators. When I didn't understand Algebra-Trig, it actually kept me awake at night with worry. I remember getting tears in my eyes with anxiety over my first physics test. It was enough to energize me to struggle and try hard, and it also taught me the joy of doing classwork that came easy to me and allowed me to express myself, like literature and writing. Anxiety would push me over the hump of Impossible to at least fall on my face on the other side.

Academic work was not the origin of my anxiety. I was a good student and for the most part got good grades without putting in much effort (which is a seperate problem). My anxiety was more a response to my sense that my world had gotten ripped to shreds through my parents' divorce and the alcoholism and mental illness in my family. Talking these things through was not yet fashionable when I was young, so in a terrible anti-Marian sense I kept all these sadnesses and pondered them in my heart. And I quickly learned that one of the less destructive ways I could deal with anxiety was to go about trying to solve all the problems I saw, especially the ones that weren't mine. I would take on more and more responsibility for things as a way of keeping chaos at bay.

This made me popular with employers, because when I finished my work, I would go looking for other unfinished work to help with. I would use spare time brainstorming contributions to others' projects. As a child, I would clean the house instead of worrying that the visitor my mom was expecting would have to see it as it was. When I wasn't sure she would be home on time to take me to my school concert, I would throw myself into a flurry of activity to make the time go faster.

(The interesting thing is that even though doctors pointed out to me that I was extremely tense and didn't seem to know what "relax this muscle" meant, it wasn't until I started cantoring for Masses that I realized I had any issues with anxiety. That's how natural it was to me.)

So, back to the kids in schools. Lots of them have Gen X parents. Lots of Gen Xers have stories like mine: lives ripped apart, coping skills often had to be on steroids. What is the natural expression of "love" in this environment? Here, let me do that for you. I'll take care of it.

Guilt says that kind of stuff. One feels at fault, so one tries to make amends -- for everything. And the offspring of such over-carers remain infantile, unable to cope with stressors.

Recently I found myself with a pain I didn't expect. I've been struggling with one of my kid's morning rising patterns, but have set a deadline by which time a goal has to be reached for a desired outcome to be possible for him. And to work towards it, I recently announced I would only issue at maximum one wake up call to him, and then if he was late to his classes, it would be on his head. My first day of working with this, I suddenly saw that even though I hate repeatedly nagging him, pledging to stop filled me with great anxiety. Somehow, my personal sense of safety and peace was shaken when I just left his responsibility to him and let him bear the weight of it.

But you know what? He did it. I had to sweat for awhile, but he hasn't been late yet. Oh, it's only been two days, but, you know...

Facing this in myself does not make me happy, that's for sure.

I've been thinking about all the references all over Paul's letters where he talks about Christians' need to grow up, to stop being mere babies, to go on to maturity. And for me, yeah, I'm down with that. I want to be super-Christian. Sure. But I realize that no one is ever super-Christian off in their own private world. Not even a hermit. By penance and by teaching and by interacting with people, Christians are to exhort others to grow up and stop being babies. And you know what? That provokes tantrums and hurt and accusations and bad feelings, and just a whole lot of loud complaints that growing up just is too much to ask. Provoking that is about as much fun as a room of noisy, crying toddlers. The good thing about toddlers is that you know in 20 years they'll be chronological adults. We have no such guarantee about Christians.

Love does not mean swallowing up all hurt so that other people can be indulged. I could swallow until I burst and it would never please or satisfy another person, and I'm left with an aching, hurting belly. Love means speaking the truth and letting Jesus fill both of us, even if it hurts both of us.

Well, I guess all that Scripture is the next thing I need to dive into.