As By a ... New Pentecost?

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

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

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

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


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

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


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

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

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

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

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

On the Duties of our State of Life

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Purity of a Child

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Big City, Little Town

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Watch What I can do with Your Yes

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

June 1, 2011 

Jesus

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

Humility

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

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

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

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

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

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

And this is exactly what God wants for us. 

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

The Sacred Heart of Jesus

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

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

Today the connections strike me as overwhelming.

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

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

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

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

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

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

God Desires No Puppets

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Balderdash.


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

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

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

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

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

God Whispers

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

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

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

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

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

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

An Act of Hope and Confidence in God

by St. Claude de la Columbiere

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

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

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

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

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

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

 St. Claude (1641-1682)

Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at Hand

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Learning to be Happy

I have a hard time being happy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Through Suffering, Self-Mastery

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

April 1, 2011

Jesus

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

Announcing My Plans for a CD

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There's something wrong with that, I know.

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

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

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

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

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

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

But I see now that I do.

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

Pardon my French.

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