Start it Over

All I can say for sure is that it is very, very clear to me that God is real and He is doing something new with me. I wonder if any other Christians get this sense of seriousness these days. The Lord is being very serious with me, very intent that I listen, now; that I focus, now; that I train myself on His will, not mine; and quiet my mind from dwelling in my thoughts and my pain so that I can sense and respond to His thoughts, and yes, His pain.

I seem to always come back to this point of feeling like I am just starting, that following the Lord is always a new beginning. This time, though, it feels even a bit further back than that. It's more like I'm being prepared to just begin.

Lately I am constantly, constantly getting the message that when the Lord sends a cross to one's life, love embraces it as love would embrace the Lord. I see how weak I am, I see how impure I am, I see how distrusting I am. But I also get these hints, these reminders that register like far off bells (I mean so far off one can barely hear) that after the cross comes not just the resurrection, but Pentecost, and a great task empowered by the Holy Spirit. Sometimes in the midst of self-surrender and embrace of the cross, the thought goes through my mind that perhaps these hints are really just mental crutches, hopes against hope that life really isn't all a Great Vanity.

And humility. "Our own efforts will not work the grace of God unless they are efforts done in humility, unless they are efforts born of love."

I feel a bit like a melon that is being balled. That's what melons are for, ultimately. But accepting that it is my call, like Jesus, to become food for the hungry, is hitting me in a completely new way. I didn't realize just how it has to do with dying to self.

Oh.

Now see.

Lord, have mercy on my weakness.

Falling into a Heap

Wow. Yesterday was a long time in coming. How do I even go about throwing this into words?

I think of Rich Mullins talking about how God is a wild man. Sometimes following the Lord feels like riding one of those mechanical bulls. But Rich gets to the paradox -- when one is in a situation like that, your instinct is to hold on for dear life. Cling in faith, stand firm, believe. But Rich gets to the point of what we actually need to do, and that is to let go for dear life.

I wrote recently about letting go of this situation with this friend of mine. That (insert rueful laugh here) was the easy part. That was but a sign of something deeper that was needed.

Yesterday I went to my second Carmelite formation meeting. I know this is where I belong and I trust this is where God has called me. I won't be able to say this adequately, but what I saw yesterday was my profound need for humility. And that part of that humility comes in not clinging, not standing, not believing -- at least not in a way that leaves every spiritual muscle I have strained to the popping point -- but in falling into a heap and needing the Lord to scoop me up.

Yesterday I fell into a heap, spiritually speaking. This time my husband had to be like Mary standing at the foot of the cross. Thank you God, that you always time these things when he is at home, because I cannot fall into a heap by myself.

I kept thinking of a scene that happened when I had begun to attend Mass but was still also attending the service at Risen Savior. One Sunday I happened to sit a few seats nearer to the music ministry than I normally did. We were singing John Michael Talbot's "Holy Is Thy Name," and after the first verse and the chorus repeats (we were accustomed to do many repeats), the head of music ministry handed me the mic and told me to sing the second verse. I guess he figured that as a Catholic wannabee, certainly I knew it. Which I did. So for the whole church I got to sing "He has cast down the mighty in their arrogance and has lifted up the meek and the lowly." To this day, the irony of that experience reverberates through me.   Every call to conversion I receive challenges my arrogance, my self-importance.

I like feeling important. I really do. But God's glory is breathtaking, and it is wiser to desire God's glory on His timetable over self-importance on mine. But I forget that. And I forget and fail to trust that He is real, and that this deal works. God keeps calling me, though. He does not get put off by my failures, and He is big enough to wrestle me to the ground and even pin me there until I come to the end of my strength so that I can feel the fact that my strength is like a fraction of a drop of water, compared to the mighty ocean of His roaring mercy.

Yes, I'm praying the novena to St. Therese right now. I wonder if it is significant that I received three beautiful red roses the morning before I even started praying it. Surely she is helping me to embrace spiritual childhood. Sometimes I think I've never been a child. Not yet, at least, but I'm getting there.

Like a Fire in my Soul

So, today I go to confession, right, and it's with a priest who is not my customary confessor. This priest gave me the same penance as the last time I confessed to him, which happened to be at an interesting juncture of my life. Anyway, this penance was basically to get into God's face and require Him to show me what He wants of me.

And after coming home and tooling around awhile, I picked up the book I'd been reading and read the next blurb. Volume Seven, Messages from Heaven. And I read what is on this video:



Now, no one ever sees how long it takes for me to write one of these blog posts. Or what all cycles through my mind from the moment I open Blogger Dashboard to the time I click "publish."

See, this thing I read hit home, hard, but in a way that made me want to sit down and vent about how much I absolutely hate being a human being, how much I really do not want any more of this damn growing in holiness business, and how I am so sick to death of the idea of thanking the Lord for going through difficulties. Like I want to take my difficulties and shove them back in God's face.

And then, between answering phone calls for my son and being pulled this way and that, I also got into an interesting Facebook exchange on a friend's page, a friend I actually don't know at all, a Christian of a decidedly-not-Catholic persuasion who posted something claiming the Church is pagan and Satanic. I could not let that pass. My comment, that I had researched the Church's claim and become a Catholic, spurred other comments by her friends -- more people I know not at all. I came out with fire coming out of my nose. Not to politely disagree but to get my sword and lop the heads off error. To call people on their ignorance, judgmentalism and condescending "maybe you should read the Bible sometime" comments.

The fire in my soul makes me I realize it would be an absolute no-brainer to me to die for my Faith. To die for being Catholic. To die for my Lord Jesus Christ. There is no way I could face an opportunity like the possibility of martyrdom and walk away from it, and still be able to live with myself. That is what I am made for. The Lord Jesus Christ has proven His love for me over and over again in ways I cannot deny without becoming an atheist and a heartless, self-seeking jerk. He has given everything to me, and I love Him so much it hurts. He has asked me to show my love for Him by laying on the line everything in my life, at so many stages of my life, and I have. There has not been one time that I have held back, not for long at least. May it ever be so, or may God strike me dead before my love for Him grows cold. (And may I face my daily baby-step martyrdoms of which St. Catherine speaks.)

All I really want out of life is for everyone I know to operate on the same basis. Tell me that's not too much to ask.

This is my soul. Get as close as you dare. Believe me, some days I don't know how to do it myself.

Getting Good and Angry

Hallelujah, Hallelujah!

That's what you say when the Resurrection dawns, and that's what I said at dawn this morning. Because sometimes it takes awhile for things to dawn on me. Like what a spiritual victory looks like. Here's what mine looked like.

Recently I've been struggling, really suffering, with feeling wronged by a friend. It hurt. A lot. Misunderstandings always do, especially if they have any depth to them. And this one went pretty deep.

In response to this struggle, I did something I realized this morning I have never done in a situation like this ever before: I confronted the person with my hurt and got angry at him, to his face.

It resolved nothing, sadly, but that's not the point. In the past when I've felt hurt and angry, I've done every manner of thing do avoid directly dealing with it. Beating myself up and forcing myself to "be better so this wouldn't happen" was my first choice years ago, then I advanced to adding layers of getting all nasty and bitter and hateful. I also tried the cool, sophisticated, intellectualizing approach. And all sorts of crap in between, including trying to convince myself that none of it mattered.

But I couldn't deny that this mattered without denying the Lord Himself. Getting nasty was like spitting into the wind. I quickly realized that the only option left was to feel the hurt, until such a time arose as I might actually speak to said person.

That went down, nothing was resolved, but, as my husband said, I did what I could.

And this morning, I realized I actually did what I couldn't. I have never confronted someone in an angry exchange, ever. (Not an adult, anyway!)

I have this feeling that my father was praying for me in heaven. The two phrases that came to me yesterday was first, to "Let Go and Let God," and then to take it one day at a time. My father, an AA devotee, had these phrases as signs in his garage for years.

My anger solved nothing, but I owned my sense of injustice, spoke out, accepted the non-resolution, and handed it to God, acknowledging that He is Lord, not I; that He is worthy of all my love and worship, regardless of whether I am hurting or not, and that He is big enough to fill me with joy, despite what I can't fix. I let it go to Him, since He is the author of everything in my life to begin with.

And this morning I suddenly realized that this is the victory. The "joy of heaven to earth come down" is literally to know that one has faced a spiritual crisis and won. The funny thing about Jesus' victories is that they seem like such defeat when you are smack in the middle of them.

Objectively, this doesn't fix anything with my rectally-investigative friend who, though bent on separation, can't seem to resist reading this. But God will manage. He always does.

St. Thérèse and the Man Thing

Recently I finished reading Story of a Soul, the autobiography of St. Thérèse. I was waiting for the lightening bolts of grace to crash through, because of so many people saying how reading it changed them, how it is the most powerful spiritual book of modern times, etc. Well, didn't really happen for me. 

I'd listened to Ralph Martin's lectures on her life, I'd read about her and become very familiar with the images she uses, and I've watched the recent movie about her a few times. I can't watch the movie without crying just because it is emotionally moving, but spiritually moving? I have to say it didn't register with me. At all.

And this made me feel bad. She is one of the most revered saints of all time. Even my daughter became fascinated with her as a toddler, and so I've considered her my daughter's patron saint. She's come through for me a few times after novena-attempts with a completely unexpected rose. But still she's been like the distant cousin at the reunion to whom you nod and say hello but never really develop much of a connection with. 

I think I've found it difficult to relate to her life. The key suffering of her childhood was losing her mother to death and her "second mother," her elder sister, to the convent. But these things were acute sufferings to her because of the intense bonds of love she knew in her family. Not only was she raised completely enveloped by intensely loving relationships surrounding her and enfolding her, but she also had profound and intense formation in the Faith. Their family was practically a Carmel in and of itself. While I can relate to some of Thérèse's childhood, like slipping off to pray and contemplate without knowing what prayer and contemplation were, for me these were not natural outgrowths of my environment, but the beginnings of special graces that indicated Jesus intended to put up a fight for me, rather than watch me be sucked down into hell by the bitterness and hatred I started to dabble in, responding to my own environment. Thérèse's life was one of being lifted straight up to God like a child by the elevator of His mercy. Mine has been more like a tug of war, a chance for my Love to prove His tenaciousness and determination (and ability) to completely break apart so many tendrils of deformation. 

So it wasn't her autobiography or the story of her life that got me. It was her exchange of letters with Maurice. I just happened to have needed to kill some time in our parish library, and this book, Maurice & Thérèse, caught my eye. It is nearly 300 pages, but I read half in one sitting and half in another. And somewhere in that second sitting, my heart cried out Thérèse! and I burst into tears. Not the sentimental tears of the movie, but the tears that happen when everything within you gets up and moves toward a person because of some undeniable recognition.

Her autobiography had pointed out that one thing she had longed for and prayed for all her life was a brother to join her family. She had had two brothers who died in infancy before she was born, and all of her surviving siblings were girls. She had wanted so much to have a priest brother, and she asked the Lord for this gift. And quite remarkably, God answered her. Maurice, a young man, struggling with his seminary formation, happened to have heard of the Carmelite convent in Lisieux, and happened to write, asking the Mother Superior if she could ask one of the Sisters to pray for him. The superior chose Thérèse. There were a few letters exchanged between Maurice and the superior, because it was considered "just not done" for a sister to exchange letters with a man. But when the superior became ill and could not respond to his letters, she gave Thérèse permission to simply do the writing herself. Thus was born a correspondence that had a profound meaning and impact in both their lives.  It seems that their relationship put into concrete reality the mystical yearning Thérèse had to become a missionary, and I suppose even the very fact that she is today the patroness of missionaries, despite having barely ever left her own backyard. And Maurice, who became Fr. Louis, became one of the very first to spread devotion to her.

Their letters (now here's something that makes it easy for me to love Thérèse -- the only reason she didn't die in obscurity was because of what she wrote!) reveal the tremendously ardent affection they had for one another. Maurice was unsure of himself and his vocation, plagued by his past sins, and not at all afraid to beg Thérèse for more letters and words of wisdom and consolation because they strengthened him and helped steel his resolve to follow the Lord. They had barely begun corresponding when Thérèse's health took a serious downward turn, and so a prominent aspect of their exchange was the growing awareness that she would die. What he did not know was how very much in pain she was, not only physically but spiritually as well. During the last 18 months of her life, she endured a spiritual darkness that required from her intense acts of faith to maintain that there even was a heaven. All the while she wrote to him of her promise to accompany him from heaven until the day he died, she battled the constant tormenting thought that after death there was only eternal emptiness. As she said, she "ate the food of atheists," but did so willingly as a spiritual offering for them.


And in this state, Thérèse wrote nothing but encouragement to Maurice, teaching him to immerse himself in the mercy of God. He was afraid that his failings and his instabilities made him somehow displeasing to God, and even that after she got to heaven and would be able to see more clearly who he was, he feared that he would be displeasing to her. She taught him her Little Way of confidence. She gave him the example of a father who had two sons. They both had disobeyed the father. The first son, when he saw the father approaching, was afraid and ran away from the father, trembling. The second son ran to the father, threw himself into his arms and told him all about it, holding the father close, and then asking to be punished with kisses. This is not manipulation but childlike trust in the merciful goodness of the father. Childlike trust and confidence in God, she insisted, is the way to holiness, because in these we stop with the self-obsession over our own wretchedness and start looking at and responding to the immense love with which God surrounds us. Eyes off self; eyes onto God. Then we start to become like the One we behold.

The doctrine is rich, but it wasn't even that that moved me. It was their love for each other. Thérèse held nothing back in expressing all the pure affection of her heart. Maurice held nothing back in how beholden he was to her. She was canonized, is the patroness of missionaries, and is a Doctor of the Church. He was ordained, arrived at his mission in Africa the day after she died (October 1, which is her feast day), suffered horrendously and died in a mental institution -- the same one where her father had lived for several years. When she had told him how she feared she would miss the sufferings of earth in heaven, he asked that she beg for him the grace to take her place in suffering. And since she promised to accompany him from heaven, I'm thinking what a gift it was to her to spiritually attend him in the very place her father suffered. His life was not about becoming a brilliant saint (he wasn't). He is remembered because he was enveloped in a brilliant love.

Karol Wojtyla explains in his book Love and Responsibility that for women, being loved is about being freed to give, and for men, it is about being freed to receive. Somewhere in this is the key to why the image of God in humanity is in our maleness and femaleness. It is why our maleness and femaleness images the Trinity. The mystery of God with us is all about giving and receiving. Nothing is supposed to interrupt this flow. The mutual love that is suppose to characterize Christians and the Church is simply this flow of love that enables giving, love that enables receiving. Love is the fuel that puts the gospel in action. Both men and women need to give and to receive (for we can't give something we haven't received), but I think JPII means that it is inscribed in the nature of each of the sexes to especially need to either give or receive if we are to stay human, or become holy. 

There's so much I could say about this "man thing" in my life.  Sigh.  My Lord is determined, tenacious, and victorious, and He has made me the same. St. Thérèse got me because I see in her the example of a pure, ardent affection pouring out of her that filled her last days of suffering with intensity of purpose, a way to more fully and completely be herself, because she was freed to give in a way her heart longed to be free to give. It was all for God, and it was God who rewarded her. God, who always uses His people as His instruments, because we need to receive His love as much as we need to give it.

Maurice Belliere

1877-1907

This, Too

This, too, is the face of my well-Beloved.

You called to me, oh Lord, and for three years I've followed you. Your words tugged at my heart; I could not help but follow. You taught me, and my heart was set ablaze. You healed me; I was made whole. You sent me, and I actually thought that was scary. I came back, only to be taught by you not to be so full of myself.

But now, what is happening? I know you told me plain enough this would be so, but I never thought it would be so... so like this. Everything is tumbling inside me. The last three years really did happen, didn't they? It wasn't one long self-deception, was it? Have I built my house on the sand, like you warned me not to? Lord, your words have become the bedrock of my life, but looking at you now, none of them make sense.

Wait. There's one thing that makes sense.

Mary is here. With John. And the other women. And there's St. Thérèse, catching the drops of blood that fall from your lacerations. She's bringing it to the souls of sinners, and they are being converted. Countless priests, feeding the nations with the food you provide. Countless suffering souls, who in you are not alone. Millions and millions and millions and billions of prayers ascending, ushering forth the mighty flood of mercy which you are unleashing for the life of souls in every corner of time and space.

No, I don't see all this with my eyes, just like I don't really behold your bloody body. But there you are. There they are. And here am I. Mary, and all you holy ones, and all you who at least show up -- stay with me, so that I can stay with you. And together we can see what happens next.

The Joy of Good Friday

In the early 1990s, when I was a Catholic-wannabee and then a neophyte, God showered my life with a lot of graces in a rather intense way. I've come to think it was because I was taking such a huge step forward and I needed lots of extra help to stay the course. Also, I was suddenly in contact with tons more "means of grace" as the Lutherans would have said, than I was accustomed to.

Conversations with God flowed pretty freely in those days. For Christmas in 1991 (the day after God called me to become a Catholic) I received as a gift a little cloth-covered book, like a mini-diary. I quickly got the idea to write down in it whatever I believed the Lord spoke to my heart.

And so it is that I have one of these conversations written down. I will quote:

Sunday, August 15 (1993) -- Assumption
On the way to Mass, I asked the Lord what His most joyous moment/day on earth was. For many minutes I thought of what it might be. Then the Lord reminded me of Luke 15:7, of the great rejoicing over the one sinner who repents. So I asked Him "which repentant sinner gave you that most joyous moment/day?" And He replied, "Peter."

Now, at the time, what I focused on in this was the importance of Peter as the head of the Church, as the one with the charism as leader. This was very powerfully important to me at the time as a new Catholic, because I understood for the first time that leadership in the Church is primarily a spiritual, supernatural thing.

But just the other day, the Lord brought this 19-year-old conversation to mind again. I read it again, and thought about it some more.

On what day did Peter repent? What, by extrapolation, does this very personal conversation with the Lord serve to teach me (regardless, of course, of its completely unverifiable veracity)? Well, that day was Good Friday, the day the Lord died. Lord, what was your most joyous day on earth? Good Friday.

Now that thought blew me away.

This is called having the perspective of heaven, the perspective of eternity.

Lately the Lord has been calling me to rejoice in Him and His great and powerful work, despite the fact that simultaneously I see things with my eyes that cause me to think of anything but rejoicing. But it makes sense. Jesus Christ is the ultimate reality of the universe, and He is here, now, in the midst of our sufferings and sadness, and witnessing all of the evil loose on the earth. He is with us through all of it. Heaven surrounds us with grace and help and power to overcome. Heaven empowers us to call down that grace and make it flow here. Christ is risen; this means that no cross we can bear is the final word of our lives. We know the final word, and it is Hallelujah.

As the old saying goes, "It's Friday, but Sunday's comin'!"

September 1 Message -- Direction for our Times

The cycle of messages given has now finished, and we double back to the beginning for the prayer groups and personal reflection.

September 1, 2005

 

 

Jesus

 

 

 

"God's little children know great suffering on earth, it is true. There will always be those who are suffering. Extend the greatest love and assistance to those who carry the cross because you will carry it one day and you will then benefit from the help of others. Dear brothers and sisters, all is well. I can say that all is well because I view all from the perspective of heaven. Can I ask you to share that view with Me? I will give you this view, if you are willing to accept it. From heaven I see that souls cry out to Me. They ask for a relief from darkness. I am sending relief, My dear faithful ones. I am sending great conversion graces. There are times when a child is having trouble and the child cannot see how to solve a problem or remove himself from a situation. The parent sees more clearly, of course, and often understands what the child requires to recover. What parent is unfamiliar with the protesting cry of the child who wants to do it his own way, despite the danger of the child's intended path? The parent must then step in and avert the child's course, showing the child the better and safer way. Such protests a parent must endure. But a good parent perseveres in the course that will benefit the child in the long run. I am the parent in this time. I am looking at the world and I have decided that it is time to pierce the darkness with My light. I have told this to My beloved apostles. Please trust Me. Please support Me. Please do as I ask and examine your role in the Renewal each morning, when you offer Me your day. I will then continue to flow My light through you into the world. Dearest friends, I am your Saviour. I do not abandon you. Do you understand that heaven is your intended destination? Do not object when others come to heaven. It is for this they were born on the earth. I understand earthly grief. You know that I understand because I experienced great human grieving on earth. I will comfort you. I will sustain you. You have been asked to spread My heavenly calm. All is well. You know this because I am telling you this. You are one who believes your God. Spread My calm, My grace, My joy. Will you support your Jesus in everything? It is this I am asking of you. Rest joyfully in your soul with Me. I will give you exactly what is needed for your world and you will be a holy carrier of My grace. I am with you. Rejoice."

The Fire of Love

Once again, as if it ever stops, something's going on deep inside of me (that's a song quotation, by the way). I've written about this before, but here I go again.

One of the most bizarre ways that God called to me many years ago was to tell me very clearly one day "I have called you to be an outspoken person." This was at a time when I struggled horribly to say anything to anyone. If I wanted to talk with someone about something personal, I tended to sit there and cry for an hour, first. Words just didn't flow. I didn't know what to do around people when it came to anything but superficiality, and I didn't even do very well with that. And then God spoke to me very clearly and said He called me to be an outspoken person.

God's work is never ending (praised be He) and it is very mysterious. These days I am in a completely different place than I was when I first received that call. Right now, today, I can feel my heart burning within me with a kind of a fearlessness I have never known before. This too is God's gift, and this too comes by way of a crucible. But now, I don't fear it. I want it. I want this crucible badly, and not only for me. This crucible is my place of prayer. I want the fire of God to burn all sin, all dross, beginning with mine and spreading to everyone, beginning with those closest to me. His fire is judgment, but His fire is mercy, because it is love. When we love God, the experience of His love comes to us as a blessed relief. When and in what ways we do not love God, the experience of His love is a painful, consuming fire.

I don't care if it hurts. I don't care if God's ways are hard. This is evidence of His mercy, and we should rejoice and be glad in it.

For me, being outspoken is about living with courageous faith, not about spouting off my mouth with my opinions everywhere. Being outspoken means speaking how and when and where God would have me, with no excuses, no fawning, no pretending, no pandering.

I want one thing. I want the fire to blaze. Come, Holy Spirit.

This Blog Post has been Retitled

I'm just going to write this raw, to get it out of my system, or at least, I hope, to move it along a little.

I have been reading JPII/Karol Wojtyla's book Love and Responsibility. I read part of it for a grad class something like 14 years ago, but all I remember is it being really dense, and it making me feel that way, too. There's something about reading philosophy and about theological concepts that makes it so that if you don't have a certain amount of life and prayer under your belt, it all becomes useless blather.

I started to read it again in part because of an article a friend posted on Facebook several days ago about marriage, and how Catholics are to understand this notion that goes around and around in Protestant circles, about wives submitting to their husband, and exactly how that is supposed to work. This kicked back into my consciousness this term "personalism." I know JPII was an avowed personalist, and while I sort of knew what that all meant when I was studying theology, it hasn't been something I've thought about much lately. But as I started to read Love and Responsibility I saw that this is the precise context in which the Pope talks about understanding relationships between the sexes.

And then I saw what he contrasts personalism with. Utilitarianism. Using people. And it is starting to get me unhinged.

But not nearly as fast as it should.

Several days ago as I was praying I was moved to pray something like this: that God would give me His kind of hatred for injustices and wrongs that I tolerate. Not "out there," but in myself. I have this sense that this is because of that.

As I read the first part of the book, where the Pope lays out the philosophical groundwork of utilitarianism and why it is always wrong to treat a person as an object of use, I just kept thinking of this man that I once trusted. Really, our relationship was not worthy of the term "trust." Don't know yet what I should call it. This was some 20 years ago, and he was a man 20 years older than myself (so, he was then about the age I am now). I looked at him like a father-figure, I guess that's the best way to put it. He, for his part.... well, he was married with three kids and also seemed to believe he had a ministry to young single women. That should give you an idea of the footing this thing starts off on. But when I first got to know him, in a church context, he liked to repeat this phrase to me, using the royal we: "You're ours to use and abuse." He said it in such a way that it was supposed to give me a sense of belonging. Really, the sonofabitch was very much like a pedophile, except that the only way I was a child was emotionally.

What makes me really angry (yes, I believe that is what I am finally feeling) is that, while his comments, and his treatment of me for about 5 years registered with me as annoying, mostly I was happily resigned enough (well, "happy" can hardly be the right term) to put up with being used by him. I blocked out so much, maybe because it was just too painful to watch my dignity being shredded. Something in me wanted to believe I was being cared for, because this was as close at it got for me for the most part. I was completely blind, by choice?, to how stuff just wasn't right. He would call me almost every night and get me to tell him everything that was going on with me. When he wife started working night shifts, he would take me out for dinner two or three nights a week, treating me like a date. Physical advances started creeping (perfect word) more intense and he seemed to get a real kick out of trying to do it literally behind his wife's back. All the while, I just tried to pretend it wasn't happening. I had absolutely no sense of physical attraction to him at all. Blech.

Oh, once I found the strength to say I didn't want to see him at all for two months or something like that. I think that may have been after I knew I was becoming a Catholic and new graces started to reach me. He was right back at my apartment on the exact "last day" of that arrangement. Finally, right before I moved to Japan he figured he had to go whole hog and take his chances with pushing it as far as he could. And finally I did the most violent thing I could muster in our religious context, which was to pull away and yell "God damn you" at him.

Even then, it mostly just meant "Would you stop being so annoying."

That was 1994. It took me until about 2010 to realize that all that while, I was being wronged by him.

And right now it fills me with revulsion to think that I ever accepted that being used by someone is in any way synonymous with being loved.

Pope JPII points out very well that this is pretty much the cultural standard that infects modern thinking very deeply, including even some strains of theology wherein God is depicted as the grand "User" of people to fulfill His ends apart from their own intrinsic good.

This is why Catholicism alone preserves the truth. This is why when I encountered this very Catholic theological vision of God that I'm not really smart enough to articulate right now, but which presents God as not at all using us, but creating us as human beings, and His law and plan made for us and all that.... that's why my heart throbbed for joy to understand on some level that God does not at all, ever, in any way, intend for people to be used, to be treated as objects.

But it takes a long time for truths to work their way into the fiber of lives so that they start to affect what I am willing to accept as treatment of myself. There's a certain personal bearing one must have before it makes any sense to say "I won't accept someone treating me like that." I guess I mean the mouth can say anything, but it has to be the heart, the life, the whole being that can say that.

This is still rocking my interior, and while I'm not sure what happens next, I also get the sense from God today that all this realization pleases Him, and that it's going somewhere good. It never feels good to have junk kicked up, and to potentially look around and say "My God, what else is infected?" But I do trust God and know He loves me dearly. So, I'm Ok.

And you know, it does feel much better to finally get mad at that sonofabitch.

A Royal Throne and the Hundredfold

Some days I come home from Mass with a homily-redo running through my head. Today was one of those days. You know, you hear the readings, and your mind starts putting things together, and then the priest goes off in a completely different direction that leaves your thoughts like a pile of bricks begging to be reassembled properly. Tell me that happens to you, too. Right? Well, never mind, it is my blog, after all.

Here are those readings, by the way: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/082112.cfm

Basically, there's Ezekiel prophesying to an extremely wealthy and arrogant politician that all of his money and all of his supposed high-and-mightiness wasn't going to do him a whit of good when, shortly, he would face a bloodthirsty murder who would stick a sword through his belly. (This reading wasn't very familiar to me; I guess we skipped it in my Sunday School class when I was a kid.)

The psalmist actually was quoting arrogant people saying obnoxious things about how they don't need God, and the response was God saying "It is I who deal death and give life."

(I was the lector today, too, so I was really feeling the this-ain't-so-rosy-ness of these readings.)

Then there's the gospel of the rich young man who really wants to follow Jesus, says he's kept all the commandments (yawn), is there anything else Jesus can think of he might try as a spiritual exercise? And Jesus tells Him "sell what you have a give to the poor, then come, follow me." And the guy goes away, waiting, I guess, for another rabbi with better ideas to try.

But then, and I think this is the key, Jesus continues talking to his disciples about this. And here I'll quote:

Then Peter said to him in reply,
"We have given up everything and followed you.
What will there be for us?"
Jesus said to them, "Amen, I say to you
that you who have followed me, in the new age,
when the Son of Man is seated on his throne of glory,
will yourselves sit on twelve thrones,
judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
And everyone who has given up houses or brothers or sisters
or father or mother or children or lands
for the sake of my name will receive a hundred times more,
and will inherit eternal life.
But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first."

What hit me as the key to understanding all this is that talk about thrones. Yes, in heaven, Jesus is depicted as seated on a throne (in Revelation, and therefore in art). But what is that royal throne as it appeared on earth, in Jesus' lifetime? Where was He high and lifted up to draw all men to Him? From whence comes Jesus' right from the Father to sit as judge of the world (Jn 5:22)? The answer to all three is the cross, of course. Jesus' throne in glory is the flip side of His cross on earth. And Jesus tells his disciples that they, too, will sit on thrones, and they will judge the twelve tribes of Israel, which is the new covenant people, the Church. The promise of real authority must have encouraged those men, after all they were always going off about who would get the prime positions in the kingdom. But what a blow that crucifixion was to them, completely and utterly messing with everything they had ever envisioned the kingdom to be. Still, I think Jesus planted these words in them so hope couldn't die and so that they wouldn't all go off like Judas and hang themselves on Good Friday. And so that after Pentecost they could look back and realize that the experience of the cross is necessary for every Christian.

So what about this wealth stuff that caused the prince of Tyre to be impervious to the doom before him, and that caused the young man to get turned off by Jesus, even though he was a "good person"? The key is that following Jesus means going to the cross with Him. It means dying to the idea that I'm all-powerful, that I need no other god but myself. Dying to self means to open myself totally to give and to love, as Jesus did. The basic truth of life on this fallen earth is that love has an enemy, but that we get  victory over the enemy by dying with Jesus and rising again. That happens when we are baptized; and after we are baptized it happens when we repent and confess our sins and then live in the truth of that victory. That is why Jesus promises his followers the hundredfold in this life, and eternal life in the next. The hundredfold is the riches of the Christian life. Look at what it is, by the way: not money and power, but people, and a place. The apostles were to gain lots of people into their lives all over the then-known world.

There. Now that I've got my homily out, I feel much better.

The Book of My Life by St. Teresa of Avila

Just today I finished reading The Book of My Life by St. Teresa of Avila, translated by Mirabai Starr. My heart just wants to say Thank you, Lord for this incredible gift!

I think it is accurate to say that St. Teresa is the first woman I have ever encountered who my soul immediately wants to call "mother." I read smatterings of her works years ago when I first met the Carmelites (which I wrote about before, including here.) But this is the first that I've read one entire work by her. The translation is modern, and seems to preserve Teresa's own rather earthy and blunt writing style, and also her tendency to ramble. Her growth, her struggles, the temptations she endured and the things she beat herself up over, worrying that they were faults or sins are all laid out for all to see. Of course, she didn't write it knowing it would be read for 400 years by people all over the world. She thought she was writing privately to a few of her confessors. God had other ideas.

And why does my soul want to call her "mother"? Well, it is evident how hard she struggled and wrestled to come to, or to receive from God, the certainty about her experience of prayer, discerning what is of God and what is not. And she did this in a point in history when she (at first) seemed compelled to keep denigrating herself for being unlearned and a woman, and when it was easy for many to dismiss her efforts to reform the Carmelites (really, simply to obey God) as "the silly notions of women." It also made me so happy to read her descriptions of some of her spiritual experiences and say "Yes! I've been there, too! I know just what you are talking about." But it makes me even happier to realize that she went far beyond where I have been, and this was written 20 years before she died! Here's a woman from whom I can learn so much, who has so much to teach me. Really that makes me so happy I could cry.

And I guess it is not for nothing that she is a Doctor of the Church!

I could quote vast chunks of the book that were helpful to me, but I'll restrain myself to one area. I really appreciated her frankness in discussing her relationships with various men in her life: priests, confessors, and lay men, and how these relationships both helped her and blessed her, but also sometimes caused her soul trials. I'll let her do the talking:

I have had this experience many times over the years: whenever I like someone very much, I am filled with nearly unbearable longings. I want to see this person utterly surrender to God. While I want everyone to serve God, my yearning is especially acute when it comes to the people who please me the most. Thus, I fervently beseech the Lord on their behalf. This is what happened to me when I met with the priest I am speaking about.

He asked me to pray wholeheartedly to God on his behalf. But he didn't need to ask. I was already so filled with prayers for him that I could not have done otherwise. (pp. 273-274)

Here is one benefit I derived from [a certain vision]. Before he appeared to me, I had this troubling tendency to become very attached to anyone I thought liked me. As soon as I began to detect that someone had fond feelings for me and I myself found them attractive, I would start thinking about them all the time and recalling every detail of our encounters. I had no intention of forsaking God, but I was very happy whenever I got to see these people. I loved to think about them and reflect on all the positive qualities I perceived in them. This habit was becoming a serious problem and leading my soul astray.

(And then she relates how seeing a vision of Christ made every other attraction dull in comparison.)

I experienced this kind of liberation in the case of one of my confessors. I have always had a tendency to develop a deep fondness for the men who guide my soul. I believe they stand in God's place in a very real way, so my thoughts of them are intimately entwined with my thoughts of God. Because I feel safe with them, I express my affection. This often seems to make them uncomfortable. Being God-fearing servants of the Lord, they are afraid that my love for them -- even if it is a very spiritual love -- might become a dangerous temptation for me, so they have treated me harshly.

...Sometimes when I saw how they were misinterpreting my feelings for them, I would laugh to myself but wouldn't let on how unattached I really was to any human being. But I did reassure them, and as they got to know me better, they realized that my primary attachment was to the Lord. (pp. 304-305)

I was wondering one day if the joy I derived from my relationships with my spiritual guides represented a dangerous lack of detachment. I loved being with these men....Then the Lord spoke to me. "If a man who had been close to death attributed his recovery to a doctor, it would not be a virtue for him to withhold his gratitude and love from that doctor. And so it is with you. If it hadn't been for these people in whom you have confided, what would you have done? Conversation with good people can never be wrong! If you consider well whatever you say and always speak with integrity, you have no reason to avoid their company. Not only are such conversations not harmful, they are beneficial"

This was very comforting to me. I had been worrying that because conversing with these men gave me such pleasure, it must be an attachment. This made me not want to talk to them at all. (p. 341)

Two years ago it was St. John of the Cross who showed up on my doorstep after pretty much keeping silent for two decades of my life (wrote about that one here). Last fall I started in on Edith Stein before writing music pulled me away. (Hmm... just noticed that...) Next I plan to read the autobiography of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, whom I have to admit I've never developed a fondness for. Probably that's because of my own disconnectedness from a sense of ever having been a child. And next Sunday, please God, I will finally get to my very first lay Carmelite formation meeting.

Because maybe I should start taking the hint.

Confessions of an Evolving Unschooler

So, my kids are really in for it. Who am I kidding -- I'm really in for it.

We are homeschoolers. Geez, I hate that term. I used to say that we are unschoolers, which some people understand and most don't. Let's just leave it at this: I don't send my kids to a school. We learn without it. Now, I suppose I might scandalize my UnschoolingCatholic friends with this (then again, I know they are a great bunch of women who don't scandalize easily, plus I highly doubt any of you are still reading this blog since I've pretty much dropped off the face of the UC group in the last few years), but we are moving steadily away from true-blue unschooling. I've always been about finding what best serves my chidren's needs, and really I think that's more what the intention of unschooling is (unless one just really wants to grind an ideological ax, and yes there are people who groove on that sort of thing).

I found a few years back that my son was complaining to me about his academic formation. Specifically some of his friends were calling him stupid and spoiled because he didn't spend as much time on schoolwork as they did. My son took this to heart. Now, it doesn't help that most of my son's friends are older than he is, and some of them really delight in demonstrating at every possible turn how smart they are. But while he could read far beyond what would be considered normal for his age, he could barely add single digit numbers without counting on his fingers.

Well last year I (gasp) bought him a math textbook. And with great effort on both of our parts, he went from 0 to 60 mph in about nine months. He also really got a kick out of telling his friends "I can't play now; I have to do my Latin."

Now he is 11, and I informed him that this year I will be expecting a lot more from him.

In a way, I have been waiting since his toddlerhood for him to be 11. It is such a great full-speed-ahead age, and such a perfect age to not be in school, fighting for one's life against the social shark-infested waters.

And then there's my daughter who is as smart as a whip but tries very hard not to let on. She has an amazing capacity to memorize, and she is so dutiful. She's a girl, for crying out loud. The child's academic world is made for her.

So, I've announced that we are going to move full steam ahead, doing all sorts of not-very-unschoolish looking things. We are going to master some great skills. We're going to study and learn so much.

Can you hear me salivating?

And I'm in for it.

See, I love learning, and of course all of the stuff my kids are learning right now is very simple to me. My very big problem, I admit, is that I do not know how to patiently come alongside someone who is learning. I think I should coach football, because my style is more the push-and-yell-and-challenge style. Think! Use that brain! Stop being lazy! Do it over again! Go, go, go!

My son, I think, needs this. I know God matched me correctly with the children He gave me, but I fear I will crush my daughter, and I know I am capable of deeply frustrating my son, too. I need to take breaks to go off and do push-ups or something, because I get my choleric dander up and I just lose my ability to be patient and understanding and encouraging. I love working hard, and probably my primary way of bonding with my kids (or anyone) is to work hard with them. But there's a big difference between working hard with someone and dragging them along by their hair. Unless, of course, I hit a snag of depression, and then I say "Oh, hell, go watch a movie, I'm going to lay in bed today." I suppose this will eventually (if it hasn't already) leave the impression on my kids that if I'm pushing them it's because I'm happy. Hopefully that will balance out whatever other psychosis I impress on them.

And hopefully the years of personal formation I did with the ideology of unschooling will keep me from going really bonkers on them and forgetting that learning is everywhere and always. And I do already know deeply that they are more important than their performance and grades. I haven't completely lost it!

So, ask me in a few months how it's going.

On second thought, mind your own business.

The Hard Ways and the Love of God

This morning I've been thinking about some of the hard ways in which God has led me.

It is, indeed, of ultimate importance that we come to understand that God never has any thought toward us other than total and complete love. But I guess that means that we also come to disassociate our ideas and our experiences of love from our desires for indulgence. Indulgence means that right now, today, I have an idea of something that I believe will satisfy me, and I want tons of that and I want to wallow in it, even disappear into it. That's pretty much a definition of disordered love, is it not. First, we know by experience that what we think will make us happy today doesn't always make us happy tomorrow. We also know that just because a little of something gives pleasure does not mean that a lot of that same something gives a lot of pleasure. Sometimes a lot of something just makes us sick, or at least sick of that thing. And disappearing into something? People disappear into prison cells.

Disordered love is about willing bondage.

What about real love, then?

Yes, there is such a thing. Even people who "believe in God" sometimes doubt, based on their experiences, whether real love exists, or at least if it will ever show up in their lives. If God loved me, then I wouldn't have xyz going on in my life, children wouldn't suffer and everyone would be good to each other. It's not a far leap to chuck the idea of a personal God entirely, except perhaps as a cultural icon, an idea, after one questions God's love in this way.

Moderns like their theism to be self-styled, and this kind of junk betrays that one has remade God in one's own image. I think what one is really saying is If I were God, I would get rid of xyz in my life, and I'd make everyone happy. I'd be a great sugar daddy!

Reminds me of listening to a bunch of kids (or maybe candidates!) making plans for the country after one of them becomes President. Everything is free and everyone has all the money in the world.

Back to the top. I've been thinking about some of the hard ways in which God has led me.

God's love, the real stuff, has as an effect our freedom. When we really let God do His thing with us, it will (get ready, you can take it) hurt, but only to the extent that what binds our lives up gets broken away and what imprisons us gets destroyed. We simply have to want real love more than we want the bondage we create.

So, I was thinking of all those jobs where I had to make and answer hundreds and thousands of phone calls. Me, the phone-phobic woman. Some of those I answered were extremely intense when I worked for the Right to Life office and got grieving or angry or sometimes just downright evil people on the other end. And I thought of the time I spent in Japan. At a time when I struggled to speak even to friends in English, I plopped myself into a foreign country by myself where I could not communicate with anyone beyond the level of a toddler. For 30 months my soul scraped the dregs of isolation and loneliness. And then there was the whole infertility thing, when I felt that God Himself was thwarting my deep desire to become a mother. That pain was only second to the pain and mental torment I'd endured wondering if I would ever have a husband in the first place.

Often during these years I'd say to the Lord through my tears, "I don't see your love in this."

God's every thought toward us is love. His every movement toward us is love. His every desire toward us is love. Love entails the giving of oneself. But for God to give Himself to us in a way that we can receive, we need to have space, openness to Him. All of these painful things were really like sunlight shining on me, melting my frozen, fist-like heart that would not open to receive anything from God because of fear and shame and all that bad stuff. If ice could think, it might think sunlight is an enemy bent on its destruction. It might not realize that there is an entirely different state in which it can exist -- that of life-giving and refreshing water. It might not realize that it is meant to be part of a cycle of movement and change and that if it gives itself even to the hottest sun, it won't be annihilated.

Sometimes the things that cause us the most pain are the deepest evidence of God's loving presence in our lives. He is coming to liberate us. It is who He is and what He does. He is our freedom. We can trust Him.

Faith Had Led the Way

Yesterday I was listening to a teaching by Mother Immaculata, a Carmelite nun, on St. John of the Cross. Good stuff. This is I think my third time through the CD set, and of course each time something new is what grabs me.

This morning as I thought about what I heard yesterday, I had a naru hodo moment. She was talking about the three theological virtues: faith, hope and charity, and how they grow and develop together. Actually, she was talking about what St. John has to say about faith, and how we fail in faith by not believing that God's mercy can apply to us, in our particular lives and circumstances. In that context, she made a comment, something along the lines of "thanks be to God, because all of the theological virtues hang together, our acts of love also build up our faith and our hope."

This morning, it struck me. Throughout my life, faith has led the way.

And then I could understand what Mother Immaculata was actually saying. In her experience, and maybe most people's experience, love is the virtue that we are called upon to exercise the most in most normal contexts of life. It is perhaps the most "natural" of the supernatural virtues to most people because of our constant need to use it. And she was grateful that it helps build up faith as well.

Well, ain't the case in my life. I have often thought of a song my friend Gail wrote when we were young adults. She grew up in a Buddhist household and was baptized at 19. The first line of this song was, "Where I grew up Jesus was a dirty word." I think of this because in my young life, "love" was a dirty word. Love was something illicit, something you didn't talk about, something from which you avert your gaze. And then there was "God is love," but that was mostly just words. The devil was pretty effective at snatching the concept and reality of love away from my mind and heart and making it appear as putrid as himself.

Then, there's hope. Oh my, what a laugh. My brooding, dark personality needed little help settling down into utter despair. I was so drawn to dwelling on the negatives of life that it was simply habitual to me to give up hope for anything good. Ugh. It's oppressive to even think about how easily I abandoned hope.

The one virtue left, the one little toe-hold of grace that was left to me, was faith. Perhaps it helped that my Lutheran formation emphasized the importance of faith almost to the exclusion of all else. I know that I didn't have a right intellectual understanding of faith, but one doesn't absolutely need right understanding to exercise a virtue (thank you, Lord!).

Looking back, I can see all the times the Lord called me to trust and take a step forward. I think I have gotten a lot of exercise in this primarily because of how frightened I was of everything. I see now how my timidity has been a gift. I think of a certain book bindery we now pass by every time we visit my Mom, because of where she lives now. I worked there as a temp during the last summer I lived at home, so when I was about 20 years old. The first day I walked in there I was so petrified. I felt like I was walking into the belly of the beast, like I would be killed. The truth is, I've felt that way about almost every new situation I've ever encountered!

And I think of how I used to write letters to my friend Keith when was a missionary in Africa. I wrote maybe three or four times a week. And every time I dropped a letter into the mailbox, I was stretching my heart out in trust. And I vividly remember at the time this image of a spider spinning a web. One tiny thread at a time, the web gets bigger, wider. I could feel how my heart slowly was expanding, and how I was able to say, "Yes, Lord," and step into life. And I see now, too, how true it is what Mother Immaculata said. As my faith, my ability to entrust my life to the Lord, grew, I had more hope and even more charity.

Then God called me to become a Catholic. Wow. That was a leap of faith. Then I went to Japan. Well, that felt like a leap of stupidity, but in the process God really restored my sense of hope and purpose. Then I got married and had children, and finally I began to learn that love means giving oneself.

And now, well, I feel like I'm finally firing on all cylinders. To be honest, on the occasions where the words "I love you" actually come out of my mouth, I am fully aware that this is a miracle. I'm sure this is why it has taken me so long to "get" that doing my daily duty is how I build up the kingdom. Faith is still my strongest cylinder. I don't scare nearly as easily as I used to, but God knows how to work me into situations that challenge my faith again and again. Maybe it is because I have such an intense need to understand that He often directs me to step out in faith at His call, without understanding. I don't know. I've made plenty of stupid mistakes with this faith business, but I guess that's why you call it "practicing" one's faith.

Anyway, I realized this today, and I'll just join in Mother Immaculata's sense of gratefulness with my own twist: Thanks be to God that the exercise of faith can also make one grow in hope and charity.