A New (Leg of the) Journey

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, I read it.

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

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

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

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

So, here's to the journey.

Following up on Things Previously Said

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

And then it happened.

I had a panic attack.

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

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

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

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

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

Inflating my Christmas Hope

I admit it; Christmas has been going flat for me. As a small child there was, I suppose, glitz that even I managed to be excited about, and as an older child, there was plenty to weigh down my soul with sadness, and later I brimmed with cynicism as we approached the celebration of the birth of Christ. No one could do it right enough for me.

But all of that changed for me on Christmas Eve of 1991 when I went to a Midnight Mass with a guy I was very interested in, though I managed to be even more interested in finally taking the step of personally experiencing something of Catholicism with as open a heart as I was able to muster. 

I was two years out of college. My grandmother had just died, I was emotionally paralyzed over remaining unpursued by any romantic interest, I constantly whined to God about how He didn't love me, my employment was purely survival-driven, and in many ways I was still waiting for my life to start. I plodded through life but dreamed, rather despairingly, of possibly having a future with meaning. 

It all seemed perfectly normal and relatively stable at the time, but when I look back, I realize I was in a rather dark place. 

This morning at Mass I began to recall the importance of keeping my personal journey fresh in my mind. I've written about that Mass many times in this blog; here's a link to the full story. Suffice it to say here that God stepped into my history as with a trumpet, announcing that He had come to save me -- me, not mankind. He showed up. He called to me: Here I am! This electrifying encounter shook my life for decades. 

Just like a little baby showing up in a poopy stable, He burst upon the scene and changed everything forever.

(Oh my goodness, I just realized I am coming up on this being 30 years ago! How did I suddenly get so old?)

It really was like being born again, in the sense that a brand new life started for me that night, and I also had much to grow into. When God again burst into my life within the last decade or so, which ended up with me entering the Secular Carmelites, I learned that a Christmas Eve conversion is something I had in common with St. Therese. I learned how Carmelite-y Advent is. I learned that my call is to be the intercessor that invites the same grace of conversion I have received to be present to souls who, like me, searched without hope of finding, whined after love with a cold, closed, cynical heart, and doubted the value of my own creation. And I realize how it makes me weep when I encounter souls like I was! Oh dear God, I can't stand to witness that pain! It makes me feel so helpless, so powerless, so... desperate! I could wish I had a magic wand to take away this pain, but in this moment I realize I have something that is real, and powerful: I have my own history of God's action in my life. Don't forget, Marie.

The proof of the power of the love of God is now in me. It is my life. It is in my reality. It is in my faith. 

For whoever is begotten by God conquers the world. And the victory that conquers our world is our faith. 1 John 5:4

Faith is the realization of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Hebrews 11:1

Faith calls me, places me, into the community of believers. As a Carmelite, I know that my vocation is ecclesial; is of the Church and belongs to the Church. I also have long had the intuition that there were people of the Church praying for me -- I mean many more than the actually individuals who told me they were, or whom I experienced praying for me. Hidden people prayed for me. I know this.

And now I am one of the hidden people, and I pray for others. I have prayed for decades for the conversion of people's hearts. Some people "specialize" in praying for healing or praying long-term for those walking through difficult situations. My speciality has been to pray for the bottoms of people's hearts to open up to Love, and respond to Love's call to belong to Him. 

What I want most is to know that the people I love know and believe that God loves them, that they deeply respond to that love. This is my joy.

And I am going to keep on reminding myself that human pain is never the end of the story. Love is patient. The Lord Jesus Christ is powerful; He is present; He pursues our hearts and will never give up. Love is not desperate, nor whiny. Jesus is with us and is pursuing us for the long (or short) haul of our entire lives. His presence brings joy, life, peace, healing, truth, beauty. We have only to open to Him, and receive.

Easter Frustrations

Perhaps because I am perennially optimistic, I think this is a good sign. Almost everywhere I look, everything I listen to within my Catholic circles (in which I include the inclinations of my own soul) I find frustrating and frustrated cries of cluelessness, for lack of a better way to phrase it. Oh, maybe it all boils down to my having eaten too much contraband food as we celebrate Easter and so my mood is all wonky, but on the other hand, maybe there actually is something out there that is groaning. Let me try to pull out a few examples.

This matter of celebration, for example. I've read a few comments about people wanting to celebrate the whole Easter season, or wanting other people to want to celebrate the whole season, but there goes that whole frustration thing. It's either "I don't know how" or "Why doesn't anyone get it?"

To this I say: mystagogy. It's what Easter is for. Today's gospel seemed to get right to the point. When we have real conversion and because of it, experience real joy, we need to drill down through it to understand more deeply our place in the story of salvation history and the meaning of what we have received. (Hint: it isn't about possession of warm fuzzies.) We also need to listen to Acts during Easter like an apprentice watches the work of the master. From this we learn what to expect as we move out into that meaning. But the liturgical cycle is all about appreciation of what we have and preparing for what is to come. And Pentecost comes later. And yes, of course we live all of it all the time, but the "cycle" part of it means we are always moving through, moving deeper.

And all of that is an aside, a really important aside, and I should probably put it in a different blog post, but this is really about frustrations, and I'm working out my own frustrations by writing, and WHOSE BLOG IS IT, anyway.

Did I mention that too much sugar and wheat aren't always good for my physio-emotional health?

Another thing I am aware of is Christians obsessing over liturgical details in various ways. Worship is super-duper important. But if we reduce Christian worship to liturgical style and rubrics, we are in big trouble. If we lose sight of Romans 12:1 worship, offering our bodies as living sacrifices, we are in trouble. We cannot offer worship to a God who is essentially a cultural icon or ideology.

And to this I say: kerygma! I have been studying the book of Acts with my daughter and yesterday was struck hard by Peter's preaching in Acts 10. I've read it who knows how many times, but when I read it yesterday I thought to myself, if one were to ask 95% of practicing Catholics what the core of the gospel is, how many, including myself, would be at a loss for exactly what to say? Love God and love people? Jesus died for you, so be nice? Obey the Church?

I know lots of Catholics who sincerely want to "tell the good news," but if we can't figure out what that is, well, no wonder we are as frustrated as hell. Are altar girls and communion in the hand really draining the Church of power? Do we need 20 new courses in how to do everything better? Frustration.

And if I want it to really get bad, all I have to do is look in my own life. From childhood I have sensed a yearning that if I was going to be a Christian, I would not be a play-Christian or a Mickey Mouse Christian. At one point I realized that I had sat in a church for some time without living faith, and I wondered if maybe there were others like that, and I felt deeply called to love this sort of person to life. If, you know, there were one or two others. The more I grow the more I realize I have nothing to give anyone that might spiritually help them, but God does, and He can give stuff through me. In fact, that's how He gives everything, just about. So now I'm becoming a Carmelite and I learn that the way I participate in this is by praying. Recently I had to answer a question about whether I am faithfully fulfilling my 30 minutes of prayer daily. I struggled with answering this question far more than I needed to, because I realized I was addressing it subjectively, as if the question were whether I feel I am praying 30 minutes a day. On the first hand, sometimes prayer really works and time flies and it hardly feels I am doing anything, so how can I count that? On the second hand, sometimes prayer walks or plods and feels so effort-laden, and how can I count that? And on the third hand, there are plenty of times that I simply sit before God and tell Him I haven't the foggiest idea what it means to pray, so how can I know if I'm doing it or not? I have a talent for making simple things very complicated. Frustration.

But other than not stressing and over-burdening my physio-emotional self with sugar, wheat, and caffeine, I guess it boils down to setting one's foot firmly on the path of faith, on the revelation of God, on the teachings of the spiritual masters I follow, and disregarding, sometimes, what it all feels like. And all those folks out there and their feelings. I mean, yes, we all get to have our feelings, and we all have to acknowledge them, but woe to us who are led by them. They do not determine how faithful we should be, how diligent we should be, how loving we should be, or what path we should take. Perseverance means that we keep going, regardless of what is going the other way or blowing in our faces.

Sometimes, frustration really is just a cry of "God, I want you!!" If frustration becomes an acknowledgment of our need and a cry for mercy that seeks contact with the God who is mercy, then fine. With patient endurance and openness to God, there's nothing to fear in frustration.

And now I suppose I'll go dig up my garden...

God's Answer to my "How To" Question

I wish I had a word for this mood surrounding me of late. I think of it as a sort of impotent intensity. I feel this great driving urge within me and also the inability of that drive to go anywhere. It's like a great desire to "pray hard" and then realizing that one can only stumblingly form words to lift to God let alone find any depth of feeling inside them.

Perhaps this is fitting for the great Advent wait.

Starting last fall, the theme that jumped out at me with my every approach towards Scripture was the theme of the anawim: the humbled remnant that has no power and can look only to God to be the Savior, the Redeemer. Last year had an Advent in it as I recall, and I heard the same readings then as I hear now. But then, it was all the call to become anawim.

This Advent, everything I hear is swirling around God the judge, the one Who arrives on the scene on behalf of the anawim. The one who takes evil out. The One with power.

So lately I've been asking God "how" questions: How do I relate to You? How do I draw near to You? What is it I'm actually supposed to do?

My problem with asking things like this is that sometimes I make nice little collections out of the answers I get. I get really happy with answers from God. The answer is a sign of God's love. But I don't always take it seriously, until the second or third or fifth time God reminds me to actually DO what He says. Geez, I sound like my kids.

Today I came across this from St. Irenaeus, and I realize it reads almost like one of those annoying "Five Simple Steps to a More Fruitful Spiritual Life" articles. But, I was asking, and I read this, so writing about it is step one in etching these things into my heart. First, the quote:

If man, without being puffed up or boastful, has a right belief regarding created things and their divine Creator, who, having given them being, holds them all in his power, and if man perseveres in God's love, and in obedience and gratitude to him, he will receive greater glory from him. It will be a glory which will grow ever brighter until he takes on the likeness of the one who died for him.

So, here's how I break that down.
Without being puffed up or boastful -- humility
Right belief regarding created things, etc. -- detachment
Persevering in God's love -- believing in, receiving, and returning God's love
Obedience -- to Scripture and to the Church
Gratitude -- for everything, towards God and people

The net result, says St. Irenaeus, is receiving greater glory. This is the same saint who says "the glory of God is man fully alive." The glory of God is really the manifestation of His presence. And St. Ireneus says that this presence will grow brighter until we actually seem to be like the Lord Jesus Himself.

So, my answer to "How do I draw near to God" is simple clear. Seek humility, seek detachment. Love God, obey Him, and be continually thankful.

All of these have given me quite a workout, but I must say the one that is left most loose and flapping on me is gratitude. I have the temperamental tendency to always see how things could be better, how they are not quite perfect. And I realize as I write that that I have some difficulty really owning that for what it is. A friend of mine who decorates our church was telling me recently how she has learned to use her own critical eye in her art to train more people to see as she sees, and to encourage others' talents, using hers to merely tweak their work rather than take the whole burden on herself. And there is a lot of wisdom in that. It isn't quite as easy to do in music, which is where I have the opportunity to train others to hear what I hear. Too often I settle for "ok, whatever" instead of helping others improve. This, too, is a lesson God has given me and I have not paid attention to.

But back to gratitude. Working to correct someone constructively is a far cry from simply crabbing and complaining about everything that's not perfect. Even if it isn't verbally articulated exactly that way, even a subtle tendency to moan over imperfect things can fuel a general direction into ingratitude. That is very easy for me to slide into. I have been making it a point to explicitly thank God for things I often take for granted. It will take some time before this becomes habitual or natural to my way of thinking, though.

Words out of Silence

This morning I had an interesting experience. It is the feast of St. Teresa of Avila, so some of the local Carmelite community met for Mass and a little reception later. There weren't that many of us, and after even a few of the few had to leave, the other few stayed to chat about our lives.

And I faced this scenario that seems to constantly repeat throughout my life.

One woman talked about how at the current stage in life, the Lord is showing her to retreat from a lot of activity and learn to be really, completely quiet inside. Others seemed to nod in sympathy.

And I felt like a salmon swimming upstream.

Silence has been co-natural to me my whole life to the point where it sometimes is my vice. I wrote about this in this post. There is a difference between being externally quiet and having interior silence, and I get that. However, interior silence has come really relatively easily for me because of my externally quiet nature. I'm not a woman who is at all likely to over-extend herself in care giving, or one to whom people flock to get their needs cared for. I don't get emotionally drawn into worrying over how people are faring. At almost any point, I tend to have a very good feel for where I am "at" interiorly (even if I don't understand why I'm there). I spend lots of time, and have for my whole life, in the cavernous regions of my soul, to the point that sometimes I haven't known how to interact socially. I've intuited that I couldn't just pull people in to one of the only things I felt personally well-versed at discussing -- interior life.

I shouldn't be bothered by this because it is simply who I am. And yet frankly sometimes it makes me feel abnormal as a woman.

What today's experience highlighted for me, however, is how God has led me since I was in my young 20s, and that is the fact that He wants my mouth. I have known that for years, and it has been a struggle. My mouth is symbolic, really, of my self-expression. I wonder why He hasn't put it to me that He wants my fingers, because I tend to write more than speak. But then again I needn't wonder that, because my mouth is what makes me feel my vulnerability more.

I knew a woman once who taught me that some people are made to feel extremely vulnerable when they are silent. We were in Japan, and she said she tried to make a one-day silent retreat, and after a few hours of the morning went by she had to walk down to the shopping district and meet someone, anyone, and talk. (I do know the feeling, although it literally took me 2.5 years of living alone in Japan before I started doing that sort of thing. And it lasted only a few weeks until I then left.) It is very difficult for me to grasp that some people are afraid of meeting themselves in silence, as, I suppose it might be hard for others to understand what have been my phobias.

But I get this sense that God's desire is for me to bring forth from my silence words that help bring others to silence. And I get this sense that this entails being able to face scary things with people. That means I probably need to learn a little sensitivity to people's fear of that intimate place of silence, of solitude, of the nakedness that leaves nothing to hide behind.

My song writing mentor friend said to me last year something about how every artist yearns to get to this place of soul-nakedness, to be able to really pour out his heart. I feel like that's what I've practiced in writing since I was 10 years old. And, yeah, I think the difficulty I have face all my life is figuring out how to insert myself in "normal society" when this is my bent. Without pretending to be someone else, without fear of being taken advantage of, and without fear of others' fear.


Maybe this is it. Maybe this is what I need to learn right now.

I Don't Do People Very Well

Some of the reasons I write this blog to begin with include helping me process and understand what happens in my life and thoughts, and having a place where I have the accountability of putting what I say "out there" for hypothetical readers, because I know this requires me to be honest with myself. But another reason I write is so that later I can go back and read what I said at a certain time, remembering what was going on at that certain time, and hopefully at that later point I can have a better understanding of all the pieces of living because, as Kierkegaard said, life must be lived forward but can only be understood backwards.

So, I write now in hopes of better understanding later. Or at least in hopes of chuckling to myself about how silly I used to be.

They say that when you draw close to the Lord you are able to see more clearly how much junk you have in your life. Well, it seems the Lord is busy drawing me close to Him. I am starting to realize that although I have certain kinds of sensitivity to spiritual things, to connections with truth, to seeing spiritual patterns, I am a dullard when it comes to people. To use a phrase that my husband over-uses to the point of irritation, I can be like a bull in a china shop. No wonder I make my daughter cry when we work on academic stuff, and no wonder I frustrate my fun-loving son to the point of tears sometimes. Sometimes I have all the finesse of an axe-wielder.

I have made my way through life by forcing myself up over obstacles, plowing ahead, clearing a path generally, not carefully. I suppose someone has to do that sort of thing, and to me it has been necessary, because I had debilitating passivity and depression standing in my way for years. But I realize now that many situations simply do not call for this approach. Many situations require delicate handling, patient endurance, a gentle hand and a calm approach. These are not characteristics that rush to mind when one would describe me, if one knew what one were talking about.

And so I see how much I need to learn from those who are not like me. And I see how much I need those who are not like me. And I see how I have to acknowledge that the entire world is not my nail to pound in my hammerness. And I see how much I need to go before the Lord each day and ask what He would have me do, and for His way of doing it, rather than presuming that just because I want it a certain way that it is wise to have it that way.

It is true that God has been teaching me for 20 years to be myself. But now I see that being myself means that I am needy, incomplete, a part of a whole, interdependent with others, and totally dependent upon God, who loves me despite my boorishness.

As I allow myself to soak in God's love, perhaps I will lose more boorish edges. I think that soaking really boils down not to an emotional experience but to a conscious awareness -- faith, in other words -- in God's love and mercy. If I stay aware of God's mercy towards me, then I will soften my approach to others, aware that it is His mercy flowing through me, not some emotional concoction I can whip up on my own. Because that's all I can bank on, really. The Lord, I am sure of. Me, I know I'm not reliable, except perhaps as a chaff dispenser. So each day I must pray, Jesus, love these people through me. Not my way with them, Lord, but yours.

Otherwise, what does it mean to belong to Him?

The Power of Carrying Out One's Duty

In 2007 my family and I traveled a few counties to our north to hear Anne speak (Anne, a lay apostle, associated with Direction for our Times). I wrote about that particular experience here. There was one little thing that happened during that talk that has stuck with me vividly all these years. My daughter was not quite two years old at the time, and during the talk she wanted to move around a bit. We were sitting on the far end of a church where the seating was a semi-circle around the altar area, and we happened to be at the end of a pew near a statue of Mary, I think. I stood up and let her interact with the statue, and all of a sudden she let out some sort of noise that was audible to the whole, packed church. This didn't bother me, really, nor did what happened next, but this is what stuck in my memory. Anne paused in her talk and said, "Every single mom sitting here is thinking, 'Glad that's not my child!'"

Now, as I said, this didn't bother me. I scooped up my daughter and we started walking the large hallway. But I could almost feel what went through Anne's head right then: "Well, every single mom, except one -- the one whose child that is!"

As I walked the hall, at one point I was smack at the center aisle of the church, standing many feet away and out of the sanctuary, but in direct eye shot of Anne, and I noticed her sort of stop where she was in her talk, and fold in a comment about how God could both use us and make us great saints if all we had to offer Him was cleaning the house and making peanut butter sandwiches all day. I got the feeling that she saw "the one whose child that was" and felt the need to insert a comment directed at me, sort of to make up for the understandable but perhaps potentially embarrassing comment she'd made.


At the time, her words hit me like pious platitudes that went from one ear to another like so much other stuff like that.

One thing I appreciate about this blog is that I can write about the "latest, greatest" thing God is teaching me, then go back a year later, after writing almost the same thing, and the re-read earlier posts to discover that what I thought was a brand new thing God was showing me was simply something I didn't pay attention to very well, earlier.

The fact is, though, that growing steadily in my heart is this realization that I participate in building up God's kingdom by my faithfulness to my hidden, domestic duty. I wish I could find a way to say that that gives it all the wallop it deserves. I've thought in the past that God was served by my intellectualizing over things and all the hot air I've spewed to people in trying to tell them how much more right I am than them, or by all my grandiose plans and intentions or at least all of my holy (or not so holy) daydreaming that I love to do, or at least by the religious trappings I've tried to surround myself in. But God keeps redirecting me: Do the laundry. With love. Change the cat litter. Without complaining. Make dinner. While trying to please others. Be patient with your children. Pay attention when they drone on and on about boring things. Be nice to people who come to the door, even when you feel like you spend all your day running up the stairs to answer it (because your butt is always at the computer chair). Let your husband know you're glad you live together. Clean the house diligently regardless of who notices.

And why? Because this unleashes powerful graces on the world, that's why. Responding to plain old reality in a Christlike way within our personal vocations is all we get in order to participate in the life of grace. I don't so much care what my house looks like, as anyone who has visited can attest. I'm not obsessive about cleaning, and most of the time I'd much rather think than do. But if I don't do my duty, I realize, my chance to participate in God's plan for spreading graces goes to waste. And what of the people who would have benefited from those graces? Well, St. Claude, who was my patron for my CD project, had some pretty strong words to say about this:  "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."

It is pretty easy to start believing that the simple carrying out of our daily duties, of faithfully doing our jobs, of being faithful to our families, has no real impact on the world. Who cares? Who can see it? But that completely misses the spiritual dimension of living as part of the mystical body of Christ and offering our bodies as living sacrifices. If there is one area where my Christian formation in the pentecostal tradition has failed me, it was that I drunk in this notion that doing something for the kingdom of God has to be big, flashy, miraculous or "ministry." No. Faithfulness and love expressed through normal life, whatever God gives us as our duty, is how we build the kingdom. Anne did not come up with some new idea when she talked about peanut butter sandwiches. She just reiterated what the Church has told us for 2000 years. And finally, I get it on a level deeper than in my head.

Learning to Trust

Last night I started writing about trust, but got too tired before I could get any clear flow of thought going. Today the familiar tide is rising -- the sense of having anxiety oozing like slime out of my veins and into my bloodstream. Perhaps this only makes writing impossible. But perhaps it makes it all the more vital to try to do.

Seems to me that trust is a lot like writing. Writers like having written; believers like having trusted. But writing and trusting both involve things that are not always easy or pleasant. You never have any reason to trust if you are never in a position of need, vulnerability, risk, danger, or dependence. In other words, you can get by fine without trusting as long as you don't insist on living.

Trusting God, I have found, is an astoundingly beautiful thing. I think that somehow from the first that I really became aware of God's personal presence in my life, I have desired to trust Him. Trusting other people was another story. How strange of God, who longs for us with all His heart, to allow human beings including ourselves to have such a big impact on whether or not we will trust Him. He must really like us. If I were God, I may have just made a lot of nice scenery and skipped the people part altogether.

But really, the point is, we look at everything that surrounds us, the good, the bad, the beautiful, the ugly, and we are supposed to realize that there is One who is bigger than all of it. He gives us signs, nudges, words, but all of that is simply supposed to make us go, "There's something to this that bigger than what I'm looking at, isn't there."

A big part of learning to trust, in my experience, is being willing to get into the place of being a child. That's probably the heart of why trusting can be so distasteful and so scary to so many people. It is certainly why I have at times found it confusing. We must be adult in our interactions; that is, we have to have our rationality in gear and we need to take responsibility for our actions, including our mistakes and sins. But at the same time, we need to be as simple as children. Wise as serpents and innocent as doves, Jesus put it. That requires an extremely conscious choice to be a dove, which excludes being a patsy. Too many people's experience of being a child is that patsy-dom, unfortunately. But I've learned it also doesn't work well to simply be wide-eyed and innocent. One can still end up doing regretful things that way. Jesus' way about trusting is never to just leave us exposed and vulnerable. But neither is it to be so crafty and calculating that rationality stamps out vulnerability, either. Really, what has to stand behind both our serpently rationality and our dovely vulnerability is the fact that God is Bigger. Trust. Our trust is in a person who relates to us as persons, leading, teaching, coaching, coaxing us. We can be the way Jesus tells us because we are in relationship with Him.

I'm thinking of something I prayed a couple years ago on Divine Mercy Sunday. Floodgates are open that day, you know, and during the afternoon vigil I asked the Lord for something, knowing full well that I was asking like a spiritual 2-year-old. (A 2-year-old might ask to have candy for dinner every night; that kind of thing.) The Lord doesn't always, or even all that often, answer me with words, but when He does you'd better believe I remember every one of them. After I made my request, the Lord told me, "What you really want is kept in heaven for you more assuredly than if [this thing I'd asked for were as assured as earth could offer]." What has really struck me about that every time I've thought about it is that God took my prayer very seriously, and He showed me that He understands me better than I understand myself. Because just like a little girl asking for candy all the time might be asking for more than candy (something she associates with candy, like happiness), God directed my heart to that "something bigger" that I couldn't even articulate. I've even prayed, "Lord, remember that thing that you told me that's what I really want? I'm not really sure what it is, but I know it's true. Can you move me closer to it, and closer to understanding what it is?"

There's something bigger involved here than what I'm looking at. Knowing that is the key to trust. God lifts up the simple, the humble, like Mary, whom He made the Terror of Demons! When I can be simple in God's hands, I'm on the right path. Constantly aware of God's presence, of my identity in Him, not clinging in fear or insecurity, but comfortable in His presence "like a weaned child on his mother's lap." There's a metaphor I can relate to! I can tell you a nursing child does not sit on its mother's lap without going after the goods! The weaned child has all the "goods" already, and is filled.

Remember the works of the Lord. Repeat them in your mind. Why did He do things for you if not for you to remember them? Has not God always given you everything you need? Do you for some reason think He will be different in that regard tomorrow?

Be still and trust.

Thank You, but No, I don't want your hug

This has been a Lent like no other. Yesterday I had an experience in prayer that was both instructive and rather hilarious at the same time. The cool thing here is that it shows me how God knows me way down deep and knows exactly what I need and His arm is never shortened to answer my need, immediately.

Mass pressed in on me yesterday. I felt, keenly, this matter of Jesus purposefully setting off for the cross, and His call to "come and follow." And my repugnance. Crosses hurt, they're scary, and I don't have your resoluteness Lord. I thought of how women get to three days before going into labor and tend to get this feeling "I can't go through with this. I don't know how." I had tears slipping down my cheeks from time to time, but I held the dam in place.

Some stuff happened after Mass. Finally by mid-afternoon I was able to take a long walk to a local adoration chapel and plop myself there for a couple of hours.

I presented myself to the Lord, prayed part of the Liturgy of the Hours, and meditated on a certain phrase that struck me. Finally, I was able to grab the need in my heart and present it to the Lord. In doing so, I let the dam go and I cried a bit. It seems I keep my needs surrounded by tears, to keep them moist, but if I've been out of touch with them for a bit the tears and the realization have to come out together.

Now I wasn't sobbing, but apparently I was audible enough for the young woman sitting just ahead of me to hear this transition in my prayer. She popped up and sat next to me, her sweet young face shining out behind her mantilla. "Hi," she said sweetly. "Would you like a hug?"

Because I was in the midst of conversing with the Lord of the Universe, I found it natural to answer her honestly. "No, not really."

"Would you like a rosary?" She held one out to me. "I have one in my pocket." "Ok, well I'll be praying for you, then." "Thank you," I told her.

I immediately added to the realization of my need in my prayer. "Obviously, Lord, I also have a real need to be myself."

I almost started laughing after this exchange, but I held to a big smile instead. I don't oppose hugging per se, but I'm a bit fussy about those I want hugging me. There was a time when I would have felt obligated to submit myself to this girl's hug, perceiving it as my duty to meet her need to try to help me. This time, instead, I took her offer at face value and simply refused it, because I knew it was not a fit. And knowing it wasn't a fit was actually a wonderful fit.

This lesson of Being Myself is one that the Lord has been driving home to me now for 20 years. I forget easily how important this is. I forget easily that my life is not given to me to be lived generically. I forget easily that being myself is not a matter of pride vs. humility, it is simply a matter of reality. "Blue is blue and must be that, but yellow is none the worse for it." I forget that each creature of God being what it is is the means by which God is glorified, peace reigns on earth, and everyone gets what they need. I forget that God is adamant about human dignity, including in my personal case. The only way to live in  harmony with our immense dignity, with our unique creation, in humility, is to lose self-consciousness, that "self factor" that has us thinking about and worrying about ourselves. It is a delicate balance, but denying one's own need, refusing to own it, keeping it in with all the tears, is a sure way of falling off balance and needing to use all sorts of fake props to keep straight. Those fake props are sin.

So, I'm heading off into Holy Week, following the Lord. The cross and pain still looms. But I am reminded that God loves me just the way I am. And when it comes down to it, being loved -- being with one who loves me -- enables me to face just about anything.

Conversion

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

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

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

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

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




The refrain perhaps says it best:

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

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

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

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

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

The Impact of Liturgy Celebrated Well

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

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

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

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

Choosing Happiness

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

I Need to Trust my WHAT?!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fascinating.

Partners

Wow... I'm hitting that "it's almost time for bed and I haven't written my daily blog post" point. I think this is why NaBloPoMo hasn't always worked well for me. Ah well, soldier through!

What is on my mind today is this matter of partnering. I find that this is a deeply important paradigm for me to keep in front of my awareness in terms of both my relationship with my Lord and my relationship with my husband. It keeps me focused on who I am and who I am with.

This is what I mean: The reality of my day (on a Monday, at least) is that my husband goes off to work and I am home with my children, doing domestic living and learning. Then he comes home for dinner, some portion of the family goes out to activities, and finally we all call it a night. I can live this with the awareness that my husband and I are partners in making our home and raising our family, that we each have the well-being of all in mind and heart and purpose, though each is involved in different aspects of the effort. Or, I can live this with a sense that I am doing "my thing" while my husband is off doing something completely different, and that because we are doing different things we are each detached, even alienated from the rest. It is completely possible that the exact same set of circumstances could be lived either way. The difference is attitude, or perspective. Where is my heart?

The reality of my life is similar. I can live my life filled with activities, thoughts, plans, sufferings, joys, prayers. I can operate as if I have an agenda to fulfill, a standard to meet. I can regularly evaluate how I measure up against myself. I can even nod my head towards God as the supposed Author of my agenda and my standard, but really hold the whole management of my life in my own hands. Or, I can begin each day (as I do, in reality) with a Morning Offering, entrusting everything that happens that day and everything I do, as a prayer and offering to the Father in union with Jesus. In this way, I am acknowledging that nothing will touch me that is not also touching my Lord. He is with me closer than I can know, experiencing everything as I do. And with my prayer of allegiance, I ask for the grace to obey every direction the Lord might give throughout that day. It is a very quick prayer, but it sets the stage of my day to be open at every turn to the Lord present with me. In this way, God Almighty becomes a partner with me, and I with Him, throughout my life. This is incredible! But what else can it mean that my relationship with the Lord is personal?

For me, the key to love is "personal." As soon as I get abstract, theoretical, figure-headish, role playing, in any relationship, I know something has gone astray. The concept of partnership reminds me constantly that I have what is mine to give, but I am not alone in that. In the case with my husband, as with other people, I give in faith, trusting him to do the same, and being helped by his giving when I get lost and give up. With my Lord, it is all the Lord who gives in faith ("while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us") and enables me to respond to Him. It's in this way, I suppose, that those who partner with us mirror to us God's faithfulness.

I thank my God every time I remember you.  In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.(Philippians 1:3-6)

Lazarus, Come Out!

The Lord can reach through time and space

And touch a wound, heal a pain

Fill a gap, leave a grace

Leaving a soul richer than the day of its creation

If only we will but see

The many ways in which we are not God

See and believe how much bigger is He

Than our efforts, our worries, our self-bandaging

Be still, little girl, He spoke to my soul

Be still and know I am God

I am Love; I heal where you cannot

In your heart, I come to stay

And from you, I go out; Bring love to a world

Which wounds in its wounding and pain

I heal you to heal; I love you to love

Gaze on Me: together always.

Finding My Words

This morning I was doing a bunch of little writing tasks, one of which was to send an email to a friend. I knew basically what I wanted to say, but there was a certain phrase I wanted to get just right. As I have done on many occasions (especially in the days when I wrote letters for a living) I prayed for words. I started out praying for "the right words," but then caught something in the nuance of my heart, having to do with what I blogged about yesterday, and I changed the request. I prayed instead for my words, the words that really get to the point in my heart. And they came.

This reminded me of an experience I had early in my journey into the Catholic Church. I don't remember exactly when it occurred, but the setting was in that basement chapel of Gesu parish where I attended daily Mass from 1992-1994. I knelt at the pew before Mass began, and the Lord spoke to me. He asked me a question: "Marie, why are you here?" I was kind of flustered, and stammered around for a factual answer. "Well, uh, I'm here because I going to worship you at this Mass..." This kind of response is pretty typical of how I respond to everyone, because communication verbally usually catches me off guard. Somehow I don't have an expectation of communication, so I usually feel unprepared. Habit, I guess.

The Lord asked again, "Marie, why are you here?" This time, I got all religious on God, sort of fawning on Him, hoping that if I bent low enough, that would somehow substitute for really answering Him. "Oh Lord," I said, "I can't really know why I'm here. But you know everything, and you know why I'm here." I had an immediate sense that this made the Lord want to puke. Like an "oh, stop it, would you?" kind of sense. I realized this morning I do this a lot, too. I don't like to admit it, and I probably don't look like I do this, but internally I fawn on people a lot. It has got to stop. Fortunately it is starting to make me want to puke, too.

He asked me a third time. "Marie, why are you here?" It was then that I realized, because I felt it become possible, that the answer had to rise out of the depths of my spirit, the depths of me. "I'm here because this is my home," I said. And as I said it, I learned it. Ah. So that's it. Not unlike the words I wrote in that email today.

Somehow, this is what the Lord is teaching me again today.

New Year's Homily

Last night my family attended Mass together to celebrate the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. Our pastor's homily has stuck with me. From the readings, he proposed some simple things for us to keep in view for the new year:

1. Bless people, especially those who present you with difficulties
2. Appreciate and live out the freedoms we have, especially the freedom to pray and to worship
3. Ponder the mystery of Christ present in your life

It isn't uncommon for me to poo-poo homilies that aren't exactly profound theological meditations. But I realize that living the gospel is far more valuable than pontificating upon it or being intellectually dazzled. The dazzle part comes in living it!

Why?

This morning after Mass, my pastor told me he'd seen me on TV the day before. Remembering the clip (which you can see here), I reflexively responded to him, "How terribly embarrassing!" To which my pastor simply but pointedly responded, "Why?" There was a lot of hubbub going on around us at the time, and it was stated somewhat rhetorically. But that question, and that little exchange has hung in my mind today. Why, indeed.

Maybe it was the sign I was holding. Someone handed it to me. Because I was supposed to be in the meeting that got canceled, not standing outside with protesters, I didn't have a sign of my own making. The sign said "I am not your ATM machine." And yes, it is true that I believe government should not impose oppressive, and especially unconstitutional, taxes. Truth be told, though, I am not at all good at standing up and saying "What is happening to me is unjust." I don't think this is a virtue, but I am more inclined to accept injustice to myself than protest it. So, perhaps it was the sign that expressed personal indignation at injustice that seemed embarrassing.

Or maybe it is just that I still have this reflex about sharing something out of my heart in public.

Why am I always spilling my guts in my blog then? TV is just a different form of media... Ok, never said this was a logical feeling.

An Incarnational Naru Hodo Moment

Just now, after noon Mass, my children and I went for a little stroll through the outdoor stations of the cross. As we strolled I stopped to genuflect in front of each station, quietly repeating the traditional prayer "We adore you O Christ, and we bless you, because by your holy cross You have redeemed the world." It is a gorgeous spring day here, blue sky, sunny, warm temperatures, and the daffodils have poked out of the ground, some with swelling buds. As we walked, I thought of The Secret Garden, which my son and I have just finished reading, and how "Magic" (aka God) makes everything come to life, even that which was long given up for dead. We pulled some dead leaves and branches off the emerging daffodils, eager to help life bloom. And each time I genuflected, I had wafts of thoughts of the Incarnation sweep over me. I thought of my significant conversion at the Christmas Eve Midnight Mass of 1991. I thought of Fr. Giussani and his insistence on Christ present with us in the Church. I thought of Jesus' suffering. About a third of the way through, my son began genuflecting along with me, and about three quarters of the way through, my daughter joined in, complete with complaints when my son was talking to her "when she was trying to pray." We arrived at the end where the Resurrection is proclaimed and beyond that where the rejoicing statue of Mary stands. I realized how much of Catholic theology is missed the more one intellectualizes it and the less one just approaches it through the common sense of a lived human life. What does Mary have to do with Christ crucified?! Isn't she detracting from the salvific work of Christ? Um, hello? She was there... she is His mother... she rejoiced at seeing God's plan fulfilled... she has a thing or two to teach us because SHE LIVED IT! My children had collected little beautiful tidbits as we walked: leaves, stones, sticks. We saw a heart shaped rock lodged at one station, and immediately my son picked up a rock and determined to carve a heart shape into it. As we left the stations area we passed the Nativity scene (also a permanent fixture there on campus). My daughter asked, could she go in the gate and give her gifts to baby Jesus? Sure. She went back a few times to give more gifts. My son was not finished carving his rock, but we made a plan to return tomorrow (with a picnic! I was getting hungry). On the way home we talked a lot about whether Jesus would like those gifts. I assured them both He loves them, not because they gave gifts, but because He loves them. But I also assured Him the gifts they gave or are giving truly make Him very happy. My son asked me several times, "Really?" as he wrestled this into his heart. Yes, really. I noticed in their very natural and unprompted actions the same pattern they use in Catechesis of the Good Shepherd. They see what God does, they make it theirs, and they find a way to say thank you. What could be more beautiful. Before we left, my daughter asked my son to make her a little person out of, um, worm castings. (This is a talent of his!) He did, but as he did, she took part of it and squished it flat. He did not like this one bit. I reminded him he was making it as a gift for her, implying that she was free to do with it what she wanted. I told him I understood his frustration though because the creator of something has an intent for his creation, a way he means for it to be, and sometimes the one to whom it is gifted doesn't accept the creator's intent, and wants to do something else with it. And then I went back to thinking about the Incarnation. Are there other models through which I can think about God's plan for my life? Are there other effective ways besides experience for me to learn things? Are there ways I like better sometimes? Yes. I could make all of life an intellectual endeavor and talk about the ideas of things, as comes naturally to me, and forget about the human, incarnational experience. But if I know my Creator, my Redeemer, why can't love simply prompt me to do things the way He likes to do them? Aha! It isn't a matter of "have to" or "it only works this way." It is a matter of "be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God" (Eph. 5:1-2) It is a matter of love drawing a little girl, this little girl, out of isolation into the playground of life, and thereby healing her.