Depth of Identity

Must articulate more thoughts provoked by yet another song. 

Because I went down a Yannick Bisson rabbit hole a few months ago (because of becoming a Murdoch Mysteries fan as a result of a David Suchet/Hercule Poirot rabbit hole a year before that) I have been watching Sue Thomas, F. B. Eye. It's a decent show, even if it does often leave you conscious of the actors having learned their lines. (I'm a sucker for characters, who I start to care about like they are real people, and I like these characters.) This show has a theme song called Who I Am, by Jessica Andrews.

Now, to be honest, I usually skip through the theme song when I watch the show. There's one held note right towards the end that just rumbles my speakers the wrong way. Plus, the theme song often comes as much as five minutes into the opening of the show, and by that time I want to just get on with it.

But lately I've listened to it with more intentionality. I couldn't actually understand the lyrics at first, so I looked up the original, longer version on YouTube, with lyrics. I was struck in kind of a confusing way by this experience, and I've been just waiting for the chance to sit down and untangle my thoughts on this.

First, the song has a strong, driving, triumphant sounding female vocal, which is great. The song is all about personal identity, and the feeling the song gives is of confidence and certainty. It fits the show well, because the lead character is a deaf woman who has overcome a lot of social obstacles and who now works for the FBI. (There was a real Sue Thomas who did just this.)

So I was weirdly struck when I understood the words of the chorus:

I am Rosemary's granddaughter
The spitting image of my father
And when the day is done, my Momma's still my biggest fan
Sometimes I'm clueless and I'm clumsy
But I've got friends that love me
And they know just where I stand
It's all a part of me
And that's who I am

So, let me unpack how this strikes me.

First of all, I have to say positive things. We are communal beings, and our identity is absolutely revealed to us in relationship to other people. I don't know who I am without you. And our families are surely our most primal sense of belonging and identity, so there is beauty in this.

A bunch of other things occurred to me before that, though. First, I can't relate. At all. Singing a song of strength and connecting it to my family of origin and how we felt about each other is about as far from my experience as picking cotton in the Deep South or fishing in the Alaskan wild. But I can imagine it. And as I said, I can feel the value in it. 

I'm also a genealogist and I follow genetic genealogy groups, and I hear people who face discoveries, for example, that the father they always knew turns out to not be their biological father. I see how this is absolutely devasting to a lot of people's sense of identity. Or the overwhelming emotions of adoptees who meet bio family for the first time. 

I think of the compassion I've had to learn for myself. I became interested in genealogy at a young age in part, I think, to get below the immediate surface of the addiction and mental health issues of my parents, and their divorce, to see who else were my people. 

But beyond on that, there was something even deeper that troubles me with this song. 

It's such a shallow identity.

If my ultimate identity is just in my family and my friends, or even in my own strength and accomplishments -- all of this has a failing point, sooner or later. To pretend otherwise is just folly. It is true I am made for relationship, but my design is incredibly profound: I am made for relationship with God Himself. I have found that relationship in Jesus Christ, and so my life's bounty is to grow in my identity in Him. He is my strength, my love, my healing, my forgiveness, my joy, my purpose, my rest, my delight. That is really something to sing about. 

I understand that some people may have actually found this depth of relationship with God precisely because of the faith and witness of their parents, and that makes sense to me. If this is the case, the failure with the song is a skipping over of the primary, to focus on beautiful secondary causes He has given into one's life. (In fact, the Sue Thomas character, and the real life Sue Thomas were both Christians and regularly pointed people to Him.) It's a country song. Maybe everyone who listens to country music presumes Jesus. I just don't think presuming Jesus is ever a good idea. 

Identity is such a huge piece in Christian life. It isn't exactly a doctrine. It's really more of a component of what is properly called mystical theology, or lived Christian spirituality. American culture is in a state of crisis over personal identity, and Christians are not helping matters if we are not rooted in identity in Christ and if we don't know how to help others root in Him. I suppose I am keenly aware of this precisely because I'm currently in formation to do that as a spiritual director. 

I could delight in thinking of myself as a daughter of St. Teresa and of St. John of the Cross. Carmelites do call them our Holy Parents. Clearly, obviously, we only love them because they teach us how to love Jesus and be loved by Him. I can actually see myself delighting in singing about being a Carmelite ("and that's who I am!"). I think it is just a crime against humanity, literally, to stop short of God and to place our identity in any created thing, even our most beloved loved ones, themselves.

And, here's the song as seen in the show:

Ponderings from Dear Master, Part One

 I want to draw out and mull over two points that struck me as I was reading the other day. The book involved is Dear Master: Letters on Spiritual Direction Inspired by Saint John of the Cross. It's a clunky title, and the premise of the book, objectively speaking, is a little strange to me. But I leave that aside to focus on these two bits that helped me clarify two episodes of my interior journey.

The first point is on page 4, where Susan Muto writes (in the voice of St. John of the Cross to his directee Ana Penalosa): "...let us be...like the Samaritan woman, who forgot her water jar as soon as she tasted the living waters offered to her by the Lord (Jn. 4:28)."

First, this admonition implies we have a choice to forget something. And having a choice to forget something requires the ability to distinguish between or among things. The "thing" in this passage is natural water versus the living water which Jesus gave this woman through their encounter. Ponder with me on this a moment.

The woman came to the well to get water. This was a normal, daily task, and she may not have been very mindful about what she was there to get, being in the sort of auto-pilot mode in which we frequently live. Functioning practically, but not very tuned in. Our primary energy expenditure is on some kind of survival, the endless cycle of trying to keep impending doom from overtaking life. For her it may have been social rejection, a shame and identity of worthlessness that broke her heart. She'd lost at least five lovers. This defined her life.

Jesus came to give her access to a very different interior well, one that could meet needs that screamed so loud she could not hear them, one that would redefine her life. Immersion into the very interior of God that He was coming to reveal. And he pierces from the normal daily task, into her hidden interior, finally into the mystery of Trinitarian life. All by talking with her. 

She feels the power of the mystery even from His first words. Why are you talking with me? This is so different from my normal life. This jars me out of auto-pilot and suddenly I'm aware again that I'm a person. 

A lot of things get stirred up in her: old issues she needs to understand. Hurts that are real, but at a safe distance, like the struggles between Samaria and Israel. 

Then her personal heart is pierced, and her longing for The One who will come is laid bare. And when The One is longed for, He answers immediately: I who am speaking with you, is He. 

In the gospel, she then drops her jars and runs and tells everyone. But in my experience, where this drama of encounter did not take place in a ten minute conversation, but over years, this part looked a little different. And it seems that this author implies that St. John of the Cross would say this is a real step in the spiritual journey: choosing to drop the jar, and seeing the difference between the natural and the supernatural gift from God.

Because (indulge me in some imagination here, a moment) what if the Samaritan woman had gotten confused at that point between realizing she has just met the Messiah, and instead realizing she had just met a man who finally understood her. What if she had not had this instant conversion, touching into the heart of the Trinity and finding her ultimate purpose fulfilled, and instead embraced the penultimate healing of her sad history of relating with men who either died, or left her, or repudiated her, or however it was the she had gone through her sad history that now left her devaluing herself with Lover Six who wouldn't even marry her. What if it took her a minute to stop at the way station of psychological and emotional healing, and maybe in the process even became inordinately attached to the Jesus of Her Dreams as potential Number Seven as she reveled in the purely natural gift of knowing that human being that she forgot she was, was actually created by God to be loved, not as chattel? 

The beauty of the real Scriptural episode is that the grace of God present through this conversation with Jesus was so powerful that she left completely changed. Grace can and does operate differently, as God wills it, for different purposes. This woman would not have time for years of processing; Jesus was moving in power during His ministry and He had a world-transforming Church to establish. 

And He still does, but now we live in the long haul phase, where He gives the world witnesses to  transforming interior power, like the fire in wood that St. John was so fond of talking about. 

For one who starts out deeply wounded and mired in indignity, there needs to be the step of first even being able to appreciate the natural gift, the natural state God intends for human beings. Children are not meant for abuse or neglect; adults are not meant to be slaves, handing their lives over to anxiety, job, debt, the expectations of others. Religion is not meant to be fearful or grudging or guilty submission to rules and rituals. There is a natural wholeness into which Jesus desires to bring us by freeing us from the idolatry of sin and breaking the bonds of the world over us. 

But wait, there's more!

We weren't just created to not be used and abused. Re-creation in Christ calls us to union with the Trinity, to divinization, to become glorious. The supernatural gift from God causes us to drop our natural water jars, ah, but causes us to see that there's a choice there. And at and the same time the choice is such a no-brainer that it is hardly a quandry. Because finally, love compels us. Love has pierced into our old, broken identity, healed it, and made us sons in the Son, the spouse of the Beloved. The living water springs up inside me, and I don't need to fear being without Him again.  

I guess this says to me that it is so important to know that the interior life, the life of prayer, the life of relationship with God has somewhere to go. To me, this is the vital importance of the Carmelite charism. I probably should write about that in its own post. Suffice it to say St. Teresa's seven mansions, St. John's journey up the Ascent of Mount Carmel, these tell us we don't just come to faith in Jesus and then wait to die. There's growth, there's progression, there's a journey to undertake. God has adventures waiting for us. There's somewhere to go, something to look forward to. And you aren't lost, and you aren't alone if you are somewhere along this path.

Well, point two will have to wait for another time.

Traveling Retreat

I just returned from just under a week of travel, so it's time to unpack. My suitcases were emptied yesterday, but this unpacking is for the interior experience.

This trip really wasn't supposed to be a retreat, in the sense that a retreat is a thing you go to with others who are seeking God, and you listen to conferences and process the information you hear. To be honest, several of the formal retreats I've been on in the last several years have felt more frustrating than fruitful. Like I was always waiting for something to happen, trying to engage my interiority but not finding the connecting point in my changed surroundings, or talks, etc. On this recent trip I did in fact have that occasion to go to another place interiorly as well as exteriorly. And I was able to spend most of one day at the Shrine of Mary Help of Christians, better known as Holy Hill, the Carmelite basilica and the heart of my Carmelite Province. 

I had a mixture of facing anxiety and nostalgia. And for once, these met and gave me a practical take-away. I realized that I cannot always take away my anxiety or grow away from it by myself. Really, the thought that I can or should is a cause for anxiety in and of itself. The realization that Mary is the Help of Christians, and therefore my help, too, is a relief. We disciples of the Lord are here to help each other. And Mary can steer me in such a way that suddenly the grace of the Lord is close at hand. Because she knows how to take my hand and draw me through the crowding thoughts in my mind and make it all seem easy.

I realize that God has my needs at heart, and He wants me to have His needs at heart. Anxiety clogs that with so many other things, taking up so many other jobs, pressures, concerns, frustations, imaginary scenarios, etc etc... I am faced regularly with things I can't control, and I can believe that because I am not in control, that horrible things are going to happen. Case in point: yesterday, the Mass I attended got a late start because they were waiting on a pilgrim bus at the shrine. I had picked that location because it was going to be feasible for me to reach home before the post office would close for the day, and I had books to ship. I noticed the moment I was in, and instead of frothing over with frustration, I entrusted my need to the Lord and offered the difficulty for the spiritual good of all those present. It was a little bit of a battle, but I realized that right there was The Point of why I pray for growth in virtue. It all turned out fine, and I was at the post office with time to spare. It made me see how entrusting my needs to the Lord keeps me free to focus on the needs of the people around me instead of on myself, and keeps me from adding to the misery in the world by my attitude, grumbling, harsh words, rage, etc.

God is working on freeing my heart for the bigger picture of life, too. In my parish, I am like a big fish in a very little fishbowl. The fishbowl is to a great degree being created by my own attitude, but I realize it isn't healthy for me or anyone. An attitude adjustment is in order, giving me more room to breathe, and allowing my environment also to change without internalizing some kind of threat from it all. Growth and change are both necessary and inevitable, and God is called a gardener for good reason. I'll let Him carry on with general management of my universe. 

I also spent a good chunk of one day with my Mom's cousin Jane. Jane's parents were both deaf, and she spent a good deal of her life interpreting for them whenever there was a family function, since none of the extended family learned ASL. I recognized from my youngest days that there was a totally different way of communication in her family than, say, with my grandparents, aunt and uncle, and my Mom. They were outgoing and made great efforts to communicate with everyone. Spending the afternoon with Jane and her husband this time made me realize how much they are both story-tellers. They love to share details, and love to hear details, but not in the way I have experienced with some people. They do not tell stories to wall themselves off or to cling to the chance to be heard or exit isolation. They speak to build community. I happened to see a thing on Facebook right after I spent time with them, and it hit the nail on the head. Of course I cannot find it now, but I believe it was a quote from Henri Nouwen that talked about speaking to build relationships, to form community, to welcome others. Like laying down a path from the heart and then encouraging, asking questions, showing interest, that welcomes the conversation partners to do the same. It's like verbal hospitality. Boundaries kept and respect shown, but openness that creates a place for peace, like seats around a campfire. I want to grow in doing this myself. It was lovely.

I decided I never want to live in a big city again. I also love summer nights and summer mornings, and daylight in general. Streets where I live are unbelievably narrow. When did it become socially acceptable for an employee to use the phrase "f***ing stupid" with a customer as a way of commiserating? Travel is good for the soul. Solitude is like oxygen to me. Quiet country roads are so beautiful. I treat my dead ancestors like stars in one of my favorite dramas, and it is enjoyable to me to visit where they are buried and learn details about their lives that even they themselves probably found boring. Rushing is a symptom of anxiety. 

These things and more I have thought.

And now, to live accordingly. 

PS: The photo shows an open field which used to hold the old apartment house where I lived for five years, and the building in which I worked from 1989-1990. 19th and Wisconsin, in Milwaukee.

The Pain in My Side

Each year during the Triduum, I lead and participate with a group of parishioners who pray the Office of Readings and Morning Prayer together. (Actually, we pray Morning Prayer together daily already, but we tend to gather a few more people during the Triduum.)

One line from the Office of Readings struck me this morning as if I'd never read it before. It is Jesus the Victor speaking to Adam whom he has gone to free from Death. He says, "My side has healed the pain in yours."

For context, there's the whole paragraph:

I slept on the cross and a sword pierced my side for you who slept in paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side has healed the pain in yours. My sleep will rouse you from your sleep in hell. The sword that pierced me has sheathed the sword that was turned against you.

The entire reading is of course about the Lord freeing Adam from the death brought upon him through his sin, the sin that lost innocence for the whole human race. By extension, then, of course it is about how we are all freed from bondage to sin by Christ's victory over death.

This ancient homily was written before fundamentalism got its teeth into the book of Genesis. But what struck me is that while the text talks about sin, it was not Adam who opened his own side to create Eve. It was God. God caused the pain, if you will. And then, it says, he heals it. 

But no, I don't think the healed pain that this speaks of is just that God opened Adam's side, and now He's saying, oh, my bad, let me fix you up again. The opening of Adam's side and drawing forth Eve speaks about how on a deep level, human beings are created to be interdependent on one another, needing one another, accountable to one another, and indeed responsible for one another. The pain in Adam's side was that when Eve, a separate person, but also part of himself, faced the dragon, he stood aloof, mute, passive, actionless. The ache in his side, which he passed on to his offspring, was this "Am I my [wife's] keeper?" She's bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, but I'm totally tuned out from any sense of connection to her, or to myself that would arouse me to act when I see this assult on human dignity. "Ain't no my job."

Salvation is indeed union with God, and union with God entails communion with other human beings. In my days when I identified as a misanthrope, I really struggled to get that. It is the grace and power of God which creates both union and communion, and we are his co-operators in both. Love of God and love of neighbor are of a piece. And we will struggle with both until we accept and care for ourselves as the locus of receiving and giving of this love, and allow the pain in Christ's side to heal the pain in ours, where we mourn how our connections with others involve failure.

Fr. John, Belonging, and Conversion

My first spiritual director, back in the early 90s in Milwaukee, was a Jesuit priest who I was very personally fond of. His was the first daily Mass I frequented, at 5:30 every afternoon after work, in the basement chapel of Gesu Church. His homilies were intelligent and helpful, and I delighted at what I suppose might have been a stereotypically "Jesuit" way of phrasing certain things, for example in his prayer intentions, so they could have a meaning to cover every angle. I wasn't fond on how he would never call God "he," though. I'll never forget the line of the Psalm which became "God Godself is in the midst of God's people." Come to think of it, I did go through a time when it drove me up a wall, and I even was ready to walk out of a Sunday Mass for which I saw he was main celebrant. But the Lord pulled me up by the scruff of my neck and I felt rebuked for allowing my prideful judgment of him. It was maybe a year later I asked him to be my spiritual director, which he did for about nine months, before I left for Japan. I missed him so mightily when I left. He was essentially the only Catholic I had any connection to at the time.

I never wanted to ask him his thoughts on theology, however. It was a time and a place where there were some wild ideas going around, and I thought it possible that he might sympathize with things I would not have known how to handle. 

The one thing he did very, very well was that he accepted me, exactly as I was. And I was a newly converted Catholic who was a big mess. I hardly remember what I talked to him about, but I know I talked a lot, and he listened a lot. He also told me some stories of his own vulnerability, like how he was terrified of flying because he had severe closterphobia. I recall one session where he actually suddenly excused himself and bolted out of the room. He had a pathway into his office in such a way that he couldn't see the door from where he sat. He explained this was due to his closterphobia also. 

He died of throat cancer at age 60, just a couple of months after my daughter was born. I felt alone in the world when I found out, even though at that point I hadn't been his parishioner for over a decade. 

So why am I thinking about Father John tonight? 

I'm thinking about the power of belonging. Belonging both to the Church and in the Church. Fr. John was Gesu's RCIA director and welcomed people into the Church from all walks of life. I remember he referred to those who came in with little religious background as having "less deformation" to work with. I was definitely the opposite (though I did not go through his RCIA). 

Are Catholics weak at welcoming people exactly as they are? Loving people where they are? What about people who are already in the pews? Do we have an ever lengthening list of behaviors that people need to conform to before they are acceptable? Do we think God treats us that way? 

Conversion is about transformation. People change people (or try to, or want to) from the outside in. God changes people from the inside out. 

We are good at saying we need constant conversion. Yes. That's why we observe Lent. But to convert, we have to stop trying to make ourselves acceptable like some kind of DIY, and trying to get others to conform to our standards. We need to seek the One who is Love and let Him embrace us as we are. All of it. As we do, He will give us His own life in return.

This video spurred my thoughts the other day: Ever Wonder Especially this line: "To belong is to be seen, to be known, to be understood, and to be accepted.... Belonging is found in God."

A Woman in a Woman's World

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*Everything in the spiritual life is always just beginning.

Submission Revisited

This morning, let's say it was by the time Mass ended, I realized I now have a refined understanding of submission. 

Sometimes spiritual insights just click, becn ause a grace God gives grabs hold of words that are spoken, and both goes to a place of past experiences, and then it all elevates, it changes key, and something new is perceptible. 

And this happened today regarding the reality of what it means to be in submission.

Fr. Mike Schmitz was addressing this in recent episodes of Catechism in a Year, because the topic has been the Sacrament of Matrimony. He was discussing the verses in Ephesians that tell wives to be submissive to their husbands, and husbands and wives to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Now, I've heard any number of takes on Christian submission, but how it landed in my mind was that submission means saying yes to what someone with valid authority tells you to do. I wrote a blogpost about this way back in 2007. Fr. Mike's definition of submission (CIAY, Day 224) is "to place yourself under the mission of the other person."

And I think those words just sunk in and hit a very deep part of my awareness today.

It's the Feast of the Assumption of Mary. Now, Mary was totally submitted to the mission, the plan, of the Blessed Trinity. She was totally on-board with the salvation of the world, the sanctification of the world, and bringing total glory to God in and through her every breath. She was also totally submitted to the mission of Joseph, who was specifically made Guardian of the Redeemer. He, in turn was totally submitted to Mary's mission as Mother of the Redeemer. Their marriage was a partnership in the mission God had entrusted to each of them. They were submitted to one another out of reverence for Christ, literally. 

And so it has to be with us. Our lives are about the mission: the Great Commission, to call to bring all souls to life in God through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit. 

Ok, so even as I'm writing this, I'm coming up a sense of well, duh. 

The changed key, the newly perceptible truth stems from an interior shift. How can I struggle this out into words...

In the aforementioned blogpost, I gave the example of how I might respond to the Bishop saying he was closing my parish. I said it would hurt, but I'd go with it. And that was pretty much my take on submission. Responding to something that happened. But if I place myself under the mission of Jesus Christ, or more concretely if I place myself under the mission of a particular human being, then I am going to employ all of my energies, all of my creativity, all of my resources into furthering that mission, that aim, that goal. This is how the dynamic of my life has been leaning for some years now, but today it clicked. This employing of my energies -- that is submission. It is not passive. I don't sit and wait for orders. I'm not a harem member that waits to be summoned. To waste my energies -- to spend them all on myself or my entertainment, or to fret myself away in anxiety or nitpicking, instead of love -- that's not submission. To chase after financial security or a name or success -- that's not submission. 

I would posit that spouses submitting to each other is not about each other; ultimately, it is also about Christ. It is about serving God, the common good, and learning where each other fits within that (because God always makes space for us). And it definitely is not about simply saying, "Yes, dear" and doing what the other person selfishly says or wants. It might keep peace, but it is not a way to grow holiness. If there's no mutual discernment of a virtuous path and an active desire to seek the Lord's will and way, then trouble ensues.

Several years ago, I had the strange experience of being contacted by an acquaintance who was leaving society to join a monastery. He had a few months as he transitioned into his new life, and just during this time he challenged me to write a song every week. He asked if I'd be willing to take it as a formal challenge and submit the new songs to him every week, and then he'd give me a new tweak in the challenge for the next week. I was intrigued, so I said yes. I had not written new music in a long time, but during that time I cranked out several new songs. I was very aware that I needed that piece of being called forth. Then he abruptly had to cut off communication, and that was that. I stopped writing, because I no longer had a mission to place myself under. That experience stayed with me a long time, and I didn't know what to call that powerful impetus. I think it is the power of submission. And I think one of my central life frustrations has been to rarely find a healthy person with a Christ-focused ability to say, I have this mission; join it. Well, I know now I am a Carmelite and I do have a mission there, but even there, we are still figuring out how to respond. Why are we so slow to live this reality in the Church? Why is it so unclear to engage the mission of Christ with our whole selves? Is it because we are not in possession of our whole selves? 

Good Morning, and Welcome to my Anxiety

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Seven Sorrows Prayer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen.

St. Joseph and the Desperation for Consolation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Year of Healing

The year isn't over with yet, I know. But I have been reflecting on the healing that has come to my life in 2017. It's been a year of surprises: both of the "Wow! I didn't expect that to happen" sort, and of the sort that is more like a realization of something I hadn't known that I hadn't known before.

All of these have involved relationships changing.

But the greatest fruit, the thing that got me reflecting on this, is the great increase of peace I've known. I've written in the past about how much pressure I have habitually put myself under, forcing myself to do things that I found difficult but necessary. There is good in being able to choose to do the hard thing, but there is a problem with habitual self-violence. The chief problem is why it originates, and for me it was due to relational isolation. To put it more plainly, I mourned that I had no one to help me, no one to mentor me, no one to disciple me, no one to teach me. No one to follow. I didn't know how to enter into that kind of relationship, or look for it, or ask for it. So I did what kids do who are left, in their play, to be bosses of themselves -- I was mercilessly hard on myself.

Then, my internal reward system was set up around how well I responded to merciless hardness. If I felt like I had busted my spiritual/mental/physical/relational butt, then I deserved some kind of applause, and I took whatever good was at hand as fitting payment, thank you very much. If I hadn't pushed enough, I was subpar, and had to go at it harder. Good things were not allowed to register interiorly, much.

Any system like this that we ourselves set up fails. We end up miserable, burnt out, resentful, prideful, self-loathing, etc. But it can get to be like a treadmill that we just can't step off of. Also, because it supports and is supported by the flesh, stuff hides in the darkness, and to some degree we perpetuate sin or our pet brokenness to which we become attached like an old comfort.

God in His grace threw some wrenches in my dance of self-violence of this sort. It started with needing to face and own truth, and then speak it. I thought it would kill me, but instead it dismantled some machinery I had going in me. It astonished me for some months. It is hard to explain, but it was like having some kind of fear of death and this habitual self-violence broken off of me. It was a work of God. Deo Gratias.

I have learned to enjoy my life and God's blessings. Gone (or going) are the feelings that if I rest and delight, if I let go of my whip to drive myself on, that I am failing in holiness, that I am failing as a person. The hardness has softened. In delight I find that God is present to me by His grace, and whether I feel great about my efforts and or I don't, His love and truth don't change. His love is far more fascinating to look at than my strained interior "muscles." And that which He feeds me by His love is so incredibly more nourishing than what I dig up by vigorously grubbing for love. And I don't have to waste energy in false expectation of return from sources of the flesh that just can't make the return that His love can.

I do have someone to follow. Concretely, it is the Carmelite saints, but ultimately it is the Lord Jesus, because He had to teach me, painstakingly, to trust Him before He could show me my Carmelite vocation. And it is never not by faith that we walk. So it isn't "clear," except to the eyes of faith. It requires practice to walk by faith, to learn to recognize God's leading, to know what to take seriously and when to just walk and trust like a child, knowing that the desires that fill my heart with yearning, will still need parsing between the Beautiful and Holy that are their cause, and the stuff that gets picked up in my flesh in the interpretation and/or expression of these desires. God can handle it. He is the one I live to please, not myself. So if I have uncertainty in my own mind, but give it to Him, then I can accept not knowing stuff all at once. I can be at peace in the work He is doing.

This has actually been a really great year. No, life isn't suddenly perfect of course, but if the fruit of the Spirit is peace, I am living more deeply in the Holy Spirit than I have been in the past. That can happen regardless of imperfection level. I am deeply grateful for this. God has such good ideas.

Time to Stop Being a Baby

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Intellectualizing and Moralizing, or Misery and Mercy?

When I was an ardently practicing Lutheran (an era that concluded when I was about 20), my public formation was largely along the lines of right doctrine. A lot was made of adhering to a right set of beliefs and of learning these beliefs thoroughly.

Now as a Catholic I often feel that my public formation (by way of homilies) has a strong emphasis on right living. We need to do the right things, especially the right daily things such as prayer, service, faith sharing, and acts general goodness.

Both of these are necessary and good, or at least they are when one's conceptualization of rightness actually accords with truth.

But in both of these formulations, the most important Christian thing is missing: the how question. How am I supposed to live this way? How is it I am supposed to believe? How am I to interface with God? Not what do I do or what do I believe, but how do I do it?

How do I do it is, I think, the question of the heart of Christianity, because it hinges on lived experience, not on doctrine or moralizing. And the human heart is indeed key to the heart of Christianity. For one person to teach another how, one must have experienced heart change. (I do not deny that Jesus teaches coaches many people through to conversion interiorly through prayer, but I imagine that this is often a much longer process than being able to be directly discipled by another.)

And I believe that the key to the necessary heart change necessary to teach another is not mere intellectual enlightenment or moral exercise, but the encounter of my misery with God's mercy. Even more than that, our hearts need more than our own experience, we need the encounter with human misery in general. We need real experience with sin and degradation encountering the life-giving love of God. We need to know and experience God's forgiveness and healing for us and for others. This grants us a capacity for compassion. It allows us to realize that sin, suffering, degradation, and the need for God's merciful love is the universal human condition, regardless of what a person may present to our eyes.

The compassion capacity that opens in us is not only to give physical relief to suffering, though of course that is included. Even more it includes lifting souls from shame, shadows, and rejection into the light and solidarity and love of Christian community, of having belonging within the people of God.

Without this dimension, without being able to operate on this level of recognizing both within myself and within you our shared misery and our (at least potentially) shared experience of God's mercy, and addressing the reality, actually talking, teaching, and preaching about it, we are trapped in the intellect or in moralizing. Sharing experiences forms a bond. Human beings finding God's mercy need to rejoice with others who know this same joy or they will spiritually suffocate.

We need to be able to know, touch, courageously face, and articulate our realization of our misery, our utter need for God in every way. To do this, we need humility. We need time spent in silence so that we have the opportunity to meet ourselves. We need courage to face the truth we meet. We need the ability to be present also to another person and his suffering without trying to mute him when we dredges up what we'd rather not face in ourselves. We need frequent confession.

We also need penance and self-denial, but not the kind I do to impress myself with how much sacrifice I can bench press. We need penance that opens us to experiencing and accepting weakness. By this penance I intentionally touch my misery. And touching it, I turn in trust once again to God's infinite  mercy and realize that that, and not my capacities, is what is awesome.

Thoughts Before Bedtime...

I'm stealing a few moments from my sleep to write about a dream I had last night.

Somehow I was time-traveling to the era of the US Civil War. There were several people gathered together, President Lincoln among them, and they were all agitated and worried about the possibility of impending assassination. I walked among them and could feel their concern. As I walked away, I was passed by two different versions (in that bizarre way that can only happen in dreams) of John Wilkes Booth, headed toward them.

From my omniscient stance, my calm reaction to all of them was, You know what, not all of you will be assassinated just now, so don't worry. But I'm from the future, and I can tell you for a fact that you will all die.

And I woke with a very clear sense that reality can only be one of two things: Either human life has no meaning at all and a bit of momentary pleasure is all that can be had, or, the only thing that really matters in this life is the drama for each individual human soul's preparedness or lack thereof to approach and enter the life of eternity.

Clearly, I believe reality is the second of these options. But I just as surely hold that there is no middle ground.

There is a lot more to life than dying, but there is nothing else that should give meaning to our life than what our death means.

Just a thought.

The Importance of Being Human

There's a lot of talk going around right now in the Catholic Church, because of Pope Francis and the general agenda of the Holy Spirit, and common sense, about how we need to stop being so self-referential and actually change our minds (aka be converted) about how we deal with those with distant, loose, or no ties to the Church.

So it was interesting to me to just experience something very similar in a different context: the public school system.

My son wants to try going part-time to the public high school this year. I made a call today for the information. It went like this:

Me: I'm considering enrolling my son as a part-time student. He has been homeschooled in the past. Is there a list available of which classes are offered at which time?

She: My guidance counselors have that list.

Me: (after a brief pause in which I thought I would hear more) Is there a way I could have access to that list?

She: None of them are available right now. They leave at 2. Eight to Two!


Me: When I call back tomorrow is there another number I should call, or whom should I ask for?

She: What's the kid's name?

Me: (I tell her, even though I have no idea what it could matter since we've had zero past dealings with the school)

She: Mrs. [Thing]

Me: Mrs. T-h-i-n-g?

She: Yes, Mrs. [Thing.]


What the exchange taught me is that the woman to whom I was speaking had every expectation that I should simply already know the who, what, and when pieces I was missing. She knew. Everyone in her office knew. So should I. Silly, irritating potential student parent.

But I've never been in this system. It is brand new to me.

It is amusing to see how this plays out, and does not speak well of the humanity of the "system" I am reluctantly entering.

But when this sort of thing happens in a Catholic context, or Christian context, where we are not naturally positioned to respond in the most helpful and welcoming way (without going gushy-overboard, you know) it doesn't speak well of the humanity of the Christian system either. And that is a scandal for which we need to do penance. Because, yes, unfortunate things happens with those initial contacts, too. People leave a phone number and never get a call back, or get a call back with no knowledge of why the original call was placed, or get a terse message to "call so and so to sign up for RCIA" (wait, what?), or get intrusive guesses about why the person wants to become a Catholic. Or they are even met with statements about how they don't really want or need to become Catholics! Don't believe it? I've heard stories about every single one, and have had three of these happen to me, four if you take it out of the calling-the-rectory scenario.

Evangelization skills start with humanity skills. It's as easy and as difficult as that.

I Do Not Permit a Woman to Teach or Have Authority

I am not a Scripture scholar, although I have studied theology at the graduate level. So what I'm about to say is not the result of textual analysis or research, but rather the result of meditation and living with Jesus, and that sudden moment of "aha!" that gives me a new insight I never once thought about before. Call it a hunch, if you will.

Among the passages of Scripture that really rankle people is 1 Timothy 2, where Paul has his bit to say about women in the church. For example:

I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man. She must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. Further, Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and transgressed. (verses 12-14)

 I've heard any number of teachings trying to bring this Scripture to bear on modern life. There is of course the literalist approach which takes Paul at face value and does not permit women to speak the Word of God in a public church setting. I grew up in a church which taught this way, though we were nothing like fundamentalists (just Lutheran). However, in that same church body I also heard the interpretation which weighted the first word of verse 12 as having all the importance: "I." This approach said it was just Paul's issue, not something that universally applied even at his time.

Yes, it is a bit weird to posit that St. Paul was a jerk who randomly imposed his will and that Scripture preserves that, but once you lose your moorings from a Magisterial understanding of Scripture, anything is possible.

The Ignatius study Bible proposes that this passage (and a similar injunction to silence in 1 Corinthians) means that women are barred from preaching in the context of ordained ministry. Well, ok. There are other arguments about why women do not receive ordination, and I think the strongest one is that to be a father, you need to be a man. But I'll leave that to the side for now.

It sounds to modern ears that St. Paul is barring women from something. Or rather, that God is barring women from something. Yes, we could deconstruct Christianity in terms of power and politics like those do who do not know the power of God, but that way of death has run its course. If we start from the reality of the life-changing encounter with Jesus Christ which has already revolutionized the soul of St. Paul and go from there to the fact that the Holy Spirit was forming a people all drawn from darkness and sin into a completely new life in the new covenant in Jesus Christ, and working through Paul as an apostle, I think we need to look again at what else might be going on here.

Let's just refocus for a moment away from "woman" in that passage, and look at the word "man."

Who has to be taught? For whom is authority structured?

Those who need it, and especially the ignorant and the unruly. Children, basically.

In other places in Scripture, believers are told they have no need of anyone to teach them, because the spirit of God Himself teaches them (cf 1 Jn. 2:27). It also has words to say for those who should be mature, but aren't (1 Cor. 3:2, Heb. 5:12). The authority that Paul most frequently speaks of is a fatherly authority, one who lays down his life and teaches by example how to live. Fathers are mature. Children are not.

Just what if what Paul is really saying here is, "Men, grow up. I'm not letting women do your heavy lifting."

Because look at what he goes on to say: Adam was formed first, but Eve was deceived. Scott Hahn has popularized the approach to the Genesis account of the fall that says Adam's key failure was stepping up to the devil and laying down his life, or being ready to, in order to stop the avalanche of sin. But instead, he simply remained still and silent, and let Eve take the hit. St. Paul reminds us of all that.

What if St. Paul is really saying that while women, holding the preeminent place of honor in the Church in the person of the Blessed Virgin Mary, have certain natural capacities that lend themselves to a strong interior life might have the capacity to teach and hold authority, he wants men to step up and take the spiritual responsibility in their circumstances, unlike Adam. This is the way they would authentically imitate Christ, the new Adam. This way, the reality of the new life of the new covenant would be made manifest to the world.

What if it wasn't about "putting women in their place" all along....

Sunday is for Heaven

In my mind, the Sunday or feast day celebration is about two things, or two sides of this coin:

First, we unite ourselves as deeply as we can, body, soul and spirit, to the Blessed Trinity in the worship of Christ to the Father in the Holy Spirit. This is carried out in space and time through His Church in the Liturgy of the Hours and especially in the holy sacrifice of the Mass.

And then, believers console each other as best they can that we don't live in heaven yet, but still on earth. We search out and offer each other the best we can find by way of traces of heaven in our souls, in our communion, in God's creation, and in the poor.

And then we move back into our work with a blessed but wistful heart that this earth is not our lasting city.

Graces, Math, Practice and Delight

I'm not one given to sentimentality, particularly not about things like thankfulness on Thanksgiving. Reality is good, but I often find sentimentality is more in touch with creativity than reality.

So here's my take on what I am thankful for today.

The other day I experienced something that I could recognize as clearly a gift of grace. There was a situation that was not unlike other situations I've been in in past months and years that has caused me grief, bitterness, pain and turmoil. But on this recent occasion, it came and I was ok. I greeted it with acceptance, and there wasn't the slightest bit of pain involved. In fact, I had a smiling feeling of delight precisely because I recognized the grace involved in this. I was happy in facing this difficulty.

A day or so passed, and I admired this little experience. Ah, how good God is to me. I'm making progress. Indeed.

And then out of the blue, in a setting I didn't at all expect, there were comments innocently made to me that cut me down to the heart. Ouch.

Oh, wait. This is just like that other thing I was just so happy about. Ok, take a deep breath, and go to the same place. I managed.

Then there was another situation where I was already prepared for it to be rough. I was not disappointed. But dang, all of a sudden I realize that the same principle is in play here as in that graced victory the other day. No wonder I've never liked it. The pummel came like a slow, swinging pendulum. Again. Again. Again.

Sigh.

There's nothing at all wrong with delighting in evidence of grace working, because it is the gift of God. But there's everything wrong with sucking on the sweetness of being a location of God's grace working. Yay me. It's going so well for me now. I'm so, you know... where it's at.

It reminds me of my daughter's approach to learning math. She will dutifully sit with me, attend, and while I work with her, she will grasp a concept. Her face will beam. "Ok, now you do this same thing on this two-page exercise, all in different ways."

Wait. What?

"Oh, and this is a skill that you'll be using over and over and in combination with much more complicated skills for the rest of your life."

Crap. It's not fun anymore.

Well, guess what my dear. It's lovely for you to find it fun, but the need really is that it becomes second nature to you, so that you have the skill to do this automatically and use it in situations where math, or virtue, is actually called for and needed. Because that's the whole point of learning. It forms you, and you master it. And so you are more fully human in this one little way. Oh, and there are hundreds and hundreds of these little bits for you to learn. Some will come easily and stay with you, and some you'll probably have to do some little mental gymnastic to accomplish for the rest of your life.

Let the delight of your soul simply be looking at your Lord and loving Him. Let everything bring you back to Him, lest you get stuck in even the most lovely bit of creation or the most wonderful effect of grace.

Grains of Sand

I don't have much left in this day in terms to time in order to meet my daily writing commitment, so I'm winging through it today.

A whole bunch of experiences today have reminded me of one of the big lessons I learned when I lived in Japan (and came out the other side as it were through a purgatorial meat grinder). And the lesson is this: relative to the might and grandeur of God, all human beings are pretty much like grains of sand. We find ourselves so amazingly different one from another, and we can develop jealousies and insecurities or self-hatred based on who we think we should be. But really, when you zoom out with the macroscopic lens, we are all basically the same.

And this is meant to be a reassuring, humbling, and peace-making thought.

This is what allowed me to come back from Japan and trip and fall into a job working for a very well-known person (in Catholic circles) and not treat him like he was anything other than my brother in the Lord and a normal person. I think it is also what has taught me to have respect for people I once would either have looked down upon or been afraid of. I, you, they, we are all equal in our need, our humanity, our propensity for greatness and holiness, and our propensity for sin and evil.

And my thought goes back again to that theme from my retreat this year: we all tend to spend energy on covering up our miseries and the things that cause us to desperately need God's mercy. Or just the things that make us uncomfortable, that make us feel like weirdos, so different. I had so many people tell me this sort of thing this week, including myself. Next time I'll say "yeah, you're so different, just like everyone else!" As long as we have the Lord, there need be no fear in how we appear to other people. We might have problems, but we are all works in progress. "If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ purifies us from every sin" (1 Jn. 1:7)

Being Called On

So, maybe I've reached that magical time in National Write a Blog Post Everyday because it's November (er something like that) where I get to dig a bit.

I had an inkling yesterday. That's a technical theological term for a little thought that surprised me and said "Hi. I'm not all here yet, but I'm going to be significant." I get these, and I've learned to pay attention to them. But they require some digging, some working over, and some living with.

This inkling was about the experience of being "called on." By that, I mean being encouraged to go deeper, to grow, to rise to a challenge. And in this case, I mean in spiritual matters. In other words, in real life.

More specifically, I thought of various occasions where another person has called me on in various ways. But here's the key: the inkling is about what, or perhaps closer to say how God was actually teaching me in those moments.

I'll give the clearest-cut recent example I have.

Three years ago I had a couple of kind of strange months conversing with a man in formation as a monk who I had met almost, but not quite, out of the clear blue. He is a musician; I had two of his albums produced before he went to the monastery. What did happen out of the clear blue was that he challenged me to write a song every week, record it, and send it to him. Even though he is younger than I, he kind of scooped me under his wing like a little bird and gave me a firm butt-kicking about music production. At first we conversed quite a bit, via email and chat, then only on Saturdays. But he had my attention, and, dang -- I started churning out music like I hadn't since my 20s. I was in the midst of recording my CD at the time, so music was very happening at the time. But the weirdest thing was that this happened. A little monklet causing me to turn my heart completely to music like I hadn't. And then one day (we agreed on the length of time it would be, roughly the season of fall) he basically said as of the next day he wouldn't be talking with me, but that I should send him my CD when I finished it.

It was weird. Out of the blue he was there, then he wasn't. But I saw the many differences it made to me.

I could narrate several other stories, like the manipulative ex-con 26 years my senior who taught me, as a 19-year-old, about charismatic gifts and the baptism in the Holy Spirit. The seminarian who first caused me to realize what love means, and whose friends prayed me into the Church. And others.

But the inkling I began writing about is really this: It has always been God. The one calling me on, calling me deeper, challenging me to move ahead, has always been God. He has used a variety of people, but it has always been Him. Usually, my response has been to resonate so intensely, so powerfully, so dramatically, so seriously to these instruments of His that it has made my soul quake.

And that's a euphemism for saying my immature soul has kicked up a wide variety of crap in the midst of God's work.

I think humility sees both: my soul goes on a drama fest, and God is at work. Both are true. Some portion of God's work is really all about calming down all the drama. Even though it has looked an awful lot like He orchestrates it in the first place. It seems what God desires is that I am able to enter into certain situations without getting my soul all coming apart at the seams. And that makes me understand why St. Teresa of Avila says that courage is far  more important to the spiritual life than it seems at first.

So, it has all been God. God does indeed employ persons as His instruments. That still makes me shake my head. Why, Lord. So much potential for screw ups! Does heaven sometimes call us on directly? I think so, but the Lord seems not to prefer this route. At least, when I have sensed direction this way, it has generally taken years and years -- and lived experience with other people -- for me to understand heaven's intent. The Lord really has a thing about Church.

Ok, I'll file this as mulled over, and see if there is something else to come from it.

An INTP Contemplates a Social Invitation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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