Prophets, Prophets Everywhere

I have prophets on the brain of late.

Those Advent Mass readings, right? Even if I've heard the same thing every year in the past, I'm not hearing it the same way this year. 

Today, there's Balaam, the dude who is better known for getting so angry at his donkey that God gives the donkey speech to tell him off. Hired to curse Israel, eh? Well, we'll see about that. God makes it clear that He is the one who gives messages, even to asses like Balaam. I love, though, the eloquent intro he gives to his prophecy of the Messiah:

the utterance of a man whose eye is true,
The utterance of one who hears what God says,
and knows what the Most High knows,
Of one who sees what the Almighty sees,
enraptured, and with eyes unveiled:

 It's like you just want to tell him, ok, enough puffery, get on with it. And yet, it seems that almost in spite of himself, Balaam speaks the truth.

The Psalm: "Teach me your ways, O Lord." I heard that immediately as the prayer coming from the heart of one being discipled in the prophetic, in what it means to be a prophet. God's ways are prophetic; He is speaking forth. And the key there, as to the entire spiritual life, seems to be humility.

Then that gospel that just made me grin as I heard it. I wrote a post yesterday about St. John the Baptist, and how he speaks to me as a prophetic sign in my own life. And I love how Jesus interacts with these religious leaders. They are concerned that Jesus defend his right to, you know, exist and do Messiah-y things. They have clearly not grasped His divinity; at most they have considered it a theoretical possibility, but they are waiting for it to make sense to them before they are willing to embrace the idea. They live religion on the level of ideology. It is about the idea of a coming Messiah, the idea of religious authority, not faith, not the openness to experience that leads to the embrace of faith.

And Jesus simply will not meet them on that level.

What about John the Baptist? What about that whole experience? Was it from God? Or was it just another human thing. (Good golly, in reference to my post I wrote yesterday, how many zillions of times did I work through those questions?! Does this experience bear the marks of the work of God, or is it a simple human flash-in-the-pan?)

But these religious leaders weren't even really ready to wrestle with the question. They still worried about how the question made them look to other people. If they said it was from God, Jesus would "get" them. If they said it was all a human nothing, popular opinion would "get" them. And at all costs, they would not be "gotten" by anyone. They had to stay far removed from all that. And that's why they lived in their isolationary ideological ivory tower (oooh -- "i" alliteration; be still my poetic heart!)

No answer, Jesus. We'll stay with ideology.

Okees. You choose to stay there. Then I won't answer you, because you don't really want it and my answer will do you no good.

And right there is Jesus' prophetic lesson: this is how you talk about truth. Step one: you have to be all about the person in front of you -- understanding, loving, respecting, challenging, and then letting go.

And then I come across this homily of Pope Francis' today.

http://www.news.va/en/news/pope-francis-without-prophecy-only-clericalism
Commenting on the day’s readings, Pope Francis said a prophet is someone who listens to the words of God, who reads the spirit of the times, and who knows how to move forward towards the future. True prophets, the Pope said, hold within themselves three different moments: past, present, and future. They keep the promise of God alive, they see the suffering of their people, and they bring us the strength to look ahead. 

'Tis certainly the season to think about prophets, but there's something insistent here for me to pay attention to.

Possessions Vs. Knowing and Believing in Love

I'm reflecting on Pope Francis' homily for today, Monday of the 8th week in Ordinary time.

When heard the gospel proclaimed at Mass, it hit me in the same way this gospel always tends to:  “'You are lacking in one thing. Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.' At that statement, his face fell, and he went away sad, for he had many possessions."


The Holy Father focused on the sense of economic well-being that makes us uncourageous , lazy and selfish. He also mentions the fascination for the temporary. He says "We want to be masters of time, we live for the moment." He speaks of a contrast to these provisionally-minded people: those who have left their homes to become missionaries, and those who have committed themselves to a life-long marriage.

I have many possessions. I wrote about this in January, about attachments. This weekend I have faced a painful revisiting of this problem, this need for healing. I'm just now trying to sort out in writing the light I'm being given from these Scriptures, from the Pope's simple teaching, from my life experience.

The possessions I'm talking about don't have to do with material things. I have plenty of them, but I am not what most Americans would call wealthy. We will in a poor region on one income, but with God's blessing we manage to be comfortable.

The things that hold me back, that make me stumble, have to do with emotional certainties. When I look at my life objectively, I know this is folly. When I live my life subjectively, I struggle often. I grew up with what I realize now was an chronic insecurity about my emotional well-being and about whether I was welcomed on planet earth. I couldn't have said it at the time; I didn't know I was insecure. Or rather, I didn't know what security was. I didn't know there was any other way to be.

So as soon as I became an adult and headed into life on my own, my first quest was to figure out if I was loved or not. It is with good reason that St. John writes "We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us" (1 Jn. 4:16). We have to believe in love; there has to be a movement of faith.

I'm mishmoshing my thoughts all together here because I'm not telling stories like I need to in order to make sense of things. Sort version of childhood: Born into turmoil, alcoholism, mental illness. Then divorce, diaspora of siblings, grossly hobbled communication and role reversal about who was the nurturer and who was the nurtured. All under the veneer of a relatively "normal" life. A Gen-Xer growing up in the 70s. Conversion to Christ during that childhood, though without any spiritual mentors for the first nine years. Then in young adulthood, I was ravenously hungry for spiritual things, and took in everything Christian I could find. God protected me from so much, especially from myself and my tendency to leave myself over-vulnerable.

So, there I was, a young adult, learning to believe God loves me. There has got to be little that is more pastorally frustrating than "trying" to get someone to believe in God's love. It has to be a work of grace. There is probably more damage done than we realize by well-meaning Christians who are zealous for souls to know God's love. In my experience, attempts to "love one another" can be so devastating. And yet we must learn to do it.

Let me not ramble away from those possessions.

You see, I did learn to believe in God's love. Layer by layer, I have learned. I lived in Japan as a new Catholic for 30 months, which was a poorly discerned decision on my part, but I can back wiser. I had all my romantic notions about following God beaten out of me during that time. I came back knowing myself on an equal footing with all children of God, yes, but all sinners too. I came back knowing I need people. It was easy, before that, for my insecurity to push me away from people, not even understanding that I was undermining myself. I was naively proud enough to think I was better off without all those "other" messed up people. When I arrived in Steubenville (where I moved immediately after my return Stateside), I took the Lord up on a promise I had felt He made me some years earlier, that He wanted to be the one responsible for choosing what people would be part of my life. Mix my people-naivete with my lack of trust, and just having a sense that God would provide people for me was the greatest weight off my mind. It was the beginning of a sense that my life was partnered with God. For some people, meeting others comes as naturally as breathing, but to me it involved all manner of terror.

Within a few days of arriving in town, I met the man I eventually married (although I had no inkling of it at first). I have always said that my husband is my stability. Since meeting him, my life has known a secure foundation. This is really what attracted me to him, because he is very predictable and is slow to change, not erratic, not a flyer-off-the-handle. Childhood insecurity can train the brain to worry and to anticipate weird things like sudden abandonment. Marriage has re-trained my brain to anticipate continuity, peace, and certainty.

All that is beautiful. All that goes right along with the Pope's comments about take Jesus up on His definitive proposals, that stuff that says "put your whole life right here. That's how you follow me."

But, ok, great. I'm married. But gosh dang, if it ain't true that during that long haul, we get lots of opportunities to revisit all those needs for healing and all those calls to recommit and to understand deeper, and all that.

So it's no great wonder that as a fully grown adult, married for a bunch of years, I get to revisit whether I believe I am loved or not. We get these things, like gifts, to trip over, to wake us up, to force the question. First it was why we weren't having babies. God gives life; why wasn't He doing it for us? Am I loved? Do I believe?

Then God started calling me to pour out my life and my heart to people. That isn't something that flowed in real ways for me in the past. My naivete has been a blessing and a curse. I am interiorly compelled to pour everything out, but I make mistakes and sometimes even when I'm not making mistakes I learn that that kind of vulnerability welcomes incredible pain.

Dang it! Following Jesus means welcoming incredible pain! It's not about staying comfortable! He really meant all that stuff about the cross!

What did the Pope say: our riches "anesthetize" us. Wellbeing is an anaesthetic. And what does an anaesthetic do? It deadens us to pain. It also deadens us to pleasure. It simply deadens us. And I decided some time ago that I do not wish to live that way.

But I am forced to reconsider that decision occasionally. Like now. Do I still believe in pouring my heart out to people? Can I accept the reality of the people in my life -- that those who could not nurture still can't? That most people to whom I pour out my heart will not be moved? That none of them are God, and while I am called to love God in them and through them, no human love will ever move my heart like divine love will? That God's love for me, that constant, unrelenting, driving, powerful force in my life, is completely outside my control -- I cannot produce it nor command it nor tailor it to suit my moment? That You are my Sovereign God?

Oh God, you are such a seductive Lover! You force me out of myself, then leave me looking for You. You leave me no romantic notions of what it means to follow after You, and yet I cannot turn back, despite the cross, after seeing a glimpse of Your all-embracing love. Oh God, do not leave me alone or I fear I will turn back away from You. And yet You are only hidden from my sight because of Your incredible closeness.

Teach me, Lord, this ironic necessity to stop trying to possess love. Let me know and believe that You are the one who possesses me.

Wrestling Out What I Want

Pope Francis strikes again.

Our deacon asked a simple question in his homily today. Basically it was "what do you want from the Lord?" and the challenge to bring that to Him as we received the Eucharist. I was not feeling that great this morning for various physical and non-physical reasons, and so it took me more than an instant to have all my thoughts tumble toward that very basic question.

And long after Mass ended and I was home, I remained pondering that question, trying to make my answer presentable to the Lord. Then I thought, heck, since when have I gone back to trying to package my heart to make it look presentable to the Lord? After all, it really isn't Him I'm trying to tidy up for, it's me. I'm the one who generally can't handle the raw state of my heart. The Lord knows it already, before I assemble any packaging.

But I've also learned that what I blurt out to the Lord in prayer as the raw state of my heart is sometimes not nearly as awful as I first feel it is. If you're not a vegetarian at least, a raw lump of meat might look unappetizing, while a nicely cooked steak might be very enticing. Same thing, only different level of preparation.

So as I lay there, trying to will my head to stop hurting, my phone alerted me to some incoming message, and I read this quote from Pope Francis: "Jesus wants to establish a relationship with his friends that is a reflection of His relationship with the Father, a relationship of mutual belonging in full trust, in intimate communion."

And I thought, well, isn't that nifty. Just take out the word "Jesus" (and His) and replace it with "Marie," and there you have it. That's exactly what I wanted to say to the Lord this morning in communion.

Have I mentioned I'm not having the greatest of days? I should create named-categories for not-great days, because this one certainly isn't a terrible not-great day. It's more like a 4 or 5 on a scale of 1 to 10. And for that I am grateful.

Tomorrow I have a meeting which will hopefully have a significant impact on the evangelization of my town. It's a convergence point for several spiritual developments that have been happening in and through not only my life, but the lives of several others. Many people's prayers are accompanying me into that meeting. Just before the last meeting like this, something that doesn't seem directly connected (but, duh, it's all God-stuff) blew up at me and I immediately wanted to respond, "oh, forget all this evangelization stuff." The thing that blew up actually served to help the cause along. It was an obvious temptation.

And what I'm muddling through today seems an obvious sort of down-pulling too.

See, I couldn't help but think that I can't ask the Lord for anything any more, at least not for me, because I only seem to want impossible things. Just give up. Stop praying. Listen to people who tell me it is all hopeless. Focus on all the sin, the problems, the never-ending weakness/mistake/imperfection muck that we all live in and around. Seems the only thing I could think of that would make me happy is being in heaven. Even that, in my head, I know is a prideful cop-out. 

Was just having one of those oh crap, I'm so sick of it all waves.

And then I read this thing the Pope said today. Probably is homily in tweet form again, like last week. "Jesus wants to establish a relationship with his friends that is a reflection of His relationship with the Father, a relationship of mutual belonging in full trust, in intimate communion."

That really is what I want, too. I want relationships with people that reflect the Trinity. I know it is possible for mere humans. It only takes dying to oneself, and living through Christ. That's all. 

What other real fruit is there of evangelization? Because we are human beings, holy relationships mean that we all have to help each other. We are allowed imperfections, but we are not allowed to wallow in them. I want to be able to turn to someone and be corrected by them, with the same love that I correct them. I am allowed to bemoan my own weakness and cry out to God for help. We need to acknowledge to ourselves and to each other our need for God. If we can't do that, we stay fake and useless and prideful. But we also absolutely need to stop pretending that God hasn't bestowed His life and His gifts on us for the good of other people, even if we feel like crud. Believe what God says, not what you feel. It is crucial to me that you believe and bear witness to Christ. It is crucial to you that I believe and bear witness to Christ. Belonging to each other isn't some emotional luxury, some warm-n'-fuzzy. It is how we survive life. It is how they will know we are Christians. It is the only proof of God to the world that there is. God designed it that way. What a horrendous work of Satan when people run from opening their hearts in any meaningful way to the Lord, to their fellow Christians. Because if you think you are open to the Lord when you are closed to other people, I mean like unable to open yourself, you are living in delusion. 

So open wide the doors to Christ. May it be so in my life, in my parish, in my town, and despite the opposition.

What it Means to Worship God

I feel like I have been hanging on every word coming from Pope Francis in the month since his election. Just about everything I read intensifies a heavy, sweet, throbbing, bursting longing in my heart. As is common for me when this intensity hits, at the moment I can't really explain how I know this ... but this Pope means something for my life's moving forward. It's not just his nice words that grip me. This is about moving my life forward, or it has to be about that, "or I will die." I think I've come to know by now that when this phrase spontaneously erupts from me it is because God is leading me somewhere, and, yeah, eventually there is some form of death involved. Well, heck, that's Christianity. So yeah, somehow God is calling me.

What I read this morning (a papal tweet of all things!) was this: "Worshiping God means learning to be with him, stripping away our hidden idols and placing him at the centre of our lives." It struck me at once that this was both profound and obvious, once it was said.

But it also struck me that I have spent a lot of time in the last four years blogging my little heart out trying to discern in my own life and define just as pithily what "worshiping God" means for me. And so Pope Francis has given me a tremendous, monumental insight into my own life. Profound, and obvious. In other words, naru hodo. Big fat naru hodo.

Ok, brain, let's put these thoughts in order.

Chronology. 

Way back when, back in my 20s in my pentecostal days, twice I received a prophetic message (meaning people prophesied to me) that God had called me to teach people to worship. "Worship" in those days meant (on my radar screen) mostly to sing to God in church. I was sometimes a Sunday night worship leader, and also a home fellowship worship leader, so in the context that I understood what it meant to lead worship, I was already doing that. But it always sort of stuck out of my heart like a nail out of wood that you catch stuff on when you go past it that the phrase was "teach people to worship" not "lead worship."

But after I became a Catholic, a lot of my pentecostal experiences sort of went to one side in a "yes, but I'm not really sure anymore what that was about" pile. 

Starting about six years ago, I started rediscovering, shall we say, communal music. Then one Sunday after Mass it occurred to me that I should become a cantor. About a year later there was that Epiphany day that I fell backwards into my parish choir. Strange and powerful things started happening to me. I'm frankly used to powerful and strange things happening in my life, but that doesn't mean that each new thing isn't a complete shock to me. What I realize now is that God was teaching me to worship Him, even while I was learning how to lead in worship in a Catholic liturgical setting.

Learning to be with God. I knew how to be silent. I knew how to be introspective. I knew how to be alone and have my relationship with God. But I did not really, really know how to experience God in the midst of His people. Being in the midst of people was always kind of hard for me, a big risk, something I didn't know well how to do without bartering away my soul. And to be honest, I was always afraid that I would discover that it just wasn't true -- that God could not be found in the lives of normal Catholics. That's why I went 16 years as a Catholic without joining a choir. I was afraid that I would knock and find nobody home. 

But instead, God inundated, walloped, overwhelmed, flooded my soul with a knowledge of His Church being my family. My real and only place of belonging. And how? Because I couldn't sing random harmonies as I felt like it. Mundane concrete detail; profound, life-altering spiritual exchange.

Stripping away our hidden idols. Ok, ouch. Idols are things we give ourselves to because we believe they will make us happy, but instead they ensnare us. And they basically hide within the recesses of our unexamined minds, souls, and lives. I learned quickly in this process that a big idol for me was certain friendships where I did not, or felt I could not, exercise the freedom to be myself. To be the person God created me to be. It was this nasty trap of sabotaging my own dignity, and again, in this choir context God quickly showed me that respect of personal dignity was not only what God demanded of people in relationship with each other, but also what He expected me to accord myself.

I also had a gargantuan hidden idol of my own self-estimation as a wonderful, upright and holy Catholic woman. Well that one sure got shot all to hell. God probably expended most of his energy on this lesson right here. For one thing, in this whole ordeal I went through no less than three periods of temptation to atheism, seriously questioning whether this God I struggled against even existed. Probably the only commandment that didn't get a serious temptation workout was the honoring your father and mother bit, but probably only because I had trashed that one so much as a child I didn't need to go over it any more. Stinking, reeking pride cannot worship God.

Placing Him at the center of our lives.  This part was interesting. I've written a lot about a spiritual ordeal of the last year, and now I see that this was what that part was all about. It was connected to what I've written above, and so much that I haven't written. After all the powerful and strange, the blessing, the healing, the peace that came after wrestling free of hidden idols, the Lord wanted to see who I would choose Lord of this new place He was opening up in my life, this deeper-than-before center of all. Would it be Him? Or would it be me? It's easy to assent to the Lord with one's words and one's will, but it is another thing entirely when that cross starts messing with you. Because the real Lord Jesus always comes with His real cross. Therefore real worship means a surrender of one's life, a dying to oneself. Jesus at the center means the Lord is the one with the power, not me. It means being anawim. It means dying and being buried and knowing that I, in my person, do not have the power of resurrection. Only God can do that. He will, but I must wait and trust. 

So, in reflecting one little papal tweet, I can summarize the most dramatic spiritual odyssey of my life to date. Pretty powerful stuff. Yet another gift God has given me. God's gifts always have such interesting timing, too...




 

P.S.  From the Holy Father's April 14 homily, here's the expansion on that tweet:

You, I, do we worship the Lord? Do we turn to God only to ask him for things, to thank him, or do we also turn to him to worship him? What does it mean, then, to worship God? It means learning to be with him, it means that we stop trying to dialogue with him, and it means sensing that his presence is the most true, the most good, the most important thing of all. All of us, in our own lives, consciously and perhaps sometimes unconsciously, have a very clear order of priority concerning the things we consider important. Worshiping the Lord means giving him the place that he must have; worshiping the Lord means stating, believing – not only by our words – that he alone truly guides our lives; worshiping the Lord means that we are convinced before him that he is the only God, the God of our lives, the God of our history.

This has a consequence in our lives: we have to empty ourselves of the many small or great idols that we have and in which we take refuge, on which we often seek to base our security. They are idols that we sometimes keep well hidden; they can be ambition, a taste for success, placing ourselves at the centre, the tendency to dominate others, the claim to be the sole masters of our lives, some sins to which we are bound, and many others. This evening I would like a question to resound in the heart of each one of you, and I would like you to answer it honestly: Have I considered which idol lies hidden in my life that prevents me from worshiping the Lord? Worshiping is stripping ourselves of our idols, even the most hidden ones, and choosing the Lord as the centre, as the highway of our lives. Dear brothers and sisters, each day the Lord calls us to follow him with courage and fidelity; he has made us the great gift of choosing us as his disciples; he sends us to proclaim him with joy as the Risen one, but he asks us to do so by word and by the witness of our lives, in daily life. The Lord is the only God of our lives, and he invites us to strip ourselves of our many idols and to worship him alone. May the Blessed Virgin Mary and Saint Paul help us on this journey and intercede for us.

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....

In Right Relationship With Glory

Today at Mass, I was reminded of this quote from Pope John Paul II:

Man must reconcile himself to his natural greatness.... he must not forget that he is a person.

At one point in my life, this would have shocked me, scandalized me even, to a degree. "Natural greatness" just seemed too deep a contrast to my understanding of sin and its effect on the soul.

But today's homily, on the occasion of the feast of St. John Lateran, focused on the glory of God coming to rest on this earth (Ezekiel 47) and then, in particular, in the person of Jesus Christ in the miracle of the Incarnation. Fr. David spoke of a modern painting of Mary at the moment of the Incarnation, with her abdomen surrounded in an orb of light which she embraced, kneeling, awestruck and humble.

I was struck by this realization because everything about the Incarnation really stops me in my tracks and makes me catch my breath. The Incarnation has been the theme of my journey with the Lord for the last 19 years. It seems that I have come to be able to accept finding the glory of God revealed through another human person. But what struck me today is the awkwardness I have at accepting the glory of God revealed through myself to others. This, I believe, is the key to humility and the antidote to pride: to know that the source my good is the Lord, to really and truly acknowledge this, and then live in right relationship with this fact. To the extent that I mistake the glory of God for my own efforts, or vice versa, I am not in right relationship with this fact.

And this too is a work of God's grace. But Mary shows us the pattern for us: to look intently for and at the glory of God, to be lost in adoration, praise, and worship as we gaze deeply into the reality before us, including the work of grace within ourselves, as one aspect of God's vast design.

Pontifical Council on the New Evangelization

This is a three-part series on the recent establishment of a brand-new Pontifical Council on the New Evangelization, published on the St. Catherine of Siena Institute blog, Intentional Disciples.

part one
part two
part three


This is exciting stuff to me.

Suffering, Penance, and Evangelization

In terms of what we today can discover in this message, attacks against the Pope or the Church do not only come from outside; rather the sufferings of the Church come from within, from the sins that exist in the Church. This too has always been known, but today we see it in a really terrifying way: the greatest persecution of the Church does not come from enemies on the outside, but is born from the sin within the church, the Church therefore has a deep need to re-learn penance, to accept purification, to learn on one hand forgiveness but also the need for justice. Forgiveness is not a substitute for justice. In one word we have to re-learn these essentials: conversion, prayer, penance, and the theological virtues. That is how we respond, and we need to be realistic in expecting that evil will always attack, from within and from outside, but the forces of good are also always present, and finally the Lord is stronger than evil and the Virgin Mary is for us the visible maternal guarantee that the will of God is always the last word in history. -- Pope Benedict XVI, May 12, 2010, on the plane on the way to Fatima.

I have been thinking quite a bit about this statement made by Pope Benedict the other day, made in reference to the famous third secret of Fatima. I have been thinking especially about what it means to re-learn penance. Sometimes when I hear the word, I think of one of the first Life Chain events I participated in as a Protestant. It was a freezing and blustery day, and one woman standing near me said "This is a good penance, isn't it?" I looked at her as if she had just said "I worship the Anti-Christ!" I know that it is not only non-Catholics who misunderstand penance as I did then, I suppose as some method of earning salvation or of making God less angry by making myself miserable.

I had an experience a few months ago that helped me learn the meaning of penance. There is a line in the Catechism of the Catholic Church which illuminated this experience very precisely: "The human heart is converted by looking upon him whom our sins have pierced." This experience was simply that of looking into the eyes of someone I realized I had sinned against, and feeling the impact of the fact of what I had done. My love for this person immediately caused me to feel deep pain, and the desire for the suffering I had caused to be alleviated. In a word, it was a desire for penance.

Penance is not about punishing myself or depriving myself or trying to pay with my pound of flesh for some abstract fault, either of my own or for the sin of the world. I've thought this in the past. But now I understand penance as simply what happens when we see what we have done, when we truly look and see. I had a dream many years ago when I taught in Japan about the Blessed Mother standing in my 6th grade class room, by far my most difficult students, where Jesus was hanging on the cross. The room was filled with people who were chatting with each other, reading, and doing everything but looking. She was going from person to person, asking them to just look at her Son. Just look at His suffering. That act alone, done by a human person, has the power to convert us, because we cannot truly look at suffering without our hearts being moved. Conversion is a long process, life-long for sure, understood this way. Conversion lasts our whole life long because it is possible for us to love for our whole life long. And because conversion and love are gifts from an infinite God, we can never exhaust them.

So, what of standing in the freezing rain. Why is that a "good penance?" Well, love dares to do generous, daring things for the beloved, like give up one's umbrella in a downpour, or stay up all night to make a special gift, or sacrifice one's time to do a favor. If suddenly a car splashes the umbrella-less one, or the gift requires a restart or the sacrifice of time becomes quite inconvenient, these can actually make the love of the giver more intense, the choice to do the task from love all the more conscious, calling forth a greater nobility from the act of love. That's why awful weather for Life Chain makes for a great penance, because it enables our act of love to be more noble. No brownie points. No returns owed for "all I'm doing for you." Just purer love. And if it's not about purer love, then it's likely to be nothing more than what the Catechism calls "sterile and false" penance.

Just this morning I hunted down a paper I'd written 12 years ago on Aquinas' Treatise on Law and the New Evangelization. I remembered that I was surprised while writing it to make the connection between evangelization and the need to practice and preach penance. I was really surprised to read many things today that I'd written over a decade ago! I guess that's a matter for a separate post. But it did tie in both with the Pope's statement, this meditation on penance and with a quotation I came across today from St. Teresa of Avila: "All the troubles of the Church, all the evils in the world, flow from this source: That men do not by clear and sound knowledge and serious consideration penetrate into the truths of Sacred Scripture!"

The Holy Family and Poverty of Spirit

This morning as my children and I headed out for daily Mass, my daughter was having what is traditionally known as a conniption fit over the footwear she selected by default. As a result, upon arriving at church, my son proceeded to the church proper while she and I sat on the big comfy couch in the foyer where she nuzzled and calmed herself down. (Thank goodness for a functional sound system and a church designed with families in mind.)

I, meanwhile, found myself face to face with a statue of the Holy Family (our parish's namesake) not entirely unlike this one:

This sacramental earned its keep by me this morning. Contemplating these figures I was struck by the poverty of spirit that Our Lord engenders in His followers. What do you mean by that, you might ask. When I say poverty of spirit I am thinking of the virtue of receiving something from the Lord, yet not grasping, possessing, reckoning oneself as the controller or owner of that which God gives. It is holding God's gift with an open hand. It is always being ready to honor God and His purposes and not imposing our own schemes and designs upon what God gives. It is acknowledging God's gift as His gift, given to me, and held by me with a spirit of worship, which is all about the act of self-giving, of freedom, of sacrificial love.

I looked at Mary, holding baby Jesus. She was given the most amazing, unique vocation as the Mother of God, the Mother of the Savior, the Messiah. I think of the incredible urge for a mother to hold tight to her beloved child, and yet Scripture shows us Mary being called from the very beginning to open her motherhood, and not to just anyone: shepherds, uncouth and unkempt; wild-eyed prophets in the temple; Magi and Egyptian neighbors. Mary knew this Child was the Mystery her whole life had to bow before. Although she was given a mother's authority over Him, I can only imagine how her life was molded and sanctified by exercising that authority.

Then there's Joseph. Contemplating him made me grab my copy of Guardian of the Redeemer off my bookshelf this afternoon. Joseph has no recorded words in Scripture, and doesn't that seem fitting? What can you possibly say when you realize your vocation is to father the Son of God and be husband to the Immaculate Virgin? I sure couldn't think of any appropriate words. John Paul II's aforementioned Apostolic Exhortation makes it clear that before Jesus was conceived, the legal portion of Mary and Joseph's wedding had already taken place. Theologically speaking, it is also pretty clear from GR and from Scripture that Mary's words to the angel "how can this be since I do not know man" indicate that her consecration to the virginal life was certain at the time of the Annunciation. It isn't completely clear, to me at least, whether Joseph was as certain of this arrangement. I hope those of deeper theological persuasion than myself aren't offended if I say that I wonder if some of the popular piety about St. Joseph scrubs this issue just a bit: was he really the old man who knew he was "just" a legal figure in a divine drama? But whenever it happened, it did indeed transpire that Joseph surrendered to God, in an act of self-giving, the whole reality of a normally consummated marriage with Mary. And he accepted what any sane man would run from: ultimate responsibility for the human formation of the Son of God. Why? Because this was what God placed into Joseph's open hand.

Think about what the marriage of Joseph and Mary must have been like. Jesus was not the product of some dysfunctional family. This was the Holy Family. (By the way, I am keenly, sharply aware of the difference in contemplating these things as a Catholic Christian. Mere textual analysis here is like eating flour instead of freshly baked bread.) And Jesus, Mary and Joseph being the Holy Family requires three persons' humanity fully and completely open to the power of the Holy Spirit. I cannot accept Mary and Joseph as automatons or neutered beings who lived in the same household as if they were each married to a cardboard cut-out. Guardian of the Redeemer points out that Joseph's love for Mary was molded to perfection by the Holy Spirit, yet, I'm sure, with all the more effect due to the graces given this couple for their exceptional vocation. Theirs was a true exclusive gift of self one to another, a true image of the communitarian life of the Trinity, fully human, fully spousal, yet virginal. Upon their relationship the reality of the Church is based, She who is Virgin and Mother. Did I mention really, fully human? This is poverty of spirit, receiving indescribably rich gifts from God and yet holding them with an open hand, offering them back to God for His purposes. If this seems too amazing to believe, I think it is because you have the collision of two "impossibilities": God made flesh, and grace elevating and transforming, not abolishing, nature.

And what of Mary at the foot of the cross? Did she not need Joseph then? Why could Joseph not have lived to see the public ministry for which Jesus came? Poverty of spirit does not make the calls of or arrangements for what we need and what we deserve. It accepts a plan which doesn't feel good. It accepts death when death comes, change when change comes, and always looks to God for meaning.

And He never fails in supplying and revealing that meaning!

Regina caeli, laetare, alleluia:

Quia quem meruisti portare. alleluia,

Resurrexit, sicut dixit, alleluia,

Ora pro nobis Deum, alleluia.

It is Jesus You Seek

"It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; he is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; he is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is he who provokes you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is he who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is he who reads in your hearts your most genuine choices, the choice that others try to stifle. It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be grounded down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society."

- Pope John Paul II, World Youth Day 2000 Prayer Vigil

photo and text lifted from Intentional Disciples

In God's Name

I watched an interesting DVD last night entitled "In God's Name." This National Geographic production wove together comments and events from the daily lives of 12 spiritual leaders. The documentary began with the event of 9/11 and its impact on the two filmmakers, which lead them to ask where was God when this happened. The production of this film was their quest, which they discovered afterwards was in itself a religious act, for finding that answer.


Some of the details which struck me: Neither the Chief Rabbi of Israel nor the leader of the Sunni Muslims nor of the Shia Muslims could escape commenting indirectly at least at the longstanding animosity and violence of one people against the other. All three condemned violence as in direct violation of religion. Yet all three made some allowance, politically, for its use in some circumstances.

The Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America was an interesting figure to me. I was struck by how clear it was that he had completely conformed his life to what he felt was the call of the gospel. Yet, his comments about reason being yet another powerless human tool stood in clear contrast to the comments of Pope Benedict's on the need for all things human to begin in reason and broaden to the ultimate flowering of reason, which is faith. He also spoke of how he doesn't not have the image of any quest for God, but that it is only God who seeks him.

I was particularly struck by a piece in the "bonus material," that which didn't make it into the TV production of the film, where the Bishop was addressed with the question "What is the meaning of life?" Rather than answer from his own experience of faith, he insisted that the question needed to be reworked because so many people in the world do not have the luxury to do anything but wonder where there firewood would come from so that they could make porridge for their meal. "Most people can't think about the meaning of their lives, so it isn't the right question to ask" was the gist of his response. I don't know if there is a personality similarity or if there is something in Lutheran theology that makes this kind of response sound so familiar to me. But I do think this is an example of someone making something abstract. His intentions, I could see, were pure and consistent, but not only in this question, but in others, it seemed he was trying to answer life's questions to him by looking into the needs that other people had, thereby avoiding his own need, his own response. He was deeply concerned and committed, personally, about discovering justice for "people everywhere," but his responses lacked a certain quality that struck a strange chord in me. It was not about Jesus' call to him, or a personal encounter with truth. He is at a "liberal" pole of Lutheranism, but I felt as a conservative a very similar regard not towards social justice but towards doctrinal truth. With the same piece lacking. Yes, God seeks me first, but it is because of this that I seek Him. Without my seeking God and my acknowledging that seeking, something is missing in my humanity.

The Dalai Lama and Mata Amritanandamayi, a Hindu spiritual leader, both struck me as examples of what Fr. Giussani might call those with the natural religious sense. Frankly they seemed the happiest, and the most focused simply on childlike love without all the complicated notions of reason, doctrine, or commentary on political or social issues. It was ok to them to waft away certain questions of ultimate truth and to just focus on this fleeting moment. Perhaps from that came their intensity for the fleeting moment, because it is all they had.

The Shinto priest made me chuckle to myself. Shinto is a religion of Japan whose beliefs, if any, have been pretty much lost in history. What remains are various ritual practices that represent a very basic animism and a desire for good luck. This Shinto priest had been a corporate executive when he was asked by the Emperor to care for the main shrine. It was clear that he was essentially a secular Joe with nothing remotely profound to say at all. And it's not like that matters one whit to anyone who practices Shinto! People just don't matter in that scheme.

Pope Benedict came across, unfortunately, as sort of institutional and distant, because he never gave any personal comments to the camera. All the shots of him were from otherwise public addresses, from pre-written talks. If this documentary had been conceived of after 9/11 I wonder if work had gotten underway to graft Pope John Paul II into the documentary, as it was nearly four years later that he passed away.

The President of the Southern Baptist Convention was featured, and for some reason it was hard for me to watch him without battling certain uncomfortable notions in my mind. I could feel how much he wanted this to be an opportunity to "share the gospel" in the way an Evangelical would think about it. Again, he was an example of someone completely given to the gospel as he understands it, but with him it struck me that he had a very low view of the sacramentality, if you will, of his own life and his own thoughts to have any value. While no one could doubt his sincerity I felt from him that Christ's message is something that one's essentially speaks, rather than something that transforms your very being, thereby Christians becoming "other Christs" whose very act of breathing is a sort of preaching. Don't get me wrong, I am completely all for making the gospel message explicit with words. If we lose that we risk losing everything into confusion. But there is a Eucharistic aspect that is needed when we preach. We don't just have a message, we become transformed into a message.

I wouldn't say this was highly insightful, but it was interesting.

Papal Preaching and Teaching on the Baptism in the Holy Spirit

My dear pentecostal brothers and sisters in Christ! My dear Catholic brothers and sisters in Christ! My dear everyone! Here are two texts that knock my socks off.

On Pentecost Sunday, 2008, Pope Benedict told the gathered crowds "Today I would like to extend the invitation to all: let us rediscover, dear brothers and sisters, the beauty of being baptized in the Holy Spirit..." (Read the whole thing. Who says Catholicism isn't pentecostal at its Heart?)

Here, papal preacher Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, OFMCap gives an amazing teaching on the baptism in the Holy Spirit as it relates to water baptism and the call to Christian maturity that baptism is. A snippet:

Here, then, is what I feel is the significance of the Baptism in the Spirit. It is God's answer to this malfunctioning that has grown up in the Christian life in the Sacrament of Baptism.

It is an accepted fact that over the last few years there has been some concern on the part of the Church, among the bishops, that the Christian sacraments, especially baptism, are being administered to people who will not make any use of them in life. As a result, it has even been suggested that baptism should not be administered unless there are some minimum guarantees that it will be cultivated and valued by the child in question. For one should not throw pearls to dogs, as Jesus said, and baptism is a pearl, because it is the fruit of the blood of Christ.

But it seems that God was concerned about this situation even before the Church was, and raised up here and there in the Church movements aimed at renewing Christian initiation in adults. The Charismatic Renewal is one of these movements and in it the principle grace is, without doubt, linked to the Baptism of the Spirit and to what comes before it.

It's effectiveness in reactivating baptism consists in this: finally man contributes his part -- namely, he makes a choice of faith, prepared in repentance that allows the work of God to set itself free and to emanate all its strength. It is as if the plug is pulled and the light is switched on. The gift of God is finally "untied" and the Spirit is allowed to flow like a fragrance in the Christian life.

In addition to the renewal of the grace of baptism, the Baptism in the Spirit is also a confirmation of one's own baptism, a deliberate "yes" to it, to its fruit and its commitments, and as such it is also similar to Confirmation too. Confirmation being the sacrament that develops, confirms, and brings to completion the work of baptism. From it, too, comes that desire for greater involvement in the apostolic and missionary dimension of the Church that is usually noted in those who receive the Baptism in the Spirit. They feel more inclined to cooperate with the building up of the Church, to put themselves at her service in various ministries both clerical and lay, to witness for Christ -- to do all those things that recall the happening of Pentecost and which are actuated in the Sacrament of Confirmation.

I have never read another human being describe so vividly my own experience!

The baptism in the Holy Spirit unleashed in the modern age has most certainly been a movement of God's desire for unity among His people. My heart shouts with Fr. Cantalamessa: "We men, and in particular we men of the Church, tend to limit God in His freedom: we tend to insist that He follows a compulsory pattern (the so called channels of grace) and we forget that God is a torrent that breaks loose and creates its own path and that the Spirit blows where and how he wants (notwithstanding the role of the teaching of the Church to discern what actually comes from the Spirit and what does not come from Him). What does the Baptism of the Spirit consist of and how does it work? In the Baptism of the Spirit there is a secret, mysterious move of God that is His way of becoming present, in a way that is different for each one because only He knows us in our inner part and how to act upon our unique personality."

An "I" needs a "You" which needs an "I"

Click here for an excellent reflection on the 3rd Sunday in Advent.

hat tip to Suzanne!

Pope Meets with Ecclesial Movement Leaders

Benedict XVI Wants More Teamwork With Movements

Encourages Pastors to Value Contribution of Charisms

VATICAN CITY, OCT. 31, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Young ecclesial movements are a gift from God and their contributions should be valued and welcomed with trust, Benedict XVI says.

The Pope affirmed this today when he received in audience two groups attending conferences related to the Catholic Charismatic Renewal.

The first group was made up of bishops who attended a conference for prelates interested in the charismatic renewal. The second was participants of the 13th International Conference of the Catholic Fraternity of Covenant Charismatic Communities and Fellowships. The bishops' event preceded the 4-day international conference, which is under way through Sunday.

The Holy Father affirmed that the "ecclesial movements and new communities, which bloomed after the Second Vatican Council, are a unique gift of the Lord and a precious resource for the life of the Church."

"They should be welcomed with trust and valued in their various contributions," he stated.

The charisms, the Pontiff continued, arise "as visible signs of the coming of the Holy Spirit." They are not, "a historical event of the past," but an "always living reality."

"The Spirit himself, soul of the Church, acts in her in every age, and his interventions, mysterious and efficacious, manifest themselves in our times in a providential way," Benedict XVI said. "The movements and new communities are like an inrush of the Holy Spirit in the Church and in contemporary society.

"One of the positive elements and aspects of the communities of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal is precisely the importance given by them to the charisms and gifts of the Holy Spirit and their merit lies in having reminded the Church of the actuality [of these gifts]."

Citing the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Pope emphasized "the value and the importance of the new charisms in the Church, whose authenticity is guaranteed by the willingness to submit themselves to discernment from ecclesiastical authorities."

"Precisely because of the fact that we are witnesses of a promising flourishing of movements and ecclesial communities, it is important that pastors carry out with the [movements] a prudent, wise and benevolent discernment," he added.

In this context, the Holy Father said he deeply hopes that "dialogue between pastors and ecclesial movements intensifies at all levels: in parishes, dioceses, and with the Apostolic See." He concluded by noting that in their discernment, pastors should take into account that many of these associations have already received or are in the process of receiving pontifical recognition.

Text Message from WYD

Today's text message from Pope Benedict XVI to participants at World Youth Day.

"The Holy Spirit gave the Apostles & gives u the power boldly 2 proclaim that Christ is risen! - BXVI"

(Lifted from Intentional Disciples. Love that blog; love this Pope!)

The Vice of Curiosity

I can always count on Fr. Dan Pattee for an intriguing homily. Today he borrowed a comment made by Cardinal Stafford during the weekend Commencement regarding curiosity as a vice. This set off a whole train set of thoughts in me.

Apparently Stafford was quoting medieval theologians like St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure. As an unschooler and mother of young children, it came as quite a shock to think of this natural and developmentally appropriate action of children -- something I bank on in our educational venture -- as a vice.

But wait, truly this needs some further examination. Fr. Dan gave the example of King Herod who, during the trials of Jesus, was excited to get a turn with the famous captive, in hopes of seeing some miracle. He was "merely curious" about Jesus, Fr. Dan said. And we understand that Herod did not at all perceive Otherness in Jesus; he was looking for titillation, for entertainment. And Jesus had absolutely nothing to say to him.

Fr. Dan went on to talk about people who flit from one interesting idea to another. He gave the general example of some of his theology students who ask him curiosity questions. He said he tries to redirect them to understand the profundity of what they are asking, but often sees the glazed-over look come upon them, so he switches to a very basic answer and sends them on their way. They ask like children, they get an answer as if to children.

This quip loaded up two different freight cars in my mind. The simple one first: children. Children want basic, concrete information to help them make sense of their world. Connecting vice to a child's learning of his environment is nonsensical (and I bet St. Thomas and St. Bonaventure would agree). But, what happens when a person is 20 years old and still flits and doesn't want to think deeply about something that tickles their fancy for a moment? This indicates to me that something has gone wrong. Somewhere the maturation process has broken down. (And I wonder if perhaps it could be tied to curiosity being stifled when it was age-appropriate?)

The second freight car is a lot more personal, because I know I am the Queen of flitting. I am interested in many things, but my interest does not always translate to a commitment, or even necessarily an evaluation of whether commitment is a good to pursue. Fr. Dan talked about the need to commit oneself to truth, to the truth of what one is seeking. So, let me take the example of my meal planning expedition I wrote about last month. I was doing quite well until I had sick children about a week ago, and things gradually unraveled. Today I looked at the last meal plan I had hanging on my fridge, and considered: did I not consider this tool good and helpful? Then, even though I'm not to chastise myself as a failure for making unplanned dinners for a few days, can I pick it back up again as a helpful tool instead of treating it like a "mere passing curiosity"? I thought through improvements in what had been difficult with the planning process, and worked out the remainder of this week. I do not want to be just a flitter, dropping "truths" and "goods" on the floor like scraps to be swept up.

Back to St. Thomas for a moment. He writes this in the Summa, II. ii. Q. 167 A. 1

Thirdly, when a man desires to know the truth about creatures, without referring his knowledge to its due end, namely, the knowledge of God. Hence Augustine says (De Vera Relig. 29) that "in studying creatures, we must not be moved by empty and perishable curiosity; but we should ever mount towards immortal and abiding things."

It strikes me that this is very much what Fr. Giussani is saying, in that education must embrace the meaning of all things (the Mystery, God). If we are pursuing any field of knowledge without referring this knowledge to the true end, this is inadequate. This is what Aquinas calls the vice of curiosity.

I believe there is much practical good for me in these thoughts, and this seems part of what I wrote about in these posts about words of the Holy Father's that challenged me to deeper thinking about unschooling. God always gives me something for me, and something toward understanding my children's needs. I like how it works that way!

Veni Sancte Spiritus

Have you heard about the 2008 worldwide Pentecost Novena?


“As we give thanks for past blessings, and look to the challenges of the future, let us implore from God the grace of a new Pentecost for the Church in America. May tongues of fire, combining burning love of God and neighbor with zeal for the spread of Christ’s Kingdom, descend on all present.”
Pope Benedict XVI, Papal Visit to the United States, April 19, 2008

Papa Ben and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

I have a tendency towards depression. I know of several things that can set it off for me, including hormone crashes and ingesting large quantities of wheat. But I also know there is the insidious kind of depression that is simply due to good old unresolved issues.

And that's basically why I've had a really awful day today.

Let's just say there is a situation I've faced recently that is by no means new to me, but somehow the person I am while facing this situation is not quite the person I was the last time around. "Why should this be so difficult now?" I thought to myself. Like a chicken on a roasting spit, I have turned this thing over and over and over again today. All I knew was that some very old pain, pain just a few years younger than myself, was getting rolled into this situation.

And then my children got into a fight. The ninja had temporarily left his helmet on the kitchen floor, and Cinderella thought it was her crown, only to discover that the ninja felt a strong attachment to this helmet. Crying ensued. I had just gone to see if I couldn't sit down for a few minutes of quiet reading, when I heard Cinderella scouring the opposite end of the house looking for me. Papa Bear tried various means of consoling and reprimanding, increasing the overall domestic volume. I came to scoop Cinderella up to her chamber, to calm her and quiet at least 45% of the volume, when I realized I had been trailed by a ninja. In all the clamor and hollering and distress of others, the ninja earnestly and urgently wanted his new karate jacket frogs done up.

Who cares about what a jacket looks like when the whole house is engulfed with chaos? With great consternation I beheld the ninja's audacity and I blurted out (and I paraphrase): "I wish I could consider what I want so danged important to ignore everything going on around me and demand that someone jump into action for my need!!"

And suddenly I realized what I'd said.

With those words, I kicked free the dammed up area in my heart that was causing me such a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

So, what does all this have to do with Pope Benedict? Nothing, yet.

But I did mention in a recent post that I was struck by something the Holy Father said in his comments at the White House (the only address I have been able to listen to in its entirety yet, papal slacker that I am!). And it was this idea of bringing one's convictions and values to public debate.

I have convictions that I hold be to absolute truths, and I have other convictions and values that I hold to be my best take on certain issues. And while some people may discuss absolute truth in a relative sort of way, I have been more of the type to discuss "spectrum values" (I'll call them) in an absolute sort of way. At least among those who share the same values. Let's take unschooling, holistic medicine, and home birthing as three such examples. I'm not going to unpack all those things just now, but what I see is that when one is either not capable or not open to frank discussion or reasoned debate about values such as these, there's a big loss. There's a loss of good information that could be shared, but there is also a loss of something of the humanity of the one holding these values, because of espousing something as more of an ideology than a reasonable, human, holy approach. Boy, that was as clear as mud. Let's just put it this way: if I can't give you a short list of benefits of unschooling as lived in my family, as compared and contrasted with other options, then I am probably not living our unschooling consciously enough to be doing it well, or to be living it to the full.

The goal of debate is not to conquer others or even to change minds or hearts; we debate in order to live life to the full. That's the call I hear.

Ok, so what does this have to do with my terrible day? Without wading deep into my psyche (for once), let me just say that speaking out, with audacity, what is in the heart, is an ability that I think is innate to the human being, especially very young human beings. Most people spend their lives tempering that ability, I suppose. I think I have spent my life thus far trying to tap it. I get lots of fissures that leak into subterranean caverns and cause a bunch of mess. But there is something that has been calling all my life for a straight tap, heart-to-world, via my mouth. And woe unto me until I get all these parts of the call to line up in peace.

I need both the raw passion of my heart to be free, and the reasoned intellectual approach to know that it is not the intensity of my passion that makes truth true. So, my need is simple: basic strong doses of ora et labora.

*My apologies to Judith Viorst for stealing her title.

Papal Piercing!

I was able to watch the Pope's official welcome at the White House Wednesday morning. I was particularly struck, called, by the following quote (in italics, but given with a line of context):

The preservation of freedom calls for the cultivation of virtue, self-discipline, sacrifice for the common good and a sense of responsibility towards the less fortunate. It also demands the courage to engage in civic life and to bring one’s deepest beliefs and values to reasoned public debate.

I will have more to say about this, but this just pierced me as a personal call, first within the context of education. I've been involved in some interesting conversations on this topic lately, and I have my eye on other ongoing discussions, like on Willa's blog and on Unschooling Catholics.

I'm excited!

USPapalVisit.org

And by the way, if you want to follow the Pope's every move (or word) in the upcoming days, check out this site.