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.

Little People

I was on retreat this weekend, and the retreat master closed the last conference with this poem. It perfectly sums up how we are called to holiness, especially following the Little Way of St. Therese.

Little People
by Fr. Elijah Joseph Cirigliano

Little people don't need honors. They know they are nothing and awards can't change that.
Little people hide in Mary's mantle. They need a mom.
Little people love the Church. They trust that Christ knew what He was doing.
Little people love the Eucharist. Of course they do, IT'S JESUS!
Little people don't try to understand everything. They're OK with not knowing stuff.
Little people make lots of mistakes. Big deal, what do you expect?
Little people crush the serpent's head. Of course they do, they belong to Mary!
Little people do God's will. They'd never think to do their own.
Little people are bold. They know their Daddy is the biggest.
Little people are peaceful. They know God can handle everything.
Little people are not attached to things. Just God.
Little people don't plan anything. They like surprises.
Little people are not jealous. They don't need to be better.
Little people don't always ask "why." They simply trust.
Little people love the cross. They know it is a gift from Jesus.
Little people are joyful. They know they are loved (infinitely).
Little people love. They disappear into the Hearts of Jesus and Mary.

Read This Book! Everything is Grace:The Life and Way of Therese of Lisieux

I have just finished reading the book Everything Is Grace: The Life and Way of Therese of Lisieux by Joseph F. Schmidt, FSC. I can't recommend it highly enough, especially if you've ever secretly or not-so-secretly wondered what the big deal is about this woman that she was declared a Doctor of the Church and seems loved by everyone.

That was my estimation of her, once, as I've written about over the last couple of years. My first impressions of her were the sweet, cartoony drawings of her, the roses, and then that movie. She just seemed such a (forgive me, Therese!) sappy thing, always breaking down in tears, and despite myself I would always cry too, watching it. For someone of a strong intellectual bent, reading that Therese taught us to be little children and trust in the good Jesus, well, I'm sorry, but she just annoyed me.

I read Story of a Soul, and at first that didn't help. Then I read her letters to Maurice, and the door of my heart's understanding swung open. I began to understand the suffering that she was neglectful of making a huge deal out of in her own writings. I saw that her "sappy" image was a gross misunderstanding on my part.

But this book is simply stunning in the way Schmidt captures the psychological suffering and her path of spiritual maturity from her earliest childhood and shows through them how Therese is absolutely the saint for our age and the Doctor the Church is so much in need of in the 21st century.

I feel like this post is just for me to gush and not give a detailed review or praise for specific points Schmidt makes, although I could pull out many, many, many. In fact, I've already blogged about a few of them, here and here.

See, the thing is, even though St. Therese used to annoy me, I turned to her intercession at two moments in my spiritual life that at the time I had no idea of realizing would be so hugely pivotal for me. So part of my gushing here is simply my growing realization of the communion of saints being so vibrantly real. The love pouring out from the saints in heaven is palpable to me. And amazing! And astounding! Getting to know these saints is a needed boon to our lives.

Do yourself a favor and read this book. It also has me thinking on a post I'll need to write when I'm done exuding and more able to resume more analytical thought: The Little Charismatic Way; How to Cut the Crap and Simply Be Open to the Holy Spirit.

Whose Responsibility is My Happiness?

Earlier this week, a friend of mine shared the article "10 Things Happy Families Do Differently." The picture with it caught my eye, and I was in a browsy mood, so I checked it out.

One particular statement from this article has stayed with me since I read it: "Everyone takes responsibility for their own happiness."

Now, I'm not usually one who gets a lot of out people's pithy lists of tips for how to make life all better. And my response to this was not along the lines of "Gee, thanks. I'll try that." But seeing this concept expressed in just this way in this context some something of a little naru hodo moment for me.

Two memories stood out as I've thought about this. The first involved the formation of my sense about where happiness comes from. And the fact that, in this formation, happiness was a commodity for other people. This happiness was supposed to come from me.

Oh, I would never have explicitly articulated it this way in my earlier years, but growing up in a post-alcoholic-divorced home taught me that it was my job to make the people around me happy. (Or stated conversely, everyone's unhappiness was my fault.) I decided that the easiest way for me to try to bring happiness was to "not bother anyone" and so I perfected my ability to lay no burden on others. Still, of course, others weren't happy. My eventual conclusion: my mere existence was the problem.

It never really entered into my calculations, this notion of where my happiness was supposed to come from.

The second memory involved my children when they were very small. On one particular night a common bedtime scene was being played out where my tired daughter was crying over some tiny nothing, consuming all my ability to be present to her and calm her so she could go to sleep. At that moment, my son entered her room, seemingly totally oblivious to the emotional drama unfolding, and asked me to intervene with some need of his that involved something like finding just the right lego to make his creation look just right. I can still see exactly where I was when this thought formulated inside me. It was sarcastic at first, but the reality of what I said impacted me shortly thereafter : "Boy, I wish I could consider my needs so dang important that I could overlook everything around me to get them met!"

My son did nothing wrong; he merely had no sense of timing (at age 5 or 6 or whatever). I, on the other hand, had a gut instinct that needs and desires are always supposed to be sacrificed on the pyre of someone else's issues.

In 1993, right after I came into the Church, I went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land with a group. In one of the many gift shops I saw what struck me as the most beautiful t-shirt I had ever seen. I literally gasped as I said, "Oh, I want one of those!" Now, this is not a normal comment coming from me because I don't care about shopping and care even less about "stuff." It was the beauty of the metallic gold embellishments that made me exclaim this in something like awe. I'll never forget an older woman from my group saying to me, "Well, you just go ahead and get it, then." I think I triggered something in her maternal heart that prompted her to "give me permission" to buy it. I did, and I still have it. Perhaps it is telling that this was an unusually memorable experience from my earlier days of seeing and pursuing something that brought me spontaneous happiness. I don't remember making choices like this on any regular basis until recent years.

Pursuing my own happiness used to leave me with a sense of guilt. If it was my job to get out of everyone's way so they could be happy, being as small and non-existent as possible, well, it didn't make sense for me to be filled up and big with happiness. Geez, the more I write about this the more diabolical it sounds.

Each person has the vocation, the duty, and the need to pursue happiness, beatitude, God. It is true that no one finds it alone, in isolation from others. But I am responsible for my pursuit of God, and you are responsible for yours. I am not responsible for yours, although mine actually can inspire yours, and yours, mine.

Of course children need adult wisdom to learn what will mess up their pursuit of happiness. Or better put, children and adults need biblical and saintly wisdom to learn how to pursue true happiness. Without it, we end up indulging ourselves with idolatry and filling ourselves up with not-god, at the expense of other things and/or objectified people whom we appoint to be god to us and make us happy. It ain't gonna happen. Nothing other than God satisfies the quest for happiness. Yes, created things can help us; we require their help. But idolatry not only leaves us unfulfilled, it actually empties us of whatever happiness we have found.

Personal responsibility for happiness means that I seek truth, beauty and goodness with all my heart, through every aspect of my life, and that I open my entire life to interact with the One I find. Yeah, I imagine if everyone in a family did that it would make for a happy life together indeed.

St. Therese and the Vocation to be Love

St. Therese strikes again.

I have to admit that in many ways I have more of a personal affinity for St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross as I relate to her intellectual nature more than to St. Therese's sweetness. However that does not stop God from using the Little Flower in my life in consistent ways all her own. Today is her feast day, and this morning I was once again blown away by her. I am not a huge novena-prayer, but I have now prayed several novenas for her intercession. Not once have I been left without a surprising answer.

This morning in the Office of Readings I read this famous passage from St. Therese:

Then, nearly ecstatic with the supreme joy of my soul, I proclaimed: O Jesus, my love, at last I have found my calling: my call is love. Certainly I have found my proper place in the Church, and you gave me that very place, my God. In the heart of the Church, my mother, I will be love, and thus I will be all things, as my desire finds its direction.

When I read those words "I will be love," something went kablam inside me. My soul staggered to be able to stand upright and catch its breath. That's it.

It is hard to explain how God communicates to a soul, but it isn't as hard to say that it happens.

At Mass as well I was overwhelmingly walloped with this realization -- I have found my call, too, where God has placed me: to be love. Oh, I'm not the same as St. Therese by any means, nor are my life, vocation, or circumstances like hers. But the call is the same. My path to realizing this has been my own, too. I've written a lot about the struggle of the last two years, the dark and hard path when it seemed that God had ripped my interior life into confusing shreds and made everything nonsensical. Now I see. It has all been for this: to teach me to be love. So I could know better what love is and what it isn't, what it costs, how it is designed to withstand and endure suffering, how it is to shape everything. How it is of God. Mostly this.

At Mass, I realized that I am giving what I have received. I have known great natural obstacles to love, but they are not too much for God. And I realize that not even I can destroy love in my own heart, as long as I'm willing to keep putting my hand back in the Lord's hand, even when I think perhaps He only wants to destroy something that I thought is good.

God is Love, and He simply desires our hearts to so belong to Him that He can be Himself and be at home in us.

As the Psalm response said today so simply, "God is with us."

I have struggled with doubt about this call because deep down I have thought I was only capable of that which is shameful. "Love," was for me as I was growing up always a dirty word, subconsciously. The word was not spoken in my home. I learned its meaning from TV and from music, so it was always connected to shame. So when God started His tutoring of me in recent years, He had some interesting obstacles to undo. But He does all things well. What can I say but may God be praised. Here I am, Lord. I am all Yours. Love through me, and I will love as you will.

He Passed the Trial by Fire

Last night I saw Michael Nesmith in concert in Pittsburgh. It was a surreal experience in many ways. My husband and I approached the venue (70 minutes before the concert started, with all the other fans with OCD. Well, there's only so long you can eat dinner, right?). The first thing I spotted was two ladies wearing green wool hats. They and another friend were loudly discussing the Video Ranch website (Mike's merch outlet) and Monkees aps. Another woman wore her First National Band t-shirt. I then realized I was not the only geek, as I was also wearing my (vintage 1986) Nez t-shirt. As we were split into ticket-haves and ticket-have-nots, a man in front of me commented on my t-shirt, and showed me his Headquarters CD he proudly carried with him. I was amused, and just a little freaked out, over these and other proofs of the sort of instant bonding geekdom creates. It didn't matter that none of us knew each other. We all smiled a bit at each other because we all knew him. And obviously some people wanted it really known just how much they belonged in this fellowship.

So we sat there (yes, mere spouses of fans stood out a bit) waiting for the concert, and I was a bit awash in the humanity of it all. That doesn't happen to me real often.

I admit that when he walked onto the stage, I cried. Not cried like those videos of screaming teens at Beatles concerts. I mean cried, like a breath of anticipation that you've held in for, oh, maybe 35 years and finally exhaled. There he is. He is real.

See, I was a Monkees fan as a kid, but something about Michael Nesmith pierced more deeply into my soul than being a fan. I'm a fan of Paul McCartney, too, but if I would happen to see him in a similar concert (and I'm not even sure I'd bother going), there would be no comparison to the meaning last night's event held for me. You could say that I had a crush on him as a kid, I guess, but (as is my constant refrain), it really was more complicated than that. It was more that I wanted to be him. Intensely.

Whatever I understood about that desire in the past, I have come to understand it better after last night.

It seems to me that the reality of purgatory means that everything must be tested by fire. Fire does not mean destruction; fire in this case means Love. I had more than a moment's trepidation about buying tickets for this concert because I think I was afraid that this soul-piercing meaning would not stand the test any better than when I went to a Monkees reunion concert in the 80s. That was when I realized that the childhood fun the Monkees provided me was rooted in nothing much. The three silly young men (Mike did not do that tour with them) had grown into three silly old men who were still trying to turn a buck based on the antics of their youth. So, without thinking it through rationally, my emotions braced themselves for being disappointed in what I would perceive when finally seeing this influential figure in person. I prepared myself for my childhood dream going up in smoke. Nope, there was nothing special there after all. Stop dreaming, and live in reality.

So when he walked on the stage and I cried, the tears were perhaps trying to figure out whether they were saying hello or goodbye.

He did a slew of songs, most of which I knew, though some were new to me. And he introduced each one with a story, painting a scene like a movie vignette so you could picture the "he" and "she" characters. He used correct grammar, complete sentences with no slang, and lots of big words. Yep, I knew it was him. His lyrics, and the stories he shared, communicated profound meanings, of people accepting loss, facing difficulty, being brave, kind, gentle, honest, spiritual. He respectfully honored the very talented musicians who were his band. During the show I found myself internally yelling: I still want to be Mike Nesmith!!

A three-second gesture at the close of his final encore made my eyes and heart go wide for a moment. For a moment it seemed maybe I was Mike Nesmith. Acknowledging his audience's applause, he did about a nose-high namaste hand gesture. I do that, but (I suddenly realized) in reference to only one person, now that I don't live in Japan, and usually only at the sign of peace at Mass. (Although that usual got pretty unusual in the last several months.) But I know from the inside out what that means when I do it. It was a little unique, to say the least, to see him do the same thing.

I came home saturated with the experience, and mulled it over in that highly sensitive state my brain is in when it is near either side of sleep. And then, early this morning like every other, I headed to my friend Iwona's home for Lauds. For our opening hymn we sang a new praise chorus she had introduced for the first time just the day before. When I heard it Tuesday, I thought, well, that's a banal, generic praise chorus. This morning, my humanity feeling far more absorbent than usual, the song soaked in quickly, went deep and forced out the tears, and my understanding. The part that bit was this:

Constant through the trial and the change
One thing… Remains [repeat]

[Chorus:]
Your love never fails, never gives up
Never runs out on me [3x]

On and on and on and on it goes
It overwhelms and satisfies my soul
And I never, ever, have to be afraid
One thing remains

There is one thing that has always been true, even when I didn't realize it: God loves. God loves me. I am loved, me, by Him.

It's personal. Persons love persons, if love is real, that is. I've had every factor in that simple equation wrong, but one of the hardest things for me to take in in my life is that God calls me to be myself. I have been aware of it since my 20s, when I started toward the Catholic Church. But now I realize that my fascination with Mike Nesmith was, in ways I didn't even understand, an inclination towards God's desire for me to be me. I'm not Mike, but there are things about who he really is that resonate with who I really am. Without being really aware of it, I see now that I recognized in him someone who was showing me how to aspire to be truly human in a way that befits me. Humanity is a beautiful creation of God. We all fall short of God's full glory, but there is something powerful that can happen when we honor the gifts God has given us, and take the risks that put those gifts at the disposal of others.

One of those things is that the real me, I, can experience love. The real thing. The One Thing that never changes. The One Thing that is more real than I am. When I'm faking, I'm also closing myself off from love, from God. But when I'm real, without fear I can reach to you and say, you know what? One Thing is true for you, too. You are loved. The real you is loved by the real me, because of the One Thing that is more real than any of us. A fellowship is born that is much bigger than what forms around a musician. There is a fellowship that is born around Love. It's where real happens.

Wasn't it St. Catherine of Siena who said "Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire"? Mike is still honoring the gifts God has given him. Those gifts have resonated with me, and sparked a hope in our Creator before I could even put my finger on it.

So thank you, Lord, for your gift, and thank you, Michael, for your faithfulness to your gifts and for sharing them. Your special place in my heart is reasonable, and has passed the trial by the fire of love.




One Thing Remains

Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Things Yet to Come

Advent has my heart about ready to explode. Truly, I have this spiritual throbbing sense that I imagine is comparable to what kids feel when they really hope for some wish to be fulfilled by a Christmas present on Christmas morning. Except that I know what my heart senses near and longs for is eternal, doesn't break or get boring. But I also have the feeling that the root joy is exactly the same.

What fills me with this throbbing sense of joy is the sense that events in my life converge with meaning. The biggest thing is always that I remember my conversion to the Catholic faith with such wonder. I hear the prayers of Mass and of Liturgy of the Hours these days, and I just know that these same prayers were offered for me, for my conversion, by people I didn't even know. They prayed and sacrificed for me so that I could experience a dramatic and total conversion on that Christmas Eve in 1991. God had led me to that point, but it was such a total surprise and shock, and so powerful. I'm sure it will only be in heaven that I will see the prayers that brought down those graces for me.

And now here I am, praying the same prayers, earnestly entreating God for graces of conversion for other people. Don't ever write off anyone when it comes to praying for their conversion. I had been anti-Catholic and had long wrestled with a kind of animosity towards Christmas that was born of a host of bad theology and sad memories. God instantly and completely changed all that.

I got this little note in a Christmas card from the Camaldolese Hermits today. It hits the nail on the head:

A good thought on Christmas comes down to us from Pope St. Leo the Great in the fifth century, via his successor Pope Benedict XVI. "That day has not passed away in such a way that the power of the work, which was then revealed, has passed away with it... All things therefore that the Son of God did and taught for the world's reconciliation, we not only know as a matter of past history, but appreciate in the power of their present effect."

In the liturgy, we do not just recall past events, we relive them. The spiritual excitement and gratification we feel are not imaginary. Rather, the saving power of the mystery becomes present to us today.

This is true of every experience of the liturgy, but for me it is particularly true of these days of Advent, and especially of the Christmas Mass. I experience not only a reliving of Calvary, but a reliving of that particular moment when Jesus first revealed Himself to me as present and real in the Mass, which prompted my conversion. Spiritually I go back to it, and it blows me away all over again.

It makes me stand in awe at where God has led me. More than that, it makes me stand in awe, realizing that it really has been God that has led me, even when I thought I was just floundering around, alone. It fills me with courage and faith. And I am aware that this is not from me; it is a gift from God. I am surrounded, enveloped, in gifts from God. I am freed, knowing that I'm not alone, that my spiritual excitement is not imaginary. God is real -- my life is proof! It makes me want to tell everyone everything that has ever happened to me.

Like a little child, my eyes keep gazing under the "spiritual Christmas tree" for a special gift I am asking for from the Lord. I've been asking basically the same thing for several Christmases now. This year, my request has special meaning, and a heightened sense of anticipation. Little children, even loaded down with gifts and lavishly provided for, can still have that special place in their heart for that one thing. So do I. Just as I'm writing this I'm wondering to myself how I might respond if Christmas comes and goes without my seeing there what I hope to see. I do see that each year my desire and request has upgraded. But it hasn't gone away. Maybe that's how it has been answered each year so far. What I do know is that my heavenly Father couldn't possibly be unmoved by my desire. And He certainly can move heaven and earth to give me what I desire, if indeed my desire has finally gotten grand enough for Him. Either way you slice it, I am excited. Jesus has told mystics and saints in private revelation all over the place that heaven participates in giving gifts at Christmastime, too. "He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things?" (Rom. 8:32) God certainly is not going to stop being generous with me any time soon. If only my heart can delight with Him in real time as He gives... and see what He is giving. Oooh, I'm happy already!

December 20, 2012
P.S. You know, Lord, I've been thinking about this. I do get excited about what I want. But I've learned something about your gifts. Sometimes their beauty plays to my weakness, and my distractable heart goes off after them. Lord, I'd rather not have your gifts if it could mean my heart moving off from you. What I really want is you, Lord. So, attach my wandery heart to you by whatever means works best. "Being with you, I desire nothing on earth..." If you give me a gift, please draw me up on your lap and hold me close there, first. I don't want to get scared of your gifts, but I'm gonna need a lot of help...

Some Profound Morning Thoughts about Hair

Yesterday I was on the phone with someone whom I apparently have met but can't quite picture. She told me she knew our neighbors, and added "You're the woman with that beautiful red hair!"

Other than the irony of having just that morning re-hennaed my hair so that it does almost look red again, I was really struck by her exuberance about this hair of mine.

See, there was an earlier time in my life, a long time actually, when I was also as regularly identified with/by my hair as I tend to be now, except in those days I was tormented and taunted about it. Even certain progenitors of mine drilled into my thinking that my hair was a "big, ugly bush" and often bought me gifts like "bad hair day" plaques or dolls with giant straw hair because they reminded of me. Every boy in high school who ever commented about what I looked like teased me about my hair. One older boy nicknamed me "Fuzzy," and to another I was "Brillo Head." Girls teased that they could look like me if they would just rat up their hair.

Those days are long gone, thanks be to God, and I admit that not until I was 40 did I really learn how to take care of my naturally curly hair in such a way that I could actually get it to look the way I wanted. I have never been particularly fashion conscious nor am I a visually-oriented person, so I have never obsessed over my looks. But regardless, I realize now how deeply these words wounded my soul.

I really like my hair, and to be honest I always have. I just haven't known how to get along with it. It strikes me to the heart every time someone comments to me about it, because I realize no one does so in a mocking way any longer. It is to me like a little message of the victory of the anawim every time I get a hair compliment.

Awhile ago, though, there happened in my life a moment that captures why I'm bothering to write about this. This was a little chit-chat conversation with my confessor, after having completed the sacramental part of our exchange. Even though he knew nothing of my hair history, I knew that between the lines he was communicating something deeper than the chit chat, though:

He:  How do you get your hair to look so pretty like that? Is that all natural?
Me:  Yes. It grows like that.
He:  Wow. Well isn't that a gift?

See, the fact of the matter is that, yes, my hair does look the way it does when I allow it to grow and help it to do what it wants to do by nature, which is to curl. When I work against my hair by brushing it, combing it, washing it with shampoo often (instead of conditioner), and not feeding it what it needs to stay in its shape -- in other words, when I treat my hair the way every "normal," straight-haired person does -- it suffers and loses its beauty.

Is this not the way our souls are? How often do we not take as our own identity the lies of the devil, which tell us we are worthless, ugly, useless, irredeemable? How often are we not made to feel guilty because we are unique? How often do we forget that each person is a unique miracle of God, whom God alone has the right to instruct as to our dignity, our beauty, and the right way for us to walk? God has no assembly line where He makes standard-issue souls. We must all be formed by the unique way of the cross that He designs for each of us. We can't copy what someone else is doing or hang our self-worth on their opinion or approval and expect to find our glory. Only God reveals that glory to and in us. We must look to Him and follow Him.

St. Thérèse and the Man Thing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

Maurice Belliere

1877-1907

For the Brothers of St. Cecilia

This is the song I wrote for week five of my Autumn Songwriting Challenge.This represents my having learned to use a Grace Tape2USB machine, multi-track recording with Audacity, composing songs on keyboard (when I hadn't significantly played it at all since I was about 13 -- that was only hunting and pecking to play hymns -- and never when writing music) and using drum tracks from Looperman.com. 

None of these undertakings considered alone was all that difficult, although combining them together in a short amount of time along with the commitment of writing an entirely new song every week has left me feel like I've been running hurdles. Hard work can be exhilarating, though!

The recording is very rough; timing with Audacity on my oldish computer is imprecise, and everything is done "live" with tape-recorder quality to the sound.. But writing the song made me very happy indeed.

This song is called "For the Brothers of St. Cecilia," with St. Cecilia referring to the Catholic patron saint of musicians. The lyrics are these:

When God in His holy will
Desired my life to fill
With love, mercy, peace and grace
He required a human face
Hands He'd taught to play His song
And a voice enough to sing along
So His melody could reach my heart
And I could sing my part

And I sing: ba nah nah nah nah nah nah....

Ten virgins waiting for their lord
They fell asleep 'cuz they were bored
When the moment came to be on task
Half had no oil in their flask

Gold refined in the fire takes time
Precious oil it buys is fine
God's the author of this whole plan
Saying, "Turn to me while you can."

That fire we walk into is love
But what fool would be fool enough
To live inside a burning flame
But this is where we find our life again

Holy Spirit come inflame our hearts
enkindle the fire of love
Recreate us all like you
This whole earth you renew

And so

When God in His holy will
Desired my life to fill
With love, mercy, peace and grace
He required a human face
Your hands He'd taught to play His song
And your voice enough to sing along
So His melody could reach my heart
And I could sing my part

And I sing: ba nah nah nah nah nah nah....

A special "thank you" to Neven Pesa for providing me with the right amount of pushiness to clear the cobwebs from my dormant songwriting creativity. Check out his music at http://www.youtube.com/user/BlueArmyfication?ob=5

My Christmas Eve Conversion Story

I have a rare opportunity this Christmas Eve evening to sit down in silence and write. Tonight my heart is pounding against what contains me to mull over what I think of as my major conversion experience. So, let me  tell the story.

It was 1991 or so, I don't remember the exact month. I had a very good friend who was married to a man attending Lutheran seminary. For some time he had been toying with the idea of becoming Catholic. His wife, my good friend, was not thrilled with the idea, and I commiserated with her. In fact I suggested that he was being attacked by demons to wish such a thing. This drama went on for several months, and finally my friend announced to me that rather than fight with her husband about it, she had agreed that they would become Catholics. Gulp.

About the same time, a man who attended my charismatic fellowship who had been raised Catholic announced to me, somewhat privately, that he was going to receive Confirmation and return to the Church. I was agitated by my married friends' announcement, but I was dumbfounded by his. I had always considered him the most intelligent, theologically correct person in the whole fellowship. And besides that, I was in love with him. In my confused way, yes, I was in love with him.

These announcements hit me within a very short time of each other. I was left very confused and very compelled to start some serious thinking about Catholicism. Growing up as a conservative Lutheran, in a church which taught that the papacy is the anti-christ, I nurtured a strong anti-Catholic sentiment. It was somehow a strong part of my own spiritual understanding of my world that I was not only not Catholic, but I was opposed to Catholicism. Why? Because I honestly believed that God was opposed to Catholicism. I believed it was an evil religious system. I remember earnestly and honestly praying this way: "Lord, I know that you hate Catholicism. But when I think about hating my friends, I get confused. Lord, if you don't want me to hate Catholics, then you have to show me why not."

It took me a long time to emotionally calm down enough to get to the point of grasping that I knew nothing about Catholicism except what I had been taught as a Lutheran. Well, it wasn't only a matter of calming down emotionally, it was also a matter of surrendering my pride. I truly thought I knew it all. I truly thought I was superior. It took me several months to come to see that if I wanted to understand the Catholic paradigm, if I wanted to understand what made Catholics different, I had to start investigating Catholic sources. I remembered that I had read Medieval mystics in college and my heart had caught fire, so to speak. I just didn't believe that anyone knew about them anymore (because, of course, I didn't, before then). That little spark of hope awoke. I bought a Catholic Bible, a copy of the documents of Vatican II, and later the book Catholic and Christian by Alan Schreck. And tapes by John Michael Talbot and the Brothers and Sisters of Charity.

I read. I studied. I prayed. I was shocked. Catholics quoted the Bible. They talked about evangelism. They talked about the supernatural power of God to change lives. The arguments for doctrines like Apostolic Succession and the Marian dogmas were logical, and Biblical. I began to discover valuable riches. Things began to make sense.

Some time before this, I had been experiencing a sort of hunger for something in the worship I had loved so much in our charismatic fellowship. I had thought of liturgical worship as a ball and chain, but more and more I saw that what we did had a similar kind of planned format. I felt as if I were experiencing nothing but the "dead religion" we railed against in the mainline churches. I had been musing that surely, Lord, there was something deeper than this. I wanted to be free of "dead religion" at all cost. But it seemed to cling to me.

And here I was now, discovering riches. This process had taken all of 1991. This man who I was so in love with had left Milwaukee for seminary in London (there is so much to that story; don't know if I'll ever write about that one!). But he wrote to let me know he was coming home for Christmas. We had arranged to go out for lunch on the 23rd. On the 22nd, my grandmother passed away, and we decided that our family would not celebrate Christmas until after her funeral, which would be the 27th. This left me in Milwaukee on my own for Christmas. Keith (yes, he has a name) therefore invited me to go to the Midnight Mass with him and some friends on Christmas Eve. I was ready to say yes. In fact, it had been going through my head that attending a Mass probably would be fitting for me at some point, as another step in my investigation of Catholicism.

Before the Mass that night, we gathered at his friends' house. One of them tried to show me his rosary that had turned gold, but I couldn't look at it or even touch it. I wasn't that comfortable with Catholic things! All that stuff that had to do with saints and people and humanity turning holy -- that was just still unfathomable to me.

We walked in the church, which was named for St. Anthony of Padua. There was a large statue of him in the foyer, and I instinctively recoiled from it. I was trying to be open, but those saints were the hardest for me to stomach. We went into the church to sit down, and I saw another statue of some other Catholic guy I didn't recognize. I grumbled to Keith, "Who is that?!" "Marie!" he answered, somewhat shocked at me, "That's Jesus!"

We sat there in silence for a good long time. Other than the fact that I vaguely recognized the liturgy (it had been only four years or so since I had been at a Lutheran service), I remember only two main things striking me. (Well, the one really odd thing was how at the beginning of the gospel reading the entire congregation developed an itch on their foreheads at the same time!) The first was the penitential rite. The way I heard it, the priest was asking his people, the Catholics, to repent of their sin. It reeked of humility. And I was undone. I thought to myself, "No, Lord, it's not these people that need to repent -- it's me! I have spent years and years belittling them, hating them, making fun of them, judging them, using them to make me feel superior... They don't need to repent, Lord, I do." If that moment brought me to my knees, the next profound moment put a state of awe into me, and literally I have never been the same. Keith and his friends went forward to receive the Eucharist, and we were sitting in the very front pew. As they came back and sat down around me, my eyes were drawn to the Eucharist at the altar and I suddenly was aware that this was Jesus. This was the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, giving Himself away right there. And what, my heart shouted, was Jesus doing in a Catholic Church?

Keith dropped me off at home and I sat up until at least 4am, mostly just staring. I can't even say I was trying to take in what happened. I was so shocked. I read a magazine Keith's friend had given me, and I stared some more. Finally, I slept. I spent the next day with friends from my church, and the following day at work. But internally I was still in this moment of complete shock. I couldn't even pray, or ask the Lord about what had happened. Finally, on the evening of the 26th, I was doing some envelope stuffing at home and listening to yet another John Michael Talbot tape a friend had given me. His voice sounded so peaceful. I had to turn it off. I yelled at the tape player: "You're a Catholic, and you're supposed to be wrong. I'm a Protestant, and I'm supposed to be the one with all the peace!!"

I had finally broken the ice to sort of speak about what had happened to me at that Mass. I felt the Lord Jesus, as real as if I could see Him, sort of tap me on the shoulder and say "When you're ready to talk about this, I'll be right over there" (on my couch, where I often went to pray). I went over to the couch and began sadly lamenting and complaining to the Lord that I didn't know what to do or what this was all about. I had a lot of lament to pour out. When I was done, the Lord showed me a sort of mental vision. There were two roads. One road was wide open, and empty. I knew that this represented my life as it was right then, and I knew that one option for me was to continue on just as I had been. Then I saw the next road. A short ways down it, there was a cross standing in the road. I immediately knew three things. The cross meant that that's where Jesus was. The cross meant the Catholic Church. And I knew that I would choose to go that way.

More lamenting. (I did a lot of that in those days! No joy.) I told the Lord, in a martyrish sort of way "Oh Lord, Ok, if you want me to become a Catholic, I will. I'll become a Catholic." The Lord answered me clearly. "I don't want you to say it. I want you to sing it." The Lord was after no less than my heart. No surfacy response would do. Suddenly I sprang up. "But Lord, what about that thing about saint intercession. If I could just find that Bible verse again and ask you how that really speaks of the saints praying for us?! I'm just not sure about that yet." The Lord was stern, but kind. "Sing."

Somehow I knew exactly what to sing, so I did:

I have decided to follow Jesus, I have decided to follow Jesus, I have decided to follow Jesus
No turning back, No turning back

The cross before me, the world behind me; The cross before me, the world behind me; The cross before me, the world behind me
No turning back, No turning back

Though none go with me, still I will follow; Though none go with me, still I will follow; Though none go with me, still I will follow
No turning back, No turning back

Well, no, come to think of it, that isn't what I sang, but it was in what I sang which was this:  "I have decided to become a Catholic. I have decided to become a Catholic. I have decided to become a Catholic. No turning back, No turning back."

I am still unpacking this experience. I realize now that it was absolutely no mistake that this happened at a Midnight Mass of Christmas. The message that has been sinking into my heart ever since that night is that in the Incarnation, God proclaims that holiness and humanity have wedded. In Christ, the way is open for holiness to enter the frailty of our human existence. This does a drop kick to the notion that humanity is, in its essence, depraved and capable only of depravity. The goodness of creation is once again restored and proclaimed and affirmed, and in it I too am restored and proclaimed good, and affirmed. We humans are made for the lofty purpose of receiving from the Lord glory, and bearing it forth to all the world. We are made for transformation unto holiness. We are not only loved by God because we are have been cleaned up by Jesus' blood. While we were yet sinners, Christ loved us, unto death! He loves us because of who we are, even in our sin! I think my notion of Christianity had been that our sin had messed things up so badly that Jesus had to fix us and then God let us into heaven simply because he agreed to forget about who we really are. But all along it was really only Himself that He loved. No! The Incarnation proves that Jesus loved us enough to live among us in our sin, and to patiently love us until we are made hungry for His love.

The Incarnation continues, of course, in the Body of Christ, His Church. I love being Catholic, but more importantly, I love Catholics! I love non-Catholics too, but I have a special love for the very type of Catholic I once judged myself superior to. Every time I see a run-of-the-mill Catholic (no, wait. I decided just recently these don't exist. Each Catholic is a miracle.) Every time I witness a certain flame of the love of God in the heart of a Catholic person, I well up with awe inside my soul, and a wave of unworthiness to be in their presence washes over me. There are moments when I kneel in Mass and I am so overcome with gratitude for the privilege of just being there. God has filled me with great joy, great peace, and great delight.

Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift! (2 Cor. 915)


Post Script:
After I wrote this post, at Midnight Mass, the priest in his homily commented on a quotation from St. Leo the Great that sums up succinctly what is in my heart: the key of what we are given in the Incarnation is our own dignity, restored. The quote:

"Christian, remember your dignity, and now that you share in God's own nature, do not return by sin to your former base condition. Bear in mind who is your head and of whose body you are a member. Do not forget that you have been rescued from the power of darkness and brought into the light of God's kingdom. Through the sacrament of baptism you have become a temple of the Holy Spirit."

Choosing Happiness

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

Contemplating the Angels

I have had angels on my radar screen of late. Ok, that sounds a bit weird. I think it began when a friend made a passing comment about how a choir, in the grand scheme of worship at Mass, acts in a way akin to "in persona chorus angelorum." As I contemplated that, I began to see all the references to angels that surround us in our Catholic life sort of highlighted in bright yellow as it were. And then more recently I re-read Volume Nine from Direction for our Times on angels, which you can download here. I've also read the book Send Me Your Guardian Angel about the ministry of St. (Padre) Pio and an currently working through two others which focus on patristic angelology.

There is no denying the reality of angels within Scripture, within Catholic teaching, within the lives and witness of the saints, and within the experiences of regular people. Still, there's this temptation to ignore them or relegate talk of angels to some theosophic, Christless spirituality. Coming up here in just a few days, the Church liturgically reminds us again of the Archangels, with their feast on September 29, and our Guardian Angels and their feast October 2. So, we need to counter the temptation to forgetfulness and listen to the witnesses who tell us of God's wonders.

Today I happened to attend a prayer meeting of the Lay Apostles (associated with Direction for our Times). The discussion was on, you guessed it, the angels. Of the fifteen or so people who attended, many spontaneously shared experiences of their own lives of asking for and receiving specific help and guidance from their guardian angels. These are the things we tend to think of as strange, isolated incidences in our lives, until we begin to share with others of the faithful and discover that while these are personal and sometimes private experiences, they are also as common as water.

I'll just share one personal experience that has happened in these last weeks since I've been paying more attention to my guardian angel. I was contemplating the fact that angels are pure intellect, with wisdom of exactly what God's will is for me at any given time. So I asked my guardian angel for help in making a good confession the last time I participated in that Sacrament. I had no flash of insight until I was in the midst of confessing my sins to God before the priest. Suddenly, I saw that everything I brought hinged together, and the difference between how I had made these various choices and what God's will for me actually is became very clear. I walked out of that confessional not only grateful to God for His grace, but with a deep respect for the ministry of my angel!

A Scripture that came to mind early on in this adventure that I mulled over was St. Paul's passing statement in 1 Corinthians 13 about speaking "in tongues of men and of angels." Years ago when I first encountered the baptism of the Holy Spirit (as we called it then) and speaking in tongues I had read many testimonies in which one person's prayer language was confirmed to be an actual spoken language that a native speaker could understand perfectly. But then there seemed to be many other people whose prayer language was not recognizable as such. I had never thought much about this little insertion of St. Paul's, apparently making a reference that was not necessary to explain to his readers, of the tongues of angels. I wondered if perhaps what God was giving with this gift was the possibility for human beings to ask for intercessions from the angels according to their perfect wisdom and understanding of God's will, in ways that the human intellect wouldn't conceive of asking. (Doesn't this just resonate wonderfully with the fact that everything God gives us is a grace, a gift? Nothing is of our own merit or labor, and yet we must give ourselves personally to God, with the exercise of our wills. Does not the Spirit pray for us with groans that words cannot express?)

Then, after contemplating this, I read of Padre Pio's ministry. At one point, in order to test him (and he was always having people test him), his superiors wrote to him in languages Pio could not understand. But he read the letter and responded naturally, saying that -- of course! -- his guardian angel translated the letter for him. Language is no barrier to heaven; only to us limited humans.

God never forces grace on us, and angels never force their help on us. But we can be more inclined to accept their ministry and if we ask, we receive. We can also intercede for others whose minds and hearts are far from focused on the Lord Jesus, asking for the specific helps their guardian angels are able to minister to be given to them. We each have a (usually) small but (always) vital part to play in the grand drama of the Kingdom that God had designed and that God sustains. It is a gift to us that He calls us to participate with Him, with heaven, to bring heaven to souls who need Him.

What Does "Poverty" Mean?

One of the things I love about social media like blogs and Facebook is coming across quotations that friends (or strangers) share. I come across several that I like, and every once in a while I come across a treasure that really lends itself to contemplation or further reading.

I came across one such quotation last week, from Lewis Mumford, a 20th century thinker of whom I'd never heard before:

A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search of truth or perfection is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life.

I think this quote struck me for several reasons, but where I plunge my thought most deeply in this short sentence is into the phrase "poverty-stricken day."

Poverty.

I have thought about that word often, but never did so much before encountering the Catholic Church. It was something I noticed quickly when I started attending Mass in Milwaukee; there was much more use of this word poverty than in the churches I had belonged to previously. Regardless of how it was used, I had a hard time getting comfortable with the word, with figuring out how to incorporate this word into my new Catholic vocabulary. I got that there was a spiritual dimension to poverty. But mostly I observed middle class suburbanites talking about the terrible plight of other people -- those in poverty. Something in the equation seemed off. At the time, I was living in what a co-worker had described (with some shock when we had discussed my plans to move there) as poverty-level housing. And I guess it was. But I could afford it, and I loved it there. I've never cared what things look like.

In fact, my whole relationship to economic prosperity has always been rather indifferent. With the possible exception of my time in Japan, where I earned far more money than I was expecting to (I went with the understanding that I was a volunteer receiving room and board), I've never lived with lots of means. But I have felt oftentimes like a material glutton, that I have much more than I need. I spent a short time doing mission work in Jamaica in my young 20s and witnessed families who lived in tin shacks the size of a closet and who drew water whenever the pump happened to be working that week. It was laughable for me to think of my "poverty-level housing" as any sort of deprivation after that.


Again this idea of poverty comes to mind these days because we've been living without my husband having a job for a couple of months. Lots of families are in this boat right now. It has been useful for me to shift out what truly we need and what we do not. I have struggled in the past with simply shifting into a "get tough" mode where I refuse to need anything. This is a self-martyrdom problem where I think I will make everything better my killing myself off. I see that this stance does not demonstrate trust in God nor respect for His love for me.

So, what of this thing of poverty? Mumford strikes it on the head. Poverty consists in being deprived of the sight or sound of beauty. Poverty consists in forsaking the contemplation of mystery. Poverty consists in giving up the search for truth and perfection. Beauty, Goodness, Truth. The Catholic Catechism states: "God created the world to show forth and communicate his glory. That his creatures should share in his truth, goodness and beauty - this is the glory for which God created them" (CCC 319). Sharing in the glory of God is all the riches the soul actually needs and desires. A life spent in this pursuit is rich, it is pleasing, it is life-giving. If we lack these things, as Mumford points out, especially chronically, we risk a fatality, the demise of our humanity, our souls.

The deceiver of our souls would convince us that Beauty is ugly, or meaningless, or superfluous -- to be sacrificed. He would convince us that there is no Goodness, there is only expedience, there is only what makes the opportunity before worth grabbing, despite what it means for my own soul or for another. He would convince us that the only Truth is what brings me momentary satisfaction. Got my goodie, gonna get my next goodie; there ain't no more to it than that.

It truly doesn't matter whether we have lots of money or little; either way we can live in poverty. Ironically I think it can be dreadfully hard to alert those in affluent poverty to the state of their souls. It sounds like a bunch of hippie nonsense to tell people their souls are dead. So maybe that's not the approach. Perhaps the approach is to pray folks into a wrestling match. Truth? Beauty? Goodness? Does it matter which facet grabs us, which of our lacks, which of our longings stabs out of our hearts and refuses to shut up? God knows the embrace each of our souls most needs today. Let us pray for each other that we will not shout down God's approach, not drown it, not turn Him aside, not try to stay "comfortable". Not try to stay in poverty. Allow Him who became poor for our sakes to make us rich.

Of Bicycles and Resurrection

This week I had an experience that leaves me in awe at the One who orchestrates my life. I couldn't dream this stuff up or try really hard to suck a good lesson out of a bad turn. This is the real thing.

On Wednesday afternoon, my daughter went outside to ride her bike. We bought this pink Disney princess bike in the early spring at a thrift shop in town, and though she had never ridden before, it quickly became one of her delights. She could take herself places! Her friend down the street has a purple Disney princess bike, and riding together was how they came to be friends.

But Wednesday, her bike was nowhere to be found. Not on our porch, not in the yard, not left on the sidewalk or in front of a neighbor's house. I knew she had ridden it the day before, and I know she has an excellent memory and thrives on the routine of putting things like this back roughly where they belong. We looked at her friend's house down the street; did she leave it there and they tucked it onto their porch? No. I asked the neighbor boy who was mowing their lawn, Did you see Felicity's bike from when she was here yesterday? No. It was nowhere. After I pronounced the sad conclusion to my daughter that someone obviously took it, I found her with her head sadly hanging down, crying her little eyes out.

I held her, and I cried too. But along with my tears I became very angry.

I took a whole hour to calm down (we had a previous engagement which we followed through on, though we were late) and then to select printable language before posting on Facebook the question: What kind of a shameless SOB steals a little girl's bicycle?

Truth be told, I did not realize until this morning how much of a impact this event had on my soul. I was ripping mad at the selfish whim of whomever it was who didn't care about the tears and heartbreak of a 5-year-old. Even if a girl young enough to ride it was walking through the neighborhood without someone with the brains to tell her not to walk off with other people's things, surely eventually an adult would notice the acquisition and demand it be returned to its rightful owner. That's simply justice. Everyone understands you don't steal from children. Right? Then why the &%$(! did this happen?!

Compounding matters of course is the fact that my husband is still out of a job and we are pinching our pennies tighter than this penny-pincher ever has before. Simply going down to WalMart and buying a new one was right out of the question. That's reality, and that's fine. But it sure added to the sting.

I had been bearing up under the stress of unemployment acceptably well. We've had some set backs and unforeseen expenses during this time, but at this point in my life I'd be an idiot if I doubted God's constant presence and fully loving, aware concern for every need we have. But to be honest, after this bike episode I began to lose it. I tend to lose it rather quietly and internally, and the soft spot for the enemy attack has to do with very basic drives for staying alive, for example, the desire for food and water. I simply lose interest. And after the weight of this bike episode sank into me, I quickly began to suffer the physical consequences.

I'm saying all this from hindsight, because the episode is now resolved. But I did also quickly rally to address those physical consequences. So I was feeling pretty good physically, when last night, as I was bringing my daughter downstairs from her bath, I was shocked to see her bicycle laying on our lawn. We both saw it together, we were both shocked together, and her bed time was shot as she was now far too excited to lay down. I thought of what my husband had said: Let's give it a few days. Maybe it will turn up.

Yeah, right. This morning I couldn't help but think of a song our choir sang at Easter time with the line: "The dead do not rise." Isn't this exactly what the disciples thought? What any sane person would think? Why hope? Why delude yourself with vain dreams of things working out? Either get cynical or get crushed: The dead do not rise, and little girls do not have things restored to them that were stolen.

Ok, take a deep breath and dive down into this with me. But first let me tell you what happened with the bike. My daughter had gone to the next-door neighbor's house on Tuesday and they decided to play dolls with it inside the house. This neighbor girl is nearly 10 and had no problem bringing the bike in, but apparently Felicity forgot all about it when she came back home. Even though I'd inquired with that neighbor, no one thought to check inside the basement, where they'd taken it. My son then returned it, muddy from his transport, and left it sprawled out on the lawn, looking like it had been dumped. He told me all about this a few hours after we discovered it.

Let me tell you something else. A year ago, if the bike would have disappeared without a trace, I would have been incapable of the type of anger I felt Wednesday. I would have thought things like "easy come, easy go" or "well, it's only a bike" or "I'm sure whoever took it had some reason, some problem to explain why." I wouldn't have been able to look at my daughter's tears and simply say "This is wrong! Stealing from children is wrong!"

But last year, crescendoing in the fall, I experienced something else that had a profound impact on me. God reached down into my heart, into an area in my heart that had gotten locked away until He found a particular person to whom He could give the key. The key had to be in a musical shape, and in that part of my heart I confronted many things I had lost, had thought were stolen from me, had thought were dead, never to rise again. My father figured largely into all of that, his presence, his meaning in my life. There are many parallels there to a bike that was missing, but not stolen. But even deeper than all that I found locked away another piece of my own humanity. In the bedrock of my soul God corrected me, and healed in me, a sense of justice toward myself. He taught me that it is no longer acceptable for me to think: "It's only me. It doesn't matter."

And this bike episode has taught me that the change in me is real, solid, complete.

I have spent a couple hours this morning with eyes wet with tears of joy. I'm grateful to have had this test case that in the end was nothing more than a misunderstanding. I'm grateful that God once again shows Himself as the faithful orchestrator of reality that is more complicated than fiction. I'm grateful for the "fire drill" that teaches me again to be vigilant about caring for my own physical needs. I'm grateful for the people God gives me to show His face and sound His voice.

As a friend said last night: Life is good. God is great.

Easter Ponderings

It is Easter Monday. He is risen! Alleluia!

I am enjoying a very restful day and reviewing the events and stirrings of the Triduum, of Lent, of life in general.

So, with no particular order in mind, some random ponderings:

There are so many reasons why I don't like "planning" Lenten penances. Some of these have to do with why I don't really like to plan anything: counter-productivity and inevitable lack of follow through. But also, I simply know that I don't ever have a grasp of what I really need, what I really lack. I always think if I did know that, then I wouldn't lack it, right? It seems to me that a far more effective way for me is simply to come to the Lord daily, giving Him full permission to instruct me in the way I should go. It might take me awhile to get clued in, but making a practice of a real daily offering over these last few years has helped.

And the fun thing about this approach is the joy of discovery. Something I felt frequently throughout this Lent was my attention directed toward my housework. My relationship with housework is perhaps different than some. I don't really have an antipathy towards it, but I do sometimes simply ignore it for other things. The same could be said for small interactions with my children, the kind I could easily overlook as almost meaningless. What I discovered somewhere during the Triduum was this overwhelming sense (that I'm sure has been translated into a great children's story somewhere) that the small things I could easily ignore or do without love are in fact the exact moments in which priceless treasures, graces, are garnered. It hit me like a ton of bricks: this is given to me for my holiness, for the salvation of the world!

Good Friday sure felt penitential. Really, this whole Triduum was one I experienced with my emotions in a way that was like a gift of love to me. Holy Thursday night I sat in the church after the Mass and contemplated how I long to be close to Jesus, not with a sense of frustration that I might have felt at other times in my life because of a perceived lack of closeness, but more as an awareness of my desire. Jesus doesn't thwart me. It's just that I don't always pick up on how He actually fulfills my desire to be close to Him. It's awareness of His closeness to me that makes the difference.

And yes, Good Friday felt penitential. I awoke to discover more computer problems that destroyed my email capacities for about the sixth time since December. I was faced with many things to do, and I knew that the day would be a challenge for my children, which would in turn challenge me. And on top of it, I got one of those pesky ideas stuck in my mind, an offer of something that I felt urged, compelled to make to a friend. I call it a pesky idea because making these kinds of offers leave me feeling very vulnerable and frankly really stupid. But it was something I couldn't not do. And yes, my children struggled, my patience was stretched, I felt my powerlessness, and I made my brave offer which was politely refused. My obedience to my conscience felt completely pointless.

I was so excited for the Easter Vigil, though! I spent all day cleaning the house, which amazed me, because I accomplished so much, and with so much joy. I got to cantor my favorite Psalm ("Let us sing to the Lord, He has covered Himself in glory") and nailed it. And I don't only mean I sang it the way I wanted to be able to (which is true) but simply the chance to proclaim that Scripture with my whole heart was a great blessing. My parish had 13 baptisms. And that seemingly pointless obedience revealed an opening to a completely unanticipated "conversation" that is all potential.

Another thing hit me during the Easter Vigil. Catholic liturgy is full of symbols, but they really are not about "the community finding meaning in ritual behavior" and suchlike as a sociological view of religion will often say. Symbols point tangibly to unseen spiritual realities that are actually far more what makes the world go around than the things we see. This struck me again as we did the renewal of baptismal vows Saturday night. This is our triumph over Satan, exercised in real time. The trick for us is to enter into the liturgy as into the deepest reality, not as if we are children repeating the sounds of words we don't comprehend.

I thoroughly enjoyed the strangest thing after the Vigil: I went to a bar to meet up with some friends from choir (and my librarian friend) to hear their kids' band play. Not the kind of thing this recovering holier-than-thou type would normally enjoy, but it felt entirely appropriate to the celebration of new life.

And for the first time ever, I believe, I made a served a holiday dinner to family and guests and had everything done at the same time and on time. No last minute stressing out. I spent the morning cooking and singing my little heart out along with John Michael Talbot. This is the kind of contemplation in action I love!

I'm so glad there are 50 days in the Easter season. We've only just begun... to live!

Thanks be to God, Alleluia!

Gaudete!

Courtesy of my four-year-old daughter, here is a Christmas Eve video (snippet!) of our choir singing one of my favorite Christmas pieces: Gaudete. This song has special significance for me. Last year during the Advent and the Christmas seasons I was particularly drawn to this song on a CD I had, and I listened to it repeatedly. That day when I found myself invited to sing with the choir (it was Ephiphany), this was one of the songs we sang. So there was that quality of entering into something brand new that I somehow knew of already.