Hi. Let Me Re-Write Your Homily (again)

So, today's gospel was the one about the man who hired the guys standing around in the market place all at different times of the day, but paid each one the "regular daily wage." And the homily was basically: God is generous, and we don't get judged on a bell curve.

The second point was what really struck me as I listened to the gospel, but like always, what I drew from it was almost the opposite from what was preached. It was "You aren't John Paul II, and you aren't Mother Theresa. They had their lives and their circumstances, and you have yours. We aren't expected to be them. Just be the best you you can be."

And that's right and good. Just too conciliatory for my need today.

But what I really needed to hear was "You see Joe Schmoe over there, or Jane Schmane. Who cares about what they are doing. You might compare yourself to them and say 'Heck, I'm doing as well as they are. Everything's fine. We're all happy and comfy together, and after all, we're not perfect.' But no. God has given you gifts, and you are the only you He has made. You have an obligation to fulfill what God has given you to do, and you are never going to realize what that is by looking around at everyone else. Don't give one thought to how you compare to others, or get comfy because you feel like you fit and look like those around you. Maybe I want you to be the only orange crayon in your bin. You'll never understand how to be a perfect orange if all you look at is yellow and green."

Come to think of it, I've written a bunch of songs with this exact theme.

For some reason I crave hearing an exhortation to courage. Perhaps I want preachers to realize how much this moment in human history calls for it. Or, as St. Teresa of Avila says, how much courage it takes to pursue holiness, at any point in history.

Pondering God's Dark Speech

I have had one humdinger of a weekend, just by way of having a lot of activity and people going on around me. But in the midst of all that there was a completely different something going on spiritually, and maybe because of the hubbub on the one hand I need to go back and capture it again and put it down in words so that I don't lose it.

It seems God has a way of using "dark speech" at times. You know how when you are in conversation with someone, it might take them 10 or 15 seconds to complete a sentence? For those seconds, your brain is simply processing what is being said to you. The time is too short to ever feel it, but eight seconds into the sentence, you might not realize what the person is trying to say yet. Well it seems to me that in conversation with God, He can sometimes take about a year to get through a sentence. And during that time, all I can do is realize that He is saying something, without being able to grasp the entirety of His message just yet. I suppose that really indicates that the relationship of listening to Him has a priority, at that point, over even what it is He is saying. It keeps one stretching forward, straining a bit to make sure every word is captured. In experience, what I'm hearing seems to have all the value, but all of a sudden I see that the act of trying to listen is an exercise.

I am an auditory person. Being able to hear things is crucial to me. Huh. Ok. I see that God knows exactly how to draw each of us to Himself. It is crucial to me to "hear" what God is saying to me, so He takes His sweet and sometimes weird time so I am thoroughly focused on that, to strengthen my relationship with Him.

(This is why I have to go back and think this stuff through....)

The first experience of this dark speech, this intense moment of an invisible finger pointing furiously at a piece of God's normal liturgical speech, was last Friday on the feast of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (aka Edith Stein), a Carmelite saint. I don't have the nifty supplement to the Liturgy of the Hours for Carmelite saints, so I was praying the Office of Readings from the Common of One Martyr. Now, there is a way that this seems to work. Praying the Scriptures normally connects us with God in His action throughout salvation history (because God never speaks in a vacuum, always to people in a context). So, in entering into this dark speech, I am already present to this God of history in this normal kind of way, and I find to some degree or another, my personal place in this greater scope of salvation history. I am part of the People of God, and I'm seeing that fact. But then I read something, usually something that bears witness to God's presence in their own life (whether St. Paul or an apostle, or the spiritual writer or saint featured in the Office of Readings), and there is this resonance, a sense, and usually specific words that have a specific meaning in my own history. It's like the proverbial "flashing neon light" that a visual person might relate to. This time, it was St. Augustine's mention of a banquet: "You are seated at a great table. Observe carefully all that is set before you, for you also must prepare such a banquet." He wrote this in the context of talking about the martyr's total self-donation.

Now, I can't go saying everything that this provoked, but two of the many things that immediately came to mind (and yes, it is possible for many, many things to come to mind all at once -- it seems that is part of the experience) were told in this post and in this one. Both of these have to do with how the image of a banquet has been present in my faith journey, and they had to do with awakening to the sense of community.

Later at Mass, the dark speech continued as I heard the readings. What was impressed upon me, remembering that this was the feast of a Carmelite saint, was that part of what is drawing me into Carmel is the prayers of generations of Carmelites before me. Community. And now I am being called, not because I am so wonderful, but because I have a call to extend the same saving grace to others. I have always had the sense that all of God's action throughout my life has been in response to someone praying for me, some unknown someones. I actually had the sense that St. Teresa Benedicta's life and death itself was intercession for me. I don't know what emotional words to put to this, but it is a profound sense of a call on my life that is absolutely about self-giving -- which is of course the opposite of self-serving. Even though I realize I don't know the fullness of what this means, I still know it is very true that becoming a Carmelite is a responsibility I have to God, a call, a vocation. This is absolutely not about how well I "like" it or what kind of warm fuzzies I get. It is about what I am called to give, to God, to the Church, to the world.

Then there were the readings at Mass on Sunday. Often I read them beforehand, but this Sunday I did not. Again, I heard the Lord speaking, darkly, about my own life. This is much harder to put into words, but again these readings harkened back to another moment of "dark speech," or a sense I had from God at a Mass almost a year ago. I had the sense at that time that the Lord was warning me of a difficulty which would come (which indeed came that very day), but that I was to do nothing about it, only to wait for the Lord to bring the resolution. But I simply have not been sure how much stock to put in that sense. And mostly I haven't been sure because I've wanted to resolve it myself. Fact is, though, I haven't been able to. I've pretty well resigned myself to St. John of the Cross's counsel to forget all about it, because if God wants to act, He certainly will; it doesn't depend on "how much faith" I put in an uncertain sense of something He may or may not have been trying to promise me. In fact, to be honest, I hate getting these kinds of "senses" precisely because I don't want to have my life hang on waiting for something to happen. I know from experience that it takes my expectation off of God.

But listening to those readings, I felt myself slowly peeled, until the gospel just about split me open. I felt the Lord saying that He had seen how I had responded, the good and the bad, that He had seen my faith and received my sacrifices, and now He was telling me to be prepared. We had the longer version of the gospel, and line and after line after line pierced me -- not in a painful way, but in a penetrating way. Then came that last line: "Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.” Again, that sense that God is extending to me a call and I am to be sober-minded and realize this is about what I am called to give. This is not about my entertainment or titillation or some kind of fun kick. In other words, we're not talking superficialities here, we're talking real giving and real joy.

In the next few weeks I need to write my letter of intent for taking the next step to receive my scapular as a secular Carmelite. I'm sure I'm not too far off to say that this is entailed in all this, but I also know the Lord speaks in many layers, and always very personally, and there is always an element of surprise that only makes sense in looking back over life, sometimes years or decades later, and it shows that God knows us far better than we know ourselves, and that there is nothing random about or accidental in our lives. He does these things with us because it is one way at least that He builds our loving, learning and trusting relationship with Him as a Master with His disciples.

Thank you Lord, for the grace of writing, and thank you especially for calling me. I renew again the fact that I make my life a signed blank check in your hands. Please help me to move with you to and through everything that you desire. My one request of you is that you would enable me not to be a disappointment to you.

What Happened at Holy Hill

It's time for another show-and-tell.

A week ago we visited the Basilica of National Shrine of Mary Help of Christians, which is otherwise known simply as Holy Hill. It is operated by Carmelite Friars whose monastery is located on the grounds.

 

View from the rear of the Basilica

It isn't so much the physical beauty of the place that stirs me, though it is nice. There is something very powerful that moves me when I am here, and even to an extent when I remember being here.

The first time I heard of this place was in a conversation with my friend Keith who had just returned to the Church, while I was still an anti-Catholic pentecostal. I had encountered one brief glimmer of light coming from the Catholic Church while I was in college, and that was in the writings of St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross. I remember then dropping whatever book I was reading onto the table in the library out of sheer awe and saying to God, "Lord, if there are any people left in the world who believe like this, those are the people I want to be among." Now, three years later, I was asking Keith in a dire attempt to be conciliatory to a man I was very fond of, "You know St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross? Are there any people like them around the Catholic Church these days?" I didn't even know what I was asking, I mean, I certainly didn't understand all about religious orders, nor did I understand that they were basically the founders of one, the Discalced Carmelites. And he told me yes there were, just in the next county north, at Holy Hill.

My Protestant friends took me there the first time, mostly for sightseeing, since in the fall everyone comes to see the beautiful leaves from atop the high church tower. But I returned many, many times. More often than not, my feeling there was one of desperate and tremulous quest. I knew and believed that the Church was God's profound beauty, but I also knew I was encountering other stuff, both in the Church and in myself, that was ugly. I was often confused and scared, and amidst these new and foreign surroundings I tried to beg God to show me what He was doing.

Holy Hill has a monthly healing Mass, and at one of these I took the offer to go in the prayer line afterwards. This felt comfortingly familiar to my pentecostal experience. And yet, I wasn't entirely sure if these women who were going to pray with me were trustworthy or not. I don't remember anything I said to them or what we prayed for, though I have a feeling I started to cry. But I do remember vividly what the one woman told me as I got ready to leave. She told me to go and pray to Jesus, and she asked me if I knew where to find Him. I blurted out, with a bit of a question mark in my voice, "In my heart?" And she smiled and said yes, in my heart.

I had no idea at the time what a Carmelite-flavored exchange that was. I don't know for  sure, but I have a feeling she was a member of the local OCDS community, just like the one I am in formation with.

Last week's trip might have been my 20th trip there. This time was different, because I'm actually an aspirant of the order. Secular Carmelites are not addenda to the "real" order. I am actually going to be part of the exact same order that St. John and St. Teresa were. To think -- God answered that extremely earnest cry of my 20-year-old heart that I didn't even understand at the time! 

During the whole visit last week, I was vibrating inside . It is hard to describe, but as I took the picture above I was thinking "I wish I could eat this place." It's that sort of experience of grace where you just want everything of you to be part of everything of it. This is Carmel. This isn't just my home, it is the room within my home where I encounter Jesus, where He encounters me. Where I am His and He is mine. 

If I had that same book from my college days in my hands now, I'd drop it in sheer awe again.

Side altars: St. Teresa and St. John

Our Lady of Mount Carmel

Main Altar

My Year of Faith Sacramental Pilgrimage

Awhile back a blogger I saw wrote about going on pilgrimage during this Year of Faith to the place where one received ones sacraments. I tucked that in the corner of my mind to undertake while in Wisconsin this summer. We just did that, and here's my show-and-tell.

Here I am in front of St. Paul Lutheran Church in Madison, WI, where I was baptized in December of 1967. My family never went to church here after that. We actually moved away the week following my baptism for about six months, and after we returned, the LC-MS/WELS split had happened, and my mom stayed with the WELS. I've only been inside this church one time since my baptism, when I was about 19 years old.

 

This next one is not, strictly speaking, part of my sacramental life. This is the door of St. Vincent Pallotti parish in Wauwatosa, WI. In 1991 it was called St. Anthony of Padua (the name change apparently came after a parish merger). This was the parish where at a Christmas Eve midnight Mass I experienced Jesus in the Eucharist so profoundly that I ended up becoming a Catholic.

This is St. Rita Parish in West Allis, WI, where I was confirmed and received into the Church on April 18, 1993. I went to Sunday Mass here from the beginning of 1992 until the summer of 1993.

I wish I could say these were out of order, but this is at Gesu Parish in Milwaukee where I made my first confession the day after I was confirmed. Yeah, that's not the way it was supposed to be, but the priest who did my RCIA formation told me confession was optional, so I decided to opt out. The Holy Spirit had other ideas, and the following day at work He picked me up by the scruff of my neck and suddenly I could find no rest at all without going to confession. Off I went to Gesu, where I had been attending daily Mass for over a year, and where confessions were heard every afternoon. I crashed into the confessional chair, startling the blind priest who apparently was not used to loud water buffalos seeking the sacrament, and I explained that this was my first confession and that I had just been confirmed. "Ah, the Holy Spirit is stirring up the embers," he said. What struck me was that after I made my confession, the priest proclaimed that God forgave me all my sins. I was stunned at this. All my sins? Not just what I managed to blurt out? What a deal!

Oh, and I'm standing near this statue of St. Katherine Drexel because the confessionals I used have been replaced by rooms.

 

This is the altar in the lower church at Gesu. I attended daily Mass here for about two and a half years, where my former spiritual director Fr. John Campbell, SJ presided. This was the first parish I actually joined, because Fr. John was for me the heart of the sense of community I knew. Fr. Confession-is-Optional made no particular impression on me...

This last picture captures for me the heart of this sacramental pilgrimage. It is a very plain chapel there in the Lower Church, and yet it was the site where deeply profound changes began to transform my heart. Many days I stumbled through the doors for Mass after work, weary and stressed, and a flood of peace enveloped me the second I came into the presence of that tabernacle that holds Jesus inside. When Fr. John (may he rest in peace) stood behind that altar and prayed he formed me in what liturgy means. Jesus spoke to my heart and I learned the first steps in becoming a Catholic. All those priceless moments stay with me to this day.

Interiors and exteriors of the churches looked old and worn, or conversely were so newly repaired that they were foreign to me. This speaks to me of the humility and the transience of the things God uses. They are just material things, and even the most grand of them will crumble and be gone one day (as was the apartment building where I lived!) Even the people get old and die. But the graces remain.

When I moved to Japan I cried at the thought of leaving Fr. John and my new parish behind. Being homesick meant wanting to be at that 5:30 Mass again. Eight years ago, Fr. John passed away at 60 years young, and when I learned of it I felt completely alone in the world. But the beauty of what I have experienced in the sacraments is learning the reality that God's power really does come to us through humble signs, through people, through created matter, and it is within God's power that we actually find our home. In fact, God Himself is our home. He gives us all of these means to call us home. Even though human love would make us want to attach to the means, we have to have the eyes of a mystic to become attached to the One who calls us through them. 

The thing that always makes me slack-jawed is that He really does use created things to communicate Himself. The eternal Word of God really and truly did become man in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. Deepest reality is sacramental.

And this is where all that first happened to me.

Natural Law, Marriage, and the Normality of Ignorance

I almost interjected myself into a homily yesterday.

It wasn't actually in response to the homily itself, but in response to the reaction of the congregation.

Let me start the story at the beginning.

It was the 4th of July, and I was attending Mass at Once-In-a-Blue-Moon parish. The deacon there preached along the lines of the closing of the Fortnight for Freedom. His basic theme was on understanding and addressing well the cultural times in which we live.

He told a story of speaking with a 30-something woman about sexual morality. She dismissed his rejection of sex outside of marriage as being merely a product of his toeing the Catholic line. He explained that one could passionately hold this position based purely on reason, with no reference to faith or religion. And then he detailed how:

When a man and woman engage in sex, he explained, it often happens that a child is conceived. It is justice for this child to be born and raised into a stable, peaceful environment. The biggest part of that stability comes through a relationship with its parents which remains constant and reliable throughout the childhood and further, throughout life. The best way to accomplish that is for these parents to be already committed to each other for life before the child comes on the scene.

Then the deacon went on to say that this woman with whom he was talking responded with: "That's a compelling argument. I've never heard anyone explain it like that to me before."

And at that point, I heard audible gasps from people seated behind me.

In the next breath, the deacon made reference to how this woman's rejection of Catholic teaching had come from her ignorance. Then I heard, on the other side of me, audible chuckling, as if to say "Boy howdy, that's right. Ignorant."

That was when I fought the urge to stand up and turn this into a round table discussion. (As you can see, I opted for a blog post.)

Much of what I'm going to say has to do with a generational divide, as the people I was surrounded with were a few decades my senior.

First, to respond to the gaspers. Normally I feel like the most naive person in any group, but I just cannot wrap my head around someone being shocked that the natural law view on marriage is entirely absent from the landscape of the mind. I am on the older end of Gen-X, but it seems that anyone of my generation or younger has had this common sense view of marriage either blotted out or made murky by either personal or sympathetic experience, and by consistent cultural messaging.

Sex equals babies? Says who. Since when. Certainly not since the 60s! In April, 1967, seven months before I was born, the first law was passed in the US to legalize abortion in some cases. And three decades before that contraception went from illegal to holding a prominent place in medical training.

And what about a two-parent family being an aspect of justice to children? Divorce rates shot through the roof in the late 60s as well. How many 30-somethings can you even find who were born and have lived their whole lives with their parents married to each other? When you have entire generations riddled through with divorced or separated parents, with many of these offspring able to reason that their lives were better off that way, how do you expect the same people to have any concept of the justice that was actually due them? Are not people more likely to assure themselves that they turned out OK, despite their parents' problems?

You can only possess what you experience. When you grow up in an environment where parents did not self-sacrificially lay down their lives for one another and give themselves to provide stability for their own vulnerable offspring, how the hell do kids learn that this is even how life should work?

They don't.

The only hope is if they see it happening that way for other people. That's called the witness of Christian family. (In reality, it takes more than tacit witness. The witness needs to be wedded to words of testimony of encountering Christ and an explicit call to likewise follow Him in conversion.)

I can remember as a late teen meeting the family of a Lutheran pastor I knew. My friend and I knew his son, and one day we had lunch with them after church on Sunday. I wanted to stay there all day and suck in their life. It was so wonderful. Two parents, kids, a dining room table, a meal together, everyone talked and joked. The poor pastor had to actually hand me a map with driving directions back home as a hint to get me to leave. I didn't even know, really, what I was hungry for, but I saw that these folks had it.

From my childhood into my adult years, I misunderstood marriage as not a means for partnering with a man to give life to the vulnerable among us, but as finally finding someone who loved me. As a kid I met a friend of my grandmother's who told me she had been married at age 15. I thought that was perfect. I also wanted to have 12 kids. Then, surely, I would finally be loved. Oh, I didn't think about it explicitly that way, but I realize now that's what it meant to me. The older I got (more and more frantic that I was "old" and single), the Lord had to reveal to me that my desire for "marriage" was actually at cross purposes with my following Him. I was a very hard sell when it came to believing that His love was the love I needed. Somehow I thought that meant no human being would ever love me. I had no idea that I couldn't give love to anyone unless I let His love flood me first. You can only possess what you experience, and you can only give what you possess.

All human beings are essentially walking, gaping needs-for-love. But perhaps my generation (and younger) experiences this more starkly than the folks who were raised in a time and place when natural law values and basic decency and love were more common.

Now to address that chuckler: Yes, the woman the deacon spoke of is ignorant. But this sort of ignorance of heart should make us double over in pain and weep. On a broad scale, we no longer understand what it means to be human, in the image and likeness of God. Marriage is thought of now as a source of pleasure for people, in whatever way and for whatever duration they agree to. This ignorance is deeply rooted in the family experience of most young people. This was my ignorance, too, but I was able to abide in a moral straitjacket that kept me from debauchery, even though I didn't understand God's loving purpose in natural law restrictions. God was gracious and merciful to me, but I can tell you that straitjackets are not comfortable. As the ignorance of the culture becomes deeper, I doubt that many would endure them for long.

We who call ourselves Christians have a dire responsibility to live dripping with God's love. That means we need to seriously turn our hearts to God on a daily basis and expand our relationship with Him to the extent that His love and His way, His disciplines, fill our hearts and lives. Forget brownie points. God wants YOU. Then, we have a responsibility to live the nitty gritty of our relationships with the determined action to do good. That's what love is. Open your heart and put it into the way you serve your family, your friends, the people in your life. We also need to repent of how we have been selfish, self-centered, unwilling to work, unwilling to give ourselves to others, unwilling to follow disciplines of prayer and spiritual growth.

We are the signs of God's reality to our culture. Let us be wise, courageous, and clear about who we are.

Surprised by Hope

This morning, our deacon preached on how today's readings bespeak hope. He talked about how we all have dead places in us, like Abraham and Sarah who were too old to have children, like the leper who was not only terminally ill but cut off from the community. These "point of no return" places leave us with no hope for change. The only exception is if there is divine intervention.

Divine intervention is all over Scripture.

And it isn't about people magically getting their wishes, or attitude adjustment that merely sees good in a bad situation.

Divine intervention is about making the impossible possible. Christianity is divine intervention in the human race, making it possible for all of us broken, sinful, self-absorbed human beings to come into union with the creative, holy, self-donating Love that is God -- and to live there, as apprentices, and eventually as masters. All by His gift, offered by Him and awaiting our response.

That mention of the hopeless case of Abraham and Sarah's infertility struck home. Deacon Steve referred to how hopelessness sometimes has to reach utter despair and desperation before it flings itself out with a request like the one made to Jesus today, "Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean." It is the acknowledgment of our own utter powerlessness to change ourselves. I want to be clean, but I have no power to make it happen.

With my own flesh and blood I've written my own story of fading hope and utter despair when it comes to infertility. There's a struggle with one's very purpose, one's sense of worthiness of blessing, of fulfillment. Sometimes there is much grinding that occurs before even being blessed with a sense of climax of reaching desperation, if you know what I mean. I've experienced this in other aspects of life as well. It really is a blessing to reach a breaking point, even though it doesn't feel like it at the time. It's like the blessed release of death. On the other side there is acceptance, learning, and a new kind of life-giving potential. But none of that is evident for some time, only pain.

(I don't wonder that folks sometimes want that breaking point so badly that they make our daily sagging hope worse than it might otherwise be. Like Redd Foxx on Sanford and Son, they are constantly proclaiming, "This is the big one!" A breaking point is a gift of grace, not something we can conjure for ourselves. We need to be patient with the suffering of each day, in all its painful hum drum, hard work, lack of glory.)

I realized today that one result in having written these stories of despair in my own life is that hope strikes me as a demand of reality. My daughter is a concrete person whom I can touch. I am bound, obligated, by my experience of God to hope in the face of these other situations where I have experienced hopelessness. Life is not random. God speaks through everything I experience, and He is not haphazard in His lessons. He is not teaching me to rely on some magical power by which I satiate my passing pleasures. He is teaching me to live in union with Him, which is ultimate, cosmic happiness. That entails laying aside the penultimate for the ultimate, and of course learning to discern between the two in the nitty gritty of daily life.

I discovered hope, in its deep green vigor, like a surprise in my life. Just as the plants in my garden are practically doubling in size over the course of a few days, all of a sudden I realize how powerfully hope has gripped my life.

That really is quite marvelous.

Let it Shake You

This morning I heard someone make a passing reference that I can't let go by without calling it forth, picking it apart, and throwing it in the garbage heap.

Ostensibly it was made in connection with the Supreme Court decisions on marriage yesterday, although it was not in a discussion of that. It was a general comment that the Christian Church has faced challenges throughout history, and some general references were made, including to today's issues of abortion and the sanctity of marriage. And the comment was "We shouldn't let it [the fact that the Church is challenged] shake our faith."

Personal note of my own spiritual formation: I'm learning to articulate a reality that has often confused me. When I heard this I had an immediate red flag, but it wasn't about the logic, nor the historical record nor any objective doctrinal or personal disagreement with the speaker, nor any imagined fault on his part. It wasn't about the words themselves, but the spirit behind the words. (I hate it, though, when I get a rock solid sure sense of something that seems that intangible. I'm still learning.)

Now I'll pick apart.

You see, the enemy of our souls wants "Don't let it shake your faith" to translate in our experience as "Don't let it upset your complacency." "Our faith" sometimes really is simply our smug self-satisfaction at how we've arranged a sense of moral and religious decency -- nothing too drastic, just an arrangement we are comfortable with. Something that serves us to get along reasonably. This way of operating doesn't have squat to do with Jesus Christ or Christianity. And the enemy of our souls loves it.

So then comes some big challenge. You were all comfortable with your "faith" and then boom: your husband is sleeping around, or your adult child enters a shocking lifestyle, or you are given six months to live, or you lose your job and your home. How do you respond? You were complacent. You were "happy." And now what? Well, you feel like the floor fell out under you, because what was under you was only your self-managed sense of decency. And it is shifting sand that the rains wash away, leaving you with everything in shambles.

Christianity, Jesus Christ active in time and space through His Church, comes to mercifully shake the hell out of us. Do let the trial shake your faith, by all means! Shaking is the only way we stop relying on our totally lame efforts to prop up our own lives with our smugness and our decency and our comforts. In His mercy Christ shakes us until all that crap can fall away. The call to follow Jesus means to build our lives on Him, not on ourselves and our own decency.

Only after we've gotten the shifting sands out of the picture am I able to build on reality, on love that is certain, on God's eternal faithfulness. Then those same winds and storms will blow -- they never leave the scene! -- but we will be secure. We are tested repeatedly and so we reaffirm repeatedly that our only security comes in how deeply we are loved by God. And with each test, we are purified.

So, let the challenges shake your faith. Let them rip your complacency to shreds and send it back to hell where it came from. And get down on your knees, or stand up with arms outstretched, whatever, and give thanks, praise and glory to God who has treated you with such great mercy as to let you be purified by the great gift of a raging storm. Stay with Him and He will absolutely prove His faithfulness.

Reflecting on "Modesty Sets Fire"

Recently I read Modesty Sets Fire by Marc Barnes/BadCatholic, and it set off several thoughts in my head that I want to now capture and look at. You can read the whole post for an overview; I'm going to pick through it for the bits that set my mind in motion.

Marc says, "I suspect we prefer monotony to metanoia" (conversion). I see this as a huge problem among Christians, one that persists mostly because we don't explicitly examine our sense of drudgery enough and because we are uncourageous wimps. Healing stories in Scripture always make me wonder how difficult that healed person's life became afterwards. You get your sight, or use of both hands, or you're cleansed of leprosy, and suddenly everything you've known is turned upside down. Being healed can really ruin you if the drudgery of same-old-same-old is something you secretly treasure.

The only way out of monotony is to really and truly feel the pain of your predicament. Pain should not cause Christians to turn away our faces and hide. Where there is felt pain, there is hope, as long as that pain is not stuffed, but allowed to be the vehicle to bring us out of ourselves for union with Christ. What else but our need prompts us to want God? We are nothing if not a gaping need for God and His forgiveness. Isn't this why classic spirituality teaches us to seek after perfect contrition? We need to feel the pain, a deep remorse for our sin (which is so much different than the devil's guilt that tells us we are worthless creatures) to even want freedom from it. Without contrition, without the pain that tells us the truth about ourselves, we walk around bored with our lives, bored with prayer, bored with God, bored with being good, bored with being evil. Bored. Flat. Dull. Not caring. Anesthetized.

All that was really just a minor introductory point.

Closer to his main point, he then goes on with this bit from the Catechism about modesty making it possible to resist fashions. Of course that means more than popular clothing styles, although he uses that to illustrate his intended point.

His main point isn't mine, really, but let me lay out three items for closer examination. Number one, the positive definition of modesty:

Modesty is wholeness; integration; a harmony between body and soul; the outward revelation of our inward subjectivity through the presentation and action of the body, in which we express to the world the inexpressible fact of our personality, and by which we have the faith necessary to believe in the subjectivity and personality of every human on the planet...

And that is simply true. Two:

I believe that modesty empowers us to act, and with the ability to act comes the ability and the impetus to resist the allurements of fashion.

And three, he talks about how passivity is the province of objects, and action is the province of subjects.

All right. This is where all my synapses started shooting fireworks.

I am always trying to understand what God is teaching me, and stringing these particular thoughts together just now is like stopping on my hike up the mountain and taking in a great view. Integration, modesty, empowerment, subjectivity, action... All of these aspects of truth and conversion have been percolating in my life in recent years. That word empowerment seems to be my word of the month, actually. Ok, so what of it.

Forget, please, equating modesty with baggy clothes, or with clothes at all. Just forget it. Modesty is this inner, spiritual quality. When it is present, it manifests, of course, but like all spiritual qualities, when it is not there, it can also be aped. I am undecided on whether aping is a good thing; perhaps it depends on how malleable we are in God's hands, how willing we are to be taught that the good we think we are doing is really worthless straw that needs to be traded for real virtue. (Or might we repent more quickly if we are the honestly wicked type?)

Certainly we are often unaware that we are aping -- externally copying what we think is morally upright, good, and holy behavior. As we progress through conversion, we go from whatever coping mechanisms we know for survival, to behavior that gets us accepted by others, to behavior that seems to fit a holy ideal, to that which God teaches us fits our own soul for the praise and glory of His name, for our good and the good of all His holy church.

I have journeyed this route, too. In certain aspects of my life I have been more scared to be taught by God than in others. I have been rather terrified, frankly, of God addressing my sexuality, of His bringing a harmony there between my body and soul, of allow Him to allow me to express my whole personality, and to act as a free subject. I have been terrified of the healing that would turn my world upside down. It's always the fear of the unknown, of course, and of that which one is unwilling to explicitly examine. It's the secretly-treasured prison of drudgery.

But I have long held a "blank check" policy with God; He is granted a free hand in my life, period. And He's taken me up on it.

He knows me far more deeply than I know myself, and He has also been intricate, patient, loving, and extremely clever in the ways He goes about leading me to freedom. I've had to walk blind because if I would have seen where I was going to end up, I would have bolted.

It is super tricky to be an adult married woman, edging up on being so-called middle aged, and getting some of this stuff for the first time. Big internal changes are one thing for a youngin, but it dawned on me recently that mismanaged big internal changes about modesty are one reason people my age end up divorcing. Yikes.

The conversion from experiencing oneself as an object to experiencing oneself as a subject is profound and powerful, like dynamite. And it highlights how and why Christian life is not just about me & Jesus. We need the Church, we need connection, commitment, belonging and protection in the Body of Christ when our understanding of ourselves starts getting blown apart. But we shouldn't get afraid of God's power, because when we hang in there with Him, we are healed, not left devastated.


These things are difficult for me to address, but it is true that since my teen years I have become accustomed to men staring at me, talking dirty and stupid around me, or getting sort of puppy-dogish or weirdly attentive. Through the years I've dealt with this as well as I could, which wasn't very well, and it involved a lot of shutting out. A lot of accepting, without thinking about it, that I was an object to which degradation was simply to happen. That was actually a tad more comforting than thinking that I was some kind of slime that caused men to be bad. There were definite comfort advantages for me in not examining this too closely.

Then I met... well, no, I won't use his name. God had work to do, and His choice of instrument and His ways scared me. But God taught me through this good man that I am a subject, not an object. God slowly removed the "object" knots around me (which had grown slack from years of not being yanked on as much) and had me practice the harmony, expression and wholeness of modesty born from being a somebody instead of a thing. Then when the time was right, he removed my mentor and set me off without the training wheels. Every step in the whole process I was either scared, angry, or both. But the one thing that has kept my life on even keel is to say every day to Jesus Christ in the midst of His Church, Jezu ufam tobje: Jesus, I trust in You.

Stopping to behold this view on the mountain humbles me, or at least it had better. I resist God, and I often think my life is on the brink of disaster when really He is blessing me. I cry over dropping my favorite stone when God is trying to fit me for a crown. I am so intent on my pleasures, and God is so intent on my happiness. I am silly.

Surviving conversion requires far more courage than one might think, says St. Teresa of Avila. But emerging on the far side of a conversion journey, becoming the one God created one to be (onion journey though it always is), one is rendered empowered. Free to act, to create, in the image of God. As St. Catherine of Siena said (and Marc quotes) "Be who God meant you to be, and you will set the world on fire!" This is where Jesus was fishing when He said "Ask whatever you will in my name, and I will do it." May I have the strength to keep going in this way.

I used to think being a Christian made me a sheep, but it occurs to me now that the virtue of modesty — and of chastity to which it is ordered — is the revolution against passivity, and will prepare my arms for battle, to burn down and build up what I will.

Read Marc's whole article at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/badcatholic/2013/06/modesty-sets-fire.html

Been Realizing so Much....

Every season of my life seems to have its weirdness, but the difference with the current season is that it's the kind of thing that I can and do talk about freely with lots of people. Health issues are like that. Emotional, spiritual and relational issues are not like that. So in a way, this is a great relief, because I can ask tons of folks to pray for me and tell them why, and they do.

Perhaps it is precisely because of all the prayers being offered for me that I find myself surrounded by new ways, new realizations, new grace. I need to try to catalog these. (Look up at the blog title -- Naru Hodo; I write, therefore I understand. That's the deal now.)

(In no particular order.) I can articulate to myself and to others, "I need to talk about this. Listen to me on this point for a bit." See, even as I'm writing that it's like seeing a new piece of furniture in my living room and wondering where it came from.

I realize that part of my loving relationship with others is to correct or direct them when they don't know something, and I have a better idea of it. I can actually do that as an expression of love, and not of impatience, grumpiness, arrogance, blame or any of the other negatives that I always felt like directing others required or elicited. I realize that I am actually grossly at fault when it is my place to direct or correct someone, and I don't do it.

I realize that God asks of me holy indifference. My life was created by Him, and exists enveloped in His love for me to serve, working with Him in His plan. Because it is His plan, I do not understand everything as we go along. I have very strong preferences for how I would like some things to be. But God asks me to trust Him to the degree that I will leave everything in His hand and allow the choice of directive to be His. And that I refrain from bitterness when that involves letting go of control of the things that strike at my dearest preferences. And strike He does. (He has no problem correcting and directing me, and He is all love. He calls me to be the same. See above.)

I realize that every piece of the service entailed in my daily duty is a precious way for me to participate in working for the salvation of souls. When I pick up the laundry basket and carry it up the stairs because it is part of what is before me to do, and I choose that over sitting down and being introspective and brooding (and calling it 'contemplative'), that action of love is an offering that can be rendered prayer for love and grace to enter someone's life. The external works don't matter as much as the disposition and the relationship with God, so that love is lived.

I realize that when I open my mouth to speak about God, I am always telling stories. I don't mean parables, I mean giving testimony to what God has done in my life. I don't think about doing it or calculate it. It's just what comes out. Instinctively, it seems, this is what I have to tell people. And I guess this is why I write stuff here, because it gives me practice in forming my thoughts.

I realize that illness is about far more than illness. I'm not even sure I'm "sick," and I'm certainly undergoing no significant physical suffering. Because I've always been a healthy young punk with a side of misanthropic past, I've often thought that people who talked about their illnesses were just moaners, basically. Maybe this is me coming of age. Maybe this is me learning that suffering makes people vulnerable, which in turn means that the moment is ripe for them to reach out for God's help. Who, then will be the instrument ready, not to fill them with pep talks or worry with them or complain about doctors with them, but to demonstrate the care and love of Christ, and to look with them, calmly, into pain and fear and show them that Jesus gives peace? But not the obnoxious peace that is really just anesthesia. The peace that acknowledges the terror of being made weak, of requiring others to pick up our slack, of enduring uncertainty, of relinquishing control.

So, while the one doctor finally decides whether I need surgery, whether the lingering chance of cancer has any validity at all, and while I try to discern what to do about the fact that no one is addressing the weirdest question my body is posing, I realize I am really blessed with the chance to work out, somewhat openly, other issues that have woven their way into my life, starting back even more than a decade. A long, long time ago I hit upon an analogy for how my life felt: a spider web. The spider does one circle around, then casts a thread and goes to a new level. Same pattern, but always slightly bigger dimensions. And that "casting out" part... you know, I'm not really sure how they do it. How do they launch out into the next thing, when technically they are hanging out in space? It all boils down to building on what came before. I have been building on what came before like this, or aware of doing it, at least, for about 25 years. Most of it has been interior stuff that hasn't been appropriate to talk about on a public scale. There's something almost giddy for me in having something else going on, that people will ask me "Is anything new happening?" and I can tell them. I can't think of a single life lesson I've gone through that is like this -- even the medical issues of infertility are not the sort of thing one can do that with, aside from a support group.

Anyway, blah blah blah, I am grateful to God. I truly am. He only gives good things, even with the pain entailed. I know how deeply loved I am, and I know that eternity is what this life is all about.

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.

God is ALWAYS to be Trusted

So, back a couple posts I wrote about this novena to St. Therese I was doing. I was giving myself a little pep talk to persevere with it, and wrote this:

I think that's the way some things are in my life, too -- only God understands them. But He does all things well, and for His purposes. Absolutely nothing transpires in our lives apart from the will of God. We need only to align ourselves with rightly with God, and whether it makes sense during this life or not, His purposes will always prevail.

Well, I went back and re-read that several days after I finished the novena, and I had to sorta laugh to myself.  I should include the fact that I was slightly bummed when I finished this novena that I did not get the customary rose handed to me at its conclusion. Well, OK, Marie, don't get all silly about this... I told myself. But then I had to stop and think again. Maybe this time the "rose," the sign of my answered prayer, was gonna look different.

Because what happened in between time was that I've developed these lumps on my neck. To make a long story short, I've run the course of two meds, supposedly ruled out the possibility of a normal problem like an ear infection, and am now awaiting testing to find out if it might be something really nasty like cancer.

So, why am I laughing at that? Well, in part I laugh because I don't want to curl into fetal position and die. But it is also because I know, like rock-solid know, that absolutely nothing transpires in my life apart from the will of God. This last year (I am officially proclaiming) was the hardest, most painful, confusing, scary, bewildering spiritual path I have ever faced. Even though I knew God was leading me on it I also hated every minute of it, at least when I wasn't scared to death. Have you ever lived through hating something God was handing you? It makes life kinda hard.

But then all of a sudden, the pain is gone, and there's this silence, like between movements of music.

And then there's this.

And all of a sudden, having a doctor say "maybe... lymphoma" to me feels like a walk in the park.

Because I know better than I know my name that God knows my life more intimately than I do. I know nothing transpires apart from His will. I know, even, that crosses are royal blessings, given to those He desires to draw close to Him, and that I am unworthy of receiving them. I know that my life exists to glorify Him and love others. I know that suffering can be offered as prayer so that others can know God. I know that what I desire more than anything is the salvation of souls. My life does not belong to me, nor do my children's lives. All that I have and experience is a gracious gift from God.

God knows what He's doing. He is always to be trusted.

Pentecost is our Ordinary

I was at the Mass for the Vigil of Pentecost this evening, and had one of those moments where I was listening to the readings from so far deep inside that I forgot where I was or what was supposed to happen next. Which was kinda interesting, considering that I was the cantor and was supposed to get up and sing the psalm. I recovered quickly enough, but not without that sense of disorientation, wondering for a moment if I was doing the completely wrong thing at the completely wrong time.

The first reading: the Tower of Babel. (Deep breath, recovery..) Psalm petitioning God to send forth the Holy Spirit and renew the face of the earth. The bit about the Holy Spirit praying for us when we don't know how with groans that words cannot express. Then this great gospel:

On the last and greatest day of the feast,
Jesus stood up and exclaimed,
“Let anyone who thirsts come to me and drink.
As Scripture says:
Rivers of living water will flow from within him who believes in me.”

He said this in reference to the Spirit
that those who came to believe in him were to receive.
There was, of course, no Spirit yet,
because Jesus had not yet been glorified. 

There are those moments when familiar Scriptures take on a whole new layer of meaning, reveal another depth, when splashed over my life, my experiences, as they accrue to me to this day. That is the beauty of life with God: everything is always made new.

Here's how it struck me today.

There are two ways that people can be united, so to speak. The first is a unity unworthy of the name, but it is actually a very sticky unity. It is the unity of sin. Sin speaks one language, and that language says "me" in a thousand ways. Even when it says "you," it really says "me." This is the unity that humanity had at Babel. The people were all about making a name for themselves, establishing their own glory and power. They worked with other folks who had the same selfish intention, willing to use and be used for the purpose of self-glorification. When "God confused their language," they discovered that they didn't understand each other anymore. There is a grace here. The facade of unity crumbled away, and each one was revealed for what they were: out for themselves. Their language now betrayed "me" when it said "you." And each selfish builder went off to build for himself instead of being invincible in the sticky, fake unity of sin. This reminds me of how the devil will butter people up with attractive perks, only to kill, steal and destroy in the end.

But this relationship amongst humanity and between persons is not God's will. This is not the image of God. God is a relationship, a family, a unity of self-giving. It is the Holy Spirit, sent by the glorified Messiah that refashions humanity to live as the images of God we are created to be.

When we are in Christ, when we have died with Him and risen with Him and we receive His Spirit, something happens to us. We experience this labor, this groaning as the Spirit births new things in us. It is glorious, but it is like a pain. But it is a pain we can't escape, and we wouldn't want to if we could realize what it is, for it is part of the birth of new life. That new life is not for ourselves. That new life is what God has done in us, and it is for His glory and His people. In our utter dependence on God for this process that we did not begin and that we do not control, we are completely surrendered to His action in our spirits.

This is the opposite of the self-seeking and other-using of Babel. This is living as self-gift, first to God, and then to the world. This is "I am not my own; no one lives as his own master, and no one dies as his own master." This is living in the awareness that God causes me to be, causes everything to be, that His love courses through me so that I sometimes do not even know (realize) what I am saying and doing, only I discover that there is a river flowing from within me that does not come from me. Jesus has given all to me, and in giving all I have in return, I find that I give God's life itself. This is living as images of God, as God intends. This is our joy.

This is why Pentecost is our "ordinary time." Yes, I know ordinary means "counted." But it is also true that the commonplace life of the Christian IS God's Holy Spirit present and active in and through us so that we are empowered to carry forth His work and His presence in this world. Don't leave out that part about Jesus being glorified, and remember that in the gospel "being glorified" means being nailed to a cross and dying. We share in that part first. But it all goes in onion layers.

This is the only way that joy is possible. This is how Christianity works. This is not about my efforts to be good, moral and nice. This is about transformation from dead to living. This is God's life soaking, flooding, pouring through my leaky, frail, clay pot and making it an outpost of His own life in this world.

Paging St. Therese

I'm in the middle of what I think is only my third ever novena to St. Therese. I wrote last summer about how I just never could warm up to her until I read letters exchanged between her and Maurice, who became a missionary priest and was her spiritual brother.

But a lot has changed since last summer. Now I am in formation as a secular Carmelite and learning how this spirituality is actually my vocation. (I realize now that approaching a spirituality in a try-it-on mentality, or an everyone-else-is-doing-it mentality isn't as good as it gets. It seems the "well, this sure explains a lot" approach is fuller, because it is about discovering the meaning of something God has already put there. It's a deeper way of learning to be who God has made me.)

So, there's St. Therese, not only a huge Carmelite saint but a Doctor of the Church.

Some people are just harder for me to get to know than others.

Some posts are harder for me to write without rambling, too.

My first novena to her, I confess, I didn't finish. And why? That rose appeared on the very first day, so I stopped. I was dead earnest about my intention, and that prayer has figured very large in the landscape of my spiritual life in the last few years. I had absolute confidence that my prayer had been answered, which is kind of ironic, because I didn't even understand how central confidence in God is to St. Therese's Little Way. This intention wasn't the sort of thing that was about an immediate manifestation. In fact, it was very much a "someday" sort of thing. The way the "someday" has been working out has gotten bigger and bigger over the last few years.

With my second one, I was asked to pray for someone, and while I wasn't thinking about a novena to St. Therese, I do remember praying about how to pray, and that was what came to me, so I did it. Rose. I had no idea how ironic that was going to prove, either.

Leading up to her feast day last October, I remember now, as a community we prayed a very simple novena for a return to the Faith for those who had lost it. But that was not this same novena I'm talking about here, so let's say it doesn't count.

But here I am again, knocking at Theresie's door (yeah, I call her that privately; hope she doesn't mind). I understand now more of her way of humility, of confidence, of spiritual childhood, of abandonment to God's will and of embracing whatever suffering comes with it. I understand more than I did before why she is a Doctor of the Church. I'm sure, in reality, my understanding is very rudimentary. But at least when I go to her I am praying more deeply this time.

And dang, if I am not wrestling hard.

Humility is a good thing. It is beautiful and it is powerful. It is pure. But in my heart I still hear echos of fighting for myself, defending myself from being put down, nursing my own wounds. Jesus, who is profoundly humble, calls me not to try to heal myself from hurts to my pride, but to bring my heart to Him for Him to love it to wholeness. Filled with His love, I don't need the kind of self-love that is all about shutting others out (including God). Filled with His love, I spill over to others without noticing.

God is all-powerful, and I am not. But in my heart I still want to get in there and do it, my own thing, to fix it. Even though I don't know how to or even what fixes I want. I know enough to know I want something from God, but I am proud enough to think I can do it myself.

Today, one line in the novena prayer said something about the delays and disappointments that St. Therese experienced, and how if what I were asking for was not in God's will, and therefore not to be granted, that I would be disappointed. At that point, I burst into tears. "Like a baby," I thought, but then I thought again... no, like St. Therese. Sometimes we just aren't given to know whys about things. When I read Story of a Soul the first time, I thought she was being rather the drama queen to weep so about her desire to enter Carmel. But there was an intensity in her soul, partly natural to her, to be sure, but it was there for reasons that no one but God understood. That's the way He wanted it. I think that's the way some things are in my life, too -- only God understands them. But He does all things well, and for His purposes. Absolutely nothing transpires in our lives apart from the will of God. We need only to align ourselves with rightly with God, and whether it makes sense during this life or not, His purposes will always prevail.

Ok, so, now I see this has been a pep talk so that I continue with this novena, continue entrusting myself to the Lord who is all wise and all powerful and all loving, and not run off half cocked in my pride. Or, at least I will wait to do that until after the novena. Hey, I don't ask for graces I'm not in desperate need of!

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.

Divine Mercy Sunday -- KABLAM!

There just ain't nothin' like Divine Mercy Sunday. God constantly finds ways to be awesome.

Since yesterday I was mulling over how it was time to go to confession. Thought about doing it yesterday, but I just wasn't in the zone. I figured I would jump in the long line this afternoon at the major Divine Mercy event at our Cathedral.

Ok. So, starting this morning I did more mulling. If you are anything like me, sometimes your prep for confession is bitingly obvious, and sometimes it is more of a spelunking challenge. Like, most of the challenge is "going in there." I am still, frankly, a bit messed up by my Lutheran upbringing when it comes to confession. Oh, sit back down, Lutheran friend. I just mean that I was so over-formed on the one hand on how everything I did was completely rotted out by sin so that I could not do one good thing, and on the other hand on how complete God's forgiveness is, that I am sometimes left feeling like I can't even breathe without sinning, but it doesn't really matter since God has already forgiven me. In short: I'm a wretch, but who cares!?

So it was kind of interesting today, of all days, how confession went. It was priest-pot luck at the Cathedral event, since you basically went to whichever one happened to be open at the moment you were next in line. I ended up with a priest whom I know (of), but had not confessed to in years. I started out with my planned lines, but then he started asking me things. My normal confessor almost never does that. And all of a sudden I moved away from the "I'm a wretch (but who cares)" mode I had kind if started out with, and started talking about that. I mean this mysterious path God has led me on for a year. I hadn't really intended to talk about that, although I had some references to it in my laundry list. And in a few short minutes, the priest still asking me things, we talked through the multiple steps of this arduous journey as if we were discussing driving directions to a place we both knew well. And then the priest tells me of an image the Lord is showing Him, and it is precisely how the Lord has given it to me to understand myself in this situation for several months. It was as if the Lord wanted to affirm through the mouth of his representative all the silent conversation we've had for months. And I just kept thinking, "I didn't mean to talk about this at all!" But the Lord knows exactly what my heart needs. And apparently, the Lord knows my heart needs to feel totally understood, enveloped, affirmed, accompanied, and sure that He's completely the boss of that.

So the upshot, the directive: stay with the joy. Examine it, delight in it. Play with God.

Which immediately reminds me of this: (Br. Neven Ivan, how I miss you!)



What is required to enter the kingdom of God is to become like a little child. Little children don't worry over understanding things, because they know to whom they look with trust and confidence. I don't care what else goes on, as long as I can see Your face. And even when I can't see It, I know where You are. Keeping myself safe and cared for is not my job, on this intensely internal spiritual level. You, Lord, are more present to me than I am to myself. Safe in Your embrace, I can do or say or risk anything You call me to. Anything.

Even holding a joy I can't explain. 

Theological Virtue of Faith

Excerpts drawn from "Theological Virtue of Faith" in the January/March 2013 Carmel Clarion. The article has no author attribution, but the editor is Fr. Regis Jordan, OCD. To request a subscription, see Carmel Clarion Communications.

***

God speaks; man responds. But man is not forced to respond. He can respond to the world instead; as if it were the only reality, as if it were his supreme value. He can respond to himself; as if his own ego is the central frame of reference, the sun which lights up and gives value to every other thing in his life. And yet a man is human, real and alive only to the extent that he respond first and foremost, above and through all other things, to God who speaks to him personally, calls him by name, loves him, and by His love creates and sustains him in being, and leads him unerringly to human fulfillment, divine union, vision, beatitude.

How can fallen man respond to the infinitely perfect love of God, the devastating demands of God? There is only one being who can respond adequately to God the Father's Love -- and that is the Word, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, from whom all eternity sings His canticle of love in the bosom of the Godhead.

But the Word was made flesh. All right then: here is the single instance in the history of humanity when one man was caught up fully into the divine life -- one Man in Whom there was absolutely nothing to impede or trammel His total, immediate, and irrevocable response to God. The natural human creature in Him was taken up fully into the divine Son. Thus, in one instance humanity had, so to speak, arrived: had passed into the life of Jesus Christ.

But the life of this one Man, this God-Man, has been prolonged and extended. This is mysteriously and wondrously achieved by His Mystical Body. So if we want to respond to God the Father Who loves us, the first thing we have to do is get into the Mystical Body, into Christ, to share His divine life, and to utter His Word -- the perfect response.

The "getting in" bit is done, as St. Thomas Aquinas says, by faith and the sacraments. And then the who divinizing process (transformation into Christ; putting on His mind, coming to think like Him, love like Him, and act like Him) which must follow is he development of faith.

The Primacy of Faith

Scripture says that we cannot even begin to approach God except by faith; we are children of God by faith; the just man lives by faith.

And this is why our Lord insisted above all other things on faith, on knowing Him. The crime of the Jews was no that He was unloved, but unknown. "He came unto His own and they did not know Him." ... This is what it means to live by faith: to be clued in by Christ, to be led right into the heart of Trinitarian life -- the family life of God, and to share the Son's secret knowledge of the Father....

What is Faith?

The act of faith, according to St. Thomas, "is an act of the intellect assenting to the divine truth at the command of the will by the grace of God." While grace is a formal participation -- created but real -- in the divine nature, faith is a participation in the divine life considered as divine knowledge. It is, says St. Thomas, "a light divinely infused in the mind of man, a certain imprint of the First Truth." It is a constant aptitude to know God as He knows Himself, to receive -- according to the limited measure of created grace, it is true -- but really to receive the light from the dazzling Sun that is God Himself. It is the sight of supernatural life.

The act of the virtue of faith is, above all, a supernatural act that goes far beyond the ordinary and limited field of the activity of the intellect. It reaches out to God Himself, to whom it adheres and makes the intellect and the whole being of man adhere in an attitude of self-oblivious, adoring assent. By an act of faith, the soul is borne into "a direct exchange, an intimate union with the interior Word of God... (Scheeben, Dogmatik, I, 40, n. 681) This contact with the Deity itself gives to the human person, in the words of St. Paul, "the substance of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things that are not seen" (Hb 2,1). It makes things real. It makes us real; keeping us, as it does, in touch with ultimate reality....

St. John of the Cross is so emphatic about faith giving us God Himself. Beneath "the silvered surfaces" of the articles of faith, he says there is the "gold of its substance." By this means, alone, faith, God reveals Himself.

A Personal Encounter

We must be very careful about depersonalizing the whole concept of faith. ...

St. Bonaventure's definition of faith saves us from the abstract: "it is the habit of the mind whereby we are drawn and captivated into the following of Christ." We do not believe in a creed, we believe through a creed in a Person. The ultimate object of our faith is always a personal encounter with a living God. This will always involve a unique kind of adventure and exploration. The articles of faith, therefore, are not meant to arrest our vision but to direct it....

So faith means much more than simply assimilating a theory, reciting a history or tying together a number of syllogisms. Without the creation -- personal, free, and deliberate -- of a world of mystical values, there can exist a systematic and conceptional pseudo-faith; but there will be no vital faith, that which touches God in His Person from out of the fumbling formulas of man's search.

Faith, though rooted in the intellect and oriented toward knowledge of God, is a response of the whole man; not just an activity of his isolated intellect. In fact, the most intimate, experiential knowledge of God is more an effect of love than of reasoning. This is mystical knowledge or contemplation: "a pure intuition of God born of love." Remember how the disciples on the way to Emmaus recognized the risen Lord -- not by reason -- but by an act of love: "in the breaking of the bread."?

Faith is not only an act: it is an attitude. It's the way we look at the world: seeking everything against the background of eternity; seeing the will of God unfolding in mysterious ways; seeking the brilliant countenance of Christ or the Man of Sorrows looking up at us from every creature; seeing oneself cradled and enveloped in God's personal love. It's a long view, diametrically opposed to notions that are petty, narrow or shortsighted. It's a divine sort of sense of humor that sees through people, things, events and situations into the plan of God.

If, therefore, a person lives by faith, he becomes rooted in God. Then, no matter how seething and turbulent the surface of life, he remains, undisturbed, firmly fixed, as he is, in ultimate reality.

Faith is not only an act and an attitude; it is a commitment -- an irrevocable commitment to Christ who said with such irresistible magnetism, "if I be lifted up I will draw all things to Myself." Since then, persons of faith have been drawn by the infinitely attractive personality of Christ. He is the Pied Piper of human hearts -- old and young. He makes people become like little children and suddenly turns the world in which they live upside-down because they have been enchanted and overwhelmed by Him....

Just because a person is committed to God by faith he should not take himself too seriously. In fact, he ought to take God so seriously that he regards himself quite lightheartedly. He must make as little fuss as possible, bearing with himself and others patiently, good-humoredly. He must remember that regardless of his faith he is still a child of Adam.

Commitment implies renouncement. To live by faith is to live for Christ; and it is harder to live for Christ than to die for Him. Living one's faith to the hilt involves a daily death (to all forms of selfishness). One can actually revel; take great delight at the thought of being hanged, drawn, and quartered. But if God makes no revelation, no spectacular demands, but just goes on letting a person fulfill his life of faith in an ordinary, unpretentious, routine sort of way, that will require a greater kind of heroic commitment than being persecuted.

Growth of Faith

Faith is not static, but dynamic. It must grow or else stagnate. A person is as alive as his faith. Even our Lady had to grow in faith.

To grow in faith, which is the "only proximate and immediate means of union with God," involves the necessary pain of being weaned away from purely human and sensible ways of knowing and loving Him -- imagining, reasoning, feeling.

To grow in faith means, from the standpoint of the senses, a person must welcome darkness. Although he has consecrated his life to a reality that he cannot see or feel, he is constantly solicited by the call of his senses and of his passion -- the enticing mirage of the glittering beauty of the world of his senses.

To grow in faith means to live progressively in the spirit -- by the intelligence and the will; and one cannot hope to do this except by mortifying the senses. Even the spirit's human mode of activity (intellectual concepts and purely human aspirations) cannot unite a person to God who is infinitely above and beyond all human modes of knowing and loving.

And so there will come a time in every person's life, if he is generous to God and faithful to grace, when the creatures that spoke so wonderfully of God will become silent; and the concepts that were like manna for his meditations will cease to feed his mind. It is here that God infuses into the soul a knowledge of Himself that is general and obscure, but far superior to his own former clear and precise ideas of God. St. John of the Cross expresses it in these terms:

... there is no ladder among all created, knowable things by which the intellect can reach this high Lord. Rather, it should be known that if the intellect desired to use all or any of these objects as a proximate means to this union, it would be encumbered by them. Not only this, but they would become an occasion of many errors and delusions in the ascent of the mount. (2A8,7)

To abandon this dark but sure way of contemplation, this "happy night" which the healthy, normal development of faith involves, would be to replace the real thing with a series of fabricated and human illusions Did not our Lord say, according to St. John of the Cross: "I will lead you by a way you do no know to the secret chamber of love?"

In faith there is only light; its obscurity is an effect of the transcendence of the light that shines upon the intellect when it searches into God and His Mystery.

(The article concludes with three sections: How to Grow in Faith: Thinking, Reading, Praying.)