Yes, I've Changed Parishes

On the morning of the feast of St. Martha (and Mary, and Lazarus), a friend who regularly prays Morning Prayer with our group asked me about my parish status. This became an interior prompt throughout the day (and, ok, it stretched out over a week or so) to finally address the matter of officially changing parish registration. And while I realize that I don't owe anyone an explanation as to why I've done this, for several reasons I think it is worthy of sharing some reflections about this whole thing.

Last September when I began my Spiritual Direction Formation Program with our first in-person intensive, I immediately, and much to my surprise (but totally consonant with the thrust of the program) began to grappling with questions about my identity. I remembered it as arising after meeting the others in my cohort, who are mostly professional people with professional identities. But as I reviewed my journal, I found that this started bubbling up even before I left home. How do I introduce myself? Who am I, and is it based on what I do? This bothered me a lot more than I thought it would. At home, I rarely was in this kind of setting where these things mattered. And before I left the intensive six days later, I found myself telling people "I'm a Church Lady." 

Although I'd been working my way towards that ever since initially becoming a cantor at Holy Family in 2008, since 2017 I had been on turbo boost in this identity. How I got there had its own history, including about six years of formation in community building with a youth/young adult ministry, and my formation as a Secular Carmelite. But at that point I began pouring out with all that was within me, and most of this landed in my parish. By this time last year, I was a serious right hand of my pastor, on parish council, involved up to my shoulders in music ministry, and in fact I was a regular go-to person for any number of parish friends if they either needed to know some detail about what was happening in the parish, or if they needed to connect with the pastor, because they thought I could facilitate that. I also felt interiorly, with alternating senses of self-satisfaction and weight, that when I walked into church, I had a deep responsibility there. 

After I applied for the SDFP, and especially after I came back from that September intensive, I began to notice a small hint of something else. I was weary. My Saturday morning Mass music ministry which I'd carried out since 2013 was starting to feel like I was belly crawling through gravel. This was strange to me, and disconcerting.

Then, as everyone in the parish knows, around Christmas our pastor announced a reorganization of music ministry. Even though it wasn't a complete surprise, it did hit me like a bombshell, and it was something I had to grieve, almost like a death. I say almost, because other factors interior and exterior began developing concurrently, to the point that the first quarter or more of this year was a huge round of reprocessing my entire life and... identity. (And this, concurrent with studying St. Teresa of Avila and the necessity of self-knowledge and humility!)

I think it is important for me to say, for the sake of community life, that I did not leave the parish because I was upset with our pastor. We had lots of open communication about the difficulties involved for both of us, but there was no picking up my marbles and storming off home moment for me. It was much more a moment of hearing "Martha, Martha, you are upset and anxious about many things. Only one thing is needed." I realized that even though my path of discipleship and growth for a season took me through a Martha role of service, now I am being called to something different. It felt like the death of one person, but I know it is really the emergence of a new and deeper identity. 

In the year or two previous to this, I would occasionally take a mini retreat day for myself and go to pray at Blessed Sacrament, where I have just joined. I did this knowing I craved a place I could go for both exterior and interior quiet -- one where I did not feel like I was going to work, and that every glance revealed something that needed to be done. In fact, I had driven to Holy Family so often that my phone identified it as my workplace!

I landed there because the whole choir decided seperately but at the same time to go join Blessed Sacrament's choir. There was no way I could erase from my heart, life, or history the community that I formed by singing together at Holy Family since 2009, even though it is true that we were limping by the time we sang our last for the feast of the Holy Family in 2024. We are now the core of a larger, fluctuating number of singers at BLS, and according to my most severe critic (my daughter) we sing as with one voice, and are actually good. I cantored for my first time there in July, and as I arrived early to set up, I heard two different women whisper loudly to their husbands, "She's going to sing!" That made me chuckle, but it is also interesting that parish communities are fluid enough in this town that I already know a large number of people there, and clearly a lot of people know me from my years of standing in front at Holy Family.

My parish family has always been the closest thing my heart as known as extended family, and so this is not something I chose lightly. I just feel that I'm extending my extended family now, and connecting from a deeper place in my heart. God is good, but the way is weird. Blessed be God forever.

PS: For those who wonder, my husband independently decided that he is going to join the Melkite rite, so he actually removed himself from the Holy Family rolls some time ago. 

You can also still find me every weekday morning at Holy Family praying Morning Prayer. :)

Depth of Identity

Must articulate more thoughts provoked by yet another song. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, let me unpack how this strikes me.

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

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

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

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

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

It's such a shallow identity.

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

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

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

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

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

Better than a Hallelujah

 Recently I was reminded again of the song Better than a Hallelujah, which Amy Grant recorded in 2010. From the first that I heard it, it's been a tear-jerker for me, but now it strikes me on even a deeper level than before. 

When I first latched on to the song, I was drew encouragement and consolation from it, because I was in a time of pouring out my miseries. I needed to hear that my mess was indeed beautiful, and that pouring it out to God really was better than a choir singing out... The hallelujah, well, that spoke to me of trying really hard to have faith and to stand firm, when all I felt capable of was crumbling. 

We pour out our miseries
God just hears a melody
Beautiful the mess we are
The honest cries of breaking hearts
Are better than a hallelujah

Now it's some ten-odd years later. Now I'm in a formation program to become a spiritual director. Now this makes me weep for the sheer beautiful truth of it. 

God just hears a melody

It's in fact the Song of the Resurrection, which He has written and He pours into us even as we are pouring out our miseries to God. "Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be poured into your lap" (Luke 6:38). It is precisely in those moments where we feel the most pitiful, when we cry out, that God is instantly reciprocating and pouring Himself out in return. It might take years to consciously receive, but "everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved" (Rom. 10:13). 

I think if there is one task of the contemplative spiritual companion, it is to bear witness to God's presence, who He is and what He does. In a way, it is what Amy Grant did for me (or rather Sarah Hart and Chapin Hartford, songwriters, did). The song affirmed to me, yes, it really is better to pour out your misery than it is to carry out mere religious action, even if that action is objectively good (and especially if it is just conformity for the sake of saving face or pleasing someone else). There is a messy point in life where honesty, for a moment, flies in the face of what is right, decent, and true. But the truth is, God hears through it. Hearing another human being affirm that pouring out one's heart to God is beautiful is enough to support faith until it becomes one's own interior knowledge.

Heaven knows there's no shortage of provocation to our cries of misery. It's a grace, actually. The misery itself? No. But the act of faith that knows there is God to whom I can turn meaningfully with it, that's such a tremendous gift. 

In reality, most of the time these exchanges happen in excruciatingly slow motion. I don't just feel miserable for an hour, cry out to God, and then skip along merrily through my life, blessed beyond measure. These things require patience, stamina, and determination. I think it is like planting a fruit tree, and it is why it is ten years later than I can look back and hold the fruit in my hand that grew from a dead pit. This is the spiritual life. There is no quick fix, but there is real transformation. It's true!

As a bonus, here's the official video, telling its own story: 

Dance, Child. Dance

One of my favorite rules I had for my kids (ok, maybe it was more my son) when they were growing up (right after, yes, you may sing about poop, but not using a hymn tune) was that they were not allowed to berate and say nasty things about themselves. It was more or less a given that they were not to be mean and rude about or to other people, but they seemed to need some help with doing this with regard to themselves. To be honest, the echo of teaching them that rule still helps me occasionally.

Like when I sit down to write this blog post. 

I can be so serious and heavy and complicated, but you know what -- that's just the reality of me facing challenges. So here, serious Marie, have some flowers. 🎕

I mentioned my winter's work of dealing with something or the other in my last post, but to that I respond with James 4:15, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that." Cuz' maybe the Lord just doesn't want to waste any time. In the last, oh, 48 hours I've had this image of a hose, laying calmly and quietly on the floor of a basement. If water comes steadily out of that hose, what a difference it will be for that basement.

Ok, so imagine a metaphor where a flooded basement is a greatly desired thing. Work with me, here.

God bless Margaret Vasquez. I just want to say that. And God bless God who knows how to give me exactly what I need, when I need it. 

It's not actually anything new, as in intellectually new: new ideas, insights, truth, revelation. I think it is like Psalm 1 says: "That person is like a tree planted by steams of water (ah -- see, there it is) which yields its fruit in due season."

Right now is, apparently, a due season for me. 

In Margaret's book and in her podcasts she talks about basic principles of how the Lord relates to us, of how we are called to relate to ourselves, back to God, and with others. I am chosen, known, and valued, I have boundaries and openness. I'm not going to go into all of what is going on subterraneanly for me at the moment, but this is definitely one of those moments of cohesion, or "the big click" or, -- of course! --a giant Naru Hodo. Now I get it. 

Yesterday at Mass I had handed all the broken bits that I couldn't quite make any sense of to the Lord at the consecration. This morning I took advantage of early morning confession (which was in itself a victory. I am an expert of talking myself out of going.) And back at home after Mass this morning I had the luxury of a good old fashioned dance party. Two songs. Because the most joyful answers don't always come in eloquent theological explanations the way I sometimes try to force them to come. Sometimes they just come in feeling the connection through space and time and through my whole soul and body, including whatever cells might be left of me that were still around when I was a child, to being a loved daughter of God. And God knows this daughter of His still feels joy at hearing songs I heard when I was 6 or 7. I think every joy I feel with them integrates another layer of my life's experiences. Almost like pulling more of me out of the freezer. I don't know. I'll understand it later. For now, maybe I'll dance some more. Sure glad I'm doing that hip strengthening workout!

Let Advent In

Tomorrow I'm singing in a community choir Christmas concert, and today was our dress rehearsal. Somewhere along the line this morning I finally became present to the words we were singing. I mean, this is perhaps an unusual community choir, where, for Christmas at least, we are singing almost all sacred music, or traditional carols, so almost every single song is actually about Jesus Christ. I confess I really haven't been tuned into that fact at all.

I confess I've gotten fairly comfortable with distracting myself pretty heavily from my interior life. Did you know that an easy way to do that is to get really busy with church stuff? At least six days out of the week I am leading music in one way or another. I found myself this week getting really bothered and ever so slightly confrontational with the sacristans about small things I noticed that went awry at Mass. Standing around the coffee pot after Mass I suddenly realized there were cobwebs in a corner of the ceiling right there. I confessed aloud to my daughter and a friend who was with us that I thought occasionally I should go to a different parish for Mass so I wouldn't be so distracted with being such a Church Lady.

And we won't even discuss hours passing through my fingers like water as I watch mindless reels on Facebook. Geez. Every day seems to go so fast, and I keep thinking about how I'm never going to get any of these days back. And yet, if I stop to ponder, even sometimes if I think I need to pull out that blog and write so I can actually dig down into it, I reprimand myself with Other Stuff I could be doing. Something supposedly more important. 

Distraction. Everything and anything except...

Reality. 

It's Advent.

Once upon a time, on a Christmas Eve night, a shockwave of grace went off in my soul that reverberated for, oh, something like 20 years. This shockwave taught me that becoming a human being was good enough for the Eternal Son of God. It isn't that I didn't know the doctrinal tenet of the Incarnation. But it wasn't so real to me until then. I can't explain the revelation except to say that Jesus embraced my humanity and said, "It is good. I made this." It was that night that, in my heart, I became a Catholic (followed be being received into the Church about 16 months later), and my Christian identity shifted from Luther's "poor, miserable sinner" who would never change, to a daughter who is redeemed, restored, and healed by the love of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit. 

But there was another shockwave that followed some 20 years later, and it was the Epiphany. Just search the blog for the word, and you'll see. 

And yeah, so here I am, in 2023, singing Christmas songs and just barely allowing the words to touch my heart. How did I get so controlling? What's the threat, here? 

There's a scary word in those Ephiphay posts: risk. I can't even write more about that right now, other than to say I need to bring my risk PTDS to the Lord. What I know to the marrow of my being is that God is good and there is nothing He cannot fill with His glory. The more cracked and broken it is, the bettter to showcase His glory. Honestly, I am eligible to be a massive, mighty showcase.

You know what? I don't want to be anxious and controlling. I know, better than I know my own name, that there is absolutely nothing for me to fear in God. I've spent my life feeling a fool to myself, so if there's new territory for me to scout there, hey, who doesn't love an adventure. I can set a daily intention to feel what is happening inside, and if I need to stop and smile, or stop and cry, or stop and write a blog post -- all are fine. All are just different verses I sing to the Lord, calling out, "Where have you hidden?" I can learn and I can change. I've been doing it for years. Any worthwhile endeavor takes some work, and I love work, as long as I also have hope and companionship.

This is the path of contemplation. How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is giv'n...

St. Ivo, pray for me.

A Gift of Grace

Six years ago today, something profound happened. In fact, it was so profound that six years later I know I'm only beginning to take it in and live by its truth. 

At the time, I wrote about it here, surrounding the main event in lots of context. By the sheer grace of God, I had the rare presence of mind to take a short video while this striking thing was happening. You won't see what happened, because it was interior, (you won't see much of anything due to camera and videographer quality) but you will hear something lovely:

This was captured on my last full day in Poland, after a month-long pilgrimage during World Youth Day in the Year of Mercy. Personally, it came at the end of a stormy period of several years where God was teaching me my vocation to love and purifying my heart in some really painful and humbling ways. It was during this juncture that I started formation as a Secular Carmelite.

I wrote a lot about the whole trip in a blog called A Pilgrim in Poland, which is pretty good. As I have begun re-reading, I've learned some things. I recommend it. 𝨾 

I think the most profound things are not "new truths," but the grace to believe truth.
Looking back, here are the graces I have received:
I know that God is Love.
I know that God loves me.

I know that His love is immense, powerful, personal, intimate, insistent, edifying, knowledgable, big, deep, wide, unconditionally available to every living being, fiery, awesome, desireable, healing. 

I know that His love is pain-inducing to the degree that we resist being love-shaped, to the degree we grip our fists, try to possess out of fear of loss, try to feed our addictions and our brokenness. 

I know that He is bigger than our wounds, and that we all have wounds. 

I know all human beings are made not only to belong to God, but to belong to each other.

I know we need not only God to be holy, we need each other. God made it that way. He makes us secondary causes of holiness for each other.

I know He has called me to Carmel to learn to be Love in the heart of the Church. To live in God, and God in me, on this earth, immersing everyone into the ocean of God's mercy and love (which is His heart, the Holy Eucharist, the Blessed Sacrament).

And while there were years leading up to being able to receive this, and while I am still working it out (and it will remain my life's task until I die), I know that on this day, six years ago, there was a significant grace deposit made, where in a prolonged instant, God gave me this.

Here's a secret. One of the songs the quartet played was Blue Moon. It was actually a pinacle moment of personally receiving this. It is why, on the rare occasion when I go to a restaurant and order beer, I order a Blue Moon. It is also one of the many graced musical moments in my life that make me a devoted non-stickler when it comes to the question of what kind of music God can use to minister life.

The only possible fitting thanks I can think of is to give my entire life to Him, trusting the Lord totally to take care of everything. Amen.

Singing, Vulnerability, and Conversion

So, I mentioned in my catch-up post that I'm involved in ChristLife. I've been in several different roles, including administration, music ministry, and prayer teams, and I've also visited a few different parishes that have been running the program. I always have my antennae up and I'm running a future-looking analysis app in the background of all of these experiences.

Music is a hot topic in post-course evaluation discussions. And as a music minister my antennae twitch vibrantly when the topic comes up anywhere. At least in my community, nothing sparks intensity of opinion quite like the type of music used to lead people in worship and the way in which that music is executed.

But the ping pong match of "freedom in the Spirit" vs "comfort of tradition" and all the ways in which one can imperceptibly move into the other is predictable and boring after hearing out the personal views of particular individuals. A more fundamental question emerges from the strongly held stances.

Why do Christians sing? What does it have to do with being human? What does it have to do with prayer, and does anything about it lend itself to the life of conversion? And specifically how can singing together help propel our parish's ChristLife to its intended goal?

Why do Christians sing?

Ok, Scripture. Just in the book of Psalms we are enjoined to sing to God a bazillion times. We've been doing it forever, and our Jewish forefathers in faith have been doing it forever. So it isn't something that those who are raised in the church even think about, because it is so much a part of us. When I lived in Japan, though, it was pointed out to me, "Christianity is the religion where people sing together." Of all of the things that characterize religions, it never dawned on me that this would be striking for someone to whom Christianity was completely foreign. "They sing together." Japanese people sing together. We even use a Japanese word for one way to do that: karaoke. They have corporate songs and school songs, but not really any religious songs.

Being corporate

And Japanese singing tells us something about how music functions for human beings. Singing together requires an experience of corporateness. Many parts make up one body, one song-singing mass. We think or read the same words, the same timing, the same feeling, and we express these together. We speak one thing as one group.

Bump that up to the liturgical responses of Mass, or a Scriptural song where we are acclaiming God's word back to Him. Here, we are focus our words, our minds, our voices on the action of God or on the thoughts of God, and together with Him, we sing the words. We are corporate, with God. Singing, in this way, is one of the clearest human manifestations of being Church.

But at what cost?

There is something very vulnerable about being Church like this. This is not an accident. In order to actually sing, you have to let your voice be heard. But it's not your normal, daily voice. It's not your business voice. It's not your negotiating voice. For most of us, it isn't our most trained voice, the one we feel in control of. Singing denotes a revealing of a secret voice, one for sacred or intimate use. Scientists tell us that singing releases endorphins and bonds us to those we sing with. Human beings are designed to grow and thrive through this experience of giving into the vulnerability of singing together.

It sounds beautiful and poetic, and those of us who love music can be cheerleaders for this point. But those who have any experience of performing music for others will tell you there is a side to this beautiful and poetic experience that is terrifying. If you are performing a new piece or in a new context or it is especially important to you for whatever reason to do a certain thing very well, the adrenaline flows. You get nervous. Fight or flight instincts activate. Alertness levels peak. Doing this in community is actually part of what bonds people as they sing or perform.

So what about prayer?

Not everyone loves to sing. Singing in any context, let alone public performance, can evoke anxiety for some people, and therefore some simply don't sing, perhaps claiming that they actually cannot. I wonder how many of these would also feel they cannot pray. That they do not know how to make their voice or their heart heard to God. The hint I'd like to give them is that singing, in one way of understanding it, is unavoidably essential to prayer.

Oh, you can say prayers, recite them. You can pray silently. I do both of these every day. But in reality if the heart does not sing, the prayer does not rise.

And specifically, ChristLife

Let's look at a specific ChristLife context now. The fourth talk in Following Christ is all about forgiving those who have wronged us. The concept of forgiving someone is beautiful and poetic. Right? We are inspired by stories of people who do it. But the act of forgiving can be terrifying. It requires our energy, our focus. The experience is likely to dredge up what happened and lots of feelings. It takes courage to forgive.

And as we venture out into this fray of Following Christ session four, we sing a few songs. Why? Why throw songs in here, or in any Mass or any Christian context? It is not filler, it is not entertainment, it is not custom, it is no mere artistic segue. We sing to acknowledge our vulnerability before the God who made us, but loves us. We acknowledge that as God, he has every right to direct our lives. We acknowledge that we need and desire His grace. 

So what is this worship music for?

We sing to open our hearts, to be real, to assent to our vulnerability, and to declare truth.  I do not sing just for myself, but in singing for myself I am simultaneously singing to support the one next to me with the same truth. We sing to belong to each other.

To worship God is to lay our lives and hearts bare before the Lord, to allow His loving gaze to fall upon us, and to respond to His creative gaze with the love His Holy Spirit births into our hearts as we are there. And that's true whether we are singing, speaking, silent, acting, or crying: it is all a song. To worship God is an experience of emotion, but not only emotion. It is an experience of will, but not only will. It is a personal and private experience, and yet it is not only personal and private. Worship is to be the place of corporate authenticity of our deepest hearts, before God. Worship, expressed in song, is a place of faith and vulnerability. I believe this is the essense of the "new territory" that my community is learning to experience through ChristLife. And to navigate it well, it helps to state it explicitly.

Is Anybody Thirsty for This?

Would that all God's people were prophets! (Num. 11:29)

Catholics who find it normal to invoke the Holy Spirit to activate spiritual gifts in them, to move in power, to be real, also seem to find it normal to incorporate a musical setting that looks like this: 

Or maybe this:

Or, if they are high-budget and not in church, this:

I play guitar. Guitars transport easily and this one instrument can support a soloist or a whole group or congregation of singers easily. I relate the guy in the first picture, and in fact I lead a group that is not too terribly different from the second picture.

But I'm so, so tired of the spiritual cliche that those who are actively seeking the presence of the Lord have guitar music. I'm tired of it from two directions: from those whose spiritual hunger makes them gravitate toward the guitarists, and from those who seemingly wouldn't know the Holy Spirit if He bit them on the nose, but see a guitarist in church and think: that's a charismatic. Charismatic is, after all, a term to define a certain musical style. Isn't it?

My heart longs to see worship groups who have a fresh fire in their hearts to seek the Lord to fill their freshly activated wineskins that have a look something like this:

Or this:

Or this:

Or maybe even this:

And this isn't a rant about musical style. I play guitar in church every week and I wouldn't do that if I didn't think one could worship well this way.

This is about a thirst in my heart for New Wine. I want all God's people to prophesy, and I want God to encounter people, open up the dormant gifts within them they received in baptism, and I want the Holy Spirit to rush upon them with power for them, the Church, and the world to be made new.

Is anybody else thirsty for this?

Onething2015: My Initial, Personal Report

I have just returned from the Onething2015 conference where for the first time ever there was a Catholic track. And here I am in my very own verbal workspace to try to start to share what is in my heart about this. This may not turn out neatly.


So, I was there to intercede and to gather intercessors. During the course of conversations before the event, I realized that I had an aversion to going basically because I have an aversion to suffering. From the promo ad copy I had my sense that there was something about this I just wouldn't like. And I can't say I was mistaken. It wasn't a dislike in the sense of "oooh, bad," just in the sense of "this really isn't my personal preference." I don't like loud music that I feel in my chest (for more than about three minutes). I don't like my ears to ring and I don't find that particularly healthy. And as much as I love music and I love to sing and as much as worshipping God in song is central to my life, I just don't like praise music that much anymore. I used to love it, love it, love it and found myself instantly at a fountain of overflowing healing. And I just don't, anymore. That was actually something I began to find happening just a bit when I first left my non-denom fellowship. It began to be the sort of thing were I had to fix my mind to really dig into the words being sung to meditate and suck the marrow out of them, and often it felt I was sucking dry bones. Sometimes it could be easier, especially if it was a song I knew and had developed a "meditative history" with. But I realized I have as much difficulty really praying with praise music as others do praying with the rosary and its repetitions.

I was also reminded, before and during, of things I experienced in my exodus from the charismatic fellowship world into the Catholic Church. I remembered how shocked I was when I first started attending daily Mass, which lasted 20-30 minutes, when I had been used to a 3 or 3.5 hour service. On the one hand, I realized I had to walk in to Mass ready to concentrate and pay attention to everything. Before, I was used to a lot of "warm up" time and a generally less intense approach. But on the other hand, I was stunned and amazed in those days, day after day, of how efficient God could be. Like a laser beam, He penetrated my soul with far deeper spiritual experiences in this short time than I had ever experienced in those long church services (although I had lots of powerful and needed emotional experiences in the former days, and these required more time. Sometimes I really needed to cry through 75 minutes of worship music.) So when at Onething, the sessions or preaching went on for hours, I sometimes longed for them to discover this efficient nature of God. :)

But the important lesson in all of this for me is that I do not live for myself. Sometimes I really want to. But if I live for God, I must also live for His people. Jesus lived for His people by serving them, not to expect to be served. Sometimes serving someone means to relent and do it their way, when it is really a matter of preference. Preferences can become passions pretty easily, and we start to think we can't live without our passions being fulfilled, that our passions are really divine urgings, when really they are just our desires with a strong upper hand in our soul's functioning. And sometimes that putting to death of our passions is exactly the type of service, and living for God and neighbor that God asks of an intercessor who feels interior things deeply. I was a little surprised at the intensity of the death and the struggle and the temptation I felt surrounding all this. Which shows me how weak and inexperienced I am at serving this way.

So, there was this big huge thing that happened about unity. I mean, it was big and huge on a spiritual level. I kept saying to our host friends how this type of gathering with Catholics just probably wouldn't have happened back in my charismatic days, at least not in the circles I moved in. My evangelism training had a slide that depicted non-Christian groups like Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons, and there was a significant point made about how the guy just couldn't decide whether to add Roman Catholics to that list, and his hesitation about it seemed almost scandalously generous to some people. That was my world. So for Catholics to be welcomed as equal Christians, and for one speaker to publicly (though he didn't use the name Catholic) apologize for past statements of arrogance to a particular Catholic present, it was profound. And there were other profundities.

I know I experienced something of a personal call, although I can't articulate all of it, or maybe even much of it, in any meaningful way right now. The first order of the day is in my own family. The second order of the day has to do with me being a Carmelite. Each day I always ask my prayer team of saints to intercede for me, and one morning I had forgotten to do so until a certain point during one of the sessions. Immediately I remembered, as if St. Teresa spoke it to me, "Four centuries ago I sat in my convent and prayed for a return of the 'Lutherans' to the Church. Yes, of course you are called." (See the very end of The Interior Castle).

From my young childhood, even what I count as my pre-following-Jesus childhood I have had a sense that my life is oriented towards a Church that would become pure and serious.

When I was a brand new Catholic, I had a profound blow-me-away experience of being called by God into His plan to raise Catholics, and me with them, from the dead. Read it here: When Confirmation Received Me. When you read it, you see this experience had to do with John Michael Talbot. A few years ago during a new season in my life I went to a mission of his in Pittsburgh. Now, JMT has very piercing eyes. And as he preached through the crowd, his piercing eyes made contact with mind as he said "Fan into flame the gift God has given you." BAM. It resurrected the earlier experience and, though I couldn't understand it at the time, that moment alerted me to the fact that I was stepping forward in this plan. Now, just when that thing from years ago makes some sense, I have this new thing that is just as persistently urgent and just as inscrutable. I guess I really aught to get used to this and realize that not knowing is part of how I get to know things.

So, there you have it. I have returned from Onething2015 with a heart full of something I can't explain or understand, and I know that today and tomorrow I need to pray and live faithfully, just like every day, but I also need to intentionally forsake the vast tracts of selfishness and misery I yet find within.

How in the World Did I Get Here?

Do you ever have one of those moments where reality flashes before you (in a good way) and you ask yourself "How in the world did I get here?"

I had one of those this morning.

The question is rhetorical, because of course I know how I got there. I was standing in a packed church, about to lead a team of several instruments and singers and the entire congregation in worship of God at Mass. I had a late start to the early morning, wasn't as practiced as I'd like to have been, was using a new-to-me guitar and a sound system, and normally I lead at less complicated daily Masses. That moment, as my pastor announced the end of greetings and beginning of Mass, was not the moment to ponder my rhetorical question! It was the time to trust that everything the Lord had worked into me over the last several years would be extractable by the same Lord, despite my feelings of the moment.

But the question is really a moment of awe at God's work. Later I was remembering how one Sunday seven years ago I stood at the podium, nervously preparing simply to cantor for the first time at my parish. And how Joe the organist told me, "You seem nervous. Well, don't be." And how I thought to myself, "Who do you think you are, the Son of God, that you can just tell me to be calm and expect it to happen?!"

That was really the first of several prophetic messages (words from God mediated through human speech and experiences) that began to shape my inner being according to a call from God to learn how to teach people to worship, that was itself a prophetic message to me several decades ago.

Nervousness and insecurity are parts of expecting something from one's own natural ability. I imagine that everyone needs to work through that stuff; I know for sure I have. Time, practice, and experience can reduce some of that, but there also needs to be the spiritual progress of submitting one's natural abilities to God for Him to work through -- or to completely set aside! I went through a short time (for complicated "people" reasons) of being barred from music ministry. It ripped my heart out, but it also drove home right quick that I had no "right" to serve. After that burp of my life passed, each time I approached the ambo to cantor and I bowed before the tabernacle, my heart offered sincere thanks for this gift of being able to lead the congregation in praising God.

And you know what else is funny? When I lead worship, I play guitar. I do believe and accept what the Church says about organ having pride of place, and that is also my preference. And I am not what you would call an excellent guitarist. I have one, very narrow strip of expertise, and that is playing rhythm guitar for church music. When I do that, I can truly worship God and more importantly I can rouse others to worship God. Before leading any music for Mass I always pray that God would draw all hearts present to enter into true, self-giving worship of Him. It humbles me to realize that I am really a second string church musician, and that many Catholics would turn up their noses at the music I play. But when a woman approached us after Mass today to comment that a song we played lifted the congregation's hearts right up to God, I was pleased, knowing our mission was successful.

God has called me, formed me, trained me, tested me. And that's how in the world I got there. Thanks be to God. It's kinda awesome.

Holy Darkness

Stop. Don't.

I need to take a break from heavy thinking, writing and evaluation for tonight, but I don't want to give up my daily blogging streak.

But I do want to comment on something I experienced today.

Since when did this beloved-to-me 80s classic:

become this:

No. Just no. (Ok, yes, I know I'm 16 years behind the times. But I only discovered this horror today. I'm sorry.)

Why Praise Music Fails

It's been almost two months since I went on this walking pilgrimage, but today a certain facet of it is standing out to me in big relief: praise music.

Music has always been a very big deal to me, and I lived through 80s charismatic praise music (at least in the tail end of that decade), and because I became a Catholic in the early 90s, I also got to experience some of the 60s/70s praise music. (Some of you will realize what I mean.)  I experienced genuine healing through very good worship leaders in various stages of my life.

But I also experienced this:



When we stick with any format simply because it is what we know, there is the danger of having no idea at all why we are doing it or even what we are doing.All of a sudden, our experience is empty.

When I was on that walking pilgrimage, I discovered a truth about praising God. Simply put, the time to praise God is when complaining comes more naturally. The moment to praise God is when we are feeling the cross we carry get heavier. That is the time to look at your brothers and sisters and point them towards God's mercy and goodness, and simply proclaim that He is worthy of our lives, our praise, our cross-carrying. That is the moment to proclaim my choice to serve God who is all good and worthy of my love.

Praise expands that love in my own heart. Praise edifies those who hear. Praise lifts us up from the difficulties we are all simultaneously acknowledging, but looking beyond. Praise is not denial of our human experience (like my friends who would not "confess" they had a cold, but simply that cold symptoms were manifesting). Praise is instead acknowledging the greater truth of God and His kingdom.

Praise is the way to embrace the cross.

To embrace the cross in community requires everyone being in tune with and on the level about the crosses they face.

And frankly I think that is why praise music is such an empty fail in many communal settings. We don't typically have any impetus gathering us this way, and we all try to hide our sufferings from ourselves and from one another.

The joy exhibited in this communal praise is, however, I believe, precisely the joy Pope Francis continually calls Christians to exhibit.



This is from the English group in 2009, not this year, but it gives a sense of what I mean. Note this is not about musical quality!

Habitual Desperation

Michael W. Smith's song Breathe was somewhat popular as a worship song in circles I moved in a few years ago. In the chorus the soul sings to God, "And I...I'm desperate for you./And I.. I'm lost without you"

I won't even go into how after hearing this song once or twice in my life, I find it boring and incapable of carrying my prayer. There's something deeper that bothers me about it, something that probably did at one point stir me up enough to sing it as a worship song with some feeling.
It is very true that the soul is lost without God. It is also a common experience to feel lost when we don't feel God.

But a good worship song really should not have us rehearsing thoughts that don't build virtues. And while we need to initially identify our desperate need for God, we need to build up our faith in God's reality and presence and our hope for His action in our world, not our own experience of a need.

I've noticed this tendency within myself. I can think of my desire for God, my longing for God, my longing for God's action, my longing to see His kingdom come and His will be done, and I can find myself in this mode: "I------ I'm desperate for you......" It's all about my tremendous feeling of need. Now, I'm not anti-emotion (although I do favor rational thinking). Emotions are good, and our sense of need for God is very good. But it's not all about me. At some point I really need to move off my experience of my desire and look at the God who has inspired that desire. We don't really take our desires seriously if we do not recognize that the God who puts them there is present to fulfill them. Oh, it won't be instantaneously, and it probably won't even a be painless and wonderful process. But we long for God because He causes that. And if we don't shut up about our desires, and turn to look upon the God we desire so He can fill us, all we are really doing is wallowing in a sensual, emotional experience. And we run the risk of walling God off in the very process of singing about our desperation for Him.

We're talking fine lines here.  And I think this is one of the limitations of modern "worship music." I firmly believe that worship is meant to form us. This is why parish music directors need to have a pastoral sense and an evangelizing sense along with musical capacity and basic awareness of who it is s/he is serving. Good worship music allows a congregation to reach out to God and to experience Him drawing them to Himself. There needs to be that exchange, facilitated at least. And if we spend 10-15 minutes simply meditating on our own habit of feeling desperate without ever looking up to see the God who fulfills our need, we are becoming deformed, not formed.


May 12, 2014

A post-script:
St. John of the Cross writes in the Ascent of Mount Carmel: "Though the intention of these persons is directed to God, the effect they receive is recreation of the senses, from which they obtain weakness and imperfection more than the quickening of their will and its surrender to God." (III, 24 [4])

This seems straight to the point I was trying to make about how worship music sometimes runs the risk of being "recreation of the senses," but it also reminds me to bring out my main point in this that I realized what I had written earlier really failed to do. I do not mean by "recreation" in this case the enjoyment of the melody of this particular song (or of any). What I means is the perverted pleasure one can feel in the comfort of being stuck in desperation. I'm sure someone has a word for this. Maybe if I keep reading St. John I'll find his. But it has to do with coming to a certain spiritual plateau that one recognizes as such -- a leveling off place in traveling where there is still higher ground somewhere -- but getting content to stay right there and simply keep asking for help that one no longer believes is really forth-coming. 

To keep with this recreation, the will is weakened -- the will to look for a way out of that plateau.

I know it is not our wills that make things happen, apart from the grace of God working on and through that will. And yet there is that moment I've experienced many times -- maybe it is exactly the grace of God activating my will -- where suddenly I *really* want something, and the skids are greased and what has remained immobile moves.

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

Holy Darkness

This afternoon at the Mass for the Carmelite community's profession, we sang this as the communion hymn. In fact, it was these precise verses.



Talk about profoundly capturing my soul in words. I didn't sing much, but sat with tears streaming down my face.

I know that God is giving me a gift, and slowly I am able to bow my head to begin receiving. It is a gift of knowing that God is the giver of all that is good. When He gives, something is given. When He does not give, He does not give. There is no manipulating God with actions or desires or other attempts to posture just so because one thinks that will win something from God. There is no winning from God. There is need -- aching, dire need -- and there is receiving. And in between, there is need of trust and faith. And in the aching chasm of dire need, room opens up for virtue, like meekness, humility, and all manor of holy desire.

I Hate it When I Wake up in the Morning and I'm Not the Center of the Universe

The other day I was washing our fruit bowl and this caused me to realize how tremendously patient, merciful and humble God is in His relationship to me. I am quite slow to have things really sink in. He is masterful at teaching, though.

The fruit bowl was a wedding present. I was 31 when we married, so I'd already lived on my own for a decade. Unwrapping all those gifts, I noticed a sharp difference between all this fancy stuff we got and the old, random junk I was used to using for daily living. Somehow, because of these gifts, an arrow of intuition shot through me that told me marriage was ultimately about being called to serve others. Not just my husband and presumed family, but the great social beyond. I didn't really have any social beyond at the time. So this intuition was like a nudge, telling me a different life was ahead.

Looking back I see that I treated this nudge at the time sort of like one treats a waitress who comes by after dinner and says "Would you like dessert, or maybe an after-dinner drink?" It's an interesting prospect, and maybe it makes me feel momentarily enthused, and maybe I even respond positively, but the bottom line is, it's all about whether I want extra goodies added on to my goodie-laden experience or not. What will please me?

The other day I held this bowl and I realized how much my life has revolved around that question: What will please me?


Oh. So that's where all of my unhappiness has come from.

God is not opposed to our happiness -- that's a stupid notion, though one I wrestled with for years. God absolutely is all about our being happy. (Here's proof.) In fact, He's really the only one who knows how we get there. It makes lots of sense for us to pay heed to His direction if we are serious about wanting happiness.

But we have this stubborn thing, this intentness on staying attached to our own plans for our own happiness. It's a sort of entitlement sense, I suppose, this cry, however buried, that insists that we have the right to our own happiness, our own way. We're sort of right, except for that last part. If we don't surrender to God and His way, well, we can kiss that chance at happiness goodbye as we get all the more frantic at trying to make it happen ourselves. It's that whole "He who loses his life will find it, and he who saves his life will lose it" thing. Heads, you lose; tails, you lose.

Here's an illustration from my life. Shortly after we got married, I really wanted to become an RCIA catechist. I had my almost-finished Masters in Theology degree and my plan that I entered grad school with -- I was going to go teach people and save the world. What better thing to do than to serve God and His Church, right? We even changed parishes so that I could do this. I slogged at it for five years. I made a lasting friendship with the then-director, but for the most part I was a lousy catechist. I mean, I tried my best, and didn't teach anyone heresy, but my efforts were like a lot of chaff flying around.

There was some value to trying to serve God the way I wanted, but the value was mostly in me seeing how ineffective it was. I thought it would please me to live out this vision of me "serving God."

A few years later, I actually felt called by God to step up for music ministry in my parish. This was not my vision for myself, and I was hesitant at first. But later, ohmygosh, I was so happy. Amazing things happened. God started blessing me so much it was almost like being high. It pleased me very much.

Just over a year ago, the Lord asked me in no uncertain terms to put it all back in His hands. And I did. This was all an interior experience of prayer. It was actually like another degree of high. But nothing changed on the outside. This year, God has broken in again far more profoundly in ways only He can with this most disturbing question: What pleases you more? Spiritual consolations, insights, revelations, favor, healing.... or obedient service to Me?

Who is this about?

Who is the One all worthy to be pleased? 

Who do you love more: yourself, or Me?

You know that it is God posing choices like this to your soul when you need to actually stop and consider it. And really, really wrestle with the desire to yell, "Me! I really only care about me! What about meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee?"

That's a good time to revisit the facts about God being the author of all that is, and the only one who really knows our path to happiness.

There is a losing that is gaining. You gain everything. All the good stuff. You just have to trust Him enough to die.

That's all.

To die to the question What will please me? and instead ask, What pleases You, Lord?

I Think I'm Too Much of a Chicken to Give this Post the Title It Should Have

I shall now go off about something that is not really my problem, though it is my concern and has been my concern for years.

I feel like, with saying this, I am now officially old, too.

I'm talking about the music ministry at Franciscan University of Steubenville.

Now, I love FUS, I love the community that has sprung up in this town with and because of it, and I have been attending daily Mass at the University, on and off, schedule and family life permitting, for 15 years. I was a grad student at FUS from 1997-1999, and I was head of a music ministry team that lead music for the 12:05 Mass on Fridays for a semester. I also led music at various times during summer and Christmas breaks way back when. Before I had those leadership experiences, I used to occasionally critique and criticize those who lead music. Mostly I had a beef with people whose style was not mine. But then I stepped up to the plate to do it myself, and I learned only a stupid person criticizes something at which they've never made their own mistakes.

My favorite story in that regard is the time I completely forgot the word "Alleluia." We got to the gospel acclamation, I strummed the chord, and I could not for the life of me remember what it was we were supposed to sing. Not the notes, not the words, nothing. That was the last time I ever got up there without music, or at least without the word "Alleluia" written down with chord notation. I desperately whispered to the singer nearest me, "Sing something!!" She did, and the moment was saved.

I've also seen very experienced leaders sing the Lamb of God where the Holy, Holy goes, and other things that people remember and tell with chagrin until the day they die.

But there's thing that that has been steadily gnawing on me for the last several years, and today is the day I say it: There needs to be a music ministry formation program at Franciscan.

I wrote about this last year in this post called Thoughts on a Vocation of Music Ministry, and I got to this climactic moment of saying what is this "something" that is needed, and I stalled out, not able to name it. I think it is simply the ability to be an effective leader of music ministry.

That's a multi-faceted thing. For one thing, basic liturgical knowledge is very helpful.

Wait, let me back up. Yes, it's been roughly 13 years since I was in the loop of music ministry on campus, but it doesn't seem to me that the modus operandi has changed any. Someone correct me if it has. Whoever was designated the "leader" of the group made all of the decisions about choosing songs, Mass settings, how things would be sung, with only the most general of guidelines coming from the chapel staff. For example, at the 12:05 Mass, the psalm used to be sung by the music ministry, but now it is read by the lector. That was a very good call, not only because of the time constraints, but also because those psalms spun way out of control, because the music ministry leader was also responsible for, if you will, composing the setting for the psalm. Often they ended up in 6- or 7-part harmony (depending on the population of the given ministry group) and they were completely inarticulate. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Ok, so you've got a bunch of college kids, with the occasional non-trad or graduate student thrown in, and they are completely in charge of the music for their day of the week. Back to the liturgical knowledge bit. It's great to have Lenten hymns during Lent. It's great to have Easter hymns during Easter week and the extended season. Etc. It often seems that leaders are just picking their favorite tunes that have blessed little to do with anything, or perhaps there is a line from the gospel that matches, but the season is off.

There is also the matter of what can be pulled off by whom. I appreciate the genre of contemporary worship music that is often employed at FUS Masses, but some songs are just very difficult for one guitarist to pull off. Some songs are equally difficult for an organ or keyboard to try to pull off. What doesn't work well shouldn't be tried anyway.

But apart from these things, the thing that screams out to me the most is what I wrote about in the above-mentioned post: the difference between standing up and worshipping God in front of people, and leading people in worship. I say it that way because quite often we are talking about a guitarist and a group of singers, perhaps with a keyboard who is following the guitar lead (though sometimes it is reversed). I suppose the same could be said about an organist who is just playing songs. There has to be a certain sense that is clear and consciously known in the mind of the leader that s/he is there to be the leader. I think there is such a thing as a natural-born leader, even in music, but I think there is also such a thing as learning how to lead.

And there is a personal and spiritual element to that that requires personal and spiritual formation.

Now, back in my day, we were all encouraged to pray together before singing. That's good, and I'm all for it. But something deeper is needed. That prayer becomes a way of the singers/musicians saying to each other "Golly, I'm nervous. Let's do a little group huddle and go out and do this thing!" That's not even necessarily the worst thing in the world, but it is on a rather immature level, both as an emotional expression and especially as a prayer expression. God wants something deeper from us than to be our lucky rabbit's foot that we rub for confidence.

How does one develop confidence? Part of it is about living a life of discipleship in Christ. Another part of it is mentoring and training. Wait, did I just repeat myself? Jesus didn't just find a bunch of disciples and send them out the next day. He spent time with them, so they could see what He did. Then He sent them out to learn by doing, and to get feedback to do better. Formation!

The vast majority of the many, many leaders and groups I have witnessed in recent years desperately need formation in leadership confidence, and often some help with basic liturgical tools. Occasionally, musical ones as well. These are students, I know, they are young and immature by definition, and to me they are getting younger and more immature all the time. They are there as students; they are not part of a religious order. And yet, Franciscan has always been about spiritual formation of its students. A big part of that formation in general actually flows through the liturgical celebrations. And an integral part of those celebrations is the music ministry. (And the lectors -- and they do get their own training. That's another story.)

It seems to me that part of the weakness of the charismatic heritage on which Franciscan's music ministry has been mostly built is that it was expected that if the musicians just prayed and "did their thing," that God would bring it all together and the worship would be effective. Then of course there's all the blather about styles of music that people have been tussling over there for decades. Part of the problem is that, in order to have any music at all, the chapel is dependent on whomever they can dredge up to provide it, and Catholics have not considered musical training an integral part of education, like learning to read (as the Lutherans are more apt to).

But, whatever the problems or the source of the problems, I have this concern, because I love liturgy. I'm a third-rate, relatively ignorant musician who has a sharp and painful passion for liturgical music being "just so," or at least close to it. Music should give the people the freedom to worship God, not to focus for good or for ill on what they are hearing.

Ok, rant done. I think. Concern, ongoing.

You are My All in All

Another year of Vacation Bible School is complete. I have to say that my favorite part of it, when I can get it to happen, is not helping with it. I did music for a few years when my daughter was tiny, and between totally trashing my fingers (playing guitar loudly for three hours with no mic, and one day with no pick), my educational ideals, and my introversion, I was always completely wiped out when the week was over. God bless those who love doing that kind of stuff. I had a hard time just being in a church full of kids for the closing Mass. The cacophony of it all!

But thanks be to God for moments during the Mass when, despite a billion distractions, meditation is still possible. As a communion song, we sang this:



Now, it's not so much that I love this song musically (though it is all right). It is more that this song takes me way back. When it first came out in the late 80s, friends of mine gave me the album it was on, along with a songbook with all the chords and lyrics. Also on this recording was some of the artist's testimony, which includes him talking about God delivering him from homosexuality. He gives a brief synopsis of his testimony on his website, here.

This song is now relatively popular in the contemporary music Mass circles where I live, so I hear it a few times a year. But somehow, singing it today amidst all of these children was striking.

Even children experience on some level questions and turbulence about their identity, although I doubt that many think explicitly in those terms. And blessed are those children who experience a sort of natural emergence of questions about their sexual identity, and a mature, loving, grounded, Christian environment in which they can figure out what it all means. I wonder, though, how many children are that blessed.


But then I hear the lyrics to this song, and I think of the innocence of children, and all that transpires in between childhood and adulthood to confuse and cloud our sense of identity. What is the answer to all the confusion in our lives and our culture?

Well, I can tell you what it ain't. It ain't a religious veneer that we use to make our self-directed lives look socially acceptable. No one particularly cares about religious veneer anymore, anyway. That is the definition of secular, is it not? Not only is religion not necessary to be socially accepted as "good," it actually is a hindrance. Religion makes an otherwise "good," socially-acceptable person look intolerant, narrow-minded, and just wrong. Socially, a religious veneer serves a very limited purpose, mostly to keep other religiously-veneered people from getting upset.

But sometimes people need to be upset.

Another way to put it is people need conversion.

Conversion happens when Jesus Christ gets access to deeper and deeper areas of our lives.  Listening to Dennis Jernigan's testimony afresh reminds me of how this is the key to everything for us. Is there anything deeper within us than our own sense of who we are, and especially in our modern culture, who we are as sexual beings? When there is something about this that disturbs us, as Dennis was deeply disturbed by unwanted same-sex attraction to the point of being suicidal, that's a darn effective way for Jesus to get our attention. And what does He do when He gets our attention? He calls us to union with Him. He calls us to walk with Him on a path that we cannot see ahead of time; He calls us to His life, His death, His cross, His resurrection. And as we walk, we see ourselves as we truly are. We get a clear sense of identity because of our union with the One who made us, the only One who understands us fully.

Calling others to conversion tends to just happen by experiencing conversion ourselves, because it is not our own thing but God's thing alive in us that does the calling. It seems to work the best when one is not even aware of God's grace at work. But there is an active surrender that the Lord calls us to, as well. An obedience. A penance. A giving. A belonging. When we are there, when we practice that kind of giving, our identity is in the Blessed Trinity, who made us and gives everything for us. Without that on-going conversion to Christ, our identity is either shifting all over the place in some kind of an anesthesia cloud that keeps us numb to reality, or it gets locked into a lie.

Discovering our identity in God through Christ is the only answer left for our lives and our culture. Thanks be to God for the pain that makes us ask the really hard questions.

Why Record a CD?

(This blog post originally appeared on my website, www.mariehosdil.com, where you can buy the CD in question.)

Recently someone asked me why I made this CD. I think there’s a story worth telling here, because everyone has phases when discerning one’s way through life is an all-consuming need. Reading nitty-gritty testimonies of someone else’s journey can help.

 On Christmas Day of 2010 I stood in my kitchen chatting with a friend who mentioned that a local recording studio could digitize cassette recordings. My mind shot to my beloved 1986 cassette version of “Daughter” (Track 8) that had already survived a 2003 toddler attack. Had to get that preserved before it was lost forever.

So, to the studio I went. I reminisced a bit with the tech about recordings I’d done in college and found myself wondering out loud to him what all it might take for me to do some real recording now.

That wondering followed me home and I prayed about it frequently. As I prayed, the wondering became a demanding question. Marie, will you record again? Will you make a CD?

Simultaneously, I had begun spending more time than usual playing guitar. Circumstances gave me a couple of hours a month to play alone in a church. This was exactly how I had spent hours and hours during college (except that now, the church had the Blessed Sacrament in residence; then I was in what had been a convent chapel, with only the memory of the Blessed Sacrament there!) That winter I began writing the song “Deep Inside” which took me months to complete. It literally grew along with me as I discerned, the only song I’ve ever written explicitly as a studio song.

January passed and February came, and I wrestled with The Question. My greatest practical concern was financial cost. However, the far more powerful question in my heart was the “Why bother?” My songs had a certain importance to me, but I couldn’t justify spending all the money to record and share them. The world had so many songs in it already. While I found buried in my heart a spark of a desire to proceed with it, try as I might I could not surmount the “Why bother?” question.

Then came one of the strangest days in my recent memory. Waiting for Mass to being at Franciscan University’s Christ the King Chapel, I prayed fretful and fuming prayers. The Question was ringing in my heart like a gong, and frankly I was annoyed with God and weary of myself. Suddenly I remembered an event from a year earlier. I had felt divinely compelled to invite a certain visiting priest to our house for dinner, despite this feeling silly to me. Long story short, I finally obeyed the prompting, talked to the priest, we played phone tag (which is mortifyingly difficult for me), and eventually he left town and never did come for dinner. So, as I prayed that day, I reminded God of that escapade. “What ever came of that, huh, Lord? I did what I felt like you wanted me to do then, and all that came of it was me feeling stupid! What about that?”

That Mass began, and in walks that same priest. I’d not seen nor thought of him in a year. My fuming came to an embarrassed and confused silence, and I “came to” about the time this priest read the gospel of the day. It involved Jesus rebuking the disciples for their lack of faith and asking them “Do you still not understand?”

All I could say was, No Lord. I don’t understand. At all.

Back at home about two hours later, I was still reeling from the impact of what had just happened. My son burst through the door, demanding I come with him immediately. A block away, he had witnessed a woman who had been walking her dog in a field behind an abandoned building collapse and begin seizing.

What happened next is hard to explain. In a complete internal daze, I found the woman, dialed 911, and proceeded to wait with her for the paramedics. A neighbor came and spoke soothingly to her.  A nun who lived down the street came running, cradled the woman and scrambled to help the paramedics when they arrived. The woman’s adult son arrived.

And all the while I stood there, completely silent and motionless inside and out, feeling as removed from the situation as if I were waiting for a bus. When she was taken care of, neighbors congratulated my son on his quick reaction that probably saved the woman’s life. Everyone took a sigh of relief and went back to their day.

I, however, could not.

Hours later as I told my husband the episode, my delayed reaction brewed – something erupting from a deeper level than emotion or stress. My response to the woman felt both natural for me, and yet wrong, wounded, broken. And somehow, I felt I’d entered into a mysterious cloud from which God was responding to my complaints about The Question.

That night after choir practice I began to tell a friend about the woman. But as I described “just standing there” something broke open in me. I started to cry, shake and hyperventilate and I ran out of the church. I made it home with great difficulty and for hours I continued in this state, hyperventilating, crying and shaking violently. It seemed my body was reliving traumas to which I had long since turned off my ability to feel.

The next day, feeling like I’d had my stuffing knocked out, I again turned to the Lord in prayer. Without any process of analysis I understood that the “bother” was not about the world needing eight more songs or another CD. The “bother” was about my need to surrender my soul to God, to obey, to follow, to give. The God who has given me so much was calling me to stop counting what it costs and to be freed to pour myself out. And what I found in my hand to fulfill this calling was the music that comes from my heart.

But it would take money, so I told God if this were really His idea, He’d have to provide some. The very next day we got a notice that we’d get a $600 reimbursement on some car repairs because a recall. Sadly, it was my sister’s death just after I began recording that provided the “more than enough” that God is famous for. My sister was musical, and she was always generous to a fault. When I received an unexpected share of her savings, I realized that God holds all of our lives in His hands.

This is only the story of how the CD got started. When I finally finished the project, I realized everything I’ve learned has only just begun. What God has done “deep inside” my heart (Track 4), I now need to take a live out “deliberately” (Track 5). Thanks be to God, each day of life gives each of us a new opportunity to surrender to God, to obey Him, to follow Him, to give ourselves to Him and to the world at His directive. Let’s all pray for the grace to do these things to the fullest possible extent in everything we do.