Unpacking from SDFP, Intensive 1: Tribalism, Turnips, and the King

I'm home from the first "intensive" of the Carmelite Spiritual Direction program, and it's time to start unpacking the experience. 

I didn't go with a lot of mentally mapped out expectation. I wanted to simply arrive and let it happen, though I admit I went through a spate of anxiety a few days before as I packed my suitcase. The worries that popped up were strange ones for me. Along with the whole bit about flying (and the fact that my flight out was on September 11) I had tribal worries about the architecture of the retreat center. What did it communicate? Could I trust these people? I recount that not to engage tribalism, but to notice that it was surfacing. This was an approach I employed a LOT during the week. It's an entry point for a contemplative gaze to listen -- first -- to what is going on interiorly, and suspend judgment for a time. 

The word wasn't in vogue when I was converting to Catholicism -- tribalism -- but it was a reality I grappled with as I tried to make sense of finding my place in a completely foreign religious landscape. It stayed with me later, too. I remember telling a woman on a parenting/homeschool chat group when my kids were small that I loved being able to label myself (unschooler, crunchy, etc). She, a more experienced parent, had been saying that she found labels limiting and unhelpful. But I was feeling my vulnerability and helplessness, and labels helped give me a sense of myself, even if it was exterior, borrowed social currency. Labels gave me a sense of belonging, a built-in sense of which way to stand in the world, and to identify my opposition. 

The day came, and my anxieties faded into the prayers of the CACS team and other friends, and I was totally at peace with the flight, and guess what? The building didn't poison my soul! All these things were total non-issues, externally. I settled into the experience with gentle anticipation.

In a word, I come away from the week having seen a depth to the term "contemplative" that I had not experienced before. This is the huge Carmelite theme. It's a bit like we hiked out into a plain, away from the city, and I looked up and saw with my own eyes, the Mountain. Mount Carmel. The mountain of contemplation. It's very different from studying geography or soil samples or the mathematics or physics or tectonics involved. It's the experience of: there it is. And here we are. And God is calling you to become a sherpa. 

And the process there involves purification, vulnerability, cooperation with the Holy Spirit, and some good old fashioned Teresian determined determination. 

At one point, we had a long three-session talk on the wounds of abuse and how spiritual direction can aid in individuals receiving healing. I have to admit, I came out of those sessions affected. Wounds that I was not aware of living with and that I couldn't quite name made their presence known. Even from my interior place of relative peace, I realized a yet deeper, gauzy level of anxiety operating in me, habitually causing me to subtly stick my fingers in my spiritual ears and sing "LALALALA" to keep God at arm's length from me. 

One thing that supported this process was the strangeness of having no remnant of my "normal" life with me (except that which I carried on my computer). No one was expecting me to lead, to be in charge of things, no one was greeting me as Senior Church Lady with desired connections and information. No demands placed on me. I remembered that I am, by nature, quiet. I don't speak first to people, and if I'm not leading something or feeling responsibly connected to those who are, I naturally just step away and expect to be totally unnoticed. It's been ages since I've felt unnoticed. And, ooh. Feeling unnoticed stirs up some painful emotions.

Also, every time I leave Steubenville I feel a bit like I just fell off the turnip truck. Surrounded by doctors, psychologists, professionals of various stripes, and people who clearly could afford to be there, I found myself grappling with the questions about "what I do" and other things that I spend zero time thinking about when I am living my normal life. All week long when I mentioned my hometown, people asked me if I teach or work at the University. All I could say was that it's been a long time since anyone paid me for doing anything. By the standards of this world, my family and I are powerless and insignificant. Conversations around this didn't steal my peace, but they did surface interior things that just surprised me, because they are in the category of so close to me I can't see them.

Humility is the most necessary virtue for spiritual growth, and I recognize that God has built in a ton of opportunity for growth into my life. That's a win. 

During one of our practium sessions of group spiritual direction (a totally new concept to me) I was overwhelmed by this sentence: "At the heart of the Carmelite Rule there is a call for us to commit ourselves to Jesus..." Actually, that wasn't even the whole sentence, but that's as far as I got into the set of readings we were given for reflection.  This wasn't just a reading to me; it was an experience. I experienced... Jesus... calling to me. (He noticed me.) The image that came to me was Aslan from the Chronicles of Narnia. There's an exchange where Lucy asks if Aslan, a symbol of Christ, is safe.

"Safe?" said Mr. Beaver."Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you."

Mr. Tumnus also says, "He's wild, you know. Not a tame lion."

I realized, I do not control, in this relationship with Jesus. Jesus is not my pet, nor my lapdog. And when He is present like that, you don't stop to go through the intellectual question of whether God is real because it is self evident. You move beyond that to a stance of He is the King, and He is calling me to a commitment to Him, personally. I can see that He means to cut through some things I've learned to find my identity in, and to re-establish, re-root my identity more profoundly in Him alone. 

Another key experience for me was of the Oxford Carmelite friars. I've followed them now for a few years, and participated in other things they've offered online. I don't yet know how to capture what has attracted me to them and garnered my respect, but I think it has to do with an answer to a question someone put to two of them at dinner one night. They said the Church in England is not polarized. I feel there is a depth of spiritual pursuit that I witness through them. They are Carmelites, so that means they are living the charism of the order. But in contrast, I feel the Church at large in the US bears witness to being blown and tossed by the winds, as St. Paul writes about in Ephesians 4:

And his gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, for the equipment of the saints, for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ; so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the cunning of men, by their craftiness in deceitful wiles. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every joint with which it is supplied, when each part is working properly, makes bodily growth and upbuilds itself in love. (4:11-16)

I will have a lot of reading and work to give myself to over the next months and years. Please pray for me that the Lord may have a good return on His investment in me. This should prove an adventure.  

Become Who You Are

One of the reasons I write is to document the unfolding of life within me. Since childhood I have found that wrestling thoughts and feelings into words helps me understand where I am (hence, the name of this blog, Naru Hodo -- now I get it.)

And this happened with my last post. It frequently happens that when I write something that feels raw at the moment, I soon find that the raw spot becomes a well, and I find Living Water welling up there. At times, it has driven to me create rawness where it was not naturally occurring, out of desire (really, desperation) for God. But no, God is not drawn to a state I get myself worked up into, like emotional coin dropped into a divine vending machine. It's rather that moment of need that I bring, presenting in nakedness. For me, there is a good measure of the feeling that I am not sure what is right or wrong in the moment. In other words, I don't know which of my interior movements are tricking me (trying to maintain self in control) and which are seeing reality, open to God, open to life and growth. Not knowing, I respect them all and bring them before God, as I mentioned the other day.

By the way, though I am not fluent in this school of thought, it reminds me of Internal Family Systems Theory, which Dr. Peter Malinowski speaks about often in his podcasts. It has really helped me stop fighting with myself and has made it easier to hand myself over to the Lord in prayer.

So what I really wanted to get to in this post was the joy I encountered after bringing all of these disparate parts to the Lord after this last little anxiety flair I mentioned the other day. The process goes like this: Something happens, I feel panicked, I feel interiorly compelled to react according to the part that feels moral responsibility. The old script kicks in that I have to take care of everything; I have to be in control or all hell is going to break loose, and when it does it will be all my fault, and I'll be reeling in pain. The witness of my friends kick in (even though they know zero about what I'm wrestling with interiorly). I go to God with all the broken-feeling bits and lay it all out. Then, later, in prayer, God comes and says, "Let me remind you who you are." And He scoops up my soul, reminds me of conversations that have been going on for years, uncovers my heart again, and reminds me of my dignity, the crown He has set on my head, His vision. Strength fills me. Tears flow, washing away the confusion.

That's what happened to me yesterday as I read Carmelite Spirituality in the Teresian Tradition by Paul-Marie of the Cross, OCD. In the brief paragraphs I read, he simply described the spirit of Carmel. I could go back and quote what I read, but it wasn't the words that were powerful but the experience of God that happened with them. This is the way all the time. This has happened to me with people. Something simple happens, but God inhabits it, and my experience of that person becomes, in that moment, and experience of God. It is contemplative. It is mystical in a sense. 

I'll quote one paragraph:

The spirit of Carmel is none other than this power and life that spring from the divine word and seek to enter the soul; none other than this divine presence that is waiting to be received and communicated in a reciprocal gift. Today, no more than in the first days, can this word wait for tomorrows in which it will be accomplished. (p. 21)

God is ardent, and in his presence is purity. He brings this purity to the soul to the extend we can withstand it. This is my place of safety, and this is how anxiety (inward-bending paralysis) is replaced with love (gift-of-self, available and at the ready).

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.

Called On

There is a big danger in being a highly religious person. I mean, there's a big danger in being a person, period, but there's a special kind of deception that can trip up people who engage in religious disciplines, and it enters through self-referentialness. If we purport to serve the God of the universe, the Almighty, the All-Wise, then we are signing up for a life where we are not Masters. We are not The Teachers. We don't stand in self-made security; slick, triumphant, neatly-packaged ease, if there is any reality in it at all, is on the flip side of a broken, humble heart that is the first to acknowledge the good of "the other," the first to bow before mystery, the first to cry "help my unbelief," the first to know that to be held in love by the Almighty is our rightful place.

Human dignity upheld, regardless of whose it is. 

Certainty of divine revelation and security only in it.

Humility of heart and freedom to bend between heaven and earth. 

These are somehow the hallmarks that I saw among Catholics in my early days in the Church that struck me with their subtle witness to truth and reality. I used to believe that Catholics were the epitome of those "caught up in religion," that is, those who practiced meaningless ceremony and recited empty formulae and relied on their own righteousness to stand before God. I was taught to believe that this is the foundation of Catholicism. Rather, I think that this is the foundation of humanity and "natural religion." I think it is probably where we all start, because we have to start somewhere. In the Old Testament, God certainly instructed Israel in all sorts of sacrifice ceremonies, and I highly doubt that at the time they enjoyed the pinnicle of mystical involvment in their interior meaning. God was teaching them. And just as children can listen to a story at ages 3, 6, 9, 12 and 17 and exercise completely different abilities, so as time went on, what Israel experienced in these sacrificial commands was different, I suspect. 

But isn't this just the thing: We can get stuck with what we exercise at the six-year point, and not move on to what the 12-year point calls forth from us. We are ready to build our monuments to truth-mastery and settle into being Masters and Teachers, because we have this one really figured out. Or we can forget, and get reminded of six-year-point truth, and feel happy that we have found our true home again, and vow never to leave.

Somewhere along the line, Christians can fail to register that we are called to union with the God of the universe, the Almighty, the All-Wise. Rather than yearning with openness to the Infinite, we celebrate learning to stand on a small, finite plot of solid earth under our two feet, and call it a day. 

Standing on solid ground is good, but we are called to more. We are always called to more. God is Love; Love is infinite, He does not wish to stop until the flame of His heart enkindles the dried wood of our own hearts and we burn as one. We can't make that happen, but God can. This is the story of the interior mansions: God draws us where we cannot go. There is always somewhere to go. This is such a word of hope for me! There is always somewhere to go. At some stage, moving forward means allowing the breaking up what we have all figured out. It means holding our hearts upwards to the God we cannot see, cannot feel, and whose existence we perhaps question. 

If God is Love (and He is), then God is the one who is waiting to in-fill us. This is the witness of the Carmelite saints. This is our experience. When all is lost, God is, and He in-fills us, and we are brought beyond our sins, beyond our wounds, beyond our limitations, our efforts, our abilities. This is who God is. This is what God does. 

This is not the tame, manageable God that we so easily mistake for ourselves and then begin to inflict on others to bend them to us. This is Reality before whom every knee will bow. This is the God who heals and transforms by His presence, from the interior. 

Turning Hardness of Heart into Purity of Heart

Recently I was called upon to teach a formation session for my Carmelite community, a task that doesn't typically fall to me. Given the circumstances, I essentially listened to a teaching on CD by one of the Carmelite friars, digested it, followed his outline, and presented his talk myself. The subject of this talk was the sixth beatitude from St. Matthew's gospel: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."

It is one thing to read a teaching, and another to hear a teaching. It is an entirely different animal to give a teaching, and to really meditate on it. It was a gift to be able to do so.

And now, several days later, something is jumping out at me from the teaching that I think has application to the current social turmoil which Christians are not immune from. 

Fr. Kevin Culligan, OCD, taught that there are two things about the heart that are involved in becoming pure of heart. First, there are the matters of impurities which arise from the heart, such as those Jesus enumerates in Matthew 15: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, malice, deceit, indecency, envy, slander, pride, folly. These things which come from the heart, and not the ritual purity and obedience, is what makes a person impure, because the "heart" in Scripture is the center of all that we are: our emotional, spiritual, moral life, our desires, passions, our thoughts, will and choices. 

So part of having a pure heart is our own choices, flowing from all this stuff going on inside us.

But the other part of having a pure heart has to do with that which Fr. Culligan states is that which Jesus laments the most: hardness of heart. If our hearts are hard, they will not be pure. Why? Because having a hard heart closes one off from the Word of God. Hardness of heart isolates you from love/Love. And how does hardness of heart develop? Through becoming overly absorbed in one's own agenda. The beatitudes, after all, are, if you will, Jesus'  plan of blessedness, of happiness, and not that of uninformed human striving to fill itself. 

Religious people know not to pursue big commandment-breaking matter. But religious people can get hot and heavy over their own agendas without necessarily realizing it.

This is why St. John of the Cross's teaching on detachment is so vital for us. He presumes that someone pursuing the Christian life will leave behind attachments involved with breaking the Ten Commandments. He teaches us, though, the dangers entailed in remaining attached to anything, even good things, even spiritual things. He is relentless.

And the point is not austerity for the sake of austerity, or detachment out of some kind of psychological aberation that leaves one wanting to grind one's own self into powder to win some divine approval. 

The point is that the beloved longs to see her lover, and God longs for us. To see Him, we must have soft hearts. We must not be overly absorbed with our own agenda, even if our own agenda is something we think is great: service to the Church, loving my family, prayer, being holy, speaking the truth. If it is mine, if I grasp it tightly, if it becomes my identity, if I've forgotten God in the midst of trying to serve Him, then we risk hardening our hearts. We risk what we perceive as our own steadfastness, our own faithfulness becoming that which actually closes us off from the Word and isolates us from Love.

But a beautiful thing happens then. God meets us then with a gift that St. John calls the Dark Night. The Dark Night of the Senses (very generally speaking) is when we are left without the external helps and supports that once held us up. The Dark Night of the Spirit is when we are left without the internal and interior helps that once held us up. This is the time when God is at work within us in a mysterious way. It hurts like the dickens. It is God's purifying action in us, which we cannot produce ourselves, and in which the only way to move forward is in faith. We don't tend to get to understand much of anything or feel like we can see where He leads. 

What might it look like practically? It might entail facing having our doctrinal or religious certainty shaken deeply. It might involve a public humiliation, or someone close to us embracing something which we deeply oppose, thereby challenging how we love them. Losing a job or having a business or a venture fail could trigger this. Facing a sudden and drastic health change... anything that throws our hearts open in a way we could not have anticipated, that leaves us thinking, "How did I get here," and where nothing we knew before quite fits. And these things might all be interior so that no one else would even know anything is going on. 

But what God does in this is call us to have faith in His goodness with us, His presence with us, and His leading, even though we may feel nothing, or animosity, or even doubt that He exists, because we thought the things we lost were where He was. It is here that God softens our hearts, takes our agendas, and gives us His.

But we can't make the Dark Nights happen. They are a gift. We can't give ourselves this kind of purification, but when we have tastes of it, we can say yes. We can ask the Lord to soften our hearts, to take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh.

When we have soft hearts, the Word of God speaks to us easily. When we have a soft heart, love flows to us and through us easily. When we see Jesus hanging on the cross (in the person of the least, here with us) we can look on with sorrow. We can empathize. We can feel His pain. Our love is not cold. We are not caught up in the thinking that standards must be met before love is given. We are also not caught up in the thinking that evil in any form can be winked at, because all that matters is that everyone feel comfortable. Primarily we experience God's love flowing to us, and then through us as He would give it, without bitterness, unforgiveness, resentment and other corrosive elements. 

Having that in which we trusted shaken is messy business, and it is painful. Broken bits fly. But we need not lose everything. We can tell the Lord, "not my self-righteousness, but Yours; not my understanding, but Yours; not my will, but Yours. And I'll leave behind all my acts of uncleanness." Our trust that He is good will be rewarded, and like the men in the fiery furnace (Daniel 3) we will lose only that which was bondage for us.

The Brokenness of Jesus

We hear it at every Mass

He broke it and gave it to them, saying, "Take this, all of you, and eat of it, for this is my body..."

What struck me today in a fresh and new way was this reality that Jesus intentionally gave his disciples that which He had broken. And what He had broken, sacramentally, was Himself.

He wanted the bread into which He would speak Himself to be broken.

He later became broken on the cross because He wanted to be broken on the cross. Or, rather, he became broken as an act of love. He didn't desire brokenness, He desired to act in love.

I am broken because of sin. I am broken because of my own sin and because I was born into a sinful world with sinful forebears and sin-in-action and sin-in-residence. Somehow it is part of this world.

He is broken not because of sin. He was born through the new order of grace, through her who was herself immaculately conceived.

I don't understand all that. But I know it means that when we are grafted into Him, we receive the capacity to be healed of sin and for it to dry up, that sin-in-action. Sin-in-residence loses its power.

But we remain broken, so that we can be like He became, for the salvation of the world. We remain broken so that we grow love.

I have thought that my brokenness meant that I was still so far away from God, from goodness, from change, from grace. I thought my brokenness meant disqualification for being with God. I thought it meant being not as valuable as I would be if I were not broken. Apparently I also thought it was something one could overcome, now, in this life.

But what struck me today was that Jesus broke the bread.

It was no act of malice. It was no act of blame. He saw us broken, and became like us, so that we could become like Him. Accepting the broken piece is that turning point in receiving transformation and transmitting it.

When I can accept the reality that I am broken at the same time that I receive this tremendous outpouring of love and grace and transformation, a corner has been turned. Ironically, it is in accepting utter weakness and helplessness in the presence of Love that we become agents of healing. We become one with Jesus in His self-offering, in His bread, in His body.

There's no earning of a better condition, and there's no striving to fix myself.

There is a two-way total self-gift.

What Just Happened Here?: Onething 2016 and the Catholic Ecumenical Track

What I'm writing here is a spiritual first draft. That means that while thoughts and inspirations have passed through my heart and soul about my topic, I haven't explored them yet. This is writing of discovery.

If you don't know what the Onething conference is, look at this, and if you don't know about the little history of the Catholic Track and MajorChange, then go here. I'm not going to spend time explaining the event from a technical perspective.

And suddenly, just as I sat down to write, my clear entry into my thoughts is not clear any more. But this is part of the process.

I remember the spot where I stood, in a kitchen in Japan about 20 years ago, when I realized that to evangelize means to tell someone the reality of who they are. To be evangelized means to have revealed to one the truth of who they are. And in this regard, we need to be regularly evangelized. It simply means to have God's truth about us spoken over us. God's truth is incredibly good news, and it is also a call, and it is also a challenge.

This, I think, strikes at the core of how I experienced the last several days at Onething. On a simple level, we spent a lot of time meditating in various ways over what is contained in the chorus:

You're a good, good Father -- it's who You are, it's who You are, it's who You are
And I'm loved by You -- it's who I am, it's who I am, it's who I am

This is meditation on truth. This is healing to our minds and souls, and doing this, especially in the wide context of Scripture meditation, prayer, praise, Eucharist, and fellowship with the saints, this meditation becomes a river of revelation through which we invite and "free" the Holy Spirit to bring all sorts of goods to us. Our attention, heart, and desire, focused on God, tunes us in to that which He has patiently waited to pour out to us. Part, I think, is our lack of interest (reason for not otherwise receiving his outpouring), but part of it is that God does this sort of thing when His people gather. And when they gather to seek Him. St. Teresa of Avila knew that "God withholds Himself from no one who perseveres," and if we want God to move among us as a Church, we need to persevere together, which involves gathering and seeking. We also spur one another on to love and good deeds. Yes, we need to encourage our own hearts in God (this is actually incredibly vital), but we can't do without gathering for mutual encouragement.

Ok, so. During the 18 months that I spent post-conversion, on my way into the Catholic Church, God spoke to me a lot about the importance of being myself. This is another way of saying, about knowing who I am in Him. And not just about the category of self-knowledge in the spiritual life. I mean, about me being me. Because all these great principles have to get applied and lived in each one of us. I believe it takes incredible faith and courage, and grace, to do this. The Christian life in totality is supernatural, you see. This was another central message. From many corners the message came that now is a time that God wants signs and wonders carried out by His people, in order to reach the lost and dying with salvation and hope. People need to see Christ. Christ healed, delivered, raised the dead, and miraculously provided. People need to see Christ. This is not about anything but love, obedience, and purity, and responding to God. Because that is Who Christ is, and it is what He came to earth to do.

The daily supernatural activity I am called to is to be myself. This is also about love, obedience, purity, and responding to God. Of course, to respond to God, I need to be in constant contact with God by prayer, Scriptural meditation, Eucharist, and the fellowship with the saints. And, I need to live in reality, because this is where God is ALWAYS found.

Personal observations.
During the first segment of the Catholic Track, people from Columbus, Ohio talked about how God is leading them to start seeing supernatural manifestations in ministry of praying for healing and words of knowledge, and they led us in practicing this. (They are doing some kind of something-school-of-this in the fall, and I am already there in my heart.) As I prayed with a woman, I could see immediately how normal this is and I could identify the interior issues I need to address: namely that I put myself under pressure, feeling a need to rush along instead of staying comfortable with God at God's pace when another person is in the mix. Also, I realize I have a tremendous need for physical silence, which may not be a problem at all, just something I personally need to learn how to address.

And then folks prayed for folks for an impartation of grace. I indentified myself to the man who prayed for me as a Carmelite, and told him I sensed God wanting more for me to give, basically. He said he saw me walking up Mount Carmel with a backpack, but God wanted to trade what I want in that pack for His pack and the more He wants in it. Completely agreed, we prayed. Well, a few nights later, when Bill Johnson was speaking and again praying prayers of impartation and commissioning for this very thing of bringing God's signs and wonders, and I prayed, offering myself for those I always pray and offer myself, I felt my back burning -- burning -- essentially in the shape of a backpack.

The next morning (I hadn't really seen this chronology before), during the Catholic Track, we gathered for worship and prayer. We had done this one other time (truly, the days and events blur together when so much happens), when some folks were asking for prayer, and Iwona was inviting people to come and pray for others, if they felt like they should pray for others. And here is where this practical stuff about being myself came into play. I have a very strong pull to be a dutiful person. I also have a strong sense of submission and response to what is asked. But this, I realize, is where discernment is needed between the difference of what God asks of me, and what someone asks of me, even if it is someone I know and love and generally would always want to respond to. I knew that one of the big but general differences for me this year from Onething 2015 is that last year, I felt that I had to dutifully stay with every single last thing from every single last speaker, every last worship song, keep my heart attuned to them, respond with my energy to the people involved. And for that reason, I think I felt more dragged out. I did not feel the freedom (or the wisdom) to simply say, "What's going on here right now, that's not for me. It's not my duty." So. There I was at the aforementioned time of prayer in the Catholic Track, and while I am a prayerful type, and I don't have a problem praying with or over other people, I simply felt that wasn't for me. And I didn't. I felt the need to pray for the whole room.

So now, let's make our way back to where I started the last paragraph, that Saturday morning of worship and prayer. I settled into the worship, again, not doing exactly what other people were doing. I wasn't singing what other people were singing. I can't always put my mind into meditation mode, because God takes me somewhere else. And at first, where He took me was a meditation on my Carmelite name, the name I chose back a few years ago. We were singing John 1, and my name is Elijah Benedicta of the Incarnate Word. I chose this, in part (there are many parts) because for years I have known that God is after my mouth. He is after my use of words. God was dealing with my heart about who I am. How I am Elijah Benedicta of the Incarnate Word. In part, the profound impact here was that, I know that as a Carmelite and as an intercessor I am basically a hidden part of the Body. And a huge part of my story, personally and in terms of my theological and mental formation, has been countering the lie that my life and my actions essentially have no significance and no importance at all. And essentially God showed me my significance and my importance. And then, in this communion, I began to pray. This is something I cannot explain apart from faith and the experience, but as I prayed things forth, I saw them happen. Again, and again, and again. It is all essentially about living the reality of God being with me.

And then I stood up and gave a 40 minute talk on intercession that was supposed to be some vague plan of a conversation with a group and a priest who ended up not showing up because of illness. I had nothing planned (zip!) but I asked God on my way to the bathroom what it was I should lead with, and two things came immediately to mind, and there it was. And afterwards a woman who heard me asked if she could talk with me, and we talked for hours and she found hope, we prayed, and we understood each other very well.

And the biggest problem in the Church at large is that we are not in love with Jesus. We don't need to be emotionally hyped; that is largely an attempt to hide and cover, I think. Being in love is something else. It makes you want to study, to discover, to spend time, to think about, to be with, to work with, to give to. It absolutely absorbs all of your emotions, but it makes you more yourself, not less. Is there a love potion to make people fall in love? I need that answer.
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People who see other people who are in love can feel deeply judged, rejected, and hated, and it can make them come out swinging, and/or plunge them into depression. It sometimes surfaces nasty crap in others because they start to feel what they lack. But the healing is in the revealing.

Still I think seeing people who are in love can melt hearts who don't even know they are isolated from love. Love is a call to self-giving. First, to awakening.

I want the Grand Theater in my town to become a place where people gather to pray and worship something like they do at IHOP.

I also want people to understand Mary's prophetic role.

Mostly I want more people to fall in love with Jesus.

I want to be myself and clearly recognize what choices I need to be get firm about to walk that way. I want to live every day with Jesus, with prayer, meditating on Scripture, the Eucharist, and the fellowship of the saints.

Yep.

Lessons from the Mystics for Normal People

Last weekend was the annual retreat for my Secular Carmelite community, and for the first time since I have been involved we had a Carmelite friar as retreat master. I loved our previous retreat master who preached the last three I attended; his messages moved my heart and have stayed alive with me all this time. But there was something uniquely wonderful about having a Father of my own charism teaching this time. It was not so much the things he said that have stayed with me (although I gleaned much) as it was his lived witness of being a Carmelite.

The Lord taught me many years ago that a key component in evangelizing a soul is to reveal to that soul, by the grace of God, who he or she is, deeply, in the truth and reality that is God Himself. In other words, when God uses me to tell someone else who they truly are, an encounter with Christ has taken place.

So I'd say I encountered Christ last weekend.

And he reminded me of reality: You are a Carmelite. You are a mystic. And here's what it means for you.

Now, hold the phone. Mystics are weird, right? They have bizarre experiences and it is probably either psychological delusion supported by the ignorant, pious blindness of those around them, and probably half the stories about them are prideful, desperate, embellished daydreams to wield power over simple people, or blah blah blah.

Well, no. Although we spent the weekend learning about a mystic of recent times who would have to push the envelope of skeptics to the breaking point very quickly: St. Mary of Jesus Crucified. She had experiences that make the mystical phenomenon of St. Padre Pio look tame.

Mystical prayer simply means prayer that is the Holy Spirit's that happens in us humans. It is not necessarily accompanied by unusual experiences, though it can be. It is not necessarily a sensibly powerful experience, though it can be.

Secular Carmelites make a promise to spend a half hour each day in this type of prayer. This promised prayer is not for personal benefit or growth, but for the Church. Friars and nuns promise two hours of this type of prayer every day.

I've known this for years now, but I had a moment this last weekend where this simply clicked for me on a deeper level. A "naru hodo" moment. And in conjunction with this whole retreat, I found an incredible joy in being able to stretch out my whole being into this vocation and exclaim "This is who I am. This is where I belong."

St. Mary of Jesus Crucified (1846-1878)

As we studied the life of St. Mary of Jesus Crucified, we learned this means sharing the gloriously joyful delights of union with God, as well as the crushing pains and sufferings of union with Jesus. But it also means simply living the normal life we have as normal secular Carmelites, by faith.

And that is what normal people can glean from mystics who levitate, have visions of heaven and hell, converse with saints and angels, have the stigmata which bleed onto sheets in drops that spell out words, who persuade Popes of things by letters someone else has to transcribe because of being illiterate, being martyred but surviving because the Blessed Virgin comes to personally nurse her back to life for a month (and on, and on, and on). We hear the testimony of the mystic, of the Carmelite, whose call, according to our rule, is to bear witness to the experience of God. The vast majority of mystical phenomenon may be things we never experience, but by faith we can acknowledge the things mystics see face to face, and live in the light of their reality.

So, yes, I believe the testimony of a mystic to whom it was given to see how many angels are crowded into an empty church, and how many more guardian angels are present during a Mass. I can't see them, but I remember when I enter a church that they are there (sometimes, I do), and I respond accordingly.

Yes, I believe the testimony of many, many mystics who have seen visions of many souls falling into hell, because I know it is a possibility and I am called to pray that it not happen.

Yes, I believe the experience of the mystics who suffer interior torments when people think they are crazy, but then they find that this is typical of a process of purification Jesus often employs for souls with this vocation. I use this insight to face my own blander struggles with courage, offer them to God, and then refocus my attention away from my own needs and onto what is going on in the heart of Jesus, trusting that Jesus will care for me and I don't have to obsess.

And when mysterious things happen in my own life, I am not surprised but simply realize this is evidence God is real, which is exactly what I should expect, and that he uses these things to purify souls and draw them away from the baubles and distractions of the world. So I take courage and thank God for drawing me.

So don't bristle at the term mystic. Like many words it has experienced abuse, but it is a genuine stream of Catholic spirituality that is indispensable for our time.

All the Way My Savior Leads Me

I was baptized as an infant, had an early childhood of religious indifference, and after a short flirtation with threatening God I'd become a satanist, I gave my life to the Lord at age 10. I was once an anti-Catholic Protestant, and currently I am becoming a lay member of the Carmelites, an ancient order of the Catholic church, devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary and dedicated to prayer and the mystical life. How does that happen, you ask? By the grace and mercy of God, I've had to learn to recognize the difference between my sin and God's holiness, and to seek Him alone.

First, let me summarize for you how I see the core of what God is teaching me today. Then let me try to trace out for you some of how I arrived at this conviction.

I firmly believe that the Christian life means living a continual state of conversion unto Jesus Christ, after we have accepted the salvation He won for us, until we reach perfect union with God. This work of conversion is a work entirely of grace, entirely a gift, but it is a grace and a gift with which a soul can and must cooperate. We have to say yes to God and do what is ours to do. This perfect union with God is something that we can and should enter into during this lifetime, but not all the saved do. We enter into it by a gift of God I'll call purgation. Scripture tells us that nothing impure can enter heaven (Rev. 21:27) and that our works will be tried by fire to remove what is worthless (1 Cor.  3:15). But we can't control or command our own purgation; God has to do it. We can either let Him do it as He wills in the course of our earthly lives, or we will have to experience it after this life is done and before we enter heaven. People call that purgatory. Everything I want is summed up in seeing the face of Jesus in heaven. Everything I hope for on earth has to do with living out the fruits of purgation and the holiness God works in me. Nothing is worth anything in comparison with the glory of being united, with all the holy ones, with the Blessed Trinity for all eternity. And the quest for eternal glory has already begun now. So Lord, whatever it takes, with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, I give you my yes.

Now, every church I have belonged to has been somewhere on the scale from diametrically opposed to what I just wrote, to uncomfortable and uncertain about how to teach it and train believers in living it. And I've been right there in the midst with them.

My first religious formation, after first giving my life to the Lord as a child, was in an ultra-conservative Lutheran setting. Here I learned to honor the Bible as the Word of God, to read and to memorize it. While I did this, though, I had a lot of sin in my life. I've always been an interior-oriented person, so these sins were the seething sort, like hatred, bitterness, pride, arrogance, judgment, grudges, and the like. The Lutheran teaching on sin did not help me repent or be cleansed of these sins. The emphasis was that all we do is like filthy rags, but that the Father imputes Jesus' righteousness to us. Sin was all handled in the eternal perspective and we simply lived with our inevitable corruption while in heaven God had a clean tally sheet with our name on it, our bill paid by Jesus. And I went on hating, being bitter, and so on. Occasionally in those days, Bible verses such as 1 Jn. 4:20 ("Whoever claims to love God but hates his brother is a liar") jumped out and startled me. But the conflicting theology left me more confused than convicted.

One summer during college, I met Christians who witnessed to me that the Holy Spirit could personally enter my life and empower me with Himself. They called this being baptized in the Holy Spirit. Once I cautiously read through all of the Scriptures and decided that they had the Bible on their side, for the first time I had to face down this entirely passive notion I had that God did everything for me. When I was convinced from Scripture that God would baptize me in the Holy Spirit, I simply got depressed that apparently He hadn't. I figured it must mean He didn't love me or I wasn't important enough. I sadly moaned prayers in the self-pitying and despairing style that was common to me. Then, a revolutionary thought came to mind: Ask Him. Maybe you don't have because you don't ask. I had to make an elaborate ritual of it that included meticulously finishing all of my schoolwork, buying a book and setting aside an entire evening to read it, but I accomplished all that within 8 hours of this revolutionary thought that I could ask God, and I asked. And when I asked, BAM, the floodgates opened, and I had a powerful encounter with the Holy Spirit.

Immediately I sought out a new church to be among people who could help me understand what happened to me. The primary grace I experienced here was the release of years and years of hurt and sin during praise and worship. I learned to open my heart to God in the midst of other people, and I also began to be aware that God would speak to my heart. Gradually I learned to recognize the difference between His leading and my own confusion. This was something I could not do when I was isolated.

While still in a Lutheran college and attending that charismatic fellowship, God planted a seed that has had far-reaching effect. I had to write a paper for a very difficult class that was to count for 50% of my grade, and I had no idea what to do. The class was on Medieval and Renaissance philosophy. One day I paced the library stacks and begged God for some insight as to a topic. He answered with one word: "mysticism." I responded happily, "Ok, Lord! But, what is that?"

I researched St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Hugh of St. Victor, the Cloud of Unknowing, and others. I was captivated. Yes, I was a bit put off that these were Catholic authors because everything I'd ever learned about Catholicism concerned how it was wrong.  But these people... they wrote from an experience of loving God that left me with a pounding heart and breathless. At one point I just dropped my book on the library table and told the Lord, "If there is anyone left on the face of the earth who knows you and loves you like these people did, Lord, that is who I want to be with."

A few years later, the memory of that day in the library was the only thing that kept me from losing it as I talked with a friend I had deeply respected who had shocked me by becoming Catholic. I later had to face lots of ugly judgments, pride, and arrogance as I finally admitted to myself I had never once in my life read anything about Catholic doctrine written by a Catholic. My friend told me, yes, there are indeed people who love God like St. Teresa of Avila. They are called Carmelites. He gave me a little book about how to pray like a Carmelite. And I was amazed all over again.

I became a Catholic in 1993 in order to enter the world of mystics and saints, and I found the world of bingo, indifference, and sometimes outright scandal. Jesus had called me, though. The first time I had gone to Mass to actually be open to Him, He stunned me, shocked me, overwhelmed me, by revealing His presence to me in the Holy Eucharist. I knew I could not walk away from the Catholic Church without walking away from Jesus. He also spoke to me the promise that He is the Resurrection and the Life, and that all who believe in Him, though they die, yet shall they live. I wanted mystics and saints, but felt nothing but death in me and around me. But Jesus promised me life.

In the last two decades I've known purgations both slow and steady, and sharp and painful. God has also blessed me beyond belief with joy and the utter certainty of His love for me, and I've always seen Him provide everything I need, especially when I hardly realized what I needed. Together we have broken open and laid flat my hard crust of a heart, and He has indeed given me a heart of flesh.

It takes six years to become a Carmelite secular, and I have three years remaining in my initial formation. Part of the mission of a secular Carmelite is to teach God's people the wisdom of the saints I've mentioned, to help ourselves and others to grow in holiness and unto union with Christ. Every day I renew to God my desire to become His instrument, that He may teach His people holiness both through our words and hidden prayer. What other response can I have but to give all that I am to Him who has given me everything?


This post also appeared at MajorChange as Draw Me After You... 

Spiritual Violence and Ferocious Love

At my last Carmelite formation small group meeting, I talked through a topic that has played a pretty big role in my spiritual development for my whole life: this notion of spiritual violence. Included in this notion are many questions, such as, how harsh should be we with ourselves? How far should self-denial go? How do we go about it? How do I understand God in terms of His harshness with us? What does "take up your cross and follow me" imply?

People tend to see Carmelites, and especially St. John of the Cross, as bastions of austerity. And it is true, right, fitting, and proper to associate austerity with this spirituality. But austerity is easily misunderstood and made horrific without a correspondingly deep grasp of the intensity of love that is the ground from which this austerity springs.

I decided there's a word I like for love's characteristic: ferocious. God's love is ferocious. And yes, I realize the definition of ferocious is basically violent. But there is also a connotation of strength, intensity, fierceness, a raging love that stops at nothing. It is complete, all-consuming, driving, penetrating, wanting everything. There is energy. And yet, it is love, so it does not violate or destroy, nor is there any lack of order or spinning out of control, like some kind of a rampaging mob. This word gives me a handle on all that.

Twenty years ago, if you had asked me about the intensity of God's love for me and how this relates to His call to leave everything and take up my cross, to lose my life for His sake, I would have told you in some formulaic way how God's intense love calls me to self-denial. I believed the theory that God was worthy and that I had to pray for the grace to be willing to leave aside what was dear to me and put God first. And my words and my demeanor in that conversation would have betrayed my anxiety about it.

Like many of my generation (and doesn't every generation have something like this?), I have struggled with disrupted attachments. As a child of divorce, a child of an alcoholic, and a child in a family with mental illness, comfortable, reliable, and trustworthy relationships were simply not part of my life's foundation. As a result, I have come towards healthy attachments by way of some fairly intense interior problems of over-attachment. And I have come towards holy detachment by way of experiences that have felt like death, and have put me face to face with the terrors I had tried to avoid through over-attachments in the first place. I was not free to give up everything because I hadn't strongly experienced receiving. I was locked into a fearful survival mode.

But along the way of the three ring circus of my interior life, I have tried to figure out what a holy normal really is. When I was in my early 20s and under the influence of a certain teacher, I decided that the music I loved was worldly and I had to abandon it. I took a record collection that held powerfully positive emotional associations for me, put it in a dumpster, and walked away. I did it solely because I felt I had to take a violent stand against myself. It hurt, and I thought hurting myself this way would please God.

If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing. 1 Corinthians 13:3

 Close relationships for me have often been fraught with issues of control, feelings of desperation, and all sorts of powerful yuck. It has been very hard for me to discern the difference between healthy closeness and a closeness for which I was paying with my dignity. It wasn't until I started having experiences of people showing they could get upset on my behalf (not at me, but for me, because they wanted to protect what they valued in me) that I began to realize there actually was a value in me worth protecting. It often made me laugh with a spontaneous and surprising joy, which struck me as strange because generally the other person was being dead serious and stern. (Come to think of it, sometimes it irked the other person, too.)




Sin violates personal dignity. We are made for holy union with God, but every time we sin, we turn away from love. When we are sinned against, we are hurt and we run the risk of enshrining that hurt in bitterness. God longs for us to repent, to live with Him and to be pure not because He's obsessed with behavioral standards but because He is ferocious love. It is amazing to think of a God with desire for a creature. Why? How? How can it be?

God sees us as we are and knows that because we are fallen we need ever deepening grace and we cannot bear the full brunt of His intense love straight on, without dying. So gently, and according to our nature, He patiently heals us, walks with us, forms us. He frees us to open ourselves, and to choose Him. He frees us to love Him in return. We cannot give Him anything that He does not give us first, and that is true of love more than anything. We love because He first loved us.

And according to our capacity and our desire, God knows how and when to touch us with more love than we can hold, the love that brings us to our knees, to fall on our faces, to cry out, our supposed breaking point far behind. Those moments reveal God to our souls. They reveal our sin to our souls. They reveal truth. Reality is clear and everything pales in comparison to this Love. Nothing temporal is worth clinging to in light of eternal, ferocious love.

And in that moment, those austere calls (taking up one's cross, denying oneself, and renouncing things) show their true characteristic: they are the invitation of Love. Love draws out love in return. And only love can generate and sustain a life of this kind of response.

God does not respond to my offerings; I respond to His invitation. My efforts -- to sufficiently injure myself, to work for His approval, to try hard enough, to be good enough, or to do anything -- do not draw down His invitation or His initiative toward me.

God calls. He is calling. With ferocious heart and gentle, intimate whisper, God calls. He invites. I love you. Come to Me.

Our response? Yes, Lord. I am here. Love me. 

Sunday is for Heaven

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

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

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

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

Divine Intimacy, and a Carmelite story

Today, I cracked open my belated Christmas gift just recently in at the used book store for me:

It was quite a moment.

It look me back to another moment roughly 24 years ago, when I cracked open this book, by the same author:

That little green book ended up in my hands because I had mustered up all of my courage to speak to my friend Keith who had joined up with them Catholics and had become a sight hard for me to behold at our weekly home fellowship meetings. Because I had to struggle to find something to say to him other than hurling accusations of apostasy his way, I came up with the best thing I could think of. I reached back into the memory of a paper I wrote in college for which I researched mysticism and had discovered St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross. (It was a hefty part of my grade I had to defend, and in answer to my frantic prayer for a topic I distinctly heard the Lord answer me: Mysticism. With true gratitude I told Him in response, Great! But, what's mysticism? Today that little exchange makes me laugh out loud, at least if I'm only telling it to myself.)

Back to the first story. Keith assured me that yes, there were people who still believed like Teresa and John did, and in fact they had a monastery about 35 miles out of town. The next time I saw him, he handed me this little booklet which he'd bought for me there.

I wasn't much keen on anything Catholic at the time, but somehow those Carmelites had held me fascinated yet again. I read the little book, which basically is an introduction to mental prayer in the Carmelite tradition. Right away I realized I wanted to practice this. It was the beginning of a whole array of confusing delights as my intellect and heart inched toward the Catholic Church.

I thought of all that as I read (the completely wrong) entry for today from Divine Intimacy. It is set up on the old liturgical calendar, and so I misunderstood how it was counting the weeks of Easter and so read the selection intended for next Wednesday. But as I read it, I got that sense of spiritual heartburn, the kind that makes you want to cry when something fits everything so well. The meditation was on Mary as the grandest exemplar of spiritual poverty, of knowing oneself to be nothing. I thought of how I have been introduced to living this beatitude. I thought of how X number of years ago, I not only would not have grasped this as a spiritual principle, but probably would have argued against it. I thought of how I never, ever would have been able to design my own path towards this spiritual truth and actually walked the path. I thought of how hard I fought God when, I realize now, He wanted me to embrace the Christian, spiritual meaning of saying "I am nothing." I thought of how all my life God has called me to Carmel, and I am finally able to at least say I'm on the same page, and I see where He points. Theoretically, it is much easier to say "yes" to walking on a path that has actual definition.

Or, it's harder.

Because I understand, even though I really don't.

But really, it is a magnificent journey as long as I keep looking with awe at God, all He does, and all He gives, and learn how to live accordingly.

The Little Charismatic Way

This is a thinking post, not a thought-out post. I'm writing so that I understand.

Yesterday I posted about having finished the book Everything Is Grace. It helped me grasp not only the spirituality of Therese, but also the spiritual culture that was dominant at the time, for which her spirituality was a corrective. Her Little Way emphasizes simple, empty, confident trust in God's boundless love and mercy with which He longs to embrace sinners in their misery and lift them up. It emphasizes willingness -- God's willingness calling forth our own -- rather than human efforts to go through great labors to be heroic, to embrace harsh ascetic practices, and thereby to attempt spiritual self-perfection. (That was the Jansenistic flavor that religious, even Carmelite, life had in Therese's time.)

Schmidt's book made me see the connection others have pointed out to me between Therese's spirituality and the "nada" of St. John of the Cross. St. Therese went through plenty of dying to self, as she chronicles in Story of a Soul. It had been hard for me to relate to her saintly family and her exceptionally pious and religious formation as a child, but I can relate to her emotional attachments and her need to let go of the dynamism that drove her, which in her case was her need to please other people in order to feel secure. Schmidt recounts that even as she was dying she apologized in advance to her blood sisters with her in Carmel that she would cast her dying glance toward the superior and not one of them (she apologized because she did not wish them to feel hurt). Even to the moment of her death she was aware of the feelings of others, but free of the violence of a less-than-genuine love that is more about establishing one's own security than simply giving love.

The "nada" means one renounces everything from which one seeks to establish one's own security. Complete detachment. This is not even something we can produce for ourselves. This kind of deep detachment is something we can only be open to, willing for, and receive from God who gives it in trial. Or rather, maybe it is not so much that we have to be in suffering to receive it as receiving it is a suffering, because it brings light where we have darkness, but it feels like darkness where once was light.

Back to the post title: The Little Charismatic Way. What does Therese have to do with the modern charismatic movement?

I have considered myself a charismatic since 1987. I wrote some of my testimony about that here. I've had different thoughts and anti-thoughts about what that means to me now, as a Catholic. And to be honest, I have not in these 20 Catholic years had much in the way of intimate contact with other charismatics, living out and discussing what this dimension of faith means, although every year or two I have gone through a season of asking questions along these lines either of others or of myself or of Church documents.

And now St. Therese steps into these questions. Maybe it simply is my current moment in Carmelite formation, but I'll be danged if she doesn't seem to simply speak clarity both into my questions and into my experiences.

Here's what's helpful:

1. God is love. Be open, completely open to Him.
2. God is big. I am little. I never control or determine what He does. That's not only silly, it's warped.
3. God has a mission. He wants souls to be with Him in heaven, but with heaven starting now. He can do that.
4. God chooses and graces His children to work with Him. He makes it happen, with our willingness.

And since the Holy Spirit is God, all of these things are true specifically of the charismatic graces of the Holy Spirit. Maybe I could call living according to these points to be the Little Charismatic Way.

There are some issues, of course.

1. The charismatic graces of the Holy Spirit as described in the New Testament and lived since that time are not always taught about, and people have difficulty responding to something about which they have no teaching or exposure.
2. The way people initially get exposure to operating charismatic graces often stirs up all manner of things we need "nada"ed out of us. And this is true both of the one who receives and operates in these graces as well as those who witness it or hear about it.

Right now I'm particularly thinking about this latter point as regards any action of God that prompts us to decision, change, or a deeper conversion. People seem OK with God as long as they can control the relationship. I can pay as much attention to Him as I want or don't want. I can keep it in the realm of either the intellect or the feeling, whichever keeps me comfortable. I can accept all of His basic rules that make no significant demands on me to stand out, or I can console myself with being better than others who don't want to stand out in the ways I want to. And really, I don't have to bother so much with God Himself. I'll just stay in the company of those I consider His people.

But all of this is religion on a human level, and none of it strikes me as being of worship. There's no death here; there's no abandonment, there's no giving it all away. There's no love affair. It is all very controlled.

But we are designed as humans to worship God.

So being religious in this way can really get in the way of meeting God in the Little Way, and encountering the working of the Holy Spirit in the Church in what I'm calling the Little Charismatic Way. (I'm sorry, Therese. I'm really just turning this around in my mind. Forgive my presumption, here!)

The book of Acts gives lots of fascinating insights into how people react to this experience of the new covenant in Christ as it began to be lived in Jerusalem. We see, for example that the religious leaders were jealous of the apostles. For some, this went well and brought them to seek and enter into faith in the Messiah for themselves. For others, it moved them to violence and sins because they really couldn't overcome the irritation of being less significant than the apostles to the people.

This makes me think about those things that get stirred up in people when they experience something supernatural. It can make them curious and simply move them to want God. I've seen people have that response. It can also kick up feelings of rivalry (they have that; I'll have to prove myself to God to get something better, since I don't really believe He loves me), competitiveness (who do those jack-asses think they are, since they obviously are claiming to be better than me?), defeat (I'm less-than. God might love me, but obviously not as much as He loves them), deprivation (I can't trust God to give me good things like that), despair (God has forgotten me. I'm doomed.), or people pleasing (Wow! That's great for you! I on the other hand don't really exist. Don't mind me.) All of these problems are essentially ways that we do not believe in God's love and as a result we close ourselves off from Him.

The opposite of our littleness is the vast array of pride that comes with associating with experiences of power. Pride is so insidious and pervasive that one can hardly begin to list all the ways it poisons both the human exercise of religion and the experience of the supernatural. Essentially, pride is connected to "having." And this is why, when we "have" our experiences of God, we are so prone to being obnoxious to others. And this is exactly why God's work in us is to detach us from everything, even, in Therese's case, any consolation of the thought of heaven. He brings us to utter darkness so that we cling to him purely in faith, and not through delight and consolation. It is ironic to say that God wants souls in heaven with Him, starting now, and that the way there is through this bleak, forsaken-feeling darkness. But this is exactly what St. John of the Cross teaches. We need to be thoroughly purged from not only sin, but also attachment to everything that is not God.

God's mission of redemption was fully accomplished in Christ, but His mission for the rescue of souls continues in space and time through the Body of Christ, the Church, and through each one called to join that Body. As we are open, humble, and purified, God accomplishes His purposes through us, through our willingness, through our small actions rendered to Him in worship. I say small actions... certainly Therese's months of gradually suffocating from tuberculosis without pain medication and with so much serenity and sweet concern for others that many of her Sisters in Carmel doubted she was seriously ill, all that in the midst of a dark night that left her with zero feelings of assurance that there was any heaven after death at all -- surely all that is not a small action.

I am reminded of an experience I wrote about here, about a teaching from the mystic Anne to the effect that God can move graces through us even if all we have to offer him is cleaning the house and making peanut butter sandwiches all day. It truly is not the things we offer God as the love with which we offer them. Different actions call us to exercise different virtues, but all these are grace. The worship we offer God is truly God crowning His own gifts in us. God gives to us; we give back to Him. This is to remain constant regardless of how it feels to us.

Yes, this is a long post! But I am seeing how, if we can simply grasp and follow these principles, understanding what God's way is and allowing Him to have it with us, not getting sidetracked by our wounded, unbelieving hearts, our pride, and especially understanding detachment from sin and self, and grasping that Christ's mission continues through faithfulness in His Body, the Church... All of these things put us in the position where God can accomplish His will through us.

The glorification of Therese in the life of the church, particularly among the little ones longing for God, as well as among all those seeking enlightenment, peace, and love, is the resounding affirmation of the truth that the measureless desires of the human heart are ultimately from God and for God. That glorification is also but a shadow of Therese's full glory and of what awaits all the poor in spirit who desire God and are willing to reciprocate divine love in their lives through works of peace and charity. The respect and honor extended to Therese from within the church and beyond are a testimony to the truth that union with God is possible to anyone who is open to the Holy Spirit, always available in the ordinary experiences of human life.

-- Everything is Grace, p. 330, italics in the original

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Loneliness and Christian Emptiness

Earlier this week, I came across this quote which speaks volumes to me:

God looked over the world for an empty heart -- but not a lonely heart -- a heart that was empty like a flute on which He might pipe a tune -- not lonely like an empty abyss, which is filled by death. And the emptiest heart He could find was the heart of a Lady. Since there was no self there, He filled it with His very Self.
~ Fulton Sheen, The World's First Love: Mary Mother of God

In a manner of speaking, one of God's goals for us is for us to become empty. This emptiness, of course, has to be understood, as Sheen's sense has it, in the Carmelite way. Empty means ready. Empty implies availability, and it implies purpose and community. One is available for something, or rather for Someone.

It speaks, of course, to the scene of Joseph and Mary journeying to Bethlehem, looking for available space where Jesus might be born. Is my house, am I, available? Not much is made of this in Scripture, but much has been made of it in meditations such as the custom of Las Posadas. 

The enemy of this kind of emptiness is loneliness. When I read this, the naru hodo alarm rang within me as my personal history instantly shot up multiple instances of proof of this. Oh my goodness how my nature has recoiled from self-emptying for fear of loneliness, of that sense of being left out of the life-stream that certainly everyone else was deeply enjoying. The voices that speak contrary to truth: the world, the flesh and the devil, scream that I must have things, people, experiences that fill me, things I can possess, things I must hold on to to stay afloat. For certainly life revolves around something I don't have but need, or something I don't have enough of, or something I might lose, or something someone else controls and I have to posture myself in order to receive. Certainly without having, I am nothing.

Right?

Um, no.

In the midst of frantic craving I lose sight of reality. Reality is that the God of the universe, the Blessed Trinity, created me for a purpose. My purpose is to love and worship God in a holy communion of persons. I worship God as I lay down my life, as I empty myself and empty from myself all lesser pursuits.

I do this not because I am a masochist and don't believe in or want good things for myself. It is not Christian to understand "empty" in the sense of "denude." I do this out of great faith in the One who reciprocates my emptiness with Himself. The availability we offer to God is always for communion. God's ultimate goal for us is union with Him, not for us to become simply a great void. As I relinquish my obsessive self-factor I see that God loves, gives, and is deeply merciful in response to enter into human misery and to be, literally, God-with-us.

To break it down and make it real simple: faith in Jesus calls me to abandon everything to Him in love. I long to be empty, I agree to be emptied, I move towards emptiness because I know, love, and trust in the One who fills. And that infilling is what every smidgeon of my being longs for.

Oh yeah, there might be long, painful gaps where there are no blissful feelings. Stuff of earth feels useless and the bliss of heaven is nowhere. You experience loss, dependencies will be broken, and temporal security will be shaken.

But I believe and trust in the promise -- no, in the One who made the promise. He is faithful. He is true. I love Him; He calls me. To wait for such a One in emptiness is not the death-filled abyss of loneliness. It is the strengthening and deepening of love. It is worth giving your life for. In fact, it is the only thing worth giving your life for.

Mysticism and the Normal Life of Faith

What's on my mind today is a phrase I've heard in various settings. This was not directed to me personally, but to an audience of which I was a part: Of course you've had touches of mystical experience. If you hadn't, you wouldn't be here.

This phrase strikes me like summer. Summer is when the warmth in the air allows the pores in my skin to open fully and soak in the comfort of not needing layers of clothes to produce heat for me. Summer is when I don't have to buffer myself against my environment. I can just be. Such peace, beauty, and union with all that is good.

People get afraid of the term mysticism for many reasons. I would simply call it the experience of God, who is real. Now, granted, I realize a lot more theological nuancing than that is necessary, but let's take it for granted that I am speaking of someone who is in union with Christ's Church and in submission to his Bishop who is in union with Rome. It also presupposes a healthy prayer life rooted in Scripture, liturgy, and community. It supposes that one is seeking to live a life of virtue and penance and mortification from sin in all its forms, but probably especially pride.

But with all that, mysticism is simply life with God, who is real, personal, and who acts as such. God is Emmanuel.

Years ago when blogging was still new I remember reading a Catholic blog where someone had the courage to ask whether mystical experiences were a common factor in people's stories of conversion. Several people tentatively acknowledged this to be true, almost as if they were letting out a closely held secret. Perhaps it is because Catholics are talking more with each other via social networking, or maybe it is because of the particular circles in which I move, or maybe it is a broader move of God, but since that time I have heard countless stories from regular ol' Mass-going sinners about experiences of God intervening in the course of their lives by vision, locution, revelation, and visitations of various sorts. For believers, it seems completely normal.

These things don't make people holy or special, or even necessarily does it mean that they understand what God may have been trying to convey. I also know that real visitations from God can be grossly misconstrued and dangerously interpreted so that people run off in weird and dangerous directions. I'll never understand why God is so peaceful with allowing us humans to play such an active role in the salvation of the world. I mean, I get it, but it puts me in awe. God takes such risks and is patient with so much foolishness from us. If we were better at acknowledging these simple truths, I believe there would be less foolishness because everyone would be better equipped to speak to these experiences, and fewer people would be deceived by the further ends of weirdness.

Bottom line: I believe that Christianity is broken and in serious danger when we do not consider that our faith and life have this mystical dimension as a part of being normal and healthy. We say we believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, and is that not a mystical reality? My goodness, yes. If we lose these basics, a faith becomes a ritual-based morality system that is opposable based on personal taste and perceived "common good." But if Almighty God interacts with human beings, well then, every knee needs to bow to this ultimate reality and every heart needs to align itself with it.

If Christianity is not mystical it is worthless.

Unexpected Presence

I didn't sleep well last night, and currently my children and I are scurrying about, getting the house ready for Thanksgiving guests. My daughter, who can be such a balm to my soul, has been consistently asking for more tasks to do to help everything go smoother.

So this morning I was dealing with my third or fifth load of laundry in the basement. Dryer humming, water emptying into the machine. I was quietly intent on what I was doing. Suddenly I turned and saw a bright blue sweater containing my daughter sitting on the chair in the laundry area. I screamed at my full energy capacity for a good solid three seconds as I held my heart in my chest to make sure it didn't fall out. She and I collapsed into laughter for a few minutes as we both recovered from scaring each other to bits. I did not hear her enter. I did not see her sit down. It was just all of a sudden -- she was there.

An hour later I still felt the physical change from that few seconds of a scare.

And I told the Lord, "You know, this is what you do to me! All of a sudden, when I don't expect it at all, You show up just like that." I'm not saying I see Jesus physically present in a blue sweater (or any sweater, or at all) in my laundry room (or other places. Just being clear.), but yes, spiritually He does have a way of just showing up to me like that. Now I don't feel so bad about it scaring the crap out of me.

Do you suppose that He has that sort of crap scaring-out thing in mind? I firmly believe that part of understanding God's personal love for us is realizing His sense of humor. What greater bonding is there than to share this kind of moment of raw reaction? It may not be the most sophisticated form of prayer, but whoever said prayer always had to be sophisticated?

A Feast Day Gift (Or, When Things Make Sense)

Today is the feast of St. Teresa of Avila, reformer of the Carmelites, my spiritual mother, mi Madre. I use that term with deep affection and a tremendous conviction which is far beyond my ability to simply drum up from myself. I have been called. Though I am still four years away from my definitive profession, there is probably nothing of which I am more sure than this: I am called to be a daughter of St. Teresa.

Several days ago I met some Carmelite nuns who happened to give me a prayer card with the official prayer of the Centenary (we are celebrating St. Teresa's 500th birthday beginning today and for a year). I had read the prayer several times before today, but in typical feast day fashion I read it today and it blew me away. Here is the text:

Saint Teresa of Jesus, holy mother,
wholehearted servant of love,
teach us to walk with determined fidelity
along the path of interior prayer,
attentive to the presence
of the Blessed Trinity,
God dwelling deep within us.
At the school of Mary our Mother
strengthen within us these foundations:
a genuine humility,
a heart free from attachment,
and an unconditional love for others.
Share with us your intense
apostolic love for the Church.
May Jesus be our joy,
our hope and our energy,
an unquenchable fountain
and our most intimate Friend.
Bless our Carmelite family.
Teach us to make your prayer our own:
"I am yours, I was born for you.
What is your will for me?"
Amen.

God weaves the weird bits of our lives into a tapestry that eventually makes sense. And this morning after Mass was one of those breath-catching and tear-spilling moments when I saw, instead of the random chaos of threads, God's weaving work.



Here's what I see now, clearly.

God has been calling me to Carmel since I was a Protestant. That I know, and I've written about that stuff here. And even in that post I had a strongly inkling about the rest of what I'll write now.

A few years ago I went through a horrendously difficult spiritual season, that followed directly after a gloriously powerful spiritual season. Both stemmed from a relationship that had no real reason (other than God's design) not to be average and mundane. But instead of mundane, it was mystical. No, actually, it was both. At the same time. God did lots of unusual things in conjunction with this person, through him, but completely without his knowledge. I knew all along it was God who was communicating with me, acting in me. These seasons have occurred to me in the past in smaller or greater degrees, but they hadn't for about 20 years at that time. I rather thought I'd outgrown that sort of thing.

The Lord even told me towards the beginning of all this that this man was like St. John the Baptist for me. I remember saying, "Gee, Lord, I hope he's not going to die in three years." Well, he did not die, but after three years there was a sudden death-knell to the glory of what had been our friendship. And one of the final kicks in my gut came on the Feast of the Beheading of John the Baptist. Nice touch, Lord.

And what set the death-knell in process was also a mystical thing, an action God required of me. It was a firm call, with a set time. It left me wide-open vulnerable to far more than I realized at the time, even though I had no goal other than obedience. I knew God was launching me forth, but I had no idea where -- I didn't even think about that sort of thing.

The image that time evokes is St. Bernadette hearing the Blessed Mother say to her, "Drink from the spring, wash in the spring" when there wasn't any spring. The Song of Bernadette depicts her scratching in the dirt, wiping mud on her face and eating weeds. People carried her off presuming her to be crazy. And then the water flowed, and the healings started.

What happened as the upshot of that obedience I carried out, that wiping of mud all over my face, was the most spiritually painful thing I have ever endured. It was a solid 18 months, with several extra bonus periods dribbling over, of soul-searing pain. I've used this analogy before, but it was like God spent those first three years gently caressing my head, and gathering back all of my (very long and thick) hair into His hands. But then in one movement, He cut it off. I had to decide who that was with His hands in my hair: were we like St. Francis and St. Claire -- was God responding to my loving entreaties to belong entirely to Him? Or was it like the WWII movie I once saw -- where I was a Jewess and God a Nazi barber, shearing away my hair and my dignity. What pained me the most was that in the deepest part of my feeling, I wasn't sure.

But.

Here's what I know now.

During this long searing process, I gained three things, had three new foundations laid in me (check out that prayer again):

Humility. Oy vey. Pride and self-righteousness underwent mass destruction. God wanted me to see clearly everything I'm made of, the good, the bad and the ugly. And the beautiful.

A heart free from attachment: Oy vey again. Yes, I became very attached to this man, like a little child gets attached to, say, a puppy that it loves dearly but also relies on for comfort. God gives us comfort to heal our wounds, but He also knows that if we rely too long on comfort, we stay childish when we should be growing strong. To everything there is a season. And to really learn detachment, we have to really experience an attachment that can safely be broken.

An unconditional love for others: Oy, oy, oy vey. You see, after things blew apart and St. John got his head lopped off, there were many, many facets of what happened that angered me deeply. But God would not let me turn to bitterness and hatred. In fact, He insisted that I use this as a means to learn to keep loving, sans the good feelings. In fact, I tried refusing to love this man, and I found I could not love anyone. The Lord showed me that if I want to to try loving the way He loves, it's going to hurt. But it frees.

This season of my life hurt so badly primarily because love, detachment, and humility were so terribly foreign to me. I felt like I was dying. And in fact, I was. I was dying to myself.

And I was having the stage set for my being called to Carmel. It was a huge gift. It was a mystical gift and an intense trial of faith. And today mi Madre sat me down to show me how it makes sense.

Oh, and there's one more thing. A month ago, on retreat, the Lord gave me this one phrase that captured what had remained ineffable to me for years, this thing I knew and longed for: Apostolic Love. And there it is in that prayer: "Share with us your intense apostolic love for the Church." Of course St. Teresa had apostolic love: she went all over Spain making new foundations of the new reform of the Carmelites. She was entirely fueled by love and she worked as hard as she prayed.

I'm nothing original. I'm just called to be a daughter of St. Teresa. It all makes sense. Ha!