Hiking, Love, and Transformation

Eight years ago, I hiked in the Tatra mountains. Come to think of it, it was exactly this time of year I was there. The scenery was beautiful, but it was an emotionally wrenching time. Also, hiking sounds glamorous but it was grueling. At one point, my then-11 year daughter asked me why in the world we were doing this. I told her that at some point in her life, someone would use the metaphor of climbing a mountain, and this would teach her what that really means.

St. John of the Cross famously uses the metaphor of climbing Mount Carmel for growth in the spiritual life. Since he traveled all over Spain by foot, even though he was no soft modern, unaccostomed to physical effort, I'm sure he fully intended the implication that the human effort part of spiritual growth isn't easy.

One thing I remember doing often on the Tatra hike was stopping for rest and looking back down the path I had just come up, and then looking ahead to how much farther to our destination. I took some photos, fully thinking that when I got back home I would appreciate their beauty. At the time I was just trying to catch my breath, wipe some of the sweat off my face, give my aching feet and legs a momentary break, not think about whether I was going to need to pee in a nearby bush nor about the painful relationship issues that were clanging around in my heart, and will myself to move forward again. 

Today I had reason to pause interiorly and look down the mountain I've been climbing spiritually. I was challenged by the reading we studied in my Carmelite community formation yesterday, where St. Therese talks about how she learned what the Lord means by His command to love one another "as I have loved you." She talked growing in specific, active acts of charity for two particular Sisters that she could not stand. 

I've read Story of a Soul now countless times, and of course the Lord's command to love is not a new thing to me. But I was both convicted by this, and led to take this particular pause on the mountain and look back down and my lived reality, in order to start back up differently.

What I saw clearly in looking back is that in my early life I developed a thick, defensive shell against the people around me. I was a well of pain, and felt I personally was the cause of every broken relationship and every moral failing around me. The defensive shell kept me from feeling my own pain and perceived failures, and kept other people at a distance so they could do me no more harm. Both the well and the shell grew with me, never quite adequate for my need. I was constanly anxious to pull myself in.

God was at work by His grace, even as I was at work strictly regulating human contact. He had a much easier time reaching directly into my soul to bring me what consolation I would allow in. Increasingly, he would use the ministrations of people, and so by the time I was an adult I had let a couple of people into my circle of trust. Mostly, these were people I did not actually interact with except by an exchange of letters or a visit every couple of years. But they were like pilot lights to me that kept me alive. That was all I allowed. Mostly I learned to endure people, or to cope until I could escape their presence and actually relax and breathe. Hah, who am I kidding. Relax? I escaped their presence and crumpled into an anxiety I never even let myself feel. 

The process of grace transforming my heart made its steady progress, despite my lack of understanding (mostly) of the problem or the cure's path.

A key moment in this hike was clearly visible today. I remembered a crisis conversation I had with my pastor and a small group of people where I had managed to create a lot of hurt. My pastor simply pointed out that God called me to love everyone equally. I felt as if he was asking me to juggle boulders, because just then my felt choice was between hating everyone and allowing God to help me authentically love one human being in my faulty way. "Loving everyone," if I was honest about it, was nice Christian gibberish to me.

He had the right answer. But it was lightyears from my experience, because I was still operating in the mode of allowing, possibly, one person at a time into my trust. Except this time, it was a real person. It reminds me of a scene from some TV show I saw ages ago where a psychopath would steal female corpses and tie them to a table in a freezing room, pretending to have dinner with them, and then he finally kidnapped a living woman he admired and tried to do the same with her. He saw this as great personal growth. He was the only one with this perspective. 😏

When I was in Poland, same trip as my Tatra hiking experience, and a few years after that difficult moment of counsel from my pastor, I had an experience of being prayed with by some Polish-speaking women. One paused as she was praying, and said to me in English, "God calls you to love everyone." The Lord had said the same thing to me in prayer a few days before. This is how patiently God works our transformation. As soon as we are ready to open our hearts for more, He's there with what we need.

And as I climbed the Tatras, I struggled with a different real-life relationship, and felt the grueling process of handing over to the Lord the hard-fought trust in my friend that I had developed, and my fear that He would leave me, that His love wasn't real, wasn't enough, that my vision of the world that caused me to build shells and stare into wells in the first place were all there was to reality. I was trying to choose this loving everyone, or as the Carmelites call it, chastity. In reality it was a beautiful moment, but it was surrender at the point of exhaustion.

And then there's today. 

I am free, now. I came back from Poland with the unshakeable confidence and knowledge that God loves me. And a lot more has happened more recently than that. Today I know that the love God pours into me is eternal and infinite, and I do not need to bind my prey. We are all made with the same design, and we even all tend to malfunction in the same ways. I am called to love everyone with the Love God pours through me. And this is tested by those who are most disagreeable to me and where my natural bend towards self-protection activates. Like St. Therese, I can choose with my will to allow the Lord to love through me. And in fact, I am called to it. 

That's the thing, today. I'm free, and I get to choose what I do with my freedom. It's not just that loving everyone is possible or that it is a good idea. I am called, daily, to make decisions to do and to choose the loving thing. It's so easy for this to get bogged down and mired in psychology and just human evaluations of what is best and reasonable. But, going before the Lord and simply suiting up for growth in virtue and acts of charity is the key. My former pastor used to always say, "At least you can pray for them." I think I always heard that as a cop out. But to sincerely pray for a person you don't like to deal with is definitely an act of charity, not an act of dismissal. And I realize I need never be afraid, because I am never on my own doing this. It is not me who loves. I know, by looking down that mountain, that I just DO NOT HAVE a natural capacity for loving people. God had to reconstruct everything in me that is involved in loving. The fact that I do love is evidence to me that God has transformed my soul.

When I got to the top of our hike in the Tatras, we weren't, of course, at the top of the world. The mountain went on to the right and to the left. In fact, it was considered just a starting point for the more strenuous hikes. What I had climbed was labeled "Family Friendly hiking," meaning even children did it. I literally saw ladies in heels doing my path. I wonder what it would feel like to go do it again. By the time we got back to our cabin that evening, I could not walk because both of my knees were like water. 

This also teaches me something about the spiritual life. The small things we do (or avoid) every day impact greatly who we become. 

Let's start today and be diligent in allowing the Lord to love us, and to love through us.

Following up on Things Previously Said

Clearly I don't blog much anymore, so when I do write something, it helps me keep track of my interior landscape all the better. On April 14 I wrote about my Lenten gleanings and noticed a grace that seemed like God was "reaching in to heal a blockage." And then last week I wrote out of a place of mounting burn-out and frustration. 

And then it happened.

I had a panic attack.

I rarely have anything remotely like a panic attack, although I have had low grade consistent anxiety for a lot longer than I've actually been aware of. And I haven't experienced an actual panic attack for roughly ten years. So this was WEIRD and I firmly noted it as such as it began happening...

But I realize I got into this place with this interior forewarning, and it makes me really happy to say I emerged from that place having avoided certain knee-jerk go-tos. The first thing I did was I let it happen. I didn't go to the "this isn't happening" place. I accepted that I was losing it and I let it be lost. Then I went to my prayer spot and I just "was." I didn't try to form words or thoughts, but I just shared my "letting it happen" with Jesus. No trying to manage or understand. If there is something to "Jesus take the wheel" I suppose it is that surrender of things sometimes looks more about acceptance than it does like trying to dig a deeper ditch. When I hear people talk about "a deeper place of surrender" it often sounds to me like I need to put more work into it. But I do think it is more about acceptance: here's the reality. My eyes are wide open, and I'm seeing it. And I'm seeing it with Jesus. He's seeing it with me. That's where I was.

Then I refrained from making it a spectacle. Sometimes in the past I have shared things with people as a replacement for accepting these things. Maybe that sounds strange, but I think that's the truth. If I tell someone else, it sure SOUNDS like I'm embracing this enough, owning it enough to share. But I think somewhere in there sharing has been a step in self-rejection. Like telling on myself. Gossiping about myself. "You wouldn't believe what I just did...." There's a judgment, a lack of mercy in that. I held myself back from it in several directions, several times. It feels good to have chosen differently.

And then, because thanks be to God I had a previously scheduled spiritual direction appointment, in the right time and in the right setting and in the right way, I unpacked the whole thing, from the interior forewarning, through the event, and down to the terrifying question lurking underneath. And into that place of acceptance that turns a threat into an opportunity for compassion. 

I know that this spot will get poked at and tested in the days to come. It doesn't take any interior knowing to realize that; I can look at my calendar. But this was a concrete event of life, healing other concrete events in life. This is why life in God is not boring. This is a testimony to God's faithfulness and the reality that GRACE HEALS.

Anxiety

I struggle with anxiety.

Ironically, I am able to say this because most of the time I win this struggle, these days. 

In fact, anxiety used to be so much a part of my life that I only noticed it for the first time about twelve years ago, when I began to have fleeting moments of freedom from it. Before that time, I had an anxiety baseline which was pretty high all the time. I recall a medical check-up about twenty years ago, when my doctor was trying to test the reflexes in my arm. He asked me to hold out my arm to the side. I held it in a tensed 90 degree angle. When he told me, "just relax," I was mystified, because I was as relaxed as I knew how to be.

Sometime happened to me when I started singing in my parish choir. There was a lot going on there. For one, I had singing-induced dopamine flowing in my brain. For another, I had a spiritual awakening going on where I found courage to step out of being self-contained and into being self-giving. Also, for the first time as a Catholic, I had a tremendous sense of belonging that was both social and spiritual. I was moving forward. It was anxiety-provoking, really, but of the sort that stretched me and which left me feeling regularly "leveled up" in terms of how much anxiety I could handle. I was growing.

It was also about that time that a Naturopathic doctor introduced me to ashwagandha. That was a really good thing, because right about then all of that stretching left me revving on so much cortisol that I never could mellow out. 

In those days I took a supplement called Cortisol Manager, whose main ingredient was ashwagandha. But I kept it on hand only in case of "really bad days," and on normal days I just coped with, you know, an acceptable level of anxiety. The type that seemed like normal life. Still.

Fast forward several years, and it came onto my radar screen again as I began exercising and trying to find my metabolism again, and learned how cortisol makes you store belly fat. Then I came across Goli gummies, and oh my, they are just so yummy. So I began taking both a capsule and gummies -- which actually brought me up to the recommended daily dose. Wow! I felt great! 

Recently I made a silly decision, and honestly I've done this same kind of thing so many times. I just decided to not take the full dose. I always use the logic that since I'm feeling great, I must not really need it. 

Lo and behold, anxiety started slapping me in the face again. And it didn't quite occur to me right away what was happening, because it isn't like my hands turn blue or I start sneezing, or some objectively noticeable thing like that. Anxiety is noticed from within. Even after I noticed it, my first thought wasn't, gee, take the pill. It was more like, "Oh, hi, anxiety; you've come to visit. Well, let me move my life out of the way so you can come in and sit down...."

It is one thing to not beat myself up, or spiritually shame myself, or self-medicate in other negative ways. Not doing all that is a big step forward for me. But I still have to work on realizing what's happening, and giving my body the care it needs to usher out the unwelcomed guest. 

And you know what? Recently I realized that for me, doing this is part of keeping the commandment "Honor your father and your mother." My father had absolutely debilitating anxiety. Both of my parents suffered from depression. This is probably one reason why I had a hard time recognizing these struggles in myself; this way of being seemed so "normal." Both of my parents also became alcoholics. From childhood, I've really struggled with what honoring my parents was supposed to mean, supposed to look like. Recently it just kind of clicked in my mind, that I don't honor my parents by erasing their struggles. I honor them by facing the things they struggled with with grace; especially where I face the same things in me. There is no shame in having a struggle. My honor of them, in part, involves accepting that I struggle with some things because I share their genes, and treating their memory in myself gently and honorably.

Then I can simply be the me God created me to be, and be at peace. It's hard interior work, that's for sure. It is worth it, though.

Year of Healing

The year isn't over with yet, I know. But I have been reflecting on the healing that has come to my life in 2017. It's been a year of surprises: both of the "Wow! I didn't expect that to happen" sort, and of the sort that is more like a realization of something I hadn't known that I hadn't known before.

All of these have involved relationships changing.

But the greatest fruit, the thing that got me reflecting on this, is the great increase of peace I've known. I've written in the past about how much pressure I have habitually put myself under, forcing myself to do things that I found difficult but necessary. There is good in being able to choose to do the hard thing, but there is a problem with habitual self-violence. The chief problem is why it originates, and for me it was due to relational isolation. To put it more plainly, I mourned that I had no one to help me, no one to mentor me, no one to disciple me, no one to teach me. No one to follow. I didn't know how to enter into that kind of relationship, or look for it, or ask for it. So I did what kids do who are left, in their play, to be bosses of themselves -- I was mercilessly hard on myself.

Then, my internal reward system was set up around how well I responded to merciless hardness. If I felt like I had busted my spiritual/mental/physical/relational butt, then I deserved some kind of applause, and I took whatever good was at hand as fitting payment, thank you very much. If I hadn't pushed enough, I was subpar, and had to go at it harder. Good things were not allowed to register interiorly, much.

Any system like this that we ourselves set up fails. We end up miserable, burnt out, resentful, prideful, self-loathing, etc. But it can get to be like a treadmill that we just can't step off of. Also, because it supports and is supported by the flesh, stuff hides in the darkness, and to some degree we perpetuate sin or our pet brokenness to which we become attached like an old comfort.

God in His grace threw some wrenches in my dance of self-violence of this sort. It started with needing to face and own truth, and then speak it. I thought it would kill me, but instead it dismantled some machinery I had going in me. It astonished me for some months. It is hard to explain, but it was like having some kind of fear of death and this habitual self-violence broken off of me. It was a work of God. Deo Gratias.

I have learned to enjoy my life and God's blessings. Gone (or going) are the feelings that if I rest and delight, if I let go of my whip to drive myself on, that I am failing in holiness, that I am failing as a person. The hardness has softened. In delight I find that God is present to me by His grace, and whether I feel great about my efforts and or I don't, His love and truth don't change. His love is far more fascinating to look at than my strained interior "muscles." And that which He feeds me by His love is so incredibly more nourishing than what I dig up by vigorously grubbing for love. And I don't have to waste energy in false expectation of return from sources of the flesh that just can't make the return that His love can.

I do have someone to follow. Concretely, it is the Carmelite saints, but ultimately it is the Lord Jesus, because He had to teach me, painstakingly, to trust Him before He could show me my Carmelite vocation. And it is never not by faith that we walk. So it isn't "clear," except to the eyes of faith. It requires practice to walk by faith, to learn to recognize God's leading, to know what to take seriously and when to just walk and trust like a child, knowing that the desires that fill my heart with yearning, will still need parsing between the Beautiful and Holy that are their cause, and the stuff that gets picked up in my flesh in the interpretation and/or expression of these desires. God can handle it. He is the one I live to please, not myself. So if I have uncertainty in my own mind, but give it to Him, then I can accept not knowing stuff all at once. I can be at peace in the work He is doing.

This has actually been a really great year. No, life isn't suddenly perfect of course, but if the fruit of the Spirit is peace, I am living more deeply in the Holy Spirit than I have been in the past. That can happen regardless of imperfection level. I am deeply grateful for this. God has such good ideas.

Life-Changing Holy Week

Five years ago, I experienced a Holy Week that changed my life. If I had known at the time what lay ahead of me, I probably would have bolted and run.

Now that it is Holy Week again, I cannot help but think back to those days. In many ways, the pain of those days is gone, and the fruit of those days is with me. For example, without that experience I doubt very much if I would have recognized my call to Carmel.

In another way of thinking about it, what God gave me during that time is so deeply etched into my heart that I don't think I would recognize myself without it, and everything still continues to flow in my life as of one piece with it.

My deacon friend who preached today's homily mentioned how we hear the Passion story so often that we can be dull to it; that it strikes as so much "ho hum." As he said this, I was wiping tears from my face because of the force with which I heard even the abbreviated version we had of the reading. Something about that experience five years ago has moved the Passion from something that happened to Jesus 2000 years ago to something that I have participated in. Even as a kid, I was one to cry while watching Jesus of Nazareth or other movies about the crucifixion. But there is something of Holy Week that strikes fear in me. Not in the sense that fails to understand God as Love, but in the sense that the end game for which all penultimate loves, all loves of creatures, is destined, is death. Loves of things are to be purged from us; loves of people will all go through the separation of death. We will all stand before the judgment seat of Christ alone, and we do not know when this will be. Those in Egypt who went to worship today and were killed probably did not expect to die during the liturgy. They would not have anticipated worship of God costing them their lives.

As I waved my palm branch this morning, and reflected on the words of St. Andrew of Crete from the Office of Readings ("Let our souls take the place of the welcoming branches"), and as I went forward to receive communion, I was deeply aware of the price those new martyrs of Egypt paid, and the price many around the world pay for simply going into a church to worship on a feast day. Here I am, here is my whole life, I hand it all over. I don't know what will come as I do this. I do it because you bid me to do it by your great and awesome love. 

And so it was five years ago. God had a purifying trial that I could not have imagined, and from which I would have run. So, what exactly have I learned?

• God is always to be trusted. 
• Understanding what is happening is not most important.
• The cross of suffering like this is like a royal scepter extended to the soul. It is favor.
• God desires far, far better for me than I desire for myself.
• God never belittles me in my woundedness, but meets my wretchedness with elevating grace.
• Trustworthy people exist. 
• He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.
• St. Teresa of Avila knows what she is talking about when she says courage is an essential component of a life of prayer. 
• God loves me; He knows every pain I've ever felt, and He is concerned to heal my wounds.
• It is so powerfully tempting to throw away everything good for what offers pleasure.
• God's mercy reaches the full extent of all of my folly.
• God is real. His love is real. His desire for me is for good, but this does not mean I will not feel the pain of my folly burning off. 
• Folly burning off is extremely painful, especially the tighter you hug it to yourself.

Ultimately, following the Lord Jesus Christ is worth the total surrender of oneself. God is immeasurably good.

And yet, I tremble when it is Holy Week. Because there is always the walking through it part.

An Advent Examination of Conscience

An examination of conscience is very important, but the term is not one I use much. I once thought it required me to mentally castigate and punish myself for everything I did wrong, and since as a child I had learned that I was incapable of doing good, I had a hard time getting past the need to accuse myself of the sin of existing. Bad theology really messes with the mind.

So instead I find it helpful to review my day and look for where I experienced God most profoundly, and how it changed my day, and how it needs to still change my day.

Today, that was fairly easy. The first whaabang was in praying the Office of Readings this morning, especially in the reading from St. Augustine. The readings about St. John the Baptist almost always strike me very profoundly, because God gave me a personal gift of a St. John in my life. This line especially: "We should take our lesson from St. John the Baptist. He is thought to be the Christ; he declares he is not what they think. He does not take advantage of their mistake to further his own glory." I could never really put into words how that made me weep, but consider how not only easy but common it is for one person to take advantage of another, but what an act of love and honor of God it is to choose to humble oneself rather than hurt another person. And how rare that is. For a person to put the honor of God even above how they wish to be received by another or what advantage they want for themselves -- that is a big deal. And when I could have truly been used, I instead encountered this witness of honoring God. Today I wept in gratitude for that. And I know that those tears washed yet clearer the true image of what I was spiritually perceiving.

The other moment was at Mass, while singing the communion hymn. I thought of how grateful, how content, how peaceful I am, not because everything is perfect, but because I was there with the Lord who has given me so much, has set so much at rights, has surrounded me, provided me with everything I need to be happy. I have no blind eye turned to what could be better, but that is so much my natural inclination -- seeing the problems, seeing the lacks -- that it is so beautiful to me to just say "I am here, and it is good." It is God's love that fills me and enables me to be grateful, satisfied, peaceful. And love bubbles from me and seeks others. That is not natural to me, and I know it full well.

I did other things throughout the day, I got tired, I began to take on other people's emotions. I had an interesting extended experience of thinking about who I was 20 years ago as I finished watching a video I took when I lived in Japan. Listening to myself talk (so sarcastic, so pain-sopped, so disconnected from other people) was deeply cringeworthy, as my son put it. I faced other aspects of my life that are problematic.

But then I thought, examination of conscience: go back to where I experienced God, not my own misery. With God, He teaches me to have mercy on my old self, understanding the pain that motivated me, while honoring the courage. It is a recipe for every day, and not only for myself. Have understanding for the pain that is behind others' actions, too, honor the courage with which they act nonetheless.

But mostly, nothing trumps being with Jesus. He gives the best gifts. Sometimes it takes us years to fully appreciate them. Every pain we pass through in pursuit of Him is worth it. He promises us the difficulties, but he also promises the hundred fold. I have been so silly, but He keeps being more and more generous to me. All I can offer Him is all of me, anything and everything that He wants. Just want He wants of me. I am convinced that no matter what it is, it will always be the best possible thing.

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.

And This is Why I Love Epiphany

God frequently seems to use the liturgy and liturgical feasts to teach me personal things. Sometimes the nature of how this works is that something significant will happen in conjunction with a liturgical celebration of a feast day, but the significance of it will only dawn on me several years down the road. My initial conversion to Catholicism at a Christmas Eve midnight Mass is the most obvious example.

And another such thing is connected to the Epiphany.

The liturgy of the hours for Epiphany preserves the tradition that it has, in the past, encompassed the Visit of the Magi, the Baptism of Jesus, and the Wedding at Cana: the Illuminatio, Manifestatio, and Declaratio. The message is clear: Jesus is on the scene with power and He's changing things.

It took me quite a long time to realize how that applied to this thing that happened to me six years ago tomorrow, on Epiphany Sunday.

That would have been one of those moments that if I had been able to see into the future, I probably would have turned and run away as fast as I could.

I'm glad I didn't. I think.

No, no: I'm sure. And I have the scars to prove it. 

It had been a quiet life for Jesus, Mary and Joseph (as long has he lasted) until the time of Jesus' public manifestation and His first miracle. I can only imagine Mary's heart at the moment when she knew it was time for Him to move on. We make a lot of her request that moved Him to His first public miracle. I'm convinced it was not a giddy moment for her, but one of surrender to the Father. Her statement "Do whatever He tells you," besides the other volumes it speaks, I believe was her fiat to the Messiah's mission which any student of the prophecies must have known would lead to His death.


The rest of us see these glory moments and think Cool! Dude, I want in on this! She realizes that the glory of God comes at the price of suffering and death. Which hearkens back to celebrating martyrs right smack after Christmas Day. Did the Church make some awful blunder in scheduling St. Stephen and the Holy Innocents? Of course not. We make the blunder in forgetting that Christmas flows into Epiphany which flows into Lent which flows into Holy Week, Easter, Ascension and Pentecost. Jesus' birth is the beginning of the pascal mystery.

Christmas is often presented as a sugar-coated fairy tale. But God is born into a world where there is also a great deal of suffering and misery. -- Pope Francis 

And God came to live that suffering and misery with us, as one of us.

And, you know, in my book, when there's suffering and misery and God shows up, that suffering and misery suddenly get changed. Where God is, there is delight. Even when the glory points to a cross, which points to glory.

Funny. Seems like I wandered far away from the purpose I started writing with, which was to remember that Epiphany six years ago when God used the liturgy to show me something I didn't understand yet.

But this is how it works. And that's all I've been talking about.

Powerful Moment: Love Without Violence

A few days before Christmas, I came across this video (if the video doesn't appear, you can try hovering over "Post," or click it, but then come on back):

Post by Carmelites.

This little two minute video has been like a needle visiting my life and leaving me with a pretty little patch of embroidery on my soul. That's a weird metaphor, but it is about that astounding. It isn't like it struck me, like a huge light bulb/naru hodo moment. It was as if hearing these words from this Brother left something in me that is tangible. Confirmed in me something I've heard and learned. It's like I heard this, and my soul, or Jesus in my soul proclaimed a Great Amen, and something has changed.

And in two minutes!

Love, in the gospel sense, is a love without violence, especially violence to oneself. That's the punchline.

I am certain that I need to soak in this before I can articulate much about the wonder that surrounds it, in my line of vision. But my raw stab at it goes like this: Basically I've done the same thing he said Therese did. Except I have a distinct feeling I was much more violent at it than she. Pride, perfectionism, measuring up to self-imposed standards, and other assorted crud has all resulted in a long, hard streak of doing violence to myself. And I've always done it under a twisted pretext of it being good, right, and admirable. And it's not! It's really, really not!

This stitching, this Great Amen, this whatever-it-is, is like a peace I've never known before. I really am so little. I really am called and cared for by One who is So Great.

And at the same time, I've been reading the account of the martyrdom of sixteen Carmelites during the French revolution, and have been inspired by them and their embrace of the call to martyrdom, which is the ultimate expression of the call to worship -- a call (worship) which I recognize as my own. There's more to say about that, but it is as if being freed from doing violence to myself is being freed to die to myself. Because it is about grace, not effort. God's gift, not my performance.

I will shortly be ordering Br. Schmidt's book Everything is Grace.

When Weirdness Gives Way to Delight

This has been a strange Advent for me thus far. But if ever I have known a peace that surpasses understanding and a joy that makes no earthly-calculable sense, now would be it. My heart is so full of a peaceful gratitude that I just have to write about it.

There is something about following the Lord's lead. It grieves; it consoles. It confuses; it gives clarity. It takes things away; it gives everything. The path is dark, but it gives light. I feel heavy, but He gives freedom. The more I follow, the less I understand where I am going, but the more sure I am. I want to say everything to explain, but words fail (multi-dimensionally); and something deeper than words germinates.

All I can say is that I am so grateful to God for my life and His call to me to Carmel. Today is the feast of St. John of the Cross, my spiritual father. His words almost always embody to me exactly the state in which I find myself tonight. He is all about renunciation, detachment, penance, and self-emptying. And yet I find such joy in his words. It's the type of joy that makes me want to embrace my own soul, this dwelling place of God, and exclaim that indeed, something makes my life make sense. A human being is actually able to convey to me that my life makes sense. It is the opposite of the feeling of alienation, disorientation, self-loathing, and mistrust. From the first time I met St. John and St. Teresa of Avila when I was in college, this has been the affect these saints have had on me.  And a few years ago it was like St. John of the Cross seemed to seek me out to explain what I deeply needed to understand about where my life was going. I can't find adequate words to describe the delight this gives me. For someone with an intellectual bent like me, there is a strong temptation to view life at its core as absurd and meaningless. This is the joyful dance of knowing that to be a lie -- and that another human being is an instrument of that certainty, which can only come from God.

Jesus said to His disciples: "Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. What profit would there be for a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? Or what can one give in exchange for his soul?" (Mt. 16:24-26)

Reporting from the Bottom of the Pit

So, it's true: I've been feeling the tug of depression lately, and yesterday pretty much the tug-of-war rope snapped and I fell over. It happens. It happens to some people a lot, and it happens to me often enough for me to remember very well exactly how it goes.

But here's how my life works: while I am sitting where I have fallen, I am also analyzing the experience. So I have this thing going on where I have feelings of depression just like I might have feelings of fever or sinus infection. And at the same time I have a slightly delighted appreciation for what is going on, too.

I'm not quite able to put these in any logical order. But here are some pieces of the realization.

Communion with other people and with all of creation, in Christ, is pretty much what heaven is about. Our earthly sojourn is about recognizing the difference between the goods of earth and the higher goods of eternity, and choosing. God always presents us with choice, and He's constantly upgrading. The good things of this earth are by no means contemptible, but the more we recognize the infinite goodness of heaven, the more we are drawn to choose that in everything and in every way. That's what dying to self and dying to sin are really about. I look at how beautiful something is here, and even so, by grace, I am willing to say yes to something higher, like loving Jesus in His distressing disguise.

I can't expect ultimate help from penultimate sources. My husband, my best friend, can't give me what I need because they don't have it. What I need is from God. God always provides what we need, but sometimes He doesn't give it to the people we want it from. The solution is to turn to God alone. That's not a problem; it's God's design.

God makes Scripture come alive as we live with Him and live in His Word. His Word is alive, but maybe it is like a virus: it needs a host body to live in.

The most obvious thing to do when in need is to ask for help, specifically to ask for prayer.

The devil will do everything he can to harass, submerge, irritate, discourage and lie to me. And to end my life. The devil is not a gentleman.

Purgation is the greatest gift God can give on this earth, but it sucks. But it's worth it. The sucky feelings don't last.

Depression takes all of one's power and turns it into jello. That's why in these moments it is vital to surround oneself with prayerful people. Thank you, God, for Mark Zuckerberg because I'd be in danger without Facebook.

And that's just it: the Christian call is all about being faithful with the graces God gives to each one each day. I can't stop disaster in Syria or North Korea or change the course of history by some great plan I devise, but I can be faithful to whatever grace God gives me, offering my joys, sorrows, labors and prayers for the salvation and conversion of the world. That's what God wants and needs from us so that His mission can go forward.

Graces, Math, Practice and Delight

I'm not one given to sentimentality, particularly not about things like thankfulness on Thanksgiving. Reality is good, but I often find sentimentality is more in touch with creativity than reality.

So here's my take on what I am thankful for today.

The other day I experienced something that I could recognize as clearly a gift of grace. There was a situation that was not unlike other situations I've been in in past months and years that has caused me grief, bitterness, pain and turmoil. But on this recent occasion, it came and I was ok. I greeted it with acceptance, and there wasn't the slightest bit of pain involved. In fact, I had a smiling feeling of delight precisely because I recognized the grace involved in this. I was happy in facing this difficulty.

A day or so passed, and I admired this little experience. Ah, how good God is to me. I'm making progress. Indeed.

And then out of the blue, in a setting I didn't at all expect, there were comments innocently made to me that cut me down to the heart. Ouch.

Oh, wait. This is just like that other thing I was just so happy about. Ok, take a deep breath, and go to the same place. I managed.

Then there was another situation where I was already prepared for it to be rough. I was not disappointed. But dang, all of a sudden I realize that the same principle is in play here as in that graced victory the other day. No wonder I've never liked it. The pummel came like a slow, swinging pendulum. Again. Again. Again.

Sigh.

There's nothing at all wrong with delighting in evidence of grace working, because it is the gift of God. But there's everything wrong with sucking on the sweetness of being a location of God's grace working. Yay me. It's going so well for me now. I'm so, you know... where it's at.

It reminds me of my daughter's approach to learning math. She will dutifully sit with me, attend, and while I work with her, she will grasp a concept. Her face will beam. "Ok, now you do this same thing on this two-page exercise, all in different ways."

Wait. What?

"Oh, and this is a skill that you'll be using over and over and in combination with much more complicated skills for the rest of your life."

Crap. It's not fun anymore.

Well, guess what my dear. It's lovely for you to find it fun, but the need really is that it becomes second nature to you, so that you have the skill to do this automatically and use it in situations where math, or virtue, is actually called for and needed. Because that's the whole point of learning. It forms you, and you master it. And so you are more fully human in this one little way. Oh, and there are hundreds and hundreds of these little bits for you to learn. Some will come easily and stay with you, and some you'll probably have to do some little mental gymnastic to accomplish for the rest of your life.

Let the delight of your soul simply be looking at your Lord and loving Him. Let everything bring you back to Him, lest you get stuck in even the most lovely bit of creation or the most wonderful effect of grace.

Those Parents Who Brought Their Toddlers to Confession Today

I didn't know them, but then again even if they weren't visitors from another parish I am a little bit out of the parents-of-toddlers loop. We parked at about the same time, and right away I realized I needn't rush to beat them into the confession line, since they were going to be unpacking out of the car for awhile. Dad came inside the church by himself, but several minutes later it seems the fascination of everything outside, in the bathroom, and in the narthex had worn off, because eventually one little boy face poked through the door. He saw the holy water font and dove for it like a winning layup. I broke into a laughing smile. He was obviously excited about holy water.

Eventually he came running past me straight into the arms of his Dad, and then I saw a woman enter with a slightly older boy in tow, and she was mouthing "Sorry" to him.

What ensued included those very whispered verbal tours of all the beautiful things in the church that most Catholic parents have probably done. I overheard one bit about the Divine Mercy picture. Dad and Mom were explaining bits of how everything reminds us of how God loves us. Little boy #1 was asking insightful questions about why the picture had light in certain places. (Specifically, he meant around Jesus' head and his hand extended in blessing. But He asked not, "why is it painted gold there" but "why is there light coming from it." This boy saw it the way it was intended to be seen.)

Moments later little boy #1 and little boy #2 were sent a few feet away, a specific place for children in the church, still within eyeshot (Though not my eyeshot. I was taking it all in by hearing.) Within moments, there was a bump on the arm of Littler Boy. Weeping ensued, which seemed to trigger some type of innate memory of all suffering and woe that has occurred since the dawn of time, and it was all mourned once again. Both parents went to give comfort, to console, to quiet.

And I understand why they did that, of course. Just like I understand why they whispered their lessons about the sacramental items around the church. It is part being good parents, and it is part their cortisol levels going through the roof as they worry about What Others Will Think. In fact, I could feel their cortisol levels rise.

But it ministered to me to simply hear a child honestly wail over his bumped arm. Healthy children don't hide when they are hurt. They cry, let it out, and then it conjures up My, I'm actually a bit hungry, and tired, and frustrated too. And I was there at confession because I was going to tell Jesus where I hurt, too. I really needed to unload it all on Him, at least as much as I could identify. It was good to have company and have someone show me how to just naturally let it out. And to find solace in Mother Church and Jesus.

And then, as Mom escorted the boys back out to the narthex again until her turn came, I overheard the Older Boy commenting that he had actually bumped his head, too. He was not going to let Little Brother be the one getting all the consolation. He wanted in on it, too. See, even for him, one vulnerable expression of pain triggered his own needs to the surface, too.

So, dear parents that I don't know, thanks for bringing those two boys to confession today. They were anointed for ministry at their baptism, and don't you doubt for a minute that they are living it out. Thanks for teaching them, for making them aware of Beauty in the church. Please keep doing it, and always teach them beyond what you think their years can hold, because that's where kids typically are, anyway.

And I hope your cortisol levels are ok.

May God Bless Us in His Mercy

Happy New Year!

I am beginning this year, in one aspect at least, in the same way I began 2010, and that is with a 54-day rosary novena. In 2010 I had a pressing spiritual question, and I wanted light to understand the question. Of course at the time I had no clue where I was headed. The technical way I framed this spiritual question at first now seems like pointless chaff, so quickly was it blown away. It doesn't really matter though how one frames ones questions as long as one prays, because God has a way of blowing away the froth and uncovering the heart of the matter. And as long as we don't panic at being denuded He will get the job done rather quickly.

In a short time I found that I was heading far away from my technical question, out into new places. Sort of like Abram heading out from Ur. I could trace the path all the way from that first rosary on January 1, 2010 up to today. The Lord has given me so much. I see that. He floods me with blessings, and I have come to recognize them. Four years ago I would not have recognized His blessings. How patient the Lord is with my refusals. A short list from just the most recent hours: the experience of helplessness, failure of human help to materialize, my own long hours of best efforts being for naught, having to wait, a reminder of rejection, physical exhaustion, financial strain... these, and more, experienced with a deep sense of the presence and grace of God calling me to not only rely on Him, and to know precisely that these actually are goods coming from His hand.

Life is rough sometimes. I went through a really bleak stretch between 2012 and 2013. I see that the most important and the most valuable thing is to continue to pray, continue in relationship with God no matter what. No matter what it feels like, no matter what happens, and regardless of one's ability to make sense out of anything. Keep praying. I actually found my prayer expanding, which seems ironic but I imagine that is actually the plan.

See, that reminds me of something else. The closer one draws to God the more one realizes the truth that God really does not only have "a" plan for my life, He has "the" plan. In a mysterious way that by no means excludes my free will, creativity or responsibility, God is my designer. He knows my purpose through and through. I do not make myself; He makes me. I want to be fully alive, totally and completely. The closer I come to Him, the more I experience that. "Trying to find and do God's will" too often makes stiff, frightened and frightening creatures out of people. So often it is more about conforming to whatever "good, religious" social pressure one can attach oneself to -- all the while mercilessly criticizing those outside that fake attachment -- more than anything that has to do with the reality of God. There is so much that is right about the rejection of religion as many people experience it. God is so very real; again, if we are not afraid of the denuding, He will show us what is fake and dead in our religious experience and cause it to drop away.

So, here I am with the 2014 rosary novena to start the year. It is the one where for 27 days I ask for certain graces and then for 27 days I thank the Lord for having granted them. I am praying for a particular person and for all who share a similar need. I woke up on Christmas morning with the experience of this need right smack in my heart, or perhaps I should say spirit. It was like waking up with a wrapped gift next to me in my bed in the sense that I felt immediately this thing that was not actually a part of me. I wondered for just a moment to whom this might belong, and then made the connection, and then sensed that this meant a new rosary novena. All of this took less than 30 seconds from entering consciousness that morning. This is often how I receive and interpret directives or signs. The fact that I did not forget the exchange 30 minutes later also helped. And if it is all nothing more than my imagination, will it hurt to pray a 54 day novena? God looks at our intentions, and He knows how I'm made, so I don't worry myself over making a mistaken novena (although I would have, once upon a time)!

And now, too, I have a purpose and intent with my prayer. I fully expect that I have no idea, really, why I am setting out to pray this, and what I love about living the Christian life is that I realize how little I know. Every day we are just waking up and beginning.

Thanks be to God simply that I can straggle along with His motley crew of followers!

What Happened at Holy Hill

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

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

 

View from the rear of the Basilica

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Side altars: St. Teresa and St. John

Our Lady of Mount Carmel

Main Altar

My Year of Faith Sacramental Pilgrimage

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

And this is where all that first happened to me.

Been Realizing so Much....

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What it Means to Worship God

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

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

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

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

Chronology. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




 

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

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

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

The Year I'd Rather Forget... Maybe

This has been a year that, simply put, I never wish to repeat. In reality it has probably been one of the most important years of my life in recent memory. It has brought me to a very good place. But it has hurt. A lot. More than life has hurt in two decades.

And even though this isn't the perspective I've had going through this year, I suddenly feel rather sure that I will look back on 2012 as "the year I started towards Carmel."

I wrote about this almost a year ago, after I finished recording my CD. I had an inkling then. I get inklings of what God intends with me. In fact, He pretty much let me know ahead of time exactly what was going to transpire, the pain and all. Only thing was, having even God say "I want this and this, and that and the other is necessary to get there," and assenting to it with my will, is absolutely nothing like walking through the actual process of the this and this and that and the other. Oy vey. I think God wants to teach me to take seriously the inklings He sends my way.

And speaking of inklings, I've been thinking of late how I could tell the story of my walk with God in a way I haven't before: all of the inklings I've had about the Carmelites. You see, on December 16 I was officially accepted as an aspirant in the OCDS, the Secular Order of Discalced Carmelites. (The initials don't seem to go in the right order because the acronym is based on the Latin title.) That is my very first step towards becoming a full member of the Carmelite religious order.

The Carmelites, and the saints and places associated with them, have held an attraction for me since before I was a Catholic. In my single-digits, before going to church was a regular part of my life, I remember glomming onto one story from my Sunday School attendance: Elijah and the prophets of Baal. This involved Elijah summoning these pagan prophets to Mount Carmel (ding!) and challenging them to a sacrifice-off, so to speak. They were to set up an offering, and Elijah would, and whoever's god answered by fire would be declared the victor. It's a very entertaining story. Go read it in 1 Kings 18 if you haven't in a while.

But you see, the way I glommed on to this story reflected my quite sorry state at that point in my life. I basically took to threatening God, Whom I wasn't at all sure was paying the slightest bit of attention to me at all, that if He didn't show me He was answering me, that I would become a Satan-worshipper instead. I had the whole audacity thing going for me like Elijah, only I had a) no clue and b) no faith. But Elijah has always stayed with me as someone I feel very drawn to. He is considered the first founder of the Carmelites.

Ok, fast forward to when I was in college. I've written about this elsewhere too, but I'll just summarize the story. My Junior year I was taking Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy, which was very difficult. I had to write a paper which would comprise 50% of my grade, and I had no clue which direction to take for my topic, so I prayed. Walking the library stacks I heard distinctly this answer: Mysticism. "OK, Lord," I responded. "Great! Mysticism. But, what's that?"

As I started researching I stumbled for the very first time into the world of Catholicism, at least in an academic way. I read St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Hugh of St. Victor, and St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila (the latter two being the modern reformers/founders of the Carmelite order). I was Completely. Blown. Away. I vividly remember sitting in a certain seat in the library and dropping the book I was reading onto the table, my heart burning inside me, and praying, "Lord, if there are any people at all left on the face of this earth who know you and love you like what I reading here, those are the people I want to be with."

I was especially struck by reading of St. Teresa's notion of the seven mansions, or stages of spiritual growth through which the Christian life passes. As a young woman already obsessed with finding a husband and distressed that the search was going nowhere, I remember being especially disheartened when I read in the Catholic Encyclopedia that the final mansion, known as the "spiritual marriage" was experienced by very few people. I thought, Geez, I have a hard enough time finding a human husband, and now you're telling me that reaching this spiritual marriage is even less likely. It was depressing.

Some years later, when I was confronted with the fact of the Catholic Church by my friend Keith, this desire, and the name St. Teresa of Avila popped up as a tiny flicker of hope. I asked him if there was anyone who lived that kind of faith, and he assured me there were, and mentioned these people called the Carmelites, who operated a huge shrine called Holy Hill, near where we lived. He gave me a little book called "The Teresian Way of Prayer" which enthralled me to no end. In the months that followed, as I wrestled with the claims of the Catholic Church, I often went to Holy Hill to walk around and try to find peace.

After I decided to enter the Church, I read the book The Way of a Pilgrim, by an anonymous Russian Orthodox believer. I was struck by his desire to go to Mount Carmel in the Holy Land. I was struck so hard, and stirred so hard in my heart that I promised the Lord that if I ever got the chance to go to Mount Carmel, I would. I said that thinking it might be when I was 80 or something. Just a few days later I went to a John Michael Talbot concert, and he mentioned that he would be leading a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He mentioned that one place they would stop would be Mount Carmel. I interiorly looked at the Lord with a very raised eyebrow, and realized I should book that pilgrimage.

As it turned out, I went about two weeks after coming into the Church. The whole trip was wonderful, but I recall arriving in Carmel with a great sense of anticipation. Of what, I wasn't sure. It was a rushed visit, but the Lord deeply impressed this Scripture on me when I was there: "... the fullness of him who fills everything in every way." (Eph. 1:23). I didn't get it, but it was clear that Jesus was identifying Himself strongly with His body, the Church, and impressing this on me. I still can't say that I get it, but I remember it in the kind of way that I couldn't forget.

After that, the Carmelites always were floating around in my peripheral vision so to speak. My husband and I even attended one meeting of the seculars some 13 years ago, but at the time the commitment to prayer seemed like too much.

But a few years ago, a Facebook friend posted a quote from the book The Impact of God, about the life and writings of St. John of the Cross. I've written about that elsewhere, too. Again, whatever it was that was quoted hit me so hard that I bought the book, read it, and immediately re-read it with great excitement. It was as if St. John of the Cross was sitting me down and explaining my life to me. The sort of strange-to-me path that God had been leading me on at the time not only began to make great sense, but it was as if the Lord Himself became "visible" to me through it as plain as day. From that point on I began again in earnest to pursue the wisdom of the Carmelite saints.

And then there came this year. Then it got super personal. There was the "this and that" conversation I mentioned above, and in theory I was all-in. But when it came to what needed to happen, well, things got ugly inside me.

And glorious, at the same time. It is hard to convey since it is still all rather fresh. But an image that comes to mind is of gathering up long hair into a pony tail, making sure every last bit is tucked in, and then *snip* cutting it all off. Then undoing the pony tail, and cutting some more. Two emotional images come to mind here. One is St. Claire, presenting herself to St. Francis, founding the Franciscan Sisters. She consents to having her hair cut very short, and accepts the veil. This was a loving act of self-surrender, an embrace of love and the beginning of a new life. The other image is from a movie about concentration camps in WWII. This scene was seared into my memory: Huge groups of women were herded into a room where their eyeglasses were thrown in a pile and their hair was all cut off. All you could hear was the snipping of dozens of pairs of scissors. Chilling. Dehumanizing. Demonic.

The test of my faith has been to trust in the call and the loving purpose of God during a time of internal, spiritual stripping, and to learn the immense difference between a humility that comes from God and  humiliation that comes from people. Not every hard thing, not every painful thing, is an evil to be fought against. Sometimes one needs to turn full face into the sting and say yes, and smile. Even when it means having the things I leaned on that are not God broken away from me, including my abilities -- to sense God's direction, His presence, His favor -- and my joys. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Every time now I read texts for my Carmelite formation, I see over and over that precisely these things make up the path on which God leads souls close to Him. I realize God has given me a tremendously precious gift, all because He wants me to be His. He wants to give me the gift of Himself in a deeper way. How could I possible balk or say no? Hundreds of ways, that's how! God is so very patient with me, and has waited so very long for me to hear His call and He waits longer for my response.

I see now that everything is about Jesus and me. I don't mean that in a theologically distorted way. I mean that my actions, my choices, my everything is about following the Way to union with God, Who is Jesus. He gives me a path, and I will run in it. As He gives me the grace, I will run. I will not plod or saunter or dilly-dally, or hang back over-cautiously. I will run. The path is but a path, and even my guides, Holy Father St. John and Holy Mother St. Teresa, are but guides. My goal is the Blessed Trinity, which is also my starting gate, and my everything along the way. And I will run in the Church, the Body of Christ, the fullness of Him who fills everything in every way. That can't help but mean it's not isolationist, as "Jesus and me" can sound. Like Elijah, maybe I'll piss off some people along the way. I don't care where the path leads or what it entails or what it costs. If the Lord directs, I will run.

This year has been worth it, even if I am primarily declaring that in faith and not feeling it yet. I know it, more than feel it.

God is good.