Announcing My Plans for a CD

Today is the Feast of the Annunciation, one of my very favorite of all feasts. The Incarnation of Christ has been the theme of my Christian conversion journey since the moment Christ called me to become a Catholic on December 25, 1991. I am blown away, every time, when I think of the profundity of God taking on human flesh and living the same life I live, minus the sin. That He came to show me how to be myself, the way the Father intended, and to actually make real transformation possible.... blows me away.

It seems a fitting day to publicly acknowledge a recent way that I have said yes to God. Another step along my conversion journey. I am planning to record an album, a little music CD.

I did some recording long ago, when I was writing songs left and right. And I've thought about the prospect of recording again from time to time. But this possibility arose afresh in my mind on Christmas Day last year, amidst a discussion with a friend about digitizing old cassette tapes. I'd long been concerned that the music I recorded in my younger days, all on cassette or giant reel-to-reel, would soon become unplayable, but I hadn't known where to turn with it. I turned to the business my friend mentioned, and then got to talking with said business owner about my dormant idea of recording new music.

It was fun to think about it, but I didn't think too much of it. When I was asked to sing for my daughter's club, a few unexpected powerful moments with my guitar in an "empty" church sent sparks flying in my soul. That led me to writing a new song, something I hadn't done in 16 years. Something was coming to life in me, and I had to start paying attention. I wrestled. I had a premonition, a sense of something a little scary calling my name. I prayed for clarity. Then it turned into a fight. I fought in my heart with why this should possibly be a good idea. It got to the point where peace was elusive, and I saw I had to face and answer whatever this was that was asking for a resolution, even if it was a little scary.

My mind told me that recording more songs was not necessary. It costs money. It's just me. More songs are not going to make any difference in the world. Why should this matter. What's the necessity here.

A tiny little peep in my heart spoke up and said I'd really like to do this. But "liking" didn't hold much sway, faced with all the rational reasons. Yet I had no peace. My husband and I discussed a budget, one of the foremost rational reasons staring me down. And yet I told him I knew there was something blocking my way, something I was needing to address before I could conclude what I needed to do.

Then I had one of the weirdest days in recent years.

It was a Tuesday. My children and I headed off to daily Mass at Franciscan University, and I was feeling scattered and distracted by this unresolved question in my head. I also felt just generally weak and unsure and needy. Before Mass began I asked the Lord again, a bit brusquely, what this insistent question in my soul was all about. Suddenly I remembered a time about a year ago when I similarly felt a strong, compelling call from God to do something. In that case, it was to invite a certain priest to our house for dinner. This isn't something I do easily, and it took considerable courage and about two missed opportunities. The intensity of the tug in my soul to do this was undeniable and unusual. And as it turned out, after embarrassing-to-me rounds of telephone tag, the priest ended up leaving town (he was here on sabbatical) and we never had that dinner. So, in my prayer (with just a hint of accusation) I reminded the Lord of that occurrence. I was so sure I had to do that then, Lord, and what ever became of that?!

About 20 seconds later, the entrance procession began, and that very priest, whom I'd neither seen nor spoken to nor thought of for almost a year, walked right passed me. It was a Twilight Zone moment. But somehow it still felt completely predictable, considering this is my life we're talking about. I didn't really even snap-to until I heard him reading the gospel:

Do you not yet understand or comprehend?
Are your hearts hardened?
Do you have eyes and not see, ears and not hear?
And do you not remember,
when I broke the five loaves for the five thousand,
how many wicker baskets full of fragments you picked up?”
They answered him, “Twelve.”
“When I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand,
how many full baskets of fragments did you pick up?”
They answered him, “Seven.”
He said to them, “Do you still not understand?”

The message seemed very clear to me. I had met that priest and been moved enough to invite him to dinner in the midst of a lot of powerful things God was doing in my life. God does things. He calls. He asks us to follow. Get it? He was saying.

I was very stunned by this occurrence, so of course I came home and posted about it on Facebook. (I just love Facebook.) I was writing while in the midst of making and eating lunch. I had just finished writing about this and began eating my lunch (I feed myself last) when my son burst through the door from playing outside, calling me to come quick because there was an emergency. A woman had fallen and was having a seizure.

I was still a bit dazed and scattered, but because it was my son prompting me I grabbed my coat and followed him to where he had been playing. There, down a hill away from the road, lay a woman, seizing. I went down to her, asked, somewhat unnecessarily, if she needed help. I called an ambulance, the called the woman's home with the number she provided. And then I stood there. The woman was saying she couldn't breathe well, and couldn't see. Every once in a while she started seizing again. I stood there. A neighbor came running down the hill (my son the extrovert told everyone what was happening), began to talk to the woman (whom she recognized as a former neighbor of hers), helped her with her dog she'd been walking, and chatted with her. Another neighbor, a nun, came running down the hill and began to comfort the woman, talking with her. The ambulance arrived. The paramedics began working on her. I was still standing there. The Sister announced that the woman was in good hands and began to leave, so I thought I'd leave, too. My son and other kids who had gathered were farther up the hill, and the neighbor began congratulating me (and my son when I mentioned it was he who found her) on saving her life. Everyone seemed very relieved. I stood there some more. Then I walked home.

One thing deeply disturbed me: I had absolutely no emotional reaction to this happening at all. All the while I was there with the woman, it was as if I was waiting for a bus. I felt no panic and sensed no emergency and no danger at all. The woman's elderly mother called me a week later to thank me, and said the woman had suffered a concussion and two hematoma, along with her seizures, but was better. Other people pointed out to me that my son had not seen her, since she was in a secluded area, she might possibly have died.


By the time I picked up my husband that evening, I was well aware that my ability to react with a normal adrenaline rush was skewed. I knew that I had been impacted, but the normal flow of my response was stuck somewhere. I sensed it was due to erupt sometime later. It was like witnessing "live" what I'd known in my head about my tendency to not process my emotions. It was disturbing and strange. But I told my husband during dinner, "I know this has something to do with this music thing."

That night I went to choir rehearsal, and I joked with my friend, who noticed I didn't seem normal, that I was experiencing PTSD. Still laughing, I told her, "actually, I'm serious, and it's not funny." After rehearsal finished she asked me about what happened, and I began to tell her about the seizing woman. "I just stood there," I told her. "Oh, you didn't know what to do." she said. I started to tell her, no, I knew exactly what to do... My next honest words would have been "It was a traumatic situation, so I clamp the panic tight and suck it down deep, far away from me." But instead, all the clamps began to burst in my soul, and I ran out of the church. By the time I got to the doors, I could barely walk, could barely breathe, and I began sobbing. I made it to my car, and hyperventilated there for a good long while. I managed to drive home, and sat in the driveway and hyperventilated some more. I went inside, ran upstairs and flopped on my bed. My husband came in, and I began to explain what had just transpired. As he  held me, I completely went to pieces. The next day my lungs hurt and my body ached from hyperventilating and shaking. I scared my husband pretty good, too. It was as if every traumatic thing I'd ever experienced but never felt was erupting out of the place in which my body had held it, in hopes I'd forget they happened.


It's an intuitive leap to fit this together with my decision about the recording, but a few days later I could see that while the world may not need to hear my songs, I need to sing them. I need to record them and go through what it will take to do so. I'm thinking of calling the album (albumette, really) Unleashed, because it is about living in the healing that God has indeed given me in Christ. It is about embracing the fullness of who God has made me, the fullness of His redemption, and leaving behind cutting off and turning aside and squashing down aspects of my own humanity that I find difficult to deal with.


I am excited about this. If you are so inclined, please pray for me and everyone who will be involved with this. One lesson I faced early on is that I can't pull this off alone -- recording no less than on-going conversion and healing! I would appreciate your partnership in praying this into being. I'll keep you all posted on the progress!

Helpful Homilies: Figure it out yourself, and Suck it up

Every once in a while I hear a homily that peels me to the core. Most don't, which I suppose is good, since being peeled to one's core isn't something one can take that often. Many homilies leave me unscathed. Recently I heard two homilies that fell into yet another category for me: the "good insight" sort.

The first of these was last Saturday, on the Feast of St. Joseph. The priest who preached was a last-minute substitute, and the nature of his rather rambling homily betrayed that fact. (Truth told, he normally rambles, but this is something that endears him to me because I could imagine myself doing the same.) The helpful insight there was that God told St. Joseph, for example, to take the Child and His mother to Egypt. Period. No other instructions were given, like which route to take, exactly when to leave, what to take along, what to do when they got there, exactly where to live, etc. God gave St. Joseph the Big Picture command, and apparently trusted him to work out the details himself, trusting him to pray for wisdom and guidance.

This was good for me to hear. Spiritual insecurity, personal insecurity, has at times paralyzed me because I felt that I needed divine revelation or divine permission in all details to keep me safe. At times I have thought that following Christ meant waiting for Him to direct me literally in all things. But if I were St. Joseph's shoes, this mistaken notion of what it meant to follow the will of God may have looked like this:  Ok, yesterday I thought God told me to go to Egypt, but then I said, "But Lord, which road should I take?", and since I didn't get an answer, I can conclude that it wasn't God telling me to go to Egypt, so I'm just going to stay right here. 

I think this kind of notion, that the Father would trust St. Joseph with working out the details of how to get the Holy Family to Egypt (just a little prophecy fulfillment, that's all) is what has always struck me as Delightful Catholic Spiritual Common Sense. God wants the glorious to become common place in our lives. We work with Him in working out our salvation and in ushering in the Kingdom of God. We are not slaves ordered around by a master, or a micro-manager. God truly respects the humanity with which He created us, and wants us fully functioning.

Helpful insight number two was in a homily I heard today. This time a different priest was talking about how certain relationships with people can get tense when people argue and feel the need to be right. He said, simply, it really doesn't matter who is right, it matters who is loving. Suck it up, he said.

Now there's advice that would have made me go absolutely mad at one point in my life. Do you have any idea how psychologically damaging it is to suck it up? Don't you believe in truth? Doesn't truth count for anything?!? But today I realized that what he was saying was that one can choose to "suck it up." And this implies, of course, that one can also choose not to. That requires freedom. In valuing loving over being right, he was not asking for us to commit the suicide of our souls nor to disregard what we know is right. He was asking us to take a higher road, and not insist on our own way, even when we are certain our own way is right. St. Paul reminds us that this is part of the definition of love: seeks not its own way.

These homilies constitute helpful and necessary formation of one's thinking. 

Un-Sticking My Anger (Or, Why I Need a God who gets Pissed Off)

I've been thinking a lot lately about this post that I wrote back in November, about being told I needed to learn to trust my feelings. Actually, it wasn't so much the post I've been thinking about as the conversation and its pretty profound and lasting impact on me.

It's Lent now, of course. So I suppose its about time for a blogpost where I reach in my guts and fish around for that thing that's irritating me. This is what I do. Ok, here we go.

Lately, when I've been in silence doing my daily chores and such, I have found myself noticing something unusual for me. Memories of things past, some long past, have come bubbling up to the surface. They all seem to have a theme, and I know I need to pay attention. The memories are of people who have either treated me badly, or who have treated someone close to me badly. More specifically, the memories are of my responses to these experiences. The one memorable case of someone close to me being treated badly made me quite angry at the time, and it is still able to elicit that feeling of anger. But the thing about all of the other cases, in which the bad treatment was against me personally, is that I have been unable, or somehow unwilling, to feel anger about them.

There's something wrong with that, I know.

Now, I don't think that there is great virtue, either, in storming around, demanding justice for oneself, as if I were the sinless center of the universe, owed all recompense. But my gut tells me that unless one is able to experience anger, one is never really "fired up" to assertively move in a direction that is positive and aimed at accomplishing the attainment of some good that should indeed be within one's power to do.

I can't even seem to bring myself to write an example. What bothers me the most is that the emotion I associate with these occasions of being treated badly -- mostly by various men and their objectification of me -- is a feeling at the time of a sort of relief. Being treated like crap was a high price to pay, but at least I wasn't being ignored. I guess it reminds me of the line from The Boxer: "I do declare, there were times when I was so lonesome/ I took some comfort there."

Wow. Now I am remembering how a certain Scripture passage struck me as I read it the other day. It was Psalm 78, recounting the flight from Egypt. Verses like these reverberated in my spirit:

He unleashed against them his fiery breath, roar, fury, and distress, storming messengers of death. He cleared a path for his anger; he did not spare them from death; he delivered their beasts to the plague. (Ps. 78:49-50)

And then this, speaking of Israel:  "He led them on secure and unafraid" (Ps. 78:53). That's pretty amazing. It speaks of God unleashing His fury, and yet Israel followed "secure and unafraid." Obviously, if the Israelites were unafraid of God, they knew something of their position in relationship to Him.

And I see now exactly what my soul's need has been. In none of these instances did I feel I had any recourse to tell anyone in my life these people treated me like shit. That man treated me like a thing, took advantage of me, etc. with any expectation that this would rouse anyone to anger on my behalf. And it is a very scary feeling to have no one who could be provoked to anger on one's behalf.

But I see now that I do.

It is not that I want God to strike down people who have hurt me, no more than I want Him to strike me down for the way I've hurt others. But I see how deeply I need a God who gets pissed off on my behalf.

Pardon my French.

You have no idea how much I needed what I just wrote!

Evangelization, Spiritual Gifts and Community

"To be Christian is to be human correctly."

Or so states one blogger, synthesizing the teaching of then-Cardinal Ratzinger on the New Evangelization: To evangelize is to teach the art of living; to be be Christian is to be human correctly.

We follow Christ as His disciples, learning from Him not only what to do but how to be. We are to be like Him. We are not to be pollyannas or plasticine people, because each of us is unique and unrepeatable. It is logical and beautifully amazing that as we each turn our gaze to the one Way, the penetrating light of the one who made us, we find freedom to love in the way that is unique to ourselves.

How does that work?

It seems to me that the key is the process of discovering and developing our spiritual gifts. St. Paul invests quite a bit of ink (in 1 Cor. 12, Eph. 4 and Rom. 12) in teaching that we are not all the same, and that the Holy Spirit graces each of us in different but complementary and interdependent ways.

When I was a Lutheran, we talked quite a bit about discovering our spiritual gifts. It may have been because it was the mid-80s, and we were responding to the uproarious changes happening all around us because of the charismatic renewal. While doctrinally rejecting the reality of "charismatic gifts" of speaking in tongues and prophecy, and any other such phenomenon as experienced as the renewal spread throughout the Church, my denomination was still open to the fact that the Bible had lots to say about gifts. I just share that because it seems ironic: it was not my pentecostal nor Catholic brothers who first taught me to think in terms of operating in gifts as a mode of discipleship and stewardship.

But in those days, I never really got beyond filling out a spiritual gifts inventory form and filing away whatever bits of insight it may have given me into the back of my mind somewhere. And I can see now why it never took me anywhere. Spiritual gifts really need to be discerned, developed, and lived out in the midst of Christian community.

Community is something I didn't have and "didn't get" in those days. Indeed, many Catholics today are in the same boat.

When I took a Catechetics class with Barbara Morgan at Franciscan University back these 12 or so years ago, I remember her calling upon the adult converts in the group (myself included) to testify to the truth of her assertion that Catholics don't really get what "fellowship" is. (She could have used the term "community" as well.) That was one of those moments for me that I've never forgotten. How do I put it into words. She recognized, on one hand, something that is central, key, vital, vibrant, crucial, and EXISTING, in the faith life of many, many a non-Catholic Christian. On the other hand, she recognized that many, many a Catholic Christian, has not a clue what is even being referred to when one says this.

But this is the premise around which the New Testament needs to be understood: that we live our faith in community. Because living faith in community is part of what it means to be human correctly.

Now, I honestly believe that many good things have happened since the late 1990s when this conversation in class with Barbara Morgan took place. In my own experience and in what I see all around me, I believe that for some, community does exist in a Catholic setting. But I don't believe that every parish lives this with a fraction of the vibrancy that is possible.

What am I talking about, anyway?

I mean that each Catholic should find, preferably within his own parish, a setting where he finds his faith, hope and charity sparked to life by encounters with other believers. A setting where people are free to share their hearts, friendship, daily joys and sorrows, needs, and service to one another, and together to share with others outside the group -- to reach out in service. And in the process, to undergo ongoing conversion.

For this to happen, parish life must be more than attending Mass together and praying for each other. That is of course indispensable, but it is not interpersonal. As a friend of mine often puts it, Mass is communal but not social. It also cannot simply be a matter of working together, as, say, a Women's Group might cook for fundraisers. It also isn't simply a group of friends who go out for coffee. All of those things are great, but community, koinonia, is a spiritual sharing that isn't purely social or service-oriented. I like the definition of koinonia: "communion by intimate participation." This word is used in the New Testament to describe how those early Christians shared life together. I am blessed to have an experience of this within my own parish. But it shouldn't be unique or rare. It should be the normative experience of every Catholic.

When we move toward this kind of living with each other, it becomes more and more clear that people's unique gifts have a place, a fitting role to fulfill, in the life of the community at large. No one needs to feel guilty because they aren't like someone else, and Mary/Martha judgments can calm down as we learn to appreciate both our own gifts and those of others, and to accept our own and others' limitations. This is the only context in which discerning spiritual gifts makes any sense.

The Catherine of Siena Institute has a program called Called and Gifted which I very much want to be a part of some day. It focuses on equipping average Catholics to discern their charisms and to begin changing the world!

There are so many different aspects to the art of living, and God graces us with the means for each of us to do so in a way that brings us life. Each of us needs to learn how to best make a sincere gift of self, and to teach others how to do this as well. This IS what it means to evangelize, to spread the gospel.

The Ministry of Remaining at Peace

On the first of every month, Our Lord gives Anne a new message about His call to service. 

March 1, 2011

 

Jesus

 

Be at peace, dear apostles. I urge you to strive daily to be at peace. All that surrounds you will benefit from your understanding that while the world changes, God remains the same. I am the same. I am with you and the reason I urge you toward a peaceful countenance is because the enemy of peace sows fear in God’s children. You may think that I am asking you to be at peace but that this is too difficult. Dear friend of My heart, consider for a moment. What diminishes your peace? Which people? Which habits? Which activities? Ask yourself why these people or things diminish your peace? You must find these answers in contemplation of Me and contemplation of heavenly concepts. Only then will you be able to readily identify the contrast between the feeling of peace that heaven offers to you and the feeling of agitation that the world offers to you. The Spirit within you directs you to quiet, even in the midst of what might necessarily be a busy life. If you work from Me, you will retain your peace in activity and interaction with others because you will be giving and receiving Me. When you are with someone who is unable to accept My love, My love will surround that person until that person can receive it and you will not have wasted love because My love blesses you even as it moves through you. By working from Me, you are disciplining yourself to remain peaceful because I am peace. I am calm. I am love. How often I ask you to provide the world with a contrast and it is in remaining peaceful that you will do so. Be alert to My presence and you will spread peace.

Thoughts on a Vocation of Music Ministry

For a long time now I've been marinating various thoughts about worship. New bits keep getting added in, but I've struggled to synthesize it all. Today I'm going to take another stab at it, because I was inspired by the group that was leading worship at Mass today at Christ the King chapel.

By habit, my children and I usually sit near the music ministry when we go to Mass at Franciscan University (which is where Christ the King chapel is). So I had a bird's eye view of the group, especially of the leader.

I noticed lots of little things that told me he was aware of his purpose in leading the congregation. He was intent on the priests, watching for his cues. Intros were not belabored, and served well as cues for the congregation to join in. His musical skill was developed to the point that he lacked self-consciousness and instead was watching to see if the music was serving the need well. For example, the guitars began picking the Agnus Dei accompaniment, but as the congregation joined in and the guitar was drowned out, he switched to strumming and got the severely lagging congregation moving together again. At one point he flubbed an entrance (I believe it was to the Sanctus), but he carried on in such a way that it really didn't detract from the experience of worship. We were almost all of the way through Mass before it dawned on me that all of his song selections were modern praise and worship style songs. I am pretty comfortable with this style (and he chose songs I've known for decades), but what I am noting is that there was a sort of seamlessness between the experience of worship and the specific pieces chosen to aid that worship. The group also did a beautiful and unpretentiously Latin and modern Anima Christi as a communion meditation. It was a delight to pray this Mass with capable music ministers freeing me to express my prayer to God with joy, and I specifically hovered around after Mass to be able to thank and encourage the guy.

I note these details in mental contrast to those experienced a week or so ago in the same context with another leader. This young man was leading alone, probably because at the beginning of the semester before music ministry groups are formed, they take whom they can. Painfully different. He announced all the songs as "not found in" either pew hymnal. His style was much more of a soloist than of a leader, to the point where the feeling was conveyed to me that the music and the liturgy were like two separate experiences. He would play music; we'd go back to the liturgy. He'd play more music; we'd hear Scripture. He'd play more music; the priest offered prayer. It felt disjointed. I didn't for a moment doubt this man's sincerity or his desire to worship God. But it was clear to me that something was missing there.

That something is what I've been meditating on and marinating in for who knows how long now. Intuitive person that I am, it is far easier for me to say "There it is!" than to be able to describe what "it" is. But I think it is fair to say that there is a personal quality, a spiritual quality to leading worship that is vital, or integral to the call to do so. And I also know I'm not writing about this because I'm all that interested in worship theory. Well, not true. I am, actually. But only because I realize this is a personal call God extends to me, to change my life. All theory is really a personal call to conversion for practictioners, or it's meaningless. Don'tcha think?

As a worshiper in the pew, I know the value of this unnamed quality in a leader. The analogy always in my mind is music ministry as a vehicle. It is there to gather worshipers together and bring them to the throne of God so that they may encounter Him there. It does not exist for the musician's self-gratification, in a sort of otherwise-pointless trip all over town so that everyone can see how cool the inside of the vehicle is. However, it is also a disservice to God's people if the vehicle is so broken down that they would be better served by walking on their own. Keeping in mind that Mass at Franciscan University has exposed me to literally hundreds of music ministry teams over the last 14 years, I would say that the vast majority of my experiences of Catholic music ministry has reminded me of an ox cart or a lumber wagon that God's people were asked to get out of and help push up the hill to the throne of God. I do not say that as a complaint, because far be it from me to not prefer that to having no access to the Sacrifice of the Mass at all. In fact, there is a certain strength and humility that is built up inside of me from this "pushing." 

But the fact is, there are times when I am weak and I am tired. If I have to help push, my spirit feels sad and it languishes. Sometimes I feel too crushed to be able to try. I vividly remember one such time I came to Mass in this state. This was at my own parish where my friend Joe plays the organ and directs our choir. After an extremely painful day that left me feeling I wanted nothing more to do with people ever again, I deposited myself in my pew. It felt strange for me to be there, actually, because of how often I am either singing with the choir or cantoring, but it happened to be a day off from both for me. Thank God, there was no ox cart I had to push. As I heard Joe play, and heard the cantor's voice, it was like stepping into a very quiet, very powerful Porsche and being zipped right to God's throne where I could *splat* land in a heap before Him and spend the entire hour being loved back to life. I came home healed and ready to risk again, aware that I had been like the man lowered in front of Jesus by his four friends through the roof of the house, entirely powerless to help myself that day to what I most direly needed.

It's not about excellent music. Or, if it is about excellent music, then we have to define what excellent music is. I'm not the person to judge excellent music in any technical sense because I have no musical training beyond a middle school strings program and the basic music class required of all Lutheran high school freshmen. So I tend to glaze over at high-brow debates over what makes good music good. I don't even do so well in the sacred music cat fight arena. I know and respect the fact that the Church has given us certain parameters, but for the most part I am a Transcendence-Utilitarian. In my mind, if music takes us to a place of transcendence, takes us to the throne of God, or at least does not block us from it, then it is good. There's not going to be some insanely intense peak moment with every musical experience of worship, and that's ok. Because just like strength is built up by pushing ox carts, so faith is built up in the presence of God by living in a reality we know rather than feel, sometimes. There is also an inherent danger for music ministers if there is an expectation that they have to deliver something to make worship worthwhile. I have occasionally found this a difficulty in my experience of charismatic worship, especially in Protestant circles where there is no certain sacramental and liturgical pinnacle for which to aim. In such a case, sticking with the vehicle analogy, worship leaders are under more pressure to make the trip go somewhere significant. I used to believe that liturgy was like shackles, but in reality it is our freedom as worshipers. It's the encounter is at the throne of God where He speaks and gives us Himself. We do need to be filled with expectation for this, but it is an expectation of Another, not the self; it is of something we experience through where we are all going together.

So, what does it take? What is that unnamed quality? What did I witness today in that music ministry team? What have I experienced in my own parish, and most importantly, how is God calling me to conversion right now through this long marinading process?

Well, I don't have the one word label. I wish I did. If you know it, don't keep it a secret from me. 

But like everything that comes from God, I think it is very simple to grasp, and a life-long process to carry out. Maybe this Scripture summarizes it: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself" (Mk. 12:30-31). Here's how I'd explicate that. You cannot love with something you do not have, so the first call is to be in command over one's heart, soul, mind and strength, over oneself. That's self-mastery, or freedom. A person with true freedom knows belonging: he was created by and for Another who is Love, total affirmation. It is the paradox that we do not really have ourselves if we have not given ourselves completely away in surrender to the One who made us. ("Whoever seeks to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it." Lk. 17:33) The second call follows from the first: We give to others what we have received. Freedom knows belonging; and the free person loves and invites others to belonging and freedom, just as he has received it as a gift.

With this Scripture as a springboard, it seems to me the first call, the first need of a music minister is to be a worshiper. This rightfully acknowledges the gift given, directs the freedom one has attained back to God. This presumes all of the musical ability and practice that frees him/her to worship with voice or instrument. (I am reminded now of the simplicity of the one-sentence tutorial I was given to prepare me for the first time I lead worship by myself at my pre-Catholic fellowship. It was "Just stand up [in front of everyone] and worship God!") The second need is for the minister to invite the congregation to enter into the experience of worship with him. In other words, the minister needs to know where he is going and beckon "come with me." And that place needs to be the throne of God, the presence of Christ in Word and sacrament. The music minister is like John the Baptist, not pointing to himself nor mumbling something inarticulately, but clearly pronouncing "Behold, the Lamb of God!" so that the people can respond with their hearts to the only One who can give life.

But of course this is not just about music at Mass, because I don't believe God gives compartmentalized gifts or calls, and worship is about living, not only liturgy. It seems that each aspect of our vocation shapes all of who we are. "I am going to the throne of God; Come with me" is to exude, does exude, begins to exude, from everything we are and what we do. We don't just issue a call, we become the call. And we cannot of course compel anyone to follow, because the Holy Spirit fuels that response from within the sanctuary of the individual soul.That's a completely separate domain.

How then does this call "exude"? I think there is another key word in that passage from Luke: your. As in, Love the Lord your God with all YOUR  heart, soul, mind and strength. We are unique individuals, and that is exactly how God wants us to love and serve. We cannot compare ourselves with others for any sense of direction for ourselves. This is part of freedom, I believe. One of my favorite quotations is from Msgr. Lorenzo Albacete: "When you are no longer afraid to be yourself in front of other people, then you are really free. Otherwise, others determine you." In the individual/community balance, the fulcrum is love. And the circle is complete.

We can trust His divine orchestration to meet all of our needs. Maybe what it boils down to for me is the reality of the cliche that what we are given, we are given to share. Because part of how God meets all the needs out there is for me to return freely to Him all He has put inside me.

An apostle views his vocation as a prism through which opportunities for holiness and joy splash out in countless beautiful and varied ways.

On the first of every month, Our Lord gives Anne a new message about His call to service. 

February 1, 2011

 

Jesus

 

Dearest apostles, I am here, waiting to listen to your pleas. I hear your hearts as they groan in the loneliness of serving heaven when around you others do not serve heaven. You serve alongside those who either live according to the standards of the world or live serving out a call that is different from yours. Truly, I know that there are times when you wonder why I have placed you where I have placed you. I hope, dear apostles, that these times are brief. I hope that you will spend less time wondering why you are serving in a given role and more time wondering how to serve more completely in the role given to you. You see, comparisons to others will never bear fruit. You are unique. The work I have for you is unique and you must beware of the habit of dragging your vocation behind you as though it were something so heavy that it destroyed your joy. This is not how an apostle lives out a vocation. An apostle views his vocation as a prism through which opportunities for holiness and joy splash out in countless beautiful and varied ways. Truly, others should view you and your vocation as inseparable. You should become your vocation. Oh dear apostles, I know that you carry crosses associated with your holy vocations, but do you not see that these crosses, carried with dignity, illustrate My presence in your life and indeed in the world more than anything else? In every circumstance, I bless you and receive you into My heart where you find the direction and reassurance you require. In every moment there is grace available for you and for others through you. The more grace I flow through you, the more the world is blessed and the more you are sanctified. Move toward Me, closer and closer in your hearts and in your actions and, truly, the world will find the love it craves. Look at how God’s children drink in kindness, as though they were parched for want of it. Yes, you are sacrificing in order to answer My call but the plan is working and the world is being renewed through the efforts of all men of good will. Rejoice then, despite your cross. We are advancing the one righteous cause, that is, the cause of love.

"I love you Steve," turns into "You failed me, Steve"

I seem to be on a kick lately of watching movies about mentally ill musicians. I just finished watching the movie The Soloist. The plot involves a newspaper reporter, Steve Lopez, who tells the story of a homeless man, Nathaniel Ayers, who had once attended Julliard School of Music and who was a gifted cellist. It was interesting, but not what I would call profoundly moving, with the exception of one scene. Nathaniel had just told Steve that he loved him, and Steve was feeling the pressure of being the only positive human contact Nathaniel knew. Steve tells another character, "I don't want him to love me. 'I love you Steve,' turns into 'You failed me, Steve.'" And this potential of failing in yet another relationship (as we get hints of the failed relationship with his ex-wife and son) is more than Steve can bear.

That admission struck me like a ton of bricks. It was at once so obvious that he might feel that way (I immediately understood his emotional logic) and yet it was such a completely foreign idea to me (I don't believe it has ever occurred to me that anyone would think that way).

I had many thoughts at once upon processing this bit of dialogue. I thought of how I would consider anyone I love as a reflection of God, of human love as a taste of the transcendent, and therefore demanding or expecting something from another limited human being that I would expect to satisfy me fully doesn't seem logically consistent in the least. Holding out a worry as this character does seems to indicate the pride of feeling he really was all that was operative in the good that was happening. He was no instrument, in his own mind. I can understand that this is a terrifying feeling. There is only peace in knowing there is One who is greater who fills and animates us, who is closer than our own breath and is the Meaning of everything. Otherwise, my goodness, the pressure on anyone's back to be the All for another! Yikes!

But then I also thought of how my own love for God went through a phase where this exact sort of thing was involved: "God I love you" did become "God, you failed me." For example, when I was in the throes of dealing with my infertility, I did get very angry at God and didn't understand where His love was in all of the pain. I remember going to confession and identifying with the older son of the prodigal parable. Here I am, doing everything right, and you don't even give me a goat to celebrate with my friends!! But at that point I wasn't really relating to God at all; I was sorting out my own heart to be able to relate to Him again not as an idea, but as a Person. A personal God with a desire for a personal journey with me. With a will of His own, with things of His own to share with me. I was missing out on that completely and just fishing for things I wanted. God's goods; His products, things He could do for me. But not God Himself. Same is true with people. If I'm just fishing for what I want in a relationship with another person, I'm going to be missing that person completely.

In the movie, we do see that Steve was sorting out his own heart to be able to relate to Nathaniel as a person instead of a story or a project or an annoyance. I guess there is quite a journey we need to make sometimes, just to be able to meet another person as a person, rather than as a tool, a toy, or an obstacle. Without an admission, an acknowledgment, an awareness, an experience of Transcendence, what is the hope for any sort of personal relationship at all?

Each Catholic, Called to be a Missionary

I respect my son as an extremely reliable barometer in my life. He is very good at picking up on things and allowing me to become aware of them when I otherwise probably would not, at least no where near as quickly.

So when as a family we were going through our little Q&A catechism, and I read a question in the section on Sacraments about whether the Church is necessary for salvation, an alarm went off in me with his answer. At first he adamantly said No. Because, he said, what about all those people who don't have the Church, who don't have Sacraments. Surely God wants them to have a chance to be saved, too!

My alarm wasn't first and foremost about the gap in my son's understanding. Good heavens, we all have those. My alarm was that I saw clearly that he was reflecting back to me the lived experience of Catholics that he has experienced. He has been very blessed in the community with which we live. It has great riches and vibrancy, and he has many spiritual opportunities that are not so easily had in other areas of the country. For example, we have Franciscan University of Steubenville in our backyard and often go to hear outstanding speakers who come here. My son has heard many admonitions: to pray, to serve, to help the poor, to speak out for justice, to defend truth, to give one's life to God, to embrace one's vocation. But apparently he has not so often heard it emphasized that each Catholic is obligated to participate in the missionary endeavor of the Church by preaching the truth and explicitly leading people to embrace Her Sacraments. In other words, we act like the eternal salvation of the souls of others has absolutely nothing to do with us, our witness, with preaching, with the Church.

If the Church is not missionary, then what is it? A feel-good club for us? One of many generic service organizations by which humanitarian good is done, if you happen to like the brand we offer?

Then today I read this article on Catholic.org: Church Exists to Evangelize! Pope Calls every Catholic to Become a Missionary. The New Evangelization is no new idea. But I am so grateful to Pope Benedict XVI for sounding this call again. Especially in the West, and in the United States, this is a radical call, meaning it is one that takes us back down to the root of who we are. Evangelizing is not synonymous with obnoxiously arguing or manipulating or venting our religious spleen on unwitting victims. Evangelization is the fruit of conversion and penance and the following of God's call. It is not a program we can implement. I think of it in terms of living a healthy marriage relationship. Programs don't work where relationships must lead, but systematic teaching can be of assistance to us to discover common pitfalls that harm our relationships. I believe that one of these common pitfalls that stop us from evangelizing is the religious relativism that says as long as people are good, it doesn't really matter what they believe. Another pitfall is that of fundamentalism that says if you don't know all of the answers according to the book, there's no way you are good. Catholics are squeezed by both into staying in the pews, praying, and hoping that all those seekers of truth who want to become Catholics somehow wander in the right direction and find us.

The answer seems simple enough: Fall in love with Jesus Christ, give Him all your life, then follow where He leads. He's going to lead you to His People, and He's going to send you out to love others with a message written into your life. Live that life!! There are specific truths, and they make people deeply happy and free. Be deeply happy and free, and others will see and want this too.

I can't help but think of the St. Catherine of Siena Institute which helps people discern and employ their spiritual gifts, so that they can understand God's call to them. On their blog, they also share lots of good information about the state of Christianity in the world that should shake us out of our pew-sitting ways to realize God doesn't have another normative plan for the salvation of the world but us.

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, and kindle in us the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created, and You shall renew the face of the earth.

Conversion

Sometimes when I clean my house, in an effort to do a quick and efficient job, I get a large box and pick up all of the scattered bits and just toss them in. It makes for a quick tidy, and there's always a chance to sort later.

Today my brain is a bit like that, or my thoughts, rather. I've spent the day picking up significant bits and tossing them into one big hopper. So part of my evening cool-down now is to go back and sort and articulate the theme.

Because the day, after all, is the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul. Conversion is one of my favorite things to think about, even to dream affectionately about. Love this feast.

This morning I heard a really wonderful homily by the missionary priest who is helping at my parish these days. He spoke about his conversion that led him to embrace the priesthood, and about the events that jar us and move us and cause us, like St. Paul, to have a major course change. He spoke about the song "Here I am, Lord" which was instrumental in his conversion. This struck me, because a hymn (similar in theme, at least) called "Hark the Voice of Jesus Crying" had a role in my initial conversion to God as well, because it gave me the words to phrase my response to God's call.

Also early this morning, a friend happened to comment on a 10-year-old picture I had posted on Facebook, saying that she didn't think I had aged. This was one of those comments that banged around in my head all day on many different levels. What I thought about the most was how, as a child of perhaps nine or ten, I had decided that on the inside I had always been, and always would be, 33 years old. I have always been a serious-hearted person, so it seemed strangely fitting to me. But there is a nuance to this that I think can only be captured in the idea expressed in this Rich Mullins song, Growing Young.




The refrain perhaps says it best:

And everybody used to tell me big boys don't cry
Well I've been around enough to know that that was the lie
That held back the tears in the eyes of a thousand prodigal sons
Well we are children no more, we have sinned and grown old
And our Father still waits and He watches down the road
To see the crying boys come running back to His arms
And be growing young
Growing young

So, in my convoluted thought process, I hope the fact that I now don't seem to be aging (in the picture my friend referenced I was in my early 30s) stems from the fact that I'm now growing young instead of growing old. Because of my commitment to on-going conversion.

Another random bit: There is something that has happened in me within the last month. It's very, very significant, but of course I don't have all the words for it yet. I have a degree of freedom that I didn't have before. And I know this because I am more able to focus on what is immediately in my hand to do, and I'm able to know it has profound meaning. It's more real to me now that meaning is not off somewhere else in another time, another place, another circumstance, another ideal. The hidden, seemingly meaningless, and potentially irritating tasks I undertake each day, like sweeping up spilled cat litter or picking up socks, are truly my sharing in building the Kingdom of God, because they are bits of my life, which I am called to live with love, and united to Christ, my Lover. This, too, has been conversion.

Recently I wrote a song, which I used to do a lot of, but haven't done since about 1994. And I like it. Last night I was thinking of something else I want to write about, something I think holds a lot of people back from flinging their hearts open wide to conversion. And it is our difficulty in trusting God with our pleasures. We derive a certain pleasure from our own will, from our own agenda, and I think we tend to fear surrendering our will and our agenda because we fear conversion will remove that pleasure and there will be nothing suitable in its place that we will actually relish. In other words, I think we hesitate to trust that the way of Jesus can please us more than our own. Isn't this how we tend to face Lent? Oh my gosh, I don't want to give up xyz for Lent because I love it so much...  Why not go into Lent thinking I really want to be a happier person, and I know God loves me more than I could ever love myself, so why not turn my full face to Him, and let Him burn Himself deeply into me, barriers be damned! And let me share this adventure of passion with everyone my life touches, barriers be damned! Yeah, now there's a Lenten theme!

So. I guess the theme in my thought-hopper tonight is conversion. This is always my prayer for myself, for those I love, for those near to me, and for everyone who has ever touched my life. So it is my prayer for you, too.

Week of Prayer for Christian Unity

January 18 through 25 is the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. In its honor, I thought I would "replay" a recent post on the subject.

Yesterday my children and I had the opportunity to attend Mass at St. Patrick's in Pittsburgh's Strip District. The structure of the interior of this church is a bit unusual as the seating area for Mass is at the second floor level. The entry level of the church seems to be primarily an area of devotional prayer. The prominent feature that catches your eye immediately upon entering through the front door is the Holy Stairs, a replica of the 28 steps in the Church of the Holy Stairs in Rome. (Read the rest here.)

When "Family" Becomes Bondage

Several weeks ago while driving through town I saw a bumper sticker which said something like "My Family is Everything To Me." I had a complex and multi-layered negative reaction to this simple statement. I have complex and multi-layered negative reactions to all sorts of things, but this one I've been thinking about just a bit, so I think it is time to unwrap it a bit.

What first sprang to mind was the "hard saying" from Jesus that "whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me" (Mt. 10:37). Now, was a day when I would have been inclined to understand this verse to have come from the heart of a heartless, sledgehammer God who simple demanded servile subjection from His adherents, humanity be damned, and who cares about tender feelings towards family. I wouldn't have actually described God as proposing these sentiments because, well, it wouldn't make Him seem very nice. But when you look at the literal words, what else can you do with it if you take the Word of God seriously, right?

This certainly is a radical word from Jesus, but fortunately we have the wisdom of the Church Fathers who have followed the Lord radically and therefore understand His heart and can instruct us. In my experience, it is John Michael Talbot who has gleaned these things and passed them down to me in recent teachings. And the instruction is this: When Jesus calls us to surrender our lives to Him, He is asking that everything we hold dear be placed under His Lordship. This includes the relationships which make us human. When Jesus becomes our Lord in these areas, He gives His order to all things, including our relationships. It is a process of transformation. When He is Lord, we are free, in this example, to enter into our relationships of family without them controlling us or being themselves our master and lord.

So, the bumper sticker. Family indeed cannot "be everything to me" without it also holding me in bondage. If family is everything to me, then it is my Lord, my Master, and not Jesus. Therefore, I will have no freedom.

But it sounds very moral, doesn't it? Isn't "family values" at the core of what decent people are made of?

I think there is a danger of many these days confusing conservative social values with the message of Christianity. If Christians don't differentiate we will soon wake up to having lost both!

Why did Jesus insist that we cannot love our family members more than Him and still follow Him? What does He have against family?

He has nothing against family, per se, but He has every concern for our true need, which is to realize the One who gives us our life, our self, our meaning, our existence, our purpose. We are made for the Infinite, and only He satisfies us. It is dangerously easy for one to look at a loved one, a person God Himself has place into one's life, and to declare "You are why I exist!" You, my newborn baby, you my wife, my husband, you my very dear mother.... my life revolves around you! In doing this we run the risk of forgetting God and ultimately replacing Him and idolizing a creature. We run the risk of forgetting that the vocation to marriage is about bringing one's spouse, children and the friends that surround us to heaven! Jesus does not come to break apart family relationships, He comes to preserve them. They can only be preserved if grace remains to keep the relationship with the Blessed Trinity preeminent for each one. When by our mutual prayer and evangelization my heart and your heart draw near to the cross of Christ, then our hearts also draw near to each other. This is how families stay united.

If I make an idol of my family, I am actually destroying it. And instead of my sacrament of marriage being an oasis of grace, a unit of mission into the world for Jesus Christ and His Church, I am actually sending out a message of despair to the world. I am really saying: Settle for something finite, and pretend it actually is enough to fulfill your soul! And if your family is actually a crushing source of pain, well, you must simply really be a loser! (How's that for a great bumper sticker?!)

In this light, does it not seem that "My Family is Everything to Me" is a downright anti-Christian statement?

2010: Prayer Evolution

At the turn of the year, it seems a natural thing to ask myself whether anything has changed for me in over the last 365 days. Actually, to be honest, it just seems like a natural time for me to write about that subject; I am very aware of changes that occur in my life because they have always seemed to flood in on me. Stopping to take stock of just what those changes are over a nice chunk of time like a calendar year seems very helpful to benchmark where I am as opposed to where I was.

I think the most significant change in my interior life has been with regard to prayer. I've always been a deeply interior person, but stewing around in my awareness, while it has value, is not exactly the same as the traditional Catholic practice of prayer. I guess what I mean to say is that there are many types of prayer, and my life has changed the most in regards to what sort of prayer I have practiced. Very early last year I took up the practice of the daily rosary. It wasn't exactly a New Year's resolution; it was more like a fitting time to embark on a quest for light and answers that I needed at that point. Saints and Popes for centuries have advocated praying the rosary daily, but I must admit that it was a devotion I had sparse attempts with before this year. In the past it felt clunky and awkward and frustrating to me. But when I started praying with a desire for light fueling me, I not only received light but developed a love for the rosary and a great deepening of meaning in meditating on the mysteries. In short, it started really working for me.

This prayer led me to a renewed mindset with regards to intercessory prayer. As a pre-Catholic pentecostal believer, I attended many intercessory prayer meetings, and found that, for this young believer, intercession was a lot about airing one's personal beefs and troubles to others while directing words to God. Sometimes it was venting anger at or hopelessness in the world, sometimes it was expressing delight, but it was always rather detailed and complex. And complicated. I gleaned that God required a lot of our words to get anything done. Now, I do hold that our prayer plays a definite role in the out-working of the Kingdom, and I believe it is good to be specific in petitioning God. But when friends attended a Mass with me where the intercessions took less than five minutes and all we said was "Lord, hear our prayer," my friend quipped to his wife that he would much rather have our pastor's wife intercede for him (complete with full emotionality, detail, and a good 15 minutes spent on one request)!

While I can understand that kind of intercession, it seems to me that if one has real power in prayer, hardly a word is necessary. That is, I do not have to invent a formula and then work myself up to a place of feeling something so that I have access to prayer power. I do need to tap into reality. Reality is God's love for me and for the world, my need or the need of my neighbor that I lift in prayer, and the love of all God's people "agreeing" with me (Mt. 18:19). And then my trust in God's will to accomplish the good, which He desires far more than I do. For these reasons I have found novena prayers and requests for the intercession of certain saints to have also found a prominent place in my prayer life. I see that intercession is a bit like housework: it is best done on a daily basis, with some general sort of system to it, based on the on-going needs closest to my heart and life. A daily offering has been part of my life for several years now, and this opens the door for grace to enter every moment of every day, making all of my activities prayer, or an offering lifted to God, for the salvation of souls.

Towards the end of the year I found myself drawn to return to praying the Divine Office. This is something I have puttered with on and off since the very first day I decided to become a Catholic. It too felt dry most of the time. But lately I sense the power in uniting myself to the Word of God in the fellowship of the Church in this way.

Writing about this reminds me that I am looking forward to reading John Michael Talbot's new book The Universal Monk: The Way of the New Monastics. I remember reading in one of his books that he wrote long ago that God had given him a vision that one day when his hair was white and flowing, a new thing would be emerging: the heart of monastic life lived by lay people in the world. The fire that destroyed their beautiful monastery in Arkansas a few years ago seems to have been a signal from God that the day of the new thing is dawning.

New things, a new year. We are always just beginning!

New Book by Anne, a Lay Apostle: Lessons In Love

I've just finished reading the latest book, Lessons in Love, written by Anne of the Direction for our Times apostolate. Anne is the public name used by the woman who receives locutions and a variety of mystical experiences from Our Lord. I always post on this blog the monthly messages she receives, and you can read all about the apostolate on this website. I've heard her speak a handful of times now and, while of course leaving all final judgment to the Church, I am convinced that what she receives and passes on is of divine origin.

But back to this book. I've read not only the messages she's received, but the books she's written, and this one I've found the most moving by far. That's not to say the others were pedestrian; it's to say that this one was breathtaking.

For some time now I have found the messages that Anne receives to echo what the Lord is doing in my own life right at the time I read them. But this entire book seems to echo a place God has been taking me over the last few years. It touches on matters of what holy relationships look like: intimacy with God, intimacy with other people, sins to avoid and virtues to pursue in step with growing in intimacy, and then a slew of issues related to marriage and sexuality. From these bare-bones words of description of the book's contents, it might not seem that one could expect more than some worn-out words of advice about the spiritual life and morality. No way. What I experienced in reading this book was Jesus Himself looking into my soul with His gaze of love, and my realizing that He knew everything about me, my life, and my experiences. He encouraged me to continue with Him, even closer. It's impossible to adequately put into words, really. But reading this book was an experience of Christ. It both affirmed and challenged me. At one point I simply broke into the hardest sobs of relief I have known in a long time as I knew His affirmation of my longing for Him. At another I was challenged to open my grasp and let Him rearrange things I have not been able to budge on my own. And throughout I saw how His merciful love and truth is extended to everyone on earth -- and how much He longs for His Church to imitate Him in this as well.

It seems to me that the reason why this apostolate exists at all was summed up in the message for January 1, 2011: "I want to assure you that I am present. I desire to assure you of this so that you can be confident about the plan I have chosen for your life." The plan Jesus has for us is that through us, He wants to make His love known to every person on the face of the earth, and to call them to make Him welcome as King of our hearts. 

If you are someone who wants more of God, I recommend that you read this book. You can find it at this link.

What Would Christianity Be Without Christ's Suffering?

On the first of every month, Our Lord gives Anne a new message about His call to service. 

January 1, 2011

 

Jesus

 

My friends, do you hear My voice? Can you feel My presence? I want to assure you that I am present. I desire to assure you of this so that you can be confident about the plan I have chosen for your life. I know that you feel temptations against the plan I have arranged for you. Perhaps not today, but on other days, or perhaps you experience this temptation every day. Perhaps you are suffering and you wonder why I allow this for you given that you feel you would be more productive without the crosses in your life. Consider for a moment what would have happened if I had rejected the cross and went on to preach. What would have remained after My life? Consider the absence of the Passion in the faith life that exists today. How can we preach the Gospel if we are unwilling to accept the crosses which inevitably accompany it? No, dearest friends. In order to accurately represent the Kingdom of God to others, we have to be willing to sacrifice, even to death in some cases. The glory of your work is seen in the souls of those whom you have touched directly or those who have been touched by others because you have agreed to My plan. My plan for you will bring the greatest benefit to those suffering loneliness and separation from joy. Such sadness! If you are serving Me, I thank you. If you are considering service to Me, I need you. If you are suffering great crosses because of your commitment to heaven, I rejoice in you. In all cases, I am with you. I urge you to believe this and live this truth. When you are finished with your time on earth you will gaze at My kingdom and view the benefits that you brought to it through your service. Life is not easy for any person and temptations come to all. Be assured that you can use My strength when you feel weak. You will not always feel conviction but you must live conviction. I will ignite fires of love through you if you do this for Me. Do not be afraid of your human struggle because it is through this struggle that others see the force of the One who works through you.