Don't Know Much About.... Music

It has been quite humbling to me to realize how little I really know about music. What I mean by that is I have been fixated, without quite realizing it, on the certain aspects of music that have come to resonate with me (and I'll get to exactly what those are) while not even realizing that other more technical aspects exist, practically.

The way I look at it, if I were in a room filled with the "general population," I would probably know a bit more about music than other folks. But if I were in a room filled with musicians, I would know far less than most everyone else. And I'm fine with that. It does make me just a little sad that I didn't pursue more formal study when I was a child. But then again I get a little sad when I think of all the other major career paths I would have liked to perfect in this life but haven't started in on. There is something in common to all of them, and I am on the right path to distilling that in the life I do actually have.

So, this realization of what I am not, and of what I know not, is really a means to help me realize who I am and what I have, and what the value of music is for me. Or what it is about it that drives me, that makes me love it -- not necessarily understand it or analyze it or perfect it -- but love it. I realize I am only going to love something if it draws me to my Beloved, to God, to the mystical reality behind all that is. To me, the experience of music is about the experience of healing, which is none other than the experience, the reality of being loved by the Most Holy Trinity.

Mystical theologians talk about how God created the world with music, and how music is made to speak a language of the redemption we find in Christ, with its harmony, its patterns, even its dissonances and non-resolutions. So I suppose I'd say that while I don't excel in the technical aspects of music, I delight in the mystical aspects of it. The fact that I cannot produce gorgeous music on an instrument myself only serves to amplify the comparison to the kingdom of God. (I can produce adequate music on guitar; as a pastor-friend of mine used to say "It's close enough for jazz.") What I mean is that the best music is created in community, with many parts, many gifts joining together. In the Church, although we can pray for our own healing and enlightenment, the biblical paradigm is to seek others to pray and minister healing to us (see James 5:14, for example). God has created us to be totally dependent on Him and interdependent on one another.

God has used music again and again to bring healing into my life. Finally, I'm seeing the trend, and it blows my mind. It seems God loves to sing to me. How can I keep from doing anything less in response? Music can make my spirit soar, my soul ache with a beauty beheld, my will firm in its choice to follow Christ, my heart happy to be a living, breathing woman. To me, these are all aspects of healing. Hearing music reminds me I am not alone; I have companions traveling the road to Zion with me. That is healing. Music gives me the courage to love. That is a grace. These are all immeasurable gifts that I can never give myself. God gives me these, through His children. And I am very happy to be one of His children through whom He can give gifts to others. When I cantor at my parish and people stop and thank me, I am very much aware that God has given them something through my instrumentation. This seems to be God's way: first He fills us in a certain way, then He gives through us to others in that way. All I can say is thank you, Lord, for using me to bless others like you have used others to bless me. Lord, you don't need any of us, but the fact that you make us your co-workers is yet another sign of your incredible love.

Memorial to my Sister

I'm trying to blog again about what has been in my heart since starting the recording of my CD Unleashed, but first I see I need to write about my sister.

My sister passed away a week ago today. She was 53 years old. She had cancer and had been battling it on and off for about 15 years. She also had schizophrenia from her early adulthood, which is nearly the first that I remember her.

I can't say that we were that close, what with her being nine-and-a-half years older than myself, and what with her having moved away as an older teen, and what with her mental illness causing it to be somewhat difficult to form what I tend to think of as a sisterly relationship. There's one big caveat to that, and that's the fact that my husband and I adopted the baby she bore ten years ago.

That was her idea, at first at least. The way we heard of our son's existence was in an email from my mother which read "Bonnie says she's pregnant and she wants you to raise the baby." Now, this wasn't the first time in her life she had claimed she was pregnant, but it was the first time that the claim came with the verification that her social worker also said it was so. My husband and I had been praying for a baby and had just begun investigating our own apparent infertility at the time. We were excited, but cautious. I had a feeling it would not be an easy ride.

And I was right. By the time my son was born, my sister had decided she would parent. Children's Services hovered over her like a hawk, and by six weeks our son was in foster care. After much kafluffle, he came to live with us when he was eight months old, first as a "visitor," eventually as a foster child, and when he was a few months short of four years, we legally adopted him. That added a special dimension to our relationship, one that was in no way magical or easy, nor was it a burden. It was a grace for me; a hard grace though.


Bonnie was the most naturally outgoing person in our family. Just like my son will do, she was always striking up conversations with people, and strangers were simply friends she hadn't yet met. She was generous to a fault (if there can be such a thing), always giving away practically anything anyone gave her. Although when we cleaned out her apartment we did find lots of stuff, her mind was constantly filled with what she could give to other people.

My favorite memories of Bonnie were of her as one of my earliest musical inspirations. The first experience I can recall of "rocking out" on a song with someone else was with her, to this song, when I was about 7 years old, I'm guessing. I can still see the scene of me cranking up the radio and us both dancing.



It was her guitar that I first snuck off with and learned to play when she moved back home with us when I was 11. Songs she wrote and songs she played were the first ones I learned.

She and I also got serious about Christianity at about the same time. I was 10, she was 20. She was living in Hawaii at the time, and began sending lots of Christian comic books and whatnot that I read voraciously. She also sent me my first New International Version Bible, which made me a progressive among Lutheran kids. It sure helped me understand what I was memorizing in catechism class.

What I didn't understand was when her mental illness kicked in. I was so young, and didn't understand at all what has happening. It has been a multi-dimensional learning process to this very day to really grasp what it means to live with schizophrenia.

Her life was very difficult in many ways, and I thought more than once that death would be a blessed relief for her. That still doesn't make her absence any easier. All I know is that every human being has intrinsic dignity, and none should ever be treated without respect, without honor, or with disdain, regardless of how much they challenge our comfort.

Through the eyes of the least of them, Jesus searches us. What answer will you give when He asks 'Where is your love?'

"Concentrate Seriously on Becoming Holier"

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

 

August 1, 2011

Dear apostles,

You are friends of My heart. As such, please be patient with Me as I bring you along in holiness. Would you like to be holier? Perhaps you identify My teachings as good but you feel frustrated because you see that you fall short on some days. This is when you must be truly patient and trust that I am bringing you along as quickly as is needed. Remember that you may see very little progress on some days, but your decision to remain with Me in the process of becoming holier creates a disposition for heaven that keeps the light where it should be, that is, on the need to examine yourself for failure instead of examining others. How easy it is to see the flaws of another. How much more difficult it is to identify which pain in you creates the disposition for repeating a mistake, perhaps again and again. Yes, patience is necessary, both with oneself and with others. I, Jesus, am patient with you. And so you must be patient with yourself. And then you must be patient with others. Do not be distracted by events around you. Do not be drawn into thinking that many events or big events mean that you can take your eyes off of the process of becoming holier. No, dear apostles. I speak gravely when I say to you that you must concentrate seriously on becoming holier because your holiness and your commitment to holiness is a crucial part of My plan to bring comfort to others. Allow Me to see to the world. If you see daily to the condition of your soul and if you love others then you will have fulfilled My plan for you. Rejoice. You are committed to Me and I am eternally committed to you.

Feast of St. Martha: Serving and Feelings

There are some gospels or themes about which I imagine I might never hear a new or original thought in a homily. One of these themes is that of St. Martha. Of course, one does not need to hear a "new" thought in order to meditate on Scripture, but it helps me to hear something I don't expect to hear. A new connection makes meditation more productive for me. And Father's homily this morning presented one of these opportunities to me.

He said, as if talking to Martha, "When you are busy serving this person and that person and doing these charitable things, do you stop and think, 'How do I feel about the person I am serving?'?" That really struck me. His point was drawn out of Martha's words, "Lord, if you would have been here, my brother wouldn't have died" and the sense that we, like Martha, can be busy serving and miss Jesus present with us. But it really struck me, this notion of being present to one's emotions in the midst of working, of service. I thought of the conversation that brought about this post ("I Need to Trust my WHAT?!"), when last Fall I faced how I have habitually handled emotion. I immediately saw the wisdom in what Father was saying this morning, and what the other Father had said to me last November (Marie, you need to learn to trust your feelings.)

I thought of times when I had followed certain courses of action, not just for a moment but for a long time, while trying to ignore my emotional cues that something was wrong. I don't for a moment believe that when one is doing God's will it feels good 100% of the time. Sometimes doing God's will is terrifying. But that's just one feeling. Choosing to compromise one's soul, choosing to cheat, choosing to be lazy, choosing to vent anger, choosing to go all boneless chicken and let someone else call shots I should be calling -- these all come with feelings, too. And it's so easy to rationalize away one's sins by calling objectivity as one's defense. I'm being friendly; that's a morally good thing. I'm serving Jesus dinner; how could there possibly be any fault in that? Well, but where's that heart? Hmm? And how can you tell if your feelings, if your self-awareness is anesthetized?

The soul can be a very confusing place, a very disordered place. It is when we bring it to Christ that order is possible and starts becoming a reality. Part of that process of bringing our souls to Christ is to be aware of those emotions, acknowledge them, and start being honest about them before the Lord. You know, Lord, when I'm trying to be friendly to this person, I can't escape a sense of being used/prostituting myself/cowardice, etc. What is that, Lord?

The very cool thing about being in a relationship with Christ is that this question doesn't just reverberate back to me. I pray, I read and hear His Word. I live. I'm open. He leads me. He teaches me. He speaks to me. He answers the question. It isn't navel gazing; it's living with Jesus.

Jesus with us. That's what He was trying to say to Martha. I'm with you; does that register in your soul?

In Which She Goes on a Rant about Language

Here's a random rant that has not been precipitated by anything in particular today but reverberating thoughts (and perhaps a few reverberating hormone chemicals).

I don't mind what language people speak. Speak English, speak Spanish, speak Danish or Hindi. I don't care. But please, oh please, talk like a human being.

I have friends who are poetic. I have friends who are funny. I have friends who are blunt and who have dry humor. Well, maybe I can't think of a dry humor friend right now, but I have dry humor and that counts. These are all ways people talk like human beings, and human beings are all different.

It creeps me out to no end when people talk using someone else's stilted lingo. I can't stand it when people want to get all "professional" sounding, using jargon their listeners don't. There's this sense of "high and mighty" that comes wafting down when people are afraid to simply talk using normal language.

Oh, I'm really only griping about myself, of course. This used to be me through and through. Doesn't mean it still doesn't grate on me. I suppose getting really infuriated about something is the only way one ever drop kicks junk out of one's life.

A lot of times when people cling to weird talk (religious people do this all the time, and it makes me cringe the worst! No, really, it makes me want to vomit.) it seems that the key is the person has not learned how to integrate what they profess with who they really are. Ok, it's a process. I understand. You're allowed. But the worst thing is that when people are trying to give answers to the world, but they can't talk from the heart. I want to just say, SHUT UP then! You know what? I don't want a bunch of pre-packaged answers. Show me your heart, and I will be very interested. I promise. I like hearts. I hate pre-packaged stuff though.Get down here on level ground with the rest of us schlunks and talk from your heart.

There. End of rant.

Perfectionism

Now that I have started recording this CD, I have so many thoughts breeding like rabbits in my mind. It's like an  explosion of insight, this experience. I owe each facet attention, in turn, but for now I'm trying to think about just this one: perfectionism.

Perhaps I start here because it seems a relatively easy aspect. I have never considered myself a perfectionist. Perfectionists, in my mind, are people who are uptight, never pleased -- impossible, really to please. And detail oriented. Every detail has to be just so, or they can't be comfortable.

Maybe it is easy for me to characterize perfectionism this way because that's not me. I'm pretty laid back, and I'm not particularly detail oriented.

But then I listen to my voice blaring over the speakers, and I hear the foibles, the missed notes. I hear myself speeding up and slowing down like some kind of 1905 hand-cranked motion picture.

And here's how I don't react. I don't think Lord, that's awful. Gotta do that again. I have to do better. I have to get this perfect.

No, my initial reaction, my feeling, is something more akin to "Wow, is that really the best I can do?"

Herein lies the rub. I really could do with a tiny dose of what I'm calling perfectionism. Because what I'm facing instead is a lifelong tendency to be happy with "good enough." To figure that whatever I do off the cuff is actually the best I can do.

I've known that this recording project was in part about the Lord's call to me to meet Him and have Him challenge some old ways in my emotional and mental processing. He's not disappointed me. I don't have any blueprint or agenda from Him, though, so everything comes as a surprise as we go along. And with this one particular facet I am reminded of something I wrote in this blog long ago about my schooling experiences. (It was in this post about Alfie Kohn's book Punished By Rewards.) Essentially what I'm driving at is that in school, I often just aimed low, for the grade, and not high, for actual learning, growing, changing, gleaning education. Most of the time I was able to get As or Bs at least without exuding a lot of effort, and if I had to put forth too much effort, I usually just avoided those subjects (like sciences in college). There were some exceptions, notably Alegbra/Trig in 10th grade. I remember lying in bed at night crying about that class, and being overcome with anxiety over it. I ultimately managed an A, but I also had to pay a book fine at the end of the year because I significantly abused that book in my frustration. It was horrible. And why? I think I didn't really know how to learn when I didn't understand something, and I didn't know how to be taught. I didn't know that being able to be taught has something to do with loving. The New Yorker author David Brooks has said, "We've spent a generation trying to reorganize schools to make them better, but the truth is that people learn from the people they love." My Trig teacher was an interesting character, but I can't say he inspired love in me. My 8th grade Algebra teacher, Mr. Blum, now he inspired love. And what I mean is that I knew he was teaching me. It wasn't because of any individual attention, because there wasn't any. But he taught the whole class in a way that conveyed that he wasn't focused on a textbook; he was focused on the students' grasping Algebra. It probably had to do with the fact that he was teaching a then-experimental "advance placement" group in a newly merged Middle School. But for whatever reason, I personally felt taught. I knew it mattered to him personally whether or not I understood. He wanted all of us to succeed. And -- he seemed to love math. That's gotta help.

But that was a unique experience for me. Most of the time, as I said, I just put forth whatever effort I felt like mustering, and I usually got good grades as a result. I learned to identify the things I naturally liked, but I had very little actual education because I was never really being drawn out, challenged, inspired, by anyone I felt any human connection to. I produced good grades but I never learned much. In college this changed I think, but there I was primarily exercising myself in my areas of strength (writing, literature and philosophy), areas that gave me an adrenaline rush but not anxiety when I had to essentially prove I was learning from my own reading and study and share this with my classes and my professors.

So what's the point? It's just this: with the exception of a rather narrow corridor of strength, I've been very slow to learn to try to do things excellently. That corridor was just enough to make me into an arrogant such-and-so. And since I'm no longer pursuing arrogance, all I find myself left with is the "good enough" approach. You know, hey, whatever.

The plan to muck through life this way has never particularly bothered me. But now, I listen to my voice, my guitar-playing. Music is supposed to mean so much to me. I'm thinking, this is how I convey my soul... no... this is how I give myself to love God. How? "Good enough?"



It's a mistake to believe one's acceptability is rooted in how well one can do things. God loves us because we are. No, He loves us because He is love. He couldn't be anything else. But His love, touching us, begs a response. Love begs for love in return. As St. John Chrysostom said in today's Office of Readings: "nothing so much wins love as the knowledge that one’s lover desires most of all to be himself loved."

So, this is something that is going on for me right now. Jesus calls to me: Love me back. Don't be afraid, and don't be selfish. Give me more. Strive to be perfect. But it's all about love.

How to Be Yourself

Yesterday when I woke up it was all crystal clear to me. This is something I've been hearing and grappling with for years -- ever since God called me to the Catholic Church at the end of 1991. I used to hear or sense God say to me that what He wanted was for me to be myself, and it would frighten me, because I didn't know how to do that. I didn't know just what that meant. In some ways, it has been at the crux of my spiritual journey for the last three years, constantly. And yesterday when I woke up, it was so obvious to me that I could delineate it in steps.

How to Be Yourself

Step One: God calls to you.
You don't make this happen; this is God's initiative. But it is universal. God calls to everyone.

Step Two: Acknowledge the call
The response you give to God ("Yes, Lord?") opens and begins to align your heart to your Creator, your Origin, your Meaning.

Step Three: Receive
I'm picturing this in somewhat abstract artistic terms of one movable piece of creation lining up "under" so to speak a fount or source of something flowing into it. That piece of creation which you are can of course choose to move out of alignment, and sometimes changes in the force of flow can require some movements to stay in alignment. But the key is to constantly remain in/seek out that subordinate relationship with the vitality of the flow of the divine. You do not control this flow or make it happen. You must receive it.

Step Four: Live the Glory

As that vitality of God reaches you, it transforms you. It purges, cleanses, reshapes, cuts away, refreshes, enlightens and revitalizes you. In this state, you live and carry out your normal daily business. This is the presence of the glory of God in you. This is you being yourself: the self God has created and is creating, the self through which God brings His presence into the world and multiplies this on-going process in the lives of others, without you trying or even noticing.

You are not going to be without flaw, without weakness, without sin until we are fully purified and finally in the presence of the Lord Himself in eternity. But we live in hope, with the first-fruits of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, longing for heaven and loving our brothers and sisters, for we are all somewhere in the process all the time. God calls to all. Not all hear. Let us love and make His call easier for those lost in pain to hear.

Blathering about my CD

I have been in high processing gear for the last day or so. I'm getting ready to start recording my CD this coming Saturday. I blathered on about how this came about once before. I had an intuition or premonition when I first set out on this path that there would come a point where instead of being my haven from anxiety, my own music would become an occasion for anxiety. That's been playing out now that I'm actually having the rubber hit the road, so to speak.

I get into these situations from time to time where, as I tell my husband, I find it extremely difficult to put into words what is actually happening internally. My brain thrives on understanding, on being able to make connections between what I know and what I don't know. When I find this difficult or elusive, I really can find no rest. I will rehearse in my mind the things I've experienced, searching for this understanding. Often during these times, even the things I know for certain no longer feel like they make any sense. And in all these regards I am speaking of spiritual realities, inner understandings -- that sort of thing. I know the sky is blue and food is fuel and putting the car in drive makes it go forward. But these types of things hardly ever interest me in the first place.

So tonight I'm just blathering for the sheer joy of working these thoughts out of my brain. What I notice developing, what I notice striking me (with staying power) is a sense I pull from a poor exegetical rendering of Ephesians 2:14: "For he is our peace, he who made both one and broke down the dividing wall of enmity, through his flesh." The actual context of the "both" in this Scripture is talking about the Gentiles being engrafted into Israel in the Church. But this verse strikes me with a more personal meaning. Because of factors in my early life, I have always carried about this sense I'd call having two lives: an inner life and an outer life. I suppose if I thought long and hard I could describe how this came about, but that's not really my concern at the moment. Earlier on my "inner" life was weaker and often ignored, and I considered my "outer" life the most worthy of development. Then, say as a later teen, I wanted to honor my inner life but felt my outer life was my master, my reality, the reality everyone else considered important. It is significant that my relationship with God (though not always my religious observance) was something I very much counted as part of my inner life. But the most important aspect of this inner life was that I carefully hid it. I habitually kept it protected from whatever hurt, misunderstanding, or intrusion I felt coming at me from others.

As I matured, my deeper held values seeped down into my inner life, and to some extent, I began living my life more out of this place. My "outer" life, meaning those things I did or followed more extrinsically, I more and more allowed to fall away. I began to live my own views about things like health, education, and parenting.

But I remember clearly one time I went to confession early on in my marriage. I mentioned this sense that I've had this private life that involved my faith, and the fact that I was frustrated with my inability to undo it now in my relationship with my husband and my in-laws. I had practiced this separation for so long that I was unable to do anything else but keep certain intimate parts of myself locked away.

The one thing that has always played a part in both of my "worlds" is music. And I think what I am realizing is that right now, this music project and all of the inner swirls it sends me on is all about breaking down the wall in me that has created these two different worlds. I had a very strange experience last night of relating a deeply formative, deeply personal story to a friend of mine, verbally. I do this all the time in writing. But I rarely do this (especially with this person in question) verbally. I didn't for a minute regret sharing it (I've already blogged the story ad nauseum), but I think the unlabeled feeling was there that I had breached the wall. Even though I have gotten very fluent at living out of my inner life, I had nurtured certain... limitations, I guess, that kept the division in place. It seems that God's business at hand is to finally do away from this distinction: to make me but one person. That my inner life is my inner life that I share in the world because it is who I am, and not my secret life that I hide in subtle ways.

One thing I am doing with this music is taking my innermost soul and putting it on display for strangers. Yeah, that's a little weird, a little freaky. I suppose it is what I've been doing with blogging for years now to some degree. But this music thing feels like it has a much bigger obedience factor. I write as a catharsis and a way to hear myself think. Music has long since stopped being that for me. Music, my music, is now a gift of self. I'm not polished nor professional nor the most talented person in the world, but these things are not really my concern. I am producing this cd because I feel that to not do it would be stepping out of obeying the Holy Spirit. It's quite literally like this picture:

I don't have any real ambition for this gift, though I would like for it to be received by people of course. What I want most in life is to be an agent of healing for those in pain. But I know full well I have no power to heal. I don't say this in any dejected way at all. It simply is the reality. God is the healer; Love is the healer. I pray and have prayed continuously that God would use the little gift I offer for the purposes He desires.

And I know his first desire is that I live with a full, undivided heart before Him. I can't make choices for you or for anyone. I can choose faithfulness to Christ for myself, and choose I must (2 Cor. 5:15 -- the love of Christ compels me).

www.mariehosdil.com

The Pain of Being Healed

The gospels' accounts of Jesus healing people have always intrigued me. Most homilies I hear focus on what Jesus is doing in these scenes, and I suppose that's all well and good. But I am always drawn to think about the person being healed.

Take for example the man with the withered hand in Luke 6. However it was that he earned his livelihood, he had an inherent life struggle where others took full functionality for granted. What was his social standing like?  The Pharisees are picking a fight over religious rules, and what does Jesus do? He tells the man, "'Come up and stand before us.' And he rose and stood there." Was Jesus just using this man to make a statement about the Sabbath? Hardly. There was something in Jesus' presence that drew this disabled man. That something filled him with the confidence of being called, loved and freed to stand up in front of everyone and, at Jesus' request, hold up for everyone to see this part of him that had caused him his life's frustration. "Looking around at them all, he then said to him, 'Stretch out your hand.' He did so and his hand was restored" (Luke 6:10).

But think. What happened to the man later? He suddenly had the functional use of both his hands. We don't know how long he had had his problem, whether it had been life-long or not, and we don't know how his muscle function was right off. There was going to be an adjustment period for him, a re-learning, a clumsiness in learning to live with two hands. If he went on living at his former mastery level, what would this say about how he integrated into his life what Jesus had given him? Healing itself causes more challenges to be worked through. Perhaps he had only begged before. What would become of his standing in the community? Would people be willing to give alms to a man who now appeared, on the outside at least, to be completely whole?


Another healing story I love is in John 5 -- the man at the pool of Bethesda . This was a spot where the chronically ill and disabled gathered. Jesus sees this man, knows he has been sick for a long time (38 years), and approaches him with a question: "Do you want to be well?" It is a very telling question. When we have a chronic condition or situation we lose a sense of power, of choice, and the situation can become our identity. I am sick. I am blind. I am sinful. I am bitter. I am afraid. I am lonely. I am proud. I am disorganized. You get the picture. Jesus doesn't ask the man about his problem. He asks him if he wants change. The man's response is equally telling: "Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; while I am on my way, someone else gets down there before me." I am powerless. Even among us cripples, other people are more powerful than I am. No one helps me. No one loves me enough to put my needs before theirs. I've been abandoned. I won't say it's funny -- ironic is a better word I suppose. Here is the Son of God personally singling out this man to help him, trying to provoke him, to awaken a desire in his soul, and the man is stuck on how he has no help. Jesus is so humble, so patient with the man. He blows no trumpet, doesn't announce how of course the poor schmuck has no help, but Jesus the Do-Gooder is now here, so he should stop his miserable whining, realize in Whose presence he actually is, get a grip, and receive this wonderful magic trick He was about to do over him. No. Jesus, humble, but with all the power the man lacks, speaks the word of command, and instructs the man to be the instrument of his own healing. "Rise, take up your mat, and walk."

Now, there's a guy who was going to face a hugely different life the next day! Talk about learning to live all over again!

Step one: God heals us. Step two: we have to learn all over again who we are. We are changed by encounters with Christ, and that change can indeed happen instantaneously. But there is an organic process, too, a growing process, and I think that happens more in a pace with the rest of the unfolding of life. The foolish thing, though, is to lose sight of the healing we have, especially in the Sacraments. We are foolish to live as if we have no power when we have been given divine life itself. It is foolish to sink into believing we have no hope of transformation when the Church lays out for us all of the riches of grace. If we look to someone other than Christ to figure out who we are, we will be lost and hopeless. Follow the presence of Christ, and you find the path to Life.

As By a ... New Pentecost?

My old friend Mike Bogdanovich wrote a song once that says:

Something's going on
Deep inside of me
Something very precious
Something's going to set me free

That chorus has been going through my mind of late, because something is going on inside me. There is a certain ironic twist that it is Mike's song I'm thinking of since this something has to do with Pentecost and he is a friend from my pentecostal days.

I was, as I sometimes put it, a "non-denominational small-p-pentecostal charismatic" before I became a Catholic, even though I was raised Lutheran. It was a formative time for me; I was 19-24 years old and I was expanding my horizons spiritually, mostly in ways that were good. My experience with what I learned to call the baptism in the Holy Spirit, which I experienced alone in my college dorm room with a Don Basham book in hand, was my first experiential encounter with Jesus Christ as Emmanuel, as God who wanted to interact with me. Before that I had let Him be primarily the God in heaven I believed in and prayed to. But with that introduction to "things charismatic" as I understood them, Jesus showed me He is a Person, that the Holy Spirit is a Person, and that our relationship could have elements of an actual, tangible exchange if I but came asking and expecting to receive.


Because I had learned to identify and develop this living and growing relationship with God, I kept hungering for more and more until my feeling that I had "eaten through" everything available to me left me restless. This was because God was leading me to enter the Catholic Church, an adventure I've written about several times on this blog, like here. I've never felt I've foresworn my charismatic formation or experience, although I have felt that what was once a great source of growth for me became far less edifying. I remember attending a lecture by a Carmelite priest while I was in the process of entering the Church. I asked him what he thought of the charismatic movement as a spirituality. I was shocked by his response. It was something to the effect that it was fine as a starting place for some people, but the real fruit was to be found in contemplative prayer. In my youthful egotism and spiritual inexperience, I felt as if I'd been standing on the spiritual Mount Everest in my charismatic fellowship. He was telling me I'd barely hit the foothills.

I share all this to say that when I've thought of Pentecost, the feast, for all these years as a Catholic (18 years, now) I've still held on to some sense of how we used to pray for a "move of the Holy Spirit." Back then it seemed we always believed that God was just on the verge of doing something new, something great, something unprecedented. The next revival was always right around the corner. Sometimes people would then start seeing these things, or convincing themselves that they did. This leaves people open, frankly, to mind games that aren't healthy.


Just before this year's feast of Pentecost, I was praying the Pentecost mystery of the rosary, and I realized I was praying with a yearning that my mind couldn't figure out how to package. I was still carrying around this sense that to pray for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit was to pray for large, bizarre things to happen of one sort or another. But my overarching sense was that I was praying open-endedly for something from the unknown to be made known. That's the best I can do to describe it.

Then on Pentecost Sunday at Mass, whether it was actually from the prayers of the liturgy or from the comments of the priest I'm not sure, but I heard that Pentecost is the fulfillment of the paschal mystery. Yes! The sufferings of Christ we shared in Lent, His death we witnessed in the Triduum, His resurrection celebrated for forty days, His ascension into glory where our humanity is raised up -- and now His Spirit is poured out, sealing His covenant with us, quickening us, filling us with life, and sending us forth: it is all one. That struck me as very significant.

What I have experienced, I think, is encapsulated in this truth. I have been experiencing a new Pentecost in my own life, and it is a large, bizarre thing in a way. And yet it is also the flowering of the things the Lord asked of me during Lent, during the Triduum, the things that first "sprouted" in Easter. It is about serving Him with power, it is about grace flooding through my soul and from me. It is also rooted in the "charismatic" reality I learned of actual, tangible exchange with my living Lord who knows every detail of my life and who opens Himself to me. And many, many would find it mystifying. This powerful move of the Holy Spirit has been about me.... cleaning my house. Yep. Sweeping those floors, doing housework.

I am in no way kidding. This is a deep thing. It makes me marvel all over again at the work of the Holy Trinity in human hearts.

I love this adventure of living with the Lord. There is always new growth, new directives, new calls to obedience and love. It is like continuously traveling and continuously arriving at the starting gate.

On the Duties of our State of Life

Written by St. Claude de la Colombière (1641-1682)

"The good order of things in the world depends upon the fidelity with which each one performs the duties of his state in life. All disorder originates in negligence upon this point. What a grand thing it would be if everyone acquitted himself of his duties! It is, perhaps, the thing that is most neglected even among pious people, indeed probably more often among those than among others. Yet people do not accuse themselves of it. Charles V said to his confessor: 'I accuse myself of the sins of Charles, not of those of the Emperor.'

"More souls are lost for this reason than for any other. Half are damned for not having performed the duties of their state, the other half because others have neglected their duties with regard to them. The duties of one's state take precedence of private duties: for instance, a magistrate must not consider relationship or friendship. Public good must prevail over private good. Jesus Christ, who came into this world to teach us and save us, did not think of his Mother when it was a question of his office as Redeemer: he looked upon others only in so far as they concerned this work of Redemption. Those who cooperated with him are his brothers; those to whom his Precious Blood gives new life are his children; his Mother is she who is perfectly submissive to the will of his Father.

"A man who neglects the duties of his state is a discordant voice in the harmony of the world, no matter what else he does. Those we are faithful to all other duties often neglect these; those who do not omit them perform them negligently or through human motives and self-interest. This is not fulfilling their duty.

"In choosing a state of life, the human advantages are considered but not the duties. It is impossible to neglect these duties without injuring others, and as God has their interests at heart even more than his own, such neglect is very dangerous.

"People would consider it strange for a man to become a religious without knowing to what he was going to bind himself. But what of a secular who has been married for twenty years, or who has held some responsible post in his profession, without knowing the duties these states of life entail.

"Sins of omission on this point are easily committed. They are hardly noticed, and consequently reparation is rarely made for them. These are sins that are committed by doing nothing; sins that do not consist in bad actions but which are often the consequence of some good work.

"By neglecting your duties, you condemn both yourself and others to punishment: others because you do not teach them their duty and make them fulfill it; and yourself because you do not fulfill your own. The less wicked will be damned for what they have done; the most wicked for what they have omitted to do."

The Purity of a Child

I love to observe children's unabashed sentiments of friendship. My son is a popular, outgoing boy that everyone seems to love to be around. I've witnessed boys debating one another about which one of them was my son's best friend. And the disappointment on the face and in the voice of a boy who comes to our house to play, only to learn that my son is at someone else's house playing, tugs at the heart. The way my children will beg to spend more time with their friends and vice versa -- it's all so free and uncalculated. If I listen closely I hear a yearning in innocence for communion that makes my own soul glow in mystery.

What happens when we cease to be children? Or is it just me? Was it just me? I'm not entirely sure I was ever a child in the way I'm thinking about it here.

When we grow and mature, we become aware of more of what we were made for. And yes, it is communion. Profound communion. Mature hormones kick in to tell us we are made for a type of communion in which we give ourselves completely to one who is able to receive us completely, and we are meant to spiritually and physically reproduce ourselves in this world. Those drives can perfect us, and they can muck us up seriously, as well. We can become calculating. The pain of disappointment can become too much to bear, or feel, so we can start to push them down and divert ourselves from what we are made for.

But hold it. Kids can do that, too. I did. But just today I witnessed that purity I wrote about earlier -- that pure longing for friendship expressed by a child. Purity is possible, just like deformation is.

We're made for more than sex, more than marriage. The only one we can give ourselves to completely and the only one who is able to receive us completely is the One who made us, the One who holds us in life. We are made for God, for union, for unity with Him through the absorption of ourselves in Him, which makes us most perfectly the unique individuals we were created to be, free from calculations, from self-conceit.

But God has gone and created this as a sacramental universe. He comes to us, not despising created means, but embracing them, employing creation to woo us, to show us His face, to pour His grace upon us: the Incarnation.

Which is why I can look at the child at my door and feel my heart bursting with the mystery of God present with us, calling me to Himself.

Big City, Little Town

Last month my family went on a trip to visit relatives, and in the course of that trip we visited Toronto, Ontario. Toronto is a city of roughly five million people, once you take in all of the burbs.

I've done my share of traveling, and frankly I'm not a huge fan of it anymore. But there was something uniquely jarring to me about the day we spent in Toronto. Riding the subway into the heart of the city, I was struck by a  difference between that culture and the one in which I currently reside.

I should explain that subways and big cities are nothing new to me. I grew up in Madison, Wisconsin; at the time the population was about 140,000. It has grown significantly since then. In college I moved to Milwaukee, which I think was something like 300,000 at the time. My next residence was in Takamatsu, Japan, on the island of Shikoku. This city was considered a quiet, backwater village of only about 600,000. Then I moved to Osaka, home to about three million people. Subways and trains were common fare to me then. In Japan everyone learns how to build a bubble of privacy around them in the midst of hundreds of strangers, even in the public baths.

And then I moved to Steubenville with its population of just under 18,000 and shrinking by the day.

This is my home in every emotional sense of that word. That means that I find great comfort here, even while occasionally feeling annoyed or amused by some aspects of the experience. I am annoyed, for example, at how drivers seem to constantly disregard the sirens of emergency vehicles (I once saw four cars pass in front of a fire truck at an intersection), and I am amused, in a slightly irritated way, at the pronunciation to which some words are subjected. But, as I think happens when one is very comfortable someplace, I didn't realize just how this place that is my home has formed me with certain expectations, certain assumptions about how people interact with each other.

On the subway in Toronto I was struck by a North American version of the Japanese privacy bubble. The Toronto bubble, however, didn't feel like a cultural understanding of respect-by-distance. It felt more like mutual alienation. Everyone avoided others, except if they traveled as a group, and then the entire group interacted in such a way that communicated avoidance of others. Just an example: in one group of young men, a coffee spilled on one man's backpack. They all groaned over the disgustingness of this while the young man wiped his backpack on the seat between him and another person, as if no one but they were present.

Then I think of life here, where it is not uncommon for drivers who pass each other on country roads to wave to each other, just because. It's not that everyone makes eye contact with every stranger here, but I routinely have strangers greet me. It's just sort of common courtesy that we say hello to whomever we meet when out walking. I've done quite a bit of petition work, and I've found nearly every stranger I've stopped willing to chat. I love the feeling that when I go grocery shopping I usually run into an acquaintance at the store.

I know from my husband, who grew up in a town much smaller than this one, that small town life can instill a sense that one has no private life, because everyone knows everything about everyone, and is probably talking about it with everyone else. Perhaps I just have the best of both worlds: I presume that everyone is minding his or her own business and ignoring everyone else, while experiencing that people are relatively aware of each other. I also have a relatively low level of gossip paranoia.

One might claim the the level of friendliness experienced here is limited in its value because it only goes so far: there are people who are suffering, lonely, abused, and even murdered right in our neighborhoods. A wave and a howdy isn't going to prevent that. But it does do something for me. I have a sense of peace and safety. I have a sense of belonging, knowing that neighbors would help each other in case of any kind of emergency need.

The feeling I had in the big city was by far more one of self-protection, guarding against strangers, mistrust, suspicion. I had forgotten, or not realized, just how much I had moved out of that mindset. I have had to coach my son in the proper application of self-protection and mistrust in public, when he had a gift card stolen from him last Christmas. But I would rather teach him to constantly keep his wallet in his hand than to watch him have to pry his heart open as an adult, constantly and routinely on guard with friend and foe alike.

I do think that human need brings out the neighborliness in most of us, regardless of our culture. I guess what it boils down to is that it makes me sad to think of all of the varieties of loneliness there are in the world -- and especially how it can crush the soul while people are crushing in on you from all sides.

Watch What I can do with Your Yes

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

June 1, 2011 

Jesus

Dear apostles, humanity suffers. If you have eyes to see, then you will see that all around you there are children of God who have become disconnected from their Father. When a child suffers, that child is consoled if his Father is nearby and engaged with him. The child feels understood, even in his great pain. The child feels that there is ultimate safety, even when he faces temporary risk. To know that one is destined for ultimate safety provides for a disposition that withstands any difficulty, even the prospect of death. Beloved apostles, so close to Me, do you see that you have something that most do not? Do you see that your anticipation of ultimate safety provides you with a solid wall at your back which will, someday, absorb you into Itself? At that time, you will never be at risk again. You will be one of those who rejoices completely, not only in your own safety, but in the safety of all those around you. You will be absorbed into the Communion of Saints who now so perfectly understand the struggle of humanity that they work tirelessly and joyfully for the salvation of their brothers and sisters remaining on earth. When you finish your time on earth, you, too, will understand the great things that I accomplished through the little yes answers you gave Me on your journey through time on earth. You will say, yes, it was worth everything. You will say this, dear friends, regardless of the amount of suffering or sacrifice you endured. But, even as I rejoice in your heavenly heading, I urge you to strain forward in My service. Others should possess this confidence and security. If I told you that there was one person who was lost and that he could be found, would you rejoice with Me? If I told you that this person, currently suffering, could be claimed for heaven through your allegiance to Me on this day, would you give Me that allegiance? For one more day? This is what I am asking of you. Answer yes to Me. Give Me this day today. Watch, dear apostle, what I can do with your yes answer today. Look back and see what I have done with your yes answers in the past. You will see, in looking back, the barest truth about what I accomplished through you. Only in heaven will you see the full extent of what the Father has gained through your presence in His heart. Trust Me, while I obtain peace for you and peace for others through you.

Humility

Lately the Holy Spirit seems to be teaching me often about humility. I recall several months ago, while reading Lessons in Love by Anne, a lay apostle, her reference to the litany of humility, below.

O Jesus! meek and humble of heart, Hear me.
From the desire of being esteemed, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being loved... Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being extolled ...
From the desire of being honored ...
From the desire of being praised ...
From the desire of being preferred to others...
From the desire of being consulted ...
From the desire of being approved ...
From the fear of being humiliated ...
From the fear of being despised...
From the fear of suffering rebukes ...
From the fear of being calumniated ...
From the fear of being forgotten ...
From the fear of being ridiculed ...
From the fear of being wronged ...
From the fear of being suspected ...
That others may be loved more than I, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be esteemed more than I ...
That, in the opinion of the world, others may increase and I may decrease ...
That others may be chosen and I set aside ...
That others may be praised and I unnoticed ...
That others may be preferred to me in everything...
That others may become holier than I, provided that I may become as holy as I should…
 by Rafael Cardinal Merry del Val (1865-1930),Secretary of State for Pope Saint Pius X

At first, when I tried to pray this prayer, I found it actually unpleasant, even painful to pray. Who wants to be "delivered" from the desire of being loved? I thought. Love is what we are made for. I was confused by this.

But over the course of praying the rosary, and especially the third joyful mystery, the birth of Jesus, my divine Tutor began to show me that the Incarnation, which one could look at as Jesus' great act of humility, is the doorway for intimacy with God. All of mankind has longed to see God's face, and in Christ, we do. It is humility that makes intimacy possible.

Long ago my Protestant pastor taught me that pride is self-protection. We are hurt, and in an effort to never be hurt again, we cover ourselves with a hard sort of shell. It works. The hurt stays farther away from our ability to feel. But it has the unintended consequence of its also blocking our ability to feel, to receive, and to give love. Pride is isolating. We are left only with calculated means of responding to others and measuring their response to us. We dam up love's movement to a trickle, and because we are made for love, we are left unsatisfied on a very deep level.

Well, in the last several weeks, I started praying the litany of humility. At first I took it up as a way of interceding for someone else whom I figured needed it more than I did! (Hardy har har.) But very quickly I realized that was not the Holy Spirit's intention. And I also realized that to pray for humility is to pray for a deeper means of receiving and giving love. It is to pray for the means to be more deeply happy and satisfied.

And this is exactly what God wants for us. 

Lately, every time I do something, or think of something I've done, that leaves me feeling vulnerable, embarrassed, foolish or weak, the Holy Spirit reminds me, "There's enough love here to cover that." The fact that God loves me, the fact that He surrounds me with love through people -- it is enough to cover where I am silly. Love is enough that nothing else matters, and it is to Love I must always go.