Parents of a Prophet

So I have a few more thoughts on the whole prophet v. apostle difference, the change that happened in how God calls those who speak to us (most directly) on His behalf. John the Baptist, the last Prophet Born and Raised, stepped aside to make way for Pope Peter, who was living an ordinary life until one day he wasn't - ever again.

I wanted to talk about what it's like to be the parents - because we are meant to see ourselves in the roles of the sons who are called, but we all came from somewhere. It's, by the way, one of the equalizing things about the prophet to apostle transformation that it's not primarily as mother that women now feature in these stories (which is an additional reason we shouldn't do that Da Vinci Code nonsense to Mary Magdalene, just sayin').

There is a kind of honor and a kind of trouble and pain that comes with raising a prophet from birth. Elizabeth and Zechariah were the last to have it asked of them. Even those saints who were holy from birth confused the hell out of their parents - man, Catherine of Siena did a number on hers at like every turn and they kept trying to convince her that she could just talk to them about it and she never seems to have believed them and done so. I can imagine the problems, the ordinary human problems that creep in even when you're raising a prophet to be someone those things never have power over.

When he's eight and just wants to try, just once, a piece of beef. Like everyone else gets to do. It's not like he wants bacon or anything. It's not like he wants beef and cheese. He just thought, well, maybe a little turkey? And you tell him he is set aside for God. That, no, there's nothing wrong with meat, but that he is called to be set apart from the rest of the world. That meat would spoil the gift he is meant to be to God.

When he's fifteen and you wish he would have a drink, just once come stumbling home drunk if nothing else so he would sleep deeply enough that you could rip that hair shirt off of him. You watch him beating his body because it has no power over him, and you try to remind yourself that that was meant to be a good thing and probably still is.

When he's out in the desert and you're so proud and everybody's talking about him, and you know that soon he will be a great and then soon he will fade away, to make way for your cousin's kid, and you wonder what will happen then. And you know how prophets always die.

When he's in prison because of a small-minded but powerful woman that if he had just lived his life, here at home, he never would have come to her notice and maybe he could have had a pretty woman of his own to give you grandchildren.

Because you raised him such that the things of this world would have no power over him, but they do over you, because you weren't. The things of this world screw you over harder than they ever came for him. You threw your body between him and all of that pain, all of those things that would separate him from God and the divine message that lights him up like a Christmas tree.

Elizabeth and Zechariah were the last to endure that. At least they had warning. At least they had time to prepare. At least they were asked (although not quite given a choice).

Zebedee was the first father of an apostle mentioned - before we're in a position to handle Peter's wife and mother-in-law. These days, when you're the parent of a summoned apostle, you don't get a warning.

You raise a precious baby as best you know how, to be a good and faithful servant of God who goes about his life except on the high holy days. I mean, they go to Jerusalem, would not thinking of missing for anything but, like, a funeral. You teach them your craft, you instill your values in them. You teach them to cook, and you turn the other way when they go out and get drunk as you remember when you were young in your turn.

You take them under your wing, and you watch in slow motion as they become more and more your equals in the family business and know that someday they will take it over - pride and terror balanced equally.

Then one day they just drop it, like it was nothing. They go off and live a life that isn't the values you taught them. It's not immoral - in fact, it's hyper moral at least on it's face, but that just makes it seem crazier. They are renouncing everything that you tried to teach them how to negotiate responsibility. They sound crazy - saying it has no power over them any more - and you can't help feeling that they are rejecting everything about you.

You can't help thinking that they're wrong - that all the things of this world still must have power over them, haven't you seen it a hundred times before? And you are terrified that this renunciation will only mean that all the things of this world will come back and just destroy them. You can't help thinking you spent your life teaching them how to work with all of the things of this world, balance the spirit and the body, and now they are going to screw everything up. And the worst part is, you very well could be right. It's happened again and a again.

They hop out of the boat as you were fishing together, and you mutter about having to bring in the boat yourself, knowing that the problem runs deeper. It's not that your immature kids ran off after a crazy man and will come back chagrined and a little behind. It's that your sons are gone.

More so that John ever was to Elizabeth, even when they cut his head off because of a great striptease.

They changed their lives, in an instant, and it's one you can't understand anymore. Because it's not who you raised them to be. Who is this person that emerged so suddenly? Why did you never see flashes of that soul in the sons you raised? Is that who they were all along? Were you repressing who they were supposed to be?

I guess, I'm just thinking - in a lot of ways, it got harder when we stopped being born prophets and started being called to be apostles. And for our parents too.

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Luke 1:67-79

Merry Christmas!

So, perhaps this is a bit heavy for 2:30 a.m. on Christmas morning, but I had a disproportionate number of ah ha moments today. I'm not going to share them all, but I'm going to start with the last one. I've been thinking a lot about how you know something that happens really is a sign from God - what is God's voice in your ear and what is you wanting justification or, if you have a history of occasional OCD moments and self-dare syndrome, just an impulse.

And I realized that a good way of telling is if it makes me laugh. I've made several people in my life mildly uncomfortable by turning upwards and shouting, "You think you're sooo funny!" In fact, whenever I have a truly big revelation - not just the "I didn't know when I started writing about this where I was going" blog entry realization (that happens almost daily, by the way) - but something finally clicks - it's usually in a way that just makes me laugh. Because of what triggered it or because I suddenly realize the appropriate parallel or because it's just too ironic for words. And I realize it's those moments when He just makes me shake my head and laugh that I am most hopelessly in love with God.

God and I have a very joke-filled relationship - or at least laughter filled one. I don't turn up for every crazy thing that happens to me, just so you know, but sometimes you get the feeling God is knocking you down a peg or trying to get your attention and I just have to smile at His Mischievous Divinity up there trying get His unobservant, distractable attempted handmaiden's attention.

Really unobservant, but I'm not going into that ah ha moment.

One of the respond-with-laughter moments I had today - and it's actually a little hard to explain why it was quite so funny when I try to put it into words, like inside jokes tend to be I suppose - was actually fairly big.

Basically, I realized what my life-changing moment was. And I realized how long ago I had it. And I realized that it was in a completely different form than I would have possibly thought. And that it was something that happened in an instant. If I'm being honest, there was a moment when suddenly my life became clear and it unfolded into something completely different than any of the potential lives I had thought out for myself.

Basically, it was when I realized that I was bisexual. Oh, I had been confused for a long time, and I didn't know that word until college so you can imagine how confusing high school was. But it was an almost embarrassingly short time ago that I was walking home up the hill in Virginia and the penny suddenly dropped.

I went through all the "wait, are you sure?" phases, of course, but one minute I didn't know and I assumed my life was on one path. Then the next I did know, and my life and my faith was about something different. That's starting to make it sound overblown - like your sexuality defines your life. I don't mean that.

What I mean is that I spent a lot my life thinking maybe I would be a nun, then thinking no, I want to be a mother if I can't be a priest. Thinking I'll be an activist pro-life lawyer, only to become a theatre director when I fell in love with Shakespeare and rehearsal rooms. I spent a lot of my life as a very right-wing Democrat.

And I realized that God didn't leave me like Zechariah, struck mute in the temple for refusing to believe the manifest and suddenly gifted truth. I remember (and often remind myself and a little bit Him) once He promised me that He would never leave me - that there would never be a time when I would have to be without Him.

It was probably during a retreat or prayer session of some kind, but I don't remember. I just remember making the request and feeling an unequivocable "Yes," in response.

He kept His promise. Within the first week at Rice, I had completely reversed my opinions on homosexuality. Pretty much the moment I met my friend Guy. Turns out all I needed to change my right-wing mind was an actual face to put with the minority group. Which - I don't love what that says about me, but at least if I catch myself in other upsetting prejudices it should be a fairly easy fix.

I spent four years working that out, in my head, with other members of my faith, over prayer. I stumped a nun in an argument. I matched Bible thumpers verse for verse in debates that didn't always maintain an entirely productive tone but never crossed a line (that I saw - unobservant, me). I made peace with the idea.

God made me ready for the penny to drop. For that I am eternally grateful, because the moment when the penny dropped didn't include a "Does this mean God hates me?" at all. It freed the realization of bisexuality to be a glorious gift - there's a word for what I've felt and been unable to understand for so long. There are other people like me. It's not a confused issue - it's an answer rather than a question.

What I realized was that He gave me an "your cousin Elizabeth is also with child" period for when the penny dropped - so that He wouldn't leave me mute like Zechariah. That's what I found so funny. God never shut me up. Must like the sound of my voice almost as much as I do.

I've thought all kinds of things about what God wants me to do here, on earth. And I remember a period of thinking that I should be a missionary, and, when I was very young, making a deal with/realizing that I was instead called to work in the First World, rather than the Third World. I wanted a different kind of fight.

And I have a feeling - will I ever get it.

I think what God wants me to do with my life is be a liberal, bisexual Christian who is right with God and practices in the Catholic Church. So that a) those who rejected the Church can see in someone who shares their views on social issues maintain a connection with God and b) those who are in the Church can have the same moment I did with Guy - a real face on bisexuality to make it harder to condemn. To make you realize that it's love however you slice it - so how can God not be a part of it? It's not only faceless heathens. It's also good Catholic girls.

I can't tell if I'm blowing up my importance or giving myself a pass to just "be" as my mission from God but - well, it's odd to think you might have already had your "life will be different than you ever imagined now" moment. I imagine Peter was still as confused as heck about what he would do with wife and mother-in-law and James and John sometimes wondered where their next meal would come from (in fact, that's on record). Heck, Peter still sank literally while Jesus was walking on water right in front of him. So I think it's safe to say I haven't gotten everything figured out by a long shot.

But reading Zechariah's burst of words after his long silence, I can't help thinking how I may have many moments like that when I tell people my sexuality in my future, but that my voice was never cut off from God's. I was never silenced, and He has never been silent in my life.

In fact, He and I are regularly cracking up over here.

Friday, December 23, 2011

Luke 1:57-66

Elizabeth never really got a middle ground - for that matter, Zechariah was punished rather harshly for trying to have one in a moment of doubt. Once her public shame is taken away she is almost immediately elevated to the mother of a prophet.

Jesus gets a fairly normal childhood, at least from what we've seen. Curiously confused parents who once left him behind, but they seem baffled to have that kind of behavior from Him, and He returned home and was obedient to them. Although Mary had all the trauma in the reveal of the pregnancy and Elizabeth all the relief, it is Mary who gets to have a normal childhood and adolescence, even a significant portion of the adulthood of her son in relative quiet.

From his birth and unusual naming, John the Baptist is marked as one who must be blessed by God. Which is, of course, in the playbook of the Old Testament prophets. The New Testament prophets, then, are the ones who come out of nowhere. Who heard a call on a beach one day and completely dropped their old lives (wives and mothers-in-law and all, fathers in the very same boat watching it happen) to follow God.

It's not a Marked from Birth thing anymore, once Jesus comes. You live an ordinary life, then one day on the road to Damascus, BOOM. You change. Of course, there are exceptions, but even those who start young have a moment that changes everything. Even the childhood visionaries are changed. They would be the last ones to tell you that since birth they were marked as special and devoted to the Lord.

Because it's not a birthright anymore - it's not a matter of one Chosen People. Being beloved by God is not something you are born into. It's something that Jesus spread to all people. So there's a moment when you choose, and then you are a New Testament prophet.

Of course, I love it because it privileges transformation over purity. Transfiguration over blessed cleanliness. All the cradle Catholics have thought it at one point - the converts are the strongest of us. Whether or not it's true, they are the new kind of prophet. The fishermen who were told abruptly and mysteriously one day as they went about their jobs that they would now be Fishers of Men.

The kind of person who was persecuting Christians until Jesus stopped him on the highway. A moment - when your life changed. You were plugging along, doing as best you could figure, and then suddenly God veers your life in a completely new and unthought-of direction. That is what it means to be a New Testament prophet, an Anno Domini prophet.

John was the last of the Old Testament prophets - the ones you saw coming a mile away. The ones kept pure from birth because they were foretold, because their parents were given explicit instructions in how to raise them, the ones that had a host of arbitrary things that demonstrated their purity and thus the clarity of their connection to God. Those who needed to renounce things to feel God's presence as we are privileged to do everyday at Mass if we choose.

The ones who had to be prepared and groomed, because it was so hard to find God in the muddle. Before the veil was torn. When priesthood ran in families, and everyone around you knew that you were going to be a prophet from birth and probably you knew that before you knew your name. Before belonging to God, before your life being lived in service of God, was a choice you made yourself only after you'd had an ordinary childhood. When your mother could trade you to God in exchange for other children and that was how you ended up as the mouthpiece of God.

And actually, this makes Mary and Elizabeth's meeting a marking of the turning of the tide. Elizabeth, the last of the surprised older mothers raising a divinely appointed child according to a strict diet, and Mary, the first who was told her life plan would change forever and to accept beautifully God's will. In the first chapter of Luke, there they are embracing - the prophets, who are born, and the apostles, who choose.

Now everyone gets a choice, after they've lived life. I imagine it's harder in a lot of ways, but it also means more. When people don't know from birth that God has chosen you, a lowly sinner, the humble to be lifted up, to be His voice to all nations.

Thursday, December 22, 2011
Luke 1:46-56

Ah, the Magnificat.

Honestly, when I was reading it just now - it's the first time it's sounded ridiculous to me. I know it's like THE prayer, besides the Our Father and other such standards, but...what?

Until the end, what is Mary talking about? True, God has often chosen to be His greatest prophets and messengers the lowliest of people, but the hungry are still hungry. Of course, "filled the hungry with good things" isn't "gave them food."

Which makes it the perfect thing to be inspired to say when you see Elizabeth - who was righteous but without the public perception of her honor for so long. She, certainly, was hungry and finally given good things. And, looking again, it's really only the feeding the hungry that isn't accurate given the Old Testament, so I guess I overreacted.

I do that sometimes.

So: "He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty."

We hear that story all the time these days - the noble spirit of the working poor, the inspiring faith of the third world nations, versus the soulless vacuum of the wealthy and endless hypocrisy of first world nations. The poor, the hungry, are closer to the desert, where God speaks more clearly. To keep with our running metaphor this Advent.

Which is a beautiful design of God's, of course, because everybody can be poor. It's kind of the opposite of the Hindu caste system where only those at the very top can really access the divine. You have to work your way through lives and lives of good behavior to be worthy or reaching out to touch God.

No, our God is there - all you have to do is have nothing, either by virtue of unlucky birth or renouncing it. All you have to do to see Him more clearly is surrender the power of all of the things of this world that are always getting in your way. The simplest way, of course, by getting rid of them wholesale. Probably the only certain way as well.

But there is another way to read "the hungry." It's the only Beatitudes issue - "the poor" versus "the poor in spirit." Those who hunger and search for righteousness. But, those who are described as "hungry for righteousness" have a lot in common with those who reject the things of this world. A focus that erases all the distractions, a singularity of purpose that can be almost as frightening as the desperation that often accompanies poverty. And those who are hungry, God speaks to clearly. He fills them with good things. He chooses them.

The lowly. All we have to do is get on our knees.

It's an enormously generous, beautiful system God set up - that He is closest when we are on the bottom. Because everyone can go to the bottom, where not everyone could climb or there wouldn't be a movement touting percentages. So we can all have God dramatically in our lives. We can all choose that. He is everyone's God. He wants everyone to come to Him.

Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Luke 1:39-45

Man, a lot happens in the first chapter of Luke.

Anyway, what I was thinking about was how what Elizabeth does here, recognizing Mary, is even more of an amazing thing than what I always think about when I hear the story of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple. How Simeon waited, for so long, and when what showed up was a baby in the arms of an unremarkable-looking (I'd imagine anyway) couple with a poor-man's offering, he still saw instantly what God had promised him he would see.

Mary is Elizabeth's little cousin. Jesus's hometown has a heck of a time with Him thirty-something years later, and for Elizabeth this could have been ten fold. I'm imagining seeing little Kalila or Michelle one day, and knowing that they would be something as glorious as God made flesh. How strange it would seem. God coming down to earth as something that only happens to other people, probably on mountains. Suddenly in your house, in your family, on your doorstep. And yes, the infant inside you knew instantly, but fetal John the Baptist was never as burdened as his mother with the concerns of the world. Not the least of which is concern for her cousin who could be in serious trouble over this.

But, as easily as if she had been raised without cutting her hair or ever touching liquor, with the instant clarity her son enjoyed when he baptized in the desert, Elizabeth turns to Mary in sheer joy at God's blessing. Because, of course, the blessing of Jesus outweighs any danger to Mary - that's ridiculous to even think. But it's still impressive to me that Elizabeth just drove right past it. Right past all the things of the world that I fear for me would creep in.

All the things that we aren't supposed to let have that power over us. Why we sometimes need to retreat to the desert, to the purity and clarity of the womb, of the fasting in the desert. To remind ourselves that even when we are in the world, it does not have power over us. We're not supposed to give anything in this world the power to distract us from the will of God, the power to make us lose sight even for an instant of the plan and the blessing He has both for us, individually, and as His children.

Even if we are cleaning out homes, dealing with our mute husband, preparing for the birth of a child and worrying about the potential health complications of our late-in-life and long-awaited pregnancy, we are meant to keep our hearts pure and ready to see what God is telling us so clearly. What we would know if we were in the desert or on the mountaintop. To recognize Him when He comes to us, whatever noise is in our way.

Whatever unlikely or overly familiar form He takes.

Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Luke 1:26-38 (again)

So, can I ask - is it just that the fourth week of Advent is usually so abbreviated? Or is the two-days-later gospel repeat a regular feature?

I've been thinking a lot this Advent about how, if we fear greatness, it's because we know that it comes with a price. I don't just mean that "with great power comes great responsibility" because, when it's humans, it also means great failure. With great power comes great destructive capability. And nobody's perfect.

There's a quote by Marianne Willaimson that was used in Akeelah and the Bee (great movie): “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

Where I came from with all of this, is that when you look at what the angel said to Mary, it's pretty glorious stuff - most of which doesn't turn out the way you would expect it to from the way the angel says it (at least not yet): "Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his Kingdom there will be no end."

It wasn't a warning that Jesus would suffer and die. It wasn't even a warning that people around her would react poorly. The thing that had to be told to us, that always has to be told to us, the thing that is scary enough on our own is that we are destined for something glorious. That our responsibility is already great. That is it already beyond imagining. That we have a responsibility not BECAUSE of our power, but that we have a responsibility to take that power. Because our responsibility to our world already existed.

We are frightened of the idea of having power over our world, to change our world, because then we could not let the horrible things in it stand. We are terrified of becoming our best selves because we must be them all the time. Because we feel so little like those people most of the time that we're convinced it would be dying. Dying to ourselves that we might live.

It wasn't a trick - that Gabriel told Mary only the glorious outcome of the Incarnation. We know, deep down in our bones, what always comes of something glorious. It's one of the times you can see most clearly the life you left behind with the choice to follow God. But then, we make ten thousand choices every day, and each one drops behind us another Life Not Lived.

We are afraid to take ownership of those choices. We are afraid to follow the path that God has laid out for us - the glorious path, the powerful path. The path that involves taking up the responsibility we already have but like to pretend we don't have.

Like, in a story so popular this time of year, when Marley tried to explain to Scrooge that "mankind was my business!" Whatever job Scrooge and Marley chose, whatever they chose to care about and do with their lives, they already had great responsibility to their fellow man. Taking up the call is just fulfilling that responsibility - not acquiring it.

Mary was the humble servant of God, and she was called to be the Queen of Heaven. What we see in her beautifully simple acceptance is not only acceptance of the hardships that come along but a humble acceptance of her own God-given power. Her own power and responsibility to use the Grace she was full of.

The same thing we have to do.

Monday, December 19, 2011
Luke 1:5-25

"That isn't your honor, Costis. That's the public perception of your honor. It has nothing to do with anything important, except perhaps for manipulating fools who mistake honor for its bright, shiny trappings. You can always change the perception of fools." - The King of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner

I read that today, and it stuck in my mind when I read a long passage bracketed with two things that should be opposing. Zechariah (sorry for yesterday's spelling of this name) and Elizabeth had led upright, faithful lives - then at the end Elizabeth thanks God for finally taking away her shame before others.

It makes me think of a moment in The Chronicles of Narnia for an intentionally parallel discussion. In Prince Caspian, the mouse cadet Reepicheep spends a page or so trying to explain to Aslan why it's important for his tail to be restored after the battle because it shames him to be standing without it. It shames him - standing before Aslan, the Son of God, having just been restored to life by the greatest prophet of his world after fighting nobly for his country in a battle that was eventually won by divine intervention - he thinks any scar can take away his honor. He refuses to accept Aslan's word that his honor is just fine.

Elizabeth and Zechariah's honor was perfectly fine, thank you very much. They were faithful, Zechariah was a priest, Elizabeth was a good enough friend to Mary that she knew she could come there for help - but they had no child. And so they had shame. In the public eye, they must be some kind of sinners. They must have failed God in some way to be denied an heir.

Why do we do this? And I don't even mean why we shame people - we do that because we forget we can all be good and glorious without other people having to be low. We do it because we are human and we like hierarchies. We do it because we have rules and things that we think are important enough to be worth using shame as a tactic.

What I mean is - why do we let there be one thing that defines our goodness in the eyes of God and the world? Why do we, in ourselves, mistake honor for its bright, shiny trappings? Something as silly as our tails or as out of our control (at some point, at least) as our reproductive capability? It's particularly silly when it's those things. I don't think that Elizabeth was thanking God, when she said, "So has the Lord done for me at a time when he sees fit to take away my disgrace before others" just for that baby she's always wanted. In fact, this is a kind of glorious acceptance of the fact that her disgrace was put by God to use. And as she is God's servant, He used her temporary disgrace to make His Grace clearer in her life.

And the public perception part of that is fair. We live in the world and God uses all the tools He can through us - but we are not of the world, so we don't have to let it affect our personal sense of our honor. Elizabeth and Zechariah knew that they were virtuous in the eyes of God. I'm sure it was hard all of those years, but that doesn't change the essential truth. When we give other things - especially when we give arbitrary or singular things - the right to define the kind of person we are in our own eyes and the eyes of God, then we've lost our way. We've forgotten that we are called to think as God does and not as human beings do.

We are in the world, so we have to deal with all the people who want the bright, shiny trappings, but we are not of the world, so there's no reason to let it affect our own personal sense of our worth before God. Our own personal honor. What is at stake when we don't meet the world's criteria for a good person is not our honor - it is the public perception of our honor. And we can live without that, if God so calls us to do, for a time or for all time. Because we know the truth of our relationship with God.

Putting Away the Groceries

Sunday, December 18, 2011
Luke 1:26-38

Of all things today, I find myself thinking about a friend of mine's thesis work on presentations of pregnancy. Perhaps it's because I tried to remember if we have two times during the year that we read this gospel and talk about this event (March 25th is the other one), and then I thought about how odd it is. One week, we hear that Jesus is going to be born, the next week (in some years the next day) He is being born. We skip over the pregnancy part - the way so many plays, television shows, and (mostly) movies do out of what occasionally seems like desperation to avoid having to portray pregnant women (which they often do poorly).

Then again, we do get bits of Mary's pregnancy - we hear about Elizabeth and Joseph's dream. But I feel like we should talk about the pregnancy and the aftermath of this announcement more often than we do. Because Mary is our blueprint. Several times in this story, we are told of her just utter confusion. And while it is our blueprint of what our attitude to such calls should be, "Behold I am the handmaiden of the Lord, May it be done to me according to your word" is also kind of -- well, what else do you say to that?

We've all been in those situations. What do you say to that?

If an angel jumped down to Earth and specifically asked us for something, well, what do you say to that? Yes, Moses tried to argue God as the Burning Bush out of choosing Him and Zaccariah refused to believe it was really happening - but if the angel prefaces the announcement by counteracting any self-deprecation on your part by pointing out you are full of God's grace so can't say you are unfit in His eyes and makes sure to point out that nothing is impossible to God, see convenient evidence, well, what is left?

We don't talk about the moment you realize that your marriage into the House of David is over. That you will have to tell your mother. That you don't even have anyone you can falsely blame the pregnancy on. That everyone will start a gossipy witch hunt to figure out who deflowered the virginal Mary. The moment you realize that the angel also gave you an indication of the probably one single person who will believe you as an act of kindness. The moment you realize that a divorce in disgrace followed by single parenthood is the probable new direction of your life and that you have no idea how God could have meant this to work out any better or if He did.

The moment you realize that where you are is no longer safe. How Mary turned in desperation to someone who would believe her first. To bolster her confidence. How she was rewarded with Elizabeth and Fetus John the Baptist's faith, how beautifully the Magnificat came from her in that moment, but how it only made it more certain that she would have to return and tell Joseph.

We don't like this part of the story. We do it to the fairy tale heroes all the time - all of those prophets returning to their hometowns strange and unwelcome. The real ending of the Shire portion of The Lord of the Rings. How to act when your life has changed. What you even do when something that big happens.

I remember one movie of Jesus's life beginning with Mary coming in the door laden with parcels presumably from the market and seeing the angel and dropping everything and now I wonder: did you ever pick it up? When the angel disappears and the dust clears, when your mind unmercifully still knows that it was all real and you must now do the divine mission in the real world - what do you do? Pick up your groceries and put them away or just head straight for Elizabeth's and the first person you can think of who won't laugh in your face?

We build our little lives up around what we think they will be. And Mary is our blueprint for when God dramatically reorders what we thought we were meant to do. We have to be willing to let them break, our little lives we've built up. That's what He meant by leaving father and brother and wives. Be willing to hurt Joseph to say yes to God. Not just take disgrace on yourself, but know that others will suffer for it. That takes a greater act of faith once the angel has returned to heaven.

We still haven't figured out quite how to do this part of the story, and I wish we knew more of Mary's.

Saturday, December 17, 2011
Matthew 1:1-17

So there are two genealogies given in the gospels - which makes sense if one is for Jospeh and one for Mary. This is the Joseph one and that's always been kind of an odd thing to think about. Of course, studying the Renaissance gives you an appreciation of how lineage used to work before the days of paternity tests when inheritance was everything. One of the few things that worked in a wife's favor was that any kid she had after marriage was legitimate and indisputably her husband's responsibility whether he was the spitting image of the mailman (or king) or not. Even if everyone knew it was Henry the 8th's kid.

So this connected up in my head with what an old religion teacher said about the geneaology: all the additions to the Jewish line (Ruth, for example), all the strays the Patriarchs brought home, are in Jesus's family. And that works great for Jospeh's line (although there's overlap with Mary's far enough back). Joseph gets included. Jesus was inclusive. In fact, since we've been talking about John the Baptist all week, let's link things up to Jesus's Baptism when He was determined that none of the formal ceremonies would be left out. Jesus came down to be a formal part of our world - so that He could be a full part of it and redeem all of it.

And make the point that everyone else gets to be a part of it. Jospeh's line was important to the world at large despite the fact that he wasn't actually involved in Jesus's conception - but we make the point that he's still important. Jesus is inclusive. He uses the world's forms and functions to make His point wherever possible.

We are ALL part of the family of God, the Body of Christ.

Friday, December 16, 2011
John 5:33-36

I'm not finding as easy access to this one as many in this past Advent season. I'm reminded of Father Shane yesterday saying that because it was only my mom, Kelly, and me sitting there, he could just say the crazy things he had thought of for his homily. I am lucky enough for that to always be true. My audience is small, and it likes enough of what I've written to give me a pass on lackluster or wilder entries.

And I've set the precedent often enough of asking questions when I have no idea what's up with the gospel. I don't know what Jesus could mean by "I do not accept testimony from human beings" except to set Himself apart from John. His first move in this gospel of setting Himself up as something fundamentally different from John, the Last Prophet of the Old Testament. Jesus wasn't a prophet come down to witness to us - He was a beloved Son of God sent to negotiate a new relationship with mankind. To wipe away all that was troubled in our world since Eden and reforge the connection we lost.

We'd been getting by on prophets - on occasional shows of God's presence like deliverance from oppression or punishment for excesses to keep us from getting too far off track. We'd be satisfied with the occasional soaking wet altar bursting into flames miraculously or great one among us ascending into heaven in a fiery chariot. For awhile we were content to bask in their lights - and the last to let us bask in the light was John.

We didn't even know that it was night.

The Son was rising, and of course we were blinded - the only thing we had known was the lantern like the ten (or whatever the number is) women waiting for the bridegroom. We clustered around bits of light - and some of us still find that more comfortable than the blazing daylight and tuck themselves away inside. But now we can step outside and the sunshine is all around us.

We have the literal Presence of God available daily. Every day, the Son rises. All those who were content to bask in the light of the likes of John longed to see this day. To see the Son rise. The Break of Day.

We can dare to stand in the light. And we are more responsible for the world around us, because suddenly we can see it clearly. It isn't a precarious candle that shows us God's light in our lives now. Whatever happens to the ending of the world, God is truly Present in our lives, in our world, in our hearts. It will never be night like that again. All the darkness is only the Light being hidden or rejected. It is always there. He is always there.

Thursday, December 15, 2011
Luke 7:24-30

So after attending 11:15 Mass today, I remember having some very interesting thoughts about the gospel. I really should have written this post before dental surgery and then accompanying painkillers.

Once John's followers were out of earshot, Jesus confirmed a different identity: John's. To John, Jesus said that he must remember the clarity he felt in the desert even in the prison. To believe the evidence of his eyes if the clarity of spiritual confirmation wasn't coming to him anymore.

Lest there be confusion, I suppose. Or perhaps because Jesus wanted to affirm John but knew that he needed to be reminded that he already knew who he was, Jesus waited until his messengers had gone to explain exactly who John is. And, in the unspoken running theme of this Advent of reminding me of popular movie and TV show tropes, I can't help think of the wise-ish man proclaiming after the Hero has gone, "That's not a priest, that's a prophet" or "That's not a ranger, that's a hero" or something to that effect. Presumably because that kind of information would just go to the hero's head/he already knew that, thank you very much.

Jesus turns back to His followers - what was it that attracted you to John? Because it was nothing of the worldly about him. He lived way out in the desert, so he was hardly on your way to yoga. You didn't go traveling around the world to find yourself by seeing other cultures and awesome architectural sights - or driving semi-aimlessly across the country. You sent to see a prophet, a voice crying out in the wilderness, because you were thirsting for God. You were thirsting for a connection to God.

And John the Baptist paved the way for him. He gave you a new chance and tools to be better - harsh lesson, but not as far reaching as those to come when Jesus hit the scene. You were starving for God's presence in your life - proof that God cares enough to send us someone who can tell us how to know Him better.

But Jesus came among us. Instead of holding court in the desert, He went out among those who couldn't or wouldn't travel to see a holy man. Those who would not make a sacred pilgrimage. His message was for all. And He purified us through His own suffering and death.

The desert is important, as my last few blog entries have been saying, but God reaches out continually even to those who would never wander out into the middle of nowhere to find a wiseman to explain the basicis of God's love to us. Jesus cam down so that we could get that just around the corner at our local church*. Daily if we so choose.

*Seriously, Staunton - is it a city ordinance that there has to be a church on every street corner? How do you fill them all?

All the voices crying out in the wilderness have been replaced by an eternally and sometimes exhaustively everpresent God in our lives - the teachings of Jesus, the influence of the Holy Spirit, the glory of God the Father all around us. Now He is not only in the clarity of the wilderness - be it thunderous lighting or roaring flames or gentle wind. He is everywhere; He is reaching to us from everything around us; He is in every step we take.

The lowest in the Kingdom of God built on that kind of relationship with God is more privileged and blessed that even John the Baptist- the ultimate (in both the sense of "final" and "most epic" although that one I am too drugged up to debate) prophet who required the clarity of the desert for closeness to God.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Luke 7: 18b-23

It's the rare extremely reassuring gospel today. Most of them are challenging, provoking. Even the ones that talk about God as our Shepherd, who knows us all and loves us all reminds us that we must trust, and that all other creatures are His as well. There's a challenge to that.

But here we see even John the Baptist - recognize Jesus instantly in the womb and the moment He came up to him to be baptized John the Baptist - have a moment of doubt. Of course, at this point he had been put in prison, which is presumably why it was his followers who came to ask for clarification. Even for John the Baptist - John the Baptist! - it was hard to leave the clarity of the hardships in the desert for the imposed hardships of prison. Not the chosen renunciations of sacrifice and an austere life but the punishments of the world for violating their ways.

Even John the Baptist had a moment of doubt - is it You after all? Is the boy I grew up alongside really the One? And if so, why has He not freed me? Why am I still in chains? If the Savior has come, why still do we suffer?

John knew about Jesus. He knew this was a different kind of Savior than the one his people had been expecting - someone to overthrow Rome - but still, he had a moment to wonder. Did he cede his position warning and baptizing in preparation too soon?

The certainty of the desert, like the certainty of the womb, had left him. In both states, there was a kind of purity of his state - and he was ripped from it to be imprisoned and soon to be killed because Herod's wife's daughter danced sexily and took orders from her mother. Purity can makes things so easy to see, so easy to understand. It is important - and that's why it's sacrifice is too beautiful to waste - because it brings a clarity to your relationship with God.

But you can't rely on it alone. You have to know, in the dark, dank prison in which you have been thrown, as you are executed because of court-gossip nonsense, the same thing you knew in the desert. You have to have faith and trust even there. We all probably have this moment of doubt - because live too long in the desert and the arresting officers are sure to come eventually. The world does not take kindly to being renounced.

The only answer Jesus gave was the evidence. And as a lawyer's kid I kind of love that. It would have been so easy to say, as Jesus did to so many others, Yes. Perhaps an added, "Chill. Keep the faith, dude." But when we cannot know, in the purity of our hearts in uncluttered and uncorrupted environments for listening to God, we still have the evidence of our eyes if we have the wit to see it. We can still see the world around us. We can still judge the tree by its fruit (a recent parable not far behind this gospel). We can still look at the world and see God's hand in it, even when we are too distressed to feel His presence with certainty.

It feels less good and certain and reliable - but it is just as real. And we are called to it just the same.

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Matthew 21:28-32

On the car drive home from the Houston airport (I'm back in Texas! WOO!) last night, my mom, Erin, and I discussed the new Mass translation. It was actually a little bizarre, because St. John's has been so gung-ho about the whole thing, and Dan's so elated to actually be better at saying the Mass parts than me, and on reflection I like what the changes I notice so far signify and clarify - what I'm saying is that I haven't really been exposed to the opposition to the change before.

It was an interestingly balanced car, at least officially. I was straightforwardly pro, Erin was unabashedly against, and Mom claimed to waffle back and forth (although she sided with me more often as the discussion progressed). Erin's main point as I understood it was that this attention to the translation represented what church shouldn't be about - focused on everybody saying exactly the right words.

Today's gospel reading certainly seems to back her up. After all, isn't Catholicism all about works being additionally necessary to please God and be saved? Another anecdote with Erin is when she worked at a summer camp that was Protestant, she said she was asked to take the kids through an exercise with three options pictured:

We are saved by:

God God + Works Works

Erin said that to her, as a born and bred Catholic, the obvious, automatic answer was "God + Works" while the obvious, automatic, and correct-according-to-the-camp answer was "God."

I remember another engrossed discussion when I was little about whether you had to be a Christian to get into heaven - which faithful readers of my blog may be surprised to learn I was on the "yes you have to be a Christian" side of, once upon a time. Not so much anymore.

So maybe the focus on words instead of action is a symptom of a problem in the church to rely overly on ceremony. Mom and I countered a lot yesterday with the idea that words are important - which I sincerely believe as only a Shakespearean scholar can. But I was thinking today - since the Church has such a...troubled...history, why did Jesus make them the conduit for His presence here on earth?

I have said several times since this past summer that I often wish I didn't believe so firmly in the Catholic Church specifically at times. Because then I could just change my denomination and go be a priest. I would be good at it, and sometimes it's what I want so badly it brings tears to my eyes (like right now, actually). But I believe in the Sacrament of the Eucharist. I believe in transubstantiation. I believe in the real presence of God - in the bread, which I receive in my body. Every day if I so choose (except in Virginia where Monday is somehow never on the daily mass schedules of any church website I look at - not that I ever go to daily mass anymore).

I have great cause to question the wisdom of the Church leaders, past and present. So I asked, Why did you promise that what they bind on earth shall be bound in heaven and what they unbind on earth shall be unbound in heaven? Why is it only through the Catholic Church that I can experience the true presence of Jesus in the Eucharist? The answer came immediately, as it sometimes does when I finally pose the right question. Because we need spiritual guides. And only by giving spiritual guides the direct connection to Grace can God give us good reason not to stray too far with too little thought from the source of His presence on earth. Not without a cracking good reason.

We are meant to be a united community - and all too quickly communities devoted to faith shatter over doctrine. But whatever nonsense happens, the Eucharist is meant to bring us back together. Because whatever happens, however far astray we wonder, we return to the Church for the Real Presence. Because however backward the Church can seem, that is the place where God is reaching down to touch earth - so it is worth changing from the inside. It is to be respected and worked with. Even Martin Luther only wanted to provoke conversation about change, originally. They say.

So yes, it should matter more that we go to work in the vineyard than that we promise we will. Like when Erin, Daniel, and I were working the C.A.S.A. party. Erin and I said we would help and did, Daniel said he wouldn't but then immediately came when we called him in. We all served today, all helped our mother. And that means more than whether we said we would.

Don't get me wrong - it caused a lot of problems and emotions that he hedged, because words do matter. But in a way, I know more now that Daniel can be counted on to come when he knows he's really needed.

Erin's right - our actions should matter more, and we should be focused on that. Jesus tried to explain such things to us, and we keep forgetting or ignoring or getting them wrong. But the grace to find ways to change things comes from the Eucharist most of all - and it's right where we should go to change things. In the Church.

Monday, December 12, 2011

Luke 1:26-38

I'm home! Back in Texas!

I remember thinking about this gospel earlier today, and I had an entirely different thought about it that I now can't remember. But what I'm thinking about with this story actually fits nicely with the growing theme of this Advent season - probably ALL the Advent seasons, come to that. The call.

If nothing else, the utter strangeness of it. Because Mary had an idea of how her life would go. She had an honorable life where she felt she would do good and serve God. And He had other plans for her. Plans that, for the moment, looked like they would completely preclude any part of the life she had planned.

There's a joke: life is what happens when you were busy making other plans. Or take: Man plans; God laughs.

But how many of us really have that abrupt a call? Or do we all?

The first thing that Mary registers is confusion - which: justified. A being of spirit and light appears before you - and your first thought isn't angel or some holy purpose, or the opposite to suspect a devil or a ghost. It's confusion. It's wondering if your friends are playing a prank. It's looking for some kind of worldly explanation.

And the thing about the call is that there isn't one. And you knew the moment you felt it. You know, when you look on an angel, that it is an angel. A hundred thoughts run through your head because you are in denial of what you know. Because to know what you know would change your life forever.

We know - Father Rolo said. We know we are called to greatness - to miracles. We know we are called to completely upend our lives at a moment's notice.

That's why we are afraid to admit we know. That's why even the most blessed among us had a moment of confusion.

Because we work hard at being the best we know how. We work at serving God, at finding His path for us through our hands and our hearts and our minds plugging steadily away. And then He appears with a flash of light, an inspiration, or a small but insistent voice in our hearts - and it's all over. The lives we had planned - they weren't for us.

And His plan is better - but damn, that's gotta be a hard moment. When the most blessed among our species said, "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word." The same woman who would later instruct us in turn, "Do whatever He tells you." Even if it means filling our fine wine barrels with water. The second vintage will outshine the first.

May we all be so blessed to answer so well.

Pink Candle Sunday!

Sunday, December 11, 2011

John 1:6-8, 19-28

Halfway Out of the Dark

I love pink candle Sunday! So much so I forgot myself and wore my plane outfit to Mass today because it's pink. Oh well, life goes on.

As Father Rolo pointed out, the third candle on the Advent wreath is pink, which we light in remembrance that we are halfway through the season - halfway through the wait and preparation.

It reminds me of an introduction to a Christmas novel (okay, Christmas-ish novel, it's a Discworld novel) that says that there is always, in every religion, a mid-winter celebration. That it's meant many things throughout the religions, but there's a moment when we turn to each other and congratulate each other on making it halfway through the dark.

Which doesn't fully work with Christmas considering it's a) just really starting to warm up, winter, b) it's much more straight joy to me, and c) it's more like realizing that the darkness has no power over us anymore, because the light came into our hearts.

But I can't shake the loveliness of the idea. Here we are, halfway through preparations, halfway to the celebration of the coming of the light, and we dress up the priests and advent candles in pink to congratulate ourselves. (Father Rolo actually did NOT wear pink.) Halfway through the preparations. Halfway through the wait.

We get a lot of rhetoric in Advent about how we should constantly be busy. With all the Christmas specials blaring that we should keep Christmas in our hearts all year around, I can't help thinking that it's Advent we're forgetting. But then I think: perhaps I'm just trying to make, figuratively, John the Baptist the Messiah. See, thought I'd forgotten the gospel, didn't ya? I always get around to it!

I said yesterday that Elijah has to come first. And I think that's true. Advent has to come first. The discipline and the renunciation of worldly things has to come before we go out and use them to do the best good we know how. We have to remember the strictness of our imperative, the necessity of our call, in order to keep it close in our hearts as we dance in the joy of the myriad proofs of God's love.

But One is coming, for whom even John is not worthy to tie His sandals. A time is coming that makes the work of Advent as to nothing. Our baptism with water will be renewed with fire and the Holy Spirit. And we are halfway there.

We are halfway out of the dark.

The whole world is about to change. That is the joy of Pink Candle Sunday - the joy both of what to come and of what we are gaining in the desert. The joy of now, and the promise of more to come.

Perhaps the best lives are lived on Pink Candle Sunday. Perhaps all the great saints resided there. You might think it would have been Christmas or Easter or Good Friday - but I wonder if it's Pink Candle Sunday that best describes the good life lived on earth. Or perhaps only the saints who took Holy Orders.

The religious life is wedding the joy of the desert to the joy of the promise of what's to come. The religious life is Pink Candle Sunday. The spiritual joy, pure and uncomplicated by all the other trappings of Christmas. And those who choose to build families live in Christmas. The difference between John in the desert and Jesus eating and drinking with tax collectors.

But whether we choose to make it our life or not, we all need the moment to remember: we are halfway out of the dark. The Light is coming.

We must be ready.

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Matt 17:9a, 10-13

I looked up the bit of this gospel that was edited out - not censored, I imagine it was for clarity. Because this is the conversation that Jesus had with Peter, James, and John on the way down from the Transfiguration mountain (or The Other Mountain, as referred to in this blog). So what do they want to know upon seeing the wondrous sight of Jesus's divinity alongside the two greatest patriarchs?

Why do the Scriptures say that Elijah must come first?

What Jesus says is actually not an answer to their question, I notice. What He says is that Elijah has already come but must suffer as the Son of Man must suffer. At this point in the gospel, that's becoming an increasingly relevant forewarning. Elijah will come and restore all things.

Considering the context in which I talked about John the Baptist's way and Jesus's way yesterday, I wonder about the order - Elijah must come first. Why must Elijah come first? Why did we need to start with John the Baptist?

After all, many believed and followed him but many didn't. For some reason, today I am resisting the idea of John the Baptist as a kind of primer - the first coat over the Jewish nation to prepare them for Jesus's...over-layer...man, this metaphor got away from me. No wonder I'm resisting it.

But if you think about their different approaches - John lived in the desert, he renounced the world. He got himself a clean slate - a place and even a whole life removed from the nonsense and noise and confusion of living in the world. And there came the clarity to spot Jesus at once - to spot the Son of God in the cousin he's known all of his life, just as he did in the womb before the world came to cloud our spirits.

We are meant to go out into the world, yes, but we have to have a place to start from. We have to have a desert we have been through, that we can return to to get our bearings. If we are going to eat and drink with sinners, then we have to have figured things out in the desert. We have to be able to separate the truly important things from the noise.

So Elijah has to come first. Before we can move in the world finding ways to help those around us and work toward the Kingdom of God, we have to go to the desert and get our bearings. Remind ourselves, over and over again, that the things of this world are transient and unimportant. That we are called to more important concerns. That we do not need all the nonsense and noise.

Bonus entry!

Okay, so I think I've got it. My whole creeped-out-by-the-focus-on-virginity-but-not-wanting-to-just-dismiss-it thing.

I went back over my "Katherine" means "purity" entry, where I talked about the Transfiguration, and how special it is because we see Jesus in His full glory before death touched Him. Before He became permanently changed by death. We saw the full glory of His purity so that we could understand the true beauty of the sacrifice of it. The purity is important, we were shown, which makes the loss of it more beautiful. It wouldn't be a gift if it weren't a loss. It wouldn't be beautiful and meaningful and vital if losing the purity weren't something precious. But it's also a story about how the loss of purity was the most beautiful act in all of creation (and beyond? what is the policy on beyond creation?).

So: virginity is important. It's not the be-all end-all that people want to make it, but the reason we're not supposed to throw it away with both hands is that it's supposed to mean something when we lose it. It's supposed to be a loss, that does matter, in order to make marital sex a more beautiful gift, a more beautiful offering to the spouse. To make the loss of purity as beautiful as the purity was in itself.

Giving up, renouncing, the solitary, personal, and fully internal connection to God in order to have a joint, shared, and mutually expressed connection to God alongside your spouse.

Okay, I can go with that.

Friday, December 9, 2011

Matthew 11:16-19

Wisdom is vindicated by her works.

So, today's gospel was Jesus telling us a story about the same kind of conundrum I have been having. If you lock yourself away to keep yourself pure, everyone says that bad and crazy. If you go and live and eat and drink and be among people, then you can't possibly be sincere in your faith.

And the way to cut through all of that crap - wisdom is vindicated by her works. Look past it. Ignore it. You see good in what you do. You know. You know when someone is a good person by their works. You don't have to sift through a laundry list of their personal habits, of their belief system, for their Views. If they do good to those around them, you know.

You know a tree by its fruit. Wisdom is vindicated by her works.

Jesus talks about children in a marketplace who wouldn't dance for the wild flute music and wouldn't mourn in a dirge. Who wouldn't be a part of their communities, who wouldn't respond in the natural human ways of living your life or acknowledge the pain of death. Who wouldn't slow down and deal with their emotions. People who couldn't stand joy or sorrow.

I read in a book today: you know a true call to a vocation because it always contains a renunciation. A call to religious life is a renunciation of a married life, as a married life is a renunciation of a holy singleness. A call to a mission is a renunciation of an ordinary life, and a call to a more ordinary life is a renunciation of a singular purpose.

But I wonder if you do have to choose. Do you have to decide if you will be John the Baptist fasting in the desert or Jesus eating with the sinners? Is that even a proper comparison? Do you have to renounce the ways of the flesh to live a life fully for the spirit or renounce the blessed but lonely path of a wholly spiritual life to live in the world around you?

Or are we, once again, being asked to find a way to be both? In the world but not of the world?

And because I'm a genu-ine Shakespeare scholar, I wander if Claudius's tactless speech is a kind of parody of this, "With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage."

Are we supposed to hold to both or indulge both in their time? Does there come a point where we have to choose?

Both can be good, wisdom is vindicated by her works. So perhaps all this wondering is useless. After all, if wisdom is vindicated by her works, that's the thing to concentrate on. See where they lead. After all, that's the bit we know.

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Feast of the Immaculate Conception

I'm going to make a muddle of this - I can already tell. Because all I can think about this evening is how angry the Cult of Virginity makes me. How angry I am about St. Jerome and his doctrine that Status of Hymen determines which room a woman gets to be in once she reaches heaven (third closest "room" to God: married women without children, second closest: mothers, first: virgins - apparently no exceptions). How angry it makes me that we place such a high priority on this. How angry I am that I can't seem to find a Reason This is Wrong in all of the multiplicity of writings about sexuality - at least, one that doesn't make me want to punch something.

Don't get me wrong - I've been thinking about it for quite awhile and come up with a few thoughts of my own. I also hate the opposite impulse that says that sex and bodies don't matter the way that heart, mind and intention matter because that can turn out just as gross as the social control of women (and it is mostly about women's "purity") often becomes. It's a nasty attempt to give ourselves a pass on our actions because we aren't - deep down in our hearts - "bad people."

Because in our culture's recent attempts to dethrone Beauty as the supreme virtue, we have no affirmed all bodies' inherent worth but turned worth away from bodies to an inner heart and mind - which isn't bad except that it leads to the thought that therefore bodies don't matter (when as Catholics we know just how much they do) and from there the next step is that our actions don't matter the way that our intentions do - which is valid in a measure of your character but doesn't discount the actual harm you have done. So only from a self-centered point of view is the whole intentions/consequences distinction true.

Then you get into the current thing a lot of public figures (and private, I imagine, I can think of one or two in particular that I know) of excusing even bad intentions because you are, in general, a good person. And the nebulous phrase "in general" is chronically in denial of the fact that our character is not composed of our intellectual View or our Moral Judgments of Others and Situations (that don't involve us) but our character is composed of thousands of small, moment to moment actions and interactions with other people.

I don't usually like "slippery slope" arguments, but I have been thinking a lot about the impulses behind the positions people espouse and I can't help linking "Sexuality isn't a big deal" with "What we do doesn't matter, who we are matters!" The same way I identify "It is sinful to have sex. Just don't do it." with "Then you will be a good person, because you will operating within a controlled system - and this makes you a good person. Conform."

So, I'm basically struggling with this: if both of these opposing impulses have nastiness under their skin, which has beauty at its core and how do I get through to it? Where do I find a proper explanation of what God does not like about non-marital sexuality (within an otherwise healthy relationship, assuming no other objection)?

And this is really complicating my relationship with the Virgin Mary. Because I do realize that the virgin/mother thing is Very Different than the virgin/whore thing that our culture seems to be trying to achieve - but, well, why was there a massive protest against the movie Dogma (not because it was insulting to religion on a host of levels not least of all angels, prophets and I think even God Herself saying Yay Abortion at some point) because it suggested that after Jesus was born, Mary and Joseph might have had a normal married sex life? Why did my religion teacher leap to explain that "Jesus's brothers" would have just meant "cousins, etc." in that translation.

If there's one thing to learn from the Immaculate Conception it's the importance of bodies in the scheme of our service to God and overall health. That our souls don't rest safely somewhere inside the body (or are trapped in a temporary prison of the body if you take the negative view) but are larger things that include the body and are therefore influenced by it. Because Mary was a beautiful soul, but in order to carry Jesus, her body had to be free of original sin. In order to be impregnated by the Holy Spirit, her body had to be fully open to an entirely spiritual conception process.

But is that precisely why it seems so threatening that Mary - who was born without sin - could, after the Incarnation, the miracle for which she was born, have a healthy sex life with her lawful husband? Why can't we conceive of a without-sin body that is not also eternally without-sex? It's not like Mary would have been unchaste if she had sex with Joseph. The Bible said it didn't happen until after the birth (because otherwise that rather throws a wrench in things). But Joseph was a stand-up guy who seems to genuine love Mary and Jesus and be okay with the not-the-baby-daddy thing. Mary was going to marry Joseph before God told her He had new plans. In fact, "How can this be, since I do not know man?" might have been her way of asking if Joseph was going to be the father of a more "adopted" Son of God. If this was more a Hannah "dedicating her firstborn son to the service of God" than a literal Son of God situation.

I remember another religion teacher making a point of saying, "So, they were engaged, but they had already agreed that even when they were married they weren't going to...[insert awkward euphemism]." I haven't found any Biblical reference to this. If it really came from somewhere, I will back WAY off this point. I'm not even saying I refuse to believe this was the situation - what I'm wondering is WHY we feel the need to do this. Why it is so important for us to say, "NO, Mary NEVER EVER had sex, okay?"

Is it because we have attached so much importance to the sanctity of her body - her immaculately conceived body, which I once heard referred to (love it!) as the first monstrance - that we can't reconcile even holy matrimony sex with the image of her body? Really?

I can't shake the idea that the answer to my dilemma lies here somewhere if I could find it. Because the Immaculate Conception teaches us nothing so much as that our bodies are important - that we are responsible for them and that taking care of them and take care what they do is vitally important to how close to God we can be. But, well, Mary was a mother and a wife. She lived. She was active. She travelled alone - while pregnant! - and she served others and she told Jesus to stop drinking with His friends and start His public ministry here at the wedding to save everyone embarrassment and she stood at the foot of the cross as her Son died. She kept herself pure without locking herself away.

And that's what I've always hated about the idea of purity, I suppose (I feel like I should link to the entry I wrote about how much I've always disliked that "Katherine" means "purity") - the idea that you have to lock something that precious away. That it's a virtue you can't actively seek - that you can only maintain or lose. And trying to be too precious with your "innocence" or your "purity" can keep you from doing a lot of good. From living.

Shutting yourself away so the world can't touch you - can't take away your purity.

We are meant to be in the world but not of the world. We are meant to live. And we are still meant to be pure of heart and mind and body. Because that does matter in how close we can be to God.

Perhaps that's why it's so hard. It's supposed to be. And it's just much too easy a way out of a very important question to say: as long as you are a virgin, as long as you haven't done THIS particular thing, you can live but still stay "pure" and "untouched by the world."

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Matthew 11:28-30

My burden is easy, my yoke is so light.

So this made me think of the entry I wrote just before Advent started up again. At the end I asked: if you go out into the world with a sincere desire and willingly put in the effort to serve God, is it impossible not to come up with good returns? It's a bit more elegantly put in there than here, but you get the idea.

It flies in the face of the saying - the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And, well, maybe it is if it's good intentions that you didn't act on with care and love for your fellow man.

But maybe the main reason that God is always trying to tell us, all but beg us, to follow His path, to think not as the world thinks but as He does, to love Him and our fellow man through Him (you know, for those people we would have a lot of trouble loving in themselves), because that's the only way we'd make it. That's the only way we'll keep from breaking ourselves into pieces, damaging our souls beyond repair.

I think of how many stories of someone horrified at the damage they have unwittingly caused, the stories of people who destroyed themselves with their selfish loves or selfish desires for money/success/etc. Only by thinking of others do we keep from destroying others and in the process ourselves.

Perhaps that's what He means by His burden being light. We don't have the weight of our inevitable failure on our heads. We follow God, we are led by Him. We see not as the world sees but as God sees. We put our fellow man first.

And in doing so, we keep ourselves from so much pain.

He really must love us.

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Matthew 18:12-14

Honestly, I got nothin' today. I've been trying to write something, and I got nothin'. Not even a g for the end of nothin'.

I'm going to try this one again tomorrow morning.

--

Tomorrow Morning:

--

So, I've been thinking about the other 99 sheep. How did they get home? Of course, the simple answer is: together.

For all this was belated, I think it's still going to be pretty simple and brief, but, well, there's a beautiful idea here: that we are responsible for getting each other safely home - so that God can be searching for the lost and forsaken. We who have been blessed with faith - with the Word of God to explain all the things everyone else spends so much time and energy trying to find their own words for - can find our way. We know.

We know the way home. So we get each other there. It's not 99 miracles that we all made it, it's one miracle. One miracle, that we made happen together.

Perhaps that's why I love Erin's theory behind the Feeding of the 5,000 so much - that the 5,000 people had their food and ate it and shared it, and that was the miracle. Then with the 4,000 feeding, Jesus saved the actually lost. We who have food need the inspiration to share it, not miracle food provided.

We who have been blessed to be in the flock and never climb the lost, rocky paths alone know the way home. Jesus shows us how to find the way. We know how to get home. So we get each other there.

Monday, December 5, 2011

Luke 5:17-26

It's very easy to think of all the things you can't do. I find myself reprimanding myself for last week's posts. Confused and crying out for what I'm missing to be explain in simple terms.

It was easy to see the crowd blocking the way to the house where Jesus was speaking. Not so easy, but certainly not impossible, to see the only other way in: the roof.

In a lot of ways, I feel like my parents trained me to see the roof - or at least to look for the roof. With yet another Sherlock Holmes movie coming out soon (love them!), I find myself clarifying: not to see everything, everything that most people miss. I was trained to ask questions until things become clear - pick into every detail. And to never be afraid of the truth.

I try to remind myself of that - that Mulvaneys know there is nothing to fear in the truth. There is no truth that you cannot, with the right attitude and other information and smarts, turn to your advantage. It's a crazy idea, Dad, it really is. But I've always loved it.

I think about that moment in that we're not actually shown in the story (since, after all, the gospels are written from the point of view of the apostles, whose first indication that it was happening would have been the roof above their heads vanishing). I think about how movies or television shows would portray that moment - something glints off a roof and one of the friends of the invalid has a sudden mad idea, a burst of inspiration.

And maybe that happens all the time for a lot of people but - it certainly takes a lot more work to sit there and try to figure it out. To believe so fiercely that not only can God fix the invalid but that He wants to, that He will provide a way. That if you look at the pieces, if you look outside the box, if you are methodical and find the right questions - then you will find the roof. The bit of truth hiding in plain sight - or the obvious other way that no one thinks to take instead.

So is that our job then, as people of faith, to keep looking for the Other Option - the Better Option - that people who think about the world simply don't see? That people who don't have faith to drive them would never be driven to find?

To find the roof. Because we have to find some way to help our friend. To believe that God will heal him someday if we can just figure out the better way to reach Jesus.

And to carry him on the stretcher in the meantime.

You Know What He Wants

Sunday, December 4, 2011

Mark 1:1-8

It really is nonstop call to arms in Advent, isn't it? Every year I forget that going in.

In a way, the homily at St. John's today was an answer to the past few blog posts I've been writing. Father Rolo started talking about patience, and at the end he asked, "What does God want from you?" Just as he knew we were all waiting for the answer, he shouts, "You know! You know!"

Of course, my first reaction was "No I don't!"

But that, of course, is just a grad student about to be thrust from the cozy (if occasionally stifling) world of academia talking. Because yes, we know exactly what He wants of us. He told us all the time. As Father Rolo said, we have the Word. We know.

We know we take up our cross and follow Him. We know that if we love Him, we feed His sheep. We know that when we feed the hungry, we feed Him. We know.

Very few people get an angel come down to show them the path. The rest of us, we have the tools to figure it out for ourselves. I think that those of us who end up deciding what we want to do with our lives over and over again - the prolonged period before "actual adulthood" begins playing tricks - forget that we're not supposed to decide in an instant what our lives will be like. We're not supposed to know where the Spirit will take us. We're supposed to live our lives according to the gospel.

We're supposed to follow His maxims and love our fellow man and do what we see to help those who come in our way. We're supposed to live our lives, He told us how, and our career path will follow it.

We know. We need the nudge now and then, of course. The Jews knew what God wanted before John the Baptist came down to remind them. They knew the scriptures and the prophets. But they forgot they were part of their daily lives - not their overall life plan.

Or there was some other problem, I'm sure there are many reasons to step from the path, many misunderstandings to stumble over on the way.

But that's been my problem. The Way of the Lord is not a secret path through life for me to discover. It is a way to walk and find my way. It is the compass. It is how I know which of the paths to follow. I know. I know what God wants of me. Not in specifics like where I will end up finding a job, what to do about X, Y, and Z. I know how God wants me to live my life and love my fellow man. I know how He wants me to show my love for Him.

The rest will follow.

Saturday, December 3, 2011

Matthew 9:35-10:1, 5a, 6-8

Now that I'm typing out the reference: quite the patched together gospel reading today, isn't it?

So what struck me as I was reading this today is the thought: what kind of person is it, really, who goes out to meet a messiah? Who stumbles after a faith healer, who goes out in the desert away from their homes to hear someone talk and see him cure the sick?

As much as I want to summon the image of the true faithful, together people that fill the established churches on Sunday, it's the cult followers who spring to mind. I can think of events at the church that fit the above description - but those are church-sponsored events. Jesus was kind of the opposite of a synagogue sponsored event.

This reading tells us Jesus had pity on the people who came to Him and I think - yes. That's what we have to people who go stumbling after the hope that someone will sweep in and tell them how the world is supposed to work and give them some scrap of dignity. People who are so thirsty not for righteousness but to feel righteous - to find some ecstasy of religion rather than the kind of sustainable faith you can live your life by. People who want to be told exactly how the world works and how they fit into it and what they need to do in order to have a good life and a good after life. What they need to do to be good people.

Two thousand years ago, they were all luckier than they could ever have dreamed. And now we're meant to be those people, as Jesus sent His disciples out to be: the ones who bring hope to those who are spiritually starving. Who will listen to anyone who promises something better, however flimsy.

We have been blessed with the truth, and there are so many thirsting for it. Why? In some places (Staunton) it seems like there are churches on every street corner (seriously, almost all of them). How do we go out and help them? Why don't they flock to the churches - or do they and don't always get what they need?

Two thousand years ago, in Israel things were bad. Rome was cruel (though less so to the Jews than to many they oppressed), life was hard. They wanted hope, needed hope desperately. They kept having false prophets saying they could lead a rebellion and failing completely. They came out to see a man who cured the sick and preached a kind of world they had never imagined. And often they disagreed when they heard what He had to say - but they came.

And so Jesus sent out His messengers to try to get it to everyone like them in the area. That should be our job too. But I wonder, really, how our tactics need to change. If they do.

Because there are churches on every corner, but so many of them are half-empty.

People want the same things they wanted two thousand years ago so badly they're camping out in parks even after police repeatedly douse them with pepper spray (as they sit quietly, mind you). People want the same things they wanted two thousand years ago so badly they dress up as revolutionary war heroes and elect congressmen and women who refuse to negotiate or compromise even to stop a national crisis.

There's something better out there, that no one even dares hope for. It's our job to bring it - but for the life of me I don't know how.

Friday, December 2, 2011

Matthew 9:27-31

I suddenly had the thought that I should go back and count up how many times I've started this blog with something along the lines of "I don't really know what to do with this one." Perhaps I should go back to last year's format, since I tend to do better in the small details, and it was so nice to be able to build on what I had said the day before - a weeklong thinking project on one story.

But this is one I don't know what to do with. I remember once at a Bible study in college, I had a kind of CSI New Testament moment. Actually, I frequently had moments during that Bible study that just baffled my all-Protestant fellows. Another memorable one was my insistence that the feeding of the 5,000 was people sharing their food and that the feeding of the 4,000 was a pure miracle and that's why we have both stories.

But this was the bit where Jesus put mud on a blind man's eyes and then he said that he saw people walking around (despite the fact that Jesus pointedly took him away from the crowd that had thrust him forward) like they were trees. Then Jesus gave him another coat of mud and told him not to go back to that town.

So I said that I thought that the man was faking it in order for the town to trap Jesus, so he first took the man's sight (partially) away and then restored it again. And then He told the man not to go back to that clearly messed up situation. Now, the message of the day was supposed to be how sometimes healing, especially spiritual blindness, takes time to overcome - and it was perhaps the most awkward segue I've ever heard when the Bible Study leaders decided to just say the stuff they had planned every time I started presenting more evidence (how does he know what people and trees look like if he's blind?).

Another great interpretation might be that the blind man was seeing some kind of spiritual truth, some in-between vision after the first coat of mud.

But what prompted all of my theorizing about the fake blind victim was an uncomfortable lack of consistency in Jesus's instructions to people. He either told them go out and spread the news joyfully or "tell no one." And I suppose it must have been specific knowledge of the facts on the ground in each place He was - but I had such a desire to rationalize it I came up with this whole story.

So here, the detail that always sticks out is the bit about Jesus saying not to tell anyone. Especially because these guys do anyway.

And I wonder: is the pattern that Jesus wanted the joyous news to be spread, but as He became more established in an area, He took pains not to be come just another faith healer? That He wanted to be the Teacher, not the Healer - for people to come to Him to solve their spiritual blocks rather than their physical problems?

We know that people spent their lives camping out by a pool for a recurring miracle. We know that people tore up roofs and had friends carry them to prophets. Jesus was something different - and He was always way more concerned with our souls than our bodies.

So maybe that makes the most sense: we're not supposed to pray to God because we want something done about this world, even if it's for others the way those who help the invalids are doing. We're supposed to come to Him to learn how to better please God with our hearts and our actions. With our lives.

Not how to improve our lives - even if it's by being touched by God. We're supposed to come to Jesus for help being better people. For permission and strength and guidance to be the people He meant us to be. Not to have restored anything we have lost in this life. To have what He wants us to do with it revealed to us.

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Matthew 7:21, 24-27

This too shall pass.

There is a song in an old play that they did here last year that I can't seem to remember all of - but it's about a king who turned to his wise men and asked them to find him a song that touched the highest string of joy but also spoke of the greatest despair. While they were theorizing, either an old man or a little boy in the back started to speak/sing:

This too shall pass.

Whether you're high or low.

No matter where we belong

Some day we'll all be gone,

So you should always know:

This too shall pass.

It's a great song they way they do it, and that's what I thought of when I read today's (I know, I know, yesterday's) reading. Because the winds and the flood will come. That we know. Someday, all of this will pass away. It will wipe away the mansion and the shack indiscriminately. The things of this world were not made to last forever.

Actually, increasingly less so are we making things to last, but that's another topic.

So building a house on rock is building a house on permanent things - on God and heaven. On eternal foundation - finding our joy there, our despair there, our work there, our lives there. Putting ourselves, our house, there. Because the rest shall pass away. However you truss it up, whatever you build because you think it will protect you - this too shall pass.

It was made to pass.

We weren't. Our souls are eternal and we are promised someday our bodies will be remade to be. So we should place all the important things about ourselves on something else that is eternal - God.

And although, again, that's a good, neat place to end, I thought of one more thing as I was writing. Science fiction and magic stories have a favorite theme these days, it seems: how much it sucks to be an immortal, a permanent thing, trapped in an impermanent world. To be a thing which does not pass when everything around us does.

Because there are some truths we always know, deep down in our bones, whatever we believe. That's actually one of the things that make certain sci fi or magic stories so beautiful - their attempts to make words for the truths they still know, in their souls. All the things we people of faith are blessed to have words for.

We were born with the knowledge of two contradictory truths: we are dust and unto dust we shall return; and, we are eternal beings. You can break your heart infinity times building a little life on the sand, because you will survive infinity floods in one form or another. What so few sci fi and magic stories can't do is provide a satisfactory answer (usually you find a way to die after all, but that doesn't really solve the contradiction). I haven't found any yet, anyway.

We people of faith are blessed to be told the answer. But also - at the beginning of this gospel we are told that we must not just build a house to retreat to when the flood comes. We must make our lives on the stone, we must build our lives completely in God. And, well, I know people who do that without calling Him by name. So I also take from this: actions louder than words.

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Matthew 4:18-22

I'm torn between two thoughts here: 1) must be nice when God Himself just says outright what He wants you to do, a simple statement really, and 2) did they actually know that it was Jesus, not just some crackpot Messiah like they had every other week during that time?

Both are fairly irreverent, so I'm going to go with the third thought the gospel provoked: James and John's father was in the boat - was he called too? Was he also meant to come? Did Jesus go along the whole beach that day or just to the four who came with him?

You get to thinking a lot, during an election year, about the kind of person you'd want to follow. And the kind of person you would follow, and if they're different. Who is it that you would drop everything for? Risk everything for? What would you have to know about them? What experience would you have had to have of them?

Perhaps one of the reasons elections are always so frustrating and unsatisfying is that we haven't figured out how to answer those questions.

But I wonder: if Jesus did walk up, would I trust that leap in my soul that says that it really is Him? I'd like to think that I would drop my nets in an instant if I knew it was Him, but what does it take to trust that you know a thing like that?

Because I have an overactive imagination and I've cultivated a hefty self-editing system (if nothing else so I can stop obsessing over uneven numbered sets of stairs), so I wonder how much of God I'm convincing myself I made up. And how much I am.

Sometimes I worry that God is always speaking to me through things like the television shows I like or beautiful coincidences or a perfectly-timed-for-irony song coming on the background music of a public place. Is it because I'm drowning out the straightforward message that He's speaking to me through what I am paying attention to?

Don't get me wrong, it's only showing His love for me. I've always felt doubly blessed when I feel like I had a truth pointed out to me from an unlikely source of grace - when a science fiction shows me what a Biblical story means - that God cared so much for me to know it, that He is talking to me through everything in the world...but I worry that I'm drowning Him out so He has to sneak in.

I worry I'd be too in the zone of fishing, I worry I wouldn't even hear His shouts from the beach, like James and John's father. I worry that I'm asking so loud I don't hear the answer. I worry I'm so determined not to trust all the answers I get that I leave God no choice but to slip His words into other mediums.

I worry I would know that it was Jesus calling on the shore, but I wouldn't trust myself to know it. I would refuse to let myself act on what I knew, convinced I couldn't know. Perhaps that's like James and John's father.

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Luke 10:21-24

I forget how hard this can be to get going again - inspiration isn't flowing for any of my projects these days, and I tend to forget between Lents and Advents how hard it is to write an entry that's only one day or so in the making.

"No one knows who the Son is except the Father,
and who the Father is except the Son
and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him."

First we're told that God has hidden the truth from the wise and learned (two different things) in favor of revealing it to the childlike, then we have it spelled out in no uncertain terms: we can't reach an understanding of God or God's plan (even just the part for us) by any feats of our own little minds. We accept it as a gift.

I feel like we hear about that a lot, God's gifts, especially this time of year. But perhaps we're more (and always have been) trapped in a Black Friday mindset more than we realize. Because I, at least, always think of that in terms of things of this world. I am grateful for the food I eat and the comfort I've been raised in certainly - I'm also grateful for the gorgeous world around me, and I'm thankful for the amazing human relationships that I've had the pleasure to enjoy and hopefully nurture. I'm grateful that Jesus saved me, that I have the promise of heaven and reunification with dead loved ones. I'm grateful for the talents I have.

And I do think of it occasionally, but not nearly as much: I'm grateful to know God in my life. I'm grateful to have been raised as I was, so firmly and thoroughly in the Catholic Church - that it was the true face of God to Whom I was first introduced. I'm grateful for what I've called in the past my Gift of Certainty. My great gift of faith.

Even that's not a quality of our own. Even that is a gift from God. Even that is something not owing to us but to Him.

Really, how can we thank Him?

I feel like that would be a tidy, succinct ending for this entry, but I want to mention one more thing. I had a thought I wrote down not too long ago. It was an idea for a potential kind of litmus test for your feelings on religion, and maybe it bears thought: if every other part of your religion were still true, but there was no afterlife, would you still be glad of the time you spent?

Would you still be glad of God's presence in your life?

Would you still feel what a gift it was?

I sometimes feel vaguely heretical in this posts (and like most proposed litmus tests I thought of it because I put myself on the "right" side of it), but perhaps that's also the reason why it upsets me so much that a person of faith would store up brownie points to get into heaven or out of fear of hell.

Eternal salvation, don't get me wrong, is probably the biggest and greatest gift of God.

I'm just suggesting: for the lucky ones, maybe it's the greatest gift save one. The gift of faith in the first place. The gift of faith to believe in Him.