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Holy Saturday

April 19, 2014

I’m almost glad (not really, but you’ve got to see the silver lining) that the internet is out this evening, because I cannot concentrate on anything and so this might come off a bit crazy.  Nothing from the booklet is really striking a chord in this state, so I will talk about what I have been thinking about this Holy Saturday.

Recently, The Good Wife had a very unexpected death and the following two episodes are masterful portraits of how people respond to those deaths – all the complicated and subtle and even cliché things that they do to make sense of the world without that person in it.  And I thought about other examples, “The Body” on Buffy the Vampire Slayer stands out as a particularly good example.  But then I thought that every television show does this kind of episode well.

Not all television shows do the death sequences well, but they all do the aftermath mourning episodes well.  Is there something to that, I wonder?  Something soft and sacred and raw about those episodes that forbids the usually Hollywood trickery from taking hold even in the most cliché-ridden works?  Is there something devastating about that subject that makes even the laziest, hackneyed writer suddenly realize this is too important to fumble over?

There’s a deep reverence that we have for the presence of death.  And a deep fear.  I wrote many Easters ago about why the funeral rituals about the dead body were so important.  That we take the time to wash or view the dead body because we need to convince ourselves not so much that it is real but that it can be born.  That the world is still here.  That this is a part of the world now and that it will continue, simply different than before.

I think that’s the part of death – and this was a real death, so all the parts must be there – that Holy Saturday honors.  Jesus’s friends mourned for Him.  They looked at the world around them without Him there, and they realized that the world was still there, unchanged.  Or so they thought, of course.

Because they were the first of the lucky ones.  They are still far luckier than most of us – to have to wait only a day for the promised reunion that we all must simply believe will come to pass.  The first to learn that death has been conquered and we will meet again.  That all partings are a lie.

But first, before you can have the beautiful gift of Easter Sunday, you must have Holy Saturday.  You must have the quiet despair and the knowledge of the time to move on.  To look at the world as it could have been if not for God’s love – a colder and emptier place, without the loved one.

Otherwise how would we ever understand how much more beautiful is the world we have been given?

"Tremble, Tremble, Tremble"

Good Friday

April 18, 2014

Most of today's reflection is what you'd expect from any Good Friday message, but then, all of a sudden, is a question I've actually spent a lot of time examining from multiple angles and worrying over.  I won't write down all of that because this is the first glimpse of Internet access my apartment has produced all day and I don't know if it will last, but the question is this:

"How do we retain a sense of compassion without developing compassion fatigue?"

I have reached that point with one friend -- the point where you are just out of compassion for their problems and the situations in which they first find themselves and then obsess over.  I had to cut ties.  I couldn't see another way out, and I was getting increasingly rude without that compassion.

And I've hit smaller flash points with others -- running out of compassion for one specific problem that I don't perceive the person as taking any steps to correct.  My mother thinks I have a failure of compassion for a certain young man with whom I think she is fast reaching the point of compassion exhaustion.

And I worry about it with my students.  This was a trying week, and I think about two incidents.  A student of mine was complaining about the homework assignment, demanding why why why and why again they had to do it.  And I remembered a phrase I had heard once about resorting to the "Because I said so" response -- that it's what parents say when they are too tired to treat their children like people.

So I made the effort and decided to explain -- exhaustively, as it turned out.  But then later in the week, another student tried the same thing and I did snap, "Because."  It took me a moment or two to calm down and say, "The real answer is..."

But that's what worries me about hard weeks and my endurance for the teaching profession.  Compassion fatigue.  Compassion exhaustion.  Aren't we supposed to find limitless reserves through the eyes of Christ?  Or is that little voice in my head that reminded me of that phrase at just the right moment instead of an hour later the voice of God stepping in?  Is that, and the quick slap of regret for the second student, the most we get in the way of divine help?  I suppose it would be a lie to say that it wasn't enough.

Just a moment to remind us of the choice before us -- to show compassion or not.  Because I think when most people fail to show compassion it is not a willful choice so much as a failure to recognize that choice.  They don't see the other path.  And that only gets harder as you get more and more tired, I think, rather than easier because you've seen the path of compassion before.  It starts to feel like a trap, like no way out, or like you haven't made a real difference.  Or you're just too tired and involved in your own things to recognize the choice.

So sometimes, perhaps, grace just looks like a well-timed memory bobbing to the surface.

It's a little thing to offer on Good Friday, when the ultimate sacrifice was made, but perhaps the only way to show our gratitude for the grand gesture is following the prompting of the small voices a little more often.

"Holy Thursday: Celebration and Commitment"

Holy Thursday

April 17, 2014

This Holy Thursday, I find myself mostly looking forward to the ending of Lent rather than dwelling on all the things it should be about.  Partially because I am too sick to go to Holy Thursday mass, which I can usually trust to reorient me.

The booklet talks about this day as special and blessed -- a gift.  "There are days and then there are days."

It's strange to celebrate though -- like Palm/Passion Sunday, really.  We start with the glorious gift and mission of the Last Supper.  Yet even there, Judas dips his hands in the water with Jesus and Peter misunderstands yet again basically everything Jesus has tried to tell him.  It's the legendary, true birth of the Church -- and all the members are so human.  Even Jesus is tired and sad.  Even He is disappointed that they cannot live up to His standards.

It's a wonder how we could ever imagine the Church as anything but a deeply flawed human institution when even this first night under the direct supervision of the Son of God the men of the Church got so many things wrong.

What I wonder tonight, however, is why two of the most joyous moments in Jesus's life are always paired with His fall.  Easter Sunday depends on the agony of Calgary.  You cannot have the joy of reunion without first the pain of parting.  But do the Eucharist and the washing of the feet, the arrival in Jerusalem, also depend on the cross for their meaning?

Well, the obvious answer is yes, because everything Jesus did does.  But the more I think about it, the more the answer is of course for Palm Sunday.  Because there are only two ways to go from that arrival in Jerusalem -- and for the celebration of Passover no less.  Jesus could ascend to political power as all the reigning elite both Jewish and Roman fear and start his rabble-rousing rebellion in the name of God.  Or He could be smacked down by the powers-that-be as an example to them.

Jesus didn't want that power, so the obvious end would be sacrifice on the cross.

What I wonder a bit more about is the Eucharist.  Could it be beautiful without the sacrifice of Golgotha?  Or would it be treated like the manna in the desert?  Eventually taken for granted?  Would it be like the Ark of the Covenant rather than bread blessed and broken for us all?  Is that what it took to convince all those men who love power and the idea of sitting at Jesus's right hand that the sacred rituals should be spread as widely as possible?  Even then, they didn't an assist from Paul of all people for the Gentiles.

But could the gift of God's true presence in the Eucharist be pure and holy without the sacrifice?  A freely given gift?  It wouldn't mean as much, if it weren't tied to our forgiveness, but I wonder what it would mean for us.  I think how easily, now I ponder it, the Eucharist could have become a thing only for the Elite of the Church of Jesus, how it could have been something that was hidden from everyday eyes and treated as great privilege.  Something too precious for common people to touch, unpurified and cleansed.

But no, the Eucharist is for all, freely.  Come just as you are.  We all say, "Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed."  All of us.  There is no more inspiring or perhaps surprising sight than a long line headed for the altar to receive the Body of Christ was precious little fanfare.

It's for all, freely and daily if you choose it.  And that is remarkable.

"Morning After Morning"

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

It's funny, despite the title of the day's reflection, it's not really about anything happening day after day.  In fact, I was trying to rustle up a comment on keeping our ears open when I went to write the title in the right section of the post and realized that the message felt a bit run-of-the-mill because the point was more about how you have to listen with your ears and heart open every day.

Which was a good reminder for this week.  It's been rocky, to say the least, on a whole score of levels.  But I'll get up tomorrow morning, and all the good intentions from the beginning of the week need to apply.  All the willingness to listen and love needs to be in play.

Perhaps that's how you measure God's spirit's breadth.  I need to hit the same level in the classroom -- intellectually and spiritually and as a mentor -- I just need more help from God as I grow more weary.  I don't know how people without faith can teach school.  I really don't.  Each day requires so much, and well, I have all the variety of good/bad/odd days that all the rest of humanity has.  But I have to bring my best morning after morning.

Seriously, you try walking in there with anything less to face those kids.

But there are days my ears aren't as open.  Some other worries are screaming too loudly, and I know there are things I miss.  It's also a job that teaches you just how inadequate we are and how lucky we are to have an omniscient omnipresent looking out for us.

I'm not sure where this is going anymore, except that in trying to do a small part of God's work, I realize how very much we need Him.  And why the people who serve and love God the most understand best how terrible we are at it and how little even the best of us do.  Trying to be His agent even in a small classroom, you just end up leaning on Him and praying it all works out in spite of you.

That none of the message gets too garbled between your ear and your mouth.

Lost Booklet

Tuesday, March 15, 2014

So I cannot find the reflection booklet today.  I would have liked to have finished it off, but ah well.

I have written many defenses of St. Martha, my confirmation saint.  Not quite defenses but alternative explanations for her actions and disputes with the way she is portrayed.  The one I wrote two years ago on Tuesday of Holy Week is here.

I read through it hoping to spark something to talk about today.  It's one of my less obvious defenses of Martha -- her discussing how being a down-to-earth realist helps her experience even more of a sense of wonder and awe at a true miracle like Lazarus.  It's from Martha's point of view, discussing how she sees the extreme of mundane Earth and glorious Heaven and how the two perspectives complement each other and enhance the wonder.

It's a good thought I'd forgotten.  But it made me think of the past two days, which have been very starkly set apart emotionally.  A flurry of pleasant hours anchored in a surprising calm and a tempest of personalities to negotiate in decreasing patience.  And it's a fairly stark difference between the days in how much I called on God to share it.

I was going to beat myself up a bit about only coming to God when I need Him, but I think that's not quite it.  Oh, don't get me wrong.  I call to God in grief more often than in non-Eucharistic joy, and I am not above begging Him for help with a struggling lesson plan.  But I think part of it lies in the moment I had in Mass today, sitting there trying to let my frustration go to pray properly.  I had the thought that I needed to keep that anger in order to put up a convincing scare of the students who had misbehaved with the substitute yesterday.

I very quickly realized the folly of my ways, there in that makeshift holy place (Parish Hall is serving as the sanctuary until the AC is fixed at St. Anne's), and realized that that was precisely what I needed to do.  Let go of my frustration and disappointment so that I could correct out of a sense of love rather than punish out of wounded pride and anger.

I'm not sure how different my lectures ended up being -- more sad disappointment, perhaps, than angry fire in my voice, but I was just as grave both ways, and I am glad I had the moment to be rebuked by God for my attitude.

Yes, I reach out to God when I feel that I need Him, but I also reach out to God in negative emotions because I have learned the hard way to listen for His warning.  His is the quiet voice that implores me to stop and think, that reminds me to calm down, that keeps me from doing greater harm than good.

I haven't felt the same compulsion to check my celebration in moments of joy lest I trample on others in my enthusiasm, but it would be a good habit that I hope to develop.

And both are a more active way of engaging with God in good times and in bad -- asking for His help bearing those times well, rather than just inviting Him to share them.

"Our Light and Our Salvation"

Monday, April 14, 2014

4-14-14!

Part of me wants to find some way to talk about the featured psalm about the Lord as our light and our salvation through the metaphor of stage lighting -- how it holds you secure and visible, bravely out in front of people.  How actors trust it to make them look good and come on so that they can hit their cues. How there are people moving in the shadows who fear being caught out in the light.

Of course, it doesn't really work.  The lights of the theatre are controlled and manipulative and they flash on and off all the time.  The stage hands are doing everything in service of a higher purpose -- one for which they will receive considerably less credit in the final bow.

It makes me think of all the different ways I have heard the theory proposed that we need a balance in Dark and Light -- that we need to have those who work in darkness to keep our world going just as much as we need people who walk in the light.  That we need Gray Hats as well as White Hats and Dark Hats, just as we need night to go alongside day and twilight in between.

And I just can't help thinking: no we don't.

Sure, the sun and moon mark the passage of days, I'm fine with that.  But why do we convince ourselves we need to walk awhile in darkness?  That we need to understand it to truly show compassion for those trapped in the dark?

And above all, why do we shrug our shoulders and say that must be the way it has to be when we see so many caught by the darkness -- not descending to it willingly, not fleeing the light, but fighting for a glimpse of the sun only to be pulled into a darker and darker situation.

Why?  Why do we act like the world must be this way?

Every Hell is man-made.  And man can unmake them again.  And no, I don't think we need the Black and Gray Hats to do it.  We just need to remember that our hats started out white and can be clean again.  And for that, we do need Jesus.  Our light and our salvation -- from ourselves.  From our silly idea that we need the darkness to run our world, at the very least in partnership with the light.  That this is the way the world is so it must be because the world has no other option.

Poppycock.  Shine a light on it.  Let's entertain a radical new idea.  What if there is nothing that does more good in the darkness, in secret, that it could in the light?

"Even Unto Death"

Sunday, March 13, 2014

While standing in line for my lunch today, I heard two high school students discussing their hectic choir schedule and how the varied service of Palm/Passion Sunday fit into it.  The one who I would guess was raised Catholic was explaining to his friend (who I think was hired to sing in the choir) that we have separate services on Good Friday for the Passion but "No one goes to those."

There is something jarring about a proper Palm Sunday Mass -- beginning outside in jubilation and palms and an altogether special, festive feel (if done well).  We enter the Mass with that energy, and then, all of a sudden really, it turns on us.  We know it's coming, but we still have a bit of joy in the half-acted out account of the Last Supper before we reach the agony in the garden, the arrest and mocking, and finally the death of our Lord.  It's a long story that we stand for to show respect and honor, like we stand at a funeral of a fallen loved one.

It feels a bit like standing at a graveside service, quiet and respectful and mournful and a huge block of text mostly washing over us.  It takes a special phrase to make it stick to us, and it's usually just one per event.

The priest lumped even more events together in his homily, talking about how we can't have Easter without Good Friday.  We can't have that joy and reunion without the pain first.  Which is a better answer than most of the ones we say about why bad things happen to good people -- or even just why bad things happen.

But the reflection booklet offers a different question: do we stand by even when it's hopeless?  The book does a good job of setting up that it doesn't necessarily make you a monster if the answer is no.  It makes a point of saying that energetic people who love to solve problems sometimes cave and run in the place of a helpless victim.  Illness is like that -- at some point, you realize you can't fight it.

Like the apostles, the booklet explains.  They were willing to fight in the garden, when they had hope.  When it was just Jesus under fire again, like the crowd that tried to stone Him not long ago.  But before the Chief Priests?  Condemned by Herod and Pontius Pilate?  Hanging on the cross?

Do we have the strength to stand and pray and adore God when it's not just hard but hopeless?  In the Valley of the Shadow of Death?  Or rather, not the shadow -- not the threat, the possibility, the probability of death, the actual unbeatable death coming for us.

Do we remember, then, all that Jesus promised?  Do we believe it then?

Do we keep the promises of Palm Sunday in the Garden?  At Golgotha?  Do we have the strength to believe and praise God there?

If not, it doesn't necessarily make our professions on Palm Sunday worthless...but we have lost our opportunity to do good and be instruments of grace in the world when it is most needed.

"Present and Manifest"

Saturday, April 12, 2014

Today's reflection was on how we see and when we miss the presence of God everywhere -- active -- in our lives.  This is something I think about all the time.  To the point where I'm not even sure what to say about it this evening.

Today feels more like those foolish moments when you realize you should have seen Him at work throughout your day.  Like you wasted a chance to abide with Him.  Which is, in itself, forgetting that THIS is a moment to do that as well.  That He is in all things.

I've always felt his presence very strongly in my life.  I've written about that on this blog before.  I don't even just mean the way the first few times I had a flat tire, someone appeared almost instantly to help.  Seriously though, one time I pulled into a parking lot after I blew a flat and the next moment, two men are getting out of a truck with professional efficiency to change it.

I think of it as the gift of certainty, but I do wonder.  The one time it felt shaken or at least vulnerable was the one true tragedy in my life.  I wonder occasionally if I am only faithful because I am not put to the test.  I wonder if it is so easy to feel special to God because my life has been easy.  And I fear finding out.

For awhile in high school, I was obsessed with "Hallelujah" by Rufus Wainwright, and the main reason was this: "It's not a cry that you hear at night / it's not somebody who's seen the light / it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah."  I think he was talking about romance in religious languages, but that's no reason for it not to be perfectly true.

Faith isn't measured in a conversion story -- in a moment of changed heart and grace intervening.  The way we make a new heart and a new life for ourselves, as today's readings urge, is when we are forced to change and spend our lives working at it.  We are not defined by the act of choosing to follow Christ, we are defined by how we live our lives as Christians.

And let's be honest: we rarely change unless we are forced -- compelled by circumstances or other people or a transformative love affair with some one or thing.  Ideally God.

I only hope I have the strength to grow closer to God when trials come.  I only hope I pass that test.

And sometimes I wonder if it hasn't come because God wants to keep me.

"The Place"

Friday, April 11, 2014

There are moments reading the gospels that I truly treasure (among many, of course):  finding another human experience that Jesus also shares with us.

In Life of Pi, there is a stunningly gorgeous chapter on how the main character converts to Christianity (and a similarly beautiful one on his conversion to Islam -- it's a complex and wonderful book).  One of the stories the main character gets stuck on, that anchors the true humanity of God and separates Jesus's Incarnation from the "Zeus visiting" stories of other (once) sacred tales, is the story of Jesus cursing a fig tree for not having any figs despite the fact that figs weren't in season.

Yann Martel found beauty in the petulance (emphasis his) of Jesus's actions.  Not in spite of the petulance but in the petulance itself.

Because man, haven't we all had that day?  When you are driven to the end of your wits again and again and then one more thing happens and you are just sure that the world is going to unravel or you are or both and the only thing that would have saved it would be some nice figs from that lovely tree over there and it just feels so personal when the tree's like, "Figs aren't in season!"  You know, you know perfectly well, it's not the fig tree's fault, but it is the thing in front of you in that horrible moment.

You know what, here's a comic about it:  http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/05/sneaky-hate-spiral.html.

There's something so wonderful about knowing Jesus had those days -- or at least that day too.  That the infinitely powerful and loving and understanding God put Himself into a position where He felt the kind of desperate powerlessness, that frustrated human rage at inanimate object (or non-sentient plants anyway).  He made Himself that small for us.

The fig tree is my original for seeing the beauty in these moments, but I love when I stumble upon moments like the one in today's readings.  Jesus had a Place that gave Him comfort.  The place where He was baptized helped to steady Him and return Him to His mission.  There was a place He liked to go where the world got more quiet and He could remember who He was.

Jesus had special places made precious and even sacred by the events that happened in them -- things it would be hard to really explain to someone else but desperately important to you.  A place to find His balance.

A necessity after the Fig Tree days.

God the Infinite became finite.  God of all power made Himself someone who needs a place to find His center every now and again.

For us.

"Self-Identity"

Thursday, April 10, 2014

For a long time, I've disliked the term "find yourself" and all of the soul-searching epic journey mess that comes along with it.  I believe that your "self" is not something you find but something you build.

This puts a lot of my identity as a person of faith in a harsher perspective than I'd like.  The reason I chose St. Martha as a confirmation saint despite about twenty-five people explaining to me that she's "the bad one in that story" (which is a whole other can of worms I'm not going to open tonight), is that I am very good at sitting at God's feet.  I am very good at soul searching.  I rattle off these posts on a daily basis thinking through theological beauties.

I lose track of my mind during prayer, of course, I'm not saying I'm particularly great at it, but my problem is getting up and serving everyone dinner and making sure that I am putting my faith into action and work.

Because just sitting or traveling to find yourself is easy compared to doing the daily work of building who you are.  The process of looking for yourself should, in my opinion, be this: spread out all the things that you do on a daily basis, the people you see most often, the things that you fill your days and time with.  Don't look at your opinions or thoughts or the things of your deepest heart -- just the meta data.

If you don't like that story, find concrete things to do or change to be the person you want to be.  Or if you don't know that part, just invest in the good and eliminate the bad to make room for better until you like the shape your life is starting to take.

I can say and believe and even think all the right things to be a person of faith, but except for my actual job, I worry about how the building blocks of my life spread out.  A person of faith who spends an absurd amount of time just sitting and watching TV.  Who groans at the thought of church however happy she knows she will be when she goes.  Who skips Bible study because the week caught up with her -- in the meta data that's just choosing all the secular events of Tuesday and Wednesday over time to study an unfamiliar part of the Bible.

I listened to a report on NPR basically challenging the NSA etc.'s reassurance that they only look at the meta-data, not the content.  The content is where all the rationalization and justification and self-deception happens.  The meta-data is harder to fool.  Each little piece might not mean much, but put them all together, and you have the real picture of who you are.

Something we should all take a moment to look into.  It's also the easiest way to look at who you are with an eye to fixing it.  There are concrete things that you can change in that picture.

"The Fourth Man"

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

As much as I want to respond to the reflection booklet's call to living a spiritual life and engaging with God and His call, I can't help thinking about today's reading of Shadrach, Mesach, and Abednego which I will henceforth call The Three because their names are hard to spell and I am tired.

I think about how I think a lot of modern people of faith take the wrong lesson from the story of The Three -- the story to be stubborn and defiant and loudly declare your ideals and never ever compromise them.  That doesn't really sound bad, but what if Nebuchadnezzer isn't there threatening you?

It's easy when there's a clear-cut, two-option choice that directly conflicts with one of your core beliefs.  What were The Three like on a regular Tuesday?

I am tired of the no-compromise screaming going on in this country on both sides, but I'm particularly sensitive to the no tolerance of prominent Christians because those are my people dragging my religion through the mud.

But I do admire The Three's actions.  They stood up to tyranny.  Tyranny that was trying to take something precious.  Tyranny that was trying to rip their faith from them.

Not stop them from forcing their faith on others.  Not force them to be in the presence of people of different faiths.  No, The Three (and God) only stood up in heroic defiance when their own faith was on the table.  They didn't scream at others, they didn't tear down the idols of their hosts (kind word for it).  They stood quietly and defiantly for their own rights.

Anybody could be on board for that.

Because I think that if there's an idol most prevalent in our time, it's the sound of our own voices.  We worship our own righteousness and our smug declaration of it.  I'm guilty, you can see in parts of this very entry.

What was threatened for The Three was their own connection and relationship to God.  That is unquestionably worth standing up for, worth dying for, and that is what will be preserved and displayed for all to see when you take a stand for it.  But, if your own relationship to God is strong and safe, you don't have to go seeking persecution.  That doesn't illuminate your faith or raise your religion higher.

Brave the flames because they are trying to take something precious from you, not because of who is watching.

"Generations and Cultures"

Tuesday, March 8, 2014

Sometimes, when I'm reading the reflection booklet, I start planning this reflection on the reflection in my head as I read.  I was all ready to talk about cultures and generations and defend the millenials with their relative lack of neuroses and impetus to impose their prejudices on the world.

Then the reflection booklet took aim at my Martha.  And that will not stand.

The reflection booklet was being playful, I think, rather than serious, but this is a topic where that excuse rings particularly hollow with me.  The reflection playfully calls the Israelites in the desert and in Jesus's own time the Culture of Complaint and lumps Martha's "Lord, if you had been there, my brother would not have died" in with the apostles jockeying for position at Jesus's kingdom.

First of all: whoa.  Are you serious?  You want to compare the petty squabblings of the apostles to the grief-stricken cry of a woman who just lost her brother to preventable illness?  You want to make light of that moment?

Even the Israelites isn't a fair comparison to the apostles jockeying for position (and even then, the Bible only says that it happened, not that it overrode everything else).  They are in the desert.  They are acutely aware that the manna could stop falling from the heavens every day.  They were promised salvation and a land flowing with milk and honey, but now they are wandering around lost in the desert until literally everyone the promise was made to has died (except Joshua?).  That is hard.  That is not a cheap complaint.

Because what I see in Martha's cry most of all is not a complaint or even an accusation.  It is a cry too many of us know all too well.  "Lord, here are the pieces of my broken heart.  Why did this happen?"  Daring to ask that question may be the bravest thing you can do in that moment.  And her sister Mary didn't.  I didn't, when my moment came.

I was afraid I wouldn't get an answer.

I was too afraid of silence -- or even worse, an answer -- that I never asked the question.  Why?  Why did this happen?  Why did this terrible thing happen?  Why did God set up the world with death woven in to the tapestry?  Why with evil and pain and suffering and sin?

All the answers I had ever heard in better days turned to ashes in my mouth or worse -- offensive bile my body was rejecting.

Martha must have felt much the same.  But she had the courage to go and ask.  How do I know that it wasn't an accusation?  Because she ran to Him and she asked the question at His feet.  That's where she was kneeling.  And when He told her she did not need to grief, she repeated in all sincerity that she knew Lazarus would rise again on the last day.

She was asking for help letting that be enough.  She was asking for help understanding.  She was calling out to God -- you could have stopped this, and you didn't.  Why?  I love you, but why?  I trust you, but please, give me something.  Please, if you can, tell me why.

Sometimes He can't answer, but asking the question is the bravest thing you can do in that moment and the truest sign of faith you can give at such a time.

It is not a complaint.  It is a testament.

"Two Human Stories"

Monday, April 7, 2014

The reflection booklet talks about Willa Cather's quote about there being only two human stories that repeat themselves over and over again.  It doesn't actually say what they are, but the stories today are the woman caught in adultery and Susanna and the old liars.

But it also talks about how who we identify with in the stories changes.  How we are each of the characters in turn.  But I wonder -- how many of us are willing to admit when we are the hypocrites?  Even when we do see their side?

It reminds me of the triangle that I put up in my classroom during the Holocaust Unit.  It places the victims in the center, because (I suppose) it's always just a quirk of fate who ends up the victims.  I don't mean that there are distinct causes and such, I just mean that it could be you or not you.  There's really nothing you can do about that part.  If you are a victim, your choices are victim, quisling, and rebel.

If you are not a victim, if the wheel of fortune lands you higher, then your choices are perpetrator, bystander, and rescuer.  Perhaps the reflection book is right that at times we are both.  I certainly see it play out that way often enough in the stories I devour so voraciously.  But we do have a choice.

Perhaps the grace is in realizing that we need to pose the question.  Perhaps the grace is not so much in the decision (for we know surely what is the right choice) but in having the strength and the self-awareness to ask the question.  To admit that the world is wrong and that someone is doing it.  That we must fight them even at personal cost.

It's so much easier to worry about that speck in our neighbor's eye or even the speck in our own left eye and ignore the beam in our right eye that -- if removed, will show us how cruel the world is and how we are a part of it.  Perhaps that's the real reason we see the speck and not the beam.  Perhaps it's not the kind of judgmental selfishness but simply as self-protective one.

We don't want to ask the question -- we want to stay out of it, if possible.  We want it to go away so we can go back to the matter of our own dreams.  We want the world to be stable and relatively good and helpful to our own agenda.

We don't want to fight it.  We could see reason to fight it everywhere, if we had the courage to look.  If we had the courage to remove the beam in our eye.

And the worst part is: we know that.  That's why we leave it there while we swat at specks of dust.

"The Spirit of Christ"

Sunday, March 6, 2014

I've listened to homilies and read commentaries on the story of Lazarus that make much of the fact that Jesus cried for the death of His friend Lazarus -- the Lord experiencing grief and sharing it with the sisters Martha (my confirmation saint!) and Mary.

I didn't really think about how odd that could seem until the reflection booklet today called it an act of compassion.

And it is.  Jesus knew what He was going to do and -- what's more, He knew that death is only ever a temporary parting.  It's not a forever loss.  He knew that the grief was natural but the despair unnecessary.

And yet He shared it.  And yet He acknowledged that Martha and Mary endured a great trauma.  Jesus didn't just sweep in and tell them to stop crying, He would fix the problem for them.  He didn't just undo the death and then say to rejoice.  He acknowledge their suffering first.  He gave them a moment to breathe and feel the horror and loss.  He validated those emotions too.

Because a lot of the teachings on Heaven and reunion in the afterlife can take on a edge of telling us not to mourn.  Explicitly, here and there, and that's always struck me as unkind, to a certain type of person.  Making you feel guilty for mourning and grieving -- like you are selfish for wanting them back here on earth rather than blissful in heaven or that you must not believe as much as you claim because you hurt so much now.

But Jesus acknowledged that death is painful for us.  It is not permanent.  It is not the end.  It is not the fearful, awful thing it would be if it actually destroyed more than our current connection to our mortal bodies.  But it hurts.  It aches.  And even when Jesus directly reversed a friend's death, He gave Martha and Mary a moment to grieve first.

He did not tell them that the tears were false or that they showed the sisters' lack of faith.  He cried with them.  An act of compassion.

"Searcher of Mind and Heart"

Saturday, March 5, 2014

Today's reflection reminded me of an entry I wrote one Advent -- not the last Advent, but I'm not sure which one beyond that -- when I listened to a radio program timed well for the holiday called "Nobody's Family is Going to Change."  It was full of stories gently, cleverly, comically, and sometimes inspirationally demonstrating that families don't change.  Family members don't become the versions of them that you've made up in your head.

One was about a family that dealt with a dramatic change, however.  A conversion to active, evangelical Christianity from in-practice-at-least atheism in the family at large.  As part of the story, the young man described his somewhat rocky journey toward conversion.

Unfairly, because the story didn't have quite enough details to be sure, I blame the church he found for his belief that he had to have some amazing Paul-on-the-way-to-Damascus moment to know that he was really saved.  He admitted to getting conflicting answers when he asked if he was saved.  Catholics have a lot of things that you have to put up with that Protestants don't -- but we don't do that to people.  We don't make them doubt their own salvation -- especially when they are seeking God with open hands.

To be fair, most Protestants don't either.  It's unfair to lump them together like that.

But this young man decided to settle the question for once and all.  He went up to the highest hill near where his campus and decided to stay there and pray until God gave him a sign.  I saw, with some sympathy, a presumption in that.  You shall not put the Lord your God to the test -- but then, from his perspective, it seems more like himself that he was testing.  It was himself that he blamed when the experience didn't come for hours.

Then he described a rush of grace and peace and love and emotion -- speaking in tongues, singing...I forget all of it.  A recognizable moment of God intervening.

And all I could imagine is this finite man pray and demanding that God find him, speak to him, find some way to connect with him, and all along God striving, fighting struggling, searching to reach him too.  And I even imagine Him shaking his head, nodding to His angels, and sighing, "Oh, just give him the works!"

The reflection book asks if the idea of God seeking us is part of my understanding of grace, and here I can answer easily and absolutely.  Always.  I know how hard I make Him work to get through to me sometimes.  I know all the random, bizarre places I have found correction or comfort -- two sides of grace, along with the compulsion to reach out to others and higher toward God.

We are loved.  We are sought.  We are wanted.  We are understood.

We are spoken to all the time through every possible lens.  Because God knows how hard it is to catch us when we're listening.

"Being Good/Doing Good"

Friday, April 4, 2014

4-4-14

Despite the title, the reflection today was not about one of my favorite topics -- the difference between what makes you feeling like a good person versus doing concrete good in the world, even at a high personal cost.

The reflection was about why we respond negatively to good people.  And my first reaction was a complete rejection -- I don't do that!  I was trying to figure out what disconnect I have with the author of this reflection booklet (perhaps that I am young and so still believe that I am growing and thus aren't threatened by someone already there; I believe we share goodness; I am hard to make feel judged, in a lot of ways, etc.).

But then I remembered the post I wrote when I wrote the homily for Father Dempsey about Saint Katherine Drexel (Blessed Katherine Drexel?) at her home parish.  I talked on and on about how awkward it is to walk where a saint has trod -- not as a holy shrine far away but as your home parish.  To think of a saint as someone you knew in your real, down-to-earth life.

Or, for that matter, to think of my patron St. Catherine of Siena meddling in local politics and gossipy disputes between her neighbors.

We like true holiness to be some Other.  Something far away and distant, otherworldly.  Something only the truly exceptional are called to do.  Something we don't have to not even just aspire to but live up to.  Something we could do ourselves, right here in Beaumont, Texas.  If we had the strength of will.

It's easy to say it's self-righteousness that bothers us, but maybe it is simply true righteousness.  It's not hostility, it's just...awkwardness and inadequacy.  I don't think it provokes anger -- maybe in some, but if you didn't want to be good, it couldn't affect you.  If you didn't want to be just and true and faithful and loving, then you wouldn't be challenged by a saint's example.

It's just so much easier to look at a portrait of a long dead and faraway saint who lived a very different life than yours than to look one in the eye.

The reflection also reminded me of the friend I have who I call objectively the best person I have ever met.  I have seen her as a kind of challenge to myself, but she is so loving and wonderful to be around that I never resented or disliked or even felt uncomfortable around her about it.  But then there are all kinds of saints and good people, and she is the kind who would never try to change you explicitly.  She would just be wonderful and kind to you in a way that makes you more like her in turn.  In a way that makes you respond to her way of doing things, even if you can't see the world as she does.  It makes you want to see as she does and join her -- and she makes it seem very possible.

I don't know if that's more or less useful to our spiritual growth than saints who make us realize that we don't do enough or demand action from us.  Saints who give explicit instructions and show the possibilities. Who demand better from us.  The probable answer is that we need all of them.

But I do think that there may be a difference between what those two kinds of good people inspire in us.  Saints who show us our inadequacy inspire us to want to Be Good.  Saints who are quietly wonderful make us want to Do Good when we are around them.  I know who I prefer to follow, but then, it's also a wider path.

Or a lighter yoke.

"The Way"

Thursday, April 3, 2014

Today's reflection takes aim at individualism and the song "My Way."  I've actually been thinking about this one.

I had the thought the other day when reading an article about continued inequality of several different kinds -- the scary, systemic, ingrained kind that people don't notice until it's pointed out -- and I realized how the cry of "Hear us!  We exist!" does not so much indict the people crying out for an individual voice and representation in the world for individual races, peoples, etc.

It indicts the people who have forgotten.

Perhaps the problem is not, as I have thought for a long time, that we do not see everyone as people -- that the long process of civilization has been expanding our definition of a "person" (in the sense of "sentient being who has feelings and a perspective just as valid as my own as well as needs and wants that require satisfaction alongside mine").  It started with just "my family" then became "my tribe" and then, if you were lucky, "my town/city/village collective" then "my people" in the sense of culture and nations and races.  "People like me" a term becoming vaguer and harder to spot every day.

I think a lot of that is happening, but perhaps the problem runs deeper.

We've forgotten -- people at the top, born to privilege so wide and thin they don't see it most of the time -- not to think of ourselves as individual people who need to make their voices and needs sing out above the din.  Not because we've forgotten that other individual voices are just as important but because we forgot that we're not supposed to be proud individuals.

We forgot we are members of the Body of Christ.  We are the eyes or the elbow thinking it is more important than the legs or the nose.  We have forgotten that it is only collectively that we are worthy of entering the Kingdom of Heaven.  We have forgotten that it is together that we live and together that we will be judged.

Perhaps it's a necessary step toward that unity to have the forgotten voices speak up and assert their own individual personhood.  Perhaps we'll all be lost in the din if we don't figure out how to turn this boat around and stop this foolishness -- remember not just that other people are people just as valid as us but that none of us are valid in ourselves.  None of us are worthy.  None of us are anything without the others.

We are a Body of Christ.  We have forgotten.  Not just the body parts nearest us, not just the body parts like us.  We are one with ALL of the Body of Christ.

"Double Resurrection"

April 2, 2014

The reflection booklet suggests that the infamous goats in the story of Judgment Day (or at least, the goats of this day and age) have the following problem: they mind too much the concerns of the present, but not the future.

I think this is missing the real problem.  How much better is it, really, if you only do good deeds for future reward?  In an absolute sense, of course, it's better for the world, but does it really make your soul shine the brighter?  If you're building a mansion in heaven in your mind right now, not a Habitat for Humanity?

I think religion doesn't work if it's Carrot and Stick.  Perhaps just not on the sheep/goats of my generation.  Perhaps this stuff worked.  Classic books suggest that it worked once.  It's persistence with older generations suggests that at least it's familiar and considered solid.  But -- I don't think that the problem is our attention to the present.  After all, that's the only place in which ANYTHING can actually HAPPEN.

I've written before about the problem with religion being becoming obsessed with the Past -- tradition followed blindly and a quick hop to golden age thinking -- or the Future -- longing for the end times and the rapture when you will watch smugly as everyone else is Judged Unworthy in revenge for your current wrongs.  True religion exists not just in but FOR the Present.  For now.

Put another way -- I listen to a science podcast Radiolab which once did a show on time that discussed the theory that our passage through time is not a shifting progression but simply us moving from one eternal instant to the next.  Every second, individually, has always been and will always be.  In that second, we remember the second that came "before" and so act accordingly.  The hosts agonized that this meant our future was already written so nothing mattered.  Nothing mattered because we couldn't change it.

All I could think was how MUCH it mattered.  Because everything you are doing right now, you will be doing it FOREVER.  Every choice you make, you will be making FOREVER.  Every pain and suffering that we let happen in the eternal now will be happening FOREVER.  Not just forever after but forever before.  As infinite as the universe itself.  Probably, anyway.

I think about that theory a lot when I want to convince myself to take the plunge on something.

What I call out for is not a promise of a better world in heaven or fear of a worse world in hell.  That's not what gets me out trying to change the world.  It's the thought that right now people are suffering -- that right now is when the world is becoming better or worse.  Closer to the New Jerusalem, closer to Hell on Earth.  All I am waiting for is for you to tell me how I can make a difference right now.  What can I do right now to solve right now problems?

The problem with goats is not that they don't see the future clearly.  It's that they don't see the present widely.  They don't see the trees or the forest for their own stuff going on inside their heads.  Me too, of course, or I wouldn't know that.  It's not a problem of not wanting the Carrot or not fearing the Stick.  It's about not seeing the eternal now and all that they could be doing with it.

"Life's Most Terrifying Burden"

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

May I just say, first of all, how terribly sad I am to have been too exhausted to do anything for April Fool's Day?  I really love this holiday, and I have occasionally gotten REALLY into it.

Not that that's always had good results, which brings me to the reflection book's answer to the question "What is life's most terrifying burden?"

Loneliness.

The gospel today was apparently the story of Jesus healing the man who waits for the sacred well to be stirred up but never makes it in time for the miracle because he has no one to help him into the water.  What a thing to have to admit to someone -- I have absolutely no one who can help me.  I suffer alone.

Of course, that's not usually the case outside of stories.  More commonly, it's that his designated caregiver has to work a job and a half to pay the medical bills so can't hang out with him beside a well all day -- they sacrifice companionship not to any skewed priorities but to staying afloat.  To staying alive.  Or there's a rotating schedule but someone is late or couldn't make it at the last minute.  Or everyone else is just tired too -- tired of the waiting and the water stirring and the sudden mad rush followed by crushing disappointment.

What I mean is even being loyal to someone, even being there for someone, you can often end up feeling alone.  Because you can't stop your life dead, most of the time, when someone calls.  You can give them what time you can, you can rearrange until you pull your hair out, but it's a lot.

You need a whole community, most of the time.  That's what my family had when my father was sick.  People coming out of the woodwork.  It was still hard and sometimes lonely, but there were people to help my father get to the well.

But perhaps the well is a bad metaphor for the real spiritual healing that the story symbolizes at least in part -- because it's not just the first to get there, the way it is on earth much of the time.  It's not just who wins the race and scurries scurries scurries around like crazy.  Salvation and healing are for everyone.  Free of charge, come as you are when you can.

It seems like there should be hoops.  We've done enough terrible things that their should be hoops that impose hardships and make us face our lives and our choices and make hard decisions about priorities and sacrifice...

But Jesus took care of all that.  Now it's free.  Now you can just pick up your mat and walk home.  Carry with you the memory of your weakness and your illness and everything else, but go about your life.  You are healed.  No hoops necessary.