Flying

EZ 2: 2-5

Personal opinion: I doubt the Holy Spirit feels the same to everyone.  I doubt the Holy Spirit works the same way for everyone.

But it's hard not to equate, for me, with the magic of the stage on a sick actor.  My platonic example of this is my friend performing Shakespeare with the flu who would bound around the stage with tremendous athleticism then immediately curl up on a makeshift couch backstage.  I've done it myself, it's a real thing that feels different from time to time.  Like you're dumb determination is the thing that's gonna suddenly fail halfway through a scene to "Wow, I really didn't notice that I was injured until I hit the wings".

A lot of my students are enduring that.

And that's what struck me today from the readings.  "As the Lord spoke to me, the spirit entered into me and set me on my feet."

There are any number of ways to do something like that.  Ranging probably like the power of Showmanship (the collective kind) from "I can't believe I'm doing this and that it's working" to "Suddenly all of this is easy?"

I wonder how often we have the Spirit enter us and don't clock it because it's not the way we think of the Holy Spirit entering our lives directly?  If we call it intuition or it seems hard to us, so we forget how petulant Jonah was all through the Nineveh story. 

And I also wonder why I never realized the Holy Spirit is a theatre fan.

Let it Go

2 Cor 12:7-10

IF grace is the thing that lifts you up, to where you are as elated as St. Paul knows it is dangerous for him to be, and also the thing that knocks you off your little pedestal, then perhaps there's another grace in this story that St. Paul didn't catch or didn't include here.

The grace that says, "Seriously, you're worrying about the shorting out projectors now?  When you actors are doing such brilliant work?  When your booth is surviving such craziness?  When your auditorium is packed with people like it's never been and you are receiving glory from all around?  You're choosing to be mad about camcorders and ruined lighting plots?"

Seriously, one angry thorn?

Did the fever drive me past my breaking point today?  Or keep me from going too crazy over everything or keep me from being too elated at an acknowledged success?

It doesn't feel like a victory tonight, even if it should.  To keep me from being too elated.

There's something so brokenly human about how I don't feel elated tonight.

Follow the Hufflepuff Instincts

Today's blog post is redacted.  It's too personal for even a only-technically public posting.

Then I Remember I Am Strong

2 Cor 12:7-10

I intended to meditate today (and for a good part of the day I did) on the difference between a holy person and a prophet.  And how welcome one is wherever they go, even their hometown and perhaps hometown most of all, and how one empathetically is not.  At least not usually.  The daily mass reading was even Jonah and Nineveh, bucking the trend and annoying the prophet.

But the end of today illuminated something about the elusive St. Paul's thesis.

Toward the end of today a couple of things went wrong in rehearsal.  Big things, like dinner being almost an hour and a half late...and accidentally telling them that the food was there 45 minute before it arrived and having to settle their instinct to riot...yeah, I literally had to calm a riot today.

I did it by standing on a chair above them and singing the first lines of "La Vie Boheme" then "Story of Tonight"...and then the riot became a shout-sing old musicals a capella time.  It was still 20 minutes until I could corrale them back to work but...I could sense my moment.  I knew them.  I knew them as a crowd and as individuals.  I realized I remembered I can read them.

Sympathetic parents offered help because they could see me struggling.  Kind parents who are fellow teachers made a point of telling me how much their children love me and how they could tell I was doing a good job with the crew from watching.

People don't have to remind you you're a good teacher when you feel like one.

The most impressive teaching moments don't happen on perfect, smooth, organized days.

When I am weak, then I am reminded I am strong.

Remembering Katherine Drexel

Mark 6:1-6

Whenever I think about this gospel story, I think about St. Katherine Drexel.  The hometown (ish) saint.  The saint whose foundation board my mother sits on.  The saint who walked in halls I've walked.

The kind of thing that's not supposed to happen.  Not really.  People go on pilgrimages for things like that.

Seriously, people who live in Siena, who live on the same street as St. Catherine of Siena, that might doctor of the church...just like...their neighborhood...

I understand Nazareth's reaction to a living saint because even to a dead saint...

I'm directing a show about fairy tales.  The kinds of stories that don't happen where real people live.  The kinds of stories that happen once upon a time in a faraway kingdom.

I think we have to work not to think of prophets and saints that way.  What is it to live in Lourdes or Fatima?  Not to visit, but to be born into a place where the Virgin Mary appeared to holy children?  To places where people found direct lines to God?

What would it mean to live next door to a prophet?  To a living saint?

It throws even the best-lived ordinary life into rather harsh relief.  I understand why Jesus was rejected by Nazareth.  It's so much easier than dealing with the Son of God as the kid you grew up with.

It begs the question why you aren't better.  Why you aren't holier.  Why you don't feel closer to God.

Why you aren't the saint.  Like the woman who lives down the street.

The Shepherd's Rod

Psalm 123

The psalm for the Sunday of the coming ACTS retreat feels like the other side of Psalm 23, "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want."  I love the musical version sung at most funerals and occasionally at Mass.

Psalm 123

Shepherd me, O God, beyond my wants, from death into life.

This psalm, exactly one hundred later, is also about looking to God, all powerful God, our Lord and Master.  Watching Him for when punishment might descend.  However deserved, this is about fear of God.

"As the eyes of the servant are on the hands of their masters."

Looking for if the master will strike a blow.  Pleading for mercy and deliverance.

That's the other side of believing that prayer has tangible change in the physical world.  A believe you can't help having under duress.  Because it means the terrible things you are afraid will happen...you're watching the Hand of God, watching to see if it will descend.  Like a servant -- powerless to stop it, probably deserving it, not sure if the master will be kind and forgiving or strike.

The Lord is my shepherd, and as He guides me, sometimes He pushes me down.

The other side of grace. The side that knocks you flat when you're getting too puffed up.  It's the same grace that bolsters you when you're low.

It's the grace that St. Paul is talking about too.  The kind that keeps you from growing too elated and proud and insufferable in your righteousness.  From overcorrecting to a new kind of sin.

The gentle guidance in your hardest times is the same grace that knocks you flat when you've been soaring so long you are starting to forget those you're passing by.

Ez 2:25

"And whether they heed or resist -- for they are a rebellious house -- they shall know that a prophet has been among them."

That's...I'm trying really hard to get my head around that.

I guess I assumed the problem when people don't listen to prophets is their ability to deny that, well, that they are prophets.  That challenging the base credibility of someone claiming a direct line to God is the first order of business when you don't like what they're saying.  I mean, it's not all that hard to do, attacking the credibility of someone like that.

But do we know?  Do we always know, when a prophet has been among us?

Can we sense the people who speak with a direct line to God or as close as we come?

I can't really wrap my head around knowing someone is from God and not listening to them.  I see that it's true.  I see that it must happen all the time...but again, I always assumed that that was because people were challenging the premise -- that that prophet is from God.

Heaven knows that's what I have to do when I don't like what I'm hearing from a spiritual authority.  I go find other authorities and declare them the prophets.  I'm not saying I always get it right or my way is better.

But to say, "Yes, that's God's will" and then toss the person out?

By and large my sins are sins of thoughtlessness.  Which is worse in some ways because at least I'd be thinking of other people if I actively wished them harm.  Because you can attack those lines of thought.

And now I'm hearing a friend in my head who recently asked for the link to this blog.  So if you come up with any clever systems to make me more aware of other people, by all means let me know.

It's not that I'm any better than the people who know they have met a prophet and still rebel.  After all, I'm the one who's more likely to run that prophet out of town in a swell of self-righteous frenzy.

Too Elated

2 Cor 12:7-10
Mk 6: 1-6

St. Paul believes he was given a thorn in his side, an agent of the devil no less, to keep him from being too elated.  From being too full of the joy of doing God's work.  That, at last, is something from St. Paul I can connect to.

I receive a lot of love from the students and parents of IWA.  I could grow quite conceited with myself if the admin weren't upsetting.  If the daily grind of tech week wasn't so intense.  If tragedies did not befall my students.  I could forget how small I am, in the grand scheme.  How little the actual performance product matters.  How much bigger the program itself is.  How much more important the students are.

Perhaps the Hometown, as in the gospel, or the Rebellious People from the first reading are the natural antidotes to the understandable pride of the Prophet.  The Chosen One.  The direct line to God.

We need the people who tell such folks, "Wait, no, you are just a dude born of a woman.  Do you really think you are something more special than your brother and sister standing right over there?"

No, we are children of God.  Just because we are chosen for missions that have more glory (of one kind of another) doesn't mean we are loved more or less than those around us.  But how easy it is to forget, until the Rebellious People see our human trappings and ignore the divine inspiration.  Lest we think we control the divine inspiration.

Lest we think we SHOULD be thank for everything as if everything is what we've done.

Lest we think ourselves more than the Vessel of the Holy Spirit.

What Does It Look Like?

What does it mean to trust that God's grace is sufficient?

2 Cor 12:7-10

Is it a constant calling on God?  A surrender to the pain of our troubles, knowing they won't destroy us?  Remembering Him in our despair?

What does it look like to trust in God's grace?

Tech week and other issues have afforded me the opportunity to trust in God's grace for my ability to accomplish this week...but what does that look like?  How does one go about being strongest when you are weak?

Is it thinking of God whenever things look tough?  Is it not worrying about the things?

Or is the grace something that happens anyway? Is grace the reason I don't cry in front of students even if I'm feeling lots of things?  Is grace the reasons I keep plugging away at a to-do list that stubbornly gets longer rather than shorter?  Is grace what keeps me looking determined and in control to everyone when I'm rather worried about it all coming off okay?

Is that was trusting in God's grace looks like?  Am I already doing it, or am I doing it wrong?

Am I strongest where only yesterday I thought I was weak?

Is grace being sufficient for me nothing at all to do with anything I do?  Is it like my friend deciding to give me an air-gun toy two months ago because he saw me laughing about it and me keeping it inexplicably in my front seat all this time out of laziness or vague plans to use it someday so that it would be ready today?  Ready to bring a smile to a student who desperately needed a piece of wacky joy?

Not because of some cosmically, divinely order coincidence.  Just the uncanny ability of acts of small kindness to continue past the first inspiration.  God's grace, just when you need it, because of the small lights in everyone's soul.

Of course His grace is nothing and everything to do with us.  How silly I feel now.

Comfortable Faith

One time my mother told me that she admired my steady faith.  I replied to her, oh so young as I was, that I had been blessed with the Gift of Certainty.  I hadn't ever doubted my faith, my place in God's love.

I still think I've never doubted God.  His existence or His love for me.  It'd be ridiculous, from my perspective.  I've seen Him everywhere in my life.

But I don't see his miracles the way that my mother and people like her do.  I don't see coincidences as the guiding hand of the Holy Spirit.  Usually anyway.  I say a prayer of thanks after every near-miss with traffic.

But that's about it.  I see God's light in the moments that help me move forward on hard days -- in kind words from the students arriving at just the right time or just a happy note from a friend turning up when I need it most.  But I don't see His hand at work, guiding my steps.  I don't see a message.  I see proof of His existence.  I see proof that He can live in our hearts.

It seemed like enough.  To see His face everywhere.

But I can't even imagine living in the way that would allow Him to direct my steps so directly.  I laugh sometimes when I find His wisdom in out of the way places.  I laugh that He had to place His words in sci fi show recaps or the silliest of novels.  And sometimes when I do, I think how I should take more time to listen.

But I sincerely don't know how.  The closest I've ever come to listening properly is this blog, where I talk and talk and talk and see what pops out.  Waiting for Him to direct me to the proper words.

Jesus could do so little in His hometown because they weren't willing to hear Him because, well, they knew him when.

I worry I have their practicality.  I worry I have their over-comfort with Jesus.  I worry I have forgot the shock and awe of His godhood in my comfort with His light in the faces around me. 

Have I forgotten that His Light isn't just their to brighten my path but to guide my steps?

I'm back!

So, I've been asked to be a team member on an ACTS Retreat for the first time in many years.  I've decided to center my reflections this Lent on the readings during the Sunday Mass at the end of the retreat.

So I'm back!

The readings are for Sunday, July 8, 2018.

Today's: 2 Corinthians 12:7-10

I struggle with Paul.

I caught myself making one of my snide comments about how, "No seriously, how he is considered an apostle?" comments in class just this week.  He's said a lot of things that...well, that remind me he spent most of his life as a Pharisee.  And that helps me take him with a grain of salt.

I struggle with Saint Faustina and her painful penance.  I wince and am grateful to God on her behalf that he made her so subservient to her superiors in the religious order and her confessor that when she came up with ideas like chaining her feet together in Mass they could tell her to cut that out and she would immediately listen.

I struggle with the idea that pain can be a way to improve faith.

I've always been tripped up by this one.  And during Ash Wednesday Mass at school today, I made a gameful try at being grateful for the ridiculous icy coldness of the church as Paul is grateful for his suffering in this reading.  I struggled briefly.  Then I failed.

Therefore, I am content with weaknesses, insults,
hardships, persecutions, and constraints,
for the sake of Christ;
for when I am weak, then I am strong.

I have never known how to be grateful for suffering.  I can see "when I am weak, then I am strong."  I can see how we never know what will be required of us.  I can see that sometimes people are more approachable vulnerable than strong.  I can see that broken heroes make heroics seem more possible for those around us.  I can see how failure and loss can shape us into better instruments of grace.

I don't know how saints have turned that pain into making themselves stronger.  I cannot see it.

But then refrains like, "My grace is sufficient" have always felt like expressions of faith rather than comfort to me.

Rather than, "I know I got this, God will take me in the palm of His Hand," I think of admonitions like this as "Even in the darker times of my life, I love You, God.  I want Your grace in my life, even if it doesn't rescue me from this present trouble."

It's an opportunity to love God even so.

But I don't think that's how Saint Paul or Saint Faustina saw pain for God.  I don't think that's what they hear when they hear "My grace is sufficient for you."

I was low-grade miserable in Mass, and it dampened my ability to pay attention, leading to a less profound religious experience.  Probably.  I'm not omniscient.

I struggle to hear what this verse is saying to the likes of Paul and Faustina.  I need to keep trying this time.