132/365 Rumination on an old Worship meeting

I don't remember the exact words, but it went something like this. It was last Easter season, or maybe the one before that, and Miguel had just read the gospel for the coming season for us to reflect on before we started our meeting (which seems to happen, and then not happen, depending on the month, or maybe on the attendance--sometimes we reflect, but other times he reads, or has someone read, and then that's it. And sometimes that's good). It was, I believe, the gospel when Thomas isn't in the upper room when Christ appears, and he doubts, and then is proven wrong and all that.

Resurrection became the topic. Hildegard mentioned something along the lines of resurrection being a mystery, how Christ was resurrected but changed--he wasn't the person he had been before. The disciples didn't recognize him on the road, for instance. And then Hazel at the end of the table, who rarely spoke up about anything, just sat listening (and sometimes I think judging, but maybe that's just me being terribly self-conscious), said, "OF COURSE he's the same person. He's flesh and blood. He ate fish on the beach!"

At that moment, and pretty much every moment since, I thought about how ridiculous that statement seemed to me. And then I though about how much I didn't care. About how my faith isn't bound to what form Christ appeared in after his resurrection. For that matter, the resurrection isn't too key to my faith. Voskreseniya. It's a mystery I don't spend much time thinking about.

But what I have spent too much time thinking about was this interchange between Hazel and Hildegard. Why is the fact of the gospel story so important to some and so inconsequential to others (not that I think it's inconsequential, but I think some folks can debate, doubt, reassess, and grow in ways that others just can not)? I wanted to cry out at that meeting, "Why? Why does that piece matter? When you are considering the Word made Flesh, why are we so concerned with the latter part? What about the words?"

But of course, it being Worship Commission, I did not.

139/365 Pentecost

There’s a lot of Christianity out there that insists that faith is all about a conviction you have in your head, a decision you make in your mind—that God exists or that Jesus saved us. It’s all theoretical and rational—a faith for intellectuals. But Pentecost shows us that Christian belief and spirituality happen to your whole body. Your mind follows your feet. Decisions come after something happens to your life. A new consciousness comes when you have to figure out what to do with the mess of people all around you and the concrete responsibilities of mutual care: feeding people, praying for needs, sticking around when some folks start getting annoying, or sticking around when the excitement wears off and life gets boring, mundane, ordinary.

--Isaac Villegas

I've had two moments of conversion: one happened after a long period of spiritual crisis and the other happened after I couldn't help myself anymore. I was confirmed in my parish, and that wasn't my conversion. That was my, "yeah sure whatever" moment of learning that I really should be confirmed if I'm going to teach religion in a Catholic school. Then confirm me. I'm catechized, trust me. No, it was after that, when I started to drift away from the church and from the parish. I kept telling myself that I couldn't stay just because I played softball with Colleen O'Toole. There had to be more than that.

So I prayed.

I prayed a lot. I talked to myself a lot. My friend Mary would say I started telling myself a different story. I thought I should leave...my daughter's godmother suggested the Quakers. She did both: Catholic mass and Friends' meetings. But here in town they happened at the same time on a Sunday morning. I couldn't just try it out. I had to make a decision. I read Thomas R. Kelly and prayed.

The archbishop decided to close our parish. It seemed like a pretty big sign. And then he changed his mind (or, rather, the committee recommended something else), and that seemed like just as big a sign. I kept praying. I went on retreat. I tried again. That fall, 7 people nominated me for parish council--Caroline told me I had more nominations than anyone else on the list.

I decided I was done looking for signs. If I was going to believe in the Holy Spirit of Pentecost, here it was. Here I was. I was Catholic and this was my parish and holy crap. Here I am.

Then, starting at that moment and tumbling forward, perhaps I shouldn't even separate them into two events, odd things started happening to me. I'd pick up a book with no real intent to read it and find myself sucked in. I'd hear words falling from my daughter's mouth that had to be at least casually inspired. I'd wind up at websites in the middle of the night without really meaning to. And suddenly it was right there in front of me. From the first time I heard the name Hildegard--the medieval abbess, not the pastoral associate--all the way to St. Bede's monastery and knowing I was so close but not there and searching and staying up thinking too much and worrying about it working out and knowing in my heart that I'd been a Benedictine at least since 6th grade, I was falling into a conversion I could not stop.

Because I didn't want to. My hands and heart and spirit were taking me someplace that had been created for me. I was the youngest oblate candidate at Clyde in 15 years; Sr. Jean said in front of the gathering of oblates that she'd never read a candidate's writing that got so close to the heart of Benedictine thought so fast. I blushed, I remember, but when I got home I wrote this:

Something about that place makes my brain reorder itself. Like physically. I can feel the change.

It was my Pentecost. Something changed and here I am.

157/365 Nightmares, Dream, Milieu

Six years ago this week, my sister's friend, Jesse, was found dead between two houses just a few blocks from where she (my sister Bevin) was living. His throat was cut so deep it nicked his spine. Bevin and her roommate identified the body from a photograph. There are moments in a life that can be pointed to and said, definitively, this was the moment when nothing was ever the same. I have a few of those moments, although most change is gradual. But for Bevin and her friends, for a long long time, this was their moment.

"Yeah, the whole neighborhood's covered in luminal. It's like we're living in a Law and Order episode. And that's all we can manage to watch on TV. We have to show an ID to go down our street after class, to get home. Cops drive by all night long."

Bevin tells me they're all having nightmares. Jen: "It's like, I couldn't breathe, like someone was sitting on my chest." Jesse shows up in some of them. They've all grown completely terrified of the basement--it's an old house that's been added onto several times, and one basement room has a pile of dirt 4 feet tall. Bevin won't even show me when I come up a year later for the trial.

"He was standing in that doorway. And he told me it was going to be ok. He walked away. That was the last one I had."

I think back to that time and I think about dreams and nightmares. I think about our brains and why they work the way they do. Why do people dream about people who have died? Are we working out emotions and things left undone? Is it reassurance, like Bevin's last dream? Wish fulfillment? What do dreams want from us, anyway? Sometimes the world seems so clear, so obvious, and then something like this happens and your head gets mixed up in circumstances and primal emotions.

The Magi experienced a dream, the moment when they were grafted onto the People of God. It was a warning not to return to Herod. So they went home to their own country by another route. And I've had dreams that seem so clear, so very real. Some even on the edge of terrifyingly true to life. So when Jesse is in Bevin's head telling her it's going to be all right, is that just Bevin hoping it's true, or is there some sort of knowledge she's tapping into? Because even though it will never be all right, for two families and for dozens of friends and their families and ripples through the pond all the way up to me writing this blog entry, many things they worried about after his death were resolved: his killer was found and convicted, and even though he had to be retried, he was convicted a second time. Things were resolved, even if they were not made whole again.

I think about recurring dreams I have had about a church called St. Rose of Lima on a street in south St. Louis that does not exist but I swear I could drive you there if only this or that road didn't end or twisted differently. I can describe the interior and I know how it feels to stand inside and run my hand down the back of the pews. There were several months back before I had kids that St. Rose's showed up on a regular basis. Most of the time I had to find something inside or meet someone there. Sometimes I just walked along the dead-end street looking at the cars parked along the side. I have some ideas what this meant, but it freaks me out, more than a little, that it was always the same church, the same setting, and it's a place that doesn't exist. I worry that it does and one day I'll walk in and know it.

And I think about the typewriter dream, back before I got married. I was looking to get a copy of my grandparents' wedding album because I was getting married at the same church. But my (now ex-) aunt was a major roadblock. She claimed she didn't know where it was. "Maybe it's in the garage?" she suggested. I was so angry and frustrated. And then I had the dream: I walked into my grandmother's bedroom, and there was a typewriter on the bed. And it typed out a message all by itself: check under the stairs in the basement. And I went to the house (my aunt and uncle were living there after my grandparents died) and asked if maybe I could just check the basement? My uncle let me in, and there it was, in a black trash bag under the stairs.

Maybe it was just putting the pieces together, thinking about where things might be, where things could be stashed. Maybe it was freaky luck. Or maybe something rearranged in my head and the stress and frustration did, what exactly?

And I have a choice about how to think about these experiences: I can be terrified, I can be overly rational, or I can just live. For the most part, I've chosen the last one.

173/365 It will be one of those parish legends

Astrid sits with me at coffee. "The funeral on Wednesday was sad," she says.

"He was, what, 94?" I point out. Sometimes I wonder if I have asperger's syndrome or something like that--not really, but my attitudes about death are obviously out of step on occasion.

"Yeah, but it was sad. They really loved him. His whole family. It was good, but sad. Oh, and Fr. Miguel told a story about visiting him at the nursing home--he wasn't even there very long, I mean, he died pretty quick once he got there."

"I noticed that they were publishing his address in the bulletin and then suddenly he was dead."

"This story, though," she continues. "Miguel was sitting there with him and Joe claps his hands together and says, 'Where are we going now?' Well, Miguel told him he was headed back to the rectory, he had things to do, and then Joe said, 'I'm going to heaven!' And he did."

It catches me off guard, especially after hearing about my Aunt Sarah's last days, the anxiety and fear from a woman who shouldn't have had any worries about her standing with God.

Later when I repeat it to Mike, he says, "Oh, Miguel told that to us at the Stewardship meeting."

It's going to be one of those stories that pass down. I hope, at least. Continuity is important for that sort of thing. But maybe.

204/365 Two Hundred and Four

204 is one of those numbers I like. 17 x 3 x 2 x 2. It was the number of my first classroom and its anagram, 420, was my first dorm room. 51 x 4, my parents were both born in 1951 and had 4 children. Yes, these are the things that keep me from going to sleep at night. It's a number that shows up here and there all over the place and makes me wonder if I'm reading too much into the universe or if things maybe aren't as random as some folks would have us believe.

I read a quote at some point, I don't know if it's true or not because I can't find the reference anymore, but the gist was that astronomers are the scientists least likely to believe in God. Mathematicians are the most likely. I mentioned this to Fr. Miguel at one point and he knew immediately. "Of course. Astronomers look up into their telescopes and see the vastness and the nothingness, and mathematicians look at numbers and realize that there is a pattern in everything."

It was either Hooke or Leeuwenhoek who looked into the microscope--I think it was Hooke, now that I think again--and was shocked that man-made objects, like the edge of a knife blade, got more more chaotic the closer you looked at them, but natural objects like cork or plant fibers got more and more orderly the closer you looked.

I don't know what I believe about God. Most of the time I try not to examine too closely. But these two anecdotes (and things like prime numbers) help my faith. There is an order to the universe. The universe doesn't care one way or another what I believe--it simply is. But I have a hunch it wasn't just chance.

208/365 Making Sense of Ecclesiastes

You know that old phrase that we've been saying probably since there were enough people speaking the same words: why do bad things happen to good people? Today's first reading at church was from Ecclesiastes. Vanity of vanities, all things are vanity. You work hard and crap happens to you anyway. Awful crap sometimes.

Ecclesiastes is a fascinating little book--most non-Catholics know it from the passage about a time for everything under the sun. A time to sow, a time to reap, a time for Crosby Stills and Nash to sing a song. From the introduction in the New American: Merit does not yield happiness for it is often tried by suffering. Riches and pleasures do not avail. Existence is monotonous, enjoyment fleeting and vain; darkness quickly follows. Life, then, is an enigma beyond human ability to solve.

But we all try to solve it. We all puzzle around things that happen, trying to make sense out of the suffering and loss around us, as well as what seems like ill-gotten gains by those we deem unworthy. We read into happenstance and coincidence and wonder at God's plan. At our best moments, we simply hope to understand someday and come to a peace with the unknowing.

This was all very poignant this morning at mass because Mike's aunt and uncle, Sheila and Bill, lost everything in a house fire yesterday. Everything is gone except the people who lived there--themselves, a son and daughter-in-law, and their 3 year old grandson--and their vehicles and whatever else they kept in the garage. Everything else burned up in a house fire so hot it was still burning 8 hours after the fire department arrived. By the time Sheila's brother saw it (he lives on the same property, in rural Illinois) and called 911, it was too hot to even get the dog out. All gone.

It will take them years, maybe decades, before they come up with a mental inventory of what they've lost. My mother-in-law keeps calling with updates and I can't even give her minimal responses like uh-huh because I'm sobbing on this end of the line.

This morning three parishes heard Ecclesiastes and the gospel parable about the wealthy man who tears down his barns to build bigger ones, and then took up a collection for Bill and Sheila. Three parishes because they share one pastor, and the boundaries between parishes are pretty fluid. Each of the three have relatives in attendance, friends, people who knew them from when. St. Catherine's, the parish they personally belong to, is a building about the size of my living and dining room. Seriously. Everyone there is related to you one way or another. After mass they gave Bill the collection and there was a lot of money--hundreds of dollars from one of the most impoverished counties in Illinois and one of the tiniest parishes I've ever known of. Bill said he had money in his pocket he didn't even know from where. Again, hundreds of dollars people just pressed into his palm when they saw him in the past 24 hours or so. Sheila said she hated taking from people, but really, when this happens, all people want to do is feed you and try to do something to ease the suffering. And it's not like they have a place to put donations that aren't cash, after all. Ma in Little House on the Prairie, as she cooks up the seed potatoes because they've been forced to move on from Indian territory, sighs and says there is no great loss without some small gain. Maybe that's so.

But they will--my father-in-law is a contractor, as is probably already known here--and he said once the insurance comes through, they could get a house up fast. Like a long weekend kind of fast. Mary Helen asked if we'd come down. My goodness I wouldn't miss that for anything.

The author of Ecclesiastes has something here, too:

If one falls, the other will life up his companion. Woe to the solitary man! For if he should fall, he has no one to lift him up. So also, if two sleep together, they keep each other warm. How can one alone keep warm? Where a lone man may be overcome, two together can resist. A three-ply cord is not easily broken. [Eccl 4:10-12]

268/365 Autumn Days

These autumn days are warning us
Of winter sure to be,
When all the leaves have fallen off
From every branch and tree.

These earthly friends are leaving us
Their autumns being past,
And thus the winters of our lives
Will come to us at last.
--Shaker poem

It is this time of year that brings me face to face with aging. In the mirror every morning, in the red bud tree in the backyard turning unceremoniously brown. The hard green tomatoes left on the vine, never to ripen, might as well pick them and make salsa verde. Again. The air is unforgivingly dry and Maeve's eczema returns with her asthmatic cough.

I am, most likely, God willing and the creek don't rise, far from the winter of my life. But it struck me that Sophia is 9, and if she is a typical child, we're half-done with having her live in our house full time. This created a sort of panic in me akin to having a baby reach up and touch a hot burner. Hurry, fast, before it's all over.

All over. It's all over in a hurry, yes. I need to be sure to hurry up and take things slow.

270/365 Dregs

From Joan Chittister's reflection on today's reading from the Rule:

God does not come on hoofbeats of mercury through streets of gold. God is in the dregs of our lives. That's why it takes humility to find God where God is not expected to be.

My best daily spiritual time? Washing the endless dishes. Rinsing, stacking, loading the dishwasher, washing the pots by hand, trying to figure out how to get the burned on butternut squash residue out of my crockpot. Sometimes I have the radio on and Tavis Smiley or Tom Ashbrook tells me things. But most of the time I work with the running water and the distant sounds of my family getting on with their evening in the rest of the house.

There is a stillness in my heart when I do dishes, like when I watch a fire on a camping trip. A meditation to the work and the same scene again and again. The windowsill with my oak leaf bowl. The milk glass vases. The marble. The glass from the Buena Vista. It's kind of an altar. Old things, precious things, depictions of creation, and things that have no meaning except to me. Below them, the jar of cooking utensils, the vitamins, the dish soap. Sugar jar. The Mexican tiles I use under my big pans to keep them balanced on my lovely, but sometimes impractical, stove. I know these images by heart the way I know the rosary. I stand in the corner, the window giving the rhythm of seasons to set off the static pieces of the counter and windowsill. It's just a sink. It's just the kitchen. But God sits there and spills coffee on the table while the water runs over my hands.

290/365 Erasers

I remember sitting in the front row of the 6th grade classroom--the other 6th grade classroom, since my homeroom was across the hall, on what would be politely referred to as the "garden level" of the school building. We were half in the basement.

Br. Stephen was up sitting on his desk and we were talking about belief. Beth asked what the difference between belief and opinion was. "Aren't faith and belief simply a matter of opinion?" she asked. Yes, in 6th grade. When I taught 6th grade later in life, I would have fallen on the ground if a 6th grader had asked me this. I got things like "what do we need to know for the test?" and "Why do we have to know this?" but Br. Stephen got questions like this all the time.

And Stephen handled it by going up to the chalkboard and writing the word "opinion." He had the most marvelous handwriting. And he picked up the eraser and turned to look at us. "This chalkboard is faith, true faith. This word is opinion." He erased the word. "It would take a lot more doing to eliminate the slate."

Simple, yes, but it's an image that has stuck in my mind ever since--and that was 24 years ago. I worry about church politics and about how long I'm going to be able to call myself Catholic and what if my local parish changes in tone to the point that I can't call myself a member and where does that leave me and what will I do and how will I find a place where I fit. I disagree with so many things. Why am I here? Why do I stay? What is it about being part of this Church that makes me walk through life as a Catholic instead of a Quaker or part of the UCC or any other of a half a dozen choices that have appeared in front of me in the past?

And I think about that chalkboard in that basement classroom--not my faith versus my opinions, but in regards to where the winds are blowing now as opposed to 2000 years of layered traditions built up and up and up. I think about atomic structures, how the glass marble in front of me appears static but is composed of countless atoms that are constantly interacting and changing and reacting and buzzing about. What's happening now, or anytime, is chalk dust. My faith and the overall picture of what it means to be Christian is slate. In the other analogy, changes in politics or ritual language or who gets communion or who the hated minority is or lamentations about Jesus' words versus a hierarchical church full of Pharisees is all buzz. It's all tiny bits of movement and change and reaction and the glass marble doesn't change.