3/365 The Magi

Today is the Feast of the Epiphany, so named because it comes from the Greek term meaning manifestation--because this celebrates the day upon which Christ's divinity was manifested to the gentiles. It is when they had their epiphany. The gentiles. The non-Jews. Here they are represented by the magi, a somewhat mysterious band of astrologers who came to pay homage to the newborn messiah.

Jews are the people of the book. The people of the Word. God comes to them in dreams, in words, in prophecies. God reveals truth by telling the truth. Telling instead of showing.

The people around them--the gentiles--learned truth through nature. They read the entrails of animals, for instance, and they look to the stars. And so the Magi saw "his star at its rising." They went to Herod and asked him where the child might be found--note that Herod asked the scribes about the prophecies about the messiah--not the omens from chicken bones, but the prophecies. Bethlehem, they informed the Magi.

So the people of the book deliver the message to the people of nature about the coming messiah. The Magi go to Bethlehem, find Mary, Joseph, and Jesus. They bring gifts representing Christ's station of priest, prophet, and king (frankincense, myrrh, and gold). All seems well. They're about to return to Herod to tell him about the child but then....

But then they are warned in a dream. Suddenly they aren't getting their truth from nature, from stars, from astrology. They are told. They are warned in a dream not to return to Herod, and they don't, returning to their own country by another route.

In this moment, they become part of the People of the Book, of the Word. They become grafted onto God's Chosen People. They are, in essence, the first Christians, the first converts. Who knows what they go and do when they get home (to Iran, perhaps?). Who can be sure of anything--their number, their intentions, their existence--but the story is still True. We are all part of the People of God by our belief in the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ. The story of the magi shows us how. We are to listen to God's word. Listen.

Reminds me of that oft-quoted preface to the Rule of St. Benedict: Listen, my child, to your master's teachings, and incline the ear of your heart.

The magi listened and followed what they heard. May it be that I take the time to incline the ear of my own heart and do the same.

67/365 Fall and get up, fall and get up

1. Humility lies in knowing who I am and what my life means. Bidden or not bidden, God is always present.

2. If God is my center and my end, I must accept the will of God. How do I recognize the will of God? How do I know if it is different from my own? How do I know when to resist and when to embrace?

3. I should submit my will to those who have claim on me: my husband, my children, my family, my friends. Those around me are the voice of Christ.

4. Perseverance through difficult conditions allows my heart to endure and embrace the suffering. Life is hard. After the mountain, there is another mountain.

5. Sharing my weaknesses and struggles with someone who has the insight and care to give good advice and help is necessary for spiritual growth. Trying to hide weakness is a set-up for failure. If I admit and own my struggles and work to overcome them, I am moving towards perfection, towards becoming fully human.

6. I should be content with the least of things and positions. I should be thankful for what I have right now and not work to accumulate more than I need.

7. I should admit that I am small and embrace this.

8. I should follow the rules and examples set down for me. Experience can bring holiness.

9. I should control my opinions and my judgment.

10. I should keep laughter in check and know that humor is different from derision and sarcasm.

11. I should speak fewer words, speaking them gently and briefly.

12. I should manifest humility in my bearing and in my heart. I should tread lightly on the earth and act deliberately. Metaphorically, hood up and head down.

99/365 Spiritual Needs

Right before Easter, Hildegard asked me if I had a spiritual director. I do, of sorts, in Sr. Jean Frances. We email back and forth regularly and she is so centered and peaceful and good. I love getting her emails because there is always something I can ruminate on, live on, for time to come. Which is good because I'm separated from the monastery for quite some time--the sisters have moved into the guest quarters while the main building is reconstructed, so there is no room for oblates. We could go stay at Conception and commute, but they strongly hinted that guests would be a burden. I can accept that, in fact, I'm glad they are honest about their own needs.

Because I should be too. This Lent was in many ways so good for me. But in other ways it got lost like a breeze in a whirlwind. I made it to Sunday mass at our parish twice before Triduum. I was here and there and everywhere and it sucked a lot of life out of me. This is good to see, in hindsight. It is, in the end, important for me to have a regular spiritual schedule. Another thing I learned this Lent.

Hildegard and I, though, were standing in the parking lot. "Have you considered going down to Pevely, even just for a night and staying the next day? What about down on Ripa?" I knew what Ripa meant--the SSND compound--but Pevely only meant a defunct Benedictine monastery to me. I mean in a Catholic sense. Pevely is also the location of one of the Girl Scout camps, but I figured that's not what Hildegard meant. I queried and she explained. Hermitages.

And I heard all those familiar nagging voices in my head. I have a baby who doesn't sleep through the night yet (yes, that's right, he's 15 months old). I have, oh, not a single weekend between now and the 5th of Never that I can easily claim for myself. I just can't trot off...but why could I just trot off to the monastery? Because they put out the weekend schedule for the year every January? They got on my calendar early?

Eh.

So she told me she'd be asking me later about it. I drove home and got things in order. Went back that evening for a Holy Thursday potluck and she handed me a one-free-night coupon to this place in Pevely. She found it by accident as she unloaded a basket to take to church for the collection that evening. There it was. Lo.

One time in Borders Books, before I was an oblate, I was searching through garbage Christian fluff, things like "The Idiot's Guide to Mary Magdalene" and crap centered around the idea that Jesus wants you to be rich--trying to find something worth my time. Maeve was wriggling in the stroller and I was about to walk away when Sophia said, "Look, Mama, a key." There on a low shelf was a key, an ordinary house key. Sitting in front of Joan Chittister's In Search of Belief. Look Mama indeed. A key.

I do not believe in coincidences. So I suppose I'm going to have to find my way to Pevely.

130/365 Let It Go

It is rarely about me. I carry things in my heart so readily, so automatically, and when something happens that is out of the ordinary, not what I expected from this person or that one, I assume it has something to do with me. I'm the cause or at least the catalyst and I need to fix it.

Astrid has often said to me that, really, it's rarely about me. Something else along the way has jarred the other person. A fight with a spouse, a bad report from school, money (always money), family problems, whatever. And encountering me doesn't cure them, but it doesn't necessarily make things worse.

This is my big challenge. Sometimes I know EXACTLY what I did, and then I often find myself apologizing. But it's a good rule of thumb to know that if I'm puzzled, it's probably not me.

let all go--the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things--let all go
dear
so comes love

--ee cummings

Nothing's happened, and I know I've written this down before. It's just that I need to remind myself all the time. And this is what was on my mind.

131/365 Oak Trees

It used to be, I'd go into the woods and I'd know that was an oak tree. If it had leaves, I could recognize oak trees. I was near the oak trees. I even learned, without trying, what a pin oak was. My grandmother had one in her front yard. And somehow I soaked in the knowledge that a pin oak was a red oak, and the other kind of oak was a white oak.

When Sophia was still a baby in a stroller, I realized I didn't know much about the natural environment around me. Missouri is beautiful and I felt bad that I didn't know the birds and trees and flowers. I began to study. I especially fell in love with oak trees. Not only were they divided into red and white, but each category had many species within. There were burr oaks and basket oaks and chinquapin oaks and scarlet oaks. I studied in books and went out into the wilderness. I held leaves and acorns in my hand and all my new knowledge was jumbled up in my head, but in a fascinating new way. I wanted to know and I wanted to know precisely and expertly.

I narrowed in on a street tree outside my front door, an oak of the red oak variety, but it began to dawn on me that it didn't fit. I would observe bud ends and baby leaves and acorns and bark and it didn't fit. I got better books and learned that oaks hybridize, and more than that: their hybrids are often fertile, leading to different hybrids themselves. The possibilities were endless. My neighbor Anne mentioned to me that Forest Park had to bring in an oak expert form the East Coast to figure out what species, or combination of species, a certain grove belonged to. An oak expert. There was no way I'd ever learn enough to be an expert.

Daunted, but still enthusiastic, I got a blank book and started recording every oak tree I ran across. Most fit simply where they belonged: blackjack, blue, white, willow, laurel, and so on. Others were mysterious. I learned Latin terms. Quercus velutina. Quercus alba.

When I went into the woods, I would point out oaks incessantly. It took me a long time to realize that many people didn't care. It didn't matter to them if it was an oak or a maple or a Kentucky coffee tree. They'd come for the shade. So I backed off. But in withdrawing from persistent identification of oaks, I didn't stop naming them in my head. I still saw them for what they were.

I had an opportunity to go walking at night this past weekend at a girl scout camp. We walked in darkness to adjust to night light, simply for the fun of it. Walking past an open field, I saw the form of the white oak in almost the center. I didn't point it out to the group of 9 year old girls walking along with me. They would note it or they wouldn't and it didn't matter. I knew it was there, gnarled and glorious, 100 years at least standing alone in that meadow. I loved it from afar in the darkness, seeing in my mind the shape of its leaves, the size of the acorn caps on the ground below it, the root structure stretching deeply underground. And that was enough.

146/365 Religious Tradition

Catholicism has an undeniable culture. There are many different shades of this, and Catholics attending two different parishes in the same diocese might have vastly different ideas of what it means to be Catholic. Forget the universal/worldwide church--there are plenty of differences between me and the folks at Resurrection or St. Clement of Rome. Geography, as usual, is destiny.

But walking into almost any Catholic church, I find myself at the front or side vestibule. There's a holy water font. There are almost always pews or some sort of seating. I'm not the biggest fan of pews, but there's something very homey and comfortable about 90 year old quarter-sawn oak pews. There's some sort of sanctuary with a chair, an ambo, and an altar. There are usually images--stations of the cross, stained glass, tapestries, statues, mosaics, something to help tell the story of our faith. There's a crucifx. Fire. Pathways and kneelers and silence. There might be parts of the mass that seem odd to a newcomer--at one parish I attended in Texas, after communion every Sunday we recited the words: O Sacrament most holy, O Sacrament divine, all praise and all thanksgiving be every moment thine. Other places don't sing as much or don't have as much silence or celebrate sacraments differently. But they are all fragments of the same mirror, reflecting God.

I am thinking about this because of the Unitarian blog I read; she is visiting her dad's family this weekend and is surrounded by Catholic tradition. She is originally Catholic, and she likes that her kids are experiencing this, even if just a few times a year. Because her kids will not make first communion or witness baptisms. They won't say a rosary or know the parts of the mass by heart. They see these things with fresh eyes, but with eyes of strangers.

She and I, on the other hand, know these things from childhood. And my kids, in some similar ways, some different, are learning and living these things, too. And in the end, this was one of the things that kept me Catholic when it really looked like maybe I wasn't supposed to be. Religion kept me going with faith wavered. I realized I wasn't strong enough to find God on my own. I needed a community to help me. I needed tradition and ritual and practice and rules. I'm not talking about morality--I could have managed that just fine on my own. I'm talking about religion. About finding one's way through the noise and static. I'm not going to find God in a pink crystal rosary. I'm not going to reach great spiritual insights sitting at vespers. But if I don't do these things, have these things, teach these things, then I don't have any hope of finding God at all. There are too many ways to lose focus.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.
--Leonard Cohen

182/365 The Stars Declare God's Glory

I just stare on past his face at Venus rising,
Like a shining speck of hope hanging over the horizon

For the first time since moving to the city in 1992, I see Venus. Venus is bright in the sky these evenings, and maybe I'm just not as exhausted at 9 p.m. as I've probably been for the past 5 years or so. I obviously have seen Venus in the past. But for the first time, I know I'm seeing Venus.

I have taken Mike's phone, with the application for tracking the night sky, and have found Mercury, Mars, and Saturn as well, although Mercury is hard to see here in the city. The other two, with Venus, I can pick out without any trouble these days.

I stand on my porch, coming in from a meeting or an errand, and glance into the western sky. Venus follows the sun. There it is, blue-green even through our light-polluted sky, setting slowing, following the sun. There it has been and there it will be long after I've stopped noticing it. In the moment as I look up and say to myself, "Venus," I have this inner silence, almost something nearing joy. I want to wave at Venus. I want to friend it on Facebook. I want Venus to know I'm seeing it and that I like seeing it and I want to see it again tomorrow night. I take breaths deeper than I'm able and I think about the vastness of space and how very cozy and small life is.

I think back to Mrs. Chott, my second grade teacher who introduced me to Edna St. Vincent Millay. I think about Afternoon on the Hill, the last stanza:

And when lights begin to show
Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine,
And then start down!

I know now as an adult that Millay is looking at porch lights and kitchen lights and spying the warmth of home and heading there. But in second grade, I thought the lights showing up from town must be the stars. And the nice thing about seeing Venus from my front porch is that it can be mine. I mark it as so and therefore it is.

Every evening this summer has been a kind of happy prayer.

The stars declare God's glory;
the vault of heaven springs,
mute witness of the Master's hand
in all created things,
and through the silences of space
their soundless music sings.

313/365 Bread of Life at Starbucks

Sounds like an advertisement.

I had to go to the girl scout shop this morning to keep ahead of things for a change. On the way home, I stopped for, probably, the last iced coffee until April. We went inside for a change and Leo and I split a cookie. We were sitting in a corner, and at the next table over sat two 40-something men, both with mild southern accents. I'd guess probably Tennessee.

The first word I overheard was "stewardship" and I knew they were somehow affiliated with church. Considering the short-sleeved plaid shirt on one and the more corporate look to the other, I went further and guessed protestant. And I tuned my ears more carefully. Mostly because I'm nosy.

Something about a wedding...and then about a music director who is disappointing. "Transitions are terrible. They're just terrible," said the man in plaid. I started to make him into the preacher or pastor, the other man some sort of adviser or elder in the community. I got involved with Leo picking food off the ground (his food, but still) and the next thing I heard were plans for the new year. How he was going to tie manna in the desert to Jesus as the Bread of Life.

I know bible-based Christians who have converted to Catholicism simple because they read John 6 to themselves one night and had a revelation about Eucharist. So I fine tuned those ears one more time to hear what they were talking about.

"The wonderful thing about Jesus as the bread of life," the corporate looking guy started, obviously interested in this topic, leaning forward over his coffee and notes, "is that every culture has bread. Everywhere, all over the world, everyone has some kind of bread. Tortillas, rice paper wontons, yogurt bread, yeast white bread, all kinds. And none of them are exactly alike. Everyone has different experiences of bread, but we all have it."

I looked over at them, pointedly, in a "I hear you talking" glance, and the plaid shirt guy looked at me. I smiled, just a bit. Knowing I'd heard, he smiled back. And then they went back to talking.

After we left, getting Leo into the car and heading back to the city, I ruminated on this. Everyone has different experiences of bread. I like it.

346/365 Yeah, that's true

"As the oldest child in a big family, I learned early how to be responsible. Like with many firstborn children, it just seemed to come naturally to me--sometimes to an extreme. The importance of accepting responsibility can't be overemphasized. Just as important, though, is knowing when to let go, knowing when we've done all that is in our power. Responsible living means embracing both realities."

Daniel Homan, OSB