Blogging, again

“The way I see it, a mystic takes a peek at God and then does her best to show the rest of us what she saw…she agrees to the quiet morning hour in front of God in exchange for a bit of revelation.  She doesn’t ditch tradition as much as take it for its word and peer inside its cavernous shell.  There must still be something worth saying, worth pointing to.” –Jessie Harriman, in David James Duncan’s God Laughs & Plays

At dinner the other evening, a long-time friend of mine asked me how things are going with the Catholic Church. This did not strike me as a general question; it seemed to be a very personal one about the Catholic Church and me—how we are doing—and that was a bit startling…which, in itself, was startling.

These days I spend a lot of time asking other folks how things are going between them and the Catholic Church. You see, for the past few months I have had the privilege of helping to facilitate a Boston-area writing group for young adults who are wrestling with the beauties and sorrows of our Catholic Communion.   Rather than attempting to voice my own relationship with the church, I have been listening to echoes of it in the profound articulations of others. And this has brought me a good sense of companionship.

Yet, when this old friend of mine asked me about my own life with the Church, I hesitated. I was speechless, really.  In the broken response that I proceeded to muster, I found myself talking about this blog.  Why had a question about my faith life led me to an explanation about this blog?  Perhaps my friend was wondering the same thing: “Oh, no, no, I didn’t mean to question you about the blog,” he said, assuring me that he was asking about my faith and really not trying to make me feel bad about my silence in the blogsphere.

What my friend’s question led me to realize, however, was just how much this blog is implicated in my ability to answer his question about my present relation to Catholicism. In the conversation that followed, and in the days of contemplation that ensued, I observed that the practice of blog writing has afforded me a space of discovery—of revelation—about where and how I am in relation to God and the Church.  Without it, I have become much less familiar with my location in relation to these very significant entities.  It is not that I am nowhere in relation to them so much as I am simply unaware of where I’m at. Unable to give an account of it. Unsure about toward where and to what I can point with regard to my life with the tradition.

Blogging more often might be a good way to get at this again.  I’m a bit out of practice, though.  My fingers don’t navigate the keyboard as quickly as they once did when I sat down to write; and this is really just a more physical manifestation of my internal aimlessness as I search my soul for some simple words to offer.  Yet it seems a worthy attempt to continue to sit down and try. I can sit in the quiet in exchange for a bit of revelation every once and awhile, a few words on the screen, a bit of insight into who I am and where I am today.  I’m a bit out of practice, but perhaps God will show up again. Eventually.

Fire II

I walk out of the library and hear the faint, familiar whisper of a tree.  It is that tall, brilliant orange one – there – calling out: Fire.  It has been a year since the autumn reds and golds consumed the city.

Now, I am reading Pascal’s Mémorial in French, a language that only months ago was foreign sounds and odd vowel clusters. Ton DIEU sera mon Dieu. Is it different now, in another language, in a different time?

I walk closer, and I wonder to myself, “How is it that the leaves of this tree burn in such a familiar way? And yet, I have never seen this one before.”  Do all trees whisper, “Fire”?  Am I drawn again, and again, to their flames? Or, is the fire, this captivating wonder, within me, yet I only recognize it when when the leaves turn?

Could it be that the fire of God did not descend upon Pascal that night, but rather it was the moment he first realized it was always, already – there - within him? Je m’en suis séparé…Je m’en suis séparé; je l’ai fui, renoncé, crucifié…Que je n’en sois pas séparé éternellement…Oubli du monde et de tout, hormis DIEU.

Fire.

Free for Today

Check out my reflection on today’s liturgical readings at From the Pews in the Back. It’s called, “Free for Today.”

Ecstasy (and in the meantime…)

You have not danced so badly, my dear,
Trying to hold hands with the Beautiful One.
You have waltzed with great style,
My sweet, crushed angel,
To have ever neared God’s Heart at all.
Our Partner is notoriously difficult to follow,
And even His best musicians are not always easy to hear.
So what if the music has stopped for a while.
So what
If the price of admission to the Divine
Is out of reach tonight…

…Have patience,
For He will not be able to resist your longing
For long.
You have not danced so badly, my dear,
Trying to kiss the Beautiful One.
You have actually waltzed with tremendous style,
O my sweet,
O my sweet, crushed angel.

-Hafiz

My friend Chuck and I meet once a week to study for the GRE.  We know we wouldn’t glance at a single analogy this summer without the accountability.  Even then, our plans to plow through a few more drills during our time together are inevitably amended for the sake of rousing discussion about theology and our vocations as educator-artist-theologians.

Last week we were musing about good theology–about the nature of it, the courage and creativity of it. I confessed to him how badly I crave to write something honest and beautiful like our favorite scholars and theologians.  Like Foucault, or Simone Weil.

“There are these rare moments of ecstasy when I’m playing with my band–” Chuck told me. He is a musician, and you would know it by hearing him mention a few words on the subject; you can hear it in the reverent tone of his voice. “These moments of beauty and ecstasy–I think they’re like the beauty of theology you’re talking about.” I nodded, encouraging him. “When I’m with my band I can’t force that, you know? It’s a combination of too many things–it’s the way the musicians are playing together that night, it’s the space, it’s the crowd and their chemistry with us.”

Remembering the rush of a great concert, I affirmed, “Yes, that’s what I want, and I know it is about more than just me. When I write I am working so hard, but God doesn’t always show up, ya know?  That energy and beauty doesn’t always come.”  I paused, and then confided to him, “We’ve been working on these applications to doctoral programs, Chuck, and I feel like there is so much riding on this performance. It’s like a show with an audience full of the most brilliant musicians, all of them scrutinizing you, expecting to witness greatness…”

“I’ve been at shows when the ecstasy didn’t come.  When the performance never reached that perfection,”  he told me. “But you know, I could tell how much the band wanted it. And sometimes that’s enough for a great show. It’s not the ultimate; it not ecstasy, but sometimes it’s enough for audience to just witness that hunger within you.”

Hafiz says that even when we do not dance so badly, and even when we waltz with tremendous style, God does not always appear there on the dance floor. This does not mean that God is not watching the beautiful dance, I am sure. “So what?” Hafiz says, writing so affectionately of this angel as she dances. So what? So what?  Perhaps the performance can be beautiful, even as her partner still pauses at the edge of the dance floor.

Perhaps I can create something beautiful, whether or not perfection takes me for a waltz today…

For these Eyes

When the headlines appear, the questions come in. I’m used to this. And in fact, I’m absolutely flattered by it. It means a lot to me that people take the time to ask for my thoughts about whatever Catholic controversy fills the news on any given day. Sometimes, friends ask me to sort out the esoteric religious jargon for them.  I’m capable of this only sometimes, but I am always honored that folks trust my assessment of the tradition.  Other times, these blessed friends are simply concerned about how I’m dealing with it all. “How are you feeling about this, Jessica. How are you doing?”

In recent weeks when the news spread that the Vatican is making significant strides to revise its handling of clergy sexual abuse cases–all while allegedly linking the severity of these sins to the ordination of women–the questions came in, and I started to ask myself, “How are you feeling about this, Jessica?  How are you doing?“

I couldn’t stop thinking about the story my friend Katie told me the other day. During a recent weekend, she volunteered at a middle school camp for inner city youth run by the Catholic parochial school where she taught for a few years after college. On that Sunday morning, she went to Mass with the students and their teachers in the camp’s quaint wooden chapel. The presider was gracious with the kids, and a good homilist, too. “But the tabernacle there–” she told me.  That’s what got her. “The tabernacle looks just like the boy’s Catholic school down the street. Like the shape of their building.”  I began to smile as she went on.  I delighted in the fact that this friend anticipated the wonder I would share with her as she recounted this experience for me.  ”This is what Catholicism is about, isn’t it? Recognizing Jesus inside an inner city school like that? Like that?  Believing that Jesus dwells with the underprivileged so much that you make a symbol of it with the most important part of your sanctuary?”

I nodded as we savored this moment that captured the best of our Church.  In that small moment, we didn’t have to convince ourselves that we are so blessed to belong to this Church.  We are blessed to have  church that views inner city schools as tabernacles, and tabernacles as inner city schools.  And blessed to be raised in a church that has given us the eyes to see the world in this way, too. “I wish I had moments like that more often,” Katie said. I think she was referring to the tabernacle at the camp, but I was thinking the same thing about the moment we had just shared–that moment of unwavering pride for our faith.

I’ve been telling a lot of people that, for many reasons, I feel sad and disappointed about the recent Vatican stirrings.  And, really, I’m feeling tired of feeling sad and disappointed. But I am also trying to tell a lot of people about my hope. I’m trying to talk about that, too. I’m trying to tell them about the eyes this tradition has afforded me–Katie and me.  Eyes that recognize miraculous transformations in places and people that much of society overlooks. Eyes that see Jesus in the sometimes harsh and unglamorous realities of our cities.  Eyes set on recognizing God’s redemption of our world in any and every place.  Even in our Church.

Go and Do Likewise

Check out my latest post at From the Pews in the Back. It’s a reflection on today’s Sunday readings, entitled, “Go and Do Likewise.”

A Sense of Direction

Check out my latest post on From the Pews in the Back, entitled, “A Sense of Direction.” It’s a little reflection on today’s liturgical reading…

Just Say the Word

When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking for help. “Lord,” he said, “my servant lies at home paralyzed and in terrible suffering.”  Jesus said to him, “I will go and heal him.”  The centurion replied, “Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes… (Matthew 8:5-8)

There are many things about this section of scripture that make me squeamish.  In principle, I dislike charges of absolute authority, even as they are ascribed to the human incarnation of an omnipotent God.  I am especially uncomfortable with authority analogies related to the military, or any other institutions that employ violence as a means of enforcement, for that matter.  There is something about the centurion’s claim of unworthiness that gets me, too.  Perhaps I’ve seen too many well-intentioned Christians transform “humility” into unproductive guilt.

Despite all this, I cling to that declaration: But just say the word, and my servant will be healed.

This man knew the power of a word.

Jesus responded to the centurion, saying, “Go! It will be done just as you believed it would!” I’d like to believe that “Go” was the word with all that power.  I want to believe that because it is often the smallest words that heal me.  Last semester I took a seminar that required students to circulate written reflections on the assigned readings before class. While reading the first reflection paper of the semester, written by male student, I was touched by the care with which he employed one little word. “When one does this, she experiences that…” Every non-specific pronoun he utilized in the essay was gendered female—a stark contrast to the ubiquitous male-gendered pronouns that filled the theological texts we studied all semester. With that little word—“she”—this colleague extended a powerful message: language so often excludes people of your gender, and I am invested in changing that.  This gesture brought a little bit of healing.

Big words and long phrases have power, too.  I keep a stack of blank note cards next to my bed; you will find me frantically reaching for them while reading Nouwen, Teresa of Avila, and Foucault when I have come across a line or a paragraph too precious to forget.  I scribble them down and pin them to the bulletin board hanging on my bedroom wall where they remind me that so many others out there share the truths that I have unearthed in this short life. These are healing words because they remind me that I am not alone in my search for sense and meaning in my strange encounter with this world.

When I think of being “Christlike,” I dream of bringing words that heal.  This is how I make sense of a life of so many books and computer screens. I am searching for the Word.  The Word that heals.

Can the Eucharist Unite Us?

Check out my latest post on Patheos.com, entitled “Can the Eucharist Unite Us?“

Ghost Stories

Check out my latest post on From the Pews in the Back entitled, “Ghost Stories.”