Photo by Justin Knight

Amid these long days curled over my laptop and yellow-paged library books, I have been stepping out into the fresh air for a walk on the Labyrinth.  The white-stoned, circular meditation walk rests on the edge of a grassy lawn across from the entrance of Andover, Harvard’s theology library.  The Labyrinth is warm from many hours under the sun, so I often take off my shoes to feel the heat radiating from the stone.  Sometimes my shoes feel as confining as the walls of the wooden study carol where I have been writing my final papers all week. The labyrinth winds back and forth from beginning to end, and no matter how many times I walk it, I find myself feeling directionless there; that’s part of what makes it effective, I think.  All I can do is look down at the path carved out in the stone, place one foot in front of the other, and follow the path in front of me.

During my second week at Harvard, I sat down for dinner with one of my mentors and I confessed my excitement and anxiety about the year ahead.  I had no doubt that I did not want to be anywhere but HDS; I already loved my classes and professors, and my peers were brilliant and fascinating. Still, I worried that I could not live up to the opportunity.  What if I’m what this place expects?  What if they don’t like my ideas, or my approach?  “Just give yourself to this process!” he reassured me.  “This is amazing!  I’m so excited for you!  Just give yourself to this process…”  I’ve repeated these words a thousand times this year.

On the days when I am particularly anxious, I look up in the midst of my labyrinth walk, and I am startled, “Have I moved at all?” This is a ridiculous question, of course.  I’ve been walking for the last five minutes. Yet, really and truly, there are moments when I look up at all the turns of this winding circular path and I wonder this.  I don’t have the patience for it.  I ache for a reminder of progress!  But all that’s there is another corner to pivot—a corner that looks just like the one I passed five paces ago. I want a reminder of progress!  And then—I remind myself that that is not the point.

People often ask me if I picture myself doing something other than theology in the future. Typically, I reply with something like, “Well, I’m old enough to know that life cannot be planned.  So, I try to remain open.  But right now, I really see myself moving in the direction of theology.”  For some reason I do not tell them about the moment earlier this year when I was sitting at my kitchen table with my roommate, Sarah.  It was one of those anxious days, one when I was doubting myself again.  She asked me that question about the possibility of doing something else, and I started to cry when I told her the complete truth, saying, “I don’t know what else I could possibly do…” It is not that I could not find employment, and even satisfaction, in any number of other careers. No. The truth is that I feel so deeply that this is what I am called to do, for myself and for my community, that even on the hard days I cannot see myself working toward anything else.  And sometimes the calling frightens me. But it is always there, and it is so much mine that I can’t imagine leaving it.

The panicked, directionless moments are so often an occasion for reminding myself that I am moving, and that I’m exactly where I need to be. “Just give yourself to this process,” I tell myself. “One step at a time.  One step.  One step,” I tell myself again.  When I confront my doubt with the truth of my call, I remember all the moments of epiphany this year—all the moments when I have felt more free than I ever have before—more myself, and more with God, and more with and for my people than I could have ever imagined.

The stone is warm under the soles of my feet, and I lean forward to take another step—

“‘My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?’ gave way–here is the heart of the story–to ‘But into your hands I commend my spirit.’

Sometimes, this is what it feels like to be a Catholic–like handing myself over to nothing.  Handing myself over, but with hope for some future resurrection.

In his autobiography, James Carroll writes the lines quoted above amidst a story about one of his mentors, American poet Allen Tate.  As a young seminarian Carroll visited Tate at his home, finding upon his arrival that one of Tate’s infant children choked and died in his crib only a week earlier.  Tate’s Catholic priest refused the infant a Catholic funeral, as the child died unbaptized and because, according to Tate, the child’s father was a “bad” Catholic.  The young Carroll was dismayed by the circumstances, and did his best to respond to his mentor with compassion and the message of a loving and unceasingly welcoming God.

In this quote, Carroll is telling his friend who God is–who Jesus is.  I can only imagine that Tate, this grieving father, could relate to Carroll’s description of Jesus, for Tate was also a human encountering the absence of God and the difficulty of handing oneself over the to this very real experience of despair.

When I read stories like Tate’s I am angered by the cruelties committed in the name of Catholicism.  I face these representations of the Church, and I think, “God is not there.” –Yet, Catholicism is my faith?

I also read about men and women like Carroll, though, and I remember why I still believe in Catholicism’s resurrection.  I am challenged to believe that God even brings resurrection to places and people that seem to be without God.  I am reminded that I still experience the same strange paradox of Jesus’ experience–and Tate’s experience: I have handed myself over to the God who was not always there–not always in Catholicism.  Yet I still find God there, in Catholicism.

It is comforting to know this strange reality belongs to more than just me.

Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/colerichards/3975660771/

I feel as if I have been in labor for the past four months, trying earnestly to birth the nascent knowledge of my time at Harvard Divinity School.  There have been times in the last few weeks when I have reached out desperately for the hand of a partner, my mind amid intellectual exhaustion, my fingers tired from pushing, pushing the keys of this tiny white keyboard. “I don’t know if I can do this….” I had to keep pushing. It had never before been that hard to process, to write, to read again and again and again!

“Push!” my midwives insisted. “Keep pushing!” they encouraged. “We see this precious child within you! We see it coming! Push!”

With a sigh of relief and satisfaction, the infant arrived: ideas I had not entirely known I possessed, or at least commanded enough to reproduce in the tangible form of written word.  “It is a miracle!” I always observe with delight whenever I create something of which I can manage to be proud. “What a miracle!”

I have never birthed a human being, but I think I have a little glimpse into the patience such a strenuous labor would require, and perhaps a tiny insight into the pride experienced when holding the infant in her arms after working and waiting for so long.  “It is a little me,” she sighs, “This is my creation!” Starring down at an essay composed of so much of me, these are my words, too.

Check out my article, “This Is What A Catholic Woman Looks Like,” featured  in the “Young Women & Catholicism” column at www.Patheos.com.

I was amidst an intimate evening liturgy with the Jesuit community and a small collection of guests from our university community.  There were maybe thirty of us in attendance.  Everyone could see me as I fumbled around with our Faith.  This was at the heart of my momentary, paralyzing anxiety.  My panic did not stem from a burden of personal shame about carelessly handling the Eucharist—I was confident this mistake was not unforgivable in God’s eyes.  It was the gaze of my fellow Christians that terrified me.  I knew how much the Eucharist means in our tradition, and I feared being judged a sloppy, unfit Catholic because of this incident.  In my struggle to participate and serve the community, I had committed a grave liturgical sin, and everyone watched me do it.

Sometimes I think this is what it is like, being a theologian, or a minister, or simply just a Christian in our world today. We publicly take up a faith, a claim to a community, an allegiance to particular authorities (however ambiguous or ambivalent that may be), and everyone is watching us do it—fellow Christians, religious skeptics, curious inquirers. Everyone is watching.

And sometimes all I can do is stand there before everyone, the Blood of Christ dripping from my fingers, all too keenly aware that I am not the appearance of what a good Christian should be.

Seeing the shock and embarrassment in my frozen expression, Father Ravizza rescued me.  This kind, gentle man stepped out of the communion line, came forward and leaned in close to me. “I spilled,” I said in a whispered confession. “It’s okay,” he replied. “Let’s do this…” He removed the white napkin from my clinched fingers, unfolded it and covered the small red puddle on the floor.  He hurried over to the side altar for another napkin, and before I knew it he was at my side again, placing a clean cloth into my hand. He did not tell me to sit down. He did not replace me with another more competent minister. “Go ahead,” he said, nudging me back to the patient people in the communion line.  “The Blood of Christ,” I began again…

When I struggle with the public imperfections of my Christian life, with the guilt of not being the community member I wish I was, or the person that I should be, I return to this moment for a reminder of redemption.  Jesus will step out of the communion line to clean up this mess with me.  And Jesus will tell me to “Go ahead,” again.

A community needs a soul if it is to become a true home for human beings. You, the people must give it this soul.” –Pope John Paul II

I hold immeasurable gratitude for all the dear friends and family in Seattle who give this place its soul, who make this community a home for me. Thank you for your Love, and for this blessed season together.

Next blog post…from Boston!

Nevertheless, this inexplicable, faint familiarity was enough to spur on the purchase, and over the next month or so I found myself rushing home after school to parse through the dense pages of Confessions on the grass of my front lawn.   I read it at the neighborhood park, in bed before I feel asleep at night, and under my umbrella during rainy afternoon walks.

This was the first time I fell in love with theology, and surely one of the pivotal moments in my continuous falling in love with God.  It was not until recently, however, that I realized that reading of Confessions marked another first-time romance: it was the first time I fell in love with St. Augustine.

I didn’t literally fall in love with this fourth century, North African saint.  But I really did fall in love with some of the man’s characteristics that surfaced in the autobiography: that restless longing for God; his noble, idealistic self-aspirations; the brutally honest disenchantment; his radical hope in God’s faithfulness.  Augustine’s traits absolutely captivated me–that’s why I read so eagerly.  And as of late, I have realized that these are the very same attributes manifested in the people I fall in love with.  When I consider the various men I have fallen for hard in my young life, they exemplify, in some way or another, the restless characteristics I fell in love with as a 15 year old with her head stuck in a book.  I am 23, and still falling in love with Augustine over and over again.

What’s up with that? Why am I captivated by men like this?  And really, considering the larger spectrum of relationships in my life, why am I attracted to all sorts of friends and acquaintances who possess these Augustinian qualities?  Perhaps it’s because I tend to be a bit of a restless, idealistic, God-seeker too. I am yearning to connect with people who live out this restlessness-thing better than I do.  I long for companions who can help me along.  And they do help.  The Augustine’s I fall in love with again and again–the lovers and the friends–they do help me feel a little less strange and a bit more hopeful in this world.

I know we are all looking for the empathy of companions in this life. This is a very human thing.  I guess I just didn’t expect I’d find love in a saint, and I didn’t expect to find  that saint in the people I love.