Check out my latest post at From the Pews in the Back, entitled “Pray for Us.”
Tag Archives: Prayer
Silence.
“We don’t need a moment of silence. There has been too much silence already. I propose noise—a moment of clapping.”
A woman said this to Karen during her recent trip to Honduras. Along with a group of students from Harvard Divinity School, Karen was there to learn from the women of this rural Honduran community whose lives are plagued by rape and murder. She had proposed a moment of silence to initiate the gathering of local women and foreign students that day, but she learned there was no more tolerance for silence in this community. For too long violence and abuse has been hushed.
So they clapped.
Increasingly, I am aware of how silence shapes my formation as a young Catholic theologian. Beginning with my early undergraduate years, I was schooled in the politics of Catholic speech: there are theological statements—even questions—that one simply cannot ask before certain audiences. Over the years, however, I have learned that with meticulous care, one can find ways to articulate these inquiries in a language that veils its hints of potential “uncertainty” or “disagreement.” If I break this decorum of speech, even in the nascent phases of my theological career, I fear it may cost me a professorship or a ministry job. I can already name numerous theologians and ministers for whom this is the case.
It is unsettling to recognize the many ways in which I must privately silence myself for the sake of avoiding potential silencing from others. What kind of theology can happen in this environment? Can I produce relevant theology when I often feel that I cannot outwardly address the probing, courageous questions of my community? Maybe once I’m tenured. Can these questions wait twenty years?
For years, the unfolding public recognition of the Church’s orchestrated silencing of clerical sexual abuse victims has shaped my life as a Catholic. These clergymen stood up and spoke before their congregations week and week—year after year—while their victims sat silently in the pews. Yesterday in a report on Pope Benedict’s Palm Sunday Homily, the New York Times analyzed what sounded like an implicit response to critics who implicate his guilt in the European abuse scandals. Granted, the Times reads between the lines of the Pope’s homily, but in the context of his public indictment, his words strike me as a clear attempt to hush his critics: “The pontiff said faith in God helps lead one ‘towards the courage of not allowing oneself to be intimidated by the petty gossip of dominant opinion.’” The silence continues–and I continue to wonder what kinds of faith development, worship, or social justice work can happen in a church of whispers and hushed voices.
How can a young theologian, situated within her own matrix of silence, speak out against the perpetual silencing that enabled—and continues to enable—the grave injustice of the global clerical abuse crisis and its mismanagement at seemingly every level of church leadership? My silencing—as a woman, as a lay person, as a theologian and minister—will never amount to the painful silence imposed upon so many abuse victims in our church. Breaking my silence will not cost me nearly as much either.
I do not know how to speak to our Church right now. In fact, these days I find myself so hurt and angry words feel useless for articulating the magnitude of our situation. But I know there must be noise. “We don’t need a moment of silence. There has been too much silence already.” There must be noise.
Perhaps on Good Friday when I approach the cross of Christ’s suffering with our suffering, there will be no moment of silence. Perhaps I will do as Jesus did—I will shout. “God, why?”
Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/42304632@N00/351678683/
Wally’s Cathedral
The liturgy begins when a handsome young man, dressed neatly in an argyle sweater, lifts the worn brass trumpet to his lips. His eyes are closed, his composure calm. With just one breath, everything in the tiny cathedral comes to a halt. We remove drink classes and beer bottles from our lips. Bar chatter hushes. We join the trumpeter’s band in shifting our eyes toward the sound—toward the man who is filling this tiny Boston bar with the most commanding, memorizing music….
Throughout the years I have experienced the benefits of going to worship services at unfamiliar churches. Foreign religious environments force me to face my own assumptions about God and religion—about who God is, how that God is to be worshiped, and what God’s worshipers look like and think about. When I stand with charismatics lifting their hands in praise, or kneel with Muslim women as they whisper Arabic words of prayer, I ask myself, “What can I learn from this genuine expression of worship? How does this push me to think about God in new ways? Who is this God before me?”
Last night in Wally’s Jazz Cafe, I found myself asking these questions. Continue reading
Sometimes Love Is Stronger Than One’s Convictions
Sometimes love is stronger than [one's] convictions.” -Isaac Bashevis Singer
It is my experience that one of the marks of falling in love, particularly in its glorious initial phases, is an unshakable desire to be with one’s partner. This desire is such that even when physical presence is impossible, alternative connections are eagerly welcomed: a phone call that simply brings the sound of that voice. A message with words that capture that charm. A day on a calendar that marks our next meeting. An imagined vision of what he or she is doing at the present moment…
I realized today that I have fallen deeply in love with the simple Catholic liturgy I experienced on weekday afternoons this past summer. I find myself longing for it, longing to be present to it again, the way I have eagerly longed for the comforting presence of my beloved. Continue reading
From My Dream of A Common Language
I spent the evening at ArtXchange, a gallery in downtown Seattle dedicated to promoting cultural exchange through the art they showcase. As I studied the featured exhibit by Deborah Kapoor against the captivating, meditative chant of a live Indian music group, I kept thinking about how my love of art is so bound up with spirituality.
In the opening stanzas of “Origins and History of Consciousness,” a poem by Adrienne Rich (it is among my favorite poems of all time), she characterizes the “true nature of poetry” as “The drive to connect./ The dream of a common language.” These simple phrases capture the real quality of poetry like no other description I have ever encountered. I would also apply the description to other mediums of artist expression, including the various mediums I enjoyed tonight. Literary, visual, and performing art captures me because it is a tangible form of our common human yearning for…for something beyond systematic grammar and simple cohesive reason. We need meter, clay, melodies and creativity to convey what our systematic, straight-forward prose cannot: something more. It is out of our dream of a common language that we create and engage art of all kinds. Continue reading
Dear Karl Rahner,
Compline
Of the numerous parts of my faith that theological studies have unfortunately confused, my intellectual understanding of prayer–what it is and how it works–has been most affected. Therefore, upon inquiry, I will not explain to someone how it works. I tell them I just don’t know. But I also tell them that I am often undeniably compelled to do it when I see people I love in pain, especially spiritual and emotional suffering. I am also compelled to do it when I see people I don’t know in pain. I tell them my most intimate moments with loved ones occur during prayer. And, more than that, I tell them that some simple part of me really, truly believes that it both shakes the earth and holds it together, and it does all other sorts of things.

