Fire.

Lately each time I enter the gates of Harvard Yard from the concrete and brick of the Square, I am greeted with the opening word from Pascal’s Mémorial. The demanding red foliage of this one large tree declares, “Fire.”

Mémorial is Pascal’s cryptic account of the two-hour mystical vision he experienced one night at age 31. “Fire” begins the montage of parsed phrases, utterings of fear, wonder, reverence, and conviction. Pascal had the text sown into the lining of his clothes, which is where the account was discovered upon his death.  Perhaps he brought it with him because he could not escape it.  I have often found that if you listen closely, you can hear his heart racing between the words on the page.

Sometimes when I am sitting in the library here at school, I look out the large windows at the burning trees, and I think of Annie Dillard.  In one of her essays she describes a moth flirting with the flame of a candle, irresistibly circling its blazing wick.  The moth moves closer and closer, until it is too close; the fire consumes it.  The moth is burning, but it has become the wick of the flame it so desires.  Then my gaze returns to the book over which I hover. Fire.

It isn’t strange to me that God spoke to Moses through a burning bush. Aren’t we all met with moments of fire? “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up,” concluded Moses when he saw it (Exodus 3:3).  There are moments of fire that capture us so much that we cannot cease returning to them.  They are people, and experiences, and visions we must circle around; we must return to them. We must sow them into our clothes.  We must give ourselves to them even if they consume us. Fire.

Fire.

Where Do I Stand?

Today the sun finally broke through the clouds in Boston.  So, after finishing lunch in a cute little Italian cafe in Beacon Hill, I decided to head to the nearby Boston Public Gardens for an afternoon stroll while making a phone call to an old friend from school.  I didn’t get very far.

Still a couple hundred feet from the park, I could see the flashing blue lights of the police cars that blocked the road along the permitter of the Boston Commons.  I heard horns honking, voices chanting, and as I drew closer I began to recognize the “NOW” logos on the large white picket signs along the sidewalk.  My studies in feminism have familiarized me with NOW, the “National Organization for Women” that headed up America’s Second Wave feminist movement. I have fantasized about marching in their protest lines at the height of their movement in the 60′s and 70′s, a time when it seems collective action was so much more energetic and visible than today.

As I drew closer, there were other familiar images. Banners with the colorful emblem of Our Lady of Guadeloupe.  Masses of people, their hands thrust into the air cradling rosary beads or wooden crucifixes. Women in habit, and men with starched white collars. The anger in the air shook me as I realized: I am walking straight into a feminist/Catholic standoff over abortion rights.  And that’s exactly what it was.

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.  

Ash Wednesday on the Green Line

It was Ash Wednesday on the Green Line in Boston today.

Public transportation became a big part of my life this year. In LA I rode a bus and subway train to work.  In Boston now I do the same.  Often, when staring out the window on the bus or zoning out over the book in my lap, it has occurred to me that I feel so Catholic when ride public transit. Although this has been a recurring observation, I struggle to articulate why it is I feel this way.  What’s so Catholic about riding the bus?

Today this feeling made sense though, at least more than usual.  Soaking wet from the walk to the nearby train stop, I collapsed onto the first dry, stiff plastic seat I spotted.  I was uncomfortable in the bulky, water-proof parka I had hid under outside; its fabric rustled loudly as I moved in the seat. I clumsily tried to find a place for my wet, folded umbrella and struggled to retrieve my book from purse without shaking raindrops from my coat onto everyone around me.  Every moment was awkward, and everyone could see this.  I felt so vulnerable.

Jesus Believes in You

It is very likely that you know the story of Jesus walking on water—the one where his disciple, Peter, hops out of the safe sailing vessel to join his Rabbi atop the waves.  When Peter starts to panic and sink, Jesus scolds him, asking, “Don’t you have faith?” If you’re like me, and probably most of us, you understand this story as a message about faith in Christ.  If Peter trusted Jesus, he would have been able to miraculously walk on water just like his teacher.  With faith in God, all things are possible.

The super hip American pastor, Rob Bell, has another interpretation of this story, however. In one of his super hip movie shorts, (one of the Nooma series), he cites Jewish rabbinic history to charge that Jesus’ question about Peter’s faith was not actually a question about faith in his teacher, as we often assume. Rather, Jesus was asking Peter, “Don’t you have faith in yourself?  Faith that you can actually be like me?”  Rob Bell suggests that by inviting all of humankind to be Christian disciples, disciples like Peter, Jesus was essentially communicating the radical message that God believes in us—in our ability to live good lives, and to live up to our individual callings. “Don’t you have faith Peter? I called you out here because I believe in you.”

I felt like Peter walking on the ocean today in my philosophy of religion class. As I looked up from the intimidating German names on my syllabus to the pensive faces of my anonymous classmates, and back down to those famous German names again, my faith waned and my heart began to sink.  

A Community Needs A Soul…

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!

Condemned to Greatness

Adam said, “I’ve wondered why a man of your knowledge would work a desert hill place.”

“It’s because I haven’t the courage,” said Samuel. “I could never quite take the responsibility. When the Lord God did not call my name, I might have called His name–but I did not. There you have the difference between greatness and mediocrity. It’s not an uncommon disease. But it’s nice for a mediocre man to know that greatness must be the loneliest state in the world.”

“I’d think there are degrees of greatness,” Adam said.

“I don’t think so,” said Samuel. “That would be like saying there is a little bigness. No. I believe when you come to that responsibility the hugeness and you are alone to make your choice. On one side you have warmth and companionship and sweet understanding, and on the other–cold, lonely greatness. There you make your choice. I’m glad to chose mediocrity, but how am I to say what reward might have come with the other? None of my children will be great either, except perhaps Tom. He’s suffering over the choosing right now. It’s a painful thing to watch. And somewhere in me I want him to say yes. Isn’t that strange? A father to want his son condemned to greatness! What selfishness that must be.”

I love this passage from Steinbeck’s East of Eden. It’s maybe my favorite of the whole book. When I read it for the first time, I was captured by Samuel’s recognition that greatness–which in my mind is really the result of anyone’s fervent and loyal pursuit of some vocation–comes at a cost. It is easy to glorify our goals and aims in life while overlooking the fact that a “yes” to one thing is often (if not always) a “no” to something else. I’d like to think that it isn’t as black-and-white as Samuel suggests; that real community and companionship is possible as we take on the individual responsibility necessary for major vocational commitments; that life infrequently occurs in this “either/or” fashion.

From the Pews in the Back: My First Reading

Check out my latest post on the blog that accompanies From the Pews in the Back: Young Women and Catholicism, a recently released book to which I have contributed. My post is called “From the Pews in the Back: My First Reading.”

If you are also reading the book, I’d love to know about your “first reading” too!

Ritual, in friendship and faith

This afternoon Casey and I swung back and forth in the hammocks that hang between his front porch and the trunk of the large, leafy tree in front of his house. After a bit of catch up concerning the recent happenings of our lives, he had picked up his latest book, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendall Berry. He wanted to read to me, and I had consented on the contingency that I could share a passage from my current read when he finished.

As I slid back into the perfect comfort of the blue hammock, I also felt myself ease into the familiar sound of my friend’s deep-toned reading cadence. During the three months we spent together in Europe this fall his voice carried me through well-over a thousand pages of words. There were times, in the midst of books like Brothers K or East of Eden, when he had had to stop reading because the text made us laugh so much, or because his throat grew tight with the feeling of impending tears. Casey and I share a special love of great books and deep thoughts, and reading aloud has become our shared passion in action–a physical, communal expression of the ideas that move us the most.

A Miracle of Speech

Today’s gospel reading begins with a miracle: “A demonic who could not speak was brought to Jesus and when the demon was driven out the mute man spoke.” I do not think in terms of demons and miracles with the ease and frequency of the Biblical writers, but I do recognize similar sorts of astounding encounters like the one depicted in this passage.

Some people really do have the amazing ability to open me up–to free me for speaking vulnerably, confidently, and candidly. They ask genuine questions rather than the polemical inquiries we often witness in the media. They seem to listen with their spirits as well as their ears. And this happens among some individuals I’ve known for years, and some who I have just met. They transform my frightened muteness into honest disclosure.

Have you experienced this miracle? Who has brought it about for you?

Lately, I’ve been trying to put my finger on what it is, exactly, that these individuals do to make me feel comfortable enough to share myself with them. I want to know so I can emulate their dispositions. I want to pass along the gift of open conversation that they give me. The more I try to capture what these individuals do, the more convinced I am that this miracle actually stems from who they are. Each individual that comes to mind possesses a gentleness and a generosity that welcome my words. This is not something they do; it is something they are. I, too, want to be more gentle and generous for others.

I like to believe that Jesus was this kind of person. The way I see it, Jesus may have healed the man’s muteness, but just because one can speak does not mean he/she will choose to do so. Jesus gave the man words, but the man spoke out of his own free will. Perhaps there was something about who Jesus was that compelled this man, just healed, to speak up for the first time.