I write, speak, invest, network, and question to stimulate fruitful conversation. Let's talk about human flourishing! It begins with freedom. Holy leisure is the key to human being, freedom and generativity. Please join me in the adventure of realizing Christ!
Archives for May 2015
Beulah – I Still Laugh About This!
In the 1960’s, in Alabama, a black maid was still a common help in white households. My grandfather’s maid, Beulah, had been with him for years and grown comfortably accustomed to his habits and preferences. My visits were rare, however, so she could never become quite used to me. She accepted my noisy intrusion into her quiet, orderly territory with cheerful resignation. [Read more…]
Let’s Call it a Day
Somewhere, theology buffs are having an argument about the meaning of the word ‘day’ in Scripture. My interest is more practical. I’ve often wondered if all the well-meaning, self-improvement types have ever stopped to consider what ‘day’ actually means. [Read more…]
Love Those Boxes
Is it just me, and my daughter, or are all women into containers? [Read more…]
Deep, Deep Healing
Two paths of mine converged recently: I’ve been working on the 50 Million Names project to see to it that aborted babies are given names and honored by prayer and gestures of love, and I recently prepared for a talk about helping women heal from interior ‘dis-integration’. Into this mix, in God’s timely fashion, came the book Healing the Family Tree, by Dr. Kenneth McAll, a devout Anglican psychiatrist who writes about hundreds of cases in which an emotional or physical illness was cured through the release of spiritual bondage.
His awareness developed as he looked for the roots of illness that baffled all physical and psychological approaches and, finally, began to look backward from the patient into the family history for clues to seemingly incurable problems. In many cases, an instance of abortion, miscarriage, or other ‘loss’ of an unnamed child was found to be at the root of the symptoms. In others, some unquiet spirit within the patient’s blood line cried out for healing prayer. In fewer, outright oppression by evil spirits was involved.
In every case, the patient and the bondage was taken before Jesus Christ in prayer, and the Eucharist received with the intention of release for both patient and relative. I did some research and discovered that McAll’s work had influenced many, many people, including Catholics, to take more seriously the work of consciously praying for the dead, and for the living affected by generational sin, or bondage to dead relatives in unresolved need of acknowledgement, forgiveness, and other release.
McAll quotes Scripture, St. John Chrysostum, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Elizabeth of Hungary, St. Augustine, Church fathers, the Eastern Orthodox tradition in support of praying not to, but for the dead. He refers to the many Anglicans who are nowadays convinced “that there exists – and that there is an absolute need for – an intermediate stage of purification between death and resurrection” from which the dead may appeal to the living for prayer. Of course, Catholics have already acknowledged Purgatory’s existence (which Anglican author C.S. Lewis termed a ‘hopeful doctrine’) and are already instructed to pray for the souls there. I’m sure I don’t pray enough for them!
What struck me about McAll’s work is that I had never much thought about my own family history. Though I had done some praying for near relations, I began to pray about whether there were any souls in our tree, or any needs within my living family , for which such prayer should be offered. Using a prayer from Catholic priest Father John Hampsch, I headed for Our Lord in the Eucharist and began to pray. I was surprised as a number of ‘needs’ surfaced very clearly.
For example, I had once used birth control pills, and realized that there are probably children I’ve ‘lost’ without even realizing conception had occurred. My husband’s grandmother died during an abortion, and that child was never named or mourned. I have two adult sons living non-Christian lives, who may have fathered children now ‘lost’ to us. A father I know of died without reconciliation with his children, and without Sacramental burial.
A number of other souls came to mind as I prayed, and I believe that, through the prayer united to the Eucharist, release and healing was poured out on our family and friends in ways that I may not ever be fully aware of in this life. I’ve given names at 50MillionNames.org for several babies in honor of these persons for whom I prayed. I offer Fr. Hampsch’s prayer, here, as a gift to anyone else who may feel led to discern her own family’s need for healing in this way. God bless you!
From Salty to Sanctified
A fine Christian woman once told me I’d know whether my heart was clean by what came out of me when I was hit by surprise. If that cup was full of pure, clean water, then ‘salt water’ wouldn’t spill out when it was jostled.
So, I was pretty excited to realize, after stubbing my toe badly and hopping around on one foot for a while, that I hadn’t cut loose with a ‘blue streak’ of, shall we say, ‘French’! I thought I’d arrived.
At that time, we were among Christians who taught that sanctification – confirmed, Holy-Spirit-filled-holiness – was a second blessing you got after the initial born-again experience. They all had it – could remember the dates even – and I clearly had not asked rightly, or didn’t want it badly enough, or was refusing to receive it. Whatever the cause, it was generally understood that I was definitely not holy yet, and the day couldn’t come too soon for the poor ladies in Sunday School and missions committee meetings, who had to put up with me.
I ran in with my pure, clean toe story, and we all rejoiced! But, it was not to be. Within days, I had to admit that sanctification had once again eluded me. I simply begged the Holy Spirit to get it over with and get me holy, once and for all! Why He saw fit to delay, I could not explain to any of the ‘saints’ around me.
Finally, a merciful God sent a Nazarene pastor for a revival meeting who, when consulted privately about my dilemma, admitted that most pastors actually realized, now, that sanctification is a loooooong process and not the work of a moment. Sigh….relief, but the reality that this was going to be a long, uphill climb.
Still, I think of her advice whenever a jostling spills some salt water, and ask God to fill my cup, once again, with pure, clean living water. My life is full of all the proof I need that the Holy Spirit has come, has blessed, is close, prays for me when I don’t know what to pray, and is working in me constantly ‘to will and to do’ according to God’s own purposes.
The fact that I am not now a fully perfect (heck, sometimes I’m not even ‘fully functioning’!) person does not negate this reality, or cause me alarm. There is no condemnation in Christ Jesus!
Prayer Reflex
Just as the mental cathedrals of medieval memory champions became ‘places’ that held specific material for easy retrieval, the regular old ‘furniture’ of our daily life and environment can become full of reminders to pray.
When I hear a siren, for example, it triggers my ‘prayer reflex’. Every prayer request email triggers an immediate Miraculous Medal prayer (Holy Mary, conceived without sin, pray for those who have recourse to thee.) Meal times trigger prayers of gratitude and blessing. Passing a Catholic church triggers a prayer of thanks to Christ for His unceasing presence. Infant wailing in a store triggers prayer that a tired mama will be able to stay patient and make it home for nap without regrets. Wailing on a plane triggers a prayer for baby’s ears….and mama’s equanimity.
It’s not that we should become automatons, but that we can learn what C.S. Lewis calls ‘stock responses’ and thus actually offer up prayer in a more-nearly unceasing way. Just as we learn to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you,’ we can learn to offer specific prayers when goosed by a trigger object, or event. We can choose to layer-in more prayer during the day by associating ‘real life’ with the call to prayer.
I like to pray the Rosary at the beginning of every long trip. Most often I forget to pray the prayer for drivers that should be triggered by the Sacred Heart Auto League clip on my visor. I’m not sure how to deal with the problem of becoming inured to a visual trigger – so used to seeing it that it disappears. For me, that’s a real weakness of visual reminders. There are too many icons, holy pictures, sacramental objects and other stuff in my visual field for anything to stand out as a reminder. Event triggers work better for me.
When I’m running behind schedule, I sing a little reminder I learned in my evangelical days: “The steps of the righteous are ordered by the Lord….” When I simply cannot (…type another word…listen to another dream story…bear the presence of that person…whatever), but must, I cling to the Scriptural promise that “I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me.” My own interior event, linked to words of life, triggers the utterance of those words as prayers.
Waking up is my trigger for Morning Prayer, from the Liturgy of the Hours. I am currently trying (not hard enough, apparently) to stop, per St. Ignatius of Loyola, 3 times a day (he said 5) for a review of the day-so-far and a brief examination of conscience. My favorite wake-up call is the middle of the night invitation to join in the Divine Mercy chaplet. Especially if I’ve waked at the Hour of Mercy (3-a.m.-ish), I feel very blessed to be participating in that movement over the whole world in prayer.
Thomas Howard, in Hallowed Be This House, recommended we take every trip to the bathroom as an opportunity to pray for cleansing and release of toxins. G.K. Chesterton suggested that St. Francis’ praise for water in the Canticle of Creation (Be praised for Sister Water: humble, helpful, precious, pure; she cleanses us…) be inscribed over sinks.
We can get creative with this! Doorbell rings: “Bless whoever this is, and our conversation.” Phone rings: “Holy Mary, help me to be truly present through this technology.” At a stoplight, “Jesus, help me to be still and wait on you.” In the checkout at the grocery store: “Praise God from Whom all blessings flow!” Washing windows: “Lord, help me to be translucent and radiate your light.”
If praying is something that we have to find big chunks of time for, we’re much less likely to do it. If it is as natural as breathing, seeing, noticing the world we’re in, responding to whatever reality we actually encounter, then the days can be suffused with prayer time.
There’s a link between praying continuously and seeing poetically. What is real becomes a window to what is even more real. It’s because Sabbath-keeping helps develop in us this ‘poetic’ seeing that I think it does permeate the rest of the week with a lightness of being that is delightful and surprising….so, as you know, I highly recommend it!
Joy in Three Persons
Weaving Supernatural Joy into Natural Life
I created this talk for Benedictine College’s Symposium on the New Evangelization. It’s about the role art can play in helping us realize our ideals of virtue and holiness. I linked G.K. Chesterton, his character Innocent Smith (from Manalive) and St. Francis of Assisi to show how Chesterton wove the things he loved most about St. Francis into his character, and thus drew all that joy and abandonment to God a bit closer to himself and his readers.
Quoting Chesterton’s biography of St. Francis, his own biography and autobiography, Manalive, and Orthodoxy, I moved back and forth between the character and the saint, the ideal and the imaginative realization, to suggest that we need such imaginative bridges to move toward full appropriation of supernatural joy, toward holiness. That art may serve to help us realize ourselves more wholly, more fully without any violation of the art, the ideal, or of our own being suggests that Catholics would do well to enter in to the work of creating stories, poems, paintings, and other works with the goal of becoming saints in the process.
This talk is now a chapter in my new book, Upschooling, which should be available from Amazon by August 30, 2019.
Little Mountain
Monteen, from the French for ‘mountain’. That’s my mom – a tower of strength to all who knew her, but barely over five feet tall. Her mother shaped her life much differently than she, in her turn, shaped the lives of two daughters. A dark, and mentally unstable woman with a brooding, sometimes violent ill will toward Monteen, Grandmother was no model of nurture and compassion. Yet, my mother dedicated her life to understanding and helping the mentally ill. Instead of hardening her heart, she was moved to give the kind of help her mother had so desperately needed.
Supported by a deeply loving father, she poured herself into her studies and then into her work. She gave herself to patients and to students with remarkable energy and effectiveness. It often took great courage for this little mountain to stand up to violent patients with psychotic strength: drug addicts threatening to kill the next person who walked into the room; confused and deluded people who might take a nurse for a hated enemy, or an attempt to help as a threat against their lives. Even to go to work sometimes was to take risks on their behalf in gang-infested, high crime neighborhoods.
But who would there be to bring help to such needy ones if not for those, like her, with servant hearts, a sense of the dignity and worth of those so difficult to love, and a vision of hope for their wholeness? Such people as my mother follow the example of Christ, who brought light into the darkness and set captives free.
Until her death, she continued her ministry of shedding the light of understanding on the problems people face in difficult relationships and in the challenges of aging. Always teaching, part of her mandate from heaven must certainly have been to multiply herself and the value of her experience a thousand-fold. She took her message, “Don’t be afraid to get well!” seriously – allowing God to cleanse and heal her own deep wounds, and becoming over the years more and more beautiful to all those who loved her.
Monteen took, as her life’s promise, the Scripture verse Romans 8:28 : “We know that all things work together for good for those who love Him, who are called according to His purpose. (NRSV)” By the time she died, she still was no saint, but she left me and my children a beautiful example of courage and faith in the face of death. Even in death, she’s a ‘little mountain’ to me now, giving me courage to “Take a risk!” and “Give it all you’ve got.”
Happy Mother’s Day to all the little mountains in all the families I love!
Questions Nobody Asked Me
Imagine a research project:
A lab-coated investigator places a box on a table before each participant, in turn. “What is in the box? Say whatever you think,” he says, to each one, alone. One person answers “Apples,” because the box says “APPLES” in red block letters. Another notices a word scribbled in marker on a label at one end and says, “Wine Glasses”. A third peeks into the box through a small hole in its side and says “Nothing in there.” Subject #4 lifts, shakes and smells the box, looks into all the torn places and holes, and says, “Clove-studded oranges.” Mr. 5 says, “I have no idea,” and when pressed to say whatever he thinks, laughs and says “I give up. A bomb?”
Finally, #6 answers. “Could be a hamster – there’s an air hole. Might be books, walnuts, tools – anything! How ‘bout a whole series of smaller boxes? Let’s see…there’s air in there, and dirt, probably. If it’s photographs you could say the box is full of memories. Depending on the books in there, that box might ‘contain’ India, or another planet, or a fairy world. What if it’s some high-tech gizmo…then it contains the work of dozens of scientists, years of research, rare earth. Wow! Should I go on??”
#1 used language decoding skill – relying on the accuracy of the label.
#2 did also, but took in a bit more information, held both labels in mind, and made a judgment.
#3 got his senses more fully involved, but didn’t realize the limitation he unconsciously accepted.
#4 used more sensory information, and gave the one correct answer.
#5 used his freedom to resist constraints instead of to play the game.
#6 answered as a child, or a poet might, because the question itself stimulated his imagination. He, following instructions to report “whatever he thought,” tried to report all the mental events triggered by the suggestion, “What might be in a box?”
I offer this scenario by way of explaining why I find it difficult to give short answers to interesting questions.
Case in point: our archbishop recently convened a ‘listening meeting’ to gather input for his ten—year planning process. I would never have presumed to offer any opinions about his management of the archdiocese, or his vision for it, but….he asked. And I began to consider the questions he asked. (What is the archdiocese doing well? What should be our main priorities? What should the archdiocese look like ten years from now?)
The first thing I noticed was that there were huge foundational gaps in my knowledge about the archdiocese. If I were going to picture it ten years along, I’d have to understand its current state better. A list of questions I’d like to ask developed from those gaps. Then, in my imaginary leap to “What would you say if the Archbishop was interested in your thoughts?” I discovered a wealth of material that didn’t quite fit into the three-question, one-paragraph format I’d been offered. Hence, a list of questions I wish he had asked.
Finally, set loose to create my own vision of our archdiocese, ten years older and wiser, I came up with lots of ideas. I had no idea what to do with all this outside-the-box response, and considered just keeping it to myself to save trouble for Self and the Bish’. But, it was all there, and such things, in my experience, do not go away. They beg to be at least typed and file away so as to free mental space for other work. And when I considered tucking those lists away and going on with my life, I really wished I could do it! (After all, when one knows one’s response is likely to be of little use to the recipient, to be a pain in his neck, or to be considered ridiculous and childish, one prefers to crawl under a rock with it!) But then, there’s that nagging sense that you are what you are, and God made you that way, and if nobody else answers in this way, it might be even more important that you do, and if everybody takes his response and files it the Archbishop will get nothing in the way of feedback at all.
So, a quick cover letter of explanation (“I’m a good girl, I am! This is not a challenge, or a rebellion, or a demand, or a joke, but a real offering.”), enclose the three lists, and I’m done. I won’t write out my answers to the questions I wish he had asked unless he expresses some desire to see them. Sigh…. By now, though, the Q’s had provoked A’s – one thing leads to another, and so now I’m actually interested in what my answers are, whether he is or not.
Enter: Blog. Here’s the entire series:
This is where I make room for my own thoughts, where I ‘essay,’ or try out my ideas. So, this is where I’ll post my responses, in case anyone is interested. Here’s a pdf of the Q’s and anyone is welcome to give your own A’s – to your pals, to me, to the Archbishop. If I were really leading an archdiocese, I’d want everyone’s responses. I might have to get help reading and sifting out main streams of thought, but I’d want the input. If he doesn’t (and I can’t imagine he’d have time for all this!), it’s all the same to me. This has been a good thinking exercise for me, so I’m happy. Nothing is wasted in God’s economy. Watch this space for my Q’s and A’s in the weeks to come. Consider writing up your own responses, and do suggest Q’s you wish the Archbishop had asked us.
I’m placing a contact form here, in case you, or the Archbishop, would like to get in touch about this Research Project of mine.
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