Gone Walkabout

Does God Care About Sports?

2012-01-30T01:43:00.000-08:00

So it looks like I might do some "Ask a Jesuit" type stuff for that new website that I mentioned last week, "The Jesuit Post". I thought I might share one of the sample questions that I answered for this week. See what you think... (And hey, if you like this idea, please, post some questions for me to answer. I need material!)

Does Godreally give a hoot about your local sports team?

Signed,T-Blows

In point of fact, God is a really big fan of the Saints.Also the Angels. Duh. For many years this was not evident from their records,but in recent years he has made his feelings more clearly known.

Second answer: I have no idea whether God cares or not.Always be nervous when people tell you definitively that God cares about thisbut not that. Because seriously, how do they know?

Having said that, I believe God wants people tothrive and be striving to be their best selves. So while I’m not sure he careswhat the score is to a given game, it is my belief that God revels in a perfectspiral thrown 80 yards down the field (or for my Aussie friends, a footballmoved down the field in a flurry of teamwork and seized inside the 50 in anastonishing leap).

Some theologians have said our own feelings andexperiences offer a glimmer of what God feels. If so, it might just be Tebowmania in Heaven after all.

Let's Talk About Sex

2012-01-27T01:11:00.000-08:00

Why do priests insist on talking about sex?

A friend of mine asked me this a couple days ago. To be clear, he was not an interested bystander, but a priest himself. "Why do we do this?" he asked me. "How is this helpful?"

His point was this -- the teaching of the Church on things like premarital sex is clear. And even today, in this so-calledly secular age, every Catholic kid has already heard the spiel, if not at Church then at home. So, really, what more is there to say? Indeed, my friend posited, as soon as a priest starts talking about sex, you can see people's eyes glaze over and all they hear is Charlie Brown's teacher giving a lecture. Wah wah wah wah wah.

Personally, I think priests should talk about sex more. Not the "here's the rules" lecture that we all know, but an exploration of the deep and real. How sex can reveal so much about ourselves to ourselves, our willingness to put the one we love first, or lack thereof. The scary vulnerability, that experience of being seen as you really are, naked both physically and emotionally, a way of being loved that is absolutely unique. The sacramentality of touch; facing your primal self; even the tedium that sex can become, in its own way so similar to the dryness we sometimes go through in our prayer.

Sex is such a major part of our lives -- one we think about quite a lot if most studies are to be trusted. And yet where can we find spiritual reflection on the things that actually happen in our fantasies and between the sheets? A good book, TV show or movie, perhaps. But why not also from the fellow traveler standing at the pulpit?

Your Mom's More On the Ball Than You

2012-01-27T00:42:00.001-08:00

The Strange Case of Bishop Morris

2012-01-25T07:56:00.000-08:00

Yesterday in the Australian Jesuit magazine Eureka Street, Father Frank Brennan contemplated Rome's decision some 9 months ago now to remove Australian Bishop Bill Morris. No public reason was given at the time, and it's not entirely clear a private one was given, either. Bishop Morris continues to be a priest in good standing and in fact works in the Brisbane diocese. A retired Australian Supreme Court justice (who had no knowledge of the case or Bishop Morris) was asked to evaluate the process by which Bishop Morris was removed. Looking at the Code of Canon Law and its provisos for the removal of a priest, the justice recently found the process lacked not only transparency, but fairness and justice.

Now, there may be very very good reasons why Bishop Morris has been removed. But even his fellow Australian bishops seem unsteady on the matter. Before they left for Rome for the visit they make to the Pope every 5 years, they promised to bring up the matter. But upon arriving they were told they were not allowed to discuss this with the Pope.

How many people get fired without just cause? Quite a few. And yet, one expects better from a faith community that advocates so strongly for the dignity of every human person. Rome has every right to remove a bishop they find wanting; but to do so without some transparency or due process shakes the faith of the people of God.

The Jesuit Post

2012-01-25T07:28:00.000-08:00

A bunch of young Jesuits have gotten together to create a new blog, "The Jesuit Post". You can find articles about spirituality, literature, music, pop culture -- there's even a video about Tim Tebow (by Jim Martin!).

Here's a link to the site. And here's a link to a great little article about someone's cell phone going off during a symphony, which has a title I wish I had thought of! "Seventy Times Seven Watch".

Editor-in-Chief Paddy Gilger writes "this site is about Jesus, politics, and pop culture, it's about the Catholic Church, sports, and Socrates. It's about making the case for God (better: letting God make the case for himself) in our secular age." Give it a look.

Sign For a Bad Day

2012-01-24T00:03:00.000-08:00

Some days don't you wish you could post a sign like this outside your life?

Connecting Amidst the Busy

2012-01-23T08:44:00.000-08:00

Have you ever just sat and listened to the world around you? Outside my window as I write this I can hear birds chittering at one another. Something's whirring. A saw cuts in intermittently from a construction site in the distance. The heater kicks in for a second and gives a deep bass hum. And then, for a few moments, there's total silence.

We all have tried and true ways we use to connect to the deeper things in our lives and to God, methods we understand as prayer. The thing is, they don't always work. And there are days, weeks, months when we're just too busy or distracted to do what we usually do.

But sometimes when I take a few moments to listen to the sounds of the world around me, to just "be" in the moment like that, I discover that peace, that inner silence I long for is still there.

Just For Laughs

2012-01-18T09:47:00.000-08:00

When you don't have much to say, there's always the New Yorker...

Risky Business

2012-01-13T00:14:00.000-08:00

So here's a thought I had today: the problem with being insecure is not the being insecure, it's being insecure about being insecure.

Think about it. In life, if you're putting yourself out there at all -- which could mean anything from being honest to chasing your dreams to having kids -- you're very very likely to be insecure, because you have given yourself something important to lose.

No, the real trouble comes when you begin to believe you're not supposed to feel insecure, that there's something wrong with you. It leads to a hundred varieties of compensation, like trying to get the approval of others to make you feel more secure (it doesn't), or pursuing other things that you think will make you feel comfortable (they don't).

In the end, all you can do is put yourself out there and be yourself. If that self is afraid, nervous, uncertain -- well so be it. It probably means you're taking a risk. And that's a great thing.

Elkanah and Ivory

2012-01-11T00:01:00.000-08:00

The first reading yesterday was the start of 1 Samuel; it's the story of Hannah begging God for a child (Samuel).

Except it's not. The real start of 1 Sam is Hannah getting picked on by her husband Elkanah's other wife because she can't have kids. (Yeah, she's a real treat, that one. Think one of Cinderella's sisters, before the ravens pecked out her eyes.) And Elkanah tries to show Hannah how much he loves her, giving her bigger gifts than he gives his other wife and kids, but it's no use, she just cries and cries.

And at the end of the reading, right before she goes to the Temple to beg God, this is what Elkanah has to say: "Hannah, why do you weep? Why do you not eat? Why is your heart sad? Am I not more to you than ten sons?"

It's not that Hannah doesn't have a point. She wants a baby and she can't have one. And I don't read Elkanah's comments even as a criticism or a scolding. It's more a reminder -- Hannah, you're not in it all alone. I'm right here beside you, and I love you.

At times life as a Jesuit can be a little like the Real Housewives (of wherever) or like working in Hollywood. There's lots of temptation to compare yourself to others, to live not out of what you have, but out of what you don't have.

But chase that dream and you will never be happy. Because you will always find someone who has more, who has done more, who seems happier, who has better connections. Some of the most successful people I know, in fact, are the most insecure. It's weird, but true -- chasing after what you're missing is like hopping on a log in a stream: you're going to run really hard, and eventually you're going to fall on your --

(But we're not talking donkeys.)

Elkanah, to me, is like God, a kind spouse who reminds us of the gifts we have, of the real bedrock of love and acceptance to be found in our lives, which is oh so much more than all the baubles we sometimes think we need.

It's so easy to forget.

Ok, One More Gift: Have You Ever Wanted to See the Sistine Chapel?

2012-01-08T23:52:00.000-08:00

My uncle Stan sent me the most amazing link. It's the Sistine Chapel, completely empty (which never happens in real life -- it's always chock full of people and guards yelling "no photo!", while everyone ignores them), and you can both zoom (using "a" and "z") and click and drag the view around so that you can literally see every inch of the place. (The arrow keys do the same thing.) Really really astonishing. The Vatican put it up, and you just have to see it.

Click Here!

12 DOC, Day 12: Apps

2012-01-07T01:41:00.000-08:00

Do you have a smart phone (i.e. a phone that you use not only for phone and texting but for the internet)? If so, you're probably familiar with the millions of apps that are available to make everything more easy (or is it more complicated) for you.

I'm no expert on the whole app phenomenon, but I do have a few that are favorites -- and mostly all free!

Path -- I just discovered this app, it's like a little photo journal, or a micro-Facebook. You can invite friends to see your stuff, a la Facebook, or you can keep it to yourself. I'm using it as a place I can share with just a few close friends. And the photos on it look amazing!

Foursquare -- You now all those websites or apps where you get advice on restaurants or travel or what not, and you can read a million people's comments? I love those websites in theory, but once I start using them there's just SO much information, so much feedback, I find it overwhelming.

Foursquare is the better version of that. Any place you go -- and I mean anyplace, restaurants, bowling alleys, gas stations, rides at an amusement park -- you can "check in" and read people's tips, all of which is super short and often super super useful. I use it whenever I'm traveling, and I get great advice about things as varied as which bathrooms are the worst to use at LAX and where to park when I'm going to a certain diner.

Foursquare also has a sort of game component -- the more you check in to a place, the more likely you are to become its "mayor"; also, with check ins some places offer special deals. But it's just a really great app.

Showtimes -- If you're a movie fan and you want to know the show times at all the theaters near you, there's a wide variety of apps that can help you. Flikster is a great one if you want a lot of information; but if you're looking for just what each theater is showing, I recommend Showtimes. A very simple, super useful app.

A Sample Screen:

Zap2It -- Basically, it's TV Guide for whatever cable system you're on, no matter where or what it is. You just tell it what system you're on and it shows you everything that is and will be playing on every station. LMU has an itsy bitsy teeny tiny system of its own, and Zap2It still has it in its database -- and so I think it's safe to say it'll probably suit you, too. Also has room for you to mark your favorite TV shows or movies and then return to those later, so you don't have to skim through the whole guide to find out when your shows are on and whether they're new. Again, super simple and super useful!

Wi-Fi Finder (above) -- A great little app for when you're trying to find a spot to use the internet without cables. Locates all the sources around you, and even tells you whether they're free or charge a fee. (I hate going to the airport and seeing those "Wi-Fi Here!" posters only to find out it's Boingo Hotspot and you're going to have to pay to use it. Give me a break!

Price Grabber (left) -- Say you see a book at Barnes & Noble, and you're wondering if you can find it cheaper somewhere else. You can scan the bar code on the back of the book with your phone (the world is getting to be so Star Trek, isn't it?), and it'll tell you where else it's being sold (in stores and online) and at what price. A fantastic way to save some money.

Tiny Wings -- At this point, everyone's heard about Angry Birds. But there's another bird game out there called Tiny Wings, where you help a little bird get off the ground and soar between hills, mountains and oceans. It's a lot more relaxing than Angry Birds, but just as consuming, and has a fantastic, mellow sound track, too. Great for a plane or train ride...

12 DOC, Day 11: Funny Tweeters

2012-01-06T00:48:00.001-08:00

People use twitter in a lot of different ways -- for up to the second info, sneak peeks into the lives of their favorite celebrities, to watch people completely melt down.

Personally, I look to twitter for humor. Talk to me about what's going on right now, or about your life, or something else goofy, and make me laugh.

On this penultimate day of Christmas, I offer you a couple of my favorite tweeters, with a sample of their wares.

Darth Vader (@depresseddarth): "You know you have a bad relationship with your son when you ask him to rule the galaxy with you and he jumps off a cliff instead."

Gavin Speiller (@gavinspeiller): "I'm at my local pizza parlor so often that I feel like the old 1990's Chicago Bulls entrance music should play every time I walk in."

Kelly Oxford (@kellyoxford): "While someone is speaking to me, 80% of my inner dialogue is just wondering if my face looks interested." (So true.)

Mike Leffingwell (@mikeleffingwell): "One way to tell the difference between seals and sea lions is that sea lions have protruding ears and seals are delicious."

Will Hines (@willhines): "It turns out the 'help' button in the elevator is only for elevator-related help."

The Dark Lord (@lord_voldemort7): "They are making a Twilight MUSICAL. If the world doesn't end in 2012 on its own I am going to have to do it myself."

(also: "'Could this day get any worse?' Yes. Challenge accepted.")

Runner Up: Paula Poundstone (@paulapoundstone): "UPS just announced they're changing their name to 'SUP?' to appeal to the younger shipping market."

12 DOC, Day 10: Make You Feel My Love

2012-01-04T22:40:00.000-08:00

Heard a great song today from Adele, a British pop star. Like all of her songs, it's a love song. But as I was listening I thought it would make a great song for prayer.

Listen, and imagine Jesus singing these words to you...

12 DOC, Day 9: A Deep Thought on Failure

2012-01-03T23:27:00.000-08:00

A good little clip to watch when you're waffling about taking a risk.

12 DOC, Day 8: Political Cartoons

2012-01-03T08:39:00.000-08:00

In honor of the Iowa Republican Primary...

12 DOC, Day 7: A Poem

2012-01-02T08:32:00.000-08:00

Susanna

Nobody in the hospital

Could tell the age

Of the old woman who

Was Called Susanna

I knew she spoke some English

And that she was an immigrant

Out of a little country

Trampled by armies

Because she had no visitors

I would stop by to see her

But she was always sleeping

All I could do

Was to get out her comb

And carefully untangle

The tangles in her hair

One day I was beside her

When she woke up

Opening small dark eyes

Of a surprising clearness

She looked at me and said

You want to know the truth?

I answered Yes.

She said it's something that

My mother told me

There's not a single inch

Of our whole body

That the Lord does not love

She then went back to sleep.

Anne Porter

12 DOC, Day 6: New Year's Eve Song

2011-12-30T19:36:00.001-08:00

An old favorite song about New Year's, sung by two young actors. Hope you love it!

12 DOC, Day 5: 5 Great TV Shows

2011-12-29T22:48:00.000-08:00

In the Jesuits we say, "De gustibus, non disputandum". When it comes to matters of taste, there is no point in arguing. People like what they like.

For me, here are five shows that fill me with joy, awe and wonder.

Community (NBC Thursdays, 8pm EST/PST)
The premise: A community college study group deals with the absurdity of school and life.

This is one of those shows critics are always talking about, because it's smart in a very meta- way. Lots of inside jokes, film references. The last episode before Christmas was a 20 minute mockery of all things Glee. So, it can seem to cater to an oh-so-smart clientele.

But I love it because it's a show with such a sweet heart. The main characters are a bunch of misfits -- a lawyer who's always cut corners (and consequently never got his college diploma); a middle aged black woman whose husband cheated on her; a dumb jock; a high strung overachiever; a racist old man (Chevy Chase); and my favorite of all, Abed, a skinny, autistic Muslim kid who comprehends reality by way of the millions of movies and TV shows he's watched.

When you've got 20 minutes, check out this episode, about a couple of the main characters dealing with foosball bullies, and you'll see what I mean -- ridiculous, snarky and incredibly sweet all at the same time.

Game of Thrones (HBO in April -- 1st season soon to be released on DVD)
While I fully embrace my nerddom, I can't say I've ever been a huge fan of swords and sorcery stuff. Probably brings back too many bad memories of Dungeons & Dragons as a kid. (Three or four hours spent sitting around a board, rolling dice and saying "Here's what I'm going to do" instead of actually doing anything -- I just never got it.)

Lord of the Rings is about as close as I get, and I think I love that because it combined fantasy with such huge spiritual and human struggles. But that's it.

Game of Thrones is not a spiritual show. It's not exactly a fantasy-style show, either, in that it really holds off on getting its magic on. It's in many ways more like a political statesmanship thriller, sent in medieval Europe. Which sounds like a snoozefest to me (and its trailers did not reassure, either). I had to force myself to watch it, but by the end of that pilot I was hooked. It's one of the only shows I'm watching that surprises me every week. It has the sorts of plot twists you wish every show had, stunners that change absolutely everything. It reminded me of Christmas as a kid, actually, that feeling of total surprise you get when you open the gifts, like anything is possible and whatever it is, it's going to be the most awesome thing ever. A really really fun show.

Breaking Bad (AMC, Fall -- Season 1-3 on Netflix)
This is another critical darling, which unfortunately very few people have seen. The premise: a weak high school chemistry professor begins to cook meth to make money for his family after he discovers he's going to die very soon of lung cancer.

The First Season poster -- and yes, there's a very good reason why

he's in his underwear.

I know, super super dark. (And boy howdy, it only gets darker, let me tell you.) But I love it because it's a master class in television screenwriting -- compelling characters, bold but believable choices, great twists, and best of all, lots and lots of pay offs.

Maybe you've heard the comment, if you show a gun in a film, at some point someone has to use it. The very presence of the gun creates an expectation in the audience which has to be satisfied in some way. It's called "paying it off", and ideally as writers we're trying to do that with every character and detail we present, pay them off in ways that are unexpected and yet once revealed seem totally shocking and satisfying. Put another way, we want every single thing we put in a script to count for something later. Nothing is irrelevant and nothing is wasted.

Breaking Bad does this better than any show on television. And it's an amazing show about corruption and human failing. Honestly, if you're looking for one cable show to check out, this is the one.

Louie (FX -- Season 1 on Netflix)
The Premise: Comedian Louis CK plays a schlubby version of himself, doing shows, raising two kids by himself and trying to find a girlfriend.

This show isn't for everyone. It's raunchy almost too a fault, some would definitely say it crosses lines. But it's also the most original sitcom on television, each week less one story than a bunch of little stories with a common theme. Each week it's a little bit film school, a little bit Seinfeld and a little bit Charlie Chaplin. And for as crass as it can get, it's a show with an amazingly moral voice.

Case in point: Early this season in the opening, one of Louie's daughters comes home to find the other daughter is eating cut up mango. She wants cut up mango, too, but Louie won't give her any. And she goes on and on about it, but Louie won't budge. He tells her, you should not spend your time looking at what others have and assume you deserve the same. You should always be looking at others and making sure they have what they need, and helping them get it if they don't.

I can watch these episodes again and again. There's so much great stuff to see.

Here's Louis CK on a late night show from last year, doing a great short routine about technology and happiness.

The Good Wife (CBS, Sundays at 10pm EST/PST)
This is the only show I pretty much have to watch the day it airs. And I'm not entirely sure I understand why. At its heart it's a law show, and how many of those have you seen? But underneath it's about Alicia Florrick, the wife of the Chicago D.A., who has had to deal with her husband not only having affairs but being arrested for using public funds to support them. Played by Julianna Margulies (of ER fame), Alicia is this poised, tightly restrained presence, trying to protect her kids and herself in the midst of the insanity that her husband has put upon them, and withholding her own desires for her happiness from all those around her.

This is the show in a nut shell -- swirling controversy, and Alicia in the center, her feelings completely hidden.

Margulies won the Emmy last year, and it's no wonder, because it is just an incredibly riveting performance to watch. And she's matched by an amazing supporting cast, filled with nuance and subtlety. And the legal cases are so much better than what we're used to, too. Week to week, a show I immediately want to talk to people about.

Have a Happy New Year!

12 DOC, Day 4: 4 Great Books

2011-12-29T06:42:00.000-08:00

Did you get an Amazon or Barnes & Noble gift card for Christmas? Here's a couple books that I have just loved this year.

Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson

Given the success Apple has had, especially in the last 10 years, the excitement surrounding this book has been immense. Jobs has been painted post-mortem as our technological saint, the next Thomas Edison. What's interesting in reading the book is how flawed and complicated a man he was. He was a Zen Buddhist who could be incredibly cruel to people, especially his friends and coworkers; a child abandoned by his birth parents who then did the same to his firstborn; a boss known to distort reality to fit his needs, whose products ended up completely changing our reality.

Reading this book was also like discovering another perspective on my own life history. The first computer my family had when I was a kid was an Apple IIe. In the 90s it was the iMac that got me making short movies (iMovie was such an easy program to use). Working at America Magazine I had an Apple computer that I absolutely loved, not just for what it could do, but for the design of it (which reading the book you discover is such an important part of Jobs' vision). And on and on.

Desperate Networks, Bill Carter

This year one of my profs asked us to read this book, which undertakes to tell the story of what happened to the main TV networks in the late 90s and early 2000s, how CBS went from worst to first, ABC got a new lease on life, NBC tanked and FOX rode reality TV to new heights (and depths). It's written by a New York Times reporter with a fantastic flair for storytelling and a surprising amount of access to hundreds of the main players. You hear the whole story of how a little known writer on Golden Girls, after many years and much struggle, ended up selling Desperate Housewives; of how NBC created its Thursday night juggernaut block of Must See TV; of the rise of reality TV; of CSI, Friends, Lost, American Idol, Survivor, Seinfeld, the Today Show and on and on. In its own way it's very dramatic and a real page turner. Like Steve Jobs, it's the kind of book that takes something so familiar to us as to be unseen, our TV shows, and lays bare a whole other side to them.

The Hunger Games (3 vols.), Susan Collins

Imagine that the United States had another civil war tomorrow. And in the end, one small piece of the country won, and rather than bring everything back to the way it has been, a United States, it decided to rule over the rest of the country. And every year, as a way of reinforcing its own power and keeping everyone else down, it would hold a lottery that chose two children, a boy and a girl, from each of the 12 sections of the new country, to compete in a televised Survivor-like tournament to the death.

That's the premise of the Hunger Games. When I first heard about it I thought it sounded way too grim and teen to be of interest to me. But last summer I started the first one, and it was so compelling. It's not anywhere near as violent as what it could have been, and the lead character, a teenage girl named Katniss who is the sole breadwinner for her family when she is conscripted into the Games, was just so broken and flawed and fierce, it was impossible to turn away. A story at root of endurance, self-sacrifice and love in a difficult world.

Awareness, Anthony DeMello, S.J.

Tony DeMello was an Indian Jesuit who specialized in Eastern spirituality. He was known for preached retreats he gave all over the world and for books of wonderful little Zen stories.

I'm not sure how I got put on to Awareness, but I must say, I have profited from it immensely. DeMello's main point is this: You and I and everyone around is at least half-asleep, in denial of the truths of their own lives (like our own sinfulness), of what's really important. And that's fine, in a way; DeMello is pretty insistent that you can't wake someone else up, and that he's not there to judge. But if you want to wake up, you need to start paying better attention to yourself, and to cut everyone else a break (because you're just as bad as they are).

I'm probably making the book sound more aggressive and confrontational than it is; DeMello can be quite playful and kind. But as I slowly work my way through it I find its short chapters, I'm finding it a great source of insight into my life, an invitation into much greater freedom and forgiveness. I highly recommend it.

12 DOC, Day 3: 3 Awesome Ads

2011-12-27T22:12:00.000-08:00

The Force:
I'm a sucker for all things Star Wars (original trilogy, please). And this year Volkswagen unveiled a Star Wars themed car commercial during the Super Bowl that just knocked my socks off. For every Star Wars fan who has ever pretended they're responsible for the (automatic) doors opening at a supermarket.

Dead Island Announcement:
This is actually an advertisement for a video game about zombies. Also as moving and creative as any 3 minute film you're ever going to see. Really. Check it out.

Dear Sophie:
An ad for Google's new browser, "Chrome", that will make strong people blink away tears. Really speaks to the ways we love our children, nephews and nieces, grandchildren.

12 Days of Christmas, Day 2: 2 Music Videos

2011-12-26T19:25:00.000-08:00

The Christmas season is a time of gifts given and received, a time of family and kings, frankincense and myrrh. In keeping with that idea, these 12 days of Christmas I offer some little trinkets that have been special to me this year. I hope in different ways they will bring you Christmas joy and wonder.

Maria Aragon
Last spring a l0 year old girl from Canada taped herself singing "Born This Way", a new Lady Gaga song that had only just hit the charts. It was a huge sensation -- to date it's had more than 48 million views -- and what's more a truly moving performance.

Glee Sings Adele
Whether or not you love or watch Glee, when the stars align their performances just leap off the screen. So it was with this recent number, which mashes up pop star Adele's great songs "Rumour Has It" and "Someone Like You". If you love great choreography, I have two words for you: shoulder rolls.

Christmas Flights, Single Moms and The Gift of Perspective

2011-12-25T19:45:00.000-08:00

Yesterday the New York Times published a wonderful piece about a single mom flying on Christmas Day, who helps another single mom struggling with two small children and in the process learns to see her own life more clearly, what she calls a gift "of the Magi order". A great little essay for the Christmas season.

Here's the link -- "The Magi at 40, 000 Feet". Enjoy.

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-25T00:16:00.000-08:00

On this feast of the Incarnation, may you, your friends and family know ever more deeply the presence of our loving God in your lives.

A friend and great poet, Tim McLaughlin, recently sent me a wonderful poem cycle, "Pinecone Trinity", about the Holy Family. I can't think of a better day to share it!

Have a very Merry Christmas.

PineconeTrinity

Wild Genesis
In this vastwilderness,
a forest ofevergreens,
pine limbs freshin cone.
Those standingfill with pollen,
those hangingripen for seed.

Lady Pinecone
The ladypinecone
does not fearimmaculate
conceptionbrought in
on the wind. Herblessedness
and awarenessnever divide.

Winged Seed
The pregnantpinecone
prays silentlyon the branch.
Winged, hersavior son
will fly andfall and burst –
into a thousandgleaming roots.

Tim McLaughlin

Christmas Countdown: O Antiphons

2011-12-20T20:27:00.000-08:00

The O Antiphons. We don't hear about them at Sunday Mass, they don't figure into the daily Mass readings in Advent. But every year around this time you hear them talked about. They are 7 honorific titles for Jesus, each one sung during evening prayer on the 7 last days before Christmas.

I used to assume they each began with the letter "O" -- which was weird, because I couldn't really think of any such titles that might fit for Jesus. ("Orator?") But no, they're called "O" antiphons because each one starts with the word "O", as you use when you're addressing a king. "O Wisdom"; "O Lord"; "O Root of Jesse"; "O Key of David"; "O Dayspring" (also translated "O Morning Star", "O rising sun"; "O King of the nations"; "O Emmanuel" (aka God is with us).

As you see from that list, each offers a different lens on what makes Jesus the Messiah -- he's the font of wisdom, the source of light, the king of all nations. They're derived from Jewish titles for the Messiah; each references Isaiah's images of the Messiah who would bring Israel back from its exile. Isaiah 11: "A shoot shall come from the stump of Jesse" (Jesse: the father of King David); Isaiah 22: "I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David; he shall open, and no one shall shut. He shall shut, and no one shall open." (See how even these titles, which seem more about lineage than power, actually describe gifts that Jesus has. He brings life from the dead stump; he binds and loosens.)

It's unclear when these antiphons started, but historians say they came from the Benedictines, and by the 8th century they were being used in Rome.

And hidden within them is a cool, DaVinci Code type word game. Take the first word from the original Latin used in each of these titles:

Sapientia Adonai Radix Clavis Oriens Rex Emmanuel

Now put them in reverse order:

Emmanuel Rex Oriens Clavis Radix Adonai Sapientia

Drop all but the first letters:

ERO CRAS

And you have the Latin phrase: "Tomorrow, I will come." (Isn't that cool?)

If we're really going to appreciate these antiphons, though, we need to hear them, as they weren't read, they were sung.

With help from chantblog.blogspot.com, I found cool little videos of the 7 antiphons sung. They're each really short, just a minute or so, and if you're into chant, you actually see the chant lines moving across the screen as the antiphons are sung.

They might provide a nice little moment of peace in the midst of the busyness of the next few days.

O Wisdom:

O Lord:

O Root of Jesse:

O Key of David:

O Dayspring -- today's antiphon, which comes from Isaiah 9: "The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness -- on them light has shined." That image of Jesus as light, probably one of my favorites.

O King of the Nations:

O Emmanuel:

Christmas Countdown: The Christmas Sweater

2011-12-19T21:39:00.000-08:00

Last week I was sitting with the Sundays readings, and in particular the angel's visitation to Mary in the Gospel of Luke.

And it put me in mind of that most familiar of Christmas experiences, the Christmas sweater. That is, the gift you get from a well intentioned relative that is so absolutely hideous it is really everything you can do to keep from visibly cringing at the sight of it. The gift that makes you want to shake the person as you cry out, "How do you not know me?"

Not even Matt Damon can make this look cool.

I had a grandmother who was a long time master of the Christmas sweater. It didn't matter whether you had a list or not, whether the gifts you put on it were easy to find or hard, cheap or expensive -- what you could be reasonably sure of was that you were getting the opposite. So for the many, many years of childhood when I was desperate for (and oh so easy to please) with anything and everything Star Wars, she'd show up with a subscription to National Geographic, or Time Magazine. When I was devouring the works of Stephen King, she'd give me a year pass to the zoo. No matter that the zoo was over an hour from my house, or that I wasn't much for going. She liked the zoo, just like she enjoyed National Geographic, so that was my gift.

And her clothing choices were no better. She didn't buy me this, but I swear, she could have:

Grandma wasn't all bad. She looked like Lucille Ball (complete with cotton candy orange hair) and her life was filled with crazy, I Love Lucy-type stories like being bitten by someone's pet pig on the streets of Chicago and then spending the day fearing she might get pig rabies.

She was just terrible at gift-giving for kids. Each Christmas Day my brother and sisters and I would go to her house pretty much resigned to the fact that whatever was in those packages, it was most definitely not going to be awesome. You know it's bad when we counted on my brother's horrible allergy to her cats to save us from having to stay and be disappointed for too long.

I'm sure Christmas sweaters get creepier. I just don't know how.

It strikes me that God, for all his loving and benevolence, is also pretty big with the apparent Christmas sweaters. Consider the Israelites: at the time of Jesus, they're stuck living under the occupation of the Romans. They're praying for a liberator to save them. And what does God give them? A human child, who will eventually be crucified by the Romans.

Likewise, when Mary and Joseph get engaged, what are they hoping for? A life of love and fidelity, a family. And what does God get them? A pregnancy that will not only immediately complicate their relationship but permanently muck up their standing in society. And a life together that involves raising the son of God. (No pressure.)

In this day and age, it's pretty much expected that if you end up with a Christmas sweater, you don't complain about it, you just return it for whatever it is you want. And sometimes that is probably the right decision:

But sometimes I try to resist that impulse; no matter what I think of what I've been given, I'll just keep it and see what happens. And wouldn't you know it, sometimes those gifts end up being the things I like most of all.

Life with my grandmother was much the same way. Once were old enough to appreciate her, we actually grew to look forward to the next bit of random craziness, like the cards she'd send for odd holidays like Halloween or Valentine's Day with a dollar in them; the stories of how she used to tell my mother's childhood friends that she was an alien from another world sent to teach us how to love; the random gifts she gave at Christmas. ("Wow, a Precious Moments statue of a deer. Thanks so much, Grandma. No, I didn't know this particular kind of deer is endangered.")

In the Christian story, it turns out Jesus did in fact liberate precisely through his faithfulness even to death. And Mary and Joseph loved him like crazy.

All of which is to say, we should be careful when it comes to dismissing the Christmas sweaters of our lives. We might not always be the best judges.

Except when we are.

(Does this remind anyone else of the original Alien?)

As Charlie Brown Would Say, Argh!

2011-12-19T07:02:00.001-08:00

I'm so sorry I haven't been posting!! I've been thinking about you guys and the blog like crazy, but the end of the quarter had really knocked me out. I'm off to my folks' house today, and I'm hoping I'll post every day this week with little items about Christmas. Praying that your Advents have been blessed,JimPS Here's a thought for you this morning. We Northern Hemisphere people associate Christmas with darkness, the cold, a sort of natural inhospitability, as that's what we are experiencing at this time of year. But in the South it is summer right now, with warm temps, a long vacation and daytimes that go on and on. What elements of the Nativity might that experience bring out for us?

Soon & Very Soon

2011-12-07T00:13:00.001-08:00

Sorry I've been offline. I'm in the throes of finals. Should be back next week.

Hope your Advent has been blest. (How about that new liturgy???)

Could Be...

2011-11-30T00:04:00.001-08:00

I've posted this before during Advent, but I always think of it these early days. It captures so well that sense of excitement and anticipation.

Could it be? Yes it could...

Waiting (Advent and Otherwise)

2011-11-27T22:56:00.001-08:00

I'm excited that we're entering Advent. Which is funny, because this is such a busy time of year, usually I don't get to enjoy it until pretty close to Christmas. I'm lucky if I manage a single evening sitting under a lit-up Christmas tree, taking it all in.

But I look forward to this season every year, more than any other, I think because the ideas I associate with it speak to me all year round: Hope. Darkness. And more than any other, Waiting.

When I was living in Australia, I spent 30 days on a long retreat. Jesuits do that twice in our lifetimes, generally, when we first enter and before we take final vows. 30 days of silence might sound like a prison sentence for some, but it can be a very privileged time of walking with the Lord.

I came away from my first retreat with a hundred stories of biblical passages that had come alive on my retreat. To be clear, this wasn't unique to me. One of Ignatius' essential retreat ideas is to imagine stories of Scripture unfolding before you, like a movie, and even to place yourself in the story in some role, and let it unfold as it will.

My second time around, I expected something similar, although I was also nervous about the possibility of that. Age had made me more wary of how much meddling I was capable of doing within meditations. (It's remarkable how much Jesus seemed to tell me at times exactly what I wanted to hear!) My fundamental prayer had become a quiet centering, and for the most part that felt like enough.

Still, as I said, I did expect something akin to my first long retreat. And instead, what I got was many, many days of nothing. Emptiness, and not of the Zen kind. Desolation, for days upon days, until I was pulling my hair out, trying to figure out what I was doing wrong, what I must be holding back. I would go to my spiritual director and confess things, just to see if that would loosen anything up, assuming it must be. Still nothing.

My director, an incredibly capable man, was obviously perplexed himself. But at one point he just threw up his hands and said, we're just going to have to wait. And rather than urging me to push harder, he asked me to step back and be gentle with himself, give it ten minutes here and there and trust that something good would come of it.

Now, by the end of the retreat I realized that there had been a lot going on all along, just not in the places I was used to looking. But honestly, that didn't become clear to me until the very last days of the retreat.

Even so, I look back now on the many days of absence in between as a great blessing. Somehow the waiting for God became a sort of experience of God, a way of being with him even though paradoxically he didn't seem to be there.

I don't know if that makes any sense, but it's something I return to a lot. It's nice to have consolation, the wedding banquet, etc. etc. etc. But I can get by with a lot less. In fact, waiting can be absolutely wonderful.

I can forget all that in my hunger for answers and certainty and all sorts of other things. It's nice to get to Advent and let it reassure me once again that it's okay not to have all the answers, and that in fact trying to dwell in that place of mystery is often a great blessing.

***

In one of his great little books of Advent and Christmas reflections, Bishop Robert Morneau, auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Green Bay, asks the question, "What words are in my Advent dictionary?"

If you're looking for a way to enter into the season, might be worth asking yourself that same question. What words speak to me as I enter into this season?

A Poem for Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T11:59:00.000-08:00

Why I Wake Early

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who made the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and the crotchety—

best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light—
good morning, good morning, good morning.

Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.

Mary Oliver

WKRP in Cincinnati Turkey Drop

2011-11-24T11:54:00.001-08:00

How To Be Grateful On Thanksgiving

2011-11-23T01:09:00.001-08:00

In the movies, the holidays goes one of two ways. It's either "I Never Realized How Good I Had It" --slow mo shots that capture each and every family member at their very best. Or it's "ARGH!" -- total chaos, complicated by lots of family conflicts and competing desires, which in the beginning of the film is awful but by the end has come back to "I Never Realized How Good I Had It."

Ok, this isn't what I was imagining, but you get the point.

But in life, there's at least one more option, "NOOOOOOOO"/'WHOOSH." That's where the holiday churns back and forth between going way too slow (my God, can we stop talking about what's in the gravy and what's wrong with the Democratic party) and going way too fast (Can we say grace mmm, that was delicious see you next year). It's basically God-as-infant messing with the playing speed.

Is there any way to seize back the controls and appreciate the holiday/your family/your life while it's actually happening? A pretty tall order.

But not impossible (says the priest who basically shows up and eats). What if dinner began with a little bit of silence, in which people were asked to just settle in and get in touch with what they're grateful for this year. That might seem a hard thing to sell, but you know what, if you tell people to do something well intentioned, they'll try to do it. Believe me, I've taken that risk, and it works, if it's clear, simple and not nutty. I was once at a religious seminar where we were asked to stand and imagine we were trees. That constituted a full head o' crazy. A little silence, not so much.

I googled "People Trees" and got Hermione Granger. Huh?

That might be enough to change the tone of an evening from "Pass the spinach" and "What's up with the White Sox? Robin Ventura, really??" to something a little more personal.

Another thing to do is break up the courses somehow. Have courses, even if all that means is have a salad separate from the meat and potatoes. If you throw all the food out on the table right from the top, it makes the whole meal move a lot faster. That might sound appealing, but after spending days preparing the food, it shouldn't be gone in 30 minutes. I know, I know, I'm shoulding on you now, but it's true. There's a lot of love in the cooking of a Thanksgiving dinner, and it should be savored. So break it up into courses, and you might find the evening breathes more easily for everyone. It's less a road race and more a stroll.

For those who want to venture further, why not ask people to share something that they're grateful for, or that has been big for them this year?

I know, it sounds awful. Forced sharing. It tends to give men hives. (So if you're looking for a way to punish a spouse -- tell me the turkey is dry, will you! -- this is it.) But if you model it by going first, keeping it clear, simple and not too intense, it can work. Really! People have a lot more going on than they reveal, and letting them share even just a very little of that can go a really long way to deepening everyone's appreciation for one another.

The other thing I think about sometimes is doing something fun after dinner. Breaking it up from the meal somehow -- go to a different room, or have a big breather before dessert. And maybe doing something a little more group-oriented. A game (I highly recommend Mafia!), a movie together, maybe little entertainments by different folks, if you're that kind of group.

If you're looking for a Thanksgiving movie,

You can't do better than Planes, Trains and Automobiles.

Or even just the moving into another room. It's amazing how much can shift and change just by getting up and moving over 20 feet into another room. It's like the things that settled inside get loose.

Ok, that's probably too loose.

Many years I have the luxury of taking some time on Thanksgiving to just sit and ask God, where were you this year? What blessings have you given me? Who are the people who have been good to me? Maybe you have time for that, too, but maybe not.

But that's not to say you can't actually have that sense of gratitude in the living of the day. It just takes some experimentation.

Well, maybe not test tube experimentation.

Yeah, definitely not that either.

Do you have special practices you do with your family, or that you've seen elsewhere? Share them in the comments, please!

And have a very blessed Thanksgiving. As we say in the McDermott household, Gobble gobble.

It's actually a little underwhelming, isn't it?

Violent Occupations

2011-11-20T23:30:00.001-08:00

New York cop attacks an Occupy Wall Street protestor.

Yesterday I was skimming Twitter. There was a report about rubber bullets and tear gas being fired. And at first it didn't really register, I think because there seems to be a lot going on with the Occupy movement.

But then I realized I misread the tweet; this wasn't a report on an U.S. event, but on the protests in Cairo.

Another tweet had the President calling for the police to let protestors peaceably protest. But again, his comments were not about the United States, but about Cairo.

What is going on in our country where by and large peaceful protestors -- college students, old people, mothers -- are experiencing the same sorts of violence perpetrated by military authorities upon their people in third world countries? Why isn't it being reported more? And why isn't our President demanding an end to the outbursts of violence here?

Maybe I sound like a bleeding lefty here, blindly ignoring the provocations of the protestors. But then again, recently in the New York Times Robert Hass, the former poet laureate of the United States, described appalling violence by the police which came out of nowhere, without warning or demands to disperse, and which included his wife being shoved in the chest and pushed to the ground. He also reports another member of his faculty dragged by her hair when she presented herself for arrest.

Sometimes on Saturdays I search for #ows on Twitter, and just watch the reports from the marches around the country (which often come with photos or videos). And it's pretty crazy stuff, very very troubling for the accounts of sudden and unexplained violence, mostly by police. I've read tweets from parents terrified because they're at a protest with their kids and the cops have suddenly surrounded them and are pushing everyone in, until they're nearly walking over one another. There's accounts almost daily of pepper spray and billy club beatings.

We're talking about people occupying parks and calling for an end to social inequality, for God's sake. A challenging message, but also being undertaken more or less peacefully.

Martin Luther King, Jr., believed non-violent protests helped reveal the brutality of those who opposed them. Because the civil rights protestors did not fight back, the men with their water cannons and billy clubs could not rationalize their actions as in any way justified. And as a result they were forced to see themselves in the harsh light of truth.

May our police have similar epiphanies today. And soon.

Penn State

2011-11-16T01:06:00.001-08:00

Seems like I've heard more about college football this week than I have in the last decade. Well, not college football in general; Penn State. What an incredibly horrible and shocking story. SNL did a sketch on Saturday in which Satan himself was portrayed as so horrified by the situation that he quit his job as prince of darkness and went back to his old life as a customer service agent at Time Warner Cable. (Apparently if you have Time Warner, you know how true this seems).

And while sordid details are emotionally devastating enough, a major part of the story in the last week has been the revelation that revered long time coach Joe Paterno knew about incidents but took the matter only to the school authorities. To be fair to him, he did do something (and it's not entirely clear how much he knew); but he didn't pursue it beyond school administration. And more children were harmed as a result.

It seems like everyone that's ever worked with Paterno views him as one of the most decent and competent individuals they've ever met, akin to UCLA's longtime coach John Wooden. But today much of that knowledge of Paterno is getting lost in the rage fog of the situation. How could he possibly not done more?

I don't have any answer to that question. But I do find the situation instructive. Some people will believe from now on that Paterno was never what we thought he was, that his character was deeply flawed in a subtle way. But what sounds more likely is that he was the man of character we thought him to be, a man deeply concerned with ethics and decency. And he also had clay feet.

It's the mystery of evil.

Down with the Family Bible

2011-11-14T00:07:00.001-08:00

Last week just came and went! Sorry for not posting more. We're getting into the crunch time of the quarter and the assignments, they are a'pilin' up.

As I was preparing for Sunday Mass this week I kept thinking about family bibles. Do you have one of these? You know the style I'm talking about, that massive tome of a Bible people buy you when you get married. The kind that creaks when you open it, because it's so enormous it might as well be a door than a cover; and it has gold plating or big frilly letters (which are extraordinarily hard to read).

Seriously, I think this one was carved out of oak.

Aren't those bibles just ridiculous? I mean, who's ever going to read a Bible like that? You could burst blood vessels just putting it on your lap. You're likely to fall over when you try to lift it. It's the version you're "supposed to have", but honestly, I'm going to weigh in and say these family bibles actually keep people from reading the Bible. They're way too big and too heavy for regular use. And we'd all be a lot better off throwing ours and getting a fit-in-your-backpack handheld version.

And since we're on the subject, you know the other thing we need? We need a version of the Bible that is accessible to people who don't have degrees in Scripture. And I don't mean a kind translation, although that's a fine place to start. I mean a version that isn't so overwhelming to jump into. The Bible has literally dozens of books. And if you wander into the wrong one (and yeah, Leviticus, that means you) it's like walking into a foreign film without the subtitles. Or walking into an accounting lecture when you thought you were going to see a movie. Or walking into the movie J. Edgar when you thought you were going to see something entertaining. Which it is most definitely not.

Point being: you're not going to like the experience. You're going to get up and walk out.

How do we fix this? Some Bibles put a little "This is what this book is about" introduction on each new book. That's not bad. If written well it gives you some useful context.

Maybe we could attach tabs to certain books, ones that are a great place for a non-Scripture scholar to start. Books like Ruth and Jonah and Samuel and Kings and Genesis and Exodus. Short books, with a clear story, or books like the Psalms that are broken into really distinct chunks that can be absorbed individually (or skipped without hurting anything).

Or maybe in the sections that are just impossible to appreciate, we insert an editorial comment telling us, this is what this section is about, and here's how long it goes, feel free to skip it. I hate to say that, but the thing is, if you're not an academic, the Bible is first and foremost a place you go to for inspiration and direction. It's a place to meet God. Hearing about how many freaking cubits the temple was long and wide is just not that.

Maybe in addition to the "complete works" we should sell the books of the Bible separately, the way we do the works of Shakespeare. That alone might go a long way to making it all more manageable for readers. You could keep the first 5 books together (they are one unit); Luke and Acts; maybe Samuel and Kings. But otherwise you split it all up, so that people can just pick up one book at a time, and not be overwhelmed by having them all there together -- or get frustrated just trying to find the book they want. (It can be a real pain, can't it?)

We call the Bible the Good Book. And boy, it is. Now what do we do to help people to use it?

PS And hey -- how about some visual aids?? Sometimes I think the children's bibles are the only ones that get it right.

Tells the story all by itself, doesn't it?

(Although if you didn't know better, you might think

the baby Jesus was radioactive.)

Listening to Jesus (Hint: Get Over Yourself)

2011-11-06T23:28:00.000-08:00

So I was with my spiritual director the other day. And we were talking about -- well, in some ways direction is lot like therapy. You keep circling back to the same old issues. Which maybe sounds depressing, or sitcom depressing if you're looking for a more upbeat spin -- the humor being predicated on the very fact that these people, despite all their effort, never really change (or not until the series finale, anyway). (As funny as they are, if you ever really stop to think about sitcoms, you discover most might as well have been written by a French existentialist. They've got a pretty grim take on people's capacity to change.)

But another way to think about it is like you're drilling down -- so yes, it's circular, because that's what a drill does. But you are getting somewhere.

Or so I hope.

Anyway, a frequent suggestion that I get, which is by far the most basic thing, and therefore I rarely do it (of course) is this: have you brought this issue/subject/event/thing-that's-bugging-you-and-you-won't-stop talking-about-it to prayer? That is, have you taken the time to ask the question, Jesus, what do you think of this? Where are you in this?

Like I said, it's really a no brainer. Of course you should bring your struggles to the Lord. And yet...we forget to do that. In my case, I tend to sit before the Lord fretting/talking to myself about what I should do. And I never turn my eyes (or ears) up to get his perspective. As though I'm really supposed to have this figured out before I actually bring it to God. Which is like saying I'm supposed to already have worked out my problems before I go see a therapist, or I'm supposed to have pretty much written my dissertation before I start grad school. (Ever studied with someone who feels confident they already know everything about the topic they're studying? Lecturing teachers, dropping citations -- these are not the people you invite to your Halloween party.)

So anyway, this suggestion to turn to God is not new to me, and it always makes me laugh at myself. But last week, my director put it in a different way:

What is Jesus' prayer for you?

It's nice, right? It's still all about listening, all about giving God a chance to talk. But it makes the relationship piece really clear, too. Jesus is your friend, and he's hoping and wishing some things for you, just like our friends do. We ask him what do you hope for me right now to help us get ourselves out of our selves and yet still connect to the life of the heart and all the important stuff stirring there.

Might be a nice question to take into the week. Jesus, I've got a lot going on. What is your prayer for me?

Cool Native take on Jesus and the beloved disciple.

Note how John has his head against Jesus' chest.

He's listening to Jesus' heart.

Friday Morning Vignettes

2011-11-04T00:49:00.000-07:00

Day before yesterday, I'm sitting quietly in the morning, praying. And the thing that comes forward is to notice how unrealistically high my expectations had been of people the previous day. And the invitation seemed pretty clear -- let it go. You're not perfect, neither are they.

I was very pleased with myself to have realized this without any serious incident or confrontation to cause it. Went into yesterday quite happy.

Then this morning I went back to prayer. And the very first thing I realized is, yesterday, as I basked in my oh so proud of myself glow, I did the same thing damn thing again. And didn't even notice it.

Isn't that just the way of things?

***

Tonight in one of my classes we had executives from some of the major television production studios in to hear 15 of us pitch ideas for hour long pilots. We've been working on our ideas for six or seven weeks now, and today was the first time we did them for professionals. 10 minutes, give me the nugget of your idea and your main characters. Everyone performed really well; it's a really stellar group, and I can only hope that someday you and I will have the chance to see some of these shows on the air.

But as I was driving home tonight what really struck me was, how incredible it is to be in a setting where I have the opportunity to pitch an idea to executives, accomplished people who have put together many many shows on networks and cable, and to get their honest feedback and suggestions.

Some days I just want to pinch myself.

***

A little video I found on Youtube this week -- it was made using 288,000 jelly beans. And it's a pretty song, too.

Lily's Disneyland Surprise!

2011-11-01T23:23:00.000-07:00

Wow, the days have just flown by without me posting. And I had something fun all ready to go, too! This old brain, she needs oiling!

This viral video was written up in the New York Times last Thursday. It's so sweet and believable, you've got to check it out. You'll love it.

The New Translation of the Eucharistic Prayer: For Many

2011-10-28T00:06:00.000-07:00

If you've read my column at all over the last year or so you know I have little patience for the change in the eucharistic prayer from "for all" to "for many".

And if you're wondering what the heck I'm talking about, it's during the prayer over the cup:

Take this, all of you, and drink from it.
This is my blood, given up for you and for all
so that sins may be forgiven.

The reason they're changing it: the New Testament text from which it's taken literally says "for many", not "for all". So, it's a correction.

The problem is, it sounds like we're suddenly rolling back God's plan of salvation. You know how we used to say God loves everybody, is interested in everybody, regardless of what they believe or ever did or what not? Well, now we're thinking, not so much. He'd settle with a good 30-50%.

Some are arguing that the point of the prayer is actually not God's love but people's receptivity. God came for many and not all because some choose to reject him. And hey, I love a good dose of Catholic guilt and recrimination as much as the next guy. But that's never what "the many" was all about.

So, Fr. Kvetching, what was the point of "the many", you ask? Well, I happened to be in conversation with my liturgy buddies, and they explained that Jesus used the phrase to make clear how expansive was God's circle of interest. Read his words again: Take this, all of you -- i.e. you all gathered here with me at the Last Supper -- and drink of it. This is my blood, given up for you -- again, you all here -- and for many -- that is, for many others who are not here.

"Many" isn't something that limits who this supper is for, but enlarges. Which is why in the 50s and 60s they came to translate it "for all" in the first place. One of my buddies said the proper translation is "so many more"; the other said it's "the multitudes" (which by the way is the French translation). Either makes clear the broadening sense of "many".

And herein is a real challenge of the new translation. It intends to be very, very literal -- that is, in most respects it avoids any attempt to shift the language of the Latin prayers into our own English, American terms. There's arguments to be made in favor of that approach, many of which I've presented in the past. But one downside is, at times it lacks the nuances that would actually have been clear to the original audience. And now presiders and liturgists and others are going to have to keep explaining that original sense to people, or paradoxically the literal meaning of the words will be lost.

Maybe this sounds like mountains made from mole hills. It's not. We are formed by the rites we practice. Having a fundamental portion of a rite seeming to suggest that God is not interested in all of us will impact how we think and act as a people down the line. And not for the better.

So I'm going to try to hold onto what I know to be true. This blood, given up for you, and for so many more.

One of my favorite cartoons ever. Note the little space next to Jesus: "A Place For You".

That's what we're talking about here.

The New Roman Missal: Here It Comes

2011-10-25T23:35:00.000-07:00

So, in about a month the English-speaking Catholic Church will finally take on the new translation of its sacramental prayers. It's hard to get away from talk about it, at least in Jesuit community, and in some ways I'm be glad to just get started with the whole thing, as the waiting only adds fuel to people's anxieties.

I've written about the new rite in some detail in this blog already, and if I'm being honest, I have to admit my comments have been seasoned at times with a light coat of kvetching. I hope I've been fair to the new translation, I've certainly tried to be, but there are certainly subjects for concern, as well, not least the woefully complicated translations of some of the eucharistic prayers.

But in the last few weeks I've had great conversations on the changes with two of my favorite liturgists. Each of them had some really cool insights into the new translation that I want to share today and Friday.

Liturgist 1 had been looking into the new final blessings. There's a couple you already know: "Go forth in peace"(which sort of sounds like "Go back to sleep"); and "Go forth, the mass is ended" (which he described as another way of saying, "It's okay for you to leave now".)

And then there are two new options. "Go forth and proclaim what you have heard here", and "Go forth to glorify the Lord with your lives."

Aren't those nice?

Both blessings make it clear, you're being sent. The end of Mass is not like the end of a bowling match or a TV show, where you sort of wipe your hands of what's gone on and move on. At the end of Mass we're meant to see ourselves as propelled out into the world to continue the mission of Jesus.

What makes the latter especially interesting is its sense that our lives are themselves our evangelization, they are the words that we use to express that reckless, extravagant love of God that we have experienced for ourselves.

At the start of the Gospel of John Jesus is called the Word. And that's confusing, because Jesus is not a verb (no matter what we read on a 60s macrame wall hanging). He's a three-dimensional person. But John's point is that it is only through a human being in all its complexity that God can most fully express his love for us. In all his words and actions, Jesus is what God says to us.

That final final blessing (if you will) draws that idea forward to us. We follow in Jesus' footsteps. He is our brother. And so we, too, are through our very lives God's loving words.

Which if you think about it, makes our our choices much more important (and intimidating!).

Great stuff, no?

I don't want anyone to panic about the new translation. I really don't.

I'm just entertained by pictures of people hollering.

Friday: Liturgist 2, on the "For the many" prayer.

Truly, Madly, Deeply

2011-10-23T23:52:00.000-07:00

Heard a great story at Mass today. A class on confessions for guys studying to be priests. The guy is given a situation -- a woman who has been in an adulterous relationship with a married man. She's repented and is coming to confession for absolution.

The priest-in-training -- the PIT, if you will -- hears her confession. And then he says this: "Do you have any idea how madly God is in love with you?"

That question might be something for each of us to sit with this week. Do you have any idea how madly God is in love with you?

Changing Lanes

2011-10-21T01:32:00.000-07:00

I was driving down the freeway yesterday, trying to get in the lane I needed. And I was just about to hit the gas when I realized, if I'd just slow down instead it would all go much easier.

Might be more a tweet than a blog post, but seems like there's some wisdom for life in there.

It's Just An Illusion

2011-10-18T21:48:00.000-07:00

First of all -- did you read my Monday post about the Dragon Mom? If you didn't, scroll down right now and read it. I didn't write it, and it's truly life changing stuff.

Moving on: I think I mentioned a few weeks ago that I've been slowly working my way through "Awareness", a book by Tony DeMello, SJ. It's slow going, and for the best of reasons -- each page has so much stuff to ponder, anytime I start to move too quickly I feel like I'm missing the best stuff. I actually find it a nice way to pray some mornings; I center myself listening to the breeze, and then I read a page or two and sit with whatever it stirs in me.

So yesterday I was in a section entitled "Our Illusion About Others". Here's the jist of it -- You know how sometimes people disappoint you? Well, DeMello says, take a look at yourself. Are you perfect? Do you have it together? Did you manage to get through the day without any sort of sin? How about half the day? How about the time it takes to drink your cup of coffee?

If you didn't do so well, why would you expect anyone else will be any different?

Sit with that question for a minute and it will change your life. Really.

Really!

DeMello's point isn't self-fingerwagging -- Bad me! Bad me! He's trying to snap us out of a habit of mind that leads to all sorts of unnecessary (in fact silly) unhappiness. Think of the energy you waste on being disappointed. Seriously, I could power the Christmas lights of Los Angeles year round with it. Then add the disappointments that aren't day to day, you know, like when you run into someone you haven't seen in 10 years, and there's old history there that you can't even remember, but you know they hurt you, so all of a sudden you're disappointed in/mad at them again.

Or even better -- I love it when I do this -- someone simply mentions the name of someone that you haven't thought about in years, but who disappointed you, and you feel that TWANG of resentment again. I mean, how many kinds of crazy is that?

I've tried many times to address these situations in what looks like the direct manner -- that is, to ask God to help me forgive them. Not a bad tack. But DeMello's approach instead turns the camera on me. And oy, does that disrupt the judgments.

And oy, does it allow us all to be a little less uptight, a little less counting the costs, and a lot more free.

Love and the Dragon Mom

2011-10-16T22:50:00.000-07:00

Emily and her son Ronan

The Sunday edition of the New York Times yesterday had a remarkable article by Emily Rapp, a writer raising an infant son that she knows will die before he reaches the age of 3. It's an astonishing, understated piece about the value of life and the experience of being a parent to a dying child. "This is a love story," she writes, "and like all great love stories, it is a story of loss."

Please, take a look.

Last Shots from Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-14T09:54:00.000-07:00

I realize this can look a little aggressive (ya think?), but I like it because it captures well the frustration people feel.

Indeed!

More Shots from Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-13T00:45:00.000-07:00

One of the most interesting thing at Occupy Wall Street are the hundreds of cardboard box tops that have been taken up by pretty much anyone who wants with their thoughts and quotes. Passersby walk slowly through the area, reading all the signs, and sometimes adding their own. Some people sit there holding signs, too. One lady's read: "I walk dogs for a living, and they have more health insurance than I do."

I was very struck by that quote in the center, not only because it's from Jefferson and seems so prescient to our struggles in recent years, but because some of the very bankers whose institutions have proven so destructive continue to take huge salaries, rake in huge profits for their business often at the expense of their consumers, and speak out so strongly against banking reform. In what other industry, I wonder, can you rip people off so fundamentally and be rewarded for it? The mob and political spin doctors are the only other professions I could come up with...

One of the other things I love about the stuff at Occupy Wall Street is its willingness to look beyond politics to the bigger human questions, as well. There's so much pressure to conform and to take jobs that are safe, to become cogs in the system. But I always think of the end of Mary Oliver's poem "The Summer Day": "Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do/with your one wild and precious life?"

Occupy Wall Street -- Visiting the Protest

2011-10-12T00:29:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I had a wedding outside of Manhattan. I was lucky enough to get one day before the wedding in the city. And one of the guys I was staying with kept talking about these protests at Wall Street -- which, I am embarrassed to admit, I knew nothing about. (It never ceases to amaze me just how small I can allow my world to get!)

So, before heading off to this wedding I took a wander down to the site where the core group is staying. It's just a little park pretty much in the shadow of the new World Trade Center building. You could walk its circumference in maybe 5 minutes -- really, it's that small. Far tinier around than a city block.

And upon arriving I can't say I knew what to do with the whole thing. It really looked like a bunch of homeless kids who had camped out. There are sleeping bags, food and trash sort of all over the place, and a lot of grungy looking people playing music or sitting around chatting.

The thing is, the longer I stayed there, reading the signs protestors had written on cardboard and laid on the sidewalk, the more I felt again my own frustrations -- the rampant profiteering of the banks in the midst of a crisis they had caused; the lack of adequate financial oversight even now; wealthy people who don't want to pay taxes; corrupt politicians, lobbyists, etc. And I thought of that line from Network: "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it."

That's where I think a lot of us are. It's not really different than the engine behind the Tea Party; it's just that rather than place the blame on big government, these new protestors -- who call themselves "the 99%" -- cast their attention first not upon the government but upon the banking system and rich elite. And as chaotic and sort of commune-like as the whole thing feels, there's something really good and positive going on down there. If you live in New York, or anywhere that they're doing protests (they're in many places in the US and even abroad now), I highly recommend spending an hour with them. You'll meet nice people from literally very walk of life, and you'll find your own perspective challenged, as well.

Over the next few days I'm going to post some of my photos from down there. May they feed your own passion for a better country.

Dream Big

2011-10-06T17:49:00.000-07:00

The death of Steve Jobs... such a big and unusual loss. Jobs wasn't involved in geopolitics, wasn't a Nobel Prize Winner or rock star, and yet he was a global figure, probably the biggest global figure other than Obama, the Pope and a couple celebrities. As a number of writers have pointed out since he stepped down last month, he never got involved with outside causes, never promised to donate his money to help the world like Bill Gates or Warren Buffett. But his business was borne out of his vision for a better world, and had an enormous impact on many different aspects of our world, from the way we buy music to the way we imagine technology in our everyday lives, even the degree to which we do imagine.

That's I think what I want to take away from Jobs -- that we should dream big. Rather than just living in the world like rats in a maze, we should imagine how the world might be if it could be any way we want, imagine how we'd like to see it, and chase after that, make that our lives' work. No matter whether in the realm of tech or politics or religion or family, we are not just passive recipients of others' genius. We each have the opportunity to be explorers and inventors ourselves.

"We don't get a chance to do many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life."

Think different

2011-10-05T23:49:00.000-07:00

Steve Jobs, RIP.

Chasing the Wind

2011-10-04T22:14:00.000-07:00

One of the things you do in the preliminary stages of writing a major work of any kind is outline. I know, one hears stories of a Stephen King sitting down with a wild hair one Sunday night and "just seeing where we go", or the writer who wrote his film a weekend. (I think "Little Miss Sunshine" has a story like that, in fact.) But whether any writers actually can kick out the Lord of the Rings without a roadmap, most screenwriters don't. We spend days upon days, weeks upon weeks, months upon months trying to get the story right, start to finish.

And as I was working on my outline today, I discovered something : each successive outline is like the work of another generation of explorers, providing greater clarity and definition to the world, yet also provoking new questions, too, demanding deeper and deeper layers of detail. It can be a bit of a funhouse mirror experience, actually, or a trip down Alice's rabbit hole, each new answer opening up into further questions.

It makes me think, maybe the most foolish errand is the pursuit of finality. There's a reason we don't find finish lines much in the wild, and that's because they're artificial, they're humanly created. If I clean out my inbox today -- a quest I have pursued many times -- the satisfaction lasts only until the next email, the next invoice. I can clear away my piles of books, dust off my desk -- but without fail, they will creep back.

Which is not to say, let's all live like slobs! (I've seen that movie; it doesn't end well -- or smell well.) It's more about deciding to do what we do because it has some meaning for us, rather than because we believe it will somehow free us up in a more than temporary sense. It just won't.

I can look at my outlining and say, now I'm done and be disappointed. Or I can say I'm in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, on a journey, and each new outline is an opportunity for discovery that much deeper. And suddenly it's not a race, it's an adventure.

Awareness

2011-10-03T08:42:00.000-07:00

I've been reading this great book by Tony De Mello, S.J., Awareness. It's basically a retreat he used to give. It's actually hard to get through, not because it's too complicated but because it's so incredibly rich. It's the kind of book you read a page and think, whoa, I need to sit with that.

I came across a stop the presses idea like that last week. He was talking about faith and belief.

An openness to the truth, no matter what the consequences, no matter where it leads you and when you don't even know where it's going to lead you. That's faith. Not belief, but faith. Your beliefs give you a lot of security, but faith is insecurity.

It seems to me, one legitimate way in which we can form our identities is by way of what we hold on to, what we claim is true.

De Mello's point as I read it is that for the believer there is another way that emerges not out of what we claim, but how much we're willing to risk.

And consequently, as crazy as it will sound, if you're feeling scared, uncomfortable, way out of your depth, maybe that doesn't mean you've strayed far from the path or that God has abandoned you in some fundamental way. Maybe it just means you're doing something right.

Great Quote for the Day

2011-09-28T09:16:00.001-07:00

Even Jesus Needs A Day Off

2011-09-27T22:19:00.000-07:00

Scandalous, I know, but funny, right?

Albuquerque, Part 3: In which the Pilgrim Finally Learns what God had been Trying to Teach Him, 20 years later

2011-09-25T23:57:00.000-07:00

Previous on Gone Walkabout: Pilgrimage in Albuquerque. Wandering along a highway. Slugs under bridges. Run away!

Last week, I had the chance to go back to Albuquerque for the first time since my pilgrimage. In many ways it was a surreal experience -- I drove along that highway that I had walked along some 20 years ago, saw with new eyes both what had drawn me and what I had completely ignored.

I felt a lot of sympathy, too, for that kid, just a year out of college and pretty naive still, with these high hopes for a very special and personal religious experience. It turns out, he probably did get what he wanted, but it wasn't at all what he expected it to look like, and it was in many ways a painful lesson.

At the end the day, I went back to the Jesuit parish that I had stayed at. I had just hoped to sit in the church for a little bit, see if that stirred any further memories. But as it turned out they had a 5:30 mass there, which with a moment's consideration seemed so much more appropriate.

And as I sat there in the pews, the presider began his homily in this way: "What are you doing here?" It was a quote from the reading, but he addressed it to all of us. What are you doing here? We're all on a journey, he told us, and what we need to know is this -- we are where we are by divine appointment. That is to say, we are here because it is what God wants for us. God has called us to this moment, to this place.

Imagine that, to come back to a place you had been on pilgrimage 20 years ago and be told by some random presider who doesn't know you from Adam, you have been on a journey, and it's the journey that God wants for you. It's a little like Moses on the mountain, you're awed at the presence and glory of God, and at the same time you have to close your eyes, because He's just way too close.

Perhaps this week, hear these words addressed to you, and see where they take you:

What are you doing here?

You're on a journey.

And maybe most of all: God has called you here.

Amazing to think about, isn't it?

Albuquerque, Part 2: In Which the Pilgrim Learns How Not To Make a Pilgrimage

2011-09-21T23:32:00.000-07:00

When taking a 60 mile walk along a highway, here's a couple questions to consider:

1) Are there plenty of rest stops? On my trip, I had a bunch of sandwiches and a water bottle. This was May; it was hot and dry, and not the biggest water bottle, but it seemed like the sort of thing that would last me long enough to get from gas station to gas stations.

Thing was, once you're out of Albuquerque proper, there really are no gas stations. There would be these exits for different Indian reservations, mostly, and as I approached I'd look in the direction of the exit, and there'd be nothing there but more road ribboning off miles into the empty distance (which is classic Indian reservation, actually).

2) What's the terrain like? I'm from Chicago. We assume everything is flat. And, in the case of highway 25 between Albu. and Santa Fe, we are wrong. There are some mighty flat pieces, but Santa Fe is actually 1700 feet higher than Albuquerque. Which means you're going to encounter some hills, in fact some big windy hills that will make your feet a little bit angry and your energy wane.

3) Is this really going to deepen your relationship to God? I had this grand notion that in leaving my friends and walking along a major highway, sucking in fuel exhaust for 60 miles, I would grow closer to God. I know why I thought that -- nature has always been a great doorway into the spiritual for me, and on highway 25 the long, dramatic Sandia Mountains lay along the roadside.

But walking along a highway, it turns out, is not the same as sitting still in a quiet place and gazing upon something amazing and blessed. In fact, the whole highway context really seems to depreciate one's quotient of wonder. So does the reality of walking.)

Suffice it to say, after about 5 hours and 14 miles, my sandwiches were eaten, my water bottle was empty and I was starting to feel a little lightheaded (whether from the heat or the tailpipe flatulence was anyone's guess). It was time to cut my losses.

So I threw away my silly walking stick, stuck my thumb out and hitched a ride the remaining 40 miles to Santa Fe as the sun was setting. I endeavored to spend the night under a bridge near a little creek that runs through Santa Fe, and was quite pleased with myself for "roughing it" until I heard a slithering sound and saw that I had large banana slugs for company. Then I made my way quickly out of there and got shelter with the Franciscans at Santa Fe's St. Francis cathedral.

A few days later I was back in Albuquerque, having been picked up in Santa Fe by the pastor from down there. He drove me home with the sort of quiet concern that a dad has after watching his son blow the big game. It's not that he's disappointed, it's that he feels badly for you, and worries about what you must be thinking.

When we were invited to do this pilgrimage, we were told it was about putting ourselves in God's hands. What we were not told is that the end result might be not only a new level of trust, but a whole lot more humility.

It was not the nicest of surprises.

On Monday: Albuquerque Pilgrimage, Part 3, in which the pilgrim, still embarrassed 20 years later, leaps ahead to the present and we learn why the heck he's remembering this story now.

Albuquerque, Part 1, in which the Pilgrim Mistakes His Pilgrimage for a Day Spa

2011-09-21T00:22:00.000-07:00

About 20 years ago, I was sent on a pilgrimage to the Southwest of the United States. I was given $30 and a one way bus ticket, and told to make my way for 5 weeks and trust that God and the people of God would take care of me and help me find my way home.

I know, it sounds crazy. When we entered in late August, the pilgrimage was the one piece of our formation that all the parents wanted to talk to the novice directors about. And it was also the one piece the 11 of us were all pretty excited about (at least out loud). It was like a rite of passage, throwing yourself into the hands of God and seeing what happens. Like gambling with your life. What's not to like?

When he began his pilgrimage one of my classmates yelled "Let's Get this Steel Dog Rolling!" Yes, I know: classy, that one.

As part of my pilgrimage, I went to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Although this was the only part of my 5 weeks on the road that I had actually planned for ahead of time, there was really no good reason for the destination. There was no holy spot I was going to visit, no amazing human being I wanted to meet.

No, this choice of destination came from a sort of goofy fantasy that I and some of my college friends had come up with the year before. I can't tell you how it started, but somewhere between the end of college and the next year two of my buddies and I started to use the term "Albequerque" as a metaphor for a Zen-like, later-Van- Morrison-looking-back-on-his-life-with-a-certain-peace-about-it-all-and-singing state of being. We misspelled the name of the city to make it clear, we weren't talking about New Mexico, we were talking about some sort of inner utopia.

Van Morrison contemplates Enlightenment (or English Rugby -- same difference).

Planning this pilgrimage about a year later, near the end of my first year as a Jesuit, knowing that both I and a couple of my classmates were traveling initially to different destinations in the Southwest, it seemed only natural to consider spending some time in the "real" Albuquerque and seeing whether it didn't live up to our hype. Actually the idea had the three of us sort of grade school giddy, giggling about whether we would be in Albequerque in Albuquerque. (See what we did there?)

The week we spent there together? Well, it was nice. We stayed at Immaculate Conception parish with some really great Jesuits who were very hospitable and also extremely tolerant of our general laxity. As I said, we were on pilgrimage, but as I look back it seems like we spent most of that week just taking it easy, praying and reading and hanging out together. (Forgive me, my novice master, forgive me!)

I'm sure if I went back to my journal I'd see there was more going on there; and to be clear, by the time I got to Albuquerque I had already spent a somewhat scary week living in a homeless shelter in Vegas and another week dealing with the humiliation of not being able to speak the language (Spanish) in Juarez and El Paso. I know in Albuquerque I helped out at some sort of soup kitchen; but something tells me that happened after I got back.

Got back from where? Well, that's the heart of the story. At the end of our week-long "Spirit Spa" (and probably after a few polite prods from our hosts), my companions decided that they were going to take a bus to Santa Fe (60 miles north of Albu.), and then do a pilgrimage walk 18 miles from Santa Fe to Chimayo. I had never heard of Chimayo; it sort of sounded like a spicy soft drink. (Coca-Cola, now with Chimayo!) But according to my fellow novices it had this storied history of miracles coming from the site in Chimayo where a crucifix had been dug up. There seemed to be some sort of custom of gathering some dirt from that site, and that's what my pals intended to do.

The Church at Chimayo.

Now, I'm not sure whether it was the fact that I was feeling guilty for having spent the whole week basically "hangin' with my homies", or a classic desire to one-up someone else (ding ding ding ding!), but instead of joining them I decided that I would stay in Albuquerque and walk the 60 miles to Santa Fe (and, I thought secretly, the additional 18 miles to Chimayo -- take that!).

My friends just sort of stared at me when I told them this. A few stumbling words. The Jesuits of the community, as I remember, bit their lips and looked away. But no matter; my mind was set, and that's what I did. On the day my friends were going to Greyhound to Santa Fe, they first drove me up the highway a few miles and dropped me and my Gandalf/crazy person-sized walking stick along the roadside.

Then they got back in the community's car and drove away.

Tomorrow: Albuquerque, Part 2, in which the Pilgrim Learns That He's Made Some Really Poor Choices.

Brainstorming for Biblical Literacy

2011-09-16T00:56:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago America Magazine, where I used to work, published an article about biblical literacy in the Catholic Church. The general thrust of the article is something I think most of us have heard many times: Catholics don't know the Bible. Maybe they read it (maybe they don't), but even if they do, they don't really understand what it is that they're reading -- what it is, how different books were intended, their context and subtext.

Reading the piece, I wondered what can we do to improve this situation. The article itself turns to the obvious scapegoats/solutions -- overwhelmed/uninformed priests who need to preach better, and weak catechists who need a fuller handle on their material.

The thing is, we've heard these solutions a thousand times and don't seem to be changing the situation terribly, whether because no one's actually doing the hard yards to change their preaching/catechizing or because it's not the right diagnosis.

And personally, as much as I agree wholeheartedly that our Church needs to work on its preaching, and in fact would love to go from parish to parish helping priests evaluate their own preaching, I'm not sure the preaching issue is necessarily about a lack of scriptural explanation, as much as it is about whether or not the presider is actually using his homily to help invite people into new insight and an experience of God. These are not mutually exclusive, by any means, but they're not always connected, either. I've heard great, important homilies borne out of just a word or phrase from scripture. And I've heard (okay, I've given) some dreadful ones that were filled with biblical hey-didja-know's.

All of which is to say, maybe we overestimate the place of an 10 minute homily in solving the issue of biblical literacy. Maybe we have to think much more broadly. What if we tried to figure out ways to put the Bible at the center of everything we do in a parish? When we have meetings, let's begin not only with prayer but with a brief breaking open of scripture, or some sort of relevant contextualized insight. With members of our parish council and its committees, with parish ministers of all kinds, let's have days devoted to biblical education - the parish equivalent of lawyers going to conferences to continue their certification.

Currently, many places are beginning to have bible study, book clubs and other forms of adult education. But let's also have its leaders come and give little reflections after communion to interest congregations, and have its groups put together some sort of presentation, day of reflection or show for the parish after they've finished a given book from scripture. Let's take advantage of our high holy days and sacramental celebrations like baptisms or weddings, where we get a lot of people that don't come to Church that often, to slide in some interesting and inviting scriptural insights. And yes, let's have some regular homilies that are grounded in proper understanding of scripture, and others where the presider leads the congregation in a discussion of an important biblical theme or idea.
Those are just my ideas. If we really want a thousand flowers to bloom, why don't we have a committee of the parish dedicated to this issue of bringing scripture into every element of the parish's life, and see what it comes up with? Many brains means many ideas, and that's what we need.

I'd love to hear your ideas. And if this little brainstorm of mine resonates for you, please, pass it along to your friends or parishioners. Maybe it can help trigger something useful for us all.

The Helplessness of the Poor

2011-09-13T22:51:00.000-07:00

I was reading through some emails the other day and came across an article by Fr. Phil Crotty, SJ, an Australian Jesuit running their foundation for foreign mission, and a long time missionary in India himself.

In his article, he writes about his own witness of the unique "helplessness of the poor":

Just after I was appointed parish priest of Mahuadanr, a village in a remote corner of India, a group of parishioners came to me at night and asked me to bury two small children who had been killed by an artillery shell they found lying near their village. They picked it up and it exploded. I was appalled at the sight of the mangled bodies that the parents had carried down from their village near which the army had been practising artillery fire. 'Have you informed the police?' I asked. The families looked frightened and explained that they didn't want to get into trouble with either the army or the police. All they wanted to do was bury their children in peace. It was my first lesson in the helplessness of the poor.

It's a really striking article. The rest can be found here.

A Prayer for the Week

2011-09-11T23:35:00.000-07:00

Ah Holy spirit, I plant my feet

into the soil of the living God.

I turn my ear toward the voice of the calling Christ.

I lean my life into the wind of holy change

Be fierce, be gentle

toss me, turn me,

shape me, dishevel me,

Ah Holy Spirit,

In gratitude I wait.

Pamela C Hawkins; The Awkward Season: Prayers for Lent

9/11, 10 Years Later

2011-09-09T09:46:00.000-07:00

We remember the 10th anniversary of 9/11 this Sunday. I wrote a little article about where we are 10 years on for the Australian Jesuit magazine, Eureka Street -- here's the link.

And I also found this little video today; it's not about 9/11 per se, but I don't know, something of the spirit of it is what I hope for 10 years later. I hope you like it.

What Happened to My Money?

2011-09-08T23:02:00.000-07:00

Our recently renewed concerns about the state of the economy put me in mind of this piece the New Yorker ran about 10 years ago...

WHAT HAPPENED TO MY MONEY?

by David OwenGod has taken your money to live with Him in Heaven. Heaven is a special, wonderful place, where wars and diseases and stock markets do not exist, only happiness. You have probably seen some wonderful places in your life—perhaps during a vacation, or on television, or in a movie—but Heaven is a million billion times more wonderful than even Disney World. Jesus and Mary and the angels live in Heaven, and so do your grandparents and your old pets and Abraham Lincoln. Your money will be safe and happy in Heaven forever and ever, and God will always take care of it.

Your money is still your money—it will always be your money—but it cannot come back to you, not ever. That may seem unfair to you. One day you were buying puts and shorting straddles, and the next day you woke up to find that your account had been closed forever. Perhaps you got a sick or empty feeling in your stomach when that happened; perhaps you have that sick or empty feeling still. You loved your money very, very much, and you did not want God to take it away.

Your feelings are natural and normal—they are a part of the way God made you—but God took your money in accordance with His wonderful plan, which is not for us to know or understand. You must trust God and have faith that He loves your money just as He loves you and every other part of His creation. Someday—probably a very, very long time from now, after you have lived a long and happy life in compliance with the nation’s securities laws—God will take you to live with Him in Heaven, too. Then you will understand.

Even though your money is gone forever, it can still be a part of your life. As long as love and kindness and happiness dwell in your heart, your money can dwell there, too. At night, before you go to sleep, you can talk to your money in a prayer. You can think about the B.M.W. that you and your money were going to buy, and you can remember the house on the beach that you and your money were going to build, and you can laugh about your funny old plan to send your children to private colleges. Someday, when you no longer feel as sad as you do today, you may even find that thinking about your money can give you some of the same happy feelings that spending your money used to give you.

Those feelings belong to you and they always will; no one can take them away from you. Even when you are very, very old, you will still be able to think about your money and remember how much you loved it. But you will still not be able to spend your money, or even borrow against it.

Groaning Into Existence

2011-09-06T20:04:00.000-07:00

I have a confession to make: over the last two years, I've taken to groaning when I wake up. I say "taken to", as though I've made some sort of decision in the matter to growl like an animal as the sun rises, but the truth is at some point I just started doing it. And to be clear, I'm talking about a strong yawn here; this is full on, loud, extended groaning -- somewhere between "I have a terrible stomachache" and "I'm having a baby."

Maybe it's a response to years of sleeping alone, a sort of reflex to let myself know I'm here. Or maybe it was my own personal welling up of Paul's "creation groaning in the pains of childbirth" (Romans 8:22). More likely, though, it's just my body trying to push itself out of the tightened cocoon of shrunken muscles and sinews.

For many years I practiced yoga. And one of the great revelations of that practice was always how much taller I felt at the end of a session. Teachers often talk about the practice in terms of "creating space" between bones and within the body, and in fact so much of yoga involves stretching up, out, over or across, you really do improve your posture and create a sense of space within yourself.

My morning moans tell me I should probably return to my practice (and also drink a lot more water -- hydrated muscles are looser muscles). But there is something oddly physically satisfying about that act of groaning itself. It's like I'm pulling myself up out sleep or throwing off the reality of my dreams like you would a thick, heavy comforter and pushing myself back into life.

Of course, the poor men who have to live beside me and below me probably have a different perspective entirely.

Labored Day

2011-09-05T23:32:00.000-07:00

It seems strange to be celebrating Labor Day this year, doesn't it? Employment in the U.S. is in a terrible state, by some measures the worst since shortly before World War II, and with little sign of improving. President Obama is going to speak on Thursday about job creation, and for all the good things he's done legislatively in other areas, by most accounts on this issue he's at least a year, maybe two years too late to the dance. The situation in Europe likewise makes the future of not only its economy but our own seem only more shaky.

Bottom line, if you're looking for wet blankets, look no further; if you're looking for a silver lining, might I interest you instead in a handsome wet blanket?

When Obama ran for president in 2008, he ran on a platform of change and also hope, audacious hope that things do not have to stay as they've always been, that it is possible for old sides and disagreements to fall away, and fundamentally that new life could spring up amidst acrimony and financial ruin.

As Christians we believe that this is possible. We believe that life emerges from death, that God not only can make a way where there is no way, but seems to tend to favor that way of proceeding. (Would that he didn't.) And as citizens of the world this year we've watched new life or something like it begin to happen in places like Egypt, Tunisia and now Libya.

But hope can be naive, too. Plato imagined human beings as driven by two horses, one noble, one "quite the opposite", and we certainly see both impulses borne out in the current political cage matches of our country. And as we see in the Middle East, new life does has costs, it involves effort and suffering. Some religious people describe such pain as all part of "God's plan," but when they do I can't help but wonder, who is this God you are living with and why do you tolerate him?

It all makes me think that today alongside hope we should embrace humility, an awareness of our place in God's kingdom -- our smallness, our limited perspective and our neediness. St. Ignatius is supposed to have said "Act as though everything depends on you, pray knowing that all depends on God." In hard times like this premature Advent darkness we seem to be stuck in, it's so important we don't forget that latter part. Cry out to the Lord, not only so that he might hear our prayers and answer them but first because fundamentally that is what we have to say. That is our prayer.

I'm back from the summer, and I'll be trying to post 2 or 3 times a week. Hope you've all had a great summer.

Sink or Soar

2011-08-23T09:14:00.000-07:00

If we are only worried about our welfare or success, we will sink helplessly. If we are worried about service and the suffering of others, where Christ lives… we will walk on the sea.

-- Adolfo Nicolas, SJ, Superior General of the Jesuits, speaking to young pilgrims to World Youth Day.

God's Blog

2011-08-18T12:10:00.000-07:00

GOD’S BLOG
by Paul Simms (The New yorker, 8/8/11)

UPDATE: Pretty pleased with what I’ve come up with in just six days. Going to take tomorrow off. Feel free to check out what I’ve done so far. Suggestions and criticism (constructive, please!) more than welcome. God out.

COMMENTS (24)

Not sure who this is for. Seems like a fix for a problem that didn’t exist. Liked it better when the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep.

Going carbon-based for the life-forms seems a tad obvious, no?

The creeping things that creepeth over the earth are gross.

Not enough action. Needs more conflict. Maybe put in a whole bunch more people, limit the resources, and see if we can get some fights going. Give them different skin colors so they can tell each other apart.

Disagree with the haters out there who have a problem with man having dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, the cattle of the earth, and so on. However, I do think it’s worth considering giving the fowl of the air dominion over the cattle of the earth, because it would be really funny to see, like, a wildebeest or whatever getting bossed around by a baby duck.

The “herb yielding seed” is a hella fresh move. 4:20!

Why are the creatures more or less symmetrical on a vertical axis but completely asymmetrical on a horizontal axis? It’s almost like You had a great idea but You didn’t have the balls to go all the way with it.

The dodo should just have a sign on him that says, “Please kill me.” Ridiculous.

Amoebas are too small to see. They should be at least the size of a plum.

Beta version was better. I thought the Adam-Steve dynamic was much more compelling than the Adam-Eve work-around You finally settled on.

I liked the old commenting format better, when you could get automatic alerts when someone replied to your comment. This new way, you have to click through three or four pages to see new comments, and they’re not even organized by threads. Until this is fixed, I’m afraid I won’t be checking in on Your creation.

***SPOILER***

One of them is going to eat something off that tree You told them not to touch.

Adam was obviously created somewhere else and then just put here. So, until I see some paperwork proving otherwise, I question the legitimacy of his dominion over any of this.

Why do they have to poop? Seems like there could have been a more elegant/family-friendly solution to the food-waste-disposal problem.

The lemon tree: very pretty. The lemon flower: sweet. But the fruit of the poor lemon? Impossible to eat. Is this a bug or a feature?

Unfocussed. Seems like a mishmash at best. You’ve got creatures that can speak but aren’t smart (parrots). Then, You’ve got creatures that are smart but can’t speak (dolphins, dogs, houseflies). Then, You’ve got man, who is smart and can speak but who can’t fly, breathe underwater, or unhinge his jaws to swallow large prey in one gulp. If it’s supposed to be chaos, then mission accomplished. But it seems more like laziness and bad planning.

If it’s not too late to make changes, in version 2.0 You should make water reflective, so the creatures have a way of seeing what they look like.

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Penguins are retarded. Their wings don’t work and their legs are too short. I guess they’re supposed to be cute in a “I liek to eat teh fishes” way, but it’s such obvious pandering to the lowest common denominator.

There’s imitation, and then there’s homage, and then there’s straight-up idea theft, which is what Your thing appears to be. Anyone who wants to check out the original should go to www.VishnuAndBrahma.com. (And check it out soon, because I think they’re about to go behind a paywall.)

Putting boobs on the woman is sexist.

Wow. Just wow. I don’t even know where to start. So the man and his buddy the rib-thing have dominion over everything. They’re going to get pretty unbearable really fast. What You need to do is make them think that there were other, bigger, scarier creatures around a long time before them. I suggest dinosaurs. No need to actually create dinosaurs—just create some weird-ass dinosaur bones and skeletons and bury them in random locations. Man will dig them up eventually and think, What the...?

Epic fail.

Meh. ♦

What's Going to Happen?

2011-08-11T07:59:00.000-07:00

I wrote a little piece for America Magazine about the growing financial crisis, and thought I'd share it. Hope to be back to regularly posting by the end of August. Cheers!

Monday night on the Daily Show, Jon Stewart described the collapse in the stock market investment in favor of U.S. Treasury bonds as akin to a guy torching your house and then asking if he can store his cash in your basement.

There’s also something of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle to these days’ events. The more closely that people around the world watch the rise and fall of the Dow Jones and listen to the reports on the situations in Europe, the more unpredictable the situation becomes.

While the recent Standard & Poor’s downgrading of the U.S. might have triggered this new financial plunge, the real crisis for the moment is the wide-snaking chain of dominoes falling in Europe.

But is it really true that people should be worrying about the banks of France? Or that a country like Italy’s ability to pay back its debt should be in doubt? In many cases it’s hard to say, as fearful lenders are themselves destabilizing state banks by increasing the rates of interests they must pay on their debts. Europe is in trouble more and more literally because we fear it is in trouble.

“Panic”, as one might guess, derives from the Greek god Pan, who beyond a gallon of a nice chianti enjoyed nothing more than whipping crowds into frenzies. Emphasis on crowds: it is no coincidence that lemmings leap to their deaths in groups. The pack mentality obscures reason so easily.

Which is why, in our own situation what is needed more than anything is the discipline to step back from the urgency of the herd and catch our breath. Panic spurs only miserly, myopic self-protectiveness. And yet all fall if everyone continues to go it alone. "Blessed the one who is gracious and lends to those in need," went the Psalm response Wednesday. If there was ever a need for Wall Street and the banks of the world to hear those words, it is now.

Silent Day

2011-07-13T16:46:00.000-07:00

Thanks to everyone for your prayers and well wishes as I went on retreat. I saw a number of you write that you were away on retreat at the same time -- How weird is that! We're in spiritual synch!

I've been slow to come back to blogging, and I think that'll probably continue until mid-late August. Just getting the gas back in the engine.

Sometimes people ask me, what exactly "happens" on retreat? The fact is, it's different every year. Sometimes it involves a lot of scripture, sometimes more just being still, listening, savoring the bird call and the breeze.

But in general for me at this point in my life it's a time of rest in the fullest sense of the word "rest". That is, not just sleep but a putting down of the things I've been holding on to (or better put, having God help me put those things down). A time of release from the shackles that I have somehow managed to bind myself up in.

It's interesting, too -- many of the things I was holding on to, be they experiences or feelings or compulsions (hello, Facebook, my old friend), I often don't know are there at the start of a retreat. So a big part of the blessing is just to see what is there, to see the cage as it were. St. Ignatius talks about how evil spirits don't want to be known, don't want to be seen. Because if you can see them or talk about them (that is, talk about the fears or temptations they're feeding you), then they are brought into a much bigger universe and have way less power over you.

So often to own us the evil spirit has to make us forget that there is that bigger (and kinder) world...

So that's another way of talking about retreat: a retreat is a time to place your own life and world in a far bigger context and see it through the eyes of God.

Or to put it even another way: A retreat is a time to gain in freedom from sin and despair, and to grow in hope and life. It's meant to offer liberation.

If you've never done one, you might think about it. Everyone thinks the silence is a nightmare, but you try a weekend retreat and you discover it's not only not bad, you even like it.

And if you don't believe me, try this: have a day when you and those you live with don't talk other than when you absolutely have to. A Silent Day. Now don't choose a day you have to work, because that's just going to be crazy. And don't make it a shopping/day to see movies day, because that sort of defeats the point. (Although, excellent try.)

But at the same time, this doesn't mean you can't do anything that day. It can be very very interesting to be "on retreat" while wandering through a mall, for instance. Just don't shop. Watch. Listen.

Maybe that sounds crazy. But having a meal together with people you love in silence can be very rich. And having a whole day of that silence -- mmm. It can be a little spiritual feast.

So that's your assignment. If anybody tries it, I want to hear how it goes!

See You Real Soon (Again)

2011-06-23T20:57:00.000-07:00

I'm off this weekend to begin my 8 day silent retreat; I'll be back after the 4th with God knows what to share.

But before I go, I heard a great parish story tonight, which supposedly is true.

A guy's sitting next to another guy at a Mass. During the homily, the second guy falls asleep -- and the presider sees!

So the presider stops and tells the first guy, hey, wake him up!

And the guy responds -- You put him to sleep. You wake him up.

It's probably apocryphal, but boy, doesn't it just seem right?

Have a great week.

Advice from my spiritual director on retreat.

What the Church Can Learn from Disney

2011-06-22T21:06:00.000-07:00

So yesterday I went to Disneyland. Have you been? If you have but it's been a while, well, it's mostly just the way you remember it. Yeah, there are new rides (some amazing ones), but the bedrock is all the things you know -- Space Mountain. The Haunted Mansion. It's a Small World.

On the surface, most of this seems aimed at kids. (I can't tell you how many times in recent years I have heard some of my nieces clamoring about wanting to go to Disney to meet the Disney princesses! Ugh!)

But I will tell you, it is a remarkable place to come as an adult, too. There's a certain easiness to being there. Pathways are large enough and varied enough to accommodate the throngs without anyone feeling suffocated. There are a million people in the park, and yet unlike every other amusement park I have ever been to, food kiosks and restaurants are so numerous as to not be overcrowded. And yes, there are long lines, if you want to wait, but there are also no-charge fast pass options that allow you to check in hours ahead of time for rides and then go on your merry way.

The other thing is, many of those rides kids love remain super enjoyable for adults. A roller coaster in the dark is fun and scary whether you're 13 or 47. Pop culture rides like Indiana Jones and Star Wars are probably even more entertaining for adults who get the jokes than for kids. And many other, not so heart-pumpy amusements like the Haunted Mansion or Pirates of the Caribbean are so rich in detail and humor that they inspire you to just sit back and relish them.

That's what happens at Disney -- you relax, and you relish.

None of this is unintentional. Walt Disney often said he wanted his theme parks to be places where people could come and play, without any apprehension or worry. A place you could leave your troubles behind for a time and get in touch with that playful childhood part of yourself again. And his imagineers, as the people who design every detail of every Disney park, cruise and hotel are called, continue to embrace that vision.

I've been thinking a lot lately about organizations like Disney, Apple, Google, and what lessons they might offer the Church. When it comes to Disney, I think it's three things:

1) Have a clear sense of what you're trying to accomplish. If you were to ask 30 pastors or parish councils to state succinctly what they want Catholics to experience when they come to Church on Sunday, I wonder what they would say. I also wonder whether the Disney vision might be a partial way of thinking about what we want the experience of "Church" to be -- a place where we release our hold on certain things, where our brows are invited to grow unfurrowed. A place where are invited to relish.

Either way, what you see at Disney is, having a clear vision is fundamental to your visitors/parishioners having the sorts of experience you want them to have.

2) Make sure that vision is humane -- that is, that it relates to the primal spiritual/physical/emotional needs and desires of human beings, first and foremost. I think we've probably all been to Masses or parishes that seemed relatively or completely uninterested in the parishioners in attendance. It could be those parishes have a clear sense of what they think Mass or Church should be. But if that vision is fundamentally disconnected from those who will be in attendance, it's not adequate.

3) Lastly, bring that vision to bear on every detail. At Disney, every element is considered in every area, every ride, every restaurant, because it's understood that one's experience comes from the combination of all of those elements, not just from a few. What makes the Golden Horseshoe Saloon a must see attraction is not just the fun stage show, it's that they also have fantastic root beer floats to drink there. And the place is clean. And the lines aren't long.

So, thinking about our Masses -- it's not just the homily we need to think about, or the architecture of the Church -- it's the sorts of welcome ushers offer as parishioners arrive; the statues and stained glass of the church; the precise formulation of the petitions; the vestments of the liturgical ministers; the design of the pews; the style of the missals and music books.

One example: if we understand the liturgy as an opportunity for people to have an experience of God, and we see that as happening in part through relishment, that is through the engaging of the senses, then the vestments the presider wears are really important. I can't tell you how many dirty or faded albs and chasubles I've worn because that's what the parish has on hand. And you say to yourself, well, I'm some distance away, they'll never really notice anyway. And maybe that's true. (Probably it's not.) But even so, it's a missed opportunity. A rich, colorful vestment is one more means of engaging the parishioner, of triggering that primal hunger to savor and also to celebrate.

I admit, it all sounds a bit much. But when you visit Disney, and you see just how much peace and joy a million tiny details can together accomplish, their wisdom rings loud and clear. If we want a taste of the truly magic kingdom (and we do), we have to work at it!

How I Spent My Tuesday

2011-06-22T00:51:00.000-07:00

Come back tomorrow for some thoughts about Disney, and what the Church might learn from them...

Fear Itself

2011-06-19T20:43:00.000-07:00


	Middle Class Blues He has everything. A beautiful young wife. A comfortable home. A secure job. A velvet three-piece suite. A metallic-silver car. A mahogany cocktail cabinet. A rugby trophy. A remote-controlled music centre. A set of gold clubs under the hallstand. A fair-haired daughter learning to walk. What he is afraid of most and what keeps him tossing some nights on the electric underblanket, listening to the antique clock clicking with disapproval from the landing, are the stories that begin: He had everything. A beautiful young wife. A comfortable home. A secure job. Then one day. Dennis O'Driscoll I love this poem for its paradox. We all equate comfort and security with having certain things. And yet, the more we have, the more we have to lose. What things do I possess that I'm most desperate to hold onto? In which cases is the quest to keep hold of them more work/anxiety than they're worth?

Two-Fer Wednesday! A poem by Billy Collins

2011-06-14T21:52:00.000-07:00

Another Reason Why I Don't Keep a Gun in the House

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark
that he barks every time they leave the house.
They must switch him on on their way out.

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
I close all the windows in the house
and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast
but I can still hear him muffled under the music,
barking, barking, barking,

and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra,
his head raised confidently as if Beethoven
had included a part for barking dog.

When the record finally ends he is still barking,
sitting there in the oboe section barking,
his eyes fixed on the conductor who is
entreating him with his baton

while the other musicians listen in respectful
silence to the famous barking dog solo,
that endless coda that first established
Beethoven as an innovative genius.

Billy Collins

And Now For Something Semi-Completely Different

2011-06-14T21:48:00.000-07:00

Monday we were talking about the Old Testament.... Do you know, when Noah was loading the Ark, where did he put the bees?

A: In the arc-hives. Where else would you put them?

Speaking of Noah, did you know he was the greatest financier in the entire Bible? It's true. He floated his stock while everyone else was in liquidation.

Do you know who his female counterpart was, the greatest female financier in the Bible? It's Pharaoh's daughter, actually. You'll remember, she went down to the bank of the Nile and picked up a little prophet? [Oh stop groaning, you know you love it.]

Speaking of Pharaoh, have you ever wondered why he didn't let the Israelites go sooner? I mean, 10 plagues, Pharaoh? Really? But the truth was, he was in de-Nile.

I mentioned Monday about Sarah's laughter... do you know the greatest comedian in the Bible? It wasn't her, it wasn't Jacob (though he did like to tell some tall tales). No, it's Samson. That kid, when he got going, he just brought the house down. [Insert rimshot.]

The apostles' favorite car manufacturer? Honda, clearly After the resurrection, they were all in on accord.

Greatest babysitter in the Bible? David. I mean, come on, he rocked Goliath to sleep, didn't he?

First tennis match in the Bible? Joseph serving in Pharaoh's court. (He actually lost that set 4-6, but won the match, 4-6, 6-3, 6-1, 5-7, 7-5.)

Most flagrant law breaker? Moses, hands down. Up on Mt. Sinai, he broke all 10 commandments at once. And yo, that ain't easy.

Thanks very much! I'll be here all week! Be sure to tip your waiters!

Bible Camp

2011-06-12T21:56:00.000-07:00

I was talking to niece The Amazing Molly yesterday -- yes, that's her name, though sometimes she just goes by Amazing; why? She mentioned that she's going to bible camp next week.

About an hour later, I was able to finally soothe the hives that spontaneously erupted all over my body at the words "bible camp". Who ever thought putting those concepts together was a good idea? "Hey, you know how kids love to run around and stuff and learn skills? Well, what if we had a week where instead of that we talked about God, but we still called it camp. Wouldn't that be cool!"

Seriously, religious organization youth group people, the whole thing's false advertising. And if anyone should be trying not to be false in their advertising, it's you (and by you I guess I also mean me).

We never went to "bible camp" growing up, but there was one at a Christian church of some denomination a block over from our house. I remember passing by that place many times and breathing a sigh of relief that my Church did not require that I be locked in a church basement during the summer for two full weeks of further religious indoctrination. (I wasn't much of a fan of CCD, either. Frankly I was a real treat to bring to church at all.)

Ironically, today if I wasn't doing what I am doing today, I'd probably be teaching Scripture. And while I can't say that the idea of making kids go to bible camp sounds terribly more attractive -- or any camp for that matter, really; it's all a little too Lord of the Flies, Piggy's got the conch for me -- I do have some strong wishes as to what you might do/not do at such a camp.

My Wish: Introduce kids to stories from the Old Testament as well as the New.

My memory of religious ed is mostly that we learned Jesus is love. This is not a bad thing to learn, if at some point a little too much corn syrup sweetness for any person, including the son of God. (Seriously, I'm all for a human Jesus (SO for it), but long haired smiling handsome hippy Jesus? A little too far.)

Okay, he's not so bad -- though to me, he's still spending a little too much time on his hair.

But this?

Just plain creepy.

But did we ever venture into the Old Testament? Based on adult Catholics' understanding of the Old Testament, I would say most of us almost definitely did not, other than some of the showpieces of Genesis). It's pretty much standard issue for adult Catholics today that OT=Bad, Angry God; NT=Good, Loving God.

And that's just plain tragic, not only because in my opinion that's a total mischaracterization of the OT God (a whole other column), but because it means so many good characters and stories get lost.

5 Old Testament Characters/Stories/Books I Wish Every Kid Got to Know (Plus One):
1. Abram and Sarai: A few years ago I was putting together a wedding homily, and thought I'd look to some scriptural figures for a model to live by.

How many biblical married couples can you name? Take a minute, I'll go get a latte.

Done? I'll bet you had no more than three, and that Mary and Joseph and Abram and Sarai make up two of them. (Bonus if your third is "David and whoever he cheated on". Nice.)

It's true: the Bible has very little in the way of stories about married people. And among them, only the story of Abram and Sarai really digs into the relationship at all.

Do you know these stories? They wander around because God asks them; God keeps showing up and saying weird things about "their seed"without actually delivering on his promise of a child; at two different points the couple pretend to be brother and sister out of fear that a king would otherwise kill Abram. (Of course, the trouble is, because they're brother and sister, the kings have no trouble chasing Sarai, and God has to get them out of it.) When God finally says he's going to give them their son, Sarah laughs at him. And that's what Isaac means in Hebrew -- she laughs.

There she is, listening in on God and thinking, Oh come on!

Seriously, this is the Lucy and Ricky of the ancient near east, and their stories are things we can all identify with. Well worth a look.

2. Jonah: This will seem odd, as every kid is told about Jonah getting swallowed by a whale. But the story is so much more than that. So much more. Jonah's this wonderfully begrudging prophet sent to a nation to tell them God's going to wipe them out, who actually gets mad when his proclamation succeeds, they repent and God saves them. Again, such a very human character; and funny, too!

Also, it's short!

3. Bel and the Dragon: First of all, have you ever even heard of this? It's in the Apocrypha, the secondary Old Testament books.

Why give this to kids? Hello, it has a dragon. Also, lions. And a really fun story about how Daniel proves an idol isn't a god. And again, it's short.

But most of all -- Come on, it has a DRAGON.

4. Proverbs: Totally different kind of book, mostly two line aphorisms. But great little ideas to talk about.

   "Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring."

   "A stone is heavy, and sand is weighty, but a fool's provocation is heavier than both."

   "A child who loves wisdom makes a parent glad, but to keep company with prostitutes is to squander one's substance."

Okay, so we'll have to pick and choose and/or "creatively edit". Proverbs isn't exactly a book you read straight through anyway. You get the picture.

5. Job: Yeah, I know, Job's a little intense for 3rd graders. (For a companion film, I suggest Sophie's Choice.)

Also, the book is crazy long -- did you know that? We all know the beginning -- bad things happen, and the end -- Job asks why, and God says I am a mystery. But in between there's about 2 dozen chapters of toing and froing between Job and three "friends" who churn out all sorts of reasons why Job is suffering. Ah yes, those oh so familiar golden chestnuts like "you must have done something wrong".

But that's exactly why I would love to see kids read some fuller form of the story. Because you don't have to be old to have the experience of having bad things happen. In fact, although some of the struggles kids go through can seem somewhat insignificant in the big picture, I'd say they end up feeling some of these things much more radically than we adults would because they don't really have the defenses yet.  Having the kid you like push you in front of the class really does have a certain dark night of the soul quality when you're 7. And there's really no answer to it, no satisfying explanation as to why it happened. You just sort of grit your teeth and wait for it to pass.

All that's worth talking about. And Job's a great way in.

This isn't exactly about getting picked on or other childhood trauma,

but my many redheaded family members will find it amusing.

Plus One: Catholics do not read the Bible. They just don't. I'm not exactly sure why. Maybe it seems like work? Or it's daunting, what with all the books and strange references? Or was it something I said?

But it's really too bad, because there's so much lovely material in there waiting for us if we're willing to venture forth -- psalms that capture the cries of our own hearts; little tales of family and faith, heroism and self-sacrifice; weird and wonderful moments like the bird who poops on Tobit and makes him go blind, or the amorous chase of the Song of Songs.

And when we do get scripture, both as kids and as adults, it's these little passages and stories that someone else chooses. Maybe one way to turn the Bible from chore/encyclopedia -- do we still have encyclopedias? -- into an adventure is to let kids have the opportunity to read around, choose for themselves from among a much wider range of stories or books, and see what they find interesting. Let them find their own favorites.

I don't know what will come of the Amazing Molly's week at bible camp. She actually seems much more into it than I ever would have been. But I'm crossing my fingers at this camp, some of the new friends she might make are to be found in our holy books.

And also, that she might not be made to look like she's in a work release program.

Travel On

2011-06-09T22:34:00.000-07:00

One of the immediate blessings of being done with the school year is that I have a little more leisure to read things that have been piling up. And also to dream about doing a little traveling.

And in a nice piece of synchronicity, yesterday I had the luck to read a one page piece about travel by Ben Birnbaum. Do you Ben Birnbaum? I bet you don't. He's the editor in chief of Boston College Magazine, and an extremely talented writer in his own right. It's extremely difficult to write both well and briefly at the same time, and each month somehow he does that in his front cover column. More than once I have outlined his articles to try and learn how to be a better columnist. He's really really good.

So this month, intuiting all of our own dreams of summer travels, he wrote his column about the origins of travel in religious pilgrimages. And his piece had so many little "wow, I never thought about that" moments, I wanted to share it with you.

Here's the link. I've also posted the article below. (Frankly, I think it's a little easier to read on my page than theirs.)

As they say in Australia, travel well. See you next week.

Pilgrim’s Progress
by Ben Birnbaum

According to some of our oldest stories, meaningful travel—the kind that’s undertaken for more than the merely practical need to track down a deer or an enemy or a valley not threatened by a glacier—was initially fostered by the gods. Shamash, the Bronze Age sun deity of Mesopotamia, seems to have been first off the mark, using dreams to guide Gilgamesh in his search for eternal life, a journey that ultimately concluded with Gilgamesh’s discovery that immortality was just not available to him, though meaningful work was. Shortly thereafter and to the west, a passel of gods alternately aided and tormented Odysseus with their instructions during a long but ultimately successful journey to home. And the Bible is, of course, replete with God-directed journeys, beginning with Adam and Eve scurrying out the gates of Eden, then Noah’s voyage, and passing on to Abram (he was not yet “Abraham”) and Sarai (not yet “Sarah”), who gathered “all their substance” and obeyed God’s unambiguous “Get thee out of thy country . . . unto the land which I shall show thee.” And that doesn’t get us a third of the way through Genesis.

Several thousand years after these excursions were first scored in tablets or inked on parchment, during the Middle Ages, business- and God-ordained travel (pilgrimage, to give the latter its proper Christian name) remained pretty much the only categories of expedition known to human beings. Of course, functions of travel taken for granted by us moderns, such as repose or adventure, could hardly have made sense to men and women with no greater ability to conceive of leisure than of particle colliders, and who could hardly have wished for more “adventure” than that already provided by unpredictable weather, children’s fevers, and errant knife blades. In any case, it would have been impossible to associate pleasure of any kind with treks through territories replete with bandits, plagues, wolves, pestiferous inns, and wandering armies of uncertain loyalty and meager discipline (medieval Europe, in short).

Traders and diplomats (who made up most of the commercial traffic) were typically moneyed and experienced enough to surround themselves with personal security details, frequently and shrewdly hired from the local soldiery or banditry, depending on which happened to be more reliable. For religious pilgrims, many of whom entered into their excursions naked to hardships and dangers that ultimately included martyrdom, the privations were made endurable, or even welcome, by the understanding that they could be exchanged for forgiveness of sins and heaven’s favor. And the martyrologies of the time do indeed present stories of men and women who deliberately placed themselves (and companions and even minor charges) in mortal danger, with the hope—soon enough realized, according to these records—that their deaths would prove uplifting when entered as evidence of hurt endured for the glory of God.

As Europe became a somewhat more settled place in the High Middle Ages, the number of men and women who took to the pilgrim trail increased, and destination churches—thousands of shrines by this time strung out across Europe and West Asia, Canterbury to Bethlehem—responded by entering into competition for the business, disseminating guidebooks, sending out postings about the latest additions to their relic collections, the newest saints associated with their sites, and the cures that could be attributed to the touch of their tombs or a sip of their very own holy water (conveniently available in lead bottles for safe transport home). This business and its associated cash flow became terribly important to participating shrines, including Westminster Abbey, a big player that claimed to hold both Jacob’s pillow and Christ’s footprints, and that in 1244 acquired a vial said to contain the Lord’s blood. This moved a practical English bishop not to piety but to announce that as the “true cross” segment recently acquired by France drew its holiness only from the fact that it had been touched by Jesus’s blood, England “rejoices in a greater treasure.”

And inevitably, dutiful seekers—some of whom sold every stick they owned so as to afford their religious quests—responded to this marketplace of holiness by seeking market value in their pilgrim progressions, carefully and pridefully recording in their journals the miles traveled, the number and quality of relics venerated, discomforts bravely endured, lists of questions to ask oneself on entering a new city, useful foreign phrases and travel habits (always carry a chamber pot when climbing a hill), and of course descriptions of marvels, from funeral processions to circumcisions. “Curiositas” replaced “pietas” as the pilgrim’s central yearning (after business), and it’s been that way since.

See The World

2011-06-08T00:40:00.000-07:00

I want to thank everyone who posted last week for their comments about desolation. One of the other things that Ignatius talks about is how evil spirits want to keep us from sharing our hardships. Things that aren't said out loud aren't shared, and as a result they have room to grow completely out of proportion and perspective. For me, anyway, it's always a blessing to hear the experiences of others.

I've just finished my first year of screenwriting school at UCLA. Last night (at 2am!) I turned in my final script and collapsed into a heap of sheets and strewn clothes.

Seriously, I was this guy, just with more drool.

It's been such an interesting experience, this first year, especially this last quarter. Over the next couple weeks I hope you'll humor me as I think out loud about some of it. (And hopefully give poor old Matthew a little attention, too. Whatever happened to him??)

So much of what I probably have to stay is about trust. The last five weeks or so, if you asked the guys I live with, what's McDermott up to, they'd probably tell you, has he been away? Because I have pretty much lived in my room. Get up, start typing. Eventually, move around a bit. Keep typing. Eventually, clean up a bit. Go to school. Come home. Either type or collapse.

And that's certainly a strategy for being a writer. Sometimes it's all you can do. Because writing is sort of like getting on a freeway without having any idea of the traffic ahead. You can have the clearest map, smartest directions -- but if there's an obstacle three miles up, you just have to wait it out.

The danger is -- at least, I think it's a danger -- you can let the possibility of obstacle mean you give nothing else room. I don't know how long this is going to take, so I'm going to block out all the time in the world for it.

It sounds responsible -- hugely responsible. And yet, if you're not exercising, if you're not praying, if you're not eating right, having human contact...well, maybe it's not the good spirit after all. (Ya think?)

Something I learned working at America Magazine in New York was that sometimes if you take a break you can get so much more done than you would have if you just continued plugging away. But that's completely counterintuitive, and consequently easily dismissed. Even after having seen it work, it's so easy to ignore it.

But my spiritual director said it to me again not look ago, and I share his thought with you: taking two or three minutes here and there to savor reality, to see the world around you, can completely change your life.

That's my goal for the next few days -- lay around and let the world in. And it seems like God is trying to help me get there. Today I went to a seminar only to find out when I got there that they didn't me have on their lists, and as a result I couldn't get in. And I knew traffic home was going to be horrendous, so instead I just wandered around a pretty little neighborhood, smelling the honeysuckle (or whatever that amazing southern California floral smell is).

Yesterday I likewise suddenly found myself with a free couple hours that I didn't expect. And so I went walking, and here's what I saw:

Wherever you are, whatever the demands your life poses, I hope you can afford yourself a little bit of the same. It might actually be the difference between drudgery and joy.

Waiting for Consolation

2011-06-03T00:05:00.000-07:00

The founder of the Jesuits, St. Ignatius, is perhaps most known for his rules of discernment -- that is, his advice on how to make decisions.

For him, it's all about paying attention to the consolations and the desolations -- the things that bring you life and joy, and the things that bring only dryness, or despair.

The thing is, even when you're living a good life, doing the right thing, etc., you have those dry days. Those not so fresh moments, to quote a commercial. And it was Ignatius' intuition that those can be the times that you most doubt the decisions you've made and might want to make some sort of change. You feel uncomfortable, uneasy, whatever. Of course you want to make a change.

But, says wise old Ignatius, desolation is not a good time to make a decision. Because you're not in touch with your best self or probably with God. Basically, the Holy Spirit is ATT and you've had a dropped call. So you just have to wait until you get out of the dead zone and the line will click back in.

Someone in my community was preaching about this today, and I had the thought, maybe this isn't just a propos of jobs or career decisions. Maybe it works with relationships, too. Like, there are some days or months when we just get sick of some people in our lives, right? Maybe they were irritating to begin with, or maybe we adored them, but in this moment, we just want them to BEGONE.

I've certainly had that experience at times, and yet in the moment I don't necessarily say to myself, hey, remember three months ago when you really enjoyed your conversations with them? And that's part of the desolation -- you lose perspective. All you see is the right now, and it feels like that's going to go on forever.

It's like, have you ever been sick, and it was just a nightmare? And then you get better, and you look back and it seems like no big deal at all? It's all about perspective. When you're in the horror, it's really hard to imagine it ever changing. And then once it does you can't remember how bad it felt.

So maybe that happens with relationships, too. We drive into dead zones that are not necessarily justified by he said/she said or an itch or anything else; they just happen. And we have to just be patient and try to screw up everything by saying or doing something drastic in the middle.

Just something I'm mulling over...

A Thank You On My Palm

2011-05-31T22:51:00.000-07:00

Welcome Morning

There is joy

in all:

in the hair I brush each morning,

in the Cannon towel, newly washed,

that I rub my body with each morning,

in the chapel of eggs I cook

each morning,

in the outcry from the kettle

that heats my coffee

each morning,

in the spoon and the chair

that cry "hello there, Anne"

each morning,

in the godhead of the table

that I set my silver, plate, cup upon

each morning.

All this is God,

right here in my pea-green house

each morning

and I mean,

though often forget,

to give thanks,

to faint down by the kitchen table

in a prayer of rejoicing

as the holy birds at the kitchen window

peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it,

let me paint a thank-you on my palm

for this God, this laughter of the morning,

lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn't shared, I've heard,

dies young.

~ Anne Sexton ~

Ode to Anne

2011-05-26T23:06:00.000-07:00

I don't know how often I've mentioned Anne Lamott on this blog -- not too often, I think. Which is a horrible embarrassment, as Traveling Mercies is absolutely one of the best spiritual books I've ever read -- as well as one of the only ones I've ever reread and reread! Traveling Mercies is a book of short stories from Lamott about her life, and they are filled with soul and humor and a wry wisdom.

Sometimes when I'm on Twitter (I tweet as "popculturpriest"), I just search under "Anne Lamott". She doesn't have an account of her own, and frankly she doesn't need one, because she is so wonderfully quotable.

So today I offer you a little bouquet from Anne Lamott. Don't hurry through them. They're best savored one at a time.

Have a great weekend.

"Joy is the best makeup."

"Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a better past."

"Certainty is missing the point entirely."

"Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life."

"You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people that you do."

And my favorite of the bunch I found:

"If you are no longer in bondage to a person or a way of life, tell your story. Risk freeing someone else."

The Oprahcolaypse is Nigh!

2011-05-25T00:38:00.000-07:00

Today, Oprah Winfrey signs off after 25 years on daytime television. It has been, by any estimation, an astonishing career. In episodes (4561), Emmys (48), guests (30,000), gifts given, books promoted, money made -- even in that most unusual of daytime television categories, spinoff programs, Oprah has soared, not just head and shoulders but whole continents above the competition. (For more amazing Oprah statistics, click here.)

As the press proceeds to dissect Oprah's success, may I offer one thought. Part of what made us love Oprah, even those of us like myself who only watched the occasional clip of her show, is that she seemed to see herself as trying to share the things that she loved. It's really no coincidence that she became known for giving things away; on so many levels, that was her M.O. She was the one that discovered fun or important things, uncovered amazing stories and people, and she wanted to share them with her 40 million plus closest friends.

You and I, we don't have talk shows -- at least I don't. And our spheres of friendship and influence are far smaller. But still, the example of Oprah reminds me that whatever the size of the worlds we inhabit, the gifts that we have and the blessings that God gives us really can touch other people's lives, and make our world a better place.

Oprah, when I think of you, that is my favorite thing.

Joy

2011-05-23T00:10:00.000-07:00

I continue to chip away at my final writing projects. Can't seem to manage any original thinking beyond 140 word tweets. (I'm at popculturpriest.twitter.com.)

It's probably going to be a couple more weeks like this. But in the meantime, I'm going to try and post some little poems and pictures I find online. Enjoy this wonderful prose piece by Mary Oliver.

Don't Hesitate

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don't hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that's not often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don't be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.

Mary Oliver

Preach it, Mary!

Waiting for The End...

2011-05-16T09:13:00.000-07:00

Writing for school the next few days. Hope to be back later in the week!

Sex Ed, Part 2

2011-05-13T12:37:00.000-07:00

Sorry this is coming so late in the day. Blogger's been offline since last night, and it's only now (noontime Friday) that I'm able to get access back and post.

On Wednesday I posed this question: if you were talking sex ed for 5^th graders at a Catholic school, what would you do? What would you want emphasized, and what would you want less of?

When I read my friend’s wall post, what really struck me was that his son wanted to giggle about the whole thing. Probably because he’s a little uncomfortable with the topic of his body. Which heck, is not that different from a lot of adults, really.

But if we don’t want to turn that discomfort into shame, I wonder if a good starting point is to trust the children’s instincts and encourage a sense of humor. Our bodies, how crazy is that! Get them to laugh, as they clearly want to, about the weird eccentricities of their own bodies, the lumps, the extrusions or intrusions that are unique to them. And then it’s in the context of that amusement and wonder we can begin to talk about what the body does – the way that men and women’s sexual organs work, and under what circumstances they should be used.

I think if you proceed out of that sense of humor, then you approach the topic of sexuality like you would some cool science experiment or adventure in the jungle, something wild and unusual and isn’t this cool and crazy. You have a different sensibility, a lighter touch. And you implicitly tell the children, any fears or apprehensions they have are okay. They are okay!

The temptation for us as adults who have a little more knowledge of the hazards of our world is to proceed from a point of view of apprehension – basically, we have to give them the do’s and don’ts so they don’t get hurt and/or pregnant. And such anxiety is a reasonable concern; moreover, we absolutely must offer an understanding of sexuality in the broader context of love and relationship and responsibility. But if we lead with apprehension, they will sense it, and we will risk making sexuality seem to them something they should be afraid of, or something first and foremost about burden and obligation.

So, I say, lead with humor. Lead with wonder. Lead with joy. It’s where they are – wide-eyed, everything new, eager to explore. And in that context the things we’re worried about as adults become richer, too – not a finger wagging or hand wringing list of do’s and don’t’s, but an exploration and appreciation of our loving human relationships.

What do you think?

Let's Talk About Sex : The Problem

2011-05-11T00:42:00.000-07:00

So today I was scanning Facebook entries and noted my friend Ken talking about his fifth grade son getting a talk about the "naughty bits" in science class.

To which I replied, I had no idea they were presenting Chris Rock sketches to grade schoolers. (A line I repeat here because I was so very pleased with it. Somebody give me a rimshot, please!)

At least Chris thought it was funny...

Anyway, that got me thinking about sex ed and Catholic sex ed. Honestly, and with enormous respect for all those who work in Catholic education, it sort of terrifies me to think what kids might be getting in Catholic schools. We're 50 years post Vatican II, but honestly, when it comes to sex, I'm just not that sure how far the Church has come. Catholics, many of them, very far; but the Church as an institution, not so much.

Ask yourself, when was the last time you heard anyone even remotely connected to the institution of the Church talk about what a great thing sex is. Let alone talk in any depth about the dynamics of a sexual relationship in a way that seems a) actually aware of how such a relationship works; and b) not driven by other, unrelated ideas.

Consider even this: is it appropriate to show a picture like this? There's absolutely nothing lascivious in the models or the presentation. But still, do you feel along with me that twinge of discomfort? Like, this isn't something we should see?

The Catholic presentation on sexuality is not a problem unique to married life -- the priests of the archdiocese of New York were subjected 4 or 5 years ago to a disastrous session with a lay Catholic "expert" on intimacy whose sense of human sexuality was grounded in all sorts of rights and wrongs with almost no connection to human physical realities. (Also, his talk was littered with homoerotic images of men riding horses and rocket ships that made you wonder, does this guy have any concept of what he's saying?)

Still, I actually think the challenge is greater for lay Catholics. As much as society tends to brand clergy as sexually disconnected, in point of fact many of us have access to tremendous resources to help us appreciate human sexuality in a human, healthy, spiritual way. In fact, to my mind sometimes it feels like clergy have a sort of inside track in which they privately acknowledge the failings of Church practices, without ever actually sharing that knowledge with the people of God themselves! Which is just plain nutty.

So, bringing this back to the original question, when we are being healthy, what are we as Church saying to fifth graders about their human sexuality? And how do we go about saying it? (As the great church historian John O'Malley, SJ writes, what made Vatican II important is not just what it said, but how it said it, the tone and style it took. The way we educate our children about sexuality is no different.)

For today, I'm just going to leave the question hanging for now, because I think it's a great question for all of us. What do we want our children told (and how)? What would we like to see less of?

On Friday, I'll come back with a couple thoughts of my own. (And eventually, we'll get back to Matthew! I promise!)

See you Friday for Sex Ed...

Ways of Saying Yes at First Communion

2011-05-09T07:54:00.000-07:00

A companion piece to last Friday: My niece's first communion went very well. The parish had I don't know, 3 dozen kids receiving their first communion. And it was their third first communion of the season -- I know, wow, right? Talk about thriving.

The liturgy had some wonderful touches. During the eucharistic prayer, they had all the children gather around the altar with the celebrant. I don't know if it was the number of people staring at them or the fact that they were all dressed so nicely, but the children were remarkably collected. And their presence up there struck me as a wonderful image for the congregation of what's happening, the children's further entrance into the community and Jesus at the center. Really neat.

And then after everyone had received communion, the children came up to the front, stood before the congregation, and sang a song about marching with God (complete with gestures!). In some quarters that might sound sappy, but it functioned as a children's acclamation -- a response of joy to the gift that had been offered to them this day. Having gone through the whole process toward first communion, and then finally receiving it, to give them a moment to publicly celebrate that -- it's a very fine idea, and a great model for the congregation, too!

I'll be back to Matthew later this week. But it's always nice to share the creative practices of good parishes.

First Communion

2011-05-05T20:34:00.000-07:00

This weekend my niece Erin will receive her first communion, and I'll have the privilege of giving it her. I am very much looking forward to the occasion, both for her and for me. It's one of the things I've learned again and again from special occasions in the Church -- even when you think you know them, they have the potential to reveal something new and unexpected. At the Easter Vigil I heard the story of Genesis read by a child, and it was like a whole new story. Saturday I'll see communion received by children, and I bet that will make it new, too. I'll let you know what I see.

About five months ago I got set up on vyou.com, which is an online video Q&A service. People write you questions, you offer short answers. And a couple times now people have made comments about transubstantiation -- do you really believe the elements are turned into the body and blood of Jesus, what does that mean, etc. And it's funny, after years of theology I certainly can offer a theological take on the eucharist, but that doesn't really get to the heart of the question of why or how anyone would believe this to be the case.

In general I pride myself on embracing these sorts of questions, but when it comes to the Eucharist I must admit I never really wonder or doubt too much. It's not that I have visions of Jesus at the consecration, God knows. It's just, somehow the receiving of communion breaks me free of my self-absorption, shakes me loose of whatever worries are distracting me and helps me be more present to the God who waits quietly and loves me.

Who knows what an 8 year old will make of the experience. Probably something far more wonderful and profound. But at the very least I hope the experience of receiving communion can always help her be more free and more present.

An Easter Season Poem...

2011-05-03T21:56:00.000-07:00

Welcome Morning

There is joy

in all:

in the hair I brush each morning,

in the Cannon towel, newly washed,

that I rub my body with each morning,

in the chapel of eggs I cook

each morning,

in the outcry from the kettle

that heats my coffee

each morning,

in the spoon and the chair

that cry "hello there, Anne"

each morning,

in the godhead of the table

that I set my silver, plate, cup upon

each morning.

All this is God,

right here in my pea-green house

each morning

and I mean,

though often forget,

to give thanks,

to faint down by the kitchen table

in a prayer of rejoicing

as the holy birds at the kitchen window

peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it,

let me paint a thank-you on my palm

for this God, this laughter of the morning,

lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn't shared, I've heard,

dies young.

~ Anne Sexton ~

A Historic Day

2011-05-01T23:26:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we all learned that Osama bin Laden had been found and killed by American soldiers acting in Pakistan.

We've all been through so much as a result of this man and the 9/11 attacks. May we and all in our world know solace in our sorrow, comfort in our exhaustion, and a blessed sense of relief.

For all who have lost loved ones due to terrorist attacks, God grant them peace.
For all who have put their lives at risk to protect innocents since 9/11, God grant them peace.
For all who suffer or have died in the Middle East, God grant them peace.
Throughout our world, Lord, God grant us peace.

Happy Easter!

2011-04-24T23:55:00.001-07:00

The Lord is Risen!

(I'll be back mid week.)

Good Friday

2011-04-22T12:13:00.000-07:00

Today in the posts directly below this one I've posted 8 images of the crucifixion by some of the world's great artists -- and some unknowns.

May you know these days the helplessness and pain of the death of our Lord and the wonder of the resurrection.

Mantegna

2011-04-22T12:11:00.000-07:00

Lots of amazing details here:

The thieves' attempts to make things easier by keeping their hands over their heads;

the guards playing games;

the two figures in the forefront (and other Romans elsewhere) not even paying attention.

The one guard behind the women, looking up at Jesus, though with what thought is unclear.