Wednesday of the fourteenth week of the year

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The Lord looks on those who revere him,
    on those who hope in his love,
to rescue their souls from death,
    to keep them alive in famine.
                                      Psalm 32 [33]

.         .       .

The first reading from today is about the famine in Egypt, the first episode in the story of Joseph’s reunion with his brothers in Egypt. It is one of my childhood favorites, the story of Joseph and his many-colored coat, his fall and rise again in Egypt, and his restoration to his family. It made a great musical.

But it’s more complicated than that, isn’t it? Joseph must have been a really annoying kid. He told his older brothers that he would rule over them, and his father singled him out. Now that I have a 9-year-old son who has his challenging days, I can imagine how aggravated his brothers must have been. Not, of course, that they can be excused for getting rid of him. Turns out, though, that it wasn’t such a bad thing after all: God chose ‘to keep them alive in famine’ through the very wrong act they committed.

Now, I should have seen that before. It is a picture of redemption bigger than the one I had five minutes ago. Really. Although I am a big fan of Romans 8:28 (‘God works all things together for the good…’), I tend not to include intentional sins in that ‘everything’ that God causes to work for the good of ‘those who hope in his love.’ So, as I look back over my life and cringe as I remember things I shouldn’t have done, I don’t need to worry so much about the ‘what if I hadn’t…?’ and the ‘what if, instead, I had…?’ No. Certainly things would have turned out differently. And I might have been spared some grief, as surely Joseph’s brothers might have if they had borne with their brother’s vexing attitude. But the purposes of God would not be served any less. I cannot thwart the saving purposes of God.

Does that mean I shouldn’t worry about whether I am acting in accordance with God’s will? Of course not–as St Paul says. But I can act in faith, knowing that even if I have read wrongly, God will still ‘keep [me] alive in famine’: the thing is to ‘hope in his love’. He’s God. That’s all he asks of us.

Deo gratias.

the ordinary

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I’ll tell you what my novitiate in the blogosphere has taught me: I’m ordinary. My experience is just human, and my reflection on that experience is just as human. I knew that, or at least I sort of knew that. And I don’t even really have anything peculiar to say about it. As Matt Jones put it so eloquently today, ‘being human is crazy.’ And it’s not easy. My favorite David Foster Wallace sentence (from the commencement address I blogged about a couple of weeks ago) is:

The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people, and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad, petty little unsexy ways every day.

Yep. And he didn’t even have children. The daily routine he describes in that commencement address doesn’t involve a 9-year-old shouting that it’s all your fault, or a 2-year-old clamoring ‘up! uppppyyyy!’ while you’re trying to peel carrots or help the 6-year-old with his reading. I listened to his address again while my girls were in the tub, and heard this sentence in the middle of the dreaded hair-washing, I think. Definitely having an unsexy moment, there.

My real hero, though, isn’t David Foster Wallace, as insightful as he was, God rest his soul. More than just about anyone, I admire Jean Vanier. Although he’s a renowned person now, having been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, among other things, he didn’t set out to create an international network. L’Arche was his home, and he shared it–at the beginning–with two young men who required unsexy sacrifices every day. I don’t admire him because he was successful, or because he’s a wise and caring person. I admire him because it has always been about being faithful to the teachings of Jesus.

Jean Vanier makes the ordinary radiant with the love of God. Would that I had an ounce of his spirit of tenderness and faithfulness. I want to escape the ordinary, the ‘crazy’ that is being human every day. But freedom and faithfulness are not in the heroic acts–or the brilliant and widely-read books-that make me say, ‘wow’. Nope. Freedom–the ‘most precious’ freedom–and faithfulness are in the power to stay, to stay calm…not to shout back at the 9-year-old or lose patience with the 2-year-old, but to persevere in tenderness.

That’s the hard, hard work of being ordinary. I’m glad I am not alone in doing it.

St Thomas the Apostle

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You are a part of the building that has the apostles and prophets for its foundations…
                                                                                                       Ephesians 2: 19

. . .

Once again, I find I have been completely outdone by Pope Francis. His daily homilies are a source of encouragement, and challenge me to practice my faith more consistently. He said:

“We find Jesus’ wounds in carrying out works of mercy, giving to our body – the body – the soul too, but – I stress – the body of your wounded brother, because he is hungry, because he is thirsty, because he is naked because it is humiliated, because he is a slave, because he’s in jail because he is in the hospital. Those are the wounds of Jesus today. And Jesus asks us to take a leap of faith, towards Him, but through these His wounds. ‘Oh, great! Let’s set up a foundation to help everyone and do so many good things to help ‘. That’s important, but if we remain on this level, we will only be philanthropic. We need to touch the wounds of Jesus, we must caress the wounds of Jesus, we need to bind the wounds of Jesus with tenderness, we have to kiss the wounds of Jesus, and this literally. Just think of what happened to St. Francis, when he embraced the leper? The same thing that happened to Thomas: his life changed. ” 

I like to stay at arms length: give to cafod, support the Missionaries of Charity, that sort of thing. But the neighbor in need deserves my attention equally. Attention to the poor is attention to Jesus…how often I forget that!

I am grateful for the words of Pope Francis, and for the example set for us by the saints. 
St Thomas, pray for us.


in the kitchen

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When I started this blog, I thought I’d be sharing the conversations we have in our kitchen, on those rare occasions when we talk theology like we did ‘in the old days’. But I have found that often, those conversations are not really fit for public consumption. It’s not because they’re trashy (though sometimes the language isn’t what we’d want the kids to use at school), but because they are unformed.

In teaching theology and ethics, I often have to wade into treacherous (for a doctrinally conservative person who works hard at charitable living) waters. Usually I keep my feet on the ground. The classroom isn’t a place where I want to work out what I really think, at the edges of my Christian faith and practice. Nope: that’s what I do in the kitchen.

Theologians and ministers especially, and Christians in general, won’t always have a ready answer to the question of the moment, or the latest news. We need time and space–safe space–to consider, to pray, and to talk with people who know us well enough to help us figure out what to say, if indeed we find we need to speak. That’s my kitchen, and I am glad there’s no webcam in it. Sometimes I realise that what I was thinking is just plain wrong as soon as I have said it. And then I’m really glad only Lewis was listening.

St Augustine Zhao Rong and companions, martyrs

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But as for me, I shall walk in my integrity;
Redeem me, and be gracious to me.
My foot stands in a level place;
In the congregations I shall bless the Lord.
                                                             Psalm 26[25]: 11-12

And when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. and behold, there arose a great storm in the sea, so that the boat was covered with waves; but he himself was asleep. And they came to him, and awoke him, saying, ‘Save us, Lord; we are perishing!’ And he said to them, ‘Why are you timid, you men of little faith? Then he arose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and it became perfectly calm.
                                                              Matthew 8: 23-26

.        .       .

Maybe this is one of those days when the readings just happen to fall on the same day, without an inherent connection (as is usually the case for Sundays). The first reading was from Genesis, about the fate of Lot’s wife, and of Sodom and Gomorrah. Don’t look back! Then the psalmist speaks confidently of stability and security before God–or does he? I am fascinated by the prayer for mercy in the midst of assurance. It is as if to say that all that we do is not what redeems us: God’s grace is what redeems us. Integrity and right worship might contribute to our hope that God will redeem us by his grace; our practice, however faithful, is not sufficient.

And grace–there he is, God’s grace come to dwell among us, asleep in the boat while the storm rages. That’s a confidence beyond that of the psalmist, I think. I love this passage, I confess. It is short, but to the point: here is the one who calms the storm. My storms tend to be of a different kind, but just as dark and sometimes just as violent. Yet here he is, if I can just remember he’s on board, ready to calm the storm, ready to redeem, and to bring me to a level place.

Deo gratias.

David Foster Wallace, commencement address to the graduating class at Kenyon College (2005)

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I listened. Somehow I missed this on the first go-round, probably because at the time I was madly trying to finish a dissertation while being the best possible mom to my two little ones. And I was going through a very dark patch. So my awareness of David Foster Wallace has been dawning over the last couple of months.

He had my full attention. I have about a million things I should be doing, but I stopped, and listened. After the conclusion of the speech, I googled him (as you do) to refresh my memory, and connected the dots. Oh, this is that guy. Wait, he committed suicide? I knew that. Right.

But I wasn’t nearly as sad when I first heard it.

St Aloysius Gonzaga

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Preserve me, O God, I take refuge in you.
 I say to the Lord: ‘You are my God.’
Lord, it is you who are my portion and cup;
 it is you yourself who are my prize.

You will show me the path of life,
the fullness of joy in your presence,
at your right hand happiness forever.

                                     Psalm 16 [15]: 1-2, 11

.        .        .

I made a conscious effort in my early 20’s to memorize this psalm. (The final verse, 16.11, is the reason for the number appearing in my twitter handle and email address. Nothing to do with the King James Bible.) I struggled constantly against the sense that what I really needed to be happy was something ‘out there’, somewhere beyond me. If only I could reach it–the right job, the right guy, the right whatever–then I would really be happy.

No. I saw in this psalm that real happiness comes from somewhere else entirely. It’s not from out there, but originates in here. It is the peace that surpasses all understanding, not the perfect situation, that settles the soul. In comparison to many, the storms in my life are just light rain showers. Still, I need shelter, and the psalmist reminds me that the only shelter I can count on is God: preserve me O God, I take refuge in you.

like that

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It says something about me, and about where I am these weeks and months, that my last two posts begin with ‘some days are like that.’ Like what? These days are full of beauty that I can’t quite appreciate, joy that I know is there but just can’t feel, and love that knocks quietly but insistently on the door of my heart as I struggle with the lock.

I had this dream several nights ago in which I was insisting to a couple of colleagues that going through the motions is important. Developing habits consistent with the hope you ought to have, even when you don’t have that hope, is not a bad thing. What do you do, I asked, when the love of your life doesn’t feel like it did at the first? You do what you would do if it did, and maybe, if you’re lucky, you find that it is still there.

What I didn’t say in the dream, of course, because it was (after all) a dream, was how difficult it is to do. It is incredibly soul-wrenching work. I write about the character of Christian identity, in my life as an ‘academic’ theologian (whatever that is); I say that John Milbank is right: the heart of our Christian practice, our being and believing and acting Christianly in the world, is receiving life, and love, and our very being from God. Apart from God, we cannot persist. (See Colossians 1: 17, or listen to Rich Mullins’ song ‘All the way to kingdom come’ if you don’t believe me.) Feeling like we are apart, but acting on the certainty that we’re not…well, you get the picture.

These days are like that. I wonder, is this accedia? Is it depression? Or is it the ordinary bumps in the road, jarring me and knocking me off balance? Does it really matter what it is? What it does is make me irritable, jumpy, tired and inconsiderate. My dad might call me ‘temperamental’, as he used to when I was a teenager, by which he mostly meant ‘grumpy.’ I find the laundry exhausting and am driven to despair by wooden train track on the floor. Everything that happens seems to upset me, and everything that might happen worries me.

So why am I sharing my misery? I hate complaining. I usually take it as a sign that disappointment has won, and stands over me, triumphantly smug. That may be. That was certainly true when I got up this morning, because yesterday I was frustrated that the activity of resting in God was not available to me in the noise and commotion and mess of my cluttered house. Janet Martin Soskice came to me this morning, though (not in person, of course, though I would dearly love to meet her someday):

Most Christian women…think that what they do around the home is worthy in God’s service–they do not think, they have not been taught to think, of it as spiritual. And here, monastic figures who, apparently, found God over the washing up or sweeping the floor will be called to mind; but these are not really to the point, since servile tasks were recommended because they left the mind free to contemplate. What we want is a monk who finds God while cooking a meal with one child clamouring for a drink, another who needs a bottom wiped, and a baby throwing up over his shoulder (The Kindness of God, pp. 22-23).

That’s my failure. I think that because receptivity is active, that the sort of activity I should seek is quiet contemplation. No, no, no! It works both ways: the activity that is typical, ordinary, and ‘mindless’ is also–or can be–a form of receptivity. This is what the prescribed movements of Benedictine prayer should teach me. It is not that I need to do something different (‘you are in the right place NOW’–thanks Sr Catherine Wybourne), but I need grace to re-frame what I am doing. I need God to reveal himself to me in the wiping of noses and bottoms, and in the picking up of toys and clothes off of the floor.

For the moment, though, I am just going through those motions. But just a little, tiny bit of hope peeks out from beneath a pile of things to be sorted. And for that I am immensely grateful.

St Romauld

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Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 3:12-14
 
 
O Lord, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
like a weaned child is my soul within me.
O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forth and forevermore.
Psalms 131[130] :1-3.
 
 
‘I have calmed and quieted my soul’? Maybe so, for St Romauld. Not so for me. Nor would I fare better with the readings for week 11 of the year: happy the one who fears the Lord, because it will go well for her. No, I am not feeling especially triumphant today, not like one who has mastered my fretful soul.
 
There is something that intrigues me, though, about the combination of readings for St Romauld. The first reading is from Philippians, and it includes Gregory of Nyssa’s favorite phrase: ‘forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal…’ The psalm says ‘rest’; Philippians says, ‘get on with it!’
 
Maybe resting is getting on with it. That seems to have been the case with St Romauld. He became a Benedictine, then a hermit. He wanted to be alone with God; he sought a prayerful solitude. To attend to the presence of God in his cell and to be quiet was active spiritual engagement.
 
I like that, but I am not entirely sure how it helps. Time alone is rare, and silence is hard to find. Everywhere I go there are things that insist on being done. At home there are more domestic chores than hours in the week; at work there is always something else waiting after each task is completed. Even walking to work, errands interrupt the quiet–whether I do them immediately or not, I am reminded of what is to be done. My soul catches the unsettledness of the house, the daily timetable, the office. And my activity is far from spiritual engagement.
 
I cannot do it: I need more grace.
 
St Romauld, pray for us.

St Anthony of Padua

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I will hear what God the Lord will say;
For He will speak peace to His people,
to His godly ones;
But let them not turn back to folly.
Surely His salvation is near to those who fear Him,
That glory may dwell in our land.
Lovingkindness and truth have met together;
Righteousness and peace have kissed each other.
Truth springs from the earth,
And righteousness looks down from heaven.
Psalm 85 [84]:9-11
 
For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
2 Corinthians 4:6 NASB
 
. . .
 
It won’t be the first time I observe that the ‘truth [that] springs from the earth’ begs for a Christological reading. The whole exchange of intimacy between love and truth, righteousness and peace, it seems to me, signals the righting of the relationship between Creator and creation. It is the work of the incarnation, accomplished in Christ.
 
But I confess I never attended carefully enough to the preceding verse. Together with the passage from 2 Corinthians (which runs from 3:15 to 4:6), the Christological significance is hard to miss. The glory of The Lord comes to dwell in the land (‘and we have beheld his glory…’ John’s gospel says), and in our hearts. (I can’t help but add, though, that we have this treasure in earthen vessels–so says 2 Cor 4:7–so that the power is seen as coming from God and not from us.)
 
Glory. It is the glory of God that is revealed in the meeting of lovingkindess and truth, in the kiss of justice and peace. The glory of God is in Christ. And it looks like love.
 
Deo gratias.