Light and Momentary

There will be a stink

Stella and I subbed in the vigil Mass choir yesterday, and everything was perfectly normal at first. Familiar readings, minor musical glitches, a slightly scattered homily -- normal normal normal. And then in the middle of the Eucharistic Prayer there was an awful noise.

I can't really describe it to you. It was like a retch but it went on longer than any retch should go. It was a sound full of distress and agony. It was a wrong sound, a terrible sound, an uncontrollable emanation from a body in desperate need of help. 

"That doesn't sound good," murmured the nurse who sings in the choir, as she slipped over to the person in the pew. She was joined there by two other nurses and an EMT. I learned later that he had a pulse and was breathing, but his open eyes stared unseeing out of a gray face. "Can someone call 911?" Father asked from the altar in the calmest of calm voices. One of the nurses nodded vigorously, her phone already held to her ear. 

"Okay," said Father, in a voice that sent calm rippling through the whole tense place, "while we wait for help to come, I'm going to keep doing what I do up here. Can someone bring me the oil from the sacristy so I can anoint him?"

He finished the Eucharistic Prayer with some very minor modifications -- "please be seated," he said when we got to the Our Father, perhaps to cut down on gawking -- and when he elevated the Host I thought about the evanescence and fragility of our lives, their inevitable end, and the hidden Presence among us.

Agnus Dei, we chanted together, and the truth rang out from the words: our God who has redeemed us through suffering abides with us in our suffering, makes a path to eternal life through suffering. Dona nobis pacem, we implored: grant us peace.

At the end of the Eucharistic Prayer Father walked down the aisle and anointed the man. "Through this holy anointing may the Lord in his love and mercy help you with the grace of the Holy Spirit."

Clearly we needed to wait before we filled the aisle with communicants. "Ed," said Father to a church employee sitting near the ambo, "lead us in a decade of the rosary." Stella was crying quietly as we said the words together: pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. We heard the welcome sound of sirens, and the ambulance crew strode in. They clustered around him, working briskly against the backdrop of the rosary. They loaded him onto the gurney, his face pinker now but still a deeply wrong color, and sped back down the aisle.

We always say the St. Michael prayer after communion, and Father invited us to pray it specifically for the man and his family: be our protection, we prayed together for them, as we thought collectively about that ambulance speeding toward the hospital. After Mass my friend Veronica stepped up to the microphone and invited us all to stay and pray the Divine Mercy chaplet for them. The church was more than half-full at that point, and almost everyone stuck around.

Stella was crying in the car afterward. "I'm not sure why I'm crying," she said, "I don't even know them." "Oh, sweetheart," I told her, "it's normal to be distressed about distressing things. The world needs people who feel sad about sad things. Death is so sad and ugly that even Jesus cried about it."

I thought about Jesus before the tomb of Lazarus. "There will be a stink," Martha cautioned him, but Jesus was undeterred. He is willing to be in the middle of messy painful stuff with us, I am reminding myself, if we only invite him. "It's so strange that it happened in the middle of Mass," Stella observed pensively, and I said, "You know, if you're going to experience a serious medical event, there are worse places for it to happen. Because (a) Real Presence, right there with you, (b) medical personnel rushing to your side, (c) fire station down the block sending an ambulance immediately. What if he'd been at home, alone in his recliner?"

I don't know this family but they are weighing on my heart today, the words of the chaplet still echoing in my mind:

Holy God,
Holy mighty one,
Holy immortal one,
Have mercy on us and on the whole world.

That was unexpected

In general I try to avoid writing about gloomy things in this space, but the biggest ongoing gloomy thing in my life has been getting me down this week. Imagine my surprise when I walked into church this morning and the accompanist said, "Would it be all right if I added some alto harmonies today?" I had never suggested this; she had always seemed a little reluctant to sing. I am virtually certain she does not read my blog and could not have known that just yesterday I was pining for someone with whom to harmonize. 

It turns out that she is not reluctant to sing; she is only reluctant to sing all by herself. It was so delightful to sing together today -- such a joy. 

I have posted occasionally about the frustrations of praying faithfully for a lot of years about an important question where the answer to date has been NO. It's a hard NO to hear, friends. Sometimes it just squashes me. But this is the second time in the past few months when I have said to myself, "I am feeling so SQUASHED by that big NO right now" -- only to receive an immediate and surprising YES about something else that was small but close to my heart.

After Mass I tried to explain to the accompanist why I was so grateful that she decided to take the plunge today, out of the blue, and offer to sing alto. I teared up in the middle of my explanation, which could have been weird. But she's been hearing a big ongoing NO in her own life, and she understood. Sometimes it's a sudden unexpected YES that helps you to remember whose you are and where you're going. It reminds me forcibly of this Screwtape quote. It leaves me feeling like I can carry the weight of the NO for a while longer.

City on a Hill

Early in the morning on April 12, 1992, I had a dream. I was walking with a group of friends on the edge of an enormous canyon. It was filled with impenetrable clouds, but I knew that the walls plunged down for thousands of feet through dangerous and unknown terrain. On the far side of the canyon, though, far away on higher ground, I saw a city.

I cannot describe it to you. I can tell you that its walls gleamed in pale blue and purple. I can tell you that its banners waved in jubilation above its walls. But I cannot convey its beauty to you. I could not convey its beauty to the companions who walked beside me in my dream, and they did not understand why I fell to my knees there on the edge of the canyon and wept in awe. Almost 30 years later the memory of that triumphant city, the most captivating place I had ever seen, still moves me to tears.

Six days later I entered the Catholic Church. I believe that she offers me the truest path to the beautiful city and the deepest union with Our Lord on this side of the divide. 

But I have to say, her bishops in the US are not making her seem very attractive just now.

I think if you asked a dozen American adults with no religious affiliation about the Church's top priorities, most of them they would say something about passing laws against abortion, and maybe something about controlling people's decisions. This would be a terrible distortion of the global Church's actual priorities, and it would also be completely unsurprising.

The Church is meant to be a refuge, a home, a hospital, a feasting hall. I am Catholic because the Church offers me the opportunity to encounter God. I can meet the Lord in reconciliation and be set free from sin. I can receive him -- the fullness of his mysterious Self, the Word full of grace and truth -- in the Eucharist. I can steep myself in Scripture with a community of believers around the world. I can grow in wisdom and grace as I yield myself each day to the voice of the Holy Spirit. The mission of the Church is true human flourishing: abundant life in the present and the future, and liberation from the errors of our past.

I don't know if any of that is visible to our hypothetical unaffiliated American adults. But isn't that the work that should be making the news?

Last week our new associate pastor introduced himself. He spoke simply and humbly about wanting to do four things while he is here: to know us, to be known by us, to love us, and to serve us. It sounded so right, this resolve to foster deep connections and to strengthen the parish community in our mutual love of the Lord. This morning I was reading 1 Corinthians 15, in which St. Paul writes about his preeminent priority (I note some divergence from the preeminent priority of the USCCB): Christ crucified and risen.

You already know that I accept the fullness of the teaching of the Catholic Church; you know that I have struggled with practical questions about who should and should not receive the Eucharist. Obviously I'm not suggesting that we should treat the Eucharist like a snack to be dispensed to fractious toddlers demanding their turn. But I am struggling with the asymmetry of the bishops' responses to different types of deliberate harm to gestating babies, and different types of offenses against the culture of life. And I'm thinking they could take a cue from St. Paul: more of Jesus, less of the culture wars.

Caulking the Tub

One day in 2003 I thought to myself, "I'm going to grab the caulking gun and caulk along that spot where the upstairs bathtub meets the floor." This was a task that needed doing -- we could see that there was some leakage from the upstairs bathroom of our ugly little apartment into the downstairs ceiling -- but I am not a person given to spontaneous caulking. There was an unexpected lull in my chaotic life with three small children, and something in my brain said TIME TO CAULK THE TUB.

A couple of days later a hose inside our washing machine disconnected itself, and water flooded through the downstairs ceiling. It was a MESS, and getting the machine fixed was such a hassle that I vowed never to buy another Haier appliance. But I kept thinking to myself how much worse it could have been. If I hadn't had that funny little urge to caulk the tub, the water would have poured right through that spot where the bathtub met the floor -- right into our antique set of the Encyclopedia Britannica. 

Shortly after that my husband lost his job. It felt pretty bleak at the time. We had moved across the country for him to take this job, and poof -- it was gone. In the stressful weeks that followed I kept thinking about that bathtub. It was as if God had said to me, "I can mitigate your disasters." I've remembered it ever since. We live in a world full of trouble, but it's surprising how often somebody has caulked the tub.

Remember when I railed about Gina Haspel? During the Trump purges in December she decided, for the first time in weeks, to go to the president's daily intelligence briefing. That decision made it possible for her to keep a pro-Trump extremist out of CIA leadership, even when it looked like a done deal. Thanks for caulking the tub, Ms. Haspel, and I'll keep praying for you to reconsider your position on torture.

Amid the frustrations about the vaccine rollout, it's easy to lose sight of how remarkable it is that we have not one but two vaccines to roll out, with more on the way. It hasn't been that long since we didn't know if a vaccine would be possible, let alone effective. It feels miraculous to me that these vaccines came together as quickly and successfully as they did, and I will not be surprised if some unexpected stories emerge as we go along -- a scientist who decided impulsively to try out a new idea, or to choose Option A over Option B. The pandemic is a once-in-a-lifetime disaster, but the vaccine feels to me like a caulking-the-tub moment.

I am seeing it too in the stories emerging from the Capitol riots. It seemed plenty bad enough as it unfolded, but OH my friends, it could have been so much worse. They narrowly missed crossing paths in a hallway with the very vice-president they wanted to hang. Cleveland Meredith's plans to put a bullet in Nancy Pelosi's noggin were foiled when he needed a minor vehicle repair. (I will pray that he finds Jesus in prison.) I have to tell you, I haven't even been able to read all the way through this Atlantic article. But do you know what it says to me as I squint at it with one eye, as if to keep the stressful bits at bay? Somebody caulked that tub.

I thirst

I have come to think that one of the most telling indices of a person's faith might be her thoughts on hell. In the days when I struggled more with scrupulosity I regarded hell with a mix of horror and fascination. I did not see clearly then that God loved me so much that he wanted me to stay out of hell even more than I wanted to stay out of hell -- that he was more invested in my sanctification than I was. And yet I also had (and still have) a tendency widespread among the scrupulous: I love to be right. Here is a true fact: a person who mutters "fine, go to hell then; we'll see who's right" when an argument about the faith goes poorly is not a compelling witness to the beauty and redemptive power of the gospel.

I once heard a priest say that when Jesus said "I thirst" he wasn't just talking about physical thirst; he was saying, "I thirst for souls." The pairing of those two meanings is particularly poignant: here in my agony, says the Lord, I desire for all people to see me lifted up and be freed from the poison of sin. He came to be with us in a world full of physical suffering, to experience physical sufferings like thirst, and to love us unstoppably even in the worst of it.

COVID has offered me many opportunities to think about whether I'd rather be loving or be right. My church's Facebook announcements have recently been a forum for the most vocal right-wingers in the parish to complain nastily about the precautions in place, and I find it wearying. I hear an echo of the me from 20 years ago, thinking, "Fine, get COVID then; we'll see who's right." I don't really mean that. But the Lord wants me to pray for them, to desire his very best for them -- and I'm not there today, friends; I'm not there. (Why, though, would they be publicly ugly to our fantabulous pastor who is working SO HARD to make the sacraments available safely? I do not understand. I am tired of trying to understand.) 

I would like Donald Trump to go to prison for tax evasion and money laundering. Is that a hunger for justice or a petty desire for vengeance? Since 2015 I have tried to avoid uncharitable language about Trump -- I don't care how much he weighs or what color makeup he wears. My concern is the competence void. But it is not very charitable to wish him in prison. "Fine, face the SDNY then; we'll see who's right" is not the same as wishing eternal damnation on someone. But it feels to me like it is in the same neighborhood.

All through the pandemic I have been thinking about Our Lord's eagerness to alleviate physical suffering, even when doing so created hassles and hazards for him. And I have been thinking, too, about his willingness to walk before us into the valley of the shadow, to make a path through it for us. The pandemic is a temporal struggle to be viewed in the light of eternity. (On that topic, may I recommend this homily from the newly elevated Cardinal Cantalamessa? Love him.) Maybe tonight it is best for me to close the social media tabs, and offer up all of my uncertainties. Teach me, I will pray as I am falling asleep, how to thirst.

BRISK CLAP

OK, US Catholics, we have our work cut out for us. We have spent decades walking down an increasingly untenable political path, driven by strident voices calling abortion the Most Evil of All Evils and saying Effective Pro-Life Political Action Equals Laws Against Abortion. But--

It is my highest priority to live a life of joyful obedience to Jesus Christ in communion with the Roman Catholic Church. I believe every word of the Catechism. And I do not believe those strident voices within the Church are right. In fact, I believe them to be responsible for deepening divisions and driving people away from the faith. Let’s do better.

An increasingly polarized political landscape has left too many Catholics thinking that it is A-OK to sneer at the libs, or to wear a PELOSI SUCKS T-shirt, or to call anything left of center “socialism.” Can we just stop with that? It's unlikely that on Judgment Day Jesus is going to be like, "wrong, socialism is when the workers control the means of production," but I tell you what: he is the guy who said it was the same as murder to call one's brother a fool. I don’t think he will look kindly on use of the word “libtard.” (Obviously, I likewise condemn schoolyard insults aimed at Trump and his fellows.)

This political landscape has also left too many Catholics thinking that all left-leaning political positions are self-evidently wrong. Medicare for all? Laughable. Ending fracking? Wishful thinking from ignorant dreamers who fail to see it’s not economically feasible. Subsidized high-quality childcare? OhohoHOOOO, it is a PLOY to allow the government to indoctrinate your children!

What if we didn’t do that?

My opinions are unchanged since I posted about abortion four years ago: just as in parenting, if you want people to make different choices, you smooth the path toward those choices. If your two-year-old is lying in the floor screaming for Halloween candy, then one option is to repeat “you get what you get and you don’t get upset.” But probably the better choice is to say, “Huh, it’s 10:00 and he didn’t eat breakfast. Scrambled eggs and toast, coming right up.” If your teens are fighting all the time, then sure, you can ground them and yell “NO RUDENESS AND DISRESPECT” at them (using your most polite and respectful bellow). Or you can figure out what the obstacles are between the situation you’ve got and the situation you want, and tackle the obstacles.

Let’s talk about obstacles. Women are not having abortions for funsies. Women are having abortions because they can’t afford a(nother) baby, and because they are in unstable relationships, and because their life circumstances do not seem to be compatible with motherhood. They are having late-term abortions in part because their unborn babies have disabilities or life-limiting conditions. In that incomplete list of reasons for abortion there is so much scope for bipartisan political action. So let’s commit to some bipartisan political action already.

In the UK, which is hardly a hotbed of pro-life activism, every pregnant resident of the country has access to skilled prenatal care, to her choice of birth setting, and to in-home follow-up care for herself and her baby in the weeks after delivery. Her out-of-pocket cost? Zero. If we in this country were genuinely committed to protecting the lives and well-being of unborn babies and their mothers, we could do something similar. With a coalition of Democrats and Catholic Republicans, we could make it political suicide for a legislator to oppose Medicaid expansion for pregnant/postpartum women and children under age 5. If ostensibly pro-life legislators vote repeatedly to repeal the piece of legislation that requires insurers to cover prenatal care, then we should hold them responsible for dereliction of their pro-life duty. Healthcare is a huge messy expensive issue, but the eye-wateringly expensive part is end-of-life care. In the richest country of the world, the cost of routine perinatal/well-child care is 100% a solvable problem. We just need the political will to solve it.

Similarly, the rest of the developed world has figured out better solutions to maternity leave and childcare. In fact, the entire developing world* has also figured out better solutions to maternity leave. If the pro-life community in the US acknowledges these barriers to motherhood and commits to working together on solutions, we can make a difference for the terrified newly pregnant women out there thinking, “I never thought I’d have an abortion, but I just cannot see how to make this work financially.” But we need systemic change, which will require sustained political action. And yes, it will be expensive. Remind me, though -- how many KAZILLION dollars have we sunk into deeply divisive and ultimately unsuccessful personhood ballot initiatives? All those strings of appeals in court cases that have only re-entrenched Roe v. Wade as settled law – how much did they cost, and how much good did they do?

*(excluding Suriname, New Guinea, and a few tiny countries in the South Pacific) 

As a nation we can afford maternity leave that allows women to stay home and recover after they have babies. We can afford childcare that allows them to go back to work when they need to, and know that their babies are safe and well cared for. If we want to, that is. If you are reading this and thinking grumbly thoughts like “Not business-friendly! Not fiscally responsible!” then I invite you -– gently, respectfully -– to consider how much of a priority it should be for the pro-life movement to be business-friendly rather than mother/baby-friendly. I ask you how much of the gospel is about protecting business interests at the expense of the vulnerable, and how well those priorities square with the idea of a preferential option for the poor. I note too that the Canadian economy, despite having a GDP only 8% of ours, has not collapsed under the weight of one-year paid maternity leaves.

Whoops, I just passed a thousand words. But you guys, we also need to talk about the pro-life impact of two other causes usually linked to the left. First off: we can reduce the number of babies with severe congenital anomalies, and thus the number of women seeking second-trimester abortions, if we reduce women's exposure to environmental toxins. Fracking kills unborn babies; ergo, in my view, pro-lifers should oppose fracking. Don't tell me we can't get by without an activity that nobody had even heard of 10 years ago. Don't tell the mothers with empty arms that cheap energy matters more than their babies' lives.

Second: we can use political means to make it easier to parent children with disabilities. We can insist on adequate funding for early intervention, for early childhood special education, for school systems that can then focus on access to services rather than gatekeeping to balance a too-skimpy special-ed budget. And let's not forget respite care. It's great to smile at the person at church who's caring for a child with an apparent disability. But the kinds of ongoing support that make a difference in caregiver well-being and eventual outcomes for people with disabilities -- those require political will, and public funding.

I guess if the one true pro-life political strategy were passing more restrictive laws against abortion, then seating judges sympathetic to those laws might be the one true indicator of a pro-life president [she says skeptically]. But I believe there are many, many ways to work politically toward the pro-life goals of protecting gestating babies and equipping their families and communities to welcome them. So let's get it together, and stop turning up our noses at our natural allies. Nobody in heaven is going to be awarding any brownie points for the zingiest social media post about whether Joe Biden should receive communion. But I do believe they will ask us what we did for the least of these.

Maybe heaven will be a little like a GBBO finale

The kids and I have been watching Great British Bake-off together, the season with Richard and Nancy and Martha and Chetna and Luis. The seasons are numbered weirdly in the Amazon menu, but when we first encountered GBBO this was season 5, the one that aired in the UK in 2014. (It's the best season.)

We watched the final tonight, and I was a little embarrassed when it made me cry. But you know, there are a bunch of reasons it made me cry, and the biggest one is that it made me think about what heaven might be like.

My favorite thing about season 5 is the mix of bakers. I love their camaraderie; I love the way they treat each other. It's easy to imagine a version of the show with cutthroat competition, but instead they help each other out where they can. The fourth-place baker, the last person to leave the show before the final, jumps up and and down when the winner is announced. One of the runners-up says with obvious sincerity that the right person won. I wouldn't normally think of GBBO as a font of enduring truth but this is a true fact: hard things are easier and more joyful when we do them in community.

I think that heaven will be full of people who have been cheering us on from afar, people who wanted to see us victorious, people who are delighted that we have fought the good fight and finished the race. I got a little teary when the competitors' family members were talking about them, because they spoke with such love and pride. I think that the saints who welcome us into heaven will know how much we have labored to complete the tasks set before us, and what it has cost us to persevere.

I think that one element of becoming the best versions of ourselves, the versions God made us to be, is throwing ourselves into hard things that bring us joy. I am thinking about the way that the bakers wove their own stories into the things they made, to present something that not only showcased their technical skill but also showed us something about who they were and where they had come from. I believe that when God asks us to do hard things for our sanctification, he delights when we do them in a way that is distinctively ours.

I am still thinking about those three bakers -- the way they laid down their spatulas and piping bags for the last time, their hard work behind them, and stepped out of the tent into beautiful summer sunshine on those lovely grounds. I am thinking about the feast they shared with their families, and their reunions with the departed bakers, because of course heaven will also be a feast and a reunion.

(P.S. I am also thinking about making a prinsesstårta. Just in case you wondered whether I was going to spiritualize the whole season.)

May 17

I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine.

Churches in Gladlyville received permission to distribute Holy Communion this week. We listened to the liturgy livestream in the parking lot, and then lined up: at least six feet apart, wearing masks, sanitizing our hands at the entrance to the church, moving briskly back to our vehicles to make our acts of thanksgiving there. I was not sure how this would go. All my life I have been a person who is cautious about new things, and this whole situation is one long concatenation of weird new things.

My lover speaks and says to me, "Arise, my friend, my beautiful one, and come!"

On the way to church I was reminded forcefully of two long-ago experiences. The first happened above Glasgow, on the September morning in 1998 when we arrived for our two-year stay in Edinburgh. The morning sun was dazzling, but below us was a heavy bank of gray cloud. I had been worried about moving to a rainy climate because the sun (or its absence) has such a huge effect on my mood, and I told myself firmly, "Don't forget, when you are down below those ugly clouds, that up here the sun is glorious and the skies are bluest blue. What you experience doesn't determine what is." 

The second happened in early 2007. It was the first year of my doctoral program, and I was worried: mostly about money, during that season when I was part-time and unfunded, but also about how to be a good mother and a good doctoral student at the same time, and about what an academic future could possibly look like for me. My oldest son asked me to take him to a local concert, where one of the performers was Vicky Beeching. One of her songs shook something loose in me, reminded me that I did not need to fret and be afraid. I remember thinking, "Oh, it's you! It's you! How could I have forgotten that you are always with me?"

I had that same jolt of recognition this morning: it's YOU, always present, only hidden for a time.

Let me see your face, let me hear your voice. For your voice is sweet, and your face is lovely.

This pandemic has reminded me that we are made to be together with other human beings-- to share their air, to make contact, to connect. This has been true from the very beginning of our existence: it is not good for man to be alone. I did not know how glad I would be to see our church family again, even briefly and behind masks. I did not know how glad I would be to come back to that beautiful consecrated space, where one day we will worship together again.

For see, the winter is past, the rains are over and gone.

I did know how glad I would be to receive the Eucharist again. I was worried that I would ugly-cry when our pastor placed the Eucharist in my hand (an advantage to mask-wearing, though, is that nobody can see if your nose is running), but I did not. I mostly kept it together until we were back in the car praying the Anima Christi together. "Suffer me not to be separated from you" -- that's the line that did me in.

The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines, in bloom, give forth fragrance.

During this season with no communal worship I have told myself again and again that God is not constrained by the sacraments, and he still desires for us to know his presence and receive his grace. I have tried to be diligent in prayer, to dig deeper into Scripture in these days when there have been no public Masses. Only two days ago I was posting unsympathetically about heedless demands for the return of public Masses.

But oh-- there is nothing like the Eucharist. I have been staring at this screen for a while now, thinking about how I might be able to explain that better, but maybe I'll just steer you to St. Thomas Aquinas instead. It is hope and strength and lightness of heart; it is the food that transforms us into the "aroma of Christ."

Let him lead me to the banquet hall, and let his banner over me be love.

May 7

Up in a high cupboard, wrapped carefully, we have a sacred vessel. My mother-in-law bought a ceramic plate with a loaves-and-fishes mosaic motif on a trip to Israel in 1996, and the priest who was leading her tour group used it in a Mass. She gave it to us at Christmastime that year. Having been used in Mass, the plate can never be used for another purpose. It has followed us through all of our moves-- carefully wrapped, tucked away for safekeeping.

I miss the Mass so much. Yesterday I was thinking about that vessel, and I imagined taking it down from its high shelf and unwrapping it -- pressing it to my cheek as a way to get a whisker closer to the sacrament. (That's going to sound weird to the non-Catholic people who read this blog.) I think every day about going to our Adoration chapel and pressing my nose against the window. 

Back in Lent my friend Veronica told me about another local parish that's doing parking lot Adoration and confession in the afternoons. I tried to go once, but the lot was full and I couldn't figure out how confessions worked. Was there a line? Did everyone else besides me understand the workings of the line? Today I thought to myself, "You know, you could probably figure this out if you went back."

They put a monstrance in a window, with a sign below it that says "Ecce." There was a priest hearing confessions inside a makeshift booth with heavy green curtains, and after I watched and waited for a while and overcame a measure of inner resistance, I made my way over. It's a weird thing to do, to confess loudly enough to be heard over the traffic on a busy street. Was it okay to stand right next to the curtain? Should I stand further back and confess more loudly? How much virus can make its way through a heavy green curtain if a person on one side is infected? At one point the priest said, "Just a minute, I'll finish my thought after this car passes by."

But OOOHHHH I am glad I did it. It had been three months since anyone spoke the words of absolution over me, and I walked away feeling light and free and grateful. I knelt down in front of the monstrance, right there in the parking lot, and wiped away a few tears.

It's another podcast

I whipped up another batch of thoughts about the Mass readings for this weekend, and I did another quick and anti-perfectionist session in my basement to get them recorded, and I am posting the result for anyone who might like to listen. Link to the video mentioned near the end is here.

I think the embedded player works best with Chrome, but you can right-click to download and play on your preferred media player as well. 

Podcast 2, based on the Mass readings for Laetare Sunday

 

It's a...podcast?

Do you guys remember a couple of years ago when I helped out with a retreat team and part of my job was to prepare weekly reflections? The retreat director told me I should turn it into a podcast, which made me say, "Hahahaaaa, sure, in my abundant free time." But I was thinking yesterday about how sad I am not to be able to attend Mass, and her suggestion came back to me.

So! The readings are here. Embedded in this post is Jamie's Quick and Imperfect Podcast, put forward a little shyly in hopes of fostering community and reflection during this wild ride. I'm not a big podcast lover, because I'd usually rather read the transcript. In a nod to all the other people who would usually prefer to read the transcript, it's only 11 minutes long.

Podcast the First (and Possibly the Last; You Tell Me)

Edited to add: Chrome seems to know what to do with the file, but Safari does not. If you'd rather not use Chrome, you can right-click to download and listen on your preferred media player.

Waiting

I picked up a bulletin on my way into church yesterday afternoon. It's the Presentation, the cover announced, and I thought with a rush of gratitude about Simeon and his patience.

One of my kids has been waiting, bravely and patiently, for a while now. We were expecting some preliminary resolution by Friday, and when no resolution materialized the bravery and patience temporarily collapsed. I offered comfort and logic and prayer, but my heart was still heavy when I walked into church for choir rehearsal. And then I saw that bulletin cover. The only thing we really know about Simeon is that he waited, and that at the end of his waiting he proclaimed God's sufficiency. I can die in peace now, he said to the Lord; you are faithful to your promises.

On the way out of church this morning I saw a friend who asked me how the waiting is going. She is waiting, too; her husband has been searching for work for months now. She asked me specifically if I would offer up this current suffering for her family, and I was glad to have a purpose for it. The idea of "offering it up" was something I'd never heard of before I went through RCIA, but it made immediate sense to me. It clarified a previously puzzling verse in the letter to the Colossians; it assured me that in yielding to an affliction, in deliberately uniting it to Christ's suffering on the cross, I could engage in a form of wordless prayer.

Our family's hour in the Adoration chapel is right after choir practice, and I prayed there for all the people I know who are waiting -- my own kid especially, but there are so many of us wrestling with one kind of waiting or another. I'm not the only Inigo Montoya in the bunch, I feel certain.

I hate waiting

I burst through the door when I got home, shouting "Isaiah 40!" (I was thinking specifically of the end, but I love the whole thing.) Something somewhere in that combination of spiritual seeking and parental encouragement and inner resilience eased the crisis yesterday, but I was still grateful for today's readings. Simeon had the kind of vision I want to have, with his certainty that the redemptive presence of God among us is enough. More than enough. Worth waiting for, however long it takes.

Angels Unawares

Our van gets cranky in bad weather. There's a leak somewhere, it seems, and when we get a lot of precipitation we get weird electrical problems. The headlights stay on when you switch them off. The dashboard warning lights flicker on and off randomly. The van thinks the sliding doors are open even when they're not. All of this nonsense drains the battery, and then we go out to start the van up and it's dead.

A couple of weeks ago we were in the path of the giant storm that drenched the Midwest. I played for 4:00 Mass, and I wasn't entirely surprised when I went out into the sleet and discovered that the van wouldn't start. It clicked at me sadly, and I switched it off and thought about my options. 

Probably Elwood would not be excited about coming to give me a jump in the dark and in the sleet, I thought to myself. Probably the thing to do was to get an Uber home and then sort out the van in the morning. I was in the middle of explaining via text when someone knocked on my window. He was holding a portable battery charger.

Of all the parking spaces in the giant lot, he had chosen the one next to me. Of all the times he could have left the church, he arrived at his vehicle just as I was trying to start mine. Of all the things he could have kept in his trunk, he had a portable battery charger. And when he heard that woeful click-click-click, he said to himself, "Even though it's dark and sleeting and I don't know that woman, I'm going to help her out." 

"For a minute I wondered if you were an ANGEL of the LORD," I told him earnestly as I listened to the happy hum of my engine.

That night I was finishing the rosary in bed, thinking through the list of all the people I include in my daily prayers. WAS I FORGETTING ANYONE? WHAT IF I FORGOT SOMEONE? An image popped into my head: the man's face above the charger, seen dimly through the window. And I thought about how I am surrounded by that great cloud of witnesses. I thought about the angelic protection and the saintly intercession that shield and enfold me whether or not I can see them, whether it is a calm and trusting kind of day or a white-knuckle clenchy-teeth kind of day. I am hemmed in behind and before, I thought. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me.

Poured Out

This morning it was almost time for the Eucharistic ministers to disperse to their stations when I heard a patter and a gasp. Something went wrong when the priest tried to hand off the next-to-last ciborium, and hosts rained down on the floor. 

I've posted before about the logistical challenges it creates for Catholics to take John 6 literally. To believe that the Eucharist is the body of Christ is to accept an immense responsibility.

The pastor and a couple of the ministers knelt quickly and began to pick up the hosts. The associate left his spot and came over to help. I wasn't sure if I should help too, or if I would just be in the way. The associate touched my elbow. "Maybe just stay put, Jamie," he said. He pointed to a host right next to my shoe. I hadn't seen it against the pale marble floor. 

In just a few minutes we had a pile of dropped hosts on the altar and none on the floor. You could see from the look on his face that the Eucharistic minister involved felt terrible. On another day I might have thought to myself, "I'm SO GLAD that wasn't me," but today I felt only a surge of tenderness toward him. He was the oldest of us, and I thought about all the years through which his brain has faithfully signaled his hands so he could use them to work and play and serve. I wondered if he might have a diagnosis that made it harder for his brain to send those signals or for his hands to receive them, and I caught a quick and flaming glimpse of God's compassionate love for this aging man.

I thought about all the spills I have mopped up in my home over the years, as preschoolers learned about gravity and bigger kids learned that distractions make puddles. In my better moments I can respond with kindness and efficiency: it's okay, sweetheart; run and grab some dish towels quickly. To be human is to make messes and break things, to cause hurts and frustrations. 

It's especially fitting, I think, that today happened to be the first Sunday of Advent. Our pastor had just exhorted us in his homily to spend some time contemplating Our Lord's willingness to be vulnerable, to entrust himself to a race that cannot manage to stop making messes and breaking things, causing hurts and frustrations. I thought about Philippians 2, and its description of the Redeemer who poured himself out for us. I thought about the hosts spilled on the floor, a vivid reminder that Jesus still pours himself out for us, still loves us with unimaginable generosity through the messes and the breakages, the hurts and frustrations.

And I distributed Holy Communion with more tenderness and more urgency than usual, praying that we might all have eyes to see this December: the glory set aside, the love enfleshed.

Hidden in my heart

My husband and our 20yo were talking about psalms this evening, and my husband said there was really only one psalm everyone knows: Psalm 23. I said, What? I said, Excuse me? I said, Let's begin at the beginning.

I never knew my great-grandfather, but my grandmother always told me that his favorite part of the Bible was Psalm 1: blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly. "Like a tree!" I told them. "Planted by streams of water! That bears its fruit in due season!"

I wound up grabbing my Bible and flipping all the way through the psalms. There are stretches where almost every psalm is a treasure (that stretch from 90-99 gets my vote for highest density of truly excellent psalms) and stretches where things are a little less persuasive (I'm not a big fan of 70-79, myself). Personal faves: 19, 27, 29, 37, 40, 42, 46, 62, 67, ALL THE NINETIES ESPECIALLY 96, 100, 117 (so concise!), 121, 150.

In the late 80s and early 90s, when I was in college and round #1 of grad school, there were a kazillion upbeat psalm settings floating around. Does this ring a bell for anybody else in my demographic? Standing there, O Jerusalem, in your gates unto the house of the Lord? Ascribe to the Lord, O heavenly beings? They were sometimes rather fractured syntactically, but we sang them enthusiastically nonetheless. The pastor of the evangelical church I attended in college challenged me to memorize the letter to the Ephesians, which was kind of a project, and then after that he recommended that I take 5 psalms and make them my own.

Phase 2 of Operation Learn The Psalms commenced in the mid-90s. Have I told you the story of getting started with the Liturgy of the Hours? One of the priests at the Newman Center wanted to encourage students to learn to pray the Divine Office. One night at a Bible study he walked us through Evening Prayer (which felt like it lasted approximately two weeks). Another time I picked up Shorter Christian Prayer from the rack of books for sale in the chapel, and found a post-it note inside in his handwriting. It said, "This is a great prayer book! I give it 4 stars! ★★★★" I bought the book, and kept the note in it for years. It was the beginning of a daily LoTH habit that has carried me from young adulthood into middle age. To pray the Office is to learn the psalms.

When I flipped to Psalm 103 it reminded me of the Godspell soundtrack, which I popped in as an accompaniment to our laundry-folding and our dinner. "And like an eagle he renew-ew-ew-ews the vigor of thy youth!" My 20yo says he's contemplating a Psalm 110 tattoo. And I can't say that I'm enthusiastic about tattoos on my offspring, but it's harder to argue with a Psalm 110 tattoo.

Tell me your favorite psalms, please, and your favorite 80s-90s psalm settings.

One or the other but not both

I can't remember why I decided to go to the training for new Eucharistic ministers, and I can't remember how long ago it was, but I do remember that I was consumed by anxiety about the role.

Whether or not you're Catholic, you know that communion is a big deal for Catholics. We believe that when Jesus said "my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink," that's what he meant. Ditto for "the one who feeds on me will have life because of me." Before I was a Catholic I thought this was the most preposterous wackadoodle bananapants idea that anybody's brain ever spat forth, even though my own Bible had John 6 in it. It was an issue for me even in the week before my entry into the Church in 1992, but I encountered the Lord powerfully in the Adoration chapel after that Holy Thursday service. And oh-- when I received communion two days later, I went back to the pew and trembled with the magnitude of what I had done.

So I am still totally willing to acknowledge that it sounds like the most preposterous wackadoodle bananapants idea anybody's brain ever spat forth, but I also believe it is the truth.

The very idea of the Eucharist creates some logistical difficulties. What should we do if someone drops a full chalice? If it's plain old wine, you sop it up with a dishrag and toss it in the wash. If it's the Precious Blood, it's more complicated. What do you do if a kid takes the host but stashes it in his pocket instead of consuming it? What do you say to someone who wants to receive but doesn't seem to know the drill? Imagine my scrupulous tendencies as a pack of yapping foxhounds. The prospect of distributing communion was like a hunting horn, sending them into a frenzy of baying and yipping. 

It's a little weird that I went to this training. And it's also weird that I stuck with it, because my first few experiences were stressful. On the one hand, I want everybody who comes to our church to feel welcome there; on the other, I feel protective about the Eucharist. When someone responded, "Yeah, thanks" instead of "Amen," I would second-guess my reaction, no matter what it was. But you guys, distributing communion became a channel of palpable grace. People would come through the communion line and I would get this flash, this brief intense glimpse, of how much God loves them. Sometimes I couldn't even say the words "the Body of Christ" aloud, because the immensity of God's generosity literally took my breath away. So I would mouth the words and look at them with love, and the whole thing would leave me a little weak in the knees. 

Here is the thing I am finding: I can't switch back and forth between the baying-foxhounds vigilance and the recognition of God's tender personal love for each person in my line. A couple of weeks ago I was in that happy groove where I just wanted to sing out "BEHOLD YOUR GOD!" to every person who came forward, and I was too slow on the uptake about a person who was almost certainly not Catholic. If I am focused on vigilance, on preventing the next PZ Myers from obtaining a host in my particular communion line, I cannot see the transcendence of the moment. There must be a middle ground. I am sure there is a middle ground. It's just that I seem to yaw from one side to the other.

I am finishing the gospel of John this week, and I am thinking again about Our Lord's willingness to pour himself out for those who did not understand his generosity -- which is all of us, really. I was struck tonight by this post at Where Peter Is, about God's choice to become vulnerable. If it were not November I would hide this post in my drafts folder, because drafting it has left me feeling vulnerable. It could inspire some capital-O Opinions about the right amount of vigilance for a Eucharistic minister. Mostly the point I wanted to make was this: I am learning to see how much God loves my neighbor, and her neighbor, and his neighbor. It takes my breath away. It's all too easy to lose sight of it.

Aflame

Yesterday I kicked off the morning with a mammogram. It was better than eating a live frog, for sure, though I have to say that the day improved from there. Breast cancer is not a thing that keeps me up at night, but it was the second time in ten days that I had paid someone to assess the possibility that a tumor might be snaking its tentacles through my body. Afterward I walked to the office through the autumn leaves, thinking about mortality.

I always think about dying in the fall. I probably post about death more than your average blogger-in-good-health -- there was this post in the fall of 2005, and another one five years later -- but I think about dying every November, whether or not those thoughts surface in a post. It's been on my mind more than usual this year.

Last week I went in for my annual skin check. I have the right amount of melanin for a person living at the 55th parallel, where my g'g'g'g'g'g'g'g'great-grandmothers lived out their lives, but I spent the first half of my childhood at the 30th. This was in the 70s, when sunblock was widely regarded as an affectation that prevented a person from attaining a healthy bronzed glow. I have had multiple blistering sunburns, and no amount of SPFing in the present will undo that history. So every year I haul myself into the dermatologist's office.

I was sitting on the table as she checked out my face, my thoughts far away. I wasn't expecting her to say anything about my face, because I look at my face every day. My back, maybe. Or my legs-- I can't see them clearly in the shower, with my glasses off, and it's no longer shorts season so they're mostly covered up the rest of the time. But she stopped suddenly, and handed me a lighted magnifying mirror. "Is this a new bump?" she wanted to know.

I frowned. I did not actually recognize that bump, despite the fact that it had taken up residence on my own personal face. "Would it be all right if we biopsied that bump?" the dermatologist asked. Yes indeed, I replied, thinking of a Twitter acquaintance recently diagnosed with metastatic melanoma. Biopsy anything you want to biopsy.

There was a release form, and a stinging injection of lidocaine, and murmured instructions to the assistant. "Left-side goma," I heard her say, and I wanted to whip my head around and demand more information. "Goma?!"I wanted to wail. "What's a GOMA? How can I not know what a GOMA is if I taught anatomy of the face to college students?" I did not whip my head around and demand more information, and a second later the syllables rearranged themselves in my brain: left zygoma.

It is a little weird how much better I feel about life challenges when I can spell them correctly.

The smell of burning hit my nose as she cauterized the biopsy site. Bandage, instructions, handshake-- off she went. I headed into the October sunshine, feeling wobbly and uncertain. Rational Jamie was trying to jolly Wobbly Uncertain Jamie into a better state of mind. Basal cell carcinoma is annoying but not a big deal, she said. This will be fine either way, she said. Wobbly Uncertain Jamie remained wobbly and uncertain, not willing to become a person with a cancer diagnosis of any stripe.

I got the biopsy results back earlier this week. Negative, thankfully.

The older you get, the more people you know whose biopsies and mammograms were not reassuring. The farther you travel through this life, the clearer it becomes that alive is a temporary state. I scuffed through fallen leaves on a perfect autumn morning, thinking again about the trees. Somehow they perceive the dying of the year, as days shorten and temperatures fall, and they respond not with a defeated slump but with a blaze of glory, russet and gold and impossible crimson. 

My route from the hospital took me up a street I don't usually travel and there I saw a baby tree, shorter than I am. It was dwarfed by its neighbors but it shone out more brightly than any of them, its leaves a stunning scarlet.

"That's what I want to be," I said to the Lord, not for the first time. "Let your glory and your beauty shine through me. Turn my awareness of my mortality into something lovely. Set me ablaze with the fire that does not consume."

So good and so surprising

Over the past few months, I've been directing a sizable slice of my creative energy toward our parish's retreat team. It was a really joy-filled responsibility, and it was kind of a lot of work. I wasn't sure how I would keep the balls in the air once the semester started, but I figured I'd muddle through somehow. 

Last weekend was the retreat, and there are a few things I especially want to remember about it. I was our team's spiritual director, which meant that I was in charge of spiritual formation during our preparations. On the weekend, I was expected to be available for women who needed to talk. The big difference between those two things is that the former offered me lots of opportunities to work in advance. If I wasn't quite sure which direction to head in when I had an idea, I could chew on it and pray over it and eventually come to a conclusion. You can't really do that with a person in the throes of a spiritual crisis.

So here is the weird thing: each of the three women who wanted to talk to me over the weekend needed something that I felt prepared to offer. It wasn't the conscious, deliberate preparation I'd been doing for our team meetings. It was the preparation of past sufferings, of shared experiences.

The weirdest part of all: for a long time I have battled anger and bitterness about one of the substance abusers in my life. If you added up the number of times I have thought about smacking her, it would be a large number. If you added up the number of tears I have shed over her, it would even larger. I have never prayed more faithfully for anything than I have prayed for her to be free, but she is not sure she would like to be free just yet. I did not really want to read all those dumb books about substance abuse, but I pored over them anyway in hopes of finding something useful for her. As I prayed and as I learned, compassion snuck up on me.

On the weekend I spoke with someone who needed that painfully acquired perspective. Until recently, I could not have spoken with genuine compassion about the issue that was weighing her down, but I believe God used my past sorrows to lighten her load in a small way. I understood at least a little bit of what she needed that night, and why. I was able to offer some concrete judgment-free assistance in the moment, and to run interference for her the next day.

I have complained so fiercely about the relentless willful folly of the person who has taught me most of what I know about substance abuse. I never suspected it might be preparation.

The next morning I mused to the retreat director over breakfast, "You know, Veronica, God is so good and so surprising."

I'm still thinking about that.

The Vulnerability Hangover

Back at the end of April Andrea left a comment about a vulnerability hangover. I had never heard of such a thing, but it made immediate sense to me-- an apt description of the regretful naked feeling that surfaces when you wonder if you've shared too much.

I'm feeling that way right this minute, actually.

Back in the spring a friend asked me if I would take on a leadership role for the fall women's retreat. Yes, I told her; yes, definitely. It felt like a clear call. Soon afterward I was in the shower when I was seized by an idea for our first meeting. I shut off the water and ran to the office in a towel so I could write it all down. We would reflect on Genesis 3, and on 2 Corinthians 4, and I had just the funny story to lead in with, and and and--

In the moment it seemed clear to me that the Holy Spirit was at work. As our first meeting drew nearer I was less convinced. Maybe it was a weird idea. Maybe it would be uncomfortable. Maybe I should buy one of those books with pink covers filled with Reflections for Busy Women or whatever and read one of those aloud. Let the professionals do the heavy lifting.

And then I went to Mass last weekend. First reading: Genesis 3. Second reading: 2 Corinthians 4. Gospel: perfect wrap-up for the central point I was making about the other readings.

How's that for freaky-deaky??? If you're not Catholic, you might not be aware: that trio of readings only appears once every three years. Here it was, the last set of Sunday readings our team would hear before we began our preparation. And here's something else freaky-deaky: I was telling myself back in the spring that I shouldn't fret about the challenges of creating new reflections each week. "God will provide at the right time," I told myself. In the wake of that Twilight Zone moment at Mass I realized I had a clear direction: I'll dive a little deeper into the Sunday readings at each of our meetings. We can mix it up -- individual reflections, small group conversations, some large-group sharing -- but that will be my framework. I won't have to come up with Eleven Saints You Should Know or Eleven Fruits of the Spirit Except Wait There Are Actually Only Nine.

And yet-- here I sit, feeling a little vulnerable. If you leave it to the professionals, it's less personal when people don't like the thing you've planned and prayed over. So. If you're a pray-er, I'd appreciate a quick one-- that I could stay out of my own way, and give these women what they need.

Things I love about Alpha

When I was first asked to help out with an Alpha course at my parish I was skeptical. I thought it would be too focused on the lowest common denominator and too Protestant. It turns out that I love Alpha.

If you're not familiar with it, Alpha is a 10- or 11-week introduction to the Christian faith that encourages skeptics to come with their questions. It welcomes everybody; it makes no assumptions about anybody's starting point. You eat dinner together, you watch a video together, and you talk about the video over dessert and coffee. In the middle of it you spend a chunk of a weekend together learning about the Holy Spirit.

Part of what I love about Alpha is Nicky Gumbel, an Anglican vicar who converted from atheism as a college student. I love his enthusiasm; I love his accent.* (You already know I get excited about British accents, even though they added some Americanisms ("sweater" instead of "jumper," e.g.) to his script.) I helped out with one Alpha course in which all of the videos were just Nicky Gumbel talking, which was fine by me. More recently, there are globe-trotting younger people appearing in the videos, but the content seems to be mostly the same. 

I love Alpha's focus on lives redeemed: prisoners, post-genocide Rwandans, people healed and transformed. There are so many powerful stories.

I love the structure of the Alpha program, the way you ease into knowing each other week by week. Tonight at my table I was laughing uproariously with this group of people I barely knew, or didn't know at all, in January. (Topic under discussion: how high-maintenance can a romantic partner be, and does it make a difference if s/he is extremely attractive?) The early weeks of discussion sometimes limp along, but I love to watch people unfurl themselves a bit at a time like slo-mo human peonies. Maybe that's actually kind of a creepy visual but we'll just go with it, shall we?

I didn't expect Alpha to touch my own heart the way that it did, to remind me that the goodness of God surrounds me on all sides. Alpha has taught me how to quiet my heart and rest in God's love for me.

Tonight as I was walking out the door the director said, "I'm going to call you in the fall to see if you're up for another round!" "You do that," I told him. I'm a little sad that it's over.