May 2022

Prayer and action bring transformation of ourselves and society

We pray for peace to no avail; for a time of healing, but terror comes instead (Jeremiah 8:15)

We religious people are often accused of saying “Our thoughts and prayers are with you,” and then doing nothing to help. Apparently this has sometimes been a problem with us.

“If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,” but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it?” James 2:15-16

So we should not pray that mass shootings will end but do nothing to be a part of the solution or a comfort and support to all who are traumatized and grieving. We can’t expect God to do things we should be doing, should we? After all we are his hands and his feet and his love in this world.

The secular world may mock the power of prayer but prayer is transformative both for us and for the world.

Another temptation right now besides prayer without action is for us to take refuge in our ideologies. This is normal these days. It happens every time there is a mass shooting, doesn’t it? The same arguments and nobody listens to anyone and nothing changes. We should remember that everyone is heartbroken about the school shooting of little children and their teachers in Uvalde. No one is left untouched or unbroken by this tragedy. This we have in common.

A challenge I want to issue is to avoid praying without taking action, and for us not to take refuge in ideology but to take refuge in God. This will read like a copout to some but it isn’t. As Fr. Richard Rohr so aptly says, when we pray “Thy Kingdom come,” we are also saying, “My kingdom go.” God is ultimate Reality, and he is Truth Itself. He will not only share his truth with us, he will strengthen us to bear it and lead us into the right actions because we are really asking with open hearts.

In open-hearted prayer we set ourselves aside. We put away our own agendas and open ourselves to God’s agenda. Not only that, we will see one another there in God too. As the people of the Focolare movement say, “We can be one with anyone at any time in all things but sin.” With these attitudes of humility, willingness and openness to unity, we will be praying humbly with love of God and love of our brothers and sisters. This is the kind of prayer that really works, prayer that changes the world and changes us.

I suggest an ancient prayer form called Lectio Divina (Holy Reading.) There are five steps to this prayer.

Let’s try using Psalm 25 for our prayer today.

Step One Lectio: First, slowly and reflectively read a passage of the Bible three times, paying special attention to any word or phrase that catches your attention.

Step Two Meditatio: Quietly ponder the word or phrase that stands out to you slowly repeating it in silence. Asking the Lord what he is saying to you in this Word, brought to your attention by the Holy Spirit.

Step Three Oratio: When you receive light on what God is saying in your soul through that word or phrase, now respond back to God in prayer, perhaps asking for all that you need to carry out his will, or maybe in praise and thanksgiving; whatever is appropriate.

Step Four Contemplatio: Rest now in simple love, in communion with him for a time.

Step Five Actio: Like Mary after the Annunciation, arise with haste and act on what you have received in prayer! (Luke 1:39) Take Jesus, as his hands and feet and heart, into this tragedy in whatever way God has led you to do in prayer.

Most likely we aren’t going to pray this way once and experience the immediate response from God that we do when we make a phone call. God is usually very subtle and so are the movements of our souls. It takes practice, persistence and grace as well as time before we learn to listen and discern. However, even after a few days with this kind of prayer you will notice a difference.

And don’t forget:

Indeed, the word of God is living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12)
God’s word always accomplishes what God sends it to do.

So is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. (Isaiah 55:11)

Even if we feel nothing, we can have faith in the Word of God, and in his purpose. What we are doing is opening ourselves to be “channels of his divine will into this world” (from a prayer by Fr. Adrien van Kaam.)

Over time we will find ourselves transformed, and in a mysterious way, we will have planted the seeds of transformation in the world around us as well.

Our society needs more than assistance, more than laws, more than debate and problem solving, more than access to psychological help. It needs all of these but beneath all of them we need change within.

May the Lord make each of us channels of his peace.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.
St, Francis of Assisi

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May 31, 2022 0

Christian love: is it fake?

What is Christian love? After my conversion to Catholicism (quite a leap from the way I was raised which was without religion,) my family had adjusting to do. My brother was the person I was closest to. We were symbiotic and as my mom said, “joined at the hip.” For me to make such a radical change in my world view seemed like a kind of betrayal by me. In the beginning we argued. I would say I loved him, which wasn’t especially well received when he was mad. Once he said, “I don’t want your ‘Christian love.‘ I just want you and YOUR love.” This upset me. I thought “What’s the difference?”

Pondering this interaction on the drive home, I realized what he meant and what his fear was. When we were kids my parents were very young, idealistic and nonconformist. We looked different. Our Hippie family was ill treated in the small Texas town my parents had moved to for school in 1968. It was a college town, yes, but unbelievably conservative. They did not allow women into the University unless they were married to a male student until 1972.

A lot of people who said they were Christian didn’t let us play with their kids, talked mess about our parents right in front of us, were harsh and cold with my brother and me and we didn’t understand why. We saw them as alienating people with fake smiles, and vacant eyes who were prone to heartlessness. When they said anything about loving us for Jesus’ sake it just sounded like they didn’t want to “love us” (whatever that meant) but Jesus wanted them to play nice. Which they didn’t.

My brother was afraid I would now love him in some generalized fake way, judging him as a person the whole time. It took him time and experience with me as a Catholic to disabuse him of that notion.

What does Christian love really mean? What does it mean to love someone for Jesus’ sake? I do think sometimes people don’t go very far with this. Maybe sometimes we do think it means to play nice.

Someone on social media told me he was tired of the Church being “the Church of nice.” I said I knew we weren’t supposed to be “the Church of Nice.” No we are supposed to be the Church of radical love.

I’m still working this out. All of us are, as my granny used to say, “full of prunes.” We don’t know what we’re talking about and we think we do. We think better of ourselves sometimes than we really are. We can wake up feeling like we love everybody and we hate everybody by 2 O’clock, or at least we hate several people. Some people. I’m no different. Sometimes I tell Jesus, “I know I’m not allowed to hate that guy. I know you love him, I know.” I tell him all about it. Then there is a glimmer, a hint, of what Jesus feels for that person, and I can’t go on with my tirade or hot headed attitude. I can perceive my self both as the fool I am and the affection and love God has for me. Most of the time peace comes to me pretty quickly if I’m willing. Life is so hard and I don’t know why it has to be so hard. It just is.

In that glimmer of understanding and touch of peace, I think lies the answer of the beginning of Christian love, real love, personal love for a unique and unrepeatable human being we may not know as well as we could, or a transformed love for someone we know as we know ourselves.

He has put into my heart a marvelous love
– Psalm 16:3a

Christian love comes from union with Christ, the transforming love of “putting on the new self.” (Eph. 4:24. This is how we begin to love others as Jesus loves us. (See Jn. 13:34.) I don’t think this ability comes from baptism alone. I think it comes from prayer and time spent consciously in God’s presence. It is prayer that taught me how to love more fully, to examine my inner motivations and attitudes toward others and myself. Prayer and fledgling love of God inspired me to own up to my character defects and wrongheaded, prideful or selfish way of loving- even my brother.

With prayer and being with God we receive a new clarity and freedom of heart. This doesn’t happen right away. It takes so much time that often I get frustrated with myself. I have to remember that God will “complete the good work he has begun in [me.]”

For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will complete it by the day of Christ Jesus.
Philippians 1:6

Teresa of Avila wrote about detachment in relationships, especially in Chapter 7 on spiritual friendship in her book The Way of Perfection. “Detachment” sounds cold to us today. Based on my own experience I think I know what she means a little bit that we can apply here. This doesn’t mean less love for someone! It really means a detachment from self, from selfishness in our relationships.

How do we do that? Admittedly I don’t have this figured out yet. However, there is a lot of mystery involved so I don’t blame myself for that!

Similar to our efforts and experience of prayer there is an active part to this new kind of human love, and a mystical part.

The active part is more obvious. We decide to be more self aware to notice what to let go of in our ways of relating. Some of this is simple. Let’s have a look at my brother and me. When he went to rehab at age 16, we learned from the staff there how to better communicate. At first we felt silly like we had to learn to talk all over again and we would get tired of it sometimes and revert to old ways. Or we lost our tempers and had outbursts. We talked about this. We decided to see our progress. The progress was we noticed what we were doing wrong. Then with practice we got where we noticed even before we were mean and stopped ourselves. Then later, we didn’t even think about being mean anymore. Or controlling. Or selfish anymore. This is basic stuff for some people but to us it was a whole new fish bowl.

In the mean time I was learning to pray. I must have been quite an emergency to God because he set about teaching me what real love felt like right away. It was the way he loved me, and the way I learned to love him back. His love is simple and tender and clear. It stops the thoughts and worries running through your mind and you don’t even think “Hey I’m being loved.” It just is.

My own love started to simplify itself, both my love for God and my love and regard for other people. I learned to listen to people in the same way I was learning to listen to God. This took work and came from an urging I think was from him, that I do so. But the transformation took time.

My brother decided I was still me and that he didn’t have to worry about me turning into someone else or loving him in some impersonal creepily fake way. He noticed me growing as a person and that he could translate my new language of spirituality into his own understandings about life and his pragmatic view of spiritual things. He noticed I judged him less, not more. Sometimes, like his early sober days, we reverted to old fears in our relationship, both of us afraid of not being accepted as were were. We both learned, we both grew. We learned to accept one another.

And that’s how it is. What do you know? When we are able to love someone in a Christly way, they don’t just experience Jesus through us, we experience Jesus through them as well, whether they are Christian or not. We want to know a person better when we meet them and we know that every one of them belongs. We may not know how we know, but we know.

And pretty soon the whole thing gets out of control and our way of loving grows a new dimension. The world opens up and the possibilities are endless.

What does God say about this?

Beloved,
we are God’s children now.
What we shall be
has not yet been revealed.
However, we do know that when he appears
we shall be like him,
for we shall see him as he really is.
1John 3:2

Applied to learning to love others, I take this to mean in this case that we are already God’s children, but we ourselves are a mystery unfolding, known only to God. The closer we get to the Lord, the more we are transformed as we come to know him and love him as he is, which is for himself; the way he loves us. We will not be perfect at this in this life. However we can cultivate God’s kind of love through prayer, self awareness, God awareness, and the service he inspires. In his mysterious way he will work his beautiful will in us all our lives more and more in pathways of love.

And then we have so much to look forward to: the absolute fullness of love, the fullness of God and union with him.

May 6, 2022 1

On the revocation of Roe v. Wade

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I feel like I can’t be happy about this and I can’t be sad either. I understand too well how this feels to the other side- that a good share of women feel that their bodily autonomy is being violated by the (mostly male) powers that be. Sexual assault survivors are particularly sensitive to this and many are triggered into PTSD symptoms today. Many women are terrified right now. I can’t rejoice because of that.

I can’t be sad about this situation either, however, because I believe that the unborn child is worthy of protection. Every human life is worthy of protection.

I can’t be happy because of the suffering this will cause and the fact that the burden of it will fall on women and girls who are without money or resources. Rich women will always be able to get an abortion that they won’t die from or be physically harmed by.

I am morally puzzled by the idea that the authority over life and death should go to the states. It seems inappropriate. If this revocation of Roe v. Wade has to do with protecting human life abortion should be illegal everywhere.

Those with the means can simply go to a state where it is legal.

I also know through many a conversation that too many intensely pro-life people more often than not seem not to care one bit about the poor and tend to blame them for their suffering, as well as support policies that deny more of a safety net, or even simply reasonable help for struggling single moms who are trying to get an education, and other policies that keep the working poor poor. This decision will keep generations of families trapped in poverty. I am skeptical that there will be any realistic remedy for that outcome.

I am troubled because it seems to me that some people’s desire for abortion to be illegal is only a wish to punish women for their perceived promiscuity or their wanting to sidestep their “proper sphere” of motherhood.

I can’t be sad today -because I want abortion to end. I can’t be happy because I don’t think this is the way abortion will end compassionately. And compassion is everything to me. I am obviously ambivalent but I can’t imagine condoning the violent act of tearing apart a helpless human life. I understand everybody. And it makes me just sad today… but not really.

I won’t be at any protests over this ruling. Of course not. Nor will I be gloating about it because it isn’t a real victory until the causes of abortion are fully addressed.

It’s been hard for me to find my home in the pro-life movement for the above reasons and some others too that maybe I will write about at another time. When I found Feminists for Life of America I was relieved. Now there is also New Wave Feminists. I included these links because perhaps you feel as I do; that there has to be a better way. Maybe I should say there has to be more. We need to be “pro-life for the whole life.” And we need women to truly be as important to us as our pro-life convictions.