I, like many, have been struggling with acceptance since Nov. 5th. Ive been thinking HOW are we, how am I, going to make it through this? I’ve made some plans, thought of some things to do to assist others who will be most affected. But I realized that one thing that could help is acceptance. It sounds obvious but sometimes it takes me a while to realize that I am in non- acceptance – which is the most painful, sticky place to be. If stuck in a glue trap or a spiders web, struggle only impedes escape. I – and we- have a lot of work to do, a lot coming that we will have to deal with. If you are familiar with AA and Al-Anon maybe you will recognize this:
“The level of my Serenity is directly proportional to the level of my acceptance.” – Alcoholics Anonymous, The Big Book
We should not accept what is evil, thats not what I’m saying. But for me it’s been hard to accept that this is where we are. Trump is here along with his clown car of malignant crazies. Yes they are cruel and destructive and authoritarian, racist, “Christian” nationalist, anti planet, sexist -etcetera etcetera, everything horrible. They are. But until I can quit being shocked every day by the awful things they say and do I can’t be very useful and I certainly will be emotionally drained. I’m chuckling a little thinking of how the Twelve Steps of AA would sound applied to Trump but maybe the idea of acceptance and sorting out areas of powerlessness from areas of responsibility and possibility is a pretty good idea.
Sometimes I listen to a spiritual speaker named Tara Brach. She is Buddhist but her talks can apply to anyone. She talks about having a heart ready for anything. To have that you need acceptance of the fact of what’s here. This is here. It “belongs” so to speak. Here we are. Am I going to go into this kicking and screaming? Or can I relax and untangle the web, roll out of the glue trap, and be open to what the Spirit is asking of me in these times ? I suspect there will be many glue trap days. But I can return to the first three steps of the twelve:
That I am powerless over the fact that for the next four years this is our government, yes, of madmen. Here they are. And I admit that my inner life has become unmanageable because of my reaction to this fact.
I believe that a power greater than myself can restore me to sanity.
I become willing to turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understand him.
I think the 11th step is a big part of this too: I seek “through prayer and meditation to improve my conscious contact with God, praying only for the knowledge of his will for me and the power to carry it out.”
I do think intercessory prayer is going to be extremely important in what we are about to encounter. So I’m adding that of course, to my 11th step plans.
Sometimes the only way out is through. So let’s go through. And let’s do it with love.
And let’s remember this is also the Jubilee Year of Hope and we are Pilgrims of Hope.
Hate did not win. Love has not died. It never will. And we belong to love. Lies cannot become truth. They never will. And we belong to truth. Our country has not been overcome by darkness. Because our country has us.
if you’re dealing with a profound loss, the after effects of tragedy or post traumatic stress you may be feeling spiritually dead. Maybe you think you’ve lost your faith or that God has left you. It may be helpful for you to know there are neurological reasons for this apparent loss of your spiritual senses.
When there is a traumatic event or a terrible loss in our lives, our brains are actually affected. Trauma can disrupt the brain’s ability to process spiritual experiences by affecting its prefrontal cortex, amygdala, hippocampus, and temporal lobes. These areas are also involved in emotional regulation, memory, and our sense of self, even our feeling of connection with something greater than ourselves. Dysfunction in these regions can lead to a disconcerting loss of or distortion in a person’s spiritual life. It’s difficult for us to feel God with us, or to reach the peace we used to find in prayer and the practice of our faith.
The prefrontal cortex is responsible for self-reflection and focus. It helps us in practices like contemplative prayer and meditation by supporting awareness and attention. When this part of the brain is dealing with trauma we can’t seem to relax. We may feel void of any spirituality at all. Even the sacraments we believe in feel oddly empty as if we are merely spectators. Everything may seem meaningless to us now because the brain is preoccupied with stress and survival due to its injuries from trauma.
The amygdala and hippocampus process emotions, especially fear and joy. It gives us a sense of our life stories, of our own history. Spiritual experiences often evoke intense emotions and build on a relationship with God that we have developed over time. Trauma can even shrink the hippocampus . It may be hard to remember the love we once knew with God. Without this memory of the lived experience of God’s love and mercy, it’s hard to trust the Lord or that he is still there at all.
With post traumatic stress the amygdala becomes hyperactive, keeping our brains in a state of fear and hypervigilance. We might also feel emotionally overwhelmed and dysregulated making daily life difficult let alone communion with God.
The temporal lobes of the brain are associated with mystical experiences, and our perception of religious imagery. They also help us integrate our sensory experiences in life into spiritual meaning. Sustaining trauma can cause either overactivation or underactivation of the temporal lobes. This can lead to either intense visions or else fear-based religious thoughts. On the other hand, we may feel emotionally and spiritually blank. Where is God?
“God my God, why have you forsaken me?” Mark 15:33-34
Our anterior cingulate cortex helps us feel empathy and compassion. It’s also involved in the regulation of emotions and our sense of the Divine.The damage of trauma can impair the ACC. We may feel lost, cut off emotionally from our friends. We feel empty and alienated from people and God.
“Friend and neighbor you have taken away.
My one companion is darkness.” Ps. 88:18
The insula processes sensations and emotions, contributing to a sense of the nearness of God or a feeling of transcendence during prayer or meditation.Trauma can impair the functioning of the insula leading to either low body awareness or too much of it. We can feel a strange detachment from our bodies, unaware of even our physical needs. Conversely we may be overwhelmed by physical sensations, making it hard to relax or focus when we want to pray.
The good news is that contemplative prayer and meditation have been shown to be healing and even restorative to these areas of the brain impaired by trauma. Interior prayer practices and meditation can calm the amygdala, improve prefrontal cortex regulation, and enhance the connectivity of the ACC and insula, restoring emotional balance and renewing our sense of connection.
It means a lot to me that Jesus experienced trauma and that he allowed himself to descend into the depths of the abyss of abandonment when he cried out from the cross his desolation.
St. John of the Cross taught about the “Dark Night of the Soul,” a phase of the spiritual life of many Christian contemplatives and mystics, which seems to have similar effects as trauma does on our prayer life. St. John of the Cross wrote that “in the dark night of the soul, bright flows the river of God.” He teaches us that God is nearer than ever before at times we feel he is farthest away. He says to go on “naked faith” and not to give up.
I have found it true that “God is close to the broken hearted, those whose spirit is crushed he will save.” (Psalm 34:18)
So if you are grieving a tragedy, experiencing trauma or post traumatic stress, and your’re having trouble with spirituality as a result don’t blame yourself. You haven’t done anything wrong. Nor have you lost God.
We know Mary and Joseph were holy and faithful people but they still lost Jesus for three days. Maybe you feel bereft but he is still there in the temple of your heart and you will find him again just as they did.
It’s ok to pray in ways you can handle. Don’t hold yourself to what you used to do. For me emotional overwhelm kept me from deeper methods of prayer after a tragedy in my life. I talked to Jesus about it. I told him, “I still love you. I just need you not to come so close for now. Can you sit farther away but still nearby?” So he sat with me but not too close. I chose what felt to me a less personal or emotional method of prayer. I memorized psalms, set prayers or passages from the mystics I love like St. Teresa of Avila and Julian of Norwich. When I could handle it I sat quietly and slowly went over them in my mind as a form of prayer/meditation. Other times all I could do was hold my rosary. These things slowly began to bring me peace again.
My friend Jim had said “the devil will try to kick you when you’re down and darkness tries to overwhelm you at times like this so keep doing the things that are of light: the rosary, going to mass, whatever you can do.” He said that would keep my lamp alight no matter what I was going through. He was right.
And after all:
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” John 1:5
I have been rather dysfunctional lately. I go to work (I still have one of my jobs) and I come home, do the minimum such as take care of my chickens cats and dogs. Then I lay in my bed and stare at the ceiling. My heart hurts. I feel like I am dying. It’s grief of course, for Zane, who died suddenly and unexpectedly August 22 of this year.
At the same time I have lost my job. I took care of Zane for about four years. I also take care of Mac, another special needs young man.
So I have lost my main job, my job with Zane, which is a crisis in itself. It’s hard to make decisions when you’re grieving and it’s not the best time to do it. However, I don’t have time to do this any other way.
I really love working with special needs young people. I seem to have a knack especially with those who are nonverbal. It is a calling I believe, to do this work. It’s a work that is love. It means a lot to me.
I interviewed with a new family. It went very well and they would love me to come work for them. I liked them too. I said I would let them know in a day or two. Then I cried in the car and had to go over and hug Zane’s mom. We sat on the couch and talked for a while about Zane, about things. Her loss is so great I had to stop typing for a few seconds just now thinking of it. I feel guilty talking about my own grief but I can’t help it.
When my mom got restless or had a problem she needed to think about, she re-arranged the furniture and cleaned madly. Sometimes she pulled up carpet or made new curtains and painted the living room to match. I’m not good at sewing. I don’t have money for paint. So I stuck with re-arranging the furniture and cleaning madly.
I talked to my friend Shawna who somehow manages to give me clarity when I need it. I continued to clean madly. My dogs were a little concerned.
I thought about how I am worried about the pay for a prospective new job which is far less than I made at my last. I wondered how I would pay the mortgage now. I finally got a house and I am not giving it up. I was thinking about what to do about that.
However the main issue is grief. It’s hard for me to think of replacing Zane and trying to love someone new already. I reflect that I have never failed to love anyone I have taken care of. In the nursing home where I did my clinicals there is no way to really get to know the people you care for. You take care of their immediate physical needs and even if they’re crying or something you have ten other patients you have to get to who need to be changed or whatever. Even then I always cared for each one in a loving way as best I could. That’s just how I do it. I can do this.
I have a daughter in college. I will do whatever I can to make sure she gets as far with her education as she wants to. She is busy applying for master’s programs lately. No matter what she is going. My other daughter has been going through hell this summer. It’s pretty unimaginable the way she is holding it together. However she needs me. Sometimes she needs my help. I’m going to be here ready.
If there is anything in my life I have learned to do it’s grieve and fight for my family at the same time.
I can work out the pay part somehow but I prayed about my next person to take care of. I think this could be the one I asked for or was led to. . I think I will try it and do my best.
The dogs needn’t worry. I think I am through cleaning for now.
I did not cry for nine years after you self destructed like a kamikaze in our midst. There are not even any pieces left to sort through. Where did you go and why couldn’t I stop you. We were closer than close and I should have known when you locked me out what was coming. We always said when we didn’t spend time together neither of us was right in ourselves so we should always make sure to connect no matter what was going on. You kept trying to apologize, trying to come back into our front porch days. You said “When I hurt you I hurt me and I can’t stand that I hurt your feelings. I hate that.” And I always said it was ok. I said we can work through anything just like we always have. I had faith in that. Absolute faith. How crazy did you have to be for me to not be surprised. Denial is more powerful than I ever thought. When you said “I’m scared I might be mentally ill,” I should not have reassured you that you weren’t. The last time I saw you I hugged you brother and I rubbed your little head. You looked like a small boy that day who had been sick, safe at his parents’ dinner table. Your letter to Dad said I would be OK. Well I’m not. None of us are. You must have hurt so badly to do something like that. You just needed it to stop. I thought oh he will be back like always. He just needs to think. I was so close. But I think you thought we were far away and you had no idea how to get back. You couldn’t find us. And you thought we couldn’t help. I finally cried the other night and it was about something else. It felt weird. It didn’t last long. I wish I could miss you the way I miss everyone else. But there is just a void where you used to be. Like the Mariana Trench. No one knows what’s down there, only how unfathomably deep it must be. I’ve been there. But I couldn’t understand anything.
700 years ago in Ireland a young girl left her home in the middle of the night as swiftly and silently as she could. She left with a priest, two household servants and a court jester who were her friends. She was not fleeing a forced marriage to a foreign prince or running away to a convent. She was running from her own father who seemed to have lost his mind after her mothers’ death and was trying to make his daughter marry him in her place.
Dymphna and her friends were able to make it to a Belgian town called Gheel.
She must have been a hard worker and had a compassionate heart. She and her friends established themselves in the town and Dymphna began caring for the sick and the poor. She had a special sympathy for people suffering from mental illness. She still shows that sympathy now through her intercession.
Eventually her father, who was a minor Irish king, found out where she was. He had her priest executed as soon as he arrived and demanded Dymphna return home. When she refused he beheaded her on the spot. She was 15.
The people of Gheel eventually built a church over where Dymphna was buried. Over the years it began to be noticed that healings happened at her tomb, especially healing from mental illness.
Inspired by St. Dymphna’s special concern for the mentally ill the people of Gheel began to take into their homes the pilgrims who came to visit Dymphna’s tomb. In a time when the mentally ill were chained, beaten and locked away the families of Gheel made these sufferers part of their households with acceptance, freedom, dignity and whatever level of responsibility they could handle. Some stayed for a short time, some for the rest of their lives becoming members of the family.
Gheel became famous for this model of family care that seemed to work so well. This tradition is still ongoing though now combined with a hospital that is only used when absolutely necessary, and with modern medicine as part of overall treatment.
Gheel’s example makes us want to rethink the way we treat the mentally ill, especially those whose conditions are severe. Gheel shows us how it could be.
Among us here the mentally unwell often end up without homes or anyone to assist them. Federal and state agencies set up to help these people are understaffed and overwhelmed. It is a testament to serious failures on our society’s part. To see some poor emaciated sufferer shouting and waving his arms at traffic with toilet paper wrapped around his legs as I did last week breaks the heart. It’s wrong and we know it. Unfortunately our state is last in mental health access in the country.
Gheel and St. Dymphna challenge us. How can we as people of faith contribute in a respectful and merciful way to necessary change, to the well being of people who suffer mental, emotional or neurological difficulties? Our society is not set up for them. How can we help? How can we change that?
Perhaps we can begin by asking for St. Dymphna’s intercession and inspiration.
St. Dymphna, healer of mental and emotional suffering, pray for us. Pray for everyone in mental or emotional pain, especially those left on the outskirts without resources. You inspired a whole town to take people with mental suffering into their homes so that they might live near you and the place you are buried. They still come and stay with you and the people of your town today. Help us build a culture of compassion and acceptance so these children of God can live with dignity among us as the people they are and so that the rest of us don’t miss out on what they can give, on their potential part in building community. Show us the way. Amen.
St. Dymphna’s feast day is May 15th. She is the patron saint of the mentally ill, victims of incest and domestic abuse, and runaways.
Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy times seventy times.
Mtt. 18 21-22
It’s been almost nine years but I’m still not sure whether I have forgiven it or not. I still struggle with how I am supposed to forgive someone who turned out not to be who I thought they were. Forgive who? What was that who was that?
In the aftermath I realized I was thinking of the whole mess about once every 15 seconds. I began training myself to repeat the names of Jesus and Mary any time I caught myself dwelling on the whole thing. I had dwelt on it long enough truly. I increased my prayer time. I decided to try to stop talking about it. It helped a lot. Slowly I didn’t think about it, not even every week.
I went to Confession. In exasperation I asked the priest, “How do I get to Father forgive them for they know not what they do?” He said my penance would be to go out and meditate on the crucifix in the church and ask the Lord, “Father forgive me for I knew not what I did.” Instant peace came to me then.
As time passed I realized that I “forgave” this person over and over again while they were still in my daily life but not in any real way because what I did was be upset about what they had done, avoid them for a while and then simply go on as before so that they did the same things again and again. My kids suffered emotional scars because of this lack of boundaries on my part. I let this person be with us for so long. At the time I didn’t realize how much the girls were harmed especially when they were still young. How did I fall into this trap? How could I not know how mean this person was being to them? Even the things I did know about them should have been bad enough. I should have not allowed this person around my daughters. I certainly did do things I didn’t know I was doing. Those mistakes seem crazy now.
Then at a time of another tragedy in my life, this person set out to ruin my reputation, blame me, interfere with my friendships and even my family relationships, to tell distorted versions of my private sufferings, commandeer one of my daughters with lies and emotional scenes when she needed me most and was too young ti break out of that situation. This person deeply hurt my other daughter as well during a time of grief and shock for my family with hateful accusations and not allowing her to retrieve what was hers and precious to her from the house. This person also participated in grave financial harm to me and one of my kids that we will never recover from. I was emotionally and socially betrayed on a level that was traumatic enough to keep me curled up on the couch for days. I never thought they would go that far especially at a time like that. Why was I shocked? I can’t answer that fully.
One thing I have learned from all this is that being a forgiving Christian does not mean having destructive people in my life. Even Jesus had boundaries.
But Jesus did not entrust himself to them because he knew their hearts.
Jn. 2:24
However I sometimes still feel angry at this person, even after I have peeled away several layers of resentment and reached certain levels of forgiveness. I didn’t feel that it was complete. Because of those feelings of rage coming up now and then, especially recently, I tend to think of this person every time I pray the Our Father. How can I forgive this person as God forgives me? God forgives me more than completely. God is mercy, God is love. I always ask that I will be able to do this. I have learned forgiveness is a grace. We just have to be willing to receive it. Was I willing? I didn’t know. My mom used to say that sometimes we have to ask to be willing. Other times we have to be ask to be willing to be willing. Sometimes the situation is so difficult we have to pray to be willing to be willing to be willing. I think this is like that.
Recently, sitting quietly in prayer, I felt that the Lord untangled my thinking a bit about what forgiveness looks like in a situation like this. In a flash I understood that all Jesus wanted from me now was to pray for this person’s salvation. I felt my heart open as it seemed the Holy Spirit prayed in me for just that: for this destructive person’s salvation. It was an understated but all the same beautiful moment. I understood that God did not need my tortuous worry about my lingering feelings about this, or the useless dead end paths of my self judgement or scrupulosity on this point. Just prayer for their salvation that is all. The rest was between that person and God. Oh.
Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
2 Cor. :8-9a
Then I prayed the our Father in freedom and when I said, “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” I almost felt a kiss from Jesus, and I had to smile. I love that guy.
July 6 is the feast of St. Maria Goretti, a Saint I love very much.
Loving her was not immediate for me. My appreciation of her has been more of a journey. I had to take a prayerful look at her life and my own life too. She became a good friend and has always been there for me.
As a survivor of child rape the way her story has most often been interpreted is disturbing to me. Holding her up to young people as a “model of purity” does not fit out current understanding of the dynamics of sexual abuse. I often read she “resisted a challenge to her purity.” She was eleven. She did not want to be raped. No one does. Abuse is not the child’s choice or fault. We know that though usually that is not how the child feels. Those feelings are hard to get over and can last a lifetime. Saying she was pure because she managed not to be raped and was murdered… instead? Can sound twisted to us survivors and not only to us, to anyone who knows much about these things.
Maria had survived the death of her father. Her mother had to go out and work the fields by herself. They had to share a house with another family. The other family had a disturbed young adult son. Maria had to take care of the house and the younger children. She was very gentle and kind. The young man thought she would be silent about his advances (most children are) and he was right. He thought she could be cowed into doing what he wanted. He was wrong. It’s not that I’m not proud of her for resisting, and for the way her thoughts even in those moments were on God. It’s amazing. She tried to persuade him with concern for his soul. He was angry with her for this and certainly for her noncooperation. So he murdered her, stabbing her fourteen times.
At the hospital her priest asked if she forgave her killer. She said she did. A lot of us are asked to forgive our abusers. It’s inappropriate for someone to ask that of us. I understand she was dying but that still bothers me. So many of us are asked to do this so we don’t make other people uncomfortable or mess up the status quo. So we are expected to carry the load alone so nobody has to deal with the relational and systemic consequences of us telling the truth. So I don’t like that he asked her that.
Later she appears to her killer in prison with fourteen lilies, one for each of her wounds. I love this. I love it because it shows that she did have the wounds. They are real and have meaning. He is confronted with that truth. However in Heaven her wounds are transformed and can become a gift to transform others; even the one who did the wounding. And he is transformed. He is converted and joins a monastery. He testified in the investigation for her cause of sainthood.
Something that moves me is that when she was exhumed her body was (and still is) incorrupt. Like Snow White she lies in a glass casket now. People come and pray and look at her.
What is God saying by this?
St. Eulogius wrote to St. Flora when she was about to be sent as punishment for being a Christian into a brothel, that even if her body was violated, her soul would remain pure. When I read about that I was very struck by it and I have remembered it for years. Abuse survivors don’t feel pure. We feel gross. I felt deeply flawed and somehow dirty all through childhood. It has taken years of work not to feel intense shame all the time. The idea and the trust that my soul is still pure regardless was profound for me.
I am sure that St. Maria felt violated by what happened to her. She was groomed and sexually propositioned at eleven years old. She was afraid of that man. That is already not OK. Just because he didn’t succeed in penetrating her doesn’t mean what she endured was not a sexual assault. He assumed like the “incels” of today that he was entitled to the bodies of women and girls, that they owed him access. He didn’t see her as a person deserving dignity and sexual autonomy. Her refusals enraged him and he brutally murdered her.
And that beautiful girl found healing in the arms of Jesus. She had been extremely devout. The love she always had with God carried her to Heaven and she was given the work of healing, real healing where the truth is brought to light and with God’s touch becomes a light for others.
He left her little body free of corruption to reveal to us the beauty of her bright soul treasured and healed in his heart, in his light.
Yes she is pure. She was always pure whether a man sexually assaulted her or not. Her body is holy and precious to God. He wants to show her to us. He wants us to know.
It’s a bit of a struggle. Some days are better than others. I noticed this summer that I was more emotionally fragile than I normally am. The anniversary of my brother’s death causes me grief but it hit me harder than usual this August. After it was over I didn’t feel all that much better. I had days I wondered what was going on with me this summer. When I start to feel alienated, withdrawn and broken I have to stop and sort out what it could be.
It could be regular old depression. It could be a stressor in my life. Or ten stressors. It could be that weird wiring I have from my Complex PTSS (formerly called PTSD). It could be grief issues coming up again for some reason. It could be more traumatic memories trying to surface – a process I particularly hate.
In any case I try to accept myself as God accepts me. Someone I like asked on social media whether God is with us in depression. It’s one thing to know the truth of his presence intellectually and quite another for our hearts, for our souls to know it. Of course he is with us.
Over the years when I am in this state that sometimes feels like a darkness and exhaustion, sometimes like broken-ness, sometimes like a crushing weight, I know he is with me, taking care of me, helping me bear this little cross of mine until I feel better.
It’s hard not to feel guilty when I’m depressed. Sometimes I need a walk or to pray. Other times I just need to hide in my room with a book. That last feels like I am being lazy and I feel bad. Jesus doesn’t want me to feel bad about what I need to do to get through depression. It’s hard for me to take care of myself when I am like this. It’s something I have to do for Jesus. “Eat a sandwich for me. Drink some water.” I tend to not only forget to eat when I am running rough, sometimes I feel angry about having to eat. So he says sweetly, “Eat something for me because I love you and I want you to.” And I will for him.
I’m so tired. I have this feeling of wanting to go home but I don’t know where I’m supposed to go. Even Heaven sounds exhausting.
Some afternoons are crushingly tough. Depression can be gray and tiring. Other times it can be a ferocious attack tearing me apart.
I’m impatient with my family, or irritable and I have to apologize.
This time around my depression seems like an agitated depression I have never had before. That scares me because my brother got like that before his suicide, though his was certainly more extreme. I think of this as a mild depression in comparison to what I saw my brother go through and not make it out of.
I am doing all the things I need to do. That in itself is a good sign. I even talked to my doctor; something I tend to avoid if at all possible. I try everything else first that I know to try. I look at my diet, stress, circumstances. I start taking B-Complex at my hardest time of day which tends to be the afternoon.
I look at the roses in the catalog. (I love looking at roses). I blow bubbles. I pet my cat.
I tell God, “I am depressed right now and I’m not sure what to do anymore. I’m so glad you are with me.”
Always I know it is temporary. I will get better. I imagine feeling better, sun on my face, feeling peaceful.
Now it is the holidays which are hard for my family and me, and maybe for you too. However I also know we will get through it, we all will.
If you are wondering if you should be “too blessed to be stressed” or something, (what nonsense), or if you are like me during depression and feel guilty about everything all the time every day, if you don’t know why your heart feels like it’s bleeding, and why you don’t have more faith, (you have plenty!) well I welcome you, and God does too.
Every second, love surrounds you, helping you along. This too shall pass, and once you have done all you can, and gotten the help you need, (I did, please don’t be ashamed about that) the rest is up to the Lord. Your job is to get through the day with his help.
Another thing I do is offer up my anguish to God with Mary, as she asked at Fatima, for the souls of others.
Oh Jesus, it is for love of you, for the conversion of sinners, and in reparation for the sins committed against your Sacred Heart and against the Immaculate Heart of Mary and, (I add), for everyone who suffers sorrow anywhere in the world today.”
I say to Jesus and Mary at the end of the day that I made it and thank you and also I add that I love sleeping and I’m comfortable and thank you for sleep.
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.
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.
Bethany Hang Out 