I Heard the Bells

I love a conversion story, whether it details the shift from absence of belief to the embracing of it, or perhaps a faith that isn't drawn upon or remembered, and suddenly something happens to jolt one into a new awareness.

I could read an entire book of conversion stories, and never grow weary of them. I stuck with Thomas Merton throughout his, and wasn't disappointed, as he transitioned from a college student swayed mostly by debauchery to newly baptized Catholic to a Trappist monk. And yes, that's quite a transition.

My own story is brief, and for some reason, or a myriad of reasons, I cannot share it in detail. Sometimes I feel like if I do, then I chip away at its meaning for me. Sometimes I feel like if I think about it too much, I start questioning its authenticity. When it comes to manifestations of God, I've always been more like Agent Mulder rather than Agent Scully. Agent Mulder believed in aliens, and not much else. Agent Scully believed in God, and always had a scientifically based rebuttal to Mulder's beliefs. (Oh, X-Files, I miss you!)

Unlike Agent Mulder, I do believe in God, but I always have questions. I don't embrace and believe as often as I'd like. So I worry that the more I examine my experience, the more likely I am to pick it apart, and chalk it up to coincidence or some other earthly reason. Additionally, there is the nagging suspicion that I am simply not worthy of God's voice. Why would He talk to me?

But He did. And, at least, that's the story I'm sticking to for now.

Sometimes when I think of the particular prayer I had said the night before my moment, and what I had asked for, I get this little chill. Goosebumps, I think, and laugh about it, like there's a bit of the Holy Spirit left in my memory of things, and it rises through firing neurons to manifest on my skin. To manifest in the remembering.

I think of my child -- who, at the time, was 3 years, 4 months old -- and how she answered my prayer the next morning. How she spoke of the concern I whispered in the dark of my room, as she slept. How she gave voice to wisdom way beyond her years in a single sentence.

Anne Lamott once wrote that she wished we could hear bells to announce the coming of grace in our daily lives, so we could embrace it more, and be aware of it. A celestial ding-dong to help us survive and deal.

I heard the bells, or rather felt them, but after, not before, when my eyes became ridiculously watery sitting across from my child, realizing at that moment God was talking to me. Me. And He was using my child to do it.

I wasn't faithless at the time. I was starting to re-explore, reading out of curiosity and starting to attend Mass again. So while perhaps my experience isn't exactly a conversion, I kind of view it as a divine kick in the pants. And I'm grateful for it.

Not worthy. But grateful.

Can Drunk People Be Sacred? Why, Yes!

I've been feeling rather spent, blog-wise. Life...it's busy, and I guess that's a good thing.

My most gigantic goal ever is trying to find the sacred in the every day, and sacred simply equals good. It doesn't entail rosy, watercolored angels coming down from the heavens, preceeded by the sound of church bells to announce their arrival.

I forget this ALL THE TIME. All the time. Especially when I tend toward the curmudgeon. I like to grumble. It's my way of dealing with stress. The problem, however, is that the grumbling can kind of take over, and become my go-to stance on viewing the world.

This past weekend, my husband and I were at a wedding. Lots of time for witnessing the sacred there, from vows being spoken out loud and shared to drunken revelry at the basement bar way past everyone's bedtime. Sometimes, it feels so good to gather with friends and be crazy. So a vodka tonic isn't nearly the same thing as bread and wine. It still felt like a Communion of sorts, with each person bringing their joy and messiness to the table.

In the morning, Dave and I had coffee by the beach, alone. Being the shore pre-season, there blessedly weren't too many people out and about. But the ones that jogged or walked past our bench nodded their greetings. I loved that, too. It's easy to love everything with the sound of vast amounts of water hitting the sand.

On our way back to the hotel, to try and wake our sleeping, hungover friends for breakfast, we saw some movement in the back of the pick-up truck belonging to one of them. Knocking on the window, we see our friend P sit-up and stretch.

"Dude, what are you doing sleeping in your truck?" we say, opening the door.

"J was being such a jerk last night, telling me to turn down the TV, turn off the lights. Mean drunk, that guy. I was like, screw this, I ain't sharing a room with you. So I came out here."

"That had to be comfortable," I said.

"Guarantee, he won't remember a thing of this," P said.

"Let's go wake his ass up."

And so we did, and we all had breakfast at Uncle Bill's Pancake House, with hash fries and orange juice and pancakes and eggs.

It was a sort of profane sacred, not the kind truly cut out for a blog post, but the kind I wanted to share, regardless.

Happy Are Those Who Are Called To Share His Supper

When David and I were engaged, we knew we'd be getting married at my parents' parish in New York. To do this, we had to get permission from our own parish priest at the time. In our dealings with him, it was revealed that we were co-habitating, sharing the same apartment next to the insanely noisy R5 Regional Rail line. We were in love, getting married, and still clearly in violation of Church rules. He told us flat out that we shouldn't take Communion until we had moved into different apartments and confessed the sin of sharing the same bed. As David and I walked back to our apartment, I howled and railed at his audacity. "Fine," I said. "I get that there are 'rules' and he's obligated to inform us of them, but to say we can't receive the body and blood of Christ? Do you think Jesus would deny us a seat at his table?" Eventually I had to just let it go, but I didn't stop taking Communion. As soon as I was sure that letter was sent, we stopped attending that church.

******

I just finished reading a book called Take This Bread, and I really wanted to share a passage of it with whomever happens to read this. The book follows the conversion of a woman who was raised in an atheist family. On a whim one day, she walks into a local Episcopal church and takes communion. As her faith and knowledge grow, she feels called to heed the teachings of Jesus and feed the hungry. And so she does so, in a big way, starting a food pantry at St. Gregory's (her new church), and with some help from her community, is able to start food pantries in other locations nearby to feed to skyrocketing number of people who are unable to afford basic groceries.

It's an amazing spiritual memoir, and the author, Sara Miles, does a good job questioning why churches put up barriers to Communion.

Since this is Holy Thursday, and we celebrate the Last Supper, where Jesus broke bread and drank wine with saints and sinners -- both a man who'd deny knowledge of him three times and a man who'd betray him with a kiss -- I thought it appropriate to offer a meditation, via Sara Miles, on Communion.

"The entire and contradictory package of Christianity was present in the Eucharist. A sign of unconditional acceptance and forgiveness, it was doled out and rationed to insiders; a sign of unity, it divided people; a sign of the most common and ordinary human reality, it was rarefied and theorized nearly to death. And yet that meal remained, through all the centuries, more powerful than any attempts to manage it. It reconciled, if for only a minute, all of God's creation, revealing that, without exception, we were members of one body, God's body, in endless diversity. The feast showed us how to re-member what had been dis-membered by human attempts to separate and divide, judge and cast out, select or punish. At that Table sharing food, we were brought into the ongoing work of making creation whole. I read a commentary by Grant Gallup, a cranky liberation theologian and Episcopal priest who'd retired to Nicaragua. 'The little loaf-sharing church,' he wrote,' stole away from the neighborhood of Jerusalem Temple and the synagogues of the diaspora, hounded by a good imperial government to martyrdom for hundreds of years, and then, one day, found its bishops enthroned and basilicas built for it by emperors. It issues receipts and itemized its metaphysics. It created a dogmatic mind of Christ to supplant the flesh of Nazareth. But there was always and remains still the opportunity to make Jesus your friend, and to invite him to share your supper.'"

('But there was and remains still the opportunity to make Jesus your friend, and to invite him to share your supper.' Those words are so profound, I had to type them again, and though they don't belong to Sara Miles, I thank her profusely for quoting them and their author.)

This will be my last Holy Week post, as we are traveling to New York, so have a lovely Easter!

Palm Sunday

What I saw:

A basket of palms.
A priest cloaked in red. The pews full.
Sculptures covered in purple fabric.
An eclipse.

What I heard:

Coughing. Babies.
My children whispering their hunger to me.
"O Sacred Head Surrounded.'
The Passion, the last breaths of Christ,
and the quaking of the ground.

What I felt:

Grateful to be a part of this church,
despite my misgivings, despite my
disagreements. Surrounded by
fellow worshippers, all of us thieves
asking to be welcomed into
the Kingdom of Heaven.

San Romero

I've been quite dispirited lately with the level of discourse that's been pulsing through the country, and encouraged and fomented by Republican leaders. The health care debates have bordered on and actually crossed over into the dangerous, culminating with demonstrations on the House lawn involving racial epithets and anti-gay slurs. Follow that up with some Twitterings suggesting that our President be killed, and I just about want to build myself a bunker.

Thrown into the mix is the idea that social and economic justice are actually code words for Nazism. This, of course, from distinguished speaker and friend of Jesus, Glenn Beck. I'm not one to pretend that I'm certain Christ is on my side, nor do I profess to know everything there is to know about Jesus. I am, though, still pretty sure that Jesus not only cared greatly for the poor, but cared about WHY they were poor. And yes, this is radical, though not even close to the type of radical Beck insinuates.

I suppose it's apt that today marks the 30th anniversary of the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was shot to death while finishing a homily during mass. Archbishop Romero cared deeply for the poor, and cared also about why they were poor. He cared about their ability to affect social change. He cared about social justice.


I read about Oscar Romero some time ago, when I finished a book on the School of the Americas by a priest named Fr. Roy Bourgeois. I read about the bloody conflicts that left thousands upon thousands dead, many killed by death squads roaming village to village killing everyone in a brutal attempt to wipe out uprising by the poor. Anyone who opposed El Salvador's government, including priests and nuns who helped serve and protect the poor, were targets for murder, kidnapping and torture. Some of the people in charge of these death squads were trained on American soil.

While some religious maintained silence under fear of death, Romero refused. He visited the poor, listened to their horror stories of rape and murder, and advocated for their safety. He tried, unsuccessfully, to get the killers to understand they were killing their own countrymen and women. Shot while saying Mass, he became a martyr.

He is still beloved by Salvadoreans, and others, all these decades later, and serves as an integral reminder of the call to help those who cannot help themselves. Though he hasn't been made a saint as of yet, he is still, to some, San Romero.

Request

I'm hoping if you read this, you can lend me a bit of the space in your brain. Or rather, someone I know who is having some difficulty.

A friend of mine is going through chemo for treatment of liver cancer. She recently had a procedure to prevent the drugs from entering her stomach, with the purpose of preventing chemo-induced ulcers. She is in a lot of pain following this treatment, and her doctors want to re-hospitalize her. I talked to her a few moments ago, and then paced around for a bit. I swept the floor and put on some U2 and wondered about things.

So I'm taking to this page to ask for your prayers for her and her family. I've been entreating St. Peregrine for some time now, and although I know there are a wide swath of people who send their prayers and good wishes on a daily basis, it can never hurt to have a few more.

And though I hesitate to type her name here, because it's not my right to do so, I think it can be very helpful to have the name of the person you're praying for.

Her name is Tara, and I thank you, greatly.

It's rather amazing what a hefty dose of Vitamin D can do for a struggling soul.

It was Hannah's idea to go outside on Saturday, not mine. I'd been out for an errand, and though it was much warmer than it has been, the chill was still present.

"I just got out a book to read, babe," I told her.

"You can read outside," was her response, and I decided not to argue with her and just do it, because they have been cooped up too. We all have, within this chicken pen of winter, pecking and clucking for some freedom.

She went around collecting items that she insisted heralded spring's arrival, including rocks, the beret-like caps of acorns, some chives and holly leaves. It is one of the greatest joys of this life, watching my kids scoot around the yard with purpose. I see them now, unencumbered with doubt and stress, being present in the moment. Sometimes they drive me insane. Sometimes they teach me.

I've been struggling a bit with grace. I have yet to accept the fact that I'm not too busy to experience it. So then it tends to come along and wollop me, like some gigantic celestial hand slapping me across the head.

I wanted to thank God for all of this, and so I did, much to the chagrin of one of the priests at my church, who lit into my disrespectful butt during one of his homilies. (Well, he didn't directly yell at me, but I felt the sting nonetheless.) He suggested we are a bit too familiar with God and not nearly as reverential as we should be. (I can also tell you he is not my favorite priest, straight up.) Apparently, there is a specific formula for talking to God, and it can only be found on one's knees and using a lofty tone.

So Hannah and I looked at the snowdrops together. I tried to show her to look inside, to lift each drooping head and look down, inside the petals, but she was too distracted. It was intoxicating, all the air and the sunlight.

So she ran off, looking for something else, as I sat on the deck reading Merton. In between the glimpses of a life just about to enter a monastery, I see Hannah, hopping around, jumping from stepping stone to stepping stone, a girl involved in her own version of prayer. It made me supremely happy.