Comfort Food

In the middle of the 30-days last January (2nd week, Temptation of Christ to be specific), I got sick. All I did was sleep and pray and throw-up. Tea and oral rehydration solution (thanks to UNESCO for the recipe) were my salvation.

Several days later, when I finally felt ready to tackle dinner (and dessert), there was an amazing bread pudding for dessert. Plated in pools of bright raspberry sauce and redolent of cinnamon, it was a delight to eye and palate. The sister at the table with me was so taken with it, she nearly licked the plate clean. Me, too. It was seriously comforting food.

We had several stale ends of French bread left over this week. I usually turn these into bread crumbs or croutons, but had enough to consider bread pudding. So that's what I did this afternoon, along with a batch of berry syrup to drizzle over my yogurt (and over the bread pudding). Barnacle Boy and Bead Girl approved the final product -- and it matches my memory well (though I discovered today I deeply associate this with the temptation of Christ!!!)

30-days Bread Pudding

1 large loaf of very stale French bread (or the equivalent)
1/2 cup butter, melted
7 eggs (!)
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 cup heavy cream
3 2/3 cup non-fat milk
1/2 tsp salt
4 tsp vanilla
2 tsp cinnamon

Roughly cube the bread into 1" chunks. Place bread cubes (and the crumbs made in the process) in a large bowl, toss with the melted butter. Whisk eggs and sugar; stir in remaining ingredients. Pour the egg mixure over the bread in the large bowl. Let stand for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

Generously butter an 11 x 13 pan (I used a glass pan), pour in the mixture. Tightly cover with aluminum foil and bake at 375 F for 45 or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.
Serve warm with raspberry syrup or sprinkle with powdered sugar. (Some like this cold, but I'm all for warm!)

Berry Syrup

1 cup water
1 cup sugar
zest from one orange
6 cups berries (I used a mix of frozen berries: black raspberry, wild blueberry, raspberry)

Bring the water to a boil, stir in sugar until it dissolves. Remove from heat. Place berries in a blender, pour the water/sugar solution over the top. Puree. Strain out the seeds, stir in the zest, bring briefly to the boil again. Cool, then store in fridge or freezer until ready to use.

UNESCO oral rehydration solution

1 litre of clean water
One level teaspoon of salt
Eight level teaspoons of sugar
Stir the mixture till the sugar dissolves.

If you can manage a banana for the potassium, that's not a bad idea -- unless of course the novices have beaten you to all the bananas!

...and now for a word from our sponsors

My director from the 30-days sent me the link to this YouTube video - part of a presentation he gave recently at Boston College on Ignatian retreats. It's about reading God's "other book" -- creation -- while on retreat. (Full disclosure - a few of the photos are mine.) My favorite one in the set (which is NOT mine) is of the person praying on the snowy rocks.

Loyola Press has just launched a site devoted to Ignatian spirituality: Ignatian Spirituality. It's a good jumping off point for many things Ignatian, though I might wish it had a bit more about what a retreat is like. The blog there, dotmagis, is an ecletic mix of spirituality and living the Ignatian charism in the real world. Read it to find out which U2 song is most Ignatian!

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming....

Column: He is Risen

This is the last of four columns written for the Standard and Times taking up the principal graces of the four weeks of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola.

I wrote this column about two weeks ago, quoting John Updike's poem Seven Stanzas on Easter. Since then, it's popped up hither and yon. Meanwhile, two other contributors submitted articles on things Ignatian for this week's paper. The imps and cherubs are on the loose!

[This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times 16 April 2009]


Having risen in the morning on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary of Magdala. She then went to those who had been his companions, and who were mourning and in tears, and told them. But they did not believe her when they heard her say that he was alive. — Mk. 16:9a, 10-11a

The pastel “Happy Easter!” signs are in peak bloom during Holy Week, adorned with the usual reminders of the holiday to come: bunnies, green grass, eggs — and chocolate. By Tuesday morning the signs vanished, and the marshmallow chicks and jelly beans were piled on half-off tables. Even without the cross and tomb, Easter quickly falls off the secular world’s radar, though the season has barely begun liturgically.

Many years ago, a Russian Orthodox colleague of mine taught me the traditional Orthodox Easter greeting, “Christ is risen!” and its proper response, “Indeed He is risen!” Each year when I see him after Easter, we greet each other in these words. As an unbelieving world bustles by, I affirm what Mary Magdalene saw that first Easter morning: He is alive.

The fourth grace sought in St. Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises is to enter into Christ’s joy in the resurrection, to reach beyond our own relief and joy at God’s wondrous gift of salvation, to welcome Christ’s selfless, overflowing joy into our lives. This is not a joy that looks inward, but outward, and manifests itself to all, believing and unbelieving, as Mary Magdalene did. This is a joy that believes that Christ is alive — now as then. We rejoice not in what has happened once but what continues to happen: Christ lives — in us.

As the formal contemplations of the Exercises draw to a close, Ignatius suggests we consider this very reality, how God dwells in us, gives us being, animates our lives. Then he asks the question, “If I were to make only a reasonable response, what could I do?” What indeed? Ignatius suggests we look into our hearts to see if we are able to answer in love: “Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty … Everything is yours; do with it what you will.”

In his poem, Seven Stanzas at Easter, John Updike lays out the challenge this reality and such a response embodies: “Let us not mock God with metaphor, analogy, sidestepping transcendence; making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded credulity of earlier ages; let us walk through the door.”

Easter is not merely a moment in our salvation history to be celebrated but an invitation to take the next steps, to walk through a door into a life that, as St. Paul says, is no longer our own but Christ living in us.

Early in February, as I packed my bag to return to family and responsibilities, I was conscious that from across the centuries St. Ignatius was sending me back from his school of contemplative prayer with homework. To return everything I had been given to the Lord, to do His will, was the work not of 30 days but of a lifetime.

This Eastertide, taking my cue from Ignatius, I’m giving over the pallid “Happy Easter!” greetings that sidestep and diminish the deeper reality for the joyous “Christ is risen!” that leads through the door to life. Indeed He is risen!

---

Receive, O Lord, all my liberty. Take my memory, my understanding and my entire will. Whatsoever I have or hold, I give it back to you and surrender it wholly to be governed by your will. Give me only your love and your grace, and I am rich enough and ask for nothing more. Amen. — St. Ignatius of Loyola’s ‘Suscipe’

Column: Passion

This is the third of four columns taking up the principal graces of the four weeks of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola.

Avro Pärt is a contemporary Estonian composer. He calls his approach to composition tintinnabulation – and it sounds very much like bells ringing. Though clearly modern, Pärt’s deep and longstanding engagement with medieval polyphony and plainchant infuses his music. If you have not heard Pärt before – listen to a snatch (see the link below), or even the whole thing. The third and fourth movements are marvelous.

Passio by Arvo Part


The voices on this setting are so clear, you can take out a copy of St. John's Passion, in Latin and follow along. If you lack a copy at home - here's the text! (It helps to know that Christ is the bass; Peter and Pilate the tenors.)


[This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times 9 April 2009]

I have entered the watery depths, and the current has swept me away.
I am exhausted with my calling out.
My throat is hoarse.
My eyes fail from hoping for my God.
— Ps. 69:3b-4

Tunc ergo tradidit eis illum, ut crucifigeretur. In the silent chapel, the spare, plaintive recitative from the fourth movement of Arvo Pärt’s Passio threads through my prayer: So he then handed Him over to them to be crucified. Like water tumbling down a rocky creek bed, Pärt’s contemplative chorale carries St. John’s Passion narrative inexorably from Judas’ betrayal to Christ’s ultimate surrender of His spirit; now swirling in chaos, now gathering in deep pools of silence and grief.

My prayer — and the ways in which I have betrayed Christ — have brought me equally, inexorably to this moment. I kneel, praying for the grace I desire in this third week: sorrow with Christ in sorrow; a broken spirit with Christ so broken; a deep grief for all that Christ endured for me.

I had set on this road to Calvary with Christ five days before, offering my imagination to God that He might use it to bring me into the reality of Christ’s Passion and death. It was difficult to avoid being transfixed by the horror, mentally scripting a Passion to compete with Mel Gibson’s cinematic version. St. Ignatius’ exercises demand more than an acknowledgement of the grievous sufferings; you must enter the depths and let the current sweep you away.

This journey was drawn out. I heard with new ears St. Augustine’s admonition, “You suppose that having said ‘I cried out to you,’ you are somehow done with crying out. But even though you have cried out, you must not expect relief to come quickly. The agony of the Church and of the Body of Christ will last until the end of time.” The Spiritual Exercises brought me again and again to each station of the cross, until like the psalmist, I was exhausted with calling out, and I wondered if my strength might fail from seeking my God.

The challenge was to let the Passion pierce me through, to let God forge more tightly in my heart the connection between the external experience of Christ’s suffering and abandonment on the cross and the fundamental truth of the unbounded love of the Father for the Son. It was to hold in my mind and let grow in my soul simultaneous realities: Christ, true God and true Man; Christ, suffering Servant and Master of our rescue; life gained only in the total surrender of death. It was a matter, as St. Ignatius advises, of understanding a few realities profoundly and in savoring them interiorly.

Perhaps the biggest challenge of the third week was to give up seeing it as a challenge, an experience to be lived through, and instead let it etch its own design into my heart and soul. I now have a pattern to hold up, that I might more readily recognize Christ’s Passion in my own life. I seek with eyes open to bear humiliation and rejection for the sake of the Gospel.

Pattern in hand, I might also more readily see the Passion in the lives of those around me. I can look there for the strength to take their crosses upon my back; wipe their faces; stand by them in their most desperate and agonizing moments; hold them until they breathe their last.

I have walked this road year after year in the Church’s celebration of the Triduum, but all too often I have confronted the crucifixion while watching the resurrection out of the corner of my eye — singing “O Sacred Head Surrounded” one moment, rehearsing Easter alleluias the next.

From this experience of a world empty of Jesus’ presence, forsaken by the Christ I had followed so closely over the preceding weeks of the exercises came a precious, albeit harrowing, gift of wisdom: I know that Christ has died.

---

O God, whose Son, our Messiah and Lord, did not turn aside from the path of suffering nor spare His disciples the prospect of rejection, pour out Your Spirit upon this assembly, that we may abandon the security of the easy way and following Christ’s footsteps toward the cross and true life. Grant this through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son, who lives and reigns with You in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen. — Opening Prayer from the 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C.

Column: Peripatetic People

This is the second of four columns taking up the principal graces of the four weeks of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola.

For me at least, one of the graces of this retreat was to follow Christ as the disciples did - without knowing where they were going each day. I had not read the Exercises before embarking (and avoided reading about them). Of course, now that I'm home, my academic side has fully kicked in and I've been reading at length! (One of the novice directors gave me some starting points and I've found a couple of others that have been interesting.)

[This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times 2 April 2009]

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus in good works, which God hath prepared that we should walk in them. — Eph. 2:10

Early on a Vermont morning, I followed Victor off the ski lift into a snowy fog. Barely visible in the mist ahead of me, my husband led me onto a trail I’d never skied before. Victor has skied the Italian Alps; I can find the Poconos a challenge, but I wasn’t nervous. I trusted him not to take me on a trail that was too steep or icy for me to ski and stayed so focused on the pieces of the trail just ahead that I could not worry about what might be coming.

Half an hour later we were at the bottom of the trail, and I was confident in my ability to do it again. That is, until the next day dawned bright and sunny and I could see just how steep that trail was. If I hadn’t done it already, I would never have thought it possible I could ski it.

In the Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius draws us into a similar experience of immediacy and trust. The grace sought of God in the second week is to know Jesus more intimately, to be able to love Him more intensely and so to follow Him more closely. Using the Gospel narratives, we are invited to let God show us His Son through our imagination. What was it like to be at Jesus’ birth? To be present as He healed the Gerasene demoniac?

Paul reminds us in his letter to the Ephesians that God has created us to walk in Christ. The Greek word he uses is “peripatesomen” which means to walk about, to explore, to make progress. Ignatius asks us to “walk about” with Christ, to explore the landscape of Christ’s mission on earth, that we might progress to a deeper understanding of what God is calling us to do here and now.

What is on offer is not a superficial summary of Christ’s life, but a way to experience it as the first disciples did — one day at a time, without knowing where you were going next or what might happen. Ignatius cautions, “do not read any mystery which is not to be used…at that hour, so that the contemplation of one mystery does not interfere with another.”

Immersing myself in the assigned moment for an hour, five times over was like skiing in the mist — only one little piece of the path was revealed to me, a piece I might with God’s grace be able to traverse. In taking these small steps across ground I had explored so thoroughly, I gained confidence in my ability to walk in Christ’s path, as the first disciples did, looking at what was right in front of them, without knowing what was coming, but trusting that Christ would not lead them on paths they could not walk.

These exercises deepened my awareness of Christ’s presence to us in word as well as in sacrament. The Gospels are not merely holy stories to be listened to but God’s very word alive and at work in me. They ought not to leave us unchanged.

In these last days of Lent, on the doorstep of the celebration of the mystery of Christ’s passion, death and resurrection, I am taking Ignatius’ advice once again to heart. As I hear the Gospel proclaimed at Mass, I ask God for the grace to be entirely present to the mystery of Christ He chose to reveal in that particular moment.

I consider how God wants me to walk in these good works of Christ, without being distracted by what might come. As the psalmist sings, “Let me know Your love, for I put my trust in You. Make me know the way I should walk.”

---

O God of justice, hear our cry and save us. Make us heed Your word to the prophets; rouse us to the demand of the Gospel and impel us to carry it out. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son, who lives and reigns with You in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen. — The Opening Prayer for the 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C.

Column: Lather, Rinse, Repeat

The photo is of the basement laundry room at Eastern Point. I took it to try to capture for my spiritual director the sense of warm prayerfulness I encountered in that space. For, as a good friend wisely remarks, "It's all about the laundry!" This is the first of four columns for the Standard on the principle graces of the Exercises.

This column appeared in the Philadelphia Archdiocese's Catholic Standard & Times 26 March 2009.

For this reason I kneel before the Father, that He may grant you in accord with the riches of His glory to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner self, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the holy ones what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. — Eph. 3:14a, 15-19

Lather, rinse, repeat. The standard instructions on the back of shampoo bottles are an apt description of my experience of Lent this year — I feel as if I have just been through Lent’s wash cycle and have been inadvertently returned to the laundry bin.

As the calendar year began, I was sequestered in silence, making the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius. The exercises are structured around four “weeks” or graces, as my director said. The first grace sought was to know how profoundly we are loved by God and how often we have failed to respond to that love.

Just as we hear the call of the prophet Joel in Lent to “Rend your hearts,” so in that first period of the exercises Ignatius invites us to open our hearts to God, to see what sin has done to the world, to us and our own role in it. In a word, Lent, collapsed into a week.

Spending a week asking God for the grace to see evil at work in the world and in your own life sounds miserable, but Ignatius builds his exercises on the same foundation that Paul offers the Ephesians: rooted and grounded in God’s love. It is only from this stance that we can risk looking so deeply at how we, together and individually, in this time and in our history, have violated our covenant with God.

It is from these depths that we can begin to grasp the enormity of the love and mercy that was and is ours. The ultimate point of this exercise, as it was in Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians, is not to wallow in sin, but to enable us to “be filled with all the fullness of God.”

No matter how much time we spend looking into this mirror, we are ultimately myopic. We can never know quite how tightly sin has bound us, how deeply its strands are embedded in our lives. Still the merciful grace of God flows over it all, whether we see our failings clearly, dimly or not at all. Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner puts it bluntly in a Good Friday homily, “the world could not escape His mercy.”

Late in the afternoon of the very last day of that first week, God’s mercy found me in the basement of the old retreat house. Standing amid almost 50 years worth of cast-off furniture and dishes, waiting for the dryer to finish, it seemed just the place to examine my conscience one last time. After dinner I would gather my almost 50 years worth of cast off sins and make a general confession — and return to my room with clean clothes and heart.

I’ve lathered and rinsed — is there any point in repeating, in taking another look at my sins? Buoyed by St. Catherine of Siena’s advice, “The more you see, the more you will love. Once you love, you will follow and you will clothe yourself in His will.” I’m ready to look again, to see more, that I may love more. I can do a bit more Lenten laundry — and be clothed again in God’s will.

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God of power, God of mercy, You bring forth springs in the wasteland and turn despair into hope. Look not upon the sins of our past, but lift from our hearts the failures that weigh us down, that we may find refreshment and life in Christ, our deliverance and our hope, who lives and reigns with You in the unity of the Holy Spirit, holy and mighty God for ever and ever. Amen. — Opening prayer for the 5th Sunday of Lent Year C

Column: Growing Up

[This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times 19 February 2009]

We are the clay, and You our potter; And all of us are the work of Your hand. — Is. 64:8

“I know why you went on the Long Retreat, Mom,” offers Mike. “It wasn’t to pray, it was to form us as men.”

For five weeks, while I was away, my two sons and husband courageously kept the household afloat. Laundry, meal planning, permission slips and housecleaning — they did it all.

Life in this temporarily all male household was, perhaps not surprisingly, a bit more ascetic. Rumor has it that tablecloth usage went down, while easy-to-cook spaghetti consumption went up. And I returned to find that my kitchen has been rearranged to suit the more spartan sensibilities of its users.

It’s not only the kitchen that’s changed. I returned to find my sons have each grown measurably in height — an inch apiece — and in ways less easily quantifiable. As I finished my piece of the welcome home cake the boys baked for me, Chris quietly and without prompting gathered up our plates to take into the kitchen. Putting my duffel away in the basement, I ran into Mike doing a load of wash — unasked.

While I was away on retreat with the novices being formed as Jesuits, as men for others, it seems the same forces were at work on my sons at home, forming them as men, (and I hoped) men for others as well. As Isaiah tells us in this beautiful passage, we are made by God’s hands, wherever and whoever we are.

In Lumen Gentium, Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, we are reminded, “If one member [of the faithful] endures anything, all the members co-endure it.” From this perspective, it makes sense that my sons could be formed by the Spiritual Exercises as the Jesuit novices were.

From my letters, Mike and Chris knew some of what the novices had given up to try their vocation as Jesuits. They were living a more ascetic life. They’d surrendered motorcycles and cell phones, facebook and iTunes accounts. Lawyers, Navy officers and scientists were now obedient to their novice masters.

Asceticism is an indispensable part of religious life as well as religious formation; it is a mirror of what Christ gave up for us in His Passion. But the call to simplicity and selflessness goes out to us all. In its Directives on Formation in Religious Institutes, the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life points out “[o]ne cannot live out one’s baptism without adopting asceticism.”

Like the novices, Mike and Chris got a taste of the ascetic life, giving up some of their accustomed comforts while I was away: Mom’s homemade pizza, her goodnight hugs and her editing of their English papers. Instead of sitting down to dinners that Dad had shopped for and Mom cooked, they were uncomplainingly (or so I understand) giving of what had been their free time to help grocery shop, cook and clean. Learning to be for each other, not just for themselves.

The Directives on Formation go on to say that all Christians “have need of coaches to assist [us] in running along the ‘royal way of the Holy Cross.’ They need witnesses.” I will be ever grateful to the 18 Jesuit novices from the provinces of Detroit, Wisconsin, Chicago, New England, Maryland and New York, for even in the earliest days of their religious lives standing as witnesses for my sons to the value of a life in and for God. I’m thankful, too, for their Jesuit novice masters and my own Jesuit directors who, through their coaching, have indirectly shaped my sons’ lives.

Many of the novices grew beards over the days of retreat, but as with Mike and Chris, I suspect the growth that mattered most for them could not be measured in inches. I can see the hand of the Potter on them all — formed by God, conformed more closely.

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From our earliest days, O God, You call us by name. Make our ears attentive to Your voice, our spirits eager to respond, that, having heard You in Jesus Your anointed one, we may draw others to be his disciples. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son, who lives and reigns with You in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen. — From the Opening Prayer for the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B.

Photos of the Long Retreat

...are here.

Column: Letters, I get letters

The back story to this column is that I was getting letters - lots of letters, while on the Long Retreat. They were all gifts to be treasured. The mail was left on a credenza that is off screen to the left in this photo.

The clue to the code that my brother used is the periodic table. D.e.18 = D.e.Ar = dear -- the element argon, symbol Ar, is element 18. Did I bring a periodic table on retreat?? Not exactly, but it turned out I had one on my laptop that I use for students on exams.

A few other wonders appeared in the mail. Several jars of pomegranate jelly - homemade by my dad; a marvelous stained glass star by Stratoz that graced my eastern facing window for the duration of the retreat; and a CD of Barnacle Boy's choral concert, complete with a short video message for his Mom.

[This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times 29 January 2009]

Paul, by the will of God an apostle of Christ Jesus, to God’s holy people, faithful in Christ Jesus. Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. — Ephesians 1:1-2

For the duration of the Long Retreat, 18 Jesuit novices, five others and I have foresworn nearly all contact with the outside world. Five weeks without the sources of instant news taken for granted in the modern world: phones, radio, television, newspapers, e-mail and text messages.

It’s also five weeks without the news we get so casually we do not even realize it: in conversation with neighbors and co-workers and overheard in the streets and corridors. There is no idle chitchat to overhear; none of us are talking. I see my spiritual director once a day and hear only the news he thinks I need to know. So far, that’s been the odd weather report and not a peep about the Eagles.

What I do get are letters, written in hands familiar and not. My heart leaps with joy (and a bit of guilt — the novices are not allowed mail) when I see an envelope with my name on it.

The mail is left next to the lectionary on the credenza in the main entry. Its proximity to God’s news started me musing about how the early Christian communities might have greeted the letters they received.

“Dear Mom, It’s Mike. I know how you love hand-written letters, so I decided not to type this. It’s Monday and school wasn’t that bad (even physics).” My 14-year old has poured his day onto paper for me, his news and love moving from his hand to mine. In closing a letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul sounds just like Mike: “This greeting is in my own hand. Paul.” We get not just the words, captured by scribe or electrons, but something more — the caring touch of the writer.

One evening’s mail brought a postcard from my brother. I turned it over to read “53 90.8.92.g.1.t …” My heart sank. It was entirely written in a code I couldn’t decipher. Several days later, another coded missive appeared. I was still in the dark.

I’ve finally decoded them, receiving a gift well beyond what the scant few lines might have yielded if I’d not had to work so hard to read them. Now sitting in prayer with Paul’s letter to the Romans, I can imagine the early communities trying to decipher Paul’s’ letters, patient with what may yet unfold, what we do not yet understand.

Chris misses me. “You will take 401,771 breaths, Mom, before coming home” is tacked to the end of his latest letter. Paul may not have counted each breath until his return to Philippi, but he misses them, too. “For God will testify for me how much I long for you all,” he writes. Paul longs not just to see his friends at Philippi again, but turns it toward the deeper reality of what we should all long for: the day of Christ’s return.

Three friends who have done these same Exercises write to tell me of their ongoing prayers that this be a fruitful time not only for me but for the others here with me. Paul tells the Colossians “we have never failed to remember you in our prayers.” Fidelity in prayer is a gift that spills over.

I am intrigued to notice as I leaf through my correspondence, that just as in Paul’s letters, there is little news of the day and much news of the heart. So while Wayne did not fail to tell me the “news — Eagles are on a roll!” he closes by reflecting “God is good.”

I will treasure all the letters I have received while wrapped in the silence of these days. The scraps of news they contain will be old hat when I come home, but the warmth, love and graces they hold will not fade. I will treasure more deeply, too, these letters from Paul and his companions — for their unfading news of the faithful love of Christians for each other and of God for us all.

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The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you. My love is with you all in Christ Jesus. Amen.— Closing of St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians

Column: Long Before Dawn

The back story to this column is that I ended up praying on an odd schedule while on this retreat. I would get up around 7:30 in the morning, see my director at 10. I'd pray twice before dinner, sometimes with a nap in between, then fall asleep (usually with my knitting in my lap!) around 8 or 9, sleep until midnight or 1, then be up until around 5.

This all came to an end the day that I saw the dawn from the night side, at which point my director decided it was time to shift me back to Eastern Time. Which I did. It was only slightly painful...

[This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times 5 February 2009]

In the morning, long before dawn, he got up and left the house and went off to a lonely place and prayed there. -- Mk. 1:35

“I wonder if I will have jet lag when I go home?” I mused to my spiritual director one morning. While I’ve never left Philadelphia’s time zone, my schedule looks more like I’m somewhere in Madagascar. It’s 3:18 EST in the morning as I write this. The last time I saw this hour with such regularity, I was getting up to feed a 3-month-old Christopher.

During these 30 days that I am making St. Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises, my days are marked out only by the evening liturgy and my mid-morning meeting with my spiritual director. Outside of Mass, I am spending five formal hours in prayer, but the times of these are up to me, my director and God. God seems to have given me the night watches.

I get up, like Christ in this scene from Mark’s Gospel, long before dawn, make my way to the silent chapel and pray. At midnight, at 2 a.m., sometimes again at 4.

Unlike Christ, I’m not alone in my vigil. As often as not I share the chapel with one or two of the Jesuit novices making the Exercises here with me, all of us burrowed into our hooded sweatshirts against the night chill. Nor are we the first to make use of these late hours. One of the early Christian desert fathers, Abba Isidore, recalled, “When I was younger and remained in my cell I set no limit to prayer; the night was for me as much the time of prayer as the day.”

In contrast to Abba Isidore, St. Ignatius does set some limits on prayer during these Exercises: no more than five prayer periods a day. Ignatius does offer less binding advice on the times of these periods and recommends one be at midnight. In his reading of the Spiritual Exercises, Jesuit Father David Fleming suggests that Ignatius had in mind that after a few hours of sleep, both body and mind are quiet and rested. In such a state, we are open to God in ways that we are perhaps not in the midst of even the most silent and still of days.

Ignatius believed that quieting of mind and body by withdrawing, if we can, from our usual schedules and responsibilities, by praying in these night watches, help us bring our desires to grow closer to God and to move more freely about His work into sharper focus.

Dawn is famous at this retreat house. The rising sun seen through the windows behind the tabernacle in the chapel is said to be a magnificent sight. Alas, I wouldn’t know.

Truth be told, I feel no lack in missing the dawn. What I have seen through that window is the moon on the clouds, shading layers of deepest blues; snow falling in ribbons, twirling in the sea winds and the light of the Presence lamp; shards of ice beating against the glass; and, just once, a shooting star arcing across a brilliantly clear, cold night sky.

In the burst of the dawn there is no mistaking God’s hand at work. In the more subtle beauties of the night, God is teaching me anew to hear His voice, as did Elijah, in the softest of murmurs, to wait patiently for the moments when His glory arcs in all clarity across the heavens — to live and move and have my being entirely within Him.

For this, I’ll deal with jet lag when I get home.

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Protect us, Lord, as we stay awake; watch over us as we sleep, that awake, we may keep watch with Christ, and asleep, rest in His peace. — The antiphon for the Nunc Dimittis, Night Prayer

Silent Movie

Crash wondered if there was some irony in our watching Mel Brook's Silent Movie as my first flick since I came back from the Long Retreat. There might be!

Before I left, Stratoz wondered what it would be like to return from a 30-day retreat in silence, doing the Spiritual Exercises. As Joe Koczera SJ noted there is much that you can't put into words about the Long Retreat, but here is what I can muster at this moment in answer to Stratoz's query:

After packing the car, and saying good-bye to my director - my car refused to start. I trooped back up the stairs in the photo to my director's office to beg a final grace: a jump start. Maybe my car (which had started without incident the day before) was picking up my conflicted feelings about leaving? I was all joy to go home, but it was hard to let the place and people go.

I drove with no music, no audiobook, no radio, no phone for 3 hours. The pull of the silence was still strong. Finally I called my dad.

I'm losing my voice - this is the ultimate irony.

Seeing my sons, each an inch taller, and both suddenly much more grown-up.

Hugs galore.

Being overset by the number of choices I had in clothes this morning. I went with a half dozen white turtlenecks, two pairs of jeans, two sweaters (green and pink) and a hoodie. Picking a sweater this morning to top off the jeans and turtleneck seemed almost too overwhelming . There is something to contemplate here.

Flying down the highway after nearly 5 weeks of being a pedestrian felt odd. (I drove into town twice on errands, I don't think I ever got over 25 mph on the narrow, icy roads.)

One Dawn May Be Enough

The Long Retreat has ended. Mass was at 11:15 this morning and the silence broke with the final hymn. Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam - to the greater glory of God. The experience was extraordinary. The prayers, thoughts and letters that accompanied me on this journey were deeply appreciated.

I saw only one dawn - having spent much of this retreat keeping the night watches. I took this photo on one of our two days of repose, when we had Mass early in the morning and I dragged myself out of bed after a scant hour and a half of sleep to walk to the beach. It was 3^oF out.

Returned firmly near the end of the retreat to more regular hours by my director - I rose obediently the first morning to find a grey sky. I greeted my director by noting the irony of my finally being awake for the dawn, and there being none to be seen. To which he replied, "Maybe one dawn was enough."

This dawn might indeed have been enough.

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For another view of a single dawn at Eastern Point from a 30-day retreatant - see here.

Splendid Isolation

I used this video of Splendid Isolation II (Alvin Ailey II dance company) for a reflection for the RevGalBlogPals which will appear in mid-January - but it's worth sharing twice. The music is from Trio Mediaeval - a Norwegian group. (Listen to their Song of Mary here...). The silence began for me on Monday.

[Michelle is on retreat, but this post appears courtesy of Blogger's scheduled posts feature!]

Column: The Gift of Myrrh

[This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times8 January 2009]

Opening their treasures, they offered him gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh. Mt 2: 11b

“I never travel without my box,” sings King Kaspar in my favorite aria from Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors. With “one lapis lazuli against quartern fever, one
small jasper to help you find water, one small topaz to soothe your eyes…” the King seems prepared for every eventuality, likely or not.

Menotti’s Magi, laden with tempting gifts, are nearing the end of their trek. The Feast of the Epiphany found me, instead, just beginning a journey. I left behind family and work for five weeks in a retreat house on the coast of Massachusetts, to make St. Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises. Thirty days of silence and prayer.

Packing turned out to be a spiritual exercise in itself. What do I need for 30 days in silence in the middle of winter on the Atlantic coast, living in a room just big enough for a single bed and with only a single drawer for storage? Besides my snow boots and a flashlight for ice storms, that is.

I’ve lived with less, in fact. I’ve lived in one room, with a mattress on the floor, two bricks and a board for a shelf, my clothes folded into a milk crate. I’ve spent a summer in the mountains of Mexico where water was pumped by hand, and the plumbing was outside. Still, I’m finding it hard to be a minimalist again in a culture where value-packs, selection, specialized tools and “on demand” rule the day.

There is a discipline to doing with much less that I must re-learn. You use what is to hand, regardless of whether it precisely what you want. Perhaps harder for me, you use what is handed to you. I find it a challenge to be dependent when you are the one so often depended on by your family and your students to meet the needs of the moment.

I am tempted by my own version of King Kaspar’s “just in case” box. I don’t find the jewels as alluring as I do the protection against the potential trials and difficulties they represent. Should I tuck in a few bags of chamomile tea just in case I might want a soothing cup one afternoon? If I’m bringing my drawing pens, should I throw in a couple of extra, just in case I run out of ink?

Each of these what ifs is small, but taken together, I would need at least one extra camel to cart it all eastward. The real burden I’m concerned with is not physical, but spiritual. I don’t want to cushion myself so well that God can’t get in. I don’t want to be so prepared that my fundamental dependence on God for my every breath is obscured by extra pens and tea bags.

St. Matthew does not even give names to the magi, let alone report on the contents of their saddlebags, except to say that they bore gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh for the infant King. Half a millennium later, St. Gregory the Great saw these traditional treasures as surrogates for the gifts all of us should carry on our pilgrimage: the gold of wisdom, the incense of prayer and the myrrh of self-denial. To offer myrrh, he says, is to “employ the spice of self-restraint to keep this earthly bodily of ours from decomposition through decadence”.

So I am taking Gregory’s advice to heart. I am prayerfully and (I hope) wisely sprinkling my suitcase not with comforts and precautions, but with empty spaces. I trust that what I need, will be provided. I’m going to seek God, as the Beloved sings in the Song of Songs, with myrrh dripping from my hands - my empty hands.

---

The wise men followed the star, and found Christ who is light from light. May you too find the Lord when your pilgrimage is ended. Amen.
From the solemn blessing over the people for Epiphany.

Educate, Rinse, Repeat

I'm spending 30 days discerning my next steps in life - this site offered to tell me in under 30 seconds. Did I miss something!?

You Should Get a PhD in Liberal Arts (like political science, literature, or philosophy)

You're a great thinker and a true philosopher. You'd make a talented professor or writer.

What Advanced Degree Should You Get?

On retreat

I'm in Gloucester, at a little coffee shop in the small downtown. I have a cup of tea and am sharing a table with a couple waiting for their yoga class. The place is packed, it looks like a stop for lots of people on their way to or from yoga class. And the free wireless seems an attraction as well...

I still feel like I've brought too much along. The ultimate packing list:

• clothes etc.
• two pillows (despite having thrown the Ignatian principle of not "re-discerning" something to the winds on this one, I don't think I'm going to regret it!)
• tea and electric tea kettle (and a travel mug, so I didn't have to pack two, I left my usual mug home and the kettle because the water for tea here in the summer was tepid at best and while I'm all for being ascetic, that penitential I'm unwilling to commit to just yet)
• my knitting
• The Lord of the Rings (on my iPod to listen to....the BBC version...and the books)
• my camera (I did promise pictures)
• Breviary, journal, bible and my favorite translation of the psalms

Thanks to one and all for their advice...

I've left various and sundry posts to appear on the blog, and written ahead for the Standard and Times, so in some way, I'll still be inhabiting this space. See you all in a few weeks...

All out of...

...Mom"

Crash and the Boy bought a pad for the 'fridge labeled "All Out Of" and with a list of things you might need. They are taking no chances while I'm gone that they won't be able to find the scrap of paper I usually tack to the cabinet for the shopping list.

I'm typing this at the island in my brother's kitchen, eating a marvelous blueberry scone and drinking my tea. Barnacle Boy is wrapped around my waist. "How are you managing your separation anxiety?" inquires Crash. "You don't love her as much as I do!" slings the Boy back. "I'm just enjoying her presence from afar. Where I'm not restricting her airway..."

Five minutes later they are both wrapped around me. I leave in an hour.

Days Away

The letter came in the mail yesterday. I've been accepted to make the Long Retreat - the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. 30 days in silence, 35 days away altogether.

I leave in 70 days.