Preying

Fox in our backyard. Credit to Math Man.

It's not a misspelling, I assure you. This post is about primarily about preying, though perhaps there is something to be learned about praying as well.

On Friday, Mr. Math Teacher (the offspring formerly known as The Egg on this blog, and not to be confused with Math Man) and I were grilling vegetables on the driveway.  I look across the street to see our local fox in hot pursuit of a squirrel in my neighbor's front yard.  It did not end well for the squirrel, who was carried off.  It was fast. It was, at most, fifty feet away.

I was stunned by the raw power on display so close at hand. Living as I do in an inner-ring suburb, which hasn't been wild in more than two centuries, in a house with a tight roof and solid doors, I'm more insulated that I want to admit.  Wind, water, cold and heat are all seemingly under my control.  Too windy, close the windows.  Hot? Nudge up the A/C.  Ice and chill, bless the Lord?  Not so much.  I keep a bag of salt in the garage.

I wonder if this is part of why the desert fathers and mothers left the cities and made their way to caves in the arid wastes.  To grasp viscerally that they controlled nothing of import.  Not the winds or the waves, the predators that slithered through the door or pounced from above.  Neither life nor death.

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In other predator news, there is are owl pellets piled up on the roof by my bathroom window. Which I presume means an owl sits there from time to time. And what looked very much like a juvenile eagle was perched on the roof of the rectory garage yesterday.  #signsOfTheTimes

Summer silence

Last night Math Man and I watched a documentary about life in Antarctica on Netflix. The film by New Zealand filmmaker Anthony Powell, focusses not on the science, but on the everyday life of the people who work to support the science. The cooks, shopkeepers, pilots and communications techs.  Through the austral winter.  As I sit on my back patio, surrounded by greenery, warmed by the sun, it's hard to imagine that at this moment it's dark 24 hours a day and 27^oF below zero at McMurdo station.  (Fascinatingly, Google's weather icon shows a bright yellow sun for "clear" at McMurdo, though the sun was last seen above the horizon on April 24th.)

The film is visually rich, with beautiful time lapse photography of vast panoramas and tiny details.  The rugged reality of a visit to the penguins in midsummer is revealed, along with delightful clips of penguins flying in and out of the water.  It's not hard to see why it won so many awards.

I was struck by the silence in the desolate Dry Valleys —  no trees to rustle in the wind, no birds chirruping, no traffic noise.  This morning, I was struck by the silence in my own backyard.  Yes, I could hear the birds, and the bell ringing in the tower of the Episcopal church a mile and quarter away.  But there was no roar of air conditioners, no leaf blowers screaming, no rumbling of lawn mowers.  It wasn't silence in the same sense as that scene in the Dry Valley, but there was the same sense of stillness in the air.

As an aside, Dropbox mailed me a flashback, a handful of photos taken more or less around the 4th of July for almost the past decade.  I was struck by how many years I've been on retreat around the 4th.

Give Me A Word: Throw yourself before God

St. Simon the Stylite in his tower and a visitor.

I am writing a Lenten series for CatholicPhilly.com organized around the sayings of the desert fathers and mothers. What words would they have for us, in Lent's desert, that we might be saved?

If you are of a mind to join me on this adventure each week, here are some questions I am thinking about!   There are some resources posted at the end for reflection as well.

Do you ever long for a desert experience?
What sort of desert do you imagine visiting?
What do you think these desert solitaries might have to offer us in modern times?
Do you think it depends on whether your trip to the desert is voluntary or not?

The reflection appeared on CatholicPhilly on 3 March 2014.

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In his early days, Abba Euprepius went to see an old man and said to him, “Abba, give me a word so that I may be saved.” — from the Apophthegmata Patrum

I’m dreaming of deserts these days, and of a cave tucked high into the sides of a dry river wadi, its entrance warmed by the sun, its depths all mystery. A rough and narrow path to the door clings to the cliff side, discouraging casual visitors.

I can’t be the only one dreaming of escaping to warmer places. Winter has worn out its welcome in so many ways. Most of my driveway is still covered in mounds of sooty snow. My teaching schedule is in disarray, and with two more storms on the horizon, I have little hope of getting it back on track soon.

Too, we’re sitting on the edge of Lent, with its images of the Israelites wandering in the desert and of Jesus, retreating to the desert to fast and to pray. But I suspect my desert imaginings are rooted more what I’ve been reading than the weather or the liturgical season — I’ve been soaking in the words of the men and women who came to the Egyptian desert in the 3rd and 4th centuries, seeking God, the people we call the desert fathers and mothers.

We think of the desert as an inhospitable place, a place of privation, a place where nothing grows. But the deserts vast horizons offer a certain safety, an ability to see clearly the dangers well before they arrive on your doorstep. There is also a certain extravagance in choosing the desert, in throwing caution to the wind, leaving nearly everything and everyone behind, and choosing to face God alone.

Visitors to Egypt at the time reported thousands of men and women, living as hermits in the desert outside the walls of the towns and cities. I wonder if this what Isaiah meant when he prophesized that “The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly…” [Is 35:1-2a]

The fathers and mothers of the desert were not seeking to be mystics or sages, but to simply grow closer to God in the silence. They prayed, they fasted, and they were famously hospitable to those who came to see them. People sought out these hermits, walking the dry riverbeds and clambering up the cliff sides, asking them for “a word,” that they might be saved. Their short sayings were passed on, from brother to brother, from mothers to their sisters in Christ, and finally collected in written form, so that fifteen centuries later we, too, might have “a word” from the desert.

Lent is often called a desert time. What do I seek in the Lenten desert, a desert that God promises us will blossom abundantly? What words of salvation would the fathers and mothers of the desert have for me?

As Ash Wednesday approaches, I hear Abba Poemen’s extravagant advice: “Throw yourself before God, do not measure your progress, cast away your own will — these are the tools of the soul.” What would God make of me this Lent, if I walk out, alone and without expectations, into these desert days?

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To read from Scripture: Isaiah 55:10-13

To pray: 
Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty,
my memory, my understanding, and my entire will,
All I have and call my own.
You have given all to me.
To you, Lord, I return it.
Everything is yours; do with it what you will.
Give me only your love and your grace, that is enough for me.
— St. Ignatius of Loyola, Suscipe


 To listen:
 

“Silent , surrendered, calm and still,
Open to the word of God.
Heart humbled to his will.
Offered is the servant of God.”
— Margaret Rizza

Crying alleluia at the edge of the desert

I'm standing in the desert these days, praying my way into two series of reflections on the desert fathers and mothers, praying my way through some days where every time I open my door (or email or phone) there's a sandstorm going on out there, blowing grit into my eyes, making it hard to see, hard to breathe, virtually impossible to see how to move forward.

Yet, somehow, Her Most Holy Wisdom keeps poking her head up over the dunes, crying, "look this way; see me; I am solace in the midst of woe, a drenching rain in the desert."  Alleluia.

This column from CatholicPhilly.com grew out of an earlier post here.  It appeared on 28 February 2014.  And if you are in need of soaking in some alleluias before the long silence, try this playlist.

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“Let’s see how many alleluias we can get in before Lent begins,” suggests my pastor as he pages through the breviary to pick a hymn to open Morning Prayer. I know what he means; I’m never as mindful of all the ways alleluia plays in my life as I am on the brink of Lent.

 A single clear voice chants in the silence. Alleluia. Trumpets fly and organs resound. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia. A gospel choir sways. Alleluia. A psalmist pulls at a harp in the desert 3,000 years ago. Alleluia. Praise the Lord, in Hebrew. We’ve been singing “alleluia” a long time.

My son Chris sang Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah at his voice recital a few weeks ago. I had heard it before, but listening to him sing I was struck by the many ways I sing “alleluia,” from James Chepponis’ resoundingly majestic Festival Alleluia to the rusty-voiced response I make to the lector’s invocation at morning Mass.

Cohen wrote dozens of verses when he was composing the piece, trying to grapple with the many meanings he heard in the word “alleluia.” Was it holy, broken, cold, blazing with light? I wonder if this is how the psalmists felt, trying to figure out how to sing out their praise of God. Baffled. Overcome. Broken.

Last week in church, the little girl sitting near me was restless. She might have been all of 3 years old, her bright purple bow bobbing up and down as she climbed on and off the pew. As the first chord to the Gospel Acclamation from the Mass of Glory was struck, her mother bent over and whispered to her, “This is your song!” Suddenly she was quiet. The cantor sang it through once, and when she raised her arms, I heard from behind me in a clear and delightful soprano, “alleluia, al-le-luuu-ia!”

Her mother was so right. Alleluia is not only her daughter’s song, but all our song. Like Daniel’s three young men in the furnace, hearing the praise of the Lord resounding in all creation, and on the mouths of all the people of God, we are created to praise the Lord.

I am struck by the thought that if alleluia is truly our song, we might consider responding to everything that happens with that one word, “alleluia” — praise the Lord. Chanting it with passion. Humming it in the ordinary. Spitting it out through clenched teeth. Crying it aloud in joy. Howling it in our worst grief. Holding it in expectant silence through Lent’s desert. Alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia.

At the very end of the song, Cohen says he’ll “stand before the Lord of Song with nothing on [his] tongue but Hallelujah.” Could I stand before the Lord of Song, with nothing on my tongue but “hallelujah”? Then again, could I stand before God with anything on my tongue, but alleluia?

Column: The allure of the desert

This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times on 17 February 2011.

So I will allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak to her heart. — Hosea 2:16

I grew up on the Illinois prairie. Fields and dairy farms spread out as far as I could see, unbroken by the sorts of tall trees I dreamed of climbing. To my dismay, neither the birch tree growing outside my window nor the crab apple tree my father planted in the backyard were anywhere near large enough to climb.

Now I live surrounded by towering trees. The branches of the oak in the front yard reach out to my study window, allowing the chirping birds to safely tease the cat who guards my computer. Even in my sixth decade I will clamber up a favorite beech tree to while away a summer afternoon nestled among the leaves with a book and a thermos of iced tea. If you asked, I would say I have no desire to return to a place with a view of unrelieved fields.

But that’s not quite true. Last week, I drove through one of California’s immense inland valleys. Flat and dry, the land stretched away from me for miles in each direction, rising abruptly to rolling foothills. It was a paradoxical landscape, one that left me feeling simultaneously like a mote on the surface of the earth — nothing compared to the vastness of God — and safely cupped in God’s hands. God transcendent and God immanent in a single breath. It suddenly occurred to me that perhaps this paradoxical view was one reason people went to pray in the desert.

I generally think of deserts as risky places. To go is to place myself in peril, stripped of resources. To go there and pray is to acknowledge my fundamental dependence on God.

Deserts are uncomfortable places, hot and cold by turns, sand and dust are constant irritants. To go there and pray is to do penance.

Yet St. Cyril of Alexandria suggests that the desert Israel is lured to in Hosea is a place of safety, not of peril or penance. From the outside it seems desolate and forbidding, but inside it God’s words of hope and new life echo. I think of the Israelites, wandering the vast Sinai in safety, God ever before them, in fire and cloud, night and day.

In his introduction to Verba Seniorium, a collection of wisdom sayings from the desert fathers, Trappist Thomas Merton points out that the desert offered these hermits a clear unobstructed view of what they sought, freedom and quies, rest. In this open space, they could see themselves simultaneously anchored in Christ, and lost in God.

As the shadows grew long in the valley I sat on a picnic table at a rest stop to pray, firmly grounded and simultaneously lost in awe. And wished I could be like the desert fathers, foreswearing dreams of trees that could obscure the horizons, and stay and contemplate that vast wilderness forever. To be at once both lost and found in God.

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All things counter, original, spáre, strange;
Whatever is fickle, frecklèd (who knows how?)
With swíft, slów; sweet, sóur; adázzle, dím;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is pást change: Práise him.
— Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J., in Pied Beauty