A few thoughts and prayers

Near is the LORD to the broken-hearted
and the crushed in spirit He rescues. Ps 34:19

Listening to Donald Trump quote the psalms in his remarks to the nation after the horrific mass shooting in Las Vegas on Sunday made me gasp aloud, it was such a switch from his usual nondescript religious language: "God bless America!" and "thoughts and prayers."  And though he attributed it only to "scripture," after decades praying the psalter I had no trouble recognizing the source:  Psalm 34.

It drove me to pick up Walter Brueggemann's short and pointed book, Praying the Psalms, last night. In it, Brueggemann points out that the psalms as prayers are direct, perhaps uncomfortably so.  The images are concrete and familiar.   Mud and bees.  Waters frozen, hoarfrost scattered like ashes. Tears. Vengeance.  There is an unfiltered immediacy to them.  A trust so deep we feel we can say anything?  Or a world so shaken, there is nothing left to lose?

We pray, and in doing so presume to entangle ourselves with the transcendent, all-powerful, ever-living God.  How can we imagine such an encounter will not leave us untouched, unshaken, unmoved?  What are we thinking?  "I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time- waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God- it changes me." (C.S. Lewis in Shadowlands) Are we willing to pray to be changed?

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Beg so that your continuing prayer of petition appears to be a pledge of your faith in the light of God in the darkness of the world, for your hope for life in this constant dying, for your loyalty of love that loves without reward. — Karl Rahner, S.J., “The Prayer of Need” in The Need and the Blessing of Prayer

Column: Inconvenient Truths

Refugee tents at Budapest Station

Victor was in Hungary a couple of weeks ago, while the refugee crisis at the train station in Budapest was at its peak.  He felt he needed to respond in some way to those bereft of home.  I'm proud of how he stretched to do so.

In writing this, I read many of the recent Catholic Church documents on migrants and refugees. They speak powerfully of how we ought to respond.  The line that I'm still thinking about comes from Pope John Paul II at 3rd World Congress on the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Refugees:   "It will be necessary to abandon a mentality in which the poor – as individuals and as peoples – are considered a burden, as irksome intruders..."

Given the news from our own country and from abroad, this is a line worth contemplating.

A version of this column appeared at CatholicPhilly on 18 September 2015.

When they were few in number, a handful, and strangers there,
Wandering from nation to nation, from one kingdom to another people,
He let no one oppress them; for their sake he rebuked kings:
“Do not touch my anointed ones, to my prophets do no harm.” — Psalm 105:12-15

“Be prepared to walk three to four miles to your event,” advises one brochure on the papal visit. There are lists of things not to bring: no coolers, no shelters, no large signs. “Grounds open at 6 am.” For an event that will not begin until after noon.

Refugee children at coloring station in
Budapest station

I am immeasurably grateful; I have a ticket to hear Pope Francis talk about immigration on Saturday, and one that lets me stand on the parkway for Mass on Sunday. Yet the more I read about the events, the more challenging the weekend sounds. How long can I stand? How far can I walk? Will I be able to bring an umbrella in case of rain?

While I began to make plans for the World Meeting of Families and the Pope’s visit last week, my husband, Victor, was in Budapest to give a series of talks on mathematics. His pictures of the small dome tents housing Syrian refugees in the train station square made me pause. So, too, did Facebook posts from friends in California, watching worriedly as fires envelope nearby communities. I’m planning for a weekend of wandering about Philadelphia with my oldest son, I’m not fleeing a war or wildfires, young children, pets and my elderly father in tow.

In 2013, under Pope Benedict XVI, the Church offered a reflection on our pastoral and spiritual response to refugees, those driven from their homes by forces beyond their control.

We are reminded that migrants and refugees are first and foremost not inconvenient company, but are a way God points to both our own status as pilgrims in this world and to Christ: “The ‘foreigner’ is God’s messenger who surprises us and interrupts the regularity and logic of daily life, bringing near those who are far away. In ‘foreigners’ the Church sees Christ who ‘pitches His tent among us’.”

The document goes on to remind us that everyone is called to respond personally to the needs of those who have been displaced by disasters. Victor visited with the refugees at the station, joining a group of students helping parents entertain their children, sitting on the ground as they colored, blowing huge bubbles for them to chase. He bought small toys for these children — carefully chosen to be easy to carry and not noisy so as not to add to their parents’ burdens!

It’s harder to see what I am called to do from this side of the ocean, but I can pray. I can allow my own wanderings to sharpen my eyes for the displaced. I can offer up long lines and long walks for those who stand at the borders, hoping for a place of safety.

The pope’s visit will interrupt the regularity of our daily lives in so many ways, even if we are not able to go to any of the events. For a brief moment our lives will manifest aspects of the uncertainty and anxiety of those fleeing catastrophes.Can this temporary disruption remind us of the Gospel’s demand to be ever attentive to the needs of those driven from their homes? Welcome, the Church tells us, is not just a task, but a way of living.

Can you microwave duct tape?

Math Man, "Can you microwave duct tape?"

Me, "I have no idea." And I'm certain I don't want to know why he wants to know.

Math Man, "Crash? Can you microwave duct tape?"

Crash, who is production stage manager for the high school this year, is intimately familiar with the properties of duct tape. Even he was not certain.

As to why? I bought one of the enormous cold packs like they have at the physical therapists to ice my (still) aching knees. They aren't meant to go in the microwave, but Math Man didn't know that. He wanted a hot pack for his sore back, threw it in the microwave and managed to burn a couple of holes in it. Which he proceeded to duct tape and then put the pack back in the microwave?!

I've ordered a new cold pack. And one just for Math Man that will heat (safely) in the microwave.

Epic Fail: Podcast version

I started experimenting with podcasting last week - trying to feel out the difference between writing to be read and writing to be heard. My hope was to post something long (3 to 4 minutes) each weekend, with a shorter (1 to 2 minute) piece midweek. I put two longer pieces up last weekend, submitted the feed to iTunes, saw it was accepted, and so last night went on to post a 2 minute piece.

Using a post from a year ago, a series of sketches from a night at Wernersville, I wrote a short reflection, recorded it, and posted it. At least I thought I posted it. If you listened to it, what you heard was just over a minute of what sounds like heavy breathing (well, hopefully you didn't listen much longer than the 10 awful seconds it took me to figure this out.) Argh.

I've fixed it on the feed, pinged iTunes so they will up the change sooner rather than later. I have more than 200 subscribers to this podcast. I'm hoping at least some of them come back after the epic fail. (Perhaps it's a good thing I've made an appointment for shriving on Monday!)

Lesson learned? Do not post podcasts after midnight. Ever.

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The new version - in case you still want to listen....

Column: My eyes stream with tears

My sister was married in this church, my mother buried from the parish. It's taken years to repair the damage in town. The last stone in the rebuilt middle school was set just a few week back; the mission church opened for Christmas. There is still a steaming sulfurous hold in the parking lot next to the town library. You can smell it from the highway.

What it will take to repair Haiti, and how long, I suspect we truly don't comprehend.

This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times on 21 January 2010.


Let my eyes stream with tears day and night, without rest, over the great destruction which overwhelms the virgin daughter of my people, over her incurable wound. — Jer. 14:17

The strange thing about earthquakes is how swiftly the change comes. There is no warning. No darkening sky, no rising waters. Suddenly, the earth shifts, shakes and moans. It’s over almost before you can grasp what is happening. But there is no mistaking what it leaves behind. Death and destruction.

Seven years ago, just before Christmas, the phone rang. A quake a third as strong as the one that leveled Port-au-Prince, Haiti, had struck; its epicenter just 20 miles away from my parents’ house. A friend was killed along with a co-worker when the building where she worked collapsed. My parents’ parish church was so badly damaged that a year later my mother’s funeral Mass would be held in the Franciscan novices’ recreation room, people and flowers spilling into the courtyard. Death and destruction, but on a scale I could comprehend, even as I grieved the losses.

The death and destruction in Port-au-Prince are incomprehensible. The bits that I read this morning spoke of a city paralyzed, of darkness, of unalloyed suffering. I could hardly bear to contemplate this reality; my eyes literally streamed with tears. Yet, at the very end of one article, I saw a sudden flicker of light in the midst of the excruciating pain. As darkness fell, the reporter wrote he could hear a single line in Creole sung over and over in the courtyard of the hospital and outside in the streets. “Beni Swa Leternel.” Blessed be the name of the Lord.

This is a faith that is as incomprehensible as the destruction. I am reminded of Jesuit Dean Brackley’s amazement at the fearless faith of the women of El Salvador, even as war raged around them. “Miré!” one woman told him — “Look! When you’ve hunted for your children among piles of corpses, you are no longer afraid. They can’t do anything to you anymore.”

If I ever fail to see that faith is God’s gift and cannot be destroyed by anything of this earth, nor achieved on our own, these words and the hymns sung in the streets of Port-au-Prince are humbling reminders.

Alfred Delp, S.J., himself awaiting execution by the Nazis, wondered how anyone could freely love God when disaster descends: “When life itself transfixes a person, tying him hand and foot, shutting him up in a prison with no possible outlet, of what use then are all decisions to live abundantly?” He goes on to answer himself, “The love of God, and the patient loving hands of those whose lives have not been afflicted…will help us.”

The people of Haiti are imprisoned in the rubble of their city, stripped of everything, in deep need of the loving hands of those of us who have not been afflicted. But from their poverty and pain, they offer us a rich gift and a challenge. They make manifest the words of Paul to the Romans: “For I am convinced that neither death nor life…neither the present nor the future, neither height nor depth nor any other creature, will be able to separate us from the love of God that comes to us in Christ Jesus.” And they challenge us to desire that same unshakeable faith.

In return, we can offer our help, not just now, but during the long process of rebuilding; not just the practical, but our prayers, that the faith of those in Haiti may be sustained through these dark days and difficult years ahead. A group of us from around the world, having exhausted for the moment what little we can on the practical front, are stopping on the hour to pray for our brothers and sisters in Haiti. I invite you to join us. We have faith that it will help.

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The photos is of the interior of the church at Mission San Miguel Arcangel. Taken in 1934 by Roger Sturtevant of the National Park Service.

Wants and Needs

I want chocolate caramels. I have chocolate caramels. Do I need chocolate caramels? Probably not. Can I have chocolate caramels? Not after today's emergency dental visit. I'm glued back together, but a bit sore, so I'm having a bowl of tangy, plain, thick yogurt. All told, it's been a good day (despite the need to see the dentist). Much was accomplished, and the day ended with a delight. I went to my office after the dentist, to see my grad student. In my box was a large padded envelope. I opened it up to find a gorgeous red and silver shawl. I'd admired a similar one on a colleague at a meeting last week, and she'd offered to send me one the next time she went to the market where she got hers. There was joy to balance the day of affliction!

On setting a good example

...or not? Barnacle Boy cooked dinner tonight. Homemade mac and cheese. He made the cheese sauce from scratch, with only a momentary panic when he thought his white sauce was too lumpy. A quick whisk to the rescue and all was well...

Meanwhile I was battling the demons that had taken up residence in my computer. My desktop is "having issues" - if only I could be more specific, perhaps I could fix them. The printer is linked through the desktop. And tonight I had to teach, using the materials I prepped, but could neither print nor pull off the desktop. Argh...I finally managed to get them onto my laptop, so I could print them at the college. But dinner?

One of my seniors arrived for class, lamenting that dinner had been chocolate and a banana. I told her she had a healthier dinner than I had. When she looked at my quizzically, I admitted to having had two (large) handfuls of jelly beans. (Barnacle Boy ate the last of the "healthy" gummi pandas...so no redeeming antioxidants in these!)

Michelle and the very bad day

We had an ice storm last night - to the great delight of Barnacle Boy and Crash Kid. At 6 am I heard the thump of teen feet hitting the floor, the quiet padding into the sunroom and then...nothing. I got up, checked the local news website, and there it was - a 2 hour delayed opening. I crawled back into bed to enjoy the gift a few minutes extra sleep. An hour later, just as I was wondering if I should get up, Barnacle Boy appeared at the bedside. "There's a huge puddle in the sunroom!" I wasn't wondering anymore, I was up!

Math Man ended up climbing out our bathroom window to clear an ice dam on the roof, which ended the leak. Meanwhile I used up a half dozen bath towels blotting the area rug.

Barnacle Boy thought we needed fresh chocolate chip cookies - so at 8 am he started a batch. It definitely improved the day -- as did an email from a friend which included this list of how to tell if you were having a really bad day (Math Man bore a startling resemblance to the kitty in photo 13 after his roof sojourn!).