Go and tell my brothers and sisters

Noli Me Tangere by Fra Bartolomeo via Wikimedia 

From the 20^th chapter of the Gospel of John:  Jesus said to Mary Magdalene, “Go to my brothers and sisters and tell them, ‘I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”
Mary of Magdala went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord,” and what he told her.

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One of the dynamics of a retreat we discussed at length during the practicum at ISI two weeks ago was how to send retreatants back into the world.  Underlying this was a conversation about the purpose of the retreat — to vacation with God, to 'unplug', a yearly spiritual 'cleanse', a moment to pick up tools to help one "make progress in the life," a step along the way toward magis  — keeping in mind that the dynamics of the retreat planned may not be consonant with the desires that retreatants bring with them, and that the magis Ignatius speaks of might not be for everyone. 

This was a practicum, so we had a chance to do a little preaching and were encouraged to sketch out retreat talks we might give.  I'm still grappling with how a weekend retreat framed around Ignatius 18th Annotation might move retreatants, how resurrection and mission might be presented in this context. 

The scene with Mary of Magdalene in the garden is what came to mind, perhaps because I was sitting outside in the heat, in a small rock garden, perhaps because her feast had been a few days earlier. 

St. Augustine called Mary Magdalene "the apostle to the apostles," because she was went from the garden to tell the apostles the good news. Magdala means tower in Aramaic and I frankly enjoy the image of Mary the Tower as a complement to Peter the Rock. The Church may be built on that rock of Peter, but Mary of Magdala ignited it with these words, "I have seen the Lord.” 

I found myself wondering what happened to Mary Magdalene next, after she returned and the disciples dismissed her as crazy (or so Luke's Gospel tell us).  The medieval legends says she went to France and lived in a cave, repenting of her sins and fed by angels.  I find myself more taken with the Orthodox tradition, which puts her with Mary, the Theotokos, the Mother of God, in Ephesus.

“Go” Jesus told Mary Magdalene in the garden.  Jesus didn’t mean for her to take a walk and deliver a message, the end.  The Greek word translated here as go (poreuou) in John’s Gospel carries the sense of heading out on a journey, to re-order your life’s direction, to carry forward a message. Go out, cries Jesus, I want you to proclaim again and again, “I have seen the risen Lord.” The ultimate root of poreuou is aptly enough "pierced through" (as a needle carries a thread through...) 

Did Mary tell the apostles, give up when they laughed at the women's "nonsense" (leros) and then quietly retire to Ephesus (or a cave for that matter)?  Or did what she saw and believed pour out of her?  Does she pray, as C.S. Lewis would say centuries later, 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. " Does she proclaim the resurrection as she was sent to do?  Does she meet Paul?  Are the two Mary's at the core of the church in Ephesus?

It's given me much to think about, not only in the context of retreat preaching, but in terms of my own vocation.

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What is most often translated "brothers," adelphous, is literally "from the same womb" as are, of course, brothers and sisters.

Boundary conditions

There is a tendency to think of boundaries as problematic. Either they are problems in themselves — something to be gotten around or through — or they are responses to problems, proxies for a sense of self-discipline — like putting the chocolate on a shelf I can't reach.

But in quantum mechanics, boundary conditions are more likely to be part of the solution than the problem. The solution to the Schrödinger equation for a particle trapped in a square well emerges from recognizing that at the boundaries, the wave function must be zero. Boundary conditions clarify, they sharpen.

I've been thinking about boundaries in my own life. There is the new door to my study, which no longer requires that I shove a pile of heavy chemistry texts against the door to keep the cat out. It allows easier access (and egress -- I no longer have to interrupt what I was doing in order to blockade the door again) to my guys, but makes it impossible for the cat and much of the household noise to get in.

Good boundaries are to some extent permeable. The monastic enclosure at New Camaldoli keeps out clueless tourists and wandering retreatants, but lets God and a view of the Pacific in. My challenges at the moment are less boundaries in space than boundaries in time. How I can plant a sign for a monastic enclosure in time, rather than in space?

What's not to do?

Sometime midweek tasks were landing on my desk (and in my inbox and tossed onto the kitchen counter and...) at such a rate that I couldn't even manage to jot them on my to-do list. I felt like Mickey Mouse in the Sorcerer's Apprentice scene from Fantasia, the pails — uh, tasks — multiplying with abandon.

I scribbled reminders on post-its, ran through mental lists of emails I had to answer as I dashed up the stairs from meetings to teach class and reminded people to remind me later (just in case). Half-forgotten tasks lurk around mental corners and jump out at me at the least provocation. (Write check for choral uniforms ambushed me even as I sat here on the sofa nominally relaxing.) I keep looking over my mental shoulder — sure there's something major I've forgotten to do stalking me. (So far so good, but now that I mention it, am I supposed to cantor this weekend?)

As I was flipping through a magazine (which promised a month of stress-free dinners, if only people in my house would eat pork loin with sauteed cauliflower and capers), one piece of advice caught my eye: write an "ignore list."

I wonder if what I need more than a to-do list is a not-to-do list. What can I let go of before I even pick it up? or spend mental space and energy on coralling?

Hei-wa: still souls

Math Man and I were on a walk yesterday, and happened across an older neighbor, a regular reader of my column in the Standard. She had lots of questions for me, and one for Math Man. "How does she do all that writing?" Math Man: "She stays up late and she is very disciplined."

It's been a very disciplined month, as I finished out the semester and juggled a number of writing deadlines (about 7000 words sent out to three different editors, in eight different pieces, ranging in length from 250 words to just over 3000 words). I've missed writing in this space, with its lack of constraints regard topic, length, format or audience, but have missed more being able to read freely. Still, I've managed to stay on a relatively even keel, partly because, despite Math Man's comment, I've given up giving up sleep.

Patient Spiritual Director has been encouraging some discernment along these lines for some time, and so I've been experimenting with finding "the mean" in my sleep. I think I've found the sweet spot for now, but having done so, I've lost nearly an entire working day from my week. (You can do the math, but I'll save you the effort - an extra 1.5 hours of sleep a night times seven is...10.5 hours.)

One reason I've been juggling deadlines is because I'm off tomorrow on a 2 week trip to Japan. I'm teaching a course next fall on silent spaces in the context of Western contemplative traditions. It's one of a triad of courses looking at contemplative traditions: Eastern, Western and science. We are traveling with the students next fall, to Japan, to Wernersville, to a Benedictine community. This trip is to scope out some of the places and people we want to see when we return with the class. I'm blogging the course here, but will be chronicling travels as well as some of my reading on this blog, too.

What am I reading on the plane? Besides C.S. Lewis' Weight of Glory?

• Sacred Koyasan: A Pilgrimage to the Mountain Temple of Saint Kobo Daishi and the Great SunBuddha, Philip L. Nicoloff, 2007.

• Neural correlates of a mystical experience in Carmelite nuns. Mario Beauregard & Vincent Paquette, Neuroscience Letters 405 (2006) 186–190

And lest you think I'm all that high-minded, I've uploaded a season of Enterprise onto my iPad.

The kanji illustrating this post means "peace," and the two characters can be roughly translated as "still soul" - an layer of meaning I enjoyed discovering.

I've left some posts to appear while I'm gone, and posting on the road is likely to be erratic, I don't expect to have connectivity everywhere I go.

Column: Yes and No

This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times on 24 February 2011.

Let your “yes” mean “yes,” and your “no” mean “no.” Anything more is from the evil one.
— Mt. 5:37a

The meeting was called for Sunday — to begin at 8:45 at night. I’d agreed to serve on this group in the fall, knowing that it would entail some meetings out of regular hours, but now I was grumbling about the outrageous scheduling of this last meeting to anyone who might listen (and probably a few who wished they hadn’t asked).

Then I went to Mass. The last line of the Gospel was like a splash of cold water in my face: Let your “yes” mean “yes.”

Ouch. All afternoon, as I read the materials for the meeting, took a walk then made dinner, that one line of the Gospel danced in front of me, insistently asking the question: did my “yes” really mean “yes”? It wasn’t just about this particular meeting, but about all of the yeses in my life.

Two years ago this week, I had just come home from a 30-day silent retreat, during which I made St. Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises. I learned much over the course of the retreat about discerning how to say yes to God in my life. The Exercises end with a contemplation about how to say “yes,” wholeheartedly and without reservation, to God.

A friend, herself experienced in directing Ignatius’ Exercises, had suggested I mark the anniversary in some way, but I let the day come and go quietly. Three days later I found myself plunged back into that final contemplation — hearing God asking if my “yes” meant “yes.” While I’m not sure if that’s quite what my friend had in mind, it seemed to fit.

There is a story told by one of the desert fathers about a widow who comes to beg for grain. The almoner invites her to help herself to the barley, but when he weighs it to see how much she has taken, he tells her she has taken too much. After she leaves in embarrassment, one of the hermits wonders if the grain was a loan or a gift? “A gift, of course,” replies the almoner. “Then why were you so exacting in your measure?”

The gift St. Ignatius encourages us to make at the end of the Exercises is of ourselves. If I intend to make God a gift of myself, and not just a loan of my time for which I expect a careful accounting and repayment in full, why am I so exacting in my measure at times?

I wonder if my yeses aren’t as unconditional as they could be because my noes aren’t either. God is not calling me to be a drudge for the kingdom, being all things to all people at all times or taking on more and more until I collapse into a heap.

The Exercises asked me to consider how God has made me in particular, the purposes He intends for the gifts given to me and to let that inform the yeses and, perhaps as importantly, the noes of my life.

Perhaps I should have said “no” and meant it to a committee meeting that left me almost too tired to teach the next day. Sometimes it takes saying no in one place to be able to say yes in another without needing to grudgingly mete out my gift. The other thing the Exercises taught me? Ask for the grace you need.

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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 from the Spiritual Exercises, 234.

Attenuating Email

I send an email, you respond, I confirm, you say thank you....

I've been using Gmail's priority mailbox - which does a reasonably good job of deciding which email I want to see (ok, it took a bit of training to discourage it from prioritizing reminders from the college about random activities - but other than that has been fine).

Sometimes I wish Gmail would decide for me when an email exchange is finished and file it away without further ado. Instead I read the latest addition to a thread, and wonder, do I need to respond, am I expected to respond, should I respond?

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Figure is of an attenuator circuit.

Column: Traveling Essentials

This piece has its genesis in two blog posts: The Role of Mature Females and The Things I Carry — or don't and in the ritual cleaning out of my purse before I travel, for retreat or not.

In the end, I walked 5 some miles, traveled another 350 miles on 3 trains and 2 subway lines, carrying only what I hoped I truly needed. It was enough to know its weight the last half mile I walked, but not so much that I couldn't carry it all the way.

The full blessing poem For the traveler (from To Bless the Space Between Us by John O'Donohue) is a wonderfully Ignatian blessing for the start of retreat, or really any trip to spaces outside your usual orbit.

The photo is of the front door to the Jesuit's Eastern Point Retreat House in Gloucester, MA and my bags, packed now to return home.

This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times, 3 June 2010.

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven.
— Mk. 10:25

“The mature female is perfect to carry the transmitter,” the sonorous voice of the Shark Week narrator drifts through the doorway of the kitchen. The scientist in me spent a moment wondering why tracking a female shark was important to the experiment, but the mother in me knew this made perfect sense.

Of course a mature female — shark or human — would be the one tagged to carry anything. I can’t count the number of times one of the guys in my house has handed me something with the words, “Can you throw this in your purse for me?” It’s already bulging at the seams, so why not add one more thing?

Before I went away last week, I cleaned out my purse. It was both a practical and a spiritual exercise. Practical for certain, I would have a couple of long walks and three changes of trains; a light load was essential. But spiritual?

In his poem, “For the Traveler,” priest and hermit John O’Donohue suggests that a traveler

Make sure, before you go,
To take the time
To bless your going forth,
To free your heart of ballast
So that the compass of your soul
Might direct you ...

The clearing out of my bag was a chance to ask what holds me down, what prevents my moving in freedom.

Some Scripture scholars have suggested that the “eye of the needle” was a narrow gate in Jerusalem, through which a fully loaded camel could not pass. Like the young man that Jesus is lovingly advising about what it will take to travel the road to the kingdom of God, there is much in my purse that I would be shocked to be told to leave behind.

Like most mothers, I suspect, I have something for almost every eventuality in my bag: cell phone, snacks and water bottle, tissues, band-aids, pens and paper, sunscreen and lip balm, safety pins and paper clips, amusements (to keep the kids from going crazy) and a rosary (to keep me from going crazy). Add in the old receipts, lists of things to do from weeks ago and ... I doubt that I would fit through a narrow gate, any more than a loaded camel would.

I carry things to clean, feed, heal, communicate, record, hold together, protect, distract, engage. Stuff I think I might need in a pinch to save or be saved, stuff that creeps thoughtlessly in, slowly and inexorably adding ballast to the bottom of my bag.

Asked to empty out his treasury of stuff, the young man left shocked and grieving, and the disciples wondered if anyone could make it through the door. Jesus reassures them that while they can’t save themselves — no matter how much they have or carry with them — God, and God alone, can save them.

Emptying out my purse was a shock in many ways (the crumbs in the bottom could feed a colony of ants). But its most potent effect was the reminder that no matter how much I have tucked in there, ultimately, I can’t save myself or even those I love. For only in God is there true hope of rescue.

I shook the crumbs out of the bottom, tossed the crumpled reminders of errands long completed and put back a much pared down collection of “essentials.” No camels will be necessary to lug it along on my travels, I should be able to sail through the gates to the Boston T. The one thing I added weighs nothing; in fact it lightens my load: the knowledge that nothing I carry is essential — except my faith in God.

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Defend us, Lord, against every distress so that unencumbered in body and soul, we may devote ourselves to your service in freedom and joy. We make our prayer through our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen. — Closing prayer for Morning Prayer, 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time.

Discerning thoughts

[Michelle is on retreat, but thanks to Blogger's scheduled post feature, is still inhabiting this virtual space.]

Over the last year several people have suggested that I might start to think about putting together a collection of the columns I've written for the Catholic Standard and Times. I started taking it more seriously when someone who routinely (relentlessly?!) rags on me about having too much on my plate suggested it. Take on a new project?

When in the midst of a discernment, Patient Spiritual Director wisely advises, look to the wisdom of those who know you best. If you come here to read, you would be among those who know me best as a writer, so I seek your wisdom. What advice would you have for me on such a project? I put a poll up in the sidebar if you just want to give a quick thumbs up or thumbs down, but I would welcome comments as well.

Meanwhile, I'm (hopefully) doing some discerning of my own on the edge of the Immense.

A Study in Clutter

Robin is blogging about a topic that's often on my mind -- the spiritual aspects of physical space. You may have noticed the list titled "Fifty Fewer" on my sidebar. Two years ago, I spent the weeks between the end of the school year and the start of my annual retreat clearing out spaces real and spiritual by trying to have fifty fewer things in my life at the end of each week. I kept the list partly for accountablity and partly so I could keep from bringing the same stuff back in over and over again.

It's been a busy semester, and I've been trying hard to triage (or discern, if you prefer the Ignatian term) well what needs attention and what must go by the wayside. I find it hard to work on a cluttered desk, or in a cluttered space for that matter, but finally reached a point where I didn't always have time to reshelve the books or file the papers before I had to dig into the next bit of writing or class prep. So the piles began to stack up. They're organized, after a fashion, but at least two piles are threatening my work space — one on each desk.

I'm hoping to spend a bit of time tomorrow afternoon making some order in my study, and hoping there will be some spillover to my life — spiritual and otherwise. If I organize things, serenity will return? I'm not holding my breath!

Sixty ways to say "no" to:

My plate is threatening to overflow again. When I announced at the dinner table the other night that I was going to pitch activities which were solely a source of stress and where my only contribution seemed to be my existence, Crash had some ways to say "no" - pulled from the posters on the walls of his health classroom. So when next I'm asked to....serve on a committee...write a proposal for....evaluate a new....I could say:

"I'd rather just be friends."
"Let's just go see a movie instead!"

My favorites are the non-sequitur: "No thanks, I have asthma." and the cheeky "I'm not that kind of girl." suggested by my brother, The Wookie. Hopefully no one can read my thought bubbles!

If it works for sex, drug and cigarettes -- will it work for my to do list?? I'll keep you posted!

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There is a list here.

Secrets of Book Writing

My big sabbatical project is writing a book - about how scientists think. I've been working on this steadily since the fall. I was about half-done (ca 40,000 words done anyway) when I wrote the introductory chapter. I tell my students that writing can clarify your thinking. This did - although what is clarified was that the way I had structured the book overall could have been better. So now I am engaged in serious verbal carnage, ripping apart 6 chapters and reassembling them according to the new plan.

The day I began, an ad appeared on my Gmail for "how to write a book in two weeks" -- sometimes those ads cut a little too close to home! As if? If only!

On deck for the coming week: finish an essay tentatively titled "topophilia" for Nature Chemistry, column for the Catholic Standard & Times and two chapters for The Book.

They did not choose wisely

My brother, the Reverend, is a middle school vice principal. One of his favorite moves scenes is from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, where the ancient knight guarding the Holy Grail dryly remarks "He chose poorly" as the bad guy writhes on the ground after drinking from the wrong cup. It's all about choices in middle school.

Math Man came home tonight after a meeting. "There's water ice," he said temptingly. "Not anymore," I inform him. "They chose poorly," my spouse intoned. It appears he drove them to the water ice place on the way home from school, then Crash and Barnacle Boy ate it all before he got a taste. Thankfully I was not craving green apple water ice, though I expect there will be a conversation about choices in the morning.