Sacred laundry

“There are many helpful Episcopal Church web sites about getting lipstick off purificators and candle wax off altar cloths but nothing about removing blood stains from albs.” From a 4:20 am text to Crash Kid and his partner.

My soon-to-be daughter in law shot back, “This is written like the opening line to a mystery novel I would want to read!!”

Maybe this is the next book? The current mystery is more practical. How do I get the blood stains and the red wine stains out of my white alb, currently soaking in cold water? Just like in a mystery novel, let’s use a little flashback here…

I was the altar server at the 5pm vigil Mass last night. We had a visiting priest who preached a banger of a homily, and I was trying to be attentive to both those weird “unique to this parish” things for the visitor and to the ways he prefers to preside. So, you know, I was trying to be mindful and attentive to the liturgy. Pride, as we know, goes before a fall. And it surely did.

The gifts were presented, I took the wine with me to the credence table at the back of the altar to collect the cruet with the water. As I turned and took a step I caught my foot in the hem of my alb. Suddenly I realized I was going to fall and there was nothing to stop me but the marble floor. My training in how to fall (thank you UCI Dance and El Gabriel) kicked in and I tucked and rolled. The water cruet flew from my hand and shattered with a tremendous crash. In seconds the altar was swarmed by people. I am mortified, also wet. As they began to help me up I looked at the hem of my alb and saw a bright red stain. Uh-oh.

"Someone is bleeding," I thought. Then a few seconds later,"It's probably me." It was. Off I went with two parishioners who are nurses to the small chapel behind the main altar where we staunched the bleeding. Presumably clean-up went forward, but I was out of play. The presider came back to make sure I was ok, and told me it was going to be a memorable visit. Someone popped back to ask me if the wine had been consecrated. No. Definitely not. Someone else said that the wine was sitting, apparently unspilled and unbroken on the floor. (As it turned out, a great deal had spilled, all over my alb, but I didn't drop it and apparently set it neatly on the floor. Huh.) They got fresh wine anyway. Good. 

We hunted up a first aid kit to bandage things up so I didn't drip on my alb anymore. The pastor came. It's communion, the helpers went out to receive, the ministers came back so I could receive. (Is this technically allowed? Is it covered under communion for the sick? Did I satisfy the Sunday obligation? This is Roman Catholicism, thereby there must be a rule. No one invoked it. There are definitely rules in place that cover what happens if the priest can't go on — see De defectibus.)

I went home, carrying the alb. Math Man took me to the ER. It took four hours and three rounds of X-rays to locate and removed the glass embedded in my hand. There were jokes. Math Man sent Math Guy photos of the damage (to reassure him I was told). "Stigmata!" he chortled. The transport tech wanted to know if I'd been in a bar fight. (It didn't occur to me that I must have reeked of alcohol, all that red wine on shoes and pants, which were at least black. Parkinson's has dulled my sense of smell.) 

There were apologies from the staff that it was taking so long, and thanks for my patience. I didn't tell them that I had once been in that ER and not had to wait. It didn't end well. Waiting is good.  Except that waiting gives the ghosts time to gather. 

This morning I picked up the alb from where I'd left it yesterday and noticed the violet stains everywhere. What? Oh. The wine. Which leads to the question at hand: how do you get both red wine and blood out of a white alb?

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Odd thoughts: 

Is the clean up protocol different if the wine had been consecrated? Short answer. Yes.

There is advice about cleaning blood stains in First Initiation into Carthusian Life (a manual for Carthusian novices, mostly on prayer, but with practical advice on mail and meals and laundry tacked on to the end).  Soak in COLD water and the stains will vanish in short order, it advises (But only in a Carthusian charterhouse, the rest of us might need to summon the imps of Oxiclean.)

Spelling: the sign “waive here” outside ED radiology (to open the door) a place I visited repeatedly; the clinical notes say I fell on the "alter".

"In Residence" - the Shonda Rhimes mystery we've been watching. Lots of flashback. A scene where the White House chef Marvella smashes glasses on the floor, screaming "Broken glass!"

Aspergillum/Aspergillus: where science and faith collide

Today I learned that Aspergillus niger - the fungus (mostly) responsible for the fermentation of pu'erh teas - was named for the aspergillum used liturgically to sprinkle holy water, which it (vaguely) resembles. No surprise, the botanist was a priest (Pier Micheli).

I haven't been writing much on the blog of late, because I have been writing another book (#6). This one is on the chemistry of tea, titled Steeped. After a day of writing, or a day of teaching and tucking writing into the corners, I've been loath to get on the keyboard in the evening and blog. I may not be out of ideas of things to write about, but I am definitely out of energy and words at the end of the day.

I am very much at the end of the process, finishing writing the last bits, and doing a big edit on the book as a whole. The goal is to have the whole thing submitted by the end of July, so watch this space!

Weird Catholic Twitter: Hymn Edition

There is such a thing as Weird Anglican Twitter, which I find (for the most part) gentle and grace-filled (and occasionally perplexing, not being Anglican).  Their Advent devotional got me through a chaotic end of the semester. Would recommend.

Weird CatholicTwitter? Not so much. Lots of pearl clutching and “well, I never”ing.  It’s often holier than thou. And sometimes perplexing (and I am Catholic). I try not to follow the denizens of that virtual space, but occasionally we cross paths in the comments to a post, as happened last week.

One of the common tropes on WCT is that people should not sing hymns that speak in God’s voice. Someone posted a paean to Sr. Susan Toolan’s “I Am the Bread of Life” — appreciating that so many congregations sing this with gusto. This brought out the “don’t say God’s words” crowd in droves. (Including a new spin, women should not sing this because they are quoting Jesus.)

I’m perplexed. The Divine Office, which can be sung, includes psalms which feature God speaking in the first person. The Church’s ancient liturgical tradition has us singing as if we are God speaking. If you want  to ban that practice, ok, I guess, but be consistent. If “I Am the Bread of Life” is off limits, so are those psalms.

I tried to engage someone on this (yes, I know, I’ll go to confession, I promise) who wouldn’t answer my question about the sung office, but insisted that I reject “a song writer putting themselves in the voice of God” (as opposed to scripture). I surrendered when I realized he didn’t know that the words to “I Am the Bread of Life” were from the Gospel of John. Oh….dear.

Overreading Nehehmiah

Lots to see here for even the littlest!

Sunday's first reading has provoked some interesting exegetical conversation about the presence of young children within the sanctuary,

In the square in front of the Water Gate, Ezra read out of the book from daybreak till midday, in the presence of the men, the women, and those children old enough to understand; and all the people listened attentively to the book of the law. Nehemiah 8:3

Fr. Michael White reads this passage to support excluding children from the sanctuary, falling clearly on the side that the Mass is entirely a rational experience and those without the intellectual capacity to understand (presumably including those with dementia or other cognitive deficits) should be provided for in other ways, e.g. by investing in strong children's programs. Worship should be serene and uninterrupted by the messy realities of everyday life.

White mocks those who sit where their children can see, "as if they’re looking." Certainly my experience in a church which does not provide differently for children, or those otherwise unable to "understand," is that children are far more attentive to what is happening on the altar than you might think. The three year-old boy next to me who joins in the prayers of the faithful, the little girl dancing to our song — Alleluia — or my own son, who on hearing the opening to the second reading, "St. Paul's letter to the Romans" leaned over to say, "Rome, I've been to Rome." He was 4. Father White might spend a few weekends sitting incognito in the pews somewhere to see where children are looking and what they are doing and how parents are investing in their formation, and then revisit the issues he takes up in his essay.

Listening to the reading this weekend, I was struck by who was in the assembly. If all the people, the men and the women alike were there, who was home with the children too young to understand?  I had visions of houses with infants abandoned in cradles and toddlers wandering the streets. Perhaps the meaning to be wrung from this passage isn't that we shouldn't bring children into the church until they are old enough to understand, but that they are old enough to grasp out for and onto God from the very start. For are we not to love and worship God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and with all our strength.  Frankly, it's more than any of us can understand.

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H/T to Fritz Bauerschmidt at PrayTell, "Suffering the Little Children"

The eyes of a handmaid

Like the eyes of a servant
on the hand of her mistress,
so our eyes are on the Lord our God
— Psalm 123:2b-3a

This was Sunday's psalm. Several years ago, when unbeknownst to us all, our pastor was dying, this verse was often in my head. He was having difficulty walking and eventually, standing for any length of time.  When I was serving Mass and he was presiding, my eyes were on him all the time, to be sure he didn't have to take an extra step at the altar, to be sure his cane was near to hand, to be sure he had an arm to get down the steps.  But also sure to not fuss, to simply be there if needed.

When I think about those days, I think about whether I'm bringing that tender attentiveness away from the altar, taking it out the doors, rather than parking it with the processional cross in the narthex. Are my eyes on those around me, ready to be there, but not intruding?  When I volunteer at the shelter, where however temporary a landing spot it is,  I am in someone else's home, can I be there to hold the door in the morning, or tie a shoe so a parent can pack lunches or go to the bathroom? Can I fade into the woodwork otherwise? It takes sharp eyes indeed, ones that I'm still working on.

Galactic language for the liturgy?

Stairs up to the Vatican Observatory's

Zeiss Double Astrograph in 

Castelgandolfo 

"With joy we give you thanks and praise.
Where once was nothing, your love
brought matter into being and motion,
thus creating time itself,
and countless galaxies, each with its countless stars,
and, to prepare a home for us,
delicately circling round one single star,
this one small globe, our mother earth." — John Daly, SJ

Recently on PrayTell there has been a discussion about a draft of a Eucharistic prayer by John Daly, SJ, that uses language and imagery drawn from modern science — a prayer for the 21st century.  [UPDATE: Kimberly Belcher of Notre Dame now has a post up at PrayTell extending the conversation.]The post grabbed my attention both because of the science and because I'm currently writing prayers for a book that is nearing completion. What should go in them?

There's a lot to critique in the draft (which you can read here, along with Thomas Reese, SJ's commentary here) but Fritz Bauerschmidt posed the question which interests me: "But a more general question might be whether we want eucharistic prayers that are so thoroughly invested in a particular scientific worldview that they are likely to sound outdated before too long."

That said, I would suggest Bauerschmidt's question is moot.  To my eye, the science in this Eucharistic prayer is isn't going to get outdated period, let alone next week.  It's all pretty settled at the level of the broad strokes used to describe in the text, and despite the title of the PrayTell post none of it is from the 21st century, some of it dates back hundreds of years.  For example, the universe is indeed billions of years old, as the prayer implies. we've known the age of the universe is on the order of billions of years for almost a century.  Whether that's 13.81 billion years or 13.77 billion years might still be up for grabs in the cosmology community, but it's immaterial in this context, Daly didn't get into that level of detail.

David Brown, SJ observing using the Zeiss
refractor at the Vatican Observatory in
Castelgandolfo

The rest of the science is similarly situated: baryogenesis did happen (i.e. matter came into being) even if the details are yet a bit murky, the earth circles the sun and is not flat. Evolution is a biological process, life on earth began at single cell level, humans evolved much later. The word chaos is used several times, but not in its technical mathematical sense.  Primal chaos is a pretty reasonable word to use to describe the universe as it existed in its earliest second, so tangled and so dense even light could not escape its clutches.

But I sense in the conversation something of the notion that scientific imagery and language just isn't sacred enough, perhaps a subtext of 'doesn't it sound silly to be thanking God for having discovered the Higgs-Bosun [sic]?' in one of the first comments.¹ The serious question I'd like to raise is,  is it really laughable to be grateful to God for scientific discoveries in general?  If not in general, then for specific ones?  May we pray for "scientists," but not for "computational chemists," or for "galaxies" but not "Bose-Einstein condensates"?  On the telescope domes atop the old papal summer palace are inscribed the words, Deum creatorem venite adoremus, come adore God the Creator.  The laws of physics are as much God's creation as the dewfall.  Dew and rain, bless the Lord.  Bosons and fermions, bless the Lord, too.

Science is not a merely secular pursuit, I would argue it's very much a dialog with God about creation.  In that sense, it's prayer.  Contemplative prayer.

It's a more than a bit ironic to deprive our liturgical spaces of any mention of "science", bearing in mind that science has always made these spaces possible, from the engineering and math that ensures the buildings stay up, to the vinter's chemistry, to the dyes used on the vestments, and these days, made those albs resist wrinkles in ways linen ones never would.

When the book is done, perhaps I'll try my hand at a litany of praise for science, galactic and otherwise.

---

1.  Well, yes it does sound silly, because there is no Higgs-Bosun, it's the Higgs boson that got discovered; bosons are a particle type, not a person's name, but I know that because I deal in bosons and fermions on a daily basis!)

And while we are on the subject of science imagery in the liturgy, I remain distracted by dewfall (which doesn't fall, it condenses), and the bath of regeneration in the blessing over the way, which also distract me, but freely admit the failing is with me.  I'm certain everyone encounters language in the liturgy that abruptly bumps them out of the prayer and into something else.  Prevenient, anyone?

Column: The madness of wearing ladies' straw hats to church

Dome of St. Thomas of Villanova in center, telescope dome to the right.

This column appeared at CatholicPhilly.com on 10 June 2016.

The Church of St. Thomas of Villanova is set into the rim of a volcanic crater, high above Lake Albano and across the piazza from the Apostolic Palace outside of Rome, where popes have come to spend the summer off and on for 450 years. It’s also a hundred feet from where I am staying this month while visiting the Vatican Observatory, so this Sunday I walked out my front door and down the street for Mass.

Daily Mass at the Observatory is sometimes in English, sometimes in Italian, and after two weeks and with the help of a missal, I can muddle my way through the responses in the latter reasonably well. I left my Italian missal in my apartment, so was delighted when the ushers handed out hymnals with the Order of Mass in the front.

Or at least I was delighted until 10 seconds before Mass began, and a sister slipped into the pew next to me, reached over and took the hymnal from in front of me and slid it neatly onto the shelf in front of her.

No, no, I thought. I need that. And there was no getting it back. Without the missal, the limits of my Italian were “Amen” and “E con il tuo spirito” (And with your spirit). The Confiteor was utterly beyond me. I was, I fully admit, more than a bit disgruntled. I wanted to participate, but was stripped of the language to do it.

I started to come around by the Gloria. I realized that if I stopped lamenting, stopped trying to figure out what I was supposed to say, and instead listened closely, I could understand the words. I could let the people around me give voice to what my heart desired to pray.

It reminded me that when I know the responses by heart, they can become too automatic. I can forget to listen to the voices around me, the People of God come together to celebrate. I can forget the power these words have to reconcile, to praise. I forget that the words, no matter how easily they come to my lips, merely scratch the surface of the mysteries on the altar.

Writer Annie Dillard wonders in her essay “An Expedition to the Poles” how we can face these mysteries. “Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke?” she writes. “It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets.”

For a fleeting moment last Sunday morning, I had a deeper sense of what lay underneath the words I say each time I go to Mass, and wondered if instead of hymnals, the ushers should be handing out crash helmets.

By the sign of peace, I could say firmly to the sister next to me, “Pace.” Peace. And Grazie mille. A thousand thanks for the lesson in listening.

Full, conscious, and active participation

Dome of St. Thomas of Villanova in Castel
Gandolfo.  Designed by Bernini in 1658.

I went to the 8:30 am Sunday Mass at the church a 100 feet from my front door.  The Church of Saint Thomas of Villanova is like a jewel set in the crown of the crater, you can spot the dome from just about anywhere (useful when navigating home!).  The church was designed by Gian Bernini, who also designed the altar of the cathedra in St. Peter's Basilica, at the request of Pope Alexander VII in 1658.  It's small — there were perhaps 80 people at Mass today and every pew was full — but airy and full of light with its high dome and clerestory windows which at this time of year, at least, perfectly catch the morning sun.

I've been managing Mass in Italian reasonably well, thanks to my Order of Mass in Nine Languages (shout out to Liturgical Press for this resource).  I had left this helpful book behind in my apartment this morning, but figured (correctly) there would be a hymnal with the Order of Mass in it.

One of the lectors went around before Mass began and handed out hymnals with the Order right up front to each of us.  Hurrah.  Ten seconds before Mass began (literally), a sister slipped into the pew next to me, reached over and took my hymnal.  From right in front of me.  She then stashed it on the shelf in front of her. Noooooo.  I need that.  I turn around to check the back table.  Nope, no helpful stack for latecomers.  No easy way to let sister know that I don't know the responses well enough to make them in Italian without that book she is not using.  Short of reaching over and grabbing it back. Which I just can't bring myself to do.

So much for full, conscious and active participation, I thought. Thankfully the Kyrie comes early in the process and (mostly) put an end to my petulance.

The homily was wonderful.  I'm certain of this because the presider was one of the Jesuit astronomers and I have heard him preach at daily Mass at the Specola (in English); he breaks open the Word with evident joy and a delightful thoughtfulness.  That and I managed to catch about 1 sentence in three.

It left me thinking, though, about how we experience liturgy.  Are we aware of how little we grasp, even when we know the responses, where the language is familiar?  Annie Dillard's riff on this in her essay An Expedition to the Poles came floating back:

“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return. ”

Chrism on my hands: science and faith

Practical theology.
In the library of the Convent of San Marco, Florence.

More than thirty years ago, I moved to the East Coast from California.  We registered in our local parish, where I was surprised to find that women could not be lectors or cantors or Eucharistic Ministers.  "The only time a woman should be on the altar," the pastor told me when I asked, "is to clean it."  Ah.  He had many gifts to share, not the least the ways in which he modeled a deep and abiding life of prayer, but this was a mindset he couldn't shake.

Last week, our associate pastor caught me after Morning Prayer, with a question about cleaning.  The question came, not because he thinks that the only role women have to play in the liturgies of Holy Week is cleaning the altar and vessels (which he most certainly does not!), but because I'm a chemist.  One of the chrismaria, the glass vessels used to store the parish's stock of oils for anointing, hadn't come clean with a first round of soap or with a second round of bleach.  It had held the chrism.  What might I suggest?

I looked at the glass container and noticed it was coated in a fluffy, waxy substance.  I rubbed some of it between my fingers.  (Yes, yes, I know, chemists shouldn't touch their stuff; buried somewhere in here is a reflection about humeral veils and gloves in the lab.)  Bleach is an oxidizing agent.  Fats, like olive oil, which form the base of chrism, when oxidized can give you esters — and alcohols.  The chemical mantra when it comes to dissolving things is "like dissolves like." So....

"Try some rubbing alcohol." I offered.

With this I went off to teach quantum mechanics, to find an email when I was done that the alcohol had done the trick.  Science in the service of the faith.

My hands smelled of chrism all morning, each time I raised my hands to write on the board, this reminder of my own baptismal anointing brushed my senses.  As priest, as prophet.  The catechism of the Catholic Church notes that service is intrinsically linked to the sacramental priesthood [CCC 876], and I see its traces in Ignatius' Suscipe, "Whatsoever I have or hold, You have given me; I give it all back to You and surrender it wholly to be governed by your will."  What do I return?  What do I turn toward God?  Toward service?

I thought, too, of Kathleen Norris' short book, The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and 'Women's Work,' in which she writes, "But laundry and worship are repetitive activities with a potential for tedium, and I hate to admit it, but laundry often seems like the more useful of the tasks. But both are the work that God has given us to do."  The laundry and the dishes are inextricably entwined with worship.  We learn to do one by doing the other.

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Chrismaria that look like they belong in the lab!

Happy anniversary

Upstairs on the shelf in my prayer corner is a book in a bright binding.  In it, I wrote the order for my and Math Man's wedding. It was the first for Math Man, the second for me.  Celebrated in the parish church on this day 23 years ago.

I wrote the order by hand. The readings, the prayers.  All of it.  It was a meditation at the time, and remains so when I pick it up.

The parish liturgist and I drafted the liturgy, winnowing down the choices for Math Man, who wasn't Catholic.  Not Mass.  Bride and groom down the aisle together.  No video recording (though Math Man's aunt made a surreptitious recording of it, I noticed looking at the photos tonight the camera in her husband's hands as they came out of the church. ) No photos taken during the ceremony. Just around the edges.

At the end of it all, before we recessed down the aisle, Math Man (whose maternal family was Jewish) broke a glass.  I like the rabbinical readings of that tradition that emphasize the intermingling of joy and sorrow, apt for this wedding of a widow, and can still hear the voice of my elderly Jewish colleague call "Mazel tov!"

Many of our choices in and out of the liturgy were about keeping the focus on the sacrament, being present to what was happening and being attentive to the people coming to celebrate with us.  No bridesmaid's uniform, or tuxes for the groomsmen.  Wear something garden-party-ish.  No micromanaging.  Unfancy food and games for the kids a hedge over from the reception, so kids and parents could be where they needed to be.

Flowers?  Ordered the week ahead of time from a florist who didn't faint when I said I needed wedding flowers in ten days time, and didn't care much about color or composition. I still look at the bouquet and think how lovely it was. And Math Man's boutonniere is dried and carefully stored in a jar on my dresser.  We had a wonderful time celebrating with our families and friends, all the more since we let go of many of the details.

As I knelt in the back of the church today for a brief moment, I rejoiced again in the gift of Math Man's love, and the ongoing support of the community of faith we live in and of our families and friends.

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Math Man is away today, the first time we've been separated on our anniversary, many time zones to the east.  He called via FaceTime as I was talking to my dad.  "Sorry, Dad, it's Math Man -- have to go!"  Math Man wondered if my dad minded knowing he was second on my list.  Nope!

Oremus: Let us Pray

Let us pray. Before we bring the gifts forward to consecrate, the food that will go to the hungry in body and spirit, we lay on the table our desires, for ourselves, for others, for the world.  For the last year or so, I've been part of a small team writing these prayers for my parish.  It's a ministry of listening, to the world — I listen to the news very differently these days — to the concerns of the people around me in the parish, and most of all to the Spirit.

I found this reflection on the ministry of intercessory prayer by St. John Chrysostom in my files (from a homily on Romans, chapter 14):

"...the gift of prayer used to come into one person in the church, and he would be the person set aside to ask God for the things which would benefit them all. Here the word Spirit is the name which Paul gives to the kind of grace and to the soul who receives it and intercedes with God on our behalf. The one who was counted worthy of such a grace as this would stand with great attention, and with many mental groanings he would fall before God, asking the things which were profitable for all. Nowadays, the deacon is a symbol of this, when he offers up the prayers for the people."

The images of standing with great attention and the mental groanings John Chrysostom associates with putting these prayers forward certainly resonates with me. At times I feel as if the Spirit uses sandpaper on my skin, making me more sensitive to the needs of the People of God, to their pain and grief as well as to their joys.

In some sense the Prayers of the Faithful are rightfully ephemeral prayers, for the needs of this particular moment, for the needs of these particular people.  But I wonder if we treat them too lightly.  We subscribe to a set of intercessions for daily Mass, each page tidily tossed in the recycling when it's been prayed.  Do we remember any of the prayers from this Sunday's Mass? Or do we just respond, "Lord, hear our prayer." regardless of whether the lector just read the first line of a grocery list. (I confess, I went last night and had to think hard to recall two or three — and I wrote the first draft of this set!)

For the grace to see God at work in unexpected people and places…we pray 

For those whose lives have been uprooted by violence and diaster: for the people of Baltimore and of Nepal…we pray

As a community, where do we keep these prayers?  Are they recycled after Mass, or do we post them on the parish website or tack them to the bulletin board in the vestibule where people can look at them again, perhaps carry them around in their hearts for a bit?

As we move from Easter to Pentecost to Ordinary Time, I'm going to try to hold onto one of these intentions for a few days or a week, pulling from the Liturgy of the Hours or other sources, willing to stand a bit in that precarious space between heaven and earth holding out a prayer for the needs of all.  For this week (from the LOH):

Forgive us for failing to see Christ in the poor, the distressed and the troublesome — and for our failure to reverence your Son in their persons.

Distraction-proof liturgy

There are many who live in the mountains and behave as if they were in the town; they are wasting their time. It is possible to be a solitary in one's mind while living in a crowd; and it is possible for those who are solitaries to live in the crowd of their own thoughts. — Amma Syncletica

The photo is of three rocks, set outside a tea house at a temple in Kyoto. The rocks would be set on the path when a tea ceremony was in progress, to keep passers-by from accidentally interrupting the proceedings.  

PrayTell posted my question about materials for engaging young children in the liturgy in their Non Solum feature.  It's a holiday weekend, so there hasn't been much discussion, but the little there has been is fascinating.  I asked about ways to engage children with the liturgy itself, not for strategies for keeping them amused while the rest of us participate.  But of the three comments there, two are about how to prevent children from being distractions (avoid liturgies at which they are present, don't bring loud toys for them).  

Can we distraction-proof a liturgy? Should we?  Push the children aside until they are "fully conscious" of what they are about (are any of us fully conscious of what we are about in this space?)?  What about the cell phones going off?  The man with dementia who mutters loudly during the homily?  Could we silence the hiss of the oxygen tank used by the man in the front row?  And even if we could get the distracting people out of the church, would we stop the train that rumbles by, a mere forty feet away from the ambo? I think not.

Perhaps the deeper question is how do we have Amma Syncletica's undistracted minds living in a crowded church?

Beyond the cry room: Missals and children at Mass

There is a photo of a pew card reassuring parents that their children are welcome at Mass making the rounds on social media.  The card suggests to parents that it is OK to sit in the front, and reminds others that our future is our children.  It made me think how we welcome families with young children.  Having once been ousted from a church before Mass even began, this is an issue that matters to me.

Many years ago, about five minutes before Mass was to start, my 2 year old's movements in the pew that we alone occupied were deemed too loud by the couple a few pews ahead. I note he was not talking, he was not putting the kneelers up and down, but he was putting his books down with a loud clunk.  In a liturgical space designed to amplify noise without a microphone, any noise is noisy. They complained to an usher and we were ushered out.  As I stopped to button his coat in the entrance to the church, tears were running down my face.  I was mortified. I was distraught at being denied communion.  The sacristan stopped me, wondering what was wrong.  I explained, remarkably calmly, scooped up Crash and left. Welcome, it seemed, we were not.

(The irony of this is that Crash now has a reputation of being a stealth altar server.  He moves through the space of the liturgy, doing what needs doing, without fuss.  He almost slips between the molecules of air.)

In my parish, we baptize at Mass, and the assembly is asked to support the parents in raising their children in the faith.  We can certainly make families feel welcome by tolerating the noise they make, and the inevitable wriggling that comes with children. (I can remember telling Math Man that prayer was a full body workout when the boys were very young.) But how else do we help families bring children into the fullness of their faith?

Missals?  We have hymnals and missalettes available (on the back table, not in the pews) for adults but nothing for children of any age.  There is a basket of random books in the back of the vestibule, many of them religious, but with a definite admixture of Disney.  Why don't we have a children's missal tucked in every pew?  Or in a basket on the back table next to the missalettes?  Why isn't there a list of books on the Mass that parents could purchase in a flyer in the back, with reviews by our catechetical staff?

And why aren't there good missals for children, particularly young ones.  This is my missal from when I was very young (and yes, I could still lay hands on it fifty years later, on the shelf with the rest of my missal collection).  The Mass was still in Latin.  It's illustrated by a well known sacred artist, there are sketches to let me follow the action, the facing pages connected the Mass to scriptural sources, with a rich illustration.  It is a beautiful and dignified prayer book, something I'm hard pressed to say about this or this. Why should not children have access to missals that are, like the books used to to celebrate the liturgy, " truly worthy, dignified, and beautiful" [GIRM 349]?  And sturdy -- our faith isn't flimsy!

Strangers in a strange land

It's the feast of the Epiphany, an apt time, perhaps, to think a bit about strangers who appear suddenly in our midst, and of weary travelers. We've had one such traveler appear late on Thursday night, in the midst of a snowstorm.  My nephew, driving back to New York from Virginia, an 8 hour drive that had already taken him nearly 12 when he arrived at our doorstep, bedraggled and wringingly exhausted.

Rita Ferrone, reflecting at PrayTell on her experience of Midnight Mass, notes that the presider "gave a self-righteous scolding to the occasional attenders." Meanwhile the comments on an article I wandered onto (about ways to make Christmas Mass accessible to those who are not habitual attenders) made me nearly weep, and glad I was not a stranger showing up at their parishes for they would prefer I neither have a seat nor receive the Eucharist, for that should be reserved for those (who they know) to come regularly to Mass.  Stranger?  You must be a C&E (Christmas and Easter) Catholic, which is, of course, no Catholic at all.

I can't imagine what it might feel like to have made the time, even just this once a year, to go to Church and be treated to a scolding.  The lost sheep has returned, do we not feast, rejoice?  There is a spark, do we sniff and blow it out?

Nor can I quite imagine what it must be like for those who regularly attend to be upbraided.  Is this how the Word that comes to dwell in our midst is to be preached at the celebration of the Incarnation?  Do not those who regularly come to this table deserve to be fed with carefully prepared preaching appropriate to the Solemnity which they have waited for through Advent's weeks?  Apparently not.

One commenter speaks of struggling with the contempt in which s/he holds the interlopers at Christmas Mass.  I'm struggling, too, with my feelings about those who feel there is no room at the inn for strangers, however they've found their way to the door, and however long before their next visit.

The texture of a silence

A couple of weeks ago, PrayTell had a thought-provoking post on cognitive engagement and liturgy, based on a comparison between an experience of a Dominican rite liturgy in Latin and the current ordinary Roman Rite.  Fritz Bauerschmidt's final questions offer, at least in my opinion, an implicit definition of excellent liturgy:  "Can we craft liturgy that is clearly both something we do and something that sweeps us up in a movement quite independent of our efforts? Can our liturgy be intelligible without being mentally taxing? Can it be mysterious without being mystifying? Or is the quest for such a liturgy just tilting at windmills. I, for one, certainly hope not."

There was some suggestions in the comments that the old Latin masses (what these days is called the extraordinary form) were inherently more reverent and perhaps more silent.  I responded to one such with by noting what I see as a tendency to conflate “contemplative/mystical” with the extraordinary form and “noisy/didactic” with the ordinary Roman rite. 
    
Fr. Allen McDonald replied that "The silence of the EF Mass is different than the silences that should be observed in the OF such as before the penitential act, after the readings, the homily and Holy Communion."  These are "silences just for the sake of silence"¹ rather than silences which emerge from a properly prepared congregation contemplating "official prayers of the Church being prayed in a silent way."  

I'm going to admit that I'm a bit put off by his characterization of the Eucharist as a contemplation (by the properly disposed) of someone else praying and gesturing in prayer.  I say this even in the face of a memorable retreat where my own prayer was certainly sustained by meditating on the stalwart prayer of the sisters around me in the chapel.  

That said, I'm grateful as his comments have made me attentive to the nature of the silence during Mass in my parish over the last two weeks.  Silence is not what my community does because we should, it is our default stance in the celebration of the Eucharist, you can hear it (or rather not hear it) even between the words of the prayers.  It's a silence that feels, in fact, not of our doing at all, but part and parcel of our being.  Be still — let go your grasp — and know that I am God. (Ps 46:10)  Here, at the Eucharistic table, we find ourselves in such intimate communion with God we cannot help but know that, and respond in kind.   I think this might be what Fritz Bauerschmidt is getting at with his description of being swept into a mystery, where our own responses swell into the stillness and fade, where the presider's prayers cascade down the altar steps and wash over us, the chant swirls up and out, but all of it, ever and always pouring into a silence whose depth and breadth and height knows no bounds.  Be still — be silent — and know that I am God. 

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1.  Sacred silence in the Roman Missal, according to the GIRM, is not just for the sake of silence, but has a variety of purposes: "For in the Penitential Act and again after the invitation to pray, individuals recollect themselves; whereas after a reading or after the Homily, all meditate briefly on what they have heard; then after Communion, they praise God in their hearts and pray to him."

Photo is of the door to the chapel at the old Jesuit novitiate.  A place that has held within its share of silent prayer and more...

What to wear to church

PrayTell's discussion question of the week has to do with getting ready to go to Mass, or at least with getting dressed to go to Mass.

There is a lot of advice about getting dressed to go to Mass on the web (about 20 million hits depending on what search terms you use), and remarkably little about anything else you should do before you go.

Skimming the first few pages of hits on appropriate attire for Mass, I am disturbingly transfixed by the advice, and how much time people clearly spend thinking about what other people are wearing. The debates rage: about whether or not women should wear pants, are flip-flops¹ suitable, must your shirt have sleeves, or a collar — and the million dollar question: does God care what you wear to His house? (Arguably it's all God's house, inside a church's walls as well as without, but attire within sacred space is what is under discussion.)

My take in the comments was that dressing with care for the Sunday liturgy seemed a link, for me at least, to the new garments I wore at baptism and baptism's cleansing waters, and so gently underscore the Sunday liturgy's Pascal character. And besides, I was concerned about the consequences if the fashion police were to join forces with the liturgical police.

The comments section, and a conversation with a fellow cantor who'd been to the NPM last week where a cantors' workshop had talked up the idea of using lectio divina with the psalm as preparation, got me wondering about how we get ready to go to Mass — by which I do not mean selecting suitable attire — but how do we suitably prepare interiorly to move into and out of these sacred rites.

Crash was reading this over my shoulder (we are on an airplane somewhere between Philadelphia and Phoenix en route to California) and suggested that if I wanted advice about what to wear, he could show me 40 or 50 parish bulletins among those he read over the last few weeks that contained advice about what to wear to Mass. I asked him how many he recalled that offered any other advice about preparing to go to Mass. A few, he conceded after a moment. And the advice? Reminders about fasting before receiving the Eucharist and requests to respect the silence so that other people could pray before Mass.

I wonder if we should stop arguing about whether or not it's OK to wear sandals (or go barefoot) because Jesus did, and scolding people (who have arguably made an effort to show up in a culture that doesn't prioritize Sunday worship) in the vestibule or bulletin or homily, and start a conversation instead about how we might help each other prepare well for the Eucharist which is the font and the summit of our life.

Herewith is my advice for some ways to prepare the ground for Sunday worship, so that what is sown there can take root and bear fruit. What would you add? I'd love to know what traditions outside the Roman Catholic communion do, so even if you aren't Catholic, please share your ideas and practices with us all.

• Early in the week, read the readings, reflect on them, talk them over with God.
• Read and reflect on the proper prayers for the day: the opening prayer, or the preface, or the prayer after communion.
• Pray one of the Eucharistic prayers, slowly and reverently, aloud or silently.
• Fast, sharpen your hunger for what you are about to receive. (For an interesting reflection and exercise, read Jim McDermott SJ's posts

here and here.

Wash your hearts, not your garments (with apologies to the prophet Joel). Reception of the Eucharist itself heals the dings in our souls, spend 15 minutes with God seeing where you missed the mark this week. What is it that cries out for God's healing touch during the penitential rite? What weight will be lifted when you say, "Amen" to that which you would become?

If we spent more time helping people celebrate the Eucharist fruitfully, perhaps we wouldn't have to worry about what they wear.

Up next? What to do when you leave...beyond take a bulletin.

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1. One should note that our culture's flip-flops are Japan's traditional dress shoes.

A good resource for preparing is at the St. Louis University Sunday liturgy site. And if you read Give Us This Day, may I recommend Mary Stommes stark and thought-provoking reflection on pulling up weeds among the wheat that appeared on July 31? (Full disclosure, I'm an occasional contributor to Give Us This Day.)

Ignatian Life: Custody of the Eyes

I've been following the conversation at the Deacon's Bench on the prudential judgement that needs to be exercised in deciding — in the moment — who should be admitted to the Eucharist. There is a lot of slicing and dicing of canon law, Eucharistic theology and moral theology being done (who has what rights, what is a correct disposition...) as well as a great deal of Monday morning quarterbacking going on.

It's been making me think, not about Eucharistic theology per se, but rather about the decisions we make — in the moment — when we come face to face with Christ in a "distressing diguise." Those can be tough, as a young Jesuit Volunteer courageously recounts here. What happens at the altar, does not stay at the altar, but plays out on the altar of the world. It's easy to be critical of the decisions made on all sides when there is time to think and discuss, not so easy when the decision is standing in front of you, asking to be fed.

I'm struggling with how to respond in these encounters with Christ as well — as you can read in my latest reflection at This Ignatian Life.

"We issue lists of grave sins, delicta graviora. We wrangle over translations, theological nuances and liturgical praxis. We worry whether we are sufficiently reverent with the body of Christ when we receive in the hand, and all the while the body of Christ lies crumpled and abandoned on the sidewalk. And I walk past, averting my eyes.

'And what about His hunger, cold, chains, nakedness and sickness? What about His homelessness? Are these sufferings not sufficient to overcome your alienation?' challenged John Chrysostom sixteen centuries ago. How can you continue to walk through the city, pretending not to see, failing to recognize what is before you? It’s not just new perspectives in science I seek on this sabbatical. What about His homelessness? I chose to work in the city on this leave, not just because the materials I needed were here, but because I wanted to look at this horizon, to struggle with my response to these challenging questions. To face what I had walked away from two summers previously."

Read the rest here.

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Photo is from rubygold, used under Creative Commons license.

Elected silence sing to me

Elected Silence, sing to me
And beat upon my whorlèd ear,
Pipe me to pastures still and be
The music that I care to hear. — from The Habit of Perfection by Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ

Elected silence, in generously deep and stilling pools, is a part of the fabric of my life. I spend about three weeks being silent a year, in chunks that range from a day to a decade of days, and have done so for many years. It's not quite a tithe of my days, but close enough.

My parish talks about giving of time, talent and treasure, the returning of the gifts we are given. I often think of the "time" part of the triad to be the hours I volunteer for the parish, whether as cantor, or spending the night sleeping in the school hall, serving as 'portress' when we host struggling families, or going to a committee meeting.

But I'm starting to wonder if the gift of time we are called to share and return is not just busy time. My book group talked a bit last month about silence in liturgy. How much is there, and how do we respond? Are we reluctant to leave it because we are afraid someone will think we don't know what we are doing? How do we use it when it comes? Are we itchy to get on with things, or thinking about the shopping list, or listening to God? Can we give of our time in this setting, not in busy-ness, but in stillness?

As I prepare to cantor the vigil Mass tonight, I thought again about time and silence. My parish sits well with silence, we can do 5 minutes at a stretch in a liturgy filled with kids, and we routinely leave space after readings and psalmody and homily for silence. (Reverent, contemplative silence is not the sole purview of celebrations of the Eucharist in the Extraordinary Form, no matter how many people want to make that case. I'm convinced it is about forming the community, not about the form of the liturgy used.)

As cantor, I'm one of the people (along with lectors and presider) responsible for reading the silence at Mass, and bringing it to a close. When do I stand after the reading to lead the psalm? The norms for the celebration of the Liturgy of the Hours call for silence, but not in quantities that might be a burden for the community celebrating, and surely the same applies in this context. I feel responsible to both offer this gift of time and to be sure that it does not weary us. I don't want to count to a certain number, or watch the clock, or even get lost in my own meditations on the first reading (that would be unbearably selfish), but want to listen carefully and deeply to the assembly. I don't want people to be thinking, did the cantor forget? I'm not quite sure I can describe what I'm listening and waiting for, but I can often sense a deep stillness that follows the reading, and somewhere before that starts to fray, I stand and move to the ambo.

This listening is prayer. We believe that Christ is present in four ways in the liturgy, including in the assembly itself. I listen and sit before the assembly holding that contemplation front and center. This is the Body of Christ, can I listen and respond to what Christ is saying in this moment? Can I let the silence sing to us all before I raise my voice?

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Photo is of copper basin of rainwater in ruins of old farmhouse in rural Japan.

Spirit 2-2-0

Dominus vobiscum.

Et cum spiritu tuo.

Back in the not quite ancient days of phone systems, before 10-digit dialing and texts, phone numbers came as two letters and five numbers. In kindergarten I learned my phone number as MOntrose 5-0947. My entire village was on the Montrose exchange.

When I was small, my parents had only one car and so once a week, in order to have the car to shop and run errands, my mother would get us up early, dress us and pack however many kids there were at the time into the car and drive my dad to the next stop on his carpool. The process was reversed in the evening. Each trip seemed like an hour long to me (though I just checked Google maps and it looks to be 30 minutes each way!). In those pre-electronic days (no handheld games, no DVD players in the car or iPod or even much choice on the radio) it took ingenuity to keep munchkins from rioting in the back seat. My mother kept us entertained with word games of all sorts.

We memorized the Greek alphabet (in retrospect I wonder if this reflects just how desperate my mother was to keep a half dozen bright children amused, for who teaches pre-schoolers the Greek alphabet? Except for Greek mothers, presumably. Though it's been an amazingly useful bit of knowledge, I will admit.) We also learned our prayers, and the responses for Mass. My age shows, as I can clearly remember my mother intoning "Dominus vobiscum." and the voices from the back responding "Et cum spirit two-two-oh." Or at least that's how I parsed it, just like the phone numbers I'd been learning!

As I work to get the new responses off the page, onto my tongue and into my heart, I miss my mother's gentle drill, and long to hear her voice one more time: Peace be with you. Et cum spiritu tuo, Mom....

Good luck with the raisins!

Good luck with the raisins!

The funeral for Uncle Norb was yesterday at the Mission (San Miguel Arcangel - founded in 1797, still in use as a parish church). The liturgy was well celebrated. We came back to the house to eat and talk. Between sandwiches and dessert my brother the Irreverent Reverend (brother #3) excuses himself from the table and his wife responds, "Good luck with the raisins!"

It's the punch line to a story about The Artistes (brother #2 and wife) where they take their leave from a breakfast table. The story, of course, must be now be retold for the benefit of the young ones, and newcomers. Once begun, the stories flow...old ones and new.

The newest is on me. I had asked my sister to read the Prayers of the Faithful and at dinner on Thursday (29 of us?!) had given her a copy. I did remember to mark up the copies for the first and second readings (Isaiah and Romans). However, I forgot to (1) mark the Prayer of the Faithful in the Rite, and therfore, failed to show my sister its location in said book and (far more critical) (2) did not mark up her practice copy. The set of intentions I selected included options for bishops/priests, religious, and laypersons. The text for the presider was also there (and not marked as such, you just gotta know, which I do, but my sainted sister does not).

At the proper time, Sainted Sister gets up, and I suddenly remember items (1) and (2). I'm trying to gesture to her to wait for the presider (who was wonderful about gently cuing everyone involved). She gets that I'm trying to tell her something, but not what, so decides she will just plunge ahead. She does. The presider lets her go. She reads the brief introduction. All is well, intention follows intention. Suddenly I hear her say, "for our brother Norbert, bishop and priest...." Oh. No.

You can hear a pin drop in the place, but we are well trained. She says, "we pray to the Lord." We respond, "Lord, hear our prayer." I'm wincing, waiting for her to go on to the one about religious, but the presider smoothly retrieves the strands and launches into the concluding prayer.

I apologize at the end of Mass, but by now my brothers have hold of the tale (and my tail) and are lovingly describing (and embellishing) the expressions that swept across my face as this whole thing goes down.

Lord, hear my prayer.