Compassionate chemistry

The Egg got his wisdom teeth out on Wednesday, it was a tough go, and early in the game we had some trouble getting ahead of the pain, even with a best practices management plan from the oral surgeon.  But get ahead we did, and I'm grateful for the chemistry that made him more comfortable.  Still, I'm aware of the huge holes in the pharmacopeia with respect to pain. There is really just a single class of drugs (opiates) which effectively relieves moderate to severe pain, and the side-effects are substantial.  And many people around the world do not have access to even these.  Compassionate chemistry research?

Crying alleluia at the edge of the desert

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stand and deliver

Last weekend I managed to aggravate an old injury to my hand by spending far too much time on the keyboard. Come Monday morning, I couldn't pick up my tea cup. Worse yet, the thought of trying to drive up to Wernersville to meet Robin and Wayne for dinner before Robin began her silence seemed painfully imprudent. Argh. Ice, ibuprofen, a splint were prescribed. I know the drill. And time off the keyboard. What?!?

As Patient Spiritual Director put it when he called to see how I was doing, "That's like asking you to take time off from breathing."

So I updated the dictation software we'd gotten for The Boy when he'd broken a hand a couple of years ago. I'd switched my writing desk to a standing position a couple of weeks ago (and yes, I like it), so I could mic up and pace. Then I tried to answer my email, post on Facebook, and....(drum roll)...write.

Stand and deliver. I think on my feet all the time, I lecture about quantum mechanics, I talk about spirituality. However, I don't write linearly. I knew this, I just didn't realize how hard it would be to switch to a more linear style. Bits and pieces find their way onto pages, virtual and otherwise, to be rearranged, tucked off to the side, polished, hold space and ideas until, like a complex origami figure, I crease one last fold, blow a breath into the interior and it pops open to hold its own. In principle this could be done by directing the mouse by voice, but my need was not enough to sustain my patience and in the end, I stuck to email and the occasional FB update. I walked, read, prayed, visited a friend recovering from surgery, sat silently and above all -- kept my hands off the keyboard. It was a different kind of breathing, the inhale to the exhale.

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Photo is from a walk at Wernersville, where I did eventually get by Thursday for my appointment with my director and got a chance to see Robin - but neither of us broke silence!

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Incredible origami art by a father-son artist-mathematician team.

Column: Praying in Pain

Times are difficult in the local Church of Philadelphia. Schools are closing and being reorganized, parishes will close, there are financial difficulties. There is scandal. Times are difficult for family and friends. A friend's husband will die, tonight, or perhaps tomorrow. My brother has lost his job.

In the months after Tom died, I found an odd sort of comfort in this passage from Habakkuk, which appears regularly as one of the canticles of Morning Prayer in the Liturgy of the Hours. I wanted to be able to hope, I wanted to be able to have such faith. I had the desire for the desire. But I prayed in pain. Years later, the passage returned to played a role in my experience of the Spiritual Exercises, prompted in no little part by an excerpt my director gave me from Dean Brackley SJ's book, The Call to Discernment in Troubled Times, and has become a place of prayer that I return to regularly.

For another take on prayer and pain, particularly in Lent, I highly recommend Matt Spott SJ's thought provoking piece on the Jesuit Post: Spiritual Painkillers. His piece reminded me of a snippet from Walter Brueggemann's little book: Praying the Psalms, where he wryly observes that we often strive for a “cool, detached serenity” in prayer. (Full disclosure, Matt made the Exercises at Gloucester at the same time I did!)

Our own pain can strip us of our dignity, of our focus. It can distract us from we conceive of as prayer, a time with God that is serene and well collected. It can strip from us even the desire for the desire to pray. Yet this plaintive exultation of Habakkuk's reminds me that even when I cannot see the triumph in travail, nor even bear to think about the possibility, trial and exultation remain mysteriously intertwined, and that whatever I bring before God, in whatever state I am, is prayer.

(You can listen to Paul Campbell SJ's short and vibrant reflection on desiring the desire, part of Loyola Press' Lenten Retreat series here.)

This column appeared in the March 2012 edition of the Catholic Standard & Times.

For though the fig tree blossom not nor fruit be on the vines, though the yield of the olive fail and the terraces produce no nourishment, though the flocks disappear from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet will I rejoice in the Lord and exult in my saving God. — Habakkuk 3:17-18

The trumpet soared, the organ thundered, my voice echoed off the ceiling in the packed church “joyfully sing out all you lands!” as I led the psalm on Christmas morning. The whole of Christendom rejoiced in the Lord and exulted in our salvation at God’s hand.

But even as I sang of joy and comfort and peace, I hurt. Every breath, every step, even my bow before the tabernacle as I crossed to the ambo was a source of unremitting pain. To kneel, to stand, to sit, to move to prayer, was an act of endurance, not an occasion for rejoicing.

To be frank, the pain that insinuated its way into my prayer a few months ago was more than physical. The words which once moved effortlessly from heart to lips at Mass, tangled on my tongue. It was like learning to waltz again, except instead of relentlessly counting one-two-three under my breath as my partner twirls me round, I was mentally chanting “And with your spirit.” as the priest carried the book of the Gospels to the ambo.

Even now the hinges on which my prayer turns each day, Morning and Evening Prayer, rasp at my serenity as I hold out the intentions of family members who have lost jobs, of friends who are grieving, and of a local Church tried by difficulties secular and spiritual. In the midst of all this pain, distress and disruption, how can I — how can anyone — rejoice in the Lord?

The prophet Habakkuk, trembling at the difficulties he sees ahead, pleads not for relief, but brashly insists he will still rejoice no matter what comes: Though the fig tree blossom not…yet will I exult in my God. It’s an almost unimaginable faith. Yet underneath the almost swaggering surety of this prayer, I sense uncertainty. For at the head of the text is placed the note: “sung to a plaintive tune.” I wonder if the prophet struggled as I do, with the mystery of exultation and travail inextricably intertwined. Is Habakkuk’s prayer as much a plea for assurance as it is a declaration of faith?

Thomas Moore, in Care of the Soul, suggests that just as our modern scientific selves seek the one magic bullet that will cure our illness, we want events to speak in a single voice. Exult in this moment. Mourn in that. He urges us to read difficulties as we do poetry, to listen for a multitude of meanings that can continue to enfold us and unfold for us. Endure and exult. Rejoice and mourn. Stumble and stride forth. One reading does not overwrite another; the meanings interpenetrate, weaving into an intricate and mysterious whole.

Mysteries by their nature do not have a resolution. There is no simple salve I can apply to my raw prayer. Pedro Arrupe, SJ, prayed to learn how Jesus met suffering, His own and that of others, desiring most of all to know “how You supported the extreme pain of the cross, including the abandonment of Your Father.”

I suspect that some things can only be learned in the doing. I learn to pray with certainty in the face of tribulation, by praying as Habakkuk did, with certainty. I learn to pray with pain by praying in pain, by praying within the space that Jesus holds open for us, arms outstretched between heaven and earth. I reach as He did for the familiar words of the Psalms: Into your hands I commend my spirit. I sing exultantly, I sing in hope and with certainty, but in a plaintive key.

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Teach me how to be compassionate to the suffering, to the poor, the blind, the lame, and the lepers; show me how you revealed your deepest emotions, as when you shed tears, or when you felt sorrow and anguish to the point of sweating blood and needed an angel to console you. Above all, I want to learn how you supported the extreme pain of the cross, including the abandonment of your Father.
— Pedro Arrupe SJ from Hearts on Fire: Praying with the Jesuits

Praying in/with pain

My prayer has been painfully inarticulate of late, particularly public prayer. The new translation of the Mass means that I muff the responses about one time in four at both Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours (where the Ordinary still says "And also with you." but the prior of the community I pray with has sensibly decided we should use the new response, "And with your spirit.") Add in that the prior has been in the hospital, so we've had a shifting set of presiders at Morning Prayer (including me), with varying styles and ability to stick to the rubrics.

And this last week prayer has become literally painful, as health issues have made it painful to bow, to kneel, even to sit. As the postures of my prayer have become more limited, my prayer, too, feels constricted. I've been reading "The Body's Poetic of Illness" in Thomas Moore's Care of the Soul. Moore notes that science demands a single reading of a phenomenon — we're pretty sure we know what's causing my myalgia, and it's self-limiting, so all will eventually be well — but that poetry acknowledges multiple layers of meaning. Why not seek multiple readings of the body's poetics when we are ill? Such an approach doesn't deny the physical causes and effects of a particular malady, but does give reality to its effects on the other aspects of our being.

The coincidence of my prayer feeling shoved into an uncomfortable position and the discomfort of the physical positions I prefer to assume in prayer are nudging me into reading these experiences on multiple levels — or as Moore says, to have a "willingness to let imagination keep moving into ever new and deeper insights." It feels very Ignatian.

"Science prefers interpretations that are univocal. One reading is all that is desired. Poetry, on the other, never wants to stop interpreting. It doesn't seek an end to meaning. A poetic response to disease may seem inadequate in the context of medical science, because science and art differ radically from the point of interpretation. Therefore, a poetic reading of the body as it expresses itself in illness calls for a new appreciation for the laws of imagination, in particular a willingness to let imagination keep moving into ever new and deeper insights." — from "The Body's Poetics of Illness" in Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore

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Photo is of my feet, praying on the rocks at Eastern Point.