Wheeling about

I went to California to see my dad, who's ill and for the moment in a care facility bridging the gap between hospital care and home. Wheelchairs were part of the landscape this trip.  Dotting the hallways, parked in corners, tucked between the curtains in the room. Occupied and not.  I felt tall in this community, where nearly everyone is in bed, or in a wheelchair, some so bent I could not see their faces.

The first night I left my dad's room, but it was late and various doors had been closed and lights turned out. I got turned around in the dark (this would a theme of this trip!) and couldn't find the exit. I walked past a man who seemed to be dozing in a wheelchair parked in the corner.  Suddenly he called out in a loud voice, something I couldn't figure out.  Had he mistaken me for someone else, or this place for somewhere else?  I turned to be sure he didn't need anything, and he looked up and me and repeated firmly, "¡Para alla!" My jet lagged brain flipped a switch into Spanish.  Directions to the exit. He then gave me careful and correct directions, in Spanish, to the main exit.

I came in on Sunday to find a family in one of the corridor alcoves, the elderly mother in a wheelchair, her daughter leaning forward to say, "Mom, you can choose to be happy." Her mother took a breath and replied, "I am sad." I wanted to cry for them both.

And then there was the elderly man in the wheelchair at the end of the offramp for Highway 101 in Salinas. Struggling to hold up a sign, though the inscription was illegible, I had no trouble reading it. Help me. There was no place to pull over and help. Huge trucks came rumbling off that ramp, heading for the coast.  Would they sideswipe him? Who do you call? I had no idea.

My temporary and relative vantage point left me feeling not powerful, but powerless. Reeling from seeing through so many eyes, Christ dancing in ten thousand places, scarred in limb, yet lovely...

_________
As Kingfishers Catch Fire by Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ

So about that second tunic...

So the trip to the Specola was — to a first order approximation — smooth.  Yes, the plane left a bit late, but clearly it usually leaves a bit late, because we were on time to Rome.  I managed to buy my ticket on the express into Roma Termini and my ticket on to Albano on the TrenItalia app.  Woot!

But.  I managed to hit the daily gap at Roma Termini where it is two hours between trains to Albano. Any other time of the day, they run every hour. It's hot and muggy, but I discover the terrace upstairs where I can get a cold drink, watch the trains and the train board and most importantly, sit for the next hour and half.  The Albano train pops up on the board, and I know from experience just how long a walk it is out to Platform 18, so I grab my luggage and go. By the time I get there I am soaked, but the train is blissfully air conditioned and ready to board.  At which point I should be enjoying the cool air and 45 minutes to recruit my strength for the walk up the hill to the apartment where I am staying.

Except. Except they are doing track work, so they are bussing from Ciampino to Albano (I knew this when I bought my ticket). Twenty minutes and we're off the train. The conductor gives me directions to where to find the bus. I haul my growing-ever-heavier bag down from the platform and back up the indicated stairs and seeing a bus ask about the bus to Albano.  Not this one, but wait right here.  I wait in the sun.  No bus.  I check the time.  It should be here in a minute or two.  No bus. Five minutes?  No bus.  I go inside and ask about the bus. Oh, that bus leaves from the other side. Next one? In an hour. Back down and up I go. I find the spot and hope that the bus will appear. A bus arrives with a spate of TrenItalia personnel in bright red polo shirts. Yes, this is your bus.  Up goes the luggage.

It is icily air conditioned, so after a bit I look for my "second tunic"...only to remember with a start that I had left my nice sweatshirt on the bench at the station. I guess I didn't need a second tunic after all.

Take One Tunic

My second tunic/sweatshirt and lots more stuff.

I'm off to Rome, or more precisely, Albano Laziale, the small town just outside of Rome where the Vatican Observatory is situated, just behind the gates to the papal gardens.  As I packed, my mind kept drifting back to the Gospel from two Sundays back. 

He instructed them to take nothing for the journey
but a walking stick—
no food, no sack, no money in their belts.
They were, however, to wear sandals
but not a second tunic.  (Mark 6:8-9)

Yes.  Well.  I have packed a snack, have a checked bag and a carry on, stashed my miscellaneous euros in my wallet.  I definitely packed a second tunic (and a third and a fourth...).  I'm not wearing sandals, though I did pack a pair.  It sounds like an all around fail, new evangelization or old, even before you consider my electronics.

It got me thinking about what the modern version of sandals and a walking stick might be?  Or that second tunic that Matthew suggests might be allowed.  Walking shoes?  A phone? What reminds me of my origin and my destination, of the source of what I have?

If I could take just one thing, and trust that the rest would be provided, what would it be?  My laptop. A virtual tunnel to almost anywhere, to information, to communications, to clothes and food. A battery for electronics.  Though  the more I think about it,  perhaps my laptop is not a sign of radical dependence, but of stubborn independence.

Advent 4: A midwife for the holy

Leonardo da Vinci's study for St. Anne,
Mary, Jesus and John the Baptist

A homily on Sunday got me thinking about the voices we don't hear in the Scriptures, and Mary's mother, traditionally Anna, is certainly one of those voices of strength.  What does it take to let your daughter, on the verge of delivering her first child at a time when one in a hundred women died in childbirth, and one in ten babies did not live out their first month?   Mary's strength is perhaps a gift from her mother...

And I'm still thinking about St. John of The Cross, darkness and light, in particular the opening liens to Daniel Ladinsky’s luminous poem If You Want:

If

you want,

the Virgin will come walking down the road

pregnant with the holy,

and say…

“I need shelter for the night, please take me inside your heart,

My time is so close.”

Then, under the roof of your soul, you will witness the sublime

intimacy, the divine, the Christ

taking birth

forever,

as she grasps your hand for help, for each of us

is the midwife of God, each of us.

A version of this reflection appeared at CatholicPhilly.com on 22 December 2015.

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that the whole world should be enrolled. This was the first enrollment, when Quirinius was governor of Syria. So all went to be enrolled, each to his own town. And Joseph too went up from Galilee from the town of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David that is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, a to be enrolled with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. Luke 2:1-5

“What time do you need to leave?” I asked my oldest son, Mike.  He came home last night, and leaves this afternoon for Tennessee to spend Christmas with his girlfriend and her family. At 2:35, they tucked their bags in the back of my car and I drove them to Philadelphia’s airport, wishing them safe travels, watching as they walked off.

As I drove home, I thought of Anna, the mother of Mary.  What had she thought as she watched her very pregnant daughter walk out of Nazareth, headed for Bethlehem — 80 miles and a mountain pass away?  What advice did she give Mary, what might she have tucked in her bags, “just in case”?

There would be no phone call for her, letting her know they were safe in Bethlehem. No email with a photograph of her newborn grandson.  She must simply trust that all in the end would be well, letting go of her daughter and the hope she bears within her.  Parting with what she treasures, to let God’s will be done.

My reflections pushed me to pull German theologian Johannes Baptist Metz’s small book, Poverty of Spirit, off the shelf to read in these last days of Advent.  This poverty, he suggests, is where “the meeting point of heaven and earth…the point where infinite mystery meets concrete existence.”  It is how we encounter God, with empty hands.

Jesus’ life was characterized by the poverty of the commonplace from the moment of his birth — laid in an makeshift, last minute bed in a stable —  to the moment he was laid in a borrowed tomb. Living out in his daily life a radical dependence on God, a grace of openness to which we all have access in our own lives.

I suspect that Mary learned this fundamental way of being from her mother, Anna, who waved her off on her journey, committing herself again to the uncertainties, depending on the grace of God to watch over her daughter.  I look to Anna in these last days of waiting to learn again how to let go of what has been entrusted to me when the time comes. In ways that are concrete, in the moments that are commonplace, in the places that are hidden, where I might not otherwise look.

Advent is helping my heart to empty out, not simply in preparation for this great feast celebrating a long-awaited birth, but emptied to allow me to become a midwife to the Christ.  That I might let him enter my soul, and willingly offer him to the world through my hands. Emptied that I might become a simple cradle for the holy one of Israel.

Adsum: #usemeinstead

After sliding our way to and from PHL today to get our Egg onto his plane for California College, I spent much of the rest of the day nursing a sore throat while listening to the freezing rain hit the roof. Too sick to go to Mass, I prayed through the propers and readings for today and enjoyed the short reflection from Carlo Carletto in Give Us This Day in lieu of a homily.  Wait on God, he says, until the time comes when we are called, when we must speak out.

Adsum, says Samuel, in the Latin translation of today's first reading.  Here I am. I come to do your will.

Wandering through my Facebook feed tonight, I found Samuel's story replaying in Amy Chanson of Diary of a Contemplative's post:  "Use Me Instead." She is taking part in the #usemeinstead campaign where clergy are offering their photographs to be used in lieu of the African-American men's images currently being used that had been used by the North Miami Beach police department for sniper training.  She is called, and speaking out powerfully.

Adsum.  Here I am. #usemeinstead

---

My friend Fran was also writing about being called - for yesterday's Feast of St. Anthony.  Read her reflection, "A compelling call," at PrayTell.

Show me the door: Andre Bessette

The view from the door.

“When I joined this community, the superiors showed me the door, and I remained 40 years." Brother André Bessette CSC

Last night I slept at our parish's shelter for the homeless, something I've been doing pretty regularly for a while. I sleep on a mattress near the door, easily available in case anyone needs anything in the night. I am the night portress.

At the end of my shift this morning I went, along with the overnight host (who sleeps in an actual room with a door!), to 6:30 am Mass, arriving 2 minutes late, something that's hard to miss in our small chapel.  The presider noted with puzzlement the appearance of several regulars from the 8 am crowd, but went on to preach about St. André Bessette and the job of the porter in a community.

It was an apt reflection after my night at the door.  The door is such a liminal space to inhabit, the hallway so public, so spare. In the summer there is no air conditioning there, in the winter, the drafts are noticeable.  There are no shades to draw, no way to block out the light from the streetlamp, or from the headlamps of the cars that use the parking lot as a short cut.  And when the little ones stir in the night, their mothers are not the only ones awakened.

To sleep here is a privilege.  It is a privilege to hold, at least for one night and however symbolically, the difficulties of the outside world at bay, and let those within sleep safe.  It is a privilege to ease the passing back out into the world of those who have taken refuge for the night, to make a thermos of coffee at 4:30 am for a mother who must get up, get her small children ready to leave, and out the door by 5:15 to get to her job on time.  To carry the makeshift bag another has scrambled to assemble for daycare.  To bounce the baby and amuse the toddler long enough to let their mother use the bathroom.

This is my own little theophany, no camels, no frankincense.  There is a babe and a mother.  And the only gift I have is a thermos of coffee.

Epiphany.  It's more than a feast.  It's a call to be shown the door.

Poached plums

No, not a recipe, but a William Carlos Williams poem (This is Just to Say):

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

The family rules are few and simple (see here), but of late we've added one. If you have your eye on something in the 'fridge, put your name on it. This goes for leftover Chinese food, sodas left to chill and the defrosting pasta sauce I have planned to use for dinner. I keep an pad of stickies in a kitchen drawer for the express purpose of labeling the sodas I'm chilling (though not the cold plums, of which I just ate the last).

I ran across this Williams poem yesterday and wondered at what the backstory might be. Were there plums? And if so, who ate them? Was forgiveness required, or as in my house, were plums in the icebox up for grabs? It reminds me of a poem written from Victor's dad to his mother about which way the toilet paper was to be hung.Wikipedia has a rather unappealing analysis of the poem, more useful to desperate high school English students, I imagine, than it is to me. But for more fun, listen to this piece from This American Life on apologies and this poem (starts at about 51 minutes).

Ignatian Antinomy

...not to be confused with antimony.^1,2 (comment on Wikipedia entry for antinomy)

In his first principle and foundation, Ignatius of Loyola uses antinomy to good effect:

We should not fix our desires on health or sickness,
Wealth or poverty, success or failure, a long life or a short one.
For everything has the potential of calling forth in us
A deeper response to our life in God. — From David Fleming SJ's beautiful paraphrase

When I told a friend the other day that I was working on not preferring order over chaos, he suggested that might be my own Ignatian antinomy. I said we could probably all write our own personal versions. Forthwith, here is mine.

I should not fix my desires on wet socks or dry feet,

placemats or tablecloths,³ silence or noise, order or utter chaos.

For everything has the potential of calling forth in us

A deeper response to our life in God (even the placemats).

I just finished writing a reflection (for next Lent!) which in combination with this exchange has me thinking about how I am willing to assent to broad terms but when faced with the real issues of my ordinary life can let it all go out the window.

Making the Exercises these big bins — success and failure, wealth and poverty — were much on my mind. But Ignatius was thinking that everything sat on this ability to let all these things, desired or not, move us closer to God. Everyday, not just while making the Exercises, not just in the momentous decisions about life, but when faced with the kitchen and the dishes, the laundry and the mail, the phone and teen driving lessons.

---

1. Antimony is a chemical element.
2. Blogger's spellcheck suggests I change antinomy to antimony. I am not confused.

3. You need to ask Math Man about this one.

A second epiphany, or perhaps a third

The trees outside my study window are gilded in the late afternoon sun, the stained glass gift that arrived outside my room one day when I was making the Exercises is glowing against the stark borrowed landscape beyond. I'm writing away in a not so silent house at this point. It's warm enough to lure the elementary school children out to ride bikes and the carpenter's radio plays softly just outside my study.

We celebrated the feast of St. Andre Bessette (a cousin of his made the Exercises with me!) at Lauds this morning, but I brought small gifts for Epiphany — and prayed for those beginning the Exercises at Eastern Point this week. In that spirit, I've reposted this podcast from last year.

This year, instead of contemplating the traditional three treasures (according to Gregory the Great: the gold of wisdom, the incense of prayer and the myrrh of self-denial) in light of my packed bags for the Long Retreat, I'm unpacking (and de-cluttering) as I move back into my newly restored kitchen (well, except for the hole in the ceiling).

Lex agendi

A while back, the wondrously webbed-in Fran of There Will Be Bread posted this photo on her Facebook page; all unaware, their souls seem on display. I've been wondering off and on since what you could tell about me by watching. Could you tell, for example, that I was a mother? a teacher? once a dancer? a Christian? a Roman Catholic?

It's those last two that have me thinking, to paraphrase the words of Peter Scholte's 60's hymn, "Will they know we are Christians?"

If you happened to notice the Orthodox prayer rope I wear on my wrist — fifty knots of black wool tied in the tradition of St. Anthony, ending in a simple cross — you might guess that I'm a Christian of some sort. If you were in the parking lot last week when I dropped my purse (upside down - ack!) you might hazard from the holy cards I was scooping up and tucking back into a prayer book (my beloved breviary, now a bit the worse for wear) that I'm of the Roman persuasion.

But this is not the real question that photograph is asking me, the big question is could you tell I am a Christian should I be stripped of the externals? By what I say and do, not when I'm writing, not when I'm praying in Church, not when I know anyone is watching, but when I'm walking down the street, as unaware of being observed as these two people are.

Today Mike Hayes at Googling God is wondering if we Catholics are spending too much time caught up in our own internal concerns (liturgical or otherwise), and not heeding Christ's clarion call to help those in need. There is a robust exchange going on at The Deacon's Bench about Hayes' post. My contribution to it, echoing C.S. Lewis' comment in Weight of Glory, "Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses." is here. (Warning, I don't acquit myself as well as I might.)

It's not that I think that our concern with liturgy is entirely misguided, or in any way deny the reality of Christ's presence in the Sacrament of the Eucharist. But I will not delude myself, these things are not the principle things that I think Christ will be weighing in the balance when the time comes. He will ask when I fed the hungry, drew water for the thirsty, was mindful of those who were poor, or suffering. Nor will I delude myself into thinking that I measure up all that well in this regard.

The liturgy and the Eucharist are source and summit of our lives. Where we go to drink of the living water so that we can go forth and see and serve Christ in each other, where we go in gratitude to celebrate the presence of Christ among us. We become as a result dwelling places for God, Christ in our very being.

"Faith finds its strength and dynamism in the Sacrament of the Real Presence, because truly the lex orandi remains linked to the lex credendi which, in turn, is translated into the lex agendi of the Church’s life and mission. The Eucharist, then, has also a personal dynamism: it is the gift to celebrate, bringing a deeper knowledge of the mystery of salvation, accomplishing communion, leading to adoration, and finally affecting the Church’s life through mission and pastoral ministry, all the while fostering charity inside and outside the Church." (The Eucharist: Source and Summit of the Life and the Mission of the Church, full text here.)

It's not difficult for me to sit an hour in front of the Eucharist; I willingly and joyfully participate in the Eucharistic liturgy. It's far harder to put on Christ and wear Him as I walk out the church doors, and I fear I've not the courage to live that radical of a life.

“And what about His hunger, cold, chains, nakedness and sickness? What about His homelessness? Are these sufferings not sufficient to overcome your alienation?” — St. John Chrysostom

Column: Old landscapes and new eyes

This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times on 14 July 2011.

I rejoiced when they said to me, "Let us go to the house of the LORD." And now our feet are standing within your gates, Jerusalem. Ps 122:1-2

The suitcases were hauled up from their basement resting places, while the kitchen door sprouted lists of chores that must be done, things that must not be forgotten before we headed off in three different directions. Water the plants; be sure to take the sandwiches from the refrigerator. Did anyone remember to close the windows upstairs?

Mike and Victor were headed north to look at colleges, Chris, east to the shore for a holiday with a friend. Me? I was bound west to for an eight-day silent retreat.

After a year in which I circumnavigated the globe — twice — and packed and unpacked my bags so often I lost count, I longed for silence and stillness. I rejoiced as I drove through the Jesuit Center’s gates, to plant my feet firmly in one spot for a week. Pilgrimages were the last thing on my mind. God had other plans.

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes,” suggested French essayist Marcel Proust. I had come to be still, in a familiar place, where I did not have to struggle to negotiate a strange landscape. Instead God sent me on pilgrimage, to see with new eyes rather than to see new places.

In reflecting on the reasons for his own pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Pope John Paul II mused, “We go to see where God has pitched his tent.” If we ourselves are dwelling places of God in the Spirit, as St. Paul tells us, then God has pitched his tent within us, and there is no escaping the pilgrim way - familiar landscapes or not.

A Christian pilgrimage, the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People tells us, has four movements: the departure, walking, the visit to the shrine, and the return. So, too, this retreat.

Though I didn’t move physically far from my usual neighborhood, I did depart from my usual ways, leaving behind both my writing and my customary prayer, the Liturgy of the Hours. I ventured onto unfamiliar roads, seeking God.

Not only did I literally walk miles through the hedgerows, but I walked in silence with the other men and women come on retreat with the same desire — to let God be at work in their lives. I walked with Jesus, meditating on the Gospels, seeing with new eyes the places where God had pitched his tent in my life.

I stopped, again and again. Held in the warm stillness of the chapel, supported by the cool stone of the cloister, overshadowed by the expanse of creation above my head as I slipped out to pray on the grass at midnight. I listened to God’s Word echo in my inmost being.

And I came back, only to find I’m still on the road. Seeing with new eyes where God has pitched his tent, in the aisles of the grocery store, in my email, in the kitchen with my sons. In me.

---

You teach all the faithful to perceive the signs of your presence along all the pathways of life; grant that like the disciples of Emmaus we may come to recognize Christ as the companion of our journey and know him in the breaking of the bread. — From the intercessions for the Blessing of Pilgrims After Their Return

Column (Redux): Doing Dishes

(Michelle is on retreat here, but thanks to the scheduled post feature, she virtually inhabits this space as well. The ability to bilocate used to be considered a saintly characteristic....)

This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times March 27, 2008 - the very first one I wrote for the Standard. It resurfaced as I packed for a retreat where one thing on my mind is what it means to dispose of things. What I discard does not simply vanish, what responsibility do I take for what I acquire?

When they climbed out on shore, they saw a charcoal fire with fish on it and bread. Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish you just caught.” So Simon Peter went over and dragged the net ashore full of one hundred fifty-three large fish. Even though there were so many, the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, “Come, have breakfast.” [Jn 21:9-12]

It’s nearly 6 p.m. and the lab is dark. My students have gathered up their things and retreated to the dining halls for a well-deserved meal. I’m in the small departmental kitchen, up to my elbows in hot, soapy water, washing the mugs we used at the mid-afternoon break.

“You could use styrofoam cups,” offers a colleague, clearly perplexed at the sight of the department chair doing the dishes. My offhanded, “We’re trying to be green” satisfies her, though truthfully, the environment is the least of my reasons for taking on this mundane chore.

How else would I have known how many of my students this year drink milk, not coffee? Do they like chocolate chip or lemon cookies? Each week I brew less coffee and make an effort to pick up a quart of milk.

Slowly, over the course of the semester, I grow to anticipate what they need — I hold the signs in my hands, they’re not tossed aside in the trash. It’s in my power not to do the dishes, but I suspect I’m missing something critical if I don’t.

As I read this passage from John, I am caught not so much by the miracle of the groaning net, as I am by Jesus’ anticipation of the needs of the men He had called to serve His body, His Church.

The fire is lit, there is bread waiting — made ready with His own hands, not called down like manna from heaven. “Come, have breakfast.” Appended to a Gospel rich in theological reflection on the mysteries of the Eucharist and the mystery of the Incarnation, I wonder what inspired the author to record this decidedly unmiraculous encounter, this unadorned invitation.

In her essay “The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and ‘Women’s Work,’” Kathleen Norris remembers being struck how, in the Mass, “homage was being paid to the lowly truth that we human beings must wash the dishes after we eat and drink. The chalice, which had held the very blood of Christ, was no exception.”

She reflects that our culture’s ideal self aspires to be above the doing of “humble, everyday tasks.” If we must wash the dishes, we want to make the work as undemanding as possible — get paper plates and toss them. Let someone else take care of the trash.

I suspect that the early Christians hearing John’s Gospel struggled as much as we do with the uninspiring chores of daily life — with loaves of bread that do not multiply and nets that do not fill with fish at a word. And so John’s heady and mystical Gospel ends by reminding us of the sacredness of the quotidian, of the daily.

We follow Christ not only through His passion, death and resurrection, but in the everyday ways we tend to each other’s needs. “Come, have breakfast.”

As we join the Apostles in encountering the risen Lord in our daily lives, may we be inspired by Christ’s example to become quotidian mystics. Finding God in the dishes, the laundry and the making of breakfast.

---

God our Father,
work is your gift to us,
a call to reach new heights
by using our talents for the good of all.
Guide us as we work and teach us to live
in the spirit that has made us your sons and daughters,
in the love that has made us brothers and sisters.
Grant this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Column: Impoverished

The sign in the photo gives the name of a waterfall (located below a Buddhist temple above Kamikatsu). The vegetarian cuisine served at the temples is called shōjin-ryōri.

I've been re-reading Metz's small gem of a book Poverty of Spirit, along with The Ten Square Foot Hut (by Kamo no Chomei, a 13th century Japanese Buddhist monk and poet). What happens when we lose access to resources we have always taken for granted?

This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times on 16 June 2011.

In the beginning was the Word: the Word was with God and the Word was God. — Jn. 1:1

We had an hour at Tokyo Station to find lunch, pick up dinner to eat later, and the right platform for our train. It was not enough. After a 20-minute hike across the station to the food court, lugging my 25-pound backpack, it became clear that a sit-down lunch was not to be. I ducked into a small grocery store to see what I could find to round out the bag of castellas I’d bought at a local street market in the morning.

After two weeks in Japan, much of it spent in rural and monastic settings, eating simple vegetarian food — and a lot of rice — a yogurt and Diet Coke sounded great. I eagerly searched for the refrigerated case, and was confronted once again by what had been my biggest struggle on the trip. In Japan, I am functionally illiterate.

I know what yogurt cartons look like (at least in the United States), and I while could recognize the pictures of fruit on the side, I could not even sound out the labels. I grabbed what I hoped was a mango yogurt, checked out and dashed back through the station to catch my train. Settled in my seat at last, I pulled off the top of the carton, only to discover I’d bought mango sauce, not yogurt. Sigh.


I spend much of my life immersed in the written word, reading and writing. To be deprived of the ability to read the signs — literally — left me feeling impoverished in ways I had never experienced. Not even when I was a graduate student with bare cupboards and a bank account that hovered around zero, without a car or TV or radio.

I had to rely entirely on my companion who was fluent in Japanese for everything from reading the bus schedule to figuring out what was on the menu in the ferry station automat. Where I slept, how I got there, what I ate, was all in someone else’s hands. I found myself becoming ever more attentive to what was around me, watching people’s faces, aware of intonation and gesture, listening for the few words I understood. Stripped of my own words, I listened far more carefully.

German theologian Johannes Metz notes that our ability to empty ourselves, to be poor in spirit, is not a “vague mysticism” fostered in isolation, but grows in the world, and out of our close relationships with our brothers and sisters. Self-abandonment takes shape in the “radical depths of our human encounters.” I understand my poverty before God all the better for experiencing this poverty of language. I grasp more deeply my utter dependence on God in my dependence of the care of others. I hear the Word more clearly for being mute.

I will return to Japan this fall, taking a group of students as part of a course I am teaching on contemplative traditions. In preparation, I am studying the basic kanji, in order to be able to read the signs well enough to find the ladies room without help. I only hope in learning to read these words, I don’t undermine whatever ability I have to read the signs of God around me. To hear the Word in which I begin and end.

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God inspired speech in different tongues to proclaim one faith. May he strengthen your faith and fulfill your hope to see him face to face. Amen. — From the Solemn Blessing on Pentecost

Column: Kenosis (Caution, theological term incoming)

This column began with a conversation in Patient Spiritual Director's office. On a walk later in the day, Flannery O'Connor's line showed up (though I couldn't recall at first who had written it, or where it appeared, though I did remember it was voiced by an unnamed girl - let's hear it for Google...) - and I realized that was my problem. Kenosis in principle is admirable, it's the practical implications that trip me up.

I managed to write the entire piece without using the technical theological term for "self-emptying: kenosis. It landed on the metaphorical cutting room floor at least a half-dozen times! I love the Hopkins' poem about St. Alphonsus Rodriguez, who lost wife and family and wished to join the Jesuits. They turned him away more than once, but in the end he became the porter at a Jesuit college in Majorca. He was (and is) known for his humility.

The photo is of our dinner table, set by the guys for Thanksgiving. With napkins. And matching glasses.

This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times 14 October 2010.

Have this mind among yourselves, which was in Christ Jesus: who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant. — Phil. 2:5-7a

“I’ve given up on matching glasses or napkins on the table,” I sighed as I bemoaned the cheerfully haphazard approach my guys take to setting the table to a priest friend. “However much I empty myself, it seems there’s always more to give up.”

It seems almost irreverent to allude to St. Paul’s beautiful hymn to Christ’s humility and subsequent glory in the same breath as my frustrations about setting the dinner table. Yet the more I contemplate the challenge that Paul sets before us in this passage — that our call to be of Christ’s mind is a call to an utter poverty of self — the more I suspect it is as much about such everyday things as it is about a willingness to be a martyr.

Theologian Johannes Metz, in his exquisite book Poverty of Spirit, talks of the ways in which our everyday experiences lead us to a deeper experience of the surrender that God summons us to, as signposts in the desert. Poverty of spirit, this self-emptying that Christ undertakes, begins not with grand spiritual gestures, but with the commonplace.

“There is,” Metz says, “nothing heroic about it; it is the poverty of the common lot, devoid of ecstasy.” By its nature, this is not a poverty we can choose, but one where the choices are made for us. Like the choice of the glasses on the table.

In principle, I stand ready to offer my life for God. I imagine that with God’s grace I could face death for my faith with the equanimity of SS. Perpetua and Felicity, with the courage of St. Margaret Clitherow. In practice, I find my attachment to these everyday anxieties about glasses and napkins infinitely harder to surrender. Perhaps because these are not abstract things, like a martyrdom I am unlikely to face in 21st century Philadelphia, but all too concrete, all too present.

Or maybe my trouble with letting myself be stripped of even my own expectations is that I would prefer it to be done Flannery O’Connor style: quick. Like the girl in O’Connor’s short story, A Temple of the Holy Ghost who mused “She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick. She could stand to be shot, but not to be burned in oil.” I want my surrender to be over and done with, and in a manner of my own choosing.

This, of course, is precisely the point. To be of the same mind as Christ is to stand ready to empty ourselves in ways we do not expect, welcome or perhaps even recognize. In small things as in the momentous. Not once, but again and again. Perhaps even every night at the dinner table.

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On Christ they do and on the martyr may;
But be the war within, the brand we wield
Unseen, the heroic breast not outward-steeled,
Earth hears no hurtle then from fiercest fray.
— Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J., from In Honour of St. Alphonsous Rodriguez