Envied silence

(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....)

In Kamikatsu — a month ago today — I came down with a serious case of hermitage envy (and not for the first time). Sitting on the tatami on the second floor of Nakamura-san's house, the shoji open, I was drawn to the sound of the wind stirring in the trees, by the insects humming as they went about their work, by the still, centered nature of the place. In that moment I wanted a home that was that simple, two rooms: one to cook and eat, one to sleep and work. I desired a pace of life that was less frantically driven. I longed to let go my grasp, be still and know God.

My guys have gone off on adventures of their own, for the last few days it's been just me and the cat at home, and I found that I've subtly shifted into my typical retreat time zone -- and waded deeply into the silence. This morning, praying the Office downstairs, every window open, the wind stirring in the trees, I realized I no longer envied the life of a hermit. The stillness is here, underpinning the chaos. I don't need to leave to seek it, I simply need to clear enough space to see it occasionally (much like the coffee table - which I also cleared off this week.) Perhaps it is enough to know that such great silence permeates this space, even when I cannot hear it.

That said, I'm off to my retreat proper....

Sacramental hostages

(Photo is of my maternal grandparents - she converted to Catholicism to marry him.)

On the Deacon's Bench there has been some conversation about marriage preparation — should widows and widowers do the same preparation as twenty-something first time brides and bridegrooms — and in Ireland a priest has suggested pushing back the age of First Communion to the late teens. What should the Church do to prepare people to fruitfully receive the sacraments?

Ashes and palms are the bookends of Lent in the Catholic Church, threads that weave together two liturgical years, pulling us hand over hand deeper into the Paschal mystery. The palms that we held aloft at the end of Lent one year are burnt for the ashes to ushers us into the next year's season.

These two sacramentals not only hold together the years, but they are sometimes the last threads holding Catholics to the Church. People come to be marked with ashes or to get a blessed palm branch who might not even edge into the vestibule on Christmas or Easter. (Based on CARA's data, roughly 1/3 of Catholics who come to mass rarely if ever, still come to get ashes.)

Is it perhaps because there are no obstacles to the reception of those sacramentals, those bits of grace? We ask no questions, impugn no motives, other than a desire to participate in the life of the Church, to be part of the Body of Christ in this way if no other. The branches are still rooted in the vine.

However, if you want to be married in the Church, or bring your child for baptism or to receive the Eucharist your relationship with the Church can become almost instantly adversarial. Approach via the parish web site, or by checking the bulletin and you will often be presented with a list of requirements and restrictions and demands. Most often there will no explicit connections drawn between the requirement and the desired sacramental encounter. We ask a lot of questions and more importantly, we assume a lot.

It's the assumptions that bother me. Yes, it may indeed be true that most brides select a church for the photographic backdrop it provides. Or that parents are bringing their child for Baptism because they want (are expected) to throw a huge family party. Or that the parents of potential first communicants are woefully uncatechized. But is that how we should greet everyone - by assuming that they are shallow and ignorant and wish to mock the sacraments? Will they not sense our patronizing attitude?

And what of the bride who was raised in the parish, the parents who are not having a large baptism party, the parents who are well catechized and faithful, the mature widowed who want to remarry? You will have to have your bulletin signed to show you went to Mass. You will have to take 40 hours of basic catechetical instruction, no exceptions. You must take a mandatory pre-Cana coursewith the twenty-somethings and learn about budgeting and family planning or a "remarriage" course where you can learn about fidelity and the importance of developing covenantal love (trust me, such instruction would not have made my first marriage last one second longer - I stood there very faithfully while the ER staff tried to resuscitate my husband; and it was quite clear how deep that covenant went was when it was severed). The message we send them is that regardless of what you say, we don't believe you or trust you. We don't care about your preparation for this sacramental encounter, we just need to tick a box. If you really want this sacrament, you'll suffer through something pointless. That's not preparation, that's ransom.

It's not clear to me that this adversarial and regulation driven stance serves either population well. The Sacraments are not cheap grace to be dispensed without thought, but in trying to be certain that they are taken seriously I wonder if we don't take them seriously enough. Sacraments are not a seal of perfection, but a source of grace that perfects.

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We can get it right, see the guidelines for the Diocese of Sacramento: The pastor and his delegates must welcome the couple as Christ would, that is, with “a warm and caring, positive and joyful attitude of hospitality” (Faithful to Each Other Forever, p. 59).

Mother, interrupted

It's summer and Barnacle Boy is celebrating by watching awful movies, riding his bike to the pool with friends, rummaging through his fiction collection and generally just letting his mind go fallow (ok, rot, Futurama, really?). He's entitled, he had a great first year at high school (he got a perfect score on his final essay for English — tragic figures in Antigone and Romeo and Juliet — that would be his choice of topic).

He was sprawled in the chair in the sunroom yesterday watching something on Netflix. I looked over to see a distinguished guy in a toga stalk onto a Roman balcony and demand, "What is so important that you had to interupt my writing?" Where have I heard that line before? The gentleman was Pliny the Elder (note that in the picture he has a guard at the door, with a spear), and what was so important was the eruption of Vesuvius. The Boy (who visited Pompei this spring) was watching some docudrama about Pompei.

I'm not sure if the moral of this story is for my kids — don't interrupt your mother when she is writing unless a volcano is erupting down the block — or for me — don't assume when I'm interupted that there is NOT a volcano belching smoke somewhere.

The NEXT THING(s)

Now that my desk is clear (and the floor around it) I'm on to the NEXT THING, or rather the next things. Mary deTurris Poust's family creates a summer bucket list, things large and small that they want to do before summer is out. I've got a bucket load of lists. HPublish Postouse projects. Course prep. Family fun. Writing. Self-care.

I'm very much looking forward the summer's mix of writing projects. I'm still writing my ongoing column for the Standard and Times and contributing another set of Thesis columns to Nature Chemistry. New projects include a column called Spiritual Fitness for the Philadelphia Archdiocese's new monthly magazine (launching in September) Phaith.

I'm also writing occasionally for another new project, Give Us This Day from Liturgical Press. I just got the first issue in the mail (August) - my first piece is in the October issue. It has the daily readings, along with reflections from a wide variety of writers from the hallowed (St. Augustine) to the quotidian (me?).

And…I'm writing a short book for Liguori Press — on what happens when you walk out of the confessional, how do you live into/out of your penance.

Column: Unhurried hospitality

This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times 23 June 2011.

For I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink; I was a stranger and you made me welcome. — Mt. 25:35a

It had been raining for the last 24 hours, and would rain for the next 48. It’s what you get when a typhoon arrives as the monsoon season begins. Soaked does not begin to describe the state of my shoes. We had been walking the paths that wind between the temples of Mount Kōya since early in the morning, and so the pilgrims’ shelter just outside the precincts of Okuno-in was a welcome site.

The young Buddhist priest who had been guiding us all afternoon took a tray from the shelf. He lifted the wooden lid off a large pot kept warm over a banked fire and ladled tea into four delicate cups. We found a table and let our bilingual conversation about the concept of self-abandonment in Buddhist and Catholic thought swirl around us like the steam from our drying shoes.

Everywhere we went in Japan — from the hut of a hermit living high on a mountainside to the elegant temple where the emperor visits on occasion — we were welcomed with tea, perhaps a small sweet, and unhurried conversation. Far from home, it was a ritual I appreciated deeply.

“A wise old monk should guard the gates of the monastery,” recommends St. Benedict in his Rule. Like our Japanese hosts, Benedict felt that guests should be welcomed graciously. Guests bless the house, and to care for them, is to care for Christ.

No wise old monk guards the doors to my office, but I suspect that Benedict would not thereby absolve me from the requirement to welcome guests — or students or colleagues — graciously. It’s not the tea or sweets I think he would fault me for failing to provide, but the unhurried conversation.

I can’t tell you how often a student knocks on my door with, “I know you’re really busy…” True. Infinity is a concept I grasp in part because it’s a good description of the length of my to-do list. Still, helping my students grapple with the intricacies of calculating pH is one thing on that list, and an important one at that.

Information moves fast these days, a message dispatched from Japan arrives in my Bryn Mawr inbox in a breath. Is this what drives the sense that I must respond quickly and efficiently to each task that presents itself, to always be in a hurry to get to the next thing? I long for the advice of one of St. Benedict’s wise Brother Porters to teach me “how to receive and answer a question.” The Rule notes that humility and charity are essential. Speed and efficiency, while commendable, take a back seat.

As one school year ends, and I begin to plan for the next, I’m meditating on unhurried conversations and the Benedictine tradition of hospitality. How can I make a gate in the wall that my to-do list seems to have erected around my office? Can I truly respond as St. Benedict advises, Deo gratias — thanks be to God — to the next knock on my door?

The fire that kept the tea warm for pilgrims at Okonu-in has been kept burning for a thousand years; communities that keep St. Benedict’s Rule have been beacons for travelers half again as long. No fire burns in my office, no wise old monk ushers you through the door, but I pray my students will know that they are welcome nonetheless.

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Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger.
Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.
— T.S. Eliot, from The Rock