The Year in Review: Thirteen things

Robbert van der Steeg @CC

The year had far more than thirteen graces to gather up, but here is a start.

1. I wrote two articles for Slate magazine on chemophobia and doing science outside the lab.  Best parts?  Listening to The Boy do a dramatic reading of the comments on the chemophobia one, and staying up till all hours to write them with Crash for virtual company.
2. Revisiting the Spiritual Exercises in Lent, for this project at DotMagis.
3. We had two car crashes in twenty minutes.
4. I have a new red MINI Cooper.  (4. is not unrelated to 3.)
5. Getting to experience James Turrell's Perceptual Cell at LACMA.
6. Retreat.  Silence.
7. Retreats.  Preaching them.
8. The US Open came to town.  I rode my bike and went for a day with Math Man.
9. Traveling with my students — both through space, from Wernersville to Japan and back — and through time, from the desert fathers and mothers to Merton and Annie Dillard.
10. Writing for Homilists for the Homeless.
11. Watching The Boy sing The Modern Major General.
12. Picking up Crash at Wonderful Jesuit University after his first year.
13. Going to the ACS meeting in New Orleans with The Boy.

Women at the Ambo: Finding family outside our comfort zone

Sunday was the Feast of the Holy Family, which somehow found me at Mass minus any of my family, unceremoniously stuffed into a too-small alb as I walked into the church and serving as an acolyte. A duty that left me sitting in splendid isolation on the side of the altar, apart even from my Church family. Humming the Gloria under my breath as I stood holding the sacramentary for the presider,  I was out of my comfort zone in so many ways.

The presider's homily was a letter he'd written to the parish (which I'd already read).  It was a fine homily on the keeping of bits of Christmas around throughout the season, rather than dragging it all to the curb on the 26th, but that's not an issue for my household.  So I was delighted to come home to find that my friend Fran was out of her comfort zone in writing a homily for the Feast Holy Family in Naked and You Clothed Me.

What kind of family are we being invited into by God?  Would we flee the comforts of our usual orbits if God called us?  You can hear/read the rest of what Fran had to say at There Will Be Bread, it's worth reading even when it's not the Feast of the Holy Family!  Christ is all in all.

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I will add that all the proceeds from the book of homilies that Fran (and I and twenty-four others) contributed to go to the poor.  You can buy the book and it's companion for Cycle C at the publisher's web site.

Of you my heart has spoken

Of you my heart has spoken: 

“Seek his face.” 

Psalm 27

I'm in the midst of reading To the Field of Stars, Kevin Codd's memoir of walking to Compostela.  It reminds me a bit of Paul Mariani's Thirty Days: On Retreat with St. Ignatius, a well-fermented mix of the mundane — what's for dinner, how to fix a blister — and the spiritual.   To be a pilgrim is to be reminded that the sacred does not subsist only inside the box, whether its inside the Churches or inside of particular times, but we walk on sacred ground all of the time.

I cantored Christmas Eve mass, singing the psalm in two-part harmony with The Boy.  The liturgy was gorgeous, the music flowed forth from hearts and souls, from choir and congregation.  The homily was inviting, but challenging, warm without being saccharine or overdone - can we let God come to love us? Communion came. "Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof..." I prayed, then launched into the incipit for the communion hymn.  I was ready for Christ to come in the midst of this sacred and well wrought liturgy, anxious to receive.

The communion hymn ended just as the last communicant received, perfectly timed.  I looked down, turned the page in the cantor's book to the closing hymn, and when I looked up, it was to see the Eucharistic ministers sweep past on their way to the tabernacle.  All but one.  A cup bearer with an empty cup stood waiting.  We looked at each other and both headed to the tabernacle.  In my attempts to maintain decorum and to avoid tripping over the sopranos, I reached the altar steps just as they turned the key and left.  There would be no Eucharist for me, it seemed.

I felt like one of the shepherds, too young, too short, too old, too out of breath to keep up with the rest, who arrives at the stable only to see the last sparkle as the angels rise like incense up to heaven, and the midwife swings the door to the stable firmly shut on the finally sleeping babe and his parents, shooing sheep, shepherds, and cats before her.

At the ambo, after receiving Communion!

Mass ended with a resounding Joy to the World, people swirled around wishing each other Merry Christmas, the church slowly emptied and the musicians began rearranging for the morning's liturgies.  Suddenly the woman who had waited appeared.  Would I like to receive?  Yes, please.  (Yes, I know it's not technically permitted.)

We walked to the tabernacle and as she turned to open it, another of the Eucharistic ministers appeared, fussy and apologetic for having forgotten the cantor. The door to the tabernacle was stuck, both sacristans appeared, suddenly it seemed there was a multitude there with us on the altar.  This was not how I wanted to be disposed as I received, in the middle of a huddle, with three or four people talking to me at once!

The USCCB reminds us that the communion procession is a reminder of our status as pilgrims.  Pilgrims walk in sacred time, along hallowed paths - complete with blisters, noisy trucks, overtalkative companions and well laid plans that quickly fall by the side.  I walked that night to encounter God incarnate, to meet Him in the midst of a noisy crowd, held out to me by someone who saw my hunger, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ under my feet.

Light from light

It's Christmas Eve and I'm sitting in our back room, awash with light from the low winter sun. The creche sits on the window ledge, the Magi still in the midst of their long journey, ways deep and weather sharp.^* Mary is brought to her knees in labor, Joseph is holding aloft his lantern — looking, I think, for the midwife the innkeeper promised to send.  The shepherd's attention is still on his sheep, one slung over his shoulder while he looks at a newborn nuzzling his mother for milk.  The angels lay sprawled in the greens, resting up for their big night.  Light from Light.

The children are just stirring behind me, the floor creaks as they ease from bed into the shower, old enough now to drive a car.  Unimaginable that these are the same sons who I once held in my arms, held within my very self.   Unimaginable that this child Mary is struggling to bring to birth — that we still struggle to bring into the world — is God from God. 

My own sons' cells still course through my veins. Mary, I want to say, this child will never leave you, not even until the end of time. "To that which you are," Augustine says, "you answer: 'Amen'"  Consubstantial, one in Being.

To which I say, "Amen."

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*From Eliot's Journey of the Magi; listen to it here.

Looking for more light?  Read Robin's light-infused, tender Christmas Eve sermon, which redeems even physics for the equation averse.

Or ponder Chris Satullo of WHYY reflection on the meaning of Christmas here.

Christmas lists: Feeding the hungry

Br. Mickey McGrath's beautiful
cover for "Hungry, and you fed me."

I am a listy sort of person (yes, yes, INTJ) , right now there is one on the board in the kitchen listing the things to bake and a few nagging chores that I would like to attend to before the Feast of the Nativity dawns.

Math Man wondered the other morning what I might want for Christmas.  The Boy has been trying to figure something out, too.  I was ready for Math Man -- no jewels, a plumber's snake to unclog the drain in the upstairs shower would be a gift I would cherish.  A working bathroom particularly after the months of renovation would be a delight, a gift to remember each and every morning.  To The Boy, I confessed I have everything I want.

They tried again at dinner, at which point I came out with it: what I really want is clear surfaces (a virtual impossibility in this house full of academics), and a modicum of order in the house.  That, the Boy pointed out, is not the life I have chosen.  Nor, he assures me, would I want my life that tidy.

But their queries, and a post by two friends on the ten things that you don't think of that food banks might need most,  have me thinking about wish lists -- and people who are hungry.

Here is my wish list, of things to add to the list that I regularly pick up when I shop to put in the box my parish keeps at the back of the church:

• Diapers and wipes (a real need for poor working mothers)
• Protein:  tuna, peanut butter
• Toiletries:  shampoo, deodorant, toothpaste, toothbrushes
• Feminine supplies:  tampons and pads (yep, are you going to put that in the church bulletin?)

Philabundance's high priority list at the moment is:

• Canned/ Shelf-stable tuna 
• Macaroni and Cheese 
• Canned Pasta, Beef Stew, and Chili 
• Creamy Peanut Butter Jelly 
• Canned Green Beans and Corn 
• Canned Fruit 
• Breakfast Cereal and Hot Cereal

Finally, many food banks can use money - to fill in where donations do not match needs, and which they can stretch further than I can stretch my dollars.

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Any Church community, if it thinks it can comfortably go its own way without creative concern and effective cooperation in helping the poor to live with dignity and reaching out to everyone, will also risk breaking down, however much it may talk about social issues or criticize governments. It will easily drift into a spiritual worldliness camouflaged by religious practices, unproductive meetings and empty talk. — Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium 207

Worship is not one thing and living another.  The synagogue is not a retreat, and that which is decisive is not the performance of rituals at distinguished occasions but how they affect the climate of the entire life. — Abraham Heschel