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Episode 8: I Do Not Run Aimlessly! February, 2004 The Big Day finally arrived… race day. This morning I ran 13.1 miles for the first time, in the Miami Tropical Half-Marathon. I awoke at 4:15 am and have not stopped since then. I can’t even nap because the excitement and endorphins have not worn off! It was grey and drizzly all morning as we ran, but still, I got to see the most beautiful parts of Miami, including the Art Deco part of Miami Beach. I think I have said before that I have learned so much about my body by running. And not just my body, but myself, too, spiritually and emotionally and in every respect. Start – mile 3: Body is reporting all systems go. I bid farewell to my Sisters, who valiantly arose to see my start. I jog a respectable pace, nothing to get excited about, but steady through the uphill jog across the bay to Miami Beach. On the right are some enormous cruise ships and I think about last night’s homily. Father Federico compared the luxe houses on SoBe to the slums of Little Haiti. Yes, it is good to treat ourselves and enjoy homes and vacations… but at what point does indulgence become a social sin? I am excited to be a little ahead of pace but don’t let myself break into a full run. After all, I have miles to go. Mile 3-6: I gulp my first gel, concentrated nutrition that gets me going. I know it is just psychosomatic, but simply having a snack immediately makes me feel more energetic. I meet a fellow first-timer on the first leg of the Beach run and pace myself with her for awhile. She is Scientologist and training to be a minister. I am Catholic and training to be a nun. Some light cross-tradition Q&A occurs until she decides to pick up the pace. I consider praying the rosary to occupy myself but decide against it. My prayer today consists in cheering on the red-faced, discouraged-looking people who are having a hard time. We are in the back of the pack together, us slow folks. “Come on, red shorts, you can do it!” “Looking good, Palm Beach Team in Training!” This is the abundant mercy of the race. Spectators and participants alike cheer and root for the runners, joggers, and walkers. People chat amiably with folks they don’t know. This is not the normal big-city Miami feel. I wonder whether shared hardship is good for a society. Mile 6-9: Mind and cardiovascular system are still going strong. Feet, on the other hand, scream at every impact. I know from my long runs that what will matter from about mile eight on is not my fitness but my willingness to endure pain. This is when I really run into the “I feel like/I choose” disparity. Often it is good to listen to what I feel like doing. I have good instincts and when I go with my gut, I am usually glad. And right now, I feel like stopping. My body is very uncomfortable! Yet I choose to go on. Since every step hurts, I might as well run. Walking hurts, too. Currently my jog is at pace with many walkers, but I know that if I break my stride, I will go into lazy walker mode. I manage to walk only about 25% of the time. I think about my prayer life, and the “I feel like / I choose” element there. Prayer is a part of my life where I can exert a little more willpower than in running. Yet, since I am doing this run to raise awareness about men and women in church vocations, I figure that this is prayer too. I talk to myself. “Come on, Joy. You can do this!” Mile 9-12: I pass my former personal distance record. My longest long run was 11.4 miles, and I don’t even think about it when I pass it. I am living water station to water station. Mind is still having fun and is in awe that I am doing this and so close to finishing. Body on the other hand is pretty ticked off at me! The wet is finally causing problems. Blisters are starting to form on my feet and I hope they won’t rip before the finish line. I wrestle, too, with being in the back of the crowd, at my slow pace. One the traits that has shaped me is my tendency to do only those things I know I will excel at. Luckily, my time here in Miami has helped me break that cycle. I read somewhere that “there are no prodigies in religious life.” I don’t know if I will excel at being a Sister. I don’t know for certain if I will even be a nun! A lot can happen in the next six months of postulancy and two years of novitiate. Learning another language has also helped, giving me a great opportunity for learning how to fail gracefully. Prayer at this point in the race is brief and to the point. “Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.” I am on pace for my desired finish time and I don’t understand how. I am walking a lot at this point, sucking down gel and Gatorade, and breaking into a run whenever I see a crowd that might include my community. Honestly, I don’t know what I am praying for: to finish, to have the pain go away, to go faster… But I pray anyway.
Mile 12- Finish: Please please please
let me finish running! I want dry clothes, I want a shower, I want
food. Most of all I want to see “FINISH.” I cross the line,
smiling and running, to the sound of my name and my time, 5 minutes past
my anticipated finish time. I hear yells of support and look over
to see my Miami community rooting
My sisters trudge in the mud with me to get my gear and find my friends, seminarians who are running for the same cause. It is truly pouring at this point, but no one complains. This is the secret of religious life that I want people to know about. It is the unconditional support of each member and the participation and joy of the community in her endeavors. This is not a partnership of like-minded professionals. It is, rather, a family of women devoted to loving God by loving each other (and humanity at large) as best we can. I babble on gleefully, thrilled to have finished. I find my seminarian friends and throw my arms around them. These young men, some of them just out of their teens, are happy and healthy. Whether they end up being priests or God calls them to something different, I am glad to have them as friends and allies. As our matching T-shirts proclaim, “We do not run aimlessly.”
In the words of
Paul to Timothy: “I have competed well; I have finished the race; I have kept
the faith.” Contact the author by email. February, 2004 Sometimes prayer surprises me with its intensity and its joy. Today is one of those days which makes me realize how blessed I am to be called to holiness through Christ Jesus. I was kneeling in chapel today, during adoration, thinking about a woman who is living with us for one month as she discerns whether God is calling her to religious life. I thought back to my own discernment time and my “come and see” month and reflected on the joys of religious life that I did not anticipate. First, the quiet. Tranquility is so hard to find in a world with pagers, cellphones, email, car alarms, and car DVD players. How can we think through all the noise? Here in the convent it was a quiet day. There are busy phone days and quiet phone days and this was one of the latter, thank God. The windows are all open so there is a nice bay breeze coming in, and the only sounds are the weed whacker three houses down, the passing traffic (not much), and our footsteps on the tile floor. It’s nice. Our guest lives in a big family with lots of kids and I wonder whether the silence is a welcome respite or a loathsome stranger for her. Quiet is hard to get used to, after all. You can hear yourself for once, and that isn’t always comfortable. As I pray and contemplate the vastness of God and God’s love, the wonder of His guidance and peace, I experience anew how much I am loved and how grateful I am to be here. This, I realize, this life of worship, this adoration, this knowledge of a God who is everything, is the greatest gift I have ever been given. I am struck. God surpasses anything I knew to ask for! Parenthood, I think, must be like this… frustrations and joys mixed together with the occasional ecstatic realization that this little one is “flesh of my flesh, and bone of my bones.” That piercing knowledge takes one’s breath away; that profound, debilitating love sweeps all else aside. I am not by any stretch a mystic… sometimes I don’t even like to pray. But at this moment I feel just a glimmer of eternity. It reminds me of Meg in A Wrinkle in Time, when she “gets” the tesseract, just for an instant. The understanding is slippery, and she cannot hold it for long. Yet for a slim moment she grasps this knowledge of space and time, eternity and reality, which is known as a tesseract. Tesseracts we do not have in the Catholic faith. What we do have is Eucharist, which sews heaven and earth together in a similarly mysterious way. Today I gave Eucharist to one of our community members who has been too sick to go to Mass. What a joy and a humbling thing it is to give Jesus to another, in a palpable and renewing way. What joy it is to receive Jesus. I rue the fact that my immersion in love is as slippery as Meg’s comprehension. Yet I joy in the hope that what awaits me is a union with this wonderful Union, my three-personed God. “At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known. So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” Amen.
Copyright © 2005 Handmaids of the
Sacred Heart of Jesus. All rights reserved. Contact the author by email. Episode 10: I Have Seen The Lord! March, 2004 I was going to make it through one Atlanta TEC (To Encounter Christ) weekend without crying. Honest! The first TEC retreat I made, I shed a few tears of healing over a broken relationship within my family. The next TEC, I cried tears of joy at a really touching revelation a friend made to me. The last couple of retreats, I was able to turn the faucet down a notch and just had a sniffle or two at the particularly moving talks given by some amazing young adults. But this time, I was the (drumroll, please) Assistant Spiritual Director! It is my job to be there for the retreatants to lean on, to provide spiritual assistance and personal advice, and to be a good listener. I was certainly not going to weep during this retreat. Right. The fact is, I’m a crier. I tried to deny this when I was in the corporate world. I was just (punch on the arm) one of the guys! Nope, (rubbing arm ruefully) I’m not a toughie. I cry. Sometimes I cry buckets at the smallest things, like ultrasound pictures of my friends’ kids. Other times I can be dry-eyed during major crises. But I cry. Usually it’s because of joy rather than suffering. That’s what happened this weekend. The dam broke for me when I was surprised to see my friend Elizabeth, who I had not known would be there. I had not realized how much I missed her until I flew into her arms and wept for the joy of seeing her. Later, as the weekend ended, a few tears escaped as I witnessed something really beautiful. I saw a small faith group, a community that had formed over the course of the retreat, clasp hands as they came forward for prayer. This group of people didn’t even know each other before the start of the retreat, and now they hold hands like a family. Yes, Lord, I believe. It’s times like this that I am surprised at my own occasional moments of doubt. I have seen Christ! How can I ever doubt him! I have seen Him in the joined hands of His people, I have felt His embrace in the arms of a friend. I see Him sometimes in the darkness, better than in the light. Last night I drove with one of my Sisters to the airport. We needed to deliver a passport to the Ft. Lauderdale airport, from whence it would be flown to Philly, to meet another Handmaid. This Sister is flying unexpectedly to Madrid to be with her critically ill brother. On the way to the airport, we prayed. We prayed for our Sister. We prayed for the doctors, we prayed for her brother, we prayed for the intercession of our closest saints to keep him alive so that she could see him. We prayed for his pain to be lessened. We prayed for his family. We prayed for good sleep for all involved. Now, it doesn’t take two women to drive to the airport to drop off a passport. But it does take two women to make a praying community. The power of the TEC retreat, the power of religious life, the power of Christian worship, is that what we are too afraid, weak, hesitant, or ignorant to do alone, we can do together. We are broken, all of us. It is only together that we make Church. Church in a retreat community, Church in a parish, Church on the interstate. Somos iglesia. We are church.
Copyright © 2005 Handmaids of the
Sacred Heart of Jesus. All rights reserved. Contact the author by email. March, 2004 I write this not knowing whether this will be a public “convent file” or just a private musing. I am deeply sad today and I am confused. Confused about God and why things happen the way they do. You see, I am not normally given to praying for specific things or circumstances. I ask sometimes for a grace, to be more prayerful, or to be more attentive to God’s action in my life. But for quantitative, measurable externals, nope, I won’t ask. I prefer to pray that God’s will be done and that I be given the grace to conform to His will. Part of this is a true desire to follow God and live according to His wisdom. Part of it, though, has to do with saving face. I am afraid to ask God for specific things because of what might happen if it doesn’t happen. Does this mean God didn’t hear me? That I didn’t have enough faith? That God disregards the plea of my heart? It’s too much to lose, so I seldom ask for specifics, and never for miracles. Until recently. I prayed for two miracles and neither happened. I prayed that Sr. Elizabeth would recover from her stroke. Instead, she became brain dead. Then I prayed that God would miraculously let Sr. Elizabeth’s kidney be a match for Sr. Kayjoy. And that didn’t happen, either. I am left cold. Prayer failed. Fervent prayer, at that, not casual “oh, God, by the way…”. Real prayer. When I was told the organ donation could not happen, I went to the chapel. Words failed me. I had planned to fast my lunch today and spend the time in prayer instead. Once I heard the bad news, though, I thought, “why bother?” I felt so completely disappointed. Yet once I entered the chapel, my head spontaneously bowed in submission. This is the way of crucifixion. To say “yes,” unreservedly, to the life we are given to live. In the car on the way to the airport, Sr. Kayjoy made a prayer joining her suffering, her waiting, her experience of diminishment, to the sufferings of Christ. She stated her obedience to God’s plan, whether that meant getting a kidney or not. This “yes”, this embrace of the Paschal mystery, is what I try to emulate today. Yes. Yes, I will fast and pray, and I will cry, probably, and maybe be angry and even demand explanations of God, explanations that will not come in this life. I don’t feel like praying. I don’t want crucifixion. I don’t want to suffer and I don’t want my friends to suffer. But I say “yes” anyway. The best I can do, and maybe just good enough after all. Copyright © 2005 Handmaids of the
Sacred Heart of Jesus. All rights reserved. Contact the author by email. April, 2004 Hollow is that which sings. It has been awhile since I wrote a convent file. It’s not because I haven’t had things I wanted to share. On the contrary, my mind and spirit have been wrestling with rather a lot of things. My interior life resembles the spring, with its riotous disregard for order. I had intended these files to be part education (what do you do all day?), and part self-disclosure. I find my spiritual insights get firmed up when I concretize them and share them with others. Writing is, for me at least, not an altruistic act! But lately, I find myself drawn more to the spiritual diary side of things more. Sharing the itinerary of my day seems dry and boring compared with the anything-but-dull workings of my heart. This (this earthly existence, this time, this postulancy, this faith) is not easy. I went through a phase of wondering when my formation would get tough. It just seemed too smooth and I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Well, plunk (the sound of one shoe dropping). I find myself repeating the phrase “agere contra” constantly these days. “To go against,” that is what I must do frequently in this awkward, awful, wonderful, terrible time. Go against despair at my own sinfulness, go against isolation, go against feeling useless, go against considering myself ugly, go against turning my back on prayer. I am swimming upstream, at the recommendation of St. Ignatius. Agere contra. Agere contra. Agere contra. This sucks. I am a teenager again, reidentifying myself and starting a new life. I love community life; I tire of community life. I enjoy prayer; I find prayer pointless. I cherish my gifts; I loathe myself. I have compared the big spiritual changes in my life to a trapeze act. I let go of one thing, and the next simply has to be there, or I land, splat, on the concrete below. So far, God has always been where God needs to be to catch me. But the air time is scary. Sometimes God shows me a motif, a theme in my interior life, and that’s what I know I need to pay attention to. Lately, I have been hearing the word “acceptance” in many places and contexts. Okay, God, I am listening. I am working the 12 steps and one of the spiritual foundations of all 12 step programs is the serenity prayer. “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change….” Acceptance has never been my strong suit, I admit. I am a total perfectionist and anything less than perfection is simply not good enough for me! Well, as I have stated before in these files, “there are no prodigies in religious life,” and I am making my way at times like a bull in a china shop. I keep sallying forth because I know that this is my joy, my calling, my fulfillment. As awkward as I feel, as completely bereft of context, as unmoored, I know that God is there on the other trapeze. So I struggle to accept my imperfections, my sorrows, my sins. I try to accept my family, with its brokenness, and my past, with its many dark valleys. God loves me as I am, at the weight I am, with the sins I have, in the place I am, with the attitudes I show, and God’s love is infinitely tender and merciful. I want to emulate this love and quit beating up on myself so bad, quit feeling in competition with others, quit trying to be loveable and instead believe firmly in the fact that I am already loved, loveable, and loving. But, like the teenager I seem to be these days, I rebel against my own dependence. Ow, ow, ow. Agere contra! I experience a lot of the flaws of my life as emptiness. I feel very empty sometimes because of the imperfections of my family. Holidays are very hard. I feel empty after a draining day, empty when I contemplate my distance from godliness, empty when I cannot pray as well as I would like (that is to say, perfectly), empty when I experience the isolation of being the only woman in formation. Yet God provides even in this emptiness. Hollow, I have been told, is that which sings. It is in my emptiness, the places where I am open, available, free, unprotected, that I sing. I walk with a water bottle in the brisk bay breeze and notice the sound emanating from the half-empty bottle. It is only after I make room, after emptying the bottle partway, that the air blowing across its mouth can inspire song. Air moves air. The vibrating column of air in a flute or a cornet or a bagpipe is another example. Where I am empty, God fills me with God’s spirit, and it is that which moves, vibrates, sings, in concert with the God around me. I cannot sing when I am a full, unbroken, solid mass. It is in my hollowness that music comes… when God taps me, breathes on me, plucks my attention, I sing. “My heart and soul cry out, for you, my living God.” There is something resonant in keening, in the song of mourning. There is something beautiful in the longing of separated lovers. There is song in hunger, in loneliness, in need. My shape is that of something incomplete. I have a hollowed-out core, a God-shaped emptiness that cries out for Him. I fight, I resist, I rebel, but at the bottom of it all, I thirst. Hollow is the thing that makes music. Hollow is that which sings. When I went into the convent, I expressed to my coworkers that this decision was based on my “being in love with” God. One friend expressed his confusion at this phrase. “I don’t get it,” he said. I don’t get it myself, some days. But when I read what I have myself written, I understand a little more. Jesus is the One who gives me life, who gives me everything, who greets me every morning, who I taste on my lips at communion each day. It is He whom I want to impress, whom I want to be worthy of, whose family I struggle to serve with love, whom I think of constantly. I cannot turn my back on Him for long… he makes me laugh at myself, at my own childish obstinacy. I would not do this, this time of self-discovery, were it not for Him. I am utterly taken and I am glad. Sometimes. I occasionally grumble, with the prophet, “You have seduced me, Lord, and I have let myself be seduced.” (Yes, that’s in the Bible! Jeremiah 20:7). Our love story is less Romeo and Juliet, you see, than The Taming of the Shrew. Sometimes I want to run to my Love, and sometimes I'd rather throw things at Him. But angry or awe-filled, tame or raging, I am His. "He aquí la Esclava del Señor." Writing this has been my “contra” for today. Yes, I am here doing the right thing, in the best way I can, in the imperfectly wonderful beauty of me. I accept me: I accept my gifts, which frighten me sometimes, and I accept my flaws, which I obsess about at times, and I accept my need, which ties me to this God I love and long for and resent and rebel against, and I accept my emptiness and my hollowness, which gives me my song. Hollow is that which sings. Amen. Copyright © 2005 Handmaids of the
Sacred Heart of Jesus. All rights reserved. Contact the author by email. May, 2004 “No, no, up pertenece a hook. Es una frase. No, se usa juntas: hook up.” Um, okay, this is an interesting conversation to overhear. I am working on the convent library, for which I am partly responsible, when I overhear this very confusing interchange. Sitting at the computer, making spine labels for the books, I laugh out loud at the next salvo: “Dog significa una mujer, fea, no amable. Es slang, no es una buena palabra. Sí, estoy segura. No es fina, es una palabra de la calle.” One of our sisters is trying to convince someone on the other side of her phone conversation of the meanings of “hook up” and “dog.” I think this wins the “least likely to be heard in a convent” prize. I am doubled over with laughter and not even hiding my eavesdropping at this point. “No, la frase significa introducir, presentar. No, no está en el diccionario, porque es slang.” She sighs with frustration. Apparently her credentials as a native English speaker are not enough to convince the other party. I leave the room before my laughter will be overheard by whoever is on the other end of the line. Afterwards, I ask what on earth that conversation was all about. It turns out that one of her friends from her ministry with the poor, homeless, and addicted in downtown Miami needed some help translating a letter. He is Cuban, his girlfriend American. They speak little of each others’ language, and letters are particularly difficult. When he needs help translating, he asks Sister for help. “So, she is in prison, and she is writing her boyfriend for a favor,” my beleaguered Sister explains. “Apparently, she has a friend who also wants a man to write to on the outside, and she’s hoping to make a connection through her boyfriend. She wants him to know that her prison pal is not ugly or unappealing, so she writes, ‘I would not hook your friend up with a dog.’ Now, how on earth is he supposed to understand that?” I’m not sure what is more surprising to me, that “hook up” is part of Sister Jane Doe’s (name changed ☺ ) vocabulary, or that she is so matter-of-fact about prison romance. It turns out that she does a lot of unconventional outreach like translating love letters (although calling this a love letter is a stretch), looking for job openings in the classifieds, and setting up and checking free email accounts for people who have neither computer nor library card nor technical savvy. She also gives out rosaries, hunts for priests willing to hear confessions, assigns beds to the homeless who come to the shelter she works at, and deals out some tough love from time to time. There are funny and lighthearted things every day in this house. This time it was a man who wondered why his girlfriend would connect his friend with a vertically elevated dog, and knew he could call his local Handmaid convent for enlightenment. Communication is such a funny, dangerous, mysterious thing, and language can be one of the worst and best ways to communicate. Communication is the way people connect (dare I say, “hook up”?). And we Handmaids are in the relationship business. Granted, our normal use of the charism of reconciliation has more to do with helping broken marriages or giving retreats to people who need to reconnect with God. But sometimes, a coarsely worded prison letter enters our life and we respond in the good humor and love that we learn from one another. “I would not hook your friend up with a dog.” Oh, my. Copyright © 2005 Handmaids of the
Sacred Heart of Jesus. All rights reserved. Contact the author by email. June, 2004 “Excuse me, is anyone going north on Biscayne Boulevard?” The dapper older gentleman addressed his question to the faithful leaving daily Mass. We sisters responded that yes, we were indeed headed north on Biscayne and would be glad to drop him home, since his taxicab was nowhere to be seen. So began a wonderful friendship with Luigi. A well-educated man, Italian by birth, Franciscan by spirituality, Luigi was the ultimate renaissance man. Appalled that we Sisters were unaware of the glories of the C minor Mass by Mozart, he made sure that we had a copy in the house right away. “Oh, Sisters, it is simply lovely. You must have it.” He insisted on sending us small gifts: books, chocolates, and the like, throughout our brief friendship. We, in turn, enjoyed having him for breakfast after daily Mass. We would often pick Luigi up for Mass, since he lived only one street over, and could no longer drive. Soon after meeting us, Luigi disclosed his deep pain at the loss of his mother, apparently relatively recently. Never married, Luigi loved his mother deeply and, although he had extended family members (cousins) in this country, his mother was in many ways his only family. He also told us that he had cancer. His treatments were rather debilitating and at times we would not see him for nearly a week. Yet when we would see him next, he would always have a positive outlook. In the distinctive, syncopated speech he used when happy, he would say, “Every-day is a-gift, Sisters. How can-I-do aaaanything but give thanks?” He was astoundingly generous, not only to us, but to the parish as well. He rued the poverty of culture of the modern age and ensured that our parish priest had plenty of CD’s of Gregorian chant for daily Mass. When I showed up to church one morning wearing a demure navy dress emblazoned with the seal of the congregation, Luigi approved. “Sister, what a lovely habit you have this morning.” Later, I would remember to don my “habit” instead of my usual “street clothes” when I visited him as he neared death. Gradually Luigi got sicker and sicker and eventually we saw him quite seldom. To our joy, however, he took us at our word and called us when he needed us. We brought him communion or went to pray with him occasionally and got to know his protégé, a young man who had become like a son or nephew to Luigi in the previous few years. Luigi was blessed with caregivers who were compassionate and gentle, and I believe that at last Luigi had a family of choice, which surpassed in love many traditional families. The last two weeks of May Luigi spent dying, both in the hospital and finally at home. On Memorial Day, I went to be with him after dinner. I had experienced a rather full and exhausting day and had not yet made my adoration. Still, I thought that being with Luigi was a duty and privilege that superseded my daily commitment to prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. I drove to North Beach with the intention of returning to make my adoration before bed. When I arrived, Luigi was nearing the end. He could make eye contact, but with no indication of understanding anything spoken to him and no vocalization of his own. I spoke with him briefly of my exploits of the day (kayaking) and of the love of the community which I brought with me. We said (I said) a Hail Mary, and I invited him to let go, to enter the company of his mother, of St. Francis, and of the many friends he had awaiting him in heaven. His breathing, which was ragged and labored, slowly relaxed over the next hour or so. His “nephew”, Nick, and I sat at his side, one of us at the head of the couch where he lay and one at the foot, occasionally changing places. I held his hand, stroked his arm or leg, and spoke with those keeping vigil. We laughed, shared, talked about our day, talked about Luigi. Occasionally we would focus again on Luigi’s passage and tell him that we were here, that we were fine and that he could let go and stop struggling. Nick told Luigi, “Go to sleep… when you wake up you will be well.” At last Nick paused for dinner while I remained at Luigi’s side with his nurse’s aide, Jennifer. He stopped breathing and grunted. A few seconds later, he took another shallow breath. I asked Jennifer to get Nick, sensing that this was the moment of his departure. As Nick and I sat with Luigi, he breathed his last and went to be with God. I was stroking his hair and felt his scalp grow cool as Nick declared, “he’s gone.” I traced a sign of the cross on his forehead and we paused before continuing, just cherishing this last moment of togetherness and silence. We moved Luigi’s body to his bed, straightened him out and washed him, and prayed. Eventually the paramedics came and the arrangements were detailed, and I had time to talk with Jennifer, with Marilyn (a housekeeper and assistant), with Nick, and with the officer who responded to the report of death. I called my community to let them know that I would be home late, that Luigi had gone to be with God and I was staying around until everything got taken care of. Each one of the people I spoke with had a different need. It was the first time I truly felt the awesome responsibility of the title of “Sister.” Dressed in my “uniform”, acting as a prayerful presence, I represented the Church for the individuals who needed to unburden themselves and share. Wow. The next day, I reflected on my experience with Sister Sagrario. “You know, while I was sitting with Luigi alone for awhile, I asked God to help me adore Him in Luigi, to make my adoration in that experience.” I was touched by her response. “Joy, the beautiful thing is that I was making an extra adoration at home with some friends when you were with Luigi. We had been praying for him, and when we left the chapel, we got your message that he had gone to God.” She casually added, “and because I knew you could not do your adoration, I made adoration for you.” How interconnected we are! I rarely apprehend the hidden lines of prayer and love that penetrate creation. This time, though, it was so beautifully demonstrated. While I was sitting with Luigi, praying for his gentle passage to the next life, praying in adoration of Christ in Luigi, of Christ in the death journey, my sisters were praying for Luigi and remembering me. This is Christianity at its finest... when the confidence of one who knows he leaves this life for the joys of heaven meets the gentle love of friends who will escort him to his new life with God. O Death, where is thy sting? Luigi, pray for us. Copyright © 2005 Handmaids of the
Sacred Heart of Jesus. All rights reserved. Contact the author by email. June, 2004 Okay, I am cheating a little. This episode of the “Convent Files” does double duty as my pre-mission trip reflection. You see, the Handmaids have a volunteer house in San Salvador, and lead mission trips there every year to familiarize first-world volunteers from various countries with the people of El Salvador. Unless you were asleep or a child or in first-world slumber during the 1980’s, you remember the bloody civil war there. If you don’t know much about it, watch the movie Romero (starring Raul Julia as Archbishop Oscar Romero). You can get it at some Blockbuster stores: check out their website to search in your area. At any rate, that’s where I am headed in a few days, and as all the volunteers do, I am submitting an essay describing what I expect to give and receive from my experience in El Salvador. What motivates me to go? Well, on one level, the fact that this is part of the formation process and that my community thinks this is a good experience for me. On another level, part of my decision to enter a predominantly Spanish-speaking congregation (at the world level) which had Ignatian, go-anywhere, do-anything spirituality, was to participate in exactly this type of thing. Let’s face it... I am the right color, the right ethnicity, have the right accent and the right education to succeed in the U.S. I am accustomed to privilege, even though I grew up poor. Poor isn’t even the right word, really. Less pampered. I want to leave this comfortable cultural experience of fitting in and join up with other cultures. Not as a tourist, not as an imperialist missionary, but as a humble student. I’ve “done” the U.S. It’s time for me to mine other languages, lifestyles, spiritualities, nations, cuisines, prayer forms, attitudes and find in them the encounters with God that will help me bring God’s kingdom into reality. What do I need (the application form asks) for the experience to be truly life-giving for all? Well, I think that I must cultivate the very attitude that lies behind this question. There is an assumption in my congregation that relationships are tools for holiness and wholeness. That’s why we work to bring reconciliation into broken relationships. That’s why we think that an interaction like our mission trips can be life-giving for everyone involved. To the extent I form relationships, symmetrical, respectful relationships, I will grow, as will the other person. To the extent that I view the other as a statistic or a stereotype or a project, I will be a denier of humanity and an agent of division. What am I willing to give to make it happen? I am willing to give my time, my comfort, my need to know what will happen next. I will try to set aside my USA watch-consciousness. I will donate what poor skills I have: broken Spanish, my commitment to prayer, the ability to juggle. I suppose the most important thing I have to give is my willingness to receive, to be the poor one. Poor in life experience, poor in comprehension, poor in reliance on divine providence. In many ways I am going to serve a people of great wealth. Can I accept what they have to give me? What talents do I bring to the project? We’ve already established that I can juggle. Hand me three relatively equally hefty things and I can keep them in midair for a good long time. I bet the kids will like that. I bring strength. I remember being the only woman at my former job’s Habitat house that was able to tote a pack of shingles to the roof. I got a few accolades for that but my shoulders were black and blue for days. My usual talents fall uselessly to the ground this time, though. Nuanced theological reflection? Uh, pretty useless when the only way I can deliver it is in English! Computer savvy? Not too helpful in a shantytown. Gourmet cooking? Some people have only a tortilla or two for their main meal. Some have nothing at all. So, that’s me. I go to a foreign land, underqualified, underprepared, and out of my element. Sounds like a perfect recipe for an encounter with God. Copyright © 2005 Handmaids of the
Sacred Heart of Jesus. All rights reserved. Contact the author by email. Episode 16: Journal from El Salvador... El Grano de Trigo July, 2004
From my email home of July 4, 2004:
“Si el grano de trigo no cae en tierra y muere, queda solo; pero si muere, da mucho fruto.” Seeing these words at Archbishop Romero’s tomb unexpectedly moved me to tears. These words, taken from the Gospel of John, are a basic foundation of my Christian life. They first came to light for me through the TEC retreat in Atlanta, Georgia. The TEC movement is intended to bring the Paschal mystery (the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus as a Paschal – Passover – sacrifice) to life for young Catholics. “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.” Archbishop Oscar Romero lived these words and took them to heart. He knew that his life was in danger because of his outspoken defense of the defenseless, but elected to continue being prophetic. Two weeks before he died, he said, "I am bound, as a pastor, by divine command to give my life for those whom I love, and that is all Salvadorans, even those who are going to kill me." Prophets are infrequently treated to honor in this life. Priests who talk about justice issues, even in a peaceful and wealthy country like the United States, are often branded “too political.” Oscar Romero, selected as Archbishop for his expected stance of compromise, lost his life because he would not compromise, would not abandon the prophetic ministry of Christ. Assassinated (according to the UN Truth Commission) by a death squad associated with the Salvadoran military, he died as he was saying Mass. His last homily related the scripture about the grain of wheat to the service of the poor. El Salvador is due a rich harvest. There are many martyrs who have given themselves as grains of wheat, as offerings for a better future. Eight of the better known ones are the martyrs of la UCA (Universidad Centroamericana). It is hard for me to share the experiences of visiting la UCA. Six Jesuit priests were assassinated for their unstinting advocacy of better opportunities for the oppressed of El Salvador. Alongside them died two Salvadoran women who were eliminated because of their witnessing the crime. I held it pretty well together until we visited the chapel. There, on the wall of the church above the entrance, are the stations of the cross. But they are not stations like I’d seen before. They were drawings of torture. Tastefully done (as tastefully as torture depictions can be), they showed men and women bound, lying in piles, with marks of torture on the bottoms of their feet, on their backs, torsos, genitals. These are pencil drawings, our friend Margarita tells us, of actual photos. I cry there and then cry more at our evening reflection when I try to explain how it affected me. I cry now as I type these words. The fact is that the people that committed those atrocities are people like me. I cannot imagine a worse fate than being a torturer, except perhaps to be one of the tortured. I cry because the children I worked with that day, poor but happy kids, have the capacity to grow up to do great evil, or may grow up to have great evil done to them. I suppose all Stations of the Cross (FYI for non-Catholics: the 14 representations of Christ’s suffering during his execution process, the Stations are in every Catholic church) depict torture, but this was the first time I had seen it so explicitly and powerfully done. Piles of bodies... bound with wire, with rope, tortured, raped, murdered. We are the body of Christ and I am so grateful for this artistic reflection on that theological fact. What I do to another, what my (government, race, Church, family, political party) does to another, I do to Christ. I love Jesuits, I love their reputation as fearless travelers and men committed to justice. I love it that they will square off against anyone to preach the truest form of the Gospel they know, even if that means being branded radical, too-liberal, or even heretical. I love their occasionally nutty founder, St. Ignatius of Loyola. I read, therefore, with great joy and a sense of being personally called by God, these words beside the place where these faithful Jesuits of la UCA are interred: “No trabajaremos en la promoción de la justicia sin que paguemos un precio.” It is a warning from the Jesuit General Congregation, issued before their deaths: “We will not work in the promotion of justice without paying a price.” I feel it is a warning to me, too. I will not work in the promotion of justice without being inconvenienced, being labeled insufficently orthodox, being tired, being sick, being overwhelmed, being lied to and lied about, without laying down my life. I don’t know what the price will be, just that there will be one. Most likely it will be something unglamorous like dealing with unpleasant people and battling exhaustion. But there will be a price. “Si el grano de trigo no cae en tierra y muere....” Enough about death. On to resurrection. The second week I was in El Salvador, my friend Jeanne and I worked in a home for malnourished babies. This home was started by an American couple, Sam and Julie Hawkins, who have lived in El Salvador since 1986 (yes, the war was still going on then). Without knowing my personal connection to “the grain of wheat”, Julie quoted the verse and related to us that the existence of this home is due to their very own “grain of wheat”, Karla. Karla was the first baby they were asked to help while they were living in El Salvador. After weeks of taking turns standing guard over Karla in the hospital, praying and caring for her, the Hawkins’ slipped out to get some rest and quiet time. They arrived home to their apartment to the news that she had died. “Karla was the grain of wheat, you see,” Julie tells me softly. “She died, but through that experience, we have the harvest of so many who live.” Karla’s death and the experience of caring for two other malnourished babies, who went on to live, inspired the Hawkins’ to develop a ministry especially for the care of the severely malnourished. From my email home of 16 July: I want to write something about what it is like to see your reflection in a baby's eyes... I haven't quite processed it, but I have held, cuddled, fed, cajoled, and sang to a bunch lately and there is something about seeing yourself reflected in the dark, wideopen eyes of a helpless infant. Wow. It had been 10 years + since I had fed a baby but it all comes back... okay, now sweep the chin area with the spoon edge, wait for the tongue to be in the right position, and go in for the delivery. Bingo! Some of the kids hate to eat or vomit afterwards. Not sure why but maybe that is what led to their malnourishment in the first place. An actual interchange of today:
Jeanne: "He's wet, I'll
change him. No, wait, ick, it's poopy." Of course all the gross stuff is forgotten in a minute when you feel those little fingers close around your own. The beautiful thing about the home is that these kids are surrounded with love. It’s not like being at home, there aren’t enough hands to give the kids all the time and affection they would get in a family, but what is lacking in amount is made up for in quality. The women who staff the home as well as the Hawkins truly love, love, love the babies. Thank God. There is certainly a great amount of work to be done: From my email home of July 14, 2004:
According to USAID, 26% of children under five years of age suffer from chronic malnutrition in rural El Salvador. Why are there starving kids like these in such great numbers? Why aren’t we, as a nation, suffering with them, dying to ourselves like the grain of wheat, paying a price like the Jesuits warned we must, in order to save our kids? Because they ARE our kids, Salvadoran or American. How can anyone in the USA (or El Salvador) enjoy their XBox and DVD player and instant messenger and Bebe skirts or Armani suits when people die for lack of food or clean water? And we here in the US are concerned about who can receive Eucharist. What scandal. We ought to be angry, motivated, shouting, weeping for dying babies. We should care less about whether Christ touches the lips of certain politicians and more about how Christ is being crucified now, being starved now, being tortured now. “The scribes and the Pharisees have taken their seat on the chair of Moses. Therefore, do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you, but do not follow their example. For they preach but they do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens (hard to carry) and lay them on people's shoulders, but they will not lift a finger to move them. All their works are performed to be seen. They widen their phylacteries and lengthen their tassels. They love places of honor at banquets, seats of honor in synagogues, greetings in marketplaces, and the salutation 'Rabbi.' “ Matthew 23:2-7 So, am I a Pharisee? Copyright © 2005 Handmaids of the
Sacred Heart of Jesus. All rights reserved. Contact the author by email. Episode 17: Under Construction August, 2004 Our house is host these days to a bevy of saw-wielding, dust-covered, paint-splattered men whose job it is to fire up a power tool as soon as I answer the telephone. They are also engaged, bless them, in building a new chapel for our convent. The present chapel is smack-dab in the center of the house and isn’t always conducive to prayer. Every phone call and conversation held almost anywhere in the house is audible in the chapel. So now our current chapel is slated to become an office and we are getting a new chapel added to the front of the house. This is not an easy thing. The price of progress is mess. I’m kind of a mess, too. I’m unruly and organic and emotional and definitely not a graph-paper, slide rule type of person. I’m happy about that now, more or less, but there was a time in which I wasn’t. As an adolescent I read a funny manual entitled Legal Daisy Spacing. This book is all about clamping down on nature and making sure daisies are regularly spaced, icebergs are regulation size and shape, and so on. I didn’t get the irony of the book as a kid. I thought it was just a funny tool for people who wanted to invent their own worlds, something that appealed to me. This was the time when a lot of my friends were into D&D, or making their own codes or languages. Early adolescence was a great time for that kind of stuff, because I was ready to break free and be creative, but not terribly enslaved yet with the need to be cool, cynical, and blasé. I was always busy with my nose in a book and learning to write, to imagine, to dream my own reality. My real world was pretty unpredictable, so I thought a book like Legal Daisy Spacing was great. I am gradually getting comfortable with disorder. The house is continually disordered, which has been irritating when we have guests or prayer groups over. I feel as though I have to apologize for the dumpster in the yard, for the sheets covering our furniture, for the boxes piled high. During the past few months, we’ve also redone our kitchen cabinets and acted as central receiving for furniture, clothing, and other things going to El Salvador. So you can only imagine what this has done to our normally neat home. We don’t have a basement, so it’s all out in the open. I have been heard to say, with a noticeable edge in my voice, “And this will all be gone by Wednesday, right?” Wednesday is the day we have Spirit and Truth, a young adult prayer group, in our house. Of course the S&T people don’t mind. They probably don’t even think twice about the mess or think we’re slobs. I try to keep this in mind, and put my ego in check. They aren’t here to do a profile for Better Homes and Convents. They’re here to worship and praise God! They’re here to enjoy our friendship. So the best thing I can do is let my cleanliness neurosis go and just relax and have a good time with my friends. It’s hard for me to pray when things are messy. That’s why I can’t pray well in my bedroom. It’s too distracting! I concentrate on the papers I need to organize, or the bed that isn’t made well, or the shoes that are half under the dresser. Last week, though, I made the effort to try. Sometimes God uses discomfort to talk to me, after all. Why, I asked myself, am I so uncomfortable here when I pray? And I remembered Legal Daisy Spacing and my lifelong attempts to make my family and my life orderly and predictable. I don’t like loose ends, and it seems impossible to pray when I am confronted with the loose ends of my messy room. Or my messy life. Maybe when I sweep and wash sheets and dust and do laundry I will be able to pray. Maybe when I get my papers organized and the computer files cleaned up and read all the magazine articles I’m saving, I will be able to pray. Maybe if I go to confession, make those phone calls I’ve been putting off, figure out why I am feeling grumpy, I can pray. You see where this is going. I want my inner life, the bedroom of my heart, to be pristine, too, before I pray. Prayer is permitting God to enter into my heart and consciousness so we can chat. If I am so obsessed about “cleaning”, I’m leaving God on the front porch while I straighten up. But God just wants to hang out! “God, I’m so embarrassed,” I say. “There’s laundry baskets of unfolded memories, dust of spiritual neglect, thoughts buzzing around, pools of spilled emotion to be mopped up, homework in big piles. Let me just clean this up real quick and then You can come in.” But just as the house will never be perfectly clean, and there will always be some sort of project, some type of chaos going on, I will never be perfectly recollected, perfectly cleaned up myself. I could maybe fool my friends into thinking I’m a perfect housekeeper. But I certainly cannot fool God into thinking I’m a perfect person. So why do have the urge to avoid that deep, meaningful contact with God until I have the loose ends of my life under some sort of control? Embarrassment, I think, and the sensation that I really can do it all if I just have enough time. That’s also known as pride. So perhaps I will open the door of my heart today, still wearing my bathrobe and with my hair all crazy, to let God in before I’ve gotten myself “presentable.” Maybe God will roll up God’s sleeves and pitch in. I’ll dust, Lord, if you fold. Copyright © 2005 Handmaids of the
Sacred Heart of Jesus. All rights reserved. Contact the author by email. September, 2004 My Friend Frances: A New Sitcom Starting Two Calm Nuns, One Nervous Postulant, and 115 mph Winds! Joy (Nervous Postulant): We’ve
got to get out of here! Frances is almost upon us! What do you mean, “this
house has no shutters”? WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE! I had never been thru a hurricane before, and had no intention of having the experience now. Hello, God invented satellite weather reports for a reason!!! Well, not God exactly, but you know what I mean. I have heard so many Andrew stories that I have post-traumatic stress from it, even though I was living in Tennessee when it hit. After hearing about the poor folks who didn’t see Charley coming, I definitely did not want to be in the “overconfident” camp. Live to fight another day, that’s my motto! No need to prove my bravery! I was kind of joking about leaving town, but was hoping that my Sisters would also get the yen to leave. No such luck. We have no storm shutters and cannot board up our house because of security bars that are placed too narrowly for plywood to go between the bars and the window. I contented myself with moving some books and things to higher shelves, backing up the hard drives, and pestering my Sisters. “Truly, you guys, you aren’t taking this seriously! I am NOT overreacting here!” They were largely impervious to my hand-wringing, and I joked with them about how they would be SO GLAD that I was the one who had the good sense to think ahead. “I think I’ll prepare the press release now,” I said at dinner. “Reluctant Nuns Owe Life to Nagging Postulant.” I envisioned the article. “Sister Mary Ann Craig, acj, claims she wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the relentless advice of the newest Handmaid. ‘If it weren’t for Joy, I’d have been swept out to sea,’ said the grateful nun. Another Sister repented of her teasing. ‘Thank God Joy was here to talk some sense into us,’ relates Sister Kayjoy Cooper.’” The other two laughed good-naturedly but were unmoved. We were not leaving town. As Frances pounded the Bahamas, unmoving, we were enjoying day 2 of “mandatory evacuation” in our own house, having, well, NOT evacuated. I thought to myself that we could very well be those victims that others shake their heads at, saying, “what a shame, but how stupid can people be! I mean, hello, mandatory evacuation means what?” Still, the surf was up and wind was blowing, but it didn’t seem much worse than an average summer storm here. So I was glad we had not evacuated yet. We moved some cars a few miles inland (we are 500 feet from Biscayne Bay) and battened down the hatches, as much as we could. The more I experienced Frances, the more I enjoyed the exhilaration of the wind and rain, the taste of salt water kicking up, the sight of the sky. I love storms, actually, when they don’t kill people and knock houses over. And little by little, she weakened and went north. Miami-Dade looked all clear. Whew. We agreed to take it as it came and move if it looked necessary, but anticipated staying home. We made it out to Mass in 30-40 mph winds, and to our surprise there were lots of folks there. Coffee at the rectory afterward made us all feel like family. The wind overnight was pretty amazing and I did have some sleepless moments. I even put my sneakers on the shelf by my bed so that if my window got hit by something, the glass wouldn’t fall into my shoes. I did spend the entire night in my own bed, however, instead of in my shower stall. So obviously I wasn’t too scared! In fact, we all did just fine. An already dead or dying papaya tree got finished off and keeled over in our back yard. Other than that and a bunch of windfall fruit, our yard and house was unaffected. We lost power for a couple of days, which was not that bad. We made evening prayer in our new chapel while it was still daylight instead of waiting until after dinner. It was still cool and windy so the lack of A/C did not affect us too much. And besides, I was sick of seeing and hearing all about Frances on the internet and TV. It was too soon to stress about Ivan, so I curled up with my copy of Systematic Theology, vol. 2 (how’s that for a summer read?) and a flashlight and settled in, eating ice cream rescued before it could melt. After all, it’s a sin to waste food, right? Right? Copyright © 2005 Handmaids of the
Sacred Heart of Jesus. All rights reserved. Contact the author by email. October, 2004 Things I am too sick to do: Sleep comfortably, Be Awake, Pray, Study, Sing, Eat, Write lists of things I am too sick to do. I recently came back from Atlanta, from a retreat which was a delight to be a part of and which nourished me as well as gave me a terrific experience of ministry. I love TEC and it is always great to reconnect. However, the retreat center is infested with mold. I knew there was a mold problem and came prepared with Claritin and the like. However, this time around, it really hit me hard. On the drive back to Miami, I gradually felt sicker and sicker. Four days of fungal exposure had wreaked havoc on my immune system and my tonsils were becoming larger and sorer by the minute. By the time I dropped off the other Miami folks at their homes and staggered back to the convent, I felt like, well, you know. I managed to stick on a smile for the Sisters and a dinner guest and then collapsed in bed. It is now four days later and I am still sick, sick, sick. Too sick to have an appetite, which for me is pretty sick. Too sick to have even written anything, much less a convent file, in days. Signing my name seems like a challenge, in fact, although typing seems to come with relative ease. Thank God for that at least. I hate being sick. I guess everyone does, but it really galls me. I am young and healthy and it seems patently unfair that I should ever have to go through the indignity of feeling sapped of all energy. It should not be so exhausting to work on the computer for a couple hours that I need to spend the rest of the day in bed. I should not have an intermittent fever that gives me troubled, sweaty, hallucinogenic, loud dreams which follow no logic. I deserve to be well, dammit! And then I realize, wow, that I am mortal, and that I will die someday, and unless I get over this apparent basic unfairness, nothing will make much sense to me. I still hate being sick but at least I figure I can learn something from it. Here’s what I have learned: Good enough is. There is such a thing as good enough. I cannot even pray as I would like... even making it to Mass is a struggle because I honestly don’t feel safe to drive, much less good enough to keep it together for a half hour in the morning! So I have to embrace the prayer of good-enough. “God, please help me.” That’s about as philosophical as I get these days. When it hurts to swallow, when the effort of standing up in the morning makes one swoon, theology is as useful as rocket science. I find the psalms helpful, though, especially the really melodramatic ones: “Behold, my bones are rotting, my flesh is dried up, have you forgotten me, O Lord? Yea, though I walk through the valley of antihistamine, there is no relief from the swollen lymph nodes. And my enemies laugh at how I fall at the feet of the medicine cabinet.” I feel like I really could just die, just stand up and fall down dead, and then I am annoyed at my own melodrama, which is certainly not helped by the pendulum swing from fever-head to medicine-head and back. I halfheartedly check my email, mouth gaped open, hoping someone has sent me something entitled “Novena to cure respiratory rot.” No such luck. So I keep plugging along, trying to do just good enough. Just clean enough, just participatory enough in the life of the community, praying just as good as I can, trying to study, at least as well as I can. Good enough is.
Copyright © 2005 Handmaids of the
Sacred Heart of Jesus. All rights reserved. Contact the author by email. Episode 20: Accidental Godmother October, 2004 I recently became, I think, a godmother. I say, “I think,” because the event in question took place in Romanian, which I do not speak (although I can order ice cream in that language, and water, and cabbage). My friend Nick (see my convent file on Luigi) was excited about his nephew’s baptism and invited us to go along. I and Sister Kayjoy gladly accepted. Baby’s mom and dad, both Romanian, spoke little if any English and lived in Germany. They’d be returning there the day after the baptism and it was probably our first, last, and only chance to see the kid and wish him well in life. So away I drive to the Romanian Orthodox Church in nearby Miramar. I arrive early and kneel to pray. The church is small but beautiful... filled, as are all Orthodox churches, with ornate iconography. I am inspired to pray for the reunification of Orthodox and Catholic traditions while I wait for the family to show up. The priest says hello and I ask whether I can take photos. He says of course, and as Mom, Dad, Baby, and Nick walk in, we get started. It is an ornate ritual, which begins with Adriana (Mom) kneeling at the church door, babe in arms, while the priest prays over them both, covering them with a cloth, crossing them with a small wooden cross. We all rise and approach the altar. A detailed prayer and chrismation of the baptismal waters follows, as well as prayers over baby and parents. It is at this point that the priest invites me to hold the large candle while the others participate in the prayers. How nice, I think to myself. I am being invited to participate! Then, at one point, the priest is praying over Mom and Dad and Nick-the-Godfather and turns to me to ask me my name. “Uh, Joy,” I say, uncertainly. Well, I guess we all need prayers, right? Later he engages in a back-and-forth with mom, dad, and godfather, and then tells me, in English, “If you reject Satan, say ‘I reject Satan.’” What do you say to that? Of course “I reject Satan,” and so I stammer out. I am hurriedly trying to remember whether the assembly at large rejects Satan and renews their baptismal promises at our Catholic baptisms. But before I can figure out what’s going on, I am walking around the altar with Nick. That’s right, the priest holds the candle with one hand, while I hold the candle in one hand and Nick’s hand in my other. Nick is cradling the babe in his free arm. Three times around we go, pausing each time for a photo op. I wonder how I look in those photos: “Oh, gee, I think I am a Godmother! Ohmigod, did mom and dad mean for this to happen?” Click-Flash. “How am I ever going to explain this? Should I say something, or is it already done?” Click-Flash. “Should I smile for this shot or be solemn? I am really confused.” Click-Flash. Sister Kayjoy walks into the church, quite late, and I murmur, “You’ll never believe what happened.” I wasn’t sure whether to ask the priest whether I was the godmother now, or what, for fear that he would be aghast at making me a godparent without my knowledge or consent. Don’t ask, don’t tell, I figure. I didn’t get a chance to ask Nick, either. I suppose we should touch base, and I can at least pray for this kid, even though he’ll grow up speaking German and Romanian and probably not English. Just another reminder that I am my brother’s keeper, even when my brother is a world away and I am an accidental godmother. As a postscript, I suppose as accidental rituals go, it could have been much worse. When I related this tale to some friends, they said, “Godmother? You say you walked around the altar three times holding hands with a man? Sounds to me like you got married!”
Copyright © 2005 Handmaids of the
Sacred Heart of Jesus. All rights reserved. Contact the author by email. Episode 21: What God Looks Like November, 2004 A friend of mine and I were emailing not long ago and I shared a theological musing of mine which has been with me for years. I don’t know where it came from or how it developed, but it kind of defines my spirituality in a way. I said, “I think, and I don’t know why I think this, that God will appear to us at our judgment in the guise of the person we wrongly hated.” So the neo-nazi will see a Hasidic Jew with broad brimmed hat and phylacteries. Others may see a gypsy, a fat person, or a liberal or conservative. The racist male chauvinist will see Oprah (this is my favorite scenario, actually). It just seems so just for us at the end of our lives to be confronted with the God we did not acknowledge... the God in that group of people we reviled. And how wonderful it would be to be embraced by that God anyway, even after the horrifying realization that our whole lives we rebelled against God. Again, this idea just came out of my head and I don’t vouch for its theological accuracy. No imprimatur on this web page. But to think in this line causes me to wonder: what will God look like to me? I mean, it’s kind of hard to see who you unjustly discriminate against, because that’s generally hidden, even from yourself. God might be black, I suppose, for me. I did grow up in the racist South although my family is not particularly racist. Also, I felt unaccountably uncomfortable when I saw a lovely representation of Jesus showing His Sacred Heart... a black Jesus. So there’s probably some stuff I need to work out there. Will God appear to me as a man? Or a woman? I don’t think I’m sexist in either way, so I think it’ll be a toss up. Certainly God could speak any language, I’m not particularly Anglocentric when it comes to culture or language. I think. These thoughts were kicking around in my subconscious the other day when I went to theology class. The topic was the liberation theology of James Cone, a famed American theologian known for framing a “Black Liberation theology.” We talked about blackness and whiteness and oppression and culture and regional differences, and then we got down to talking about the method of theology in general. Cone criticizes theology that is so academic that it is irrelevant to the needs of the people. I suppose you could say he advocates a theology of the people, from their own experiences. He advocates a down-to-earth theology even though he is himself an academic. After two hours of discussion, almost entirely among six white-skinned (Anglo and Hispanic) students, our professor turned to the often-silent Sr. Veronica. “What do you think, Veronica?” Sr. Veronica is from Kenya, of the Nandi tribe, and is here in the US getting a degree to help her ministry back home. She was thoughtful when she responded. She talked about her own experience of blackness and how it lacks the ambiguity and negativity of the African-American experience. “In my village, we are all black. I look at myself and say, ‘I am black. So what?’. I look at you and say, ‘You are white. So what?’ It is not important, it is not what is valuable about people.” She went on to talk about theology, and how important it is to have a practical theology, one that touches the human condition. Gesturing toward the ceiling, she said, “You can talk up here about concepts, about ideas and religion and theology, but if you are not making a difference to your neighbor, what are you doing? It is worthless.” She reflected on her experience in the United States. “It is strange, I hear people here talking about U.S. foreign policy and they say that the government should give more aid, that the policies are not right, that the U.S. must help other people more. But these same people have not offered me so much as a dollar. When I say, ‘I am from Africa,’ they do not think to ask if I, being so far from home, need anything. In my village, the first thing we would ask is, ‘Oh, you are so far from your family. Can I feed you? Do you need a place to stay? Can I help you?’” I thought back to the impassioned pre-election conversations we classmates had had this fall amongst ourselves, in complaining mode, simply criticizing one or both political candidates without doing anything concrete. I felt that a prophet was speaking to me in Veronica. “And it is interesting, because of my color, or the way I talk,” she said, in her lovely accent, “people think I do not have anything to say. They make assumptions about my abilities.” I forget exactly what Sr. Veronica said next, but I felt keenly that God was giving me a message. I am an academic, and have always been a bookworm, a teacher’s pet, and a good writer. I like my ivory tower of learning and books and I look down (I hate to admit this) on people who are less well educated or seem less intelligent. But seeing Sr. Veronica gesture in the air, futilely, as she described academic theology done for its own sake, helped something click in my mind. Theology is real, it is applied. It is messy and organic and human and emotional. It is not pressed between book pages but between births and deaths and Masses and hirings and firings and illnesses and joys and meals and lovemakings and sunsets and tantrums and rests. And then I knew what God would look like for me if I died today. God would be simple. A simple person, a farmer or a high-school educated mom, someone who doesn’t discriminate between “who” and “whom”, who doesn’t know all the answers, who maybe laughs at bad jokes and has never eaten at an expensive restaurant, who would rather experience life than do a peer-reviewed critique of it. Wow. That’s really unattractive to me. It dismays me that I am such a snob. If I were to have been a (necessarily male) Jewish scholar in 30 AD, I would have turned my nose up at this Galilean hayseed who couldn’t even speak Greek and worked with his hands for a living and hung out with the crass and uneducated rabble. Surely a Messiah would be a little more genteel and cultivated than that! I can see the scenario well. God, the simple, humble man or woman, who wears (gasp) black pants with brown shoes, who ends sentences with prepositions, who eats trans fatty acids with heedless abandon, would hold my doctoral dissertation, “Ecclesiological Implications of the Johannine Blah Blah Blah” in one hand and look my way quizzically. Here it is, my entrance interview with the Master. I know my Christology, I know my Greek. I have a good history of being a good catechist and I’ve been published all over. This will be a cinch. God takes a breath as he drops the dissertation in the growing pile at God’s feet. “And did you ever invite Sr. Veronica over for dinner?”
Copyright © 2005 Handmaids of the
Sacred Heart of Jesus. All rights reserved. Contact the author by email. Episode 22: Faith Like a Child: December, 2004 Lately I have thought a lot about the unselfconscious faith of children. They believe that mom and dad can do anything and that Santa and the tooth fairy have a personal interest in their lives. Kids have a refreshing and endearing ability to be really enthusiastic about things and don’t care much about “image” or “style.” I envy them. I would love to have a trust of God and humanity that is easy and natural, an attitude of openness that is not tainted by sarcasm or cynicism. It’s something I’ve prayed for. It seems to me that the wisdom of the innocent surpasses the wisdom of the sophisticated sometimes. After all, babies are basically good judges of what they need... they don’t often have neuroses or emotional baggage. Unlike grownups. Unlike me! But so far, my attempts to let go of my “adult” traits of wariness, incredulity, and sarcasm have met with mixed success. The careless glee and unthinking trust of young kids still eludes me. So I look at our Christ child in the chapel with amused interest. This nativity scene is from Peru and doesn’t depict a baby who looks 4 years old, with neat curls and hands outstretched in blessing. Heck, he doesn’t even sport a halo! Rather, it’s a very cute, very round, very naked baby Jesus, asleep in the fetal position, tushie poked up in the air so his little chubby legs can fold under his body. Precious. It highlights, for me, how Jesus really was a helpless, vulnerable little baby once. After his birth, Jesus got to spend forty days of intense bonding with Mary. After all, under Jewish law, Mary was not permitted a public life until she was purified forty days after giving birth. I wonder what it was like for Jesus and Mary those days? Mary, learning to read the baby’s cries, resting as her body healed, gazing on her little one. Jesus, learning the smell and touch of mom’s skin, enjoying the warmth of her milk, finding his fist and trying to cram it into his mouth. Wow, to imagine Jesus as totally dependent on mom for nutrition and life makes me realize that God put Godself in a rather precarious situation! Illness, neglect, accidents and the like could easily befall a helpless infant. God made an irreversible step, to enter humanity in a tender, fragile form. And that’s what inspires me to take a similar irreversible step. You see, I have just been accepted into the next phase of religious life formation, the novitiate. This is a wonderful and awaited time, a time of deep communion with God. But it’s a little scary, too, because my dependence on my religious community is increasing. I will no longer be an independent agent, with access to my own personal funds and bank accounts. Of course, even these days I don’t make use of my private assets because they are largely untouchable retirement funds. But to go from a voluntary hands-off policy to a true commitment to living according to the dictates of poverty is a little scary. I resist any encroachment on my independence. So I take courage from what God did in the Incarnation. I’ve been begging to have a more child-like, innocent outlook on life, I realize, but have been afraid to take the one simple step before me which renders me more child-like. Instead of fearing or resenting a newer, deeper dependency on my Sisters, I can embrace that as a way to give me the relaxed trust I crave. Babies trust because they must. They cannot provide for themselves, so they depend on adults without analysis, without thinking. I, too, can view this next phase of my life as a time to relax and let God and my Sisters take care of me. So I step out, in faith, into a new dependency. After all, I’ve always relied on God, and any perceived independence is probably little more than ego and self-deception. Here I go, then, into novitiate... trying to be supple, to be relaxed, to be trusting. Allowing myself to be needy. Waiting to be fed. Copyright © 2005 Handmaids of the
Sacred Heart of Jesus. All rights reserved. Contact the author by email.
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me on. They are happier than I
am, if that’s possible. Hugs and kisses and accolades are showered
on me, and I am presented with the most touching gift of spiritual and
physical nourishment…. chocolate!
I was planning on finishing this essay with the line above.
However, in mid-composition I checked the Miami Tropical Marathon
website and found that the time that was called out was “gun time”… but
since it took me 7 minutes to make it to the start line, I finished 2
minutes under my desired time, not 5 minutes over! Well, God is good
and I cannot wait to run my first full marathon… or do my first
triathlon… or… who knows?
