Barry’s Bay Chronicle: Poverty

image: shiftingpixel.com

I think that the “Cross of Combermere” has something to do with detachment. It seems that this area was picked from the ice age as a place for the cross and thus a chance, a chance for detachment; for as soon as the glaciers scratched their way south, taking almost all the good topsoil with them, and leaving rocky hillsides and blue-eyed lakes, it became a potential place for poverty.

And so it was; when the white men came, these lands were the leavings. Polish and Irish suffered here and became tough in their strange lives of the beautiful and the miserable: and then Catherine and Eddie Doherty came, two people accustomed to wealth, who were now establishing a spiritual center for the ministry to the poor. Then their vision seemed to develop into a deep understanding of Christ and His choice to be poor with the poor. Catherine’s old Russian memories of the poustinikki, men and women who gave all they had to retreat into silence and poverty, began to develop in her soul and she understood that her early visions of helping the poor were just the beginnings. As she established her dreams of silence and union with God, she understood that it must be in the context of poverty: the poustinia of Madonna House, in my mind, are little gateways, chances for the individual to have a taste of the spiritual road to God: a road, where, “The Son of Man has no place to lay His Head”. Walking with the Man of Sorrows is must be on a lowly dirt road, a road empty in the night where one must look for a place to lay for the night, stomach rumbling, feet sore: but heart full.

And so I, with my half-heart: half materialist, half spiritual longing; I, with my torn heart, have played on the outskirts of the true life. I am driving on that dirt road, wondering if I can indeed park my comforts, get out, and walk with Christ. I have not felt strong enough, or worthy. And how I love nice things, love beauty; my eyes have not been blinded enough to the world to see the beauty of God. Here, under the Combermere Cross, I have been mostly afraid and angry. I don’t want to have to be afraid of every bill; I don’t want to have to go to shop at the thrift store. I remember shopping in San Francisco and New York and feel sick. I’ve had to work at not looking at our forlorn house and imagining what I would do with it if it were mine and I had some money.

However, something inside wants union with God: this has never really changed; and I understand now that it is because He wants this- of all of us. Love desires union. So I have, all my life, done things with half of myself, dragging the other half (which is screaming and threatening dire consequences) in search of the beauty which is beyond sight, of the love which is beyond the capacity of my heart. I believe, too, that this is the condition and desire of every human heart, and remains so. I don’t believe this desire can ever be fully expelled or ignored, but living a torn life causes disorder and unhappiness. A choice must be made.

I look now more closely at what the half which longs for God is doing; and it is easier to look at it here, under the Combermere Cross. No matter where I go, whether we are called to stay here in Barry’s Bay or not, God called us here to be under this cross, and to understand poverty by living in the beginnings of it. Relative to what I have seen around the world, we are rich. But relative to what we are used to, and God knows this, we are poor. We are wimps and God knows it and is merciful to our pathetic crying: but merciful enough, also, to keep moving us closer to the ideal.

I see St. Francis in my mind; the missionaries and saints, and Mother Teresa: and I see a depth of freedom in their lives and actions that is beyond what any king or dictator enjoys. Yet it seems that I am still watching them work out their salvation in Christ- from the car. When Father Terry told me in the beginning of my pilgrimage here, “Welcome to the Edge”- I felt that I was finally getting out of the car- but then I get back in; ride, back out; walk a few steps and get scared.

I finally understood one night, after tears of deep frustration, that it was about detachment. So I went to the church to pray- it was locked, Our Lord inside. I sat in the car, literally, but my heart was outside waiting for the Lord on the road. As I looked at the lonely cross outside the church, I asked Him to begin to teach me about true detachment; and I begin to understand that a person can be as owner-minded and thus prideful about being poor for the sake of the kingdom as he is about having human power and riches. “What a minefield along this road to God”, I thought; “-if I am going to be prideful, I might as well be rich and at least provide well for my children (and myself)!”

Pride is the deep enemy within ourselves against union with God. “He resists the proud”- and how often I have felt this resistance. Poverty, then, is essentially a thing in the soul- and it cannot be an end in itself, or it simply becomes another petty idol, a place of pride, worse than that of the rich because it is under the veneer of spiritual advancement. Poverty is about detachment, of treating nothing as if I own it- because if I own it, I begin to love it; it is a physical extension of myself (Divine Intimacy). I must be detached from things, and this journey along the dirt road of poverty must be essentially a journey where one puts more and more down along the side and continues with less and less (but with more and more room for Christ).

Detachment itself cannot be the end, because then we would be Buddists only, and God wishes more than nothing-ness for us, He wishes to give us Himself. Detachment is the condition under which God can come to us, when we are becoming places where the proportion of our self to His Self matches reality, matches heaven. When we are full of Him, we are most ourselves because we give glory to Him who needs none, but is Glory Itself: and thus, as St. Paul says, “We go from glory to glory.” Giving glory to God who needs none from us is really about changing ourselves into someone more like Him, who is Perfection.

The crosses of life, whether they are Combermere Crosses, Santa Cruz Crosses, New York Crosses, or African Crosses, are gateways. They are chances by which we may begin to detach from the beauties and comforts of this life, in order to see God and thus to bring real beauty into the world, a beauty which glories in God and shows others His love: from simple flower gardens to solid family life, to a love of philosophy and literature; like the songs of St. Francis or a beautiful painting done by a happy child, or the halo of light that the journalist Malcolm Muggeridge saw when he visited Mother Teresa’s House of the Dying (Something Beautiful for God).

Barry's Bay Chronicle- One

Image from the Madonna House website

I have been here in Ontario two months, arriving timidly in the humid and stark days of August and now facing the sultry and mecurial weather of October. I am waiting for the cold, like a soldier in the trench looking for the first sign of movement out across no-man’s land.

Life goes slow here, with small “Combermere Crosses” laid on from time to time (Combermere is an adjoining town wherein lies the Madonna House). It is a place I want to run from one day and to embrace the next: just like the Cross. The town of Barry’s Bay is roughly in the shape of a cross: St. Hedwig’s at the top, near the lake; our neighborhood one arm, the lake area houses another arm, and the business district the bottom. All of this placement seems appropriate, too.

This area, about twenty or so miles square, seems like a spiritual powerhouse: it would look like New York City if the spiritual elements of life were truly visible. Sixty or more years ago, Catherine Doherty came here to start Madonna House, and her vision of people from all walks, including artists and scholars coming to this area is fulfilled. Families and single people are drawn here, some rather mysteriously, from everywhere to pursue a life of simplicity and spiritual poverty.

Catherine Doherty came here because it was most like her native Russia; but it is a strange little place with its own history of great beauty and great hardship. This was the area of Ontario least wanted by the first settlers- so the poor Polish were given it: the only place in the world where the bedrock is so close to the surface that it is visible almost everywhere. Good for enthusiastic geologists, bad for farmers. Some or other ministry of the Canadian government considers this place uninhabitable, even to this day. So the Poles built their lives one heartbreak at a time, and built out of that suffering very beautiful and majestic houses of God. Their lives were simple, and poor, and religious. Families were strong, and are strong. Perhaps their poverty of spirit drew the notice of Our Lord and He built the present apostolates upon it. Here it is as if the world is Catholic and the secular culture is trying to sneak in: exactly opposite of everywhere else I’ve been.

For me, I feel like a soft-bellied rookie here- these people are tough. They roll their eyes at me when I tell them where I am from(where am I from?). The Catholic immigrants, of the last sixty years, drawn like bees to the Madonna House spirit, are not tough Poles for the most part. But they are serious counter-culture and fighters- from a young mother in her bohemian-blue, solid cabin-farmhouse to a man-pillar in his ever-present joy. For me, this place with its wind-blown, misted lakes and deep forests is a visible reminder of the spiritual life on this earth, this place of exile- it is as if the spiritual realities of beauty and simplicity, suffering and exile are here more visible than anywhere else I have ever been.

I came here afraid of the winter, and the Lord is making me face a deeper fear: that of being a saint. Part of me does not want to get tougher on myself; yet I sense the real and lasting joys, also visible to me in the chance to teach and help something worthy grow- namely, the Academy. I am like a flimsy and flapping tent in the wind, comparing myself to the large, bulky stone houses that stare back at the lake and the wind and defy it in the Lord’s strength. When I begin to see the reality of the saints, their inner strength and deep love of God, mirrored in the landscape and the lives of simpler people here, I realize what a city ninny I really am, what a spiritual weakling, what a fearful soul.

Perhaps if I make it through the winter, the spiritual one, I will be a saint. One can always hope, but not in my strength- I’ve California blood for a Canadian winter, and a sinner’s heart for reaching heaven. It will have to be God. I always knew this, but it seems very real to me now: my anti-strength for the journey. There is so much to be purified in His fire.

I remember about ten years ago, when I lived in Virginia, I read about the Madonna House and a description of Catherine Doherty. It may have been described in the article, I am not sure, but a real inner picture of a large and large-hearted woman, a huge mother-figure, stayed with me, and I imagined myself walking up through some tall and dark pine trees, up a path, to a small cabin wherein I would meet her; and something about my death and my desire towards sanctity crept in at the corners; and sometimes it seemed I was her. It was like a dream one has over and over, except in my imagination during waking moments. A few days ago I walked into that picture, but in reality- I walked on a path through tall and dark trees to a small cabin where she had lived for many years. I felt at home there, as if I’d really seen it before. So I hope she can, with her large and strong soul, pray for me, with my small and weak soul. It is essentially a choice to let go and let God, as they say; because I’ll end up in a hell of my own making if I try to do it myself (which I have been).

D-Ascent

Descent, Ascent: D-Ascent, or the Ascent.

Ok. This is more like a moving, upheaval, life-change journal, I guess, which I think of in terms of going up a mountain: or going down into a deep, dark valley ( like the Valley of the Shadow of Death) and wondering where God is- and are we going in the right direction? And will the cat make the trip? And will the children be forever warped by the whole experience? I am now imagining a teenager yelling at me, blaming me for her bad attitude because I moved her around- oh, that was me when I was a teenager.

Ok. Gone off the beaten track, there. It can't be a beaten track, though, because if it was, I'd feel much more secure and cocky about the whole thing. Our lives are a foray into a wilderness, a track we must make ourselves. Sounds grand until you realize that you are on it, because then you realize just how small you are.

Let me backtrack and explain. We're on our way to Canada- to a little town west of Ottawa, where we are going to teach at a small Catholic college. We were in Santa Cruz, California. Now that right there should create a mental pause. "Wow, that's a change". I know you thought that because I've heard it more than I've heard "Hi" in the last few months. The other thing I've heard more than the 'Wow' comment is, "Oh the winter", or "Oh the bugs".

To be balanced ( which I am not right now), I have also heard, " Oh it is a beautiful place- it just grows on you". I can't really comment on this, because I haven't been there. I am also trying not to imagine it too much, because I want it just to be itself.

Right now, we're sort of stopped halfway between California and Canada, physically and culturally speaking. We're in Washington, on one of the San Juan Islands. Physically, it is much more wooded and it is more stark-looking than California (I am not allowing myself to think of the pinks, yellows, reds, purples and oranges). Washington has a more blue-grey-white-green-brown beauty to it. California is a flamenco dancer and Washington is a cowboy just off the fields. Culturally, the same metaphor applies. Thus, I've been weaned slowly off the exotic and getting ready for something more subtle- and tougher, I imagine.

Who are Canadians, though? What are they really like? I've been trying to get snatches from the CBC and conversations with the natives. It seems that they are much more reserved, I think; not like the candy-coated chatter of a Californian, or the in-your-face of the New Yorker. Perhaps they are more like the Washingtonians, but with a little European flair (a little less of the covered wagon simplicity, more subtlety). You can see here that I am shooting in the dark. I enjoy this immensely, partly because of my moves from culture to culture throughout my life, and partly because these thoughts distract me from the normal nervousness inherent in times of transit.

I should, though, push these thoughts aside and rather try to get through the travel days ahead in some semblance of sanity. One of my favorite places to be in is on the tarmac of life, the airports and new places- handing over your passport for inspection just makes me feel right at home. But not with three little children and a cat. A friend said innocently, "Is that the cat you had to chase down Soquel Ave on your way out of Santa Cruz?"

Poor children, though, I have to say. Well, I don't know who will be the poorer at the end of this coming flight. Perhaps I will be the poorer in the sanity department; perhaps they will be richer for the suffering I am imposing on them. Or, just maybe, maybe, it will be an adventure in the true sense of the word: an experience that draws the best and worst parts out of us all and makes us choose which part we'll be. It is, after all quite commonplace to see a woman with a large red bag, computer bag and a cat in a bag, towing three children with their own cute little Spiderman or princess bags.

I'll be back.

Moses/ Transfiguration

I was that prophet-mute; that prince stripped of power and honor

Who first beheld You in that wilderness of my shame:

Being hid within flame

Like all who suddenly behold God, I fell in fear, I decried

My own sins and was given a way to approach: in the softness, the vulnerability

Of my shepherd’s feet.

You asked me to speak for enslaved Israel; humbled desert-man

Like a feral, wounded animal hobbled by healing bands

Approached by the Healer

You caressed me with reproach, stroking my fear down

To a steadied flatness and with a promise: new understanding

Of Your Person.

I was that sunburnt piece of humanity on the side of the Mountain

Who climbed beyond knowledge as You led me:

Inward and outward ascent

An ember twirling in fire-wind, begging to see Your face, to know

you as a man knows his friend and silence fell: softness of thought:

“You will die-”

I was in the cleft; I was the Eagle’s chick with Your wing over me

Nearly burnt to death in the wake of your back

Shekinah gave way to form

In my heart, the longing to see Your Face remained, to be

drawn in to unity and made a new being: I to Thou

Ever afterwards.

I was then, with Elijah, Your I to Thou, I was a Face Fulfilled

By the Suffering God; 

I’d never have guessed Your design, especially

after Egypt

As I took my eternal fill of Your Countenance and of God’s light unabashed,

Made bold with love and immanent freedom, I spoke as a man to his friend,

Of the glorious Cross.

Waking the Past

There is a deep understanding of life and the human psyche in the practice of a wake, assisting the soul on its way beyond natural life; the practice of which, I imagine goes back into the shadows of human communal memory. The Irish Catholic practice of waking the dead retains something of this pagan custom: but true to the Church, there is taken from the practice the slivers of truth and it is baptized into the life of the body of Christ.

I guess I’m not talking about getting drunk and making wobbly speeches on chairs: or am I? I am trying to get at the spirit of waking underneath there. Perhaps a muse will help…


A few days ago I sat on a log bench in the park near the lake, feeling the rough skin of the old pine tree seat as it echoed its younger brothers still standing tall- elegant, sweet-smelling skyscrapers of the green. I was having a nice respite beside the play structure at the edge of Cascade Lake, a few minutes wherein the kids are occupied with spinning, the gyrations somehow drawing them into a different plane of being.

The line of the trees drew me upwards, and the wind off the lake supported this movement; as I was drawn away from the present, into contemplation of the quiet tree-speech: slow-motion syllables of old-timers, living things who had, perhaps, been there when my ancestors came to this state: I saw my great-great-great grandfather planting flowers in La Conner, dreaming of his own store in the new country; and my grandfather swimming in a lake like this, a water-spraying lithe figure, before life and illness bowed his body into the underground.

As I looked to the top of one old tree long since hit by lightning or fire, it’s point now shaved to a venerable but disfigured flat-top, a terrible feeling of heartbreak and sadness took hold of me, like the slow chill one feels after being out in the rain too long. It was an old feeling, one of mine; but it seemed to emanate from that old tree, as if it had held this sadness for me all these years. Was it the tree holding it, or was the sight of it waking something from the past?

I thought back on all the summers I’d been here to this park, like snapshots of myself within the flow of time. I found one, an old one from ten or fifteen years ago, when I was a young woman; a girl, really, in a woman’s body. I was an awkward thing, arms crossed over my heart too often, from more than any chill or wind in the natural world. There was no peace in my brown eyes, just a look of someone who is ruminating on something, or someone who is out-of-reach. I must have spent my time there, so many years ago, looking at this tree.

And so I looked at it now, through two pairs of eyes, a double soul. I saw more clearly who the child of me was at that time, a brown girl drawn a bit out of a self-absorption towards this old tree. The tree seemed then, as now, to speak slowly of a longer view, a view of living simply in expectation of rain and sun, of not minding so much the price of life; the price being for it the cuts of fire and the indignity done to its grandeur by children skipping on its roots.

It seemed to have, indeed, pulled some of the pain from that young woman who I was and held it in expectation that I would see it again: or perhaps, this is how our human psyche works. Maybe we are, in conjunction with places made immanent and precious to us by either great pain or joy, meant to wake the past. But why? The clues must hide in that other soul, that younger tree and younger person that I was so many summers past.

It was a summer when I was about twenty-four. I had come to visit my parents, who were planning to build a home here. I was breaking out temporarily of a life I had made for myself outside of grace; a place wherein I could not relate to my family, or real friends, because of something within myself which was disordered. I was trying to love, I wanted to, but something in me could not do it right. I was riddled with confusion and guilt, and this shadowed, heated place is where I truly lived, where the outside world of well-meaning people could not penetrate. I had many strange and tortured ideas about how I was supposed to find solace in this place of fire; and I thought that the right person could rescue me- but in my disordered state, I did not know how to see right from wrong and so I placed on certain people in my life no meaning at all, and on others all meaning. God was not an option because He seemed to ask total trust, and I was too afraid of trusting.

My world was tilted, and I was constantly trying to grip hold of something I could control in order to stop the feeling of sliding into darkness. I remember now, that the tree I looked at so long that summer somehow seemed to have the right answers, because it was so straight and tall, so rooted, so patient, so trusting in some providence; it kept on growing its green leaves amidst the scars of fire. The tree remained in my memory as a symbol of grace, but lodged there initially as only an image, a small root amidst my soul’s blackened and rotting ground.

Now sitting in the same place, a woman of thirty-eight, I was waking the past with the tree of now and the tree of my memory; the sameness of that evergreen providing a bridge to a more immediate experience of who I was fourteen years ago. I faced myself and all the years between. Although my hips now hurt from childbearing and my eyelids are more wrinkled; although my hair has some grey in it and my face does not have that smooth and chiseled look it did then, this matters nothing next to the other change.

The person I met again through the tree was someone who wanted to love; but without grace, love cannot grow or bear fruit. I saw now who I was loving, and felt sorrow in the understanding now that without God, what tries to live as love becomes a destructive force. I saw clearly that the creation does indeed groan, for with the introduction of sin and disorder (sin is disorder) our relationships to each other and to the outside world become places of burning and rotting.

I mourn the loss of friends and loved ones to these disorders, and wonder now as still a young soul in an older, ever older body if these loves (albeit disordered still bearing some semblance to real love) are ever redeemed from the twisted junkyard in which they now reside. I am waking the past, perilously close to becoming again absorbed in the vale of ghosts.

No. For now, I am depending, like the tree, on providence and grace; I am growing in the soil which God has planted me, and although scarred and a little deformed, the leaves are yet growing and the world within me is straight. So I face the past, I wake it: and I rejoice in that God let me, at twenty-four, see myself as He would allow me to look at thirty-eight: a evergreen standing straight and tall, not minding the indignity of children tripping over my roots, with a certain lived-in look, interesting knarled bark, and a peace which only comes from Him.

I remember now the love He snuck in from around me through those of His flock; the love which granted me, finally, the grace to let go of my own conception of the good and to be open to His. I remember the long road back to theology and sanity; and the evergreen hope in heaven, that all good things will be bought back from the darkness and the past.

So I wake the past, and rejoice in its going to God, that it and I were always kept in His sight; I rejoice and freely sorrow for the loss of loved ones, in the hope that in heaven, they will be made as they should have ever been- relationships of eternal joy and vessels of glory to God: but most of all, I wake the past and rejoice that God rescued me from myself.

My Beloved Winks

One sort of slams into island life.

At least, it feels that way: perhaps it is the other way round, that island life sort of slams into one; not maliciously, of course, but rather in the way it would be if you started running down the beach, into the surf and suddenly the water drags on your limbs with its thousand and one fingers.

We left Santa Cruz two weeks ago, in a frenzy of wrapping up things and placing that sear on changing relationships so carefully opened; that sauter of a goodbye which can totally scar over the love, or simply change it’s bleeding to a much slower version: for love of friends are like wounds we open to share ourselves.

The trip away was so frantic that I didn’t even look back to the familiar sea-lines and silhouettes of tree and cliff which I came to love: perhaps it was easier that way. We left in shock (at our lack of organization and my irrational fears of the car wheels blowing up as a result of the weight) and we reached the San Juan ferry in shock (at four days in the car with three kids and a cat and each other).

Then island life hit.

The house we are living in right now is a home, in a real sense, in that it was built in the sweat of fathers and uncles, a loving expression of extended family and a dream of my Dad’s. A work of art in rustic cabin style, with large picture windows looking out across Puget Sound to Sucia Island downstage and Vancouver, BC lights peeking out from upstage. The lighting is run by a master, every sunset and sunrise different, and with all the moodiness of the ocean. How I love the ocean, since I was little- perhaps it is that it matches my mercurial creative nature. I am sure I could be called treacherous too, sometimes, in my moods. But no one paints my moods. The ocean’s are much more interesting and informed by the light of the sun. I suppose that is what I hope will happen more and more with mine; that they become informed by the true light.

We’ve been trying to get our family home back from some squatter spiders, bees and birds. Paco the cat is helping with the birds and I am not sure who will help us with the other, more devious things. It is fun to watch the birds dive-bombing Paco as his little black head peeks out of the beach grass. They just don’t know what they are dealing with: this isn’t some bumbly sea otter, but a sleek, black hitcat.

One daughter is grieving the loss of the social life she loves so much, the other (like me) is just absorbing the new atmosphere in her own mysterious ways, and our son is peeking in the garage at Grandpa’s ‘driving boat’ and making bows and arrows out of driftwood (he might kill someone…).

People maddeningly drive the exact speed limits, limits unheard of like 15 and 20- and 40 on the only thing that resembles a highway. We’re dependent on the ferry system to get off and on the island; over to Friday Harbor for Mass and the cheaper groceries; or Shaw to the monastery; or to the Mainland to get Thaddeus off to his various real-time conferences and other things. And dealing with these green and white monster-boats is where the Strange Island Day for Rookies grabbed us while saying it its crusty voice, “ Haha! You’re on an island now, me hearties!”

We left Orcas in a hurry (40), and drove onto the inter-island ferry, the Kakima or Tacoma or something like that; and we made our languid way threading through the islands, leaving us time to look at each other, the water, other passengers, or just read (Thaddeus, who never leaves home without a good supply of books). Then, a little scuffle and then back in the car, and OUT! Wow. Excitement. A new island! A bigger town! We went grocery shopping in a big way (cheaper), hoping the cold day would keep the food ‘til we got home to Orcas.

Friday Harbor still has the saltly feel of an old, Western sea town, with the richly decorated buildings sticking out of the street like old teeth, and the saloon on the corner; although nowadays, besides the one tattooed guy, the patronage is mostly anorak-coated, biking short spindly Northwest types. We got ourselves to Mass in the little 1894 St. Francis Church, where we heard a homily from a Maryknoll missionary on ‘being sent’ and educated by his stories of poverty and hospitality in the Philippines. One story stuck out, about a dining room table doubling as a bed for him to sleep on, complete with the hosts still sitting around the table as he slept.

We left thinking about poverty and being sent by Christ, as we made our way down to the ferry for the ride back to Orcas Island and home. That is where the day got weird. The ferry-man, looking a bit like Charon, told us that there was no other ferry, except for the 8 in the morning.

Silence. Then test-awareness happens. God threw a curve-ball, using our stupidity as an arm. We drove back into town, found the cheapest place, which, ironically, was the “Orcas Inn”, it’s motto: “Spend a night, not a fortune.”. I have never seen a smaller room in my life. I had been worried about all the food we’d bought going bad, so was wondering if these closet-rooms would have a fridge at all, or one big enough for our stuff. Lo, there was a whole row of new little fridges in the dim hallway, fridges which the kind lady in the office said we could use- “all six of ‘em, if ya need it”. I could almost hear the silent, deep laughter from Above. We had passed the test thus far, keeping alive humor and forgiveness for the person who’d assumed there’d be a ferry back on a Saturday night (non-island thinking cropping up).

We then got everyone back in the car to go out, avoiding the one queen bed in the closet as long as possible. We wandered to Paradise Bowl, but had no socks with us. The thought of fungus and the doubtful looks of the small, red-haired island man behind the counter nixed that idea. Leaving with crying kids, we went back down to the harbor. There, like a stupid giant thumbing his nose at us, was a ferry. We looked at each other and then Thaddeus sprinted down to say, “Um?” He came back as fast and said, “ Charon said he’s so glad we came back, he made a mistake. We’ve ten minutes.”

Back to Orcas Inn. Fridges back were they were. Food out of fridges. Crying children in car, who WANTED to stay in a closet. Money back from kind Orcas Inn lady. Back down to ferry, lane 11 for Orcas. On ferry. “We’ll try to get you to Lopez for the 9.10 Orcas ferry.” While waiting for ferry to get to Lopez, eating chips, cheese, grapes and juice for dinner. Laughing together.

Suddenly everything slowed down with a child’s comment, “ God wanted to teach us trust today”. Thinking about this as the sun turns back for one glorious look, peeking through a hole in the thick cloud cover, turning the grey masses of water and sky to sparkling orange and red. It seemed to me, that the eye of my Beloved winked at me.

The Right Wood for Building Faith

There is an amazing staircase in Arizona. It is called "St. Joseph's Staircase". It is the result of a desperate nun's prayer and a mysterious wanderer who built it. It serves a rather mundane purpose, the staircase up to the choirloft in a small chapel built in the late 1800's, but to the nuns who built the chapel, it came to mean everything: but mostly, in the end, as a metaphor for faith and how God works with each of us.

In the movie about the staircase, the story goes that the mysterious carpenter, "Joad", knows that the available wood in the area will not be flexible enough for the curvature required, but that he needs a special wood which is deemed to hard to get hold of. He then tells the Mother Superior, who is very emotionally involved in the completion of the chapel, that he will try to build it with the oak wood that is available.

He works for weeks and weeks, soaking, shaping, bending and dowling the wood (no nails are used in the staircase). As the staircase goes up slowly, Joad realizes that the wood is not flexible enough and is pulling apart the form of the staircase. He speaks to the Mother Superior, and she falls apart in frustration. She wants to build this chapel for God, and "what use is a chapel without music"?

Quietly, Joad says in reply: "No. The wood is not right for building this staircase. But it is right for building faith."

Once the Mother Superior is forced to simply let her work go, Joad is able to go and get the long-leaf pine he needs, and as the Mother is dying, he completes the staircase: and it is truly a work of art, mirroring most the interior structure of a conical shell.

I have long loved that line: "not perfect for building staircases, but perfect for building faith".

How often in the last months have I grown more and more aware that the wood with which I am made, the materials native to me with which I am trying to build sanctity is not right in the sense in which I expect. How often have I come to a pass in which I cry, "I am not able to handle this". I feel myself pulling apart, wretched knotty and stiff oakwood, knarled and stubborn in my desires and habits.

I have begun to ask the Lord to remake me in long-leaf pine, which one can only get by traveling up to the mountains, His mountains. I can't get the wood myself, and I can't be shaped into a woman of real faith until I am made of something other than what is in me now.

I do think I understand, though, that the experience of being oak and trying to build and finally pulling apart at the seams is within His plan; in that He can only change our structure and substance with the aquiescence of our will; and that only truly comes when we have humililty. Humility, in turn, comes when we can see ourselves for the oak we truly are without Him.

Magnificat

Icon: Mary of the Magnificat, Mother of the Poor by Fr. W. McNichols

Today is May 13, Mother's Day; and also the 90th anniversary of the first appearance of Our Lady of Fatima in 1917. I was thinking today that I am so glad to be able to put that Mother's Day emotion somewhere beyond me.

Mother's Day still reminds me of my grandma's rose water perfume: I suddenly feel like a child again, find myself thinking about my mother. It is still slightly surreal to be the Mom. I loved the little cards, especially my older daughter's which read: "Dear Momy, do'nt be depressed.". It is telling that she knew how to spell 'depressed'. I realized then the mixture of love and pain I was for her and I felt ashamed, I have to admit.

I was glad to get to Mass where the focus was not just on us rabidly imperfect moms, but was also on a Mother who was given the grace to be what we all imagine a mother to be: a soul who magnified the Lord. I think of her, a mother so young, who with the ardor and freshness of that youth-and also a soul full of grace- laid down her soul and her life before God as she said her "Fiat". I think of her sitting outside Bethlehem under a tree waiting for Joseph to return with news, any news, of a place to stay, her anxiety quelled by the closeness of God inside her. I think of her standing at the entrance to the temple, listening to Simon and imagining swords piercing her heart, knowing the untameable nature of Him who chose her. And I cannot imagine her at the cross, I cannot fathom what she would have looked like at that moment; perhaps Michelangelo's Pieta comes closest, with the carved face exuding a mysterious mixture of love and regal suffering, empty of revenge or anger.

In all of these vignettes, she remains for me a soul who magnifies the Lord. We are defined by what we chose to magnify, or to give praise. If it is ourselves, we are selfish, thin tornados darkening the skyline in our search for the gratification of the self. If we praise and give glory to Mother Nature above all else, we become mere cogs in a system and devalue the soul of ourselves and others. If we praise a nice house and a comfortable life, we become either eaten slowly by fruitless envy or the powerful silver-sleek lord of the freeway and byway. Whoopie- that's a low bar to shoot for in the real scheme of things (but it is sure tempting).

Whether or not we praise or give glory to something or someone does not change the real value of that thing or person. A classic car remains that whether or not we praise it. It might sell for more, but the metal and wheels are the same (whalah- the secret of the advertising industry revealed for the banal thing it is). The praise and glory we give changes us, not the object or the person. The higher or more noble the value of what or who we praise, the more noble we are. Therefore, those who praise material wealth are, in a sense, making themselves less noble than the person who praises world peace or charity work.

However, only One is really worth our praise, our highest praise: only One takes our praise of Him and makes us a child of the Divine. All else, even the work for the poor done without His glory in mind, falls far short of Him. God does not need our praise to be glorious. He is, and was, and ever shall be, perfect and full of every good thing. He is Love, He is Glory. He does not need us. But love, by nature, is creative and empties itself out for the good of the lesser. He is due our praise because of His very Being and because all things were and are made because of Him: and we can only be truly human and truly ourselves when we praise Him and give Him glory. When our souls do nothing less than magnify the Lord, we are full of His grace.

This, in every aspect of her life, was Mary's privilege- not because of her own intrinsic worth, but because of the role God called her to and His love for her. She was the new Ark of the Covenant, carrying God within her; and just as the Ark of the Israelites was carefully constructed by God's instructions, just as it was to be kept sacred, so was Mary. In that fullness of grace, her soul magnified God- like the light in a room increases as it is reflected, so did the light of God in the world increase by Mary's choices and by the beauty of a human soul as it was meant to be.

So on Mother's Day, I was glad to look away from my own imperfections as a mother and a person, and see once again what I am trying to become. It gives me hope that a simple girl from the backwater of Judea was given the grace to magnify God, becoming by this a glorious soul in the garden of God. I know that God loves us and being Love, wishes us all to become Magnifiers of His Glory. Our Lord Himself deigns to be placed upon our altars to mingle as a lover does, with our very physical and spiritual nature. He desires nothing more that our greatest good, which is contained in this simple phrase: "My soul magnifies the Lord".

Our destiny is certainly lofty, and I almost feel that perhaps a tiny corner of my heart is beginning to reflect although I am slowed in my ardor and hope by the amount of grime I still see He must scrub off the rest. I think of all the spiritual Brillo pads coming and cringe. But it is that tiny corner that responds in hope and love as we sing the Ave Maria around the garden outside the Shrine of St. Joseph on a sunny May day.

Not Livin'By Default Two

So, we were on hippies gone south, and the poster phrase, "Live by Choice, Not by Default".

I think in order to understand 'choice' in the phrase, we have to understand 'default'. Viewed from the secular self-actualization, these are the two exclusive options: it is either default into a Stepford Wife (and at Curves, they mean a fat one, at that), or (wind blowing hair fan starts along with Braveheart theme music) start making choices about your life, determine where you are headed.

In the Ellulian society (cities escaping from God), default is allowing yourself to become what your environment, your place of origin and your genetics determine. It is the easy route, the way of the cow crossing. It is acting like a cow because that is what you know. It is holding onto certain values because they are simply what you know. It is getting married because your parents did, or not going to college because no one in your family has ever gone. It is the unthinking man, Marx's common man on religious opium. Default is, to the City of Man in our day, hell. It is the worst thing you can do in the eyes of the cultural elite.

The other secular option: Choice. Instead of a cow, you can be a god. You can take each day and choose to be in it, you can send out positive energy to those around you and change the world, one ripple at a time! You can begin to be the self that you are truly inside- or better yet, since the days of EST seminars and encounter groups when people found out that they couldn't get to anything but an empty hole after stripping everything away- you can create the self you would like to be (and by the way, there's lots of great products like hair colors and psychoanalysts out there which can help you do it). You can follow the ones who are self-creative, like the woman named after the Mother of God who seems exactly the opposite of her name saint. Or you can go along with "The Secret" and THINK about what you want in order to get anything (on the downside, anything bad that happens to you is totally your own stupidity and result of negative thinking: and what kind of negative thinking does that engender towards Christ's crucifixion? I can hear it now: "Oh, of course Jesus was a great teacher, he just needed to work on His positive thinking skills"). If you wind it out far enough, it gets scary.

Enough. We know we aren't gods. A bunch of us with divinity with no redemption would make up exactly the image that Lewis paints of Hell in The Great Divorce: a bunch of selfish, oppressive ninnies building more and more palatial homes but farther and farther away from each other. That is what is the end of this "Live by Choice" mentality: if you are making up your own existence, then in effect you are alone, because all real relationships come from God.

Then let's turn from this cacophony of choice-making and towards the Catholic thing: the real thing.

We are endowed with free will, and this is never taken from us. We have a will to choose: find God or to lose Him forever. That is the choice upon which all other choices rest, the foundational choice. However, after Adam and Eve fell, we did inherit a terrible default: original sin. Our bent will is skewed towards the self, towards the three-fold sin of the Man of Lust: lust of the eyes, of the flesh, and the pride of life. The real default of a bent will is exactly what the secular culture defines as "Choice": choose what to wear, let that be self-expression; choose how to live out your sexual nature; to be self-actualized and a positive part of the culture, choose your lifestyle.

In the true sense, choice is freedom: but it is the choice to find God at all costs which gives us true freedom, for He knows how we are made to live as only the Creator can know. It is beyond us, as the EST people found out. We have to make that choice, but because of the default of a bent nature, we need help to continue to choose God and freedom. That is the very purpose of right religion, of orthodoxy and orthopraxy: to assist us to make the choice for freedom, to become truly ourselves by paradoxically losing ourselves in God.

The ten commandments, the inspired writings of the New Testament, the saints, the doctrines and traditions of the Church: all these are assists in each person's choosing God every day. This kind of life is the true wind-blowin' hair fan Braveheart hippie life: it is what the hippies were almost on to in their hippie way at the very beginning and then lost. This kind of life takes the William Wallaces and the St. Joan of Arcs. It is the only choice worth dying for. The default is unthinkable, as Hell is unthinkable.

The poster should read : "Live by God, Not by Sin". Then it would truly express the nobility it aspires to, even in the fat-farm outlet.

Not Livin'By Default

There's a poster that says, " Live by Choice, Not by Default". That is the kind of poster that should be charged with Spiritual Assault. Maybe it will be on Judgement Day. I can't wait to see the exquisitely shorn, bottom-wisp coiffed woman named Jewel Iksen-Radcliffe standing on the dock that Day, answering for those words (and then I'll be right after her for judging her- but wait a minute, she doesn't exist. ha.)

Now, let's dissect that phrase. "Live by Choice" first: what does that mean? Is this a subtle sexually liberated, pro-abortion phrase? For as we all know, a woman just can't be free unless she has the right to kill someone. Wait. Oh, yeah, the truth is exactly the opposite. A woman can't be free unless she has the right or the ability do do what is right; that certainly doesn't include killing someone. So perhaps that isn't what they mean. I suppose we'll have to look at the context then, in which we find the words. I have to admit, I suppose, that I was in an outlet akin to a fat farm. It is called "Curves" (Why don't they call it "Sleek" or something like that? I thought I was trying to get rid of those five or six extra curves). Well, anyway, I was at "Curves", finishing my workout, and there was the poster. So the context is that we are all, most of us, out of control, eg. Food Chooses Us. So, we're all a bunch of poor oppressed women, oppressed mainly by the weight: literally oppressed to the point of not being able to breathe well when sitting in the car sucking that sixth soda.

Maybe, just maybe, there is a good intention there in that phrase: Take Control, Baby. Choose your food to the proper end. Well, they should have said that. "Live by Choosing Your Food to Live". No, that doesn't work well. This phrase on the poster seems to suffer from the same problem that many advertisements do: they make a universal, philisophical statement about something that doesn't warrant it: "Have It Your Way" or "Do What Tastes Right" or something like that. It is depressing, really: when noble values are used to sell burgers, it somehow demeans the noble value. Not in its objective value, doing what is right will still be noble, but it will lose its attraction and nobility in a subjective sense, to the teeming masses, of which I am one.

So, "Live by Choice", if it is about dieting, seems to devalue the grand romance of free will. But perhaps the statement in it's entirety, IS at a higher level than fat farm or burgers- which may make it all the more subtle and possibly dangerous.

The statement, "Live by Choice and Not by Default" reminds me of a return to the sixties slogans, but for the common man, not the blowin' in the wind' hippie. It carries the same value that the hippie ended up with. It is truly a statement about self-actualization, of stripping all the values put into one by the traditions and culture, the media and the consumer-driven interests, and THINKING about what you want.

Sounds good.

Not.

The hippies in the sixties had, I think, a brief golden moment where they were on to something, but then it went south. Way south. To hell. In the golden moment of partial clarity, they were realizing that their values were being driven, in the larger culture, by the interests of big business and advertisers, and those in power who wished to control them by arousing and satiating their desires for goods and self-images. They started fighting back, eschewing materialism and wishing to build a 'love-culture'. If they had turned to Love Incarnate, ah, there would have been a golden moment shining out for generations- the Kingdom of God ever-nearer.

Instead, they went the direction of self-actualization, of stripping the self of all indoctrinated values, good or bad, to a point where there was nothing left. And then, instead of recognizing the hole in us where God belongs, the Source of all real value and identity, they started creating themselves. They began to Live by Choice and Not by Default. This was, though, a Satanic chimera: individualism, self-image, self-esteem: the true and freeing realities are ever out of their grasp. They succeeded in making dolls of themselves, ever more able to be manipulated by the culture at large and big business.

Part Two will, well, finish it.

The Eros of God

Simone Martini
"Annunciation", 1333, panel, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

The Annunciation, one of the most profound feasts in the liturgical year is almost upon us. . In many paintings of the Annunciation, there is a certain posture which seems to be repeated ove and over. It is that of the angel on one knee, holding out a lily to a retiring maiden- Our Blessed Mother. What I think of as the real meaning of this posture was hidden to me, I believe, because there was a part of my spiritual life which was not yet developed or awakened.

It was when I read the Holy Father's meditation on the Love(s) of God for Lent when this part of me was tapped upon the shoulder and began to look sleepily around. Let me go back a bit to explain:

For many years, before my conversion, I knew I did not understand love. It seemed so vague, and varied- what was the difference between the love my mother had for me and that other love she had for my father? How should I love my friends? Was I supposed to? Was that betraying my family in some way? It wasn't that I shut myself away because I didn't know the word storge but rather a feeling of bumbling around in a pitch-black, glass store.

When I converted to the Faith, something in my intellect began working properly: that is the only way I can describe the reality that I was a different mind, a different heart and soul. I was Home and the moral universe began to fit into a pattern I could understand. In study, I began to understand that "LOVE" - our big and clumsy English word - is a much more varied, and fruitful reality; and in beginning the philosophy of love I was becoming more who God wants me to be.

I understood now the difference between philia and storge, and began to grasp that agape, the selfless love, as Christ grows it in us, is the transfer love. It is like the beam in Star Trek which penetrates the person and lifts them and all the rest of the loves into the supernatural sphere. But I did not understand the relationship of eros- the passionate, the lover's love- to the other loves, especially agape. In fact, I simply did not understand eros, but I thought I did (ignorance being made nearly invincible by dependence on one's own understanding).

...until I read the Holy Father's Lenten reflection and Theology of the Body at the same time, a providential juncture of study. The piece I needed for my understanding of eros on the natural sphere, as God intended it, was the movement from original solitude (in which Adam understands himself as essentially different from all other creatures) to the gift of self to the other, "the flesh of my flesh". The body is the sacramental sign of this reality, this pure and unadulterated passion for a joining with the beloved.

From this, I began to wonder about the eros of God: how can He make that same movement, or have that need for His creatures, when He is not in solitude nor does He need us? Yet if God is love, then He must encompass all the loves. I thought for awhile that agape superseds all the others, and these are absorbed into it on the supernatural level. But I was making the Buddhist mistake- that whole "we're absorbed into the tapestry of the universe" nonsense. No. God does not destroy what is good-somehow we are meant to be absorbed, in Divine Union, yet in this becoming more ourselves. And so the same with the different kinds of love, and eros specifically. As the Holy Father elucidated for me, the eros of God is seen quite clearly in His death for us on the cross. And it is indeed a sacramental sign in the body. No detail of true eros left unanswered: an act of selfless love and passionate love at the same time. Not out of need, but eros out of agape.

So it is that God wishes, like a lover, to unite with His creatures in intimacy. It is a profound and absolutely astounding thought! And so, the paintings of the Annunciation are profound in their portrayal of the love of God, the eros of God, personified in His angel, wooing The Blessed Mother. I wonder: does she provide us with an archetype of how God wishes to incarnate Himself in each of us? Not as another savior in the same historical way as the Savior of the World, but that He wants us to be one with Him, to be filled totally with Himself so that we become incarnations and bear the fruit of His love.

St. Francis and the Wolf

"Oh, St. Francis and the Wolf of Gubbio- what a cute story. The wolf who eats people and then becomes nice because St. Francis spoke to him. That's neat."

Wait a minute.

A people-eating wolf who becomes their pet because of a saint? That isn't a cute story. Either that is total fiction, or it needs some thought. Legends about saints, especially those who drew out their lives- like pure water from the well of God- hundreds of years ago, are rife. How do we sift through that which is pure fiction from those stories which hold truth?

Legend, especially in the area of hagiography, is a more complex area of study, because there is usually some grain of truth, some part of the saint's spirituality which so struck those around him or her, making stories grow and spread over miles and generations. The importance of the legend, it seems to me, is not the details which vary just about every time you hear it, but rather the truths about the God-infused person who is the center of the legend.

Here is the story of the Wolf of Gubbio, in short: St. Francis, after he had been espoused to Lady Poverty for some time, heard about a town called Gubbio, whose inhabitants were menaced by a ferocious, giant wolf. The wolf had figured out that Gubbio was a place where there was an endless supply of food- unfortunately, he had taken a taste for people. So frightened that they would not come out of their houses, the people now survived in a state of near anarchy.

St. Francis, hearing of their situation, traveled to Gubbio and learned the whereabouts of the wolf's lair. He walked right up to the entrance, and the wolf rushed out with teeth bared, ready to feast on St. Francis then and there. The saint held up his hand and ordered the wolf to lay down. He then spoke to the wolf and rebuked it, ultimately making a bargain with the wolf: if the townspeople agreed to feed the wolf, the wolf would leave the townsfolk in peace. The animal agreed, nodding its great, shaggy head, and placing its huge paw in the hand of St. Francis. For two years, the people fed the wolf, and when it died, the people mourned it.

The image that draws me into this legend is that of St. Francis traveling towards the entrance to the wolf's lair. What would he have been thinking, or praying? Would he have been sure that God would exercise His power to tame the wolf? Was he placing his own life in the hands of Our Lord, caring not whether he lived or died, in hopes that the suffering people of Gubbio would find relief? Was he thinking of the parents who had lost children in those evil times, and hoping that with the change of the wolf, the parents would find hope in the power of God to heal suffering? What kind of man would face a wild animal without weapons?

There are some clues in the rest of the life of St. Francis which can help us flesh out this part of his character- and spirituality. There is something almost wanton, but a wantoness with a sure love and deep passion for God, in the well-documented instance of St. Francis coming out from behind the Bishop's tapestry with nothing on, in order to give everything back to his earthly father. It is a courage beyond earthly prudence, but not beyond supernatural prudence. Francis understood worldly prudence: he had lived it, and lived with an incarnation of it in the person of his successful merchant-father. However, he eschewed this prudence for the supernatural, like the merchant who finds the pearl of great price. Francis knew that the price of this Pearl is the espousal of Lady Poverty.

Another instance is the rule which St. Francis wrote for his new order, radically stark- and pure Gospel. In his reply to Pope Innocent III's concern for the 'impossibility of following such a rule', St. Francis' reply elucidates the man who could face a wolf with supernatural prudence: "Holy Father, these are the words of the Gospel. Our Lord lived them: who are we to water them down?" (paraphrased).

It was this courage based in absolute love of God that drew followers to St. Francis like bees to honey. It was that this man became so thin, thin of bodily frame as to have light shine through him, the light of the ineffable love of Christ, that made him a torch by which the love-starved thirteenth century man could find real love.

Inspired by God, the saint stripped himself of every comfort, of every modicum of status and power, all that was easily in his grasp based upon his family background. This sounds so familiar to us now, that the radicality of it is largely lost on us, so that we reduce it in our lives to a 'willingness to be detached' but no actual action; when in its reality, St. Francis' actions were and are unthinkable to us in our natural state. To leave all normal society and follow in the invisible footsteps of Christ, to become a second Christ on His cross of ignomy and absolute poverty is not something we can even think about doing on our own.

St. Francis jumped into the call of the Gospel with all that he had, and reaped from his great loss of worldly comfort an amazing harvest of courage, love and joy. It was with this absolute-ness that he tamed the wolf. God was so present with him that the wolf responded to St. Francis as a creature to Adam before the Fall. It is the incredible dignity to which God calls us all: but the road is through poverty for the sake of God. This means something different in every life; we only have to understand the myriad of ways the saints traveled this road of absolute surrender: but the call to radicality is the same, for real love is radical.

It is not easy, I think, to be in radical love with God- but I think it is a beauty beyond compare, making the things of this world fade. The paradoxical mystery is that as we are impoverished in the terms of the world, the more we are enriched in God. We begin to live on another plane, and this carries with it what John Paul II called original solitude: the sense which a'dam had of his own body and the difference that the image of God placed upon him meant in relation to the world of all other creatures. Adam sensed a solitude: but it is through this solitude that we understand the need to search for and the meaning of communion- with God and with our neighbor.

The sense of solitude and emptiness of chosen poverty works, I think, in the same way as the solitude of Adam in creation (before Eve)- in that the awareness of oneself as completely naked(like Adam before the Fall, in acceptance of poverty, unashamed) and dependent on God enlightens us as to our absolute need of Him: thus are we truly prepared for His loving reply, I am always with you. Poverty, Lady Poverty as St. Francis so called her, on the levels of the body and the soul becomes the necessary incarnation for us of our absolute dependence on God ( a reality that comfort simply hides but does not eradicate). The dependence on God is the condition for our loving Him and Him loving us in truth: for without Him we are indeed impoverished. He cannot bring us to the true heights of love until we understand our real position; our real depth of poverty when we depend upon ourselves or creation for love instead of Him Who is True Love. Poverty, like the Cross, is a sign of contradiction to the world, but a sign of grace and love for those who seek Christ.

The wolf is tamed by a spirit steeped in the heights of love. St. Francis knew that if you try to steep a tea bag in more than one pot, the tea is weakened in its power and becomes insipid. Thus, he impoverished himself from the tea pot of the world in order to be totally God's, and he was made strong with the strength of Christ.

The Community Builders

I think (maybe I'm wrong) that the mom in a family is the community builder. I remember listening to a Mars Hill tape on hospitality, and how this is a dying concept in our fragmented (or spatialized, in Catherine Pickstock's view) societies. The mother, that ideal of hospitality, comfort and the warmth of community, is now often replaced by a slick office version, who is an expert at microwave meals and would be interested in an ad such as the one I found in a California paper: "Do you need a housewife? Well, we've got 'em".

The reality is, it seems to me, that among working mothers there are two types: the educated, wealthy types, who manage things with smooth hair because they have a lot of help, and the frazzled one, who must work to help maintain a mortgage or just survival. This second type is often covering over a train wreck with saran wrap and hoping that the kids will make it somehow- thanks to the schools. The wealthy type enjoys dinner parties and guests from time to time, but really has no time for true community building and hospitality.

There is another, growing group of women: the neo-community builders, who are the true heirs to that generation (two or three ago) who knew the art and importance of hospitality and community. These are the homeschoolers, the stay-at-home moms, or the 'very part-time working' moms who somehow understand that their place is at home- but not staring out the kitchen window like some fifties manikin. They have sensed that no one, not even the TV, can replace them in the lives of their children. They understand that they have to build a culture for their children, because the culture outside is failing children, and corrupting them. They know that they have to provide safe and healthy spaces of play and work, places where their children can retain their innocence and yet learn to deal with 'the world' from a place of strength.

In this endeavor, hospitality is primary, because in order to build a healthy culture-within-a-culture, community is essential. People have to open themselves, their gifts and their homes in a more radical way, so that a community can begin to grow. However, as important as hospitality is, there is something else much more important which I have discovered in my community-building attempts (some successful, some abject failures).

I have realized a couple of things, actually: one is that women, it seems, are ill-suited in one sense to community building, and well-suited in another way. The other thing is that community building is an apostolate- and watered by prayer.

First, the suitability of women: they are highly sensitive and prone to talking. These are good and bad things, both. In being sensitive and talkative, they are showing their propensity to be experts at hospitality. Being sensitive to others' needs is the foundation of hospitality, and the beginning of community. In talking, 'word gets around' and families begin to get to know each other. The moms can help the dads and the children to understand one another, and encourage friendships between families and not just between individuals. Family friendships are the building blocks of the community, and hospitality is the mortar. The woman in a family is the primary producer of both: and if her vocation is primarily her family and home, she will pour into it not just effort and thought, but her very being.

The underside of a woman's propensity to be sensitive and to talk might be pretty obvious to anyone with any sense. The cure of it is not. I think that often the sensitive and talking issues as weaknesses are objects of fun and sterotyping, but they can actually wreck community. Gossip and grudge-holding, the bad fruits of sensitivity and talking, can destroy every tiny effort to build family friendships, choking these efforts in a tangle of weed-roots.

The Gospel commands to forgive- seventy times seven- and not to gossip, and following these commands is the practical way by which women can retain their natural propensities for good. Additionally, prayer and the understanding that community-building is an apostolate are the essential and supernatural ways by which we forgive and not give in to gossip.

An apostolate is a work which God has given a person. It is like a house built, and it must be built on Christ. It will be tested by fire, it is a work upon which we will be judged. It is also primarily Christ's, and it cannot be something that we hang on to for ourselves, no matter how big or how small it is. An apostolate must be given back to God and within it God must be given the glory, or it is built on sand.

An apostolate like community-building in all its forms, from little schools to bible groups to girl's or boy's groups, must be supported by and watered with prayer. "Pray without ceasing" the Apostle said, and we must pray while we are doing anything, any apostolate. We must pray with our willingness to forgive, to love beyond death even those whom we dislike, and with our determination to think the best of those around us and to protect their person and their reputation with our lives.

We must pray with our blessings and our goods shared, to the point of sharing what we ourselves need. We must pray with our desire to serve the other, and to see Christ in those around us. Only then will true community be built, a Christian community.

We must all of us, pray for the Christian communities in the world, those little cells of renewal, the new monasteries perched on the edge of the sea.

Savior Delusion

As St. Thomas Aquinas taught, no man consciously does anything purely evil. In any action, however evil it might be, there is some motivation for good- either the good of the self, or others. The perceived good may not be good in reality, but the point is that it is perceived by the doer as a good on some level.

One can see this easily with small children. Two-year-old Robin believes that the rabbits need some fresh air, and decides to do something about it without checking with the gatekeepers of reality (his parents). He is perceiving two goods: one, his own decision-making ability, and second the good of the rabbits (as he understands it). The rabbits are let loose in the yard, they crawl under the fence, and finally they are lost. Little Robin has created a wake of destruction while believing he is doing good.

It is much more difficult to see this same disorder in adults- mainly because they cover it up with onion skins of rationalization, slowly blocking out the truth to others and to themselves. Let me try to elucidate it with a fictitious example: Andrew is a very intelligent adult in his thirties. As he has grown in his faith, he begins to feel that he has much to give those around him, in terms of counseling and faith-based solutions to people's everyday problems. He sees two goods here, just like little Robin: the good that helping others will do for his own spiritual journey, and the good that he will do for others in helping them with their problems. There is one issue, though, that Andrew does not grapple with: just because he can help, should he? What does God wish him to do? What has God called him to?

Andrew, you see, has learnt a way of looking at his faith such that he is the center of it- but he doesn't know this, awash in the very self-oriented culture of both the modern culture and many churches of the day. Andrew believes in God, but believes in Him as Andrew perceives Him. Andrew does not know that he does not have a faith based on God's presentation of reality but rather a faith built on self-perception, the wishes of oneself.

Andrew begins his mission, his savior-like work. Because he is self-oriented, he lives somewhat in an enclosed world, a bit like an observer sitting in the dark under the canopy of 'stars' in a star-gazing room (the ones where the constellations are actually little lights placed in a ceiling). It is a safe and predictable environment, and this safety in a synthetic creation is where Andrew actually derives his incredibly alluring optimism and self-esteem. As he tries to help others with their problems, he is actually helping them to create their own synthetic realities, wherein they can claim to know that God understands them and that they feel certain about the decisions they have made. Andrew, the savior, begins to make disciples of Hell.

The most common problem of evil is not that there are these frightening people who decide they are going to cause havoc. Evil is a much more subtle problem of those who have made their own world, their own understanding of existence. They are people who are, fundamentally, lying to themselves. Thus they can actually believe they are telling others the truth, when in fact, they are creating versions of themselves. A sociopath is the extreme version of this, but a culture bent upon sowing the seeds of radical individualism and self-determination (even in questions of existence and the right thereto: think "abortion") will produce the same evil fruits, albeit on a spectrum of mild insanity to extreme sociopathology.

One only needs to read the history of the City Council of Santa Cruz to understand this kind of middling insanity. They're just now trying to declare Santa Cruz a 'Pro-Choice City', establishing a diabolical city-state religion of sorts, all the while believing they are establishing freedom.

Evil is the absence of good. In terms of a self-oriented person, reality becomes subsumed into their own encased bubble of 'reality'. Three important examples from literature come straight to mind: one is the scene in C.S. Lewis' The Last Battle. All had come through the door of judgement at the end of the world, and the little group of dwarves who had been 'sacrificed to Tash' were sitting huddled together in the midst of a bright meadow (heaven). They could not see anything beyond the darkness of the world of their own making, the cynical 'reality' of the dark stable. Aslan, to please one of the queens, attempts to break into their reality but is rebuffed at every turn. As He tries to help, He turns and says, "I will show you both what I can and cannot do." Even Our Lord cannot break in to a person's selfish construction of reality: Reality Himself is rebuffed, for the deluded person has made himself god and will not trade for the True God.

Another example is the unforgettable character in Flannery O'Conner's A Good Man is Hard to Find, an older woman who is waylaid by robbers along with her family. As they relate to the criminals, it becomes apparent that the older woman has been a tyrant and a destructive influence all her life, all the while believing that she was acting for everyone's good. As reality thrusts itself upon her in the form of a gun, she begins to dismantle her own reality for the truth. The great line in the story is from the mouth of the man who shoots her: "She would have been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life." In this, O'Conner brutally illustrates the terrifying nature of evil and the near-impossibility of a self-deluded person opening himself to reality.

In The Brothers Karamazov, the famous character of the Elder Zossima exhorts the people, "Beware of the lie to yourself". In this great passage, he begs those who come for his advice to search for truth, and above all, to avoid the lie to oneself, for this is the unbreakable prison.

Pride, or fear of hurt is the source of this kind of evil, and it is by learning to view ourselves as humble creatures and not the creators of our own existence, or the creators of whatever information or tradition we inherit, that we begin to live in true reality: thus we live in the good. Humble people, those who stand on the ground, or humus, are those who see themselves in the true light- they seek to see themselves as God sees them, and measure themselves against the standards of Christ and the teachings of the Church. They do not dance around a self-made golden calf, but rather follow God's laws which reflect reality and teach us how to live in it with peace and true love.

Inasmuch as we are humbly searching for the truth, for the True Savior, in reality, we are good. We may not be completely healed, or sane, but the will to strip ourselves of anything or anyone which would keep us from God, or from seeing ourselves how God sees us, is what means we are heading towards being good.

The Philosophy of the Broken Boat

We stand, you and I, on the edge of the languid pond; we are looking together at the small boats bobbing and bending along with the wind-sighs of a balmy, New York afternoon sometime in the Spring. Compounds of young and old move past us in differing versions of the same stroll around the sculpted edges of the pond, edges which seem to have an agreement with the water : to stay in concert with one another and to provide an orderly experience of boating.

One boat, a perfect red dash crowned with white triangulated splashes splayed outward to catch (to it, a gale) the soft-blowing wind, breaks from its compatriots who toddle safely at the far corner and dares the high seas at the center. It sails true and straight for a glorious thirty seconds and seems never to mind the end of the world ( it's world is rather squarish wherein one does not fall off, but rather splinters on an unforgiving and orderly wall). The wall, now, as we watch in fascination and some horror (imagining tiny people asleep at the helm), does not forgive. There is a splintering sound and a 'whosh-flap' as the sails crumple into the shallow water.

We do not speak, we wait- for what? Perhaps we are waiting in morbid curiosity to see what the owner will do with the remains of the red dash. A boy comes, plodding rather than running. To my surprise, he does not waste too much time in mourning his art-work toy: straight to the great green garbage receptacle he plods and without cermony, lets it fall to the bottom with a humiliating myriad of thuds.

You do not turn towards me, for we live in different universes now. I only hear you say, as if from very far away, "That reminds me of a relationship- you know, maybe that boy loved his boat. But he was not afraid to admit that it was broken beyond repair, and realized that he would just have to get rid of it-hard. That's why I like that 'thud' in the trash."

I do not answer, for you will probably not hear me; your philosophy comes from so deep inside that it is not something I can counsel you about; and also it places us far apart. I cannot be with you in this, the philosophy of the broken boat. I will not. But I live outside it, and pray; and discuss to myself, to make clear to my own heart what bothers me so about it.

I suppose I understand this philosophy from a natural standpoint: I guess I've had experience both as the broken boat and also the trash-man. However, my soul and all I know of God's love makes me reject this philosophy absolutely. I must here differentiate between a relationship which is disordered from one in which each person has struggles and deep flaws, causing hurt to the other. In the former case, the cause of the disorder must be remedied in charity, according to the laws and will of God-in charity. Sometimes the remedy is indeed an ending of the relationship- but it is done in prayer and charity. In the latter case, with the flaws and such, it is different: and I think of this now, as you begin to turn and walk away slowly...

When one person holds the philosophy of the broken boat, whether in a courtship, marriage or friendship, the other person becomes aware of the guillotine hanging unobtrusively over the relationship, and the whole thing becomes a dance of fear. It is a dance of control, of waiting for a flaw to appear and be judged: hurt does not become a chance for spiritual growth, but rather a tally mark on some ledger-sheet in the heart. A wall is built, and the one willing to love and work on the relationship will often feel a temptation to escape (and perhaps escape is just what is needed). The one who understands true love must call the other out and be willing to lose this relationship on the altar of reality, of real love: for love will be tested, either by the lovers or friends or by the providence of God and the trials of life.

For love is not meant to be a perfect sail on a balmy night. It is meant to help us grow towards Our Lord, who gave Himself up to death for love. Love is meant to make us heros and saints: it demands nothing less. That is why the disillusionment in any longstanding relationship is actually a good thing; for in the moment of disillusionment we have the profound and divine choice to really LOVE: not for gain, nor pleasure, but rather for the other. Our self-life begins to die as our life in Christ grows in exact inverse-proportion. Love is not fundamentally fun. It is fundamentally real, worth great risk and pain. The fixing and re-fixing of the boat is true love.

The other kind of relationship, the disordered kind, needs remedy before it can even approach the fixing and re-fixing of love. You and I, my friend, and all friends, how can we love if we are starving spiritually, or in sin, far from the Source of Love and Life? How can we navigate the storms on the pond without formation or the Sacraments, or the sanity of the True Theology? How can we discern anything through disorder? As you disappear into the trees beyond the pond, this is what I grieve the most: that I was not capable or willing, perhaps, to love the way God would have wanted me to, and to let you be His first and not mine.

In this fundamental disorder, God is ready to rescue at the slightest humility and willingness to let go: for even in disorder, to let go (not to throw in the trash, but more akin to the boy allowing Someone else to take the boat who could perhaps fix it and sail it better for him), yes, to let go is the beginning of real love and the beginning of hope of order.

In any real love, to begin to lose oneself truly in the love of God is to begin to be able to truly love anyone else. It is only after really loving this way, perhaps often in the dark, that one begins to understand the depth of love. It is the true meaning of the prophet who married the harlot as a sign of how God loves His own though they stray.

You know, my friend, as I watch your shadowed form slowly climbing the hill across the way, I sense that you know that real love is much more demanding than the toughest mountain-climb- and you say you don't have the courage for it. None of us do, I whisper, hoping the wind will carry my message of hope. That is why you need the Sacraments, the 'body and soul' love expressed in the life of the Church. It is Her purpose: to cause us to be able to love, like the wind in the sails. The strength of the Eucharist, the healing of confession...

How can I express it? I feel that I am failing to convey it! I remember that love of God you first felt, even as a pagan of sorts, when you were suspended in the deep blue; that infusion of the knowledge that He would never leave you, that He would reach you wherever you were and walk through death for you. It was a mark of deep understanding that was imprinted on your soul, it shone through your eyes: a kind of never-ending explosion. You thought that somehow a relationship was tied up with that- and in some sense you were right; but yet you carried the pagan broken-boat philosophy with you, like an extra change of clothes, a just-in-case.

And I failed you, miserably. The mysterious thing, is that perhaps He allowed us to fail-to give us a chance to learn to love as He does: or to know beyond doubt that He is the Alpha and Omega of everything, but especially of love. Love in courtship, or marriage, or friendship, must begin in Him and His law and will, it must continue thus, and end thus. When any relationship fails in His law, or tries to live outside it or in selfishness, it becomes demonic. The only remedy for this is not to trash it because it hurts, but to repent and to seek after His will once more: whether His will is to seek Him together or apart.

But when you are seeking His will, and His will for you is to have a broken boat, or to be one, do not despair. Rejoice. Again, I say, rejoice...for He gives you the power, His power, to love beyond measuring, beyond and in failure, and this makes you Christ in this sphere. You become a true witness to the other and to those who observe: and you give witness to the truth that the final end of any love-whether it be agape, philia, eros, or storge-is to draw everything to heaven through the love of Christ. No love can remain love and be an end in itself. You are only left with childish anger and despair at a broken, expensive toy.

I know, my friend, that God will ask from you a love no less than His love, for your good. If you ask for the courage, He will give you His own, the courage of the One who stumbled to Golgotha for love. Love those whom God has placed in your life with that love, a love that never forsakes, that always wishes for the other's good: that good of the other being to dwell in the House of the Lord forever. Heaven is constructed on this selfless love, and I pray that He will fill you with the grace to love this way, for it is all His doing. It is begun in our willingness to have God transform us as we surrender our own precious philosophies which do not conform to His Truth. It is the seeking after His Truth as the 'doe longs for flowing streams'.

For me, I know I am nothing, nothing, next to the love of God in the relationships I have now- I just want to be in that love, immersed in that ocean. My peace, in my clingings to selfishness, is that God knows He must change me, and that I want it. This wanting is also a grace given by Him. I know I always retain my free will: and I hope to use it to be willing to love without thought of measuring the cost, to love even when someone is imperfect or seriously flawed, or when I have been seriously hurt.

Perfect love casts out fear. Fear, begone. Sweet Courage of Love, enter in!

To Be A Man of Peace

"Keep thyself first in peace, and then shalt thou be able to pacify others."

This is harder than it sounds. I'm failing at it pretty miserably right now, so I feel the hardness of the good way, like the characters in C.S. Lewis' book The Great Divorce, who come from Hell on a busride to Heaven. They are like soft silver fishes flopping on diamonds: the very goodness of Heaven rubs like sharp points on their thin, selfish skin. But help is sent to them: the inhabitants of Heaven come with charity to lift them and strengthen them; but in the end, to be a good man and a man of peace requires great humility and the choice of the will.

" He that is well in peace, is not suspicious of any".

This is not so easy, especially in our closest familial relationships, when hurt has been passed around like a sour drink, me buying one round, and you another until we're dizzy with hurt and anger, it becomes very difficult to be at peace. I think of the Lord saying, "Forgive seventy times seven", completely blasting open the apparently more prudent Old Testament law to forgive seven times seven: that is a prudence which dictates one must have a limit on one's forgiveness.

A limit on forgiveness is a limit on love, the selfless love which lays down its life for the other: and with the grace of Christ, we became able to have charity, and thus to forgive endlessly. Thus, the suspicion ends, and you are well in peace. Easy? No. It requires the death of the selfish seeking in us. As in the New Testament, "Let me die with Christ, so that I may live with Him."

"Behold, how far off thou art yet from true charity and humility, which knoweth not how to be angry with any, or to be moved with indignation, but only against its own self."

I think this means that if you really understood the enormity of any sin you would realize your focus on rehabilitation must be foremost on the self, and that we have all sinned, and that I have sinned: I have sinned!! This brings either a despair from the proud, or a humility from the humble. The enormity of placing the self above God is the root of sin, it is pride: and this is enough to make us realize that we cannot treat others as if they are doing something 'that we would never do'. It is that feeling of 'how dare you' which falls against charity and humility. We, a fellow creature, a fellow sinner, have no business saying 'how dare you' with self-righteous indignation. This kind of pride is the sneakiest kind I know- that is, you are doing it before you realize it, and the more 'moral' a person, the easier it is to have this kind of pride.

Anger, however, is not an evil: it is, as Aquinas says, a motivating feeling; an emotional reaction to a real or apparent injustice. Anger is meant to motivate us to act decisively and courageously in the face of danger or evil. However, it is the anger and subsequent reaction of a perceived injury to one's self-image, one's ego, which is the bad kind. This is the hypocritical kind, because in the case of damaged pride, we are most at fault who have not first considered our own injustice to God and to others.

"But to be able to live peaceably with hard, and perverse, or undisciplined persons, is a great grace, and an exceedingly commendable and manly deed."

I would say this applies also to living with oneself in this regard: for often it is our own hardness and perverseness which brings us the most suffering, and lack of peace. But all of us, in whatever state of life we have been called, must suffer another's lack of discipline and hardness. Suffering another's burdens is a purgatory and when done with loving, manly resignation, can sanctify and purify us.

" And there are that keep themselves in peace and study to bring others unto peace. Nevertheless, our whole peace in this miserable life consisteth rather in humble sufferance, that in not feeling adversities. Who knowest best how to suffer, will keep the greatest peace. That man is conqueror of himself, and lord of the world, the friend of Christ, and heir of heaven."

Friend of Christ! What greater and sweeter title is there?


*Quotes from The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas 'A Kempis