continuing

It is nearly 9:30 and my almost 13 year old is not yet awake. At what time does this teenager sleeping till noon thing start? We've got school to do after all.

I'm needing to write again. I don't know why this urge comes and goes with me. Maybe it's a constant thing that I simply succeed at distracting myself from until it builds into something too great to ignore. Maybe it's gas. I really don't know, but have, through a couple different avenues, been drawn back to Flannery O'Connor's writing and the inspiration it has been to me and continues to be to me. Specifically, the short story, "Parker's Back." I was flipping through Google Reader when I saw someone had written on this story, Flannery's final bit of writing. What a wonderful story addressing, ultimately perhaps, the Incarnation. It's a good one, if you haven't read it. Nearly as haunting, I suspect, as Parker's own back. Anyway, time to wake up Sleeping Beauty and get on with the day.

Are We Poor?

"Are we poor?" says my son, says my daughter, says my heart.

And I think of the man on the street and the ladies who live across from us in the duplexes. I think of so many whose first chore of the day is to walk to a well or a river for water. And for water that isn't even clean. I think of them after taking a hot shower in the middle of winter. I think of them while sipping at my coffee. "No," I say. "We are not poor." And the car breaks again and the floor rots under us. The bath tub is useless and our water pipes hold together only stubbornly. This house is at odds with itself.

"Are we poor?" they say.

I say, "It depends what you mean by 'poor.' " It seems obvious to them what they mean: They cannot have the new pair of shoes they want, or that video game, or clothes that they do not have to share. It seems obvious when they go to bed, stacked like cordwood. Or when the weather constrains them to indoors, and their parents grow impatient at their play (it is so loud). It seems obvious. But still they ask.

"Look around you," I say. "You have a big family that loves you, that is and always will be together. Who, when I take just half of you out to the store, people ask whether you are all mine. You are rich where richness counts."

"Are we poor?" they say. And I think of my anger and my covetousness. I think of my despondency and impatience. I think of how I hoard what I do have, failing to give to those who do not. And I say, "I am poor."

Outside, overnight, it has snowed. It is a Carolina snow. And the ground, pizzelle-like, reminds me of holidays and weddings. We are not poor, children. We are not.

Resignation to the Will of God

Flannery O'Connor, writing to a friend ("A") about recent criticism the friend had received concerning a book she had written, and the subsequent depression she had fallen into:

No matter how just the criticism, any criticism at all which depresses you to the extent that you feel you cannot ever write anything worth anything is from the Devil and to subject yourself to it is for you an occasion of sin. In you, the talent is there and you are expected to use it. Whether the work itself is completely successful, or whether you ever get any worldly success out of it, is a matter of no concern to you. It is like the Japanese swordsmen who are indifferent to getting slain in the duel. ... The human comes before art. You do not write the best you can for the sake of art but for the sake of returning your talent increased to the invisible God to use or not use as he sees fit. Resignation to the will of God does not mean that you stop resisting evil or obstacles, it means that you leave the outcome out of your personal considerations. It is the most concern coupled with the least concern.

(Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor, 25 November 1960.)

And elsewhere, a favorite:

Sit at yr machine.

(Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor, to Cecil Dawkins, 11 July 1960.)

Mistress

I'm having some difficulty writing lately, which is disconcerting. I want to say things and then find it better they remain unsaid, not because they are unkind or controversial, but because they are just words: cold thoughts, too sterile for paper. Just words. Text. The metaphor of language where silence serves better. There is nothing for me to say straight. Writing must be all slant. I cannot describe a flower as a naturalist, only as a painter - even if I must paint in water colors.

I wonder whether my muse is bemused by my pauses, my faltering. So here I am again, caressing, speaking tenderly to her; I miss her. Gentle mistress, quiet, who demands that I be me - perhaps no more than a novice, but certainly no less. Who is patient with my anger and ranting and silliness. Patient with my airs. Who waits. Who simply wants to calm a shaking hand. Who remains silent when I elbow her aside and push my own words forward. For when she speaks, she speaks beauty. Her words tumble down like soft black curls on alabaster cheeks. She is patient, saintly toward her awkward, shy lover.

She deserves better than me, but will not hear of it. It is the only time she is insulted by me, when I tell her so.

Newborn

Sensuous, birth is full of contrasts and archetypes, meaning. It is the intercourse of heaven and earth. It is God encountering woman in her pain and joy, sweat, blood, expectancy. A kiss. A rendezvous. A revelation. We are enamored. God's breath, awake, unveiled; the Divinity reaching into clay and pulling a person from it. Two. Three.

Surprised at surprise. Caught unprepared again, thirty-eight years in, I stir to.

Life is too great, too glorious. There is suffering. There is pain. But there is, also, limitless joy that leans out from little things, like an upturned, red-capped mushroom, a defeated umbrella pooling rainwater. Like morning glory bedding on a rusted sign. Like a newborn covered in blood and vernix, trembling. Joy entwines itself in the pain, curls about it, over it, and purples. Glory subsumes all suffering, at a glance.

If You Can't Say Something Nice

As I was taking time to compose a post (bits and pieces over the past three days), I came across an excerpt from a book that always strikes a resonant chord: St. John Climacus's (+650) The Ladder of Perfection. Today's excerpt came from the Daily Gospel that I receive, well, daily in my inbox. It stopped my pencil. (Perhaps an old dog can learn a new trick or two.) And this refrain constantly comes to the forefront: Do not judge. Do not judge. Do not judge.

Here's the quote:

I have heard some people speak ill of their neighbour and have rebuked them. To defend themselves, these evildoers have answered: "We are saying these things out of charity and concern!" However, I have replied: "Stop practising a charity like that or you will be accusing of deceit the one who said: 'Whoever slanders his neighbour in secret, him will I destroy,' (Ps 101[100],5). If you love him – as you claim – pray for him in secret and don't make a mock of the man. This is the way of loving that pleases the Lord; don't lose sight of it and you will take the greatest care not to judge sinners. Judas was of the number of the apostles and the thief was among the criminals but, in an instant, what an astonishing change! ..."

So reply to anyone who speaks evil of his neighbor to you: "Stop, brother! I myself fall into the most serious faults every day; how could I now condemn this man?" Thus you will make a twofold gain: you will heal yourself and heal your neighbor. Not judging is a shortcut towards the forgiveness of sins, if this saying is true: "Do not judge and you will not be judged" ... Some people have committed grave faults in the sight of everyone but, in secret, have carried out the greatest acts of virtue. Thus their detractors have been mistaken by focussing only on the smoke without seeing the sun ...

Those who are hastily censorious and severe fall into this delusion because they don't keep the memory and constant care of their own sins before them ... Judging others is shamelessly to usurp a divine prerogative; condemning them is to bring down our own souls ... Just as a good grape-picker eats the grapes that are ripe and does not pick those that are green, so a watchful and sensible soul carefully takes note of all the virtues he sees in others; but it is the stupid man who keeps an eye on their faults and failings.

I am a stupid man. I hate judgmentalism in others because I see it so clearly in me. Lord, have mercy.

Pray for me, St. John Climacus, that I might love truly, forgive all, and judge none.

Giving Up Giving Up

My giving up on this blog is officially over. It's become a habit, writing here. I write. It's what I do. It's how I breathe. It's how I think. And though it's not the only place I write, it has become a kind place for me. Certainly, this is not the proper setting for every exhalation.

I may, someday, buy an old manual typewriter and pound out my thoughts exhaustively, compiling reams of strange ideas about stranger things for my great-grandchildren to someday stumble upon and subsequently use to heat their homes. But until then, here I am.

That being said, rather sheepishly, my writing this month may certainly still be scarce regardless of my resolution to continue forward. I have some articles due at the end of this week, and then the next week will be spent in preparations for the holidays and finishing school with the girls.

Again, I thank you for your prayers. It's been a sorrowful time for our family, and a break was certainly needed from some of the things with which I normally busy myself. But the sun also rises, doesn't it. We are doing reasonably well. I haven't, as of yet, written through my grief. I probably will soon. I probably must.

"For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea" (Is 11,8).

The Start of an Explanation

I know my last post was abrupt and unexpected. Maybe, as Dan suggested, my leaving this blog will merely be a sabbatical, maybe through the holidays. Maybe until spring, in that glorious season of resurrection. Maybe forever. At this point, I just don't know. There's part of me that feels terribly lost right now, much of which, I realize, is related to the loss of our baby. And added to it all, I feel as if this blog gums things up for me sometimes with my writing, keeps me from being the writer I want to be, and the provider that I, right now, feel that I desperately need to be (how that all works out, or why that wound hurts so badly right now, I haven't the slightest).

Then again, all of that simply may be my confusion right now. It may merely be me, in my grief, digging up the shallow, marked graves of a lifetime of griefs and regrets and losses - of deaths. I need time to mourn all of it. And to rebury most of it.

I appreciate your affection that spills over, so naturally, into prayer.

I will still be a reader and commenter on your blogs, for those of you who have them. And I may add things to my "Shared" list in the sidebar from time to time, or update pictures. But my writing, for now, will take place in other venues. And I hope productively so as I deal with everything that hinders me in that arena, the biggest obstacle being me.

What Do You Do?

What do you do when you are contracted to write about spiritual practices, but feel unworthy and incompetent to do so?

You pray and try to be diligent in your duty. And you pray.

When I said I'd take this job, I wanted a paying gig where I could write about the spiritual life - I thought it would be cool, honestly, and I needed the money - but the more I write, the more I understand my own utter lack of authority in such matters. I am humbled by it.

So this is a nothing post. Just a note to say that I feel totally inadequate for this endeavor.

May God guide me, and forgive me my errors.

The Church Needs Art

Apostle St Matthew
El Greco
1606

"In order to communicate the message entrusted to her by Christ, the Church needs art. Art must make perceptible, and as far as possible attractive, the world of the spirit, of the invisible, of God. It must therefore translate into meaningful terms that which is in itself ineffable. Art has a unique capacity to take one or other facet of the message and translate it into colors, shapes and sounds which nourish the intuition of those who look or listen. It does so without emptying the message itself of its transcendent value and its aura of mystery."

Upon reading an extract of John Paul II's 1999 Letter to Artists yesterday, I pulled up the document, printed it out, and have been thinking of it since. Here's more:

"Human beings, in a certain sense, are unknown to themselves. Jesus Christ not only reveals God, but 'fully reveals man to man.' In Christ, God has reconciled the world to himself. All believers are called to bear witness to this; but it is up to you, men and women who have given your lives to art, to declare with all the wealth of your ingenuity that in Christ the world is redeemed: the human person is redeemed, the human body is redeemed, and the whole creation which, according to Saint Paul, 'awaits impatiently the revelation of the children of God' (Rom 8:19), is redeemed. The creation awaits the revelation of the children of God also through art and in art. This is your task. Humanity in every age, and even today, looks to works of art to shed light upon its path and its destiny.

...

"Beauty is a key to the mystery and a call to transcendence. It is an invitation to savor life and to dream of the future. That is why the beauty of created things can never fully satisfy. It stirs that hidden nostalgia for God which a lover of beauty like Saint Augustine could express in incomparable terms: 'Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you!'.

...

"... may your art help to affirm that true beauty which, as a glimmer of the Spirit of God, will transfigure matter, opening the human soul to the sense of the eternal."

Poetry. Argh.

I'm entering a poetry contest tomorrow. I'm still working on revisions and am feeling, the entire time, my inadequacy as a poet. Don't get me wrong - I love poetry and I love writing poetry. But I do feel inadequate with my poetry at times, which is certainly another way of saying I am unsure about my ability as a writer in general. All writing is poetic at some level.

Here at the blog, I just kind of spew out the words with little revision. When I am forced to present my best - through hours of work - that's when I begin to get nervous. That's when my present ability is put under the microscope. Though it is, to some degree, a subjective view.

After reading over what I've written, it almost feels too personal for a contest - that it's simply a family poem and lacks universality. Ugh. It feels immature somehow (the poem itself, not the content). Anyway, I'll try to post the finished poem here tomorrow. I still want to pour over it some - though it's a relatively short thing. I'm still working on it and I hope to have a more beautiful piece tomorrow when I submit.

Say a prayer for me and my muse today, if you would.

New Year's, Shmew Year's

Ah! Another year, another yen.

I haven't thought much about resolutions this year, though I have plenty to make. Yesterday, however, I was thinking about my writing and how I want to become more disciplined, more serious about it. I know a general resolution won't do the trick, so I'm putting together a schedule.

“I pray ... that they may all be one.”

A new article of mine, concerning unity, is up at Tyndale's New Living Translation site. I normally don't point them out to you because most of you know that an article mysteriously appears every week or so like magic. If you want to read, you read. And if you don't want to read, you don't. And that's cool.

But I wanted to point out this article that posted Wednesday because it is a big part of who I am, of where my heart lies.

I know, speak, and listen to people with a diversity of beliefs on a fairly regular basis. We, all of us, love Jesus and have orthodox beliefs about Him. But we are different in many other ways. And we are divided. We do not always see eye to eye. Still, we respect and love one another because each of us is in Christ.

It seems to me this being 'in Christ' should have more bearing on our unity than our polity, how we define justification, or whether we recite the filioque.

I know. It's more complex than that. Even so.

Check out the article.

This and That

I got the news from the garage concerning my pimped Mini,uh,van: Apparently I need to replace a gasket. Depending on whether we're talking about the intake or the head gasket, the repairs will run anywhere from $500 to $1200+. It's fortunate that I'm uber-wealthy. That's like maybe a quarter for me, relative to what you all make. Not to rub it in or anything, I'm just saying good for me and all.

Speaking of wealth, I need to start searching for at least one more freelance job. I'm looking primarily for a writing gig, but I suppose I'll accept editing crap. And speaking of crap, can you believe Peter Boyle is gone? Holy crap. (That's not "Catholic, XXII: Sacramentals," by the way, just an exclamation.)

Saturday was 30 weeks for the baby boy. Woo-hoo! I think he's already done, though, because Laura's belly button looks like a spent plastic pop-up turkey timer.

Tolkien Was No Hobbit

There is a funny article by Don Miller over at "The Burnside Writers Collection" titled, "Tolkien Was No Hobbit." I understand that some of you have a problem with James Frey, so don't get too upset by this article - just enjoy the tongue-in-cheekness of it. Here's an excerpt:

The truth is I wasn’t surprised by the whole Frey incident. As a book insider, I’ve known for a few years that the stuff in books is made up. I’m not trying to sound condescending, which means to talk down to you, but it’s something I discovered in my mid twenties.

I remember how much I loved J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” for example, but was enraged when I finally saw a picture of the author, smoking a pipe wearing a hat and jacket, no floppy ears, no webbed and hairy feet, a complete con. Lying bastard, I said to myself, throwing the book across the children’s section of a bookstore. Hobbit my ass.

Now go read the rest of it. Go on. Read it. One . . . Two . . .

Notice

Dreams die quietly, with little to-do. They fail to acknowledge your investment of time or tears. They fail to appreciate your hard work. You woke up this morning as you have woken up every other morning; then, in the afternoon, notice arrives in the mail:

I am dead. Dream another dream, if you dare.

And so, broken, you sit in front of a machine, another man's dream realized, and you gently, hesitantly, tap out . . . something. Plastic keys, arbitrary letters and words, are rallied together to make some sense. But even while they do, they don't. Not to you.

Ash and dust. Beauty? Where are you?

A nice letter, all in all. Clean and concise. Impersonal. The envelope lies torn open on the table. The letter has been neatly refolded and replaced. The dream too. Maybe dreams are not for you.

Some Nights

Some nights I don't want to go to bed. Silence and solitude seize me and whisper Exploration. Time to be. Time to enjoy a simple reward won through housewifery. Typing words. Laying structure on the altar of art.

Some nights I run into 1:30, imagining I have no children. But then I hear troubled cries from restless sleep and my heart is conquered again. Again. It's a city never reclaimed - just a fool's dream of hell. I have those dreams sometimes, some nights. I believe lies. I run from joy into the arms of ease. Joy isn't easy. The earth it grows in is hard ground to till, but the greening is worth the sweat. Watered with sorrows, it grows.

Yes, some nights I doubt. I cry.

Some nights I wake from sleep laughing. Lightly, so lightly. The bed trembles with me and so I take hold of this joy that is wanting to shake loose. Tightly, so tightly. Don't wake her. But this maddening, irrepressible joy swells within me like laughter in the middle of a funeral. The seams are not strong enough. They stretch and tear.

This body is not big enough for joy or sorrow. They burst out. They pour out. Some nights they mix into green.

And so some nights I don't want to go to bed. I don't want to sleep. Shh. Some nights I just want to be green.

Chapter 3: A Disagreement

"I own part of these woods. The stone wall that runs not half a mile from here is the border of my property."

"It is all the King's land," says the gardener, "and under the King's rule through the authority He's given to His Ministers and to His Prime Minister."

"I recognize the King's authority, but not the Prime Minister's." I do not know why I am suddenly so offended, or why the bitter argument springs up out of me. But I am enraged.

"Regardless, His authority is the King's," says the gardener. "And, if I may, how can you recognize the King's authority if you do not recognize His Prime Minister's?"

I leave the garden angry. "He is a false Prime Minister," I say under my breath. "He reaches too far."

Why do I accept and even demand hierarchy and authority in every institution but the Church?

There is something in me that rejects human, spiritual authority. "I am Christ's man, and His man alone," I want to say. And that is correct: I serve no King but Jesus. But what if He has established His authority on this Earth in a man, in a council of men, in order to guide His Church? Or, to put it differently, is there another way, given the heart of man, to have His Church be one?

At the very least, can I say that perhaps it is true? If I could say, "Perhaps," then I may be able to approach the question honestly.

Unity is the fruit of charity. And without charity, who can be saved? What does that unity look like? Is it unity within diversity? Is it unity under the recognized authority of the Bishop of Rome? Or is it a completely invisible unity? Is invisible unity even unity? One thing becomes clearer to me as I get older: The gospel demands unity. In Question 3 of N.T. Wright's February 2006 Wrightsaid Q & A, Wright says that the existence and propagation of denominations is "a flagrant disobedience" to the teaching of the New Testament. That statement, if I believe it, demands something of me.

I walk through the woods, and then turn and run back toward the garden. The gardener stands and watches my approach as I crash gracelessly through the forest. He is grinning.

The Riches of Emmanuel

I know that most Protestants who have thought about and determined to be Protestants have manifold problems with the Roman Catholic Church - many of the problems arise out of competing worldviews (sometimes differing eschatologies) while most of them, in my opinion, bubble up out of simple misunderstandings of or misinformation about what Catholics actually believe. Though only a novice, I have begun studying the Roman Catholic Church, and I have found richness there. And, possibly, exceedingly great richness.

Let me share with you the true riches of the Catholic Church. It is not found in her history, and it is not in her unity or charity (or even her hats). I do not find it in her strong moral stand within our culture or in her unrelenting grasp of right. It is not that she has given us the Scriptures or that she is, after two millennia, thoroughly orthodox. Don't misread me - there are riches here. But her true riches are, unquestioningly for me, in her Mass.

Many of the riches in the Catholic Church I can explore as a Protestant. In many cases, I can even make them my own. But the Mass is wholly different, wholly other. It has its liturgies (the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist) that must be performed. And though the priest plays an essential role in the Mass, it is not about the priest. Or the music. Or the homily (sermonette). The Mass is a celebration of the Eucharist. And the Eucharist - and here lies the scandalon, the stumbling stone - is Christ.

The dogma of the Real Presence (the transubstantiation) is a difficult one. The Church claims that the wafer and the wine truly, really, and substantially transform into the body and the blood, the soul and the divinity of Christ - though completely indiscernible by the senses. The Eucharist, therefore, celebrated as such, is either the greatest good or it is foul evil. I don't know that there is a middle way.

And therein is my great struggle with Catholicism. It is the most profound and life-changing news I have ever received as a believer - that I can touch and experience and feast upon our Lord. And it is the most terrifying.

What am I to do with this Sacrament?

For the first millennium of the Church's existence, the Real Presence was never questioned. And it was not rejected until the Reformation (even Luther and Calvin believed in the Real Presence, though they rejected the Catholic Church's teaching about its transformation - some of our "higher" Protestant traditions still believe in the Real Presence as the real spiritual presence of Christ). The Early Church Fathers write about the Real Presence and believe it. The Scriptures certainly allow and even suggest such an interpretation (This is my body, whoever does not discern the body, etc.). Is the Reformation more weighty than the first 1500 years of Church tradition? Wouldn't the Early Fathers have better known what our Lord intended than Luther or Calvin?

If the Real Presence is true, then I cannot keep myself from the Catholic Church.

What am I to do with this Sacrament?

Chapter 2: An Encounter

I walk through the woods. A brown-headed nuthatch appears, hopping from branch to branch, chasing after her bridegroom. They chirrup smart sensuous songs to one another. A stream, clean and new and cold, runs through birches and white pines. I step over the low, broken stone wall that marks the far edge of my property. Ivy runs over it and a variety of mosses huddle together in community. I am crossing into another's woods. Whose, I do not know. The woods are not wholly lovely. There are dead trees and rotting trunks, just as on my property. Here an old oak, once a prince of the forest, lies split asunder. It rots. There are also denser spots that are dark and leave me feeling rather uncomfortable, making me look nervously over my shoulder.

The Church is sensory. It fills my five senses until I know somehow the spiritual. Pictures and smells and symbols, water and bread and wine - the invisible becomes incarnate. And I find myself remembering Jesus. The Church calendar takes me through the birth and life of my Lord. It participates in his passion. It mourns his death and celebrates his resurrection. It adores him in a world that forgets him. Many churches are letting go of the Church calendar, claiming that every day is new in the newness of Christ (which, of course, is true). But I wonder if, in removing the celebration, we have removed the reason for the celebration. We make ourselves a dead and empty marriage without memorial, devoid of intimacy or anniversary, reft of romance.

As I continue, I come into a clearing. And before me is a garden, perfectly kept and newly in bloom. Rose bushes are red-and-green alive, though still without rose. Forsythia shine. Dogwoods unwrap themselves in an ever-widening circle, white and pink, and spread gloriously into the forest beyond - ethereal beauty floating between heaven and earth. Sounds catch my ears and draw my eyes. They are gardening sounds: pruners pruning away dead branches and shovels shoveling soft, good earth. The gardener wears white, somehow kept clean. I greet him, and he I.

"I was walking through these woods," I say, "but I do not know whose they are."

"They are the King's," he answers.