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Transformed by Emptiness

It’s important for us to learn that imperfection is our natural state. For if we don’t, we will forever seek to fill the emptiness that cannot be filled with all manner of things, and mistakenly assume that we’re supposed to do something to change it. But what this emptiness calls for is acceptance and gentle perseverance with the lives we’ve been given. With acceptance comes peace and greater capacity to love.
+ Maryann Edgar Budde

We may not like it, but Lent is that necessary season for us to get in touch with our emptiness, fallibility and finitude. Sound too pessimistic or depressing for our feel-good culture? Well, perhaps it does — unless we grasp the great human paradox of death/resurrection. That’s the invitation!

As St Francis of Assisi — certainly the most popular Christian saint of all time — said so eloquently: “It is in dying that we are born to eternal life.” Francis was not just referring to our ultimate end-of-life demise. He was speaking about the seemingly infinite opportunities and requirement to “die to self” that consistently come our way.

Our friend, the current Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington DC, expresses this invitation so well in the quote above. We got to know Maryann when she was the rector of St. John’s Church in Minneapolis. Today I can do no better than to recommend her reflection [here] for your prayerful consideration.

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My Lenten Shake-Down

My spiritual foundations are being shaken to their foundations. On a practical level, I’ve presumed that God became human in Jesus because we had screwed things us so badly that God needed to “work our salvation” through the passion, death and resurrection. Today something else seems to be struggling to break through.

Steeped in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, my “fix it” mentality still deeply colors the way I have interpreted Jesus’ Incarnation. Even more, my presumption about the Son’s mission has pretty well determined the way I have “observed” the season of Lent — Jesus came to save us because we had created a mess and couldn’t fix it for ourselves.  We’d do well to realign ourselves with Jesus’ plan of action.

Though this traditional affirmation remains true, it’s not the whole truth. In fact, it’s only a sliver of the truth and can distort and impoverish a fuller understanding of Christ. That’s what seems to be rattling my foundations these days. It’s a work in progress — it’s God’s doing, nothing I can cause, simply a grace I hope to apprehend.

Christopher Pramuk’s Sophia: The Hidden Christ of Thomas Merton has had me captivated for the past while. Masterful. Meant to be savored. Perhaps the most significant book I’ve read in the past five years. Not easy, but solid theology that is also spiritually satisfying. Reading something today caught me off guard and sent my head spinning:

The incarnation … was not an afterthought following a failed creation. Christ is the Word, the uncreated Image of God, who has already decided “from the beginning” to enter fully into humankind.

Okay, so what’s new? We’ve all heard that before. It’s simply another way of saying what Paul writes in his Letter to the Colossians (1:15-17). Yes, I’ve “believed” this. I’ve even parroted it in my own words. Today these former formulations seem conceptual, abstract. True, but cognitive!

Here’s what flipped my apple cart, left my head spinning:

the heart of Christian spirituality [resides in] the discovery of our true selves already resting in Christ, not “out there” as a separate Object, but “as the Reality within our own reality, the Being within our own being, the life of our life.” (Merton, The New Man, p19).

With images of Pope Francis praying at the Mexico/US border yesterday fresh in my mind, Merton’s words stopped me in my tracks: “If we believe in the incarnation of the Son of God, there should be no one on earth in whom we are not prepared to see, in mystery, the presence of God.” (New Seeds of Contemplation, p296)

The church teaches virtually the same thing: “In Christ, God became not only ‘this’ man, but also, in a broader and more mystical sense, yet no less truly, ‘every man.'” (Gaudium et spies, #22).

Again, I have long ‘believed’ these words. I have often parroted them. But have they really sunk in? Are they deep in my bones such that I see in others — each and every other, especially the poor and marginalized — the human dignity of Christ?

That’s my challenge as we enter this second week of Lent. God did not become human in Jesus as an afterthought due to our having screwed things up! Incarnation leading to salvation has always been God’s intention from the beginning. How do I get that truth in to my bones, give flesh to this “Word” in my life?

Perhaps we need to spend less time in our church pews and more time at border crossings, less time meditating on the crucifix and more time attending to the many forms of personal crucifixion people endure today.

Christmas and Easter are not dualistic polarities on a salvific timeline. They are the self-same singular impulse of a loving God from the very beginning. Don’t know about you, but this pretty well turns the table on many of my traditional Lenten presumptions and practices.

Getting my head and heart around this will take some doing, certainly more than the forty days of Lent.
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Sophia: The Hidden Christ of Thomas Merton by Christopher Pramuk. A Michael Glazier Book, Liturgical Press, Collegeville, MN (2009), pp 179-180).

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Such is Our Duty

This time of year reminds me of a church discipline from childhood I’ve long discarded. It’s called the “Easter Duty,” the obligation each Catholic has to go to Confession sometime during Lent. In theory it’s a beautiful and sensible practice — preparing for a full-blown, no-holds-barred celebration of Easter.

Fact is, no one does it. I haven’t for years. But something is shifting this year, something feels different, something is quickening deep inside. The desire to again look at the directive, perhaps even to reincorporate it into my spiritual practice, is awakening. As with all new growth, it’s fragile and might be easily smothered.  But this year it seems I’m being urged to take a fresh look.

Numerous reasons might be cited. First, and most significantly, my experience as a “spiritual coach” for men in recovery from alcohol or drug addiction has a profound reciprocal effect on me. Everyone familiar with the 12 Steps knows the critical importance of the famed Fifth Step — that arduous encounter with another human being when we admit out loud the exact nature of our wrongs.  This is done after a fearless moral inventory.

One need not be a rocket scientist to see the close connection between the Fifth Step and the Easter Duty. Both traditions are inspired and come to the same conclusion. An honest, accurate and thorough admission — out loud and to another person — of our moral failures with acceptance of responsibility for the wrong we have done engenders the recovery, health, well-being and serenity we seek. Twelve-Steppers understand such acknowledgement is critical and  essential to their recovery.

So, yes, with restored resolve I intend to make my Easter Duty this year. But something more is stirring deep down within this quickening awareness. It’s as simple as the archaic aphorism that has also fallen out of vogue: “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.” In fact, I would amend that to say, “What’s good for the adult male goose is good for the gaggle of geese!”

Pope Francis prophetically leads the way in gestures like the one we saw yesterday. In a monumentally historic statement the Roman Pontiff and Russian Orthodox Patriarch jointly affirmed, “We are not competitors but brothers, and this concept must guide all our mutual actions as well as those directed to the outside world.”

Like every courageous and prophetic acknowledgement of moral culpability and consequent responsibility to make amends, such acknowledgement is easily ignored, overlooked if not denied, and often subverted by powers-that-be.

Yes, I intend to make my Easter Duty this year. I propose the “gander” do as well — by this I mean Francis’ fellow bishops and all church hierarchs (not all of whom are ordained). Even more, “What’s good for us geese has got to be good for the gaggle.”

We will gather as one Body in Christ to celebrate the unmerited grace of God at Easter. What then might be our corporate, collective “Easter Duty”? …a collective, corporate, fearless confession of our wrong doing with “a firm purpose of amendment”?

Unquestionably, a good place to start would be for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops to launch and fully fund a truly independent, unhampered and fearless “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” regarding clergy sex abuse. But this is only a first essential step, the litmus test by which we demonstrate our sincerity to enter into the “repentance leading to resurrection” offered us in the Easter Triduum.

In the absence of such resolve by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, there is nothing preventing leadership within local dioceses from embracing an authentic season of conversation, shepherding us through death to life. I can think of no better place than our own Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis for this to begin.

Is not this the repentance God seeks, “to loosen the bonds of wickedness, to undo the bands of the yoke, and to let the oppressed go free and break every yoke?” (Isaiah 58:6). Would this not be a Jubilee Year of Mercy, truly of Biblical proportions?

It is long past time for each and all of us to perform our Easter Duty!

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A Necessary and Honest Confession

I can be pretty harsh and judgmental, especially about things related to liturgy. I hate congregations that haven’t learned a new hymn in thirty years (unless it’s truly a rock-the-rafters or tug-the-heartstrings classic). Some of my harshest criticisms focus on mediocre preaching — and in my opinion there is plenty of it our there!  And that’s not all.

Another pet peeve that irritates me are lectors who do a crappy job of proclaiming the Scriptures. Too often they seem unprepared and clueless about what they are reading. Too often that’s what it is — just reading, and it may as well be the weather report or assembly instructions for your Weber grill.

Today I found my hackles rising and my stomach tighten as the lector rattled off the Old Testament reading. I was really annoyed when he then reappeared to do the reading from Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians. Then something happened! It was external, not something I initiated. I heard, “Stop! Just stop!”

The images of the first Christmas, not the one just celebrated, flashed back. Simplicity. Poverty. Away from home. A simple, insignificant young woman. A nobody carpenter. Events occurring, not in cosmopolitan Jerusalem, but quietly nine miles away in the backwater outpost, Bethlehem.  World-shattering events, done poorly by my sophisticated standards.

If I cannot hear the Word proclaimed in a hurry, without polish, less than perfectly I would most certainly pass right by the inauspicious stable of Jesus’ actual birth! At least that’s what I heard when I was asked to stop my harsh, judgmental criticisms.

Then I heard something else, not a judgment but an invitation. A consoling voice reminding me that the most polished oration is no match for simple living.  A gentle questioner whispered, “How’re you doing with giving flesh, embodying, living the Word?” I felt exposed, though not embarrassed; admonished, but with my self esteem intact.

For the first time this season I really experienced Christmas — God’s Word laboring to take flesh in our world. Yes, even in me!

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Alone in Good Company

Simply profound and profoundly simple…

Long ago the Roman stoic philosopher Cato said that “he was never so busy as when he did nothing, and never less solitary than when he was alone.”
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Attributed to Cato by Cicero, De Republica 1.7, trans. Francis Barham. My source is: Monastic Practices,Revised Edition, Charles Cummings, OCSO. Collegeville, MN: Cistercian Publications, Liturgical Press, 2015, p. 49.

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The Disney Effect

The resonance came as a surprise! Something about China captured my imagination and interest at a deep, visceral level. I’ve had the very good fortune of visiting many more countries than I could ever have imagined as a kid. But China was different, unique, unforeseen despite my eagerness to go.

Lingering impressions continue to resonate during these days since my return. The Great Wall, the terra-cotta warriors of Xian — so much about this ancient culture — predates the birth of Jesus. How could such an impactful immersion in another culture not color the way I experienced Christmas this year.

Certainly an especially impactful ingredient was going with my 14 year-old grandnephew. Except for James, it was a pretty “mature” bunch of 25 in our tour group. Seeing his jaw drop, attempting to keep up with his pace, witnessing his insatiable curiosity, marveling at his perfectly expressed one-word sentences enhanced my experience beyond measure.

What is it about the young and old together? Unbridled energy, their sponge-like capacity to absorb facts catalyze with our more sedate wisdom and broader perspective regarding the singular and the paradoxical. We need both! Each is exponentially enhanced by the other. Call it the “Disney effect” — that which grandparents report when they accompany their grandchildren to Disneyland.

Much of this came rushing back today when reading one of my favorite blogs. Kayla McClurg offers a fresh, relevant and insightful reflection on today’s Gospel from the Common Lectionary. Yes, the finding of Jesus in the Temple brought me back to my China adventure with James.

Perhaps you will recognize a familiar but unforeseen connection in your relationship with the indispensable young people in your life:

The common idea is that children have much to learn from us, and should be always taking our direction and listening to our wisdom, but we adults have much to learn from and about our children as well. What a difference it makes to pause and listen. What might they be trying to communicate through their wayward words and actions. What looks like mischief might be an emerging creativity; what sounds like ‘talking back’ could be the clumsy beginnings of deeply felt expression; what seem to be displays of disobedience might be signs of their listening to inner guidance. Or not. We can never be sure. We can only be companions to the mystery, a steady presence, guiding by walking alongside.

“Why were you searching for me?” Jesus asks his bewildered parents. “Did you not know where I must be?” To really know the children in our lives is to search continually for them, to lose sight and then to rediscover who they are now. It is to want to know them more, to ask them what matters most, to listen at least as much as we talk. To know them is to enter the temple of their lives and care about their worries and wonders. Because children are not only our future . . . children are our right now. We need each other. What they see and say matter. We are called to do God’s business together.

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Kayla McClurg’s full reflection from which her quote is taken may be found [here]. I recommend her blog, Inward/Outward.  You may sign-up to receive weekly emails with this link.

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Let the Partying Begin!

God, apparently, loves feasting. Nothing secretive or peaceful about it. A brash new star, exotic foreigners, ec­static shepherds, choirs of angels—not just a quiet messen­ger, but hosts of them, pouring through the night sky singing “Glory.” God chose to celebrate this feast “just at the worst time of the year,” to be a light in the darkness, to comfort us on our lonely road, to prove over and over again that the things of the world are good, that fun is an ethical concept. Perhaps this is what is meant by “blessed are the poor”—they know how to feast.

I wish I were able to feast with this extravagant host. I am appalled by my pusillanimous responses: by the minginess of my imagination. I tend to criticize the menu (“virgin birth­ so out of date”) and carp at the behavior of less refined guests (“oh, not ‘Hark-the Herald’ again”). I wear jeans not my wed­ding garment, and I want the children to “calm down” and not wake up too early in the morning.

Of course they should wake up early, of course they should be overexcited, of course they should run amok and tear open their presents with greedy zeal. This is the feast day of a God who so delights in matter, in the stuff of the universe, in bodies, that he plunges into it all head first, and becomes a child. This is the feast day of a God who rips the invisible membrane between time and eternity so heaven floods the world, in an extravagant and abundant tide of love, and the world laps back, carried undiluted to the everlasting ban­quet. The feast of a God who comes into the cold, the dark, the silence of our prosperity and says, “Let’s party.”

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This is only the conclusion of a marvelous piece that first appeared in Commonweal in 1997 and has been reprinted in the current issue. I encourage you to read the full article [here].

 

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Formula for Happy Holiday Gatherings

Here are just a few observations that may be unduly influenced by the social fatigue so common at this time of year. This is a crazy season for holiday gatherings… and we still have Christmas and New Years ahead of us!

So, how are you doing? What do you think? What’s your experience teach? Here’s what’s rumbling in the back of my head…

I too often anticipate parties or family gatherings wondering, “What’s in it for me?”. Experience has taught me that’s a non-starter! I have a better time if my focus is on others and not on myself. A good indicator for me is how much time I spend at the buffet table. If I’m stuffing myself with snacks, treats, sweets and drink it’s time for me to ask, “What hunger am I really trying to feed here?”. It’s time to engage others more and my mouth less.

We all notice the most popular, charismatic people at a party. Some folks are clearly having more fun than others. What’s the difference? What’s their secret? Well, there are multiple answers — personality, temperament, innate abilities. But here’s a pattern to watch… aren’t the people we admire and appreciate most those who always seem to be looking for opportunities to engage others? Maybe you are more virtuous than me, but the most boring and tedious party-goers are those who appear to be interested in talking only about themselves.

So, what are we to talk about? Yes, people are sincerely interested in catching-up. But there is a way of sharing our personal experiences that is open-ended and loops back to the other person. For example, choose to highlight the part of your story that will be of most interest to the other person, something with which they can identify and perhaps expand upon. Then there is simple and gracious habit of sprinkling your story with plenty of open questions. Too many are inhibited by a fear of not knowing what to talk about. The solution to that phobia is to focus on asking the other person “open” questions and then truly listening.

So what’s your experience tell you? What advice would you offer? My final thought is the simple reminder not to allow Scrooge to steal your Christmas or “that tedious uncle” to spoil your family gathering. Choose to be happy, to enjoy yourself!

What my Mom used to say about life applies especially to Christmas… “It’s pretty much what you make of it!”  And that is from a Mom who had little concern for herself but that others enjoy themselves.

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The Subversiveness of Our Wish-List

Despite nostalgic protestations, do we really want to “Keep Christ in Christmas”? Do we realize how subversive that would be to so many of the social customs and family traditions in which we revel at this time of year?  At some deep, desperate level I want to believe we do!

Have we so domesticated the story of Jesus’ birth that we fail to recognize how Christmas really turns our world on its head? Virgin birth? God becoming human? No room in the inn? Birth in a manger. The people in darkness see a great light?

Instead of Christ’s birth truly liberating us, saving us, transforming us; we seem to have turned the original story inside-out and up-side-down. Instead of being the story of our salvation, many if not most of our social customs and religious practices exonerate false gods and verge on a practical atheism.

I have absolutely no valid evidence to make the following claim, but I have a hunch. My gut tells me that the very people who feverishly “worship” at the Twin Cities’ temple of American consumerism — our world famous Mall of America attracts more visitors each year than Disneyland! — are the very people who most vehemently protest to “Keep Christ in Christmas!” Yes, such is the state of our cultural agnosticism, our alienation from the true revelation of the Christmas story.

This is not meant to throw cold water on our family gatherings and holiday revelry. In no way do I want to be Scrooge or an old-curmudgeon! But let us at least acknowledge that we too are a people who walk in darkness. We too reside in a world in desperate need of a savior. Such is the basis for an even more celebratory Christmas, our recognition of the sheer gratuity of this grace-filled season.

Each faltering impulse, every nostalgic appeal, to “Keep Christ in Christmas” is truly an expression of a deeper personal and collective need — our persistent yearning for a savior, one other than ourselves to keep us from drowning in frenetic consumption and feverish idolatry, to bring us back to the truth of who we are as human beings.

Onto such as these — us — a child is given, a son is born, who is Christ the Lord.