Pathways To Heaven

Photo by VISION Vocation Guide, via Flickr

We had a pretty good discussion here last week on the topic of marriage and whether there is only one man for one woman. As I was writing, I knew I was spending too much time on one part of what I was trying to communicate, but not until later did I realize I had buried the really important point. So I decided to revisit it today–briefly. (No epic-length post today, I promise!)

The quotes I shared about marriage were actually made in the context of a discussion of vocation to consecrated life:

“Usually, in refusing (a vocation) from God, a person finds his or her path to heaven more difficult. It is not so much that there is only one way to heaven for each of us. But it seems that God calls us to the best possible vocation suited to our personalities and talents.

“God would never violate his own creative act by compelling human persons to act in a certain way. This is why God tolerates the choice to sin. … Therefore, there must be more than one possible path to heaven for each of us, although for each of us there is a best vocation.” (ToB/Hogan, p. 155)

This is the point I was hoping to make last week, and I got off-track by spinning out my neurosis about marriage as an example. It’s a big deal to discern a vocation, but sometimes we leave kids with the impression that if we incorrectly identify GOD’S WILL FOR MY LIFE, we’re just basically screwed (pardon my language). Like, if we get it wrong, we’ll never be able to get to Heaven because we aren’t following GOD’S WILL FOR MY LIFE.

Once you put it in those terms it’s kind of obviously nonsensical, but does it ever occur to us that maybe people resist the idea of discerning a religious vocation because we make it such a big deal? That maybe they’d rather not risk asking the question and getting the answer “wrong”?

Hogan went on to explain “best vocation” by saying that God calls each of us to our vocation based on our talents and interests; a person who isn’t good with kids might not be well-suited to marriage, for instance…but all is not lost if that person does get married–it’s just that the path to Heaven is harder, because the daily demands of life are going to push their buttons more. Likewise, someone called to marriage might not function as well in the priesthood, because loneliness might be a heavy burden–but it’s not impossible, it’s just harder. So it’s okay to step out and discern, because that’s the point of seminary or novitiate–to ask the question, and learn by living out the life whether it is or isn’t meant for you.

That, in the end, was what I was getting at by saying this was such a liberating idea.

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Published in: on January 22, 2013 at 8:12 am  Comments (1)  
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A Word For A New Year: Charity

Plus haut

Plus haut (Photo credit: iko)

I love the idea of celebrating New Years, but in reality the idea’s not even on the table anymore. Last night we went to bed at 10:30 and called it an hour late…because by eleven Nicholas woke up with a nightmare, and when the fireworks hit at midnight Michael woke up scared. And then there were the “Happy New Year!” text messages beeping on Christian’s phone. (Face palm.)

Well, in any case, it’s just ahead of six a.m. on New Years Day, 2013, and here I sit, reflecting forward. For the last few Januaries many of my bloggy friends have been choosing a word for the year, a word to direct their spiritual focus for the coming months. I’ve never participated before, but there’s been a word rattling around in my head for the last several weeks, consistently enough for me to recognize the Spirit at work. The word is charity.

Charity is a funny word. My whole life I’ve associated it with giving money to those in need, but in Scriptural terms it’s used interchangeably with “love.” It makes sense; love is a series of choices and actions, so it should naturally bear itself out in giving.

But there’s still another definition. For me, charity is a call to change my heart.

I’ve fussed often enough on this blog about the way we talk to each other in the modern world: the vitriol, the rigid mindset that causes us to dig in at the extremes of any political, philosophical or religious disagreement. A mindset in which we make assumptions about others’ thoughts and motivations and pass snap judgment based upon assumptions, sound bites and half-truths, while simultaneously refusing to recognize our own self-righteousness in doing so. It’s a state of mind and heart that shreds others’ human dignity, and as such it stands contrary to what we believe as Christians.

But you know, what a person focuses on sheds a great deal of light on their own mindset. I’ve said it a lot recently: religious writing is like one ongoing examination of conscience. And I’m at least as guilty of these sins as anyone I call to task for them. Charity for me this year means changing my internal monologue from judgment to acceptance. It means giving people the benefit of the doubt instead of assuming the worst about their beliefs, motivations and actions. It is an exercise in finding Christ in others, and in myself.

And it’s probably the hardest task I’ve ever set myself for a new year.

(Others are sharing their word-of-the-year here.)

Published in: on January 1, 2013 at 8:37 am  Comments (5)  
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Who Are We Dressing Up For, Anyway?

Photo by dullhunk, via Flickr

There’s a topic that people of faith spend a lot of time fretting over: what we wear to church. I did a search this morning and came up with a very revealing list of online articles. Clearly, a lot of Christians are incredibly concerned about what everyone else wears to church on Sundays.

But a post I read late last week raised a good question, namely: who are we really dressing up for?

I was taught that you wear your best to church on Sunday because God is the most important person in your life, and that’s how you show respect for Him. Over the years, I’ve gnashed my teeth as much as anyone else about the increasing trend toward casual dress at church. People dress up for funerals and weddings and going to work, but not for Sunday–what’s up with that? If you respect your job enough to dress in a suit, you sure ought to be dressing up that much for God! Hello!

But as time goes by, I’m moderating my thinking. Because let’s face it, it really isn’t any of my business what anyone else wears on Sundays. What we wear is only important because it might be indicative of a person’s internal state of mind. In other words, how much you bother to dress up might indicate how important you think the occasion is. Might.

But.

It’s not God who expects us to dress up. God made us naked, remember? The only reason we wear clothes at all is because after the Fall, we can’t look at the body with the appropriate mindset. The obsession with what is and isn’t proper church attire really has no Godly connection at all–it’s entirely a worldly one. We dress up for church because human beings place importance on clothes. Not because God does. More and more, I’m coming to believe that when I wag my finger about what others wear, it’s a sign that my mind is in the wrong place.

I will continue to dress up for church every week, because this is one way I can show respect for the God I’m coming to worship. I will teach my children to show respect for God by dressing up for church. But I’m no longer going to obsess about what other people wear to church on Sundays. Frankly, it’s just none of my business.

Published in: on December 4, 2012 at 7:20 am  Comments (21)  
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When You Pray…

It’s been a crazy weekend, and today’s slated to be an even crazier day, so I’m pulling one out of the archives today. Be back tomorrow with fresh thoughts!

***

“Pray without ceasing.” I Thessalonians 5:17

The Angelus by Millet ca 1857

I’ve known a lot of faithful people in my life. And one of the most striking things I have noticed is that it’s frighteningly easy to abuse faith. To turn it into an idol of its own.

Maybe I should be more specific. It’s easy to abuse religious practice. Like prayer, for instance.

I’ve known people who substitute prayer for action. I’ve known people who go for quantity of words, as if they think if they go on long enough, they’ll beat God into submission. I’ve known people who go for flowery language, thinking it makes their prayers more important. I’ve known people who use prayer, consciously or unconsciously, as a way to lecture other people in the room. (I should add that at least once in every category above, “people” refers to me.)

“Some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.” Garth Brooks

And I’ve known people who have bought into the idea of the unanswered prayer. This is one of my biggest pet peeves, because there is no such thing. That lesson, learned in my youngest elementary school days at Catholic school, still forms my world view. God answers every prayer. Every one. But sometimes, the answer is “no.”

And sometimes, the answer is “not yet.”

“If I really wanted to pray I’ll tell you what I’d do. I’d go out into a great big field alone or into the deep, deep woods, and I’d look up into the sky – up – up – up- into that lovely blue sky that looks like there’s no end to its blueness. And then I’d just feel a prayer.” Anne Shirley

At some point in my life, someone offered this “formula” for prayer:

First praise, then thanksgiving, and then (and only then), petition.

I struggled for years with the difference between praise and thanksgiving, but finally my daughter taught me the answer to that one.

The trouble is with that last bit. The petition bit. The part that overwhelms prayer for most of us.

The trouble is that we grow up with a wrong-headed idea of what prayer is supposed to do. Prayer isn’t about changing God’s mind. I mean, do you REALLY think you’re going to change the mind of the maker of the entire universe? If that was even possible, I’d lose my faith instantly; who can depend on a God that fickle?

No, prayer is about changing me. It is a lesson in humility, an opportunity to stretch my soul by bending my will to someone else’s. It’s about shifting my attitude from what I want, what I need, what I fear, to what God wants. To what God is asking of me.

That kind of prayer is a lot harder. But it’s also liberating.

I learned the power of this prayer during three years of infertility, when all my life was consumed by the desperate desire for a child. It was such a bruising experience, to pray two dozen times a day, every day for three years, for the same thing, and never once to hear a “yes” in reply. That is spiritual exercise of the most powerful kind. I thought I would never know the reason why God said “not yet” for so long. But in time, that question was answered, too.

“Pray without ceasing.” I Thessalonians 5:17

When I was a kid, I used to hear that quote and shake my head. What a boring life. Are you supposed to just live on your knees? But now I understand that life itself can be a prayer. It doesn’t have to be formal. It doesn’t have to be eloquent. It doesn’t need words at all. It begins with praise, it continues with thanksgiving, and ends with “Thy Will be done.”

And when I manage to live up to it…it works for me.

Published in: on April 30, 2012 at 5:12 am  Leave a Comment  
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Bigger Than Me

After two blissful weeks of uninterrupted sleep, Michael started waking to nurse again. I took it philosophically, because I’d been expecting it–I’ve said often enough that sleeping through the night is a myth–and these days he mixes it up; a night or two on, a night or two off.

This was an “on” night, and his roommate (Julianna) pulled a drama number at 4:30 a.m. and woke him up, so it was, in fact, a double-nursing night…something I don’t take so philosophically. I sat in my nursing chair while he wiggled and pushed his legs against the spindles, mostly playing around while my temper shortened with the dwindling minutes till morning. He needs his nails clipped…badly. And he likes to grab things these days. Sometimes he gets my shirt, but more often he goes for skin, and pulls the breast right out of his mouth. Repeatedly. After he’s torn the skin to shreds, of course.

So as often as he’ll consent, I grab his hand and let him hold my thumb. And as I sat there in the murky quiet of early morning, I suddenly saw the scene from his point of view. I saw the absolute trust, the craving for closeness with something Bigger Than Me. So much bigger, in fact, that his entire hand will wrap around its thumb. So big that it can protect him from the terrorizing of older siblings, and the specter of loneliness. So big that it fills up most of his world.

It occurred to me then that this is the source of faith, the first way in which our longing for God manifests itself. What do we adults have that can compare to that experience of infancy? We long for the security being cared for, too, and we long for Someone so big that we can rest upon that person. But it isn’t the same, because the physical Being is missing. We can’t snuggle up to God and wrap ourselves around a divine hand, knowing because of what we can see and touch that we’re safe. As adults, we have to reach into our souls and our intellects, to see God present in the beauty and power of nature and in the presence of community and supernatural Presence at church. In our “show-me” world, those connections are held suspect, even by those of us who believe them sincerely. We’d like more, and the frustration of knowing we can’t have it leads everyone to question at some point, and many to turn their backs.

It’s good that we grow and become parents ourselves, that we can see these moments in a new way and recognize the truths in them, truths we might otherwise lose touch with.

Published in: on April 18, 2012 at 7:14 am  Comments (3)  
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Does Jesus Laugh?

Jesus

Image by glasgow's finest via Flickr

On Saturday night I was singing Julianna through hair washing (“I’ve got that joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart!”) when Alex turned to me and launched into an unfinished conversation from the day before. “Mommy, we don’t sing that Devil verse at school because it would be wrong.”

I paused in the middle of “If the Devil doesn’t like it he can sit on a tack—ouch!” (Julianna’s reward verse for getting through the rest of the torture. It makes her giggle.) “What do you mean?”

“I mean, we can’t sing that at church!” He looked appalled by the very thought. Somewhere deep in my gut, I felt a disturbing flutter. “Well,” I said, “I don’t know that I ever sang it at church when I was little, either. But Alex, church isn’t supposed to be all gloom and doom.”

He looked at me like I was completely nuts. “It’s supposed to be…” He couldn’t find the word, but I knew what he was searching for.

BORING.

IRRELEVANT.

I wasn’t about to fill those words in for him.

There are so many ways to skew how we approach God. An acquaintance of mine once told me, “A person’s faith ought to be a comfort to them, not a source of misery.” The point being that faith should never require suffering or challenge you to do anything you don’t want to do. There’s a strong movement in the world in which church is entertainment—I heard recently of a church where the cross isn’t even used, because it might “make people uncomfortable, and we want all to be welcome.”

On the other hand, there is a strong reaction to all this which focuses myopically on formality, on sacredness—to the point where it’s viewed as disrespectful at least, and perhaps sacrilegious, to crack a smile, to play an upbeat song, or to speak above a whisper.

Believing that God lies squarely in the middle on this topic as almost every other, I find myself continually frustrated. But to see the dawning of POV #2 in my own child brings me to a whole new level of soul disturbance. God created us as people who love laughter and companionship. And since we’re created in God’s image, doesn’t that say something pretty important about God?

At first, casting about for explanation, my mind settled on the strict regimen of behavior expected at parochial school. But as Alex stood beside me during Mass yesterday, his nose pressed to the shiny lacquer of the piano his daddy was playing, looking at reflections of his face and the ceiling in its depths—and more importantly, as we tried to scold him into paying attention—I realized that we bear a large portion of the blame, too.

Not so long ago, I read somewhere that when we’re trying to make the liturgy “relevant” for our young people, the opposite of boring is not entertaining, but meaningful. That’s what I want for my children. Alex shows some really wonderful early signs of reaching that goal—he’s trying to listen to Paul’s brutally convoluted rhetoric and make sense of it, and when he doesn’t (which is every week, of course), he tugs on my arm and says plaintively, “I don’t understand.” I love that about him.

But I think as his parents, we have a huge role in this too. Guidance and formation might happen without us…but it’s not very likely.

“Alex,” I said, “you know, Jesus didn’t walk around being all solemn all the time. He loved to laugh and tell jokes. Jesus was a human being, too.”

Two little ones screamed for attention then, and we never finished the conversation. But maybe that’s okay. Because this isn’t really a conversation that ever gets “finished,” is it?

Published in: on November 21, 2011 at 6:27 am  Comments (19)  
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Blowing In the Wind

The smell caught me…that distinct, absolutely divine scent that only comes in the fall, the smell of dead leaves. I think of Anne Shirley rhapsodizing over dead fir leaves, and her friends thinking it somehow unholy to think of things dead in Heaven. I think it’s just one of those “Yay God”-worthy moments, realizing that God can take death and make something so beautiful of it.

Alex has been waiting for the chance to jump in the leaves. Julianna has been waiting for the chance to plunge through them and kick them up, just like her mommy loves to do in the fall. Nicholas is ready to follow his siblings’ lead, wherever it takes him.

The sun shines warm, tempered by the chill of a wind waiting to steal the warmth as evening draws near. The smell drifts upward as I crouch close to the ground with the camera.

Time to dig small hands in the leaves, to crinkle them beneath fingernails, and fling them skyward.

Yay God, indeed.

Shared with Wordful Wednesday at Angie’s Seven Clown Circus.

Published in: on November 16, 2011 at 4:43 am  Comments (6)  
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Time, Talent, Pride

“The one who had received five talents came forward
bringing the additional five.
He said, ‘Master, you gave me five talents.
See, I have made five more.’
His master said to him, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant.
Since you were faithful in small matters,
I will give you great responsibilities.
Come, share your master’s joy.”

(Mt. 25)

“Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.”

(Lk. 12:48)

God is busy, may I help you?

Not long ago, I came across a blog post that asked, “How big is your plate?” She was reflecting on busyness and how we prioritize our commitments. How to set limits, to say enough is enough, I can’t do any more. I thought of my mother telling me, “You can do many ministries consecutively, but not necessarily concurrently.”

Among people of faith, there’s a strong predisposition to encourage women to focus on the vocation, or ministry, of motherhood, and to lay the rest of it aside until that commitment is largely fulfilled. But as I was pondering last week, if we’re given gifts—talents (how interesting it is that the word should be translated that way!)—are we not meant to use them all? And if we simply ignore them for a couple of decades, aren’t we, in effect, burying them?

That is the question each one of us faces. Where do we draw the line between giving back/paying forward the gifts we have been given, and thinking the world can’t possibly get by without our particular charism? One is stewardship; the other is pride. And it’s really easy to stray across the line.

A few years ago I probably would have built a big soapbox and tried to tell the world how to tell the difference. But like another blog friend, the more I learn about God, the less certain I am of anything except that absolute certainty is more likely to be a harbinger of pride than stewardship. I can’t claim to know where anyone else’s line is drawn. I can only do my utmost to stay on the right side of it in my own life…and to correct course when it becomes clear I’ve wandered into the path of oncoming traffic.

Published in: on November 13, 2011 at 8:19 pm  Comments (13)  
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A Dangerous Prayer

Photo by wenzday01 via Flickr

At 9:55 a.m. on a Sunday morning, we wrestled one unwilling girl and two boys along for the ride up the mauve-carpeted aisle to the empty front pew beside the music area. Christian put a protesting Julianna at the end by the teen ensemble, where she could have maximum exposure to the music. The community hummed around us as the kids unpacked the church books. Alex shoved The Clown of God into my hand, and even though I hate that book, even though we really don’t read to the kids anymore at church, I obliged, since there were still five minutes before Mass started.

When the guitar began—a very distinct strum pattern—my ears perked up. I knew it, but I couldn’t place it until the teens began singing: Open the eyes of my heart, Lord…

I closed the book, but the music peeled off into silence; they were only checking sound. It was Communion before the song resurfaced, and the arrangement of the pew had shifted; after wrestling Julianna up to Communion, she sat at my end of the row. I closed my eyes and tried to internalize the prayer.

Open the eyes of my heart, Lord, open the eyes of my heart. I want to see you. I want to see you.

It took all of three seconds to realize that this is a very dangerous prayer. Dangerous, because to be open to God is to see things that force us to rethink our most cherished convictions. Any philosophy, any belief, any certainty—however pure and noble and holy—can become an idol, fixed in stone and incapable of responding to a reality that is in constant motion. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong, it just means that it’s become self-serving instead of God-centered. The hallmark of spiritual growth is uncertainty, a painful awareness of how much we don’t know, and a longing, a questing, to understand more, to embrace the unknowing.

I’m going through one of those soul-stretching times right now, largely off the radar of this blog, because the subjects are too personal. Insights into the nature of oneself never come singly; they always pile one atop the next until I’m sure the tower must come tumbling down into a pile of rubble, burying me in the collapse.

Of course, it never does. I’m always grateful for soul-stretching…after it’s done. In the middle of it, not so much. It’s more like a scrabble for traction at the edge of a cliff. But, like seeking a fourth pregnancy, even though large parts of my mind cried out, “Enough!”, being open to God is a conscious choice to look big picture, to focus long-term instead of allowing myself to be overwhelmed by the difficulty of the present.

It would be easier to build my beliefs and philosophies around me. But I know that doing so will only trap me inside, until I discover, too late, that God is all around, and I’m on the wrong side of the wall to meet Him. And so I won’t close the door on further stretching. I’ll keep praying that dangerous prayer. I’ll keep questioning, and seeking, and living with uncertainty, in the hopes that as I stumble along, a power greater than me will keep me from hurtling into the abyss to either side.

On In Around button 

Published in: on August 15, 2011 at 7:12 am  Comments (8)  
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