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Day 7: Sunday

Sunday 22 March 2020

With the diocese of Charleston making the decision to close all churches in the current emergency, today had a different feel from most Sundays and a somewhat different feel from the previous six days.

Previous six days? Has this only been going on a week? It was indeed a week ago that we learned the governor of South Carolina was closing all schools for the rest of the month, but I swear it feels like that was weeks ago. I know it’s been going on for several months now with the original outbreak in China, and while I’m tempted to go on a rant here about how much time we wasted between that initial outbreak in China and even a week ago when everything started shutting down all because our narcissistic shallow president views everything as if it’s about him and went so far as to call the pandemic a hoax at one of his rallies and still behaves as if this will all blow over because he’s now taking it seriously and pretending to put some resources into it — no, I’ll resist that urge and simply point out that it feels like it’s been longer than a week.

First, there was no church — no Mass at a church, that is. Second, there was church — something like it, a series of readings and a recorded homily that Kinga, the kids, and Papa did while I was out taking the dog for a walk. It just didn’t feel like a Sunday.

Is it possible that someone could look at this and understand how much exponentially worse it could get with a different virus with, say, a 60% death rate and understand that something like that could very well lurking in our future and still, understanding that a belief in God would necessitate an acceptance that God would have also created such a virus, it would have been in his plan, part of his mysterious ways — could someone hold all this in their head and still believe in a benevolent god? Thinking how relatively mild this is compared to what could be or even has been makes it all but impossible for me.

Another change: we got a new hot water heater installed today. We’ve been wanting to do it for some time, and I’ve had a feeling that our old heater was going to malfunction any day. The guys who did the installation for us — the guys who did the renovation of the carport, turning it into Papa’s room — were going to come next week, but with so much uncertainty, they decided to come today. We’re expecting a significant drop in our power bill as this was our last power-hungry appliance/system in our house. Changing the HVAC system cut our power bill by 30-50% (depending on the usage); this change should result in additional significant savings considering the heater dates from 1992 — the year after I graduated from high school.

Why am I so negative about all this? Why do I see only gray to any silver lining? It’s my eternal battle.

In the afternoon, the kids and I went out in the backyard to — guess — shoot. The dog does not like when we shoot as she gets stuck up on the deck for her own good…

E and I have figured out that if we fire toward something a little bit darker than the surrounding area, we can actually follow the flight of the bb, so we’ve taken to firing into the forest behind our neighbor’s house on occasion. We’ve also been trying to shoot from various positions in the yard, all of them significantly farther away from where we normally shoot. And we still take shots at the dog’s fetch ball because, well, why not?

After shooting, the Girl decided to bake a cake. The aesthetics were something like I would produce, but that comes with time. The taste is all that matters, and I think we all agreed: it was delicious.

Random day, random thoughts.

Passing

Wednesday 5 February 2020

I learned this evening that the pastor who led our local little congregation of the WCG when I was a teenager died recently. Nana and Papa had heard years ago from their connections that the man had Alzheimer’s or some other form of dementia, and that’s what one obit said about him:

R spent his life in the ministry, lastly in the Living Church of God. Due to his ailment, he was retired but continued to attend until his condition did not allow him that freedom.

The church I grew up in held some fairly heterodox beliefs, including the one that its members (at most 150,000 worldwide) were the only true Christians and everyone else, unbeknownst to them, was worshipping Satan and through his “counterfeit Christianity.”

When I read Peter Berger’s work on the sociology of knowledge (especially his books The Social Construction of Reality and The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Social Theory of Religion), I felt he’d looked directly into my youth and described what I’d experienced. When you hold a view that’s in the cognitive minority, Berger explained, it’s difficult to maintain that view. Everyone else says you’re wrong. You either adopt the prevailing view or you insulate yourself with what Berger called plausibility structures — rituals and such that reinforce the heterodox ideas you hold and make them seem plausible in the face of a majority who says you’re wrong. One of the most basic plausibility structures is the cognitive ghetto: you isolate yourself from others physically and mentally to avoid contact with contaminated “others,” who might introduce new ideas that lead to doubt.

Our church did this exceptionally well. We had our own little culture with its own vocabulary, customs, retreats, and other structures that kept the perverted world with their Satanic ideas at bay.

Ministers in this church enforced this isolation with varying degrees of severity and using various leadership methods. It was not uncommon to find very authoritarian and controlling people drawn to the ministry of this organization as a result.

Growing up, I had contact with a number of these ministers and heard about others. Some of them ruled as an autocrat. Many of them were controlling, manipulative, and destructive.

R was none of these.

Certainly, he enforced the rules of the main organization, but there was a gentleness about him that was unlike many of the other ministers. He didn’t seem like he was on a power trip like so many of the pastors in the church did. He seemed humble, and he could certainly laugh at himself — a rarity in ministers in that sect. One online memorial expressed it succinctly: “He brought a new way of looking at things, he encouraged the entire congregation to try new things.”

I became close friends with his sons and spent countless weekends with their family in high school. He and his wife were always kind to me and the other teens in the church.

In the early- and mid-90s, the main organization went through some doctrinal changes that led ultimately to the breakup of the church. “It turns out, we were wrong — we aren’t the only Christians” seemed to be the overriding theme. “All these heterodox beliefs — they’re pretty daft as well.” Several groups splintered off in efforts to hold fast to the truth once delivered.

My parents accepted the changes; R and his family did not. For years I never heard from any of them.

I found myself thinking, “How could our friendship mean so little to them? How could they just let that all disappear? Were we friends only because we believed the same things?” I knew the answers. Instantly we were outside their cognitive ghetto; we were the other; we were heterodox, unkosher, unclean. Dangerous.

Then in the early 2000s, I found R’s email address on the internet and had a brief exchange with him. I was curious about why he stayed with the original beliefs; he was curious about why we left. We had a few exchanges and then as often happens, it ended rather suddenly for no real reason. What really did we have to say to each other, after all?

When Nana passed, I wondered if he and his wife (rumor had it they’d separated, even divorced, but the obituary I found indicates otherwise — or at least that she kept his name) had found out about her passing. My folks were close with them, and I know the dissolution of their friendship due to no-differing theological views pained them greatly.

In my interactions with R, though, I came to see that it pained them too, though in a different way. How could we turn our back on the truth we’d once held? How could we come out of the world (“the world” was the generic term for the non-member hordes) and then go right back into it? How could we hold the key to becoming God as God is God (but not quite — hey, I said it was quite heterodox but you probably weren’t thinking that heterodox) and then give it away?

In truth, it was the church that brought us together and provided the catalyst that we used to break ourselves apart. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. But is that really any different from how other friendships come and go? Except for the handful of true, deep friendships we have, don’t we all move through relationships in the same way, regardless of religious belief or other baggage?

I do this on a smaller scale with 130+ students every single year. I get to know them; I get to like them; I don’t consider them friends, but they’re more than just students. And then they’re gone. And truth be told, I can’t remember most of their names initially when the handful comes back for a visit. “What’s your name again?” I ask with some embarrassment.

Blessing 2020

Tuesday 28 January 2020

I first noticed it at a friend’s house. Above one of the doors were some numbers and letters, and I thought it was perhaps a marking left behind during construction — some kind of measurement or something. Of course, the house in question was long finished: it was not one of the half-built, “raw” houses that dotted the road that ran through Lipnica. This was a fully completed house, but I didn’t really think about that. I just didn’t have any idea why someone would write something in chalk on the wall.

And then I married a Polish Catholic and found out: it’s the indication of the blessing of the house.

I’ve grown much more skeptical in the last few years and tend to have to fight the temptation to view these things as I once did, which is not all that positively. To begin with, the priest is supposed to do it. Our priest leaves a basket of blessed chalk in the church narthex with a card that includes instructions and the prayers. This year, we didn’t get the blessed chalk, so we just used chalk that we bought at Walmart. Does that make a difference? Ontologically, it should: if not blessing it didn’t make a difference, why bless it to begin with? And what exactly does blessing the chalk do? Is it possible to discern the difference between blessed and unblessed chalk?

There’s not even consensus about the origin and meaning of what one writes in chalk:

The origin of this ritual comes from eastern Europe where homeowners mark their doors with the sign 20+C+M+B=(year). CMB are the initials of the three Wise Men: Caspar, Melchoir and Balthasar who are remembered on the Feast of Epiphany.

Another interpretation given of this sign is: Christus Mansionem Bededicat (Christ Blesses this Mansion). We welcome you to bless your home for the New Year using the blessed chalk and rite given below:

One person makes the inscription with chalk above the door (20+C+M+B+14), while another proclaims the corresponding words: The three Wise Men, Caspar, Melchoir, and Balthasar followed the star of God’s son who became Man (20) two thousand years ago. (+) May Christ bless our dwelling (+) and remain with us throughout the New Year.

If we don’t know what it means, doesn’t that kind of make it, well, useless?

Perhaps. Perhaps not. Perhaps what’s more important is the unity involved in the process, both in the blessing itself and in the overarching idea. It keeps us thinking about the house as not just as a building, a location, but as a home, an idea.

Stoned

Tuesday 9 April 2019

Sunday’s gospel left me troubled.

and Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. At daybreak he appeared in the Temple again; and as all the people came to him, he sat down and began to teach them. The scribes and Pharisees brought a woman along who had been caught committing adultery; and making her stand there in the middle they said to Jesus, ‘Master, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery, and in the Law Moses has ordered us to stone women of this kind. What have you got to say?’ They asked him this as a test, looking for an accusation to use against him. But Jesus bent down and started writing on the ground with his finger. As they persisted with their question, he straightened up and said, ‘Let the one among you who is guiltless be the first to throw a stone at her.’ Then he bent down and continued writing on the ground. When they heard this they went away one by one, beginning with the eldest, until the last one had gone and Jesus was left alone with the woman, who remained in the middle. Jesus again straightened up and said, ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’ No one, sir,’ she replied. ‘Neither do I condemn you,’ said Jesus. ‘Go away, and from this moment sin no more.’

A number of things trouble me about this, ways in which it seems Jesus failed to act morally.

To begin with, here he has an opportunity to condemn the unspeakably barbaric act of stoning, undoubtedly one of the brutal ways to kill another human being, and he says nothing. “What have you got to say?” ask the scribes and Pharisees, and Jesus should have answered with a clear, unequivocal condemnation of the act itself.

The obvious answer is that, if Jesus was God, he was responsible for the Old Testament, which prescribes stoning for a number of offenses. It was his idea to begin with, in other words. It’s littered throughout the Old Testament and is always commanded or condoned:

  • Achan … took of the accursed thing. … And all Israel stoned him with stones, and burned them with fire, after they had stoned them with stones. … So the LORD turned from the fierceness of his anger. Joshua 7:1-26
  • And he that blasphemeth the name of the LORD, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him. Leviticus 24:16
  • If a damsel that is a virgin be betrothed unto an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her; Then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones that they die; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city. Deuteronomy 22:23-24
  • If any man take a wife, and go in unto her, and hate her … and say, I took this woman, and when I came to her, I found her not a maid: Then shall the father of the damsel, and her mother, take and bring forth the tokens of the damsel’s virginity unto the elders of the city in the gate: And the damsel’s father shall say … these are the tokens of my daughter’s virginity. And they shall spread the cloth before the elders of the city. … But if this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel: Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die. Deuteronomy 22:13-21
  • If there be found among you … that … hath gone and served other gods, and worshipped them … Then shalt thou … tone them with stones, till they die. Deuteronomy 17:2-5
    If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers … thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die. Deuteronomy 13:5-10
  • If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother … Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city … And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die. Deuteronomy 21:18-21
  • A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with stones: their blood shall be upon them. Leviticus 20:27
  • Whosoever … giveth any of his seed unto Molech; he shall surely be put to death: the people of the land shall stone him with stones. Leviticus 20:2
  • They found a man that gathered sticks upon the sabbath day. … And the LORD said unto Moses, The man shall be surely put to death: all the congregation shall stone him with stones…. And all the congregation brought him without the camp, and stoned him with stones, and he died; as the LORD commanded Moses. Numbers 15:32-56
  • Thou didst blaspheme God and the king. And then carry him out, and stone him, that he may die. 1 Kings 21:10

Another issue: this is the story of “the woman taken in adultery” — where’s the man? (I’m presuming it was a man because were it a lesbian encounter, I’m certain the scribes and Pharisees would have eagerly pointed that out.) Why did Jesus not bring them to task for their blatant misogyny?

Questions without answers. Well, without answers that most believers would find palatable, I think.

Wigilia 2016

Saturday 24 December 2016

What makes this Saturday different from any other Saturday? If I look back at Saturdays over the course of my life, what a change I see. How I spent my Saturdays when I was my children’s age is so very different from how they spend they theirs. Better? In a way. Worse? Also true, in a way.

The Boy started the day with a speech for us all.
The Boy started the day with a speech for us all.

If K were to take the time to look back over the Saturdays of her life and compare them to what her children do, how they spend Saturday, there too would be enormous change. Better? In a way. Worse? Also true, in a way.

The point is, K and I are both in a place in our life that we probably never would have imagined when we were our children’s age. Both of our lives at their age were about waiting, in a sense. K and her family were often waiting in lines in still-Communist Poland; I was waiting for the end and a new beginning.

Finished zakwas and mushrooms

And yet, there’s still the waiting today. It’s part of life. Waiting for the wild mushrooms (picked in Poland, dried in Babcia’s kitchen, smuggled in our checked luggage, and waiting for months in the freezer) thaw then re-hydrate. Waiting for the zakwas to finish its fermenting so we can have the properly sour barszcz for dinner. Waiting for the prunes, apples, oranges, cloves, cardamom pods, cinnamon sticks, ginger cubes, and brandy to release their magic to make the Christmas kompot.

Magic in a pot

The preparation, the waiting, is itself magical. K keeps everything moving, and I am constantly asking, “What now?” I dice the potatoes for the mushroom soup. “Not too big, not too small.” I hold one cube up.

“They could be a little bigger.” I try again and hold up a cube for inspection.

“That’s a bit too big.” But I don’t mind. I’m just glad that I’ve found a place to help other than taking out the compost again and again — peelings from all the fruits and veggies, then the cooked veggies from the stock, those that won’t go into the salad that is — and cleaning up the house.

Grating beets at a one-second exposure

While all this waiting is going on, there are things to do, of course. The table needs to be set. This is one of the things I leave to K. It’s not that I wouldn’t know how to do it — I’m not that bad. But it’s something K enjoys doing, a creative endeavor as I enjoy creating this site.

Gospel reading for the evening already prepared

We begin with a Gospel reading and sharing the opłatek. The Boy likes the wafer enough that he just sits and eats it as if it were a snack.

The dinner itself goes by in a flash. No matter how we try to slow things down (which we actually did this year), it still seems to go by entirely too quickly. We putting the barszcz on the table, and suddenly it’s desert time. For the kids, that’s a good thing: they can’t wait to tear into their presents. For K, I guess it’s a little bittersweet.

The menu is a traditional one (mouse-over to see details).

Barszcz z uszkami
Kompot made of prunes, apples, and oranges, spiced with cloves, cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, and honey
Zupa grzybowa
Trout with potatoes and Orawian-style beets
Pierogi z kapusta i grzybami
Baltimore-style crap cakes
Makowiec, gwiady betlejemskie, cygan

Dinner over, we head to the living room for presents. Probably this is the best part of the day for the kids: they can’t imagine what it’s like to go to bed Christmas Eve without the presents as we do it Polish style — everything opened tonight.

And I guess, truth be told, it’s everyone else’s favorite as well. The gifts we get? Who cares, really, except for one gift: the kids’ joy. The Girl got what she’s been talking about for ages: a bow and arrow set. When she saw one in Kmart the other day (when we went to find something or other for decorating), she was insistent that we buy it. That she buy it.

“Please Daddy, I have enough money!”

Papa demonstrates proper drawing technique.

But I already knew Nana and Papa had bought a set for her, so I held my ground and played the mean Daddy. “Can we get it after Christmas?” became the mantra, to which I answered, “Nope, probably not.” Now she understands; then, she was just frustrated. Yet another thing Daddy says “No” about.

The four-year-old’s heart’s deepest longing

The Boy’s big prize: a fishing rod from our fishing neighbor. “Oh, I’ve been wanting one of these for years!” he exclaimed.

We talk and laugh, and before anyone knows it, it’s almost time for Christmas vigil Mass. Nana and Papa head home, and we pile into the car and head to our new parish.

Father Longenecker’s homily focuses on the three animals that are traditionally thought to have been in the barn with Mary, Joseph, and the newborn Jesus. There’s the donkey, which seems to symbolize how we’re all so stubborn in a way. Yet it was a donkey that Christ rides into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. There’s a continuity there.

Next, there’s the ox, which usually labors under a yoke. Three decades later, Jesus to his disciples says that “my yoke is sweet and my burden light” and invites the disciples to take up his yoke. But the early Church Fathers saw in this a parallel with taking up the cross of Christ. Just as the older ox in a pair takes the heavier load, so Christ.

Finally, there’s the sheep. This reminds us of the fact that Jesus is both the Good Shepherd and the Agnus Dei. (Below: Penderecki’s Agnus Dei — not from tonight’s Mass.)

In closing, Father speaks of the simple crib the infant Jesus had, a manger. It’s close to “eat” in French, and therefore etymologically related to the Latin, the original language of the Church. The Church Fathers saw this as symbolic too, with the manger foreshadowing an altar and Jesus as the Eucharist.

It’s a blessing to end the evening in such a beautiful space; it’s a blessing to have a priest who gives you something to think about; it’s a blessing to have a choir that sounds like this.

I kneel on the concrete floor, careful to put my left knee down since we don’t have a kneeler as we’re sitting in the overflow seating and I know what will happen if I put any weight on my right knee, and I think back to the beginning of the day, to my thoughts that have been bouncing around all day: what makes this Saturday any different from any other Saturday? We do. Our decision to make it different makes it different. We could abandon all tradition, we could order pizza and watch silly movies, or just go about our day as if it were any other Saturday, but we don’t. And that’s what makes it different.

I look to my fellow parishioners and familiar thoughts swirl about: even if all of this is human-made, even if the wafer the priest holds aloft as the altar server clangs the altar bell remains just a wafer, there is value in all of this, in the singing, in the humbling (after all, isn’t that Christmas is about, the ultimate humbling?) of ourselves, the stopping one day a year and looking about us and seeing all that’s beautiful in the little spheres we orbit.

Previous Years

Wigilia 2003

Wigilia 2004

Wigilia 2005

Wigilia 2006

Wigilia 2007

Wigilia 2008

Wigilia 2009

https://matchingtracksuits.com/2010/12/25/wigilia-2010/

Wigilia 2011

Wigilia 2012

Wigilia 2013

Wigilia 2014

Wigilia 2015

Immaculate

Wednesday 7 December 2016

Tomorrow is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, a holy day of obligation in the Catholic Church, which means you’ve got to go to mass. Our new parish, though, is only have a morning mass, so we went to the vigil mass tonight. At six. Which meant the Boy was ready to go to sleep before mass even began.

The notion of the Immaculate Conception has always confused me, no less now that I’m Catholic. The idea is that, to avoid the “stain of Original Sin” passing on to Jesus, God removed from Mary at her conception original sin. The mechanics of this, as I understand it, involve retroactively applying the salvific nature of her son’s sacrifice to her — which brings about an obvious question: why not just do that to everyone? In the spirit of “fake it until you make it,” I go along with it. But the whole thing leaves me a little off kilter. So, truth be told, does the whole Christian story, and I guess that’s supposed to be the point of it in some sense.

Mary’s holy and immaculate conception, by Francisco Rizi, Museo del Prado, 17th-century, Oil on canvas. Via Wikipedia

There are so few things we encounter these days that we could call “immaculate.” A newborn child. And I sit here, thinking about what I could add as a second item on that list, and even with the thought of adding a qualifying “perhaps,” I’m stuck. Perhaps that’s a good thing. Perhaps that’s what Original Sin is all about. Perhaps it’s human nature. Perhaps Original Sin is human nature. Perhaps it’s not important at 10:50 on a Wednesday.

Part of growing up, I think, is that realization that “immaculate” really doesn’t exist in our world. The natural world is filled with such cruelty, with wasps that plant their eggs in still-living organisms that the larva will literally eat alive — and likely very painfully. Then there are all the natural disasters just waiting to happen, or just happening. Thinking about “immaculate” leads us to think about its opposite, whatever that might be, and perhaps that’s a good thing. Perhaps that’s the point.

Autumn Ritual

Tuesday 14 October 2014

In years past, last Tuesday night’s gathering would have filled a large-capacity auditorium, or even a civic center, like the Scope Arena in Norfolk, Virginia. They would have sat in dozens of rows on the floor, up risers, into the balcony area, and walking into the arena that first night would have produced an excitement in everyone that was audible.

Norfolk_Scope2

Thousands of people, gathering for eight days, in locations all over the world. It would look something like this, except for more formal attire.

8654388381_328f47d1aa_k

Part of my past that I haven’t experienced in almost twenty years as best I can remember. Ninety-five was the last time, I think. Those gatherings have continued through those years, but my trajectory has gone in the opposite direction before veering back to something more like an eighty-degree angle: not quite the same beliefs, but certainly not a denial of all the beliefs.

Those gatherings have continued for the last twenty years, though the single, monolithic church organization that originally held it has splintered into almost countless pieces, with the organization itself changing its name and completely reversing most of its old doctrines — like the required eight-day Old Testament festival observance — so that it is indistinguishable from other mainline Protestant groups. The splinters that fell away have been keeping up the tradition, though, and last Tuesday night, in Bend, Oregon, a pastor opened the gathering with a message that has been repeated every fall with the regularity of the changing leaves.

They’ve been starting like that for decades now — I still wonder every autumn how many more decades it will continue. When will a group that proclaims definitive prophetic events within our generation and has been proclaiming it in vain for something like seventy years (Germany will rise again, don’t you know?) — when will such a group (or in this case, groups) disappear for good? For how long can someone declare that “time is short” and warn people that a great confederation of European nations with Germany and the Vatican at the head will rise up and utterly decimate the United States? At which point does the hypothesis — no, the sure prophecy — become just too ridiculously and obviously wrong for anyone to take seriously?

Temptation

Sunday 24 August 2014

In Mass, there are a lot of temptations every Sunday morning. It really begins well before Mass, when as is always the case, we’re running late. My temper flares, and I have to consciously tell myself that barking out orders won’t make L put her shoes on any faster. But once we’re there, the temptations only increase.

Inordinate pride is a big sticking point. I like to say that my children will be well-behaved in Mass because

  1. they understand the ontological reality of what’s going on there and respect and believe in it;
  2. I am such an awesome parent that I have trained them like good little monkeys; and
  3. I don’t want to disrupt anyone else’s experiences in Mass.

In reality, it’s that second one that gets top billing: I’m just embarrassed because my kid isn’t as saintly as that kid, two pews up, just to the right.

Clothing is another area of temptation. Women come to Mass dressed like they’re going out for a night on the town, and men come dressed like they’re going to the beach or for a hike in the mountains. “Can you believe he/she wore that to Mass?” is on the tip of my tongue, and sometimes the temptation is just too great, and I point out to K the fashion offender. “Don’t they know why we come to Mass?” I always finish, then regret that I even brought it up, that I gave into the temptation.

Then of course there are the temptations of distraction:

  • “Boy, that lector is really stumbling over that reading. Perhaps he should have reviewed more.”
  • “Oh no! She’s singing the responsorial psalm?!”
  • “Dear God in heaven, could he distribute communion any slower?”
  • “Really? Checking Facebook just after receiving the Eucharist?”
  • “Well, if I’d known he was giving the homily, I might have just stayed home.”
  • “Why in the world would anyone select that hymn?”
  • “Doesn’t he know any better than to wipe his nose with his right hand just before we do the sign of peace?”
  • “Cheapskates: they never put anything in the offering basket.”
  • “I’m still kneeling here: you should be too so I don’t have your nasty hair in my face.”
  • “There is nothing in the missal to indicate that we should all be holding hands during the Our Father! Uggh!”
  • “If that kid doesn’t stop putting that kneeler up and down and up and down and up and down, I’m going to…”
  • “Dang, if that guy behind me sang any more off key, he’d be singing in a whole different mode.”
  • “Wow, that’s a big hat.”
  • “Really, only the priest should be praying in the orans position!”
  • “That is just the nastiest perfume on the planet. What is it? Eau de Dead Fish?”
  • “That’s right — do the Judas Shuffle: receive and leave. There’s piety for you.”
  • “You snotty little teenagers: this is the crying room, not the ‘don’t want to sit through Mass and would rather chat it up with my friends’ room.”

Of course in the summer, there’s a whole new batch of temptations, most commonly about clothing selections. It usually goes like this: “He is a grown man, with graying hair and kids who appear college age, and he’s still wearing shorts to Mass? Does he not realize that there comes a time in one’s life when one understands that comfort is not always the be-all, end-all goal in life?” That thought is more often than not amended with, “And he’s wearing flip-flops for heaven’s sake! There’s not a beach within three hours’ drive of here, and even if there were and even if you were going to the beach immediately after Mass, you should be dressed like you’re going to the beach while at Mass especially when you’re a grown man!” Occasionally I can match it with another gripe: “She’s wearing that top to Mass?! Really?” And every now and then, I can tack on one more: “And their teenage daughter is wearing tight short shorts?”

Pride is truly at the heart of all sin.

Gratitude

Sunday 23 February 2014

The small steps one takes to the greater goal: with the Boy today, it struck me that I don’t do enough with him during Mass to help him develop spiritually. I’d fallen into that silly line of thinking that he’s too young to get it. How ridiculous. We’d begun teaching him how to cross himself after dinner prayer. He gets the head — belly and shoulders, not so much. And he ends folding his hands together for “amen.” “If he can get that, of course he can begin other rudiments of the faith.” So today, during the Liturgy of the Eucharist, we knelt together for a moment. He ran his car on the floor after a few seconds, but it’s the small steps.

Small steps can of course grow into gigantic leaps, and Polish Mass today showed that as well. The choir, which began simply as K singing along with the organist, has grown in all senses, so that today the choir boasted seven members including an international accompaniment section that included a trumpet player who’d learned the hejnał played from St. Mary’s Basilica in Krakow hourly. I recorded the final hymn; watching the video, K mused about the irony: “That’s one of our most patriotic hymn, and we had a Latino accompanist and an Irish-American trumpet player.”

I can’t deny that at times, K’s choir involvement bothered me. Not because of what it was but the lengths to which she sometimes went to participate, singing when she was sick, singing when she’d rather do just about anything else. To have such a woman in my life at all could not fail to make me a better man; to have such a woman as my wife often leaves me speechless.

Given the rambunctious nature of our daughter, such a temperament as K’s seems nonnegotiable. It’s certainly not environment and it’s not obviously genetic — at least not in the first generation — but there it is all the same: energy that can be frustratingly exhausting, frustratingly difficult to redirect, frustratingly everything. Yet it’s not hard to see the gifts and wonder packed into her small frame as well. While playing tag after Mass, she reminded me just how incredibly nimble-minded she is. “JesteÅ› berkiem!” one of the boys called out, and she smiled as she ran after him: “I know I’m it!” She lives in the midst of two languages, two cultures, so effortlessly. If only it were effortlessly: it’s another struggle sometimes, but these little moments that show us that it’s not all in vain are welcome.

Back at home, I returned to my morning task, grading essays on Romeo and Juliet. As they’re all turned in online through a course management system, I can see the resulting word-counts in a simple list. Quantity is not quality, but seeing word-counts that average close to a thousand words, I remembered students’ incredulity at the beginning of the year when I told them that by the end of the year, five hundred words would seem restrictively short. And here it was, right on my computer screen: proof that I’ve had an impact. It’s easy to say, “We teachers can only plant seeds,” after days that seem like staying at home and bashing one’s head into the wall repeatedly would have been more productive, but such moments of clarity make those days all worthwhile.

Four things to be grateful for, in four different categories — spiritual, spousal, familial, and career. And the fact that it was so easy for me to think of these four things is itself something for which I can be thankful.

Donald Miller

Saturday 31 August 2013

Even our beliefs have become trend statements. We don’t even believe things because we believe them anymore. We only believe things because they are cool things to believe.

The problem with Christian belief — I mean real Christian belief, the belief that there is a God and a devil and a heaven and a hell — is that it is not a fashionable thing to believe.

Burton Visotzky

Monday 19 August 2013

[Belief] may be the battle of your life, but emotionally and intellectually, it could also be the most exhilarating one you’ve ever engaged in. Whether you experience God’s reality or are just intellectually intrigued by the idea, God can be a very real force in peoples’ lives – spiritual, emotional, supportive – that almost no other system can offer. But you must gird yourself for a fight and know that you’re going to have to try to reconcile very difficult things. Or at least hold them in suspension and bounce them back and forth and get tired. There’s no quick fix, but we have the benefit of drawing on thousands of years of religious thinking. You can’t learn it over a weekend. It’s an engagement for the rest of your life.

Eric Sevareid

Tuesday 6 August 2013

One asks not only for the courage of his convictions, but for the courage of his doubts, in a world of dangerously passionate certainties.

Work as Prayer

Wednesday 6 February 2013

Benedictine spirituality sees work as a kind of prayer. The rule of Benedict teaches that, through daily, mundane work, we can achieve holiness. Like so many holy orders of so many other religions, Benedictines from the beginning understood the beauty of the simple life. Theirs is an asceticism not only of the body but of the mind as well.

I thought of these things this evening as I was puttering about the kitchen, cleaning up after K went to bed, emptying the dishwasher, wiping off the counters, drying the remaining dishes that had been sitting in the sink drying rack. I continued wondering how work might be prayer as I went upstairs and, on an odd whim, pulled out the ironing board and iron. K earlier in the evening had expressed a certain frustration at how things in the house tend to build up: our to-do list seems always to be expanding, rarely if ever contracting. But if work is somehow prayer, I thought, that means we have paths to holiness all around us.

Yet that helped very little: how exactly is pressing a heated piece of metal against fabric to steam out the wrinkles in any way prayer? It occurred to me that it might be a question of re-framing what “prayer” means. Growing up in a decidedly non-Catholic home, I always had a very strict and limiting view of what prayer was or could be, and it make the Catholic notion of prayer seem somehow foreign. Marian devotion and prayers to saints were most decidedly and perversely wrong. But the Protestant notion of prayer might be closer to the Catholic notion of worship, and so Catholics through the centuries have had a broader view of what prayer is than Protestants.

Yet that still didn’t help me understand how work might be prayer until I began thinking about motivation. I’d purposely put most of K’s clothes on the top of the to-iron pile because I was doing it for her, to help her feel a little less behind, and it seemed somehow silly to be ironing my own clothes. “I helped you out by ironing my shirts and pants.” It just seems somehow unseemly, arrogant.

Work in some sense then can be prayer through having a selfless motivation for work. Perhaps that’s a first step in understanding Benedictine spirituality. Or perhaps it’s just late night rambling of someone who should have been in bed some time ago.

Birth, Material, and Mystery

Monday 14 May 2012

The birth of our son today leads to thoughts of matters of significance: of the miracles and improbabilities of love and life; of the cosmic scope of unbounded affection and the microscopic details it discovers; of the sweetness of sacrifice for sweetness; of the paradox of pain in beauty and beauty in pain; of phlegm and blood and the sacred oils of life; of the indescribable perfume of a newborn and the musicality of his cry; of the promise of motets, poems, and equations that threads through a life from the moment of conception; of the paradox that one plus one equals one, two, four, or more; of the perfect symmetry of our asymmetrical familial lives; of a softness too delicate to believe and too tough to be broken; of the illogical logic of a mother’s love; of trust and patience and a million other things that shouldn’t exist in a purely material world; of souls and blessings and angels; and of a father’s circular reasoning.

There are biological and anthropological explanations for all this. Studies of nature show we are unnaturally natural and naturally unnatural, that we have the same codes at the heart of our being as chimps and many of the same behaviors circling out from that almost-identical genetic blueprint. Physics and astronomy combine with chemistry to form a foundation for a biological explanation for why I would fight to the death for my son, daughter, and wife, but even the most elaborate string theory or quantum physics can make sense of it, can discover why I should, can illuminate the goodness of altruism.

And so I am left in a chilly room with an exhausted wife and a swaddled son, an energetic daughter bouncing from idea to idea with grandparents who can only try to keep up, and the realization that at the heart of it, the mystery of this all is what must be at the start and finish of any human endeavor. Mystery is the thread through our lives that strings together all our happy accidents and makes continuity out of chaos. Mystery, in the form of love, is the thread that makes embroidery out of our lives, but someone must be pulling on the needle.

Accidental Christmas Present

Saturday 26 December 2009

“Ouch” by rossneugeboren at Flickr
(Obviously not a photo of the car under discussion.)

We were leaving the church after a Christmas Mass in Polish when we noticed a group of men standing around the priest’s new Volvo. Apparently, someone had hit his car and driven off without anything. I saw a little scratch, but I couldn’t discern any significant damage.

The priest was angry.

He called the parish pastor to let him know it had happened, and he requested that the local priest announce it in Mass, asking for information.

“I guess this is my Christmas present,” said the Polish priest sarcastically.

Perhaps it was.

It seems to me that the material should not be terribly important to a priest. It seems to me he should have been more concerned with the individual who hit his car: what would cause someone to do this? Is this a lack of conscience or a fear of facing consequences? It would have been heartening to hear the priest say something like this.

So maybe it was a Christmas gift. Maybe it was an opportunity to show instead of tell the parishioners that the spiritual is more important and things like cars and iPods are of little value. Perhaps it was a chance to preach with actions rather than words, to show forgiveness and express concern about the mental state — the soul — of the individual who committed the act. Possibly it was an occasion to show selflessness, to show concern for others before showing concern for one’s own silly objects.

The homily had been about having Christ in one’s heart and how God doesn’t force himself on anyone — a fairly common sentiment among Catholics and Protestants alike. I suppose the gift of salvation isn’t the only gift God doesn’t force humans to accept.

Thoughtful

Sunday 8 February 2009

What I was getting at in the last post is simple: most inspirational writing requires no mental unpacking. It tells; it doesn’t show.

Nell Maiden (who, I recently and sadly discovered, died in 2003)  shows:

Prayer, September 29

Lord,
if it’s going to happen,
pack it in an earthquake.

Give me epiphanies that blind,
that trip or wring
and tear but leave no doubt.

Deliver me from diurnal grinddown,
from innuendos, suspicions,
from mere cells quitting.

Let it be fatal and instant.

Or stripe it with rainbow.
Call me to action with purple.

Lord, let me know.

I sleep in lieu of deliberation.

I’m strung staccato.

I’m insensitive to puns, hair growing,
the lampshade wearing thin, that shy kiss
that hardly costs a breath.

Lord, grant me moans.

And when it’s over, give me
a moment to realize and leave
me breath enough to say:
yes, yes, yes.

Amen.

That is what I mean.

But most Evangelical believers don’t seem to be interested in things that have multiple meanings, especially when it comes to belief and faith. They seem to be less interested in instant epiphanies than instant religious gratification: microwave dinners for the soul.

I don’t want my soul filled up with cliches.

I’m okay, you’re okay

Saturday 7 February 2009

Most Christian inspirational writing is simply an affirmation of mutually accepted beliefs. Much of it offers little new insight. At best, it’s semi-poetic reinterpretation of old Christian cliches; at worst, it’s painful restatements of the obvious.

Take this passage from Speechless, by Steven Curtis Chapman and Scotty Smith:

Jesus has taken away our punishment on the cross. There he defeated our great enemy, Satan. God’s loudest singing and his most passionate delight is expressed in the gospel of his grace. Through the gospel God is with us. By the gospel he saves us; In the gospel he delights in us. Through the speechless gospel he quiets us with his love. In the gospel we hear him rejoice over us with singing! Does your heart allow you to imagine God himself serenading you with his love songs?

What does this really say? Nothing that Christians don’t profess on a weekly, daily, or even hourly basis, depending on their level of personal piety: God loves us, and Jesus died for us.

“Jesus has taken away our punishment on the cross.” Heard it a thousand times. Nothing new there. It’s about like saying, “Mayonaise is made from eggs.”

“There he defeated our great enemy, Satan.” And hamburgers generally have meat in them.

“God’s loudest singing and his most passionate delight is expressed in the gospel of his grace.” This is a semi-original way of saying, “God’s happy when someone is saved.” What Protestant church doesn’t ring with those words at least once a week?

“Through the gospel God is with us. By the gospel he saves us.” Shoes generally have an element on the bottom known as soles.

“In the gospel he delights in us.” God loves you — that’s at least one being in the universe that loves you.

“Through the speechless gospel he quiets us with his love.” Really, God loves you.

“In the gospel we hear him rejoice over us with singing!” I’m not joking — God loves you.

“Does your heart allow you to imagine God himself serenading you with his love songs?” I’m only going to say this once: God loves you.

It’s like contemporary Christian music: what sense of satisifaction can someone get saying/singing the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over? There seems to be so little intellectual content. All emotion, all the time.

Even Schleiermacher would be distressed…