Jesus Has Come!

It’s funny how much we think about what’s missing at Christmas time: friends and family who aren’t here, things in our lives that didn’t come to pass, things that did and left us feeling empty. It can leave you feeling like a bit of a Grinch if you don’t feel the holiday cheer. Sorrow, darkness, anxiety – the opposite of the Christmas story, no?

The Nativity stories tell us that this is precisely what Christmas is. Christmas is about a woman scared of what is to come; about a man who doesn’t understand what has happened; about lonely shepherds in a field; about a difficult and dangerous journey undertaken at someone else’s whim; about a couple desperate to find a place to bear their child. Our sad and empty feelings are exactly the place in which the Christmas message appears.

These last weeks, we’ve been calling on God in our prayers to return and rule the world, to free us from darkness and pain – our Advent prayers expect us to be experiencing these difficult feelings. Sorrow, waiting, hope. Waiting in joyful hope for the coming of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The joyfulness is in the hope, and not necessarily in the lives we’ve been living.

Our community in particular has experienced a great deal of loss and sadness. We’re faced with the reality that none of us will be getting our Christmas hug this year. Forty days ago, we celebrated our first Mass after Father died, some of us learning for the first time that God had taken him from us the morning before. Forty days we’ve been in the desert. What have we been preparing for? What, like Elijah, have we been calling for? Where have be been journeying to, if not the promise of the Lord?

Today is the forty-first day: today, as our Savior is born for us, we are coming out of the desert. Tonight we light candles in the darkness and see anew in the glow of that flame.

That promise – that light in the darkness – is fulfilled, the answer given to us in the Nativity story. Although Mary is troubled and afraid, so scared of what will happen to her that she hides at her cousin’s house for three months, she accepts God’s promise and is given a beautiful baby boy. Joseph, who is angry and confused, listens to the message of an angel and enters into the greatest story ever told. The shepherds are gathered together amid tidings of great joy. The Holy Family makes it safely to Bethlehem. In their hour of need, God provides through the kindness of a stranger.

We, too, experience this amazing love and joy, this great gift of light. And it isn’t because we’ve forgotten our sadness, or because we’ve left it behind and no longer feel it, but because God’s promise is fulfilled in the midst of it. Christmas is about those feelings, that sorrow, darkness and anxiety, and about how God embraces those feelings – those moments – in something greater. A light so great that the darkness did not comprehend it.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Pink Sunday?

So I’m wondering whether or not there is more than one Advent wreath tradition. I went to the local Anglican church today, and they lit the fourth candle, which was the pink one. Apparently it’s the ‘candle of love.’ I didn’t know there was a candle of love aside from the Bethlehem candle (the second one). Also, I didn’t know that ‘pink Sunday’ was, like, moveable. I knew it was optional, but not that it could be relocated from the third Sunday to the fourth. They also lit the white candle in the centre of the wreath.

I am so confused.

On the other hand, their children’s Christmas pageant was very cute. I’ve never seen a pageant that wasn’t on Christmas Eve, so I found it rather odd, but I’m going to just assume that this is an acceptable variation…sure, why not? I guess that’s why the white candle was also lit: Jesus is born!!

That is just so not right…

I keep feeling like I’m living in some horrible dream; not a nightmare, just a kind of stepping through the looking glass, a kind of disconnection of an image between one mirror and the next, something misaligned, distorted or missing. It’s not a nightmare, but a world I’ve fallen into in which I don’t exactly belong. Like a life lived sideways.

Back Off My Sparkly Pink Flower!

One day in November, I was alone in the chapel for evening prayer (I don’t know if I mentioned this before or not, but it isn’t like I’m a stranger to obsessive repetitiveness), which actually doesn’t happen that often. Anyway, so I’m there by myself in this chapel. It’s a very pretty chapel. What do I decide to do?

I decide to sing evening prayer. Not all of it, just the hymns, canticles and psalmody. Got to do the psalmody differently, too: with antiphon, psalm and psalm prayer – bonus! Since no one else has to try and copy me with my no-actual-music, I can do what I want.

After I finished evening prayer, I got one of the hymn books and sang all the songs in it that I knew (except the ones about Jesus dying, which would be liturgically inappropriate, I think), which were depressingly few. Still, having memorized a few of my favorite songs anyways, I ended up staying there quite a bit longer than the usual half hour. It was great!

I realized when I was leaving that I was super happy, which was an interesting and welcome departure from my usual moping and despondency (cue the violins). I think it just felt like…I was doing what I was meant to do, that for a moment things slid into place, that this was what I wanted.

Do you think Medicare would subsidize building a chapel as a medical expense? Hey Medicare: build me a chapel! In the long run, it’ll be cheaper!

Absurd notions aside, it isn’t the building that gave me that feeling, though I must admit the sound was great. The praying, that’s the key…But of course praying can’t be the entirety of my life: I’m not trying to be a twelfth-century German anchorite mystic.

More’s the pity.

There are other things that make me happy in my life. I mean the kind of happy that is just pure and unreasonable – that is, there’s no reason at all for such a thing to make me happy like that.

I really like snow globes. I gravitate toward them in stores. I keep forgetting about how much I like snow globes until I’m actually standing in front of them. *happy sigh* I like the sometimes-sparkly little snow and the way it drifts down after I turn the snow globe over. I like watching it settle. I like looking at the little scenes inside of it. Simple snow globes are the best: easy to turn over, simple enough little worlds within them, a perfect little image. Thus, I am somewhat annoyed by complicated snow globes that try to integrate multiple scenes and globes in the same structure. You know, like the dragon and wizard war ones where the dragon and the wizard are in separate bubbles that are stuck on the same unwieldy base, which is also thematic. You can’t watch both at once. One bubble per globe is enough for me. Though a snow globe may come with the ability to play pretty little music, I almost never wind it up.

So far, I have prayer and snow globes.

I also really like balloons. If snow globes make me a kind of relaxed happy, balloons are their excited brethren. People don’t randomly give each other balloons nearly often enough (I don’t randomly give people balloons, either, mostly because I’m afraid they won’t want them). I love getting balloons. *happy dance* I don’t know why, exactly. Maybe because they’re so innocent and joyful all by themselves. Helium balloons are so cool! I admit that the tin-foil looking balloons shaped like other things (a heart, for example) kind of annoy me. This doesn’t make any sense because I think balloon animals would make me happy – I haven’t actually had any, but they seem like so much fun in the movies.

One of the saddest things I ever saw was…you know those garbage cans with the round hole in the top that you put things through, that’s a bit smaller than the circumference of the actual can? The reason for these holes and discrepancies is mysterious to me. Anyway, one day I was walking to the tunnel that connects Place Ville Marie with the Eaton Center, and I saw an upside-down red balloon stuffed into one, part in and part out because it didn’t fit through the hole. I don’t know why it made me sad…there’s just something wrong with throwing out a perfectly good balloon. Letting them up in the air is fine – freedom! FREEDOM!! – but stuffing them into a garbage can just isn’t.

So I’ve got prayer, snow globes and balloons. I think that’s enough.

Which is kind of funny, because I don’t actually have balloons or snow globes, and sometimes even prayer, but somehow just knowing they exist is enough.

Color Me Happy

I was planning to go to Anglican church downtown today but, having woken up at the early time necessary to catch the morning train, I decided that falling asleep during worship wouldn’t really be ideal. So I slept in and went to Catholic church instead.

This turned out to be a good idea, since our choir organist just came back from Australia, so I got to see her and give her a hug. Yay!!

At the beginning of Mass, the priest made a comment about how it was one of the two Sundays a year where clergy wear pink…he said that priests hate wearing pink, but that there is a good reason for the color: happiness, lightness, celebration, a break from penitence.

But his comment about pink isn’t true: Father loved wearing pink. It really brought out his coloring and he looked good in it. He thought so, too. One time he went into the hall to turn on the heat before Mass and accidentally locked himself out of the church – and, hence, the rectory. He called one of the wardens to come and let him back in. He was wearing pink pajamas and his Toronto Maple Leafs slippers. I’m not telling the story nearly as funny as it was.

I wish there was more pink in churches.

In his homily, the priest talked about stillness, about finding that moment of stillness where you can just sit and be with God. Likewise, Evagrios the Solitary, whom I happened to be reading today, says that “the practice of stillness is full of joy and beauty; its yoke is easy and its burden light.” He connects this stillness with asceticism, with charity, with wilderness, with constancy, with rejoicing (which sounds very much like Advent). He also says that, in order to be a space in which a person can really live his life, one's ascetic disciplines must be flexible enough that they can be modified or dispensed with if a person is sick or tired, so that he can return in strength to them. He also says that they should not limit the way a person participates in the lives of others, as for example would be the case if one were invited out to dinner.

In a way, this joy in stillness is exactly what ‘pink Sunday’ is about. A break from those burdensome or difficult aspects of devotional life, a place to stop and just be happy and recapture that stillness, recapture the meaning of all the preparation; a bubble of calm that can be carried out of that day and into the rest of life as the liturgical seasons flow on. A space in which to sit and be, of lightness and joy. In a way leaving the expectation and preparation behind for a while and just living in the simplicity of being, in knowing that in God all is already accomplished, that there is already a place for you and that God welcomes you into it even now, even in the middle of a life not yet fulfilled.

Maybe this is something I should try and take to heart. That I need to accept my own limitations in my prayer life without feeling guilty or ashamed or sad when I can’t accomplish everything I want to do. That I need enough flexibility to be able to live in that joy and stillness instead of always seeking to do something I haven’t had time to do, or obsessing over the ways I have failed. I’m not living a religious life, and that means that I don’t always have the freedom to live a God-centered life in all the ways I feel drawn to do, in all the ways I want to.

Maybe I’m supposed to understand that that’s okay.

I’ll try to work on that.

Son Of God: Yum!

I’ve been eating my ‘Advent’ calendar for a week now. I must say, Well done Laura Secord (whom Heritage Moments tells me is some kind of heroine): excellent, excellent job. I still miss the old calendar from when we were children, the one with the felt Christmas tree and the twenty-five Velcro-backed felt ornaments, the star being for Christmas morning, of course. My brother and I took turns from year to year. That calendar was the best, but this one is a good approximation.

So, at the La Trappe store – which used to be run by, you guessed it, Trappist monks – this is a season to stock up on Santa-shaped chocolate lollipops and suchlike. One of the things that always creeps me out about the store now that they’re gone is the uniforms: employees wear these black ‘aprons’ over white clothes in an approximation of the Trappist habit. In other words, they’re trying to look like monks. What, do they think no one will notice the difference? Sadly, this may actually be true in some cases.

Despite the ‘resemblance,’ I’ve not yet found one of them to discuss radical Catholic theology and Church happenings with while paying for my cheese. O liberal (and heretical) Trappist monk at the cash register, how I doth miss thee!

Along with the calendar, one of the things marking my approach to Christmas is setting up the crèche. The original one had its own little stable with a grass-like roof that tended to shed, a loft and a barn-like main area. I would put all the little porcelain figurines – once liberated from their bubble wrap – lovingly inside the stable, whose floor is much like its roof. Jesus and the angel of course have to wait until after the Christmas Eve Mass. The three kings get lined up in various places and I move them a bit closer to the Nativity scene each day: look at them go! Unfortunately there aren’t figurines of the Holy Family fleeing to Egypt. *awkward cricket chirping*

There has been a more recent one with bigger figurines and no stable. I think they’re shinier. I don’t actually remember much about it. But the most recent one, which we’ve used for the past two years, is a Veggie Tales version of the crèche and characters. Two attached peas are dressed as sheep, for example, and one of the other people is an asparagus spear. On top of the crèche is a star that sings something unintelligible, supposedly a little Christmas song, when you press it. Since Veggie Tales are used to teach children, this can’t be sacrilegious, though I admit it feels that way somewhat.

At La Trappe, they sell a variety of approximations of the Nativity scene. This itself is not a problem. The problem is that some of them are made out of chocolate and marzipan. Now that just seems so wrong, eating the baby Jesus, manger and all.

I know, I know: we eat the actual Jesus when we receive Eucharist, so what makes this so different, especially since it isn’t real? I think the difference – the gap between reality and a replica – is exactly where the problem lies. Because Eucharist is real, a real gift with substantial effects on us and on the world, allowing us to participate in a reality greater than our own, which includes the entire life Incarnate of Jesus Christ. So yes, we are actually eating the baby Jesus, but it is real and spiritual food, making-present the very reality to which it points.

While chocolate and marzipan are also real food (no kidding?), they lack this manifestation. The chocolate baby Jesus figurine symbolizes the reality of Christ in the same way a crèche does: by providing an image of that which we believe, an image inherently containing that belief in who the Christ child is. That this is not an ordinary baby, though to all appearances and according to all rationality, he is precisely as ordinary as any other human being. What we have in the chocolate Jesus case is someone consuming that reality for nothing but transient, meaningless pleasure.

I doubt that even a vehement atheist would seriously consider eating an Icon or a crucifix. Why then would the baby Jesus be any different? Because the baby Jesus is most clearly a joyful offering of God for all the world, because Jesus is for all of us, because he’s cute? Maybe. Ultimately, it doesn’t really manner. What it expresses is that we’ve turned Jesus at his birthday into something to be consumed like an object, like anything else; it expresses a rejection of the beginning of the greatest Story ever known, and therefore all the rest of it as well; it expresses the modern meaninglessness of the Christmas Celebration - a profound transformation of faith into an occasion for a possessiveness that turns one away from God through a desire for things.

Maybe I’m overstating things: you will have noticed that I do that sometimes. But it feels to me almost like a desecration of the Nativity, eating the cornerstone and meaning of faith.

p.s. I am eternally grateful for this title to my source of inspiration.

I Mistook My Bible For A Cell Phone

I went to one of the downtown churches today that I’ve only been to a few times, mostly because my local Anglican church wasn’t having Eucharist, which still seems strange to me. In the priest’s homily, she talked about how Advent requires us to go into the desert in order to get to Jerusalem: it isn’t a comfortable place to be, and it isn’t easy, but it’s the only way to be prepared for the journey.

I like that. It gives me hope that this place where I am is part of a journey and not a meaningless side trip along the way.

Where I am right now is fairly uncomfortable; I think this blog as of late has made that pretty clear. Bloggerific.

I went to pull my cell phone out of my bag to call for a ride home and grabbed it, as I usually do, based on the feeling of the case it’s in. Belatedly, I realized that I had in fact pulled out my Bible instead.

Maybe this is a message from God. Maybe it symbolizes that what I’m trying to do is call someone, anyone, who will help me get home. Maybe the word of God is precisely that way home, precisely that to which I must turn, to which I must reach out. Given that I was brought up Roman Catholic (whoda thunk it?), it’s not like reading the Bible is the first thing I do when I’m trying to figure something out in my faith life.

Maybe I need to do more of that: more turning to the Word itself and less trying to find someone to talk to who’ll help me sort out this emotional turmoil that is my life right now. Although I believe that human relationships, in all their imperfections, are an indispensible source of healing, it just doesn’t seem to be something that’s in the cards for me right now (although I must admit I am not a Tarot expert). So, less asking people for help and comfort and more praying with the Bible. Maybe that will work out and maybe it won’t, but right now it’s all I’ve got.

Here We Go A Wassailing

So today (Friday) I went to an Advent Carol service being put on by the Anglican chapel I normally go to. It was really, really pretty, with candles and readings and singing. But I was having a really, really bad day. I skipped saying the Rosary this morning, so I lost that little bubble that I usually have, and it just went downhill from there.

I had really been hoping to hear from someone, because I wanted to see them, so I was a bit disappointed about that. When I got to my carrel, all my books had been moved (again), and I had to wait for the girl using my desk to come back from God knows where so she could move her stuff. And I was tired and, due to exertion-induced asthma, couldn’t really breathe and needed to get my wind back, for which sitting is helpful.

Then, my kidneys etc. were doing that thing again where they don’t function properly. So that was frustrating as well as worrying, since I thought I’d gotten a handle on that. In any event, it causes a good amount of pain, so that didn’t make me cheerful. My meds were making it impossible to eat, so I was dizzy and lightheaded but couldn’t eat anything without getting nauseous. I skipped Advent devotions and evening prayer, which I’m sure was a bad idea. Coming home so late, I’ve also missed Compline. So I’m out a good, oh, two hours of prayer. That always makes me a bit cranky. I wrote a draft of a letter requesting medical leave – a concept which is itself worrying and stressful, ironically – but didn’t get a response to that, either. Also, I’ve had a constant headache since Wednesday. Ugh. I haven’t been sleeping and so I’m exhausted.

Anyway, so I go to this service and only actually know one song, which made me feel like a bit of an outsider, especially having spent the last few days with people singing songs I know. Holding the candle made me think of J---, God † rest his soul, who I was always afraid was going to light his music on fire during the Vigil. I’ve been missing him a lot lately: singing songs we had parts to together, expecting to hear his voice in my ear and sometimes almost hearing it.

I guess I was in a bit of a nostalgic mood. I also thought about B---, God † rest her soul, that time driving back from St. Mary’s hospital when my mother and S--- convinced her that Styrofoam grew on trees, and I was trying not to laugh. Or was it plastic bags?...What it felt like when she didn’t sit next to me in choir anymore. About S---, God † rest her soul, who sometimes drove me home from choir, and how much I cried at her funeral. About B---, God † rest his soul, whose funeral I altar served at and then cried later, realizing how much I never knew. About T---, God † rest his soul, and the first Christmas that he was sick. About my grandfather, God † rest his soul, where there was never any service and they wouldn’t let us into the hospital room to see him when he was dying. About P--- and R--- and K--- and R---, God † rest their souls. About Fr. S---, God † rest his soul, whose CBW I hymnbook I just got. About my friends and family who are dying. Most of all, I thought about Father, God † rest his soul; I got a Bible that belonged to him, and now I carry it with me.

I’ve been surrounded by so much recent grieving this last while, but I haven’t had the opportunity to share my stories with anyone, to have anyone hold me while I cry, to have anyone willing to be there in all my sorrow. I’ve been trying to be that person, the person I don’t have and have never had, and it’s at the point where I’m not sure I can deal with this all alone anymore. At any rate, I don’t want to, but there seems to be nowhere to go.

Add to this the fact that I already kind of dread Christmas – the year I was really sick, some horrible things happened and were said in the family that kind of tainted it forever for me – and you have a mixture of everything that’s fucked up about me, and it’s really volatile.

So I leave after the service and go sit in my little alcove, where, of course, I cry. Some really cool friends saw me and came and made me laugh, and I felt a bit better. But I had been bursting into tears all day. I was afraid to go to the thing they had afterward because, well, it’s humiliating to cry in front of people, especially when they have no idea why it’s happening. I was also really embarrassed to see the person I had wanted to meet, because I think it’s not really fair for me to ask, again, for someone to help me out by listening. I mean, really Kat, get a life. I’m sure everyone now thinks I’m even weirder than they thought before, but I’m not sure I actually care. Better to seem like some sort of social phobic person than some sort of crazy freak who keeps crying. That’s my theory, anyway. I am grateful I was able to make it through the skit part, which is what I really wanted to see.

Going back toward the train, I had to keep stopping to cry. I thought about jumping in front of the Metro, but then I realized that that’s stupid. Having been in the position where I’ve almost died, waking up in the ICU freezing cold with monitors and IV’s and various other medical stuff, not knowing what happened, I understand that just because everything happens to hurt right now isn’t a good reason to not struggle to live. You know that you’re a bit of a wreck when random homeless people ask if you’re alright, though.

So, it’s been a long day, full of me sobbing and trying unsuccessfully to hold it together, of me gathering yet more proof about why it is I need to get off my current medication cycle given that it’s actually making me physically ill, full of me embarrassing myself and whatnot. Retrospectively, I probably shouldn’t have tried to stay at all. But I wanted so badly to try and be normal, to try and do a normal thing that I used to do all the time, to do something that I really wanted to do, and I underestimated how much everything is still affecting me. It’s difficult to explain it to people and it’s difficult for people to understand. It actually really hurts when people make fun of me for it, because it isn’t something I can control, nor do I fully understand it myself. But that feeling of hurt, which makes it harder to think even of trying, is something that I can’t really articulate because it makes me more vulnerable and more fragile in the face of future making-fun-of-me. So I don’t talk about it. Except in this blog, which has no bearing on or effect in the real world.

Wow: it’s Saturday, and I’m still crying while typing this stupid post. Aren’t I special.

Where Shall I Find Rest

The other week – a Wednesday – I went to mid-week Mass at the Anglican chapel I usually go to. I was coming back after a (fairly) long absence, especially considering my penchant in days of yore for attending Mass every day. Anyway, the point is that, right before the consecration, I felt suddenly overwhelmed and cried a little. I’m fairly sure no one noticed. Fairly.

This really drives home the fact that I feel like I’m experiencing a sort of religious angst that was both unexpected and not: at a very deep level, I still feel incredibly torn between two paths – one that I’m leaving and one that I’m seeking. Conflicted. Confused.

The day before, I had gone to Mass at the university’s Catholic center for the first time, for reasons that were both whimsical and practical. Practically, the schedule for Mass intentions at my home parish has been thrown into complete disarray, since it was based on the presupposition that Mass was being said every day. Therefore, to ensure a timely Mass intention which I could attend, I got one at the Center. Whimsically, I went because Father was always saying, “Are you going to go to the Center? You should really go to the Center. Have you gone to the Center yet?” Anyway, it seemed perfect that now, after he died, I finally did what he’d nagged me to do for years.

I confess that I experienced the comfort I always do at Roman Catholic churches that comes from knowing the liturgy and being able to participate in the service without any sort of book. (After all, We Are Church, are we not?) I also received Eucharist: I’ve been doing that ever since Father died, which makes that about, oh, five times now. It was interesting that I decided to do that in the first place, since I had always sworn not to, and even more interesting that I felt no conflict at any time while I was doing it, or in the time surrounding.

However, when I went to Anglican church on Wednesday, less that 24 hours later, I felt a profound sense of…having done something wrong. As in, what have I done? I knew that by the laws I grew up with the idea of receiving Eucharist in two denominations at once is, well, frowned upon, though that doesn’t quite convey the horror orthodox, law-abiding Catholics would feel at the suggestion. Oh, I had all sorts of nice reasons planned out. ‘I still believe in the Apostolic succession of the Episcopate and the doctrine of Transubstantiation, so I’m not really separate when it comes to Eucharist.’ ‘It’s about me and Jesus, not the Church.’ ‘Now that Father’s dead, no one will be hurt.’ But those are really all justifications I came up with after having already acted on the basis of what I felt compelled to do.

I just feel…so profoundly confused. I don’t really know how to name what I feel, or even if it has a name. In many ways, I long for the certainty that I had in my youth. I am forced to ask myself why I decided to leave the Catholic Church in the first place. My blog has actually been very helpful in this: I looked back over parts of it and was able to say, ‘oh yeah, now I remember.’ But to base this decision primarily on private experience is, of course, profoundly un-Catholic.

I miss my community, the people that I love, singing hymns I know, being familiar with the liturgy to the point that I can reflect on it instead of trying to figure out what it is that I’m supposed to be doing. I wish I knew what the Anglican Church is, the beliefs, sacraments, colors, documents, prayers, movements, fundamental beliefs (aside from the shared Creed, of course)…I wish that there was someone to just, I don’t know, teach and discuss these things with me, so that I might find a way to catch my footing. I feel lost, and therefore conflicted about where it is that I am meant to be. I wonder if I’m supposed to go back to Catholic churches, if that’s what recent events have been pointing me towards, even though I do not believe, fundamentally, that this is true. In a way, my recent experiences of comfort represent a profound temptation to slip back into what is easy and familiar rather than to seek out in difficulty what path it is right for me to take.

In the Roman Catholic Church, there is a highly structured catechetical program for adults who want to be initiated into the Church, complete with discussions, teachings, and guidelines for experiencing what the corporate beliefs are. I don’t know if the same thing exists in Anglican churches. The Alpha program is not what I mean: I found it interesting but ultimately unenlightening and insufficient when I did it at my home parish several years ago. I want…I don’t know…someone cleverer than me to help me make my way through the tangled branches of it all. All this is assuming, of course, that there are shared corporate beliefs, at least sufficiently for such a program of study to be viable. Even looking at the latitude for variation is important, I think, since this is not something the Roman Catholic Church itself excels at.

Thus far, I have been unable to find this mythical mentor. For one thing, the church I’ve been going to places no importance at all upon actually belonging to the Anglican Church. For another…um…I’m not sure the priest there is actually suited for dealing with me in this way: I’m afraid I might actually trample him with my incessant questioning. I need someone to challenge my assumptions and show me new things, who isn’t going to get confused by what it is I’m asking. I have an unfortunate and sneaking suspicion that I already know more about liturgy and doctrine than this priest, given my hyper-dedication to studying catechism, tradition and law, as well as classical philosophy and theology. This actually puts me at a disadvantage, since I am well-schooled in the doctrines, history, and documents of the most systematic church currently in existence. The Roman Catholic Church is not exactly known for its brilliant expression of mystery…oh, there’s mystery in the doctrines and teachings, but it’s lodged firmly inside a logical and thorough account of the mystery in question. For example: transubstantiation. It uses the language of substantial ontology to capture the reality of what Eucharist is. The idea is that the accidental properties of the bread and wine remain, but that their substance is effaced and replaced by the substance of the Body and Blood of Christ. Yes, this remains a mystery, and the doctrine does not pretend otherwise. But the doctrine seems to, in a way, take away this fundamental aspect of mystery in gratitude and replace it with a kind of gratitude-in-understanding. Which is the only problem I have with the doctrine of transubstantiation as such.

But I digress.

The point is that I desperately need and want to learn about this way of being Christian that I am circling. But it just doesn’t seem to be happening. I also don’t have a confessor I click with…ideally, the two would be combined, since the idea of sin and understandings of doctrine are sometimes tightly bound up with each other.

Oh, my heart! There is such a great temptation in my longing, for that which I know and have known. I returned to my home congregation because I needed and wanted to be there, to grieve with the people I love and who love me, to face and experience loss in and with the community entire. I’ve gone to the funerals of three people from that church now whom I have loved deeply, and if there’s only one thing I’ve learned it’s that grieving is never done alone, not really. We come together and prepare, together, to go back out our separate ways. Although the healing and the returning to our separate lives is done individually, the process of that healing, as well as the sending forth, is only really accomplished in communion with one another. But now, out of this need to be home again, is the fear – and secret longing, as well – that I will not be able, not be willing, to go onward again as before. The tendency to return to the people who love and miss me, whom I love and miss, and the Church as I have understood it for so long, is a powerful one. In so many ways, I just don’t know what to do. It’s isolating and heartbreaking and I don’t know that I am strong enough to try and do this on my own anymore. But that still doesn’t change the fact that the place I need to turn to and lean on for support if I am to change doesn’t seem to exist, at least for me. I world of mirage and doubt and fear…where is this place that I have taken myself? Where shall I find rest?

To quote Jeremiah: “This is what the Lord says: ‘Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.’” (6:16)

Or, Psalm 62: “My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from him. He alone is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will never be shaken […] Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him […] Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.” (1-8)

Or, Frodo: “There is no real going back. Though I may come to the Shire, it will not seem the same; for I shall not be the same. I am wounded with knife, sting and tooth, and a long burden. Where shall I find rest?”

Or, with Matthew: “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” (11:29)

Or, with St. Augustine: “God, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you.”

Lord Jesus, Come!

Today is the first Sunday in Advent. While I can’t start eating my ‘Advent’ calendar yet, I still think that this is a pretty auspicious time.

In his homily, the priest spoke about Advent as being a time of hopefulness and preparation, especially in our parish given recent events. No one really knows what’s going to happen, though the bishop has said they have no intention of shutting the parish down. There is waiting, in hope, for a new parish priest. The board of Wardens has expressed to the bishop their desire to have a resident, full-time priest. They were then informed that our church was actually the only one in the entire diocese to have still had a resident, full-time priest. Nevertheless, the hope is still to have one. A time of waiting, of expectation and uncertainty: the parish family is in Advent.

Purple, of course, is the liturgical color of Advent in most western church Rites, although some churches have replaced the purple with blue. I asked someone about the blue, and I’m still not really sure what it’s actually supposed to mean. ‘Making more money for vestment makers,’ is not really the deep liturgico-theological revelation that I was hoping for, even though that was joke. The idea that it’s the color of the sky just before dawn is a nice one, I find: the time just before the sun comes out. That actually captures aspects of Advent very nicely. Ultimately, the reason blue is used is because the older Sarum Rite used blue, and this is a sort of liturgical return. A return to the time before the Roman Catholic Church suppressed all local customs at variance with those of the Latin Rite.

Blue vestments are actually still used in some Catholic churches in the Philippines and Spain during the observance of Marian feasts (of which there are, if you keep them all, many many). The current laws of the Roman Catholic Church do not recognize blue as a valid (or licit) liturgical color at all. Although blue was worn widely within the so-called ‘Gallican-Rite’ churches – Spain, etc. – in the Gregorian Liturgical Calendar and elsewhere blue is omitted. Presently, limited indults have been granted to specific churches to use blue vestments while celebrating Marian Inmaculada feasts, though I might say the practice is still generally discouraged. It is licit to use blue trim and such-like things on white vestments for Marian feasts, but those vestments are white. I guess what I’m trying to say is that, in the Latin Rite, blue is NOT a legitimate liturgical color.

I don’t personally think that blue is an invalid color for Advent. I just don’t like it, not that I’ve ever seen it; I don’t like the idea of it, of what it would mean for my impression of purple during other liturgical moments. While Canon Law does not list Advent as one of the Church’s penitential seasons (§ 1250), I think erasing the penitential aspect is a mistake. The General norms for the Liturgical Year has this to say: “Advent has a twofold character: as a season to prepare for Christmas when Christ’s first coming to us is remembered; as a season when that remembrance directs the mind and heart to await Christ’s Second Coming at the end of time. Advent is thus a period for devout and joyful expectation” (§ 39). Yes, there is an emphasis on joy and well there should be: the end of days – and Christmas – are joyous occasions when the world and God are fully met together, and the kingdom of God is fully realized. But this preparation to welcome God does not involve only rejoicing: to make ourselves ready we have to be penitent. Because the coming of God is for us, not for God, and that implies a need of it, a need which we must recognize in order to be able to welcome the kingdom. Not that I think the gates to heaven are one big Confessional in the Sky, but that there is an inevitable sorrow at our human failings accompanying Christ’s coming. After all, Christ’s coming is an event that happened, is happening, and will happen. The coming of the kingdom and our freedom in joy is integrally linked to his victory on the Cross, his triumph over our sin and death, and we should not in our anticipation forget that.

I like the purple because it structures the liturgical year so that Advent and Lent are twinned seasons. They are tied together by the same color – Advent also has pink on Gaudete Sunday – and by the fact that they are both, fundamentally, seasons of expectation and preparation. Sure the emphasis on joy and repentance is different in one and the other, but both are always present. I think the pairing of purple helps us to remember that. So when we wear purple in sorrow, it is also infused with joyous waiting, and when we wear it in joyous waiting, it is always suffused with the Sacrifice. Both remind us that we must keep ready, be waiting, be watchful, because the Lord comes unexpectedly – as a child whose birth was unnoticed by most of the world, as a man crucified (and then risen), as a glorious king whose kingdom comes like a thief in the night. It is that kingdom, always that kingdom, for which we are waiting. Christians are a people in Advent.

The person I asked about the use of blue told me that some parishes use different shades of purple for the two seasons, light for Advent and dark for Lent, to help emphasize the difference. I think that’s a GREAT idea. Unfortunately, my home parish can’t do it because there is only one set of altar dressings and one set of purple vestments. I did notice something interesting today, though. The altar is dressed in dark purple, but the side altars – one of which holds the tabernacle and the other a copy of that Jesus-face thing – are dressed in light purple, which also covers the tabernacle. The deacon’s stole matches the dark altar, and the priest’s chasuble matches the light altars. Interesting.

In a feat of stunning making-something-accidental-have-a-deeper-meaning, I think that this is brilliant and makes an interesting point. So the altar where the Sacrifice is offered is the dark purple of sorrow and repentance – appropriate. The altars holding the Blessed Sacrament, the ultimate embodiment of the Sacrifice among us, and the picture of Veronica’s veil, from within Jesus’ suffering but also an astonishing gift that endures, are dressed in light purple, the color of hope and expectant joy – also appropriate. The remaining presence of Jesus among us associated with the happier and the Sacrifice with the sadder, and yet both living within the same family of purple, which is not fragmented but…differently shaded. The deacon, who serves the priest, is more strongly associated with the repentance, and the priest who stands in persona Christi with the joy. The Sacrifice sees both shades at the altar and is surrounded by both.

Perhaps this suggests that the kingdom of God is served in penitence and accomplished in joy.

It's A Crazy, Crazy Faith

Our emergency priest last Sunday (the 15th) pointed out in his homily that, sometimes, our Christian faith is crazy. We always talk about heaven and the resurrection and saints in glory, about how that is our goal and the fulfillment of our lives. Except when someone actually dies: then we don’t want to talk about those things at all. Which is healthy – it would be a bit worrisome if one didn’t grieve.

However, at some point we must transcend our grief and share in the joy of our loved ones, who are in the Kingdom of God. I don’t know how it is anywhere else, but in the Catholic Church that transcendence is meant to occur during the Mass of Christian Burial. This may strike one as ironic, but really it isn’t. The whole process of Catholic dying leads up to it.

If a person receives last rites, the celebrant will be wearing a purple stole. The rite includes Absolution (or presumed Absolution, depending on the circumstances), Unction and Viaticum. The purpose of final Absolution is pretty obvious: it is a cleansing of sin before a person goes to meet God. Unction is an anointment of the body that embraces a kind of holiness of the flesh, presumably; I tend to understand it more as a sacramental recognition of the fact that the body already possesses an inherent holiness. It blesses the body before you die, imbues sanctity, but it is not intended to heal – which is of course why it’s permissible to anoint a dead body. Viaticum is simply Eucharist received for the last time as part of, or constituting, the last rites. Originally, it was so named because it was intended to give strength for the journey. Now, Viaticum is a plenary indulgence, making it the only indulgence in the Catholic Church that itself carries and creates the conditions necessary for receiving it.

Anyway, the point of all this is that it emphasizes the fact that you’re going away. The purple is a color of sorrow and mourning; but notice that it is the celebrant who wears purple, and not the person who’s dying – they don’t, like, drape a purple cloth over you or something. We are sorry about the going away, because it is our lives that you as we knew you will be missing from.

Purple, of course, has a second meaning, that of awaiting or anticipating the arrival of Christ and his Kingdom (hence the use of purple during Advent). Already, even in the sorrow, there is the anticipation that lies deep within all of us, always.

So here, here in the beginning of the journey, there is mourning for loss, as well as resolute anticipation of the things to come. There is anointing of the person who is dying in a way that expects the effects of that anointing to travel with him.

Next comes the actual handling of the body after death. The body is (thank God) embalmed, which has more to do with the people at the viewing than the actual body, so we’ll leave that aside. The body is laid out in clothing, usually something in some way representative of the person. In this case, Father is wearing his Christ the King chasuble. The vestment was new and unworn, probably because he was saving it for the feast, and he is now wearing it for the first time. I find this to be appropriate. For one thing, it’s white. For another, it emphasizes the kingship of Christ, a Kingdom which Father is now experiencing, the Kingdom to which our deaths look forward and which already abides among us: now is the Kingdom, now is the day. The feast brings a clarity to this reality and to our faith, as do these vestments. As we are in communion with all the Saints, the Kingdom is already our reality, though in this present darkness we cannot see it clearly. But we believe, and so we celebrate both Christ’s kingship and our Christian deaths. The vestment also points to the fact that, even though there is no Eucharist in heaven, the sacrament of Holy Orders leaves an indelible mark. Father is, like all other clergy, a priest forever, as we all remain ourselves in one way or another. After all, it is we ourselves who are saved, we who are loved, in all our sin and human frailty; our lives shaped and sanctified by the sacraments and realized in our deaths.

[A brief aside. I was saying to my brother, ‘Father is wearing his Christ the King vestments,’ to which he responded with something along the lines of, ‘no he’s not. He’s dead: his corpse is wearing them. He’s gone, he no longer exists.’ Of course, this is unacceptable. The person and the body we understand to be connected in some mysterious way that passes beyond death and into eternity. We speak about the body as the person because we recognize that, in some way or another, the person is coming back to get their body in the resurrection – or, perhaps more precisely, that the final resurrection will be an embodied one. Catholicism is not a faith that believes we shed the body as a snake sheds its skin, leaving it behind as a useless and meaningless thing. We take such care to prepare and present the body because we believe that even in death and eternal life a person is still themselves, still who they are, though they have also become so much more in the transformation that awaits us all. This conversation drives home an interesting point: in the reality of death our faith is both most deeply challenged and most strongly affirmed. Death exists. Death is real. This is no mirage. But eternal life is also real, also exists, is also not a mirage. Powerful stuff, this collision of two realities. Powerful. One might perhaps call it the center and definition of our faith.]

Then there is the funeral Mass. The celebrant(s) wears white vestments: the color of resurrection, eternal life and glory, sanctity. All sadness has been left behind, at least liturgically. At Father’s Mass, three bishops celebrated, along with a bunch of priests, at least one deacon, and a seminarian. The priests sang a song around the coffin: Ave Maria. In our Mother Mary, whom Father loved very deeply, the saint closest to the throne of God, we find an expression of brotherhood. That, too, is everlasting. We sang his favorite song (Lord of the Dance) and all simultaneously thought that if he were singing the Ave Maria with his brothers he’d be ruining it. Father loves singing, but can’t sing at all. Incense and holy water anointed the casket: again, we pray and sanctify the body until the moment when we commit it to the earth. We celebrate the Mass, the gift of God to us, the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus Christ, given for us for the remission of our sins. In the Mass we are all united in the mystical Church (itself a sacrament – the only one remaining after the final coming of the Kingdom, the one only fully realized within it). In the Mass we realize that God has shared in our death, in all of its horror, and so we are never alone in it; the feeling of aloneness is real – even Jesus felt it – but in reality it is an illusion. It is something we, in our humanity, must feel, but it is also a time when the Lord does not leave our side. I will be with you always, even to the end of the age.

The priest who gave the homily said something I believe is brilliant. He said that, throughout his life, Father experienced a dark night of the soul – only once did he feel the Lord’s presence and joy, when he was in the choir loft at seminary (perhaps why he loves singing). The fact that I seem to already have known this is a story for another time, or perhaps never. The priest said that it takes real courage to keep going, day after day, as a priest, without ever feeling anything, and he is right. Saint John of the Cross said that wood needs to be thoroughly dried out in order for it to burn. Father was consumed by the fire of the Holy Spirit when he died – a moment he had been waiting for all his life now come in completeness. Maybe that's why he looked so at peace, in a way I've never seen in a body before. Sudden, but not something for which he was not ready or unprepared. The Lord comes like a thief in the night, and we must be ready, because where one is taken there is another who will be left behind.

Thus we see, in dying and death, the promise and reality of our faith, in which we all participate through the rites and sacraments surrounding it.

Holy F*@# !

This is unexpected. I was going to write about the Remembrance Day service at the University, and what it means to me in my life.

And now for something completely different.

I went to the same church my whole life: I was baptized there, received first Eucharist there, was confirmed there, and, illogically, I want to have my funeral there. (The feasibility of this plan remains sketchy. I also have music picked out, though the list is constantly evolving.)

My relationship with this congregation has been one of the most rewarding relationships in my life thus far. I love the people there. They watched me grow up, as I watched others grow up. I love people there very deeply, and it’s those people who make me miss the congregation most.

This church brought me to God. I felt God there, I loved God there, I hated God there, and I clung to God there. The Church was my life, which is why of course I will never fully let it go. Not really. This is still my church, my home, the place to go when there’s nowhere else. Even in all the sorrow and grief – especially in the sorrow and grief – it is the place to which I return. There are some things that never change. In many ways, the Roman Church is still the center of my world, and will be forever.

Sure, there was strife. For example, the priest and I sometimes disagreed. Vehemently. But, then again, I loved and cared about him very deeply all the same. So stubborn, but so sure of his vocation; so traditional, but so in love with the Church; such a terrible homilist and uneven in pastoral care, but the most love and the biggest heart that there could be. He loved this church, and I don't think he really wanted to leave it. The church was prepared to send him off into retirement, but they also would miss him desperately. He defined the church, and it defined him.

Now he’s dead. That was unexpected. It seems as though he died in his sleep, which would be good, since he wouldn’t have felt any pain. But he always said he’d rather have a priest by his deathbed than a saint, because he wanted to receive unction and Viaticum. Instead, he died alone. It’s so haunting, to not have the one thing you’ve always wanted, having performed the rite so many times yourself. He was sixty-five years old, and was a priest for thirty-eight.

I loved that man. Oh sure, sometimes I wanted to strangle him, but that doesn’t mean I loved him any the less. I believe that God put me in his life on purpose. Over the years, interacting with him forced me to think about what I thought Church was. What the priesthood was. What it was that God wanted for me in my life, in the sense of discerning what is important to me about my faith and what isn’t. Ultimately, this meant that I left the Roman Catholic Church because I realized that what matters most to me is Jesus: loving and following Jesus, not any church. A church is a community in which I can do it but, ultimately, the path is only mine to take. I do, of course, need the Church. The sacraments are very important to me, and I have a…profound reverence and awe for them, as well as a fairly full and robust understanding of them. He gave that to me, and for that alone I will always be grateful.

He also taught me the importance of Canon Law, being a canon lawyer himself. I was always a ‘canon-law-observant’ Catholic, which meant that I could not receive Eucharist in other particular churches outside communion with Rome, and that I cannot now receive Eucharist in the Roman Catholic Church. He taught me the language of the Church, and to be respectful of its traditions. At the same time, the language he taught me opened up a world in which I was able to explore and question things like doctrine, tradition, and Church. His ecclesiastical ministry has shaped the entirety of my life in the Christian faith. He married my parents, baptized me, gave me Eucharist, and was there at my Confirmation. He prayed over me (although I don’t think he was the one who’d actually decided I was possessed). I owe him a lot, including, ironically, my stubborn refusal to just accept things as they are without prying into them, always questioning, always trying to better understand.

I have always observed Canon Law. I do it because it was important to him, and so it was important to me, and it forms a very real part of what I understand the Roman Catholic Church to be.

However, I’m going to Holy Family tomorrow and I plan to receive Eucharist (should no one stop me). Fuck the law: life is short. See, he taught me something else, too. About what matters in the living of one’s life. Because ultimately Eucharist isn’t about him, it’s about Jesus and my relationship with God. And I want it. And I need it. Therefore, probably only this once, I will break the law. Which I’m sure he would have found infuriating.

May the Lord in his love and mercy help you with the grace of the Holy Spirit; May the Lord who frees you from sin save you and raise you up.

Something Or Other

I haven’t been posting much lately (duh) and I really don’t have much to say now. This is the consequence of the life I’ve been living – or, rather, not living. While I finally made it back to evening prayer, I haven’t been going to church Sundays, or any other days of the week.

I haven’t received Eucharist since October 2nd. I’ve had opportunities – like when I went to the Anglocatholic church for All Souls – and I’ve let them pass by me. The thing is that, when I think about it, I don’t really care. I care very much about my reasons for not going, which are manifold and complex, difficult to explain clearly. If I just had hand puppets I’m sure I could do it: everything is clearer once you’ve seen it in the hand puppets version.

Anyway, the point is I’ve not been going. The dude I’m supposed to be writing my thesis on condemns religious indifference as the cause of France’s social disintegration. Indifference is bad, because it undermines the possibility of doing everything else, or at least doing it well. To extrapolate, my blatant refusal of the Blessed Sacrament is corroding the rest of my life as a Christian. I can accept that: it feels true.

I just keep wondering to myself, Where is God when you need Him? I mean, really need Him, a question of life and death, a question of desperate need without which you’re afraid you’ll die.

Instead of going to church and looking for God, I’ve been attempting to psychoanalyze myself. With the emphasis on “attempting.” I assure you, I’m equally long-winded and pointless in everything I write, though I am sometimes capable of clarity and insight.

‘Look inside yourself and find God,’ St. Augustine said. Maybe this really is just another path to God. But that still doesn’t justify my non-attendance at Mass.

I’m going to attempt to go on Friday morning. Wish me luck!

Now Remember: Before You Can Serve Others, You Have To Turn Off Your Cell Phone

(this title comes from a quote from a homily; in context, it made very little sense, and out of context, even less. however, I decided to run with it anyway)

In a way, our society is constructed around the idea that people will tell you exactly what you need to know, in a direct and clear way, at the exact moment (or close enough) that they learn it themselves. Or anyway, they’ll tell you what they think you need to know. Or ought to know. Or what they really just want to tell you.

Hence the cell phone metaphor. Each of us is expected to be ‘plugged in’ at all times, ready to answer that call in the middle of a homily from our friend (or whoever) telling us about their remarkable discovery of a new flavor of pie. Or even the call from our friend telling us that their beloved pet rabbit has died, or that the radiator exploded and your apartment has burned down. One might be tempted to use this as a model for service: always ready to listen to and help another, with a minimal surcharge for text-messages from the United States.

But is that really true? I think maybe the point about turning off the cell phone is a good one. How can you attend to what you’re doing if you’re interrupted? What if you were having dinner with a friend, or praying, or reading an inspiring blogpost? What does it mean to be broken away, even momentarily, from what you were doing? How does it make your friend feel, or affect your relationship with God, or your own personal growth? There’s something to be said for service being focused on the moment rather than on the possible.

While it’s true that you might have wanted to know right away that your apartment has been reduced to ashes, there’s something to be said for the idea that in order to serve anyone properly – perhaps most especially yourself – you need to make sure you’re not always ‘on,’ not always ‘plugged in;’ that you don’t try to be everything to everyone, and end up being much less than you could have been. Maybe you shouldn’t have to make excuses for using your cell phone as a portable answering machine instead of picking up your calls.

Obviously, as someone whose cell phone is almost never turned on, I’m not exactly unbiased here.

Sometimes I think that maybe our culture of instant messaging about anything and everything has created unrealistic expectations about human communication. Do we expect people to tell us everything, to tell us directly and immediately, to put everything in words? Would we be upset if our friend’s rabbit died and it took her a month to say anything to us; would we be upset because we know she could have said something right away, but instead decided not to dial our number? Does it mean she doesn’t trust us, or care about us, or believe that we could help?

I have to admit, I would probably be pretty upset. Because I have this idea in my head that because she can tell me right away, she will, and she should. But it’s a bit unfair, isn’t it? So much of deep communication is done without words, so much is said by silence…why shouldn’t I hunt down my friend when she’s unplugged and find out what’s going on? Why shouldn’t I make plans with her and sit and watch her, try and find out why she hasn’t been phoning, if there’s even a reason? Why shouldn't I keep calling and leaving messages, though not maniacally?: when she's ready to stop wanting space, she'll not have forgotten about them. So I know that even though I’d be a bit miffed that she didn’t tell me (especially if I’ve found out later), I hope I'd also understand that there are things people need time to say, or need to say without saying.

In this vein, if I’ve turned off my cell phone, I should answer my messages and call back; if someone doesn’t return my calls, I should try contacting them another way, and possibly give them some space; if I’ve been dodging their calls in order not to tell them something, I should probably meet them for lunch and see what comes out. I should absolutely give them a reason for why I’ve smashed my cell phone into little pieces with a sledgehammer so that no one can ever call me again. All of that is what service is: it is turning off your cell phone, but not ignoring your messages; it is fulfilling your responsibilities, not putting them off or hiding from them; it is the receptivity to others’ needs, both what they need you to give them and what they need to give you, and not smashing up any possibility of their reaching out to you.

This concept of service leads up to many things I think I should say. I haven’t exactly kept up with posting meaningful or relevant blogposts recently: sorry about that. I haven’t exactly been answering people’s e-mails asking how I am or what’s up in general: sorry about that. I haven’t exactly been going to daily prayer and weekly Masses: sorry about that. It has been pointed out to me that not explaining my behavior, behavior which amounts to avoiding practically all meaningful social interaction, is not “the Christian thing to do:” sorry about that.


Oh wait, sorry, I have to go: my cell phone is buzzing. I must’ve forgot to turn the damn thing off.

In [?] I Trust

Trust is a very important part of our lives, both as Church and as individuals. But what does it mean to trust, to be trustworthy? The final prayer in the Divine Mercy chaplet is “Jesus, I trust in you.” Trust, therefore, demands to be explored.

The interesting thing about trust is that it’s both a verb and a noun – an action and a thing – and that it is both of these at the same time, as well as being a description.

To trust is to have certainty that a person, in some respect, will act or behave in a certain way. It is certainty that the person is who you think they are, and that they will be that person. When someone tells a secret to someone else, they are trusting that person to do certain things in response, they are trusting that their secret will be received in a way that respects its integrity and dignity. ‘I trust you to understand,’ ‘I trust you to know that the secret is important to me,’ ‘I trust you to feel a certain way about it, a way that encompasses its nature,’ ‘I trust you to accept the secret as a knowledge that belongs to you though not an experience that belongs to you, to take it into account and not pretend that you never heard it, but also not to try and make it your own.’ These expectancy constructs are all based on trust as a certainty about another person. There can be trust, in the active sense, regardless of whether or not that certainty is well-founded: it is an action performed by only one person, the one who has decided to trust and reveal.

This kind of trust is also a noun, a state of being or affairs. When the trust is not betrayed – when the other person accepts that trust – something exists between you, a relationship based on mutual respect for the bond that trust creates. I think that relationship is important for both people, the one who is accepting the responsibility as well as the one who is reaching out to them in trust, when the person reaching out has also taken responsibility for themselves.

Genuine trust, I believe, always carries that kind of self-responsibility, because it acknowledges that in that decision is a risk that can be borne only by the person taking it. I choose to trust you, and in so doing I acknowledge myself to be the kind of person who does trust you, who believes in you, and who accepts that what I reveal belongs to me, is my own, and is my own to share or to conceal. Real trust is the greatest form of self-responsibility that there can be, as is the real acceptance of that trust by someone to whom the secret does not belong, but who chooses to be trust-worthy in the sharing of it.

Trust, of course, does not only have to do with secrets; trust can also be a form of dependence. ‘I trust you to catch me when I fall,’ to take an example from the clichéd trust-building exercises used in marriage counseling and group formation classes. ‘I trust you not to walk me off a cliff if you’ve volunteered to substitute for my guide dog today.’ ‘I trust you to help me in the way that you can, the appropriate way, and no other.’ ‘Jesus, I trust in you that you will love me and, at the final end, make everything right.’

Where would we be, as people and as Church, without this dependence on one another? Surely not a living metaphysical and real entity; surely not human; surely not truthful. Because we all depend on others in a myriad of ways, as we are supposed to. I don’t think this is unhealthy. I think that denying this essential part of our human lives constitutes a dangerous and destructive falsehood that denies the nature of what we are: that we are created to trust and depend, to be trustworthy and dependable. On whom can I depend but God? The best answer, I would hope, is ‘other people.’

Trust also always involves a vulnerability on the part of the person who trusts. They have, after all, given a great deal of power to another person in the hope that that person will not abuse that power, will not choose to violate that vulnerability. Which brings up what may just be the most important thing about trust: trust is hope. There is no trust without hope – it just isn’t possible. It is a choosing to believe in goodness, in kindness, in the humanity that God has created us to be. It is a hope in love, in one’s own and another’s strength. It is a hope in another person. Where could there be healing without hope? Without love, dependence, trust? These things are all woven together in a life that looks forward to and expects the resurrection, in a life that sees the promise of that resurrection here among us. Now is the kingdom, now is the day.

It makes me sad that disclosure of and healing from one’s secrets can be related to an interaction with another person that is devoid of mutual responsibility, expectation, investment and hope, rather turned in on itself where the act of speech, and not the relationship it inevitably demands, is grasped as the sole means of healing and self-responsibility. You might as well be talking into your web-cam. I personally would not want to think another person opened up their life to me as if I were a mirror to be used only for their own need to speak. I would feel devalued as a person, I would feel like I am being used, because in that action my own humanity, my own ability to be responsible with another person’s trust, is being devalued and denied. Trust is intimacy. Without intimacy there is no hope, no love. Without trust, life is not possible.

I sometimes think that this necessary intimacy is precisely what we have denied our priests (using ‘we’ for the moment to refer to the institutional Roman Catholic Church). We confess to them as if they were some sort of forgiveness-dispensing machine: just put in your quarter and receive healing. But is that really such a great idea, to forget that they are a person and not just standing in the place of Christ? Maybe that forgetting causes more harm than we know. Our priests are not allowed to marry. Our priests are expected to keep up one-way relationships with their parishioners where their own needs are suppressed, or at least never expressed, because of course a priest should not need anyone in his church or contribute something of himself to an intimacy between them. Our priests live alone. I don’t think it’s fair, and I don’t think it’s right, that we should limit or deny a priest this necessary element of vitality and humanity. It just seems like that kind of trust, that one-way expectation, does not account for who they are, and it’s a sacrifice that no one should have to make. It must be a heavy burden, that trust, knowing that you can never trust that person in turn – not really, because the expectation is that you will not attempt to do so. It makes me sad that anyone should have to live like that, especially our priests who represent Christ on earth, the epitome of that perfect love, hope and trust.

Now, this is not to say that unhealthy relationships cannot develop around the sharing of secrets or dependence or hope. Hope can be unrealistic, reflecting a denial of reality and an attempt to make another person carry to heavy a burden for you. It can be a way of shifting your self-responsibility onto another person and expecting them to fix things for you. It can be a gateway to inappropriate intimacy. An attempt to control another person. An attempt to avoid risk, ironically, by assuming that risk is eliminated by a relationship with another person. But that isn’t trust: that’s co-dependency. And the interesting thing about co-dependency is that in order for it to actually occur as a noun and as a verb, more than one person has to be involved in it. If your would-be co-dependent does not respond by allowing that relationship to unfold, you’re not actually co-dependent: you’re being stupid maybe, cowardly, afraid, manipulative and selfish, uncaring of another, but you are not co-dependent. All that there is is a false trust that mistakes hope for reality, certainty for the absolute, and dependence for unlimited and unbounded care.

That is not trust. But nor is it to be entirely condemned, either. We are, after all, human, fallible, weak, desperate and needy. There’s no sense in denying it, and trying to do so probably just creates the kind of psychological damage that makes people like Martin Luther despair of God because they themselves are not perfect, but flawed.

The fundamental difference between trust and co-dependence, I think, is something like that in trust the thing in question (secret, dependence, or whatever) is implicitly acknowledged, and that trust happens perhaps because of it but does not become it. Once the thing becomes imbedded in a relationship and forgotten, becomes a dynamic, becomes the intimacy…the secret becomes the relationship, rather than the relationship being alongside, within and around the thing, which remains always itself, for what it is. A mutual choice by two persons, belonging to one and entrusted to another, the responsibility of one person and not the responsibility and burden of the relationship.

That’s all I have to say about that. (which actually turned out to be quite a lot).

Oh, and therefore, I don’t think that it’s some sort of unhealthy trust if you feel hurt when it’s betrayed. After all, what person does not feel hurt by the ending of a relationship, by finding out that that relationship no longer exists, by hitting your head on the floor when you are not caught, be seeing that the thing you have hoped for has not come to pass? Hurt is healthy, because it reflects the true value of all these things, and so a sense of loss and pain when trust is broken can only be human, healthy and authentic as well.

Here In This Place

So, by now I'm sure everyone out there in cyberspace who cares about these things has heard the news about Ep. Lahey. I personally seem to be taking this rather hard because, for a variety of reasons, it hits close to home.

I think that what makes it worse is his role in the reconciliation process with survivors of child sexual abuse in his own diocese. It does take a great deal of courage to open up at all about such intimate issues -- not only what happened (though that is of course a part of it), but the ways in which it has affected and affects your life. What makes childhood abuse so difficult is that it does not really allow for a sense of the past...there is no real moment when you can look behind yourself and say 'it's over,' 'it's behind me.' Instead, it becomes an element of the present, of one's reality and lived experience of the world. It shapes everything around you so that it can never be left behind, not really. You carry it with you every day, in so many ways...a constant companion. These are the things it’s perhaps most difficult to talk about, because it involves opening up your private world, trying to express something that, at the end of the day, can't really be put into words. It involves the acknowledgment to another person of your vulnerability. It is very important that the people you choose to reveal these things to is able to listen, and to feel and express compassion, not so much for what has gone before but for the shape of your present, for the sheer challenge of trying to live a life where you've passed through it even while knowing that this passage can never be complete. It involves realizing that the journey itself is full of danger and that the constant evolution of your healing means you are never really in the same place more than once...that you may need to say it more than once, more than an hundred times, because each time you are not exactly the same person who is saying it, not saying exactly the same thing.

Because it takes a great amount of courage, trust is very important. A lot of the time, I think, it is not obvious why people choose to confide in those they do: a vague feeling, knowledge that the person has previous experience dealing with this sort of emotional fragility, sheer timing in that they're the only person around when it happens to explode out of you. In this case, it is fairly obvious why Ep. Lahey was chosen as someone to trust. His position in the Church makes him an ideal person, both because he represents the institution that allowed the harm to go on in the first place and because, well, we inherently trust our priests, do we not? We tell them our secrets, we come to them to find God, we entrust our children to them, because the lives they have chosen to lead reflect an undeniable goodness, service, and sanctity. It is a sad day when we can no longer look at our clergy without doubt, without concern, without a shadow of suspicion. Hopefully, that day will never come for most of us.

Trust is so important that it forms, I think, an integral part of the reconciliation process...reconciliation with yourself about the truth of your life, if nothing else. That trust makes it possible to see beyond, to hold onto the goodness of another person and know that you are not, after all, completely alone. The people involved in this particular case trusted Ep. Lahey and felt that his compassion and understanding played a crucial role in their ability to constructively confront their experiences. To not be alone in the public proclamation of it. To feel that, through all the shame, confusion, anger and hurt there was someone there whom they could trust and who might even, perhaps, help them to forgive.

So, obviously, finding out that the person you trust is involved at all in the same kind of hurt you’ve been entrusting them with is devastating. Because if the people who profess to care –- and even really do care -– do the same thing that they’ve listened to you talk about, who is there left? Who is there left to trust? I think it carves a new wound on top of an old one, making it even harder to really feel that you’re not alone. That’s what makes this case so particularly bad.

What should have happened is that Ep. Lahey never became involved in this case in the first place. What should have happened is something like this: Dear Holy Father, the diocese under my jurisdiction is about to enter into the process of reconciliation with child survivors of sexual abuse at the hands of our own priests. I request to be relieved of my Episcopal post immediately and to retire from the clerical profession. The grave reason necessitating this action is that, as it turns out, I have also been engaging in child sexual abuse. It would show a complete lack of regard for the souls entrusted to my care if I were to risk wounding them in such a horrible way. I am not requesting to be moved to another diocese not embroiled in a clerical sex-scandal; this would, of course, be terrible, repeating as it does the past sins of the institutional Church. Please accept my resignation immediately. Also, this event has spurred me to realize the implications and harm my actions can cause to other human beings. I’m thinking of turning myself over to the police, perhaps allowing them to catch more people involved in the trafficking of child pornography. Sincerely, your faithful servant.

But, of course, this didn’t happen. I sincerely hope that Ep. Lahey is able to find the courage to repent of what he has done. And it does, I think, take a great deal of courage to truly repent for one’s actions –- all the courage of your life. It means seeing, really seeing, what you have done for what it is, allowing yourself to feel all the deep pain of it, allowing the devastation to penetrate your soul, accepting the hurt and responsibility without any equivocation, any denial, any attempt at proving innocent. That willingness to suffer, that willingness to see yourself as you truly are, is the real measure of a life. And it’s something we all of us will have to face when we stand before God in judgment. I pray that we all find the courage to immerse ourselves in repentance so that we can all accept God’s forgiveness. God can forgive anything, but embracing that mercy means first accepting in all of its horror what we have done. We are all sinners, none of us more than another –- not really. None of us deserve or merit forgiveness. But, through God’s freely given grace, it is poured out upon all of us. The choice of our lives, I think, comes on the final day, and the task of our lives is to love and trust God enough that we can brave the horrible sorrow that accepting forgiveness will mean, trusting that God’s love for us will save us even from that, even from ourselves. So I pray for Ep. Lahey, just as much as for any of us, that he will find that courage and strength. Maybe facing the consequences of his actions in this life will help him to do that...though human justice can never look into the mystery of the human heart, it can help a person to see, to see as clearly as it’s possible to see in a dark glass, that they have sinned, and that they need forgiveness. So God can save them with a Mercy that knows no measure, and a Love that knows no end.

But I ramble.

The point is, I feel really, really sad and weepy and vulnerable about this, because I know what it’s like to have someone you’ve trusted with your most painful secrets break that trust by committing the same offense. To whom can I turn but God? But, of course, God is not all I need in this life –- God can’t really hug me or hand me Kleenexes. I need other people. Which is another reason I feel so bad. Because I, like the people of Antigonish, need to find the strength and courage to forgive, the strength and courage to trust again, to really put it aside and hand it over to God, and not live my life inside anger and vengeance and all that it means to not forgive. It is difficult, and I’m not sure that it can ever be fully accomplished until the end, when I come face to face with the true depth of my own sinfulness, which I can never fully appreciate behind the cloud of this life. Like everyone else, I need the final resurrection to be whole. But forgiveness now is necessary, as necessary as possible, because that too prepares you to accept the love of God, to understand the depth and meaning of mercy, that it is beyond anything that can be expected or comprehended or deserved. That only in God are all things possible.

We pray to the Lord: for the sake of your Son, have mercy Lord.
May everyone, all of us in need of your mercy to escape the darkness of hell, be lead into new light, and see your face.

Things To Think About

These are the lyrics of a song written by Francis Patric O'Brien in 2002, "In a Time of Pain"

In a time of pain when confusion reigns, will you hear our burning cry?
When the wound won't heal as the truth's revealed, when our anguish just won't die:
Come save us as you saved your Son, who was faithful to the end.
God of justice reign; through our sin and shame
be salvation, God, and friend.

When our leaders fail, when the dark prevails, be the path that will guide our way.
When our anger burns may we strive to learn to reveal the light of day.
Come save us as you saved your Son; in your truth we will be set free.
Teach us how to deal with the hurt we feel;
may we rise from this Calvary.

When the weakest ones have no place to run from the terror that haunts their days,
Who will give them peace, make their nightmares cease? Who will drive their dark away?
Come save us as you saved your Son, who embraced each child in pain.
May your healing balm bring a peace and calm
that will make us whole again.

Teach us what is just and in whom to trust; by your wisdom we will abide.
May the ones with pow'r, in this crucial hour, seek the Spirit as their guide.
Come save us as you saved your Son from corruption's deadly toll.
May we rise at last from our shadowed past
with your love as our guide and goal.

In a note at the end of the score, O'Brien writes: In this time of crisis in the church, many have found that, once again, music and lyrics have the power to confront and to heal. This text was written as a prayer to our good and gracious God to express the confusion, pain, and other emotions that well up within so many in these difficult days in the Catholic community. It is also intended to be a prayer of hope that our church may confront the darkness and move toward the light of Christ, which is our goal and guide.

At least for now, I think I'll leave it at that.

Scripture Is Open To Interpretation

Mt 5:27-37
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell.

It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

Again, you have heard it said that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.’ But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one.”

Read through a hermeneutic of…uh…relaxation, clearly what Jesus is saying is

If thou lookest at thy brother’s wife’s shoes and thou art beset by a grievous envy, in thy heart it is as though thou hast already procured them for yourself by immoral means.

Truly I say to thee, if thou hast possessions too numerous for thee, thou shouldest cast them aside; for it is better for thee to be wanting in possessions than to be thrown into the depths of bankruptcy because of thine excessive desire for them.

Truly I tell you, if thou hast disingenuous intimate relations, thou shouldest cast them away that lack in sincerity; for it is better for thee to lament the loss of thy beloved than to be flung into the abyss of scornfulness and vengeance.

If thou desirest to break up with thy partner, thou shouldest discuss it in the presence of their person, and not send such a missive in the manner of an electronic communication (excepting that thy relationship wast until this moment expressed solely in the manner of electronic communication and through no other means).

However, if thou desertest thy partner, thou art compelling them to alter their status of relationship on Facebook.
If thine ex-partner should engage in a novel relationship following directly from your desertion, thou didst compel them to alter their status of relationship on Facebook, which didst not pass unnoticed amongst thy common acquaintances and shall henceforth affect you also, and that thou didst this by compelling them reveal their status to potential suitors.
It was said of old that thou shalt not tell falsehoods nor make false promises in the name of the Lord. But truly I say to thee, that thou shouldest not embellish thy promises and thy word, nor shall thee secure thy promises by any thing except the value of thine own word; for all things belongeth to the Lord, even thine own self, and thou hast not the power to ransom them against your own word. Speak always only the truth, with clarity and without accessory, for to do otherwise is to succumb to the ways of the devil.


Verily, reader, thou art charged with the task of imparting this missive anon to all thine acquaintances, for it is verily a novel rendering of the words of our Lord.
Aroint with it then.

Also, I think this is a lovely occasion to reprint something you may have already seen:

Why I Hate Proof-texting

I hate proof-texting: that much has been established. Proof-texting is any time someone pulls from the Bible a passage which provides ready-made proof of the position with which they agree – or anytime proof is found that the contrary position is, indeed, incorrect.

I disagree with the practice of proof-texting because it does not acknowledge the Bible's textuality. A text is not simply a bunch of words on paper: it is a living thing, existing to be actively read. There can be no passive reader of a text, because a text is not actualized unless it has been fully engaged; a text cannot live unless it is constantly being read anew, vertically, through all its nuances as a being in relationship with the reader. There is a dynamic quality to a text, a flow, movement, and vibrancy. A text cannot breathe if it is not dynamic, is not vertically engaged, is not inhabited in a genuine quest for deep meaning. The text requires an always-returning, a re-reading, a new engagement which does not regard it as a static, lifeless thing.

When a person proof-texts, the Bible becomes a work, a purely horizontal thing which can be read linearly, a thing which does not admit of multiplicity, a static thing. You can search it for what you want, pull it out of the work – force it, if necessary – and take it home with you, never to return to the work again. You have abandoned the work but, worse yet, you have consumed it! The Bible becomes yet another object for our consumption, a one-dimensional thing without contradiction, tension, or life. The Bible becomes a commodity, bought and sold in the arena of understanding. But there is no real understanding, because the Bible, as text, has not been allowed to express itself, to speak, to be fully that which it is.

The Bible should never be made into a work. That would imply that it, as the word of G-d, is brought to us so that we can eat it, digest it, and throw it away without engaging fully in its complexity. That would imply that the word of G-d is one-dimensional, fundamentally lifeless. The Law, the Gospel, is written on our hearts, and our hearts are alive. A dead thing cannot be grafted onto a living; a static thing cannot bear the chances and changes of a heartbeat.

The word of G-d must be a text. Like an Icon, it is a window through which we enter into relationship with the Divine. In the context of right worship, it becomes alive through our engagement. It is written on our hearts because we do not simply look through it…we enter into being with it, vertically descending in its layers, allowing it to live and move and have its being. Always returning, always exploring, but never demanding, we come close to G-d in engaging the Bible as text. We cannot exploit it, or the richness falls away. We can never withdraw taking our goodies with us, or we lose the fullness to which we are called. G-d wants a relationship, a continual renewal, a continual engagement with His living Truth.

That is why I hate proof-texting: it denies the possibility that G-d speaks once but that I can hear Him twice, that that power belongs to G-d (Ps 62).

What a beautiful sky with clouds in it
and light clinging to their underneath
like a woman’s frosted slip, or the inside of a dress.
The seasons are starting to creep up
on the warm air and afternoon sun,
autumn trees pretending to be a sunset in the day.
Sweet breeze like music,
like a bird swimming through the air
tossed on every wind in the beautiful sky
with clouds in it.

Consumption

Before I start, I’d like to say something: I am not a trend whore. By which I mean, I don’t buy things because they’re en vogue. In fact, as a general rule, I avoid wearing anything trendy until it’s been out at least 2 or 3 seasons, even if I already own it. Not that I attempt to purposefully look unfashionable, either – I usually aim for something in between cool/cute and mediocrity (unless I’m in a really bad mood…oh boy). The nicest compliment anyone’s ever given me clothes-wise is “You should be one of those people who dresses celebrities or something. You always look so original and fun, and you make things pretty without spending a lot.” At the time, I was wearing this sleeveless dress I got from Simons for, like, 5$, and converse boots coming to about mid-calf. Those were some great shoes. I had gotten a free shirt at some jeans store which I didn’t love, so I liberated its sleeves and fixed them up so I could cover my arms without putting on a cardigan. The dress had great lines so I didn’t want to break them up with an extra layer of clothing. I know I’m rambling, but that was a really great outfit, trust me. Suffice it to say, it’s clearly been a long time since I put any effort into being creative clothes-wise.

Anyway, I’m not a trend whore. But I’ve been walking by these amazing boots at Browns everyday…they’re those really tall boots that we’ve been seeing on the runway (anyway, I’ve been watching them on the runway, along with a lot of really structured pieces emphasizing the shoulders, shiny material, leather, plaid, some really interesting gathering, and stretch pants - again). Über trendy. But they’re also purple suede. Purple!!!! And they don’t have ridiculous heels on them either (like we’ve also seen on the runway and quite enough of that thankyou). I admit it: I’m infatuated with them. So, today I finally decided to ditch my trend-hating trend in favor of the boots. And besides, they’re eccentric enough to work for me. And although I might pay 5$ for a dress, I’ll spend ‘ridiculous’ amounts of money on shoes: I AM a shoe whore.

They didn’t exactly have my size, which is to be expected, so I didn’t get them. They did have another different-ish kind in this dark purple-blue color that are pretty awesome, but those are pressing my price limit close enough that I’d never think of getting them without active moral support and a second opinion.

While I was there, I decided to walk around to all the shoe stores in the vicinity to check out their boots. They were not super awesome…no purple anywhere *frowny face*. But what struck me the most was the complete lack of customer service anywhere except Browns. Did they think I couldn’t afford their shoes or something? And anyway, shouldn’t you try? I knew that I was willing to drop up to maybe 300$ on sufficiently amazing boots if they were made well and durable, and had a good balance (crucial: bad shoes are not made to naturally fall to the 'center' thereby taking some of the stress off your spine). I can justify the ridiculous price by being able to wear them for the rest of my life. I also knew there’s no way I’d buy anything at a store with crappy service.

It got me thinking: why were they so comfortable ignoring me, ignoring anyone? Is it that they think consumers are so indoctrinated that they’ll be desperate enough to buy their shoes without any convincing at all? What does it mean to turn the business of selling us stuff that we don’t need into a service so important that we have to go to it, rather than the other way around? It’s scary to think we’re a society that will gorge itself so much on consumption that anyone thinks it's okay to purchase something from just anyone – anyone with no investment in you or even in what they’re selling. We buy stuff all the time without ever being aware of why we want it, or where it comes from, or who it’s exploiting. They expect us to have no reflection…enough lack of concerted awareness that we’ll even be interested in things they don’t even bother to try and sell us. If we build it, they will come.

What does all of this mean theologically? It’s fairly self-evident to say that a perverse love for things and acquisition has replaced a love and desire for God in many people’s lives. But what about Christians? What does it say about us? The most dangerous thing about consumer culture is its insidiousness, its infiltration of every aspect of our lives. It runs alongside us, weaving through our lives, an unconscious incorporation of our things into our identities. We might not look at it or think about it, we might believe that things are utterly unimportant, but the truth is we’re all surrounded by this overwhelming cultural desire, we all live our lives in it, and we can’t escape our place in it just by telling ourselves that we’re different or that we’ve escaped it. Because even if we buy the 5$ dress that we think falls outside the clawing grasp of couture, that dress got there after a process in which high fashion gets transmuted down through ready-to-wear designers and retail stores into a variety of pieces incorporating ideas or patterns or materials from some designer’s collection…your original non-fashion dress that you thought nothing about when buying is actually just another element in a giant web of production that ultimately begins with some person telling us what it is they think we should want.

I don’t pretend to have a solution. I just think that we need to be aware that we play a part in a larger consumer reality and that, as Christians, and even as people who may reject the idea of things altogether, we do not stand outside this circle. If we want to see more clearly and perhaps attempt to refocus our society there needs to be some critical thinking about the ideas we live in. Because, frankly, no one group of people can change a social construct by merely shifting their behavior, because that rebellion already implicitly buys into the ideology it rejects; it is that reality that determines what constitutes rebellion. Just like how getting tattoos used to be a way of ‘rebelling’ against the dominant culture actually relied on the ideas of that culture in order to be meaningful, uncritical rejection that isn’t supported by a more sophisticated system of thought can never hope to survive or thrive or be meaningful outside the paradigm it pretends to be escape. Because it's only a juxtaposition, and not a re-thinking.

Having said that, I also found some really great colorful shoes in my long journey…maybe if I can’t find sufficiently amazing boots, I’ll consider those instead.

Tell It Slant

First, let me apologize for the depressing nature of my blog lately. But, in the absence of church-going, I’ve had to rely on talking about my ‘feelings.’ It’s going well, don’t you think? Except for the complaining all the while. I suppose it’s to be expected that there is a little bit of anguish for each ecstatic instant.

I got back one of my term essays today; I had (finally!) handed it in four months late. Since I’d passed the course, I figured I couldn’t have bombed the paper. Therefore, I was curious to see exactly which part of this thing I’d written was actually acceptable. I was expecting soooo much criticism…but actually my professor was very kind. It was simultaneously good – phew, I can relax – and disappointing – my certainty that the paper was crap was squashed, a ribbon at a time. Which I suppose is also good. I think. It yet remains to see.

Truthfully, I haven’t really liked anything I wrote last year. Well, originally I liked my paper on the Symbolic as a metaphysical reality grounding all possibility of meaning, but then I re-read it and had no idea what I was saying. Well, I mean, I knew what I was saying, but it felt like my knowing was so superficial. I guess that’s the problem with being a theory-whore: in the moment there’s a huge payoff and it feels great and important and intoxicating, but afterward I feel like I’ve woken up next to something I don’t recognize. You should see my Heidegger papers from during my Literature degree. Not my best moments, to be sure. I feel like…not myself, like myself sideways. I feel like…whatever I’ve managed to painfully create has been nothing more that a few disjointed moments of colour on an otherwise blank canvas, soundless as dots on a disc of snow.

Maybe it’s a palimpsest…like the stillness in the air between the heaves of storm.

I don’t know why I care so much about schoolwork; from an outsider’s point of view, and in the long run, it doesn’t really matter. I feel like I’m searching for something, trying to unlock some magical thing that’s going to make me feel better again; that I could not breathe without a key.

I wish I could be more myself again. Everything seems off somehow. It’s like being in a room where everything has been moved an inch out of place. You know something’s wrong, you feel disconcerted, but you can’t quite say why. Myself felt ill and odd…There’s something missing, something empty…I don’t hurt: not exactly. I guess I feel like I’m in the space where pain has an element of blank, where it’s the sense of something…like the ground has shifted where my life had stood. The feet, mechanical, go round…maybe if there is a way to stand still somehow, stop everything just for a little while, your breath has time to straighten.

In other news, I skipped church on Sunday. Again. Definitely not the will of the Inquisitor. I’ve got to find a way to get excited again, so that not everything feels like just one more thing I have to do. There are days when everything feels like a chore, when everything I do is a job set by some sort of boss – even happy things like praying feel like work, all sorts of things…whatever is driving this feeling and brushing my joy away, she sweeps with many-colored brooms. To let you in on a secret: given all my…ahem…medication-induced issues (see above), I should be kind of proud I’m somehow managing to walk around and do all these things while appearing normal. Well, no one’s spontaneously said anything, so I assume I look normal enough. I should be proud, but of course I’m not: that is not the way of me. Of course, after this beautifully incoherent post, I’m sure the mirage of normalcy is fading quickly.

Also, while I’m sitting here thinking about writing this blog, I think I see one of my teachers walk by the door. He’s pretty fuzzy-looking, so I’m not sure. I’m not sitting very far away, either. Yep, my vision is getting even blurrier – a side effect. This is not ideal. This situation is becoming untenable. I can almost see hope flying away into the distance. Hope is the thing with feathers. Not that I can make them out.

I guess I feel like time is running out in my little universe of maintaining my world while simultaneously getting this thing sorted out. It’s been suggested that I take medical leave…but if I break my inertia I’ll never get through this school thing…and, after all, a wounded deer leaps highest. And, since I didn’t fail out of the program, it would be a waste not to press on. I know that if I can just make it through this difficulty, this feeling of disconnection and distance, of confusion and unclarity, of alienation…I feel that darkness is about to pass.

I just really hope I’m doing the right thing. Aside from this marginal blog, I haven’t talked seriously about this whole disaster with anyone. That really wouldn’t be fair. I want to be a happykat, not a sourpuss always caterwauling away about my life…issues. I really hope that going forward as planned, according to schedule, isn’t going to be a bad idea leading to some sort of burnout or something. While I absolutely don’t want to give up, being the most stubborn person in the world, I don’t want to make it worse because I could not stop