The Knitting Theologian

A friend of mine told me a story last week. There are little jellyfish in Florida that sometimes wash up on the beaches. They are small, about the size of a person’s thumbnail, and they have a little bit of bright blue lightning inside them that you can see. So when they wash up on the beaches, thousands and thousands of them all at once, all flashing with blue lightning, you can see all those combined flashes and it is beautiful. Now, understand, the tide is going out, and the jellyfish won’t be able to get back in the water, so they will die there on the beach, and I suppose at that point their little blue flashes of lightning will stop.

My friend said there is an apocryphal story about a little boy who walked the beach during one of these times when the jellyfish had washed up, and was picking them up, one by one, and throwing them back into the water, back into life. A man approached the boy and said, "Hey, kid, what do you think you’re doing? You can never make a difference. There are thousands of jellyfish, and you’ll only save a few of them." The boy shrugged, picked up another jellyfish, threw it back into the water, and said, "Made a difference to that one."

I am fascinated by this story. It makes me think of sacrifice. All these jellyfish, called out of the water by their Creator, to spread themselves on the beach and show their otherworldly light. Maybe they chose to do it, inasmuch as a jellyfish can choose. Maybe their great gift is to show their light for a little while to an unbelieving world. Maybe, for even one person, seeing the spectacle of all those jellyfish, all those tiny flashes of blue lightning coming from inside them, is an experience of God. Maybe seeing that helps one person to believe in God for the first time, or to renew a long-forgotten belief. And for even one person, just one, God would do it. After all, Jesus died for each of us personally.

I believe that there is purpose to everything in the world. Now in the scenario I just outlined, where the jellyfish are called by their Creator, God, to show themselves, and they accept this calling and give themselves over to it fully, the question arises, what of the ones the boy throws back into the water? Here they have made this self-giving choice, and then it is taken away from them.

In God’s world, I would say that it is simply not their time yet, because the boy’s role in the story is also important. He is not thwarting the will of the Creator in throwing the jellyfish back; he is acting out of his own impulse of charity to love and care for these creatures. He is giving of himself, his time certainly and perhaps there is risk—I don’t know whether these are stinging jellyfish but I think many jellyfish are–so perhaps the boy is willingly choosing to suffer the pain of a jellyfish sting for each jellyfish he chooses to pick up and throw back into the water.

And he offers a different lesson to the observer; the lesson of the importance of each individual life. Of course he can’t save every jellyfish. He can only save a few of them. But the ones he chooses to save are precious, each one, just as each human being is precious in the eyes of God. Perhaps a jellyfish who has responded fully to the call of God in allowing itself to wash up on the beach responds just as fully when it finds itself in the water again. And that is a great example of acceptance (a good reminder for me these days).

Are there jellyfish on the beaches who did not fully give themselves to being there? I would argue there are not. They are animals, not humans; they lack free will and the ability to choose. So even when I’ve used the word "choose" above in reference to the jellyfish it is not really accurate; the jellyfish can only respond fully to their nature, and if their nature, created by God, calls them to show their light to the world, that is what they do.

I don’t think that the jellyfish that are not chosen to be thrown back into the water are neglected or not chosen through some fault of theirs. I think they are also chosen: to give of themselves fully. Who says that the jellyfish who die on the beach do not find a kind of freedom in doing so? I think they do, because I believe that all creatures have value and nothing, not the tiniest act of self-sacrifice, is lost before the loving and compassionate gaze of God, our Creator and Father.

So, I know I left something out: how I started praying to Jesus, and what that did.

It all began when I turned my heart over to Jesus in the chapel at Seattle University on one December Saturday in my first quarter at Seattle University. I sat there in the chapel lonely and sad, full of the recognition of what a wreck my life actually was, all exterior accomplishment and no interior fulfillment, and I asked Jesus to come to me. I had always prayed to God before, who was comfortably abstract and far away. Jesus, I knew, would mess up my life, and I liked it the way it was–until that day in the chapel, looking at Jesus on the crucifix, when I realized that actually I did not like my life the way it was at all.

This was the first time I had ever done such a thing. But I was so lonely. I think it was beginning to dawn on me that nobody could ever love me as I longed to be loved. The only person who could do that was Jesus.

I remember the prayer I said that day:

Oh, Jesus, come to me. Come to me. Be my brother, my father, my lover, my friend. Come to me.

I said it over and over, and I wept. And that’s how it started.

I have read so many times in different spiritual books about how all God needs is for us to turn to Him. He, like the father in the story of the prodigal son, will run to meet us. I know how true this is, because this is what happened to me.

I prayed that prayer in the chapel, looking at the crucifix, and then I began to pray with the Sacred Space book, which was my first introduction to mental prayer. And Jesus began to come to me.

Soon, I was praying daily, and then I was making it most important, praying first thing in the morning. In return, it seemed like my prayer life was deepening and growing almost every day. Soon I couldn’t do without mental prayer. I needed it.

Jesus granted me a lot of consolations through prayer in those days, as if to draw me deeper and closer in. It’s a good thing He did. I still panicked the first time I encountered a dry patch in prayer, but the Holy Spirit directed me to some texts on prayer and I learned enough about dry patches to soldier through, or at least to keep going.

I still pray daily. It is a constant in my life. Sometimes I think of it as my real work. And I have seen my life transformed by it.

I don’t have much to say. I had a blessed Easter season and was happy to return to Ordinary Time, which has its own liturgical rhythm. But consolation from God through prayer has been downright scanty, if not entirely absent, lately. As a result, I find I have little to post.

I have major distractions: my work has become very challenging, and I am writing a book. It has occurred to me to test the book by posting some bits of it here, but I am shy about doing so.

But I have not stopped praying, and I am reading interesting books on holiness and the discernment of spirits. I have learned that the absence of consolation in prayer does not mean that I am doing it wrong or have somehow displeased God. It might mean that God wants to know whether I will persevere, even without the consolations. The answer to that is Yes.

In the spirit of the Easter season, and knowing that the possibility of experiencing moments of resurrection exists in our lives here, I offer my conversion story.

Yes. I have been converted–or perhaps more accurately I am still being converted. I’ve heard some people call it a "reversion" instead, meaning that they were born and baptized a Catholic, attended Mass as children, received the sacraments of Eucharist and Confirmation, and then left the church as teens or young adults before coming back to a full practice of the faith. I’ve used that term to refer to myself as well, but really I think that the difference in how I thought of my faith before and after is so significant that the term "conversion" is more accurate.

You see, I really did not know Jesus before. I did not have a personal relationship with Him. Prayer, for me, was a series of words I said directed at God who was comfortably abstract and far away. After I finished saying all those words I checked "pray" off my mental to-do list and went about the rest of my day, never giving God a second thought.

As a child I experienced my faith as a series of rules I was supposed to follow. God was actually pretty scary. I believed in Him, because I was supposed to, but the idea that God loved me was so preposterous to me that I simply dismissed it. The idea that Jesus might have died for me, personally, on the cross was simply not to be believed. I didn’t even believe that Jesus loved me, at least not me personally as an individual. I thought God loved me because He had to according to the way He’d set up the rules. I was along for the ride. And so my faith was entirely exterior.

I apparently had a great longing for a deeper faith, and a natural orientation toward spirituality, because other people saw in me what I did not see in myself. But without that personal connection, without falling in love with Jesus Himself, the church became more and more a series of constraints to me. Just a bunch of stupid rules. I continued practicing my faith, sort of, in a very superficial way but in my heart I continued running farther and farther away from the image of God I knew.

However, I knew, deep down, that I wasn’t really happy, and I knew that God was seeking me. That frightened me. I had even been blessed with a few experiences, in my unbelieving days, which I knew were much more than they seemed. I couldn’t dismiss them as hallucinations or figments of my imagination, but accepting them as encounters with Christ was so ridiculous to me that I simply boxed the experiences up and shoved them away. I shake my head now, knowing that they were experiences when God reached out to me, came so close, revealed Himself to me–and I wasn’t paying attention. I stuck my fingers in my ears, closed my eyes, closed my heart, and waited for the moment to pass. How grateful I am now that God never stopped trying.

This history of mine is why I tell people to start with prayer. I have had people ask me why the church teaches this and that, which seem so backward, so authoritative, so demeaning toward women, so…everything that we modern people are supposed to reject. I have been asked "how can you, an intelligent and liberated woman, possibly be a Catholic?" What I have come to learn, through my own experience, is it all starts with getting to know Jesus as a real person and falling in love with Him. Everything makes way more sense after that. It all starts, goes back to, and remains in Jesus.

The way to get to know Jesus, I am convinced, is through prayer. I don’t mean rattling off Our Fathers and Hail Marys either, although they are a perfectly fine way to pray. I am devoted to the Rosary, for instance, and say at least one daily, so I say my share of Our Fathers and Hail Marys. But what I mean by getting to know Jesus through prayer is something else.

I mean sitting down with a passage from the gospels–they are our best record of who Jesus was and what He did–and taking 20 minutes to reflect on it, asking Jesus to be present during that reflection. I know that He will be, if you keep an open heart and trust that He is there, and if you remember that very often He is subtle. But He will be there and gradually you will begin to know who He is, and then you will begin to hear His voice in your heart.

And He is irresistible. I think as a human He clearly was; you can see in the gospels how great crowds followed Him, asking for healing, asking for food, asking for wisdom. Not very many understood Him, but certainly they were attracted to Him, and I think He must have had an irresistible attractiveness then. He still does. I know this through my own experience of encountering Him in prayer. I have come to know Jesus, and I have come to love Him deeply, and — no surprise here for anyone who has experienced conversion — my life has changed as a result. It hasn’t always been easy — there is no Christianity without the cross — but I wouldn’t trade it for anything, and in fact I am happier now, much happier than I ever was before. It is a deeper and more profound joy that sustains me and gives me life and hope. Those are big gifts, especially in the world we live in today.

They really helped. I made it through the novena and have been experiencing the fruits of it, including a deep sense of peace. I am also having a rather joyous Lent, all in all. That might seem like an oxymoron, but I have learned the reward of opening my hands and giving over to God.

I used to have a recurring nightmare in which I was driving through the mountains on a foggy day. I was enjoying myself: the car was fun to drive, and I could see enough of the road ahead to feel comfortable with the speed at which I was travelling. The nightmare started when I suddenly came out of the mountains, into the sun, only to see that the ocean was on the wrong side of the road.

It’s difficult to describe the awful shock of this. Obviously the ocean wasn’t really on the wrong side; only my mental map was wrong. The problem was, though, that I now had no idea where I was or where I was going, and the map I had been using was clearly worthless.

The shock of this dream always woke me, so I never figured out what to do next. I haven’t thought of the dream in years, but I remembered it recently when I realized what a struggle these last days of this novena have become.

I thought the spiritual struggle of the novena would be like climbing a mountain. I would work hard but climb steadily, the way I have often done in real hiking. At the halfway point I would be at the summit of the mountain, take some time to enjoy the view, and then descend, keeping in mind that I must work on the way down, too, instead of relaxing and coasting back to the trailhead.

My map is wrong. This particular spiritual struggle is shaped like a valley instead. The first part was a descent down to the floor of the valley, which looked nice enough from the where I was. The descent itself, though difficult—I have never really liked descending while hiking—was certainly doable.

When I reached the valley floor, not knowing it was a valley, of course, I took time to enjoy the fact that I was halfway through. I remembered the graces I’d received so far. I kept going.

Soon after that halfway point, though, I began to tire. It was harder than I thought it would be to keep going. I had expected to work, but not like this. Doubts and fears began to assail me. They tested me on the way down, but were fairly easy to brush off then. Not anymore.

Sometime in the last week, I looked behind me and realized it seemed I hadn’t made any progress at all, and that’s when I realized that my map is wrong. I am going uphill, not downhill. The valley floor I am struggling to leave is still close by. The temptation to give up is very strong.

I only have nine more days of this. And what I’m doing is a small thing. I want to keep my promise to God, but the temptation to doubt that He even cares whether I do is constantly nagging in the background.

So I’m asking for prayers. If you could pray for courage and fortitude and perseverance for me, I’d appreciate it.

I am halfway through the Irresistible Novena. Yeah, I know: what’s a novena? It’s nine days of prayer. In a row. In the case of the Irresistible Novena, the prayer is the Rosary. Other novenas have other prayers associated with them.

So the Irresistible Novena, which is said to never fail (hence the name), is actually fifty-four days: six nine-day novenas in a row, for those of you following along doing the math. The way the Irresistible Novena works is you spend 27 days (three nine-day novenas) praying a rosary for your intention, and another 27 days praying a rosary in thanksgiving, whether or not your intention has been answered.

Like that little kicker? I can hear my non-Catholic friends right now; heck, I can hear my Catholic friends, and the voices are coalescing into just a few words: are you crazy? How can you give thanks if you don’t even know whether your prayers are answered? I wondered that myself.

The answer to that question is pretty simple: welcome to the Classroom of Faith, my friends. And actually I know that my prayers will be answered. I’m not sure entirely of the form in which they will be answered, but I’ve had enough experience praying to know that God always answers.

And why would I do such a thing? Because I have a couple of intentions I wanted to pray for, and the Irresistible Novena, about which I read a couple of years ago, came to mind immediately in a way that I’ve come to recognize as a nudge from the Holy Spirit. And because I recently resolved to take my fingers out of my ears and stop singing la-la-la when I sense those nudges, I went ahead and started the novena.

And so, halfway through, here I am, and I do have things for which I am grateful:

• An increased sense of God’s presence, not only during prayer but throughout the day.
• An increased recognition of the presence of God in others.
• An increased sensitivity to the graces present in the Eucharist. (I could write a whole other post on this last one, but I’ll just say here that there are many graces present in the Eucharist, and I’m sure I’m only scratching the surface of them. Trust me, they are there, and it’s the biggest reason I go to daily Mass so often. Gets me through the day like nothing else.)

I knew when I started that there was no way I could do this alone, no matter how stubborn I am. I have had to say to Jesus as well as to Mary and Joseph and practically the whole communion of saints, often, “Help! I can’t do this anymore.” They have come through, with help and support, every single time. It feels like being showered with “every spiritual blessing in the heavens.” (Ephesians 1:3) For all that, how could I not be grateful?

Yes, I know it’s already 2010 and I ought to have done this post a couple of days ago. I say better late than never. Technically I’m more than a month behind, anyway, since the church year begins with the season of Advent. I was even on retreat at the beginning of December, which offered a great opportunity, but other things happened on that retreat and somehow I never got to a review of spiritual commitments.

I have daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly spiritual commitments. Here’s what they are and how I did.

Daily

1. Liturgy of the Hours: review the readings from Office of Readings and say Morning Prayer. Not 100%, but probably darn close. I doubt I missed more than 10 days.
2. Lectionary: review the readings for Mass, and take some time to reflect on the Gospel. Again, not 100%. I’m very good about reviewing the readings, less so about reflecting on the Gospel, because I don’t always read slowly enough to allow God to get my attention.
3. Mental prayer: 20 minutes. Not 100% but very very close. Mental prayer has become so necessary for me I can feel the difference when I don’t do it.
4. Rosary: maybe about 60%. I do pretty well saying the Rosary during the week but less so on the weekends because I haven’t found a good time for it.
5. Nightly Examination of Conscience: maybe 10% if I’m being generous. I just haven’t been doing it, and I know the reasons I don’t are just excuses.

Weekly

1. Liturgy of the Hours: say Evening Prayer at least once a week. I’d say about 50%. It’s easy to do when I meet with the prayer group, less easy to do when I’m on my own. I added this commitment in Lent and have kept it going. As the year went on I was up to about 3 times a week pretty regularly.
2. Daily Mass: I’d say about 40% here. I cannot attend Daily Mass every single day because of work commitments, but I tried to make a point of going when I could. It got easier after my dog died.
3. Holy Hour: ooh. Not very well here at all. I had trouble finding a time I could work into my schedule. I maybe made about a dozen Holy Hours, but recent experiences have shown me the tremendous healing power possible.

Monthly

1. Confession: maybe 75% here, because this particular sacrament is becoming  more and more important.

Yearly

1. Retreat: check. And it was a good one.
2. Review of spiritual commitments: well, I’m doing it now.

Next time I’ll post on the fruits of my reflection on this list of commitments and what I plan to add/change/delete for 2010.

I do hear things in prayer sometimes, if I can shut up my brain long enough to let God talk. I don’t think I’m really that much of a chatterbox but apparently during mental prayer I am.

I was on retreat this weekend. There were sign up sheets for lectors, Eucharistic ministers, and so on for Mass on Saturday and Sunday. On Friday night my friend pointed to the empty spaces by “music minister” but I said No.

I don’t know, I figured there was somebody else who could do it better than I could. Yeah, I’m a cantor, and people sometimes tell me I have touched them when i sing, but I worry a lot about getting a swelled head. Besides, I was an English major! I’m not a real musician!

Later Friday night, I dropped into one of the tunnels I’ve become so well acquainted with over the past year, and spent time in the chapel praying over Psalm 38, especially verse 5:

My iniquities overwhelm me,
a burden beyond my strength.

Nothing happened right away, which is not unusual for me. But early Saturday morning in prayer I heard this:

You cannot let the weight of your iniquities keep you from using the gifts I gave you.

I signed up.

Thanks to the Catholic Key blog, which is from the Diocese of Kansas City, here is a video of the Gregorian chant Mass setting Missa Orbis Factor. It’s one of the sort of videos that shows close ups of the score so you can see how the square notes and the text line up.

I would be happy to get to the point at my parish where we regularly sang even the simplest chant Mass settings year around.