The Knitting Theologian

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.

In today’s gospel, Luke 5:12-16, a leper begs Jesus for healing.

Now Jesus was in one of the towns when a man appeared, covered with leprosy. Seeing Jesus he fell on his face and implored him. “Sir,” he said, “if you want to, you can cure me.” Jesus stretched out his hand, touched him, and said, “Of course I want to! Be cured!” And the leprosy left him at once.

I hear immense compassion in Jesus’ words. Bottomless. And it seems to me that Jesus has the same answer for anyone who goes to him and begs, as the leper did, to be cured, or freed from sin. Jesus’ compassion extends to all sinners, and he does indeed want to cure anyone who asks in all sincerity.

Now there is something important about the way in which I ask. Sometimes I ask, but I also have the desire to retain some control over the situation. “Lord, make me chaste, but not yet,” as St. Augustine famously said. I think sometimes I say, “Lord, make me clean—but not too much.” Is it any wonder then that perhaps nothing happens? After all, the leper didn’t say, “you can make me a little better.” He said, “you can cure me.”

The key seems to be a wholehearted request and an acknowledgment of God’s will. Jesus does want to cure me. All I have to do is ask with my whole heart.

Tonight concluded a three-day parish mission at Holy Family Parish in Kirkland, WA presented by the Apostles of the Interior Life, a group of consecrated women from Lawrence, Kansas.

The mission was a wonderful experience. Three evenings of reflection and prayer, on these themes:

1. A call to holiness and prayer
2. A call to conversion and a penitential celebration
3. A call to the Eucharist

Three sisters came to lead us. and one of them spoke each night. I have never participated in a parish mission before, and I thought this one was well worth it. Apparently a lot of people agreed with me: although the church wasn’t packed, it looked to be at least three-quarters full each night.

I hope to post more details on each theme in subsequent posts—no time! no time!—but in the meantime, a question or two for you:

Have you participated in a mission led by the Apostles of the Interior Life, or do you know them from their work at college campuses? What do you think?

I found this in Magnificat today and wanted to share it.

A stable-lamp is lighted
Whose glow shall wake the sky;
The stars shall bend their voices,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry,
And straw like gold shall shine;
A barn shall harbor heaven,
A stall become a shrine.

This child through David’s city
Shall ride in triumph by;
The palm shall strew its branches,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry,
Though heavy, dull, and dumb,
And lie within the roadway
To pave his kingdom come.

Yet he shall be forsaken,
And yielded up to die;
The sky shall groan and darken,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry
For stony hearts of men:
God’s blood upon the spearhead,
God’s love refused again.

But now, as at the ending,
The low is lifted high;
The stars shall bend their voices,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry
In praises of the child
By whose descent among us
The worlds are reconciled.

Richard Wilbur, quoted in Magnificat, vol. 10, no. 11, Christmas 2008, pp. 51-52.

I love the way he repeats the line “and every stone shall cry,” particularly the way he uses it both as an ending and as a beginning. The phrase itself is from Scripture, Luke 19:39-40:

Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” He said in reply, “I tell you, if they keep silent, the stones will cry out!”

The context of this quotation is when Jesus was entering Jerusalem in triumph, riding on a colt, with people spreading their cloaks before him and waving palm branches, when Jesus’ disciples began to praise God “aloud with joy for all the mighty deeds they had seen.”

I think it’s important to remember the birth of Jesus in context with the rest of his life. Christmas is a time of great joy and promise, but foreshadowed within the blessed humility of his birth is the ignominious and yet also blessed humility of his death.

How grateful I am for the gift of faith this morning, as I look out upon yet more snow falling.

Just a quick update to say hello and thank you to Dave in New York City, who welcomed me on his blog yesterday. Dave posted the source of a lovely Rumi poem in response to a comment I made asking for it. I found Dave via Michelle who works for Loyola Press and found (I don’t know how) my post on Fr. Paul Coutinho’s book, How Big is Your God.

The lines I like best in the Rumi poem are

Be melting snow.
Wash yourself of yourself.

They resonate with me because of my struggles to awaken, to open to God’s will, to recognize the barriers that keep me from trusting totally in God’s love. I do want so much to wash myself of myself, to empty myself, to make room for God.

Back to a snowy day in the Pacific Northwest, with more snow on the way.

I love this last week of Advent, with all the stories about Jesus’s family tree, Joseph’s struggle with the news that Mary was pregnant, and, today, the story about Zechariah and Elizabeth’s most wanted child, John the Baptist. I love all these stories but I don’t always know where to go with them in prayer. I’ll ask Jesus, “so, what do you want me to pay attention to?”

Today, one of the reflection points in the Sacred Space book mentioned the idea that I, too, was a wanted child. This turned out to be where the Holy Spirit wanted to take me.

I had never really thought about it before, being a wanted child. Given my lifelong struggle with the belief that nobody could possibly really want me, I suppose it’s not a surprise. For today, Jesus reminded me first of all that of course my parents wanted me. And then He took me further and reminded me that God wanted me.

Have you ever thought about that? The idea that God, who formed you and loves you with a deep and wide and utterly compassionate love, wanted you, specifically, you, to be born? Not only that, but to be born at a particular time and a particular place, to particular parents, and with a particular set of attributes?

I never had, until this morning. What a gift.

Quick post. The title refers to a book by Paul Coutinho, S.J., (about) which my friend Fr. Jack told me I absolutely had to read. So I broke my self-imposed fast from Amazon.com and bought it.

It is a small book. The subtitle is “The Freedom to Experience the Divine.” The first time I opened the book, a few weeks ago, a paragraph in the introduction, which is by Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, brought me up short:

We tend to be well-armored against authentic God experience, because it always leads us into the unfamiliar, that new terrain where we are not in control and God is. St. Augustine said, “Si comprehenderis, non est Deus”: “If you can understand it, it is not God.” I guess that is why God usually has to break in or break us down to break through to us.

I certainly feel broken down these days. Not insurmountably, mind; just cracked open, vulnerable, waiting for the next thing. And somewhere in the back of my mind, a small voice keeps reminding me that I asked for this when I started praying for openness.

Here’s a link to a video of Fr. Coutinho talking about the idea of a big God.

If you are reading this book, or if you start reading it, let me know. Let’s talk about it.

I am going through a difficult time personally. I find myself willing to accept the difficulty, the suffering, even, although I often worry about using that particular word, wanting to reserve it for something more important. I am willing to accept it because I believe it’s necessary and part of the path to holiness.

Imagine. Two years ago I never would have said that I was on the path to holiness, because I couldn’t ever imagine being worthy of it. God’s grace works in the most mysterious of ways.

One image has come to me frequently over the past several weeks, from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis, the part about how Eustace, who became a dragon, was transformed into a human again:

Then the lion said…”You will have to let me undress you.” I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.

The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know–if you’ve ever picked the scab of a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away.”

Yes.

There is a blog I read, called Abbey of the Arts. The blogger hosts what she calls a poetry party, where she displays an image and invites readers to leave their own poetry in the comments.

Here is the image for this week: a heart-shaped depression in a stone.

And here is my poem:

Heart of stone?
Or heart in stone?
Entombed in stone, only now beginning to break free?

Your words are written there.
Love. God. Reality.

I have called you out of yourself.
I will cleanse you of your impurities.
I will take away your stony heart and
give you a natural heart, a heart of flesh
and feeling.

The many tears I choked back are simmering
below the surface, waiting to erode
my stony heart.

Here is something I ran across yesterday morning in the Sacred Space prayer book that really resonated with me:

Our intense need to understand will always be a powerful stumbling block to our attempts to reach God in simple love, and must always be overcome. For if you do not overcome this need to understand, it will undermine your quest. It will replace the darkness which you have pierced to reach God, with clear images of something which, however good, however beautiful, however Godlike, is not God. So, therefore, never give up your resolve, but beat away at this cloud of unknowing between you and God with that sharp dart of longing love. And so I urge you, go after experience rather than knowledge. On account of pride, knowledge may often deceive you, but this gentle, loving affection will not deceive you. Knowledge tends to breed conceit, but love builds. Knowledge is full of labor, but love, full of rest.

(From The Cloud of Unknowing, a classic work on spirituality written in the fourteenth century by an unknown author.)

Sometimes my entire mental prayer session consists of me asking God to help me understand something. I have noticed that those are usually not the most fruitful of sessions. The all too rare times when I can just be with God, meditating on His love for me, and my love for Him, are better. Perhaps this passage explains why.

By the way, Sacred Space 2009 is available on amazon.com.