Change Your Nature

The days of this season have been marked by a certain grace. Lately, I’ve been rising to the occasion in many matters, and the occasions have reciprocated, rising to me.
The book came on Saturday, and my first nature was to keep it to myself, to tell no one. But I am reminded of the line in The Road to Coorain. Perhaps you should change your nature. I changed it to be one who shared the good fortune. People actually do like to hear good news. Some people need to hear good news. I changed my nature to share this good news with my mother and father. I so desired to keep it a secret, to maintain my privacy. I think I have clung so to privacy because for a very long time it was all I had. Mother opened the book enough to see what she thought was the dedication, what was really an acknowledgment. She told everyone how it was dedicated to her. She thanked me and kissed me and I, knowing she will never read this book—at least not carefully—did not tell her that if she flipped over the page, it would say, For Helen.

yesterday--one clear second
of holiness
i recalled your face

Magic and Miracles

Magic and miracles take time. God may be slow because he has to be. We are so fixated on microwaves. We think prayers should be like pushing those buttons and hearing the little motor zap radiation into all of our wishes.

God remembers our wishes, our deepest desires long after we have forgotten them. It is the fifth week of Easter, the last before Ascension Sunday and then Pentecost. For a long time now there is a peace I have longed for, an end to disputes with one person, and end to these bad feelings, this wall. This morning in church, I turn and catch his eye. He is looking at me. I wish him peace, something I think it took my a long time to truly wish, and so I never would have done. To my surprise he says it back. Miracles are small like that.

My God a lilac
i want always
to be in gentle bloom
like the late spring
heavy with the scent
of that purple
flower

A New Day

Just as The View was getting really lame, the show was preempted and suddenly we were at the Vatican watching smoke of an indeterminate color spew out of an itty bitty chimney in the Sistine Chapel. Everyone was excited and irked, waiting for the bells to toll out and let us know there was a new Holy Father. I couldn't leave the television set. I grabbed my rosary. Then the smoke was white, and even the news reporters were excited. The crowd in Saint Peter's Square was jubilant. And then the bells began to rang. They rang and rang and the Square began to fill. I started sending jubilant e-mails. I called my mother, and then I got off the phone and waited for the new pope to come out.
When his name was announced, since none of this was English, it took a while to know who it was. I was on my knees, crossing myself actually, full of joy at who it would be.
And then God taught a valuable lesson.
For who should the new pope be but one of my least favorite cardinals. There was Joe Ratzinger, as the new Holy Father.
I shot off of my knees immediately and almost fainted. It was just too much. Benedict the XVI is Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger.
I have had a day now to digest what many people never do. The lesson of what true love and respect are. I don't think I've ever sided with this man, in fact, I've always felt dead against him. And I won't pretend that I had any love for the last pope while he was alive. But seeing the newly created Benedict the XVI I was filled with nothing short of a great love. He is the first pope I have ever seen created, and I love this man.
The truth is, and conservatives and liberals will both have to understand this: God is not a conservative or a liberal. God has a strange and wonderful way of doing things without taking polls and it really is for us to sit and see what happens. I have a strange, strange feeling that this coming papacy will prove to be a beautiful thing.

In Jerusalem

I've been reading Karen Armstrong's Jerusalem, dizzied by the three thousand plus years of Jew fighting Jew, Jew fighting Christian, Christian against Christian and then Muslim, different peoples, all lacking respect for one another, all coating their hands in blood. Now and again arises a teacher, arises the incarnation of God and the example of light and yet none listen.

Tonight, at the end of the long weekend, I purify the altars and light candles getting ready to pray. I open the Common Prayer Book and the first reading is from Wisdom. How like the Anglican Church to have a reading notin the King James Bible. Almost as soon as I thought I had left the Catholic Church for good, I was at Mass one day, at the Anglican Church and we prayed to the Blessed Virgin for the Bishop of Rome. Incidents like that remind me you never leave anything and this life cannot be lived in bitterness. It is hard to be a true Christian because it is hard to be true.
I, so recently returned to Rome, am having one of those moments again as I have to search for one of my Catholic Bibles in order to get today's reading from Wisdom. I am on my knees, coated in dust, overturning the entire room, finding nothing. I know I thought I had washed my hands of Catholicism, but God, how could I have tossed away a Bible! I can find my Koran, I can even find the Cathchism of the Catholic Church. But I am over a half hour looking for this Bible.
When all else fails, still yourself and pray. But I cannot still myself. Still I pray anyway and under the bed, past a shoebox and a bundle of twigs (don't ask) covered in dust is the old Catholic Bible, the one Allison gave me all those years ago. How do I feel about it? About this Church I was born into? About the English one I entered into? And about this whole Christianity business? How the hell do I feel about it?

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, coated in blood.

On the CD player the Franciscans of Jerusalem (who sound very Greek) are singing before the Holy Sepulchre. In God's name we have done so much violence and brought about so much foolishness. And still, beauty, incredible, terrible beauty remains. When the light glistens on the chalice, when the monks sing the long, doleful note that thrills the soul, when one hand touches another in church, and the phrase "I'm sorry," is not longer necessary... there is that terrible, glorious splendor.

And blowing the dust off of this old Bible I know that the story of Jerusalem is my story.

Territories

I almost bought something stupid on ebay. In fact, the bid was secured. It was for a portable air conditioner on the cheap, and then I saw the instructions... just add ice... It was a grill you plugged into a cooler, thus transforming a humble old Igloo into an air conditioner.

Bad news. Bad news.

Life is full of silly moments mixed with the sacred.

It am coming to terms with a truth in worship. Often, in prayer we bump up against something we don't know. There is no name. We have stumbled into uncharted territory. We won't to rush back, or put it in a box. We are disconcerted. We do not know that we have been given a gift. We do not know that in that moment we have left ourselves, and slid into grace.

Persian Flaws

I was watching something really good tonight, one of my favorite shows. Since I've gotten a television I have favorite shows again. I found myself thinking, "This was a great hour. I could never write something like this!"
No, I have to remind myself that is just it. When we find something good, it must be applauded. One good story does not compete against another. It is not for me to write something "as good as" or "better than," but to make something that simply is good. Something with life.
Now, after so long, the book is coming out, and I know at last what Virginia Woolf lamented when talking about all writing coming out crippled. The writing came out well enough, but I see things I would change, errors the publisher made, errors I made. This is no flawless book. I wince at every error and think of people catching them. If I could I would correct it over and over again.... And then it would never be published. We are so addicted to perfection, but the flawed book that exists in reality is far more powerful than the perfect book in my brain.

No matter how intricate a Persian rug may be, the rugmaker always leaves a flaw, or puts one in. This is called the Persian Flaw. It serves to remind us that nothing made is made with out flaws. Our flaws are foibles. Are foibles are our cracks. And through these cracks slip in... grace.

Friday

We pause for sleep
for love filled dreams
tonight there is dirt
under my nails
and longing under my skin
half between the equinox
and beltane
so much done
yet so much remains
and under stars i am still
dreaming of you...


what if we made holy
ev'ry hour a mass
all bread and wine-- god

The Word

Today at the funeral I experienced Christ. I experience him in so many ways these days. But not like a person, not really. Or maybe I should say not as another person. This experience is the experience of life itself, and the experience of the person of Jesus is in my person, in the people around me. How to explain this? Verbum caro factum est. That's incarnation, that word of God in the Bible, in history, in heaven... In life. In the skin.

Like it, love it, own it

From an e-mail written to Anne Niemiec on the death of Joannes Paulus Secundus Pontifex Romae


I make peace with Catholicism just in time for the pope to die.

I admit that I actually never liked him. He did some decent things and stood up for justice in other people's countries but he centralized the running of the Catholic church and then controlled things like a fascist. He saw the world in black and white and never even considered ordination or married priests or women. His policies toward gays and reproductive rights were complete barbaric.

I'm having a hard time missing him, Annie.

And yet, I'm still touched by how he died. He did his best according to what he felt was God's will, and whatever he did, however much I disliked him, I also respected him, and I honor him at his death. Or maybe I'm just being magniminous because he is dead, and we're getting a new pope. I was born when Paul VI was still pope, so this is my third pope, but he's the only one I was conscious of. You and Megan and lots of other folks... Kevin and Danielle... he's the only pope you've ever know. No one had a sense of history so I bet everyong thinks of the way he does things, his Catholcism as THE CATHOLICISM. I never liked it. I'm glad it's over.

I meant to write in response to what you wrote me, but here I am rambling about this church, the one that I am a part of. I was thinking, Annie: you can love something without liking it. Without admiring it. I wondered if that was the way I felt about the Catholic Church, and America. But that's not it. I think maybe there's something even past love. Like the knowledge that you belong to something regardless if you feel love for it or not. I belong to this big, ridiculous church. I belong to and love the Anglican church. Maybe one day I will love the Catholic Church, but for now it's enough not to hate it.

-- ME

Tonight

From what I keep hearing the Pope is dying. No, really dying. Not the suspicion that he was gradually going. Everything is shutting down in him. He can scarcely make the sign of the cross. And all of this as I come to accept my Catholicism again.

Do you know last week I wouldn't even think of praying for the Pope. What harm has he done me? No, really? I don't know him, and he doesn't know me. Even on my most Catholic day I never thought much about the Pope, and I can't think of Popes now. i know there are Catholics, many whom I will see and have known, touched at this moment, sad for this moment, lighting candles, saying rosaries, feeling like their losing their holy father. And for them they are. I don't feel that way at all.

So what do I pray for? I pray for them. I pray for people losing their father. I pray for him. He has done a good work, he has served his vision of God in sincerity of heart. Many have loved him. He says, and I believe, that he has loved them. No matter how I feel about his politics, the mystery of being a bishop is something I cannot unravel. I can only respect it.