Questions for Lent

Posted on April 1, 2014 | 1 comment

Setting the Tone

Whatever Jesus goes through, he breathes into us. The story told on the first Sunday of Lent, about Jesus’ temptation, sets the tone for the season to follow. So, if he endures a desert struggle, so do we. If he must assess his priorities in response to the devil’s challenges, so must we. And if he turns from the dark, destructive voice to the life-giving one, we do the same pivot.

It’s an excellent time to ask ourselves, as we should regularly: What’s going on inside? What am I hungering for? What matters most? Lent is the ideal time to tackle the tough questions: Where have we become inauthentic or sluggish? What have we neglected? Where do we need to spend more time, money or energy? How have we squandered our gifts? Knowing that physical privations are secondary to emotional suffering, we burrow deep into the soul. What obstacles block the pathway to God? What selfishness strains our compassion for others?

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Lent: Places to Pause

Posted on March 24, 2014 | Leave a comment

from The Best of Being Catholic

An annual season of penance and reflection is common to many traditions, for example the Muslim Ramadan. So what makes a Catholic Lent unique? What are its best parts?

As with most things Catholic, a big part of the answer lies in the sensory connections. Sometimes, in giving a catechetical workshop, I’ve asked the audience to remember the Lent of their childhoods. A wealth of sense impressions emerges: the fragrance of incense, the singing of “Stabat Mater,” the taste of tuna casserole or fish sticks on Friday, the soft swish of ashes on a forehead, and with older people, the draping of the statues in purple. No one ever mentions the headier doctrines. Instead, it’s immediately clear: messages engraved on all five senses endure. So while this is not a complete or doctrinal approach to Lent, it describes some of the highlights which have touched people enough to change their lives.

Lent Begins: Ash Wednesday

People unaware of this date may wonder why co-workers or passers-by have a large smudge of what looks like dirt on their foreheads. This is part of a ritual where ashes are marked in the form of a cross on each participant. A slight change in the formula spoken when ashes are given is significant: “Turn from sin and trust the good news.” Sin in the Hebrew context was anything less than the fullness of what God wants us to become. While the media and the grapevine may hum with news of “giving up”  (alcohol, chocolate, meat, etc.) for Lent, the real fast is from what destroys us, the bad memories, overstimulation, and worries that will sicken us if we focus on them.

No matter what the darkness in our past (argument, illness, divorce, betrayal), the dynamic of Lent is to name it, not deny it, treat loss with gentle kindness, then move on. Whatever vortex threatens to suck us in, we look to the hope offered by Jesus, his dear and welcoming embrace. We know we can make this passage because we’ve done it before, just as our spiritual ancestors the Jews left the slavery of Egypt.

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Dorothy Stang, Part 2

Posted on March 8, 2014 | Leave a comment

Editor’s note: This is part 2 of a 2 part series.  Read part 1 here.

Enter the villains. The ranchers hire gunmen who shoot her to death on February 12, 2005. Seeing the gun, Dorothy doesn’t run or plead for her life, as most folks would. Fear would’ve been natural and understandable. Instead she pulls out her Bible and reads the Beatitudes aloud. The divine power transcends human limitations; in those final moments, she imitated Christ. She must’ve spent a lifetime preparing for that climax; now she teaches me how to live.

Breathing a deep lungful of piney mountain air, scented with sage, at home in the Rocky Mountains, I recall Dorothy’s joy outdoors. Without much institutional church, she finds God in the green canopy of trees, the cathedral of forest. Dorothy reminds me that when we lose our sacred connection to the earth, we’re stuck with small selves and petty concerns. In film footage, she proudly shows off a tree farm, exulting, “we CAN reforest the Amazon!”

Dorothy has encouraged me to stop eating beef, since intensive grazing requires destruction of the rainforest. I’m learning “green” alternatives to wasteful habits. Like most North Americans, I have enough stuff and now lean towards a simpler life. David explains, “she was so in love with what she was doing, she didn’t notice her dirt floor, primitive plumbing, no electricity.”

“Holy” once meant pious and passive. But Dorothy models how to raise Cain and act for justice. As we baby boomers age, Dorothy is patron saint for slow butterflies and reluctant caterpillars. She didn’t remain captive to her traditional upbringing. She probably could’ve hunkered down into the retirement center, counted her wrinkles and kept careful tabs on her ailments—as some older folk do. Instead, vivaciously, she tried new things, journeyed to new places. Her face is so youthful, it’s hard to think of her as 73. If I want to look that luminous at that age, I too must shed fears and take risks.

I want to love as gladly and fully as she did. It’s easy to get caught up in trivia: social commitments, work deadlines, domestic chores. But is this how we want to spend the precious coinage of brief lives? At Dorothy’s funeral, her friend Sister Jo Anne announced, “we’re not going to bury Dorothy; we’re going to plant her. Dorothy Vive!” If I want that immortality, I should examine what seeds I’m planting now, how I’ll live on in memory.

Dorothy has ruined my easy cop-out: how can one small person offset complex and apparently hopeless wrongs? Dorothy and I are the same height, 5’2”. Yet look what this giant accomplished: her killers’ trials, televised to every Brazilian classroom, have given children hope.

Her family and community won’t pursue canonization, preferring to give the poor the money that cause would require. Many already consider Dorothy a saint and martyr—in the early church, that’s all that mattered. As one biographer said about St. Catherine of Siena, “someone must’ve told her women were inferior. She clearly didn’t believe it.”

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Oscar/Olympic Heresy?

Posted on March 1, 2014 | Leave a comment

I know: saying this, I’ll be pummeled with little gold statues, medals and ice skates. But at what point will humanity outgrow competition? When will we say, “Here’s what the Canadians did beautifully. These were the Russian strengths. And the U.S. excelled at this.”

It’s not quite the same as giving every kid who plays soccer a trophy—though I wouldn’t mind that either. By the time athletes, actors and actresses have reached the point of competing in the Olympics or being nominated for an Academy Award, they’re at the top of their fields. They’re all spectacular. Trying to compare Amy Adams and Judi Dench is like adding apples and oranges. Let’s simply say, “Cate Blanchett, you were riveting. Philomena, you were the very portrait of a formidable forgiveness.”

The original Olympic athletes received a laurel wreath. No record that they were painted gold, silver or bronze. Can’t the world’s finest come together for the sheer joy of the sport and the celebration of their skills? Why must some go home angry and disappointed? As for the movies: throw the parties. Parade the gowns and jewelry. Lift a glass of champagne to the fine art of film-making. But forget the envelope, the phony suspense, the awards that often seem arbitrary. Why must the human race be further divided?

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Environmental Warrior: Dorothy Stang

Posted on February 17, 2014 | 2 comments

In a slightly belated tribute to Sister Dorothy Stang, who died 2/12/05, this essay is reprinted in two parts, from THE BEST OF BEING CATHOLIC.

Dorothy’s brother David is always eager to talk about his martyred sister. “She whacked me around as a kid,” he admits. “A tomboy, she played the best football in the family.” That tenacity carried her through the Amazon, where she became a feisty defender of the poor and the rainforest. After her death, she’s still a role model in the arenas of the environment, aging and women’s roles.

Her story has the attributes of heroic legend, so let’s tell it that way. First, the setting(s). In Brazil, less than 3% of the population owns 2/3 of arable land. When the government gives land to displaced farm workers, loggers and ranchers burn poor settlements, sell valuable timber, then graze cattle (to supply our McDonald’s!) The consequent loss of the rain forest is tragic because it contains 30% of the world’s biodiversity. Some call it “the lungs of the planet.” As it shrinks, global warming increases.

It’s hard to imagine a place more distant from Brazil than Dayton, Ohio. Young Dorothy lives here, her backyard a model of organic gardening, where she learns composting and the dangers of pesticides. In 1948, she becomes a Sister of Notre Dame and teacher. You expect her to become a benevolent nun who dies of old age in a quiet convent, right? That’s where her story gets interesting.

Our heroine volunteers for Brazil when her order calls for missionaries. She accompanies families to Para, bordering the rain forest, to defend their land. She asked the right questions there: not minor matters of narrow denominational or territorial concerns, but “How do we preserve the earth’s treasures? How do we empower God’s beloved people who live upon this land?” Dorothy had the expansive spirit of Roman philosopher Seneca, who declared in 42 A.D., “the whole world is my own native land.”

She organizes people into co-ops: they learn crop rotation, read the Bible and worship with music and dance. (Because priests are scarce, she becomes their “shepherd.” In a contemporary version of Galatians 3:28 (“There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus”), it didn’t much matter if she was male or female, ordained or not. What DID matter, burningly, was “no greater love than to give one’s life for one’s friends.”

When her people are attacked, she tells them brusquely, “quit crying; start rebuilding!” Her old VW Beetle wobbles over bridges with rotting planks—while her passenger David makes a nervous sign of the cross. Dorothy takes the peoples’ case to the government. When officials deny receiving her letters, she burrows through their files ‘til she finds them. Persistently, she asks for protection of poor farmers, but nothing is done. Amazingly, she keeps this up for 38 YEARS. Dorothy starts fruit orchards with women and projects for sustainable development with 1200 people. The Brazilian Bar Association names her “Humanitarian of the Year” in 2004.

To be continued…

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A Tribute to Sister Mary Helen Rogers, Part 2

Posted on January 31, 2014 | Leave a comment

Editor’s note: This is part two of a two-part series.  Read part one here.

Fast-forward to “Granny’s” 98th birthday. For the event, several of us traveled to the motherhouse in Indiana where she’d retired with many of her friends. Even in old age, they were still remarkably gracious ladies. Within minutes of our arrival, a cart appeared with sandwich fixings, cold drinks and beer. (They’d never been overly pious, these veterans of tough missions.) One sister spoke fondly of her work with H’mong refugees, who in gratitude had given her a H’mong name which translated to “Sister Umbrella.” The umbrella not only symbolized their new life in the U.S., but also her kind protection, shelter in a strange place.

May aunt was almost totally deaf, but she didn’t let that isolate her. At the slightest provocation she’d launch into hysterical stories, like her puzzlement when a poor family in San Antonio had gratefully brought the sisters a live chicken. Or the time the bishop, thrilled with his new television, invited the sisters to share the wealth. Unfortunately, their little town didn’t yet have a channel, so they tried to sit appreciatively through snow on the screen and static in the air.  Later, when he’d watch his cowboy shows upstairs, her job was distracting visitors for an hour, trying to convince them he was praying, and disguising the thrumming of horse hooves overhead.

A frequent refrain when she described her many kinds of service: “it was such a privilege.” Never a complaint, when there must have been plenty of irritations, frustrations and tragedies. She quoted a hymn which might sound cheesy now, but which fit her perfectly: What more could Jesus do? How many more blessings could there be? Many of her friends had died, but she reveled in the present moment. Even in her walker, she gave us a tour that exhausted the young folk, and made sure we had our afternoon snack of cookies and Cokes. Bent over with osteoporosis, she nevertheless bent even further to touch the arm of a sister whose mind was fine but whose body was almost paralyzed. As she made a “date” for a chat later, she was the portrait of compassion.

The large campus which the sisters run is noted for its hospitality. In cooperation with Lutheran Services, they offer retreats for women veterans returning from deployment. How peaceful it must be, I thought, after Iraq or Afghanistan: these gardens, beehives, ponds and grasslands. Each sister, living or dead, has a tree with her name hanging on a small plaque on the trunk. For Arbor Day, local schoolchildren identify the wide variety of trees, hike through areas set aside for conservation, and take home their own sapling. Their labyrinth is open to all and many have entered this form of moving meditation that dates back to medieval cathedrals. The morning I walked it, grass, leaves and pine needles were gleaming with tiny drops from a recent rain. Each branch, each step bejeweled: it must have been an image for the life of grace, the kind of lives these sisters had so gratefully embraced.

To look back over 98 years with obvious joy and appreciation must be a great gift. Always the Irish storyteller with perfect timing and cadence, Granny loved to embellish precious memories and entertain a new, youthful audience. She even bragged about the Babe Ruth autograph she’d gotten on a baseball, waiting outside the ballpark as a girl. But the story she told most proudly was of a small, shy boy, asking her to be his grandma. Now 37, he got misty-eyed, as did his wife, who was hearing it for the first time.

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A TRIBUTE IN TWO PARTS to Sister Mary Helen Rogers

Posted on January 23, 2014 | 2 comments

Sister Mary Helen Rogers, OLVM died January 13 at the age of 100. This tribute to her is reprinted from THE BEST OF BEING CATHOLIC.

Sister Grandma

It all began over forty years ago, when after service as a Papal Volunteer in Belize, I knew I couldn’t return to start the graduate program at University of Chicago I’d planned. After a year of living with poverty, I needed a more gradual transition back to the wealthy U.S. Fortunately, my aunt, a Victory Noll sister, ran a Center in one of Denver’s worst neighborhoods. Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty had provided funding for a summer program for children, which my cousin and I offered to direct. It was a match made in heaven!

Our aunt and her community happily introduced us to the neighborhood, the local attractions, and best of all, the mountains. Although they worked daily with grindingly difficult situations, violent gangs, drug and alcohol addictions and suffering people, they were a remarkably cheerful and upbeat bunch, celebrating everyday miracles. Dinners with them were always fun, with dessert an essential, and the table often decorated. Perhaps because they’d given me such a warm welcome, or because I loved the mountains so much, I stayed in Denver, completed the graduate work, and married.

Some eight years later, our oldest son was feeling his lack of grandparents. His only living grandfather was in another city, but his sister, my aunt, had always been a joyful presence in his life. He approached her shyly: “would you be my foster grandma?” She of course was delighted, and scooped the kindergartener into her arms. “Of course! I’d be thrilled!”

The other children quickly assumed that my aunt was Granny; it didn’t bother them that she was also “Sister.” One day, they were leaving her office as a client entered. “’Bye Granny!” each called sweetly. She apologized for the interruption to the woman who said graciously, “Oh Sister, you be with your grandchildren!”  Over thirty years later, slight embarrassment crosses my aunt’s face as she tells the story. “She didn’t quite get the concept of nuns. So I told her this was my niece and her children before any rumors could get started.”

Granny had a knack for gifts and notes on each child’s birthday, candy for the “major religious feasts,” which included Halloween, St. Patrick’s Day and Easter, and root bear floats. “Royalty were never treated as well; no child was ever cherished as much as we were,” one daughter remembers. Faithfully, despite blizzards, she’d attend First Communions, Confirmations and graduations. Now engaged in their own work with nonprofits, the children see her as a model of how to live with compassion and treat all people with a profound and gentle respect. From her they learned that justice is about making love tangible in ways large and small.  To be continued…

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Christmas Themes, Part 3

Posted on January 16, 2014 | Leave a comment

Editor’s note: This is part 3 in a 3 part series.  Read part 1 here, and part 2 here.

Celebration

John’s first letter says God’s commands “are not burdensome for whoever is born of God conquers the world” (1 John 5:3-4). Our learning to trust may be the work of great happiness which leads to Christmas. Then we celebrate the fact that God “pitched his tent IN us” (John 1:14).

What’s waiting to be birthed in us? If we dismiss that possibility because we’re too old, tired, sick or angry, it’s the season to remember Elizabeth. She and her husband assumed they were too old to have a child, but John the Baptist was God’s surprise.

Another surprise was God’s choice of the most unlikely vehicle, the person who seemed least suited to bring his son into the world. Mary had four strikes against her: she was female, young, unmarried and a Jew, belonging to the ethnic group oppressed by Romans, clearly the dominant culture with all the power. But apparently God didn’t think human obstacles and categories were “flaws” in Mary. If God had approached a heavenly committee to explain the Plan for Salvation, God would have been unfazed by the ensuing chorus of criticism.

Scripture doesn’t record whether a goose was present at the Bethlehem stable. But symbolically, it would be appropriate. Nicholas Kristof writes in The New York Times that his family raised geese when he was a boy in Oregon. The geese mate for life, and trying to fatten up the male with some delicacy was impossible; they’d always save it for their mates.

The boy’s monthly job was to grab a goose for slaughter. As it struggled in his arms, another goose “would bravely step away from the panicked flock and walk tremulously toward me.” It would be totally terrified, but it knew something was awfully wrong, and wanted to stand with and comfort its love. The adult Jesus would do that: step forward to stand with us, sacrificing his very life. At our best, we do that for others: fearful, unsure, yet stepping forward for those we love. At this season, we gratefully celebrate holy boldness.

When we reach Christmas itself, Father Patrick Dolan recommends, “for one day, let the child in the manger overshadow the elephant in the living room.” Of course we have “issues” when we gather with our families to celebrate the feast. Old arguments can resurface nastily; old wounds can re-emerge; old habits can still grate. But all we need do to better appreciate our friends and relatives is notice how many have died; how many mourn. Despite his annoying repetitions, we’re blessed to still have Grandpa. Despite their astronomical costs, we’ll miss our children when they grow up and move away.

The Christ Child reminds us that even the small, vulnerable and insecure can make a giant contribution. As an infant, he demonstrates silently what he would say strongly as an adult: the prince of this world has no hold over me. The brute force of the Roman empire, Herod’s murderous thugs: NOTHING could stop a baby and his bewildered parents from bringing forgiveness. When God asks us to be God’s hearts, hands and home in our worlds, do we respond hesitantly or fearfully?

If so, we need the central word: Remember. The forces that drag us down and demoralize have no power because we belong to God. Even as we struggle to believe and internalize that wondrously good news, it’s giving us life. Christmas reminds us how we were saved once–and will be saved again and again and again. Jesus wants to come into our lives, take on human skin and elbows and ears, heal whatever it is that holds us back from being fully ourselves, fully God’s. Like bells on a frosty morning, the themes resound: Attend. Trust. Celebrate.

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Christmas Themes, Part 2

Posted on January 11, 2014 | 1 comment

Editor’s note: This is part 2 in a 3 part series. Read part 1 here.

Trust

As we make our wobbly way towards God’s dream for us, the only door to the future is trust. Trusting is not an act like leaping off a cliff, but faith solidly rooted in past experience. As Pat Livingston says, “It’s impossible to trust God in the abstract or just because we’re told God is trustworthy…We learn to trust God because of our ongoing experiences of God’s goodness.”

We’ve all had blessings slide into our foundering boats like full nets of fish, thrashing and gleaming in the sun. This is the time to remember that God who has been faithful before will be faithful again. No matter what desert or wasteland we face, God enters it with us because of Jesus’ incarnation.

Much troubles us, but much has already been resolved. Look, for instance, at an old “to do” list. It records chores crossed off, projects accomplished, calls returned, questions answered and dilemmas either solved or forgotten. All the prickly question marks eventually bend into a smooth highway for God.

Researchers who study happiness find a close correlation between happiness and trust. If we can engage confidently with our government, church, workplace, school or neighbors, we feel supported, and in turn, able to trust.

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Christmas Themes, Part 1

Posted on January 3, 2014 | 3 comments

Sorry the Christmas posts are late, but the illustrious editor spent WAY too much time playing with grandchildren over the holiday….

From THE BEST OF BEING CATHOLIC, Chapter 11 (Orbis Books, 2012)

Every time it happens, I catch my breath. Westbound flights to California pass over the Grand Canyon in silence. Beneath us stretches a marvelous sculpture of brilliant red rock, carved over centuries by the Colorado River. J. B. Priestley called it “all Beethoven’s nine symphonies in stone and magic light.”

Seven million years of geological history lie exposed beneath the plane, and the pilot never mentions it. Passengers on Flight 1183 to San Diego or 1719 to Santa Ana doze, read magazines or work on their laptops. “Hey!” I’d shout if security wouldn’t arrest me. “There are only seven natural wonders of the world, and you’re missing one of them!”

Are we equally oblivious to Christmas when it rolls around again? Some things are so important that once a year, we must make a conscious effort to remember them. The themes of attention, trust and celebration are so frail they tend to get swamped in seasonal busy-ness. But they are so powerful they can sustain us through the rest of the year.

A certain amnesia is healthy for humans: the mind simply can’t hold all the details, phone numbers, passwords, jingles, events, etc. that threaten to clog and stall it. It’s as natural to erase the mental clutter as to clean out the garage.

But the hazard of this natural forgetfulness is that it works against our remembering how we’ve negotiated difficult passages before: through illness, job loss, divorce, grief or moving—so we can do it again. Christmas, like the weekly Eucharist, recalls our survival stories.

Attention

During Advent, the themes like those of music, begin to build gently, then reach a climax in Christmas. First comes our transition from ordinary time. Isaiah sounds the alert:

“A voice cries out: In the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord” (40:3). Notice the placement of the colon. The good news comes first to the desert where it’s most needed. There, all is bleak and empty, unless you’ve got a long extension cord and a lot of water. It’s a wasteland without borders where nothing works the way it does in cozy civilization.

We’re always in one wilderness or another: in one year, it’s drought, dismal economy and widespread joblessness. Another year, it might be poor health or the death of a friend. Yet the advice remains the same: always look for the water sources. One year we’re sustained by kind people; another, by the hope of recovery.

Furthermore, Isaiah continues, “Make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” The purpose of a highway is to keep moving, not to get snagged or stuck in the desert. The prophet recalls our high calling as God’s construction crew, with lots of work to do. We are not to get sucked into anxiety or worry about what we can’t control anyway. The desert plays its part in awakening us, but we don’t want to stall there.

Where are we getting bogged down, building roadblocks to God? For some people, it’s depression or a hurt they can’t release. For others, a debilitating illness. Even innocent victims of crime can feel responsible, and guilt or shame drains energy. When we’re trapped in terrible circumstances, we can remember the Jews in the Nazi camps. Some went to the ovens angry and bitter; others went singing the psalms. When the problem is unavoidable, which response do we choose?

Each year Christmas reminds us: whatever it is that threatens to sap our strength, we needn’t get trapped in that vortex. We are beloved of God, centers of freedom and fidelity.

Throughout the Genesis account of creation, one refrain sounds over and over: “and God saw that it was good.” The word “good” refers to the stars and sea, the land and plants, the rivers and animals. But as the account reaches its crescendo, the creation of human beings, it shifts to the Hebrew word “tov.” This means blessed, growing towards completeness. While flowers and fish have reached their natural perfection—they can’t get any better by making retreats or taking classes—humans are still in process. We always have the potential to grow into what God envisioned  at our conceptions.

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