Check out my latest post on From the Pews in the Back. It’s a reflection on this Sunday’s liturgical readings entitled, “The Burning Bush and The Patient Gardener.”
February 22, 2010
A Thirsty Lent
My friends over at The Church Is Alive invited me to post as a guest blogger during their Lenten fundraiser campaign to raise $5000 to build a water well in Africa. Check out my post, “A Thirsty Lent“, and contribute to their fundraising effort if you are so inclined…
February 20, 2010
I Think God Moves in People
Sometime before midnight on New Years Eve I found myself nuzzled into the living room couch with another friend who studies theology in graduate school. Amid the dancing, yelling, and clamoring of glasses at the party that surrounded us, she spoke one of the most simple, profound things I had heard about God in a long time.
After describing the details of a rigorous seminar course on prayer she had completed early that month, she said, “You know, I came out with a lot of doubts about whether God works in the world the way we often think God does. But I do think that God moves in people.”
A poet friend of mine once described the different types of poems she writes. She identified one kind by describing a visit to a museum when she found herself standing before this particular painting, staring and staring, simply captivated by it at the deepest parts of herself. She couldn’t walk away. She had to write a poem about this surprising moment of wonder that simply grabbed her. She writes these poems about simple, startling moments. I think God moves in people.
The more theology and philosophy I study, the more confused I am about the Infinite working in the finite. I’m reading Karl Barth and at the moment he is trying to convince me that in my human limitation I do not know God from within. He says something like, human beings cannot know this wholly-Other God but through the revelation of scripture and the Church. What to say? I do not have convincing words for responding to this brilliant theologian at the moment.
But I have wonder: I have these moments when God moves in me. And in these moments the finite world may be simply what it is, but something in me is different. The wonder persists beyond the limits of what I can explain with my rigorous reasoning right now. I’ll keep trying to put words to it.
Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/l-dogg/2558482751/
February 7, 2010
Wide White Margins, And A Few Words
On the days when I particularly overwhelmed–when I am convinced that any reform in my church will require at least 10 million perfect words, when I am sure that nothing I can think or say or write will ever make any difference, when I am tempted to think that the countless number of books in Harvard’s theological library may actually make so little an imprint on the world–on these days you will probably find me cross-legged on the floor of the Harvard Bookstore. I will be hunched over barren pages held together by thin bindings in the poetry aisle. Their words belong to people that most people do not know, people I do not know.
I don’t just come for the poems; I come for all the white space that fills these poetry books. The white space actually comforts me more, I think, reminding me of two things: First, reminding me of the arduous silence–all the wordless thinking–that accompanied very worthwhile word I have ever written. Wordlessness can be precious and productive in its own ways. Second, reminding me that I do not need to say everything–I do not need to say everything–only a few beautiful, dangerous, honest-to-God, true things. Poems are so captivating because they say so much with so little.
I am so little, and I want to say something worth so much.
Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/kokjebalder/366508847/
February 7, 2010
Here I Am! Send Me!
Check out “Here I Am! Send Me!,” my reflection on today’s Sunday liturgy readings at From the Pews in the Back: Young Women & Catholicism.
February 3, 2010
The Incarnation Next to Me
Emerging Women is currently posting entries about the incarnation, so I reworked an older piece for a contribution on their site entitled, “The Incarnation Next to Me.”
January 20, 2010
The God Who Was Not There–or Here, Today
“‘My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?’ gave way–here is the heart of the story–to ‘But into your hands I commend my spirit.’ Jesus handed himself over to the God who was not there. And found God there. In trusting the One who was not there, Jesus was resurrected…” –James Carroll, from Practicing Catholic
Sometimes, this is what it feels like to be a Catholic–like handing myself over to nothing. Handing myself over, but with hope for some future resurrection.
In his autobiography, James Carroll writes the lines quoted above amidst a story about one of his mentors, American poet Allen Tate. As a young seminarian Carroll visited Tate at his home, finding upon his arrival that one of Tate’s infant children choked and died in his crib only a week earlier. Tate’s Catholic priest refused the infant a Catholic funeral, as the child died unbaptized and because, according to Tate, the child’s father was a “bad” Catholic. The young Carroll was dismayed by the circumstances, and did his best to respond to his mentor with compassion and the message of a loving and unceasingly welcoming God.
In this quote, Carroll is telling his friend who God is–who Jesus is. I can only imagine that Tate, this grieving father, could relate to Carroll’s description of Jesus, for Tate was also a human encountering the absence of God and the difficulty of handing oneself over the to this very real experience of despair.
When I read stories like Tate’s I am angered by the cruelties committed in the name of Catholicism. I face these representations of the Church, and I think, “God is not there.” –Yet, Catholicism is my faith?
I also read about men and women like Carroll, though, and I remember why I still believe in Catholicism’s resurrection. I am challenged to believe that God even brings resurrection to places and people that seem to be without God. I am reminded that I still experience the same strange paradox of Jesus’ experience–and Tate’s experience: I have handed myself over to the God who was not always there–not always in Catholicism. Yet I still find God there, in Catholicism.
It is comforting to know this strange reality belongs to more than just me.
Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/colerichards/3975660771/
January 17, 2010
The Incarnation After (and Before) Christmas
If you’re interested, visit the Emerging Women blog to read my entry, “The Incarnation After (and Before) Christmas“; it’s a reworking of my an entry I posted here last month.
January 13, 2010
Going Home
Check out my latest post at From the Pews in the Back: Young Women and Catholicism, entitled “Going Home.”
January 13, 2010
If Your Voice Is Shaking
“Speak your mind, even if your voice is shaking.” -Maggie Kuhn
I have memories of being a typically-gregarious little girl who was afraid to speak in class. Maybe it was more self-consciousness than fear. My young male peers taunted me on the basketball court at recess and inside the classroom walls–”like children do”–because I was a young female with something she wanted to say. They told me this. They explained to me my boundaries “because I was a girl.” Even though I sensed that all of us knew these were untrue, these young men said all this because it had power. It had power because we all knew it had once been thought to be true. And that was a powerful reminder. (Where do second graders learn this? Probably Nickelodeon sitcoms).
Generally speaking, I imagine these situations evoke two types of reaction: Either young females learn not to speak up in class; studies have confirmed this. Or, they start talking louder. With the impassioned cursive script of a second grader, I decided to report gender confrontation after gender confrontation in our class “Conflict” notebook, which my teacher read aloud once a week before facilitating a detailed lesson and class discussion concerning conflict resolution skills. I started talking louder.
And I’ve been loud ever since. I’m the kind of person who steps out into the middle of Boston traffic to yell at taxi drivers who spit out racist and homophobic slurs in moments of senseless road rage. I have this intense moral compass (undoubtedly learned from my mother) and I will simply shatter if I don’t speak up sometimes.
That’s why I don’t know what to do with the trembling voice and unsteady pen I have found myself with in recent times. In moments like these, I don’t recognize myself. I ask myself, “What happened to that little girl with that strong, loud voice? The young woman who believed in the potential power of her voice?” I am second-guessing my words, projecting onto myself the presumed judgements of others. I doubt whether anything I have to say could possibly make any difference for the causes I address. My voice trembles when I speak, and I struggle to silence its shaking doubt.
I keep speaking, though. I keep writing, clearly. One of my favorite quotes reads, “No great art has ever been made without the artist having known danger.” It’s from Rilke, the writer who told a young poet to keep writing when he doubted himself. I think my voice shakes these days because I have given myself to a sort of danger–to the danger of a challenging academic environment, to new friends and brilliant peers, to a world far from the comforts and tangible love of home. It feels vulnerable. But it is getting better.
I still believe that one day I will open my mouth and the words won’t shake anymore. I hope they will resound louder and stronger than before.
Until then, I’ll keep talking.
