Advent 4.7 - How can this be?

Surprise!

Surprise?

Tonight I'm leading Christmas in a Minor Key, our Blue Christmas service at my home church. It is one of the many surprising twists in my understanding and practice of ministry in the past two years. This wonderful reflection is exactly what I need to get from the beginning to the end of this day. Maybe it will be meaningful to you as well.





HT to Ignatian Spirituality.

Advent 4.2 - Discernment

'He shall eat curds and honey by the time he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good."

Isaiah 7:15

This is a complicated passage about the restoration of Israel, the place of anticipated peace where the young child shall be able to eat curds and honey.

But what struck me as I read and studied it a few weeks ago, when I was trying to make some preliminary decisions about preaching for this Sunday, was the emphasis on discernment. On the capacity for discernment as a mark of growing maturity.

I have often, in Ignatian and Jesuit contexts, heard spirituality described as being all about discernment. How we choose, what we choose, for how long a choice remains viable.

In times of intense grief, that capacity becomes clouded and broken. How could it be otherwise, when we can't remember anything for longer than five seconds? Was I going to go to the grocery? Did I decide to go back to seminary? I can't remember, I can't choose, I don't know.

It seems to be not only a mark of growing maturity, but also a sign of recovery when we can, indeed, begin to discern next steps with increased clarity.

In the meantime, agere contra ~ another term, to act against, which I learned from Jesuits. They use it as Ignatius did, meaning to act against desolation. To act against all that causes turmoil, disturbance, and agitation. It means go to the grocery whether you feel like it or not; to go back to seminary even when it seems pointless to do so.

It seems to work ~ agere contra ~ it seems to enable the creation of a solid foundation, even in a time of emptiness, that makes it possible to recover, eventually, the capacity for discernment, for spiritual growth and attentiveness.

I suppose the truth of that potential may be realized from the irony that while I have no recollection of my spiritual director talking to me about agere contra in the early months after Josh died, though he tells me that he did, I am now able to suggest it as a way of moving forward through the dark. It seems to have worked well for me, and for every bereaved mother I know, regardless of whether or not we had any conscious sense of what we were doing.

Advent 4.1 - The Harshness of Belief

"But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.' "

Matthew 1:20

I am preaching this coming Sunday. The lectionary gospel text focuses on Joseph, and so I have been thinking about fatherhood and what it means.

My own father is a good man who has experienced much sorrow in his life: the death of my mother and youngest brother in a car accident when he was 28, the death of his second wife in another sudden accident when he was 38, a difficult divorce much later in life, and the death of his fourth wife from cancer a few years ago. He has a great love of the outdoors and has found much pleasure and solace over his almost-eight decades in the wild and natural places and things of this continent, sharing some of it with us on family canoe trips into the Canadian wilderness.

But he is not a man of Christian faith, and has little understanding of its pull, or of its role in life.

Thus I overheard him say, as I walked through my house in the first days after Josh died, that "at least she has the comfort of her faith."

I shook my head and moved on. I know there are people who find faith comforting in times of hardship, but I have not been one of them.

I have another father, a spiritual father, in the 80-year-old Jesuit who accompanied me through the Ignatian Exercises. He has continued as my confidant, advisor, counselor, teacher, consoler, and friend in the five years since, even after moving to another city. He's an eloquent writer and has a wicked sense of humor, both of which I have needed and upon which I have greatly relied over the past two years.

In one of his e-mails around the second anniversary of Josh's death, he referred to the "harshness of belief" as something with which I have become well acquainted. Indeed.

When I think about Joseph, and Mary, that term comes to mind. The dream and the encounter. The terrifying reality of the angel, and his bewildering message. The resolve needed to follow through with God's project. The circumstances ~ physical, geographical, political, social ~ all of them less than desirable.

We put out charming nativity scenes ~ we have one in this house ~ and sing cheerful songs, but harshness, rather than charm or cheer, is probably a more appropriate term for what Christmas presents.

Comfort, comfort ye my people. There is, as it turns out, a profound comfort hiding within the harshness, but it is not the comfort of platitudes or sentimental reassurances. It is the comfort of Immanuel, God with us, and of the demanding pull toward that presence even when all circumstances seem to indicate that turning away might be the more rational choice.

Perhaps what we modern people need most is to be genuinely shaken, so that where life is grounded, we would feel its stability; and where life is unstable and uncertain, immoral and unprincipled, we would know that, also, and endure it. Perhaps that is the ultimate answer to the question of why God has sent us into this time . . . we have stood here on the earth with a totally false and inauthentic sense of security. So now, God lets the earth resound . . . to teach us one thing again: how to be moved in spirit.

Alfred Delp, S.J.
Homily for the First Sunday of Advent
Preached in Munich
November 30, 1941

Almost Advent

"Being shaken awake is entirely appropriate to thoughts and experiences of Advent. . . . It is precisely in the severity of this awakening , in the helplessness of coming to consciousness, in the wretchedness of experiencing our limitations that the golden threads running between heaven and earth during this season reach us; the threads that give the world a hint of the abundance to which it is called, the abundance of which it is capable."

Alfred Delp, S.J.
Written in Tegel Prison, Berlin
December 1944

Incarnation

Chartres Cathedral Nativity

Such a loss! Such a keen and tearing pain. Even when I am in a crowded room, there is a loneliness I never knew existed. Comforting God, I have turned to you so many times for solace, and I come again. While the world is bright and sparkling, my heart feels leaden and has an emptiness that cannot be filled.

Lord, how can I enter into this season of joy? In my head I celebrate your birth into this world, but in my everyday life, I am filled with a grief that runs so very deep. You blessed me with a loving relationship and now it is gone from my life. How can I be faithful to that love and the memory of that love and my sorrow in this season of "Rejoice!"??

Tears are so close to the surface all the time and helpful friends who want to "keep me busy" don't seem to really understand that I need to embrace my grief. I am afraid of letting go of the sadness and losing the deep love connection I had.

Instead of entering into the Rejoice of Christmas, I long for the sorrow of Lent. I beg you Lord, show me how the two are connected. I ponder the name Emmanuel and know that it means "God with us." With us. With me in this world, in this sorrow. If I look beyond my pain, I know that you, too, suffered so much in this world. I never understood so clearly before that Emmanuel is what your nativity is really about. You are in my world, in my pain.

Thank you, Lord, for the loved one you blessed my life with. Grant me now in my grief, a peace. Give me a comfort that might not make the tears go away, but that lets me feel your presence as you take up a place deep in my heart, with me.

(Another one from the Creighton Advent Website.)

Prayer as Expectant Attention

Giotto's Nativity Fresco in Padua, 1305-06

Praying with the Nativity scriptures can help us with a profound support for our everyday lives. The gospels paint us beautiful portraits of how Our God comes to us in the midst of great poverty. The age of Elizabeth, Gabriel's annuniciation to Mary, no room in the inn, enemies out to get the newborn, all surround the central mystery - our God is faithful.

Our God's fidelity is not only not limited by great poverty, it is most apt in places of great poverty. The way the nativity happened then can tell us a great deal about the "style" of our God. And, it can open our eyes and our expectation to the places of great poverty in our lives now. Whenever I ask, "How can this be a place of promise?" or "How can I expect God to be present in this mess?" I am being invited to experience the mystery of the Incarnation in my life.

Eventually, I begin to look for and to really anticipate special intimacy with Jesus in the difficult, challenging, painful, empty, power-less situations of my life. If I desire to find intimacy with God in all things, I'll pay special attention to the povery places of my life.

(This is from the Creighton Advent Website. I hope I am providing credit as desired and appropriate, so that the Nebraskan Jesuits do not feel compelled to come down to Key West and bust me.)

Palestrina

Dome - Basilica Santa Maria Maggiore

In spite of myself, I am finding small new gifts this season. Steering clear of the usual traditions which as the source of much joy in the past have become intolerable reminders of what we have lost, I bump into other things.

One of the benefits of my immersion into Ignatian spirituality has been the discovery of the music of Palestrina. I didn't know why it kept popping up in various Jesuit contexts, but I finally did a quick search today and learned that his life spanned much of the 16th century (Ignatius lived during the first half of that century) and that he was a major figure in the development of Catholic church music. During the 1560s he held an appointment at Santa Maria Maggiore, one of the five major basilicas of Rome; during the following decade, he lost his brother, two sons, and wife to the plague.

When we visited Rome in 2000, we stayed in the Maria Maggiore neighborhood and spent our evenings eating gelato in the piazza outside the church. These days, my shaky and tentative journey back to life includes connections to the prayer and music of the 16th century. I don't know why I'm so surprised.

From Palestrina's Missa Brevis:

Here.