Prayer beads are a wonderful aid I have discovered. Lately, praying repeated Our Fathers has opened new doors, unexpectedly I might add. I was not raised on repetitive prayer and many of my colleagues in ministry were suspicious of the idea. One United Church of Christ pastor I knew in Maine deliberately altered the prayers of the liturgy every week so that "I will keep everyone on their toes." I always worried that this was a form of liturgical terrorism. I made use of a structured liturgy with only the Prayers of the People altered from week to week. Still I didn't explore the use of private repeated prayers until becoming Catholic. "The Way of a Pilgrim" is a beautiful exposition of how effective praying the Jesus prayer can be. There are several variants of the prayer, but "Lord Jesus, have mercy on me a sinner" seems to be common. Other references to the use of repeated "Our Fathers intrigued me until I decided to try it myself.
My own experience praying the "Our Father" as Catholics commonly call the Lord's Prayer has opened up new vistas of focused, contemplative prayer. The "Our Father" first of all has a wonderful way of calming the mind and the imagination so that only our Father is himself the focus of prayer. Then, the prayer seems to reduce every conceivable kind of petition to a few basics without in any way minimizing the specifics of what may be weighing down the petitioner's heart. I tend to pray the prayer in couplets, with a stand -alone line here and there:
Our father,
who art in heaven
That is a magnificent starting point because it separates the every day realm of human life and discourse from the realm of God, and so the one praying can switch mercifully away from the concerns of everyday life to focus on the divine. Our father, who art in heaven. You who are my spiritual father and are every day close to me are also in heaven.
Hallowed be thy name.
In my mind that line stands alone as I contemplate what it truly means.
Hallowed, not taken for granted, hallowed, not despised, hallowed, not substituted for the name of my choosing, hallowed: revered and adored.
Thy kingdom come
thy will be done
The coming of God's kingdom is linked to doing God's will, not that the one determines the other but that the one encompasses the other. When and as God's kingdom comes it will involve the joyful and obedient doing of God's will.
On earth
as it is in heaven.
We can only prepare for an eternal life with God if we understand how obedience
now prepares us for obedience then. Even now the saints and angels are kneeling at the throne of God in devoted obedience and adoration.
Give us this day our daily bread
Give us your presence at mass and in adoration, and in reconciliation even as you feed our bodies. For we will not make use of the food at our tables if we have not fed on you at the Table of our Lord.
Forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who trespass against us
How many of life's daily difficulties circulate around being hurt by another person, or being the one who has done the hurting in retaliation or ignorance or a bit of both? And how much freedom has been gained by admitting to both and then offering forgiveness as well as receiving the forgiveness of God? I could spend a day on that petition alone.
Lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil
Evil exists as a concrete reality around us, but whether we become ensnared in it has a lot do to with our own intentions. To ask for help with avoiding temptation is a reminder that we have wills, often weak wills, even as we also have to cope with the evils in the world not of our own making. How to keep separate the weak will of my self from the stark reality of evil outside myself is not always easy. And so these two petitions accompany one another inevitably.
If I can pray 25 "Our fathers" while in adoration, with intense focus on each petition, I can begin the glorious process of self-emptying which leads to genuine union with God. Notice I began with the word "if". I try and anyone reading this should try too. It is a beautiful experience.
May we all get better at it and inch closer to our Lord, in whom resides all our comfort and joy!
Friday, February 26, 2010
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
We Are Made For Something Glorious
Fr. Thomas Joseph White has some good things to say about the priesthood and about the high calling of the laity as well. Here is a priest who believes in grace and what it can do for all of us concretely.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Dominican Preaching
The Dominicans of St. Joseph Province have posted a nice explanation of what Dominican preaching is all about. It begins, Fr. Dominic says, in an encounter with Jesus. My own thoughts in a recent post parallel this line of thinking. We, the laity, have our own call to live and to an extent proclaim the encounter we have been graced to experience so that others may have life more abundantly. It seems to me to be the essence of evangelization to live and proclaim in this way, joyfully sharing with our words and our actions within the context of our own vocations the abundance of God's love. To the extent that we live out our vocations faithfully, that love we encountered in the person of Jesus is made manifest and indeed magnified, it is the mustard seed which takes root and spreads in the hearts of others. Take a look at the video here.
Dominican Preaching
Dominican Preaching
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Precious Dust II
Ok, watch this and remember that we are all precious dust!
Thanks to the anchoress who never fails to come through on a slow blogging day!
Thanks to the anchoress who never fails to come through on a slow blogging day!
Friday, February 19, 2010
Precious Dust
This past week found me at my daughter's school, filling in for the music teacher who was taking some personal days. It was a lovely and creative interlude, though it took time away from this blog. But watching and listening as children from first through fourth grades created their own sound orchestras and then took turns conducting them was worth the change in daily routine.
A sound orchestra relies on created sounds to take the place of standard instruments. Repeated words or phrases, hums, tsks, pshas, oohs can all be a part of the orchestra as long as they are uttered within the beat pattern established by the conductor. So one group might chant "chicken legs, chicken legs, chicken legs," and then on the fourth beat another group says "ooh." Add a contrasting section of "chick-a-saw, chick-a-saw, chick-a-saw, saw,", accompanied by tongue clicks and ta daa...orchestral texture is demonstrated, sort of. It's a way to reduce something beautiful and sophisticated to a few of its essential elements and make it accessible to children. Children, I might add, who seem to know which pop star had a mental breakdown, and who's the cutest Jonas Brother but have only the haziest idea of what Mozart accomplished by the time he was their age.
While I would not rely on such reductive techniques alone to teach music, there being after all no substitute for simply listening to, say, a Mozart symphony, it has its place. Art teachers reduce art in the elementary grades to color and line and shape, texture and form. Music teachers introduce rhythm, pitch, color, melody and harmony and texture. For the most part, my temporary students seemed to enjoy and benefit from the experiment, never mind the occasional suggestion that a burp would be a great sound to accompany "chicken legs", or "ka-boom" was a really cool way to end a segment. Wisely, I think, I didn't tell my students about the Fourth of July concert I attended last year which featured the William Tell Overture, accompanied by inflated paper bags being popped by each member of the audience to simulate the sounds of cannons. It was a raucous evening, all told.
On Wednesday the school held mass and included the imposition of ashes. Students from Kindergarten through eighth grade, teachers, staff and visitors all received ashes, wearing them with a variety of expressions, some subdued, many quiet and prayerful indicating a sense of awe and reverence for the occasion. I always enjoy watching the children who are the silliest in class (the proponents of burping as a form of musical expression) transform at mass into suggestions of their future grown up selves, hands folded, eyes alight as the ashes are dabbed onto their foreheads. "Remember man that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return." It's quite possible that an eight year old boy enjoys this notion of dust for its connotations of the outdoors and the playground. It's also possible that a child burdened with too many expectations from teachers and parents should for a few minutes enjoy a sense of relief that after all we are only dust. It's for once an attainable goal, achieved by the mere fact of having been born, and it's a leveler as well. The honor roll student wears the same blurred ashy smudge as the student who struggles with dyslexia or depression. "I belong" the ash proclaims, and for too many students , the need to belong is undermined daily in ways sometimes too small to detect even by the student, but the effects show themselves in outbursts of temper, or sagging grades, aloof solitude or frequent tears.
"Man is dust and to dust he shall return, but he is precious dust in God's eyes, because God created man for immortality," Pope Benedict reminded us on Wednesday. How we need to hear those words each year, sweeping away as they do everything but the most essential in our lives: our complete dependence on the loving God who created us, from whom we came and to whose arms we will return, we hope and pray, for all eternity. The ashes are a gift, a sign of life reduced to its barest elements.
I asked my daughter what she thought as she received her ashes on Wednesday. She, being twelve and not always predictable answered, "I don't know."
"Did you feel loved by God?" I asked.
"Yes."
We are dust, but we are precious dust, precious in the eyes of God. I wonder if every child knows that or connects that truth to the ashes they receive each year on Ash Wednesday? Surely a few at least and more will grow to understand it. Just as they grow to understand after First Communion that a sip of wine and a bit of wafer offer them, not just the sign but the real presence of Jesus himself.
In sacramental and in sacrament the fundamental elements of human life are offered back to us with their substance glorified. Ashes point us to God and bread and wine give us Jesus.
The sacrificial walk during the days of Lent offers us a span of time to refocus on the basic elements, and allow them to alter how we view one another even as we deepen our understanding of God. I can't claim to be anything more than a beginner on the way toward regarding everyone in my life as precious dust, but by grace perhaps I'll inch forward.
"Dust, dust, precious dust"...it doesn't have quite the easy rhythmic snap of "chicken legs, chicken legs, chicken legs ooh ," ....but noone said life with God was entirely easy.
A sound orchestra relies on created sounds to take the place of standard instruments. Repeated words or phrases, hums, tsks, pshas, oohs can all be a part of the orchestra as long as they are uttered within the beat pattern established by the conductor. So one group might chant "chicken legs, chicken legs, chicken legs," and then on the fourth beat another group says "ooh." Add a contrasting section of "chick-a-saw, chick-a-saw, chick-a-saw, saw,", accompanied by tongue clicks and ta daa...orchestral texture is demonstrated, sort of. It's a way to reduce something beautiful and sophisticated to a few of its essential elements and make it accessible to children. Children, I might add, who seem to know which pop star had a mental breakdown, and who's the cutest Jonas Brother but have only the haziest idea of what Mozart accomplished by the time he was their age.
While I would not rely on such reductive techniques alone to teach music, there being after all no substitute for simply listening to, say, a Mozart symphony, it has its place. Art teachers reduce art in the elementary grades to color and line and shape, texture and form. Music teachers introduce rhythm, pitch, color, melody and harmony and texture. For the most part, my temporary students seemed to enjoy and benefit from the experiment, never mind the occasional suggestion that a burp would be a great sound to accompany "chicken legs", or "ka-boom" was a really cool way to end a segment. Wisely, I think, I didn't tell my students about the Fourth of July concert I attended last year which featured the William Tell Overture, accompanied by inflated paper bags being popped by each member of the audience to simulate the sounds of cannons. It was a raucous evening, all told.
On Wednesday the school held mass and included the imposition of ashes. Students from Kindergarten through eighth grade, teachers, staff and visitors all received ashes, wearing them with a variety of expressions, some subdued, many quiet and prayerful indicating a sense of awe and reverence for the occasion. I always enjoy watching the children who are the silliest in class (the proponents of burping as a form of musical expression) transform at mass into suggestions of their future grown up selves, hands folded, eyes alight as the ashes are dabbed onto their foreheads. "Remember man that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return." It's quite possible that an eight year old boy enjoys this notion of dust for its connotations of the outdoors and the playground. It's also possible that a child burdened with too many expectations from teachers and parents should for a few minutes enjoy a sense of relief that after all we are only dust. It's for once an attainable goal, achieved by the mere fact of having been born, and it's a leveler as well. The honor roll student wears the same blurred ashy smudge as the student who struggles with dyslexia or depression. "I belong" the ash proclaims, and for too many students , the need to belong is undermined daily in ways sometimes too small to detect even by the student, but the effects show themselves in outbursts of temper, or sagging grades, aloof solitude or frequent tears.
"Man is dust and to dust he shall return, but he is precious dust in God's eyes, because God created man for immortality," Pope Benedict reminded us on Wednesday. How we need to hear those words each year, sweeping away as they do everything but the most essential in our lives: our complete dependence on the loving God who created us, from whom we came and to whose arms we will return, we hope and pray, for all eternity. The ashes are a gift, a sign of life reduced to its barest elements.
I asked my daughter what she thought as she received her ashes on Wednesday. She, being twelve and not always predictable answered, "I don't know."
"Did you feel loved by God?" I asked.
"Yes."
We are dust, but we are precious dust, precious in the eyes of God. I wonder if every child knows that or connects that truth to the ashes they receive each year on Ash Wednesday? Surely a few at least and more will grow to understand it. Just as they grow to understand after First Communion that a sip of wine and a bit of wafer offer them, not just the sign but the real presence of Jesus himself.
In sacramental and in sacrament the fundamental elements of human life are offered back to us with their substance glorified. Ashes point us to God and bread and wine give us Jesus.
The sacrificial walk during the days of Lent offers us a span of time to refocus on the basic elements, and allow them to alter how we view one another even as we deepen our understanding of God. I can't claim to be anything more than a beginner on the way toward regarding everyone in my life as precious dust, but by grace perhaps I'll inch forward.
"Dust, dust, precious dust"...it doesn't have quite the easy rhythmic snap of "chicken legs, chicken legs, chicken legs ooh ," ....but noone said life with God was entirely easy.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Dominican Confessors
My friends, the Dominicans of St. Joseph's Province are offering talks online. Here is one on confession which is wise and gentle and encouraging! Read it and then hurry to your nearest confessional!
Dominican Confessors
Dominican Confessors
Monday, February 8, 2010
The Peace Which Passes all Understanding
Magnificat Magazine has a lovely introduction to today's psalm for Morning prayer:
By waiting and by calm you shall be saved, in quiet and in trust your strength lies. (Is. 30: 15b)
God in his power is refuge and strength; God in his mercy is the river that refreshes the soul; God in his beauty stills all our useless struggles and gathers us into his peace.
And then comes Psalm 42 which begins with words I remember from childhood:
"God is for us a refuge and strength."
I don't think I truly understood those words until one memorable day a few years back, when I sat on a bench at a neighborhood playground.
Annie was still young and so we were making regular visits, often lengthy ones. I had my Magnificat Magazine with me and was taking the opportunity to pray while enjoying a particularly mellow spring day, which probably means that it was sometime in March or April. I began to feel a presence, like a sweet breeze, the gentlest of encounters which did nothing but fill my heart with joy. All at once I was praying to Someone and Someone was listening. I could hardly tear myself away from the beauty of the encounter.
It was an encounter with the person of Jesus, an encounter from which has flowered a whole new understanding of the spiritual world in which reside the angels,the saints and the living Christ.
I had already been received as a Catholic when this event occurred, and indeed had been a baptized Christian since infancy and a staunch believer for most of that time. So it cannot be that this was my first real experience of faith, or that any doctrinal convictions changed. But some perceptions did change, not as dramatically as they did for Saul of Tarsus, but dramatic enough for this former protestant. You cannot encounter the living Jesus as I did on that blessed day without your horizons widening and your faith deepening.
I suppose it was fundamentally a call to relationship, which means it was a call to prayer. In that sense it was a call to vocation, as Paul was called to his vocation to preach to and teach the gentiles.
I cannot say I experienced that kind of call to ministry as a protestant, though I was a pastor for a number of years.
I would not ever deny that many of my protestant colleagues in ministry did in fact experience that very kind of call. But my call to ministry in those days was more of an ecclesial one, an intentional decision on my part in concert with the decision of my sponsoring congregation to consider together the fitness of such a path. After years of study, practical experience and an examination of sorts by the governing body of the church's regional overseers, and then the offer of a pastorate, I was given the credentials to be a pastor, which meant that as far as my church and the state authorities were concerned I could preach, teach, perform weddings and funerals
and celebrate Holy Communion. I was licensed to do a certain kind of job, and yes, it was probably more than that. It was a ministry in some sense which Catholics would recognize, though it was in no sense the role of priest because I was not ordained to be a Catholic priest. And however similar the job descriptions might sound, without the transforming element of true ordination by a bishop, sacramental ministry cannot be exercised or indeed most likely be fully fathomed by the non- ordained.
Did I pray in those days? Yes, of course, though never with the sense that I do now, that I am praying to the One whom I encountered on that playground one spring! My prayer now truly is vocation, it has purpose and meaning, defined as it is by certain key thoughts and phrases: "for healing, yet not my will but thine be done"; "that suffering might be removed, yet let the suffering be joined with the suffering Jesus on the cross"; "for contrition and the right reception of absolution"; "for dying to the self that the soul might live." These are words which seek out life with Jesus Christ, life in and through him. They go beyond mere petitions and extend most intimately to life with the triune God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Above all, my prayer now rests on the sure understanding that the peace which passes all understanding resides in the midst of life with the triune God, that that peace is a part of every breath taken, every word uttered, every gesture that is made in and through Jesus.
So it is that I have left behind a former life as a pastor, a life that had its own richness, challenges, heartaches, its salary and retirement account. I found instead a vocation to prayer, a vocation that is offered to every lay Catholic who desires a joy-filled life with God. It is far more beautiful than the creaturely call I followed earlier, though I say that with a pang, as I know and love many fine pastors. Yet it is true. Perhaps in some ways they know that call as I did not then know it.
But having received it, I cannot ever mourn the truth that women are not ordained in the Catholic Church. How can I be sad or frustrated or angry at the call which has breathed life eternal into my soul and entrusted to me a richness beyond any treasure I could have imagined? What is more precious than the call to approach Jesus on the cross with one's heartaches and unite them to his suffering? What is more worthy and filled with dignity than the call to leave behind the old tattered self so that a new self can be reborn,a self which seeks virtue for its own sake and for the sake of God?
"God in his beauty stills all our useless struggles and gathers us into his peace."
"Be still and know that I am God."
Deo, dicamus gratias!
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Quiet Day
All is quiet here on the home front. After a couple of hours in the dentist's chair yesterday for two crowns (the dentist says that's nothing, sometimes people have seven or eight at once....yikes!) and then some bustling about doing errands, no time remained for blogging. Today we have spent our time preparing for Annie's 12Th birthday surprise party which turns out not to be a surprise after all....she wormed it out of us. Suffice it to say I haven't had much on my mind on the Catholic front, except to wonder who the patron saint of dentists might be. And, as promised, I have been praying as I go about the cleaning.
When I first became Catholic I was overwhelmed with all of the available saints, angels, patrons, guardians, and then Mary, to accompany me on my prayer journey. Who to turn to first? Now I simply call upon my favorites, Padre Pio, Mother Theresa and Therese,followed by a general cry to all the saints and angels (after all we do that during Mass) and then a special appeal to Mary. It seems to work out, so far. I don't know enough about their particular traits to call upon one saint or another in highly specific situations, like being in the dentist's chair. That could change of course. For now I will continue to draw upon those saints I know a bit about and leave the rest to their mercy. For all I know there is a patron saint of birthdays who even now is keeping a special eye on tomorrow.
When I first became Catholic I was overwhelmed with all of the available saints, angels, patrons, guardians, and then Mary, to accompany me on my prayer journey. Who to turn to first? Now I simply call upon my favorites, Padre Pio, Mother Theresa and Therese,followed by a general cry to all the saints and angels (after all we do that during Mass) and then a special appeal to Mary. It seems to work out, so far. I don't know enough about their particular traits to call upon one saint or another in highly specific situations, like being in the dentist's chair. That could change of course. For now I will continue to draw upon those saints I know a bit about and leave the rest to their mercy. For all I know there is a patron saint of birthdays who even now is keeping a special eye on tomorrow.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Hospitality Revisited
During the weeks preceding Grandma's anticipated visit (now cancelled for health reasons) our family had much discussion about which bed she would occupy.The guest bed is not much of an excuse for a bed at all, being one of those sofa beds which relies uneasily on a thin mattress, metal rods and springs for its supposed comfort. Because the mattress can't really pad the rods and springs, sleeping on this bed is something of a penance, maybe not as bad as a hair shirt, but getting there.
With a clean house and lots of sparkling windows on offer, it seemed a shame to provide a bed upon which Grandma would lie and most assuredly not sleep.
The only person who really wanted to try it out was Annie, who still thinks of sleeping on sofa beds instead of her own bed as an adventure. She thinks the dips and curves are cozy, and she gets around the metal rods by sleeping at an angle, which she is still small enough to do.
That left her bed for Grandma, in a room which is far from clean and which houses a hamster, two hermit crabs, and two fish. I figured Grandma would adjust to the bright pink walls and maybe even the general air of untidiness, but I couldn't see her sleeping through the night with a hamster periodically exercising on a noisy wheel and an air filter for the fish tank whirring loudly enough to fall outside the boundaries of white noise. The hermit crabs are pretty harmless unless you get up close and whiff their fishy aroma.
We finally decided that yes, we could clean the room, and then temporarily relocate all the boarders to one of the bathrooms, where the door would be closed at all times so the three cats couldn't get in.
One more problem solved in our effort to welcome Grandma. Or so we hoped. When you are expecting company you can never perfectly prepare, and mostly the company you expect know that. They know that you will likely not anticipate every need that might arise. One couple we entertained when we were much younger, took the mattress off the pull-out bed, placed it on the floor and happily slept soundly all night long. It was only in the morning when they produced their own organic herbal tea for breakfast that I began to take offense.
In Barbara Pym novels, a suitable selection of books is always left by a guest's bed, carefully chosen with that particular person in mind. A Norwegian grammar book, the collected sermons of John Henry Newman, and a stack of parish newspapers laid out for a visiting Anglican rector for whom the host has scant regard, or a limp volume of the Poems of John Dunne for an old school friend. Few houses I've visited have offered hospitality in quite that form, though the most recent guest room did have a machine which would make a variety of soothing background sounds. Providing bird song, or the sound of ocean waves to guests is my idea of hospitality. I suppose if you had an Anglican vicar visiting for whom you felt only slight fondness you could provide Cd's of Hymns Ancient and Modern.
As I said, it's difficult to welcome even the most loving family members, never mind friends and relative strangers, with any certainty that you have offered just what they might need. Being human, we all mostly understand that, and we do our best whether we are the invited or the invitor, to be gracious and kind and non- critical. Hospitality is not the same as hotel service. It is more a humble offering of self to be received with a corresponding degree of humility.
Beyond the obvious preparation of home and hearth,hospitality is a matter of the heart, the opening up of heart and mind and soul to the active presence of something more. Christians will identify this as the Holy Spirit, the constant current of quiet wisdom and guidance and love which, if allowed to enter, will take over where the material cannot go, into realms of tolerance and understanding and virtue.
I suggested in my previous post that we could probably all benefit from spiritual housecleaning from time to time, dusting off virtues so that the Holy Spirit might be our guest. By this I did not mean that we are in any way responsible for the presence of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, if we allow the Holy spirit to penetrate deeply into our interior lives, it is by virtue of the Holy Spirit himself! Embedded in the mystery of human action is the truth that no human activity can on its own do what God himself does. The most we can say about how we control our own spiritual lives is that we are asked to ready ourselves for the workings of the divine in our human hearts and souls through prayer, prayer motivated by the Holy Spirit, prayer which opens doors to guidance from somewhere outside ourselves but which translates into thoughts and actions done by our selves. I suppose it's a way of saying that the Holy spirit himself readies our hearts for his coming!
To be sure we can cooperate with this flow of divine love by attending mass and confession, and spending time in adoration. A difference in the way I understand all of this now, as compared with earlier protestant days, is located in the word cooperate. I see now more clearly that the small portion of good done at my hand is really tied to what I allow God to do. I have the means to prevent God from acting. I can be stubborn, proud, lazy, and act in any number of ways which are not at all virtuous. Or I can hold out my hands and allow God to act through me, displaying virtue which is always a gift and never a product of my own doing.
So it is that when guests are expected we - all of us- can do all the cleaning and polishing we like. But if we are to cultivate the habits of hospitable living we will, in prayer, listen more and more to the promptings from the Holy Spirit and allow him to be our guide. I rather like the thought that this can be done while mopping the floor and sweeping underneath beds. These simple tasks allow time for reflection and prayer as long as the back stays free from pain and the knees continue to bend with flexibility.
I am truly sorry that Grandma won't be with us this week, as we had planned, but for the opportunity to encounter God in the midst of all the preparation I am truly thankful. Perhaps next time company is coming I will be even less tense and more prayerful, and God willing I will even have a decent spare bed to offer!
With a clean house and lots of sparkling windows on offer, it seemed a shame to provide a bed upon which Grandma would lie and most assuredly not sleep.
The only person who really wanted to try it out was Annie, who still thinks of sleeping on sofa beds instead of her own bed as an adventure. She thinks the dips and curves are cozy, and she gets around the metal rods by sleeping at an angle, which she is still small enough to do.
That left her bed for Grandma, in a room which is far from clean and which houses a hamster, two hermit crabs, and two fish. I figured Grandma would adjust to the bright pink walls and maybe even the general air of untidiness, but I couldn't see her sleeping through the night with a hamster periodically exercising on a noisy wheel and an air filter for the fish tank whirring loudly enough to fall outside the boundaries of white noise. The hermit crabs are pretty harmless unless you get up close and whiff their fishy aroma.
We finally decided that yes, we could clean the room, and then temporarily relocate all the boarders to one of the bathrooms, where the door would be closed at all times so the three cats couldn't get in.
One more problem solved in our effort to welcome Grandma. Or so we hoped. When you are expecting company you can never perfectly prepare, and mostly the company you expect know that. They know that you will likely not anticipate every need that might arise. One couple we entertained when we were much younger, took the mattress off the pull-out bed, placed it on the floor and happily slept soundly all night long. It was only in the morning when they produced their own organic herbal tea for breakfast that I began to take offense.
In Barbara Pym novels, a suitable selection of books is always left by a guest's bed, carefully chosen with that particular person in mind. A Norwegian grammar book, the collected sermons of John Henry Newman, and a stack of parish newspapers laid out for a visiting Anglican rector for whom the host has scant regard, or a limp volume of the Poems of John Dunne for an old school friend. Few houses I've visited have offered hospitality in quite that form, though the most recent guest room did have a machine which would make a variety of soothing background sounds. Providing bird song, or the sound of ocean waves to guests is my idea of hospitality. I suppose if you had an Anglican vicar visiting for whom you felt only slight fondness you could provide Cd's of Hymns Ancient and Modern.
As I said, it's difficult to welcome even the most loving family members, never mind friends and relative strangers, with any certainty that you have offered just what they might need. Being human, we all mostly understand that, and we do our best whether we are the invited or the invitor, to be gracious and kind and non- critical. Hospitality is not the same as hotel service. It is more a humble offering of self to be received with a corresponding degree of humility.
Beyond the obvious preparation of home and hearth,hospitality is a matter of the heart, the opening up of heart and mind and soul to the active presence of something more. Christians will identify this as the Holy Spirit, the constant current of quiet wisdom and guidance and love which, if allowed to enter, will take over where the material cannot go, into realms of tolerance and understanding and virtue.
I suggested in my previous post that we could probably all benefit from spiritual housecleaning from time to time, dusting off virtues so that the Holy Spirit might be our guest. By this I did not mean that we are in any way responsible for the presence of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, if we allow the Holy spirit to penetrate deeply into our interior lives, it is by virtue of the Holy Spirit himself! Embedded in the mystery of human action is the truth that no human activity can on its own do what God himself does. The most we can say about how we control our own spiritual lives is that we are asked to ready ourselves for the workings of the divine in our human hearts and souls through prayer, prayer motivated by the Holy Spirit, prayer which opens doors to guidance from somewhere outside ourselves but which translates into thoughts and actions done by our selves. I suppose it's a way of saying that the Holy spirit himself readies our hearts for his coming!
To be sure we can cooperate with this flow of divine love by attending mass and confession, and spending time in adoration. A difference in the way I understand all of this now, as compared with earlier protestant days, is located in the word cooperate. I see now more clearly that the small portion of good done at my hand is really tied to what I allow God to do. I have the means to prevent God from acting. I can be stubborn, proud, lazy, and act in any number of ways which are not at all virtuous. Or I can hold out my hands and allow God to act through me, displaying virtue which is always a gift and never a product of my own doing.
So it is that when guests are expected we - all of us- can do all the cleaning and polishing we like. But if we are to cultivate the habits of hospitable living we will, in prayer, listen more and more to the promptings from the Holy Spirit and allow him to be our guide. I rather like the thought that this can be done while mopping the floor and sweeping underneath beds. These simple tasks allow time for reflection and prayer as long as the back stays free from pain and the knees continue to bend with flexibility.
I am truly sorry that Grandma won't be with us this week, as we had planned, but for the opportunity to encounter God in the midst of all the preparation I am truly thankful. Perhaps next time company is coming I will be even less tense and more prayerful, and God willing I will even have a decent spare bed to offer!
Monday, February 1, 2010
Ashley Torrenti Interview – 1/28/10 : Currents
Ok, if this doesn't restore your faith in school children in general, and Catholic children in particular, I will be surprised! I found this at the Deacon's Bench, I site I visit regularly for gentle wisdom, humor, and Catholic insight.
Ashley Torrenti Interview – 1/28/10 : Currents
Ashley Torrenti Interview – 1/28/10 : Currents
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