Feast of the Visitation (Reprise with Update)

Jump for Joy  by Eisbacher

Today's Gospel is wonderfully joy-filled and encouraging: Mary travels in haste to visit her kinswoman Elizabeth and both women benefit from the meeting which culminates in John's leaping in his mother's womb and prophetic speech by both women. The first of these is Elizabeth's proclamation that Mary is the Mother of Elizabeth's Lord and the second is Mary's canticle, the Magnificat. Ordinarily, homilists focus on Mary in this Gospel lection but I think the focus is at least as strongly on Elizabeth and also on the place the meeting of the two women has in allowing them both to negotiate the great mystery which has taken hold of their lives. Both are called on to offer God hospitality in unique ways; both are asked to participate in God's mysterious plan for his creation despite not wholly understanding this call and it is in their coming together that the trusting fiats they each made assume a greater clarity for them both.

Luke's two volumes (Luke-Acts) are actually full of instances where people come together and in their meeting or conversation with one another come to a fuller awareness of what God is doing in their lives. We see this on the road to Emmaus where disciples talk about the Scriptures in an attempt to come to terms with Jesus' scandalous death on a cross and the end of all their hopes. They are joined by another person who questions them about their conversation and grief. When they pause for a meal they recognize Jesus in the breaking of the bread and their entire world is turned on its head. That which was senseless is on its way to making a profound sense which will ground the existence of the church. Peter is struggling with the issue of eating with the uncircumcised; he comes together with Cornelius, a Centurion with real faith in Christ. In this meeting, Peter is confirmed in his sense that in light of Christ no foods are unclean, and eating with Gentiles is Eucharistic. There are a number of other such meetings where partial perception and clarity are enhanced or expanded. Even the Council of Jerusalem is a more developed instance of the same phenomenon.

On Spiritual Friendship, both formal and informal:

I personally love Eisenbacher's picture above because it reminds me of one privileged expression of such spiritual friendship, namely that of spiritual direction. I can remember many meetings with my own director where there was immense surprise and joy at the sharing involved, but one time in particular stands out --- especially in light of today's Gospel. I had experienced a shift in my experience of celibacy. Where once it mainly spoke to me of dimensions of my life that would never be fulfilled (motherhood, marriage, etc), through a particular prayer experience it had come to be associated instead with espousal to Christ and my own sense of being completed and fulfilled as a woman. 

As I recall, when I met with my director to share about this experience (c. 1983), I spoke softly about it, carefully, a little bashfully --- especially at first; but I also gained strength and greater confidence in the sharing of it. (I was not uncertain as to the nature of what I had experienced, but sharing it allowed it to claim me more completely and let me claim a new sense of myself in light of it.) My director listened carefully, and only then noted that she had always prayed for such a grace for all her novices (she had been novice director for her congregation); she then excused herself and left briefly. When she returned she had a CD and CD player with her. Together we sat quietly, but joyfully and even a bit tearfully celebrating what God had done for us while we listened to John Michael Talbot's Canticle of the Bride.

New This Year:

Pregnancy comes in different forms. Midwifery and even Motherhood do as well! As noted in an earlier post, this year today's feast is marked by a foundational shift of healing within my deepest self, and so too, a shift in my relationships with God, my own deepest self, my director, and many others. Six years ago this Friday I began an intense form of inner work with Sister Marietta and during the weeks between Easter and Pentecost, our work reached both a crisis and a climax leading to this shift. Both dimensions of this event required a struggle against death (that too comes in various forms) and full engagement with the coming of new life. It has taken several weeks to assess the depth and quality of the healing accomplished (a kind of counting the fingers and toes of the newly born), and now that we are certain of it, it is time to celebrate these last six years, the grace of God, all the hard work, struggle, faithfulness, and all the love --- it took us to get to this point. 

 

We will do this in several ways of course (including continuing our work together in a new key), but this next Saturday it means going out to share a meal together, not merely as accompanist and accompanied, or delegate and hermit, but as friends and companions on the journey shaped by the same values and similar commitments, similar grief and grace. Friendship (especially when it is shaped as Sisterhood in service to our God and his People) is a precious gift of God and one I hope never to take for granted! This year, on the Feast of the Sacred Heart (a special Feast for me anyway), I will also celebrate the admission to temporary vows under c 603 of one Sister I have been working with from the UK. With her bishop's approval, we will continue working together to prepare for her perpetual profession in three years' time. Pregnancy comes in different forms; so do mothering and midwifery. Last year I shared the following poem to mark the year's work and the relationships that made it possible. This year it is even more profoundly true. Thanks be to God!

As Mary faced

        her unexpected future

And hastened to Elizabeth,

        who was similarly expecting,

and shared with her

her hopes,

 her dreams,

  her concerns,

  her fears;

spoke frankly as sisters

 about their love of God,

   about their future,

  about  their commitment

  to God's mission,

  so we two come together today,

   speaking the truth

   in love and faith,

   and God is with us.

Summary:

 

Elizabeth and Mary come together as women both touched in significant ways by the mystery of God. They have trusted God but are not yet completely clear regarding the greater mystery or how this experience fits into the larger story of Israel's redemption. They are both in need of one another and especially of the perception and wisdom the other can bring to the situation so that they can truly offer God and God's plan all the space and time these require. Hospitality, especially giving God hospitality, takes many forms, but one of the most important involves coming together to share how God is active in our lives in the hope of coming to a greater and more life-giving perspective, faith, and commitment. It is in coming together in this way that we clarify, encourage, challenge, and console one another. It is in coming together in this way that we become the prophetic presence in our world God calls us to be.  The gift of being able to "speak frankly" as sisters (and brothers) is an inestimable gift of God. Let us all be open to serving as friends to one another in this sense. It is an essential dimension of being Church and of the coming of the Kingdom of God.

Questions On "Craziness", Solitude, and the Possibility of Healing

[[Hi Sister, in a question you answered for Nun's Life Ministry you said that though healing could happen in solitude you thought it best that someone needing healing mainly have that taken care of before trying to live as a hermit. But you have also quoted Thomas Merton where he says that a person cannot be truly crazy in solitude since real craziness requires other people and solitude can bring one to drop pretensions. It sounds to me like these two positions are in conflict. Why should a person have their healing "well in hand" before trying to live as a hermit? Do you agree with Merton as much as you seemed to when you quoted him?]]

Thanks for the questions. You've been doing some back reading it looks like. So, let me explain what I said in the three part Q and A Sister Julie initiated. It is true that healing can certainly be accomplished in solitude. In fact, for the personal healing sometimes necessary, especially that associated with bereavement and grieving, solitude can be a powerful context and catalyst for healing. In The Values of Solitude, John Barbour notes that healing is one of five major reasons people seek solitude and, in some cases anyway,  may live in extended physical solitude. But what is also true about solitude, and especially about eremitical or more absolute solitude which is a silent solitude, is that it breaks down and does so before it builds up.

Ordinarily, with temporary or transitional periods of solitude this is relatively gentle and limited, not least because it is "controlled" by the prospect of leaving the silence of solitude. But with eremitical or more absolute and permanent forms of solitude the absence of this same prospect actually intensifies the effect of physical solitude. The consoling and edifying power of solitude and its related silence may not be experienced sufficiently to offset this or to establish the full dialectic of solitude. If one is psychologically fragile or actually ill the results can be destructive. Moreover, even if one is entirely healthy, if one does not have a mature and balanced spiritual life which is focused on and allows for the metanoia of the whole self, such solitude can open one to the more destructive portions of one's own psyche. Thus, I believe that a person needs to have their own healing well in hand before choosing to live as a hermit.

You see,  if one does not proceed in this way a couple of things can happen: First, because the "tearing down" that happens in eremitical solitude is more intense and extensive than in occasional solitude,  it may morph into psychological decompensation.  One simply may not have the psychological health to defend oneself sufficiently, much less live without defenses, in this new and relatively alien context. When this happens, because one is alone one may not really appreciate the degree of decompensation occurring. This is especially true when psychological symptoms are covered by naive readings of traditional eremitical stories and justified with simplistic notions of spirituality which are themselves unhealthy or unbalanced and destructive in isolation. Secondly, one may actually be tempted to turn in a naive way to traditional stories about early hermits and stereotypical notions of the eremitical life to justify and/or deny the decompensation.

Merton's Comments on "Real Craziness"

My sense is that Merton's references to "craziness" and "real craziness" is not so much to mental illness per se, but to the "craziness" associated with a culture which is individualistic, geared to competition, social climbing, consumerism, and the constant need to do rather than be --- among so many other "dysfunctions" of our society. These ensure the development of the false self, a concept we also largely owe to Merton, and that kind of spiritual schizophrenia is the epitome of "craziness" for a monastic.

The pressure for all of these comes from other people and our tendency to measure ourselves accordingly. In this context Merton's comments about craziness needing other people and how real craziness cannot be sustained in the face of the sanity of trees and mountains make perfect sense and I agree completely. If we interpret his meaning to refer to actual diagnosable mental illness as found in the DSM V then his comments make less perfect sense. For instance, in some forms of mental illness isolation (physical solitude) will exacerbate the illness whereas significant contact with others will mitigate it. Merton's comments would be mistaken in such cases. That said, I can't be sure what Merton's intention actually was; I don't know of another place he spoke in the same way and clarified his terminology.