Apologies and Promises: Catching up With Correspondence

Well, as unusual an use of a blog as this is, I wanted to thank a couple of people who sent letters to me at my parish recently. I had not received them because I had not been to my mailbox there in a several weeks. I've decided to use a blog post for a couple reasons: 1) the first correspondent (Teresa) does not have access to a personal computer though I know she reads this blog somehow, and 2) I am probably not going to be able to contact either person before Christmas -- especially since I'll be using snail mail --- so I want to reassure them both I received their letters or package and nothing has gone missing.

There is a third reason for this blog entry though. The second correspondent  (Susan) sent a book (cf illustration) and I am grateful for that unexpected gift. I had not seen this book before and it looks fascinating. Other readers of this blog might also be interested in it. It is entitled, The Spiritual Experience of Itala Mela, a Life Incandescently Immersed in the Trinity. It is about Itala Mela, a contemporary (early 20 C) woman hermit and recluse. Also a Benedictine Oblate and now called "Servant of God" by the Church, her "ordinary life" is presented as that of "an ordinary person made extraordinary by God." That is certainly a theme that has come up here a few times and in referenced comments made by Karen Fredette in the Saturday Evening Post article! It is a very Benedictine perspective and one that came up here in its own way in the post I put up re Gaudete Sunday and the vocation to be sick within the Church.

To both Teresa and Susan, once again my apologies for the delay in replying and my very best wishes for a wonderful and fruitful Advent and Christmas Seasons. We each and all of us wait and are open to God doing something new in our lives, however unimaginable (and sometimes, however challenging) that is! Be assured of my prayers. I will be in touch. To all other readers as well, my very best wishes for this last week in Advent. May your own preparations for Christmas be marked with joy and real hope. Maranatha! Come Lord Jesus!

P.S., Susan just emailed to thank me for the post but more importantly, to let me know that Itala Mela was just declared "Blessed" by Pope Francis this week (December 15th). Particulars are available on the Vatican website.

Third Sunday of Advent Mass: The Joy of Being Called to be Sick Within the Church

Yesterday's Mass was a special one for me in a number of ways and this is so each year at my parish. It being Gaudete Sunday, the focus is on joy, of course and this means calls to rejoice and reminders of a God who has come to dwell with us and will come again in ever greater fullness. But each year with the rest of the Church we also celebrate the Sacrament of Anointing of the Sick in this communal setting; anyone in the parish who struggles with illness, is preparing for or recovering from surgery, and so forth, is welcome to come forward for the Sacrament. The presider lays hands on each person's head, anoints his or her forehead and hands with sacred oil and prays a prayer for healing and the forgiveness of sins. It is a powerful and immensely beautiful sacrament and I personally receive it at least once a year.

There is an irony in all of this for me. A paradox. On the Sunday we call Joyful I (and probably many others) regularly receive the Sacrament of the Sick because of chronic illness. For me, the difficult reality of illness is now something also marked by real joy. This shift, this move to paradox, began a number of years ago now --- around the time I was doing Masters work. About then I read Prophetic Anointing by Father James (Jake) Empereur on the Sacrament of anointing. At the time I had been struggling with this illness for a few years and it was proving medically intractable (it would soon prove to be surgically intractable as well). In that book Jake Empereur spoke of Anointing of the Sick as a "vocational sacrament" or "vocational anointing" similar to the anointings associated with baptism, confirmation, and ordination. It was an image that lit a fire in my imagination and took my own reflection on chronic illness in a direction I had never considered. In time, and buttressed first, by the Apostle Paul's theology of divine power perfected in weakness, and second, by Merton's Contemplation in a World of Action, it took my life in a direction I had never conceived.

Paul's theology led me to see my own weakness as potentially sacra-mental, potentially mediatory. Jake Empereur's work led me to consider it was possible to conceive of chronic illness as a specific and vivid way one might witness to the good news of God's redemption. Though I never believed and still do not believe God wills (much less sends!) suffering or chronic illness, I came to believe that one might have a "vocation to chronic illness", or rather, a vocation to be well in Christ in spite of illness and to proclaim the Gospel especially through the lens of one's illness. In this way illness becomes transparent to the reality of redemption. Especially I drew on Empereur's idea that the Sacrament of the Sick marks us as being called to be ill within the Church! It is a vastly different thing to be sick outside the Church and apart from the Gospel than it is to be sick within the Church as a witness to God's redemption!

Merton's work allowed me to take both of these related insights in the direction of the radical expression we know as eremitism, and eventually in the direction of consecrated eremitical life. The article I wrote for Review For Religious back then was about Chronic Illness and Disability as a [potential] Vocation to Eremitical Life. I add [potential] because didn't think many would be called to this (the eremitical call is rare in absolute terms) but relatively speaking, I did think that the chronically ill and disabled were one demographic group that might have a higher percentage of such vocations than average. Experience (and a number of diocesan hermits with chronic illness) have proven that to be the case.

Shifting Personal Perceptions of the Sacrament of Anointing

The Church is still appropriating the shift in the way this Sacrament is seen. It has moved from seeing it as extreme unction given only to the dying to seeing it as a Sacrament which strengthens and makes whole in illness so that one may live more fully. My own perceptions and use of this Sacrament have also shifted. Once upon a time I received the Sacrament of the Sick just to help get me through the next weeks or months of my life, or prepare for yet one more surgery, or to help me deal with injuries or depression. Today I receive it not only because I still, and apparently always will struggle with chronic illness, but because in my life this Sacrament is very much what Prof. James Empereur noted it might well be, namely, a sacrament of vocation. Certainly the Sacrament strengthens and heals, but in my own life it marks or symbolizes a call as well, the call to be sick within the Church and therefore, to come to know and rejoice in an essential and transcendent wellness that exists in spite of physical disease and (sometimes) psychological stress and dis-ease. The symbol of anointing has overtones of royalty and priesthood, and of course, the strengthening of those who will do battle or be injured. While I always pray for whatever physical healing might come through this Sacrament, I am more focused on the witness to wholeness and abundant life it calls me to as part of a royal and priestly People. Listen to the hymn (psalm) which focuses and explicates the promise we celebrate this day:

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,
    the desert shall rejoice and blossom;
like the crocus ² it shall blossom abundantly,
    and rejoice with joy and singing.

The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it,
    the majesty of Carmel and Sharon.
They shall see the glory of the Lord,
    the majesty of our God.

³ Strengthen the weak hands,
    and make firm the feeble knees.
⁴ Say to those who are of a fearful heart,
    “Be strong, fear not!
Behold, your God
    will come with vengeance,
with the recompense of God.
    He will come and save you.”

⁵ Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
    and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
⁶ then shall the lame man leap like a hart,
    and the tongue of the dumb sing for joy.
For waters shall break forth in the wilderness,
    and streams in the desert

This describes what God has already done in my life, and what he does every day I open that life to Him. My "real" Christmas gift is renewed every year in this way and so is my own vocation, not only as a consecrated hermit but as one whose illness is meant for the proclamation of the Gospel and thus, the healing and encouragement of others. As my profession motto says, "My (God's) grace is sufficient for you; my power is perfected in weakness." 2Cor 12:9 That is what the Sacrament of the Sick summons me to and underscores in my life.
 

As I have also noted before, we (the Church) do a fair (but not a great) job of ministering to those with serious and chronic illness but we rarely give much attention at all to what might be called a ministry OF the chronically ill and disabled! (Consider the times you have met someone in your parish who is struggling with illness and the grace associated with their struggle has allowed things to "fall into" perspective for you! Consider the times you have been encouraged, raised to gratitude for all you have been gifted with, and moved to generosity and acts of patience, perseverance, and real sacrifice because of the joy and presence of someone suffering well within your faith community! Consider how much more these folks could give if only provided some format or other within the parish community.) The Church has made a move in the direction not only of ministering to the sick but of suggesting the importance of a ministry of the sick by including the Sacrament of the Sick during Mass on Gaudete Sunday. After all, the Sacrament of Anointing is a vocational sacrament! 

For me, the Sacrament of the Sick is, in its own way, as much a part of my vocation as my profession or consecration. It marks the special character or flavor of my desert experience and call to the witness of eremitical life; had it been possible I would have wished the Sacrament could have been incorporated into some part of my consecration liturgy --- though there are many good reasons it could not have. In any case, in a special way it is the Sacrament that marks me as gift of God when discrete gifts I possess might no longer be usable or must be relinquished. It calls me to remember that illness, as real and significant as it might be in my life is never the thing I am called to witness to. Instead it commissions me to allow illness to become transparent to the grace of God that makes whole and holy while allowing weakness to be transfigured as God's power is thus more perfectly manifested in our world. The call to be sick within the Church is no small matter --- and no easy one either. Even so, despite the struggle involved it can also be a joy because what once seemed utterly meaningless has been made to be profoundly meaningful.

We often think that the Sacrament of the Sick "doesn't work unless it heals us".  But consider that the call it is associated with is described precisely in the psalm: [[then shall the lame man leap like a hart,/ and the tongue of the dumb sing for joy./ For waters shall break forth in the wilderness,/ and streams in the desert.]] It is not as necessary that our illness itself is healed in this Sacrament (or that it need be healed in order to fulfill a profound vocation to proclaim the Gospel) as it is that we ourselves are healed as persons and our this- worldly illness is transfigured with eschatological life and significance. On one level we may still be lame or dumb, and our lives seem fruitless and barren, but on another level we are called to be people who, through the grace of God, leap like a deer or sing for joy as we ourselves are made to be the fruit of grace and the wellspring of love. This is the call celebrated and mediated in the Sacrament of Anointing; how appropriate we celebrate such a powerful and paradoxical summons to be "sick within the church" on Gaudete Sunday!

Feast of St John of the Cross

I am no scholar of St john of the Cross, though I certainly love his writing and feel deep affinities with his spirituality. In any case during this third and more joyful week of Advent I remember that John writes of divine light which is so bright we are blinded by it (it is as darkness to us) and silence aflame with love. These are images I love. I also recall an article on John from America Magazine which corrects some common misconceptions. Part of it is reproduced here.

America: January 30, 2006 Issue
Lawrence S. Cunningham

[[There are so many mistaken notions about St. John of the Cross (1542-91) that we might do well to clarify some of them at the outset. He is, of course, most identified with the phrase dark night of the soul, but in fact he never uses the term. John does speak of the dark night of the senses and the dark night of the spirit in his treatise titled simply The Dark Night. But he is centrally concerned not to identify those purifying processes with what we would call clinical depression (or what he would have called melancholy, which he does discuss and carefully distinguishes from the dark night) or world-weariness or monastic acedia (spiritual torpor). Nor is it true that John was a reclusive hermit with little experience of the world. His biographers have estimated that after his ordination, he traveled nearly 18,000 miles all over Spain, mainly on foot.

We also know that John was a man of practical abilities. We have his famous painting of the crucifixion, which most know through the painting by Salvador Dali, which was inspired by John’s. Spain still has a functioning aqueduct that he designed and helped to build for a Carmelite monastery. Finally, he is not, despite the best efforts of some, to be classified with those mystics who are closer to Buddhism than to Christianity; in fact, his spiritual doctrine is both profoundly Christological and Trinitarian. It is merely a cliché to call him simply a mystic of the night, an apophatic mystic, since his final work ends in light, as is clear from its title, The Living Flame of Love.

In passing, it is also worthwhile to note that John would be unfamiliar with the term mystic or mysticism (words first used long after his death), but he does speak of mystical theology, a term that has behind it a millenium of history in the Christian tradition. When John spoke of mystical theology, as he did more than a few times in his writings, he had in mind the traditional term deriving from the writings of the sixth-century Syrian monk known to us as the Pseudo-Dionysius. It was a phrase well known to every medieval doctor. Mystical theology meant that hidden state of experiencing God without images or concepts. Mysticism, by contrast, was a term coined after John’s death to describe deep spiritual experience detached from formal practices of religion, as the late Michel de Certeau has shown in his classic work The Mystic Fable.]]

Also, let me add my best wishes to Sister Nerina Er Dio, and all Carmelites who celebrate the feast of one of their greatest Saints today.

Reflecting On St Bernard and the Fourth Stage of Love

[[Dear Sister, so often we love God for what he can give us. Is loving God for his own sake the highest form of love? St Bernard says this, right?]]

Hi there,
         Thanks for the question. You are absolutely correct that according to St Bernard of Clairveaux and many others as well, love of God for God's own sake is a higher form of love than love of God for the sake of our own needs --- that is, for the sake of the gifts and blessings God gives us. However, according to St Bernard loving God for God's own sake is actually the third of four levels or stages of love, not the fourth. This will certainly seem to run counter to common sense but the highest form or "fourth level" of love according to Bernard is love of self for God's own sake! It is quite difficult though to love ourselves simply because we are loved by God, simply because we are empowered by God in this way. It is difficult and paradoxical because it is a form of self love in which we are wholly empowered by God and forgetful of self! Paul expressed the paradox in this way, "I, yet not I, but Christ in me."

The prerequisite for this is the third level of love, that's for sure. We will only be able to forget (and truly love!) ourselves in the way that is necessary if we can love God simply because it is what God is worthy of and moreover, if it is that which Love-in-act itself empowers. We have to become practiced and strong in this intimate form of love of God if we are ever able to love ourselves and others in the way God loves us! In other words we must love God in this way (the third level) before we can love ourselves and others in God (the fourth level of love)!  The importance of this fourth stage and the way it follows the third cannot be overstated. Maybe it would be helpful to recall the first two stages of love, the two more immature forms before saying more about this.

First and Second Stages of Love:

The first form is one we all recognize. It is love of self for one's own sake. Sometimes called selfish love it is all about what one needs and desires. This is the earliest form of love we know, the love of infants and children who love others for the gifts they give, the blessings they bring. This form of love is often not really a form of self-love at all; the better word is narcissism. It can and ordinarily does grow into more authentic and mature love for the sake of the other just as children ordinarily come to love their parents despite not being able or desiring to get anything from them in return. The second form of love is love of God for the gifts and blessings which come from God. This is a higher form of love than the first because it includes a real love of God despite this being offered for the sake of the kindness, correction, empowerment, etc which God gives to us. We are loving God here but at the same time we are looking for God to help us in our sinfulness and immaturity, our lack of self-discipline and frailties of all sorts. There is a little forgetfulness of self involved here (we are no longer as narcissistic as we were as infants) though of course we can and ordinarily do grow in this form of love just as we do in the first one.

Third and Fourth Stages:

The third level of love is, as mentioned above, love of God for God's own self or God's own sake. This is an intimate form of love where we recognize God's infinite worthiness of our love. Those who sit in quiet prayer despite no expectations of mystical "experiences", no sense of God's presence beyond a faith commitment to this Divine truth, these persons know this level of love. Those who attend Mass regularly not merely for what they get out of the liturgy, nor because the Church requires this of them, and not merely as an opportunity to put their petitions before God, but simply because this is an act of worship of the One who is worthy of such time, attention, and love, they also know this level of love. I think these examples could be multiplied many times over. However, this level of love is not the same as union with God --- though there is certainly communion with God which empowers this particular level of self-forgetfulness and generosity (for genuine worship always involves self-forgetfulness and generosity). This form of love, like those earlier stages also mentioned is also capable of growth and increasing degrees of maturity or perfection. Over time one's heart is purified and eventually one reaches union with God where one loves self and all else only in the power of God who is Love-in-act. When this occurs, one has entered or reached the fourth level of love. One has truly "put on the mind of Christ."

The fourth level is described by Bernard as loving oneself for God's own sake. It means loving oneself as God loves one and in the way God does but doing so as an act of worship of God alone. In short, it means letting God alone act in and through you -- which is really the highest form of worship. Here one truly loves oneself but does so with a kind or degree of self-forgetfulness one had not known earlier. One certainly does not despise oneself. Instead one embraces a humility which is absolutely honest and loving precisely because one sees and knows oneself as God does.

Even the subtlest forms of self-hatred are healed in this form of love. One sees oneself as God sees us and we find we are truly loveable, precious and a delight in God's eyes. One takes care of oneself and one's legitimate needs but one does so precisely so that one may further spend oneself as God wills and empowers.This means one may certainly give one's life for others in the way Jesus did in his passion and death, but it also means spending oneself for others in ALL the ways God wills in a daily (continued) dying to self --- as Jesus and his true followers do every day of their lives. Take a look at how radically different the first stage of love is from this one! Both are ways of loving self, but the first stage is self-centered and protective; it is lived at the expense of others. The fourth stage is other-centered and kenotic; it is love of self lived for the sake of others whatever the God-willed cost to oneself --- just as Jesus' life was lived.

Fourth Stage Love as Corrective to Spiritual Individualism and False Mysticism:

I don't recall if St Bernard spoke of this specifically (though from the Cistercians I know, and the relatively little I know of the Cistercian Reform, it would not surprise me that it was a motivating insight of Bernard's own life and efforts at monastic reform) but seeing this as the necessary stage of love coming after love of God for God's own sake is an important corrective to forms of monastic practice and prayer which focus on despising the world outside the monastery or a mysticism which focuses on a "Me-and-God alone" relationship which is individualistic and exclusionary or exclusivist. Union with God means we love both ourselves, others, and the whole of creation with God's own love. Union with God empowers this kind of love and the selfless giving of self our world both needs and is made for. It allows God to love in and through us as exhaustively as God desires to do. It is not so much a spillover of our love of God, but a stage of love which love of God for God's own sake makes possible. It is precisely the way Christ loved, the love God calls us each to, and thus, the very apex of what having a covenant nature (as all human beings do) is all about.

Had the stages of love stopped at "loving God for God's own sake" we might never have been able to understand why Christ ever "came down from the mountain" or left any of those solitary prayer periods with God that so characterized his identity in order to spend himself for the sake of others; neither might we understand what moves the Triune God (a community of such love) to continually create and redeem as God constantly does. But being moved so is the very nature of union with God, the very character of God's Mediator and the Trinity itself. Union with God leads naturally to a divine love which goes out of itself to and for the other.

Had St Bernard not written so wonderfully and in a way which runs counter to common sense that  loving God for God's own sake was "only" the third stage of love, we might be tempted to adopt forms of spirituality which are really thinly veiled forms of selfishness or not-so thinly veiled forms of self-hatred. We also might be tempted to denigrate representatives of active as opposed to contemplative forms of life (or eremitical vs coenobitical) for choosing a "lower" form of love. This has certainly been done in the past by even the very best theologians and I recognize it as a significant temptation today.

I should also note that the significance of the fourth stage of love fits very well into the new cosmic consciousness I have mentioned recently because it does not allow spirituality to ever be an individualistic or privatistic matter. (Need I say yet again that this is especially true for hermits?!) We must be ultimately concerned with God's own will, God's own projects and plans for reality; moreover, we must do so ONLY as God's own Life/Love in us make possible. Union with God empowers something our world needs from each and all of us so very badly, something we were each made for and are called to by God as we participate in moving the drama of an evolutionary and unfinished universe forward, namely "love of self (and others and all reality) for God's own sake"!

P.S., What should probably be emphasized, I think, is that these four stages are somewhat like Kohlberg's ego stages. It is not so much that one stage of love is completely left behind as another is entered so much as it is the case that the earlier stage is integrated into the higher stage of love and transformed or transfigured in the process. For instance, as I understand it, we do not cease to care for our everyday needs or seek assistance as required but securing our own needs (and desires!!) are not the driving force of our lives. Moreover, integration means one meets one's own needs in appropriate ways while one's desires are tempered and moderated by higher stages of love.

Similarly, when we have reached higher stages of love we do not cease to ask God to help us with our needs or to count on God's blessings and gifts, but this is no longer the defining form of love motivating our prayer or our approach to reality. And of course, as noted above, we do not consider love of self something "base" to be despised and outgrown or simply rejected. Instead, our love of self is healed and transfigured by God's own love; it becomes something we do for God's own sake and that makes all the difference! Thus, as we become more and more certain of, filled with, and moved by God's own Self (Love-in-Act) we become more and more secure, less needy,  anxious, or fearful of loss and death, and more willing and even grateful for chances to generously spend ourselves for others. The paradox here includes the fact that in the third and fourth stages of love our own profoundest needs are also met but without the self-seeking found in the first two stages. ("Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and all these things will be added unto you.")

Chosen to Clap and Cheer: Embracing the Future With Advent Gratitude

Last week in Advent: Shaping our Lives in Light of the Future I wrote that Advent is about embracing and preparing to embrace the future, and especially the future revelation of God rather than hanging onto the past as an adequate model of what will one day be. I reminded readers that our cosmos is an unfinished reality and that we are on the way to the day when Christ will "come to full stature" and God will be all in all. I also noted that theologians and exegetes today read the Genesis creation and fall narratives very differently than they once did --- not as pointing to a completed and perfected universe which then, through human disobedience or sin, fell from perfection, but instead to a perfected universe still coming to be.

Such a new reading does not leave human sinfulness out of the picture nor does it even change our definition of it much. It is still very much about an ungratefulness we link with disobedience and "falling short" of the reality God calls us to be and embrace in our loving, our stewardship of life in all of its forms and stages, and our worship of the One Creator God. Sin is still about substituting our own versions of God for the real One based on partial and fragmentary revelations and being "satisfied" with a religion whose focus is too much on the now-dead past while we resist (fail to entrust everything in faith to) the ever-surprising God who wills to make everything definitively new. Sin is about enmeshment in this passing world and its fragmentary vision; it shows itself in resistance to the coming Kingdom (the sovereignty and realm) of God which is already in our midst in a proleptic way and seeks to pervade and transfigure all we are and know. Sin is about a resistance or lack of openness to the qualitatively new and surprising (kainotes), the reality we know as eternal or absolute future; when we embrace or otherwise become enmeshed in that lack of openness we are left only with the world of transience and death. After all, sin and death, in all of their forms and degrees are precisely about a lack of future.

Today's readings from Isaiah and Matthew fit very well in underscoring these dynamics, both those of Advent and the futurity it inaugurates and celebrates, as well as of sin and its resistance to newness and future. Isaiah's language is classic for us. He reminds us that so long as we are disobedient to the Commandments of God we have no future; we will not prosper. I think today we need to hear the term "Commandments" as referring to those imperatives of gratefully loving, stewarding life, and worshiping God which are the keys to any futurity. Obedience is a matter of hearkening to these, that is, being open and attentive to them in all of the ways and places they come to us as we embrace whatever they call us to. Obedience is the responsive behavior of those who are grateful.

The Gospel lection tells a wonderful story of prophetic and messianic gifts of God (symbolized most fully by John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth) given freely to God's People --- only to be met with narrow minded criticism and hardhearted ingratitude. God is trying to do something new, trying to bring creation to fulfillment in a "New Creation" of freedom, holiness, and eternal life and human beings representing God's chosen people are resistant. Now John the Baptist himself had come to wonder if Jesus was really the Messiah John had prepared people for; things were looking bad for both John and Jesus and Jesus did seem to be pretty different than the One John had been proclaiming.

Jesus responded to John's questions by pointing to the things God was doing through him to give the blind and crippled a new and full future --- just as Isaiah had promised. Then Jesus uses the image of children engaged in petty bickering as they play games mimicking weddings and funerals. It is important to note that these are ordinarily the most joyful and poignant celebrations of life, love and the hope of a future grounded in God we know. Similarly funerals are those moments marking the terrible sadness and grief of sin and death in separation from God --- though they too may be transformed into celebrations of an eternal hope and future. Jesus reminds the adults listening to him that --- in something that was deadly serious --- God played them a dirge (called them to serious repentance and conversion) culminating in the prophet John and a wedding hymn in Jesus his Anointed One, but they resisted and rejected both. Instead, they criticized John as a crazy person, and called Jesus a drunkard and glutton. Theological arrogance, religious complacency (lukewarmness) or superiority, outright cynicism or hardheartedness --- whatever the roots of this ingratitude it gave no room at all to a faith (trust) that allowed God to do something new in and with our world.

Because Christmas and the exhaustive incarnation of God is, in some ways, not yet complete; because we look forward to the day when Christ will finally come to full stature (Paul to the Ephesians), both Isaiah and Matthew are urging us to adopt an attitude of gratitude and joyful openness to the God of Newness and the future we know as life in God. It is an attitude that contrasts radically with that of the children playing their games in today's gospel or of those rejecting Jesus and John and the Kingdom they inaugurate. Harold Buetow tells the following story which captures the childlike humility, excitement, gratitude, and openness we are to have in relation to the awesome Christmas drama of New Creation God is authoring right now in our lives and world.

[[Little Jimmie was trying out for a part in the school [Christmas] play. He'd set his heart on being in it though his mother feared he wouldn't be chosen. On the day when the parts were awarded, with some trepidation his mother went to collect him after school. Jimmie rushed up to her, eyes shining with pride and excitement: "Guess what, Mom," he shouted, and said, "I've been chosen to clap and cheer!"]]

I am especially struck by how really involved and aware, how truly attentive to and appreciative of the work occurring right in front of one one must be to "clap and cheer" (or to be raptly silent!) in ways which support and move the drama of God's will forward. Isn't this the attitude of praise and gratitude evident in God's followers all throughout the centuries? Isn't this the attitude merited by an unfinished universe moving mysteriously but inexorably toward the day when its Creator God will be all in all?  And isn't this the attitude of obedient anticipation Advent asks each of us to cultivate?

Story of Jimmie's call is from Harold Buetow's, Walk in the Light of the Lord, A Thought a Day for Advent and Christmastide, Alba House, 2004. (Friday, 2nd Week of Advent, p 40.)

John the Baptist and Jesus: Two Approaches to Forgiveness (reprise)

Gospel Reading for Friday, 2nd Week of Advent: Matthew 11:16-19

Recently I watched story of a woman (Eva Moses Kor) who survived the holocaust. She was one of a pair of twins experimented on by Dr Mengele. Both she and her sister (Miriam) survived the camp but her sister's health was ruined and years later she later died from long term complications. Mrs Kor forgave Mengele and did so as part of her own healing. She encouraged others to act similarly so they would no longer be victims in the same way they were without forgiveness and she became to some extent despised by a number of other survivors. What struck me was the fact that Eva had come implicitly to Jesus' own notion of forgiveness and justice (where her own healing is paramount and brings about changes in others and the fabric of reality more than other notions of justice) while others clung to the Jewish teaching which states that amendment and restitution (signs of true repentance but more than this as well) must be made before forgiveness is granted. What also struck me was that she was indeed freer and less a victim in subjective terms than those who refused to forgive saying they had no right, for instance. Further, her forgiveness and freedom freed others (including another doctor at the camp (Dr Hans Munch) who had, until he met Eva and heard of her own stance towards Mengele, been unable to forgive himself) --- though it also pointed up the terrible bondage of either refusal or inability to forgive which other survivors experienced, especially as this became complicated by their newfound anger with Eva.

Tomorrow's Gospel reminds me of this video (and vice versa) because of the close linkage of John Bp and Jesus, and so of two very different (though still-related) approaches to repentance and forgiveness. On the one hand, a strictly ascetic John the Baptist preaches what John Meier describes as a "fierce call to repentance, stiffened with dire warnings of fiery judgment soon to come." (A Marginal Jew, vol 2, pp 148-49) In general John's preaching is dismissed and John himself is treated contemptuously as being mad or possessed by a demon. In the language of the parable John piped a funeral dirge and people refused to mourn.

On the other hand we have Jesus of Nazareth preaching the arrival of the Kingdom of God and offering "an easy, joyous way into [that] Kingdom" by welcoming the religious outcasts and sinners to a place in table fellowship with himself. Meier characterizes the response to THIS call to repentance in terms of the parable, [[With a sudden burst of puritanism, this generation felt that no hallowed prophet sent from God would adopt such a free-wheeling, pleasure-seeking lifestyle, hobnobbing with religious lowlifes and offering assurances of God's forgiveness without demanding the proper process for reintegration into Jewish religious society. How could this Jesus be a true prophet and reformer when he was a glutton and a drunkard, a close companion at meals with people who robbed their fellow Jews . . .or who sinned willfully and heinously, yet refused to repent. . .?]] In other words, in terms of tomorrow's parable Jesus piped a joyful tune, a wedding tune, and people refused to join in the celebration and dismissed Jesus himself as a terrible sinner, worthy of death.

There is wisdom in both approaches to repentance and forgiveness. Both are part of the Judeo-Christian heritage. Both approaches are rejected by "this generation" --- as Jesus calls those who refuse to believe in him. Both lead to greater freedom. But it is Jesus' model which leads to the kind of freedom Eva Moses Kor discovered and which is supposed to mark our own approach to repentance and forgiveness. After all repentance is truly a celebration of God's love and mercy, and these we well know are inexhaustible. Still, entering the celebration is not necessarily easy for us, and we may wonder as some of the other survivors wondered about Eva's forgiveness of Mengele: do we have the right to forgive? Is it wise to act in this way towards someone who has not repented and asked for our forgiveness? Isn't this a form of "cheap grace" so ably castigated by Dietrich Bonhoeffer --- also a victim of the Nazi death machine? (cf The Cost of Discipleship) Where does forgiveness become enabling and does it demean others who have also been harmed? What about tough love: isn't John Bp's approach the better one? Am I really supposed to simply welcome serious sinners into my home? Into our sacred meal? To membership in the Church? To my circle of friends?

And the simple answer to most of these questions is yes, this is what we are called to do. The Kingdom of God is at hand and Jesus' example is the one we follow. It is this example which leads to the freedom of the Kingdom, this example that made Christians of us and will in time transform our world. In particular, it is this example which sets the tone for Advent joy and festivity and allows the future to take hold of our lives and hearts. It is not merely that we have the right to forgive in this way, but that we have been commissioned to do so. It is an expression of our own vocations to embody or incarnate the unconditional mercy of God in Christ.

Most of us will find ourselves caught between the prophetic example of John the Baptist and the Messianic example of Jesus' meal fellowship with sinners. We have great empathy both for the approach of Eva Moses Kor AND those survivors who could not forgive Mengele --- often because they felt that doing so was contrary to justice as spelled out in the Scriptures and elaborated in rabbinical tradition, as well as because it demeaned his victims. We know that "tough love" has a place in our world and that "cheap grace" is more problem than solution. Tomorrow's Gospel underscores our own position between worlds and kingdoms, and it may cause us to recognize that there was a deep suspicion of Jesus' table fellowship which was grounded in more than envy or fear. We may see clearly that the Jewish leadership of Jesus' day had serious and justified concerns about the wisdom of Jesus' actions and praxis. Even so, it is also clear regarding which model of repentance and forgiveness we are to choose, which model represents the freedom of the Kingdom of God, and which model allows us to be Christ for others. As Matthew's version of this parable also affirms, the wisdom of this approach will be found in its fruit --- if only we can be patient and trust in the wisdom of Jesus, the glutton, drunkard, and libertine who consorted with serious sinners.

Followup on Dating While in Pre-Discernment Regarding a Religious Vocation

[[Dear Sister, I read your post on dating while in the "pre-discernment" process of entering a religious order (cf., Dating While in Pre-Discernment). I was surprised to hear you talk about dating while doing this. Shouldn't you be pointing people to celibacy and to religious life instead? You said that perhaps the person would find that they were called to marriage or associateship, but what happens if they are called by God to religious life and then get pregnant or decide to marry because they are infatuated? What happens if they never are able to enter religious life? I wonder about your advice!]]

Thanks for your questions. I am happy to answer them and try to show why I advised what I did. First though let's get something really clear. I am not a recruiter for a religious congregation. My "job" is not to point people to any specific vocation or try to get them to live in any particular way beyond as an authentic Christian (or human being!). Instead it is to  answer whatever questions I am asked in a way which is honest and which, I hope, will open up a future to the person. Sometimes this has to do with religious life generally, often with eremitical life specifically, and sometimes with the requirements of canon 603, etc. In cases dealing with religious life of any sort I am going to try to stress the maturity required, and quite often, the formation needed to achieve this maturity.

Secondly, in advising the person to go ahead and date someone whom she thought she was in love, I also reminded her she was called to chastity in whatever state of life she found herself. Nothing I said suggested transgressing chastity simply because I recommended dating! Quite the opposite in fact. When a person is considering entering a religious institute to discern a vocation in a mutual process they should not only be considering this single vocation --- or better put maybe, they should be open to other possibilities entering their life as their true vocation. The person who wrote me had at least as much chance of discovering she had a vocation to marriage as to religious life. A number of other possibilities also existed and may still! It is incumbent on her to maintain her spiritual life and to focus on truly growing in her capacity for love and generosity in mature relationships prior to and during any vocational step she might eventually take.

I am troubled that you connect dating so automatically with having sex. Of course I know that this is not only your association. It is part and parcel of the society and culture and that is profoundly troubling to me. I am not sure we have ever lived in a time or culture where something as sacred as sexual intercourse was so thoroughly demeaned and trivialized. But if a person cannot date without giving him or herself away to another in this manner, if "hooking up" is a routine transgression of significant boundaries everyone does because it is fun or expected or simply meaningless --- much less a way of exploiting another or "proving" one's masculinity/femininity or demonstrating one's love for someone --- then how can we expect them to live a life of radical generosity in celibate religious life without transgressing significant boundaries there as well?

The same goes for marriage. Dating is a time of exploration, yes, but it is also a time of restraint and real care while each one learns to honor the other, their God, and the boundaries which help constitute and protect each person's selfhood and personal integrity. Dating is an intense process of learning to love another and maturing in that capacity (as well as helping them mature in theirs) so that, should one discern one is called to marriage (whomever that involves!!), one will be able make the complete and unique self gift that implies. If that self-gift is to be made instead in religious life, then the process of dating while remaining chaste will have helped the future religious prepare for this complete and unique oblation in celibacy. It also will enrich his or her life in ways which are almost immeasurable. A male or female religious who is capable of healthy, chaste, and strong relationships with someone of the opposite sex is an incredible gift to the Church and world. Dating helps prepare the way for this as much as it helps prepare the way for marriage.

It seems to me then that two young persons who are dating need to realize they are helping one another to grow in their capacity for a life commitment. It is as much about the fact that God is calling the other person to a unique vocation as it is that God is calling oneself to that! One needs to bear in mind that God has a singular calling for each of us! Parents help form the foundation for such a commitment, but it really is with peers that our capacity for this is solidified. If one is only thinking about their own vocation while dating another then they are not nearly generous enough in their relationship. BOTH persons have divine callings and both need to grow in their capacity for responding to and living such a calling --- not only in learning to love others genuinely, but in developing the capacity to sacrifice one's own immediate desires and so forth for the sake of the other and the other's vocation as well. Dating can serve as a significant part of this specific form of maturing.

Will young (and not so young) people make mistakes? Yes, they will. Some will get pregnant, some will marry before really being sure this is what God is calling them to. But some will be able to act wisely and lovingly and some relatively few of these will also be called to religious life. The real or most fundamental vocation any of us are called to is authentic humanity and this itself is about being loved and loving in genuinely mature ways. Thereafter we may find one path or another is the best way for strengthening and expanding this capacity in us, but, whether we miss that path or not, the essential or fundamental vocation is still the same. While I think it is a terrible shame if someone fails to discern a genuine call to religious life, for instance, I recognize that God does not cease calling any of us to be ourselves in the most exhaustive ways possible. We have to trust in God's creative power and will. We have to focus not on what we missed (or on mistakes we made) but on the future God calls us to nonetheless.

You see, the greater risk I see is in religious vocations embraced and lived by those incapable either of mature relationships with persons of the opposite sex or of living a mature (and chaste) sexuality than with "missing" one's specific vocational path. The first is genuinely disastrous and may hurt many people; the second may be a significant bump in the road but it does not end the vocational journey itself.

Oakland Civic Orchestra's First Set of the Season

I didn't play the first set this season with the Oakland Civic Orchestra, nor am I playing this Advent, though I am still with the orchestra and keep them in my thoughts. I have been waiting for these videos to be available because the concert was supposed to have been really impressive. Here are two of the movements (#3,4) from Tchaikovsky's 4th Symphony, the main offering of the first set.

I personally love the second movement (not included here) while the third (included) is amazingly fun --- not only because the music itself is playful with parts thrown back and forth between instruments, but because the strings are mainly using a fast  and repetitive pizzicato which is not easy, especially for extended passages (never mind an entire movement!). This is simply a technique we (violinists anyway) do not use a lot --- not enough to gain real facility with it! The fourth movement (also included) is one I honestly would not have thought our orchestra could ever play (the string parts are quite difficult and I suspect the same is true for the wind parts), but here it is --- an amazing testimony to the group's growth over the years and the commitment of its members (and director and associates !!!).

Remember, this is an amateur orchestra whose members have day jobs as teachers, professors, nurses, ER physicians, mathematicians, retired park rangers, psychologists, attorneys, librarians, contractors, social workers, hermit nuns, and any number of other fields most of which have little or nothing to do with music --- at least not directly. Rehearsals are held one evening a week for 2.5 hours. Anyone living in the SF Bay Area and interested in playing with the orchestra should go to the website Oakland Civic Orchestra and contact Marty Stoddard, Artistic Director. Strings are always needed and no audition is necessary. Winds (for whom chairs are much more limited) are also welcome but do need to audition for seats.

Advent: Shaping our Lives in terms of the Future

So many things have changed in Theology today in light of the scientific discoveries on the nature of the cosmos. We used, for instance, to read Genesis as though it referred only to past events, a state of perfect blessedness that had been lost and which one day would be regained in another realm we called heaven. Similarly, our enmeshment in and subjection to death was treated as the result of a "fall" from perfection. Today, more and more we are reading the Scriptures, writing, and preaching with a new focus and perspective --- that of an unfinished universe that one day will reach perfection or fulfillment in God, the day when God will be all in all. At the same time then we human beings are called to a fulfillment that lies before us and it is possible to read Genesis as a powerful myth reminding us of all we are called to --- and all our world is meant for as well. Our identity as imago dei would then be something we are in the process of moving towards, something we are allowing or at least are called to allow God to transfigure us into day by day.

Sin, a Situation of Enmeshment in the Past and that which is resistant to the Future God Wills and Represents

The situation of enmeshment, incompleteness, falseness, distortion, or sin in which we find ourselves is not a fiction that can be dismissed by a non-literalist reading of the Genesis narratives. It is as real as ever, and Genesis narratives, especially when read as myths ** conveying profound truths, explain how it is we each collude with death in all its forms as we lead one another into greater and greater enmeshment in everything we identify as sin. In light of the unfinished developing nature of our universe, I think it is especially important to remember that hamartia (sin) is most fundamentally defined as "missing the mark" or "falling short". We miss the mark or fall short of being the persons God has created us to be in any number of ways. In attempts to become what we are meant to be, in attempts to become more genuinely human, we choose gods of all sorts who themselves fall short of true divinity and make us even less complete or true than we were before we embraced them. In acts of forgetfulness and carelessness, fear, insecurity, and woundedness, we choose to embrace the past rather than the future and therefore to be someone other than the one God calls us to be. But too, we are summoned into and embrace the future as we become Advent persons, persons of the Eschaton for whom the words holiness and Saint actually fit. Our God is working constantly to bring us to freedom and fulfillment, truth and authentic humanity; his Word is active in our world and in our own hearts and each one of us is called to incarnate that Word just as fully as possible.

If we now read Genesis in a way different from what we were once used to and comfortable with, so too do we approach the Nativity of Jesus in somewhat different ways as well. Advent reminds us that the Word is at work in our world looking for those who will allow it to bear fruit in their lives. It reminds us that God's plans for us and our world are something we can hardly imagine yet --- and with the Gospel readings from next week, something we may find profoundly disturbing or even offensive. It is part of our past, but even more, it is the future by which we are called to measure ourselves.

Authentic humanity has been born into our world and we will celebrate that at Christmas, but at the same time, it is waiting to be born in us and in every person we know so that God's plans for the fulfillment of reality may be brought to fruition. The Annunciation is an invitation to enter an unimaginable future we should each experience here and now while Mary's fiat is an acceptance of this invitation we too should each offer --- and offer many times over this period of Advent! Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus who will, throughout his life and death, incarnate the Word of God more and more definitively. But Christmas is not only in the past; it lies ahead of us as well.

Embracing the Future: Christ Brought to Full Stature

Ephesians speaks of Christ one day "coming to full stature". We speak of the Christ Event which includes not only Jesus' life and death but his resurrection and ascension as well. We are participants in this Event because we have been baptized into his death and resurrection. Thus, while part of this Event is in the past it continues in the present as well. WE are the Body of Christ and it is we who are responsible for helping to usher in the Kingdom of God, WE who are called to incarnate the Risen Christ here and now. It is only right that we celebrate Advent as a season in which we begin to look not primarily at the past but instead to the present and future. Even more, as was the case with the Annunciation when Mary began to shape her life in light of the future the angel announced to her: "You shall be overshadowed by the Most High and bear a Son and he shall be called Emmanuel," we too are called to begin to shape our lives less in terms of the past than in terms of the future which Christ's death and resurrection proclaims, the world in which in us Christ comes to full stature.

Advent reminds us it is not enough to be freed of serious sin. Baptism and the Sacraments do that, of course, but that does not make us all we are called to be, all that God dreams and wills for us.  We cannot shape our lives merely in terms of freedom from serious sin or restored innocence. It is not enough to look to the past to what we once were. Instead, we are called to truly become a new creation, (an) imago dei, those in whom the Word of God finds its full expression. Christ is the model of this new life, the first fruits of this new creation. He is the incarnation of our absolute future made real here and now in a proleptic way, the One in whom all reality has been redeemed and imbued with true hope and profound promise. Christ variously announces to us who we shall be, "I call you friends." He invites us to be his disciples, his own brothers and sisters, salt and light to the nations, Sons and Daughters of God, and citizens of the Kingdom; in him, we are called to be expressions of the Logos and commissioned to bear lasting fruit. We too are to be overshadowed by the Most High. Advent asks us to begin shaping our lives according to this vision, not that of who we once were, but of who we are created to become. In our embracing this future lies the hope of our entire world.

Readings of Genesis Sharpened by the New Cosmology

By the way, in light of the new ways Theologians read Genesis, one of the newer shifts in that reading is to understand Adam and Eve and the story of the Garden as a narrative describing the ultimate future of our world as well as (and sometimes instead of) some primordial history. That reading has been around for a while but it has been honed considerably in light of our sense of an unfinished, yet-to-be-perfected universe. The future reality described in the myth** will be a place where human beings are completed in their relationships with one another, with God, and with creation itself. As in Jesus' language to his followers, this future is defined in terms of friendship. If this is correct, then sin is most fundamentally a matter of refusing to embrace this future. That means refusing to commit to God and God's plans for his Creation, refusing to embrace our truest self --- an identity shaped in terms of this reality in which God is all in all. Sin is a matter of refusing to be made new and remaining bound by the past. And of course, that definition of sin is really not all that different from the one we are so familiar with. Our own "falling short" or "missing the mark" (hamartia) though is a matter of falling short when measured according to our future, not the past.

** It is important to understand that myths are not fictions but rather narratives or stories which convey deep truths that can be adequately described in no other way than through some narrative. While the more superficial details of the stories (myths) may be untrue (there is no such thing as a talking snake!), their deeper truths are just that, profoundly true (talking snakes are a good way to externalize Eve's (and our own) insatiable tendency to theologize, for instance, or to describe the temptations she (and we) struggle(d) with).cf: More on Stories and the Tower of Babel or Myths, Parables, and Narrative Theology

Advent Prayer: Coming to see the Miracle of an Everyday God

So much in the spiritual life is about learning to see. Advent is often called a season of light and light is precisely that which allows us to see things --- hopefully as they really are! I remember the theology class I was in when the professor pointed out that we don't so much see the light as we see everything by virtue of the light. It was one of those aha moments, dazzling and utterly delightful because it involved a bit of insight that also meant nothing would ever again look the same to me.

These days, when I think of Christ as the Light, I think of the One who allows me to see reality as it is. He reveals God to us --- the One whose just-making judgment is achieved in mercy and compassion --- and he reveals ourselves to us; he shows us to be human beings who are incomplete and distorted without the One who loves us into trueness and completes us by drawing us into himself. Of course he also shows what true humanity is --- a life of generosity and other-centeredness, a life of love and service lived in relationship. Similarly the Christ reveals this world to be the very place where God is revealed definitively. Sometimes we spend our lives seeking a God who resides in a remote heaven when Advent and Christmas witness to a God who comes to us, who seeks us out precisely here in this everyday world of space-time.

My prayer for Advent is that we allow this "everyday God" to shine his extraordinary light on all of reality so that day by day we come to see it more clearly, know and appreciate it more truly, and embrace it and the God who creates it at every moment with genuine love. Perhaps then when Christmas comes we will be able to see more clearly the paradox of an Incarnation that is at once the miraculous revelation of the transcendent One who comes to us in complete ordinariness.



I almost changed videos last night to "day by Day" from Godspell because of the prayer ending the piece. A couple of people heard resonances of Godspell in my prayer as well so I am adding a video which speaks to the challenge of allowing ourselves to find (or be found by!) and follow the transcendent God in the ordinary every day of our lives. In deciding which video to use I saw one of the original cast which reminded me that the original musical was offensive to many religious folks --- just as the Incarnation was offensive to many in Jesus' day. The scandal of the Incarnation, a transcendent God who chooses to turn a human face to us which reveals both Divinity and Humanity, and the need to find that God in the ordinariness of our lives, all of these themes are present throughout Advent.

God's Story: In What Story Will We Stand? (Reprise)

A Poignant Conversation

Last week I spoke to a friend I haven't seen in a number of years. She has Alzheimer's and now lives in a different state. We have known each other since the early 80's  when we were both working with the same spiritual director and sometimes stayed at the Center for dinner or made retreat together. Today Denise remembers that time clearly as a watershed period of her life and it is a complete joy for her to talk about it. Doing so is part of what allows her to remain a hopeful and faithful person. It is a major part of her ability to remain herself. But her capacity for story has been crippled and to some extent reduced by her illness.

We are Made for Story

For me this conversation helped underscore a deep truth of our existence. Human beings are made for story. Story is an inescapable part of being truly human and we are diminished without it. It is not only a profound need within us but a drive which affects everything we are and do. Nothing happens without story. Nothing significant that happens in our life is unmediated by story.  When scientists reflect on and research this truth, they conclude we are hardwired for story. Neuroscientists have even located a portion of the brain which is dedicated to spinning stories. This portion of our brain sometimes functions to "console" and compensate one for the loss of story in brain disorders (amnesia, for instance) and I sometimes hear it at work in my friend Denise as she fills in the holes in her own memory for herself; but it is implicated in our quest for connection, context, and meaning in all its forms.

Thus scientists explain that story is actually the way we think, the way we relate to and process reality, the way we make sense of things and get our own hearts and minds around them. Whenever we run into something we don't understand or cannot control --- something we need to hold together in a meaningful way we invariably weave a story around it. Children do it with their dolls and crayons; Abused children do it and often have to be helped in later life to let go of these so they may embrace their place in a better, truer story. Physicians do it when they determine diagnoses and prognoses. Historians do it in explaining the significance of events. Scientists spin stories to explain the nature of reality. The complex stories they author are called theories. Like the myths of religious traditions, these narratives often possess a profound explanatory power and truth. They work to allow the development of technology, medicine, and the whole of the sciences, but they are stories nonetheless. And of course, gossips, know-it-alls and scam artists of all sorts routinely spin stories to draw us in and exploit our capacity and hunger for story.

We all know that stories are essential to our humanity.  At their best they help create a context, a sacred space and healing dynamic where we can be ourselves and stand authentically with others: Thus, when someone we love dies it is natural (human!) and even essential that we gather together to tell stories which help reknit the broken threads of our story into something new and hopeful, something which carries us into a future with promise. In a way which is similarly healing and life giving we offer strangers places in our own stories and make neighbors of them. We do the same with friends. Ideally, there is no greater gift we can give another than a place in our own stories, no greater compassion than our empathy for and appreciation of another's entire story. For good and ill our humanity is integrally linked to the fact that we are made for story. We reside and find rest within stories; they connect us to others. They are vehicles of transcendence which make sense of the past and draw us into the future. They link us to our culture, our families, our communities, our faith, and our church; without them we are left bereft of identity or place and our lives are empty and meaningless. 

We have only to look at the place story holds in our life in the Church to appreciate this. The creed we profess is not a series of disparate beliefs or dogmas but a coherent story we embrace more fully every time we repeat it and affirm "I believe" this. Our liturgy of the Word is centered on stories of all sorts --- challenging, inspiring, consoling us as only stories can do. Even the act of consecration is accomplished by telling a story we recount and embrace in our "Amen" of faith: "On the night he was betrayed, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it saying. . . then he took the cup, blessed it saying. . .]] Stories like these, we know, provide the context and overarching narrative in which all things ultimately hold together and are meaningful.They make whole and holy. For this reason we yearn for them and honor them as sacred.

Our Capacity for Story is Both Blessing and Curse 

Augustine summarized all of this when he said, "O God, we are made for thee, and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee." He might well have said."O God your story is our own and our hearts are restless until they finally reside securely in that story". Just like physicists who are searching for that one theory of everything, we are each made for and in search of the story which makes complete and ultimate sense of our lives, the story which allows us to develop our own personal stories fully, the narrative framework which lets us be completely and exhaustively human. Christians recognize this blessed story as the Kingdom of God, God's own story.The challenge for each of us, I think, is to make this story our own. The problem? We already reside rather securely in other stories, other controlling narratives and myths. Because of our capacity and even our hunger for story our lives are full of scripts and tapes which conflict with the story we are offered in Christ. Some seem lifegiving but many do not serve us very well at all.

 For instance, when young persons opt to join a gang, they are choosing a particular story of status, community, belonging, power as opposed to powerlessness, and a place in a world which seems larger and more adult than the one they occupy already. Unless these things are distorted into badges of courage and achievement the narrative omits prison, death, the sundering of family relationships, loss of education, future, and so forth. Another example: when adults choose to have affairs they are buying into a story they tell themselves (and our culture colludes with this at every point) about freedom and love, youth, immediate gratification, sexuality and attractiveness. The part of the narrative they leave out or downplay is the part of the story we are each called to tell with our lives about personal integrity, commitment,  faithfulness, patience, and all the other things that constitute real love and humanity. 

What we are seeing here is the very essence of sin. It is no coincidence that the Genesis account of humanity's fall from "grace" (which is really a place in God's own life or "story") centers around the fact that at evil's urging Adam and Eve swap the story God tells them about themselves, their world, and their place in it for another one they prefer to believe. In THIS story eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil will not bring death; in THIS story God is a liar; in this story humanity grasps at godhead and lives forever anyway. So many of the scripts and tapes we have adopted are as distorted and destructive and they touch every part of our lives. Two of the most recent I heard are, "The poor are takers" and "Selfishness is a moral imperative and the key to the common good." But there are many others! Scripts about what real men and women do or don't do --- both in society and in our church --- about what freedom is, divine justice, what is required to gain God's love (despite the fact God gives it freely to anyone who will simply accept it), etc. As sinful human beings we are an ambiguous mixture of stories which make us true and those which stunt or distort us. Our capacity for story is both blessing and curse.

Story is also the way Home

If our capacity for story is both blessing and curse then it is also the way home. In particular the stories Jesus tells us are a primary way home. Jesus' parables are, in fact, one of the ways he works miracles. (If anyone --- even Webster's Dictionary --- ever tells you these parables are "simple religious stories with a moral" don't believe them! They are far more dynamic and dangerous than that!) Like every story, Jesus' parables draw us in completely, allow us to suspend disbelief, check our overly critical voices at the door, and listen with our hearts as well as our intellects. They create a sacred space in which we are alone with God and can meet ourselves and God face to face. No one can enter this space with us even if there are hundreds standing shoulder to shoulder listening to the same story. But Jesus' stories do more. As I have written here before: [[ When Jesus told parables, for instance, he did so for two related reasons: first, to identify and subvert some of the less than authentic controlling myths people had adopted as their own, and second to offer the opportunity to make a choice for an alternative story by which one could live an authentically human and holy life.

Parables, Jesus' parables that is, typically throw down two sets of values; two perspectives [or stories] are cast down beside one another (para = alongside, and balein = to throw down). One set represents the Kingdom of God; one the kingdom where God is not sovereign --- the realm the Church has sometimes called "the world". Because our feet are firmly planted in the first set of values, [the first set of stories or scripts], the resulting clash disorients us and throws us off balance; it is unexpected and while first freeing us to some extent from our embeddedness (or enmeshment) in other narratives, it creates a moment of "KRISIS" or decision and summons us to choose where we will finally put our feet down again, which reality we will stand firmly in and inhabit, which story will define us, which sovereign will author and rule us. ]] 

Will we affirm the status quo, the normal cultural, societal, personal, or even some of the inadequate religious narratives we cling to, or will we instead allow our minds and hearts to be remade and adopt God's own story as our own? Who will author us? Will it be the dominant culture, or the God who relativizes and redeems it? Where indeed will we put our feet down? In which story will we choose to walk and with whom? These are clearly the questions that face us during this season of Advent as we prepare our hearts for Christmas and a God who tells us his story in a most unexpected way.The fresh cycle of readings are an invitation to approach God's story with fresh ears and a willingness to have our lives reshaped accordingly. It is the story we are made and hunger for, the story in which we are made true and whole, the story in which nothing authentic of our lives is ever lost or forgotten. What greater gift can we imagine or be given?