The Conversion of St Paul (reprised with tweaks)

Tomorrow's reading from the Acts of the Apostles tells us of the conversion of Paul. There is no doubt this is one of the most important events in the history of the Church and certainly one of the most dramatic. Luke tells us of this event three times in this single work so it is hard to overestimate its importance. A couple of things in particular strike me about this reading this time around.

The first, and the one I will focus on in this blog post, is how radical the changes needed to be in Paul's life to really do justice to his experience of the risen Christ whom he had been persecuting, but also how conservative in the very best sense that experience also was. Tom Wright describes this dual dynamic or dialectic when he says, [[ But this seeing . . .confirmed everything Saul had been taught; it overturned everything he had been taught. The law and the prophets had come true; the law and the prophets had been torn to pieces and put back together in a totally new way. It was a new world; it was the old world made explicit. . . .it showed him that the God he had been right to serve, right to study, right to seek in prayer, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, had done what he always said he would, but done it in a shocking, scandalous, horrifying way. The God who had promised to come and rescue his people had done so in person. In the person of Jesus.]]

So often I am emailed by people who would like to be hermits or who, similarly, would like to put up a sign calling their home "____ hermitage" so people "realize this is not a normal home any more," but who have not themselves made the necessary transition to an essentially eremitical life. As I have noted before, they may or may not live alone, but they add in a little prayer, a bit of silence, a little lectio, and then continue living essentially the same lives they have always lived --- just tweaked a bit. After a day's work outside the hermitage they refer to their time at home alone in the evenings as "their eremitical time" and wonder why I or others -- including their chancery personnel -- reject the idea that they are yet really hermits.

Many people live the same kind of "Christian" lives. Their spirituality is compartmentalized and in the main their lives are untouched by the reality of the risen Christ. They pray and worship on Sundays, they say grace before meals, and perhaps before bed or on arising, but on the whole, their lives are mainly unchanged and perhaps untouched by the completely world shaking reality of the risen Christ. Sometimes we have the sense that elements of the institutional church suffer in somewhat the same way. Parts of their lives, parts of their interpretation of the Tradition they rightly hold precious have not been touched by an experience of the risen Christ and the result is an unfortunate compartmentalization in their approach to reality and a narrowness of vision with all that entails. But given the example we have from St Paul and the Acts of the Apostles, this will not do --- not for anyone claiming the name "Christian".

Following his experience on the road to Damascus, Paul took the next few years, withdrew to a desert region, and began completely reframing the tradition he deeply loved in light of his extended experience of the risen Christ. He completed this reframing as he engaged each of the churches he founded or preached to in their own unique pastoral circumstances and with regard to their own unique problems. In other words, an experience of world-shattering revelation (what Lohfink refers to as a long "process of discovery") through prayer, reflection, and genuinely pastoral presence and ministry became an experience of radical conversion. It was, in some ways, what happens when a vat of dough is affected by yeast. No part of the dough is or can be left untouched. Similarly it is rather like what happens when one puts a picture together from all the puzzle pieces one has at hand --- but finds some have been left out. Each time a new piece is discovered and added, the picture must be reformed and the place of each and all the pieces must be adjusted and reconsidered. (This is especially true with puzzles whose pieces are all the same shape and can be combined in a myriad of ways --- each of these creating a different picture as a whole.)

In such a process none of the older pieces are rendered obsolete or superfluous, but neither can they be seen any longer in their old light or from an older perspective. When one meets the risen Christ, all of the old pieces of the Tradition must be regarded from this new perspective and for Paul that required a rethinking of issues like Law, the nature of resurrection specifically and salvation more generally, the relation of Israel and the Church, Creation and Covenant and what God is attempting to effect by these, the nature of election and who God has called to this and why, the relationship of evil and grace and how ministry is truly effected --- whether by separation and ritual purity or immersion and a holiness which is contagious, the nature of the Messiah, and so forth. 

In other words, the old doctrinal statements and understandings are not simply swept aside as unimportant, but neither are they left unaffected nor can they be treated adequately apart from the charismatic experience of the risen Christ. Nor are the changes called for merely cosmetic then; they are radical --- reaching right to the roots. We are not merely to be thrown from whatever hobby-horse we have been riding for so long --- no matter how worthwhile. Instead there must also be a soul-deep healing or reconciliation, a bone-deep re-envisioning of all the old certainties after an experience of dazzling illumination or revelation. We, our faith, and lives which reflect and incarnate that faith must be wholly remade from the roots. Nothing else will do.

Paul is the Apostle we must look to here, the one with the courage to change everything without losing anything essential, the one whose experience of the scandalously crucified and risen Christ shaped entirely the way he would honor and represent the Tradition handed onto him, the one who refused to compartmentalize his faith and experience but instead allowed everything to become a new creation in Christ. The simple fact is that should our church, this community of disciples of Jesus, fail in this it will cease to truly be the Church Christ called into being. Mark, whose theology was very like Paul's, knew that genuine discipleship recreates the person and in the process it transfigures them; he spelled it out in terms of our becoming a truly human person who is transparent to God as Jesus was entirely transparent to God. Paul would have approved of such a notion of conversion where we are our truest self to the extent we reveal the face and heart of God to the world and where we are actually transparent to God to the extent we are authentically human. This is the conversion they both associated with discipleship.

Like Paul's own conversion, the RADICAL integration of our own EXPERIENCE of the risen Christ at this point in time with the Tradition and with the concrete needs and yearnings of our time --- or our failure to do so --- will be one of the most significant events in the history of the church. We will either return to largely being the religion/institution of the Pharisees or become the gospel reality, the Kingdom Jesus meant and called us and our world to be. Every group, every individual must play a part; none is unimportant or can be allowed to remain voiceless (much less be silenced!!) or the Gospel of Jesus Christ will fail to be proclaimed with our lives, and the coming of the Kingdom which is the thoroughgoing interpenetration of heaven and earth leading to complete transformation will continue to be hampered.

On Making Neighbors of the "Other": Jesus' Most Fundamental Commission

I try not to get political on this blog but the truth is that Jesus spoke truth to power on all levels, religious, political, personal etc., and given my own standing, it is important that I remind myself and us all that at the heart of the Gospel is the mandate to love our neighbors as ourselves. Of course, there is another step involved here which discipleship requires, namely, that we make neighbors of those whom the "world" calls aliens or "other." Jesus did not honor with a direct (and simplistic) answer the sly question of the young man who asked him "but who is my neighbor"? (In an honor/shame culture like the one known by this young man, where one's own prestige was enhanced by certain relationships and lost by others, making neighbors of everyone was radically countercultural. This young man was not asking who his neighbor was in order to include others but to exclude them.) Instead he told a parable, one of those stories which asks us to drop our own baggage as we enter (including our religious and political baggage!), and step obediently (openly, attentively) into a different world, the world of the story Jesus is telling and the world of the Kingdom of God he hopes we will embrace. Before we can love our neighbors (or as part of truly doing so), we first have to make neighbors of those we consider alien to us. In order to help us chose this stance toward others Jesus tells the parable of the "Good Samaritan."

We all know the story. A man was travelling to Jericho on his way from Jerusalem and was fallen upon by robbers who "stripped and beat him". They then took off leaving him for dead. A priest travelling to Jerusalem saw him and, perhaps not wanting to be defiled by the victim's condition, passed on by --- on the other side of the road. Following this a Levite did likewise --- again moving to the other side of the road in the process. Finally, a Samaritan spotted the man by the side of the road and, moved with compassion, cared for him, bound up his wounds, took him on his own beast to an inn and paid for his care there. Following this story Jesus turns to his audience and asks, "Which of these three proved to be a neighbor to the man who had fallen among the robbers?" The answer was obvious, but also very challenging: the Samaritan --- one who would ordinarily have despised and been despised by the Jew who fell to the thieves.

Jesus chooses people who have very good reasons for disliking or avoiding one another in this parable. For the priest who is on his way to serve his turn on the Temple Rota, he cannot allow himself to be defiled and rendered incapable of serving; for the Levite the Law also requires he keep clear of defilement with a possible dead body. Meanwhile, as noted, the Samaritan was despised by Jews and might well have reciprocated or at least lived among those who would have. But for this man compassion allowed him to see a greater truth, the truth of shared humanity and perhaps too, the truth of a God who loves all of his creation with an unreserved love. It was these two truths which Jesus lived and died to witness to exhaustively, and it is these two truths we who call ourselves Jesus' disciples are called to live out with integrity.

Compassion is the basis of truth, the way in which we each truly encounter the real every person embodies and reflects, and it was compassion which moved the Samaritan to make a neighbor of someone he would ordinarily have met (and who would ordinarily have met him) with hatred. But over the last four years and culminating in the events at our Capitol on the Feast of Epiphany we have seen a progressively growing failure of compassion and too then, a growing tendency to define those we meet who differ from ourselves in politics, world view, and so forth, as "aliens", "others" or "them". Our mindset is revealed in a rhetoric which is constantly peppered with the dynamics of  "us vs them", "we vs they", red vs blue, and any number of other designations which are meant to mark people as enemies, and to denigrate them as idiots, brainless, uncaring, unpatriotic, and generally unworthy of our care or respect.

There is no Christian, except those of us who fail in our discipleship, who can allow such a dynamic to continue to mark and mar our relationships with others.  After all, Jesus called and commissioned us to make neighbors of these "others" and to love them as we love ourselves. I am not naïve in reiterating this commission. I understand the tremendous challenge it poses and I know personally the failure my inability to live it out during these past years -- and recent days especially -- indicates. But called to this I am. Every Christian is called to this! 

Once upon a time I saw myself as "different" than most folks I knew --- and, in some less foundational ways, there are still good reasons for that. However, one of the most important prayer experiences of my life revealed to me that I was truly "the same" as everyone else; on a level much more fundamental than those marking me as different, I came to know myself as the same--- as similarly human, similarly hungry for life and meaning and love, similarly loved by God and similarly insecure and sometimes even dangerous without that love. The occasion was a joyful one for me, and deeply compelling. At that point I became more truly capable of using the terms "brothers" and "sisters" (and certainly the title Sister) as God was calling me to do -- as, that is,  a creative and courageous Christianity actually does. When I read Jesus' parable now, I wonder if perhaps the Samaritan had had a similar experience which made compassion for his Jewish brother possible.

There is only one power which can confront the horrific dynamic of "partisanship" and division which has been  exacerbated, focused, weaponized, and turned lose in our country during these past years and that is the power of love. No, not a sentimental rose-colored-glasses type of "luv", but a serious, determined, clear-seeing, truth-speaking-in-compassion Love that is rooted in God's own Life and love for us, and expressed in the commission to make neighbors of the "other" and treat them as we ourselves yearn to be treated. This is the Christian vocation and, God knows, it is very different from what passes for "Christianity" in much of our country and world today. I sincerely pray that those who call themselves Christian can, in the power and humility of Christ, find the courage to accept this radically countercultural commission and carry it out with integrity. It has, perhaps, never been more critical that we do so.

Feast of the Baptism of Jesus' Baptism (reprised)

 Of all the feasts we celebrate, [today's] feast of the baptism of Jesus is one of the most difficult for us to understand. (I think Ascension is the most difficult.) We are used to thinking of baptism as a solution to original sin instead of the means of our initiation into the death and resurrection of Jesus, or our adoption as daughters and sons of God and heirs to his Kingdom, or again, as a consecration in/to and for God's very life and service. When viewed this way, and especially when we recall that John's baptism was one of repentance for sin, how do we make sense of a sinless Jesus submitting to it?

I think two points need to be made here. First, Jesus grew into his vocation. His Sonship was real and completely unique but not completely developed or historically embodied from the moment of his conception; rather it was something he embraced more and more fully over his lifetime. Secondly, his Sonship was the expression of solidarity with us and his fulfillment of the will of his Father to be God-with-us. Jesus will incarnate the Logos of God definitively in space and time, but this event we call the incarnation encompasses and is only realized fully in his life, death, and resurrection -- not in his nativity. Only in allowing himself to be completely transparent to this Word, only in "dying to self," and definitively setting aside all other possible destinies does Jesus come to fully embody and express the Logos of God in a way which expresses his solidarity with us as well.

It is probably the image of Baptism-as-consecration and commissioning then which is most helpful to us in understanding Jesus' submission to John's baptism. Here the man Jesus is set apart as the one in whom God will truly "hallow his name." (That is, in Jesus' weakness and self-emptying God's powerful presence (Name) will make all things Holy and a sacrament of God's presence.) Here, in an act of manifest commitment, Jesus' humanity is placed completely at the service of the living God and of those to whom God is committed. Here his experience as one set apart or consecrated by and for God establishes God as completely united with us and our human condition. This solidarity is reflected in his statement to John that together they must fulfill the will of God. And here too Jesus anticipates the death and resurrection he will suffer for the sake of both human and Divine destinies which, in him, will be reconciled and inextricably wed to one another. His baptism establishes the pattern not only of HIS humanity, but that of all authentic humanity. So too does it reveal the nature of true Divinity, for our's is a God who becomes completely subject to our sinful reality in order to free us for his own entirely holy one.

I suspect that even at the end of the Christmas season we are still scandalized by the incarnation. (Recent conversations on CV's and secularity as well as private conversation re learning as something that cushions experiences of scandal of the Incarnation make me even surer of this!) We still stumble over the intelligibility of this baptism, and the propriety of it especially. Our inability to fathom Jesus' own baptism, and our tendency to be shocked by it  because of Jesus' identity and intimacy with God,  just as JohnBp was probably shocked, says we are not comfortable, even now, with a God who enters exhaustively into our reality. We remain uncomfortable with a Jesus who is tempted like us in ALL THINGS, and matures into his identity as God's only begotten Son, but without sinning.

We are puzzled by one who is holy as God is holy and, as the creed affirms, "true God from true God" and who, even so, is consecrated to and by the one he calls Abba --- and commissioned to the service of this Abba's Kingdom and people. A God who wholly identifies with us, takes on our sinfulness, and comes to us in smallness, weakness, submission and self-emptying is really not a God we are comfortable with --- despite three weeks of Christmas celebrations and reflections, and a prior four weeks of preparation -- is it? In fact, none of this was comfortable for Jews or early Christians either. The Jewish leadership was upset by JnBp's baptisms generally because they took place outside the Temple precincts and structures (that is, in the realm we literally call profane). Early Christians (Jewish and otherwise) were embarrassed by Jesus' baptism by John --- as Matt's added explanation of the reasons for it in vv 14-15 indicate. They were concerned that perhaps it indicated Jesus' inferiority to John the Baptist and they wondered if maybe it meant that Jesus had sinned prior to his baptism. And perhaps this embarrassment is as it should be. Perhaps learning should NOT cushion our tendency to scandal. Perhaps the scandal attached to this baptism signals to us we are beginning to get things right theologically.

After all, today's feast tells us that Jesus' public ministry begins with a ritual washing, consecration, and commissioning by God which is similar to our own baptismal consecration. The difference is that Jesus' freely accepts life under the sway of sin in his baptism just as he wholeheartedly embraces a public (and one could cogently argue, a thoroughly secular) consecrated vocation to proclaim God's sovereignty. The story of the desert temptation or testing that follows this underscores this acceptance. His public life begins with an event that prefigures his end as well. There is a real dying to self involved here, not because Jesus has a false self which must die -- as each of us has --- but because in these events his life is placed completely at the disposal of his God, his Abba, in solidarity with us. At the same time then, there is a new life being embraced, a truly or authentically human life which is marked as a dialogue with God for the sake of all that is precious to God. Loving another, affirming the being of another in a way which subordinates one's own being to theirs --- putting one's own life at their disposal and surrendering all other life-possibilities always entails a death of sorts -- and a kind of rising to new life as well. The dynamics present on the cross are present here too.  Here we see only somewhat less clearly a complete and obedient (that is open and responsive) submission to the will of God, and an unfathomable subjection to that which human sinfulness makes necessary precisely in order that God's love may be exhaustively present and conquer here as well.

Feast of the Epiphany (Reprised)

There is something stunning about the story of the Epiphany and we often don't see or hear it, I think, because the story is so familiar to us. It is the challenge which faces us precisely because our God is one who comes to us in littleness, weakness, and obscurity, and meets us in the unexpected and even unacceptable place. It is truly stunning, I think, to find three magi (whoever these were and whatever they represented in terms of human power, wealth, and wisdom) recognizing in a newborn baby, not only the presence of a life with cosmic significance but, in fact, the (incipient) incarnation of God and savior of the world. I have rarely been particularly struck by this image of the Magi meeting the child Jesus and presenting him with gifts, but this year I see it clearly as a snapshot of the entire Gospel story with all its hope, wonder, poignancy, challenge, and demand.

If the identities of the Magi are unclear, the dynamics of the picture are not. Here we have learned men who represent all of the known world and the power, wealth, and knowledge therein, men who spend their lives in search of (or at least watching for the coming of) something which transcends their own realms and its wisdom and knowledge, coming to kneel and lay symbols of their wealth and wisdom before a helpless, Jewish baby of common and even questionable birth. They ostensibly identify this child, lying in a feeding trough, as the King of the Jews. Yes, they followed a star to find him, but even so, their recognition of the nature and identity of this baby is surprising. Especially so is the fact that they come to worship him. The stunning nature of this epiphany is underscored by the story of the massacre of the male babies in Bethlehem by the Jewish ruler, Herod. Despite his being heralded as the messiah, and so too, the Jewish King, apparently there is nothing remarkable about the baby from  Herod's perspective, nothing, that is, which allows him to be distinguished from any other male baby of similar age --- unless of course, one can see him with eyes of humility and faith --- and so, the story goes, Herod has all such babies indiscriminately killed.

One child, two antithetical attitudes and responses: the first, an openness which leads to recognition and the humbling subordination of worship; the second, an attitude of a closed mind, of defensiveness, ambition, and self-protection, an attitude of fear which leads not only to a failure of recognition but to arrogant and murderous oppression. And in between these two attitudes and responses, we must also see the far more common ones marking lives which miss this event altogether. In every case, the Christ Event marks the coming of the sovereign, creator, God among us, but in the littleness, weakness, and obscurity of ordinary human being. In this way God meets us each in the unexpected and even unacceptable place (the manger, the cross, human being, self-emptying, weakness, companionship with serious sinners, sinful death, etc) --- if we only have the eyes of faith which allow us to recognize and worship him!

A Contemplative Moment: The Winter of Listening

 

The Winter of Listening

by David Whyte

"No one but me by the fire,

my hands burning

red in the palms while

the night wind carries

everything away outside.

All this petty worry

while the great cloak

of the sky grows dark

and intense

round every living thing.

What is precious

inside us does not

care to be known

by the mind

in ways that diminish

its presence.

What we strive for

in perfection

is not what turns us

into the lit angel

we desire,

what disturbs

and then nourishes

has everything

we need.

What we hate

in ourselves

is what we cannot know

in ourselves but

what is true to the pattern

does not need

to be explained.

Inside everyone

is a great shout of joy

waiting to be born.

Even with the summer

so far off

I feel it grown in me

now and ready

to arrive in the world.

All those years

listening to those

who had

nothing to say.

All those years

forgetting

how everything

has its own voice

to make

itself heard.

All those years

forgetting

how easily

you can belong

to everything

simply by listening.

And the slow

difficulty

of remembering

how everything

is born from

an opposite

and miraculous

otherness.

Silence and winter

has led me to that

otherness.

So let this winter

of listening

be enough

for the new life

I must call my own."

From The House of Belonging

Introducing "Junior", Stillsong's Resident Gargoyle

 [[Hi Sister, I was looking at the pictures of your hermitage and I wondered about the grey thing in the foreground of one of the pictures. What is it? I hope you had a good Christmas and a Happy New Year!!]]

I think you mean "Junior" a small gargoyle I have had now for more than 25 years. He was part of a duo of gargoyles --- Mother and Son and he was made to sit on his Mom's knee.  During that period I was fascinated with gargoyles and loved both the size and the "age" of Junior.

I bought him singly and was glad that was possible because the pair was just too expensive for me; he has lived on my desk or bookshelves for all these years since. As gargoyles go I think he is pretty adorable. Occasionally I have looked for his "Mom" to see if I could afford her now, but have been unable to locate her. (To be honest, given her size and the size of the two of them together I doubt I would  have a place for her/them, but I have looked nonetheless.)

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you too! I hope these holidays and all of the holidays within the octave of Christmas are fruitful for you. Junior sends you a friendly growl!

Christmas at Stillsong 2020 (Reprise with tweaks)

[[Hi Sister Laurel, I don't think I could ever be a hermit. I like people and I like to talk too much! Is the silence and being alone all the time hard for you? What about during holidays? I guess you don't visit with your family or spend the holidays like most of us do. Do you get Christmas presents? Do you have Christmas dinner? I am in fifth grade. Thank you for answering my questions.]]

Hi there yourself, and thanks for your questions. I don't get a lot of them from students your age so it is terrific you decided to write. You know I also like people and I like to talk but it is true that I am an introvert. By that I mean that I am a person whose energy comes from quiet activities done alone more than from being with other people. I enjoy being with other people but it also tires me out and I need time alone to kind of recharge my "inner batteries." (The other kind of person is someone we call an extrovert, and they get their energy from being with people and even from partying; spending too much time alone is what leaves them feeling kind of wiped out or "needing others".) 

I know it is commonly thought that hermits never see other people, but during ordinary times I see friends at Mass during the week and on Sundays, and I also get together with one friend (a Dominican Sister) for coffee many Sundays after Mass. Christmas is a little different too. Of course, now that we are in the midst of a pandemic all that has changed and I am unable to go out much at all --- as is true of a lot of people! But I will catch up with people online (ZOOM), spend the day writing some emails to friends and family, and just generally celebrating my life in light of the Christmas feast. At the same time, even apart from the pandemic, I do spend most of my time during holidays in the silence and solitude of my hermitage.

Like many Catholics and other Christians I ordinarily spend some of the holiday time in Church --- more than usual anyway since the hermitage is like a "little church" or "ecclesiola". (I should point out that in the early Church all Christian homes were viewed this way and it is a critical perspective we need to recover and retain even after this pandemic.) I usually go to Mass late on Christmas Eve and again on Christmas morning. I watched a streamed Mass from my parish for Christmas Eve this year. Apart from this Christmas is like most other days though. I pray several times a day; I do some studying and reading as usual and usually I will do some writing. Today I may also watch a movie on Netflix or do something else I don't usually do. 

I am not lonely during Christmas as some people believe I must be. I think that is part of what you are asking when you wonder if the silence and solitude are hard during holidays. Remember that I am called  by God through his Church to live this vocation and that God does not call us to something which makes us unhappy. Not only is God here with me in everything, but I have the sense that I am meant to be living this. Also, folks send me cards and small presents so I have a strong sense of living the feast with these people. I sometimes think that one of the things which makes people lonely during the holidays is the thought that others are enjoying time with family and friends so somehow being alone --- even if one chooses it --- is not okay. They feel left out and even unloved; sometimes they may even think that having no place to go during Christmas is a sign there is no purpose to their lives or that they have failed as human beings.

But you see I know that I live alone (really, with God!) for an important reason. My life says to others (at least I really hope it does!) that even if we are alone God is there too and that Presence changes everything. It is one of the things we celebrate at Christmas -- that our God is Emmanuel or God-with-us in a very special sense. Our relationship with God is part of being truly human; in fact, it is the thing which makes us truly human. Because of that witnessing to this relationship is a very important mission for any human being. More, I know that God loves me without limit or condition and that when I answer love with the gift of my own self God is truly delighted --- just like your being present with your family delights them.  For these reasons the time I spend in solitude is not usually hard for me even during holidays like Christmas. If I were always thinking things like, "I should be with family" or "I should not be alone; it's not right," then I might make myself feel really empty and miserable. Instead I celebrate what Christmas is all about with the One who made it possible 2000 years ago and who makes it real now in my own life too --- just as I am called to do.

Do I get Christmas presents? Yes, as I noted briefly above, I do. This year I am especially aware that my life is the greatest present I could be given; I celebrated that yesterday as I met with my Director and it is something I am journaling about as well. One of the things I love about Christmas is that God reveals himself in all of our stories as someone who brings life out of barrenness (like he did with Elizabeth) or where God makes people who have been frightened, grieving, or were mute into people whose lives are songs of great meaning and joy (like we hear about with Zechariah or Mary)! But I also get Christmas presents in the sense you mean. Those come from friends, family, and even from my parish or organizations in the parish. One gift this year was a small oil lamp with Christmas greenery inside it. It is really lovely and goes well with Christmas decorations. 

I hope I have answered your questions. Please feel free to write again if you have other questions or if I was not very clear about something. It is refreshing to hear from a fifth grader! Have a terrific Christmas season and a happy New Year too. All my best. 

Fourth Sunday of Advent: Vulnerability by David Whyte (Reprised)

Throughout the Gospel of Mark Jesus' invariable title for himself is Son of Man which can be translated as "Son of Humanity" or even "the Human One". One of the things Mark is concerned to show his readers is that Jesus reveals the nature of authentic humanity. Jesus is the One in whom humanity is exhaustively transparent to God. This is one way of seeing how it is he can reveal both the nature of humanity and divinity at the same time. At the heart of this double and paradoxical revelation  stands the critical and peculiar openness to God and to all God wills which we know as obedience and also, a radical vulnerability.  We see this in the creche and we see the same openness in the events of the cross. One of the most wonderful pieces I have read on the nature of vulnerability and its centrality to authentic humanity is the following piece by David Whyte:

[[Vulnerability is not a weakness, a passing indisposition, or something we can arrange to do without, vulnerability is the underlying, ever present abiding undercurrent of our natural state. To run from vulnerability is to run from the essence of our nature, the attempt to be invulnerable is the vain attempt to become someone we are not and most especially, to close off our understanding of the grief of others. More seriously, in refusing our vulnerability we refuse the help needed at every turn of our existence and immobilize the essential, tidal and conversational foundations of our identity.

To have a temporary, isolated sense of power over all events and circumstances, is a lovely illusionary privilege and perhaps the prime and most beautifully constructed conceit of being human and especially of being youthfully human, but it is a privilege that must be surrendered with that same youth, with ill health, with accident, with the loss of loved ones who do not share our untouchable powers; powers eventually and most emphatically given up as we approach our last breath.

The only choice we have as we mature is how we inhabit our vulnerability, how we become larger and more courageous and more compassionate through our intimacy with disappearance, our choice is to inhabit vulnerability as generous citizens of loss, robustly and fully, or conversely, as misers and complainers, reluctant and fearful , always at the gates of existence, but never bravely and completely attempting to enter, never wanting to risk ourselves, never walking fully through the door. (from Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment, and Underlying Meaning of everyday Words)]]

In Christ authentic humanity becomes a reality in our world and in him it becomes a possibility for us as well. It is truly a humanity which does not "fall short" of the dignity to which we are called by God. (Remember hamartia which is translated "sin," literally means, "to miss the mark" and the mark we actually miss is, as noted in recent posts, that of realizing our call to be imago dei and becoming imago christi.) The birth of Jesus marks the coming of this new possibility into our world. As we approach the Feast of the Nativity may we each recommit ourselves to the vulnerability which allows us not only to say yes to God in the way Mary did, but also to grow in the grace and stature of an authentic and self-emptying humanity as did Jesus. 

Best wishes and prayers for a wonderful last week of Advent and a fruitful Christmas! Sister Laurel, Er Dio.

Laetare Sunday: Embracing Stricter Separation from the World as a Way of Rejoicing in our call to Authentic Humanity

This afternoon I attended a retreat (virtual) offered as a gift by the Mission San Jose Dominicans. The presenter was Father Jim Clark from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. It was a significant piece of an especially rich Advent season marked by the way my own inner work has come together along with resonances with Scripture from the Mark class and reflection on Canon 603 and the concept of stricter separation from the world --- something I mentioned in an earlier post because of the role it played in the renewal of my vows and in the notion of Sabbath as well. In today's retreat the presenter spoke of becoming our truest or authentic selves and of incarnating God in the process --- ideas which will certainly be familiar to readers of this blog. It reflects that process of kenosis (self emptying) I have sometimes described as "becoming wholly transparent to God."

In speaking of "guarding the heart" and "preparing the way of the Lord" Clarke referred to being careful of or avoiding anything causing us to lose sight of who we truly are. What struck me most about this was that it is a very good way to speak of what canon 603 calls, "stricter separation from the world". Ordinarily I define "the world" in the sense used by the canon in terms of anything "which resists or is antithetical to God in Christ (or to the love of God)" but this notion that "the world" could also be defined in terms of "anything causing us to lose sight of who we truly are" and are called to be was new to me. I have certainly approached this insight but never really saw or articulated it so directly before.  What I came to see  regarding what canon 603's stricter separation from the world requires of us is that it serves our focused journeying toward the realization of our truest selves and that it is primarily a positive element in the canon and in the spiritual life in so far as it helps prevent us from losing sight of who we really are. Also, of course, in and of itself stricter separation from the world can and inevitably will be misunderstood without this correlative and primary focus on the true or authentic self which God summons into being at each moment of our lives.

Father Clarke's presentation began with Mary Oliver's poem, "The Journey", which set the tone and key of the entire presentation:

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice—

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"

each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do—

determined to save

the only life you could save.

Learning to leave all of those distracting, distorting, and falsely defining voices behind to attend to that one new voice which is truly our very own, the voice of God which dwells within us as our deepest truth, our truest identity, and which calls us by name to truly be, requires we embrace a process of kenosis. It is a process in which slowly the stars begin to burn through the clouds that have surrounded us and prevented clarity; in fact, it is a process in which life begins to burn within us ever more abundantly if our journey is on track. But to stride deeper and deeper into the world of that authentic voice or call, will mean embracing a stricter separation from anything that obstructs our view of and commitment to becoming our truest selves. This really is the process of Advent. It is the process of the inner (growth) work I have referred to occasionally here; and it is the process and meaning of stricter separation from the world called for by canon 603 and echoed in our similar Sabbath practice. 

There is pain, struggle, and darkness in this kenotic process, but ultimately, it is marked by a profound freedom and joy as we embrace God and the deepest selves God creates within us. During this third week of Advent rejoice in the Advent journey. Rejoice as Isaiah call us to do in today's first reading and let us never lose sight of the God-given splendor of the one God calls us to be.

Rejoice heartily in the LORD,

in God is the joy of (our) soul;

for he has clothed (us) with a robe of salvation

and wrapped (us) in a mantle of justice,

like a bridegroom adorned with a diadem,

like a bride bedecked with her jewels.

Our Lady of Guadalupe: Believing in a God Who Lifts Up the Lowly (Reprise)

 Fifty years ago at Vatican II the messiest, most passionate, and often "dirtiest" fighting to occur during the council took place during discussions of the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium. Out of nearly 2400 bishops the fight was divided almost exactly evenly between two factions, those nicknamed the maximalists and those nicknamed the minimalists. Both factions were concerned with honoring the greatness of Mary in our faith but their strategies in this were very different from one another. The maximalists wanted the council to declare Mary Mediatrix of all Graces and to proclaim this as a new dogma in the Church --- never mind that the thrust of the Council was not toward the definition of new dogmas. They wanted the council to write a separate document on Mary, one which effectively made her superior to the Church.

The minimalists also wanted to honor Mary, but they wanted to do so by speaking of her within the document on the Church. They desired a more Scriptural approach to the person and place of Mary which honored the dogmatic truth that Christ is the One unique Mediator between God and mankind. The Church would be spoken of as Mother and Virgin, for instance, and Mary would be seen as a type of the Church.

The minimalist position won the day (had only 20 Bishops voted differently it would have been another matter) and so, in Lumen Gentium after the Church Fathers wrote about the Mystery of the Church, Church as People of God, the hierarchical nature of the Church, the Laity, the universal call to holiness, Religious, and the Church as a Pilgrim people, they wrote eloquently about Our Lady in chapter VIII. Mary is highly honored in this Constitution --- as it says in today's responsorial psalm, she is, after all, "the highest honor of our race", but for this very reason the Church Fathers spoke of her clearly as  within the Church, within the Communion of Saints, within the Pilgrim People of God, not as a rival to Christ or part of the Godhead, but as one who serves God in Christ as a model of faithfulness.

It is always difficult, I think, to believe and honor the Christmas truth we are preparing during Advent to celebrate, namely, that our God is most fully revealed to us in the ordinary things of life. We are a Sacramental faith rooted in the God who, for instance, comes to us himself in bread and wine, cleanses and recreates us entirely with water,  and strengthens and heals us with oil. Especially at this time of the liturgical year we are challenged to remember and celebrate the God who turns a human face to us, who comes to us in weakness, lowliness and even a kind of dependence on the "yes" we are invited to say, the One who is made most fully real and exhaustively known in the unexpected and even the unacceptable place. Advent is a time when we prepare ourselves to see the very face of God in the poor, the broken, the helpless, and those without status of any kind. After all, that is what the Christmas Feast of the Nativity is all about.

I think this is one of the lessons today's Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe teaches most vividly. We all know the more superficial story. Briefly, in 1531 Juan Diego, an Indian Christian encountered a beautiful Lady on the hill of Tepeyac; she told him to ask the Bishop to build a church there. The Bishop refused and required a sign of the authenticity of Juan Diego's vision. Diego returned home to find his uncle dying. He set out again to fetch a doctor and avoided the hill where he had first met the woman and went around it instead --- he did not want to be distracted from his mission! But the Lady came down to him, heard his story about his uncle, reassured him his uncle would be well, and told him then to go to the top of the hill and pick the flowers he found there. Diego did so, gathered them in his tilma or mantle, and went again to the Bishop. Juan poured out his story to him and he also poured the flowers out onto the floor. Only then did he and the Bishop see a miraculous image of the Lady of Tepeyac hill there on the tilma itself.

But there was a deeper story. Remember that Juan Diego's people were an essen-tially subjugated people. The faith they were forced to adopt by missionaries was geared toward the salvation of souls but not to what we would recognize as the redemption of persons or the conversion and transformation of oppressive structures and institutions. It was more a faith enforced by fear than love, one whose whose central figure was a man crucified because an infinitely offended God purportedly willed it in payment for our sins. Meanwhile the symbols of that faith, its central figures, leaders and saints, were visibly European; they spoke and were worshipped in European languages, were dressed in European clothes, were portrayed with European features, etc. At best it was hard to relate to; it's loving God was apparently contradictory and remote. At worst it was incomprehensible and dehumanizing. Moreover, with the "evangelizers" who had forcibly deprived the Indians of their own gods and religion came diseases the Indians had never experienced. They were dying of plagues formerly unknown to them, working as slaves for the institutional and patriarchal  Church, and had been deprived of the human dignity they had formerly known.

It was into this situation that Mary directly entered when she appeared on Tepeyak hill, the center of the indigenous peoples' worship of the goddess Tonantzin, the "goddess of sustenance". The image of the Lady was remarkable in so many ways. The fact of it, of course, was a marvel (as were the healing of Diego's uncle, the December roses Diego picked and poured out onto the Bishop's floor or the creation and persistence of her image on Diego's tilma), but even more so was the fact that she had the face of a mixed race (Indian or Mestiza) woman, spoke in Diego's own language, was pregnant, and was dressed in native dress. And here was the greatest miracle associated with OL of Guadalupe: in every way through this appearance the grace of God gave dignity to the Indian people. They were no longer third or fourth class people but persons who could truly believe they genuinely imaged the Christian God. The appearance was the beginning of a new Church in the Americas, no longer a merely European Church, but one where Mary's Magnificat was re-enacted so that ALL were called to truly image God and proclaim the Gospel. One commentator wrote that, [[Juan Diego and millions after him are transformed from crushed, self-defacing and silenced persons into confident, self-assured and joyful messengers and artisans of God's plan for America.]] (Virgilio Elizondo, Guadalupe and the New Evangelization)

Here too then, in the truly unexpected and even unacceptable place, our God turns a human face to those seeking him. He comes to us in weakness and lowliness as one of the truly marginalized. In the process we see clearly once again the God of Jesus Christ who scatters the proud in their conceit, unseats the mighty from their positions of power, and lifts up the lowly. During this season of Advent Our Lady of Guadalupe calls us especially to be watchful. God is working to do this new and powerful thing among us --- just as he did in the 1st Century, just as he did in the 16th, just as he always does when we give him our own fiat.

Second Sunday of Advent: Embracing Sabbath and the "Way" of Jesus

Over the last three or four weeks I have been working on or giving presentations for a Women In Faith group in my parish. It dealt with our foundational vocation to become authentically human and the ability to be free and rest that our embrace of such a vocation results in.  I have the concluding half of all of this to do on Tuesday and so, it has been on my mind. Specifically, I will do a presentation on Sabbath as the "great equalizer", the day (period) when, in  God, we embrace the identity God gives and calls us to and allow ourselves to truly rest from all those "'essential' roles and burdens" the world defines us in terms of. On Sabbath we let go of competitiveness, workaholism, consumerism, and so many other ways in which we are set against our true selves and one another and we simply rest in who we are in God. The title for the second part of the presentations will be "Be still and know that I am God" from psalm 46:10. The title for the first half of the presentations reverses this to, "Know that I am God and be still". The two are inextricable from one another and together they present a symbol of the freedom of authentic humanity.

Additionally, last Sunday as part of the first Sunday of Advent I prayed with the ecclesial community of a couple of friends of mine who celebrated their 55th wedding anniversary during the week and who renewed their vows last Sunday. As part of the celebration they asked me if I wanted to renew my own vows and I did. As part of  doing that I had to compose a renewal formula which led me to thinking once again about  the term "stricter separation from the world" and how I would say that for a community who would be likely to misunderstand the canonical phrase in terms of a rejection of God's good creation. I borrowed the  overall structure of the formula from that of the Sisters of the Holy Family, and for the c 603 elements of my commitment, including "stricter separation from the world," I promised to: "devote myself to the service of God and all God holds precious in stricter separation from anything resistant or antithetical to God's love, in the silence of solitude, and in assiduous prayer and penance."

In both of these activities what canon 603 calls "stricter separation from the world" played an important role. Sabbath itself is a way of  standing aside from "the world" which often holds us bound by its values and perspectives, its way of viewing God, ourselves, and others, while making commodities of them (cf., Walter Brueggemann, Sabbath as Resistance); it is a way of resting in God and both being and becoming the ones we are called to be in God. It is a symbol of freedom and is given to us as gift and responsibility in the Decalogue, the charter of freedom and covenant in the OT. but this freedom plays off against the bondage of something canon 603 calls "the world" --- again, that which is resistant or antithetical to God's love.

Pharaoh's Egypt was, for Israel, the very epitome of "the world" canon 603 calls me to separate myself from more strictly. The Jewish people were made to toil endlessly without even time to pray or worship. When they sought the time and space to worship their God, they were punished and the toil they were made subject to became even more demanding, even less fulfillable, and even more dehumanizing. Hours were long, food and time for rest short. Relationships deteriorated as did the Jews' own sense of their own dignity. Their behavior likewise deteriorated then and they fell into the kinds of things we expect among the dehumanized and starving: unhealthy competitiveness, theft, covetousness, dishonesty, murder, the failure to honor one's inheritance as one born with infinite dignity or to honor others in the same way, etc. In short, this bondage and dehumanization marked by endless toil and insufficiency was incapable of putting God first, resting in God's love, and loving oneself and others in God as a natural consequence. Israel became bond to an ethic of idolatry (for this was the Pharaoh's system and Pharaoh was a divine figure) and dehumanization --- an ethic resistant and even antithetical to God's love. (These two elements, idolatry and dehumanization, always go together.)

What I recognized is that quite often today we buy into the same bondage and the same forms of dehumanization. We buy into "the world" and in fact, we build that same "world"  and our own self-definition upon it. We do this in the form of a system that makes commodities of us all--- objects which can be bought and sold, used and disposed of as easily as one would do to a shirt or pair of pants. We become workaholics whose value is tied up with what we do rather than who we are, or shopaholics who fail to be in touch with the really new (kainetes) God is doing in our lives every day and substitute the merely new in time (neos) --- something which has to be replaced almost as soon as we have purchased it, or we become those who treat others in the same way through competitiveness, elitism, classism, an unhealthy capitalism, etc etc. What we are called to instead is the way of Jesus, the way of the Kingdom of God, the way which honors and delights in God's good creation but is also the world of Sabbath and the Ten Commandments, the world of the Great Commandment -- that is, the world of the love of God and all that God holds precious.

When I renewed my vows to live as a diocesan hermit under canon 603 last weekend, it was the all-too-common  but destructive meaning of "the world" I rejected and the "way of Jesus" I embraced again more intensely. As we enter more fully into Advent what I want to suggest is that this is the same commitment the Church and God are asking of each us --- not as hermits perhaps, but as those who recognize the Kingdom of God in our midst at the same time. I would encourage you to look carefully just as I am doing, at the way the canon 603 sense of "the world" plays a defining role in your own life, and that you build in real Sabbath rest where you allow yourself to rest in God and be just who he had made and calls you to be.  

Separate yourself more strictly from that false and idolatrous world. Let go of the consumerism, competition, division, striving to achieve (including religious striving(!),  and all of the other "-isms" that so represent the idols of our day, and try to do this in a focused or dedicated way for at least one entire day each week. After all, this is what the fourth commandment requires of us. Reject Pharaoh's ethic of ceaseless toil and embrace Jesus' ethic of God's gratuitous (and ultimately unearnable) love. Embrace "the great equalizer" of Sabbath which allows everyone and everything to rest and be the ones God calls them to be, the world of  genuine respect for all of creation, and of loving collaboration and unity in the Love of God.  I believe it will change the season for you and help it be what it is meant to be, but also, over time, it can change family life, life in our faith communities, and even the larger world in which we live.

Reappraising the Disciples' Failure to "Get it"

 I've been teaching a class on the Gospel of Mark and in many ways it has been a marvelous experience.  Though this gospel was the first I ever studied, and while I have always loved it, it is simply amazing to come away with a greater appreciation of the brilliance of Mark's literary and theological ability. One aspect of the story is the disciples' well-known and oft-ridiculed failure to "get it". Again and again they fail to understand the truth which stands right in front of them. Even after numerous private sessions with Jesus re his mentoring on the nature of the Kingdom, the reason for teaching in parables, his eschewing the usual titles associated with the Messiah in preference for  the "Son of Man" (the Human Being), and his explanations re his need to suffer, still his disciples fail to understand; they resist, reject, argue, and are sometimes simply mute in response to this Jesus who is a riddle as puzzling (and sometimes as intimidating) to them as his parables are.

I can't say how many times I have heard homilists poking fun at the disciples for their failure to "get it". I have done it myself. Peter especially comes in for such treatment. But what I have never heard is a homily which points out their failure to get it is, in some ways, an essential part of their discipleship. After all, when we look at how radically countercultural Jesus is and how he differs from the messianic expectations of the Judaisms of his day how can we be surprised by his disciples' "obtuseness"? 

Moreover, when we remember that Jesus is revealing (i.e., not only making known but making real in space and time) the Mystery of a Creator God whose very nature is Love-in-Act, a paradoxical God whose justice is realized in mercy, whose power is revealed in human weakness and subjection to death, whose sovereignty finds its truest counterpart in human freedom, and who is truly loved when we allow Him to love us unreservedly, how can we be surprised that Jesus' disciples just "don't get it?" Most of the time we don't either --- loath though we are to admit this!! I suspect we sometimes point fingers at the disciples' failures and incomprehension to distract us from having to admit our own --- though perhaps doing so also encourages us to humility instead!

What I have come to appreciate over these past weeks is that the disciples' failure to understand the mystery Jesus represents and mediates is intrinsic to discipleship itself --- at least it is if we are disciples of the real God. It finds its counterpart in the disciples' commitment to keep on following Jesus despite their confusion, doubt, and even the failures that constantly attend their journeys of faith. Both pieces are essential to genuine discipleship, 1) the struggle to understand and embrace the mystery Jesus mediates, and 2) the commitment to persevere in following Jesus in the midst of one's inability to see things clearly! 

I think this is the same dynamic at work in the father of the epileptic boy's reply, "Lord I believe, help my unbelief!" --- an act of faith some consider the finest or "most perfect" in the NT. It is when we reduce Jesus' question which is the very center of his Gospel, "Who do you say that I am?" to a kind of pro forma catechism question which is matched by an equally bloodless doctrinal or catechism answer that we also opt out of the demanding call to follow Jesus. If we take this question seriously, however, it is one we will never finish answering; similarly, it is one we can never answer adequately, much less exhaustively except by persevering in a faithful life which is itself the only fitting response.

                                             

                                             * * * * * * * * *

I am probably not done with this piece, and I know it is not done with me (that is, God is certainly not done with me nor is Mark!), However, I have heard from several people who have worried a bit that I have not written much in the last month so I will at least put this much up this morning and redact it as I need to. In the meantime, please know I am very well.  Please stay safe and keep others safe as well. For all in the US, Happy Thanksgiving; in some ways we have new reasons to cherish this fragile but very real democratic republic. May all of us, from whatever country, accept the need for solitude and the possibility of celebrating "together alone" during this pandemic. That is certainly something eremitical life witnesses to!!

Thanks and Why Did You Reprise the Piece on Solace?

[[Dear Sister Laurel, I wanted to thank you for the piece you put up yesterday by David Whyte. It is really wonderful and I missed it the first time you put it up several years ago. (Maybe I didn't miss it and it didn't really speak to me then, but it did this time!) I know this is a personal question but do you mind telling readers why you put it up again? I don't think you have done that with your "Contemplative Moment" posts so it piqued my curiosity. Is it because of the pandemic? Did you think this was particularly meaningful at this time because of the suffering the world is experiencing? I thought maybe the reason it spoke to me this time was because I really needed consolation that did justice to my own suffering and this piece did that. Sometimes what you write makes me think you know me and just what I need! I am going to get David Whyte's book!]]

Many thanks for your comments and questions. Yes, David Whyte is a really wonderful writer and what he has to say is rooted in a deep wisdom which is only gained through experience. I think you will love his book; I have posted several passages (definitions) from it over the years and it confirms for me that quite often we need to spend more time thinking about the words we use too blithely or facilely. Consolation (and/or solace) are among these. 

For instance, in spirituality people speak of experiencing consolations and usually they mean by that that somehow God did something "pleasant" or pleasurable for them in prayer, and sometimes they will mean that something that happened in prayer eased their pain and made them feel better. Thus, they will speak of "sweet consolations" and play these off against "bitter desolations" --- where desolations are unpleasant and, at least momentarily, make one feel worse. But in Ignatian spirituality these words are not so easily defined in this sort of black and white way. Instead, what Ignatius meant by a consolation was anything that helps us grow closer to God (and our deepest selves), and desolation is anything which does the opposite. A consolation in this sense might be immensely painful; it might entail serious struggle and various lesser forms of death (or even death itself), while a desolation might be deceptively pleasant when in reality it draws us away from God, and so, away from the very source of life and meaning which is the ground of real happiness or beatitude. David Whyte's piece on solace understands the complex dynamics of these words and captures them very very well.

So why did I reprise this piece? In the Scripture class I am teaching on the Gospel of Mark we had finished the first half of the Gospel, the portion that includes Jesus' non-stop "campaign" through Galilee and environs, his seemingly unceasing miracles, exorcisms, teaching, and his calling and missioning of his disciples/Apostles. This is the story Mark tells in a breathless way, much as an excited 4 year old might recount the story of Christmas morning or a beginning writer just discovering conjunctions might link sentences together with "and" after "and" after "and". This section concludes with Jesus' transfiguration and Peter's compromised profession of Jesus as the Christ or anointed One of God and Jesus' instruction on his death. As Jesus and his disciples move towards Jerusalem and the cross, the first story of the second half of the Gospel (Mark 9:14-29) is Jesus' last recounted exorcism, the healing of the boy with epilepsy which occurs against the backdrop of the disciples' failure to do this and the boy's Father's request to Jesus to heal his son if he can. 

I have never taught this story before and, because of my own seizure disorder, it has always been a difficult one for me. I have tended not to spend a lot of time with it, but now I had to teach it and that meant understanding the story in terms of Mark's Gospel, why it is placed where it is in the text, and attending to what Jesus says about the disciples' failure and the place of prayer in the successful healing. As part of this I especially had to be ready to deal with my own identity as a woman of prayer and the importance of suffering in discipleship (because of the story's context); I needed to do this in light of my own struggles with continued seizures.  Consequently, I spent more than two weeks with the story, reading commentaries, journaling, praying with it (lectio, etc.), and using a couple of sessions with my spiritual director to explore all of this and particularly the way the story affected me. Central to this period was recognizing and articulating the questions characterizing my own struggle to be myself in the face of competing gifts and limitations. Especially I had to pose some sharp questions to God, questions I had never specifically asked Him (unlike the exchange that occurs in the dialog between Jesus and the blind man in the story of the healing of Bartimaeus which ends the section in Mark 10:46-52!!); the process was both incredibly painful and healing for me. Thus, the following paragraph was timely and particularly powerful:

To look for solace is to learn to ask fiercer and more exquisitely pointed questions, questions that reshape  our identities and our bodies and our relation to others. Standing in loss but not overwhelmed by it we become useful and generous and compassionate and even amusing companions for others. But solace also asks us very direct and forceful questions. Firstly, how will you bear the inevitable that is coming to you? And how will you endure it through the years? And above all, how will you shape a life equal to and as beautiful and as astonishing as a world that can birth you, bring you into the light, and then just as you are beginning to understand it, take you away?

A second reason had to do with several conversations I had with a writer for the New York Times. (More about this later.) We were talking about eremitical life and the place of solitude in a truly human life, but also, yes, there were links to the pandemic and the added dimensions of solitude so frequently forced upon people as a result. Especially, we were talking about what is possible and necessary then with regard to solitude, not only for hermits, but for every human being. I had written some about the place of struggle and even of suffering in growing in one's capacity for compassion and had cited Douglas John Hall's God and Human Suffering where he says: 

[[The question therefore becomes: How can one at the same time acquire sufficient honesty about what needs to be faced, and sufficient hope that facing it would make a difference, to engage in altering the course of our present world towards life and not death?]] a page later he observes that acknowledging suffering is not enough. What is also required is [[ the trust that something --- the life process or Providence or God --- something “enduring,” as Isaiah put it, is able to take into itself all that does not endure, even things that are not, and give them a future that infinitely transcends the bleak promise of their past.]] 

Eremitical solitude combines all the elements needed for sufficient honesty about "what needs to be faced" with a defining orientation to God and God's Providence; together these provide significant hope in the midst of suffering in a way which is profoundly consoling. Above all I recognize my own eremitical life as motivated by the desire and sense of a call that, by virtue of the grace of God, can [[shape a life equal to and as beautiful and as astonishing as a world that can birth (me), and bring (me) into the light.]] So this too was on my mind and in my heart, and David Whyte's piece on Solace helped clarify and contextualize all of this for me personally. However, yes, I certainly believed it would speak to readers during this time.