Help Through the Desert

When I talk about Growing in Love and Wisdom, I often start by talking a bit about my own faith journey thought Buddhism and back to Catholicism (the subject of another book I’m in the final stages of editing).

In telling people about my abandonment of Catholicism at the age of seventeen, I share that when I told my high school chaplain of my decision, his response was “Well, Sue, you’ve entered the desert. And all you can go is keep on walking until you reach the other side.” I add that I didn’t really find that advice all that helpful and walked out of the chaplain’s office feeling very alone. (He did add something like “Go with God,” but having just told him I didn’t believe in God, that didn’t do much for me.)

At a recent book talk, someone referred to that comment, asking what advice I would give someone in that circumstance. Essentially, from where I stand now, what would I have said to someone like my seventeen year-old self?

At various times, I have thought about what I wished someone had said to me at the time. I might have benefited had someone suggested that I read Thomas Merton’s Seven-Story Mountain (which I found extremely helpful when I read it years later during my difficult transition from Buddhism back to Catholicism), or even Augustine’s Confessions. By those I mean: Something that would have clued me into the struggles of faith other thinking, questioning people had undergone. Something that, if nothing else, would have let me know I wasn’t alone and that it was OK to experience what I was experiencing.

I would have also benefited had the chaplain offered to be available if I needed someone to talk to, or recommended someone else I might have talked to. Even if I never took him up on it, the invitation would have meant something.

Of course we live in a different world now than in 1974 when I had the conversation I did with my high school chaplain. I suspect he had never read Thomas Merton (and maybe not even Augustine’s Confessions) and so could not have made that recommendation. And he may not have had any recommendations for people I might have talked to.

It is much easier today to walk with people like my seventeen year-old self and I feel privileged whenever a young person struggling along their faith journey comes to speak with me. And I pray that something in my own experience can be a source of guidance and strength to them.

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Losing the Faith of our Childhood

In so many areas of our life, we appreciate that children and adults have different capacities for understanding, that children cannot understand things in ways adults can. As we grow, our understanding becomes more nuanced, more sophisticated.

We don’t always have that appreciation when it comes to our faith. As we mature, we have to lose the faith of our childhood and replace it with an adult faith. (I say have to, recognizing that there are some people who neve take this step.)

Part of growing into an adult faith is appreciating that God isn’t always about feeling good, or even feeling reassured.

In New Seeds of Contemplation, Thomas Merton writes:

How many people are there in the world of today who have “lost their faith” along with the vain hopes and illusions of their childhood? What they called “faith” was just one among all the other illusions. They placed all their hope in a certain sense of spiritual peace, of comfort, of interior equilibrium, of self-respect. Then when they began to struggle with the real difficulties and burdens of mature life, when they became aware of their own weakness, they lost their peace, they let go of their precious self-respect, and it became impossible for them to “believe.” That is to say it became impossible for them to comfort themselves, to reassure themselves, with the images and concepts they found reassuring in childhood.

Place no hope in the feeling of assurance, of spiritual comfort. You may well have to get along without this. Place no hope in the inspirational preachers of Christian sunshine, who are able to pick you up and set you back on your feet and make you feel good for three or four days-until you fold up and collapse into despair.

We needn’t lose our faith when things get rough. But we do need to find out how to have faith in the midst of a world that is not all sunshine, and that does have moments of despair. That is difficult for children, but it is part of the task of developing a mature faith.

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I Bow To Your Most Holy Will

Yesterday I gave a Lenten retreat at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church in Minneapolis. The focus of the day was on two traditional devotions designed to help us walk with Mary and with Jesus in the passion: the Seven Sorrows of Mary and the Stations of the Cross.

These devotions are familiar to many, if not all of the people who attended the retreat. The problem, however, is that when things become too familiar, we cease to see them, or at least cease to focus on them in a meaningful way. We can find ourselves attending a Friday evening Stations service during Lent and mumbling the prayers without really meditating in the event before us. Indeed, while most people could probably mention most of the stations, few have meditated on each of them. So my hope was to encourage prayerful reflection on the events that make up the two devotions.

The day was very powerful for the participants and for me. And I found it emotionally challenging. I have spoken about both of these devotions on a number of other occasions, but never both together. Presenting them like that, I found myself almost choking up at a couple of points.

One of those points came when I was talking about the thirteenth station: Jesus is Taken from the Cross.

When I contemplate this station I think of wakes – of our watch over the dead body of a loved one as a sign of our love and respect. And as we do, we remember the life of the person. At the moment of bereavement, we mourn, but we also celebrate life that was.

And part of this process is about learning to accept the partings that will inevitably come our way. The prayer in Clarence Enzler’s version of stations (Everyman’s Way of the Cross) is one that always touches me deeply. In our response to Jesus at this station, we pray:

I beg you, Lord, help me accept the partings that must come – from friends who go away, my children leaving home, and most of all, my dear ones when you shall call them to yourself. Then, give me grace to say: “As it has pleased you, Lord, to take them home, I bow to your most holy will. And if by one word I might restore their lives against your will I would not speak.”

When I spoke them yesterday, I almost couldn’t get them out. When I pray those lines, I half shake my head, especially at that last line because there are times I’d give just about anything to have some more time with my father…or my mentor Ned…or some of the other people’s whose deaths hurt me so deeply.

So I pray, let me grown in my acceptance so that I am able to pray those lines more honestly and fully, to more and more bow to God’s most holy will.

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They Have No Wine

Today’s Gospel is a scene from St. John’s Gospel that is very familiar to most of us: the wedding feast at Cana.

There was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples also had been invited. It sounds like it was a great big party, one of those events where everyone in town is invited. Lots of guests, lots of food, great music and plenty of wine.

But, at a certain point in the celebration, the wine runs out. In Jewish tradition, wine was a visible sign of God’s loving gifts to human beings, as well as a sign of wisdom used in Jewish rites of purification. So to run out of wine unexpectedly was a big, big deal.

Mary realizes the situation and goes to her son and says, “They have no more wine.” At first we wonder what is the point of her statement or whether anything will happen, because Jesus response to Mary is so abrupt and dismissive: “Woman, how does his concern of yours involve me? My hour has not yet come.” Essentially: leave me alone. Not my problem.

If the hearer of that response is a person of timidity of uncertainty, that is the end of the story. Jesus brushes her off and she goes away. But that is not what happens. Instead, Mary turns to the servers and says, “Do whatever he tells you.” Despite Jesus’ words to her, she seems secure in the knowledge that Jesus would take some action. .

And, Jesus does just that. He tells the waiters to fill six stone water jars with water – and then he turns the water into wine. He doesn’t appear to touch the jars, he doesn’t seem to do anything to the water. He gives no blessing, utters no specific words – he simply changes the water into wine. John ends the wedding at Cana story by pointing out that this was the first of the signs revealing Jesus’ glory, and it was because of it that “his disciples believed in him.”

The contrast between Mary and the other disciples is telling. It was because of this first sign that they believed in him. Mary, however, didn’t need the sign; Mary believed before there was a sign. Not only does Mary go up to her son with expectation and certainty, but also by doing so she effectively declares her belief and certainty that Jesus was the Messiah. Mary’s words – the final she is recorded as speaking in the Gospels – implies faith in Jesus.

In his Encyclical Redemptoris Mater, Pope John Paul II wrote,

Mary is present in Cana of Galilee as Mother of Jesus, and in a significant way she contributes to the ‘beginning of the signs’ which reveal the messianic power of her Son…At Cana, thanks to the intercession of Mary and the obedience of the servants, Jesus begins ‘his hour.” At Cana, Mary appears as believing in Jesus. Her faith evokes his first ‘sign’ and helps to kindle the faith of the disciples.

A model of faith for all of us.

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Blessed Are You Who Believed

Today’s Gospel is the beautiful encounter between Mary and Elizabeth recorded in Luke’s Gospel. It is a passage I love and have written about before. (See. e.g., here and here.)

Having been told by the Angel that Elizabeth is with child, Mary travels “in haste” to the home of Zechariah and her cousin Elizabeth. Elizabeth says several things when she greets the younger women. The one that struck me this time was the last thing Elizabeth says: “Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.”

Mary believed what God promised. We see that belief reflected in the canticle that follows Elizabeth’s line (although it is not part of today’s Gospel), in which Mary “proclaims the greatness of the Lord” and speaks about God’s fulfillment of “his promise to our father, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”

The question for us is: do we believe in what was spoken to us by the Lord? Do we believe it when God says:

I have called you by name and you are mine. (Isaiah)

I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you. (Jeremiah)

I have branded you on the palms of my hand. (Isaiah)

As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you. (Isaiah)

And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age. (Matthew)

I will come back again an take you to myself, os that where I am you also may be. (John)

As we come to the end of this Advent period, we might reflect on God’s words to us. Words Mary believed. Words we can believe.

“Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.”

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Born Again

On Sunday afternoon, I was interviewed (via phone) on Kate Turkington’s Believe it or Not, a talk show that “offers a non-denominational but multi-dimensional approach to philosophical, moral and religious topics and issues drawn from our daily lives.” The show has been running for an amazing 19 years with the same host. Kate Turkington is extremely knowledgeable and it was both interesting and enjoyable to talk with her about my experiences with Buddhism and Christianity and about my new book, Growing in Love and Wisdom.

I’ve been thinking a lot over the past couple of days about my reaction to one comment that she made. As best as I cam remember the actual words she used (I haven’t yet gotten the link to the podcast of the interview, but will post it when I do), she said, “you sound – in your passion in talking about your experience of God and Jesus – like a born-again Christian.”

I felt myself immediately draw back as I head the question. “I’m not one of those,” was the first thought that went through my head. I immediately had a vision of several people I had known when I was younger, who announced they were born again, and in whom could not detect any visible sign of that label. And “born again” is not a term Catholic tend to use.

What I said to Kate Turkington in response to her comment was that I think I sound like anyone who has had a deep religious experience – that when we experience God, we are changed. I think it is impossible to sound anything other than passionate about a deep experience of God.

As I thought later about her comment, my reaction and my response, I realize that, despite the negative associations the term has for some people, the “born-again” is actually a quite good phrase. What came to my mind was Jesus discussion with Nicodemus about the need to be born again. (“You must be born from above.”) I don’t think Jesus is talking simply about baptism, but about a fundamental transformation of our being – a transformation that comes from our experience of God. Born again may be a good way of talking about the fruit of our foundational religious experiences.

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Why Believe?

This morning I spoke with a twelfth grade religion class in Guatamala via Skype. The class had just begun a unit on Buddhism and the teacher, a UST graduation, asked if I’d be willing to talk with his class.

The students’ questions ranged far and wide. They were interested in hearing about Buddhist vs. Christian prayer practice, life as a Buddhist nun, what it was like to meet the Dalai Lama and all sorts of other things.

One student asked why we should believe in God when we can’t empirically prove God’s existence? How can we believe in God when we can’t verify it.

Believing in God does require something of a leap of faith, because it requires us to accept the possibility that there is something beyond that which we can scientifically and empirically demonstrate. (I still remember sitting through my Problem of God theology course at Georgetown, which examined various “proofs” for the existence of God that had been offered over the centuries. I remember thinking that the proofs were entirely unnecessary for those who already believed in God and entirely unsatisfactory for those who didn’t.)

We can’t “know” that God exists the way we can know that that the square of the hypotenuse of a triangle is always equal to the sum of the squares of the two sides or that water and oil don’t mix.

And thank goodness for that. A God no bigger than we are – a God we could totally understand and map out – wouldn’t be all that meaningful a God. We can’t come to scientific and empirical proofs of that which is so much bigger than we are.

Ultimately, I answered the student, I can only know God by experiencing God. And I can experience God in all sorts of ways. And what allows me to be convinced that God exists may be very different from what convinces you that God exists. But we can all experience God and come to that conviction.

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A Christian Faith Enriched By Buddhism

“A Christian Faith Enriched by Buddhism.” That is the title of the blog post I wrote for Huffington Post, which which had asked me to explain in 700-800 words how Buddhism has enriched my Christian faith.

Yikes – that question occupies an entire chapter in the manuscript I have just completed on my conversion from Catholicism to Buddhism back to Catholicism. The task of distilling what I expressed in 13-15 manuscript pages into a shot essay was not simple. But I think I managed, with some success to at least convey something of both how necessary Buddhism was to my ability to return to Chrsitianity and the ways in which it has influenced my spirituality.

You can judge for yourself how successful I was by reading the whole piece, which was posted by Huff Post yesterday. You can find it here.

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St. Frances Xavier Cabrini

Today the Catholic Church celebrates the feast day of “Mother Cabrini,” St. Frances Xabier Cabrini. Since I remembered very little about this saint, I looked her up when I realized that today was her feast day.

I was struck, as I read a short description on one website, by Mother Cabrini’s openness to God’s plan. When she was eighteen, what she wanted was to become a nun. But she was rejected because of her health, so she helped her parents until they died and then worked on their farm with her siblings. When she was asked by a priest to teach in a girls’ school, she said yes, doing that for six years. When she was asked by a Bishop to do so, she founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart. Despite her own desire to evangelize in China, when she was asked by a Bishop and then Pope Leo XIII to emigrate to the United States to minister to Italian immigrants, she did so.

I don’t get the sense that this was simply blind obedience out of any fear of authority. Rather, the picture that emerges of this saint is of a woman of deep faith and trust in God who discerned prayerfully how to respond to what was being asked of her. A woman who was willing to consider not only her own desires, but the needs of God’s people. And a woman of incredible courage.

Ultimately, Mother Cabrini became a citizen of the United States and in 1946 became the first American citizen canonized as a saint.

Mother Cabrini, pray for us!

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Two Statues

I just finished reading Brian Kennelly’s Two Statutes, sent to me for review by St. Benedict’s Press. The book is Kennelly’s first novel, and he succeeded in keeping me engaged enough to read the book almost in a single sitting. The problem I often have reviewing novels, however, if figuring out what to say that will be sufficient to entice someone to read the book, but that will not say so much about the content to take away the enjoyment of reading it. But, on the supposition that I need to say more than, “Hey, I liked this book. You should read it,” let me say a few things.

The book weaves two stories. One has to do with the friendship between a retiree named Buck and his violin-playing neighbor, a private man who doesn’t open up about his past easily. The other has to do with a young priest suffering a crisis of faith who is sent as part of an investigative team studying something strange with respect ao a statue of the Virgin Mary. That the two stories ultimately come together is a surprise to no one, but the lack of surprise is no detraction. There is a miracle here – and it has nothing to do with physical manifestations of a statue.

What Kennelly succeeds best at, in my view, is creating real and compelling characters. Buck is described late in the book as someone whose heart is “made only for kindness.” And that he is; a good man. But not a plastic one – he pushes too hard, butts in when he is not invited, doesn’t always say quite the right thing. In short, human like the rest of us. Peter, the young priest questioning his faith and his vocation carries a lot of pain, and you can feel it in everything he says. We don’t always agree with everything he says and does, but we feel for him as we follow his story.

I was grabbed by Walt – the violin player – from the start. Tentative in offering or accepting friendship, he nonetheless is a man full of love. Then there is Father Paul, the priest who Fr. Peter accompanies to investigate the statue. His desire to help his friend find his way back to a place of God, of peace, is palpable. Then there is Sister Marie. And Donald. And…

Kennelly manages to combine telling a good tale that keeps one reading with a portray of characters that invites our reflection. A good and enjoyable read.

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