Finding direction.

In terms of spiritual direction, I've spent the last ten years or so finding it in books. My education was largely classical (thanks to dearest mum), so those books have Deo gratias been classics: Therese, Teresa, John of the Cross, Dubay, de Sales, and other various names that pop up on this blog regularly.

Finding a regular spiritual director, however, has not been a successful venture. Jen over at Conversion Diary had a beautiful post last January that kicked me in that direction again. For about two weeks. Then, as per usual, I resumed my leisurely and most rational excuses, "Well, this just isn't the right time of life for me to be doing this. It would take too much time away from home. You know." I'm already so obsessed with this religion thing--family members think I'm like that obnoxious Jewish aunt who keeps every darnned tenet of the Law to the T.

But the nagging thought remains: "Can I really do this on my own?" It's simply not Scriptural to forge ahead into the vast stretches of my Interior Castle's endless rooms and mansions. I committed myself to more spiritual reading, and that was wonderful. Casual conversations with friends advanced in the spiritual life have also provided great insight and held me accountable to various commitments. Questions still pop up, though: How does this apply to my life? Is this dry period from God or a result of selfishness? What attachments are holding me back?

Then two days ago my mother handed me Thomas Dubay's Seeking Spiritual Direction. Talk about another kick in the pants. Perhaps most helpful so far (I'm only about half-way through) is simply hearing that the thirst for intimacy with God should be the driving thirst of my life. No matter what anyone in your life says, however they perceive your passion, the overpowering desire for Him and for holiness is our common vocation.

Dubay quotes John Henry Newman extensively. Here, Newman describes the life of mediocrity: "They have a certain definite and clear view of their duties; they think that the summit of perfection is to be decent and respectable in their calling, to enjoy moderately the pleasures of life, to eat and drink, marry and give in marriage, and buy and sell, and plant and build, and to take care that religion does not engross them." This worldview, however, makes no eternal sense. The bottom line is that we all have a final destination, so our progress to that final destination ought to take precedence over and inform our other various goals and pleasures (many of which are perfectly legitimate and even helpful toward teh final resting place).

In other words, I think it's time to get more serious: "With all my heart I seek your face." (Psalm 119:10) That means exhausting every avenue, every resource, in pursuit of the divine lover.

But more on this later.

Happy Day.

Miriam Gianna is four today. For her, this first half of Emily Dickinson's poem. The whole poem is here.

29 - Have You Got a Brook in your Little Heart

Have you got a brook in your little heart,
Where bashful flowers blow,
And blushing birds go down to drink,
And shadows tremble so?

And nobody knows, so still it flows,
That any brook is there;
And yet your little draught of life
Is daily drunken there.

Citizens.

As I mentioned in my last post, I've been pondering what it means to be a good citizen lately. Obviously, we belong--precendently and ultimately, as Neuhaus says--to the heavenly city. Eternity is a very long, um, NON-time; all our earthly joys and duties are nothing in that final perspective. No matter his country, his loyalites, his failures, every citizen of an earthly kingdom will in the end leave and be relieved of that kingdom.

Nevertheless.

Our final destination, the eternal city, also provides the very reasons we have for our loyalty to and service of our earthly city. Most of us reading around here agree that our own lives have a purpose and the circumstances in which we were born--our family, our nation--are given and ordained to be our place in which we will live out our own particular choice for or against the city of God.

Longing for heaven will express itself in concern for, and perhaps even love of, our place in history--for our family and nation--as gifts.

"And seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captives, and pray unto the LORD for it: for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace." (Jeremiah 29:7)

So, I would add to the quote from Neuhaus yesterday that we must be able to account for the good and just present in our nation but also be willing to pray, suffer, and strive for its welfare. Nauhaus would agree, I'm sure. For him, true service and love can only come about through knowledge, especially of "the constituting moment and subsequent history of [America]." Origins and final end are everything--they are the roadmap to peace for this city.

Here's where the labor comes in: history and constitutional law are tricky. But it helps to keep the basic questions in mind. Who were the founders? What did they say (read their actual documents with a clear mind)? What were the early sins of the nation? How were they extirpated? What were its triumphs? How were they preserved? A poet, who I can't find in a quick Google search, once said the greatness of America was its ability to sorrow over its sins. That's not far off.

Onward to more vacationing! The mind must take these thoughts in little sips.

The good citizen.

I've been musing (between diaper changes) lately about our citizenship, patriotism, globalism, Catholicism, and, you know, the Meaning of It All. Last year's election and the aftershocks have really woken my interest in these things.

What does it mean to be a good citizen while still being a "stranger and sojourner"? Here's Richard John Neuhaus's formulation:

"A good citizen does more than abide by the laws. A good citizen is able to give an account, a morally compelling account, of the regime of which he is a part--and to do so in continuity with the constituting moment and subsequent history of that regime. He is able to justify its defense against its enemies, and to convincingly recommend its virtues to citizens of the next generation so that they, in turn, can transmit the order of government to citizens yet unborn..."

Then he turns to we Christians who happen to live now, in present-day America:

"This regime [our regime] of liberal democracy, of republican self-governance, is not self-evidently good and just. An account must be given. Reasons must be given. They must be reasons that draw authority from that which is higher than ourselves, from that which transcends us, from that to which we are precedently, ultimately, obliged."

More thoughts on that later.

Thomas More.

Few men capture my imagination like Thomas More, the happiest martyr of the Reformation. In More's Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation, the condemned "Anthony" speaks his author's wit:

"But whensoever God may take me hence, to reckon yourselves then comfortless, as though your chief comfort stood in me--therein would you make, methinketh, a reckoning very much as though you would cast away a strong staff and lean upon a rotten reed. For God is, and must be, your comfort, and not I."

The words of a great orator, brilliant wordsmith, and great father. May his memory be hailed hearty in all the pubs of Christendom today!

Vacation.

The Philosopher Mom and Scientist Dad, together with the various progeny, are sequestered up in the deep greens of New Hampshire. It promises to be three weeks of deep breaths, long walks in the woods, maybe deer and bullfrogs at twilight, and good food with family.

It is good that we are here.

There can be few gifts sweeter in life than a family home to which we can return. There are certainly few joys that prophesy more keenly the joy of heaven, our final home. I can hardly grasp the enormity of this gift: to be with those who have known you from your first breath, to be at one in heart and mind concerning the Final Things, to laugh at the same jokes, and to enjoy peace and prosperity while knowing they are not ends in themselves. Many families, I know, plan and long for this to be theirs without ever seeing it come to pass. I will take these days to be grateful and to pray for them.

We are resting and recovering from the storms now, readying our hearts for whatever the divine will has for us in the coming months. It is good.

Father's Day 2009.

"A father," my father said today, "should be

holy (hallowed be thy name)

the just man (thy kingdom come)

submissive to God's will (thy will be done)

generous (give us this day...)

forgiving (and forgive us our trespasses)

a moral teacher
(as we forgive those who trespass against us)

gentle (lead us not into temptation)
and
a spiritual warrior (but deliver us from evil)...

He has been all of these things to me.

Joy and peace to all fathers--spiritual and otherwise--today.

When modern art rocks my world.

I usually limit my artistic raptures to early icons (Russian or Slavic) and gothic masterpieces. I simply don't trust a lot of my artistic impulses. But once in a while, I come across something post-modern (like that John Collier I posted) that astonishes me. Here's another one. This sculpture stands in Koln, Germany, as a memoriam to Edith Stein (whom I quoted at length yesterday).

St. Edith Stein rocks my world.

Okay, so how many hard-core philosophers do you remember using the image of a trusting little child to prove their point? Here, Edith Stein (in Finite and Eternal Being) is responding to Heidegger's idea that human life is a process, dominated by anxiety, of hurtling toward death. He made the case that the only "rational human attitude" is "a passionate ... consciously resolute and anxiety-stricken freedom toward death." She objects:

"By no means. The undeniable fact that my being is limited in its transience from moment to moment and thus exposed to the possibility of nothingness is counterbalanced by the equally undeniable fact that despite this transience, I a, that from moment to moment I am sustained in my being, and that in my fleeting being I share in [eternal] being. In the knowledge that being holds me, I rest securely. This security, however, is not the self-assurance of one who under her own power stands on firm ground, but rather the sweet and blissful security of a child that is lifted up and carried by a strong arm. And, objectively speaking, this kind of security is not less rational. For if a child were living in the constant fear that its mother might let it fall, we should hardly call this a rational attitude."

Interesting historical note: Stein was gassed at Auschwitz under Nazi rule; Heidegger defended National Socialism, apparently to the grave, and is still lauded as the most influential thinker of the 10th-century in continental philosophy. Nonetheless, I guess I'd rather be the happy child than speed with such accolades toward death.

Corpus Christi

Today the Church honors the Eucharist in an extra-extraordinary way (we honor the Eucharist every Sunday, but this is extra!). We have a whole day to simply revel and rejoice in the mind-blowing fact that a piece of bread becomes the body of Christ. Not just a symbol or an idea or a community-builder... it is him. I love this story about Dorothy Day homilized by Deacon Gregg, via the Anchoress:

"Back in the 1970s, when there was a lot of liturgical innovation going on, Dorothy Day invited a young priest to celebrate mass at the Catholic Worker. He decided to do something that he thought was relevant and hip. He asked Dorothy if she had a coffee cup he could borrow. She found one in the kitchen and brought it to him. And, he took that cup and used it as the chalice to celebrate mass.

When it was over, Dorothy picked up the cup, found a small gardening tool, and went to the backyard. She knelt down, dug a hole, kissed the coffee cup, and buried it in the earth.

With that simple gesture, Dorothy Day showed that she understood something that so many of us today don’t: she knew that Christ was truly present in something as ordinary as a ceramic cup. And that it could never be just a coffee cup again."

Sexual Authenticity

Melinda Selmys (you may have caught her 3-part series at NCR, Part II here, and Part III here) opens her newest book, Sexual Authenticity: An Intimate Reflection on Homosexuality and Catholicism, with an apology. It is an apology in two senses. First, she explains her goals: to help Christians understand homosexuals, to explain Catholic thought on sexuality without alienating homosexuals, and to understand the whole issue herself. Second, she wants to ask forgiveness for not perfectly attaining these goals.

But she comes pretty darn close.

She divides her work into five parts, exploring homosexuality through the world (media, politics, and history), theory (psychology, statistics, and theology), the human person (body, family, and children), God (the theological virtues), and identity (gender, vocation, and beauty). This is not a "proof" for the evils of homosexuality nor is it a rant against the failures of Christians to manifest Christ's own charity. It is a series of meditations and essays that attempts to unveil--with greater and lesser degrees of success--the inner workings of the human heart, its desires, attractions, and final end.

I have to say, I loved this book. Loved it. I have never seen anything quite so penetrating and brutally honest. Selmys pins everyone to the wall--she is ruthlessly fair in her estimation of various "gay movements" throughout history as well as Christian struggles with sexuality and the body. Anyone who loves to cite Keats, Shakespeare, Plato, Augustine, Tolkien, or any true poet as an expert on human nature will love her style. If you peddled in goth mysticism at any point in your life, you will love it.

But you will have to remember that Selmys is telling the story from the inside as much as from the outside. Once a self-convicted, passsionately atheist lesbian, today she is Catholic, the mother of five, and happily married. She did not bulldoze through these lifechanges through therapy, group prayer, or suppressing her sexuality: She was inspired by beauty. And so she writes for us all--heterosexual and homosexual--in the language of beauty, not science.

Her discussion of what homosexuality is was extraordinary, and must be read in full: "What is homosexuality? What causes it? I don't know. Frankly, I don't think anyone else does, either. I do know this: that what we speak of as homosexuality is profoundly individual. It is a point where many factors meet: self-determination, identity, psychology, genetics. Any one of these things might be sufficient, in an individual heart, to add up to homosexuality; and any one of them might be radically insiffucient in the heart of another." Any change in orientation, therefore, must be a reorienting of the heart--that is, of the will. Selmys vehemently resists media tendencies to treat homosexual behavior as compulsive--although she leaves room for that possibility in any given individual. Freedom and sexuality are a big part of the meditation.

Which, of course, means that she spends some serious time with the theology of the body as articulated by John Paul II. Her chapter on the body is truly one of the strongest (from a Philosopher Mom's point of view, of course!). She explains the idea of the body as gift, love as the entirely free self-gift to another, and sex as the physical manifestation of that gift.

Another shining chapter is her essay on children and the suffering they endure as a result of our sexual escapades: "Surrogate motherhood, sperm donation, and the deliberate decision to become pregnant with the intention of raising the child yourself all involve purposely creating a child who will never know at least one of its natural parents. This is not, and cannot be, in the best interests of the child--only in the best interests of the parent. But parenthood cannot proceed from these principles... Of course, a child conceived for the stupidest and pettiest of reasons can grow to be truly loved; human beings are capable of repentance, of growing beyond themselves. But it is sheer lunacy for a society to sanction and condone the practice of putting parental desires ahead of the needs of children in the vague hope that everything will be okay in the end."

She ends with an incredibly moving meditation on heaven (always the quickest way to my heart) as communion in beauty. Artists will swoon just a bit. Only a true conviction of eternity with the Author, the Artist Who Is, can be sufficient to move the human heart beyond itself to purity, charity, and a life of grace.

p.s. Oh, and she has a great sense of humor: "I am not a prophet thundering from my mountain; I'm Balaam's ass, saying, 'Uh, Master, I think maybe we ought not to go down that road. What's that? Oh, you don't see the angel with the flaming sword. Well, it plans to cut your head off. I thought you should know.'"

This review was written as part of the Catholic book reviewer program from The Catholic Company. Visit The Catholic Company to find more information on Sexual Authenticity.

Omigosh!

I'm a centrist! I really liked this quiz, though all such things are pretty limited in the end. It should have included a follow-up for each question: Exactly how much time have you put in researching and contemplating this issue? I guess fewer people would bother taking it then...

The other frustrating thing was the inevitable lack of nuance. For example, I know it pushed me leftish when I said that unions were indispensable to the middle class. That's just a historical fact; it didn't ask me what I thought of the teacher's unions now. And then, I went farther right when I said that intelligent design should be "taught" (what does that mean?) in public schools. The quiz didn't ask whether I thought evolution should also be proffered as an option.

It reminded me of when Todd and I took the FOCUS marriage prep test. We failed one section because we both said we hoped to see "change" in our partners over the course of our marriage. We both assumed (wrongly) that this meant we hoped to see growth in holiness. Oops! Wrong answer: You're supposed to love your fiance without hope of "changing him"!

Ah, the limitations of statistics.

My Political Views
I am a center-right social moderate
Right: 1.74, Libertarian: 0.71

Political Spectrum Quiz

The inner life and action.

From Edith Stein:

"The work of salvation takes place in obscurity and stillness. In the heart's quiet dialogue with God the living building blocks out of which the kingdom of God grows are prepared, the chosen instruments for the construction forged... For those blessed souls who have entered into the unity of life in God, everything is one: rest and activity, looking and acting, silence and speaking, listening and communicating, surrender in loving acceptance and an outpouring of love in grateful songs of praise. As long as we are still on the way ... we need hours for listening silently and allowing the Word of God to act on us until it moves us to bear fruit in an offering of praise and an offering of action." ~"The Prayer of the Church"

She wrote for her Carmelite sisters, but I think her words resound for each of us in the world as well. May "everything be one" for you today.

The numbers.

OK. So I'm not posting this as a call to arms or a wallowing in fear of Marauding Musselmen. It's simply to reinforce the fact that we need to figure out how to speak to the "Muslim world," because the Muslim world is not confined to the Arab states. The tone of the clip recalls at times the McCarthy ads from the 1950's, but the numbers are sound and, I think, speak for themselves. (My other reason for posting this is that we don't all have time to read books or articles on demographic change in the West. But the facts here match those I've read in, among other things, First Things and America Alone.) Something to consider as we raise our beautiful children.

Hope is a thing with feathers.

Or with excessively cute, chubby thighs.

I was watching Miriam and Bella at the park this morning--watching them watch the other kids. This is something I remember so vividly from my childhood. I would stand or sit on the side and watch the others, absorbing, yes, judging, wondering why at every move the other children made. And now I watch my children doing the exact. same. thing. all the time. The poor things get it from their dad, too. It's delightful, though sometimes exasperating.

But it made me think about the circle of life (cue: Elton John). How we human beings keep on reproducing, at higher or lower rates, and perpetuating these same ol' genes. When it happens in the ordinary course of things, a man and woman end of up raising more little people who are surprisingly like themselves. And as those children grow, as much as they may resist it, they start to notice, "Wow. I just sounded exactly like my mother."

Then my thoughts turn to the self-imposed fear of reproducing that seems to have settled on my generation. The sort of dull fear and despair over this whole circle of life thing. Since having Bella, the most common question I get from strangers is, "Are you going to try for another one? A boy, maybe?" As if it would require heroic bravery for us to dare to reproduce again, to cast the die one more time, to make that dangerous gamble.

The assumption behind this fear is that we are stuck in an irredeemable circle. I can only hope against all hope that my children will be more wonderful than I. A man and a woman must prepare everything perfectly for those two or three children so that those children will somehow escape the pain or failures or disappointments of life, so they can be shielded from its difficulties as much as possible. And then, of course, they must be shielded from too many siblings, who will draw precious resources and college funds away from them. Fear that my faults will be seen again on earth. Fear of 18 more years of motherly boredom, seeing the same diapers, behavior patterns, and frustrations every day. Fear of even being bored or afraid, because that makes me a bad mother.

All of this mulling, which I see awakening in my two girls (and, yes, we'd love to have more, boys or girls, in case you were wondering).

Why do these fears, however understandable, have no grasp on my heart? (I say that in all humility and honesty. They have no grasp here.) It is because of the profound grace of hope. I know that my children, however many we are given, will in all likelihood bear my foibles and darker secrets in their little DNA. But I also know that my redeemer lives. I have seen growth away from sin and sorrow in myself and in my husband. I know that the one thing necessary in life is unconditional love of God--and no failure, no boredom, no routine will ever separate these children from him. I can delight in the circle of life, in seeing myself in my children (and my mother and father and grandparents) without fear or despair, because God has not been afraid to bring them into existence.

As Edith Stein wrote in one letter, "Be patient with yourself; God is." I might embellish that a bit for these purposes: "Do not despair of yourself; God doesn't." Armed with that conviction, we become free to ... well, reproduce. Life and its delightful, biological mess overcomes death and sterility. Yes, there is pain, but it is not the final word. That is why Christians who believe in the presence of Christ risen, Jews who believe in their election, Muslims who believe in Allah's promises, and the poor (most of all, the poor) who see where true riches lie love life and more lives.

Hope is a thing with very chubby legs.

Torture and the Middle East.

Spengler has a strong article on the culture of cruelty and torture in the Middle East, with lots of references, over at his blog. In the wake of President Obama's solecistic* speech to the so-called "Muslim world," it is vitally important that we take off the blinders about the sort of violence permitted (although, yes, there are other interpretations) by that religion:

"In countries where torture is habitual, unexceptionable and embedded in everyday life, it is foolish to imagine that our armed forces might conduct successful operations without employing torture as a matter of normal practice."

Let you think he's condoning torture as policy, note his exhortation:

"We must leave the Muslim world to its own destiny rather than to attempt to engineer a happy ending. "

Fascinating stuff, leaving plenty of room for rumination and debate.

*solecistic: benighted, catachrestic, inerudite, unable to read well

Speaking from the heart and abortion.

Beautiful. Dianne Elder talks about her experience with a trisomy-18 pregnancy and why she did not abort her child.



Thanks to American Papist.

More on Tiller murder.

Well, she's topped it: Elizabeth Scalia over at First Things has improved upon Reno (see yesterday's post), so please give her a read. She ties in all sorts of ideas, including Dietrich Bonhoeffer's involvement in a plot to assassinate Hitler as well as our understanding of Humanae Vitae, Paul VI's 1968 encyclical on human sexuality. It's not an easy read, but it worthy of our time. Here is an excerpt:

"Most people have not read Paul VI's short, prophetic encyclical Humanae Vitae, but everyone has an opinion on it. But all who identify themselves as pro-life should read it. It demonstrates with startling clarity the way in which small ideas that some may call "unpleasant but necessary," grow ever larger. Once you read it you can see how the seeds of the culture of death can reside in the tiniest tools doing what some would call the least damage. A pill grows to an IUD, an IUD grows to a suction or curette, that grows to a row of ever-larger forceps, all to deliver death, death, death-death with which we have quickly become so comfortable that we don't even realize the tools of destruction have grown so large or become so light in our hands.

We are all currently watching the inexorable creep from the largest of forceps to the next step: large human beings who will be refusing medical treatments to the expensive-to-keep-alive elderly, or injecting "compassionate" needles to the terminally ill or the children whose quality of life they deem insufficiently productive, or to people with an extra chromosome.

Slippery slope is a useful cliché, particularly on this issue. The same slippery slopes that call for the manufacture of those ever-increasing-in-size forceps exist in the idea that Bonhoeffer or Tiller's murderer, Scott Roeder, should be emulated. They should not. George Tiller's life may not have been a life any of us would have wanted, or admired, but it was the life he had, and he was entitled to it."

Right on Tiller murder.

Of course this appeared over at First Things' On The Square. RR Reno gets it exactly right, with the necessary distinctions on the Tiller murder: The murder must be condemned and it must be condemned for the right reasons. The wrong reasons are, of course, that the doctor was serving women and being "a hero" for continuing to abort late-term infants in spite of threats. You can be a martyr for the wrong reasons. You can condemn murder for the wrong reasons, too.

The right reasons, of course, are that (1) only a just authority has the right to take a human life and that (2) no individual has that authority in cold blood (self-defense is a horse of a different color). Here is Reno:

"The emphasis on "unlawful use of violence," the evocation of "vigilantism," and the description of Tiller's killer as a "vigilante killer" are all exactly right. We are all sinners, but it is painfully obvious that Dr. George Tiller acted in wanton disregard for the sanctity of life. Killing him did not violate the principle of innocence. Moreover, he gave no evidence of stopping. As a result, perhaps something like the principle of necessity can be satisfied. But it is certainly obvious that his killer was acting as the law unto himself. He arrogated to himself the roles of jury, judge, and executioner. He violated the principle of legitimate authority."

The news made me literally sick to my stomach, and I still can't write too much about it, so I'll use Reno's conclusion:

"I have always loathed revolutionary vanguards, terrorists, and assassins. I have never felt any attraction to John Brown. On the contrary, he strikes me as a dangerous man who was capable of horrible crimes. The same holds for Che Guevara and others. They have imagined that the noble truth of their cause justifies their disregard for the laws of society. But law transcended is law destroyed, and law destroyed invites barbarism, as the history of the twentieth century so sadly illustrates.

Pro-life leaders rightly condemn vigilante violence. It is a principled stand, not a public relations maneuver. Legitimate authority restrains the grossest forms of evil. The existence of a civil society allows us to exercise our consciences on behalf of the unborn rather than being absorbed by the cruel need to fight for our own survival. The rule of law provides the fundamental condition for any right-to-life movement that seeks to protect real lives rather than to congratulate itself on its moral purity."

I guess that makes this blog ...

... a little superfluous?



From yesterday's Magnificat meditation:

"It is better to advance towards God and virtue by the sentiments of the heart than by the thoughts of the mind, and it is important to feed the heart and starve the mind: i.e., to desire God, to sigh after him and aspire to his holy love, to an intimate union with him without the diversion of so many thoughts and mental reflections which often dry up the heart and become a sort of dissipation, a pure amusement of the intelligence, a series of vain complacencies in our own thoughts and speculations. It is far better to be occupied with the care to belong to God without reserve, with the desire of the interior life, of a profound humility, of fervor, of the gift of prayer, of the love of God, of the true spirit of Jesus Christ, and of the practice of the virtues that he taught by his virtues and his divine example, etc., than to make a thousand useless reflections on these very subjects. When one feels none of these desires, the sole desire to possess them, the affection of the heart alone suffices to keep a soul recollected and united to God.

"Once more: the simple tendency of the heart towards God, or towards certain virtues, in order to please him, causes us to advance more than all our grand thoughts and reflections."

~Father Jean-Pierre de Caussade, SJ

One of my favorite spiritual guides, Father Caussade has more on this in his sweet, little book, The Sacrament of the Present Moment. It's a very easy, but profound, read--perfect for the busy life that leaves little room for ponderous, "grand" thoughts.

Very little breath.

I thank you God, for this grace -- that I am too weary this morning to do good, to be patient. Because it is in you alone that I will persevere today and, when evening comes, I will look back through the hours and praise your name. You alone bring me safely into holiness.

~St. Thereze of Lisieux

Thanks to a dear friend.