My spiritual group has been slowly working through The Reckless Way of Love, a collection of reflections from Dorothy Day’s writings and journals. Yesterday’s chapter was pregnant with resonance. It was so affirming to see her reflect on a day she’d been in a bad mood and bitten someone’s head off. Saints always call themselves sinners, but we rarely see someone (even someone in the process) actually do something that makes us go, “Oh yeah, that’s a sin. I do that all the time.” But her reaction to it was really profound. It got her thinking about how awful it was that she’d bitten the head off someone who was totally dependent on her. It caused her to reflect on how humility before God is beautiful, but humility because your bread and butter depend on it strips a person of his or her dignity. This is a great book–bite sized excerpts saturated with profound insight.
On my spiritual journey right now I am trying to focus on my own failings rather than those of the world. I see this playing out all over the place in the world (please tell me you can too), but I’m trying to focus on changing me right now. I could point this at newsworthy items. I could point it at my kids. Hoo-boy, do I ever see it play out there. But I’m keenly aware that if I want the conversion of the world, I have a duty to work with God for my own conversion first. Because “the world” includes me, too.
This is part of the conclusion of Pope Francis’ reflections on the Good Samaritan. I find that it’s easy for these parables and teachings to become trite by repetition. It’s not a fault of the story, it’s a fault of human nature: we start tuning out b/c hey, we already know this story. I did a presentation on this parable a year or two ago, and reflecting on it anew really changed my relationship with it. This reflection does the same thing–renews and adds insight to something I’ve known for a long time.
Pope Francis spent this reflection pointing out that this parable is about individuals, but it’s also about groups of people. That it applies in person-to-person situations close to home, but also in communities and nations and the world. And there’s no neutral in this story: at each level, you’re either a victim, a passerby, or a person who undertakes the uncomfortable work of engaging. Most of us end up being passers-by, but we don’t want to admit it, and so we come up with all kinds of excuses. Hence, the bickering over policy that has caused the Church to divide along “abortion” and “everything else.” I see this as a call to recognize that those entrenched philosophies are themselves the problem. A sin.
I’m not sure how to change myself. I still want to point everything I read at others. That’s my sin. And so I begin simply by admitting it. Change my heart, O God.
I’ve been wrestling painfully lately with what it means to love people with whom there seems to be so little common ground. People who believe and do and say things I find so horribly contrary to my faith and world view. A friend told me that Fratelli Tutti‘s third chapter addresses that.
But first I had to read chapter two–a reflection on the parable of the Good Samaritan.
Of all the quotes that jumped out at me in that section (there were many!), I picked this one to share, because this is the truth that has twinged my own conscience in recent years. I drifted very comfortably in a black-and-white view of the world for years, until it impacted me directly when I was given the gift of a child with a developmental disability. This quote was me. And my spiritual journey now is deeply formed by wondering if, in fact, this quote still is me, and I just don’t know it.
The more I interact with Pope Francis’ writings, the more in awe I am, the more grateful that the Spirit gave us this man to lead us during this particular moment in history. And once again, I beg everyone: READ THIS ENCYCLICAL.
For years, my prayer routine has been consistent: audio daily readings from the USCCB, followed by the USCCB daily reflection video and usually a Robert Barron reflection email.
Throughout the pandemic shutdown and semi-shutdown, I’ve been coping with the extra togetherness by going for hikes and long bike rides, which give me greater time for prayer in solitude and (sort of) stillness. (Sort of, because my brain is a beehive constantly)
But as the weather got too cold for outdoor rest/restoration/prayer time, I realized I have to shake up my prayer routine to offset the lack of access to stillness and solitude. In December, I reached out to one of my choir members who has been involved in contemplative prayer outreach, and he generously put together a stack of books to get me started.
So this year I am devoting Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to contemplative prayer, and mixing up the other four days of the week with daily Scriptures, etc.
The first thing I realized is that I’ve already been doing this for years. But now I’m approaching it in a new way.
Contemplative prayer is hard work, but I can feel the difference. Yesterday the weather was unseasonably warm, and I carved out two hours for a hike/walk along a creek in a local nature area. I found an eroded bank to lean back against for about forty minutes of off-and-on bonus contemplative prayer. For the rest of the day and evening I basked in a glow of contentment. Despite it being the craziest day of the week; despite having thousands of things to do and all kinds of anxieties surrounding circumstances I can’t change. Despite it all: contentment.
It was an eye-opener. William A. Meninger says that contemplative prayer is the most effective one there is–not that rosaries and Lectio Divina and so on are not good, because they are, and will always be necessary–but this is where we most truly love God, because we are simply being with him, without agenda–and for that reason it is the most effective praying we can do. It has been a part of Christian prayer for millennia.
The way I felt last night certainly gave some weight to that assertion.
This is profound on multiple levels. My first reaction upon reading this quote was to nod vehemently at the words “unverified data.” I have been appalled at the things people are unshakably convinced are true, when a quick internet search easily disproves them.
On the other hand… I do a lot of fact-checking as I scroll social media, and I’m in a terrible rush when I do it. Quick searches are good for making sure something is legit. But not for the pursuit of wisdom. Wisdom takes time and prayer and processing.
Background photo taken from the Jefferson Memorial, October 2018
It’s been a week, hasn’t it?
I saw this quote this morning in America magazine (linked below, if you’re reading on social media). I can’t find the source, which makes me think it might be not 100% word for word, but the message is one we really need.
Since day one at Intentional Catholic, I have been begging my fellow Catholics to share and read with integrity. We have a Christian responsibility to make sure we fact check the things we share, the things we take in, the opinions and philosophies we embrace.
We have a Christian responsibility to think critically and compare what we take in and say and share to the teachings of our faith. To embrace the niggling discomfort when our consciences are tweaked. To acknowledge that that discomfort is meant to point out the ways in which our worldly view is out of whack with our faith.
We have a Christian responsibility to use that discomfort to reshape our world view more authentically with our faith, even if it means setting aside long-standing idols in the form of political ideologies. (I say this as someone who’s had to do that myself. I know it’s hard. To this day, I routinely have to keep questing in order to keep myself from swinging too far the opposite direction.)
To choose instead to chase down, embrace, and share conspiracy theories, distortions, and outright lies is a violation of the ninth commandment. It is a violation of every exhortation in the Bible about living with integrity.
When large numbers of Christians fail to fact check and instead enthusiastically embrace things devoid of integrity, the events of this week become inevitable. For months, God-fearing people have been expressing terror about socialism, about dictatorships, about the shredding of the Constitution. And then, on Wednesday, people with those same beliefs shredded the Constitution themselves, far worse than anything they fear from their political opponent. I even saw one Facebook commenter say that Trump should declare martial law so he doesn’t have to leave office. Apparently, dictatorship is fine as long as it’s “my” dictator.
What we saw this week was the inevitable end of the path we embark on each time we choose to share distortions and outright lies because we haven’t undertaken the time—or embraced the humility—to examine them and recognize them as such.
Yesterday I rode out to the spot by the river I call my Breakfast Cafe. It was unseasonably warm (a lot of that this November) but very, very windy.
The wind sounds different in the winter. I once said, “In the winter you hear the wind itself instead of the rustle of leaves.” But I realized yesterday that’s not true. Wind has no sound of its own. What you hear is the way the wind plays the earth like a musical instrument. It vibrates differently depending on what it touches. The wind sounds different on soft grasses than it does on deciduous trees, or the whisper-sigh it makes running over pine needles. The bamboo-like reeds, dry now, but still green, create something more like a rattle. But the bare treetops of wintertime give a low, round, rich, smooth sound, heavy on bass, absent almost all treble.
Sitting there reflecting on the way the wind can only be perceived in the way it interacts with other forces and objects brought to mind this meme.
We like to pull things apart, to examine them in isolation–because it is easier to process, I think. The complexity of the world often overwhelms. But the danger in focusing on things in isolation is that we risk believing they actually exist in isolation. In reality, every object, every person, every issue, is constantly being pushed and pulled, and thus reshaped, by other factors.
I think this desire to simplify and isolate issues into separate boxes is the cause of our American “culture wars.” The foundation of our polarization. The world is too complicated, so we pick the thing that seems most obvious to us–the thing that seems, to us, to have the most obvious answer.
But in doing that, we miss the reality that every problem we face, every issue we have to address as a nation, has multiple causes and multiple ripple effects, and each of those exerts a pull on issues all around it.
I don’t have a pat answer for why the problem of oversimplification and polarization seems so much more severe now than it used to. It’s always been there. What made it explode as it has in recent years?
Truthfully, I think there are a lot of factors. It’s easy to point fingers, but to do that risks proving the larger point: trying to isolate ONE cause, as if it happened without a host of other factors pushing and pulling and shaping that one factor into the form and influence we know, can’t possibly reflect reality.
This week, a group one of my kids is involved in pretty much gave up on pandemic-mitigating strategies. Because now the weather is cold and it’s, y’know, hard, because you can’t be outside anymore.
And for this reason, we’re going to have to say no to at least one major event this child really wanted to attend.
I had a conversation with the leadership, asking if the group would consider voluntarily taking on masking. I explained the medical history that makes our caution necessary: a child with naturally floppy airways who nearly died of RSV as a newborn, had open heart surgery at 7 months, and was intubated again at age 2 for pneumonia.
I got about the response I expected. The burden is on us to just abstain.
I expected it, but it made me angry. In fact, my reaction bordered on rage.
I totally get being tired of COVID limits. Me too, people. Me too. But masking is such a small sacrifice to make for the good of others. We want America to be a Christian nation, but when the rubber meets the road, what does that mean?
Well, Jesus was clear that the most vulnerable among us are supposed to be our priority.
To say, “Hey, if you think you’re at risk, just stay home” places the entire burden on those who already bear the heaviest burden–and to those who love them. (Like my kid.) It forces them into isolation that erodes their mental health, all so the strongest people don’t have to be bothered with small sacrifices like wearing a mask that would reduce spread and make the world safer for more vulnerable people.
Where is Jesus in that world view?
But what was most significant last night was what I learned from that hard spark of outrage: helpless, choking, impotent rage. I felt powerless against an inexorable machine that was perpetrating an injustice that stands in direct opposition to Christian values–but which the perpetrators do not recognize as such.
And for the first time, I really “got”—even if only the barest, palest shade of an echo–what it must feel like to be a person of color in the United States.
I understood why the Black community is angry. I understood at some speck of a level what it might feel like from the inside of a system that thinks itself righteous while imposing unjust burdens on entire communities. And which, when challenged, blames the victims.
The offense against me (really, my child) is ludicrously small. It barely registers on the scale. But it really clarified for me how a lifetime of micro-aggressions would cause exactly the kinds of reactions we’ve seen across the country this year in response to police violence against unarmed black men. I can’t even imagine living every day with the kind of righteous anger I was feeling last night. Let alone multiplying it exponentially.
I can’t walk a mile in the shoes of a person of color, but last night, for the first time, I felt like I kind of understood.
Intentional Catholic 