2012.12.20 Teen-Holy

Here’s what Izzy looked like when she was a tween, that is between single number ages and thirTEEN. Twelve seems like the longest year.

She has just turned 13 and is bursting with hormones and mood swings. A seminary professor once compared a grinning ball of energy called a teenager, suddenly appearing without warning on a stair step as you’re ascending carrying a bundle of laundry, with the Holy: a mysterium tremendum et fascinans. 

Teens are a tremendous and fascinating mystery.  They are goofy and wise, in your face and secretive in equal measures.  I remember one of my sons as a young teen asked for a hairdryer with a style comb, a stuffed teddy, and a lock for his door—all for Christmas. He got the first two.

I think of Jesus’ disciple Thomas, whose calendar day it is today. He wanted proof of identity of Jesus in resurrected form. And Jesus said, OK touch me and see. I’m the same one you love and follow, just in a different form. A teen might say, Here I am, the same one you birthed and love, just in a different form.

Having a FaceBook page is an age-related privilege Izzy loves. Perhaps she has age on her brain. Recently she posted the names and ages of all the 20 children and 6 adults who were murdered at an elementary school in Newtown, CT. Adult ages:  56, 52, 27, 30, 47, 29. Children, 16 aged 6, 4 aged 7.

Then she wrote a small prayer: "God please help their families and friends cope with this tragedy."  

By the time Izzy is old, like her Grammy, I bet she will post a prayer also for the murderer, the one just as holy though not as innocent. And post a prayer for his mother, whom he shot before he went on his rampage. I bet Izzy will think of that,  because that’s how she is at heart.

No one really knows why this happened, and may never know.

The young man was developmentally disabled, and himself a “child” of 20. He shot his mother who had tried to love him, and then headed for the school and sprayed bullets around the office and first grade classrooms in a Newtown school. And finally he shot himself.

These two more lives were lost also in this holocaust.  These two lives are grieved by someone somewhere—and in heaven.

But the reported death toll has been consistently reported at 26, and that’s what I read in most newspaper articles and heard on television. Twenty-six. 26. 

Twenty-eight lives were lost on that fatal day. 28.  

2010.12.01 Pregnant With Boobs

It is well to begin the Advent season pregnant, willing to labor for something you have long wanted to birth.

What is your "baby" right now? Mine happens to be Jesus as his is the chapter of my memoir I’m at work to birth.

I first met Jesus, one Christmas in fact. My mother saved the evidence, a Christmas Eve church bulletin of 1946 with my eight year old small neat printing in its corner: Where did he come from? Some days I wish I had photographic evidence for Jesus. Some days I long to see what he really looked like. Some days I wish I could put him neatly between the pages of a scrapbook, saved forever. Men were short then. Maybe he looked more like Danny DeVito, chunky with a swinging perky gait, than El Greco’s long lean bearded version. One thing I’m pretty sure of is he wasn’t blonde! But maybe he looked like my Jewish grandfather I never met.

Thank God I am not pregnant for real. Only spiritually so. Pregnant with curiosity and wonder and a nagging occasional desire for proof.

But in the real world I am led back to remembering my own child birthings, not just the pain of labor and delivery but the thrill of giving it a big push and seeing a tiny bulge of slicked hair begin to emerge, followed by a squished up squinty-eyed little face, then a whole body about the size of a vole, naked and ugly except to parental beholders. A first draft.

In spite of your relief that it’s all over you can’t wait for it to begin, this new life you will love and share, hate and fight, worship and grieve. I have four children, now adults of wonder who belong to their own families and the world, not me.

The only grace birth doesn’t bear is beauty. There is nothing beautiful except in the eye of Love. It’s not a photo op beauty. The moment deserves to be spared advertisement. It deserves modesty. It’s a manger moment, but you don’t think the historical natural scene really looked like the icon do you? But that’s why we have icons to serve as windows into mystery, not reality shows.

So I am aghast that women in this process are being asked to smile for the little handheld devices pointed in their direction when they are sweaty, hair all stringed out, face stripped of all cosmetics. There is nothing glamorous about it, but everyone wants it on record.

Why? Because technology has provided a way that it can be.

Why not? Because this moment goes on record in the heart, not the camera.

What will we not trivialize next in 140 Twitter characters? What is sacrosanct from the eye of the touch screen? Where are the boundaries on techie addiction?

Leave the poor woman and her newborn alone please. Do not try to take away the holy from this picture by sending it out to 100,000 of your “friends” on Facebook. The kid doesn’t even have a real face yet? And his Mommy’s is streaked with strain and puffed with exhaustion.

And the same thing goes for breast cancer. There is nothing glamorous about it. OK so we’ve seen Demi More’s swollen belly and we’ve seen someone else’s noble scarred breastless space. Isn’t that enough showing off? Now we have to wear pink rubber bracelets that say I “heart” boobies, pretend that we are somehow proud to have survived the amputation or to still have intact nipples.

Ok, but only if all this display raises tons of money for research for cures and better treatments. Breast cancer is NOT a women's issue (not meant to be sarcastic)and deserves a campaign that is dignified, not tainted with sexist voyeurism.

Scandal of overexposure, immodest at best, exhibitionist at worst.

A woman priest friend would say, “Jesus would puke!” (Adult Jesus. Baby is entitled.)

What is SDI?

One more acronym to figure out. Oh no!—another “stupid dumb institution.”

SDI stands for Spiritual Directors International. Not stupid. Not dumb. Not institution.

SDI is a an organization dedicated to the ministry and practice of Spiritual Direction (SD) a discipline with ancient roots and contemporary practice of guidance in deepening your relationship with divinity in your soul and divinity all around you.

SD spans all religious traditions and many secular humanists come wondering and seeking. The longing persists for something beyond human effort alone, something beyond human beings—Being itself.

SDI is a global learning community of people from many faiths and many nations who share a common concern, passion and commitment to the art and contemplative practice of spiritual direction. There are annual conferences, a monthly journal called Presence and a website where you can learn more about SDI history and purpose and locate a Spiritual Director in your area with the Seek and Find Guide.

Recently I attended a meeting of this organization at which Boston area directors gathered to network, eat cookies, pray in silence together, share our hopes and concerns, and get to know the coordinating team.

The value of this meeting was to see faces of our community. Most of us practice alone in offices or homes and only connect on line. In the age of Facebook it was inspiring to me to see real faces and hear voices too. I confess I get tired of electronic connecting that is deaf, dumb and blind even if it is convenient and quick.

SD’s don’t just sit around and pray; nor do their directees. We don’t simply go on retreats or spend time on our knees looking at icons. Nor do we seek to strengthen our personal spirituality for self betterment or happiness. We seek to transform the soul of the world.

SD is not for narcissists or the faint of heart. We talk to God about peace, justice, simplicity, love. Our lives exemplify these values.

That mission is why the SDI committee made a last minute decision to cancel the Boston accommodations for the annual conference in April, 2011 and move the conference to Atlanta. Why? The large conference had been scheduled at the Hyatt in Boston.

The Hyatt recently made some management decisions that conflict jarringly with our core spiritual values of faith, hope and love to say nothing of the common good. They trained people who would work for less money, then fired their maintenance staff and put in the new and cheaper team. I’m sure there are nuances and official excuses for the inexcusable but that’s the nutshell.

The decision was of course a great disappointment to Boston SD’s. SDI’s director Liz Budd Ellman told us the decision was made with much reflection and prayer.

It is impossible to discern exactly what God wants but this one wasn’t hard to guess. What the Hyatt did in the interest of their own profitable survival. I doubt they will suffer from SDI’s decision as their former employees suffered from their executive decision.

Bostonian SD’s were disappointed but affirming of the rightness of this discernment. Everyone praised and overpraised. I wondered.

Rightness can be close to righteousness.

What about the present staff, hired under such inauspicious circumstances. How do they feel? Are they ashamed of needing and having a job at whatever cost? Do they cringe at the publicity and the protests? Are they treated with respect? Did they know the circumstances?

I have no doubt about the sincerity of SDI’s decision. I know it wasn’t knee jerk bleeding heart liberal spiritual reactivity. I pose my questions to caution against any syrupy jargon that stultifies and sets us apart from the hard truth that all decisions, God or no God, are extremely complex and likely painful even for those we imagine to be haughty.

I have faith in the long slow movement of the divine Spirit in and through everyone involved.

No one can know what Holy Wisdom works in human hearts.

SDI will continue on in its fine ministry, making decisions to the best of their limited capacity, trusting that time—grace and circumstances acting on our own good will—will bring about goodness and truth.