2012.12.19 Bloody Marvelous Hope

Blessed is the act, the act of defiance, the act of justice
that fills the mouth with blood.
Blessed is the act of survival that saves the blood.
Blessed is the act of art that paints the blood
redder than real and quicker, that restores
the fallen tree to its height and birds.

These are words of poet Marge Piercy written on a visit to a holocaust site. She was saying kaddesh as she jotted down her poem.  Kaddesh in Hebrew means sanctification, derived from the word holy.  It is the first blessing prayer said over the cup of wine you drink at the Passover meal.  “Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has kept us alive, sustained and enabled us to reach this wonderful moment.”

I felt renewed anguish seeing the images of 20 small caskets, donated (what more can we do?) by the funeral home in Newtown CT. They will house tiny bodies; they will be present at funerals, rituals of remembrance and intimacy, containers for unmanageable grief, a way to DO something.

 In Advent Christians wait for this “wonderful moment” we call Jesus Christ, the Christ event.  And we ACT in the Eucharist, as Piercy wrote, by drinking “blood,” the wine of holiness. It is an act of defiance—and hope.

In hope, we bless God, in our odd blood-stained meal of justice, intimacy, and remembrance, called Eucharist. God, we say in faith, brings forth (Hebrew ha motzi)  fruit from the vine, bread from the earth, freedom from captivity, truth from error, peace from violence, and life from death.  Go and do likewise!

In the absence of certainty beyond faith, we act in hope—over and over—bloody marvelous hope. 

Are we all nuts?  Of course!  But no: it is certainty that is nuts, not hope. 

2012.12.16 A Prayer for a School Shooting

This prayer I received from a blog called the Velveteen Rabbi. Thank you Rabbi Rachel.

When we cry for holy innocent children, “perfect reflections” of God, there are no religions, no idolatries, no power or rights, no arguments, no blame, and no -isms. There is only oneness. Amen.  

God, let me cry on Your shoulder. 

Rock me like a colicky baby.

Promise me You won't forget

each of Your perfect reflections

killed today. Promise me 

You won't let me forget, either.

I'm hollow, stricken like a bell. 

Make of my emptiness a channel 

for Your boundless compassion.

Soothe the children who witnessed
 
things no child should see,

the teachers who tried to protect them

but couldn't, the parents 

who are torn apart with grief,

who will never kiss their beloveds again.

Strengthen the hands and hearts

of Your servants tasked with caring 

for those wounded in body and spirit.

Help us to find meaning

in the tiny lights we kindle tonight.

Help us to trust

that our reserves of hope
and healing are enough

to carry us through.

We are Your hands: put us to work.

Ignite in us the unquenchable yearning

to reshape our world

so that violence against children
 
never happens again, anywhere. 

We are Your grieving heart.

2012.11.15 On the Other Hand, God

In the wake of the Newtown, CT.  school shooting this week, the tremors, like an earthquake aftermath, will ripple throughout the immediate geographical area, and also through the hearts of people the world over.

One of my sons, who lives in the neighboring town, posted on FaceBook that his son Will, age ten, cried himself to sleep last night. One of Will’s ice hockey teammates is a student in the school where the shooting happened. He was not killed because he was not a kindergartner. Will cried anyway.

Reactions start small and spread.  Every single reaction matters. Every single thought and feeling count— rational, sentimental, denying, skeptical, optimistic or pessimistic, prayerful, practical, bold and impotent, frightened, guilty, loving. ALL of it matters. 

Many people will rush to church, as to an Emergency Room in a time of crisis. They seek healing for broken hopes, wounds new and old, everything/ anything they can’t control. Treated, they leave and don't return till the next emergency.

Maybe Godde can help. If even for an instant, we look to the stars and wonder. This night the blamers of Godde seem as uncertain as those who turn to God for help.

This is a season for children. Secular or religious, children lead the way, in life and in death. It’s silly really. What can a child do?

Inspire and empower love, that’s what.

Kids teach us to care wildly and boldly, move us to lobby for better health care for the mentally ill, to confront powerful gun control resistance, force us to wake us and develop the public will for change, push us to act because we are angry and scared and we love.

We the people really are the people, aren’t we?

Not for naught that the biblical story of Nativity tells us God comes as a newborn child. Not for naught that the Bible reminds us that “a little child will lead them.” 

Will we follow? 

2012.12.14 Not God

Today's school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut (a small community right next door to where one of our children teaches and some of our grandchildren attend school) means that 20 TWENTY! young children are dead, and 6 adults.  The children were babies, kindergartners. It's a massacre of holy innocents. I write through blurry tear-filled eyes.

My Godde!

More information will flesh out motives and patterns and all that BUT for now....... so what!  All we can do is sob.

I want to know where the HELL our Congress is? Why the HELL wasn't the ban on assault weapons reinstated? Why the HELL is it legal in 33 of our states to purchase deadly assault weapons of mass destruction with NO license or identification? How the HELL can we justify a whole war in the Middle East over the possibility of concealed weapons of mass destruction, when we can't even keep them out of our schools and away from our babies? In short, what the HELL is wrong with us? What the HELL is wrong with this country with its grandiose vision for peace-keeping?

People want to blame God at times like this. "Where was God when this happened?" they whine.

I ask: Where the HELL was humanity?

I'm grateful our President had the nerve to invoke God, prayer and scripture.  God is "close to the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds" according to Psalm 147. That's where the HELL Godde is.

People today blat on about being secular humanists. Well, OK, then let's get going and humanize the HELL out of ourselves.

2012.12.12 Mercy, Mercy, Mercy Me

In 1831  Catherine McAuley, Mary Ann Doyle and Mary Elizabeth Harley professed their vows as Sisters of Mercy. It has been 181 years since the Order’s official founding and I’ve been a Mercy Associate for 20 years. I’m not Roman Catholic; I’m Anglocatholic. We all count who serve with their gifts.

Catherine never isolated or insulated herself or her community from the miseries of Dublin’s poverty. She felt the Spirit of Godde-Goodness was calling her to serve, especially the poor and the broken.  She would be, as would the other women who joined her, a steward of the gifts God gave her of compassion, organized effort, and leadership. 

Her leadership style was one that balanced freedom with authority. The order, like most women’s religious orders, is based on, and held together by charism—spiritual gifts. Charism is a different kind of glue than the glue of obedience that binds us in institutional loyalty based on doctrine and dogma.

Theologian Roger Haight said, “Spiritual nourishment is of higher value than institutional loyalty. If you’re not fed, leave and go where you are nourished.” 

For all these years, the tradition of Mercy has carried on its mercy ministries in many healing ways: education, health, spiritual guidance, and works of mercy for justice and peace. Think nuns on the bus.  

Judy Collins wrote a song dedicated to the Mercies who saved her life and freed her to use her own charism in song.

“Oh the sisters of mercy, they are not departed or gone.
They were waiting for me when I thought that I just can’t go on.
And they brought me their comfort and later they brought me this song.
 Oh I hope you run into them, you who’ve been traveling so long.”

Catherine McAuley hasn’t yet made it to sainthood. Godde knows why.   Maybe no direct miracles attributed to her.  Now I ask you!

Today is 12/12/12. It won’t come round to an even dozen like that again for 100 years.  Let’s hope it won’t take that long for us all to have mercy for real, and for Catherine to get beatified. 

Hooray for foundations—garments as well as loving acts, both quite merciful.   

2012.12.09 Breathtaking/Breathgiving

Some things take your breath away. Could be death, danger—or awe.

One such "thing" is Jesus of Nazareth, a man who lived and taught the God of love so fiercely, with such boundless compassion, that they called him the Christ, a word whose root meaning is salve, a healing ointment. Think salvation.

The other is oxygen.

At a recent retreat at Holy Cross Monastery in West Park, NY,  I talked with  two brothers, both on oxygen. One of them I'd known about and one of them was newly encumbered.  I felt sad for them, and scared for me.  I have lung disease and dread one day having to drag around a tank and have tubes to force oxygen into and through my nose so I can breath. I'd been told things like: Avoid oxygen as long as you can. Resist it. Don't do it till the doctor threatens death.

But these brothers gave me hope.  Oxygen, they told me, rather than a death sentence oxygen meant new life. Oxygen was a beginning, not an end— metaphorically, a manger not a cross. Travel was possible, eating obviously was, as well as good humor, garrulousness, and a spritely step.

The way these monks spoke of their disability and their oxygen would've sounded counter-intuitive, or at least nuts, if it weren't so authentic— joyful not doleful. They weren't playing a pious role.

The click-clicking of the oxygen machines in the silence of chapel prayer suddenly sounded to me like applause. 
                                                               ********

I've prayed for years to the tune of a hymn,  Breathe On Me Breath Of God. I use my own text and prayed in hope, with fear in my heart. Now I can pray it in hope, with hope in my heart.

Breathe in me, breath of God,
healing my lungs disease,
so that I may in purist love
breathe in and breathe out with thee.

Breathe in me, breath of God,
for when my life is done
and my sweet lungs lose all their power,
my last breath and yours are one.

2012.12.05 Tabernacle

Formidable
dull, brass immensity
immeasurably plain
intrusion
House where the blessed flesh
and sacred blood—containers thereof—are
secure against invaders, the hungry of soul
locked
It stands on the threshold of a hitch in time
the present immense
it doesn’t know it is about to
change
from a cold monstrosity—invention
of exclusionary politics— to a
pulsing throbbing quivering sacred heart
unlocked

Are there, or were there, locked hearts in your life?  Enclosures of trapped love?  You have a key, don’t you?