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What Are We Doing Here?

What Are We Doing Here?

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I’m picking my way through Marilynne Robinson’s book of essays, What Are We Doing Here? I love Robinson’s fiction and am enlightened by her nonfiction. But I have to read the latter carefully, and more than once, so dense is the prose, so tightly packed are the ideas it holds.

The extra time is never wasted, as her ideas are countercultural in the best sense of that word. Robinson writes about humanism and religion — and she writes unapologetically. Most of our great institutions grew out of our theology, which she defines as “the great architecture of thought and wonder that makes religious experience a house of many mansions, open to the soul’s explorations.”

Robinson does not shy away from delivering charges. Here’s an example: “One thing theology must do now is to reconsider and reject the kind of thinking that tends to devalue humankind.”

To read Robinson is to be reminded of a world richer and fuller than the one we inhabit now, one where what she calls the “moral self, that old wanderer through the trials and temptations of earthly life,” was freer to roam and risk and challenge and live.

Come with Thy Grace

Come with Thy Grace

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I often go to a Saturday-evening church service that “counts” for Sunday (it’s a Catholic thing), and was surprised when I arrived to see the red wall hangings and vestments. I had forgotten that it was Pentecost, or more technically, it was Pentecost Eve. Turns out, I had unwittingly worn orange, and so was semi-appropriately decked out for the feast day.

I’ve written about Pentecost before, noting that it was a celebration of clarity, that from the many voices came one.  What spoke to me this time, though, was the jubilation of it all: the extra prayers (a sequence before the gospel), the special blessing, and, of course, the music.

It dawned on me, then, and not for the first time, that one of the needs church meets for me is singing aloud. I’m not saying I don’t go for spiritual strengthening and inspiration. But to join voices with hundreds of others is not an opportunity I’m given every day.

We opened with “Come, Holy Ghost.” Thanks to my parochial schooling, I know the words so well that I didn’t even crack the hymnal till the second verse. “Come with thy grace and heavenly aid, to fill the hearts which thou hast made. To fill the hearts which thou hast made.” I could almost hear my seventh- and eight-grade classmates belting it out with me, struggling as usual to reach that high “D.”

Transcendence

Transcendence

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A friend sent me an electronic Easter card, the kind that comes with music and motion, with sweet scenes of birds and bunnies.

Only this one played the powerful “God So Loved the World” by John Stainer.

I’ve heard this piece before and marveled at it, but something about the animation of the dove — a pure white bird flying heavenward, spreading flowers in its wake — and the dynamics of this hymn, the great swells of its sound, the ache in its harmonies — spoke powerfully of the mystery and the promise of this day.

I write these words in the office, a room I don’t often sit in this time of day. I don’t know why not — because it sits in the front of the house, the one the light touches first.

It is not just Resurrection we celebrate on this day, but transcendence.

Cathedral Time

Cathedral Time

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I’m not used to reading good news in the newspaper, especially not these days, so I was surprised last night when I finally settled down with the paper to learn that the walls of Notre Dame are still standing and the exquisite rose window is still intact.

Yes, the roof and the spire are gone, and some priceless treasures are lost, but many others were saved. Already stories of heroism are emerging: the chaplain who braved the blaze, the human chain that rescued precious artwork. Donations and pledges are pouring in. Notre Dame will be rebuilt, though it will doubtless be on “cathedral time,” not at the pace we might expect in the 21st century.

Even more encouraging were the perspectives the articles contained: that cathedrals are patchwork creations. The fallen spire we lament was a relatively late addition to Notre Dame. Europe is filled with cathedrals that have risen from fires and firebombing: St. Paul’s in London, the cathedral in Dresden. Besides, in many ways the places are as sacred as the buildings, and they remain sacred even when the stones are singed and the rafters give way.

The most optimistic accounts mentioned the survival of the gold cross on the altar and the votive lights that remained lit throughout the ordeal — also the fact that the fire happened during Holy Week, the most sacred time in the Catholic church’s liturgical year, a time when we celebrate redemption and resurrection.

I’ll end with this from the Washington Post’s architecture critic Philip Kennicott:

Meanwhile, the roof will rise again, and in a century some bored teenagers will stand in the plaza before the great Gothic doors and listen as their teacher recounts the great fire of 2019, just one chapter among all the others, and seemingly inconsequential given the beauty of the building as it stands glowing in a rare burst of sunlight on a spring day in Paris.

Lenten Thoughts

Lenten Thoughts

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Two nights ago after a leisurely dinner, I found myself reading a fine essay about Lent. I rounded off the dinner with a few squares of white chocolate as I pondered Michael Gerson’s words.

The chocolate is significant because I didn’t give it up this year, and in Gerson’s thoughts I found some justification for my decision. “Some of us give up sweets,” he writes, “with the dual purpose of self-sacrifice and dieting. It is fully consistent with American ideals to kill two birds with one ancient spiritual practice — examining our inner selves while losing those 10 pesky pounds.” The focus instead ought to be on the inner life, he says.

What I was striving for this Lent was to pray more, snipe less — to be more grateful for that which has been given to me. In that I’ve been only partially successful. But I’m encouraged when I learn of others who struggle too.

Gerson describes an earlier “enforced Lent” he experienced recently, a week in the hospital with poor food and no electronics. “What did I miss? Lots of things. What could I do without? Pretty much everything.”

Such denial, he writes, reveals that the “richness of life is found elsewhere — in … the experience of gratitude — not for this thing or that thing — but for God’s radiating presence in all things.”

I don’t typically seek spiritual uplift from the newspaper. But that’s what I found the other day.

Saint Joseph’s Day

Saint Joseph’s Day

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When I was just out of college and teaching high school English for a few years, I was lucky enough to work with a man named George Herman. He seemed old to me at the time, though was probably just in his 50s. Puckish and fastidious, Herman led the 20-plus-person New Trier English department, New Trier being a suburban Chicago high school with a campus as big as some colleges.

Herman comes to mind regularly this time of year because when I wore green on St. Patty’s Day, he told me he was holding out for March 19, when he would wear red for St. Joseph’s Day. And he did. I can still remember his red vest.

Today is St. Joseph’s Day, and I’ve been thinking about this saint, what was asked of him. Yes, your betrothed is with child, said the angel, but don’t be afraid. The child was conceived through the Holy Spirit. You will name him Jesus and he will save his people, your people, from their sins.

Who knows how this all came down. Who knows if it really did come down. (My faith is a rather elastic one.) But even in metaphor, St. Joseph’s example speaks volumes. To follow your beliefs no matter where they lead you, to endure ridicule and scandal for them. Not a bad example to follow — depending on your beliefs, of course.

(A photograph that has nothing to do with St. Jospeh. I just happened to take it while walking to work this morning.)  

Ashes

Ashes

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I began Lent by returning my overdue library book (see below … additional venial sin averted!) and receiving ashes. To accomplish the latter, I reached my parish church by 6:33 a.m. (the service having already begun, of course) and found the parking lot almost full. Wind chills today are in the teens but that doesn’t stop Catholics from their appointed rounds.

Back on the road to Metro before 7:00 a.m., I noticed that my church wasn’t the only one offering predawn distribution. Cars were leaving the Methodist church, too.

But the greatest surprise came at the Crystal City Metro. I usually avoid that station these days, having found a bus that leaves from another Metro stop that gets me to the office more quickly. But today I opted for Metro all the way because it was warmer.

As I was scrambling up the escalator into the usual crowd of buskers and hawkers, I spotted a man in purple off to my left. He was bearded, smiling and … wearing vestments. It was a priest giving out ashes!

Guess I would have gotten them today one way or the other.

A Day, a Diary

A Day, a Diary

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I found an old journal in the back room of my parents’ old house, my grandfather Cassidy’s diary from 1940. This is my father’s father, who I never knew; he died before I was born. He was a Nazarene preacher, and much of this diary records his prayer habits and the texts he preached from.

On this day, 78 years ago, the tent was in or near Clinton, Illinois, and his sermon came from 2 Samuel 25-28:

“I pray you, forgive the trespass of your handmaid: for the Lord will certainly make my lord an enduring house; because my lord fights the battles of the Lord, and evil has not been found in you all your days.”

Many days began with reading and praying. There were walks, helping friends cut wood, marveling at the beauty of the day.

My grandfather followed his calling even though his family, my father then a young man, were far away. I’m not sure what they lived on, how they made it. But somehow, they did.

The world is a different place now, but the pages in this diary are as crisp and clear as the day he wrote them. At the bottom of each page, a quotation. This one is from Emerson: “Give me insight into today, and you may have the antique and future worlds.”

Singing with Dad

Singing with Dad

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Sunday was the nativity of John the Baptist, a feast I don’t ever recall celebrating before. Something new in the liturgy? One of those days you notice every few years, when it falls on a Sunday?

We sang “Shall We Gather at the River,” a hymn I always associate with summer tent revivals — and not one of my favorites. To me, it sounds “Protestant”— a non-ecumenical term to be sure but the only one I can come up with. It’s not the kind of hymn I sang as a kid, one with verses in Latin. Singing it has always made me feel a bit strange and out of place.

But now I have an antidote for hymns like “Shall We Gather” or “How Great Thou Art.” Whenever we sing them now, I imagine Dad standing next to me, belting out the melody in his rich baritone. Dad was the Protestant in my life. He went to tent revivals and Wednesday night services as a kid. He knew the score.

So I follow his lead, sing out loud and strong. I can almost feel him nudge my elbow. “See, Annie,” he winks. “That’s not too bad, is it?”

The Sacred and the Profane

The Sacred and the Profane

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I snapped this photo on a walk around Nagarkot, the hill town on the cusp of the Himalayas. It speaks to me, summarizes the way Nepal combines spirituality and chaos, how it mushes up prayer life and real life until you can’t really tell the difference.

And isn’t that how it should be?

I looked up “sacred and profane” not really knowing the origin of this dichotomy, and learned that it’s attributed to the French sociologist Emile Durkheim. Sacred things are those forbidden and set apart; they represent the interests of the group. Profane things are individual interests, more mundane concerns.

While Durkheim believed that all religions contain this dichotomy, other scholars disagree. It’s a western way of looking at faith, they say.

After visiting the temples and stupas, seeing the Ganesh statues in taxis, and of course, the prayer flags … I would agree with those who disagree with Durkheim.