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The Fine Print

The Fine Print

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The Catholics are at it again. I love them, of course. I’m one of them. But their pronouncements can make me cringe. One of the latest is about cremation.

It used to be verboten. The resurrection of the body and all of that. But now, for reasons I don’t completely understand but which may have to do with the number of people on this earth and the popularity of the practice, it’s allowed as long as the cremains are buried respectfully. No scattering the ashes about in woods and fields and mountain tops. No keeping them in jars on mantels.

I read a letter in our diocesan newspaper last night. Can I be buried at sea? was the question. And the answer: Yes, if your ashes are in a special container.

For some reason this morning all of this makes me smile. I mean, if the good Lord is capable of raising us on the Last Day, is it really going to matter if we’re in a jar or the ground or scattered across the Appalachian Trail?

I have to hand it to Catholics, though, because we care about these things. And that’s the point, isn’t it?

Passage to Spring

Passage to Spring

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Lent arrives early this year — before Valentine’s Day. This is cruel timing for those of us contemplating a 40-day ban on chocolate.

But if it gives us an early Easter and an early spring (not that those two necessarily go together … ) then bring it on.

Meanwhile, the wind is howling in from the west and roads are slicked from last night’s freeze. This will be the coldest week of the winter. A fitting time, then, to begin a spiritual pilgrimage, a journey, a passage.

I always remind myself that “lent” comes from the word “to lengthen.” Seen this way, then, lent is a passage to spring. It is a time of lengthening days, of birds on the wing. A time of promise that soon we’ll be green and growing again. 

Finding Francis

Finding Francis

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It’s not as if I had lost him, or didn’t know about him at all. But there was a bit of the miraculous in what happened yesterday.

I was facing a difficult situation at work, a delicate, pretending-like-everything-is-okay-but-it’s-really-not situation. And that, on top of the grief and worry, was making for some desperate hours. I needed quick relief, an instant infusion of calmness and strength. So for some reason — I’m not sure why — I googled a 16th-century saint, Francis de Sales.

This is not St. Francis of the Franciscans, namesake of Pope Francis. This is the other Francis. I know about him because my parish priests are of his order, the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales, and his writings are sometimes reprinted in the bulletin.

Still, googling saints is not something I do in times of trouble. I’m more likely to pace or bite my nails. Nevertheless, the impulse was so strong that it was like reaching for Motrin when I feel a headache coming on. There was the near certain promise of relief. I knew this was what I was supposed to do.

So I found this: “Do not lose your inner peace for anything whatsoever, even if your whole world seems upset.” And this: “Have patience with all things but chiefly have patience with yourself.” And this: “The same everlasting Father who cares for you today will care for you tomorrow and every day. Either he will shield you from suffering or give you unfailing peace to bear it. Be at peace then and put aside all anxious thoughts and imaginings.”

Yesterday I found Francis when I needed him the most.

The End of Sanctuary?

The End of Sanctuary?

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When I wrote of barbarism yesterday I didn’t yet know about the slayings in Jerusalem. This time terrorism has reached much farther than Indiana. It has reached into the sanctuary itself.

It is difficult to measure grief and outrage, but this incident is striking in its brutality. The piousness of the victims, their vulnerability, the contested city in which these slayings took place — a city riven by religious violence.

I looked up how often murders occur in places of worship and found a Christian Science Monitor article reporting that as of last June there had been 780 deadly attacks in U.S. churches in the last 15 years, according to Carl Chinn, a church security expert who was himself a victim of church violence. Such violence was almost nonexistent before the bombing at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963, Chinn said.

The numbers worldwide are much bigger and more horrifying, I’m sure.

Religious-based violence is nothing new. But the ironies are too great to ignore. That a force intended for good has been hijacked for evil. That a place built for sanctuary has become a killing ground.

Fighting Fear

Fighting Fear

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I try to think of something else but it’s hard not to. I have a daughter flying into Dulles from West Africa this weekend.  She’s not arriving from one of the affected countries but from somewhere close. And while at this point the extra scrutiny (temperatures taken, isolation if necessary) only applies to passengers arriving from Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, I wonder if officials will widen the net, start checking those arriving from any West African nation.

It’s fear at work, I know. But fear is contagious, too. And just as there’s no vaccine for Ebola so also there is no immunization for fear. Information doesn’t help — it’s hard to read a newspaper or watch the news — but ignorance is no better.

One of the most poignant news programs I’ve heard about the epidemic described what doctors and nurses do in Liberia before starting their shifts. Here they are on the front lines, dealing with Ebola patients every day, wearing substandard protective gear and working in primitive conditions. And what do they do before anything else? They stand in a circle, they pray and they sing. 

If they can sing, so can we. Sing in their honor. Sing for their safety. Sing until the fear goes away.

Resurrection, Continued

Resurrection, Continued

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As it happens, the priest based his Easter sermon on the article mentioned below. There was no equivocation from the pulpit — not that I expected any. But there was this comment: that we need no proof, no scientific evidence, to believe. All we need is faith.

Having my father on the other side now — someone who lived so fully on earth in his human “skin” — makes me think and hope that all that love, all that energy, has gone somewhere. That it exists in a form I can’t access at this point makes sense to me.

Last Friday I stopped by the church for a few moments. I had driven home from Kentucky that day and missed the service I usually attend. By instinct I headed for the small chapel, what used to be the main sanctuary before the grand, new one was built.

The minute I stepped into that welcome darkness I was struck by the aroma. It was the Easter flowers. They had already been delivered — all the lilies, azaleas, hydrangeas and hyacinths — and were being stored in the chapel until the great Easter vigil celebration Saturday evening. The fragrance was almost overpowering, but I inhaled deeply anyway.

It was a preview, a welcome aromatic reminder, of all that lies in store.

Resurrection

Resurrection

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Tomorrow is Easter Sunday. It is also April 20, exactly a month after my father passed away. I’ve  been thinking of this coincidence —3/20 and 4/20 — and of the leap of faith required to believe in bodily resurrection after witnessing first-hand a bodily demise. 

It is, I suppose, an appropriate time to be pondering this eternal mystery. And an article in today’s Washington Post convinces me that I’m not alone.

As Easter approaches, many Christians struggle with how to understand
the Resurrection. How literally must one take the Gospel story of Jesus’
triumph to be called a Christian? Can one understand the Resurrection
as a metaphor[?] …

Here’s what I’ve decided. And it solves no great theological mystery. It’s only what I have to get me through:

It is no metaphor to me that Dad is gone — nor is it metaphor that he lives on. There is real, tangible proof that he does.  He is there in the World War II books and the multiple DVDs of “Twelve O’Clock High” (his favorite film and one he believed everyone should watch. “It’s not about war,” he told his friends. “It’s about leadership.”).  He is there in the bell he installed on the back door so the cat could be let in. He is there in the statue of St. Francis, one of many items he planted in the now overgrown garden. Most of all he is present in all of his friends, in my mom and in each one of us, his children.

You may have to look harder for him now — you couldn’t miss Dad before; he was always the life of the party — but he’s there, I’m sure of it.

After the Deluge

After the Deluge

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The pipe burst on Friday, the day after I sent the magazine to the printer. I was working at home, but colleagues noticed water seeping under my door and puddling on the carpet. They called facilities, which sent personnel, shop vacs, large fans, drying machines. My desk and file cabinet were put on blocks.

The hard work paid off.  Other than a few water-damaged boxes (which I’ve tossed) the place looks better than it did last week.

The waters came, raged and departed.

They left behind a stiller, calmer world.



(This may not look still and calm, but compared with last week…)

Season of Growth

Season of Growth

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Lent is late this year. Like spring, it is taking its time. But today is Ash Wednesday, so the 40 days have begun, the ecclesiastical season that prepares us for Easter with prayer, fasting and contemplation.

Somewhere along the way — it’s been a few years ago now — I learned that “Lent” comes from the Anglo-Saxon word “lencten,” meaning spring. The days are lengthening. It’s harder to appreciate this when Ash Wednesday falls on February 13, as it did last year.

But this year it arrives on March 5. It’s light outside as I type these words. And I decide to approach the season with less dread and more optimism. A bit more like Advent. As a moving toward rather than a dredging down. As a season of growth rather than self-denial.

Radiant Way

Radiant Way

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For me it’s a return to work after two weeks off — a good day to celebrate the Epiphany, a feast that marks revelation, the manifestation of the divine and, in the words of James Joyce (courtesy of the Writer’s Almanac), the “sudden ‘revelation of the whatness of a thing,’ the moment when ‘the soul of the commonest object … seems to us radiant.'”

The workaday world sorely needs some radiance, some shining representation of its meaning and purpose.

So today, on my return, I will look for it.