Sanctorum Communio - The Communion of the Saints

(Cross posted from my parish blog. This is written from my Roman Catholic perspective and originally for my Catholic blog. I know others love the saints too and I am very grateful to all who shared their favorite saints on my Facebook page!)

 (Yes, everyone who reads my blogs knows that I have an obsession with John Nava's Communion of the Saints tapestries at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, Los Angeles.)

Sanctorum Communio is Latin for the Communion of the Saints.  While I don't get to daily mass like I used to, now that I am working, I remain influenced by Father Pat's references to common union. (He makes these references on Sundays too, but that is not as frequent, at least not overtly!)

This morning I happened by one of my favorite spots in the blogosphere, dotCommonweal, the blog of Commonweal magazine. This is a rich place to read about all manner of things and I highly recommend it.

Today, Commonweal blogger, Father Robert Imbelli posted this:

Appropriately for this liturgical season, my graduate seminar has been reading Joseph Ratzinger’s great work, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life. Here is a passage:

In all human love there is an implicit appeal to eternity, even though love between two human beings can never satisfy that appeal. In Christ, God enters our search for love and its ultimate meaning, and does so in a human way. God’s dialogue with us becomes truly human, since God conducts his part as man. Conversely, the dialogue of human beings with each other now becomes a vehicle for the life everlasting, since in the communion of saints it is drawn up into the dialogue of the Trinity itself.


This is why the communion of saints is the locus where eternity becomes accessible for us. Eternal life does not isolate a person, but leads him or her out of isolation into true unity with their brothers and sisters and the whole of God’s creation.

I thought that it was a great reminder of faith and community - our "common union."  We are called to life in community and to live in relationship to and with one another.

What better illustration of this than the images of the Communion of Saints?

It is so easy to want to have a "God-and-me" experience, at least it has been for me. I am slowly, now that I am in "second half" of life, learning otherwise however. God is not linear and so often as humans, linear is where we are at. Go here. Do this. Get that. Learn this. Be this. It is all endless binary code in our lives.

Our faith practice as Christians, and in particular as Catholics invites us into community. The Trinity itself is relational and dynamic, not linear. We have our Trinitarian God, we have our Sanctorum Communio, we have each other.

Saints is what we all are in some fashion. You call me to my sainthood and I call you, we all call each other.  This not only precludes but rather prevents (or should prevent) this need to isolate or to reject that so many of us possess.

Well listen to me ramble on... Many paragraphs as I useless try to explain the words of Father Imbelli and Joseph Ratzinger.

Today I wish you prayers of hope that is found in community with God and one another, with the saints, canonized and otherwise, leading our way to the Lord.

Thanks be to God for that!  Have a blessed All Saints Day.

All You Holy Men and Women Pray for Us

I have returned to some Catholic blogging here. This is a slight variation on a post which I wrote for my parish blog. Read on or tune out - the choice is always yours. As always, I hope you stay.

The church gathers on November 1 each year to celebrate All Saints Day, which is coming up this Sunday. (The readings can be found here if you want to pray with them in advance.)

I was talking to a friend about the saints and what this means. While Catholic today, she grew up in another Christian denomination. As a result, her childhood experiences of the saints was quite different from my own, which was awash in Catholicism of both the reverent as well as the kitchsy.

What saints are your personal favorites? Maybe your patron, the saint who inspired your name? Or a saint that has helped you at different times of your life? We discussed this very topic in a small faith sharing gathering last night.

There were many troubled years in which I leaned heavily upon St. Dymphna, when I felt mentally stressed . St. Teresa of Avila has always been a great favorite saint of mine as has St. Therese of the Child Jesus, also known as St. Therese of Lisieux; They were strong women in different ways and this inspired me. St. Francis, my own patron has a special place in my heart. There was a time when I often turned to Blessed Margaret of Castello in great need, because I felt abandoned. Of course there is St. Anthony of Padua... If you are Catholic and of a certain age and have ever lost something, you have called upon him!

As you can see, I could go on and on. Our saints are a beautiful and beloved tradition of the church, they became saints in their humanity, which is so important to remember. The illustration above is from the tapestries of saints that you will find if you go to the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles. To say that this is a stunning representation of the saints would be an understatement. The first time I saw them there, I wept.

Want to learn more about the saints? There are no shortage of books, go to O'Connor's here in Albany to have a look. One of my favorite books about the saints, as seen through the years of the author's life is, My Life with the Saints by James Martin, SJ. You can see that the tapestries from the Cathedral have touched many of us as they are on the front of this book.

I will close with this Litany of the Saints for you to listen to if you wish. It is so beautiful.

Litany of the Saints - St Marys Music

Dog Days

Doxy has a new post about Blue Cross/Blue Shield of North Carolina. This was yesterday's post.

Jasper may not be so happy. This does appear to be a bone otherwise destined for him.  Sorry dog, that's how Doxy rolls. You of all canines should know that!  She will hook you up with a new bone soon. Just as soon as she is done seeking justice, OK?

Dear Lord, deliver us from evil. Please begin by delivering Doxy's letter and postcard. Thanks.

 (I stole this photo from Doxy, I hope that she's OK with that!)

Oh, my amazing friend Doxy has written a post in which she details the contents of her letter to her insurance company.

Doxy - she is fierce. Seriously!

Don't believe me?  Well click here to read it for yourself.

Perfectionism, Self-forgiveness and Prayer

Both perfectionism and self-forgiveness bear a direct relation to our understanding of God. The first step of prayer is telling the truth about who and where we are. It is also, at the same time, learning the truth about who and where God is. We are the ones who tend to place limits on the mercy of God. Prayer involves a capacity to stretch our imagination, to imagine and therefore to begin knowing a God who is not a projection of our own self-condemnation … The idea that prayer is somehow a production (in the economic or in the theatrical sense –both are destructive) will take us away from prayer.
Jane Redmont, When In Doubt, Sing (Sorin, 2008)

This has been on my heart since Friday, I just can't shake it. That is a good thing. All I am here to do today is share it with you all.

If you have not read Jane's book, please go and do so now. You will not regret it. Just go ahead and click, right here.

So What Do I Think?

Oh the churchy world is ablaze with the news from the Vatican regarding "a single canonical model" for some Anglicans.  Whatever this might be - it is NOT a case of simple ecumenism and holding hands, all kumbayah-Jesus-loves-you-togetherness. If I were Anglican or Episcopalian, I think I would be really, really ticked off - now that I *get* in a big way.

I have commented on various blogs and on Facebook regarding this. I am both upset and not over the whole thing. However, many emails have come in asking me what I think and since I do not have anything else to post right now, I will say a few words.

First of all, for good or ill, I am immersed in the life of the church. That is just true. There is more that I will write about this in the next few days. Church is not just institution or structure and it is certainly not building, church is people. What I am a part of and what the larger thing are, well they are the same and different.

Case in point, we have been so busy not a word has been uttered about this other than me bringing up how I wish that we had time to sit and just talk about it. We don't.

I posted an Anne Lamott quotation on Facebook about how it was "too soon to tell." And that is what I do believe. Someone sent me an email accusing me of agreeing with the whole mess if that is how I feel.

Oh please.

If you stood at the foot of the Cross 2000 years ago, I doubt you would see glory, no matter how hard the Renaissance painters have tried to convince you of the immediacy of it. Oh - to be certain, there was immediacy, but not to the human eye at the moment.

Nor now.

My professor was talking about something that Elizabeth Johnson had said to her the week before (now I am name dropping off someone else's theological name dropping!) during a talk. We are all parts of generations that are "hanging in there." If the reformists of the earlier part of the 20th century did not hang in there, maybe Vatican II would not have happened. We just don't know. I think that Elizabeth is onto something.

Sometimes you hang in there but then the spirit prompts you to depart. I have also thought a lot about Mary Daly and her "exodus moment" when she knew it was time for women to "walk."

How do we know? And is it always too soon to tell?

I don't have a clue. Right now I am where I am and while not 100% happy I am not prompted to have my exodus moment. It is probably out there, I can get a whiff on distant breezes, but now is not the time.

The other day I was talking to Mimi and she said to me, as only Mimi can, "Fran - I am not sure how to say this, but you've changed." I acknowledged that yes, things were up with me. She seemed hesitant to say more, but she seemed like she had something to add, I urged her on.

"Fran, you've become more... this isn't the word, it just isn't but... well I have to use it. Fran, you've become more pious."  I threw my head back and laughed out loud.

She's right and yet not. Oh that is rich. We had a good talk about this place that I am in right now - emotionally, spiritually and even practically. Pious is not it, but I am more serious and I am not so close to the edge. Nor am I am in the middle.

It is a place of journeying.

Well, someone has drifted a bit off-topic about the Vatican-Anglican flap. I am quite put off by all the hand-wringing and angst. I was particularly turned off by this dose of bitterness from the Anglican turned Roman Catholic priest, Fr. George Rutler. I used to pray in his lovely church in NYC, a beautiful place. He always looked a bit pinched and angry.

Here is another piece that left me feeling uncomfortable at large. Now John Allen is someone that I tend to trust and his piece is here.

As for some good analysis and an outstanding comment thread, I have to point to a post with a most provocative title - Is The Vatican Creating An Anglican Petting Zoo? by Eric Stoltz.  Eric really speaks well to some thoughts I have about the need for unity through diversity. In fact, he tends to speak it a lot more clearly than I seem to be able to.

So what do I think? At face value, I don't like it, I don't like it one bit. And if it is truly a bad idea, I think it will backfire.

This I do know. It is too soon to tell for me. That is what I think.

The Whole Mishpacha - A Book Review, Blogging and Community and Faith Practice

One of the things I love about blogging is community. I not only get to write and hopefully become a better writer, but I get to become part of something that is so much bigger than all of us. I have been very blessed and am most grateful to know some richly wonderful people that I might have never gotten to meet or know otherwise.  I have met many bloggers and have talked to many on the phone as well... It is all so remarkable. It is like one great big mishpacha and I love it..

I also learn about books I might not know about, like Jane Redmont's When In Doubt Sing, Tobias Haller's Holy and Reasonable, The Price of Right by Alicia Morgan, Googling God by Mike Hayes, to name a few.

Such is the case with "Why Is There A Menorah on The Altar? Jewish Roots of Christian Worship".  Author Meredith Gould became familiar to me in the comment boxes of various Catholic blogs and I was delighted to hear of the book that she was writing at the time. Her book was recently published and I reviewed it for The Evangelist, the newspaper of the Albany Diocese.

Jesus aside, what else is Jewish in Church?

by Fran Rossi Szpylczyn

As a Catholic child of a Jewish father, I was thrilled to learn that we would be attending a Bat Mitzvah. The year was 1967 and I was 10. My parents told me that we were going to “God’s other house.” This got my attention because I loved Mass at our “God’s house.”

Entering the synagogue, I was curious about the yarmulkes for men and no chapel veils for women, the lack of statuary and candles, not to mention no Holy Communion. The Hebrew might as well have been Latin; it seemed transcendent to me.

I fell in love with this version of God’s house. In fact, I could not wait to get to tell Sister Agnes Marie all about how it was totally different yet so much the same. As it happened, I can’t say that Sister was as excited as I was. However, I was intrigued with whatever God had going with Judaism.

No wonder I was anxious to read, “Why Is There a Menorah on the Altar? Jewish Roots of Christian Worship” by Meredith Gould (Seabury Books, $20). Gould, who was born and raised Jewish, is now a practicing Roman Catholic.

In the foreword, the author wastes no time and jumps into how her Jewishness shapes who she is to this day. Her proclamation that she is a “Jew in identity, a Christian in faith and a Catholic in religious practice” shows that her faith is wide and deep, cultural and spiritual.

Meredith is Catholic, but the book addresses liturgical Christian worship including Episcopal and Lutheran services. Go ahead and read the rest of the review you wish, you can find it right here. And if interested, go get the book, it is really good!

Let Nothing Disturb You - St. Teresa of Avila

I put this up over at other blog and I am posting here as well.  Well - I made a few changes. I loves me some St. Teresa of Avila. She was not kidding around!

St. Teresa of Avila was truly one of a kind. I wish I had more time to write about her, but I don't. Today is her feast day. 

St. Teresa did not suffer fools gladly, turned the Catholic world pretty much upside down and she did this all as a woman, as a nun, in 16th century Spain!

What I present to you here are words found written in her Breviary. The photo above is of what was found.

Let nothing disturb you,
Let nothing frighten you,
All things are passing away:
God never changes.
Patience obtains all things.
Whoever has God lacks nothing;
God alone suffices.

Here is video presentation of a sung version of the prayer that I first saw at Margaret's blog, the very first day I ever went to her blog. I have not stopped going since!

A Post Without A Title

It has been a almost a week since I have posted anything. If you could look, you would see several active drafts in folder on my computer and many more than that in my head.

Also, I have a paper due Monday and I have been very slow to get going on that, even by my own procrastinator-y standards. It is a short paper (5-7) pages about a parable and how it might be read. For this paper, I have selected the parable of the Prodigal Son from Luke chapter 15.

Oh it is oft used, but it keeps coming up for me, it reminds me of my own story. Girl takes treasure and runs. And runs. Riotous living ensues. Girl loses all and returns home. Fatted calf and gold rings follow ginormous embrace from father. Brother gets pissed off, he *did* stick around and behave after all. Harumph!

When I went on my unlikely journey to Medjugorje, which I wrote about recently, I went to confession. The priest was about 25 years old, just a kid. He did not scold me for my long absence but was so welcoming and joyful. He told me that I was the Prodigal daughter and honestly, I had no clue what he was talking about. Yes, I knew the story sort-of, but could not take it in then.

So I am off to work on my paper and I need to do some prep work on my second paper as well as begin to work on my group project. The second paper is on the role that Scripture plays in my life and its importance along with how it has developed and changed over time.  Then I must chose a pericope from any of the four Gospels and explain how it might be interpreted from the perspectives of both "high" and "low" Christology.

The group project calls a team of 3 of us to choose a contemporary theologian and explore their work regarding their basic theological beliefs and the challenges that this person offers to our faith community. We have chosen Elizabeth Johnson.

And hey- I am going to be published in print again. My review of "Why Is There a Menorah On the Altar? Jewish Roots of Christian Worship" by Meredith Gould will be published on Thursday. If you are so inclined, send Meredith your good wishes; she has lost two of her beloved cats in a very short time.

I will supply a link to the review come Thursday and give some background on Meredith, who is a true menschette beyond all reasonable menschettery. That said, she has chops. You can also read her words, which spare no one, regarding the latest Catholic-Jewish mishegos, which has been the source of a lot of tsouris. Oy, anti-semitism seemingly never goes out of style and tragically so.


OK, so much for a short post, now I must run.


Do some people still not realize that Jesus was born a Jew, lived as a Jew and died a Jew? Just sayin'.

The Inbetween - As Unlikely As Just About Everything Else

It all feels so self-indulgent to be telling you my story, yet it feels necessary, cathartic.

So I guess I will keep going, but with a little backtracking.

Prior posts have spoken of my (unlikely) early life and Catholic (church nerd) childhood, plus a bit about my return to church. I also wrote of my great love for Mary, the Mother of God and how a trip to Medjugorje, of all places, is how I ended up back in the fold.

What I haven't written about yet is some of the in-between, so let me start that today.

For reasons far too complicated and vast to go into here today, the late 80's were some of the most miserable of my life. I was a terrible crank, mean to people, short-tempered, hostile. Somehow people still seemed to love me, but I look back and wonder how and then remember how grace works. Thank you God.

One reason for my despair was that I was so disconnected from my own soul. All my searching and seeking was futile at some level. As I mentioned, there were many narcissistic elements of this era of my life and I think that each time I reached out for what I saw, the ripples made the image go away and I was distraught. It feels crappy to say that out loud, but it is true.

My job was beyond unfulfilling at that time and my home life was a mess. I was living with my mother and my aunt at the time - that is a LONG story, not going there right now. It was not a happy time. My mother was at her all time low, sunk deeply into depression, awash in some white hot anger and very deeply engaged with her alcoholism.

The way I coped with all of this, in addition to buying all kinds of crap that I did not need, was to travel. I traveled a lot for my job and then I would take trips and for those 3 weeks a year, I felt alive. The other 49 weeks were for misery and trip planning.

In February 1989 I went to Paris, a favorite place I liked to skulk around on my own. This was my third of five trips to that fine city. I felt very exotic and mysterious being there, wearing black, drinking lots of coffee as I sat in cafes and read books or wrote in my journal.

Despite my not being in touch (or so I thought) with my Catholicity, I loved going into churches in Europe. Who doesn't? Art, light, transcendence... Ahh.  Plus I liked to fancy myself praying in that great "spiritual-but-not-religious-just-Jesus-'n'-me" sort of way that was delusional for me.

On this particular trip I went up to Sacre-Coeur in Montmarte. When I first visited Paris in 1979, my friend was living in that part of Paris and it was one of the first places I saw, so it had a special place in my heart. I was deeply upset over the status of my life which felt so miserable and I did actually go there to pray in some way.

For reasons that were not at all clear at the time, I stopped at the little gift shop and bought a blue-stoned rosary. I went and sat in some side chapel and prayed to a statue of Mary, asking for help. This was one of the darkest times of my life and I longed for change.

Now I would have prayed the rosary if I had remembered it. Yeah yeah - I knew it was 1 Our Father followed by 10 Hail Marys and a Glory Be, but beyond that I could not recall any detail or mysteries to follow. So I just prayed 5 Our Fathers, 50 Hail Marys and 5 Glory Bes.

And I cried. A lot. Sobbed actually. It being February, and at about 2 in the afternoon on a weekday, I was pretty much alone there. My heart broke into many pieces and shattered, pieces of it skittering across the cold, hard floor of the church like a glass hitting tile.

It is not at all clear to me now how long I stayed there, but it was a long time. Finally I left the church and walked around Montmartre. I stopped and had coffee, I wrote in my journal. Something felt different. Not better - not worse, just different.

At the time I could only characterize different negatively, my lens was fear. I think I felt like I was sprayed by a skunk or something, an odor I could not shake.

Allow me to say that this is not about "magic" but rather that sometimes things happen that are way bigger than we have the vocabulary for or the depth to describe.

I wanted to pray a proper rosary like nobody's business but I was lost, so I did spend time saying what I could, all awkward and stilted. It was like I was trying to learn a language that I had spoken frequently as a child.

Which is exactly what was happening.

The rosary - with Mary's intercession of course, changed my life. More about that will follow, this is enough for today.

Paris will always be special to me for many reasons, not the least of which is that it is the place where the inbreaking of the spirit made an undelible mark upon my heart.

As for the rosary - I love this video, which I had found last May, via my friend Paul. And I still treasure, and use almost daily, these fine beads (shown above) given to me by Maria. She made them for me, I was so touched.

Me praying the rosary on beads strung together prayerfully by an Episcopalian... so very unlikely, but beautiful!

The Day My Karma Ran Over My Dogma, Or How Edgar Cayce Sent Me Off To Medjugorje

(St. James Church, Medjugorje, Bosnia. I was going to use my "poor man's scanner" and take a photo of a photo I had, but my camera is no more. I sat on those benches and had some interesting conversations with God. That is another story for another day.)

Perhaps I should say, How God used Edgar Cayce, but that may just be obvious.
If you had met me 19 years ago this month, you would have met a green shoot that was pushing up through the earth; a bulb long ago planted was ready to bloom. It was at this time that after an 18-year absence, I returned to the Roman Catholic Church.

Without ever actually having intended to do so, I might add. Oh yes, another unlikely tale.

If you read my earlier post, Mary the Mother of God was always guiding light for me. For good or ill, over the years, even though that was not why I left, I had grown to associate the organized institution of the Church with a male dominated society that I had no use for. (Still possibly true? Well, the first part of the sentence perhaps.)

Now I have written at other times in other places about my background of sexual abuse; let it suffice that that had a great deal to do with my issues of male domination – and understandably so. That is another story for another day, but I will clarify that I was never hurt in any way by any priest.

In any case I felt like I had no use for a stultifying and negative place that seemed to have little to do with my image of God at that time. Mary the Mother of God however seemed to represent all that was good and I decided to stick with her. I did like the idea of angels and saints, so parts of my Catholicity stayed with me.

One of the things that happened to me was that I became immersed in the “New Age movement. My inner-hippie-gnostic-pantheist was aflame with all the ways in which the things I read dovetailed with my own immature spirituality.

Some of you who have read my words have heard me quote Anne Lamott quoting her priest friend Tom saying, “You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do." Interestingly enough, I had done this too. I wanted a God who was hip, kindly, and who fed all the appetites around my own “magical thinking.” Does God hate mean people? I thought that God did. No - I do not think this any longer!

For all those who believe that they are “spiritual, but not religious” I do not intend any disrespect to others, but today that thinking is simplistic and even narcissistic to me, at least in my own life. I had to spend a lot of time there, maybe some people need to be there, so understand I am only speaking of my own experience here. 

In any case, one of my main sources of “new age” information was the Association for Research and Enlightenment, which is part of the Edgar Cayce foundation. Cayce was known as the “Sleeping Prophet” and I had been captivated by his story, which I first heard in my early teens.

At some point during late 1986 or early 87 I received my monthly ARE magazine and opened it to discover spiritual gold… An article about the appearances of Mary at a place called Medjugorje. This was karmic serendipity beyond what I could have hoped for and I’m sure at the time I had happy-thought-ed my way into it due to all my new-agey good thoughts and feelings. For someone who hated the kumbayah feel of Vatican II, I was agog in hand holding magical mystery.

So it was all coming together at last, Mary has entered the new age! I could not be happier. Looking back it now seems so unlikely that such an article would have been in there and I even question that it was, but I think it truly was there. How else would I have heard of this?

Like so many things, when you hear of something, you are suddenly flooded with information about it. I took this as good karma on steroids, but likely it was just because I was now aware of it. It now seemed like every fifth person I met had gone to or was going to Medjugorje! Surely this was a cosmic convergence of events based on me me me. (Can you see why I said narcissistic earlier?)

Now if we take a moment to inspect the other side of the coin, we will find out (I did not happen to turn the coin over at the time) that Medjugorje was then (and remains) a place where one might find more conservative Catholics gathering.

That did not worry me; I had no intention of ever dealing with the Catholic part. That I thought I had a choice underscores both my arrogance and the self-serving nature of my so-called spirituality. In my mind, I was going to go there one day and say hello to my beloved Mary, who had stuck by me.

Which of course, she had. In ways that I could not even imagine and guided always, by the hand of God and in the most unlikely ways.

Note: For reasons that are either conservative, liberal or any other qualifier, I am no longer someone who keeps up with what is going on at Medjugorje, which has never been officially recognized by the Roman Catholic Church. Controversy remains about the veracity of the apparitions at both the diocesan level and at the Vatican. If you ask me, something is happening, but what I do not know nor do I need to know. I simply know that using some bizarre cocktail that included Edgar Cayce and Medjugorje, God got my attention. Yes, I did experience some things that go beyond explanation during my visit there, but I don’t fixate on that. At this point, it seems to have no bearing and puts the focus on the wrong place.

To be continued...

Mission Improbable - St. Francis and the Sultan

In the tradition of unlikely stories, I want to talk about St. Francis' mission to meet the Sultan.  In July 2008, I put up a post on the St. Edward's blog about St. Francis meeting the Sultan. If October 4 were not a Sunday, we would be celebrating St. Francis' feast day, so Francis is very much on my mind.

As it happens, a new book has come out, The Saint and the Sultan, by Paul Moses. I just read an excerpt of it entitled, Mission Improbable, in the current issue of Commonweal. Here is a link to the piece, which I urge you to read. It is really good and I wish I had the time to read the whole book right now.

It is so remarkably radical that St. Francis and his friar companion, Illuminato (loving that name) would walk through the battlefield, stepping over the corpses and inhaling the stench, in the name of God. Instead of plotting and planning some kind of revenge, he simply walks into the heart of the enemy and starts to talk.

And then he walks alive and out a few days later. So much for godless infidels cutting heads off and all that.

If there is a phrase I can't stand, it is the ever-popular "WWJD." Come on people, be real. What would Jesus do? That should be obvious and we too should be doing that without having to wear it on a bracelet. Jesus gave us numerous examples of how he talked to pretty much everyone.

Then he ate with them, the most radical thing of all. Go read the Moses piece in Commonweal, it discusses table fellowship too. That Francis, he was total whack and that was his genius and his holiness.

Today, on my way to the animal blessing I drove by a church sign that said something to the effect of "Having a relationship with God is what matters." I thought - yes, to a point. To simply have a relationship with God alone and to not have it through and with one another seems to be a colossal waste of the "scandal of incarnation." If our faith is not about the Trinitarian dynamics of relationship then I don't know why we are here.

God did not become human just so that we might spend all our time on our knees, tending him and hating others. Rather, I think that if we work to love others, we might indeed be tending to God and God's business, on our knees and otherwise.

What the hell do I know? I tend to stink at this, but I keep trying or at least wanting to try.

It is great that we associate the animals with St. Francis, but I think that we miss a true opportunity to associate loving our so-called enemies with him as well.

Imagine if today the Pope or some other religious figure were to walk through a battlefield, pocked by death and destruction, hold their hand out to the enemy and then sit down to eat.

Just think on that one for awhile.

I present you with these words from Martin Buber in closing.

All Real Living is Meeting
by Martin Buber

Yahweh, Jesus, Allah, God,
I do not suppose You are very tied to titles,
You seem to revel more
in creating and loving
Than arguing like we do.

You are beyond any name,
Beyond this group or that,
Beyond ideas or any ability to
Control You by definitions.

You are the Utterly Free One.
You are the Eternal I
That always allows me to be a Thou
Whenever we meet.

You are the Speaker, I am the spoken,
So Love must be Your name!
Which is always beyond words.

Amen.

Church Nerd Stories... Walking Out of Church, Inching Back - Another Unlikely Tale

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my church nerd beginnings. I also noted that I was coming up on my 19th anniversary of returning to church, a date that is shared with the 18th anniversary of my mother's death. It's a big day for me and it has come and gone. Like so many things, it was so unlikely.

In 1971 I made my Confirmation and not long thereafter, stopped going to church. Now, it is not uncommon to see Confirmation as “graduation” from religious education; frankly that is a pity. Sometimes it is called “a sacrament in search of a theology,” but that was not what was operative in my life at that time.

Along the way I made some serious religious and spiritual searches… Judaism and Buddhism were my two most extensive journeys. Oh how I wanted to be Jewish! However, there was that pesky issue of Jesus. I was fine with so much about Judaism, I was fine without the Roman Catholic Church it seemed, but not without Jesus. Crap. Don’t you hate when that happens? Dang! Jesus!

Buddhism might have worked out better if I had not ventured into Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism. You might know this as the chanting of “Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo.” At the end of the day, it was a bit more cultic than I could handle. There was a tenet about “wishes” being granted and I still think of “born again Buddhism,” that did not set well with me. It was simply not my path.

The Roman Catholic Church was never far from my heart. I remembered my prayers. I often said them quietly, hoping no one, myself included, would notice. I did hope that God would notice but I figured that God was done with me. I still said a lot of Hail Marys because I had a feeling that Mary would never give up on me.

Sandwiched in between the Jewish phase and the Buddhist phase, I was in college and I did have some RC longings. The first time that this happened was in September 1979. It seems hard to believe that the me of this era would do this, but I guess it was the homesickness and adjusting to new surroundings.

I headed over the campus Newman Center to check things out. There was a priest there and a lot of people. It was all very post-Vatican-II-70’s-kumbyah and it scared the living crap out of me. Folk mass always gave me the creeps! To say I fled would be an understatement… Imagine the cartoonish trail of dust at my heels as I recall running out of there.

Many prayers but not one iota of church attendance later in 1978, I decide to go to church. What brought me there? Who knows? Well, I know now, but then it was as out of character for me as it would be for me to attend a Nichiren Shoshu session now.

However, awash in my own unworthiness, which breaks my heart today, I got dressed up and sat in the back of a large church in Oswego. I loved the music, the prayers, the ritual but I did not feel like I was worthy. So I sat in the back, never went to communion and left feeling worse than when I had arrived. I felt ashamed. I told no one about this and I was hoping that by sitting in the back, God would not notice me and smite me down.

If God did notice me, I figured that Mary probably calmed God down and I was left in my lonely pew at the rear of the church.

Mary, the Mother of God, who was my secret devotion and my only hope for some connection to the divine. Holding on to her was like one thin yet sinewy lifeline that kept me from going under. I told no one.