The Blessed Guilt

After four years of Jesuit education and another four years of living in community, I finally “arrived” when I moved into a teeny apartment in a bustling neighborhood in Boston. I was surprised last summer to find that five years had gone in my garden-level (read: mostly underground), two-room home with drop ceilings and weird paneling on the walls.

As it turns out, I haven’t needed anything else. And I’ve been happy here.

Last night I sailed in the door after a typically busy day and set about to start dinner. I looked at my mess in the kitchen and thought “I don’t even have that much stuff, but somehow it has all congregated on the kitchen counters”. And then I thought about all the other stuff in the cabinets and closets. Can I still say “I don’t have that much stuff”?

I had a professor once who said “I hope this generation has guilt about justice the same way mine had guilt about sex”. I can assure him, we do, or at least I do. I believe it is wrong to have more than I need, yet I look around and see a closet full of clothes and a nice car and books overflowing to every corner of the apartment, and I feel guilty.

I do not want to want these things. I want it to be easy to “give away all I have and follow me”, but if I were asked today could I? This is where my spirit lives right now, and may for a long time. I’m fighting off the onslaught of stuff – or trying to convince myself that I am not complicit in my own aggregation of things I don’t need. Part of my heart believes that it is immoral to have more than I need, but clearly there is part of me that is fine with it.

When I was an undergrad and went to the outskirts of Tijuana to build houses, I returned with the requisite culture shock and discomfort. After a few weeks of not knowing what to do in this culture, it occurred to me that I had to bloom where I was planted. I was born in a hospital in Hartford, not in a village in a third-world country, and there’s nothing I can do to change it.

Here I am, in a culture that doesn’t satisfy my desire for justice and rightness (but could any culture do so?). I know I have to swim in it. I know I have no choice. But I have to have a choice, or rather I have to make a thousand choices every day, striking that balance of blooming where I’m planted and living a moral and just life.

I don’t mind guilt. Sometimes we should feel guilty – it’s a sign that we’re not doing it right. Maybe part of opting for the poor is feeling guilty about having more than them. Maybe the guilt is a blessing, a sign that I have not yet lost the itch for goodness, and that I haven’t missed my opportunity to be numbered among those who hunger and thirst for justice.

The Woman on the Mat Next to Mine

As a child, I occasionally became envious of girls more athletic than I. This was before I learned to envy women’s bodies, and only envied what those bodies could do. When I became jealous my mother in her wisdom would say to me “Margaret, I bet those girls can’t sing a note”.

I wish I could say I have outgrown this. Although I did the recommended soul-searching and maturing during my twenties which gave me what is often called “positive self-image”, I still fall prey to the false god of desiring what someone else has.

This happens more often than it should during yoga.

One reason I love long-distance running is that for all intents and purposes you are alone. Even during races there is solitude, and so much exertion that you can’t see anyone else.ut in yoga class I am surrounded, often by women in very good shape, and by mirrors. So as we’re setting up I peek at the woman on the mat next to mine.

Her stomach is so flat…and look at her clothes. She must have on $250 worth of yoga gear. Doesn’t she usually stay for the Pilates class after this, too? Her skin is really clear…crap was she just doing one-armed pushups??!!? And I envy. Oh how I envy. I have the life I want, but for a moment I imagine my life would be easier if I had a nicer body and skin, and nicer clothes to put them in.

Then we begin, and we are asked to set an intention and I pray “God help me value my body today”. If I’m lucky at some point, even for a second, I’ll be challenged so much that I’ll ignore the hottie next to me and the mirrors all around the room, and I can focus on nothing else but balance and strength.

Thy Will Be Done: Utopia, St Joseph, and the Occupy protests

I should start by saying I’m not a communist. For someone with an apartment, car, expensive education and closet full of blue dresses, that seems like a peculiar place to start. You’d think it would go without saying.

(Undoubtedly the first person to call me a communist was my father, in one of our many discussions during which I sided with my mother. My brother, alas, bore the brunt of it, not because of any extreme views but because “Tommy the Commie” sounds funny.)

Now that that’s settled, I must confess the frisson I felt when I read about the plan to “Occupy May 1st” today. Solidarity! Protests! Images of disembodied clenched fists!! I’m getting excited again just thinking about it.

I won’t be striking today for sundry reasons, the strongest of which being that I work for an employer that values my work and compenates me justly. I’m not even sure I’ll make it to any rallies or marches, more’s the pity. But Occupy has gotten a bad rap lately, with encampments overstaying their welcome (New Haven being a recent example)  and the lack of a clear message. Maybe it’s not enough to simply say they want “change”, but it’s better than nothing.

You can read my love letter to a vision of a more just America. I still agree with the Occupiers that too few in this country control too much. And I think that most Americans don’t understand the magnitude of what this movemnt is trying to accomplish. They are going up against Bank of America and Newscorp. They’re going up against Disney for heaven’s sake. Who presumes to gaze upon the face of Mickey and live??

Corporations control money and the media and the message and I believe that could destroy us. Amassing capital simply cannot be the highest good in a society that calls itself moral – or in a culture that hopes to survive.

We have to organize our economy somehow. I’m not saying capitalism – or at least free enterprise – have to go out the window completely. But we have to stop allowing people of means to create a government and body of laws that keeps them on top and keeps others down.

So on this feast of St Joseph the Worker I’m not letting anyone call me a communist for being dissatisfied with the world as it is (even you, Dad), because my convictions come from a Catholic worldview. I believe in the dignity of work. I believe in the dignity of persons, not the personhood of corporations. I believe that the truth of Jesus Christ  – of liberation, service, and love – is what can set us free. I believe in the Reign of God, where justice and love prevail, not yet actualized but already stirring in the lives of those who hunger and thirst for justice. And I believe we have a responsibility to nudge that Reign into visibility when we can, all the while praying “Thy Will Be Done”.

Mouthing the Words

A few years ago I was at a liturgy in a small, unfamiliar parish in another part of the state. As usual, I did my best not to sing so loudly that I stuck out from the rest of the congregation, but I still sang as clearly as I usually do. Processing to communion we were singing You Are Mine (to which, of course, I know all the words), and the young man in front of me, a few steps from the communion station, turned around and whispered “Nice job!”

Singing has always been easy for me, and I enjoy it. Fortunately, I also get paid to do it. Weekends you can often find me at the front of one parish or another, raising my holy hand and smiling wide in hopes that those assembled with me to worship will also raise their voices in song.

There’s a look I get from some communities where singing is not the norm. It is a hostile, challenging look that says “no matter how hard you try you are not going to get us to sing with you”. This always disheartens me. I am happiest when I am not needed, that is, when everyone is singing so confidently and and enthusiastically that I can’t be heard over them.

Recently at mass I wasn’t hearing a thing from the congregation when I raised my hand to invite them to sing. During the Gloria I thought “this is going to be a long afternoon”. Mine felt like the only voice in the church, and I felt guilty and foolish, like I was putting on a concert when we were supposed to be praying together.

During the Sanctus, I noticed something: everyone was moving their lips. I couldn’t hear sound from them, but nearly every person I could see was at least mouthing the words. Maybe they didn’t want to raise their voices because they felt exposed in the half-full church. Maybe their throats hurt. Maybe they don’t like singing, or they’re not used to it. But still, they were doing something. They were mouthing the words.

I can’t get frustrated with those who don’t do the things that come naturally to me. In the same way I have to beg mercy of those who can’t understand why I struggle with the virtues I don’t possess or the things I don’t like to do. When faced with the things that we can’t do wholeheartedly, how many of us have the discipline and heart to at least give it a shot?

So I sang, and looked around, and prayed that all of us gathered might keep mouthing the words, if nothing else.

I say that nothing frightens me: How Boston Opera Collaborative changed my life

I’m writing this post today because of an upcoming event for a group dear to my heart.

Fun fact: I used to be president of an opera company. But we’ll get to that.

When I finished my Master of Music degree I had a lot going for me.

To Love God is a Wonderful Journey: My love for John Paul I

Poor, forgotten John Paul I,  il sorriso di Dio. The first time I googled “John Paul I”, it asked me “do you mean John Paul II”? It seems that the only folks who do remember him are the conspiracy theorists who insist his short papacy was ended by something other than natural causes.

I can’t say I know a lot about him, other than that he was smiling, positive, beloved, and that he spoke often of love. But I love an underdog, and I feel bad that he is overshadowed by the papal megastars who followed him.

In truth, I’m not much of a papist, and contrary to popular belief I don’t have to be. While respect for the pope and recognition of his authority as the successor of Peter and universal Pontiff are an element of Catholic faith, hero worship and treating each word as if they were Scripture is not. Still, I have my heroes – John XXIII being the greatest among them.

There is nothing more natural than being attracted to those who are similar to you, and there is nothing more healthy for the Church than to be led by a chain of Popes who are wildly different. I feel a great spiritual affinity for the Smiling Pope, the Smile of God. And I wanted you to know about him.

Who are your spiritual heroes?

The Doorway into Thanks

Praying 

by Mary Oliver

 

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

 

a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway

 

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

 

For the longest time I knew nothing about prayer, or thought that I didn’t. Prayer was something pious people did, those kids who went to Eucharistic adoration and smugly genuflected deeper than everyone else. Me, I just wrote to God sometimes at night, and I listened.

There were times when life was harder, and darker, and I wasn’t slapped in the face by grace as often as I had been before. Inspired moments were fewer. My prayers were angry and confused, a lot of “Make me whole” and “why me?” and “where are you?”

These are not the prayers that win contests. They may not even be prayers that get us through the night, or day. It felt futile to offer the darkness to God, over and over, but it was all I could do. Or at least I thought it was.

I have always left open that doorway into thanks. I can’t take any credit for this. I was given a gift of faith as surely as the gifts of prudence and cleanliness were withheld from me. Even when life was very dark I was waiting for whatever was on the other side of the door. I’ve bullied myself into maintaining a heart that is ready for gratitude whenever it springs up, that even in darkness seeks the light on the other side of the door.

this isn’t
a contest but the doorway

 

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

(Last night I turned to Mary Oliver for something to think about. She never disappoints.)