Published in today’s Edmonton Journal. This article was inspired by Father Joe Maier’s quote–a quote he attributes to Vincent de Paul– "You must love the poor very much so that they will forgive you for helping them."
Click on the image below or go here for the Edmonton Journal link.
When St. Benedict wrote in his Rule that the life of a monk should be one of continual Lent, I wonder if he was smiling. It’s like a professor telling her first-year university students that they may need to study.
After all, a monk signs on voluntarily to a communal regime of regulated prayer, study and labour. He willingly enters a community that holds, what were once "his things," in common with everyone. He then sets about to eat, sleep, work, and pray, in close proximity, day after day, with the same group of men—and he’s to do all this in a spirit of peace. What about any of this is not Lenten? But then—is there anything not Lenten about living at peace, day after day, in close proximity with any group of people, or even another person?
True, monastic spirituality goes head-on with the chipping away of self-referencing desire. But really, anyone persistently trying to orient their lives by something beyond mere self-actualization is in for a Lenten ride.
And a Lenten ride is pretty much the opposite of those grand conversions that have media buzz and mega-church appeal. Conversions we view with part suspicion and perhaps, part envy. No, souls (and monastics) in for the long-haul, who get up, wash, try, fail, fall down, ask for mercy, get back up and do it all over the next day are the ones who keep the world stitched together. They may not have understood the fuss about a Lenten calendar—they simply go about setting their daily lights on some quiet intuition that they, and humanity itself, cannot make it armed with envy, greed, and resentment.
It was still cold this morning, but the Healy Ford rabbits were chasing each other all around and under the new cars and trucks like they sensed the bubbling up of spring. I stopped and watched this crumple of urban and natural life.
There is something bizarre, not quite right, but necessary, about white-from-winter jack-rabbits playing among red Escorts. It’s like no matter how far we remove ourselves from the soil, no matter how much speed and steel we build around us, the earth finds us. And this morning I loved those rabbits for pointing this out.
Standing on the sidewalk in the morning half light, I got lost in their pell-mell chase. And if it wasn’t for the car horn–was it directed at me?–I’d still be there. Yea, I’m ready for spring.
There were five of us in church this morning–making the cavernous cathedral seem like a grand-canyon, and we few, appear like specks–pack-mules, traversing a dry riverbed at the bottom of mile-high rock walls.
These days I prefer the stark emptiness of the "early-early" service at All Saints. It’s a kind of Lenten solitude.
In other jurisdictions there will be praise songs in the air, motivational sermons, all good and uplifting. But I prefer the starkness as it reminds me that not everybody has that connected anchor of hope. That some are depleted. And that many have had orthodox faith peeled away through a kind of systemic spiritual violence. It also reminds me that more often than not, there is more genuine life and living outside the sanctuary than within.
The dark sanctuary helps me think about an eight year old girl who met all the criteria of being a perfect Christian. Who at a very early age understood the churchly concepts of regeneration, conversion, sanctified growth, and the rest of it. Who recognized the end product of being right–righteous–because she carried all the signs with ease.
And now I’m thinking about that same girl, who, in the midst of being in a three-year haul of chronic neurological pain, was introduced to the possible notion that her experience of pain is linked to an existential signal of her place upon the unnamed Christian-morality-continuum. That is, that highly subtle notion of linkage between ethical purity and thought-piety, and God’s approval, or disapproval. All this readily confirmed through a spiritual language with which she was easily conversant. And now I’m thinking of this same little girl, who, following the lead of her parents, underwent every possible elder-prayer, hand-laying gathering, anointing, purifying, home purging technique, and yet, remained in relentless pain.
Twelve years forward and now I’m reading notes from a young woman, who while studying in the UK is exposed to a plurality of faiths and non-faiths. Forward another year and now I’m listening to the same young woman, almost a year back into chronic neurological pain, a year of "forced" reflection of every belief she had osmotically held, naturally examine a childhood black cloud of self incrimination. A cloud she now rightly identifies as spiritual violence, unwittingly perpetrated by well-meaning adults.
It may be denied in some circles, but there is such a thing as spiritual violence. And whether it’s well-meaning or structurally Machiavellian, harm is done.
Harm is done–whether it’s the perennial patriarchal bias that still erects plexiglass walls around women, or whether it’s the double-bind–"be" but don’t "act"–placed upon lesbian and gay parishioners, or whether it’s prescriptive modes of living and praying that assure your well-being, or whether it’s the passive aggressive withdrawal of the "church body" from anyone who begins moving through a quest of questioning Christian presupposition–dogmas.
Spiritual violence, like all violence, justifies itself by creating a myth of the blame-worthiness of the victimized. Women are assessed as prideful in their "demands" for equality, within the structure. Gays are kept under surveillance for any signs of public affection, immediately construed as flaunting, or attempted "normalization." And questioners, who dare put everything on the table for reevaluation through a new lens, are charged with faithlessness and apostasy.
The church, whether modern-mega, or traditional, sees these as threats and like any nation-state moves to silence the unpatriotic. (It remains to be seen whether the "emergent church" is capable of such incorporation.)
Emerging from my dark canyon–now, from my chair at a riverside coffee house, I watch the sun-soaked air plunge its hands into bags of ice crystals and throw them high in the air, transforming all those frost-flecks into diamonds, as they descend. Their is much hope in that. And there is much hope in the forgiveness offered by that young woman. A young woman, who like myself, loves hoarfrost on bare branches, and their black-capped chickadee visitors.