This cold and rainy evening I was in the art museum at my alma mater, talking to current students about careers in the arts. There is nothing like being asked “how did you get to where you are?” over and over to get me thinking about that question: How did I get here? And being there with fellow alums - a few of whom I knew as an undergrad - had me thinking the whole way home about how different things were when I was a big musical fish in the wonderful humanistic pond of Boston College.
I have vague recollections of a time before my voice was a commodity. I hadn’t invested a ton of money in it, it wasn’t making me very much money, and I was still getting to know it. People told me my voice was beautiful and I believed them, and it was true. I enjoyed my beautiful voice and used it as often as I could.
If that romantically Edenic memory sounds ridiculous, there’s a reason for that. My relationship with my voice in late adolescence was not pure or innocent. Burdened with deep insecurity, part of me believed that people would only admire or want to be around me if they knew I could sing, and I saw that as the only way of drawing people to me. At the same time, though, I could see through the illusion that there is anything virtuous about having a gift I never asked for, and felt shamed for using a false virtue in hope of attracting people.
I still try to take time to just enjoy my voice, even though using my voice is work for me now. It’s a source of income and a big investment. I have been told a million things about it, and often spent more time picking it apart than celebrating it. I listen to my recordings so many times that I have no idea what they sound like anymore. In order to improve (and to appropriately market myself) I need to think about the things my voice doesn’t do well, and sometimes it causes more anxiety than joy.
At the same time that I have this preoccupation, I feel paradoxically free because I know that it is not what makes me who I am. My voice does not make me holy or lovable. It is an unexplainable blessing that I can never earn but that I do my best to serve. I don’t need to have people hear me or know that I have this particular skill because I know that at the most fundamental level it’s nothing special.
When I was an undergrad there was so much I didn’t know, for better and for worse. Because everyone’s journey is different, it doesn’t make much sense to share all of that at a career night. What I was able to share was that I wake up every day and do what I love. That I’ve never had a thing planned for my future and have just made the best decisions I can, day by day. That you need to work your tail off to make it, and you had better find other things that can give you joy because a career is never going to love you back.
My voice is who I am, and at the same time it’s not, and I can live with that.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Monday, November 1, 2010
A cold and broken hallelujah
Every year my mother takes great delight in ‘changing the clocks’, because rather than fuss with the hands on the clocks in the great room she actually switches the clocks, pulling out the winter clocks and stuffing the summer ones away. With the time change coming even later than usual this year, I have spent the last few mornings stumbling around trying to get out of the house in the dark, going so far as to walk directly into a door late last week.
Leaving my late afternoon class a few days ago the teacher commented that starting soon the sun would be going down closer to the beginning of class than the end. I looked out the windows of the new class building as dusk fell at dismissal time and thought “for someone who gets sad in the fall, I’m doing OK. The sun is setting and my mood is all right”.
Then I got in the car and put on Rufus Wainright and that all changed.
The first time I remember having an emotional response to the autumn was while I was still in elementary school. I felt nostalgic and a little melancholy and very confused about why these feelings had seemed to come from nowhere. Even now, away from the town where I spent the autumns of my youth, the smell - rare in the city - of burning leaves takes me back to that revelatory afternoon on the swingset, a little amazed that the seasons could affect me so powerfully, and a little, well, sad.
Every year I think maybe this is the year I can write about seasonal depression, and despite always writing a bit that springs from it, I can never quite write about it. For a while it was because I was embarrassed and ashamed, but that’s not really it any more. Now when I try to write about it I become totally stuck, because I just don’t understand it.
Can I live with that mystery? I have no idea why, at this time of year, every goodbye and disappointment I’ve ever had becomes wrapped up in each sunset. I don’t know why the way the falling leaves match the stripe of yellow down the center of the road makes my eyes well up through all of October. Maybe this is just when I mark the passage of time - New Year’s never really did it for me, but I can mark the time by each somber, sensitive fall.
Tonight’s sunset, marking the bridge between the commemorations of All Saints and All Souls, really threw me, even though I was sitting in a room with a bunch of other people talking about nothing that had anything to do with sadness or darkness. Without my knowledge or will thoughts crept in of those who are on the other side whose closeness we celebrate these days. There’s a reason so many cultures remember their dead this time of year. I beg the forgiveness of my Southern Hemisphere/Equatorial friends, on whom some of the fall-in-New-England imagery might be lost.
The evenings get dark and I do too. Even though I can’t explain the darkness, I fear a part of me has started to take comfort in the yearly ritual of staring out the window at sunset, brooding, or as Hopkins writes in verses that could have been written for me “grieving over Goldengrove unleaving”. Despite the heartache there’s something oddly beautiful about being pushed and pulled by nature, year after year. I didn’t always know what I know now: that this will pass, and that April will see us all alive again. Despite Eliot’s claim that April is the cruelest month, I know the cruelest is October, mixing memory and desire even as our dull roots grow duller, well aware of the long sleep that is coming next.
I have spent some stretches in very dark places, and my spirituality has been shaped by that. Life is hard; it’s a blessing anyway. We are confronted with incomprehensible suffering; God exists anyway. Sadness can stretch us across herself like we’re prisoners on a rack; we worship anyway. In our cold and broken halleluiah faith breaks forth, quietly resolute, sometimes too weak to even be a sign of determination, just there, in a silent confidence that defies the present pain.
Spring and Fall: to a Young Child
--G. M. Hopkins
Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By & by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep & know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
Leaving my late afternoon class a few days ago the teacher commented that starting soon the sun would be going down closer to the beginning of class than the end. I looked out the windows of the new class building as dusk fell at dismissal time and thought “for someone who gets sad in the fall, I’m doing OK. The sun is setting and my mood is all right”.
Then I got in the car and put on Rufus Wainright and that all changed.
The first time I remember having an emotional response to the autumn was while I was still in elementary school. I felt nostalgic and a little melancholy and very confused about why these feelings had seemed to come from nowhere. Even now, away from the town where I spent the autumns of my youth, the smell - rare in the city - of burning leaves takes me back to that revelatory afternoon on the swingset, a little amazed that the seasons could affect me so powerfully, and a little, well, sad.
Every year I think maybe this is the year I can write about seasonal depression, and despite always writing a bit that springs from it, I can never quite write about it. For a while it was because I was embarrassed and ashamed, but that’s not really it any more. Now when I try to write about it I become totally stuck, because I just don’t understand it.
Can I live with that mystery? I have no idea why, at this time of year, every goodbye and disappointment I’ve ever had becomes wrapped up in each sunset. I don’t know why the way the falling leaves match the stripe of yellow down the center of the road makes my eyes well up through all of October. Maybe this is just when I mark the passage of time - New Year’s never really did it for me, but I can mark the time by each somber, sensitive fall.
Tonight’s sunset, marking the bridge between the commemorations of All Saints and All Souls, really threw me, even though I was sitting in a room with a bunch of other people talking about nothing that had anything to do with sadness or darkness. Without my knowledge or will thoughts crept in of those who are on the other side whose closeness we celebrate these days. There’s a reason so many cultures remember their dead this time of year. I beg the forgiveness of my Southern Hemisphere/Equatorial friends, on whom some of the fall-in-New-England imagery might be lost.
The evenings get dark and I do too. Even though I can’t explain the darkness, I fear a part of me has started to take comfort in the yearly ritual of staring out the window at sunset, brooding, or as Hopkins writes in verses that could have been written for me “grieving over Goldengrove unleaving”. Despite the heartache there’s something oddly beautiful about being pushed and pulled by nature, year after year. I didn’t always know what I know now: that this will pass, and that April will see us all alive again. Despite Eliot’s claim that April is the cruelest month, I know the cruelest is October, mixing memory and desire even as our dull roots grow duller, well aware of the long sleep that is coming next.
I have spent some stretches in very dark places, and my spirituality has been shaped by that. Life is hard; it’s a blessing anyway. We are confronted with incomprehensible suffering; God exists anyway. Sadness can stretch us across herself like we’re prisoners on a rack; we worship anyway. In our cold and broken halleluiah faith breaks forth, quietly resolute, sometimes too weak to even be a sign of determination, just there, in a silent confidence that defies the present pain.
Spring and Fall: to a Young Child
--G. M. Hopkins
Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By & by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep & know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Great women are like meteors
Last week I took yet another tour of the state house, an activity that always brings my civics nerd-dom to the fore. I love history, politics, policy, and majestic buildings, so this oft-repeated trip inspires and interests me. I have no illusions about the inclusion of my people in most of Massachusetts history: women, Catholics, and even the iconic Irish were absent from most of the decision making for a large portion of the history of the Commonwealth. So I know how significant it is when we walk by the sign on Senate President Therese Murray's door, and my heart aches a little when we stand in the House chambers, beneath a ceiling encircled with names of Massachusetts greatest (white, anglo-saxon, protestant) men.
Most days I can be patient about the progress women have made. Things are easier for me than they were for my mother, and were easier for her than for her mother. I went to a college my mother couldn't have gone to and have the freedom to live on my own, have a job that I love, and basically do what I want. Things are OK.
At the very end of the tour, in a side hallway near the stairs, we viewed the Portrait Gallery of six of the Commonwealth's most extraordinary women. It was a challenge to listen to our tour guide and read the quotes and look at the portraits. I was struck by this quotation of Lucy Stone:
In education, in marriage, in religion, in everything disappointment is the lot of women. It shall be the business of my life to deepen that disappointment in every woman's heart until she bows down to it no longer.
Then I heard the tour guide say "Not only does this gallery honor these six women, it honors all women". I'm sure our well-spoken and bright guide was just following her script, and I'm sure most of the people I was with were thinking "isn't that nice", but I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying something snide. Don't pretend that portraints of six women make up for centuries of grave injustice, and don't imaging that just because Lucy Stone was a woman, she'd be content with sharing her honor with everyone else just to be nice. This is better than nothing, but it's not even close to justice.
I'm glad we honor Dorothea Dix and Florence Luscomb and the other leaders whose faces are on those brass plaques. In no way does that make it right that so many people's voices were excluded from decision making just because of their gender (or race, or religion). It doesn't make it right that we criticize our successful female politicians for being pushy or unbecoming, and then ridicule the other half who we keep in the public eye in order to have someone at whom to laugh and gawk.
Most days I can be patient about the progress women have made. Things are easier for me than they were for my mother, and were easier for her than for her mother. I went to a college my mother couldn't have gone to and have the freedom to live on my own, have a job that I love, and basically do what I want. Things are OK.
At the very end of the tour, in a side hallway near the stairs, we viewed the Portrait Gallery of six of the Commonwealth's most extraordinary women. It was a challenge to listen to our tour guide and read the quotes and look at the portraits. I was struck by this quotation of Lucy Stone:
In education, in marriage, in religion, in everything disappointment is the lot of women. It shall be the business of my life to deepen that disappointment in every woman's heart until she bows down to it no longer.
Then I heard the tour guide say "Not only does this gallery honor these six women, it honors all women". I'm sure our well-spoken and bright guide was just following her script, and I'm sure most of the people I was with were thinking "isn't that nice", but I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying something snide. Don't pretend that portraints of six women make up for centuries of grave injustice, and don't imaging that just because Lucy Stone was a woman, she'd be content with sharing her honor with everyone else just to be nice. This is better than nothing, but it's not even close to justice.
I'm glad we honor Dorothea Dix and Florence Luscomb and the other leaders whose faces are on those brass plaques. In no way does that make it right that so many people's voices were excluded from decision making just because of their gender (or race, or religion). It doesn't make it right that we criticize our successful female politicians for being pushy or unbecoming, and then ridicule the other half who we keep in the public eye in order to have someone at whom to laugh and gawk.
Earlier that same day, at the JFK Library, I saw an inscription Jackie Kennedy wrote in a gift to her husband: "great men are like meteors, consuming themselves as they light the earth". Fifty years after she quoted Napoleon, women deserve their chance to be meteoric and powerful - and it's not because they are women but because they are human, skilled (or not), wise (or not), strong (or not) like all other humans. The meteoric trajectory is not for every woman nor is it for every man, but everyone deserves a chance to have her photo among the legislative leadership, her name painted above the house chamber, her visage sculpted in bronze.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Keep turning it 'til it fits
When I was quite young I had a puzzle of Bert and Ernie that I really liked. It was a young child's puzzle with only a few thick cardboard pieces and often my mother would help me put it together. If I would get stumped with what piece went where, she would instruct me to pick up a piece, try it in a certain spot, and "keep turning it 'til it fits".
Somehow that expression made it into our familial language, and I still think of it frequently, much more often than I think of that flimsy puzzle that has surely outlived its usefulness just as surely as it still lives in the corner of the basement my mother reserves for memories.
I wonder if our lives are puzzles, and we spend most of our lives trying to get the pieces to fit. Few of us live in a constant state of disshevelment, but most of us know the feeling of playing whack-a-mole with our lives: when we finally get one thing in order, another pops up.
So we keep trying to fit our pieces in together. As soon as we find the right place for prudence, prayer becomes displaced. Then we get charity just as it ought to be and the jigsawed edges of chastity protrude from what should be the puzzles' smooth edge. There's a part of each of us that knows what the puzzle is supposed to look like and isn't satisfied until it is just so. A part of us knows that holy = whole.
It has been suggested to me before that since I work in ministry I 'teach virtue'. That could not be farther from the truth. Teaching virtue is impossible: virtue lies in all of us, and at best I walk with people as they uncover it. But finding our virtue is not so much a clearing away the clutter but turning traits the right way, making foul tempers into zealousness, shyness into contemplative patience, mouths inclined to harmful chatter into those that blabber the goodness of God.
I doubt the work of our turning ever stops. Is an outcome of original sin that we are never put together quite right this side of eternity? If in my minds eye I can see what the puzzle should look like - or even if I can't - I can keep feeling my way to its completion. No discouragement or apparent failure can stop me plowing forward, piece by piece, if I just keep turning it 'til it fits.
Somehow that expression made it into our familial language, and I still think of it frequently, much more often than I think of that flimsy puzzle that has surely outlived its usefulness just as surely as it still lives in the corner of the basement my mother reserves for memories.
I wonder if our lives are puzzles, and we spend most of our lives trying to get the pieces to fit. Few of us live in a constant state of disshevelment, but most of us know the feeling of playing whack-a-mole with our lives: when we finally get one thing in order, another pops up.
So we keep trying to fit our pieces in together. As soon as we find the right place for prudence, prayer becomes displaced. Then we get charity just as it ought to be and the jigsawed edges of chastity protrude from what should be the puzzles' smooth edge. There's a part of each of us that knows what the puzzle is supposed to look like and isn't satisfied until it is just so. A part of us knows that holy = whole.
It has been suggested to me before that since I work in ministry I 'teach virtue'. That could not be farther from the truth. Teaching virtue is impossible: virtue lies in all of us, and at best I walk with people as they uncover it. But finding our virtue is not so much a clearing away the clutter but turning traits the right way, making foul tempers into zealousness, shyness into contemplative patience, mouths inclined to harmful chatter into those that blabber the goodness of God.
I doubt the work of our turning ever stops. Is an outcome of original sin that we are never put together quite right this side of eternity? If in my minds eye I can see what the puzzle should look like - or even if I can't - I can keep feeling my way to its completion. No discouragement or apparent failure can stop me plowing forward, piece by piece, if I just keep turning it 'til it fits.
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Lessons from the latest race
One of the reasons I love running is that it gives me long stretches of time alone with my thoughts. I have designed retreats, planned events, and written lots of posts and poetry while thumping along on my training runs and races. Yesterday I completed the Hartford Half-Marathon for the fifth year in a row. Usually finishing races yields some of my trademark Profound Thoughts, but yesterday was an anomaly – a more difficult course added to poorer preparation yielded a distracted and miserable race. Still, there were a few takeaways. What I learned from this race:
1. Spectators never expect you to cheer for them first.
Without going in to great detail, I would like to apologize to the meek young woman in the Boston College sweatshirt who I apparently scared out of her mind. My bad.
2. “The new course moved all the hills to the front of the race” is code for “the first nine miles are hilly as hell!”
So yeah, this course was hilly, and hilly in all the worst areas. We would turn onto a residential street, suddenly be all crunched together, and hill would come up and everyone would change their pace in a different way. Chaos. I honestly don’t know why they even mentioned the hills when they were explaining the new route. What would have just been a more difficult route now feels like a bait and switch since they tried to convince us it was going to be easier. I should admit, some of the blame falls on we runners – did I really think that the run into Asylum Hill between miles 11 and 12 was going to be flat?
3. Sometimes the most trying experiences result in success, not failure.
OK, I know I promised not to get all Profound Thoughts ™ about this, but it can’t be avoided. I was miserable yesterday. Everything hurt. I hadn’t trained enough, I hadn’t done enough hills, my feet, thighs, knees, and hips were all screaming by the mid-point of the race. As I stumbled through Elizabeth Park , what was supposed to be the most beautiful part of the race, I was mad at everyone: myself for not training enough, the people who kept me late at work Friday so I had to miss packet pick up and go in at 6:30 am on race day, those organizers who changed the course, the other runners who kept me from starting off at a comfortable pace, and God for making everything athletic so damn hard for me my whole life. I wanted to show everyone how badly I’d been wronged. I wanted to punish them by failing.
But then I checked my timer. I was making better pace than I ever had, and that tiny part of me that had enough energy to be positive said “don’t waste this by crapping out now”. I did my best to turn my brain off and keep running hard. In the last two years or so I have cut almost a minute off of my mile and my body still doesn’t know what to do with that – it knows it is working harder than it is used to, but also knows it can’t slow down.
I thundered across the finish line without having cried once – quite a feat for me during my most difficult runs. I finally was able to check my time today and it was 20 seconds faster than my time on my last race. Barely a PR, but I’ll take it.
I run because it is hard for me, and when I succeed I know it is not because I am just doing what comes naturally – it is because I am striving to accomplish something in the field that challenges me the most. Sometimes I want an excuse, a reason why I can’t do what I’ve set out to do, and it is tempting to give in to the frustration of not being naturally gifted. Then, just as I think my body and my pride can’t take any more challenge I turn the corner into the park, run through the crowds to the Arch, and have something else of which to be proud.
1. Spectators never expect you to cheer for them first.
Without going in to great detail, I would like to apologize to the meek young woman in the Boston College sweatshirt who I apparently scared out of her mind. My bad.
2. “The new course moved all the hills to the front of the race” is code for “the first nine miles are hilly as hell!”
So yeah, this course was hilly, and hilly in all the worst areas. We would turn onto a residential street, suddenly be all crunched together, and hill would come up and everyone would change their pace in a different way. Chaos. I honestly don’t know why they even mentioned the hills when they were explaining the new route. What would have just been a more difficult route now feels like a bait and switch since they tried to convince us it was going to be easier. I should admit, some of the blame falls on we runners – did I really think that the run into Asylum Hill between miles 11 and 12 was going to be flat?
3. Sometimes the most trying experiences result in success, not failure.
OK, I know I promised not to get all Profound Thoughts ™ about this, but it can’t be avoided. I was miserable yesterday. Everything hurt. I hadn’t trained enough, I hadn’t done enough hills, my feet, thighs, knees, and hips were all screaming by the mid-point of the race. As I stumbled through Elizabeth Park , what was supposed to be the most beautiful part of the race, I was mad at everyone: myself for not training enough, the people who kept me late at work Friday so I had to miss packet pick up and go in at 6:30 am on race day, those organizers who changed the course, the other runners who kept me from starting off at a comfortable pace, and God for making everything athletic so damn hard for me my whole life. I wanted to show everyone how badly I’d been wronged. I wanted to punish them by failing.
But then I checked my timer. I was making better pace than I ever had, and that tiny part of me that had enough energy to be positive said “don’t waste this by crapping out now”. I did my best to turn my brain off and keep running hard. In the last two years or so I have cut almost a minute off of my mile and my body still doesn’t know what to do with that – it knows it is working harder than it is used to, but also knows it can’t slow down.
I thundered across the finish line without having cried once – quite a feat for me during my most difficult runs. I finally was able to check my time today and it was 20 seconds faster than my time on my last race. Barely a PR, but I’ll take it.
I run because it is hard for me, and when I succeed I know it is not because I am just doing what comes naturally – it is because I am striving to accomplish something in the field that challenges me the most. Sometimes I want an excuse, a reason why I can’t do what I’ve set out to do, and it is tempting to give in to the frustration of not being naturally gifted. Then, just as I think my body and my pride can’t take any more challenge I turn the corner into the park, run through the crowds to the Arch, and have something else of which to be proud.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
I contain multitudes
I'm a vegetarian with glue traps in her kitchen.
I'm sure Walt Whitman won't mind me stealing his line to add "I contain multitudes".
The best answer to this mouse problem is the decidedly inhumane sticky trap. I'm not thrilled about it, but it's what I have to do and it doesn't totally offend my morals. So when the exterminator put down the traps, I didn't complain.
But as a vegetarian, isn't that something that "people like me" don't do? That supposition is one major reason I don't talk about my food choice: I don't need anyone making assumptions or judgments. Because I self-identify with a number of groups, I fall prey to those assumptions all the time. Certain things are expected from "that" group, whatever "that" may be.
When I was a teenager I spend a lot of time trying to be a variety of "that"s, using an image as my guide and basing my choices on whatever image I aspired to at the time: rebel, punk, social radical, even that most elusive of all images - normal.
Eventually I got sick of my rebellion always getting me in trouble, I discovered I don't have the stomach for radical poverty, and I spend enough time with people to discover there is no normal. That's when the hard work began: getting to know myself well enough that being me could be my ideal. The behaviors I ruled out weren't avoided because they didn't fit my image, but because they didn't match my integrity. The statement changed from "I'm not that kind of person" to "that's not me".
To be sure, there's a place for "that kind of person" in our choices. Kids don't lie because we teach them not to look up to liars. Catholics avoid meat on Fridays in Lent because "that's what Catholics do". And sometimes I put down a leather item in the shoe store because "I'm not that kind of person" (and frankly the dirty looks aren't worth it).
We can do better than that. A person is much more likely to follow their conviction if they truly believe that a lie is a betrayal of the credulousness of another person, and not just another thing on the list of actions "we don't do". Still I won't begrudge someone not lying "just because" - or even only because they over heard one of my "there's nothing I hate more than a filthy liar" speeches.
Occasionally one of more outrageous comments or actions will earn the shocked response "but you're a religion teacher!" as if that vocation came alongside a basket of other qualities that society has deemed appropriate for good Christian ladies. My goal is never to scandalize, but I know from experience how painful it is to try to fit into a mold and I'm not going to do it, no matter how pious the mold.
Instead, I mold myself according to my conscience, prayer, and the guidance of my community. Chances are the person I become won't fit one of the world's molds. I trust that somewhere there is a me-shaped-mold, with just the right fit for a loud-laughing Catholic, a left-brained artist, a complacent rebel, a mouse-killing vegetarian.
I'm sure Walt Whitman won't mind me stealing his line to add "I contain multitudes".
The best answer to this mouse problem is the decidedly inhumane sticky trap. I'm not thrilled about it, but it's what I have to do and it doesn't totally offend my morals. So when the exterminator put down the traps, I didn't complain.
But as a vegetarian, isn't that something that "people like me" don't do? That supposition is one major reason I don't talk about my food choice: I don't need anyone making assumptions or judgments. Because I self-identify with a number of groups, I fall prey to those assumptions all the time. Certain things are expected from "that" group, whatever "that" may be.
When I was a teenager I spend a lot of time trying to be a variety of "that"s, using an image as my guide and basing my choices on whatever image I aspired to at the time: rebel, punk, social radical, even that most elusive of all images - normal.
Eventually I got sick of my rebellion always getting me in trouble, I discovered I don't have the stomach for radical poverty, and I spend enough time with people to discover there is no normal. That's when the hard work began: getting to know myself well enough that being me could be my ideal. The behaviors I ruled out weren't avoided because they didn't fit my image, but because they didn't match my integrity. The statement changed from "I'm not that kind of person" to "that's not me".
To be sure, there's a place for "that kind of person" in our choices. Kids don't lie because we teach them not to look up to liars. Catholics avoid meat on Fridays in Lent because "that's what Catholics do". And sometimes I put down a leather item in the shoe store because "I'm not that kind of person" (and frankly the dirty looks aren't worth it).
We can do better than that. A person is much more likely to follow their conviction if they truly believe that a lie is a betrayal of the credulousness of another person, and not just another thing on the list of actions "we don't do". Still I won't begrudge someone not lying "just because" - or even only because they over heard one of my "there's nothing I hate more than a filthy liar" speeches.
Occasionally one of more outrageous comments or actions will earn the shocked response "but you're a religion teacher!" as if that vocation came alongside a basket of other qualities that society has deemed appropriate for good Christian ladies. My goal is never to scandalize, but I know from experience how painful it is to try to fit into a mold and I'm not going to do it, no matter how pious the mold.
Instead, I mold myself according to my conscience, prayer, and the guidance of my community. Chances are the person I become won't fit one of the world's molds. I trust that somewhere there is a me-shaped-mold, with just the right fit for a loud-laughing Catholic, a left-brained artist, a complacent rebel, a mouse-killing vegetarian.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
We are unprofitable servants, we have done what we were obliged to do
When you have done all you have been commanded,
say, 'We are unprofitable servants;
we have done what we were obliged to do.' (Luke 17: 10)
I distinctly remember the first time I noticed these verses, which must have been two Cycle Cs ago. They left a strong impression, both because they captured so perfectly a sentiment I share, and because they seem harsh and counter-cultural. I almost felt guilty for agreeing with the idea that we don’t deserve a pat on the back for discipleship or moral behavior.
This is the type of attitude that gives Catholics a reputation, and I don’t care. Obligation is an important part of our lives. There are things we do simply because they are that which should be done. I run into a lot of people who think the purpose of religion or worship is to make us feel all warm and squishy inside. I’m not wise enough to say what the “purpose” is, but it ain’t that. To congratulate ourselves on our faithfulness is not the same as to affirm the grace of faith. We can be content with our faith and our deeds and still be unprofitable – perhaps we can never truly exceed what we are obliged to do because God’s expectations of us are so high?
Paul writes in today’s reading from 2 Timothy to “to stir into flame the gift of God that you have...For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather of power and love and self-control” (1: 6-17). We are endowed with great spiritual gifts, every one of us, and we choose whether to stir them into flame or to cower and let them decay. Claiming our gifts is dangerous business, because it makes us agents in the world. Our power, inspired by love and tempered by self-control, makes us capable of doing every good thing that God expects of us.
The first reading today is from the small-but-mighty book of Habbakuk. The prophet cries out to the Lord, lamenting the destruction and violence surrounding him. The Lord responds:
Write down the vision clearly upon the tablets,
so that one can read it readily.
For the vision still has its time,
presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint;
if it delays, wait for it,
it will surely come, it will not be late. (2:2-3)
Living in hope gives us a vision of what the world could be, with all people responding to the invitation of grace and living together in love and charity. We write this vision on the tablets of our lives, doing our best to manifest the hope that lives inside of us. This is what is expected of us, and may even be what we’re made for. Our labors toward the fulfillment our mission and duty may give us plenty to be proud of, but are nothing more than what we are required to do.
say, 'We are unprofitable servants;
we have done what we were obliged to do.' (Luke 17: 10)
I distinctly remember the first time I noticed these verses, which must have been two Cycle Cs ago. They left a strong impression, both because they captured so perfectly a sentiment I share, and because they seem harsh and counter-cultural. I almost felt guilty for agreeing with the idea that we don’t deserve a pat on the back for discipleship or moral behavior.
This is the type of attitude that gives Catholics a reputation, and I don’t care. Obligation is an important part of our lives. There are things we do simply because they are that which should be done. I run into a lot of people who think the purpose of religion or worship is to make us feel all warm and squishy inside. I’m not wise enough to say what the “purpose” is, but it ain’t that. To congratulate ourselves on our faithfulness is not the same as to affirm the grace of faith. We can be content with our faith and our deeds and still be unprofitable – perhaps we can never truly exceed what we are obliged to do because God’s expectations of us are so high?
Paul writes in today’s reading from 2 Timothy to “to stir into flame the gift of God that you have...For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather of power and love and self-control” (1: 6-17). We are endowed with great spiritual gifts, every one of us, and we choose whether to stir them into flame or to cower and let them decay. Claiming our gifts is dangerous business, because it makes us agents in the world. Our power, inspired by love and tempered by self-control, makes us capable of doing every good thing that God expects of us.
The first reading today is from the small-but-mighty book of Habbakuk. The prophet cries out to the Lord, lamenting the destruction and violence surrounding him. The Lord responds:
Write down the vision clearly upon the tablets,
so that one can read it readily.
For the vision still has its time,
presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint;
if it delays, wait for it,
it will surely come, it will not be late. (2:2-3)
Living in hope gives us a vision of what the world could be, with all people responding to the invitation of grace and living together in love and charity. We write this vision on the tablets of our lives, doing our best to manifest the hope that lives inside of us. This is what is expected of us, and may even be what we’re made for. Our labors toward the fulfillment our mission and duty may give us plenty to be proud of, but are nothing more than what we are required to do.
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