Every boot that tramped in battle, every cloak rolled in blood

The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom
a light has shone.
You have brought them abundant joy
and great rejoicing,
as they rejoice before you as at the harvest,
as people make merry when dividing spoils.
For the yoke that burdened them,
the pole on their shoulder,
and the rod of their taskmaster
you have smashed, as on the day of Midian.
For every boot that tramped in battle,
every cloak rolled in blood,
will be burned as fuel for flames. - Isaiah 9: 1-5

Last night, as I sat at the midnight-now-10-pm mass, my second mass of four over this feast, surrounded by poinsettia and wearing jewelry that makes me think of my family, Isaiah 9: 5 jolted me out of my tired, carol-soaked mindlessness just before I headed up to the ambo to sing a peppy psalm.

Every boot that tramped in battle, every cloak rolled in blood... I wouldn't be the first person to comment on the domestication of the Scripture. I'm not an expert on the prophetic books, and like too many people who have studied Scripture I feel like that precludes me from being moved by passages I don't know inside and out. That verse was so rich that I couldn't help but be shocked - cloaks rolled in blood, boots stomping through warfare: where can the promised one meet us if we don't know such experiences?

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free,and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord." - Luke 4: 18-19

If what we celebrate today - the coming of God into the world as a human like us - is tied up with this message of liberation, what does it have to offer us who have not been oppressed. It's trendy to say that we need to be spiritually liberated, or that we are oppressed by our own bad attitudes, but that reads a lot into the message that Isaiah is drenched in: that God is on the side of those who suffer and has come to suffer with them.

In a realistic assessment, my life has seen a share of suffering, but nothing like the suffering of those in Isaiah or Jesus' historical contexts. I wore pearls to mass last night and was well compensated for singing in a warm, neat church and being highly praised afterward. How can I hear the message of deliverance when I'm not quite convinced there is anything from which I need to be delivered? And if I don't practice the art of being reliant on God for salvation, how will I know to whom to turn when I know need?

Christ came in an unexpected form to raise up those who are lowly, to cast the mighty from their thrones, to set captives free. How do we welcome the unexpected when we live expected lives? I am blessed that the times I have known brokenness my heart has turned to faith and hope in my need. That inclination did not come through my own virtue but through grace. That I have never had a boot that tramped in battle or a cloak rolled in blood is also a sign of my blessedness, but it leaves me at times unable to hear the message - or perhaps just unable to hold it in my heart.

A Soul that Shouts

One occupational hazard for a church musician is that we rarely come across traditional hymns that are new to us: we’ve literally heard it all before. But just a few years ago I got the gift of a new Advent/Christmas hymn when I heard Gabriel’s Message for the first time. I like the tune (when it’s not done too slowly!), the refrain is catchy, and the poetry is above-average. When I got to church last weekend I was happy to find it on the song sheet.



Like many singers, I have the capacity - either enviable or regrettable - to sing on auto-pilot while thinking about any number of things (for instance, yesterday I discovered I could sing the entire Halleluiah Chorus from memory while deciding what to have for dinner). Last Sunday I found myself analyzing the text to Gabriel’s Message. “Then gentle Mary meekly bowed her head/to me be as it pleaseth God, she said.” At the word "meek" I groaned, thankfully silently, since I was singing into a microphone.

“Mary was that mother mild.” “A Virgin pure both meek and mild/In Bethlehem brought forth her Child” “gentle Mary laid her child”… There are plenty of problems with the idea that all women will feel an unqualified affiliation with Mary, who is often presented as the only role model Christian women are allowed to have. There are even more problems with the relentless stereotyping of Mary as docile and tame. Do we really believe a shrinking violet would have had the nerve to do what she did?

This week we are hearing the Gospel readings from Luke 1, starting with the Annunciation on Monday and concluding with the Canticle of Zechariah. Today’s Gospel is Mary’s Magnificat, an unapologetically bold declaration of praise. This is a saint I can get behind. So with all due respect to late Romantic Marian piety, I’m taking Mary back.

The idea of an ideal woman as meek and submissive may seem like an anachronism, but we’ve kept her alive in our religious iconography, and I don’t think I’m alone in saying that I’m sick of it. Give me a role model who questions an angel, bravely says yes, deals with a life lived in the rumor mill, does some bossy maneuvering at a wedding to restock the bar, and proclaims God’s praise and promises. When my soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord it doesn’t do so timidly - my soul shouts, and there’s a possibility that Mary’s did too.

My other church

I received an unexpected blessing a few weeks ago. It took the form of an email stating "the campus ministers have decided there will be no 9 pm mass on December 19". I conduct and worship with a collegiate musical ensemble every Sunday at an hour that to me seems impossibly late. I've written before about how they inspire me, and the assembly with whom we worship has become an important part of my spiritual life.

Still, for someone who works early Monday mornings, a standing Sunday night gig can be a drag. I was not-so-secretly happy to squeeze one more week out of winter break. Ever busy, I had two other church gigs in my neighborhood this weekend. After last night's 6 pm mass I dashed home, got changed, and drove to the apartment of two newlywed friends who are also hosting another couple at whose wedding I sang and who now live in Germany.

We briefly did the basic "catching up" small talk and then conversation plowed right into education: Jesuit schools, charter schools, diocesan schools, rigor, standards, you name it. As the part moved from the living room to the dinner table we talked about the homilies we'd heard at our parishes that weekend, about how parishes (and their liturgies) feed people (or don't). The Dream Act, Vatican II, the SSPX, a train station in Stuttgart - nothing was outside our purview. We agreed and disagreed, challenged, supported and edified each other. And I thought "here is my other church".

I hold the sacramental life of the Church in a place of highest honor. It is the Church's public prayer made up of particular actions that give us grace. But I can only be as positive as I am about the communal prayer of the Church - its liturgy - because I have experience of church that is intimate, local, and relational.

People often roll their eyes at my devotion, because "the Church" does this or that that they - and maybe even I - don't like. In my heart the Church is not just a series of pronouncements or dogma or the College of Cardinals. My Church has always been my people: my family, my parish, my school, my work, my diocese.

If you don't 'get' community, I don't see how you could 'get' Church, or liturgy. Two nights ago with another group of friends - not from my Catholic circles and not monolithically religious - a dear friend looked around at everyone hollering and laughing in one couples' basement and whispered to me "this is magical". Magical it was. A group of people who a few years prior were strangers are now like family. This is my other church.

I come across people who want to get the Church out of the modern world. Let us go back into the fortress, drape the nuns in black habits, cover the women's heads and put back the altar rail to guard the table from the faithful. Let's bring the Church back to a different era (one we have arbitrarily chosen as 'the most Catholic' - give us the 19th century with indoor plumbing). While we're at it, let's make sure we know who's in and who's out . There are "real" - pure, elect - members of the Body of Christ, and then there's everyone else.

The people on that side of the culture war shout the loudest because they know they have lost. The world has turned and they are still in the past. I don't want an anachronistic Church, frozen in time. I like my Church in the here and now, around all the tables of my life. I recognize the current of grace in which I swim  because of real people and relationships. No old-fashioned fantasy can compete with the living, breathing sanctity of my community drawn together by the Spirit of love.

Socks for Christmas

The Christmas after my apartment was burgled, my brother seized the opportunity to replace some of the items that had been taken. He didn’t buy me a new camera, or a new rosary ring, but hit up his college bookstore for the one thing he knew I couldn’t live without: socks.

Driven by motivations beyond the scope of this post, the burglar(s) had stolen most on my socks, and when my brother presented a new set to me with a mischievous grin after my Christmas morning gigs, I was somewhat relieved. A few days later my Godmother gave me another really nice three-pack of socks, for the same reason. Since then, I have had enough socks.

I was putting on the Fordham socks my brother gave me just the other day, and I smiled because they made me think of him. That same morning I drank my morning coffee from a mug that I had purchased when in Italy with family, and that too had made me smile because of the memories it held. When I wear a hat from my godmother, write with a pen from my father, sleep under an afghan from my grandmother, I have what I need and I have the memory and companionship of those who have provided it for me.

To be sacramental, to find God in water, oil, bread and wine, is to also find God in a pen, a pair of socks, even the set of dental picks that my mother puts in my stocking every year even though I prefer regular floss. I have great appreciation for the purposelessly beautiful – a vase of flowers, my claddagh ring – but what really moves me is the beautifully purposeful. Items I use every day are full of memories, infused with a Love beyond their evident purpose.

By virtue of the Creation & still more of the Incarnation, nothing here below is profane for those who know how to see. –Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Celebrating Christmas

One of the habits I nag my choirs about is singing too much consonant and not enough vowel on any particular word. It’s especially noticeable on words with the “s” sound: one song includes the phrase “this time” repeated on eighth notes, and results in a sputtering hiss upon which even my most sophisticated singers cannot improve.

I faced this challenge from the other side of the conductor’s podium this past weekend, when I had to try to make art out of singing the word “Christmas” over and over. At a certain point I admitted defeat, all the while wondering why I had never before noticed that this word gave choirs so much trouble.

Then I remembered that I conduct liturgical choirs, and we don’t sing about Christmas.

Now, before you get all “war on Christmas”, hear me out. I don’t celebrate Christmas. I celebrate the Nativity of the Lord, the Incarnation, the awesome generosity of a God who became human just like me. I celebrate these realities in the context of a larger year of grace that over the course of a turn of the earth tells the whole wonderful story of our salvation and looks forward to the salvation to come. I try to celebrate these things every day, and the liturgical calendar has given me special days to celebrate them, just in case I forget any part of the story.

When people huff and puff about people forgetting “the meaning of Christmas”, I have to laugh. There are plenty of people who celebrate Christmas by celebrating the celebration. It’s not a commemoration but a celebration, and that’s just how they like it. They didn’t forget anything, and our reminding them is not going to change them any more than their ignoring the origins of the feast would change my observance of the feast.

I sing songs that worship Christmas instead of Christ because it’s gig, and I frankly can’t see much harm in it. I am in the midst of celebrating Advent right now while half of the country is celebrating Christmas. If I could magically force them to wait until December 25th, would that make their celebration the same as my commemoration? We’re not celebrating the same thing.

This post sounds more “us vs. them” than I want to be, because in truth the line between us and them runs through every human heart. But I wish the people who try to fight the war on Christmas would accept that it has already been lost. The holiday has been transformed, and we are left to keep our Christmas as it suits us. We can be aggravated that the word was appropriated, but that is a bell that can’t be unrung. There are two Christmases now.

With every year that goes by I become a little more complacent, but I still maintain my subversive core. At this time of year, it doesn’t yearn to remind everyone that Christmas is about Jesus, or harangue consumers. But it thrills a little to know that I am keeping my Advent and Christmas seasons in my heart and in my faith community, even if the media and the world is suggesting something different. We can keep the traditions and hope that people will join us.

God so loved the world… Nothing anyone can do or say or know or forget or struggle with or insist upon can negate that or improve upon it. All I can do is create small spaces of grace where God can come again. Where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in.

My Lord, What a Morning

What are the chances that on the same morning one decides to sleep a few extra minutes and one's car is a ten minute walk from the house, one would discover dampness seeping through the ceiling tiles in one's apartment and gathering in puddles on the floor?

If the chances are unfavorable, then I beat the odds today with just such an unfortunate discovery. I had my coat on and my bag packed, and had to drop everything to frantically clean so that when someone came to look at the leak they wouldn't immediately assume the apartment had been ransacked. After a surprising phone call from a maintenance guy announcing "I'm outside of your building...can you let me in?" I dashed home from work just before lunch.

As we were going into the apartment he told me that the upstairs apartment had an overflowed sink which had caused the drip and the water damage. I was immediately embarrassed that I hadn't knocked harder on the upstairs neighbors door to ask about the leak in the morning. "I wish you had told me that on the phone, you could have saved yourself a trip", I apologized.

He looked up at the dry-but-stained ceiling tile, and then back at me with a look of astonishment. "Don't you want me to replace that?"

In all honesty, it would never have occurred to me to replace a perfectly good yet hideously ugly ceiling tile. I think my initial response was "geez, if I replaced everything in this apartment that was ugly I'd have my hands full". On my way back to work, after leaving with an agreement that he'd replace the tile (and some others that have been stained for years), I had to laugh at myself, even calling a family member from whom I inherited my tendency to stick it out with the not-ideal-yet-functional.

The desire to conserve resources is a trait that I am stuck with, as evidenced by the watch with a cracked face that I have been wearing for over a year. I could think of worse traits to have. In so many ways I am hung up on beauty - I love liturgy, poetry, music, architecture: all things that rise and fall on the aesthetic. Despite this, I don't make always make beauty a priority in my own life, or even make it available to myself. Is there part of me that takes pride in doing without?

The truth lies somewhere between the two poles. I don't need to live in luxury, but I don't need to live in squalor either. I still am trying to determine how I can be hospitable to myself, making my life more comfortable and beautiful. It may require money, resources, and time. It may require mental commitment to treat myself better (on some days, I think it may require therapy).

During Advent, we look forward to something we can't predict or understand with firm hope that it will be better than what we know. I think I get lazy sometimes, putting my own transformations on hold while I wait for that something better. I consider myself an imaginative person, but can't always imagine improvement. There's certain virtue in being content with what one has, but it needs to be balanced by a vision of something even more beautiful.

At the end of the day

At the end of an off-the-charts exhausting day, one that began with a parking ticket, included mishaps galore and wall hangings crashing to the floor, questions I couldn’t answer and tasks I couldn’t accomplish, I was not far from home tonight when I spied in my rearview mirror the flashing of blue lights, signaling I should pull over.


It wasn’t just blue lights I saw. I saw my insurance going up, a bill to pay. I saw another 10 minute delay before I could fall into my apartment and take off my heels. I saw another way to be disappointed in myself, another reason to feel like I can’t keep it together.

I pulled over, rolled down the window, rested my head against the headrest, and waited. He came around the side of the car and I just looked at him. I couldn’t be clever or cute or cool. Maybe my day was written on my face; I’m not sure, but he kindly, humorously chastised me and sent me on my way.

Mercy. The rest of the way home that word rolled around in my head. I had simply been let off, not because of anything I had done or because I deserved it. Someone else had made a choice about how to treat me, and I, with my head leaned back wearily, had passively accepted that treatment.

I would have accepted anything at that point, but that magnanimity came as a shock. I was powerless. I was too broken down to try to muscle my way to a particular outcome. Someone else chose for me, and the choice they made was mercy.

The last few years have been one long meditation on mercy - how deeply I believe in it, how I can show it to others, how God can show it to others. Never have I considered how it could be shown to me. As I walked down the hill from my car to the apartment tonight, I prayed from my gut that someday I would be shown deeper mercy. I have done worse than traffic violations.

If I hadn’t been so weak, would I have been able to accept the gift? Would I have tried to control the situation and manipulated my way into a less gracious outcome? Is our weakness the only place we find the strength to let ourselves be swallowed up in forgiveness?

A Blessed Unrest

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time. This expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost. The world will not have it.

It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.


No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others. - Martha Graham

I have learned that my books of music tear in a certain place when I throw them aggravatedly across the practice room with my left hand (and for whatever reason, it’s always my left hand). Today during a coaching I added another volume to my collection with torn covers as a result of a minor tantrum.

Everything my coach asked me to do was met with discouraged resistance. “Find a higher resonance” I don’t know how. “Relax the breath” I’ve never been able to do that. “Use less pressure” I don’t know what that means. So after about fifteen minutes of hating the sound of my voice, I abandoned all pretense of maturity and threw my score across the room.

My patient coach was laughing at me, commenting that he had just finished congratulating me on winning an award, and I was still so down on myself that I could barely see straight. What could I say? The award, though an honor, hadn’t satisfied me, didn't mean I was singing as I should be. My last few practice sessions had been crap - I couldn’t sing in tune, couldn’t even out my vibrato, and sometimes couldn’t get through a phrase. What good does an award do me if I sound like garbage? I thought.

I know I don’t sound like garbage. Still, I always want to be better, which is probably not an uncommon desire among people who are already very good at something. Driving home from my coaching a delivery van from “Wacky Wings” rolled up next to me, and the driver gave a creepy stare. Rather than being unnerved I indulged one of my worst habits: Imagining life is easier for other people. “I bet he’s not hung up on evening out his coloratura”, I thought. More remarkable evidence of my emotional maturity.

Sometimes I imagine what it would be like to be satisfied. It’s not that I don’t feel accomplishment: I go to bed most evenings happy about and thankful for all that has happened that day. Yet every night at bedtime I have even higher hopes for tomorrow. What would it be like not to be constantly pushing to improve?

As a teenager I had that quote from Martha Graham hanging above my bed, even though I didn’t really understand the last paragraph. Suddenly tonight, I do. I will live my whole life knowing I can always be just a little bit better, and knowing that improvement is the duty one owes to a gift.

Remembering the Four Churchwomen

"The church's role is to accompany those who suffer the most, and to witness our hope in the resurrection." - Maura Clarke

On December 2 we remembered the four churchwomen killed on that date in El Salvador in 1980. Ita Ford, Maura Clarke, Dorothy Kazel, and Jean Donovan were raped and murdered by members of the Salvadoran military during the terrible period of oppressive violence that lasted in that country for more than a decade.

One news report commemorating the event mentioned that the killings of these women opened the world’s eyes to the atrocities being committed in El Salvador. It’s important that we look at the context in which this awful event occurred, and that there is plenty of blame to go around. Conversations I've had this week about these women often turned to a number of topics- the School of the Americas, Oscar Romero, US involvement in Latin American conflicts (with a healthy dose of my guiltiest pleasure: Reagan-bashing).

At what point do our saints stop being people and become symbols? Can we remember these women as individuals in their own right and as part of a grander narrative? I think there’s a tendency in hagiography (particularly when it comes to women) to miss the trees for the forest. We miss the particularity of their holiness by focusing on What The World Learned From Them.

"I hope you come to find that which gives life a deep meaning for you. Something worth living for--maybe even worth dying for." -Ita Ford

If these women were merely victims caught up in the world-wide turmoil of the late Cold War, if this were only about the lingering effects of European colonization of the Americas, or the American support of oppressive regimes, or a civil war in which few were acting morally, we wouldn’t admire them. Through the memories of those who knew them and through their writings, we find evidence of an integrity that both put them in harm’s way and gave their lives purpose. They knew who they were and what they were called to do, and they didn’t let the world around them muddy the waters.

Integrity is the quality we need from our modern saints. To stand firm among the swirl of our complex world, to remember one’s mission while being bombarded by competing values, to keep the spark of divine love alive in our hearts while being told that we should fill our hearts with only ourselves, that is to be holy. We may think that we have something new going on here, but wasn’t Jesus also caught up in a complex political and social environment, and put to death for refusing to deny who he was?

The four churchwomen followed Jesus by not denying who they were, even though the path they were on led to martyrdom. Their conviction is admirable (or foolish, depending on how you look at it), and shouldn’t be ignored when examining the bigger conflict in which they were caught up. It’s a horror that simply living an honest life of service can lead to a brutal death. We do a disservice to the women’s memories if we focus only on the salaciousness and drama of their death and fail to notice the simple holiness of their lives.

We're all sinners, everyone of us, and a radical change is needed for all of us. - Ita Ford

[I will never be a successful blogger if I don’t lose this habit of thinking things through before I post about them. What good does a post about the four churchwomen do two days after the anniversary of their killings? If I don’t cut out my processing time I may never be a successful blogger, but I just might turn into a writer. ]