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A Mood Change

What is life like when we change our mood from “imperative” or “subjunctive” and learn to live in the indicative?

If that question makes no sense to you, don’t worry – I’ll explain along the way.

I love language. I love learning new languages. I love the experience of connection with someone else’s insights, beautifully expressed – all the more so when the words bridge a gap of time and culture. In another life, I could have been a philologist, like Tolkien or Lewis.

I even love grammar. I’m grateful to my high school teachers, who placed such great emphasis upon it. It served me well later in life when I was wrestling with Latin or Greek or German. With my own writing, being grounded in grammar is not unlike the months of training that Daniel underwent with Mr. Miyagi in Karate Kid. Good grammar doesn’t make good writing, but it lays a sturdy foundation, without which creative expression will stagger and stumble.

During my many years of study, I had nine semesters of Latin and five of Greek. I answered hundreds of questions about declension and case, gender and number, tense and mood. My Latin Composition class in 1998 was at times a torture. Dr. Petruccione relentlessly and manically drove us through Bradley’s Arnold, always sporting a bowtie. Twice every week, we submitted our elaborate sentences, translated from English into Latin. If you missed one time, you dropped a letter grade. If you missed a single class, you dropped a letter grade. Late every Friday afternoon, I would wistfully watch my friends go to goof off, while I plodded off to class. The professor could tell that my mind was wandering, but could never catch me!

“And what mood is that, Mister Sakowski?” At the sound of my name, my distracted brain jolted to attention, frantically poring over the last 10 seconds. Somehow, I always come up with the answer. “Subjunctive!” He screwed up his face with a look of “I’ll get you next time!!” But he never did. What can I say? My body pays attention even when it’s not paying attention. I guess hypervigilance has its advantages.

What kind of overachieving college student enrolls in a challenging elective class on late Friday afternoons? The same kind, I suppose, as the high school student who spends four weeks of her high school summer vacation learning Latin, along with seven of her peers. In 1999 and 2000, home for the summer, I taught Latin upon the request of students at my alma mater. We had a blast.

Most of the students were highly competitive overachievers, but one struggled significantly. Honestly, he only passed because I found creative ways to give him points on his tests. It wasn’t hard, because he made up for his lack of Latin prowess with a wicked sense of humor. One section asked them to parse different words. I had to give him bonus points as I howled at his answers:

  Person?  Magister   [“Teacher” – the name the students called me]

  Tense? Very

  Voice? Sometimes mumbles

  Mood? Depends on the day…

As some of you know, verbs can have different “moods” – indicative, imperative, subjunctive, etc. The indicative mood describes or asks about matters of truth (what actually is, was, or will be the case). The imperative mood gives commands. The subjunctive mood expresses the “woulds” and “coulds” and “shoulds.”

When it comes to discipleship and morality, moods also matter! I’ve come to appreciate living in the indicative mood, rather than the imperative or the subjunctive. Eagerly pursuing the good is much more possible when we can tell the truth with kindness, when we can name particularly what actually is without judging it or pressuring it to be a different way. I wrote recently about this calm noticing and accepting of what is as a prerequisite for virtue.

I remember my early years as a pastor. I was overwhelmed and putting all kinds of pressure on myself. I had just returned from Rome, where I had been researching and learning in seven different languages in the writing of my doctoral thesis. Now I was shared as a pastor of two previously separate parishes, and ministering to the Latino community in the region. I had 5-6 Masses each weekend and felt impossibly pulled in three directions. I lived daily with a fear of failure and a felt trapped in powerlessness. No matter how many “shoulds” I checked of my list, it was never good enough – not for many of the people I was trying to serve and not for my harsh inner critic.

Those first several years, I wrote out my Spanish homilies. One memory that is clearer amidst the blur is my struggle to find effective ways in Spanish to translate “should.” That should say something about the content of my preaching at the time – both to others and to myself!

It was only a matter of time before present pressures and past unhealed wounds converged in an unbearable torrent. When I finally reached out for help, I found myself swept away on a journey of transformation that continues nine years later.

I definitely experienced a “mood change” along the way. I’ve been learning and re-learning the joy of living and relating in the indicative mood – accepting what is and engaging it with curiosity and kindness. Then deciding what to do.

Advice is overrated. It is exceedingly rare for me to tell people what to do. I’ve learned to be with, to notice, to point things out, or to pursue by asking curious questions – all in the indicative mood. When I show up that way, the others can tell that there is no judgment, no pressuring them to be a different way than they are now. They feel my genuine curiosity, wanting to get to know them, and delighting in them as they are now.

To those driven by moral imperatives or living in a “should” fortress, this approach seems madness. In their view, you have to get people to do the right thing, or you’re not being a good Christian. Can you feel the fear there?

How  can we discern what is truly good if we don’t slow down, be with, and perceive what truly is? And how can we see what truly is when shame and fear are in the driver’s seat? They literally and figuratively narrow our field of vision.

I’ve learned to pay attention to what shame is up to. Where there’s contempt, there’s shame. When I notice self-contempt or other-contempt coming up, I get curious. I acknowledge the shame (if I don’t, the shame will power up even more!). But I ask if it’s ok to look at what actually is, setting aside judgment for the moment. Can I just be with you in what’s coming up now?

One would think that all the shaming and pressuring to do what you “should” would be a place of greater truth-telling, but it actually isn’t. When shame is talking, we utter strong-sounding and vague statements like “totally messed up” or “wacko” or “off the rails.” We speak in language of always or never, all or nothing, good guys and bad guys, us versus them. If we calm down and slow down, we can look more honestly at what is really happening – often surprised in the discoveries we make! Pretending like certain emotions aren’t there (or wishing they weren’t there) is not truth telling. Pretending like we can live reaction-less lives is not truth-telling. It’s dehumanizing.

Calming down and slowing down, wondering about what really is (even if it seems unglamourous or “bad”), also allows room for desire to breathe and grow.

Desire can take us places that shame never will. Some of you have seen Monsters, Inc. – the Pixar film about monsters fueling their power plant by capturing the fear of children. Then they make a revolutionary discovery – that laughter is far more powerful than fear. Similarly, desire for goodness is far more powerful than any amount of fear-mongering or “shoulding.” When Christians feel threatened, it seems like only fear and shame will get results. It is much messier to get down in the dirt and look up at what’s really going on. But that’s exactly what humility does.

When we humbly, calmly, curiously, kindly, and truthfully look at what is, we begin to see a much more truthful narrative. We start to see the ways in which deeper desire has been shamed, silenced, belittled, dismissed, or hemmed in. I find that shame is the loudest when desire feels vulnerable and exposed. Rather than allow desire (yet again) to be abandoned, betrayed, dismissed, or disappointed, shame will take over the controls. Setting down shame feels risky! But only then can desire be untethered to seek and find the good, and in finding it to desire it all the more.

What mood are you in today? Do you put pressure on yourself to be a certain way. Is your life one of “I should…” / “I just have to…”/ “I really need to…”? What would it cost you to dial down that pressure for a while, to be with a safe person, and to look at what is? You just might discover your deeper desires, and how your good Father is inviting you to soar.

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Idols and Isaiah

As Advent comes to a close and we welcome the Messiah, I offer some reflections from the prophet Isaiah. He’s been a close companion of mine these past four months.

Isaiah invites Israel to repent of its idolatry, and return to the living God (see Isaiah 44). On the one hand, he names idol worship as empty and fruitless, ultimately leading both idol-crafter and idolater to be put to shame. Yet his lengthy descriptions of the crafting and worship of idols have a certain warmth and tenderness to them. There is a felt beauty and hopefulness in the process that leads, ultimately, to so much emptiness, enslavement, and misery.

Idols are not always ugly. They’re often appealing and alluring. They bring beauty and soothing and comfort. They promise security and protection. There is a certain satisfaction in idols because they are the work of our own hands. We can see them and touch them. They offer a transactional relationship. We know what we are dealing with.

And idols ruin us. They leave us miserably alone and exhausted, languishing in increasing fruitlessness. The work of our hands can never save us. Idols ultimately enslave and torment us.

I have some obvious idols in my life – addictive pleasure that leave me unhealthy, exhausted, depleted, and ashamed. But much more frequently, I feel the pressure to produce or perform, the relentless “I have to, or else…” I can be pulled back-and-forth between those two poles in an endless tug-of-war – only to feel more powerless and ashamed.

As I prepared this summer for the public launch of the Rebuild My Church Initiative in our diocese, I was amped up with anxiety and fear and pressure, which sometimes became paralyzing. In truth, the challenging situations our churches are facing (as well as the amazing opportunities that are in front of us) are beyond any merely human stratagem. The deeper invitation is for me and for all of us to be renewed in our secure relationship with the Father and with each other. Mission is a way of being.

If I’ve learned anything in my personal recovery journey, it’s that most of us have far more shame and fear and insecurity than we care to recognize. Shame and fear, when unnoticed and untended, become a hotbed for the weeds of idolatry to take root and take over.

During many moments of overwhelm this past spring and summer, I felt a gentle invitation from Jesus to keep embracing the interior integration he is inviting me to. Any “successful” institutional renewal only flow from my interior renewal.

So, at the end of the summer, I began journaling and reflecting on forgiveness, slowly making my way through Robert Enright’s new book on that topic. I shared back in October how that reflection unexpectedly brought me to Robert Frost’s poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay.”

The Lord had more to show me that day. I suddenly remembered the words of Isaiah – “All flesh is grass.” And I found my way to Isaiah 40.

“A voice says, ‘Cry out!’ And I said, ‘What shall I cry out?’”

“All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field … The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand for ever” (Isaiah 40:6-8)

And I kept reading. Chapter after chapter, the words pierced my heart. I felt encouraged and emboldened by the invitation to be a herald, about to cry out to thousands during the fall listening sessions. It’s easy for me to see the ways that our Catholic parishes are clinging to a familiar institutional culture that offers a false security and comfort while choking off new life. The Lord was showing me the same struggle in my own day-to-day discipleship. How can I invite institutions to repent of their idols if I don’t look at my own?

The Lord also spoke promises and assurances (Isaiah 41:8-10). They seeped into a deeper layer in my heart than ever before:

  Friend

  I have chosen you

  I am with you

  I am your God

  I will strengthen you

  I will help you

  I will uphold you with my victorious right hand

For many days, I kept returning to these words in prayer. Meanwhile, I was finishing reading a book about families raising securely attached kids. I was stunned when the author discussed the prospect of grooming and sexual abuse of one’s own children. After many valuable practical instructions on crucial conversations, she calmly and matter-of-factly named the truth that parents cannot stop bad things from happening. Security comes not from the prevention of tragedy, but from knowing that there is an abundance of secure love and connection before, during, and after any bad things that happen.

Here God was answering some painful cries of my heart in the preceding months. Occasionally, I write my own psalms of lament to God (not easy to do, but worth it!). More than once I have written, “How can I trust you?” – along with a list of complaints to God of the ways he did not stop bad things from happening in my life. Where’s the “protection” in that?

Can you see the appeal of idols here? They twist the promises of God in Isaiah 41:

  The LORD – “I am your God”

     Idols –  “Craft your own god”

  The LORD – “I will strengthen you”

     Idols – “You can be strong on your own”

  The LORD – I will help you”

     Idols – “you won’t need to depend”

  The LORD – “I will uphold you”

     Idols – “You can uphold yourself”

  The LORD – “my victorious right hand”

     Idols – “Bad things happen in this world. You need to protect yourself!”

Idols seduce us by appealing to our fear and shame, and distracting us away from our deeper longings of Faith, Hope, and Love. Idols promise protection against those desires getting betrayed, crushed, rejected, abandoned, or disappointed.

Desire is a dangerous thing. It feels dangerous to us. But it is first dangerous to the devil and his kingdom of darkness. He is a liar and a murderer from the beginning, envying what God placed in us and the lofty destiny he has for us. So he assaults and disrupts our secure relationships with God and with each other. He invites us to turn away from our desires, and instead to live controlled, curated, and comfortable lives. He seduces us individually, but especially loves it when entire church institutions can begin living this way. That way, even when some individuals (like the prophet Isaiah) have abundant desire and lively imagination for more, there is an inertia in place to resist institutional change. Prophets tend to be persecuted.

In a fallen world, in which bad things happen (and all flesh is grass that will wither), it is not an easy thing to abide in Faith, Hope, and Love. Holding desire and imagination for abundance means weeping over what is no longer and waiting for the not-yet. It means trusting in the promises of a God who is truly good.

God actually does NOT promise us that no bad thing will ever happen to us. As human beings, we find ourselves in the middle of a story in which terrible tragedy has already struck. Things are not as they should be, and more bad things will happen. Through the prophet Isaiah, the LORD promises to be our friend, to be with us, to be our God, to help us, and to uphold us as He works out the victory that is already assured.

The birth of Jesus at Christmas brings the assurance of Emmanuel, God-with-us. He enters our world, enemy-occupied territory, on a stealth rescue mission. Precious few people realized that the God-man was in their midst – certainly not the rich or the powerful of this world. They only felt threatened and attempted to murder him. Baby Jesus barely escapes.

I love imagining that flight into Egypt. Baby Jesus, even in his frail humanity, felt calm and secure, not because Joseph and Mary were preventing bad things from happening, but because they were connecting again and again to God, to each other, and to him. They had no idea how this all was going to be okay, except that they were being assured by God’s promises.

Jesus brings true salvation and security. Genuine security is not found in managing or controlling. It’s not found in five-year strategic planning or by setting measurable goals and objectives (even when there is a time and place for those). Genuine security doesn’t even mean that you and I won’t experience fear or failure. We will, and often.

The true security that Jesus brings is the one-flesh union of the heavenly wedding feast, already anticipated on the Holy Night that we are about to celebrate. The gap between heaven and earth is now bridged. Humanity and divinity are now one, in the tiny body of the babe of Bethlehem. What God has joined together, no human being can separate.

Come, let us adore Him.

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“Watch!”

Advent is a season of watchfulness. Near the end of Mark’s Gospel, Jesus admonishes his disciples with a simple and strong commandment, “What I say to you, I say to all: watch!” (Mark 13:37).

What does Jesus mean by “watch”?

His one-word command (grēgoreîte) is a dramatic conclusion of extensive apocalyptic prophecies about the destruction of the Temple, the darkening of the sun and moon, the falling of the stars from heaven, and the coming of the Son of Man. You know not the day nor the hour, so watch.

Jesus is not fearmongering – even though many Christians today imagine the apocalypse that way. The coming of the Son of Man is not something we dread, but something we eagerly await, and daily pray for: “Thy Kingdom Come!” “Come, Lord Jesus!”

To be sure, overindulgence, carousing, or spiritual lethargy will hinder us from being watchful and ready at the coming of Jesus. But so will fear! There is an important difference between vigilance and hypervigilance. The former is a sober-minded awareness that is willing and ready to receive and respond. The latter is a fear-based reactivity, a trauma response doing what trauma responses do – ensuring survival at all costs. Jesus is not inviting us to mere survival, but into abundant life.

This fall, I appreciated a prayerful reading of Erik Varden’s The Shattering of Loneliness. Near the end of the book, he suggests a twofold meaning of the word “aware” – 1) to notice; and 2) to take care of or protect. He suggests that the best of the monastic traditions, including the desert fathers, embraced both dimensions of watchfulness. If we exclusively focus on one or the other, we will fail to fulfill Jesus’ command.

I find that, amidst the ruins of Christendom, many of the remnant Christians are so hyper-focused on “taking care of” that they no longer know how to notice with curiosity and kindness. It’s not hard to find hypervigilant and overprotective Christian parents, Christian families, or entire Christian communities. Fear dominates their consciousness and imagination as they try to control their lives and their environments, feeling immensely threatened by “those people.” These attitudes cause grave harm.

When fear predominates, it becomes impossible to live in trust, receptivity, and mutual relationships. I’ve worked with many adults who survived these home and church environments. Beneath all their tendencies of people-pleasing, anxiety, resentment, and control, there is a vast well of grief over never really being noticed, loved, and delighted in for who they are. They had to reshape their identity into cookie-cutter roles in order for the family to feel well-managed and in control.

When fear is intense, our field of vision literally narrows. There is little space for childlike curiosity to notice and discover and grow. I wrote long ago about the difference between Smoke Alarms and Watchtowers. More recently, I explained how virtue is impossible when emotions are eliminated or subjugated.

Christians have understandably felt threatened in the last few centuries. It’s tempting to get stuck in a collective trauma response, bound up in fear, and fail to remember that the victory is already won! Yes, Jesus spends all of Mark 13 offering apocalyptic prophecy. But these teachings immediately precede his entry into Jerusalem and his willing engagement of his Passion. As a victor very much in charge, Jesus overthrows the powers of darkness and brings his Kingdom definitively and victoriously into the midst of a world that is indeed passing away. It is our calm noticing of his presence and activity that will allow us an eager response and a joyful readiness to enter the heavenly wedding feast.

One extreme of “watch,” then, is a fear-based hypervigilance, which is not hard to find in our church communities. In our culture today, you can increasingly find the opposite extreme – an individualistic “mindfulness” that sometimes gets stuck in navel-gazing, or an untethered empathy that leaves no space for truth-telling.

As we see in Jesus, “the kindness of God that leads to repentance” (Romans 2:4) allows compassion and truth-telling to go together. He describes himself and our heavenly Father as “moved with compassion” (Luke 10:33; 15:20), using the Greek word splangna (“guts”). Compassion is an embodied response. We allow ourselves to feel what the other is feeling – especially when it is painful. Rather than backing away, bypassing, or fixing, we stand with as witnesses. Such “being with” is not at all incompatible with telling uncomfortable truths. Once the toxic shaming of “shoulds” is set aside, there is a time and a place for naming honestly and kindly the harm that is being caused by destructive behaviors. Jesus frequently speaks uncomfortable truths with kindness.

What about mindful noticing? During all these years of healing and recovery in my own life, I’ve come to appreciate being aware, here and now, in the present moment. I’ve come to appreciate noticing what is happening, without launching into contempt or judgment. I discover much more truth that way! Much of my former “discipline” was more about self-shaming, drivenness, and perfectionism. From a place of insecurity and fear, I was desperately striving to be good enough to be lovable. That is not virtue.

Of course, overindulgence is not virtue either. As I read Erik Varden’s words this fall, I felt a gentle invitation from the Lord to take the next step from a calm noticing into a healthy “taking care of.” I can be mindful of what is really happening here and now, and then freely engage in a “yes” or “no.” My desires are still unruly and disordered, in need of guidance and direction. They do not need shaming or fixing or subjugation, but they do need to be brought over to the Kingdom of God. So long as my desires belong only to this fallen world, they will indeed pull me downward, in a way that steadily ruins me. As I learn to receive them, accept them, and allow Jesus to love me there, I discover that I can be free in Christ; I can say “no” and be okay.

Jesus is the Word made flesh. He humbles himself to share in the clay of our humanity so that we can be exalted to share in his divinity. Mindfulness has enormous value, but is not an end in itself. It opens us to the transcendence that Jesus brings. It opens us to the fullness of Truth. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Jesus entered this world precisely so that we can be wedded to him and thereby transcend this world – because this world and all the things in it are passing away.

Without the Incarnation, there is no Hope. There is no “taking care of” possible in a world that is under the dominion of its seducer, Satan. Jesus undoes that betrayal, not by eliminating its consequences, but by forging a path through suffering and death into eternal life. Genuine mindfulness allows us to see and follow that path, without being dismayed or distracted by the immensity of suffering that we would prefer to ignore, and definitely without being seduced by the allurements of this world.

Genuine mindfulness allows us to follow the path (not just “me”). The command of Jesus to “watch” is plural (grēgoreîte). He is not inviting an isolated and individualistic mindfulness, but a shared path of noticing and responding. We were never meant to exist as isolated individuals. It is not good for man to be alone.

Pope John Paul II articulated this balance in his Law of Gift: “Man cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.” But we cannot give ourselves without much diligent labor of human integration. We must first become more of a whole person, self-aware and self-possessed – thereby allowing us to make a free, wholehearted, and fruitful gift of ourselves. Each person is a unique and unrepeatable mystery, worthy indeed of being loved and cherished in that uniqueness. But that unique giftedness is for the sake of bringing life and healing and goodness to the rest of the Body of Christ. It’s a gift to be given away.

We desperately need healthy Christian community – community which allows us (in the words of Curt Thompson) to be seen, soothed, safe, and secure. It is through a shared and communal “noticing” that each of us can discover more fully who we really are. It is also in that shared and communal noticing that each of us can emerge in lives of discipleship and truly “take care of,” truly become the steward of our story. It is then that self-awareness and self-possession can become self-gift. It is then that we can be one with Jesus in laying down our lives that others may live.

Come, Lord Jesus!

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Dies Irae

For Catholics, November is a month of remembrance. We become mindful of many things we would prefer to forget – death and judgment, heaven and hell.

“Memory” in the Jewish, Catholic, and Orthodox traditions is not mainly a matter of looking backwards, but of becoming more mindfully present. Through holy rituals, we “remember” saving events such as the Passover in Egypt, the birth of Jesus, or his death and resurrection – in a way allows us here today to participate and become true sharers in those saving events. They become here and now for us. We also “remember” what is yet to come, the fullness of life in the Kingdom of God. We glimpse the goodness of the Lord in a foretaste and anticipation of more to come.

November begins with the twin celebrations of All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day – reminding us that the love of Jesus connects all the members of the human family, even those beyond the grave. In the very flesh and blood of the risen Body of Christ, we are truly united to those who have gone before us. We are never alone. Our deepest longings are never in vain. We are reminded not to get stuck in this fallen world that is quickly passing away.

All around us (at least here in the Northern Hemisphere) nature enters its annual cycle of death and decay. So swiftly does the dazzling and majestic fruitfulness of fall plunge into darkness and decay – particularly for those of us in the upper Midwest!

There is a marvelous medieval hymn traditionally sung during this month of remembering death and the Final Judgment: the Dies Irae. Amidst decades of what Bishop Robert Barron has often described as “Beige Catholicism,” this hymn has been all but forgotten. What is more, those few who remember it tend to be drawn to it for all the wrong reasons: fear-mongering, shaming, or scrupulosity. It doesn’t help that there are bad translations that reflect the shame of the translator more than the actual text. Indeed, the English translation provided in the video linked above describes “universal dread” and a “severe” Judge with “searching eyes.” None of those words are there in the original Latin poetry!

The Dies Irae has captivated human imagination for centuries. In 2014, Thomas Allen of the CBC (Canadian Broadcast Company) offered a playful and fascinating exposition on the influence of this hymn upon musical history.

Yes, the hymn is haunting and disruptive – especially to privileged Americans who would prefer to live comfortable lives and somehow stay young and powerful forever. But it is ultimately an invitation to trust Jesus and step into real Hope.

The world we live in, insofar as it was created by God, is good and beautiful. He entrusted it to us humans as the stewards. We failed in our stewardship. The world we live in, through the devil’s envy, malice, and seduction, is now enemy-occupied territory. Jesus describes the devil as “the ruler of this world” (John 12:31). This world and all the things in it are passing away (1 John 2:17).

The first verse of the Dies Irae reminds us that the “Day of Wrath” will dissolve this world in ashes. However, it goes on to describe the victory of Jesus on the Cross, and the invitation to humble ourselves before him as we receive the redemption that he freely gives. Neither our own merits nor any power of this world will save us on that day. We place our trust in Jesus alone.

“That Day” is also described as lacrimosa dies illa (“That Day of weeping”). We can see why this hymn has been buried in the West during my half century of human existence. We live in a culture that has forgotten how to grieve. And we definitely live in a culture that struggles to engage in real repair when harm has happened. “That Day” of Jesus’ coming will bring both. It is not merely a Day of Judgment; it is a Day that brings full Justice and definitive resurrection and renewal – which is only possible with the fulness of Love and Truth that Jesus will bring. Jesus will definitively heal our shame, if we will allow it.

I’ve developed a keen radar for shame. For several years now, I’ve been contending with my own shame (as well as the shame of others who harmed me in my life – shame that doesn’t belong to me). I’ve learned, at least some of the time, to stand calmly in the face of shame – not to run away, nor to power up, nor to freeze, but to draw closer with curiosity and kindness.

I’ve been learning from Jesus in the Gospels. He frequently pursues those who are feeling shame – when he calls Matthew the tax collector (Matthew 9:9), when he tells the woman caught in adultery “I don’t condemn you” (John 10:11), when he awakens the thirst of the Samaritan woman at the well (John 2), and in his various encounters with Peter. When Peter denies Jesus (as predicted), Jesus turns to look at Peter (Luke 22:61) – not with accusation, but with love and truth. Peter goes out and weeps bitterly. He sees an almost unbearable gaze of kindness – far more painful and more helpful than any accusation or name calling. Peter suffers again after the resurrection, when Jesus awaits him on the seashore, having already lit a charcoal fire (John 21:9-19). He reminds Peter of his threefold denial, not to add to Peter’s shame, but to bring that shame into the light and transform it.

These encounters with the merciful and truth-telling love of Jesus help me imagine what Judgment Day will be like. When I hear the chanting in the Dies Irae describing the “Day of Wrath” or “That Day of Weeping,” I imagine him gazing with love at each of these women and men in the Gospel, seeing right through them, accepting them, choosing them, and inviting them to total conversion. The kindness of Jesus always puts love and truth-telling together. Kindness heals shame, through a gentle yet utterly necessary unveiling of the full truth. That is what “apocalypse” literally means – “uncovering” or “unveiling.”

Shame is a master of disguises. It shows up in outbursts of rage, in ghosting other people, in “cancel culture,” in witty-but-cruel name calling, in self-loathing, or in self-destructive behaviors. Where there’s contempt, there’s probably shame. Where there’s vagueness, there’s probably shame. Where there’s all-or-nothing language, there’s probably shame. I’ve learned to detect the lurking presence of shame, and to draw closer to it, while respecting the sacredness of others’ freedom. This kind and curious pursuit is not what people expect!  I love those moments when it becomes possible to tell the fuller truth with kindness – not to paper over, not to humiliate or condemn, but to be with each other in love and respect while acknowledging all the particulars.

This definitive repairing through the kindness and justice of God is exactly what the Dies Irae is about. Jesus will assemble the nations. Death will stand in astonishment as all the tombs are opened, and all our bodies raised (John 5:25-29). The victory wrought by Jesus on the Cross – overthrowing the cruel empire of sin and death – will be fully unveiled. So will all of our thoughts, words, actions, and omissions. The stories of each and all will be told in their full and unedited versions. In the words of the Dies Irae, “The written book shall be brought forth, in which all is contained, from which the world shall be judged.” No doubt, “My face will blush with guilt” – just like Peter or Matthew or the Samaritan woman. In my fear and shame, I may dread that “the day” will be like a blazing oven that burns up everything (Malachi 3:19) But if my trust is in the victory of Jesus, I will experience “the sun of justice with its healing rays” (Malachi 3:20). There is no other way.

We can conclude with the beautiful words of Pope Benedict XVI in his 2007 encyclical letter on Hope. He describes this encounter with the fire of Jesus’ love, whether on the Day of Judgment, or as a purgatorial experience following my own death. He comments on the apostle Paul’s reflections in 1 Corinthains 3, which describe some of us being saved, but “as through fire.” As Benedict explains, “the fire which both burns and saves is Christ himself, the Judge and Savior. The encounter with him is the decisive act of judgment. Before his gaze all falsehood melts away. This encounter with Him, as it burns us, transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves. All that we build during our lives can prove to be mere straw … and it collapses. Yet in the pain of this encounter, when the impurity and sickness of our lives become evident to us, there lies salvation. His gaze, the touch of His heart heals us through an undeniably painful transformation ‘as through fire’. But it is a blessed pain, in which the holy power of his love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally ourselves and thus totally of God” (Spe Salvi n. 47).

Without the Day of Judgment, we cannot share fully in God’s holiness, nor be fully and authentically human. Only the truth-telling and merciful love of Jesus can bring full flourishing and righteousness. Therefore, we pray ancient Christian prayer: “Come, Lord Jesus!”

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Nostalgia

Nostalgia is a fascinating human experience. It can be playful or delightful, as when old friends reunite. Suddenly they are in tears or side-splitting laughter as they recall long-forgotten songs or jokes or shared antics. Their recalling of story after story rekindles old connections, and everyone feels gratitude and joy. Alternatively, nostalgia can evoke a deep and wistful longing for what once was or what might have been. I have written before about the Welsh word Hiraeth. In its darker forms, nostalgia can also evoke rage or blame or contempt toward those who allegedly ruined the good things that used to be – even to the point of scapegoating and violence. If you study the history of any genocide, you will find nostalgia in the mix.

Not all nostalgia is helpful, and not all nostalgia is truthful. As Brené Brown suggests, “Nostalgia is also a dangerous form of comparison. Think about how often we compare our lives to a memory that nostalgia has so completely edited that it never really existed.”

It’s not uncommon for me as a priest to hear a resentful rant about how America used to be the greatest nation on earth, but now…those people…

Sometimes, I will kindly and playfully ask, “Do you think that’s the story Jesus will tell us when he comes again? Is he going to assemble all the nations and every human who has ever lived to sit and listen to how much greater America was than all the other nations?” That usually gives some pause to the person. It reminds me of the school kids modifying their story when they realized that my friend (their principal) had been viewing the entire incident on the security camera.

The truth is that our American story is quite a mix of greatness and darkness. It includes some of us living privileged lives at the expense of others. Nostalgia becomes a drug to distract our notice from what it is really like to be downtrodden and oppressed. God never forgets his little ones. Judgment Day will uncover the full truth of how we choose to love and serve the poor (Matthew 25:31-46). G.K. Chesterton wrote a century ago, during an age in which nationalism was also running high. As he explained then, genuine patriotism is not loving your nation as better than all the others. It’s loving your nation because it’s your home.

Whether we realize it or not, we tend to edit our stories. Day and night (including in our dreams), our brains are at work, trying to make sense and meaning of our human experience. If it’s not safe to feel grief or hurt or anger or intense unmet desire, we are prone to tell a more pristine story about how things used to be. We will play up the beautiful and happy memories and hide away the dark or disturbing ones. We will bury our deeper longings and settle for a superficial nostalgia.

I’m nearly finished reading Erik Varden’s The Shattering of Loneliness: On Christian Remembrance. All his writings invite a healthy asceticism that helps reclaim and re-order the intense longing of the human heart. These longings are “very good,” and can only truly be satisfied through God’s plan to have us share in his divine life and become truly like Him. Our deepest nostalgia is for our heavenly homeland, which leaves its traces everywhere in this creation. We are homesick for the Kingdom of God, which is not of this world.

Nostalgia that only looks backwards will ultimately leave us disappointed, disillusioned, empty, and embittered. It will sap our Hope. This world and all the things in it are passing away. Nothing here can ultimately satisfy our intense and unquenchable longing.

Varden reflects on Jesus’ seemingly random reference: “Remember Lot’s wife” (Luke 17:32). Lot’s wife looked back, and turned into a pillar of salt. As Varden explains it, we are prone to sacrifice a good future by turning back to what is left behind. Therefore, Jesus goes on to explain that we will lose our life if we try to save it, and find our life if we are willing to give all.

This fall, I’ve been reminding people of those words of Jesus, as I travel the nineteen counties of my diocese. I’ve been facilitating a few dozen listening sessions as we launch our renewal efforts, inviting a pivot from maintenance to mission. I’ve tried to avoid the equivalent of a Pawnee Town Hall Meeting, successfully in every case but one. In order to allow everyone a voice (especially Jesus!) we’ve included silent time to reflect and write. Of course, that leaves me reading through the written reflections of over 3,000 participants.

In my reading, I am finding no small amount of nostalgia for an “amazing” past that was probably not as flourishing and carefree as the person remembers. Nor is the nostalgia limited to one political or theological ideology. Many people, understandably (but unrealistically) just want things to go back to the way they used to be. Or they just want to hold on to some small scrap. Or they blame “those people” for wrecking everything. Or they are simply resigned to ongoing decline. Can you hear the grieving process here (denial, bargaining, blame, depression)? Neither our culture nor most of our church communities know how to grieve well these days. I am noticing a palpable proportionality: the more intense the nostalgia for a supposedly glamorous past, the less imagination there is for a hopeful future.

Nostalgia that gets stuck in the past enables us to bypass our grief. It becomes toxic and ultimately lethal. It will kill our Hope. It is only when we are willing to enter together the pain of the Cross and the Tomb that we can be surprised with the Hope of the resurrection.

The Mass allows us to experience genuine nostalgia. We remember the saving events of Jesus’ death and resurrection in a way that makes them truly present. But the Mass is also a memory of the future. We gain a foretaste and anticipation of the wedding feast of the Lamb. We become again and again what we one day will be – each of us individually and all of us collectively in a one-flesh union with the Bridegroom.

There is a reason why words like hiraeth or saudade or Sehnsucht have provoked endless reflection from poets and mystics. We were created for eternal communion with the living God. We ache for a homeland that we cannot yet fully receive.  For most humans most of the time, it is easier to bury or avoid or escape that longing.  To desire and not yet possess is perhaps the greatest suffering – known and embraced by all the Saints. The more they desired, the more they joyfully received, and the more they joyfully received, the more they suffered in their desiring.

This, perhaps, is why the Saints were so often unwelcomed and persecuted, not only or even chiefly by this world, but by the very Church they loved and served. The witness of the Saints awakens longing and invites conversion from a merely human nostalgia. In the presence of the Kingdom of God, there is no standing still, no comfortable plateaus to settle on. Any earthly power or privilege will be turned on its head, and exposed – not as evil – but as inadequate for answering our deepest questions or filling our deepest longings. Idols are often the beautiful work of human hands. We don’t like to remove them from the holy place of longing in our heart that belongs to God alone. Waiting with empty hands is scary.

What are your idols? What are the idols of your civic community or of your church community? Where does most of your nostalgic energy go?

As we celebrate another All Saints’ Day, may we feel their invitation to embrace our deepest longings and renew our trust that God is faithful and true to His promises. Come, Lord Jesus!

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There is a River

I am from the river.

When I was one, my family moved back to Wisconsin and purchased a little house along the Wisconsin River.

I could see the river from my bedroom window, pulled open on sweaty summer nights, or through the ice that clung to the curtains in January. The river beckoned, beautiful and dangerous: frozen yet fragile in the winter, rising and rushing in the spring, serene in the summer, reflecting bright bursts of color in the fall.

I spent thousands of hours, endlessly exploring in our backyard, between the deck and the dock I had helped my stepdad build. There, near the river, I would catch toads or turtles or grasshoppers. I would dig up worms for fishing, or get grass stains in my pants as I touched and tasted the flowers (the violets were by far the best!). More than once I wistfully watched as a ball plunged into the waters and floated away, eluding the reach of branch or cane pole.

As Heraclitus once suggested, you cannot step into the same river twice. Visiting home elicits a mixture of emotions. It’s the same basic house and yard, but remodeled, refurnished, and rearranged a few times over. The town has the same streets and many of the same buildings, yet feels noticeably different. For many decades, it was a booming paper mill town. Then they witnessed the loss of hundreds of jobs in the early 2000’s, followed by a total shutdown in 2020. What a change from my childhood and teen years, when Consolidated Papers was a Fortune 500 company and invested $400 million to build the state’s largest paper machine.

This fall, I am facilitating a few dozen listening sessions throughout my diocese, inviting our 156 parishes to pivot from maintenance to mission. For many parishes that are struggling, the invitation is felt as an immediate threat. Are we going to close?? What are we going to lose?

The Lord has often surprised me in this process, especially when I feel overwhelmed, fear failure, or put pressure on myself. It happened again a few weeks ago.

My friend showed me a brand new book by Robert Enright, Forgiving as Unity with Christ. I quickly realized – “O, this is going to be one of those books.” It’s going to take me at least six months to meander through the journaling and meditation prompts, which have already tapped deep places in my heart.

So there I was, working on wounds of resentment and unforgiveness (which include my avoidance of feelings of anger). The exercise invited me to remember a time when I received unconditional love from another human, and to enter vividly into that moment. Memories of 1999 cascaded into my imagination. At that time, I received remarkable compassion and kindness from a few friends, especially Peter. It was healing to recall the lovely ways that they attuned to me, drew near to me, held space for my raw pain, and showed empathy.

My gratitude and consolation were interrupted by the memory of how awful it was to lose Peter that November. He was only five months ordained when he unexpectedly and inexplicably died in his sleep.

Out of nowhere I found myself recalling Robert Frost’s poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” It opened some of my deepest wells of grief, and I sobbed, not for the first time, and probably not for the last. I was not only feeling that sudden loss of a friend, who indeed glittered like gold. I was connecting with the universal human experience expressed in Frost’s poem. In this post-Eden world, the most amazing and beautiful moments never linger. It is agonizing. We were not meant for endings.

How painful it is to be like the poets or prophets – to have huge imagination and perceive beauty and goodness where many do not. It’s thrilling and delightful. You are eager to share the goodness with others. It’s awful because, often and even inevitably, the delight evaporates. Or it gets crushed, ripped away, or (perhaps worst of all) dismissed or spurned by others, who could have delighted in it. I think here of Jesus weeping over Jerusalem (Matthew 23:37). He imagines and desires so much more goodness for them – but they don’t want it. Or, if they want it, they are unwilling to repent and receive it.

As I continued to pray, I realized the connection between my own intense feelings in the moment and what Jesus is inviting all of us into in the Rebuild My Church Initiative in my diocese. I often feel unsettled and fearful in the face of future unknowns. I keep catching myself trying to manage or control the process, fearing failure. The Lord keeps reminding me that the people of the diocese doesn’t need a project manager; they need my heart. My own experiences are a microcosm of what I’m inviting everyone else into. I have all my familiar survival strategies that feel so much more appealing than trusting and following the voice of the Good Shepherd into more abundant life.

When people first hear about “reimagining the structure of their parishes” or “pivoting from maintenance to mission,” their reaction is often one of fear, suspicion, and self-preservation. I am listening to them in their fears, while inviting consideration that we need not live our lives out of fear.

But the Good Shepherd has been prompting more in my heart. It’s not only the unknowns or the potential losses of the future that are unsettling; it’s what has already changed and changed again, but remains ungrieved. When hurts are unhealed and losses are ungrieved, our human tendency is to fight to hold on to what is already lost, perhaps even finding a scapegoat to blame for the struggles.

Case in point – the loss of Christendom. Fifty years ago, Fulton Sheen prophetically proclaimed, “We are living at the end of Christendom – not the end of Christianity.” Yet so many Christians and churches want to fight culture wars and save Christendom. Rather than weeping over the ruins and rejoicing that new growth is sprouting up, we are fantasizing that we can still stop the collapse – not unlike the Japanese soldiers on Pacific islands who had not yet heard that the war was over.

I’ve been inviting the participants at these listening sessions to reflect upon changes and losses in their families, communities, and churches that have already happened, but are hard to accept. If we don’t mourn those, we will be less capable of heeding the voice of the Good Shepherd, being surprised with resurrected life, and following him into green pastures and new experiences of more abundant life.

In addition to Robert Frost’s poem, my prayer prompted a recall of the 1990’s movie A River Runs Through It. I remembered my curious discovery in Mexico twenty-five years ago. I spotted the movie in a storefront, only the title in Spanish was Nada Es Para Siempre (“Nothing Lasts Forever”). You can’t step into the same river twice. Nothing gold can stay.

Interestingly, in Spain, the same movie bears the Spanish title of El Rio de la Vida (“The River of Life”). There is a river that gladdens the City of God (Psalm 46), running through the heavenly city of Jerusalem. That river brings healing and life and new fruitfulness (Revelation 22).

Whenever I imagine receiving from those saving streams, I sometimes sob. I feel the parched places in my heart soak in the superabundant goodness. It is wonderfully consoling and intensely painful at the same time. My desires awaken, allowing me to drink in divine life. Then, in receiving more, I ache for still more – and know that I still have to wait, mostly because of God’s kindness allowing me to go at my own pace.

In these listening sessions, the hardest questions for people to reflect on have been questions about Hope. Many of our parish communities, not to mention many of our priests, feel listless or lost! They watch their numbers diminish and fear for their very existence, feeling powerless to change. A few of them, I find, have lost all imagination for more. The felt fear is so intense, and the grip on self-preservation so tight, that there is no longer an imagination for what abundance could look like. It feels too painful and too risky to dream of a feast when you are unsure whether you will eat today or where your next meal will come from. Survival mode and scarcity tend to cling to each other.

When I am tempted to feel frustrated or judgy about this narrow-mindedness, the Lord gently reminds me of how patient and kind he has been with me in the very same attitudes. It is truly sad when I or others don’t desire the goodness or abundance that is right in front of us. Or, more accurately, we bury that desire beneath a hardened façade.

It is very much like the story told in the Pixar film Encanto. As with the Madrigal family there, it can be terrifying when the cracks of our façade begin to show, and the “identity” we had falsely propped gets exposed and collapses. But it’s always an opportunity to access the living God anew and remember who we really are. We get to go to the Cross and drink from the life-given stream that flow from the pierced heart of Jesus. He is the Good Shepherd who promises to lead us into more abundant life.

Yes, there is a river that flows through the Heavenly City. That river, too, is beautiful and dangerous. I ache for it and avoid it. That river runs through my divided heart, much like the river that divides my home town.

I am from the river.

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