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The Way from the Cross

The Way of the Cross has enlivened Christian imagination for centuries. 800 years ago, Francis of Assisi popularized the devotion of imagining, moment by moment, what Good Friday was like for Jesus – from his early morning encounter with Pontius Pilate to the  hasty burial in the tomb before sunset.

But have you ever pondered the Way from the Cross? What was it like for the mother of Jesus, or Mary Magdalene, or the beloved disciple when they walked away? What was that Sabbath day like for them?

Remember that the Jewish day begins at sunset. Day One of Jesus’ Paschal Mystery begins with the Last Supper and concludes with his burial in the tomb. Day Two begins shortly after the faithful few walk away from the tomb. Day Two continues as they observe the Sabbath by…by…??? Day Three includes Jesus rising in the night and beginning to surprise his followers with encounter after encounter.

My imagination had never considered the Way from the Cross, until just a few months ago. I received the prompt from a friend of mine, who is a courageous survivor of child clergy sex abuse, including dark ritual abuse and a grave failure of Church leaders to accompany her in the ways she needed and deserved. She shared with me one of her favorite paintings – The Return from Calvary by Herbert Gustave Schmalz. It captures a little-imagined moment in the Christian story – significant not only on that dreadful Sabbath day, but for anyone who has ever felt trapped in the timelessness of trauma.

Abuse survivors tend to be on the margins of our church communities. It’s easy for both leaders and members of our churches to be like the priest and the Levite in the Good Samaritan story by keeping a comfortable distance (which means leaving them alone with their wounds). It is indeed agonizing to hear their stories. “The truth” sounds exciting to many of us, especially if we’re feeling zealous or self-righteous. It’s much harder to pick up a bloodied body and take in the full truth of the evil that has been perpetrated. We’d rather ignore it or speed past it.  It’s hard enough, like Mary, to stand at the foot of the Cross. But the timelessness of Holy Saturday is virtually unbearable. For the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, and the other disciples, there was no fast-forward button.

Jesus does not cast judgment on the priest and the Levite in his parable – any more than he condemns his friends and companions when they abandon him and flee (Matthew 26:56). They are his chosen shepherds. Where were each of them on Holy Saturday, I sometimes wonder? We do know that when the agonizing Sabbath is over, he greets them with his perfect Shalom (“Peace be with you”) and breathes his Spirit on them. They are filled with joy and peace. Even then, their conversion is a work in progress.

I pondered these points on my annual retreat last summer. I spent multiple hours each day reading and reflecting on Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus keeps telling the truth with kindness – stating as a matter of fact that they have “tiny faith” (Matthew 8:26, 14:31, 16:8), side-by-side with choosing them, calling them, and reminding them how much worth they have in his Father’s eyes. He’s not shaming them for the smallness of their faith. He’s naming it and reminding them that they can trust the superabundant goodness of his Father.

I don’t trust easily. Or at least I don’t stay in a place of trust for sustained periods of time. It’s easy for me, automatically, to break away from intimacy and connection – especially when it’s abundantly good. My brain and body and nervous system have deeply embedded memories. There is a preponderance of evidence in my story suggesting that it’s better not to surrender myself into the good care of another. I’ve done plenty of renouncing of lies and claiming of the truth of who God is and who I am. Those tools have a place. But learning to stay securely connected in Faith, Hope, and Love – that is a lifelong labor. I still feel the urge to take matters into my own hands.

I can only accompany others to the extent that I have allowed myself to be accompanied. My giving will quickly become fruitless if I am not allowing myself to receive. You and I are branches on the vine, bearing fruit only in intimacy and receptivity.

Most of us spend much of our lives bypassing and avoiding the valleys of death in our hearts. We want Day Three of the Paschal Mystery without fully entering into the agony and powerlessness of Day One, much less the stillness and the indefinite waiting of Day Two.

It shouldn’t surprise us that the Church today is much like the Church during that first Paschal Triduum. Those of us chosen as priests tend to bypass and avoid our hearts, as do the majority of our church members. Then, too, it was only a very small number who chose to stay with Jesus on the Way of the Cross, to stand with him at the foot of his Cross, and to connect with each other on the Way from the Cross. They are the ones who first encounter the risen Jesus. Jesus chooses Mary Magdalene to be the apostle to the apostles. Even then, at first they resist her and do not believe her (Mark 16:11).

The Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary stayed connected to Jesus and to each other, not only on the Way of the Cross, but on the Way from the Cross. Even if they did not fully understand his promises, they believed. More importantly, they were willing to persevere in being with. They remain present and receptive amidst the unknown – at such great cost. It is so much easier to close oneself off from receptivity and hide behind locked doors. We sometimes do this as individuals, but we also do it as church communities when we cling to what is comfortable, tidy, and familiar.

I see an amazing renewal at work in the Church. Sometimes I am amazed and overjoyed; other times I feel frustrated and cry out “How long???” There is one thing I know to be true: those at the heart of the renewal are those willing to be together in Christian community both on the Way of the Cross and on the Way from the Cross. Such disciples of Jesus will always be the first chosen witnesses of the resurrected life that he brings. Jesus descends into the darkest and most agonizing places of the human experience. It is there that he overthrows the powers of death and sin.

The Resurrection is actually not Jesus’ victory stroke; it’s a revelation of a victory already won. Jesus already proclaimed “it is finished” on the Cross. He descends into hell not as a powerless victim but with the eternal triumph of Love. Most of us are afraid to walk the Way from the Cross, or to descend into the hell of another’s agonizing story. If we do so on our own strength, we would indeed be fools. But if we go there together with others in healthy Christian community, if we believe in who Jesus really is, we need not fear any darkness. He has descended with the glory of his love into every human heartache. He shines in those darkest places, and the darkness can never overcome him.

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Casting Light? Or Casting Shadows?

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches us that we are the light of the world (Matthew 5:14-16). He invites us to let our light shine before others so that they can see our good deeds and glorify our heavenly Father.

Jesus invites us to cast light, not to cast shadows. I borrow this metaphor from Parker Palmer, who cautions against the too-common tendency of Christians to sit comfortably in the light and enjoy casting shadows on those outside. This is not the mission Jesus gives us.

There is a sense of power in casting shadows. When I was a child, I loved playing imaginatively with my next-door neighbor. After dark, we would sometimes entertain ourselves in the floodlight behind her back porch. Sometimes the game was “shadow tag.” We skillfully dodged each other’s stomping feet while trying to “tag” the shadow of the other. That game was typically brief, inevitably bickering over whether we actually touched or missed each other’s shadow. At that point, we’d return to making ourselves feel fifty feet tall, casting huge shadows that extended far into the darkness down the hill. As little ones who often felt lost or trapped in our own homes, it was thrilling to imagine ourselves as giants.

It is well and good for children to feel powerful casting their shadows. It’s less life-giving when we live that way as “decent” society members or self-righteous churchy types. Perhaps we look for the latest celebrity gossip or the latest church gossip. Perhaps we complain or crack demeaning jokes about those who think, dress, live, or vote differently than we do. Perhaps we self-righteously point out all the ways that “those people” are wrong, or really relish in the fact that we are right.

Notice how well these attitudes serve to distract us from the dark places of our own hearts! “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain…” No matter how much we’ve progressed in discipleship, we all have a shadow side we prefer to ignore.

Sometimes we have a speck in our eye, and other times a wooden beam. In its darkest form, shadow casting becomes a culture of abuse, in which a some enjoy consuming or humiliating others, while loyal companions collude in casting shadows on anyone who would dare shed light on what is really happening. I have walked with so many who have been harmed by the Church, or have been unbelieved, unprotected, and unnurtured when they turned to us for care. Not uncommonly, they live messy lives and don’t check all the boxes of a “good” churchgoer. Their stories may make us incredibly uncomfortable. So it’s just easier to keep them on the margins, languishing alone in the shadows.

Some of you may object that, in calling us to be a light for the world, Jesus invites us to be a city set on a hill. Doesn’t that mean setting ourselves apart from the sin and contagion of the world?

That depends on what kind of city Jesus is describing. I imagine it as a place of abundance and hospitality, a warm beacon beckoning all God’s exhausted and wounded children to come in from the cold and find safety and rest. Sometimes it feels more like a fiercely guarded fortress, designed to keep others out. The key line here is “so that they can see your good deeds and glorify their heavenly Father” (Matthew 5:16). Jesus desires to draw all creation to the bosom of the Father. His entire mission is “to gather God’s scattered children together and make them one” (John 11:52).

We are invited to share in that mission. The Church is called to be a place of hospitality and abundance, a place of warmth and welcome, in which people truly feel like guests at a wedding feast, received with honor and delight. We Catholics seldom pause to consider what it is like for those who are first-time visitors in our parishes. But it is not enough to wait for others to come to us. Missionary discipleship includes a willingness to go out into dark places, casting light.

During my eleven years as a pastor leading two parishes, there were many resources I wish I had. But the rarest resource was a missionary disciple who was really great at the art of accompaniment. God sent us so many little ones with wounded hearts and messy lives. They needed hundreds of hours of patient accompaniment from others who didn’t mind the mess.

There’s a reason why the Gospels spend so much time recounting the exchanges between Jesus and the scribes and Pharisees. It’s just too easy for believers to prefer black-and-white thinking, rule following, and a transactional view of holiness. We become like the older son in Luke 15, joylessly toiling in the Father’s house, looking at “sinful” brothers and sisters with contempt. Meanwhile, all our good heavenly Father wants is to invite all his children to a feast! Yet we remain reluctant to set down our transactional yoke and risk real intimacy.

Why are we afraid to go into dark or messy places? Jesus invites us to be not afraid, and gives us assurance that he has overcome the world. If God is on our side, if we are united in the love of Jesus, the gates of hell can never stand against us! Yet we are afraid – like the priest and the Levite who keep their distance from the wounded man in the ditch (Luke 10:25-37).

We are afraid to the extent that we have not yet contended with the dark places of our own hearts. Each of us has far more harm and heartache in our story than we want to admit! We deny and minimize. We intellectualize and spiritualize. We stay busy and feverishly follow the rules. And the shadows remain.

The hardest thing for us to believe is that we are truly loved in those shadowy places. Jesus desires our whole heart. He wants to be in union with us – every part of us.

You and I cannot accompany others any further than we have been willing to go ourselves. If we avoid and resist going into the deep and dark places we know are there within us, how will we go into dark places with others? If we don’t grow in confidence and competence going into dark places with others, how will they experience the light of Jesus that they so desperately need?

We fear the darkness, giving it a power it simply doesn’t have. The devil pretends that his darkness can consume the light. But Good Friday proved the opposite. Light always dispels darkness.

The devil cannot create. He can only take the very good things God has created and distort, diminish, or fragment them. Light always dispels darkness. Jesus is God from God, light from light. No one has power over him unless he allows it. As the Gospel of John puts it, “All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be. What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:4-5).

Be not afraid. Be not afraid to allow Jesus and other trustworthy companions into your shadowy places. Be not afraid to go into dark places with others, radiating the light of Christ.

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Standing in the Gap

Holy Week invites us into Hope.

Hope sounds lovely, until you actually get into the hoping. There is an often painful gap between what is and what is yet to be!

Jesus literally stands in the gap. He is the one mediator between the human race and God, who eagerly desires all men and women to experience his fullness (1 Timothy 2:4-5). Jesus burns with desire to celebrate the heavenly Passover and so share God’s abundance with his beloved children (Luke 22:15). He suffers intensely in his longing – because God’s chosen children so often do not desire what he desires for them, causing him to weep over our hardness of heart (Matthew 23:37).

Jesus stands in the gap between heaven and earth, He stands especially with the poor, the outcast, the abused, and the abandoned. In his Passion, he willingly plunges into the depths of human misery, uniting himself with all the agony that any of us have ever experienced.

My understanding of the Passion shifted significantly over the last decade as I began experiencing the healing love of Jesus. I used to focus more on how much Jesus suffered physically, how hard he tried, or how much he sacrificed. Looking at the Cross would sometimes cause me to feel that I needed to be better or do more. Without realizing it, I was restlessly striving to be “good enough” so that I could be worthy of love.

Jesus reminded me how his Passion is much more about union. He brings his love and truth into all the darkest and most chaotic moments of human existence. He willingly unites himself with the particular sufferings of each member of the human race. He brings the perfect communion of his eternal Love into each and every one of those places. We are no longer alone in our misery. Love wins.

Little by little, he’s shown me how he was always there in my most agonizing moments – not only my worst sins but also all the moments in which I ever felt terrified, ashamed, powerless, alone, abandoned, neglected, or unprotected. Some of those moments were quite early in my life. And then they’ve been reinforced again and again in no shortage of agonizing situations. It’s a very familiar story to me to feel misunderstood, abandoned, and left alone and unprotected in the face of a massive threat. In those moments, it feels not only like I’ll be alone and unprotected in the face of overwhelming chaos, but that my very lovability is on the line as I walk on the edge of that knife. Impossible pressure. Exhausting to try so hard. But so familiar to me.

On any given day, present-day struggles can still elicit embodied memories of all the times I have felt that way. In comes the seduction of the evil one for me to seize control of my life and manage things for myself. That may come in the form of a restless pressure to produce or accomplish. When that gets unbearable and exhausting, then I am prone to escaping and avoiding and self-soothing. And if I begin to feel violently tossed around in that spin cycle, I am even more prone to isolate and not want to be seen and known by others (how could they love me now?). Unchecked, that isolation and fragmentation become a living hell.

I’ve learned from neuroscience that these initial reactions happen automatically and instantly (in a fraction of a second). I’d so much rather not have the reaction in the first place. But that’s not how the brain and nervous system work. God hardwired us so that our bodies can remember, adapt, anticipate, and react for survival – before the rational brain even gets involved.

What has changed in me, little by little, is a growing gentle awareness of reactions as they start happening, and a growing invitation from Jesus to be one with him in his Passion – even when I can’t just shake it off. On retreat this summer, he showed me what it was like for him when every one of the apostles forsook him and fled (Matthew 26:56). He showed me the union between him and me in every moment of abandonment in my life. He didn’t stop these moments from happening, but he was always there, loving me and choosing me. If he and I are one in the Passion, all will be well, and all manner of thing will be well (even if it feels awful in the tension of the present).

The good fruit of this invitation is most obvious to me when he invites me to stand at the Cross of others. In those moments, I get to weep with those who weep, and to witness what it’s really like for them. I get to stand with them in the gap. I know this has been a great gift to many abuse survivors, who often feel like they are unwelcomed and unwanted in our churches. The community and/or the clergy often don’t want to be burdened with the full truth, the messy symptoms, or the painful tension of what it is like for some of the suffering members of Christ. There are times in witnessing the suffering of others that I simply feel the ache of the love of Jesus on behalf of that beloved child of God. Sometimes there are no words, but only tears or groans. They know the difference between someone standing at the foot of their Cross and someone forsaking them and fleeing.

Jesus invites us as beloved disciples to stand with him at the Cross on Good Friday (and to stand with others who are painfully united with him as members of the suffering Body of Christ). He invites us to stand in the gap of Holy Saturday – trusting in his promise of goodness and resurrection and perhaps having no idea how all will be well.

Few do. In the words of the poet T.S. Eliot, “Human kind cannot bear very much reality.” We prefer to flee from the tension of Hope.

Early in my healing journey, I thought that healing would make the pain and tension go away. Had I known that I would suffer even more, I may have fled! Healing is not always the elimination of tension or pain.  It’s an ongoing encounter with God’s love and truth. It shatters our loneliness and brings you and me ever more deeply into love and communion. If we look at the Saints, we see that this lived communion actually brings more suffering, even as it brings more joy and peace.

One suffering I never anticipated was seeing with ever greater clarity what is diseased and unwell in Christ’s Church. The more I heal, the more clearly I see unnamed abuses, an unwillingness to let go of power structures (not just among clergy but also in parish communities), an unwillingness to be with others in big and intense emotions, a preference to spiritualize or intellectualize, and a contempt or marginalization of people who don’t fit the culture of our comfortable club.

I know very few Christians who are really great at standing at the foot of another’s Cross. Sometimes I’ve felt judgment or contempt on this point, but more and more I realize how much it makes sense. This is where the Church was during Holy Week, when Jesus willingly entered his Passion. All of his chosen priests forsook him and fled – just as I often have. One, apparently, came back on Good Friday to stand with the three Mary’s at the foot of the Cross. Mary Magdalene and a few of the faithful women came to the tomb Easter morning (amidst agonizing tension and loss), while the chosen leaders of the Church cowered in the upper room, and most others were nowhere to be found.

I have huge Hope and imagination for what the Church could be like, as I and others begin to embrace the invitation to stand in the gap. This gives me a sense of what Martin Luther King, Jr. must have felt when he gave his “I have a dream” speech. It’s exciting to see Hope surging in the hearts of some. But it’s agonizing and paralyzing when others exhibit hostility, passive resistance, or apathy when invited to the wedding feast.

Meanwhile, you and I are invited to stand in the gap – just as Moses stood between the stubborn and hard-hearted Israelites and the God who was leading them into so much more. No amount of rational arguments or meticulous strategic planning will change people’s hearts. You can’t coerce someone to give up their precious self-preservation and survival tactics. I was so struck on retreat this summer at how Jesus lovingly chose the disciples and told them repeatedly how much they were worth in his Father’s eyes (Matthew 6:28-30; 10:31), even as he told the truth to them about their fear and their turning away from him. He knew that they wouldn’t be ready until they were ready, and that some of them would never want it.

Mother Mary is the ultimate model of Hope. At each moment of her story, she stands in the gap, waiting for God’s promises to unfold. She sees with clarity the flaws and resistance of the apostles, and stands patiently in their midst, trusting and waiting for the divine goodness she knows will ultimately emerge. And it does.

Jesus invites you and me as beloved disciples to join her and the Saints of every age, to stand in that gap, to abide patiently in the tension of already-but-not-yet, to taste and see how good God is while waiting together for so much more.

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From Dust to Glory

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

So we are reminded every Ash Wednesday. So Adam was reminded as he left the Garden of Eden, following his failed attempt to become like God by means of his own grasping and striving (Genesis 3:19).

God had created Adam from the dust of the earth, breathing life into him (Genesis 2:7). God had invited Adam and Eve to depend upon him for life and every other blessing. That dependence allowed a level of intimacy and joyful connectedness that the devil simply could not stand. From his envy and malice he viciously attacked, by means of subtle seduction. He pretended to offer what God had already planned and desired to give – to share ever more fully in His Glory.

Remember.

Remember who you are. You are dust. You came from the soil of the earth and will return to it. This world and all its desires are passing away (1 John 2:17).

Remember also that you are destined for Glory. Lent leads us to the rescue and deliverance experienced in the Passover of Jesus’ Passion and Resurrection.

We ache for so much more. Every human heart knows the longing, even if it is buried beneath layers of busyness, rugged survival, or mindless distractions. The desires of this world may be passing away, but we remain image bearers with an insatiable desire to return to our true home.

If you’re looking for an early Lenten read, the first chapter of Erik Varden’s The Shattering of Loneliness is breathtaking. You will be in good company, because Pope Leo has invited Varden to offer a Lenten retreat to him and the other workers in the Vatican from February 22 to 27. I was thrilled when I learned that. During these modern centuries in which many in the Church have forgotten what it means to be human, Varden is a voice crying out in the desert, inviting us to remember who we are.

Drawing from the desert fathers, he describes the painful nostalgia we experience, if we are bold enough to let ourselves feel it: “homesick for a land I recall, but have not seen.”

I remember how I began to experience that nostalgic ache with intensity after I had allowed myself to seek help and healing, beginning nine years ago. I stumbled onto the Welsh word hiraeth, and immediately resonated. There are parallel words in many languages, in which homesick humans attempt to describe this wistful longing within: saudade in French, Sehnsucht in German, banzo in Portuguese, Yūgen in Japanese, and many more.

This fall, I visited the cemetery in my former parish. I tend to weep there as I remember so many beautiful people whom I personally entrusted to the dust of the earth. The grave from one such man, who passed five years ago, bears the inscription, “There is no greater Sorrow than to Remember happy times.”

It is especially in our encounters with beauty that our longing for more is awakened. Even amidst the delight, there can be undercurrents of sadness. It is then that we perceive the enormity of the gap between where we have come from and where we are going.

“I am dust with a nostalgia for glory.” This is the fuller truth of Ash Wednesday, as named by Erik Varden.

We prefer to ignore both sides of this human paradox. We turn instead to our shallow survival strategies, whether we cover our nakedness with feeble fig leaves (Genesis 3:7) or mighty monuments of folly (Genesis 11:4). We pretend that we are not really dust. We create a manageable version of “glory” that we can control. Sooner or later, it all comes tumbling down.

Humility is the answer. The word “humility” comes from humus – the earth or soil or dust from which we are created. Humility grounds us. It allows us to accept both our bodiliness and our profound ache for more.

Humility opens up space for Hope, which is how we abide in the tension. We may be from the soil of the earth, but God has planted a divine seed within us. We would so much rather rid ourselves of the tension!

This urge to escape tension is a potential pitfall amidst the sudden widespread interest in healing. I have met many in healing work who are uncomfortable being present to the pain of others in the messy in-between. They feel an urge to fix or figure out, or to rescue. We can harm others when we do so, leaving them feeling more shame and abandonment in their pain.

As Jake Khym and Bob Schuchts pointed out in a recent podcast episode, healing is not about getting rid of pain (even if it sometimes happens). If that is our goal, we are turning God into a vending machine. Rather, healing is an ongoing encounter with God’s love and truth that brings us to wholeness and communion. Unfortunately, most Christian communities, even in healing ministry, are still more comfortable with spiritual bypassing.

Most of us are familiar with the notion that people turn to perfectionistic striving or to numbing addictions to medicate pain. More particularly, however, it is the vulnerable desire for Glory that we are fleeing. Desire is the most dangerous place in the human heart, often fiercely guarded by shame and contempt. I’m not talking about fleeting earthly desires, but the homesick longing for more. If I let myself feel that longing, I am no longer in control. And what if everyone rejects or abandons me then? It seems far better not to go there – except that this self-protection becomes increasingly exhausting and lonely.

“The Shattering of Loneliness” – what a title for a book! We each experience a desperate loneliness because our trust in God and self and each other has been shattered through betrayal. Through his Passion and Resurrection, Jesus now shatters our loneliness. In our survival outside of Eden, we have been striving to manage and control or to hide and escape. It is once again possible to connect and receive – if we are also willing to wait in Hope.

God so honors us as image bearers that he desires us to grow into His Glory, at our own pace and with our full consent. We need healthy community to do so. Ash Wednesday is a marvelous shared witness to these truths. It’s a truly communal experience. As a priest, I can offer a private Mass, but it would be absurd for me to impose ashes on myself in my private chapel on Ash Wednesday. We witness with each other in God’s presence what it truly means to be called from dust to Glory. We recommit to our shared sojourn through the shadowlands. We rekindle our ache for home.

In the witnessing and connectedness of healthy community, and in being reconnected to the love of our Father, our loneliness is shattered. It’s not that every longing has been totally met. We might actually suffer more in our longing once it’s witnessed – just as poets often feel agonizing desire in the presence of beauty. Some of the holiest disciples I know suffer the most when they feel intensely connected to God. They desire more, and are painfully aware of the gap between human dust and God’s Glory. They are holy because they keep daring to desire, to be known in their desire, and to be stretched in the tension of waiting.

As we receive our ashes this Lent, may we encourage each other in remembering who we are: dust that is called to Glory.

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Embracing Paradox

I’ve been appreciating Brené Brown’s newest book (Strong Ground). She names some of the paradoxes that wise and courageous leaders learn to embrace.

I immediately resonated with the chapter on the importance of “negative capability.” It’s a concept she found in a letter from the poet John Keats (1795-1821). Keats praises this capacity that he perceives in great men like Shakespeare – “when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”

There are moments when abiding in love and truth is particularly painful. These are the moments of the in-between, when we have only partial insights or unsatisfactory options. We feel the pressure to make something happen and get away from the tension as soon as possible. It becomes almost unbearable to abide and wait for fuller truth and goodness and beauty to emerge.

To be human in a fallen world is to live in this tension. We are stretched by two seemingly incompatible truths. On one side is the harsh reality of impermanence. As much as we attempt to deny it, our earthly existence is fleeting. Nothing gold can stay. On the other side is the nonstop human tendency for meaning-making. We insatiably interpret what is happening and why – a task that our brains engage both consciously and unconsciously, even while we sleep! We don’t like waiting to receive the fuller truth. We both desire and need to belong securely and trustingly to something solid.

To put the paradox differently, our human hearts were not created for endings, and everything good in this world comes to an end. What can we do?

As Brené Brown puts it, “Negative capability is a difficult muscle to build.  We’re wired to resolve tension and seek certainty.  This capability requires the ability to reach inward toward stillness rather than out toward counterfeit facts and reason.”

“Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10).

Even in turning to God, we are likely – in our urge to escape the pain of this paradox – to engage in yet another form of irritable grasping or controlling in the face of eternal mysteries that are never for sale, and will repel any attempts as seizing or sieging.

I’ve been reading the comments of a few thousand participants in the listening sessions I facilitated for my diocese this fall. You can feel attempts at grasping among many of our longtime parishioners who (in a world where everything has changed so much and so rapidly) expect their parish church to be the one place where nothing changes – only it already has, many times over. You can feel the grasping in the comments of hundreds of others who expect everyone else to adopt their political or liturgical ideology. If only we all thought this way, or all did things this way, our pain and suffering would go away. They forget the flaming sword that will not permit us to return to Eden (Genesis 3:24).

I empathize with their fear and restlessness because I know those movements in my own heart! I have my own versions of grasping or striving or hiding when the tension feels unbearable.

The real invitation is go deeper into the paradox without trying to escape it, nor to escape the tension found therein. This is exactly what Jesus and Mary do on Good Friday and Holy Saturday.

Jesus, true God and true man, does not erase or eliminate the dreadful consequences of our human freedom. Rather, he brings eternal love into the depths of our humanity, loves us to the end, and invites us back into relationship – with his Father and with each other.

His mother Mary does not do what so many churchgoers do when feeling the powerlessness of this paradox. She offers no fixing, no advice, no comparisons with others who have it worse, no backing away from his Cross. She stands with and witnesses.

Her with-ness and witness continue on Holy Saturday, a day of Sabbath – a day of stillness and rest. “Be still, and know that I am God” – these words sound so pleasant and peaceful in other settings. Not so much on a day of Sabbath rest in which your Son is buried in the tomb, and you are utterly powerless. Even then, rather than grasping or escaping, Mary embraces the promises of Jesus and waits in Hope amidst the paradox, not knowing how he will fulfill these promises until it actually happens.

Even after the Resurrection and Ascension, when so many questions remain unanswered, when the disciples are still downcast and doubtful, she abides with them and prays with them for nine days (Acts 1:10-14). They learn from her the capacity for passion and compassion that she exhibited so beautifully at each earlier moment of her discipleship, a capacity which grew and deepened as each mystery unfolded.

Yes, prayer and liturgy and Church are all part of our human response to this painful paradox – not so much being the answer itself, but the context in which The Answer can be encountered, again and again, stretching our capacity to receive – which also means stretching our capacity to suffer! The suffering of the Saints does not diminish as they grow closer to God. The greater their longing, the greater the gap feels between them and the living God. The greater their willingness to stay connected to others, the greater their capacity to suffer with. Show me even a few such saints, and I’ll show you a church community that is thriving on mission!

I find Brené Brown’s words both comforting and emboldening: “Resist the urge to reach for certainty where it does not exist. The longer we can hold that paradox, the greater our capacity to see and honor one another in our fullness AND in our contradictions.”

Faith and Christian community are essential, not as an escape from the tension of this world, but as a shared receptivity of the eternal, and of the mystery of each human person. It is in abiding relationship and receptivity that we can glimpse and taste the goodness of the Kingdom of God, and can persevere in our sojourning until this world definitively passes away, when Jesus comes again with full righteousness, wiping every tear away and abolishing death forever.

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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.