Favorite New Spiritual Memoirs

I'm a besotted book-lover. I have heaps of books piled on tables throughout the house waiting to be read or in the process of being read. Many of these books have been recommended to me by friends whose reading preferences I respect. When these books are spiritual, it makes sense to  recommend them on a blog dedicated to spiritual living? These are not exactly reviews. They are meant simply to share what I've loved. They are a get-to-the-point-and-do-it-quickly type of review that will perhaps inspire you to check them out and maybe buy a copy.

My two newest spiritual favorites are both memoirs and both were written by Jesuits. When a Jesuit writes, you can usually count on the work being erudite. Some Jesuit authors are also darn good story-tellers.The authors of the next two books are erudite and they know how to engage the reader.

I have numerous books on the lives of the Saints. I've recommended some of them here, in the past.While all of these books introduce us to saints and their lives, I've not found one that combines both the lives of the saints with a personal experience of these saints. Father James Martin's My Life with the Saints is a perfect blend: a personal spiritual memoir combined with the lives of the saints. This book is a delightful journey with a self-effacing, articulate, and often funny Jesuit as he meets and “befriends” saints both modern and ancient. Martin is a gifted story-teller and guide to those seeking to know the great friends of God. This book has instilled in me a new curiosity about my own and other's relationship with the saints. I question whether I've ever considered them friends. I wonder if reverence for their lives and the inspiration they offer qualify as friendship. I wonder what is your experience? Are you friends with particular saints?

I received Tattoos on the Heart from one of my best friends: a nun who spent the money I'd given her to buy books, to buy me a book! Actually, she bought several copies to share; she loved it that much. Tattoos on the Heart is a spiritual memoir of Father Gregory Boyle's work with the “homies” in Los Angeles. As we follow him into the heart of the LA ghettos, we travel with a priest who has dedicated his life to restoring hope and a sense of self-worth to hopeless lives. He introduces us to gang members who want more than anything to "to get a job." It is having a job that instills a sense of dignity to their lives. But even more than that, these young people need to be loved and it is love, unconditional love, that Father Greg offers. For the past twenty-years, Father Greg has run Homeboy Industries, a gang-intervention program in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles ( the "gang capital of the world.") The lives of these young people, as told by a wise and courageous priest, propel this book with such urgency that you will find it hard to put it down. Some of the stories Father Greg tells will make you laugh. Others will break your heart. To my mind, they are certain to enlighten and uplift you. 

An Advent Question: How Do You Wait?

"How do you wait?" the priest asked us at Mass this Sunday. He reminded us that we've just begun Advent -- the liturgical cycle of waiting for the coming of the Christ Child.

I've been known to fall asleep during sermons. I never sleep when Father Tom gives the homily. He began this Sunday's homily by telling us that he was taking a group of students to Disney World. Having done so in the past, he knew that long lines for rides were part of the Disney experience. While waiting on one of those very long lines, he'd been struck by the different "waiting" behaviors of those on line with him. Some griped loudly and made their displeasure obvious. Others chatted amiably. Some even laughed.  They didn't seem to mind waiting.

Most of us spend a great deal of time waiting. We wait on lines at the grocery store, we wait to get into theaters, stadiums, restaurants, buses, subways, we wait --seemingly without end -- in the doctor's office. We spend much of our time in the car: waiting for our children, for the light to change, for the almost inevitable traffic jam to clear up. I remember once telling my spiritual director how painful that morning's drive to work had been. Road repairs on an exit ramp created a bottle-neck that took over an hour to clear.

"Oh, I love traffic jams," she laughed. "There's nothing you can do about them but you can use them. I look on the time spent driving as a mini-vacation. A time for me." Her words turned me into, while not exactly a line lover, a person who could greet time spent waiting as a gift. A time to slow down. A reminder to stop the rushing and simply be.

While "waiting," I can reconnect with the inner self I might have lost on the way. I can greet God and spend time listening. I can pray for the the people waiting in line with me. I can check the color of the tiles on the supermarket floor if I want, notice the dust motes in the air, observe the way sunlight strikes the cashier's hair.  The things I can do while waiting are limited only by my imagination. For the times my imagination fails, I usually have a book in my purse. And, because I'm a writer, a notebook and pen.

We can waste our time waiting, just as we can let Advent which is all about waiting, slip past without noticing, without participating, without longing for its apex. Why should we yearn for something that happened thousands of years ago? While we're at it, why should we wait  during Advent anyway. Are we waiting for that special gift under the Christmas tree? Do we wait for the excitement of the celebration itself? The family gathered together? The joy of giving to others? The arrival of Santa Claus? Is that why we wait? Yes to all those things but Advent is so much more. Advent is a time to come to life. It is God's reminder of His Gift to us: the fathomless love that sent Jesus to show us the way to Love. And to Life.

Our experience of Advent depends on our response to God's gift. The Church makes it easier to live Advent through the liturgies that comprise this season. Advent's scriptural readings capture the age-long yearning for a savior, it's hymns lift our hearts, it's ceremonies move us. Advent prepares us to respond to God's gift of Love. Advent comes round year after year, to remind us of  God's unfathomable love for us. And if we are listening, our hearts will break open to receive this Love. This Advent, I hope to participate as fully as I can, to experience the full meaning of its liturgies, to prepare my heart to open wide to greet the Christ Child.

I'm glad I'm good at waiting. I just have to work on Advent.

God's Besotted Love

During one of our Benedictine Oblate meetings at St. Scholastica Monastery in Duluth, Sister Edith handed us sample copies of a new publication from the Liturgical Press. “Give Us This Day: Daily Prayer for Today’s Catholic” is a treasure for those of us seeking to live a deeper life of prayer.  Morning and Evening prayers include Scripture and intercessory prayer and features models of holy living in a daily reading called “Blessed Among Us.” Mass texts include reflections by well-known spiritual writers.

Today, the reflection for the mass was taken from “God, Christ and Us” by Father Herbert McCabe, an English Dominican, theologian, philosopher and preacher:

“You do not have to be good before God will love you; you do not have to try to be good before God will forgive you; you do not have to repent before you will be absolved by God. It is the other way around. If you are good, it is because God’s love has already made you so; if you want to try to be good, that is because God is loving you; if you want to be forgiven, that is because God is forgiving you.”

I was especially moved by the words: “You do not have to try to be good before God will forgive you . . . if you want to be forgiven, that is because God is forgiving you.” It brought me back to the day I saw my daughter Francesca for the last time. When Francesca came to see me that day, it was September 11, 2001 and the attack on the World Trade Towers in NY had just hit the news. She’d called to tell me she was on her way from Minneapolis to our home on Minnesota’s North Shore of Lake Superior. “I need you, Mommy,” she said. “I need to be with you.”

Francesca was a wildly loving, intensely vulnerable, and tormented young woman whose lifestyle placed her at great risk. When she came to see me on September 11, it was to tell me how much she loved me and agonized over all the pain and worry she’d given me. When I pulled her into my arms and told her I’d loved her through all her choices, she asked about God and God’s forgiveness.  

“What about God, Mommy. Can God forgive me for the way I’ve lived my life?”

“Oh Fran, honey,” I reassured her, “God has already forgiven you; you’ve always had God’s forgiveness; even in your darkest hours God’s been there, loving you”

I hope Francesca believed me for on September 18, one week later, my lovely girl – all of 24 years old -- was shot and killed. I pray that Francesca died knowing how greatly she was loved  . . . and forgiven. Seeing Father McCabe’s words this morning brought me to tears. This was the message I’d hoped to give my daughter. That is the message I hope to take into this day and the rest of my life. The knowledge of and belief in God’s “besotted”[i] love for us.

---

[i] Roberta Bondi, In Ordinary Time, Nashville, Abingdon Press, (1996) pp 22-23

Scruples and Teresa of Avila?

This week, I began reading Saint Teresa of Avila: Collected Works translated by Kieran Kavanaugh OCD and Otilio Rodriques CD starting with “The Book of Her Life.” 

I'd looked forward to connecting with this great lady. My first reaction, however, was one of irritation. Why did Teresa continually insist that her actions were so sinful? Wasn't this just a case of scruples? The Catholic Encyclopedia defines scruples as "An unfounded apprehension and consequently unwarranted fear that something is a sin, which, as a matter of fact, is not.“

Her vagueness about her so called “sins,” bothered me. To what loose and dangerous activities did she allude, save for some hints at friendships that were perhaps more secular than spiritual. Yet how were these friendships sinful when she was always trying to encourage these persons to a life of prayer?  What could be sinful in that, save that perhaps she sought some degree of personal glory in the attentions and love of these persons?

Then I remembered that saints do not view their behavior the way we do. Aware of God’s tremendous love for them, they view anything that might distract them from God, as sinful. While we might deem these “sins”  simply as distractions due to our humanity, saints view everything through the lens of love – God’s love for them and their feeble response to that love. I remember once having tried to become a saint and remember how the sense of sin tainted everything, even my efforts at prayer, so aware was I of wanting to excel.

During the intervening years, I've had to come to terms with my "sinfulness." While once shame had me praying while hiding my face in shame, I now view sin -- not as something deserving punishment but as something we do to ourselves.By choosing to ignore the movement of grace we block the door to the gift God brings us. My spiritual director once suggested that rather than berate myself for my failures of grace, why not celebrate the times I did respond. Why not view our failures as reminders that God is waiting to assist us. They force us to acknowledge our helplessness and dependence on our constantly loving creator.

Teresa (thanks to that infinitely loving God she remembers to praise constantly throughout her autobiography) speaks much the same way. She asks how God can work within us if we avoid opening ourselves to that loving presence because we are ashamed of our imperfections. If we take the time to turn to God, she reminds us, God will shower his graces upon us. 

Whether or not Teresa suffered from a surfeit of scrupulosity, no longer troubles me. Her efforts, despite her reluctance (and even repugnance), to live a life of prayer provide us with a mirror in which to observe our own unwillingness to pursue a similar course. “Don’t give up,” I hear her telling us. "Yes. You’ve been a miserable failure thus far, but keep turning toward God. That’s all that’s necessary. God will guide you the rest of the way.”


Pastel by Beryl: Fall on a Lake Superior back road

Lake Superior in Advent

Lake Superior’s North Shore is a craggy, rugged land with only six inches of topsoil on some of the oldest rock exposed rock on earth. Over 90 % of the land is state and national forest. Two thousand square miles of land with an average population according to the latest census of 3.6 persons per mile. Towns are small. The town where I live boasts fewer than 200 residents.

It’s quiet up here, the predominant sound that of waves crashing against ledge rock, and the peregrine falcons and ring-billed gulls cruising above. It’s a place where you’d better love the out-of-doors because there is little indoor activity to distract you. TV reception is inaccessible unless you have satellite and that’s expensive. Night life focuses primarily on lodges and taverns, when they’re open, the occasional community theater production or visiting musical group.

Those who don’t live here wonder what we do with ourselves. There’s little industry save tourism. Mostly the area caters to tourists, artists, people wanting to escape city life. In warm weather we hike, pick berries, watch birds, canoe the boundary waters and challenge Lake Superior in kayaks. The lake is too cold for swimming. In winter we hunt, snow shoe, ski, run sled dogs, watch the night sky. Deer, wolves, bear and an occasional moose wander our woods.

It’s a perfect place for a monastery, here where God’s bounty is so clearly visible. Contemplative living should flow naturally in such a place, one would think, yet perfect places do not guarantee perfect lives. Always we lug ourselves around, not seeing clearly, not listening closely, always dependent on God’s love to rekindle the fires of yearning within us. Advent approaches, reminding us that the Incarnation was willed through eternity as an expression of God’s love for us.

In a beautiful meditation on Advent, Sallie Latkovich CSJ writes that in Advent we contemplate the three ways of Christ’s coming: in history, in our daily lives, and in the second coming.

“I’ve been thinking that we’ve got it all wrong,” she writes. “We need not wait for God. God is always present, always with us . . . this Advent I’ve come to see that it’s GOD who waits for us . . . [God who] waits for us to notice the myriad ways in which God is with us, always.”

Time as a fountain bubbling up, not running out

The other day, while fretting over the difficulties encountered while writing the sequel to The Scent of God, I came across a quote that read something like this. Waiting for inspiration is like waiting at a train station to catch a plane. I read these words and smiled. Why would we head to a train station to catch a plane?

I asked myself this question as I plowed through 23 years of accumulated journals, medical reports, letters, and notebooks, trying to connect the disjointed but important factors of the story leading to my daughter's violent death nine years ago. I felt like I was in a train station wild with the mess of gates, and timetables and platforms and levels with time breathing heavily behind me.

There is another way to deal with the pressures we impose on ourselves. We can think of time as a well bubbling up into our days -- monk's time as referred to by Brother David Steindl-Rast in one of my favorite books, The Music of Silence. Monk's time is not chronological. It is what the Greeks called the kairos: time as opportunity or encounter.

The thought that “there is always enough time for the task at hand” frees me when I hit the barrier of my limitations; when I worry that I might not have another 10 years to finish this book, as I had with The Scent of God. It is in Kairos that I will catch the muse’s hand, not in the train station while waiting for inspiration.

The violence of the daily

In her weekly e-mail update titled "Reflection Questions," leadership and life coach Marcia Hyatt quotes Trappist monk and world renowned spiritual author Thomas Merton

"To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to the violence of our times," she asks us to reflect on the ways in which we succumb to the violence of our times.

How intriguing to find Merton relating "good deeds" to the "violence of our times." Certainly, the issues he mentions are ones that concern all who struggle to make good use of their time. Merton, however, is not accusing the works themselves but the way in which we perform those works.

In reflecting on this, I realize that I succumb to this violence each time I forget to be fully present to whatever it is I am doing. Each time I rush through the "now" to get to what should be an “attitude” but instead has become a “place,”: Inner quiet and focus.

Why quiet should be a place toward which I rush might stem from my monastic days when we were warned against the prayer of silence or centering which the church termed “the doctrine [heretical] of quietism.” Catholic Encyclopedia.

"Generally speaking [quietism is]a sort of false or exaggerated mysticism, which under the guise of the loftiest spirituality contains erroneous notions which, if consistently followed, would prove fatal to morality. ...In its essential features Quietism is a characteristic of the religions of India. Both Pantheistic Brahmanism and Buddhism aim at a sort of self-annihilation, a state of indifference in which the soul enjoys an imperturbable tranquility. And the means of bringing this about is the recognition of one's identity with Brahma, the all-god, or, for the Buddhist, the quenching of desire and the consequent attainment of Nirvana, incompletely in the present life, but completely after death."

Thomas Merton helped turn this doctrine on its head by reminding the Church of it’s ancient mystical traditions, diffusing the threat of "heresy," and introducing millions to lives of contemplation. Rather than warning against the falsity of eastern mystic traditions, "Merton was a keen proponent of interfaith understanding. He pioneered dialogue with prominent Asian spiritual figures, including the Dalai Lama, D.T. Suzuki, the Japanese writer on the Zen tradition, and the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh."

Perhaps in "succumbing to the violence of our times," I've also "succumbed to the violence of" Church doctrine.