Love is an Action Verb

LOVE is a word with a lot of definitions. It gets confusing! In fact, I don't think we have nearly enough words in English to cover all the things "love" is used for.

from Dictionary.com:

noun

1. a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person.
2. a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, or friend.
3. sexual passion or desire.

verb (used with object), loved, lov·ing.

1. to have love or affection for: All her pupils love her.
2. to have a profoundly tender, passionate affection for (another person).

So this covers filial love, romantic love, friendly love, sexual attraction ... all nice, warm, pleasant feelings. Nothing to do with the Christian definition of "love," actually. Nothing, really, to do with the grown-up definition of "love." 

St. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 13:4-6, says:

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

The ten commandments start out with "love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your strength; and love your neighbor as yourself." Jesus says, "love your enemies." 

You can't "love your enemies" according to the dictionary definition. It's an oxymoron. Then again, that dictionary definition, which defines love as a feeling, excuses the man who slaps his partner around because he sees her smile at another man. He "loves" her, and therefore it is natural that he feels jealousy; and if "love" is nothing but a feeling that brings and keeps a couple together, if a mere feeling can motivate pair-bonding, then why shouldn't the mere feeling of jealousy motivate violence? 

Christians, and grown-ups generally, aren't meant to be driven by our passions. We are meant to act in accordance with our conscience and our principles, sometimes in opposition to our feelings. Ask any truly happily married couple, and they will tell you frankly that love is an action verb. Love is a choice you have to make every day. Love is patient, love is humble, love compromises, love is vulnerable, love forgives, love listens. 

Exodus 23:4-5 says, 

When you come upon your enemy’s ox or donkey going astray, you shall bring it back. When you see the donkey of one who hates you lying under its burden and you would hold back from setting it free, you must help to set it free.

To paraphrase: if you see a car on a narrow shoulder, at night in the rain, with someone struggling to change the tire, and that car has a big bumper sticker on it advertising the evil, wicked political candidate of the evil, wicked party that you hate -- then you shall pull over and help, at least by pulling up behind them with your flashers on to shield them from getting hit by a car while they change the tire, or at the very least, you shall call #77 and alert the state troopers that someone needs help. Even if it's election day and they're on their way to vote for the evil, wicked, bad guys, you still help. THAT is love, in the Christian sense, in the grown-up human sense.

And sometimes, it's not possible to actually help someone, even someone we feel loving towards. Some illnesses are incurable. Sometimes, love is a nothing more than a shoulder to cry on. Sometimes, there's a pandemic on, and you can only video-phone or send a card. Sometimes, love is looking straight into the eyes of a panhandler, whose material needs are way beyond your ability to meet. Sometimes it's listening, with attention and an open mind. 

THIS is ultimately why I remain a Christian, despite all the glaring shortcomings of my Church. God loves us, so much, so deeply, so completely, so intimately. This is how I experience God's love. It's not about making everything OK. God's love doesn't keep things from going wrong, it doesn't keep people from getting sick and dying, it doesn't keep me from screwing things up, it doesn't keep pandemics and wildfires and hurricanes from happening, it doesn't keep war and rape and child abuse from happening. It's about holding my hand through it all, holding me in a loving embrace through it all. It's compassionate love, love that goes through the pain right along with me. Christianity describes a God who chose, out of compassionate love, to enter into my suffering with me, to show me that suffering is not the the ultimate meaning of life, that it is finite, and that it is smaller than love. 

The Christian God is incarnate, carnal, messy, bloody, weak, betrayed, physically overcome. He feels pain and anguish and betrayal and fear, and He chooses to stay, He is not defeated by the pain. And then He does it again every single day, in the Eucharist -- I'm not saying the wafer feels pain when we chew it up, I just mean it's so small, so insignificant, so meek and mild, like Elijah's "still, small voice." And yet, it's Love. It's intimate. It is Communion, two-way union, between the limitless God and limited me, and all-encompassing, although it looks and tastes like nothing at all. 

Some of the most loving people I know are atheists, so I can only put this in the first person. For me, it is in knowing myself loved by God, in feeling how God embraces suffering to embrace me in my suffering, in seeing how small, how paltry, how unimpressively God presents Himself to us, that I am somehow enabled to embrace my paltry, obnoxious, stubborn, wrong-headed self, and my neighbor, and even the ones who might be my enemies. To love, with my actions, by the grace of God, no matter what my feelings might be. Amen.

ADHD and me (getting to know me, part 99)

I never heard of ADHD until I was 30, when my dad was diagnosed with the disorder. Immediately, the whole rest of the family recognized ourselves in the same diagnosis, and some of us (myself included) went out and got diagnosed, too. Still, although I am now 53, I have a very superficial understanding of ADHD and how it has affected my life. Back when I was first diagnosed, science was only just beginning to see ADHD beyond hyperactive boy children, so the diagnosis didn't really provide me, a spacey (that is, "primarily inattentive type") grown woman, with a lot of guidance. Then again, I could never tolerate the stimulant medication that is typically prescribed for ADHD at anything like a useful dose. So basically, I have been untreated and uncounselled for ADHD all my life. 

This past week, I got intensely frustrated with one of the ways this brain-kink manifests in my life, which is something I call "stuckness" or "an excess of inertia." I just can't get started on things, or switch from one thing to another, even things I really want to do and know I'll enjoy. I very much wanted to go for a walk in the park, which is literally right outside my door, and does not require any special preparation or equipment or planning. I wanted to go in the morning, but it was 1:00 in the afternoon before I finally managed to get out the door. I was literally crying with frustration before I left. It felt like literal paralysis, like being stuck hip-deep in marsh mud, as if I were exerting every ounce of energy in my body to move a muscle that just would not move. I try and try, so hard, to go and I just can't go.

So later on, when I got back, I started to Google around about ADHD and what I guess was the state-of-the-art term last time I talked to anyone about it (a dozen years ago): "executive function." And I am finding that the state of the art has progressed a whole lot since then. I'm finding that some things that I never would have connected with ADHD are now considered part of or closely related to it.

There's a thing they're calling "Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria," that sounds familiar, but I always attributed to being ostracized in 4th grade. But according to this article on WebMD, "up to 99% of teens and adults with ADHD are more sensitive than usual to rejection. And nearly 1 in 3 say it's the hardest part of living with ADHD."

Here's another author who has coined the term "Emotional Distress Syndrome." As I understand it so far, he means something like Complex PTSD, which is a kind of PTSD resulting not from a single traumatic event, but from a prolonged series of events or one long drawn-out event. Neurologically, spending too much time in "fight or flight or freeze" isn't good for you, it can cause lasting harm. Now, I've said I have complex PTSD from having had major depression from the age of 9 to ... 24? 26? however old I was when I discovered Prozac (and not remembering when that most life-altering thing took place is also typical of ADHD). But again, yes, the depression was a real and crushing thing, but I also had undiagnosed, uncomprehended, untreated ADHD all my life. And I really have no idea how it has affected me.

And there's more. Sensory overload is another piece of it -- I have a very low tolerance for noise (the washing machine can really stress me out), and now I find that that, too, is strongly associated with ADHD. For some people it's smells, or textures, or light, though I think maybe noise is an especially common stressor. And you know, I've always said that clocks and I just don't get along, and now here I find they've put a name on that, too: "time-blindness."

But let me skip over any more details, for now, and say a little about how I'm feeling about it. Pretty emotional! I'm feeling a lot of things about it, all mixed up together.

One, there is a consolation in knowing that some of the things I struggle with are part of a bona fide "disorder" (although I think I still prefer "syndrome," since some of the aspects of it are positive, at least sometimes). It defuses the shame I feel at not measuring up to some standards that are not, after all, reasonable for me.  

Two, it's discouraging to realize that some of those things I'm still, always, going to have to struggle with. I may cut myself slack because I'm just wired the way I am, I may be able to laugh at my "time blindness" instead of beating myself up for being late everywhere I go -- but I still have to try really hard to be on time, because it puts other people out. And it's always going to be hard, in a way that "neurotypical" people can never understand.

Three, after all, I'm proud of myself for managing as well as I do. I'm proud that my laundry is folded and my furniture is dusted and my dishes are done, and I almost never go to bed without having brushed my teeth, and I spend a little less than I bring in each month, and my car maintenance is up to date. Those things are real triumphs for someone with ADHD, they are all things that I didn't use to do.

Four, I'm aching, grieving for all the struggle having ADHD caused in my life, and for all the pain having so little understanding of it caused in my life. It's given me a new perspective, especially, on all the stress of my working years.

Five, I regret how I've hurt others, especially the way I reacted to my dad's temper in his last years -- it was ADHD-type temper, and I inherited it from him and know damn well how quick and ephemeral it was, and that it didn't reflect his real feelings about me. I trust he understands, now -- forgive me, Dad. And for those I blew up at in the same way, I'm sorry.

Six, I'm interested, fascinated even, to learn more about this phenomenon. Of course, studying with ADHD, even studying a topic I'm interested in, is anything but focused and linear. And that's fine, because honestly, there's a lot to process. Only being able to read half a page or a page at a time allows me time to reflect on the information as it relates to my own life, past, present, and future.

Seven, I'm feeling very, very grateful for the life I have now. Working for a living isn't supposed to be easy, I know, but I think the ADHD just made it a whole lot harder than it would have been otherwise. My vows of Silence, Solitude, and Simplicity would drive most people crazy, but for me, it's pure peace and freedom. It's a relief, making up for all those years of feeling like Atlas carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders. 

Having ADHD must be why I love the Liturgy of the Hours. It's definitely not for the content. There are gems in it, sure, lots of them. But it is also very often infuriating. The language ignores women when it's not actively insulting us, the psalms and prophets are full of blatant political propaganda and insults against neighboring tribes, and I've always been uneasy with what seems to me the arrogance of dogmatic statements of theology (because God is a Who, not a What, and how do we get off thinking we can define the inmost nature of God?). But, the liturgy has a strong structure, it gives my days a strong structure, and it has rhythm (even music), and just enough variation to stay interesting. Everything I need is available in one place, for when my ADHD brain is feeling overloaded, but there's plenty of flexibility to go outside the breviary when it starts to get too hard to stomach. And after all, however clumsily, it does keep constantly referring me back to my Invisible Husband, God, the center and ground and delight of my life.

I feel like I'm tapping a can of worms here.... there is a lot I could say about why I am a Catholic in spite of everything. But that's a harder blog post to write, and writing any blog post at all is one more thing that having ADHD makes really challenging. I'll get to it, though. Probably soon.

Meanwhile ... thanks for sticking with me. God bless you. 

Follow Your Bliss

 "I really care about how humans smell smells in the environment and how insects smell smells in the environment, and how they smell humans." -- Dr. Leslie Vosshall, a molecular neurobiologist at Rockefeller University, as heard on the Nature podcast.

I got to do one of my favorite things in the world over the past few weeks: dress up in heavy chest waders and slog through sticky, stinky marsh muck, craning to see the next plot marker over head-high thorny vines and occasional poison ivy, during a humid Mid-Atlantic heat wave, carrying a heavy backpack, a clipboard and pencil, for the biennial emergent vegetation survey. Ah, what bliss! My ecologist friend thanked me profusely and repeatedly, and I just kept on assuring her that I love this! But she says -- and maybe this won't surprise anyone but me -- she can't get anyone else to go out more than once on this project. To me it is almost as hard to grasp that most people would pay money NOT to have to lie down and wet their hair in muddy water to stave off heat exhaustion (whereas I just sit there with my phone trying to get a good enough picture of the snails crawling all over my waders to enable me to identify the species) as it is for me to believe in those old Merry Maids commercials, with the women dancing around with feather dusters and huge smiles on their faces ("house cleaning may not get you going, but it really moves us!"). *shudder*

And that is how I know that this is my vocation (and in fact, I wrote "study of the natural world" into my Rule of Life as a hermit). Not merely that I love it, but that my love for it is weird. It is peculiar to me. House cleaning is not my vocation (if you ask me, enjoying house cleaning is weird). I try to keep my house reasonably clean, but I definitely don't love it. I do love being a hermit, living a prayerful life in substantial solitude. I love it so much that it was totally worth it for me to retire with half a pension -- so I'm not going to be paying Merry Maids to dance their dusters around my house, either. 

In secular culture "vocation" is generally equated with "career," which means it is limited to one dominant kind of activity that pays well enough to support the other aspects of life. Some women (and fewer men) consider parenting to be a vocation, but again, generally that implies that it's a full-time job, in this case supported by the other parent's paid work. In the Catholic Church, on the other hand, "vocation" means a "religious vocation;" e.g., priest, nun, hermit, that sort of thing. 

Both definitions are more limited than the sense in which I understand vocation. My vocation, for example, includes being a solitary religious contemplative, and it also includes direct study of the natural world around me. I don't get paid for either of these aspects of my vocation. Then again, to one who loves God, all of life is religious life; and if one discerns one's true vocation in prayer and the humility of clear-eyed self-knowledge, then that vocation is a religious vocation, whether it is the priesthood, or nursing, or painting, or football, or molecular neurobiology and the study of how insects smell humans. And/or, I should say, since vocation may as well branch out like streams in a marsh (some paid, some not) as flow together in a single, purposeful channel. Depth vs. breadth is just one of the aspects of vocation to be taken into account in the discernment process.

I'm not sure I've ever actually read a whole book by Joseph Campbell, but his phrase "follow your bliss" lodged itself in my psyche many years ago. I am deeply convinced that God calls us through joy and passion, and that He calls us one at a time, individually and entirely uniquely. We are so used to thinking of, and hearing about, the virtuous life as battling our natural inclinations, and sure, in another sense that's true, too. But let me just take the example that St. Paul uses in his letter to the Philippians (3:13-14), that of the athlete single-mindedly pursuing victory. Elite athletes push themselves through pain and exhaustion and frustration. They must battle their natural inclinations to rest, to give up, to settle for good enough, to have one more cookie or one more beer, to skip practice in favor of hanging out with the exciting new boyfriend or girlfriend, to roll over and go back to sleep on a cold morning. Why do they do it? Because they have a passion for the sport, surely. Because no joy, for them, compares to winning that gold medal or tournament. Because playing at the utmost limits of their ability is elating, exhilarating, and nothing else can compare to it, for them.

There is no real contradiction between self-denial and self-realization. If we are doing what we are called, what we are uniquely designed and motivated, to do, then we will find the burden light, we will naturally want to press on toward the goal. But it's still a burden and a pressing on. We still have to discipline ourselves. It's just that we give ourselves a far better chance if we are disciplining ourselves for the sake of something we love and want, something that we find compelling. Bad habits still have a strong pull, especially when they are first challenged. We are naturally inclined to anger, to sloth, to gluttony, to lust, etc., and we do have to battle those inclinations. But we give ourselves more of a fighting chance if we can oppose them with whatever sparks bliss in us. 

And what sparks bliss in each one of us is totally unique. Each one of us has a combination of history, temperament, gifts, interests, strengths and weaknesses, as unique as voice and fingerprint. None of us is ever going to be able to fulfill all of our unique potential. Most of us are so side-tracked, so early in life, by social expectations and the imperative of making a living that we have at best only a vague idea of our deep, unique vocation. And then again, vocation is not static. We grow and change and move on to new challenges and new circumstances. But for a whole lot of people, this pandemic has blasted so many of our expectations and so many ways of making a living, that this might be a fine opportunity for a lot of people to think about turning in a completely different direction. 

I'll leave you with this gem that I just discovered recently: Wishcraft, by Barbara Sher, whose unique vocation in life was to help other people discover their own unique vocations, and then find a way to follow them. What God makes you for and calls you to, God will make a way for you to do. 

God bless you.

Weeds among the wheat

In one of my first posts on this blog, I wrote about over-aggressive weeding. I confessed to a tendency to hyper-focus on trying to pull out every single weed, even when they get so entwined with the garden plants that I do more damage than good.  That happens to be the theme of the parable in today's gospel reading (Matthew 13:24-30). Jesus cautions his followers not to be too zealous in weeding. He says, "if you pull up the weeds you might uproot the wheat along with them. Let them grow together until harvest." 

Now, at the first level (OK, the 2nd level -- the first is my poor garden), I think of this as meaning that we should not rush to judgment of people, not label people as "good" or "bad," "wheat" or "weeds." Not try to exclude the people we consider "bad" from, let's say, our church. I think that's a pretty standard interpretation, actually. But as I've gotten older, and especially as I've been growing into this religious vocation, I have begun to look at it on another more personal level.

I am learning to be more patient and gentle with myself, the weeds in my own character. My  garden needs weeding, and also watering, and pruning, and staking. It needs me to put in a considerable amount of careful effort. But it also needs time, and sunlight and rain, none of which I provide. Likewise my inner garden. It requires me to work at establishing good habits and breaking bad ones, to spend time in prayer, in reading, in housework and yardwork, to get enough sleep, and a decent diet, and some exercise. But it also requires grace, that part of the formula that is out of my hands. Some weeds I have to get down on my knees and pull -- the chickweed and the stiltgrass -- and some, like the bindweed, I can only keep breaking off at the ground because its roots are 10 feet deep and I'll never get them out without plowing up or poisoning the whole garden, or both, and even then it'll probably come back. 

I once told my brother that I struggle with perfectionism, and he startled me by exclaiming, "I would hate to be perfect! How obnoxious would that be?" I assumed everyone, like me, wished to be (and even more to appear to be) perfect. But he's right, of course. Perfection is obnoxious. God Almighty inspires awe and even fear. It's God as needy infant who inspires love, and God the tortured, dying man, who inspires compassion. And it is the mirror of our weaknesses in others that inspires us either to love or hate them, in proportion to how we love our hate our own weak selves. 

So I learn. I'm a better gardener than I used to be, both with my vegetable garden and with my inner field of intermingled weeds and wheat. I spend a little time most days watering and weeding, but I am no longer so apt to damage the crop by attacking the weeds too aggressively. I am less proud, less rigorous, and more gentle with myself. I'm more willing to wait on the sun and rain, in whatever time and proportion they come, and to accept that some plants will thrive and others die off, and that it is not all in my hands. Even, sometimes, I find that what I considered a "weed" turns out to be beautiful or useful, and what I planted on purpose is a waste of space. There is another Gardener who tends me and my garden with infinitely more wisdom and skill and care than my own. 

Cracked

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That's how the light gets in

(Leonard Cohen, "Anthem")

This has been a tough week. It started on Monday with the feast of Saint Maria Goretti -- a little Italian girl, not quite 12 years old, who was knifed to death in 1902 while resisting rape. Worse even than that appalling event, somehow, is the text that the Church in her wisdom (yes, that's sarcasm) assigns to the Office of Readings for that day: it's an excerpt from Pope Pius XII's speech at her canonization, in 1958. "From Maria's story carefree children and young people with their zest for life can learn not to be led astray by attractive pleasures which are not only ephemeral and empty but also sinful. Instead they can fix their sights on achieving Christian moral perfection, however difficult and hazardous that course may prove."  Worse, because that almost unbelievable sermon was inflicted not by some random psychopath but by a 20th-century Pope of my Church, the Church within which I have dedicated my life to God. 

And here's the thing: I didn't have to read that this week. A, it's an optional memorial. B, I use an alternate lectionary anyway. C, if I do want to remember poor little Maria Goretti on her feast day, I have another reading that is really excellent (if long for the purpose): the chapter on "Virgin Martyrs" from Kathleen Norris's book Cloister Walk. And I did that, I read Kathleen Norris instead of Pope Pius XII ... but it didn't help. I already knew. I had read it before, and it hurt and angered me so much that just seeing her name in the calendar was enough to trigger the PTSD. 

I was raped. I was raped three times before the end of high school. I wasn't a saintly child like Maria, and I didn't fight to the death to hold onto my virginity. I was passed out drunk when I lost my virginity, at age 15. I had already been clinically depressed for 6 years by then, but this was before Prozac, and before Prozac "clinically depressed" was not understood as it is now. Neither was "date rape" or "capacity to consent." Anyway, I didn't tell my parents or any other responsible adult about it, since it was all mixed up with my own misbehavior. Which means there was no counseling, either. 

I've had some counseling since, but not much. I have always had a hard time communicating with most counselors. I never feel like they understand me, I get frustrated when they fail to follow my intuitive leaps of thinking. My spiritual director now is a monk, not a professional counselor, has no training in dealing with PTSD -- but I feel like he understands me, and we share the monastic-religious vocabulary and framework of thought, which also helps. And in the 4½ years that I've been talking with him, I have healed and healed. But I'll never be over it entirely -- it is never not going to have happened, it's never not going to be part of my history and therefore part of myself. So this week ... was rough. 

As if to drive home the message that there was some God-sent purpose, for me, in Monday's feast and its emotional impact, it was capped off by a real "act of God." A thunderstorm came through that evening, apparently with a very local microburst or small tornado. Trees and large limbs down all over my yard, and not much beyond my yard. A big limb hit my air conditioner and knocked it out of the window. A limb took down the power line between the pole and the house. I found out the next morning that another big tree had fallen and blocked the road right before my driveway, and brought down the power line there, too. After that crazy intense storm passed, wave after wave of ordinary thunderstorms came throughout the night, and I slept poorly. 

There was no damage to my house or car or chicken coop, only minor damage to the garden, and the road was cleared and the power restored by Tuesday afternoon. The landlord brought over a chainsaw and cleared up most of the fallen limbs, cutting the big pieces down to where I can manage turning them into firewood. But you know ... it all kind of piled on top of the stress from the Maria Goretti story. The depression lasted for days. Rage, grief, and a feeling of sterility in prayer, even at worst, a real aversion to prayer. I felt better yesterday -- the feast of St. Benedict, even though I still can't go to the monastery, was a pretty good diversion. I put so much attention into figuring out the music (using the old 1934 Latin Antiphonale Monasticum) that it was a good distraction, and having managed it better than I expected, it ended up being fun, too. 

And this morning I went to my parish Mass, where the saintly pastor was in fine form. He evidently doesn't much prepare his sermons, which is kind of a charming contrast from my brilliant intellectual Benedictines. He certainly reflects on the readings ahead of time, but then he just gets up and starts talking, and I suspect he doesn't always end up where he had expected to go. (Kind of how I write in this blog!) He's humble and ordinary and vulnerable, weak and flawed, and I think I would not be entirely surprised to see him start to glow, as with a halo, or find him walking a few inches above the ground. Here is a man who sees what is invisible, maybe more clearly than what is in front of his bodily eyes. He believes so passionately and surely, and as simply as a child. It was just what I needed.

And I started to think of those lines from Leonard Cohen, "there is a crack in everything; that's how the light gets in." And I started to think, I am glad to have cracked this week, I want to be shaken out of my state of "recovery." I want to grow, and continue to grow, and I want to be full of life, which is never static. Not scarred and scabbed over, not safe behind emotional walls of self-sufficiency and competence and routine and, you know, tools for cheerful and peaceful living -- I mean, I don't scorn those things, I take them seriously and I'm very, very grateful for what I've learned and where I am compared to where I've been. But sometimes I have to learn how to live, and then sometimes I have to be shaken out of my strategies and reminded that God is God and I'm not the source of my own life. 

I've got to live through all the seasons: slow, green summer is followed by fruitful, decaying fall; frozen dormant winter is when the roots grow deeper underground, and all the lush exuberance of spring comes on winter's heels. The seed is ruptured by the green sprout, flowers wither and fall off when the fruit starts to form, fruit starts to rot as soon as its seeds mature, each stage in its turn, and turn again the next year. And so the seasons of life, of personal growth, of spiritual growth. There is life in death and death in life, growth and fruitfulness in shock and damage, progress in waiting. 

St. Paul talks about this thing in 2 Corinthians 12. He says he had prayed repeatedly to be freed of some unnamed weakness, but God's answer to him was, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness." Paul says that he is content to be weak, both in himself and in dealing with external hardships and persecution, because it is when he is weak that God's power really shines through. "There is a crack in everything; that's how the light gets in." It's when I'm knocked off my foundations that I find myself safe in God's hand. It's when my boot laces break that I realize how futilely I've been trying to lift myself up by them, and all the while I am being carried on God's wings. 

And now it's time for Compline, and I'm going to let this go and move on. Dear God, I offer You my weakness, my pain and grief and fear and anger, my insufficiency, and my false self-sufficiency. Let me breathe Your breath, and let my heart beat with the pulse of Your life, and let me walk in Your steps like a toddler standing on her daddy's feet, my hands held by Your hands. Let me be safe, not behind my own paltry, illusory defenses, but under Your divine and loving protection. I trust You, I love You, I choose You. Amen.

   

 

Twin Thomas

Today is the feast of St. Thomas the Apostle. The gospel reading at Mass today (John 20:24-29) is the origin of the phrase "doubting Thomas." That's not the attribute I'm here to pick on today, however. The reading starts with the words "Thomas, called Didymus." Didymus is the Greek for "twin," and Thomas seems to be the Aramaic for "twin." But it takes two to twin, doesn't it? And the Bible never gives any hint of Thomas actually being a twin, or having a twin. Is it just like nicknaming someone named John "Loo", or someone named Kelly "Green", or someone named Joe "Java"? Yeah, maybe. Or maybe he looked enough like the Teacher, Jesus, to be His twin? Or maybe he and his identical twin brother were oldest sons, and no one was ever sure which one was the firstborn and heir? 

This mysterious missing other twin made me think about duplicity, not in the sense of deceitfulness, but in the sense of being two people within oneself. Lack of integrity, or of integration, between the face we show to the world and the one we see in the mirror. Or even deeper, a split between the face we see in the mirror and the person God sees when He looks at us. Is Thomas, the untwinned twin, called "twin" because he's twice as much man as the rest of them, or because he seems to be only half of a whole? 

I am not speculating on the actual, historical, apostle Thomas. This isn't biblical scholarship. The far-out internet notwithstanding, there are no serious theories out there. It's a riddle. What does it make you think of?

Ask, and you will receive

Today at Mass we heard Matthew 8:25-34. I just love this gospel passage! Jesus comes to the region of the Gadarenes, where he encounters a couple of violent demoniacs, wandering around among the tombs and terrorizing the population, so that the people are forced to avoid that road altogether. But the demons who possess the two men recognize Jesus as the Son of God, and they know He is going to drive them out of the men. So they make a request: "if you drive us out, send us into the herd of pigs." And He does that, and the demon-possessed pigs immediately rush off and drown themselves. 

Now, I'm a little thin on demonology, and I can't think why the demons asked for what they did, or why they immediately drove their new hosts to their deaths, or whether they themselves were destroyed in that death, or if not, what? I suppose, demons must work on our intelligence, and although folks say that pigs are very intelligent animals, it's still not like human intelligence. Maybe they didn't intend to drown their new hosts. 

But what I love about this episode is the fact that the demons made a request of Jesus, and He granted it. It illustrates something that I think we often tend to miss, which is that God is not in competition with the Devil. There is no great cosmic battle between Good and Evil. There is only one God, and God is good, and God is entirely sovereign, everywhere and always. We are weak and fallible, we do stupid and selfish and even cruel things to each other, but that is not because there is this great, powerful Devil, in serious competition with God. Nothing can compete with God, not at all. The Devil and all his minions are creatures, subjects of the sovereign God. The Devil may be stronger than we are, but God is infinitely stronger than the Devil.

God is always there for us, waiting for us to turn to Him. So why are we so weak, so wicked, so vicious? It all comes down to free will. God will never rape our will. We always, day after day, must choose good over evil, God over evil. We ourselves must reject the wrong and choose the right. As an essential part of that process, we have to be willing to examine our conscience rigorously, and to expose our shame and guilt to God, to ourselves, and to at least one other human being. One reason I appreciate being Catholic is because we sacramentalize that practice of confession, and ritualize absolution. On the other hand, we are weak in the follow-up of concrete atonement. It's not enough to say "I'm sorry" to the priest, if we've harmed someone else. We have to say "I'm sorry" to the one we've hurt, and we have to make amends, and we have to make a serious effort to change. 

And part of that effort to change is to reach out for God, to ask for God's grace, to ask God to help us to rise above our baser impulses. If He's willing to answer the prayers of demons, surely He will answer ours? Listen to what St. James says (Ja.4:7-8): "Submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you."  God can, God will.  We will always be weak and fallible, but God will always be waiting for us to turn again towards Him. If we're ruled by the Devil, that's our own fault -- the bars are not locked, we can walk out of our dark prison into the sunlight of grace, any time we choose. God is God, and God is good, and there is no other. Amen.