Seasons of the Spirit
Redemption is it? - December 12, 2009
I am really tired of hearing Christmas songs anywhere I walk beginning now BEFORE Thanksgiving! It is ridiculous and completely empty of meaning. The merchantile purpose of this non stop exposure to the o, so superficial rendering of the mystery of Christianism is sickening.And yet I wonder if the success of Christmas, and so of all the hoopla around it, merchantile and others, is not our deep rooted need for redemption.
But what is redemption?
Is it what the dictionary says:
1. The act of redeeming or the condition of having been redeemed.
2. Recovery of something pawned or mortgaged.
3. The payment of an obligation, as a government's payment of the value of its bonds.
4. Deliverance upon payment of ransom; rescue.
5. Christianity. Salvation from sin through Jesus's sacrifice.
Certainly the last one is being the Christian one is the Christmas one, isn't it? But even that is not clear. What is sin and what sort of sacrifice was Jesus'? How does the whole thing saved us? From what?
The other night, thanks to Netflix, Pat and I watched the Gran Torino, a film by Clint Eastwood. (Read a good synopsis by Jason Buchanan in All Movie Guide: http://www.answers.com/topic/gran-torino-film)
Pat and I concurred with no hesitation that it is story of redemption. In a movie like this one, redemption is easy to understand.
In conclusion, you know redemption when you see it, but in its absence it is hard to define it, even to understand it.
Perhaps what Christmas brings is a longing for redemption, even though we do not know how to express it in thoughts. Yet, we sometime glimpse at how we could live it, actualize it, make it happen.
Christmas' Good News is a hope that indeed redemption is possible, here and now. And that makes all the difference.
Ordinary Time - June 28, 2009
After the Feast of Corpus Christi, the liturgy enters the Ordinary Time, also known as Time after Pentecost. It will last until Christ the King, the Sunday just before Advent. Each Sunday of this period has a theme, but there is not a particular on going thrust from one week to the next as there were in Advent, Lent and Easter Time. We are so to speak, left spiritually to find our own thrust. Which is really what we, Catholic lesbians, are left to do all the time. Because of our 'life style', we must negotiate the path of our spiritual life on our own, usually without a community.How do we do it? Where do we pick our spiritual daily bread? Is it easy? Difficult?
Now would be a good time to share what works for us, and what does not, the successes and the pitfalls. We are as in a desert, but there are oasis out there. There are ways to travel, to keep sustaining ourselves. Please let's share with each other, in this, our virtual community.
Happy trail!
Labels: 2009, After Pentecost
Pentecost: Birth of the Church? - May 31, 2009
Today is the feast of Pentecost and I just came back from mass at the villages' RC parish. The homily was classic, celebrating the birth of the Church.That got me both annoyed and wondering. Of the risen Christ's breathing his spirit into his disciples, the Church kept only the second part: "The sins you forgive will be forgiven in heaven and those you do not, will not." Chances are this part of the story was added way after the fact. It does not appear in the same way in all the gospels. Sometimes it is told to Peter alone, and sometimes to all the disciples. In any case, the important fact is the passing along, or "infusion" of Christ's spirit to his followers, and by extension to us all. It is the continuation of this co mingling of the divine and the human which first happened at the conception of Jesus and continued in the Eucharist. Or to sum it up in one word, it is part of the mystery of the Incarnation and of Creation all together.
But to go back to my problem with the homily -and the RC Church's traditional teaching- how can the Incarnation be limited to the said RC Church? From day one, the apostles who considered themselves Christ's heirs, wanted to limit who would be "in". And from day one the Spirit spoke directly to people outside the apostles' rules and regulations, starting with Paul on his road to Damas. "No, the Spirit says over and over again, you do not have to be "in" to receive me."
There is however a prerequisite to receiving the Spirit: Searching.
As we Catholic lesbians have over and over again experienced rejection from the Church, we assume too often that searching is no longer demanded of us.
Just the opposite, the Spirit is for us, as well, and even more, but we must search and ask. Then She will be poured into us and we will speak in tongues (figuratively speaking at least) and move mountains and live.
The domain of the Spirit and those of the institutional churches do not overlap. There is no exclusive to God's gift.
Today is not as much the anniversary of the birth of the church as it is the acknowledgement and celebration of God's presence in the most intimate part of our self, a presence so quiet yet so loving that we seldom think at all about it. "If we only knew God's gift!"
Report on the Catholic Irish Orphanages and the Feast of the Ascencion - May 23, 2009
This week saw the publication of the report on the Catholic Irish orphanages. Horrifying! I had seen the movie: The Magdalene Sisters (www.miramax.com/the_magdalene_sisters ) and this was just commonplace. Some very good comments can be found on the New York Times blog on the report. (http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/20/abuse-in-ireland-one-victim-responds/). One particularly caught my attention: "To begin to understand the appalling torture and slavery of children by Catholic institutions with the complicity of the Department of Education and the Government and Courts, you must attempt to understand the subservience of the individual in this country to the tribe, to the leaders of the tribe, and to whatever organizational form the tribe assumes through history."I am not sure if it is true of the Irish, but if it is, it is not only of the Irish. Is it true of us Catholics? In France where I grew up, anti-clericalism is prevalent. It is the norm. To become a nun or a priest does not give you any special status in society, almost the opposite. The Church is poor having lost all its real-estate holding in 1905.
I am not trying to defend the RC Church; I am only looking at the connection between a particular society and the Church within it. Looking both at history and at actual instances, one could conclude the more persecuted the Church, the more holy it is! In any case, the less collusion between Church and State, the best it is for everybody.
Such collusion begins within each one of us. What do I give to Caesar and what do I give to God? And that brings us to the feast of the Ascension we celebrated this week. Christ had to disappear from our mist, if he had not, his visible presence would have de facto been part of the particular political reality of wherever he is.
Persecution reminds us that our Christian faith needs to be forever challenged by the affairs of the city, the political reality of our day - and vice versa. In the absence of persecution, we need to be vigilant, forever questioning our faith, our own Church and our own City. We need to risk loosing if not "our tribe" at least our peace of mind and comfort level in doing so. We need to do so over and over again as complacency is always one of our worst temptations.
Pruning Forsythias - May 09, 2009
Today I decided to cut the h-- out of the forsythias. Those past weeks while all the neighbors' were gloriously blooming, ours gave only few lousy flowers. To remedy this shameful result, I went on line and find out what to do with lazy forsythias: "Prune them to death, they'll survive and you'll get flowers next year" I read, and so I did.Then I found out what this Sunday's Gospel reading is.
Jn 15:1-8
I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower who cuts off every branch in me that doesn't bear fruit, but prunes the fruitful ones to increase their yield. You've been pruned already, thanks to the word that I have spoken to you. Live on in me as I do in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit of itself apart from the vine, neither can you bear fruit apart from me.
I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who live in me and I in them will bear abundant fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. Those who don't live in me are like withered rejected branches, to be picked up and thrown on the fire and burned. If you live on in me, and my words live on in you, ask whatever you want and it will be done for you. My Father will be glorified if you bear much fruit and thus prove to be my disciples.
Ouch! I just hope and pray that God will not be as energetic pruning me that I was with these poor bushes of ours.
But on a second reading of this Gospel of John, it seems to me that pruning is not really the theme here. Even better, pruning as it may, needs not be painful: "You've been pruned already, thanks to the word that I have spoken to you." What is important is not so much the pruning than the living on in Christ. We cannot bear fruit apart from Christ. OK, but that can be very abstract. Does it mean, as we are often told, to abide by the (Church's) rules? Or, should I become a mystic,and lead an other worldly life? I am not great with ascetism!
There is a third option, also known as St. Therese de Lisieux'"Little way": the here and now. Encountering Christ is not a matter of moral. It is not necessarily either a matter of mysticism, rahter, it is the voluntary act of turning toward Christ in the present moment.
The present moment is the only place in space and in time where we, as individual, interact with the world, with each other and with the divine. It is THE place of contact, there is no other. Not in our regrets or remorse, not in our dreams, plans or wishes, but in the here and now do we meet. Every moment is pregant of this possibility. It is up to us. We only need to actively turn toward God.