Heather King's Blog, page 11

WHAT IS THE POINT OF LEISURE?

Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins:

Last summer I stayed for two months in an Irish village.

People often pleasantly inquired, “Are you on holiday?” or “So you’re vacationing?”

“No!” I’d practically shout in reply. “I am not on vacation. I am working.”

“Oh. Okay,” I could almost hear them thinking, “Because we see you peering into shop windows, eating pastries from the fancy greengrocer, browsing the used bookstore, yakking on your phone, ambling down the Bog Road taking pictures of sheep, incessantly ducking into church… I’m sorry. We thought that signified a holiday.”

READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.

NYC TOUR GUIDE

Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins:

Manhattan, I reflected on a recent trip, is like a giant swaddling cloth, enclosing the Mystical Body.

Within a block of almost any Mass you can buy a cruller from the coffee-and-donut guy (“There ya go, sweetie”), a box of figs from the fruit guy, a fish gyro from the falafel truck.

As always when traveling, I walked everywhere I could, leaning toward museums, gardens, and churches.

I also set aside a day for a subway trip to Washington Heights, way up toward the north tip of the island. Step out of the 190th Street train station and you’ll see a raucous public basketball court and playground, right next to the St. Frances Cabrini Shrine.

READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.

OFF TO IRELAND

Whoa, I have barely had a moment to breathe for the last two-and-a-half weeks. I’m off to Dublin, there to spend a night at an aiport hotel, to meet up with my friend Dee who is renting a car and BRAVELY DRIVING us to Kylemore Abbey on Saturday, to settle in, and to give the first talk of our weeklong memoir retreat on Sunday evening.

Then we’ll both do a week-long silent retreat at Ards Friary, then we’ll go back to Dublin, again spend a night at the airport, Dee will fly home the next day and I will proceed on to Venice for another week. Then back to Dublin for two nights with my dear friend Muireann.

Venice is California-type weather and Ireland is cold and wet. And since I was determined to bring but a single suitcase, I had to be a super-duper packer.

I’m at the Tucson airport at the moment, two hours early as I feel my presence, waiting, hovering makes the incoming plane arrive on time.

I got through security unbelievably easily (I have Global Entry and thus automatic TSA-Pre, plus this is Tucson), and stopped after retrieving my bags to don my jewelry when I realized my prescription glasses were missing. That’s right. My freaking glasses. WHAT! I mentally re-traced my steps (I’d worn my prescription sunglasses in the cab), ran back to the security lane and inquired there, rifled through my purse a few times and realized I had perhaps left them in the taxi!

Luckily, Anthony of Yellow Cab had called me before arriving, so I had his number (plus I had the receipt so could have gotten in touch with him that way), and the good man–for indeed there were the glasses in the back seat where I must have put them on (then taken them off? why?) to pay–drove back to the airport with them. Good Samaritan #1! (of course I tipped him). Thank you!

The whole prep has kind of been like that: unpleasant surprises let’s say at the rate sometimes of several a day. Then again, everything gets ironed out in the end, as it always does (or not), and we put one foot in front of the other.

My fondest wish at the moment is to get to Dallas in time to watch the Navarro-Sabalenka US Open semifinal on my layover. Be careful what you wish for, as what is not my fondest desire is to have the flight delayed (as has happened frequently and I’m not talking half an hour on my recent travel) or cancelled as happend last year when I was returning from Dublin.

I wouldn’t mind so much except that I need to have a little time to recover from jet lag before launching into workshop leader mode. But again–“Let nothing disturb you, let nothing frighten you,” as Teresa of Avila said. “All things are passing away; God never changes”…

Speaking of quotes, today is the feast day of St. Teresa of Calcutta and I heard these from the Portsmouth Abbey, RI livestreamed Mass this morning: “Ask not for success; ask for faithfulness,” and “The person who wants truly to love must learn truly to forgive” (paraphrase but oh so true).

I especially liked the first one as I received a short, one might even say curt, email the other day from Franciscan Media informing me that two (more) of my books (Loaded and Stumble) are out-of-print, meaning not more than about three people have bought them in recent memory, and thus the rights have reverted to me and I can buy the remaining inventory for two bucks a book.

I already have a bunch of copies of both as I purchased them pre-COVID thinking that I would continue to land a speaking gig her and there and could sell them at my talks. HA HA!!!

Anyway I had so much on my mind and also I am so inured to such news that it barely even registered. There was a time when such “failure” would have laid me low but these days (as I prepare to self-publish yet another book, which will also PROBABLY not be a blockbuster (partly because I do almost nothing in the way of PR but that’s another discussion) I’m like, Eh, I poured my heart and soul into the books, whatever was generated in me and went out to the world has been accomplished, I can always format them as pdfs and give them away, and on to the next thing.

“My beloved Lord, I offer my soul to you as your hiding place, your haven of concealment. Take possession of the depths that I cannot see or feel. Let the silence there be a place to rest your voice, let my dry longing be your comfort and welcome. I want to be altogether yours. I ask that you make my soul your own possession. I willingly offer it to you that you may occupy my soul permanently. Hide there, conceal yourself there, and let me carry you to others in that concealment. Speak to others in your voice with the worlds that I pronounce; speak as well in the silence that encloses my life. It matters not at all what fruits I perceive in the days to come as long as you are acting. I expect to see little; it is better that way. I have become accustomed to your preference in using me without my knowledge. Your action is more effective when your hiddenness remains. The more ignorant I am, the more you are present in fruitfulness ” (a contemplative nun), quoted in Fr. Donald Haggerty’s Contemplative Enigmas

Mother Teresa (as she remains to me, canonization notwithstanding), also says in today’s Magnificat: “Only sin prevents us from growing. If you commit sin, let us use confession. Only see God, speak to God, love God. A clean heart is very close to Jesus, it can love him, serve him. If you neglect confession, sin becomes old adn then we don’t bother about it…If we stay close to Jesus it will protect us from sin.”

I like that a lot. My own sins are usually some version, or combination of, lack of charity (always), pride (also always) and greed. But confessing them gives me a little stab of pain the next time I commit one of them. I’m reminded in a different way than if I hadn’t confessed to try and do better; to beg for grace.

I really tried to scale back on the snacks this time and “surrender” my fear of wasting food, and simply put everything in my fridge that would go bad (including two whole small avocadoes) in the freezer. With me I brought a small container of two cut-up leftover tomatoes, half an avocado, some black oil-cured olives, and a good-sized hunk of cut-up cheddar. And some flatbread crackers, half a bag of dried apricots and three small bags of roasted cashews. That’s pretty good for me, and will serve me well for that US Open semifinal. I’m rooting for Navarro, simply because she’s the underdog.

Let’s not let our sins get old! And may your weekend be sweet.

THE NOTEBOOK: A HISTORY OF THINKING ON PAPER

Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins:

Increasingly we live in a digital world: e-cards, Google calendars, the Contacts phone app.

“The Notebook” (Profile Books, $31), by Roland Allen, subtitled “A History of Thinking on Paper” celebrates the age-old practice of writing things down — numbers, images, thoughts, dreams — and charts the evolution of this handy, humble little item that many of us consider indispensable but to which I, for one, had never given much thought.

Allen begins by recounting the surprisingly absorbing history of the Moleskine, forever romantically associated with Hemingway, Matisse, and the nomadic English travel writer Bruce (“The Songlines”) Chatwin.

READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.

NB: Biblioasis is publishing the North American edition of The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper, to be released on Sept. 4, 2024

ONE SLOT OPEN FOR MEMOIR WRITING WORKSHOP IN IRELAND!

Due to a last-minute cancellation, one slot has opened for my week-long Memoir Writing Workshop at Kylemore Abbey in Connemara, Ireland, September 8-13. Details HERE.

Come join us! There’s a chef. 

DIRTY WARS

Revisting the works of Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuściński recently, I happened to read Shah of Shahs, his 1982 non-fiction book analyzing the decline and fall of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran.

Then, boning up on the actor Ralph Fiennes after watching a YouTube in which he discusses his acting career, I came upon Coup 53, a theatrical feature documentary on the story of Operation Ajax, the CIA/MI6 staged coup in 1953 in Iran that overthrew Prime Minister Mossadegh. You can watch it here on Internet Archive.

Fiennes reads the words of the M16 operative, named in the documentary but apparently never filmed, who, from the British end, masterminded the coup that overthrew the democratically elected Mossadegh installed the Shah, and helped put and keep in place a dictatorial regime propped up by SAVAK, Iran’s brutally vicious secret police.

The CIA did the job for “us.”

The documentary is produced, directed and co-written by the Iranian-born filmmaker Taghi Amirani and co-written and edited by American Walter Murch who is considered without peer in the Hollywood film-editing and sound-editing worlds.

SYNOPSIS FROM THE DOC’S WEBSITE:

“While making a documentary about the CIA/MI6 coup in Iran in 1953, Iranian director Taghi Amirani and editor Walter Murch (Apocalypse Now, The Conversation, The English Patient) discover never seen before archive material hidden for decades. The 16mm footage and documents not only allow the filmmakers to tell the story of the overthrow of the Iranian government in unprecedented detail but also leads to explosive revelations about dark secrets buried for 67 years. Working with Ralph Fiennes (The Grand Budapest Hotel, Schindler’s List, The English Patient) to help bring the lost material to life, what begins as a historical documentary about four days in August 1953 turns into a live investigation, taking the filmmakers into uncharted cinematic waters. The roots of Iran’s volatile relationship with America and Britain has never been so forensically and dramatically exposed.”

Superbly written, shot, edited and paced, the documentary is horrifying on any number of levels, not least of which is the way it shows how the 1953 coup laid the groundwork for slews of subsequent similar CIA-sponsored coups throughout the world, as well as the Western conflicts with the Middle East that continue to this day. All in the name of democracy and all executed by means that were/are anything but democratic.

Does it even matter who we vote for? I thought this morning in prayer.

But closer to home, I also started thinking about the dirty wars I wage in my own heart. Wars that purport to be about fairness, decency, honesty, and truth–in interpersonal relations, for example–but that actually often take place in the underground dungeons of my psyche and that involve trumped-up allegations, enhanced interrogations, self-appointed judges, juries and executioners (me, always), and an utter lack of mercy.

Like the CIA and M16 ops who so glibly, with a smirk, dismiss their methods and the suffering they wreak on untold millions, I, too, can pass over my treachery and plotting, congratulating myself on what I prefer to think of as my ability to make boundaries, stand up for myself, and exercise (though I loathe the term) self-care.

I loathe the term but what is it but “self-care” that allows us to dismiss the suffering we impose on others either by commission or omission? What about the torture, the hot needles, the mutilated bodies, one of the U.S. ops is asked. with respect to the practices of SAVAK. He shrugs and with a faint smile responds in so many words, Well, when democracy is at stake, you do what you have to.

There’s nothing wrong with making boundaries, where appropriate, and taking care of our bodily, mental, emotional and spiritual health.

But you know what I mean.

However, let’s not despair!

“If it were not for Scripture on the one hand and Communion on the other, I could not bear my life, but daily it brings me joy in this sorrow which is part of our human condition, and a real, very real and vital sense of the meaning and the fruitfulness of these sufferings.  Thomas á Kempis, a mystic not at all in fashion now, says that in the cross is joy of spirit.  Jesus said, Take up your cross and follow me.  There is no one living who is not bearing a cross of some kind… My grace is sufficient, God promises us….

Compassion — it is a word meaning ‘to suffer with.’  If we all carry a little of the burden, it will be lightened.  If we share in the suffering of the world, then some will not have to endure so heavy an affliction.  It evens out.  What you do here in New York, in Harrisburg, helps those in China, India, South Africa, Europe, and Russia, as well as in the oasis where you are.  You may think you are alone.  But we are members one of another.  We are children of God together…

I write to comfort others as I have been comforted.  The word comfort too means to be strong together, to have fortitude together.  There is the reminder of community.  Once when I suffered and sat in church in a misery while waves and billows passed over me, I suddenly thought, with exultation, “I am sharing suffering,” and it was immediately lightened…

In patience you will possess your souls.  Patience means suffering and suffering is spiritual work, and it is accomplishing something, though we don’t realise it until later.  It is a part of our education, our pilgrimage to heaven.  By it we keep in mind that all the way to heaven is heaven.

I have had so many years of experience of how God takes care of those who trust him.  He is unfailing and will send us what we need.”

–Servant of God Dorothy Day

CONTEMPLATIVE PRAYER WITH FR. DONALD HAGGERTY

“A perennial need within the Church is that more souls become contemplative, not just those in monasteries or cloisters, but hidden souls of prayer living in the world, mixing with the world, a leaven sanctifying it.”

— Father Donald Haggerty, Contemplative Provocations

Father Haggerty is a priest for the Archdiocese of New York, serving at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

He has been a professor of moral theology at St. Joseph’s Seminary in New York and Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Maryland.

And for many years he acted as spiritual director to Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity, whose sisters — in spite of what many of us would consider their extreme asceticism — he describes as some of the happiest people he has ever met.

His subject is contemplative prayer. His books, all from Ignatius Press, include Contemplative Provocations (2013), The Contemplative Hunger (2016), and Contemplative Enigmas (2020), and his newest, Saint John of the Cross: Master of Contemplation (2022).

But the one that’s galvanized me during Lent is Conversion: Spiritual Insights Into an Essential Encounter with God (2017).

In it, he speaks of a pattern he’s observed through the years: the second, deeper conversion. Often a person, sometimes for decades, will lead a virtuous life, participate faithfully in the sacraments and develop a deep life of prayer.

At some point such a person might hit a wall.

The old ways don’t work.

Imaginatively inserting ourselves into a Gospel scene or passage, for example, as suggested by the Ignatian Exercises, becomes a grinding chore.

The Office, though prayed as usual, might leave us cold. A restlessness, a sense of something missing, of a call not yet quite heard or discerned comes to pervade such a person’s consciousness.

Not to despair, says Fr. Haggerty: Christ is calling us, desiring us, inviting us to a surrender of self more total than anything we’ve yet experienced.

This “second conversion” awaits “every soul serious about God.” It “demands a conscious interior choice on our part, a defining choice in prayer that takes us across a threshold of surrender to God.”

I can only speak for myself but I think for many of us the hesitation in crossing the threshold comes from thinking, deep in our hearts, that perhaps we’re not wanted. I know Jesus loves me but does he like me? Would he even be able to stand my annoying quirks, fears, neuroses if we hung out in person? (After all, no-one else much can).

Also if you’re a contemplative type, you learn early on that no-one much is remotely interested in or remotely understands the North Star by which you live and by which you hope to die.

I can’t count the number of times, unable to contain myself after days of relative silence, that I’ve breathlessly related some astounding insight I’ve discovered in prayer only to be met by a slack-jawed stare.

So you learn simply to accept that your real life is hidden. The world sees little value in such an existence, but you persist in believing that God does. You learn to persevere through long periods of aridity, desolation, staying seemingly stuck in various ways.

No problem: you don’t really expect anything else. There is always a flower, a bird, the sun, a kind word; a movie or book that captures the mystery and paradox of the human condition; the Gospels, a breviary.   

There is always, thanks be to God, the Eucharist.

In fact, this irresistible attraction to the Body and Blood, to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, is a sign.

It’s not as if so many people are falling all over themselves longing to offer up their own body and blood, Fr. Haggerty points out, that Christ doesn’t notice such a soul.

He’s noticed all along. He wants to share his secrets with us. And his secrets are his wounds.

“A sign of crossing the threshold into the ‘second conversion’ may be the sudden realization that it is the crucified Lord who dwells within our soul.”

The question becomes: So how far are we willing to go for him?

Fr. Haggerty describes what that willingness might look like: A widening consciousness of, and love for the poor. A desire for a simpler lifestyle around food, clothes, money.  

Always deeper prayer, directed toward souls, which itself requires a life that is sacrificial.

In fact, the most valuable, radically old-new suggestion I took from Conversion was to practice a daily holy hour.

Adoration is of course ideal. Or we can sit in church before the tabernacle. And if for whatever reason neither of those is available, we can find a corner at home and pray in silence before a crucifix.

Is that extreme? Is that weird? Would I be trying to look “holy” in the eyes of God, the world, or worse, myself?

A whole hour?

The time is long past for such waffling, says Fr. Haggerty. Am I willing to die for Christ or not?

“At some point long after an initial conversion, another leap of soul is necessary. A decisive ‘yes’ to Our Lord is demanded, as it was earlier in life, but from a deeper layer of soul, overcoming any barrier of hesitation. Spiritual conversions of this kind may be the most important acts in our life.”

THE EUCHARISTIC REVIVAL

Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins:

Not long ago I attended a Catholic talk. We heard a reflection by Thich Nhat Hanh, a poem by Rumi, and excerpts from a non-denominational pop psychologist.

My mind wandered. I tried to pray the rosary. But then the speaker posed a question in the face of which I could remain silent no longer.

“Do we love our religion enough to set it aside?” he asked.

READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.

CONTEMPLATION

ETYMOLOGY OF CONTEMPLATION

“The word comes from templum, contemplation which is, as you know, the Latin word for temple, but also from the Latin word for tempus, they are the same word. The word for temple and the word for time have the same origin, and they both come from the Greek word called temno, the Greek work is temno, which means “to cut.” Saturn, time, with a scythe cuts; the contemplatives are those who cut a space of time and privilege it, or a space in place, and cut it off from the flow of history and the flow of profane place and make it the sort of ground for turning the minds to the consideration of higher things.”
–Professor Giuseppe Mazzota, in Lecture 20 of a 24-lecture series offered by Yale Courses and available for free on YouTube called “Dante in Translation.”

“When Jesus takes you into himself to give you to souls, wherever you go means a life of isolation. We find that apparent contradiction in Christ, a hidden, contemplative soul who ended up giving himself to men, allowing himself to be consumed by them.”
–St. Charles de Foucauld

“Those who give up everything for God have always been the most powerful proof for the truth of Christ as a personal presence. But there is also a corollary to this. In a time when Christianity does not attract so strongly, must it be that souls giving their lives sacrificially to God are far fewer in number or perhaps simply more isolated, less visible, less able to influence? It is love alone in generous self-giving that consistently draws others to the truth of Jesus Christ.”
–Father Donald Haggerty, priest of the Archdiocese of New York, from Conversion: Spiritual Insights into an Essential Encounter with God

“In this time of anxiety and searching, one should write something, shape something. Whatever it might be, it could lead to proposing some kind of sense and order. Any situation can become a starting point. Knowledge of life doesn’t have a specific beginning and an end. It is like the earth: any point on it can become the beginning or the middle.”
–Anna Kamieńska, Polish poet, from “The Notebook,” 1969

THE FALLING BIRTH RATE

Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins:

Recently The New York Times op-ed columnist Ross Douthat, who happens to be Catholic, published a piece called “Is It Weird to Care About the Birthrate?”

“The deeper we get into a birth dearth,” he wrote, “the more dramatic the alteration required to come back up … a transformation in how the sexes relate to one another … a recovery of existential hope.”

To me this is a no-brainer. You don’t need to be a scientist, an expert in demographics, or a member of a particular political party to intuit that a globally falling birthrate cannot possibly bode well for future generations, or the future of the planet.

READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.