Chris Anderson's Blog, page 14

My Neighbor’s Yard

     Easter in the pandemic, for Peter Ely, S.J.

Beneath the word COURAGE on a scrap of plywood in my neighbor’s yard, there is a poster of what looks from a distance like an order of chicken teriyaki with rice.  But it’s the earth seen from space, the continents in their colors and the clouds.  There is the God who made the world and the one gray garden of stone.  There is the love that moves the stars and the one gray morning.  The grieving women with their spices.  The empty tomb.  There is the angel in my neighbor’s yard, sitting on culvert reading a book.  A gray stone angel with a gray stone book.  His head is bowed.  His feet are crossed.  He is just a boy, with wings.  And the stream flows beneath him, and the trees bloom behind him, and hidden in the branches, a black-throated gray warbler sings, zee-da-zee-da zee-zee, zee-da-zee-da zee-zee, again and again in the morning air.

 

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The Clouds Over the Valley

I’ve been thinking about the empty tomb.

I’ve been thinking about the fact that none of the gospels actually describe the Resurrection.  We’re always outside, looking in.  At a gap.  An opening.   He is not here, the angels keep saying.

I’ve been thinking about the fact that even the friends of Jesus don’t recognize him at first.  Mary Magdalene mistakes him for the gardener, until he calls her by name, and then her joy is mixed with confusion and even, I think, sadness.  She can’t hold on to him.  He won’t let her.

At Emmaus, when the disciples recognize him in the breaking of the bread—at just that moment—he vanishes.  He disappears.  Then they run to tell the others, and what they’ve seen and what they’ve felt becomes a story.  A narrative.

I’ve been thinking about the great hymn in Colossians, that all things were created through Christ from the beginning of time and are still being created—that all things “continue in being in him.”   So what is the Incarnation?  Did it happen just once, in a stable in Bethlehem, or has it always been happening?  What is the Resurrection?  Did it happen just once, on a hill outside Jerusalem, or is it part of the very fabric of things, their motive force, their reason?

I’ve been thinking about the clouds as I look out at the valley, from Arboretum Road.   They’ve closed the forest now and I have to walk on the asphalt.  I have to keep Bumble on his leash.  But there are clouds over the valley, huge white clouds in a blue spring sky, and now I can see them.

I can see the farms.  The fields.  Nothing is blocking my way.

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Everything That Rises

Cells live and die and new cells are born.  Species go extinct and other species emerge.  Stars fade away, and galaxies, and from their matter and their energy new stars are formed and new planets take shape.  New galaxies.  This is happening all the time.  If we in our own small moment are caught up in this larger cycle of life and death, let us give thanks.  Let us give thanks that we are being made more aware of the larger forces that shape our lives, the vast cycles.  Because these cycles are meaningful.  They’re not random, however random and indifferent they might seem. They’re going somewhere, they’re spiraling up higher and higher, they’re moving towards an ever-increasing love, an ever-increasing tenderness.  There are seven trillion cells in my body, Peter said as he was dying, and I’m really curious to find out where they’re going.  And now he knows.  They’re going towards love.  They’re going towards joy.  They’re going towards Christ.

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Surrendering

I wonder if I’ve been thinking about this all wrong.  If I’ve had a false image in my mind all this time.  Maybe I don’t have to be roasted on a spit or kneel all day in a shaft of light.  Maybe I don’t have to stop being human and stop living my life.  Maybe I do get to live my life, but slowly.  Quietly.  Maybe to surrender to God means to walk in the woods with a clear mind.  Maybe to surrender to God means to walk in the woods with awareness.  To feel the road beneath my feet.  To hear the woodpecker drumming in the top of a tree.  Maybe to surrender to God—to say, Your grace and Your love are wealth enough for me; give me these, Lord Jesus, and I ask for nothing more—maybe that means, Lord, give me this moment.  Lord, help me slow down.  Lord, help me be myself.  Fully myself.  God created all these things in Christ, God loves all these things in Christ, all these things continue in being in Christ.  I continue in being in Christ.  Do I really think that He cares less about me than He cares about anything else?  That’s blasphemy!  There is no place where Christ is not, even in me, right now.  I am walking down a gravel road.  I glimpse the valley in the distance, then the mountains.  My dog bounds away in front of me.  I am surrendering myself to Christ.  Christ has given me His grace and His love.  He has given me the day.  He has given me my life.  I ask for nothing more.

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The Mass of the World

Though we were all expecting it, I was still shocked when I got the archbishop’s email cancelling all public masses until after Easter.  I still can’t quite believe it.

It makes me realize how much I love the Eucharist.  How much I need the Eucharist.

 

It makes me think of the Jesuit scientist and theologian Teilhard de Chardin, how there were times in his life when he wasn’t able to celebrate the mass—when he was a soldier in the French army during World War I, in the middle of battle—or later, when he was leading scientific expeditions, often by mule train, into the remote deserts of Western China.

What he celebrated then is what he later came to call the “Mass of the World”:

Since today, Lord, I your Priest have neither bread nor wine nor altar, I shall spread my hands over the whole universe and take its immensity as the matter of my sacrifice.  Let creation repeat to itself again today, and tomorrow, and until the end of time, the divine saying: “This is my body.”

What moves me here is Chardin’s sense of unity with the natural world, and also with all of humanity.  In fact, it was exactly in the trenches, in the midst of the horror of war, that he first felt this faith and this joy welling up in him, this solidarity with his fellow soldiers and this confidence that Christ is in all things.  Even in the midst of war.  Even as the shells were flying.

It’s very much the faith at the heart of what the Church has always called “Spiritual Communion” and that the archbishop has recommended for all us, until we can come together again.  “I love You above all things,” we pray in part, “and I desire to receive You into my soul.”

And this communion happens, it truly happens, if we pray for it sincerely.

We will be in communion with Christ.  We will be in communion with each other.

 

Maybe in our hunger for the Eucharist in the next few weeks and months we can come to better understand its depth and breadth and scope.  Maybe in our hunger for the Eucharist we can come to understand the way that the Risen Christ is continually transforming all of matter into spirit, drawing all things to Himself.  Maybe when we finally return from our exile, when we are finally standing together at the Eucharistic Prayer, we can feel more powerfully than before what really happens then–that when the priest elevates the host, when he holds the Body of Christ in the air before us, he is holding the world.  He is holding the universe.

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Still the Moon

A day or two ago, after a sleepless night, I looked out the window and saw the moon shining through a gap in the clouds. Still the moon, coming through the bare branches of the trees.  Everything was quiet.  Beautiful.

The moon, a symbol of Mary, reflecting the light of Christ.

I think of all the saints we know and all the saints we don’t, serving in famines and serving in wars and serving in plagues.  The courage that comes from faith, and the calm.  I think of Our Lord on the cross, and Our Lord in the tomb, and the joy of Mary Magdalene when he calls out her name.

Even during the total eclipse last year, when the moon blotted out the sun, all that happened was the coming of the prettiest violet light.  A few soft stars.  It was like a quiet summer evening.  We sat in our lawn chairs in the front yard drinking our second cup of coffee.

And then it was morning again.  An ordinary summer morning.  The dishes to do.  The lawn to mow.

Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.  Nothing.  Neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers.  What has come into being in him is life, and the life is the light of all people, and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness will never overcome it.

 

 

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Our Faces

Tuesday, March 3, 2020

Psalm 34

There’s a beautiful line in the psalm today that I haven’t noticed before: “Look to him that you may be radiant with joy / and your faces may not blush with shame.”  I like that.  It’s nicely balanced.  It’s almost a kind of pun.

My wife is a redhead and she blushes easily, and I blush easily, too.  The blood just rises up into my face when I’m angry or embarrassed.  I can feel it happening, and everyone can see it.

What the psalm tells me is that my face should be glowing with joy.  My face should be turned towards God, reflecting his light.

 

We all know a few people like this, people with faces that seem to shine, who seem to radiate something healthy and good.  They’re persuasive not because of what they say but because of who they are.  We all know people, many more people, with faces full of worry or anger or shame.  People with drawn faces.  Tight faces.  Or I think of my students, who are good kids but who after growing up with smart phones don’t have the same expressions I’m used to, don’t have faces I know how to read anymore.  When they’re not looking down, their faces are often blank.

This Lent let’s look at ourselves in the mirror, and if we can’t see that joy, let’s reflect on why not.  Let’s connect again with our only true source.  And when we do, let’s show it.  Why are we such “sourpusses?” as Pope Francis asks.  We’re at mass–we’re in the presence of the Eucharist—Christ is giving himself to us!

Think of the difference it makes when someone smiles at us.  It lifts us.

At one point in the Paradiso, as Dante and Beatrice are flying up into the light of heaven, Beatrice even has to turn away from Dante, her smile is so radiant.  If Dante saw it, he’d be burned to ash.

 

It all depends on what we’re looking at.  That’s what our faces reflect.

Are we looking at God—at what’s healthy and right and good?

If we’re not, what are we looking at?  What have allowed to capture our gaze?

 

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The Perfect Catholic

February 23, 2020

Matthew 5:38-48

Jesus says “be perfect as your Father is perfect,” and my heart sinks.  I panic.  Because I can’t do that.  I’m incapable of doing that.

I could say the obvious and point out how terrible our public discourse is and how we’re all striking cheeks, not turning them:  Republicans hate Democrats and Democrats hate Republicans, and Democrats hate Democrats, and Republicans hate Republicans, and we’re always saying so, outright and without any filter, in public, online–and it’s even worse in our hearts, interiorly, where we’re always judging and blaming and dismissing.

But that’s just the point.  Whenever I get fixated on what’s wrong with the world, whenever I find myself obsessively reading The Washington Post and The New York Times, looking for something else to get upset about, it’s because I don’t want to face my own inner politician, my own personal hypocrisy.

The other day I saw someone texting and driving, and I swear if my car had had missiles, like in a James Bond movie, I would have blown her to kingdom come.  We had some people over recently and when I wasn’t bored I was infuriated.  They drove me crazy.  I had to make up an excuse and leave the room, and I thought, why can’t I rise above this?  Why can’t I feel compassion for these people?  Why don’t I have any patience?

Because I don’t.  Because I can’t.  And this is the key.  Because it’s only when we realize our own lack of love, it’s only when we accept our own limited capacities, that we can turn to God and ask for his grace to flow through us.

It’s only when we admit that we’re not perfect, when we acknowledge who we really are, that we feel our solidarity with all the other imperfect people in the world.  We’re all in this together.

“In this is love,” the First Letter of John says,” not that we have loved God, but that he loved us.”  And later: “We love because he first loved us”

And we have to keep this in mind when things are going well, too, when we get the compliment or the raise and we’re feeling good about ourselves, as if we’re pretty special, which in a way we are but in another way we’re not.  “The sun rises on the bad and the good,” Jesus says, “the rain falls on the just and the unjust,” which is as good a rebuttal to the Gospel of Prosperity as I can think of, a rebuke to anyone who thinks the people who are suffering deserve to, that we’ve earned what we have by being so holy.  True holiness never makes us feel set apart.  True holiness begins in humility.

There’s this wonderful advice from the poet William Stafford, “when in doubt, lower your standards.”  Just write.  Do what you can and stop trying to win the Nobel Prize, and this is just as true in the spiritual life.  “When you feel the temptation to dwell on your own weakness,” Pope Francis says, “raise your eyes to Christ crucified and say: ‘Lord, I am a poor sinner, but you can work the miracle of making me a little bit better.”  This is wonderfully freeing, and it’s also very challenging.  For one thing, I don’t have any excuses anymore.  I have to get going.  For another, to be holy doesn’t mean making grand and noble gestures that will get me a lot of attention.  It means slogging along day-to-day.

The Pope talks, for example, about the holiness of our next-door neighbors, those he calls “the saints next door,” people quietly taking care of their families and doing their jobs as best they can.  Trying not to gossip.  Trying not to get mad.  Being open to the stranger.  Generous.  Kind.  Being the best parents they can be or the best programmers or the best salespeople.  “We are all called to be holy by living our lives with love,” the Pope says, “and by bearing witness in everything we do, wherever we find ourselves.”

The other day when I brought my car in for an oil change, they found that I needed a new seal on the right front axle.  But when I picked it up and drove it for a while, the brakes were soft and there was this humming, like I was driving on studded tires.  So I brought it back, and they checked it out again, and they said, well, you need a new wheel bearing now, on the right side, and that’s going to cost you, hundreds of dollars.

I thought this was odd—I hadn’t had this problem before—but I don’t know much about cars and so I said, OK.  Go ahead.

But here’s the thing.  The woman who was helping me at the desk, who could have let this go—I was ready to pay, I wouldn’t have known—this woman went back to the mechanics and asked around and found out that it was their fault, that in replacing the seal they’d set the brakes wrong, and this had caused the problem with the bearing.  Or something.

All I know is that this woman called me back, and said it was their fault, and said they wouldn’t charge me for the work.

I don’t know if this woman was a Christian.  All I know is that she saved me a lot of money.  All I know is that it was easy to love my neighbor as myself that day, because she first loved me.  All I know is that this woman was a model of what it means to be a Christian in the world, of how we do the work of the Spirit by doing our jobs well and with integrity, of how being Christian isn’t just a matter of how we act in church but also of how we act when we leave it.

We need the Eucharist, it’s our life and our hope, but then we have to go out and be the Eucharist, in the world.  The mass is never ended.

“The truth is devastatingly simple,” Sister Ruth Burrows says, and “we are tempted to shirk it”:

the stark, overwhelming reality is that God is giving himself to us in the stream of the ordinary, mundane events of our ordinary, mundane life.  This is where he is for us, here and not elsewhere.  Here, precisely here, must we hallow his name.

And later Burrows goes on to make an even more striking statement—that though we long to be “masters of our lives, in control, strong and beautiful,” though we long in effect to be God, the Gospel message is just the opposite.  We must be human.  We must be small.  “Our poverty is blessed,” she says, “because it opens us to God and makes us realize our need for a Savior.”

This is the work.  There is no other.  And it’s heroic work, and it’s hard work, harder than any work we will ever do: to continually strive to be loving and compassionate, and to continually admit that we can’t be, and to continually be open to grace, to goodness, to the saving action of the Lord Our God.

For He is always present.  He is always with us.  All is grace.  Everything.

 

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Under the Volcano

Tuesday, February 11, 2020

Mark 7:1-13; Memorial:  Our Lady of Lourdes

 

As Catholics many of us have strong opinions about music and everything else about the mass–there are things we like and things we don’t—and that’s OK, as long as we don’t lose sight of what the mass is really about.

The next time something happens at church we don’t like, let’s take it as an invitation to pray for deeper faith.  Let’s remember the Lord’s admonishment in the Gospel today: “You hypocrites!  You disregard God’s commandment but cling to human tradition.”  Why are we worried about little things when the Lord our God is pouring himself out on the altar?

Did Our Lady care about what Bernadette was wearing when she appeared before her in the grotto at Lourdes?

And we’re always judging people, too, by the way they look or talk, forgetting who they really are.  “Next to the Blessed Sacrament,” C.S. Lewis said, “your neighbor is the holiest thing you’ll ever see.”  What difference does it make if his sweatshirt is dirty?

As someone put it in an article I read the other day, too often we’re like people playing golf underneath a volcano.  The writer was talking about how out of touch college professors are in the face of all the terrible things in the world, especially English professors, but I think that’s true for all of us.  We’re all working on our short game while the mountain explodes and the fire reigns down.

Except for us as Catholics the volcano doesn’t represent the end of the world, at least in a terrifying way.  For us the volcano is Christ.  For us the volcano is the love of Christ.  For us the volcano is the great power of Christ, under us and all around us and everywhere.

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The Heart of the One Who Hung There

February 4, 2020

2 Samuel 18:9-19:3; Mark 5:21-43

 

Sometimes we experience sadness and grief, as David does in this great literary set piece from the Second Book of Samuel.  We lose someone we love or we lose something really important in our lives and the loss is more than we seem able to bear.  “Absalom, Abaslom,” David cries out in his grief, when he learns that his son has been killed.

And sometimes we experience joy, we experience resurrection, as Jairus does today in this great literary set piece from the Gospel of Mark.  His child doesn’t die.  She is saved, brought back to life by Jesus himself in his kindness and his compassion and his power.  “Rise little girl, rise!”

Desolation and consolation.  The darkness and the light.

And the thing about the spiritual life is that both are from God, in ways we can’t understand.

What does it mean that yesterday as I was walking my dog in the bright winter sun somewhere else on the planet a child was dying of hunger or violence or neglect?  This is the great question, how a loving God can allow suffering and evil in the world, and the great temptation is to say he can’t.  He doesn’t exist.  The joy we feel is a lie.  It’s easier that way.  We are naturally either/or people.  We can’t live with unresolved questions.  We can’t live without an answer, even if that answer is that life is random and bleak.

But as people who believe in God, like David, as followers of Jesus, like Jairus, we can’t be that arrogant.  We can’t be that presumptuous.  We are called to live inside the tensions.  We are called to live inside the contradictions. We are called to endure the darkness as best we can and to exult in the light when it comes and not presume to explain how they fit together.  Only God can do that.

All we can do is be where we’re at.  All we can do is be in the moment.

“The best help for holding on to the light is to understand that we can do nothing and that it comes from God,” St. Teresa of Avila says.

The most important word in the scriptures is and.  This and that.  The crucifixion and the resurrection.  The human and the divine.  All of it.  Everything in the world brought together and focused and intersecting, on the cross, and through the cross, and in the heart of the man who hung there.

 

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