Lin Wilder's Blog, page 27

The Corporate Reality of Prayer: How Can You Say Reality?

the corporate reality of prayer:?The Corporate Reality of Prayer

Although I had never conceived of the Mystical Body of Christ, a few pieces of the massive chessboard of the mystery of God clicked into place. All at once. We were all connected, all of us. Even if the virtual arteries and connective tissue had narrowed, even closed, due to sin, they were there. They existed. All of those strangers speaking to me through the years, even perhaps praying for me. There was no doubt in my mind, none at all. This was why I had felt this powerful sense of belonging, of being home. So much was made clear to me by this construct. But most of all the effects of our sins and of our goodness on the Body and on each one of us.

Finding the Narrow Path

What does that even mean: the  corporate reality of prayer?’

And why write about it in late January, 2021?

Why indeed? 

This perfect storm of “coincidences” has embraced this country-and the world- for ten months with no relief in sight:A global pandemic of illness, fear, and economic catastrophe.Worldwide closing of churches due to fear of contagion. A time of unprecedented political division.A significant and growing proportion of Americans – if we believe mainstream media- who have lost any conception of God, His Law, and the extraordinary gift to humanity brought by the Resurrection of the Christ.A new administration in Washington, many of whom claim Catholicism, yet legislate mortal sin as righteous.

That phrase, “corporate reality of prayer,” connotes mega-corporations and bureaucracy-hardly what is implied by prayer. But it’s the origin of the word, corpartus or ‘to form into a body’ that I write about here. For we are a body- we baptized Christians. Even if the Baptism is but a faint memory. And you uncomfortably joke about the last time you were in a church. you are a member of the Body of Christ. “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body…”

Baptized into one body…

Surely that phrase is allegorical. How can some water and words take mega billions of people-black, white, men, women, Chinese, African to create a single body? 

No, it is not allegory and it is not only possible, but is more real than is the laptop on which I write. The quote at the beginning of this piece is from a book I wrote at the request of a dear friend. “Lin, there is no way I can understand how you feel about your faith, your relationship with Christ and the Catholic Church. These are things I have had all my life. I have never known a life without them. In a sense, I take them very much for granted. But when I listen to you talk about your faith, it’s as if I am listening to a love story… You fell in love, didn’t you?”

My friend extracted my promise to someday write the story of why I walked away and then back. Uncomfortably, reluctantly, I agreed.

How can you say reality?

Here is just one -of many-examples of my upfront and personal experience with the reality of corporate prayer. Shortly after my conversion, a business acquaintance from Houston and I were at dinner. I had invited her to the academic medical center where I was working to consult with the nursing staff. The business settled, our conversation turned to personal matters and she asked how I was doing. To my broad grin and declaration, “I have become a Catholic,” Nan expressed no surprise. She simply nodded.

Into the silence, I said, “Most everyone in my life is stunned…you’re not?”

Nan carefully placed her fork back on her plate and looked at me, her expression filled with light. “Of course not, Lin, David (head of the IS department at the AMC where I had worked in Houston) and I have been praying for you for years…we knew He had His hand on you, it was merely a matter of His timing.” Then she smiled and said, “Welcome, my sister in Christ.”

To the convert, at least to this one, the process feels instantaneous, like the most famous of us: St. Paul. but, upon reflection, we see that it has been incremental. And understand that our unbelief takes work, energy, persistence, just like faith. Our unbelief is a structure built by human hands, like a wall we build carefully, methodically around us to shield and shelter us from God, from all things religious. But when we ‘lose’ our unbelief, it is not done in an incremental nor rational way. Paraphrasing the words of Edith Stein, the corporate reality of prayer collapses the walls of our unbelief.

Destruction of a brick wall. Bricks fly out of holes in the wall. Visible light shines through the hole. 3d illustration.

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A Man For Our Times: Saul of Tarsus

By Caravaggio – scan, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index... man for our times: Saul of Tarsus

Tomorrow, the Christian Church celebrates the Conversion of St. Paul the Apostle, pictured above in Caravaggio’s exquisite painting. A special day in the life of the Christian Church. A special day for each one of us: believers or not.

This day is one imbued with mystery and grace for me: a former hater of Paul, his writings, and the entire Church.

The following section is excerpted from the author’s notes of my latest novel about the early life of St. Paul:

Throughout the writing of this book, my decision to imagine the early life of St. Paul has seemed alternatively foolish and wise, arrogant and humbling … and a panoply of other feelings as paradoxical as Paul himself. Of one thing I am sure, however. After a year of immersing myself in the life of the young man called Saul, I am convinced that he is a man for our times. I undertook this book for many reasons, but primarily because I came to see Saul as a man who had no interest in sidestepping the meaning of things, or in appeasing hurt feelings or bruised consciences. Saul was interested in just one thing: truth.

Whether it was the truth about the God he chased for the first part of his life or the God he died for, or about himself, Saul permitted no margin of error. Saul lacked any tolerance for artifice or mitigation. And, upon learning the depths of his early arrogance and transgression, he spent the rest of his life risking it for the Christ he had persecuted. As I said … he is a man for our times.

My Name is Saul

Like most of the books I have written-all of the novels– My Name is Saul was not my idea. Writers often speak about an outside source for their inspiration. There is a strangeness intrinsic to the process of the creation of characters: they emerge from the ether to assume a life of their own. Even unbelievers attest to a mystical element in the creative work of writing fiction.

Upon completing I, Claudia, I was stunned to ‘hear’ that my next book would be about St. Paul…that ginormous Apostle of the Apostles. But this isn’t the book I planned…how can I of all people write about this colossus?

Then, abruptly, I understood.

I got it.

Got as in Voila!

Saul of Tarsus was a man of certainty: certain when entirely, wholly wrong. I know precisely what that kind of wrongful certainty tastes like:

“Wives, submit to your husband as to Christ.”

At the sound of the Pastor’s words to my friend Tim and his new bride, something awful was unleashed in me. I began to opine loudly about the misogynism of Christianity, about the patent hypocrisy of Christians… Never stopping to consider the believers who stood by. Or to realize that my hostility to all things and people religious, signaled a grave disorder in me. One emanating, of course, from fear. What if all these people are right and I’ve been wrong, all these years?

Until...

Like all of God’s gifts to us, this writing ofMy Name is Saul was both joy and penance. When I began the work, I was troubled to learn how little was known about his early life. But after reading a number of books about the “apostle of the apostles”, the silence of scholars about his early years transformed to opportunity. And the blanks began to fill themselves in.

Saul’s consent to the stoning of Stephen: the first martyr was pivotal to his story. This was the act which had to have galvanized his decision to take up the persecution of followers of “The Way.”

One could readily infer that the two men had known one another. Even studied together. And so, it was Saul’s early friendship with Stephen, an early intimacy which turned to hatred upon Stephen’s revelation of his conversion-Stephen’s betrayal to all that Saul stood for, staked his life on that impelled Saul. It was this, I imagined, that had formed the “thorn in my flesh,” St. Paul writes about in Corinthians.

Here is the scene which preceded the stoning and death of Stephen:

My relief at coming to this dire conclusion was akin to sexual release; purpose and meaning had found me, and my sense of aimlessness was dispelled. I understood what I was to do—my mission. At that moment, I knew why the Lord had taken my family. Like Joshua and King David, I would lead the tribes of Israel against these hypocrites, liars, and deceivers. It was what I was born to do. This time, no one—not even Rabban Gamaliel—would stop me from fulfilling my lifework. I did not hear Simeon’s vote to abstain when he stood to cast it.

Ignoring a voice that whispered, Do NOT do this thing! I jumped up and barked out my “Yes!”

A few minutes later, we all filed out to the courtyard where Stephen stood waiting, a serene expression still suffusing his face. I stood in the back, far away from the enormous piles of
stones that sat silently waiting to collide with flesh. The rocks began to fly toward Stephen. As one after another connected with his face and head, he started to bleed. I thought back to our mishap with the goatherder, whose correctly aimed shot had felled Simeon instantly on the road to Bethlehem.
Unlike him, Stephen stood firm for more than ten minutes, absorbing an impossible hail of rocks. Finally, one of the elders cried out, “Blasphemer,” picked up the most massive stone he could lift, and hurled it at the back of Stephen’s knees. Stephen dropped to the ground, and the air grew thick with the sickening sounds of rocks pulverizing flesh.
It will be over soon.

But suddenly, improbably, Stephen sat up, pointed at the sky, and cried out, “Look! I see heaven opening and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. Lord Jesus, receive
my spirit.” My childhood friend’s last words were, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”
Without giving the battered, broken body another thought, I strode over to Annas and Caiaphas, who stood quietly talking by the Chamber of the Nazarites. “You need a warrior to lead the fight against these heretics,” I declared.

Startled, Caiaphas peered at me as if trying to place me. “My name is Saul of Tarsus, sir. I studied here under Rabban Gamaliel for six years. I have returned to Jerusalem because I lost my family and business in the Cilician earthquake and now sit as a junior member of the Council. I am the man you have been looking for.”

The parallels of Saul, his religious zeal, and confidence in the holy righteousness of his mission to contemporary political polemics cannot be overlooked. Righteous zeal abounds throughout our country, indeed, the world. We know what is right. Each one of us is certain.

My editor expressed her puzzlement at my decision to cite Andrew Hyatt’s splendid film, Paul the Apostle, in my list of sources. But the film which takes place in Paul’s cell with its inspired and piercing dialogue along with riveting performances by Jim Caviezel and James Faulkner was invaluable to me while writing the prison scenes in the book. The excerpt below is from a piece I wrote shortly after seeing the film, never dreaming that soon I would be drawing from the movie for my new book.

Little is ‘wonderful’ for Christians in first- century Rome. A heartbroken Luke attempts to convey the terror, anger and despair of the Roman Christians to Paul. But the older man is unwavering:

Evil can only be overcome with love.

Who can better understand the mysterious ways of this God than did the greatest hater of Christians in the Bible?

This greatest of all Pharisees who confidently murdered Christian men and women assured that he was doing the will of God?

Who indeed?

Paul the Apostle Movie

Converts see things differently. Especially those of us experiencing a metaphorical fall from our horse- who knows what God will do with those without faith? He who was once my enemy is now my friend.

Saul of Tarsus- A Man for our times, pray for us all.

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The Razor’s Edge of Forgiveness

the razor’s edge of forgivenessThe razor’s edge of forgiveness

“Forgive your enemies. “

Since forgiveness was just as unnatural 2100 years ago as it now, the Apostle Peter seeks to bind it. You will recall that Peter was a pious Jew and knew the Mosaic law. The law that from Levitcus, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” and in both Deuteronomy and Exodus denounced the hatred of fellow country men “in your heart,” and commanded the loving of “even the stranger.”

And yet, Peter asked, “Lord, how many times must I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”

 Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.” According to the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus explains further, lest there be any mitigation of His command to love even -perhaps especially- our enemies. He spells out the awful consequences of hatred, bitterness, refusal to endure all things.

Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold was brought to him.  Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.

“At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’  The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.

 “But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.

 “His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’

 “But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt…

 “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

The Gospel of Matthew

It is a razor’s edge, isn’t it?

Because surely there are people whose actions warrant punishment, right?

Serial killers?

Pedophiles?

Abortionists?

The people who managed to overlook the coarse, arrogant, boorish behavior of President Trump and voted for him again?

Bringing it closer to home, the neighbor who borrowed my brand new truck and scratched the heck out of it?

The ‘best friend’ who seduced my husband?

The doctor whose mistaken diagnosis caused the death of my only son?

The uncle who raped me when I was four?

The list is long, in fact, it is never-ending for new grievances-and horrors- keep happening. And our innate response is a yearning for vengeance…justice, when faced with patent evil-evoking the razor’s edge of forgiveness.

Culturally and politically,

we are reading and hearing about the need, not for vengeance exactly, but reparation…in both monetary ways and in a peculiar revisionist history seeking to cement America’s “systemic racism,” or in academic circles, critical race theory. Now embraced by the Democrat Party and resulting in the confounding notion of the New York Times 1619 Project.

Project editor Nikole Hannah-Jones’s essay, “Our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written. Black Americans have fought to make them true,” was awarded the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for commentary on May 3, 2020. 

Ideology Over Excellence: Forbes Magazine

In one sense, I can understand.

Without underlying moral principles or any understanding of Truth-The Word-, then using words and their meaning as weapons makes eminent sense. With a stroke of our fingers, we can access all available knowledge…and in 2021, human will is supreme, right? Our pitiable words easily accommodating ruinous damage to our children as a cultural norm.

If one’s reality is fluid, that is, ungrounded in God’s Law, then identity is a construct: artifice. I never “felt” like a woman, and am therefore a man. Over 150 years ago, Dostoevsky explained:

If God did not exist, everything is permitted.

The Brothers Karamazov

To a few close friends, I have shared my conviction that we Christians are being tested. Our faith, trust, and willingness to follow Him whose last words to his torturers were “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.”

Jesus, I trust in You- beyond reason!

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Baptism: His and Ours

Baptism: His and Ours



Baptism: His and Ours

If we’re under the age of fifty and are, or were, a Christian, we have been baptized. Most likely, our parents made the decision for us when we were infants. But in this “post-Christian era”, more and more parents choose not to baptize their child. The stated reasons vary, but these are a sample of those I have been told and read.

We don’t need church to be spiritual.We can pray anywhere.The woods, mountain or ocean is our chapel.Nature is my church.I was brainwashed as Catholic or evangelical Christian and I want my child to make her own decision, rather than be forced into a religion he doesn’t believe in.  

Each of these reasons makes sense, at least on the face of it.

Unless, we consider the very first public act of Jesus: to be baptized by John the Baptist. If baptism means forgiveness of sin, why would the son of God need baptism?

Exactly.

Why indeed?

Hold that question for just a moment. First, some quick background.

What does it mean to be baptized?

When baptized, each of us is left with an indelible spiritual mark. “No sin can erase this mark, even if sin prevents Baptism from bearing the fruits of salvation. Given once for all, Baptism cannot be repeated. Through the sacrament, the Holy Spirit has marked us with the seal of eternal life…Baptism is God’s most beautiful and magnificent gift. . . .We call it gift, grace, anointing, enlightenment, garment of immortality, bath of rebirth, seal, and most precious gift. It is called gift  because it is conferred on those who bring nothing of their own; grace since it is given even to the guilty; Baptism because sin is buried in the water; anointing for it is priestly and royal as are those who are anointed; enlightenment because it radiates light; clothing since it veils our shame; bath  because it washes; and seal as it is our guard and the sign of God’s Lordship.”

That first sentence begs for a repeat: “No sin can erase this mark, even if sin prevents Baptism from bearing the fruits of salvation.” And perhaps pondering concepts not considered since childhood.

Like sin, life of the soul and repentance or my preference: turning around.

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the word means literally to be plunged into the water- which symbolizes our “burial into Christ’s death” from which we emerge as a new creature. It is the “gateway to life in the spirit” and effects the “birth of water and spirit without which no one can enter the Kingdom of God.”

The only sacrament that the 2.6 billion Christians in the world agree on is baptism and is universally recognized as valid.

Like all sacraments, Baptism cannot be obtained in nature, or the ocean, or mountains or self study. It requires a church.

Why His baptism and ours?

The Christian liturgy celebrates the Baptism of the Lord as the feast day which ends the Christmas season.

Last Sunday, we celebrated Epiphany symbolizing the three manifestations of the Christ.

The three seekers who travel a great distance, at great risk, to adore an unknown god.The wedding at Cana where the jars of water intended for washing feet becomes the ‘finest wine.’And today, His Baptism by the baptizer, John. Where the heavens are ‘torn open…and the spirit descending on him like a dove and a voice came down from heaven,’ You are my beloved son, in you I am well pleased.’




Used by permission copyright 2020 Jeff Haynie

Saint Maximus of Turin explains why His Baptism and ours in the Second Reading of the Divine Office for the Friday after Epiphany:

…reason should demand” that the Baptism should follow so close to the incarnation even though 30 years separate the two events. At Christmas, Jesus was born a man; today he is reborn sacramentally. Then he was born from the Virgin; today he is born in mystery: When he was born a man Mary held him close to her heart; when He is born in mystery, the Father embraces him with his voice when he says:

This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Listen to Him.

… Christ is baptized not to be made holy by the water but to make the water holy. When our Lord is washed, all waters for all baptism for all time are made holy.

…I understand the mystery as this… in the column of fire he went before the sons of Israel; so now, in the column of His Body he goes through baptism before the Christian people. At the time of the Exodus, the column provided light for the people who followed; now it gives light to the hearts of believers. Then it made a firm pathway through the waters; now it strengthens the footsteps of faith in the bath of baptism.

Friday–after Epiphany to Baptism

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In Desperate Need of Fatherhood

in desperate need of fatherhood



In desperate need of fatherhood

Ours is a world in desperate need of fatherhood. A quick online search reveals the startling rise of single motherhood here in the US and in the world. Soberly revealing our need for heavenly intervention for our fatherless families and overburdened mothers. Starkly exposing our culture’s bereft notion of fatherhood as mere sexual congress.

Such simple words, “father” and “fatherhood,” have meanings which once were plain, unadulterated. But that was before the intensification of the “struggle between the family and the State for the minds of the young.”

And the realization that the final battle between the Lord and the reign of Satan will be marriage and the family. Final because the struggle for the control of the minds of our children is not a new one. But rather an age-old battle between the state and the family.

GK Chesterton explains:

The ideal for which [the family] stands in the state is liberty. It stands for liberty for the very simple reason with which this rough analysis started.  It is the only one of these institutions that is at once necessary and voluntary.  It is the only check on the state that is bound to renew itself as eternally as the state, and more naturally than the state…

Every sane man recognises that unlimited liberty is, anarchy, or rather is nonentity… So long as the state is the only ideal institution the state will call on the citizen to sacrifice himself, and therefore will not have the smallest scruple in sacrificing the citizen…

The state consists of coercion; and must always be justified from its own point of view in extending the bounds of coercion; as, for instance, in the case of conscription. The only thing that can be set up to check or challenge this authority is a voluntary law and a voluntary loyalty. It is a principle of the constitution that the King never dies. It is the whole principle of the family that the citizen never dies. There must be a heraldry and heredity of freedom; a tradition of resistance to tyranny.  A man must be not only free, but free-born.

The Superstition of Divorce

GK Chesterton

Is it mere coincidence that Pope Francis has dedicated the year 2021 to St. Joseph?

Each Christmas, we hear and read these words about St. Joseph,:

Joseph her husband, since he was a righteous man, yet unwilling to expose her to shame, decided to divorce her quietly.”  (Matt. 1:19) ”

And hear interpretations that Joseph believed Mary’s pregnancy had resulted from another man, that she’d had relations with another man. But Michael Palakuk challenges that assumption with his remarkable meditation, Doing Justice to St. Joseph. St. Joseph’s hesitation emanates not at all from suspicion of Mary’s infidelity with a man but rather from the prophecies which he knew well, “A virgin shall conceive and bear a child.” Palakuk reaches back to the third century to find a far more plausible reason for St. Joseph’s hesitation to become the legal father of Jesus.

St Jerome writes that, “This may be considered a testimony to Mary, that Joseph, confident in her purity, and wondering at what had happened, covered in silence that mystery which he could not explain…”

And from Origen we find this, “He sought to put her away because he saw in her a great sacrament, to approach which he thought himself unworthy.”

On the 150th anniversary of the Proclamation of St. Joseph as the Patron of the Universal Church,

Pope Francis published his Apostolic Letter, Patris Corde.

It begins, “WITH A FATHER’S HEART: that is how Joseph loved Jesus, whom all four Gospels refer to as “the son of Joseph”. After a careful read of Patris Corde, I find the document

inspiring, reassuring and a not-so-subtle weapon against the acceleration of the assault on fatherhood and family.

Early in the apostolic letter, Pope Frances writes,

Joseph had the courage to become the legal father of Jesus, to whom he gave the name revealed by the angel: “You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (Mt 1:21). As we know, for ancient peoples, to give a name to a person or to a thing, as Adam did in the account in the Book of Genesis (cf. 2:19-20), was to establish a relationship.

Stirring language, isn’t it?

“Joseph had the courage to become the legal father of Jesus, to whom he gave the name…as we know…to give a name..was to establish a relationship.”

This is the authentic fatherhood once understood and revered in the world. One which comprehended, in the words of Father Paul Scalia , that the “greater part of fatherhood is not begetting a child or training him for worldly success. No, it is the imparting of wisdom, patrimony, and identity.”

The not- so- subtle weapon to counter the assault on our families and our children

is a man of silence. Although St. Joseph is known as guardian, protector, and legal head of the Holy Family, we never read a single word of his.

As a matter of fact, we hear very few words from Mary. We read only her Fiat to the angel Gabriel, her Magnificat, admonition to her Son once she and Joseph find Jesus in the Temple. And the last words we hear from the Mother of God at the wedding at Cana are:

“Do whatever He tells you.”

In today’s culture of “wokeness”-the war on words- where the meaning of enduring concepts seems to deteriorate with staggering frequency, the silence of Nazareth is a formidable weapon.

I am exceedingly grateful for the balm offered to this world in desperate need of fatherhood: Patris Corde, With a Father’s Heart.

Hail, Guardian of the Redeemer,
Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
To you God entrusted his only Son;
in you Mary placed her trust;
with you Christ became man.

Blessed Joseph, to us too,
show yourself a father
and guide us in the path of life.
Obtain for us grace, mercy and courage,
and defend us from every evil. Amen.

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Happy Holidays or The Silence of Christmas?

the silence of Christmas



Happy holidays or the silence of Christmas?

They are synonymous, aren’t they? Don’t both phrases [Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas] mean the same thing?

I used to think so. But now, I am not so sure.

I never understood all of the animosity of some Christians to the first phrase because “happy holidays” is merely a shorthand way to say, “happy holy days..”even if intended to be ‘woke’, the underlying meaning remains.

But this Christmas is different, as is so much else in our lives, in America, and this world. Like you, I often hear and read variations on “when we return to normal.”

I wonder about that.

I wonder about everything now: the election, the virus, vaccine, the pervasive politics in the church, and the governments which thrust themselves more and more into the ordinary lives of the citizens of this earth.

The numbers of words written on these subjects must exceed quadruple digit trillions.By choice, I no longer read them. On any subject.

It’s almost as if the mushrooming volume of expert opinions demands an opposite reaction: silence. Just so, this Christmas commands a different response from each of us: the silence of Christmas.

I think and therefore write frequently about silence. All my life I’ve been a wordsmith; fascinated and addicted to the chase for “le Mot Juste.” By now I have written and published enough to understand-and accept- that after my best efforts to write about a thing-anything– I can get close to the essence of it. But only close.

Because the truth of it lies outside.

This is true because of a long list of factors like language, preconceptions, the inherent bias and prejudice of our sources, and, primarily, the inescapable fact of our intrinsic ignorance. But we writers get addicted to our attempts to add something unique to the list.

The silence of Christmas

My last phrase, “inescapable fact of our intrinsic ignorance” might be offensive. Perhaps even disrespectful, but it is so very true. The Oracle at Delphi famously stated that Socrates was the wisest man who had ever lived because of his statement, “The only wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”

When considering this 25th of December, 2020, the incarnation of the Word, which we celebrate now, the truest salutation is….

SILENCE

Finally, she reached the summit after years of
climbing stumbling, searching

Please,

she begged, I need the answer, please. One word,
one word only

 silence

 Desperate, she began the slow
lonely descent

  All
this time, all this work, all this- for nothing at all.

 Yet
there was this word, silence, that began an echo

Deep
within where thoughts are frozen

Deep
within where old tears and yearning live.

This
word striking cords both strange and familiar

                                          She dared to open her eyes to look, to see.

                                            It was as if time had stopped and she saw

                                                                   the mountains,

                                                                     the frozen river,

                                                                        her breath.

                          She stopped, for the first time in so many years, she stopped

                                                                standing still 

                                                                   listening

                                                                   waiting

                                And she heard and she knew and she saw

                                                                 silence

                                                             one Word

                                                           just One Word

A Search for the Sacred . . Kindle Edition.

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Hope Holders: Reflections on Mary

Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus with plain and zigzag border and white background



Hope holders: Reflections on Mary

Do you wonder why these beliefs have taken root in your

Soul?

Roots which deepen, burrow into the secret places of mind and

Heart?

Year after year, prayer by prayer, tear by tear, doubt by doubt until

Fixed?

Do you wonder why you believe the impossible-god as infant born of a

Virgin?

Do you wonder at this girl child, at her trust in the incomprehensible

Answer?

Enveloped by wisdom, she carried eternity in her womb,

A child emptied of ego, of self, of sin, full, instead, of grace.

She who was filled with the hope of Adam, she who came

To

Dry the tears of Eve through her incomparable sorrows.

Do you wonder if there is a price for these gifts we have been freely

Given?

Must we not  somehow offer back to Him some tiny

Crumb?

Struggle and sacrifice, penance and passion, some small

Sharing?

Finally we hear, we see and understand from her silence, her

Knowledge

Too immense for words, cannot be contained by the sea or the

Sky

We are to proclaim, to put in our hands and our hearts, to be

Hope Holders.

Poetry as language of the heart

I wrote that poem, “Hope Holders Reflections on Mary” back when poetry was the sole method for me to convey the search for, and then the gift, of this faith- the stunning, world-shaking descent of it. Poetry has never been a form of writing that appealed to me. And yet, during those years, the “language of the heart” worked…when nothing else did.

The Greek word for conversion or repentance is metanoia- some, like me, think of it as turn around-180 degree turnaround. Think of a small child whirling around and around…then stopping, often to fall on the ground, giggling. Repentance just is not a big enough word, it’s too bounded and packed with narrow, rigid thought.

Turn around is better.

World shaking?

Most assuredly.

In fact, consider this statement–

Oh, if people know nothing about the message and the promises anymore, if they only experience the four walls and the prison windows of their gray days, and no longer perceive the quiet footsteps of the announcing angels, if the angels’ murmured word does not simultaneously shake us to the depths and lift up our souls—then it is over for us.

Advent of the Heart

Unprecedented!

How many times have we heard and read that word? These are “unprecedented times”: never-ending cycles of world-wide contagion, lock-downs, persecution and resulting economic collapse.

But are they?

Few of us are literally imprisoned in our homes. We drive, we walk outside and many gladly accept the governmental handouts, while simultaneously complaining about some personal lack-hairdresser closed, shivering outside at mass are just a couple of a long list.

Father Alfred Delp’s words. “if the angels’ murmured word does not simultaneously shake us to the depths and lift up our souls” were penned in a prison, a Nazi prison by a man who knew he would be executed. And yet, eighty years ago, he wrote this:

“If we want Advent to transform us – our homes and hearts, and even nations – then the great question for us is

whether we will come out of the convulsions of our time with this determination: Yes, arise!

It is time to awaken from sleep. a waking up must begin somewhere. It is time to put things back where God intended them. It is time for each of us to go to work – certain that the Lord will come – to set our life in God’s order wherever we can. Where God’s word is heard, he will not cheat us of the truth; where our life rebels he will reprimand it.

We need people who are moved by the horrific calamities and emerge from them with the knowledge that those who look to the Lord will be preserved by him, even if they are hounded from the earth.

The Advent message comes out of our encounter with God, with the gospel. It is thus the message that shakes – so that in the end the entire world shall be shaken. The fact that the son of man shall come again is more than a historic prophecy; it is also a decree that God’s coming and the shaking up of humanity are somehow connected…

Being shocked, however, out of our pathetic complacency is only part of Advent.

There is much more that belongs to it. Advent is blessed with God’s promises, which constitute the hidden happiness of this time. These promises kindle the light in our hearts. Being shattered, being awakened – these are necessary for Advent. In the bitterness of awakening, in the helplessness of “coming to,” in the wretchedness of realizing our limitations, the golden threads that pass between heaven and earth reach us. These threads give the world a taste of the abundance it can have.

We must not shy away from Advent thoughts of this kind. We must let our inner eye see and our hearts range far. Then we will encounter both the seriousness of Advent and its blessings in a different way. We will, if we would but listen, hear the message calling out to us to cheer us, to console us, and to uplift us.”

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We Gotta Give This World Back to God

We gotta give this world back to God

You gotta get down on your knees

Believe, fold your hands, and beg and plead

Keep on! praying

You gotta cry, rain, tears of pain

Pound the floor, and scream His name

‘Cause we’re still worth saving

Can’t go on like this, and live like this

We can’t love like this

You can hope the best

Make a wish

The only answer is

We give this world back to God

Ohh, give it back …

Reba Mcentire Back to God

My friend Gordon Ashe posted this song on his Facebook newsfeed early this past week. If you click on Gordon’s embedded Facebook link, you’ll see that Gordon loves music, music of all kinds. Whether country, classical, orchestral, doesn’t seem to matter to him, just so long as it is beautiful: A beauty which emanates from God.

I understand why. Beautiful music has an ability to pierce our through our defenses, anger, regrets in a way that words cannot. And then can reach into our hearts to grab and twist…cracking them open.

I know-it has happened to me. More on that in a moment.

I have watched and listened to Reba McEntire sing this song, five-no, now seven, times. The video begins in a graveyard, we see a sobbing couple walking through and then stopping at a tombstone.

Then the video advances to Reba, alone in a church. Singing.

Singing and Praying.

Begging, really.

As only great country western singers can.

I was surprised to see that she recorded the song three years ago. Surprised because it seems so perfectly tailor-made for this year which will end in about three weeks.

Among the hundreds of reasons that I love her song so much is what it invokes- a clear memory of being in a church in London, England. I did not attend church back then. Had no interest in religion or church. And yet, when I heard the soloists begin to sing The Messiah, those sacred words reached into my heart and burrowed in to dig around.

A British friend invited us home to England for Christmas

and I jumped at the chance. A whole host of reasons to get out of Texas and the country:

My mother had died the Christmas before. Her death had been jam packed with contention; some of the enmity in my family still burned fiercely. I had never been out of the US before. Christmas held no religious significance for me. I had just published a textbook which had consumed me for the last six years.Why not go?

But I was unprepared for my reaction upon entering Westminster Abbey…tears…which coursed down my face. And never stopped until we left. Everyone presumed it was because of my mother and certainly that was part of it, but there was something else, something I could not name.

About five days later, the four of us attended a performance of The Messiah in the basement of St. James Church in Piccadilly Square. Once again, I was caught off guard. I had not never paid attention to The Messiah before…the music had been in the background but way back. Consumed as I was with the parties and the shopping.

From the opening lyrics of the performers, the tears began again:

Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.
Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned.
The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness; prepare ye the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. (Isaiah 40: 1-3) And never stopped.



Ev’ry valley shall be exalted, and ev’ry mountain and hill made low; the crooked straight and the rough places plain. (Isaiah 40: 4) 



And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. Until the performance was over.

Yes, something else was going on.

We gotta give this world back to God

You gotta get down on your knees

Believe, fold your hands, and beg and plead

Keep on! praying

You gotta cry, rain, tears of pain

Pound the floor, and scream His name

‘Cause we’re still worth saving [italics mine and worth capitalizing-WE’RE STILL WORTH SAVING!]

Can’t go on like this, and live like this

We can’t love like this

You can hope the best

Make a wish

The only answer is

We give this world back to God

Ohh, give it back …

Reba Mcentire Back to God

Can’t abide county western music?

Okay- I get it. There was a time I couldn’t either. That was before I became a naturalized Texan. (It’s true, I have the papers.) It’s not possible to live long in Texas without falling for country music.

So how about Andrea Bocelli with a Russian soprano who, I promise, will wake you up? They perform an interpretation of Ave Maria that I suspect you never have heard.

This haunting, heartbreaking aria is especially suited for this year of suffering, 2020.

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These Weeks Before Christmas: Advent

These Weeks Before Christmas


These weeks before Christmas

In my new home of California, the churches are closed again. Therefore, we are not able to see the simple beauty of the Advent wreath, purple vestments and candles on the altar. But no mind, I found the box containing my Advent wreath and candles and they are now displayed- for these weeks before Christmas have become cherished ones.

During my pre-conversion life, these weeks before Christmas were jam packed with parties, mostly work-related and therefore obligatory, along with shopping excursions to unearth novel gifts for people who did not need them. And planning vacation when the week of Christmas and New Year’s finally arrived.

The holiday held no religious significance to me. So when friends tell me they don’t want to attend church because they have no need for it, church is irrelevant to them. I understand. There was a time I felt the same way, occasionally quoted Nietzsche’s acerbic comment, “God is dead. He choked to death on theology.”

Wholly oblivious to the wonder of the incarnation: …

The very Son of God, older than the ages, the invisible, the incomprehensible, the incorporeal, the beginning of beginning, the light of light, the fountain of life and immortality, the image of the archetype, the immovable seal, the perfect likeness, the definition and word of the Father he it is who comes to his own image and takes our nature for the good of our nature, and unites himself to an intelligent soul for the good. to purify like by like. He takes to himself all that is human, except for sin. 

He who makes rich is made poor; he takes on the poverty of my flesh, that I may gain the riches of his divinity. He who is full is made empty; he is emptied for a brief space of his glory, that I may share in his fullness. What is this wealth of goodness? What is this mystery that surrounds me? I received the likeness of God, but failed to keep it. He takes on my flesh, to bring salvation to the image, immortality to the flesh. He enters into a second union with us, a union far more wonderful than the first…

Advent?

If I learned about Advent during the Episcopalian faith I walked away from as teenager, those lessons did not stick. Now, more than twenty years after conversion to Catholic Christianity, these weeks before Christmas are precious.

Why?

We converts get emotional when attempting to explain to cradle Catholics-or to those who don’t yet know Him-what it feels like to belong…after years of searching for a faith that reeks of truth. One with rules. Not suggestions.

Commandments.

Even after all these years, I need to reign in the passion to  speak and write coherently about before…and after. Because when I consider the specific details of my life without faith and compare it to my life with it it feels very much like the Zen maxim:

Before enlightenment, chopping wood and carrying water; after enlightenment, chopping wood and carrying water. 

Everything changes and yet nothing does.

In a conversation with a good friend the other day, I paraphrased CS Lewis while explaining why I thought we need church, religion, an association with a religious institution.  I explained the sense I’ve had for most of my life that life is a series of battles. Only upon my conversion did I realize why: The Spiritual combat for which the gains or losses mean no less than everything.

Lewis learned what each of us does when we reject the faith of our fathers-and our mothers. We lose our way, get distracted, make stupid, silly-eventually, evil, choices.

“In a way I quite understand why some people are put off by Theology. I remember once when I had been giving a talk to the R.A.F., an old, hard-bitten officer got up and said, “I’ve no use for all that stuff. But, mind you, I’m a religious man too. I know there’s a God. I’ve felt Him: out alone in the desert at night: the tremendous mystery. And that’s just why I don’t believe all your neat little dogmas and formulas about Him. To anyone who’s met the real thing they all seem so petty and pedantic and unreal!”

Theology is like a map.  (Italics are mine.)

Merely learning and thinking about the Christian doctrines, if you stop there, is less real and less exciting than the sort of thing my friend got in the desert. Doctrines are not God: they are only a kind of map. But that map is based on the experience of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God—experiences compared with which any thrills or pious feelings you and I are likely to get on our own are very elementary and very confused.

And secondly, if you want to get any further, you must use the map. You see, what happened to that man in the desert may have been real, and was certainly exciting but nothing comes of it. It leads nowhere. There is nothing to do about it. In fact, that is just why a vague religion—all about feeling God in nature, and so on—is so attractive.

It is all thrills and no work; like watching the waves from the beach. But you will not get to Newfoundland by studying the Atlantic that way, and you will not get eternal life by simply feeling the presence of God in flowers or music. Neither will you get anywhere by looking at maps without going to sea. Nor will you be very safe if you go to sea without a map.

In other words, Theology is practical: especially now.

In the old days, when there was less education and discussion, perhaps it was possible to get on with a very few simple ideas about God. But it is not so now. Everyone reads, everyone hears things discussed. Consequently, if you do not listen to Theology, that will not mean that you have no ideas about God. It will mean that you have a lot of wrong ones—bad, muddled, out-of-date ideas. For a great many of the ideas about God which are trotted out as novelties today are simply the ones which real Theologians tried centuries ago and rejected.”

Mere Christianity

These weeks before Christmas contain days when we can dust off oft planned

but not executed practices like prayer. Not just our routinized prayers but actually talking to Jesus.

Isn’t that what prayer is?

A conversation with God?

Believing that He loves his creatures, all of them, even the weak, flawed and most pitiful of sinners. Which is all of us. All seven and a half billions souls whether in or out of church. Even you and me. Trusting Him enough to bring him our greatest fear, the one we tell no one. 

In clear and unequivocal tones, the young priest stated, “God wants to meet you at the point of your greatest fear.”  Go, he explained, to the point of your greatest fear, in your mind and heart, and God will meet you there.  When He meets you there, tell Him about the fear, and He will help you there.

Those words struck me in my core.  I had to admit that although I had consecrated my life to Jesus through His Blessed Mother, and was on intimate terms with a number of saints, St. Thérèse of Lisieux in particular, I tended to avoid meeting God directly.  I kept Him at arms’ length, in the safe and superficial distance.

What was it that I was avoiding?  

The Catholic Thing

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Writing Two Books at Once-A First

Writing Two Books at Once?

If you scroll down to the middle of my home page for my new website, linwilder.com, you will quickly see that I am writing two books at once- a first for me. Each book is scheduled to be released next year. Certainly, I did not plan it this way.

However, the antagonist-and even major parts of the plot for Plausible Liars have proved to be so elusive that it makes a strange kind of sense to take a break from all things transgender to return to a place that feels like home: The ancient world. Which in itself is a peculiar fact. About two and a half years ago, I clearly recall hearing that “your next book will be about Pontius Pilate” one Tuesday morning while praying the sorrowful mysteries of the rosary on a hike in the mountains of Nevada. My reaction was to stop short and inaudibly shout a “Huh? I know nothing about writing historical fiction!”

But after the research and writing of I, Claudia and then,I find the ancient world far more comfortable than I do the twenty-first- century. If you’ve been reading these mostly weekly posts of late, then you may recall that Plausible Liars was scheduled to be released about now. Or at least a completed first draft of the manuscript. But that was magical thinking on my part.

Several months ago, back in July, I wrote that I should be “writing like crazy, clear about the plot and direction of Plausible Liars.” But I wasn’t even close. It took over four months to accept that I could not write this book right now.

Quit? Gasp!!

First I had to deal with what my psychologist husband calls my perfectionist and fear of failure demons. And analyze what was happening. That process was accelerated by a friend who after listening to my writing struggles with this story, asked, “But isn’t that writers do? Deal with characters that most of us cannot possibly relate to? Make them come alive?”

I answered, “You’re right.” As I stared at him, began to dissect my problem… Yes, Paul, that’s precisely what we do” and instantly thought of Joe Cairns. Of those days and weeks of pondering, thinking, imagining, “What would cause a highly decorated special forces Marine to sell himself out for hire?”

“Can I do this…make this guy someone real?”

Yes, I could. Joe Cairns was so real that in those last pages of writing Malthus, I told my husband that I did not know what was going to happen. Of what Cairns would do.

It’s a strange combination of walking in the shoes of a character while keeping distant from the psyche of a genius like Viktor Dragovic who considers it the essence of reason to annihilate humanity. Another of the Malthus lineup of characters…a razor’s edge, really. I’ve not been able to walk that razor’s edge with the antagonist Dr. T. in Plausible Liars or for much of the story-line.

So… write two books at once!

Esther’s story is, of course, Queen Esther from the Old Testament Book of Esther, wife of King Xerxes, and son of King Darius. The research feels like returning to old friends like Josephus, Herodotus, the Torah and Jewish scholars of the Old Testament. And revisiting the Greco-Persian Wars instead this time, not from the Greek perspective, but the Persian.

If you scroll back up to Nancy Clearly’s cover for The Reluctant Queen at the beginning of this post, you’ll see Esther. In Hebrew, her name means “hidden.” Nancy’s cover conveys this hiddenness, along with beauty, mystery, allure and a sense of steadfastness…even doggedness. A perfect description of this intriguing woman whom I am getting to know. And in a few months, you will too.

Here’s the prologue if you’d like to take a peek.

And yes, Plausible Liars will get written-just a year later than I planned.

I hope.

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