Skeered of the Holy Spirit

As a half-hearted joke, I've long told my Godly friends that I am terrified of the Holy Spirit. Why?

1. I'm afraid of the commitment

I know that when you meet the Holy Spirit, it's for keeps. It can't be a vague wondering, a maybe experience. I can't meet Him and turn aside and pretend that we didn't connect. That means a permanent point of connection from which I have to proceed. Am I ready?

2. I'm afraid of my reaction

What if something happens? Do I know what that means? No. Will I call attention to myself? God Himself knows that I am delighted to draw a crowd, under my control, delivering some wryly witty (I hope) comment or being friendly and connecting, drawing a crowd together. But this is different. Childishly, I'm worried. Will I cry? Will I be loud? Will I (oh heavens, I squirm) pray out loud? In front of people?

3. What if I'm fooling myself?

What if I'm caught up with the emotion of the moment, and think that the feeling is the Fact? Poop on my perceived strength of mind; I can be just as easily drawn down an avenue where everyone is acting as one, and mistaking that for a real experience of God.

My friends assure me that I HAVE met the Holy Spirit, and I know that I cannot look at the blessed times of prayer and worship I've been given and isolate those as an experience with distinct and separated Gods, as though the Trinity was walled off and individual.

Years ago, in that potent heady near-arrogance of college-fueled intellect, while I was toying (but with serious intent) with God as Energy and Energy as God, I was given a direct knowledge, a personal encounter with God the Father, the Creator. (That was December 10, 1978, in case anybody's interested.) I began to understand my place in the universe, and the universe's place in the mind of God. I, at least for awhile, got myself in right relationship with the world, and gave Him back my origin.

More recently, as I've come to real living faith, I've met Jesus, true God, true Man. I understood that He walked this earth, my earth, at a real time in real history. With my knowledge of Him, I embraced fully everything He did, His passion, His suffering, His death and His resurrection. No more picking and choosing, no more relative Truth, I met Truth and He loves me.

Now, I think I'm going to meet the Force, the Spirit, the Power. It's like meeting a tornado, personally. Well, that's a scary thought.

My retreat is bigger than your retreat

This weekend, I'm going to the parish of Christ the King in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to attend their annual Women's Retreat. It's worth the over-200-mile drive, to celebrate and worship with charismatic Catholics, including my blogsister Roz. The retreat master is Fr. Thomas Dubay, an ascetic, precise, dryly earnest and witty, older, wonderful priest from the Plains States, who speaks on the contemplative life just about better than anybody living today. To prepare for this retreat, we have all been reading his book, Deep Conversion, Deep Prayer.

Just look at this schedule!

Friday - after arrival, a concelebrated Mass by Fr. Dubay and the pastor, a talk by Fr. Dubay, night prayers, and our choice of Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament continuing until midnight or fellowship with the other attendees, or both!

Saturday - Morning prayer, breakfast, another talk by Fr. Dubay, the Sacrament of Confession, more Adoration time, lunch, prayer ministry, Rosary, Mass (the Masses are scheduled for at least an hour and a half, how wonderful), another talk, dinner, more prayer ministry, night prayer and Adoration until midnight

Sunday - Morning prayer, breakfast, Mass, a last talk with some Q&A time, lunch and beat it out of there.

That's what I call a retreat! No crappy relationship exercises, no experiments, no labyrinths, no reiki, no nothing but Jesus Christ.

What's kept me from retreats for over 25 years, besides years of shocking faithlessness, is wastes of time like that experienced by a friend who went on retreat last year to a local Illinois shrine, and she related, with some happiness, poor thing, that, among their other activities, they took baby food jars, filled them with colored sand in layers, and made the beach that represented their ideal. Their ideal what? I was tempted to ask her if they made a circle and then took turns going into the middle and falling into people's arms as an exercise of trust, but I didn't have the requisite charity to keep the scorn out of my voice...

This retreat, on the other hand, is way bigger than me, and I'm simultaneously thrilled and petrified. More on my chickenhood to come before I leave Friday.

Mortification explained, beautifully

Read this article from Godspy. It is a loving, passionate, sober and clear explanation of the place that suffering and and mortification (corporal and spiritual) should have in our lives of faith.

It's a jolt to read a testimony with such common sense and love, grounded in a regular guy's life. And extra credit for using the term "money shot" in a holy way!

The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Through God's goodness, we're reading through Job at daily Mass right now. Except for the fact that the feast of the Guardian Angels was celebrated instead, yesterday's first reading would have been Job 1:6-22, with the Devil's cavalier and chilling remark that he was "roaming the earth and patrolling it." (Don't you get a feeling for his personality from that line?) Job's world falls apart: crops, cattle, children, all swept away in cruelty, chaos and violence. And he says "The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away, blessed be the Name of the Lord." Today in Job 3, he laments "why was I ever born?" I peeked and tomorrow Job tells his friends "If I appealed to Him and He answered my call, I could not believe that He would hearken to my words!"

Been there, done that. I didn't sleep, Father didn't show up for Mass (power failure, not his fault, we had a Communion Service instead), and then my day of work was a parade of pratfalls, humiliating work mistake after interpersonal blunder after diet destruction after sandbagging by fellow staff after stern email lecture from senior manager. I tried repeating between gritted teeth Job's line of "blessed be the Name of the Lord" and I got zip comfort, no consolation from it. But that's faith for you: we seek the "Lord of consolations, not the consolations of the Lord."

The Lord was good enough to give me a door to my office, so I could close it and have a nice old-fashioned cry, which was a terribly mature thing to do, no?

We are so fickle and weak - nobody pulled out my toenails, nobody in my family died, I was forgiven and understood and complimented during all the awfulness, but still I felt small and I HATE feeling small.

From the fear of being humiliated, Jesus, dear Lord, deliver me!

For an encore, I figure I'll round out the evening by setting fire to my hair. Hope your days went better than mine - but both were blessings, I trust and know.

Why don't sharks eat tax collectors?

Today is the feast of St. Matthew, aka Levi, son of Alphaeus, TAX COLLECTOR (doom music).

It was bad luck not to say "tax collectors" whenever you said "prostitutes" in the culture of Jesus' time. Like peas and carrots.

Today's Gospel:

As Jesus passed by, he saw a man named Matthew
sitting at the customs post. He said to him, “Follow me.”
And he got up and followed him.
While he was at table in his house,
many tax collectors and sinners
came and sat with Jesus and his disciples.
The Pharisees saw this and said to his disciples,
“Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
He heard this and said, “Those who are well
do not need a physician, but the sick do.
Go and learn the meaning of the words,
I desire mercy, not sacrifice.
I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”

Do you think tax collectors were the lawyers of that day? Admired but envied, resented, mocked, stereotyped. Surely there were honest and merciful ones, but they were lost in a sea of criticism.

There's a certain dramatic courtroom flourish in Matthew's actions: he just upped and walked away from his customs post. Picture it: no explanations, no final tallying, presumably mid-customer, jaws dropping as he walked away, silently, following Jesus. And then a big dinner with all his flashy friends....

The Donald would do it this way; Gotti would have done it this way. Their motives and impetus would be different, but from the outside, it would look the same. When I try and picture Gospel scenes in meditation, maybe I'll give Matthew a big glossy combover and a Versace suit in the "before" scenes.

St. Matthew, pray for all those who have unpopular jobs!