Offering it up

Lightning struck a power pole less than 100 feet from our building last night. The transformer was annihilated, the pole was split, wires came down and landed all over cars, siding and glass blew off the closest house to the pole. Nobody was hurt, so (not minimizing the repairs to the house) it was a very exciting and thoroughly satisfying five minutes of BAMMMBABOOMbzzzzzzzhissssssss.

We all came to our balconies and patios and chatted, watching other people work harder than us, firemen and the utility company.

Then the terrific heat wave we're in started asserting itself. No wonder people are shooting each other in the poor parts of the big city. I lay in bed, radiating heat, too hot to sleep, watching the emergency mars lights strobing across the ceiling and listening to the repair workers pounding, drilling, buzzing, whacking, sawing and yelling at each other. I finally talked to the Lord and offered the whole sweaty experience up for the sake of those poor people who live that way all the time. So of course I then dozed off. The power came back on about seven hours later.

So many people misunderstand the verse from Romans: "...all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose." They think Christians are saying that death and pain and discomfort are good. No! They are not good, but they humble us, drive us to our knees in supplication, and attach us more firmly to the Lord, dependent on His Help and seeking to learn and follow more closely His Will.

Walking awhile in the Song of Songs

Beautiful as it is, I tend to shy away from the Song of Songs because my own concupiscence often leads me into thoughts of romance and fantasy rather than devotion and agape. This beautiful Scripture snuck up on me yesterday, however, in a talk/sermon and later in prayer, giving me an opportunity to further fathom the yearning nature of His love for us.

The talk came at a prayer meeting in the afternoon from one of the most analytical, left-brained God-loving men you'll ever meet. An overview:

When you read the verses, you will see many references to aroma, fragrance, perfume, spices, nard, liquid myrrh, incense, honey, aloes . . . you can practically feel the heavy breeze wafting off the pages. What does that aroma signify? Well, in each Gospel we find a story of a woman pouring out perfume on Jesus as a measure of her devotion to Him. He doesn't allow her to be stopped, seeing in that demonstration of her love an appropriateness that his disciples' concrete minds miss completely. The aroma that draws the Groom to his Bride in Songs is that devotion, that love, that beauty that only Christ's transformation of his Bride can inspire and enable. God loves us, not because of anything we have done, but because he has bathed and anointed us, and now we carry the fragrance of the Holy Spirit. He longs for us, he causes us to long for him, and when we find him we are supremely satisfied.

Then I went directly on to my weekly appointment in the Adoration Chapel where I came excerpts from St. Alphonsus Liguori's writings on the Holy Eucharist:

"'The voice of my Beloved knocking: Open to Me, My sister, My love, My dove, My undefiled' (Song 5:2). Open to me, he says, O soul, thy heart, and there I will come to unite myself to thee; so that, being one with me, thou mayst become my sister by resemblance, my friend by participation in my riches, my dove by the gift of simplicity, my undefiled by the gift of purity, which I shall communicate to thee.

And then he goes on to say, "Open to me, for my head is full of dew and my locks the drops of the night." As if he said: Consider, my beloved, that I have waited for thee all the night of the bad life thou has led in the midst of darkness and error. Behold, now, instead of bringing scourges to chastise thee, I come in the Blessed Sacrament, with my hair full of heavenly dew, to extinguish in thee all impure desires towards creatures, and to kindle in thee the happy fire of my love. Come, then, O my beloved Jesus, and work in me what Thou wilt."

What I love about this is the reminder of the overwheming gift-ness of oneness with him. It's truly Christmas - lavish gifts of riches, simplicity, purity, love - with nothing for us to supply but a willingness to open the door.

All I could do in response was pray to hear the knock when he comes, for him to show me what it means to open my heart and give me eagerness to do it.

Numerical biography meme

I've been tagged by my blogsister Roz, at her other blog In Dwelling, to complete this meme:

What I was doing 10 years ago: Going through a agonizingly bizarre and sudden divorce, nearly completely without faith in Christ to sustain me, but lots of help from friends and family.

5 years ago: Delighted to have found Jesus in my heart, working full-time in real estate management, realizing it was what I was going to end up doing as a career.

1 year ago: Working more than full-time in the same job for the same company, growing rapidly in my relationship in my parish and with my Lord.

Yesterday: Cooking dinner for my mother who is ill and bed-bound, watching a Bob Newhart retrospective on public television.

5 Snacks I enjoy:
Onion dip and chips
Peanut butter on anything edible
Cold pizza
Hot pizza
Nuts in any form

5 songs I know all the words to:
Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?
all of Handel's Messiah
Another Saturday Night and I Ain't Got Nobody
Wouldn't It Be Loverly
American Pie

5 things I would do with $100 million dollars:
Keep it a secret from all but closest confidantes (I'll keep Roz's first answer)
Wipe out parish’s building debt and make mongo donation to local pregnancy center (and her second answer, too)
Spend a month in Rome
Buy every musical instrument I ever had the urge to play and learn to play them
Invest the rest and live on the income, giving things away whenever I felt like it
(Roz, your answers are too good!)

5 locations to which I would like to run:
England
Scotland
Ireland, specifically wherever my ancestors are from
Germany, specifically wherever my ancestors are from
Poland, specifically (you guessed it) wherever my ancestors are from

5 bad habits I have:
Interrupting others
Gluttony
Fascination with myself
Being nosy
Procrastination, especially about housework

5 things I like doing:
Eucharistic Adoration
Telling jokes, including big-set-up, stand-up jokes
Interesting and witty conversation
Listening to old-time radio, especially Jack Benny
Watching old movie musicals

5 things I would never wear:
Anything with a visible brand name
A really, really expensive watch
"Slut slides" (ultra-high-heeled shoes) (Yes, I know the REALLY dirty name for them, too, thanks)
A vinyl or plasticized raincoat
A backpack, unless it had a tent on it and I was camping

5 TV shows I like: (limiting myself to ones on air now)
The Journey Home (on EWTN)
Whose Line is it Anyway?
Life on the Rock (on EWTN)
America's Test Kitchen
Antiques Road Show, especially when they feature gazillion-dollar surprises

5 biggest joys of the moment:
Trying to do the Will of God in our current family crisis with mom's illness
Losing weight on Weight Watchers
Visiting with my friends weekly at the local farmer's market
Making wonderful new friends and reconnecting with old friends who love the Lord
Watching my tomatoes and pepper plants produce a harvest

5 favorite toys:
Laptop computer
Crochet project I can actually manage
Bicycle
The perfect saute pan
"Bare Escentuals" makeup (their spelling, not mine)

5 next victims:
I'll pass for now!

Good things are bustin' out all over

Excellent things appear to be happening in a Catholic parish in Greenville, SC of all places. This is meant as no insult to loyal South Carolinians, but it's not the first place I'd look for top-drawer Catholic life.

St. Mary's Catholic Church in Greenville has started a Center for Evangelical Catholicism seeking to bring parish members and other Catholics more deeply into true transformation of life through the Gospel. Then, "[h]aving experienced the freedom and the joy of being transformed by the Gospel, Evangelical Catholics pursue an intensive, intentional and radical living out of their Baptismal promises in communion with Jesus Christ and His Church."

This is truly an exciting development. Have a look at their document called "A Simple Way of Life" which is one of the best descriptions of normal devotional life for the lay person that I've ever encountered. And there's a further treat. They're about to begin saying one Mass each Sunday according to the Novus Ordo in Latin, courtesy of one of their own seminarians who is assigned to the parish as a transitional deacon.

Does anybody want to go on a field trip to Greenville?

Really, really short prayers

The first prayer I remember saying as a child was "Jesus, Mary, Joseph: I give you my heart, my soul, Amen." It was a very good prayer for a very little kid, who had yet to be able to remember and recite all of the Our Father, Hail Mary, or Glory Be. To a little kid, the fact that the baby Jesus had a mommy and a daddy was reassuring; Jesus wasn't a ghost or a spirit. He was a real boy, who was also really God, a starting point into the Mystery of the Trinity for a four- or five-year-old.

The Church has a special name for very short prayers: they are called ejaculations. (Yes, there's a ten-year-old somewhere in me too who finds that term hilarious.) The link is full of nice quoted reminders that praising God all day, at all times, sometimes using words, is part of our love affair with Him.

A famous short prayer everybody knows is "My Jesus, Mercy." And the most famous short prayer in the Church, perhaps, is most beautifully practiced in the Eastern Catholic Churches, as well as by our Orthodox brethren, the Jesus Prayer: "Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." Some try and say it timed with every waking breath.

My man St. Francis de Sales says "Aspire to God with short but frequent outpourings of the heart." The Orthodox mystic St. Hesychois, in his Philokalia, says "The more rain falls on the earth, the softer it makes it; similarly, Christ's holy name gladdens the earth of our heart the more we call upon it."

It's not a mantra, because we are not using words to detach ourselves. It's not fruitless multiplication of words, because we aren't keeping count (we'd better not be). We're instead attaching ourselves to Him and most specifically to His Will, of offering whatever the moment is to Him, our resentments, our frustrations, our joys, our sorrows.

I want to grow in the habit of keeping a few beautiful words handy in the front of my mind, to sing or groan or cry them out to the Lord every time I think of Him.