And the “Most Opinionated Lump Award” goes to….

Confession: I’m kind of a saint-geek.

Not familiar with the term?

Well, I think I might have invented it, so let me just give a little definition here:

  

So, I have a (sometimes eccentric) devotion to a particular interest, which happens to be saints.

I was that kid who liked flipping through saint encyclopedias.

What, you didn’t know they had saint encyclopedias?

Dude, you’re missing out.

Anyway.

It’s a good thing to study saints. The Church recognizes certain holy people whose example can help inspire us to live in love with Christ. Research of any depth into the lives of saints shows men and women who are sometimes dramatically different from one another in every way except one: a passionate love for God. Each has, if you’ll pardon a pretty sorry simile, a very unique flavor, born of the many thousands of unique personalities and backgrounds from whence they came. Their stories reflect countless starting points converging on the same “narrow way”, and ending at the same destination: an eternity face-to-face with their beloved Creator.

Dramatically different, highly unique people make for fascinating stories.

I have always liked those hyper-dramatic stories, like the one St. Margaret who ran off with her lover, had an illegitimate child, saw her lover murdered, and after a profound conversion spent life as a penitent. Her picture in the children’s illustrated saint book was pretty rad. Definitely caught your eye while you were flipping through.

Or a perennial favorite of mine, Blessed Miguel Pro: the guitar-playing jokester extraordinaire, cartoonist, master of disguise. Finally martyred, the story of his death raises goosebumps at every re-telling.

Eccentric devotees, such as myself, sometimes have the problem of tunnel-vision. I get so awed by their fascinating stories that I lose sight of the purposes God has for me.

Let me explain it like this: do you know that “Potter and the Clay” Bible story?

Admittedly, it’s possible you don’t. If not for my long-suffering Mom, I wouldn’t either. So, for those of you who were not allowed to endlessly replay Donut Man tapes in your childhood, a quick detour to check out Jeremiah 18:1-6.

This word came to Jeremiah from the LORD:

Arise and go down to the potter’s house; there you will hear my word.

I went down to the potter’s house and there he was, working at the wheel.

Whenever the vessel of clay he was making turned out badly in his hand, he tried again, making another vessel of whatever sort he pleased.

Then the word of the LORD came to me:

Can I not do to you, house of Israel, as this potter has done?

… Indeed, like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, house of Israel.

I don’t know about you, but when I talk, I find it difficult to pay attention to anyone else at the same time. I had a sort of mental picture today, of being that lump of clay that kept turning out badly. The reason being that I wouldn’t shut up.

Seriously. Oftentimes in my prayer life I sound like this: “Oh, Lord – look at this saint. Wow, that one is really something. Hey, You did that once. How about another go? I think we should try a little St. Gianna today, with perhaps a few turns of the wheel in a Blessed Chiara-like direction.”

It would be like a lump of clay on a wheel looking around the Potter’s shed as the wheel turns. The response to so many marvelous works should be trust in the Potter’s skill.

My response too often is more like a lump of clay begging: “Oh! What a lovely vase! You should make me into a vase like that one. But wait, no, not a vase – that bowl is very useful. Perhaps a bowl, make me a bowl. No, no! That jar is very sturdy, I should be sturdy, too. Make me a jar!”

What nonsense! The Potter already has the vase, the bowl, the jar – those lumps of clay were already shaped by His hands to match the image He had planned in His Heart. Sometimes very slowly and sometimes quickly, they learned to be unique vessels by their cooperation with His purpose. They chose to respond with an unlimited trust in His mysterious designs for their lives, and with a boundless love to the One who loved them into existence.

When I fail to focus on Him, I become an opinionated lump of clay. Too preoccupied with my own muddled thoughts, I'm incapable of becoming “a vessel of whatever sort He pleased.” I turn out badly when I refuse to rest beneath His hands, when I resist allowing Him to shape me according to the purposes of His Heart.

We serve an endlessly creative God. His ability to shape beauty out of clay does not run out, nor does His patience with sincere-but-opinionated lumps like myself, who sometimes have to learn the hard way.

C.S. Lewis makes the point with these words:

“How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different are the saints. But there must be a real giving up of the self. You must throw it away ‘blindly’ so to speak. Christ will indeed give you a real personality: but you must not go to Him for the sake of that. As long as your own personality is what you are bothering about you are not going to Him at all. The very first step is to try to forget about the self altogether. Your real, new self (which is Christ's and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him.”

Knots vs. Pulp...Or is it?

You know that moment when, in addition to the frustration of a “situation,” you have the frustration of not being exactly certain (or being unwilling to admit) what the real problem is? We’re just so full of pent-up angst that reacting in any way at all at least offers the relief of release. Sometimes our spirits are so tied in knots over a deep issue that it seems easier to start yanking away at something insignificant than it is to address a very real, very tangled mess.

There’s a saying in my family for moments like that: “The issue’s not the issue.”

I found myself in one of those situations recently. I’d been yanking away at small things instead of giving God time and space to unravel the knots I’d been making around my heart.

See, I have this new theory that we make a wall of knots around our hearts for a specific reason: we’re getting skittish about being bruised.

After all, who really wants to sign up for getting beaten to a purple-blue-green pulp?

As my siblings and I were always quick to chant for dish duty, “Not It!”

But Mother Mary Francis (abbess of a cloistered community of Poor Clare nuns, by the way. Hardcore, right?) explains something important about this in her book Anima Christi. She tells of traveling with a small group of nuns to found a new monastery. With only a short time to prepare, in their eagerness to work quickly and focus on their individual tasks, they ended up running into each other pretty frequently. She returned home and realized she was covered in bruises, “Beautiful little emblems of our earnest desire to do something beautiful for God…so glad was I to have been bruised in trying to work with and help sisters so dearly loved.”

It was the next part she wrote that really that hit me: “Easily the reflection opens out that we can never help one another spiritually, either, if we do not wish to be bruised. With an unbruised heart we shall never love. Indeed, it is inevitable that when we really love, we shall get bruised.”

I was considering this potentially pulp-like lifestyle when I remembered the mini-epiphany I had on the last feast of St. Thomas the Apostle.

You know Thomas, that doubting guy. I never had much sympathy for that one, I’m afraid. Not that I really thought about him long enough to have much of anything towards him, except a sort of mild bemused feeling. I’m not necessarily one of those “show me” people, I couldn’t exactly relate on that level.

So the mini-epiphany was this: maybe it wasn’t that Thomas wasn’t just all believe-it-when-I-see-it, maybe Thomas was so reluctant to believe the Resurrection because he was hurt.

(Disclaimer: I am by no means a biblical scholar or expert, but I’ve seen Mother Angelica do the “Suppose this about a Bible Person” thing so I’m giving it a try.)

Suppose Thomas came from a tough family. Suppose someone he loved had abandoned him. Maybe he had reasons to fear vulnerability: maybe experience had taught him the heart is safest when it is unattached.

And then there was Jesus. Maybe for three years Thomas let Him untie the knots around his heart, let Him pour love gently into the spaces that perhaps had been bruised.

Supposing that was the case, imagine what it would have been like to lose Him. To lose the Person Whose love you had experienced and lived on for all that time, your best friend, your leader, the center of your dreams and plans…gone.

How much easier, how much more reasonable, to wrap up the heart in angry, doubtful knots than to hold onto something as delicate and fragile as hope. So much simpler to live in our heads instead of loving with our hearts.

So maybe Thomas did just that.

Much as I hate to admit it: maybe I do, too.

Because I cannot express how much I absolutely hate the thought of living as a bruised, pulpy purple mess. Can I get an "Amen"?

But the redeeming beauty here is that Jesus is more familiar with the pains, bruises, wounds, and temptations of the human heart than even we are. We might get bruised, but He doesn’t leave us there. He knew that Thomas, and many more after Thomas, would need the moment where He does not condemn our fear, but reassures our faith. He sees our foolish attempts to avoid disappointment by pretending hope never existed. He places His finger on that wound of our hearts when He invites us to place our finger in the wound of His side.

Now, it is of course important to have a properly formed intellect and will. I'm not talking about flower-power-fluffy-“love” here. I mean real, come-what-may, Christ-like love being lived out for the glory of God.

As a priest told me recently: “Jesus made your heart for something.” He has a plan for it. That plan, I’m pretty sure, does not involve living surrounded by knots. Our Lord wants us to be free to serve Him in love. I can be confident of this because the Church has even given us a representation of the Blessed Mother as Our Lady Undoer of Knots.

Maybe if you’re feeling knotted up, you can ask her to intercede with Her Son that He would set you free, free to love as God intended. If you do, consider yourself in company...I need to ask her that very thing. But there's always hope for us, fragile as it might seem. John 8:36 even promises it:

“For if the Son sets you free, you are free indeed.” 

Canticle for the Workers

Normally at Planned Parenthood I have to sidewalk counsel. I say “have to” because I don’t actually like to.  I’d much rather everybody leave me the heck alone so I can focus on praying.

Super saintly, right?

Anyway.

A while back I actually got to do just that: stand around and pray. Other counselors showed up and (bless them!) took right over, and I was free to wander at will. So I paced back and forth, reading my June Magnificat in peace and feeling grateful for the silence, and the early-morning shade.

Shade. Suddenly it struck me that nearly all the shade was from the building. That building is so massive that, in the mornings, nearly the entire street is deep in shadow.

“Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…”

How chillingly appropriate.

But then, so is the next part:  “I will fear no evil, for You are with me.”

At the time I was standing beside the employee parking lot entrances, and so I naturally begin thinking of abortion industry employees…and of all the things their hearts maybe fear. 

Fear seems to be a hallmark of the abortion industry, even among its own workers. Many former abortion industry employees mention hearing that if they tried to find work elsewhere, no-one else would ever hire them, since abortion work was a black mark on their records. They are frozen in place, convinced they are unable to leave, sick at the thought of having to stay.

I got back to “focusing” on the morning prayers, and since it was a Saturday, they were prayers honoring the Blessed Virgin Mary. The next verse to catch my attention? “Behold, your Mother.”

St. Josemaria Escriva wrote a meditation on the Wedding at Cana which I can only describe as endearing. He talks of our weary, cheerless souls and says to Our Lord: “Your Mother will by now have said to You, as at Cana, ‘They have no wine!’”

No wine of joy, or peace.  No wine because we refuse to approach the Vine as the only source capable of quenching our thirst.

My thoughts returned to the employees – “Lord, they have no wine…” No wine of gladness or love, because perfect love casts out fear, and in that place, surely they are afraid.

The next part of morning prayer was the Canticle of Zechariah. I’ve read it many times, but right then, I was seeing it in a new light. It struck me as the perfect prayer for those feeling trapped in the abortion industry. When you get a chance, find the whole thing and read it. Until then, think about the workers as you read this:

“He has come to His people and set them free…He would save us from the hands of our enemies and the hands of all who hate us…He promised to show mercy…to set us free from the hands of our enemies, free to worship Him without fear.”

There’s even a part for the workers who have already been set free, and who reach out to help the ones still caught inside:

“You will go before the Lord to prepare His ways,

to give His people knowledge of salvation

through the forgiveness of their sins.

In the tender compassion of our God

The dawn from on high will break upon us

To shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death,

And to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

Praying for the workers. It’s important.

Think about it.

Then let that change the way you think of them, treat them, talk about them. And not just the workers, but the volunteers too. The escorts. The clients.

There’s already plenty of fear around there. Threatening, ugliness, condescension…we say we want to change things, but too often we contribute to the shadows surrounding abortion facilities. The only thing that casts out fear is love.

Not a flimsy tolerance, but real, strong love. If you’re not sure what that looks like, a great place to start is turning to Our Lady, and asking her to go to Jesus and say to Him, “They have no wine!”

Now, as then, we will see He gives only the best to those who ask. Because when you ask for more love, you’re asking for more of Him. And that’s really what He has wanted to give you all along.

To learn more about an amazing new ministry formed especially to help abortion industry workers, click here.

Magic Mike is about...What?!?

I was at the store a while ago to get water for our office. I don’t usually have any issue with slinging three or four cases of water into a cart and then into my SUV. As it turns out, though, it’s a bit difficult to sling 36-bottle-packs around, when one arm is IN a sling.

(Sling = long, at-this-moment-irrelevant story. Focus on the water.)

I managed to shimmy two cases into my cart with one arm, wedging the basket against the shelf with my foot. Impressed with my own abilities, I knew, however, that I wouldn’t actually be able to get them out again.

Moral of the story: it’s a lot easier to put things in, then it is to take them out.

I was considering this and the many examples I could use to reinforce this mini-life-lesson to myself, when it occurred to me: this is the solution to my Magic Mike problem.

See, I have been noticing several Facebook friends posting cheerfully about their plans to go see Channing Tatum’s Magic Mike film. For those of you who haven’t heard about Magic Mike, it’s about a male stripper.

Yep.

Call me old-fashioned, but I was surprised to see more than one young woman I know sharing their excitement about watching Channing Tatum do stripteases, which is essentially what they were saying when they publicized the fact that they were going to a male stripper movie.

Now, these are WONDERFUL young women. Sweet gals.

So I was puzzled. Why in the world would these beautiful people, all of whom I KNOW are looking forward to marriage, or who love their husbands very much, chooseto engage in things which undermine the very relationships which they either enjoy or anticipate the most?

Unless, maybe, (maybe), they didn’t realize that’s what was going on, which is what I definitely prefer to think is going on with the sudden stripper blitz, as opposed to willful undermining.

I’m possibly about to offend somebody here, but I hope not. Because, if I didn’t think well of these women, I wouldn’t bother to say a word. So, please know that I’m putting this down in writing BECAUSE I think you’re amazing girls, and because I think you deserve more than tear-away pants on a two-story screen.

You deserve to be cherished by someone who knows and loves you, and is committed to you – not just to be entertained for a few moments.

And that somebody who does cherish, love, and commit himself to you, deserves the same thing back.

Watching strippers is incredibly unloving towards our fellow human beings who are actually doing the “performances”. Not only does it objectify them by reducing their body to an item for consumption or a source of pleasure, but participation in this kind of "entertainment" also has serious repercussions in other areas - for those "performing" AND those viewing.

We also need to keep in mind that our loving, Heavenly Father spent a whole commandment on “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.” This also applies to women coveting other women’s husbands, and Channing Tatum is married. (Even if he weren’t, he isn’t MY husband, or YOURS, which means we have no business coveting him in any way whatsoever.)

Let’s start with this: I don’t actually know a single woman who isn’t bothered by her husband/fiancée/boyfriend viewing pornography. Puts up with it, sure, that’s possible. Shrugs it off and chalks it up to “boys being boys”, sure, that happens. But not even bothered a single little bit, wouldn’t even change it if she could?

Uh…duh.

But, our men are supposed to be totally okay with us viewing porn? Because, ladies, that’s what stripping basically is, regardless of the stripper’s gender.

If we wouldn’t want our men to do that to us, why would we do that to them?

As women we often have the privilege of being the means that God uses to draw men closer to Himself. I’m not necessarily often good at it, but I really do try to love my sweetheart and to be a means through which he experiences the love of God. And I’m betting most of you try, too. We’re called to that, girls – it’s wired into us, it’s part of our path to sanctity, to God, to an eternity in Heaven. I heard once that both men and women manifest different traits of the Creator. Example: women manifest, among other things, His beauty.

Think about that: we are called to show God’s beauty to the world. The deep, profound beauty of a holy love and quiet service to our brothers and sisters, drawing them closer to the One Who loves them, closer to Heaven. The admiration of our eyes, the affection of our hearts, the moments of our lives…these are things God has given us to give our husbands, serve the Church, bring glory to our Creator, and attain holiness. Spending these precious currencies on things which have no lasting value is a deeply tragic loss. And it’s not so easy to gain back.

It would have been easier for me to pull those cases of water back out of the cart with one arm and load them into my car then it will be to reclaim our spent affection from one object – Channing Tatum in his Magic Mike character, for example – to give it back to our husbands. They will feel compared to the first object of our love if we can’t do it. They shouldn’t ever feel compared, they should have our whole hearts, and to give them our whole hearts we have to protect those hearts fiercely from a world that tries to steal them away.

This is partly why porn is so harmful to relationships, because we feel compared to the computer-enhanced people that are being viewed. It makes us feel lacking, not-enough, insufficient, inadequate.

 “Your boyfriend may appear inadequate.”

One of the TV spots (which I was inadvertently exposed to) for Magic Mike screams those words in big block letters, then flashes images of strippers followed by a character from the movie saying snidely “Can I get an Amen?”

This is not “okay”, or just “entertainment”, this is serious. Even if the gentlemen in our life shrugged, laughed it off, or rolled their eyes – this is damaging. It is damaging to give the admiration of our eyes to a man who is not entitled to it.

Which men are entitled then?

1. 1.     Your husband
2. 2.     If you’re not married, but you’re in a relationship which is discerning marriage, to that gentleman (I refer to mine as my “sweetheart”) J
3. 3.     Our Lord in the Eucharist, the perfect Man.

C.S. Lewis remarked on it with these words:

“You can get a large audience together for a strip-tease act—that is, to watch a girl undress on the stage. Now suppose you come to a country where you could fill a theatre by simply bringing a covered plate on to the stage and then slowly lifting the cover so as to let everyone see, just before the lights went out, that it contained a mutton chop or a bit of bacon, would you not think that in that country something had gone wrong with the appetite for food?”

Dear ladies – we need to follow the advice given in the Song of Songs on this matter. Three times, in three separate places, the exact same words are used as a caution: “I charge you, my daughters…do not stir up nor awaken love until its own time.”

Protect your heart for your husband, don’t give it away for the pleasure that lasts only a moment.