Author: Meg

I'm a Catholic, madly in love with the Lord, His Word, His Bride the Church, and especially His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the Eucharist. I'm committed to the Church not because I was raised this way but because the Lord has drawn my heart and convicted my reason. After 2 degrees in theology and 5 years in the classroom, I quit my 9-5 to follow Christ more literally. Since May of 2012, I've been a hobo for Christ; I live out of my car and travel the country speaking to youth and adults, giving retreats, blogging, and trying to rock the world for Jesus.

Why I Hate Mr. Darcy

No, that isn’t one of my misleading provocative titles.  I’m not going to be all clever and then reveal that I, like every woman my age, think Darcy is just the most wonderful thing ever.  He’s not.  He’s kind of awful.

If you haven’t read Pride and Prejudice–or at least seen the BBC movie–you might just want to skip down a few paragraphs.

I’ve had this conversation more times than I can remember.  It usually goes something like this:

Any Twenty-something Girl: Oh, I love Mr. Darcy!

Me: Really?

ATG: Yes, he’s just so perfect.

Me: But he’s arrogant and condescending and really quite awful.

ATG: No, he’s not!

Me: Yes, he is.  For the entire first half of the book, he does absolutely nothing to recommend himself.

ATG: But then he loves Lizzie and she brings out what’s good in him and because of her, he becomes this amazing guy!

This certainly makes me a heretic among Austen-lovers, but I don’t even think Colin Firth is that cute as Darcy. Except here. This look is one of the cutest things ever captured on film.

This is the part where I start spluttering.  Now, all you P&P lovers out there, I don’t mean to say that Darcy should be dismissed entirely.  I appreciate that he helps Lydia and I respect the way that his servants and his sister love him.  I think it’s fair to say that deep down he is a decent guy.

But.

I have a real problem with his being the standard to which every man is held (in some circles) as I think he’s a fairly pathetic standard.  He’s arrogant, unkind, and insensitive until he’s got some reason not to be.  Certainly he’s very good to Lizzie once he falls in love with her–well, after his proposal, which is so insensitive as to be cruel.  But a man’s character is defined not just by how he treats those he admires but even more by how he treats those he despises–and Darcy despises most people, so we’ve got plenty of evidence as to his character.

Now I’m not saying he can’t change.  I absolutely believe that we can, by God’s grace, defeat our vices and grow in virtue.  God, I hope we can–the idea of being as loud, emotional, and attention-seeking at 40 as I was at 14 kind of makes me want to die.

Here’s a tip, ladies: if he tells you WHILE PROPOSING that being with you is “reprehensible,” he doesn’t deserve you.

But I can’t sit back and watch women use Darcy as an excuse to date losers.  Oh, they may not make the argument that their stoner boyfriends are just as misunderstood as Darcy, but there’s an attitude that women are already inclined to have that Lizzie and Darcy just encourage: I know the real Fitzwilliam and I can help him to be the great guy that only I can see.

I’ve watched more women make this mistake.  They date guys who booze or cheat or sulk or lie or whatever but they really believe that the glimpses of good they see are their boyfriend’s real self.  And if they can love him enough to draw that real self out, then not only do they get an awesome guy, but they also get to be his savior!

I’m going to be real with you, ladies.  If your friends think he’s a jerk and your family thinks he’s a jerk and his friends think he’s a jerk and his family thinks he’s a jerk, you’re not finding the heart of gold beneath the rough exterior.  You’re being fooled by a jerk.  Or, more often, you’re fooling yourself because you just really want him to be great.

It’s been my experience that most guys will be as good as you require.  Men are hunters by nature; they’re built to chase down the mammoth and they’ll fight until they’ve killed it.  Forget chastity here (okay, never forget chastity, but you get my point), but I’m not talking about keeping your clothes on so that he’ll marry you.  I’m just talking about character, about the way a man will do anything to win the heart of the woman he loves.  If you’re interested in a Darcy and you try to date him so that he reforms, he’s just going to congratulate himself on having captured his prize and see how far he can coast before you freak out about how awful he is.

If, on the other hand, you hold out like Lizzie, he may just surprise you, as Darcy, to his credit, ends up doing.  See, you’re incredible.  You really are–you’re beautiful and captivating and absolutely worth fighting for.  You were born a princess, living protected atop a high tower.

Okay, maybe this farm boy. But work with me here–it’s just an analogy.

But high towers get lonely.  And you might look out the window and see, for example, a farm boy covered in muck.  And maybe you two make eye contact across the distance that separates you.  And you begin to think how handsome he is under the caked-on manure.  And how he has such sensitive eyes when he bothers to look up at you.  And really, how unreasonable of your parents to demand that you marry someone of consequence–they just don’t understand!

So you sigh and you pine and you wait, but he’s just mucking around with the pigs.  And at this point, you have to make a choice.  Most Darcy-lovers of my acquaintance are inclined to rip up their fancy bedsheets, make a rope, and climb down to the sty, after which they are chafed and muddy and in the company of a man who now has no reason to improve his station in life, his object being achieved.

Don’t even get me started on Tangled, which I also love despite the lesson it teaches. She falls in love with a con artist simply because he’s the only man she’s ever met? That’s a great model for romantic young girls.

A wiser princess waits in her tower, knowing that her farmer will either move on (in which case he was never worthy of her love), or he will fight.  If he deserves her, he will wash off the muck, train as a knight, slay the dragon, scale the tower, and take her in his arms.  He will either stay filthy or be transformed, based entirely on what she expects of him.

Now there are plenty of holy, God-fearing men out there who will fight to be good men regardless of what is expected of them.  But there are many more–even really good guys–who will only fight to be good as long as it is demanded of them, ideally by a beautiful woman.  But you can’t be a harpy or a nag, dating or–God forbid–marrying a mess of a boy and then insisting that he change.  Even worldly wisdom knows that you can’t change somebody else.

He can change himself, though.  And if you refuse to compromise your values and your standards, a man who truly loves you will fight to become the kind of man who deserves you.  A man who won’t fight for you never could have deserved you.

Now a reasonable woman can’t be uncompromising on non-essentials.  You can’t refuse to date a man because he doesn’t play the guitar or have curly hair or play football.  But if he drinks too much or uses vulgar language or belittles your family or demeans you (ahem–Darcy!), you can’t save him.  You can only make yourself miserable trying.

Look, I know that Darcy’s shy and socially awkward.  And maybe you can convince me that his tremendous vices are really just a consequence of that.  Or perhaps that he loves Lizzie so much that he reforms himself entirely in order to be worthy of her.  And I’ll admit that I shriek and giggle as much as anyone every time they get together.  I suppose I don’t really hate him (the reformed him, anyway) so much as I hate the way women ignore his flaws and cling to the idea that they can change a jerk into a charming gentleman of 10,000 a year.

After years of hearing Austen distorted to excuse imprudent attachments (read: moronic crushes that will only end badly), I had to say this to all the lovely ladies dating scumbags and thinking they can save them like Lizzie saves Darcy: he’s already got a savior and it’s not you.  If he really deserves you, he’ll fight to be a man who’s worthy of you.  So stay up in your tower, princess, and watch him become the man you know he can be.  And if he stays in the pigsty, count your blessings that you didn’t climb down to him.  You never could have turned him into your knight in shining armor.

Okay, I’m watching the movie right now and I do kind of love him. But that doesn’t excuse years of abominable behavior! He’s washed off the muck, but I’m going to have to see some serious dragon-slaying before I’m convinced.

An Ignatian Meditation on Surrender

Have you ever been in prayer and had a really powerful image and a sense that you were entering into really deep prayer–maybe even contemplative prayer–and then you realized that you were thinking about mashed potato shampoo and you weren’t actually having a vision, you were actually half asleep and dreaming?

Yeah, that happens to me at least once a week.

It’s not that images don’t have a place in prayer, it’s that coffee does.  And when I’m good and jacked up on caffeine, I can use my imagination to pray and get some images that make a lot more sense than mashed potato shampoo.  Prayer isn’t just a left-brained experience of memory and recitation, nor is it an introvert’s Mecca of silence and solitude.  Prayer is about relationship and God wants to encounter you in so many different ways.

So sometimes I put away my rosary and close my breviary and even try to turn off my interior monologue.  I turn to the Gospels and try to meet Christ there.  When the Spirit’s moving, I can open the Scriptures and insert myself into a scene, imagining that I’m encountering Christ just as the characters of the Gospel do.

This style of prayer is often called Ignatian, after St. Ignatius of Loyola whose Spiritual Exercises use this technique.  The idea is that you enter into the story and allow the Holy Spirit to speak to you through, essentially, daydreaming.

What’s most important here is to be open to the promptings of the Spirit.  Don’t try to dictate who you are in the scene or what you experience.  Instead, try to let go and see what happens–do you find yourself cast as a Pharisee?  Are you too distracted to listen to Jesus?  Are you afraid to approach him?

One of my students, after a meditation on Jesus calling Peter to walk on water, told me that he knew Jesus was calling him out of the boat but he couldn’t hear what he was saying because he refused to listen.  “Were you afraid of sinking?” I asked him.  “Oh, no,” he said.  “I knew I’d be safe.  I was just afraid that I wouldn’t be happy, so I turned my back on him.”  Very telling.

A seventh-grade boy explained after a meditation on the woman caught in adultery that he was a Pharisee.  When I pushed him, he got very quiet and then said, “I think I have the same struggles that the Pharisees did.”  Twelve years old.

An Ignatian meditation can definitely be done with just you and a Bible, but a guided one can be a good way to start.  So I’ve got a meditation for you on the woman who anointed Jesus.  Throughout the meditation (about 20 minutes), I ask a lot of questions.  Ignore them if they don’t help.  Definitely don’t feel the need to figure out your answer to every question.  The idea here is to immerse yourself so completely in the scene that you let go of yourself and allow the Spirit to speak to you. (You’re going to need speakers.)  So set aside some time, get comfortable, silence your cell phone, and see what the Lord has to say.

Anointing at Bethany Meditation

After your meditation, take some time to process.  Who were you in the scene?  What emotions were you feeling?  What did Jesus say to you?  What look did you see in his eyes?  Where did you go at the end?  What does all this mean?

This kind of meditation doesn’t work for everyone, but I thought I’d throw it out there for those of you who were interested.  I do a lot of these (on retreats especially) and I’m trying to get into the habit of recording them for y’all.  You can find others on this page.

Getting a Beat-Up Bible

Six years later, it may be time to rebind again. When the binding breaks apart completely, it’s the beginning of the end.

When I was a first year teacher, years of use (and abuse at the bottom of my backpack) caught up with my Bible.  The first part to fall out was James.1  Over the next few months, it reached the point where I was keeping my Bible in a Ziploc bag.  So I bit the bullet and sent it away to be rebound. I was seriously lost without it.

When it came back, I was so excited, I ran into class and shouted, “Guys!  Guess what!!!”

“You got engaged!” one of them guessed.  Yup, I was so excited to have my Bible back, I looked like a radiant bride.  That might be nerdier than it is holy….

But I think it says something that literally the only thing I’d be devastated to lose in a fire would be my Bible.

This page in Luke was only mostly detached before I went to take the picture. The things I do for you people!

I mean, not to be weird or anything, but I love my Bible.  Okay, yeah, I love the Bible, but I really particularly love my Bible.  It has all my highlighting and notes (even the really embarrassing stuff like, “Worms, I hate worms” and highlighting 3 straight pages in puke green from when I was 13).  I might not remember exactly what a verse says, but I know it’s highlighted on the right-hand page in the left column towards the top in an epistle that has a lot of footnotes on the page.  Give me 5 minutes and I can find it–usually faster than I can google it because I often can’t remember more than the feeling it gives me.

I started reading the Bible when I was 13.  The weekend I was converted (praise God!), I decided that if I was going to do this Jesus thing, I was really going to do it.  I was going to read the whole Bible.

There’s my tally down at the bottom. Do you love my second grade magic marker handwriting on the dedication page?

It took me five and a half years.

It was tough going, largely because I read straight through and got stuck in Leviticus for maybe a year and a half.  But during that time I developed a relationship with my Bible.  I began to find meaning in what had seemed irrelevant or dull.  I “discovered” connections between the Old and New Testaments that seemed to make sense of everything.  I started taking my Bible with me everywhere–just in case.  I bought (okay, fine, buy) purses only if they’re big enough to fit my Bible.  Eventually, I started reading it through once a year.

I’m a 28-year-old Catholic and I’ve read the Bible ten times.

Maybe I don’t love books as much as John Paul does. Nobody loves books as much as this kid.

Now, this is not due to some great virtue of mine.  I just really love books.  So much so that it’s currently past midnight and I have to be up at 8, but I know I’ll still read for at least an hour after I put the computer away.  So I realize that I’ve definitely got an advantage when it comes to loving the Bible.  But I think Catholics especially forget how important this book is.  Because we’ve got so much richness to our faith outside the Bible, we often (as individuals, not as a Church) ignore the Word of God.

We can’t do this!  Forget the fact that you’ll never get anywhere with a Protestant if you don’t know the Bible, this is the WORD of GOD!!  It’s meant to be studied and memorized and loved and lived.  After the Sacraments, there is nothing more important to the life of a Christian.  So here are some tips for those of you whose Bibles are in mint condition:

  1. Read the whole thing–eventually.  I think every Christian should read the Bible at least once. I really recommend the one year option above if you’ve got the dedication and the time (almost always less than 20 minutes a day).  It breaks up the boring parts (and there are a lot of boring parts, especially when you’re a Bible beginner) with Psalms and Gospel passages.  Plus, I’ve known very few people who manage to push through if they’re just going Genesis to Revelation.
  2. Start with the fun stuff.  Most people really aren’t up for 2 Chronicles or Ezekiel when they’re newbies.  So ease into it.  Try reading a chapter a day from the Gospels.  Or get a broader view by reading in this order: Luke, 1 John, John, Philippians, Matthew, Isaiah (maybe starting at chapter 40–that’s where it gets good), Mark, Genesis, 1 Corinthians, 1+2 Samuel, Romans, Deuteronomy, and go from there.  It’s not a logical order by any means, but I think those books are interesting enough to get you acclimated before you dive into Ezekiel and the like.
  3. Study the liturgical readings.  Take some time with the readings before Mass every day or spend the whole week looking at Sunday’s.  Try to figure out how they connect or imagine what you’d preach on.  It’ll transform the liturgy for you, too.
  4. Memorize.  My life has been absolutely transformed by the memorization of Scripture.  When I find a passage that speaks to me, I generally make up a tune for it and sing it over and over until it sticks.  Then when I need it, the song pops into my head.  This has the further benefits of making the Mass come alive when I hear a passage I’ve memorized and really impressing people when I can quote a whole chapter from memory.
  5. Mark it up.  Don’t be afraid to write in a holy book!  I spent a few years reading but not highlighting or taking notes, and while that means I have fewer embarrassing things in there, I also have less to show how God has blessed me through his Word.  Marking up your Bible doesn’t just help you find stuff later, it also reminds you how you’ve grown and draws you deeper.  I add quotations from Saints, point to other passages, or pencil in my own observations–in a lot of ways, my Bible is almost a journal for me.  I’ve read the Gospels more than 20 times, but I still read with a pen in hand.  As St. Gregory the Great said, “Scripture is like a river . . . broad and deep, shallow enough here for the lamb to go wading, but deep enough there for the elephant to swim.”  I will never exhaust the depths of Scripture and marking it keeps me mindful of that.
  6. Just read it!!  Play Bible Roulette (flip and point), read a Psalm every day, find a Scriptural devotional, follow a daily verse on Twitter, pick a verse to meditate on throughout the day, check out Pinterest Bible boards, or walk down the beach reading people’s tattoos.2  But do something to make sure you’re in Scripture every day and let it transform you.  As St. Jerome said, “Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.”

At the end of my life, I want to take a lot of laugh lines, a heart broken and remade over and over again, and a beat up Bible before the throne of God.  Join me?

PS Anybody know a good book rebinder?  I’m not sure how many times you can rebind a book, but I think I need it to last longer than 6 years if I’m going to hang on to this Bible for a lifetime.

  1. I actually discerned whether I ought to be Protestant, James being a book Luther particularly disliked. I tend to read too much into things. [↩]
  2. I once had a student who was a Chinese national who had a Bible verse (part of 1 Pt 4:8) tattooed on his back. I commented on how much I liked it and he told me–in very broken English–that he didn’t know what it said and didn’t realize it was form the Bible. I guess it’s like when Americans think they’re getting “loyalty” or “family” tattooed on their shoulders when really it says “pork fried rice.” [↩]

Consider It All Joy

I knew a 3-year-old who was desperately trying to buckle her car seat.  She howled from the back of the min-van, “WHY DID GOD MAKE MY BUCKLE SO HARD TO BUCKLE???”  I love that her car seat was somehow God’s manufacturing design.

But I’m totally like that when it comes to minor inconveniences.  I get frustrated and, yes, sometimes cry, and complain to God for not making everything in my life perfect.  Yeah, because he doesn’t have anything else to do.

Here are some things that have ticked me off in the past 3 days:

  1. MY LIFE IS SO HARD!!!!
  2. People driving too slowly.
  3. People driving too fast.
  4. Red lights.
  5. Green lights.
  6. Heat.
  7. Rain.
  8. Bugs.
  9. Being late someplace.
  10. Being early someplace.
  11. Traffic.
  12. People who cheat in traffic.1
  13. Not having time to finish a book.
  14. Finishing a book that I didn’t want to end.
  15. People yelling at their kids.
  16. People not disciplining their kids.
  17. Computer programs that think they’re smarter than me and format my stuff the wrong way and won’t let me fix it.
  18. “Spit” as the past tense even in published books!!
  19. Grammatical errors in general.
  20. Hitting backspace on this post, having it go back a page, and having to rewrite this whole angry list.
  21. Prime numbers.2

Tip of the iceberg, folks.

Um, so, chill pill much?  I’m not exaggerating when I say I could easily grumble or shout about something 50 times a day.  I’m that irritable.

I’d guess that most of you are, too, especially in this world of instant gratification and expected perfection.  I feel so sorry for myself when I don’t have air conditioning for two weeks.  Forget the fact that I have running water and a fan and a car with air conditioning and access to air conditioned churches and libraries and homes–I’m hot and you should feel bad for me!

But the other day I read a short essay by Chesterton in which he suggests that irritation is all a matter of attitude and I began to wonder.

Why on earth am I annoyed at a red light when I was running early anyway?  Doesn’t #4 cancel out #10?  Shouldn’t I be pleased that I can avoid the awkwardness of being early?

But I’ve conditioned myself to be annoyed at everything that inconveniences me.  I’ve decided how life ought to treat me and I think it’s unfair if anything doesn’t go according to plan.  How arrogant!  How completely unchristian!

What a waste of time.

Forget virtue for a minute (I know I usually do).  If I want to be happy, this is just dumb.  Why don’t I choose joy?  In minor issues that don’t make any real difference to my life, why don’t I let myself be happy?

I’m sure it all comes back to pride–it always seems to.  But Chesterton’s right (as usual): it’s an attitude issue.  I can’t change the minor inconveniences that plague me, but I can choose to rejoice anyway.

St. James gives us a little attitude check at the beginning of his letter:3

Consider it all joy, my brothers, when you encounter various trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. (Jas 1:2-3)

Now James is probably talking about actual suffering, which is a matter for another post, but I don’t see why we can’t take his (and Chesterton’s) advice and be a little bit Pollyanna when it comes to the minor inconveniences that give us “terrible days.”  You’ll remember that Pollyanna always played “The Glad Game,” finding something happy in the most miserable circumstances. She didn’t let her situation dictate her mood but chose to find what was beautiful in a given situation.  She’s code for trite optimism, but I think we could all learn a little from the way her choices govern her character.

Why do I choose irritation?  Why do I choose stress?  And it really is a choice; most of the things that “ruin my day” are so minor that I might not even notice them if I’m distracted.  But it feels better to be angry about traffic than it does to recognize that I wasn’t going anywhere important anyway.  Or even if I was, how important could it really be, in the grand scheme of salvation?  How many of the things that drive me to sin are really that serious?

I’m not saying that real suffering shouldn’t be honored.  I’m saying that most of us probably aren’t dealing with real suffering when we’re upset.  We’re probably indulging in some worthless (and possibly sinful) self-pity, which only serves to make us more obsessed with ourselves.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t need the help.  I’m plenty self-absorbed as it is.  Sirach’s good and blunt about this:

Do not give in to sadness; torment not yourself with brooding….  Distract yourself….  Envy and anger shorten one’s life….  (Sir 30:21, 23a, 24a)

That’s all there is to it.  Quit whining about your buckle, change the shirt you spilled chocolate sauce on (or rewrite the email you lost or settle in for some smooth jazz while you wait in traffic or whatever) and be a grown-up.  I’ve been babysitting all week.  God knows the world doesn’t need more temper tantrums.

Mother Teresa once admonished: Never let anything so fill you with sorrow as to make you forget the joy of Christ risen.  So maybe that’s our litmus test: is this worse than Calvary?  Is this so bad that even the pierced hands of Christ on Easter morning couldn’t drive the sorrow from my heart?  Would I be embarrassed to mention to the risen Christ that this was the reason I lost my cool?

And then maybe look for the good.  Or just acknowledge the annoying element and compare it to the other good in your life.  Or get over yourself and realize that the world doesn’t revolve around you.

Consider it joy.  The little stuff, anyway.  That’s my challenge to myself this week: to choose joy even in frustration.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

  1. You can tell I’m back in Northern Virginia when half my post is about traffic. [↩]
  2. Which is why this list now has 20 items–or did until WordPress decided that I meant to have 1 and 2 on top of each other which shows up as one before two with a blank spot that I can’t erase. See number 17, which was actually on here even before that happened. [↩]
  3. Probably not the St. James of today’s feast day which will most likely be yesterday by the time I get this thing published. [↩]

I’d Make a Great Priest

I’d make a great priest–I really would!  I’m knowledgeable, I’m faithful, I’m an excellent listener, and, boy, can I preach.1  I’d touch hearts in the confessional and set parishes on fire.

It’s not that I wouldn’t be a good priest, it’s that I can’t be a priest.

Look at it this way: those little girls I told you about?  I spend more time with them than their dad ever has.  I flew to Indiana for Megan’s first communion earlier this year; I’d bet money that he doesn’t even know her middle name.  He hasn’t seen them in years; I’m there every summer.  I may be a much better father to them than he is, but I can’t be their father.

I might not be so great at giraffey things like walking on those spindly legs.

Or how about this: I’d be an incredible giraffe.–bear with me here.  I’d be the first singing giraffe ever.  I’d be able to read and write and spell prehensile when blogging about my awesome prehensile tongue.  But I can’t be a giraffe.  It’s not a matter of being good enough–I’m not capable.  I don’t have the giraffeness it takes to be a giraffe, the maleness it takes to be a father, or the essence it takes to be a priest.

What we have to get here is that nobody’s saying women aren’t good enough to be priests.  Nobody loved women more than Jesus.  When he rose from the dead, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene (happy feast day!), and yet he didn’t invite her to the Last Supper.  He honored her above all the apostles but he didn’t make her a priest.  Not because she wasn’t good enough but because it wasn’t possible.

And quit telling me that the Church hates women.  You can’t spend more than 15 minutes around real Catholics without wondering if they don’t maybe worship the Virgin Mary.  You can’t feel the way we do about the blessed Mother and hate women.  So this has to be a matter not of talent but of capability–not of intelligence and piety and compassion but of something innate to men that women don’t possess.

Intrinsic to this whole question is the idea that men and women are essentially different in more than just chromosomes and their biological expression.  That’s what the church is assuming when she says (infallibly, btw) that women can’t be in persona Christi because they aren’t male.2

For a long time, I thought this was stupid.  Do priests then have to be Semitic and have beards and wear sandals?  Don’t be ridiculous.

But those things are all accidents (remember when we talked about substance and accidents?)–they’re characteristics that don’t define a person.  Jesus’ gender, on the other hand, is substance.  It’s essential to who he is.

Think about it this way: if John and Mary pull a Freaky Friday and switch bodies, John doesn’t become a woman.  His maleness is not a mere function of his body–it’s who he is.  We’d say that he was a man trapped in a woman’s body, not that he had become a woman.  He may have long hair, pink fingernails, and great legs, but he’s still a man.

We have to keep this in mind when we’re discussing women’s ordination: the Church has never said that women weren’t good enough to be priests but that they weren’t capable.  Just like my dad would have made a great mom but he can’t be a mom.  He doesn’t have the femaleness required.

So if you’re a Catholic, you accept this because of Scripture (Jesus didn’t ordain women) and Tradition (the Church has never ordained women and has said infallibly that women can’t be ordained).  You can argue all you like that Jesus was restricted by his culture, but then you’re a) ignoring the fact that everything he did flew in the face of cultural norms–prostitutes and tax collectors, anyone? and b) denying the divinity of Christ who would certainly have rejected those customs if he though it necessary, for that time or ours.

But why is this true??  I always got that I had to accept this, but it took a near miracle for me to see why God had designed things this way.  I had to know what there is about “maleness” that is intrinsic to priesthood.  C.S. Lewis (himself an Anglican) explains this brilliantly.  If you’re short on time, definitely read him instead of me.

Lewis doesn’t say much, though, about the argument that really makes sense of all this for me.  He understands that women can’t represent God to men the way that men can, not because they’re not kind or loving or wise enough but because God is masculine in relationship to his people.  God is the initiator, the one who gives to his Bride who receives.  (Forget your personal relationships for a minute and just recognize the significance of the act of sex in terms of what it means to be masculine or feminine.)  So when priests act in persona Christi, they can only do that by fully imaging Christ the Bridegroom.

When he stretched out his arms on the cross, Jesus consummated his marriage with his Bride the Church.  At each Mass, we step outside of time to that one sacrifice.  When the priest takes the host in his hands, he speaks the words of Christ once again, “This is my body, which will be given up for you.”  This moment in the Mass is the Last Supper, the Crucifixion, and the marital act of Bridegroom and Bride.  It is offered by Christ through the person of the priest.

That’s why the gender of the priest is essential.  The Mass is a marital act, an act of complete self-giving by Christ to his Church.  If a woman were the priest, each Mass would be the image of a homosexual union.  Think what you want about gay marriage in America, it’s pretty clear where the Church has to stand on the issue of the morality of homosexual actions (Rom 1:26-27, 1 Tim 1:10, 1 Cor 6:9).  And the Church’s central act of worship has to be in line with God’s plan for men and women as much as everything else the Church does.

If priesthood were a matter of talent, I’d make a great priest.  If Christianity were entirely reasonable (as Lewis says), it would be appalling to deny holy orders to women.  But when we enter the realm of the divine, we have to accept that there may be some truths that counter contemporary human wisdom.

Second wave feminism taught us that equality meant sameness, that if men and women were equal it meant that they were interchangeable.  What makes humanity so beautiful, though, is the difference between and complementarity of the sexes.  And I think the great downfall of second wave feminism, even from a secular perspective, is that it tries so hard to champion the value of women while telling women they have to be men.

Gloria Steinem didn’t argue in favor of respect for the feminine genius, as did John Paul II; she declared that women, being as good as men, were just like men.  So instead of earning the dignity we always deserved while embracing our femininity, we were told to want sex as much as men (and as indiscriminately as boys who are unworthy of the name “men”), to be as unemotional as men (without being bitches), and to work harder than men (since deep down we all know that women aren’t really as smart as men), all while looking hot.

Believe, me, I’m a feminist.  You are, too.  But I understand that to be a good woman, I don’t have to be a man.  I can be as athletic or emotional or nurturing or intelligent as is natural to me without comparing myself to anyone else’s ideal.  I can wear spike heels or Converse, work 10 hour days at the office or 16 hour days at home or never work a day in my life.  I can be girly or tough or quiet or nerdy or all of the above.  I’ve never let my culture define who I am because my self worth doesn’t lie in what I do but in who I am: I am His.

I’ve had people ask me in the past if it’s hard to be a woman in the Catholic Church.  My Episcopalian grandmother tells me every time I see her that it’s a shame I can’t be a priest.  But, having been blessed to accept this teaching, I’ve found that I love the Church all the more because of it.  I would never want to be a member of a church whose doctrine is swayed by the sensibilities of the world.  I feel so blessed to take refuge in a bastion of truth that stands firm in the face of onslaughts from every side.

I did feel a little sorry for myself for a while until I began to understand the beauty of being a woman in the Church.  Sure, men can be priests, but most aren’t.  Every woman, though, can be pursued by divine love in a way that speaks particularly to a woman’s heart.  Every woman can picture herself in the arms of Christ in a way that’s meaningless (or disturbing) to most men.  No, I can’t say Mass, and nothing will ever change that.  But I can read the Song of Songs as a love letter to me.  I can hear the voice of my lover crying out to me in the Eucharist, be lost in the romance of his embrace, and live as a princess in his kingdom.

And I wouldn’t trade that for a sham priesthood.  Not for anything.

  1. Please excuse the bragging here–I’m making a point. [↩]
  2. If you haven’t yet read my most recent post on priesthood, please do. This post won’t make much sense if you don’t have that background. [↩]

What Is the Priesthood?

I was trying to write about women’s ordination per my promise of this weekend, I really was.  But I kept having to parenthetically define my terms, so I figured I’ll sketch out a quick theology of the priesthood today so we’re all on the same page.  Expect the argument against women’s ordination soon.

First, can I just remind you how much I love the priesthood?

Good.

A priest in vestments about to be executed.

I think much of the rhetoric surrounding women’s ordination comes from a misunderstanding of the priesthood.  We tend to equate Catholic priests with Protestant ministers.  They often serve similar functions, but they’re not the same–not at all.  You see, Protestant ministers are ministers because of what they do: preach, pray, lead.  Catholic priests are priests because of who they are.  At ordination, they receive an indelible mark, a mark that can’t be removed.1  This mark makes them alter Christus, another Christ.  Their souls are changed.  Even if they never preach, pray, or lead a day in their lives, they’re still “priests forever according to the order of Melchizedek” (Ps 110:4, Heb 7:17).

Because of this special character imprinted on their souls, priests act in persona Christi, in the person of Christ, when they function as priests.  It’s Christ who blesses you through the priest, Christ who consecrates, Christ who absolves.  In Mt 10:1 (and parallels), Jesus commissions his apostles (the first priests, although they’re not ordained until later) to heal and exorcise, exactly what he’s doing.  After the resurrection (Mt 28:20), he tells them to teach as well.  So Jesus himself sends the first priests out to fulfill his role in the world.

But they’re not just doing the same work as Jesus–they’re doing his work.  In Lk 10:16, he tells them that those who hear them hear him.  He’s giving them his authority and sending them into the world as he was sent.

Why don’t I ever get to confess in a field?

It’s most clear in Jn 20:21-23, a passage where Jesus gives the apostles the power to absolve sins.  He says to them, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”  These men aren’t just reminders of Jesus, they’re his presence in the world.  And when he gives them the power to absolve (“Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them”), we can’t help but remember the line “Who but God alone can forgive sins?” (Lk 5:21)  Indeed, only God can forgive sins.  Which must mean that when priests absolve, they do it by Christ’s power, not their own.

Jesus instituted the Sacrament of Holy Orders on Holy Thursday at the Last Supper.  In John 17:17, he prays, “Consecrate them, Father, in the truth” and goes on to say “As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world.”  As Christ is the Father’s presence in the world (not the same as the Father but acting on his behalf with his authority), so priests are Christ’s presence in the world (not the same as Christ but acting on his behalf with his authority).  At the moment of this prayer, the apostles became priests.

A Franciscan priest prays with a man about to be executed.

Throughout the early Church (Acts 6:6, 13:3, 14:23; 1 Tim 4:14), the office of priesthood is passed down through the laying on of hands.  In this way, the priests who follow the Apostles share in their priestly character just as Judas’ successor, St. Matthias, enjoyed the same apostolic privileges that Judas had thrown away (Acts 1:26).  This apostolic succession is a top priority in the early Church for one reason: it is absolutely necessary that the Church have priests, not merely ministers.  Preaching and praying and leading are wonderful, but anybody can do that.  To be a priest, one must be ordained by a successor of the apostles in order to be alter Christus.

So when priests function as priests, they have that priestly power not by their own merit but because they share in the one high priesthood of Christ.

I was at Mass with a 3-year-old one day.  Afterward, she saw the priest who had celebrated the Mass walking around in street clothes.  She tugged on my shirt.  “Meg, that man looks like God.”

“No, honey, that’s not God,” I said.  “That’s the priest.”

“I know,” she insisted, “but he looks like God.”

“No, sweetie, he looks like the priest because he is the priest.  He’s not God.”

“I know,” she said, exasperated that I would think she was so dumb as to imagine that we could see God outside of Mass.  “But he looks like that green God what was at the front of the church.” (It was Ordinary Time—green vestments.)  I realized that she, in her youthful credulity, understood in persona Christi better than I ever had.  In Mass, the priest is God.  Outside Mass, of course, he’s not God, he’s just some guy (well, still alter Christus, but functioning as a regular person).  Wow.

A missionary priest anoints a dying woman.

This doesn’t mean that individual priests are infallible or impeccable or even particularly nice.  It means that they act as Christ when they say Mass or hear confessions or anoint the sick or give blessings.  They might be jerks sometimes, but their character as another Christ remains.

Because they are in persona Christi, priests are married to the Church.  Ephesians 5 famously tells us that Christ is the Bridegroom and the Church is the Bride; all of Revelation echoes this.  The cross is Christ’s marriage bed where he gives himself completely to us forever.  This marital covenant with his bride the Church is renewed on the altar at each Mass, where Christ renewedly offers us his very self in the Eucharist.  This is what it means to be a priest: to stand in the place of Christ doing for the Bride what only her Groom can do.  This image of Christ’s marital love for his Church is inherent to the priesthood.

With this understanding of priests as being ordained in the upper room, consecrated to be in persona Christi, and the bridegrooms of the Church, we’ll finally be able to explore why women aren’t capable of Holy Orders.  Soon, I promise.

 

If you’re reading this before 8:15 am (Eastern) on Thursday, tune in to KWKY to hear me talk about discernment.  That’s 8 hours from now.  If you’re up and reading now, I sure hope you’re not up again then.

  1. I know you know a “former priest.”  He’s still a priest (can still absolve sins if the penitent is in danger of death), he’s just not permitted to function as a priest and is released from his obligation of celibacy.  For all intents and purposes, he’s a lay man.  But technically, still a priest. [↩]

Maybe I’m Not Smarter Than Aquinas?

My father stayed home with us when I was growing up.  When he did work, he was a nurse.1  My mother worked, my last name was hyphenated–is that enough information to let you know that I wasn’t raised with a traditional understanding of gender roles?

Until I was a teenager, I honestly believed that men and women were the same–as in, I thought that women were physically as strong as men.  To recap, my dad bench pressed 400 pounds.  My mom clearly did not.  But my ideology was stronger than my logic and I remained convinced that the only difference between men and women was a minor accident of anatomy.

So when I found myself a Catholic in high school, I had a few bones to pick with the magisterium.  The biggest one, of course, was women’s ordination.  If women were just as good as men (which I knew the Church taught), why on earth couldn’t they be priests?  To my second-wave feminist mind, it was extreme patriarchal mysogyny.

This is a picture of me being a nerd. Give me a break, I thought the post needed an image.

So, like any good nerd, I began to research–rather belligerently, to be sure.  I asked friends and priests; I even read the Catechism on it.  Had the internet been more than a mass of awkward chat rooms at the time, I might have had a better shot at figuring it out, but I found myself at the end of my research with nothing more than I’d had at the beginning.  It still sounded like this Church I had given my life over to was telling me that women weren’t good enough to be priests.  How medieval could you get?

But I’d read Matthew 16:18-192 and John 6 and I knew I was stuck with the Catholic Church.  And I knew that if the Catholic Church was true (which I was convinced it was), she had to be right–about everything.  You see, the central claim of the Catholic Church is her claim of infallible authority.  If she’s not right about everything, she can’t claim to be right about anything.  I knew that if I rejected Church authority on this matter, I needed to find a new Church.

So I decided that maybe 2000 years of the world’s greatest minds might–might–actually know more than I did on something.  Maybe Aquinas and Augustine and Irenaeus and Tertullian and Chrysostom and all those ecumenical councils actually knew more about God than I did.  Maybe the infallible Church I claimed to believe in was infallible on everything, like she claimed, and not just on the things that made sense to me.

In the end, I realized that I trusted the Church more than I trusted myself, which was saying a lot.  So I submitted to the Church.  I sucked it up and accepted the teaching, not understanding it, because I accepted the Church’s claim of authority.

Six months later, I realized that I not only believed it, I understood it.  In submitting to the authority of Christ and his Church, I had made an act of faith, one far greater than my conversion had been.  For an arrogant intellectual like me to accept an unpalatable doctrine on faith, not reason, was almost miraculous.

I honestly believe that the Lord withheld understanding from me in order to call me to a deeper faith.  Up to that point, everything I believed, I believed because it was logical.  I had done the research and learned the arguments and I was completely convinced of every other truth claim the Church made.  There was nothing virtuous about my faith: in my mind, it was completely the product of my reason.  Catholicism seemed to be a product of my brilliant intellect, and God knew I needed more.

When I found myself up against a doctrine I didn’t understand, a doctrine I couldn’t accept, I had to learn to trust.  I had to follow God not because of what he’d proven but because of who he was.  I had to submit to the Church not because I had checked out her argument and given it the Meg Hunter-Kilmer seal of approval but because I accepted the Church as a truth-telling thing.3

I think that for intellectuals, this is where the rubber meets the road.  Catholicism is supremely logical, but nobody ever became a Saint by reason alone–or even a real believer.  You can argue and reason and explain your way almost to the Tiber,4 but it takes a leap of faith to swim across.

And this is the downfall for many of the most intelligent people.  If you’ve always understood everything, if you’ve been able to give a reasoned explanation of everything you’ve ever believed, it takes a heroic submission of the intellect to step from reason into mystery.  There is nothing in the faith that is illogical, but some of it is supralogical.  The Trinity is not accessible to our reason, but it’s not contrary to reason, either.  It’s above reason.  As a smarty-pants, accepting that something that you don’t get might be true is an almost super-human feat.  But that’s why we have grace.

The moment I decided (by the grace of God) to accept the Church’s authority was the moment my belief became faith.  It’s that faith that’s brought me through confusion and doubt and crisis and left me stronger on the other side, and it’s because I finally decided that I was all in.  I believed in the Church more than I believed in myself.  She hasn’t let me down yet.

So here’s an appeal to all of you who know better than the Church: you can’t.  Either you believe that the Catholic Church is the true Church of Christ, preserved from error when speaking authoritatively on matters of faith and morals, or you don’t.  If you don’t believe in every single thing the Church proclaims to be revealed my God, that’s fine.  Either submit anyway or find a new Church.  Because if the Catholic Church is wrong, she’s really wrong–and arrogant, and possibly evil.  Why would you want to be a part of that?

But if you do–if you believe that the Catholic Church is the Church Christ established in Mt 16:18-19, promising that the gates of hell would not prevail against it–you’ve got to accept everything the Church teaches.  Real Presence and contraception and homosexuality and confession and obligatory Mass attendance–all the hard stuff along with the fun stuff.

When it comes to infallibility, you’re either all in or all out.  There is no middle ground.

Stay tuned for an explanation of the all-male priesthood–an argument that was made clear to me only after I accepted it as truth.  Look for it in a few days.

  1. Before you call him a pansy, you should know that he also bench pressed 400 and trained dobermans and rottweilers. [↩]
  2. And so I say to you, you are Peter and on this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. [↩]
  3. From G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy: “This, therefore, is, in conclusion, my reason for accepting the religion and not merely the scattered and secular truths out of the religion. I do it because the thing has not merely told this truth or that truth, but has revealed itself as a truth-telling thing. All other philosophies say the things that plainly seem to be true; only this philosophy has again and again said the thing that does not seem to be true, but is true. Alone of all creeds it is convincing where it is not attractive.” [↩]
  4. The river that runs through Rome–get it? [↩]

Did You Know I Have Kids?

I’ve been stumbling on this blog over a habit I have of referring to “my kids.” I’m sure that’s confusing to those of you who don’t know me. “Wait, didn’t I see something about consecrated virginity? But she has kids? Hang on, now….”1 So rather than footnote it every time, I thought I’d write you a good long explanation.2

My newest godson, Hugo. He’s inspecting my crucifix. My work here is done.

I have hundreds of children. A few godchildren, but mostly spiritual children, students I’ve taught and teens I’ve spoken with at retreats or camps or talks and sometimes ladies twice my age who needed God to love on them through me. The relationship I have with these kids of mine is sometimes just a few hours long and sometimes lasts for years and changes us both. I call them my kids because I am their mother–one of many mothers they have, God willing. I call them my kids even when they’re 25, because when I say that I don’t mean that they’re children. I mean that they’re mine.

When I was first discerning a vocation to consecrated life, I went to see my spiritual director. I was feeling led to enter a convent that summer but my relationship with my students was holding me back.

“I just love these kids so much, Father. Maybe that’s God’s way of telling me not to leave them.”

“Oh, that doesn’t mean you’re supposed to stay. That just means you already have a consecrated heart–you already love them with a mother’s love.”

I burst into tears at that: “You mean, I do get to be a mom?”

I had been wrestling with my vocation, convinced that Christ was calling me to be his bride but still longing for marriage and motherhood. I had offered my barrenness as a sacrifice to God but I remember sitting in a movie theater watching a movie featuring a pregnant woman. I sobbed into my sweatshirt (have I mentioned that I’m super-emotional?) and prayed, “Lord, I will give that up. But I will never stop wanting it.”

Like many women, I ached to be a mother. I wanted so badly to give myself in love to people–and, to be quite honest, to be loved and needed in return. I think it’s a universal longing–the desire to love and be loved–and for many women, this manifests itself as a maternal instinct, even for those who aren’t physical mothers. I’d read about women feeling like mothers to their students or their friends and it just struck me as counterfeit–some sham replacement for real motherhood that was supplied us to keep us from being bitter when we were old maids (and yes, at 24 I did kind of consider myself an old maid.  Catholic college will sometimes do that to a person).

But then I began to experience this phenomenon of spiritual motherhood. When I first started teaching, I loved my kids so fiercely that I honestly felt creepy. I remember almost crying from pride while watching a pep rally, of all things, and thinking that there must be something wrong with me if I loved these random kids so much. It wasn’t until I began to discern my vocation that I realized that my love for these kids was maternal.

These three lived with me for three summers in a row. Diapers and nightmares and tantrums and all.

There is something very real about spiritual motherhood. I have never borne physical children, so comparisons I make will have to be viewed in that light; I have, however, been a foster mother to young children, so I can relate to the all-consuming task (and love) that is physical motherhood, both biological and adoptive.

No, it’s not the same, but neither is the way you are a mother and the way my sister is a mother. Because two types of motherhood are different doesn’t make one any less real. They aren’t the same—and yet, somehow, they are.

As a teacher and minister, I love His children as my own. Certainly, I don’t have the same motherly love for every one of the hundreds of children who have belonged to me—my heart couldn’t take it—but I offer myself completely to each one and some few dozen have become as dear to me as I can imagine any physical child of mine being. I pray for them desperately, I ache with love for them, I miss them terribly when they go off to college.

There’s a reason people don’t have 20 kids at a time–it takes a lot out of you.

Just as a physical mother does, I suffer for my children. No, I’m not theirs 24 hours a day, but I feel the weight of their souls as strongly as many physical mothers. My knees are bruised for praying for them, my face lined with the joy of watching them repent and the agony of knowing I can’t make them saints. Daily I pour myself out for them and daily they roll their eyes and ignore me, sometimes embracing sin just to spite me. Yes, I am a mother—and a mother almost exclusively of teenagers, God help me.

My children are so often broken before they even get to me. I love them with everything I have, but I am not the most important force in their lives. I spend my life working damage control, trying to love their broken hearts back together, knowing that I will often fail. I plant the seeds and I hope, but most of the fruit is borne years later, after they’ve moved away and fallen out of touch. I watch my children leave the fold and I never know if they’ve come back.

Unlike physical mothers, I usually have these children for only a few years after high school before they move on and mostly forget me; unlike physical mothers, I often have absolutely no impact on them after they leave my care. I can’t call them every Sunday if they don’t want to hear from me; I can’t always step back into their lives to invite them lovingly to conversion. At a certain point, I have to let them go.

The love of a mother is the love of the Cross. We pour out our lives for our children and they spit in our faces. Some few stand by and love us in return. The rest may, by God’s grace, be converted by the empty tomb, by the hole in His side, by the tongues of flame. We love and we pray and we hope—and we leave them in God’s hands. This is motherhood—spiritual and physical.

I feel for those of you without physical children who view spiritual motherhood as a consolation prize, a phrase coined to silence those women who suffer for not being physical mothers. I felt this way for years, and perhaps I accept it more joyfully now because, in a sense, it’s something I’ve chosen. But real holiness is rejoicing in the suffering we’ve chosen and in the suffering that’s been forced upon us.

I’m not exactly sure of my point in writing this post–maybe just to give you a glimpse into my heart?

Maybe encouragement for those who long to be mothers that you are mothers. All women are called to spiritual motherhood (with friends or siblings or children in the church nursery) and you are able to love the souls around you with a mother’s love and to transform them through that. It’s not the same, but it’s not less, either. Motherhood is a gift offered to all women–see 1 Tim 2:15; if it’s not open to everyone, those of us who can’t bear children are in serious trouble.

Maybe I just want to ask you all to take a moment to thank your spiritual mothers. Godmothers, teachers, friends–there are women in your life who’ve held you before the throne of God or wrapped you in arms of love or taught you to be honorable and virtuous. Many of them don’t get phone calls on Mother’s Day or presents at Christmas. They love you because they choose to, not because you were handed to them. Spiritual motherhood is often a thankless job; let’s change that today.

Then again, maybe I just want something to link to when I say something about “one of my kids.”

  1. I had a kid once, a secular atheist who had been in Catholic school for four years. One day I mentioned something about the Virgin Mary. “Mary wasn’t a virgin,” he laughed. When everyone looked confused, he continued, “Mary is Jesus’ mom, right? She can’t have been a virgin. That’s not how that works!” He wasn’t objecting to the theology–he’d honestly never noticed it before. Way to go, Catholic schools. [↩]
  2. Many of these thoughts show up in a comment I posted a while back on Simcha Fisher’s post on spiritual motherhood. [↩]

You Are Good Enough

Princess NatalieI had a fight with a five-year-old today. She was wearing a Cinderella dress and two tutus and told me she was pretending to be a princess.

“Oh, Natalie!” I said, in that voice I use when I’m trying to get little ones excited about something. “You don’t have to pretend. You are a princess!”

Natalie was not amused.

“Yes, because a princess is a daughter of the king and your Father is the king!”

“My daddy is not a king,” she stubbornly replied. I tried to convince her. I laid out the argument. She agreed with all my premises, that God is her Father, that he’s king of heaven, that the daughters of kings are princesses. But she would not accept my conclusion.

The exchange felt a lot like conversations I’ve had with older girls—and adult women. They know intellectually that they’re loved by God, but they’ve bought into the lie that they’re not good enough. And so they pay lip service to God’s unending love and go happily back to hating themselves.

Being a Christian is so often about choosing God’s truth over the world’s lies, and I think we get that. We choose chastity and sobriety, we choose confession and fasting, we choose life and we march to support it. We’re glad to be radically different on all those surface issues, but we ignore the central truth of Christianity, that truth without which none of the rest of it makes sense:

God loves you.

Deeply, desperately loves you. He made you exactly as you are—on purpose—because he wanted you that way. From before the creation of the universe, God was planning your too-frizzy hair or too-loud laugh or too-big butt and loving it.

The world tells us the lie that we’re not smart enough or pretty enough or thin enough or athletic enough or popular enough or whatever. Popular Christianity counters with: yes, but God loves me anyway.

LIE!!

God doesn’t love you anyway—he loves you exactly this way! Sure, there are parts of you that are sinful or unhealthy and he wants to walk you through those. But he even loves you in your sin and your addiction. He loves every little bit of you. He’s captivated by you. Why?

Because you’re a princess, a daughter of the King.

The princesses in our stories are beautiful, yes, but they are also brave and clever—in the good stories anyway. More importantly, though, princesses are wonderful simply because of who they are. They don’t have to earn our love. We even love the awkward and plain ones in the stories we read as tweens. We love them because they are daughters of the King. He loves them, and that makes them good enough.

My friends, you are beautiful—so beautiful. You are brave and clever and strong. You are funny and sweet and loving. Maybe you’re a little short or sweaty or slow, but can’t you see that God is entranced by just that? Your cynicism is endearing, your chub lovely. The God of the universe made you just that way. He doesn’t make mistakes.

I need you to be strong on this one. I need you to decide today to serve God. You’ve done it in so many other ways. Today I’m asking you to believe that God is who he says he is. God is love. There is nothing about you that can change that. God is crazy in love with you—read Isaiah 62:3-5, if you don’t believe me. Or Hosea 2. Heck, read the whole book of Songs and tell me again that you’re not good enough.

You are so good. So beautiful. So loved. Don’t let the lies of this world ever convince you otherwise.

Letting Him Lead

He taught me to dance in my tiny grad school living room.  We had to push the futon out of the way to have room.  Sure, I’d “danced” before, but I never could get my feet to do the right things, and I was nervous.  I’m not generally clumsy,1 but there’s something about someone being that close and paying that much attention to the movement of my body that just makes me nervous.

This is not a picture of that dance lesson (although it would have been nice if he had been wearing a tux). But it is a picture of me dancing. So that’s relevant. Right?

But he was nice, and not my type, so I let him teach me.

“What do I do?” I asked, as he put his hand on the small of my back.

“Just lean back,” he smiled.

“But what are the steps?  How do I count?”  I’m sure a look of panic crept into my eyes, despite my desperate desire to maintain my composure.

“Just lean back and let me dance you.  Relax and look into my eyes.  In this style, the guy does the work.”

So I put my arm around his shoulders and my hand in his.  Then I took a deep breath and let go of myself.  I had to be loose for this.  I had to surrender, to let him hold me and look at me and move me.  A few times I tried to pay attention and catch up and do the “right thing” and it just got me all twisted.  For this dance to work at all, I really had to let him lead.

I could have fallen in love with him right there. I don’t know why more men don’t learn to dance.

I was wearing ripped jeans and flip flops, but I don’t know that I’ve ever felt so elegant or so graceful or so captivating.  There was nothing between us but the dance, but oh, what a dance.

It was one of the most intimate moments of my life, looking into his eyes, being held so close, almost letting him carry me.  It was pure and innocent and intense and I’m so grateful for that dance.

It’s a moment that comes back to me in prayer often, that ethereal half hour in the living room.  There’s something so beautiful about that image,about  the surrender involved in that dance.

I picture myself in the arms of Christ, just being held and adored.  I spend my life doing and thinking and achieving, but here it’s enough just to be.  There’s so much of me that wants to know what to do next, how to act, what steps to take, but that just makes me stumble.  The beauty of dancing with a man who knows how to lead is that all I have to do is look into his eyes and trust.

And so in prayer and in life, I’m trying to lean back.  I’m trying to let go of my plans and intentions and desires and to be caught up in his embrace.  There, in his arms, I don’t have to do anything but let myself be loved.  Dancing through life with him, I don’t have to know the song or the steps.  I just have to let go of my obsession with being in control and let him lead.

For years, my relationship with Christ has been a romantic one.  It’s the only way I can understand how consumed he is with love for me, the only way I can learn to live and move and have my being in him.  Maybe this image of being held and loved and danced won’t work for those of you who see him differently–men especially–but, oh, what a gift it is to find him in prayer and to feel the beauty and the power and the intimacy of that living room dance session in his Eucharistic embrace.

More often than not, the song I hear is a setting of St. Ignatius’ Prayer for Surrender:

Take, oh Lord, and receive
All my liberty, my memory,
My understanding, and my will.
All that I am and all that I possess
You have given to me.
And I surrender it all to you.
Form it to your will.
Give me only your love and your grace!
For with these I am rich enough
And desire nothing more

How perfect.

Irregular

  1. That scar on my arm? I ran into the door. At the library. Just call me Evel Knievel. [↩]