Another gray day in Erie. No wonder Western Pennsylvanians are so bitter and resigned. On days when the sun comes out we run around drunk on sunshine, wondering why we're so buoyantly happy. Then the sun hibernates in its den of clouds again and the happiness slides back into grim forbearance and we square our shoulders and go back to enduring, thinking vaguely that everything felt better just a little bit ago and we have no idea why.
It's been such a cold damn spring, and now it's a cold damn summer too. I don't remember the last time the temperature broke eighty -- or even seventy, for that matter. I'd love to be soaking in some vitamin D, but I a.) can't find the sun and b.) can't spare the body heat.
Wherever I'm going next, it had better be a place with lots and lots and LOTS of sunshine.
This afternoon finds me headachey. I started sorting through my massive collection of books, deciding which to keep at the house, which to box away in storage and which to discard altogether. I'm gleefully getting rid of all my Victorian literature, with, of course, the exception of the Brontës, George Eliot and Jane Austen.
I had forgotten how many awesome books I own but haven't read yet. It's giving me ideas. For so long I've been in the habit of strictly organizing my library according to genre, then alphabetically by author's last name within each genre; but the chaos of grouping by size on the cramped bookshelf in my room has inspired me to organize the books I have chosen to keep at the house (the folks generously gave me use of the enclosed front porch for three of my six-foot bookcases) in order by the books I want to read. Books I've read will appear at the very end, in order by how much I love them. Maybe this blatant favoritism won't be fair to my books, but I'm tired of doing things the way I've always done them, and I really really want to read these gorgeous, amazing books. First stop: A. S. Byatt, then Margaret Atwood. And, being products of prolific authors whose works I have purchased in abundance, those will keep me occupied until at least the end of the summer. Given how much I have to do anymore, with the desk job, the grading job, and my newly established morning writing routine, I can't devour books as quickly as I'd like.
I miss having friends around. But since I don't have much time or money, I suppose it's just as well.
Not exactly sure what's gotten into me; maybe I'm death-at-the-end-of-my-rope tired and it's nothing more than that. Everything is going pretty well, and I'm starting to go to daily Mass during lunch on weekdays, which has been a source a great peace. (Although I'm really clumsy at sticking my tongue out for the priest to place the Eucharist on -- I like the tie of the action to God's cry to "open wide your mouth, and I will fill it," so I've been trying it out the old-school way, but I feel like an idiot, so maybe it's back to the cupped hands for me.) The cathedral down the street from the office is the seat of the Erie diocese and extremely beautiful, and quiet, and the Scripture readings so very soft and lovely.
I appreciate, deeply, the availability of church as a Catholic. I firmly believe in time spent alone with God, but some days my mind gets into such a whirl with all the things going on inside it that it's hard to untangle and still it on my own, and I love that I can flee to church and find some sanctuary. And something about Mass is private. I can kneel and pray and pour my heart out honestly to God, and all around me other people do the same thing, and no one intrudes on anyone else's thoughts. Which is nice, because when I get all weepy I don't have to tell anyone about why, and at the same time I know the people who notice say a prayer for me (or, if they're judging me for crying in church, they keep their judgments to themselves). And I always feel palpably uplifted, strengthened, by God's presence, and I leave joyful and at peace.
And yet, while Catholicism holds a great deal of personal value to me, I'm not at all fussed about whether or not I marry a Catholic or raise strictly Catholic children. I value like-mindedness in a man's faith far more than I value how well he matches up to a system. I don't match up to the system; I'm not overly fond of rules for their own sake, and my Protestant roots will always inform my character and my view of the faith. Which makes me a bad Catholic in surface regards; in other regards it makes me an excellent Catholic. I'm learning, as I interact with more "cradle Catholics," what I suspected when I decided to switch ships: that my perspective doesn't match up to the typical Catholic perspective, in some ways, any more than it matches up to the perspectives of my evangelical upbringing. I don't think the way most people think (and neither do my closest friends; Meg asked me over Memorial Day weekend why I'm good friends with so many people who espouse no belief or nebulous belief or different beliefs from my own, and I said, "Because none of us think like everybody else, and that brings us all together. And our characters are similar"), and I don't do things for the reasons a lot of people do them (this is not to degrade "everybody else" or "a lot of people"; their way is great, it's what holds the world together. It's just not me. I'm more of a born reformer, I look at things differently, and I'm learning to embrace that with gratitude and joy, is all: It means that I do have a purpose, and all this not fitting in means the isolation is meant to bear fruit for others, so I don't have to try to fit in, because it's a gift, not a handicap, as lonely as it can be). I am Catholic because it's the only place in the Christian faith where I have ever felt at home, but, as always, I feel much more at home with the Church than with its people.
So I'll always be a misfit, and I'd rather have another misfit, a solid, thinking, self-aware individual to be a misfit with than find some stellar example of the status quo (I don't think I'd do much to make the status quo very happy anyway -- an artist mystic with visions pushing the boundaries of generally accepted orthodoxy with an eye more toward a hut on a cliff by the sea than a picket fence doesn't make for a typical wife). And I plan to raise intelligent children who can make their own choices for the right reasons. (Ah, the idealism of inexperience.) In short, I think that the people who change the world are the different ones, and where my one-day family is concerned I have no denominational demands as long as the house is ruled by open-mindedness and peace, in Christ (yes. The same faith is vital to me. Its expression is not).
Plus a lot of cradle Catholics suffer from that Catholic guilt...and so do a lot of evangelicals. (Boy, I'd really make a nice status quo guy completely uncomfortable. I can't imagine it. I only follow rules that serve a legitimate purpose, I don't believe in guilt and as for opinions -- gah! I'd never be able to say anything.) I refuse to foster the guilt legacy in my children, in whatever denomination they're raised, Catholic or not. (Ugh, isn't there a place where denominations don't exist? Everyone gets so worked up and upset about tiny theological points that don't matter, and then it becomes a huge political negotiation that's utterly unnecessary.)
Well. At least there's beauty and artistry. This week I'm going to call the little parish in my hometown and see about cantoring again. I miss singing.
6 comments:
As a protestant I must say that I am often bothered by the non-availability of church. There are various things (daily eucharist, monastaries, and especially convents) that are essential to the life of the church and to the life of the community that we protestants were far too quick to abandon.
Try explaining to a typical protestant why we should never have cast off the convents! I don't think I've ever gotten anyone to understand why I think it so abhorent that we did.
And I won't even get started on the unavailability of the Lord's Table (eucharist, mass, etc) in the last church that I attended. I felt like I was suffocating for the 8 or 9 years I was there. But I won't start, for I must sleep at some point tonight.
Yes, I do feel that there was a certain dumping of the baby with the bathwater in the evolution of modern Protestantism. The old prayers are so beautiful, so rich with meaning, and a life governed by the canonical hours is nothing short of radiant.
The church of my adolescence only serves Communion once a month, which, from my current framework, is absolutely unimaginable. I think that reducing church to a few songs and a sermon is a jump that falls short of the boat; to me, the whole POINT of church is bringing the people of God together under the one head of Christ in the Eucharist. The worship through song and the application of Scripture are, of course, important; but if we are to live by and in Jesus, how can we neglect the observation of His supper? Even Baptists (the denomination of my upbringing) consider Communion a sacrament. Why limit its availability so sharply?
Now, if it's only a symbol, I suppose that makes sense. But to me it was never just a symbol; it was always, powerfully, the presence of Christ (in many ways I've been leaning toward Catholicism from my childhood; I just didn't know it until many years down the road), and I can't fathom only celebrating that presence once every thirty days.
Now, again, I don't think any of these things have to do with salvation. But they do, I think, affect the richness of the Christian life. I love knowing that on a bad day I can run to the house of God and kneel there in safety and quiet. I love especially the daily presence of Christ in body, waiting for me.
Your lament about the Protestant excision of convents intrigues me. What makes them so important, do you think?
OK, let me try to give you the short version on why I think that convents were so important and why it is such a shame that the protestant wing of the church abandoned the idea.
First, convents were (an in some places still are) an excellent 'city of refuge' to which women and girls were able to flee. In a time when to be a spinster meant at best poverty, and at worst being forced by circumstances into the sex trade, convents provided a safe habitat. Thus it helped both those who had slight prospects of marriage and (just as importantly) it provided rescue of young women who were in danger of being given in marriage against their will. It would be impossible now to tally how many young women were saved from marriages worse than death by being married to Christ in a convent.
Second, both monestaries and convents need to be recognized as precursors to our modern universities. They were places of high learning, not only in church matters, but also in science, mathematics, poetics and art. Convents were for many women the only opportunity to explore their own potential, to push their own boundaries.
The closest that modern society has come to matching what was offered to women by convents is what we have seen in the past forty or fifty years in our universities. It is significant though, that the women who are most encouraged by such places are those who are willing to abandon both Christ and their femininity at the classroom door. Thus our pride that we have now unchained women in Western society is a blatant lie (or seems so to me) and the freedom falls far short of what was at least sometimes the case in medieval convents.
Third, through the system of convents women of high potential were able to attain positions of great leadership and influence in both the Church and the world. That is something that is still wrongly denied them in much of the protestant church.
Convents also provided an alternative to the life of getting-and-spending. In them those who sought it could live a life focussed elsewhere then keeping up with the Joneses. That helped not only those individuals who sought out such a life. It was a "salt" to borrow Jesus' word, for society. While the monastic lifestyle was prevelant, we always were reminded that getting-and-spending did not have to be all that life is about. That is something we seem to have forgotten after the demise of the cloisters in Western consciousness.
I could go on, but this is enough. Convents provided (and should still provide) help for the oppressed, opportunity for the ambitious, simplicity for those who seek it, and a reminder of other possibilities in life.
The old prayers that you mention. I agree wholeheartedly. A while back I posted a few great poems from what I called the silent millenium. It was a tongue in cheek title, because I was posting great Christian voices from a time when many of my fellow protestants don't seem to think that there were any great Christians. They tend to ignore everthing after Augustine and before Martin Luther, and thus that thousand years seems to them silent.
Pity for them, they miss out on so much glorious Christian noise!
But then you mention "canonical hours." OK, I'm ignorant. What does that phrase mean?
Oh, I like your convent commentary (conventary?). Don't even get me started on all the things second-wave feminism has done to destroy, enslave, deny and cripple women: That's a hole with no bottom.
As for canonical hours, those are merely the traditional monastic times throughout the day for devoted prayer service. Most of us are familiar with Vespers, for example; there are a number of others that rededicate the soul to God through special prayers that coincide with certain times of the day.
I structured one of my pieces of poetry around the canonical hours a couple of years ago (I had to leave a couple of them out, but for a basic grasp of their names and purposes the poem will do as a basic springboard):
http://prettypuddleglum.blogspot.com/2007/06/daily-poem.html
Compline in particular I have always loved. I sat in on a Lutheran Compline service once, and I wish I had it on a CD so that I could play it every night before falling asleep. Perfect day's end.
There seem quite a few of them. Is there (as the name might suggest) one every hour? Or every waking hour?
I was familiar with matins and vespers, but the other names were unfamiliar.
Very cool poem, by the way, and the way you organized it around the procession of the times of prayer throughout the day adds to its intrigue. Now if I knew some of the prayers that are used at those times that might add even more.
Post a Comment