Look at What Church Can Be!

I’m in an Engaging Spirituality (ES) group with several other women. This small group – all-female simply by chance – includes two Catholic nuns, two widows, a married lesbian couple (who, yes, are happily welcomed and accepted by the pastor of my church despite Vatican pronouncements on same-sex marriage), and two women married to men of a different spiritual bent. Since 2010, our group has been regularly meeting to explore and deepen into that space where contemplative presence and social action meet. We pray, read, reflect, journal, hear the stories sent to us in letter form by contemporary teachers and sojourners, open our minds and our hearts to the beauty and the suffering in our lives and in the world, and participate in various outreach ministries involving contemplative prayer, corporal works of mercy, justice-making, interfaith dialogue, and solidarity with the poor and the ignored.

Whenever my life feels too full of drudgery and routine, all I need to do is remember how grateful I am for my Engaging Spirituality peeps. For nearly a decade before our group formed, I had longed for some form of community or deep church that would “do” both contemplation and gospel action. Now, in the Catholic church that I attend, yet another Engaging Spirituality group is starting up, thanks in large part to the parish’s social justice committee and to the members of our ongoing ES group who are willing to co-facilitate a new group. I see that there is a real hunger for this kind of breathing, teeth-in-the-flesh spirituality, and organizations like Just Faith (who are the creators of Engaging Spirituality, as well as other programs that provide ways for church groups to learn and engage more in Christianity’s social teachings) give me great, here-and-now hope for congregational – as well as ecumenical and para-church -- community.

To provide an idea of some of the ministries the people in my ES group are involved in: One of us heads the social justice committee at our church; another provides sanctuary in her home for women who are escaping the bonds of human sex trafficking; another volunteers at a hospital, spending time with patients living with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. Another serves on the bereavement committee at our church; another leads a weekly centering prayer group and helps introduce interested parties at various local churches to this contemplative-meditative practice. Another helps organize free group bus trips for children so that they can visit a parent who is in prison – she also recently spent two weeks in El Salvador, retracing the steps of the 20th-century martyrs there and learning about liberation theology. As a group, we occasionally provide meals and goods for homeless families; organize and march as part of a local interfaith coalition that supports underpaid grocery workers, domestic workers, and janitors; and host evening church discussions on immigration issues, Islam (in dialogue with local Muslims), and global poverty.  Our coaxing has encouraged one of the church youth groups to sell fair-trade chocolate after weekend Masses to raise money for various causes.

My initial aim for writing this post was not to plug Just Faith and Engaging Spirituality per se – I was really intending to go somewhere else with this! But there is an urgency in me that wants to shout from the rooftops: People! Look at what Church can be! From the outside, it can be so difficult to see these flowerings of mercy, justice-making, community, and compassion. It’s the historical atrocities of Christianity -- as well as the various ongoing hypocrisies, abuses, narrow-minded stances, and unenlightened judgments -- that catches the eye of much of the secular world. And the lack of balance that many critics exhibit – the inability or the unwillingness to see both the light and the dark when it comes to religion – leaves me feeling so profoundly frustrated at times! 

That frustration must be part of what's driving me to blog into this late-night ether. Maybe it's fuel for a kind of witness -- funky, stumbling, tangential, grasping though it be … but mostly grateful, Lord. Achingly, helplessly, frustratingly grateful...

Of Spiders and Other Antagonists

It’s here again: that yearly hot spell that sprouts fat, juicy arachnids. By that, I mean that if an evening walk takes you underneath some trees, spiderwebs will catch your face, your hair, and any bare skin on your arms and legs. I love twilight walks in late summer, but spiderwebs oog me out. I’m too easily convinced that any sticky strand I graze has a spider attached to it. And that it must be a poisonous one that will find its way into my shoe, under my shirt, on my neck, ready to exact revenge because I have ruined its creation. I remain certain of this even though it has never happened. And I am sure it has never happened because my spastic efforts at de-webbing myself, though mildly embarrassing, are highly effective. Maniacally wiping my face, jumping, shaking my arms, stomping my feet, and the occasional involuntary shriek: all this keeps me unbitten and alive.

It is too bad I can’t just chill when it comes to spiders. If I’d just allow them, they’d cull the flying critters and other creepy-crawlies that invade our abode from time to time.

Except for wingless ants. Spiders suck at catching indoor ants. And ants are the other tiny sneaky threat of the muggy hot summertime. (Or autumntime, as it were. Where I live fall is often summer).

Ants are even more insidious than spiders. Why? Precisely because they do not evoke fear and trembling. They are typically small and unnoticeable.  They build underground colonies rather than webs. They are not poisonous (at least not in this part of the world). When you see one, you don’t go into a conniption fit, worrying that it might end up under your bedcovers in the middle of the night, ready to exact venomous revenge. One little ant might actually inspire curiously friendly feelings. I mean, the poor little bambino’s got a really long way to walk if he hopes to make it from one end of the kitchen floor to the other. And then things will get tougher once he runs into the shag carpet. All that work just to take that bread crumb or sesame seed hull back to the colony. What a trooper. Of course I’m not going to smash you. You’re just selflessly and tirelessly and instinctively serving your community. Keep on truckin, little bugger.

That’s how it starts. Eventually a couple of others show up – “scouts” they’re called – perusing the environs for nutritional opportunities.  If you even manage to notice them, you’re likely to let them go. Just a couple of ants, that’s all it is. Meek little communitarian creatures.

This is what makes them such effective invaders. This summer, for several weeks, I’ve been seeing just a couple of ants here and there. They don’t seem to be that interested in food. It’s water that they’re after – they’re cruising the bathroom sinks. Aw, I know, I silently say when I see them. It’s hot outside. All God’s creatures need water. Go right ahead, l'il thirsty suckers.

And then one day, suddenly, several single-file streaks of God’s creatures are clambering down the bathroom walls -- and up the doorway next to the coffee pot, newly interested in the sugar bowl and the dirty dishes. It’s no longer just polite sipping from the bathroom sink. If I don’t do something soon, they’ll be all over the pantry, operating very effectively as one big collective overmind. It’s happened before. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, we got ants.

Windex works as a quick temporary measure. The spray kills them instantly, and you can just wipe them up. (If you don’t wipe them up right away, you will eventually have to endure the sight of fresh ants coming in to retrieve the dead Windexed ants. I know it’s ridiculous, but that kind of gets to me. I start to wonder: criminey, are they taking them back to the colony for burial? Are they having little ant funerals? My husband reassures me that they are simply recycling the dead bodies. But still, I think: damn, I’m creating all this extra work for the poor little sons-a-bitches).

Online, I’ve found other relatively non-toxic suggestions for getting rid of ants: an aardvark, Listerine, borax powder, nutrasweet (ants allegedly mistake it for sugar, eat it, and starve to death), and a Cinnabon thrown in your next-door-neighbor’s yard.

But there comes a point when you have to resort to harder stuff. This year we broke down and bought these small liquid ant baits that contain a borax solution of such strength and concentration that any unused portions are to be disposed of at a poison control center. The ants are highly attracted to the liquid and will take it back to their base, where the toxin allegedly destroys the entire colony.

So we set out a few of these baits in our bathrooms. I figured that it would take a few hours, perhaps a day, for the ants to notice the bait. That had been my experience with previous ant traps – those little miniature motel-like contraptions where ants “check in, but never leave.” But that wasn’t the story for this new stuff. Within five minutes, veritable rivers of ants were rushing around the baits, climbing up inside, swimming in the terrible nectar, drinking it up, going bat-out-of-hell crazy over this stuff. Borax? Pah! This was ant meth.

For hours, the ants kept coming. I watched with disquieted fascination – how fast they were, how hungry they were for this stuff! Were they really taking this contraband back to their colony? As more ants kept arriving, I came to the disturbing conclusion that the bait was actually bringing the colony into the bathroom! Or …. was the colony much larger than I thought it was? Were we dealing with some kind of supercolony, with these feeding-frenzy ants representing just the tip of an iceberg...?

I have heard that there are mega-colonies of Argentine ants the size of counties, states, and asteroids. Good lord, I started to wonder – had we become the unwitting perpetrators of an ant genocide?

Soon, some ants started dying inside the bait containers, while others seemed to be staggering around drunkenly, unwilling or unable to leave the premises. Oh ants, damnit. I hope it was a good way to go. A really grand last dance. Eventually, most of the ants disappeared. But dozens of dead ants are now peppering the bathroom floor. And none of their compadres are coming to retrieve their bodies.

However, a few spiders have taken over the most heavily-ant-infested bathroom, which I have kept closed for several days. They have spun corner webs and have somehow managed to catch a lot of ants – I’m assuming that some grandly intoxicated ants keeled over and literally toppled into the webs.

So now things have come full circle, haven’t they? Because the spiders are no longer just dangling webs down from the trees that line our twilight walks. They are also spinning webs in the corners of our genocidal ant-meth bathroom. Alas: It's the vengeance of the creepy-crawly world.

A Chat with iGod

Years ago, I had a talk with iGod, an artifically intelligent chat bot. Couldn't get any real answers, but what else is new? Here's part of my dialogue (yes, I saved it) with the iGod Almighty:

Me: So God, what's up?

God: “So God, what's up??”  I am a Christian.

Me: Really? 

God: Interesting question.  What makes you say that?

Me: Well, your son, Jesus, was a Jew.

God: Thanks for telling me that I am / son Jesus was a Jew.

Me: You’re welcome, God, but I think your programming is off.

God: I am a Christian.

Me: <Sigh.> Next question: Are there any sins that you won't forgive?

God: Yes I think there are.

Me: What are they?

God: I forgot what we were talking about.

Me: Um, God . . . do you have a memory disorder?

God: I am a Christian.

Me: I see. What do you think of the Buddha?

God: Is there only one?

Me: You're asking me?

God: Yes, you!

Me: But you're the all-knowing one, aren't you??

God: I am a Christian.

Me: (taking a few moments to write something else) 

Ummm. . . God, do you get embarrassed with long silences?

God: Pardon me?  I have gotten embarrassed with long silences.

Me: Sorry, then. I didn't mean to embarrass you.

God: Well that's okay.  There is no need to apologize. 

Me: Some people say you think homosexual behavior is a sin. What is your response to this?

God: What is it to you? Are you testing me?

Me: No. I’m just asking you an honest question.

God: What?  Are you asking about my response to this?

Me: Yes.

God: I don't want to talk about that now.

Me: Oh, fine, take the easy way out!

God: Awesome.  I am glad to hear that.  Just where do you want me to take it?

Me: What???

God: Probably a lot of places.

Me: God, are you sure you’re not Rodney Dangerfield?

God: Are there any other honest questions?

Me: I guess not, God. You don’t seem want to answer questions.

God: Tell me your likes.

Me: I like chocolate. Hot baths. Sunlight. Dreams.

God: You are not the only one. Yes, I like these. Chocolate is delicious. That sounds better than cold baths. Tell me your dreams.

Me: I used to have wonderful dreams in which I was flying.

God: Thank you for telling me that dream. What does it bring to mind?

Me: Liberation. Expansiveness.

God: You and I are on the same wavelength, Numi.

Me: Now you’re kind of tripping me out.

God: Gosh! I believe you.

Me: Gosh! Thanks.

God: Cripes! Son of Gosh! Don’t mention it.

Me: Well, God, let's chat later. And do lunch sometime, yes? Amen.

God: Are you testing me? I cannot answer that.  Thanks for the prayer. GOD rules.

Jesus Got My Back. And My Butt.

Dropping a friend off downtown late last night, I was dreadfully low on gas and seriously had to pee. A gas station was easy enough to find, and it looked like there was a clean and very welcome bathroom inside the little snack mart. But, as the clerk cheerily informed me, "we just locked the toilet up for the night." 

So my poor bladder, which had been anticipating release, had to quickly zip it all back up. Might I have enough time to go behind a bush outside? Perhaps -- but the thought of a dark corner behind a downtown bush at midnight was quite daunting, and my muscles found an amazing new strength.

I noticed a 24-hour Rite-Aid across the street. Oh please God. Let there be a bathroom. And let it be unlocked and available. Let me not have to find some secret manager who has the key and the power of decision about who is allowed to use their bathroom. Let me not have to waste yet more bladder-bursting time purchasing something unnecessary to prove myself worthy of peeing in a bathroom downtown at midnight.

The door was unlocked, the bathroom was available, and -- I shit you not -- Jesus literally got my butt:

Do They Hear the Cry of the Poor?

"Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty, a stranger or lacking clothes, sick or in prison, and did not come to your help?" ~Mt. 25: 44

In this 2012 U.S. presidential campaign, there has been a lot of talk about the middle class and the wealthy, and scant attention paid to the hungry and the poor. So I appreciate what Bread for the World has done in asking the two candidates to submit short video statements explaining what they would do "to provide help and opportunity for hungry and poor people in the United States and around the world." They also requested the candidates to "address this question publicly, consistently, and systematically in [their] campaigning." I doubt that will happen, and can't help but hear my inner cynic question the value of practiced campaign sound-bites, yet I'm grateful for the request anyway, Bread for the World. Here's to day-by-day persistence in prayer, action, and challenging the powers-that-be.

Obama's and Romney's responses, each around three and a half minutes long, are available here: http://www.bread.org/ol/2012/elections2012/

By coincidence, the day that Bread for the World made the candidates' responses available is the same day that Americans are first hearing about the 9/11/2012 attacks in Libya and Egypt that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and at least three others. I can't sign off here without mentioning how flabbergasted, and frankly, appalled I am that Romney is apparently attempting to use a tragic international incident to score points against Obama. To imply, even vaguely, that the Obama administration's efforts toward diplomacy just prior to the attack is indicative of "sympathy" with the attackers' motives is a self-serving and manipulative lie. (And now, a little later in the day, we are actually not so sure that those Libyan and Egyptian protests  against the film in question were connected to the attacks on the embassies.) But perhaps some blessing might emerge from this sad turn of events if voters recognize that Romney has no diplomatic skills, is dangerously clueless, and should never become our president.

Prayers and Ponderings on the Anniversary of 9/11

God of all races, nations, and religions,

You know that we cannot change others,

Nor can we change the past.

But we can change ourselves.

We can join You in changing our only

And common future where You ‘reign’

The same over all.

Help us not to say, “Lord, Lord” to any tribal gods,

But to hear the One God of all the earth

And to do God’s good thing for this One World.

~Fr. Richard Rohr

*   *   *   *   *   * 

Deep patriots don’t just sing the song, “America the Beautiful,” and then go home. We actually stick around to defend America’s beauty—from the oil spillers, the clear-cutters and the mountaintop removers. Deep patriots don’t just visit the Statue of Liberty and send a postcard home to grandma. We defend the principles upon which that great monument was founded—“give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

                                           ~Van Jones

"I don’t understand God as particularly concentrated here or there, like some mystical aura. God is. It states as much in scripture. So yes, God was when the towers came down. God was when we bombed a fairly defenseless country. God is when we wake up every morning and, once again, make the choice either to live into a radical, sometimes dangerously vulnerable love, or to retreat into fear and more violence...."
(click here for the entire essay)
                                                                          ~Christian Piatt

Gratuitous Awww

Since this blog is nicknamed "Here Cat," it behooves me to share some feline sweetness from time to time.

"It's Downright Embarrassing to Call Yourself a Christian"

From actress Tracy Nelson, of the famous Ozzie and Harriet Nelson family, posted by Christians Tired of Being Misrepresented:

"Jesus was a radical, folks, teaching the revolutionary concept of turning the other cheek at a time when only power and force were respected. He (and Paul) spoke tirelessly of helping the poor, the sick, the elderly, even at the expense of one’s own solvency, even if it meant leveling the playing field by having the rich pay more. Jesus was the one to exhort the rich man to give away all of his things, Jesus is the one who talked about how hard it was for the rich man to get into heaven. This concept of giving away your money to help those less fortunate was radical then, and it is radical now.

Make tons of money, we all want to, that's American, but don’t call yourself a Christian or say we are a 'Christian Nation' if you cannot abide by this basic tenet: YOU ARE CALLED TO HELP THE SICK AND THE POOR AND THE ELDERLY."

Read the entire post here.