My Holy Week Experience

"Once more the wind of embarkment blew across my mind. How long would it continue to do so? God grant until my death! What joy to cast off from dry land and depart! To snip the string which ties us to certitude and depart! To look behind us and see the men and mountains we love receding into the distance!"

Nikos Katzanzakis Report to Greco

Here it is now, the mid-point of Easter Week, and I am remembering so very fondly my Holy Week experience. I was blessed to be in Italy for the first part of the week: Rome and The Vatican City, Assisi on Palm Sunday where we went to Mass at St. Clare's, visited her shrine in the crypt, and received olive branches to take home with us as tokens of our devotion. Assisi was among the favorite stops for the young adults I took on tour with me. We arrived in Florence for the next few days, then traveled on to Venice where we were surrounded by a party atmosphere that took me right back to Mardi Gras. Finally, we wended our way toward Milan stopping in Verona to visit the "famed" balcony of Juliet Capulet, the market in the town square and Dante's statue.


Dante Alighieri, famed poet of The Divine Comedy, was an exile in Italy. His wanderings were not for the sake of pleasure or sightseeing or even to visit new and interesting places. He was forced to leave his beloved city of Florence to preserve his life. How unlike Katzanzakis this great poet was! Katzanzakis had the freedom of "exile" while Dante was constricted by a life of wandering. Since these two writers rank in the top five of my favorites, I find the contrast between their circumstances very intriguing.


In June, once again I will embark for Europe. This time I will travel to Ireland, the land of at least some of my ancestors. I will be taking my mother, who has never gone abroad, with me. Together we will explore the sights, smells, sounds, and textures of a country that is filled with legends and the people of the Fay. I long to "snip the string which ties us to certitude and depart!"


What would all of life be like if we were able to "snip the string of certitude"? If we didn't insist on having our future planned and laid out neatly in days and months and years? If we could let the calendars, Blackberries, and datebooks we carry simply disappear from our lives? I often feel that in our journeys, we are more in exile than in adventure. We have an innate drive to plan our lives, to schedule our own days and months, and in the process to schedule others so they fit into our lives. Simply "being," observing, wandering, and even resting have become obsolete—or when they do come our way, it is because we've made time in our schedule for them. Such a life seems unworthy of creatures who were made in the image of the Holy.


May God grant us a deeper sense of the freedom to embark, to cast off, and to leave the need for certitude (and control) to someone greater and more capable than our own frail selves.

The Birth of Anam Cara's Mantle

I've always heard that a closed door leads to new opportunities. There is a wistfulness about such a statement, evoking a "what if" or "what now" mood. This past week, at my initiative, the Saint James Center for Spiritual Development Board of Directors advised me to end that ministry in its present form. It became clear to me from the level of participation in the programs we offered recently that the Center needed to lay fallow for the present moment... to follow the ancient Israeli practice of the seven year Sabbath. The Center came into being in 2004, so it is appropriate to think of the Sabbath coming now. We will officially end our programs when we return from the trip to Ireland on June 16, 2011.

But what of new opportunities? Knowing it is best not to run from one frenzied set of activities to another, I am also aware that I want to keep my practice of being an anam cara, a spiritual friend, open to those who choose to join me on the journey to be Christ in this world. To that end, I have posted a webpage specifically for the work that most attracts me: being a teacher and soul friend. This work includes leading retreats and quiet days, and I am willing to talk with you if you find my work interesting. 

I do sense a peeling away of layers. Like Longfellow's Arab, I am folding my tent and quietly slipping away. Let there be more of you God and less of me as I continue the journey with you. Help me to accept with grace the changes that come as part of life and to turn and turn again to your face. 

Twelve Days and a White Christmas

The end of 2010 brought us a lovely surprise in the form of over three inches of snow in our back garden. Living near the South Carolina/North Carolina border means we get more of the North Carolina weather than our neighbors at church and my work get. It's lovely this second day of Christmas morning. Though there are some cars on the highway, for the most part, it's quiet and white blankets the landscape.

Of course, we Western and European Christians have this concept that Mary and Joseph traveled through the dead of winter to Bethlehem; that snow lay on the ground as the beautiful hymn, "Venite Adoramus" claims, and that the infant child though possibly cold in his meagre stable cradle, had a mother and father who tenderly took care of his needs while shepherds and angels called on the new family. This rather romantic view of the Incarnation gives us comfort in our own hardships, but perhaps it also helps us to render the struggles we face in life as unrelated to what God intended them to be. After all, it was a "silent night, holy night," and most of us don't think of our pain and struggles as holy.

Perhaps if we take a look at what the Catechism says about this wonderful birth, we can make the connection to Jesus a little more visceral, a little more profound. Jesus is an "in your face" kind of guy. The life he lived was for our benefit and example. Brother Gregory, OCSO, a monk at Mepkin Abbey, sent me this quote for Christmas and New Year's. "Go see in the arms of the Virgin, God became one of us, so that we might live his life." Living the Christ life is what being a Christian should be all about. We study the life of Jesus in the Scripture and other holy writings; we commune with Jesus in the Sacraments, and through prayer and contemplation, we look at the Lord of Life with adoration and with resolution. In the arms of the Virgin is our life. In the arms of the Virgin is our answer of how to walk day by day. In the arms of a Virgin is Love sent down at Christmas.

For me, it is critically important to keep all twelve days of Christmas. Doing so is certainly counter-cultural, and yet, it's what I need to remind myself that it's not about our packing up the decorations before New Year's day, or returning to work after a generous winter break, or once again becoming obsessed with our struggles and pain laid aside for a moment to remember the baby in the manger. Like the reformed Scrooge, keeping Christmas in my heart all year is vital because it means I will live the life that Jesus lived. I will love and pray, speak the truth, touch those in need, and ultimately die and rise in glory. Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote about this idea in the following poem:

Moonless darkness stands between.
Past, the Past, no more be seen!
But the Bethlehem-star may lead me
To the sight of Him Who freed me
From the self that I have been.
Make me pure, Lord: Thou art holy;
Make me meek, Lord: Thou wert lowly;
Now beginning, and alway:
Now begin, on Christmas day.

Hopkins gives God credit from freeing us from ourselves by giving us the opportunity to be Christlike. Being Christlike means living as Jesus lived. May God help us all to be about doing God's business: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and visiting those in prison, with grace and compassion, the grace and compassion shown by our Lord as we, too, live the Christ life.

Traveling the Road

I’m old enough now that there are more than several anniversaries that I find myself marking. Obviously there is the anniversary of my engagement to my husband Michael, and of course, there is the wedding anniversary that we have faithfully celebrated for twenty-seven years. There are other anniversaries—our own birthdays, birthdays of our children, birthdays of our parents—and now the anniversaries of their deaths are times we remember as well. Even more mundane anniversaries like the surgery I had in 2001 or a particular personal triumph like my graduation ceremony in 2008 when I received my second degree from Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School of English program are worth noting.

Robert Frost, who was long associated with the Bread Loaf Program, wrote a poem that most people can at least recite a few lines from. “Two roads diverged in yellow wood…” The roads taken and not taken are strong metaphors for my life, and the marks the journey has left on me come in the form of those anniversaries.

And so I think that what I am doing as I sit here writing tonight is marking the events of another December and considering how the road I’ve traveled has left its mark on me. Perhaps it’s not a bad exercise at all to allow one’s mind to wander back over the pathway of one’s life and to consider how one has been shaped by the journey itself. Nothing has shaped my life more than my journey in the Church.

It’s almost the end of the Advent season. Christmas Eve will be here in less than five days. We’re having a modest Christmas in this household for several reasons, but most importantly because both Michael and I have become acutely aware that the season is first and foremost a spiritual celebration. In the past, we’ve provided many gifts for our children, but now both of them are out of the home. I stopped trying to give gifts to my extended family once my nieces and nephews began having children. Here, at home, it’s just us and the dogs. My mom will have her traditional Christmas Day brunch, but for the first time in all these years of marriage, we have opted not to make the three hour drive there. Instead, we’ll attend Midnight Mass at St. James, where we’ll welcome the Christ child, and then we’ll sleep in on Christmas morning. We’ll have dinner with friends later in the day, and save our gifts for Twelfth Night.

In many ways, this way of doing Christmas will be a paradigm shift for me. So far, I haven’t felt any angst about not having gifts for people to whom I have often felt obliged to give something. Instead of shopping, I plan to volunteer at one of our local charities. My deepest desire is to “sit” with the mystery that is The Incarnation—to let the Christ Child be born in me in a new way, a way that makes the event a truly spiritual experience. I pray that you, too, will find your road to a joyful, peace-filled Christmas, and that ages hence, you will be telling your story, not with a sigh, but with the realization that you found the path that made all the difference.

A Meditation While Drinking Coffee

The steam rises from my coffee cup as I sit on my patio in the crisp October air. At one time I would have considered a Sunday morning vacation from church a big “no-no,” but not so much any more. Growing older has brought me to a deeper acceptance of my introverted, eremitical self, and sometimes, at least for me, that means community worship will take a back-burner. I reflect on the beauty of my surroundings: maple leaves turning yellow-gold, the browning lawn, and blue skies infused with wisps of pink and gold left over from the sun rise. This morning, I cannot help but think of stories from the past.

Just yesterday, I drove through what is left of the little town that I first called home. Several members of my extended family lived in Miley when I was young, and both my grandfather and my father worked for the Lightsey Brothers Saw Mill. My grandmother’s name was Queen Esther Cook Roberts. She was born of Irish stock, worked alongside my grandfather in the field, and raised ten children to adulthood. She was a devout churchwoman, but sometimes she, too, took a Sunday off from worship. She used the excuse that she had to cook, and then she would tell my granddaddy to make sure he brought the preacher home for dinner.

This morning, I stayed home from church for no good reason. Sure, I wanted to make soup, but like my grandmother I can cook circles around many people, and what I really wanted was to be alone. Perhaps it was an epiphany, but I realized that’s why my grandmother also took a Sunday “off” from church now and again. With ten children running around, and all the chores she faced day in and day out, no wonder she sent the entire family off to the church while she stayed home and perhaps breathed a sigh of relief.

I believe God meets us in any number of ways. I’m not advocating staying home from Sunday worship on any kind of regular basis—and for some that is simply not an option. Being fed by being with other Christians worshipping God together is a vital part of life. On other occasions, doing something for no good reason—like sitting on the patio and sipping coffee—and enjoying God’s presence in the quiet of an early morning feeds the soul and refreshes one’s spirit for what lies ahead. May God give us many moments of quiet joy and the wisdom to recognize those moments as a gift.

Homecoming: Sacraments and Intimacy with God

The following article was previously published in EDUSC's Crosswalk magazine.

“Be known to us in breaking of the bread.”


When I was twenty-two years old and a senior in college, I had pretty much given up attending church. I had begun my faith journey in a congregation that emphasized the preaching of God’s word and missionary work, but I never felt a sense of God’s mystery—and I found myself yearning for something more as I was beginning to mature in my faith. It always seemed to me that the preacher and church elders had God all figured out, but I was not making the connection to God through the particulars of that faith expression. And then, one Sunday morning, I awoke with a strong desire to go to church. I asked my roommate if she wanted to go with me, and she asked me where I intended to go. I responded with,

“How about that Episcopal Church where you interviewed for the daycare job? It’s just up the road, isn’t it?”

“Have you ever been to an Episcopal Church?”

“Well, no, but how different could it be?”

Of course, I was in for a [very pleasant] surprise because, yes, the service was very different from anything I had ever experienced previously in my life, but I was also overwhelmed with a special sense of having come home. The liturgy of the table spoke to me in a way I had never experienced God before. When the priest put the small wafer in my hand and said, “The Body of Christ,” I experienced a sense of God’s affirmation; I experienced God’s touch in the mystery of bread and wine given to me by another human being.

The Eucharist and all of the sacraments are, in fact, a way for God’s Holy Spirit to touch believers so that we know the reality of God in body and soul. The common thread interwoven into the fabric of sacramental action is proper and caring human touch. That felicitous touch, evident in all seven sacraments, is what captures my imagination when I consider how the sacraments provide an inward transformation of one's whole life—and the life of the community.

At the heart of our sacramental theology there is a core belief—that we are a community. God came to us in the human form of Jesus, who as a First Century rabbi in Palestine, prayed that his followers might be “one as we are one” (John 17:22). When we come together in community the sacraments focus our hearts and minds so that we are clear as to our purpose as followers of the Christ in this world. We continue in the teaching and fellowship of the Apostles (creed) when we share the body and blood of Christ and when we gather to baptize a new believer. While baptism is about cleansing away sin, primarily Episcopalians see the sacrament as incorporation into the body of Christ. We tell the newly baptized who has just been lovingly held over a font and touched with water and the oil of chrism, “We receive you into the household of God. Confess the faith of Christ crucified, proclaim his resurrection, and share with us in his eternal priesthood” (BCP, 308). Baptism makes us part of the family.

The so-called “lesser” sacraments—confirmation, reconciliation, healing, marriage, and ordination—also incorporate the human touch that symbolizes God’s touch. When the Bishop confirms, he or she lays hands on the head of the candidate. Reconciliation of a Penitent provides for the priest to lay [her] hands on the head of the one making confession. Healing provides for the laying on of hands and anointing with oil. Marriage is effected when two people join hands and make promises to each other, while Ordination is accomplished when the Bishop and all the presbyters lay hands on the ordinand and say, “Make him/her a priest in your church.”

In today’s culture, it is simply too easy to respond to the idea of human touch in a jaded fashion. It seems we far too often hear of some child who was abused by a person of authority, or we learn of a church staff member who has overstepped the boundaries described in “safe church” training. Too many of us have a distorted sense of intimacy fueled by a negative personal experience or by the media. And yet, how many of us long to be held in the hands of a loving God? How many of us desire an intimate relationship with God, but cannot make that connection?

The Gospels point to a Jesus who was not squeamish about touching others. In a culture where touching the dead made one unclean, Jesus touched the Widow of Nain’s son and brought him back to life. He touched the blind man and gave him sight. He blessed the woman with a flow of blood through touch, and he took Jairus’ daughter up by the hand and said to her “Little Girl, get up” (Mark 5:36-43).

There are several saints who serve as models for us when we consider the idea of human touch at the core of the sacraments. Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Catherine of Genoa, and of course, Francis of Assisi, all expressed their love for others through human touch. For each of these saints, human touch, both as a simple invitation to come into the family and as an expression of sacramental presence, reached across the boundaries of racism, sexism, classism, fear, and inordinate pride affirming the human dignity of those who most needed to be reminded of their humanity.

The sacraments—and regular practice of a sacramental lifestyle—can help foster that healing of intimacy that so many of us seek. The little Episcopal Church that I attended that November morning thirty years ago introduced me to the joy of coming to the table to share bread and wine with others who also wanted to know and be known in the breaking of the bread. Later in the year, I was confirmed in that church, and I have continued to experience the sacramental expression of the spiritual life that God brought me to through that community of believers.

On Sunday we baptized two babies at St. James. I say we because while I didn’t actually pour water on an infant’s head, I stood there with the congregation and wholeheartedly welcomed that child into our family—our community—and I promised to support that child in his faith journey. After the liturgy, I took that baby from his daddy’s arms and held him in my hands making my commitment real. Human touch. God’s touch. The sacraments remind us that God’s love is real and meant for our healing and blessing.

Poverty of Spirit

The following article recently appeared in Desert Call, the journal of The Spiritual Life Institute. The Spiritual Life Institute is the community that has the Nada Hermitage in Crestone, Colorado, where I spent my two week retreat this past summer. For more information on the community and their publications, please visit http://www.spirituallifeinstitute.org/Nada.html

The poems I love the most are written by the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke. His words have given me comfort in times of sadness and have bolstered my conviction that God is present, even and especially in the darkness. The one poem that has helped me come to terms with the assurance of God’s indefatigable love is I.17 from The Book of Hours:

She who reconciles the ill-matched threads
of her life, and weaves them gratefully
into a single cloth-
it's she who drives the loudmouths from the hall
and clears it for a different celebration

where the one guest is you.
In the softness of the evening
it's you she receives.

You are the partner of her loneliness,
the unspeaking center of her monologues.
With each disclosure you encompass more
and she stretches beyond what limits her,
to hold you.

This poem above all other writing has assured me over and over of Jesus words, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

The past year has been one of sadness and sometimes overwhelming fear as I’ve watched the two bookends of my life disintegrate. My father had several strokes a few years ago and began to deteriorate with vascular dementia shortly after we returned from a family trip to The Grand Canyon in the summer of 2007. Last spring he “got in the hospital bed” (my mother’s euphemism) where he spent the last ten months of his life. His dying was a slow process, but my family did what we could to ease his last days. He died at home on January 1st at the age of 75.

My son who served in Iraq for fourteen months came home in 2008 addicted to pain killers. Between the time he returned home and today, he has gone through a marriage, lost the home he bought with his bonus, wrecked several vehicles and his life. He currently serves as an inmate in a correctional facility for trying to steal drugs from a pharmacy.

The fact that this double trauma happened to me simultaneously sent me into a deep state of anxiety. At one point, our son was living with us, and I was taking him for daily Methadone treatment before I went to work each day. My husband and I were being held prisoners in our own home by a son who had an arsenal of guns hidden in the bedroom closet, and he knew how to use them. One day my husband drove him to the clinic, but it had already closed. Our son tried to break in and was picked up later and put in the local jail for fifty days. We lost track of him until he called us from the jail in the town where he committed his last crime by which time we had exhausted our financial and emotional resources to help him. We made the difficult decision to let him go to trial with a public defender as his attorney.

All of my son’s drama did not lessen the fact that I had a dying father and an exhausted mother three hours drive away. My life certainly was full of “ill-matched threads,” and it was taking everything I could muster to keep them woven into a single cloth.

That’s when I picked up my copy of Rilke’s poems once again—a dog-eared and marked up copy—and sought comfort in the poet’s words. Rilke, even at a young age, seemed to know that God knows. I realized by re-reading his poetry that what I had to do during this extremely stressful time was to take good care of myself and allow God to take care of me as well. I had to recognize my poverty of spirit, and come to rely more and more on the “partner of my loneliness.”

Rilke’s poem speaks of driving the loud mouths from the hall so that the woman in the poem can focus on God and the kingdom. One loud mouth that I had to drive from my hall was the crystal clear voice of “but you should have…”. I should have been there the moment my dad breathed his last breath; I should have been in the courtroom when my son was sentenced. I should have tried harder to get him into a rehab that would have “fixed” him. I should have taken more time off from work and spent it with my mom and dad.

In those moments where I could and did make room for God, “in the softness of evening” or in the early morning moments of meditation and prayer, I soaked up as much mercy and grace as I could manage.

It has been six months since my father died and almost a year since my son was locked up. I finally made a retreat in a place where I could come to terms with the losses and absolute inability to have done anything to change my circumstances My heart is broken, but I am stretching “beyond what limits [me] to hold” God.

I do go visit my son in prison. His dad and I have committed to giving him one weekend each month. He has a ten year sentence to serve, so I will be spending a great many weekends in prison. It’s true what they say about a man’s family serving time with him. But I am coming to believe that my son is living his own dark night of the soul, and it’s best if I let it happen for him.

The experiences of losing a parent and, in effect, losing my son have caused me to pay careful attention to my experiences, the relationships I cherish, my vocation and most importantly the time I make for God. It is only by loving God and accepting God’s love in return that poverty of spirit can be filled with the promises of the kingdom found in The Beatitudes.