The Birth of Mary

From this day all generations will call me blessed:
the Almighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his Name.

We read this excerpt from the Magnificat every evening in evening prayer as part of the routine of Liturgy of the Hours. On days when I have my wits about me, I try to envision Mary when she is being visited. I see a young girl with dark skin, dark eyes and dark hair simply dressed in robe style dress of era, a hood pulled over her hair loosely. I imagine her having a plain appearance about her but I also see a countenance filled with a radiance that both attracts but confuses those who encounter her. I try to contemplate if I would be able to match her great faith, to proclaim that the Almighty had done great things for me by choosing me to bear the most precious of gifts only to see him die in the most terrible of ways. I try to always remember to finish prayer with a Hail Mary which always seems to bring the day to a more comforting conclusion, particularly if it is not likely I will be able to recite night prayer. To finish in this way always seems to make the precious mother a real and immediate presence in my life, a true loving intermediary for me with her son, our lord.

I tried to find an image of Mary that matched up with what I seen when I try capture the image of Mary in my mind. I looked at hundreds of images of Mary but did not find anything similar to what I hoped to find. Many were beautiful, haunting, mysterious and, curiously, all clearly recognizable as being Mary. None of them picture a girl as young as Mary, by the custom of her time and era, would have had to have been when betrothed. None of them represented the image of a clearly semitic girl as Mary had to be since she was native to the land. With respect to all of the great artists who have painted Mary through out the years, she could not have been light skinned or light haired or had European features. I come to realize my visualization is just that: my visualization. How I see her makes her seem some how more personal to me and that we all, if given the chance, would create an image of her that would allow us to see her in a way that brings us comfort.

Psalm 57

From Morning Prayer, Psalm 57:

Have mercy on me, God, have mercy on me. In you I seek refuge. In the shadow of your wings I seek refuge till harm pass by.

 A couple of years ago while floating the Smith River we were surprised by a sudden thunderstorm that boiled over the white cliffs and blasted us off the river and into the shelter of the trees along the shore. We had to balance the danger of being under trees while lightening struck all around us, sometimes so near we could smell ozone, with being out on the open where hail could pelt us. I had on a good rain jacket and I had the others with me gather around me and kneel down so I could lean over them, spread my arms and protect them from at least some of the hail that was quickly blanketing the ground around us. We laughed as we talked about my “hooding” them like a hen with chickens when a hawk passes over.

The image that comes to me from the Psalm today is different than the one portrayed in the story. I had been having one of those mornings prior to being able to start Morning Prayer.  My job requires me to engage unhappy and dissatisfied people and there had been a couple of such calls had been referred to me. I also have struggling with making some difficult decisions at work and the weight of those decisions had been wearing me down. When I finally was able to carve out some time for prayer, I was distracted and unable to concentrate on the text of the reading. I finally resorted to reading out loud which an often time brings the ability to focus. Hearing the words of the Psalm prayed out loud triggered an immediate sense of comfort and I found myself reflexively repeated the first stanza over and over again. After a while I was able to finish the rest of Psalm and then eventually Morning Prayer.

That is what God does for us when we finally remember where our refuge lays. In his mercy he provides us with safe refuge until we can face life again buoyed by his grace.

Father Simion

We were blessed with the present of visiting priest at noon mass recently. Father Simion was visiting from Africa and while he had a heavy accent, his manner was charming and engaging. He and Monsignor could not have been more different – a traditional Irish priest with a black shirt compared to a short, very dark skinned man with tribal scarring on his face wearing a purple clerical shirt yet they moved together at the altar as if they had con-celebrated together every day. One of the most powerful aspects of our faith is that men from different continents could be as one in the celebration of the Eucharist. It is gives me a better understanding of what it means to be Catholic.

The second year continues

From St. Cyril writing about the Gospel according to John: (T)he Spirit changes those in whom he comes to dwell; he so transforms them that they begin to live a completely new kind of life.

It would be trite to say I have been amazed that the changes that have marked the passage of the past year and I have no wish to diminish the intensity of what has been seen, experienced by trying to describe what has happened with tired phrasing and clichéd stock responses. All we can do is to rise up in prayer and give thanks to the Holy Spirit for continuing to refresh the old with a new way of living. I am anxious to begin my second trip through Office of Readings and the cycle of the Liturgy of the Hours. I am promised that the revelations will continue to spring out of the sacred texts.

Saint Ambrose, Bishop - an excerpt from his writings

If you shut the door of your mind, you shut out Christ. Though he can enter, he does not want to force his way in rudely, or compel us to admit him against our will.

Closing my eyes and letting my mind build a visual image of this observation, the image I see is of a mud house with simple window openings unprotected by glass with plank shutters and an unframed door opening closed off by an unlatched wooden plank door.  I can see sort of a Hobbit kind of thing except without the charm and warmth of the real hobbit town we experienced in the Lord of the Rings. By securing the doors and window of our simple little hut, we not only shut out the sunlight, we are blocking out the eternal light of Christ. Try as we might, our attempts to hide ourselves away. We are imperfect carpenters and shafts of light stream through cracks in the wood and around the clumsily constructed edges. That we cannot block the light makes us uncomfortable in our seclusion because it reminds us what waits if we only open the door. To reach for the door to open it requires us to overcome the shame we feel for having tried secret ourselves from his presence. Once the door is open and we are again with him it takes but a moment for his healing grace to restore us.

 When we are healed we find ourselves living in a spiritual summer where good things grow and flourish. Inevitably we have to enter a spiritual winter when we try to answer doubts whispered into our hearts by voices that are not from God. We cannot avoid this time because we are human. The gift that growing faith brings us is that we recognize earlier that winter has settled in on us and we can take the first steps ourselves to journey back into the light of spring. The journey begins by simply opening the door to let the light of grace flood in on us and then we can again step out into the brightness.

Psalm 90

To your eyes a thousand years are like yesterday, come and gone, no more than a watch in the night.

God’s time is not our time. The eternity I spent waiting for a meeting to end today was really just a blink of time. I think back of the experiences from years past when time seemed to have come to a stop. Think of the nights we spent walking the floor with a sick baby or even the days the spanned the time from when a close family member died until the funeral came. We struggled to acknowledge when we were stuck in those fear filled, anxious or sorrowful days that we would survive to the next day. Sometimes it was more than we could bear just to wait out an hour or a few minutes. Then, as we slid unthinking into the future memory of frozen  time fades until it becomes like a scar we only think we can still see for the gift of healing is that we understand that time does move on at a constant rate and that time is our friend.

The other gift I have taken from the treasure store of scripture is that even though we who share this experience are few in number and our collective lives are but a blip in God’s history, his love for each of us is surpasses our ability to comprehend it. As minimal as we might be, He has a plan for us that was conceived before our ancestors came into being. So then, who I am to question that plan? A human who still needs to work at getting in step with the plan before he runs out of his time here.  

A grownup looks at the 23rd Psalm - verse 1

The Lord is my shepherd. There is nothing I lack.

There has been major shift in my perspective of this line since childhood. When I first memorized the verse, I took the meaning to be that all of my wants would be met. I would always get the extra dollop of whipped cream and a cherry on top of my hot chocolate when we went to the Park Café after church on Sundays. The coveted peddle car I found at the department store would assuredly be found under the tree on Christmas morning and let’s not forget the State Farm insurance and Western Montana College bumper stickers that should cover the fenders. I expected that my emotional and physical desires would be met. Times and desires have changed. Now when we pray the second line we are confident that our spiritual needs will be met.