For All Who Are Thirsty

My previous meditation talked about attending Mass some weekday mornings. The desire came from a sense that I was missing the mystery of the liturgy and the Eucharist by attending contemporary churches for the past 30 years. Recently, we've found some type of middle ground attending a lovely Episcopal church near us, where the experience below took place on Easter Sunday...
Cory
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For All Who Are Thirsty
As usual these days, we arrived at St. John's for Easter Sunday service just as the procession was starting. Which of course on Easter meant that the only open seats were on the front row of the side (transept) chapel. What we didn't expect is that we'd have the best seats in the house.
About five feet away, off the end of the front rows of the main (nave) seating facing the altar, was a woman in a brightly flowered dress, often smiling, singing out... sitting in what was clearly her life-sentence wheelchair. Occasionally her son ambled over adult laps down the row to rest on hers, a happy boy with Down's Syndrome.
In what might be expected to be a parade of "beautiful people", it became quite moving to watch everyone come to the altar for communion... the woman in the wheelchair just the first of the lame, the infirm, some leaning on canes, others sitting in wheelchairs; all of the rest of us humbly on our knees, hands outstretched to take hold of the broken Body of Christ, the Bread of Life, necks craned to receive the Cup of Salvation.
And all of a sudden I saw with new eyes that these fine people were dressed in their Easter finery not out of pretense, but as part of their act of worship and celebration of the day. Because no one was attired so fine as to be above the humility of bended knee, outstretched and beggarly hands, hungry as baby birds in the nest for what gifts Jesus had to give us.
A little boy, maybe three years old, was hungry too; he wouldn't let the cup pass him by without getting a drink. Other children came forward, as they come every week here, as Jesus bid them come, whether for a blessing upon their heads or for an experience of the Eucharistic mystery they hardly understand; which, after all, is true of all of us. Maybe in some ways, children understand with their hearts more than we understand with our heads.
There's a cacophony of comings and goings at the altar every week that I simply can't take my eyes off of. Today it was multiplied into a banquet feast, Fr. John moving from end to end and back again giving the bread to every supplicant, trailed by four lay leaders providing wine.
And the rhythm of broken, "imperfect" bodies coming forward, punctuating the pageantry, was stunning. I thought of Bob Cratchit's report to his wife in Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" about having taken Tiny Tim to church on Christmas morn, that "Tiny Tim was happy that people should look upon him and remember who made the blind to see and the lame to walk." Here they came, only their outward appearance more clearly showing their want of God's touch than mine. And what a seat I had to look upon them.
Finally, in the last group to the altar was a man I hadn't seen approach the rail. He seemed to struggle to hold the communion wafer, almost hiding it in his fists. A kindly, knowing lay minister with the chalice extracted his wafer and dipped it in the cup, then placed it on the man's tongue, adding a compassionate touch to his shoulder. Only when the man arose did I see his cane, his uncertain gait and his withered hands.
And as he wobbled back slowly up the side aisle between me and the lady in the wheelchair on the end of the aisle facing forward, her Down's Syndrome boy playing peacefully between dad and grandma, my eyes suddenly became wet.
As he went along, Jesus saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?""Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life." (John 9:1-3)
What a display of the work of God I was privileged to celebrate, not only as an historical event, but as a firsthand witness, on this Easter Day. All of us imperfect, all of us needy; hungry and thirsty at the foot of the empty cross.
Cory
April 2009

A God Who Weeps

I wrote this in early May, just after the twin disasters of Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar and the earthquake in central China. It seemed right for Good Friday.
May the mystery and work of Jesus be fresh for you this Holy Week.
Cory

A God Who Weeps
I just finished attending a weekday morning Mass at the nearby Catholic Church. I sit here and ponder: When hunger increases and food grows more scarce, or when disaster casualties mount, sometimes my heart sinks with each sad report, and it turns from bright red and warm to a cool steel blue.
I can almost feel it. My chest exhales and I feel something like a loss of body temperature. My heart stops sinking only by cooling itself, another slight cooling of passion and hopefulness.
Then I go after faith as something to blame, go after my expectations of God and grouse at his potency if not his unconcern, his laissez faire way of overlording this world in the midst of pain and need. Can He do nothing? Who is clanging the steeple bells to rouse... God?
This is where I suppose it turns from a faith-in-humankind issue and becomes a faith-in-God issue. The fateful twist of the accusing finger away from our combined culpability to the one seductively simple Scapegoat.
As I drove away from the church toward my office, I listened to the gorgeous, and for me emotive, 17th century sacred choral "Miserere" by Allegre, rendered from David's penitential mourn in Psalm 51. It's the wail of the world, and of all who live there, vocalized by voices straight from heaven itself that pierce every octave of my soul. Heaven bewailing the misery of man. Heaven crying with us, grieving our sin, mourning our fate in ancient Latin words that I wish I understood but barely need to. Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love.
And I recall the priest's words as he held up the communion host today: "The body of Christ, broken for you." Broken. Broken for a broken world; for a broken me. The body of Christ, Cory, broken for you.
Between his body and his blood given, can there be there any question of the heart of Christ also being broken? Scripture says Jesus wept. Was there ever a religion that claims that God weeps, that He mourns, that he breaks for us?
"Weep with those who weep," Jesus says. Is that what God does too? It wouldn’t be enough for me if that's all He were capable of doing. Yet there is something about this weeping, this broken heart, that speaks to my heart, that resonates with my experience of life for 54 years: God does not swoop in and right every wrong. Yet. He does not feed every hungry child. Yet. He does not, whether he is able or interested or potent or all or none of the above; He does not.
Sermons promising that this time he surely will no longer finds easy space in my heart. And I think that explains why I gain strength from this expression of Jesus' Church, the Church of the Perpetual Crucifix, the Church of Faithful Sufferers. Why? Because I myself can feel some tiny part of the pain of the world, and I have seen pretty close up that there are no glib, neatly-tied-up answers or perfect endings in this life. But I can show up anyway, just like the 60 other people at church this morning of diverse age, ethnicity and economic status.
No promises from a positivist pulpit. No hanging on the words of a preacher for the comfort I lack, relying on him and his stirring words to bolster a flagging belief that everything will work out the way I want it to work out.
Instead, just the sacramental homage to a God I love but don't always like in the way He superintends things. Instead, gazing up at a God-man who didn’t take the easy way out. He hung there until it was finished, stayed in the pain, drank the dregs.
There is a rhythm of faith in this place, of faithful-ness. A faith that accepts the ache, and has even discovered a way to integrate the ache into the very experience of faith itself. Because the ache is life; it's real, and I refuse to deny it or fear it. After all, I only fear it because my faith walk hasn't been holistic enough to integrate it fully. Yet.
But today I realized that it's not only about us participating in the sufferings of Christ; it's also about Christ participating in the sufferings of us. Not just "once for all" in his death, but something quite immediate, available, a traveling and hurting together. God with us. Emmanuel.
I turned out from my short drive to the office and detoured instead to a coffee house to write this. And while I waited and listened and reflected at a long turn signal, I sensed my fear of faithlessness turning away too, the music and my heart embracing the same beautiful aching groan that heaven was heaving, letting it in from the cold to warm my heart, cradling the truth of it, transcending words. Too deep for words. As deep called unto deep.
And right then my eyes caught sight of something very strange: a trinity of vertical purple flags without any markings, inexplicably standing beside the traffic light, side by side, flapping in the breeze. Like Father, Son and Holy Spirit, all arrayed in the very color of the Passion, the Pain, the Broken Heart, broken for us.
A God who weeps.
And now, praise be to Him, my own heart warming again by the spirit of the suffering faithful Christ, I can weep too.

Together in the Crucible

I took my California colleagues to visit World Vision's Tijuana project last week. It's always great to visit the people and the program. Last year I made 6 trips, and I returned home each time thinking that day was the best visit ever. But this time my heart stirred with less comfortable feelings.

I came away sobered, maybe sad, having seen and heard from many people there about the impact of the economic downturn, especially on the poor, but on everyone else as well. Perhaps most vivid was driving down Revolucion Avenue, the main touristfare in Tijuana, devoid of tourists; shop fronts flung open wide, shopkeepers keeping vigil outside, yet without shoppers inside. Drive-by voyeurism of an abandoned populace. And it drove home the point that this economic slump is hardly confined to America.

These downtown store owners are not our microloan borrowers; yet they are still entrepreneurs trying to make a living for their families. The enterprising, the proactive, the hard-working, feeling the pressure of the economic screws turning, mixed in with the border’s gangster-on-gangster violence which scares away the few remaining tourists who might otherwise still come with precious dollars in their pockets.

Tijuana is a brackish place, where my friend and colleague Mauricio must pay his rent in dollars but receives his salary in pesos. Now the peso has declined from 11-to-$1 down to 15-to-$1 and his math becomes increasingly difficult.

People still go to work; they're not giving up. Others are getting second and third jobs or starting small income-generating activities on the side. The volunteers somehow are still amazingly active, planning new activities. They are wonderfully faithful and inspiring, although Mauricio tells me that some volunteers are having to cut back in order to concentrate on making ends meet at home.

The unknowns are trying for everyone we met. Occasionally women even choked up talking about the economic impacts on their families, clearly concerned for the future as well as the present. "Finances are so difficult right now, as we must buy in dollars but sell in pesos. My husband is a butcher and his business is really struggling."

Yet some beautiful kindnesses are emerging as well, as is often mercifully the case when people see themselves as being together in the crucible. We met a group of 5 women who have formed a sewing cooperative business. "We give each other credit here, so people can still get what they need." "We share food with each other and make it into a meal all our families can eat."

A pathos for me, compared to other visits, was that Rosaria, the leader of this sewing business, seemed pensive if not apprehensive. Maybe I’m reading too much into her countenance, but it struck me as an acknowledgement that the necessary ingredients to make their business succeed were no longer as simple as a good idea, a little financing and hard work. Other forces lurked in the shadows, forces she could not control nor predict. She wasn't backing down, but she wouldn't be naively self-confident either. Hers was not the bright-eyed, can-do spirit we all love to see and that I've become so accustomed to encountering among poor entrepreneurs in Tijuana and around the world.

Janet and I recently watched the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, and I easily think of little Frodo Baggins, setting his sights on mighty and ominous Mordor, no Pollyanna nor pretense. The risks are enormous but the call is clear, and he doesn't back down. The story is so compelling of course because this is the best kind of commitment, the kind we hope we ourselves might make if called to do so in a darkening hour.

In this environment, I'm reminded again that this is not the season for expecting the highest highs and the biggest gains. Rather, there is a call to faithfulness despite the risks and the shadows, to keep on keeping on, to putting one foot in front of the other and getting through this time... together. Like our friends in Tijuana are doing each day.

And a call to solidarity. Janet and I plan to visit Mauricio and his wife Vanessa in their home soon, to see the parts of Tijuana I never get to see, to just be together. And I think I'll spend some dollars there.