"Why Wait?" Check it out at Blessed Is She!

I got the chance to submit a post to be published on Blessed Is She, and I just couldn't be more thrilled that it's up today!  I'm a big ol' BIS fan.  You'll have to check out their site.

Meanwhile, here's an excerpt from my little contribution to the goodness that's going on over there--an Advent post entitled "Why Wait?".

"So what, then is the reason for–and the value in–waiting? If we were created for something so opposite of it, why does God allow us to ever want for anything here on earth? Why do we need to learn to be patient? Why do we have to grow in virtue? Why does He allow the suffering of waiting–of not knowing–in our lives?"

More here.

On The Waiting and The Beginning of Time and The Year of Mercy

So, due to aforementioned major transition in our lives, our family isn’t currently “part” of any parish.  We’ll settle in soon enough, but for now, we’re just kind of (Catholic) church hopping around the Omaha area, basing our decisions on where to attend solely on Mass schedules that fit our fancy.  Oh, sweet freedom.

Last night, to celebrate the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, we landed at a sweet little parish with the CUTEST little priest.  Not relevant, I suppose, but there you have it.  Anyway, I was so excited when I picked up my missalette and read the first reading for the Mass celebrating the very beginning of Mary’s life.  Genesis is my favorite book in the Bible (Hence, brace yourself for more of a novel than a blog post.  Fair warning.), and particularly I love the passage we meditate on during the Feast--for a couple of reasons that are super relevant today.

One is this:  Advent.  Waiting.  I don’t know about you, but every year I start Advent really excited because I’m firmly set on saving my real Christmas jubilation for December 25 and notaminutesooner.  Holding off on Christmas music, lighting the Advent wreath daily, waiting on the tree and the lights and the Santa visits (Not forever--I try not to be crazy weird about it--but I definitely wait longer than our culture encourages.), rededicating myself in prayer...I really do what I can to enter into this liturgical season because I think it’s so beautiful and it makes "actual Christmas" so much sweeter.  But, then, sometime during Week 2 or 3, I go to Target.  And the wrapping paper aisle and the decorations and the gifts and the Michael Buble Christmas tunes on repeat...and it just gets harder to be excited about waiting for the joy of Christmas.  I want it NOW, baby!

I can blame the retail industry all I want--and truly, it probably does contribute a great deal to the difficulty of living liturgically in our culture, especially this time of year.  But I think there’s something a little deeper that makes it hard for us to enter into the beauty of waiting for Christ’s birth, and that is this:  In “real time,” He actually already came.  We know it.  We live it every day.  We, the people of the A.D. years, know how the story ends.  So in some sense, I think, that can make it hard for us to persevere in the waiting and preparation period that Advent is meant to be for us.  We have the history on our side.  We are the Easter people, which can make it hard for us to "get" Advent.

At the beginning of Advent this year, it hit me:  Maybe to help myself embrace the season better, I should think about what it was like to live during the millions of years prior to Christ’s birth.  And last night’s first reading reminded me of the appreciation you’ve just gotta have for those folks.  In the passage from Genesis 3, we enter the story just after Adam and Eve ate the apple.  Sin is here, and it’s here to stay.  The first part of the reading is God’s conversation with Adam and Eve regarding what went down (more on that in just a hot second), and the second part is God’s conversation with Satan (who is, in this case, cleverly disguised as the serpent).  That’s the part that interests me for the moment.  

At the end of Satan’s little butt-chewing from God, God says,

“I will put enmity between you and the woman,

and between your offspring and hers;

he will strike at your head,

while you strike at his heel.” (Genesis 3:14-15)

The fancy name for God’s words here, I’ve always learned, is the “protoevangelium,” or the first proclamation of the gospel.  Here, God is telling Satan, Adam, Eve, and all of us, that Jesus is coming (via Mary) to fix what has been seriously goofed up.  Only, in true “God-fashion,” He doesn’t do that in a super-specific manner.  Adam and Eve are left with God’s word that He will deliver them, even though they're not 100% sure how it's going to happen, giving them another chance to trust Him after they just, well, didn’t.  

I heard a Bible scholar (Sri?  Gray?  I’m not sure who it was…) teach about this passage once, and He shared a cool fact that I had never heard before.  (I swear I’m not making this up even though I can’t cite my source.)  When Adam and Eve heard God say this, they actually assumed He was referring to Eve’s offspring, not Mary’s.  So when their kids, Cain and Abel, came along, Adam and Eve were like, “Great!  Which one of these boys is going to be our deliverer and get us back into paradise?  Because not being in paradise is kind of starting to suck, comparatively.”  Yikes, right?  They thought that the Messiah was coming immediately, but it was going to be millions and millions of years of waiting before He did.  And that’s the whole story of the Old Testament--God’s people waiting on Him to deliver them.

If you look at your Bible from the side, putting your finger in where Christ shows up, you notice that there’s a lot of pages and a lot of stuff that happens pre-Him.  And all of that stuff is basically stories of people trying to (or not trying to) trust God while waiting for Him to send the Messiah like He said He would in Genesis.  Mostly, they keep screwing it up at some point, but God is faithful anyway.  He continues to bridge the gap, which culminates with Him sending Jesus, who is the ultimate bridge between us and God.  

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I skip over all of the hard-to-read-and-understand Old Testament stuff because Jesus’s (and Paul, et al’s) words in the New Testament are a little easier for me to grasp.  But I probably shouldn’t do that.  Because--especially during Advent--I could learn so much from the waiting people of the Old Testament.  

For example:  Can you imagine the joy of the people who lived at the time of Jesus and actually realized He was the Messiah?  Can you believe how hard it must have been for them to do that?  I mean really, without the Holy Spirit moving in the hearts of those early believers, it would have been impossible to accept, I think.  Would YOU have believed it without some Divine assistance for your heart?  After millions of years?  And hundreds of other prophets?  Would you really have accepted that He was the Savior without the Holy Spirit’s help, just basing it on your own logic?  I sure as heck wouldn’t have.

Better yet, can you imagine Mary’s emotional explosion when she found out that HE--the Savior of the world--would be born of her?  Her faith and upbringing had been all about waiting for THIS GUY.  She probably went to the synagogue every week (Even daily, maybe?  I don’t know.) with Papa Joachim and Mama Anne and heard about this Messiah that was to come.  But she also knew that the waiting had been going on for dozens of generations.  So hearing that HER BABY was THAT GUY was probably pretty overwhelming and unexpected and EXCITING and JOYFUL and...whoa.  I bet she needed to sit down.  Although, I’m sure Mary had a lot more emotional control than I do.  But still.  She had real emotions.  And this would have rocked them.  

I think sometimes our pretty little nativity sets make us forget what was really going on in the world that night Jesus was born.  Those shepherds--were they skeptical?  Did they talk the whole way to Bethlehem about whether or not they really saw what they had just seen?  “Guys, did we just all hallucinate?”  Was it awkward when they got there? "Hey...Mary and Joseph...sorry to crash your stable here...umm...you don't know us, and we don't know you...but--get this--some ANGELS told us to come here and we have no idea what's going on..." Did some of them accept Jesus immediately?  Did some of them think going to see this kid was a waste of time?  Did anybody wonder what the heck was going on when they realized the Messiah they had been waiting for was actually a BABY?  What could a defenseless BABY do to save them?  And, are you kidding me--a kid that was born into a super poor family that didn't even have a room to sleep in was going to save the world? THIS was God's answer to the age-old question of how He'd save the world? Did Herod send the three kings to check it all out because he actually knew the truth about Jesus in his heart, but refused to let himself believe it?  

Bottom line is this:  Jesus’s birth was big for people of the time, because of the anticipation that had been building up since, you know, the beginning of humankind.  And for me, thinking about that helps me remember what a BIG DEAL Christmas is and was and always will be--and what a big deal it should be in my heart.  It should ROCK me, every year, and really every day, that God became incarnate.  That He delivered on his promise after so many years.  That He is trustworthy and good on His Word and never going to forsake His people--and never going to forsake me.  Christmas is the ultimate proof of His faithfulness.

Another quick reflection from that first reading that is super pertinent to the beginning of the beautiful Jubilee Year of Mercy that starts today: Let me preface this by saying that the reader as last night’s Mass did a truly fine job proclaiming the Word of God.  Here’s the thing though, when she read the first part of the reading from Genesis--the part where God is talking to Adam and Eve about the fruit-eating situation--she read God’s words with a little bit of a “ticked off” tone.  “WHY did you DO such a thing?”  This is not a criticism of her any more than it is of all of us, and specifically myself.  Why do we always think of God talking to Adam and Eve in a booming, mad, mean voice?  Isn’t that how Satan wanted us to hear Him?  As the mean, unpleasable Master?  Upset with his terrible, misbehaving children, and not afraid to let it rip the minute they screw up?  I think of God this way all too often when I fail Him.  

But if we look a little closer, we realize that God is actually handling this situation super mercifully.  (As if He could do it any other way.)  He’s not impatient or gruff with Adam and Eve.  He takes the time to ask them all of those questions, when, come on!  Don’t you think He already knew the answers?  He is God after all--He watched it all go down.  And while His anger is present, His sadness is even more apparent.  He knows, because He is also all-just, what Adam and Eve’s act of sinfulness will mean.  For Him, it will mean separation from His children. (As a mom, I now know the pain of that is real. Ouch!)  It will mean knowing that they aren’t living in the paradise and happiness He had planned for them to live in.  It will mean watching them suffer.  And this breaks His heart.

The only victim of his wrath is Satan.  He gets really mad at the Evil, not at His kids.  And before he starts doling out punishments and discipline for them, He rips Satan a new one and tells him that he’s (eventually) going down--hard!  Adam and Eve get His patience, His promise of deliverance, and His protection.  Sure, they also get His consequences--getting banished from the garden, labor pains, etc. (Genesis 3:16-24), and that's important to note.  But read verse 21 closely, “God made tunics of skins for the man and his wife and clothed them.”  God made them clothes.  He knew they’d need them outside of the garden.  If He was really yelling and screaming and breathing His wrath down on them, do you think He’d just stop all of a sudden to provide for their needs in this way?  Further, He didn't just tell them, angrily, "And you two better figure out some way to cover yourself because it's going to be cold and awkward out there if you're naked!" HE made the clothes Himself. BEFORE He even told them about the whole banished-from-the-garden thing. He anticipated their needs and served them by performing an actual Corporal Work of Mercy in this decisive moment.

God’s mercy is apparent from the beginning of mankind's existence.  And that is the focus of the next year.  He’s going to allow us the freedom in our lives to not choose Him like He did with Adam and Eve, and that might mean consequences that are less-than-desirable for everyone (including Him).  But it doesn’t mean He’s going to stop loving us and protecting us, and most of all providing the way back for us to rectify the relationship that He so deeply desires with all of us.  

May we remember this mercy daily, knowing that it is new every morning, and may we use the next year to share this beautiful love with all of His children.  He misses us and wants us to come home to Him.  It’s all He’s wanted since sin entered the world and He had to let us go.  He sent Jesus, and so He’s done everything He needs to do to provide the way back.  Now, He simply awaits our response, and encourages us along His way.  What a loving Father we serve!   

A Simple (Yet Incredibly Difficult) Way to Prevent Mass Terrorism

                        

I watched coverage from San Bernardino all day yesterday. Passively, and while caring for a 1-year-old, but still...I have no excuse.  I watched it.  When my husband came home from work and started asking me for details, here’s a summary of what I had to share:  There was another shooting.  In California, maybe somewhere by LA?  I think it was at a mental hospital?  And I wasn’t sure if they had caught the guy yet.  

There was a time when a story like this would have stopped me dead in my tracks and had me glued to the TV.  But not anymore.  Now I kind of halfway-pay-attention.  I’m desensitized, numbed, even hardened, maybe? (Call it what you want…) to mass shootings, bombings, and what have you.  In fact, I think a real thought that passed through my mind yesterday was, “Oh.  Only like 14 people died.”  Yep. ONLY 14 lives lost.  ONLY 14 families torn apart.  Small potatoes.  Better check my heart, huh?  

I’m not proud of this reaction.  In truth, it DOES make me sad, frightened, and shocked.  But I’m really not surprised.  And I suppose that’s what living and growing up in a culture where this is the norm will do to you.  I was a 2nd grader when the Oklahoma City bombing happened.  A 6th grader when the Columbine shooting took place.  A sophomore when 9/11 occurred.  So it’s pretty hard for me to remember life without mass, senseless terror in public places.  (If it ever existed, I guess.)  It used to scare me more, but now...as the BBC reporter quipped, “Just another day in America.”

This isn’t to make light of the terrible tragedy that occurred yesterday.  Or any of the terrible tragedies that have occurred at the hands of seriously hurting people who have committed these horrible crimes.  It’s just to show that the numbness to the hurt that’s going on in our culture today has invaded my heart.  That apathy could be the biggest obstacle to any remedy we could ever hope for.  

So I join the chorus of voices saying that we--or at least I, obviously--have to wake up.  We have to get to the root of the problem and turn this runaway train around.  We all have a voice and a role to play.  But where do we start, right?

The first step in making any change is identifying the issue, which many good people of varying political stripes try to do.  We try to place the “whys” on many likely culprits:  mental health services (or lack thereof), video games and movies and the media in general, gun laws...all of which probably have some merit, but all of which cause deep divides and controversy.  And so, we spend our precious time arguing about the next step instead of taking the next step.

Before I go any further, this isn’t meant to be a commentary on any of those particular issues.  Frankly, I don’t have a single answer when it comes to decisions about policies regarding any of the “traditional scapegoats.”  Doesn’t seem like anyone really does, for sure.  We’ve made these issues so black and white (or red and blue, rather) that it’s hard to have any real conversations about them.  Which sucks, big time.  But we’re America and that’s “how we do.”  Personally, I have considered a lot of viewpoints on gun control and mental health services and video game ratings and the only solid opinion I can come up with that I know I hold is this:  All of these issues that we’re spending our time arguing about are probably much too small to capture our attention like they have, because none of them will really have the wide-scale, long-term impact or intervention that we need.  As a society, we have to (for once) think bigger.

I believe that policy changes on several fronts are probably inevitable, regardless of anyone’s opinions on them.  Maybe that’s what we need, maybe it isn’t--I can't say for sure.  But I can say this--in all of the discussion surrounding this latest tragedy and what our country's reaction will be, I can’t keep my thoughts from returning to this wise gem from one of my main dudes, G.K. Chesterton:  “When you break the big laws, you do not get liberty; you do not even get anarchy.  You get small laws.”   And I strongly believe that “small laws” of any kind are a band-aid solution for a much larger, more serious problem.  In this case, there’s absolutely no denying it anymore.

I’m not saying that “small laws” are universally unnecessary.  We have many and need many to keep our society civil, because, well, sin and brokenness.  What I'm saying is that I think the real issue has nothing to do with “small laws,” or policies, and everything to do with the fact that our culture has turned away from the “big laws” for a long time now.  We’ve done so in the name of greater freedom, but we haven’t found more freedom.  All we’ve found is a greater need for “small laws” as a last ditch effort to keep people safe.  

The truth is that only when we rededicate ourselves to the “big laws” on an individual and collective basis will we see the solutions we’re all hoping for.  

The “big laws” are the natural ones--the ones that are written on our hearts and in our bodies--the ones that no man can make--the ones that were created when nature itself was created.  

We’ve been laughing natural law in the face and turning up our nose at it for quite a while now, haven’t we?  Or at least picking and choosing which parts of it we like and which parts of it we don't--following what we fancy and disregarding or explaining away the other less comfortable stuff.  All in the name of greater personal freedom because “I should be able to do what I want, when I want, and nobody should be able to tell me no!  And anyone or anything who tries to hates me/doesn’t love me/is a bigot/is a whacked out right-wing religious freak living in the past who just wants me to feel guilty like they do!”  Right?  But see, what starts to happen when we ignore natural law like we have is that people of all kinds--with all different backgrounds, intentions, and sins (and don’t be fooled, we’ve all got sins…)--start living like they don’t need to submit to any authority and then go about hurting others.  And THEN we get our collective panties in a twist.  And rightfully so.  But maybe we should try a different approach for once and start with prevention instead of treatment.

The unintended consequences of ignoring natural law claim millions upon millions of lives every day.  Not always physically (although, sadly, oftentimes physically), but emotionally and spiritually too.  That’s the real issue.

What unintended consequences am I talking about?  Particular attention could be paid the wounds that fatherlessness has caused in our culture.  For too long, men have been told that it’s ok to opt out of the family life realm (or they’ve been pushed out by women who, for too long, have been told that the worst thing in the world to need is a man.)  Personal sacrifice for the good of others (aka: real love) is seen as bondage instead of the path that leads to freedom.  Materialism, too, has caused deep wounds in our families and in the way we have cared for the poor.  Even our culture’s attitude toward children--seeing them as commodities to be had when we want them (or eliminated/prevented when we don’t want them) instead of gifts who are made to be loved and cherished, not just to fulfill our unmet needs or desires--can take part of the blame.  Folks, we’d be missing the point completely if we didn’t make a connection between this cesspool of hurt in our culture and the tragedy at San Bernardino.  Or the one at Sandy Hook.  Or Columbine.  The spiritual poverty and “abdication of responsibility” (that phrase is stolen from the one and only Matthew Kelly) that have infested our culture play the largest role in the cause of these tragedies.  It’s a much bigger problem than the current cultural narrative seems to be acknowledging.  

Want to eradicate this problem at the source?  Strengthen marriages, support families, take and teach responsibility, eliminate materialism, and instill in children what it means to love others and be loved.  Make sacrifices.  Love til it hurts.  

Better yet, bring Jesus Christ to people.  Don’t just “be nice” or “follow the golden rule” or “pay it forward this Christmas.” (Those are all good things to do, by the way.)  But go deeper.  Actually help people have a meaningful encounter with Jesus as a real person; who really loves them; with whom they can have a real, living relationship with; with whom they can fall in love so that the desire to emulate Him springs from that love and not from fear.  So that the people of our culture can--FOR ONCE--start to see Christianity as a relationship with the person of Christ instead of just a set of rules to follow because “you think it will get you to Heaven.”  

We need more people willing to look at the challenges, inconveniences, WORK!, and sacrifices inherent in creating and supporting good family life and say “Yes, I will serve,” instead of “No, I choose myself.”  We need more people willing to lay down their lives (and desires and even needs, sometimes) for others instead of searching for freedom from the responsibility and real pain that loving well demands.  Mother Teresa said that if you want to promote world peace, you should go home and love your family--particularly your spouse.  We must do that better (I must do that better), but we can’t stop there.

The truth of the matter is there are a lot of people my parents’ age, my grandparents’ age, my age, and everywhere in between trying to do just that, and doing a damn fine job of it on a daily basis.  Real cultural change is going to demand even more of us, but it’s what we’re all called to.  We’re going to have to leave our homes with mercy and love to bring truth and justice to the spiritually and materially poor.  We’re going to have to go out of our way to encounter people where they are--in all of their messiness and brokenness--without fear of sharing our own messiness and brokenness--and form real relationships that prevent people from feeling alone.  Relationships that lovingly challenge people to take responsibility for their lives and make them better.  It’s going to take time, energy, effort, discomfort, and most of all, prayer.  But it’s something we can all do.  And it’s something we all must do.  We have a responsibility to God and to our fellow man to do what we can to change our world.

So go ahead advocate your favorite policy solutions all you want.  I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to do.  I’ll probably even read your facebook posts while I try to figure out what I think about all of those things.  But me?  I can’t pass any laws.  I don’t have the authority to impart my will on others via the legal system.  (Nor do I really want such authority.  Hah!)  But I can love my family, and I can love my neighbor, and I can do my best to bring Christ into a culture who needs Him maybe more now than ever.  I could spend time lobbying my congressmen and woman, but I think instead I'll focus on doing those simpler but harder things.  Because the reality of the situation is that no law will get to the root of the problems we have.  It’s only when we start caring for each others’ hearts that hearts will change, and it’s only changing hearts that will change our culture.  We have a long way to go.  I have a long way to go.  Better wake up and get to work.