Crazy Catholic Question # 134: Prayer

Crazy Catholic Question # 134: I don’t “get” prayer. I just don’t feel like I’m doing it right. Any insights?

I think we all wonder if our prayer, with all its distractions and missteps, really “qualifies” or is effective. We have so many “shoulds” and “oughts” that derail us; we should be in the right “head space” (whatever that means) or we ought to be able to shake off all the stress brought by the umpteen things that battle for our attention every moment of the day. We think that unless we feel altruistic and pure and are able to muster up the appropriate reverence and attention that God deserves, that we can’t even begin to enter into true prayer.

Before coming to prayer we think we need to sweep away all our feelings of boredom, or exhaustion, and try to put out of our mind the anger we have about how our boss treats us, or how worried we are about our finances and future. We think these thoughts and feelings are somehow disappointing to God, breaches of our trust in His providence. Instead we try to muster up feelings of reverence. We murmur words of praise and gratitude, but they feel manufactured…contrived…and indeed they are.

God for us then becomes like a parent who only wishes to spend time with us when we are at the top of our game; on our best behavior. We treat God as a visitor, a distant figure of authority, someone who we only permit to see us in our most polished state (Rolheiser).

One of the oldest classical definitions of prayer is to “lift our hearts and minds to God.”  And what I have just described couldn’t be further from this practice. In fact it’s the direct opposite – it’s like masking the true content of our hearts and minds FROM God. In short, God cannot find us where we think we ought to be.

So, I imagine the first step is to shake the misconception that we somehow have to “shape-up” before we pray and rather fearlessly open ourselves up and believe that God welcomes, accepts and loves us without boundary or breaking point just as we are, not as we think we should be and that every feeling and thought we have is suitable to bring to God in prayer – no matter how irreverent – how full of doubt or anger – or how unholy we may deem them to be. We need to completely stop editing ourselves and trust that God is up for the task.

In a word, we need to be transparent and this makes it much easier to “pray without ceasing” as St. Paul urges us to do. “Praying always” doesn’t mean we should constantly be walking around saying Our Fathers in our heads all day, but is more like cultivating a certain awareness that we carry with us everywhere we go, in every situation we face in life. Like the businessman who travels with his work. Yes, of course he calls home in a concrete way a few times a day, but he carries an awareness of his wife and family everywhere he goes. Even amid his busy schedule and fast-paced meetings, he still remains anchored in the awareness that he is a husband and a father first - these relationships are the foundation of his life. 

So too with God. God is not so needy that He needs us to be explicitly thinking of Him every minute of the day. Rather to “pray without ceasing” is a way of being in the world, anchored in our relationship with God, aware of the love we are receiving and giving in everything we do.

Send your Crazy Catholic Question to Lisa Brown at dre@ctredeemer.org or read past columns via our website at www.ctredeemer.org.

Easter Bulletin: Crazy Catholic Question #133 - Dear C&E Catholics

Dear C&E Catholics (Christmas & Easter Catholics. Yes, you have a nickname),

We are aware that this might not be your first choice of where to be spending your time today. Perhaps you are here against your will. “Mom guilt” is a powerful force in the universe. Some of you may not even be sure if you believe in God anymore or that our spiritual life is real, or important, or worth investing time and energy into.

If this is where you are at, I hear you. Because truth be told: Jesus has officially been confiscated; His teachings twisted by corrupt politicians and wayward religious leaders for years. As a result, even the utterance of the name “Jesus” in any public forum is often received with disdain; perceived by most as distasteful and inappropriate; sometimes even more offensive than the strongest of curse words.

Even I – the Director of Religious Education here – sometimes find discussion about “religion” repellant. Talk of church is sometimes such a turn-off that it makes me queasy. No lie. Jesus, a hero by any measure (even for those who do not recognize him as God), is badly in need of a new Public Relations manager.

But here’s the thing. I believe with everything I’ve got that our relationship and understanding of God (aka: our spiritual life) whether it is strong and healthy or wimpy and ill-informed effects us more than any other aspect of our life. I believe that tradition is to a community what memory is to an individual. I value being part of the 2000 years+ long continuum of our faith tradition that continues to try and figure out what God is all about and why we are here. I enjoy our collective pondering of these big questions even though most days I think we have about as much insight as an ant trying to figure out astrophysics. Nonetheless, I find beauty and meaning here.

So, the way I see it, it is my job is to make a good case for choosing to hang your hat here. That is what I’m hired by this community to do. So let me throw a piece of spaghetti on the wall and see if it sticks…

We Catholics hold a very strong conviction that God wishes to communicate with us. How and where? First and foremost, in what God has made; namely creation itself; all of nature, animals, plants, the stars and the incredible expanse of time and space of which we are a part.

Second, we hear God in the bible, which is more of a library than a book. Don’t start on page one or you’ll never make it. Rather, start with the Gospel of Matthew or Luke. You can read either one in its entirety in about an hour – and then you can say you have read the entire story of Jesus first hand, not filtered by anyone else.

Third, we hear God in the collective wisdom of the church; the living, changing, growing tradition of our community. Doctrine can and DOES change, but not if everyone with a brain in their head takes their toys and goes home.

Finally, we hear God by listening to our own experiences and inner workings: our mind, our will, memory, imagination, feelings, desires – all these are actually designed to sense the presence of God in our lives. So if we listen to our deepest longings, this is where God communicates with us. Our job is to get quiet (aka “pray”) and listen for that small, still voice within us.

So, if this resonates with you at all, call me or email me, Lisa Brown, at dre@ctredeemer.org and give me a shot at doing my job (a billable hour at Starbucks? Yes please!) Happy Easter P.S. There are worse motivations than pleasing Mom. Glad you are here.

Crazy Catholic Question #132 - Sacrifice

Crazy Catholic Question 132: Why did Jesus have to die such a brutal death for our sins?

Theologian Fr. James Alison describes our common misunderstanding of Jesus’ death like this: We sinned and offended God, so God was angry with humanity and demanded justice or some kind of payment for our blunder. But humanity couldn’t offer any kind of divine gift big enough to diffuse God’s anger since we are just lowly humans. So, God, needing to loose a lighting rod, sent Jesus and Jesus said, “you can loose it on me” substituting himself for us. Lighting rod strikes; Sacrifice is carried out; and God is again happy because He got his blood-lust satisfied.”

The problem is, this is a very pagan idea of sacrifice. It is NOT our Catholic understanding. This understanding of atonement goes back to the ancient Aztecs where the priest sacrificed a person or animal to satisfy a hungry God. But the Jewish priestly rite that Jesus grew up with was already way beyond that primitive understanding of sacrifice.

Jesus and his contemporaries would have understood that when the high priest entered the Holy of Holies in the temple once a year, put on the white robe, sacrificed the lamb and then brought the blood out of the Holy of Holies to sprinkle on the people, this was a liturgy designed to remind us of God’s divine movement towards US to set people free. The high priest was standing in for God who was coming OUT of that holy and perfect place to forgive and restore the flow of creation. It was NOT as we often imagine a priest satisfying a hungry, demanding God. The direction is the opposite. God is healing us, not us satisfying Him…

If we cling to the idea that God will not forgive us until his son has been tortured to death for us then God is a lot less forgiving than even we are sometimes. St Thomas Aquinas says that the mission of Jesus from the Father is NOT the mission to be crucified; God’s mission for Jesus was to love us right here in our own history and to show us a way other than violence; to encourage us to follow Him in being merciful. Complicated theories about the Father deliberately putting his Son to death to settle some kind of score are just nonsense. Rather the cross is the reminder of the world WE have fashioned where it is dangerous and sometimes even fatal to be a compassionate, courageous and loving person. God out love for us, His misdirected people,  sent His love, embodied in the person Jesus to live with us and show us the way and we murdered Him.  

The fact that Jesus never broke; never became bitter; never gave up or gave in to the violence; the fact that He never stopped loving us even as we were nailing Him to the cross but rather prayed “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they do.” His endurance in this love is what saves us and continues to show us the way.

In other words “who is the angry divinity in the story? We are. We are the ones who think we need vengeance in order to survive. God was occupying the space of our victim so as to show us that we need never do this again…it is quite clear that Jesus' self-giving, and the “out-pouring of His blood” is the revelation of who God is: God is entirely without vengeance, entirely without substitutionary tricks; and that God was giving Himself entirely for us, towards us, in order to set us “free from our sins”…“our sins” being the way of death, vengeance, violence.” (www.jamesalison.co.uk/texts/eng11.html).

Send your Crazy Catholic Question to Lisa Brown at dre@ctredeemer.org or read past columns via our website at www.ctredeemer.org.

#131 cont. - Talking Trinity 2

Talking Trinity #2

One of my heroes, theologian Sandra M. Schneiders, IHM is coming to our Castelot Scripture Conference this summer and I love her insightful statement about the Trinity. She said “God is not two men and a bird!” A good place to begin I’d say!

Before we jump into some heavy lifting, let’s plant our feet on some relatively firm ground. Theologian Michael Himes says that when we hear the word “God,” something goes on in our minds. Now, however wonderful, however deep, rich, powerful, consoling, however philosophically and metaphysically precise, however scripturally sound and orthodox, whatever that idea of God that is in our mind - it is NOT God. And THIS is really the most important thing to know about God: that what we have in our mind when we hear or speak the word “God” is only a very imprecise image of God. Us trying to figure out everything there is to know about God is like an ant trying to learn astrophysics. We are way out of our depth, to put it mildly.

That being said, our scriptures tell us that “God is love.” Himes says this “is the least wrong thing we can say about God.” As Christians, we believe that love is the core of God’s divine essence. This is a very important truth to understand because the Trinity is one of the most confusing and misunderstood concepts in our faith, but if we have ever known love in our life, we can at the very least grasp at an inkling of who God is for us. Because as another hero of mine, Elizabeth Johnson declares, at the root of ALL our doctrine is an encounter with the holy mystery that is God. Our doctrines are not just speculative mental acrobatics but rather an attempt to express a truth we have experienced.

The Trinity is an image, a concept of God that developed historically out of our collective experience. The first Christian believers were faithful to their Jewish monotheistic tradition and without abandoning Yahweh, the God of Israel, they pondered and tried to make sense of their experience of this same God in the person and mission of Jesus Christ - and then once again coming to know this same God in the Holy Spirit in the days following Pentecost.

In the doctrine of the Trinity, and why perhaps it is a non-negotiable for every Christian believer, God has shown Godself to be a community of three persons, equal in every way, living together in loving, mutual relationship - and somehow in the life, death and rising of Jesus we too have been swooped up into this communion, invited into this love of God that is gratuitous, overflowing, and life-giving.

“In the deepest mystery of his being, God is an intimate relationship, a fellowship, a community of love.” (Johnson) So, when pondering the Trinity, I think there are two great places to start. First is from a deep place of epistemological humility. In other words we have to be able to say and believe “There is no way I can comprehend God with my little brain” And truly, if we could understand God, then God would not be a God worth worshipping, right? “A God comprehended is no God at all.” (Tersteegen)

Secondly, our very own Catechism states that the Trinity is the central mystery of the Christian faith and life. It is the source of all other mysteries of Christian faith, the light that enlightens them. So, if we truly believe that the least wrong thing we can grasp about God is that God is a community of equal, self-giving love then – as yet another hero of mine - Catherine LaCugna says – in the Trinity humanity is being invited to ponder “How are we to live and relate to others so as to be most Godlike?

#131 - Talking Trinity 1

Your Crazy Catholic Question column has been a tad boring for a few months now. What’s the scoop?

This question was lovingly submitted by my husband who, frankly, even on my best day, finds my column “too Catholic” for his taste. I’m lucky (and annoyed) to have such a straightforward, “borderline-heathen” critic in my own home. But, he does keeps me honest.

So my aim is to retire my CCQ column for a bit and explore with you in my little 600 words in the bulletin each week something that very few Christians find any relevance in for their lives, but yet we claim is at the very center of our faith. Something that in years past, debate and disagreement about has sparked wars and schisms in our church, but now is hardly ever talked about at weekly bible studies, book discussions, or faith formation classes. Even our beloved CGS (Catechesis of the Good Shepherd) does not have a lesson on it! What am I talking about? The Trinity. For the next six weeks of Lent, Let’s Talk Trinity.

And here is why I think “Talking Trinity” might be helpful. Because we need to face the facts: Jesus has officially been confiscated. His teachings have been twisted by corrupt politicians and wayward religious leaders with the result that there is an enormous amount of errant teaching being attributed to him. Good people (especially young people) immediately recognize questionable integrity and statements void of truth – even (and maybe especially) those that are spoken by our so-called “leaders” who profess to believe and serve Jesus.

As a result, even the utterance of the name “Jesus” in any public forum is often received with disdain; perceived by most as distasteful and inappropriate; sometimes even more offensive than the strongest of curse words. Even I – your Director of Religious Education – sometimes find discussion about “religion” repellant! Me!! Someone whose work it is to draw people together at church, finds talk of church off-putting! Quite a conundrum I’d say.

Case in point - the other night on my commute home I was flipping through the radio stations and landed on the judgmental churchy jargon of some evangelist and seriously, it turned my stomach. It made me want to run as fast as I possibly could in the other direction from the “Jesus” he was laying down. The dominant “Jesus and Me” theology is ideal for the children in our atria but is woefully inadequate for the challenges that we are facing as adults in our society. Even the most nominal believer recognizes how this theology can arrest our development and lead us in the wrong direction; away from effective collaboration as the body of Christ toward more isolation…away from respectful dialogue and toward more individual opinions and ideology…in essence away from the mystery of the “God who in Godself is a community of persons” to the impossible task of being a Christian alone.

In short - Jesus, a hero by any measure (even for those who do not recognize him as God), is badly in need of a new Public Relations manager. The true beauty and force of his teaching is either being romanticized, tamed and individualized to the point where it has no punch OR being blatantly misrepresented and misappropriated in today’s sometimes vacuous culture of tidal-wave force.

Perhaps the seed of well-received discussion about Jesus has died. And maybe, just maybe, God wants to grow something new from the death of this seed. At the very least, I think we need a little subterfuge. So this week I have outlined some of our challenges, but in the weeks to come I hope we can explore together some possible avenues that can lead to more fruitful dialogue about where God may be drawing us and inviting us to grow.

Respectfully submitted by Lisa Brown, comments welcome at dre@ctredeemer.org.

#130 - Resolutions

So, how are your New Year’s Resolutions going so far?
Well, like many of you perhaps, I have good days and bad days. I start the year with great hope and enthusiasm that inevitably gets tempered by the realities and demands of daily life. Luckily, we all get a second chance for a sincere metanoia since Lent is right around the corner! So, perhaps we can sit down with our families in the next week or so (Ash Weds is Feb. 14th) and discuss how we might live out these spiritual resolutions below in a concrete way during our sacred season of Lent.

1. I will live in the present moment. I will not obsess about the past or worry about the future.

2. I will cultivate the art of making connections. I will pay attention to how my life is intimately related to all life on the planet.

3. I will be thankful for all the blessings in my life. I will spell out my days with a grammar of gratitude.

4. I will practice hospitality in a world where too often strangers are feared, enemies are hated, and the "other" is shunned. I will welcome guests and alien ideas with graciousness.

5. I will seek liberty and justice for all. I will work for a free and a fair world.

6. I will add to the planet's fund of good will by practicing little acts of kindness, brief words of encouragement, and manifold expressions of courtesy.

7. I will cultivate the skill of deep listening. I will remember that all things in the world want to be heard, as do the many voices inside me.

8. I will practice reverence for life by seeing the sacred in, with, and under all things of the world.

9. I will give up trying to hide, deny, or escape from my imperfections. I will listen to what my shadow side has to say to me.

10. I will be willing to learn from the spiritual teachers all around me, however unlikely or unlike me they may be.

* Taken from New Year's Resolutions based on spiritual practices in the Alphabet of Spiritual Literacy by Frederic & Mary Ann Brussat: www.spiritualityandpractice.com/practices/alphabet.

#129 - Nassar

What can I do to help protect children from the likes of the Larry Nassar’s of this world?
As a mother of three daughters, in the wake of the Larry Nassar sentencing and having listened to all the tragic, emotional testimonies of the beautiful, courageous women whose lives he impacted, I want to compel every member of our community, especially our parents, to consider participating in a couple timely, informative and relevant programs coming up here at CTR.

In the United States 1 out of 4 girls/women and 1 out of 7 boys/men are victims of sexual predators. The first step in lowering these appalling statistics is by becoming informed and aware ourselves.

The Catholic Church is, of course, no stranger to sexual scandals. In fact, the failure of our own leaders to protect the children in our care was one of the first big cover ups to come to public light. If you haven’t seen the movie Spotlight yet (which won the best picture Oscar in 2016), do. It is an important film about our own dark history that helps raise awareness of the insidious ways we sometimes unwittingly participate in systemic failure and abuse of power that can lead to such unfathomable tragedy.

Since the time of our own scandals, the Catholic church, to our credit, has lead the way in the research, development and prolific offering of some stellar, free programs that provide top notch guidance in how we can work together to keep our children safe from harm. Here are some that are coming up in the next few weeks here at CTR:

Circle of Grace

Sunday, Feb. 25th all are welcome to join us for a quick 20-minute presentation on safe environments and right relationships that will serve as an introduction to the curriculum being presented to our children at our March Faith Formation classes as required by the Archdiocese of Detroit. Some great safety tips, signs to look for and very helpful resources will be shared. Anyone who cares about children and/or has young people in their lives can benefit from this short course. No RSVP necessary. Just grab a donut, some coffee and join us after Mass in the chapel.

Called to Serve
This interactive safe environment training program designed for teens grades 9-12 will be held here at CTR on Sunday, April 15th from 1PM-4PM. The important information shared is empowering and absolutely essential to every young person in our community. It is an Archdiocesan requirement for all our teens who volunteer with children in our parish. Please register with Lisa Andridge at highschool@ctredeemer.org.

Protecting God's Children
This safe environment training program for adults will be held here at CTR on Saturday, March 3rd from 1PM—4PM. The Archdiocese requires that ALL of our adult volunteers who work with children attend this workshop which alerts adults to signs of child abuse but, more importantly, offers a variety of ways to ensure the safety of our children. It is an excellent program which ALL the adults in our community could benefit from. The kindness of an RSVP is requested to Gabriela at eduadmin@ctredeemer.org.

For both Called to Serve and Protecting God's Children we bring in (in mine and many other people’s opinion) THE best local presenter, Michelle Pittel, who works with teens at Notre Dame Prep. All participants WILL leave enlightened and informed. The three hours with Michelle truly flies by. This workshop is time well spent, not only for the good of our parish, but for the safety of ALL children in our lives.

These programs grew out of our own great failure. Let’s do our due diligence as a community to inform ourselves so we can be protectors and advocates for our children and work together to put an end to the horrors such as our own church scandals and those propagated by Nassar and others who pose a threat to our most precious gift; our children.

Send your "Crazy Catholic Questions" Lisa Brown at dre@ctredeemer.org or read past columns at: http://crazycatholicquestions.blogspot.com.