Reflecting upon my short life thus far, I imagined what I would have to say about it, were it to end today (I know, I know. Typical "Melancholic Maria" moment). This is my attempt to express what I have concluded.




Almost nothing good has come easily, except the most wonderful and mysterious gifts. Every inch of the way has been a struggle, and the extent of progression is not prodigious. But examining myself and my life with my most critical eye, I can honestly say that I never slacked off, and I always tried my hardest to do the right thing in every circumstance. I have never chosen something I believed was a neccessary evil. I have never admitted that there was any such thing as a neccessary evil. I have never compromised my principles. I have always been truthful to others and especially tried to be so toward myself. I have never hated anybody in my life and have never intended harm upon anyone. As for the gifts given me, I can unequivocally say that I did nothing to deserve them, especially my friends and my sisters and brothers. As for the enemies I have made, I can honestly look into my conscience and their wrath and maltreatment and say that I have done nothing to merit that in them either.



I have discerned that although the list of things that I want to change about myself or improve in myself seems to lengthen each year, although I don't believe I will ever feel quite at home in this life and this world, or will ever understand why I was placed here by God, or even concieved of, in His Mind, for that matter, I can go on living with the mystery. I can forgive myself for having lived this life, because it is not really a small life, although it looks that way, to skeptics. I have decided to stop being a skeptic.



I also admit that in my life, I have been unforgiving, hardhearted and acted solely out of anger to one person only, and that person was myself. While in previous years, I was tempted to consider this of little importance, (because it was only myself, after all, who was hurting) I have decided now that that was at the root of every mistake I have ever made and that if left unchecked it could subvert everything good that I wanted toward everything that I love and every goal for which I have worked. Ironically, I seem to be the only person in the world that I would not hug if he needed it. Osama Bin Laden, Larry Flynt, Hugh Hefner, Nancy Pelosi, Josef Stalin, Margaret Sanger, Vlad the Terrible, Genghis Khan, anyone else, just not me. It seems that in my own past esteem I am only person whose suffering merited indifference. I have now decided that this is not true, that no human being should be hated, not even myself.



So while my list of things I could resolve upon this year are seemingly endless (Get a better job, make more money, be able to afford a doctor and dentist visit, smile more, get more books, make more friends, slim down, get more organized, be more tenacious about what you want, grow in wisdom, sing in church again, pray with more order and consistency and fervor, get married, have kids, get a new hair-do, learn to sew, learn how to cook chicken cordon-bleu...) I have decided that the most important resolution of all, is the one that is the most difficult for me: to hope.



Because my hope has always been hampered by my inability to accept what I do not understand, my inability to forgive myself for my failings, and my lack of emotional conviction that God loves me or truly has a part for me in His plan that is important. Yet, this is precisely the most important thing to believe. It is the grace granted us in absolution in the sacrament of penance, in the mystical union with Christ in the Eucharist, in the miraculous gift of life itself. Hope is not a virtue that comes naturally for me (or for anyone for that matter). That is why it is called a theological, an infused, supernatural virtue.



So, this new resolution comes with the truth that this gift, this very resolution, must be prayed for, and accepted as yet another gift from God. The gift of hope in His goodness and His mery and His love, is my central and principle desire for myself this year. As with all other self-imposed commandments that mark each new year with every person, though one tends to think of it as something that one must hold oneself to by sheer will-power, we secretly know that what we call "resolutions" are actually prayers, for ourselves, to the God that gave us that will and that mind with which to say, "This year, I resolve..."

Today's reading

Advent Meditations (continued)

So the world had no place in their rooms for Jesus that night he was born. The only people who knew or cared about Jesus was a troop of shepherds, young poor boys mostly, who already in the fields that night. Even they needed an angelic invitation. Even the wise men came afterward and looked in the wrong place first. They looked for the King of Heaven in a worldly palace in a big royal city. The surprise of where the royal child actually was born was like the contrast between finding him in Front Royal instead of Washigton D.C. And in a stable?

I once slept in a barn. It was partly to see if I could do it. Partly it was because the group leader had not planned on it being so cold that night. I had one blanket and no pillow. I did not sleep in a plie of straw, I slept on the the cold, hard wooden planks of the floor. Even with the barn door shut, it was so cold it was very difficult to fall asleep. It was a cold autumn night. As I laid there, trying to unclench my stiff, cold shoulders and find a comfortable position on the cold wooden floor, with the cold air coming right through the thin barn walls, my fingers trembled and my teeth chattered.
I could not help but think of poor mother Mary and St. Joseph and Baby Jesus. It was winter and they had to sleep in a stable. They probably did not have a lot of blankets and pillows. Baby Jesus was swaddled up and laid in a feeding trough. Poor mother Mary just slept in some straw on the cold ground, probably, with one blanket. She was probably just as cold and much more tired than I was that night. She probably awoke the next morning so stiff that she could barely move at first. Poor St. Joseph probably could not even get up his muscels were so sore.
Then, after the wisemen came and went, St. Joseph had to pack up the donkey and wake Mary up in the middle of the night and sneak out of Bethlehem by a hidden trail toward Egypt, avoiding the main roads. Why? Because the world had now discovered them, and the world was after the life of the Child. No sooner had the world discovered the importance of the obscure Galilean carpenter, and the ordinary teenaged girl and her baby, then they were in danger. An evil King tried to kill the Son of God who came into the world to save the world from its sins.

I have taught catechism to so many children. Some of them did not ever hear about that dark night, when Josephy packed up the donkey and stole out of the town with Mary and Jesus, looking over his shoulder watching for Herod's soldiers to come down the road and discover them. Jesus was not yet a year on this earth and already martyr's blood of innocent babies was being shed. Our Poor Blessed Lady was all the while, holding baby Jesus and running for His life, unable to fathom how anybody would want to kill her baby. And the women of Bethlehem wept for their children. Some eight or nine year olds have found out that tale and asked me, "Why did the King try to kill baby Jesus? Why did the soldiers obey the evil order of the evil King and kill all those one year old and two year old infants? Why did poor baby Jesus not even get to stay hidden in the manger bed?"

And some of the older children piped in, "The evil King wanted to be the only King, he was jealous." But the younger ones still shook their heads in confusion. I answered, "The Bible gives no explanation as to why King Herod was so determined to kill this infant that he slaughtered all of the male infants in Bathlehem up to the age of two. History knows that Herod was an evil murderer and a madman. But the truth, is, there is no explanation. There is never a true understandable explanation for that kind of evil. That is why we call it evil."

This Advent, now that Our Lord has shed his last drop of blood and saved the world, what will the spirit of world do this Advent. Hang up decorations and sell "X-mas" gifts before Thanksgiving and claim to do this for "Christmas", put up buffoonish images of a Catholic Saint, yell at people at WalMart on "Black Friday", say "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" avoid putting up any Nativity sets or anything that reminds them of Christ. In this meaningless materialistic charade, do we let our doors open to Our Blessed Lady and Baby Jesus, or do we shut it in his face? Do we find the time to ask God therough prayer and vigilance to come into our hearts this Christmas season or do we "Not have room" for him and send him away? Are we like the shepherds who visited him in our poverty, or like the wise men who gave him gifts of our wealth and give Him supreme honor, or like the angels who sing and give glory to him, like St. Joseph who was so strong for Christ, or like our Lady who trusted God in everything and loved Him best? Or are we like the rest of the people who ignored him or like the evil King and his soldiers who are murdering our brothers and sisters and their children? Are the innocent not being slaughtered around us? God help us and have mercy on us and on the whole world.

Some Advent Meditations

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AMDG

Last night I was working on a party poster for Baby Jesus. It says, "Happy Birthday Jesus" on it, with pictures of Mary and Joseph and Baby Jesus in utero going through Bethlehem, trying to find lodging for the night, going from inn to inn, seeing people sleeping in the streets or around campfires, then finally getting directions outside the walls of the town to some caves used by cattledrivers and shepherds.

I have a Mexican grandmother and one of my favorite Christmas traditions is La Posadas.
In this tradition, children carry statues of Joseph and Mary on the donkey, or sometimes they dress up for the parts, and go from house to house in the neighborhood. Now, only one house, at the end of their nights journey lets them in, and then there is a fiesta inside, but every single other house turns them away, with any number of excuses (all scripted of course) "We can't be bothered, go away" "We are all full up" "No room!" "Let us go to sleep in peace!"
It is a very beautiful tradition and I have often been struck by how apt it is for our culture today.

Now, as I draw my specualtive imaginings of the characters who turned away Joseph and Mary and Baby Jesus on that fateful night, I wonder as I wondered over and over again when I was a child, "How could anybody turn a desperate man, and a pregnant teenager and the unborn child out to be born in the streets late on a cold winter night? How could anybody do that to anybody? Let alone to the Son of God who came to save you from your sins!" I think about the man or woman or men and women that night who ignored Our Lord and Our Lady and St. Joseph that night. How did they rationalize it to themselves? How did they sleep that night? They might have ignored St. Josephs pleas that they open their doors to them because it was getting late at night and they were afraid. It is not impossible that every inn in the town was full because of the choas and unexpected flooding of the city caused by the census. Maybe there really was no bed in the house to spare for the poor thirteen or fourteen year old girl about to give birth. But really, really no room? I have slept for several months on somebody's couch, that was a LOT better than being out in the middle of the night. I have slept on a narrow wooden pew in a chapel, and that was a lot better than being out in the dark, alone. When I was growing up I once had to share one room with all eight of my siblings. There were three bunkbeds, all in a row, and one crib for the baby. Sometimes my mother joined us because she was scared of my Dad. My dad had converted one room in the house and the garage to store arcade video games that his warehouse could not fit. So there we were, my mother in one narrow bunk, the baby in the crib, three skinny kids in one bunk, two more on another bottom bunk, two more on the top bunk. As squished as we all were and as hard as it was to sleep with one bed-mate always hogging the blankets or peeing in the sheets, my mother used to say, "Count your blessings, Mary and Joseph and Baby Jesus in Bethlehem were not even given THIS!" As callous as it was of her to say, it was true. Nobody in Bethlehem gave even that much space in their inn to Mary and Josephy and Baby Jesus.

Sometimes, at Advent and Christmas, I think the cute little fontanini nativity sets or Chruch cribs can be a little misleading to kids. The manger bad looks cozy, Our Lady's highly romanticized outfit is usually trimmed with gold thread and looks silken, not a blonde hair out of place. St. Joseph usually looks far too old for anybody to believe that he has built tables and chairs with his big, strong carpenter's hands and dragged a stubborn mule up over mountains and hills and across deserts to get from Nazareth to Bethlehem and soon will again, all the way to Egypt. Baby Jesus is smiling and stretching out his arms in his cute chubby naked infant glory.

It is all true, do not get me wrong. It represents his kingship, even in his poverty. All I am trying to say is, before the Glorias and Angels and Star of Bethlehen and shepherds and magi and gold, frankinscence and myrhh; Joseph and Mary and Baby Jesus suffered rejection and pain from the world. "He came into the world and the world did not know him" It still does not know him.

Our Lady did not look like a silk-bedecked version of a blonde fifties pin-up girl or a modest version of somebody on a magazine cover. She looked like a fourteen year old girl, because she was one. She looked Jewish. Because she was a jew. She probably did not have tweezed eyebrows, and glistening, silky hair after her long trip, or a flawless complexion. When was the last time you saw a fourteen year old girl with no acne? She probably did not have perfectly symmetrical features either. She was nine months pregnant, that means that after she gave birth she probably did not have the tiny waitline that she is typically depicted with. Do not misunderstand me, I do believe that the Blessed Virgin Mary was the most beautiful women in the world. I do not believe that the world recognized the most beautiful woman ever created. If she had looked like Marilyn Monroe, the world would have noticed her and given her a corner in their house on the floor to have her baby on. She did not.
The most beautiful woman ever created by God was a fourteen year old Jewess girl, with Galilean features, nine-months pregnant, with messy, wind swept, unwashed dark hair under a coarse veil, wearing loose heavy garments for the cold and for maternity, with unbrushed teeth, untweezed eyebrows, a sweating brow, a galilean accent and tired, but beautiful, oh so beautiful dark eyes. The most innocent, loving, couragous eyes any woman has ever had on this earth. But nobody except St. Jospeh looked into her eyes when she arrived at Bethlehem. They just saw an ordinary girl. Just another pregnant wife and mother. Another one of those pesky travellors passing through town for the census. So they turned her and baby Jesus away. He was just another unborn baby. (To be continued)

On Advent dread, anticipation, and the will to hope

The Holy Season of Advent has always been one of mixed feelings for me. In my spiritual life, I try to keep it to the front of my mind, preparing myself for the miracle of Christmas, when God sent His only begotten Son to die for my sins.

In my emotional self-survival tense, I usually try to shove to the back of my mind the fact that my heart shall soon have to endure the bitterness of another Christmas.

Normal people from happy families will not understand me because for them Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year. They are another part of the problem.

"Maria, are you going to see your family this Christmas?" they ask, all good will and pleasantness.

"Yes," I reply.

"How long has it been since you have last been with them?"

"Several years" I answer all coolness and detachment.

"Well then you must be so excited to see them again!"

"Well...I am looking forward to seeing a handful of my siblings. A few of my siblings I always have to mentally prepare to be around. I suppose you could say that I am anxious to see them." Dark pun intended.

This is the part where the sweet happily married middle-aged mother of my friend starts to look at me as if I were the rich man in Scripture, who refused to let a beggar eat the scraps.

"But," she protests, "What about your parents! Your parents must miss you so much! You must be looking forward to seeing THEM!"

I chuckle darkly, and answer, "Yes, they miss me and they love me but I do not have much of a relationship with them. It is painful to be around them, so you can say fairly accurately that I am preparing to see them again."

The well-intentioned lady then starts to look at me as if I were the woman caught in adultery in the Gospels.

The reason why she does it understandable. You see, I am too honest to just pretend to be normal and answer that I can't WAIT to see my parents and they are so wonderful and I am so happy to be with them. No. I can never do that. But I also hold myself to a certain level of propriety and a party and conversation with the mother of one of my BFFs is just not the place to clarify and say,

"You don't understand, you are projecting your own good nature onto my parents and asking yourself how you would feel if your daughter talked this cooly about not seeing her parents for years. My parents do not love me that way. My mother loves me the way a two year old loves a teddy bear. She squeezes it until the stuffing falls off and cries over it, and gurgles terms of endearment to it, then throws it against the wall in a fit at a minute's notice. My father loves me with the obsessive, grasping, controlling desire to possess and own that a rapist feels toward the one woman he has hunted down who has escaped him. Except that he wants to grasp and pummel, disease and impregnate my mind and heart, not my body."

No, I am not telling her that over cocktails, thank you.
So this is the part that the lady says,

"Well, you should talk to your parents. All families have problems. But your parents love you."

"Please do not tell me what I should do. I know what I must do. You do not know my parents. I love them, but I don't trust them."

"How do you possibly love somebody when you don't trust them?!"

"Very painfully."

At this point the nice lady starts to look at me as though I were a leper.
She does not know that I was a leper before, but the Christ touched, as He did in the Gospels and now I am clean.

At this point I tell her that I am planning to see them but to please not discuss this topic any further. I should have said that a long time ago. But I know that if I had she would have stared at me as if I were the walking, decaying body of Lazarus in the Gospels.

That would be fairly accurate though, I was a corpse. I still have to heal. But Christ ordered the stone to be removed, so that I would not be trapped. Then, when I still felt too weak to escape the living death, He called out to me in a loud voice to come out. Then I got up and walked out.

Now I know that He is the resurrection and the life, and if I believe in Him, I shall never die.

This is where I recieve my joy from Christmas. From the Christ child. From the God who saved me and is still strengthening me through the path He has paved for me. His great love for me is what gives me joy at Christmas. He deigned to take on my human nature and be born in a stable, to take my sins and the sins of the world on His shoulders. He came to free the captives, to give sight to the blind, to raise the dead. I was a captive, now I am free. I was born blind into a blind world, parented by blind men, and he gave me my vision. My heart was dead and he revived it.

Now, with the vision of the manger and the cross before me, I can go toward this Christmas with all the loneliness and cruelty and pain that will accompany it, and hear not the ache of my heart, nor the silence of my father, nor the screeching of my mother, but the laughter of the baby at Bethlehem saying to me. "I am with you. You still have me. Family may forsake you, you may have no money to buy your friends gifts, but I have come into the world and I will come again. You are mine and I love you. Do not be afraid, Maria. I am with you every day, until the end of time."

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The difference between "What would Jesus do" and what Jesus actually did do

Last night, I was talking to an well-meaning but misguided relative who shall not be named.

She was trying to convince me to reunite with and "reconcile" with my abusive father.

Yes, now it is out in the bloggersphere, for good or for ill. When I was a little girl
my Dad had odd hobbies for his liesure time...like taking nursing infants out of my mother's arms and hitting her then driving away with the baby to show her that he was in control.

My messed-up childhood aside, the point of the matter is, that while this well-intentioned relative was trying to convince me that I was abandoning and rejecting my father by not calling him or talking to him all those years, she kept blindly saying; "What would Jesus do? Would Jesus abandon him like this?"

I always try to follow the example of Christ, but there are many things that I know that I can not do for the simple reason that I am NOT Jesus Christ, the Son of God mad Man who came into the world to free us from our sins. I am Maria...child of God, member of the Mystical Bride of Christ, friend of Jesus Christ, redeemed by His blood.

There are many things that Christ did and does that I try to do in my life and encourage others to do. For example, Jesus fed the hungry, healed the sick, and gave hope to the hopeless. What does that mean for me? That I should give food when I have it to the hungry? Okay, I will put money in the donation box, donate to the food drive, cook my tired friend a meal, spot her/his dinner check when they can't afford it. Heal the sick?
Okay, I'll drive a sick friend to the hospital, make her some medicinal tea, give him my asparin, make them some of my famous homemade chicken soup (that will grow back a leg!).
Give hope and comfort? Grieve with those who are mourning, offer sympathy. This last one is the easiest of all and the one that is in my experience, the most generally neglected by people.

What else did Jesus do? Oh yeah...He died on the cross for our sins. Allowed Himself to be beaten, crowned with thorns, hammered with nails and speared through the heart. He gave us His flesh to eat and His blood to drink. He commanded people to name Him as God. He insisted that He was God.


So, obviously that means that I need to find somebody (maybe my Dad or Mom) and let them beat me with whips, put a crown of thorns on my head, nail me to a cross and then spear me through my heart. Then I need to give them my flesh to eat and my blood to drink. Then I tell my friends not to cry because I am God. (This is the part where you smarter readers start to say, "Wait...what?")

Do you start to see my point? When Jesus told us to follow His example, He never meant by that that we should pretend to be God. God heals the broken hearted, God gives direction to the lost, God chases endlessly after the people who endlessly reject Him because He has a heart that He ALLOWS to be broken SO MANY TIMES BY SO MANY PEOPLE because He has an INFINITE HEART to let them break. I don't. This might come as a surprise, but I AM NOT GOD!

I have a very small, very human heart that I have given to God and to the church, such as it is. Jesus would never tell a crying child or a battered woman to go back to the person who had done that to them and let them keep doing it. Jesus gave comfort to the afflicted and protected the innocent against injustice. In fact, he had some very strong words to say towards people like my Dad.

If I were to take this relative's advice literally, and do what Jesus did, this is what would happen. I would chase my Dad out of the vestibule of his church hitting him repeatedly with a whip made out of cords, saying, "SERPENT! HYPOCRITE!" (yes, Jesus did do that) I would chase after my Dad and say, "RETURN! RETURN O ISRAEL! YOU HAVE MADE YOURSELF A HARLOT!" (Yes, Jesus quoted His Dad on that.) After that, I would leave Him alone (Yes, Jesus actually DID DO what I am doing right now) and say "You shall not see me here again, not until you learn to cry, Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!"

I did not take a whip to my father, because I love him and do not want to hurt him. I have never called him names in my life (he has called me quite a few). I do not have the authority to do that, because I am not Jesus Christ. I did try when he kept saying he was sorry the first hundred times, try to believe him until he kept doing the same bad things again. I did finally say to my father, and I believe Jesus was with me and inspiring me when I did, "Very well. You have made the choice not to love me. I will accept your choice and leave you alone. You do not want reconciliation and forgiveness, you want to go on mistreating me. If you change your heart and mind, I have loved you every day or my life and have always been ready to forgive you."

Then I turned and left, and have not spoken to him in years. That is what I did, trying to do God's will. Sweet Jesus, take pity on me and on him.