Secret Prayers of Secret Prayers

     This afternoon I was at an electronics store with my son to get a new charger for his phone. He found one that had been marked down because it had been a returned item whose package had been opened. The price conveyed to the register by the UPC symbol had to be overwritten manually because it didn't reflect the marked-down price. The cashier was unable to do it and needed a supervisor to do it for him. He called his manager on the radio, asking him to come to the register to give him a hand. So we had to wait for Wes to come to the rescue.

     A couple of minutes passed by and – no Wes, whom the young man called again, apologizing to us for the delay. I indicated that it wasn't a problem; we were in no rush. Meanwhile a couple of other customers had gotten in line behind us. Eric and I continued to idly fidget, looking at the floor. Eric looked at the packaging of his new charger again. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other – something I need to do when I'm standing for very long at one time. I don't think the customers who'd gotten in line behind us had been there long enough yet to begin to get impatient.

     Apparently the young cashier had – or anticipated that I might – so he called Wes again. And we continued to wait. A little more time passed. Another customer got in line. It was becoming a little bit annoying now, but I knew the kid behind the counter had no control over the situation – and seemed to be more put out about it than I was. So I continued to be patient.

     Eventually, a good five minutes had gone by and my mind began to imagine what might be going on. Was Wes tied up with another customer? Was he on the john? Was there some major problem he had to deal with? After all, he was a manager and problems do come up, whether with a customer, an employee, whatever.

     Maybe because I was well beyond bored by this time, my mind really began to run wild. Had there been an accident? Maybe Wes had fallen off a ladder or slipped on a freshly mopped floor. Maybe such a thing had happened to one of his employees and Wes was out of touch because he was busy giving assistance. For whatever dumb reason – just in case – I said a little prayer for Wes. There was no discernible reason why, and I didn't know him from Adam. But I prayed for him all the same. Almost certain nothing was wrong, I prayed anyway that everything was okay for him.

     Half a minute later, he came strolling by, put a key in the register, hit a few buttons, solved the problem and left. The cashier finished the transaction and we were off.

     Now I'm sure none of this added up to anything – and for Wes, least of all, I presume. But it occurred to me that maybe – just maybe – there could have been something difficult going on in Wes's life at that moment. Something I'd never have reason to know about but which I was being led by God to pray for – not knowing the reason, but knowing that if there was one, that God knew the details.
      Now I seriously doubt that this is the case, but this strange little incident led me to consider the importance of being available. Of trying to keep the spiritual feelers out there, as it were. To try to at least be in a cogent enough frame of mind to be open to this kind of thing. Maybe it was a practice run for when I would be called upon to lend spiritual assistance to a stranger.
     On the other hand, maybe it was a teachable moment designed with me as the unwitting object. On any number of occasions, I've seen someone at a restaurant, on a bus – wherever – whom I've sensed could use a little prayer: a mother having trouble in public with her unruly kids; a person on the side of the road who'd had an accident or whom I saw talking to the police after apparently getting pulled over; maybe someone whose expression appears to betray that they were just having a bad day. And thinking about all this gives me pause to consider that perhaps this kind of anonymous prayer cover has been lofted my way a time or two by one of my fellow believers – maybe even a believer of a different faith. If this has ever happened, who knows what benefit I might have received from this little gift offering?
     And so, to all of you secret prayers of secret prayers, on behalf of your unknowing recipients, I say thank you. And please, if you will, keep paying it forward.

Meat or Be Meaten

I always welcome Lent with its theme of reflection and renewal. I think it good that we have this annual occasion to take stock of what and where we've been for the past year -- and being human, we can always see room for improvement. For whatever reason, I come into it this year with even a bit more enthusiasm than usual (check back with me in two weeks to see how well ol' Mr. Enthusiasm is doing.) I've lined up some daily devotional reading and a couple of other books that I hope to finish between now and Easter; over the coming weeks at church, I'll be going to some lecture and discussion groups pertaining to the season; I feel like I've generally got my brain screwed on right this year to make the greatest use of Lent that I reasonably can.

And then last night, just as I was turning in for bed, it dawned on me – a few hours earlier, I'd eaten meat on the first Friday of Lent. At which point I accosted myself, “Nice going, ya dope! Love that enthusiasm . . . dumbass!”

I hadn't even given it a thought.  Earlier in the week (and no, not on Ash Wednesday; I did refrain from eating meat then) I'd had some Hamburger Helper and, now that it was a few days old, I thought I'd better finish it off before crawly things began to colonize it. And so I did, not thinking anything more about it. Until I was about to go to bed. “Doh!”

To be honest with you, I've always been puzzled about the whole meatless thing. After all, Jesus tells us that it's what comes out of a man (lies, hatred, lustful thoughts, whatever) that defile him – not what goes into him. Essentially, he's admonishing the Jews to lighten up on the whole pork thing, and then our church turns around and creates something like it but with fish (at least on Fridays.)

Trying not to get too hung up on what I consider petty details, I've always gone along with it. If I'm going to reap the benefits of the church (the Eucharist, confession, the intercession of the saints, etc.) I can live with not eating meat on Fridays and certain other days during Lent. And I also always have to realize that maybe there's more to it than my meager understanding will allow me to digest. Besides, this has given me an excuse to take advantage of – at least once a year – the dangerously delicious heart-attack-on-a-platter that is Long John Silver's Fish and Fries. (Love those hushpuppies!)

I think that one benefit of refraining from meat on Fridays during Lent is the notion that, by doing so, it gives us pause to stop and think for a second that nothing we have – not even ourselves – would exist without the grace of God. The meager gesture of this partial fast is easy to make (although -- *ahem* -- easy to forget) but it more than rewards us by allowing us this reflection on the true nature of ourselves and of God. All of which reminds me: I haven't been to Long John's since last year. Hoo-hah!

The Medusa-Hair People of My Mind

     Many years ago while in college – and to be perfectly blunt – while in a state of mild quasi-acid flashback, I was walking down the street and imagined every person and thing I saw as existing in four dimensions. That is to say that, for instance, I imagined a woman walking across the street from me as a single organism stretching all the way back through every place she'd ever been, worm-like, to her mother's womb.

    Imagine a baby being born and existing all its days as one continuous life-form, living each moment through time and space while never losing its existence from the moment before. What you'd see in this weird conception are organisms that resemble something like vines, wending from place to place through every experience of their lives but never losing their physical existence from the moment before.

    A poor, but accurate, representation of what I'm talking about is the following:  Imagine a dash (-) as a human being. What I'm trying to convey is that I imagined the woman not as a dash (-), but as a line (----------), stretching (again, from her mother's womb) twenty-some-odd years to the very moment I saw her walking past a shop with a bag of groceries in her arms. In this conception, the whole of humanity would appear – not as a horde of single, isolated individuals – but as a tangle of vine-like creatures covering the earth.

     I've thought about this experience many times over the years, but never figured out what, if any, truth it might convey. Maybe it doesn't convey anything but the odd imagination of a kid who probably spent too much time smoking dope when he should have been studying. But still, I've always wondered what I had stumbled upon in these musings and am no less intrigued by it now than I was then.

     I just started reading Father Robert Barron's book, Catholicism: A Journey to the Heart of the Faith. In the introduction to the book he says something that brought this weird thought back to my mind:

      “Essential to the Catholic mind is what I would characterize as a keen sense of the prolongation of the Incarnation throughout space and time, an extension that is made possible through the mystery of the church.”

      What Fr. Barron is getting at is the fact that Jesus' once and for all-time sacrifice continues to live today. Not that the church re-crucifies Jesus at every mass. It doesn't. But the loving gesture of the act of submitting to that terrible ordeal is eternal and immutable. The sacrifice Jesus made was at the same time “one and done” (it happened once and will never happen again) and yet continues to live in the form of his love for us that brought him to his sacrifice in the first place.  It radiates out to us, the happy receivers, through space and time.

     The church, as Fr. Barron says – and as the church itself has always held – is something like a living organism that continues to exist, its purpose to carry the flame of that sacrifice through all time and to as many places as possible. The church is far from being the source of the flame. Rather, its whole reason for being is to tend to it and to continually renew the promise that God entrusted to it by giving it to her.

     Looking at the church from the long view of its 2,000-year history, one will see a vine replete with scars and foul infestations manifested by the sins of her children over the years. The Catholic who believes the church is free from sin simply isn't paying attention – or is denying reality. But if one takes into account the horrors of things like the Crusades, the Inquisition and the sexual abuse of minors by priests that are still so much in the news today, one must accept the fact that there has been much about our church that has been defiled by sin.

     And yet, the truth is that it isn't the church, but the people who populate it who've caused all the trouble. Fr. So-and-So diddling an altar boy doesn't obviate the truth that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior. It just renders his promise less effective – or ineffective – to those who can't square salvation with the reality of such horrors. And can you really blame them? Can you call them condemned for denying the reality of Christ when confronted with the sins of his followers? (Hint: one of the chief sins Jesus preached against was the judgment of others. So don't even go there.)

      I've got another blog called “Clutterjam.” I've failed over the years to do much with it and I think part of the reason has been that I've never quite known what it is or what it should be. Sometimes I just talk about stuff, but I also have a very important spiritual side to myself. I'm not always sure that topics on that subject are “appropriate,” for lack of a better term. It's as if there are two different audiences out there, some of whom may not care for or prosper from my spiritual musings, and others who might.

     So I've created a second blog which I've dubbed “Clutterbread.” It's meant to be a place where I can muse on spiritual matters without worrying about the prospect of offending – or more importantly – boring people with my observations, rants, etc.

     Like one of my heroes, C.S. Lewis, I make no effort to hide my own position. I'm an ordinary layman of the Catholic church who still has problems with some of the details. For instance, I don't understand the apparent contradiction of meatless Fridays in a church whose founder said that it's what comes out of man that defiles him – not what goes into him. I'm also not wild about -- nor do I completely understand the purpose of – the new translation of the Catholic mass. (I suppose that'll be the subject of some future entry.)  Anyway, I do have a certain level of devoutness on my better days, though I'm not on board culturally with a lot of my fellow Catholics. I'm still trying to sort all of that out and, for what it's worth, anticipate mulling a lot of it over in this space. 

 

      I've only just created Clutterbread and am admittedly pretty obtuse when it comes to manipulating the magic that is the worldwide web. (Is that where the prefix “www.” comes from? I'd never thought of that til this moment. Hah!) I've made an initial exploration of the properties of this blogsite, Google's “Blogger.” (Clutterjam is done through livejournal.com) My expectation was that it would be simple to create on each site a link to the other so that the interested (merely a theoretical prospect at this point) could easily go from one to the other. But this didn't prove to be such an effortless task after all. I'll look into it.

     We'll see whether this bifurcation of my interests provides any assistance to the sorting out of the thoughts therein, but I do want to point out something for the record: I want visitors to Clutterjam to be able to easily access Clutterbread. I'm not conducting this segregation experiment, as it were, to hide my religious beliefs from readers. To the contrary, I'm proud of my faith and think I even have a thing or two worth saying about it. More than anything else, I've created the second site to help my meager brain focus on the particular topic that may be at hand. It's actually very important to me that those who might care to, have access to my thoughts. Why the hell else do people blog in the first place?

Happy Meatless Friday,

je