Above all, trust in the slow work of God We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability - and that it may take a very long time.
And so i think it is with you. Your ideas mature gradually - let them grow, let them shape themselves, without undue haste. Don't try to force them on, as though you could be today what time (that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will) will make of you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be. Give Our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.
Even for someone as prone to tears as I am, I know I have finished a good biography if I cry at the end when the subject dies. The last book that moved me like that was Christophe Wolfe’s biography of J. S. Bach, and it goes without saying that I knew what was coming in the end. “Winston & Franklin” on the other hand, made me eager for the demise of both protagonists. Last night I got misty reading the end of Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Life by Paul Mariani. I’ve always admired Hopkins’ poetry (and Mariani’s, for that matter) but had only a passing familiarity with the circumstances of his life - I knew he was a convert, a Jesuit, lived throughout Great Britain, died young, achieved no literary fame in his lifetime.
On the other side of having read this biography, that’s still the story. I now have a greater understanding of his trademark sprung rhythm, a term for which I’d only had cocktail-party level comprehension. New Hopkinsian terms like inscape and instress have worked their way into my vocabulary and will likely disappear once I’m off what promises to be a “Hopkins kick” and have moved on to another temporary obsession.
Every biographer is going to focus on one element or another of a subject’s life, and throughout much of this book we read about Hopkins desire for sacrifice - he sacrifices reputation and relationship to ‘swim the Tiber’, he sacrifices his writing and creativity seeking obedience to his order, and he sacrifices much of his health in that same spirit of obedience. From what I know of Mariani’s other writing, the biographer has undertaken spiritual journeys of his own, including the Spiritual Exercises. The knowledge, both intellectual and spiritual, of Hopkins’ Catholic (and Jesuit) world makes all the difference in his writing about the poet. I imagine it is hard to write about a man who punished himself too much - who probably took himself too seriously - while loving and respecting the man and his actions. Mariani never laughs at or dismisses Hopkins’ deep desire for sacrifice or communion with God.
What I do is me, for that I came. I know I’m not the only person for whom that is one of Hopkins’ most memorable lines. My little liturgist rises up at this affirmation that what we do matters - not what we think, or believe, or intend, or someday might do.
I realized about 2/3 of the way through the book that I was basically reading from poem to poem. Though I gave attention to and was interested in the circumstances of his life, all the while I was measuring out Hopkins’ life in sonnets. I turned each page hoping to see more of his familiar poetry, accompanied by the circumstances of its writing and by Mariani’s unparalleled insights on its inspiration. But would the poet have read his own life the same way? Would he have agreed with posterity on the reason for which he came?
What I do is me, for that I came. We can think we know what it is we do, for what it is we come, but perhaps like our friend Gerard that which survives of us won’t resemble our dreams and intentions. Knowing the future’s uncertainty what else can we do other than catch fire, draw flame, keep grace, offer ourselves over to God and to each other? Perhaps Hopkins would have been even more prolific, more genius (is that a possibility?) had he not indulged his religious scruples. But the brilliance that we have from him was born in that intersection of devastating sacrifice and creative indulgence. His reality - his ‘me’ - was the filthy manger in which his spark took flesh.
For that I came. The eager and inspired want to know what “that” is. It is music, it is sport, it is health, it is justice - we have ideas of our purpose and our end. Or maybe we don’t. Maybe we just slog through, with no sense of what makes us most ‘me’, what will survive, and what may reach beyond us across years to help others suss out dappled things, bright wings, God’s grandeur, our end.
Greetings from beautiful CT, where I am enjoying a few days off from work with the family.
Christmas was pretty standard. I sang a bunch of masses (including midnight, which at my home parish is really at midnight. It's not so bad that mass starts at midnight, but that it ends at 1. Every year during O Holy Night I amaze myself by popping out that B-flat at 12:45 in the morning), we saw my mom's family on Christmas Eve, and goofed off here on Christmas.
I began training today for my next half-marathon, which will be in March. This will be my 5th halffy.
I have been so lazy recently that I have nothing to say on either of my blogs. It's embarrassing.
Who am I kidding? I have been doing an obnoxious amount of soul-searching and will probably post some emo, intrusive bit of writing before you know it.
I got a Thanksgiving card from my aunt and for once I took the time to read it well. She rarely does more than sign her name so I don't often give them much scrutiny. On the very top of the front was printed "Today, do what you love".
I do what I love every day. I work myself into the ground because there is nothing I can bring myself to give up, be it conducting, singing, catechizing, coaching, administrating, working with middle-schoolers, high-schoolers, college kids, opera singers. By that mystical combination of hard work and indescribable good fortune I do what I want. What a blessing.
good heavens, i bitch and complain relentlessly about any number of things. I feel so deeply that when I am angry or annoyed, boy, am I angry (or annoyed). But I wouldn't trade any of it because when I love, I love. More often than not I am so full of love for every one that I feel like I could throw up. For all of my frustrations I can't help but agree with Genesis and with the God who proclaims that It Was (and Is) Good.
"Many see, with alarm and distress fast deepening into silent despair, religious faith in themselves and others fading into a dim uncertainty as to everything beyond the world of sense. These men are skeptics, involuntary skeptics, as to everything. They would believe in God, but they find only a possibility of his existence in physical science, and his alleged revelation as doubtful for critics as himself; they would believe in their own immortality, but they can only hope it is real; they feel, too clearly for their happiness, that with the fundamental doctrines of Christianity they give up the quickening spirit of modern civilization, but the light which shows the abyss at whose brink they stand reveals no way of escape. They have seen the religions they may still formally profess, qualify and make meaningless one tenet after another, concede this point, silently abandon that, try vainly to compromise over and over again with a constantly advancing spirit of materialism and negation, until the very idea that there be any fixed, immutable relgious truth, has become strange to them. And, while they have lost so much, they have gained nothing".
Some of you guys write things that simply blow my mind, leaving me alternately breathless and teary. You are such good writers with such fascinating lives. I am in awe of many of you this morning.
At the gym today I was lifting with my headphones on and watching folks in the mirror, which makes one feel like a detached observer if anything does. I was thinking about the fact that I always reuse the same paper towel to wipe down my equipment because it produces less waste which really matters to me, even if it is just a little thing.
Sometimes I feel silly about those little things, recycling candy wrappers and the lids to iced coffee cups, using cloth napkins and repairing shoes. For whatever reason this is important, and I want to consume less and leave less behind. As I thought to myself at the gym, I want to leave less of a mark.
But aren't we supposed to want to leave a mark? I thought to myself as I rested between sets. I looked around at the action swirling around me and realized once again that I just don't matter. A gazillion people were on this earth before me, and a gazillion will be there after I'm gone, and I better just leave enough for them to get by, because my needs, my wants, my life, is pretty darn insignificant.
I truly believe that, but at the same time I believe in a God that counts every hair on our heads, who knows each of us. I believe in the fundamental dignity of each human person. I believe that every person in that gym with me is a universe unto themselves, and that they are worthy of care and love and peace.
People always joke about my ministry program's motto being "both/and", but I think the deeper you get into the study of theology or even just the honest observation of life, the more comfortable you become with holding the contradictions. We matter...but we don't.
Between vigil masses and midnight mass last night I drove to the other side of Hartford (sounds ominous!) to my mother's family's annual Christmas Eve gathering. My oldest uncle is 72, and my youngest cousin-once-removed is in kindergarten, and they were both there, along with most of my aunts, uncles, cousins, and cousins' kids.
The last time we were all together was at my bro's graduation party last summer, which my parents hosted out in our big backyard. My uncles told LB they wanted him to graduate again this year so that we could have another party.
I don't take for granted that my family all likes to get together, and neither does my mother. So we will have another big party this summer. My mother determined that in 2008 two of my aunts will turn 70, she will turn 60, one aunt/uncle pair will have a 50th anniversary, my cousin will turn 40, LB will be 20, and a cousin's daughter will be 10. Mom thinks that is plenty reason to have a party.
Midnight mass was fine and I wasn't as tired as usual. I sang O Holy Night after communion - it is nice to sing a song that uses some of the skills that I work on with my teacher and that shows (at least to me) the vocal progress I make from year to year. I sang quite well - the held notes above the staff were vibrant and overtone-y, and the B-flat was in a resonant spot I only discovered the last few months. People were really moved, which is rewarding, although I admit I wasted a few minutes after mass indulgently lamenting that my lot in life is to work really hard to create transcendant moments for other people. What a jerky thing to think.
But then I remembered the moment after the fractioning rite, when I kneeled at the altar with the other ministers as the choir began their song. I was with people who have known me literally since I was born, and the sacrifice of the Second Person of the Trinity was being made manifest up on the altar while the choir howled away on some awful hymn. In that moment I felt totally beloved - by my family, my community and my God - and I felt confident that even if I couldn't sing a note, even if I had no special talents to speak of, God would still cherish and hold me. My many, unearned, extraordinary gifts are not my blessings - the love of God is my blessing, one that will not be withheld.
