The Body of Christ

Today I went to my Parish Credit Union to cash a check. It’s a tiny credit union, tucked away in a corner of the basement of what used to be my parish grade school (now the common grade school for three inner-city Catholic parishes, of which my parish is one). It’s only open three afternoons a week, and is accessed by going through an unmarked door at the bottom of a flight of concrete steps on the back of the school. There is no sign, no posted hours, no advertising. You only know that it is open because when you try the doorknob it is unlocked. I’ve been a member of this credit union since I was in third grade. The ladies who run it, a gang of almost-geriatric matriarchs who could run the parish if they ever cared to try, have known me since my family moved to the area when I was five. When I went in, I didn’t bother to bring my bag or wallet in with me. I presented the check I wanted cashed, the woman behind the counter asked me my account number, had me sign on the dotted line, and handed over the money. Just like that, with inquiries after my family’s health, and telling me how good it is to see me again.

On the way out, I passed another Matriarch of the Parish, Mrs. Richardson. She smiled and asked how I was. I replied politely, and it seemed that was it. Then she stopped and asked me how was Lisa, where was she now? Lisa is my little sister, who is currently in Kenya. She arrived there shortly before Christmas to begin a five month stint teaching grade school at St. Jude’s Academy, the second half of her year of service in Africa. I don’t know how many of you guys have been following the news, but the country is in a downward spiral of violence that is threatening to turn into a total meltdown. Just after Christmas there was an election in which the two main candidates were members of rival tribes. The election was massively corrupt. Protests by the party that lost turned violent, there were reprisals, and everything quickly spiraled out of control. Now there are gangs of men from one tribe armed with machetes and clubs studded with nails actively going out to hunt down members of the other tribe, and being disappointed when they can’t find any to kill. So far the police have been unable to stop the violence, and have lately been given orders to shoot to kill. The US State Department’s warnings have been growing progressively grave, although they have not yet warned US citizens to leave the country.

I told Mrs. Richardson that Lisa had made it safely from the small village where she had been staying to Nairobi, where hopefully she would be able to make arrangements to come home soon. She smiled and nodded, and said she was praying. We parted, but as I walked away, I was shaken. You see, Mrs. Richardson’s sister is Sr. Dorothy Stang, the Sister of Notre Dame who was martyred in Brazil in 2005. She was gunned down on a forest road by hired killers in the pay of rich landowners who didn’t like her work with poor farmers. Her death stunned her family, and our parish. Mrs. Richardson’s sister went into a dangerous situation and never came back. Now she was asking me about my sister, who is in a dangerous situation. Hopefully, however, my sister will come back.Most of the time I take for granted the kind of community I live in. Even though I usually attend Mass elsewhere, I’m still part of the parish I grew up in. My family is embedded deep in the web of relationships. Because of the strength of that community, I can walk into the credit union and cash a check without ever having to produce any ID, a situation most people haven’t experienced since the 1950s. Every person I encountered knew who I was, knew who my family is, and cared about us. This is partly because we’re an unusual family, but it’s because they’re unusual too. We are a parish that gives birth to martyrs and missionaries and free spirits. We are a parish that cares about God and about each other. We are a parish that trusts and prays for one another.

This is what it means to be part of the Body of Christ.

No Nonsense Marian Theology

Today I am wearing my Our Lady of Guadelupe t-shirt, one of my favorite articles of clothing.  My friend Chris asked about it, and I started telling her the whole story: Juan Diego is on his way to Mass, and a lady dressed as an Aztek princess tells him to go to the bishop and instruct him to build a chapel in her honor on that spot.  My friend pointed out that this was like a picture of Abraham Lincoln coming to life, and asking me to go to the President of the United States and telling him that he should build a new library on the corner of Fifth and Main because Abraham Lincoln said so.

The funny thing is that Mary does this a lot when she appears to people.  She comes to visit, and tells them to do something totally ridiculous.  Tell the whole region to repent.  Drink from a spring that isn’t there.  Whatever.  The visionary whines about it some, and Mary tells them to suck it up.  Just do it, cuz I’m going to make it work.  So they do, and it does, and we have miracles like roses in December, and springs of healing water and things.

It occurred to me that this is very like a mother.  The mom tells the kid to do something, the kid whines, and the mom tells the kid to suck it up.  And then the kid does it, and it’s cool.  Because it was never about the kid.  It was about the mom and the power of God.  We do these things, not because we can, but because God can.  It’s a good thing for me to remember these days, when so much seems impossible.  Suck it up.  It’s not about me, it’s about God.

Theology and Poetry

I’ve been working on my final project for my poetry writing class, which involves looking back over the work I’ve done this semester.  In the course of this, I found this essay I wrote at the beginning of the class.  It sums up so much about who I am and what I want to do with my life that I thought I’d post it here.  Enjoy!

The question of what I want to write about is inextricably tied up with what kind of writer I wish to be.  Although I have been writing poetry longer, I have come to realize that my true vocation is to be a theologian.  I anticipate spending much of my professional career writing and teaching about God.  However, theology and poetry have much in common – they are both about something that cannot really be expressed or explained.  God is the ultimate mystery.  No matter how deeply we delve there will always be more depths to explore.  I think every poem (at least good poems) are small mysteries.  A true poem is a sum that is greater than all its parts, using everyday words and constructions to brush up against those depths.  In some ways poetry can be understood as the attempt to use words to show us something that cannot be described.  The theologian would say that this is God.  To be a great theologian is to be a person so full of God that He leaks out of your pores.  One of the ways God can leak out of a person is poetry.  There is a long tradition of theologian poets.  Thomas Aquinas was one.  We sing his great love poems to the Eucharist every Holy Thursday.  John Paul II was another.  I hope that one day I may be one too.

            I was once told that every artist who paints the human figure, no matter who that portrait is supposed to be, really paints themselves over and over again.  I do not know how much I believe it – my source has a history of being careless about the things she cares to repeat – however, I think that there is something to what she said.  We are all of us narcissists.  What we really want to write about is ourselves.  However, there is more to it than narcissism.  The only experience of being human we will ever know is our own.  To know what it means to be human, what distinguishes the human from all the rest of the world, means to begin with ourselves.  If you believe, as I do, that the human person is created in the image and likeness of God, then to know ourselves we must also know God.  And we’re back to theology again.

            They say that St. Francis of Assisi once sat up all night asking God, “Who are you and who am I?”  They don’t say whether he ever got any answers.

            To write about humanity is to write about love.  We are such odd things, we human beings.  We are body and soul, all mixed together such that, even when artificially separated from our bodies in death we cry out to be reunited.  We are fragile and terrible at the same time.  And we do not exist in this world alone.  We live with other people, and interact with them.  Sometimes we even love them.  By this I do not mean romantic love, although that is a part of it, and traditionally the part that poets find easiest to write about.  Instead I’m talking about the blood and bone sort of love, the kind of love that came to us with nails through His hands and thorns on His head.  This is the love that does dishes and changes dirty diapers and takes out the trash without being asked.  This is the stuff of everyday heroism, the stuff that adds up to true holiness, the stuff out of which saints are made.

            So this is what I want to write about: what it means to be human, to be made, both body and spirit, in the image and likeness of God, and what it means to love other embodied persons as we experience it in the most concrete details of our everyday life.  This is a project that would demand the best of both theology and poetry, applied over a lifetime of continuous effort.  I can’t wait!