Write for God

 Matthew 19 contains the words of Jesus about marriage, divorce and who can accept chastity for the Kingdom of God:

The wedding at Cana

 1 And it came to pass, that when Jesus had finished these sayings, he departed from Galilee, and came into the coasts of Judaea beyond Jordan;

2 And great multitudes followed him; and he healed them there.

3 The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?

4 And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female,

5 And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?

6 Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

7 They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away?

8 He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.

9 And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.

10 His disciples say unto him, If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry.

11 But he said unto them, All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given.

12 For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother’s womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.

Window at Our Lady of the Ozarks, Missouri

As I grow in faith, I am more cognizant of the lack of faith in the world.

 A friend I keep in touch with through social networking is active in atheist groups that jeer at people like me. Posters on this blog express points of view that drip with moral relativism instead of Catholicism. A good friend who is a Catholic is adamant that there’s no conflict between the Church and same-sex marriage. A religious woman who runs a Web group I subscribe to actually recommended Angels and Demons, the sequel to The Da Vinci Code and saw nothing anti-Catholic about it.  (I had to go to a film site organized by Christians of other denominations to read their take on how anti-Catholic the film is. I haven’t seen the film and won’t see it.)

The Catholic Church and its faithful are under attack by a world that continues to fall away from God. I was searching listings in Writer’s Market, a publication that contains information about book and magazine publishers, and I ran into a publishing house called American Atheist Press. Jolly for them, but what caught my eye was their “urgent need” for books for young atheists, meaning books that teach children not to believe in God.  It was the most pathetic listing of all the ones I scanned in the book.

(It’s interesting that Madalyn Murray O’Hair, the late leader of atheism in America, is the mother of William J. Murray, who converted to Christianity in 1980 and is now active in conservative Christian groups. His mother said he was “beyond forgiveness” when he found God. Her lawsuit that took God out of classrooms had been filed in his name when he was a child.)

To my friend who travels in atheist circles, we Catholics are deluded fools on par with grown men who believe in Santa Claus. God and Kris Kringle are on the same footing with him.  He’s otherwise a nice, funny guy who cares about social justice.  I have hope for him.

I despair more for those who think they believe than for those who think they don’t. The Catholics who joke about pedophile priests and the ones who think it’s dandy for priests to cavort on the beach with women are sadder than those who want proof of a God or who claim He doesn’t exist. I like to think there’s the possibility of faith for them, even if they were raised by Madalyn Murray O’Hair.

The ones who try to compromise being a Catholic with being part of a fallen world that sneers at God are the ones who bother me most. When it’s fine to say that priests can be photographed with their hands on their lover’s bottom or that anti-clerical films can be entertainment, there’s something wrong with their concept of what it means to be a Roman Catholic. The Catholic Church will always be a beacon to those who seek God.

I have another friend whose parents raised her Protestant and Jewish. She sometimes goes to Mass at the Catholic Church near her home because of the comfort she derives from the worship there. To her, the beauty of the Mass that celebrates God in Body and Blood draws her in.  She has a better grasp of the mysteries of the Church than some of the “good Catholics” I know.

The world at large can be a hostile place if you walk the Catholic walk. In some settings, you might as well have a horn on your head because you’ll be be looked on as a weirdo or as Torquemada’s niece. The Beatitudes say we’re blessed when we are persecuted for His sake and that the Kingdom of Heaven will be ours. That’s a good thing because the earthly kingdom is doing its best to shut us out.

We Catholics are not perfect, but we are made in God’s image. We can struggle with sin and our own failings, but we follow Him when we get back up when we stumble on the road to salvation. When was the last time Hollywood made a film about that journey?

Delaware Gazette cartoon by Dan Collins

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Freedom of speech at the ballot box is a right guaranteed to all voters in the Bill of Rights. Our votes cannot be coerced, we limit voting to native-born or naturalized citizens and issues are decided by the number of yea or nay votes. When a community votes in larger numbers one way, the issue is decided.

I was dismayed to read comments from friends about the 6-1 judicial decision in California to uphold the results of the popular election that overturned Proposition 8, which had allowed same-sex marriage. They bandied words like intolerance, hatred and Mormonism when the court ruled that the election results stood.

I found it curious that intelligent people I know would actually be in favor of a court overturning what 52 percent of voters in California decided. It wasn’t about where one stands on same-sex marriage, but where one stands on the right to free elections unencumbered by jurists who are politically appointed or politically elected. 

When we think it’s okay for a court of seven judges to disregard what we said at the polls, we fall into a morass where fascism can be the only result. Some of the 48 percent of voters who supported same-sex marriage didn’t have a problem with a court overrruling a popular vote on Proposition 8. That’s a scary thought that belongs in George Orwell’s 1984 instead of in America 2009.

Three states allow same-sex marriage and two others will make it legal by the fall.  Thirty states have prohibitions against it, including my home state of Florida. (Florida’s ballot language was confusing; it banned civil unions, not just same-sex unions.)

Our laws are designed to give us a voice at the ballot box. Those who oppose how the majority voted have the rights to free speech, free assembly and freedom of the press to make their case. Issues can return to the ballot and special-interest groups can battle for the hearts and minds of voters. Under no circumstances should we impose judicial involvement in ballot-box issues.

If a court dominated by convervative jurists were to overturn an issue that a majority of supporters of gay marriage supported, the aggrieved would rightfully call it tyranny. I would join them in protesting that courts have no business overturning the results of fair elections. The folks who support same-sex marriage and have claimed victories in Vermont and Maine would be aghast if a court were to preempt the rulings allowing them to marry. It’s always a matter of whose ox is being gored.

We cannot set the dangerous precedent of having courts overturn ballot decisions for no valid reason other than the minority of voters don’t like the results of the election. We may as well burn the Constitution and let its ashes scatter in the winds of indifference.

Richard Wurmbrand

Armando Valladares

I glorified you on earth by accomplishing the work that you gave me to do. Now glorify me, Father, with you…

 

A paperback book titled Tortured for Christ arrived in the mail a few days ago. Its author was Richard Wurmbrand, a Christian preacher who spent 14 years in solitary confinement for preaching the faith in Romania. On my bookshelf are two copies of Armando Valladares’ prison memoirs, Against All Hope. In both memoirs, an ordinary man withstands unimaginable torture for the sake of his principles and emerges vested with God’s grace.

Valladares was imprisoned for his opposition to Cuba’s Communist regime, but his Christian faith bouyed him during his lowest moments. In prison, he meets evangelicals whose crime was preaching the Gospel in an atheistic nation. Valladares’ 22 years in prison included time in solitary in the worst of Castro’s gulag institutions.

Wurmbrand and Valladares were physically tortured, but they emerged from prison with a stronger faith they shared with the rest of us. As we read of their trials, we can think of the excuses we hear from those around us who call themselves Christians and yet don’t do the least of their brothers. When giving God an hour in His house one day a week is too much, how little are we giving? When we consider that some of us give all and others give nothing, who is accomplishing the work that God gave us to do?

These two men glorified God on Earth. Wurmbrand passed away in 2001, but Valladares is still actively speaking out for human rights. We glorify God when we speak out for peace, human rights and justice, just as these two men did. In prisons all over the world, there are Wurmbrands and Valladareses who are being refined through suffering to emerge as examples for us to follow.

Pray for all who are suffering for the sake of the Gospel today. May we all learn how to glorify God no matter where we are.

 St. Francis has been called the most beloved saint with good reason. As he followed the command to rebuild the Church, he introduced radical concepts of love for Lady Poverty, devotion to the Earth and holiness that made him worthy of the stigmata. This simple man composed the beautiful prayer that bears his name:

"St. Francis" by Francisco Zurbaran

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury,pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen

 There was a time when Memorial Day meant a quiet day to remember the war dead.  In other decades, Americans were closer to the loss of family members in the World Wars, Korea and Vietnam. Even though young men and women are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan today, Memorial Day ain’t what it used to be, if a quick look at the store sales and promotions planned for the weekend is any indication.

Leave it to commerce to turn even a solemn day of remembrance of the casualties of war into a time for blowout sales and deep discounts.

Memorial Day was once called Decoration Day and it honored the dead of the Civil War.  Many of us remember the artificial poppies used as Memorial Day remembrances and In Flanders Fields, the poem that inspired their use:

Our Lady’s university isn’t a political arena
“He made a whip out of cords and drove them all out of the temple area, with the sheep and oxen, and spilled the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables, and to those who sold doves he said, “Take these out of here, and stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.”

Our Father’s house is not a marketplace and Our Lady’s university is not a political arena, but that’s what it became this weekend when Notre Dame chose to invite President Barack Obama to deliver the commencement speech and to confer an honorary degree on him…..

(more at http://writeforgod.stblogs.com/2009/05/18/our-ladys-universi ty-isnt-a-political-arena/)

“Stop writing. You’re not meant to be doing this. Plenty more where you came from.”

(Author Gore Vidal, to those who have writer’s block)

Sometimes, for various reasons, I’ll take a break from blogging for a day or two. Usually, it’s a heavy schedule at work and home, but sometimes it’s the pull of another writing project. This past week, my entries have been thin because of despair over issues related to finances, which have affected my sleep and my ability to approach issues with a rational mind. Better to take a break than to write a bad Dickensian blog post.

I’ve never really had writer’s block, that dread of the blank page or the blank post. I guess being opinionated comes easily to me or perhaps it’s my constant habit of writing in pads and notebooks. For some people I know, a blank page inspires more dread than a bloodied hacksaw in a slasher film. I know intelligent people who turn into zombies when they’re told to write something.

 In one of our favorite goofy comedies, Funny Farm, Chevy Chase plays a big-time sportswriter who retires to write a great novel. He and his wife move to a rustic home where everything goes wrong, especially with his novel. In one funny scene, the ex-sportswriter finally sits at his desk to begin his novel, types The to begin a sentence and then freezes into a terminal state of bad writing and writer’s block. As Vidal suggests, for everyone who can’t write, there are more in the wings who have no trouble creating worlds or music with words.

Here are some ways to avoid writer’s block that always work for me:

• Fill the blank page with something, anything, to begin. Write the lyrics to that song in your head at the moment or your favorite limerick. A white page with something on it fools the eye into thinking you’ve written something.
• Begin writing badly. Rewrite later.
• Play music you enjoy when you sit down to write. It’s amazing how the rhythms of the music will move your fingers to type as it moves your feet to tap out the tempo.
• If you’re on the keyboard, switch to a pad and pen. If writing by hand, go to the computer or typewriter. Mix things up.
• Open a random page in a book you enjoy and retype a paragraph or two. The habit of forming words will move you to begin writing.
• Change location. Our local library has private rooms for study or work where a writer can bring a laptop or pad to write in silence and without interruptions. Each spring in school, we would beg the teacher to have class outside. Sometimes he or she complied and we took our lit books outdoors. It would put our lessons in a different light — literally.
• Surround yourself with the beauty of words. Listen to books on tape, write in a cafe bookstore or find records or CDs of poets reading their work. A teacher once played us an album of Jack Kerouac riffing his poetry with Zoot Sims on sax. For years, I’ve wished for my own copy of that album.
• Do something messy and nasty. Clean the bathroom, plant seedlings, scrub the floor. Your clean keyboard and cushy chair will be all you’ll dream of while you’re removing mildew or scraping baked-on cheese from a pot.
• Pray. A Rosary or two, meditating on the day’s readings or browsing through the works of good Catholic writers like Thomas Merton or Dorothy Day can bring you blessings tenfold.

When the words begin to flow again, you might have a clean bathroom and a richer spiritual life. Either way, you’ll conquer writer’s block without the agita it can bring. Remember the wisdom of Ecclesiastes 3: “There is an appointed time for everything, and a time for every affair under the heavens.” In God’s time, you can defeat writer’s block.

“In the real dark night of the soul, it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.”

– F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Crack-Up

"Christ of St. John of the Cross," Salvador Dali

 

“The juxtaposition of darkness and love, so central to all John’s works, but especially The Dark Night of the Soul, is deeply expressive of the paradox central to the Christian faith:  that in the cross of Christ, in that abyss of suffering and degradation, is the ultimate expression of the love of an all-powerful and all-merciful God.”

From theologian Margaret Kim Peterson’s introduction to The Dark Night of the Soul, 2005 Barnes & Noble edition