Wilderness Crying 101

Annals of a weak christian. I have not lost faith in God. I have moments of anger and protest. Sometimes I've been closer to him for that reason. Elie Wiesel

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Finding My Way Out of The Evangelical Church

God’s unconditional love is often preached from the evangelical pulpit. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son (John 3:16 ) is the hook that pulls many an unbeliever into the church. As far as the message goes, its a good one, perhaps the best. But does the evangelical church really believe its own messaging as it pertains to God’s unconditional love?

As a former evangelical and an observer of the church at work in the world, I’d have to say no. It took me a while to figure this out and I eventually left because I never experienced the unconditional love I was promised once I became a member. 

Rumors of unconditional love haunted me while I was in the church. God loved me enough to save me while I was a sinner, but once I was “saved,” this love eluded me. My time was occupied with living right and looking right, and witnessing to unbelievers. I became involved with church programs, bible studies, and youth ministry. As a parent, considerable effort was put in to making sure my kids spent time with Christian friends so they wouldn’t fall off the deep end by believing in evolution when they became adults.

Although we talked about God a lot, I don’t recall feeling loved or cared for by anyone; nor feeling that I now loved others more deeply. On the contrary, I felt more connected to people and less judgmental before I was saved. 

Now, I was steeped in an us against them mentality, us being my church community and them being the world of the lost. The world was the enemy we were supposed to love. Be in the world but not of the world, we were warned, which seemed incompatible with God so loved the world. I was confused and deep, down I was unsure if what the church offered me was any better than the world, which didn’t even pretend to love me unconditionally or at all.

What the evangelical church did offer me was a ticket to a future paradise. Once I possessed this ticket, I spent most of my time with other future paradise dwellers like myself because to do otherwise would mean mixing with people from the wrong side of the spiritual tracks. 

Hanging with outsiders was acceptable only when courting them to join up with us (believers). I mean, you could talk to them  and socialize on a superficial level but you had to guard your time wisely and not get caught up with worldly activities, especially if these activities took your focus off God and your church. 

People were projects to convert and to lead to salvation. Interaction had less to do with loving others and more to do with getting them into the winners’ circle. It seemed more like salesmanship than unconditional love, and even worse, insincere.

In a broad sense I didn’t have to look very far outside the churchyard to experience intolerance and condemnation of any other individual who didn’t believe exactly as evangelicals believed in our literal interpretation of the bible. But the intolerance was covered up by the language of conversion. If a sinner’s heart was hardened towards God, it’s not God’s fault if he refused to believe.

I learned that accepting a verbal gospel was highly valued above everything else. Talking about the Lord and worshipping Him meant more than following Him. Adherence to a verbal gospel trumped giving to the poor, accepting the immigrant, loving your enemies and turning the other cheek, being a peace maker, etc  as long as Jesus was invoked as a talisman in every thought, word and action as in: the Lord laid it upon my heart, the Lord told me to do this, the Lord directed me to take this job, etc. Independent reasoning and personal responsibility for having an original thought had no significance to the evangelical believer. God-Speak took over all personal conversation.

Evangelicals are certain no one is saved except people who believe as they do. This sense of righteousness is masked by false humility claiming it is God’s will, not theirs, for their exclusivity regarding salvation because it says so in the Bible. Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, members of main line protestant churches, atheists, agnostics, secular humanists,  and all other ________s are beyond the pale of salvation and are destined to burn in hell. To be a non-christian is the worst thing you can be.

Popular or secular culture is the enemy. Believers see themselves as set apart or above the secular culture even if they drive a hummer, own a big screen TV, shop at Walmart, own guns, operate a hedge fund in the Bahamas, hate Muslims, are divorced or cheat on their taxes. They are forgiven for all offenses past, present and future because of their acceptance of Jesus as their personal savior, unlike unbelievers, however law abiding and well intended they might be. Evangelicals wear their narrow-mindedness as a badge of honor, calling it the narrow gate, and obedience to the Lord.

The narrow gate is belief in Jesus as Lord, literally. If your belief in the literal interpretation of Christ is not total, or if you only ascribe to His teachings, well then you are SOL.  Some evangelicals feel sad about these lost souls but in my experience most don’t because the longer they are in the “church”, the less real contact they have with anyone on the outside whom they really care about in an intimate way. We will be so happy in heaven, we won’t even miss them because it is impossible to be sad when we are with the Lord.

How can you miss someone you don’t know and with whom you never spend any time? And how can you spend time with someone if all your time is devoted to your church programs in the company of other christians like yourself? 

How does this behavior reflect unconditional love in a meaningful way when you only rub elbows with “others” during a short term mission trip or church outreach event? Or pity them because they don’t share your beliefs? Or try to convince them they have to believe what you believe in order to be worthy? Sounds like spiritual quid pro quo to me. 

Sometimes you pray for a co-worker who doesn't know the Lord or endure spending time with an unfortunate, unsaved family member to whom you must be a “good witness,” because the whole purpose of any relationship with any unbeliever is to evangelize, not to hang out with him just because you like him for who he is. There is nothing unconditional about this kind of evangelistic set up. Let me act like I really care about you so you will see how cool being a Christian really is. 

I remember being confused by this conditional, unconditional love at a Bible study I once attended. We were talking about Jews and how much God loves them as His chosen people.  Someone asked the inevitable what about the holocaust question. The group leader actually said that if the Jews had only called on the name of Christ during WWII, God would have spared them from the horrors of the holocaust.

The Bible says Jews are “stiff necked stubborn people” who repeatedly rejected God throughout human history. Remember the golden calf? The bottom line is that Jews who perished in the holocaust are in hell, after all they suffered at the hands of the nazis, because they didn’t accept Christ as their Lord and Savior. Ask any evangelical Christian and he will tell you this is true. Some might stutter and seem slightly apologetic about Jews being in hell, but most will dismiss their feelings, deferring to God’s justice, not theirs, with pious conviction. Who are we to judge the mind of God?

By these standards, God seems more fascist than savior. Why should any Christian lament the holocaust at all if God just completed the job that Hitler started on this side of eternity by burning Jews in the afterlife?

I looked around at the Bible study group and asked a question that eventually led me to leave the church: Do I really want to spend eternity with people who believe such things? As one among them, I felt as if I were a member of some kind of retro-Inquisition. Their attitude about Jews and salvation was not fueled by compassion but by a righteous sense of tribalism for the “lost, misguided  (materialistic) Jews who rejected their savior.” But yet, these same fundamentalist Christians were politically, if not militantly, pro-Israel because they believe Jesus is coming back and he really needs that strip of real estate in the Middle East.

The evangelical church I attended was populated by a fair amount of former catholics including myself. It was an ordinary practice to hear catholic bashing from the pulpit. One minister, who was a former catholic, really loved to let the papists have it. He preached an entire hour one Sunday on the evils of the Catholic doctrine that encouraged parishioners to be good catholics. Goodness, he said,  was impossible without an evangelical belief in Christ. 

Far from being inspired, by my pastor’s anti-Catholic sermon, I felt great sympathy for anyone who struggles, to be good and to do good. I wondered why God’s unconditional love was being withheld from catholics who believed in the value of good works but was granted to evangelicals who were contemptuous of catholic good works because they lacked the correct branding. Good works are like filthy rags to God if you are not among the truly saved, I was told. It all sounded so hopeless on one hand and self congratulatory on the other. I knew only one thing for certain upon hearing this message, -that I didn’t feel the love.

Goodness as a virtue may be impossible without God, but preaching about God while maligning others who are engaged in good works doesn’t transform anyone, ignite great faith or help people to love well. I began to move one foot towards the door.

My other foot soon followed after hearing a sermon that discouraged believers from following their dreams. A youth pastor was cited as an example of someone who gave up his dreams for the church. For most of his childhood and young adult life this youth pastor dreamed of becoming a doctor but realized his personal ambitions were selfish compared to preaching the gospel to teenagers. He made the ultimate sacrifice by turning his back on his dream to attend medical school and became a youth pastor instead. His career choice was extolled as a paradigm of Christian virtue. The minister made the youth pastor stand up and instructed the congregation to give him a round of applause. God requires no less of us, the preacher claimed, then to give up our dreams for His glory.

While I didn’t have a problem with this young man’s personal career choice, I cringed inwardly at the mandate to give up your dreams. What if Joseph had given up his dreams? What if Dr. Martin Luther King had given up his? What if a young person sitting in the congregation really wanted to be a doctor or a cancer researcher?

What if.. God was the generator of our dreams and desires and not their executioner?

As the pastor droned on about what it takes to become a fully devoted follower of Christ, the sermon reached its predictable climax: God wants you to give up your money for the church as well as your dreams. And by the way, don’t expect God to answer your prayers if you don’t tithe; it’s against His principles. Stated simply, God’s will can be manipulated through tithing, more than prayer, because He won’t even hear your prayer if you don’t show Him the money.

While attending a Christian concert some years ago I was moved to adopt a Haitian child through a compassionate organization that promoted the unconditional love of Jesus Christ. Monthly donations would go towards the adopted child’s food, shelter and education. The compassionate organization would pay for all these services but there was a catch: the child’s family had to attend weekly Bible studies and church services in order to receive help. 

At first, this didn’t bother me much, but as time went on and I wrote out the monthly checks, I began to think of the hundreds, maybe thousands of Haitian children who didn’t attend Bible studies or church. Weren’t they worthy of food, shelter and a good education too? How can a compassionate organization chose to help some children and not others on the basis of where they worship?

Even now, some fifteen years after I left the evangelical church, I am confronted by their lack of unconditional love which is supposed to be central to their message. Through my job at a local non-profit woman’s center I come into contact with some very needy people who often lack basic human needs.  One such woman had two very young children and was in grave financial trouble. Her six year old son had outgrown all of his clothes and needed some new/used pants and shirts for school.

 The young woman of whom I speak barely had money for food. She was disabled with chronic liver disease and her husband was out of work. She worried that kids would make fun of her son if he started school with ill fitting clothes.

When she called I put her in touch with a local evangelical church that had a benevolence center in the same county where she lived, although not in the same neighborhood. 

But the church refused to help her because she lived a few miles beyond their serving area. I was flabbergasted because the church and its benevolence center were located in a very affluent community where most folks wanted for nothing. This church refused to give her assistance, they claimed, because she  didn’t live close enough for them to disciple, even though they admittedly had the means to help.

Now, people travel from miles around to attend this mega church that hosts the benevolence center. The pastor’s sermons are broadcast on a radio program with a stalwart signal throughout a major metropolitan area, inviting people to visit his church. I know for a fact they would never refuse a donation if it came from someone who didn’t live in the same neighborhood. 

But yet they turned away a poor woman because she wasn’t a viable candidate for discipleship. She would be too hard to track after they met her need, I was told. They preferred to spend their time and resources on people who were willing to be discipled over the long haul.  My client was denied help because she was deemed a bad risk for discipleship purposes. This benevolence, if you can call it that, was dispensed with firm conditions.

I learned a lot that day about the benevolence center not being benevolent as in being a true blessing to others. Benevolence center is a misnomer in this case and the building should be aptly named the Discipleship Center since charitable giving is contingent upon the poor qualifying as discipleship material. 

“Or what man is there among you who, when his son asks for a loaf, will give him a stone?”

They didn’t even offer her a stone. They didn’t even refer her to another agency or put the word out among church members for my client’s plea for her son. Ironically I contacted a local chapter of the unsaved Jewish Family Services and a main line denomination Christian Caring Center that agreed to help with no strings attached and without an agenda for church discipleship.

There’s always an agenda with hard line evangelicals. Its the old bait and switch no matter how you look at it.They will say they are motivated by compassion lest anyone perish without being saved, but such compassion, if you will, is fraught with all kinds of spiritual arrogance. I’ll act as if I love you so you will let me disciple you! Love for the sake of love seldom happens for the other. Sounds pretty conditional, more than that, it’s misleading. 

If I had known that the benevolence center was a store front for recruiting disciples, I never would have contacted them in the first place. Such subterfuge is disrespectful and condescending to the people who come there for help. Where’s the unconditional love?

While I don’t begrudge a church or charitable center for having rules and guidelines by which they must operate, I do take exception about them claiming to be something they are not though, agents of the unconditional love of Christ. 

Do what you have to do, follow your rules, recruit more people, help those you deem worthy, reject those who are not worthy of your help, but don’t do it in the name of God’s love. 

Because it has nothing to do with love. It has to do with your program and whatever power you wield to run your program. 

Don’t sucker people into believing your church offers them love when you are really trading goods for potential church membership in one of the wealthiest communities in the state. Feel good about using material goods to draw the have-nots into your sphere of influence and through the doors of your church. Any ad agency will tell you it’s the American way, but it is not the gospel, the good news of God’s unconditional love.

When I entered the evangelical church, I was hungry for God’s love. I wanted something real, something good that could sustain me through my life now and perhaps in the one to come. I must admit that I never really understood what accepting Jesus was, and was never so certain as other folks seemed to be about being saved. Some essential ingredient to unconditional love was missing. 

 In the end, being saved was a blend of arrogance and narcissism, and a religious way of covering my own ass. As an evangelical, I don’t think I learned to love others well, which seems in retrospect to be more important than personal salvation.

I think now that it is the work of a lifetime to accept Jesus and to love like He loved. If God is worth pursuing, it can only be because He really does offer us unconditional love, regardless of who we are or what we believe. I have faith that God’s love does surpass all human understanding and eliminates no one. Love must act and look like Love or it isn’t Love at all. 

As I gradually turned away from the evangelical church with more questions than answers, I felt at last, authentic. 

What if Jesus came to show us that love is truly its own reward? What a surprise to learn that I am excited to find out.

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It’s Walt Whitman’s birthday. He lived in Camden, NJ during the latter part of his life and it was in Camden that he completed his final drafts of Leaves of Grass and in Camden that he died. He was perhaps, the city’s most famous resident, and his words have achieved a certain immortality in the canon of American poetry, transcending Camden’s legacy of poverty, drugs and violence. 

I can imagine Whitman, walking along the Delaware river, when the city was young and full of hope after the Civil War. As a poet sees, could he have known the fate that would visit Camden, our country’s most dangerous city? Could he have glimpsed the demise of the industrial giant as he hobbled along the White Horse Pike on his way to Atlantic City? 

We did not love the earth, the sun, the animals and each other enough it seems. At least in this corner of the world, in South Jersey.

But it is not too late. We are still here, as Camden is here. Whitman’s words live on. 

Where are the poets among us who will help us to see? 

And the readers of poetry to catch their inner fire to help us transform the world, one small flame at a time? 

We need them, both the poets and the readers of poetry. 

Who else can adjust our vision to help us see what we miss every day? Without them we are lost.

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My First Day on Retreat or a Six Takes a Hike

In the middle of the day, I decided to take a walk into town. I needed fiber so my plan was to hike the long way to the CVS and get some exercise. The directions given to me by my spiritual director were fresh on my mind: Stay on the grassy path. Don’t walk on the road, over the hill, because it is too dangerous. Keep to the grass until you come to the Baptist Church and then make a right . 

All right, got it… thanks for the heads up, I said.

I was on my way. Everything was looking good. I started down the entrance drive (or exit, depending on how you look at it) with my backpack containing cash, my  fully charged iPhone and a water bottle, and with my camera strapped across my shoulder just in case I wanted to snap a few shots of the scenic countryside. I calculated the entire journey would be 4 miles tops to and from the CVS if I took the circular route into the historic part of town. 

When I arrived at the top of the drive, I turned right and kept to the narrow path next to the road, except the path ended at the rise of a curve, leaving me with no other choice than to walk on the slender strip of pavement that was a poor excuse for a shoulder. Traffic zoomed by in typical New Jersey fashion, without adherence to the speed limit. I was stuck at the curve in the road. 

Do I continue my journey on the narrow margin beside the curve or do I take the long way around, through the path that bordered the soy bean fields? Sister said to walk on the grass not the road didn’t she?  

My fear of walking too close to the highway got the better of me. I imagined a random driver texting and clipping me as I rounded the curve. Never even saw me. 

I opted for the grass next to the field, a slower but safer choice, thinking it must be the grassy path I was advised to take.

The grass was uneven, browned out in spots and strewn with honeysuckle, goldenrod and wild geranium. Dots of blue morning glory pierced the dense green of the overgrown landscape. Pretty. My steps interrupted more than a few grasshoppers, some bees buzzing around the flowering clover, and an occasional butterfly or two. I smiled at the sight of empty airport bottles of gin and tequila that shimmered in the dirt like misshapen jewels. A red tailed hawk circled the sky above the fields. I didn’t mind this rugged road…at first. 

The terrain slowly became wilder and thicker with grasses and brush. Earlier, I had changed my shoes to sturdier sneakers and threw on a  pair of white socks, but my socks were anklets and I was wearing capris, which left a good deal of my leg exposed above the ankle. What if there were ticks in the high grass and I caught Lyme Disease? What if I got chiggers? I am especially prone to chiggers. All that fierce scratching? No thank you!

 Considering my proximity to the soybean field, I figured the crop had been dusted with pesticides, so I continued on my way, scratching my legs now and then and dodging grasshoppers as I walked. Maybe it was specific pesticide that wasn’t meant for grasshoppers or butterflies, I reasoned. Didn’t Michael J. Fox attribute his Parkinson’s Disease to exposure to pesticides when he was a kid?

I was only a few yards away from the parking lot of the Baptist Church where I could make a right hand turn and maybe find a sidewalk when I came to a stop. A deep gully severed the path. There was no way I could jump over to the other side. If I wore hiking gear, perhaps I could have climbed through the plunging thicket, but even then it would have been like trudging through a murky swamp. Who knew what lived down there? Snakes… rodents? It might be a quagmire. I had to turn around. 

I returned to the narrow verge next to the curved road, again faced with the same dilemma as I had been earlier -the high speed road with no shoulder or the rough trail beside the fields? 

I decided to walk back towards the retreat house on a wide path that cut through the center of the soybeans and a cornfield. This path was bigger and easier to tread. Half eaten ears of yellow corn littered the brown dirt. Could there be rats hiding in these fields? I didn’t see a scarecrow. What sort of critter was snacking on the corn? 

When I finally came to the end of the path, I turned left towards the church, congratulating myself that I had found an alternate route, when I reached another dead end. The gully, the gulch, the ravine or whatever the heck that thing was, was back again! Only this time it appeared steeper and more impassible. 

Given the reappearance of the gully and the lateness of the day, I decided to forego my quest for dietary fiber and to turn back. Heading home with a new resolve to start my journey afresh in the morning, I inspected the ground. I noticed that I was hiking through some suspicious looking ivy vines. My memory rewound back to my girl scout days. Virginia creeper?  Or was it poison ivy? Oh man, I hope it’s not poison ivy. Whatever it was, the plant was certainly prolific, climbing all over the path and surrounding grasses. I kicked a cobweb out of my way and almost turned my ankle as I stumbled over the knobby ground. Where did the spider go? Better check my socks. 

I picked up my pace, and tried to leap over the spots that looked like poison ivy growth. To my left was a lane of chain link fence, browned out arborvitae evergreens and border shrubs that separated small ranch style homes and yards from the narrow path next to the field. I glimpsed rows of attached backyards with over grown gardens, above ground swimming pools, rusted out swing sets, bird feeders, plastic lawn ornaments, and at he end of the row-two very pissed off pit bulls. 

Yikes! The dogs growled and barked and threw themselves at the fence as soon as they saw me. Frustrated when their brute force wasn’t enough to push through to where I stood, frozen in my tracks on the other side, the dogs tried to scratch and claw their way up and over the fence, but thankfully not high enough to reach the top. 

The dogs sensed my fear which made them act crazier.Their barks grew louder and more menacing. I thought if I stood there and didn’t move, that they might calm down and go back to chilling in the yard, but no…they were mad to get me. What was I thinking, making eye contact with these dogs! I’m no Caesar Milan.  I had to get going.

I walked fast and then ran. The tenacious dogs followed me to the end of the chain link fence and then disappeared toward the side yard, running I assumed, to the front where they could make a break. Oh God, I thought as I ran past the perimeter of the backyard, what if they break through to a neighbor’s yard that’s not fenced in? They might find a way through the hedges. I could hear the dogs yelping in the distance and I could feel the adrenaline pumping through my system urging me to run faster. I can’t out run them. I’ll be mauled to death by these hounds. I envisioned the headlines on Fox news.

I sprinted all the way back to the farmhouse, catching my breath as I finally collapsed on a bench that faced the back of the soybean field. Safe at last, I began my centering prayer, thankful that I wasn’t torn to shreds by the hounds from hell.

Where did I meet God today, Sister will ask me when I meet her for direction. I don’t know if I met God, but God certainly showed me myself in all my sixness. Sitting on that bench I saw my whole life in a flash, how I always try to micro-manage the road, tweaking what I’d prefer not to face, whether real or imagined.

To meet myself while paying attention to my thoughts… What a surprise!

When will I learn that there is no such thing as a safe road, even when it is padded with grass and away from the highway?  I can’t travel and be my own traffic controller at the same time.  All my maneuvering to avoid trouble was just a waste of energy anyway, only leading me to a more fearful situation.

A favorite priest often shares that when we are given a burden to bear on the road, God always gives us a gift to bear it.

Maybe, my gifts today were the grasshoppers reminding me to have fun along the way and to not take myself or the road too seriously; the honeysuckle strung between the reeds like party lanterns meant to brighten an event; the dreamy, golden haze of the corn and soybean fields that stretched on for acres in the afternoon sun like God’s grace; the ever present hum of faithful crickets anchoring me to all that’s familiar and trusted; the receding rhythm of the highway traffic like ocean waves in the distance; and my favorite -the chain link fence.

The road is just the road. Walk it in good faith, a hard but not impossible task for a six. 

And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest? - Luke 12: 25-26

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Despite rumors to the contrary, good things are happening in Camden, NJ. Happiness can sometimes make you cry. See if this video doesn't do just that. Thanks to Pharrell Williams for lending The Goodness Project his song. Sometimes you just have to dance!

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"A short prayer pierces the heavens."

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My Disturbing Church

A grim monument rises up from the pavement across the street from Sacred Heart Church on the corner of Broadway and Jasper Street in Camden NJ. Fifty-five white wooden crosses are nailed against a wall painted black as a starless sky to represent all who were shot, stabbed, strangled or beaten to death in the past year; one cross for each human life struck down by violence in America’s most dangerous city.

Think about it. Fifty-five people murdered in a  10.3 sq. mile city of 79,000, with a crime rate of 87 per one thousand residents. But who cares about Camden’s numbers? Beyond the occasional sound byte and media headline these numbers don’t really disturb anyone. 

Camden is easy to forget if you don’t live there. It’s the media coverage about all those pesky murders and the crime related violence that keeps Camden in our collective suburban conscience. But why don’t we care? 

There seems to be a consensus within the Garden State that Camden is a city of untouchables and throw-aways, people who are a perceived drain on the system, perpetually on the dole and financed by the overburdened tax payers of neighboring towns within the county.

If Camden residents aren't drug dealers, welfare abusers, prostitutes, addicts, thugs, drunks or gang members then at best, they are people who are out of work and shit out of luck, the poor, the hungry, the imprisoned, the homeless, the mentally ill and the immigrant. The folks who just can't get it together or who have given up. Camden is a city that people want to move from not one where people want to move...unless they want to sell drugs.

I’ve heard many respectable people complain about these lazy n’er do wells who clog up the soup kitchens and the clothing lines looking for handouts while everyone else is working hard and paying taxes. Even the faithful who volunteer now and again, groan and whisper that no matter how much you help the Camden poor, they never seem to change. They are rude and demanding, in a word -entitled. They don't seem especially appreciative of folks who give of their time and energy to help them. You can spend an entire day volunteering to hand out food and clothing and when you come back a year later, the same people show up for handouts, maybe even looking worse than they did a year ago. What's the point?

It's a conundrum among high functioning New Jerseyians why “normal” folks who live in Camden can’t seem to help themselves and do better. If they could, why would they choose to live in a city that could pass for a third world country on a good day? Can't they even clean up the trash on their streets, for God’s sake! 

But still I have to ask myself, is it fair to expect the marginalized to act as if they are not marginalized? Forget about fair, is it even logical to expect or demand change just because we show up to help? If transformation were that easy, then everyone would be enlightened.

In response to a recent drug related murder that was posted on an online newswire, I saw someone comment on Facebook that the only way to clean up Camden was to build a wall around the city until the “animals” who live there eventually kill each other, giving the state of NJ a perfect opportunity to rebuild and start over from scratch. Apparently, no one there is worth saving now. Like Father McKenzie in the old Beatle tune, Eleanor Rigby, we should wipe the dirt of Camden off our hands and walk away from the city, leaving her to self destruct in a drug fueled Armageddon, in shades of ethnic cleansing, American style, where the poor are targeted instead of one particular ethnic group -disturbing.  But there it was plain as day, garnering more than a dozen “Likes.”

I’d like to forget about Camden too; to look out my window at the deer in the backyard of my home on the edge of the Jersey pine lands as if my suburban sanctuary was the only place on earth that mattered; to turn my back on all the ugliness, danger and poverty that grow like black mold in the city’s streets. There are 15 miles and the sprawl along Route 70 between my home and Camden City. From where I sit in Medford, Camden might as well be Syria.

But I can’t forget. Each Sunday when I drive to Mass at Sacred Heart I come face to face with Camden in all her glory.

I see prostitutes on Broadway hustling for drug money, and the same group of homeless men hanging out by the corner liquor store.

I see the abandoned factories and bombed out shells of buildings, and vacant lots cluttered with syringes on the browned out grass.

I smell the putrid air from the sewer treatment plant that overpowers the neighborhood and I see the bullet hole in the stained glass window of the church, a souvenir from 2 years ago when a 19 year old girl was killed in a drive-by shooting while she was buying a sandwich at the deli across the street.

I see 55 crosses ascending from the sidewalk, a shrine that cries out from the ground, like Abel’s blood.

It makes me sick. It makes me want to cry. It makes me want to run away to nicer lands and never return to Camden.

I don’t want to live in Camden. If I had balls maybe I would. I don’t kid myself that I’m doing anything special by attending church there. I do after all return to my home in the suburbs after church each week.

But I see it like this. I’m sort of like Carmella Soprano when she realized what a morally bankrupt scum bag her husband Tony was. She sought help from her priest and her psychiatrist. On the one hand she had money and power as Tony’s wife, on the other she had the knowledge that her life was based on murder, cruelty and corruption. She was in spiritual crisis. Her priest was no help, leading her to moral rationalization. Her psychiatrist was brutally honest, calling Tony a depressed mob criminal and an adulterer. Leave him, he told her, and take whats left of your children and go. His last words to her were chilling:

"One thing you can never say, is that you haven’t been told."

Carmella ultimately chose comfort over disturbance. I have no delusions that I might have done the same in her position. It's just as difficult for the haves to make life-changing shifts as the have-nots, perhaps even more so.

My wanting to run away and forget about Camden is the reason why I force myself to go there. Wanting to forget something means that the memory of it is too disturbing.

And like Carmela, I don’t like to be disturbed.

But of what value is the gospel if it doesn't disturb us?

Shouldn't every person of faith in South Jersey be disturbed about Camden?  Or like the pharisee in the gospel should we kneel down in our pews and give thanks to God that we “are not like them,” the ones who live beyond our borders, the lepers of Camden? 

That’s why I force myself to attend a church in the heart of America’s most dangerous city, where I am disturbed enough to act, to pray, to give, to help, to hope, to cry out to God "to heal all that is broken in our lives and in our streets." 

I can’t ignore or forget what I see, hear, smell and touch when I go to church each week.

I have been told.

Even if I wanted to forget what the gospel tells me about the poor, my presence at Sacred Heart won’t let me. Camden isn’t a concept , a mere visual blight upon my suburban landscape. It is a brick and mortar experience. Sacred Heart keeps me on my knees and keeps my prayers urgent.

So I go to church to be disturbed; to break bread with a congregation that doesn't separate itself from the poor; that doesn't promote a gospel of personal salvation at the expense of people who are suffering and dying from violence and unmitigated poverty now. 

Somehow, worshiping amid the broken streets of Camden, in the sacred space of Sacred Heart Church, I sense my own brokenness and the spirit of Christ is very present. There is something very real and spiritual going on at Sacred Heart as if the gospel illuminates the windows, the pews, our clasped hands when we recite The Lords Prayer, and the bread and wine we share at the altar. All barriers are debilitated and there is communion.

My disturbing church reminds me each week that life isn’t safe no matter what lengths I go to in order to protect myself. Distance and circumstance separate me from Camden but not much else. But as long as we stay connected to God and each other, there is hope. And there is beauty among the rubble if we see beyond our fear.

Who knows if my presence at Sacred Heart will make a difference? I am compelled by my forgetfulness, because like Carmella, I am addicted to comfort.

I go to church to be disturbed because Sacred Heart teaches me that my own comfort is my greatest deficit, and the biggest obstacle to spiritual growth and compassion.

It isn't much, but it is something.

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All there is to know about true spirituality can be learned by observing trees; they let go so beautifully.

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I wanted to remove brother bug from his eye but it seemed somehow inappropriate.

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"Growth on the spiritual journey comes when the divine life within us, which we need only receive, breaks into our conscious experience, changing the structures of our consciousness and even, as we will see, changing the way we experience and relate to God." -David Frenette

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"It is simply no good trying to keep any thrill: that is the very worst thing you can do. Let the thrill go...and you will find you are living in a world of new thrills all the time.... It is much better fun to learn to swim than to go on endlessly (and hopelessly) trying to get back the feeling you had when you first went paddling as a small boy."

~ Mere Christianity

 When the Thrill is Gone  or Why is the Present Always Chopped Liver compared to the Past and Future?

As is often the case,  C.S. Lewis's words inspire me not only because they are beautifully written, but because I recognize the truth in each line and in all the spaces that lie in between. Holding on to a thrill long after the thrill is gone has been a source of considerable personal suffering, causing me to wander through many days as a somnambulist suspended in the twilight between worry and hope for the future and regret and nostalgia for the past.  I've wasted too much time making plans and then lamenting over circumstances when those plans fail to match up with my internal mandate. You think I'd know by now that things never happen the way my mind ordains that they should. It's been the work of my life to pay close attention when my thoughts of past and future circle the present, a neurotic orbit if ever there was!

Once I was driving to the beach with one of my younger sons. The sun was shining in a blue, cloudless sky, and The Band was playing on the radio. My son was singing, or trying to yodel with Levon Helm to Up on Cripple Creek, but I kept on interrupting his yodels with complaints about his older brother, who as it happened, was driving me crazy at the time. Finally, my poor son yelled at me in frustration, "Mom, I understand that you're upset about -----, but he's not here with you now. I am. Don't I count for something?" His words hit me like a ton of bricks. I didn't even notice how I was affecting him as I ranted on about his brother and his perceived offenses against me. "I'm sorry," I told him, turning the volume up on the radio, and joining in with a chorus of "yo yo Oooo, yo yo yo hoo Ooooo..." I almost missed it.

Some time ago, I went on a three day silent retreat in a bucolic, contemplative setting. I would often go out walking by myself while taking in the beauty of the countryside. Instead of letting the beauty bless me, I became obsessed with photographing the spring flowers that dotted the landscape and the soft meadow grasses that surrounded the retreat house. The light wasn't right; my camera couldn't quite capture what I saw with my naked eye. I kept shooting, but the scene eluded me. It wasn't until I returned home and reviewed all my photos that I realized that my picture taking was a failed attempt to capture the present moment that I had rejected in real time. Instead of allowing myself to be present in the beauty, I tried to control it with my photography, to stretch it out for commentary and proof. The weekend became about freezing my contemplative experience on a digital screen. The result was dissatisfaction and frustration at my mediocre photographs. Who knew what other moments of beauty I had missed while snapping away on my camera? The next time I returned to the retreat house, I designated a specific time for photographs, and the rest of the time, I simply received what I experienced.

 As I age, I realize how much energy I waste looking over my shoulder at my past, trying to recapture the joys I experienced then. In doing so, I cut myself off from the present and the treasures God has hidden in the ordinary moments of the here and now.

After dinner this evening my youngest son asked if I would have a brandy with him. I chose to have sambuca instead. I opened up my china closet and took out two diamond cut brandy snifters that were given to me as a wedding present. We poured the libation into our glasses and held them aloft in the dusky glow of the kitchen window. "Salud," we toasted one another with a clink of shiny, crystal, our eyes locked in mischief and affection. The silver liquid tasted sweet on my lips and tongue and then warmed my throat as I swallowed until it burned in my belly. The first sip was the best.

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Why I Went Back to Church

These days I'm inclined to attend Mass every Sunday. It seems important to go and connect with the liturgy, so I return each week like a prodigal from a distant land, to the circle of corporate worship. There were years when I didn't attend any church on Sunday and years before that when I attended only because it was required of me. 

Now I go to Mass each week as if compelled by a charism that has nothing to do with my will. My going isn't an act of obedience or a response to fear. Nor is it social thing. And it's not faith either, not the kind of faith that can move mountains, although I used to think that my church attendance was linked to that type of faith.  Sitting in the pew this morning reciting the Nicene creed, I realized that I have my doubts about almost everything my religion tells me to believe, but here I am.

Do I believe in God the Father Almighty,  maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen? Yes...maybe,  well not all the time, uh, not entirely the way I learned in catechism or in the evangelical church -not with my former arrogance of knowing that I'm irrefutably right as a member of the one true church. Now I entertain the possibility that I could be wrong.

Do I believe in Jesus Christ, consubstantial with the Father, and that through Him all things were made, and that He suffered, died, was buried and rose again on the 3rd day for my salvation? It is too fantastic. Consubstantial?  I really don't know. But I want to believe.

Even more, I want to understand salvation.  I know it must mean more than living forever. Wanting to live forever is self-preservation, if not narcissism, not a motivational force for real goodness. Survival throughout eternity with a never ending self -how is that holy? Jesus said go lose yourself if you want salvation. Confusing. How can you save something that you don't even have?  I'd like to be saved from worrying about what will happen to me after I die though; to be free to truly love without being tethered to self interest. Yes, losing myself in that regard would be heaven. How do I lose myself? I know I can't make it happen.

Do I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of Life? Well, if I'm not entirely convinced that the other two persons of the trinity exist, I can't be sure of this one. But when the sunlight streams through the stained glass window and the bells of consecration ring, I am undone by the humility of surprise.

I'll continue going to Mass each week, greedy for contact with the living God. My uncertainty is my faith. My not knowing is what drives me to the communion rail, hungry for the eucharist on my tongue. Could it be true? Each week I suspend my disbelief and feel grateful for the possibility that God is present in the bread and that the story of salvation is more than just a story. Here I am Lord -wanting to try to love you. That's all I've got. Is it enough, this mustard seed? Everything in the rational world tells me that the story can't be true. But then I hear myself pray...

Please let it be true, dear God. Amen.

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Lent me a book from your mystical cupboard.

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Lenten Reflection II

Yesterday, during centering prayer I heard a song bird outside my window. The weather was below 20 degrees, and I thought it odd that a bird should be outside singing on such a harsh winter day. No one answered him, meaning not another bird. His song was a series of high and low cheerful little squeaks, like the sound of children playing on a seesaw in the park. “Come outside, it’s not so bad, rather nice if you want to know the truth,” he seemed to be saying. "The world is more than you know."But I labored on in my prayer letting his song drift in and out of my consciousness, as I focused and refocused on my sacred phrase, “I am.”

All through yesterday and today I thought of the bird’s singing as a gift and wondered at the message behind it. His song was such a perfect singular thing that he shared so freely with the world. How unlike me. The older I get, the less sure I am of my voice. When I was younger, I was sure I knew what was right, what was wrong and which side of the fence I belonged. Now, I’m frequently uncertain if I am doing the right thing. It seems like I should be doing more, and then when I do more, I question my motives. Trying to be good, to be right takes such effort. The more I try, the more uncertain I am of any kind of goodness. Even writing about my own pursuit of goodness seems egotistical and self righteous to me. But to ignore these propensities seems dishonest and that can’t be good…

And then it hit me, why I do centering prayer. I enter in solitude and silence to be like the bird. The bird can only sing because that’s who he is. He doesn’t try to sing or think maybe he shouldn’t sing or worry that his singing isn’t good enough. He does what he does, naturally as an instinctive response to life. If only my response to God were that simple, a natural activity generated by my acceptance of His love. Yes, that’s what I AM after, living without trying to live, just being who I am.

Ha. There I go again.

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Lenten Reflection I

A few days after Ash Wednesday and my indoor garden needs attention. The potted lily in the family room is lack luster and scraggly.  I remove the lily from its perch and place it on my kitchen table where the sun hits it with its full force of afternoon light. The front of the plant reaches for the sun, leaves curling and almost swaying in the rays with incandesent dust particles. The back of the plant that faced the wall is crusty with dead leaves. I pick up a scissor and go to work, cutting away the brown to make room for the green. Maybe it’s because it’s Lent but I think of Jesus and the parables and how He liked to reference fig trees, vines and branches, lilies of the field and birds of the air, and I see myself as the plant. I need to grow towards the light and shed my dark and brittle aspects that I hide, like the plant, in the dark corners of the room that are blocked from the sun. It’s time to reckon with the parts of me that I can't face; turn them towards the light and let the divine surgery begin. I pray that Lent will be a season of remembering for me to expose my poverty and meanness to the light of God's grace each day as I journey towards resurrection. I don't want to settle for being half alive.

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January is gone and with it the epiphany season. What was my discovery for the new year? The wrinkles on my thick fingers glow in the light of my keyboard as I write. Are these really my hands? These chubby folds belong to my mother not me. I make a fist and then shake my hands free to reassess. Still there. I flinch and then smile in spite of myself, remembering my mother's hands stroking my hair when I was a little girl with my head nestled in her lap, my mother's hands fixing me cream cheese and crackers for an afternoon snack, my mother's hands changing my babies' diapers with loving efficiency, and my mother's hands shaking with the palsy of old age as they labor to write her signature on a check, a birthday present to me. Do we all eventually become our mothers, I wonder.  

Sometimes, I don’t recognize myself when I look in the mirror. Like my hands, my face takes on a life of its own without my permission. My forehead is discolored and my eyes and my mouth are falling away from my skull. My cheeks droop into jowls and tiny pustules of meaty flesh take root under my eyes. What the heck are these things? Can a face grow mushrooms? And where did all this extra skin underneath my chin come from? I wonder how long before I look grotesque enroute to becoming invisible and which stage is better? I consider getting a Lifestyle Lift.

Even if I did go for the lift, the changes would still come. Like cracks in a dam, the water would seep through from new fissures as soon as the old ones were plugged. The flood is coming, there’s no doubt about it. Soon I will be swept away. All matter of extreme maintenance is denial. My body is telling me what my mind tries to forget.

Everything that is -is becoming something else, even the most reliable, steadfast constructs. People are leaving, relationships are shifting. Mom and wife are different experiences now than what I’ve been used to. Wife, more partner than lover; mom, more fixture in my kids’ lives than a help, a nurturer, or a friend; maybe a guilt producer, unconsciously or not; a relic of some former function.

Daughter is different too. My parents are dying and I fret about doing for them, knowing that the time is coming when they won't be able to do for themselves. All my doing won't bring me what I want. I want to restore them to the way they were twenty years ago, ten years ago, to a time when their mind and body performed at will, when eating and breathing, walking and talking  were natural actions, not symptoms of failing health, to a time when just knowing that they were there gave me strength, and my world was sound. Now I wait for the telephone to ring in the middle of the night. 

A hurricane flooded our house a few months ago. We patched up the holes and rebuilt the damaged walls but our fortress was breached. Now, I feel the earth tremor beneath me when I walk. I've lost faith in brick and mortar. Better to seek shelter in the storm.

So, my epiphany is not the change, not my aging and inevitable death, not the loneliness of the empty nest, not the decline of my sexual self, nor the fading of my own particular beauty. My epiphany lies in the fact that I never really noticed how temporary everything is. Things have always been changing, the earth was always spinning, the sea cutting into the land. I was never standing still. I only thought I was. Silly me, thinking that if I held on to things tightly enough, I could control gravity. The weight attached to the comfort of my circumstances was a ball and chain, not a safe anchor in the superstorm; it held me down, when I needed the buoyant waters to lift me up. I hope it's not too late for me to learn how to float.

I woke up this morning to a snowy landscape. As the moon and stars knelt to the sun, the snow illuminated the grass, trees and rooftops in a silent benediction. By mid afternoon, the snow was gone and the sharp angles of winter had returned. But I know what I saw this morning.

He must increase, but I must decrease. John 3:30

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Last Saturday I had dinner with my extended family at my sister's home. We spent most of the day in her kitchen and adjoining dining room preparing and then eating a delicious meal. My 25 year old son, who traveled from Boston to be with us, tried out his chicken caciatore recipe, I supplied the lasagna and my sister did the rest, -salad, dessert, coffee, etc. We uncorked a bottle of Cabernet and sparkling water, there was coffee from the Kureg and also a pot of freshly brewed on the stove, and biscotti from the bakery. My young nephew refused the biscotti and opted instead for a pile of chocolate chip cookies which he dunked into a glass of cold milk. My eighty-something father preferred to dunk his biscotti into a mug of steamy coffee, my mom scolding him as he did so.

In the family room beyond the kitchen area, a mounted flat screen TV flashed images to which no one paid any particular attention. An Imac sat prominently upon a desk at the far end of the living room; every now and then someone would log in to check his/her facebook status or email. A Boston Terrier ran excitedly through the kitchen and dining area, yipping for a "little something" from the table. On top of the black granite counter top bar sat an assortment of cell phones. Each phone had a distinctive ring, easily recognized by its owner.

The antique Tiffany lamp that hung from the ceiling bathed the dining room table with warm light. We sat around the table talking and laughing and invariably got around to grumbling about the economy, gas prices,the GOP primaries, the upcoming presidential election, our high NJ taxes and the sad state of municipal government. Our bills are too high, we lamented. The turnpike tolls have doubled. Generally, things are tougher all around these days. We're all working harder and longer to make less. And what about health insurance? Our conversation pulled us downward beyond annoyance towards anger and frustration.

And then my dad leveled the conversation with these two words -bread and butter. He held a butter knife in his hand and a hunk of Italian bread in the other. "You know," he said, "There's nothing better than this. I can live on bread and butter. Even after all these years, it's my favorite thing." He recounted how, during The Great Depression, there was often no food to eat in his mother's pantry, except for Italian bread and butter. Sometimes a slab of butter wrapped in butcher's paper was the only luxury in the house. "We never starved...the bread was a treat for my sister and me. I can still taste how good it was." He smacked his lips.

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Why Mitt Romney’s is 100% Wrong About 47% of Americans

I usually don’t blog about politics but I’m making an exception this time. After listening to Mitt Romney remark about how he doesn’t care about the 47% of Americans who will never vote for him because they don’t pay income tax, I had to weigh in. The fact that he doesn’t care a lick for these 47 percenters isn’t what bothers me. He’s in the business of politics and in  a political sense, I totally get why these people don’t matter to him, especially if their votes are unwinnable. Specifically Mr. Romney ranked the 47% who don’t pay income tax as “people who will never take responsibility and care for their lives,” calling them “victims”  who feel they are “entitled” to government handouts.The arrogance and insulting nature of his statement shows he knows nothing about this group of Americans whose characters he maligned while pitching to his donors. They (the 47%) are not useful to him so he’s not going to worry about them. And he calls the democrats elitist!

What bothers me is that included in the 47th percentile whom he dismisses as entitled, irresponsible, and careless human beings are people whom I know and love. And these people are none of the things he says they are. Far from it.

Among the “victims”, whom he has judged unfairly is my father, an 86 year old WWII veteran, who doesn’t pay income tax and who survives on a fixed income. And yes, he’s on medicare and social security, which by the way, are not enough to cover all his medical expenses. He pays for supplemental insurance each month out of pocket. He takes care of my mom and does his best to survive. Do I think he’s entitled to full health-care coverage after working his entire life in the public sector and after serving his country in the last World War? You bet I do. But to Mitt Romney, he is a victim, a hanger on, who sucks the tit of the government dry. If it wasn’t for my dad and others like him, there would be no USA, as we know it, where Mitt could run for President. Mitt is dead wrong about my dad, but he is spot on about one thing: he will never get my father’s vote. 

Mitt Romney not only reduced my father’s life to one of “victimhood” but his indictment covered the millions of elderly in our country who no longer pay income tax and who must rely on government subsidized health care to stay alive. And what about veterans from all wars who returned from their theaters with broken bodies unable to work? They’re included in the irresponsible 47th percentile too. How right Mr. Romney is again when he says that these veterans “care nothing for their own lives.” Instead they cared enough to risk their lives by fighting overseas for their country, the same country that Mitt wants to govern if he’s elected President. He said he’s not worried about them, though. They’ll never vote in favor of tax breaks for the rich.

At the heart of Mitt’s list of irresponsible slackers are the working poor who earn less than $18,700 a year. I’ve met a good deal of these folks through my line of work at a crisis pregnancy center. They include a hospice home health aide, mother of four, pregnant with her fifth child, who earns slightly above the minimum wage taking care of the sick and elderly in their last stages of life. She loves her job and considers it a calling to help people die with dignity. She is trying to earn her degree as an RN. She doesn’t earn enough to pay income tax. She is a prime example of a person whom the pro-life advocates like the Tea Party-backed Romney, would discourage from having an abortion, while simultaneously deriding her as being one among the mooching, entitled 47%, who rely on medicaid for her prenatal care.

...So, too would the 27 year old waitress who bikes twelve miles to and from work each day because she can’t afford a car payment or health insurance. She is pregnant with her first child and is in her last trimester. Would Mitt Romney cut off her medicaid for prenatal care in favor of tax breaks for the rich because, how did he put it, -it’s not his job to worry about people like her because they (she) will never vote for him. Does Mitt Romney even know anyone who is ranked in the 47% ?

I’m sure he doesn’t know another young woman, 22, a single mother of two girls ages 5 and  4 months, who works as a grocery clerk while attending school part time so she can earn a teaching degree and maybe one day make enough money just to pay her income taxes. Does she sound like someone who will never “care for or take responsibility for her own life?”

I’m certain I touched only the tip of the 47% iceberg. There are many politicos who have researched the matter more thoroughly than I, perhaps to include childcare workers, students, and those who devote their lives to charity or working for non-profits, like my son and his wife who are full time missionaries. Maybe some of the 47% are what Mr. Romney accuses them of being, but I’m sure their status as government dependent parasites is not limited entirely to this specific demographic.Why not call out the  millionaires and corporations who avoid paying their fair share of income taxes with “creative” write-offs and tax loopholes? You won’t hear Mitt Romney insulting this group of well heeled  operators because they are more than likely funding his presidential campaign.

And finally, in Mitt Romeny’s defense, as I’ve heard conservative pundits explain, maybe he didn’t mean that he literally didn’t care for the 47% but he only said what he said as a candidate appealing to financial donors and not to the American people whom he hopes one day to govern. To this I add, I don’t care. I don’t want a President who insults almost half the country and then lacks the decency to apologize to those he has offended.I don’t want a president whose awkward comments were an affront to the people of Great Britain during the recent Olympics. I don’t want a President who is unable to negotiate the finer points of diplomacy and who blunders under the strain of his political campaign. Perhaps Mitt Romney’s wife, Ann, said it best when she warned her husband’ critics to: “Stop it.This is hard.You want to try it, then get in the ring. This is hard.” If the campaign is too hard for Romney, then how will he measure up when dealing with a real diplomatic crisis as president, say with North Korea, or Russia, or Iran? Just imagine if Mitt Romney were president during the Cuban Missile Crisis! No thank you.

With the presidential election a mere seven weeks away, who knows how Mr. Romney will fare in the race. Maybe he will attract the 10% of voters he says he needs to beat Obama. Maybe the harsh words spoken at his fundraiser reveal a side of Mitt we rarely get to see,  because here, candidate Romney finally sounded sincere when he said he didn’t care about the 47%. And the authentic Mitt Romney is difficult to pin down, at least 97% of the time.