Smells and Bells and Stuff Like That

OK America, I know you've seen 'em. And I think it's time we talked about this.

They're all the rage in churches these days. According to Abbott Church Supplies, they're "authentic, safe, and convenient." And they cost about $2890 for a set of 40. They're electric candles. That's right. ELECTRIC CANDLES.

A few years ago, someone felt that we should no longer waste time and money on real candles in our churches because they discovered that candles...

1. burn down, and then you have to buy more
2. require expensive matches
3. make fire, which, as helpful as it's been for humanity in the last ten millennia, is downright dangerous

This is the 21st century. You want to light a candle and offer up a prayer? Plug it in! Flick the little switch to symbolize your aspirations before the altar. It's that simple! No fuss, no muss! (Just add a prayer that there's not a power outage, because "poof" there goes your intentions).

Now it may seem that I have my "cranky pants" on about this issue. I know. But mostly, I'm befuddled. Who encouraged Electric Candle Inventor Guy by buying his product!? Now any pastor of a church reading this who has a handy set of votive techno candles is probably upset with me right now. Yes, I know. Real candles do occasionally cause fires. Insurance is pricey. But uh... I think in our effort to be "safe" and "secure" we're missing out on a real sacramental moment. Ponder this from the Catechism:

"As a being at once body and spirit, man expresses and perceives spiritual realities through physical signs and symbols." (CCC, n. 1146).

Remember the old days (for me this was the glorious 1970's and 80's) walking into a church and getting smacked in the nose with the warm, beeswaxy smell of the Holy? And if you were lucky enough to have a church that had adoration from time to time, the sweet smell of incense still hung in the air like a veil to the Holy of Holies. I realized I was on holy ground. The very air was different. This wasn't my house, this was God's House, and He was happy to have me over. The flickering candles and the incense and the cool water in a marble basin and the wood varnish of those ancient pews and the scent of Murphy's Oil and the sunlight streaming through the stained glass all spoke a word. All whispered words that lifted my mind to the Word, that pointed my heart to the Other Who had descended into our midst. It was He Who took on the physical sign of a body, of flesh and blood.

Walking into a church today that has electric candles always gives me the creeps. It feels like that cold, clean, antispetic feeling of a hospital: sterile, neat, boring...

I say bring on the danger of real candles! Give us the real with all of the risk involved!
That's all I have to say about that... Next time I'll share MY brilliant idea to reinstate the sacramental experience:

The "Scratch and Sniff" Bible! Think of the possibilities!!

This Week's Mission Moment

I love it when one of pop culture's idols turns into an icon of something more. When a transfusion of the gospel slips into the mainstream of the media. I believe it happens more frequently than we know, it just gets unplugged so quickly by the media monster that we miss it. Wouldn't it be great if we could nail that moment down, capture the conversation, image or incident? Welcome to this week's Mission Moment, captured in full in this linked article by Christopher West!

"In a book-long interview with Michka Assayas, Bono reflects at length on his unconventional Christian convictions. And Assayas simply cannot understand how the world’s biggest rock star could believe Jesus is the Son of God. Nor can he understand how Bono has remained faithful to his wife of twenty-five years...." (read more)

Bobby McFerrin at His Best.....

Kind of a DEAD audience, huh? Wake up to the wonder of it all people!

On Tarantulas, the Missions, and Distractions in Prayer

I was visiting a missionary sister in a poor barrio called Los Alcarrizos in the Dominican Republic in the summer of 2000. Sister "Anita" (aka Sr. Ann Joyce-Peters) is like a superhero; Mother Teresa and Wonder Woman wrapped up in one. She works with the Haitian migrant workers, the poorest of the poor, in a batey on the fringes of a sugarcane plantation. And she is loved deeply by those whom she serves.

I had the chance to visit the batey a couple of times, getting there via "motorcycle taxi." (Imagine 3 people on a vehicle the size of a moped. The driver, Sister Anita, and me. Hilarious, death-defying, and the only way to experience life in the DR).

In her house, where she lives with an occasional missionary volunteer, other sisters, or just local helpers, she hosts a prayer night for the neighborhood. Once a week or so, a dozen people show up to read scripture or a reflection, or maybe to pray the Liturgy of the Hours.

One of the days I was there, we gathered out on the back patio beneath the bouganbilia, in the still very warm air that was filled with a host of fragrances, just as the sun was sliding past the branches of the coconut trees. There is nothing so powerful as to pray the psalms in the midst of a mission country. Suddenly you feel, as you hear words about the cry of the poor and a longing for freedom from the oppressor, that the ink on these pages is still wet. It's like time travel.

That night, as the prayers rolled from English to Spanish to Creole to French, and the palm trees started whispering their dark secrets, I noticed a massive black tarantula crawling up from the shadows on the plaster half-wall just beyond our prayer circle.

Oh boy.

Now, our thoughts can take us to a million places when we're trying to focus on the Lord; bills to be paid, errands we forgot to make, why mosquitos exist... The saints tell us to let them pass, like static on the radio as you go under the bridge. We're human! We're bombarded by stimuli constantly through our senses. It's natural to get pulled here and there when we stop and try to think One Thing. Just try not to focus on the static. Note it, acknowledge it before the Lord, and let it pass. Offer all of it up to Him and ask for the grace to see through distractions, as through raindrops on the windshield as we move towards our destination. If we fixate on the rain-spattered windshield, we can drive right off the road.

But there are exceptions to this technique...

There are distractions in prayer, and there are DISTRACTIONS in prayer. Big black tarantulas are capital "D" distractions, as St. Theresa of Avila notes in her classic work the Interior Castle (well, she would have noted it if she lived in the Dominican Republic).

Back to a Patio in Los Alcarrizos...

As this creature of darkness (sorry spider lovers but I've been conditioned by the system) made its way up the wall, pulling me and many others away from the rhythm of prayer, an old woman slowly lifted herself up from her bench and walked over to the wall. She picked up a small brick on the way, and WHAMMO!... she hurled it at the tarantula with laser precision! Returning to her seat, she picked up her prayer book and the people said "AMEN!"

I sat back and smiled. Life in the batey; where the women are strong and prayer is a battle. And you sleep with one eye open.


________________________________

"The great figures of prayer of the Old Covenant before Christ, as well as the Mother of God, the saints, and he himself, all teach us this: prayer is a battle. Against whom? Against ourselves and against the wiles of the tempter who does all he can to turn man away from prayer, away from union with God."

- Catechism, Section 2725

Inspired by Caffeine and Irish Soda Bread

My in-laws have descended for a visit from NY! We had a wonderful dinner at Romarco's last night (deep fried zucchini spears, nice!), rented the Illusionist (very good, creepy, and we love Paul Giamatti) and now morning is breaking.

I'm always up before everyone else. What can I say? The morning is the divine hour! It's the hour of awakening. And this morning is particularly crisp; sharp and bright as linen. Her face is freshly washed and she's got her blue dress on again, and no cloudy look to obscure that sunny smile.

I was just tossing up some morning prayer with a little coffee and some of my mother-in-law's famous and ridiculously delicious Irish Soda Bread, looking out our little window just above the front door, when I spied the old pine in the neighbour's yard. He filled the tiny pane of glass, waving his green good morning to the day. And this old swatch of a poem came back to me:

"Two men looked out through prison bars; one saw mud, the other stars."

I thought to myself, "Self, imagine if some alien force suddenly barged in while the house slept peacefully upstairs, wantonly destroying my Irish soda bread, spilling my coffee, and whisking me away to confine me to a place where a little window was my only glimpse of the Outside? Would I appreciate it? Would it be like a viaduct of grace and a reminder of what reality is, what freedom is, and that "above all shadows rides the sun"? Did I make this coffee too strong this morning or what?"

Ah the thoughts that come to me while sipping the sweet, dark nectar of the Bean. I love you Maxwell House, right to the last drop!

Another Poem

To be lost
To step away
into unplugged and mapless places

Away from the security of comfort
and into the deep Unknown

From the deadening buzz of lights, signals, arrows, bells, beeps
Into the Great Silence, into mist and shadow
Into the gnarled darkness of woods and the wet bark of trees

We should go
We should stand again beneath (at last beneath)
towering trees
again

To listen, to wait
for the creak of their bones

To see if we might find
In the soft whisper of branches
In the solemn cracks of old trees bones
A secret

Older than we are
Older than our generation
And our father's generation

A secret

Happy Birthday Encyclical Letter of Pope Benedict!

I just read Amy Welborn's post on this happy fact (actually Pope Benedict's first letter was penned on Christmas Day, 2005, but we got it in print later). Here's a couple cool facts about it:

"It's been just over a year since its release, yet Pope Benedict XVI's first Encyclical letter continues to be a best seller. According to the Rome-based ANSA news agency the Pontiff’s profound discussion of human and divine love is proving to be one of the most commercially successful doctrinal tracts ever written by a Pope. The 72-page document, Deus Caritas Est (God is Love), has been reprinted three times in the German Pope's own language, three times in Spanish and sold almost 1.5 million copies in Italian. Its success has also meant that, for the first time in modern history, the Latin version of a papal document has had to be reprinted. The initial run of 1,000 copies sold out in two months."
- from Amy's blog "Open Book"

And here's a couple of highlights from the Pope's letter itself, God is Love:

"God does not demand of us a feeling which we ourselves are incapable of producing. He loves us, he makes us see and experience his love, and since he has “loved us first”, love can also blossom as a response within us." (DC, 17)

"In the gradual unfolding of this encounter, it is clearly revealed that love is not merely a sentiment. Sentiments come and go. A sentiment can be a marvellous first spark, but it is not the fullness of love. Earlier we spoke of the process of purification and maturation by which eros comes fully into its own, becomes love in the full meaning of the word." (DC, 17)

"God has made himself visible: in Jesus we are able to see the Father (cf. Jn 14:9). Indeed, God is visible in a number of ways. In the love-story recounted by the Bible, he comes towards us, he seeks to win our hearts, all the way to the Last Supper, to the piercing of his heart on the Cross..."