COLONOSCOPY AND SPIRITUALITY

I had a colonoscopy at the beginning of the Advent season, and for those of you who have been blessed with that experience know that it is not the procedure that is the trial as much as it is “the season of preparation”.  While the preparation time lasted around 18 hours in total, it seemed like a long time.  It is literally an emptying of the body, or at least the entire gastrointestinal system, so that the doctor doing the procedure can see clearly.

Since it’s been over—it was clear, so I don’t need another for 10 years—I have thought a lot about how hard it is been for me to do a similar emptying emotionally and spiritually.  My mind has been very cluttered and distracted for weeks, and on many days, my spirit has been more frantic than peaceful.  Even though the poems and scriptures I use during this time speak to me about letting go, and even though the darkness of the days in Minnesota during December invites surrender, it has been particularly hard for me to do so this year.

About a week or so ago, I asked—maybe out loud—“why is it so hard to be emptied spiritually when it was so easy to do so physically?”  And then I began to think about how easy it really was or wasn’t to go through the physical emptying.  And I had to conclude—it wasn’t all that easy!  I had to drink copious quantities of a mix (I’ll spare the details) that wasn’t pleasant, and then wait for it to do its work.  It meant feeling gross and disgusting.  It meant realizing over and over that “no, that was not the end of it” and “no, we haven’t arrived at the goal of complete emptying yet.” What made the ordeal possible in part was that I knew that it would be eventually over, and I knew it would be demanding, so I didn’t schedule anything else during those hours.  And I trusted that the health workers had my best interests at heart.

So how might that apply to my spiritual emptying?  I sure haven’t trimmed down my schedule—if anything it has been busier than ever, with eight productions of La Natividad, and extra activities at home and at work.  Even when I sat in the morning in darkness and tried to read or pray, my mind was often racing to what I needed to get done that day.  Even “getting in” my daily prayer and meditation began to feel like a chore—one more thing I had to get done.

What if I had decided that instead of a little input of the spirit each morning, I needed copious amounts, even to feeling over full?  What if paid attention to what was coming out of me, as much as I did when the colonoscopy prep happened?  I would have noticed more my resentment, anxiety and fear, for sure.  Perhaps even some self-judgment about my worth as a person and a spiritual leader.  I flushed my physical wastes down the toilet; but I’m not sure where my emotional and spiritual wastes have gone.  Maybe they haven’t left me, but are just hovering near me, waiting to get back inside.

Of course, spiritual cleansing is never over, unlike the short period of physical cleansing before a colonoscopy.  I’m never going to “be done with it.”  But if anything this Advent has taught me, it is that I need to trust more the healer who is bidding me do the cleansing, and to let go without worry, and without shame.  I will try to keep aware of that for the next ten years at least.

Be justice

Be beauty

Be empty

Patrick

KEEPING MASS IN CHRISTMAS

Of the many and various ways my spirit is afflicted over the Yuletide season are the strident calls to “Keep Christ in Christmas”, and its variant “Put Christ Back in Christmas”, as if the baby Jesus snuck off and was partying somewhere else, and we have to snatch him up and stuff him back into the feast, or else the time will simply not be redeemed.

These rallying cries are part and parcel of the program  of the currently reigning King Herod (remember, Jesus called him a “Fox”) in their never ending drumbeat to resist and defeat the “War on Christmas”, which rears it hoary head each 25^th of October or so, to remind us that “they” are out to destroy our faith, and we must resist, mostly by refusing to live by any of the fruits of the spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) when it comes to our brothers and sisters who think different than us.  Hear ye angels, the cry of the strident masses defending the faith:

“I will get mad at you if you say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”, and will righteously proclaim that ‘as for me and my family, we say MERRY CHRISTMAS!’  I am sorry (ed. Note: read “not sorry”) if that offends you.”

Apparently this ancient chant has the power to shame all heathens back into the fold, and we can all go merrily shopping for Christ-like gifts at all the imperial emporiums promising hundreds of door busters.

(I know, Ferlinghetti does this better—so look him up!)

The door busters of Jesus’ time were the boots and staves of the Roman occupiers, kicking in the doors of Jewish Palestinians, forcing their men into the army, raping the women, terrorizing the children.   The door busters of our time are the Taliban and the 2^nd Amendment Heroes shooting up school rooms, the barrel bombs of the Assad regime dropped on children, the narcos and politicos collaborating to kidnap and murder students, the police who kill unarmed black men, the ever tightened glove of hunger, violence and hate.

That is where Christ is found this Christ-mass, among those suffering masses.

I have no need to glorify “the masses” and make them into a righteous vanguard.  We are as human as human gets, and that gets pretty ugly.  But the little baby we so coo over at Christmas, loves ugly.  Loves brokenness, loves hurt, loves even death—not in the style of warm feelings, but in the style of hot actions to break the bonds and set the captives free.

(You blessed nullifidians: hang with me for awhile.)

Christmas was meant to be Christ-mass, and yes, in many ways it was started as a feast in order to co-opt the old harvest, solstice and even war gods.  I mean who, doesn’t like a baby (I mean for an hour or so, not a sick baby up every hour every night for a week).  Our Christmas is a mix of Norse, Germanic, Roman and more and more Nahuatl and African celebrations.  But the Mass part remains.

From a cultic point of view, the Mass meant a gathering of the faithful, often under persecution, in order to have their faith renewed. It meant hearing the old prophecies that

“The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
    and the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
and the calf and the lion will feed together,
    and a little child shall lead them.”

It meant praying for those in prison or in sickness, and then organizing missions to serve them. It meant honoring the dead who had lived for a better world.  It meant sharing a feast. And it meant holding to the courageous faith that:

“They shall not hurt or destroy
    in all my holy mountain;
for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord
    as the waters cover the sea.”

That is the mass of Christmas. That and Mary’s cry that God has

“Scattered the proud in their conceit,

Cast down the mighty from their thrones

Lifted up the lowly.

Filled the hungry  with good things,

Sent the rich away empty.”

That’s the Mass I want to see in Christ-mass.  It is the mass of mission, of turning the world upside down again, or right side back, so that the justice and mercy and love planted deep in all creation may flourish.

I want to share two pieces of liturgy this early Christmas-time morn (it’s 5:02 am at my kitchen table).  First Lawrence Ferlinghetti:

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and softly stole away into
some anonymous Mary’s womb again
where in the darkest night
of everybody’s anonymous soul
He awaits again
an unimaginable
and impossibly
Immaculate Reconception
the very craziest
of Second Comings

And Gustavo Gutierrez:

“The poverty of the poor is not a call to generous relief action, but a demand that we go and build a different social order.”

Be justice. Be beauty.  Be a mass of hope and struggle.

Patrick

Christmas Under Another Name: La Natividad

We are in the midst of the 6^th year of La Natividad, a bilingual Christmas production that our church does in concert with the world-renowned In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theater.  It is told from the point of view of an immigrant family in the neighborhood, and includes the whole of the Christmas story, most importantly murderous King Herod who is so afraid of this little child to be born.  In our telling, Herod tries to stop the immigrants from crossing a bridge, saying they aren’t allowed, they cannot work here, be here, belong here.  The “neighbors” in the play (actual neighbors in most cases), call out “mother—madre”, “hermano-brother”, “tia-aunt” in order to disarm Herod’s guards peacefully and allow everyone to pass.

We call it a play, a performance, but it’s more than that—it’s a procession of courage and joy through the most diverse neighborhood in the city, a neighborhood looked upon by many as “crime ridden” and “unsafe”.  And it is a political statement that the love of God shown by God’s people breaks down the barriers that divide us.  Barriers of race, religion, class, language, status, age—we can go on forever

I was interviewed about the show last night on local radio, and the interviewer asked me what I would say to those who say that such themes are not in their view of the Christmas story.  I can’t remember exactly what I said, but the basic thing I would say today is “read the book, would you?!”  Mary and Joseph have to leave their home in Galilee because Caesar wants to count everyone (for the purposes of taxing and conscripting into his wars).  They are rejected by Joseph’s kinfolk in his home town.  The little one is born among the most poor.  Then he is hunted by Herod, the puppet king of Rome, and the holy family has to flee to Egypt, where they are political refugees for seven years.  Yeah, it’s in there.

She also asked me how it was for children who had grown up in the show, and how that effected them (I chose “effected” over “affected” on purpose).  I talked about how people who have immigrated here, under hardship—and often persecution—can see their own life story in the Christmas story, and what a difference that can make.  They can see liberation and abundance coming, even in the midst of darkness, and see—and to a great extent be—God’s power working that in the world.

This is a poem that I wrote for La Natividad a few years back—the tricky angels, and the beasts with fins and paws and feathers can still be seen from December 11-21.  www.hobt.org.

One more thing: when I send an e-mail with La Natividad and spell check it, the first option given is “antiviral”.  Which I trust that it is: an antiviral against the brutality, division and fear in our land.

LA NATIVIDAD

Maria, you shop for tortillas, the tongue’s comfort,

a bed to lay the evening meal upon.  One eye out

for La Migra, one ear cocked for a shout, a boot,

a hard knock on the door.  You hear the bells

of tricky angels troubling, you listen to the voice      

of God that tells you your womb

is a quarry of bright diamonds, a pond

bearing wounded fish into the world. How

to explain that to a man who spends his days

talking to wood?  Finally, you walk. Together

and alone.  You take your feet and the child

feasting on your darkness and you carry

into the night, trusting that the dust you walk on,

the water you caress with your eyes

is the same dust, the same dew God

used to make the world, to make the man

and woman one and apart and free.

You cross a bridge, you don’t look back,

you march into the holy, abandoned rock

where beasts assemble and you wait. 

One by one the heavenly beings return,

with four paws and two, with wings

and fins and feathers, gathered to

watch the little one burst from you

and keep the silence love requires.

Look, Maria!  Listen! The voice of God

upon your lips.  Even your screams

turn the stars into dancing.

Be justice

Be beauty

Be antiviral

Patrick

Come and see how grownup these tricky angels are!