12/3/2014 - Perfect Joy

The story of perfect joy from The Little Flowers of St. Francis, the Fioretti

One winter day St. Francis was coming to St. Mary of the Angels from Perugia with Brother Leo, and the bitter cold made them suffer keenly. St. Francis called to Brother Leo, who was walking a bit ahead of him, and he said: "Brother Leo, even if the Friars Minor in every country give a great example of holiness and integrity and good edification, nevertheless write down and note carefully that perfect joy is not in that."

And when he had walked on a bit, St. Francis called him again, saying: "Brother Leo, even if a Friar Minor gives sight to the blind, heals the paralyzed, drives out devils, gives hearing back to the deaf, makes the lame walk, and restores speech to the dumb, and what is still more, brings back to life a man who has been dead four days, write that perfect joy is not in that."

And going on a bit, St. Francis cried out again in a strong voice: "Brother Leo, if a Friar Minor knew all languages and all sciences and Scripture, if he also knew bow to prophesy and to reveal not only the future but also the secrets of the consciences and minds of others, write down and note carefully that perfect joy is not in that."

And as they walked on, after a while St. Francis called again forcefully: 'Brother Leo, Little Lamb of God, even if a Friar minor could speak with the voice of an angel, and knew the courses of the stars and the powers of herbs, and knew all about the treasures in the earth, and if be knew the qualities of birds and fishes, animals, humans, roots, trees, rocks, and waters, write down and note carefully that true joy is not in that."

And going on a bit farther, St. Francis called again strongly: "Brother Leo, even if a Friar Minor could preach so well that be should convert all infidels to the faith of Christ, write that perfect joy is not there."

Now when he had been talking this way for a distance of two miles, Brother Leo in great amazement asked him: "Father, I beg you in God's name to tell me where perfect joy is."

And St. Francis replied; "When we come to St. Mary of the Angels, soaked by the rain and frozen by the cold, all soiled with mud and suffering from hunger, and we ring at the gate of the Place and the brother porter comes and says angrily: 'Who are you?' And we say: 'We are two of your brothers.' And he contradicts us, saying: 'You are not telling the truth. Rather you are two rascals who go around deceiving people and stealing what they give to the poor. Go away!' And he does not open for us, but makes us stand outside in the snow and rain, cold and hungry, until night falls-then if we endure all those insults and cruel rebuffs patiently, without being troubled and without complaining, and if we reflect humbly and charitably that that porter really knows us and that God makes him speak against us, oh, Brother Leo, write that perfect joy is there!

'And if we continue to knock, and the porter comes out in anger, and drives us away with curses and hard blows like bothersome scoundrels, saying; 'Get away from here, you dirty thieves-go to the hospital! Who do you think you are? You certainly won't eat or sleep here'--and if we bear it patiently and take the insults with joy and love in our hearts, Oh, Brother Leo, write that that is perfect joy!

And if later, suffering intensely from hunger and the painful cold, with night falling, we still knock and call, and crying loudly beg them to open for us and let us come in for the love of God, and he grows still more angry and says: 'Those fellows are bold and shameless ruffians. I'll give them what they deserve.'  And he comes out with a knotty club, and grasping us by the cowl throws us onto the ground, rolling us in the mud and snow, and beats us with that club so much that he covers our bodies with wounds--if we endure all those evils and insults and blows with joy and patience, reflecting that we must accept and bear the sufferings of the Blessed Christ patiently for love of Him, oh, Brother Leo, write: that is perfect joy.

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Brother Bill Short, OFM, a Franciscan scholar, suggests that it is very likely the story of St. Francis being turned away and rejected by one of his own communities of friars is true, that Francis did experience being left out in the freezing cold. Especially in this time of Advent cold and rain in Sacramento, I am reflecting on this passage. How many times do we do this in various ways to one another? (More to follow.)

9/23/2014 - Freedom

I am grappling with how to let go, to become nothing, to become free as St. Francis was free. I am coming to understand more and more, and yearning for, that Privilege of Poverty which St. Clare held as necessary for her community to thrive. She held it as being critically necessary even when popes did not, and only did not, but actively discouraged her from that belief. She held it as necessary because poverty is a means for being free. It is Clare following in the footprints of Francis following in the footprints of Jesus -- and Magdalen with a sparsely furnished cell, spaciously appointed for contemplation.

I wrote these words above two days ago. I am at King's House in Bellevue, WA, for an Association of Contemplative Sisters bi-annual assembly. This morning at 7:00 AM Mass, Cynthia Bourgeault read the gospel (Luke 9:3-5) then asked us to meditate on this question: "What is the relationship between radical non-possiveness and the radical freedom to speak the gospel?" Synchonicity.

Unencumbrance is a luxury for me. Moments of freedom are a luxury, and I tend to find them in the early morning when the neighborhood is quieted -- the activity in the vicinity is mostly asleep. Following in the Naqshbadi sufi tradition, just before dawn is the best time for my meditation. I find freedom, unencumbered silence, then. It isn't silence that takes energy to enforce. I don't have to spend the energy to turn off the cell phone at 3:00 AM because no one tends to call. I don't have to close the window to shut out the television from the apartment next door because they are asleep. The vehicle traffic has stilled -- the bus has stopped running for the night. Minds are quieted. It is luxurious silence in which to bask, a silence which didn't need to be constructed, a natural pause between breaths in which to rest. It is freedom. It is an experience of poverty, or inner freedom,  which the Privilege of Poverty allowed Francis and Clare and Magdalen to carry with them all of the time. It is moments of non-attachment when few  try to re-attach themselves, to regain my attention for other than silence.

Radical poverty was controversial in St. Francis' own lifetime. But, I can see the merit of it -- fewer things means there is less to demand or necessitate one's regard, less to take one's energy to see to its maintenance -- which leaves more time and energy for other activities of one's choosing, like praying. The answer to Cynthia's question is obvious for Franciscans.

I need to get rid of more stuff -- and that's just the external, material stuff.

9/1/2014 - Labor Day

It's been quite a few months since I've blogged. Life has been busy. Other more important things seem to have taken precedent. But, now is the time to resume. A Franciscan friend asked me to write again. And, I am moved by a recent occurrence within the Franciscan community which I wish to share. But, first, a bit of memoir.

I was a young, naive social worker performing food stamp home visits in the winter of 1975. I didn't understand then, but now I do, some of my encounters with senior citizen couples living on the edge of poverty. Often, these retired couples -- who had been married to one another for forty, fifty, or sixty years, lived in dingy, low cost apartments. Side by side easy chairs, often threadbare and worn, bespoke of lives blended into one, of their one heart. Their financial circumstances were as threadbare. Typically, one spouse had been awarded minimal social security disability while the other would  have a part time job. The purpose of the social services home visit, of my presence in their apartment, was to ensure that the one individual in the pair who had been receiving maximum food stamps without cost, stored, cooked, and consumed food separately from the other. There could be no sharing. For, even though they still considered themselves to be married, legally these couples had divorced in order to survive. Legally on paper, these couples were no longer married. In their hearts, they were. On paper, they had parted company and lived as roommates. In reality, they lived still as one heart.

At the age of 22, and married a little over year in the winter of 1975, I was bewildered by what these couples had done. They would offer me a cup of coffee, show me the pictures of their adult children, brag about their grand children, and then pull out the divorce papers. I would inspect the kitchen and note the two bottles of ketchup, the two salt shakers, the separate shelves for food storage in the fridge, and certify that the food stamp requirement had been met. My head comprehended that they were fooling the government by meeting the letter of the law. But, at the time, my newly wed heart did not truly understand how life had forced them into such an absurdity. I was busy learning how to blend two very independent lives, mine and my new husband's, into a single life together. I was busy trying to do what these senior citizen couples had undone in their lives, with a simple stroke of a juridcal pen by divorcing, and what they had done in their divorcing seemed crazy to me. Truly, how they were living didn't make sense to the twenty-something me. It has taken me almost four decades to clearly fathom the genius of what these couples had done.

These senior couples understood Franciscan relationship. They knew that legalities could not touch the depth of their love and caring for one another. After 34 years of living as one with my husband and soul mate, I could understand that kind of relationship -- the kind that continues even after one of the pair might die. I could understand that a marriage certificate could keep a marriage from unraveling in the worst of times, but once woven together, a divorce certificate could never split those two lives apart again. These senior citizen couples understood that their marital legal status had little to do with their marital heart status.

Since my initial encounters with "divorced married" couples during my early twenties, I have witnessed other couples doing the same -- a retired immigrant Russian couple divorced so the husband might get help for his blindness, another couple legally divorced so a spouse might get skilled nursing care for a heart problem. In these instances, the juridical status had little to do with the reality of the relationships.

In the last two or three weeks, I have come to understand that this seems to be my situation with the Franciscan sisters in this province. My juridical or canonical status has little to do with the reality of my relationships. I live in a Franciscan community. I pray in a Franciscan community. I work in a Franciscan community. My friends who are sisters are still my sisters in the community. Little has changed in Franciscan relationship, in the heart of what it means to be Franciscan. I have just stepped over the legal line, and that has allowed me to live into Franciscan life more that before.

Foundation Day Vigil: 5 months ago today

Five months ago today, I ended six months of discernment. I had three questions, about which I spent six months (from July 2013 to January 2014) seeking answers. The three questions had to do with the Redwood City Franciscans. They were:

1) Can I be heard?
2) Can I be treated as an adult?
3) Is the province fossilized -- a closed system and dying or an open system and changing?

Five months ago today, I met with the council of the Sisters of St. Francis of Penance and Christian Charity in the St. Francis Province and said I was not continuing with the formation process to become a member of the community. I did that because I found the answers to my three questions. Afterward, I worked on my thesis for a Masters in Theological Studies from the Franciscan School of Theology in Berkeley. The title: A History of the Sisters of St. Francis of Penance and Christian Charity in the Western Province of the United States.

I am posting this for myself as a means of closure. I spent five years pursuing membership with the Redwood City Franciscans. That part of my life is over. Being a Franciscan is NOT over. More to come in future posts, including a link to the thesis. But, on the eve of Foundation Day for the congregation, May 10th, I needed to mark the anniversary. I still consider myself to be a daughter of Magdalen, but not formally. There's a certain freedom to respond to the movement of the Spirit in that decision which allows me to live a evangelica vita in a way the responds to those living in poverty who I meet on the street every day. I am doing what I am supposed to be doing, now.

1/8/2014 - Further reflections on obedience

I started this post before Christmas, and have been considering for the last couple or three weeks how to say simply what I've learned about obedience. There are nuances and layers to this concept -- ripples that move outward touching other elements of religions life. It becomes very involved. I thought at first to start with Keating in the 20th century and move backward in time to show how the concept might be nuanced now, but have decided it would be too wordy and too long an explanation -- perhaps requiring multiple parts. So, I've decided this evening just to begin at the beginning.


There is a proto Indo European root word, au-. It is defined, according to the University of Texas Linguistics Learning Center, to be "au-, auei- 'to perceive, understand, be aware of' " (see this  link:http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/ielex/R/P0135.html). This root gives rise to the Latin word, audire, which means to hear or to listen. The Latin phrase, ob audire, gives rise to the English word, obedience. Some conjecture that the Latin, ob edire, is the root of the word obedience. Ob edire denotes following a command. So, for most who delve into the depths of the word, obedience, after Vatican II, the emphasis is on hearing and listening rather than in blindly following a command. As it is described in works by Sanda Schneiders, Amy Hereford, and other contemporary writers on women's religious life, obedience has to do with mutual listening. If we look at the proto Indo European root that is the initial source for the word obedience, the listening has to do with understanding and with changing perception and awareness as a result of understanding. Ultimately, it seems to me, obedience is about becoming more aware, more perceptive in a mutual listening. It is less about power relationships (blindly following the orders of a superior) and more about dynamically coming to know others in relationship, in a give and take of discovery that finds in another always something that is new and changing and unfolding. Obedience, in my opinion, is about dynamic growth and change at its essence, about a continually coming into greater awareness.


So now, jumping back to what I wrote about Keating about three weeks ago, which was:

I was talking with a friend this morning about perception and awareness. She shared an email with me from Contemplative Outreach. It contained a transcript from an 8 minute talk done by Fr. Thomas Keating entitled, "The Five Levels of Consciousness," which is part of the "Invitation of God" DVD. The synopsis from the DVD cover, as provided by the Contemplative Outreach folks, reads in part, "The outermost layer of consciousness consists of ordinary, everyday consciousness, where all our thoughts and emotional reactions lie. Through Centering Prayer, the next level of consciousness, spiritual awareness, is awakened, from which intuitions, among other things, derives. From here, yet another deeper layer can slowly be opened, first, the True Self, the image of God in which we are created, and thereafter, the Ground of our Being, which is our rootedness in God and his creative powers, and finally, our inmost center where we meet the presence of God and the Holy Trinity." In the DVD, Keating refers to this "next level of consciousness," the one after ordinary, everyday consciousness, as being Spiritual Awareness, which in the transcript is in larger and bolded letters. So, it's an important term and to be noted. In my opinion, the opening of Spiritual Awareness, using Keating's term, is an opening up into the classically described state of mysticism named, by Evelyn Underhill and others, as purgation. In my opinion, this purgation, this Spiritual Awareness, to use Keating's parlance again, has everything to do with the evangelical counsel of obedience. Keating goes on to describe spiritual awareness, as awakened through contemplative prayer (and centering prayer in particular), as a shedding of false selves, as a letting go of attachments which our egos may have, and of which we may not be aware. In short, centering prayer leads into the process of purgation which results in a change in levels of awareness and perception.


So, the linkage that I was trying to make three weeks ago is that, it seems to me, practicing obedience, as a core change in perception, leads us along the journey by helping us to shed the excess baggage of our false selves, to use Keating's terminology. It leads us ultimately toward union with God. One more little thought . . .


My friend, Franklin Fong, OFM, reminded me several months ago of this ultimate priority. He said to remember: "You don't belong to the provincial. You don't belong to the council. You belong to God." To emphasize the point, he gave me one of his calligraphy pieces, which reads: "I belong to Christ." Six months and more later, I'm beginning to understand what he was trying to get me to perceive. It is a perception shift that is of both head and heart, and is slowly coming to awareness -- that ultimately my obedience lies where the Spirit leads.