Christians in the Visual Arts (CIVA) states its mission as three-fold: called to creative work, devoted to the church, and present in culture. For this Advent season, CIVA has put together a virtual art exhibition entitled YES! to explore Mary as a model of faith. CIVA's website says the aim of this exhibition is to "visually guide us during the days of Advent as we anticipate the joy of the incarnation, reflecting upon how we are being called to respond in hope to the 'how can this be?' moments in our own lives. Where and how might we say with all our heart: 'May it be done to me according to your word.'"
I hope you'll click here to visit the gallery and take a look at the art that's been gathered and the statements by the artist's about their work. In particular, please visit this page to see an entry by my good friend, Pamela Keske.
The Duty of Delight
I've been reading The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day. At 693 pages of small print, this compilation gathers her journal entries from 1934, at the age of 36 years, through 1980, the year of her death at age 83. Based on her work with the poor in New York City for most of her adult life, Dorothy Day is currently being considered for sainthood by the Vatican. In addition to her work with the poor through her community, the Catholic Worker, Day also wrote about 6 books, including The Long Loneliness.
I'm only halfway through this volume of her diaries, but what hits me every time I open the book is how human Day is. Many of her entries are filled with statements of honest complaint, such as how sore her legs and feet are, how tired she is, how frustrating is a person in her life, how upset she is with someone else, how discouraged she is, how little time she has for herself. Yet she kept getting up every day (well nearly every day) and being about her very difficult work. The title of the book comes from her mention, multiple times of a phrase from John Ruskin, "The duty of delight." A footnote in the book said, "this phrase came to serve for Dorothy as a call to mindfulness in the face of drudgery and sorrow."
Here's an entry of Day's from July 9, 1951:
"This diary could start with the chronicling of aches and pains—rheumatism, lumbago, etc., every day. It also could go on to list work done and that would give satisfaction. So many hours at the ms., letter-writing, talking to visitors, odds and ends of housework, wash, caring for the children, so much that does not show, that does not give one a sense of thinks accomplished....
The duty of delight—as Ruskin says.
Today we have a picnic in the woods. The air is sweet with milkweed in bloom. The honeysuckle is past, the sweet clover goes on all summer. ..."
The duty of delight. I like this reminder very much.
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This post was first published in my monthly newsletter, “Dear Reader.” Subscribe here.
Participating Faithfully in a World Being Remade
Given all that’s going on in our communities and in the world, it's a good time to think about—but then, it's always a good time to think about—the value of putting a body of work out into the world that aims for a common good beyond yourself, no matter your job title (including retired), industry, or the size and grandiosity or lack thereof of that body of work, as long as it's what you have to give.
If you're in need of inspiration or camaraderie, let me suggest you peruse the writings from Breaking Ground, a year-long, online, publishing project led by Cardus that started in May of last year, when tensions of multiple varieties were escalating: viral, racial, socioeconomic, political. The project, which started as "first and foremost an act of hope,” had the goal of "galvanizing the Christian imagination from a wide array of voices to equip tomorrow’s leaders, thinkers and caring citizens to participate faithfully in a world being remade."
Although the project recently ended, per its original plan, rather than simply stopping the work the editors have passed the baton to their readers. The goal, now individualized, becomes how can each of us, from a base of Christian imagination, participate faithfully in a world being remade? I think that's quite a good question to ask ourselves, regardless of whether you've read any of the Breaking Ground writings. How can I—how can you—from a base of Christian imagination, participate faithfully in a world being remade?
~~~
[Photo: Eric Carle, children's book author and illustrator whose great body work brought much good into the world, died last month. Many of Carle's books have been on our bookshelves over the years. This picture of two pelicans is from Animals Animals. A number of pages in this book are falling out, it's been read so many times.]
A promise of strength
Reading recently in the New Testament, these words of Paul's shimmered for me: "He will also strengthen you to the end." (I Corinthians 1:8). Yes, please, to strengthening.
I looked up strengthen in my trusty hardcover Webster's New Dictionary for Synonyms—which still sits next to my desk decades after buying it used for $4.98 at Half-Price books—and found these synonyms for strengthen: invigorate, fortify, energize, reinforce. Yes, to all of that. God will strengthen, God will invigorate, God will fortify, energize, reinforce. Ever and always.
If each of us were to make a list of all that has zapped our reserve, our sense of strength, over the past year, I dare to assume that no list would be empty. In God's mercy, may all entries on such a list be converted to strength. May all entries come to eventually commingle generously with joy of the deep and abiding variety.
~~~
[Photo: very strong rock in northern Minnesota]
On taking a journey
I read River Jordan's The Ancient Way: Discoveries on the Path of Celtic Christianity before the holidays. It's made me think about what it is to boldly pursue a vision for a pilgrimage as well as to choose to trust people while on that journey. It's made me think about how the longing for the journey, the planning for it, the returning from it, and the weaving of the experience of it into your ongoing life are as much part of the journey as are the days between the packing and unpacking of your bags. For River Jordan, this journey was a pilgrimage to Iona, Scotland, the birthplace of Celtic Christianity, but Jordan's writing invites you to take what she learned and think about it in terms of ordinary life. To be touched by a vision of something that's yours to do and then to seek to do it, without knowing how it will play out in your life.
”I learned that following that sense of direction that came from a place deep in my soul was sometimes the surest way to find myself right where I belonged. As I traveled the path, God showed me that, like Columba and the monks of Iona, the point was for me to live the faith, to walk it out. To embrace the path and the doing of it and at all times to walk with the understanding that I was to be a blessing to those I met as I went. To be a living epistle.”
Blessed Are the Nones
“[A]s Sister Theresa said a few months ago at Saint John’s Abbey, God is walking with us regardless of what particulars we believe at any given moment, and life is long. Who knows where exactly we will end up!”
A friend of mine, Stina Kielsmeier-Cook, has just had her first book published, Blessed Are the Nones (InterVarsity Press). I first met Stina online a couple years ago through the Collegeville Institute, and then just before Covid struck, I met her in person at a newly formed writing group here in Minneapolis. Blessed Are the Nones is a spiritual memoir that tells the story of her marriage as she came to terms with her husband leaving their shared Christian faith even as they stayed very much together.
Stina meets the monastic Salesian nuns who live in an ordinary house not far from hers while she and her husband were out trick-or-treating with their young children one Halloween. Befriended by these nuns, Stina wrote that discovering that they were in her neighborhood was as if God were winking at her. These nuns and their hospitality to Stina become a doorway through which she learns to live in the vital juncture of spiritual singleness and spiritual community.
Just as a good spiritual memoir should, the story Stina tells is not just her story, and the gains and losses she describes are not only hers. Blessed Are the Nones speaks to the faith journey of so many of us. For some, the way seems to get more and more sure; for others, the way veers in a different direction. For others, doubt visits, prompting a pause of short or long or unknown duration. Stina shares Bonhoeffer’s warning to love people more than our own visions of life.
Blessed Are the Nones shows that deep love can transcend dissimilar faith journeys and that God offers community to sustain us on the way. Echoing her words earlier in the book, and shown at the start of this post, near the book’s end Stina writes, “I rest in Sister Theresa’s wisdom that everyone is on a journey with God, whether they know it or not.”
Staying Put, Listening Well, Being Changed
This week I finished reading Benedictine Promises for Everyday People by Rachel Srubas. Rachel is a Presbyterian minister, a spiritual director, and the author of several books. I met Rachel several years ago when we both were participants in a summer writing program at Collegeville Institute. I’ll admit that when I started reading the book I expected that it would be applicable to my life but in a small sense, as in here are a handful of things that Benedictines do that may help you, the reader, in your life. But I was wrong. The book suggested much to consider and apply.
The book focuses on three key parts of the Benedictine rule: staying put, listening well (which is another way of saying obedience), and being changed by God. So much of life falls into this rubric. I was particularly struck by Srubas’s writing on staying put, because staying put is what was at the heart of one of my chapters in Finding Livelihood. In the chapter titled “Centripetal Centrifugal Counterpoise,” I wrote that “Staying in place is a pilgrimage too.” We tend to think that movement is good, particularly movement up the ladder, up the power grid, up the chain of command, up the salary structure, up up up. Or at least movement of any pleasant variety: seeing the world, visiting all the new restaurants. But the essay I wrote came from a place of feeling stuck until I looked at things another way. I’m writing this sitting in front of the same window where I’ve written for more than two decades.
Now Srubas helps me further in understanding the good that comes from staying put (please note, there’s no implication in this book to suggest staying put in a place that’s unhealthy or dangerous). Listening well to God and being changed by God follows on this point of staying put. These are the reasons for staying put. There is an intentionality to staying that goes far beyond the fact of a 30-year mortgage or vesting in a retirement plan (wait, is anyone vested anymore?), or a lack of imagination for any other place to be. The intentionality is to put one’s energy into listening well to God and being changed by God.
Srubas writes:
“Whether the vow of conversatio morum [lifelong conversion] is understood as fidelity to monastic life or more broadly as a commitment to turn to God daily and be changed, it is a promise to undergo lifelong conversion. The other two Benedictine promises, stability and obedience, make conversatio morum possible. We stay put not because we have no other choice, but because we choose to abide in Christ with these particular people in good times and hard times alike. This frees us to give ourselves completely to God where we are. Once we’ve become stable, undistracted by a life with too many moving parts, we can listen well enough to detect the voice of God speaking to us through the Scripture, other people, and daily life. It’s this attunement to God, cultivated through a pattern of prayerful living, that allows us to be changed over time into healed people who do more good than harm.”
We’re not all called to be Benedictines or to follow their rule, but Srubas shows us that it can be both exciting and challenging to re-imagine how staying in place is part of a high calling. What are you to be about sitting at the same window every morning? Sitting in the same chair, sitting at the same computer, lying in the same bed? Worshipping in the same church? To whom are you listening? What do you hear? How are you being changed?
~~~
[Photo: My grandmother’s embroidery.]
