Leshem Shamayim: “For the sake of heaven.”

My Jesus, we have conversed many times before, and each time, Your words find me different, I am more or less of what I used to be, pushing the limits of humanity, because there You are, on the fringes, calling farther. As I step closer, adoring You, You hold out Your hands to me, is this warning or invitation?
You speak words to me, You caution me.
This is the life I have given you, take it wholly and run beyond the question, do not be caught too far ahead of where you are or too far behind.
Jesus, I take Your hands into mind and try and search that gaze which strips away everything I hide my soul behind. Here I am, I have no where else to go, don’t turn me away from You now. I would give everything to stay here, but You tell me we must keep moving on.
But its not in the direction I always think we should be going; I have not learned the steps of this waltz yet, my weak imagination cannot grasp hold of what You are leading towards. Will I be holy, move in step with You, or pull the direction I tend towards?
You smile, gently, and this smile I can’t read, as open as it is, because so much churns within me, I am unable to see You as You really are: the Jesus I have come to love, the one beyond my confining comprehension. Where is this dance You are guiding me in moving?
I find myself all alone, in a place so bright I can hardly squint… the wind is so hot, my skin singes on contact with the sun, sand in my eyes. I look around… You are there, but You are not alone. Inside You raging, through the words You are pouring our to Abba aloud, so much is moving through You, a violent current that terrifies me. Instinctively, I should have stepped back, but I am drawn towards You… You look so haggard, so hungry… my Bread of Life, famished for me. So thirsty, You could squeeze water out of the sand. I reach my hand towards You as You fall to Your knees in exhaustion…. Not by bread alone… a more vicious tremor seizes You, is everything within You tearing You apart? Or are You being wrenched by the stuff inside me? Worship Abba YHWH alone… and You collapse… Your body looks so frail, near starving. Before I can bend beside You, You are surrounded by the lights, angels, spirits, all giving You some food I have never seen.
Arising, invigorated, You take my hand and spin me into the stars, our dance continues. No Father of the desert, the rest became torment. I pity, You shake your head… it was what You needed to do, because You love me.
Another turn, I am alone again…in a moonlit garden. Something about the desert must have gotten You romantic. Here will there be rest, peace. But I look ahead of me, turning from the stars… and see You again. Anything but peace stirs within my soul.
You are looking up and the stone-faced moon, crying silently… I watch the tears pool in the corners of Your eyes and trace a river to drop onto Your clenched hands. You are so full of the words You are giving Abba that You can barely speak. My feet feel to heavy to run, and I fall to my knees watching, awed, uncomprehending. Why are You hurting, my Jesus, this isn’t right, I know that is where I should be, begging for my life, who are You to need mercy! A difficult swallow, Your whispers are so hoarse, what must You be feeling? You unfold Your hands to Heaven, as if to take, not to beg, drawing them to Your heart. It is for love You would be here, asking the Father for mercy. Your friends are asleep… watching You, the burden is too heavy to stand still. I close my eyes and lift my hands, will Abba let me help You. But You are before me now, taking my hands: This is My task, it is too heavy for You too bear.
I stay closer to You dancing, I dread You will be gone before too soon, Jesus don’t leave me. The waltz is so ominous now.
A kiss on the cheek, You are gone from my arms, they are beating You, Jesus, Jesus why? They break Your body before me and I know they will not take my life for Yours. I look into Your eyes, Your eyes searching the crowd, agonizing, aching, loving… Abba, Abba, no one knows how much He loves us! You cry out under the lash, tearing You… I shiver, those wounds cut Your soul, perfect Jesus. And my hands are bloody from giving them to You. You are better than Hosea, You pursued not just an adulteress, but a murderess. They crudely nail You to that cross, pinned inhumanly as a spectacle, no icon of worship, but humiliation and ridicule.
Abba, Abba, why have You abandoned Me?
Abba, Abba, how can You let Him do this?? My Jesus, abandoning Yourself for me, for us, for love. Your cross is too heavy… how I want to take it from You… You alone can me lovable, able to love in return. I have been so cold up to now, Your blood revitalizes me. Do I have any ability to take hold of You? To begin to love the way You do? Three days I am fixated here, part of my that I need to continue dies with You.. so I remain where it was lost, mourning, as they took You off the cross… dancing alone, crying to Abba. It is all too much, and I fall asleep curled beneath the shadow of Your cross.
A gentle hand, but oh there’s a hole. You have come to say goodbye, and will come back soon, because You will always be with me. I have to let You go, for the good of the world. And none of it is truly letting go.
You take my hand as You leave, as all of us who love You, You leave Your mark in my heart. You are still holding my hand, I feel it in my heart. Be in my every moment, be here, help me be near to You.

I, Hannah, remember the spark of young love with You; when You so consumed and drove my focus that all I could do was immerse myself in You and be drowned in Your word to a point of ecstasy. Do You remember the dances, Jesus, when there was nothing better to do that jump out of bed to go running and speak with You, to hold out my hands in prayer and feel Yours take hold of mine? There was a reorientation in our relationship that may never happen again. But I have oriented too far into rationality, so as to be discouraged in the love by uncertainty of faith. I don’t think this was what You ever desired.

You gift me over-abundantly; I am so spoiled by what You are pouring into me… and yet as I am finding in myself by the graces You give me through academics, I have tried to convince You to make me an angel on earth, that I have tried the botchy surgery myself. Perhaps Basil of Ancyra thought that “those who practice asceticism have succeeded in being just like angels: they have castrated the female and male desires to cohabit through virtue and live amongst men on earth with naked souls;” but somehow Your image is the greater path than that of feeling-less angels.

I can picture You now, my Jesus, and I have no idea what You look like, but there You appear in my imagination… and here is what I see: brilliant, blazing eyes, full of an endless passion that is beaming out of the most expressive and compassionate faces, drawn and attracted intimately to the hearts of each of us. You are teaching me, Jesus, just how fleshly Your heart is. So because we are working out this contract of daily heart exchange, where I am assumed into Your life through that working out of our love. You are still holding Your arms open beyond me. As I am before You now, I get a sense of how it was, like a lingering aroma, but I am being given a fresh course of Your feast of love. What is this world You put before me?

If “the only way a pure soul can express itself is though the body…” You have given me to the world and You have given the world to me… an exchange of hearts, an answering of a cry to love. You usually wanted us to count our costs, Jesus, but i don’t know what they are yet… the weight of the disappointment and grief over displeasing You? You are gracious and I know the costs come out of me not because of You wishing to harm, but because to move forward, some things must be released. Be merciful, Jesus, I think I have gotten a glimpse of Your holy.

I kneel again and You move into me, I cannot be still, I am overwhelmed by the more in the presence, the gratitude in provision; the joy in Your life. To please You in each moment would be more than enough joy to sustain my life. Be near to me, keep Your mercy close as I seek to live the heaven I render impossible. Your closeness is like a breath of warmth on my neck– and Your presence only increases the need for You. I must move into You, for You have not brought me to remain on my knees, though here I could stay forever, just gazing at You.

In a moment of dance, You draw me to my feet and let the wordless hallelujah emancipate from my soul, bringing angelic wings I didn’t know it could possess. You have called for all of me. As I lift my hands to heaven and feel You guide me through the dance, this is more than i have ability; I am lost in Your love. You only ask me to remain such and You will discover me and let me be discovered of my own questing. Here I am to worship in the love of life again, be near to me.

C.S. Lewis is quoted as saying:  “We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, ‘Blessed are they that mourn.’”

Jesus, Your heart is sacred… You have promised me and maybe given me a new heart. I seem to forget that a lot or else I am not where I think I am. Give me Your heart, Here I stand by the crucifix to receive it. Are you beckoning me to open my chest to, inviting me up to the cross for nails in my own hands and feet, to collect my heart in Your chest and receive Yours into mine? So am I made my Love’s and my Beloved is made mine.

I have found something wholly other to me which is needful to embrace because I think in the deepest recesses of my being, You originated it as part of me: this tender heart of Yours, Your compassionate eyes and hands which only ache and desire to take away the burdens which we have become so attached to. The blessings You bestow upon my I have counted as curses because I do not bring them to You, to this same place of the cross and let You take them off as cares on my heart. You have given me a burden which is light and full of joy to give and to share, and as I make my way through this life which has been united to yours, I find there is nothing more I should ever want again.

“Christ has no body now but yours
No hands, no feet on earth but yours
Yours are the eyes through which He looks
compassion on this world
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”
St. Therese of Avila

In the ordinariness of my life, I am seeking the more of Your presence… to feel You in this very soul of mine if the delight of my life… to feel You are there, or to know it in some core essence of my being that has no place in the realm of intellect… is this enough, my Jesus? I am asking the question of myself, and not always finding the answer enough, sweet Jesus. I am still missing You. The way to negate this missing cannot just be the ignoring of it, the numbing of the sickness in denial through ignoring and losing myself amongst the crowds and throngs of daily activity. This is my running, my running from the absence of You. At least, that is what I call it. Perhaps there is something more, perhaps there is an absence I am not comprehending in my very self.

Can I call it sin, is it an ignorance? I have no idea my Jesus, but here is my heart again… I have forgotten how everyday, if I do not give it to you, it is crushed between my hands as I hold so tightly. So I give it to You now, again, knowing You will be giving it back to me, deeper throughout the day. Let my life be a prayer to You.

In surveying the progressive movements on the fringes of conservatism, but not nearly liberal enough abandonment of gender distinctions implied by human sexuality to attempt to refute innate tendencies towards behavior, I have noticed (using, for example, the issue of women’s leadership within the church) that men in the fringe are supportive of women pushing the socio-religious limits of acceptability. I have not had too much exposure with men pushing those limits, so from personal encounters, I theorize the same would apply to women, encouraging “risky,” “threatening” to gender roles male movements which seem to androgynize the difference between male and female. Especially in the sphere of Christianity, where sexual distinction is crucial to understanding the image of God and propagating the work of God, both through the support of opposites as well as in producing progeny.

Yet, this support of mutually-challenging tendencies does not seem to be present internally to the sexes; within myself, and I consider myself to be a somewhat progressive female, I notice tendencies to cringe at the very actions of other women who might be attempting to embody the goals I myself voice. What is going on with this, are women the only hesitant supporters of same-gender motions, which threaten the stability of established gender relations? In potential theory, noting a protectiveness over one’s identity, I posit that there may be a correlation between male and female tendencies, maybe rooted in the facts of essential sexual identity and ego, to attack the self-same qualities of edginess recognized and celebrated within self. What is the root cause of this attack on the very position and existence of what is desired? Does it stem from an inherent threat that if another achieves what we threaten in regards to society, we will lose our own ability to express individuality? Have we become so inculturated with a sense of stability from external cultural values, that our rebellion is co-dependant on the very system to which we rebel? Is it a homophobic fear for those of us who, knowing we are heterosexual and feeling an attraction towards the opposite gender, do not want to be mistake as advocating a different cause by establishing ourselves too intimately with our own sex? Is attraction to the opposite sex itself the selfish motivator which causes us to appreciate that which is different more than that which is same? So many possibilities to the internal cause of our external segregation. How is one to determine the root cause?

Having no subject to experiment on but myself, and having been made aware through the internal substance of my conversation that somewhere inside me there is female misogyny, I am seeking to determine the justice of these beliefs as well as their motivating factor. The cause of my bias against women evades me grip, though not without speculation on my own part. Here are some historic factors about my interactions with women: bias against female authors, suspicion of female professorship/leadership/teaching, distrust of women mentors, wariness about the maternal figure of Mary more than any other part of the Catholic faith, dissociation from categorically female imagery and thought patterns in particular, an alienated relationship with my mother. Sensing some values which I question as biblical in theology now, it has been suggested to me that I have internalized the external controls of my world and surroundings without consciously confessing or even agreeing with these tenants. In fact, I have noted conflict in my being over what I aspire to do and what I sense I “should” do. Who is defining this standard of “should,” and why am I so captivated to it?

I find myself in many senses conforming to what I have internalized as female constructs: long hair, skirts, head covering for mass… all these at times feel almost like a front, though they are part of what I am, and I have been told appear entirely deceptive to what is internally at work. To the outside eye, most of me looks extremely conservative. I reject feminine particularities such as makeup, “girly” activities like complex hair and nail painting, but this is remaining on the external. Internally, I have been described as male before, categorizing emotions and acknowledgements of desire as undesirable, connecting those with the female. Reading male literature and taking onto myself the aspirations towards male scholarship, I mentally try to be “male,” detached and unfeeling. Yet feeling is a part of being that should not be wholly ignored in any human, I feel. On these considerations, I am beginning to ask, in exposing myself to readings which would normally shock my system, what is it about women defining themselves solely off other women that disturbs me? Does a balanced understanding of being include a consideration not only of the other, but of same as well? In this self-experimental journeying, I will record insights with the hopes of developing a viable theory.

Gillian Cloke, This Female Man of God: Women and Spiritual Power in the Patristic Age, AD 350-450. Hb. London and New York: Routledge, 1995. Pp. Vii, 243. ISBN 978-0-415-09469-6. $135.00.

Caught in the eternal struggle of male versus female authority, the sphere of religious leadership once again reverberates with ancient echoes of spiritual warfare. The historically male-dominated Roman Catholic Magisterium continues to refuse women admission into the most intimate leadership role of the Church, ordination into the priesthood, perpetuating a misogynistic hierocracy, which has defined holiness from male perspective since the earliest ideals of “holiness” began to form through the example of martyrs. Is the traditionally masculine picture of spiritual influence derived from the fears of overwhelmingly male literary legacy of the early Church against a depraved female nature? Were men truly the sole perpetrators of doctrine, which evidence the evolution of the Church through masculine social movement? Focusing on the transitional period between martyrdom and empiric rule when asceticism reigned as the definitive standard of personal holiness, Gillian Cloke unveils the influence of women on the Patristic writers of AD 350-450, reasserting the crucial role women played in defining and exemplifying even the most severe forms of ascetic holiness through male literary mutilation of the female sex.

Seeking to answer how women were deemed worthy of the designation of “ holiness,” Cloke introduces her quest for an authentic voice of Patristic women through a comparison of exclusively male-authored classical and Christian historical depictions of women (1-12). In the context of patriarchal Rome, Christian heroines are strikingly similar to classically-deemed disgraceful women: abandoning male-defined paradigms of womanhood, the women most lauded by the Church Fathers ardently practiced spiritual devotions espoused by the Fathers to male practitioners. By noting that her examination encompasses material from not only anecdotal cameos and legends of saintly women, Cloke uncovers feminine influence in its explicit scarcity through a variety of sources. Juxtaposing social perceptions of women disclosed in medical notes, legal asides, epigraphs, letters, tombstones and inscriptions onto the ecclesiastical writings noted for their significant sway of contemporary Patristic thought (13-24),Cloke derives a strongly active image of women through the eyes of their male critics and admirers, while noting limitations of this method.

Finding women as the source of much male inspiration, Cloke reassembles the theoretical Patristic perspective of womanhood as incapable of holiness due to the introduction of original sin at the hand of a woman (25-56). In order to deny this inherently polluted female nature, Patristic writers encouraged celibacy to both men and women. Female piety was more unforgivably judged than male by the presence or absence of a fully sexual marriage. Demonstrating the significance of sexuality to female holiness, Cloke discovers women relegated to a life of consecrated virginity in order to achieve esteem above the depraved state of womanhood (57-81). Virgins were assigned a paradoxical role to their limited public sphere of spiritual conduits for not only specific families, but the Church and Christian spirituality at large. While consecrated virginity rebelled against the societal role of women as reproductive beings, widowhood was embraced as an acceptable form of renunciation (82-99).

Given more public maneuverability than virgins, widows over the age of sixty who remained univira, devoted to their dead husbands in celibacy, were given ecclesiastical duties of prayer and ministering to virgins and other women. Though unable to attain the same socio-spiritual merit as virgin, Cloke notes that widowhood as a sexually renounced order was still more esteemed that incontinent marriage. Married women were considered the lowest order of devout women, though if in a state of sexual renunciation, Patristic writers acknowledged married women as capable of piety (100-133). Able to persuade husbands to conform to the sanctified standard of sexual renunciation or not, the very silent humility of a submissive wife was witnessed to win over many husbands, as seen in the example of Augustine’s own mother, Monica.

Christian wives were influential not only in the conversions of their husbands, but also strongly inspirational to the spiritual lives of their children. While many of the Fathers were directly impacted by maternal spirituality, seen in Augustine whose conversion was a product of his mother’s persistent prayer, this effect was most directly evidenced in the lives of daughters (134-156). Through the Patristic confession that some married women jointly held pious devotion as well as worldly devotion, Cloke finds expansion for the female sphere of influence beyond the moral states of their families to manipulation of power in the social sphere as well. Branching beyond these three “offices” afforded to women, Cloke notes that women sought to manufacture new standards by which to be judged apart from their performance as sexual and reproductive beings in devotional vocations (157-211).

Examining the relationship of independently minded aristocratic women with Fathers, Cloke traces the feminine use of resources such as wealth, contacts, and lineage to circumvent gender restrictions and forge new roles for themselves in symbiosis with the Patristic writers. Non-elite women earned their designation as “holy” through the same defiant attitudes of their aristocratic sisters, confronting the Church and clerics from the desert rather than urban settings. In each case, Cloke indicates that female authoritative innovations rarely outlived the women who introduced particularly feminine strains of leadership the male religious culture, inevitably yielding womanly-acquired leadership to the male officials of church hierarchy.

In her concluding chapter, Cloke reasserts that since women in the Patristic theory were responsible for the destruction of God’s image through sin, women could not attain holiness as women in spite of all their piety (212-221). Adopting societal-determined male devotions of the ascetic life such as sexual renunciation and detachment from worldly concerns, the Fathers lauded women as “male,” having negated female nature through masculine piety. Though fundamentally negative about theoretical positions of feminine holiness, the personal relationships of Fathers with women on each level of hierarchical strata evidence individual exceptions to the standard of sexual renunciation, but in each instance of praise, Patristics deny women the right to be holy as women, praising them rather as men.

Cloke provides a revealing antithesis of feminine presence in the Patristic era, sorting through the words and lives of the Patristic Fathers in a risky endeavor to disclose a more realistic image of obscurely presented femininity. Cloke manipulates the uncertain margin of error in depicting influential women through predominantly male documents to demonstrate the profound affectedness of female spirituality on the Patristic writers’ lives and literature. “These great men of their age were bought and sold by women,” Cloke poignantly emphasizing the femininity of the environment which surrounded and directed the Fathers’ thought processes. Expanding this theme throughout her work, Cloke painstakingly delves into each phase of the female life: virginity, maternity, and widowhood, contrasting Patristic stance to actual interaction of Fathers to women in all such circles. While delineating the evolution of a female holiness within the male ascetic ideal, Cloke stays true to her emphasis on aristocratic women’s influence, which most resoundingly moved the Fathers. Balancing the scope of power amongst women, Cloke is mindful not to neglect the inspiration of non-elitist ascetic women, who continued their socio-religious rebellion in the desert while affecting the most urban of movements amongst (I liked the first old spelling but the second rings wrong) women.

The debate on ordination that was recent in 1995 at the publishing of This Female Man of God remains a current subject of contention for progressive female Catholic Christians, eliciting conversation on issues of holiness and gender equality pervading female spiritual experience beyond the confines of ordination. Questioning the presuppositions of the Fathers and shedding light on their experimentally formed perspective, Cloke indicates the socially-constructed perspective of human holiness. Creatively demonstrating how each form of feminine piety was alienated from the context of womanhood as “male” in Patristic spirituality, I feel this work probes beyond the social spirituality of religion to the bare constructs of female belief: are we going to allow others to define or reject our spiritual practices as holy, or will we, like the innovative Mothers of our faith, use the resources at our disposal to distinguish new sacred spaces of our own, so that we are no longer dependent upon the Patristic paradigm of male holiness versus female unholiness?

Cloke’s work provides a detailed foundation upon which further innovation into issues of women’s spirituality might be delved. Continuing the subject of feminine leadership within Church contexts, what perpetuates adherence to fifth century ideals for female holiness (seen in the Roman Catholic context in the virginity of Mary) and why do feminine attempts at particularizing holiness to women continue to oppose female leadership? Future works by feminist scholars find Cloke’s depiction of 5th and 6th century womanly holiness directly applicable to current conceptions and beliefs concerning feminist spirituality.

Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology, Berkeley                         Hannah Marie Mecaskey

Caught in a web of time, I find myself treading a path in the likeness of a mother, though it was less directly this early morning with my children at work. Images of children were in my mind, though, as I continued work; an image that hung in on of the rooms I cleaned almost daily over the summer on the Hill in New Hampshire of an armless man at whose feet sat young children—ware refugees, desolately poor? A striking C.S. Lewis quote ran across the bottom of the frame: “The Lord Himself is present… therefore, let us wash His feet…” This image returned to me again as I discussed the mendicate holy orders with a school colleague in deciphering the true definition and supposed consequence of heresy. As far as I am able to discern in Jesus’ espoused doctrine, the truths for life are hidden in the fabric of stories such as I might imagine, but with purposeful intent. The theological querying methods I employ in the intellect are entirely theoretical attempts to discover Jesus… and for all my imagination, this sort of faith is empty without true, seeking in the substance of life. Uniting the paradigm of a mother’s kitchen with the monastic segregation from world to find compassion in a unifying solitude, I attempt to etch out a further nitch for women between the two worlds, coexisting in a polarity of pietistic devotion and practical distractions of life, an “opposing” form of devotion.

A disconcerting similarity pieced itself together in my mind as I walked miles over Berkeley in my bare feet, finding the pavement a comforting stabilizer to an ethereal frame of mind: both monks and mothers go barefoot. So can I call a mother a female monk in the world (partly inspire by Br. Wayne Teasdale’s book entitled A Monk in the World and the images conjured by such language)? In a surrogate mother position adopted of my own accord through a consensual union in spirit with Jesus, pursuing the joining of our fibers in an almost invasive sense, I seek to embrace Jesus’ perspective of love and compassion: only the most open arms of Love Himself could embrace that which dissents and contradicts. The diversity is beautiful in its convenience to unity… all of God’s children see and experience the Father’s love so differently… how can we hope to project a unified definition of that experience on anyone? That is the gospel my heart was resonating with in the Mass today (Luke 12.29-38)… “But if that servant says to himself,‘My master is delayed in coming,’ and begins to beat the menservants and the maidservants, to eat and drink and get drunk, then that servant’s master will come on an unexpected day and at an unknown hour and will punish the servant severely and assign him a place with the unfaithful.” Susanna Elm’s Virgins of God reflects this beautifully: “Institutions create shadowed places in which nothing can be seen and no questions can be asked.” (9) I believe that the state in which a woman is to find herself in Jesus is primordially inquisitive on the demonstration of compassion.

Each miracle of the day draws me into further cause to remember that I have been greatly blessed, and therefore need to carefully guard and give all I have been entrusted with as nothing is my own. My “kitchen” is this life in-the-world where I walk, move, and have being in contrast and unity with others. Here I can concoct mixtures, which nourish the souls of others through the recipes of grace, love, and truth which Jesus prescribes in the making of holiness. These must be more than an abstract state of barefootness… but for the love of Jesus, am I willing to take up the challenge of Mark 10.17-30? “And Jesus looking upon him loved him, and said to him, ‘You lack one thing; go, sell what you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.’” If Jesus has entrusted me with so much, what could be better than giving it away: but what does that mean, an extreme divesting of material goods, the care for material, family connections (see Luke 12.49-53), intellectual and emotional resources? The monk in me wants to be free and able to wander and bestow whatever is given to me on others, but the virginal mother in me acts as a conduit between extreme asceticism and practicalism… perhaps there is more to my children than the need for physical barefootness.

Lately I have been questioning the location of my heart’s treasure as I question and wrestle out what I am and how I am to be through the theology I ponder and the life I am living in relationship and isolation. Tangible barefootness through the streets of Berkeley now and again may remind me of how blessed I am to be healthy and strong, to have shoes to cover my feet and move me to a deeper compassion for the multitudinous homeless in my new city. But more than an experience is necessary to affect some degree of change in my life. I am finding holiness as my inheritance and the disadvantaged children as my own. As Jesus indicated a special realness to His presence in the company of two or more, I walk in the footprints of others, looking for His face in what has been marginalized. What could be more marginalized than the contribution of a woman who is pregnant, yet again, with a message, a love, a joy, a sorrow, but who finds herself incapable of more than heart expression, as her bare feet run to and fro in a kitchen tending to the needs of the surrounding less-than herself; the disabled others? Perhaps there is more to be discovered in the blessedness of giving and learning out of the state of poor that is required of us who are so blessed. Where are our feet falling? What motivates the footsteps?

“Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.” Carl Jung

I was inspired by my “children” at work to write about a home that is mine, but isn’t  at the same time. I have been married to Jesus for at least eight months now, and He is shaping me into a wholly different woman every day. In the beginning of the romance, we had had a relationship for many years, but only began the close friendship in lieu of struggles I found in my life. Jesus is not like other lovers, though eight months ago I thought He was, commanding of all of me, absolutely exclusive, commanding my heart towards an angelic existence. I failed miserably in such an attempt to be a faithful bride—at every turn of my head, another sort of distraction drew me away from my aim of pure spiritism, and more into this body, which I considered more lowly than dust, because dust cannot become unclean, dust does not transgress against God. Thus the dust around my form was what I though to be trying to shed, yet it would not shake loose from me; because it is me, I am enfleshed spirit. And yet Jesus was gracious in my self-deception, allowing me forgiveness again and again for what I deemed affairs over my love with Him; I felt since I was called to be Holy before Him, the wholeness of such decree was impossible from an intrinsic division within myself: was I a spirit called to live among the world?

Indeed, the body I am I felt would have been better off to be dust, and I spirit, blissfully immersed in Jesus; Yet He began to show me my spirit could not know His unless my body knew Him too. So I began to contemplate in my anxiousness to please Him, what I conceived of as the most right way to know Him in my body; by losing it. As if on earth, I were a social unit of my own, husband and wife within myself,one part belonged to God and another to a flesh I could not shed. I was the story of Nonna and her husband… the part of me aspiring to holiness apart from humanness falling before the mercy of my Jesus, for:

“unable to bear, in the excess of her faith, to be unequally yoked; for, though surpassing all others in endurance and fortitude, she could not brook this, the being but half united to God, because of the estrangement of him who was a part of herself, and the failure to add to the bodily union, a close connection in the spirit: on this account, she fell before God night and day, entreating for the salvation of her head with many fastings and tears” (from Gregory’s Oration 18: On the Death of His Father http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/gregnaz-fathr.html)

asking God to make the flesh so small it would conform to the will of the Spirit. Unlike Nonna who won her husband through devotion, I could not win Jesus to meet my request… for it was my mind that kept me half unified to God, because I had consecrated the flesh of myself so unholy that He would want no part of it. Who am I to stand before God and tell Him what of me He does not want, what He does not love, what is so despicable to Him. As much as I veiled myself in shame, He would draw back the veil and love me again, just as I am, to make me more than the current. Embracing the demons is the release of them; and finding out one is self allows one to see the selves of others and love them. Love was what I was missing as I had merely admired to an idolatry my Jesus and not allowed Him in; idolatry of God can only be the desire and ardor of love without the embrace.

So now I am learning the waltz of life all over again, finding that the world is in different shades of color depending upon my perspective, and truth is found when something that is pressing still in me let’s go. Maybe it’s the attempt to give Jesus an expectation for me, maybe it’s a confusion. If holiness is perfect obedience, how often am I holy? If holiness is worked out in the love between me and Jesus, incorporating my stumbles, how merciful is He? His work in me may take fruit, and perhaps I will never see it, yet today, I found myself becoming a mother:

Still consecrated to God, the world is a different place to step in every day; how much of self to give to the world? Well, that all depends on how much I need to love, and what love means, is it to give self up to others or detach from interdependence with others to know Jesus; are both the same or is there more besides? Something about God is momentarily eternal. I found my life swept up by mothering today… at work which sinks deeper and deeper into me, becomes part of me… over my nine children, all old enough to be at least aunts and uncles, if not parents and grandparents. The glow of mothering fell over my soul again as, making the beds at 7.30 this morning, I saw a Madonna and child image which frequently reminds me that I am conceiving Christ in my soul, being born into the love of God. Maybe it is love too, once it is fully grown in me, that will come forth and produce Jesus. As a virgin mother, the only way my children are mine is that I have taken them into my heart and look at my care of them as simply all I have to give. It is a beautiful thing to be in the middle of running between cooking oatmeal and folding laundry to brushing teeth and boiling soup, to find oneself swept up by Jesus in the midst. I think after my little girls at City Mission 2 summers ago, I understand why monks went to the poor to find God, and how becoming poor too in the aid of such was exactly their most spiritual experience. As my spirit is in me, it seeks as much as I let the rest of self love.

The first memoir of a virgin mother.

Just reflecting on some things that struck me yesterday (Wednesday) afternoon after a challenging and rousing conversation with my History professor, reading through some passages in 1 Corinthians while waiting for my friend to meet up and go to mass. I had forgotten the head scarf I traditionally wear, covering my head in worship… a practice I have gone back and forth about, but yesterday, it struck me as significant in the conversation with Jesus:

“Jesus, I covered my head with many veils in Your presence– I have hidden myself in a covering of shame and thus somehow brooded an arrogance, a distrust, an inaccurate state. Beginning to disclose myself to DP (Professor) is a new journey with you, we have moved on to a more mystical level than before. I guess the authenticity to which I am testimony in this very being of a body, as You point to Your people, that we are to be light, a city to be seen… it matters thus that I am authentic to the message You have impregnated me with. In this very body, there should be evidence of You Word. What drama, but no, its real, we’ve been married for long enough now, Jesus… I have known You for far too long not to be intimate and to take part in sharing that intimacy. I know I do not care as I should for how and what You have made, so the pregnancy does not appear very developed. Maybe that is how we women are saved in childbearing– I carry You Word in the very manner in which I hold myself as a testimony of You; great or small, but present as I am in You and more– You have come into me. Maybe I can claim the Marian psalm as my own, Hannah, Samuel’s mother, for You can make any woman a mother of Your world if we exercise faith in a life of compassion.

So why am I so afraid to take up presence in the world, without an office for a woman in the world? O my Jesus, it is beautiful to try and love You… You always defy the reason I try to hold. I am a repenting pagan, probably eternally… but here we are at last, like two lovers; who will make the first move of conversation, what will it be. You have unveiled me as Your bride in this very moment. I have confessed with my mouth another layer of the veil beneath which You know the essence of me, as all Your creation, has been created with a unique part of You invested in it, Your own child taking form within me. But for all the imagery of love between us, I have only exposed You too much to my shame… and that was not a wholly uncovered self before Your will. When I am just me before You, I hope I will not be afraid, but as the veils are slowly discovered, I must be the one to uncover my own face to kiss You. You are never merely beholding me, You are in me and to draw me to yourself, uncovered, is the only way to be sure of You. What is this office of belonging to You?

Why am I so afraid to take up presence in the world without an office in the world? Why am I so hesitant to ask You for what I cannot find on my own? To even fight You for it? Why am I apologizing and demuring myself before everyone I meet. There is fight, frustration, ferocity, weakness and strength in me– but I clothe myself in timidity which hides it all. Deceptive, and I just want to be true with You, acknowledging what is there and then moving with You forward. Something within me deeply resonated with the tasks of work on Wednesday… the simple physical services of feeing, cleaning, etc. Yet I realize the veil of dichotomy dividing my person between the holy of holies and the unclean court. This contradiction is over the very existence and body You have given me, looking at life externally, so I am not present in it, but in the worry over it. That is never good for Your Word, what sort of life will it be able to bring?

All this, maybe I need to imagine more with You. What is inside was made to come out, in a transfigured manner as You, though what will come out will only be able to be what I can do. There is the mystery, You taking form in the stuff I wish I could change but in the end just can’t. I don’t know what I am asking You Jesus, maybe for faith, maybe for movement, maybe for peace. I want to live Your life, not theologize aabout it. Guide me in my steps as I quest to  come to terms with this womanhood. So my fingers trail the edge of this fabric of life… but life is slowing, as I am going to sleep. I love You Jesus, lets continue the conversation.

“We are seekers. We desire to know an authentic God. We want our faith to help us understand moral and ethical choices in work, education, economics, politics, and even out families. We want to integrate spirituality into every facet of our lives. We are questing for voices that have never been heard before. We are reclaiming women’s spirituality and listening to the voices of nondominant cultures to help us find our way. We are a generation of questioners. We do not want to be told what to do, what to think or believe. We insist on figuring it out for ourselves. Faith must make sense and seem logical. It must stand up to face our challenges. We want to encounter God, not merely learn about God. Our spirituality must be grounded in this perpetual search.” (Swan, Lisa. The Forgotten Desert Mothers.151-2)

In the middle of my young life, at the core of my being, I have these things called questions. The rather bluntly stated truth of what is above comes from a book I have just finished on my quest. I am challenged to the core of my tradition, to the core of my being, to be authentic, for only there is Jesus truly revealed in me and do I really know my Jesus. What hinders me, well, I think to be transparent, there is something in my core that is afraid to probe places because I think others will cease their love. As long as my questions and wonderings remain anonymous, people don’t care who or what I am, but find something in me open and desiring to know them enough to engage in a dialogue of life, which I think is an expression of love. I can love and talk to anyone, I think, because Jesus did, and I want my heart to be His. Do I? Another, story, no not always. But the sheer fact is I imagine I can. But I know I hold back, I am terrified of losing the love connection with people. Does that element of care make me human or evidence that I really don’t love Jesus enough?

I am challenged on both sides by women in leadership… and Martin Heidegger whom I have just read for class warns me that “fallenness,” the act of being determined or swayed substantially by society against my inner inclination is inauthentic, therefore, what inside me could Jesus be saying. He must speak often through a nature I don’t here. On Tuesday, I was asked why I resisted women in leadership, priesthood. I have never cared for the idea—perhaps I am prejudice against my own sex. Misogyny of women… I hope that is not my authentic place of being, and if it is, I mean to change it and be determined out of love. Do I need to be determined? Everything hardly seems as set in life as it is often advocated. More from Heidegger’s readings today, I realize something that my hands are shakingly reaching out to accept: that life comes from within. Jesus lives in my heart, and as much as I want to find Him in others and need to, how I am to be with Him, with others, with my very self cannot be externally determined.

Do I even believe what I just wrote; I think I must, now. And so long, Jesus and I have struggled because I naturally go inward, naturally repel the feminine of me, naturally deny by my very life the weakness I have been given for blessing to allow love. Because I am so afraid of it. I have been just like everyone else, giving into the temptation of allowing the public society determine the condition of my interior life… I care far too much about what other people think. Yet, how can I not care, in love? I must be fundamentally confusing what it means to deny myself and pick up my cross to follow Jesus. I am no longer asking to by martyred, Rabbi warned me that would come with loving like Jesus. It is this whole loving business I still don’t understand. I think I am still operating out of a presupposition that I must please in order to gain enough love to love in return, to be allowed to love as it were, because I am doing things still to try and qualify my love. You can have all this world, but give me Jesus, really? Where is the line of Jesus in the world and Jesus in heaven… I must make my heaven on earth, be one with the people, but not at expense of Jesus. I have no sense of balance or direction there.

I have a very conditioned belief structure and keep my thoughts on gender minimal, because it seems a two-edged sword. I talk with my male friends enough to know that some have felt incredibly unwary with a woman questioning social structure. Yet there are definitely, as my professor at the Franciscan school told me and demonstrated within me Tuesday, more men advocating women’s roles then maybe women ourselves. The misogyny of women, she called the movement. Maybe I hold back and doubt, because I just want us to be able to be women… and I really don’t know much about what that naturally means. I am not always very submissive, though part of me just collapses when it comes to Jesus. Intimacy is formed, to me, in the open exchange which can involve some disagreement and struggle. I don’t know what God and Jesus think about men versus women other than the words in that Holy Bible and the multiple ways I have heard those words interpreted.

So much questing going on in this soul, I fear my words would be very unorganized if I continued with the intensity I have been typing for a while now… so I will continue with exploring the origins of women in church structure. Why am I doing this struggle… because I need to know my Jesus, and learning how much more of Him there is, especially because He always shows me there is more of me to wade through… we have just begun to scratch the surface.

“Not all courses are suitable for all people. You should have confidence in your own disposition. For many it is profitable to live in community; for others it is helpful to withdraw on their own…. Many people have found salvation in a city while imagining the conditions of a desert. And many, though on a mountain, have been lost by living the life of townspeople. It is possible for one who is in a group to be alone in thought, and for one who is alone to live mentally with a crowd.” (Life of [Amma] Syncletica)

As I travel through the roads of decisions on this life with Jesus, I am faced with all the same decisions every young woman my age must make, sometimes daily, sometimes momentarily… sometimes it is in the very decisions of the moment that I commit myself to a decision for the future. I am a creature of solitude, one who has always valued the practices of introspection and severity which purge the self of distractions and clears a channel for Jesus. I wrestle with that, because if I am so empty, what have I to offer others. The past several years of my life, this struggle has varied in my ascetic practices… determined by the passion of my soul and my perceived priorities. The different practices I take up and discard are meant to focus me on the love of my Jesus and my need for Him. So once again, as I study through what it means to be a woman with my God, how to love and live Him as a woman, I consider the practices of my sisters before me who passionately loved our Jesus. Virginity, asceticism… it all can seem so appealing, yet… maybe intrinsically works against what we are called to? I am torn.

Yet weakness is the place to which all my experience calls me, emptiness is the place where all my learning is to bring me, desolation of love is to where all my seeking will direct, abandonment for all my questing. My life is to be Jesus, and so deeply in love with Him that whatever is in me or whatever spaces are cleared through me, that He may poor with uninhibited radiation. The tension is where He ebbs out of my heart—I cannot abandon myself to glorious desert or become assimilated into the people. I am one of God’s people, and I think that could call me to a collective Hell with them, but my Jesus woos my soul to tread the threshold of heaven and teeter at the place where others will join me. Neither edge is an option, for both are a deeper type of loss—for Jesus treads the edge with me. A call to be alone before communal. He calls me to lose what I think is myself in order to discover who I truly am in Him, since He has removed the necessary weight of my sin. Jesus is the one I must find to know how I am to love as Him.

So as I am traveling through a new road of discovering my Jesus in new dimensions, I stumble across this “hindrance” of perpetual annoyance in my path: myself. I struggle with Paul’s words of denying myself, thinking that is to abolish anything I am and be devoid of mental processes, physicality, anything that would be other than Jesus to those I know. I struggle with the doing of this, because in purging this being I have of my very self, I have nothing of Jesus to offer others. And that is why I am here, is it not? To be woven as a piece of the fabric in the garment of my God, the robe of His glory. It is relational faith, I think, not aloneness. Yet the pursuit is intensely alone in the midst of a crowd, as human divisiveness evidences itself, an infection in Jesus’ body, giving Him little place to take being, and mostly tearing apart His flesh (are we not His Body) through divisiveness. I am a part, I know. And part of me is discovering the breadth of Jesus’ love.

As a woman, it is my joy to give in a way that seeks to wholly encompass and give what I am. Maybe that is just speaking as a person, a lover, an adorer of this Jesus. Divisions exist, and in the naïve idealism of my heart, I try and circumnavigate them, but find that inauthentic. I cannot avoid the divisions of difference between people, nor in my core do I want to because they are so beautiful. So wherein lies our unity? Can it be just in this loving, that we all will do and contribute to so differently because of who and what we are? I look out and idealize love everywhere, but something core within me, that I am seeking to identify believes there is a natural order, a God-created structure for most fitting operation of life. So how do I as a woman fit into that? I always question order, origin, power, authority, because my spirit rebels even against itself. Taking hold of that danger, I bring the separation of women before the Church, meaning all who will take Jesus as Savior. I know we are different then men, I am not asking for us to be the same.

I want to find a place for our difference in the unity, and so I am probing, seeking to what I can try and identify as source for our displacement. The family may have been, and still be, the foundation of the church, a father priest, a mother nurturer, but what now do I make of hierarchy, which does not encompass all who call Jesus “Lord” and who love Him. Why if we love Him, do we not love each other. In my small corner of the world, I am trying to love. My sphere of mutual influence is small, I try not to isolate too much. But those whose lives touch mine I love, and those who I can touch, I love. Differences arise and challenge love, especially when the love is close… strains and stresses on disagreements. I do not understand that phenomenon in myself, why we must agree in order to love. I am finding that as I have let go of that, Jesus gives me love without boundaries, and sometimes that scares me. Where are the boundaries, where are love’s limits: I would say in Jesus… how He lived.

But back to our place as women, obviously God did not make the world all-male. I appreciate the men, without them, where would we be; I appreciate male contribution to the creation of life and growing of it… how many of us have or know fathers who have given us wisdoms and imaginations we might not have had from our mothers who taught us care and concerns. So church, where will you let me be, Jesus, where should I go. When the heart is full, I feel it must pour out somewhere, as I learn more about people and this love, I cannot contain it inside; I think then it ceases to be love. And how can virginity, widowhood, motherhood, etc… any of these be any more holy or uniting to our Lord if consecrated to Him with full heart? I am asking that we not be left to blunder on our own, but be allowed to create a space with the things of God we have been given to be church and love as much as anyone else. I am still exploring how order fits into that. But that is for the next post. No cell for me but the cell of my heart, for the remembrance of Jesus must be constant in life immersion.