Today was interesting from a spiritual perspective. Putting it mildly. It all started when a friend of mine announced that the Bishop had declared today to be a day of fasting and prayer for Syria, and I chose to participate. Catholic fasting isn't quite like Protestant fasting. The guidelines are: no meat, no snacks, two smaller meals and one larger one, the total of food eaten at the larger meal not to exceed the combination of the smaller meals. (When I first heard that, I thought it was a total cop-out. LOL. Actually it's easier than Protestant fasting in some respects and harder in others, and given the choice, I usually elect to go completely without food. However, there are a variety of health reasons that Protestant-style fasting wasn't a good option for me today.) Last night I suddenly had a brainstorm that I could count my Saturday as being from 5 PM Friday through 5 PM Saturday, and that way when I got home from work tonight, I could have the chicken tortilla soup that had been in the crock pot all day. So last night I just had a bowl of white rice an apple. So far so good.
This morning -- after having been up 'till almost six in the morning creating this blog -- I got out of bed around 10:30-ish, later than I'd planned but not too much later. I kept the lights off, turned on Rich Mullins' "Wind of Heaven, Stuff of Earth," album, lit candles, and attempted to pray for Syria. Mixed results, I think. By Protestant standards, I did terribly. I couldn't concentrate at all, my mind wandered off to the stupidest little things, and the spiritual sense that I'm totally in love with God and everything's as it's supposed to be is a dim memory. But by Catholic standards, I actually accomplished a good thing. I was up at ten thirty on a Saturday morning praying (however badly), going mostly without food (however incompletely), and offering the very real small suffering for a country that has so much horror and injustice going on all the time. I don't know if it's like this for all Protestants (I actually suspect it isn't) -- but I know that my very favorite part of being Catholic is the way that "it is enough" can resound through my mind and I can believe it. That never happened for me when I was still a Protestant. Ever.
The rest of the day has been a comedy of errors of sorts. I ate my cheese sandwich and apple around noon, then went to my office where I forced myself through six and a half hours of accounting. I brought my Rosary from Right to Life Sunday awhile back and put a thumbtack next to it, so whenever my computer froze or I got up to go to the bathroom or something, I said a Hail Mary in my head and moved the thumbtack. Something drifted through my mind about repetitive prayers, but the thing is ... vain repetitions are bad when they're attempts to earn brownie points with God. I wasn't trying to earn anything, I was just trying to do one more thing to add to my very small contribution to what the Church was sending to Syria today. I don't even know how to pray a Rosary properly, and the whole thing turned almost comical. I grabbed for the Corn Nuts right at 5PM as I was mentally reciting the last few Our Fathers while starting over every couple of seconds when I'd get distracted by accounting problems. I'm not used to thinking of the concept of prayer itself as accomplishing something. For most of my childhood, I thought of prayer as a way to build my relationship with God. Asking for things for the beloved people in my life was a way to show support for them. But it wasn't going to change God's mind -- what He was going to do, He was going to do, and prayer was more about my attitude than anything else. Now -- well, I'm still not entirely sure how to think about prayer now. I don't think that God has this little Points meter like one of the Hogwarts Houses, where when it gets full enough He'll act. I'm taking it on faith that prayer is a very real participation in a spiritual battle, and I'm one soldier on the battlefield. I'm not more than that, but I don't have to try to be more.
The segue between that thought and the Rich Mullins interview going through my head was a lot clearer when I was mentally composing this than it looks in black and white! Oh, well... I do think Rich's favorite "never picture perfect" theme runs all through those first few paragraphs. "I'm not talking about the pie in the sky that the good girls and boys get in the by and by, but rather the strength we can find if we've got the guts to try."
I heard an interview where Rich was discussed what he thought it meant to be born again. I wish I could find it again to link here (just spent the last fifteen minutes looking through the Ragamuffin archive, but it has to be called something else or buried in the midst of a different interview, I'm not sure).
One of the first things he said was that Evangelicals always hate him for this opinion, but the idea of being "born again" occurs once in the Bible (in one story, anyway). It specifically referred to Nicodemus. Just like the rich young ruler didn't want to give his riches up thus those riches were in his way even though riches inherently aren't evil, Nicodemus didn't want to give up his family name thus his birth status was in his way even though good birth isn't inherently evil. So Jesus told him to be "born again" and become equal in his own mind with all of Jesus' other disciples, including the orphans and former prostitutes and common fishermen. It makes sense in context of the story, and that would mean that the concept of being "born again" shouldn't be such a big deal in our personal spiritual lives today.
Hmmm. I'm not articulating this very well -- I'm paraphrasing Rich Mullins' opinions, but I have yet to hear a Rich Mullins interview where I disagreed with anything, so I guess that means I'm taking responsibility for the ideas. I see the concept of being "born again" kind of like this:
When I was in college, we used to have hour-and-a-half to two-hour worship services in the college gym. They were called "Vespers," they boasted a tremendous worship team with a full instrumental accompaniment, and more than 3,000 people -- students would come from the surrounding colleges and high schools. Those services were the unquestioned highlights of the week. Since we sang so many songs, I can guarantee that at least one song per evening would come on where I would hear the opening notes and think, "yes, this is precisely what I need to pray, I just didn't have the words." Since we sang so many songs, I can also guarantee that at least one song would come on where I'd hear the opening notes and roll my eyes and think "this is the dumbest song ever, when's it gonna be over." It's not a huge leap to think that maybe my reactions were reversed from the person standing next to me -- maybe my "I think I'll go use the bathroom" moment was her "this makes the week complete" moment. Every time I think that a particular song is so dumb that no one could love it, I remember my reaction to "You Alone." In its full version, the song has a refrain in the middle that consists of nothing but repetitions of "I'm alive." My college roommate thought that was the stupidest thing ever. But the experience had a particular special meaning for me. I don't think I've gotten to sing the "I'm alive" part since I left college (most churches leave it out) ... and that's a shame.
In the same way, the concept of having one precise moment where they are "born again" is very important to a lot of Christians. And I think rightfully so -- I've heard way too many stories to think otherwise. It's just not the only way to be a Christian, and I don't think God ever intended us to go into one mold like that. (I'm not saying anything as radical as it appears. I'm not saying that I don't think that all Christians need to convert -- just that we don't all need to call it being "born again." All I'm arguing is that we don't have to use precisely the same words or picture the concept with precisely the same images.)
Rich went on. He said that people would press him then, to ask when he was saved. He'd say "about three years old." When asked "so young?" he sang a few bars of the song "into my heart." Here's the clincher, and the idea that ties this all the way back to my rambling paragraphs at the beginning. Rich Mullins said (paraphrased), God hearing our prayers isn't dependent on our understanding those same prayers. That's in the Bible in so many places: "trust in the Lord, and lean not on thine own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make straight your paths." (Proverbs 3:5-6, probably a mixture of translations since my memory is more for song lyrics).
I was three years old when I asked Jesus into my heart, and I did both understand and remember it. (That's my second-earliest memory, if anyone's curious -- I have one vague picture of meeting my little brother in the hospital when I was two, then asking Jesus into my heart when I was three, then fuzzy, scattered pictures from ages four and five until the story starts taking shape). Being Catholic has let me know that one specific moment wasn't ... maybe just, wasn't the only moment of conversion. It's precious to me. It was the start of a journey.
But it didn't and doesn't depend on my understanding or performance. Just my willingness. And maybe that's all I'm trying to say. Paradoxically enough, that concept all by itself (that Christianity isn't dependent on performance, just willingness and state of one's heart) -- that was a concept that Dad attempted to teach me my entire life and we both despaired of me ever learning. But now I do get it. I don't think it's possible to really live that idea out when some part of you still feels spiritually superior to anyone else. When the ideas "it doesn't matter how much I understand," and "these prayers are my contribution to a larger cause, not me in a vacuum trying to wrestle my own attitude," are prevalent, then it's possible. And when I can stumble out of bed an hour late, spill candle wax all over my foot in attempting to clean up from my distracted prayer session, start a Hail Mary fifteen times because work keeps pulling my attention before I've finished, put up with a growling stomach until precisely five and then not even take the time to finish my prayers before shoveling Corn Nuts, forget every single Rosary prayer besides the three I knew as a Protestant, and find the whole thing absurd and funny and still beautiful -- I think I at last understand what it means. To sing "Into my heart" as a three year old and have that count.
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