In the Beginning

Words have lost their music, or so I hear.

Perhaps they never had any, or so they say.

I will never forget a soldier to whom I said,

“What is the most beautiful song you have ever heard?”

He stopped his talk, and looked at me in quiet,

For a precious half-a-second, before he replied,

“It never occurred to me that music could

Be beautiful.” Perhaps that is the point.

Words retain the music, but we’ve lost the ear

Because we’ve lost (or chased away) our silence.

Our silence? As if it were ever ours.

The Word draws power from the Silence Before The World,

The only power that is, the power of Music

The Music which is the Lord and Giver of Life.

When we become quiet, we begin to do the same,

But neither the words, nor the quiet, are ours;

And certainly not the Music which Is between.

Rather, we are Theirs, or else we simply are not.

Our words are lego miniatures of the Word

And even in them we play with Holy Fire.

If there be not music, then let silence reign

Or at least the rehearsal, barely attended to

By children playing bagpipes, violins,

Trumpets, drums and flutes, in eager cacophony

Always sharp, or flat. Some are merely young.

Others are always trying to play the wrong tune,

Or play their favorite tune at the wrong time.

Some expect they will likely do well enough

When the time comes, so they distract themselves

With sidebar talk; And some just like the noise.

Dead men fill the air with the burden of talk

Zombie conversations about nothing

And I, being dead myself, am fully complicit

In filling and killing the silence with empty talk

Struggling to empty words of all their silence

Lest we find ourselves confronted by

The aweful reality of nothing to say.

So conversations deaden, bore and stultify,

Wilt the critical function and reconfirm

Me in my headlong flight from bright reality.

This is not the courage of the bulwark picnic

In the cancer ward; nor yet the Socratic libation

Poured out for the gods; nor even of shaking the hand

Of a pretty girl. This is only fear

Conspiring to (just-so-happen-to) look

Out the other window at that precise time

As we pass the camo jacket with the cardboard sign,

As if we fear that poverty might be contagious.

Of course it is, but what we do not see

Is that we are already infected, and quite terminal.

Against all this we raise our timeless chats

Over tea and toast around the kitchen table;

Amid beer and pipes of aromatic smoke

In the cool of the evening, when the ancient garden echoes

Softly in the mind, tingeing words with music

Older than fig leaves. Conversations reach

Backwards and forwards into the now and always.

Silence dives still deeper in the single point

Where darkness dwells in unapproachable light.

Humility alone can bring us to this place.

Humility requires, demands, the incarnation

Of ineffable word in flesh of mortal deed.

The scandal of the particular is never more

Strongly felt than when at last we turn

From words to music, in this specific act

Of encountering the Word in scribbled sharpie ink

On a cardboard sign; or in the aching void

Between the lines of empty zombie talk;

And offering bread, not bread alone but Word

Eternally uttered forth from the Mouth of God.

 

Mary, Martha, and the Primacy of Contemplation

As much as I hate to admit it, there is a certain hierarchy in the spiritual life, as in the physical world. It is, perhaps, the most uncomfortable thing about the faith, that some things are true, others are not, and there is no getting around them when they are. The second most uncomfortable thing is the knowledge that I am fallible, and therefore I never truly know when I am right, and when I am wrong. So, in yesterday's discussion of Martha and Mary, I came to the conclusion that the "one thing needful" was love and the trust that must follow it. This takes different shapes, depending on the situation, but love is always the central thing.

However, this does not fully explain the fact that Jesus did say that Mary chose the "better part." In fact, throughout the history of the Church Mary and Martha have been considered archetypes of the two broad vocational categories, if you will, the contemplative and the active lives. Mary, of course, is the proto-contemplative and Martha is the proto-active. A good deal was made out of this distinction by the Church over the ages, in holding up the celibate, contemplative life as the beau-ideal of the Christian life.

Ah, but isn't that rather an old fashioned way of thinking about it? Don't we now know that everyone Apostolic Letter "Novo Millennio Ineunte", the Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, by Pope Paul VI, and Chapter V of Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church.) Wasn't Vatican II all about increasing the role and responsibility of the laity in the Church?

Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa 1979

is called to be a saint, and lay-people are called to the same level (although not "style" for lack of a better word) of holiness as everyone else? (For reference to recent emphasis on the "Universal call to Holiness), see Article 30 of St. John Paul II's

Heck, go back to the beginning and didn't St. Paul say, "For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose" 1 Corinthians 12:14-18.

Yes, but this does not change the fact that St. Paul was also the author of 1 Corinthians 7:32-34. And Jesus definitely did say that Mary chose the better part. Is the active life really second best?

I think the key is to be found in the two great commandments. We all know them: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your strength and all your soul," and "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." These are clearly hierarchically arranged. Love of God comes first, love of neighbor comes second. However, they are not arranged according to worth but according to primacy. First things first, if you will. Love of God comes first, love of everyone else comes second. 

For some reason, and I suspect it is diabolical in origin, almost everyone Christian I know will read that and hear, "Love of God is more important, love of neighbor is less important." The implication is that there is a competition for limited resources (love) and God has first claim so when there is not enough love to go around, well, sorry family, but God gets His first. This understanding is widespread, pervasive, but is a straight up lie. Hence my suspicion that it is diabolical in origin.  

In reality, there is not and can never be any sort of competition between creature and Creator, except in the imagination of the creature. "In Him we live, and move, and have our being!" There is no possible way in which we could ever have something that God needs, and there is no possible way God could ever not provide for His creatures what they truly need, and in any event, Love is the one thing that only multiplies the more you give it away.  The Creator vs. creature dynamic is not a valid construct. 

Competition, when it occurs, occurs in the imagination of the creature. The creature imagines that something is good for it, which God has warned is not, in fact, good for it. Promiscuous sexual activity or gossip, to pick two fairly common examples, one respectable, one slightly less so. These give pleasure, they make the creature feel good for the moment, so the creature thinks they are good. God says they are not, the creature does them anyway and reaps the consequences later on down the line. This is what we call "sin" and "punishment."

This brings me to what Fr. Michael E. Gaitley, MIC, calls "The Primacy of Contemplation." This is a concept that reconciles the two halves of the false dichotomy, admittedly by the rather mundane process of non-reinvention of the wheel. Simply put, pray first (commune with God), then go and do what He tells you (love your neighbor.) In the order of the Church as the Body of Christ we have contemplatives who listen to and commune with God, and we have actives who put that relationship into practice. This is an important area of study, but not really my topic at the moment. Right now I am concerned with the contemplative and active element in my own life.  

The Primacy of Contemplation means that my work must flow from my prayer. My relationship with people must flow from my relationship with God. This is not because God is more important than people (He is, but He doesn't insist on His importance) but because people are so important that anything but the best is not good enough for them. Therefore our service must be the highest, noblest and most loving service, which means is must be united with Christ's service (from Bethlehem to the Cross). To do this we must be united with Christ. As Vatican II proclaimed in Perfectae Caritatis, "Apostolic activity must spring from intimate union with Him."

This means that prayer, spiritual reading and the sacraments, while not the focus of our lives (for laity in general) need to be the foundation of our lives. As busy as we may become (and I have become very busy at various times in my life) we must never be too busy for dedicated time for prayer. The world attacks prayer time. It always will by design. When you make the decision to set aside time (five or ten minutes or an hour, it doesn't much matter) every day for prayer, the devil will attack that time. He will make you unusually tired in the morning, try to get you to stay up late so you will say, "Just this once I really need those extra ten minutes of sleep, so I am going to hit the snooze button. I'll make up for it tomorrow." He will wake the kids up early and send them to interrupt. He will offer distractions, diversions and downright despair of ever praying worthily. (I don't know whether all of those interferences are directly as a result of the devil or just coincidence, but I have noticed that they tend to occur with surprising regularity. I know as a matter of history that when my alarm goes off I can count on having at least one good reason not to pray every single morning.) 

The great thing is simply to keep trying, and not to be discouraged by failure. When prayer time is interrupted by tiredness, offer that as a sacrifice. When it is interrupted by other people, offer that to God. When you are secretly very glad that so-and-so came along and interrupted and got you off the prayer hook for today, and ashamed of that feeling, offer the feeling, and the shame and the interruption to God. Try again tomorrow, or later in the afternoon. 

Set an alarm on your phone for 3 PM, and when it goes off simply say the Divine Mercy prayer or a short form of it, such as, "For the sake of His sorrowful passion, have mercy on us, and on the whole world." Pause, center your awareness on God (who has not ceased to be aware of you for all eternity) and look at Him with love. 

Talk to Him like Tevye. 

Talk to Him, listen to Him, then do what He tells you, and you will become an active contemplative, probably without even knowing it. 

You will also become a saint. Sweet deal!

Pied Beauty

One of my favorite poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, the Jesuit priest and poet.

Enjoy!

Ulysses

I had a lot of time today, so I made a youtube video. This is me, reciting Alfred Lord Tennyson's "Ulysses."

The One Thing Necessary for the Triumph of Evil

In keeping with my last post, here is some food for thought that my little brother shared on facebook.

Granted, there is no point in jumping half cocked into a situation where you might end up getting stabbed or shot, and not do anyone any good. On the other hand, the sort of bullying shown in this video could easily have been stopped by nearly any college age adult with a half an ounce of confidence. People choose not to step in, not because of any reasonable fear of personal harm, but because of a kind of psychological and moral paralysis, which may be the subject of my next blog.

The decision about when and how to step in in more dangerous situations is a thornier question. I think I might do a blog on that as well.

In the meantime, I hope this video has given you some cause to think.

The Power of the Powerless

I remember reading a story about a rather wealthy Indian lady who volunteered to work for Mother Teresa for a day, back in the years before Mother Teresa was an international celebrity. This Indian lady arrived at the clinic, which was a house for the dying, and was instantly overwhelmed by what she saw, heard and smelled. I know how she felt, too. Walking into a place like that is an instant sensory barrage of horror and evil. The evil, ugliness and pain are all very sensory phenomena, with their accompanying groans and screams, odors and wounds. The peace and love that the patients experience for the first time in their lives is much harder to see. The sight of raw flesh of a beggar who got run over by a truck is easier to notice than the fact that his wounds have been painstakingly cleaned of dirt, maggots and infection;  emaciated arms and ribs of a man who should weigh 70 kgs but instead weighs barely 30kgs hide the fact that he has just received the first good meal of his life, spoonfed by a woman who has dedicated her life to loving him; the smell of a human being in total kidney failure when his uric wastes are oozing through his pores on his skin disguises the fact that he has just been bathed today for the first time in his life. All of these things are a shock to the system. Even a trained and experienced medical practitioner can be overwhelmed walking into such a scene. Where do you start? What do you do? But this rich lady was a lay person, just an upper caste woman who had a kind urge and decided to volunteer for a day. I can only imagine what she must have been feeling as she stood there, surrounded by the obvious horror of human suffering. She must have been terrified, bewildered, filled with sorrow and helplessness. She must have wanted to turn around, run right back out the door, and never come back.

Fortunately there was something else at work, subtly, quietly, faithfully hidden under the obvious horror. Mother Teresa took this lady by the hand and led her to the most heartbreaking patient of all. A newborn infant was lying on a cushion, alone. Perhaps his parents had abandoned him, or perhaps they were dead. This was not a healthy baby. He was lethargic and emaciated. He did not cry or flail his tiny arms around. He did not startle the way a normal baby should, or grasp with his hands, or even suckle when a nipple or finger was put to his lips. He just lay there with his arms and legs spread out limply around him, breathing with the halting, abrupt, shallow gasps of a baby for whom simply breathing takes too much energy to be worthwhile.

Mother Teresa led the rich lady to this baby and told her simply to pick the baby up and hold him and love him for the few minutes or hours he had left to live. The rich lady protested that she couldn't possibly do that. It would surely break her heart. Mother Teresa only repeated her invitation, and went about her work. Left there in front of the dying infant the rich lady made a choice. She reached down and took that baby in her arms and held him. For the rest of the day she did nothing but love that baby as hard as she could until finally he died in her arms. And her heart broke, but not with anguish as she had expected. It broke with love.

I read this as I was in the first half of the SF medic training course, and it forever changed my view of medicine and healing. As healthcare providers we are trained to save lives. Our thought and energy are bent on staving off death for as long as we can, prolonging life, reducing pain, preventing or mitigating disabilities. All true healers have this goal, but all of us inevitably face the truth that our patients are going to die. Put it off as long as we can, prescribe what we will, in the end death will win. We can only delay it. Sometimes we can delay it for years. Sometimes only for minutes. Sometimes the patient is already dead, but their body just hasn't figured that out yet.

Faced with this truth, each health care provider, from the lowest EMTB to the Surgeon General (who generally does very little surgery from what I hear) has to find his own way of dealing with it. Some choose to ignore it. Some simply shrug their shoulder and move on. Some stop caring eventually. But in Mother Teresa's radical and almost unforgiveable request I believe I have seen the only true way forward. We must look deeply into the horror of death and see past it to the subtle, patient, silent work of love which is operating underneath the horror and pain, stronger and older and wiser than them. In the truly authentic Catholic approach to healthcare there is the acknowledgment that the patient will die, and the deeper knowledge that love is stronger than death. Even if the patient will only live for a few seconds, those few seconds can be lived with dignity. They can be filled with life and love and peace, if someone is brave enough to let God use them to be that gift. Such moments are never wasted.

All of this went through my mind when I saw this video by Tammy Ruiz a Registered Nurse who specializes in Perinatal Bereavement and Perinatal Hospice. I am not at all ashamed to admit that I couldn't watch the full video without tears in my eyes. The work she does is beautiful, heroic and necessary, and alas, all too rare.

Please watch the video and pass it on particularly to any medical proffessionals who are involved in birth and perinatal care. Pray for Mrs. Ruiz and the continuation of her vocation, which is truly a call within a call. Take the time to celebrate life in whatever way you can. This is a solid, concrete answer to the culture of death and a joyful affirmation of the infinite value of every single human person, no matter how small.

Go here to read Mrs. Ruiz's own words on her work.


(The Title of this post is taken from the title of the amazing book by Christopher De Vinck.)

The Dutchman's Wife

Margaret awoke while it was still dark. Hans had coughed, and his wheezing breaths had paused, then stopped for too long and it had awakened her. He was breathing again now, and she allowed herself to relax. It wouldn't be long now, she knew. He could not hang on much longer, and it was better so. She reminded herself vehemently that it was better so, and looked over at the clock. Her vision was not what it once had been, but she could just make out by the light of the embers on the hearth that both hands were pointing nearly straight down and just a little to the left of the six. It was about six-thirty. She sighed and slowly eased her old feet onto the floor, finding her old worn slippers. Then she knelt painfully for her morning prayers, letting Hans sleep as she always did these days. There was work to be done and no one to help her with it so she prayed quickly, sure that the Lord would understand. The chickens needed to be let out into the yard and fed, the eggs needed to be gathered, the fire needed to be built up both on the hearth and in the stove, the dog, an ancient German shepherd named Fala, needed to be shooed up from her bed in front of the hearth and sent outdoors. By the time Margaret had breakfast heating on the stove the sun was up and she could see the mills swirling through the frosty air in the distance, on the other side of the canals. If it warmed up enough they would walk along the river for awhile, if he felt strong enough.


Hans was awake, sitting on the edge of the bed, his thinning, tousled hair looking like straw in the shafts of sunlight from the barred window. His eyes were curious today. He didn't know where he was, or who he was. In some ways that was better. On the days that his mind was blank he was easier to deal with, more pliant. Other times, when he fancied he was a little boy again he ran everywhere as fast as his old limbs would take him and she could never keep up. The few and far between times when he knew things were the most painful. Then he would reproach himself and beg her pardon for being such a burden all these years. Today he was a blank slate. Perhaps she would teach him his alphabet, later. For now she had to feed and bathe and dress him.

He liked the food today, sometimes he didn't. The eggs and biscuits were warm and done perfectly, she still cooked as well as she ever had. He didn't want to bathe at first, until she convinced him, mostly by signs and gestures and the reassuring tone of her voice, that the water was warm and nice and wouldn't hurt him. Then she dressed him like a large baby in his old, old shirt and overalls, and the wooden shoes that no one ever wore anymore. She dressed him just like the children that they had never had, and in many ways he was very much her child. The innocence and trust of an infant looked out from his china blue eyes, or sometimes the petulance and weepiness of a two-year old, or the playfulness of a schoolboy.

"Aunty Lars," he said, suddenly.

She started. He was a child again, and in this particular fantasy he thought she was his long dead aunt. "Yes, Hans," she answered.

"Aunty, Captain Decker comes by today."

"Of course he does my love," she said. His eyes were the eyes of a little child, out of place in his gray stubbly face. There were only a few days in the month in which she could shave him without danger of him moving suddenly and cutting himself. He rocked back and forth and bounced a little, a potbelly he had never had as a boy jiggling as he did so.

"Can we go see him, Aunt? I want to wave him by."

"It is cold out today Hans," she said.

He laughed. "Silly Aunt, it is summer. See the tulips," he waved towards the window with a withered hand, blue splotches showing through the transparent skin.

"No dearest, that is snow."

"Yes Aunty, but the tulips are under the snow, of course."

"Asleep?" she asked.

"No Aunty. Tulips only sleep during the night. Don't you remember when you took me out into the garden at night and we watched the tulips go to sleep. But in the winter time they are awake beneath the snow."

"Maybe they are my love, maybe they are. But it is still cold out."

"I'll wear my muffler Aunt, and I will stay warm. Please let me go out and watch the boats."

She sighed. It was still cold out and would be until the afternoon, but he would not be kept indoors until then. She nodded and got his cap and coat off the pegs on the wall. He tried to put them on, as she wrapped up some cold biscuits and cheese for their lunch, but he couldn't remember what to do with the buttons. She buttoned them for him and let him carry the lunch because he begged her to. And they stepped out, a bent old man trying to run ahead of a gray haired old woman, she holding him by the hand and telling him to stay close. They walked across the fields, still covered with snow in some places, despite the warm April rain of the days before. The canals lay on the other side, and beyond them the Zuider Zee, and at the end of that, the dikes and the harbor, the ocean with all the ships that he used to build. A flat bottomed river boat drifted by, and Hans called out to them and waved. "Captain Decker, Captain Decker, it's me, Hans." The man in the striped shirt stared and then tried to pretend he couldn't hear. Hans continued to call, disappointment in his voice. He broke his hand out of Margaret's and tried to run after the boat for a few feet until he came up short of breath and had to stop, bent over and gasping. He cried and Margaret held him and told him it was all right, but he soon forgot all about it. A patch of tulip buds, breaking out through the snow caught his eye.

"Look, Sis, tulips. I'll pick some for you, pretty Betty." She was his older sister now and he scampered off to pull the tulips up by the roots and bring them back to her. He insisted on putting them in her hair and teased her about beaux that she never knew. They meandered down the banks of the canals into the village. Margaret pulled the tulip stalks out of her hair before they went in, but he didn't notice. He liked the town, it was so alive. He ran between the stalls in the busy market, calling merry greetings to long dead friends he fancied he saw. Most of the people were regulars, and they knew him and greeted him back. Hans begged Margaret to buy some ginger that she might make some ginger snaps, and she did, knowing that Alice, the pretty young girl who watched the stall, would let her give the ginger back as soon as Hans forgot about it, which he did in less than a minute.

He moved down by the shipyards, and she followed. She tried to turn him back, but for once he would not let her change his mind, though the day's outing was becoming longer and longer and very soon it would be too late for them to get back before dark. He would not listen, he wanted to go down to the shipyards. She remembered long ago, when he was a young man. She had first met him on her way home as she walked past the docks. Some sailors on shore leave had jeered and catcalled as she went by, and she had blushed bright red at their words, too frightened and embarrassed to do anything but put her head down and walk past, trembling and not daring to look right or left. And then, suddenly, a young man with broad shoulders and thick, calloused hands had stepped out from an alley and was walking beside her. He did not say a word to the group of jeering men, he just looked at them with his blue, blue eyes as cold as ice, and his hands clenched into fists. He had been a very tall man then, well over six feet and immensely strong from his work in the shipyards. The sailors shut their mouths and looked away. After that she had never walked home alone. He was always waiting for her at the end of the street, and he always walked with her, at least part of the way home. And she loved him for it.

Now he stared out into the dry docks, where men were building ships unfamiliar to him, new ships without sails that burned coal and put out a dreadful smoke. He didn't speak, but looked very hard as if he was trying to remember, but whatever thoughts and distant dreams that were dancing in his head, they faded and eluded him. She could almost see them like wisps of smoke curling away from his groping mind.

But perhaps they were not gone entirely. He took her hand in his and squeezed it with all his feeble strength and said. "Come on, little Meg, I'll walk you home. No one shall harm you while I'm around."

"I know they won't, Hans. I feel safe with you." She had always used to say that, as she leaned her head against his shoulder, and it had always made him beam with pride and happiness. It still did.

"You are safe with me, Meg. Pray God I am always around to keep you so." He walked with shuffling steps the length of the dock, going still further from the way home, following the streets that they had traveled so many times in their youth. He forgot his fancy before they made it to her father's old house, and they were now walking through narrow, deserted streets. He seemed no longer able to feel her hand in his and he began to tremble with fear. He hated to be alone. It was the worst when he got lost in his own mind, no longer able to see, hear or feel her. He called out to her, "Margaret, Margaret." He didn't hear her answer and kept calling, "Where are you Margaret?" There was nothing she could do but put her arms around him and hold him until the fit passed. Sure enough, he suddenly forgot about it as if it had never been, the evil of loneliness swallowed up in the childlike purity of his withered mind, like a drop of poison dripped into the ocean. Gone, erased from his memory.

Time went on, as they continued to walk, and afternoon found them on the dikes overlooking the sea. The sunsets they had watched from there, the starry skies, the moonrises. She dared not stay long enough to watch another one, and at last he was getting tired, and allowed her to turn him homewards. It was a long walk, but she was not worried. It would do him good, he would sleep well tonight with no pesky dreams to disturb his slumber, and the memories that flooded over her were very strong, very beautiful. It would not hurt to take some time to turn them over in her mind, to thank God for them. She had long ago learned to live without bitterness, not like the first few years of loneliness after the terrible war had taken its toll on his mind and body. She had often thought it would have been easier to be a widow, rather than losing him while he was still alive. It had been especially hard when she was younger, for his mind had gone long before her beauty had faded into its present comfortable grayness. She had learned since then, painfully over long years, but she had learned. Now she lived to care for her husband and her love for him was so strong that he seemed to be more a part of her than a separate person. When it was time for him to go, she would feel the loss terribly, as if she had lost her right arm and right leg, but it was not time to think about that yet. The day had warmed up beautifully, and he took off his jacket and made a show of flexing his arms, fancying they still had the muscle of his younger days. She wasn't sure where his mind was then, but it didn't last long and then he was quiet again as they walked home together through the fields, following along the wagon trails. They still had a mile to go as the sun set blazing behind the windmills, washing the sky in red and orange, purple streaked with pink and bordered by the deepest of deep blues, rapidly fading to a satin black. There was one bright star with the temerity to shine out while the sun was still over the horizon as if impatient to start the night's festivities. It was alone at first, but as the sun sank and surrendered more and more of the sky the one star was joined first by a few, then a dozen of its stronger brothers and sisters, and then by hundreds more, and finally, all at once, a million of the smallest and youngest in the family appeared, twinkling diamond bright in the black. Sometimes he used to say the stars had voices and they sang, like a choir of very high, sharp chimes, voices that no human could ever understand, but with a beauty that would kill anyone who once heard it, or break their heart and drive them mad. She looked into his eyes, small dark circles with an entire galaxy mirrored in them, and she believed him.

When they reached their door, the wind was just picking up with a little hint of frost, reminding her that it was not yet May. He was in a quiet, melancholy mood, and she left him to sit quietly as she hastily did the chores and warmed up the leftover breakfast. She made him some tea, with a drop of whiskey and they ate quietly, and he sat still and listened to her as she said her evening prayers.

As she said "Amen" she heard his voice whisper, "Margaret?"

Her heart beat fast, and she met his eyes, realizing that he was having one of his rare moments of clarity. "Hans?"

"Thank-you, Margaret," he said, his voice trembling with age, but his eyes clear and steady. "I love you.”

"I love you," she said, but the moment was gone. His eyes were vacant again.

She began to hum through her tears as she dressed him for bed and rolled the covers back. It was an old song, one that had been popular when she was a little girl, but he recognized it as she tucked him in, and he hummed it with her, until his eyelids drooped, and he fell asleep. Margaret brushed two gray hairs away from his forehead, and then with a sigh, she leaned over and softly blew the candle out.



Written by Ryan Kraeger, June 2007: inspired by the 1968 song “The Dutchman” by Michael Peter Smith.

Why I Love People Who Hate Religion

I think I should probably get out more. Apparently there is a video that went viral (is it just me, or does that phrase just sound bad?) on the internet of a young man standing in a parking lot rapping about why he hates religion but loves Jesus. I heard about it through the responses for days before I actually saw the video. I didn’t watch any of the video responses, but I read a great deal of argumentation against it. Finally, I went to the ignitumtoday.com post about it and watched the original video there, and then watched several of the video responses. For those who haven’t seen the original video it is here:

My favorite response was this one:

The poetry was better than any of the others, and his beard is way awesome.

I have to say, I liked the original video. It was well done, heartfelt and sincere. The poetry wasn’t great, a good number of the rhymes were forced, and the lines wouldn’t scan well written out, but that’s common with rap. It is a performing art. It is simply not meant to be read. The performer has to adjust his cadence to make the lines fit and his performance was (in my opinion) quite good, which is saying very little as I am not a general fan of rap and don’t listen to it often. It was, at any rate, a better effort than any of the attempted rap responses I’ve seen, except the Don Bosco priest with the beard.

I think most of the responses I have read and watched simply ignored the poetry and went straight to the theology. Perhaps they are right to do so, but I thought someone should at least say something about his poetry. The responses mostly begin right away with quoting from scripture to dismantle his points, one by one, and perhaps they are right to do this as well. At least it saves me the trouble. On the other hand, I don’t think I would have argued his points in any event. I don’t think that is the right response. It seems to me that most of the arguers aren’t really listening. They watched the video and all they hear is an attack on the Church, and they respond to that with varying degrees of patience, humility and eloquence.

I don’t know, perhaps they heard something I didn’t hear, but when I listened to the video, this young man reciting his poem, I didn’t hear an argument. I heard a poem. I heard an echo in my own heart of everything he was saying, and I realized, this fellow isn’t rejecting the Church at all. How could he? He has never known the Church. I don’t know whether he was Catholic or Protestant, but whatever the case may be, I would be very surprised if he has ever seen the real Church. He has seen only a shadow church, partly created by others, partly created by himself. Unable to see the reality behind the shadow, he thinks the shadow is the Church and he rejects it. And he is right to do so. He is absolutely right to reject everything he describes in his poem.

This is why I wouldn’t argue against him at all. If I tried to defend the Church I would find myself beating the air because he is not even talking about the Church. He is not even talking about religion, even when he uses the word. I would not be addressing his issues, and he would have no idea what I was talking about because his understanding of the words “Church” and “religion” are defined strictly in terms of his experience with the shadow church. We would be arguing from different premises. Not only that, but he will never read this blog and so I wouldn’t even be talking to him.

Instead I am speaking to people who have seen his video on the internet, or seen the flurry of defensiveness directed towards it and wonder what all the fuss is about. I encourage you to listen to the poem, but listen to him, not your own commentary on it. Know that this man doesn’t know what religion is, but if he were to substitute the word “hypocrisy” for the word “religion”, no Catholic would argue with it. It also would never have gone viral, but that’s another topic altogether.

If you do have the good fortune to be able to meet with this guy, or one of the thousands who listened to his poem and responded “Yes, that’s it! That’s exactly what I’ve been saying,” think about how you are to respond to them. They do not know what the Church is. They know only the shadow church. I don’t think this calls for arguing against their points. I think it calls for understanding their points, and then introducing them to the real Church, which cannot be done by words alone. Therefore it is costlier. The fruit will be in proportion to the cost.