Negative capability

I’ve been appreciating Brené Brown’s newest book (Strong Ground). She names some of the paradoxes that wise and courageous leaders learn to embrace.

I immediately resonated with the chapter on the importance of “negative capability.” It’s a concept she found in a letter from the poet John Keats (1795-1821). Keats praises this capacity that he perceives in great men like Shakespeare – “when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”

There are moments when abiding in love and truth is particularly painful. These are the moments of the in-between, when we have only partial insights or unsatisfactory options. We feel the pressure to make something happen and get away from the tension as soon as possible. It becomes almost unbearable to abide and wait for fuller truth and goodness and beauty to emerge.

To be human in a fallen world is to live in this tension. We are stretched by two seemingly incompatible truths. On one side is the harsh reality of impermanence. As much as we attempt to deny it, our earthly existence is fleeting. Nothing gold can stay. On the other side is the nonstop human tendency for meaning-making. We insatiably interpret what is happening and why – a task that our brains engage both consciously and unconsciously, even while we sleep! We don’t like waiting to receive the fuller truth. We both desire and need to belong securely and trustingly to something solid.

To put the paradox differently, our human hearts were not created for endings, and everything good in this world comes to an end. What can we do?

As Brené Brown puts it, “Negative capability is a difficult muscle to build.  We’re wired to resolve tension and seek certainty.  This capability requires the ability to reach inward toward stillness rather than out toward counterfeit facts and reason.”

“Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). -from Spiritual Direction blog

Kairos, not Chronos

Happy Catholic shares a quote that should be emblazoned as my epitaph:

"I'm sure God would have created the world very differently if he wanted us to be all business. Instead he generously sprinkles opportunities to laugh and play and adore and savor."

--Shemiah Gonzalez's friend Starlene, Undaunted Joy

Candles

This has become such an important liturgical calendar moment for me in my house. My son Ambrose in the Advent season with the candles beams when his patron saint is the one who blesses the bees who make the wax that makes the candles. My eldest daughter beams when she explains the St. Lucy tradition of an eldest daughter carrying the Christlight to her family. My daughter born in the third week of Advent beams when she lights the rose candle of Joy, which renders her middle name. Then comes the pivotal moment of Candlemas, when we close Christmastide and look towards the Paschal Candle, exulted for the work the bees did to make it, and we bless the candles that remind us that the Light of the World has Advented, and He will shine on us at the Easter Vigil. Then we take those blessed candles and place them on the throat of my beaming boy Blaise. 

I am truly blessed in this wreath of children encircling me with Light!

"The One True Holy Catholic & Apostolic Church taking time out to bless my throat!" -Flannery O'Connor, from the homage of Amy Welborn

Crepes for Candlemas: https://ashley315.substack.com/p/candlemas-the-presentation-of-christ

Myrrh is mine

 

Humility

 I cannot chant the angels’ hymn

As did the hosts of seraphim.

I cannot even cross the wild

As shepherds did, to find the Child.

I cannot shine, a living star,

To guide grave magi from afar.

I have no incense, myrrh, or gold

For gift as had the kings of old.

In all the world there is nowhere

A place so poor, a spot so bare

Save the crude cave at Bethlehem town

Where Christ, my Savior, laid Him down.

Because I am like that mean stall

I may possess Him most of all.

-Sister M. Madeleva Wolff, CSC (1887-1964)

From The Happy Christmas Wind and Other Poems by Sister M. Madeleva; 1936, St. Anthony Guild Press © Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Cross, Notre Dame, IN.  

In this crucifix in the reconciliation chapel at the Shrine in Knock, Ireland, I noticed the depiction of St.John the Beloved, reaching out his arm to comfort Mary, his new mother. It was a blessing to me at the time to consider my late wife, Amy, whose name means Beloved, reaching out to console me in my sorrow. 

Tannen-balm

There's something evocative about this Christmas tree, as imagined by Salvador Dali.

This would be a greeting card I could mail to a griever. O Tannen--  balm...

Joseph, Our Certain Hope

 Joseph, our certain hope below,

     Glory of earth and heaven,

Thou pillar of the world, to thee

     Be praise immortal given.

Thou as salvation’s minister

     God the Creator chose,

As foster-father of the Word,

     As Mary’s spotless spouse.

Joyful thou sawest Him new-born

     Of Whom the prophets sang,

Him in a manger didst adore

     From Whom creation sprang.

Lord over lords and King of kings,

     Ruler of sky and sea,

He Whom the heavens and earth obey,

     Was subject unto thee.

Praise to the Three in One Who thee

     Such signal honors lend,

And may thy merits be our aid

     To joys that never end.

-Father Juan Escollar; translated by Father Edward Caswell (1814-1878)

From St. Basil’s Hymn Book compiled by the Basilian Fathers; 1925, Rogers Church Goods Co. In the Public Domain.

Advent Longing with St. John

St. John of the Cross tells us that we do not truly know what it is we need, but Jesus knows. The soul properly disposed “does no more than represent its misery and pain to the Beloved … so that the beloved one may do what to him seems good.… The soul is more secured against self-love and self-seeking by indicating its necessity, instead of asking for that which it thinks is needed.” The Spiritual Canticle II.8.

The point is not simply to suppress our desire for things, as though desire was a weed in the garden. This is not at all what Catholic asceticism is about, in Advent or Lent or at any other time. God created all pleasures, and they are good, because He created them. The desire for pleasure, at its heart, is human and wholesome. The problem isn’t that pleasure is bad, but that we want it for selfish reasons. We become attached to the gratifications that are offered to us, and St. John of the Cross has a lot to say about the danger, not of desires, but of attachments. The disciplines he encourages are not meant to destroy desire but to teach us what desire is for.

In our overstimulated culture, we must struggle to avoid settling for meager comforts and cheap thrills, because our hearts are made for great things. To embrace this truth is hard, but profoundly liberating.- Spiritual Direction blog

May the intercession of the saints lead us to desire rightly, to long only for the only One who can satisfy our longings!

I am not making this up

On this day in 1476 was born a girl named Lucy.

She would eventually become the prioress of a convent in Narni, where she received the stigmata.

St. Lucy of Narnia, pray for us!

St. Juan Diego Day!

Feliz Dies de Diego!

Exemplar of Evangelization, pray for us!

Juan the Widower, pray for us!

Rosa Mystica

What was the color of that Blossom bright?

White to begin with, immaculate white.

But what a wild flush on the flakes of it stood,

When the Rose ran in crimsonings down the Cross-wood.

          In the Gardens of God, in the daylight divine

          I shall worship the wounds with thee, Mother of mine.

-from the poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Advent Vortex

The great temptation of Advent, at least for me, is the petty sin of low horizons and little expectations — missing the moment to focus on the great sweep of the history of salvation and the glorious promise of heaven, held out to me in my baptism, and choosing instead to look ahead to the commemoration of Christmas.

And, of course, the great temptation of Christmas is nostalgia; to wallow in the thousand little seasonal customs of my own life and family, especially now I have a daughter just old enough to appreciate them.

For me, the great urge of nostalgia is to keep still, to stay home, to look back. But, of course, there is no keeping still, and there is no going back. We do not ever stop moving forward in time — and when you consider the orbit of our planet, the sweep of our solar system within the arc of the Milky Way, and that our galaxy is itself rocketing out into the ever expanding void, we never stop moving in space, either.

However much my desire is to stay home, the reality is my home, as a Christian, is not somewhere I can make or maintain for myself. And it is no fixed point on the map to which I can return.

My home, our home, is elsewhere, and we are all on pilgrimage toward it. The challenge, I suppose, is appreciating that reality and not allowing myself to give in to the illusion of a stationary life.

Advent is good for that.

The Pillar is right: our solar system is a vortex. I try to explain that this is the model for our liturgical cycle as well, since we are spiraling closer to Jesus each year: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jHsq36_NTU