Like many, I am deeply disappointed that the State Senate voted down marriage equality last Thursday. Three months ago, those who profess to divine the political winds were confident that it would pass – and New Jersey would join the ranks of states that permit same-gender marriage.
It didn’t.
In her new book, An Altar in the World, priest and writer Barbara Brown Taylor suggests that wisdom is not gained by knowing what is right. Wisdom is gained by practicing what is right.
One of the ironies of the Christmas season is that immediately after the birth of the Prince of peace, we get violence. The Feast of St. Stephen is on December 26; it commemorates an early witness to the faith who was stoned to death. December 28 is the Feast of the Holy Innocents -- who were the children that Herod ordered to be slaughtered upon hearing of the birth of a potential rival.
We live in a world of violence. There is physical violence -- which may or may not be on an increase; and verbal violence, which -- from my perspective, is most definitely on the rise.
Customs and traditions help us see the connection between the human and the holy: "If there is no way to connect the normal with the wonderful, what can possibly give the little things in life spiritual meaning?" (page 173) These words have resonance with earlier passages in Chittister's book -- to live an ordinary life extraordinarily well.
In the novel Evensong by Gail Godwin, an Episcopal priest gives his wife, another Episcopal priest, his definition of vocation: "something is your vocation if it keeps making more of you."
On this fourth Sunday of Advent, we hear Mary's song -- the Magnificat: "my soul magnifies the Lord". It is a song of openness -- to receive God's life-changing blessing; and a song of fierceness -- of what that blessing can and will do to the power centers of the world.
"Stability says that where I am is where God is for me". (page 151) That is being rooted in God; being stable with God. Often we want to be somewhere else, in the idea that God is there, and not here. The proliferation of bumper stickers over the past several years speak to this desire to be elsewhere: 'I would rather be sailing'; 'I would rather be fishing'; I would rather be doing something other than this.
It's known as the Benedictine triangle: stability, obedience and conversion of life. Stability, which is the title of Chittister's 12th chapter, is the ability to stay and not run. To stay with the situation, the problem, the confusion, the feeling -- to stay with it and learn the truth from it. The temptation is to move on or move away -- or seek a distraction, or give in to a temptation.
"Listen for the truth of a thing, not the power for a thing." (page 146) In my experience we may indeed listen for the truth of what is being said or done, but more often than not we react to the power of what is being said and done.
Joan Chittister talks about the dangers of of dependence, license and domination when considering authority: "dependence says that everybody counts but me. License says that nobody counts but me. And domination says that I have the right to tell everybody else what counts at all". (page 142)
