Restless

It's late Monday afternoon, and I have been at our cabin in Ashe County since last Thursday. For weeks we had planned to spend the weekend of July 4th here with my brother and his family, since it's normally the start of blueberry season and there's a lot going on. I arrived early so I'd have some time to myself, and planned to stay through the following Wednesday. That way I'd have a couple of days of solitude on the back end too.

Needless to say, things have not worked out as I imagined. Not in a bad way, mind you -- it's been a nice weekend, especially spending time with my nieces, Catherine and Grace. It seemed like a lot happened during the day work-wise on Thursday, then Steve arrived with the girls Thursday night. Pat and Sarah arrived early Friday, and we were off to the races. Dinners on the deck, the Christmas in July festival in West Jefferson, fishing, blueberry picking, wine drinking, and a lot of good eats. Dan arrived Saturday, fresh from a mission trip to Jamaica with Jesse and Hunter. The weather was great (till Sunday) -- low 50s at night and right about 70 during the day. Not bad for July in North Carolina.

Yesterday was more mellow, since we had off-and-on rain, and then Steve, Sarah and the girls left to return to The Real World. Another mellow, rainy morning today, and then Pat & Dan left. So today I finally got the solitude I thought I came here for.

It rained again, off and on, until early afternoon, and it was foggy until a few hours ago. It's always quiet here, but when it's foggy and overcast (or snowy), it's silent. No matter how many times I've been up here by myself, it's still a little unnerving for it to be so quiet.

And so I have been restless all day. I've had things to do for work, and a few things to do around here, but basically I've mostly been lost, kind of confused. I'd think of something I needed to do, maybe something involving tools, go down to the storage room to get what I needed...then stand there asking myself, what did I come in here for? I've just not been able to settle down and concentrate all day.

A week or so ago I thought I wanted time up here to be alone and have quiet time to pray without interruption. Now I had that time, and I couldn't settle down. I'd think about praying and then get distracted by some other thought or activity, and prayer would go out the window. I have spent the day being called gently by God to spend some quiet time, and I have been running away.

The sun finally came out a while ago and dried the furniture on the deck. It's not really sunny, but there are peeks of sun in between the clouds and it hasn't rained in a while. I finally stopped running away, and sat down on the glider, which is my favorite Prayer Chair. I closed my eyes and tried to pray. Then Moose wouldn't settle down - he'd pace around then finally lie down, then two minutes later he'd walk over to another place and lay down. Then the "chattering monkeys" that Henri Nouwen writes about started up -- you know, all the thoughts, to do lists, people, and things that spring to mind as soon as you still yourself. This has been the story for the last three months -- when I finally made the time to pray, I couldn't bring myself to truly connect.

But this time I was determined. This time I was not going to run away from the Lord, I was going to run away from the monkeys, and before long I felt the first peace I'd had all day. Maybe I should try this more often...

Insight

My posts of late have been few and far between, though I have occasionally written to explain some of the reasons for my lack of inspiration. There have been glimmers of re-awakening, occasional showers to relieve my drought, and I have tried my best to soldier on as best I could. But the writing did not come, or at least did not come easily.

I have tried to understand what was happening to me and why. I have tried to pray, and for the most part just try to listen without an agenda as Fr. Louie had directed. But mostly I just tried to be open to what God was trying to do through me, even though I often felt lost and disoriented spiritually. But in the past week or so I have been reminded of reading that when asking hard questions, especially spiritual ones, you don't really "get" an answer. Instead, little by little, even without knowing it, you grow into the answer.

And so I have gradually grown into what turns out to be two answers. The first is simple, as I might have known it would be, and the insight lies within the proverb "absence makes the heart grow fonder." All the time I felt removed from Christ I also felt such a longing for reunion. I had taken his constant felt presence for granted. But I think the insight and the lesson is that this time has made me realize, on an emotional rather than intellectual level (since I so often live in my head rather than my heart), just how much I really love Jesus Christ. That love has been there, certainly, and has even grown over time, but it took this time away for it to penetrate my thick head and stony heart.

Which leads me to insight #2. All this time I have been trying to untie this Gordian knot all by myself -- just mano a mano with The Big Guy. And all this time I have been surrounded by loving and generous friends and family members who would gladly help me if I had only reached out. As I have often read, Christianity is a faith that can only be practiced in community. That is so that we can help, encourage, and admonish each other, especially during the rough patches.

Lucky for me, others including some of you, dear readers, have encouraged me. Three people have recently asked me about this blog, noting my lack of posts and telling me how much they got out of it. Then I got this via email yesterday which I share in part, anonymously...

...I too have experienced times of spiritual drought and find it so hard to pray while in them. Often the best I can do is simply pray, “O Sacred Heart of Jesus, help me place my trust in you” and “Remove from me my stony heart and fill me with a heart burning with the fires of your divine love.” I have been in that place for the past couple of weeks ....I know that this time will pass and my heart will once more feel the flame of Christ’s love and I sometimes think God does this just so that we truly appreciate it when the drought has passed and the rain once again begins to fall.

I hope to see you and Pat tomorrow night ... I also hope to find the time to read your blog more often and to listen to God speaking to me through you. It is truly a gift for which I am so grateful. Thank you dear friend!

With that kind of encouragement, how can I not write?

So thanks to all of you who have hung in there with me and encouraged me. I think I'll be writing more from here on out...

Honduras Update + Plans for Next Year

At the conclusion of our Habitat build trip to Honduras, I thought we might have some funds left over from our trip expenses to donate to Habitat Honduras, Hogar de Niñas, and Sisters of Charity orphanage. Alas, Lisa has let me know that for all intents and purposes there is nothing left to send. The stash of lempira I brought back apparently will become pocket money for the next leader. Fortunately the Greensboro Catholic Partnership (which spwned our trip in the first place) had already sent nearly $5000 as part of its tithing commitment.

The good news is that members of the team responded to the call for donations for Hogar de Niñas with some very nice contributions. Additionally Habitat had some funds from a prior trip to add, and we ended up sending $6,600 to Sr. Dimora Lopez for the girls (h/t to Miguel Rubiera for being our courier and braving a 7.1 magnitude earthquake to deliver the money!). Surely it is a godsend for them to get that much unrestricted cash. She had hoped to hire a full-time custodian, which cost about $4500 per year, so she’s got enough to hire one now. Thank you all for your generosity!
Several team expressed interest in going back next year, and expressed interest in me leading again. I am trying to discern with the help of the Holy Spirit whether leading a trip in 2010 is what I’m being called to do. I have had discussions with Habitat Greensboro, Global Village and Margaret Rubiera of Habitat Durham about dates and locations, and things seem a little murky right now.
By early 2010, the development we helped build, called Shimishal, will be built out. The Habitat affiliate in Santa Rosa does not have another large piece of land, so it looks like from here on out they will be building on infill lots through the city. What that means for future Santa Rosa teams is that they will have to split up each day and go to different sites.
The one set of dates I tried to reserve was March 5-14, which lines up with spring break for most NC colleges. Obviously we were fortunate to have Claire and Megan and Dan, and they were brave to skip a week of school. It would be a lot easier to attract college students with spring break dates. Unfortunately Durham already had those dates locked up for Santa Rosa.


So the choices are – lead a trip to Santa Rosa at some other time, lead a trip to a different location at spring break time, or possibly join the Durham trip as a team member. I also understand that Gerard plans to lead a trip to La Ceiba in January, so that is another option. My heart is pulling me to Santa Rosa (I made a promise, after all), but my head is telling me we won’t be building there forever, maybe it’s time to move on. It’s a stalemate I will leave to the Holy Spirit to break. I’ll know by the end of July, and you will know soon after.

That said, and knowing that the Holy Spirit often works through others, I would welcome your thoughts, opinions and encouragement in trying to discern which way to go.

River of Life

Last evening I went fishing for the first time this year. Normally by the end of May I would have gone a number of times, so this is highly unusual, though not inconsistent with my spiritual drought. For me there is a strong connection between fishing and spirituality. The act of fishing, the setting, the water itself, and the physical touching of these rarely-seen creatures all contribute to an immensely healing and nourishing experience. I have missed fishing more than I realized.

I am writing from our cabin in Ashe County, NC, so the easiest place to wet a line from here is in the South Fork of the New River, which is reputed to be the second oldest river on Earth after the Nile. The drought of the last two years has been hard on the river. At one point last summer it had dwindled to a fraction of its normal flow, and the water was so shallow that some kind of river-weed grew and almost choked whole stretches. It was too low to float, too low to fish, and kind of sad to behold.

But this spring the rains have been bountiful, and for the first time in two years all of western NC is out of drought. It's been six weeks since we've been up here, and it is incredible the feeling of life everywhere -- it's hard to adequately describe how green everything is. But the effect of the spring rains on the river is most impressive. All but the biggest rocks are covered, and water runs from bank to bank with an energy and vibrancy I'd forgotten. The water is not as clear as it was during the drought, but clear enough to be pretty.

As I parked my car along Cox Road, I could feel the moist cool air and hear the low murmur of the river as I looked for a place to begin. The place I selected was not the one I had in mind when I left the cabin, but it seemed inviting. Why not try a few casts there? I tossed a gold Panther Martin spinner out in the current and reeled it back slowly. On the second cast, I hooked up with a small but feisty redeye bass -- they have the body of a bream and the head of a smallmouth bass, with blood-red eyes.

I thanked God for this fish. It has been my practice for some time now to offer thanks for the first fish I catch, because that first fish means that today I will not be skunked. Each fish is a gift, and even the little ones are fun. This one struck like a ton of bricks, and it wasn't until I had him almost all the way in that I realized he was only maybe eight inches long.

I can still remember the first time it occurred to me to give thanks in that special moment after the first catch. I was standing in the middle of Helton Creek on a chilly morning, having just caught a nice trout. Remembering that St. Peter was a fisherman, I also recalled how the Lord after His resurrection had directed Peter and the other disciples (who had been skunked the previous night) to cast their net over the right side of the boat, and how they caught 153 large fish. Right in the middle of the creek I said a prayer of thanks, and have been doing it ever since. Interestingly I can count on one hand the number of times since then that I've been skunked.

Fishing reconnects me to both the earth and to God in a mysterious way. Part of it is that all my thoughts and cares seem to travel down the line into the water, where they dissipate harmlessly. My mind is amazingly blank when I fish -- somehow the low-intensity thought process of fishing expands to fill my brain pan. Once my mind is no longer preoccupied with worry and care, my senses are filled by visual beauty, gentle sounds, earthy smells and the tactile sense of the rod in my hand and the earth under my feet. The rod becomes a living thing, or like a divining rod telling me where the fish are. After a hookup, the rod is electric with the connection between me and the fish and the unique vibrations of a fish on the line.

Moving on from my first spot, I got another strong strike and a solid hookup. Playing the fish in the current, I could tell this one was bigger. What kind of fish would it be? That's part of the mystery, especially in the river. Would it be another redeye, or maybe a smallmouth, or even a nice trout? Though "officially" there are no trout in the South Fork, you do catch them occasionally -- either refugees from a trout-water tributary or perhaps one that just lives in a deep dark pool near a chilly spring in the bottom of the river.

Alas, this one was a hornyhead. The first time I caught a hornyhead it was alarming, because these chubs can get to be a pound or so, and they look like some kind of radioactive mutant with their spiky bump on the forehead. They will also talk to you sometimes, like catfish will, with a deep throaty er-er-er sound. This was a fine specimen, as hornyheads go, and he put up a noble fight. I threw him back, as I did with all the fish I caught this day.

Normally I don't count how many fish I catch. In fact I intentionally try to forget. that way it gives you lots of honest leeway when conveying to friends and family how you did that day. You can say, "quite a few" or "ten or twelve" or "it must have been about twenty, but I wasn't counting", and you'll be covered. Because you really don't know. But last night I caught five -- two redeye bass, two bream, and Mr. Hornyhead.

By this time the shadows stretched all the way across the river, and the evening quiet had descended upon this beautiful valley like a blessing. Where the sun still shone it looked clean and warm and golden, the sky was clear and blue. Dinner on the deck with Pat beckoned, along with a nice bottle of wine, so I clambered up the bank and walked toward my car. My thanks to God had returned as a blessing.

Spiritual Dryness

I see that it has been three weeks exactly since my last post, so I apologize to any of you who may have checked in on Emmaus Road during that time. My lack of writing seems to be an accurate reflection of my spiritual state of mind and heart during that time, as it seems like a bit of a spiritual drought.

Looking back I can see now how completely I emptied my tank in Honduras and the week or so afterward. I even described it to Jesse as "mission fatigue". The last straw was my frustrated attempt to establish dates for another trip to Honduras in 2010. I will just say that Habitat has not made it easy, and I'll leave it at that. And so by the end of April my spiritual resources had run dry, and I was at a loss as to how to replenish them.

It was not for lack of trying that the drought continued. I prayed and celebrated the Eucharist as usual, and even went on retreat with the Men's Group the last weekend of April. The retreat was a great experience and a good soaking rain, to stay with the meteorological metaphor. But it did not break the drought.

As I was leaving the retreat, I had a brief conversation with Fr. Louie, wherein I shared my experiences and frustrations with Habitat. I did not and still do not know whether God is calling me to lead another mission there, or whether these frustrations meant that it was time to move on. He sized me up in an instant, as he has an uncanny way of doing, and told me to spend time praying with no agenda -- to listen.

And so I have, yet for all my attempts at listening I still had no answers. It was not as if I received nothing -- even in a drought it rains sometimes, just not enough. I was feeling dead inside, not depressed or angry or even frustrated, just kind of dead. I could sometimes make a connection to God but I could not maintain it or achieve it reliably.

At the same time I became acutely aware of the rapid passage of time. I've actually had some very good experiences in that period. All three sons and Hunter were here for dinner on Mother's Day (Emily was with her family), which is a rare and blessed event, yet it was like an instant. Work has been good, and I have enjoyed the spring weather, planting a garden and working in the yard. Yet each day seemed like just a heartbeat.

I am not one to pine over such things or about growing older. I know that this sense of the rapid progression of time is probably part of getting older, and I accept that. But as I lay awake waiting for sleep, I have longed in a new way for the day when I finally see Christ's face, with the feeling that the faster time slides by the sooner that day will come.

Don't get me wrong, this is not some morose death wish kind of feeling. It is nothing but positive and uplifting, a new and more sure footing for my faith that one day I will be united with Christ. And that is new, and really kind of remarkable in the context of the "drought".

Saints and spiritual writers like St. Francis de Sales and Henri Nouwen have spoken about spiritual "dryness" and "aridity", and it's interesting that they choose the same metaphor. Mother Theresa went for more than fifty years without feeling the presence of God, even in the Eucharist, and still held tightly to her faith (now that's a drought!). Some have called this "the dark night of the soul", though that would be a somewhat melodramatic and overwrought description for my situation. Still I have been in a new and strange place these three weeks.

Last night though I had an Emmaus Moment. On my way to Mass, I guess I was thinking about my state of soul, and for some reason I put a song on my iPod in the car that I just bought -- "He Leadeth Me" performed by Sara Watkins (formerly of Nickel Creek). I'm not sure why I chose this song or even bought it in the first place, except that she has written and performed other spiritual songs I really liked (see The Hand Song from the first Nickel Creek CD). The song is performed in a very simple and spare style on guitar and violin:

1. He leadeth me:  O blessed thought! 
 O words with heavenly comfort fraught! 
 Whate'er I do, where'er I be,
 still 'tis God's hand that leadeth me. 

Refrain:
 He leadeth me, he leadeth me,
 by his own hand he leadeth me;
 his faithful follower I would be,
 for by his hand he leadeth me.

2. Sometimes mid scenes of deepest gloom,
 sometimes where Eden's bowers bloom,
 by waters still, o'er troubled sea,
 still 'tis his hand that leadeth me. 
 (Refrain)

3. Lord, I would place my hand in thine,
 nor ever murmur nor repine;
 content, whatever lot I see,
 since 'tis my God that leadeth me. 
 (Refrain)

4. And when my task on earth is done,
 when by thy grace the victory's won,
 e'en death's cold wave I will not flee,
 since God through Jordan leadeth me. 
 (Refrain)

And that's when it hit me that indeed He leadeth me, even when I feel I am in drought. When she sang "by His own hand he leadeth me" I felt the drought ending. What an image. So once again I am reminded of how Cleopas and the other disciple must have felt as Jesus broke bread and blessed it, ending their spiritual drought.

Hard Questions About Dr. Zinkhan

"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist." So says Verbal Kint in the movie The Usual Suspects. Events in Athens, Georgia over the weekend have me thinking about the existence of Satan again.

I spent the better part of six years in Athens from 1976-1982 getting an ABJ in Journalism and a Master of Marketing Research (MMR) degree in the very department from which George Zinkhan had taught since 1994. I've met George several times at various events there, including board meetings for the MMR program. There was to be a board meeting this week that I was scheduled to attend. Now it has been cancelled.

For the most part the media descriptions of Dr. Zinkhan are accurate relative to my experience. Introverted, socially awkward, eccentric, brilliant, disheveled in appearance, odd in behavior. He is exactly the kind of person that, when something like this happens, people say, "Oh, yeah, something was not right with that guy."

But there is a big difference between being eccentric and killing three people in cold blood.

Which makes me wonder for the umpteenth time: does Satan really exist? Because it seems to me at times like this that there is something that enters a person and tells them that some outrageous, barbaric act is really something that is going to help them make things better or set things right. Maybe that's what happened to Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Jeffrey Dahmer. It's a long list.

Sometimes I wonder if we don't hide behind science -- especially psychology -- to explain the supernatural. There's no question in my mind that science and in particular psychology are more good than bad. But I think we go too far sometimes when we think we can explain everything from the weather and climate to why events like this murder happen. It can become a vain attempt to wrap our arms around the immensity that is God, and our arms will never be long enough.

Peter 2.0

A while back I wrote about Peter and his incredible metamorphosis over the time from when Jesus called him to his death in Rome years later. Before the Resurrection, we have a number of incidents featuring Peter in a none-too-complimentary light:

• Babbling at the Transfiguration
• Fearfully sinking as Jesus walked on the water
• Humbly refusing to let Jesus wash his feet
  
• Boastfully declaring he would lay down his life for Jesus at the Last Supper
• Vindictively cutting off the ear of the High Priest's slave
  
• Later that night declaring three times that he didn't even know Jesus

In the readings from the last two weeks from Acts we see a whole new Peter -- Peter 2.0:

• Boldly condemning the House of Israel and people of Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost for Jesus' death, and calling them to repentance, baptism, and conversion. The people he called out were the same people the disciples tried to lock out in the upper room ("for fear of the Jews").
• Curing the cripple at the Temple in Jesus' name
• Again condemning the children of Israel, and calling them to conversion
• Arrested by the Sadducees, questioned by "their leaders, elders, and scribes...Annas the high priest, Caiaphas, John, Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly class." There he boldy testifies to the Risen Christ and forgiveness of sins through Him.

For me, it is precisely because of Peter's all-too-human weaknesses as Jesus' disciple that I find his example so compelling once he assumes leadership of The Way.