During the past week, many people have been watching a YouTube video of a wedding entrance. It doesn't take place at a Catholic wedding, but it clearly seems to be in a Christian context.



There's something infectious about the moment. It's a fun celebration of the joy of the moment, communicating a carefree sense of celebration... a unique, creative and serendipitous ode to human love.

However, it seems to me that such an outpouring of self-expression is more suited to a reception than the start of a worship service. In the words of Cardinal Ratzinger,

"Real liturgy implies that God responds and reveals how we can worship him. In any form, liturgy includes some kind of 'institution.' It cannot spring from imagination, our own creativity -- then it would remain just a cry in the dark or mere self-affirmation. Liturgy implies a real relationship with Another, who reveals himself to us and gives our existence a new direction." (The Spirit of the Liturgy, "Liturgy and Life")

I think the young playwright Karol Wojtyla had a similar insight, more particularly as it relates to marriage, in a passage from The Jeweler's Shop. A couple struggling through their married life after starting on a wobbly foundation observe their situation as follows:

CHRISTOPHER
When we took the rings I felt your hand trembling ....
We forgot to pay attention to the face of that old man,
whom Mother told me about: his eyes are said to be very expressive.
It is not our fault that we read nothing
in his eyes; and he said little -- things we knew anyway.
So do not be surprised, Mother, than his words left no trace
(things we knew anyway -- we did not sense greatness),
and Monica's trembling hands told me much more.
I was engrossed in her being moved, and in my own
experience of her being moved, which I shared fully
-- and I saw us two deep down in our own experience:
I think I love her very much.

MONICA
We were taken up with each other -- how could we tear ourselves away ...
He did nothing to fascinate us ...
he simply measured, first, the circumference of our fingers, then of the rings,
as an ordinary craftsman would. There was no artistry in it even.
He did not bring us closer to anything. All the beauty remained
in our own feeling. He did not widen or narrow anything ...
I was absorbed by my love -- and by nothing else, it seems.

In essence, the hyperfocus on their own powerful emotions / desire for each other overshadowed the sacramental and transcendent dimensions of the vows they were entering into. The jeweler, a priest-like figure who stood before them -- almost like a witness at a marriage -- was in the periphery of their experience, a mere tired formality in the background of what they perceived as most important.

I wonder how often this sort of thing happens to men and women approaching the altar and the sacrament of marriage. How often does God's role in the marriage covenant become only window dressing for a couple preparing for marriage? I don't have the answer, but only want to pose the question.

We live in a hypersentimental culture. But sentimentality doesn't carry us through trials and difficulties. The grace of God -- the initiating and sustaining power of human love, enabling two distinct persons to become one flesh in the mundane but very demanding sacrifices of each being for the other -- is an essential part of what Christians acknowledge and ask for when they come together in the covenant of marriage.

I know some will say I'm a spoil-sport for raising this question, but is an entrance procession like the one above really an appropriate way for a couple to present themselves before God and the human community at the threshold of their marriage vows? I don't know the answer, but merely want to raise the question.

Labels: church, John Paul II, liturgy, marriage and family, moral life, multimedia, poetry, prayer, sacraments

In honor of Father's Day this weekend, I'm posting a poem I wrote back in college re: fatherhood. Fathers everywhere, God bless and keep you!

On Fatherhood

Our son
first time in my arms
while Susan sleeps
sweat drying on her forehead.
So tired
she did so well.
He squeezes purple fists
purple veins in
tight fists,
tight,
the size of my thumb.
No sounds
just squirming.
Beautiful.
Let’s sit down
sit down.
Head is resting right, I think.
Looks happy –
I wonder if his eyes will open soon...
Susan’s nose on his face,
her chin too,
chin...
That noise –
the door –
Nurse’s head disappears
behind closing door.
Must’ve been sleeping –
Susan still is.
Wonder when he’ll first open his eyes
and see Dad.
I’m Dad.
Not quite ready –
a baby of a Dad
but so was mine
when I was born.
My Dad will help
he always has
like the time with the wheelbarrow –
I was eight.
Too heavy –
but Dad took one handle,
Dad.
Small fist
hitting my arm.
Don’t sleep now, Dad.
Don’t sleep
I won’t, son
Let’s take a walk in the nursery –
maybe we’ll find the nurse
and ask for some coffee.

Labels: fatherhood, human life, poetry

A garden dark and darker hearts
Bring agony this day;
From Sunday palms to Friday whips
The passions wave astray;
He bears the tree with broken heart
Upon the stony way.

With body raised, He hangs in pain
And very few will stay
To watch the life escape Him now;
They'd rather run away.

But someone stands beneath the cross
To keep despair at bay;
And Christ can smile before He dies:
He hears His Mother pray.

Labels: Lent, Mary, motherhood, poetry, prayer, suffering

What pleases me is
freedom —
the prison key given
to each soul,
an invitation to willing captivity.

A tender soul,
making itself my captive,
captivates me
as it walks into the prison,
locks the door behind it,
eagerly,
and, reaching its arms through the iron bars,
throws the key far out of reach.

The little souls —
some are quite impulsive —
throw their keys with all their might.
They remind me of mother,
which isn’t surprising...
she taught me to throw when I was a child.
From mother,
the great economist of the heart,
I learned that keys are made
to be thrown away.

Of course,
she learned it from Father.
Father was the first to lock himself in,
to throw His key away...
with His back to the door
and a grin on His face,
He launched it over His shoulder.

He was so proud of mother
when she threw away her key.
“That’s my girl,” he said.
“That’s my girl.
Have you ever seen such an arm?” he asked me.
“Where did you get such a mother, anyway?”

This business of throwing keys away —
it wasn’t my idea, really,
though Father and Spirit like to say
that it all began with me.
It’s a conspiracy of praise on their part,
to which I willingly submit.

Father knew what He was doing
when He invented keys,
and when He sent me among men
to show them how to throw.
For men,
throwing away a key
is not such an obvious thing to do.
Having been a man,
I understand this.

Now there are many souls
throwing their keys with eager haste
and I throw with them.
Side by side
we laugh
and throw away the keys.


from a collection of poems entitled Only Say The Word

Labels: poetry, vocations

A birch wields it way toward
the grey haze of an icy sky,
with a golden pile of garments at its base,
shrivelling dry.

The birch is empty to be full:
barren, still it reaches,
still it forks its twigs upward
like a waiting hand
to catch the flurries of November,
wet and heavy
in the promise of a splendor
received, not produced.

But first there are the empty days
between foliage and flurries,
the windswept silence of autumn afternoons,
the waiting for more than vacancy --
for more than fall promises of itself...
the outstretching
toward the promise of a gift,
unknown.

Labels: poetry

My August flies by
down the street of summer
like an anxious maple leaf
yellowed too soon
headed for the pond
where it will soon lie at the bottom
with a hundred other memories.

Why does time
like a wind
pick up in August?
Maybe it's my imagination
fueled by the approaching blackboard
thrilling on the anxiety
of another school year.

I'm determined to let my mind
be starved of its fears
so that the tumbling speed of my August
no longer bothers me.
I need only look at the memory-covered bottom
of the pond of my experience
to see a thousand anxious leaves
decomposing, losing form.

My task is to enjoy the tumble
of my crisp, bright August
and to let it sink beneath the pond
when Autumn calls my name.

Labels: poetry

Reveal your presence,
and may the vision of your beauty be my death;
for the sickness of love
is not cured
except by your very presence and image.

The Spiritual Canticle, stanza 11 - St. John of the Cross

Labels: John Paul II, poetry

When we find ourselves at the shores of autumn
fear and love explode their contrary desires:
fear desiring the return to what was already existence,
and still is --
love desiring the departure to the One
in whom existence finds all future.

- from Meditation on Death by Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, March 1975

Labels: John Paul II, poetry

one life became the father of many nations. another brought a nation to their knees through his cloak. one life brought millions of peoples to life-giving waters in the Far East. another brought his people through exile in an arid desert. one life brought many peoples together under the sign of a cross. another freed a people from darkness on an emerald isle with the symbol of a clover. one life wrote an entire system of belief used in schools to this day. another didn’t write a single word and became the most revered pauper throughout the world. one life built the greatest political dynasty in the Far East that the world has ever seen. another conquered and established the greatest empire of the western world. one life discovered that planets orbit the sun. another found the earth is round. one life discovered America. another reached the moon. one life delivered your baby. another teaches your child second grade reading. one life does your taxes. another picks up your garbage. one life fixes your dishwasher. another sells you stamps. one life is your best friend. another is the love of your life. one life is your mother. another is your father, your sister, your brother. one life is your first-born child. another is your child with Down’s syndrome. one life is your grandmother with Alzheimer’s. another is a quadriplegic boy confined to a wheelchair. one life is your bedridden daughter, sister, aunt, niece and cousin. another is you in a coma. one life hangs bleeding from a cross.

one life died for His people of a pierced and broken heart. another died at the hand of savages having his heart torn out. one life died for her country while burning at a stake. another died for a foreign people in a burning desert. one life died in a blaze of glory before a stadium of bloodthirsty people. another died bloodied and alone before forfeiting herself to a rapist. one life died en route to Russia and an empire ended. another died to bring freedom to the highlands of an island. one life died and his people were freed from prison camps. another died in a motorcade and a nation mourned. one life died of self-inflicted poison and a genocide ceased. another died from an assassin’s bullet for the rights of his race. one life dies with a community surrounding him. another dies alone without a trace of family. one life dies of old age. another dies of cancer. one life dies in a freak accident. another dies of a slow, agonizing disease. one life dies at the hand of a criminal, oppressor or enemy. another dies of cowardly escape or selfish willfulness. one life dies heroically. another dies in ignominy. one life dies embracing suffering. another dies running away. one life dies of starvation in Auschwitz for the sake of one man. another dies of starvation because she is a burden to one man. one life was condemned to a criminal’s death though innocent. another was sentenced to die like a wartime prisoner unable to defend herself. one life died to give Himself as food. another dies without the right to food. one life died as a scandal to the leaders of His day. another dies as a disgrace to the newly “enlightened”. one life died bloodied and brutalized at the hands of another nation. another dies a woman brutalized at the hands of men. one life died because of His provocative words. another dies because she cannot speak. one life died refusing the hyssop. another dies being refused a drink of water. one life died on a cross in seeming failure. another dies being deemed a biological failure; a useless being. She is your mother, your daughter, your sister, your lover, your cousin, your friend, your grandmother, your granddaughter. your child. what is one life?

- Anonymous

Labels: poetry

A garden dark and darker hearts
bring agony this day;
From Sunday palms to Friday whips
the passions wave astray;
He bears the tree with broken heart
upon the stony way.

With body raised, He hangs in pain
And very few will stay
To watch the life escape Him now
Instead they run away.

But someone stands beneath the Cross
to keep despair at bay
And Christ can smile before He dies:
He hears His mother pray.

Labels: poetry

I wrote this poem as part of my senior thesis, shortly after reading Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

It was an exploration of Puritanism as it manifests itself in modern life... which was on my brain because of a course I was taking: American Literature to 1865. The instructor mentioned in one lecture about the perennial legacy of Puritanism (and, on the other extreme, hedonism) in American life.


***

Striking a match,
he lit up,
then gave a light to Steve and Dan.
Between puffs, Steve turned on the stereo.

The only lamp was in the corner,
but still I could see the smoke,
rising between my face and theirs.
They drew regularly,
even Dan --
especially Dan,
on the couch,
with his toes gripping the edge
of the coffee table.
I emptied my glass of water
and excused myself to get another,
while the music pounded the glories of rebellion,
chaos, libido, anger --

I returned.
Steve, on the floor,
relaxed as ever, leaned back against the wall,
crossed his legs,
and bowed his head slightly to draw.

They talked about the music,
I think.
I couldn't hear too well --
I wasn't really listening.
I was watching the faces,
glassy-eyed,
complacent, smiling,
with lips drawn to cigarettes;
faces for the first time grey in my mind
and the smoke has left them grey --

What childishness to see them any other way...
why should they be less grey than I?
An inner voice cries:
Goodman Brown, go home.
Go home, young Goodman Brown.
Purify yourself
of your puritan mind.

Those grey faces
grey mouths
drawing on their cigarettes and smiling --
I know them as my own.
And I love them still
I love them sorely
and perhaps that is
the only way to love them truly.

Labels: poetry