In Lieu of Flowers...

I was still in England when I met her. Of course, she had never left Northern Virginia--except for the
time she went to Lourdes as a guest of the Knights of Malta, her parents praying for a miracle. But in the few weeks that remained of her life, Courtney Elizabeth Lenaburg became my hero.

Thanks to her blogging mom, Mary, thousands came to know about the bouncing baby girl whose life changed drastically on the day of her baptism 22 years ago when she suffered the first of a lifetime's worth of debilitating seizures. Those merciless seizures stole Courtney's sight, compromised her ability to move and communicate freely, eventually took from her even the ability to take nourishment by mouth.

You can read (as I did) Mary's entire blog archives (lots of great recipes in there along with the stories of raising, in faith, a special needs child). What struck me in the reading was that Courtney was a person who had known and received only love, her whole life long. She was surrounded by love, formed by it: love, care and tenderness was the very air she breathed; it was her environment, her culture. I thought of St. Therese of Lisieux, another young person whose childhood was marked by an atmosphere of goodness. Having known only love, delivered from the sad and corrupting experiences of hostility, betrayal, exaggerated discipline or unhealthy competitiveness, these souls are able to radiate love without the usual impediments of self-protection or self-promotion that hamper the rest of us. These are the kind of people who are willing and able to put themselves in the breach for others.

Dependent on her family (including her protective older brother Jonathan) for all of her needs, Courtney still managed to demonstrate incredible willpower when it came to arduous tasks like propelling herself forward on a walker, and, permitted to receive her First Holy Communion (during that trip to Lourdes), I think she may have, at some deep level of the soul accessible only to God, accepted the vocation of an intimate share in the cross of Jesus--for us.

Having outlived numerous predictions of an early death, even when her final weeks came Courtney managed to outwit the doctors. Her final agony, expected to be a matter of hours, lasted five days. I prayed for her intensely during those days, knowing that the enemy of mankind would do his utmost to thwart the practically guaranteed entrance into heaven of someone who spent her entire life in an embrace of love.

Today and through the night her family and friends keep vigil in preparation for her funeral tomorrow. Her parents, realizing that the parish church will be decorated for the Eighth Day of Christmas, are begging well-wishers not to send flowers. Instead, they are inviting donations in Courtney's name for the building of the new parish church, a fully-accessible church with enough room for all the Mass-goers in that particularly active corner of the Catholic world. (They also welcome gifts that will help them retire Courtney's still-significant medical debt. And prayers that her Dad will find secure employment.)

I accompany the Lenaburgs from afar, grateful that the Lord has allowed me to accompany them online these past two months. They have offered me an incredible witness of faith. I only hope I can let Courtney's life continue to speak to me and challenge me to radiate love in the world.

My wish for you this Christmas.

Book Review: Dancing on the Head of a Pen by Robert Benson

WaterBrook Press

Colorado Springs 2014

Shortly before moving to England for what I thought would be a year (it turned out to be half that), I signed up for a book review service that promised that so long as my Kindle was charged I would not be without something to read. I received (and reviewed) one e-book and then eagerly went to claim a new title. Seeing a book by Robert Benson on the list, I knew that no other book would do. The only problem? Benson's book was not available in e-format. I had to wait until my return to the States to read Benson's latest.

Robert Benson is a reader's writer. He shares his experiences and insights in a gentle, conversational style that I find poetic. There is an authenticity there that makes his genuine Christian witness shine (all the more since he's not trying to “witness”). At least, that was what I found in earlier titles of his that I had read (The Echo Within and Between the Dreaming and the Coming True), and I was not deceived in thinking that Dancing on the Head of a Pen would be similar.

Dancing is both a reflection and a “how-to” guide for the aspiring (or discouraged) writer; not a “follow these five simple steps and you'll be putting out a book every six months!” guide, but a “this is what has worked for me; maybe something here will resonate with you.” While Echo and Dreaming communicated (at least to this reader) Benson's contemplative spirituality, Dancing witnesses to his inner (and to some degree, outer) life as a writer. As an aspiring (but disorganized) writer myself, I found solid guidance here. It was especially encouraging to me that the same things that intimidate me (like the sheer whiteness of a blank page) were familiar to Benson. And the same siren calls that would lure me from my appointed task continue to find their way to Benson's Tennessee home. I was also pleased to be confirmed in my cut-and-paste approach to putting a text together. (Benson uses an X-Acto knife; I use whatever scissors are around.)

Taking a page from Graham Greene (!), Benson set a daily goal of writing six hundred words: a quota I can just about imagine imposing on myself. Through years of journaling (another practice he strongly recommends), he learned what times of day were better for him to tackle which stages of a project. I loved his metaphor of the three hats: the artist's beret; the faded baseball cap for the grunt work of refining and rewriting; the fedora for handling the business aspects of publishing. Wisely, he warns the writer not to multi-task when it comes to writing and refining: You can only wear one hat at a time.

The most surprising advice I received from Dancing on the Head of a Pen was the rather strong discouragement from talking too much about one's writing project. There's a double risk involved when a writer gets a little too chatty about his or her next book: being talked out of writing it at all (especially if the reason for talking is to find encouragment for the project—or the idea behind it), or saying everything that ought to have been written, and finding, when pen hits paper, that the words themselves have been drained dry in the telling. This also relates to the writer's need for silence—and for its opposite: reading the developed work aloud to an audience, as a way of recognizing where it does or does not hit the mark.

Several of my take-aways from Dancing on the Head of a Pen are destined to appear among my New Year's Resolutions. If you are an aspiring writer, I do not doubt that you will find the practical wisdom that can help you refine your skills or find your voice. Better yet, you will be moved and inspired in your calling.

Herod returns

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Massacre of the Innocents
from the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle

It's not Christmas yet. Not yet time to tell the story of the power-hungry King Herod who would not even stop at targeting infants in order to maintain his throne. But we have to tell the story, because Herod has returned--and for the second time in a decade (remember Beslan?)

It's an uncomfortable story. Even the masterpiece by Pieter Bruegel was altered from a scene of
carnage against babies to one of general pillage. See the woman in the middle, weeping disconsolately over...a sack? Almost all the dead children in the painting were substituted with market bundles, birds and dogs--and the coats of arms identifying the soldiers were likewise repainted. The very fact of Bruegel's work being profoundly altered proves the necessity of this gruesome Gospel story. Someone in power (enough power to convince an artist to rework an acknowledged masterpiece) did not want Herod's handiwork too clearly depicted. It might tie his own hands someday.

There is little danger (sad to say) of the Taliban hearing the story of King Herod and the babes of Bethlehem; little danger of any of us being able to convince a fanatic that some things really are unjustifiable. Perhaps the most we can do is see where in our own lives, a shadow of King Herod sits on his throne, giving us permission for a little pre-emptive meanness. If the grace of Christmas can exorcise the Herod in us, perhaps the renewal it brings could exorcise Herod from the world stage, too.

To what are you up?

The title of the post is a nod to our Sister Mary Paula, a former English teacher from the days we had a high school aspirancy program. Sister Mary Paula is in our "Queen of Apostles" community here; more about that below.

I arrived back in the States at an interesting time: as soon as I landed, practically speaking, it was Thanksgiving. Last week around the country our sisters hosted "Baby Jesus Birthday Parties" with anywhere from two dozen to three hundred guests; the past two weeks have seen our choir members (alas, without me!) on concert tour--and this weekend, the concert comes home with three performances in our motherhouse chapel. This calls for a lot of community participation.

Makeshift Chapel: Before

Makeshift Chapel: After

Yesterday while two sisters prepped the Assembly Hall to serve as chapel for the week, I was in the kitchen as part of the cookie team. The dough had already been prepared (oatmeal chocolate chip raisin cookies); all I had to do, alongside Sister Guadalupe, was measure it out and plop the dough onto prepared baking sheets. Sister Joan, the local superior, handled the industrial oven side of things. I forget how many hundreds of dozens of cookies we actually need, but the process continues today. I also had my first turn filling in at the switchboard yesterday. There were (mercifully) few calls!

Being back at the motherhouse is an interesting experience in itself. There are actually three distinct communities sharing the facility: Our provincial government (responsible for our life and mission in the US and English-speaking Canada) is one community; I am part of the biggest community, which consists mostly of sisters engaged in the publishing house and its radius of activity; we also have a community (the "Queen of Apostles" community mentioned above) made up especially of our senior sisters, including those who need various levels of nursing assistance. I am learning to get used to the sound of walkers squeaking down the hallways, and loud "whispers" in chapel, as well as the need to simply s-l-o-w down when walking through community areas. The eldest member of the family is Sister Augusta, who is looking forward to her 99th birthday. No walker for her! She speeds along the halls and up and down the stairs with a cane draped over her arm. (I just learned the most interesting anecdote about this Italian missionary: when she was 12, during the Nazi occupation, she and her sister were on a black market errand, and got picked up for questioning. Thankfully, that was all it was, and the girls were sent back home--but 98 year old Sister Augusta still remembers the Nazi officer's beautiful blue eyes!!!)


The three communities share Morning Prayers, Mass, breakfast and lunch (this includes leading the prayers for the first two, and washing the dishes for the second set of activities), but times of formal sharing the Word, community activities and (for the most part) apostolate are specific to each group. One team of senior sisters meets daily in a workshop where they pray the rosary while making the rosaries for our book centers and web store. They are indefatigable.

Meanwhile, a lot of the talk at the dinner table has been about the new "reality" show on the Lifetime network. The Sisterhood purports to follow a group of young women as they "discern" a vocation to religious life. Our postulants watch the show with their phones set to Twitter: using the hashtag #RealPostulants, they give real-time feedback on the show. I confess, I have yet to watch a single episode (they are all on the Lifetime website, so you and I can catch up), but I have been following the Twitter posts, and three of the sisters have done some very reflective blog posts about the show, what it is and what it isn't (Sister Rose, Sister Marie Paul, Sister Hosea all have something to say). One interesting phenomenon that I have observed on Twitter is the number of (real!) communities of sisters who are gathering to watch (and live-tweet) the show together. Have you seen any of the episodes? What stood out for you as particularly authentic (or inauthentic!)?

Advent, in the Words of TS Eliot

I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre,
The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed
With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,
And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama
And the bold imposing facade are all being rolled away
— Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations
And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence
And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen
Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about;
Or when, under ether, the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing—
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.