An asterisked faith

It was warm when I went out for my walk, a ramble that takes me down and up hills, past streams and, often, by some rather docile looking bulls (perhaps bulls are docile when they aren't being tormented or unforgettably fictionalized by Flannery O'Connor).

But given the rather late hour, as the sun set it quickly became cold.

 I could not avoid the mocking chill of a spring that many of us in the east have found delayed (here, though, the rain still waters the earth, and there is a harvest).

As I strode, I couldn't stop thinking about Rick Warren's son Matthew, who committed suicide last night.  Warren, in case you have been living in a hermit's cave for the past fifteen years, is pastor to the mega-mega Saddleback Valley Community Church, and the author of "The Purpose-Driven Life."

Matthew, wrote Warren in a letter to his congregation(s) was an "incredibly kind, gentle and compassionate man" with a brilliant intellect -- beset through his short life with mental illness, depression and suicidal thoughts.

They say that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. But it seems, from what his father wrote, that Matthew suffered for a very long time. They tried the best medical care money could buy -- Rick Warren isn't a poor man. But nothing worked -- long enough, anyway, for this lovely young man to outrun his demons.

As a person of faith, I don't understand, I tweeted in some anguish, how God can allow this terrible kind of suffering without ceasing.

My thoughts inevitably went back many years, to the death of my brother.  Two years older than Matthew, Jonathan  was also a beautiful soul, someone who cared profoundly for the world of nature and for oppressed peoples, particularly native Americans.

Jonathan did find some relief from his depression -- in loving a young woman with two children he met out in northern California.  It seems as though, finally, this boy who had undergone so much misery at the hands of an educational system that didn't understand his learning disability and our sometimes dysfunctional family would find peace with her.

But then, in a minute of what I still consider terrible evil, she was killed, and one of those children with her, on a German road -- on her way to the airport to rejoin my brother in California.

Though Jonathan didn't struggle constantly, as far as I know, he could not withstand this cruel assault. His death changed so much about life for my father, my sister and myself -- not to mention my mother, who was ill then with the disease that would ultimately kill her.

Since then, I have been impatient with aphorisms.

"He's gone to a better place." Or "God just wanted another angel." Or, particularly "We don't understand, but there's a reason for everything.":

No. No. No. YOU don't understand, I want to say -- but I don't (usually). I try not to, you see, because I know that for many, such truisms provide a frail comfort zone against the mystery of theodicy --why God allows evil in our world.

I do mutter, on occasion, whether they hear me or not "I don't believe in that God."

I can only imagine the Warren's ordeal -- drug after drug, therapy after therapy, and each time, each time the profound hope that Matthew was going to be o.k. He was going to o.k., not in heaven (where I trust he is now free from pain), but o.k. right here.

Isn't that what we want for all of our children - earthly happiness? The heavenly kind is great, too, but let it come in time -- not too soon, we pray. We don't want to bury our children.

That's what Rick Warren and his wife will be doing in a few days.

Why did Matthew Warren suffer so long, and so terribly?

Since my brother's suicide, my faith has had an asterisk -- symbolizing the soul that cries out to God questioning: why?

I am fiercer.  Less tolerant of b.s. More capable of being provoking.

Still, I believe.

But I don't understand.

Nuns almost always seem to do more with less

Let's write about how they celebrate Easter in a convent!

That's was just one idea I had for an Easter-themed story (my editor needed multiples).

He bit.

I started looking around.

Have you ever tried to FIND a convent in or near Lancaster, bastion of evangelicalism and the Amish?

Right, then.

But we did stumble upon one that was close to Lancaster, or at least in the Diocese of Harrisburg -- in Danville, (near Reading).

(I also found a group of ten enclosed Dominicans right on the Lititz Pike -- and called to ask if I could get their story after Easter.)

I'd spoken with the General Superior of Cyril and Methodius back when the Leadership Conference of Women Religious was being investigated on suspicion of being more liberal than the Pope and most American prelates (shocked, shocked, shocked).

I grew up reading, and rereading, a novel about a group of enclosed nuns in England and their adventures in faith.  "In this House of Brede" gave me what turned out to be some pretty romantic ideas about the religious life.

Aside from chatting with one of the most rockin' priests I have encountered in recent times ("I'm going out now to find the tree where they (the nuns) will hang me" he said after a riotous interview), I really enjoyed writing this story.

There's nothing extraordinary or exciting about it, except that scenes like this are becoming more and more rare.

Fewer nuns visiting the sick.

Fewer sisters teaching in schools.

Fewer vowed ones  serving in parishes, offering female leadership that many Catholics feel is sorely needed.

Are we going to miss the sisters when they are gone (possibly within our lifetime)?

God bless them.

I'm quite sure of  it.

http://lancasteronline.com/article/local/832087_Holy-Week-special-time-for-nuns-of-St--Cyril-and-Methodius.html

The darkness within

My Palm Sunday column - a little too "you are there" (as I reread it).

http://lancasteronline.com/article/local/829499_Column--Have-we-become-a-nation-of-bystanders-.html

Born to love you

She's free from me now.

I wonder how she'll like being free, I wonder, as I climb off the sofa , languid, sad, resigned..

It could be that it will be forever.

I try not to think about that possibility.

I see twentysomething mothers with young children, and I marvel at the ease with which many conceive them, bear them, and bring them into our complex world.

You assume -- until, perhaps one day, you find that you can't assume.

Pushing grocery carts with kids strapped in at the Acme, dropping off at the nursery school, showing up for the Parent-Teacher meetings, these mothers (caregivers are still overwhemingly female) make motherhood look easy.

At least on the outside.

As will the moms and dads who show up at graduation in another few months, surrounded by relatives, eyes welling with sentimental tears.

My daughter's high school experience, as I said to her dad this morning, has been hell.

Hell for her, and hell for us.

She eats alone in the cafeteria, I heard.

What is there to celebrate, except for the (and I should be happy) fact that she doesn't take drugs, hasn't gotten pregnant, and still has dreams?

She seems precocious -- and naive at the same time, said the counselor who had met her.

What will she do with this freedom?

Liberty -- from me?

You still love her, said another friend.  You're just defending yourself right now -- because, again, and again, your heart has been broken. Loving her feels like a weight around my legs, my head, my heart.

But not loving her -- that's not an option.

Will anything impel her to reach out a hand that has, more times than not, been used to slap me down?

I dream that someday she will discover that freedom isn't all it's rumored to be by her peers.

And I wonder if that's true -- and how long I will have to wait to find out.

When kindness matters

Who said you were  a bad mother? asked a friend a few nights ago.

Was it someone on Facebook? Did someone send you a message? Call you out publicly?

Sheepishly, I had to admit that no one had.

But you're thinking it, right?

O.k., so you aren't.

I think it enough for everyone -- even the people who don't have time or interest.

After all, what kind of woman decides she won't have dinner with her daughter -- or buy her daughter new clothes, or take her daughter out for coffee?

One who has spent 18 years in and out of guidance counselor's offices, paid out big bucks to educational psychologists, paid for endless theater camps, hired tutors.

One who has bickered and quieted and wept until she thought she was barren of tears...

One who has walked around in a cloud of grief for months, at her wit's end.

Thank you, my dear friend, for helping me see that it's o.k. to set a boundary.

That it's not awful to get some distance right now.

That there IS something wrong that I can't fix, as much as I would like to make it all better.

When was the last time you did something nice for yourself? she asked me.

Perhaps it is now.

New Pope will need to woo American Catholics

Conservatives often accuse the mainstream media of leaning left.

Some writers and t.v. reporters do veer sideways -- right and left. Watch Fox News for ten minutes.

But at an even more fundamental level, the media love a fresh face -- and a new narrative.

Even if he is a 76-year-old Cardinal who was the runner up to the newly retired Pope in the last papal election.

He's from Argentina!

He leads a "simple" life!

He's on the side of the poor!

But will all of that be enough to bring North American Catholics back into the fold?

Are many Catholics faithful in name only?

What could the church do to restore a sense of integrity on a national level?

Is it even possible to do that, or must it be done diocese by diocese?

Check out the link to the Pew analysis in my story -- and feel free to chime in.

The bells of Rome have already.

http://lancasteronline.com/article/local/826721_Throw-away-the-papal-playbook.html

Can "good people" dish the dirt?

I'm grateful to my editor at the Inquirer for sending me books that stretch me intellectually.

I never thought I'd review a young adult novel, analyze a series of meditations on zines, or delve into an autobiographical account of being locked up by a criminal and having to bear his child.

I have to admit, however, that there is usually a minute when I say (to myself): he is sending me WHAT?

That was certainly the case here.

After reading this autobiographical memoir by Judy Wicks, founder of Philly's White Dog Cafe, I have many more questions than answers.

In the end, I grew to admire her determination -- while still hoping, in spite of myself, for some of the intimate (relatively speaking) details that she chose, for whatever reason, not to reveal.

I have a good idea now of what Judy Wicks believes. But can readers say that they know Judy?

Arguably -- yes.  And arguably -- no.

http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/196216571.html