(N.B. This isn’t directed at anyone in particular.  It should not also be read as a flounce.)

Today is kind of a weird day, if you’re a contemplative, and it’s mainly to do with the fact that contemplatives aren’t understood.  In one sense, today is a very public demonstration of one’s faith.  In another, the entire Church is being called to turn inwards, perhaps more than most would in their everyday lives.

That puts those of us who’re called to some sort of contemplative vocation in a weird place, especially if we’re the liminal types who’re both contemplatives and not living in some sort of community fully dedicated to contemplative life.  Every day of our lives, we’re pulled in a thousand different directions, mainly having to do with our secular lives, which is as it should be, since we have obligations to things that contemplative monastics don’t:  we have our families, our friends, and our jobs.  That also means that our faith gets showered with a thousand different “shoulds” as to what we “should” be doing.  Yes, witness is important, but so, also, is contemplation, which is something I think our culture has lost.

Some are quick to point out that there have been contemplatives who’re more public in their lives.  (Mother Theresa had a very public ministry that was invaluable, but she’s not the type I’m discussing, although contemplative prayer was important to her.)  Everyone likes to pull out Merton as an example of a “public” contemplative.  Most religious communities in the Benedictine tradition lovingly offer hospitality.  I’m certainly very public with some things:  I blog, I’m on facebook, and I play WoW.  I’m also engaged.

But there’s always a cloister.  No matter how much I love my fiancé, he will never fill that “God-shaped hole” that’s in me.  Nor will my blogs, facebook, or WoW.  If you are at some sort of cloistered or semi-cloistered community, there are places you’re requested not to go, the cloister.  Merton’s writings have certainly been a blessing in my life, but I can’t help but also feel his pain at being forced into a more public life than he was being called to, because that pain is something I have to mitigate every day of my life.

I’ve also got some pretty clearly-defined lines.  There’s a point every night at which the computer gets locked and I get my space with my Maker.  My prayer life is between my God, my spiritual director, and I, and there are things which don’t get blogged about, either.  It’s when those lines get blurred that there’s trouble and conflict between these two worlds I’m in.

Yet often because my faith doesn’t fit “the norm” I’m written off as not being “on fire” enough or lukewarm, especially among the types who’re influenced by evangelicals.  I’m attacked because I don’t publicly support the right causes or do the same things.  Certainly there is always a need for protests, soup kitchens, and other acts of charity.  Sometimes those things have to take precedence over anything else.  But by engaging in those kinds of witness, I would be ignoring the one to which I was born:  contemplation.  I hope there’s still room for diversity in what our vocations are.  Without it, the world would be a poorer place.

And here’s a link from Steve:  http://faultline.org/index.php/site/item/incendiary

One of many reasons why I’m marrying him.

Welcome to the new blog.  It’s the same as the old blog.  Haloscan started charging for commenting features, so I decided to move.  Blogger’s got a lot going for it, but its comment functionality is limited, to say the least.

On trying to be a good ally

First, a video I saw on Kurt Sutter’s blog:

I think it’s instructive to watch, especially in light of yesterday being National Coming Out Day. So many people I read yesterday posted something along the lines of coming out because they like members of the opposite sex. This is not being supportive. This is not being a good ally. It’s being a douche. Why, you ask? because of privilege. You’re taking the voice of someone marginalized in our society, whose voice might not be heard. Congrats!

See, privilege is an insidious thing because while you have it, you don’t know it’s there. I can hit on a guy in a bar and not worry about being killed for it. I can tell my parents I like men, and not be kicked out of the house, shunned, or otherwise expelled from whatever support structure they offer. I’m free to marry the person I love with all the legal protections that come from it. And I’m certainly not going to be shunned or expelled from my denomination, should it become known that I’m attracted to men.

Don’t believe me that it’s happening in the Catholic Church? Go read this article. Go ahead. I’ll sit here and wait.

Here’s one thing you should take away from that article: twelve of Corcoran’s parishioners went to the bishop. They didn’t go to the parish priest, who could’ve diffused the situation. They went straight to the head of the diocese. Also, they went to the bishop with nothing more than rumor. Even if they had conclusive proof, what those twelve parishioners did was nothing more than a witch hunt.

If you can stomach to read further in, it’s mentioned that being an altar server isn’t a right, but a privilege. I’d agree with that, but I’d also like to point out the sentence where the one parishioner quoted says that gays and lesbians aren’t supposed to be involved in the liturgy. I wonder if the person who said that realizes that we’ve got at least two thousand years’ worth of Church history behind us. I’m willing to bet good money that a not insignificant amount of popes, priests, religious, saints, and martyrs have been gay/lesbian. And that’s not counting all the countless people not recorded who lived and died for our faith.

You know how in the video Wise discusses how the white people in the district next to the 9th Ward blamed everything on those who lived in the 9th Ward? That’s happening in the RCC right now. Look at what fingers get pointed where. Who got blamed for the sexual abuse crisis? I’ll give you a hint: it’s not the same group of people described in the research done by independent groups about pedophilia. Instead of whiteness, you’ve got sexual orientation being thrown around.

Divide and conquer. We don’t need other groups imposing it on us. We’re doing it just fine on our own.

A school for the Lord’s service…in Azeroth?

And first of all, whatever good work you begin to do, beg of Him with most earnest prayer to perfect it, that He who has now deigned to count us among His children
may not at any time be grieved by our evil deeds. (Rule of St. Benedict, Prologue)

So for the past year or so I’ve been playing World of Warcraft. I resisted it for ages, pointing out how it had borrowed a number of things from other games and pointing at its perceived flaws. I’m not sure why, but one day I asked my fiancé if I could make a character on his account to try it out. A few months later, I was level 80 and regularly raiding with a guild.

A year later, I’m still playing and an officer in the guild, and during that year I’ve learned a number of things about intentional community and my own understanding of the Rule of St. Benedict. Our guild–as Sr. Susan over at Musings of a Discerning Woman–so aptly pointed out was formed via social action.

I was hesitant to join a guild, a group of players who comes together to do certain content that can’t be done alone. So on a lark, I joined a “casual” guild, one that’s comprised of people who aren’t hardcore raiders, but are more in a guild for the bank space, social interaction, and help when they need it. I got to know a group of people, and we’d wind up grouping together more often than not. Soon, though, it came out that the Guild Master created the guild only to harbor gold farmers. One officer in that guild called the GM on it, and he booted her. A group of us left en masse as a protest. (Please do go read the article. Gold farming may seem innocent enough, but it is sweatshop labor, and it was something we weren’t going to support.)

Suddenly I found myself as a founding member of a guild, and an officer at that. I knew two things: I had no clue what it meant to be an officer, and I certainly didn’t feel worthy. But that action that created our guild–a concern for the ethics of what we do–has carried over into how we run the guild and play the game.

Time and time again, I’m reminded that there are people behind the characters. It can be in the life details: our GM has been out of work since December. Another guildie’s child broke an arm. Another guildie’s been sick with the flu. Someone else became a new parent. But it’s also in the interactions: I may not agree with the decisions of the Guild Master, but, ultimately, he’s in charge. After a time I’ve come to understand his decisions, and it’s helped me understand obedience in a way that a lot of commentaries on the Rule of St. Benedict don’t: fundamentally, obedience is lovingly listening to another, even when you think that other person is wrong, crazy, or being a jerk.

It’s also in letting that nice piece of loot go, when someone else needs it more than you. Sure, pixelated goodies don’t mean anything in the long run, but realizing you aren’t the center of the universe does mean a lot to the other person. The founding message of our guild was that the people behind the screen matter. What we do, we realize that we can’t do alone, and that we’re all in this together.

Next up: what I learned about the penal code.

Dehumanization of online media

I’m sure everyone has heard or read the comments made by the Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, about facebook. If not, it’s worth a read. Go ahead and take a gander, if you haven’t. And, yes, irony not intended that I’m blogging about his comments.

I think he’s right to be wary about some of the community springing up from online media, as we’ve all seen. But while he makes valid points, I don’t think he’s got the full story, either. Granted, my view is a bit skewed towards Catholicism in the US.

So once upon a time, you’ve got a group of people who’re disenchanted with some of the things happening after Vatican II. For whatever reason, these people were happier with the extraordinary form of the Mass, traditionally-designed architecture, and all the aesthetics that came with it. In the changes, they saw a lot of other things–Eucharistic piety and devotion, for instance–getting lost or thrown out altogether. A lot of the time, these people’s voices weren’t heard.

So enter 1993 and the internet. As technology became faster, cheaper, and more available, people got online more. It became easier to find people who thought like you, and so these people connected with others who had been disenchanted by the Church in the 1970′s and 1980′s. (No matter where you fall on the spectrum, you have to admit that there were some atrocious things that came out of those decades.) Suddenly a group of people who had no voice were heard and found others like them.

Fast forward ten to fifteen years later, and you’ve got the situation we’re in. Neither side is speaking to the other, and neither is willing to budge. I can’t say I disagree with some of what the traditionalists want (especially when aesthetics and the liturgy are concerned.) That having been said, I think both sides are falling into the trap that Nichols discusses.

Real question is: how do we fix this situation?

The Power of Nightmares

So I’ve been way burnt on blogging the past few months. Just haven’t had anything interesting to say, honestly.

Tonight I watched the first part of “The Power of Nightmares,” a three-part documentary that originally aired on BBC2. The first part describes the rise of neo-conservatism from the philosophy of Leo Strauss and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism around Sayyid Qutb. The neo-conservatives knew to keep power they needed some sort of crisis. In Ford’s administration, it was the Cold War. Since the real information out of the CIA showed that the Soviet Union was rapidly falling into economic collapse, information was manufactured. Who was behind all of this? Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz.

Qutb was an Egyptian schoolteacher, who was studying over here. He saw Truman’s America as corrupt and degenerate. So when he went back, he saw the same influence creeping into Muslim society. His take on things influenced the growing Islamic Jihad. What I found interesting–in the Chinese proverb sense of the term–was that his thought said it was okay to kill the leaders of the government, because they weren’t “real” Muslims.

What does that sound like today?

Turn on EWTN. You’ll hear talking head after talking head opine about how it’s okay to deny communion to those who aren’t “real” Catholics. It’s fine to disparage them in all sorts of ways because they aren’t “real.”

And, to be fair, the other side does it too. Have you heard some of the vitriol spewed at those who prefer the extraordinary form of the Mass?