True Conversions No. 3: Darcey Steinke

Easter Everywhere: A Memoir
Darcey Steinke
Bloomsbury: New York, c. 2007
231 pp. $14.95 (paper)
ISBN: 1-59691-138-7

I once asked a friend of mine in Stockholm why so few Swedes ever bothered to go to church. His answer was both direct and revealing: “We don’t really need to; the influence of Lutheranism is so deep in our culture. In fact, we even have a saying: ‘Luther sitter på axeln,’ which means, “Luther is sitting on our shoulders.” It appears that author Darcey Steinke certainly started out in life with Luther propped up on her shoulders. But in the progress of her faith, as this intimate memoir reveals, she has made the clear decision to carve out her own spiritual space, Luther or no.

Steinke was born in upstate New York, into a clerical family¬-- a preacher’s kid. A Lutheran pastor’s preacher’s kid, in fact. Her earliest memories, she writes, “are of my father in cassock and white surplice preaching from the pulpit.” It’s clear that this and other early experiences have left a deep imprint on her faith journey. Her childhood and adolescence occur during the cultural revolution of the Sixties and early Seventies. Her parents’ spiritual progress during this same period reflects the disruptive influence of the times. Her father moves from the not so genteel poverty of pastor and parent, through a more secular calling as hospital chaplain slash social justice activist, to an ultimate return to church work three decades later-- as shepherd of a struggling inner-city congregation. The waning and waxing faith of her father coincides with the downward spiral of her mother’s ongoing clinical depression, as well as her growing estrangement from, and ultimate renunciation of any formal creed. In and through both of these broadly diverging poles, Steinke seeks to forge her own path.

When she was a child, her father spoke to her of a deity whose existence and presence in the world are both “infused” and infinite. She intuited that somehow God must be something like her dad, in a way: both loving and aloof. Her paternal grandfather, also a pastor, images a deity made of sterner stuff: stolid, humorless, even punitive. Her own search unfolds as a quest for a God who is more passionate, direct, and intimately involved people’s lives, an image that, understandably, she rejects. Later on, in adolescence, she finds her father’s faith struggles perplexing: “Outside of church I’d never seen him pray and he mostly read popular novels…. But his voice quivered as he blessed me (at confirmation), and I knew that his faith hadn’t gone completely, that he still clung to a particle of faith.”



Steinke’s own quest for belief continues through the struggles and growing pains of her teens and twenties: multiple family moves, a study term abroad and her first experience of love, relationship, breakup and heartache. A healing summer sojourn in South Carolina, accompanied by a peak into Penecostal exuberance. A subsequent move to New York, more studies, bouts of clubbing, druggy friends and acquaintances, an abortion, a frustrating relationship, the birth of her child. An emotionally excursive and itinerant life, to be sure, but one in which apparently aimless wandering metamorphoses into a dedicated search for spiritual succor. Lifestyle experimentation gives way to greater inner stability and a disciplined approach to prayer, spiritual reading and direction, friendships with fellow seekers, and the search for a stable worshipping community.

Through her persistent searching and longing, Steinke ultimately experiences something of an epiphany—a direct and intimate experience of the divine which is her own—neither inherited, borrowed, nor vicarious. She is at the University of Mississippi on a fellowship grant: “I paid the sitter and sat outside on my lawn chair. The sky was full of stars, like salt spilled on salt paper. I saw one fall, a quick arc of light disappearing over the horizon… I felt weirdly deracinated, but it was not a creepy feeling. My daughter and I were not, as I had so often feared, doomed characters in the opening sequence of a horror movie. I felt we were living in the eternal moment, residing inside infinity. I raised my hand up and held it before me as a sign.”

Back in New York, she endeavors to settle more firmly into her own life and literary career, She joins a church in her neighborhood—Grace Reformed—and is drawn to the passionate ‘presence’ of evangelical faith. She participates in a study group on Rick Warren’s A Purpose Driven Life. She connects with a spiritual director, an Anglican nun on Manhattan’s upper West Side. And, intermittently, she attends Catholic Mass.

By the books’s end, Steinke has reached her own, but still somewhat tentative conclusions about faith: “I am not able to break with Christianity, no matter how uncomfortable I am with many of its current manifestations. Biblical imagery and Christ’s message of forgiveness continue to haunt me, and I know my own redemption lies in Christian tenets, not in others’ religious beliefs.” She stakes her own ground within the tradition: “The idea of church still has a grip on my imagination, but I realize now that what I thought was held only inside those walls—grace and divinity—is actually located directly and authentically inside myself. Church is not a set of rules or a specific building,” she concludes,” but a way of life.”

There is an ambivalence here yet. Steinke is still not quite fully convinced, committed. She writes more about the Christian church, for example, and less about her direct experience of the Christ from whom the church (traditions, theology, people) has emerged. Still, even if Steinke is not completely at home spiritually (who is?), she is certainly in the neighborhood.

True Conversions No. 2: Sara Miles

Take this Bread: A Radical Conversion
Sara Miles
Ballantine Books: New York, c. 2007,
283 pp. US$24.99
ISBN: 978-0-345-48692-9

(As far as book reviews go, this one's a little late. Just after I finished rereading this conversion memoir by Sara Miles (published in 2007), I discovered that she has recently come out with a new title --Jesus Freak: Feeding, Healing, Raising the Dead—published just this spring. So now what? Well, I’m gonna write about what I’ve read, then order the new title from Borders, and then write about that later on. Sound like a good plan?--ct)

Take this Bread: A Radical Conversion, is a driving, passionately articulate narrative of a faith lived, loved and savored. If there’s such a thing as Episcopalian chutzpah, she’s got it. An experienced journalist and former war correspondent Miles is equally relentless and unsentimental in her spiritual quest. She forces one to realize from the get-go that there’s no such thing as a ‘conversion’: I came, I saw (the Light?), I conquered (or was conquered?), over and out. No. Miles makes it clear that life, all of life, moment to moment, day to day, is an ongoing process of converting. She appears to move in a Spirit-driven universe in which one is challenged constantly, consistently, and persistently to know, grow, and sometimes glow (wonderfully, even) amidst all the mayhem and messiness of life in order to understand and acknowledge Life and the Source of Life itself. There are bound to be collisions, but so what?



Miles doesn’t lean into conversion. She jumps heart-first right into the middle of things and then tries to figure out where to go from there. Apparently out of the blue and overnight, she moves from the stance a theologically uninterested bystander-- offspring of atheist parents (and, ironically, missionary grandparents)-- to that of a convicted believer. “One early, cloudy morning when I was forty-six,” she writes in the opening paragraph of this breathless narrative, “I walked into a church, ate a piece of bread, took a sip of wine…. This was my first communion. It changed everything.”

The ‘everything’ that has changed for Miles, starting with this initial experience more than a decade ago, includes her understanding of herself, of the nature of church, the centrality of communion, and the transforming power of sacramental life. Her “converting” process is fed and fueled by one vital discovery after another: “ The mysterious sacrament turned out to be not a symbolic wafer at all but actual food—indeed the bread of life.” In light of this epiphany, she begins to see the ways in which she, as a self-professed ‘outsider’ finds her own place within the communal narrative of the Christian faith: “I realized that what I’d been doing with my life all along was what I was meant to do: feed people.”



And feed them she does—with both zesto and pesto! Miles is fed by a profound and explicit experience of Eucharist, which in turn moves her into a direct and abiding experience of a particular church community—that of St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco’s Portero Hill neighborhood. Centered and centering at St. Gregory’s she is impelled to extend the Eucharistic experience and narrative literally—by dedicating herself to feeding others. With the help of a motley/godly crew of volunteers, she draws from years of restaurant experience to start a food pantry at St. Gregory’s, which over time morphs into a project involving a citywide network of distribution centers. The Pantry’s approach is a direct reflection of the congregation’s own inclusive promise: all are welcome, all will be fed, and all are invited to feed others. No questions asked.”

It is this openness of Communion and communion which, ironically, helps to ground Miles in Christian tradition. She constantly bristles at any sign of cant and hypocrisy in the church as institution, while just as constantly drinking deeply from the very depths of a living tradition that has somehow—miraculously-- survived, even thrived through centuries of alleged institutional fossilization. Welcome to the mystery.

The Christian faith of Miles is intense, kinetic. A kind of ‘in your face,’ but at the same time, ‘isn’t God great’ small ‘c’ catholicism. She has no patience for borders and boundaries she feels have been arbitrarily construed, constructed and defended through human selfishness, fear and pride. And her passion for ‘feeding’ the outsider of any and every description shines through it all. The Pantry is neither a service or a ministry as such; for Miles it is serving and ministering. Period.

With all this constant movement, one wonders: who, what, and where is its still and certain center/ Center? One has hints of this in Miles’ fidelity to the tradition of morning and evening prayer— a potent force in the Anglican/ Episcopal tradition and wonderfully expressed through the liturgical life at St. Gregory’s . But overall, Miles writes less about ‘being’a Christian than about ‘doing’ Christianity.

Like Mary Karr (see previous blog entry) and others, Miles’s converting is not always understood or appreciated by friends, family, and colleagues both beyond and within her faith community. Initially, at least, her decision is greeted by those on the ‘outside’ with skepticism, amusement, and indifference. Within the context of the church, she clearly struggles with the tension of another order—that of belonging to an institution which is all too often reactive rather than proactive in the proclamation and living out of Gospel values. Miles appears to understand that tension fully and is willing to engage it, wrestle with it. Rather than becoming frustrated and embittered, she continues to feed and be fed. And she challenges us as well: take this Bread (and live it)!

True Conversions No. 1: Mary Karr

Lit: A Memoir
Mary Karr
Harper: New York, c. 2009
400 pp. US$ 25.99
ISBN: 978-0-06-059698-9

One of the most interesting phenomena of our time from my perspective is that “a pesar de todo y en medio de todo”/”in spite of everything and in the middle of everything”—people continue to join the Catholic Church. At our parish alone this Easter, we welcomed 47 new Catholics—30 adults, teens, and children (no infants) were baptized at Easter vigil; an additional 17 were received into the Catholic community from other Christian denominations. In the Diocese of San Diego as a whole some 1400 neophytes joined the Church. Nationwide in the US, more than 100,000 people enter the Catholic Church annually. A pretty good indication, from my lights, that in terms of Church membership and attendance, there’s a fair amount of two-way traffic—people are leaving (no news), but other people are joining as well (pretty big news for us Catholics, I’d say). How come?

While I have a few hunches from my own pastoral experience as a Franciscan and as a priest, I’m also fascinated by the number of our contemporaries who have been willing to step forward and articulate their own conversion stories. Nearly two decades ago, I found myself sitting in an audience in San Francisco as author/ poet Annie Dillard spoke about her own unlikely embrace of Catholicism. The information was received with embarrassed silence followed by surprised gasps and giggles by her generally well-heeled and well-read listeners. There was no applause. I hadn’t know about that part of Ms. Dillard’s life, but she made it clear that her faith was important to her and that it illuminated her own artistic search and expression. I liked that in her. I still do.

That was then. More recently, I’ve become aware of a whole slew of “true conversions” stories appearing in print media– almost a sub-genre in itself. I find these tales of personal discovery fascinating. Why would someone choose Catholicism—especially now—especially given the media coverage of the sexual abuse scandals, in particular? What’s going on here? How is the Spirit moving in our time? What is s/he saying to us? What continues to attract intelligent and committed people to this faith community, while other equally intelligent and committed people appear to be leaving in frustration, bitterness, and contempt? I’d like to reflect a bit on some of the stuff I’ve been reading lately. It is, after all, all about ‘vocation’—listening for the clear, calm, gentle voice of Someone (maybe God?) inviting us into a deeper experience of love and community. In spite of, and in the middle of all the ‘stuff’ that goes on in our lives.



Writer Mary Karr can best be termed as a “memorist”. Her first works-- The Liars Club and Cherry—were both bestsellers. The former concentrated on her rough and tumble childhood in Texas. The latter dealt with her adolescent struggles. Karr’s third and most recent memoir, however, focuses on her spiritual journey and her unlikely path of conversion from, what-- Alcoholism to Catholicism? (Would it be fair to describe it as kind of a shift from one kind of‘religion’ to another?) So how did she get from there to here?

On the other hand, why not look at things in reverse—how did Mary Karr make her transition between here and there? “Time arcs back,” the author notes in the very last chapter, “carrying me in it.” She is visiting her mother—an aging, cantankerous, absolutely charming professional prevaricator and ingrate. Karr stumbles across an underlined passage in her mother’s Bible—Psalm 51—(“the hanging psalm”). The thing is, this is the very passage her spiritual director has prescribed for Karr’s Lenten reflection. She reflects: “… it feels as if God once guided my mother’s small hand, circa 1920-something to make two notes I’d very much need to find seventy years later—a message that I could be made new, that I am – have always been – loved.”

Karr’s conversion story ‘ends’ in its’ ‘beginnings’—the jagged trajectory that her life has made “arcs backwards” from love to Love. In between is all the ‘stuff’ that happens or that we make happen in our own stumbling, bumbling way. In Karr’s case the arc passes backwards and forwards through childhood misery, adolescent longing, youthful experimentation, catastrophic relationships, and toxic dependencies. In between and among all this, one is able to discern some slender, yet surprisingly firm threads of sustaining hope, stubborn discipline, and sustaining friendship and love. “A pesar de todo y en medio de todo,” she discerns presence of a loving God in her life, partly through the means and medium of her chosen call, the written word.

Where does the Catholic part come in? Maybe it was just some kind of crazy luck or random choice, but I think not. Again, my funny bone tells me that with Karr it may have been a matter of things “fitting”— the narrative of her own suffering and redemption coalescing with that of our own collective history and struggles. They fit. They fit well enough for her to embark on the path and serious business of making a faith choice and commitment to a specific community of worship and service. Whatever happened, it is clear that the point of entry into the faith experience for Karr was every bit as much through her pain as it was her brain. As she expressed it in a PBS radio “Fresh Air” interview: "I thought faith was a feeling. My intellect told me this was insane. The only way I was able to do it was through practice," she says. "[I'd] been trying to get sober and not really listening to the ways you're supposed to do it, and somebody said 'pray on your knees every day for 30 days and see if you stay sober.' And I just saw it as, like, self-hypnosis or like talking to yourself."

Karr’s journey is not unlike a lot of our own stories. What makes her tale particularly striking and convincing, though, is her gift of honest expression— by turns blunt, blue, raw, or reflective, yet ever relentless. Her seemingly constant and continuing collisions with crushing realities. Her ultimate deliverance from multiple and cumulative experiences of pain and suffering-- through successive dead ends to eventual recovery and spiritual awakening. Read the book for the details. It’s not always pretty, but it’s really real. Just like life.

Jesuit Advice in a Franciscan's Life

Discerning the Will of God
An Ignatian Guide to Christian Discernment
Timothy M. Gallagher, OMV
Crossroad Publishing: New York, c. 2009.
ISBN: 987-0-8245-2489-0
$16.95, 160 pp.

Personally, I struggle a lot with decision-making. It doesn't come easily or naturally to me. It never has. Recently, though, I needed to make a decision—a really good decision—about an important matter in my life. And I wanted to get the best help and advice available. My spiritual director (a Jesuit, by the way) suggested this text, which I took along on a recent trip to read, study, and reflect (upon). I was looking for a practical, step-by-step guide which would lead the reader through the discernment process-- hopefully without too much stress or discomfort (!).



Timothy Gallagher’s guide to discernment in the Jesuit tradition clear, rational, user-friendly, and methodical. But it was not Gallagher's methodology which I found most helpful. Rather, it was his basic insight that the foundation for any and all good decision-making is an “awareness that God has created us out of love and ceaselessly offers that love to us.” The recognition and acceptance of that Love leads to a “consequent thirst for communion of wills with the One who so deeply loves us.” Peter, one of Gallagher’s spiritual directees, states things succinctly. Peter reports that at the age of eight, he approached his father saying, “Dad, everything we learn in church and everything in the Bible comes down to just one thing, doesn’t it? …. That all God wants us to do—all the time—is to ask him what he wants us to do, and then do it…. Instead of asking ourselves, ask God.”

Imagine. Good decision-making, for the Christian, has its foundation in our relationship with a loving God. For the adult, it is “the experience of ourselves as loved sinners, loved in our failures, faults, woundedness, and pain—loved in a way that frees us to seek moral newness and so creates a heart ready to discern.” (p.41)

The necessity of basing one’s discernment upon a foundation of love—God’s love (intimate, personal, and abiding)—transforms one’s experience of the ensuing process.Gallagher goes on to speak of the “disposition,” “means”, and “fruit” of discernment. And he provides a clear and accessible road map of the distinct and discrete “modes” of discernment provided in the writings of St. Ignatius of Loyola.

I was surprised by a couple of other aspects of the book as well. For one thing, Gallagher quotes extensively from the reported experiences of his spiritual directees over a thirty-year period. A fair number of these anecdotes are from women and men contemplating priesthood or religious life. This is particularly helpful and accessible to those on the path of vocational discernment.



The other surprise I experienced was Gallagher’s reference to several Franciscan sources. He refers for example, to an account of a Secular Franciscan, Blessed Peter Pettenaio, who reports his vision of Christ walking into the cathedral of Siena, surrounded by a throng of saints, each of whom tried (unsuccessfully) to place her/his foot into the footprint of the Lord. At last, the only one to succeed in the task was Francis of Assisi (Atta boy! That’s our guy! Whadda way to go, Francis!)

A more revealing and relevant reference, however, is the experience of Francis’s own clarity in eventually discerning his call: “Immediately, exulting in the Holy Spirit, he cried out: ‘This is what I want, this is what I seek, this is what I long to do with all my hear!’” (I Celano). Isn’t that the kind of clarity, focus, and determination most of would really like to have in our own lives?

This is a very good, practical, and user-friendly guide to spiritual discernment. It is not enough in and of itself, however, as the author wisely cautions. To be complete the process requires a disciplined commitment to spiritual practices (prayer, spiritual reading, reception of the Eucharist, silence) and the help and assistance of a skilled spiritual director. By the way, it was a great help to me in my own recent decision-making.//

April 16: V-Day

It has been a tradition in our Order that each year on April 16 – the day on which Francis made his profession into the hands of Pope Innocent III – we gather and renew our commitment to our way of life. The purpose of this renewal is to recall the origins of our Rule, to recall the devotion of Francis and his companions to follow the Holy Gospel, to recall our own fervor as we began this way of life, and resolve to commit ourselves again to these ideals.



Reading:
From the Testament of St. Francis of Assisi (14-17)
“And after the Lord gave me brothers, no one showed me what I had to do, but the Most High ... revealed to me that I should live according to the pattern of the Holy Gospel. And I had this written down simply and in a few words and the Lord Pope confirmed it for me. And those who came to receive life gave whatever they had to the poor and were content with one tunic, patched inside and out, ... We desired nothing more.”



Friars Renewal:
All praise be yours, Most High, for all creation gives you glory. All praise be yours, O Lord, for all good things come from you. All praise be yours, Almighty One, for you call us to the life of the risen Christ. Today, we your sons, renew and re-dedicate ourselves to the call you have given us. We renew our commitment to the Rule of our father Francis, and we ask your help to continue to live the life of the Gospel with obedience to your Spirit and your Church, with poverty that imitates the life of your beloved Child Jesus and his holy mother, and with chastity that frees us to love you and your people with unmeasured love. All praise be you Most High! Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning is now and will be forever. Amen!



The Promise of Eternal Life:
“And whoever observes these things, let them be blessed in heaven with the blessings of the Most High Father, and on earth with the blessing of His Beloved Son with the Most Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, and all the powers of heaven and with all the saints.” {Testament. 40}

The truth is:
Today, Friday. I came home from the parish about 4. It had been a grueling week: way too many meetings, emergency calls, appointments with people struggling with overwhelming issues in their lives.... Celebrations: Fr. Jerry's anniversary as a priest (Fr. Jerry is a retired diocesan priest who helps out with Mass on our day off. A truly good and humble man)..... The School Mass for our parish school (the kids were full of life and just amazing)..... A man sitting in the chapel, sobbing, after Mass: his brother had just died. A dozen red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese appearing out of nowhere..... A couple in their 60s, walking hand in hand, like a couple of lovebirds-- stopping by to plan the details of their August wedding..... 78 emails waiting to be answered.... The Sunday homily to be started..... A mother and her son visiting the family graves.... An elderly Filipino couple who wanted Anointing of the Sick. And so on....

I hopped in the shower, planning to skip evening prayer and sleep through dinner as well. But something bugged me-- so I went to the friary chapel after all. Oh, Renewal of Vows! Wow! Already? What does it feel like after 16 years in this life style?

It feels like it's my life. My life, not someone else's. Not a dream, a fantasy, a daydream or a movie. Just my life. Getting up in the morning, praying with my brothers, doing my best during the day (with lots of disappointments and failures). A precious hour of 'radiation therapy' before the Blessed Sacrament. A nap after lunch. Relief at locking my office door and walking across the property to the Old Mission-- hey, it's really beautiful outside! Tired. And content. Still tired, but still... content. And grateful. So, let's keep going: The Lord gave me brothers. Siempre adelante!/ Always go forward!//

Men Religious: Image and Experience

Let the Great World Spin
Colum McCann
Random House Trade Paperbacks: New York, c.2009
US$15.00, 375pp.
ISBN: 978-0-8129-7399-0

Brooklyn: A Novel
Colm Tóibín
Scribner: New York, c. 2009
Hardbound, US$25.00., 262pp.
ISBN: 978-1439-138311-1

When it comes to religious life and/or priesthood, I’ve always been struck by the difference between image and experience. When I was growing up in the urban Midwest of the Fifties and Sixties, the dominant images of priests and priesthood available were those created and promoted by Hollywood. Wise, folksy, affable, but also appropriately tough and worldwise ‘don’t mess with me, I’m nobody’s fool’ kind of Irishmen, by and large. Pat O’Brien, Gene Kelly, Bing Crosby. Father Flanagan of Boys’ Town; Going My Way, The Bells of St. Mary’s. If the cassock fits, wear it.

My own actual, lived experience was of men of a somewhat different cloth altogether. Monsignor Heinrich, pastor, had up to four (count ‘em!) full-time associates at any one time. He was a stern, aloof, and formal figure, who left no strong impression, endearing or otherwise. He simply ran the place, and ran it rather well. His associates, like Frs. Stetson, Sargent, Murphy, and Bank were somehow more visible, approachable, believable. Outside of church, they could be seen catching a smoke at the sacristy door, or in their T-shirts washing their cars on a Saturday morning, or chatting easily with families after Mass. Inside the sanctuary, however, they could sometimes be holy terrors--Fr. Sargent, the ex-Presbyterian, brought the spirit of John Calvin to much of his preaching. Parishioners basically took them as they were, though: liked them, respected them, and downplayed their failings. The cinematic Irishness of O’Brien & Company was charming and romantic. Our real, live parish priests were far less dramatic or compelling figures. But they were good, hardworking, and holy men, and over the long haul, that counted for more than charm and charisma.

Novelists McCann and Tóibín, both transplanted Irishmen who write about US culture, provide differing images of priests and male religious-- ones which merit some consideration and reflection. In Let the Great World Spin, one of the chief characters is Corrigan—Irish-born and bred and self-styled urban monk who, by the early 1970s, has graduated from the streets of Dublin to the howling madness of the South Bronx. In the spirit of the heady decade immediately following Vatican II, Corrigan parachutes right into the midst and messiness of inner city life. “What Corrigan wanted was a fully believable God, one you could find in the grime of the everyday…. He consoled himself with the fact that in the real world, when he looked closely into the darkness he might find the presence of …light.” His parishioners are the neighborhood’s most fragile denizens: the elderly and the street prostitutes whom he befriends, and attempts—largely without success—to protect and defend.

By the time of his early exit from the novel’s pages, Corrigan has fallen in love—with a single mother from El Salvador, who works as a nurse’s aide and sometimes assists him in his ministerial endeavors. He has also become addicted to heroin: “He was shooting smack (his brother reports)…because he couldn’t stand the thought of others being left alone with the same terror.” In a fatal auto collision, he ultimately gives/ loses his life. During the remainder of the novel, his life and character— flaws as well as virtues-- are reconstructed through the memories of family, friends, and the destitute and the abandoned people he served.

One is left with a number of doubts about Corrigan. What is his real ‘religion’—his point of connection, his interpretive lens of spiritual meaning? To whom and to what is he connected beyond the immediate realm of his ministry-- his family? his religious brotherhood? the Church? Corrigan is a kind of kamikaze Christian— in the unsparing arc of his self-styled call to action, the fact of his demise is ultimately unsurprising, yet nonetheless compelling. He leaves behind a motley crew of suffering, struggling human beings who have been genuinely touched by his love. But has anyone, included himself, been transformed or redeemed through his sacrifice?



Colm Tóibín’s Brooklyn: A Novel visits an earlier, kinder, gentler, quieter, safer New York. It is a slice of the Brooklyn of the early to mid-1950s, the waning days of the fraying Irish ghetto, with even a remnant of the immigrant boardinghouse. Tóibín’s cleric is the irreproachable Fr. Flood, who on one of his periodic visits home to Enniscourthy, County Cork, befriends Eilis, the novel’s main figure and protagonist. Fr. Flood sees that, left unsupported or encouraged, Eilis faces a doomed existence in the same pinched and provincial small-town life he himself escaped. He proffers himself as patron and protector, and assists Eilis in her literal and figurative passage to the new world. Fr. Flood is an honest broker: he knows the game and the players. Through a mixture of kindness and canniness, he is able to place and assist Eilis in her adjustment to a very new and different cultural reality. He arranges safe living quarters for her, work in a respectable department store, and the possibility of contacts with appropriate peers through a network of parish social activities. He is a mentor and literally, a ‘father’ figure, but he is at the same time somewhat detached in his dealings with Eilis. He takes pains not to shelter or smother her in the way her own family and culture have done. But the safety net of parish and family life are always assumed. Eilis may suffer, but she will not be devoured by her environment.

There you have it. Two good and decent men. Both deeply committed to the Church and to the care of souls. Fr. Flood is from central casting—or at least what’s left of it by the mid-Fifties. He could squeeze into the suited image of O’Brien, Kelly, and Crosby with few alterations. Corrigan is another bird altogether. He is cut astray, searching and uncertain both in his personal identity and institutional anchoring. Part of a generation of men (and women) who have broken out of a traditional network (or web?) or relationships and have not yet firmly fixed a new one to replace it. Corrigan is the more complex and compelling figure by far. His heroic struggles and ultimate, untimely death are lived and expressed the ambiguities of a world and culture split wide open by the Sixties. Neither Father Flood nor Eilis have any sense of the convulsive decade ahead of them.

Two images, two expressions, two experiences of men committed to the Lord and the Church through religious life and/or priesthood. What appeals to you in these characterizations? Which of the qualities in these characters would attract/distract you in your own search for identity and expression? What images and experience/s of your own do you have of priesthood a/o religious life? Do they help or hinder you in your personal journey in any particular way at all? Feel free to leave a comment….

Praise with Elation!

The Carnival cruise line Elation, that is. Hello, Everybody!
The Blog is Back. Some time in February, 2009, I made the decision to discontinue Friarside Chats. We Franciscans of the Province of St. Barbara had just held our biennial Chapter (i.e., congress) at the historic Old Mission San Luis Rey in Oceanside, California (about 40 minutes north of San Diego). We elected our new provincial administration, and then proceeded to reshuffle the deck in terms of ministerial assignments.

As a result of that process, I was elected as one of six definitors (consultors) to our new leadership team, which includes our recently elected Provincial Minister (Numero Uno), Father John Hardin, ofm, and our vicar-Provincial (Numero Dos) Father Ken Laverone, ofm. In July of last year, I left my job as vocations coordinator to become reincarinated (or rather, re-incardinated) as pastor of the parish at-- Mission San Luis Rey—the same venue as our Chapter meeting.

I was not alone in terms of reassignment. Of the more than 100 friars in active ministry in our province, nearly half of us were moved in the wake of our Chapter. It’s not that we weren’t doing our jobs. Rather, as an integral part of our vocation as ‘itinerants’ (pilgrims and strangers on this earth) we are asked to be open and available to the call of the Spirit and of our superiors at all times—the terms is “disponible” in the lingo of religious orders. When I first entered religious life 16 years ago, I thought that moving around like this on a regular basis would be easy and fun. Now, I find it more difficult—it’s really hard to leave the friendships and contacts one develops in a particular place. Every move brings its sadness and joy.

In this process of institutional musical chairs, everyone was to be in place by the time the record stopped on September 1. And it worked! With the exception of a few stragglers, everyone was in place, at least physically, in his new assignment by Labor Day. The psychological adjustment is ongoing and takes much longer, of course.



For my part, I shifted from a very focused, one-on-one and small-group oriented ministry to responsibilities as head of a leadership team for more than 5,000 families in a large, multi-cultural environment. We have a staff of 20, including 2 full-time friars, 12 lay ministers, and a five-man maintenance crew. The parish campus—about 12 acres in all—includes a ‘worship space’—the Junipero Serra Center (capacity 1200), and our parish Montessori school with 200 students. In addition, the parish hosts a wide variety of programs, ranging from our religious education program (800 students, K-12), to the Knights of Columbus, to ‘grupos de oracion/ intercesion’ and even that enduring mainstay of Catholic parish life: bingo! It’s compelling, often overwhelming, but I’m not complaining. Seven months into a rather steep learning curve, I am really enjoying this new ministry. The people—warm, welcoming, and faith-filled-- make it all worthwhile, believe me. And the local Franciscan fraternity—eight of us all together, along with four lay Covenant volunteer members—makes for stimulating community life, to say the very least.



Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I have come to realize even though I’m now working as a pastor, I’m still very interested in vocations work and will probably continue to help promote vocations one way or another for a long time to come. I am deeply convinced that the Franciscan movement, lay and religious, is still ‘alive and kicking’, and that there is a vital role for us in today’s Church and society. But we ain’t goin’ no place unless or until we can get the word out effectively

We have an excellent new vocations coordinator, Father Alberto Villafan, ofm, who works out of San Jose, California. I have known Fr. Alberto for more than 16 years—we are classmates and entered the Franciscans together as postulants in 1993. He is a good, hardworking, and dedicated man. I will be writing more about him in future blog entries. At any rate, Fr. Alberto has moved the Vocations Office to San Jose, California, and can be reached directly at 408/903-3422. Email: avillafanr@hotmail.com

For my part, of course, I’ve decided to restart this blog and see what happens. This particular stroke of genius (or was it sunstroke) hit me while on a post-Easter boat ride from San Diego to Baja California, Mexico. The ship, by the way, is the Carnival Line’s Elation. (!) I like that. (The trip was a 60th birthday present).

But now I will be writing from the perspective of my own ‘vocation within a vocation’-- my work and experience as a pastor and member of a large Franciscan community. It’s just one of a wide variety of working/living situations our Province supports and maintains. I hope something from my experience may help you in your own spiritual growth and discernment.

Feel free to contact me at any time and I will be happy to respond and/or forward inquiries to Fr. Alberto as it appears appropriate. Peace and all good!—Fr. Chuck Talley, ofm.