Hugging God

A few nights ago, I was walking and talking with God when an overwhelming desire to hug God passed through me. Well, you know, we humans are physical beings, so why would we not want to have some kind of physical contact with the supernatural if we are programmed for physical contact with the natural? So, I expressed that desire: "I would really like to hug You!"

That Voice that I hear upon occasion responded in a surprising way: "Hug My people!"

Well, maybe, on second thought, that is not so surprising at all. After all, God is within each of us.

I think I will right away start doing a lot of hugging of God!

Obedience

I have written a number of posts here about taskings I have been given, and which I have followed through on. Usually, they require me to act like I am nuts (to those who don't believe in God or don't believe that God interacts with people today as God did in the past -- I don't believe that God has stopped talking to us but rather that we have stopped listening) or require me to do things that I find embarrassing, humiliating, and otherwise a tad troublesome. Of course, they are always the right thing to do, and they always focus on helping someone, righting a wrong, and the like. It is just that sometimes I wish God would choose someone else, partly because I am not obedient by nature and partly because, well, why would anyone want to go around making himself/herself sound like a modern-day Jeremiah (if only on a small scale)?

Interestingly, these taskings, to date, have always been things I am supposed to do. Until recently, that is. I have for a few weeks been trying to write a post for this blog about the Voice. Yes, of course, I have written many posts about the Voice. However, I have never sat down and described the Voice in detail the way St. Teresa did -- and maybe she described all that is needed to be described, but I really thought I had something to add to that description. However, each time I wrote a very nice (my opinion) post on the topic, I would hear God telling me: "Don't post it." I have tried 4-5 times, each time with the same message: dont, which is not a word I typically get, except in the case of not leaving my job for a better one. I don't know why I am not supposed to post it. After all, God let St. Teresa of Avila (big disappointment this week -- was in Madrid, Toledo, Alcala but could not get to Avila) write about the Voice in very specific ways. (Of course, there was St. John of the Cross hanging around, telling her not to pay much attention to her locutions, whose advice she did not heed in this case.)

It is all very confusing to me, yet very clear. I will not post or share my description because I am not supposed to. Perhaps because it will do some harm. Perhaps because I don't understand it as well as I think I do. (That happens a lot in life with a lot of things.) All I know is that when God says do something, I do try to do it (perhaps with less posh than someone else would do it, but it gets done). Now God is saying not to do it -- so I will not do it.

Tasked V, Moving on with Goliath

I have related through several posts the continuing saga of Goliath (see previous posts on Modern Mysticism or the story as a whole, including the paragraphs below, on 100th Lamb -- note that I may have changed some names between the posts on this blog and the chapter in the book, from which I took the story for 100th Lamb) and the spiritual warfare around him, including my being pulled into -- or, rather, pushed into by God. If the purpose of the task was to change Goliath’s behavior, apparently, it succeeded, no matter how poorly carried out, at least momentarily. Eduardo, who continued to attend team meetings, told me that the meetings improved and that Goliath is not the same person. Praise be to God if that is true!

In hearing Eduardo’s words, I felt a rush of love for Goliath and a great gratitude to God. I can lean on God, and I can learn to love those for whom I feel no natural affinity. And even if I fumble a task, God will use my efforts somehow to bring it to the desired closure.

One underestimates the tenacity of Satan, however, at one’s own risk. Our organization recently had a change in management, and, apparently feeling emboldened, Goliath reverted to his old ways. Satan seems to have gifted Goliath with the charism of deception so that those who do not know him well gravitate toward his dissemblance of meekness, allowing Satan’s purposes to be accomplished. Finally, I understand, at least in greater part, what is happening in our organization and why God pitted me (and, thankfully, a few other volunteers) against Goliath. There is a serious spiritual battle going on, not only among our local employees but also at higher levels of management. Satan is using Goliath as his local champion. Why? Because he can. Just as God can use me and others like me to combat Goliath.

I also understand now why God wants me to love Goliath. Goliath is not the evil one. Rather, he allows himself, likely unknowingly and, I would guess, not by desire, to be used by the Evil One. Clearly, loving Goliath and praying for him is critical to helping him loose himself from the bonds of Satan and to returning our organization to spiritual health.

I imagine our organization is not unique. Otherwise, I would have spent fewer pages relating the story of Goliath.

Tasked IV

It has been while since I have posted anything about Goliath. In fact, gulp!, it has been a considerable amount of time since I have posted anything at all. First, I had to wait three months for my computer to be restored to me (well, a new one provided) and then, for Lent, I reduced my Internet time, which was further restricted by quite a bit of travel to places I do not even remember without concentration (Hawaii, Qatar, Korea, North Carolina, maybe others that have slipped my mind). In any event, I am glad to be Internet-operational again, and I am happy to follow up on my posts about Goliath.

After making Goliath aware of God's message: "Let Goliath know he cannot treat My people this way," I stopped attending formation meetings by agreement with the SFO Council. So did E, who had also felt the spiritual negativity that I and others had. Then, as his term ran out, Goliath decided not to run again for formation director although I learned from those who had stayed in formation that Goliath had indeed taken God's words to heart and had changed his ways.

"So, now what?" I asked God, expecting to be told something about whether I should return to formation with a new formation director. But nothing of the sort is what I heard. (I suppose I am on my own to make the decision about returning to formation -- and I do plan to return because it makes sense to do so, now that the director is experienced and a good example of conversion and spirituality.)

Instead of getting direction about formation, what I got was a new task: "Love Goliath!"

Huh? Love someone I just spent several months "fighting" in order to bring God's message to him? Love someone who had spiritually abused those in his charge? Love someone who had stopped speaking to me and had, unsuccessfully, led a charge against me with the help of regional officials, whose help he enlisted through manipulation of information and outright lies?

Well, if told to love Goliath, then love Goliath is what I need to do. At the last several meetings, I have made a conscious effort to speak to Goliath about anything positive I could find to mention, to address him warmly, and give him hello and good-bye hugs. Funny thing about trying to love someone -- it works! (Of course, it helps that he has indeed changed his attitude after being given God's message; I suppose being told "God says that you are not to treat His people this way" would cause anyone to think twice.)

Now I have begun to have very warm feelings toward Goliath. Just in time, too. Goliath has thought about leaving the organization. From what the Council can tell, he feels embarrassed about what happened and how everything turned out and wants to avoid those he believes think poorly about him. A couple of the officers actually made the comment, "good riddance, if he leaves; he has brought this organization little more than trouble and anxiety."

I found myself in the rather odd position of arguing that he is as much a valued member as anyone else, that he needs our support now, that we must let him know that he is loved and accepted (ironically, the two things he could not do for the fiscally poorer members of his formation group). I convinced the Council to work on getting him to stay and providing positive feedback to him.

Oh, how strange are the ways of God! How unpredictable! As the scripture says, how far above our thinking is God's thinking! And how breathtaking it is to be touched even by a small part of it all!

Voice IX

In one of my earlier posts, I related the story of a friend who did not understand why she could not (or was not allowed to) feel God's presence in the same way I have sensed, felt, and known the Presence. God to me is the Presence; the Presence is God. Like Br. Lawrence (Practicing the Presence of God), if I do not palpably know that God is with me it is because I, unlike Br. Lawrence, have chosen for the moment to focus my attention away from God. Otherwise, I do feel the Presence nearly all my waking hours, and I find the Presence not only comforting but also increasingly necessary and thirstily desired. Therefore, of course, I wanted my friend to have this same kind of experience and relationship, and I pestered God about it. After much pestering, I received another of those locutions that startled me. "She is fragile," I was told.

Huh? Fragile? What was that supposed to mean? Well, when I told her, I found out what it meant: fragile personality disorder. More details are given in the earlier post: Voice IV.

This friend later came to visit me, spending a week here. Every day she accompanied me to the Old Mission, where I had made a habit of an early evening walk, basking in the Presence of God, sometimes listening, sometimes talking, but mostly just being together with God, which is usually enough for me.

My friend immediately began to have the same experiences I did, but, fragile personality disorder or not, they did not frighten her. Rather, she began to look forward to our long evening walks, and she often sat on a bench in one of the rose gardens, just being with God, as I love to do although, being a very kinesthetic person, I prefer to walk with God, rather than to sit.

My friend had experienced a traumatic childhood. Without going into details, I will say only that the result of this difficult and horrendous childhood had led to years of regular psychotherapy as an adult with very slow and extremely incremental progress. After her week's stay with me, she returned home more comfortable with herself and accepting of her past as being in the past, more filled with genuine forgiveness for those who had either harmed or failed her, and met with her psychologist for their routine session. My friend reported that her psychologist was amazed by how she had changed, saying that such changes either take many more years of psychotherapy than she had had or come about as a result of Divine intervention. It is remarkable what communing with God can do! (And, I suppose, that fragile personality is now a bit less fragile, thanks to God.)

Voice VIII

A discussion of locutions came up at our prayer group recently. This is a topic I rarely discuss with anyone except a couple of priests I truly trust and to whom I go running for help in determining authenticity, and, of course, Sr. Maria. I do not remember whether the discussion developed as an outgrowth of something I had said or something that Fr. Kevin had said at the monthly contemplative prayer group meeting in Campbell. In any event, our entire evening discussion between our prayers that began the meeting and our prayers that ended it focused on locutions, mainly mine, and I shared far more deeply than ever in the past, including even with Sr. Maria.
I have actually experienced less than a dozen locutions. However, each remains seared into my memory because of the element of surprise and the message, almost always something I have not wanted to hear or do. (Mostly “doing” has been associated with these locutions).

Getting Sr. Maria’s insights on my more unusual and intimate experiences made the discussion valuable. I assumed that it was okay with God if I were to share with others who love Him the kinds of locutions that I occasionally get. (I am pretty certain that if it were not okay, I would soon find out.)

From my blogging and occasional mention of my experiences to others, I have learned that people rarely accept locutions, let alone understand them or receive them. For that reason, I am grateful for the people in my prayer group and the people who read this blog.

From our discussion at prayer group, I gained an understanding of the rarity of locutions (and both respect and gratitude for my experiences). It has taken a considerable amount of time for me to understand why and how others react to my talk of locutions and really to know that they are a rare gift. For me, everything in my conversion came along topsy-turvy. I did not run begging to God for help at any time before conversion because I was a chronically happy atheist. My world did not shatter, and God did not lift me from among the shards. My world was a place of joy. God simply one day entered it. Definitively and vocally. Because I did not come to God through the church but rather to the church through God, contemplative prayer, which was my starting point for believing, is to this day much easier for me than the formulaic prayers that most Catholics have known by heart since childhood. I am still trying to learn some of the more beautiful ones and have given up on ever knowing all those that cradle Catholics know. (For that matter, I still have trouble with the mysteries part of the rosary and need a cheat sheet or someone to prompt me.) Talking to God, on the other hand, comes easy, and listening to and hearing God comes even easier.

I know I am making judgments based on a very backward “journey” from communication and contemplation into formal ritual. Nonetheless, my intuition rightly (or wrongly) tells me that I should not be unique among my peers. I know I share experiences common to a group of people spread around the universe and most closely with my dear Sufi friend, Omar the poet. In fact, there is an Arabic word used by the Sufis, the mystical side of Islam, for what I experience: zikr. I just have to wonder, it being my nature to wonder, if there would not be many more people who receive locutions if they truly believed that God wants to communicate with His people. Just as most people find that a difficult thing to believe, I find the opposite difficult to believe, not only based upon my experience but also upon what seems to me to be logic. Why would God make people and then go silent?

Doah, my rather severely retarded adult son, clearly hears locutions. For many years now, he has said to me “God told me” this or that. I used to tell him, “that’s nice, sweetheart,” and change the topic. Now I listen when he prefaces a comment with these words.

Confession

I am certain that in a lifetime of being Catholic, many people have had one or more rather odd or disconcerting confessions. So, I suppose what happened to me with a priest I shall call Fr. Dan might be typical enough, but for me it has been a unique experience. I have been fortunate in having mostly really good confessors, even those whom I have not known and those who have laughed at me. (I suppose I would laugh at me in the same cases, as well.) This particular confession took place at a retreat I attended that was conducted by Fr. Dan, so, except for our interactions at the retreat, he was unknown to me and I to him. And confession with him took the oddest of turns.

The topic of the retreat was Franciscan spirituality, a popular topic in my part of the world, where the missions here were established by the Franciscans. Our local retreat center is run by the Franciscans, and the convents here are generally Franciscan. So, here I was, an SFO (third order Franciscan) candidate, at a Franciscan retreat center, spending a weekend immersed in learning more about Franciscan spirituality with a Franciscan priest. What could be better? Well, actually, a lot.

At the very first session, Fr. Dan presented a part of St. Francis's bio. In doing so, he interpreted it somewhat differently from what I was used to and made a pronouncement that floored me, kept me puzzled all weekend, and caused me to talk to him separately.

"St. Francis," he said, "never really heard a voice telling him to rebuild God's church. He just thought he did. Obviously, it was something he was thinking about, something that he thought should be done, and so he 'heard' in his mind the words that led to his rebuilding not only San Damiano but the more abstract 'church'."

Say what? St. Francis was confused about what he heard? Convinced that if St. Francis said he heard a voice he really did hear a voice, not a little bolstered by my own experiences and readings of the experiences of St. Theresa of Avila, I approached Fr. Dan during the break and asked him whether he thought that God ever speaks to people in a voice.

"No," he responded. "That's not the way God works."

But what about all those times in the Bible when someone heard the voice of God? Was it only in their minds, too?

"Yes," he said.

"Don't you think that God can choose to speak in a way that people hear?" I asked.

"No," he said curtly. "God is not capable of that."

I do not remember much of the rest of the retreat. In fact, I missed a portion of it because a friend who speaks only Russian had a stroke and I am the only local "family" that she has so I spent some time with her doctors and hospital staff, translating for her. Fr. Dan seemed to understand the urgency of that and forgave my absence for a few hours. While I had difficulty understanding his position on whether or not God speaks to people (ever), I found Fr. Dan to live up to his reputation as charming. Though there was not much of substance in his presentations, there was an obvious attraction between him and the participants. I felt the attraction, too, except for the nagging concern over his comment on the weakness of God and the mistakenness of St. Francis.

The retreat ended with confession and Mass. Mass was fine; Fr. Dan celebrated a lovely Mass. Confession, though, as I noted at the beginning of this post, took the oddest of turns in a way that I could not fathom and still cannot. I related a Jonah-type experience (I do encounter these unwished taskings from time to time that I sometimes try to sidestep initially), in which I had just given in (I always do; when God wants something, God gets it -- at least from me) but was still working on those sticky details, the ones that are along the lines of "Oh, God, do You really want me to do that? Please, not that!" I did not get far, however, when my tongue stopped working. Literally. I could not say another word. I just looked at Fr. Dan silently. Now, typically, one would expect the priest to take over, ask some questions, pull the details out of me, or at least say something. Fr. Dan, however, seemed to have also been struck dumb. He just looked at me. We looked, and we looked. Silently. Maybe for as much as a couple of minutes. (Time passes slowly when you are just looking and not talking, yet wanting to talk.) It was all very strange. Finally, he silently made the sign of the cross over me, and I walked away.

That was over a year ago, and the matter still puzzles me. Were we really struck dumb in some modern version of the meaning of that expression, or had I done or said something wrong? Was there something I should have done that my inexperience precluded me from doing? Why could I not talk? Fr. Dan was a charming priest in general. Disagreement on one small matter (well, maybe not that small a matter, considering that I do hear, aloud, something that seems to be a voice that gives me tasks me that I could never dream up or even want to carry out) should not have created such a barrier. Moreover, why did he not speak? I am inexperienced, but he has been a priest for many years. Certainly, he has heard more complicated things than I was relating.

I have no explanation for what happened. I do not pretend to understand it. I do, however, remain troubled about it. I suppose, though, that if God wants me to understand it, He will send along an explanation at some point in some form. Until then, I simply furrow my brow and continue down that path, you know, the one along which God pushed Jonah.

Voice VII

In the early days after my conversion, I received what seemed to me to be a very strange locution, one I do not understand to this day. Perhaps someone reading this will have some insight into the meaning of it, or, for that matter, the authenticity of it.

To understand any part of it, though, I will need to go back to more than a year before my conversion. At that point, I had spent nearly two years living and working in Jordan as the chief academic officer of an American university there. I had, in fact, no counterpart chief administrative officer, and so I took on that set of roles, too, until one arrived 18 months later. Although I enjoyed the job—especially the faculty, staff, and students, there were complications in carrying out my instructions from the home office because it was difficult to determine what constituted the “home office” on any particular occasion. It could be the local umbrella university to which we were attached; that president was my local supervisor. It could be the Middle East administrator; that person was my supervisor when it came to admin decisions. It could be the New York main campus vice president; that person was my supervisor when it came to academic decisions. Unfortunately, some decisions overlapped in nature, and all three supervisors rarely agreed. In fact, there was a good deal of jockeying for position among them, and I would often be left to commonsense in implementing whatever decision seemed to be best for the faculty, staff, and students. Always that decision met accreditation standards and so typically met with the approval of the academic vice president. Often, however, that decision was not particularly palatable to Dr. Abdullah, the Middle East administrator, who, by the way, held only an honorary doctorate and whose primary goal was to make money for the institute and for himself, regardless of whom might suffer. So, while he and I enjoyed an unusually cordial relationship, given the acerbic relationship he has had with my predecessors and successors, there were times that I needed to use all my wiles—female, younger, American, cross-cultural-chameleon, whatever ones I could muster—to placate him, hold him back from ripping into staff who were trying their best to do their job, and sweet-talk or logic him, as the case may have been, into retaining a deserved soul whom he intended to fire for a fleeting and unintended offense. More than holding him back, many times I had to push him forward—to pay people what they had earned or reimburse what they had spent. The tugs-of-war over these issues never ended, from the day arrived until the day I left.

This attitude of self-love and profit at the sake of any other person permeated everything he decided, did, and did not do eleven months of the year. During Ramadan, however, he splashed money onto the community, feeding the poor in large numbers (quite a manageable act for a multibillionaire as he was), and making a tremendously public show of charity in the name of the university. He himself spent Ramadan on omra (pilgrimage), in addition to making hajj before every Eid al-Adha.

Hajj is the at-least-once-in-a lifetime pilgrimage to Mekkah required of all Muslims who can afford it. Dr. Abdullah made hajj every year, seeming to understand this act in a way similar to which some young Catholic children understand confession: confession sets you free to sin again, enjoying a clean record against which to work until the next confession comes along to clean up your new dirtiness. In this way, it seemed, Dr. Abdullah believed that he could “buy” salvation by spending money once a year on the poor that he took from them during the rest of the year and making a pilgrimage to clean up his "dirt" before doing so.

When Eid al-Fitr (known as “little Eid” because it is only three days long) approached at the end of Ramadan, he would appear in Amman to celebrate in great joy. There were smiles all around, parties the likes that none of us working souls would likely see in any other context, and gifts for many. The same was true for Eid al-Adha (the week-long “big Eid”). My first Eid corresponded with my birthday, and Dr. Abdullah handed over the keys to a car, his birthday/Eid gift to me and arranged for a celebration with 75 leading university staff and townfolk in one of the most lavish restaurants in town.

That was the dual nature of Dr. Abdullah, and one never knew which side he would show. I fared well. I always had his smiles, and when he was about to mutilate one or another employee, I would be able to draw him away long enough on some trumped-up emergency to elicit his smiles again, not just for me but, more important, for those he intended to harm.

And so it went, more or less on an even keel, thanks to my ability to elicit his smiles that usually, although not always, prevented little worse from happening than the failure to pay people for their work. I constantly fought with him over that, including a $30K debt he owed me. I advanced a hefty portion of my salary one semester, based on Dr. Abdullah’s promise to reimburse me, to buy all the student textbooks because the bookstore would not order books until Dr. Abdullah had paid them the $75K debt he owed them. (He had sold the books and retained the money.) I should have been wise enough to know that he might do the same thing to me. He did. The rest of the year I scrimped and scraped to get by on the little that was left of my salary. (Fortunately, at that time in Jordan, before the Iraqi financial invasion, one could live on very little.)

When I left the university, Dr. Abdullah still owed me the $30K. He still does. At one point after I left, I wrote to him, suggesting that if he had any conscience at all, that if the purification of his soul that was supposed to take place during omra and hajj really did occur and he felt both guilty for not reimbursing the $30K yet awkward for any reason about returning the money directly to me, he could donate the amount, in his own name if he preferred, to the Middle East Institute of Special Education, which, as a new, unusual-for-Jordan-at-that-time, and struggling institute, could really use the money. Returning the money to me would indeed have been awkward for him since he was angry with me for considering taking a job in California. In a purely Arab way, he understood any discussion with a potential employer to be an indication of disloyalty. His negative reaction to the potential other-job situation propelled itself to heights higher than normal because I was a woman, in fact, the only woman he had ever trusted, and he had told this to anyone and everyone, saying that his level of trust in me surprised even him because, as everyone knows, women really are not capable of competing successfully with men, a rampant belief in the Middle East.

And so, one evening, a year later, with all of this in the background, I found myself walking around Old Mission, as I did so frequently in the early days after my conversion and thinking about Dr. Abdullah for no particular reason other than that he came to mind. He had been a significant figure in my life in the most recent two-year period, so, not surprisingly, I thought about him on more than one occasion. I prayed for him, as well. After all, it seemed to me that he needed prayer in order to move from the rules and regulations of religion and an impersonal God to a love-based spirituality and an immanent God. I wanted him to be able to feel the kinds of love, acceptance, and forgiveness I had felt and to be able to pass them along as I had been trying to let them flow through me and splash out onto others. How different his life could be!

That particular evening was probably the third or fourth occasion that I had prayed for Dr. Abdullah. I was getting ready to wax eloquent about the matter when I was startled by that Voice that always catches me by surprise and often completely confuses me. This time the confusion has outlasted and outranked other confusions, and to this day I do not know how to interpret what I was told. “Do not pray for him,” I heard.

This made no sense to me, and I am still unsure which “side” the instruction came from. I felt like I could not continue to pray for someone for whom I had been commanded not to pray. But was it God’s voice? Even while I accept that it is okay if God chooses not to provide greater clarity to me, I have a difficult-to-repress, almost seething, desire to determine authenticity. I just don’t always know for sure what is real and what is not. In this case, as in similar cases where I just do not know, I balanced benefit against harm, good against evil, and scripture against non-scripture and could not find a good reason not to follow these instructions. So, I ceased that particular prayer though I did not and do not understand why I should.

I told the story to a friend who is a Protestant minister. She told me not to worry about authenticity and simply stop praying for him. She would do that for me. I hope that is okay. I assume if it is not, she will find out in time.

Tasked

I considered labeling this post Voice ## (whatever # I am up to now). However, there is so much more to what I am about to relate, "tasked" is definitely a better label for the overall experience. ("Evil" would not have been a bad label, either.) Here is the story:

Much time had passed after hearing the Voice in Bahrain. God must be on silent running, I presumed. I was now almost painfully aware of the fact that the people with whom I normally associated, no matter how strong their faith, did not talk to God and expect an out-loud answer.

Recently, though, I have had reason to hear the Voice again. This time I asked for it! That was not something I had ever imagined myself doing because every time I hear the Voice, I am startled by the sound and unnerved by the content. My plea did not come easily, then, but as a result of this tugodum (Russian for dunderhead or dimwit, literally being a reference to a "dead-ended thinker") not being able to make sense of more subtle forms of input, input that seemed to be very important.

Let me go back to the beginning and collect all the details. I wish I could omit some, but I cannot. They all work together. So, I apologize for the short-story (vs normal-post) length that this post will require.

About a year ago, the Council of the local Secular Franciscan Order with which I have been associated for more than three years appointed a new Formation Director. (Later -- and this turns out to be important in understanding the overall situation -- I learned that he had actually appointed himself.) I shall call him G, as in Goliath, for it seems that little Beth was going to end up pitted against big Goliath although I did not know it at the time.

As a candidate in the SFO, I welcomed G. I hoped to learn much from him. I even opened my home to formation meetings since the majority of the candidates live much closer to me than to G. In the style into which the Russians and Arabs have trained me, I provided snacks for meetings.

At the first meeting, it became clear that truly spiritual discussions, particularly anything that smacked of mysticism, was out. G was soft-spoken and considered himself a good listener although in reality he listens but does not hear. His cognitive deafness was less troublesome than his eyes. He would look at me with vacant eyes; I would almost have to call them dead. While that disturbed me on some subconscious level, a level that usually is sensitive to evil and recoils from it, in the beginning, I paid scant attention, even waved away any negative reaction. After all, this was Goliath, someone the SFO considered capable of being our formation director. (Remember, I was unaware that he had appointed himself.) Moreover, he was in training to be a deacon. Are not all deacons the chosen of God? How could there be evil inside the church?

After a number of formation meetings, those of us who had been coming to the SFO gatherings for three years started comparing notes. It seems that all of us had been perturbed by the same aspects of our formation meetings: formulaic prayer in limited amounts as if God's presence was not really wanted; a sense of God's absence; a feeling of uneasiness; a shared sense of G as condescending and arrogant. Moreover, G had moved our meetings to Salts, where he lived, the travel to which put a strain on the finances of the poorer among us.

At about this time, the third-year candidates began coming to me individually. Perhaps they sensed that as a manager in my professional life, I could provide some leadership skills they needed in dealing with what we started to call the G situation. Perhaps it was all divinely motivated. I don't know, and I imagine that I will never know. Knowing, as I have learned with time, is not important.

The first to come was E. He scrambles to make a living and taking time off for our formation meetings meant time without pay. The trip to and from Salts meant a full additional hour without pay. He accepted that he needed to make that sacrifice, but I felt it was unfair. His concern was the arbitrary and arrogant behavior of G, G's obvious condescension toward E (one can only guess at the reason - because E is poor? because E is Hispanic? because E is simple and naive, much like one might imagine some of the early Franciscans to have been?), and G's shying away from spiritual discussions. E wanted me to go with him to talk to Fr. Barry, de facto spiritual advisor/director for both of us, about some of these issues, but Fr. Barry (1) although Franciscan and at the time the director of the St. Francis Retreat Center, was not directly connected with the SFO, and, more important, (2) was out of town for a considerable period of time. So, life went on without what would surely have been a helpful consultation.

The next meeting E was unable to attend. Ditto for N. So, O and I were the only ones in the car to Salts. (I always drove the other three because none of them could afford the gas.) The absence of E and N prompted some comments from O. O, also openly disdained by G, likely because O is a recovering alcoholic and still suffers from some aspects of schizophrenia, insisted that I bring up the financial and time issues with G and ask him to move the meetings back to San Ignatio. He also felt that the other issues should be broached, as well, at least from the point of view of lack of related spiritual growth in nearly a year of meetings.

Unsure of how best to approach the situation, I pulled over and called a senior member of the SFO whom I know quite well. He, too, felt that I should raise the concerns to G, that G should be given the benefit of a doubt and a chance to rectify the problems. So, near the end of the meeting, I brought up our concerns. The result shocked me. G insisted that it was his right as formation director to have the meetings at a time and place that was convenient to him regardless of how difficult it was for others. He was the most important person in the group he stated over and over, and then he implied that if we did not like it, we could leave. When I voiced his implication explicitly, he recommended overtly that we leave until we were ready to do things his way. Well, there we had something to mull over. At least, E, O, and I did. N had not been involved.

A couple of days later, N called me to find out what had happened at the meeting. Before I could tell her about the awkward discussion about the quality of our sessions, she volunteered that she had not come not because of being tied up, the excuse she had given me earlier, but because she was so uneasy being around G. "Would you let your daughter go into his house?" she asked.

It was that question that coalesced the emotions that I had been feeling whenever I approached G's house into a definition: spiritual rape. (Having been sexually abused on many occasions as a child, I recognize a form of rape when I see it.) Practicing the presence of God (a la Brother Lawrence) is something I do all the time. However, I now realized the source of the uneasiness felt by all of us third-year candidates: God was not with us in G's house. In fact, I lost the sense of God's presence when I opened the door to go into G's house and regained it when I walked out of G's house. What I was feeling while there, what I was labeling a sense of spiritual rape, what N did not want to expose her daughter to was evil, pure and simple. There was evil in G's house. I don't want to say that G is evil, but it certainly seemed that G was controlled by evil -- his spooky way of speaking in a soft, flat monotone, his empty eyes, his avoidance of spiritual discussion (substituting for it discussions of "rules," "religious requirements," and worldly experiences). N and I discussed whether or not to continue exposing ourselves to this unhealthy environment.

Following this discussion with N, I prayed for direction. Continue or not continue? I was surprised and puzzled by the response. A sharp image appeared before me: Jesus overturning the tables in the temple. What was that supposed to mean? I prayed again. The image repeated. I left the question unresolved for several days, when once again I turned to God for help. Once again, that same image appeared. I did not know how to interpret it, and the one person to whom I could have turned, Fr. Barry, was still out of town. I shared it with the same senior person I had called earlier, but he did not know how to interpret the image, either.

That image brought not only puzzlement but also feelings of anger. They did not seem to be my initial feelings but rather something that bubbled out of seeing that image. Meanwhile, none of us were planning to go to the next meeting.

Another prayer brought another experience of the same image and a sense of needing to do something. After all, the picture was of Jesus doing something. So, I sent an e-note to G, asking, perhaps too stridently as a result of those feelings coming from the image, to move the meetings to San Ignatio for compassionate reasons, to have a helper come in since he was inexperienced at faith formation, and to alter the content of the sessions. He responded by calling all the others in a divide-and-conquer power play that only drove them to me for help in combating what they had perceived as condescension and manipulation. I wrote again and repeated, more stridently, my earlier requests and forthrightly told him of our concerns with his leadership (or lack thereof) but hesitated to mention the sense of evil that surrounded him (perhaps I should have). He refused to put anything into writing and asked for a phone call so that he could help me understand how formation works. I countered by agreeing to discuss matters with him but only with all concerned present. He demurred.

So, as a group we decided to write a letter about our concerns to the Council. Again, I prayed about the situation. Again, I got the same image. Understanding by now that this was some kind of tasking being given to me but not understanding what the task was supposed to be was driving me nuts, and still Fr. Barry was out of town. So, N and I wrote the letter, trying to keep it objective, non-accusatory, and focused on resolution of the issues that were troubling us -- all except the issue of evil, which probably was the core of the problem. We were hesitant to commit that to paper, but we knew we had to bring it up at some point. So, we asked for a meeting with the Council to discuss details "more fully."

G, knowing about the letter to the Council, preempted their action by going directly to the regional leadership and presenting a rather biased case of what was going on. Regional told the Council to support G and suggested barring us from professing. So, there was no meeting, and I was still getting the same image. N and I talked about giving up and walking away, but that action did not seem to be the kind of response that the image I was receiving would prompt.

Then, N ran into a member of the Council in a bookstore in another city. (None of us can convince ourselves that this meeting was coincidental.) Out tumbled N's concerns, minus a discussion of perceived evil, and the Council member (L) told N the history: G was not their choice but there were no others who had volunteered, G had forced himself on them through the intervention of the regional organization, and the regional leadership had insisted that the Council support him against any criticism. However, L continued, the Council was as uncomfortable in G's presence as we were! Here was news!

L asked N to convince me to call her. I did -- from Washington, where I happened to be at the time. Since we could not meet, we talked by phone for more than an hour. Encouraged, I told L everything up to that point, including my sense of being spiritually raped in G's house and even the image of Jesus overturning tables in the temple, wailing that I just could not make any sense of the image other than the feeling that I was supposed to do something related to it. L had an interesting interpretation: "I think it means that God does not like evil infiltrating His organization." That was the first that the word "evil" had been spoken.

After I hung up with her, I complained to God: "Lord, You know that I am a verbal learner; I need words, not pictures, to understand. I am sorry that I am a tugodum, but I think that's no surprise to you. I will try to grow in the ways you seem to want me to, but in this case, I really need verbal input. I suppose You know that. I just want to mention it in case you might think that I am smarter than I really am."

Then I drew bath water, nothing else having distracted me from the rituals of the day. As the water filled the tub, I debated whether to take into the tub with me a book that I was partway through reading or the Bible.

"My Word." Out of nowhere came the Voice, startling me as usual.

So, the Bible it was. I haphazardly opened it and found myself staring at a passage I had never read before: Ezekial 30, to be precise. As I read through the chapter, a lament for Egypt and God's promise/threat of destruction, I saw many parallels to the situation I was in, including experiencing as I read the same feelings of anger that the image of Jesus overturning tables in the temple brought. Once again, a prayer had been answered. I had words, not an image.

...except, uh-oh, as I read, I became less certain of my interpretation. Here was told of arrogance punished. Certainly, G's arrogance deserved to be punished, but the adjective used in the verse was "her," referring to a nation. Now, G was definitely a "he," and I am definitely a "she." So, confusion appeared anew.

Once again, I cried out for help in exasperation at myself for not being able to understand what was apparently supposed to be obvious. "So, Lord, whom do You see as arrogant? Me or G?"

And then, once again, I heard that Voice, which I have come to love, trust, and rely on, yet which causes me to jump out of my skin nearly literally whenever I hear it and which always sets me to scurrying off to a spiritual director to confirm authenticity. Only this time, I was far away from home and from anyone who could help. But I did get an answer to my question: "Let G know that he cannot treat My people this way." As with other locutions, those words are forever seared into my memory.

Yes, now that I had what seemed to be clarity, I would definitely let G know. Whatever were to happen to me or my reputation (people tend to think you are nuts if you tell them that you experience locutions), I would carry out any tasking that so much effort had gone into making clear. Although I sincerely wished I did not have to do this, it would be, as the Russians say, skazano, sdelano (lit., said-done, i.e. no sooner said than done.) "Skazano, sdelano, Lord," I promised. "Just, please, stay by my side and ensure that no one else gets hurt in the process of taming Goliath."

When I returned, E, laboring under the assumption that I might continue along the path that N and I had talked about earlier, i.e. leaving, asked to speak to me urgently. (I had come home only for a day before leaving on another business trip.) E told me that he had been praying about the situation and was certain that I was not supposed to leave but to stay. For some reason, E thought it meant I should stay and be professed, but I understood it to mean that I was supposed to see the tasking through to its finish: discuss the question of evil with the Council.

Interestingly, the morning of the meeting with the Council about which I was understandably nervous knowing that I would have to talk about things mystical and not knowing whether the other Council members would be as accepting of them as L had been, N and I attended the same Mass. There, the person leading the choir made a mistake (or was it a mistake?) and gave the wrong page number for the last hymn we were to sing. The song we ended up singing was "Be Not Afraid." N asked me after Mass if I had picked up on the mistake and its possible significance. Of course!

I found that once we were at the meeting with the Council, with G present as well, I was not afraid. I felt not alone. It was the first time in G's presence that I also felt God's presence. I methodically explained everything that had occurred: the discussions among ourselves, the purpose of the letters, and the image I had been seeing in response to prayers. Then, I paused to take a breath and told the Council I had something difficult to say (difficult for me to say because they might well consider me nuts and difficult for G to hear). Looking G in his still-dead eyes, I said, "G, you cannot treat God's people this way. I have been tasked to tell you this." Wow, there was absolute silence for a few seconds.

In that silence, a strange thing happened. G's face went through multiple distortions. I am not talking about him changing his expressions. Rather, his physical face distorted in ways that one sometimes sees in movies about possession, like Evil cornered. I wondered if perhaps I really was nuts after all. However, after G had left, L stayed behind along with another member of the Council, and all four of us immediately began talking about the ways in which G's face had morphed so fluidly and distinctly. We took comfort in the fact that we had all observed this seemingly impossible phenomenon. (No, I do not think that G is possessed. I do think, though, that he is so strongly caught in the grip of evil that he can neither see it nor, should he manage to glimpse it, extricate himself.)

The outcome was definitely worth the fight. I realized that our Council does accept mystical experiences as a way that God chooses for communication with some people. The Council exempted N and me from formation meetings. G is now conducting the meetings in San Ignatio, and several professed SFO members, including a member of the Council, are present at all formation sessions. I suppose N and I could return, given those favorable conditions.

There are moments, though, when I question whether I was I right or wrong in my interpretations, understanding of being tasked, and manner of accomplishing the task. To this day, I wish I had had the opportunity to take this to Fr. Barry, to get his insights and to let him "test" the authenticity of what I saw, read, and heard. In the end, everything seemed compellingly clear, but I suppose that could itself be a deception. Others agreed with my ultimate interpretation, but again that could be a deception. If evil can parade around the church in the clothing of a deacon (admittedly, this is still a personal discernment not an evidenced fact), can it not take nearly any guise, including self-delusion and a seeming tasking from God?

It is all sometimes more than a tugodum like I can manage! I thank God that I have those who can help me, but I also bemoan the reality that I cannot always appeal to them for help because of urgency and/or availability.

Now this experience has led to something more: a major decision that I will relate in the next post. I am afraid that I may already have lost the attentional patience of anyone reading this post. So, I will save the follow-up decision for a follow-up post.

Note: Illustration from A Portrait of Jesus website.

Contemplation II

For the past year or more, I have been attending a contemplative prayer group in San Jose, directed by Fr. Kevin Joyce. It is a considerable drive (nearly an hour one way) but well worth the time and effort. I take a friend with me from our local Old Mission prayer group, so the to-and-fro time is pleasantly passed.

Last year, when Fr. Kevin was at Santa Clara University, there were only a handful of us. This year, though, he has become parish priest at St. Lucy's in Campbell, and that has yielded an attendance at times of 60-100 people. Once, there were so many of us, we had to use the church instead of one of the religious education rooms. What amazes me is Fr. Kevin's ability to create silence and reverence in such a large group of people. He combines prayer itself with study. (Yes, it is possible to be contemplative in a very large group; after all, God, who is stranger than we can possibly imagine and whom we are not required, fortunately, to understand fully, is quite able to interact with individuals individually throughout the whole world simultaneously. Now, there's something that is very difficult to get a human mind wrapped around!) What we study with Fr. Kevin are the mystics and the history of mysticism. All of this has been very educational for me, yet there is much I still do not understand, seemingly really important things that, in my personal experience, stray from the historical path as we know it.

Perhaps it might help to understand my mindset if I were to share that the very first spiritual book I read (even before getting involved in Bible reading and study) was a one-volume combined set of The Cloud of Unknowing and The Book of Privy Counseling. I loved those two books, the second even more than the first. I carried the volume with me. I read and re-read it. It explained so much of what had been happening to me. It also let me know that it was okay not to understand everything; in fact, that there was no need to seek to understand everything. For someone with a Ph.D., not needing to understand everything was counterintuitive. For someone with a flair for foreign languages -- I have studied 17, but I can communicate in (or at least understand) a far larger number than that, my life's focus having been on understanding foreign cultures, foreign words, foreign behaviors -- not needing to understand everything was counterintuitive. As a former teacher, where my goal was to teach others to understand, not needing to understand everything was counterintuitive. Having been raised in the West, where the emphasis is on reason (maybe even I should write that with a capital R, since we seem to worship Reason), not needing to understand everything was counterintuitive. So, it was very difficult for me to push aside my attachment to logic and accept the idea that it is okay not to understand. I carried around The Cloud of Unknowing and The Book of Privy Counseling as a security blanket for more than a year after my conversion. They are still my favorite spiritual books, especially the latter, although I have now read many more and realize that I probably chose those among the most difficult as my entré to spiritual reading. (The volume just fell under my hand, as the Russians say, so it could be that the books chose me and not the other way around.)

In any event, the experiences that led me to conversion and those that followed me during the immediate weeks and months after conversion reflected in the most minute detail those experiences described in The Book of Privy Counseling. Over time, I have come to realize that my experiences are not common among my peers (at least, the local ones) in the 21st century, and I have begun seeking out others who do have them. (Actually, that search prompted this blog site.) With time, I have been rewarded in that search, finding others who share those experiences and a priest, my beloved Fr. Barry (unfortunately, recently transferred to an assignment 100 miles away), who can help me interpret what I consider unusual experiences but which he, at the age of 82, has seen more than once. (There is no question in my mind that God plunked me down at Old Mission Church in part precisely because I would need Fr. Barry.)

Now, back to Fr. Kevin. As a mechanism for initiating a contemplative state, Fr. Keving taught us the Jesus prayer. Up until that time, I had not used (or needed) any "mantra" for connecting to God. It just happened. God made it happen. In The Cloud of Unknowing and especially in The Book of Privy Counseling, the unknown author (I love the fact that the author is also "unknown") tells that the old mystics, the Egyptian desert fathers, would sometimes repeat "God," "Lord," or a similar word to initiate contemplation, so I understood why Fr. Kevin taught us the Jesus prayer. However, for me it felt odd because I had never needed to call. (My friend, Omar, poet of spiritual and philosophical verse in Arabic and English, professor of political science, and Sufi mystic, has repeatedly told me, "God spoils you." Usually, he is referring to some problem that God has whisked away, but in the case of contemplation, I think God also spoils me. In any moment of quiet, there I have nearly always found God in an overwhelmingly present way.)

However "odd" it might have been for me personally, I dutifully followed Fr. Kevin's instructions the next morning, which I began with some time in contemplation as I begin every morning. Contemplation is less a choice for me than something that just happens seemingly often without deliberate volition. So, I began the Jesus prayer and was immediately startled (locutions never fail to startle me) by the words, "Why do you call me? I am here."

Oh, my, yes, I know that God is with me. I feel it throughout the day from morning to night -- more deeply when I take time for prayer or contemplation, but always at least peripherally in my senses as a comfortable companion and guide, except for those times that I focus intently on some activity that excludes God. (Sometimes, admittedly, I exclude God deliberately, at least subconsciously so, because I want to do what I am doing and don't want to think that maybe God would want me to do something else or do it differently -- that kind of behavior keeps me going to confession!)

So, following the locution that morning, I am back to being confused. If I know that God is with me, if I can feel His presence in every fiber of my being and the expansive atmosphere around me, why, indeed, do I need to call Him? Well, there's a question for Fr. Kevin after our next meeting, with whom I have not before sought personal contact because he lives too far away for me to "drop by." I could bring up the question during our sessions but cannot bring myself to share publicly with a group of 60 people, most of whom I do not know or barely know. I hope that Fr. Kevin will not be mobbed by people (my country girl origins make me instinctively shy away from crowds) or have to serve Mass after our next meeting since the last four months have been that way, and the last four months I have remained in a state of confusion. On the other hand, confusion is becoming a comfortable state for me -- I don't know whether that is good or bad; it just is.

So, folks, what do you think? Any answers or thoughts for me before May 2, which is the next time I will see Fr. Kevin?

Voice VI

Months passed before I heard the Voice again. When I did, I was quite startled both by the hearing of it and by the content. It often seems to come out of the blue and when I am engaged in doing something that requires concentration, such as driving or reading, pulling me instantly from the task at hand although when driving I cannot always just stop as I can when reading.

In the case that I am about to relate, I had been doing some consultation for the Ministry of Education in Bahrain. That particular day I had finished early and was reading in my hotel room. The sun does not set until quite late during the hot days of early fall in Bahrain, and at 4:00 in the afternoon, the sun was at full throttle, providing me with lots of natural light for enjoying the book I had brought with me.

As I was reading, seated at the window, I heard four distinct words that pulled me instantly from my book: "Bring him to Me."

Simultaneously, I saw the image of an employee who worked for me. Or, more accurately, who worked for a supervisor three rungs in the ladder below me. I, however, did know the employee and knew that he was a devout Catholic of the Chaldean persuasion.

"He is with you," I responded instinctively. My talking-back trait that drove my mother to fury has not changed, no matter who the partner in conversation is. I am relieved that God does not have the same response as my mother!

No, no fury. All I got was a soft, short comment: "Not enough."

Oh, my! This tasking was going to be complicated. How on earth was I going to approach this employee? Write to him and tell him what I had been told? He would think I was bonkers!

Nonetheless, I clearly had to "bring him" to God even though I knew (thought) that he was devout. Goodness! I took a deep breath, turned on my computer, hooked up to the Internet, and sent a brief note of query: "Is everything all right with you?"

Days and nights occurring at different times in the Middle East and the USA, it was the next day before I got his response. Indeed, he said, everything was not only all right but going swimmingly well. He went on to talk about his children's recent accomplishments at school, his success at work, and even his wife's success at her job. He was not making this easy for me at all. Feeling rather foolish but nonetheless mission-compelled, I typed back five words: "I mean with your soul." What a strange thing to write to an employee!

I waited impatiently for the next day to arrive, wondering how he would interpret this highly personal intrusion into his life -- and from his boss's boss's boss's boss. This was not the typical topic of discussion between people so far apart in a hierarchy. (On the other hand, I have worked diligently and successfully to flatten our hierarchy.)

The answer came. It was perplexingly ambiguous. Had it been a voice conversation, I would have labeled his response dissembling. As it was written, I can only say that he did not answer the question directly. Although he claimed that all was fine with his soul, he made unclear references to future concerns about issues that might or might not come up but that he felt on top of. I had no idea what he was talking about or even how to respond to what seemed to me to be gibberish.

I did not have to wait long, however, for a fuller understanding. In the middle of the next night (it was a Thursday; I remember that because Thursdays and Fridays in Bahrain are the weekend, and I mistakenly thought I was going to get a good night's sleep because I did not have to get up early the next day), I received an urgent phone call from the immediate supervisor of this employee, whom I shall call M. It turned out that the husband of another employee, a Muslim, had called him and threatened to sue our organization because his wife was having an affair with M. Ah, hah! Now the "bring him to Me" made a lot of sense!

I explained to the first-line supervisor, who was quite new in the position, that he did not need to worry about the angry husband. The husband could not sue the organization. We had not required his wife to have an affair with a co-worker, nor had anything taken place at work premises. We talked a bit about why the husband would feel like he could and should contact the supervisor, the differences between Muslim and non-Muslim marriages, and the marital fidelity that is required especially on the part of the wife by Shariya law. I was a bit concerned for the female employee and not without reason. Fortunately, others in her community stepped up to protect her.

The first-line supervisor was calmed. After sending me additional information by email and being fully reassured, again, by me that there was nothing to worry about, he could go on with business as usual. I, however, could not. I still had not completed the tasking of "bring him to Me."

There being nothing more that I could do from a distance, I filed away all the e-notes just in case I were to need them (I still have them because they are evidence of the remarkability of what transpired), then completed my consult in Bahrain.

As soon as I arrived back in California, I called the employee into my office at the end of the work day for what turned out to be a two-hour conversation. While his having an affair was really none of my business, it clearly had been made my business. I told M I knew about the affair and asked why he had told me that all was well with his soul when this was going on. He said nothing. Then I told him about the voice and being told "bring him to Me." At that point, M broke down, stuttered that he knew he had a great wife (I reinforced that notion because I had met her and knew that to be true) and felt remorseful. I suggested that he tell her before someone else did, our community being small. He demnurred; I asked him to consider this strongly and to get guidance from his priest. "Oh, no," he said. "There is no way I am going to confess this to my priest; he knows my whole family." Well, he should have thought about that ahead of time. He begged me to find someone who did not know him. I refused, but I did take him to Old Mission to pray together with him about this.

During that first meeting, he told me how worried he was for the safety of the female employee, with whom he had severed relations once with the husband had found out. He said that she had been forced to write a suicide note by her husband. She had told the local police, but they did not understand Muslim tradition, especially honor killings, and pooh-poohed any need for concern. M wanted to absolve himself of any need to act on her behalf because he did not want any of his acquaintances to learn about his unfaithfulness, but I insisted that he tell her adult daughter everything he knew because she would understand and know what to do. I tried to impress upon him his responsibility to do everything possible to ensure her safety regardless of his reputation. He wavered, but he did do it.

We had a second meeting a short while after our late-evening prayer on the mission grounds. He told me that he had talked to the woman's daughter and to an elder couple in the Muslim community, and the latter had given shelter to the woman to protect her until her husband got over his anger and realized that US law prohibited him from harming his wife. That realization took a couple of months, and ultimately the couple divorced. M told me that he had also talked to his own wife, realizing that I was right. Were she to find out from someone else -- and everyone had begun talking about this -- it would hurt her far more than his coming to her in remorse. She forgave him. He also had been able, with more than a little effort, to put aside his pride, go to confession, and achieve reconciliation with the help of his own priest.

So, all is well, I guess, that ends well. I am not sure quite how to rate the ending. I am also not sure how to rate my performance. I tried the best I knew, not having been given any further instructions or any explicit guidance, to accomplish the "bring him to Me" task. Was bringing him to Old Mission in prayer enough?

Of course, the age-old question nagged: why me? God only knows! Yeah, that would be right. God does know; I don't, and I suppose I don't need to know.

Did I do what was expected of me? I don't know that, either, since I was having to come up with my own response. I can only assume that having been given the tasking, had I marched off in a wrong direction, I would have been either pulled back to the right path overtly or gently nudged back there without my noticing it. The former did not happen. If the latter happened, I would not even know.

I am getting much better these days at accepting the not knowing of it all. Not knowing why people and things get put in my path. Not knowing what exactly is expected of me. Not knowing if how I respond meets with God's approval. None of that matters much to me any more. I know that God loves me. I know that I honestly try my best to do as I am asked. If I need to know more than that, I will be given to know it. In the interim, I am happy to serve God in whatever way I can, even if it is imperfectly.

Voice V

The next time I heard the Voice, it came with imagery and a very tall order. As I was driving to work one morning, I was startled (I don’t think I will ever not be startled) by the Voice saying to me, “I gave you the gift of words. Use them for me, and on the basis of what you write, speak.”

Now here was something I was certain I was not qualified to do. I argued, “I don’t write those kinds of books. I write textbooks and cultural stuff. I would not know how to write something about You or for You.” Why God puts up with my argumentativeness and does not simply wipe me out with the swat of a thought or give up on me, I do not know, but I am grateful for His patience.

The response to my argument was immediate. Against the clouds, I saw a pink-covered book with a moving black pen. “I will guide your pen,” came the response.

Well, here was an interesting dilemma. First, what on earth was I supposed to write? There was not much direction in what I had heard. Second, when on earth was I supposed to do it? I had a job that often required me to put in as many as 60-70 hours a week, a job, I might mention, that God insisted I take and keep. Third, by the time I got to work I was wondering had I really heard what I heard.

It would have been easy perhaps to ignore the vision and Voice, but somehow I could not. I fussed about it for four months, trying to figure out what to do about the tasking and wondering if it was authentic. This was the first time that I felt a definite need for a priest’s interpretation, yet I really did not want to be written off as hopelessly psychotic. I tried to turn to Fr. Barry, at the time just completing an assignment as our interim parish priest at the time (double-hatting with directing the St. Francis Retreat Center). I took RCIA classes with him and over time he has become my de facto spiritual advisor and informal confessor although I generally go to regular confession at Old Mission with one of our parish priests (English-speaking, Spanish-speaking, or Latin Mass -- for a small town, we are rich in that respect). Each time I ran into Fr. Barry, however, when I tried to bring up the topic, but my tongue just would not work. Finally, I sent him the following letter:

Fr. Barry, for some weeks, I have wanted to relate an overwhelming event because I trust your insights and experience. Each time I have tried, however, I have lost my courage. I think the only way around this barrier is to seize a brave moment and describe it in writing. To wit, I spend my 90-minute (roundtrip) daily commute in communication with God, enjoying His presence. Well, one morning I heard, “I gave you the gift of words. Use them for Me.” I argued that I don’t know how to do this kind of writing. In answer, against the clouds I saw a book and a moving quill pen. The Voice said, “I will guide your pen.” I have not known what to make of this. I am not anyone special to entrust with such a task, yet this is not something I would be likely to fantasize since I do not consider myself capable of writing this sort of book, my job does not allow time to write, and logic dominates my thinking. (The latter trait is probably why for 56 years I remained an atheist. My coming to faith is a testament to the remarkable power and loving willingness of God to touch both mind and body.) Since “no” turned out to be an unacceptable response, I have now written 100 pages. My pen has indeed been guided, and this incident, along with others, has introduced me to the concept of submission.

Having learned that such experiences are not typical for all believers, I have told nearly no one. My support has come singularly from God through hours of prayer. I stumbled across St. Thérèse d’Avile’s journals; they have helped me to understand the voice. The medieval mystics’ works also ring true for me, but I am left to my own interpretations.

Do you have insight into this and time to talk to me about it or know someone who does? I am not sure what I need—perhaps confirmation of my sanity or, if I am misinterpreting something, correction. I yearn to know more about such experiences and how to achieve the self-effacing submission that God seems to want. I know there are people who need support just to get through their daily lives and my need is minor, so if there is no help except through what God chooses to tell me, I will cope, confident that in time I will be led to understand what it is that God wants me to understand and the rest is unimportant.

Thank you for reading this, Fr. Barry. I feel better having shared it. Since only sane folk question their sanity, I pray that you will not think I have taken leave of my senses—as I sometimes ask myself.

Fr. Barry called me immediately and grilled me for nearly half an hour. Later, as I became more familiar with Catholic literature, I realized that much of his questioning came straight out of the journals of St. Theresa of Avila. They were the kinds of questions she posed to herself to determine the authenticity of what she had heard. Fr. Barry concluded that the Voice (and tasking) was likely authentic and that I should try to follow through and see what happened. (He also suggested that I not share widely the experience. "It might be best to keep this to yourself," he said. "I don't think you're crazy, but others might." Of course, this has been my concern for quite some time -- until recently when Fr. Kevin from San Jose, with whom I am taking a yearlong contemplative prayer seminar, said that everyone is called to the seventh mansion described by St. Theresa of Avila (which I have not reached and may never reach although I find it desirable, attractive, fascinating, etc.). With those words, Fr. Kevin allayed my fears, and I am starting to feel quite normal now. Yes! :)

As for the tasking, along the way, when I asked for help, as I did on several occasions, the book title popped into my head: Blest Atheist. All along the way, from the day he first told me to treat the tasking as real, Fr. Barry has been available to help, reading my drafts, giving me feedback, encouraging me. Of course, I gave him the very first copy of the book, following publication. (Oddly enough, the color of the book cover is essentially pink.)

And now Blest Atheist has become a blog. That blog led to other blogs, including to this one. Perhaps blogging is more important than the book itself. However, the next book is underway (if I can stop blogging long enough to finish it).

These days I try hard to use my words for God because I know that any talent with words that I might have comes from God and therefore my words belong to Him. Not only am I writing, but the rest of the message -- "on the basis of what you write, speak" -- has started to occur in and of itself. I have been asked to speak at organizations, at chapel sessions, and, surprisingly to my family and friends, have become a catechist.

Fr. Barry told me to write and "see where it takes you." Clearly, it is taking me.

Darkness

One day my friend, Tom, who works near where I do rushed into my office at the end of the day. With wide eyes and rushed breath, he exclaimed, "Beth, I think the Evil One is after me!"

He went on to explain that he found himself doing things, bad things, that he would never accept from others and had never thought he would even be tempted to do, for example, hitting on women in whom he had no real interest and in spite of the fact that he had a beautiful and loving wife whom he loved and admired. Yet, he was doing these things and could not seem to stop. He also talked about nightmares and feeling alone. To my response as to whether he had prayed for help, he said, "I have not been able to pray for weeks. The words just don't come, and I don't feel like praying, anyway. I guess prayer is simply now something in my past, not in my present or future."

He really was in a lot of trouble! So, although it was difficult for him, I would not let him leave my office until we had prayed together about this problem. Once we started, the words came to him just fine, and we spent nearly a half-hour in heartfelt prayer. When he left, I could see that he was relieved but at the same time still troubled, worried that what he called "the Evil One" was waiting outside my door to pounce on him.

I was a recent convert at the time and had no idea what I was getting into or what to do about it. After Tom left, I asked God to help me understand what was happening to Tom. "Please let me feel what he feels," I begged. "If possible, give me his struggle for I am stronger."

How naive that request was! How arrogant to think I could "handle" it! Immediately, that Presence, which I had begun to take for granted as it had been with me day and night since my conversion, disappeared. If what I had been sensing all around me for months on a 24/7 basis was the Presence of God, then what I was feeling now was the Absence of God. It was a cold, lonely, empty feeling. It was highly disconcerting, and it created incredible yearning. No matter how much I yearned, no matter how much I prayed, no matter how much I begged, the only thing that came to me was Absence. Black, dark, cold, impersonal Absence. Absence in the office. Absence in the hallway. Absence in the parking lot. Absence in the car. Absence at home. Absence!

That night, I fell into bed and immediately nodded off to sleep. Fortunately, I can always fall asleep; that is how I have treated my inability to take painkiller throughout my life: go to sleep in the dentist's chair during no-painkiller root canals, go to sleep during grin-and-bear it biopsies, go to sleep during childbirth. So, in the tormenting presence of the Absence, I fell asleep.

In the morning, I awoke to the Presence again. Yes!

"Where were you last night?" I demanded to know. (Sometimes I wonder why God puts up with me.)

"You asked to feel what Tom was feeling," came the response.

I admitted that I had overestimated my strength. "Please don't ever do that again," I begged. "Don't ever go away. I don't want to be without You." So far, that request has been honored.

A few days later, I happened across a copy of St. John of the Cross's The dark Night of the Soul and read every word eagerly, finding many parallels in this experience but not a complete fit. Nonetheless, I have to wonder if that is what was happening to my friend or if instead he was indeed in the clutches of something evil. I suppose I will never know. I just know two things:

(1) After 20 hours of prayer, together and separately, Tom emerged back into a life dedicated to God; and, most important,

(2) I want the Presence, not the Absence, every day of the rest of my life!

Voice IV

Not long after I started to receive verbal taskings, I began to have some doubts, mostly put into my head when others started questioning me about these experiences. In the early days after my conversion, I shared these experiences openly, thinking that all believers have them.

One of the people who questioned what I was telling him suggested that I ask for a sign that the Voice was indeed divine. About the same time, the Voice had become quieter in speaking to me, not that it ever was very loud, ebbing into more of a whisper then a voice. So, the next time I heard it, I said, “I cannot hear You,” and the message was repeated more audibly (to my ear, anyway).

“How do I know this is You?” I asked. “Please give me a sign that it is Your voice that I am hearing.”

“I will not give you a sign,” the Voice responded. “Trust that it is My voice the way you trusted me to heal your employee.” (That incident is recounted in my conversion story, and it was indeed a moment of pure trust.)

After that I have trusted although I have upon occasion sought the advice of priests. Thank God for Fr. Barry, the 82-year-old priest who has seen so much that whatever I tell him neither overwhelms nor underwhelms him.

About this same time, I learned that not all believers interact with God in this way. In fact, most tell me that they have never heard this Voice. With time, I began to feel that something might be wrong with me —- until I was invited to the prayer group at our mission, which I now co-lead, and learned that I was not alone.

Truly, I do not understand why God chooses to interact with different people differently. I can suppose that it is because we are different, but only God really knows why.

Nor do I understand why God chose to reach out, grab me, and thrust me into a cosmic nutcracker or give me verbal taskings, but I could guess that it may be because I can be what Russians call “tugodum” (thick-headed). Subtle things I don't always pick up on.

But, again, only God really knows why. I accept that this is the why God has chosen to communicate with me, take the incoming messages to a priest if I feel the need for confirmation, and march off in the direction in which I have been sent, hoping and praying that I won’t screw up too much of what I have been asked to do. As Jean-Pierre Caussade wrote in Abandonment to Divine Providence, “Perfection consists in doing the will of God, not in understanding His designs.” Over time (and not without moments of regression), I have given up my intense need to understand, and in doing that I have achieved an immense level of peace.

Voice III

In the early days after my conversion, I heard many things from a Voice that I assumed was God or God through the Holy Spirit, directing, teaching, and, surprisingly, tasking me. While little things, but they were often things that could be confirmed in their authenticity by subsequent events. Here are a couple:

Incident 1

After my first confession, I was frustrated and confused (which, I now freely admit that I had no right to be). The priest to whom I had been assigned – this was a large group set up for all in the parish before Easter – was partially deaf and spoke only Spanish. I probably could have managed communicating with him in Spanish, but with impaired hearing and a non-native accent, he would never have understood me. Not that he understood me in English! So, he gave me ten Our Fathers for a penance, not having understood or perhaps even heard much of what I said. Obviously, I was not in the right frame of mind for any penance to be sincere, and partway through the second iteration of Our Father, I felt myself being pulled by the elbow to the outside of the church. Once outside, I exclaimed, “He didn’t listen. I could have said that I burned down the town and murdered ten priests, and he would have given me the same penance!”

“I listen,” answered the Voice. There can be much communication in just two words!

Of course, since then, I have come to understand better the nature and role of confession, as well as the role of the priest. Having been "instructed" by the Voice, though, I came to that understanding much more quickly than I might have otherwise.

Incident 2

In the early days, I did not know that not everyone heard the Voice as I did. A good friend, in whom I had confided several of my experiences with the Voice, made the comment to me that she did not understand why she could not hear the Voice and wondered if there was something wrong with her. I did not think so, but the next time at prayer, I asked.

“She is fragile,” came the response. I had no idea how to interpret that comment!

Nonetheless, the next time I spoke to her, I told her what I had heard. In a shocked voice, she said words that then shocked me: “I understand completely. I have been diagnosed with Fragile Person Syndrome.” Oh, my! I had no idea what that was, but when she explained it to me, I understood how apt the response had been.

When I first began sharing my experiences with what I call "the Voice" with readers, I was very reluctant to mention these experiences at all, let alone in detail. The response of readers, though, gave me courage to continue sharing, and the fact that I was not alone among those in the blogosphere also gave me courage. However, somewhere along the line, quite recently, I have come to full comfort with this situation. I suppose there have been many things that have fed into that comfort, including learning that others have the same experiences, finding some historical descriptions of similar experiences, and, most important, coming to the realization that it is not my choice how God communicates with me. It is God's choice how He communicates with me or with anyone. The fact that I do not know why He chooses one means of communication for me and other means for others should not trouble me. (It could be as simple as my being too "dense" to "hear" or understand anything more subtle.) I should simply be happy that God is willing to communicate with me. I am.

Voice II

In the early days after my conversion, I heard the Voice regularly. Prayer to me was a dialogue with the Voice. I would ask for lessons, and things would happen. Or, out of the blue, the Voice would task me with something, always something that I did not want to do.

One early example was the day when praying about something entirely different, the Voice interrupted me with the words, “Call your mother.” To understand the significance of this, one must know that my mother (my only living parent) had so abused her eight children both as children and as adults and abused our children (her grandchildren) as well that all of the “8-pack” (my seven siblings and I) had written her off. I had not been in touch with her for ten years, and I certainly had no intention of just up and calling her for no reason at all. In fact, it would take some sleuthing to find out where she lived and what her phone number was.

So, this did not seem right. I was sure I had not heard correctly. “There is no way I am going to call my mother,” I responded. “She is a bad person.”

“She lives in grace,” responded the Voice, and that was the end of the communication.

I fumed and sputtered about it all being so unfair, arguing that she should not live in grace after everything she had done to us (beating, biting, kicking, stabbing and letting us be used as sex objects by male relatives). I stomped around the Old Mission grounds, punching the air in anger. I must have been an interesting sight to anyone walking by. I wonder what they might have thought I was — drunk or deranged.

The Voice would have its way, though. I finally realized that I have no right to judge Ma. (Oh, but how I wanted to!) Only God could do that, and if God said that she lived in grace, who was I to say anything to the contrary?

Assuming that the Voice I had heard was Who I thought it was, I figured I had better make a phone call. That was easier said than done. I spent a few days and tracked down my mother’s phone number, yet I could not bring myself to make the call. Every time I felt that Presence around me, pushing me just a bit, I would resist. Finally, I turned to God and said, “I cannot make this call. I have no idea what to say. What can I say after ten years?”

The Voice immediately responded. One word only: “Listen.”

Sure, of course, I could call, tell her who I was, and then just listen. And that is what I did. I called her. There was complete shock in her voice as she said, “Is this Beth? It sounds like Beth used to sound.” I confirmed her guess, and she took over, talking non-stop for an hour, occasionally asking a question, filling me in on her life, telling me about her concerns. Clearly, she had mellowed as she approached her 80th year.

The outcome of that conversation was that more of the 8-pack began speaking to her, and a year later seven of the eight of us returned to Maine to celebrate her 80th birthday, the first time we had all been together back in Maine in more than 30 years. Rollie, unfortunately, could not get off work, but he, too, had forgiven Ma for the horrific abuse of him and would have come had he been able to.

Another example of God turning bad into good -- and teaching the value of waiting and forgiving. And of the Voice tasking me in ways that have led to spiritual growth.