Tasked II

I am heading for a meeting, the purpose of which I am unsure. But, let me backtrack and give some background both for the meeting and for my uncertainty. It goes back to my encounter with Goliath. For those who have not been following this blog and the drama with Goliath, here is the first installment of what appears will be the Goliath series: Tasked. The second installment is here: Decision?. Now the tasking and the decision-making seem to be rolled up together, and absolutely nothing is clear. Argh! Help!

Details? They follow, but to understand them, you will need to be familiar with the two postings above for this is actually the third in a series.

After what I thought was case closed, tasking completed, following the SFO Council meeting where I explained the problems with Goliath, the name I had given to the Formation Director who systematically belittled people, put up barriers to profession by the most spiritual among the group, and seemed intent on snuffing out any discussions of deep conversion at formation meetings (even general spiritual discussions he would nudge out of the conversation, moving it into more secular or rules-oriented topics). Worse, several of us felt a cloud of evil surrounding him, which made it difficult for us to meet in a small, enclosed space with him. The outcome, with which we had been left after meeting with the SFO Council about this (not an easy matter to arrange, either, as you know if you have read the first posting on this topic) was one that left N and me, the two who presented the case to the Council, filled with elation:

(1) No one who objected to being with G would be required to attend Formation until a new director came into place (some unspecified time in the future);

(2) Meetings would be held in San Ignatio, making them easier to attend by local people who could not afford to go to Salts where the director lived (something that G had been insisting upon for his personal convenience);

(3) One or more senior members of the organization would be present at all Formation meetings to ensure that spirituality was not waved aside and that the presence of God was always requested.

That lasted for two months before G fought back. Soon, he had intimidated the three candidates who remained in Formation to come to Salts. Since none of them were from San Ignatio, I suppose it did not matter although San Ignatio is considerably closer to their homes, an important fact when considering that one of them suffers from agoraphobia. At least, however, Goliath is not allowed to be alone with candidates. That is a major accomplishment for the side of good, and G is not happy. In writhing to extricate himself from the "cell" he has been placed in by the Council, he, of course, has tried to blacken my name and reputation with all with whom he comes into contact. I don't worry about that. I did as God asked. The interesting and perhaps not surprising result, then, is that G's efforts have been turned against him. People other than those originally involved have begun to see what N, O, E, and I saw months ago, and now G is becoming marginalized, or at least his efforts at bringing evil into God's organization are being deftly turned away. It is so interesting and encouraging to watch God defend His people.

Nonetheless, when the two strongest Council members, AR and L announced that they would be resigning in protest over G and what he has done and is doing, N and I felt that the side of good had clearly lost ground. There was still no spiritual advisor, whom we felt could balance the force of G. So, N and I invited AR and L to dinner to try to convince them to (1) stay on the Council and (2) push for a spiritual advisor.

Donnie cooked a wonderful spaghetti dinner for us, which everyone enjoyed. N ran about my kitchen helping serve and clean up. (I am lost in a kitchen. Send me to the war zone in Afghanistan? Sure, no problem -- and that really is on the docket for me for most of the summer. Put me into the kitchen, and I become nervous and confused.)

We began our dinner meeting with prayer, and it seemed that God stayed with us throughout. The dinner had not been necessary, however, except as a wonderfully supportive coming together of sisters. AR and L had already taken back their resignations; although they might be very frustrated, they realized that they, too, had at least an implicit tasking. They had also pushed forward the hunt for a spiritual director and had identified a local nun, whom I know quite well; she would be ideal -- very spiritual, honest, and strong. She will attend our next SFO meeting and make a decision as to whether she will join us as spiritual advisor.

AR and L said that they were concerned that the others and I had been hurt by G. Not so, I assured them. I was not hurt. God gave me a tasking. I did it imperfectly perhaps but to the best of my ability, letting the chips fall wherever they might. I added that I probably cannot be hurt because God would not allow me to be hurt. L and AR did not understand that latter part, about God not allowing me to be hurt, but I suppose that does not really matter. And, yes, I know that sometimes God does allow His people to be hurt if there is a greater purpose, but in the long run, the greater good becomes clear and the hurt turns to something valuable.

What was clear from our discussion was even more encouraging than our meeting with the Council. First and most important, G is receiving oversight. In L's words, "no one is allowed to be alone with him, and no group is allowed to be alone with him." Clearly, G is feeling boxed in. He lashed out at AR and L, telling them "you betrayed me." They laughed and told him that they could not betray him because he is not holy; they worship God, not him. I wonder how that went over! AR and L also told me that MB, the minister, had "found her voice and her role" on the Council and was no longer being intimidated by G or taking directions from him that are self-serving, wrong, harmful, and even anti-Franciscan. It seems to me that AR and L have also found their voice!

So, just when I thought everything was over and I could make some kind of decision about my participation in the SFO, that I had completed my tasking by the Council's reaction in containing G, the saga suddenly continued with G fighting back. Then, when that seemed contained, when the other members of the Council had found their voice, and I assumed that now I could move on, N called me (yesterday) and said that AR and L want to meet with us for a pre-Council-meeting discussion. Neither of us knows why.

Nonplussed by this information (and the sinking sense that my tasking has still not been completed), before leaving for the meeting, I asked God what He would have me do. In response, I heard two words, more impressed than spoken, that absolutely flabbergasted me: "Love him."

Love him? After everything I had been through? After making a fool of myself in front of the Council by revealing that I had been told to "Let Goliath know he cannot treat My people this way?" Love him when I seem to have been tasked to de-claw him? Love him when his intent toward me has been clearly stated -- he wants me out of the way, completely out of the way, gone -- and refers to me only in the scathing-most terms? Love him when the characteristics that best describe him -- ambition, pride, condescension toward women, derision of the poor, selfishness -- are ones that repel me? Love him when I feel Evil pulling at him, even enveloping him to the point that at times I simply recoil? Love him? Lord, You are indeed inscrutable!

If God says love him, though, I guess I have to learn how to do that although I don't really know how. I do pray for G very frequently. Perhaps that is a start. I can bring myself to hug him, but from his side it is always a cold, mechanical, public gesture. I hope that what I return is not the same, but it is admittedly not some kind of passionate care and concern. Lord, how do you define love?

I guess the first step must be learning what God means by love, and then maybe I will be able to love Goliath. Right now, though, I have to run off to a meeting and, on the way, decide whether to share this new "enlightenment" with the Council members who probably have already written me off as a bit "touched" after I shared with them the earlier visions and locution. I will let you know soon what happens.

(This post was written last Sunday; I am just now getting a chance to post it. The meeting has taken place, so stand by for a post on the results and next steps in the sage that this tasking has produced and is continuing to produce.)

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.

Nightmares

I do not like to believe that Evil exists. It would be so much easier just to assume that only Good surrounds us, that we can ignore God or accept God, but either way, Life is Good. That is what I would like to believe, but it is hard to do so when one is attacked, or seems to be attacked, by what would be difficult to label as anything other than Evil.

Whether I was attacked by Evil as an atheist, I do not know. I may not have recognized an attack had there been one. On the other hand, maybe Evil was comfortable with me the way I was. After all, I was not a threat.

After my conversion, however, a couple of events happened that were difficult to ignore or to pass off as anything other than Evil. Considering that I am by nature somewhat oblivious to what goes on around me (making for the stuff that my son Doah used for his book about all the embarrassing and odd predicaments I have always found myself in, such as accidentally poisoning a house guest and striding off to work not fully clothed), it is perhaps not so amazing that the ways in which I have felt attacked by Evil post-conversion have been overt and growingly forceful.

Twice, not long after my conversion, as I left work late at night, the only person around, I distinctly felt as if Someone were sitting in the back seat. Both times, I whipped around and saw no one but still felt a dark presence. In the event that it might be something of an evil sort, for that is precisely what it felt like, I spoke aloud, "Whoever you are, please do not skulk about in the back seat. Come up front with me and sit in the passenger seat. We can pray together all the way home because that is what I intend to do." Each time, no sooner had I finished speaking than the sense of darkness and evil dissipated.

Then there was the time that it seemed like I was being stalked when I was taking my evening walk at Old Mission. Every since I castigated That (whatever That was), I have not had another experience of the same. (The story is a bit long for including here. If you are interested, please see the post on Blest Atheist.)

For some time now, I have no longer been attacked in the open, at least not recently that I have been aware of. (I am conscious of the fact that Evil can attack in very sweet, seductive ways that may not be noticed as being evil in nature, and I have to assume that I am every bit as susceptible to those as anyone else and try to continue to improve my ability to discern the nature of the experiences, temptations, and "directions" that are in front of me). About six months post-conversion, though, I began to have deeply disturbing, dark, godless nightmares, which I understood as Evil's way to reach me when I was at my most vulnerable: asleep. Now, I am not a person who knows how to be sleepless. Although I sleep, on the average, probably fewer total hours than the average person, I do sleep. I fall asleep easily and, unfortunately, very soundly. No one can wake me up for any reason when I am asleep, a problematic trait when my kids were small and ill at night. My husband, Donnie, was always the one to tend them. (The only exception was the two years that Doah was having apneic episodes. I would sense the instant he was not breathing and was immediately wide awake to give him CPR. I had no explanation of that unique phenomenon at the time. I do now: God clearly wanted Doah to live, and I had to be instrument for that, so He woke me up again and again and again.)

When the horrible nightmares struck, I began to pray that my dreams be filled only with thoughts of God. The first night I prayed that, the terrible dreams did not appear. I awoke refreshed, with the sense that my dreams had been wonderful. (With the exception of those black nightmares, I have never been able to remember my dreams.) The second night that I prayed that my dreams be filled only with thoughts of God, the terrible dreams did not appear. Again, I awoke refreshed, with the sense that my dreams had been wonderful. Since then, I have prayed for dreams only of God every single night, and every single night since then God has answered that prayer. Thank You, God!