I also really hate the forced/captured group Rosary thing. It seems to be a particular favourite of Americans. My interior life is INTERior, and isn't for performative public display.
Nothing made me want to run screaming from a parish more than when I knelt down to do some silent prayer before Mass and a bunch of olds started just loudly praying a group rosary that shattered the silence.
Or, growing up, the way my girlfriend's parents would use the rosary to stop a group of us from going out to see a movie like we planned. "It's rosary time!" they'd say as we were getting ready to leave.
You couldn't go anywhere in a group in the pro-life movement, in any van or bus, without someone interrupting your conversation/nap/brain-musings with, "Let's all say a Rosary!" I did once just respond, "No thank you, I'm having a conversation right now." and the shocked silence ... you could cut it with a knife.
I didn't grow up in a practicing Catholic environment, and when I got into one, I just couldn't believe how deeply embedded it was in the subculture to use the devotional life as a means of passive-aggressive control. Almost always by women.
My mother did this incessantly. She’d go to daily Mass, and invite us to go with her. If we didn’t, she’d tell us we were not allowed to watch TV or get on a computer or do anything we liked while she was gone. Sometimes she’d reward us with treats if we went.
She once lamented to me that my then-13yo sister was insufficiently interested in doing Lenten devotions and daily Mass with her. I, an adult by this time, said, “Mom, she’s a teenager. What do you expect?”
“I expect holiness!” she snapped back.
“Well, you’re going to drive her right out of the faith if you keep that up.” I said.
My sister was the first to leave. She is now a leftist atheist lost cause.
I first experienced this kind of rosary as an altar boy in suburban New York in the 1970s. Typically it would happen before a weekday mass. At that time the Blue Army was praying for the conversion of Russia, and the Fatima prayer was inserted into each decade asking for salvation from the fires of hell through Jesus' pathfinding mercy. As a child I wondered how this all started, who led the group, how did they decide who said the first part. And why was this attractive to people. I still wonder that today as a similar group gathers before daily mass today here in Nashville. Do the participants experience a kind of communal participation in the recitation? Is that the draw? A sense of being a true believer, member of an in-crowd, carrying the project forward? Is it the belonging, the unity of purpose? Have they found something or are they persistent in their seeking? I feel a tinge of guilt as I experience this small rite as an intrusion, as I need quiet to prepare myself for Eucharist. I cannot pray the rosary as they do. I can't keep a steady pace and often never finish unlike these folks whose timing impeccably finishes for the start of mass. I usually get lost in the mystery of the "mysteries." I wish them well, but their little liturgy is just not for me. I want to respect their prayer but can't help thinking they're off target on my view. I think you put the point beautifully with your concept of INTERiority, that we're called to both go to our rooms, close the door and seek God in solitude as well as to gather at the table, assemble at the altar to lift up an offering of praise and thanks. Do we understand just how hard the work of liturgy is? Do we remember that the Shepherd told us about the other flocks he's gathered? That the psalmists continually urge us to sing new songs?
"A sense of being a true believer, member of an in-crowd, carrying the project forward?" - ding ding ding... we have a winner!
I was never into the Rosary until a priest, a monastic, explained what it was actually for - to meditate on the Mysteries. In other words, as a tool for the pursuit of contemplation and ultimately the Unitive Way - the pursuit of the Transforming Union. It is similar to what Benedictines talk about with "meditatio" - cf. Lectio divina.
But postmodern suburban North American Catholicism has turned it into a kind of conservative version of the guitar sing-along, to prove that you're "one of us" or, as Taylor Marshall so memorably put it, "On the team." And that's a thing I've never found interesting or appealing in any way, even as a kid in school. I've met "the team" and no thanks.
Another hit out of the park! Terrific piece, Steve, thanks.
Jimmy and company sound like a group I would enjoy hanging with. And, in fact, I do have younger Catholic friends of the same ilk. Terrific men!
I agree 100 percent with Father Dan, "You're sincerely seeking the truth, so you will eventually find it." Apparently, in the original Koine Greek, Jesus says something akin to "Keep on seeking and you will find." In any event, no one sincerely set on finding truth will be ultimately disappointed.
I've never been one for whiskey but feel like I need to give it a chance. My go to alcoholic drink is beer, good beer. Over the last six months I've lost 50 pounds and feel great. I don't want to return to my former condition so can't have beer very often. A nice whiskey after dinner might be just what the doctor ordered.
Great piece, Steve. I often think that, just like there are different temperaments and personalities and "types", there are people with all different spiritualities and sensitivities and approaches to the divine. Some people (as I apprehend you're learning about in the Telepathy Tapes) are "gifted" with abilities that the rest of us perceive as paranormal or psychic. Just so, some people are very spiritually sensitive and see angels and know the presence of the Divine because they actually experience it. You and I are not those types of people, so we have to pursue virtue and trust others' experiences of God and just believe that He's there, even if He doesn't reveal Himself to us (because He so obviously doesn't).
A lead worth exploring is the divine energies. When you begin to see that God’s activities and his energizing of us when we’re at our best are God himself, you may find God hidden in plain sight. Nathan Jacobs is one to read or listen to on this topic, and he has a compelling and entertaining personal history. You would also find a lot of resonance in Jacobs’ explanations of the problems of hell.
I recently listened to a podcast interview between Andrew Huberman and psychologist James Hollister. This post reminds me a lot of a line from that conversation that struck me: "this isn't working for me anymore but I do it very well."
So happy you had such a wonderful weekend! I think God is subtle, and calls and speaks to you, by the love you received, and the love you have for your sweet wife and children, the very desire to be better.From the outside looking in, He calls and waits. Best wishes to you, always!
I have seen the ghosts at Mass. I saw a very brief image of Our Lord, which I didn’t mention to my director…so he mentioned it to me. While I was pregnant with my youngest, I saw OL Guadalupe. So did a close friend.
I have been through spells with little consolation. It sounds to me like something similar. Maybe you’re being remade, perfected.
Think of kintsugi, the art of repairing broken things with gold. We’re all broken. God repairs, refines, and the process isn’t easy for us, but…we learn much in the suffering.
Right before my wedding, I was hanging out with an old friend who is Muslim, who was also looking forward to his own wedding. I alluded to how I was _really_ looking forward to that wedding night. He grinned and asked, "So is she making you wait?". "Yep". "Same here. I take it all with a grain of salt, but you definitely meet a better class of people when you attend mosque." "Oh, yes, same with church!" So even if I stop believing someday, I guess the people of faith will still be my kind of people.
btw: want to know that God was talking to you in this? Right here: "I resolved to try to turn that around and put my wife and kids first as often as possible, even as I worried that I would just fall back into old habits."
In Roman Catholicism, I felt insulated from numinous experience. Everything, from the clinically academic footnotes in the NAB to the Spartan aesthetics of worship (including the TLM), made me feel like I was isolated in the psych ward of the spiritual equivalent of a sterile, white-roomed hospital. There was no color, no life. Only stifling quiet and anxiety about what might be outside.
So I get where you're coming from, regarding the disconnect but experiencing synchronicities and experiences beyond the walls of that epistemologically closed system. However, it's weird that I experienced a signal first, before Catholicism, and ultimately returned to that signal, whereas you only encountered the spiritual side of things after leaving.
I'm curious what would happen if you went to an Orthodox Divine Liturgy next.
You ask God for a sign and he brings you to a Latin Mass in a family members kitchen but you didn’t feel anything? You ask God for financial help and total strangers send you money but you don’t know why he won’t answer your pleas? No stranger will ever send me money, I can guarantee you that.
Just an outsider but I would conclude God is working directly in your life. A family friend saw Angeles swarming around your event!!! what other signs are you looking for?
You say he "brought me Latin Mass in a family member's kitchen" but I knew it was on the schedule and I went anyway because I wanted to be there for the rest.
You say "You ask God for financial help and total strangers send you money" and I say, "Yes, but I asked for it, directly. It's not like he told them without me mentioning it. That was THEIR generosity, not his."
"No stranger will ever send me money, I can guarantee you that."
How do you know? Have you ever been in a position where strangers who cared about you had an opportunity to help when you needed it and asked?
"A family friend saw Angeles swarming around your event!!! what other signs are you looking for?"
Yes. Someone I know told me they saw something. But *I* didn't. Whatever that person's journey in faith, I know them to be someone who wasn't asking God for a sign. And yet they got this...whatever it was. I ask all the time for something so I can know that he's there, he cares, he wants me to do X, Y, or Z.
He doesn't.
Why does the guy who isn't asking get something, and the guy who is doesn't?
At the end of the day, our interpretative framework matters. If you're a person of faith, every coincidence can look like providence, or even a miracle. If you're not, they just look like coincidences. There are prosaic explanations for most of the things we're discussing, and there may even be one for the seemingly supernatural event.
How do we know? How can we be sure? And why do people of various faiths, all of which are thought false by the others, receive these same kinds of signs?
I've already decided to keep an open mind about all of this. My thought is: "You shouldn't just dismiss it. Maybe this weird, roundabout, indirect set of seeming coincidences should be taken as circumstantial evidence that God loves me." I wouldn't have written about this the way I did if I hadn't. I know my audience can read this into the story. I know many of them will, and do. I wasn't just setting myself up as the most oblivious guy in the room.
But I have a hangup. My particular flavor of childhood wounds come from abuse/neglect/abandonment/shame. I need God to be the kind of father I didn't get to have, the one I know I can count on no matter what, who will have my back, and will show me in some way that is persuasive to *me*, in all my brokenness, that he is real and loves me and wants me to come to him. And more specifically, that he has some specific mode of religious life he wants me to live. I want a relationship with him, not a set of nebulous, indirect, possibly prosaic nudges.
I don't think it's a lot to ask in exchange for a life of willingly embraced suffering and sacrifice in service of the divine to want to know that someone is on the other side of that who is worth putting your faith in.
At the same time, there is a valid question: "How much indirect evidence is enough?" I've been asked this same question about other things - like the UFO topic. I don't know how to stop being a skeptic. I don't know why I'm so hard to persuade. I am fascinated with the UFO phenomenon, I see lots of evidence that something anomalous is going on, but I haven't seen a detailed look at a ship or a verified video of a being, and I certainly haven't seen either with my own eyes, so I keep compiling circumstantial data and trying to connect the dots. I seem to be wired to be both enthusiastic at the prospect and resistant to jumping to conclusions.
But really, can anyone answer this? What evidence would it take for you to be convinced of something you're deeply skeptical of? If you're unmoved by what you've experienced or seen so far, is that a culpable fault, or just an obstacle you don't know how to overcome?
The only thing I can do is try to stay open, keep asking, and keeping making a note of these things when they do happen to see if they fit a pattern. I'm sorry if that seems obtuse.
I have asked myself all of the same questions you have here, and I'm afraid I don't have a silver bullet answer to any of them myself.
But I will share some thoughts that have crossed my mind while pondering them:
It occurred to me that if I had experienced some of the things these other people describe (seeing angels, "hearing" God's voice telling them to do something, etc.), I might be far more culpable for failing to persevere in faith than I am hoeing this arid row-- and I don't trust myself enough not to slip back into the usual doubts and alternate explanations I've always had even should I experience something "undeniable."
That's not a very consoling thought, but it may be a "severe mercy" of the kind written about by C.S. Lewis' friend Sheldon Vanauken.
Then, I've considered something along the lines that St. Thérèse supposedly said about her own dark night of the soul right at the end of her life, when atheism was rampant in France, which was that the experience of not experiencing God gave her more sympathy for those unbelievers.
I can't say I can point to a discrete experience where some previous suffering of mine was clearly relevant and useful when ministering to someone else, but I like to hope that my own spiritual aridity and willingness to be honest with outsiders that the spiritual life is *not* all sunshine and daisies the way so many Christians make it seem to be may be the bridge that some other searching soul needs to eventually meet God.
Perhaps, if is *is* all true, then when those of us who experience such hunger with no satiation in this life finally do arrive at beatitude, it will be so much more fulfilling than for those who "had their reward" somewhat already... but I hate how much of Christianity is these sorts of promises of future reward for a lifetime of scraping and suffering.
I know God is not a genie to save us from all suffering, but it does seem like if the Incarnation is the paradigm-shifting event it supposedly is, the world should look more different or that the spiritual life within the Church should be more fulfilling... or else what was the point really?
I've been told that God wants life in abundance for me, but while I've certainly been blessed and have experienced occasional moments of deep peace from my practice of Christianity, I do find it all very "meh" most of the time and have resigned myself to the reality that I am not God and therefore I cannot possibly comprehend this alien being nor does he owe me anything really. But then that feels very Muslim and not like the proper disposition of a son who is supposed to call God "daddy" with the same confidence of a little child.
"I no longer call you slaves but friends." Ok, God, but then why all the special favors for your enemies who aren't even looking for you and the total silence and hiddenness for those who are *earnestly* seeking you?
In my experience, God is responsive when we offer ourselves utterly and unreservedly to him in the deepest humility we can muster. I first encountered God when I made a decision that instead of taking my life, I was going to give it to him, and put him on front burner in my life instead of just toying with him when I wanted him. When I made that prayer of offering, I felt a supernatural warmth enter the top of my head and permeate my being, and I was transformed. My whole attitude shifted in a way I never would have expected. I've never been the same since. Rod Dreher reports similar experiences in his new book, Living in Wonder. Most of my numinous experiences have been when I was at the end of my rope and I cried out to God in deep humility and self-surrender.
Are you just "kicking the tires", or are you offering God your whole life, willing to give up anything that stands in the way of your relationship with him? I think he will respond when we sincerely offer our lives as a total sacrifice. I can't judge whether you have or haven't, but I didn't see that level of commitment in your post.
Sometimes God waits until we hit rock bottom, so that we're totally broken and humbled and radically open to him so he can fix us. Maybe you haven't hit that yet, and you need to.
God is real, and he loves you. I assure you. And I believe he is working in your life.
Kind of. I haven't updated it in a while. I sketched it out a year or so ago.
I always waffle about whether I should lean into it and really write it out, or if I should just avoid going deeper down the doubt rabbit hole. The biggest problem I face is that fundamentally, the Christian narrative reads to me like a kind of mythology that has beautiful and noble bits, ugly and awful bits, and plot holes that seem irreconcilable.
Since accepting the premises of creation, the fall, the diminution and cursing of human nature, the requirement of human sacrifice to restore man's place with God, the necessity of the incarnation/passion (over and above non-fatal shedding of divine blood, which a number of theologians have posited would suffice for the remission of sin), etc., are all essential to building anything on that foundation, I have to start there.
I can cherry pick dogmas like infallibility that I think are bunk, but they're WAY downstream of the first premises I struggle with.
On an overarching level, I do not get, at all, why a God who is good and loving and omniscient and omnipotent would create sensate beings with limited knowledge and memory and compromised and changeable wills and then place them in a context where he hides from them completely but expects them not just to believe in him, but believe in very specific manifestations of religious beliefs about him, none of which are falsifiable, and if they don't a) choose the right religion and b) follow all of its rules and precepts and c) love him above all else despite not even being able to perceive him, they will be plunged into eternal conscious torment -- which in and of itself is a logical violation of any intelligible concept of justice and proportionality.
If the God of Christianity is true, I can only hope that He is infinitely more patient and understanding than what we've been told about Him by preachers and clergy up and down the centuries. I hope He understands most of us didn't mean any harm or disrespect, we were only trying to shuffle through this chaotic existence.
I was going to offer the same observation. This was a pilgrimage. The wedding feast was a Eucharist. You found connection, community. You were bathed in familial love that lifted you up. Do you have any idea how many people wish they could "fail" this way? Maybe it's not the experience but the idiom that's not working. Maybe it's because you're listening in Latin. That photo of the kitchen TLM was jarring. My great uncle, Fr. Rufus, would possibly be into that world today given his devotion to Homiletics and Pastoral Review in the 70s. When he said a home mass in his room at my uncle's house, he'd clear the dresser, set out candles, don a simple stole, and pull out a mini sacramentary and celebrate "the new Mass" for his family, much as he would have during his Navy chaplain days during WWII. If the folks in the photo found God in the kitchen TLM, then who am I to judge and mazeltov. And if some experience God in visions, God bless, just discern carefully. But I think what you experience as a silent indifference looks a whole lot like holiness from here.
What if after Jesus, Abba, having spoken the perfect, final Word, has no further use for words, and instead communicates in hugs? What if the Spirit blows where she may among the gathering to foster the work of the Kin-dom? What if where two or three are gathered, he's there, really there as promised, even if we're not quite feeling it?
Dethrone belief in favor of trust, and trust the gathering with open hands and heart. If Jesus is distant I doubt you'll find him in transcendence and doctrine. He can be found in the little way, in trust, in surrender.
BTW, if that was the Regal gun range, y'all were about two minutes from my house.
I also really hate the forced/captured group Rosary thing. It seems to be a particular favourite of Americans. My interior life is INTERior, and isn't for performative public display.
Nothing made me want to run screaming from a parish more than when I knelt down to do some silent prayer before Mass and a bunch of olds started just loudly praying a group rosary that shattered the silence.
Or, growing up, the way my girlfriend's parents would use the rosary to stop a group of us from going out to see a movie like we planned. "It's rosary time!" they'd say as we were getting ready to leave.
Stop it.
You couldn't go anywhere in a group in the pro-life movement, in any van or bus, without someone interrupting your conversation/nap/brain-musings with, "Let's all say a Rosary!" I did once just respond, "No thank you, I'm having a conversation right now." and the shocked silence ... you could cut it with a knife.
I have never enjoyed praying the rosary in a group, though it does give me peace when I pray it alone.
It's supposed to be a meditation on the life of Christ, which I can't do when we're all clattering on together in a weird rote chant.
I have never understood why some people are so obsessed with foisting it upon others.
I didn't grow up in a practicing Catholic environment, and when I got into one, I just couldn't believe how deeply embedded it was in the subculture to use the devotional life as a means of passive-aggressive control. Almost always by women.
My mother did this incessantly. She’d go to daily Mass, and invite us to go with her. If we didn’t, she’d tell us we were not allowed to watch TV or get on a computer or do anything we liked while she was gone. Sometimes she’d reward us with treats if we went.
She once lamented to me that my then-13yo sister was insufficiently interested in doing Lenten devotions and daily Mass with her. I, an adult by this time, said, “Mom, she’s a teenager. What do you expect?”
“I expect holiness!” she snapped back.
“Well, you’re going to drive her right out of the faith if you keep that up.” I said.
My sister was the first to leave. She is now a leftist atheist lost cause.
I first experienced this kind of rosary as an altar boy in suburban New York in the 1970s. Typically it would happen before a weekday mass. At that time the Blue Army was praying for the conversion of Russia, and the Fatima prayer was inserted into each decade asking for salvation from the fires of hell through Jesus' pathfinding mercy. As a child I wondered how this all started, who led the group, how did they decide who said the first part. And why was this attractive to people. I still wonder that today as a similar group gathers before daily mass today here in Nashville. Do the participants experience a kind of communal participation in the recitation? Is that the draw? A sense of being a true believer, member of an in-crowd, carrying the project forward? Is it the belonging, the unity of purpose? Have they found something or are they persistent in their seeking? I feel a tinge of guilt as I experience this small rite as an intrusion, as I need quiet to prepare myself for Eucharist. I cannot pray the rosary as they do. I can't keep a steady pace and often never finish unlike these folks whose timing impeccably finishes for the start of mass. I usually get lost in the mystery of the "mysteries." I wish them well, but their little liturgy is just not for me. I want to respect their prayer but can't help thinking they're off target on my view. I think you put the point beautifully with your concept of INTERiority, that we're called to both go to our rooms, close the door and seek God in solitude as well as to gather at the table, assemble at the altar to lift up an offering of praise and thanks. Do we understand just how hard the work of liturgy is? Do we remember that the Shepherd told us about the other flocks he's gathered? That the psalmists continually urge us to sing new songs?
"A sense of being a true believer, member of an in-crowd, carrying the project forward?" - ding ding ding... we have a winner!
I was never into the Rosary until a priest, a monastic, explained what it was actually for - to meditate on the Mysteries. In other words, as a tool for the pursuit of contemplation and ultimately the Unitive Way - the pursuit of the Transforming Union. It is similar to what Benedictines talk about with "meditatio" - cf. Lectio divina.
But postmodern suburban North American Catholicism has turned it into a kind of conservative version of the guitar sing-along, to prove that you're "one of us" or, as Taylor Marshall so memorably put it, "On the team." And that's a thing I've never found interesting or appealing in any way, even as a kid in school. I've met "the team" and no thanks.
Another hit out of the park! Terrific piece, Steve, thanks.
Jimmy and company sound like a group I would enjoy hanging with. And, in fact, I do have younger Catholic friends of the same ilk. Terrific men!
I agree 100 percent with Father Dan, "You're sincerely seeking the truth, so you will eventually find it." Apparently, in the original Koine Greek, Jesus says something akin to "Keep on seeking and you will find." In any event, no one sincerely set on finding truth will be ultimately disappointed.
I've never been one for whiskey but feel like I need to give it a chance. My go to alcoholic drink is beer, good beer. Over the last six months I've lost 50 pounds and feel great. I don't want to return to my former condition so can't have beer very often. A nice whiskey after dinner might be just what the doctor ordered.
Thanks Steve.
Another superb piece. This is one of the best that I have read from you. As others have suggested, maybe just keep going.
Stop thinking about "it" and start every day grateful, (wife, kids, health...). See where that gets you.
Great piece, Steve. I often think that, just like there are different temperaments and personalities and "types", there are people with all different spiritualities and sensitivities and approaches to the divine. Some people (as I apprehend you're learning about in the Telepathy Tapes) are "gifted" with abilities that the rest of us perceive as paranormal or psychic. Just so, some people are very spiritually sensitive and see angels and know the presence of the Divine because they actually experience it. You and I are not those types of people, so we have to pursue virtue and trust others' experiences of God and just believe that He's there, even if He doesn't reveal Himself to us (because He so obviously doesn't).
A lead worth exploring is the divine energies. When you begin to see that God’s activities and his energizing of us when we’re at our best are God himself, you may find God hidden in plain sight. Nathan Jacobs is one to read or listen to on this topic, and he has a compelling and entertaining personal history. You would also find a lot of resonance in Jacobs’ explanations of the problems of hell.
I recently listened to a podcast interview between Andrew Huberman and psychologist James Hollister. This post reminds me a lot of a line from that conversation that struck me: "this isn't working for me anymore but I do it very well."
I so get that feeling.
So happy you had such a wonderful weekend! I think God is subtle, and calls and speaks to you, by the love you received, and the love you have for your sweet wife and children, the very desire to be better.From the outside looking in, He calls and waits. Best wishes to you, always!
Thank you, Josephine!
I have seen the ghosts at Mass. I saw a very brief image of Our Lord, which I didn’t mention to my director…so he mentioned it to me. While I was pregnant with my youngest, I saw OL Guadalupe. So did a close friend.
I have been through spells with little consolation. It sounds to me like something similar. Maybe you’re being remade, perfected.
Think of kintsugi, the art of repairing broken things with gold. We’re all broken. God repairs, refines, and the process isn’t easy for us, but…we learn much in the suffering.
Keep in mind that The Giver Of gifts such as these far outweigh the gifts.
According to Fr LaGrange, it is a normal development in the spiritual life; it’s not exceptional or something to be prideful about.
Right before my wedding, I was hanging out with an old friend who is Muslim, who was also looking forward to his own wedding. I alluded to how I was _really_ looking forward to that wedding night. He grinned and asked, "So is she making you wait?". "Yep". "Same here. I take it all with a grain of salt, but you definitely meet a better class of people when you attend mosque." "Oh, yes, same with church!" So even if I stop believing someday, I guess the people of faith will still be my kind of people.
btw: want to know that God was talking to you in this? Right here: "I resolved to try to turn that around and put my wife and kids first as often as possible, even as I worried that I would just fall back into old habits."
In Roman Catholicism, I felt insulated from numinous experience. Everything, from the clinically academic footnotes in the NAB to the Spartan aesthetics of worship (including the TLM), made me feel like I was isolated in the psych ward of the spiritual equivalent of a sterile, white-roomed hospital. There was no color, no life. Only stifling quiet and anxiety about what might be outside.
So I get where you're coming from, regarding the disconnect but experiencing synchronicities and experiences beyond the walls of that epistemologically closed system. However, it's weird that I experienced a signal first, before Catholicism, and ultimately returned to that signal, whereas you only encountered the spiritual side of things after leaving.
I'm curious what would happen if you went to an Orthodox Divine Liturgy next.
Maybe nothing. Maybe something.
You ask God for a sign and he brings you to a Latin Mass in a family members kitchen but you didn’t feel anything? You ask God for financial help and total strangers send you money but you don’t know why he won’t answer your pleas? No stranger will ever send me money, I can guarantee you that.
Just an outsider but I would conclude God is working directly in your life. A family friend saw Angeles swarming around your event!!! what other signs are you looking for?
It's all subject to interpretation, isn't it?
You say he "brought me Latin Mass in a family member's kitchen" but I knew it was on the schedule and I went anyway because I wanted to be there for the rest.
You say "You ask God for financial help and total strangers send you money" and I say, "Yes, but I asked for it, directly. It's not like he told them without me mentioning it. That was THEIR generosity, not his."
"No stranger will ever send me money, I can guarantee you that."
How do you know? Have you ever been in a position where strangers who cared about you had an opportunity to help when you needed it and asked?
"A family friend saw Angeles swarming around your event!!! what other signs are you looking for?"
Yes. Someone I know told me they saw something. But *I* didn't. Whatever that person's journey in faith, I know them to be someone who wasn't asking God for a sign. And yet they got this...whatever it was. I ask all the time for something so I can know that he's there, he cares, he wants me to do X, Y, or Z.
He doesn't.
Why does the guy who isn't asking get something, and the guy who is doesn't?
At the end of the day, our interpretative framework matters. If you're a person of faith, every coincidence can look like providence, or even a miracle. If you're not, they just look like coincidences. There are prosaic explanations for most of the things we're discussing, and there may even be one for the seemingly supernatural event.
How do we know? How can we be sure? And why do people of various faiths, all of which are thought false by the others, receive these same kinds of signs?
I've already decided to keep an open mind about all of this. My thought is: "You shouldn't just dismiss it. Maybe this weird, roundabout, indirect set of seeming coincidences should be taken as circumstantial evidence that God loves me." I wouldn't have written about this the way I did if I hadn't. I know my audience can read this into the story. I know many of them will, and do. I wasn't just setting myself up as the most oblivious guy in the room.
But I have a hangup. My particular flavor of childhood wounds come from abuse/neglect/abandonment/shame. I need God to be the kind of father I didn't get to have, the one I know I can count on no matter what, who will have my back, and will show me in some way that is persuasive to *me*, in all my brokenness, that he is real and loves me and wants me to come to him. And more specifically, that he has some specific mode of religious life he wants me to live. I want a relationship with him, not a set of nebulous, indirect, possibly prosaic nudges.
I don't think it's a lot to ask in exchange for a life of willingly embraced suffering and sacrifice in service of the divine to want to know that someone is on the other side of that who is worth putting your faith in.
At the same time, there is a valid question: "How much indirect evidence is enough?" I've been asked this same question about other things - like the UFO topic. I don't know how to stop being a skeptic. I don't know why I'm so hard to persuade. I am fascinated with the UFO phenomenon, I see lots of evidence that something anomalous is going on, but I haven't seen a detailed look at a ship or a verified video of a being, and I certainly haven't seen either with my own eyes, so I keep compiling circumstantial data and trying to connect the dots. I seem to be wired to be both enthusiastic at the prospect and resistant to jumping to conclusions.
But really, can anyone answer this? What evidence would it take for you to be convinced of something you're deeply skeptical of? If you're unmoved by what you've experienced or seen so far, is that a culpable fault, or just an obstacle you don't know how to overcome?
The only thing I can do is try to stay open, keep asking, and keeping making a note of these things when they do happen to see if they fit a pattern. I'm sorry if that seems obtuse.
I have asked myself all of the same questions you have here, and I'm afraid I don't have a silver bullet answer to any of them myself.
But I will share some thoughts that have crossed my mind while pondering them:
It occurred to me that if I had experienced some of the things these other people describe (seeing angels, "hearing" God's voice telling them to do something, etc.), I might be far more culpable for failing to persevere in faith than I am hoeing this arid row-- and I don't trust myself enough not to slip back into the usual doubts and alternate explanations I've always had even should I experience something "undeniable."
That's not a very consoling thought, but it may be a "severe mercy" of the kind written about by C.S. Lewis' friend Sheldon Vanauken.
Then, I've considered something along the lines that St. Thérèse supposedly said about her own dark night of the soul right at the end of her life, when atheism was rampant in France, which was that the experience of not experiencing God gave her more sympathy for those unbelievers.
I can't say I can point to a discrete experience where some previous suffering of mine was clearly relevant and useful when ministering to someone else, but I like to hope that my own spiritual aridity and willingness to be honest with outsiders that the spiritual life is *not* all sunshine and daisies the way so many Christians make it seem to be may be the bridge that some other searching soul needs to eventually meet God.
Perhaps, if is *is* all true, then when those of us who experience such hunger with no satiation in this life finally do arrive at beatitude, it will be so much more fulfilling than for those who "had their reward" somewhat already... but I hate how much of Christianity is these sorts of promises of future reward for a lifetime of scraping and suffering.
I know God is not a genie to save us from all suffering, but it does seem like if the Incarnation is the paradigm-shifting event it supposedly is, the world should look more different or that the spiritual life within the Church should be more fulfilling... or else what was the point really?
I've been told that God wants life in abundance for me, but while I've certainly been blessed and have experienced occasional moments of deep peace from my practice of Christianity, I do find it all very "meh" most of the time and have resigned myself to the reality that I am not God and therefore I cannot possibly comprehend this alien being nor does he owe me anything really. But then that feels very Muslim and not like the proper disposition of a son who is supposed to call God "daddy" with the same confidence of a little child.
"I no longer call you slaves but friends." Ok, God, but then why all the special favors for your enemies who aren't even looking for you and the total silence and hiddenness for those who are *earnestly* seeking you?
I love seekers the best. Most people who are content, or satisfied, set my teeth on edge.
Sensemaking seems to require a struggle.
In my experience, God is responsive when we offer ourselves utterly and unreservedly to him in the deepest humility we can muster. I first encountered God when I made a decision that instead of taking my life, I was going to give it to him, and put him on front burner in my life instead of just toying with him when I wanted him. When I made that prayer of offering, I felt a supernatural warmth enter the top of my head and permeate my being, and I was transformed. My whole attitude shifted in a way I never would have expected. I've never been the same since. Rod Dreher reports similar experiences in his new book, Living in Wonder. Most of my numinous experiences have been when I was at the end of my rope and I cried out to God in deep humility and self-surrender.
Are you just "kicking the tires", or are you offering God your whole life, willing to give up anything that stands in the way of your relationship with him? I think he will respond when we sincerely offer our lives as a total sacrifice. I can't judge whether you have or haven't, but I didn't see that level of commitment in your post.
Sometimes God waits until we hit rock bottom, so that we're totally broken and humbled and radically open to him so he can fix us. Maybe you haven't hit that yet, and you need to.
God is real, and he loves you. I assure you. And I believe he is working in your life.
Had that thought. Just not sure how to integrate it with the resistance & disconnection I still feel.
Do you have a running list of what you don’t believe in? Items you aren’t sure about don’t have to qualify, but they certainly could be included.
Kind of. I haven't updated it in a while. I sketched it out a year or so ago.
I always waffle about whether I should lean into it and really write it out, or if I should just avoid going deeper down the doubt rabbit hole. The biggest problem I face is that fundamentally, the Christian narrative reads to me like a kind of mythology that has beautiful and noble bits, ugly and awful bits, and plot holes that seem irreconcilable.
Since accepting the premises of creation, the fall, the diminution and cursing of human nature, the requirement of human sacrifice to restore man's place with God, the necessity of the incarnation/passion (over and above non-fatal shedding of divine blood, which a number of theologians have posited would suffice for the remission of sin), etc., are all essential to building anything on that foundation, I have to start there.
I can cherry pick dogmas like infallibility that I think are bunk, but they're WAY downstream of the first premises I struggle with.
On an overarching level, I do not get, at all, why a God who is good and loving and omniscient and omnipotent would create sensate beings with limited knowledge and memory and compromised and changeable wills and then place them in a context where he hides from them completely but expects them not just to believe in him, but believe in very specific manifestations of religious beliefs about him, none of which are falsifiable, and if they don't a) choose the right religion and b) follow all of its rules and precepts and c) love him above all else despite not even being able to perceive him, they will be plunged into eternal conscious torment -- which in and of itself is a logical violation of any intelligible concept of justice and proportionality.
IOW: It's complicated.
If the God of Christianity is true, I can only hope that He is infinitely more patient and understanding than what we've been told about Him by preachers and clergy up and down the centuries. I hope He understands most of us didn't mean any harm or disrespect, we were only trying to shuffle through this chaotic existence.
That would be nice. Because we really are trying.
I think God is in fact much more patient and understanding of the weak and contrite than people have made him out to be.
I was going to offer the same observation. This was a pilgrimage. The wedding feast was a Eucharist. You found connection, community. You were bathed in familial love that lifted you up. Do you have any idea how many people wish they could "fail" this way? Maybe it's not the experience but the idiom that's not working. Maybe it's because you're listening in Latin. That photo of the kitchen TLM was jarring. My great uncle, Fr. Rufus, would possibly be into that world today given his devotion to Homiletics and Pastoral Review in the 70s. When he said a home mass in his room at my uncle's house, he'd clear the dresser, set out candles, don a simple stole, and pull out a mini sacramentary and celebrate "the new Mass" for his family, much as he would have during his Navy chaplain days during WWII. If the folks in the photo found God in the kitchen TLM, then who am I to judge and mazeltov. And if some experience God in visions, God bless, just discern carefully. But I think what you experience as a silent indifference looks a whole lot like holiness from here.
What if after Jesus, Abba, having spoken the perfect, final Word, has no further use for words, and instead communicates in hugs? What if the Spirit blows where she may among the gathering to foster the work of the Kin-dom? What if where two or three are gathered, he's there, really there as promised, even if we're not quite feeling it?
Dethrone belief in favor of trust, and trust the gathering with open hands and heart. If Jesus is distant I doubt you'll find him in transcendence and doctrine. He can be found in the little way, in trust, in surrender.
BTW, if that was the Regal gun range, y'all were about two minutes from my house.