On Leaping

Now, I know that two weeks ago I'd said I had returned to blogging. Unfortunately, I've been lax. Oh, Discipline, why are we not yet friends? Anywise, here's my thought for the week:

Most everyone has a cool cousin, someone super awesome at all times. Mine is a great out-doorsy type: he's rock climbed in Patagonia, ridden his bike down the Western seaboard, rafted the Grand Canyon several times, and led Outward Bound wilderness excursions for 50 days at a time. He told me story a while ago about a visit to Guatemala. He was backpacking around Latin America and visiting all the places I wasn't cool enough to see when I was down there for a month that same summer. One of the places he went was a system of caverns.

There are tour guides who take groups of people through these caves by candlelight. In places they wade through water, there are all sorts of creeping things about, and they squeeze through tight cracks and such.

Well that looks neat.

Cave spiders? Not so much.

At any rate, he said that they got to one point where the guide gathered them all together and had them blow out their candles so that they were in complete darkness. Then the guide took them each one by one to a place in the dark and said "Jump." He didn't say jump over or jump through or jump up or jump down. He just said "Jump." So my cousin jumped. He said it felt like he fell 8 or 10 feet and landed in water, which sucked him under and shot him into a river outside the cave.

I think about this story all the time. When I heard it, my first thought was, 'Isn't that a lot like faith?' We're lead to a place in the dark and we hear a voice we do not know say "Jump," and we're faced with a choice: to trust that voice without any assurance or vision of where it will lead, or to back away and stay in the dark, where it isn't comfortable, but at least we can feel the ground. What do we allow to rule our lives? Trust or fear?

They say that priests preach first to themselves, and it strikes me how much this story touches the nerve of one of my many habitual sins, which is to try to understand everything before committing, in the attempt to control all possible outcomes. If I can just see and understand all ends, I can choose correctly. It is a perpetual failure of mine to believe that I can choose my way to Heaven. But this thought neglects the leaping that is fundamental to the life of faith.

Goodbye, cruel world! (Why hello, nice ocean!)

Why is leaping fundamental to faith? Because it takes the ground out from under us. It is the surrender of the attempt at control. There will always be times that we meet with mystery, with our finitude, and need to make a choice, trusting in God's grace more than our own lights. That's why I've titled this entry "On Leaping," not "On the Leap." Despite what some of our beloved separated brothers and sisters may insist, there is no definitive personal proclamation of faith. Yes, you will leap, definitively, and then you will find that you must leap again. And again. And again. This is the life of faith, and if we continue to place our toes at the edge and trust that voice, it will be the life of growing in sanctity. Why? Because sanctity is nothing more than giving over our authority and control, and acknowledging Christ as the Lord of our hearts. Which is really the most freeing thing possible, because for such were we made. There is no freedom possible except the freedom for which we were made, which is the freedom to love. Anything less than love is a binding, a backing away from that edge, and a desire to remain in the dark where we can at least feel the walls, even if we can't see. And love itself will always be a leap in the dark, a trusting in the Mystery who is another person. So we need to ask ourselves: are we leaping?

On Love in a Free-Market Economy

My many and most humble apologies for my long absence from the Interwebosphere. I have emerged from the writing cave, with a first draft turned in and a second percolating away merrily. Happy Easter Week to you all and I pray that it is a most blessed time for you! My sister and 4-year-old nephew have been staying with me for the past two weeks, which has been awesome, but has cut into blog-time, on top of which I've unwisely added a nasty head-cold. But all said and done, I am returned. Now back to the thought provoking!

Being, as I am, a simple American, I have grown up with certain ideas. Hard work pays off. If I pay for a service, I have a right to receive it. 'Networking' is part of my vocabulary in the sense of making connections with people who will be able to help me achieve my goals. The ultimate dream is to retire early, with a respectable (read: large) sum of money and bum around, allowing myself all the experiences that work (read: responsibility) has kept me from having all these years.

What's that, ringing phones? I can't hear you from out here on my freaking windsurfing board. Perhaps you could leave me a  message? I'm sure I'll get back to you as soon as fun stops being fun.

These ideas are great! The only problem is that they're all about me. Not that I'm so terrible to think about (I mean, I have been working out... well, not really), but also not the best. That is, these sorts of ideas may help to form me in "succeeding" in American society, but they ultimately point back to me. All the goals formed by these ideas will be based on my thoughts, my opinions, my desires, and especially an 'economic' view of relationships. That is, if I give you something, I expect and deserve something in return.
This is a fine model when applied to business (the basis of it, in fact), but when applied to relationships, it's not so helpful. In fact, it's probably the easiest and fastest way to frustration and despair.

I LOVE YOU MONEY DOG WHY WON'T YOU PLAY WITH ME???

Why? Because unfortunately for folks like me with analytical minds and an eye toward the mathematical, when math is applied to love, it dies. Well, one or the other must die: either the math must go or the love will.  Here's what I mean by 'relationship math': doing things in order to be loved. Now first, please do not take me to mean that a relationship is not give-and-take. Of course it is. But a loving relationship is give-and-take precisely because both parties are giving, and they take what the other has given in humility, not because they have earned it. Something that is earned is payment, but love is always a gift.

What it comes down to in the end is control. If we believe that we deserve the love we are given, it must be a result of something we have done, that is, it again points back to us. If we can do something in order to receive love, then we are ultimately in control and love is not a matter of gift, but of receipt.

A few years ago, I went to a cousin of mine's high school play (they were doing one-acts that the students had written). In one of them, depicting a first date, the boy leans in for a kiss just after dinner. The girl, surprised, says, "What are you doing?!" The boy responds, "Well, I just bought you dinner, so I figured..." Wrong idea, son. That ain't love.

Here is where this all becomes rather terrifying: when this is applied to God, we can get caught up in the arithmetic of it all, making up a spreadsheet, with what we've done right on one side and what we've done wrong on the other. Then we spend our days in frustration trying to make the good side outweigh the bad side. 'This is a good act, but how good is it? Is it enough?' 'This was a bad act, but how bad? How many of my good acts does it cancel out?' This will leave us in one of two places: if we are like Flannery O'Connor's Misfit in "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," we'll be filled with anger and frustration:

"I said long ago, you get you a signature and sign everything you do and keep a copy of it. Then you'll know what you done and you can hold up the crime to the punishment and see do they match and in the end you'll have something to prove you ain't been treated right. I call myself The Misfit," he said, "because I can't make what all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment."

On the other hand, we can be filled with despair because we can see that nothing we do is enough to earn God's love. But this is as it should be. Nothing we can do is enough to earn God's love because God's love cannot be earned. It is gift. Realizing that it is not dependent on our actions means that all control is taken away from us; it is ultimately an act of humility to accept God's love because it is given to us in abundance, completely without our ability to control. Love is the antithesis of control. Love bursts the thought that we are self-sufficient and capable of ordering our world according to our own desires and powers. Love confronts us with what-is-not-ourselves, or it is not love.
Now, I do not mean to argue that our actions are meaningless - of course our actions have great meaning, especially when they are genuine expressions of our personhood. But it is not that we act in a good way in order to be loved by God. Rather we act good (we are good) in response to the fact that we are already loved. John O'Donnell, SJ, wrote a book on Hans Urs von Balthasar's theology, and in one chapter he wrote,

"Those who begin to love perforce cease to worry about their own happiness, are no longer concerned with merit, and even forget about heaven for themselves. Their whole being is caught up in the fact that everything is gift."

This may sound silly, but when we love, even salvation no longer matters. If salvation is the primary goal of our actions, this will devolve into that arithmetic that kills love. This is the point of saying that the goal of faith is not an event or a destination, but a person, Jesus Christ. It is not that we are striving simply to enter the heavenly realm

ROAD TRIP!!!!

Rather, we are striving to encounter and be caught up in the love of Jesus, in the Holy Spirit, through the power of God the Father. This was the insight of St. Therese, who promised to "spend her Heaven doing good on earth." Why? Because she longed to be with Christ, who is present with us here and now. I think when we fall into a "Heaven's my destination" type of mindset, we think that we get to check out and leave this world behind. But it's not about escape, it's not about rejecting this world, it's not even about reward - it's about submission, about allowing ourselves to be loved, which means giving up control, being humble before the blast of God's love, and loving in response. But do not despair. The math went out the door with the Cross.

"Our sins are as a drop of water, flung into the furnace of God's love."

Update

Sorry all, as I mentioned about 10 or 11 weeks ago, I'm in the midst of writing my MA (though not actually pen-to-paper yet: hopefully that'll be tomorrow). It's become quite urgent (I received an email from my director yesterday morning informing me to have a first draft turned in next Thursday - eep!) so I will not be able to do any in-depth posting until after next week. Final stats: 138 pages of direct quotes which I typed out while reading 36 books, articles, and speeches, ranging from Benedict XVI's "Address to Artists" to the 120-odd page intro to von Balthasar's massive The Glory of the Lord. All that to be boiled down into a coherent paper of some sort. Good luck to me! See y'all on the other side!

- Inkler in the Dark

P.S. Prayers are, of course, always appreciated. May the work be for the glory of God!

This is what I imagine happens during the writing of a thesis intended for God's glory.  What actually happens is probably more akin to Flannery O'Connor's statement about the experience of writing a novel: "Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay." Remember to check my teeth the next time you see me, which won't be until I emerge bleary-eyed and pale from the writing chamber. Ta! 

Placeholder

So I've been kicking around an idea for a post for a couple of weeks now but I haven't really had time to sit down and bang it out (whaaaaaat? Things are busy at work?!). It should be one of the more important ones I've written so far so I want to get it right. Way back in the beginning of the blog, though, I did promise some poetry or short stories as I saw fit, so this week I'll be sharing a poem I wrote on Ash Wednesday. Hope you like!


The Tomb, the Beast, the Sea (On the Occasion of Ash Wednesday, 2012)

The priest hunched, with ash-blacked thumb,
Comfortable and sheepish in his jeans and
Tennis shoes, murmuring,
Hands hovering over the gifts.

What am I? The ash that clung
To the corpse of Lazarus come forth,
Or the heart that beat blood anew, coursing that
Thumb with life?

Am I Peter, shirtless, with garment tucked,
in the midst of the leap,

Or am I Jonah, foot-splayed on the roiling deck?
Weeping -
at my foolishness,
weeping -
at the Love in which I am caught,
the Love that reaches me out
in the great gape of the beast,

that reaches me out
in the salt spray of the deep.

No, I am Peter, foot-deep in the swell,
Eyes on Him.

But for how long?

How long til I slip
And He reach his hand for me,
To grasp me in the crook of his staff,

In that goodness and kindness
which hound me relentlessly?

The priest straightened,
And with the ash, the thumb, the wheat,
I am raised,

Caught up in the tomb, the beast, the sea,
Caught up in Him
Who catches, catches,

And catches.

Ah, but is this not Lent?

On Desolation, Hope, and Mumford and Sons' "Feel the Tide"

As those who know me know, I love Mumford. I love their lyrics, I love their sound, I wish I could play banjo like they do.

Look at how freakin' cool these guys are. I would never wash my hair again and wear vests every day if it got me to be this cool.

I recently came across a b-side of theirs called "Feel the Tide," which is included on the deluxe version of their fantastic "Sigh No More." I'll give you the lyrics (from songmeanings.net, so any errors are the fault of that site, ha!), then my interpretation of it (and it's a doozy!):

Feel the Tide
She sits him down in a stiff chair
Rubs his back and strokes his hair
Telling him it's okay to cry
But he just sits and stares
The merciless moon outside
Has nothing now he's come to realise
Only the desolation he feels
The cold distance inside

But you and I now
We can be alright
Just hold on to what we know is true
You and I now
Though it's cold inside
Feel the tide turning

While the priest just sits and weeps
Lamenting the fact that he can see
Darkness and light in so much detail
He has given himself over
Refusing what he knows to be real
He turns away from every meal
Starving himself of goodness
He doesn't think he can heal

But you and I now
We can be alright
Just hold on to what we know is true
You and I now
Though it's cold inside
Feel the tide turning

"What if I lost all I had?"
Said the stranger to his dad
And the witness was confused
He can't tell what is bad
Instead he runs up to the nearest girl
And he comments on her glorious curls
Says, "Darling come with me
I'll show you a whole new world"

But you and I now
We can be alright
Just hold on to what we know is true
You and I now
Though it's cold inside
Feel the tide turning

So there it is, and here's what I understand of it (yes, I was an English major way back when):

The speaker is the same throughout the song - he's pointing at various examples of loss of hope, but with hope still beating, however frail.

First verse: the man is in desolation and can't even connect with his emotions anymore (she tells him it's okay to cry, but he just sits and stares). Even the moon has lost its meaning - in desolation, we believe that nothing is meaningful and never can be again. BUT the important part is that the woman is consoling him. Here there is hope. The relationship has not been severed, and she will stroke his back and hope for him.

Aww, cheer up, Johnny!

Chorus: hope lives even when it cannot be seen or felt. We feel cold inside, but hold on to what you believe, the tide is about to turn (this is like the old proverb, "The night is always darkest just before the dawn.") When hope seems totally lost, it still lives.

Second verse: the priest. This reminded me of Eleanor Rigby ("Fr. McKenzie, writing the words to a sermon that no one will hear. No one comes near. Look at him working, darning his socks in the night when there's nobody there"; "Fr. McKenzie, wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave. No one was saved"). The important part about Eleanor Rigby is that it looks at the mystery of human existence and asks us to look with it ("Look at all the lonely people - where do they all come from? Where do they all belong?), and if the song is successful, the listener realizes that the lonely people come from the same place they do, and belong to them (the listener). In fact, the listener is one of the lonely people, yet is also consoled in that we are all lonely people. We are all displaced, and we all belong.

This is something like confession: confession is the willed displacement of self, the admission of guilt in order to again belong to that family to which we already belong.

Here with Mumford, we see a priest who is deeply aware of the darkness and the light, and weeps in the face of it. But he doesn't only weep at the detail of the dark, he also weeps at the detail of the light. This, I think, is correct: we should weep in sorrow at the dark, and weep in joy and longing at the light. But here the priest has failed in the courage it takes to confront the dark and light (he laments that he can see it - in the courage of holiness, we must confront the dark and allow ourselves to be continuously confronted by the light). So failing in this goodness, he rejects the meal (fellowship, but also maybe an echo of Eucharist?) which he knows to be real, but which he cannot believe he can ever be healed enough to accept. This is desolation - the loss of hope, the complete disbelief in any possibility of restitution. Yet there is also hope! Because he still knows the truth even though he can't feel it, he can see the darkness and the light, and he still weeps. These are all doors, or windows, or cracks in his heart that the Thief may use.

Third verse: this one's a bit convoluted - there are 3 people here I think. The stranger - is he a stranger to his own father? or a stranger to the witness? I like the thought of him being called a stranger to his dad - in that sense we're dealing with estrangement, but also hope (he's turning to his dad in his need, in his fear of losing all). So estrangement, but also hope for restitution. But maybe the most important point between these two is that it is the fear of loss that brings them back together - suffering, even the thought of loss of what we love, can breed restitution, reconciliation. This is the Paschal mystery - it is in our suffering that we can be healed, in our dying that we can be raised. Here the stranger is dying to whatever pride or hurt that separated him from his father, and asking his father to again be his father.

I've always been reminded of the Prodigal Son by another one of Mumford's great lines: "It's not the long walk home that will change this heart of mine, but the welcome I receive at the return."

But the witness is confused at this hope for resurrection. He can't understand how a stranger can again become unstrange to his father.  He continues to cling to what he knows, which is to stay on the surface - he runs to the first girl he sees and invites her into what can only be a superficial relationship (he comments on her curls and offers a rather tired pick up line). He doesn't know what is bad - he's too confused by his refusal to understand the redemptive aspect of suffering, so he remains in the world of self-centered pleasure-seeking. But there is also some small sliver of hope here: her curls truly are glorious - she truly is beautiful. Glory is never something that allows one to stay on the surface, but reaches out to them, confronts them, and demands a response.

My boy, H. Urs von B.:
"There is a moment when the interior light of the "eyes of faith" becomes one with the exterior light that shines from Christ, and this occurs because man's thirst, as he strives and seeks after God, is quenched as he finds repose in the revealed form of the Son."

There is danger of the despair of only staying on the surface, of missing the fact that this girl is truly beautiful, in herself, but also hope that there can be true connection, true intimacy. Why? Because there is glory in her. There is Christ in her, by virtue of His love.

Chorus again: but you and I, we are acquainted with all of this. We know the dark, we know the cold, but don't lose hope, even when your hope is gone. The tide is about to turn. But not only that - the answer is here too: good ol' Marcus is not just telling us that the tide is about to turn. He's also telling us to feel the tide turning. In other words, begin to already feel what is about to happen. It may not even be happening yet, but begin to feel it. This is like St. Thomas, who said "If you wish be virtuous, act as if you already are." If you wish the tide to turn from despair to hope, feel it already doing so.

Credit where it's due.

Response to a Recent Statement Made by Some John Carroll Faculty Members in Support of the HHS Mandate

Hello all, sorry to invade your house with politics on an otherwise beautiful Thursday morning, but this seemed an appropriately important issue. Two days ago a number of John Carroll (my alma mater of happy memory) faculty members issued an open letter to Fr. Niehoff, S.J., the president of the university, asking him to make a public statement in support of the administration's revision of the HHS mandate concerning the coverage of contraception. Desiring to issue my own open letter in response, your faithful Inkler sent a message first to Fr. Niehoff (president@jcu.edu), then to all of the faculty members who had signed the statement. The full text is below. While my tone is often negative, I do sincerely hope that the points I made are valid, and that they may further discussion (as Flannery O'Connor has said, in a deaf world, one has to shout in order to be heard). I'll try to get back to posting as normal in the next day or so. Peace!

Date: Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 4:33 PM
Subject: The Recent Statement Regarding the HHS Mandate Made By Some Members of the John Carroll Faculty
To: president@jcu.edu


Fr. Niehoff,

I am sorry to be contacting you regarding this, but I am even more sorry to have to. I am an alumni of John Carroll (class of '07), and was extremely disappointed to have seen this article which lists a number of Carroll faculty members and expresses several opinions that can only be defined as negligently ignorant:

1) The undersigned faculty members support the HHS "compromise." In fact this is not a compromise at all - a careful reading of the administration's wording shows it to actually be a widening of the original mandate. Whereas the original mandate allowed for a narrowly defined exemption for those working for a "religious employer," the revision mandates contraception coverage for all employees, regardless of who their employer is.

2) Just a side point: while the revision does not require the Church as an institution to pay for this coverage, it undeniably violates the conscience of the individual - by mandating that insurance companies (which, after all, are run by human persons who also have consciences) cover this additional "health care" with no co-pay, the administration is in effect demanding that the insurance companies simply raise the cost of coverage for all of their covered members (i.e., the cost will be passed along to those who are supposedly getting this coverage for "free" - both those who object to the morality of this coverage and those who do not). There is no other way of understanding this mandate than saying that it will force people, even against their own conscience, to pay for operations and contraceptives which are objectionable on religious, moral, and even anthropological grounds.

3) The undersigned faculty states "We, the faculty of John Carroll University named below, are committed to freedom of conscience and religious liberty... However, we also believe that access to contraception is central to the health and well being of women and children." There are a number of things wrong with this statement. I'll list two:
       
3.1) The commitment to freedom of conscience applies in all cases, not merely those with which a person (or even a group of persons) agrees. That would be logically untenable. That is, the undersigned faculty cannot logically hold both positions at once - it comes down to effectively saying "I support freedom of conscience, except where there is something else which I judge to be more important." In other words, "I support the freedom of other people's consciences except where those people's consciences disagree with mine." Another way of looking at it: a person is smoking a cigarette. The research into the adverse effects of smoking on the health of the smoker finds undeniably that smoking is harmful in the vast majority of cases. Knowing this (that is, my conscience having been formed in this way), I still cannot demand that that person stop smoking, nor can I expect the government to mandate that insurance companies provide "free" emphysema and/or lung transplant and/or heart disease treatments by raising everyone's cost. It is that individual's choice to smoke, and it is not society's responsibility to cover the ill effects of the individual's choice. 

3.2) That being said, we're dealing with a point of absolutely fundamental disagreement: the undersigned faculty claim that access to contraception is "central to the health and well being of women and children." Why? Because pregnancy has here been implicitly redefined as a disease. I understand that they are merely agreeing with the statements of the various governmental agencies they cite, but citing agencies that are making statements to justify their own actions does not excuse these faculty members from examining the issue with their own consciences. It is morally abhorrent and gravely insulting to human dignity to suggest that pregnancy is a disease. What is equally disconcerting is that two of the undersigned are professors of bioethics, who at the very least ought to have an understanding of the implications of such a position.

4) "The fact that the bishops have rejected the accommodation offered by the administration leads us to wonder what motivates their continued resistance." This statement is shocking in its ignorance and frustratingly disappointing to find it coming from people who are supposed to be teaching. The bishops' motives are nothing other than what they have stated them to be - the defense of 1) the First Amendment of the United States Constitution which protects the freedom of the individual's conscience (this is an issue far wider than the Catholic Church - it is a legal question first as to how the Constitution itself may be applied) and 2) the dignity of the human being, whether they be female or male, adult or child, inside the womb, or outside of it (and no, one should not have to engage in a debate with faculty members at a Catholic university over what constitutes a "human being" - this ought to be a complete non-issue). To suggest that the bishops have any other motives than what they have repeatedly and publicly stated is nonsensical and paranoid. 

5) "The American bishops have accused the Obama administration of attacking religious liberty in mandating insurance coverage of contraception. On the contrary, we believe the insurance mandate is driven by a concern for women’s health." Undoubtedly a concern for women's health ought to be a primary issue, but this concern must first of all be directed toward her health, not motivated by some other concern. The idea that pregnancies are to be considered harmful is simply a redefinition of what "health" means. The secondary idea that the only way to avoid unplanned pregnancies is through the use of contraceptives is morally repugnant and presents a picture of human volition that is grossly at odds with that presented by the Church. Unfortunately for this line of argument, the issue here is not what motivates the mandate. The issue is what the effects of the mandate will be, which is precisely what the bishops are concerned with.

6) "We believe that the faculty and the administration of John Carroll University need to take a stand in the face of the bishops’ unwillingness to accept the accommodation offered by the Obama administration." I'm not going to address this one in depth because it is absurd and betrays a surprising ignorance of the structure of the Catholic Church. If the bishops were teaching something contrary to Catholic teaching or something that in any other way violated the consciences of the faithful, then yes, a "stand" would be necessary. Neither of these is the case. 

7) "We thus ask that, along with the presidents of other Catholic and Jesuit universities, you urge the bishops to avoid the inflammatory rhetoric they have been using to attack the administration’s policy." Two points:

7.1) Even a cursory look at the statements made by Notre Dame College and the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (to which, undoubtedly, John Carroll already belongs and is therefore already included under) shows that they are not simple acceptances of the administration's revision. While they both applaud the administration's willingness to compromise (note: this is actually a slap in the face of the administration, who refused to use the term "compromise," preferring "accommodation" to avoid the appearance of backing down in the face of criticism), both statements end by acknowledging that there are still significant issues (the AJCU statement calls them "details") which need to be resolved. In both instances, what is commended is the administration's (real or imagined) willingness to enter into discourse, not the content of the accommodation itself.

7.2) "Inflammatory statements" - This is itself an inflammatory and accusatory statement and, unsupported as it is, has no place in this letter.

8) "We ask that you stand up to those who would play politics with women's health." Again, two things:

8.1) "Playing politics" is a surprising oversimplification of the bishops' position that can only be the result of willful ignorance. This is not a political issue: on the one hand it is a legal issue, and on the other it is a moral issue. Trying to make it simply an issue of politics is a refusal to see the implications of the action.

8.2) This statement is again itself inflammatory by implying that the bishops have little or no regard for issues of women's health. This is simply and patently false.

9) Lastly, while the tenor of this letter from the undersigned faculty is respectful in tone, it is, in principle and intention, deeply divisive. The undersigned members of the faculty are explicitly asking you to initiate and encourage further division within the Church, on the apparent belief that the Church is run as a sort of democracy. As you well know, it is not. The Church is concerned with Truth, not with opinions, however learned they may be. 

Fr. Niehoff, I appreciate your efforts to run a truly Catholic university. When you became president, I was one of those excited by your stated intention to further John Carroll's "Catholic identity." I also appreciate and support the freedom of the faculty members to state their beliefs. The appropriate manner and forum of such statements is open for discussion, but the fact that John Carroll is a Catholic University means that it must publicly support the position of the Church herself. Thank you for your leadership in this matter.


Sincerely,


Inkler in the Dark


(just kidding, I used my real name).

On the Polar Bear, and the Plunge

Happy Lent! Or, as our brothers and sisters in the East would call it, happy Great Lent! Content with being a Westerner myself, there is nevertheless something about the exuberance and one-up-manship of the East that continuously snags at my heart.

It's not possible for me to look at the Bridegroom without longing, that pre-eminent language of the heart.

In this same spirit of exuberance, five friends and I rose early last Ash Wednesday, met at the church, drove the 20 minutes down to Lake Erie, and took ourselves a plunge in the pre-dawn, sub-40 degree swill (for all you non-Clevelanders: over at a great little concert club called the Beachland Ballroom, the water jug in the bar is marked "Lake Erie Cocktail." This is a joke because no one in their right mind would ever drink anything that came out of that huge hole in the ground). Why did we do this? Good question: we really only hit the water for less than a minute, spent a few minutes congratulating ourselves, then went our separate ways, I to the job, hair still slick with the brine. So what was the point?
Certainly I asked myself the same thing as I picked the sand  from between my toes a bit later. The reasons one of my friends had given me the night before in our feverish "should we or shouldn't we?" debate were: 1) act of penitence to kick off the Lenten season and 2) act of community (shared suffering nearly always has an odd community-building effect). These two reasons were appropriately Lenten, but I think there's a third one, which is perhaps only secretly Lenten, but nevertheless reveals the heart of the season, and that is that same exuberance and one-up-manship we find in the East.
There is something so spiritually enlivening about moving to the excessive. Why? Because it is in response to Christ, who has first been excessive in his love, prodigal even, pouring it out upon us, who so often allow it to be wasted. But if Christ is excessive, exuberant in this outpouring, then this is love. That is, God, who is love, shows us what love is by showing us himself, in Christ and in the movement of the Spirit throughout history, drawing us to Him.
So love is excessive, exuberant, constantly longing to go beyond, to be larger, to give oneself more. That is the secret at the heart of Lent: not that we are terrible and sinful and unworthy, but that even in our terrible, sinful unworthiness, Christ goes beyond. This season is emphatically and above all not about us. It is in fact about something much greater than us: it is about us and Christ, but even more centrally, it is about Christ, who through the Holy Spirit beckons us to communion with the Father.
What does this mean? It means that this season of longing, of seeking the Bridegroom, is not about punishing ourselves, as if such a thing could be pleasing to the One who loves us (think about it: say you are a parent and one day one of your children comes to you and says, "I love you so much that I am going to punch myself in the face every day just to prove it." Your response would rightly be a rather high level of alarm).

No - fasting is not about punishment, but about longing. We give up what is right and good (e.g., being warm and dry on a Wednesday morning in February) in order to remember that there is something even more important than us. Life is not just the avoidance of pain. In fact, life often necessitates pain - ask any mother about giving birth. A woman does not give birth in order to punish herself, but to go beyond, in the excessiveness of love, to open her heart to a new person, a new life. A father does not give himself to his wife and his children in order to punish himself, but in order to continuously break his heart further open in the prodigality of love.
That is what this season is about - to shatter the attachments of our hearts like the glass that they are, to allow the Holy Spirit to breathe a heart of flesh into our chests, and to allow that heart to beat in unison, in union, with the very heart of Christ.
So why a polar bear plunge into the nigh-on toxic waters of Erie? It was an excess, an exuberance, a going-beyond what is expected, to give even more than what is demanded. It was only an action, yes, but so is an embrace, a hand on the shoulder of a suffering friend, or the uttering of those three words. It was a longing to be engaged in the great romance for our souls that God is even now pursuing. May our Lents be the same - full of fasting, full of longing, full of actions of excess, of overflowing love, and of knowing ourselves, even here in the desert, to be pursued, down the nights and down the days, by the scenting of the Hound.