The Man in the Moon

I really like the moon. Ask some of my friends, and they'll tell you my penchant for pointing out lunar phases. A good waxing gibbous gets me jacked, man.

Brett Dennen has a cool song, a love song of course, called "Just Like the Moon." Instead of telling a girl that she's like the sun, he says, "You light up the night, just like the moon." It isn't to say that she's not awesome enough to be the sun; it's a fun, subtler way to say that someone is a source of light.

The moon has so many cool things going on. It's orbit is locked-in so that it spins in just such a way that we see the same 180º of it all the time - hence the alluring and mysterious dark side (a misnomer because sometimes - specifically during new moon - the side we see is completely dark) of the moon that is unobservable from earth. The elliptical shape of its orbit causes it to mess with the earth's shape and cause the tidal effects of our waters. It orbits around the earth every 28ish days, and sometimes, a new moon will line up just right to eclipse the sun and give us the awesome spectacle of a solar eclipse.

The awe of the solar eclipse comes from the "new moon," which happens at the beginning of the lunar cycle. Since the moon is between the earth and the sun, only the side that we never see it lit up; we can only "see" the dark side. It doesn't really appear to us, especially since the new moon rises at sunrise and sets at sunset. But we know it's there. It's still effecting the tides. Even completely shrouded in darkness, it's still the same side of the moon we see at first quarter, full moon, and third quarter.

No matter if it's a little sliver of a waxing crescent or the just-less-than-full waning gibbous, the moon still gives us its bit of light, its tidal effect, and the awe of its place in the sky. And the completely dark moon that we can't really make out in the sky is called "new" - it's about to return to light; the visible section of the moon will grow from tiny sliver on its right corner to fully lit up. The light will return, never to go away forever.

Somehow, there's a metaphor for the presence of God in here. God is always with us; He comes to us in the Eucharist and is with us there and to the end of time through the Holy Spirit. However, not every glimpse we get of God's presence is the same.

It can be the full moon of the Eucharist, like the communion at mass or Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. It can be the little crescent of a brief prayer during your day. It can the first quarter of seeing someone do a random act of kindness from afar. It's not to say that every moment you become aware of God or His love can be related to a phase of the moon, and different moments may strike you differently each time.

An even cooler way to prolong this comparison is the idea of the moon in the sky. Even if the northern and southern hemispheres see different constellations and directions in the sky, the moon appears the same to everyone in the world. If the moon is full, I'll see it in Ireland from my sunset to my sunrise just as you in the US will later today. So, too, with Christ: he comes to us in the Eucharist to give the Body of Christ to the Body of Christ, no matter when or where. Christ transcends time and space, so we who make up His Body are connected in communion with all others celebrating this awesome mystery today, yesterday or 100 years ago, and tomorrow or 100 years from now. I see the same Christ in the Eucharist, in others, in Adoration, that you see in your lives of faith.

So when I'm far away, I can look at the moon and know that my loved ones all over the world see the same moon in the sky. And when I look to Christ in the mass and throughout my life, I see the same Christ you see; I am in the same Christ as you.

Oh, going to mass...

Sometimes (a lot of times?), the issue of going to mass seems to be the greatest one facing our Church and its believers, and lapsed believers.

Personally, I love mass, and I've never really had any time in my life when I've thought about suspending my attendance. I even made a habit of going to a daily mass once or so each week while I was in college, and here as part of community life, I go to daily mass almost every morning.

The question at this point for me is "what are you doing at mass?" I've been dealing with some feelings of getting "massed out" by the how often we go to mass. It's hit in little spats, but for the most part, I'm not plagued by it. Some weekends, the three masses in an 18-hour span can be a bit much, and that's the only major time I start to feel troubled.

We are here to bring an outside perspective of joy and commitment in our ministry, and we have to, sometimes tenuously, toe the line between accepting ingrained norms, whether "right" or "wrong," and challenging or reshaping them. Sometimes my place at the mass in the context of how I am trying live my faith and ministerial call here in this community gets skewed by questionable motivations.

We have a laptop that's connected to a projector, which enables us to project the lyrics to the music for mass, and we have added the new responses for mass to the slideshows, too. For one mass each weekend, I sit in a pew with no one else, just a computer, and run the slideshow of responses for a music-less mass. In addition, we take turns running the slideshow during masses with our choirs.

The issue isn't so much running the slideshow while trying to be present to the mass and/or the music we are leading - that comes with the territory of our job, and it's something we try to do with the most grace and focus that we can. The issue is moreso that I sometimes feel like an auditor, judging the confidence and unity of the congregation's response as I sit there administering the most helpful tool there really is toward learning the responses. We have this blessing of the laptop-projector system, but it doesn't create 100% unity. Some people can't snap out of the old words while others just space or blank on the changes. The repetition of doing this job has jaded my perspective, and I have trouble leaning toward giving the benefit of the doubt after months on end.

Part of is having to come to an extra mass just to press the spacebar 30 times in a half hour and struggling with finding it useful and necessary. It's affecting my desire to consider the beautiful cornucopia of motivations, inspirations, prayers, and pieties that people bring to mass and compile into the Body of Christ. I enjoy looking around to discover a wide array of humanity in the congregation, but the struggles with the new words, the task of running a slideshow, and the habitual indifference, laziness, or short attention span of people (sometimes I forget how I am thoroughly included in these categories) toward the words of the mass and our music (which is meant to be participated in by everyone!) skew my perspective of mass.

Then, I come to daily mass, where I am immersed in a sea of crusty, grey-haired piety. I am surrounded by people who could (and maybe do?) pray rosaries in their sleep and concelebrate the mass under their breaths, a gesture toward a lost piety of praying with the priest and for the prayers he speaks to be effective in inviting Jesus into our midst.

The mass can blow by too quickly sometimes - for example, the priest amalgamates the Gospel, homily, and Prayers of the Faithful into a tight unit that spills over into the preparation of altar. However, here I can look around and be less distracted, less jaded. Aside from lectoring once a week or so, my community and I are free of responsibilities for daily mass; we just go and be.

This morning, I found myself not only looking around but also look in and through the Eucharist. As ideas for continuing my career of ministry next year swirl - two exploratory/pre-interview conversations with retreat centers, a cover letter and resume sent on to a Catholic high school, an application to a service corps started by my favorite order, and an application for full tuition for an MAPS and a stipend-supported ministry placement - I was feeling around for a sense of those opportunities and their potential in the Eucharist. I spent most of the Eucharistic Prayer with my eyes closed and head bowed, reflecting upon the nature of these opportunities in light of the Church that they all share with me and the Eucharist before me right then and there.

I was finding bits of peace and light in the embarrassment of riches that are potentially in front of me in my formation, career, and life. I enjoyed how easily I could find that all in my heart, in my prayer. However, I have been trying to keep my foot on the brakes to keep myself firmly grounded in my current situation and the five months of work and life that remain here in Ireland.

A good friend of mine told me that she prays and thinks and reflects better in the environment of the mass. At times, it can feel too formal or feel boring or have music not everyone like. But the mass gives us a thorough, rich, broad, and deep opportunity to pray. The expanse of the Body of Christ provides so much of that for us, but that's not it. Even if I didn't do it as well as I could of, the Eucharist gives us room to see all at once the Body of Christ in the communities we've belonged to, the ones we celebrate with today, and the ones we will join with around the table in our futures. And there's more, between the opening and the sending forth rites and the richness of the Liturgy of the Word (sometimes, I feel like I kind of swing on a faith pendulum between being more drawn to the Word or the Eucharist, not in mutual exclusivity but in different ratios of complementarity).

The whole of the story is that there's no shortage of opportunity for frustration, criticism, distraction, and spacing out, for speaking, singing, and thinking, and for looking around, looking down, looking up, and looking within. And if you let that all happen honestly, offering yourself in good faith while trying to grow closer to God amid all the desolations and consolations, I'd say it all adds up to a helluva opportunity to be with God and grow closer to Him and build a better, stronger relationship. Sounds like pretty full prayer to me.

His Primary Point

I came across this opinion piece posted on CNN by a comedian/personality named Dean Obeidallah - I've never heard of him either, but that's no reason to discount him. Per usual, the headline of the piece was eye-catching and sucked me and many other readers in: Santorum wants to impose "Judeo-Christian Sharia." Ok, let's see.

Since Obeidallah opted to use such an extreme and loaded term to characterize Santorum's positions, I'll go ahead and label Obiedallah as a paranoid, polemic secularist who's out to insure that religion finds no place in politics. Ok, that's done now.

Read the short article for yourself before I launch into my reactions...

Obeidallah suggests Santorum's desire that legislated laws be in accordance with natural law - "a higher law" or "God's law" in Santorum's words - is on par with Sharia Law. He calls it "Judeo-Christian Sharia."

This is outlandish and wild, but I get it. The basic concept is the same for Santorum as for Islamic leaders: leaders of a country explicitly cite their religion in order to justify the laws they make. Straight forward enough. The problem comes when you realize that Obeidallah never affirms or advocates religion at all.

He goes after the specific ramifications of how Santorum's positions can be justified by his Christian faith and spells out the aftermath: rape victims have to carry the child to term; gay marriages would be annulled; no funding for birth control; outlawing pornography. I'm not saying I agree with all of these potential actions that a President Santorum would take (for example, I wish rape victims could be supported and helped in a way that would encourage and embolden them to have the child but it shouldn't ever be legally required). However, I give Santorum a lot of credit for asserting his faith and admitting outwardly that his positions on issues are informed by his faith.

The trouble comes when you realize not all of America is Christian. Even if a good majority of it is Christian, not everyone is. You can't legislate an official religion; you can't shove a form of belief down Americans' throats. Furthermore, it's dangerous to claim that you have a conclusive understanding of "God's law" and use that to produce layers of legislation.

However, to an extent, this country has a centuries-old tradition of a civil religion - a vaguely Christian, sort-of Deist God who benevolently protects the country and is invoked by its leaders, without tension, in times of trouble and joy alike. I couldn't articulate the specific correlating religion to that God, but surely, there is some kind of consensus Christian values and sensibilities that are inherent within it that Americans would affirm.

There are disagreements on specifics of beliefs and positions on social issues between religions, between denominations, and even within a specific denomination (yay Catholicism!). But there is a solid overlap in the middle of all these venn-diagram-circles. Again, I lack the grounding to specify what all is in there, but I'd venture to guess that most Americans - secularist, spirituals, atheists, and non-Christians - can get behind a lot of what's there in the middle.

My major beef with Obeidallah comes not with his connecting Santorum to Sharia Law and not even with his disgust toward the policy ramifications of Santorum's positions. My beef is that Obeidallah is hostile toward any influence of religion on political activity, and that's a horrible shame.

Goodness doesn't come from the thin air; it comes from our Creator God who made us in His image and gave us gifts and talents with the hope that we'd freely use them to share Love in our world and grow closer to each other and to Him.

To those who would demonize religion in such a way: criticize a candidate if you think the specifics of the way his religion influences his policy are alienating to American people, but don't fault a candidate for having faith and a religion. Fault yourself for attacking religion's influence on public and social life. Fault yourself for thinking that reason can stand alone and find ways to justify laws without faith or the Truth of God. Fault yourself for becoming too much of the world and demonizing the joy and light that others gain from faith in God and the community around them that joins together to celebrate and support one another.

My hope is that Obeidallah is actually a religious man and is just keeping his faith private. If so, if that's his principle, then good for him for sticking to his guns. But in a personal opinion piece complete with your thumbnail picture and biography, can you not even let your religion in then?