Receiving the Gifts

This time of year, everybody is giving thanks for things. What's worse, some of us are writing about giving thanks for things. I apologize in advance for participating in this.

It was the phrase "giving thanks" that got me thinking. There are two giftings implied in every thankful exchange: first, the original gift, and second, the gift of thanks in return.

One possible interpretation of the double-gifting is that giving and thanksgiving are transactional. You know the feeling: someone gives you something, and you feel like you have to say "thanks" for it. If someone gives you a "gift," you "pay" for it by giving thanks. Unfortunately, if this compulsion is at the root of the phrase "thanksgiving," this would mean that neither the original gift nor the thanks were in fact given. They were both purchased, reducing the giving of thanks to obligatory remuneration. If this is how we understand thanksgiving--a required payment for every gift--the whole possibility of giving as a un-self-conscious sacrifice disappears. 

But thanksgiving--both the holiday and the act--isn't seen as primarily transactional. It's not something obligatory, any more than kissing your beloved is obligatory. It's something you ought to do, without it becoming compulsory.

This realm of actions we really must do without being compelled to do them is where things get fuzzy. Just think about it for a minute: we ought to do it, and in some ways we feel like we have no choice. But it's not compulsory. We are not forced to give thanks.

So back to the double gifting. If it's not an exchange of things--gift in return for thanks--what is it? What is the relationship between these two given things, if not transactional?

St. Anselm has a lot to say about gift-giving in his treatise On the Fall of the Devil. The gift in question here is perseverance in righteousness. It's a scholastic treatise, so it winds around a bit in miry bogs of philosophy, but the point is contained in this splendid sentence: "It's possible for non-giving not to be the cause of not-receiving, even if giving were always the cause of receiving." To interpret, St. Anselm is saying that the words "gift" and "give" are chock-full of double actions. A gift is not fully given until it is received. Something cannot be given, even with the most generous of intentions, if it will not be taken.

It seems to me that thanksgiving plays the role of marking the moment the gift is fully given (by being received). It doesn't symbolize an exchange, something given in return for a gift, but the act of receiving the gift fully. Think about the Eucharist, which is actually the etymological source for our word "thanksgiving." It's a reception of a gift, called thanksgiving.

So go and receive your gifts! Let them be given fully by receiving them fully in thanksgiving!

Happy thanksgiving. 

Christ the King Sunday

This year Christ the King Sunday falls on the Feast Day of St. John of the Cross. It also marks the end of the Year of Faith called for by Pope Benedict. The intersection of these three events in the calendar of the Church is pretty wonderful. Here are a few of my thoughts on today.

Christ the King Sunday: the last of the ordinary Sundays after Pentecost in the liturgical calendar. The journey that began in May is nearing its end. This Sunday we meditate on the nature of Christ as King of heaven and earth, on His triumph in inaugurating the Kingdom of God on earth, and on His promise to complete that Kingdom and bring peace to all creation--simply put, we meditate on the end of the world.

The encyclical Quas Primas (which means "in the first," or "the thing that causes") is the most deliberate consideration of the Feast of Christ the King. In it, Pope Pius XI says, "As long as individuals and states refuse to submit to the rule of Our Savior, there would be no really hopeful prospect of a lasting peace among nations." The peace of Christ is not simply a political peace or a social peace. It is not a semblance of political order imposed over fomenting human souls, like the Pax Romana at the time His birth. Christ promises not the wearying notion of a perpetual, unstable peace between democracies motivated by self-interest, as Kant predicates in Perpetual Peace. The peace of Christ is a permeating spiritual peace that fundamentally changes the conditions of life on earth, so the political and social peace become the only conceivable relation between people. Political and social turmoil are symptoms; Christ the King (like Tolkien's healer-king Aragorn) will heal the disease, all the way to the soul.

The celebration of Christ the King is not one-dimensional glorying in the promise of the Kingdom to come, however. Quas Primas makes a magnificent observation:

          "[Christ's] kingdom is opposed to none other than to that of Satan and to the power of    
           darkness. It demands of its subjects a spirit of detachment from riches and earthly things, and
           a spirit of gentleness. They must hunger and thirst after justice, and more than this, they must
          deny themselves and carry the cross."

In other words, those loyal to Christ's Kingdom are not entitled to hate. Often, political and national loyalty are most easily expressed in hatred of other regimes and nationalities; we are held together not by our love of what we are, but by our distaste and hatred for what we are not. But we as Christians are not given this path of easy loyalty. We cannot hate Satan's instruments on earth, nor can we despise those who have succumbed to the power of darkness. Christ's kingship is predicated on the Cross, an act of love for those who oppose Him. If we are to be loyal citizens of His Kingdom, we must also follow in this way of the Cross.

St. John of the Cross was a 16th century monk who suffered cruelly at the hands of non-Christians and Christians alike. He was imprisoned and tortured by his own order of Carmelites, some of whom felt threatened by his attempts to reform the order. After his escape, he began publishing mystical writings and poems that invariably examine the nature of God's love. In an unwitting but apt summary of his own life, St. John of the Cross said, "Where there is no love, put love--and you will find love."

This is an exquisite expression of the kingship of Christ. Where there was no love, He came and brought love, at the cost of His own life. Where there is no love now, He commissions His followers to take love, sometimes at the cost of their lives. This is the spread of His dominion.

Today also marks the end of the Year of Faith proclaimed by Pope Benedict XVI. The Year of Faith "is a summons to an authentic and renewed conversion to the Lord, the one Savior of the world," he said in his letter "Porta Fidei" (The Door of Faith). It is a summons to reaffirm our citizenship in the Kingdom of Christ, and to honor that citizenship with deeds appropriate to that Kingdom. St. John of the Cross is an inspiring example of what citizenship in Christ's Kingdom looks like. But his life and writings, as all examples, point us back to the Door of Faith Himself: Christ, the King whose coronation was the Cross. 

So today ends the proclaimed Year of Faith. Today also is the last Sunday of Ordinary Time. Today, we cast our eyes forward to the end of the world: Christ's Kingdom spread over every corner of creation. But every "end" in the liturgy is not an ending at all. The liturgy is a cycle; we cannot come to the end without coming to a new beginning. Next Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent, the great march towards the initiation of the redemption: the Incarnation. Similarly, the Year of Faith cannot really end until our faith becomes sight at the end of time. But even that will be simply the new beginning. Christ said, "Behold, I make all things new." This is the promise of the Kingdom of Christ, and it is the duty of the citizens of that Kingdom to participate in this promise by seeking, through the renewing power of love, to spread the great news of the King and to look forward in faith to the second Advent, and the beginning of all things. 

I Am In Need of Music...

Today I bought a piano from a Craigslist posting my roommate saw a few weeks ago. It's a 60s-era Kimball upright, small and delicate. I chatted with the man I bought it from for quite a while--he was a conversational, cheerful fellow. It belonged to his mother years ago in New York. It grew up on the LES, on E Houston Street, I think he said. She bought it because she was seeing a musician, and she thought it might be nice to have him play on it. Well, the man didn't stick but the piano did. It moved from the 4th-story walk-up out to Arizona in the 80s, I think.

He was selling it because his mother passed away, and he recently got divorced. His wife and children moved to Texas and she remarried. He said he'd kept it thinking that maybe his daughter would learn to play, but that wasn't going to happen now, so he might as well sell it.

As we were loading it, he said, "I'm so glad it's going to a good home. I'm so glad you're going to take care of it." Then, as we were getting ready to drive away, he patted the slim little front leg and said, "I'm going to miss it, you know. It's sort of like a baby to me. I'm going to miss it."

Now it is sitting in my living room, badly in need of a tune but otherwise in beautiful shape. I look at it and think about those days in New York, with merry young people in the heyday of the 60s, and how much splendid, brash life it saw then. I think about the move to Phoenix when it was still an infant city, and how the instrument must have mellowed as the New Yorker settled and raised children and passed it on to her son. I wonder about the sweet early married days and the children, and the split, and the long long decision of finally parting with it for a trifle. I wonder if the room feels emptier tonight, with the symbol gone and all the memories floating about with nowhere to settle. But I'm glad he told us, and passed the piano on to us, and I will try to remember for him.

Book the World

I have this game called "Shakespeare Words" for the students. It varies from grade level to grade level, so it's always a little different. One of the great things about our students is that you can say "Shakespeare," and they have an instant associate of ideas with the name. They think of Romeo and Juliet, which they put on a few years ago, and Midsummer Night's Dream, from last year, and poetry and plays and humor and language. So when I told the 2nd graders we were going to play with Shakespeare words, they were instantly excited.

It's a simple game: take a word and see how many different parts of speech it can be. We played with our spelling words. A Shakespeare word is a word that works as a noun, a verb, or an adjective, depending on context. For example, chalk. "I have a piece of chalk" -- noun. "This is a chalk board" -- adjective. "I chalk the wall" -- verb. Shakespeare word. 

For 2nd graders, the challenge is to find Shakespeare words by using different words as different parts of speech. It's actually surprisingly hard; try to use the word man as at least three different parts of speech. You'll find that it is, in fact, a Shakespeare word, though a weak one because as an adjective it doesn't always lend much to the context. Fell was a big surprise, and became one of our favorites in composition assignments. I read plenty of inventive paragraphs about fell beasts and monsters during the weeks after fell. 

In 3rd grade, the game is a little different. The students are more confident with their basic usage, so the challenge is to actually create a Shakespeare word. It's wonderful to speak English (modern English; I'm not sure if Old English is as conducive to this game), where nouns are already packed with action and verbs are centrally focused on a thing. It's actually quite simple to slip a word into an unfamiliar usage. It just takes a little creativity. 

So we did a few practice rounds where I'd provide an example and the students would try to imitate. The example was "I chess you." I used a noun as a verb, but "chess" in that sentence conveys meaning as a verb. All of my students knew what I meant by that. It meant, "I defeat you in chess," or (my favorite interpretation by a thumotic student) "I triumph in chess over you." It's on its way to becoming an idiom in our classroom. We had a rash of imitation--"I leg you," "I war you," etc. We were getting the idea. 

Then one student raised her hand and said, "I've got one! I book the world." Everything stopped then to listen. She said it again. "I book the world." I asked her what she meant, then stopped her and asked her classmates what she meant. A student raised his hand and said that she meant she shut the world, the whole world, in the pages of a book. The rest of the class agreed; she meant that she took the world and put it in a book. I asked her if they had understood her correctly, and she said yes. 

I didn't know how to tell them, but at that moment, we watched poetry happen. We watched language, simple words that we all knew, take on a completely different form. We heard things that had never been heard before. My 8-year-old student said something new. She'd felt something universal--the longing to express reality in written form--and she'd used a fresh composition to communicate it purely and accurately to her listeners. 

It is a beautiful childlike hope, to put real things into a book, to word the world truly and well. It requires a conviction that the world is composed of real things that are worth knowing. But it also involves the childlike certainty that these things can in fact be known. Communication is based on faith, faith first that the world is able to be known, and then that it is able to be shared be rational minds. In this 8-year-old's boldness to accept the challenge of making something new, the whole classroom made a small step towards participating in the miracle of communication, towards putting real, true things into words and giving them to listeners. 

May we all have the boldness of this double faith, and may it give freshness and depth to our language towards each other in the quest to seek out the real nature of things and (not to be forgotten) to share this reality. May we book the world! 

Eye Has Not Seen

Seeds bubble and foam up from the flat
low land and spin out in wet wild galaxies
of life. The farmer looks. That 
is the wide unknown, hurling
the mind past the depths of the seas,
capturing (for Orion) the Pleiades...
there is the reckless mystery! Who needs
a submarine or a satellite to see marvels
when here from a speck of life pours
unseen,
unheard,
unfathomed glory.