"Well You Have Met Me Now": The Sister and the Rapper

The latest viral video sensation is something you need to experience. The last time I checked, it had nearly twenty-five million views on YouTube (though the seventh million shouldn't really count because that was all just me. Heh.). An Ursuline Sister named Cristina Scuccia performed on the Italian version of the television talent show, The Voice, and the response from the judges and the audience was absolutely amazing. After watching the clip the first time (before I knew how to turn on the English subtitles), I was most struck with how quickly and willingly the audience embraced the habited young woman. She had barely sung a single note when suddenly everyone was on their feet cheering loudly. When her song ended, they chanted in unison the Italian word for sister, "Sor-ell-a! Sor-ell-a!" Clearly the state of the Church in Italy is way better shape than I thought. (Thank you, Pope Francis!) The next few (dozen) times that I watched it with the benefit of the dialogue following the song, I zeroed in on the judge she chose to be her coach, rapper "J-Ax". The profound transformation that he undergoes through Sister Cristina is one of the most inspiring things I've ever seen.

I pray that I am correct in assuming that everyone reading this knows what it is be deeply moved—to be electrified with light and joy through a direct encounter with beauty. I hope that when you read or hear the story of the Transfiguration of Jesus you can imagine what the three apostles experienced as they fell on their faces with awe and adoration. I hope that some event in your life made it easier for you to identify with Peter when he said, "It is good that we are here," and wanted to start worshiping right then and evermore. But have you ever actually watched someone else have that experience in real life? If you already clicked the above link and watched it, please do it again and this time concentrate on J-Ax (be sure to hit the CC for the subtitles to appear). Then, let's break it down together.

First, consider how his reaction differs from those of the other three judges. They are clearly shocked, amused, and even touched. The blonde one is so curious that she wants to interview Sister Cristina right then and there. Her first question is, "Are you a real nun?" Later the red-headed judge says when she first looked she thought she was day-dreaming. The gestures and expressions of all three signify that they are really into it, but what is happening in that third chair under that skull cap is altogether much deeper and higher. Tears. Tears and tears and more tears. When he swivels around, the look on his face is like a child seeing fireworks for the first time. But then the paradox of what he sees begins to take shape in his heart. (Of course this is my own interpretation here, but just go with it.) Some beautiful and innocent form from his youth has suddenly appeared in the midst of his current fame. Worlds are colliding—past and present, sweet and sour, hugs and hits. It's like the scene when Anton Ego eats the ratatouille and has a flashback about his mom:

When J-Ax finally speaks to Cristina, he tells her, "If I had met you during the Mass when I was a child, now I would be Pope. I would surely have attended all of the functions [awkward YouTube translator]." This is an incredible statement. If he had encountered her energy, her capacity for joy and faith in his youth, he would have gone all the way. He doesn't say he would have wanted to date her or something. He says he would have been inspired to follow her, and that such a path would have led him to the top of the Church. He would have attended all of the "functions"—the Masses, funerals, baptisms, confirmations, weddings, ordinations, canonizations, papal elections, feast day parties, Bible studies, Theology on Tap nights, Brideshead Revisited marathons, vespers, holy hours—the "functions" that so many of us attend and take for granted every day. Her reply is absolutely perfect in its clarity and simplicity: "Well you have met me now." Flood of tears from me at those magnificent words. The voice that shouted the same words to me ten years ago was not an Alicia Keys song but a High Tridentine Mass. I thought, "Where were you?? I would have attended all of the functions!!" That was the encounter with grace that launched my reversion. How awesome it is to watch it happen to another soul through another means.

There are so many Biblical allusions in my mind that I feel like I might have a stroke: burning bush, lost sheep, prodigal son, (go ahead and just shout them out at the screen) the Transfiguration (as I already mentioned), the Finding of the Child Jesus. But here, it is Sister Cristina who finds the little child still living and breathing underneath those tattoos. The baptismal waters which cleansed him as a infant seem to wash him anew through his joyful tears. It's like Ajax for J-Ax ("Stronger Than Dirt."). Behold the transformation: Unselfconsciously, J-Ax smiles, cries, giggles, cries some more, wipes his eyes with his arms, curls up in his chair as if he wants to hide himself so she won't see how ridiculous he looks. It's like Adam covering his nakedness before God. While she is deliberating over which coach to join, you can see in his eyes the "Pick me! Pick me!" of every kid who ever wanted to play kickball. And when she does choose him—for he chose her first based on her voice alone—he leaps out of his chair, scoops her up in his arms, and spins her around to the sound of hundreds of cheering fans. What a moment.

As my mother-in-law would say, "I want to *snug* him!" The affection that I have for J-Ax is very similar to what I felt for Jesse in Breaking Bad. I wrote about his redemption in a blog post after the series finale last year. Even if guys like these look a little scary, they are still human beings made in the image and likeness of God, yo. It's really important to keep this in mind. As Pope Francis said,

The more the [Christian] mission calls you to go out to the margins of existence, let your heart be the more closely united to Christ’s heart, full of mercy and love. Herein lies the secret of pastoral fruitfulness, of the fruitfulness of a disciple of the Lord!

Of course the best part about this is how Sister Cristina explains herself to the crowd and the judges. Why is she there? Because she has a gift and she wants to share it with the world; because Pope Francis calls us to evangelize, reminding us that "God doesn't take anything away from us but will give us more." J-Ax totally abandons his "dude" persona and cries openly at that. The blonde woman says, "I am so moved." I hope you are, too.

J-Ax tells Cristina that she is holy water to his devil (maybe the one on his throat?). I don't know about you but I will be praying for that guy as long as he is working with her through the coming weeks of this competition. So much can happen in that time. Here are a few things that they might learn about each other: Sister Cristina only began practicing her faith in 2008. Ten years before that, J-Ax won a major award for his rapping and also published his autobiography, "I Thought of No One." Presumably, this is about how he rose to fame by looking out for numero uno. How fitting that the song—appropriated by Sister Cristina as a love song to Christ—should be called "No One." What else will they talk about? Will the seed that was planted in J-Ax that night take root? Will he water it regularly? Will he stop flashing devil horns with his hands and start attending all the functions??

All things are possible for God.

***

If you liked this, check out my last post, "The Lament of Eustace Scrubb and the Sacrament of Penance", which handles many of the same themes (music, conversion, grace, etc.). 

And while you're praying for J-Ax (his real name is Alessandro), throw in an intention for the 24,000,000+ people all over the world who were able to experience this beautiful moment through the internet. Way to be, internet.

Update: Here is Elizabeth Scalia's First Things post which treats this topic. 

The Lament of Eustace Scrubb and the Sacrament of Penance

In honor of St. Patrick's Day, I will attempt to supplement your imagination with a new set of ideas, images, and sounds related to this dear patron of Ireland, the "keeper of Purgatory."

***

 After reading my Mumford & Sons post, a friend of mine recommended a new band to me called The Oh Hellos. It took me a while but I finally listened to their first album on YouTube. They sound like a mixture of The Head and the Heart, Of Monsters and Men, and The Lumineers. I really enjoyed the whole thing, but the song that stood out from the others is the one titled, "The Lament of Eustace Scrubb." I knew C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia from my childhood and I had the opportunity to study them as an adult in college. So right away I recognized that the song was about the wretched little boy in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader who turned into a dragon. Do yourself a favor and listen to the song. It has a very Celtic feel to it, perfect for St. Patrick's Day. (Here's a link if you need it.) If you feel compelled to dance, by all means...

     
     Brother, forgive me:
     we both know I'm the one to blame.
     When I saw my demons
     I knew them well and welcomed them;
     but I'll come around, someday.

     Father, have mercy:
     I know that I have gone astray.
     When I saw my reflection
     it was a stranger beneath my face;
     but I'll come around, someday.

     When I touch the water
     they tell me I could be set free.
     So I'll come around, someday.

Wipe that dancing sweat from your brow and let's talk about what just happened. What do you feel? Were you surprised when the song took such a dramatic turn? Surprised by.... joy, perhaps? Why did that happen in the midst of such mournfulness? Here's my interpretation: I think you just experienced the musical version of the Sacrament of Penance, or Confession. The songs begins slowly and sadly, the subject lamenting a sin that he has committed against his neighbor. He acknowledges the fault, sending up his mea culpa. He addresses God the Father, asks for mercy. What happens next is not illustrated in words, but rather in music. But the title directs the listener to a brilliant image to aid our understanding of what is happening: Aslan, the mighty lion, tearing the scales off the boy-turned-dragon, Eustace Scrubb.

This saga is captured by two chapters in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The beastly boy, in order to shirk work, breaks off from his cousins and the rest of the crew and discovers a dragon's cave full of treasure. (The set up is so similar to what happens when Edmund does the same sort of thing in The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe that we know something bad is coming.) Greedily, Eustace stuffs his pockets and covers himself with loot to the point of exhaustion. When awakens, he sees his reflection in a pool of water and discovers that he has become a dragon. The "Lament" goes: "When I saw my reflection, it was a stranger beneath my face." The rest of the chapter provides the full content to what the Oh Hellos mean by, "I'll come around someday," as Eustace struggles to cope with being a dragon and longs to be changed back. In the next chapter, Eustace tells his cousin Edmund about how he stopped being one. Aslan, King of Narnia, had come to him, and told him to undress. Eustace realizes that he means to shed his skin much like a snake does. So he scratches and scratches as scales fall to the ground, but it is not good enough:

   "Then the lion said—but I don't know if it spoke—'You will have to let me undress you.' I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it. The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I've ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of felling the stuff peel off. You know—if you've ever picked the scab of a sore place. It hurts like a billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away."
   "I know exactly what you mean," said Edmund.

C.S. Lewis looking as if he just listened to The Oh Hellos.

 Allow me a brief digression here as we come upon one of my most cherished gems of spiritual formation, which came from C.S. Lewis. The last chapter of Mere Christianity is titled "The New Men." I've read it or listened to it at least a dozen times and I made my Apologetics students experience it, too, because it is one of my favorite things. It is about becoming holy, and Lewis says simply and surprisingly, "it must be fun." That is what is happening when we are stripped and purged of our baggage and our dead skin. We are being sanctified, and it is such fun.

Back to the song: none of this text is featured in the lyrics, but the music brings it to life most delightfully. The fiddle scratches like he lion's claws, the drum pounds like the child's heart, hands clap as if to cheer on the dazzling dance of transformation. It is loud and intense. It burns with pain but also pleasure. It is, to use Eustace's word, fun. As the music slows back down, the lyrics pick up and end with the next scene:

"Then he caught hold of me—I didn't like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I'd no skin on—and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious. [...] I'd turned into a boy again."

But the perspective has changed in the song. By the end, it is not the dragon talking ("When I touch the water they tell me I can be set free"), for he has undergone the cleansing of these baptismal waters and as such is being held up to the singer and to the listener as an example to follow, so that we, too, can be set free. But then he says that he'll "come around someday." To that I say, get thee to a priest, my friend! You can "come around" before the sun goes down. Here's how I discovered that beautiful truth...

After about ten years of sinning since my First Reconciliation, I accidentally found myself in a Confessional. A new acquaintance of mine had invited me to attend a Latin Mass. I had no idea what that meant but I felt sure that it involved a mariachi band. Undaunted, the guy picked me up at the Newman Center and brought me to this mystical place. We got there early because he was in the choir, so I meandered around the back and ran my eyes over the pamphlets and such that were lying about. Then I noticed a long line of people who appeared to be waiting for something. 'Why would all of these people have to go to the bathroom now before this thing has even started? Why didn't they just go at home? Why are they reading instead of chatting to one another?' Total confusion. As I continued to ponder the line (after ruling out the idea that the box at the front of it was a concession stand), an elderly lady asked me, "Do you need to go to Confession, sweetie?" She handed me a folded piece of paper that had a really detailed and scathing examination of conscience on it. Without really thinking I took it from her and placed myself at the back of the line where I read the list. Staring down at it was like looking into a pool of mucky water. I had done many of the things on that list, and I knew on some level that my soul was so spattered in sludge that the image of God within me had been obscured. I saw my demons. I knew them well. Over the course of a decade, I had become a dragon.

When I finally went inside the little door and faced the wooden screen, I could not think of how to begin. "Um... well... I've done a lot of things from this list." The priest patiently led me through the process. Uttering each sin (which I basically had lumped into categories for the sake of the many people in line behind me), I felt just as Eustace felt as he picked and scratched at his scales. The experience was painful, but good—exhilarating, even. Eventually, the priest told me that I really needed basic formation and that I should go find the Baltimore Catechism. I actually thought that he was telling me to go to Baltimore (I could take the train during Thanksgiving break) and search for a thing (maybe like an obelisk?) called a catechism. Thankfully, that level of ignorance didn't invalidate the absolution. The words were in Latin, but I knew what they meant—what they were doing to me. It was the priest, in persona Aslan (if you will), clawing away at my remaining dragon-ness and transforming me into a Daughter of Eve. The next step, my penance, completed the process, and I became a Daughter of God in a state of grace (however brief). From that moment on, I was determined  to belong to Him. My Second Reconciliation was also a Second Spring.

As I think about this experience in tandem with my love of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (which my husband and I are reading to our son this Lent—he is dressed in a lion costume in his bed as I type this), I'm struck by how similar the confessional is to that magical wardrobe. As one steps inside either of them, he or she embarks on an incredible adventure in which obstacles are overcome, the King is encountered, the self is transformed. Then, when one steps outside, it seems as if no time has passed at all.

In the Sacrament of Penance, we are washed of our iniquities and cleansed of our sins. It recovers lost baptismal grace and continues the transformation that is both—somehow—complete and yet only incipient when we are baptized. This process is usually only finished after death, and that is why there is Purgatory. I became fascinated with this in college. In one semester of college, I managed to choose the topic of Purgatory in four different subjects so that I could study it from four different angles at the same time. In one of the classes I had been studying Hamlet when I came across a footnote in the Arden Edition which explained a bit of dialogue that had long puzzled me. Hamlet, having just had an audience with his father's ghost, is flummoxed and enraged, jabbering incoherently: 

HORATIO: Those are but wild and whirling words, my lord.
HAMLET: I'm sorry they offend you, heartily; yes, 'faith, heartily.
HORATIO: There is no offense, my lord.
HAMLET: Yes, by St. Patrick, there is, Horatio. And much offense, too.

Why St. Patrick? The note said he is traditionally the "keeper of Purgatory." The story goes that in Patrick's day the faithful would make a pilgrimage to Lough Derg in Ireland where the saint would lead them to the mouth of a cave where they would have a vision of their sin-riddled souls as God saw them. In that moment of horror, they would experience a purgatory on earth in the hope of being spared of the torments that otherwise awaited them. So, as I claimed in my term paper, the reason for his offense in the context of the ghost scene is that Hamlet had not been praying for the repose of his father's soul. Then in my Medieval Art class, I gave a presentation on iconographic representations of Purgatory and included the great image of St. Patrick below.

Several months after All Soul's Day in November, St. Patrick's Day can serve as a joyous reminder to pray for the holy souls in Purgatory, to go to Confession at least once during Lent, and heartily to celebrate the agony and the ecstasy of repentance and renewal. Now go back and listen to that song again—imagine C.S. Lewis (who was born and raised in Ireland, after all) clapping to the beat—and take St. Patrick's blessing along with you. Have fun!

***

If you enoyed the sound of "The Lament of Eustace Scrubb," try another Oh Hellos song, "Like the Dawn", which is about Adam and Eve. It's a little slower, highlights the girl's voice over the guy's, and it's simply gorgeous.

My Thing with Owls: A Meditation on Divine Providence

So I've had this . . . problem. For the last six months, I've seen about 5+ owls per day in the form of graphics, illustrations, stuffed animals, real owls, and more. I know owls are having a moment in our culture right now (my husband sent me this article about it), but they've had a particularly deep significance for me. It started in the early fall last year when my husband began applying for jobs which would launch his career after this his final year of grad school. Whenever I'm on the cusp of some major life change, I start to look for signs of God's Will so that I know which way to go. The reason I do this is because is it what I became accustomed to in my new life which began after my reversion in 2003. It felt like a personal bargain that God and I had struck when I committed myself to His service: I'll work for You if You make things easy and peaceful and fun. Deal. So for the first decade of my life of faith, God was always raining consolations upon me. I have dozens of stories of His Providence arriving clearly and boldly just in the nick of time. If I wrote them all down, you would surely say it was all made up (I shared one of them in the epilogue of my Groundhog Day post). I felt very blessed to have God so clearly on my team at all times.

Thus, when I started noticing owl paraphernalia everywhere, I immediately tried to figure out what it meant. One day when I took my kids to the zoo, my 4-year-old decided that he wanted to see the owl first and I was surprised because the thing has never, ever been awake in the hundred or so times we've gone to that zoo. "Yeeeeeah, owls are nocTURnal," my son would explain to the disappointed on-looking children who were hooting at it to try to wake it up. But this time, we went straight to the owl and its eyes were wide open, staring at me. I was so struck by this that I got as close as I'll ever get to the Inferno's circle of diviners and leaned in to ask the owl, "What do you want? What am I to do?" That was pretty confusing to my kids, as you can imagine. It didn't talk to me, but when I was home that evening doing a little research on the universities to which my husband had applied I discovered that the mascot of one of the places is an owl. All at once I was convinced that that is where we are going and that God is trying to prepare me in His gentle and weird way because—wow—I really didn't want to go there.

Let me give you a little taste of what this time has been like with a synopsis of one day-in-the-life-of-a-crazy-person: I woke up in the morning and went to the kitchen to prepare the baby's oatmeal and applesauce and pulled out a jar with this on it:

Then, I found the Winnie-the-Pooh book open on the floor of the nursery with this page open:

Next, I drove my son to school and the back of the car in front of me had this decal:

Then I took the baby for his well-check at the pediatrician and the bin of stickers at reception is filled with hundreds of Sponge Bob and Scooby Doo stickers which are facing down and the one sticker on top facing up is this:

Went home, put the baby down for his nap, and the thing at the very top of my Facebook feed was this:

 I pick up my son from school and he shows me that the only art work he did all day was this:

Finally I went out in the evening to meet a friend at Barnes and Noble and adjacent to her head was this:

All in just one day, people. Wouldn't you be freaking out?! It got to the point where I needed some form of spiritual direction for this thing. A friend of mine who is much like a mentor to me found the whole conspiracy really odd and told me, "You've got to mortify that. Next time you see an owl, you tell yourself, 'That is just an owl. Nothing more.'" I recalled a talk that she had given about a year earlier in which she said something so important that I rummaged through my purse in order to write it down on a receipt: "If you have to see the Will of God to be able to do it, you're going to get stuck." This had been a new step in my understanding of what faith really is: believing without seeing.

The next day when I continued to see owls everywhere I looked, I averted my eyes and said, "No, owl," or "Get behind me, owl!" or something even more dramatic than that. My husband and I knew that the university with the owl mascot would be getting back to us very soon and it became harder and harder to suppress the owl-sighting/God-signpost connection in my mind. Then the day came when I took the baby to have his flu shot and we were led to nurse's room that was completely devoid of decoration except for a child's coloring page of a cartoon owl winking. I laughed at it in a nervous way and the nurse looked puzzled (welcome to my world, nurse). And when I got home, what was in the mail but the rejection letter from the place with the owl mascot. I thought of the winking owl, and I thought of George Costanza shouting at his friends in the dark movie theater: "I know you're there! Laughing. . . laughing and lying!"

I was starting to "vein it up" a little bit when I called my (honorary) godfather who is a priest and was my mentor in college. I love this man. He knows me so well and knew exactly what I needed. He took very seriously what my husband affectionately called "the crazy" and started brainstorming about owls in literature and poetry and all of it. Of course we all know that they represent wisdom, but he knew of a specific reference to them in philosophy. He told me about the preface to Hegel's Philosophy of Right which ends with this:    

Only one word more concerning the desire to teach the world what it ought to be. For such a purpose philosophy at least always comes too late. Philosophy, as the thought of the world, does not appear until reality has completed its formative process, and made itself ready. History thus corroborates the teaching of the conception that only in the maturity of reality does the ideal appear as counterpart to the real, apprehends the real world in its substance, and shapes it into an intellectual kingdom. When philosophy paints its grey in grey, one form of life has become old, and by means of grey it cannot be rejuvenated, but only known. The owl of Minerva takes its flight only when the shades of night are gathering. [emphasis mine]

 My godfather picked the pearl out of this point. Hegel argues that it is only possible to understand an epoch, or even one's own life, as it comes to an end given the benefit of hindsight. It's not for us fully to comprehend what is going on around us. Clarity only comes with time. The priest added, "with the end of time." That's why it's enough to just be in the present and trust in God's providence.

 
I had an epiphany and immediately thought back to one of the most formative books in my reversion, Jean-Pierre de Caussade's Abandonment to Divine Providence. Have you read this remarkable book? In it, Caussade talks about the "sacrament of the present moment," and he tells his reader to

"carry on as you are doing and endure what you have to do—but change your attitude to all these things. And this change is simply to say 'I will' to all that God asks."

It is ideal spiritual reading for Lent. I read it on a plane headed towards Rome for a spring break pilgrimage after the guy that I really liked (and later married) told me the night before we left, "We can't be romantic in Rome." (Isn't that an oxymoron?!) I knew I needed the Church's big guns to get me through that confusion. That book gave me a beautiful education in how to trust in God and how to live fully in the present moment. It was a game-changer for me, and ever since I've recommended it to people who feel like they're in the "dark wood." But all too often, those lessons fall behind the desk of my mind and get covered in dust. My godfather's counsel recovered them, polished them up, and set them on display at the forefront of my thoughts. He helped me to see that Divine Providence is not limited to our experience of happy coincidences and silver linings. Even the bad things that happen are part of His Providence because He allowed it for the sake of some greater good. I really do believe this with all my being. I remembered that incredible quote from Mother Theresa who was once asked, "How do you know God's Will?" and she replied, "It's whatever happens." And this winter my book club is reading Alessandro Manzoni's classic novel (not to mention Pope Francis's favorite book), The Betrothed, which includes this line from a nobleman to Fr. Cristoforo: "Everything that happens is the will of God."

I know I'm guilty of thinking that only the good things come from God and saying, "That was Providential," when I retell those stories that turned out well in the end. But my dear friend helped me to understand that even my miscarriage was providential—so too my mom's detached retina and our friend's heart-wrenching string of tragedies last year. It's not like God fell asleep at the wheel when that stuff happened. Suffering—particularly redemptive suffering—is certainly part of His plan, too. (Huffington Post recently had an article on this theme.) And He knew about all of it from the foundation of the world. And for Him who is outside of time, all of Salvation History has already happened—complete, perfect, made whole.

I recalled that this was the same priest who once gave a homily with the best image I can think of for this amazing reality: a Medieval tapestry which tells the story of the Pascal Mystery from Genesis to Revelation. God views the tapestry from the front, beholding the drama in its final ideal form, but we who are still in time see only the backside of it. We see all of the random threads of color zigzagging about and the knots and loops and other tricks of the weaving trade that make possible the perfect image on the face side. I used to tell my students about this when I taught high school theology. What a gift to see their eyes shine and their hearts skip a beat in just the way that mine did when I first heard this good news.

The last little gem of insight that my godfather left me with in that phone conversation was a consideration of an exchange from the final scene in Dostoevsky's The Brother's Karamazov:

"Karamazov!" cried Kolya, "can it really be true as religion says, that we shall all rise from the dead, and come to life, and see one another again, and everyone, and Ilyushechka?" "Certainly we shall rise, certainly we shall see and gladly, joyfully tell one another all that has been," Alyosha replied, half laughing, half in ecstasy.

This is what the New Heaven will be like after the end of the world. Those who've loved God and one another will gather together at the Wedding Supper of the Lamb and share our stories, delighting in the ways in which our lives have intersected just as one might at a big wedding like the one I went to last month: "How did you come to know the bride? When did you meet the groom?" But this final time which will never end, the Bride will be the Church in all of her billion faces, and the Groom will be the Christ who laid down His life for her. And we'll all be united forever in the joy of God's Providence, half-laughing, fully in ecstasy.

I'm happy to report that that is what I think of now whenever I see an owl. It happened to me four times today including this evening when I sat down to write this post. I was babysitting for a friend and there was a pile of children's library books near the computer. At the very top was a paperback called, Owls in the Family. Ha, I thought. Well they are now. And I embrace them as little reminders that I can't count on seeing God's action in my life on a daily basis. "It ain't over 'til it's over," as the song goes. And my faith assures me, in the wonderful words of Julian of Norwich: "All will be well. All will be well. All manner of things will be well."

So much of our spiritual discipline should be about refreshing our own memories for the sake of the good lessons and insights that we've gleaned in the past. Like with a foreign language, if you don't use it, you lose it. I already knew Abandonment to Divine Providence and had told my students about the tapestry image years before my schizophrenic owl meltdown. But I forgot, and I let Screwtape have his way with my weakness for comfort and assurances and avoidance of suffering. This Lent, I will be working against that, meditating on this nugget of goodness that I found in an online bestiary page about owl symbolism:

Christianity saw in the owl a symbol of Christ, who came to those who sat in darkness and in the shadow of death (Luke 1:79). This is the case with owls in pictures of the Passion. Early mystics believed the owl had a luminous substance in its eyes which dissolved the darkness, giving it excellent night vision. In the same way, the light of Christ was said to dissolve the darkness of this world and give a pure and good direction. The Christ-owl may be found with the cross on its breast or head.
In Le Livre des Symboles, the light or wisdom of the Holy Spirit is represented by the owl who brings light to the dark souls of unbelievers. The owl was used by the Greeks to symbolize wisdom and, as such, it is an attribute of St. Jerome. It is also representative of the wisdom found in solitary prayer and so appears in pictures of hermits. As wisdom, the owl is a symbol of meditation, retreat, or the scholar. As the scholar, it is often found perched on a scroll or book.

I bought this owl pendant to wear each day of Lent as my own little sacramental for keeping at the center of my thoughts God's mysterious yet boundless Providence. This is what true wisdom is all about, after all. May it please Him and may it do me good.

P.S. I also have a thing with peacocks, but that has less to do with Divine Providence and everything to do with Flannery O'Connor—a post for another time, perhaps.



***
Check out this lovely post from the blog, Mysteries and Manners, and this one from Fare Forward. Their messages dovetail nicely with mine.

Lastly, I want to share with you one more fruit of my owl encounters. Go to the homepage of musician Josh Garrels here. First of all, notice the owl graphic at the top which actually made me scream at the computer because it had just been too many times that day.

 Then go to Media tab and click Videos. You'll find an intriguing animated short set to his song "White Owl" (!!) which expresses sentiments quite close to the ones I discussed above. What are your thoughts? Help me to analyze it. Then, find the main thing that I want you to see/hear which is the performance of his song "Words Remain." It's hauntingly beautiful. And it, too, captures many of the insights about Divine Providence that I've recently gleaned and regleaned. It has been the soundtrack to this epoch of my life. Plus, there are plenty of owl-like sounds, and he might be wearing an owl shirt. Someone with the right connections, please help me to meet this guy. I love so much of his music, and I really think we could bond over this owl thing. Thanks in advance.

***
 Next topic: The Lament of Eustace Scrubb and the Sacrament of Penance.