Catholic, Gay, and Feeling Fine, Thanks
My friend B. is a body psychotherapist. She’s explained what this means more than once, but I never quite get a handle on it.1 I gather that, where traditional psychotherapy is focused on talking, body psychotherapy treats us as the soul-body composite we are. One of the tenets of the discipline is that past trauma…
To my relief, I wake up too late for Mass this morning. More sleep means less surliness, and less effort spent ignoring my resentment at the priest who sings off-key and the parishioners who ad-lib the responses to make them just a little bit more feminist. I’m trailing a cloud of melancholy from bad dreams:…
And I said “Help me, help me, help me, help me– Thank you! I’d no idea that you were there.”1 A few weeks ago, when things were worst, I was having one of those very anguished prayer times where you are yelling so loudly for help that it’s hard to notice when it comes. I…
I want to give you some words from the best spiritual book of any kind I have ever read. I keep trying to say something beforehand as an introduction, so you will know how good it is, but the best way is probably to just give you some passages. It is called Beginning to Pray,…
Hey, Jesus. I mean. Hello. Hail. O Jesus. This carpet always smells funny. God, that twinge in my back. Sorry: I mean gosh. Hello, Jesus. Mind if I sit close to you today? In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Sh★t, I’m late again, only five minutes…
The first few mornings in Peru, the roosters next door woke me up. There was what sounded like a field full of them next door, a whole tribe, saluting the sun hours before it would arrive. We were up at five and off to the chapel for morning prayers. Then back to bed — lucky…
So I says to the Lord at the beginning of this Lent, “Lord,” I says, “let’s keep things on the surface this year. I think I’m in a pretty good spot.” “Yeah?” He says. “Yeah,” I say. “I mean, I’ll give stuff up and so forth. I’m no slacker, I’ll even tackle something big. But…
So there I was, sitting in Adoration. Every particle of my being seemed to be bathed in glory and resonating with — okay, so actually, I was going over sparring techniques in my head, while grooving slightly to the Paul Simon1 playing on my interior soundtrack. Because that’s how it usually goes. And certainly, much…
It’s like Jesus is coming to dinner and you want to make him something delicious to eat, something that will really wow him, so you get to work putting it together. And you think you’re concentrating pretty hard on the meal until you look into the mixing bowl and it turns out to be a…
Lent really snuck up on me this year, the way Christmas never does. Of course there’s no real reason for the culture at large to get all geared up for Lent, since Lent usually means people buying less, not more. I doubt most people notice Lent at all, except for wondering about the black smudges….
