Don’t Lose Your Head

Saturday a week ago was “Ordination Day,” for males only, of course, in our archdiocese. A group of us supporting women’s ordination in the Catholic Church always attend these yearly ordinations – oh, not inside the basilica where we are patently not welcome (by the Archbishop and his minions at least) but outside, always outside. And on the sidewalk. And across the street. Undaunted, however, each year we set up our card table, cover it in soft cloths, add our own Holy pictures including one of the Last Supper with women present, position our multicolored indigenous cross just so, add bread and grape juice to our earthen vessels, add salt to our bowl of water to represent our tears, and enliven our spirits with a sprig of flowers. Then one of our ordained woman priests says Mass, and this year another gave the homily.

Since it is morning and we face east like the basilica before us, we wind up always standing in its shadow, another metaphor for our position in the Church. Ironically this year, however, with temperatures in the nineties, the Church’s looming presence actually brought us relief and respite from the oppressive heat.  A metaphor perhaps for days to come?  

Not so fast with that hope bit, the traditional patriarchal Church seemed to say, as a young man, impeccably dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, and trim bow tie, came across the street to us with – as it turned out – deceiving smile on his face. He read “Remember Your Sisters Who Are Ready and Willing to be Ordained” on our banner and then asked if we were Episcopalians!

No, we assured him, we are Catholics, and one person explained we were there to witness for women’s ordination in the Catholic Church. He then made an all too familiar pronouncement: “But the apostles were all men.” Someone gently countered, “Well, not Mary Magdalene, the apostle to the apostles.”  Still smiling, he countered that he did not believe that and was about to let us know what he did believe when someone informed him we were actually in the middle of a prayer service – and, by the way, would he like to join us? 

The smile faded. “I don’t pray with heretics,” he said and walked across the street and into the basilica.

Heretics! We felt he had genuinely welcomed us back to the Middle – or was it the Dark – Ages

Because he was so young, as were the men being ordained inside, I thought about an excerpt from an address to a graduating college class I had kept since 1993. I was definitely not a fan nor espoused the political or world views of the speaker, Charles Krauthammer, but his three bits of advice had obviously struck me as wise at the time and today still seemed pertinent for that young man, all the young men inside the basilica, and for the rest of us, too. Here they are:

The first: Don’t lose your head. The speaker meant intellectually, emotionally, or morally. As wave after wave of what he called the “enthusiasms du jour” wash over us and threaten to carry us away with them (in the post 1993 world his word “enthusiasms” seems almost a euphemism for what currently over us), he called for pause, investigation, questioning, and a heavy dose of critical thinking. To the young man who labeled us as heretics, I would add, apply those same strategies not only to what is sweeping over you now, but to what has washed over and carried you away from the past. In either case, don’t lose your head.

The second: Look outward. This was my favorite and probably why I had saved the excerpt. Be forewarned, however, it may not be yours! He agrees with the adage “an unexamined life is not worth living” but added: “The too examined life is not worth living either.” Think of how relentlessly self-conscious, self-referential, and self-absorbed we have become. (Mea Culpa. I write a blog for heaven’s sake!) We even relish ourselves through “selfies”. And so many of us listen to media and religious gurus who compel us to do intense forms of “interior” work while outside, literally, Romes everywhere areburning.

Let me quote a bit more from the speech:

“The reigning cliché of the day is that in order to love others one must first learn to love oneself. This formulation – love thyself, then thy neighbor – is a license for unremitting self-indulgence, because the quest for self-love is endless.

The story is told of the sultan who awoke in the middle of the night and summoned his wizard. ‘Wizard,’ he said, ‘my sleep is troubled. Tell me: What is holding up the earth?’

‘Majesty,’ replied the wizard, ‘the earth rests on the back of a giant elephant.’

The sultan was satisfied and went back to sleep. He then awoke in a cold sweat and summoned the wizard. ‘Wizard,’ he said, ‘what’s holding up the elephant?’

The wizard looked at him and said, ‘The elephant stands on the back of a giant turtle. And you can stop right there, Majesty. It’s turtles all the way down.’’’

The speaker finished that thought with lines I wish I had written: “My friends, don’t get lost in the study of turtles. Endless, vertiginous self-examination leads not only to a sterile moral life, but also to a stilted intellectual life. Yes, examine. But do it with dispatch and modesty and then get on with it. Act and go and seek and do.” Yes!

Third: Save the best. I think in all the advice given above, this is the phrase I most wanted to say to the young man – and men inside – and to all of us. If you do keep your head, if you do keep looking outward, then you let yourself learn and grow and transform so that your first impulse when you meet new thoughts, ideas, information is not to walk away. Instead, when and if you do head inside established institutions with intractable dogmas again. you will know what is the best to save and what is best to let go.

Since his was an address, speech, homily, and/or sermon, I will let his ending be mine:

“Save the best. Look outward. Don’t lose your head.

Now go out and change the world.”