Purity of Heart

Thank you. Thank you.

So surprise, surprise. Carmel meetings are not always a bed of roses. Or rather, there are heavenly roses sent down from our buddy St. Therese of Lisieux along with some sharp, juicy thorns from our other buddy St. John of the Cross that are aimed RIGHT at the most sensitive part of the back of my knee.

As I YELP in shock and pain, Mr. John of the Cross gives me a huge thumbs up sign. "Just making sure you're staying awake Miss Abigail" he shouts with a smile. "Wouldn't want you to get too comfortable. Carmel is not a spa treatment! This is hard work for Jesus, baby!"



(This was not my Carmel experience for the month of September!)

To wit I reply with complaints and tears "I work SO HARD for Mr. J.C. all month! Don't I deserve a little break? Isn't there one place where I can come and not get surprise jabs in the heart when I least expect them?"

So far the answer seems to be an emphatic "NO!"

I'm slowly becoming more and more okay with that.

Maybe, instead of a place of rest and relaxation--an easy well of spiritual renewal, Carmel meetings are a place of hard work for me right now. A place to give love. A place to donate smiles. A place to deposit more peace, and hope, and joy--than I withdrawl from right now.

Maybe Carmel is supposed to be more about serving Our Mother, and less about having a comfy place to crash among all my Marian siblings.

You duped me Lord, and I let myself be duped! But lead me on! I know you always have my best interest at heart.

St. Teresa of Avila, pray for me.

Our Lady of Mount Carmel

Pray for us!

Praying Through the Human Condition

Welcome back!

Many exciting things have happened since my blog fast.

In November, my husband and I received our Brown Scapular. We are now official members of the Third Order Carmelites. I'll have to post a picture of the happy day, because it ranks right up there with marriage and child birth as a life changing event. One of my dear seminarian friends got to be there for my Profession Mass. He and I were jumping with joy during the Mass. The love between Carmelites and priests, even future priests, is so deep and so dear.

The priest who did our investitures was so sweet. He told me "don't give up praying now" as he put on my scapular. I held my toddler Mimi during my whole Profession, since she was not about sit quietly in the pew without Mom or Dad. Rather than being a distraction, her presence was a joy. Father joked "where's her scapular?" after he had invested both Jon and I. I had tears of happiness when we were announced as the "Catholic Church's newest people" of prayer after our final vows. I can't think of a more honorable way to serve this Church that I love so much.

We sailed through a smooth Advent. I got my prayers routine down pat. Didn't overspend on Christmas presents. Whipped up a seven course seafood dinner without notice when Christmas Eve handed my mother a family emergency.

I turned a happy 35 on December 31st.

On Mary's Day, January 1st, I found out that I'm pregnant. Our dearest prayer for two years has come true. I told my Carmel group that this was a Carmel baby. We'd had no luck conceiving for two years. Yet as soon as I got my Brown Scapular, everything came together again.

So pray for me and the newest Benjamin baby.

HA HA about my great prayer routine. Morning sickness has struck me hard over the last three weeks. Instead of deep mystical prayer experiences, I now spend my daily half and hour, moaning on my bed uniting myself with every time Jesus experienced the stomach flu during his 33 years on earth.

My prayer time is seriously pathetic. Sometimes I just sprawl out on the carpet in the morning and let Jon pray the beautiful words of Divine Office over me. We're one flesh so that still counts, right?

I asked advice from one of my Carmelite friends who is the mother of TEN. "How do you prayer with morning sickness?" She just laughed at me. "You just muddle through", Stephanie said sympathetically. "Jesus understands. It's part of praying through the human condition."

I wish all of you a happy time in our preparation before Lent. Keep praying through whatever is happening in your life. We weren't made to be angels. Our muddled and pathetic attempts at prayer are a part of our human condition.

Losing Carmel

During my retreat, I had this incredible experience in confession. I go to confession a lot. My priest offers confession immediately after Daily Mass and there's nothing like the Eucharist & motherhood to immediately expose most of my shortcomings on a daily basis.

So needless to say, I've become a little blaze about receiving this sacrament. I mean I'm thankful always, but sort of in the "it's nice to have a newly washed car" type of way. I rarely get the "Wow there is something seriously wrong with your soul's engine and it needs immediate repair" type of surprise.

This confession was so "weird." I was in the middle of Adoration when I felt this strong pull to go immediately to confession with the director of our retreat. I felt confused, because confession was "scheduled" later in the retreat when more than 5 extra priests would hear confessions on Saturday afternoon. One of the things I most looked forward on my retreat was making a leisurely catalogue of my sins without the immediate neediness of three young bodies. So the fact that I was "hurrying" to confession, seemed a waste of my opportunity this weekend.

The thing about Adoration is that these "pulls" happen in a very tangible way in your soul. So without even knowing why, I got up and stood in line for a rushed confession before the start of Morning Mass.

While I stood in line, again reviewing why this action was so foolish, I looked up. There was a luminous stain glass window of St. Yves. I was so shocked. St. Yves is the patron saint of lawyers. He was the first guy I prayed to in RCIA class when I first starting opening up to the whole "communion of the saints thing." I'd stopped practicing law soon after converting to the faith and promptly forgot all about him. St. Yves isn't a popular saint, and I've never even see a prayer card made out to him. To see a main window dedicated to him immediately off the central alter, seemed incredible.

I didn't have much time to contemplate what this meant, because it was my turn.

I started out the same "Bless me Father for I have sinned, it's been two weeks since my last confession...." I've said those words countless times in the last six months.

But this time WHAM!

This sacrament was so intense.

I even got called over from behind the screen to get my head prayed over at the end of confession. That's has never happened to me before.

So in the middle of all of intension confession and advice, I heard this really hard truth.

"You know, becoming a lay Carmelite is a lot for a mother of young children to handle."

I'm losing Carmel? It hurt so much, I couldn't breath.

The priest went on to say "I'm not saying that you can't participate in the charism. It's just that you've got to be sure that this is God's will. You can't get caught in checking off things just because you like to check off boxes."

Every word that he said hurt my heart. I still couldn't catch my breath.

The priest went on to say "You're the one who said you had a problem with perfectionism. I'm just talking about things that you've already brought up."

I nodded. I still couldn't talk. Then we went on to talk about my other sins.

That conversation happened three weeks ago. This Sunday I'm not going to my regular Carmel meeting. I've taken a break from trying to squeeze in Daily Mass, two Litany of the Hours, a rosary and a 1/2 hour of quiet prayer each day. With the exception of my rosary & my St. Louis de Monfort prayers, I catch the rest when I can. My prayer life is much better. But it still feels weird. My husband does most of these prayers each day, and it still feels weird to not join him in the Litergy of the Hours or a full 1/2 hour of quiet prayer.

A Catholic friend of mine asked me "what do you mean it hurt when the priest said this might not be time to become a lay Carmelite?" I couldn't describe it really.

It just hurts.

Carmel is home. Carmel is the place where my life makes sense. Where all my character defects are suddenly not "stupid" or "wrong." I liked having a place. I liked belonging to an order. I liked having an intimacy with Theresa of Avila, and St. John of the Cross and all the other Carmelite saints. Maybe that's just my pride and selfishness.

What's the big deal about waiting?

This waiting for my kids to grow up doesn't have an "end date." I'm hoping to have more children. It feels weird to have this excuse of motherhood when the other mothers in my group have 5, 6, and 10 children.

But the truth is, I'm still little. 90 minutes of prayer every night after my kids go to bed at 8 PM hurts. It makes me resentful. I went into confession just thinking that "I was the problem." I came out confused that something so "right" could still be not in God's plan for me right now.

In the middle of my retreat, when I hurt so badly after that confession I felt the comforting presence of the Little Flower. Saint Theresa wanted to go to Carmel at age 12, when her beloved older sister joined the order. She hurt so much she got sick. I felt comforted that at least this awful "waiting" period was still part of the Carmel experience.

Today, as I struggled to figure out how to tell my Aspirant class leaders that I was missing class on Sunday, I opened the "Story of the Soul" for comfort. Immediately I saw this passage concerning St. Theresa's request to enter Carmel at age 15, "Come come" the Holy Father said "if it's God's will you will enter."

Comforting words on a hard, Lenten Friday.

Make Sure God Wants You to Plant Tomatoes

(retreat post)

During our retreat meal times were a big deal. We spent our time in Silence after the retreat talks, Mass and at night. If we wanted to have a conversation, we were supposed to travel downstairs to the break-room. The idea behind so much silence, is that this retreat was 250 women working on their personal relationship with God. Silence respects other peoples ability to listen to the quiet, still voice of God-- and also incidentally-- makes it easier for God to speak to you.

Meal times were important because it's the only time we were encouraged to talk. We were also encouraged to trust Christ by coming out of comfort zone. One concrete way was to make sure we sat with strangers at every meal, instead of clumping together with our friends.

I felt all shiny after my Saturday morning confession and decided to take that direction literally. I imagined holding Christ's hand and having Him direct me to my seat each meal. Not surprisingly, He had me bypass the jolly souls who had pretty bangs and engaging smiles. I sat with the awkward ones who sat alone at a table looking desperately afraid.

Meal one on Christ's seating chart was a jackpot. I ended up sitting next to the only Baptist at the retreat. You all know how much I adore future Protestant converts, so I listened intently to her story and prayed hard to Mother Mary all through our meal.

Meal Two seemed to be the complete opposite. I sat next to a shy mother of five, who had an extremely soft voice which was almost impossible to hear over the chatter of a 250 person dining hall. Every topic I suggested was a strike out. Things started getting painful. Our topics of conversation for 15 minutes was the elevation of certain hills in Wyoming and actual street names in her small town. I'm painfully shy as well, so when conversations start flagging with strangers, I really get sweaty palms. "I don't know what Jesus was thinking, clearly this lady and I have nothing to talk about for an hour . . ."

Just as I was really starting to panic, a friendly vet & mother of three young boys sat down on my right hand side. I thought this was my "reward" for being a good sport and eagerly started comparing working/versus homeschooling notes with her.

The friendly vet was conflicted about working part time. She had just described this lovely aspect of her work. Lonely old people with pets would schedule unnecessary appointments with her, just so they could have an excuse to talk. She said she ended up talking sharing her Catholic faith with many pet owners, because these intense conversations kept happening in her vet office.

Even so, she was worried that she was missing out by not being home with her boys full time & doing exciting things like homeschooling.

I took an excited breath and was just about to launch into my "Stay At Home Motherhood Is fabulous speech."

When the shy violet sitting next to me asserts "You've got to make sure that God wants you to plant tomatoes!!!"

That statement was so odd, the vet & I were stunned into silence.

Recovering her shy, whispering voice, she tells this story. "Once I was flipping through the TV channels and I heard this lady talking about planting tomatoes with her neighbor. Her neighbor wanted a crop of tomatoes and she thought that was a great idea. They bought seeds together. They worked on clearing a big patch of garden. They planted the tomatoes at the same time. They weeded the tomatoes. Over the summer, the tomato patch because a big pain. The lady always needed to weed it. Finally, in August she goes outside and finds her giant tomato crop crawling with bugs. The whole tomato thing was a giant bust. A few days later, she talks to her neighbor. "Sorry the bugs came and ate our tomatoes." The neighbor says "What are you talking about." Her crop, which stands only a few feet away is completely pristine. Not a bug in sight."

The lady was mad. She took the matter up in prayer. "This isn't fair God. I did all the same stuff as my neighbor. How come she has beautiful tomatoes and I've wasted all that time on nothing." God's response "I didn't want you to plant tomatoes."

I was completely blown away by this story. I mean it's, tomatoes. How can God not want you to plant tomatoes. Gardening is a great good, right. You get to eat cheap organic produce and spend time in the sunshine. What can possibly be wrong with planting tomatoes?

My shy seat mate explained, "but God didn't ask her to plant the tomatoes. Maybe she was supposed to spent that time in a greater good, like reading to her kids or visiting a sick aunt."

So that tomato story from the woman I thought had nothing to talk with me about, is defiantly on my mind. You can't assume that God wants you to do something just because you see your neighbor doing it. You've got to check in and confirm this is God's will for your life. This "check in" doesn't just apply to big things like your choice of a spouse. You need to check in on life's little projects as well.

The tomato story is such a clear metaphor for the "I'm the vine you are the branches, only good fruit comes from me."

Hopefully, I'll be more meek before suggesting "this is how you should mother" in the future as well.

Wisdom from St. John of the Cross

"The honing of [St. John of the Cross] spirit came to a head in circumstances where his weakness was extreme; months of imprisonment in Toledo for his part in the Teresian reform. Transferred to a tiny, dark dungeon, where hunger, squalor and isolation could set to work. John was pushed there beyond the thresholds he had never had to cross before, into the unfamiliar regions, where his emotional and physical weakness would have made him very vulnerable.

And it is precisely here that John began composing his most personal poetry, from which his writings derive.

That then is the first indication for us from John about prayer; the place within us where not everything is all right, where the wound that is in you aches, John says: go there.

Go to that place of need, because that is the threshold at which Christ stands; our need is an evidence of God. . .

Let your need be your prayer.

This, then is one of the seasons of prayer in St. John of the Cross. We have been led by him to Cana, the family wedding where the wine runs out. Mary sees the anxiety, and has a quiet word with her Son just pointing out what she has noticed.

this is a scene with cosmic scope: the wedding of the Lamb, espousing humanity, a humanity in peril. The mother of Jesus perceives what is lacking, and names it, without dictating a solution: "They have no wine." Hers is a prayer of need; her perception of need is a prayer. She takes it, hold it. allows it to ache before Him. And that precipitates glory. He "manifested his glory, and his disciples believed in him."

This, then, is a way of prayer; to feel our way to the wound that is in us, to the place of our need. Go there, take it, name it; hold it before Christ.

To feel our way to the wounds of the world, to those people or situations in dire need of healing. Go there, take them, name them, and hold them before Him.

Go there, not to dictate to Christ what the answer should be or what he should do about it; but to hold the wound before Him.

"They have no wine." John of the Cross sees wisdom here. A love which does not spell out "what it needs or wants, but holds out its need so that the Beloved might do what pleases him" is especially powerful.

"St. John of the Cross and the Seasons of Prayer," Iain Matthew, O.C.D.

Finding my Home Among the Carmelites

In ninth grade, I lost my steady lunch group. For five years, I'd eaten lunch every school day next to my best friend Kellum Ayers. Kellum was Scottish, with a Scottish Terrier named "Scottie", thin blond hair and an amazing talent with the violin. Some days, I brown bagged my lunch with bologna, cheese and mustard sandwich. Some days, I had peanut butter and red raspberry jelly. Some days I had a Capri-Sun. Sometimes, I had a can of Cherry Coke. Occasionally, I had enough spare quarters to buy an Almond Joy at Huffington Market for dessert.

Every day, however, I had Kellum's sunny chatter about the latest happenings in Orchestra class to accompany my lunch.

Then my Dad failed his tenure review at Ohio State University and suddenly I got yanked out of my "perfect" suburban high school dreams and placed in a rural West Virginia where there were actual dirt roads and days off for deer hunting season and boys who wore Redwings to school instead of K-Swiss tennis shoes.

Nine grade was a bit of a culture shock for me.

I remember sitting in Health Class filing out a State Testing Form which had the following question:

How many years of school do you intend on completing?

a) ninth grade

b) tenth grade

c) eleventh grade

d) twelfth grade

e) some college

"How ridiculous!" I thought. At 14, I knew I was going to graduate school. Here the official state form wouldn't even let me check off a bachelor's degree.

I snorted out loud, and several of the guys sitting next to me looked up. I rolled my eyes and pointed to this questions. They looked back at me in confusion.

That's when it forcibly struck me that in my 9th grade Health Class, I was one of only three ninth graders. Health was a freshmen required class. If you flunked it, you repeated it. I sat in a 35 person class filled with 32 juniors and seniors. There was a big chance that most of the people in my class weren't going make it past letter "b."

The world sort of opened up to me in that moment.

In retrospect, the whole yanking me out of sheltered suburbia was a good thing.

During my ninth grade year, however, it was incredibly lonely.

Every time the bell rang for first lunch at 11:45, I'd get an anxious knot in my stomach: "Where would I sit at lunch?"

By some scheduling fluke, I got assigned to the lunch period with very few freshmen. I think there were 12 freshmen girls in the whole cafeteria at that time.

Ten of them were freshmen cheerleaders.

The freshmen cheerleaders were all good Christians. These girls were extremely kind. They let me sit down at their table. They asked me kind questions about my family and my sports interests.

The problem, of course, is that I don't have an sports interests. I had no idea how the Pittsburg Pirates differed from the Pittsburg Steelers. I didn't have a boyfriend who followed baseball or football or basketball. (My father and baby brother didn't even follow baseball or football or basketball.) I had no idea what being "pre-engaged" meant. I had no favorite perfume, or favorite skin care regime or favorite shade of Cover Girl lipstick. I didn't even have a common Algebra homework to groan over, because I skipped out of even taking a math class that year.

So every lunch period I sat down with a steaming, yet inedible hot lunch of mashed lasagna and faced a wide social gulf between my inner world and the rest of humankind at Buckhannn-Upshur High School.

It wasn't that the Cheerleaders weren't open. It wasn't that they weren't friendly or kind. It was just that deep down I knew it was only a matter of time before the glib social small talk around the lunch table bumped against a brutal uncomfortable truth; I was a strange, strange girl from an alien planet.

So everyday for a year at 11:45 AM was "Please, don't make me sit at the Cheerleader table today."

I think said yes to at least two Friday dance dates that year, solely so I had a place to sit for a while other than the Freshman Cheerleader lunch table.

Fast-forward two years to the beginning of my junior year, where I found myself sitting next to a girl I'd shared the same Cross-Country Team Bus, Pep Club Bus and Band Bus for three years. Only today, during this otherwise ordinary lunch in the same glaring lemon yellow cafeteria, we start having a real conversation about a book, I think it was Pride and Prejudice. Suddenly, we start finding all of this commonality, like that we both adore English class but despise Math Class, and it turns out that I find a new best friend again. I found my "Kellum." And all I can think, after all of my lonely, at loose end lunch periods is,"I finally have a person to sit next to at lunch!"

That grateful feeling is all I can say about finding the Carmelite order. It feels so good to have a home in the Catholic church.

I know what I'm supposed to do. I'm a contemplative. I'm supposed to pray.

I don't pray well yet. I don't pray often. Yet I still know where my lunch table is in the interior social map of the heart.

The Catholic church. A grand place for everyone inside!

Carmelite Sunday

On the surface, my Carmelite meetings seem perfectly normal and perfectly familiar. There are uncomfortable folding chairs on plain plastic tables in a dingy church basement. There is a treasurer report, and a talk by the snack coordinator. Our Carmelite books have the homely covers from a cheap printing press.

Everything is familiar from a life time of attending United Methodist Church events.
I'm calm and easy, relaxed and comfortable.

Then someone will start talking and the roof of the building flies off and my soul is in flight.

Seriously. I spent the better part of my first, and prior to this Sunday, only Carmelite meeting gripping the back of the plain plastic table to keep myself grounded in time and space.

Fellow Carmelites will use the most mundane language to easily express these thoughts that are so deep and so true.

For example, my group leader Lou said "The world is always going to underestimate the power of contemplative prayer. Someone will thank you for your time spent in the prison ministry, but no one is going to thank you for that hour you spent in active prayer. Yet we can't make that mistake. We can't underestimate the time spent alone with God, allowing Him to form us. In fact, it's only after we have that regular quiet prayer time that we'll ever be any use in the prison ministry or any active service for the church."

Lou said this with the calmness and certainty that I'd say "The Washington Post says its going to snow tomorrow."

As he talked I had this clear picture of the section of the church bulletin where the thank yous for help with the Food Pantry are listed. I realized in this deep interior place that no one is ever going to print up a bulletin heading that reads "A special thank you to Mrs. Abigail Benjamin for spending a half an hour with the Lord in her closet during the kids naps." If I waited around for public approval, or for an "easy" time to start my prayer life, it was never going to happen.

That doesn't matter.

I know what quiet prayers does for my soul. God loves to give me gifts during quiet meditation.

So that is the Carmelites, glowing, happy interactions with some of the neatest people you'll ever meet.

Kissing My Scapular

At this point, it’s a pretty fair bet that any Catholic devotion that I turned my nose up during RICA as being “too weird”, is now on my “must have-- can’t live without it” list. NFP, Daily Mass, the Rosary, First Saturday devotions, Our Lady of Fatima, all of these have won their way into my heart. My latest, “How did I live without it” item is my Brown Scapular.

I cannot tell you how much this small piece of brown wool has changed my prayer life. I love that the back feels scratchy, like the camel hair clothes of John the Baptist. I love that mine comes with a St. Benedict medal that reminds me to pray for the pope. I love that it’s unfashionable and sticks out of my hip black tee shirts. I love that I can kiss it every time that I sin as a concrete act of penance. When I’m going into a tense situation (especially when I have to make difficult phone calls), I clutch a cloth picture of Our Lady in my hand. I love that wearing Our Lady of Mount Carmel makes me feel so close to St. Theresa of Avila (my patron saint) and her namesake St. Theresa of the Child Jesus.

Wearing a scapular is a reminder of the maternal hug that Our Lady extends to each of us. I’m so grateful that Our Lady extended this kindness to St. Simon Stock.

PS: Don’t forget to read about the Ugandan Martyrs Feast Day today and discover an inspiring example of male chastity.