“But don’t you want to get married
and have a real family?”
This was the honest question posed by
my ten-year-old honorary niece shortly before I entered the canonical novitiate. My middle school girls from ministry ask me similar
questions: “But don’t you want to fall in love?” “What
if you meet a boy you really like?”
Adults ask, too, though without the
disarming frankness of these preteen girls.
If you’ve grown up on the narrative of falling head over heels and
living happily ever after, Disney-princess-and-Prince-Charming-style, it’s hard
to believe a life that doesn’t follow that road map could be meaningful and
fulfilling. This narrative gets an
annual shot in the arm every February when corporate America rolls out the candy,
jewelry, lingerie, and flowers, replete with lots of pink hearts and red
glitter, to sell us a cupid’s-arrow-pierced image of romantic love. Unhappily-single friends quip that
Valentine’s is “singlehood awareness day” as it serves as a painful reminder of
their unpartnered state in a culture where romantic, sexual love is at the
heart of identity, belonging, and worth.
In the face of such relentless marketing, the vow of consecrated celibacy
I am considering sounds unrealistic at best, impossible and unhealthy at
worst.
How can this way of loving possibly
make sense? Such an inclusive, counter-cultural
way of loving can only be understood by expanding the definition of love and
intimacy. There is a lot of love that
doesn’t fit into the commoditized mold of a gorgeous bride and gallant groom –
both with Colgate-advertisement-smiles and perfect hair – walking hand in hand through
a spring meadow. I appreciate the way
Valentine’s Day is named in Latin America: as el dia de amor y amistad – the day of love and friendship.
The confluence of Ash Wednesday and
Valentine’s Day – dubbed by a pastor friend as “Valentash Day” – in the calendar
adds a unique twist to my take on celebrating love this year. There is a stark contrast between the
Hallmark-card caricature of love and the black, dry ashes we smudge on one
another’s foreheads at liturgy.
Fairytale fantasy meets a solemn call to fasting and conversion. How can the two fit together?
Perhaps there’s a valuable truth in
this holiday mash-up: all authentic, enduring,
love – in marriage, community, family, ministry, or friendship – requires
struggle, and often sacrifice. St Valentine
was, after all, a martyr. Love is costly. “Love in reality is a harsh
and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams,” said Dorothy Day, quoting
Dostoyevsky. Given her life of
voluntary poverty, service to the poor, and justice-seeking in community, she
knew well the cost of love.
Recently at a house panel
discussion on consecrated celibacy, a Dominican sister stated, “our world needs
mirroring of who God is.” Her words echo
in my mind as think about “Valentash Day” with its simultaneous celebration of
love and call to conversion. I began to
catalogue the glimpses of God I catch in countless acts of love I witness and
share in, each of them a mirror.
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| Mary Grace ministers to a wounding "Unite the Right" protestor in Charlottesville on August 12, 2017 | (photo credit: Jeremiah Knupp, News Leader) |
I smile at the enduring love of a
couple at church - both over 90 years old - and the gentleness with which the
husband helps his wife into her coat at the end of liturgy. I am moved by the spontaneous love of a
middle school student who affirms a classmate after reading an original poem in
front of the class. I weep at the
muscular love in the public sphere of friends who have taken to the streets proclaiming
“black lives matter” and nonviolently challenging police violence – all while
refusing to diminish the human dignity of police officers. I treasure the inclusive love of my brother
who invited a transgendered friend to our family Christmas dinner when her own
family no longer accepted her. I witness
the courageous, risk-taking love of a couple who have become guardians of an
unaccompanied migrant Guatemalan teenaged boy so he can apply for Special
Immigrant Juvenile status. I am in awe
of the quiet love of monastics who rise in the middle of the night to pray for
the needs of the world. I appreciate the thoughtful love of sisters back home
who send me so many cards of encouragement that they cover nearly every spot on
my bedroom walls. I am heartened by the childlike love of my fifth graders as
they wield Crayola markers and glue sticks to fashion red-construction-paper
valentine cards for local nursing home residents. I am humbled by the vulnerable love of a
friend in early recovery from cocaine and alcohol addiction who brought me to
an open Narcotics Anonymous meeting so I could bear witness to his resurrection. I respect the truth-telling love of a sister
who admits she found something challenging about an interaction with me so that
we can deepen in relationship. I hold in
prayer the gritty love of my friends Sam and Daniel who do urban streetoutreach, carrying Narcan in case they encounter someone who has overdosed on opioids. I am moved to tears by the astonishing love
of my friend Mary Grace who, on August 12 in Charlottesville, while wearing a
homemade t-shirt proclaiming “Love, 1 John 4:7-8” compassionately poured water
on the face of a white supremacist with tear gas in his eyes and staunched his
bleeding wound, despite her total disagreement with his point of view. I give thanks for the generous love of
Dominican congregations who for thirty years have offered novices the space to
grow in freedom to make an authentic discernment about God’s call on our lives.
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| Mary Grace washes the eyes of a "Unite the Right" demonstrator in Charlottesville on August 12, 2017. | (photo credit: Jeremiah Knupp |
This Ash Wednesday, might you write
your own litany to celebrate how the love you witness mirrors God’s love and
bears witness to Lent’s call to continual conversion?
