Risky

Dear Friend,

Love is Risky.

I keep running over these words as I finish the last week of my first semester at the School of Theology. As I struggle to finish papers, take mind-bending exams, submit proposals, and work a 40-hour week, I have been overcome by the most intense wave of self-doubt I have ever experienced. Am I smart enough to be here? Is my writing strong enough? Am I strong enough? Have I learned anything? Will I pass my finals with distinction? Will I pass them at all? Can I really keep working while I'm doing this and not go crazy? How much are my relationships suffering because of my schedule?

Never has the riskiness of love been as apparent as it was while I've holed up writing a paper about the beauty and terror of the Crucifixion. People often ask me--despite corruption in the Church, pedophilia scandals, power abuses, degradation of women, in spite of a religion at which any reasonable person would scoff—in spite of all of this, why do I remain Catholic, Christian, a student of theology? While writing this paper, I thought about the riskiness of the Incarnation; the beauty and terror of a God who loved the world enough to say "yes" to torture and death. This, to me, was more than enough to become a Christian, and certainly enough to keep me in a Church with which I so often feel in conflict. My experience with the Catholic Church has been analogous to falling in love. It's risky. I've had to open myself to an uncertain future with nothing but faith in the other party. For an extreme type-a personality, this has been a difficult, but necessary process.

Yesterday an unlooked for and very dear friend stopped by. He knocked in my door in the midst of my cursing Turabian style guides and feeling like I was drowning in a sea of my own inadequacy. Expecting another student, I was near to tears with the thought of another distraction, another indication of how much smarter and self-possessed my compatriots are, when he burst through my door. A graduate of the SOT, he knows much about my frustrations, exhaustion, occasional total and complete apathy toward my subject, and intense doubt about my own scholarly abilities. During these final days of December, when Minnesota is so dark, quiet, and lonely, he arrived as an unforeseen blessing; a small gift to remind me that amid the milieu of papers, exams, sleeping through the alarm, phone calls, mail merges etc. ad nauseum, God is Present. Shaun reminded me what it is to be in real communion with another person. Months worth of emotional crust was stripped away and I remembered what it was like to love someone and allow them to love you just as you are.

I take much comfort in some words of Karl Rahner's which I read in the last week: "And in Jesus he (God) experienced the fact that the mystery of man, which it is not for man himself to control, and which is bound up in the absurdity of guilt and death is, nevertheless, hidden in the love of God." In typical Rahnerian style, he cannot help but obfuscate his own meaning. After much unpacking of and prayer over these words, I think what Rahner is saying is that human nature, despite its fallenness and sinfulness is inextricably interwoven with God's grace and love. I find the idea of a constantly graced existence both compelling and true to my own lived experience. Shaun's vist and Rahner's words came to me at the same moment, each a different and equal blessing as I muddle on the best I know how.

How are you? How are your own joys and small sorrows? Your moments of beauty and terror? Are you staying warm? Finding ways to overcome the darkness? Are you looking forward to the solstice? Christmas? The ending of an academic semester? The beginning of a new year? I would like to tell you more, but the kettle is whistling and my slippers are waiting. I hope you remain safe in your travels and that you embrace love's riskiness, whatever it may mean to you.

You are in my prayers. I hope to remain in yours.

With love,
KMJ