The Cross, Conversion, and Chippendale Chairs

I've really enjoyed following the Bright Maidens' Lenten blog series, especially this week's installment about conversion. I've had conversion on the brain lately since I've been following Kassie, Brit, and Kortni's poignant journeys into joining the Catholic Church this Easter. Being a cradle Catholic, I never had the experience of a dramatic leap into the truth, but lately I've been realizing that God requires a change of heart at every stage of life.
Elizabeth's Bright Maidens post really resonated with me since she described the stage that I'm grappling with right now - figuring out how to balance my faith and my professional life. When I interviewed at my grad program, I described my volunteer work with the poor and my love for fancy museums as "two halves of me that I'm trying to reconcile." Two years later, that is still a work in progress.

One of the new lambs on the museum grounds

When you spend most hours cramming information into your brain, there is little energy left to worry about your soul. Sometimes it's hard to see life beyond stacks of books and papers. I feel like to much of academia, my church-going is just a quaint hobby that makes me really good at art history trivia. It's only slightly more relevant to modern society than Civil War re-enacting, and probably less palatable since re-enactors don't ever tell people their choices are immoral. What do my beliefs have to offer modernity except the Cross and self-denial? That's a hard sell, and its discouraging. I've gotten a little too jaded about how crazy and kitchy Christianity must seem to outsiders.

I'm startling to realize that this is another conversion opportunity. I have to decide to be Catholic not because it's what my parents taught me, or because I'm afraid of hell, or even because I loved my college campus ministry community. No, it has to be something I choose myself, today, for the way I live right now. But exactly how do I make that choice?

Lamb of God headstone at my Delaware parish

God gave my jumbled mind and heart a breakthrough this Tuesday as I sat with the daily readings in my local parish. My over-academic brain noticed that there was a lot of material culture in the Gospel accounts of Holy Week - clothes, dishes, donkeys, attic spaces, plants, money. Maybe the two halves of me weren't so separate after all...

I thought about all the reasons why Catholics are supposedly weird:
- We talk about people and things most people have never heard of. Oh wait, that's what my classmates and I do all day long. Normal people don't spend car rides discussing Chippendale chairs, museum ethics, vernacular architecture theories, or Jackson Lears' conception of antimodernism.
- We have goofy rituals and traditions that are off-putting to outsiders. Well, at grad school dinner parties we flip over chairs, climb under tables, and analyze the china. (Seriously, I did that last weekend.)
- Then there's that sticky final issue of poverty and self denial. Frankly, I can't think of a better way to describe getting a master's degree or PhD. Case closed.

late 1800s embroidered Lamb of God burse at Church of the Transfiguration, NYC

Really, the two halves of me work best when they are in tandem. Catholicism has given me an advantage as an historian, and not just in the trivia department. When I look at the world through the eyes of faith, I can see connections everywhere - the hand of Providence in good things, Old Testament allusions in the Mass, words of hymns that pertain to certain moments, experiences that I can compare to events in Christ's life. The entire world is bound together by the love of God, the waters of Baptism, the tangible mystery that is the Eucharist. When I was at Mass tonight, I was connected to thousands of people who lived centuries before me.

There are times when studying history feels similar. Sometimes my mind envisions a timeline of people and events stretching back through the decades, connected by threads of causes and ideas. Good history books weave a complex web of lives and stories to help us understand how the world got the way it is now. The best way I can try to explain it is a kind of 3-D or polarized filter, and you have to make a point to turn it on.

Today, Holy Thursday, I turned in my master's thesis about Episcopal vestments. The whole thing is secretly about the allure of the Eucharist, so it's perfect that it ended on the day Christ instituted that very sacrament. Maybe God is trying to tell me something.

For the rest of the Triduum, I'll be praying for the converts waiting to be Confirmed, and working on my own conversion. I'll be praying for God to open the eyes of my heart, so I can see the connections that have yet to be made.

Man is a giddy thing

It's Latare Sunday. How is it time to break out the rose vestments already? Didn't Lent just start? Almost every year around this time I start to worry that I don't feel penitential enough, that my Lent needs to be harder, that I should have piled on more things to give up. If I'm not miserable I must be doing something wrong. Does this ever happen to anyone else? I guess it's a sign that I need to involve God more in my thesis drudgery.

A nineteenth-century rose cope at St. Ignatius of Antioch, NYC

Brother #3 is turning 17. How has it been that long since he was born? Wasn't I just 17? It can't have been that long since he was born on a Holy Saturday evening. I still remember the cooing compliments from the nurses when we all came to meet him the next day in our Easter clothes. My sister and I had matching dresses (my idea), but I also remember my 9 year old hair-styling skills being not that great. When Mom and the new baby arrived home the next day, our next-door neighbor kid climbed up on the garage roof to meet them. I'm so proud of the outgoing, ardently Catholic young man my little brother has become since that day.

Yesterday was the 6th anniversary of Pope John Paul II's death. Has it really been that long since I watched all the news coverage of crowds gathering to mourn in St. Peter's Square? That weekend was a very emotional one for me. I've idolized JPII since childhood, and as his sickness and pain ended, my own journey into suffering was just beginning. The circulatory condition that would eventually make me drop out of college for a year was just starting to flare up. Grief over the Holy Father combined with frustration at my body slippping out of my control and I ended up crying in a heap on the laundry room floor. Normally I don't cry when people die, but that day I felt like I was finally getting it right. I'm grateful for what I learned that year about suffering and trusting God, and for how much stronger I've gotten in the past 6 years. I like to thing that JPII may have put in a good word for me up there.

I guess what ties all three of these things together is that since time keeps moving us forward, there will always be more opportunities to keep growing into the people God wants us to be. I love how this song explains that with a little help from Shakespeare.

Sigh no more, no more
One foot in sea, one on shore
My heart was never pure
And you know me
You know me

And man is a giddy thing
Oh man is a giddy thing...

Love that will not betray you, dismay or enslave you,
It will set you free
Be more like the man you were made to be.
There is a design,
An alignment to cry,
Of my heart to see,
The beauty of love as it was made to be

Emotional Perfection

This morning I went to Mass at St. Patrick's cathedral, since it is only a 15 minute walk down 51st from our hotel. It was just a typical simple half-hour weekday service with no singing and sparse pews, but I haven't felt this happy to be in church in a long time. I remembered feeling the same way about a year ago when I sought out Catholic churches in London.

As I walked back past Radio City Music Hall and Times Square, I wondered why I had the sudden attack of pious euphoria. It must be because I'm on a trip - all the excitement of exploring makes me feel like a new person. Seriously, when was the last time I fit in Mass, a brisk walk, and breakfast before 9am?

It's true that I can be something of an emotional perfectionist. I think I need to be happy all the time, and feel guilty if I am depressed, distracted, discouraged, etc. This can especially happen in my spiritual life. Not every Mass is full of quiet joy; sometimes I am going through the motions. Sometimes the rosary is drudgery. Sometimes saints are intimidating, not inspiring. Does this mean I am a bad Christian?

But this morning I realized that having a connection with God is not that different from any other relationship. Sometimes the stress of ordinary life gets you down and it's not all cinematic fairy tale fireworks. Then you go on vacation or have a birthday party and suddenly you appreciate everyone much more. For example, there have been Saturdays where The Beau and I are so zonked out from school that we haven't had much to talk about. Those days are mundane and not particularly euphoric. Then there are days that are blissfully happy and exciting, like the Saturday in New York last December when we visited St. Patrick's and the Guggenheim. There's a natural emotional rhythm there, and maybe my relationship with God is not too different.

Museums in movies: When In Rome

Ever since I've seen the trailer for When in Rome, I've been curious about the fact that it stars Kristen Bell as a curator at the Guggenheim museum. Could a chick flick present the job accurately?. Now that it's on Netflix I figured I should give it a try and see how realistic Bell was as curator Beth. Here's what the film got right:

• The Guggenheim website lists 15 curators, not all of whom have PhDs, so its not entirely improbable that Beth could get an assistant position with just an M.A.(Although the film makes no comments on her credentials.)
• A major part of Beth's job involves extracting large donations from wealthy patrons on the board of trustees. 
• Beth seems quite familiar with the museum's permanent collection, and gives private tours to potential investors.  
• Beth fell in love with the Guggenheim visiting it as a child. If you ask any of my classmates they can tell you about fond childhood memories of museums or antiquing. 
• Beth's boss, a Miranda Priestly clone played by Anjelica Huston, wears statement jewelry and does not tolerate personal lives interfering in work. This uber-curator scowls at the prospect of Beth being out of town for her sister's wedding.
• Unlike her angelic sister, Beth has not been lucky in love, no doubt because her manic career goals in graduate school sapped her emotional energy and will to be normal. 

Okay, that's about it. Sadly, there's a lot more that doesn't make any sense. This character might as well be a journalist or fashion designer or other generic chick flick job.

• Despite her low ranking position, Beth makes enough money for a sizable Manhattan apartment. So does her suitor, who works in the even more financially doomed field of print media. 
• Beth doesn't believe in magic, despite that fact that she has her dream job at the museum she loved as a child. Don't make me hurt you, blonde girl. 
• Beth does curate an exhibition, but her job really seems to be more event planning than scholarship. Why the heck is she assembling gala programs at her home? That's the development department's job! I also doubt anyone would think 3Oh!3 songs as the soundtrack to an exhibit opening is a good idea .
• For someone with at least an M.A. in art history, Beth seems pretty oblivious about Europe. In her staff meeting, she has to specify that her sister's warp speed wedding will occur in Rome, Italy. (So... not the one in Texas?) The fact that the Guggenheim has a branch in Venice makes this really inexcusable.
• To make matters worse, once she gets herself off a plane and into a Roman taxi, Beth takes no interest in scenic views of architecture or statuary. PUH-LEASE. Even my most iPhone addicted colleagues would stop checking email to, I dunno, gawk at the art they have chosen as their life's work. 

 So, you're probably thinking, whatever Sarah, is this still a fun movie? Um no. It's horrible. It's an accidental satire of romantic comedies. Characters say lines like "He didn't really love you, he was just under a magic spell!"; "I just realized I love Nick more than my job!"; and in the "I love you" reveal - "No, no, you go ahead and say it." Just when I thought things might not be completely predictable, there were both a race through traffic at a critical moment and a runaway bride. What, you didn't have time for someone to dash through an airport?

In the end, I decided to enjoy When In Rome by accepting it as a total slapstick farce, kind of like a really bad Marx brothers movie. After all, Beth's four magic fountain stalkers are like a Chico and three Harpos. Also, the scenes in Italy are about as authentic as this number from the Marx's A Night at the Opera. Hmm, the Marx brothers at the Guggenheim - now there's an exhibit I would curate.

Muli-dimensionality

This weekend I got to visit The Beau up in New Jersey, where he is a history grad student. There was particular cause for celebration because he had finished his first qualifying exam! Huzzah!

One of my favorite parts of New Jersey weekends is brunch after Sunday Mass. Our usual diner instinctively asks "How many this week?" when we show up. In Delaware I don't have a close church community, so I relish the chance to talk about my faith with people my age.

Sometimes conversation only deal with pop culture and the appeal of bacon, but this week we had a weighty discussion of metaphysics and the dimensions of reality. Does God exist in time, or in an outside fourth of fifth dimension? How does our concept of reality's dimensions affect our understanding of heaven, the Mass, and free will? I'm not sure I understood it all, but it was a welcome break from intense material culture research. Objects have meaning, but there is an entire universe of intangible concepts that is equally important.

Anyway, all these metaphysics got me thinking about the dimensions of my own life. Most of the time, I'm in the museum dimension. I fit in there with the colorful books, field trips, and endless conversations about material culture. But every few weeks, I inhabit another dimension up north. Over the past year I have gotten to know The Beau's church friends and his life there. Now I feel like I fit in there, with the Jersey diners, Sunday hymns, walks in the park, and endless conversations about what it means to be a Catholic academic. I am grateful for the opportunity to inhabit both worlds, I just wish they weren't so far apart.

Put a little splendor in your life

When I interviewed at my grad program over a year ago, one panel member asked the obvious ans tricky question of why I was applying when I currently was a full-time social work volunteer. How could I study antiques in a mansion when I was well-versed in urban poverty and infant mortality?
My response was that "there are two halves of me that have to co-exist, and that I try to reconcile."

That's still true. This past weekend in St. Louis was a much needed time to get in touch with my service half. It was great just to have fun with my wonderful posse of roommates and not worry about school. No one there got snobbish about furniture or made connections with noted scholars or played the "who is more stressed about school" game. Instead, we re-connected with people who were important to us and remembered the people we helped last year. Service requires humility and adaptability, and I like that.

On the other hand, I could feel my academic side itching to burrow into a book. For Sunday Mass we went to the cathedral on Lindell. I love that magnificent building so much I could just hug its marble columns. Sitting under the mosaic-covered domes and hearing the soaring organ, I remembered why I love the splendor of art and architecture and religious history. In that sacred space, I was just a drop in the ocean of magnificence and transcendence and Divinity and mystery. If my little thesis can help tell one story of how people experience God through worship, it will be worthwhile. Academia requires wonder and curiosity at how the world works, and I like that too.

Sometimes, rarely, the two halves work together. Like when I show the Urban Promise campers example pictures of great art. Louis Comfort Tiffany might not seem relevant to their inner city lives, but they loved his work. Today they oohed and ahhed at images of stained glass from churches and museums. A few even tried to replicate what they saw in their tissue paper crafts. In that moment, splendor and service combined. Everyone deserves some experience of awe-inspiring beauty, even noisy kids in a church basement.