Waiting for David: 1 Samuel 16

This is the first of a three-part series by Felicia Schneiderhan on 1 & 2 Samuel.

A turning point in my faith came when I stopped disagreeing and debating with everything I read in the Bible ("Nobody lives to 800!"). I began reading the Bible as a story of how people relate to God. And then I opened Samuel, which is the story of how I relate to God.

Samuel, the prophet, is mourning because the first king, Saul, is not doing so hot. God tells Samuel to go see Jesse of Bethlehem, that one of his sons will be the next king.

In Bethlehem, Jesse parades out seven sons. They all look like strong men who would make a good king and Samuel's ready to pick one. But God tells Samuel, don't focus on outward appearance – God looks at the heart; and as each of the seven pass in front of him, Samuel knows he's not the one. When all seven have gone by, Samuel asks Jesse, "Are these all the sons you have?"

When I heard this read in Mass one Sunday, I laughed out loud. Samuel has just seen seven fit, strong, intelligent young men, and he has the gall to ask Jesse, "Um, do you have any more sons?"

Of course, there is one – the youngest, out tending the sheep. Samuel tells Jesse to send for him, that they won't sit down till he gets there. Maybe you know the rest of the story – ruddy little David appears, God tell Samuel, "Rise and anoint him; he is the one," and David starts his journey to becoming Israel's king.

We never know what we'll find in the Bible that we will relate to, what story will open up the text for us, show us how applicable it is in our lives today. For me, this story suddenly made the entire Bible very alive, very current.

I am like Samuel in nearly every decision I make. I get nervous about making important decisions and, afraid I'll chose wrongly, or that I won't get what I need, I'll grab the first thing I see because it looks fine on the outside. My impatience is based on fear and selfishness. I fear the space of not knowing, and so I make a decision as quickly as possible to fill it up.
But I am learning to wait. I am learning to go where God leads me, and then wait for His choice to appear.

Last month, my husband and I moved from Chicago to northern Minnesota. For two months I searched for a place to live and kept coming up with nothing. Things would seem fine out the outside, but something would tell me, wait, wait. And then, two weeks before we were set to move, when I was starting to get a little panicked, we found a place more perfect than we could have imagined. It's better than anything I could have requested from God, reminding me that His will for me is always better than any laundry list of requests I could write.

Like Samuel, I have to remember just to keep standing until the right king appears.
***
Felicia Schneiderhan is a freelance writer based in Duluth, Minnesota.

Photo from Felicia's camera.  Her own, Duluth-based David.

New Year's Resolutions

I can't help myself. This time of year always gets me into the resolving mood. Increase the number of miles I jog a week. Start yoga. Find a meditation group that I like. Cut mint chocolate chip ice cream out of my diet. Keep my personal blog updated. I'm always disappointed in how stereotypical I am about it...and amazed by how my resolve crumbles by my birthday at the end of February.

And it's a beautiful time in the Catholic calendar. We start of the year celebrating Mary, reminding ourselves of the potential for goodness and sacredness all around us. It is an invigorating time of the liturgical year

I have a friend who thinks about New Year's Resolutions in a beautiful way. In recent years, she has decided that her re-commitment to ideals around the first of each year would be less about a "grin & bear it" resolve and more about a change in attitude approach. Her approach makes January a month of reflection and evaluation and deciding how to direct ourselves in the next year, rather than guilt-ridden re-commitments

I like it. I'm inspired by it.

What are you inspired by this January?

Advent & Addictions

I'm reading Sarah McFarland Taylor's Green Sisters: A Spiritual Ecology, a really wonderful survey of the incredible way Catholic nuns are pushing the bounds on environmental issues--from hybrid cars, to eco-friendly remodels, to CSAs, to commitments to only wear second-hand clothing. One of the women Sarah interviewed talks about how one of the ways she sees her environmental commitment is as an effort to slow addictions--addiction to fossil fuel and television and speedy food, obviously. But she also mentioned addiction to work and to perfectionism. And these things caught my attention.

Greg (my husband) and I are just six weeks back from our three-month adventure in Argentina. I've been a scurry of stress to find jobs, cars, an apartment, furniture, renters' insurance, finish some work on From the Pews in the Back, keep up the blog. I've even found myself working about how quickly I can make some friends! Is it possible I've become addicted to my own life-creating busy-ness?

What I haven't done yet is go hiking in the Olympic National Forest that is almost literally out our backdoor. It's the third week of Advent and I'm still promising myself to teach Greg "O Come, O Come Emmanuel." Our Christmas tree stands light-less and ornament-less in the corner, waiting ever-so-patiently for us to find our collective moments of joy to decorate it.
And I know that these things, more than cars or the perfect couch, are what really make life.
So as I enter these final whispers of Advent renewed in my commitment to be careful about the way my addictions to busy-ness hurt me and my loved ones. And, if you feel so inclined, I invite you to do the same.

Kate Dugan is one of Olympia, Washington's newest residents and one of the co-editors of this blog & From the Pews in the Back.

Sounds of the Season

My boyfriend prefers not to listen to Christmas music before Christmas Eve; he thinks that songs about Christmas should be reserved for Christmas proper. But, I cannot help myself. I love the carols, the canticles, even electronic jazz piano versions of classic favorites. This music is our common holiday language. How many songs (beyond such bar favorites as “I Will Survive” or “Livin’ on a Prayer”) do so many people know by heart and are willing to sing loudly and without self-consciousness in a room full of people?

There are many fantastic songs of the season, secular and religious, and my favorites are the ones that are thick with theology (especially in their rarely sung third or fourth verses): The First Noel; The Holy and the Ivy; Lo! How a Rose E’er Blooming; Joy to the World. Sometimes these songs carry an instructive air; they tell us what we believe. Other times they are solemn and devotional, allowing for us to retreat inside ourselves and examine our own notions of what it means that God was born human. This music to me is a method of meditation, a reminder of the constant presence of something, of a faith in a miraculous, wonderful, and downright unbelievable event. The music takes us there. It takes us to the annunciation, to the manger, to epiphany and the coming of the wise men. The best songs even take us into the hearts of the kings, the shepherds, the angels, the holy family.

J. Chris Moore, in a gorgeous choral arrangement of Four Canticles for Christmas reminds us of the humble and glorious first moments of the Christ child’s life. Listening to the fourth canticle, “The Worlds Rejoice”, I am left speechless by its precise and reverential description of the wonder of the birth:

The night softly envelops her as she sits quietly.
Angels whisper their delight. The leaves create a lullaby.
The earth holds her breath.
A child.
Peace has come to a troubled place.
And the worlds rejoice.

Music is a kind of poetry, able to capture in the harmonious combination of words and notes what cannot be captured by words alone. And perhaps these songs are not the most historically accurate; perhaps they often represent older theological ideas or take literary license with biblical passages. But they are a holiday ritual, and singing them is a type of homage paid to the wonderful, to the miraculous, to the mysterious.

Rebecca Curtin is dreaming of a warm Christmas, and can’t wait to hop a flight from Boston to spend the holidays with her family in San Diego. Her Christmas music playlist is already programmed on her iPod for the long plane ride.

All in a Name

When I met Mary she was the kind of old that fascinates children. With her soft, creased skin and thin white hair, I thought she must be a hundred, at least. She was one of the aids in my first Sunday school class when I was four or five, and I can still see her fragile, hunched body and shaky voice hovering over us, a gentle reminder to focus on the task at hand while our little bodies bounced up and down in the tiny plastic chairs. She is the first matriarch I can remember from my Catholic upbringing.

One day Mary put her soft hand on my shoulder, leaning down a little further to ensure that I heard her direction. As I pressed the red crayon against the paper in front of me, she spelled my name aloud: J-e-s-s-i-c-a. She repeated the letters again and again, inserting brief commentaries on the precise curve of the "J" and the round dot of the "i" when I struggled to produce them on the page. When I looked up at her with a satisfied grin, my word complete, I had realized for the first time that it was my word. Thanks to her careful attention, these little squiggles suddenly carried a new profundity.

Looking back, this is delightfully ironic because my name, Jessica, happens to be the most popular name given to American females born in 1986—the year of my birth. If this Sunday school class was like the others, I was one of two—if not three—other girls with this name on her paper. But at that moment, there was no possible way anyone could have convinced me that those seven letters belonged to anyone but me. Surely, Mary, this lovely woman, had labored patiently and attentively in order to help me master this word because it captured me. J-e-s-s-i-c-a.

During the moments when I feel unseen or unheard in the Church, I look back to this childhood memory and long to experience the same sense of significance that Mary granted me. And as I ask myself how I can possibly make a difference in our vast tradition of so many issues and complications, I am often comforted by the knowledge that through the simple act of affirming one's name—of recognizing the unique and valuable life that each individual brings to the greater Body of Christ—I might help one person see herself the way God does, and that can make all the difference in the world.

Jessica Coblentz spent many childhood years perfecting her signature in preparation for her future career as a famous actress. Today she dreams of becoming a theologian. She is a regular blogger at www.jessicacoblentz.blogspot.com
Image from:
http://images-cdn01.associatedcontent.com/image/A1361/136183/300_136183.jpg

Waiting for Advent

The new Church year is just around the corner. Soon we’ll move from Ordinary Time to the Season of Advent, from green to violet and rose, from the daily stuff of faith to four weeks charged with the feeling of hope and anticipation.

I can’t help but look forward to Advent and it’s palpable excitement as we look forward to the coming of Christ Jesus. To me it feels like those days when you wake up super early and the sky is still darker than dark. You make yourself a cup of coffee, and sit on the couch, waiting for the dawn to come and the world to wake up. That’s the feeling I have right now as I think about Advent.

As the stores start cranking out the holiday merchandise and the Christmas present pitches, I want to hang on to this feeling of anticipation, of hope and trust in the new life of Christ Jesus. While I don’t normally do a lot of holiday shopping, I think this year I might try to get all my shopping done before Advent begins. That just might help me better embrace Advent and all that the new year holds for us.

And I might just make it a habit to wake up early. This will give me a chance to spend time with two Mary’s -- Mary Oliver the poet and Mary the Mother of God. The poet because her poems from Why I Wake Early will be good morning meditations for Advent. The Mother of God because I feel drawn to walking with Mary, especially as she prepared for the coming of not only her child but to God and to new life for the world. Wow!

In what ways are you preparing for Advent?

Sister Julie Vieira, IHM, blogs regularly at A Nun’s Life (http://anunslife.org) and is trying to wait patiently for the Season of Advent to begin.

Beyond the meat and potatoes … Er, sort of

I’ve been practicing yoga with a lot more regularity lately. This isn’t my tradition. I grew up in enough of a meat and potatoes kind of town to fully understand that some people, albeit less and less every day in our increasingly Cosmopolitan world, think yoga is a bunch of hooey. I pretty much get where they’re coming from—I grew up in a pretty traditional, Catholic environment. Spirituality to me growing up was sitting in a wooden pew smoothed over from a great many sits before me, staring up at saints in colorful robes catching the sunlight from behind them, listening to the priest drone incantations way up front, staring into the glow of candles lighting the altar, talking to God in my head, on my knees.

So I don’t think I started out thinking yoga would provide some sort of profound experience. The first time I tried it was in college, in a big aerobics classroom with bright neon lights and mirrors all around. It seemed to be mostly about exercise, and muscle toning. But after a class or two of getting over the seeming silliness of it all (things like planting all fours and sticking your backside in the air) I started to have a few moments of notable expansion in my head and heart. I don’t think I articulated it much then. Yet off and on over the years, I continued to practice, with different teachers, in different environments. And now for the past year and a half I have settled on one studio, with a gentle teacher, restful lights, and simple music. And something about doing this week after week, going to the same place, moving through the same poses … the experience has steadily deepened in meaning for me.

Growing up in a Catholic gradeschool, there was a lot more ritual and routine built into my days and weeks—more, I realize now, than I’m naturally apt to build into life on my own. Mass was always on Thursday mornings in the church, music preparation on Tuesday afternoons in the gym, lunch unerringly at noon. I guess by nature I’m more prone to flighty swings in one direction or another—I’ve learned this about myself when let loose into an adult life that I can shape however I choose. But perhaps more of that habit of ritual sunk into my bones than I realized. Even though the squirmy 12 year old in me—and the ardently independent 20 something, I suppose—are a bit surprised to say so, it seems my heart and spirit start to expand and see the bigness around me a bit better when I corral them into a space I have seen many times, into movements I have come to expect, in an environment where I have met serenity before and thus have some measure of trust I can find it there again.

Kate Lucas lives in Minneapolis, MN, where she writes grants and many other communications for an international NGO that supports communities in Guatemala. She served with the Colorado Vincentian Volunteers several years ago and now scratches out poetry and knits in her free time.
Image used from: http://static.flickr.com/108/305169133_f9305a73c3.jpg

At God’s Table

I had been dating my husband just a few months when he invited me to come to church with him. I was hesitant. I hadn’t been to church in a long time. I had found too much to disagree with and had walked away.

He convinced me. I don’t know what I expected to happen. I had this strange irrational fear that an invisible barrier would bar me from coming in. “Our Doors Are Open Wide,” the sign said.

When I entered, I asked God if it was okay. I was filled with an overwhelming sense that of course it was okay, I was always welcome – that the only thing holding me back was me.

As a kid, I was a passionate practicing Catholic. I fervently prayed the rosary; I had deep discussions with God. I took each sacrament seriously. During high school, I taught CCD, attended retreats, and was a lector at Sunday Mass.

In my late teens and throughout my twenties, I had too many reasons to stay away. Some were my own willful desires to be in charge, to rebel. But mostly, I found too much I disagreed with.

I am reminded of something the Dalai Lama said, told to me by a Tibetan living in exile; when approached by a western Christian who wanted to convert to Buddhism, the leader of Tibet suggested he stay in the religion into which he was born, because it still had a lot to teach him.

I learn as much – maybe more – from what I disagree with. It forces me to look within, to dialogue with God, to see what it is I do believe and why – and then to look again at the thing I disagree with, which is usually an interpretation of scripture or doctrine. Text is always up for re-interpretation, and in fact must be reinterpreted, by many people, in many ways.

Too many of the disgruntled are leaving the table. In the Catholic Church today, we need to keep the disenfranchised voice at the table.

It’s easy to get up from the table when no one is listening to you and you don’t like the side dishes, even when you are hungry. It’s easy to refuse the whole meal and get up in search of another. But the harder path is to stay for what you came – the main dish – which everyone will alter slightly with condiments to suit their own tastes, and everyone will take a different part (this one likes white meat, this one likes the dark) – salt, pepper, ketchup, steak sauce – we are all sharing the body of Christ in the Eucharist. What is even more challenging is not to sit silently as you share the meal, quietly observing a discussion with which you passionately disagree, but to raise your voice and take issue, in the way God has set out for you – with kindness and compassion, with tolerance for others but still speaking your own truth as God speaks within you.

Felicia Schneiderhan is a freelance writer based in Chicago, where she lives year-round on a boat with her husband Mark. Visit her blog at Life Aboard Mazurka.

The Power of Place

Recently, I have been trying to convince myself to attend mass at the parish in which I grew up. After fifteen years away from my New Hampshire hometown I am spending the fall right in the middle of it since I’ve moved here to care for my mother. Being back in the spaces and places of my childhood has reminded me of how much I have changed since I left. But most challenging has been my struggle to redefine a relationship with the faith community once at the core of my life.

I have fond memories of my childhood parish, an impressive brick edifice rising over the city. It was here that I was an altar server and it was here that I sang “glory to God in the Highest” at the top of my lungs in the choir. But it was also in this space that I first identified the limits of what I began to call “comfortable Catholicism”. By high school I was frustrated with my fellow congregants. In my mind too many of them were people who faithfully attended mass on Sundays without embracing the radical change which I was beginning to feel my Catholic faith called for.

In the years since I have sought out Catholic churches very different from the one in which I grew up. I Kansas City I worshiped in a dilapidated building with Catholics from all over the world. In Minneapolis I worshiped with radical Catholics in a gymnasium. In Boston my Catholic community included women meeting in living rooms. And yet I can not ignore the call of this suburban church here in my hometown. Each time I drive by I feel a tug in the pit of my stomach. I think that this tug is a longing to make sense of my own faith journey and to reconcile where I am with where I’ve been. While I believe that “the church” is not synonymous with a physical building I am increasingly convinced that for me, the physical spaces of my Catholic identity loom large.

As I think about what it might be like to worship inside my childhood church I am worried. I assume that I will struggle at first to enter a peaceful, reflective place in my own heart. But still, I cannot shake the sense that this place--this very space--might still be important to my Catholicism. After all, this building literally holds segments of my faith journey. These fibers and beams and plaster housed, nurtured, and protected my earliest explorations of Catholicism. Might they be able to nurture my current questions and beliefs? Perhaps I will find out soon.

Elizabeth Duclos-Orsello is a mother, wife, runner, and Catholic living and working in New England where she is a professor of American Studies. She also writes for the blog “The Public Humanist”.

Why Jesus?

On my husband Mark's last birthday I took him to see a play at the Lookingglass Theater in downtown Chicago, then to the Signature Room lounge atop the John Hancock building. We sat before a table of cocktails, cheese, and chocolate cake, overlooking the sparkling skyscraper rooftops against the black backdrop of vast Lake Michigan.

Something about the vantage point – watching the city we love at night from high above– led our conversation away from the ordinary.

"But why Jesus?" I asked him. "Why do you think it's important that Jesus was the son of God? Why does it matter?"

He answered that Jesus went to the very depths of despair in people – the lowest of the low – and embraced them, and suffered alongside them.

Imagine for a moment that God couldn't go into the depths of sin – but a human could, and God as human could. Why Jesus? Because that's how God sent Himself into the depths of human despair and suffering. He wanted to reach us in the places we hide. Where do we hide? In vice, debauchery, hatefulness, violence. In power trips, in gossip, in the place we believe we are cast out, invisible, worthless.

God wanted to come after us. Whatever capacity and craving we have for sin, he wanted to call us back to him, make it possible for us to come to him – he wanted to reach us where we were.

God waits for us at the bottom, at the place we think we can't go any lower. Christ went into the deep, horrible places. He brought fishers of men along with him. He waits at the bottom for us, and then when he helps us up, he gives us reels to bring others.

God doesn't ask anything of us that he wouldn't do Himself. He went to the bottom to give us hope – to show a way out. He sends us to do the same.

Felicia Schneiderhan is a freelance writer based in Chicago, where she lives year-round on a boat with her husband Mark. Visit her blog at Life Aboard Mazurka.

The Devil Within

Early one morning when I was in grade school, I approached my dad with the moral dilemma troubling me big time. "If we're supposed to love everyone, what about the devil?" He answered, "You can love the devil, but not the devil's ways." This made sense and gave me some peace.

As an adult, I have sought a simple idea such as this one to help me wrap my mind around how I can understand the devil today. Does the devil even exist? In biblical stories the devil takes all manner of form – the snake, the trickster – to pull one over on us.

And then there is Christ's response to the Pharisees when they question why his disciples break the tradition of the elders and don't wash before they eat.

"Nothing outside a man can make him 'unclean' by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a man that makes him 'unclean.' …For from within, out of men's hearts, come evil thoughts…" (Mark 7:14-20)
The devil is not some outside force, peering in at the window, ready to strike us at our weakest points. Just like God dwells in each of us, so can the devil.

Was it really the snake who tempted Eve in the garden? Or was it more like Eve was hanging out in the garden, kind of bored, and a snake of an idea slithered into her mind – there's a tree smack in the middle of everything that God said don't touch…hmmm…wonder what would happen if I touched it?  

The force that separates me from God comes on most strongly when I am bored, when I'm frustrated and anxious and fearful, and, surprisingly, when I am right. Oh, how I love to be right! How I love to lord it over other people that I am right, and then the little devils get loose in my mind and go to all the places where I am right-right-right. Because when I am feeling right, then I don't need God.

The devil, at its core, is the idea that I am God.

Felicia Schneiderhan is a freelance writer based in Chicago, where she lives year-round on a boat with her husband Mark. Visit her blog at Life Aboard Mazurka. 

Mate' Communion

Argentina is well-known for its yerba mate' culture. Mate' is everywhere here—sitting at the ready in the cubicles at my English students' workplace, enjoyed during my Spanish classes, passed around at the language intercambio on Tuesdays.

There is much to say about mate' and the way it facilitates social relationships. Here's the rough & dirty of the tradition: yerba mate' is placed into a shared cup (often with sugar) and passed around the group. Everyone drinks through a straw and the cup is refilled regularly.

It's really a beautiful tradition.

The other day, it dawned on me that it's a lot like Catholic Communion. A community of people sharing in this goodness. There's no fear of the exchange of germs, there's no concern about running out of yerba. The sharing of mate facilitates conversation, makes people relax, and encourages a warm, open environment. When someone pulls out the mate', the entire mood of a conversation shifts into companionship.

The historical roots of Communion are similar—a meal shared, conversation enjoyed, people together. That's how mate' feels too—time together, a chance to chat with people.

I love that there are the connections in our rituals. It reminds me that we humans have a sort of instinctual need to share with one another. It makes me feel hopeful.

The Purpose of Prayer

My best friend Jill was 31 years old and five months pregnant with her first child when she developed breast cancer.

People around us began to pray. "I have whole churches in Texas praying for me," Jill joked.

I couldn't see the purpose of prayer. If God wanted something to happen, then it would happen, and we would have to trust His reasoning. Like maybe there was a reason for Jill being 31 years old and pregnant with her first baby and suddenly a five-centimeter tumor grows in her breast.

My mom says prayer is like asking your parent for something – maybe your dad doesn't know you want that new bicycle until you ask. I've found this to be a common idea; prayer is a gentle nudging to God to grant your request. Please help me pass this test, please help me get a new job, please save my friend from cancer so she can raise her baby.

My friend Mary reasoned that maybe it's not that God is going to grant me my wish – rather, in the process of prayer, I connect to the divine, so I can see the bigger picture, or at least what I can do, and then I can act in alignment with God's will.

Jesus told the disciples, "The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field." (Matthew 9:35) They were, in effect, praying for themselves – they were the first farmhands, and through their work, they would attract more farmhands.

God seeps in through the cracks created by our own weakness, our own ineptitude. He sneaks into the places where we don't have it all figured out. Through prayer, we allow God to intervene in our lives, by opening ourselves and becoming willing to do God's will.

Jill has been cancer-free for more than a year. Little Sophia is 17 months old, bright and vibrant and healthy. I had nothing to do with this. But through prayer, I was able to show up for her, to be present during some of the roughest times in her treatment. When I couldn't be present, I prayed.

Now, I pray for other people daily. I pray simply their names. I don't know what is best for them, I don't know God's will for them, but I do know their names, and I know they need God in some way. I ask Him to help in whatever way is best. I tell Him I trust His will for them. I pray for my relationships with people. I pray to be the best wife/daughter/sister/friend/employee/co-worker/neighbor/fill-in-the-blank relationship I can be.

In more than a year doing this, I see people's lives changing – most of all my own.

I try to remember to say thank you.

Felicia Schneiderhan is a freelance writer based in Chicago, where she lives year-round on a boat with her husband Mark. Visit her blog at Life Aboard Mazurka.

Rethinking Universal

The other day, my English students here in Mendoza wanted to know if Catholicism in the USA is exactly the same as in Argentina. One of the young men is a regular Mass attendee and turned to his compañero and exclaimed that, yes, of course it is. It's Catholicism. It means universal.

But the inquiring student wasn't finished—exactly exactly the same? How can that be? The Mass attendee recanted a bit, saying, well, no in the US Mass in English and here it's in Spanish. But, yes, he stayed firm, it's the same.

We were already so far into this digression that I didn't have time to explain any idiosyncrasies of my beloved American Catholicism—I just quickly pointed out two differences I've noticed so far and we moved on to the many uses of "should."  But the question has been haunting me for several days. What does it really mean that we call ourselves universal? For my student, there's at least an assumption that Mass in Provo, Utah, will move, smell, and feel a lot like his Mass in Mendoza. And maybe it would, to him. A familiar oasis amid a foreign land.

In an age when I can video-conference with my sister in North Dakota over Skype from an internet café in Mendoza, Argentina, and the verb "googlear" has been added to the Spanish lexicon, maybe our understanding of "universal" is shifting. Maybe universal does mean familiar amid the foreign; a way for Catholics to be re-grounded in new or scary situations. When I walk into a church here in Mendoza, I feel a sort of welcome that far outweighs the countless kisses on the cheek I receive here. I can breathe a little more deeply, I can understand the Spanish with a bit more ease.

Historically, churches have always been sources of sanctuary for the lost or forlorn or needy. Maybe a "universal" Catholicism is meaning that again—a Catholic-ly recognized place of welcome sanctity.

One Night in Istanbul

After only a few steps out the door, I reached for the strap of Casey's messenger bag to avoid losing my companion in the swarm of colorful headscarves, families on picnic blankets, shouting vendors, sizzling kebabs, and roasted chestnuts.  Between the giant Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia, thousands of Muslim fasters had already assembled.  Our rushed dinner purchase was an ear of boiled corn, which we passed back and forth while we searched for an available plot of grass to sit on.  We were still on the lookout when it happened: the Arabic drone rang out from the mosque's minaret speakers, hushing the masses.

I had never witnessed the turning of clamor to calmness or hunger to satisfaction in a single dramatic moment--and on such a massive scale--until the chant rang out and families reached for their bread baskets.  The people of Istanbul had broken the Ramadan fast.  This moment of ritual stunned us, two American Christians spending September 11th in a country where 98% of its citizens identify as Muslim, a country that borders Iraq, Iran, and Georgia.  It was as if Sacredness knocked the wind out of us, halting us right where we were.  

On our first night in Turkey, after the fasting crowds had filled their bellies and turned to Ramadan's late-games and gatherings, I learned something about being Catholic.  

To read on, click here.