MUSINGS ON SAINT LIBERATA AND VOWS OF CELIBACY

Saint Wilgefortis, 

also known as Saint Liberata

Sometimes conflated with one other "Liberata"

of a similar time period

I love to pick out the names of the obscure female saints about which most people know little to nothing, including ME! When I run across an interesting female saint on a day when searching for them, I spend some hours researching them.

With Saint Liberata, also called Wilgefortis, Librada and other derivations, and sometimes confused with another Liberata who also died as a martyr, we have again a woman who, when faced by an angry father determined to give her in marriage when she definitely did not WANT marriage, is saved by some circumstance.

In this case, Liberata is rescued by the sudden appearance of a beard on her chin! The beard disgusts her would-be husband, and he abandons his suit. She goes on to become a nun, etc.

Is this a myth? Did this person actually exist? Does it matter?

In some cases, the saints appear to answer the needs of the spiritual heart. Those of us with leanings toward the contemplative life, who yearn to be with God alone and for whom earthly romance pales in comparison, are encouraged by stories of brave young female saints who eschewed the married state from the very beginning and pursued God alone.

There appear to be fewer male saints who specifically cite aversion to the married state as a reason for adopting a life of celibacy, likely because women were pretty much at the mercy of their family and society as to the form their life would take, in many instances. Men were also expected to marry, but their work and duties of station were  considered important, whereas the purpose of women's lives was, for centuries, limited to childbearing and rearing within a family. That was their sole contribution to society in the eyes of that society, and I can well imagine chafing at THAT particular bit, as it were.

In the case of Liberata, legend has it that she was eventually martyred at the insistence of her father, who was incensed that she chose religious life instead of the Muslim husband he had picked out for her. Because she was killed for choosing faith instead of family, she is officially considered a martyr for the faith. The backstory on this isn't given in any of the sources, and we are left to wonder why the extreme of crucifixion was imposed on her in the middle ages. Was her father just mad because she disobeyed the orders of this petty king? Was he tired of supporting her, as was his duty until she married? Was it a religious thing because he was a pagan and he objected to her faith? I don't know.

I look upon her story as one of many in the general theme of preferring God to man, and an example for all the vowed and secular women who have given themselves to this life. In my 17 years as an "accidental hermit," I have relied upon the examples of female saints like these.

Currently, there is a minor kerfuffle in the Catholic blogosphere about a book to which Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI may or may not have intended to have his name attached. In it, he supposedly makes the case for continuing the norm of celibacy for priests, in contradiction to some exception that Pope Francis may be making for the priests in the Amazon, where priests are few and far between. Humans like a good controversy, and there are plenty of Francis-haters who have traded in their Catholic faith for a Republican worldview that is cruel and punishing. Pope Francis has made it clear that Trump's wall is unChristian, and he certainly objects to ripping children away from their parents at our borders as punishment for daring to apply for sanctuary in our prosperous and promising country. Francis-haters became so because of these contradictions, for obvious reasons.

In any case, it amuses me that so many people take for granted that celibacy is some horrible, arcane punishment and that it "should" be dispensed with, just as we have dispensed with archaic practices like putting naughty people into stocks in the middle of town so that citizens can throw rotten vegetables at them. I have lived as a celibate person for more than 17 years, and I find it not at all inconvenient.

Saint Liberata relic

Don't get me wrong. Being married is wonderful. It is a lovely state of life, but it isn't for everyone, and it is damn hard to both have a family AND live entirely for God. In fact, it seems an oxymoron to me!

As I have mentioned before, there is some historical proof for people adopting a celibate life after they've been married and seen to the raising of a few children. Husband and wife both take up the life of a hermit or a sannyasi or a Buddhist monk. All the major religious traditions on earth have precedent for this. In fact, it seems natural that, after one has moved through the child-rearing stages, that the elderly would try to move closer to the God to whom one will 'return home' before long. There is absolutely no provision for continuing one's sex life after embarking on this stage, and I think it is terribly funny that Americans are so obsessed with sex that they get all up in arms about this issue about whether or not the Catholic Church should only accept married priests.

I keep reading from these people about what a TRIAL it is to go without sex, and what a horrible thing it is to ask of someone. It's hysterically funny, to me!

As with all rules, there will always be exceptions. In isolated regions, there is no possibility for the kind of day-to-day support that is generally given priests in developed countries. In the Amazon, it really IS a lot to ask of someone that they serve that community entirely alone, without the assistance or support of the church's institutions. Few people would be able to carry on like that, and I think it is smart of our Pope Francis to recognize this and to make provision for the only type of support that is feasible under this circumstance - a WIFE. To do otherwise might be considered cruel.

But, generally speaking, having a wife and children is a full time job in itself, and being a priest on top of those duties isn't practical. Without question, it would draw the church into a responsibility for the costs of raising such a family. Parishioners would be saddled with this obligation that has monetary and social implications, I would think. Providing separate housing for each priest and their families would be onerous. Disregarding the financial entanglements, there are very real burdens on a person's time, when it comes to children, especially. All of this has practical connotations, which can be substantial, if you give it some thought.

I am not saying that these pedestrian considerations are the reasons the Catholic Church proposes for just why celibacy should remain the preferred state for most Catholic priests. I WOULD point out, however, that many of the other religious traditions consider celibacy essential to the aim of the mystically inclined. When I was studying with the Hindus, and then in the Vedanta Convent, there was a lot of information about how necessary celibacy was to the "realization of God." Buddhists also have celibate monastics, for similar reasons. Those who have a dog in this fight and who feel compelled to opine about this controversy, should research the celibacy issue in various religious traditions in order to broaden their understanding of this topic. There is more to this topic than meets the casual eye!

As always, I encourage other women who are living the solitary life to contact me and say "hello." It is always good to hear from you, as it is to hear from all my readers, but I especially send a message of solidarity and support to my sisters in this life.

God bless us all.

Silver Rose
Sannyasini Kaliprana

NATIONALISM VIOLATES ULTIMATE REALITY

Dalai Lama, giving a talk

HOW I CAME TO MY UNDERSTANDING

OF ONENESS, RELIGION, AND NATIONALISM

Ultimate reality, which is loosely termed "God" in the English vernacular, is called by an assortment of names by other religious traditions. The Vedantists say that God is one, but sages call it by different names.

God, the all-powerful, all-pervasive, cannot be limited by anything else, so one naturally wonders "what about me?" Am I separate from God? Yes and no. The stories that we tell about God and man shift when we touch various parts - and especially when we draw close to Him.

There is a parable about a group of blind men who are tasked with the job of describing an elephant. To one man, the elephant is long and thin, like a snake, with a tuft of hair on the end. To another, the elephant is like a tree trunk. Another says that it is a long, cool and hard thing, shaped like a curved cone.

There is reality, and then there is the way in which we speak about Ultimate Reality, which forms the teaching vehicles of the various religions. Each religion arises from and naturally addresses the personality of the culture in which it is birthed. Different personalities and different cultures respond to various religious vehicles in harmony with their lived experiences and their cultural environment.

When you touch the Divine, the holy ground of all being, one naturally wants to explain it, express it, teach it. The practices that lead to that Divine Oneness, such as meditation and prayer, are remarkably similar across the different religious traditions. I would venture to say that none is "perfect" from an absolutist perspective, but nothing outside of God IS "perfect" in the way that we imagine that term might manifest. It is actually ALL perfect when viewed through the lens of a good God that is creating all of it. God, being perfect, creates outward from Himself in a constant stream of love, and there we are.

If God is omnipotent and you can't limit him - what about all of us? That's the question - and it is worthy of study, thought and spiritual practices in order to find the answer.

I have been fortunate enough to experience an array of these religious teachings. When I was 17, I joined the Scientologists, who had a psychological bent, and went to Portugal on their flag ship. Thereafter, I dabbled with a Buddhist prayer path that involved a lot of chanting.

When I decided I wanted to learn how to meditate deeply and found Vedanta (a Hindu-derived group) I stayed with them for many years and learned a lot, but the cultural accretions, though beautiful and worthy, grew to feel like a suit of clothes that did not fit quite right. This mostly had to do with unfamiliar cultural norms and expectations, some of which were quite sexist.

Obviously, it is nothing like what we are used to in our country, nor could it have been expected to be, but it remained a key sticking point in my development. I had to be willing to ignore the misogyny I felt and to practice more cultural appropriation than was comfortable, and it finally got to be too much for me.

While in the convent, I sat in rapt attention during the very intense series of talks that Bill Moyers had with Joseph Campbell, based upon his book, "The Power of Myth" which drew parallels between many of our world religions that was part of what he perceived as a common paradigm - a framework in which to examine deep Truths common to all the major religious traditions.

At the same time, I was studying the mystical teachings of some of the saints of the Catholic faith. It felt much more familiar to me, being revealed wisdom in a western context. I was very drawn to it. 

Eventually I left the Vedanta convent and began my journey with the Catholics, where parish life has been a horror. Very few people seem to be interested in the mystical life. There is all this political junk, and a near obsession with divorce and matters having to do with sex. I was most interested in the Byzantine Rite, but the new priest from the Ukraine ridiculed me in public and made loud, ribald jokes about my body parts. It was appalling.

When Donald Trump came on the political scene and I objected to his cruelty of locking up more than 5,000 babies, toddlers and children in tight little cages, the group of Catholic women with whom I'd made friends immediately shunned me. They blocked me on Facebook, and when I saw them at church, they sneered at me, tilted their noses in the air, and turned their backs on me. Evidently, their type of Christianity says that it is perfectly fine that little brown innocents should be tortured if it would punish the parents who dared to walk over our border seeking asylum.  The fact that doing so amounted to nothing more than a misdemeanor didn't seem to factor into it. Only one of these women remained friendly with me, but, for the most part, the Catholic venture into parish life has been a disaster.

Some Catholics are oblivious to the life of a contemplative. One woman, who was bringing the eucharist to my house for some time, suddenly started showing me highly inappropriate photographs one day of a teenager dressed in skin-tight, flesh-colored dress that was so low-cut and so short at the same time, it was a wonder it covered anything at all! I recoiled in horror. Honestly, I thought she was showing me a picture of a prostitute. She was insulted because, evidently, they were pictures of her granddaughter, and the flesh-colored dress was her prom dress. I was wide-eyed in shock, to tell you the truth. I hardly knew what to say, but I am sure I was not diplomatic. Inwardly, I was flabbergasted that anyone would let that child out of the house looking like that. The woman told me that "all the girls" are dressing like that - but this isn't something I am used to. Clearly, I am out of step with modern society, but I am surprised that this woman was so clueless that she was proudly showing off these pictures.

My prom photo

Nevertheless, drawing closer to God, becoming immersed in the Divine Oneness, is still the goal, albeit in a more familiar form of a Western religious tradition. It is couched in terms that speak to a person raised in a Western culture, with its own saints and sages that lead the way down a more familiar path. But the God that waits for me at the end of that path is the same God of the Hindu, the Buddhist, the Muslim, etc. By definition, there can't really be more than one God, when one distills it to the ground of all being.

Are there "mistakes" or "errors" in the different religions? Some might say so. But I would say that adulterations of pure essence are actually part of the design of the thing, the further from the oneness of God one goes. Differentiation, itself, is an adulteration. In the Divine Oneness, there can't be differentiation, otherwise God is limited and is not omnipotent. It is difficult to speak around the topic of spiritual "oneness," since, if one is looking at a thing, differentiation is at least implied. If there is oneness, there can be no "other."

Sometimes I feel as if we are all actors in a soap opera meant for the amusement of God. Every good drama has some very evil villains that make us yell at our television screens and cry to Heaven for justice. When "the good guy" rides in and saves the day, we feel so good, don't we? Is God looking at us like this? I wonder.

Some people believe that if you don't belong to their particular religion, you will go to hell! Many of us seem to be already in Hell, we are so unconscious of the Divine Presence in our lives. Likewise, the Kingdom of God is among us, according to Jesus. Heaven and Hell are an inside job, apparently. However, I do not pretend to know with certainty what happens to any of us when we die. That's God's bailey wick, and I won't opine.

What does all this have to do with nationalism? In Catholic terms, I would say that God is omnipotent, he created the entire world from his being, including us who are made "in the likeness and image of God" and therefore there is no "nation" that is more beloved by God than any other. God probably doesn't recognize "nations." A nation is an artificial construct designed to organize people who live on a certain piece of dirt. There are common understandings and agreements that solidify it, and rules (laws) about how to apply the underlying philosophy that binds the people together. It vaguely speaks to our relationship with God, but nationalism is on one of the furthest rings of consciousness - far from the ground of all being, far from Ultimate Reality.

I am quite sure of one thing, and that is that our all-loving God loves the native person who lives in the Amazon just as much as He loves the Pope in Rome or a poor brown child in one of those cages on the border. God doesn't care where they live. He cares about them.

If we are to be perfect as our Father in Heaven is perfect, we need to at least mimic the love God has for all His creatures, loving the English, the Dutch, and the South African as much as we love our American compatriots.

We are meant to bring this understanding of the deepest spiritual realities into our day-to-day lives. This is what Jesus was all about. If we only enjoy ourselves diving into the ocean of endless bliss and do not bring it back into our lives and give its fruit to others, we are exercising spiritual masturbation and missing the entire point of the realization of the Oneness of God and all creation. The entire Bible speaks of how we are to do this. In it, we are told to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the prisoner, be kind to the stranger. Jesus ALSO advises us to go off alone, by ourselves, and pray to God.

I am grateful to be living in America, a fairly wealthy country that is naturally beautiful and offers a certain amount of freedom to its inhabitants. But I wouldn't say I love Americans more than English people or Welsh people or Scottish people. All of the people are God's people, and I love them accordingly, which is why I have been absolutely bereft and have cried many times when I see the poor refugee children being abused at our borders, snatched away from their parents in Donald Trump's vile attempt to torture the refugees into thinking twice about coming here. Those children are my children because they are God's children, and I love them every bit as much as if they were born of me.

Likewise, the children of the 680 people that were arrested at the chicken processing plants in one of the Southern states. They arrived home to find the doors locked and NO provisions made for even where they were going to sleep that night or what they would eat. No after-school snack for them! Seeing at least one of those children, weeping and shaking uncontrollably, expressing the deepest torment, and begging Donald Trump to give her back her dad, who is "not a criminal," just busted me up. Even now, remembering that video, brings tears to my eyes.

These current events do not exemplify the timeless truths of the love of God. They are the evil part of the soap opera, and we must find a way to stop it.

If you are interested in topics suggested by this post, feel free to contact me and I can refer you to some good literature.

In the meantime, God bless us all.

Silver Rose

(Sannyasini Kaliprana)

Silver Cottage Ashram Hermitage

Albuquerque, New Mexico

Copyright © 2019

All rights reserved.