Ordinary Time: Cycles in Marriage, Faith and Renewal
Nancy Mairs
1993
Beacon Press
The ability to share one's life of faith with candor and insight is a risk
undertaken by few. For such sharing can easily be interpreted wrongly and
received with less respect than is its due. Yet, with piercing honesty and
penetrating wisdom, Nancy Mairs has done this, placing her life and her
belief before her readers in a series of personal essays which form her
autobiography of faith, Ordinary Time. In this spiritual diary, she
exhibits a depth of understanding of her newly-owned Catholic faith. At
the beginning of her book, Mairs makes clear the urgency she feels to know
why and how she has spent most of her conscious life-- "in an uneasy
and unrelenting state of religious faith." The author relates her growing
response to a "Something Else", the presence of God Herself. Mairs
examines the immanence of "God working out Godself in everything."
The title of her book identifies that time in the liturgical life of the
Church which is outside the seasons of feast and fast-- outside of Advent
and Christmas, Lent and Easter. Ordinary Time becomes for Mairs the time
of religious presence, of God's close proximity to her in the people and
events of her life. The transcendent God of mystery seems far from her experiences
of God who is involved in every moment of her life.
Mairs struggles with her "uneasy faith" in being, at one and the same time, Catholic and feminist-- something she laughingly refers to as an oxymoron. Yet, throughout her book, she attempts to weave together these two realities. Sometimes she accomplishes this with insight and integrity. At other times, she wrestles with the uncomfortable fit of both in her life. At this intersection of Catholicism and feminism, Mairs exhibits most visibly her ability to live with ambiguity and uncertainty. For she chooses to remain within this Church which she loves and wishes to change.
Recognizing her own nagging illness of depression, her time spent in a psychiatric hospital and her progressing disease of multiple sclerosis, Mairs does not skirt reality and the terrifying questions of meaning it raises. Faced with her husband's cancer and his two-year affair with another woman, Mairs struggles with forgiveness. Her understanding of this is profound. I find myself going back to this section often. Her chapter on marriage, "Dis/Re/Com/Union", is amazing in its openness and honesty, a powerfully moving expose of vulnerability and strength. This chapter concludes with a theologically rich explanation of Eucharist: "I eat the Body of Christ. I am-- we all are --the Body of Christ. Nourished by God, we must bear God into the world and give God away with ourselves."
As she reviews her own life, Mairs examines times of doubt-- "that one might go to church not because one believed in God but precisely because one didn't, that in `going through the motions' one might not be performing empty gestures but preparing a space into which belief could flood if it were going to." Nancy Mairs was drawn toward Catholicism as an adult, drawn by the aesthetic dimension of ritual, art and prayer. Yet in this autobiography, Mairs truly manifests the faith of a convert who chooses to believe over and over again in very earthy and concrete ways. This reality is the greatest gift that Ordinary Time holds out to the reader-- a practical daily effort to comprehend God's action and purpose in one's life.
Action for justice was another component of the faith that moved the author to embrace Catholicism. She was attracted to making a difference in the lives of those not born to privilege. Her practical acts of welcome and care become evidence of the depth of her genuine Christian love. The chapter "Room for One More", describes the young mother and child that Mairs takes into her home. This is followed by a more personal understanding of compassion for the poor. In "From My House to Mary's House," the author identifies herself among the poor. Her physical deterioration forces her to receive the charity she so willingly gives to others. True charity demands conversion from simply giving from one's abundance to receiving as one who also needs. Mairs writes with a lived experience of such conversion.
Nancy Mairs poses several challenges to the Church in Part Three of her book. She dares to enter into the area of sexuality, an arena of moral confusion for many today. She frames her questions of meaning and the viability of the Church in our present society. Today's conflict between culture and faith is clearly seen in her chapter "Whose Body?". I am reminded here that honest questions and doubt are essential in our quest for moral integrity. Mairs has articulated these questions well.
I have been enriched by this compelling book and its author. I find myself returning to Ordinary Time often. For Nancy Mairs has the courage to ask the questions that I need to ask of myself-- those of life and death and ultimate meaning. I am indebted to the author for her honest search of self before her God. She has shared with me a profound understanding of Catholic Theology and a living wisdom born only of faith.
I hold a two-fold hope as I finish this book. One, I hope that I will
meet Nancy Mairs in my lifetime because she has stirred and enlivened my
own faith. And two, I hope that many others will have the opportunity to
read this insightful, courageous articulation of a living faith, which happens
in Ordinary Time.
Kathleen Crowley, S.C., is a member of the Sisters of Charity of Halifax.
She is one of the Catholic Campus Ministers at Salem State College.