Aisling on Earth

The Flowering That Comes From....Death/Loss

2012-02-05T18:43:00.001-08:00

Without knowing it, I had a great start to this week’s effort. I had the absolute delight to celebrate Mass last week with the kids. I always give them a chance, or in some cases, take the risk, to ask questions.
One boy asked, “Was it alright to get mad? ", and a girl asked whether it "was alright to cry?”. Two great questions why? Because, they lay the foundation for healthy grieving. Healthy grieving is essential if we are to recover from any loss, whatever that loss may be. When we do not grieve in a healthy manner, or we are not allowed to do so because of unhealthy circumstances, we will suffer big time. Did you see in the paper where there is an effort to describe grieving as a mental disorder? I would like to suggest, that it is ONLY when we do not do the healthy grieving, then we have to face some mental challenges.

I have read that we in America do not grieve enough. We hide the reality of death. The first shock, of the many, was when I was sent to a funeral parlor to say the Rosary for a person who had died. That was a serious cultural shock. I was not able to get around that one and still am not able to become reconciled with the practice. When I was growing up, you went to visit the home where the corpse was laid out. No embalming, as the person died, so they were before you. What is done here? The corpse is all done up as if will cover up the finality of her/his death. You went to the room where the waking was taking place. There you were exposed to the active mourning and crying. You expressed your condolences. You got down on your knees and said your prayers. Then, you kissed the dead person goodbye. Yes, you read correctly. You kissed some part of the face.
That was the practice. It was after that when you had some refreshments. All of this was part and parcel of the reality, of the life of “The Little Church of The Home”. How far removed we are from such a healthy practice in dealing with death. You can understand why I am surprised when asked by people "is it alright to bring children to the mortuary? ". Where else are they going to come across the finality of loss? Where are they going to receive the message that it is not just ok to cry, it is both necessary and essential for healthy growth. We will not be mentally healthy until the tears are shed.

I told the young boy that it is more than ok to get angry, not mad. (Dogs go mad, people get angry). Again, getting angry is both necessary and essential action for each person, so as to recover from a loss. A family that has suffered a loss must also grieve as a family. There are no exceptions. We can minimize the loss, but to our own peril. I have seen so very often the destruction brought about because the grieving process did not take place. How many unnecessary divorces have taken place because one, or both parents do not grieve healthily. Rather than process the anger they transfer to one another. Rather than do the necessary feeling work, the feelings are stuffed and the end is inevitable. That is so sad to see. How many divorces take place years after a family death, but the root cause was, one person failed to do the healthy grieving.

How often do we hear those well-meaning, but very toxic, words; “You can try again”, “You are young enough to get married again", "she/he has gone to a better place". Last, but not least, the really spiritually sick one, "it was God's will". You can add to that list those words that were directed at you, or your loved ones at the time of loss. You did not want this pious jargon, you wanted a healing presence. You desired to be reverenced where you were at, in your place of powerlessness, frustration ,and anger.

You did not want to be spoken to, you wanted to be just held. How blessed are you to have such a presence in your life. That person stands with you and by you. There are no pious words, no can’t phrases, to minimize what you are feeling. How often those phrases are used because those who use them, are so uncomfortable dealing with honest feelings. It is not their fault. That is how they are wired because of the sterile environment they were raised in. There was the unwritten rule, you do not express any honest feeling that may challenge “THE FAMILY SECRET". There was the expectation that they be "perfectly nice", resulting in them being very emotionally sick. What a price some of these “good children" pay. It takes tremendous courage to reject the sick family system, so as to live in the freedom of who one is in the unconditioned, unlimited, unrestricted love of our Gracious God. As one comes to discover they are the beloved of the Living God, everything changes. When we reach that point, and most especially after we desire a Mary, Mother Mary, who was promised so much by God's angel, and where did she end up? We are told in John’s Gospel that she stood silently, by the cross of her Savior Son. Yes, she just stood, as helpless, and as powerless, as each one of us is, in the face of death.

"But there is one who has all power, that one is God." The God of the Psalmist Who is close to,....and is able to heal the brokenhearted." We must make the conscious effort to welcome God into the space that loss has created. If Goodness, God, does not fill up that space, then there is the GUARANTEE that evil will. Both the physical and spiritual life do NOT tolerate a vacuum. It is up to us then to do the feeling work, feel, experience, express and then let go. Those not comfortable with feelings, just want to pray about it, without first doing the three steps. Then there is wonder and concern why there is no let up. We are told now it takes three to five years to recover from a loss. Yes, three to five years is necessary. That is why so many second marriages do not work out. The rate of divorce when it comes to such unions is much higher that those who are married for the first time. How many second marriages are entered into without allowing the necessary healing to take place from the previous lost relationship?

“Pain breaks the shell that limits our understanding." (Gibran ) Our faith and hope allows us to break open the “shell" of pain. Our faith in the Death and Resurrection opens up a whole new life. This new life BEGINS with the ending of the old. The loss IS the beginning of a new way of living. A new life, which is actually the old way being transformed as the result of loss, a real death. Death then, is NOT an end, it is THE BEGINNING of a new and, dare I say, a better way of living. Our anger has been transformed into compassion. Our tears have watered the garden of our souls, in which has blossomed the flowers, of empathy and understanding. These flowers are our gifts. They are to offered to those who are now struggling with that, from which these came. “O death where is thy sting?"

The Chapters of our Life....

2012-01-28T09:19:00.001-08:00

Last week there was the suggestion that each one of our lives is a Bible. Now the Bible is not ONE book, it is a LIBRARY of books. Each book was written at a unique time to tell an unique story. What is this unique story? It is the story about God dealing with humankind, and His creation. This relationship was lived out in a particular time and space. Yet, the reality of what is described has a life way beyond time and space. That which we read about in The Bible is a living description of my life today. Our lives are a continuation of The Bible story. John Shea, “We are God's story". When it comes to understanding God, we have to let go of the restraints of time and space. We are dealing with That which is beyond our control, no matter how much, or how deeply, we desire to control. We cannot define God, and so control God. In Africa, there is this saying "to define is to kill". This is a necessary, pre-requisite for a deep understanding of all things spiritual. "With God all things are possible.....with God nothing is impossible." Must be a constant mantra for each one of us, as we tell God's story by the life we lead.

The Bible is a very long story. It is the story of all human beings, their lived, real, relationship with their Creator. The means of telling the story are many and varied. In this library, we call the Bible, we read history, poetry, mythology, wisdom and theology. A whole book of prayers is given to us, as models for our prayer. Each book and sometimes books within the one book, are placed before us to meet a need. All are presented as The Source of
Encouragement and counsel. It isThe Source of information, leading to formation. Through this formation, we will then be lead to understand that formation is NOT enough. We need contemplation, so as to be led into The Mystery, lying patiently, waiting for us to discover. That Lived Life, which is beyond what we read and see will be revealed, but in Mystery's time. This time we are called to live in, is Kairos time. Many feel that this stage is the last step. How dangerous that thinking is. This way of seeing can and does lead to all sorts of unhealthy thinking and action. Contemplation, of necessity, leads us to action. "Contemplative action" is the goal of all Catholic Christians. K. Rahner has said that there will be a time where you will have only two groups left in the world, contemplatives and atheists.

"How then, are we to approach The Bible and as a consequence all spiritual reading. Henri Nouwen has written the following; “Reading often means gathering information, acquiring new insights and knowledge, and mastering a new field. It can lead to degrees, diplomas and certificates. Spiritual reading, however, is different. It means not simply reading about spiritual but also reading about spiritual things in a spiritual way. That requires a willingness not just to read but to be read, not just to master but to be mastered by words. As long as we read the Bible or a spiritual book simple to acquire knowledge, our reading does not help us in our spiritual lives. We can become very knowledgeable about spiritual matters without becoming spiritual people.

As we read spiritually about spiritual things, we open our hearts to God's voice. Sometimes we must be willing to put down the book we are reading and just listen to what God is saying to us through its words......Spiritual reading is food for our souls. As we slowly let the words of the Bible or a good spiritual book enter into our minds and descend into our hearts, we become different people. The Word gradually becomes flesh in us and transforms our whole being. THUS SPIRITUAL READING IS A CONTINUING INCARNATION OF THE DIVINE WORD WITHIN US. In and through Jesus, the Christ, God became flesh long ago. In and through our reading of God's Word and our reflection on I, God becomes flesh in us now and makes us into living Christs for today. “Let us keep reading God's Word with love and great reverence"

Have you ever reflected on the library of books your life is? There is your history book, now seen as the continuation of salvation history. Your story IS God's story. What is The Wisdom book you have within which is yours because you how your God had taken the pain and challenges of life and revealed gifts beyond measure. These gifts are, in part; patience, kindness, empathy, compassion, sensitivity, the ability to understand and not stand in judgement. These gifts, I am sorry to say, can only come to us from bringing our angers and frustrations to prayer. By this action, we are surrendering, accepting defeat, accepting our inability to cope. This is NOT LOSS, this is the way it is in the spiritual life, in these moments of loss, and surrender and allow God to transform that which we definitely do not want in our lives. You have the mythology of your dreams, to take you where your reality really is. You have the book of sacred prayers written by your daily actions directed by The Holy Spirit. You have your unique theology. This theology is formed by that which has come to you through The Spirit within revealing a unique knowledge of God. In the history of the church we had what was known as the “Teaching authority of the people". Were not many of our saints declared by the people, and accepted the universal church? There is your inner authority, as well as there is the outer authority. You have The Book of Music to be shared and The Book of Poetry. Each day, event, season, has given us that song, that poem which will console, gladden the hearts of those who listen to the language of the heart. We need more "heart to heart” encounters so this journey through the "vail of tears” may be one of growth and discovery, leading to a life of Joy.

Reverence then your story, and the story it tells. In that which lies behind your life, dwells Life Itself. You are the dwelling place of Mystery.
Your life then is...???????

The Good News Lived....Is Gospel

2012-01-23T18:17:00.001-08:00

I am back from Mass. As I reflect back on the scripture readings, they appeared to be more appropriate for the season of Lent, not for the 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time. Then again, on second thought, the encouraging message offered is timeless. We, because we are human, are in constant need of this reminder. In the sacred readings, the prophet Jesus encourages us to "repent and believe in the gospel". In other words, we are to repent and believe in The Good News. This is a call to perform two actions. We are to first of all, repent, then we are to believe in the good news of the gospel. In practice we are to turn around from the direction we are going in, and go the opposite way. In other words, make a u-turn. Our spiritual journey demands many, many, u-turns. When we make such a turn, we are admitting "I am going in the wrong direction, and must change direction". We make the turn because of some new information that was revealed to us. To keep going in the old direction would not get us to where we intended to go. With the new information came a new direction. As we travel in this new direction, we gain confidence that we will reach our destination. The attitude has changed as well. There is that great inner feeling, which I cannot describe, knowing you are on the right path, the right trail. With that feeling comes a great sense of freedom and enjoyment.
When I hike in a new area I always have a map. Even with a map I can get lost. (I can get lost in a bath tub.) There is real fear in being lost. That fear is relieved when someone appears who knows the right direction and takes the time to share that knowledge in a way I can understand. Small words in short sentences, is my preferred way to hear 'the good news' of new directions. So often, the new information demanded I double back and go in the opposite direction. This act of faith is both humbling and freeing. So it is with the "good news” that comes to us from The Gospel of Jesus Christ. All "good news", in any form, is intended to direct us safely home . This results in that great feeling one gets when after enduring a troublesome, challenging part of a hike one sees clearly where one is to go. There is a deep need to shout out in joyous freedom. "WOW….WOW….WOW, I MADE IT." I would like to suggest this is a paradigm to help us communicate the experience of the spiritual reality, both hidden and revealed, in that which we call, life.
By our birth we have been placed on a path to travel, a trail to hike, that will eventually lead us to,"the fullness of life”. This 'fullness’ is also called The Kingdom of God. This is, as you well know, NOT a temporal kingdom. It is a spiritual kingdom of justice, love and peace. It is an eternal kingdom, which we cannot earn or deserve, because it is a gift. Because of this gift we can freely choose to enter into The Kingdom of, peace, joy, and love, or not. Well, to be very honest, there is a catch, (I can hear you say, “I knew it, this is too good"). We have to ALLOW it to happen. Our egos will fight us tooth and nail on this one. We have become so used to earning, deserving, and qualifying for what we receive, so when such a great gift is freely offered we balk. We begin to calculate what do I have to give in return? What is equal to the gift i have been gifted with? The gift is eternal in its origin. It is "the pearl of great price".
To make it easier for us to get our arms around this “Good News", our gracious God sent His Beloved Son to Incarnate this Good News. He choose our humanity and our everyday living as human beings, as the instruments through which this great mystery is revealed. Jesus came as the lived reality, of that which is offered spiritually. We will be challenged to turn from one way, our selfish, self-centered way of existing, so as to live another, centered way. This u-turn, this turning around frees us to live a life that is truly human and truly free. St. Irenaeus has this wonder-full saying, “The glory of God is the human person fully alive". That is what our God’s plan for us is. We do our best to mess it up. We need to repent from our self-centered way, which leads to a life lived in guilt, fear and shame. We need to turn to a new way of acting which is appropriate for those who are called to live the life of free daughters/sons of a Gracious, merciful God. In this turning, this acting, a wonder-full reality appears. We begin to think of ourselves as the beloved daughter/son. We begin to believe in our beloved-ness and so are lead to live life and live it to the fullest. We begin to live out the reality of the good news. We are fulfilling our God given destiny. It is for this you were born, for this you were created, for this you were anointed, consecrated, to be revealers of that great secret which our world so desperately needs. You then are the contemporary “gospelers", spelling out in your life today what Jesus Christ taught and lived. Your lived everyday life may be the only bible some people will ever get to read. See how much faith our God has in each and every human being, as well as in all of His creation. Want to shout out, “WOW….WOW….WOW”, now?

We Are All Beachcombers!

2012-01-15T19:13:00.000-08:00

As we look at our calendars, which measures every day, cronos time-the annual spiritual tsunami has passed. The waves of grace which washed onto the our shores of our souls during the Advent/Christmas/Epiphany, have accomplished their mission. They have come and receded back into the original ocean of infinite, eternal grace. These waves of grace have washed onto the shores of our souls, with what results?

After an ocean storm, you have the beachcomber who searches the beaches. They are seeking, searching for “treasure" left behind, as the result of the storm. It must be so exciting when she/he is surprised by some "gem" washed up on the shore. So at this time, I would like to suggest that each one of us don the mantle of beachcomber. We, too must take the time to seek out, and search out those life giving gifts, treasure that has been deposited on the shores of our souls by the recent "storm". The beachcomber has no shopping list. What she/he discovers is looked on as a gift from the ocean. There is gratitude for what has been gifted. As they can have no expectations, and hence with no expectations, the beachcombers must have an attitude of gratitude for the gift right there before them. They are in gratitude and not resentment. We are here taught the lesson, gratitude and resentment cannot coexist. That is a great lesson to learn. We cannot be grateful, thank-full and resent-full, at the same time. So, there is a choice to be made, by us, and we are responsible for that decision. We are placing ourselves in either gratitude or resentment, nobody else can be blamed, or held responsible. How often I have wished it was healthy to be able to blame somebody else.

Grace, will wash upon the shores of our souls, all that will ever need at any given moment. Our needs are always met, but not in the way we want, or expect. Our needs are always GUARANTEED, our selfish, self centered greed, no way. Our God is so healthy, He will never give us that which is spiritually unhealthy for us. There are times, I have wished, no wanted, my God to be a little more codependent, just a wee bit. It is only when we look back at our lives we see the wisdom of our Father/Mother God in not giving us what we so desperately wanted at the time. Remember that old song that brought this point home? Did it not say that God's greatest gifts were prayers that were NOT answered.

Life, we are told is lived, looking forward, but understood, looking backward. In order to look backward, we have to take the time to stop, look, listen. This process will lead us to
discover the lessons learned, and that which we still have to learn.
This so necessary time is provided by the liturgy, which " is the work of the people." Yes it is work. It is a struggle to let go of all those outward demands so as to pay attention to what our minds, souls, spirit demands of us. This demand is met as we celebrate the community prayer, we call, liturgy. In the time we set aside to celebrate liturgy we celebrate the now moments, we call time. In the celebrations, different layers of meaning are revealed, for us to give reverence. As a consequence, we are led into the ever-deepening mystery of God present in all time. There is NO ordinary time. All time is sacred, all time is holy.

To be connected to The Mystery of The Incarnation as any everyday experience, what must happen? We must allow the lenses of faith to be adjusted by The Optometrist . Through the adjustment, the action of grace, we will become aware of the gifts of The Holy Spirit is placing in our lives. That is what happens in each liturgy. Our ability to see enhanced. We do not just have one adjustment, we need constant adjustment. There is always something new happening in our lives which triggers anxiety and fear. We need a place where we are assured that all of this "stuff" is now being worked into the pattern of our life. We need to be reminded it is this "new life” that God will use to reveal who He is. That trauma, conflict, upheaval is not intended by God, He is not that sick. The moment, that very second that pain, loss, tragedy becomes part of our lives, The Holy Spirit is working it into a new pattern. In this new pattern , which we have created, The Incarnation continues becoming a reality, in this mysterious way "creation continues". We have added our unique touch to God's masterpiece. Try that one on for size!!!

Already, in a recent scriptures this has been made this known to us. In times past, God spoke to humankind in fragmentary and various ways, through the prophets. Now in the fullness of time, God has spoken to us through His Son, His exact representation. How did This Son "speak " about His Father-God? Was it through “two bit words”? No, to teach The prophet Jesus, took from the ordinary events and made the eternal connection. He came as a human being to challenge us to see in all that is authentically human His ongoing presence. The events of Advent/Christmas/Epiphany are alive and well as we continue to discover, ever anew, the living, daily presence, of Mary, Joseph, The Shepherds, and The Angels. Where can they be found TODAY living within you? "The crib within" is a reality. It is a lasting, eternal presence, not a temporary scene to be looked at and forgotten. Just because the visible, physical, cribs have been packed away that does not mean their spirituality has ceased to exist. If that happens, then The Holy Family lived in vain. All they endured was for naught. It was a waste of time. So, let us set aside some time to "waste" in silence, so we can come to discover the many and varied treasures washed upon the shores of our souls. Through the eyes of wonder, we will discover what we need, not what we want, is right there in front of us. So until we meet again good beach combing.

Love....Sexuality...Sacrament

2012-01-08T10:11:00.000-08:00

There was a touch of sadness as I journeyed through last Sunday's Liturgy. Something was missing. For the last number of years we celebrated the Feast of The Holy Family on the first Sunday after Christmas. This year we did not have that feast on a Sunday, and it was truly missed by me. I especially missed the old opening prayer. This opening prayer placed the following words in our mouths, minds, and so came into our hearts. Every year it provided an opportunity for each and every person to reflect, anew, on that which is most essential for a healthy, happy, wholesome and holy life. Our deepest wish, then, must be that as we pray this prayer, what we pray for, becomes an ever-deepening reality. We have prayed these simple words, never stopping to reflect on the wonder-full, enlightening, transformative message hidden within.

"Teach us the sanctity of human love, show us the value of family life."

Such simple words? Yet, how profound they are. We ask to be taught ‘the sanctity of human love”. We ask to be taught that this wonder-full, mysterious gift, which we are ever and always wanting to understand, is sacred, is holy. We have to be taught what so many use and abuse is the place where our God encounters us. Where love is, there our God is. Where there is no love, there is no God. We are told the way we are loved is the way we allow God to love us. Is not that scary? How often is imitation “love" used to control and manipulate others. This is so abusive. Why? It is saying to that person, "since God is love, I am asking you to believe the way I “am loving you” is the way your God loves you. [Of course, this is a LIE!] “As I am treating you, expect God to treat you in the same way". Pretty sick!!! But, we have with God, what we have in our human relationships. Yes, this IS the lived experience of so many who want nothing to do with God. They are not denying the True God, they are rejecting the false god, which they are lucky enough to intuitively know to be false. They ARE NOT ATHEISTS. They believe in the true God. These are in fact the prophets who challenge us to get healthy, and so reveal a life giving God that they can be believe in. They have only been exposed to abusive relationships, masquerading as “loving" relationships. Experiences such as this make it so difficult, but not impossible, to have healthy and so a holy life-giving relationship with a living God.

This involves real hard work. It takes the willingness and the courage to really leave home, and leave behind that which is
familiar. We are grounded in our family's way of seeing, acting and believing. When that is not right, or healthy it still takes time and guts to dare move away. It tales real courage to start the development of that which is healthy, and of its essence, life-giving. It is so hard to break away from the old familiar ways. This does not occur in a day, week, or month. That is why there is that “spiritual principle". “We do not think our way into a new way of acting, we act our way into a new way of thinking.” “The longest journey begins with the first step.” The first step is to acknowledge that innate desire to become healthy, and as consequence have a healthy, loving relationship with the real God. We will always receive and become that which is the healthy object of our desires. Deep down we are aching to be once again united with The God Who is our origin and destiny. This Living, Loving God, sees each one through the lens of infinite, patience and kindness. It is a love that does not take offense, and has no resentment to direct at us. Who in our life accepts us like this?

A healthy love of self leads to a healthy celebration of our sexuality. I read that sexuality is not so much about what I do, it is about who I am and who I am doing it with. Way, way back, St. Thomas saw that in marriage, prayer and sex are one and the same. Now how many have ever made that connection? When I used to prepare couples for marriage, I asked the following, "would you put sexuality and prayer in the same sentence?”. Some would not see it in the same paragraph, others not in the same page, while others would not see it in the same chapter or book. There has been a lot written about the sacramentality of sexuality. (A sacrament, with a small “s": is each and every person, place and event which brings one in contact with the deeper realities of life. Ultimately with Reality Itself, that Reality we can call God). We need to recapture the holy, the sacred aspect once again of human love, of human sexuality. As we see so many being abused in grade school, not to mention high-school, it is essential the God centered reality of sexuality must be embraced. It must be embraced by parents, who, because they see, and enjoy the mystery, have an authentic voice with which to speak and share with their children. So much misinformation comes to our young from locker room talk or from sleepovers. Where will the sacramental nature be in those conversations. John Bradshaw in one of his books equates lack of sexual information, is tantamount to sexual abuse. I am saddened to say over the years, I have found this to be so true.

Human love is then the sacrament, which in the Wisdom of God, has become the reality through which God has chosen to reveal who He is. As there are so many layers of understanding when it comes to human love, there are as many layers to be searched through, so as to come to the ultimate goal, a healthy love of ourselves, others, and God. This has been taken from Bishop Morneau, of Green Bay. The Packers are not the only good thing to come out of Green Bay.

My wish for the new year, is that you have the courage, or ask for the courage, to dare to do what it takes to experience the sanctity of human love. This will further expand your understanding of the sanctity of all that is authentically human. Let us journey deeper so we can understand the great connection between a healthy spirituality and the ever-deepening celebration of sexuality.

A Messy Family....Is A Holy Family, Right?

2011-12-31T08:26:00.000-08:00

"One of the hardest things in life is to have words in your heart that you cannot utter." -J. E. Jones I think those words can sum up where we find ourselves, so often, during the Advent/Christmas/Epiphany Season. When we are present to all that is celebrated, we are pretty much find ourselves caught up in silent awe. Awe, wonder, is the beginning place of all prayer. Do we not find ourselves caught up in the celebrations in a way that stills us on the inside? In this "stilling of the insides", we become more aware of something that is greater. Something outside of ourselves which we intuitively know we are connected with. Are we are not drawn to listen more attentively and allow ourselves to be taken to new and exciting places? These places however we are unable to really describe. We have lost the language (Rohr). Does that mean we have to settle for less? By no means. That is why we have been given the works of the artists. To paraphrase Kenneth Branagh, "In the hands of a great poet, words and music have a way of affecting us in a way that we don't understand or be able to communicate”. We find ourselves in a state of "spiritual intoxication".

Hidden within these days and weeks is a spiritual tsunami. The True Spirit of these times is not 86 proof !!!. Whatever comes to us from the latter, passes. The gifts bestowed freely upon us by The Former, lasts forever. It is this reality, experienced by us in each and every moment is celebrated over an extended period of time.; The mystery of The Incarnation reveals to us who we really are in God's loving eternal design. Yes, we are eternal, and The Eternal has entered our humanity to be our model. We cannot solve This Mystery, all we can do is give reverence to it, and so be led each year into a new and more vibrant understanding. We only have this Season once in our lives so we must be vigilant for the ever new insights WILL come to us. God does not repeat Himself.

So, as we enter the process of wondering (aweing),reflection and contemplation, so many new layers of meaning will be revealed to us. The mystery of The Infinite, All Power-full One, coming to us disguised in the vulnerability of a baby,is like an artichoke. It has layer upon layer, and it takes a long time to get to the heart. Each layer, of the mystery, nourishes, enlightens, and challenges us. St. Paul tells us "the goodness and the humanity of God has appeared in our midst" – God, The Majestic One, The Omnipotent One, could so easily have chosen to send His Son into an environment of power, and prestige. He choose not to. Because, how will we who have no power and prestige relate to such a one. Consequently when we are chasing after the latter we are willing ourselves to be in a place where God chose not to be. Placing His Only beloved Son into the reality of where He entered this world has layer upon layer of meaning. Each year we are led deeper and deeper into this mystery, only in so far as we encounter, and own, our poverty, powerlessness, and vulnerability. Reflecting on our status and privilege, will avail us nothing. It will leave us anxious, fearful, and full of discontent. To be in those places is NOT part of God's dream, His Aisling, for us, His Beloved daughters/sons. It is of our own graceless choice. How often do we find ourselves choosing to be where God is not, and then wonder, where God is? This precious gift of free will, is definitely both a blessing and a curse.

God chose to send His Son to be part of a human family. A family of property, and prestige? No way. Would you not think that He who was able to order all of creation would do a better job of getting Mary and Joseph organized ? Why did He not wait for the wedding to take place? With the approach of the Angel Mary experienced fear, anxiety, and uncertainty? What was the struggles of Joseph as he was called to cooperate? I feel certain we can honestly say this was a real mess, from the human stand point. Yet it was into this messiness that that our Savior was sent. Why? So again, we have a God who knows messiness, is not put off by it, and weaves it all into the pattern of His redeeming will. The messier a family is, the closer our God is to that family. It is through the messiness, a messiness however that must be owned, that a Savior is experienced. In this way it is the messy family, that is the holy family. That is right, and to our way of thinking it makes no sense. It never has, nor will it ever be so. A sick family relies on their own power. They can handle all the challenges that life throws at them, alone and by themselves. (This is foundation of spiritual abuse.) That illusion has been shattered, as it has to be shattered them as a family, and for all of us, as individuals. With that shattering comes excruciating pain. This pain can last and will last, until the job is done. There is no ducking this shattering if we care or dare to become authentic human beings. That is our true destiny. This is the trail each one of us has to travel. There are no exceptions. T o become whom we are chosen to be, we are required to, in some cases forced, to accept that inner powerlessness. It is these moments of so called disaster, a Savior has been born to us. A living Savior is given to us. It is out of the darkness, the true Savior, appears.

Christmas Letter from Papa J

2011-12-22T08:10:00.001-08:00

Dear Friends,

I, again, take this opportunity to wish you, and yours, a Healthy, and Happy Christmas/Epiphany season. May He, and so become a reality in a world so desperate in need of a Living Savior. As He becomes an ever deeper reality within your, “little church of the home”, His Presence will seep out and bring about the Kingdom of peace, justice, and love. We all have to play our part to continue that which the Christ Child began, as He appeared as one like us. The Child grew up, and became the Prophet Jesus, who rattled the smug cages of the leaders of church and state. Of course, it is this that got Him killed, We, in like manner, must take the risk of being prophets and be prepared to pay the price. As it was with Him, whom we follow, so it will be with us. We are however, guaranteed all that is necessary for us to fulfill in which we are uniquely called to do. Do you remember in the old days we called that actual grace? That love presence, will ever and always be there to nourish, strengthen, and encourage us. As we are faithful to the radical message of The Gospel, so too a faithful to the radical message of The Gospel, so too a more healthy, a more whole, (holy), home church and society may come into being.

Thornton Wilder has written the following: “We can only said tobe alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures. “Where we are at present, we are being forced to look beyond what is on the outside, it is not there. We are called to focus on what has real, and lasting value, the inner being, and Sacred Presence. This Sacred Presence, comes hidden and revealed within the human condition. We all need to become more aware of the eternal gifts within, and as we search for same, on the outside. That “stuff” we seek, on the outside, will never be enough. We are designed for something so much infinitely mine the inside treasures. Our bank accounts will not reflect this discovery. Peace, joy, and love are priceless. No earthly value can be placed on these eternal gifts.

I am still enjoying “retirement”. There are the daily challenges that come with the aging process. You will notice I did not say, maturing process??? Since that has not happened so far, it ain’t going to happen, Thank God. I had my usual long trip. Drove and hiked about 9,000 miles. Again, I encountered some wonder-full wildlife all out in the open, I might add. IN the Lamar Valley I saw a wolf. The wolf posed like a dog. Those of you on FaceBook can view those pictures. I also heard her/him howl. It was awe-full, and exhilarating. I saw two more bears; the count is now up to 12! An e-book is almost ready. From what I am told it will be ready in January. As of now, it is called, “Soul Searching”. I take this opportunity to thank the many of you, who because of your acceptance, gave me the courage to write what has been written. I now believe, more than ever, we are loved into honesty. I am looking into having some hard copies printed as well. If you have nothing to do, Google Fr. Joe Hennessy. I did out of the blue, and was I shocked! My FB profile picture is an elk, a photo taken in Yellowstone.

So, have a wonder-full Christmas/Epiphany Season. Live each moment in the knowledge that you are the “contemporary Christ”. It is you, who in your daily struggle to live, that continues the ongoing revelation of the mystery of the Incarnation. What dignity you are gifted with, do not allow any power of church or society take awasy from you. Christ came that we would have life and have it to the fullest. Love yourself, and so others, by claiming a vital, life-giving, way of living. St. Irenaeus has written those famous words, “The glory of God is the human person fully alive.”

May 2012 see you claiming, and cherishing who you really are. There will be, then, nothing missing.

Wishing you the best of Irish luck,
God Bless,
Papa J., (a.k.a. Fr. Joe)

The Adventing....of.....?????

2011-12-19T07:38:00.000-08:00

I was going through some old journals and came across the following quotation. This is from August of 1993, and I do not remember the authors name. "If our lives are to be healthy, (here I would add the words - and holy), and our spirits are to grow, we must be dedicated to the truth. For the truth is reality. And the more clearly we see the realty of the world, the better equipped we are to deal with the world.”

The spiritual life ever and always calls us to live in the truth of who we really are. The truth of who we are comes to as we contemplate on the revelation of, The Truth. Each year we are given a whole season, which is dedicated to the reflection, and contemplation of the truth. This truth is both hidden and revealed, in our evolving reality. Since we are ever new, so then our reality, truth, will be ever new. There are no repeats, in our God's creation. Pretty exciting?? During this time when reality is “adventing”, we must prepare ourselves to honestly face this change, which leads to a newness. What is the new reality that has been or is being revealed in and through you reality? Where do we see a new presence, and in that presence, The Reality of God both hidden and revealed? Advent is an everyday experience.

The Truth has come, and continues to come anew, through grace. Mystery is experienced in the mystery of the present moment. When we hear it said "this is the same old stuff, there is nothing new" we are listening, not to the truth, but to a lie. In the lie there is no lasting creativity, death is it's destiny. Why? Because the lie is not connected to The Life Source. When we espouse such a way of living, we are being dealt death, rather than life. We likewise will become death-dealers, rather than be life-givers. We make that choice every moment of our lives, either consciously or unconsciously. As we embrace the reality of who we are, the truth of Who we are called to be, and Who has done this calling, The Mystery of the Incarnation, is once again revealed, anew for us to discover and be a place of discovery for others. For this Mystery to be discovered within we not only need the x-ray eye of faith, at times we will need an MRI.

Our willingness to be led into this new discovery takes courage. Yeats once said, “it takes reckless courage to journey into who we really are”. We must ask Mary for the courage to be able to say "YES” as she so bravely said yes. We are saying “yes” to the same God, who shepherded her through all her questioning and uncertainty. It was not always an easy journey being the Mother of The Savior. In being His mother, more was demanded than she could ever imagine or dream of. Yet, she persevered in her "yes". She is set ever before us as our model. Our "yes" will lead us, as it led her, to Calvary. On Calvary, she stood by the cross of her Son, in utter powerlessness. In the presence of her "standing by", she has gifted us with an eternal message, which becomes ever new for us. As she had to wait to give birth to her Son, Mary had to stand by and wait for her Son to die. She held Him in her arms both after birth and after death. So too, as our Mother, given to us on Calvary, is there to Mother us in our births and deaths. She will be present in the aftermaths as well.

How hard, difficult and pain-full these moments are. In these moments, we do not want to or need to be alone. We are in desperate need of some presence. In our Bethlehems and Calvarys. Our Mother Mary is present to assure us of the presence of Her Son. As she was with her Son, so is she present to, The Still Suffering Son within us. As she was so too, shall ever be. What great comfort there is awaiting us as we embrace that part of the reality. The gifts of The Mystery of The Incarnation from announcement to birth, death, resurrection, ascension, and the descent of The Life Giver, can never be exhausted. Why? Because we are dealing with the eternal. Our flesh provides a home for The Eternal. Advent provides us with new ways of not only discovering This Hidden Guest, it also provides us with ways to celebrate this inner reality. May these celebrations enhance your belief in your chosen-ness. In other words, deepen your belief in your essential goodness, in your beloved-ness. As there was a Herod out to destroy The Infant Child so we have to be on guard ever alert, not to allow present day Herods to denigrate , destroy, or question our essential goodness. That danger will come to us from not just our known enemies, Herod appears under the guise of "concerned" family and so-called friends. We have to conform to their narrow understanding of what is healthy, holy, while all the time missing out an understanding of The Birthing taking place in our deepest reality. “Religiosity is for those who are afraid of going to hell. Spirituality is for those who have been to hell." (This is one of my very favorites.)

Mary, through all that she had to endure, was forced to come to a new way of living. She had to leave the security of her old life. With her "Yes" everything was radically changed. So too with us. Our "yes" will demand so much more than we are ready right now to commit to. Thank God we do not know the future. We are strengthened through the living of each moment to endure whatever life has to offer us. That old saying "God strengthens the back for the burden", I have found to be so true. We will NEVER be given more than God and we can handle. As Mary was prepared to become The Christ Bearer, so are we. As Mary was graced, so are we. As Mary was told by Gabriel, "She had found favor with God", so too, we must listen to the Angel Gabriels of our lives who reminds us that we too have been, are graced, always. Nothing can come between the love of God and us who so desperately need and desire that love.

Mary presented her Child to the shepherd outcasts, who came to visit Him. Later, as The Good Shepherd, He will seek out and search out the outcasts of His time. Where are we going to look within to find “the outcast" which is in need of a visit from The Shepherd Child? As a result of our encounter with The Shepherd Child, we will like the shepherds of old, have Good News to tell all those who will encounter us on our journey.

I hope these last few weeks have provided you with some material which will enable you to discover a new reality alive and dwelling deep within. Within that living reality will be discovered The Reality of The God of Light, Life and Love.

Advent Wish....Healthy Birthing

2011-12-13T09:19:00.000-08:00

Last Sunday I left Sun lakes in a light fog. (No, I was not hung-over!) As I drove to St. Andrew's I made my way frog, to good viewing conditions, and back into fog again. As I went along I was again reminded of the fact, that this my present reality is, a great paradigm, leading to a an ever deepening understanding of our spiritual journey. On this journey there are the times when we physically cannot see beyond the next step. There are times when our view of our God is lost in doubt, uncertainty, and disbelief. All of these are part and parcel of this earthly journey of ours, as spiritual beings. This is our lot as every moment we journey, enfleshed in a humanity, that is ever and always transforming us. All of these experiences are used by God to mold us into who He has intended us to be, and so fulfill our destiny. It is in this way we fulfill our vocation. This is the source of real joy, and lasting happiness.

"God I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me, nor do I really know myself." This has been my prayer for the “Foggy Days". As I get older that prayer has become my abiding, comforting, and consoling companion. Each time it brings with it new meanings, and insights. I wish the same for you, as you journey through your “Foggy Days". Speaking about foggy, ever drive from Brookings to Meyer's Beach, on the Oregon Coast?On this stretch of highway, one meets serious fog banks. As I drive, there are times when I can barely see the road ahead. After awhile, I begin to ask the question, "Will this ever break up, so I can be in sunlight?” This goes on for a time. Just as I have given up, and accepted the fact, not very willingly, this is going to be one of those endless foggy days, I drive into brilliant sunshine, and awe-full scenery. What a change of attitude occurs within. I go from being discouraged, and disheartened, to being wide awake to the beauty, and wonder right there before me. That particular is just filled with places that evoke thoughts and feelings that cannot be expressed in limited words. Words, cannot describe mystery. As I am enjoying these, WOW (wonder on
wonder) moments, guess what? Into a dense fog bank I go. My joyful optimism, with its feeling that everything is now going to be okay, suddenly disappears. It is back to hanging on, doing what is necessary to stay on the road, and avoid an accident. I go back to being very much awake. Alert to traffic, in front, behind, and that which appears beside you. Now on top of these anxious thoughts and feelings the "itty bitty negative committee", make its presence felt.

We all have that "itty bitty negative committee". It has taken a room in our heads, and is not easily evicted. The best we can do is to develop a strategy which will enable us to to reject its constant negative messaging. This demands constant alertness. I must remember I am more than any thought or action. I am not the person others see, or believe they see. I have the eternal within, nestled in a place no sin can touch. That committee is the lie which always must be replaced with The Truth. This is our life long battle. We engage in that battle every moment we are given to live. In this way we are life givers to ourselves, and hence to others. We can also choose, yes this is a choice, we are death dealers to ourselves and consequently to others. Of our essence we are good, right? We are always on a journey of discovery into that reality. This journey we call life.

As I find myself in that dense fog, " the committee" starts up, and can do a real number on me. But I have to choose to allow it. It is not God's will that I am bombarded with this negativity. This is the result of a, as yet, non- transformed human condition. It takes a real conscious effort to break away from that negative thinking. It is essential to reject the lie, so as to be lead into the truth. One is lead to the belief that in this called to the understanding since this is now part of my reality, Reality, God, is to be found. A lesson is learned. The revelation of the wisdom will take time. The wisdom will be slow in coming, but WILL appear when we are most need of a deeper insight. This will be an insight that will be way beyond the obvious. God, through the power of His merciful love, turns the lemons we create, in lemonade. With God all things are possible, and with Him nothing is impossible. (The source of great hope.) That is why I have real trouble with that statement, "God did this for a reason" when something bad happens. This Is NOT God's will! He, of His essence cannot harm us, so as to make Himself look good. Think about that for a while…….. A god that inflicts evil so as to look good rescuing us, is a god that must be rejected. Bad things happen when we misuse our free will. Bad things happen to us when others misuse their free will and we become the victims of their dysfunction. What happens to us has nothing to do with the living God, whom The Christ Child, is the revelation of. Can such a God who came to us as a vulnerable Child, take advantage of us in our vulnerability? That would make God an abuser. We find ourselves so ready to automatically blame God, rather take responsibility for our part in what has happened.

This takes real honesty. We also have to confront others in their misuse of their free will, as it applies to our well being. It takes real courage to be healthy and challenge others to treat us in a healthy manner as well. We will not think our way into this healthy state, we will have to act our way, into this
new, unfamiliar, uncomfortable way of living. Yes, it will be the latter for a long time. So, do not give up. You are giving birth to who you really are. All birthing involves pain. So it is with us. For each one to become our real selves, which is where our God reveals Himself, we have to take the risk of being rejected by family, and so called "friends ". Your healthy family and REAL friend, will be only too will to encourage you, as this new reality emerges from within. So then when “stuff happens", and it will, let us not be too ready to blame God, rather than take personal responsibility for what has happened.
Let us ask for the grace, the strength, the courage, to hold others to become healthy and responsible. Do not act out victim behavior. We all have to choose to be survivors, living a life of peace, joy, and freedom. We reject the life of the victim, living a life of guilt, fear and shame. At times, we must risk a fight rather than settle for dysfunction. We must challenge those who are too ready to give God a bad name. We must not allow "the blaming game”, be played out in our presence. Why? We must know this to happen as it creates a false understanding of our Gracious God. We must not buy into the lie, no matter how popular the lie is. A lie is a lie and we must not choose, or allow ourselves to become the people of the lie. (Peck) "This is a way of living that makes our life here on a earth a living hell.” Hell is where God, is not. "It is heaven all the way to heaven, and it is Hell all the way to hell." Teresa of Avila. The old order, we find has passed away. Behold we now experience “new Heavens and new earth”. By The Lord, has this been done, and it is wonder- full to behold, and reflect on. This is why we are so lucky to be gifted with this season of expectation, and active waiting.

Just as the message of The coming Savior came to John The Baptist, in the desert. In like manner, the beginning of our journey into the Good News, always begins in our desert experience. Or, it will happen, as it has so often for me, in deep fog, as I hang on for dear life. As I look back this has been my experience, yet I always hope, the next time it will be different. The only difference is it just goes deeper. So where are you experiencing your personal desert, as an individual, a couple, a family. Where do need to hear the consoling Good News, there is a Savior and He has come, not only to be for us, but to be with us, and within us. It is the acceptance of our deepest reality, a highway for our God is created. Highways do not just appear. They demand hard, difficult and sustained work. We are never alone in our “highway making”. We will always be guarantee whatever is, “The Daily Bread” we will need.

Advent....Divinity Within Humanity

2011-12-02T06:51:00.000-08:00

The world is a country which nobody ever knew by description, “One must travel through it one's self to be acquainted with it". So wrote Philip Stanhope many centuries ago. We are told today that unless we discover the Advent world within ourselves, it will have no life giving meaning for us. The people, places and events are not meant to be just words, they describe a reality within each one of us, at this time. As we gaze on the crib, it will have no real meaning until I come to discover this outer reality, is alive and living within myself. We ask for the gift that on Christmas when we view the crib in our "little churches of the home", and in the gathering of these communities of faith, a real encounter will take place.

Encounter in not just about a fleeting, casual meeting. Like passing someone in the corridor, or at this time of year in the mall. In an encounter we have in an in depth meeting with another reality. Some part of our deepest reality really meets some part of that persons deep reality. The result of this meeting is change. If there is no change then there is no change, there has been no real encounter. The change will not be of our choosing. Yes! We will not choose the change. Each encounter is Holy and Sacred. As reality meets reality. The Divine Encounter, the divine. The result cannot be controlled by us. It is beyond our power, however we try. We have to surrender to the gift resulting from the encounter. All of this demands, real presence. Why? Because we are dealing with REAL PRESENCE. Real Presence is only present in honest living. This is so frightening for us and as a result we have so few real encounters in our lives. We, then, live lives that are meaningless, lonely, and seemingly without value. Yet, we have within us that which all the wealth of this world cannot buy. What then are riches hidden deep within? Each person has to make their own unique journey of discovery. This will happen as we freely choose to respond to the particular grace of this season. We will be led to a new awareness to what really is of value. This "great treasure", which is beyond earthly value, has been given , has been entrusted to us. To make this "pearl of great price” even more worthwhile, it is enhanced each and every moment we live. This make s the inner journey, however painful, so rewarding. I like the following quotes; “We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures". Thornton Wilder. “Uninterpreted truth is as useless as buried treasure.” L. Strachey.
During this Season of Advent, let us get in touch then, with the LIVING Crib, present within each one of us. This is indeed "buried treasure". This is a very fruitful spiritual exercise. It allows us to personalize the Advent/Christmas/Epiphany scriptures . That which is alive within us will come to discover it's outward expression each time we see a crib scene. What a spiritual explosion? That is why this time of year is looked on as a time of special grace. Some describe it as a constant wave of grace washing over our hearts, souls, and minds. This "washing over” results in new awareness. New insights, triggering new challenges resulting in new commitments. Gives new meaning to New Year's resolutions??? We will find ourselves making commitments to something more than just losing weight. The result of this action will reveal to us what has happened because we choose to allow the encounter to take place. “We live our lives looking forward, but understand it looking back."

So far on this Advent we have begun to see that this is a season, it is a time, within which demands that we be alert for the approach, and the appearance of The Divine. A Divinity that cannot be controlled, or programmed. This Mystery cannot be solved by our present finite, human minds, so what is asked of us is that we develop reverence. Reverence for The Mystery revealed to humanity, through The Human Person. This reveals to us how our God sees us as we make our dwelling within within humanity. He has joined as a human being to transform all life into the place of encounter, with the Divine. He knows well the workings of the human heart, and how fearful we can be, He made allowance for that. So as not to threaten us, He appeared, clothed in the vulnerability of a baby. When He appeared as a baby he was a threat to those in power, not to the powerless. We do not see any local people of power at, or in the crib scene. These leaders of church and state had the knowledge, but not the wisdom to seek out The Child, the newest, and the best revelation of who their God really was. Let us ask then for the gift of wonder, so we can see beyond that which is ordinary to the new, ongoing revelation of our "vulnerable God". As He came once in human form, He has now chosen each person to continue The Incarnation. In each person the mystery continues to be revealed anew. With this in mind, always believe, where you stand, is a holy place. The God dwelling within your presence makes it so. St. Francis went so far as to say, "Everything that is, is to be adored". Strength and blessings for the journey, from a wanderer.

Advent....To See More Clearly

2011-11-25T11:07:00.000-08:00

Another Advent Season is with us. I was thinking on a hike recently, after 48 years, is there anything new to be said about Advent?
There is not much new to be said, however, there is so much newness, to be experienced. This will be our FIRST Advent as we are, right now.
We, as we are today,have never experienced this season of patient expectation.There will be a newness. this newness will not happen in a vacuum. This newness will be in direct proportion to the effort we will make so we can encounter the newness as it breaks into our everyday living. We will have to make the effort to look beyond the familiar, to that which is hidden, and exists beyond the familiar. Let us ask to see the people, places and events of the Season through a new set of lenses. Let us allow faith and wonder to lead us to a new Bethlehem. Let us make the effort to this year to take the risk of leaving the familiar behind. Why? So we can have a new vision, a newer, more vibrant, life-giving understanding of how each person, place and event of this Season is within us, right now. What we read in the scriptures is not just about what happened 2,000 years ago. This season challenges us to encounter all the above, in our everyday living.

Here is a suggestion to make this Advent a newer, and more life-giving reality. Take one person, place, or event and reflect on where that reality is within you. Where do you find Bethlehem within, this year? Where in your life is the place you are certain God is not there? What is the part of you that you look down on and resent? Who, for instance, has been Angel Gabriel for you? Who have you been an Angel Gabriel to? Who has been Elizabeth for you as you struggled with the reality you are the bearer of The Christ. That in itself is a challenge, but we have to give birth to that reality. A birth that will take place in a very hostile world. Not unlike Mary and what she and Joseph had to face. Now the next one is real nasty, where do we find Herod in our lives? Who is it that makes the effort to destroy the Life of THE INFANT within us? Who is it we are persecuting so that The Mystery of The Incarnation within is prevented from taking root and developing? When we are being tough on ourselves now we can encounter the shepherds within. The outcasts of society we the first to hear the Good News, and become proclaimers of said good news. God's ways are definitely our ways. Take, then, this year an unfamiliar person, place, Advent, then, is NOT a once a year event. It is an every MOMENT event. What we are doing in this season is taking an in depth, faith led look at an age old, but ageless event. This ageless event is an encounter with the infinite, hence it's meaning can never be
exhausted. There will be new insights because of the ever newness, of our human journey as spiritual beings. We will be challenged to see the connection, an ever new connection, between what is presented to us in the Gospels, and how we are living that gospel reality in the reality of our daily living. However, let us be honest, and own the fact we are all imperfect bearers of the Good News. But, let us never lose heart. The real good news is that while we are on this journey Our Gracious Father/Mother God is ever and always molding and fashioning us to be more like Jesus Christ. He was , and ever will be, the ONLY perfect manifestation and revelation of God. The rest of us are following perfectly imperfect, always in need of the strengthening, transforming grace which will allow us to fulfill our eternal vocation.

Each moment we live then is another moment in which The Holy Spirit is molding and fashioning into who our God wants us to be, so we can be more authentic bearers of the Good News, His Son was the incarnation of. We then each day continue make the Mystery of The Incarnation an ongoing reality. That is the God given dignity of each and every person. No matter where he or she is living out their reality. Being faithful, and true to their reality, is the necessary conditions for God's plan to work. When we are not true to who we really are, the original plan is frustrated and God now has to work with plan "B". Plan 'B" is challenge we give to God as the result of our egocentric egos being in control, rather than the healthy true self. It takes a great deal of purgation and purification for the true self to surface and the false self be put in its rightful place. This battle royal is the battle, we have to experience, and endure, within the depths of souls. There is no let up. That is why our Good Shepherd God never sleeps. He is the vigilant One always there to defend, nourish and gently guides us.

In this season we again look through the eyes of faith to the approach, the appearance of God. He appears in the most unlikely places. He approaches us in the personhood of the vulnerable, the outcast, the “least ones", in the estimation of the world. As the world sees that is not how our God sees. May we all be gifted with a deeper insight, so we can see more clearly as God sees.

A Kingdom For The.......Powerless

2011-11-18T14:07:00.000-08:00

We are coming to end of yet another Liturgical year. Another year in which you and I were invited to deepen the connection between what is the experience of our everyday living, and what we celebrate in our liturgical celebrations. When there is no connection between the two, neither is there a connection between us and 'the celebration". Where there is no connection, then we have "liturgies without soul", and we leave without soul nourishment. I like to believe that all liturgy is a celebration of life. It is a celebration of a life that is fully human". In so far as it is fully human can the presence of the divinity be revealed. It is in the imitation of Him who became, The Human Being, can the divinity placed within us come to be revealed. This revelation is not just for our benefit it is given to be shared with all those who our God WLL place in our path. We do not become imitators overnight. There has to be much purgation, much illumination, so that the union of wills can take place. Our self will dies a very slow death. It's desire for power, and control does not die easily.

The ego does not wish to share moments of loss, disappointment, and weakness. Our egos drive us to look good on the outside, while we are going to hell on the inside. The lie is " you to look good, no matter what". Living that lie brings so much pain, death, and destruction to so many. The sad thing about it is, this lie is passed on from generation to generation. Perfectionism is a great cover up for " the lie”. Behind that desire to be perfect is the individual, or family secret which must be defended at all costs. The cost is many times the loss of knowledge of of who one really is. The soul is lost. There is no loving, creative spirit. The only power being tapped into is the destructive power of the lie. It takes a serious earthquake for the true person to emerge. Thank God for Twelve Step programs. In the safety of the fellowship the truth can be spoken. The real truth is spoken for the first time. In speaking the truth there is that immediate connection with THE TRUTH. This Truth is the power that will set us free. The toxicity of shame is now replaced with hope, and courage. Not only that but there is a gradual growth in faith in a Benevolent God who does care about individuals well being, as well as all of His creation.

All this was always present but it took that awe-full journey into the hell of powerlessness, for The Truth to be revealed. When the false image of who we are supposed to be, is replaced with the truth of who we really are a miracle takes place. It is the miracle of grace. As we begin to pray from this new place of honesty there is a certain something that is now present that was not there before. We are not to analyze or examine this new gift. It is a GIFT and is given for us to enjoy. So there will always be a great struggle. There will be an ongoing hostility between the real self, the one God's knows and listens to, and the false self whose prayer is not heard because does not know of its existence. That is why gut prayer, prayer from the depths is always heard. "The Lord is close to the brokenhearted, and from all their distress he rescues them.” As long as we are alive there will always be that war between the opposing wills. That war is waged on the battle field of our souls.

In our liturgy the ideal is revealed to us. As we look at this ideal, which is presented for our imitation, we have to admit we sure do come up short. We are not to be discouraged. As one wag put it; "We are all here, because ,we are not all there" Pretty good?? We always approach The Sacrifice, and Sacrament because we are accepting more and more the truth of the scriptures; "Of ourselves we can do nothing, but we can do all things in Him Who strengthens us". "With God all things are possible.” It is only in and through my weaknesses God's power is revealed. “Our weaknesses become our strengths, the source of compassion for others, and the basis of our awakened nature.” (Halifax)

I think that prayer from Lent is appropriate here; " May our faith hope and love , turn hatred to love, violence to peace, and death to eternal life”. Now The Kingdom of our God has a place to be revealed. In this milieu, “A Kingdom of truth and life, a Kingdom of holiness and grace, a Kingdom of justice peace and love becomes a reality”. Not through our strengths but only through our weaknesses. Is not This Kingdom an awe-full mystery? The acceptance of the reality of who you are, in all its messy truth, is the threshold over which we must cross so as to gain entrance into God's Kingdom.

“It is only through our weaknesses and brokenness, can we have an audience with a God of faithfulness and compassion." (Stuhmiller)

Grace and Free Will......Real freedom

2011-11-13T07:54:00.000-08:00

The Liturgy for last week-end contained a prayer for health of mind and body. The prayer asked for health to continue the work of Jesus Christ, which is asking for the health to do what our God has planned on us to do. He created us with a plan in mind. Each one of us has been created uniquely. Each one of us, no matter how we see ourselves, or are seen by others, is uniquely gifted destined to be a unique contributor to the totality of creation. When we find ourselves questioning our value, our worth-whileness, we need to remind ourselves all that is my reality is being woven into the whole of creation. Yes, even these moments of doubt and uncertainty have been woven into the totality of my life. As a consequence all that I have and am now experiencing in part of the totality of creation. What we think are throw away moments, moments to be denied, or if possible destroyed have become a part of living creation. All of this happens through the miracle of grace. Nothing goes to waste in our Creator's Creation. What we judge as worthless , or even shame-full, is not how God see the same reality. All, what we judge as good or bad, is woven into the total reality of creation. In our Creative Creators there is nothing that is not used. "There are", as one author has so wisely said, "no garbage cans in God's Kingdom". Nothing is denied its existence. Everything is woven into a living whole. Everything is woven into a wholeness. Everything is woven into holiness. This is the work of The Creative Power of God, which is also,The Power of Love, Who is, The Holy Spirit. Wherever there is love, there is, of necessity, creation.

In all of these mysterious workings, no one is doing anything by themselves. Co-operation, collaboration, is required. God relies on humankind to bring about the continuation of the perfection of His creation. He in us, and we in Him continues the perfection of a creation that has been in process for millions of years. This ongoing creation will not stop with our passing. As we have built on the efforts of so many, so many will come after us to continue the work we have been a part of. Each person, in every generation will be given the unique gifts, and grace necessary for their unique contribution. So, we are ever and always given a choice. We are given the choice to say yes, or no. That is how much our God loves us. He, the Ultimate Lover loves us into freedom. There is no force, there cannot be. It is intrinsically impossible for our God to force us to do anything. God does not make us do anything. He is not a puppeteer, pulling the strings, as we move on command, with no self control. There is that image of God in some people’s minds, that is not the living, loving, gracious God of a healthy spirituality.

When a person is healthy, personal boundaries are respected. Since our Father-God is the essence of health, our boundaries are always respected, and safeguarded. Sometimes, no, a great deal of the time, I wish God was not so healthy. A little dysfunction on His part would make my life so much easier. At times, it tees me off that God will not do for me what I can do for myself. I like things to be done my way, and on my terms. Not healthy thinking, so I am told!!!!! Such thinking leads to real dysfunction. When my little agenda allows no questions, and no opposition tolerated, this eventually leads to dictatorship. That old saying about absolute power corrupts absolutely, needs to be kept in mind! Even when it is more convenient to deny that particular wisdom. Will, can an ego trip like this last? Of course not. Eventually there comes, in all of these scenarios, painful collapse. This leads to apparent destruction, as the so called powerful one is overthrown. The false- self created, paper mache kingdom, is destroyed. This can, and will happen sometimes fast sometimes slow. The towers built will crumble. All that has constituted the kingdom turns to rubble. This is where faith, hope and endurance comes in. This is not the end, however. This is the beginning of a new creation. The first was the creation based on ego. The second is the creation is brought about by grace. The chaos brought about by the fall of that created by self, will is in direct contrast with the peace, joy, and love experienced in that new creation of grace. What has really happened is that our Creator God has taken the rubble of our kingdom, and created His Kingdom with it. (Rohr) That is why we have a sense of familiarity, yet we know something has changed. These changes are slowly, and gently revealed to us.

Thomas Merton has written the following about the above mentioned cooperation, and collaboration, " ....if I hope in God, I must also make confident use of the natural aids which, with grace, enable me to come to Him. If He is good, and if my intelligence is His gift, then I must show trust in His goodness by making use of my intelligence. I must let faith elevate, heal and transform the light of my mind. If He is merciful, and my freedom is a gift of His mercy, I must show my trust in His mercy by making use of my free will. I must hope and charity purify and strengthen my human liberty and raise me to the glorious autonomy of a son/daughter of God.

Some who think they trust in God actually sin against hope because they do not use the will and the judgment He has given them. Or, what use is it for me to hope in grace if I dare not make the act of will that corresponds with grace? How do I profit by abandoning myself passively to His will if I lack the strength of will to obey His commands? There, if I trust in God’s grace, I must show confidence in the natural powers He has given me, not because they are my powers but because they are His gifts. If I believe in God's grace, I must also take account of my own free will without which His grace would be poured into my soul to no purpose."

From Medicators to Hope....

2011-10-24T13:26:00.000-07:00

On my recent long trip I was, again, able to take advantage of the ongoing generosity of the Echeverria family. This resulted in 25 days in a cabin in Montana, 30 miles from West Yellowstone. The latter is one of my very favorite places to visit. Over one hundred days have been spent in this part of “the cathedral of the great outdoors”.

“Every blessing is a curse, and every curse is a blessing.” How true that saying has been for me. When I get to that cabin I am in peace and quiet. My usual medicators are not available-no T.V., no radio and no internet hookup for the computer. (I am not a great techno guy, so I was not able to figure out the cable.) One year there was not even the ticking of the clock, to keep me company. This year there was company. What company that turned out to be! One evening I was listening to the ticking of the clock . Then this thought bubbled up from within, with each tick my death is one moment nearer. How wonder-full???? I was so tempted to get up and remove the batteries so I would not be faced with the steady, unstoppable, march of time into eternity. Boy, does that trigger the uncomfortable feelings of powerlessness as one is faced with lack of control.

It is then I have to remind myself of what Fr. Richard Rohr has said in one of his books. When we get into solitude we will be faced with our issues of addiction, negativity, fear, and control. But Richard, every year? Yep! Joe, in his innocence, thought that after doing this for a number of years it would get easier. Well that was a bad thought. I find that for the first two weeks I am looking for excuses to get the heck out of that cabin. I come up with a lot of EXCUSES but faced with reality, they are not reasons. T.S. Elliott has said ; "human beings can only face, so much reality" ditto for me. The good news is, the tougher that time is in solitude the better one feels after the struggle. It is definitely a struggle. I wonder, is that why so many want to take their computers on vacation so they will have something to distract them when there is down, or quiet time? I read recently that some people turn their vacation time really into hard work. Go, go, go, let us never have time on our hands. This is not a vacation. It is just another type of work, under the guise of vacation time. We are inclined to go from one form of hustle and bustle to another kind. We are deceiving ourselves. No wonder so many want a vacation when they return from their so called "vacation".

When faced with the issues, bubbling up in silence, we will either run away, the ego's choice, or allow one’s self be gently led into deep, and progressive, prayer. This is the choice of the true self. The false is very demanding, and so gets the attention. The true self is the shy, quiet one. One has to listen carefully. We must be led far away, way beyond the noise and clamor, not only to listen, but hear what is it we need to hear. Not necessarily what we want to hear. It is in the quiet, the whisper of the Spirit of Truth expresses it's desire for us. For us who are ever and always the beloved.

Often it is the prayer of desperation, "out of the depths I cry unto you O lord. O God come to my aid, O Lord make haste to help me." Does He hasten? I have been exposed to the fact that my haste, is not God's haste. God's time is not my time. This is something that I have to just not only know but accept. Acceptance is a process. “God's way is not our way, so I have to pray for the gift of my way to be transformed into God's way. What an ongoing struggle that is! Then the two following sayings have a deeper meaning, “No pain no gain", and "growth only comes after death". This is true in everything, both in the physical world and in the world of the spirit.

It was then that I picked up Merton's classic, “No Man Is An Island”, and came to his chapter, "Sentences on Hope" where I read the following;

“We are not perfectly free until we live in pure hope... He who hopes in God trusts God, Whom he never sees, to bring him/her to the possession of things that are beyond imagination...Supernatural hope is the virtue that strips of all things in order to give us possession of all things. We do not hope for what we have. Therefore, to live in hope is to live in poverty, having nothing. And yet, if we abandon ourselves to the economy of Divine Providence, we have everything we hope for. By faith, we know God without seeing Him. By hope we possess God without feeling His presence. If we hope in God, we already possess Him, since hope is A CONFIDENCE WHICH HE CREATES IN OUR SOULS AS SECRET EVIDENCE THAT HE HAS TAKEN POSSESSION OF US. So, the soul that hopes in God already belongs to Him, since He gives Himself completely to those who give themselves to Him. The only thing faith and hope does not give us is the clear vision of Him Whom we possess. We are united with Him in darkness, because we have to hope, "For in hope we are saved. For hope that sees for itself is not hope. For who hopes for what one sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait with endurance", Romans 8:24.

More Prayer....More Gifts

2011-10-20T10:08:00.001-07:00

"Let us pray to the Lord (Gracious God, Kind and Loving Father) who bends close to hear our prayer; Father your love for us surpasses all our hopes and desires...The hand of your loving kindness powerfully yet gently guides all the moments of our day....You guard us under the shadow of your wings, and search into the depths of our hearts....Your goodness is what our spirit can touch, and your love is more than the mind can bare. Lead us to seek beyond our reach and give us the courage to stand before you truth. Remove the blindness that cannot know You and relieve the fear that would hide us from you sight."

Did I make up that prayer? I wish I had that depth of relationship to be able to express the heartfelt wisdom the above words enunciate. The wisdom expressed is a gift presented to you and I, through the opening prayers of the 27th-29th Sundays of Ordinary Time. The opening prayer, the collect, reveals to us the theology that will be revealed, or hidden in the celebration to be entered into. That is why liturgy is righty called, "the work of the people". It takes work, it takes effort, it takes a sense of real presence on our part, to connect with The Presence. The Presence comes to us both hidden and revealed in The Sacrament of Word, Sacrifice, and Sacrament. We have to be in, not at, each celebration. There are times we are just there. There is no connection. There is no connection with anything that is happening, or with anybody around us. This is when we really need the community of faith. Why? Simply there will be others suffering with us in our disconnectedness. There will be others so connected they will be able to draw that something out of us, that was present but so hidden, so inundated with the trials and challenges of life. It takes that something that happens in the gathering which breaks down that which confines, and binds us. From each celebration we will be given what we need not what we want.

Many, many times the gift given is not obvious. It is not apparent at first glance. The hidden gifts, that wonder-full wisdom, the great challenges, are revealed to us through reflection, and ONLY through reflection. Silent reflection allows us slowly and gently to be drawn into the mystery of who we are, and who our God is. As we come to embrace All of who we are, the good and the bad, we will be drawn into a deeper understanding of the vastness of the Mystery, which is our origin and destiny. We are able to gradually become more and more comfortable with who we are as spiritual beings having a human experience.

In the above prayer we are words comforted with the words acknowledging our God bends close to hear our prayer. Ever reflect on what that really means? How so very human that image is? How often we have seen a concerned parent not only listens to the concern of their child, but will get down on their knees, look into the troubled face of their child. They give the child the gift of their caring presence to assuage whatever their fears and concerns are. It even gets better when warm, heartfelt hugs are exchanged. In every moment that dynamic is what is part and parcel of our relationship with our Mother/Father God. We are strengthened so that when we encounter words like fear, blindness, we also have words of encouragement like “loving kindness", and "goodness". If we are in the shadow of God's wings, then where is our God? These words, on reflection, will trigger the beginnings of a desire not only to be able to believe in the truth expressed, but there will come moments when we will want to experience that reality in our daily living. There is that spiritual principle, 'We become what we desire". It will happen not in the way we want, or expect, it will come in the way that Our Loving Father knows that is BEST for us. There is a whale of a difference between the two. We are always becoming reconciled with what God knows we need and what we want. We must also keep before us, "Be careful what you pray for".

We will slowly get connected with what has to this point been a secret, untapped strength. Now that changes. We will come to a deeper understanding of the mysterious, supernatural gift we call HOPE.

Until next week, blessings to and on all.....
The wondering wanderer

The Need, Not Want of a.....Ranger

2011-10-10T16:24:00.000-07:00

I am sure most of you, either have read, or seen what happened to that Michigan man that was killed in Yellowstone Park. The Mary Mountain hike is one of my favorites. It was my intention to hike it again. Well, then I thought it would be a good idea to hike Mallard Lake instead. That was the hike I was on last year when I experienced thunder, lightening, heavy wind, rain and hail. Along with the running streams. I was lucky to get out of that in one piece. Not to make the same mistake again(you see, I am learning!), I went to the visitor’s center so as to check with a ranger. I was lucky to meet a young helpful ranger. I told him about my experience of last year. He was kind enough to check the weather radar and give the all clear. I still had Mary Mountain in the back of my mind, so I asked what bear activity was there in that area. He told me there was a lot of activity in the Upper and Lower Basin, so it would stand to reason that there would be activity in the Mary Mountain area as well. With that information, I decided to forgo Mary Mountain, and I went to Mallard Lake instead. What a good move that was indeed! You can imagine how shocked I was to read in the paper of the death of that unfortunate man. Good information kept me out of harm’s way. Good direction enabled me to make a very healthy decision. Applying common sense to the information I was given, I was able to avoid the danger. Naturally these events were uppermost in my mind. I have had plenty of time to reflect on that close call. What has surfaced from that reflection?

I like to compare the spiritual journey to a long, long marathon hike. All that goes into the preparation for one of these challenges, is required of us who make this journey, as spiritual beings having a very human experience. The only difference is one can choose to take on the challenge of a marathon, or pass on it. I have chosen not to meet that particular challenge. The challenge of the marathon hike, we call the spiritual journey, that is a different matter. In order to have some semblance of sanity, in this life, I for one had no choice but to surrender to the challenge. As I get older,, and who is not right there beside me, I am embracing no, change that, I have no choice but embrace the great words of Merton; “God I have no idea where I am going. I do not know for certain where it will lead to, and I really do not know myself.” I have fewer and fewer answers, but a growing mountain of questions. On reflection, they can all be summed up in the two questions St. Francis had, his whole life; “Who are you God, and who am I?” Simple, yet so profound.

When I am in Yellowstone I go to the rangers for good, fact based information. They, from their experience, will point out to me the different hikes. They will be able to share with the me the challenges, the degree of difficulty, also the great rewards from my efforts. I have to make the decision to take the hike or not. The ranger cannot make the climb for me. It is I, who will ultimately will take a particular trail, and have my own unique experience. Each trail is different. Each and every time you hike is a new and unique experience. No two hikes are ever the same. No two events are ever the same. No two moments are ever the same. God does not repeat Himself. He has, he is, Infinite Imagination. We all are in need of “rangers” who will provide us with the necessary information so we can journey in confidence and safety. The more the research, the more secure and confident the hike. This begs the question, who are the “rangers” we consult on our continuous hike, called spiritual journey? What are the resources we read, research, seeking guidance and counsel? It is essential for our spiritual health, and well being to be in constant contact with a healthy source of information. We are in constant need of information, that will lead to formation. This formation is not for the sake getting information. The formation that is essential is that which will conform us to the will of Our Father, revealed to us in and through the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. This results in a battle, no, not a battle, a war. A battle is over and done with, in minutes, hours, days, or in some cases weeks. We are in a war. That war is within. The battlefield is our soul.

My ego wants to be admired, stroked, puffed up, made to feel good. This happens when we allow ourselves to be conformed with that which is on the outside. Power, property, prestige, control, comparisons, competitions, popularity and pleasure are that which will lead us to live a life that is all based on what is on the outside. The inside, the spiritual is neglected and the price to be paid? We live our lives in a constant state of unrest, disharmony, disarray. There is no inner peace, security or serenity. The result is disaster. But let us not lose hope. When we get to the stage where we are facing death and disaster, strange as it may sound, we are in the best possible place. It is now that we are teachable. It is now that we are prepared to read, listen to and reflect on what the “spiritual rangers’ have to say about where we have landed, as the result of listening to the wrong voice of guidance. The voice of the as yet non transformed ego will lead us to many versions of hell, here on earth. The rangers will inform and offer guidance as to how to let go of one way of thinking and acting, so as to be free to enjoy at a level beyond our imagination, an inner life of peace, joy and love. Rather than having “hell on earth”, we will experience partially what will be fully, and eternally ours in heaven. We do not have to fight this war by ourselves. Our Gracious God will provide essential for a life that is “happy, joyous, and free are open hands. Opened in hope and confidence. Our Shepherd Ranger. This will not happened in the way we expect it to happen. It will be a slow process through places and spaces we never imagined would be part of our life’s hike. Life is so full of surprises. It stands to reason that He who is The Author of Life, The Surprise.

Honest Prayer...Leads to What?

2011-09-22T11:19:00.000-07:00

The last prayer I quoted last week from the Fourth Sunday in Lent, is one that has to be used often. It will aid us, help us, as we face the challenges on this oh so human journey. The human journey we are called to make as spiritual beings. We are after all aliens. Yes, this is who we are. Because of this reality, whether we like it or not, aliens have so much to teach us about who we are, and who we have been called to be. Each alien is a sacrament, for you and I. In their life's story, is our story with our God as we make our way through "this Vale of tears''. When we look closely, and examine without judgment, the life of an alien we will see a living incarnation of who we are, as individual pilgrims, and as a pilgrim people. The poverty of the alien, is really the poverty that is deep within each one of us. As we grow in reconciliation with that poverty, we will be slowly lead, to the embracing acceptance, of the presence of those who at one time, appeared as a great threat to our security. We will be able to listen with more open and accepting hearts what Jesus has to say in Matt. 25. He tells us He is the hungry one. He is the prisoner. He is the sick one. He is the one away from home. He does not provide ANY EXCUSES. He states the reality. He gives us the bare facts. These are challenging facts, which we as, The Contemporary Christ Presence, we must face up to.

There is a price to be paid when this call is answered. A great price is demanded of not a few, but so many of our sisters and brothers. Look at how many, many martyrs we have in South America, as the struggle for basic human dignity continues. I am happy/sad to say I was in one parish with Sister Dorothy Stang who was assassinated because of her great work for the poor and the oppressed. I have a picture of her dead body lying in a remote area. This is a constant reminder of the price many are prepared to pay so that the fruits of the Redemption reaches ALL not a few. There are so many who have no lived experience of what the Redemption has really brought to humanity. There is so much sacrificial work still to be done. So many martyrs still be be crowned. Many have chosen to take Sr.Dorothy's place. What courage it must take to know that at any given moment the ultimate sacrifice may be demanded of you. Talk about walking the Gospel message, and responding to it's demands. South America, has not only given the church so many martyrs, it has also gifted her with the wonder-full power of The Small Base Communities. What a dynamic presence for radical change that has been. Radical, because it charges the church at it's roots with a new enthusiasm for what is right and just. There is a wonder-full reservoir of spiritual richness available to the whole church from the experience of these people expressed in prayer. Real honest gut prayer, expressing their reality.

We have to admit we have not always been on the right side of the struggle. We were on the convenient side, where there was no danger to be faced. Then, the so called, WEAK, harnessed that eternal inner gift of hope, the result, mystifying. How could the poor, the weak, be so strong? What gave them that inner strength to fight, and not count the cost. The poor, the oppressed, are the channels, the sacraments, through which Our Gracious Father-God, continues to show His "fundamental option" still lies. As it was, so it is, and ever shall be. We all are in a struggle to liberate that which we have imprisoned, that which we have alienated, into the freedom that is ours as the beloved of our heavenly Father. As we are, so all those we see have the self same dignity. As we embrace all the we are, so we will find we will be able to embrace the many, many, disguises Our God comes to us in. He does not come, and never did, in trite answers. We, now more than ever must pray that we do not worship the convenient god of complacency. We must shudder when we think, smugly, we have all the answers. Look at those who crucified the Prophet Jesus. They thought they had all the answers, and were doing right in the taking of His life. How many lives have been taken, in many and various ways, by those who think they have they have all the truth they need, yet fail miserable to see the Real presence of God in the reality that is right before their eyes. How true is that old saying; "There are none so blind as those who WILL not see". Fear keeps them from the TRUE Presence of the living God in the lives of those who they are sitting in judgment of, and condemning. How easy it is to rash judge and condemn, rather than see the person as God's see them. Not the narrow god of our limited understanding, but the infinite loving and compassionate God of Jesus Christ. Without understanding there can be no real acceptance, and reconciliation . That is so very true for ourselves first, then it flows out to those who are placed in our daily lives. There are going to be some real eye-popping surprises in heaven, when it will be revealed to us who really is “THE APPLE OF GOD'S EYE".

I will finish up, no comments please, with a verse from an old Gaelic hymn:
" God.
Your eyes are watchful,
Your ears are listening,
Your lips are speaking,
Friend at my side."

Prayer can be seen as that gentle, misty rain that falls so gentle at times. In Ireland, when that happens, we call it "a soft day", and there are many of them. So then let us allow our prayer to bring about a gradual softening of the hardness with which we so often treat ourselves with. Then what was promised, through the prophet Ezekiel will become a reality for you and I. Through the prophet, our God promises that he will remove from us our hearts of stone. The heart that is critical, unyielding, judgmental, and so very inhuman. He, and only He alone, can replace the former, and in it's place we will be given hearts of flesh. We will be given the human heart. The heart that Jesus Christ modeled, and revealed to us through His life, and especially His death. This Heart of Christ, who will lead us to a life tat will be lived out lived in love, peace, freedom, and joy. Happiness, MAY happen, but it is not the goal. Happens can only happen, it cannot be made to happen. It cannot be bought or manufactured in some way. we are powerless to make happiness happen. It is a by-product of the life that is lived in the knowledge, you are the beloved. That is what has to be claimed," again and again." (Nouwen) May the gentle rain of Our Gracious God descend on the Field/garden of your souls. Then may the harvest that comes to you, be embraced, and accepted, giving you what you need , not what you want.

Prayer....Waters....Refreshes

2011-09-22T10:58:00.001-07:00

" God of the universe-God ever close to us we rejoice to call you Father (Mother). From this worlds uncertainty we look to your covenant (of faith full love)..We ask for Your guidance. ..Father in the rising of your Son death gives birth to new life. The suffering He endured restore hope to a fallen world. Let sin never ensnare with empty promises of passing joys...so that our love may give life. Father, let the light of your truth guide us on the way to your kingdom through a world filled with lights contrary to Your own. May your love make us what you have called us to be Father, may the gift of your life continue to grow in us, drawing us from us from death to faith, hope, and love. Keep us alive in Christ. Keep us watchful in prayer, and true to His teachings.....Father of everlasting goodness, our origin and guide... gifts without measure flow from your goodness to bring us Your peace. Our life is Your gift. Guide us on life's journey, for only You can make us whole (holy). Keep us strong in Your love.... Your Spirit has made us tour children, confident to call you Father. Increase your Spirit (of love), within us. Touch our hearts, help them grow. Touch our lives, make them signs(sacraments) of your love for all humankind.

The above is a composite of opening prayers from the Sundays beginning on the 12th Sunday of Ordinary Time through the 19th Sunday. Since I am dealing with the gifts that come from theses prayers I might as well include my own favorite. This is from The Fourth Sunday of Lent:
"God our Father, Your Word, Jesus Christ, spoke peace to a sinful world and brought humankind the gift of reconciliation by the suffering and death He endured. Teach us, the people who bear His name, to follow the example He gave us: may our faith, hope, and charity turn hatred to love, conflict to peace, death to eternal life. "

Now why do not you write, or print out just a few of you comforting, and consoling prayers. Keep them handy so they will be readily available when the need arises. This we can all be certain of, the need will arise, and often We then must be responsible for that which we are able to provide for ourselves. God will not do that. He will not do what He knows we can do. Whether we do it or not, that is our decision. For that we are responsible. Becoming mature is accepting that responsibility. What happens when we pray those prayers that is in our God's domain. We will ALWAYS be given what we need not what we want. Gandhi word come to mind; “God will take care of our needs not our greed". Even into the spiritual life we find lust and greed. That is when we are honest!!!! "Honesty is progressive." But honest prayer will always lead us out of our illusions. We will slowly grow into deeper honesty with ourselves, others, and our God. It is not easy. We have to pray for this gift of honesty. Always keep in mind; "When I am honest about being dishonest, I AM being honest". I have always liked that saying.

So until next week let us keep watering the gardens of our souls through every day prayer. Your work, whatever it may be, IS your prayer. Embrace this reality, and know wherever you are, there is your God. Say Hi to That Presence, in your own unique way. Do it frequently. At first it will feel "weird", then as you develop the habit, through grace, you will become more and more comfortable. You are going to be surprised, and yes, even shocked at the conversations, and at the tone of said conversations. God is not anxious to hear the prayers of others coming from you. He/She is your lover, your beloved waiting, as the hymn says, "right beside you". This Presence IS a living presence, and your life makes it so. What a wonder-full mystery real life is?

Finally......Water

2011-09-03T13:02:00.000-07:00

Saint Theresa of Avila saw what watering does for a garden, prayer does for the soul. I will deal with her first way, as this has been my own experience. Just as I had to draw the water to the garden so too we have to draw the water of prayer to the garden, that is our soul. I had to go to the source to fill those drums, so we too must go to The Source of Living Water, Jesus Christ. he Himself claims to be the source, of living water. Now-a-days we have to pay for water. The scriptures reminds us that this living water is free. We are to come without money, but we are to bring a 'soul-bucket" that is empty. The reality and harshness of everyday living empties us, big time. We do not have to live in fear. Our Shepherd Gardner will make sure we will have ALL that is necessary for our safe nourishment and growth. A well can and does run dry. The Fountain of Living Water is an eternal source of all that is necessary for eternal life. We must also keep in mind, the emptier the bucket, the more water we can receive. So when we get to that stage where we are most emptied of any of our own strength, we are in the best possible place. For it now, we are really ready for that which will renew, refresh, and reinvigorate us. We will get what is necessary to “pick up our cross" and continue on behind Him who goes before us, yet is able to share the common yoke. A paradox, yes, embrace this one as you would embrace ant other. Paradoxes are that which stretches us, and draws us into the realm we would not otherwise go to. This one goes with Paul's "It is only when I am weak it is then, I am strong”. Our egos will fight this tooth and nail. The journey into the acceptance of human weakness, and powerlessness in a power-full struggle. One we pray our egos loose. Why of the following. In the Old Testament God, when asked, "Who are you?", answers simple, "I Am, who Am". He also says, "Go and tell them, I Am sent you". We are the small "I am not the Great One”.

Since God's name for Himself is, I Am, then when we are able to say 'I am' strong, we are actually saying, I am, God strong. What a great gift emptiness is??? The following is some of the life giving water that has been offered to you and I over these last number of weeks. The source of this water is from the tap we call ,the opening prayer. Like a cold drink of water, on a scorching Arizona day, this is to be sipped slowly not gulped. down. We all enjoy to feeling of taking that mouth full of water and let it slowly seep it's way down our parched throats. As it works it's way down what a refreshing feeling that is. May that physical reality, become you spiritual reality. So drink freely, but slowly.

"God of the universe-God ever close to us we rejoice to call you Father (Mother).” From this worlds uncertainty we look to your covenant (of faith full love)..We ask for Your guidance. ..Father in the rising of your Son death gives birth to new life. The suffering He endured restore hope to a fallen world. Let sin never ensnare with empty promises of passing joys...so that our love may give life. Father, let the light of your truth guide us on the way to your kingdom through a world filled with lights contrary to Your own. May your love make us what you have called us to be. Father, may the gift of your life continue to grow in us, drawing us from us from death to faith, hope, and love. Keep us alive in Christ. Keep us watchful in prayer, and true to His teachings.....Father of everlasting goodness, our origin and guide... gifts without measure flow from your goodness to bring us Your peace. Our life is Your gift. Guide us on life's journey, for only You can make us whole(holy). Keep us strong in Your love.... Your Spirit has made us tour children, confident to call you Father. Increase your Spirit(of love), within us. Touch our hearts, help them grow. Touch our lives, make them signs (sacraments) of your love for all humankind.

The above is a composite of opening prayers from the Sundays beginning on the 12th. Sunday of Ordinary Time through the 19th Sunday. Since I am dealing with the gifts that come from theses prayers I might as well include my own favorite. This is from The Fourth Sunday of Lent:
" God our Father, Your Word, Jesus Christ, spoke peace to a sinful world and brought humankind the gift of reconciliation by the suffering and death He endured. Teach us, the people who bear His name, to follow the example He gave us: may our faith, hope, and charity turn hatred to love, conflict to peace, death to eternal life.”

Now, why don’t you write, or print out just a few of these comforting, and consoling prayers. Keep them handy so they will be readily available when the need arises. This we can all be certain of, the need will arise, and often We then must be responsible for that which we are able to provide for ourselves. God will not do that. He will not do what He knows we can do. Whether we do it or not, that is our decision. For that we are responsible. Becoming mature is accepting that responsibility. What happens when we pray those prayers that is in our God's domain. We will ALWAYS be given what we need not what we want. Gandhi word come to mind;
“God will take care of our needs not our greed". Even into the spiritual life we find lust and greed. That is when we are honest!!!! “Honesty is progressive." Gut honest prayer will always lead us out of our illusions.
We will slowly grow into a deeper honesty with ourselves, others, and our God. It is not easy. we have to pray for this gift of honesty. Always keep in mind; "When I am honest about being dishonest, I AM being honest" I have always liked that saying.

So, until next week let us keep watering the gardens of our souls through every day prayer. Your work, whatever it may be, IS your prayer. Embrace this reality, and know wherever you are, there is your God. Say Hi to That Presence, in your own unique way. Do it frequently, at first it will feel "weird", then as you develop the habit, through grace, you will become more and more comfortable. You are going to be surprised, and yes, even shocked at the conversations, and at the tone of said conversations. God is not anxious to hear the prayers of others coming from you. He/She is your lover, your beloved waiting, as the hymn says, "right beside you"

This Presence IS a living presence, and your life makes it so. What a wonder-full mystery real life is?

Waiting....Watering....Not Easy.

2011-08-19T11:48:00.000-07:00

The earth, the humus, has been broken open. The seeds, and the seed potatoes, have been planted in the fertilized ground. Is that all there is? Unfortunately not. There is no instant growth, neither in the physical world, or the spiritual world. In both world we have the four W’s. (A), We have to wait, (B), we have to watch, (C), we have to water, and (C), we have to weed. All the above are not just necessary, they are each essential for a healthy, productive garden, and a healthy spirituality. This demands effort, sacrifice, and sad to say, a great deal of patience, all bound together with no expectations.
Waiting, for most of us is very difficult. we want results, and we want them now. Nature says to us, " hold you horses", growth cannot be rushed. There is a process here that has to be followed. If that is not followed then the results are not going to be what was desired, or we were destined to be given. The birth of God's only Son was not rushed. Unexpected, yes, ask Joseph. Mary, like all women had to go through the usual nine months of pregnancy, in order to have a healthy Son. Jesus had to learn the slow process of becoming a good carpenter. He was not able to snap His fingers, and a table and chairs would just suddenly appear. Nope, He had to do it the slow way. Slow is good. So we wait in, "patient expectation", for "the harvest "to appear. While we wait we watch. While we wait we are given the opportunity to rest. Rest from our efforts and surrender to the secret action of grace. This action is invisible . Just as we watch the rows and rows before we , in the beginning see no results. Deep within the earth these is a miracle happening. The seeds as we have sewn them die, they have to. It is the law of nature. Out of that dying new life appears. Unless the seed dies it remains just a single seed, but it is the dying that an abundance appears. So it is with us in our inner life. Where there is no death, there cannot be resurrection and NEW life. The greater the death, the greater the resurrection gifts. This is a guarantee.

We keep a close eye on the garden. We will come to see that it will need, both water and weeding. The water is essential for growth. The weeding is essential, so that a healthy space is provided for growth to happen. When the weeding does not happen, then growth is choked off. Would it not be great if you had to water just once, and weed just once. That is just a pipe dream, nothing to do with reality.

My reality was we did not have an irrigation, or sprinkler system. Actually we did have one, it was named Joe. The garden was a distance from the water source. So it was necessary to draw the water from the source, in five gallon drums. Water is heavy, that I soon discovered. Yet in order for growth to happen, numerous trips had to be taken with those two five gallon drums. In Ireland you can have a Summer with only one fine day. Other years you would only get one wet day. Guess which Summers I was gifted with, the" one wet day" Summer. While I was able to enjoy the beach in Garryvoe, by day, I knew well what was before me each evening. The results were great. We had fine spuds for dinner, to go with the carrots and parsnips. There were tomatoes, lettuce, and onions to make a wonderful salad. As we enjoyed all the good healthy food, not much thought was given to those, five gallon drums.

As the years progressed I have had the opportunity to reflect on those days, weeks and months in the garden. So many authors and mystics use the analogy of , the garden, as the symbol of our souls. as it happens in the garden, so the same reality is within our souls.( Jesus when He taught used the analogy of a field.) We have been called by Our Creator-Father to be co-cultivators of our individually gifted gardens. We are called to cooperate within , The Master Gardner, in the sacred work of the cultivation of our souls. He will not do what has to be done without our cooperation. He cannot get done what He intends, without our cooperation. What trust and faith Our Shepherd Gardner has in us. What a awe-full gift free will is?? Look at what is now within our power. Just as He had to wait for Mary's great YES!, so He waits for our Yes for His creative plan to be realized. That is how much Our God loves us. We have been created out of His freedom, to live, if we so choose, a life of creative freedom.

Here I have to rely on St. Theresa of Avila. She was able to connect the action of watering a garden with four different stages of prayer That is going to be next week effort.

Preparing the Ground....Hard Work

2011-08-09T07:43:00.000-07:00

Over the last three weeks we have dealt with the hardpan, rocks, and briars mentioned in the Lord's parable. These are al soul realities for both you and i. These realities are faced by all, who embrace the human condition. This embrace will happen as we make our journey as spiritual beings having a human experience.The above realities are not to be shunned or avoided.These conditions , on the contrary, are to be embraced with the same love our merciful, and gracious God showers upon them. This is a process. it is called reconciliation.It is also called acceptance. Acceptance of our reality, knowing if it is real our God is already at work bringing healing and wholeness, holiness, long before we are even aware of what is happening, or needs to happen. This is the very silent, and mysterious work of the Holy Spirit, the Power of love in our lives.Active denial , active avoidance,will result in us falling deeper into that which we so desperately wish to avoid and deny. There is no running away from who we really are.
Through the power of Love, Grace, we are slowly lead to the belief, and understanding that, low and behold, beneath the hardpan,rocks, and briars is revealed the good fertile earth. The good earth, our essential soul, is the gift of our Gracious Father God.This reality is, and I reiterate,Is, present in each and every human being. there are no exceptions to this reality.There is present in all humans an essential goodness. It is called the heart. The heart, our deepest reality, is the dwelling place of our God. There is that place which has never known sin, or devision. There The Holy Trinity dwells in a unity. We are all called to join them in their life of joyful, loving,unity. This is our destiny, our sole purpose, in this life, as we are prepared for the fullness of that Reality, in heaven.
For this to happen we are faced with hard work. It involves us coming face to face with our broken humanity. We are gently lead , always through grace, to accept that which we cannot do. We surrender all of that which we are powerless over, into the waiting, outstretched hands of Him with whom all things are possible. We have to be constantly reminder The Power of Love, God, is the essence of health. This loving Parent, Father, is not co-dependant. He/she will not do for us what we can do for ourselves.( I wish at times God was a little bit co-dependant.)This love we are lead to see, and believe, is both gentle and challenging.He knows well our weaknesses. He also knows the strength, that lies within us. It is he who has placed that strength within us as His gift to us. I was brought with that saying," God fits the back for the burden. St. Paul assures us we will never, and i repeat never, be teated beyond our strength. I have to remind God, he has more faith in me than i have in myself.In this way, our strengths are reinforced, and our weaknesses transformed into strengths. All of this happens through the miracle of the secret action of Grace. The Holy Spirit is one very quiet, very secretive operator.In the pre Vatican church The Holy Spirit was called, the forgotten person of The Trinity. Not so in to-day's church. I wonder whose work was that?
Now we have the good earth, a new kind of work begins. The earth must be broken open to receive the seed. In the old days there were no power driven machines to dig and spade the ground. The ground of our souls is broken open by the harsh realities of life, death, loss, failure, ill health, divorce, loss of jobs and hence security. The earth, in that garden, had to be broken one fork at a time.It was not easy work, to say the least. "What does not kill you, makes you stronger' i found to be so very true. I did not find that out until later in life. This was back breaking work, or was it back strengthening work?Still later I came to realize that which I was doing on the outside, was great schooling in what was, and is now happening in my inner life.Gardening, farming, is a wonder-full sacrament of what is always happening in the life we cannot see, or easily grasp. Growth in both lead us into a deeper understanding of darkness. It is in darkness all growth happens, right?In the darkness there is a necessary death, so that 'Much fruit may be produced" in abundance.
To jump ahead. The earth has been broken,and fertilized. The seeds, and seed potatoes are in the ground. Is the work finished? No, of course not. Now the work of caring for the garden begins. What happens in a garden has been used by so many spiritual authors to describe the happenings in our souls. Gardens and gardening, as has been mentioned ,are great sacraments. They lead us to deeper insights using what is seen to deepen our knowledge of that which is unseen.
A gardener has to be always alert to what is happening, or not happening. Weeds, that will choke off growth, must be watched for. For growth to happen there must be obviously sun light, and of course water. Water is an essential element in life. It is also essential for the life of the garden. Water for the garden, "water for our souls," where will that take us to?
Well, no pun intended, that will be, hopefully, next weeks effort.

From Briars to Bounty....

2011-07-30T16:35:00.000-07:00

My Dad was a police man. Yes, he was an Irish cop. In my younger years we got to move quite a lot. That is why I always have an eye out for newcomers. I was a "newcomer" many times. In some parts of Ireland, we are called "blowins". Our last move as a family was to the village of Castlemartyr. When we got to the kitchen and looked out we saw a back yard, a very large backyard, and a even larger garden. That was the good news. The bad news, the garden was overgrown with briers, thistles and weeds. Let's say that is what I saw. My father, a farmers son, his vision was different, it was. Well let us now fast forward to see where once there was an overgrown disaster, now there is a well ordered garden. With peas, carrots, tomatoes, celery, lettuce and of course rows and rows of "Irish Rice", potatoes. It did not happen overnight, nor in one year. It was a gradual transformation . If my memory serves me right, I spent a good part of at least two Summer vacations in and among those thorns and overgrown weeds. It took a great deal of pain,hard work, sweat and some blood. Encounters with thorns and briers will always, always leave you with a little bloodletting. That adage, "No pain, no gain" was so very true, in this case. There had to be serious effort before the good earth was revealed and a harvest could be harvested. There had to be the clearing away, before the seed could be sewn.

These scenes and thoughts welled up as I listened to, and reflected on the third reality, the seed cast by the Sewer, found Itself. The Seed, The Word of God, The Good News, is received. The circumstances, the reality in which it has been received are not conducive to growth. For growth as authentic, healthy, human beings it is essential we are immersed in an atmosphere of healthy love. Healthy love is indispensable for our healthy spiritual growth. Yes! Healthy, loving, and authentic human living are one and the same. We are told again, and again that we are loved recklessly by our Prodigal Father. A love without any conditions, restrictions, or reservations. Do we believe it? For the most part no. Why? Because nobody in this journey of ours can replicate that love. Human love,"the second love", is of it's essence incapable of meeting this great challenge. As a result, those we love, and say they love us, will hurt us. In the same way the people we so desperately want, and wish to are the victims of our selfishness, and self centeredness. That old song, "We always hurt the ones we love". So the, we hear the wonder-full Good News that there is this extravagant love we hear it with our ears, but never get to accept. We hear "You are loved". The next question that pops up right away, "well what have you done to deserve that"? "What are you going to have to do to repay that love"? "I love you just the way you are." "If you REALLY knew me there is no way you would be saying that." The conversation goes on, and on, like that. We all have that committee in our heads that has a relentless energy, resulting in our endless restlessness. That voice of negativity is always present. That voice has only one purpose, and that is, to prevent you and I from accepting, believing, enjoying, and above all, celebrating The Gospel"s Good News, you have been, are now, and always will be My beloved daughter/son.

That committee, speaks only words that trigger feelings of Guilt, Fear, and Shame. These three I like to call, "the toxic trinity" The "tt's" only goal is to destroy us. They are death dealers, and will go to any means, any extremes to make sure we have our own personal hell, here on earth. They are the 'briers' of the gospel. They choke the new life that has been given to us, through God's love for us. Their job is to get us to loose ourselves chasing power, property, and prestige. We go chasing that which will make us look good on the outside. Why? Because we do not believe our essential inner likeableness, goodness, and lovableness. We are in desperate need to become more accepting of what is means to be human, to be limited. We are, and never will be, in this life, perfect. The toxic trinity wants us to believe the lie that perfection is there, that it is possible, if we would only somehow make a greater effort.

That leads to tremendous insanity. This insanity is so easy for us to observe. It is present, and can be observed in so many individuals, families, and as a consequence in family based institutions. The games that go with "control, comparisons, and competition" leave so many victims in their wake. Every addiction,and compulsion can be traced to the power given to the 'tt" in our lives. We all have to get to that point where we have nothing of ourselves to meet the challenge of the 'tt". There is one who has all the power. We must bring our powerlessness to the All Merciful, Lenient One and there spell out what it is we of ourselves cannot do. The prayer of desperation, crying out from the depths of our nothingness, is always. That is the prayer that comers from the gut. It is our deepest truth. In this prayer there is no sugar coating. There is no effort to look good, or sound good. Here we meet who we really are, and as we meet who we really are, lo and behold there meeting us is The God of Jesus Christ. The briars, brambles, weeds, thorns, and thistles slowly are moved away, and the good earth, which has ever and always been there is revealed. That is the next blog.

Rocks in the River of Grace....

2011-07-21T09:45:00.000-07:00

As you read last week, life has a way of hardening us. There are so many and varied ways that demands of us, to survive, that we stuff our feelings and emotions. In the family of the active alcoholic, you don’t think for yourself, you do not express your honest feelings, and you do not speak your truth, or reveal in any way the family secret. This is true of ALL dysfunctional families, and organizations. As long as we are able to either deny, or repress our true feelings there is a very sick peace. It is peace at any price, and such "peace" eventually will lead to innumerable "wars" leaving painful and destructive wounds. Wounds that must be attended to, or else the dysfunction is passed on from generation to generation. Take a real honest look at the families you know and see how the wounds of past generation is having a devastating effect on the current generations. This will, unfortunately, continue until some generation says, "Enough" and speaks the truth. The truth WILL set the person free, but it will also tee a lot of people off. That is why there must be truth speakers in each family. They are not the most popular member, but they are the most free, and above all, the healthiest. This freedom, like all freedom comes at a price. Sometimes at a great price. The one who tells the truth may themselves be attacked, wounded, and killed. Not always a physical killing, but much worse, the spiritual and psychological assassination. The "secret" must be guarded at any cost, and so the hardening will continue. The good news that The Word is intended to bring cannot be believed, or received. It is amazing the number of individuals who are so condition in the "lie", they find it so difficult to come to believe and accept the truth. They will never know or experience God's dream, The Asling, which He so desperately wishes to impart. The call to be, The Beloved, goes unheard. The beloved is loved without "condition, restriction or reservation". We do NOT, nor can we ever earn, deserve, or qualify for it.

We must always keep before that saying, "Love will find a way". The All Powerful One's Love will find a way. The way He will reach us will not, and I repeat not the way we expect Him to reach us, but reach us He will. God has His own rules, His way of doing things, and they are way beyond what we can understand. All we can do is gaze in wonder, and be gently lead to a desire to have what seems to be impossible. With God all things are possible, that is with the God, The Prophet Jesus, came to teach us about. This is not true of the false gods of human beings creation. We will, left to our own devises create a god made in the image and likeness of ourselves. The ultimate idolatry!!!!!!!!!

We all have the innate need and desire for love. Yet being who we are as wounded human beings we find ourselves as the rocky ground of the parable. When we have not experienced a healthy love , they will be no depth to us. Everything is on the surface. How difficult it is to believe the good news, and how easily we embrace the negative. If you are like me, you will hear a number of good or kind remarks, they there will be one negative comment, which one will get the most attention? Which one will have a more lasting effect? "What tangled webs we weave……" All of us , as human beings will encounter the following rocks on the journey, " guilt, anger, resentment, boredom, anxiety, greed and envy". (Also called The Garbage of Life.) These come in all sizes. From little pebbles, to seemingly immoveable boulders. These we encounter, but we are not on our own. "Where sin abounds, grace abounds even more." Grace IS ever and always being poured out upon us. This is happening to us, whether we know it or feel. It is those moments when we feel the most abandoned, the most unloved, the most lost, Grace, the love of God is most operative in our lives. The contradiction is when we feel most distant from God, and His loving presence, it is then and there we are closest to our God. The living and true God we are always discovering, anew. MYSTERY !!!!!!

I just love to hike or walk by a river, or stream. When you look at something long enough something beyond what one see initially slowly is revealed. Mountain streams are for the most part, rocky. You see the water cascading down. As it flows you can see it dodging between the rocks, as it winds its way down hill. Where the flow is strong, the water will cover the rocks, and keep on going. What were just dull rocks, now exposed to the constant flow of water, are revealed now as polished and gleaming. There is a beauty, which would not be there if the water had not flowed. It appears to me something like happens to you and I. We, as spiritual being having a human experience, will encounter small pebbles, large rocks, and seemingly immovable boulders. We are always caught up in the river of Grace. God's grace, like the flowing waters of rivers, and streams, is always slowly transfiguring, and transforming us. The river one sees, and the power one observes, is a great example of what is always happening to us, and within us. The rocks reveal their beauty on the outside, for all to see. Your transformative beauty will be an inner peace, joy, and love. You will, for the most part , have the joy, not the happiness, that no matter what the obstacle, there is a gift waiting to be bestowed upon you. A gift not for yourself, but for the person that will be placed in your life. The garbage does not remain garbage, it is transformed into treasured gifts, by The Great Recycler in the sky. "Behold I make all things new."

All we have to do is express the desire to have the pebbles, rocks, and boulders of our lives be exposed to the everlasting flow of Grace. Then time, that is Graced, will bring more delight than the most captivating Rocky Mountain river or stream. So, "let the river flow, let the river flow". Let us then allow ourselves to be immersed in, and refreshed by an endless stream of a love we will never understand or comprehend, in this life. It is not for us to analyze, it is for us to enjoy. Come then, approach with confidence, not fear, the river of Divine Merciful love immerse yourself in it's refreshing water. Drink fully from this stream. This river runs free, and is free to all who choose to drink from it, then you will "taste and see the goodness of God".

Breaking Ground....

2011-07-18T10:47:00.000-07:00

Last week, I shared what was one of present days author's understanding on how we approach life, and all of its realities. We are either pre-occupied, closed, stuck or ready. Well this week a very well know Teacher gives us His understanding of how we are, as the gift of life, is offered to us. Jesus, at His teaching best, describes the four dispositions we are going to have as The Good News is proclaimed, presented, offered to us.

In the parable of The Sower, the Prophet Jesus, wants to get across the human conditions THE Word, The Message of Life, meets. These are universal realities. As you have heard me say we are each and every person, place and event in the Gospel. So, we need never be upset when we identify with any of the places, and people Jesus presents to us. No matter what the place our God is calling out to us. Calling to remind us we are loved as WE ARE. "Do not be afraid I am with You. Our God is always saying to us. Wherever you are, there I AM.” There is NOTHING that can get in the way of God’s covenant love for us. Nothing that we can do, or anybody else can do to us, can separate us from The Mysterious love, of Our Beloved. Been reflecting on you belovedness lately? Henri Nouwen recommends we claim our belovedness again and again. There is so much in life that will lead us to not only question, but sad to say, deny who we are in the unconditioned, unlimited love of our God. We will have an IDOL for a god, not The Living God Jesus came to reveal to all human beings, through His mission and His ministry. That message is still being offered to all, in every moment.
For those of us who do not claim our belovedness we will find our reality in the first three situations, and persons described in the parable.

Ok, let’s start with the seed that fell on the path. The path was the place where people walked. We all have travelled paths left by others. The paths, the trails, left on South Mountain, by those who have gone before, are hard and unyielding. You can see everything that has been dropped. Ever notice the fields in farm country after the snow has melted how hard and unyielding the ground is. The farmer know that soil must be busted open before seed can be sewn.

Life has the ability to harden us. There is the story Fr. Rohr tells it is about the walleyed pike. The fish was placed in a glass tank. As it swam around little fish we dropped into the tank. they were duly swallowed up. This went on for a time. Then there was a glass plate placed into the tank. The little fish were placed behind the glass. the pike proceeded to attack the fish, and bumped it's snout against the glass. Eventually the fish gave up. The glass partition was then removed. The little fish swam around, and around the pike. He starved to death. Very sad is it not? Yet that is what plays out time and time again in so many lives. In my years in parish work I have met men and women who were unable to believe that they were loved. After listening to their life's story it came as no surprise to me the great challenge they were facing. What had happened, and was happening challenges the possible existence of a loving and just God.

The ground must be broken open for there to be a harvest. We who have become hardened, must fins away to break the hard shell we have created for self-protection. The hard shell is created, for survival. Is there a way out? Is there a way to leave behind existing, and claim life? Of course there is. It is not easy, I am sorry to say. It is possible. It is a process. It takes time, and with Grace, and through God's INFINITE love it has happened, and is happening for millions of our fellow human beings. The shell was cracked, the mask slowly removed, and a new way of living was revealed. As it was, so it is, and ever shall be.
Beginning to own our feelings is the first preparatory step. As I write this i am smiling. Here there is an Irishman writing about feelings. We would not know a feeling if it hit us between the eyes. In the Irish culture, many of you have been infected with this Irish flaw, you are wined and dined to prevent a real truthful feeling from being expressed. Booze and food, YES, but please no feeling talk. That is how the family secrets are never expressed to the detriment of generations. I had to learn the way to my truth was to see within that dangerous word feel lay the answer. 'F" is feel, "E" is experience, "E" is express, and the "L" is to let go. I have also learned the way to a deepening health is, feel, deal, reveal, and heal. Whatever is not expressed cannot be healed. Whatever is not transformed is transferred.(Rohr) We again are faced with this decision, is it life or is it death? The choice is ours every moment will i be a life giver, or a death dealer? Do I keep the words of Jesus ever before me, ' My wish for you is that you will have life, and have it abundantly " The harvest will be abundant. like all harvests they take time. Nature cannot be rushed or hurried. The working’s of the Spirit cannot be hurried as well. My mother taught me this so many years ago, “The mills of God grind very slowly, but they do grind so very true". The words of Jesus, our Good Shepherd, “Be not afraid I am with you........until the end of time".

Willingness......????

2011-07-08T07:25:00.001-07:00

This is a real tough time to live in Arizona. It is hot, muggy and energy draining. What must be the struggle of those who have to spend their working day outdoors? They must have a tremendous sense of dedication and commitment to brave the burning heat and the energy sapping humidity. Yet they have that willingness to get up and get going, to meet the challenge of each new day. We see our fellow human beings trimming trees, working construction, handling even hotter tar to pave streets and roads, so we can travel with delight and comfort. When we see and enjoy wonderful buildings, trimmed lawns and gardens, well paved streets and highways, do we ever reflect on the price that has been paid by others so we have comfort and delight? Their willingness to do the most difficult work really adds so much pleasure, joy, and happiness.

Willingness is an essential element for us as well as we face the challenge of our spiritual journey, which is our every day life's experience. We must ask for the willingness to be able to see with ever new lenses, and not be afraid to be led on a path we have not planned on. "We journey to Him we do not know, by a path we do not know." That is what St. John of The Cross teaches us. Our egos want certainty. We are most comfortable worshiping at the altar of the idol.......CERTAINTY. We have made such an idol of certainty, God help those who have the cheek to challenge that certainty. That is why The Prophet Jesus ran into so much trouble. That is why He was killed. All who are prophets of His message have met the same fate. Maybe not physical death but today’s equivalent. Some of the “killing” is more deadly, and more difficult to endure than physical death. That is over in a second. Today’s "killing" can last a long, long time. As in the time of Jesus, this is done by well minded people, who think they have the whole truth, and are not prepared to listen ad see anew. We have to have that willingness to not only listen to the words of Jesus Christ, we have to actually hear. We have to listen, take the message deep within and then say, "YES", to what is being asked of us. This is scary, for it leads us into uncertainty. Is it any wonder then that our original "YES" is always in the process of becoming a deeper "YES". Some of us will say yes, then we go and live the life of "NO ". Then the Good Shepherd reaches in that lonely, painful, place of our no. We are then, by grace, able to say a deeper 'YES". This will lead to commitment. So our journey is, according to Fr. Rohr, YES, NO, yes, then commitment.

Those that Jesus spoke to were not the most receptive of people. He was The Light that came into to the world, but was not received as such. He was The Wisdom of God, teaching and not being listened to or understood. He applied the following words to His listeners, and through them these word are addressed to you and I. These contain a great challenge and warning for you and I today. “As it was so it is, and ever shall be." Listen as you will, you shall not understand, look intently as you will, you shall not see. Sluggish indeed are these peoples hearts. They have scarcely heard with their years, they have firmly closed their eyes; otherwise they may see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts and turn back to me, and I should heal them. WE can, however take heart in the following words of encouragement, "But blessed are your eyes because they see and blessed are your ears because they hear”. That is the daily struggle, at least for me. I wrote down the following, from a book I was reading. Does it not describe us very well, as we approach every liturgy, every person, every action, of our journey as spiritual beings having an oh so human experience.

We, I, approach all of our daily reality, either (a) Preoccupied , (b) Closed, (c) Stuck, or (d) Ready. How we see, in the way we are present to life, will depend whether we are going to live life, and live it to the fullest, God's dream-His aisling, or just exist. The latter will lead us to discover here on earth our own private hell and open others to the same reality

Discover.....Burden Light...

2011-07-05T11:04:00.000-07:00

We are now in the liturgical time, we call 'Ordinary Time". Realistically speaking, there in no ordinary time. Each and every moment is extra-ordinary.
Why? Because in each and every moment is both hidden and revealed, the Sacred, The mystery we are always seeking and searching for. That which we seek is hidden within the reality I am seeing, and experiencing. There is no way of meeting the God we so desperately seek, and who desperately seeks us than in the sacred place we call the sacrament of the present moment.

There is no, "ordinary" reality. If it really real, is sacred. It is holy.
We become whole, holy, by becoming more and more aware of where we are, and WHO it is that is seeking to encounter us , where we are. Not where we would like to be, not where are supposed to be, but where we are at RIGHT NOW. We may have, and do have difficulty with where we are at, and what is happening, our gracious God does not. That is why we have a great opening prayer for this time we call, Ordinary. We will pray, or have prayed;

"Let us pray, to be faithful to the light we have received, and to the name we bear. Father, let the light of your truth guide us to your kingdom through a world filled with lights contrary to your own. Christian is the name and the gospel we glory in. May YOUR love make us what you have called us to be."

"May your love make us what you have called us to be." It is both necessary, and essential, we keep before us that it is always grace, God's love, that creates in us who our God wants us to be. It is God's light that directs us on the path He invites us to walk. It is God sharing His life with us, that allows us to have life, and have it to the fullest. The life, light, and love of God is always being communicated to us there is never an, "outage" I This what we celebrate in each and every Liturgical celebration !!!! ) There was an outage this week, and 80,000 people were without power.

People suffer when the is a power failure. Thank God with our God there NEVER is a power failure. We, at times, may think this is so. That is due to our inability to see, as God sees, and to know as God nows. There are times we feel so very much alone, and uncared for, but that is not our deepest reality. We are unaware of that which is our deepest reality, in being the beloved, daughter/son.Our darkness is not darkness to God. It is in those dark moments our lenses are tweaked resulting in a new way of seeing. For God this is the opportunity to mold us, to form us in a deeper reality of His Son Jesus Christ. This reality is our destiny, or vocation. For this we were born, for this we were created. For this and no other reason.

There will be, and always will be, lights directing us to places the still unredeemed part of us wants to go to, and dwell within. This is what Paul calls "flesh" We will never be able to escape this pull, this attraction. There will always be a battle. The battle takes place in our souls each and every moment life gives us to live. The right way is not always the easy way, nor is the easy way the right way. How often I have found that to be true. As matter of fact that is a truth I still have to learn. It is so easy to get angry and say, "I am tired of having to constantly find out my best thinking will always come up short. There is always something more to everything".

The road that Jesus trod was a tough one. As it was for Him so it is for us. He had His Father with Him, for most of the time, Calvary was the exception. We in following Him will NEVER be on our own. Why, because we are locked into the same yoke that He carried, and now carries in us and with us. Yes we share the yoke of the human journey with Him who became human for this purpose. When two animals share a yoke, they have to pull together, to get the work done. The driver is there to make sure one does not the other do all the pulling.

We share the yoke with the one who entered into the fullness of our humanity, so when we can no longer honestly do our part, He will assume our share of the burden. This burden then is His until we are rested and refreshed. How will this happen? In the Gospel we have this invitation; "Come to me all you who are weary and find life burdensome. and I will give you rest. (Another translation...I will refresh you) We will not be fixed, even though this is what we want. We will be refreshed by resting in Him.

Then we can return and again assume the yoke of Him who refreshed us. He will do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. No wonder we call Him, Savior God. May you persevere in the struggle until you find your place of rest and refreshment. Not in the way we want,but in the way our Gracious Father meets our every need. In this way they are not , "burdens heavy", they are "burdens light". Now to go along with "beer light", "butter light", "cheese light', "juice light" etc., now we have " BURDEN LIGHT" Wow, Jesus was so ahead of His time.

Our Family of Origin...Gift Givers!

2011-06-27T14:35:00.000-07:00

As I read ,I sometimes like to write out a phrase that hits me as something new, or I have not seen life through that particular lens. I see a need to reflect on this truth some more. This usually starts a new way of thinking, leading to a new way of seeing. This in turn, brings about change. Some changes I fight. At my age, change is not something one easily embraces. There are enough changes I have no control of. This getting old sure leads to a great deal of change. Accepting and becoming reconciled with them is hard work. So when other sources of change surprise me I am not usually accepting of them. I know I do not like all of what is presented to me by life. It is very consoling to know I do not have to LIKE all this, I do however have to grow in ACCEPTANCE, and RECONCILIATION with this on going process. This process leads to a deepening understanding of the place that grace, in other words ,The Love of God, pays in bringing about an ever-deepening sense of unity, and wholeness. We are mystery. Why? We, after all, are created in the imagine and likeness of God. As God is THE MYSTERY, we, too, are mystery. God is Mystery with a capital "M". We are mystery with a small "m".
" After each journey, we take, into mystery we are enlightened, enlivened, refreshed,and renewed. There is a newness to life". That is what I wrote some time ago when reading a book. The title of the book, I do not remember. These word have sure left a mark, and are a great lens through which we can look back over the last three weeks. We have met a God who has moved from being a God who is for His people, Old Testament. In the New Testament, He is a God who is with His people, Emmanuel. Now, because of Pentecost, He is a God who dwells within us, the people of the New Covenant. We are led to the understanding of the great mysterious life that is within us and whose Presence we are consecrated to be.
Do we claim this weekend's celebration of, Corpus Christi, both as a communal and a personal celebration of who we are and who we have been called to be? The feast of The Body of Christ is a celebration of who it is we are, and who, by grace we are called to be both as individuals, and as a community of faith. Last week spoke to us of The Family of God, who is our family of origin. To know about ourselves we have to take a real close look at who it is, and where it is, we have come from. Our Family Of Origin is eternal. So we too are eternal. That is both good news, and bad news. As we have the eternal within the there is nothing, without, that will bring us any lasting peace, joy and love. We will ALWAYS be restless. The good news is,The Family of Origin, who live in a community of eternal love, is ever and always drawing us into an ever deepening relationship with them. Our Family of Origin is always communicating in love, so that where real, healthy, authentic love is there is The Family dwelling within. In Them we are only to really, live and move and have our being. They in turn depend on us to live and move and be a reality in their creation. The Creator is so humble, and vulnerable, He, makes Himself subject to our free will. The Family reveals to us their life sharing love. The Father's creative love, The Son's redeeming love, and The Holy Spirit whose love brings everything into a wholeness, a holiness. (The work of sanctification). As they spend themselves in eternal, everlasting love, so we are called to imitate their example. We imitate them by doing what They have modeled for us who it is we are to be, and what we are to do. Their continuous , strengthening presence is GUARANTEED, so we can be who we are called to be, and do what we are called to do. All we have to do is say, "YES".

That yes is why we come to mass and receive The Eucharist. In the reception of The Body of Christ we renew our "Yes" to the call, We are called to be HE, whom have received. We also recognize our human frailty. Accepting what St.Paul said, as our truth as well: "Of ourselves we can do nothing, but we can do all things in Him that strengthens me" I guess we can also say: "we can do all things in THEM that strengthens us." What a Family of Origin we have. A family who despite anything we do will never desert us. Will never abandon us. We are not always faithful to our "Yes", but the gracious and merciful Family is always faithful to It's YES to us. Nothing can change that. That is what it means to be, "members of the new covenant of grace" Pretty one sided, do you not think? Yet our Family dwells happily within us. Celebrating, not our love, but Their love. We are always invited to join them in, celebration. We can say 'Yes", which is the response of love to love, grace. We have however been given the freedom to answer, "no". Each and every moment demands of us a "YES" or a ,"NO". What great power and freedom is our Family's legacy. In this way we are going to be life givers or death dealers. First of all to ourselves, and as a consequence to those who will share our journey.

The Gift of Triune Love....

2011-06-21T19:09:00.000-07:00

Birthdays are times of gift giving. We, as the church, just had a birthday. That is contained in a fuller understanding of The Feast of Pentecost. Did you have a conscious celebration of this ever new event in your life, and in the continuing life of The Body of Christ ? When we do not have a conscious celebration of a significant event then we are not drawn into it's deeper meaning. When that is our modus operandi we will not see our lives through the lenses of awe, and wonder. We will never see or come to appreciate the life that is both hidden and revealed in the mystery we call daily living. We will then complain how dull and boring life is. There will nothing to trigger the awe and wonder that is essential to living life and living it to the fullest, which is our Father-God's dream for you and I. This is a dream we have to claim again, again, and again.

Religious celebrations allows us to celebrate the deepest reality within us. The purpose of religious practice is not to give us religion, rather it is intended to help us celebrate that which is already present. You do not put religion into a person, it is our challenge to provide the opportunity which allows the person to come to an awareness of what our Gracious God has already placed within each and every person. Regardless of how we see, or what we see in an individual, that is the reality hidden deep within all human beings. This is the in depth reality is hidden within human being. We have, at this time of year, three celebrations which provides us with an ever new awareness of this reality.

Pentecost Sunday is the first of three celebrations that reveals to us our great calling, our deep mysterious reality. The celebration of Pentecost is followed by two celebrations of equal mystery and majesty. They are The Feast of The Blessed Trinity and The Feast of Corpus Christi. In the celebration of Pentecost we celebrated The Spirit that has descended, has come to bring the new Spirit leading to a new way of living for a community that was discouraged, and doubtful. They needed a new unique spirit to live the new life that was now theirs. This Spirit was to be the living, vitalizing presence of Him who loved His own, and loved them to the end. He left but promised not to abandon them or leave them orphans. That promise is directed toward you and I as we are their successors and the inheritors of that same promise. “As it was, so it is, and ever shall be”. This Spirit will lead us to all truth, as has been promised. We will not ALWAYS like or embrace the Truth. Real Truth will always challenge us, to reach beyond what is easy, and comfortable. I personally do not like this. Then I am told I do not have to LIKE it. I will however be led, in time, to the wonderful promised land of acceptance.

In the celebration of The Holy Trinity we are drawn into an ever deepening understanding who is The Family that has chosen our bodies, to be their dwelling place. The Family of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have out of their Triune love for each one of us, have chosen us to live within, "the prisoner of our finiteness". We have within us here on earth, here in our earthly existence, what is present in the life of Heaven. We are temples of the living God. A God who is in reality, a family, living in loving unity. They live within us, so we can make our dwelling with them, as they dwell within us. In that way we can have here on earth a taste of the life of Heaven. Pretty neat ????? There is this Celtic prayer that has been around for many, many centuries:
'I arise to-day
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of
the Trinity,
Through belief in the threeness,
Through confession of the oneness
of the Creator of Creation.
Can this, in time, and with grace, bring about the change necessary so we will have Guests to visit, rather than PRISONERS to be feared??

The People ARE The Church...

2011-06-12T20:23:00.000-07:00

"The people are the church." Eugene Kennedy

Happy Pentecost. Today is the birthday of YOUR church!

Ascension...It Is Every Day!!!!

2011-06-06T08:50:00.000-07:00

It was only after having read Fr. Rolheiser's book, “The Holy Longing" that I was able to have a more real practical understanding of The Feast of The Ascension. He points that the Ascension is another stop along the road to a fuller understanding of what the Paschal Mystery really means for you and I. I just love the way he describes the three days of The Tridium and beyond. He says .."the Paschal cycle might be diagrammed as follows;
I Good Friday....."the loss of life ---real death"
2. Easter Sunday.... "the reception of new life"
3. The Forty Days...... " a time for readjustment to the new and for grieving the old"
4. Pentecost..............." the reception of new spirit for the new life that one is already living"
Put into a more colloquial language and stated as a personal, paschal challenge for each of us, one might recast the diagram this way:
1... "Name your deaths"
2.....”Claim your births"
3.....”Grieve what you have lost and adjust to the new reality"
4......”Do not cling to the old, let it ascend and give you its blessings"
5......"Accept the spirit of the life you are in fact living.'

This cycle in NOT something that we must undergo just once, at moment of our deaths, when we lose our earthly lives as we know them. It is rather something we must undergo daily, in every aspect of our lives. ...The paschal mystery is the secret to life. Ultimately our happiness depends upon properly undergoing it. ...Our happiness, peace, and maturity depend upon appropriating properly this mystery in our lives. Unless we die in infancy, we will have many deaths in our lives and within each of these we must receive new life and new spirit."

What an awe-full, wonder-full concept those words are. They are so full of hope. There are also words of warning, our happiness depends on us embracing the reality of The Paschal Mystery, in the reality of our daily living. On this feast of The Ascension what are the things of yesterday, or of all the yesterdays, that we need to let go of. The risen Christ took with Him the wounds of His crucifixion. What are the wounds we are carrying that need to be united with the wounds of Christ ,and allowed to ascend into Heaven. WE must not hang on to what has been. We must take the time to grieve. This is not what we do very well grieve. We want it over and done with. We know now grieving is a PROCESS, and it does not only demand days and weeks, but months and years. Words are poor vehicles to describe the pain and sorrow I have seen in people’s lives because the process was not embraced. There is a horrible price to be paid, and I am sad to say, many have paid that price. It was not necessary, but it has happened and will happen to all who deny the this process.

Again the choice between life and death is placed before us. Fullness of life is guaranteed, to us, as we embrace the reality of the mystery, that our many, many deaths are our present day participation in the dying and rising of Christ. We have died, and are dying with Christ will rise with Him. We will experience a new way of seeing, new way of living. Why? We have allowed ourselves to name the deaths, and claim the births. Our wounds are now in the presence of Our God, in the person of His beloved son. In the naming of the death, the embracing of the pain of emptiness we are creating the space for the new spirit which is on the way. More about that next week.

"Every time there are losses there are choices to be made. You choose ti live your losses as passages to anger, blame, hatred, depression and resentment or you choose to let theses losses to be the passage to something new, something wider and deeper." (Henri Nouwen )

The Loving Eye...Frees

2011-05-30T21:40:00.000-07:00

As you know, or at least have guessed, I am Irish. We, as a people, have had a great struggle to achieve real freedom. We spent four hundred years in bondage. The struggle was, therefore, a long and arduous one. It came at a great price. Freedom, we are told today, is not free. It never was, and never will be, that reality we must always keep ever before us. As the result of our struggle, us Irish, have always been on the side of those who are enmeshed in their own struggle for freedom. Sometime check the number of Irish who fought in Washington's army? The Irish have great passion for what is right and just. Patience, on the other hand, is not what we are known for. We who have known enslavement, bondage and every kind of injustice, when we see people confined in any form of "prison”, we do not keep very quiet. There is something inside that forces us to speak out. We must speak and name the source enslavement. In the spiritual life that which enslaves us is guilt, fear, and shame. These are what I like to call "the toxic trinity". We will never be spiritually free until these forces are faced head on in our lives.

This takes tremendous courage. A courage that is provided, free of charge, by our gracious, ever-kind, and merciful God. All we have to do is desire to be free, and the process has begun. The ride to real spiritual freedom is one scary wild ride. We have been called, by our Baptism, to that freedom. We have to ask the hard question, “Do I really want to be free?". Do I want the freedom that requires of me that I no longer live in the expectations of others? I risk telling the unvarnished truth, naming the lie. Speaking out loud what has ever and always been the family secret. We are no longer going to carry the burden of that secret. We have to realize our unhappiness, our life lived in the prison of addiction and compulsion, is actually our struggle with the family secret. Real spiritual comes when we name the family secret and expose it to the transforming power of Love.

This love, like all healthy love, is creative, not destructive. This Power of Love unifies, not divides. This love transfigures, and transforms. This Power of Love will ever so slowly, and ever so gently bring us to spiritual health, wholeness, and holiness. Yes, wholeness and holiness ARE the same. They are interchangeable words, just as God and Healthy love are. We have to express our desire for that love of all loves. We can paraphrase the words of Robbie Burns, "Would that God the gift to see me as God Himself sees me". We are thereby asking that the lenses of God become our lenses. Are we willing to let go of the old way of seeing, so we can be lead into a new way of living? It is scary to let go of the familiar. A great number of people I have met know in their hearts of hearts the old way must be surrendered. The old behaviors cannot continue, do they let go? I am sad to say the prisons of “the toxic trinity" are chosen, rather than risk real freedom. Bondage they can handle freedom, no. They will continue to analyze, criticize and brutalize themselves and as a consequence others. This is their comfort zone. Here is where they will stay rather open themselves to a new way acting. A new way of acting is THE only way we can reach a new way of thinking. When we do not risk the new way of acting we are then frozen. We are drying up, and will eventually crumble. These words of Rousseau I like, "Man was born free, and everywhere I look I see him chained".

We all have to face the decision to choose life over death. Here is what I promised to give you, so you at your ease can reflect on what it says, and so be lead to a place where you can rest, and be the beloved you are called to be. The "resentful eye" has got to go. Why? John O’Donoghue has written, "To the resentful eye, everything is begrudged”. People who have allowed the canker of resentment into their vision can never enjoy who they are or what they have. They are always looking outward towards others with resentment. Perhaps they are resentful because they see others as more beautiful, more gifted, or richer than themselves. The resentful eye lives out of its poverty and forgets its own inner harvest. As regards "The Loving Eye " he writes "To the loving eye, everything is real”. This art of love is neither sentimental nor naive. Such love is the greatest criterion of truth, celebration, and reality. Kathleen Raine, a Scottish poet, says that unless you a think in the light of love, you do not see it at all. Love is the light in which we see light. Love is the light in which we see each thing in its true origin, nature, and destiny. If we could look at the world in a loving way, then the world would rise up before us full of invitation, possibility, and depth.

The loving can even coax pain, hurt, and violence towards transfiguration and renewal. The loving eye is bright because it is autonomous and free. It looks lovingly on anything. The loving vision does not become entangled in the agenda of power, seduction, opposition and complicity. Such vision is creative and subversive. It rises above the pathetic arithmetic of blame and judgment and engages experience at the level of its origin, structure, and destiny. The loving eye see through and beyond image and effects the deepest change. Vision is central to your presence and creativity. To recognize HOW you see things can bring you self-knowledge and enable you to glimpse the wonderful treasures you life secretly holds.

Now, a Second Casserole!

2011-05-23T13:09:00.000-07:00

New ideas, thoughts come as I hike. These thoughts lead to new ideas. New ideas lead to new material for new homilies. (I can hear the chorus, “It is about time”.) Since I do not write out what I am going to say, what is said is very fluid, to say the least. The heading in the Sacramentary for these Sundays reads The .......... sunday of Easter. Then it appeared to me that there was something missing. What was missing was the word, "celebration”. We spend over 40 days in preparation. Preparation to once again celebrate, The great Mystery of our faith. This preparation is to provide us with new lenses so we can see in a new and more vibrant way, that which is our daily reality. We spend three days in the celebration, The Easter Tridium.

We now we are spending 50 days to see where our lives are centered within what we celebrate. With each such celebration the is new meaning given to the life we so many times call ordinary. We only have ordinary lives when we do not take the time to stop and reverence the Mystery dwelling within each and every, person, place, and action. These 50 days are saying to you and I, “stop and allow The Holy, The Sacred, The mystery to bubble up from within your life”, leading us to a depth of meaning which is way beyond what we ever could imagine, on our own. “This is what the Lord has done”, is doing and ever shall do, until the fullness of The Kingdom is revealed in and to this expectant world of ours.

As I mentioned last week, when I introduced the idea, that these weeks were a spiritual casserole. A casserole from which Mother church doles out to us, people places, events, and actions, intended for our nourishment. Intended for our encouragement. Once we have been nourished and encouraged it is OUR SACRED duty, OUR Sacred obligation to become bearers of this good news. We are to be the place of encouragement and hope for those who our God will certainly send our way. Watch for the contemporary suffering Christ, who will appear under many, many, different and unusual disguises. We have to have desire The Heart of God to be able to see beyond fear, hatred, prejudice, indifference, to the presence of His suffering Son ever before.

I was at the intersection at 44st. & Ray when the thought came, or should I not say, the question came what about our own personal casserole? How is this a reality in the life I am presently living? Well, my life is a casserole. In it, are many different ingredients. Some I have put in place, other ingredients are placed, or sometimes forced into the mix. In the kitchen casserole, that which holds all the ingredients together, is the canned soup. In the spiritual casserole that which holds it all together is the power of The Holy Spirit. There are so many thing in our life's casserole we wish were not present. We cannot deny them. They are part of our reality. To deny is to place ourselves, and as a consequence others, in real danger. Acceptance of our reality, in struggled prayer, allows the process of integration and reconciliation to happen. This Power at work is the Power of Love. This love has so often been described as fire. Well the casserole on the stove needs fire, heat to cook and so the ingredients are integrated, they are blended. The Fire, that is God's love, brings about integration, transformation, leading to reconciliation and freedom.

This is not a fantasy of mine. Here is what deChardin has written, “Love is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves". Wow! Isn’t that something to ponder, and ponder. So, then the power of LOVE is ever and always at work. It is at times like this we are given the opportunity to stop and reflect on the process at work within the casserole we call, everyday living. I will leave you with my second favorite saying of the above author, “Someday, after we have harnessed the winds, the waves, the tides, and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then the world will have discovered, for the second time fire".

Let us all then conspire together to bring this about. I have the belief, that with all of us uniting in this wonder-full endeavor it will happen. Our belief united with the Aisling, the dream of God, nothing can get in the way. Uniting the strength, the power of the two casseroles within each of us will be the source of that which otherwise would be impossible. With God, all things are possible. Let us give His love, His plan a chance. The opposite has not worked, has it?

A Spiritual....Casserole

2011-05-14T19:28:00.000-07:00

"I set before you life and death--therefore choose life", Deuteronomy 30:20. These words of scripture are words we must ever keep before us in order to enjoy the dream, our gracious God has for each one of us.

This is not a sometime dream. A dream that is in place, not just when we are good and obedient, but all the time. This dream, aisling in Irish, is always and ever in place for you and I. God, we are able to say, is the great dreamer, The Eternal Optimist. His dream for us is that, we choose to live. He has sent His Beloved Son down here to model for us just how to do it. Jesus, The Christ, entered into the fullness of what it means to be human, so as we enter the process becoming human, we will begin The Great Encounter. We will not encounter what we expect, but what is unexpected, and sometimes in a very, very upsetting way. It is, however, only, and I repeat only, upsetting to our false-self, our as yet unredeemed ego. It actually allows the true self, the one that our God both knows and has loved, from all of eternity. His infinite loved is the source, and the root cause of its existence.
"In the womb, before the day star I have begotten you."

That is why we are eternal in our origin, and our destiny. When was the last time you have reflected on that? What a great mystery each one of us is. It is in our isness, that we are able to connect with that great mystery. To more we become authentic human beings, and not just exist as human doers will that mystery be slowly revealed to us. It is in our being, NOT our doing, that we allow this great revelation to happen. Each year, we are provided with a new, and never before experienced opportunity. We are drawn by grace to experience ever anew this wonder-full, awe-full mystery. Each moment of every day of every year we are provided with a new opportunity to reflect on this Mystery. Our God wishes us to see how we are living a life that His
Son has already lived. His wish is that we accept and embrace this mysterious reality, as a reality that is now living within us. Really?

The Mystery is called The Paschal Mystery, or it is also called The Easter mystery. It is THE mystery of our faith. We proclaim this mystery in each Mass we co offer, with the priest, as we celebrate our common priesthood. As we are baptized into the Paschal Mystery, so are we baptized into the priesthood of Jesus Christ. Each and every baptized person is consecrated with the same chrism that a priest in anointed with, on the occasion of his ordination. We have been chosen to participate in the ongoing revelation and celebration of The Mystery. Each mass and our daily lives God uses to teach us, and through us, others; that "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again". This is a truth we have to be brought to accept. We have to be brought to the truth that, it was through His cross AND resurrection Christ set us free. We will be further led to the realization that is what is happening to each one of us right now.

True freedom comes as we embrace the dying and the rising hidden and revealed in the living out of every moment, of every day. There is NO moment that Christ is not suffering death within us. There is no moment that new resurrected life is not breaking through. As we are drawn ever deeper in to the celebration, our eyes are slowly opened. We will see ourselves and our lives centered in that Easter/Paschal mystery. We will be led to see we are never alone. We never suffer alone. We now believe that our lives are really hidden, with Christ, in the caring, persistent, infinite love of God. The same Holy Spirit that raised Jesus from the tomb of death is the very same Power that will bring to us life, liberty, and freedom. I see all the events of Holy week, Easter Sunday and the following 50 days as a great spiritual casserole. A mother, a cook, places so many different ingredients into a casserole. Then some soup, my favorite is mushroom, is poured in to make the whole mess a nourishing meal. It does taste good, most of the time. Well we are to do the same thing. We see our daily living as a giant casserole. We see all the people, events, and places of the Paschal Mystery within us. We are called to love and accept all of them. Without this acceptance of all, we will not be whole. We will never be a holy person. Wholeness does not come from holy feelings, on the contrary. The process of integration, and transformation is anything but pleasant. It is right up there with a root canal, and giving birth. The Holy Spirit will, and I repeat, will provide all that we need to allow this to happen. The dream of God, the aisling, will not be denied. Frustrated, unfortunately, yes. We all have people, places, and events we would much prefer not to have in our lives. It is up to us to ask for the gift of acceptance. Through this gift we are able to open ourselves to the mystery of grace, the mystery of God's love. Slowly, but surely, the following will happen, this is from John O Donoghue; “When love awakens in your life, in the night of the heart, it is like the dawn breaking within you. Where before, there was anonymity, now there is intimacy; where before there was fear, now there is courage; where before in your life there was awkwardness, now there is a rhythm of grace and gracefulness; where before you used to be jagged, now you are elegant and in rhythm with yourself. When love awakens in your life, it is like a rebirth, a new beginning”. These words truly sums up God's dream. Is it not a perfect description on the experience of the totality of the Paschal/Easter mystery. In the kitchen the casserole is made, in the realm of the spirit it happens. It cannot be rushed. Again patient endurance is our greatest friend, and our ego's worst enemy.

Wounds Are To Become....Sacred

2011-05-07T09:35:00.001-07:00

I guess by now you know or can guess, I like to read. I was blessed with this gift at very early age. My mother's love was the romance novel. My dad devoured the daily paper. As he was reading the paper he was not aware of anything else. My mother was unable to penetrate that concentration, much to her annoyance, from time to time. I began my reading adventure with a picture book only named "The Beano". I then graduated to “Adventure" and I have not looked back. There were no pictures in that magazine, only all written words. I was hooked, and have been ever sense. Life has been, for me a real great adventure. It was easy then to connect with the statement I read recently, "Our journey in Faith IS also, an adventure”. We can say then, that our faith journey is that which lies above, beneath, beyond, and permeates every step we take on this great adventure we call life. I have read of so many heroes as they made their way through success and failures. The hero was always wounded. The wounding was a very important, if not essential event in the development of the hero. You are the hero of your own story. As it happened to the heroes of old so it will be for us. In that wounding we are transformed, not for our benefit but for those who will be placed in our lives. So, it is with the hero we have come to know, Jesus Christ.

We all know how harshly He was treated. He was beaten, bruised, broken and betrayed, but unlike all the other great heroes, He was killed. Just like all the other heroes when all seemed lost, He returns to His own. When does He return? He returns the moment of their deepest need. When all seemed lost The Historical Jesus returns as The Risen Christ. He as the Risen one is sometimes goes un recognized . Even those who had the deepest relationship with Him, such as Mary, failed to recognize Him. She did, however, come to know Him when He spoke his name. There was those who did accept the fact that HE was risen, then there was Thomas. I disagree with the fact he is called, "Doubting Thomas". There was nothing doubtful about “I will not believe", he is here, "Thomas The Denier". He gives doubting a bad name. Questioning and doubting are an essential part of our faith journey. I really like that definition of faith, it is doubt grounded in Hope. As regards questions. In all questions is ALREADY sewn the answer. The only difficulty with the answer is that it contains the seeds of a new question, and so the process continues. It will NEVER stop, in this life. So the we are a community of Questioners. Living the questions so as to live into the answers. (Nouwen) As we reverence, respect, and develop patience with our own process, so we will have with those who are the same path as we are on, and ever will be.

We read how The Risen uses His wounds to bring Thomas to Faith. Yes, THE risen Christ does carry the wounds of His crucifixion. He still has the wounds in His hands, and side. His sacred wounds become a gift for Thomas. It is the very same with you and I. From our everyday life experience we are wounded. We too are beaten, broken, bruised and betrayed. After all, we are the heroes, of our stories. As it was with the heroes of old, so it is with us. Now we can take it one step further as it was with Jesus Christ, so it is, right now with you and I. We are contemporary Christians heroes. We, too, are asked to share our wounds with those who have questions about life and the value of life. WE are given fellow human beings who are discouraged because of some failure, disappointment and or, loss. We can only be of help when we are able with, sometimes brutal honesty, share our experience of crucifixion, and in most cases crucifixions. We have as Christians an ever deepening journey into That Mystery we have been baptized into, The Paschal.

Because of the work of The Spirit, The Historical Jesus, is now The Christ of God. We, too, at each Mass, and in our prayers surrender all the brokenness, all of the betrayals, all the losses, and all the deaths to the self same Power, the self same Spirit that brought about the Resurrection. Yes!! The very same. We are reminded that suffering of itself has no value. We have to bring all that we suffer to prayer. It is ONLY, and I mean Only, then that our wounds become, Sacred Wounds. As sacred wounds, they now have within them the strength, hope and encouragement, our fellow human beings are so desperately in need of. But, it takes courage to tell, honestly our story. Come to think of it, it is not our story, it is the story of God within us. What faith our God has in us. He, who is Omnipotent, has confined Himself to the limitations of our life. He awaits to be revealed only through our authentic human actions. He is in other words, a Prisoner .

The question begs to be asked, when will I free THE Prisoner, so in the freedom of our human actions the world will continue to be transfigured and transformed. So, too many who have lost hope, just as the early disciples lost hope, will be brought to a RENEWED faith. Their faith will, of necessity be deeper. This faith will be a life giving faith , freed from judgment and condemnation. From the apparent, seeming, death new life has sprung. "By The Lord this has been done , and it is marvelous in our eyes." We can then proclaim from the depths of our nothingness, and emptiness, Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ comes again and again within the everyday adventure, we call life. That is why; life is not a problem to be solved, it is a mystery to be lived. So now, when somebody says to you, “I do not understand you”, just say, “I know that, so just reverence me, my questions and wounds, no matter how deep they are”. See and be utterly amazed at what is revealed to you.

Shalom....Is Way Beyond Peace!

2011-05-01T22:03:00.001-07:00

The Paschal Mystery is "THE" mystery of our Faith. We proclaim this mystery again, and again. We are being brought back, as it were, to a well that has no bottom, but offers endless refreshment with mystery we are led, always, to a deeper understanding of what we thought we already understood. There are layers upon layers of meaning to mystery. The challenge of The Paschal Mystery is, we have to deep inside so as to be brought to and ever new realization, we are this Mystery. All this happens through grace. It cannot be hurried. It is a very slow process, taking place in God's gracious, ever so gentle time. We will be brought gentle, and slowly to an encounter with all that Jesus endured. We are called to be like Him. We are called to follow Him , so that where he went we are destined to follow.

To be a disciple means, that whatever Jesus and those first disciples we through, that is the journey which we , of necessity, we will always be on. The journey we read about in the Scriptures will be enfleshed by us, in the world we are given to live in. The same joys, and sorrows will be, as they have been , our every day experience. This is the process of, soul making. Here is what May Sarton has written, "It is only when we can believe that we are creating the soul that life has meaning, but when we can believe it-and I do and always have- then there is nothing we do that is without meaning and nothing that we suffer that does not hold the seed of creation in it". Pretty power-full stuff???

So in every death IS sewn the seeds of the Resurrection. Just as in every success is sewn the seeds of loss and disappointment. In every success we must be aware Calvary is now our Destiny. This is our spiritual journey, and there is NO moment we are not on that journey. On this journey there will be times when we can be glad we are on this very mysterious way. We can join the Palm Sunday crowds and recognize, for a time, who Jesus is. Life is so good when we are aware of His presence, and His ready worse of advise. It is all together when we can identify the disciples hidden away in that room, with the doors locked. He who they followed is now no longer present. He has let them down. Their expectations have not been met, consequently resentment has set in, as it always does in cases like this. May I suggest some of the feelings which those 'lost" men and women had to deal with on that first Easter morning. From the scriptures we see, the following, helplessness, confusion, bewilderment, hopelessness, disconnectedness, frustration, guilt, fear, shame, anger, hurt, all leading to excruciating, and paralyzing pain. That is the same with all of us who as spiritual beings, who are having this oh so human experience. When we are honest, and honesty is a necessary prerequisite for the spiritual journey, we can say there is not one feeling on that list that has not been part of our human experience. Now admitting, and owning those feeling is something all together different. That is another process to speak about. (Go back to the very beginning of the blog and there you will find some insights, and also something to practice, practice, and then, practice some more.)

Is all lost then for the disciples, and us? Of course not, that is what the skeptics say. When all SEEMED lost, then the Risen Christ appears. What are His words to those who had betrayed, abandoned and deserted Him? Were words of disappointment, and resentment uttered? Did He bring Peter to task for his denial? A denial that was foretold. There was no, “I told you so”. Jesus came to reveal that God's ways are not our ways. They are way and beyond what we can imagine. So there is no condemnation, "For in God there IS no condemnation". Rather, The One who was so cruelly treated offers the gift of Shalom. Shalom is the greeting of the Risen Christ. For the longest time I thought that shalom just meant peace. It does mean peace, and so much more. Shalom means ALL of the following; Contentment, harmony, rest, completeness, soundness, wholeness (holiness), health, safety, prosperity, tranquility, the absence of agitation and discord, last but not the least shalom means peace. What a great gift offered to those dispirited men and women? That gift has been with the disciples of Jesus Christ through the centuries, until it reaches you and I, as we live out our lives in 2011.

For each one of us, again when we are honest, there will one, two ,or three or even more of the gifts of shalom we are need of right now. What do you need of the Risen Christ that will make life a little more bearable? What is the darkness that is our present life experience which is need of THE LIGHT, so we can discover in that darkness our tomb experience. We ask to be lead to the belief this is where we are buried with Jesus, and just as He was risen we too shall enter a new and different way of living. This is the GUARANTEE of our faith. Let us not hesitate to claim this reality. Yes, Christ has died, and I have died with him. Just as Christ has risen, I too shall experience the same joy, the same freedom of The risen Christ. All that Shalom means, can be ours. All we have to do is really claim who we really are. I forget who wrote the following, I like it.

“Make ready for Christ, whose smile like lightening, sleeps in your paper flesh, like dynamite." Wow !!! Are we ready for that ???

Your Mystery...within...THE MYSTERY

2011-04-23T13:02:00.000-07:00

"Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again." Words we know, and can repeat without thinking about them.
We can repeat them so easily, from the top of our head. Here is a hard question, “are they a real expression of what is our gut feelings?”. It is only when we pray from our gut, that our prayers are heard. We have to own our reality for there to be connection a with our God. When we do not pray from our reality, we are not known to God. Our God IS reality, and the closer we are to our reality the closer we are to God. As Metz says so very disconcertingly,
"Sinful flight from God begins with sinful flight from self, return to God begins with a return to self". That is to the person I really am, as God sees me
not as others see me. What a vast chasm lies between those two realities??? Honesty, with who we are in God's oh so gentle, loving gaze allows us to slowly embrace and accept who it is we really are.

That is our who spiritual journey. We never have to be anything more than we already are, the beloved daughter/son of our Heavenly Father.
A love revealed to us, in and through the Life and ministry of His Son, Jesus Christ.

We have that saying, "Familiarity breeds contempt". We can and do become indifferent to our everyday life, and all of it's happenings. We will then lose sight of the Mystery that is being encountered, and lived out in our so called ordinary, familiar lives. We can become so indifferent to the people, places and events and never realize that it is in them we encounter the reality of what we say at Mass, “Christ has died, Christ is risen and Christ comes again”.. and again, ever new. What a mystery, no wonder we have no repeat it so often? We have the expression in Ireland, “When you throw enough mud at a wall some of it is bound to stick". We then need to ask for the faith to see beyond the ordinary and familiar so as to grow in wonder, and in awe of the mystery that is hidden within us. As we grow in reverence of what we see, hear, feel, taste, and touch, we will be brought to the realization, and oh so slowly, that Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ DOES come again, again , and again. We also pray that our lenses be cleared of all the garbage which prevents us from enjoying the freedom that is ours, because Jesus Christ suffered and died for us. This is the real truth of who we are as we live out our part in The paschal Mystery.

This life, this source of truth is aching, is demanding to be set free in our lives.

We must remember there was an earthquake before the Resurrection, and so it is with us. For us to really encounter the depths of the Paschal Mystery we must have our lives shaken. There will be an earthquake or earthquakes in our lives. Because of this, what we have built will be shaken to its roots and foundations. Maybe in some cases, there will be serious loss. This is not real loss, it is our encounter with temporal death, the loss of the illusion, so that Paschal life can be for us an ever deeper reality.

On my hike I see new life struggling to be revealed and add beauty to the harshness of the desert. That beauty will struggle to break through the hard-pan of the desrt floor. That emerging beauty will not be denied. The following is a quote I like, "If Easter says anything to us to-day it says this; You can put truth in a grave, but it won't stay there. You can nail it to a cross, wrap it in a winding sheets and shut it up in a tomb, but it will rise". Pain, betrayal, brokenness, weakness of all kinds, and the resulting unnecessary guilt, endless fear, and toxic shame are the caves, the tombs from which we arise. We arise to a new and better life. A life beyond our wildest imagination, feeling of freedom and happiness we have no words to describe. We come to discover the place of our wounds, is the place where our greatest gifts are revealed to us. There is great consolation in knowling, " the greater the wound the greater the gift”.

To paraphrase the words from The Exultet, "oh happy sin of ours that reveals to us such a faithful God. It is He who transforms all of our brokenness and betrayals, into the revelation of his abiding love”. Bonhoffer said, "guilt is the hardest idol to break down". This Easter allow ourselves, and I mean ALLOW, to be raised from the depths of despair and abandonment, that is where fear can lead us to, to the place where peace joy and love is ALWAYS ours. This is our share in the resurrected life. This is what it means to be risen with Christ, as the beloved daughter/son. A reality we must claim, and reclaim, because we can so easily lose sight of that reality.

The same power that raised the bruised, beaten, broken, betrayed, and abandoned Jesus, is the same power that is awaiting our fearful selves to surrender to our powerlessness to. We will say always with some reservation, “let it be done to me according to your will”.

The prayer of the crucified Jesus in time will also become ours, "Father into your hands I commend my spirit". It is here we join with Jesus Christ, and enter the blessed mysterious place we call the risen life.

What is this new risen life you will claim this year? Where are the places of brokenness that have revealed to you and we have discovered a strength you never thought you had or was even POSSIBLE. Claim all of that, as a real revelation of the abiding, faithful love of Your God. Where it sessms not possible, but the desire is there, why not say, "I believe Lord, help my un/disbelief”. Then love yourself enough to allow the Spirit of Wholeness to work mysteriously within you.

Would this be complete without some saying of Henri Nouwen? Here it is; “Our life is full of brokenness, broke relationships, broken promises, broken expectations. How can we live with. How can we live with the brokenness without becoming bitter and resentful, except by returning again and again to God's faithful presence. "

There is something very consoling at the end of this Sunday's Gospel, speaking about the disciples of Jesus we read the following, “Remember, as yet they did not understand the Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead". So when we are in that place of not understanding how all of this is going to happen, or has happened, we are in real good company.

"The Lord has done great thing for us; we are filled with Joy. Those that sow in tears.......shall reap rejoicing." What a guarantee???
A Wonder-full, awe-full, Blessed Easter to you all.

Who Do You Find....Within?

2011-04-16T21:17:00.000-07:00

We are told that the Gospel story is not just “The Story" of Jesus, it is OUR story as well. We are every person in the Gospel story. We are asked to take a look at our lives and see how each character we meet, in the reading of the Gospels IS already present, within each one of us. Yes, you read right, each and every person of the Gospel, is waiting to be discovered, and accepted, within you and I. It takes a great deal of honesty to face that reality. Some of the Gospel heroines/heroes we are more than happy to embrace. We only too welcome the faithfulness of Mary, as she stood resolutely by the cross of her son. She who was promised so much must be one of the most deceived persons of the whole scriptures. She becomes for us, the example discipleship. We have the example of the crowds who so loudly cheered the entrance of the Rabbi Jesus to Jerusalem, and we just as loud in His condemnation. How easily we can cheer the contemporary presence of the Christ in His resurrected life, how easily we condemn that same Christ when He appears to us in his wounded, bruised, and broken self. How convenient it is become blind to the Present Day Suffering Jesus in the poor, the outcast, the immigrant, all those polite society turns it's back on, but in reality they are the apple of our God's and Father's eye. There is a terrible fate awaiting those who abuse, "the widow and the orphan”. These are the ones our God has chosen as His own. We in turn, must develop the same lens that God has, and to see these persons in the same way as God does. This takes conversion. This takes us being granted a new set of lenses. There are there for, take the risk and ask for them. With those new lenses we will see ourselves more clearly in some of the not so acceptable characters of the Gospel story.

We have to discover both the Peter and the Judas within. Yes they are both there. Both betrayed Their Lord. Peter repented, he cried rears of sorrow. Judas was not able to and committed suicide. We have the same decisions to make. When we sin, and we all sin, we now have a choice. To have a healthy sense of guilt, and say " I made a mistake. I am sorry. I will do better, with grace, the next time.” Then we move on. Judas was on the other hand unable to make this his own. He then was caught up in toxic shame, was not able to bring himself to the acceptance of God's love. That is what toxic shame does to us. It takes away the right we have to be loved without condition, restriction or reservation. We are asked, because of our sin or sins to surrender ourselves into the unconditioned love of our Prodigal Father. We go through that process again, and again ad infinitum. As we experience the mercy of God then we are lead to a place of deeper compassion. Rather than judge the sin of another, we pray they will encounter the same mercy and compassion we have been blessed with. We can even go so far as to say what a blessing our weakness is, when it brings us so much closer to the God of Jesus Christ. Our sin(s) have allowed us to fall deeper and deeper INTO grace. OUR FALSE GOD OF FEAR AND CONDEMNATION MUST DISAPPEAR. Then we can rejoice in the reality of us being beloved daughter/ son of our Gracious God. Judas killed himself fast, he hung himself. There are so many, many who are committing suicide slowly as they live their lives in the belief they are not lovable, or can ever be loved. Where they cannot sew the necessary love, then we are bound to carry that Gospel message, the message of good news. What is that, that they always have been loved, always will be loved, as long as they allow it to happen. For those who have been hardened by living loveless lives this is hard work. I am sad to say I have come across so many, many, you children who already have been hardened. They can only be tenderized through the miracle of grace. Their journey from the tomb of guilt, fear and shame is a long and difficult one. Let us not lengthen the journey or make the process more difficult by our self righteousness and judgmentalism.

On the road to Calvary the suffering Jesus met two very significant people. He met Simon, who was FORCED to carry the cross. He had no choice. Veronica responded out of compassion to reach out to the suffering one. Where are you encountering Simon, within yourself. Name the suffering Christ, that life has chosen to be the reality of The Suffering One in your life right now. Do you, or can you make that leap in faith to see the broken, bruised, beaten, and betrayed of the historical Jesus alive and so very present in what is so very difficult for you to handle. Reach beyond to seen, to the unseen and ask for the grace you need to be a source of consoling strength. God has chosen some very difficult and a truly amazing disguises. When we are brought through that process of grace, we will find ourselves being more and more like Veronica. We do not know her story. I would love to be privy to her conversion story. When did the transformation happen? What was the tragedy, and subsequent graced moments that that allowed to brave the crowds, and the Legions of Rome, to minister to a condemned prisoner? Where is the struggle going on in your own life, your family's life which is your process of transformation. The challenge is, of course, what do we as individuals, as couples, as families have to let go of, so that the same spirit who raised the historical Jesus from the dead can work the miracle of transformation and transfiguration. This again is temporal death leading us to the an ever deeper understanding of The Paschal mystery.

Temporal Death......Paschal Death.

2011-04-10T22:12:00.000-07:00

Next Sunday will be Passion Sunday, and with it will begin our celebration of the week we as Catholic Christians call, Holy. We will for the first time, as we are right now journey into the Mystery we have all been baptized into. Connecting that reality to the reality of our daily living is a great ongoing challenge. To make our journey with The Suffering Servant an ever deepening one, I hope and pray this will be of some help.

The Pascal Mystery transforms, transfigures and leads an always and new and different way of living. It bestows on us the great gift of hope, that death is not, “the final word on life or despair the final days of human beings”. [Boff] As we make our journey into the light of the resurrection, we will be led again and again to the understanding that out of all of our pain, sorrow, and brokenness, comes new life and wonderful gifts. We will be led to the belief that the “greater the wound, the greater the pain…the greater the gift”. That is why each year, we are “dipped and dyed” in the Pascal Mystery to be awakened and to celebrate the new life that has come to us from what we thought was death. Death is never the end, it is always the beginning.

The Pascal Mystery is first and foremost a mystery. This mystery teaches that with every beginning there is an ending and with every ending there is a new beginning. It is a mystery dealing with the deepest working of God's grace. A mystery dealing with death, burial and new life. A spiritual mystery such as this cannot be explained, it can only be entered into and treated with reverence. I would like to suggest this year, more than ever, we need to open ourselves up to what this week offers in the way of hope, consolation and the promise of radical new life. This will come to us through the power of honesty, honesty about our everyday experience. There can be no spiritual growth unless we are developing a progressive honesty which is about embracing what is real. Where there is no honesty, there is no reality. So, there is no God. When we want to get a grip on reality and the Pascal Mystery within us, here are a number of words you and I cannot have in our vocabulary, the following are many words which have no connection with reality:
could, would, should, what if, if, if only, when, ought, try, interesting, or any similar words used to deny our real feelings and our real emotions.

A number of years ago, I read a book by Fr. Ronald Holheiser which enabled me to enter into a new and better life-giving understanding of what the Pascal Mystery is all about. In his book, The Holy Longing, he explains the difference between terminal death and Pascal death. "Terminal death is a death that ends life and then possibility. Pascal death, like terminal death, is real, however, Pascal death is a death that, while ending one kind of life, opens a person undergoing it to receive a deeper and richer form of life. The image of the grain of wheat falling into the ground and dying so as to produce new life is an image of Pascal death. Then resurrected life...is the reception of a radically new life... The Pascal Mystery is about Pascal death and resurrected life."

Continuing on, in the same chapter entitled "The Spirituality of the Pascal Mystery", we read the following:

The Pascal Mystery might be diagrammed as follows:
1) Good Friday...The loss of life-real death
2) Easter Sunday..."the reception of new life"
3) The Forty Days..."a time for readjustment to the new, and grieving the old"
4) Ascension..."letting go of the old and letting it bless you, the refusal to claim"
5) Pentecost..."the reception of new spirit, for the new life that one is already living"

Put into a more colloquial language and stated as personal Pascal challenge for each one of us, one might recap this diagram this way:
1) "Name of your death"
2) "Claim your birth"
3) "Grieve what you have lost and adjust to the new reality"
4) "Do not cling to the old, let it ascend and give you its blessing"
5) "Accept the spirit of the life that you are in fact living"

This cycle is not something we must undergo just once...It is rather something we must undergo daily, in every aspect of our lives. Christ spoke of many deaths, of daily deaths and of many risings and various Pentecosts. The Pascal Mystery is the secret to life. Ultimately, our happiness depends upon properly undergoing it... Unless we die in infancy, we will have many deaths in our lives and within each one of these we must receive new life and new spirit. Daily we must undergo the Pascal Mystery.

In her book, Little Pieces of Light, Sister Joyce has this to say, "Being able to let go and let God take over one's life demands a tremendous amount of trust in this Divine Companion. Thomas Merton writes that, 'True love and prayer are really learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible and your heart turns to stone'. It is in within the hour of our greatest darkness that we discovered that we are never really alone. It is a time when we learn to trust as Gods love is much more than we ever imagined." This gives us the great freedom to be able to sing our Hallelujahs with real gusto. Death has turned into life. Christ is risen and is alive within you and me.

"O happy fault of Adam that has revealed to us such a God."

Our Ongoing....Process

2011-04-03T20:13:00.000-07:00

This Sunday is called Laetare Sunday. It is to be a weekend of rejoicing, in the midst of our season of penance. Looking back, what have we heard, read, proclaimed and prayed that calls to rejoice? The opening prayer, for starters, offers us some wonder-full food for thought, leading to us being nourished. Then, as we are nourished, we share the strengthening which we have received with those our God has chosen for us. They come into our lives in the most ordinary and very extra ordinary circumstances. They do come however. What we have been given, St. Paul writes is not for ourselves, but for the common good. We do not know what has been given, until it is given away. What surprises lie in store for those who take the risk. We prayed: "God our Father, your word, Jesus Christ spoke peace to a sinful world and brought humankind the gift of reconciliation.....Teach us the people who bear His name, to follow the example He gave us: may our faith, hope and charity (love), turn hatred to love, violence to peace, death to eternal life.”

This process of transformation is a life-long process which we must endure. It is also a very painful process, because, it is a birthing experience. Some of us would much prefer to do anything else rather than embrace that, which of necessity, has to take place. What adds to the difficulty of embracing this mysterious process is we do not know what timeframe we are working with. We are dealing here with God's time, Kairos, which is way outside clock time, cronos. Kairos cannot be measured. We are assured, however, God does not allow us to move on until we have received all the wisdom He intends us to receive, from what this life brings to us. Great??? We are told in the Scriptures that it is by patient endurance we are saved. On the spiritual hike there are no quick fixes. As a matter of fact Jesus only guarantees us rest, when we rest in Him. This is why we have to reach out in faith filled prayer to a Loving Power far, far greater than ourselves. We have to accept, sooner or later, (for most of it is always later) that we cannot do it. We have to accept, or be brought to acceptance we are powerless, but we have One who is all powerful. We will discover our gracious Father knows us better than we will ever know ourselves. He will act accordingly. That does not make it any easier to bring our hatred towards ourselves and other and surrender it into His always outstretched hands. Hands that have been pierced, out of love for us.

We have to admit, and bring to hope filled, the anger and to the seeds of violence that dwells in the depths of each one of us. Without prayer it will be too much for us to handle. The result will be and has been war and untold destruction. We will go to war with ourselves, and with those who have the misfortune of being in our lives. All wars begin within the human heart. What I do not like in me that I see in you…I will want to go to war with you. I am led to the understanding, I am not going to war with you, I am going to war with the "me" which I have found in you. How is it in family life the two people most like each other are always at each other’s throats? Does the aforementioned truth help to explain that which is the experience of so many families? Anger brought to hope filled prayer, is transformed into a compassionate peace within, us. We will then be ambassadors of peace, bringing the gift of reconciliation to our homes, and eventually to the families of, humankind. There is no mess too big for our God. All our deaths must be brought to loving prayer, especially to the great expression of God's love for us, The Eucharist celebration. There we will be led to see, and eventually believe the great connection between temporal death and Paschal death. We will be led deeper into this great mystery, all deaths are not endings but real beginnings. Temporal death, the losses we endure in this life, the loss of a job, a dear friend, a spouse, child, a pet, a home, a reputation etc. The list is endless as are pathways leading us to an ever deepening understanding of the Paschal Mystery in our everyday life. All of our little deaths are our preparation for the final death which leads us to the new transfigured life which will be ours in the resurrected life. All temporal death leads to a new way of seeing, and a new way of living. It is in the plan of our merciful God, that this is so. Otherwise evil, death, destruction wins. This CANNOT happen where The Kingdom exists. What a reason we have to rejoice? "How can I keep from singing?"

Yes, this is not easy. It is essential we keep all this truth before ourselves and when we are brought to wisdom we share the treasure that we have found buried deep within. The following is what I read at Mass and promised to post. It from Merton's book, Faith and Violence, "Popular religion has to a great extent betrayed man's inner spirit and turned him over, like Samson, with his hair cut off and his eyes dug out, to turn the mill of a self-frustrating and a self-destroying culture”. The clichés of popular religion have in many cases become every bit as hollow and as false as those of soap salesmen, and far more dangerously deceptive because one cannot easily verify the claims made about the product. The sin of religiosity is that turned God, peace, happiness, salvation and all that man desires into products to be marketed in an especially attractive package deal. In this, I think, the fault lies not with the sincerity of preachers and religious writers, but with the worn-out presuppositions with which they fare content to operate. The religious mind today is seldom pertinently or prophetically critical. Oh, it is critical all right; but too often of wrong or irrelevant issues.... But I wonder if we have not settled down too comfortably to accept passively the prevarications(lies) that the Gospels or the Prophets would have us reject with all the strength of our being. I am afraid the common combination of organizational jollity, moral legalism and unclear crusading will not pass muster as serious religion. It certainly has nothing to do with "spiritual life"

The Sacrament of....Reconciliation

2011-03-26T09:37:00.001-07:00

As a Pastor, this was an extremely busy time of year. One of the faith community's most important celebrations had to be planned for. That celebration was The Communal Celebration of The Sacrament of Reconciliation. It was always a priority, in the planning, to have celebrants who were gentle, kind, and understanding. The presence of a compassionate priest, to me, is an essential element for a real celebration of that particular Sacrament. Yes, we have all heard of the horror stories of how unkind, and judgmental some priests have been with penitents in Reconciliation. If a priest is not kind and compassionate, but instead loads you up with toxic guilt and shame, I have always encouraged the parishioners to just simply say, “Father , stick it in your ear" and walkout! When I said that at Mass one Sunday, a little kid looked up at their parent and asked, "What is it he has to stick in his ear?". The parent did not know the answer, so the question was repeated to me. Well, says I, he is to stick all the unnecessary guilt, and toxic shame which he wants to load on the penitent. The confessor is to be the reality of the Jesus we encounter in the Gospels. Kind, compassionate, understanding, was He as He encountered the lost, forlorn, the alienated, the so called sinners, and those outside the law. These were His people of interest. Those in the opposition were the religious leaders who pointed out He that was unheard of, He shared a the table with them. These leaders , thinking they were doing what was right, conspired to have this challenge to their way killed. They refused to listen to what Jesus had to say. Oh they heard Him alright, but they did not dare listen, and so, they never became disciples.

Henri Nouwen tells us the first requirement of being a disciple is to listen:

"The first discipline is listening.
The word listening in Latin is audire.
If we listen with great attention we are ob audire.
That is the word for ‘obedience’.
The word obedience means listening.
The Latin word for deaf is "surdus', and if we are actually deaf we are ab surdus.
The ‘absurd’ life is a life in which we are not listening.
The obedient life is a life in which we are listening.”

Our Lenten journey asks of us to put away all those distractions which prevent you and I from not just listening to The Good News of Jesus Christ but to really hear what He has said, and is saying to us right now. It is up to us to set aside the time, and space where we can encounter the Word of God, not just meet the Word of God. We must not only hear, we must also heed. Those two are necessary in order that an encounter take place. Encounter means we pay close attention and consider what is being said to me right now, and who it is that is speaking to me. What then are we to hear and heed at this time of year, it is of course The Parable of the Prodigal Father. Thank God we have we have been lead to the broader understanding of that wonder-full parable. In the old days, it was all about the 'prodigal son'. The one that was so bad, as opposed to the so called good who stayed at home and did what he was supposed to do. Outwardly so good, but on the inside seething with resentment. He was actually in a worse place than the younger and rebellious son. The Father has the unbelievable challenge of being able to reach out in love and understanding to BOTH of his sons. Would you and I actively seek out that challenge? Do not worry. We do not have to seek it out we are already living it out each and every moment we are given life to live. In other words, welcome to the real world in which we live. The world in which our gracious, compassionate, and merciful God is ALWAYS at work within us. There is never a moment that He is not fashioning us into the image of His Son, bringing us to a place of peace, joy and love. It will come to you and I. All we have to do is to have the desire, “Your Kingdom come your will be done". There is a hidden surrender here which we have to give consent to. We come to a very, very slow surrender to The Dream of God, communicated to us in human language by our Savior Jesus Christ. We are asked to embrace who it is we really are without judgment. We are to seek out who we really are, as this is the only one God knows. Yes, the truth will set us free, but before that, it will tee us off! This however will help us to let go of the "false self". It will allow us to shed the mask behind which we hide in fear from a love our being aches for, but we want no part of. It does not make any sense, does it? There is nothing to feed the ego here. These actions do however enable us to confront the ego centered ego, who is very unhappy about all of this. The false self will use every trick at it's disposal to avoid the necessary result, it's death. This is a very long process. No wonder we are constantly at war, and never allow peace to flow, and never come to the great wisdom contained in Merton's words " that poverty...is our strength".

So we have within each one of us three realities;
A) The younger son, a.k.a., the rebellious one,
B) The older son, a.k.a., the obedient but resentful one,
C) The Father, who has a prodigal, reckless, extravagant love for both.

The dynamics of that relationship is our reality each day we live. We are always living out our lives either being the rebellious son/daughter, the resent full son/daughter, or we are in the process of growing in reconciliation with the whole mess. We must always keep before us God DOES Make All Things Work Together for Good. We do not know how this will happen, we must me satisfied with the fact that it will happen. It will happen not in our time, but in God's time. WE are given The Sacrament of Reconciliation to provide us with the graces needed for process of reconciliation to happen Before we meet again. Keep the following in mind; "It is the Sacrament of Reconciliation, NOT the Sacrament of obliteration. Does that change anything in your thinking??

The Essential.....Beauty

2011-03-21T19:52:00.001-07:00

There was a wonder-full,”Thought for the Day”, in this morning's paper. It was the following: "Every Spring is the only Spring, a perpetual astonishment."(Edith Peters) As I read that I said to myself, "What a great gift. I can work with that." So, that can be paraphrased into,
*"Every Lent is the only Lent, a perpetual astonishment."*,
*"Every Mass is the only Mass, a perpetual astonishment."*, and
*"Every moment is the only moment, a perpetual astonishment."*

The acceptance of said quotation allows us to be drawn ever deeper in into the richness, the beauty and the complexity of each and every moment we are gifted with, to live. Each moment will be lived in unique circumstances. It will be lived by us in the uniqueness of that moment. A moment never again to be encountered. With each new encounter we become new. By God's grace we are being lead into the truth about who we are, who our God is and who we are, because we have been loved by The Infinite love.

This very mysterious love will lead us to, “Fullness of life and limitless truth". This fullness of life and limitedness truth will not come to us in the way we expect it to happen, or want it to happen. God never comes in the way we want Him to come, or expect Him to come to us. His ways are not our ways. Do we ever come to accept that reality? From my own experience, and what I have learned from working with others, the answer is, I am sorry to say, a resounding NO.
When we begin to speak about the Infinite, that is God, a new language must be adopted. Our previous way of thinking, and defining, that is my ability to control, has to be let go of. We have to leave behind our security, so we can be astonished with the wonder of newer insights and understandings. We have to embrace the new questions that appear. Within every new question is already sewn part of the answer. Now here is the hard and unsettling part, within each new answer is sewn the seed of a new question. Not fair!! How about exciting? How about wonder-full???? Does it ever end? I am sorry to say no. We are all on an eternal quest. A quest for Truth, and Beauty.

We are never alone, and I mean never. When we find ourselves in the most desperate of circumstances, where all seems to be lost, we are not actually. It only appears to our as yet non transformed part of ourselves, we are lost. To the transformed part we could not be in a better place. Makes no sense, right? When we feel we are lost, abandoned, and uncared for it is in those moments our God is zeroing in on us. The lost sheep, is the one that is SOUGHT after. God is then on a mission to seek us out and search us out. He will not give up on us. We might give up, God, CANNOT. He cannot not seek, and search for us. It is so sad to see how so many are lead to believe how easy it to go to hell, and how difficult it is to go to heaven. It is the other way round. It is easy to go to heaven, it is difficult to go to hell. If hell is what I have in mind I will have to fight the Infinite love of God, all the way to hell's gate. After all this journey is not about our love for God but His love for us. Our egos want to earn, deserve, and qualify and is teed off when it cannot do so.
*All is gift.* *All is free.* *All is Grace.*
This is the cause of real difficulty for us, until we are purified of this need. This is a process. Purgation is a lifelong experience we never welcome, but is essential for our spiritual growth.

There is this quotation from a letter which Thomas Merton wrote to Henri Nouwen: ....." at the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God....This little point....is the pure glory of God in us....It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in EVERYBODY". Nouwen goes on to say, "Merton understood that our access to God was connected to the penetrating and penetrable hearts of all people. Purgation is the work of Our Father's love within each one.

If then there is a part of us that has known sin, how can we be sent to hell? Hell is ALWAYS of our choosing, not God’s. "I will not the death of the sinner but he/she be converted and live”. Converted means seeing things in a different light. There is that constant light of love always revealing to us the awe-fullness of who we are. Let us let go of the old ideas which keep us in the prisons of guilt, fear, and shame. We have been given the key to live a life of peace joy and freedom. Listen to the words of The Father as directed to both His Son and as a consequence to us, "You are my beloved daughter/son in whom I am well pleased". That is the reality we must claim every moment of the day. Then we will be able to say with St. peter "It is good that we are here".

One last thought, the glory that shone out through the humanity of Jesus, is waiting to shine through us as well. Do we really believe Henri Nouwen and the scriptures?

Welcome to the First Lent....

2011-03-12T18:08:00.001-08:00

Welcome to our FIRST Lent. Both you and I have never been through this season before. We can say, and rightly so, I have made the Lenten journey before. We have not made this journey AS WE ARE TODAY. Since we journeyed through the desert with Jesus, as we did last year, so much has happened in our lives. Through the so called "ordinary" events of living, our God has fashioned us more deeply into the image of His Son. Since last year, since last month, since last week, since yesterday, we have been drawn closer to Him who is, Light. He, who is the light of truth, leads us to see more clearly who we really are. When we reflect on who we are truly called to be, we realize there is so much more work to be done. All this, however, will happen in our gracious God's time, not in our time. So, there is that gift of patience with ourselves which must be a necessary part of our daily prayer. Unless we have patience and compassion with ourselves, we will never know the patience and compassion of our God. In other words, we will have a false God. A false god we will pray to, and of necessity nothing will happen, that is good. We will get frustrated at the lack of results. We will come to the conclusion, falsely of course, that God does not exist. The living God of Jesus Christ is a God of compassion, mercy and patience. He is the Master Teacher, teaching us not in the way we expect Him to teach us, but in the very opposite way. We come to realize, more and more, the wisdom of the scripture, "God's ways are not our ways", " His thoughts are not our thoughts".

We then will have to let go our narrow understanding, and thoughts of who God is, and how He relates to us. We have to surrender, and surrender a great deal. In fact, we will have to surrender everything. Surrender is not easy. It is very difficult, and excruciatingly painful. We, as human beings, will do anything to avoid it. It is UnAmerican to surrender. Yet, sad to say, without surrender, without the giving up of control, there is no advancement along the spiritual path. We then, sad to say, we become more selfish, more self centered, more religious and more self righteous. We turn in on ourselves, and shut everyone else, that does not meet our narrow standards, out. We have all the answers. What a lonely place to be. Lonely, because the living God cannot reach us there. He does not know us there. We are living a life He has not intended us to live.

Lent is a journey into what it really means to be, really human. This was the same "cross" that Jesus picked up and carried. We follow along. Where He has gone, we will journey to as well. I have to emphasize, EVERYWHERE, Jesus journeyed to, we will journey to as well. It is a journey into the mystery. The mystery of why God would allow His Son to be beaten, broken and weakened. Weakened to the point that His Beloved Son felt He was abandoned by His Father. Each time we enter The Paschal Mystery we are brought to a deeper understanding, of our own weaknesses, failures, brokenness and how our God reveals Himself to us in the ways, and in the places we least expect . Calvary is not about feeling good. There were no good feelings on Calvary. There was however, obedience and fidelity. On the part of Jesus, and what was left of those who outwardly had the courage to support Him. There were not very many to openly stand by Him. The self righteous religious leaders must have felt pretty good about what they has accomplished, with the support of the civil authority. They thought they had the answers and see where that lead them to. They had all the answers and were not prepared to listen to the question the life and ministry of Jesus offered to them. Lent is the time offered to us where are challenged to not only see, but inwardly and outwardly respond to what is placed before us. This will happen through prayer, the reading of solid, well grounded spiritual writers, Mass, and living out in a practical way what was celebrated in the Eucharist.

The desert is a harsh place to be. It is demanding of a persons, physical, spiritual and emotional resources. You do not go into to desert unprepared for what is before you. We in Arizona are reminded all the time what happens to those who are not prepared. The result is death. We, however, enter the desert of Lent with all that we need. For the desert journey, we as humans need food and water. On this Lenten journey, we enter the desert experience with Him who is The Bread of Life, and a source of refreshing water bubbling up to lead us to eternal life. We journey anew with Him, who has the knowledge, the wisdom, the experience and be lead, if only we surrender, to a newer, more exciting, more wonder-full, understanding of what it really means to share in the Paschal Mystery of Jesus Christ. The Mystery, we have been baptized into, and whose reality, is, our daily experience. We must always keep before our Lenten journey IS our daily, 365 times a year, experience. We are given this time to place it under the microscope of faith. This bringing of our daily living, with all of it joys and sorrows, will lead us to the wisdom that will bring greater joy, happiness, and freedom to the living out of our daily life. This is another way our God makes all things work together for good. It ALWAYS happens for those who allow it to happen. Not in a way that we think is best, control, bit in the ways our God knows is best for us, surrender. Not only in what is best for us, but in the way our God sees it as fitting into His universal plan. There is always something greater to who we are, what we do, and what we experience. This has been a plan that has been in place from all eternity. You and I have been present in the mind of God from all of eternity, so why have we been given our unique existence right now? What is our experience our God has seen as necessary, for the perfection of His creation?

Spring Training......Spiritual Training, part 2

2011-03-07T10:13:00.001-08:00

Last week there was the beginning of a reflection on the connection between Spring training and The Season of Lent. Both come around each year. For the game of baseball, the training is essential for every team. Each person that is invited to Spring training already knows how to play the game. There is nothing new about the game to be learned, Spring training is about the finer points. It is the same with you and I as far as Lent is concerned. We know we are Catholic Christians, not just Christians. We know we have been Baptized into the Paschal Mystery, Lent introduces us to the finer points of that Mystery. It is, like all mysteries, an encounter which will never lead us to a complete understanding. Not in this world anyway. Spring training is for those who are involved with the game. When the participation ends, so does the need, the demand to train. With us, Lent is never an option. As long as we are alive we will always have the need to enter the desert, and face, as Jesus faced, the wild beasts that reveal to us our humanity. Thank God, just as He sent ministering angels to strengthen His Beloved Son, so we too, are guaranteed the same consoling presence. As Jesus went so do we. As He was strengthened, so will we. As we know Jesus went more than once to deserted places, so also will you and I. Some desert journeys are chosen, while others of us, we will do everything in our power to avoid. Such is the fate of us humans, as we journey through this vale of tears.

In Spring training the coaches are on the watch for any bad habits that a player may have developed. Now a professional player will not deliberately choose to develop a bad habit. It just seems to sneak into his game. Things are going along fine until he is striking out too much, or being hit too easily. A closer look has to be taken at how he is going about playing the game. In our everyday life we can be going along fine, until we begin to find that we are angrier than usual. Each day we have less and less patience. We find ourselves not very interested in life. We resent those who share their lives with us. There is a great desire to isolate. We are shouting, silently, deep within “will you please leave me alone?”. I have no energy for you. Many times it will come out in a very impolite way. God has been put on the shelf. Prayer time is just the few quiet moments at Mass, that is if I have the energy to get up and get going. The list can go on and on and contain such words as discouragement, disappointment, etc.

In Spring training there are the coaches to keep an eye on the players. Now there are slow motion cameras which are used to analyze the different motions and in time the problem area will be revealed. Not so easy in the spiritual life. We have to enter again and again into the Lenten journey and discover, what it is that is preventing us, in the promise of Jesus, " I have come that you will have life and have it more abundantly" from being part and parcel of our lives. We have to face the persons, or pattern of behavior which are resulting in our eing less than what God has intended our lives to be. His intention is that , "We would have life and live to the fullest". We have to face the dry and barren places of our lives. We have to bring that place of hopelessness to that place of Jesus' abandonment and hopelessness, the cross, and unite our reality with that same reality The God-man experienced. Jesus went to Calvary so that when you and I find ourselves, bruised, broken, betrayed, and abandoned we have a God that can say to us, been there, done that. A coach has to discover a player's weaknesses, our God on the other hand KNOWS our weaknesses from His experience. What we have go do, and boy is this hard, we have to acknowledge our powerlessness, our frailty, our impotence to do anything by ourselves. We will not just jump into that place of surrender. We will, at least for me, fight it tooth and nail, until there is nothing left to do but surrender. Does it get easier? For me, being a hard headed Irishman, surrender has never been easy. I am like a kid who is really tired, his eyes are almost closed, but will not admit that it is time for bed. I am so envious of those who can say so easily, "I surrender it all to God ", and make it sound so easy. I guess I have much more of the training of Lent before me.

So this Lent let us bring that place which is our desert, and ask our gracious God to bring forth, through His power, streams of “LIVING WATER" that will transform the harshness of our present condition, into a life of peace, joy and hope. As one author wrote, " Where there is no love, sew love and you will find love". This may be difficult for some of us. In that case let us express the DESIRE for this to happen, and relax. "Be still and know that I am God."

Let us keep before ourselves, this will be our FIRST LENT.!!!!!!!!!

Spring Training....Spiritual Training

2011-02-26T13:24:00.000-08:00

It was cold and windy, for Arizona anyway, on Wednesday when I hiked Telegraph Pass. I was looking at how barren and harsh the desert was to view. I was also reminded of the beauty that is waiting to be revealed in this inhospitable place. Thanks to the great rains, we are going to have wonderful carpets of Spring flowers. On my way, I was surprised when I looked down, it is recommended to keep a steady eye on the trail, and low and behold there was this beautiful small yellow flower at the side of the trail. Yes, winter is here, but there before me was the promise of Spring. Just as there is the certainty of the flowers of Spring, we also in Arizona, have the certainty, at least for now, of Spring training. As Spring training begins, we ask the question, “can the ‘spiritual Spring training’, Lent, be far behind?”. As it was, so it will be again this year, and we hope forever and ever.

Over these many years, I have begun to see the two seasons dedicated to training. Baseball’s Spring training is all about getting back to the fundamentals, pitching, catching, hitting, running the bases. I see this year our Diamondbacks are working on an added dimension, attitude. A healthy team attitude, is built on the concept of unity and commitment. Without these two basics, a team has no future. (For us D-Back fans, let us hope there is a relief pitcher or two in the picture! We have had no "savior" of late.) The season of Lent is our spiritual Spring training. It happens every year. Each year, we too are asked to return to the fundamentals, prayer, fasting, and reaching out to those who are in need, the contemporary suffering Christ. He appears to us in the disguise of the poor, the needy, the sick, the homeless, THE IMMIGRANT, those who are in prison, persons we would choose to avoid, rather than reach out to them. Here is where we have to have an attitude adjustment, if we are going to make it on team Christ.

We are told there is no I, in team. Where egos run unchallenged there is chaos on that team. In Spring training it is the job of the manager, and the coaches, to lay out their way of how things are going to be during the coming season. The players on a healthy team, have either to, shape up or be shipped out. Those only interested in their stats, and their glory will have to be challenged to adjust their attitude. Our egos are sure hard to battle, for ourselves and others. Where the egos reign, rather than the vision of the manager, there will never be a healthy, and happy clubhouse. Managers and coaches on a baseball team have only so much time to work with a player, we who are on team Christ are worked on, our whole life long. The other blessing we have when belonging to His team, we will never be cut, or placed on waivers. We are not bound to this team by contract, we are part of a covenant. A contract ends, a covenant is everlasting, eternal. Just as egos get in the way of a successful baseball team, so too, our egos are constantly getting in the way of the good, orderly, direction, that comes from our Manager, through the coaching of the Holy Spirit. That is the reason for this season we call Lent.

Spring training takes place under ideal circumstances. We see the movement of teams, leaving old, tired, training centers, and taking up residence in those new state of the art facilities. In these facilities everything is laid on. It must be first class. Despite all those wonderful surroundings, during Spring training and afterword during the season players still get played out, they get burned out. Then they have to go through that horrible experience of being traded, or forced to retire. They have come to a dead end. Who looks forward to that? Well for us who are that different team, those dead ends, the great losses, the great disasters, in other the great deaths we are constantly faced with, are just the BEGINNING of a new way of living. All these experiences lead us to a gradual, deeper understanding of that wonder-full Preface prayer, 'Death is NOT an end death is a BEGINNING". That is where we are lead through the experience of temporal death, in an understanding of the mystery of Paschal death. Because it is a mystery, and one of our five supernatural mysteries at that, we must return to it again and again. Not very appetizing, is it? This will happen through our life experiences, when we are forced to confront this reality. On the other hand if we are very, very lucky it is this season of Lent in which makes us enter into, to delve deeper into a mystery we shall NEVER solve. "Life is not a problem to be solved, it is a mystery to be lived", now where have you heard that before?
As you know, I love what Meister Eckhart has written, that is the stuff I can understand, The following is entitled, “Led to the Desert"

Consider the divine spirit in the human soul.
This spirit is not easily satisfied.
It storms the firmament
and scales the heavens
trying to reach the Spirit that drives the heavens.
Because of this energy
everything in the world grows green,
flourishes,
and bursts into leaf.
But the spirit is never satisfied.
It presses on
deeper and deeper into the vortex
further and further into the whirlpool,
the primary source
in which the spirit has its origin.
The spirit seeks to be
broken through by God.
God leads this spirit
into a desert
into the wilderness and solitude of the divinity
where God is pure unity
and where God gushes up within Himself.

A Difficult Challenge???????

2011-02-19T19:37:00.000-08:00

This weekend's Liturgy opens innocently enough. We will / have prayed, “Almighty Father, faith in your word is the way to wisdom, and to ponder your divine plan is to grow in truth. Open our eyes to your deeds, our ears to your call, so that our every act may increase our sharing in the life you have offered to us".

This "word" we have to have faith in has the following to say us, "You shall not bear hatred for your brother in your heart.....Take no revenge and cherish no grudge against your countryman. You shall love your neighbor as yourself". These words are from that first reading. We go on to the Gospel where these words are addressed to us by Jesus, "My command to you is: love your enemies, pray for your persecutors".

This is real heavy stuff, and so difficult to do. We have to face what we would like to do, and contrast that to what we are commanded to do as followers of Christ. There will be, for me there usually is, between what my ego wants and what the true self desires for me. There is that instant satisfaction, gratification that comes with putting someone in “their rightful place". Unfortunately that does not last too long. Our conscience starts to act up, and we get to be in an uncomfortable place. We have to face this challenge over and over again. Being Irish, this is one of the curses of belonging to our wonder-full race. I am sure you have heard of Irish Alzheimers , "You forget everything, but the grudges". At least we are honest about it. Honesty is the first step towards a healthy spirituality.

Instead of carrying the grudges, Jesus commands us to pray for that certain individual. How can I do this, you may ask, and not choke on my words? Well since it is the command of Jesus, why not use the words He has given us to pray? Here is a practice that DOES work. It has been road tested by so many people. For two weeks, yes 14 days, say one “Our Father” for that person. When you start you can even say, “I really do not mean this, but I am saying it anyway”. See what happens. God's ways are not our ways. As we go along they become more and more mysterious. This makes the command of Jesus a little easier to obey.

This life we are asked to pray for, and is offered to you and I, is a participation in the life of our God's only begotten, beloved Son. A life that described for us in the Gospels. I always recommend the Gospel of Mark for this purpose. There we meet a very human Jesus, and a still more human apostles, and disciples. When we struggle, as we always will, with following The Lord, they await us in the Gospel of Mark a great source of encouragement. Up to the very last moments, up to that last moment before The Risen Christ was to ascend, they still did not get it. In that state, Jesus Christ left His "not together" apostles, and returned to the Father. He left The Holy Spirit a great of work to be done. With the descent of the Holy Spirit, at Pentecost, the challenge was met, and so it continues to the present day, to you and I. The ongoing formation of the baptized into the Body of Christ is a process we hinder, or facilitate with our God given freedom. What power the love of our God has bestowed, and blessed us with. The life that is offered is a life that Jesus Christ will live out His suffering, death, resurrection, ascension. It is the life God has chosen from a life of eternity to be the place where a New Spirit will descend to, and infuse Itself into. So, that the risen life of Christ may have a contemporary expression. This is the dignity we are called to. Great blessings always come at a great price, e.g. our freedom. Are we ready to accept this hidden challenge in this weekend's liturgy. Take heart we do not take on this challenge alone, we have this GUARANTEE from our God, “Whatever challenge you are asked to face, it is a challenge that both you, and I can meet, and accomplish”. You will never be tested beyond your strength. I will not allow that to happen. If you have any doubts about this, read what happened to Job, “So, when a challenge comes your way, it only comes at a time and in the place where you and I can meet it”.

So many of us have a great difficulty in letting the past go. We hold a grudge against ourselves and it is called resentment. This weekend's Psalm is wonderful. It is Psalm 103, and it has these so consoling words,"As far as the East is from the West, so far does He place our sins behind us". Hope this will encourage you to not read, but pray the whole psalm.

Where is the Scribe and Pharisee......Within?

2011-02-13T08:23:00.000-08:00

It is time to take another look at the chart at the beginning of the blog. The heading reads, "The Battlefield of The Soul". When we read down, the words we read are, "My Free Will". This free will, we are always reminded, is a gift freely given to us by God. This free will will never be interfered with. At times we wish we did not have it. Then there would be no chance of us making mistakes, we could say to God "you do everything, I will be just along for the ride. I expect it is going to be a good one because it is all up to you". To do this is to surrender our free will. To surrender our free will under any circumstances is a sin. Our free will is that which makes us human. When we do not act as healthy human beings we revert back to acting like animals. Our God given ability of being able to think and act make us rational animals. God will not take our free will away. We are not puppets. So each and every moment, of each and every day, we have to make a choice. That choice is made either consciously, or subconsciously. We read in the Scriptures, before us is presented life and death, good and evil. Whatever we choose will be given to us. So in every moment we are going to life-givers or death-dealers. We are going to choose between a life lived as the beloved. When we choose that life to live, we live a life that is permeated with the light, life, and love of God. When we deny ourselves that gift, we are choosing to live a life lived in guilt, fear, and shame. One way of living is a life lived in the freedom our gracious God has chosen for us. To choose to live a life locked in the prison of guilt, fear, and shame is the life of a victim, not that of the beloved.

Thank God, our God is a just God. Again in the scriptures this God "understands man and woman's every deed". We often hear it be said of a judge in our courts, "He really takes into account all sides of an issue". Not all judges are like that. Some work out of a personal agenda. Then there is injustice. Our God understands us better than we understand ourselves. He loves us more than we ever can imagine, or hope for. He looks at us through the eyes of infinite mercy and compassion. Jesus had a real problem with those who were rigid, and inflexible. Jesus called this group the Scribes and Pharisees, a bunch of hypocrites. Jesus here was not being a " nice guy', He was being an honest person, much to the chagrin of the latter group. The Scribes and Pharisees we caught up in religiosity, while Jesus was revealing how hard and difficult it is for the self righteous to get to the Kingdom. The Kingdom is for the poor, broken, the sinner, a concept the Scribes and Pharisees were either unwilling or incapable of accepting. Now here is the nasty part, the Scribes and Pharisees are alive and well, and have taken up residence within you and I. When we are lured into the lie that we must earn, deserve, or qualify for our God's love we have joined the above group. When we compare ourselves to others so as we relish the feeling of being better than, guess who is in charge at that time?

Jesus did not come and assume a perfect humanity. His humanity IS the same humanity you and I share, no different. He continues to use that same imperfect humanity of today, to carry on His mission and His ministry. Our spiritual journey is that conscious effort, on our part, to acknowledge while we are beaten, bruised,and beaten, just like Him somehow our God has chosen this way to reveal His presence to and to the world. This is the "WISDOM Of GOD" that makes no sense to this world, as it made no sense to the Scribes and Pharisees. It is our calling to struggle the day to day living while all the while the mystery of grace is bringing about the Kingdom, using our mistakes and blunders as the main instruments of its creation. It is NOT for us to analyze how it happens, it is up to you and I, to allow the grace to flow. Please enjoy, and above all please celebrate the hike.

Fr. Adrian van Kaam, C.S.Sp. wrote;
"The Lord wants to incarnate Himself in the world through persons involved there as fully human beings."

"My daily environment should not be looked upon as the Divine but a possibility of entrance into the Divine. Every new enterprise, reading, or encounter may reveal to me another aspect of God's presence. I should never identify one task, place, or assignment with God Himself or dub this the only road to God. In that case, I might suffer from religious fetichism, which means that I isolate one specific person or place and tell myself that this is the only road to God for me. If I do so, I may be danger of closing myself off from the rest of reality and remaining fixated on one or more parts of my total situation. In such estrangement from reality, both my daily and spiritual life may become FICTION."

Religiosity.......Real Spirituality

2011-02-06T08:12:00.000-08:00

There are, and were, great challenges afforded to us in this weekend's scriptures. It is the job of the scripture readings to deepen our understanding of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. That challenge comes from The Table of The Word. The strength to face the challenge, comes from The Table of The Eucharist. The two Tables compliment each another. We need to have both to lead a truly Christian life, and lead an authentic spiritual life. In the first reading from Isiah, we are exhorted, we are encouraged to do the following. The prophet, speaking the word of God, counsels us to: " Share your bread with the hungry, shelter the oppressed and the homeless, clothe the naked when you see them, and do not turn your back on your own". Now if that is not enough, he goes on to speak the following, as the mouthpiece of God, "Remove from your midst, oppression, false accusation and malicious speech”. We may well say, "this is hard work”, and we are right. The spiritual journey, the spiritual hike, IS a hard and difficult task. That is why we can never journey alone. Alone we will be destroyed.

The spiritual journey is a difficult ego busting journey. We are led on a journey into who we really are, as authentic human beings. We are led to that place where we have to face, honestly, who we are in our limitedness, and our brokenness. Until we accept that place where we have nothing to rely on, or any resource to fall back on, we will be living in the world of fantasy. We will have our existence in the fantasy world of religiosity. To blast us out of that cozy place, we will have to face some shattering event that rocks us to the core of our being, the old trite answers do not work ant more. We now have new questions, for which new answers must be found. We get that place, which in the words of Karl Rahner, is a blind alley. This so called "blind alley" is not really what it appears to be, but is in reality a new deeper, and quite different understanding of God. A new understanding coming in a way that we least expect, or would plan on, given the choice.

I have found the following words of Fr. Adrian van Kaam, C.S.Sp to be both consoling, comforting, and challenging. These words are from his book, On Being Involved,
“Religion and life are not separated. My daily task and it's religious meaning, my worldly and religious commitments sustain one another. I can encounter God in the realities of daily life and face all events in. ("In Him we live and move and have our being")...Commitment to God which excludes a commitment to the world will lead to a FALSE RELIGIOSITY. In a make-believe religious commitment spirituality may degenerate into an egotistic search for sentiments and fantasies. A split spiritual of religious sentiment and imagination can be maintained only when I withdraw emotionally from my commitments. I tell myself foolishly that as soon I get involved in my study and in the people for whom I care, then I have to leave behind that sweet world of religious dreams and sentiments in which I want to indulge.

"If, with God's grace, I find the courage to give up this self-centered world of religious sentiment, I may be able to develop a true spiritual life. I may find God where He is: in the needy people around me, in the difficult hours of exhausting study, in the collaboration with humankind for the building of a better world. I find Him in the asceticism of the laboratory where I dedicate myself, together with my brother and sisters of the human race, to discovery of the concrete scientific aspects of the truth of His creation."

"Present to God, in struggling and suffering humanity, I may grow to a spiritual life which replaces that fantasy life that I previously called "spiritual". The main difference between my own imaginary life and that of other withdrawn people was that my fantasies were religious while theirs may have been aesthetic or sensuous. We rejected the challenge of God's reality and sought refuge in the shelter of pleasant feelings and imaginations." We will then find ourselves visiting "the land of tears and the land of fear." Again and again we will shed our tears. Physical tears, and emotional tears. We must then always keep before our mind’s eye the wonder-full words of this week’s opening prayer we prayed to our Gracious Father that in His mercy and love He allows no tear to go unheeded. There are no Kleenex moments with God. The is nothing not connected with the whole. There are no garbage can in The Kingdom. All of our tears are taken by God, when offered, and re-returned to us as pearls of wisdom. Not for ourselves, religiosity, but for the hungry, the thirsty, the prisoner, the homeless, the immigrant, or whichever is the "least of the brethren" you will encounter in your daily living. St. Paul reminds us as well, " What we have been given is NOT for ourselves, but for the building up of the common good." This can only be, a WE JOB.

Blessed Are The Poor...Are You Kidding???

2011-01-29T18:38:00.000-08:00

In a short while, the race for President of the United States will begin, again. Each candidate will have to reveal his or her platform. This will give us an idea what kind of a leader this person will be, or would like to be, for our country. We have the freedom to accept that candidate or reject her/him. It is the same with Jesus. In this week-end's Gospel, we have the platform on which Jesus was going to base his mission and his Ministry. We have the freedom to accept or reject this platform, this vision of The God-man. His revelation is The revelation of The Father as well. Everything Jesus speaks has been given to Him by the Father. He in turn, has been blessed with the self same message. This is a vision we must not keep to ourselves, but share with those who will be placed on our path.

Last week we were told to repent, to adopt a new way of seeing. This week in the Beatitudes we are provided with the lenses with which provide a new way, of not just looking but actually, seeing. We are asked to repent. We are to not just told to look, but actually to see what action must be taken so we can know we are on the right path and have the proper lenses to provide us with good, orderly direction. The first Beatitude provides you and I with an underlying message of hope and encouragement. In saying “How blessed are the poor in spirit, theirs is the Kingdom of heaven", we are being told when you get to that place in the looking and seeing, you get discouraged, and or disappointed with what you have to face about yourself, listen to this. In that place where your weakness, failure, and brokenness is revealed, you are in the best possible place. This place where we would never allow anybody else into is the place where the fullness of a God of mercy and compassion is revealed to you and I. For entrance into The Kingdom, is not and I repeat NOT based on world, or society values but on the spiritual value of powerlessness. Power, success, control will allow us to advance in the estimation of the world, but in the realm that really counts we are slowly regressing into our own made hell. We will end up in that place where there is no real love, no real peace, and no lasting joy.

We will eventually get to that place where the question will be asked, and listened to, "Is this all there is, there must be more to this in life?”. We must all pray for that question to surface in our lives, otherwise we will live not life but an empty, existence. That question hopefully will lead to a reflection on what has real meaning, and what has lasting value. We will have to take the necessary step of getting to that place where we will face our limitedness, our humanness, and be lead forth to a place of real freedom and real happiness. A freedom that cannot be taken away, only surrendered. We make that surrender when we deny the true Gospel value of, “poverty of spirit”, and be seduced again by the attraction of power, property and prestige. The battle is life-long. It is an everyday, and an every moment battle. It is a battle we do not enter alone, we grow in the knowledge that the tougher the going, the harder the slog, the closer our God is to us. So, it is in that weakest moment, when we feel most lost and most abandoned, the closer our God is to us and in the holding of us. What a blessing then weakness is. How blessed we are, that our God knows that in that place we spend so much of our life's journey He has chosen to make His dwelling place. I am not suggesting we rush to that place of weakness, failure and poverty, but when we arrive in that horrendous place, we will find it to be a place of transformation, and transfiguration. A place of blessing, not a place of cursedness.

The following is a quotation from The Little Flower. I introduced her last weekend as St. Theresa of Lisieux. She has written the following;

"I understand why Peter fell...He was relying on himself...I'm sure that if St. Peter had said humble to Jesus; ‘Give me the grace I beg you to follow you to death’, he would have received it immediately...And Jesus could have said to St. Peter, ‘Ask me for the strength to accomplish what you want’. But no, he didn't because he wanted to show him his weakness and because, before ruling the church that is filled with sinners, he had to experience for himself what man is able to do without God's help. Before Peter fell, Jesus had said to him, “And once you're converted, strengthen your brethren’. [This means; Convince them of the weakness of human strength through your own experience.]"

So as it was, so it is, and so it shall ever be, until the end of time. We all have a story of hope, and healing. The story is not for ourselves, it has been given, to be shared. In the telling we will again and again be brought to that opening plank of the platform we are called and chosen to implement, "How blessed are the poor in spirit, theirs IS the kingdom of heaven".

God's Aisling....For Us

2011-01-22T09:03:00.001-08:00

God has, not had, a dream, an Aisilng, for you and I. His dream is that we would have life and have it abundantly. We would be able to share in His joy, and so bring our joy to completion. We would be offered a life to be lived out in freedom, not fear. Happiness was going to be a reality for us. Obviously we are not there yet. We are part and parcel though of it's becoming. We are the instruments through which this grand plan, which is also called, The Coming of The Kingdom, becomes a reality. There is a struggle within each one of us to allow this reality to happen, just as there is a struggle within society, and the church. We as it were, to use the scriptures, are all groaning as we await the reality. The tragedy of Tucson points out how far we have to go. Yet the prayer in last week's blog points to the power of God, who watches with care. He does not just watch, He watches with care. This not just care, this is infinite care. We all have been aware of the care the victims of the shooting received, and are receiving. Each caregiver has only a limited amount of physical. and psychic energy. There comes a time when everybody has to rest and sleep. The caring presence is not there. With one who is Watchful Care, he does not rest, he does not sleep. His is eternal, vigilance. How reassuring it is to know that He who created us out of His Infinite love, continues to love us with the same infinite love. A love we do not have to earn, deserve, or qualify for. No wonder we do not believe it. How can anything that is free be any good. Are not told to be careful of anything that looks too good?

That is why this week’s prayer is so great. We will pray, or have prayed,

"Almighty Father, the love you offer ALWAYS exceeds the furthest expression of our human longing, for you are greater than the human heart. Direct each thought, each effort of our life, so that the limits of our faults and weaknesses may not obscure the vision of your glory or keep us from the peace you have promised."

Last week it was the power of God that was presented to us, this week we are informed this is not just power , it is the power of love, infinite love. Why do we need such great love? Simply put, we are too darn good at pointing our faults and weaknesses, and constantly harping on them. We keep on picking at them, and harping at them that we move from a healthy guilt to toxic shame. Guilt is, I have made a mistake and need to change, or to use this weekend's Gospel we need conversion. Guilt is about what I do. Toxic shame is about who I am. Guilt is I made a mistake, and so can change. Toxic shame is I am a mistake, and it take a great deal of hard work to release the shame and embrace the unconditional love always and ever being offered to us.

It seems God does His best work with the good sinner. St. Theresa of Lisieux tells us, "God has two weaknesses that make Him lovable. He is blind...and He doesn't know arithmetic. For when the greatest sinner on earth repents at the moment of death and dies in an act of love, God does not count either the numerous graces that the sinner has abused or his crimes but counts ONLY his last prayer and receives him without delay into His merciful arms. She again has written the following, "God's justice..seems to me to be clothed in love. What a sweet joy it is to think God is just ,i.e., that He takes into account our weakness, that He is perfectly aware of our fragile nature. What should I fear then?" The following is the one I like the best, I wonder why? "Sometimes it happens that despite our best efforts, God allows some souls to remain imperfect because it would be to their spiritual detriment to believe they are virtuous". What great hope there is in those quotations. They with the opening prayer, and being complimented with last week's prayer, will be a source of strength for us who are weary, discouraged, and losing sight of the promises given to us at Baptism.

We need to recall to mind that wonder-full smile of Christina-Taylor Green. In that smile, she is telling us- I have not forgotten, yet, where it is have come from. I still hold bright the light that has been entrusted to me. I am here to remind you of who you really are, and who we are all called to be. You like me are to be the contemporary Christ. We are to reach out to those who have become dispirited, alienated, and discouraged. We all must be a beacon of hope so that all can say our God does watch over us all, is caring for us all. Just as His Son has to enter the shame and darkness of Calvary, so as to enter His new life, we too will follow in His footsteps. Footsteps, that will of necessity, lead to the place where there is no death, only the fullness of life.

Reflection....On a Life

2011-01-18T19:22:00.001-08:00

"Isle of hope, isle of tears,
Isle of freedom, isle of fear,
But it's not the isle I have left behind."

These words are taken from a haunting Irish-immigrant song. These words are used to describe the land of promise, America. For this immigrant, these words also describe the America I have come to experience and know. It was shortly after my arrival in 1963 when President Kennedy was killed. Those were dark says of uncertainty. They were the precursor of other days, of fear and struggle. Which one of us will ever be able to leave behind us that bleak, and disastrous day of September 11th, 2001? Yet, into that darkness came a little light, and a glimmer of hope. Christina - Taylor Green was born on that fateful day when the world as we knew, ceased to exist, so a new world had to be encountered and lived in. Christina's birth was God's way of saying despite what may happen, I am still involved in my creation. I have not lost confidence in humankind, see…I am sending a new source of My Presence. I am sending this new creation to be a reminder that there will always be goodness entering into creation. My creation will continue. On that day when 3,000 died, a new life began. A life so full of energy, enthusiasm, hope and dreams that has now, too, come to a sudden end. This ending has begun a new way of living for Christina, and for you and I. Christina has returned to the infinite love she was sent forth from nine years ago. We have to live dealing with her absence, and the questions surrounding her death. Death, because it is a sacrament, will trigger questions about was is true and what is real. Death will always make us question the reality of our own existence, and the values that shape our life. Christina was able to point to the fact that on the day of tragedy, when so many died, her life began. What a life she shared with her family, friends, school, parish, and community. She had already set her eyes on a life of service, and leadership. We, as a church, a state, a nation, have been drawn into her life, and are left with a sense of awe, and wonder. Did not St. Irenaeus say many centuries ago: " The glory of God is the human person fully alive"?

We have been gifted with God's presence in and through the life of Christina. That is the reality hidden and revealed in each and every life. Christina made God look really GOOD. We will have to rely on that same God of goodness to become our living Savior at this time. There was a great opening prayer in this week end's liturgy, we prayed as follows: "Almighty and ever present Father, your watchful care reaches from end to end and orders all things in such power that even the tensions and tragedy of sin cannot frustrate your loving plans." We need to make that prayer our daily prayer. We must ask for a real deepening of our faith in what that prayer says. It is a prayer of confidence in the fact that God's power is, and I repeat is greater, than all the forces of hatred, prejudice, bigotry, and cynicism. The same Spirit that was the source of Christina's vitality is the same Spirit that was imparted to you and I the day we were Baptized. Christina was the model of what could happen. We have the opportunity to continue the good she has begun. As we do so, we will continue the mission and ministry of Jesus who became the Christ. Then death is not an end, it is the beginning of a new and different way of living.

We Are The Reason...For The Season...Not Jesus.

2011-01-08T07:01:00.000-08:00

We all know what it is to look and not see, to hear but not listen. When it comes to what the past season has to say, and point us to we must take the plugs of fear and complacency from our ears, and remove the blinders from our eyes. We must become keener listeners, and ever deeper seekers. Why? Because, otherwise the fact that God became a human being will be just another birth. Another ordinary birth with no special meaning, just another ho hum event, in the history of our world. We who believe come to know and understand there is mystery in The Birth. We come to accept the reality of the seeming harsh words of Meister Eckhert "What good is it that Christ was born 2,000 years ago if he is not born now in our hearts". With each and every Advent/ Christmas/ Epiphany celebration, we allow the meaning to seep deeper and deeper into our hearts, souls, and minds. If not? Why Jesus just wasted His time and efforts. We do not obey our Father when he says to us "This is my beloved Son, LISTEN to Him". Do we look and listen, or are we afraid to see the real truth, hear the real message, and be converted on and on going to a deeper level? With conversion comes a new and more dangerous way of living. We enter the living of a life that offers no security, no certainty, only a life that is lived and journeyed on, in dark faith. We will make the words of Thomas Merton our own, "God I have no idea where I am going, I do not see the road ahead of me. I do not know for certain where it will end, nor do I really know myself". All we can hang on to is by our Baptism we are mysteriously called, blessed, and uniquely gifted for journey. We are in the words of the Gospel, "The beloved" in whom our God is well pleased. It does say was, or will be, the word is, IS well pleased. Here and now our God takes great delight in our reality. A reality as God sees it not the way we, see it. The more we claim our belovedness, and live our lives accordingly, we will have life and have it to the fullest. We will slowly come to know there is never anything missing from a life that is lived in the mystery, and the sacredness of the present moment. We have that awe-full freedom to live in the freedom of the beloved, or live out our lives in fear, guilt, and shame. WE live our lives as victims of "the toxic trinity" rather than to live our lives in the wholeness, the holiness of The Holy Trinity. This a decision you and I make every second, every moment we live.

Jesus to my way of thinking is not the reason for this past season…..we are. If we say Jesus is the reason, and not us, we will never be free to hear, see, and listen to what The Infant has to say. His birth says to you and I, I reveal myself to you in the place you least expect to find me, and in ways beyond your imagination. The Vulnerable Child says to us, I am to be found in the powerless, the place of powerlessness. It is to those who are nothing in the eyes of the world, it is those who I have set, my eyes and heart on. It is much easier to keep that Child as as infant rather that allow Him to grow up, and become the crucified One. The one that is broken, bruised, and beaten out of love for us. From the cross He speaks to us, you want power? Accept a powerlessness like mine. You want property, I offer you a share of all that is mine, emptiness, abandonment, desolation is all I have to share with you. When you come to know and accept what appears to be a void you will discover a treasure beyond your wildest dreams.

Jesus says to us, it for you I came. I came to reveal what is really real, and what has lasting value. The world hated me, even wanted to kill me as a child, so it wants to kill the innocence within you. My life was spent in the outreach to those who were the outcasts, and I joined them as an outcast. Can you do this for me? Now we really want the Infant to be the reason for the season, this message is so hard, and too difficult to respond to. Lately, I have been wondering what would happen if on Christmas when we entered the church we saw not the Crucified Christ, but Infant Jesus on the cross? Are we ready for such a radical statement? Yet is not that what we do each time we persecute ourselves, and then of necessity one another? This killing will stop when we listen truly to what The infant wants to say to us. we will then become life givers, and not death dealers. We will be able to continue to be, not only the voice, but the very presence in action of Him, who has called from eternity, to be who we really are.

In Wonder Gaze....

2011-01-02T13:45:00.001-08:00

I just love when, as I eat breakfast and read the paper, I get the start for the week's blog. This happened again this week, thank you God. The thought for the day was the following: “If a child is to keep alive his/her inborn sense of wonder, he/she needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him/her the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in" (Rachel Carson, Biologist).

We are in that time when resolutions are made. We tend to make resolutions that will enhance our physical well being; lose weight, go to the gym, take a walk, etc. etc. We will also take steps to be better organized, to be physically responsible, and the list can go on and on. How many of us will take to heart what Rachel said? Not only to take it to heart, but take concrete steps to actually do something about it. We all have that child within, who is in constant need of a source of encouragement so as to be able to continue it's journey into wonder. The child within each one of us is in the constant need of an encouraging presence, force, to enable it to achieve the intended goal for which it was created. Our prayer life, our spiritual health, demands a sense of wonder. If there is going to be the continued presence of art and science in our world, we must be aware wonder is the source of both. When was the last time, we made the cultivation of wonder, our New Year's resolution, if ever? We must make the conscious effort to be guided to see beyond the ordinary and the obvious to discover. There lies a great excitement in the discovery of the seeds of mystery in all that is . Whatever the reality, hidden waiting to be discovered, is mystery.

With those set of lenses, what a new year lies open before us. There will be no moment, and I repeat no moment, that will not have within it the on-going revelation of the mystery of God. We will have to have that person in our lives who posses that which enables us to speak the truth of our excitement. This is very much like the encounter between Mary and Elizabeth. So then, who is going to be the Elizabeth for your Mary? Who will be the one that you can trust to have the maturity to recognize the Sacred dwelling within you, and the life you have been given to live? Who will be the one you can take the words of the opening prayer of the Feast of The Holy Family to and explore all the depths of meaning contained in the following words; Teach us the sanctity of human love, show us the value the value of family life". What power-full words those words are.

We cannot be taught unless we allow the questions to surface. Others have asked the questions and have lead us to the greatest of gifts, the understanding of sacramentality of sexuality. As far back as the 13th Century, St. Thomas Aquinas saw the connection between the celebration of sexuality and prayer. We need to discover, anew, the sanctity, the grace filled action that is human love, and in its expression. Read again and again the Song Of Songs in the Old Testament, and be shocked, as so many have been shocked, at the imagery and the passion. We are told God's love for us is Eros. In the reading of The Song Of Songs keep in mind you are the one The Lover is seeking and searching for. Our final union with God in this life can only be expressed in the awe-full, wonder-full, out of this worlds experience of ecstatic love. That is the imagery which comes from St. Theresa of Avila, and St. John of the Cross. Within the mystery of human love is perfectly hidden and revealed, The mystery of God, and His love for us. The ecstatic love experienced in human love is ultimately what on experiences in the soul with God. The joy of that union cannot be described only alluded to.

Let us all ask for a new set of lenses as we gaze upon family life. Within that which is so ordinary, so mundane, God choose to both hide and reveal His son, His revelation of who He is. For those who looked at the family of Mary, Joseph and their son Jesus what did they see? People who walked around with halos on their head? Did they not have to work in order to eat? There were no angels being sent with special food, for The son of God. Whatever food Mary was able to purchase at the local market, with what Joseph, and later Jesus, was able to earn is what The Infinite Son of God ate.

How ordinary, yet how extraordinary both human love and family life is. Both are sacraments, in the broad sense, in which the sacred, The Mystery, is both hidden and revealed. So when we are lost in boredom, it means we have lost the lenses God has provide us with. We are choosing to see through the lens of what is tangible, rather than that which is mystery. We are lead to grasp at that which is apparently real, only to find out it is an illusion. It will leave, it will change, it will not last. It is that which we receive from that which we cannot see, yet experience at our depths that stays with us and lasts forever.

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-24T20:33:00.000-08:00

It is that time when my heartfelt wish for you is that the Christmas/Epiphany Season will be one filled with the choicest of God's graces. Blessings that will lead to an ever deepening understanding of who you are and who you have chosen to be, in the universal plan of God. May the conviction that you are the continuation of the Mystery of the Incarnation, lead you to a life filled with the Advent gifts of Peace, Joy and Love.

Retirement continues and I am learning to enjoy it more and more. It is tough work, but that kind of "tough work" I am very willing to take on. I had another long trip this summer. The highlight was the 28 days I was privileged to spend at Dolly's cabin. Just before vacation began, I had to be part of a very sad and difficult goodbye to Dolly. It was a whole different feeling being at the cabin this year. I have now been able to spend an astounding 75 days in yellowstone over the last three years. These days are awe-full and wonder-full. I have about 1,000 photos to process from my trip. The vast majority are from Yellowstone.

I was hiking on the Howard Easton trail all by my lonesome. The thought came to me this really could be bear territory. With that, from a very close proximity there was the rustle of branches. When I looked in the direction of the noise, I saw a black bear taking off at great speed. I was later told a black bear can hit between 35-40 miles an hour. I am so glad he took off in the opposite direction from whwere I was intending to go. I now have a deeper respect for that animal. It was so exhilarating to be able to witness such speed. T?he next morning I was lucky to see a huge grizzly. He was about a quarter of a mile away. I have him/her in my camera. I have had the priviliege of seeing 10 bears in the wild. Five blacks and five grizzlies. I also had a very challenging episode at 8,000 feet, ;lus with driving rain, hailstones, heavy wind, thunder and lightening. I was able to get two blogs out of that encounter with Mother Nature. You can read about that in the blog. Some of you have read of that adventure, so I will not bore you.

Then it was brought home to me, Joe you are getting old. I began to be in real pain from my arthritis. Also, a spot on my face began to hurt as well. That spot has caused a lot of trouble over these many years. The end result was I had a shorter vacation. I was glad to get back to the warmth of Arizona. Since I ahve returned the arthritic pain has gotten go much better. I recently had surgery on the troublesome spot. It was cancerous, so it was a good move to return early. It took 21 stitches to close the wound. I am looking more and more like a Raiders fan. (They are looking pretty good this year.) Life is continuing and I am still helping out wherever there is a need.

I came across the following on the internet. I have used it on weekends, and I am thinking it would be a great gift for you, as individuals, as couples, as families, as you conintue your journey to your God, and with your God. It is called "the Advent Virus
, and has been penned by that well known author, Anonymous. My prayer for you is that you will be infected and affected by this virus and the effects last with you long after the AdventChristmas/Epiphany season has passed into memory. The following are some of the signs and symptoms of this wonder-full virus to be infected with and infected by.

An unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment.
A loss of interest in judging others.
A loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others.
A loss of interest in conflict.
A loss of ability to worry. (This is a very serious symptom.)
Frequent, overwhelming episodes of gratitude.
Contented feelings, connectedness with others and nature.
Frequent attacks of smiling.
An increasing tendency to let things happen, rather than make them happen.
A tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than on fear based on past experience.
An increased susceptibility to the love extended by others
as well as the uncontrollable urge to extend it.

There is that wish expressed in song, would that every day be Christmas Day. Well let us all join in a great conspiracy to nourish the above virus. It will be then that the non-believers will be led to the belief. Yes, God did come and true to His promise, He is still with us. yes, He is as He said, Immanuel.

The Blessings of The Christ Child be on your and yours,
Fr. Joe (aka Papa J.)

Mary and Elizabeth.....Part 2

2010-12-20T06:13:00.000-08:00

This week we all woke up to some serious fog. One would think we lived by the ocean, where morning fog is the norm. When one drives in coastal fog one goes in and out of fog banks. When you are in the fog you feel like you will never see sunlight again. Then you enter the sunlight and are under the false impression on will never be in the fog again!!! Wrong. The coastal drive is all about entering the fog, leaving the fog, and entering the fog again, again, and again. That is exactly the way our faith journey is. It is that way for all. It takes honesty to admit it. We admire strong people of faith who were able to meet the challenge of being faithful. That is all that we can have, is the desire to be faithful. What follows is the way we are called to live out our personal faith journey. Each journey is unique, one of a kind. We can never, and I repeat never compare our faith journey with anybody else's. To want another's journey is, the denial of one’s own uniqueness. Yes!! It is hard work to cooperate with God's grace and so come to one’s own unique understanding of the relationship between one self and the power outside of ourselves on which we know we are dependent. That is the essence and the foundation of ALL religion. In Mary and Elizabeth we have two real giants in the realm of faith.

Last week we left off with the arrival of Mary at the home of Elizabeth. Mary must have had to shout a greeting, as she was not expected, "Shalom, Elizabeth are you at home? It is me Mary". Then we have the reaction of Elizabeth. She explodes with joy and happiness. Both she and her unborn son are graced. First, John in the womb, and through him Elizabeth. She, through the power of the Spirit is able to recognize Mary, for who she is, the mother of the coming Savior. The lives of their sons will be interlocked. What John will go through, so will Jesus. Elizabeth's spirit filled greeting loosed within Mary the reality of her truth. Elizabeth was the instrument through which God's grace was channeled to Mary, resulting in her ability to vocalize her reality. From that grace filled encounter we have the awe-full prayer of Mary, also called The Magnificat. It is the prayer of the humble servant, who recognizes her greatness as the result of, the present mercy of her God. She reiterates God's past Goodness to His chosen people and what was the result of His faithfulness. She sings a song warning of God's justice. A theme her Son was to echo when He described what His Ministry was to be about, "I have come to preach good news to the poor ..to proclaim liberty to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to release the oppressed." So much of Mary's faith had of necessity be passed on the Jesus. The apple does not fall too far from the tree.

This Season of Advent reveals within us anew Mary and Elizabeth. Who have you identified as your Elizabeth? The one that recognizes you as the present day carrier of the Christ? Who have you been Elizabeth to? Who have you encouraged to be faithful to the call of making the Incarnation a deeper reality in a very hostile world? Where is the suffering in your life, where Christ is hidden in the pain so as to reveal to you a new creation. A reality never planned of expected, but now a reality. We are brought to an ever newer understanding of those words, "With God all things are possible...". Where do you see and reverence the Mary within you, be you man or woman? Women have such a head start in the understanding of this birthing process. We men, have to suffer deeper and longer, before we come to the point of realizing and accepting both Mary and Elizabeth within.
What is your personal Magnificat? What is your song of joy, not happiness, springing from the realization of the constant Presence of a merciful God whose presence has not been recognized but in this Advent has broken through the fog? What are the WOW moments that forces a song of joy and thanksgiving, just like Mary? Are you going stop have an individual song, a couples song, or the song of a family? What a wonder-full Christmas tradition this would be? Now what a great treasure would be in the making, if all the "Magnificat" spoken were written down and passed on from generation to generation. What a store house of Good News would be part and parcel of your family. How are you going to pass on the story of today's Mary and Elizabeth as it is experienced in your life, and in the lives of your loved ones? As Mary and Elizabeth were graced and blessed, so you are graced and blessed by the same Source. There was not one grace for Mary, Elizabeth, John, and Jesus, and a lesser one for you and I! We are somehow all one and that makes us all one, in His love.

Two Strong Women....(part one)

2010-12-12T07:55:00.000-08:00

Mary, is very much an Advent person. Within these last few days we have had the celebration of The Immaculate Conception, and the feast of Our lady of Guadalupe. As we reflect on the scriptures, Mary was not alone in her "patient expectation" as she awaited the birth of her Son, Our Lord and Savior Jesus, who was to become The Christ of God. She had the companionship of another strong woman, her cousin Elizabeth. When we are confused, and stressed, we always need to have the wisdom of the ages available to us. So it was, with Mary. She had Elizabeth, and the latter recognizes the person who blessed her with her presence. With the presence of Mary came another Presence.

Mary and Elizabeth, so different and yet so many wonder-full similarities. Both strong women, and individuals of deep, deep faith. One, Mary, the teenager, the other, Elizabeth, a woman of many years. She is many years beyond her child bearing years. Yet, miracles of miracles, she finds herself pregnant. What were those many years like when she had to suffer the agony and the shame of being childless? In the culture of her time she lived out her life in disgrace, because God did not grace her with the vocation of motherhood. She had the desire, and nothing, until now. Mary, who was she? A young woman betrothed to, but not as yet living with, her intended. She was preparing to be married, but was not preparing, to be a mother. That would would come, with God's blessing, at some future time, but not right now. For Mary, the future became a reality, right now. Her pregnancy was not the result of her and Joseph’s plans. Her pregnancy was the result of the plans, of the Ultimate Planner, God. Yet, The Planner, The Almighty God, had to wait for Mary's "YES". What conflict Mary must have been in. Here she was still a virgin and is being asked to say, yes, to a child. What was Joseph going to think? How was this going to work out with family and friends? What if Joseph's family wanted their money back? The questions must have been many for that conflicted teen. She was invited to say yes to something that made no sense to her. Yet from the depths of who she really was, the chosen one, the gifted one, the graced one from all of eternity, she was able to muster what is now know as the ,"FIAT of Mary";

“I am the servant of the Lord, let it be to me according to His will.” ~ Mary said not my will but your will be done!

So the long and difficult journey began. A journey that would take her to Bethlehem, on to Egypt, and on to Nazareth. Mary was promised that her Child would have the throne of David, what were her thoughts as she stood by the throne, of the cross? Her son was not crowned with a crown of gold, his crown was a crown of thorns? I like to ask this question, "Was Mary the most deceived woman in the scriptures?” Dispirited, disillusioned/ Not Mary. We see how strong in faith she was as she was in that room, with the other followers of her son, when The Spirit Of that same Son descended, "and the world was turned upside right". She was present when a new birthing of her Son took place. The physical body she gave birth to was now to have a Mystical presence.

So we have two strong women, chosen and blessed. One seeks out the other, and they meet. What an explosion resulted from that encounter. An encounter happens when those involved in the event look beyond the obvious, and come to see, and own the deeper reality. From that spiritual explosion was released blessings that have filtered down to you and I, these many centuries later. Gifts that must not be taken for granted. When taken for granted, leaves us empty, disheartened, and disillusioned with life. Gifts when reflected on, under the guidance of The Holy Spirit in prayer, adds vim, vigor, and vitality, to our lives. Our liturgical celebrations then take on a new meaning, leading to the deeper living of a life of peace, joy, and love. We then have Advent time, all the time.

Next week we will take a look, and a listen to the words and actions of Mary and Elizabeth. In the mean time take some time to reflect on these questions;

* Mary is present within me, each and every day.*
~ Where do I encounter her?
~ Who is Elizabeth for me right now?
~ Who do I choose to be Elizabeth to?

Reflect on the following, as individuals, as couples and as families.
“I, (we) will sing a new song. As difficult as it is, I must learn the new song that is capable of meeting the new need. I must fashion new words born of all the new growth in my life. My mind, and my spirit. I must prepare for new melodies that have never been mine before, that all that is within me may lift my voice unto God. How wiIl love, the old familiarity of the wearied melody, shrink from the harsh discords of new untried harmonies. Teach me, my Father, that I might learn the abandonment and enthusiasm of Jesus, the fresh new accent, the untried melody, to meet the need of the untried tomorrow.” ( Howard Thurman, "Meditations of the Heart" )

Where will you allow that to take you to? Mary, and Elizabeth gave voice, what words do they speak to and through you, right now?

A virus to desire......or avoid?

2010-12-04T10:23:00.001-08:00

As I enjoyed my cereal this morning, I read the following in the daily paper; “The well of Providence is deep. It's the buckets we bring to it that are small.” So wrote a Scottish religious leader, at the turn of the last century. I would like to suggest, it is not about just the size of the bucket, it also depends on the condition of the bucket. If I want the bucket of my soul to be filled up, I must make sure there is no garbage taking up the space, we are inviting our Gracious God to fill up. Our spiritual garbage has been described in the following manner;
G...Guilt,
A...anger,
R..resentment,
B..boredom,
A..anxiety,
G..greed, and
E...envy.
Being spiritual beings on a human journey, we are very much aware of the garbage we encounter in the daily living of our lives. We must not allow that garbage to detract from the wonder, and the mystery of who we are and the dignity that is ours, as the result of our God's plan for us. We must continue to allow God to fine tune the lens of our faith so we become more and more enlightened. We must actively invite our God to awaken in us the real depth His love for us, and to the life He has called us to live. Advent is a time we are given to re-orientate ourselves so we will become more available. Advent is an opportunity to stop, yes!! STOP, and reevaluate what is the real in depth meaning of this precious time, and season. One person has written, "Christmas renews our youth by stirring our wonder. The capacity for wonder has been called our most pregnant human faculty, for in it are born our art, science, and religion."

We pray then, for a greater sense of wonder so we can ,again and again, be lost in the awe-full mystery of our God, a God who left His lofty Heavenly Home, and throne, to come and make His dwelling place, our dwelling place. Yes, our God left His power and majesty behind. He deliberately emptied Him. He came in emptiness, so the bucket of His soul could be filled up with the powerlessness of our humanity. He who has all power, came to us in the vulnerability of a little newborn baby. We wonder and wonder and never exhaust the mystery. Each and every Christmas we are led into the wonder-fullness of the Bethlehem event that took place so many years ago, yet happens again and again, ever new, in the Bethlehem of our souls.

So the can this season of Advent be seen as a time of emptying out, rather than of gathering up? How do we empty ourselves, so as to be ready to receive the fullness of Him who came to model in His life, what we are in the hope to imitate in ours. His life, is our life today, so that where we are, He is. His Incarnation continues on in the life you and I live, today. What an awe-full dignity and responsibility has been bestowed on you and I. We are not in this alone. Anything our God asks of us, that which is necessary to accomplish the task, is already within us. We, in fits and spurts, do some of the things necessary for others to believe that the Incarnation has happened. During this time and season, we are more actively being who we have been called to be. This results in what has been described as “The Advent Virus”. Here are the signs that will indicate to you whether you too have been infected by this virus, or may have encountered this wonder-full 'contamination'. That is in the eyes of those who will not see.

Some signs and symptoms of....

The Advent Virus

A loss of interest in judging other people.
An unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment.
A tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than on fear based on past experiences
A loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others. A loss of interest in conflict.
A loss of the ability to worry. (This is a very serious symptom.)
Frequent, overwhelming episodes of appreciation. Frequent attacks of smiling.
Contented feelings of connectedness with others and nature.
An increasing tendency to let things happen rather than make them happen.
An increased susceptibility to the love extended by others as well as the uncontrollable urge to extend it.

This virus is the exact recipe we need to empty our buckets, as we draw near to our God, so as to receive His blessings. For those who may want to go further, how about that great prayer of St Francis. "Lord make me an instrument of your peace........”.
That well know author, Anonymous, has penned the following, “It is easy to think Christmas, and easy to believe Christmas, but it is hard to act Christmas”.

A New lens......for.. a never before... Advent

2010-11-27T12:53:00.001-08:00

We are once again invited to enter into and celebrate The Season of Advent. With this season, the new Liturgical year begins. Like the Celtic calendar, the liturgical calendar begins in the world of winter and darkness. The upon is not that where ALL life begins. We all emerge from the darkness of our mother's womb. Jesus, who became the Christ, shared the same journey as each one of us, and was born in the darkness of the night. He arose from the dead in the darkness before the dawn. Somehow, God has chosen that connection between darkness, birth and life and presented to us for our ongoing reflection. We can be sure that wherever there is darkness, then it contains the promise of new life, and new beginnings. This wisdom will not come to us in a day, a week, a year, we will be led to that by those who have gone before and left the promise, as their legacy. A legacy for you and I to claim, enjoy, and celebrate. A legacy whose value will not show up on our bank accounts. It is a legacy that enables us to live life and live it to the fullest. We are empowered to live our lives in love, and freedom. Is not this the deepest wish of all human beings?

So, we are again invited to enter this mysterious Season of Advent. We are gifted, again, with the invitation to enter into this time of longing, preparation, expectation, and, anticipation. We are asked to take the ordinary events of our lives, and see in them the means which afforded to God so He can prepare us in our own unique way for The Revelation. This Revelation, is our God taking on the human condition, so as to reveal to us in a very personal way, He is a God that is not a distant God. On the contrary, He is a God that is with us, He is Emmanuel. As He is revealed to us, so our God depends on you and I to reveal Him to those He will place on our paths. In that way, the Incarnation will be everlasting. It will be, as it is, eternal. This is all, mystery. A mystery that can never be solved, only entered into again and again. With each new encounter we are gentle led into an ever deepening knowledge and understanding of that which will never be understood, in this life. This life affords us the opportunity to enter, ever anew, the Mystery of God becoming fully human. He entered our humanity to the point of suffering and death, so we would have a God that knows from His own human experience, what it means to be powerless, vulnerable, and alone. Beginning with the announcement of His birth, through the events of His birth and life we are drawn always closer to Him who came for the purpose that we would have life and have it abundantly.

Abundant life for Jesus, is not about the bottom line. His abundant life does not show up on our bank statements. Abundant life is not about having the right house in the right neighborhood with the kids attending the right school with the right kind of kids. Abundant life if not even about giving you or your family the right stuff. Stuff will never be enough. The life that is offered to us for our reflection during this Season of Advent is wonder-full and beautifully captured in the following poem by Jessica Power entitled:

ADVENT
I live my Advent in the womb of Mary. And on one night when a great star swings free
From its high mooring and walks down the sky to be the dot above the Christus i,
I shall be born of her blessed grace
I wait in Mary-darkness, faith's walled place,
With hope's expectance of nativity.

I knew for long she carried and fed me, guarded and loved me, though I could not see.
But only now, with inward jubilee,
I come upon earth's most amazing knowledge;
Someone is hidden in this dark within me.

This Advent let us pray for, and be prepared to receive new lenses. Let us let go of all that has come to in Advents past. T his Advent is new, never before experienced. Let us prepare for the appearance of our God, not in the places and people we expect to find Him. He will come to us in the people he came for, the poor, the outcast, the prostitute, the leper, the blind, the lame, the wanderer. All those people we will meet, when we realize they are all within you and I. We are in reality a great community, wounded, and broken waiting in patient longing for Him who will transform the so called darkness in the birthing place of our God. As G.K. Chesterton once said, “Jesus came to turn the world upside right”. So, let us journey in dark faith, not knowing what is before us, but having the conviction God is faithful to his promises, "you are my friends" and "I am with you".

A very happy New Year to all of you. May all your celebration lead you ever deeper, until you meet that Someone who is hidden in the dark within you. A wonder-full, awe-full season of anticipation, and patient longing is my wish for you.

Happy New Year?

2010-11-23T20:01:00.001-08:00

Happy New Year - this is Sunday is the beginning of the new Liturgical Calendar!

A Family Tradition....

2010-11-15T06:02:00.000-08:00

We are coming to the end of the cronos year - 2010 will end in about seven weeks. The Liturgical Year, on the other hand is ending in just two more weeks. The changing of the leaves and the cooling temperatures signal that we are at the beginning of the end of the year. The liturgical readings provides us with the annual readings which confront us with the challenge of facing our own life's end, and the end of our world, as we know it. This is the time for the fear-mongers. Emphasizing death, destruction, leading to untold, unnecessary worry and spiritual turmoil.

How many of these fear-mongers will take the time to emphasize those last few words of this week’s Gospel; "Yet not a hair of your head will be harmed." There will that upset all around, yet our God is the God of life, not the God of death and destruction and He is our Good Shepherd. The darkest valley is not dark for Him. As a matter of fact, it is those terrible and dangerous times, when we have given up does our Faithful Prodigal Father reveal Himself as He truly is, all powerful, merciful, and gracious. For us who have to journey to the place where we ourselves thought, this is the end, it is all over, light and love breaks through. With this newer and deeper understanding of what is real life and real love, we will have the necessary strength to persevere. It is in and through that God given of perseverance, we, as Jesus in the Gospel, will save our lives.

So, then we see, the future holds no fear for those who have seen their worlds crumble. Their plans not realized. The towers they spent so much time and energy to build, they to their horror saw them fall, and crumble. All there was left was rubble. Was that the end? Of course not! It never is, for those who believe in the spiritual journey. That ending is THE BEGINNING of a newer, and better life. A life not caught up with the demands of this world, but with eyes directed towards the demands of that life which will never end. Over these many years I have seen individuals and families in a matter of seconds have one world end a new way of existence forced upon them.

While I was vacation, I was able to see the History Channel's documentary on the horrors of 9/11. It was a documentary that compiled the actual video recordings of individuals as they journeyed through that seminal day in the history of our country. It began with a wonderful sunny New York morning, with people beginning to go about their morning chores, in preparation for just another day. All that changed when those planes flew into the Twin Towers. What followed was at times very, very difficult to view. I do not go to horror movies, but what was that TV set was beyond any horror movie. This was real. To see the thousands of people running in panic before on-coming clouds of dust, that they were unable to escape was really unnerving. I was looking at real people, running scared, running for their lives. Then you were presented with the picture of firemen either going into the twin towers, or preparing to go in. You saw the faces of those who would never be seen again. There was a look of steady resolve on their faces as they moved towards their destiny. No looking back, just straight forward. They were formed and trained for that day. They did not shirk their duty. They will always be remembered. How could they ever be forgotten? Their physical lives ended on that day, but their efforts and heroism will last forever. The lives of their loved ones have been forever changed. The sun did rise on the September 12th, and the process of living continued on a new and different level. Death, and evil can never win.

That is the message of this week’s Gospel. We will be prepared, strengthened, and trained for whatever may come our way. We will not be overwhelmed. Jesus Christ by His death and resurrection has provided us with that guarantee. When we are caught up in fear, and which one of us has not, we are forgetting we have been provided with the gift of faith for such occasions. This is the truth that comes to us from the words, actions, and life of our Savior, Jesus Christ. John's gospel chapters 14-17, are a great antidote to the fears generated from just living life. We need always to remember we have been created by Love for a life to be lived in freedom, not cowering in a corner out of fear.

We have a Good Shepherd, who states pretty bluntly that what has been given to Him will not be snatched out of His hand. With our desire to be in lasting relationship with Him we will we guided safely the many, many, many dark valleys of our lives. We will not always know where we are being led. We do know by faith, there will never be a place where The Good Shepherd does not only have us in His sight, He has us wrapped up in His loving presence. Where ever He is, we are, wherever we are, he is. After all, it is all about the here and now. In this NOW moment, we are ever and always safe. Do we not ask Our Lady to pray for "now, and at the hour of our death"?

We have Jesus Christ as our brother. We have His Mother as our Mother. This tells us we are very well connected, both put the devil in his place. Let us do the same, 'It is a family tradition". A tradition we will always be empowered to continue.

Every Mass...Trick or Treat?

2010-11-08T18:26:00.000-08:00

This past week, as you well know, was "trick or treat" night. Well, I experienced a little of a trick that evening myself! As I left my home in Sun Lakes, I was all prepared to reflect on what I had written here. I was going to deal with the fact that our God not only talks the walk, but He came to walk the talk. In doing so, we have a model to follow. A model that challenges us to walk the same path he has laid out for us. We will then be a people that will really walk the path our God-Father, has intended for our wholeness and happiness. Such was my intention, when the thought flashed through my mind, this is "trick or treat" night. Then the question, "will those who come to Mass lose out on anything? The answer came, of course not! Then the thought process began to expand. Here are some of the thoughts, which are also pretty much what I shared at Mass.

On Halloween, those who go from door to door, always begins with an empty bag or bucket. There is then room for the goodies to be received, into the emptiness. The greater the emptiness the more room there is for gifts, to be received. The gifts that are received will come from the generosity of the giver and cannot be earned or demanded. What happens at each mass we attend? We bring our emptiness to each celebration. Life empties us out. Living life reveals to us our powerlessness, our lack of control, our essential loneliness, all those things that force us into the admission we are after all just a regular human being. We are not the exception to the rule. We begin each celebration with the admission, we are sinners. That is we have said no to God's love, and went in search of an apparent good, only to be very disappointed, eventually. We come to recognize, where we have said no, and the place of the ensuing pain, needs to be handed over to the infinite, prodigal, mercy of our Gracious God. This then is the place of emptiness. This is our empty that will be filled up with what we need, not what we want.

I have been so culturally deprived. I never went trick or treating. So you have to forgive me if I make some mistakes. I have been on the giving end, not on the receiving end. As you look on the faces of the little ones, especially the real little ones, there is a great sense of expectation. When you produce some goodies that meets that expectation there is the familiar, "oh wow". Skittles, M&Ms, Kit Kats will trigger such a response. There will be a rush to tell their friends the good news of what is awaiting them. Then you have to face this new group who has these great expectations. Now let’s switch things up a little.

How about this scenario? What if, instead of the expected treats, a plate of celery, carrots, raisins, and other vegetables was produced.
Would not there be a response like, first of all dead silence, followed with "What gives?”, “Who are you , my parent?”. They would not be very happy campers. They would not be consoled with the trite statement, "vegetables are good for you". They expected candy and will not settle for anything less. Veggies do not provide what Skittles can provide. (Personally a dark chocolate Kit Kat will do the trick.) We want what tastes good, not necessarily what is good. We want that good rush which comes with instant satisfaction. We do not want to wait for the process which allows serenity, and peace of mind to flow into us, or should I not say, to bubble up from WITHIN us. We want religiosity, not spirituality.

How often do we approach the Liturgy of The Mass with the expectation of coming away feeling good. If that does not happen, then there is something wrong. We attended the celebration with the expectation we will hear that which will confirm some pet idea , which bolsters our sense of our own perceived goodness. That did not happen. Instead we were confronted with a message that confronted our preconceived ideas, and smug self righteousness. In other words we wanted candy and got veggies. Here is the question, “Will we be as enthusiastic about spreading the good news of veggies received, as we are in letting everybody know of the "candy" that is waiting for them?”. Our God always gifts us what is good for us, not what we think, or feel is good for us. Lastly, what steps are you going to take to make sure the bucket of the soul is empty, so as to be filled with that which really nourishes us, not just gives us a cheap high. How blessed are you when you are responsible and responsive, and share that gift with your fellow travelers.

Those who attended that Halloween mass were given THE TREAT. The Treat which is essential for healthy spiritual living. The Treat, that comes to us as bread and wine is in fact that which we all seeks as we go about seeking out, and accepting what life has to offer us. That Real God, is behind all of our seeking and searching. We will find ourselves knocking on many doors, only to be disappointed with what is offered. Eventually we will be lead to the peace and quiet that is always within our own souls. On that journey, we will not survive on candy, nor on just pious religious feelings. We will find our strength from that which comes from the same source as we do, namely the earth. It is from the earth, the humus, the human, comes our real nourishment for the journey into reality. That journey we name, the spiritual journey. Let us rest in The Real, and not be seduced by the candy of fantasy, of unreality. Let us not be so tricked that we lose out on “THE TREAT”.

God Walks......His Talk!

2010-10-29T20:02:00.000-07:00

There is a daily prayer each day in the paper. One day, this was the prayer:
" Lord, each day let us look for and find good news to give to others we meet, so we may help spread your love and light to those around us. Amen"
It was later in the day when I began to read the scriptures for this weekend's Liturgy. The following is from the first reading from The Book of Wisdom. "You have mercy on all, because You can do all things; and you overlook the sins of men that they may repent. For you love all things that are and loathe nothing that you have made; for what you hated you would not have fashioned. And how could a thing remain, unless you willed it ; or be preserved, had it not been called forth by you? But you spare all things because they are yours, O Lord and lover of souls, for your imperishable Spirit is in all things!
You rebuke offenders little by little, warn them and remind them of the sins they are committing, that they abandon their wickedness and believe in you, O Lord."

Now that is real good news. It is such good news, that it can really stop us in our tracks. God love all that He has made. Yes, there is nothing that God has made that his love does not maintain in existence. If it exists, it is loved, all the time. God's love is permanent, and does not waiver. Whereas the love we experience and express is all over the place. It runs hot and cold. Lukewarm, however, is the killer. Jesus has a warning for the lukewarm. Our God hates nothing that he has made. Now that is an eye opener for those individuals who use God as a weapon to bring impart their own guilt, and shame on to those they have difficulty with. How often God is used as a weapon for evil, when all there exists in God is infinite understanding, mercy and compassion. How we see others treat others reveals to us a great deal about themselves. They are not seeing the person as that person is, they are seeing that person as they see themselves. Nobody, but nobody, can see us as we really, even we ourselves cannot do that, only God see us as we are. Our God always, and I mean always, sees us through the lens of His love. What a terrible act of abuse it is to use the All Loving God as a weapon to further our narrow agenda, or agendas. So, when I have difficulty with someone, it is not actually with that individual, it is sadly about me, and I do not want to deal with me. Eventually, we will have to come home to who we really are, and find out all humankind dwells within each one of us.

In keeping with what Jung says, "Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves". All that irritates me allows me to fall into that love we are told about in that Wisdom reading.

We all have heard about those who talk the walk, and those who talk the walk. It could be said that in the first reading God, in the scriptures, is talking the walk. In the Gospel Jesus has come to walk the talk, and in doing so is calling on us, His followers, to do the same thing. Our God hates no one, but maintains us all in His love.

Jesus came and became the incarnation of that love. Was it well received? His message of acceptance was so radical it got Him killed.
His outreach was so extraordinary, His own family wanted to intervene. In today's gospel, Jesus scandalizes the self-righteous with His
acceptance, of the invitation, to eat a meal with a sinner. The word sinner was a the same as, prostitute. The tax collector, the sinners, the prostitutes, were among the groups, the ones he reached out to. Jesus pointed out that the tax collectors and prostitutes heard and accepted His word. On the other hand those who stood in judgment of ALL THREE, did not.

Our God is always, as a matter of face every second, maintains us in His love, and reaches out to us in His love. The more we find the tax collector and sinner deep within ourselves, the deeper we will fall into the love revealed to us by, LOVE INCARNATE, Jesus Christ. We will then be able to go beyond the snap judgments, and reach out in understanding and compassion. In this human encounter the mission and the ministry of Love and Incarnate will continue. Let us take the risk of expressing the desire to be able to not just talk the walk, but walk the talk. You will become what you desire. What a ride, what a journey that will be. The opening prayer has these encouraging, and hope-full words;

" May the changing moods of the human heart and the limits which our failings impose on hope never blind us to you, source of every good".

It is only through the lens of the tax collector and sinner we will eventually arrive at that place where we will find ourselves dining with Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Does God have a sense of humor or what? In the last place we expect to find Him, there He is, looking up at us and His eyes and asking the question, "What took you so long?"........Pride?????

A Prayer....and a Meaning...

2010-10-24T12:51:00.000-07:00

Fall weather is with us, at last! We have endured the heat. We are now ready for the good days to refresh us, and renew us. That seems to be the pattern of the life we live out on this earth. There is struggle, some rest, and then we go back to the struggle again. I see the same thing in the hike up a mountain. There is the struggle, then you have a switch back, more struggle, and then there is another switch back. Aren’t those switch backs great? To my way of thinking, our weekend mass is a wonder-full spiritual switch back. Each liturgy provides a resting place, a place of renewal, a place of refreshment. We, as it were really take Jesus up on His invitation to come and rest in Him. We also come to rest with Him. We come to find REST, for the journey. He does not promise a FIX. He promises us rest. I love that prayer we sing, "I am here, standing right beside you". What comfort, encouragement, and strength, there is in those words. That is why we are in the constant need to be reminded of God's faithfulness to us.
We are in the constant need of being reminded that it is NOT our love for God, but his love for us. It is all God’s doing. It is He who has sought us out. We search for God. Why? Because he has found us. Not only found us, but has drawn us into a covenant love. This covenant love is all one sided, it is on God's part. This is His dream, His Ashling, not ours. We are told that His thoughts are way beyond His thoughts, and His ways are not our ways. Let us say a collective, "thank you God for that". We are caught up in a world of checks and balances, that is the world of contracts. God is not there. A real love relationship is not, contractual. His covenant has to do with no conditions, no restrictions and no reservations. His love in the love of, The Beloved. A love that we cannot, even if we want to, earn, deserve, or qualify for. WE have to be reminded of the fact that covenant love is, of its essence, a gift.
So the opening prayer , of this weekend's switchback experience,draws us, again, deeper in the mystery of God's love and who we are, as we exist in We will pray at mass to Him in whom we live, and move and have our being.

"There is no power for good which does not come from your covenant,
and no promise to hope in that your love has not offered.
Strengthen our faith to accept your covenant,
and give us the love to carry out your command."

We have to, or at least I have to, pray that again and again. Each time a little slower to allow the full meaning and impact to penetrate into that place where it will nourish, strengthen, revive and heal me. I ask for the faith that will overcome the fears of my insufficiency, limitedness, faults and failings.
I must be ready to accept no good comes from me. Any love in my life is that which comes to me, first, from God's love. I am simply the channel through which it flows. I am responsible to for the upkeep of the channel. When there is garbage in the channel I have to pray for the wisdom, and strength, to face that reality. It will be grace, and only grace, that will empower me to do what is necessary to unclog that space. I have the guarantee, from my Baptism, that I will never, and I mean never, be alone. I will never have to rely just on my so called strength, I have the pledge that My God will ever be there to strengthen, guide, and direct me. That is what it means to be anointed, which we all are in that sacrament.

We are then open to be strengthened to be who we are called to be. E.E. Cummings wrote; "It takes great courage to grow up and become who we really are." That which is necessary will be provided. We will have to face our fears, but we hear,
"Be not afraid I go before you", and "Fear is the only true enemy, born of ignorance and the parent of anger and hate". We then have a choice to make. Every moment we are given on this spaceship, we call earth, we make the choice of living in the freedom of being the beloved. We will of necessity be life givers, to all we meet. We will not be death dealers. Death dealers, are those who refuse to recognize and accept their essential dignity. Their essential goodness. This is what it means to be wounded. We all have to accept there is that wounded part of each one us. That must be told of the Good News. We must claim we are the beloved again and again until it brings God’s healing to that wounded part, and so join in the great celebration of life. We will also fulfill the command of God, and love as He loves.

Question..?...& ? some more!

2010-10-15T22:50:00.001-07:00

Since I have returned from my trip, I was going to say vacation, there has been a lot of blog material that has appeared before me at the breakfast table. As I eat my regular food combination, which I have described in a previous blog, I search the paper for what you and I share, having a common humanity. Well the first thing I do is check out the chuckle for the day. After that there is, The Thought for The Day. Then the sports page. After that I may have the courage to read about the daily happenings in the city, county, country, and world I am given to live in right now. Some of the chuckles do not come across as really being funny, but displays an ignorance on the part of the would-be funny person. I have heard, read and listened to many people who use misinformation, and also disinformation, to make a so called funny. Our Catholic faith is on the receiving end of so much hidden anger, resentment, and downright falsehoods. Take for instance the exert I have taken from the daily paper. This is supposed to get you all happy and free to enjoy the day; "Religious faith is belief without relying on logic or material evidence. So is political opinion."

We as Catholic Christians have a theology to rely on. Theology, I learned over 50 years ago was first and foremost a science. A science is, an organized body of truths. There is Natural Theology, based on reason alone. Then there is a theology that takes the findings of natural religion, adds to it Revelation, and so we arrive at Supernatural Theology. That is why we have the great freedom to be able to question, question, and then question some more. St Augustine had two questions he asked all throughout his life, "Who are you God, and who am I? "As G.K. Chesterton once wrote, "Catholicism is a thinking person's religion. "Pretty neat. “So the next time you hear someone wanting to be funny at the expense of our church, you may well ask the question, " Have you really studied the theology of the Catholic church?" What the church teaches and what is popular understanding are as different as chalk and cheese. Again this is where GOOD spiritual comes in, it affords the opportunity to ground ourselves in the real truth and not be lead astray by following what, "THEY SAY".

They, I have found out, do not have a clue about the real basics of the Catholic faith. They do however keep the church in the business of being the source of real truth. Do not get me wrong, I have been questioned about what a person heard from a so called Catholic expert, and my answer has been, " you got to be kidding me?” I guess that is why we have to ask for the gift of prudence. We, at the same time, must acknowledge the weakness of the human side of the church. We have to take our lumps when some aspects of the failings are made fun of. We do not have to take it personal. Like in any family, there are members we would like to disown, but they are still family. It will be through their weaknesses that the transforming power
of God will flow into our unions, and communities. There was a wonder-full opening prayer in the liturgy last week. I am going to take the liberty of changing a few words and see how it speaks to you. The original prayer:
"Father in heaven, the hand of your loving kindness, powerfully yet gentle, guides all the moments of our day. Go before in our pilgrimage of life, anticipate our needs and prevent our falling. Send your Spirit to unite in faith, that sharing in you service, we may rejoice in your presence."
Now let us pray it this way:
“My Father in heaven, the hand of your loving kindness powerfully yet gentle guides all the moments of my day. Go before me, which He has, in my pilgrimage of life, anticipate my needs, and prevent my falling. Send you Spirit to unite me with all those lead by that same Spirit . That united in spirit we serve you more faithfully, and so we will all have the opportunity to rejoice in your many presences."

We go to mass to offer individual worship, and communal worship. That it our reality because of our Baptism. It is not either/or it is both/and.
When we are strong, as an individual we thank God for that. That is easy, right? Now when things are all messed up for us as individuals and community, the same God is working ever so power-fully, and so awe- fully gentle, to bring peace and unity to the chaos we as humans have created. Here is another Thought for the Day:

“The opposite of a fact is a falsehood, but the opposite one profound truth may very well be another profound truth." Niels Bohr.

Let us embrace these two truths;

" The powerless of power, and the power of powerlessness" , which allows us to fall into the "LOVING KINDNESS " of our God, which
is His dream, His Aisling."

Rejoice" then because of your essence you are loved. You have been loved from all of eternity, and will be loved FOR ALL OF ETERNITY. Continue to live and celebrate THE DREAM.

More Goodness....to Challenge Us.

2010-10-08T18:08:00.000-07:00

Spiritual reading is so essential for a healthy spirituality. To be healthy, we must be taken ever deeper. This journey that takes us deep is the work of the HOLY Spirit within us, and so can be trusted, even if not liked. None of us are comfortable with facing the honest truth that is part and parcel of this journey. There is consolation in that adage, we are as sick as our secrets. The more we grow in honesty, and honesty is progressive, the more free we are to enjoy that which our God has dreamed for us…. There is a newness about our life. Our life is not boring.

Spiritual reading does this for us. Yes!! It is a blessing and a curse. It is a sacrament in the broad understanding of that word. It is sacrament (with a small “s”) in that sense is: Each and every person place event, action, that brings in touch with the deeper realities of life and ultimately with Reality Itself, that reality we call God. Last week in the quotation from Fr. Rolheiser we were taken to a new and deeper understanding of who we are as today’s living presence of the historical Jesus, we as the contemporary Christ are in the constant need of being reminded who we really are. WE must have that constant reinforcement of our innate dignity. Why? Because, the Devil, the father of all lies, wants us to believe in the lie. The lie is that we are not who we are really called to be, we have to earn, deserve, and qualify for the unconditioned love of God. That love comes to in so many ways and through so many channels. Here is some of what Fr. Rolheiser has written, speaking of The Incarnation;

"When Jesus walked around Palestine, people were healed and forgiven, not to mention given eternal life, by touching him ,and being touched by Him and simply by relating to him. If we the ongoing incarnation, and we are, then this is true also for us (and not just in the sense of it happening through the institutional churches, important as that is)......The mystery of the incarnation is extensive. It is not just the institutional churches that carry on, carry forth, and carry the mystery the mystery of God in human flesh. ALL LOVE THAT IS IN GRACE IS THE WORD MADE FLESH. To touch it is to be touched by Christ; to touch with it is to touch with Christ because it is the ongoing incarnation. From Augustine through Pius XII, we are told that this is wild doctrine, something beyond our limited imaginations, and measured hopes. Nobody dares hope for us as much as God has already given in the incarnation.

What are we given there? The power, literally, to block death and hell. If we love someone, that person cannot go to hell because Christ is loving him or her. If we forgive someone, that person is forgiven because Christ is forgiving him or her. If children of ours, or anyone else we love, no longer go to church, our love for them and their love for us bind them solidly to the Body of Christ. They continue to touch the hem of Christ's garment as surely as did the woman in the gospel who suffered with a hemorrhage. The end result, unless they reject their bond to us, will be like hers, namely, healing.... it is Christ who is doing this. We, as St Paul so clearly assures us, “are the body of Christ”. He recognizes how difficult it is for us ordinary people to believe, accept, and act upon. So he concludes the chapter with these words:

" Part of the difficulty in believing in the incarnation is precisely the fact that it is too good to be true: God is not hidden and hard to contact; forgiveness, grace, and salvation are not the prerogative of the lucky and the few; we don't have to save ourselves; we do not have to live our lives perfectly to be saved;...human flesh and this world are not obstacles, but part of the vehicle to heaven; we can help each other on the journey; love, indeed human love, is stronger than death; and to love someone is indeed to say; "you at least will never die.!"

This spiritual reading does take one deeper, and so it is indeed, sacramental. This will lead us to pray for the simple faith, to believe in the very simple words of scripture;

"You are my Beloved daughter/son, in you, I am, well pleased", another translation goes like this "You are my beloved child; in you I take delight!" How often do we take time out to join our Father God in His delight of who we are, and in where we are? We cannot think our way into a new way of enjoying being ,God's delight, we must take the action to join God in his delight, of us. We have been given the gift of imagination. Let us dream of new ways to celebrate this great gift of God's great delight in us, each one in his/hers own unique way. Again, to quote Thomas Merton, “Be, who you already, are”. The question would be then, who are you?

Let the dreaming continue….

Too Good...To Believe?

2010-10-02T16:14:00.000-07:00

We as Catholics did not look too good in the news today. Throughout the news media there were discussions on the startling statistic that Catholics knew the least about religion. Is it not amazing that so called atheists knew the most about religion when questioned. Yes, atheists were the best informed. An amazing 45% of us did not know of the Real Presence. That in the bred and wine we receive at mass Jesus Christ is really truly present. In the reality of the Eucharist the historical Jesus, is present as the Risen Christ. We, because of our Baptism are the living presence of the same Jesus Christ. The historical Jesus is now living, walking, talking, loving , crying, within the reality of us living out our daily life. Whenever you or I touch someone, that is the touch of Christ. When you are reaching out in compassion, and understanding, the compassionate, understanding ministry of Christ continues to have life. What wonder- full faith our God has in each one of us that we are called, gifted, and consecrated to carry on the ministry of Christ, our brother. I guess you can say we are called to be in the Family business. Isn’t that one way of looking at this mystery?

I would like to suggest the fact we do not know, and so do not believe, all the ramifications of our Baptism, all that is presented to us is so hard to believe. How can our limited lives contain and reflect the mystery of the many presences of God? How can we, as oh so limited human beings, carry on the Mission and the Ministry of the Godman, Jesus Christ? We must ask for the gift of deepening faith to let go of our narrow, comfortable, understanding so we can be led in the vastness of the mystery we are called to be. May I suggest it is because we do not allow ourselves to be led ever deeper into Mystery, we lose out on the great mysteries which are the foundation of who we are as Catholic Christians. When we receive the Eucharist how many will say, and believe here is the living reality of Jesus Christ not only meeting, but encountering the reality of the same Jesus who walked this earth 2,000 years ago? In the Eucharist, Christ meets Christ. In all that we are, He finds His life, in us HE has his existence and his being. Just as in the same Christ we live and move and have our being. We as it were, complement one another. Where we are, Christ IS. Where we are, the church, as The Body of Christ, is.

Last week I mentioned how important spiritual reading is. I find this reading to be encouraging, challenging, and threatening to my preconceived ideas and false conceptions. There was a great expression in the 70s, when we came across something which really made us stand up and pay attention-what “Blew our minds". "You blow my mind” was such a common expression. Well that is what spiritual reading does for me, and has been doing for many many years now. The following is from Fr. Rolheiser’s book “Against an Infinite Horizon". WARNING this is not for the narrow minded, or the closed minded. I hope it will "Blow Your Mind"!
He writes:

"Gabriel Marcel once said; "To love is to say, you at least will never die”. That might sound like romantic wishful thinking, but in Christian faith we believe that this is deep insight, an article of faith, a truth of the Incarnation. If we take the Incarnation seriously, then to love someone is to say to that person "You will never die because, in this life and the next, you will never be separated from the community of life, God's family, because in accepting my love you are touching the Body of Christ just as really as did anyone who touched the historical Jesus. You will never die and you will never go to hell because you are bound to Christ. ... The truth is rather that, as the body of Christ on earth, we can continue to do all the things that Jesus did and, as Jesus himself says in the John's Gospel (4:12), we can even do greater things. Scripture tells us that we are the body of Christ on earth. It does not say that we are like the His body, or that we replace His body, or even that we are His mystical body (which would not be so wrong, if we understood "mystical" in the deep sense of the word). Our Christian faith informs us that we are the body of Christ--flesh, blood, tangible, visible, physical, available to be touched, and all of this definitely and clearly residing in nameable persons on this earth. We are the ongoing incarnation of God, the anointed ones of God, Christ."

Pretty good stuff, no…..on second thought, that is GREAT stuff. The stuff our faith needs if we are to live the dream our God has dreamt for you and I. So continue to enter the dream of God, as revealed to us in the life and the person, of the historical Jesus, who became The Christ of God. Live what you know and so be led into the unknown.

Discipline...to Nourish Our Spiritual Life

2010-09-25T17:32:00.001-07:00

After I was ordained in 1963 I visited a Catholic store. Even then, I was always looking for good books to read. I am sorry to say you could not find too many books to choose from. Today go to any bookstore and you will find row after row of books on the spiritual life and journey. There are also books on the lives of those who have gone before us. They are the men and women who are looked at as the guides and trail blazers. Spiritual reading is now commonplace. Why? Here are some of the thoughts of Henri Nouwen:

"An important discipline in the life of the Spirit is spiritual reading. Through spiritual reading we have some say over what enters our minds. Each day our society bombards us with a myriad of images and sounds. ..words yell and scream at us; "drink me, buy me, hire me, look at me, talk with me. But do we really want our minds to become the garbage can of the world? Do we want our minds to be filled with things that confuse us, excite us, depress us, arouse us, repulse us, or attract us whether we think it is good for us or not? Do we want to let others decide what enters our mind and determines our thoughts and feelings? Clearly we do not, but it requires real discipline to let God and not the world be the Lord of our minds. But that asks of us not just to be gentle as doves, but also cunning as serpents! Therefore, spiritual reading is such a helpful discipline. Is there a book we are presently reading, a book that we have selected because it nurtures our mind and brings us closer to God? Our thoughts and feelings would be deeply affected if we were always to carry with us a book that puts our minds again and again in the direction we want to go. There are so many good books about the lives of holy men and women, about remarkable examples of peace-making, about communities that bring life to the poor and the oppressed, about the spiritual life itself. Even if we were to read for only fifteen minutes a day in such a book, we would find our mind becoming less of a garbage can and more a vase filled with good thoughts. The great value of spiritual reading is that it helps us to give meaning to our lives. Without meaning, human life degenerates. The human person not only wants to live, but also wants to know how to live. A life that is not reflected upon eventually loses its meaning, and becomes boring."

It does take discipline to do what is necessary to preserve and nourish our spiritual life. It also demands that we be generous with ourselves when deciding how we are to spend our time. How many when they look at their day will put aside time for themselves FIRST? This is time that is going to be spend in a way that nothing is going to show up in the area of power, property or prestige? We are so programmed to want to see results that we lose sight of what the scriptures warns about, " What is seen is transitory, what is unseen lasts forever".

Blame has to .....STOP!

2010-09-19T08:47:00.000-07:00

A butterfly does not immediately immerge from its cocoon, it takes it time. Time and effort are essential ingredients for a butterfly to immerge healthy. The struggle to be released from the cocoon is necessary for it to have healthy wings. For it to be able to fly, there is the necessary struggle. In the same way, a chick immerging from its shell, cannot be helped by the mother, otherwise there is a price to be paid. The birthing process does involve pain, ask any mother. We too have to accept the fact that for us to become who God intended us to become, this too demands time ,effort, and yes……
pain. The one thing we must constantly guard against is adding to the pain that is ours, on this oh so human journey as spiritual beings. God came that we would have life and have it abundantly. We are called to a life of freedom, not fear. We are called to fly as free as butterflies. That is God's dream for you and I. We are the Aisling of God, living out the Aisling of God. We are the incarnation of a dream, of God. Pretty neat? We must work, work, and work on the ongoing understanding of being loved as this ever unique dream. We must keep reminding ourselves we are limited, never perfect. This is necessary for us to immerge from the cocoon of limited understanding.

As much as we want and strive to be perfect, in this life, will never be ours. That is reserved for the next life, the resurrected life. So, in the meantime we must concentrate on enjoying the life God has given us to lead. The same human existence, God as human, lived. A life we live very imperfectly. Yet somehow all of this is part of God's dream. A dream we are created for, and invited to both enjoy, and celebrate. One of the weapons we use to sabotage this wonder-full dream is BLAME. As I promised last week, here is the quotation I received and wish to pass it on to you. Read this slowly and listen to what these words say to you. What comfort do you see being offered to you for your daily living? John Powell in one of his books, "Happiness is an Inside Job" writes; "Growth begins when the blaming stops"!!!!!!!!

Nouwen's quote:

"You must avoid not only blaming others but also blaming yourself. You are inclined to blame yourself for the difficulties you experience in relationships. But self-blame is not a form of humility. [oops ... thought I was a little holy with all the self-bashing.] It is a form of self-rejection in which you ignore or deny your own goodness and beauty.

When a friendship does not blossom, when a word is not received, do not blame it on yourself. This is both untrue and hurtful. Every time you reject yourself, you idealize others. You want to be with those whom you consider better, stronger, more intelligent, more gifted than yourself. Thus you make yourself emotionally dependent, leading others to feel unable to fulfill your expectations and causing them to withdraw from you. This makes you blame yourself even more, and you enter a dangerous spiral of self-rejection and neediness.

Avoid all forms of self-rejection. Acknowledge your limitations, but claim your unique gifts and thereby live as an equal among equals. That will set you free from your obsessive and possessive needs and enable you to give and receive true affection and friendship."

Until next week...LIVE the dream!

Become....A Butterfly...

2010-09-12T20:28:00.000-07:00

Acceptance is tough, hard and difficult, but it is the only real road, to an ever-deepening spiritual life. Acceptance of who we really are, is first and foremost a process. A process we all, at least for me, we will make every effort to avoid. I am wondering out loud here, is this the reason there is so little use being made of the Sacrament of Reconciliation? We are told reconciliation with who we are, is a process as well. The one gift that can make these two processes worthwhile, however painful, is gut honesty. We grow slowly in that deep honesty of who we really are. This process is made somewhat easier when we have a person in our lives, who bestows unconditioned, unlimited, and unrestricted love on us, especially in times when we have abandoned who we are, out of toxic shame. That toxic shame wants to give the message, which is contrary to our deepest reality. The message of toxic shame is we are not good enough, we are not smart enough, we are not beautiful enough, and blah, blah, blah.....All of that is a LIE, and the source of the lie is 'the father of all lies - Satan". When we listen to the voice of toxic shame, we are giving ear to The Devil, rather than to the voice of the Spirit of Truth. This Voice of God then, because God IS Truth, tells us from deep within that we are loved as we are, without condition, restriction or reservation. This battle wages on and on and on. It is our every moment, daily struggle. We have to make this choice, each and every moment, am I the beloved, with all that it means, or will I be duped into the lie I am not, and never will be good enough? This question lies ever before you and I. Will I work on being spiritually healthy, and live a life of freedom as the beloved daughter/son, or will I live out my life in the unmitigated hell of being spiritually sick? The popular word for that today is, being codependent. This will mean what? Simple, I will choose to live out my God given life, not with the real God as my guide, I have replaced that God with the dis-eased view of a limited human being.

A healthy relationship is always pointing to THE LOVE relationship between us and God. It is to bring the freedom, peace, love, joy, and happiness is a by-product of this mysterious reality. Yes!! Happiness is a by-product. A healthy relationship is the cocoon from which emerges the wonder-full, beautiful butterfly, which is who we are in God's love. The butterfly is destined to fly free, that is our destiny as well. Does it always happen for us? No, sad to say it does not. Never fear, we are given what it takes to fly free, it is the ability to make healthy choices. There are times when we will have to let go of controlling people in our lives, so we can walk in the freedom of who we really are. WE will have to establish boundaries, with individuals who have no concept of boundaries. We will have to say "I love you but I cannot have you in my life", and stick with that decision despite all the efforts of friends, and FAMILY. I recommend the book, "Boundaries”. If you do not like to read, go to a bookstore and read the chapter beginning on page 103. That will give you great permission to live your new life of freedom, which is God's wish for you. Then read the chapter, beginning on page 83, and see what message is there for you. By the way, there is also another life changing book by the same authors, Cloud & Townsend, this is called “Boundaries with Kids". After this, your kids will not allow you to read this blog any more. Guess what? You will not pay any attention to them, Why? Simply put, there is a new sheriff in town. I am reminded of a cartoon I had on my office door at St. A's. There was this man speaking to a woman, saying the following; "I liked you better, before you learned to love yourself".

To further enhance you and your freedom, the following was gifted to me by a dear friend, and I want to share it. It is from who else?
Henri Nouwen.

On Second thought...this is long enough, I will save it for next week.

Acceptance is one of Life's Greatest Challenges...

2010-09-06T10:02:00.001-07:00

I was able to pick up Fr. Rolheiser's great book, "The Holy Longing”, at a bargain price in a thrift shop. Thrift shops are a favorite haunt of mine. I have been able to buy some great books and wonderful music, at unbelievable prices. There are two fantastic chapters in the above book. One chapter is on the Spirituality of The Paschal Mystery, and the other is on the Spirituality of Sexuality.
Both these chapters are a daily read. In this book Fr. Rolheiser quotes Henri Nouwen;

"Our life is a short time in expectation, a time in which sadness and joy kiss each other at every moment of our life. There is a quality of sadness that pervades all moments of our life. It seems there is no such thing as clear-cut pure joy, but that even in the most happy moments of our existence we sense a tinge of sadness. In every satisfaction, there is an awareness of limitations. In every success, there is fear of jealousy. Behind every smile, there is a tear. In every embrace, there is loneliness. In every friendship, distance. And, in all forms of light, there is the knowledge of surrounding darkness....But this intimate experience in which every bit of life is touched with a bit of death can point us beyond the limits of our existence. It can do so by making us look forward in expectation to the day when our hearts will be filled with perfect joy, a joy no one shall take away from us."

Then Fr. Rolheiser writes the following commentary: "What Nouwen affirms here, in simple language, is what Christian Theology means when it tells us we are living in the interim eschatological age. We are living in that time between Christ’s Resurrection (the initial triumph of God’s promise to give us fulfillment) and the final consummation of that promise, the end of time (when all tears will be wiped away).
During that time, and it is an interim time, we will always live in tension, waiting for the final consummation of history and our lives. Our happiness depends not on overcoming this, which we cannot do in any case, but in making peace with it. And that peace is not made by a stoic acceptance that we cannot have it all in this life. It is made by living our incompleteness in face of a future promise.

To live in the interim eschatological age to be like a couple waiting to be married who, for a good reason (for example the death of a parent), have chosen to postpone their marriage for a period of time. There is a certain frustration in that, but that frustration is offset by the clear knowledge that this is only a temporary delay, soon to be overcome. Our essential “inconsummation” in this life must be understood in this way. The frustration is real, but it is, as Nouwen so well puts it, something we will one day overcome, albeit that day will not meet us in this life.

“To understand the time we live in, is to be less frustrated with the fact that it cannot offer us the final symphony." Our spiritual journey, then, is the everyday living in that reality. Fr. Rolheiser hits it right on the head when he points out it we are dealing with real frustration, and that frustration is now. We do not deal with this frustration by fighting it, no use we cannot win, or by making attempts to fix it, which we ourselves cannot, it is somehow in the acceptance that we are able to arrive at some peace. Acceptance of who we are, and who God is, in that reality lies the key. God is God, and we are not. WE have the great, deep desire, given to us by our God, to be totally one, once again. That is our journey into a oneness with who we are, and in that process we find union with Him, who is our Source, and Destiny.

The Psalmist provides us with those wonderful lines, "out of the depths I cry to you o Lord. Lord hear my cry." When we allow ourselves to taste the essential helplessness, hopelessness, and powerlessness of who we are as human beings, then our Savior God will come to us with those consoling word, "My Beloved here I am. I am always standing beside you. I will not, I cannot desert, abandon you. You are to me as beloved as your brother Jesus. The love I have for the both of you is the same.” Can you believe that? It is not the reality that you have difficulty with, it is a deepening faith that will bring you to that place. It is yours to have. Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and it will be opened to you. Always keep in mind, “My ways, are not your ways”. My time is not the way you figure time. I will come at a time and in the places you least expect. “It has been this way, and as it was so it shall ever be." I believe Lord, help my unbelief/disbelief.

Unbelief...Disbelief...

2010-09-06T10:02:00.000-07:00

On Further Reflection.......Hope

2010-08-31T21:43:00.000-07:00

UPON FURTHER REFLECTION With most hikes there is the going out, or up, and the coming home, the coming down. It means ascending and descending, unless, of course, you are on a loop. In the spiritual life , ascending has to do with the realm of the spirit, while descending has to do with, soul work My spirit and soul got a great workout, on that hike. Actually you could say there were two hike, in one. The ascending was in the peace, and security of clear skies, and bright sunshine. This lifted the spirit into the realm of freedom. Freedom from care, concern, fear, and worry. It was so easy to say, "Thank You". An attitude of gratitude was so apparent. The descending was so much, the very opposite. It was a journey into insecurity, fear, and concern, just to name a few. This was, and is, the journey of the soul. Soul work is not that appealing, that is why the spiritual journey is not attractive to so many. Soul work IS hard work. On the hike, I was given a deeper insight into both. Upon reflection is not this the way we spend, the way we live out all of our daily living? We do not have to go on any hike to have the aforementioned experiences. They are the both sides of you every day.

There are some days, well let’s say, there are some moments of our day when are in sunshine, we can safely say, “I have got this life thing wired?". When we are in that much desired place, Fr Rohr calls that place, that pole he calls "inflation”. We never stop there, we then go to the opposite pole. Here, we are meeting the challenge, of being lost, lonely, and so alone where we ask the questions, “How did get into this mess?" and "Is this ever going to stop or go away?”. This pole at which so much of our lives are spent, is called "alienation". When we are that pole in our daily journey, we are really frazzled. We do not know which way is up. We are facing the limits of our endurance. Here, we border on hopelessness and helplessness, we are in the best place possible. Yes! I will repeat that again, as you may think I was having a senior moment, we are in the best place possible, SPIRITUALLY, that is. This is where our ego does not want to go to.

The ego will do everything in its power to avoid being in this situation. The ego has the power of the Devil on its side. What do we have on our side, as we slowly come to admit our human limitations, we are guaranteed THE POWER of GOD which overcomes all evil. WE have to face however, what the ego hates ,the the great challenge, we call surrender. That is why soul work is so repulsive to the ego, and so to us who want to look good and powerful.Here we face what Fr. Rolheiser calls , the challenge of our insufficiency. We are here challenged to face our own inner incompleteness. For the ego a root canal in more acceptable.

When I returned to the cabin I had a great big bowl of soup. Did that taste good? Later, I had a very relaxing hot bath. That night before I went to bed I had a big mug of camomile tea. As I lay there feeling very safe, cozy and warm, I had to ask the question, " Can this get any better?”. To make things even better I was in that state where I knew I was going to go to sleep. I suffer from insomnia, so this was the cherry on the sundae, I fell asleep listening to the wind and the rain. My very favorite sound. It was great to experience that feeling of contentment. The big question that is begging to be asked is, would it last? Of course not, I am sad to say. Within a short period I was back facing my essential loneliness, insecurity, incompleteness, discontent. I was again back in daily struggle of what it means to be a spiritual being, having a human experience. T hank the Good Lord, this is not our lasting home. We are here on a visit, so in the meantime we have our daily struggle. There is no escape.

Fr. Karl Rahner has written the following; " In the torment of the insufficiency of everything attainable we come to understand that here, in this life, all symphonies remain unfinished". Fr. Rolheiser writes the following in commentary, "What does it mean to be tormented by insufficiency of everything attainable?” How are we tortured by what we cannot have? We all experience this daily. In fact, for all but a few privileged, peaceful times, this torment is like an undertow to everything we experience;" beauty makes us restless when it should bring us peace, the love we experience with our spouse does not fulfill our longings, the relationships we have within our families seem too petty and too domestic to be fulfilling, our job is hopelessly inadequate to the dreams we have for ourselves, the place we live in seems boring and lifeless in comparison to other places, and we are too restless to sit peacefully at our own tables, sleep peacefully in our own beds, and be at ease within our own skins. We are tormented by the insufficiency of everything attainable when our lives are too small for us and we live in them in such a way that we are always waiting, waiting for something or somebody to come along and change things so that our lives , as we imagine them, might begin. ..... To be tormented with restlessness is to be human."

I have found great consolation, and courage in those words.

Life.....or a Hike...(2)

2010-08-20T15:36:00.000-07:00

Ready for the rest of the hike? Well let’s do it! Remember where we were last week? Well, you do not have to remember, all you have to do is scroll down and read all about how I described the ascent ? How beautiful and serene it was? How it was so easy to get lost in the wonder-fullness of the place I was at, doing what I was doing. In Ireland they call these places, "thin places". Places where the divine is more easily encountered, than in other places. Since last week I came across the following; “Beauty serves....to prepare the soul for... encounter with God". That trail which was such a sacrament, revealing the presence, and the mystery of God in the beauty of his creation, now to say the least, has changed. The trail will still be a sacrament, it will demand more in depth thought….a lot of thought and reflection. It is in the storms of life we need the x-ray eye of faith to see the deeper meaning behind the obvious reality of pain, stress, and discomfort. The rain and hail sure made that trail different, and more difficult. There was great confidence on the way up. Now, as the rain began to gather and flow downhill, I had to go slow, and pick my steps. On the way up the rocks, that I avoided, now became a source of security. Strange??? Those rocks were a way to stop the slipping and sliding. The same can be said of the rock we call faith. What one time was a real pain for us, prayer, Mass, the Sacraments, moments of quiet, now becomes a source of peace and serenity. What once were seen as obstacles, are now seen as stepping stones “Storms of Life”, I believe, reveal their own sacraments to us as well.

A person of my age, and temperament has to be very cautious . That peaceful, serene trail is now, as I have said, a great challenge. In the beginning of the descent I skipped about to avoid the gathering pools. (Now that was a sight to see- my version of the jig!) After a time, I saw it was to no avail. My boots were getting really wet, as a matter of fact, they were soaked. Lo and behold, I reverted to days of long ago. Do you remember how GREAT it felt to jump into the middle of a puddle of water, much to the horror of your mother? She was not looking at my great joy, but to the washing and ironing that was waiting for her, as the result of my great adventure in to muddy water. Well here I am happy as Larry, whoever he was, splashing my way down hill, with plenty of rain, wind, hail, with flashing lightening, and rolling thunder. There was a great feeling that came with the buffeting. I was warm in my body, and the energy was good. Yes, it was good to be alive and I wanted to stay that way. When the lightening got really close, I had the thought, “Why not get to a place of shelter and wait this storm out?”. It was getting late. I had no idea how long that storm would last, it lasted a while. The sky looked as if, as we say in Ireland, “it was settling in for the evening”. So, I carried on down that wet sloppy trail, which in some places was a little stream. Some parts numb with freezing cold, the other parts really enjoying the long forgotten pleasure, of playing in the rain. On the was down, I was anxiously looking for familiar signs along the way that would tell me how much further I had to travel. There was a great sigh of relief when I saw the trail head sign. I now knew I was close to the parking lot and the warmth of my car. I could almost feel the warmth of the hot air. Obviously I reached the car. On came the heat. Then a change of clothes. Something to eat, and headed for home. Yes, it rained the whole way home. I have had some days to think, and reflect on that hike. How true to the spiritual life that experience was. How often do we find ourselves going along, again, happy as Larry. From what we can see life is going well. All the ducks are in line, and almost at the water. Our plans are working out, our expectations are somewhat being met. Most of the people in our lives are working and walking in step with us. That is me on the first leg of the hike. Then life happens. We now become aware, or in some cases are forced into awareness that this spiritual being is immersed in the totality of the human experience. That storm which hit me, in the physical, will hit every person on the spiritual level as well. When I am lost in the storm, I have to realize there is no place I will go to that Jesus has not gone to, and he is also there waiting for me to show up. He got wearied on His journey. He was buffeted by the storms. He was disappointed. He as the scriptures say: "He was like unto us in all things, except sin", and He died out of love for us sinners.

As human beings we can so easily, in a split second, go from being calm and serene, to being angry, hateful, and spiteful. We can go from being accepting to being resentful, in no time flat. Being Irish, I am in that group of people that will speak and act first, then think. I have to learn to be a responder, rather than a reactor. I am still in school for that one. I have to learn to slow down and read the signs of the time I find myself in. On my hike the changes around me were gradual, yet I missed them. I was so caught up in the good feelings of a great hike that the reality of where I was lost on me. My emotional needs joy and happiness were being met while all the same time I was putting myself in physical danger. When the rational side took over I made the healthy decision to get on the trail home. I have to learn to balance, or better still, to bring into balance the emotional and the rational. How often the signs of danger and trouble are there and we choose to ignore the challenge to, confront . How often are we so unaware of the changes that will of necessity, be brought about we continue in our dysfunction? To make matters worse, we blame God for what is happening to us, and where we are at. God has nothing to do with so much of the trouble and danger we find ourselves in. How responsible do we hold ourselves to be? It was not God who lead me into that danger, through what was an apparent good. Joe was responsible to take all factors into account and then make a decision, which I did not. What happened on the next hike? I was out a distance, looked up, and saw the dark clouds, see I learned. The trail looked great in front of me, it was very tempting to say, " just a little further".

No, this time I turned back. I barely made it to the car when, the heavens opened. Enough said.

A Hike....or Life...

2010-08-14T21:12:00.001-07:00

It was first hike up to Mallard lake. Last year I hiked the Mallard Creek trail. To be honest, I had some reservations about this year's choice. A ranger informed me the lake trail was a little more challenging, translation, a steeper trail. She was quick to add that the scenery was so much better. When I heard that word, steeper, I immediately was countered with the question, “Are there any switchbacks?". She replied, with a reassuring smile, "Yes, there are". What a relief that was. On difficult hikes I look forward to the switchbacks. They provide a time and a space, to regroup a little, so as to have the energy, and strength to meet the challenge of the next stage of the climb. As it is on hikes, so it is with The Hike we call “The Spiritual Journey”. Here is a thought, on the hikes we choose to go on we cannot plan the switchbacks, nature has control of that. On the hike of your every life, however, you are in control (and only you can do it) of where those switchbacks moments are. We now call those who do not take this healthy step ”victims”. Those who do take the healthy step are called “survivors”. Those in the first group are referred to as “human doers”, and those in the second are referred to as “human beings”. God created us to live the life as free human beings….Come on switchbacks.!!!!

Well, let’s get back to this hike. What a hike it was, otherwise I would not be writing about it. As I made my way up the trail, I was struck with the peace, calmness and serenity. Looking back, I do not know why this was so. Was it because I, myself, was in a good place, or was the trail itself, and all that it had to offer. (How about ," both/and", you may well say?) The trail was somewhat challenging, but soft and gently underfoot. You kinda bounced of the sod as you moved along. It was great. So wonder-full, that the thought came to me, this should be named "The Serenity Trail to Mallard Lake".
I journeyed along, lost in thought, enjoying the feeling of being immersed in Yellowstone. I was gradually making my way up the trail. Not only were there switchbacks, there were also little hills to go up and down. I was really enjoying myself. Not too much though. I was keeping a close eye out for, Mr. or Mrs Bear. You see, earlier in the week, I came within about 20 yards of a bear! I was not able to decide whether it was a Mrs., a Mr., a Miss or a Master, that bear took off so fast! Take it from me, bears are fast. I am so thankful he/she decided to run away from me, and not at me. I am told they can hit speeds of between 35-40 mph. Later in the week I saw a huge grizzlie. He was about a quarter of a mile away. I have him tucked away, in the safety of my camera, he is no threat there.

So, here I am, lost in thought among the trees. I, however, have no view of the sky. That is not good. Suddenly, I heard the sound of thunder. It was away in the distance, so it was nothing to worry about. So, I went back to being lost in the joy, and pleasure of the hike. There was another peel of thunder. This one got my attention, why? Because this time, there was lightening before the thunder rolled. I looked up, and saw that the sky had darkened in the East, but there was blue sky to the west. So, off I went, keeping the thought of the blue sky uppermost in my mind, and not paying too much attention to the ever darkening sky. Not even the drops of rain got my attention. Not a smart move, but my best. (I failed to read all the signs of the time and place I found myself in.) That was my best decision at the time. My best, but not the best. The right one was not made and as usual there was a price to be paid. Was this the first time in my life this has happened? Of course not. This has happened may times before, and there is every chance it will happen again. As long as I am a limited human being, this will happen again and again, until the day I die. It is our friend, death who will free us to live the fullness of live. In the mean time, we are to struggle, on a daily basis, with what it means to be a, spiritual being having a human experience.

Well the raindrops became more frequent, and there was more of them than there was before. So, here I was at somewhere between 7,500 and 8,000 feet. There is wind, rain, thunder and lightning. To make matters worse, the rain was then hail, and it is freezing cold. I have not been in this kind of weather since I left Ireland. In Ireland, mother nature would never play a trick like this. Here I am in Summertime. A time like winter has entered, to darken the joyful light . It was, and never is, a lasting darkness. When the light does appear again, as it always does, what will be the truths that have become a part of this new reality. This new reality is: life as I live it today.

It would be too long of a blog, a sermon yes, to bring me down the mountain. So I will leave Joe at say, 7,700 feet. There is lightening, wind, freezing hail or rain, peeling thunder, numbing hands, heading for home, and lessons to be learned.

See you next week, as the wandering continues, or so, I sincerely hope.

Wandering Thoughts from a Cabin....

2010-08-06T19:28:00.001-07:00

I have heard it said, "Every seven years we ask a new set of questions". I have found this to be so very true, in my own life and in the life of so many others. Look at what happens between the ages of 14 and 21. How the questions flow so quickly, and the answers appear so slowly. Henri Nowen encourages us, “to live the question, so we can live into the answer". For those who are in their 30’s, or have encountered that watershed year of 35, I do not have to tell you anything about life being turned upside down, and a great feeling of being lost takes over. Nothing has worked out the way you expected . All your plans have gone askew, you are not where you wanted to be. You are not in the place others expected you to be. You are not who you thought you would be at this time. The things of life are so up in the air, so uncertain. There seems to be no real order, only questions about the chaos. Even if the outside looks good, the insides are the very opposite. I now firmly believe, the better we show ourselves to be on the outside, the more messed up we are on the inside. What is worse, we will do everything in our power to defend , and protect the illusion. The illusion that is ours, our family, our parish, our church, our country, and our world. In each case, we pay a terrible price. Look at the cost, in human and monetary terms, the defense of sexual misconduct has wrecked on individuals, families, and church. There is that saying, which we have adopted from AA, " We are as sick, as our deepest secrets". How true that is. The opposite is honesty. Honesty is progressive. Thank The Good God for that. It is that fearsome gift, honesty, which will enable each one of us to journey from illusion, into who we are in the unconditioned love of our God. Yes, a fearsome journey, yet we can be assured that nothing will be revealed to us, that God and we, cannot take care of. Sometimes I have to remind our God , " you have more faith in me than I have in myself right now, so you may want to ease up, just a little". In some cases, I have to say, "a lot". That is an honest prayer, as it comes from the gut. Gut prayer always works. Why? We are being real, and Reality always responds to us in our deepest reality.

There is one person who, over the years, has enabled me to grow, very slowly I may add, into gut honesty, that person is Henri Nowen. So, at this stage, as I am dealing with a multiple of 7, it is time for me to reread again, “Reaching Out ". I first read this book in 2006. I have been reading it over the years. In the hard, difficult, and challenging times, it has been a daily read. Nowen writes, as nobody else does, about the sacrament of the human condition and all that entails. In all that is authentically human, God, The Divine Presence, is perfectly hidden and perfectly revealed. He is so honest about being a spiritual being enfleshed in the human condition. He is, for me, a prophet of hope. He is, for me, a great teacher. He has lead me, and continues to lead me, by the sharing of his faith journey, to embrace my faith journey, just as it is. A faith journey with it's valleys and mountaintops. A journey replete with times of hope and despair. A journey into great loneliness, and a deepening happiness. A faith journey with its times of great fear, leading to a deepening of faith. He has given me the permission, which I always sought, to be who I really am. Honesty, I have found, is the stepping stone leading to a freedom and a happiness beyond imagination.

In the foreword, he writes the following; "the quest for an authentic Christian spirituality is worth the effort and the pain, since in the midst of this quest we can find signs offering hope, courage, and confidence". Those signs are to be found in each and every life. These signs are there for you and I, to be found . WE are always being offered, what we need, not what we want. Sources of hope, courage, and confidence are our daily bread. This ‘daily bead’ is the GUARANTEE of a Loving, merciful and caring God. It is when we stop reacting to life, and begin to respond to what is our reality, we begin to see life as it really is. We all need that time, a time that must be claimed, which will enable us to slow down and allow our souls to catch up with us. In this place, a peace, a joy, a happiness is awaiting those with the courage to do so. Merton says, “it takes tremendous courage to be still”. It takes great force of will to say to oneself, and mean it, “I am a human being, NOT a human doer".

This Spiritual journey stuff is tough work. Thank God it is His doing and not ours. It is a life we fall deeper into, the more we fall down.!!!!!!

Never Too Young...Never Too Old...To be Taught

2010-08-01T21:03:00.000-07:00

I was finishing up a hike in Steamboat Springs. There is a great feeling that comes with being able to see the trailhead, it is even better (the journey) down-hill. As I was coming down the trail, enjoying the last part of a very enjoyable hike, I heard the cry of someone who was not having a good day. I came around a bend, standing there was a young mother looking down the incline. She said " My son is not able to ride his bike up the hill, and he is really upset". Her daughter was pushing her bike up the hill, and seemed relaxed about it. It was very different with her brother. He did not look like a very happy camper, as he pushed his bike up the incline. He was a really upset young boy, and was not ready to listen to, or accept, his mother's words of understanding and support. She was so positive.
On the other hand, his body language was loud and clear: “I am not listening to you, I am not paying attention to you, just leave me alone.” How often have we, as adults , found ourselves in the same boat? Thank the good Lord, it is not the Titanic! For some very unfortunates, it is.

I finished up my hike, but I was not finished with the encounter, with what had happened back on the trail. I knew there was a lesson to be learned. I waited for it to surface. Whatever is REAL, for you and I, reveals to us some aspect of the spiritual. In all that is real, is perfectly hidden, and perfectly revealed, the Divine Presence, our God. Remember that old axiom; " every picture tells a story" ? Well, today we are told, and have to be continually reminded, all reality is the ongoing revelation of God. That is the meaning of the
expression, 'the sacrament of the present moment'. So what has surfaced so far, what gift has come from that meeting on that hike, on that particular trail?

Well as you know, I like to compare our spiritual journey to a hike.
( Read the blog from this time last year). On the hike of life, we find out what it really means to be spiritual beings, enwrapped in the oh-so human condition. On an ongoing, daily basis, we have to continue to learn, to be taught, how to not just exist, not to just survive, but live fully, this human journey we call life.

That morning I began to hike a new trail. Yet, what I encountered was the same, eternal struggle that is met in every human endeavor. If it is an authentic human event, the action of a knowing mind and a consenting will, then it involves both the human and the divine. That is why every, and I really mean every person, place, event, action, is my coming face to face with a new revelation of who my God is for me. Yes, our God is ever new, and at the same time so ancient. Here, is a good time to reflect on the famous words of St, Augustine, "O, Beauty, ever ancient, ever new". These can be our words as well, as we live out each and every new moment in a creation that is ever ancient and ever new. From all I have read and been told, this world of ours has been in existence for billions of years. (This week I overhead a park ranger describe what happened 700 million years ago to give us what we have today.) Into this ancient environment we are released to discover the very ancient, and the ever new. We are asked to live a fruitful life in a time and place that never was and never will be again. Each step is a unique step. Each life is a life destined by God, to be unique. The more unique we have the courage to live our lives the more the uniqueness of our God is revealed to all creation. God is not threatened by uniqueness. We are . We want conformity to expectations, so we will not be threatened by sudden newness. God always appears in the most unexpected places, and in the most surprising of people. (God as a vulnerable baby? God betrayed, broken, bruised, beaten.) God is not threatened by seeming loss. He turns all of our so called temporal losses into eternal gains.

For that young boy he came face to face with his limitations. He had to deal with what he was unable to do right now. As I told him, in time and with practice, he will conquer that hill. Not the next day nor the next week. It will happen on the condition he plays his part. I pointed out to the young mother, this was a teachable moment on what it means to be human. She can gift her child with a sense of healthy shame, I am human, I am limited. How many of us were never taught that lesson? We had to learn it the hard way. Yet there are so many in denial. We are the ones who want to be perfect. This is a physical impossibility for us humans. This is not defeat. This is not loss. This is us being offered the opportunity to accept, in freedom, our limitations. The result? We now have a real, Savior God. We also are freed from the burden of perfectionisn. We are freed from the bondage of the false self. So then we are given the gift of being able to embrace our called faults, failings, disappointments. We are now lead to the great freedom of being able to live a life of honesty. This is not the end. This leads to a beginning, on the hike, that is ever ancient, ever new. This, of necessity will enable us, will empower us, to claim our belovedness on a new, and ever deepening level.

Thomas Merton has this to say in his book "No Man Is An Island”,
" We must accept the fact that we are not what we would like to be. We must cast off our false, exterior self like the cheap and showy garment that it is. We must find our real self, in all its elemental poverty but also in its very great and very simple dignity; created to be a child of God, capable of loving with something of God's own sincerity and His unselfishness".

Blessings.....Three Gifts...

2010-07-25T21:01:00.001-07:00

Now that I travel on real long trips, I have to do a great deal of reading, and research. I will first come up with the general direction of where I would like to go. Taking into account the information gathered, I will then get down to the specifics of the proposed journey. This year I even bought a book on the great Northwest, and promptly left home,..without it. Oh, these senior moments !!!!!. Then on the other hand am I not blessed to have lived long enough to have what is necessary to get away with that..."another senior moment"! When I was younger and asked for a room key, to replace the one I lost, or left in the room, I got dirty looks. Now, thank
the good Lord, I get knowing smiles, or in some cases sympathetic words. Being a part time senile senior sure makes life, to say the least, exciting and never dull. Sorry, I digress.

When I get to a specific stop, I immediately head for the Visitor's Center. Some centers are wonderful in the way you are treated. There is a great sense of hospitality and welcome. You are given the impression they are excited to see you, and are anxious to help make your stay enjoyable. I find myself looking forward to my stay with an added excitement. That is not true in every case though. Other centers lack that intangible. You come away with the feeling that the particular person, who was there to help you, sees life as a deep burden. To add to their burden, is your presence and questions. Is not that the same feeling one gets, as one seeks information and direction from many church offices.

Those helpful individuals at the Visitor’s Center are more than happy to share their experience of an encounter in a particular place. They will share the last time they saw a wolf, bear, elk, moose, and where the encounter happened. They will share with you their experience of a hike. They have tips on where to go, and what to expect. I always want to know if there are switchbacks. From that encounter I always leave with a greater sense of excitement and confidence. So when I look at hiking this way, I can say, my spiritual journey, is a hike. Just as I have to my reading and research for my intended hike, so must I do for my spiritual journey. I will have to listen to the experiences of those who have made the journey before me, so I will be better prepared for the challenges that lie ahead. I will read the books written by those who have gone before in which the beauty, and the trials of the trail are described. Reading and research can only do so much, it is only in the lived moment , in the existential moment, does The Mystery of the time, place, and space really reach us. We are so often stopped in our tracts, and are able to join with St.Peter in saying: "How good it is that we are here".

One of my favorite guides for my everyday hike is, Fr Ronald Rolheiser. I have just acquired his book "Against An Infinite Horizon", I see this book as a source of knowledge, leading to a deeper understanding of the hike, I am called to make every day, along the trail shrouded in the mist of mystery. I was delighted to read the following, and I use it to further develop what was introduced last week. Last week, I made a real big mistake. In speaking about mutual blessings I left out the blessings that couples who are in a relationship need to bestow on one another. That was a real big mistake, and I am sorry. I honestly believe that the mutual blessing of those in relationship will bring an ever deepening sense of serenity, peace, joy and love. How can this happen, you may well say?

Here is what Fr. Ronald has to say:"...To bless someone is to speak well of them. But this implies a special form of "speaking well". To bless someone is, through some word, gesture, or ritual, to make that person aware of three things:
(1) the goodness of the original creation where, after making the earth and humans, God said that it was "good, very good";
(2) that God experiences the same delight and pleasure in him or her that God experienced with Jesus at His baptism when he said " This is my beloved child in whom I take delight”, and
(3) that we, who are giving the blessing, recognize that goodness and take delight in that person."

What a gift our God has given to us. We can bless and in that blessing we speak a deeper truth. What is stopping us from filling up in each person’s life, that for which we ache, and search for. To be blessed, to know we are the Beloved. "To be unblessed is to be bleeding in a very deep place" (Fr, Ronald) We can really make a difference in the lives of those whom our God places in our life so we can be to them, His instrument of blessing. What faith our God has in us, mortal humans, in whom is hidden, MYSTERY.