We have been offered and accepted a new spirit for the new life that is now ours. One person told me she lost a husband and a son. Her prayer is for the spirit she needs to be a woman of her age, who has lost a husband and a son. Her prayer is not the prayer of a woman who is blessed with a husband and a son, and maybe grandchildren.
The prayer of a newly married couple is a prayer for the spirit they need to face the challenges of the first years of married life. They have to struggle through the process "form, storm, norm and perform". They will have to accept the fact that their relationship is always part of an ongoing process. The spirit requested by a couple that are five years together is not that of a couple who have been married for 15, 20 or more years.
The prayer of a couple who has lost a child or children is not the prayer of a couple who has a child or children. The prayer of a widow or widower is for a unique spirit for their unique lifestyle. The prayer of a blended family is also a unique prayer as they pray for the spirit to strengthen them. To strengthen them as they have to struggle with the ongoing process of "form, storm, norm and perform". This struggle is always going to be at an everdeepening level.
God gives us His particular grace in each of our unique situations. The different stages of the single life also demand a unique prayer for a unique spiritual experience. The emptiness, the aloneness of the single life must be recognized and owned. When this does not happen, we can so easily lose our way and end up in places we would prefer to avoid.
God's love for us is particular, passionate and persistent. His love is always being offered, we must welcome that Creative Love into the place of our woundedness, into the place of our brokenness, into our aloneness. We have been given the power to invite and allow God to transform what is in the painful place of loneliness into the consoling presence of solitude.
Thomas Merton had the following to say, "Surrender your poverty and acknowledge your nothingness to the Lord. Whether you understand it or not, God loves you, His presence in you, lives in you, dwells in you, calls you, saves you and offers you an understanding and compassion which are like nothing you have ever found in a book or heard in a sermon."
What we also have to remind ourselves that we have been given the power, the free-will, to deny ourselves hope and consolation. What a double-edged sword freedom is! We must remind ourselves again and again that we have to make a choice between life and death, hope and despair, fear and faith. The choice is an every moment choice, it is here and now.
All this leads us to the opening prayer of Easter Sunday liturgy when we prayed, "Send Your Spirit, into our lives with the power of a mighty wind, by the flame of Your wisdom open the horizons of our minds. Loosen our tongues to sing Your praise beyond the farthest reach, for without Your Spirit humankind could never raise its voice in words of peace or announce the truth that Jesus is Lord."
The prayer of Pentecost is asking the Spirit to be sent into our lives. It is an invitation. Because God, out of love, respects our free-will. He, like the great lover He is, awaits our invitation. We must know who is it that we are inviting. Why the invitation is being offered. What we are inviting Him to do. He is God, all-powerfull, all-knowing and all-loving. These are just some of His qualities. One saint encourages and paraphrasing here, when we pray to God, we pray for big stuff so as not to insult His dignity.
We then ask Him for help in the places we are helpless. We ask Him to come and reveal love in the places we ourselves can find no love and are powerless to love. We ask for His loving compassionate wisdom to understand how it is He can make all things work together. He makes all things work together, so we who believe, can be brought to joy and hope. We are asking for a new way of acting so we can be strengthened to commit ourselves to a new way of thinking. We pray that we may be strengthened to see that our lives are reflecting all that happened to Jesus Christ as He was, so we are. We are now His living presence. A living presence that comes to us only when we too have surrendered, died and allowed a new spirit to live within us. This then is a new creation, that is happening and will continue to evolve because we are graced. It will continue as long as we allow ourselves to be loved. The transformation will continue until one day, we too can say with St. Paul, "I live, no not I, it is Christ who lives within me". The dream of The Dreamer IS being realized. We are everdeepening our participation in that dream, but there is a choice to be made. The choice is being made right now.
The following prayer is from The Liturgy of the Hours,
Breath on me, breath of God,
Fill me with life anew,
That I may love the things you love,
and do what you would do.
Breath on me, breath of God,
Until my heart is pure,
Until with you I have one will,
To live and to endure.
Breath on me, breath of God,
My soul with grace refined,
Until this earthly part of me,
Glows with your fire devine.
Breath on me, breath of God,
So I shall never die,
But live with you the perfect life,
In Your eternity.
The dreamer’s journey continues…
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Who?....Why?....What?....
Here are three questions that help define this new spirit in our lives so we can experience an ever-new creation within us:
1) Who is it that we are inviting?
2) Why are we inviting this Spirit?
3) What are we inviting this Spirit to do?
Who is it that we are inviting? We must be consciously aware that we are inviting the power of love into our lives. It is a love that, like all healthy love, and of it's essence created. It is, a Creative Love, bringing a oneness into a world of chaos, disunity and disharmony. It is a Creative Love that makes all things work together for good. And, I mean here, ALL THINGS, not just the things we are comfortable with! Like healthy love, it transforms us, ever so slowly, ever so gently into an ever-renewing creation. This is the love that we are invited to sow in the place where we see no love right now.
The result is what? Where before there was anger toward oneself, now there is compassion. Where before, there was fear, now there is freedom of living life as a beloved son/daughter. Where there were hatred and violence, there is slowly growing a shy, quiet flower of peace. Where there was death, new life has appeared. A life full of energy, enthusiasm and hope. A life that is now able to cry out in a very loud, exalted, big voice -- "YES."
Our lenses are now being changed and refined. We are now able to see life and all of creation through the lens of love. I like the following from Anam Cara:
"To the loving eye, everything is real. This art of love is neither sentimental nor naive. Such love it is the greatest criterion of truth, celebration, and reality. Kathleen Raine, Scottish poet, says that unless you see a thing 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 eye can even coax pain, hurt, and violence toward transfiguration and renewal. The loving eye is bright because it is autonomous and free. You can look lovingly upon anything. The loving vision does not become entangled in the agenda of Power, Seduction, Opposition, or 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 sees 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 your life secretly holds."
Why are we inviting this Spirit? Why are we inviting this power of strength and transformation? We have come to realize from our personal encounter with the power of death and destruction in all its forms that left to ourselves, we are powerless. We need a power, a spirit, greater than we are, so we will not be suckered into fatalism, lack of confidence and despair. We have come to accept what the scripture says and what has become so true for us, "Of ourselves we can do nothing, but we can do all things in Him who strengthens us."
Yes, we need a Savior. We can no longer survive as an “I,” it must be a “We.” Lately, I have been telling people, including myself, that unless we make it, a “we“ effort, then we will “wee-wee” on ourselves and blame God and others!
What are we inviting this Spirit to do? To open our eyes, so we can see life where seemingly there is none. To open our eyes to the new life that is now emerging, where outwardly we see only loss and death. To strengthen our faith that in this place of loss and death, a new and deeper connection is evolving within ourselves, with others, with humanity, and all of creation. The preface of the funeral Mass stands as a reminder of our evolution -- "Death is not an end, death is a beginning."
All of our new understanding we now carry into ordinary time. Maybe it is wise to come up with something to usher us into mystery-laden time, which is not really ordinary.
The dreamer’s journey continues…
1) Who is it that we are inviting?
2) Why are we inviting this Spirit?
3) What are we inviting this Spirit to do?
Who is it that we are inviting? We must be consciously aware that we are inviting the power of love into our lives. It is a love that, like all healthy love, and of it's essence created. It is, a Creative Love, bringing a oneness into a world of chaos, disunity and disharmony. It is a Creative Love that makes all things work together for good. And, I mean here, ALL THINGS, not just the things we are comfortable with! Like healthy love, it transforms us, ever so slowly, ever so gently into an ever-renewing creation. This is the love that we are invited to sow in the place where we see no love right now.
The result is what? Where before there was anger toward oneself, now there is compassion. Where before, there was fear, now there is freedom of living life as a beloved son/daughter. Where there were hatred and violence, there is slowly growing a shy, quiet flower of peace. Where there was death, new life has appeared. A life full of energy, enthusiasm and hope. A life that is now able to cry out in a very loud, exalted, big voice -- "YES."
Our lenses are now being changed and refined. We are now able to see life and all of creation through the lens of love. I like the following from Anam Cara:
"To the loving eye, everything is real. This art of love is neither sentimental nor naive. Such love it is the greatest criterion of truth, celebration, and reality. Kathleen Raine, Scottish poet, says that unless you see a thing 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 eye can even coax pain, hurt, and violence toward transfiguration and renewal. The loving eye is bright because it is autonomous and free. You can look lovingly upon anything. The loving vision does not become entangled in the agenda of Power, Seduction, Opposition, or 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 sees 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 your life secretly holds."
Why are we inviting this Spirit? Why are we inviting this power of strength and transformation? We have come to realize from our personal encounter with the power of death and destruction in all its forms that left to ourselves, we are powerless. We need a power, a spirit, greater than we are, so we will not be suckered into fatalism, lack of confidence and despair. We have come to accept what the scripture says and what has become so true for us, "Of ourselves we can do nothing, but we can do all things in Him who strengthens us."
Yes, we need a Savior. We can no longer survive as an “I,” it must be a “We.” Lately, I have been telling people, including myself, that unless we make it, a “we“ effort, then we will “wee-wee” on ourselves and blame God and others!
What are we inviting this Spirit to do? To open our eyes, so we can see life where seemingly there is none. To open our eyes to the new life that is now emerging, where outwardly we see only loss and death. To strengthen our faith that in this place of loss and death, a new and deeper connection is evolving within ourselves, with others, with humanity, and all of creation. The preface of the funeral Mass stands as a reminder of our evolution -- "Death is not an end, death is a beginning."
All of our new understanding we now carry into ordinary time. Maybe it is wise to come up with something to usher us into mystery-laden time, which is not really ordinary.
The dreamer’s journey continues…
Thursday, June 11, 2009
The Spirit Offered
As we have seen, The All Powerful One appeared as The Vulnerable One -- a baby. A baby cannot do anything for itself. It is the only young, in all creation who has no instinct for survival. So the All Powerful God who was so for His people, is now appearing to His people as powerless. On His journey, He always reached out to the powerless and the outcast. Eventually, He ended up an apparent failure. Crucified. The death of a runaway slave. This broken, bruised, beaten and betrayed body is Emmanuel -- God with us.
The broken, bruised, beaten, betrayed one did not remain so. Through the power of the spirit He became the Risen Christ. The Risen Christ would depart so the same Holy Spirit who raised Jesus from the disaster of His death is the same Spirit that will be sent in his stead. The same Spirit who brought order to the initial chaos of the first creation is the One who is to come to bring order to the new creation of a new people, and a new world. A new people, who are the chosen people of the new covenant of grace. We are that people, blessed, broken and given, to continue the mission of the ministry of Jesus Christ. We are called to be co-creators of a more just society. A society that can evolve when we are guided by the Spirit of Justice. We are called to be good stewards of creation in which The Creator God perfectly hidden and perfectly revealed. This challenging job of dignity is ours, yet we do not or ever will face this challenge alone. We will always have this Spirit of Jesus Christ.
As He was - so we are - through the power of the Spirit.
The following is a prayer by Thomas Merton, which I have given to so many people over the years:
Dear God,
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually
Doing So.
But, I believe this,
I believe that the desire to please you does
in fact please you.
I hope I have that desire in everything I do.
I hope I never do anything apart
from that desire.
And I know that if I do this
you will lead me by the right road
so I may know nothing about it at the time.
Therefore, I will trust you
ALWAYS.
For though I may seem to be lost,
and in the shadow of death,
I will not be afraid because I know you will never leave me to face my troubles all alone.
How do we make room for this transforming new life-giving Spirit? We need do nothing – except -- let go of what is harmful, what is toxic, what is death-dealing, what is victimizing us. [May I remind you of the great need to write and always burn as has been suggested before.] We must let them ascend as the wounds on the risen body of our Brother Jesus Christ. Let them ascend into Heaven so as to create a space to be filled with a presence of the Holy Spirit, the re-newing, the transforming power of God. Because of this, a new way of life, a new way of living is now opening up right before our very eyes. We are not thinking our way, we are actively cooperating with life-giving spirit to allow God's dream for us to become a reality. "Behold, I make all things new." This Holy Spirit, this power of love in our lives, puts the "get up and go" back in our lives where our get up and go has gone – gone -- gone.
The dreamer’s journey continues…
The broken, bruised, beaten, betrayed one did not remain so. Through the power of the spirit He became the Risen Christ. The Risen Christ would depart so the same Holy Spirit who raised Jesus from the disaster of His death is the same Spirit that will be sent in his stead. The same Spirit who brought order to the initial chaos of the first creation is the One who is to come to bring order to the new creation of a new people, and a new world. A new people, who are the chosen people of the new covenant of grace. We are that people, blessed, broken and given, to continue the mission of the ministry of Jesus Christ. We are called to be co-creators of a more just society. A society that can evolve when we are guided by the Spirit of Justice. We are called to be good stewards of creation in which The Creator God perfectly hidden and perfectly revealed. This challenging job of dignity is ours, yet we do not or ever will face this challenge alone. We will always have this Spirit of Jesus Christ.
As He was - so we are - through the power of the Spirit.
The following is a prayer by Thomas Merton, which I have given to so many people over the years:
Dear God,
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually
Doing So.
But, I believe this,
I believe that the desire to please you does
in fact please you.
I hope I have that desire in everything I do.
I hope I never do anything apart
from that desire.
And I know that if I do this
you will lead me by the right road
so I may know nothing about it at the time.
Therefore, I will trust you
ALWAYS.
For though I may seem to be lost,
and in the shadow of death,
I will not be afraid because I know you will never leave me to face my troubles all alone.
How do we make room for this transforming new life-giving Spirit? We need do nothing – except -- let go of what is harmful, what is toxic, what is death-dealing, what is victimizing us. [May I remind you of the great need to write and always burn as has been suggested before.] We must let them ascend as the wounds on the risen body of our Brother Jesus Christ. Let them ascend into Heaven so as to create a space to be filled with a presence of the Holy Spirit, the re-newing, the transforming power of God. Because of this, a new way of life, a new way of living is now opening up right before our very eyes. We are not thinking our way, we are actively cooperating with life-giving spirit to allow God's dream for us to become a reality. "Behold, I make all things new." This Holy Spirit, this power of love in our lives, puts the "get up and go" back in our lives where our get up and go has gone – gone -- gone.
The dreamer’s journey continues…
Friday, June 5, 2009
God For......God With.....God Within
Every ending is a beginning. Some endings arrive with a bang, others in a simple, calm whimper. Some beginnings ignite in a blaze of glory, other beginnings -- like the dawn of each day -- occur in a gentle, almost undetectable way. The Pascal/Ascension cycle, that 90-day procession, reaches its long-awaited climax. There in the presence of a strong, driving wind, in the appearance of tongues of fire, is a theophany -- an appearance of God – as a breathing of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles.
This is reminiscent of the first creation when God breathes life into the form He had created from the earth. In this action, man received life. The risen Christ breathes the Holy Spirit on the frightened, huddled disciples. A new creation is born. This new creation is public, not private. It is for all of humankind. It is meant to transform all creation. There is now a newness to humankind and an evolving order. The old has now passed away and a new creation is in progress. A creation that can be -- and was -- opposed.
This new creation can never be prevented from reaching its intended destiny. We, as human beings, have been given great dignity as co-creators with God of this new creation. How do we make it personal? How can we connect with our daily living? How do we connect with the reality of God sending the Holy Spirit to enter, vivify and empower these disciples? Huddled in fear, they none-the-less went forth and became the living presence of Jesus Christ. They were given the life of the Spirit to live life fully free from fear.
God for...
To recap the Jesus of history, He has died and then risen as the Christ of God, the Christ of Faith. He has ascended, departed, no longer a physical presence. He has departed to Heaven, wounds and all. In the Old Testament, we had a God of power. Yahweh evolved from one of the many gods to Number One among those many gods. He was a God who was for His people and had a power to defend and protect them. To put it in today's language, Yahweh was so powerful, so strong, "you did not mess with His people." God proved it over and over. He was always there for His people. Even when His people deserted Him and His ways of living, He did not desert them. He was always the Good Shepherd who cared for His flock, even when they strayed. As it was, so it is.
God with...
In the New Testament, there is a change. God now becomes more personal. God now is known as a God "with His people," Emmanuel. He becomes flesh, enmeshed in our humanity. He is "likened to us in all things, except sin." He dies to show His love for each one of us and all sinners. He comes to share in everything we as human beings are asked to endure. He comes to be our foundational concept of God. This would enable us to move from the transcendent other-worldly presence of God beyond, to the imminent God with us. Mankind can now believe God is always with them and beside them.
As it was, so it is.
He is the God that no matter where humankind goes or where humankind finds itself, this God has gone before them, ready to welcome them wherever they tread. He is a God who definitely is with His people. As a God with us, He then tells us something really startling. He tells us it's better that He leaves so that He can become the God within us, through the Spirit, the new Advocate, whom He will send when He leaves.
As it was, so it is.
God within...
He can only be a God within when we make room for Him. As we look at history, salvation history, we see that God seemed to have serious trouble with finding a home, a place to dwell. It took Him time to have the Ark of the Covenant built as His dwelling place. Then He had a temple built. That did not turn out to be such a safe home -- it was destroyed. When He became human to dwell among us, it was not only difficult, but actually impossible, to find a human dwelling place in which to be born. We are told in scripture -- by Jesus Himself -- that the God-man had no place to lay His head. He was, however, invited to the home of Martha, Mary and Lazarus. These invitations to meals, He accepted. God has this tremendous love for you and me. He awaits our invitation. He asks our permission to come and eat with us. He asks for our permission to confer, to bestow the gift of His life-giving spirit when it is we who depend on Him for our very existence. What a mysterious love affair this is! This love affair is modeled for us in God's inner life. God's inner life is the Father, Son and Holy Spirit living as one, yet dwelling within each one of us. This is the wonder-full mystery that we are celebrating this weekend. As we reflect on the mystery of the Holy Trinity we can break it down in the following way:
God For... is our Father
God With... is our Savior Jesus Christ
God Within... is the Holy Spirit dwelling within each one of us
The dreamer’s journey continues…
This is reminiscent of the first creation when God breathes life into the form He had created from the earth. In this action, man received life. The risen Christ breathes the Holy Spirit on the frightened, huddled disciples. A new creation is born. This new creation is public, not private. It is for all of humankind. It is meant to transform all creation. There is now a newness to humankind and an evolving order. The old has now passed away and a new creation is in progress. A creation that can be -- and was -- opposed.
This new creation can never be prevented from reaching its intended destiny. We, as human beings, have been given great dignity as co-creators with God of this new creation. How do we make it personal? How can we connect with our daily living? How do we connect with the reality of God sending the Holy Spirit to enter, vivify and empower these disciples? Huddled in fear, they none-the-less went forth and became the living presence of Jesus Christ. They were given the life of the Spirit to live life fully free from fear.
God for...
To recap the Jesus of history, He has died and then risen as the Christ of God, the Christ of Faith. He has ascended, departed, no longer a physical presence. He has departed to Heaven, wounds and all. In the Old Testament, we had a God of power. Yahweh evolved from one of the many gods to Number One among those many gods. He was a God who was for His people and had a power to defend and protect them. To put it in today's language, Yahweh was so powerful, so strong, "you did not mess with His people." God proved it over and over. He was always there for His people. Even when His people deserted Him and His ways of living, He did not desert them. He was always the Good Shepherd who cared for His flock, even when they strayed. As it was, so it is.
God with...
In the New Testament, there is a change. God now becomes more personal. God now is known as a God "with His people," Emmanuel. He becomes flesh, enmeshed in our humanity. He is "likened to us in all things, except sin." He dies to show His love for each one of us and all sinners. He comes to share in everything we as human beings are asked to endure. He comes to be our foundational concept of God. This would enable us to move from the transcendent other-worldly presence of God beyond, to the imminent God with us. Mankind can now believe God is always with them and beside them.
As it was, so it is.
He is the God that no matter where humankind goes or where humankind finds itself, this God has gone before them, ready to welcome them wherever they tread. He is a God who definitely is with His people. As a God with us, He then tells us something really startling. He tells us it's better that He leaves so that He can become the God within us, through the Spirit, the new Advocate, whom He will send when He leaves.
As it was, so it is.
God within...
He can only be a God within when we make room for Him. As we look at history, salvation history, we see that God seemed to have serious trouble with finding a home, a place to dwell. It took Him time to have the Ark of the Covenant built as His dwelling place. Then He had a temple built. That did not turn out to be such a safe home -- it was destroyed. When He became human to dwell among us, it was not only difficult, but actually impossible, to find a human dwelling place in which to be born. We are told in scripture -- by Jesus Himself -- that the God-man had no place to lay His head. He was, however, invited to the home of Martha, Mary and Lazarus. These invitations to meals, He accepted. God has this tremendous love for you and me. He awaits our invitation. He asks our permission to come and eat with us. He asks for our permission to confer, to bestow the gift of His life-giving spirit when it is we who depend on Him for our very existence. What a mysterious love affair this is! This love affair is modeled for us in God's inner life. God's inner life is the Father, Son and Holy Spirit living as one, yet dwelling within each one of us. This is the wonder-full mystery that we are celebrating this weekend. As we reflect on the mystery of the Holy Trinity we can break it down in the following way:
God For... is our Father
God With... is our Savior Jesus Christ
God Within... is the Holy Spirit dwelling within each one of us
The dreamer’s journey continues…
Saturday, May 30, 2009
The Floatation Mat of Faith
Each season brings with it, its bounty, its own gifts. We are heading into summer, where "living is easy." What are the gifts of summer we can look at through the eyes of wonder, through the x-ray eye of faith? What are the sacraments, what are the sacred events that allow us to encounter God's presence? What has become so familiar to us that they have lost their deeper meaning, their inner mystery, their wonder-full beauty? What are the sacraments of summer?
In Arizona, we love to swim. When I came to Arizona I discovered a wonderful invention -- the floatation mat. On it, you can lie, relax and soak up the rays of the sun (of course you haveput on at least an SPF 30 protection). With that comes a great feeling of being supported as you gently move around the pool.
Many times over the years, I have recommended the use of the flotation mat to any number of people. I recommend it to people who find it difficult to rest, relax and let go of life for a time. To others, who have difficulty with surrendering, trusting God, this too is recommended. What better way to imagine God as the mat? Just as you can trust the mat to support you, you can trust God's support while you relax. You can train yourself, allow yourself to just be, just chill, to live in this moment -- all the while being supported.
That is the way it is with us and God. In faith, we see that He is our mat. Always there with His love, His care, His persevering faithful love. When we fight Him -- as we do on a regular basis -- like the mat, He does not move. We can slip off the mat, but the mat is there for us to reconnect with again. Yet, we can make it an act of faith when we connect a simple act of gliding on a flotation mat to our willingness to surrender.
Our willingness to surrender our lives unto Him. It is He who has the power to support us and transform us as well. This gives new meaning to the scripture passage, "In Him we live and we move and we have our being."
When we move to the ocean, that mat can be used in two ways. We can lie on the mat and rock slowly and gently to the gentle movement of the waves. The relentless movement of the ocean seems to still the restless spirit within us.
The ocean can change just as life changes. When the waves grow from little to big, then our mat enables us to ride the rough waves. What a great feeling it is to move at speed, as we ride the waves and come safely to the shore. To do what? Well, to go out again and again. We have the security within each of us knowing that the mat will bring us safely back to shore. As long as we hang on, this will happen. In the rough waves of life, we have the safety of the mat of faith to carry us safely to the shore, to security and to home.
Our journey continues…
In Arizona, we love to swim. When I came to Arizona I discovered a wonderful invention -- the floatation mat. On it, you can lie, relax and soak up the rays of the sun (of course you haveput on at least an SPF 30 protection). With that comes a great feeling of being supported as you gently move around the pool.
Many times over the years, I have recommended the use of the flotation mat to any number of people. I recommend it to people who find it difficult to rest, relax and let go of life for a time. To others, who have difficulty with surrendering, trusting God, this too is recommended. What better way to imagine God as the mat? Just as you can trust the mat to support you, you can trust God's support while you relax. You can train yourself, allow yourself to just be, just chill, to live in this moment -- all the while being supported.
That is the way it is with us and God. In faith, we see that He is our mat. Always there with His love, His care, His persevering faithful love. When we fight Him -- as we do on a regular basis -- like the mat, He does not move. We can slip off the mat, but the mat is there for us to reconnect with again. Yet, we can make it an act of faith when we connect a simple act of gliding on a flotation mat to our willingness to surrender.
Our willingness to surrender our lives unto Him. It is He who has the power to support us and transform us as well. This gives new meaning to the scripture passage, "In Him we live and we move and we have our being."
When we move to the ocean, that mat can be used in two ways. We can lie on the mat and rock slowly and gently to the gentle movement of the waves. The relentless movement of the ocean seems to still the restless spirit within us.
The ocean can change just as life changes. When the waves grow from little to big, then our mat enables us to ride the rough waves. What a great feeling it is to move at speed, as we ride the waves and come safely to the shore. To do what? Well, to go out again and again. We have the security within each of us knowing that the mat will bring us safely back to shore. As long as we hang on, this will happen. In the rough waves of life, we have the safety of the mat of faith to carry us safely to the shore, to security and to home.
Our journey continues…
Friday, May 22, 2009
Why Open Your Eyes?
"The eye is the body’s lamp. If your eyes are good, your body will be filled with light: if your eyes are bad, your body will be in darkness. And, if your light is darkness, how deep will the darkness be?" Matthew 6:22:23.
"Beginning in the eye, when it opens, is like the dawn breaking in the night. When it opens, and new world is there....yet, in a wonderful way, the eye makes us wonder at the mystery and otherness of everything outside us. When you really gaze at something, you bring it inside of you...when you look deeply at something, it becomes part of you...to look at something that can gaze back at you, or that has a reserve and depth, can heal your eyes and deepen your sense of vision...An interesting question you ask yourself at night is, ‘What did I really see today?’ You could be surprised at what you did not see...The human eye is always selecting what it wants to see and also evading what it does not want to see...It is a startling truth that how you see and what you see determines how and who you will be...To recognize how you see things can bring you self-knowledge and enable you to glimpse the wonderful treasures your life secretly holds." Anam Cara
Why have I selected the above quotations? It is to emphasize the fact that our whole life is sacred, our whole life is mysterious. That is why the last writing effort ended with a prayer which asks for the gift of sight. We need these x-ray eyes of faith to see what is hidden and revealed in all we see, hear and do.
"All of creation is charged with the wonder of God," according to Hopkins. All is mystery, all is Holy, that is what we must be reminded of, otherwise our lives will be dull, lifeless, death-dealing and boring.
I love the following story which I first heard on a Richard Rohr tape. "There was a researcher who placed a walleyed pike into a fake glass tank. He then placed minnows into the tank. The pike gobbled up the little minnows. After a time, the researcher changed the configuration of the tank. He placed the glass wall in the tank. He then placed the minnows behind the glass wall. The pike made effort after effort to get at the fish. Each time, all he was able to do was bump up against the wall. That went on for some time. Eventually, the researcher removed the glass wall, the minnow swam all around the pike. It starved to death with food all around it."
This is a heart-wrenching story. This is the life story of more people than we can ever imagine. We must be reminded that "our daily bread" -- like the minnows -- is always around us, surrounding us. Whether the food is claimed or not, is our decision made one moment at a time. Our daily bread is always around us, but is not there something of that defeated pike in each one of us? We have been disappointed, rejected, betrayed, as we reached to what we thought was food. We were deprived of life-giving sustenance for our bodies, souls, spirit. This is where a radical change has to take place within each one of us, or else, the quotation from the Irish poet Yeats becomes true, "A heart too long neglected a stone becomes." This is victim language and needs a radical change into a survival mentality. This is difficult to achieve, but this radical change can come about one moment at a time. This change comes about as we open our eyes to each moment as a nourishing moment for ourselves and consequently those who share our lives.
Our journey continues…
"Beginning in the eye, when it opens, is like the dawn breaking in the night. When it opens, and new world is there....yet, in a wonderful way, the eye makes us wonder at the mystery and otherness of everything outside us. When you really gaze at something, you bring it inside of you...when you look deeply at something, it becomes part of you...to look at something that can gaze back at you, or that has a reserve and depth, can heal your eyes and deepen your sense of vision...An interesting question you ask yourself at night is, ‘What did I really see today?’ You could be surprised at what you did not see...The human eye is always selecting what it wants to see and also evading what it does not want to see...It is a startling truth that how you see and what you see determines how and who you will be...To recognize how you see things can bring you self-knowledge and enable you to glimpse the wonderful treasures your life secretly holds." Anam Cara
Why have I selected the above quotations? It is to emphasize the fact that our whole life is sacred, our whole life is mysterious. That is why the last writing effort ended with a prayer which asks for the gift of sight. We need these x-ray eyes of faith to see what is hidden and revealed in all we see, hear and do.
"All of creation is charged with the wonder of God," according to Hopkins. All is mystery, all is Holy, that is what we must be reminded of, otherwise our lives will be dull, lifeless, death-dealing and boring.
I love the following story which I first heard on a Richard Rohr tape. "There was a researcher who placed a walleyed pike into a fake glass tank. He then placed minnows into the tank. The pike gobbled up the little minnows. After a time, the researcher changed the configuration of the tank. He placed the glass wall in the tank. He then placed the minnows behind the glass wall. The pike made effort after effort to get at the fish. Each time, all he was able to do was bump up against the wall. That went on for some time. Eventually, the researcher removed the glass wall, the minnow swam all around the pike. It starved to death with food all around it."
This is a heart-wrenching story. This is the life story of more people than we can ever imagine. We must be reminded that "our daily bread" -- like the minnows -- is always around us, surrounding us. Whether the food is claimed or not, is our decision made one moment at a time. Our daily bread is always around us, but is not there something of that defeated pike in each one of us? We have been disappointed, rejected, betrayed, as we reached to what we thought was food. We were deprived of life-giving sustenance for our bodies, souls, spirit. This is where a radical change has to take place within each one of us, or else, the quotation from the Irish poet Yeats becomes true, "A heart too long neglected a stone becomes." This is victim language and needs a radical change into a survival mentality. This is difficult to achieve, but this radical change can come about one moment at a time. This change comes about as we open our eyes to each moment as a nourishing moment for ourselves and consequently those who share our lives.
Our journey continues…
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
From the Ordinary, Into the Excitement of the ExtraOrdinary/A Choice
Keeping our focus is really difficult. Coaches and teachers have to be constantly reminding their players and students, to “be focused”, to stay focused. We know the hardest thing we can do is to do what we are actually doing, to be where we are really at without giving away to distractions and mind wandering. Our minds, thoughts, feelings move about so quickly, it is so very difficult to concentrate on what is happening in the here and now. Why is this so important, so necessary? Because without being attentive to where we are at. Without being attentive to what we are doing, who we are present to, we will not be led into a new way of seeing, acting and believing. We will rather say, “our life is boring”, it has no meaning. We will buy into the concept that life is to be survived rather than lived. When we are attentive to where we are at, what we are doing, who we are with, we will be led from the ordinary into the sacred extraordinary. We will be led from seeing life as boring to seeing the hidden reality behind what we are seeing. We are then caught up in the excitement of a life charged with the presence of the divine, God. Yes, God is Emanuel, He is with us forever and ever.
De Chardin, in one of his great quotations tell us, “by reason of creation, and still more reason of the incarnation, there is nothing profane for him/her who knows how to see”. St. Francis of Assisi also tells us, “everything this is, is to be adored”. This leads us to an understanding that all creation is a sacrament. You and I are sacraments. Last week, I wrote of the sacramentality of sexuality, that got some people’s attention! Love obviously is a sacrament, so is a kiss, an embrace. So is light, so is darkness, so is birth, so is death. Shared meals are sacramental, a family vacation, despite the struggles, are sacramental. A sacrament in this sense, is a sacrament with a small “s” as opposed to the Seven Ritual Sacraments, spelled with a capital “S”. I like to think of sacrament with a small “s” as;
Each and every person, place, event, action [all that is real] that brings us in contact with the deeper realities of life, ultimately with Reality itself, that Reality we call God.
This is meant to stir your imagination. Be subversive, seek the person behind the person, do not settle for the profane, the ordinary, when the extraordinary, the mysterious is being offered to you. “What is seen is transitory, what is unseen lasts forever”, so the Scripture says.
Thomas Merton, in Contemplation In a World Action writes the following;
“Imagination is the creative task of making simple, joining things together in such a way that they throw new light on each other and on everything around them. The imagination is a discovering faculty, a faculty for seeing relationships, for seeing meanings that are special and even quite new. The imagination is something which enables us to discover unique present meaning in a given moment of our lives. Without imagination…life can be extremely dull and fruitless.” In other words, life is boring.
My Celtic ancestors believed everything charged with a presence of the divine. The ancient Celts, and, also the pre-Christian Celts had a great belief in the spirit of a place. They believed in the spirit of the trees, birds, fish, animals, all of creation. How similar then is this spirituality with the spirituality of the Native Americans? The late Pope, speaking in Phoenix, shocked a good number of people with the statement, “there was nothing in the spirituality of the Native Americans that contradicted Catholic teachings. So then as we reclaim the sense of reverence for all of creation we will see that this reverence is not only necessary for physical survival, but for a healthy spirituality as well. I would like to suggest the opposite of the sacramental view of life, is to be bored, and to see life as boring. We have the awe-full vision, a wonder-full vision, or we have the bored or indifferent sightless, lifeless vision of reality. We completely miss out from the light giving presence of the sacred.
Jesus tells us He has come, “That we have life and have it to the fullest.” So what has happened to our life of excitement? What has happened to the excitement? What has happened that has caused us to lose our zest for life? Why then do our Eucharist celebrations lack vigor and vitality? What has caused us to see life, and our relationships, through the eyes of indifference and boredom? Why then do we go about with feelings of boredom, masking anger? “Anam Cara” page 64 says, “To the indifferent eye, nothing calls or awakens. Indifference is one of the hallmarks of our times. It is said that indifference is necessary for power; to hold control one has to be successfully indifferent to the needs and vulnerabilities of those under control. Thus indifference calls for a great commitment to non-vision. To ignore things demands incredible mental energy. Without even knowing it, indifference can place you beyond the frontiers of compassion, healing, and love. When you become indifferent, you give all your power away. Your imagination becomes fixated in the limbo of cynicism and despair.”
To help us get a handle on this, we need to stop and develop an understanding of time and the sacrament of the present moment. There is “chronos time” and “kairos time.” Chronos time is clock time. Kairos time are those moments which our God uses to break into our lives as we stop, are still, and listen (a real difficult thing to do). Kairos time is the time when Reality, God, breaks through into our understanding and change is brought about. We are no longer blind, we are beginning to see. Kairos time is actually each and every moment of our daily lives.
We need then the gift of faithful sight. We need the gifts of faith and wonder to see in each and every moment of our existence, the presence of God. The scriptures tell us, “Now is the acceptable time.” There is No Other Way (N-O-W) except in the wonder of this “now” moment to encounter, to meet our God. This Kairos time is a time of intensity. It is a time of mystery. Our full participation in the church’s liturgical calendar and the celebration of its season offers us an opportunity to celebrate, and so intensify, the God presence in each one of us and in every moment of our lives. This participation allows us to celebrate the sacredness of time.
It allows us to celebrate our own individual sacred journey through time even as we celebrate within a community of faith. This is the opposite of being bored.
The paradox is, we always need our individual spiritual journey to be celebrated within the communities journey. Our lives are only boring then when we fail to stop, see, and experience in each moment, each event, each person, as the place of our encounter with the living God. Our whole life then becomes sacramental, our whole life becomes a sacrament. Where there is life, there is God. Where there is love of life, there is God. Let us take the advice of John of the Cross, “Where there is no love, so love, and you will find love,” and life. Where there is no love, no life, no wonder, no awe, no mystery, no wonder, we say there is no God because there is no zest for life. Saint Irenaeus says, “The Glory of God is the human person, man and woman fully alive.”
We have to constantly ask for an ever deepening faith to see all creation as the reality of God. “Heldegard of Bingen” says, “Good People, most royal greening verdancy, rooted in the sun, you shine with radiant light. In this circle of earthly existence you shine so finely, it surpasses understanding. God hugs you. You are encircled by the arms of the mystery of God...and as human persons view creation with compassion, in trust, they see the Lord. It is God which humankind is then able to recognize in every living thing. Does not humanity know that God is the world’s creator? Just as it occurred to God to create humankind, so it occurs to God to save those that trust in him.” We ask for the deepening faith so we can meet God in all the moments of our lives, not just the moment we choose. We ask for the deep faith, see our God not only in happy and joyous moments, but also in the sacramental moments of pain, suffering, and loss. We can pray with the blind man, “Lord that I may see.”
John O’Donohue, in “Anam Cara“ has these challenging thoughts. When we become bored with life, in all of its forms, I hope the following will enable you to come to a deeper understanding of who you are and the mystery unfolding in each and every moment of your life.
“The awakening of the human spirit is a homecoming. Yet ironically our sense of familiarity often militates against our homecoming. When we are familiar with something, we lose the energy, edge, and excitement of it.” Hegel said, ‘”Das Bekannte uberhaupt ist darum, weil es bekannt ist, nicht erkannt”- that is, “Generally, the familiar, precisely because it is familiar, is not known.” This is a powerful sentence. Behind the façade of the familiar, strange things await us. This is true of our homes, the place where we live, and, indeed, of those with whom we live. Friendships and relationships suffer immense numbing through the mechanism of familiarization. We reduce the wildness and mystery of person and landscape to the external, familiar image. Yet, the familiar is merely a façade. Familiarity enables us to tame, control, and ultimately forget the mystery. We reduce the wildness and mystery of person and landscape to the external, familiar image. Yet, the familiar is merely a façade. Familiarity enables us to tame, control, and ultimately forget the mystery. We make our peace with the surface as image and we stay away from the Otherness and fecund turbulence of the unknown that it masks. Familiarity is one of the most subtle and pervasive forms of human alienation.
Oh God, help me to use your gift of imagination, to seek beyond the familiar, the so-called ordinary.
Open the eyes of my heart to your wonder-full presence in each and every person I meet.
In each and every place I will visit.
In each and every action of my day.
I will never be alone, even though, my thoughts and feelings want to tell me so.
You are Emanuel-You are God with us,
As you are always with all of your creation.
De Chardin, in one of his great quotations tell us, “by reason of creation, and still more reason of the incarnation, there is nothing profane for him/her who knows how to see”. St. Francis of Assisi also tells us, “everything this is, is to be adored”. This leads us to an understanding that all creation is a sacrament. You and I are sacraments. Last week, I wrote of the sacramentality of sexuality, that got some people’s attention! Love obviously is a sacrament, so is a kiss, an embrace. So is light, so is darkness, so is birth, so is death. Shared meals are sacramental, a family vacation, despite the struggles, are sacramental. A sacrament in this sense, is a sacrament with a small “s” as opposed to the Seven Ritual Sacraments, spelled with a capital “S”. I like to think of sacrament with a small “s” as;
Each and every person, place, event, action [all that is real] that brings us in contact with the deeper realities of life, ultimately with Reality itself, that Reality we call God.
This is meant to stir your imagination. Be subversive, seek the person behind the person, do not settle for the profane, the ordinary, when the extraordinary, the mysterious is being offered to you. “What is seen is transitory, what is unseen lasts forever”, so the Scripture says.
Thomas Merton, in Contemplation In a World Action writes the following;
“Imagination is the creative task of making simple, joining things together in such a way that they throw new light on each other and on everything around them. The imagination is a discovering faculty, a faculty for seeing relationships, for seeing meanings that are special and even quite new. The imagination is something which enables us to discover unique present meaning in a given moment of our lives. Without imagination…life can be extremely dull and fruitless.” In other words, life is boring.
My Celtic ancestors believed everything charged with a presence of the divine. The ancient Celts, and, also the pre-Christian Celts had a great belief in the spirit of a place. They believed in the spirit of the trees, birds, fish, animals, all of creation. How similar then is this spirituality with the spirituality of the Native Americans? The late Pope, speaking in Phoenix, shocked a good number of people with the statement, “there was nothing in the spirituality of the Native Americans that contradicted Catholic teachings. So then as we reclaim the sense of reverence for all of creation we will see that this reverence is not only necessary for physical survival, but for a healthy spirituality as well. I would like to suggest the opposite of the sacramental view of life, is to be bored, and to see life as boring. We have the awe-full vision, a wonder-full vision, or we have the bored or indifferent sightless, lifeless vision of reality. We completely miss out from the light giving presence of the sacred.
Jesus tells us He has come, “That we have life and have it to the fullest.” So what has happened to our life of excitement? What has happened to the excitement? What has happened that has caused us to lose our zest for life? Why then do our Eucharist celebrations lack vigor and vitality? What has caused us to see life, and our relationships, through the eyes of indifference and boredom? Why then do we go about with feelings of boredom, masking anger? “Anam Cara” page 64 says, “To the indifferent eye, nothing calls or awakens. Indifference is one of the hallmarks of our times. It is said that indifference is necessary for power; to hold control one has to be successfully indifferent to the needs and vulnerabilities of those under control. Thus indifference calls for a great commitment to non-vision. To ignore things demands incredible mental energy. Without even knowing it, indifference can place you beyond the frontiers of compassion, healing, and love. When you become indifferent, you give all your power away. Your imagination becomes fixated in the limbo of cynicism and despair.”
To help us get a handle on this, we need to stop and develop an understanding of time and the sacrament of the present moment. There is “chronos time” and “kairos time.” Chronos time is clock time. Kairos time are those moments which our God uses to break into our lives as we stop, are still, and listen (a real difficult thing to do). Kairos time is the time when Reality, God, breaks through into our understanding and change is brought about. We are no longer blind, we are beginning to see. Kairos time is actually each and every moment of our daily lives.
We need then the gift of faithful sight. We need the gifts of faith and wonder to see in each and every moment of our existence, the presence of God. The scriptures tell us, “Now is the acceptable time.” There is No Other Way (N-O-W) except in the wonder of this “now” moment to encounter, to meet our God. This Kairos time is a time of intensity. It is a time of mystery. Our full participation in the church’s liturgical calendar and the celebration of its season offers us an opportunity to celebrate, and so intensify, the God presence in each one of us and in every moment of our lives. This participation allows us to celebrate the sacredness of time.
It allows us to celebrate our own individual sacred journey through time even as we celebrate within a community of faith. This is the opposite of being bored.
The paradox is, we always need our individual spiritual journey to be celebrated within the communities journey. Our lives are only boring then when we fail to stop, see, and experience in each moment, each event, each person, as the place of our encounter with the living God. Our whole life then becomes sacramental, our whole life becomes a sacrament. Where there is life, there is God. Where there is love of life, there is God. Let us take the advice of John of the Cross, “Where there is no love, so love, and you will find love,” and life. Where there is no love, no life, no wonder, no awe, no mystery, no wonder, we say there is no God because there is no zest for life. Saint Irenaeus says, “The Glory of God is the human person, man and woman fully alive.”
We have to constantly ask for an ever deepening faith to see all creation as the reality of God. “Heldegard of Bingen” says, “Good People, most royal greening verdancy, rooted in the sun, you shine with radiant light. In this circle of earthly existence you shine so finely, it surpasses understanding. God hugs you. You are encircled by the arms of the mystery of God...and as human persons view creation with compassion, in trust, they see the Lord. It is God which humankind is then able to recognize in every living thing. Does not humanity know that God is the world’s creator? Just as it occurred to God to create humankind, so it occurs to God to save those that trust in him.” We ask for the deepening faith so we can meet God in all the moments of our lives, not just the moment we choose. We ask for the deep faith, see our God not only in happy and joyous moments, but also in the sacramental moments of pain, suffering, and loss. We can pray with the blind man, “Lord that I may see.”
John O’Donohue, in “Anam Cara“ has these challenging thoughts. When we become bored with life, in all of its forms, I hope the following will enable you to come to a deeper understanding of who you are and the mystery unfolding in each and every moment of your life.
“The awakening of the human spirit is a homecoming. Yet ironically our sense of familiarity often militates against our homecoming. When we are familiar with something, we lose the energy, edge, and excitement of it.” Hegel said, ‘”Das Bekannte uberhaupt ist darum, weil es bekannt ist, nicht erkannt”- that is, “Generally, the familiar, precisely because it is familiar, is not known.” This is a powerful sentence. Behind the façade of the familiar, strange things await us. This is true of our homes, the place where we live, and, indeed, of those with whom we live. Friendships and relationships suffer immense numbing through the mechanism of familiarization. We reduce the wildness and mystery of person and landscape to the external, familiar image. Yet, the familiar is merely a façade. Familiarity enables us to tame, control, and ultimately forget the mystery. We reduce the wildness and mystery of person and landscape to the external, familiar image. Yet, the familiar is merely a façade. Familiarity enables us to tame, control, and ultimately forget the mystery. We make our peace with the surface as image and we stay away from the Otherness and fecund turbulence of the unknown that it masks. Familiarity is one of the most subtle and pervasive forms of human alienation.
Oh God, help me to use your gift of imagination, to seek beyond the familiar, the so-called ordinary.
Open the eyes of my heart to your wonder-full presence in each and every person I meet.
In each and every place I will visit.
In each and every action of my day.
I will never be alone, even though, my thoughts and feelings want to tell me so.
You are Emanuel-You are God with us,
As you are always with all of your creation.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Motherhood - The Neighborhood of the Sacred
I was on vacation. It was Sunday and I was at Mass. As I sat in my pew, a family of four plus a little little baby came and sat in front of me. Everything was fine, that is, for a while. Then the baby, as babies do, began to fuss. Then a process began. As the fussy baby became too much for one person, it was handed on to the next. That appeared to satisfy and calm the little one for a while. Then it all began again. Each person was able to provide some peace and calm to the little one, if only for a time. It eventually ended up in the arms of the last person. She just laid it on her chest. The child rested, became quiet and went to sleep. The journey was over. It had found its place of rest, security and nourishment, the child had found it’s mother.
What an awe-full, wonder-full, mysterious, sacred vocation, is motherhood? All of these words have such deep meaning. We will always have to look at motherhood through these lenses and so we can be caught up in it’s awe and mystery. To be caught up in the understanding of the holy, sacred, and sanctified mission, which women are so privileged to be invited to journey on.
When we approach the sacred, when we deal with mystery, which is the essence of motherhood, we must always be prepared, otherwise so much will be missed. So much will be missed because we will be so caught up in what is seen, we will miss the unseen. Why has God chosen a human being to be the place for the reception of His new revelation? That is what each and every child is, a new revelation of God. In each child, the incarnation continues. Each and every child in the womb is a part of God never before revealed to the world. God has chosen this woman to provide flesh for the human existence of a new unique revelation of who He is. Motherhood is the entrance path into a neighborhood called the sacred, it must be approached with awe, reverence and respect. This neighborhood must be approached with awe, reverence and respect. If not, God’s intention of invitation to co-creation, to say the least, is either missed or ignored. The result is the dark side of motherhood which so much is experienced in the world of loveless existence. The entrance key to the mystery is itself, too, a mystery. It is sacred. It is holy. The key is, the celebration of the sacrament of human sexuality. In the sacrament of human sexuality, the divine is encountered. New life is created. When sexuality is viewed through the lens of God’s intentions we are then able to see in the celebration and encounter with the sacred, with the divine, with God. We are caught up in wonder, we are caught up in awe, we are caught up in the mystery, and in that place, we experience prayer. Yes, what I am saying is a happy, healthy celebration of your sexuality is an essential part of your prayer life. How often is human sexuality seen through the lenses of love laden mystery, a God-centered mystery? I like when we pray at Mass that “we may be taught the sanctity of human love”, “be shown the value of family life”.
I came across the following quotation, in which I have found food for thought over many years;
“Mothers beauty infinitely surpasses the glory of nature. It is an unimaginable beauty, the only one that you can imagine this woman attending to stirrings of her infants. Christ never speaks of beauty. It is the only company He keeps, but under it’s true name: Love. Beauty comes from love, as daylight comes from the sun. As the sun comes from God, as God comes from a woman exhausted from childbirth. Fathers go to war, to the office, sign contracts. Fathers are in charge of society. That is their business, their great affair. A father is someone who represents something other than himself in his relationship to his child, and who believes in what he represents: law, reason, experience. Society. A mother does not represent anything in relationship to her child. She does not stand in relationship to it, but is around it, inside, outside, everywhere. She raises the child up at arms length and presents it to eternal life. Mothers are in charge of God. That is their passion, their sole occupation, their loss and their empowerment at the same time. To be a father is to play the role of father. To be a mother is an absolute mystery, a mystery without reference point, a absolute that is not relative to anything, an impossible task that is nevertheless fulfilled, even by bad mothers. Even bad mothers stand in their nearness to be absolute, they have an intimacy with God that fathers will never know……. Mothers have no rank, no pull. They are born at the same time as their children. Mothers grow up in life at the same time as their child and as the child is equal of God, from the time of its birth, from the beginning mothers are inside the holy of holies, fulfilled by everything, ignorant of everything that fulfills them. And if all true beauty comes from love, where does love come from? From what matter does it matter derived, from what nature its super-naturalness, beauty comes from love. Loves comes from attention. Simple attention to the simple: humble attention to the humble things: living attention to all lives, and surely to that of the little cup in its cradle, incapable of feeding itself, incapable of everything but tears. The first knowledge of the newborn, the single possession of the prince of the crib, is his gift of complaint, his claim on the love far away, his screams in the direction of a life too distant-and it is mother that gets up and responds, it is God who wakes up and arises, responding every time, every time attentive above and beyond weariness. The weariness of the first days of the world, a weariness of the first years of childhood. Apart from that, there is nothing. There is no greater holiness then that of mothers exhausted by diapers to be washed, formula to be heated and baths to be given. Men hold the world. Mothers hold the eternal element that holds the world and men.” [Bobbin, The Secret of St. Francis Assisi]
God says to you and I, “from the beginning I have loved you. I now love you, and I will love through all of eternity. I love you so much I want you to have life, and life to the fullest. I love you so much I have chosen this special place within this special person where you will learn of my love. Where you will find a place of new beginning. I love you so much I will always be with you. I have chosen this person to communicate that reality to you. That is why she will gaze into your eyes and you will gaze into hers. Through that gaze you will come to know my love for you.”
That is what I see when mother and child are caught up in “the gaze”. When I am at Mass on vacation, I get caught up so often in the interplay between mother and child. When I celebrate Mass, I also have to admit I get caught up with that same wonder-full interplay. There is something going on with that interplay. Whatever I have to say is being ignored. There is something more satisfying, more full-filling being offered in that interplay for the mother and child than what I have to offer. Of that I am certain.
Another day, when I was at Mass. In front of me was a mother and child. The mother placed the child in front of her at arms length. They gazed at each other for some time. The child gazed at his mother was a steady silent gaze. Then its face broke into a wondrous smile, from its lips joy is screeched and its little hands began to clap happily. The child rejoiced that it was loved and the face of the young mother shone with a beauty that no artist could capture. From then on, whenever I hear a screech at Mass, that is my vision. I am jealous.
There is also the dark side of motherhood, there are many books written about those who have birth mothers but not life-giving mothers. There is a vast difference between giving birth and giving life. Not to have a mother’s nourishing, loving , caring presence has to be grieved for by an every growing number of people. There are men and women who have to come to terms with the fact that the nurturing presence is missing from their life, in fact, it never existed in their lives. This terminal death, then, becomes a Pascal death, leading to a new and richer life than they have at present. The feelings of anger and resentment must be processed. I was told a long time ago that the word feel can be spelled out feel, experience, express, let go. I have dealt with a great deal of people who just want to feel and then pray about it. The result, nothing changes. On the other hand, when you write out, not type out, your feelings in honesty. When you write out your feelings, not sugar-coating anything and express all the pain of loss and abandonment, wonderful things happen. There is a welcomed feeling of release and relief as God is welcomed into the emptiness caused by the release of the feelings. I always encourage those who write out the feeling of anger, resentment, shame, betrayal, etc. to always end by writing “God you can have all of this. I do not want it anymore. Please fill up the emptiness this has caused, with your love.” You sign your name and then BURN it, not tear it up! In the prison I had the kids write and rip on the condition that when they were released they would write and burn . We must always remember that there is nothing in the spiritual we do once forever. We have to repeat it over and over and over.
Each year on Mother’s Day, I always make an effort to women who became mothers yet they were never able to experience the physical touch of their child. These mothers were never able to engage in the sacred gaze, these mothers were never able to experience the joy, wonder of what nursing at the breast means. Their child lived but was not born. I always make a point to congratulate the great men who see the vocation of motherhood in their beloved. They make sure that their motherhood is respected, reverenced and celebrated. Some great men do this with such energy and vitality, they are uncommon men who walk among their fellow men.
To all the men who to fulfill responsibility of motherhood, you too, are to be saluted and honored on this day. To all the foster mothers, adopted mothers and step-mothers who give so much of their essence to be the living presence for their daughters, I salute you. To all who qualify for the wonder-full title of MOTHER, have a great day. It is not going to happen again for 364 days. Your children give you one day so you can give of yourself to them for the rest of the year. I say not! “If mama ain’t happy…ain’t nobody happy!” Mothers you come first. Your husband comes second. Your kids come third. [In dad’s case, he comes first, mom comes second and the kids come third. The kids always come third.] This is the recipe for a healthy family. Bishop Morneau, from Green Bay, has this to say, “A healthy love of God and the healthy love of another person, begins with a healthy love of self”. Single moms, you first of all have to take care of you. You have to be healthy, so you can model for your children what it means to be healthy. What it means to be able to choose happiness and so come to be whole people, holy people.
May the Holy Spirit guide and direct you through the neighborhood of motherhood.
May the Holy Spirit strengthen and energize you on your journey through the neighborhood of motherhood.
May the Holy Spirit grant you perseverance so that one day your journey through this neighborhood is ended. You will then enter into that GRAND NEIGHBORHOOD of Grand-Motherhood.
What an awe-full, wonder-full, mysterious, sacred vocation, is motherhood? All of these words have such deep meaning. We will always have to look at motherhood through these lenses and so we can be caught up in it’s awe and mystery. To be caught up in the understanding of the holy, sacred, and sanctified mission, which women are so privileged to be invited to journey on.
When we approach the sacred, when we deal with mystery, which is the essence of motherhood, we must always be prepared, otherwise so much will be missed. So much will be missed because we will be so caught up in what is seen, we will miss the unseen. Why has God chosen a human being to be the place for the reception of His new revelation? That is what each and every child is, a new revelation of God. In each child, the incarnation continues. Each and every child in the womb is a part of God never before revealed to the world. God has chosen this woman to provide flesh for the human existence of a new unique revelation of who He is. Motherhood is the entrance path into a neighborhood called the sacred, it must be approached with awe, reverence and respect. This neighborhood must be approached with awe, reverence and respect. If not, God’s intention of invitation to co-creation, to say the least, is either missed or ignored. The result is the dark side of motherhood which so much is experienced in the world of loveless existence. The entrance key to the mystery is itself, too, a mystery. It is sacred. It is holy. The key is, the celebration of the sacrament of human sexuality. In the sacrament of human sexuality, the divine is encountered. New life is created. When sexuality is viewed through the lens of God’s intentions we are then able to see in the celebration and encounter with the sacred, with the divine, with God. We are caught up in wonder, we are caught up in awe, we are caught up in the mystery, and in that place, we experience prayer. Yes, what I am saying is a happy, healthy celebration of your sexuality is an essential part of your prayer life. How often is human sexuality seen through the lenses of love laden mystery, a God-centered mystery? I like when we pray at Mass that “we may be taught the sanctity of human love”, “be shown the value of family life”.
I came across the following quotation, in which I have found food for thought over many years;
“Mothers beauty infinitely surpasses the glory of nature. It is an unimaginable beauty, the only one that you can imagine this woman attending to stirrings of her infants. Christ never speaks of beauty. It is the only company He keeps, but under it’s true name: Love. Beauty comes from love, as daylight comes from the sun. As the sun comes from God, as God comes from a woman exhausted from childbirth. Fathers go to war, to the office, sign contracts. Fathers are in charge of society. That is their business, their great affair. A father is someone who represents something other than himself in his relationship to his child, and who believes in what he represents: law, reason, experience. Society. A mother does not represent anything in relationship to her child. She does not stand in relationship to it, but is around it, inside, outside, everywhere. She raises the child up at arms length and presents it to eternal life. Mothers are in charge of God. That is their passion, their sole occupation, their loss and their empowerment at the same time. To be a father is to play the role of father. To be a mother is an absolute mystery, a mystery without reference point, a absolute that is not relative to anything, an impossible task that is nevertheless fulfilled, even by bad mothers. Even bad mothers stand in their nearness to be absolute, they have an intimacy with God that fathers will never know……. Mothers have no rank, no pull. They are born at the same time as their children. Mothers grow up in life at the same time as their child and as the child is equal of God, from the time of its birth, from the beginning mothers are inside the holy of holies, fulfilled by everything, ignorant of everything that fulfills them. And if all true beauty comes from love, where does love come from? From what matter does it matter derived, from what nature its super-naturalness, beauty comes from love. Loves comes from attention. Simple attention to the simple: humble attention to the humble things: living attention to all lives, and surely to that of the little cup in its cradle, incapable of feeding itself, incapable of everything but tears. The first knowledge of the newborn, the single possession of the prince of the crib, is his gift of complaint, his claim on the love far away, his screams in the direction of a life too distant-and it is mother that gets up and responds, it is God who wakes up and arises, responding every time, every time attentive above and beyond weariness. The weariness of the first days of the world, a weariness of the first years of childhood. Apart from that, there is nothing. There is no greater holiness then that of mothers exhausted by diapers to be washed, formula to be heated and baths to be given. Men hold the world. Mothers hold the eternal element that holds the world and men.” [Bobbin, The Secret of St. Francis Assisi]
God says to you and I, “from the beginning I have loved you. I now love you, and I will love through all of eternity. I love you so much I want you to have life, and life to the fullest. I love you so much I have chosen this special place within this special person where you will learn of my love. Where you will find a place of new beginning. I love you so much I will always be with you. I have chosen this person to communicate that reality to you. That is why she will gaze into your eyes and you will gaze into hers. Through that gaze you will come to know my love for you.”
That is what I see when mother and child are caught up in “the gaze”. When I am at Mass on vacation, I get caught up so often in the interplay between mother and child. When I celebrate Mass, I also have to admit I get caught up with that same wonder-full interplay. There is something going on with that interplay. Whatever I have to say is being ignored. There is something more satisfying, more full-filling being offered in that interplay for the mother and child than what I have to offer. Of that I am certain.
Another day, when I was at Mass. In front of me was a mother and child. The mother placed the child in front of her at arms length. They gazed at each other for some time. The child gazed at his mother was a steady silent gaze. Then its face broke into a wondrous smile, from its lips joy is screeched and its little hands began to clap happily. The child rejoiced that it was loved and the face of the young mother shone with a beauty that no artist could capture. From then on, whenever I hear a screech at Mass, that is my vision. I am jealous.
There is also the dark side of motherhood, there are many books written about those who have birth mothers but not life-giving mothers. There is a vast difference between giving birth and giving life. Not to have a mother’s nourishing, loving , caring presence has to be grieved for by an every growing number of people. There are men and women who have to come to terms with the fact that the nurturing presence is missing from their life, in fact, it never existed in their lives. This terminal death, then, becomes a Pascal death, leading to a new and richer life than they have at present. The feelings of anger and resentment must be processed. I was told a long time ago that the word feel can be spelled out feel, experience, express, let go. I have dealt with a great deal of people who just want to feel and then pray about it. The result, nothing changes. On the other hand, when you write out, not type out, your feelings in honesty. When you write out your feelings, not sugar-coating anything and express all the pain of loss and abandonment, wonderful things happen. There is a welcomed feeling of release and relief as God is welcomed into the emptiness caused by the release of the feelings. I always encourage those who write out the feeling of anger, resentment, shame, betrayal, etc. to always end by writing “God you can have all of this. I do not want it anymore. Please fill up the emptiness this has caused, with your love.” You sign your name and then BURN it, not tear it up! In the prison I had the kids write and rip on the condition that when they were released they would write and burn . We must always remember that there is nothing in the spiritual we do once forever. We have to repeat it over and over and over.
Each year on Mother’s Day, I always make an effort to women who became mothers yet they were never able to experience the physical touch of their child. These mothers were never able to engage in the sacred gaze, these mothers were never able to experience the joy, wonder of what nursing at the breast means. Their child lived but was not born. I always make a point to congratulate the great men who see the vocation of motherhood in their beloved. They make sure that their motherhood is respected, reverenced and celebrated. Some great men do this with such energy and vitality, they are uncommon men who walk among their fellow men.
To all the men who to fulfill responsibility of motherhood, you too, are to be saluted and honored on this day. To all the foster mothers, adopted mothers and step-mothers who give so much of their essence to be the living presence for their daughters, I salute you. To all who qualify for the wonder-full title of MOTHER, have a great day. It is not going to happen again for 364 days. Your children give you one day so you can give of yourself to them for the rest of the year. I say not! “If mama ain’t happy…ain’t nobody happy!” Mothers you come first. Your husband comes second. Your kids come third. [In dad’s case, he comes first, mom comes second and the kids come third. The kids always come third.] This is the recipe for a healthy family. Bishop Morneau, from Green Bay, has this to say, “A healthy love of God and the healthy love of another person, begins with a healthy love of self”. Single moms, you first of all have to take care of you. You have to be healthy, so you can model for your children what it means to be healthy. What it means to be able to choose happiness and so come to be whole people, holy people.
May the Holy Spirit guide and direct you through the neighborhood of motherhood.
May the Holy Spirit strengthen and energize you on your journey through the neighborhood of motherhood.
May the Holy Spirit grant you perseverance so that one day your journey through this neighborhood is ended. You will then enter into that GRAND NEIGHBORHOOD of Grand-Motherhood.
Friday, May 1, 2009
Wounded Healer Meets Wounded
Oh God, help to me to believe the truth about myself,
no matter how BEAUTIFUL it is.
This morning I was having my morning cocktail with breakfast. My morning cocktail Total, cheerios, All Bran, Craisins, banana and soy milk. Added to that is the “thought of the day” from the morning paper. Today it read, “The world does not require so much to be informed as reminded”, Hanna H. More, English religious writer. That is exactly for the reason for this effort. It is not designed to tell you anything new but to remind you, “to be who you already are” [Merton].
“Life is not a problem to be solved, it is a mystery to be lived.” How often do you and I hear that expression? Is it possible then my life is “a mystery story” which can best be understood, only, through the lenses of the whole life story of Jesus, who became the Christ. The historical Jesus, became the Christ of God, through His Pascal Mystery. We too, can become Christian, only when we follow the same path, the same way. There is no Christianity without crucifixion . Through the process of suffering, death, burial, resurrection and ascension, we are led to ask for a new spirit for our new life. This new life is yours and mine precisely because of our experience in participating in the above mentioned mystery. Because of our experience we see we are now opened up to a new way of believing and active living. We also open ourselves up to the never-ending quest for answers to the mystery of love, life, death and rebirth. We are encouraged to embrace, to live with the question so we can someday, through some very ordinary event, be awakened to the beginning of the answer. Is this the end? No. The reason why every answer will itself lead us into a new question, or questions. The more we know, the more we want to find out. “The nearer we get to God, the less we know about God.” This process continues our whole life long. It is endless, sorry, my mistake, it is not endless. The questioning is only endless in this life. In the next life, the questioning ceases, because St. Paul says, “We will know as we ourselves are known”.
There is great comfort in the following quotation from Carl Jung’s essay, “Stages of Life”. In this he tells us,
“The serious problem in life, however, are never fully solved. If they should appear to be so, it is a sure sign that something has been lost. The meaning and purpose of our problems seems to lie not in the solution but in our working at it incessantly. This alone preserves stultification and petrifaction.”
In the last posting I began the introduction to Thomas the Apostle, who was not present when the Risen Christ appeared to the rest of the disciples. He is told by his fellow disciples , “we have seen the Lord”. He wanted none of that. So he said to the, “Unless I see the marks of the nails in His hands and put my finger into the nail marks and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.” To me this appears not to have anything to do with doubt. This is not about doubt, this is about disbelief. To my way of thinking, Thomas has given doubt a bad name! I’ve heard so many sermons about “Doubting Thomas” and to be honest, given a few myself. All of this was a mistake. I like the definition of faith which defines “faith as doubt grounded in hope”. That provides us with a positive understanding of doubt. George Hermes states the following, “The starting point and chief principle of every science and hence of Theology also, is that not only methodical doubt, but positive doubt. One can believe only what one is perceived to be true from reasonable ground. Consequently, one must have the courage to continue doubting until one has found reasonable grounds to satisfy their reason.”
The following is a quotation from the book, Living Liturgy. The Gospel story is usually called the story of “Doubting Thomas”. Indeed, this characterization of Thomas effects the translation of verse 27: “Do not doubt, but believe”. [NRSV] Read in this way, the story describes Thomas’ movement from doubt to faith and leads us to set up doubt and belief as opposites. This creates two problems.
First, doubt is NOT the opposite of faith and one does not preclude to the other.
For example, the Gospel of Matthew, the disciples the Risen Christ in Galileh, just before His ascension. Matthew says of the disciples, “When they saw Him, they worshipped, but they doubted.” [28:17] Apparently, they believed enough to worship the Risen Christ, but doubts persist. Doubt and faith CAN coexist.
The second problem with the traditional reading is this: it misrepresents the theology of the Evangelists. Our Lectionary accurately reflects what the Evangelists wrote: Jesus responds to Thomas assertion, “I would not believe” [20:25] by chiding him, “do not be unbelieving, but believe.” [20:27] In other word, the issue is not that Thomas doubted, but he did not believe.”
The Risen Christ carries in His body the results of His crucifixion. He has wounded hands, feet and side. In the above encounter with Thomas, He uses His wounds to bring Thomas to faith.
As we look at our life journey, we encounter the same reality that Thomas encountered. It is happening today through many people who minister to those who are suffering inside and outside the Church environment. When we suffer a loss of any kind, we need to hear the story of someone who has gone before us, and experienced the same trauma, person or persons who are now alive, healthy and well. Survivors who are living life and living life to the fullest. We need transformed people in our lives who have been to their Calvary. People who chose not to stay in their crucifixion, who chose life, and a new, richer way of living. We need people in our lives who chose life over death, people who chose to be survivors rather than the victim, people who are now living the transformed, transfigured and consequently richer lives.
A number of years ago, I met a young girl, let’s call her Patricia, who was a junior in high school. Later I had the privilege being the celebrant at her marriage. One day she called me and told me she had lost a baby. Over the next few of years, I received the same call two more times. When she had lost her third child, I said to her, “Patricia, I don’t have a clue what to say to you. I can’t even guess what you are suffering, but I will have Julie Gonzales call you.” A curt question came back, “and how many babies has she lost?”. “Five in one year”, was my answer. (Julie was pregnant with quads and lost all four babies. She then got pregnant with twins and lost one of the twins and eventually Erica was born. She is now serving in the Armed Forces.) I journeyed with Julie through the grieving process. I never allow individuals who have gone through the grieving process not to share the wonderful gifts that have come to them from their crucifixions and resurrection. They were the suffering Jesus, who are now the living presence, of the Risen Christ. It is their vocation now, their calling, to be the ones who will allow the suffering person to enter into their woundedness.
It is in this encounter that the presence of the Risen Christ becomes a reality. Because of their experience of the Pascal Death they are now a source of transformation and transfiguration. This encounter happens in the thousands upon thousands of support groups and 12 Step Programs throughout our country and throughout the world. We have the support groups for parents who have lost babies, and groups for cancer survivors. This is what happens in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Gambler’s Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, etc, etc. In the fellowship of the 12 Step Program, stories are told in brutal simplicity and sincerity, thereby exposing the deepest wounds. From this encounter, between the wounded healer and the wounded, hope is exchanged. “Heart speaks to heart.” St. Augustine has these wonderful words, “in my deepest wounds, I see your glory and it dazzles me.”
Suffering of itself has no redeeming value. When it is brought to prayer, when it is brought to Eucharist, it is transformed and we are transfigured by God’s grace, and are slowly transfigured into the living person of the Living Christ. As I look back on my life, like everybody else, there is pain and suffering. My experience, however, is that after each painful experience a person is placed in my life with whom I can identify and to whom I can offer hope and understanding. This hope and understanding would not be present in my life had I not gone through that particular pain and suffering. This is a result of God’s transfiguring and transforming love. It is pure gift, grace.
You also will find there will never be anything you have gone through or will go through that God does not take and weave into the pattern of your life. “In God’s world, there are no trashcans,” [Rohr]. God is the great recycler. Because it is woven into the pattern of your life, people will be placed in your life who will learn from you. From telling your story, which is revealing your woundedness, they too will experience hope renewal and resurrection. In God’s mercy and compassion, “Death is not an end, death is a beginning.” Your wounds brought to prayer have become sacred wounds. A place for wounded people to be admitted to, so they can encounter the light, life, love of God, which is now present in your wounds. Their wounds no longer are a place of guilt, fear and shame. Their wounds reveal to them what was been revealed to you, which is the light, life and love of a Prodigal God, or a higher power. Now they too, have a story to tell. Now they too, have good news to share. Now they too, become good news. Now they too, become Gospel. Now they too, are beacons of faith, hope and love, in a world of darkness. Yes, in their lives, that place of death, is exactly where the fountain of hope springs up. Yes, Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ lives within you and me right now.
“Life then is not a problem to be solved, it is a mystery to be lived.” We are living out that mystery right now. “Behold, I make all things new. It is springing forth. Do you not see it?”
no matter how BEAUTIFUL it is.
This morning I was having my morning cocktail with breakfast. My morning cocktail Total, cheerios, All Bran, Craisins, banana and soy milk. Added to that is the “thought of the day” from the morning paper. Today it read, “The world does not require so much to be informed as reminded”, Hanna H. More, English religious writer. That is exactly for the reason for this effort. It is not designed to tell you anything new but to remind you, “to be who you already are” [Merton].
“Life is not a problem to be solved, it is a mystery to be lived.” How often do you and I hear that expression? Is it possible then my life is “a mystery story” which can best be understood, only, through the lenses of the whole life story of Jesus, who became the Christ. The historical Jesus, became the Christ of God, through His Pascal Mystery. We too, can become Christian, only when we follow the same path, the same way. There is no Christianity without crucifixion . Through the process of suffering, death, burial, resurrection and ascension, we are led to ask for a new spirit for our new life. This new life is yours and mine precisely because of our experience in participating in the above mentioned mystery. Because of our experience we see we are now opened up to a new way of believing and active living. We also open ourselves up to the never-ending quest for answers to the mystery of love, life, death and rebirth. We are encouraged to embrace, to live with the question so we can someday, through some very ordinary event, be awakened to the beginning of the answer. Is this the end? No. The reason why every answer will itself lead us into a new question, or questions. The more we know, the more we want to find out. “The nearer we get to God, the less we know about God.” This process continues our whole life long. It is endless, sorry, my mistake, it is not endless. The questioning is only endless in this life. In the next life, the questioning ceases, because St. Paul says, “We will know as we ourselves are known”.
There is great comfort in the following quotation from Carl Jung’s essay, “Stages of Life”. In this he tells us,
“The serious problem in life, however, are never fully solved. If they should appear to be so, it is a sure sign that something has been lost. The meaning and purpose of our problems seems to lie not in the solution but in our working at it incessantly. This alone preserves stultification and petrifaction.”
In the last posting I began the introduction to Thomas the Apostle, who was not present when the Risen Christ appeared to the rest of the disciples. He is told by his fellow disciples , “we have seen the Lord”. He wanted none of that. So he said to the, “Unless I see the marks of the nails in His hands and put my finger into the nail marks and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.” To me this appears not to have anything to do with doubt. This is not about doubt, this is about disbelief. To my way of thinking, Thomas has given doubt a bad name! I’ve heard so many sermons about “Doubting Thomas” and to be honest, given a few myself. All of this was a mistake. I like the definition of faith which defines “faith as doubt grounded in hope”. That provides us with a positive understanding of doubt. George Hermes states the following, “The starting point and chief principle of every science and hence of Theology also, is that not only methodical doubt, but positive doubt. One can believe only what one is perceived to be true from reasonable ground. Consequently, one must have the courage to continue doubting until one has found reasonable grounds to satisfy their reason.”
The following is a quotation from the book, Living Liturgy. The Gospel story is usually called the story of “Doubting Thomas”. Indeed, this characterization of Thomas effects the translation of verse 27: “Do not doubt, but believe”. [NRSV] Read in this way, the story describes Thomas’ movement from doubt to faith and leads us to set up doubt and belief as opposites. This creates two problems.
First, doubt is NOT the opposite of faith and one does not preclude to the other.
For example, the Gospel of Matthew, the disciples the Risen Christ in Galileh, just before His ascension. Matthew says of the disciples, “When they saw Him, they worshipped, but they doubted.” [28:17] Apparently, they believed enough to worship the Risen Christ, but doubts persist. Doubt and faith CAN coexist.
The second problem with the traditional reading is this: it misrepresents the theology of the Evangelists. Our Lectionary accurately reflects what the Evangelists wrote: Jesus responds to Thomas assertion, “I would not believe” [20:25] by chiding him, “do not be unbelieving, but believe.” [20:27] In other word, the issue is not that Thomas doubted, but he did not believe.”
The Risen Christ carries in His body the results of His crucifixion. He has wounded hands, feet and side. In the above encounter with Thomas, He uses His wounds to bring Thomas to faith.
As we look at our life journey, we encounter the same reality that Thomas encountered. It is happening today through many people who minister to those who are suffering inside and outside the Church environment. When we suffer a loss of any kind, we need to hear the story of someone who has gone before us, and experienced the same trauma, person or persons who are now alive, healthy and well. Survivors who are living life and living life to the fullest. We need transformed people in our lives who have been to their Calvary. People who chose not to stay in their crucifixion, who chose life, and a new, richer way of living. We need people in our lives who chose life over death, people who chose to be survivors rather than the victim, people who are now living the transformed, transfigured and consequently richer lives.
A number of years ago, I met a young girl, let’s call her Patricia, who was a junior in high school. Later I had the privilege being the celebrant at her marriage. One day she called me and told me she had lost a baby. Over the next few of years, I received the same call two more times. When she had lost her third child, I said to her, “Patricia, I don’t have a clue what to say to you. I can’t even guess what you are suffering, but I will have Julie Gonzales call you.” A curt question came back, “and how many babies has she lost?”. “Five in one year”, was my answer. (Julie was pregnant with quads and lost all four babies. She then got pregnant with twins and lost one of the twins and eventually Erica was born. She is now serving in the Armed Forces.) I journeyed with Julie through the grieving process. I never allow individuals who have gone through the grieving process not to share the wonderful gifts that have come to them from their crucifixions and resurrection. They were the suffering Jesus, who are now the living presence, of the Risen Christ. It is their vocation now, their calling, to be the ones who will allow the suffering person to enter into their woundedness.
It is in this encounter that the presence of the Risen Christ becomes a reality. Because of their experience of the Pascal Death they are now a source of transformation and transfiguration. This encounter happens in the thousands upon thousands of support groups and 12 Step Programs throughout our country and throughout the world. We have the support groups for parents who have lost babies, and groups for cancer survivors. This is what happens in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Gambler’s Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, etc, etc. In the fellowship of the 12 Step Program, stories are told in brutal simplicity and sincerity, thereby exposing the deepest wounds. From this encounter, between the wounded healer and the wounded, hope is exchanged. “Heart speaks to heart.” St. Augustine has these wonderful words, “in my deepest wounds, I see your glory and it dazzles me.”
Suffering of itself has no redeeming value. When it is brought to prayer, when it is brought to Eucharist, it is transformed and we are transfigured by God’s grace, and are slowly transfigured into the living person of the Living Christ. As I look back on my life, like everybody else, there is pain and suffering. My experience, however, is that after each painful experience a person is placed in my life with whom I can identify and to whom I can offer hope and understanding. This hope and understanding would not be present in my life had I not gone through that particular pain and suffering. This is a result of God’s transfiguring and transforming love. It is pure gift, grace.
You also will find there will never be anything you have gone through or will go through that God does not take and weave into the pattern of your life. “In God’s world, there are no trashcans,” [Rohr]. God is the great recycler. Because it is woven into the pattern of your life, people will be placed in your life who will learn from you. From telling your story, which is revealing your woundedness, they too will experience hope renewal and resurrection. In God’s mercy and compassion, “Death is not an end, death is a beginning.” Your wounds brought to prayer have become sacred wounds. A place for wounded people to be admitted to, so they can encounter the light, life, love of God, which is now present in your wounds. Their wounds no longer are a place of guilt, fear and shame. Their wounds reveal to them what was been revealed to you, which is the light, life and love of a Prodigal God, or a higher power. Now they too, have a story to tell. Now they too, have good news to share. Now they too, become good news. Now they too, become Gospel. Now they too, are beacons of faith, hope and love, in a world of darkness. Yes, in their lives, that place of death, is exactly where the fountain of hope springs up. Yes, Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ lives within you and me right now.
“Life then is not a problem to be solved, it is a mystery to be lived.” We are living out that mystery right now. “Behold, I make all things new. It is springing forth. Do you not see it?”
Monday, April 20, 2009
Letting go of the past, to live a new life
We are now in post-Easter time according to the Liturgical calendar. Many will still find themselves, because of the reality of their lives, being in the pre-Easter events of Jesus. Our relationship with God is best understood not in ordinary times-Cronos, God’s time is Kairos, God is always best understood outside of time and space. In this post-Easter time, we are given for our reflection, the events as they happened in the relationship between THE RISEN CHRIST and his frightened and doubting disciples.
The days after the resurrection were challenging times for the followers of Jesus, who was the historical Jesus. These were challenging times for the followers of Jesus of Nazareth. This historical Jesus was the one they followed in hope but whose life ended in death. He died not just any death. He was crucified. He died the horrible death reserved for run-away slaves. His followers were keenly aware of what the Hebrew scripture said about how cursed is he who hangs upon the wooden cross. As we reflect, we see something new has happened, which is beyond the comprehension and understanding of these followers who are disillusioned and fearful.
Now something has happened which is beyond their comprehension, their understanding. Startling events have happened which are way beyond their expectations. The one whom they knew suffered a horrific and public death. Now they are told He has risen from the dead. He has not just risen, He is appearing to people. He is not just appearing. He is sharing food with His former disciples. He is not only sharing food, but is appearing in their midst when they are locked away in door-locked rooms. This will take getting used to. This is exactly what the risen Christ does. He spends 40 days with His disciples so they can get used to a new way of relating to someone they knew and is now living a new life. The Risen Christ wants to lead His followers away from the past, which is past and gone, into a new way of living and relating to the Risen life. Over the next few weeks I hope to share some reflections on the Scriptures relating to what happened between the Risen Christ and His disciples.
I think it is fascinating to reflect on what was going on in the minds and hearts of His disciples locked away in fear. Even though the door was locked, Jesus appears to them. I have many times wondered about the thoughts and the feelings of those gathered in that room. What was going on in their minds, what were their private thoughts, what was the content of their conversation? It more than likely was about what has happened and the startling news of His resurrection. In the midst of all of this the Risen Christ appears.
Uhh ohh, He is here. What will He have to say to us? We really blew it. When it came to crunch time there were not too many of us that hung around to be with Him and His family as He hung in crucifixion. We are happy John stuck it out on Calvary and gave Mary support.
Peter's thoughts,
"Boy, am I in for it now. In my usual blustery way I promise way more than I could deliver. I cannot believe I went back on my word to stand by Him. Not only did I not stand by Him, I even denied I ever knew Him. He picked me out to be a leader and all I did was deny Him. I did not deny Him once, but as He told me ahead of time, “Peter, you will deny me three times, and so I did”. When He told me that, I was so offended, I was angry. I am so grateful for tears, when I had shed enough tears, I was somehow able to remember what He said in the past, "Anyone who comes to me, I will not reject." He also said, "Come to me all who are weary and find life burdensome and I will give you rest". What His visit in my memory was the woman brought to Him caught in the act of adultery, everybody was ready to stone her. In a quiet way, He turned everything upside down. When He was finished there was nobody there to condemn her. And He said these wonderful words, “Neither will I condemn you”. I also remember Him saying, “In God, there is no condemnation”.
I will never forget that day when we were in the boat and a storm came up, He had forced us to get into the boat to cross the lake while He Himself went off and prayed. He did that a lot. We were in that boat and it was scary. We were being tossed about by the winds and the waves, then out of the storm He appeared. Would you believe it? He was walking on the water! Being very impulsive I wanted to get out of the boat. I was going to walk on the water, to join Him. He called to me and I got out of the boat. In the beginning I was just fine-I was focused on Him. Then, the splash of a big wave hit me and I realized where I was. I got into immediate fear, lost my focus on Jesus and began to sink. I cried out for help, He reached out and took my hand, saved me and together we walked back to the boat along the water. I was safely seated before I became aware I still had a death-grip on His hand. That sinking feeling is with me now. I also know what happened to me before. That same rescuer is standing in front of my again. It was though I would like to run and hide, there is no place to hide for "the big Fisherman".
Would I have been better off to do what Judas did and commit suicide? Those tears that I shed, somehow soothed my soul. I decided to rely on the mercy I heard Him speak about day after day after day. I wonder what is He going to say to us, and me in particular? I know myself I would have a field-day sending people on a guilt trip. He is beginning to speak and what is this I am hearing? He has nothing to say but “Peace be with you”. For myself I was expecting “Hi Peter, remember how brave you were when you promised to die with me? But, when it came to crunch time, what happened to you? You chickened out?”. With this person there were no recriminations, there were no paybacks. All He is offering us is peace, Shalom.“
What is this wonderful, something new, that is taking me over? What is this new sense of oneness and togetherness that is filling this room and all who are in it? Is this what He means? Is this what it means when He says “Receive the Holy Spirit”? There is s calm, a serenity, a peace of mind I have never felt before. I, who am a restless, always on the go person, all I want to do now is to be here, to be with the rest of the group. We together have been through so much. We have been in so much guilt, fear and shame. Now, there is peace, joy and a great feeling of love. I said this before, on the mountain, when He was transfigured before my eyes, “It is good to be here”. It is good to be here right now.
Now what is He saying? You have got to be kidding, He wants us to forgive sins? His timing is impeccable, as it always has been. No way am I ever going to allow somebody to speak to me about their sins and remain in the guilt and shame of their sins, and remain in the guilt and shame of it. My sin has been the worst. I denied I knew Him. At the time, He needed someone to stand by and stand up for Him, I was not there. Now I have been given this peace from my troubled and rebellious soul. I have experienced not His judgment, not His condemnation, but the gift of His peace. I want everybody to experience what has just happened to me. That guy is smooth! He knows us as we are right now. I remember one Him saying that He never had to be told what was present in the hearts of human beings. He knows where we are and how we feel. At this moment we are most aware of our humanity, of our weaknesses, our powerlessness. He gives us the power to forgive the sins of others when we need forgiveness most ourselves. He is saying to all of us, and me in particular, “As I have treated you right now, this is the way I want you to treat others when they come to you beaten, broken, bruised, with feelings of abandonment”. Wow…does it ever get better than this?
Right away! I do not see Thomas here, I wonder where he is? Oh there is a knock at the door! Thomas, I’m so glad you have joined us. You are not going to believe what has just happened.
A reminder just because the calendar says resurrection has happened, this does not mean it has happened for some individuals. Some are still in their Good Friday agony. Theirs are the feelings of being bruised, beaten, battered, betrayed and abandoned. There are still millions in liminal, in between, time of Holy Saturday. The death has taken place, a loss has happened, but the new life has not yet immerged. For them it is the belief, the hope, the certainty that is theirs in the face of all the odds against them. This year, they are being asked to celebrate what can be rather than what is. There are some lucky ones not experiencing the joy, the freedom, exaltation, of the new life which has burst upon the horizon of their lives. The dazzling light of the resurrection has definitely penetrated the previous darkness. It is Allelujah, Allelujah, Allelujah.
The days after the resurrection were challenging times for the followers of Jesus, who was the historical Jesus. These were challenging times for the followers of Jesus of Nazareth. This historical Jesus was the one they followed in hope but whose life ended in death. He died not just any death. He was crucified. He died the horrible death reserved for run-away slaves. His followers were keenly aware of what the Hebrew scripture said about how cursed is he who hangs upon the wooden cross. As we reflect, we see something new has happened, which is beyond the comprehension and understanding of these followers who are disillusioned and fearful.
Now something has happened which is beyond their comprehension, their understanding. Startling events have happened which are way beyond their expectations. The one whom they knew suffered a horrific and public death. Now they are told He has risen from the dead. He has not just risen, He is appearing to people. He is not just appearing. He is sharing food with His former disciples. He is not only sharing food, but is appearing in their midst when they are locked away in door-locked rooms. This will take getting used to. This is exactly what the risen Christ does. He spends 40 days with His disciples so they can get used to a new way of relating to someone they knew and is now living a new life. The Risen Christ wants to lead His followers away from the past, which is past and gone, into a new way of living and relating to the Risen life. Over the next few weeks I hope to share some reflections on the Scriptures relating to what happened between the Risen Christ and His disciples.
I think it is fascinating to reflect on what was going on in the minds and hearts of His disciples locked away in fear. Even though the door was locked, Jesus appears to them. I have many times wondered about the thoughts and the feelings of those gathered in that room. What was going on in their minds, what were their private thoughts, what was the content of their conversation? It more than likely was about what has happened and the startling news of His resurrection. In the midst of all of this the Risen Christ appears.
Uhh ohh, He is here. What will He have to say to us? We really blew it. When it came to crunch time there were not too many of us that hung around to be with Him and His family as He hung in crucifixion. We are happy John stuck it out on Calvary and gave Mary support.
Peter's thoughts,
"Boy, am I in for it now. In my usual blustery way I promise way more than I could deliver. I cannot believe I went back on my word to stand by Him. Not only did I not stand by Him, I even denied I ever knew Him. He picked me out to be a leader and all I did was deny Him. I did not deny Him once, but as He told me ahead of time, “Peter, you will deny me three times, and so I did”. When He told me that, I was so offended, I was angry. I am so grateful for tears, when I had shed enough tears, I was somehow able to remember what He said in the past, "Anyone who comes to me, I will not reject." He also said, "Come to me all who are weary and find life burdensome and I will give you rest". What His visit in my memory was the woman brought to Him caught in the act of adultery, everybody was ready to stone her. In a quiet way, He turned everything upside down. When He was finished there was nobody there to condemn her. And He said these wonderful words, “Neither will I condemn you”. I also remember Him saying, “In God, there is no condemnation”.
I will never forget that day when we were in the boat and a storm came up, He had forced us to get into the boat to cross the lake while He Himself went off and prayed. He did that a lot. We were in that boat and it was scary. We were being tossed about by the winds and the waves, then out of the storm He appeared. Would you believe it? He was walking on the water! Being very impulsive I wanted to get out of the boat. I was going to walk on the water, to join Him. He called to me and I got out of the boat. In the beginning I was just fine-I was focused on Him. Then, the splash of a big wave hit me and I realized where I was. I got into immediate fear, lost my focus on Jesus and began to sink. I cried out for help, He reached out and took my hand, saved me and together we walked back to the boat along the water. I was safely seated before I became aware I still had a death-grip on His hand. That sinking feeling is with me now. I also know what happened to me before. That same rescuer is standing in front of my again. It was though I would like to run and hide, there is no place to hide for "the big Fisherman".
Would I have been better off to do what Judas did and commit suicide? Those tears that I shed, somehow soothed my soul. I decided to rely on the mercy I heard Him speak about day after day after day. I wonder what is He going to say to us, and me in particular? I know myself I would have a field-day sending people on a guilt trip. He is beginning to speak and what is this I am hearing? He has nothing to say but “Peace be with you”. For myself I was expecting “Hi Peter, remember how brave you were when you promised to die with me? But, when it came to crunch time, what happened to you? You chickened out?”. With this person there were no recriminations, there were no paybacks. All He is offering us is peace, Shalom.“
What is this wonderful, something new, that is taking me over? What is this new sense of oneness and togetherness that is filling this room and all who are in it? Is this what He means? Is this what it means when He says “Receive the Holy Spirit”? There is s calm, a serenity, a peace of mind I have never felt before. I, who am a restless, always on the go person, all I want to do now is to be here, to be with the rest of the group. We together have been through so much. We have been in so much guilt, fear and shame. Now, there is peace, joy and a great feeling of love. I said this before, on the mountain, when He was transfigured before my eyes, “It is good to be here”. It is good to be here right now.
Now what is He saying? You have got to be kidding, He wants us to forgive sins? His timing is impeccable, as it always has been. No way am I ever going to allow somebody to speak to me about their sins and remain in the guilt and shame of their sins, and remain in the guilt and shame of it. My sin has been the worst. I denied I knew Him. At the time, He needed someone to stand by and stand up for Him, I was not there. Now I have been given this peace from my troubled and rebellious soul. I have experienced not His judgment, not His condemnation, but the gift of His peace. I want everybody to experience what has just happened to me. That guy is smooth! He knows us as we are right now. I remember one Him saying that He never had to be told what was present in the hearts of human beings. He knows where we are and how we feel. At this moment we are most aware of our humanity, of our weaknesses, our powerlessness. He gives us the power to forgive the sins of others when we need forgiveness most ourselves. He is saying to all of us, and me in particular, “As I have treated you right now, this is the way I want you to treat others when they come to you beaten, broken, bruised, with feelings of abandonment”. Wow…does it ever get better than this?
Right away! I do not see Thomas here, I wonder where he is? Oh there is a knock at the door! Thomas, I’m so glad you have joined us. You are not going to believe what has just happened.
A reminder just because the calendar says resurrection has happened, this does not mean it has happened for some individuals. Some are still in their Good Friday agony. Theirs are the feelings of being bruised, beaten, battered, betrayed and abandoned. There are still millions in liminal, in between, time of Holy Saturday. The death has taken place, a loss has happened, but the new life has not yet immerged. For them it is the belief, the hope, the certainty that is theirs in the face of all the odds against them. This year, they are being asked to celebrate what can be rather than what is. There are some lucky ones not experiencing the joy, the freedom, exaltation, of the new life which has burst upon the horizon of their lives. The dazzling light of the resurrection has definitely penetrated the previous darkness. It is Allelujah, Allelujah, Allelujah.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Everyday Living is the Pascal Mystery
I came across the following story in Thomas Keating's book, The Mystery of Christ,
"A Sufi master had lost the key to his house and was looking for it on the lawn outside, running his fingers through each blade of grass. His disciples came along and asked the master what had happened. "I have lost the key to my house", he said. "Can we help you find it", they asked. "I'd be delighted", he replied. With that the disciples got down on their hands and knees beside him and started running their fingers through the grass, too. After some hours, one of them asked, "Master, have you any idea where you might have lost the key?". He answered, "yes, of course. I lost it in the house." The disciples looked at one another in astonishment. "Then why are we looking for it out here", they exclaimed. The master replied, "Because there is more light here".
This parable speaks to the human condition. We have all lost the key to happiness and are looking for it outside ourselves where it cannot possibly be found. We search outside because it is easier or more pleasant; there is more light there. There is also more company. If we look for happiness in emotional programs that promise happiness through symbols of security/survival, affection/esteem, our power/control, we can find plenty of help, because everyone else is trying to do the same thing. When we look for the key where it can be found, we may find ourselves, abandoned by friends and relatives who feel threatened by our search. Lack of support for the spiritual journey, not to mention possible opposition, is one of it's heaviest trials."
I do not have anything original to say. All I have to say is repeating what has already has been said by so many others in a much more eloquent way. I see this space as a place of reminding, a place where you and I can remember who we have been from the beginning of time, who we are now in the love of our Prodigal Father. To keep before us we are journeying as pilgrims back to our original home and the eternal presence we have sprung from.
Easter Sunday was last Sunday. I hope you and your loved ones had a wonder-full celebration, which continued on to a day of ease and peace. Our spiritual reality was celebrated last Sunday and is being encountered again and again in each and every moment of this day and every "today". The whole mystery of the death-burial-resurrection-ascension-and the gift of "a new spirit for a new life" is so vast, so deep, so encompassing, it takes us 40 days [Lent] to prepare ourselves for the celebration. It takes us three full days to celebrate the mystery. It will now take us another 50 days to reflect on how this mystery is our life. The life we live every day as we deal with the reality of being "spiritual beings having a human experience". Our everyday connection with the Pascal Mystery does not come automatically. We cannot think our way into what the mystery offers us. We must act our our way into being open to the fact that in all of my everyday reality we are encountering the love of God and His transforming love in every moment of life. In doing we are offering the limitations of our human efforts to the transfiguring, resurrecting power of our God. The result is a new way of seeing, believing, and acting. Transformation is a process we must allow to happen. It is to this we will come to believe in the saying "I will not think my way into a new way of acting, I will act my way into a new way of thinking". This the only way we can, with God's grace, be freed from the old patterns of thinking and acting. I want to make it very clear this is not easy. It is very difficult to act our way into a new way of thinking. It takes practice, practice, practice.
During the closing weeks of Lent, I had the privilege of celebrating Reconcilation with a good number of people across the whole spectrum of age. This year, like every other year, I heard the confessions of "I was angry with my husband/wife/sister/brother/employer/employee---when the penetant finished, I would ask this questions, "and who else are you angry at?". Ususally the answer is "nobody else". My next question is, "Are you sure". There is usually no answer, just silence. Then I ask the million dollar question, "what are you angry at yourself about?". There is a look of surprise and I hear, "Oh, I never thought of that". Then we get into a conversation about where the anger is directed to themselves and in what area does the person themselves need forgiveness and compassion in their own life. There is a great deal of anger and resentment, but is there a willingness to forgive? I have asked the person, "have you ever said, I forgive you, to yourself?". The ususal answer is, "no, I have never done that". I now ask the person to say, "John/Mary, I forgive you". In some cases, the person is able to say it, in many many cases, there is silence. There is the welling up of tears, sometimes, many many tears are shed. "Father, I cannot say it" or "I cannot say it because I don't mean it". I then ask them to say, "You do not have to mean it in the beginning, all you have to do is say it. Because of the spiritual principle, I will not think my way into a new way of acting. I will act my way into a new way of thinking". In many instances there a continued inability to say "I forgive you". I then ask them to say, "I release shame, I release shame, a number of times". And following the "I release shame", I ask them to say "John/Mary, I forgive you". Now, as those wonderful words are expressed, tears dry up and smiles appear. Resurrection has just happened. We know that only God can forgive sin, but if we do not forgive ourselves, we can never enjoy the forgiveness of God. St. Thomas Aquines has said, "Grace builds on nature". God takes what we give Him and through His transforming grace, His transforming love, that which is impossible for us, becomes possible through His grace. With God all things are possible. All we have to do is surrender.
What I have just described is repeated and repeated with so many individuals when I ask them to say simply, "John/Mary, I love you". I hear the objections, "Father, I cannot say that", or "I can say, I love others, but I cannot say it to myself". We have to remember the command of Jesus, when He tells us, "we are to love our neighbor as we love ourselves". There are many times in my life if I was to love people the way I was loving myself, they were in serious serious dodo! Now I am in the uncomfortable position of when I start criticizing and judging others I am reminded that what I see that I don't like in them is exactly what is present within myself. "If I see it in others, I got it myself." It takes practice, practice, practice to accept the freedom that is ours because we share in the risen life of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. This is the mystery we have been baptized into, and you and I live it out every day.
We have to actively claim our new life in each and every moment of each and every day. In each day is the pain and suffering of Calvary [Good Friday], in each and every day we have to deal with some kind of loss, terminal death, Pascal death. In each and every day we must wait in the tomb of emptiness and nothingness. From the womb springs new life and new beginnings. Each day we must claim these new lives and new beginnings. Each day is resurrection day. Each day we must ask for the grace, the help, the new lenses to see the ever newness of God's revelation in every new moment given to us. Each moment is given to us to live, to experience, to celebrate so then every day life is our daily living out that mystery we take 40 days to prepare for, three days to celebrate and 50 days in which we work to grasp the reality of new life and a new way of living. This is not just something we read about in the Bible, hear preached about in the Church, rather, it is your reality and my reality in the here and now. Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ comes again and again and again to you and I in the wonder-full mysterious awe-full reality of this present moment.
"I believe Lord, help my un-belief - or - I believe Lord, help my disbelief."
New life is always being offered to us. The risen life of Christ is being offered to you and I right now, exactly where we are at. Where we are at, God promises to meet us and He promises to always be with us [Emmanuel]. God is always faithful to His promises, He is faithful to His covenent with us, He is faithful to us, not because we are faithful to Him. God is faithful to us because He is good, not because we are good. God is faithful to us and He will not abandon us like He was abandoned because we are His Beloved. Again it is always good to remind ourselves, we do not earn, deserve or qualify for this love. It is unconditioned, unlimited and unrestricted. We cannot make any sense of God's love. All we can do is relax and enjoy it. This of course, is easier said than done. In our world, where there is so much emphasis on productivity and results, it is so very difficult to fathom that what we are striving for is really already present within us. What is behind all of our efforts and striving is already given to us freely. It is deep inside each one of us. For us to come to this realization and the enjoyment of the free gift, we must learn to give ourselves permission to be human beings, not human doers. Over the years, I have asked stressed out moms and dads to take some time for themselves. I ask those who have the feeling of being over-whelmed to set aside 20 mintues for themselves to do nothing. I am then asked the question, "What will I get from doing nothing?". The answer is "Nothing that you will see right away. The change will come slowly from the inside and will become apparent to others before it will become apparent to us". One young mom said to me, "My husband thinks he has a new wife and my kids think they have a new mother. All that is happening is I'm taking time for me." There is another example of Pascal Death and Resurrection. We have the words from Psalms 46:10, "be still and know that I am God". In the stillness, our God is always present in us, and through us. I would offer the following for your reflection, which is part of my favorite Celtic prayer:
Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise,
Christ in every heart of every man/woman who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouths of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.
I hope and pray this will help you, encourage you on your journey to resurrection and new life. I hope and pray that these words can be a source of strength for you to continuously look inside rather than outside for your strength for the journey. This is an effort to emphasize we are never alone, even in the darkest times. We may feel deserted, abandoned, but our God is always reaching us in the place we least expect it.
"I am the blind alleys of all your paths."
"For you no longer know how to go any further, then you have reached me......thou you are not aware of it."
"I love you."
"You are precious to me."
"You are the apple of my eye."
"A Sufi master had lost the key to his house and was looking for it on the lawn outside, running his fingers through each blade of grass. His disciples came along and asked the master what had happened. "I have lost the key to my house", he said. "Can we help you find it", they asked. "I'd be delighted", he replied. With that the disciples got down on their hands and knees beside him and started running their fingers through the grass, too. After some hours, one of them asked, "Master, have you any idea where you might have lost the key?". He answered, "yes, of course. I lost it in the house." The disciples looked at one another in astonishment. "Then why are we looking for it out here", they exclaimed. The master replied, "Because there is more light here".
This parable speaks to the human condition. We have all lost the key to happiness and are looking for it outside ourselves where it cannot possibly be found. We search outside because it is easier or more pleasant; there is more light there. There is also more company. If we look for happiness in emotional programs that promise happiness through symbols of security/survival, affection/esteem, our power/control, we can find plenty of help, because everyone else is trying to do the same thing. When we look for the key where it can be found, we may find ourselves, abandoned by friends and relatives who feel threatened by our search. Lack of support for the spiritual journey, not to mention possible opposition, is one of it's heaviest trials."
I do not have anything original to say. All I have to say is repeating what has already has been said by so many others in a much more eloquent way. I see this space as a place of reminding, a place where you and I can remember who we have been from the beginning of time, who we are now in the love of our Prodigal Father. To keep before us we are journeying as pilgrims back to our original home and the eternal presence we have sprung from.
Easter Sunday was last Sunday. I hope you and your loved ones had a wonder-full celebration, which continued on to a day of ease and peace. Our spiritual reality was celebrated last Sunday and is being encountered again and again in each and every moment of this day and every "today". The whole mystery of the death-burial-resurrection-ascension-and the gift of "a new spirit for a new life" is so vast, so deep, so encompassing, it takes us 40 days [Lent] to prepare ourselves for the celebration. It takes us three full days to celebrate the mystery. It will now take us another 50 days to reflect on how this mystery is our life. The life we live every day as we deal with the reality of being "spiritual beings having a human experience". Our everyday connection with the Pascal Mystery does not come automatically. We cannot think our way into what the mystery offers us. We must act our our way into being open to the fact that in all of my everyday reality we are encountering the love of God and His transforming love in every moment of life. In doing we are offering the limitations of our human efforts to the transfiguring, resurrecting power of our God. The result is a new way of seeing, believing, and acting. Transformation is a process we must allow to happen. It is to this we will come to believe in the saying "I will not think my way into a new way of acting, I will act my way into a new way of thinking". This the only way we can, with God's grace, be freed from the old patterns of thinking and acting. I want to make it very clear this is not easy. It is very difficult to act our way into a new way of thinking. It takes practice, practice, practice.
During the closing weeks of Lent, I had the privilege of celebrating Reconcilation with a good number of people across the whole spectrum of age. This year, like every other year, I heard the confessions of "I was angry with my husband/wife/sister/brother/employer/employee---when the penetant finished, I would ask this questions, "and who else are you angry at?". Ususally the answer is "nobody else". My next question is, "Are you sure". There is usually no answer, just silence. Then I ask the million dollar question, "what are you angry at yourself about?". There is a look of surprise and I hear, "Oh, I never thought of that". Then we get into a conversation about where the anger is directed to themselves and in what area does the person themselves need forgiveness and compassion in their own life. There is a great deal of anger and resentment, but is there a willingness to forgive? I have asked the person, "have you ever said, I forgive you, to yourself?". The ususal answer is, "no, I have never done that". I now ask the person to say, "John/Mary, I forgive you". In some cases, the person is able to say it, in many many cases, there is silence. There is the welling up of tears, sometimes, many many tears are shed. "Father, I cannot say it" or "I cannot say it because I don't mean it". I then ask them to say, "You do not have to mean it in the beginning, all you have to do is say it. Because of the spiritual principle, I will not think my way into a new way of acting. I will act my way into a new way of thinking". In many instances there a continued inability to say "I forgive you". I then ask them to say, "I release shame, I release shame, a number of times". And following the "I release shame", I ask them to say "John/Mary, I forgive you". Now, as those wonderful words are expressed, tears dry up and smiles appear. Resurrection has just happened. We know that only God can forgive sin, but if we do not forgive ourselves, we can never enjoy the forgiveness of God. St. Thomas Aquines has said, "Grace builds on nature". God takes what we give Him and through His transforming grace, His transforming love, that which is impossible for us, becomes possible through His grace. With God all things are possible. All we have to do is surrender.
What I have just described is repeated and repeated with so many individuals when I ask them to say simply, "John/Mary, I love you". I hear the objections, "Father, I cannot say that", or "I can say, I love others, but I cannot say it to myself". We have to remember the command of Jesus, when He tells us, "we are to love our neighbor as we love ourselves". There are many times in my life if I was to love people the way I was loving myself, they were in serious serious dodo! Now I am in the uncomfortable position of when I start criticizing and judging others I am reminded that what I see that I don't like in them is exactly what is present within myself. "If I see it in others, I got it myself." It takes practice, practice, practice to accept the freedom that is ours because we share in the risen life of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. This is the mystery we have been baptized into, and you and I live it out every day.
We have to actively claim our new life in each and every moment of each and every day. In each day is the pain and suffering of Calvary [Good Friday], in each and every day we have to deal with some kind of loss, terminal death, Pascal death. In each and every day we must wait in the tomb of emptiness and nothingness. From the womb springs new life and new beginnings. Each day we must claim these new lives and new beginnings. Each day is resurrection day. Each day we must ask for the grace, the help, the new lenses to see the ever newness of God's revelation in every new moment given to us. Each moment is given to us to live, to experience, to celebrate so then every day life is our daily living out that mystery we take 40 days to prepare for, three days to celebrate and 50 days in which we work to grasp the reality of new life and a new way of living. This is not just something we read about in the Bible, hear preached about in the Church, rather, it is your reality and my reality in the here and now. Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ comes again and again and again to you and I in the wonder-full mysterious awe-full reality of this present moment.
"I believe Lord, help my un-belief - or - I believe Lord, help my disbelief."
New life is always being offered to us. The risen life of Christ is being offered to you and I right now, exactly where we are at. Where we are at, God promises to meet us and He promises to always be with us [Emmanuel]. God is always faithful to His promises, He is faithful to His covenent with us, He is faithful to us, not because we are faithful to Him. God is faithful to us because He is good, not because we are good. God is faithful to us and He will not abandon us like He was abandoned because we are His Beloved. Again it is always good to remind ourselves, we do not earn, deserve or qualify for this love. It is unconditioned, unlimited and unrestricted. We cannot make any sense of God's love. All we can do is relax and enjoy it. This of course, is easier said than done. In our world, where there is so much emphasis on productivity and results, it is so very difficult to fathom that what we are striving for is really already present within us. What is behind all of our efforts and striving is already given to us freely. It is deep inside each one of us. For us to come to this realization and the enjoyment of the free gift, we must learn to give ourselves permission to be human beings, not human doers. Over the years, I have asked stressed out moms and dads to take some time for themselves. I ask those who have the feeling of being over-whelmed to set aside 20 mintues for themselves to do nothing. I am then asked the question, "What will I get from doing nothing?". The answer is "Nothing that you will see right away. The change will come slowly from the inside and will become apparent to others before it will become apparent to us". One young mom said to me, "My husband thinks he has a new wife and my kids think they have a new mother. All that is happening is I'm taking time for me." There is another example of Pascal Death and Resurrection. We have the words from Psalms 46:10, "be still and know that I am God". In the stillness, our God is always present in us, and through us. I would offer the following for your reflection, which is part of my favorite Celtic prayer:
Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise,
Christ in every heart of every man/woman who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouths of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.
I hope and pray this will help you, encourage you on your journey to resurrection and new life. I hope and pray that these words can be a source of strength for you to continuously look inside rather than outside for your strength for the journey. This is an effort to emphasize we are never alone, even in the darkest times. We may feel deserted, abandoned, but our God is always reaching us in the place we least expect it.
"I am the blind alleys of all your paths."
"For you no longer know how to go any further, then you have reached me......thou you are not aware of it."
"I love you."
"You are precious to me."
"You are the apple of my eye."
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Pascal death-The Highway to Radical New Living
This week we are celebrating the greatest mystery in the greatest week of the Christian calendar. It is the week we call Holy. In our understanding of the events and Liturgical celebrations of this week, we are empowered to journey into the Pascal Mystery. This is a mystery we experience every day of our lives. Our participation enables us and empowers us to journey into a mystery which is part and parcal of our everyday lives. This mystery is hidden and revealed in every moment of every day enabling us to participate in the life, suffering, death, burial, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. Most importantly, the final event we celebrate is the descent of the Holy Spirit. For some of us it will be an orderly celebration. For others because of today's life experience it will be about the possibility rather than the reality of resurrection. The Liturgical calendar says we can journey from suffering death to burial and resurrection in three days of celebration. In the reality of life, this does not happen in nice 24 hour increments, which is Kronos time. When we see ourselves participating in the reality of the Pascal Mystery, we are in the realm of God's time, which is called Kairos. There are no measuring instruments when it comes to God's time. There is nothing about God that can be boxed, controlled or measured in time and space. In the spiritual life there is no time, there is no space.
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.
On the otherhand, here are six words that help us to face our reality and they are:
yes, no, I did, I didn't, I will, I will not. In these words, the REAL which is God will be revealed to us. Resurrection is not just "an intellectual promise or an historical event, but a daily experience by the person who knows that his/her faith might not be in remembering but in living here and now". Eugene Kennedy. We must get out of our fantasy world, our fantasy world of denial, the world of illusions, so we can encounter the living God. So we can encounter the Pascal Mystery as it occurs in our everyday reality. This makes every moment of everyday Holy, a place of encounter and hopefully an everdeepening encounter with both the suffering Christ and the Risen Christ.
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 diagramed 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.
We all know what BFFs are...and the drama that occurs when BFFs become enemies rather than the best friends. I would like to suggest that what we think are our greatest enemies are in reality God's BFFs. That is the secret. That is a paradox we have to encounter and deal with on our spiritual journey.
God's three BFFs and our worst nightmares, which are failure, rejection and nakedness. Fr. Richard Roar uses those three to describe what the cross is for each one of us. Each one of us on our journey into the resurrected life will have to deal with what it means to fail, what it means to be rejected and deal with who we are without any the many masks we wear to hide who we really are. Honesty is not only necessary but is is essential for us to journey through the reality of the Pascal Mystery so we can not only claim but enjoy the new life that is ours because of the journey we are on right now. For those who are in Twelve Step programs, they know that recovery is dependant on honesty, open-mindedness and willingness. Where there is no honesty there is no recovery. To sum up, honesty makes it possible for us to journey from death to new life.
The celebrations of Holy Thursday are rich with outward signs of celebration. Good Friday, the atmosphere is an atmosphere of the startk reality [no bells and whistles]. Then we come to the time between Good Friday and Holy Saturday. This is a time of an emptiness, devoid of any movement. This time can be called "tomb-time" or "womb-time" and is also called 'in-between time". There is something happening in the womb of the tomb which is going to result in an explosion of new life. The only thing that we have to do is what most of us are very poor at doing, is to wait. We have to wait for the new birth that is going to come from the death that has taken place. A seed does not germinate quickly in the darkness of the earth (human), it is a slow process which must be endured. We, too, must enter into the darkness which comes to us from being human and patiently await the slow transformation and transfiguration which will occur through the power of God's grace. The resurrection is all about transformation, transfiguration and the birthing of new life. We believe the same God who raised Jesus from the dead is the same God who is present in all of our dying, in all of our deaths, and is slowly and uniquely bringing us to a new level of living, to a new level of being, a freedom as his beloved sons and daughters. We believe as it happened to His Beloved Son, our brother Jesus Christ, so too, will it happen to us who are loved with the same love. Whatever has happened to The Beloved will also happen to each one of us. The tomb-time, the womb-time is called by Fr. Richard Rohr "liminal time", it is the in-between time. The time that between that death we have experienced and what has not yet appeared to take the place of what we have lost.
For myself, I find it a very difficult and anxious place to be in. We have said goodbye to something or someone that was a part and partial of our everyday life. We must enter a new way of living not knowing what is going to occupy that place and space. How many millions of people have lost their jobs and are now searching for new ones. For others it is even more difficult because their search is not being rewarded so they have to live in a deeper darkness. How many people have seen their IRAs, bank accounts, college funds, not only take a deep hit, but in some cases disappear? What is the future holding for them? The families and love ones who have had to deal with sudden disasters are in their womb-time, tomb-time, Holy Saturday time. We see this as a time of true darkness. There seems to be no felt-sense of God. Our sense of God somehow dried up and disappeared. We are now being forced to see a God that is beyond our feelings, our thoughts, our imagination. To again quote Fr. Rolheiser, "when you feel agnostic, even atheistic, because we can no longer imagine the existence of God. God seems non-existence, absent, dead, an fantasy of wishful thinking'.....when we get to this reality, we are in deepest faith. Faith begins exactly where atheism assumes it ends."
For those of us who have endured the desert of Lent, the journey is almost over. We are ending the journey into the depths ourselves where the demons were encountered, where the limitations of our humanity were experienced. This resulted in a cry for help out of the depths of our emptiness and nothingness. Easter Sunday is a time of celebration, it is a time when we rejoice and celebrate in the felt-presence of God, who is revealed to us as loving, caring and faithful. Because of His faithful care and compassion, we are led to the acceptance of His gifts of Light, Life and Love. Light enables us to journey out of the prison of the guilt and shame into the freedom of being Beloved daughter/Beloved son. God's Life enables us to journey from being at war with ourselves and others to a place of peace and serenity. God's love enables us to journey from our Pascal death to resurrection and to a radical new life lived in real freedom. That is the ideal. Reality is altogether different. I expect many will come on Easter Sunday only to be brought to the understanding that in reality they are still in the fear and anxiety of Gesemane or the abandonment of Calvary or in the darkness of the in-between time in the tomb. What we pray for is that by this participation in the celebration in Easter Sunday, they are awakened to what is their destiny.
Again 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 Devine 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 Halleluahs 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."
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.
On the otherhand, here are six words that help us to face our reality and they are:
yes, no, I did, I didn't, I will, I will not. In these words, the REAL which is God will be revealed to us. Resurrection is not just "an intellectual promise or an historical event, but a daily experience by the person who knows that his/her faith might not be in remembering but in living here and now". Eugene Kennedy. We must get out of our fantasy world, our fantasy world of denial, the world of illusions, so we can encounter the living God. So we can encounter the Pascal Mystery as it occurs in our everyday reality. This makes every moment of everyday Holy, a place of encounter and hopefully an everdeepening encounter with both the suffering Christ and the Risen Christ.
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 diagramed 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.
We all know what BFFs are...and the drama that occurs when BFFs become enemies rather than the best friends. I would like to suggest that what we think are our greatest enemies are in reality God's BFFs. That is the secret. That is a paradox we have to encounter and deal with on our spiritual journey.
God's three BFFs and our worst nightmares, which are failure, rejection and nakedness. Fr. Richard Roar uses those three to describe what the cross is for each one of us. Each one of us on our journey into the resurrected life will have to deal with what it means to fail, what it means to be rejected and deal with who we are without any the many masks we wear to hide who we really are. Honesty is not only necessary but is is essential for us to journey through the reality of the Pascal Mystery so we can not only claim but enjoy the new life that is ours because of the journey we are on right now. For those who are in Twelve Step programs, they know that recovery is dependant on honesty, open-mindedness and willingness. Where there is no honesty there is no recovery. To sum up, honesty makes it possible for us to journey from death to new life.
The celebrations of Holy Thursday are rich with outward signs of celebration. Good Friday, the atmosphere is an atmosphere of the startk reality [no bells and whistles]. Then we come to the time between Good Friday and Holy Saturday. This is a time of an emptiness, devoid of any movement. This time can be called "tomb-time" or "womb-time" and is also called 'in-between time". There is something happening in the womb of the tomb which is going to result in an explosion of new life. The only thing that we have to do is what most of us are very poor at doing, is to wait. We have to wait for the new birth that is going to come from the death that has taken place. A seed does not germinate quickly in the darkness of the earth (human), it is a slow process which must be endured. We, too, must enter into the darkness which comes to us from being human and patiently await the slow transformation and transfiguration which will occur through the power of God's grace. The resurrection is all about transformation, transfiguration and the birthing of new life. We believe the same God who raised Jesus from the dead is the same God who is present in all of our dying, in all of our deaths, and is slowly and uniquely bringing us to a new level of living, to a new level of being, a freedom as his beloved sons and daughters. We believe as it happened to His Beloved Son, our brother Jesus Christ, so too, will it happen to us who are loved with the same love. Whatever has happened to The Beloved will also happen to each one of us. The tomb-time, the womb-time is called by Fr. Richard Rohr "liminal time", it is the in-between time. The time that between that death we have experienced and what has not yet appeared to take the place of what we have lost.
For myself, I find it a very difficult and anxious place to be in. We have said goodbye to something or someone that was a part and partial of our everyday life. We must enter a new way of living not knowing what is going to occupy that place and space. How many millions of people have lost their jobs and are now searching for new ones. For others it is even more difficult because their search is not being rewarded so they have to live in a deeper darkness. How many people have seen their IRAs, bank accounts, college funds, not only take a deep hit, but in some cases disappear? What is the future holding for them? The families and love ones who have had to deal with sudden disasters are in their womb-time, tomb-time, Holy Saturday time. We see this as a time of true darkness. There seems to be no felt-sense of God. Our sense of God somehow dried up and disappeared. We are now being forced to see a God that is beyond our feelings, our thoughts, our imagination. To again quote Fr. Rolheiser, "when you feel agnostic, even atheistic, because we can no longer imagine the existence of God. God seems non-existence, absent, dead, an fantasy of wishful thinking'.....when we get to this reality, we are in deepest faith. Faith begins exactly where atheism assumes it ends."
For those of us who have endured the desert of Lent, the journey is almost over. We are ending the journey into the depths ourselves where the demons were encountered, where the limitations of our humanity were experienced. This resulted in a cry for help out of the depths of our emptiness and nothingness. Easter Sunday is a time of celebration, it is a time when we rejoice and celebrate in the felt-presence of God, who is revealed to us as loving, caring and faithful. Because of His faithful care and compassion, we are led to the acceptance of His gifts of Light, Life and Love. Light enables us to journey out of the prison of the guilt and shame into the freedom of being Beloved daughter/Beloved son. God's Life enables us to journey from being at war with ourselves and others to a place of peace and serenity. God's love enables us to journey from our Pascal death to resurrection and to a radical new life lived in real freedom. That is the ideal. Reality is altogether different. I expect many will come on Easter Sunday only to be brought to the understanding that in reality they are still in the fear and anxiety of Gesemane or the abandonment of Calvary or in the darkness of the in-between time in the tomb. What we pray for is that by this participation in the celebration in Easter Sunday, they are awakened to what is their destiny.
Again 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 Devine 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 Halleluahs 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."
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Light always overcomes darkness, but we have to make the decision
From our everyday experience we know that both the windows of our homes, and the lenses through which we see through, must be kept clean and clear. We know these must be kept clean and clear so we can see the reality of what is both in us and in front of us. We must have the windows of our homes clean so that we can see out and light can filter in. When we enter into the storm of guilt, fear and shame, our windows and our lenses are splattered by dirt and grime which make seeing difficult and darkness appears. I came across the following, which I used last Sunday, from a wonderful book by Joyce Rupp, O.S.M.. She tells us, "darkness is a natural part of life, but I have fought this reality for years. It has taken me a long time to recognize that darkness is an essential element for personal growth. No matter how 'right things' I do, darkenss still comes unannounced and uninvited because it is an essential part of life. Without darkness I cannot become the person I am meant to be." Sister Joyce continues;
Darkness comes in many forms and is not an easy visitor. Our life experiences when 'dimness and disorder hold sway' are as many and as varied as we are. The Webster's Dictionary definition for darkness includes: "closed, hidden, not easily understood, obscure, gloomy, hopeless, entirely or partly without light." This description hardly touches the human experience of darkness. The darkness in the human heart also includes: lonely, shattered, dead, anxious, forlorn, bereft, despairing, discouraged, numbed, grief-laden, damaged, empty, bleak, fearful, traumatized, stumbling, aimless.
The land of darkness might be any or all of the following:
-a time in which the energy and focus of life is almost completely funneled into physical, emotional, or psychic pain
- a discouraging and empty inner sojourn when nothing seems valuable or worthwhile
- a stage of spiritual desolation in which there is no sense of God's presence and little or no desire for things of the spirit
- a battle of indecision and struggle, when the unknowns and fears of the future press painfully upon decisions to be made
- a fog-like state when life is confusing, unclear, and seemingly impenetrable
- a situation with evil and atrocity which threatens to overpower or annihilate
- an excruciating time of helplessness in which one feels paralyzed or powerless to alleviate the pain of another
- an on-going siege of negativity which brings with it constant frustration, irritation and dissatisfaction
This list of general descriptions of darkness could go on and on."
I want to encourage you to take these different states of darkness and see which of these states of darkness is overshadowing your life right now. I see, for myself, there is more than one right now. This is our sharing in the Pascal Mystery right now. This is why we have Lent and the journey with Jesus into the desert. This year's experience of Lent is so different for so many people. Not only do we have to journey into the powerlessness, desolation and darkness of the inside, but we also encounter powerlessness, darkness, frustration on the outside. This year, more than ever before, our everyday life is a real reflection of our inside journey.
"The Battlefield of My Soul" was posted earlier today. What is going on in "The Battlefield of My Soul" and so of all of our souls? We see there are two opposing forces, the force that is offering us the Aisling of God, God's dream for us, which is the life of being at ease. There is also the force that wants to not only to sabotage and but distroy that dream. When we are in darkness of guilt, fear and shame, we will be more inclined to deny God's dream and so live in disease. We must always then be on guard, be the alert, be aware of the constant need to continuously open ourselves up to the light of God which is faith, the life of God which whole, and the love of God, which reveals to us the loving presence of the Holy Spirit. So those who struggle with addictions and compulsions this is called serenity recovery. So we are now no longer death-dealers but life-givers to ourselves and consequently to the others that will enter into our life. We will now be wounded-wounders rather than wounded-healers.
I remember many years ago, I began to read the book by John Powell, Happiness is an Inside Job, I came across the following quotation, "Growth begins when the blaming ends". There and then, I threw away that book for five years! When we are using the escape hatch of blame, we will never hold ourselves responsible or anybody else responsible as well. Being responsible is part of growing up. Growing up is painful and in the process we have to face the disease, the darkness that can prevent us from having a life that is full and free. God's dream for you and me. We have been given the awesome gift of free-will we make a personal choice and so we no longer have the freedom to blame anyone or anything, not even God. God has become a wonderful scapegoat on whom we can lay blame for lack of responsibility on our part and the part of others. One of the classic God-blaming states is "God did this for a reason" when it was first and foremost the abuse of our freedom or us being the victim of other acts committed from their disease. When something painful happens in our lives, God does not cause the pain, but is hidden within the pain so he can journey with us from that pain into a new life, a new freedom. That is what Calvary, "Good Friday", Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday is all about. It takes time for the gift to appear from the transformation of the pain, but it will happen. All of our suffering, all of our darkness brought to prayer, always and I mean always, are thresholds leading to resurrection and new life.
So then it is not only necessary, it is essential to keep the windows and the lenses of our life clear so we can enjoy the Sunlight. The Sunlight that is always shining on each one of us each on at every moment of every day. No matter how dark the clouds are, the sun is shining above those clouds. When the clouds roll by, and for certain they will, we will be reminded of this fact. A reminder of this fact, light will overcome darkness. In these moments of change, transfiguration and transformation we will come to believe that light is permanent, darkness is transitory. Because we are believers in the Pascal Mystery, we can now see that in every failure is already sown the seeds of the resurrection. In every success, there is sown the seeds of failure.
We cannot build a tower to the sky, all of our towers crumble at some stage in our lives. All we have to do is look at our society and see the towers that were built on ego and disease have now crumbled. What happens next is God takes the rubble of our fallen towers and builds his Kingdom within us. These moment are our Gethsemane moments. The falling of our towers and the pain and the darkness of loss are our Gethsemane moments. It is our Calvary moment when wee cry out "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? Why have you foresaken me? Why do I feel so alone?" Our faith leads us to surrender in faith, "Father into your hands I commend my spirit". The resurrection, transformation, transfiguration has now begun. I love the prayer, "May our faith, hope and charity turn hatred to love, violence to peace, death to eternal life."
"The human eye in selective what it wants to see and also evades what it does not want to see. It is a startling truth how you see, what you see determines how and who you will see....When you really look deeply at something, it becomes part of you...To look at something that can gaze back at you or that has a reserve and depth, can heal your eyes and deepen your sense of vision." Anam Cara
Darkness comes in many forms and is not an easy visitor. Our life experiences when 'dimness and disorder hold sway' are as many and as varied as we are. The Webster's Dictionary definition for darkness includes: "closed, hidden, not easily understood, obscure, gloomy, hopeless, entirely or partly without light." This description hardly touches the human experience of darkness. The darkness in the human heart also includes: lonely, shattered, dead, anxious, forlorn, bereft, despairing, discouraged, numbed, grief-laden, damaged, empty, bleak, fearful, traumatized, stumbling, aimless.
The land of darkness might be any or all of the following:
-a time in which the energy and focus of life is almost completely funneled into physical, emotional, or psychic pain
- a discouraging and empty inner sojourn when nothing seems valuable or worthwhile
- a stage of spiritual desolation in which there is no sense of God's presence and little or no desire for things of the spirit
- a battle of indecision and struggle, when the unknowns and fears of the future press painfully upon decisions to be made
- a fog-like state when life is confusing, unclear, and seemingly impenetrable
- a situation with evil and atrocity which threatens to overpower or annihilate
- an excruciating time of helplessness in which one feels paralyzed or powerless to alleviate the pain of another
- an on-going siege of negativity which brings with it constant frustration, irritation and dissatisfaction
This list of general descriptions of darkness could go on and on."
I want to encourage you to take these different states of darkness and see which of these states of darkness is overshadowing your life right now. I see, for myself, there is more than one right now. This is our sharing in the Pascal Mystery right now. This is why we have Lent and the journey with Jesus into the desert. This year's experience of Lent is so different for so many people. Not only do we have to journey into the powerlessness, desolation and darkness of the inside, but we also encounter powerlessness, darkness, frustration on the outside. This year, more than ever before, our everyday life is a real reflection of our inside journey.
"The Battlefield of My Soul" was posted earlier today. What is going on in "The Battlefield of My Soul" and so of all of our souls? We see there are two opposing forces, the force that is offering us the Aisling of God, God's dream for us, which is the life of being at ease. There is also the force that wants to not only to sabotage and but distroy that dream. When we are in darkness of guilt, fear and shame, we will be more inclined to deny God's dream and so live in disease. We must always then be on guard, be the alert, be aware of the constant need to continuously open ourselves up to the light of God which is faith, the life of God which whole, and the love of God, which reveals to us the loving presence of the Holy Spirit. So those who struggle with addictions and compulsions this is called serenity recovery. So we are now no longer death-dealers but life-givers to ourselves and consequently to the others that will enter into our life. We will now be wounded-wounders rather than wounded-healers.
I remember many years ago, I began to read the book by John Powell, Happiness is an Inside Job, I came across the following quotation, "Growth begins when the blaming ends". There and then, I threw away that book for five years! When we are using the escape hatch of blame, we will never hold ourselves responsible or anybody else responsible as well. Being responsible is part of growing up. Growing up is painful and in the process we have to face the disease, the darkness that can prevent us from having a life that is full and free. God's dream for you and me. We have been given the awesome gift of free-will we make a personal choice and so we no longer have the freedom to blame anyone or anything, not even God. God has become a wonderful scapegoat on whom we can lay blame for lack of responsibility on our part and the part of others. One of the classic God-blaming states is "God did this for a reason" when it was first and foremost the abuse of our freedom or us being the victim of other acts committed from their disease. When something painful happens in our lives, God does not cause the pain, but is hidden within the pain so he can journey with us from that pain into a new life, a new freedom. That is what Calvary, "Good Friday", Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday is all about. It takes time for the gift to appear from the transformation of the pain, but it will happen. All of our suffering, all of our darkness brought to prayer, always and I mean always, are thresholds leading to resurrection and new life.
So then it is not only necessary, it is essential to keep the windows and the lenses of our life clear so we can enjoy the Sunlight. The Sunlight that is always shining on each one of us each on at every moment of every day. No matter how dark the clouds are, the sun is shining above those clouds. When the clouds roll by, and for certain they will, we will be reminded of this fact. A reminder of this fact, light will overcome darkness. In these moments of change, transfiguration and transformation we will come to believe that light is permanent, darkness is transitory. Because we are believers in the Pascal Mystery, we can now see that in every failure is already sown the seeds of the resurrection. In every success, there is sown the seeds of failure.
We cannot build a tower to the sky, all of our towers crumble at some stage in our lives. All we have to do is look at our society and see the towers that were built on ego and disease have now crumbled. What happens next is God takes the rubble of our fallen towers and builds his Kingdom within us. These moment are our Gethsemane moments. The falling of our towers and the pain and the darkness of loss are our Gethsemane moments. It is our Calvary moment when wee cry out "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? Why have you foresaken me? Why do I feel so alone?" Our faith leads us to surrender in faith, "Father into your hands I commend my spirit". The resurrection, transformation, transfiguration has now begun. I love the prayer, "May our faith, hope and charity turn hatred to love, violence to peace, death to eternal life."
"The human eye in selective what it wants to see and also evades what it does not want to see. It is a startling truth how you see, what you see determines how and who you will see....When you really look deeply at something, it becomes part of you...To look at something that can gaze back at you or that has a reserve and depth, can heal your eyes and deepen your sense of vision." Anam Cara
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Healthy Spirituality is the answer to toxic shame
We need a constant reminder of Nouwens great words of consolation, "God's mercy is greater than our sins. There is an awareness of sin that does not lead to God but to self preoccupation. Our temptation is to be so impressed by our sins and our failings and so overwhelmed by our lack of generosity that we get stuck in a paralyzing guilt."
I believe what Nouwen is speaking about here is the third aspect of the "toxic trinity", which is shame. Healthy shame says, "I am human, I am limited, I make mistakes and it is okay. I do not have to be perfect." Toxic shame on the otherhand takes away the following five rights, which must be reclaimed.
I MUST reclaim the Right to:
Right to love - which means I do not have to earn, deserve or qualify for love, otherwise, it is not a gift.
Right to be loved [the beloved]-I am the beloved when I am loved as I am right now. I am loved with a love that is unconditioned, unlimited and unrestricted. It is now and forever. Being the beloved cancels out need for and the demands of perfection.
Right to belong- I have always belonged to God's love. The fact that I am living means God's love is supporting me and I will return to the same eternal love. I always belong to the family of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Right to worth-whileness- My right to live fully human life. "The glory of God is the human person fully alive." My worth-whileness is not dependent on what I do, but who I am. "My being proclaimed the greatness of the Lord." Mary in the Magnificat
Right to have fun [play]- Unless I play my prayer does not work.
We are not born with toxic shame, we are "gifted" this beginning at about 18 months old. We must spend our whole life giving back that toxic gift so we can live God's dream for us on a daily basis. Toxic shame comes to us in words and in phrases. Words like; dumb, stupid or phrases like; I am ashamed of you, how could you be so dumb/stupid, what cannot you be like....I am sorry you have ever been born and the list goes on and on. It also comes to us as the result of physical, spiritual, sexual or psychological abuse.
Behind every addiction and compulsion is toxic shame. Behind all of our medicators -abuse of alcohol, drugs, sex, food, shopping, work, gambling, TV, internet, pornography, cutting - is toxic shame. We are now blessed to have such wonderful support groups such as Alcholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, Sex Anonymous , Overeaters Anonymous, etc. etc., which offer to the addict a way out of the addiction into a new way of living an authentic human life. What is offered in these groups is the essence of spirituality. It is a great example of how the place of the wound becomes the place of the gift and those who are previously wounded now become empowered to be healers from their experience. When we are in a shame attack, with feelings of not being good enough, or not being deserving, we lose sight of who we are as the beloved son as beloved daughter. A classic example of a shame attack is "poor me". The natural consequences of this will be unhealthy behaviors which we just mentioned above.
Toxic Shame wants to kill you and me. Many people surrender to the end consequence of toxic shame and commit suicide. Suicide can be either fast or slow. Toxic shame is terminal, it is death dealing. Because toxic shame and healthy spirituality are mutally exclusive, not so with religiosity. We are told that religiosity if for those who are afraid of going to hell. Spirituality is for those who have been to hell. Spirituality is the key which unlocks the door allowing me to cross the threshold shame into a life of peace, joy and love. Every encounter with toxic shame will either strengthen and reinforce my belief in my essential goodness or weaken the boundary of my belonging.
Religiosity and toxic shame seem to be able to coexist. We will do everything we can to look good on the outside, all the time while actually in a living hell on the inside. The thinking is as long as the outside practice is okay and I am looking good doing it then I must be okay, not so. How often have you heard, "The cleaner the house, the sicker the family. A clean desk is the sign of a sick mind."
How often do we as individuals, as couples, as families, as parishes, as church, as country project one thing while we know deep down that is not the truth - we are living a lie. We have a secret. There will always be a secret we are not allowed to speak of or share in any way. A secret, because of our misgotten love, we will take to the grave rather than face the reality and bring it to light. Our unhappiness will somehow be connected to our share in the family secret. When toxic shame paralyzes us into inactivity, we are unable to move, we are frozen in place. Something will then happen which will force us to deal with the toxic shame of the secret. This is a moment of conflict. Will I continue to live the life of the lie or grasp on to the outstretched hand of unconditioned, unrestricted, unlimited love which will lead me to freedom. This freedom can be summed up in a new way of living, which comes to us from a new way of acting.
The antidote to toxic shame is a healthy spirituality. Healthy shame, healthy spirituality is always reminding us we are the beloved, we are loved without conditions or restrictions. We do not have to earn love, deserve love or qualify for love, it is always being gifted to us without price. We cannot earn what we already have. Unhealthy thinking and unhealthy messages from the family secret will lead us to perfectionism which according to John Bradshaw is a disease not a quality to be desired. Those of us who desire to be perfect are usually angry, resentful, short-tempered. Why? Because, simply when we want to be perfect, we are chasing an illusion. We cannot be what we expect to be or want to be or other people tell us we ought to be. We are never good enough. This in turn will lead me to another visit to the pity-pot, to the "poor me". When enough of us get together who are on our pity-pot, we have a pity-party, which will only reinforce our sense of powerlessness and alienation. The opposite of this is asking the question, "What am I going to do for me, right now?". You switch the focus from the poor me to that of empowerment. We make the choice of being a victim or a survivor. Healthy spirituality is saying to us on the other hand, by the grace of God, I am who I am right now [St. Paul]. That means that right now I am loved by God. I am being graced. Because I am loved by God right now, I have to make a choice whether I will respond to God's love or choose self-hatred, leading to self-punishment.
Spirituality enables us to become comfortable with being a human being rather than a human doer. When we are authentically human we realize that we are in the process of becoming through the actions of God's grace. We are in the process of being born. We are always in the process of giving birth to who we are. You can reflect a little bit more on the quotation from Anan Cara shared in the March 17th blog.
I find great consolation in the parable of the wheat and weeds. In the parable the servants want to go and to pull up the weeds, but the wise king says, "Let them grow together until harvest time. Because in pulling up the weeds, you may pull up the wheat as well." As they spring from the earth, the wheat, and in this particular case [Darnel] are very similar. So the king is wise because what the servents would have thought were weeds would have actually been wheat and what was wheat would have been weeds. This is our spiritual journey. This is the process we go through. What I thought were the strengths of my twenties are now the weaknesses of my sixties. What I thought were the weaknesses of my twenties are now the source of strength for the sixties. Merton encouranges us with the words, "Be who you already are". We have been loved by our God from all eternity. We are loved right now with that same eternal love we have had from the beginning of time. We will return to that infinite eternal love when our time here is ended. Where that love resides is called the heart, that is the place in each one of us that has never said no to God. I do not care where you have been, what you have done, there is that place in you that has never said no to God. In that place, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are having a great celebration. There is always an open invitation for us to celebrate. We have been given the freedom to say yes and to say no. When we are living in the true life of the beloved, we are open to join in the celebration.
When we are in toxic shame, we do not believe that we are good enough or that we do not have the right to celebrate because we have not earned it, deserve it or somehow in our misguided [diseased] thinking qualify for the celebration. Each moment there is a decision to be made, we are we going to chose to live live life, and live it to the fullest [spirituality] or surrender to death [toxic shame].
There is the great prayer which called the Serenity Prayer;
"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things that I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference."
Everybody is familiar with those lines, but not many people know the next two lines;
"Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time."
And that moment is now.
There is No...Other...Way...of meeting God except right NOW.
Scripture tells us, "Now is the acceptable time, now is the time of salvation". In this now moment, we make a decision whether to listen to the truth that we are the beloved. Or listen to the lie, which is we are not good enough. In this moment, God is saying to each one of us, "I love you with an everlasting love. It is my gift to you."
I believe what Nouwen is speaking about here is the third aspect of the "toxic trinity", which is shame. Healthy shame says, "I am human, I am limited, I make mistakes and it is okay. I do not have to be perfect." Toxic shame on the otherhand takes away the following five rights, which must be reclaimed.
I MUST reclaim the Right to:
Right to love - which means I do not have to earn, deserve or qualify for love, otherwise, it is not a gift.
Right to be loved [the beloved]-I am the beloved when I am loved as I am right now. I am loved with a love that is unconditioned, unlimited and unrestricted. It is now and forever. Being the beloved cancels out need for and the demands of perfection.
Right to belong- I have always belonged to God's love. The fact that I am living means God's love is supporting me and I will return to the same eternal love. I always belong to the family of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Right to worth-whileness- My right to live fully human life. "The glory of God is the human person fully alive." My worth-whileness is not dependent on what I do, but who I am. "My being proclaimed the greatness of the Lord." Mary in the Magnificat
Right to have fun [play]- Unless I play my prayer does not work.
We are not born with toxic shame, we are "gifted" this beginning at about 18 months old. We must spend our whole life giving back that toxic gift so we can live God's dream for us on a daily basis. Toxic shame comes to us in words and in phrases. Words like; dumb, stupid or phrases like; I am ashamed of you, how could you be so dumb/stupid, what cannot you be like....I am sorry you have ever been born and the list goes on and on. It also comes to us as the result of physical, spiritual, sexual or psychological abuse.
Behind every addiction and compulsion is toxic shame. Behind all of our medicators -abuse of alcohol, drugs, sex, food, shopping, work, gambling, TV, internet, pornography, cutting - is toxic shame. We are now blessed to have such wonderful support groups such as Alcholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, Sex Anonymous , Overeaters Anonymous, etc. etc., which offer to the addict a way out of the addiction into a new way of living an authentic human life. What is offered in these groups is the essence of spirituality. It is a great example of how the place of the wound becomes the place of the gift and those who are previously wounded now become empowered to be healers from their experience. When we are in a shame attack, with feelings of not being good enough, or not being deserving, we lose sight of who we are as the beloved son as beloved daughter. A classic example of a shame attack is "poor me". The natural consequences of this will be unhealthy behaviors which we just mentioned above.
Toxic Shame wants to kill you and me. Many people surrender to the end consequence of toxic shame and commit suicide. Suicide can be either fast or slow. Toxic shame is terminal, it is death dealing. Because toxic shame and healthy spirituality are mutally exclusive, not so with religiosity. We are told that religiosity if for those who are afraid of going to hell. Spirituality is for those who have been to hell. Spirituality is the key which unlocks the door allowing me to cross the threshold shame into a life of peace, joy and love. Every encounter with toxic shame will either strengthen and reinforce my belief in my essential goodness or weaken the boundary of my belonging.
Religiosity and toxic shame seem to be able to coexist. We will do everything we can to look good on the outside, all the time while actually in a living hell on the inside. The thinking is as long as the outside practice is okay and I am looking good doing it then I must be okay, not so. How often have you heard, "The cleaner the house, the sicker the family. A clean desk is the sign of a sick mind."
How often do we as individuals, as couples, as families, as parishes, as church, as country project one thing while we know deep down that is not the truth - we are living a lie. We have a secret. There will always be a secret we are not allowed to speak of or share in any way. A secret, because of our misgotten love, we will take to the grave rather than face the reality and bring it to light. Our unhappiness will somehow be connected to our share in the family secret. When toxic shame paralyzes us into inactivity, we are unable to move, we are frozen in place. Something will then happen which will force us to deal with the toxic shame of the secret. This is a moment of conflict. Will I continue to live the life of the lie or grasp on to the outstretched hand of unconditioned, unrestricted, unlimited love which will lead me to freedom. This freedom can be summed up in a new way of living, which comes to us from a new way of acting.
The antidote to toxic shame is a healthy spirituality. Healthy shame, healthy spirituality is always reminding us we are the beloved, we are loved without conditions or restrictions. We do not have to earn love, deserve love or qualify for love, it is always being gifted to us without price. We cannot earn what we already have. Unhealthy thinking and unhealthy messages from the family secret will lead us to perfectionism which according to John Bradshaw is a disease not a quality to be desired. Those of us who desire to be perfect are usually angry, resentful, short-tempered. Why? Because, simply when we want to be perfect, we are chasing an illusion. We cannot be what we expect to be or want to be or other people tell us we ought to be. We are never good enough. This in turn will lead me to another visit to the pity-pot, to the "poor me". When enough of us get together who are on our pity-pot, we have a pity-party, which will only reinforce our sense of powerlessness and alienation. The opposite of this is asking the question, "What am I going to do for me, right now?". You switch the focus from the poor me to that of empowerment. We make the choice of being a victim or a survivor. Healthy spirituality is saying to us on the other hand, by the grace of God, I am who I am right now [St. Paul]. That means that right now I am loved by God. I am being graced. Because I am loved by God right now, I have to make a choice whether I will respond to God's love or choose self-hatred, leading to self-punishment.
Spirituality enables us to become comfortable with being a human being rather than a human doer. When we are authentically human we realize that we are in the process of becoming through the actions of God's grace. We are in the process of being born. We are always in the process of giving birth to who we are. You can reflect a little bit more on the quotation from Anan Cara shared in the March 17th blog.
I find great consolation in the parable of the wheat and weeds. In the parable the servants want to go and to pull up the weeds, but the wise king says, "Let them grow together until harvest time. Because in pulling up the weeds, you may pull up the wheat as well." As they spring from the earth, the wheat, and in this particular case [Darnel] are very similar. So the king is wise because what the servents would have thought were weeds would have actually been wheat and what was wheat would have been weeds. This is our spiritual journey. This is the process we go through. What I thought were the strengths of my twenties are now the weaknesses of my sixties. What I thought were the weaknesses of my twenties are now the source of strength for the sixties. Merton encouranges us with the words, "Be who you already are". We have been loved by our God from all eternity. We are loved right now with that same eternal love we have had from the beginning of time. We will return to that infinite eternal love when our time here is ended. Where that love resides is called the heart, that is the place in each one of us that has never said no to God. I do not care where you have been, what you have done, there is that place in you that has never said no to God. In that place, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are having a great celebration. There is always an open invitation for us to celebrate. We have been given the freedom to say yes and to say no. When we are living in the true life of the beloved, we are open to join in the celebration.
When we are in toxic shame, we do not believe that we are good enough or that we do not have the right to celebrate because we have not earned it, deserve it or somehow in our misguided [diseased] thinking qualify for the celebration. Each moment there is a decision to be made, we are we going to chose to live live life, and live it to the fullest [spirituality] or surrender to death [toxic shame].
There is the great prayer which called the Serenity Prayer;
"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things that I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference."
Everybody is familiar with those lines, but not many people know the next two lines;
"Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time."
And that moment is now.
There is No...Other...Way...of meeting God except right NOW.
Scripture tells us, "Now is the acceptable time, now is the time of salvation". In this now moment, we make a decision whether to listen to the truth that we are the beloved. Or listen to the lie, which is we are not good enough. In this moment, God is saying to each one of us, "I love you with an everlasting love. It is my gift to you."
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