Monday, November 30, 2009

Cost

Each time I sit in front of the computer and try to compose my thoughts, try to make sense out of the images and sentences within my brain, I sometimes stop and lose myself in a monumental battle of self doubt and confusion which frequently is accompanied by apathy, lethargy, and procrastination. And, during these times all the world is a distraction.

It costs me nothing to waste time, to accept my shortcomings, to avoid moving forward, to avoid moving closer to God. Modernity provides many explanations mental, physical, chemical, genetic, and many other innumerable reasons. I can easily accept or easily deny these defenses. I must always deny them, I must always force myself to move toward Christ.

My life will always be a mystery to me. I will always surprise myself. There are moments when I say things completely unplanned, unimagined and others when I am completely mute when I am ready with either an anecdote or riposte.

Some part of me constantly seeks divine unity. Part of me questions the loyalty and dedication of the other part and just wants complete relaxation.

Each time I sit in front of the computer I wonder about typographical, grammatical, and spelling errors. My mind has fun challenging me with examples of my past failures, past successes, and all other ambiguous moments. What I write often reflects two competing realities, what has happened and how I want things to be.

It costs me nothing to accept and wallow in my imperfection and selfishness. I can describe my life as a beautiful contradiction, a perfect expression of angst and ennui with a dollop of craziness for effect. I can accept all types of secular ideas and thought of victimization by association. Our society makes this easy, natural, almost respectable.

My life as a Christian encourages reflection on all aspects of my life, from the big ticket decisions to the humdrum moments. There is always a desire, a need to do more, pray more, love more. There is always a reason to challenge the status quo, to challenge complacency, to challenge moral and ethical complicity. Modernity offers and promotes leisure and comfort. Christianity offers and promotes sacrifice, humility, charity, work, prayer, and mercy. Sadly, our society teaches us how to expect these from other people but not how to include them in our own lives.

Being a Christian costs me nothing but provides me with guidance and inspiration to move toward, closer to God and to build a life filled with love and hope.

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Reflection

Today the new liturgical year begins. Today is the first Sunday in Advent. Today, I am enjoying a couple of moments of silence while looking out of a second floor bedroom window at a half dozen rear yards still green and manicured, each uniformly enclosed by similar unwhitewashed wooden fences. The yards are empty. There is a factory made plastic doll house that a little child could walk into and play inside and some other removable slide or bridge thing.

As I approach Advent this year, I must do everything to minimize the allure of secular Christmas. I must make myself go to confession. I must do everything to clean and purify both my heart and mind.

I must be silent and employ the silence to observe how God communicates with me. I must not be afraid of sacrifice. I must help and support others who are doing good and those who are serving God.

There is always a millisecond of doubt, a moment of hesitation which is totally natural, totally human when I analyze the current situation, my appearance before Christ, hopefully with effort and thought I will live a life of quiet charity, quiet humility so completely, so simply that this appearance has been inveterate as a faithful believer, a simple Christian whose life reflects Christ’s social justice teachings; I pray that my life be lived as of vessel of goodness, compassion, mercy, and love will in fact be my guide; all the favorable and good things be first and always associated and acknowledged to be the work done by a humble servant of God, anonymously asking only to do more work, not asking, not wanting any earthly reward, any earthly praise.

May all labors done honestly and truly in God’s name inspire others to follow on the road to goodness with prayer, thoughts, and action and inspire others to build lives filled with universal hope and love ready to share with their neighbors, ready to share with anyone in need.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

individual lives

Nothing more mercifully, more patiently, or more recurrently solicits us, in each of our individual lives, I think, than the interest of our learning how to move closer to God, how to be more like Christ in all of our daily activities, and how to live and encourage lives filled with compassion, hope, and love; the Christian, the true Christian, and above all the particular behaviors which are displayed which reflects the beauty and truth of the Word will help all who believe and obey it to reach God’s kingdom. If our lives are filled with concern, compassion, and love equally for ourselves and our neighbors, nothing will be hard for us to bear as long as offer all of our prayers, dreams, and fears to God consistently throughout each day of our lives, never stopping, never waivering. If our lives are a testament to God and his glory, love, mercy are asserted in both our actions and our deeds, then our lives will contain and inspire natural and honest humility, charity, and sacrifice. Each one of us have an individual identity with God; we each have private and personal questions to ask God; we each have to work out ways to listen to God in our lives; we must always believe and always be patient that God will reach out and touch us. We may want to believe that our lives are just a random collection of accidents and coincidences. There is a danger in this reasoning, it minimizes the reality that we are all loved by God, we are all special to God, we all have a specific purpose assigned by God. Each day each of have infinite chances to do God’s work, to share God’s Word; and each day each of us have infinite choices to follow Christ, to bear witness and use all of our lives changes for the glory and benefit of God. Our personal history can make of strong in our faith and our love for God. God does not ask us to be perfect, to be a genius. God only asks that we believe his Word and make it the basis of our lives. Faith can draw us into God’s adventure, sometimes as absolute observers, absolute participants. Our spiritual lives should naturally be filled with curiosity and inquiry, leading us on a journey to learn more about God, his mystery and our Christian experience (I mean, needless to say, when we are at all spiritually minded our lives will always be ascendant, always be in motion, always be prayerful); but there is something beautiful and calming in the clear comforting embrace of the spiritual nature, in simple terms, within each of us there should always be a continual discernment, question of vocation, desire to affirm our purpose for living is always to be God’s instruments of love, hope, and mercy. Serving God is a happy exercise in faith and love.

Friday, November 27, 2009

Inspiration

This will not be a description of how or when I became a Christian; it will be sufficient to say that I accept and understand that I was born with original sin, but that I came to convert a good while ago now. The several prayers and hymns in which, in my time, I have said and heard during my lifetime did not always please me but did inspire me, for one reason or another; our lives need purpose, direction, and hope; but when, on a summer evening about seven o’clock, I first tried to read Seven Storey Mountain, with its spiritual call and response, this autobiography has been compared to St. Augustine’s conversion, encouraging an education in the Christ’s mercy, the story of the restless and vagabond travels, observing or living; the great power of the ruined life rising high into the melancholy sky, with a whole platoon of memories--blurry figures, soft voices--skimming about with questions and revelations and facts and figures and fissures;--when I first tried reading this book, I felt instinctively that my burdens might be removed from my shoulders, that my tired fingers might write no more, that at last, within my imagination, I had found inspiration in a book to read. Initially I tried to read the book, this autobiography explains one person’s private journey; Christian spirituality needs to be nurtured and developed; this is the power of vocation, purpose of discernment, so far at least as spiritual growth is concerned, to encourage movement closer toward God in all areas of our lives. After reading a couple of chapters, I put the book down, convinced myself that I would pick it up later on, and several days, then weeks, then months passed. The book remained untouched and unread. There, with the former inspiration of the book, I tried to read this book again and again; I thought about reading the book several times and I even told several friends that I was about to read the book.

And so now as Advent begins, I am about to read the book again.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Silence

Today, I have finished reading Saint Benedict’s Rule.

My mind is filled with thoughts avoiding pride and self-importance, increasing time spent in lectio divina, obedience, silence, humility. All are intertwined, all are important. Obedience and humility are easily pulled out as cornerstones of good Christian living.

Silence resonates within my mind as being essential for a good relationship with God. There must be a time when we are quiet, when our minds are no longer worrying about whether our boss will like a report, whether there will be a parking spot close to the building, whether reservations are needed at some restaurant, or whether to call someone after some long forgotten disagreement.

Although they may appear important at the time when we look at them through anxiety colored spectacles, a second examination often diminishes the importance. We confuse all types of things with importance: convenience, ambition, control.

Silence as we become acquainted with it and as we allow ourselves to trust it can become a powerful ally for us. Before we act there should be meditation and prayer. Before we speak there should be reflection and prayer. Before we speak or act there should always be a moment of silence.

On stage as an actor learns his/her lines, they also learn the beats, which includes the written dialogue and the pauses and silences. Learning the beats is often essential for interpreting the character and breathing life into the written words. The beats of a scene often make a character more human, provide glimpses into motivations, and punctuate what is important to either the character or author. Watch any television show, stage play, or movie and you will see beats; you will see moments when the characters stop talking and begin thinking.

There is nothing wrong with taking a moment to reflect on what we have either heard or observed. Our silence provides an opportunity to catalogue, analyze different situations. Our silence is a good time for prayer. How much better or lives would be if we prayed more often and said rude, inappropriate, and unacceptable things less.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Actions and Prayers -- Part 1

The circumstance of our Christian lives presents many opportunities for us to show our love, compassion, and mercy. If we accept Christianity’s belief in social justice, we must also accept the inherent call to action that is necessary to bring the teachings and ideas about social justice alive. Before joining the Church, I gave social justice a cursory wink between deciding which restaurant and which sale to investigate this week.

The Church presents us with an expectation regarding ongoing concern and effort toward social justice. All Christians are called to action. All Christians must do God’s work. Our lives should reflect God’s love, God’s mercy, God’s compassion, God’s forgiveness. Modernity encourages haste and instant gratification. Modernity is spasmodic and enmeshed in tangled webs of individual rights, individual freedoms, individual selfishness.

When we act in God’s name by helping the less fortunate and those who can not help themselves, our actions become indomitable, shimmering and glittering with goodness; our actions reveal something exceptional and ethereal; our actions can contain a powerful magnetism which encourages our recidivism; and our actions are often at odds with the buckwheat flecked, caffeinated worldview of our society where all problems are solved by the government, philanthropists, or foundations; our actions allow us to be humble servants of God; we must always remember to reach toward God like Michelango’s Creation of Adam on the Sistine Chapel.

There is something obdurate in the ease and poise that is employed in avoiding animating the Church’s social justice principles. As Christians there should be no compromise, our lives should include prayers and volunteer work for the vulnerable.

The zest of Christianity is universal love, universal concern. Action by each one of us who call ourselves Christians is needed. We must be willing to pull back the glossy veneer of society and to offer whatever assistance we can. We must remember to always be courteous. We must remember to always pray.

Our prayers may reflect our true feelings, our true fears, our true hopes.

Huddled with a couple of floppy pillows beneath a quilt in dramatic fashion I am asleep dreaming of the malignant advance of avarice, apathy, acarology, and alchemy and world domination with fast sports cars, foot fights on deserted European promenades, and guns on deck-chairs.

Actions and Prayers -- Part 2

I was not sure if I was either anesthetized or oxidized but I felt paralyzed, permanently attached to this bed but I could hear voices chanting the Rosary. I could not see any faces, just ten candles slowly approaching, growing brighter. Suddenly my eyes opened.

On Saturday I climbed out of bed around six o’clock in the morning. I always find waking to be a mysterious process of reality erosion as my dreams fade and disappear into a waking reality. This morning I was the perfect stereotype of the smart, prepared, time conscious sidekick/boy-next-door embarking on my own personal adventure.

I shaved, showered, dressed, combed my hair, didn’t look at television, checked the weather online, didn’t eat a thing, picked up my cell phone, picked up my iPod, put on my leather jacket which should be repaired, and left my apartment.

If I am awake and functioning before seven I am in some type of neuralgic distress. I have displayed lunatic tendencies, cajoling chaos out of oxygen molecules and sometimes freezing hot air with just a glance and well displaced sigh previously at this uncivilized hour. I knew my destination, my route, my time estimation. I imagined all types of tragic and comedic imbroglios which might delay my progress.

How savage the world was that morning! How malnourished and uncaffeinated the other pedestrians looked! Yes, there were other pedestrians! Little women in high heels pulling heavy pieces of luggage. Men in sweatpants carrying newspapers! I had a sense of accomplishment as I listened to music to keep my mind occupied and my pace steady.

And I arrived at the meeting place early. I was so pleased with myself. I had envisioned being late or abducted by aliens or stumbling unaware into some grizzly crime scene like some unaware character in a police procedural television show.

I arrived in good spirits filled with a healthy mixture of anxiety, anticipation, and amiability. On Friday night I must have somehow been marinated in hope, love, and humility while I was recumbent. Maybe I was on some type of spiritual rotisserie which drizzled peace, social justice, compassion, charity into my character. I was calm! I was happy! I was standing near the Foggy Bottom metro station, waiting patiently, watching the people enter and exit the hospital, watching cars speed up and slow down at the stop light in front of me.

And finally I had to turn off the iPod and climb into a shiny SUV. Somehow I was sitting in the middle and there was a vague queasiness as I imagined that the two men on either side of me were mob enforcers and I was about to be rubbed out and tossed into the East River which was quickly changed into the Anacostia River because of budget restraints and I wondered if I would still get my pair of cement shoes.

My imagination turned itself off. My tongue was on mute. My mouth was on holiday. My ears were on high alert, listening to the conversation, listening to the outside sounds, listening to the cadence of the silence. I personally do not like talking before ten o’clock in the morning but I can be a spirited and active listener.

The drive across town was drenched with enthusiasm and good cheer. I think I mumbled a couple of inaudible sentences lacking in both enunciation and pronunciation.

Actions and Prayers -- Part 3

We arrived at the Missionaries of Charity. I was feeling contemplative. I surveyed the houses, noticed a statute of Mary, saw leaves and assorted toys on the ground. There was something very familiar about this place although I had never been there before. There was something venerable, something jovial, something mystical, something holy about this ground.

As I looked at the gray November sky, looked at the leafless trees, looked at the simple, inauspicious buildings, I knew that I had arrived at the place that my soul had dreamed about.

We walked into the building, walked down a short hallway and entered the kitchen. There were four boxes placed near the sink. We were instructed to remove our coats and put on aprons. I looked at this shiny stainless steel kitchen with its various sinks and countertops and cabinets and shelves. My mind did not capture any of the details of this kitchen, only the dedication and compassion of the Sisters of Charity. On one wall, there was a shiny poster with several prayers.

Almost immediately I received my first assignment and found myself submerging my hands into warm water, pushing big green collard greens down, puling them up and then pushing them down again. I smiled as I began to do this. I remembered watching my Grandmother do this when I was either six or seven, I remembered teasing my cousin about washing and cooking greens each year just before Thanksgiving.

And for a moment as I touched the water and the greens, that became my entire reality. That became my life’s task, my purpose. I focused all of my energy on those greens until I realized that my cuffs were getting wet. I stop, pushed them up.

And my ears were aware of the conversations going on around me. How easily our lives can be condensed into short sentences. On one side there was a man who had studied theology and converted to Catholicism while at University and then worked in Chicago for two years and on the other side of me there was a man from Belfast, currently in graduate school working on a thesis about Graham Greene. And they talked about monastic life, theology, becoming diocesan priests.

I was able to mumble a couple of sentences but was happiest not speaking, but listening. I was happy being thankful for this opportunity, this moment in this kitchen at this time. It was a moment when I could view an event through the eyes of an adult and a child. Memory and reality merged while I was rinsing greens and listening to talk about God and possibly serving God as a priest.

It was a sumptuous moment of hope. Feeling equal parts spiritual, giddy, and juvenile I stood there enjoying this interlude, enjoying playing in the water with the greens, enjoying the silent prayers that my soul automatically made, enjoying the camaraderie and Christian fellowship of this moment, enjoying and giving thanks for the work of the Missionaries of Charity that occurs in this South East neighborhood in Washington.

Actions and Prayers -- Part 4

And then somehow I found myself outside being asked and briefly contemplating climbing a tree with a buzz saw, cutting off unwanted limbs. Luckily a rake was placed into my hands. After a brief lesson in the correct leaf raking Mid-Atlantic posture and technique I began. It was a completely new experience for me. I could not remember ever raking leaves before. It is possible even plausible that I had raked before but I had no single memory of it.

The more I raked, the more I liked it. The more I concentrated on the leaves on the moist ground the more I thought about doing God’s work, offering my life to God. Somehow I raked leaves into several little piles, too small to jump into but large enough to see that some leaves had been removed. After I started I wished that there was time to rake all the leaves into neat little piles.

We stopped raking and went back to the kitchen where we joined the others in prayer before they served their guests.

And then piles had to be placed within black plastic bags and carried to the curb. How fun it was to hold the bag open and discuss the Mass, to learn about a monastery in Rome, to learn about the Eastern Church! Somehow the leaves were placed inside the bags and moved away from the front of the house to the street.

The morning was a pleasant gallimaufry. I did not view it as a service project. It was a moment of gentleness and patience. How polychromatic faith is! What a privilege it was to rinse the collard greens and then rake the leaves. Being exposed to different experiences with different people in search of goodness and doing God’s work is invigorating.

I felt humane and worthy of God’s love.

Actions and Prayers -- Part 5

I believe that my Christian life will be an ongoing continuous discernment, I shall always be trying to live a life worthy of God’s love. I must find a way to show humility, charity, mercy in my day to day life. My life hopefully will reflect obedience and fidelity to Christ and his teachings.

Being Catholic presents many ideas to ponder on and to pray about. Prayer is essential for a good Christian life. It is my prayer life which I must concentrate on and improve. How I communicate with God is important! When I communicate with God is important! Why I communicate with God is important.

As a Christian my relationship with God is very important. Every day of my life I must strengthen this relationship through prayer, humility, obedience. I must remember to always be humble, not to boast, not to lust for attention, not to desire and reward for doing the right thing.

Spiritual growth requires discernment; moving closer to God requires discernment; prayer is an essential component of discernment. Spiritual growth is connected to prayer.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

The Beauty

I have to remember that there is a visible Holy Spirit, leading me toward God, guiding me to doing his work, encouraging me to put others first. I want to learn humility and obedience. I must always remember that the Church was founded by Jesus Christ, and as a Christian there is an implicit promise to offer my life in service of God, to love everyone equally, and be merciful, humble, compassionate. The gates of heaven are not to be taken for granted. The apostolic Church allows us to learn how to love and serve God. As Christians our lives and our daily choices should reflect the Church’s ministry. I have to remember the sacraments, Baptism, Eucharist, Confirmation.

I want to live a life that is holy and filled with God’s grace. Our lives should be filled with perpetual love and service to God. I want to add the Holy Scriptures to my daily routine, reverence for all of God’s teachings, respect for all. My faith includes silence. I can look to the saints for inspiration. I am looking for direction.

It was a singular hope that I find this inspiration, enhanced with the beauty and bounty of God.

I wonder if the over stimulation of our civilization leaves our hearts unoccupied. What will we discover about our faith? How can our lives be more devout? And do we all agree on the mission of the Church? Do we understand and believe the Church’s mission?

I hope that my life contains a pure zeal, a pure reverence for God. Each day provides lessons on how to be better, to move closer to God. My life leads me to holiness.

We commemorate our faith when we treat each other with respect and fairness; when we attend Mass and remember the Sabbath; when our lives are filled with obedience, humility, and charity. We must contemplate the saints, the Church’s creeds and prayers, the Church’s documents and dogma and use all of the knowledge from our faith in our daily lives. Our love in God makes us triumphant.

Our lives should include self-sacrifice and love.

I am searching for direction, filled with the hope of discernment. There is a desire for righteousness and holiness; however, there is a need to be merciful and forgiving in our daily lives and to live a life of worship celebrating the mystery of our faith.

I want my life to glorify God.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Hearing

I have a practiced ear, capable of listening to and remembering multiple conversations as long as I remain mute, keep my mind in listening mode.

At times with great patience I can be simultaneously auricular and an oracle.

Depending on who we listen to our lives are filled with either collisions or coincidences. Depending on my mood I find it hard to separate them. I think that my life is dreamily spasmodic, ordinarily episodic. Faith leaves me quenchless, wanting to be better, wanting to be more compassionate, forgiving, and merciful.

Learning about venial and mortal sin, I sometimes feel like a gun-toting, wisecracking lammister hiding from both the police and the mob.

Each day I want to learn more about God, more about Christianity, more about how I follow in Christ’s footsteps. Each day I want to be more humane, more loving.

The minute I recognize that there are two choices, then I immediately realize the possibility of imminent danger, confusion, or delay. Nevertheless I do enjoy playing with this cauldron of ideas, creating rhetorical questions, circulating excessively genteel fears throughout my mind.

I sometime feel that being a good Christian means being a good listener. We need to listen first, then analyze what has been said, and then respond. Listening requires an extra dollop of silence. Silence is not always awkward. Silence is often natural. People trained to expect instant gratification, immediate responses are suspicious of silence and try to fill it with all types of brittle noise.

We, as Christians, always need a bit of silence. It is a time for reflection, prayer, meditation. Silence is not always negotiable. We may hear life’s gamelan gently or boldly playing in the background. We must train ourselves to be mute. Silence can be capacious. Silence can allow us to hear God.

As Christians our lives should be an ongoing, continuous discernment process as we strive to learn new ways to serve God and to share his love with those whom we meet each day. We should educate ourselves to do more and more without requiring any acknowledgement or reward. Let love be our signpost, guiding us toward God.

Friday, November 20, 2009

The Triumph

Our lives are filled with many moments equivocal, moments caustic. Our society creates and exaggerates spiritual and existential conflicts. Our materialist culture is a jumbled mixture of assumptions and ambitions, praising decadence and moral and ethical ambiguity while hiding moral deprivation.

How abstract life can sound when certain words are utilized to manipulate our emotional response to a topic, to temper our reactions and our interactions! How absurd modernity is when society encourages distance and distrust among its diverse members. In many ways modernity will always be at war with Christianity.

The triumph of God is love. Faith is the centrifuge of the soul’s longing for God. Within faith there is something euphoric, something symbolic.

Of course within our individual narrative lines there are always examples of God’s mercy, compassion, and love which we sometimes overlook. We must acknowledge always acknowledge and offer praise to God, our lives must involve holiness.

It is easy to forget that being Christian means being part of a community. Christianity does not grow in a vacuum. In each of us Christianity’s formation has been a continual activity of our hearts, minds, and souls. It’s impact upon our imagination is hard to calculate.

The Sacraments of the Church allows us to develop and maintain an identity as believers and followers of Jesus Christ. The characteristics of Christ’s teaching provides a model for living a simple life filled with forgiveness, mercy, and love.

Modernity offers and promotes a complicated network of relationships. Even when modernity suggests simplicity, rarely is simplicity ever achieved without rejecting and/or limiting access to some core parts of modernity.

For those who allow themselves to believe and to follow the teachings of the Christianity, life can be a more simple, more spiritual, and more beautiful. This is not meant to suggest that Christian life is easy. It is not. Being Christian is often a daily struggle between good and bad; moral and ethical choices confront us each day at work, home, and many places in between; the meagerness of consumerism constantly battles our sense of social justice.

Being Christian helps us to understand the world in which we live, understand that many of the problems and concerns have been around in one form or another for thousands of years. Being Christian gives us hope and strength to survive. Being Christian allows us to believe in God, his mercy, his forgiveness, his love. Being Christian encourages us to believe that we are not alone.

A Christian life is filled with hope and love.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Heroes

There is one idea that I hope that all Christians should always consider as they live their lives each day. Our lives can inspire others to believe in God, to believe his teachings, to follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ. As Catholic we can be heroes to those around us by simply sharing our faith; by simply praying; by helping those in need, the poor, the homeless; by simply living lives of hope, mercy, compassion, and love.

It is easy to assign this duty, this responsibility to the clergy, to the rectory staff, to the archdiocese staff, to the volunteers of the various parish ministries, to anyone but ourselves.

But, we share this responsibility to live lives that bear witness to God’s love and mercy. We share the duty to do God’s work, to spread his Word, to help those in need. All of this is to be done freely, without thought or desire of earthly reward or payment. It all needs to be done simply, beautifully for the love of God.

Altruism is good for the soul. Our culture encourages us to be selfish, to think of our comfort and well being first, to put ourselves first. This thought is in direct conflict with the teachings of Jesus Christ. There has to be something more to our lives than simply being the first in line, the first to be seated at dinner. Our lives are enriched when we are able to serve another, when we allow ourselves to assist someone who needs our help, when we put aside our prejudices and act according to the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Each of us can be a Christian hero if we allow ourselves to try and if we allow ourselves to believe in ourselves and in the glory and the power of God. When we our actions are selfless, they embody the humble, compassionate mannerisms of Christ. There is a robustness in being selfless. Being selfless introduces another way of living and behaving to us. Being selfless is a “correct” way of living and reacting to our culture.

Our dominant culture promotes the idioms of insecurity and provincialism and perverts the ideas of innocence, simplicity, spirituality. Fear is now the vigorous common denominator guiding the American culture. Many of our laws were enacted because of fear. Fifty years ago we were afraid of nuclear annihilation. Now we are afraid of dirty bombs and terrorists. God has left the building. God is only on the periphery of our culture. The dominant culture is violent, decadent, selfish, distrusts authority, desiring only instant gratification.

Our dominant culture does not offer hope, does not offer faith. It offers rhetoric, stump speeches, all types of pills with all types of side effects, all types of commercials to improve everything which can be seen by the eye. Faith, hope, love, and mercy do receive airplay in sappy love songs and in connection to the latest crime in the news.

As Christians our lives must offer an antidote to every moral and ethical argument created by our culture. We must live our lives for God. We must be willing to sacrifice our lives in service of him. The goodness in our lives which we share with each other in God’s names will make us heroes.

Faith

I have always been restless. I have always liked moving around outdoors. Once upon a time I was a cross country runner. I always liked running around and thinking or walking around and thinking. I do some of my best thinking when my mouth is still and my feet are moving me forward, moving me toward the horizon.

From the outside each religion involves many obtuse beliefs and traditions. Depending on how religion is approached there are all types of rankings and classifications which can be applied to formal worship. But faith is a serious issue which defies easy definition. It is always important to consider how faith influences each one of us as we live our daily lives.

I am peripatetic. I sometimes feel the most spiritual when outside, walking between here and there. If I am not too preoccupied or otherwise resistant, different sensations are discovered by my eyes and ears. I have on occasion felt the presence of God.

Faith is not static. Faith can displace established ways of thinking, talking, and relating to the world. Faith is fundamentally simplistic in its approach to us and specifically spiritual in its interactions with our minds, bodies, and souls. Faith can and does touch different parts of our beings.

The origin of love and hope somehow intersects with faith.

For me faith asks many questions, inspires many answers, sparks creativity. Surprisingly faith makes me restless as it encourages continual growth by creating successive series of thoughts and deeds which challenge the moral and ethical laxity of our current society. Interestingly faith is the greatest architect of all goodness, compassion, and mercy within our lives.

Admittedly, faith offers evidence to support and nourish our love of God. I believe that it is an argument for all that which is beautiful, all that which is innocence, all that which is inspirational. Faith asks me to not be conventional, to not be traditional, to dare to sacrifice myself, my life for the glory and the love of God.

It is obvious that each person’s faith creates its own private idioms. There is no question that we should all follow the Ten Commandments, live our lives according to the Church’s doctrines and rules, and above include a love and respect for everyone. I admit that it might be difficult to do but it is essential to create and maintain a good relationship with God.

In the process of examining my faith, there is an explicit desire to find a personal relationship with God, to find the origins of my hope, my love, my mercy.

Faith offers us a chance for continual discernment, continual improvement as we learn about and approach our own holiness.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Humanity

As I write this I must constantly remind myself of my humanity. I must accept myself for who I am and hope that each day I become a little better. I must accept that I am a sinner and that each day I must ask for forgiveness. As a creative person I after some deep examination enjoy the synthesis of the varied elements of my life. Each day offers an opportunity to learn something new, to imagine something in a completely different way, to listen to a conversation with a new awareness.

There is no way for me to turn off this gift. One of the first things that I learned in school was that life is repetition; day follows night; winter, spring, summer, autumn. I also learned that simplicity is often more enjoyable than complexity. Life is better unglossed. We are better when we allow ourselves to live lives filled with prayer, hope, humility, charity, mercy and love.

Recently I picked up my Breviary, skimmed through some of the pages. I said the Compline. Afterwards I felt at peace.

There is a part of me that enjoys silence, that enjoys the peculiar atmosphere of walking on a crowded street, noticing other pedestrians, noticing dogs on leashes, noticing bicycles, noticing the homeless man offering to shine shoes, noticing this and so much more, noticing this and saying an incomplete prayer as I continue to my destination. This incomplete prayer is a snap shot, of hope and praise captured by my eyes and heart and offered to God.

I wish that I could say that each time I leave my building that I approach the world this way. I do not. The fragments of my life involves a lot of running around, racing to this event, racing to that restaurant. Often I am only focused on my destination or should I bring wine or did I lock my door.

It is important for me to remember my humanity and try to remember that everyone deserves to be treated with compassion and mercy. Each day we hear stories about all types of contemptuous violence in this world. Somehow we can not escape crime. We can not escape all types of cruelties. We may not be the immediate victim, but we are all victimized by the individual acts and all the thoughts that lead to the acts. How people justify and rationalize all types of evil actions can not be ignored.

We live in a time when our judgement can easily be clouded and confused by omissions, half-truths, and lies. We live in a time where expediency is valued more than anything else. We live in a time where God’s mercy and compassion are needed more than ever.

We must always remember to pray, to ask for God’s guidance.

Humanity often needs and inspires conversation; conversation often needs and inspires silence.

As Christians hopefully, we allow ourselves a little times to examine our daily thoughts and deeds and a little time for prayer and reflection.

Monday, November 16, 2009

unexpected

In 2005, I journeyed to an Atlantic Coast beach town toward the end of the great August exhibition known as summer vacation. I am not fond of the beach or too much sunlight: moonlight reflecting on the water at midnight did make me think of Yeats and Arnold; the sunrise did encourage my mind to create some terse, tense text detailed silliness about creation with a hint of glossy, glib science fiction jargon; and somewhere in the gallery of my mind stretched a desire for goodness, justice, mercy, hundreds of unsaid, unasked prayers like sand beneath my feet, like sea grass protected in small patches to be seen, to be remembered. And each time I heard the waves crash, now looking back, it seemed as if that trip was an allusion, in part, to the nursery rhymes and Bible verses from my youth – the causeway of sound memory recitations about Job and the Whale, Miss Lucy, This little light, that were preserved in order to give safe passage to continuity and reason across my swampy gray matter for a lifetime.

Unexpectedly, after the Atlantic Beach trip whenever I would look at some of the photographs of the water or the sunrise over the water my thoughts were also accompanied by a longing, a yearning new yet familiar. Unexpectedly – because I had previously made many statements of faith, civility, propriety, and common sense partially based and formed on a particular Midwestern Catholic thought, so much that I felt more Catholic than the lapsed Catholics that one frequently meets at dinner parties, the theater, smart cocktail parties, poetry readings, art gallery openings of new or emerging artists. My own life was presented to me, an incomplete work, without passion, without purpose exhibited with a trendy colorful retro unglossed sheen of silent, resilient innocence, the innocence of compartmentalization and separation. How awful to view my life, as if it appeared on a single sheet of glossy card stock, folded into three panels, like a simple brochure. I could not decide upon a title. I could not decide upon the text which would describe my life. There was just the image of the water, and the sun at dawn. My mind was infatuated with the horizon, the horizon energized thoughts of faith and hope. The simplicity and repetitions of hope and love (as seen in the images from my camera), combined with the mise en scène, gave the canvas of my growing faith a peculiar perspective: part discernment, part situation comedy–

I like the simplicity of holding my camera,
the simplicity of focusing the lens on flowers in a basket, or playing cards dropped in the gutter near the corner of a busy street.
I like common definitions and uncommon allegories, allusions, and alliteration that provides life and art with a gentle, unexpected twist.
I choose colors and the horizon because they do the job of inspiring hope.
My life is about applying hope in the wide world, applying love in the wide world, and remembering that once upon a time everyone believed that the world was flat.
My life, my hope is not modern, nor is it anxious.
It is the laying down of ancient questions, ancient hopes, ancient prayers and trusting in the mysterious and the practical moments of prayer and faith.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Culture

After several cloudy, rainy mornings, there was a beautiful sunrise today.

As a Catholic, I no longer have any desire to be sophisticated in the manners and sentiments of the moment. I no longer have any desire to accept the malnourishing sophistry that is so widely promoted and accepted by our society. I no longer have any desire to be perpetually distrusting of my neighbors, perpetually ready for battle against loved ones, perpetually scabrous because of fear, jealousy, or lust.

As a Catholic, I must navigate this imperfect culture, learning and retaining only that which encourages a relationship with God. I must remember the commandments.

At the core of our culture is leisure. We must rest, relax. To feel good about ourselves as individuals we must purchase new assorted accessories, drink and eat all types of things, both healthy and unhealthy, accept the rules of consumerism in thought and action. And this is just the tip of the hype. Our culture encourages us to be passive, not to think, not to challenge ideas. Our culture isolates us from the people around us, each other, and our loved ones.

As much as we cling to technology, there is something bizarre about all the benefits of technology contain latent dangers. I have various pieces of technology which I try to use appropriately. I understand the purposes of my computer and I use it for those reasons. My computer is primarily a writing and visual media assembling tool. But, there are moments when I am tempted to stray from my formula.

Our society wants us to stray, encourages us to stray, empowers us to stray. Our society is an enabler.

Depending on who you read, what philosophy that you accept, which psychological argument you accept everything in our society is simultaneously abstract, concrete, obscure, exaggerated, and unconscious. Great meaning can be attached to eating, walking, sleeping, rolling our eyes. Our lives can be reduced to conflicting truths, impulses, and learned thoughts from philosophy or psychiatry or sociology.

Modern American life is often viewed as one never-ending commercial break, filled with a multitude of ideas and images. Our culture is the condensation and corruption of love, mercy, hope, and compassion. Our society wants us to be on the curb or the sofa watching the parade, not marching in it.

Christianity asks us to join the parade, to trust God, to remember the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, to follow in his footsteps in both thought and action. Christianity asks us to accept the mysteries of creation and faith in our daily lives. Christianity asks us to allow spontaneity into our hearts and minds as we go about our lives and encounter those who are needy, homeless.

Being Catholic means keeping life simple, respecting the environment, loving my neighbors and myself. It means working to be spiritual, to have humility, charity, mercy, patience, compassion guide our lives.


Saturday, November 14, 2009

Mercy?

The text of the Gospels offer comfort to us. As Christians we must always remember and always believe one thing: that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever; and, therefore, what he did when he lived and walked on earth, he continues doing now, and will continue till the end of time. If we allow our hearts to accept and proclaim this, and look at our Lord's actions when he taught us how to pray and how to love one another as recipes, formulas, roadmaps as it were, for our journey toward eternal life and God’s love and mercy, then each verse in the gospels can enlighten us, and guide us toward goodness and love. We, however, must encourage our minds to be open, understanding, calm.

I believe that each day the need for Jesus increases in the world whenever I hear about any violence between men. I often imagine Jesus walking on Connecticut Avenue around five-thirty on a Wednesday afternoon in early October. Some people would stare and point at him; some would either text or call their friends and explain who they saw; and some would follow him and listen to each word that he spoke.

The city is wild with anxiety. I often wonder what happened to to compassion and mercy. I often look into the faces of other pedestrians. Sometimes I smile and offer a polite salutation. Sometimes I am running around trying to both remember the wild forest of this city.

And I am learning many things, finding many new unanswered questions. I am content not knowing all of the answers. I am content uncovering questions.

And, what kind of person am I, would I recognize God's mercy in my life? Would I share God’s love and compassion with my neighbors?

Christianity offers not only a solution, but an endless question and an endless challenge leading us toward goodness and eternal life. Each day a new question forms within my head, some of the questions are spoken, still others are never spoken. Christianity strives to improve our humanity.

Remember to allow yourself to be silent. Endeavor to listen patiently and to learn obediently. Help your heart to develop a honest eloquence. Christianity requires patience, obedience, silence and prayer.

And prayer is always needed.

Friday, November 13, 2009

Vocabulary

I am worried about my declining vocabulary. In ordinary day to day conversation I probably use less than a handful of words; in written communication, I use even less. Today, I shall begin with beautiful generalizations and what used to be called twenty-five cent words but now due to inflation and other societal abnormalities are known as five dollar words.

Yesterday, during a friendly morning interrogation about life, sacrifice, and duty, I was asked where did I see myself in two years. My first instinctive rocket-acellerating response which flashed in my brain and anesthetized all other thought was “In two years I want to be doing something that is good. I want to be doing something to help people, performing some service for God. I don’t have an action plan yet. I want to formulate a response that reflects modernity’s heterogeneity’s need for God’s mercy and grace.” Luckily I never shared this jumbled bit of confusion.

Off and on for the rest of the day, my mind was subjected to many similar vague but good intentioned etherizations. I could not protest. I could only search for distractions. How concentric modern thought is! How circuitous modern avoidance is! How circumlocutory modern dialogue is! I searched for a sense of equilibrium.

We live in a time of anarchical bargaining. Social responsibility and social morality have been locked outside. Everything is permissible, everything is allowed except good common sense. Some people seem to wallow and flourish in the modern cultural imperialism of angst, nihilism, and preemptive strikes. Populism no longer rules; it just waits to take polls.

And I exist within this world of rhetorical questions in conflict, this world of rheumatic fever and mother’s apron strings delusions. Every tongue has a wound; every dream was savagely punctured; every heart tells tales out of the operating room, before the surgery begins. I listen to the stories about Thucydides on the Potomac, Nobel Prize preferences, naturalism, consumerism, fascism, Admiral Horatio Nelson, Ponce de Leon, Robinson Crusoe, Jane Addams, demonstrative adjectives, Betty Friedan, genetic engineering, Bourbon kings, perfectibility of man, skepticism, and take-home pay.

Sometimes I can not respond coherently in complete sentences. I force some little sound from my throat which hopefully is appropriate to the situation.

And so all I can do is pray and suggest that they pray.

Outside I can hear the hiss as automobiles drive through the puddles in the alley. And my telephone rings. I remember yesterday’s friendly morning interrogation about where did I see myself in two years. In two years I want to pray more than I am praying today.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

In All Things

Discernment, in its most liberal analytical-sense, is a search for expression of the life of the spirit of man creating an alliance with the intellect. Without the alliance and encouragement of the spiritual, the intellect creates only thought; and superficial thought, whatever be the subject with which it deals, is neither satisfying nor nurturing, in its flickering existence. For example, verses from the Psalms, Proverbs, the Pentateuch, and the Acts of the Apostles, do assist in properly guiding my discernment. (By "an alliance with the spirit" I would be understood to mean the entire conversation of the emotional, the intellectual, and the thoughts not governed by the conscious mind which flash in mind and which are sometimes described as instinct, intuition; these do allow our hearts to be susceptible or impressible, to be sympathetic, to be gentle; in short, that mysterious quest of a lucky man by and through which he yearns for a special guidance and learns that his education is incomplete. All his relationships begin and end with the essential desire to find the Holy Spirit in all things, including himself. The spirit is phenomenal, inspires a refined cognizance beyond our usual senses.)


The grandeur of this personal journey is the result of a careful and complex joining of several personal traditions, or desires. Hope and love of God are essential: the journey is a movement toward the Trinity following the strands that run through both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible which contain both the commandments and lessons. (I am conveniently illuminated with flashes of insight into individual Bible verses.) Each verse brings to my discernment its own characteristics, its own theological opinion--a rich variety of interpretation that my sympathetic mind will labor to comprehend and apply to my life. The verses sometimes inspire prayers, knowledge. Discernment is concrete, creative. It creates a narrative, a theological approach, a deepening faith, and an appreciation of virtue, service and God. And I want to discard the superficial distractions and restlessness. And I want to live a life of goodness, justice, service, sacrifice and love for both God and for all mankind.

However, even this brief description of my thoughts on discernment is an over-simplification, for it is a synthesis of ideas from various sources. The fact is that this journey although from one perspective is individual but it incorporates the love, hope, and prayers of the Church community. My discernment allows me to be a collector of wisdom and an reciter of verses and prayers. My narrative is made up of many disparate anecdotes, poems, slogans that have been re-interrpretted, and given new definitions, old meanings within the context of searching for my life's purpose, my vocation.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Fear and Doubt

There is a little bit of fear and doubt which accompanies each decision, creating questions, creating conflicts.

I have lived a good comfortable life filled with the usual intrigue, comedy, regret. I have no complaints about my life as I have lived. There are one or two things I would like to change if given the chance.

I have been wrestling with writing these simple words for a little while. Fear can be a formidable opponent.

I sit here thinking and then revising my thoughts.

Outside there is a fine, soft rain, barely perceptible to my ears. I began to plan the day’s activities. I wanted to walk outside, look at the November sky, go to Mass.

The rain became harder and harder. My mind shifted its focus. Confession became important and I tried to decide when I would be able to go. The rain became softer and softer. I know that I am human. I just want to be better than I am. I want to live a life of service, of sacrifice, and of love.

Considering a vocation is a gift from God. It is a moment when all the noise of our lives can be turned off. It is a moment when there is no need for diversion. It is a moment when there is no need for distraction. It is a moment of silence. It is a moment of reflection. It is a moment of prayer.

Silence scares many people. Some people need perpetual insistent noise of the loud music, the television, the telephone conversations. Some people are confused by immorality because of all the images that are displayed in our society. Our culture is a haphazard collection of freedoms twisted and stretched to encourage and to protect immorality. Neither God nor goodness is at the center of our culture. Responsibility is often forgotten. At the center of our society is a steady beat, is the sound of emptiness, loneliness, despair. At the center of our culture is noise encouraging violence, encouraging immorality, encouraging sadness.

Rejecting the noise is difficult. A little fear and a little doubt precede many thoughts and actions. Our confidence and strength arrives when we are able to turn down the volume on the noise and listen to the sound of the fine rain, falling softly, falling gently.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Autumn

Each autumn the leaves on some of the trees change color, die, and fall to the ground. But, the orange, gold leaves possess perfect beauty; so, in the garden of my soul each feeling has, its moment of intensity its moment of radiance, its moment of luminosity. And for minute or two there is such a sensation of grace that the entire world appears bathed in goodness and hope.

I have been lucky enough to have met and to have been influenced by several people who were willing to bravely share their faith and their love in God with. Seeing their radiance inspired me.

I hope that some day my life will be seen as a witness to the mercy, wisdom, and love of God.

Each day I try to say prayers for peace, charity, and compassion.

And now I am trying to find some wonderful metaphor which would incorporate the word meridian.

And now I am wondering about the blue sky and clouds above our heads. I have to remind myself to say thank you to for God for those wonderful gifts. I like to imagine heaven. Rarely do I imagine it in the same way. Sometimes it has the splendor and grandeur of old Hollywood, Cecil De Mille. Sometimes it has the beautiful cadence of William Shakespeare. But, there is always an undeniable brillancy.

I do not want greatness. I want goodness. It’s zenith is more elusive, more ephemeral. I want to inspire people to trust their feelings, to seize the power of their Faith, and to rise to their highest point in their journey to God.

Our lives are a mixture of ideals, presentiments, and reminiscences. The more we allow God into our lives the more radiant and graceful we become. Faith in action is beautiful to behold.

Monday, November 9, 2009

Direction

My young life was greatly influenced by reading books. My parents encouraged me to read everything. I had the Bible. I had Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little. My first love is the written word. I have always enjoyed reading books. I have always enjoyed writing. My imagination enjoys the struggle of opposites, the struggle of familiarity, the struggle of hope. I like to compare these struggles to the long ago endless summer days of my adolescence when I had a simple predilection toward goodness, movement toward God encouraged by the love and hope of others.

My early life my spiritual direction came from the adults in my life either making me go to church, making me say prayers before meals, reminding me to say my prayers before bedtime, teaching me the Lord’s Prayer.

Spiritual direction is relative, quiet, gentle, patient. It explores the relationships between my heart, my mind, my soul and God. It is not like going to the neighborhood delicatessen and asking for tomato, spicy mustard, provolone and a bag of chips. Spiritual direction is more subtle, more sublime. I might not ask for anything at all. I might not be thinking about anything but my eyes might see something or my ears hear something which will trigger a thought, a prayer, a brief reflection.

I am sometimes in such a hurry that I forget my name, address, telephone number. My mind concentrates on only one project, one goal. I momentarily forget everything else. There are times when I like being like that, like the feeling of finishing a project, accomplishing a goal, exceeding someone’s expectations. But, often after the moment passes, I wonder what did I miss, what did I give up to achieve this goal.

As an adult even as I make all types of mistakes and errors of fashionable modern judgement, there is always a search and yearning for goodness. I want to be humble, obedient, loving, compassionate. I want my life to be of service to God.

It is during the unexpected moments of life when I briefly quiet my thoughts, my insanity, my goofiness that my natural concern and prayers return; love universal sneaks up on me and sometimes I have so much emotion that I simply cry. It is these moments which are now the framework of my spiritual direction. It is during those moments that I feel closest to God.

Moving toward God requires discipline, sacrifice, prayer. Moving toward God requires action, contemplation. Moving toward God requires silence. I have to stop talking.

Faith is a beautiful phenomenon which can help me become closer to God. I must allow my hunger for goodness to grow, my thirst for God’s love and mercy to flourish.

A wise man once said, “Hope is persistent and God’s love is eternal.”

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Conflict

My life is filled with an endless series of questions and minor conflicts. Each morning I wake up and wonder what activity will dominate my mind this day. Sometimes there is only one answer, others three or four. Sometimes the questions amuse me. I like conflict as a strictly literary device which moves the plot forward, creates a scenario which helps to define the main character, illuminates ideas and desires. Conflict is an essential ingredient to our perception of the world, humanity, and God. How we perceive goodness, love, compassion depends on where we position them within our hearts and minds; on what ideas we view in opposition to them; and an ever shifting field of relationships.

Conflict makes us human; understanding and challenging our personal interior conflicts can lead us to our humanity.

Each day I wonder how I am perceived. Did I say the right thing? Did I remember this anniversary, that birthday? Does this shirt go with those slacks? Should I shave twice a day? Would any stranger know that I am a Christian by how I act? Am I following in the footsteps of Christ? Is God’s love visible in how I interact with others? Similar questions find me at different times, at sometimes awkward times.

How I dealt with different awkward moments eventually helped me decide to convert. At some point I had to stop and look at the world around me and take responsibility for my mistakes and accept that I am imperfect, I am mortal.

There are days when I feel totally unworthy of God’s love. There are days when I feel just like the worst unnoticed typographical or grammatical error. This happens when I either do not like the answers to the questions that I have asked myself or that the current conflict I am wrestling with has some hidden component which makes me think even harder, analyze myself even more.

I sometimes think that how I perceive myself might be just a little faulty, overly biased, against me. I can see every flaw, hear every slurred or rushed word in need of enunciation.

Life is about our perception. How I perceive myself. How I perceive my friendships. How I perceive my relationship with God? Am I being the best Christian that I can be? Am I truly offering my entire life, my entire being to God in obedient service?

At this very minute my sockless feet are perched on my sofa while my body is strangely contorted so that my right arm reaches across my torso so that I can type. It is a little uncomfortable. My mind is in a state of rebellion or agitation as I try to plan this day, as I try to define my goals and actions in broad strokes.

Today, I want my actions as a Christian to exist within confluence of predilection and imagination, enthusiasm and creativity, love and hope.





Saturday, November 7, 2009

being humble

The person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great ones; and the person who is dishonest in very small matters is also dishonest in great ones. Luke 16:10

Today I enjoyed a quiet November Saturday afternoon. I had thoughts about St. Paul’s letters, and my mind tried to force me into composing an inspirational letter in a similar style. My impression of Christ life and Christian struggles start with the passages of St. Paul. His letters are a mixture of affection and hope, of thoughtfulness and prayer, of humanity and divinity; so full of warm, direct intention for all its boldness, expressing the random, spontaneous, immediacy of Faith; strength expanding, strength delicate. My inquisitiveness continues to grow as I learn more about being Christian.

Modern life is abrupt, cold, indifferent at times. The Church desires to entertain, to inspire, to challenge us. The Church desires to teach us. The Church desires our intelligence, our fidelity and our unconditional love.

And it is easy to find someone with an opinion on philosophy and art. Be aware of those who boldly proclaim themselves as God’s jurisconsult. Beware of those who do not encourage your inquisitiveness. Beware of the austerity of technological advances. Beware of the perfumed coldness of false friends. Life is often haphazard.

The singular focus of our lives should be God and being his humble, obedient servants.

Our thoughts and daydreams flash in my mind quickly and freely. Naturally we touch goodness, wonder about whether we’re being too predictable, too conventional. Goodness can be piecemeal. Goodness can be cold.

And I want to discuss affection and trust and faith and hope. And I want to be self-conscious in my love of God.

And I want to move toward God.

Abraham replied, 'My child, remember that you received what was good during your lifetime while Lazarus likewise received what was bad; but now he is comforted here, whereas you are tormented. Luke 16:25

The relationship between Faith and action is a friendly frenzied interrogation of abstract and concrete. Faith encourages truth, provides access to God. Faith depends upon the commonness daily prayer, attending Mass, helping those who need help. Faith exists beyond the conscious, beyond the unconscious.

Being Christian means creating and living a routine life of service to God. Action is needed to move closer to God.

And I want to read another letter by St. Paul.

Friday, November 6, 2009

Split Second

For if we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord; so then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord's. Romans 14:8

It was my intention to write about the Sacraments today. I created an outline, typed one opening paragraph, did a quick mental outline, searched for some quotes. Then, I got up and did something else. I reviewed the opening sentences decided to do something else. So I then typed another opening paragraph. I looked at it. Then I decided to run an errand.

And so I went to the bank. Since it was early, it was quiet. There was one man and one woman in front of me. The man had a cellphone with a large screen. He kept aiming it all around the bank, taking photographs. He photographed the names on the door, the teller stations, the counters. He was non-threatening but my early morning mind instantly imagined the worse. When he slid his hand into the pocket of his gray sweatpants I knew that he was not going to pull out a gun but for a split second I asked myself what if he did pull out a gun.

Such is the the state of the world and our society. Fear and mistrust wait for us. The events at Fort Hood have left me feeling uneasy and vulnerable. I think we need to offer our prayers for both the victims and the shooter. I think we need to offer our prayers for all our soldiers and their families who have been deployed to either war zone.

There is no way for us to know what thoughts or fears lead people to action. Our only response should first be to God. We must offer our prayers to God and ask God for guidance, compassion, and mercy for all.

Then let us no longer judge one another, but rather resolve never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother. Romans 14:13

All people live within an unique sphere created by truth, facts, and opinion. The combination of these three elements can create perspective. What leads one man to shoot and kill one person might lead another to prayer and service to God. There probably is that split second when everything is quickly considered, when everything is decided right before the action. I think we should pray that if someone reaches that point, that they stop and ask themselves what would Jesus do?

Each day I try to temper what I do and what I say. I try to have fairness and goodness be my guide. There are moments when I am able to be humble, compassionate, merciful. But, I must always work at it, focus on obeying Christ’s teachings. Each day I try to live for God. Some days it is easier than others.

And there are split seconds when I have to make decisions. I try to put God first. I am not always successful. But, I keep trying. I have to remind myself that I am human and that I am not perfect.

Then I try goodness again; trying imitating Christ again.

And again and again.


Keep the faith (that) you have to yourself in the presence of God; blessed is the one who does not condemn himself for what he approves. Romans 14:22


Thursday, November 5, 2009

Mystery

November 5, 2009.--The relation of prayer to spiritual growth filled my mind with all types of images and statements as I walked down Connecticut Avenue to the Cathedral. Love creates an infinite set of formulas and set of rules within each of us. Prayer remains very essential to our spiritual life. Prayer is one way for us to communicate to God or for God to communicate to us.

I give myself a little prayer or a simple thought, to think about, to play with each day. I like having something mildly cerebral to focus the thoughts of my rambunctious mind; my imagination needs some question, real or rhetorical to cling to, to tease, to define; the clinging on often leads to more thoughts about mercy, compassion, and hope. Sometimes I am able to develop a deeper understanding of God or my love for God.

The more real that God becomes in my heart and soul the easier it becomes for me notice sin. Sin is a coarsened behavior, either thought or action. I sometimes wonder whether the impetus for sin begins somewhere within the unconscious within the fragments of dreams, fantasies, nightmares and other fears. How we interpret our sins might provide us with tools and resources to avoid them in the future.

Do I consider sin to be concrete, abstract, or some type of rebellion against the conscience? I am still trying to decide. Each day I am trying to avoid sin. There are good hours, and bad minutes.

Life is a condensation of all of our thoughts, all of our actions, all of our deeds, the ones we planned, the ones we completed. Within all of us there are an infinite number of thoughts and truths. This is how we advance and grow by learning, asking more and more questions.

Our thoughts, our imagination provides us with an incalculable wealth of symbols and ideas. Our lives as Christian needs to have access and control over our thoughts, our imagination. They both need to be always focused on goodness, fairness, mercy and directed toward God.

Many of my dreams are forgotten each morning when I wake. Many of my daydreams are repeated with slight variations each day. The conscious mind is often a Byzantine enterprise of mazes and dead end hallways and mirrored rooms and all types of other adjective and noun combinations.

There is mystery in the conscious mind; there is mystery in the unconscious. If we except both of those statements then can we also accept that within each action that a human makes there is a mystery; there is always a question why? This question occurs with every action, good or bad, sinning or loving God. This question leads us to reason, a deeper understanding of ourselves, our actions. Our relationship with God deepens when we learn and express more humility, charity, and love within our lives.

The mystery within our minds allows and encourages spontaneity. Hope and goodness are often supported and strengthened by some act unexpected, sudden, yet very beautiful. Our spiritual lives are neither scripted nor planned. Our progress is based upon our efforts, our prayers, our hope and how we interact with our Church community. Our individual progress might not be the same as our neighbors. It does not have to be. It should not be.

We often repeat what we pray for and how we pray for it. Our prayers exists with our thoughts, our dreams. Our prayers are sometimes spontaneous. Our prayers are always necessary.


Wednesday, November 4, 2009

My Three P's

I am absent-minded these days. I must admit that I have always been a little absent-minded. I forget to write letters, return phone calls, answer emails. My mind is always filled with all types of things books I want to see, music I want to listen to, people I want to visit, food I want to eat. But, to achieve any of those things, some action by me is needed.

My mind frequently explores the connection of pastoralism, philosophy, and predilection in my personal faith development. This morning I have played with their individual meanings and created a simple confection which will cause me to revisit and reevaluate these statements. Such is life! Such is spiritual development. There will always be questions both asked and unasked, prayers well formed and prayers rushed and incomplete. I am learning to sprinkle faith on everything.

My conception of spiritual life has these very words with there very distinct definitions woven into one very thick strand. My spiritual life needs pastoralism, needs philosophy, needs predilection.

Pastoralism provides the tools to grow and protect a Christian life which contains love, hope, fairness and which is giving and peaceful. Pastoralism reminds me to keep humility, charity, mercy in my heart and to share them unconditionally with everyone.

Philosophy provides the great rhetorical questions which can make me peevish if I consider them too long in the vacuum of the infinite. Questions about why I do this or that, how I feel about this or that provide a glimpse into my true being. I learn more about my humanity when I analyze my behavior with acquaintances, friends, and other strangers. Within my philosophy resides a basic curiosity. Within my philosophy resides a basic belief in order. Within my philosophy resides my basic belief in God. My philosophy retains the childish enthusiasm and never ending question creating tools.

It is my curiosity which leads me closer to God; it is my curiosity which questions what is in my heart and soul; it is my curiosity which encourages me to give goodness a chance; it is my curiosity which encourages and fuels my hope. And my philosophy uses this information to move me closer toward God, to strengthen my belief in God.

My predilection for being Christian and following in the footsteps of Christ is influenced by the pastoralism and philosophy within my life. Each day there is a reason to pray, to give thanks, to remember God’s goodness. For my life to have meaning, it must have direction. It must have motion. My heart and soul must be working together to help me do the right thing, be the humble, obedient servant of God. For my life to have meaning I must accept and protect the desire to place God in the position of supreme importance in my life. My life is not my life. It is God’s life. It is God’s will.

Each choice that I make should reflect that simple belief.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

More about Sunday

November 3, 2009.--I am proud at the incredible traditions of Judaism that helped created Christianity. I am happy to hear the Redeemer’s parables and teachings. I will always like the Beatitudes.

The Beatitudes challenge us to behave in a manner that shows concern and love for our neighbor as well as for ourselves. The Beatitudes challenge the modern vogue idea of the individual. The Beatitudes are simple instructions for living and flourishing within God’s community.

Please remember to include the Beatitudes in your daily life. Kindness and goodness will surprise you when you do.

Hope is a large part of our belief in God.

I think that we live in a time of moral difficulty. We live in time where vice is encouraged, glamorized and accepted as the norm. The laxity of modern society allows for all authority to be challenged, ridiculed. Man needs rules, he needs laws. We need to know what is acceptable and what is not acceptable.

Humanity does not exist to serve the whims of Madison Avenue. The richness of our Christian lives exists beyond the Hollywood formula and variations. Eternal life requires a belief and trust and love for a higher authority. Eternal life requires fulfilling promises to God.

I am always amazed at the examples of God’s love that I observe while going about my daily life. People helping each other, being respectful of each other.

Our religion is truly based upon a foundation of love. As believers we must constantly reinforce this foundation.

The Beatitudes provide this foundation in their directness, in their simplicity. They are an appeal to each and every one us to live rich lives of fairness, faith, hope, humility. and charity.

How we use them remains our personal choice. I like to think of them as flash cards. As I go through my daily routine, depending on what I am doing or not doing, my mind will flash “Blessed are those who mourn” or “Blessed are the peacemakers”.

Nestling within me, within my heart and soul is a desire to live a faithful obedient Christian life. The Beatitudes will help me with that.

Monday, November 2, 2009

Thinking About Sunday

November 2, 2009.--Yesterday, Sunday, I listened to and later read through verses from Revelations,
and the gospels of St. John and St. Matthew. The text was filled with imagery to teach and to inspire.
“Salvation comes from our God, who is seated on the throne, and from the Lamb.” Revelations reminds us. Last week while researching iconography and art associated with the church I read this chapter. Hearing it read aloud helped me to revisit my perception of God and his followers. The image of the Faithful and the sacrifices that are necessary, pain, distress, confusion are inevitable. But our belief in Jesus Christ provides hope and a path to follow. Our belief in Jesus Christ provides both instruction and inspiration. Our belief in Jesus Christ provides us with a simple way of living and being which when faithfully followed will lead us to heaven. Like the warm rays of a June sunrise, God’s love is prismatic and creates new and individual responses in all of us as we accept or not accept it, as we rest in it, as we find ways to share it with others who need it. And that is the true reason that we are Christians. Our lives should always reflect our love and belief in God. The message of Christ must be repeated and shared by each and everyone of us who believes. The message of Christ must be taught to all generations, young and old, as lessons to encourage intrinsic goodness and as lessons to challenge blindly living lives of current fashions, current trends, and ancient corruption, ancient sin. Often, psychiatry, science, and self help books have relegated sin away from the hearts and minds of men. Sin seems to only exist only in the murderer or terrorist or anyone opposed to our beliefs. Please do not let sin win this earthly battle and lead you into a de facto life of confusion, complacency. Please understand that we are all sinners, that we will struggle with the fact that we are sinners each day of our lives, and that we will ask God for forgiveness. We must remember to request forgiveness for ourselves, we must remember to offer forgiveness to others. Christianity exists beyond the sacred texts, Christianity exists within the hearts and minds of the believers. Christianity exists within each and everyone of us. If we are lucky, our hearts and souls will create a fertile, nurturing space for Christianity to grow and flourish within our lives.

We must always remember to pray to God and to give him thanks.

Human life is always going to be a time of uneasiness and struggle. Believing in God makes it just a little easier and provides hope.

Touched and Touched Again by the Spirit

All Saints Day - Holy Days of Obligation - November 1, 2009

It was of him that the prophet Isaiah had spoken when he said: "A voice of one crying out in the desert, 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.'" Matthew 3:3


There is a brilliancy in the design and actions of the Church. There is a beautifulness in the simple projection of God’s love, mercy, and compassion. There is a distinctness in the traditions and the re-interpretations of the traditions by the priests. There is an axis of Faith with both the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist providing hope and guidance. The pastoralism of the Catholic Church is symmetrical and alive in everyone of us. Our Baptism begun our individual distinct pastoralism.

There is a straightness of connection between the Church and God which should not be downplayed, can not be forgotten. The world needs to be reminded of this loving, gentle connection, this nurturing, luminous relationship between God and his believers.

The moment we walk into Mass we become part of the Catholic Church’s living pastoralism. Our actions, both individual and collective, suggest the beautiful mystery of each of our spiritual lives. Our actions present our witness to our belief and faith in God. Our actions are a mixture of love, hope, obedience, faith, humility, charity, mercy and so many other things which produce goodness.

Spiritual life and spiritual guidance both are always on display and both are amazingly frequently non-verbal, silent moments to be glanced, or watched momentarily. They ask only for our respect. For me one of the most powerful moments occurs when I see people praying in front of the Blessed Sacrament. Whether it is one person or ten, the prayers, sometimes with rosaries, sometimes without, remain personal, private. They are between God and the individuals, sometimes kneeling, sometimes seated with their heads bowed.

Our spiritual guidance extends beyond the homily to how we interact within the Church community. Our regular Church attendance is a good start. But the more we volunteer and participate in the various committees and ministries the more our spiritual lives as Catholics will grow and radiate through our daily deeds and actions. Being Christian is based upon truisms and commandments which instruct us to simplify our lives, be humble, be meek, love one another.

Too often we allow ourselves to interpret and associate our Christian lives within the specific church and the specific time when we worship together as a community. Too often we allow our secular lives filled with instant gratification and bad grammar to challenge the simple commandment to love one another.

We live in a time when each and every Catholic needs to bear witness to the beauty, grace, and love of God.


"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat (or drink), or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Matthew 6:25


Sunday, November 1, 2009

Minute by Minute, Almost

I shall try to reconstruct some of my personal events of this day.

On paper this was going to be a busy Sunday. I planned to be an Altar Server and then assist with Hospitality Sunday at my parish and then attend another Mass at another parish and learn how to be a sacristan there.

I arrived and for a brief moment I thought that I was late because Mass was going on. Since Daylight Savings had only hours before moved an hour somewhere else, for a second or two I feared the worse and imagined that I had overslept. Then, the old brain began to listen and I recognized the somber Stewardship appeal. I hastened to the sacristy, changed, and waited for my assignment.

There is always activity in the sacristy before Mass. There are always questions and answers. There is also prayer. Yesterday, after lining up and waiting for the procession to begin and before the choir began there was a beautiful moment when I prayed love universal and unconditional.

I enjoyed the Mass itself. I enjoyed being reminded to bear witness.

After Mass I helped out with Hospitality Sunday. I mainly talked with friends and introduced one young woman who was interested in the Homeless Ministry to one of that program’s leaders. Then, I circulated, smiled, spoke, smiled, spoke, emptied the tiny trash can filled with the tiny plastic empty coffee creamers, empty paper sugar packets, paper napkins, and stirrers. I did not drink coffee. I tried to avoid eating a donut.

And then one of my friends that I met at the Homeless Ministry saw me and reminded me that I had not given him his housewarming present yet. He had some coffee and donuts and sat down.

I then decided to help with the Hospitality at the next Mass. Moments later I decided to attend the Organ Concert. And then the doorbell sounded. People interested in another ministry arrived and I was helping to move some chairs from a conference room into the hallway for them to sit down.

After the next Mass the room was filled with people, young old, children and adults. Trays of donuts were being emptied quickly and carried into the kitchen and refilled. I was trying to keep the pitchers of orange juice and water on two tables located near the rear of the room filled. It was amazing. How great it seeing all these people and trying to navigate around them. How great it was to see the children waiting for the orange juice.

And then I raced upstairs to attend the Organ concert. How beautiful the music sounded. I am still amazed that the organ is incomplete and more work still needs to be done on the pipes.

Later, with a hint of approaching exhaustion, I rallied and walked across the bridge to the other parish. I arrived and listened to the instructions about pre-Mass preparation and set-up.