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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.