waiting...waiting

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Waiting...waiting...waiting

When I study the work of Michaelangelo, I think he was divinely inspired.  In his "Creation of Adam," I see more and more all the time.  Adam (from the earth) is emerging from the earth, clearly in the image of God (almost a mirror image of bone and flesh and sinew), but he has yet to receive the spark of life that is about to be communicated through the finger of God reaching toward him.  He reaches up; God reaches down -- and we all know what is about to happen:  Man is about to become a living being!

A friend of mine has told me for years that I need to read A World Waiting to be Born by M. Scott Peck.  And for years, I have kept forgetting to pursue her suggestion.  But lately, something has been stirring in me to read that book.  For one thing, the title itself intrigues me -- because I think that it captures the sense that I get from Michaelangelo's painting of Adam, "waiting to be born." 

Every one of us individually, at every moment of our lives, are, in a sense like that title and like Adam, are 'waiting to be born.'  We are reaching up, while God is reaching down.  We are waiting...waiting...waiting for the finger of God to touch us, to re-order the chaos within and without in our lives, to bring energy within and order without in our worlds.  We are waiting to be born -- again. 

I love in Michaelangelo's painting that Adam is fully grown, just as Genesis portrays also, because it is in our fully grown state that we most need the divine touch.  In The Holy Longing, Ron Rolheiser says that "Spirituality is what we do with the passion within us."  Everyone has a spirituality, whether it's creative or destructive.  It's how we channel the energy that makes us live.  Spirituality is what drives us forward in our lives, from moment to moment.  When I look at "The Creation of Adam," I think of what it portrays not just as a moment in time, but as every moment of our lives:  either our energy is being sapped and drained from within and without, or it is being renewed by the Spirit of God touching and energizing and bringing life to our souls.

Rolheiser says that there are two functions of a healthy spirit in us:  it has to energize us -- give us fire-- and it has to "glue us together."   As any mother or businessman will recognize, daily life "pulls us apart" in so many directions, with so many demands.  It is hard to stay focused and moving toward a goal.  People -- including children -- demand energy from us, deflate us, sometimes destroy us.  So where in this world, given its tendencies, do we find a renewal of our flagging spirit?  How do we stay energized and "glued together" instead of "pulled apart from the center"?

We see little children, fresh from the hand of God, as truly spiritual beings, full of energy, full of truth, focused on one goal -- learning and growing and loving.  And so many times, their spirits are quenched by evil, itself focused on one goal -- to destroy the spirit within them.  We have all been participants in evil to some degree or another; that is the human condition, the 'cross' we have to bear-- that we have inherited the tendency to destroy rather than to build up. 

So all of us, whether we have been destroyed, or whether we have had a part in unraveling the work of God in another -- all of us are alike awaiting the rebirth of our spirits.  At every moment, we are like Adam in M's painting -- partially of the earth, partially the "son of God, created in His Image," awaiting the new birth, awaiting the new divine touch, the spark that comes from the very hand of God and breath (Spirit) of God.

At the moment we cease reaching up and waiting for His touch, we begin to die.  God told Adam, "the day you eat of its fruit -- the fruit of experience -- dying, you will die."  Life, experience, has a way of killing the divine spirit within us, so that even while we are living, we are also dying.  But remaining in communion with God, even while we are dying, we are being renewed in strength, in wisdom, and in truth.  Even as we approach old age, our energy is being renewed, and we are being "glued together" by the hand of God.

Abba! (Calling God "Father")

O peoples, bless our God,

let the voice of his praise resound,

of the God who gave life to our souls

and kept our feet from stumbling (Ps. 66:8).

 

Whether speaking to God in prayer or speaking of Him to His listeners, Jesus called God "Father" (Abba in Aramaic).  A priest once told of waiting in an airport in Jerusalem when he suddenly heard a 5-year-old little boy cry out in a panic:  Abba!  Abba!   The little boy had temporarily lost sight of his father and was terrified among all the strangers.  His cry pierced the hearts of all who heard him and brought the father instantly to his side. 

 

When we call God "Father," we call to the One Who has given life to our souls.  The title has nothing to do with gender, but with His role, His relationship to us.  As Paul says, "We see in part and we know in part..."   We can speak only from what we know and understand, and we understand that to be "father" means to pour out the seed of life into a waiting womb, where it is nurtured and grown. 

 

The Father of heaven and earth is the Source of our life.  Everything we are and have comes from Him and returns to Him.  And the action is continuous, ongoing forever.  Even now, He is pouring forth life, received by the world; even now, He is generating us in His Image and bringing us to a new birth.  Once we move into that ongoing relationship with Him, and acknowledge Him as the Source of all we are, once we can, like Jesus, cry out "Abba, Father," we are His children -- children born not of human will, but of His Spirit, and like Him. 

 

To be created in the image of God is to be male- and- female in relationship to one another, and to be capable of bringing forth new life, as he does.  In Himself, God is both male-female, in that He pours forth His own life and nurtures it into existence.  Biblically, God is both Father -- the Source -- and Mother--the receiver and nurturer of life until it blossoms forth.  That is why the doctrine of the Trinity is so important.  If God is not both Father and Mother, then to be created in His image leaves out one half of humanity. 

 

Everything in the physical world speaks to us of the world of the spirit, if we can only look deeply enough to see it.  Jesus, in human flesh, called God "Father" in acknowledgment of the fact that He was created in the flesh and received His whole being from Another.  He was like us in all things except sin.  Only He, among all born of women, could receive fully the life of the Father and live it.  That is what we were destined to do from the beginning, but we could not do it.  So now, Jesus does the same thing in us if we permit Him to do so.  In us, spiritually, He dwells, receiving all Life from the Father of heaven and earth.  In us, God the Father and God the Son live their eternal, flowing, generating - and- receiving - and giving - back - life - in - relationship - to - one - another. 

 

Life is movement; it is not static, but flowing.  To look up and say, "Abba! Father!" is only to acknowledge Him as our Source, to receive all that He has to give us, from His loving hands-- our daily bread-- and then to return all that we have back into His hands in an eternal giving and receiving. 

 



Seeking Wisdom

When I was in the 8th grade, the nun who taught us loved art, and her art classes were full of inspiration.  She gave us models to copy-- which for me took the pressure off tying to create something from scratch-- and then gave us time to work on our own.  I always found that time peaceful and quiet and restful, as the whole class concentrated on copying an image and then coloring it in.

One day, she brought in images of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit and allowed us to choose one to replicate.  I chose Sapientia -- Wisdom.  The image was an oil lamp, something like Aladdin's lamp, with the word curved over it.  I remember that while working on that image, I fell in love with the idea of wisdom, and I remember wanting it more than anything else. 

Later, in high school or college, I remember writing a poem that has long been lost.  But it expressed an image of my daily holding up a chalice to the Lord, in order to receive pure, sparkling Wisdom, or Truth, in the form of a clear, refreshing liquid -- maybe it was water, but seemed more than that.  I remember writing that I wanted to receive Wisdom and "pour it out, distilled, into the world."  Later, I puzzled over the word "distilled," as that usually means refining out impurities, an image that didn't seem to fit at the time. 

Now, though, I see "distilled" as more "titration," or in other words, pouring it out drop by drop into the world.  I think this might be all I really want-- to receive wisdom and to give it out as I receive it.  I cannot hold it within; the cup spills over as it fills up, and I cannot hold it in. 

This morning, I began re-reading the book of Proverbs; that book, along with Sirach, or Wisdom, never fails to fill my cup to overflowing.  When I first began reading the Bible, I would race through, eager to know what it said.  Now that I know what it says, though, I find myself reading more and more slowly, drinking more deeply from each word and phrase.  Instead of reading a paragraph or a page, I read a phrase or a sentence.  It is just like sipping wine instead of gulping it.

In fact, Wisdom is personified in Chapter 9 of Proverbs as a woman who 'mixes wine' and offers it freely to those who will enter the house she has built and "hewn out its seven pillars."  Now that I have spent many years seeking wisdom, I begin to understand the treasure that was given to me early in life, when I fell in love with wisdom.  The book of Proverbs enumerates many gifts that Wisdom holds in her hands:  prosperity, straight paths, health, nourishment, longevity, riches and honor, peace, pleasant ways, and a Tree of Life -- the Gift offered to Adam and Eve in Paradise, but which they rejected in favor of the Tree of Knowledge (Experience) of Good and Evil.

Wisdom is better than gold and richer than silver; she watches over and protects those who seek her: when you lie down, you will not be afraid; when you lie down, your sleep will be sweet.  As I read those words again this morning, I thought to myself:  Wisdom is better than winning the Publishers' Clearinghouse Sweepstakes!  From what I hear, those who win the lottery are forever plagued with pleas and requests to share their good fortune.  But Wisdom brings riches along with sweet rest and peace. 

I wish I could hand everyone I meet the Book of Proverbs and say, "Eat This!  It is sweeter than honey and richer than wine, and you will find rest for your soul."

The Poetry of Jessica Powers

Yesterday's entry in Give Us This Day included a poem by Jessica Powers, whose poetry has touched me before and now once again:

I am copying down in a book from my heart's archives

the day that I ceased to fear God with a shadowy fear.

Would you name it the day that I measured my column of virtue

and sighted through windows of merit a crown that was near?

Ah, no, it was rather the day I began to see truly

that I came forth from nothing and ever toward nothingness tend,

that the works of my hands are a foolishness wrought in the presence

of the worthiest king in a kingdom that never shall end.

I rose up from the acres of self that I tended with passion

and defended with flurries of pride;

I walked out of myself and went into the woods of God's mercy,

and here I abide.

There is greeness and calmness and coolness, a soft leafy covering

from the judgment of sun overhead,

and the hush of His peace, and the moss of His mercy to tread.

I have naught but my will seeking God; even love burning in me

is a fragment of infinite loving and never my own.

And I fear God no more; I go forward to wander forever

in a wilderness made of His infinite mercy alone.

 

I read and re-read this poem and know its truth.  There is nothing I can add that would not take away from her words.  

Witness!

You shall be my witnesses, even to the very ends of the earth...(Acts 1:8).

 

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched -- this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.  The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.  We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard...(I Jn. 1-2).

 

Go home to your family and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.  So the man went away and began to tell in the ten cities how much Jesus had done for him.  And all the people were amazed (Mark 5: 19-20).

 

In every church sooner or later, the members will hear that they should tell 'the good news,' that they should be evangelists, or witnesses to Christ.  While the Catholic church is not really 'evangelical' in the sense of either training people to be witnesses, or even putting an emphasis of being evangelical, from time to time, I have heard that we should be witnesses.  Usually, the method of 'witnessing' is to be by the way we live, as children of God in a dark world.  Back in the 50's, when I was confirmed in the 6th grade, we were told that we would be "soldiers" of Jesus Christ.  As an 85 lb girl at the time, I was not sure what kind of 'soldier' I would be, or how bravely I could 'stand up' against Communism, the threat of the day.

 

Ever since I have truly 'met' Jesus Christ, as John the Apostle did, now that I have truly "seen with my eyes, and my hands have touched," I can witness to "what the Lord has done for me," as the man in the Gospel was told to do.  As long as our faith is just 'belief in ideas," we have nothing to witness to, nor any reason to do so.  Every religion has doctrines to believe in, and therefore, one doctrine is for the most part, as good as another in keeping people on the straight and narrow.  One church accepts divorce and re-marriage; another does not.  One church is culturally oriental and introverted, in the sense of looking within for reality; another is culturally extroverted and looking without for its reality. 

 

As children, we believe because someone in authority has outlined for us what we are supposed to believe -- and we accept it.  That's fine; that's the way the world works.  The child accepts almost everything on faith -- even mathmatics.  The adolescent begins to questions what he has been told; he typically needs to test the waters and find out for himself what is true, what is not --- that is what is meant by the "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil," or "eating the fruit of Experience," of finding out for ourselves.  If we don't kill ourselves in the process, it is a normal and natural process.

 

Somewhere along the way of Experiencing Life for Ourselves, (and usually rejecting the wisdom of the past), some of us may encounter the Jesus of the Gospel -- the Word of Life, who was with the Father, and now is with us, as John says.  Maybe there is a "witness" who has himself come to know Jesus Christ and who can tell us about Him.  Or maybe, as in the case of C. S. Lewis, there is a specific moment of profound grace that causes us to drop to our knees in recognition of a Presence in our lives that was not there before, but now has come to us in a personal way.  (To be fair, Lewis had actually heard the 'good news' from J.R.R. Tolkein, his good friend, for some years -- but, although Lewis respected and loved Tolkein, what he said about Jesus was just another philosophy/ fantasy until that moment when the door opened and Lewis walked through it for himself.)

 

My point is this -- until God has "done something for us," we are not really witnesses; we are like the Greek philosophers, telling our ideas about God, but not really what He has done for us, what our "eyes have seen and our hands have touched."    We know--in the sense of experience-- that of which we speak; we are not speculating or philosophizing about what it must be like. 

 

At some point, we must all abandon what we "think" about God and acknowledge the TRUTH about Him -- that He has come in the flesh (Jesus Christ) and has "met us on the road to Damascus," as He did Paul.  While we are "breathing threats against the believers" who are "corrupting our religious beliefs" and wanting to put them to death, we encounter the Living Christ.  Once Paul had that encounter, his religious beliefs melted away.  He knew the Way, the Truth, and the Life -- and later, he was to say after debating with the Greeks, "I resolved to know nothing else but Jesus Christ, and Him crucified." 

 

Of course, neither Paul nor Jesus nor the early church "threw out" Judasim, but then began to study what they believed in terms of their encounter with the Risen Lord.  And that is true of all those who have met Jesus Christ; they do not throw away all they have been taught, but begin to study it in the light of what they have experienced --- and find that doctrine now becomes alive, richer and fuller and more meaningful.  Jesus said, "I have come not to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it." 

 

For those who have met Jesus Christ, they now know what that means.  The "Law," or teachings become as vessels holding living water, not just 'rules to be followed."  But only the Holy Spirit -- or the Presence of the Risen Christ -- can teach us these things.  Then we can truly be "witnesses," not of what we "believe," but of what we know to be true because we have lived it, we have tasted it, we have seen it, we have embraced it in the Person of Christ. 

 

 

 



a Great Teaching

Yesterday, someone asked me a simple question:  When you go for spiritual direction, what is expected?  Since I had never gone for spiritual direction, I could not really answer that question, so we called over our pastor, who had just finished Mass.

His answer,so simple, gave me so much to think about:  The spiritual director is a discerning, another "eye," helping you to see what God is doing in your life right now.

How many of us, whether seeking spiritual direction or not, ask What is God doing in my life right now?  It is a simple question, cutting through all of our theology and pursuits of the mind:  What is God doing in my life right now?

We seek to understand so many things in our lives:  the hurts of the past, the directions of the future -- but what about the present moment?  Is God here, in this moment?  And if He is here, what is He doing right now?

I think of the young man in the Gospel who asked Jesus, "Master, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"  Jesus answered him: You know the commandments...." and the young man said, "all of these I have followed all my life."  So now we know where the young man was at that moment.  And at that moment, the Holy Spirit put his finger on the blockage in the man's life:  Sell what you have, give to the poor, and come, follow me.  The man walked away sad---for him, it was a moment of profound revelation of the next step.  I like to think that his "walking away sad" was not the end of the conversation with God, but the doorway to the rest of his life.  Having seen the truth of his heart in that moment, it may be that he spent the rest of his life parting with the things that ensured his physical security, but left no room for the security of eternal life.  It may be that, by the end of his life, he was truly free of the chains that bound him to earth -- because of that moment of encounter with Jesus Christ. 

Surrendering all that we have to the Lordship of Jesus is the work of a lifetime; it is not accomplished in one moment.  As Jesus said, "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."  Our spirits in one moment can attach themselves to the things of God; it takes a little longer for the flesh to follow.  So the young man, though not at that moment "selling all his possessions," must have gone home and taken a good look at all he owned, weighing his possessions against the joy He experienced in the Presence of Jesus Christ. 

Jesus invited him to a life of perfect trust in God; at that moment, the young man was not "there." His trust still resided in his earthly possessions and inheritance.  It was as if Jesus had given him a glimpse of a distant land which he would one day possess.  But the journey was not to be accomplished in one day -- it was the journey of a lifetime.

If we ask God what He is doing in our lives today, will He not also give us a glimpse into where we are going?  We are not yet there, but we might see the future, in a sense, of our souls.  Very few of us can see where we are on the journey, but we can place our trust in the One Who knows the Way and Who is willing to lead us to the next step. 

What is God doing in our lives today?  He is leading us away from clinging to the things of the past and teaching us to cling to Him alone.  He is the Way and the Source of Eternal Life!

Prayer as Listening

One of my earliest childhood heroes was George Washington Carver (thanks, Mom and Dad for having such a great series of books in our home).  I read his story over and over as I was growing up, and never tired of it.  Carver was born in 1864, just as the Civil War was ending, and plantations were being broken up into sharecropping estates. 

Because he was a frail child, not strong enough to work in the fields, he helped with household chores and gardening, so he developed an early love for plants.  He gathered and cared for a wide variety of plants and became known as the "plant doctor," helping neighbors restore ailing plants to health.  He loved art and music, and wanted to study piano, but one of his teachers at Simpson College, whose father was head of the Iowa State College Department of Horticulture, recognized his horticultural talents and convinced him to pursue a career in scientific agriculture.

[The fact that his art teacher came from this background and could connect Carver to agriculture in this way is amazing.  God guides his servants in mysterious but sure paths.] 

Carver was the first African American to enroll at the Iowa State College of Agriculture, today known as Iowa State University.  His excellence in botany and horticulture prompted his professors to encourage him in the pursuit of a graduate degree, where he became a leading plant breeder and developed scientific skills in plant pathology and mycology.  In 1896, he was invited to become a faculty member at Alabama's Tuskegee Institute, where he gained an international reputation in research, teaching, and outreach to the community.  There, he taught his students that nature is the greatest teacher, and instilled in them the attitude of gentle listening to the forces of nature and the dynamics of agriculture.  He taught them that education should be used for the betterment of the people in the community.

Carver created what he called "movable schools," bringing practical agricultural knowledge to farmers, promoting health, sound nutrition, and self-sufficiency to Southern farming, which had subsisted on cotton up to that time.  Carver developed the peanut as a crop which could restore nitrogen and improve the soil so depleted by cotton crops for so many years.  His people could barely survive because of the thinness of the soil.  Carver wrote in The Need of Scientific Agriculture in the South: "The virgin fertility of our soils and the vast amount of unskilled labor have been more of a curse than a blessing to agriculture.  This exhaustive system for cultivation, the destruction of forest, the rapid and almost constant decomposition of organic matter, have made our agriculture problem one requiring more brains than of the North, East, or West."

In the Book of Judges, we see again and again how God raised up leaders in Israel to lift His people out of crises, to establish them again and again in peace and safety.  What God did then, He still does today.  George Washington Carver was annointed by God to help his people--poor sharecroppers -- survive not as slaves but as free men.  Carver learned early in life to listen not only to 'nature,' but to God.  He was occasionally criticized by his peers in the scientific community for being too "intuitive," or "unscientific," as he freely admitted that his ideas often came to him in prayer.  Supposedly, at one time he prayed, "O God, show me the secrets of Your great universe."  Thereby God answered him: If I showed you the secrets of the universe, you could not comprehend them.  But I will show you the secrets of the peanut.

Carver developed 325 products from peanuts, making the peanut a valuable crop to farm.  He also developed more than 100 products from sweet potatoes and hundreds more from a dozen other plants native to the South -- all alternative crops to cotton that were beneficial to farmers and to the land.  As a botany teacher at Tuskeegee, his practice was to go out into the forest at 4:30 each morning to gather specimens for class that day.  It was during these early-morning forays, he said, that he received his instructions / inspirations for the day. 

His prayer was a 'listening' to God on a daily basis, and because he did not try to hide the Source of his wisdom, the scientific community sometimes ridiculed him,  but they could not deny his work. He died in 1943, was commenorated on postage stamps in 1947 and 1998, and a fifty-cent coin in 1951.  In 1977, he was elected to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans, among many other honors.

When God asked Abraham to leave his father's house and "come to a land I will show you," He made a promise to Abram, whose name meant "exalted father," though he had no children then.  God said, I will make your name great, and all nations shall bless themselves through you."  Later, Abram's name was changed from "exalted father" to "father of multitudes"-- Abraham. 

Those who learn to listen to God and to be guided by Him in all their ways are inheritors of the same promise:  Let me make your name great!  We might say that G.W.Carver, "son of slaves,' "poor black man in America following the Civil War," was transformed into "teacher, leader, shining light, deliverer of his people, Great American" -- by listening humbly to God, His Teacher, His Rabbi, His Source of Wisdom and Truth. 

Can we also learn to listen to God?

How God Changes Our Brains

If you go to Youtube and type in Shawn Achor-The Happiness Advantage, you will find a site that begins TEDxBloomington - Shawn Achor- The Happiness Advantage....  I tried to post a link to this blog, but was unable to do it.  Anyway, the 12-minute video is very much worth the trouble of finding it.  I have it saved to my desktop and I watch it periodically.  It seems that science is now catching up with biblical principles in finding out "how we work."

For over a year now, off and on, I've been reading How God Changes Your Brain: Breakthrough Findings from a Leading Neuroscientist.  Written from a scientific, rather than specific Christian, viewpoint, the book is valuable "evidence" of what Shawn Achor is talking about in "The Happiness Advantage" video -- that happy people are the most successful people. 

All of Chapter 4 of the Book of Proverbs, along with almost all of the Wisdom Literature in the Bible, reiterates the same thing:  wisdom (from God) = restful happiness (peace) = a full life:

The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn,

shining ever brighter til the full light of day.

But the way of the wicked is like deep darkness;

they do not know what makes them stumble (Proverbs 4: 18-19).

 

In How God Changes Your Brain, the scientists spent years studying the physical, psychological, and emotional effects of religion and/or spirituality.  Their conclusion:  Spiritual Experiences Add new Dimensions to Life.  Actually, back in the 1970's, Redbook Magazine conducted a nation-wide survey and concluded that the most "religious" women, (as self-defined) were also the most sexually satisfied women.  Interesting, isn't it?

 

After conducting brain scans to see what was happening inside the brain of people who prayed or meditated, the neuroscientists concluded that "the world becomes more three-dimensional, more rich, intense, and pleasurable," for those who somehow related to God.  There was a deeper connection to other people and to reality that transformed the subjects' orientation to life when they opened themselves to God:

 

Nearly every spiritual experience, in some small way, changes our sense of reality and the relationship we have with the world.  Generally, it increases our sense of unity and wholeness, not just in a metaphoric sense, but in the way we conduct our lives.  In fact, almost three - quarters of our respondents indicated that they felt a sense of oneness with the universe or a unity with all of life.  These feelings are also associated with a greater sense of purpose and meaning in one's life.

 

Such experiences involve a degree of self-transcendence and a suspension of personal egotism.  In those moments, one no longer feels the need to control the external enviornment, because everything seems fine just the way it is.  Past and future are suspended, and a sense of living in the present pervades one's consciousness.  In such a state, some believe they are in the presence of God, while others may simply feel the suspension of negative moods.

 

The authors (Newburg and Waldman) study the parts of the brain that respond to our orientation toward God in prayer, and conclude that some parts are suppressed by prayer -- the angry, hostile, raging connections -- and others are enhanced by prayer -- the sense of connectedness to others.

 

Proverbs advises us that paying attention to wisdom is "health to our bodies and healing to our bones."  One reason so many people love being outside is that it is so much easier for us to "pay attention to wisdom" when we are surrounded by nature:

 

The foolish fears of what might pass,

I cast them all away

Among the clover-scented grass,

Among the new-mown hay,

Among the rustling of the corn,

Where drowsy poppies nod,

Where ill thoughts die, and good are born--

Out in the fields with God! 

                                                            -- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

 

By the way, E.B. Browning's How Do I Love Thee? written to her husband, is one of the most famous poems in the English language -- more "proof," if we can call it that, that those whose life is oriented toward God are also more connected to themselves, to the universe, and to others.

 

St. Paul tells us, All things are ours, for we belong to Christ, and Christ is God's.  Now, that is something worth meditating about!

 



 



 



Passionate People

The saints are all passionate people; they are relentlessly passionate for one thing -- the kingdom of God.  The Spirit that animates Jesus Christ is passed onto them because they are open to Him and want nothing more.  In each one, the Spirit expresses itself through that particular physical and mental framework.  God does not destroy our "natural man;" He electrifies and energizes us according to the nature that is already in us.

Some of the saints are passionate for justice and mercy toward the poor -- St. Vincent de Paul, Mother Teresa, St. Elizabeth of Hungary.

Some saints are passionate for truth and clarity -- Thomas Aquinas, St. Paul, C.S.Lewis, Teresa of Avila.

Some are passionate for trust in God and for celebrating the life that contains his gifts to mankind -- Francis of Asissi, Julian of Norwich, Therese of Liseux.

God pours out His passion for healing, for truth, for justice, for goodness and kindness on the world through His saints -- those who are willing to open their hands and hearts to receive His Gifts to man.  He told Abraham, the first "saint:" I will make your name great; all nations shall be blessed through you.

I think each one of us can and should be a blessing to the world around us, not through our own knowledge and understanding, but by generously receiving and giving the gifts we have been given.  Jesus said, Freely have you received; freely give.

What is it that God has given us?  What is the passion that drives us?  If the passion is to satisfy our hunger for wealth, power, recognition, fame, etc, the fire quickly burns out.  If the passion in us is for the kingdom of God, it never burns out, because it is God's own passion in us.

The passion of the saints does not diminish in heaven; if anything, it burns even more.  What they so earnestly desired while on earth, they still desire in heaven -- and, like us, they are passionate about involving others in their mission.  That is why we have 'patron' saints.  They have been here before us; they have lived through many dangers and trials -- and they are witnesses to us that God is faithful in the midst of trouble. 

At the threshhold to the Promised Land, Moses passed on his mantle of leadership to Joshua.  To a younger man, the task must have seemed overwhelming and daunting.  But God's words to Joshua were, Do not fear; be strong and courageous; as I was with Moses, so I am with you!  When we communicate with the saints in heaven, or read their stories, this is the message we receive:  As I was with _______, so I am with you!

Sarah, promised by God to have the child of Abraham, was taken into Pharoah's harem once they entered Egypt.  What would happen to the promise of God to her?  When she was released by divine intervention, Abraham could know forever that God was faithful to His promises.  Now that's security and release from fear!  All of us have to walk through the valley of death to know that for ourselves---but so many others have gone before us and we can rely on their testimony that God is faithful and will deliver us from evil.

When we give testimony, we are not testifying to what we think or believe, but to what God has actually done for us.  We want to encourage others coming behind us, just as the saints in heaven still want to encourage us to trust God in all circumstances.  In the company of the saints, we learn to pray; looking at them, we learn to trust God as they trusted God.  When we feel weak and clumsy in the spiritual life, we can ask for their help.

As I first began my own walk in the Spirit, I pleaded with God, "Please send someone to teach me!"  I knew that I would fall down, stumble, and give up in ignorance by myself.  The person He sent into my life was strong in the spirit, having walked with God many years herself.  When I was doubtful, she was certain; when I faltered, she lifted me up; when I hardly knew how to pray, she prayed with me and for me.  She graciously poured into me her very soul  -- and from her, I learned to know God for myself.  As the villagers told the Samaritan woman at the well, We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.

When we face difficult moments in our lives, it is important for us to have someone to turn to, someone who has faced the same situation before us; we need to be schooled by others.  In this life, if we are fortunate enough to have a close friend to whom we can open our hearts, we ponder our questions together, we pray together, we pray for one another, and each is grateful for the other's support and concern.  In this form of friendship, God is the center, and each one acknowledges that the other is right with God.  If the saint is in heaven, this is still no obstacle to their friendship.  The dialog is even more far-ranging and fruitful, because the friend is now wrapped up in God's providence and shares His resources.  The friend now truly desires nothing else but our continued and deepening friendship with God too.  His passion for God and for us is even greater than before. 

God does not save us to become hermits, but to become friends with one another and with the world.  We are in the greatest company in heaven and on earth.  Let us rejoice that we have been called to such great fellowship!

Our Satellite Dish

I've been writing about man as a solar-powered creature, whose life-energy comes from the breath of God within.  The spirit He has placed within us is like a satellite dish pointed to the heavens, searching for signals from beyond our physical sight.  Every one of us has an internal satellite dish; the question is, "Where is it pointed?  What signals is it tuned in to receive?"

The "natural man" (body and psyche) is tuned to the world around us, desperately trying to receive the things we need and want for survival:  food, shelter, rest, etc for our physical bodies, and acceptance, emotional safety, recognition of worth for our souls (minds and emotions).  Obviously, God does not place these desires in us if He does not intend for them to be satisfied.  The fact that we are thirsty means that we are creatures designed to drink water.  Jesus did not deny that we needed these things:  Your father in heaven knows that ye have need of these.  He simply said, Be not anxious about what you shall eat, or what you shall wear....,  but seek first the kingdom of heaven and all these things shall be given to you besides.

Jesus wanted us to point the "satellite dish" of our hearts and minds to our heavenly Father, "who knows how to give good things to those who love Him."  When we point our souls towards earth and others for what we need, we will be disappointed.  No one has all the physical and emotional and mental resources to satisfy our souls.  Even those with untold wealth are still restless for "something more."

Psalm 139 is the prayer of someone whose satellite dish is tuned into God as his source of life.  He knows that from the moment of his conception, God saw "his unformed body" in his mother's womb.  He knows that the Spirit of God has hovered over him his entire life, and that God has been thinking about him every moment of his life.  This man -- David-- probably sang or prayed this prayer while hiding in caves, trying to escape Saul's army which was hunting him down to destroy him.  David's only hope was in God's awareness of where he was and God's everlasting kind "thoughts" toward him.  At that moment, David had no one and nothing else to rely upon but God alone. 

When that time comes for all of us, our satellite dish will be focused on God, Who is our Source of all good things.  Psalm 37 says, Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.  To "delight ourselves" in the Lord means to look to Him, to remain open to Him, to remain pliable before Him, and to yield to His purpose for our lives.    This is to seek first the kingdom of God in us -- everything else will follow.

The Person Re-born

Paul Tournier was a Swiss physician and author whose focus in his writings was the healing of man's soul.  He defined sin as not only specific acts, but a state of man which hinders the advent of God's kingdom on earth.  C.S. Lewis, also, writes about specific acts of man that gradually turn the man into the sin itself.  He gives the example of a woman who grumbles so much that eventually the inner person is lost and she "becomes the grumble."

So many people misunderstand what it means to be "born again."  Once our "natural man" has turned itself into something else, other than our "inner man," our spirit, there is almost no going back the way we came on that journey.  Our only hope is for that "natural man" to die and to start over -- to be "born again."  This is as true for religious people as for non-religious ones.

In Chapter 17 of The Person Reborn, Paul Tournier writes this:

The Bible gives us a powerful picture of men guided by God.  They are not men who make no mistakes, but men who seek to listen to God and obey Him.  After many mistakes and acts of disobedience, humbled by disappointments and trembling before God, Moses found intimate fellowship with him, so that he was able to receive the Ten Commandments directly from God.

 

If Abraham had not believed the order to sacrifice his son, would he have had the experience that was his at the moment when God stayed his arm from a sacrifice which so many other religions saw as the cruel will of the diety? ....

 

Christ himself is the incarnation of this life led in its smallest details by the Spirit.  He walks peacefully, seeing in the man met on the road or the woman at the well the very soul to whom God has sent him.  No rush, no concocted plan, no disorder; eveything takes place in its own time, as he himself so often says.  But this does not stop him from withdrawing with his disciples to seek God's guidance.  He returns full of assurance, to go up to Jerusalem to face death.

 

All of these men of the Bible accept God's precise orders---the place they must go to, the time they must go there.  But they do not look for these orders as for oracles.  What they seek is God.  Following the directions they receive, they find their lives directed toward fellowship with God.  They do not express their fellowship sentimentally, but manifest it through their faith in the concrete directions they are following. 

 

Is it not because they have lost the sense of being led by the Spirit that so many church people are overworked, exhausted, and worried?  Administrative regulations, projects and committees may be necessary, but they do not take the place of what is lost.  Is it not for the same reason that so many of our patients tell us that what they hear in church seems theoretical and unconnected with real life? 

 

Yesterday, I wrote that man is a solar-powered creature; his 'natural man' is animated by the breath of God within him.  When we lose contact with the breath of God in us, our natural man grows weak, dis-integrated, gradually losing power as a battery cell gradually runs down with repeated use and no re-charging.  Jesus often took his disciples off to a quiet spot where they could re-charge their batteries and re-energize their lives by connecting just with Him.

 

If we lose our connection with God, it eventually no longer matters how much "good work" we are doing; it will only exhaust us and frustrate others.  If we are not being led by the Spirit, our work is in vain.  The breath of God in us is soft and quiet; it cannot be detected over the noise of the world.  If we cannot find a spot in which to re-charge our batteries, we will eventually run ourselves and all of our resources down to the ground:  if salt loses its flavor, it is of no use but to be thrown out. 

 

Being born-again means to allow the Spirit of God access into our inner man, allowing His direction and breath to blow us where He will.  As long as God is the Source of our energy, we will never lose power, enthusiasm, and inner strength.  The very word "enthusiasm" means "God within" (en-theos), from the Greek.  Sometimes, we may have to surrender all that the natural man has built up in order for that to happen.  We are so used to directing our own lives that it is hard to surrender to God's direction for us.  But when we allow the 'natural man' to die and begin to allow the Spirit to be our controlling center, we will find a life we never dreamed or imagined, a life that will never die, but will continue to live forever.



Two Stories of Creation

And the Lord God formed man ('adam' in Hebrew) from the dust of the ground (adamah) and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being (Gen. 2).

 

Man is a solar-powered creature; our life-source, our energy, does not come from ourselves, but from the "breath of God" in us.  In Hebrew, the word we translate as "breath" is ruach, the same word that is used in the first chapter of Genesis at the moment of creation: When God began creating the heavens and the earth (adamah), the earth/adamah was formless and empty, darkness over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit(Ruach) of God was hovering over the waters (Gen. 1).

 

There is a deliberate connection -- or word-play-- betwen the Hebrew words of adam/adamah and the word ruach, translated in Enlish alternately as "Spirit" and "breath" in both stories of creation -- that of the universe and that of man.

 

The same creative energy that hovers over the formless deep in Genesis 1 to bring about order, harmony, beauty, balance hovers over the dust of the earth that is formed into a man.  The word "adam" was not at first a proper name, but a generic reference: the man.  In the first creation story, Elohim first creates the space for life--the heavens above, the earth below, and the sea beneath.  That is His work for the first 3 days of creation.  On days 4, 5, and 6, He fills the empty spaces with teeming life forms -- the birds of the air, the plants and animals on earth, the fish and all the sea creatures below.  And finally, mankind to rule over all the earth.

 

In the second creation story, YHWH Elohim first forms man from the dust of the earth/adamah, and then He breathes into his nostrils His own Spirit--His ruach.  And man becomes a living being.

 

One interesting note is the use of two different terms for "God" in the two stories.  In the first, He is Elohim--the plural form of the Hebrew El: God.  The word here is a title, signifying His role,something like Creator, or King, or Mr. President.  In the second story, the reference is to "the Lord God."  Since Hebrew does not permit the use of YHWH, out of respect and reverence for the Sacred Name revealed to Moses.  Every time that term appears in the Scriptures of old, it has been changed to Adonai (The Lord).  So our English "The Lord God" is really YHWH Elohim.

 

What can be the significance of two creation stories with two different terms for God?  The first story tells us who God is ---all powerful, transcendent, above His creation, the Source and Energy of all that exists.  Unlike the gods worshipped by the Babylonians--the sun, the moon, and the stars -- Elohim is the creator of these servants, made by him to mark out the times and the seasons for man.  He is great and powerful above all, to be worshipped in awe.  In the second story, the great Elohim "bends over" his creation of man, scooping the dust of the earth and fashioning it as would a potter fashioning a vessel.  Again, He is creating the "space" first; the "life" will fill it later, as in the first creation story.  Elohim is not just "out there and far away," someone to be feared, but right here, close by--immanent.  He has not just a title, but a name: YHWH:  I will be where I will be.  He is close enough to breathe into man's nostrils His own spirit/ruach.  Usually, we are that intimate only with our spouse or our infants.

 

In our rational, scientific approach to the bible, we find the two versions of creation incompatible: they cannot both be true.  And yet they are.  God is both Elohim -- powerful and transcendent-- and YHWH -- near enough and familiar enough to be called by Name.  To know someone's name is to be able to call on them, to appeal to them.  Elohim is to be feared because of His almighty power.  Yahweh is at our side, our "Helper, another name for Him even in Genesis.  Taking both stories together  reveals a truth we could get no other way, a truth beyond all our scientific quest for fact.  Elohim's power -- His Spirit/Ruach -- is at the service of His love for man.  His power -- His breath-- is in us to energize us, to create us, to order our lives as He first ordered the universe, creating harmony and beauty in us as well as around us. 

 

 

 



Wisdom and Knowledge

No one has ever seen God, but God, the only Son, who is at the Father's side, has made him known (Jn.1:18)

 

The hidden nature of God is shielded from human understanding by a "sort of cloud of unknowing." Because God is not a concept, he cannot be known by the intellect.  But what cannot be thought may yet be known by love.  Through the sharp arrows of love directed toward God in contemplative prayer, it is possible to pierce the "cloud of unknowing" and attain blessed union with God.  This requires that we wrap ourselves in a "cloud of forgetting," abandoning all images and concepts of the divinity and overcoming our attachment to the world. -- from the commentary on The Cloud of Unknowing, a treatise by an unknown 14th century author. ( Commentary by the editors of  Give Us This Day.)

 

God can be known, but not thought.  No man can reveal to us the true nature of God, what he is like, because no man has ever seen God.  It would take God Himself to reveal Himself to us.  In the Bible, we have stories of men and women who came to know God -- not philosophers and kings and wise men -- but simple men and women who came to know God through what he did for them, in them, and through them.

 

We tend to focus on the protagonists-- the central characters of the story.  But the biblical writers were focusing on God -- who was He?  He is the God of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob, of all the prophets.  He is the God of Israel.  When He becomes our God, we will know who He is.

 

Jesus told the Scribes, "You search the Scriptures because by them you think you will have life, but you refuse to come to me that you might have life."  We will never know God through the intellect, or through knowledge, though the study of nature may provide some insight.  The only way to know God is through the heart of Jesus.  Once we enter into Him, the mysteries of God unfold to us, enlightening our minds and lifting our hearts.  In heart-to-heart communion with Jesus, the Spirit that animates Him begins to stir in us:  Were not our hearts burning within us as He spoke? said the disciples on the way to Emmaeus.  In Him, the Scriptures begin to unfold to us, and our understanding is enlightened -- beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he unfolded the Scriptures to them.

 

Forget everything else:  know Jesus, and you will know everything, for He is the wisdom of God Himself.

A Child of God

A friend wrote to me yesterday something along these lines:  "______keeps telling me that I am a child of God.  When will I be an adult of God?"

And my immediate answer was, "O no, baby; you don't want to be an adult of God.  The entire bible is our human story from the delight of Paradise to adulthood (the Tree of Knowledge, or Experience, of Good and Evil), and the painful journey back to paradise as a "child of God."

The problem for most of us is that we get stuck along the way in our "adulthood" and can never find our way back into the kingdom of heaven that belongs to the children in us. 

Let me approach this through the realm of psychology, which studies our "inner man:"

The two-year-old comes bursting into the world of signs [meaning] like a child on Christmas morning.  There are goodies everywhere.  For him, signifying the signified is like unwrapping a git.

[Note:  I am taking all of this from Walker Percy's Lost in the Cosmos, a book which studies man as "the only creature which is ashamed of itself and which seeks cover in a myriad of disguises...the only organism which tells lies."  The problem with Percy's book, fascinating as it is, is that one needs to study it with a kind of "second language," known only to linguists and "semioticists."]

Anyway, Percy and the semioticists -- the people who study "language as signs of meaning" are studying the development of the child as a pattern laid out in Genesis 2-4 or 5, with the story of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and beyond.  Again, it is a fascinating study:  The story of Adam in Paradise is that of the two-year old, discovering and naming his world with utter delight -- light,
 tiger, baby, etc.  When we read to children, we say, "What does the tiger say?"  We are helping the child discover and "name" his world.  What a joy!  We can all remember the utter joy of Helen Keller when she discovered that water had a name and that she could name it.  Wow!  That discovery opened to her the world of signs (language) and of meaning.  After that, she was no stranger to her world; she could "name" it and "own" it. 

What about the four-year-old?  By now, he should be a sovereign and native resident of his world, concelebrant with his family, at home in Eden....The typical four-year-old tends to be rather a joy.  His enthusiasm, his exuberance, his willingness to go more than halfway to meet others in a spirit of fun are all extremely refreshing...He is basically highly positive, enthusiastic, appreciative.  This makes him fun to be with, an engaging, amusing, ever-challenging friend.  You have to be on your toes to keep up with spirited, fanciful, four, but at least you have an even chance of success...With other children, things as a rule go rather well.  Fours enjoy each other; they appreciate the challenge that other children offer.  This is an age at which children interest and admire each other most....(Louise Bates Ames et al., The Gesell Institute's Child from One to Six (New York: Harper and row, 1979)

Here is the point in the story of Genesis where Adam moves from naming and claiming his world for himself to where he meets Eve, the "other," his partner with whom he will share his known world.  He has discovered that naming and claiming the world is not enough; he is lonely.  He needs another's eyes to see the world he knows, and he needs to see the world through her eyes.  He needs to look into her eyes and see the world within her.  He needs more than the physical world; he needs the world of spirit, of connectiveness -- that is what he is made for. 

The four year old is a concelebrant of the world and even of his own peers.

The seven-year-old?  Something has happened in the interval.
More aware of and withdrawn into the self...seems to be in "another world."....self-conscious about his own body.  Sensitive about exposing body.  does not like to be touched...modest about toileting...protects self by withdrawal.  May be unwilling to expose knowledge, for fear of being laughed at or criticized...apt to expect too much of self (Arnold Gesell and Frances Ilg: The Child From Five to Ten (New York: Harper and Row, 1946). 

Now we are up to Adam and Eve no longer as concelebrants and sharers of Paradise, but as ashamed, covering themselves and hiding from one another and from God.  Paradise is no longer a shared world, where God and Man enjoy being together, but a place of alienation, of separate worlds that cannot be bridged.  The rest of the bible is our story of the journey back to Paradise.

When we read Scripture, we tend to focus on "what happened."  The Hebrew writers knew that "what happened" translates into "what happens."  All literature, including the Bible, portrays universal human experience and does not go out of date.  In the bible, we see ourselves in the characters, who become paradigms of the human condition.  So the bible communicates by indirectness, by example rather than by precept.  The result is memorability, affective power, and truthfulness to lived experience.  This places a greater emphasis on the reader's ability to be receptive to human experience and meaning.

The ultimate question here is, "Do we want to be stuck eating from the Tree of [our] Experience (Knowledge) of Good and Evil," or do we want to return to Paradise as (now knowledgable, but wiser) concelebrants of God, one another, and the world around us?  As long as we are determined to cover ourselves with fig leaves and blame one another for our own failures, we will remain cast out of Paradise, as "adults" in an alien world.  Can we recover our precious four-year-old selves, dancing and singing before God:  Ah! At last! This is bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh, and we are one!

The Will to Power

"Not by power, not by might, but by my Spirit," says the Lord God of hosts (Zechariah 4). 

 

Fredrich Neitzche was a German philosopher of the late 19th century who wrote about the Uberman, the superior man who challenged all religious beliefs and sought his own health, wisdom, knowledge, creativity, and power from the world itself, not from the world beyond.  He is the source of Hitler's cult of the genetically perfect "super race," and of Ann Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

 

In Abraham Joshua Heschel's Man is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion, he begins with the contrast of two attitudes when man views the world (nature).  Mankind either says, "I can control/ manipulate that to my advantage," or he says, "Wow! Look at that -- Awesome!"  According to Heschel, one of my favorite writers, awe and amazement is the beginning of religion.

 

As the stories of Cain and Abel, Lamech, and the Tower of Babel show us, man's natural tendency is the "will to power, the will to conquer, the will to exalt" himself:  We shall be as gods... Let us build a tower to the heavens and make a name for ourselves (Gen.10).  Since the world began, until its very end, there will always be the tension and the struggle between the will- to- power group and the "meek," who will inherit the earth.

 

December 1, 1955.  Early evening.  A small black woman boards a public bus in Mongomery, Alabama.  She has worked all day in a dingy basement tailor shop; her ankles are swollen and her feet hurt.  She sits in the first row of the colored section until the bus fills with riders and the driver orders her to move back so that white patrons can have her seat.

 

Rosa Parks was no Dr. Martin Luther King, but if he was the Voice of the Civil Rights Movement, she was its soul.  At that moment, something strong and powerful and resistant against injustice rose up in Rosa Parks soul.  She had no "I have a dream" speech -- that was to come later; all she had was a simple word: "No."  That word ignited the Civil Rights Movement in America and helped the South change its "Will to Power" culture.  That word ignited the black population of Montgomery to boycott the buses for the next 381 days.  That word made Dr. Martin Luther King stand up and speak for the first time.  That word changed the world as we know it.

 

I Cor. 1:26-31 tells us that God uses the weak and foolish things of this world to shame the strong.  Every one of us, from the age of two, has the natural tendency to power and control:  "I do it myself!"  But submitting to the will of God, to the Spirit of God who wishes to speak through us, is the greater power.  When Jesus says, Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth, He is not at all referring to the "weak."  There was nothing weak about Rosa Parks.  Physically, she may have resembled someone who could be pushed around, but the spirit in her was stronger than all the unjust laws of this nation and the policemen who enforced them.  The title of her autobiography is Quiet Strength.

 

The word "meek" refers to "strength under control;" the best example is that of a thoroughbred race horse that can be controlled by its rider.  It is not "unbridled" strength, but strength that can be channeled in a powerful and useful direction by the will of another.  I am often amazed by the gift of the dog to us.  Here is (in some cases) a powerful animal that could rip us apart with his teeth, and yet, he is gentle enough for a baby to pull on his fur without incident.  That is meekness -- strength that can be trusted to yield and obey. 

 

Are we strong enough to yield to God?  To allow Him to have His way in us and through us?  To allow Him to control our thoughts, words, and actions?  Can we change our world?  The empires of Egypt, of  Rome, of Nazism, of Communism, have all crumbled.  Everywhere man has set out to build a Tower of Babel has seen God confusing the speech of the leaders and dismantling the man-made Tower.  Instead, He has raised up Moses, Peter, Pope John 23, Rosa Parks, and others to build a new "tower," one built on compassion and justice and submission to the Spirit of God.

Choose Ye This Day....

Without a guide, we are like men stumbling in the dark.  We cannot "tell our right hands from our left," according to the book of Jonah.  There are many opinions, but only one Truth, manifested in multiple ways. 

As the Israelites entered the Promised Land, Joshua told them this:  "...choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served...or the gods of the Amorites...But as for me and my household, we will serve [Yahweh] (Joshua 24:15).

And David, in Psalm 16:  "I said to [Yhwh], 'You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing'...The sorrows of those will increase who run after other gods.  I will not pour out their libations of blood or take up their names on my lips....I will praise [Yhwh] who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me....You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand."

At the Last Supper, Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit, Who would lead us into all truth.  It seems clear that we must choose our Source of Truth -- either the Spirit of God to teach us, or "other gods."  When we choose Yahweh, He is faithful to place in our hearts His own Spirit of Truth and of righteousness.  The first letter of St. John to the church is worth reading, because he has much to say about how we can recognize the Spirit of Truth: 

...do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.  This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God.  This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world (4:1-2).

 

That is very practical advice.  The Spirit that comes from God obviously cannot testify against Jesus Christ.  Nor can He accept the "truth" of the world.  If we want to "test" the spirits around us, we need to bring them to the Holy Spirit and ask for His enlightenment on them.  If we cannot bring ourselves to do this, we will forever be following blind guides.  But Jesus promised that if we ask, we would receive -- and receive not something deceptive, something that looks like the Truth, but is a masquerade for Truth:  Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead?  Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?  If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?" (Luke 11). 

 

In our culture, we are far removed from the Middle East, where eels are considered a delicacy, but look like snakes.  Or where a rolled-up scorpion resembles an egg.  And because these are not everyday experiences for us, it is hard for us to "get it" in these words of Jesus.  But He is promising that the Spirit given to us will lead us into truth, not deception that looks like truth. 

 

Can we trust God to give us what He promised us?

Wild and Waste

If all I ever had to read of the bible were the first chapter of Genesis, I think I could be happy.  Of course, all of what follows adds to, elucidates, and enriches those first few lines -- and of course, Jesus brings the fullness of truth to them.  So maybe without the rest, I wouldn't understand the beginning.  But still, after 35+ years of reading the bible, I go back periodically to Genesis 1, and again and again, I am awed and amazed:

At the beginning of God's creating of the heavens and the earth,

when the earth was wild and waste*

darkness over the face of Ocean,

rushing-spirit of God hovering over the face of the waters--

 

*in Hebrew: tohu va-vohu (wild and waste), indicating "emptiness."

 

Our world tends toward entropy.  If I remember right, that is the second law of thermodyanics.  Genesis, amazingly, does not begin with God creating the world from nothing, the way we learned in catechism, but it begins with the Spirit of God "hovering" over emptiness, chaos, darkness, the abyss.  Everything that follows in Scripture follows this pattern: 

 

The Spirit of the Lord hovered (or brooded) over the chaos created by mankind in the first six chapters of Genesis, leading to the flood, the "uncreation process" that destroyed the entire earth.  Man's rapid slide from paradise -- harmony with God, with one another, and with the earth -- to the total disharmony represented by the flood began with Adam and Eve and intensified with each generation.  Already in the second generation, Cain cries out: My iniquity is too great to be bourne! Here, you drive me away today from the face of the soil, and from your face I must conceal myself, I must be wavering and wandering on earth--now it will be that whoever comes upon me will kill me!

 

The original harmonies between God and man, man and woman, and man and the earth have now become a permanent source of alienation in all three areas. The reason Cain founded the first city was that the earth would no longer yield its produce for him.  Not only nature and energy, but relationships tend toward entropy.  I have a friend who maintains that all relationships end badly, either in alienation or in death.  That, to me, is a rather pessimistic observation, but I do believe that without God, it is indeed true.

 

Fortunately, however, the entire bible portrays the ever-creating, the ever-renewing Spirit of God "brooding" over the chaos that man tends to create, the entropy sliding down into nothingness once again.  Only for those who refuse to look up does "everything end badly."  Our hope is the Spirit of God "brooding" over the darkness.  As long as we continue to stare into the darkness and curse it, nothing changes.  When we look up to the breath of God gently blowing over the waters, we begin to see light.  Once again, the waters part, and order is restored -- not all at once, but gradually.

 

First, we find we have space in which to stand and breathe; we find not confusion, but order, a clear division between Night and Day.  And slowly, our dry land begins to teem with life; our waters are filled with living creatures, and the birds of the air fly in the heavens.  We are no longer drowning in the chaos created by evil. 

 

Psalm 18 is one of the clearest portraits of the entire pattern:

 

The cords of death entangled me;

the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me.

The cords of the grave coiled around me;

the snares of death confronted me.

 

In my distress, I called to the Lord;

I cried to my God for help....

He reached down from on high and took hold of me;

he drew me out of deep waters.

He rescued me from my powerful enemy,

from my foes, who were too strong for me....

He brought me out into a spacious place;

he rescued me because he delighted in me.

 

 

When we discover that our lives, our relationships, our work has descended into chaos and confusion, there is only one remedy:  we must look up to the Spirit of God, Who is "hovering" over us.  All light, all beauty, all harmony, all truth have their source in Him.  Only He has the light, the energy, the truth that can restore a darkened world.

Winter Trees

Recently I decided to pull up my vegetable garden and plant blueberries instead.  Since I had not grown blueberries before, the man who sold me the bushes gave me some good advice: "around the first of September," he said, "fertilize the bushes with azalea food, because during the winter, the bushes will grow roots.  In the spring, they will produce fruit."

I've been thinking about what he told me.  I think in our personal lives, most of want to be summer trees: beautiful, shady, restful, and bearing fruit (useful).  We want to be "whole" people, contributing to a peaceful world.  But the only way we are going to be "summer trees" is to nourish our roots during the winter months, when the tree seems bare and unproductive.  The winter is important for root development; without strong and deep roots, the fruit may develop and then drop off.  Soon there is nothing left and no way to grow more fruit.

I remember once growing a Louisiana peach tree.  I was told not to allow the tree to bear much for the first three years, because the fruit would develop too quickly for the growing tree, perhaps breaking branches in the process, but in any case, depleting the tree's small resources.  But I was so excited to see the tree producing fruit that I could not bear to strip away the peaches.  Of course, I had to learn the hard way.  In just a few years, the peaches were of very poor quality and could not be eaten. 

In human life, that's what is called a "flash in the pan" and then a slow (or quick) burnout.  Too much too soon, and then it's over.  We see the pattern a great deal with child movie stars, or teen-age singers. In contrast, Meryl Streep, Oprah Winfrey and others like them who endure through the "heat of the day" have taken the time to hone their craft and to put down deep roots.  Their "beauty" is not superficial, but comes from deep within.  We do not tire of truth or of deep beauty the way we do of the latest fad, the thing without "roots."

In the Parable of the Sower, Jesus spoke of those who receive the word with joy, but then lose it because of the cares and riches of this world.  All of his examples in this parable, in one way or another, refer to those who have not put down deep roots, and so lose the fruit they might have bourne.  It is not merely "hearing" of the kingdom, exciting as it might be, that leads to eternal life, but "soaking our souls" in the word, allowing it to produce in us first deep and wide roots, leading to the bearing of much fruit. 

When we feel that we are "winter trees," not bearing fruit, not doing much, that is the time to fertilize our souls: to read, to think, to pray, so that when summer comes (when people come to us seeking fruit), the tree will be strong, resourceful, and productive.

The Kingdom of Heaven

Jesus called a small child into their midst and had him stand before them.  And He said, "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become as little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matt: 18:3).

 

Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these" (Matt. 19:14).

 

 

The reason Jesus came was to bring (not simply announce) the kingdom of heaven to earth.  We do not have to wait until we die to enter the kingdom of heaven; it is here.  It has arrived in the Person of God-with-us: Emmanuel/ the Christ.  Many Jews rejected Jesus as the Messiah because He did not bring the world-wide peace they were looking for.  But he said that His kingdom is not of this world; it is in the world, but not of the world.

 

Not everyone belongs to the kingdom, but we know who does belong.  In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus listed for us those who enter the kingdom even now: the poor in spirit, they who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness.  

 

Those who cannot enter the kingdom of heaven are the proud, the powerful (in the sense of abusing or lording it over others), the ambitious, the "rich," those who are unchildlike in any way.

 

It is really easy to recognize those who belong to the kingdom, even though we do not judge or condemn others.  We do not have to argue about who has the right doctrine, or which system is the best.  Children do not concern themselves with such things.  A child-like spirit is simpy receptive to the truth and to those who love.  They want to be loved, cuddled, taught.  They know they cannot take care of themselves -- an infant cannot even feed itself, but is dependent on someone to choose nourishing food and to provide it. 

 

St. Peter, in his first letter to the new Christian church, tells believers that they have "been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God" (I Pet. 1:23).  He urges them as newborn babies, to "rid [themselves] of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander...and to crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation" (I Peter 2:1-2). 

 

Like babies, we "grow up" in our salvation as we begin to digest the pure milk of the word of God.  We are told to "crave" the milk, given to us by the Holy Spirit.  Those in Jesus' day who came to Him had no hope of ambition, power, riches, either because, like Joseph of Aramithea or Matthew, they had already tasted the disillusionment of such things and were ready to turn away from them, or like children, they felt helpless in a world of power and glory. 

 

It is so good for us to know how to enter the kingdom of heaven even now:  to become little, powerless, pure of heart, turning away from manipulating the world's systems for our own advantage and seeking only the kingdom of God and His righteousness.

A Way to Pray

Ideally, prayer is a way for us to let go of all the things that constantly race through our minds and clutch our hearts with fear, uncertainty, and anxiety.  Of course, prayer can also be just another way for us to talk to ourselves and ingrain with even more cement the things that worry us.  When we "talk at" God, we are still in control, asking Him to arrange things our way.  But Prayer can also be a way of just piling up at His feet all of our daily burdens and letting go of them for a time.

Prayer can be a way for us to come to really know Jesus, God-who-is-with-us, Who entered the world we live in once only to enter it again and again with every one of us who welcomes Him into our world of uncertainty and anxiety.  He says in Rev. 3:20:  Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone will open to me, I will come in and dine with him and he with me. 

We never "dine" with those who are not our friends.  We may be forced at a wedding or at Thanksgiving or at a family meal to sit at the same table with people we can't stand, but we don't "invite them into" our hearts and minds; we don't really "dine" with them.  If Jesus is knocking at the door of our lives today, we may be embarrassed to open the door and allow Him to see the mess inside our houses, our minds and hearts.  If we are embarrassed enough, we may tell Him He can't come in today, but maybe after we've cleaned up.  But when does that ever happen?  Are we ever "ready" to open the door?  And won't He know that we have not really cleaned up, but just hidden the mess where it is not obvious to the casual observer?

How do we ever really get ourselves ready to "dine" with Jesus?  To allow Him to sit at our kitchen table, despite the clutter and the clatter of our daily lives?  How do we learn to let go of our idea of what we (our homes) should look like enough to really be open to His Person and Presence in our lives?

When Jesus says, "I will come in and dine with him, and he with me," He is not speaking poetically--every word has specific meaning.  It is a matter of who is the host and who is the guest.  When He "sits down" at our table, He willingly and graciously partakes of our daily fare -- the burdens of caring for an elderly parent while trying to raise teenagers and holding down a 9-to-5 job; the worry of having cancer or of not having a job to support one's family; the daily dealing with an alcholic spouse....  He enters into that mess of our lives with everything that John says about Him:  The true light that gives light to every man [is]coming into the world....from the fullness of His grace, we have all received one blessing after another...God, the only Son, who is at the Father's side, has made / [is making] Him known.

But allowing Jesus to enter the mess of our lives and to sit at our table and eat of our daily fare, embarrassing though it may be, also opens the door for us into His life, allowing us to sit at His table and to partake of the food He prepares for us---the food of peace, of joy, of solutions to impossible situations, of power coming down from above.  He became incarnate of Mary so that He could walk with us, among us, in us, so that He could also become incarnate in us, to bring us complete and whole to the Father.  Only He can manage our lives.  Why do we keep closing the door and telling him we're doing fine, when we and He both know we're not managing very well at all?

Maybe we just don't know Him.  Maybe we think He would not really want us as friends, as intimates.  Maybe we think we are supposed to be able to manage things better than we are doing.  Maybe we are just afraid to let go because we think we are supposed to be in control.  When we finally admit that we cannot, do not, manage things, that we are overwhelmed, that we need help; when we finally give up our illusion that we can do better, that is when we finally open the door and allow Him to enter.  Prayer can be just 'giving up' the pretense that we are the people we want to be, the people we think we should be.

I've never seen Hoarding: Buried Alive, but I used to watch the pre-curser, the HGTV show where a professional organizer would come in and help ordinary people sort out and organize their clutter. (I don't remember what the show was called.)  I just remember the three piles: throw away, donate or sell, and keep.  People like myself who just couldn't decide on their own what to do with "stuff" were directed by a stronger wisdom and power to make basic decisions on what they could live without and what needed to stay.  What stayed was given a pleasing and effective space, so that the whole family could "breathe" again instead of having their lives taken over by useless clutter. 

When we finally "get over" our embarrassment, and allow Jesus to enter our lives, we can begin to relax.  Yes, it is a mess -- that is the human condition.  We are no better or worse than anyone else; we, like everyone else, are just pretending that we're in control of the situation. Once we're comfortable with His Presence in our lives, once we're not embarrassed any long by our failures, once we can allow Jesus to see what we really do and "eat" on a daily basis, and once we give Him permission to take over and re-arrange things, we can relax and let Him do what we cannot do for ourselves. 

Here I am, Lord; you see what my life is like.  What do you want to do with it?  I surrender it to you, and I am willing for you to take charge and make whatever changes are necessary.  You just tell me what you want to do, and I will do it.

We tend to think that when we get to that point, He will lay on us a heavier burden, one that we will not be able to perform.  If we think that way, it is just because we do not yet know Him -- His hospitality, His gracious kindness and compassion for us.  What will He say to us, but, "Come, sit down and rest for awhile; eat the food I give you; sleep.  When you awake refreshed, we can begin."  He is the perfect host; He sees to everything we need.  When He has fed us, made us sleep in peace, and fed us again, He pours into us His own strength to face our lives.  When He has assured us that He will not leave us or abandon us, we know we don't have to be strong or perfect or wise enough.  He is Emmanuel, God with us.  What more do we need?

In the Gospel, the Roman centurian said, "Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof...say but the word, and my child will be healed."  We can also acknowledge that we are not "ready" for Him to enter our homes, our lives, but allow Him to come anyway.  Like the people whose lives were transformed by the professional organizers, we will never be sorry that we opened the door to Jesus Christ and allowed him to enter our lives:  Come, Lord Jesus!

One Bird Watching

One reason I write this blog every morning is to open my heart and hand to share with others some of the riches I receive each day either from prayer or from reading. 

For many years, I kept a journal so that I would not lose or forget the treasures I received.  But then, one day, I read Mary's Song, a meditation on the Magnificat, by Mary Catherine Nolan (my husband's cousin).  In the introduction, she mentioned that the Dominican vocation is to contemplation and then to share the fruits of contemplation with the world.  That made sense to me; I wondered why I was burying the fruits of my prayer in a journal and not sharing them with others.  Of course, I did not know how to "share" with others, short of publishing a book, which seemed to me then to be an impossible and overwhelming task.  And then, I thought, who would read it?  The expense of publishing a book for 3 or 4 people who may be interested seemed ludicrous to me.

One day, a couple of years ago, I was visiting a friend in Tennessee, who showed me how to begin a blog.  That seemed to me a perfect way to share with others the fruit of my prayer and reading.  So I began.  Whoever reads this blog is God's choice.  If 3 people read it, that is fine with me; everything is up to Him.  But somehow, I find I must write, even if no one reads.  I chose the name for this blog from a poem that I found on a plaque beside a pond in New Harmony, Indiana, and quoted within the first few days of starting my blog.(The back story of the poem can be found in an October, 2010, entry of this blog called "The Title.")

Stranger

When no one listens

To the quiet trees,

When no one notices

The sun in the pool;

When no one feels

the first drop of rain,

Or sees the last star;

Or hails the first morning

Of a giant world

Where the peace begins

and rages end:

One bird sits still

Watching the work of God:

One turning leaf,

Two falling blossoms,

Ten circles upon the pond.

In my time of prayer each morning, that is exactly how I feel:  like a bird sitting still, watching the work of God -- not creating my own work, but watching what He is doing.  And when I walk to the beach at the end of the day and see "my" beautiful blue heron that has taken up his post at the edge of the water, looking out over the waves, I see the image of "one bird watching the work of God."

The reason I so often quote from what I am reading is my great desire not to "hoard" the treasures the Lord opens to me each day.  I want to grab everyone I see and say, "Read this!  It's great!"  (I can see all the eye-rolling going on from here.)  But all of this today is just to explain why I am quoting from God Calling 2.  I have used God Calling for about 35 years now, as a way to enter the quiet space I need for prayer.  Recently, a friend gave me God Calling 2, a sequel to the first book.  Each day now begins with my reading the entries from both books, a practice that never fails to lead me into communion with God.  Today's entry from GC2 is one that I must share in its entirety:

Listen and I will speak.

I seldom force an entrance through many voices and distracting thoughts.

There must be first the coming apart, and then the stilling of all else, as you wait in My Presence.

Is it not enough that you are with Me?

Let that sometimes suffice.

It is truly much that I speak to you.  But unless My indwelling Spirit is yours, how can you carry out My wishes, and live as I would have you live?

My greatest desire is that whoever reads this would hear His voice, and that mine would be stilled.