More.....

 Spirituality can be defined as what we do with the fire inside us, as how we channel our energy.  And how we channel it, the discipline and habits we choose to live by, will either lead to a greater integration or disintegration within our bodies, minds,and souls, and to a greater integration or disintegration in the way we are related to God, others, and the cosmic world. (The Holy Longing, p. 11).

Spirituality is what we do with our spirits, our souls.  A healthy spirit must do two jobs:  

(1) It has to give us energy, or fire, so that we do not lose our joy of living, and (2) it has to keep us glued together, integrated, so that we do not fall apart and die. "What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?"    Someone who suffers the loss of his soul has lost his identity, so that at some point, he or she does not know who he/she is anymore.  A healthy spirit keeps us both energized and glued together.  

Our soul is not something we have; it is who we are!  When cynicism, despair, bitterness, or depression paralyze our energy, part of the soul is hurting.  When we no longer know where we are going, who we are, or where we came from, it is the other part of our soul that is limping.  

When Jesus said, "Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God," He was telling us how important the soul -- or our spiritual energy-- is to our lives.  There comes a moment in every life when we must stop and ask ourselves how we are nourishing our spirit.  Much, if not most, of our life consists in nourishing the body, and perhaps the mind.  But what about our spirit?  What is it that renews our energy at the deepest level and helps us to hold together all the parts of our lives that threaten to pull us apart?

Padre Pio once said, "I shudder to think of the harm done to souls by the lack of spiritual reading!"  Our religious practices of going to church, singing hymns, praying, etc. may be a start, but unless we renew our spirits with soul prayer, spiritual reading, and simple contemplation of nature/beauty/wisdom, etc. we run the risk of giving our souls pablum instead of real food.

Life tends to pull us in multiple directions --- all of them good, sometimes, so that we can no longer decide how or where to draw the line on our energy resources.  Our lives need wisdom, peace, and guidance to keep us from falling apart --- and, according to the book of James, God will lavishly give wisdom to those who ask Him (James 1:5).  He never intended for us to slough through the mire on our own; He always intended to be with us a Full Partner in this business of preserving our souls!

What is "Spirituality"?

 Ronald Rolheiser, one of my favorite writers, has a wonderful book called The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality.  I happened to read this book many years ago when I was teaching the 11th grade Confirmation class, and I used his insights as the basis for my teaching for a long time.  One of my students wrote, after the first class that year, "This seems more like a philosophy class than a religion class."  My answer to her was, "It takes an astute mind to recognize philosophy when she sees it!"

Now, re-visiting this excellent book, I would like to highlight some of Rolheiser's insights for other astute minds to enjoy.  Certainly, his words have given me much to think about!

Spirituality is not something on the fringes, an opton for those with a particular bent.  None of us has a choice. Everyone has to have a spirituality and everyone does have one, either a life-giving one or a destructive one.....Spirituality is not about serenely picking or rationally choosing certain spiritual activities like going to church, praying or meditating, reading spiritual books, or setting off on some explicity spiritual quest.  It is far more basic than that.  

Spirituality is more about whether or not we can sleep at night than about whether or not we go to church.  It is about being integrated or falling apart, about being within community or being lonely, about being in harmony with Mother Earth or being alienated from her.  Whether or not we let ourselves be consciously shaped by any expicit religious idea, we act in ways that leave us either healthy or unhealthy, loving or bitter.  What shapes our actions is our spirituality. 

When we act, what we do will either lead to a greater integration or disintegration within our personalities, minds, and bodies -- and to the strengthening or deterioration of our relationship to God, others, and the cosmic world.

Rolheiser offers three well-known examples of spiritual lives:  Mother Teresa, Janis Joplin, and Princess Diana.  Mother Teresa, he says, was a dynamo of energy, despite her diminutive appearance.  She was a human bulldozer, dedicated to God and the poor.  She channeled her energy in a creative, life-giving way, and that total dedication was her signature, her spirituality. 

According to Rolheiser, few people would have considered Janis Joplin, the rock star who died from an overdose of life at 27, a very spiritual woman.  And yet she was.  Like Mother Teresa, she was an exceptional woman, a person "of fiery eros, a great lover, a person with a rare energy."  However, her energy, unlike Mother Teresa's, went out in all directions and eventually created an excess and a tiredness that led to an early death.  But those activities --a total giving over to creativity, performance, drugs, booze, sex, coupled with the neglect of normal rest--were her spirituality.  This was her signature.

Most, of us, according to Rolheiser, are more like Princess Diana than either Mother Teresa or Janis Joplin.  Usually, we tend to see other people as one or the other, but not as both erotic and spiritual.  And yet, Princess Diana reflects both dimensions.  She obviously had great fire within her; people were drawn so powerfully to her: "her energy, more so than her beauty or her causes, is what made her exceptional."  She was a person who willed God and the poor, even if she still willed many other things also.

Spirituality is what we do with the spirit that is within us.  For Princess Diana, her spirituality was both commitment to the poor and the Mediterranean vacations...and all the pain and questions in between.  She chose some things that left her more integrated in body and soul and others which tore at her body and soul.  Such is spirituality.  It is about integration and disintegration, about making choices about living and living with what that does to us.

More reflections tomorrow......

 

 

Tohu Vavohu

When God began creating the heavens and the earth, the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

In the original Hebrew of the Scriptures, the words translated here as "formless and empty" were tohu va vohu, meaning "wild and waste,"  indicating emptiness.   

The words "Spirit of God" come from the Hebrew ruah, meaning "rushing-spirit."  It carries the meaning of breath, breeze, or strong wind.

 And the word "hovering" carries the image of "flitting; the image is that of an eagle protecting its young in the nest.

All of the images associated with the story of Creation are repeated in the history of Israel, taken from nothingness -- the darkness, wild and waste of paganism in the case of Abraham; the darkness, emptiness of life in the case of Hebrew slaves -- and brought into order, balance, and harmony through a living, loving relationship with the Creator of heaven and earth.  Chapter 32 of Deuteronomy echoes all the themes of Genesis, the first creation:

In a desert land he found him [Israel],

in a barren and howling waste.

He shielded him and cared for him;

he guarded him as the apple of his eye, 

like an eagle that stirs up its nest 

and hovers over its young,

that spreads its wings to catch them

and carries them on its pinions. 

The Lord alone led him;

no foreign god was with him.

  Once again, man is led into Eden, where he has fellowship with the divine Creator of heaven and earth. All the richness of the Promised Land (Israel) echo the Garden of Paradise:

 He made him ride on the heights of the land,/ and fed him with the fruit of the fields.

He nourished him with honey from the rock, /and with oil from the flinty crag,

with curds and milk from herd and flock,/ and with fattened lambs and goats,

with choice rams of Bashan,/and the finest kernels of wheat./

You drank the red blood of the grape. 

All of the story of the Bible from beginning to end leads to the story of US.  According to St. Augustine in his commentary on Genesis, our souls/spirits are formless and empty, wild and waste, until the Word of God speaks life and order into them: Let there be Light! 

The "Light" of Genesis 1, day 1,  is obviously not the sun, as the sun is created on Day 4.  Rather the Light spoken of here is energy, beauty, order, illumination -- the same Light spoken by the Word of God in the Gospel of John, chapter 1:  In Him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

And John 8: I am the Light of the world; whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.

St. Augustine says that for Jesus, the Word of God, to "live" means to live wisely and happily.  But a creature, although it has a spiritual nature endowed with intellect or reason, can have a formless (wild and waste) life.  For Jesus, living is not the same as possessing a life of wisdom and happiness. For when man is turned away from changeless Wisdom, his life is full of folly and wretchedness, and so it is in an unformed state (tohu va vohu).  Its formation consists in its turning to the changeless light of Wisdom, the Word of God.  The Word -- Light! Be! ---is the source of whatever being and life the creature has, and to the Word it must turn in order to live wisely and happily.

The Gospel of John sums up all the lessons of creation and history in one Person -- the Word, the Light, the Alpha and the Omega.  If we read nothing else but that Gospel, we have all the Wisdom we need to turn to the Rushing Spirit of God, hovering over our chaos.  We, too, can become a new creation by allowing the Word of God to enter our tohu va vohu, our emptiness!

What Can I Do?

 Recently I read a book called Sacred Encounters with Mary, an account of visitations people have had with the Mother of Jesus.  Most of these encounters are very simple, and yet profound in their own way.  The following one impressed me:

As I was going into meditation one day, I asked of [Mary], "How can I help to prepare the way for the the return of Christ?"  A little while later, she appeared to me in a vision and I saw her roll up her sleeves....As she rolled up her sleeves, she took me by the hand and led me to a sink where we proceeded to wash dishes together.  In that moment, we were just two women doing what needed to be done.  Interestingly, I have an expression that I have used before and since this encounter: "Talking doesn't do it, reading doesn't do it it; living is what does it."  And I always say that if you can't wash dishes with me, you haven't got it.

 Matthew Kelly, a renowned speaker on the Catholic circuit, always says, "Just do the next right thing!"  We often wonder what we can do to help, especially in view of world-wide hunger and poverty, violence, human trafficking, and just plain ignorance.  I think we have to commit our lives to God and trust that He is able to use our talents in His own way.  We want to be useful; we want our lives to count for something, but we are helpless to know what to do.  

St. Therese lived perhaps one of the most "useless" lives of all, behind the cloister walls, and died at the age of 24.  And yet today she is known world-wide as the patroness of missions.  Her way of life was unbounded confidence in God, trusting Him to accomplish in her all that He desired.

I think we can all wash dishes -- or do whatever is needed at the moment to clean up the world we live in.  It may not seem like much, but as Mother Teresa often pointed out, a pencil in the hand of God can change people's lives.

Gratitude!

 Last week, I had a follow-up visit with the doctor who performed the bronchoscopy, and what she told me then made my post-anesthesia vision even more meaningful.  All the tests for cancer were negative, thank God, although it seems that what they have been seeing in my lung since 2016 is a fungus caused by breathing in mold, usually from decaying plant matter.  It makes sense, as I have been gardening for many years, using leaf mold as mulch, cleaning out gutters and breathing in mold, etc.  

However, the reason I was under anesthesia so long was that the doctor struck a blood vessel in the lung as she removed tissue for diagnosis.  Although she was using a scan to guide the procedure, it seems that blood vessels do not show up on the scan.  As blood spurted all over the room, the doctor's colleague suggested that she not biopsy me another time, and she was not at all sure she could stop the bleeding.  

I asked how she did stop the bleeding, and she simply stated: I prayed.

After hearing her answer, my vision of the 23rd Psalm covering me as a blanket became even more stunning; I had not realized how close I had been to dying.  How can I thank the Lord for what He has done for me?  

Speak Your Word...

 Speak Your Word into my heart, O Spirit of God!

This is the second time it has happened.  Two years ago, I had a bronchoscopy under anesthesia.  As I awoke, but before I was alert enough to even have a thought, I saw and heard the 23rd Psalm as though I were watching a video.  The words appeared before me in similar fashion to the opening of the original Star Wars movie -- rolling upward on a screen, as I heard them spoken to me.  I was astonished, knowing that I had no capacity at the moment to even imagine such a thing.  In fact, a moment later, the nurse, seeing my eyes open, came over to ask me a question.  Still under the effects of anesthesia, I could not answer at the moment.  So I knew that what I was seeing and hearing could not be coming from my imagination.  It had to be a gift from the Holy Spirit, speaking to me at a time of great weakness.  

Yesterday, I had another bronchoscopy, but this time was under anesthesia for two hours, as the doctor performed five procedures in an attempt to finally diagnose the lung cancer she can see on the CT scan.  Coming out of the anesthesia was much more difficult this time; I felt like a butterfly pinned to a table, unable to move or speak.  And yet, as I opened my eyes, I once again saw and heard Psalm 23: The Lord is my shepherd....   This time, the words were not dramatic, but visually and auditorially very soft.  It felt as if a light blanket were being gently laid over my body.  And the entire Psalm was present to me, not just the opening words.

Actually, I had forgotten all about the first incident going into this surgery.  And so the second event was as unexpected as the first.  I could neither think nor speak, but just received the words as comfort, with a few tears of thanksgiving.  I knew once again that I could not be manufacturing this experience, as my brain was not yet engaged.  It had to be a gift from the Holy Spirit at a moment of extreme weakness. 

What this experience has done for me is to make me realize that God does not leave us alone in times of stress or weakness.  He is even more present to us in love and mercy and tenderness.  And it gives me great hope that I will not face death alone, but that His Word will be with me to comfort, guide, and lead me to the next life. 

The Power of the Sacrament

 For the very first time since I knew I had lung cancer in 2010, I felt fear.  For 13 years, I have known only the peace and joy of knowing that the Lord is my Shepherd:  Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou are with me.  Thy rod and thy staff bring me comfort.

And yet, yesterday morning, for some reason, fear overwhelmed me.  I am scheduled next week for yet another bronchoscopy. A tumor has been appearing on the left lung since 2016, but no biopsy or procedure has been able to capture it for diagnosis and treatment.  This time, my doctor thinks she can get a piece of it with a new instrument, and if she does, then radiation is the next step.  

I went into Mass thinking that I would not ask to be anointed for this procedure, as I have been anointed so many times previously.  I figured the power of the sacrament still held -- that it didn't "wear off," so to speak.  But then, for some reason, during Mass, I was encompassed by fear.  Not fear of dying, but fear of radiation and its side effects.  I knew myself to be weak, and I did not want to face pain and suffering.  In tears, I did request an anointing after Mass.

As the priest laid his hands upon my head, the most profound peace once again entered my soul and mind.  I knew I had nothing to fear, that the same God who had brought me through before would be with me once again.  Peace --- and freedom from worry and fear ---- took over.

Afterwards, I wondered why the sudden experience of fear.  And I wondered if I was supposed to once again experience the power of the sacrament (the anointing of the sick).  That I might know and testify to the working of the sacraments on our behalf.  If this laying on of hands and anointing with oil is so powerful, how much more the Eucharist, when God Himself joins His body and soul, heart and mind to ours!