The Shape of the Soul

There is within each plant a drive, an energy that propels it forward to achieve its purpose:  to produce a flower that will in turn produce either a seed or a fruit containing the seeds of future generations.  We look at the flowers; we see the fruit.  What we do not see is the energy, the "soul" of the plant that forces it to grow and develop to maturity, the drive within whose goal is the flower and the fruit.

In American culture, we tend to think of aging physiologically, rather than spiritually.  We see the flower -- the bloom of radiant youth.  We see the fruit in our reproductive power.  And then we see the plant beginning to wither and die, and we call it "sad."

But we are more than flowers and more than animals too.  Spiritually, aging is no accident, no "leftover process" after we have achieved our primary purpose for living.  Rather, the aging process is necessary to the spirit, intended by the soul.  Has it ever occurred to us that there is a reason why we continue long after fertility and even after muscular usefulness and sometimes sensory awareness?  There must be some purpose to aging beyond wearing down and running out of steam.

St. Paul had this to say: ...we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that His life may be revealed in our mortal body...though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day (2Cor. 4:16).

When we die, what people remember is not the principles we lived by, or our ideas, but our character:  The beauty of the soul is harder to see than that of the body, yet it is the soul that is concerned with goodness and beauty, with justice and courage, with friendship and loyalty.  People will remember us as wise, knowing, kind, timid, intellectual, vacillating......etc.  I told someone the other day that when she dies, no one will ever say, "She was a wonderful housekeeper!" (or at least, that's what I'm hoping!)

It is the qualities of our character that reveal "the shape of the soul." And it is the shape of the soul that patterns the movements of our body.  And it is the movements of the body that gives shape to our world.  Think of the recent "revelations" on tv of the hoarding phenomenon.  Psychiatrists and psychologists are trying to medicate and cure the disease of hoarding.  But hoarding is a sickness of the soul, not of the body.  It can be treated spiritually, but I doubt that our psychic conditioning or physical medication can touch that sickness. 

Robert Bly wrote "My Father at Eighty-Five:"

His eyes blue, alert,

Disappointed...suspicious...He is a bird

Waiting to be fed,--

Mostly beak -- an eagle

Or a vulture...Some powerful engine of desire goes on

Turning inside the body.

 

What we know is that longevity reinforces character, so what we get in old age is more of the same. 

 

I think we live longer than necessary because our soul has an inner drive to produce what the spirit is craving -- beauty and goodness, truth, justice, kindness.  But it is hard for us to give up the throne.  WE have been "in control" for so long that we cannot relinquish our desire to be recognized, to be acknowledged, to be thanked, to "be fed." 

 

Vulture or dove?  There is a driving energy inside of us, giving shape to our souls.  What kind of fruit will the tree produce at the very end?

Why I Teach

The very first time I attended Mass at Holy Family Parish, the first Sunday of Advent 2005, there was a ceremony for the young people who were entering the three-year program leading to Confirmation.  For some reason, as I looked at the faces of these 10 or 12 young people, I knew I wanted to teach them; there was a great desire in me to teach them.  In fact, I knew at that moment that was my mission. 

I would not move to Mississippi permanently until 2007, until I had retired from the Community College and had restored my house in Long Beach to a liveable condition.  But that year, I volunteered to teach the 11th-grade Confirmation class, and I have been doing it ever since. 

John the Baptist said that the One Who would come after him would baptize us with "the Holy Spirit and with fire."  Jesus said, "I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and what would I but that it be kindled."  And, indeed, on Pentecost Sunday, the Holy Spirit did arrive with tongues of fire that rested over the heads of Mary and the disciples (120) gathered in prayer.  Immediately, Peter stood up and began speaking bolding of the Scriptures that foretold this event.

That 'fire' still burns today in the hearts of those who have a God-given mission.  It certainly today burns in my heart.  When the fire dies out, I will stop teaching, because I will know that the flame will have been kindled in someone else whose mission is to teach this class as I leave.

For me, teaching is a gift that constantly renews me.  Proverbs 2 and 3 are chapters that should be read over and over again until they take root in our hearts.  Those chapters are probably too long to copy here, but the short version is that the person who daily searches for wisdom and understanding will be given it.  And along with wisdom and understanding will come protection ( a shield), long life, prosperity, and peace:  She [Wisdom] is a tree of life to those who embrace her; those who lay hold of her will be blessed.

Because I teach, I must "stand daily at the door of wisdom," listening to the Spirit of Truth, seeking the Wisdom of God for them.  I have no choice but to do so if I am to have something worth teaching.  I cannot fall back into my own laziness and indifference -- there is a group of young people depending on me to teach them what maybe no one else will ever teach them.  I cannot let them down.  Jesus said, "For them I sanctify myself."  (To 'sanctify' means to 'set apart, to consecrate.' )  If I do not 'set myself apart, consecrate myself' to teach these young people, it may be that they will never hear what God wants to say to them. 

But as I seek the Wisdom that God wants to speak into their hearts, I myself am richly rewarded with wisdom and understanding -- almost beyond my capacity to hold it.  In fact, one reason I write each morning is to try to capture what God is showing me before I lose it and forget it.  I know people who know me well -- my own children and husband and friends -- will wonder how I can write what I do not always live.  I am writing what I need to learn myself.  As Padre Pio once said, "God frequently makes use of His lowest instruments to carry out His will and divine plan."  That was certainly true of Israel, the "smallest and most ignorant of all nations."  It was certainly true of the Apostles, the lowest of classes in the nation of Israel.  And it is still true today of the people God chooses:  Where is the wise man?  Where is the scholar?  Where is the philosopher of this age?  .... think of what you were when you were called.  Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth.  But God chose the foolish things of this world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.  He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things---the things that are not -- to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before Him.

I teach because Jesus Christ Himself lit some kind of fire within me that has not yet gone out -- a fire of love for these young people, a fire that wants to light within them the same kind of fire that is in me, a desire and a hunger to stand daily at the door of Wisdom to learn what She has to teach, and a knowledge that what I teach comes not from me but from God Himself.  I am blessed daily by my mission to teach, and I am grateful that God chooses the lowly things of this world to do His work.

Channels of Grace

During the 70's, I think, there was a show called The Millionaire, where an intermediary would find deserving people and present them a check for a million dollars.  The money came from an unknown source, a millionaire, who was never seen on the program.  Last year, Secret Millionaire updated the old concept by sending real millionaires into poor areas to find deserving groups.  After volunteering in soup kitchens, youth outreach groups, and homeless shelters, the millionaires would return with huge checks to help the groups.

I think most of us at one time or another have dreamed of winning the lottery or the Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes so that we, too, could give freely to those in need. We have all "figured out" what we would do if we won a million dollars.  (I always think I would first pay off the student loans my kids still carry from their college years, so they could begin to live on what they make now.)

No one I know is likely to win either the lottery or the PCS, least of all, me.  However, in the spiritual realm, the people I know are indeed rich, wealthy beyond all measure.  We have both inherited and acquired wealth in the spiritual realm -- not that we have "earned" it -- who could?  But we have received more than we could ask or imagine.  What if we thought of ourselves as "channels of grace," much like the intermediary on The Millionaire?  The wealth does not belong to us, but to Someone Who wants desperately to bless the people all around us -- everyone we know and those we meet even briefly.  We hold in our very hands and souls untold wealth; how can we give it away?

I do not know the answer to the question, but I stand here with my hands full of God's blessings.  Who wants it?  How can I share it?  All I can do is to consider myself the channel, the intermediary, knowing the Source, knowing His desire to bless others, and stay alert for people who need or want the blessings I hold in my heart. 

St. Francis of Assisi divested himself of all his worldly goods in order to be free of them.  Rather, each day, he gathered up the blessings of God given through prayer and nature--the light of the sun, the beauty of the moon; the gift of seas and of stars, and the blessings of prayer:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:

Where there is hatred, let me sow your love.

Where there is injury, pardon.

Where there is doubt, faith.

Where there is despair, hope.

Where there is darkness, light.

Where there is sadness, joy.

 

O Divine Master,

grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;

to be understood, as to understand;

to be loved, as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive,

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.



My Garden - My Soul

This garden, once beautifully -- perfectly -- landscaped by a good designer, was devastated by Katrina.  Salt water infused what was once healthy soil; trees were uprooted so there was no longer any refeshing shade in the garden, ferns disappeared in the brutal sun, and weeds took over the entire area --- so much so that the contracter working on my house was afraid of snakes.

I hardly knew where to begin; it seemed entirely hopeless.  The weeds were higher than my head, with roots stronger than those of trees.  The ground was rutted and uneven; even a lawnmower was useless.  I knew that no matter which area I attacked first, all the other areas would continue running wild, and I was just one person facing a jungle.

My sister and her husband arrived just after I moved in.  The garden had been neglected for 18 months while we were making the house liveable.  But they told me to choose a spot to clear out -- they were there to help.  For a week, the three of us labored together to pick up loads of roofing shingles blown from all the houses between mine and the beach; roofing shingles, boards, curtains, even an electric drill from someone's garage was buried among the overgrown weeds.  Slowly, we cleared a section of land and hauled the debris to the curb.  Then we went to the garden center to find something that would thrive in the poor soil left behind.  By the time my sister left, the "wild and waste" section of my yard had been transformed into a place of rest and beauty, and I had the hope and encouragement I needed to begin work on another area.

Today, five years later, I am still working on my yard, once a hopeless wilderness harboring snakes.  But each morning now, I take my coffee out to assess what still needs to be done.  Now, since I have carefully placed each plant, I know each one by name.  I know whether it needs sun or shade, and I have chosen the conditions in which it can thrive.  I look each day to see whether it is doing well, or needs to be moved to another location, or maybe needs a little pruning or compost.  Today, I am no longer rescuing and establishing my garden; I am enjoying its beauty and marveling at its strength, even while tending to whatever needs attention.  It brings me much joy to see it responding to my touch and thriving under my care. 

And would God be doing less each day for our souls than I am doing for my garden?  Would He not each day be tending to the needs of my soul?  Here is what He says:

Think of Me today as the Great Gardener, tending and caring for you as a gardener does for his garden.  Pruning here, protecting from frost there, planting, transplanting.  Sowing the seed of this or that truth, safeguarding it with the rich earth, sending my rain and sun to help in its growth, watching so tenderly as it responds to my care.  Lovingly anxious when its first eager green appears, Full of joy at the sight of bud, and when the beauty of flower is seen.  The seed and fruit of His pastures.

 

The Great Gardener.  Let Me share with you the tending of your garden of life.

The Bible Begins with Chaos

Yesterday, I wrote "What Does It Mean?"  Not so much, "What do we believe?" but "What does it mean that we believe [_x_]?"    Let me explore today one example.

Most of us grew up believing that God created the world ex nihilo-- from nothing.  He began with nothing and He made something -- a beautiful, balanced, harmonious world that He saw was "very good" when it was finished.  Then man messed up the "very good" world, and it became "not good" anymore, beginning with thorns and thistles in the earth and ending with the flood.

What does it mean to believe that this is the pattern from the beginning of the Bible?  If this is the repeated pattern, it means that man keeps messing up what God has created.  It means that we are eternally guilty, despite forgiveness, and that we will continue to create chaos until the end of time, until the final day. 

A careful reading of Genesis, however, reveals that what God started with was not "nothing," but rather, "the earth was formless and empty, darkness....over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God hovering over the waters" (New International Version).  In the Shocken translation by Everett Fox, which attempts to closely translate the sound of the Hebrew into English, we get this reading:  At the beginning of the God's creating of the heavens andthe earth, when the earth was wild and waste (tohu-vavohu), darkness over the face of Ocean, rushing-spirit of God hovering* over the face of the waters----

*The word translated "hovering" in English conveys in Hebrew the image of an eagle protecting its young. 

Words create images, and the images contain meaning for us.  If our imagination gives us a God making a perfect world to begin with, and man messing it up, we have one kind of meaning.  If, however, we grasp the image of a world "wild and waste,"( kind of what we experienced after Katrina, with no trees in New Orleans that could support birds of the air, with no ground that could support life, with everything grey...), we have a different meaning.

The Bible begins with chaos, with a "watery deep," with an abyss that has no form or shape or meaning --- and what we see there is the Spirit of God hovering over the water, anxious to begin the work of separating the confusion, of creating a distinction between light and dark, between heaven and earth, and between earth and dry land.  We see a Divine Corps of Engineers saying to Ocean, "This far you shall come and no more; here is where you stop!" 

For anyone who has ever experienced chaos in their lives, this image gives immense hope.  We are always moving out of the darkness toward the light.  In the Gospel of John, Nicodemus comes to Jesus (the Light of the World) "at night."  He is coming out of the darkness toward the light-- and the first thing he hears is about being "born again of water and of Spirit."  Being born again means moving out of chaos into light, from the watery deep onto dry land, from drowning into rejoicing. 

This is the Biblical pattern of creation  -- from chaos to cosmos, from being lost to being saved, from "uncreation" to a new world, from the old to the new.  God says, "See, I am doing something new; do you not perceive it?"  "I am creating a new heavens and a new earth."  "The convenant I will give at that time is not like the Old Covenant, written on tablets of stone, but will be written on men's hearts."  Jesus says, "See, I make all things new again." 

The images we have, what we believe, make a difference.  If we can learn to see the Bible the way it was written, not the way "we think" it was written, we will see new meaning in it.  And then Psalm 18 will be the way we think about God:

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....

 

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.

They confronted me in the day of my disaster,

but the Lord was my support.

He brought me out into a spacious place;

he rescued me because He delighted in me.

 

Understanding this pattern as the basic human condition, with the Spirit of God "hovering" over the chaos which is always threatening to overwhelm us also helps us to understand -- or give meaning to---Christ's crucifixion.  He did not shun the human condition, but took it on for us, in us, and with us, willingly submitting to the forces of death, destruction, and chaos, that He might bring us out of  them into a "spacious place," because He delights in us. 

 

This "meaning" revealed by Scripture is much different from that of "guilty man," who needs to be punished for messing up the world and the work of the Almighty God.  Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote about a world "bleared, smeared with trade," and "over it all, The Holy Ghost broods....with-- ah --- bright wings"  (God's Grandeur).

 

This is the image and the meaning we need when threatened by deep waters closing over our heads.  We need to look up and see the Spirit of God hovering over us to draw us out of the cords of death; we need to hear the Voice of God sending the LIght of the World into our hearts, the Light that has come into the world to see men free from the darkness of death!  Alleluia!  This is the Good News that all men need to hear!

 



What Does It Mean?

The ultimate question is not "What Do I Believe?" but rather, "What Does It Mean?"  Jesus said, quoting Deuteronomy, Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God. 

If this is true, and of course, I believe that any thinking person would assert that it is, there are several implications to that statement:

(1) Meaning is essential to a human way of life: we are more than the animals, wonderful as they are.  But they can live without meaning, without reflection, by instinct alone.  Man cannot.  As much as I love and communicate with my cats, and am profoundly grateful for the joy they bring to my life, I have never been able to say to one of them:  "Look at this beautiful flower, or that magnificent sunset!"  The meaning of beauty, or of joy, is not within the parameters of their existence, although I do like to think they are grateful for their daily "bread," in the form of the corn gluten that passes for cat food.

About 40 years ago, Viktor Frankel wrote a classic study called Man's Search for Meaning.  Very few books, as much as I love them and devour them, have actually changed my life -- although I think that every one has influenced me in some way, changing at least my brain, if not my life itself.  But Viktor Frankel's book actually changed my life as a 20-something college student.  As a German Jew Psychotherapist, Frankel found his entire existence turned upside down by Hitler.  He, like every other Jew within Hitler's reach, endured the destruction of his entire life and family and culture in a German death camp.  Day to day, he watched men all around him lose hope and die -- deliberately -- for lack of meaning.  None of the events they endured "made sense" to them; there was no reason to continue to live.  Some of the people deliberately reached out to the electric fence surrounding the death camp, and grasped it to die.  Others just gave up, lay down, and did not get up again.  Those who survived were those who somehow found a reason to survive.

Frankel knew that unless he and others could find meaning in the situation, meaning which gave them a reason to endure unspeakable horror from day to day, they would not come out alive.  Meaning was literally, the bread that sustained them in this situation.  In fact, recently I read of a man who survived the death camps, was re-established and re-nourished -- but who then committed suicide because he could never find a reason to continue living.  After his release from the prison camp, Viktor Frankel went on to re-establish his psychiatric practice, but now based on "man's search for meaning," which he called logotherapy.  He found that man could endure anything if somehow he could find meaning, or a reason to live, in the midst of the situation. 

(2)  The second implication of Jesus' words is that meaning has been given to us "from the mouth of God."  Somehow, some way, God Himself has revealed meaning to man, and man is able to receive it, to grasp it.  This is an awesome concept!  It means that God has not left man alone to figure it out for himself, to stumble along doing the best he can.  It means that, despite Pontius Pilate's question, "What is truth?" Truth does exist, and that we can know it! 

The very foundation of all science is the belief that truth exists and that man can discover, probe, explore it and then, having found it, apply what he has unearthed to his existence on this planet.  What does it mean that man has found penicillin --- not just that we know it exists, but that we can then use our knowledge for the good of mankind.

The same is true in the spiritual realm:  Truth exists; it is not what each man thinks it is, but has a Source that can be discovered, or "received."  And Truth has meaning -- it has application for our lives.  So then, the question becomes, "If ____ is true, what does it mean?"  How does it apply to mankind, to me as a person?  How does it affect my life and the lives of others?  How is this belief "my daily bread," sustaining my existence from day to day?

Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word coming forth from the mouth of God.

Where, then, do we go for our daily bread? 

Prophets of Doom

The day following our election was a day of depression and grief for me.  While not an ardent Romney fan, I feared more than anything else four more years of what this country had experienced under Obama.  The day after the election, I mourned the loss of a country I knew as a child, of a way of life where morality and justice was honored.  I felt that "bread and circuses" was all that this country now cared about, and that "tax and spend" was the beginning of the end of everything I had known.  Can we possibly recover from four more years of downhill slide?

I have never before known this kind of mourning, and I did not fully understand what I was feeling until I looked around.  The stock market, evidently, had the same "intuition" I did; the victims of Hurricane Sandy and the following nor'easter were suffering in the flesh what I was experiencing in the spirit, and I mourned for them in their suffering and grief. 

The local news channel interviewed random citizens for their reaction the day after the election.  Amazingly, there was not a single positive reaction among those they interviewed.  The most 'postive' reaction came from a soldier who said that he respected Obama as his commander-in-chief, something every soldier must say or be court-martialed.  Then I began speaking to friends and neighbors; their reaction was mine.  All were either very fearful for our future, or depressed at its certainty. 

Like the prophet Jeremiah, the "prophet of doom," I believe there are now two Americas -- and neither one can see what the other one is seeing.  Those who support abortion on demand, gay marriage, and legalizing pot have no idea that our lack of morality is destroying this country from within.  They laugh at any idea that we are suffering as a nation because, like Israel, we "have committed two sins: [We] have forsaken [the Lord], the spring of living water, and have dug [our] own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water (Jer. 2:13).

If the blood of Abel cried out to God from the ground, and if he heard the cry, I wonder what the blood of 17 million innocent murdered babies sounds like. Since when has murder become the accepted 'solution' to societal ills?

 Both Jeremiah and Jesus were 'prophets of doom,' and to shut them up, the leaders of the nation decided that both had to be done away with.  The temple leaders in Jesus' day decided that He must be put to death on the day He said, "Has this house, which bears my Natme, become a den of robbers to you?  But I have been watching! declares the Lord."   That saying comes directly from the book of Jeremiah (chapter 7), and there it is followed  by prophecies of destruction for Jerusalem because of the wickedness of its inhabitants.  The Scribes and Pharisees knew exactly what Jesus was saying, and they did not like its implications.  (In fact, the city of Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D.)

It seems that now might be a good time for those who "have ears to hear" to re-read the Book of Jeremiah.  Even while one half of America is celebrating and flag-waving, 49% of the nation, those who form the 'other America' are grieving, like Jeremiah, over the destruction of the land they love.  Like Jeremiah, I hope I am wrong; may God rescue us from what it seems is about to happen to all of us!