Meetings

At most meetings there are people who validly point to difficulties inherent in a proposed project or activity. Even though they serve a purpose, they can be very disheartening. Just once we ought to act, even though it may be hard and even if we might be wrong. Who said things should be easy or that we had to be right all of the time?

For The Cause

What happened to all those willing, and sometimes even anxious, to die for a cause?

I don't know, maybe they all died.

No Choice But to Stay

People say, "If you don't like the Church as it is, get out." They also say, "If you don't like the country the way it is, leave." They do not realize it is because a person loves that he must sometimes criticize, urging that it get better rather than stay satisfied. He cannot leave and there is nowhere else to go. His heart is there. There is no choice but to stay - and make people mad. Leaving it wouldn't help; changing it might.

Emotional Junk Mail

They are in life responding to all the emotional junk mail, treating it as though it were significant communication and leaving no time or energy for more important matters. Perhaps the junk serves a purpose, providing busy-ness and a way to avoid what could be too hard to face.

The Wisdom of Knowing Less

We can perhaps demythologize too much. We can end up knowing so much, but having so little. In finding the facts, we can destroy the beauty.

Leaving Home

Aeneas left home carrying his gods on one shoulder and his father on the other. In what may be a less graphic - though just as real - way, so do we all.

Success & Failure

Only if there was a chance of success can we truly call it failure.

Trusting

The prophet Jeremiah feels God should maybe look-out for God's people, that he should stop being so tough on Israel, in general, and in particular the prophet. There are times I feel the same way, times when God seems to be fouling things up, especially me, and he is missing the point of just about everything, and would he please stop. Please, smarten up. But when I complain, when I ask about it, he doesn't answer. He doesn't apologize. He won't even try to explain. Still, I think maybe he does understand, maybe better than I do; and even if he doesn't, there is little to do but go on trusting.

God's Interlocutors

I thank God for people I have known, especially those who can act as though they have seen God's face and know his first name, and try to tell us what he said.

Reactions to Us

We cannot be responsible for reactions to us. Whether people accept, like, hate, tolerate, or venerate is within themselves and not our concern. Yet I think we sometimes alter our message or ourselves, so someone will look favorably upon us, so they will recognize themselves rather than us in who we are.

Despite what they say and in spite of the evidence, God is not a giant spider

Talking to Walls

We sometimes talk to walls. Not because they do not hear, but because they will not answer.

God's Role

It is sometimes easier to say God has no role in day-to-day functioning, to say his casual role is inapplicable to specific situations. The alternative is to see him as responsible for some terrible things, things inconsistent with whom we want him to be.

How to Solve Problems

To deal with a problem we must first give it a name. It need not be the right name. We can change it as we get to know it better, but if it has no name, no identity, then we have nothing to alter, no place to begin and no way to know when we have finished.

Like God Prays

They prayed like God must pray. They prayed like they meant it. The words were not just words. They instead said what was in their heart, and they said it for all to hear.

What Relationships Depend On

Some relationships depend on actions, on doing or responding to what is done. It is OK to some extent but allows no joining at a more essential level. That can occur in any situation but it is necessarily incomplete, and there is a danger of it being the extent of our relationship to God if doing, not being, becomes what is shared.

Forgiveness

It is hard to forgive, especially when you are right or have been very wronged. Maybe it would be easier if we could share in Jesus' rejection of what he had wanted to say and be. We needn't be alone, even in this, and we are no less right, though the wrong may seem less, if we can forgive.

Being

All things are being, in that they "be." As human beings we go a step further by "being human."

Adventures in Faith

We talk in symbols and metaphors hard pressed to withstand the eternal "what and why." When scrutinized they cannot pass beyond their ascribed meaning and so reveal inadequacy. Of course, there are some things which must live in metaphor or sign. By nature they are poetic and delicate, not meant to be probed. They make no claim to finality (though they may have a right to immortality); these are not the current concern.

Rather, of interest are the eternal answers, truths and definitions: the final statements not admitting the prospect of limitation. Once assumed they become final irrevocable points beyond which there is no need to go, or to even want to venture.

But in truth there is always more to be said, and said with reason and conviction, even if still incomplete. Very often all that is offered as a next step is a denial, a negative statement about what went before. That is not in itself enough but it seems to require such vehemence only because opposed to so definitive a formulation.

It is always possible, and desirable, to go beyond, no matter how much uncertainty may prompt or derive from the probing. Some things may have to be left behind to make room for what is new. It is alright to do so, and easier done if we recognize there are no ultimates, no points beyond which we may not go. It is alright if it becomes an endless refinement of belief and thought. In voyages into faith and thought, as in other adventures, there is no need to fear we will fall over the end of the earth and tumble into a terrible pit of despair.

Parenting & Growth

Relationships between people and their parents seem to founder when roles do not grow, when the dependence and giving that characterized its early stages do not give way to a mutuality that acknowledges distinctions while fostering the growth of both parties. It is a process that ought also apply to our relationship with God, allowing each the completeness of ourselves and a mutuality built no longer on need but on a desire to share. There is no freedom in need, no choice about union if without it one may be harmed. It is the child's relationship to parent, not that of an adult.

Futile Searching

He was searching for what had not been hidden so it was no surprise that he never found it.

Being God

People sometimes act as if I were God. They expect me to have his wisdom and make his judgments. They do so because they are afraid to accept the Godness in themselves. I think that is it, but whatever the reason I wish they would stop. I find it hard to be God for them. It is hard enough just being me.

Caution

Peter did not think it necessary to caution Jesus until it came to the issue of dying and rising. He seemed able to permit rejection by the priests and leaders. The prospect of adversity maybe supported his need to be special, but that dying and then the rising. That made no sense. It was not done and Peter needed his life and belief to make sense. Maybe it is the making sense, the trying to introduce reasonableness into what was only open to belief, that prompted Jesus' rebuke. Perhaps that was the Satan to be put behind him.

Part of Life

He told them Lazarus' illness would not end in death, but he would have to pass through it. It was a part of life neither he nor Lazarus would have chosen, but it made possible and made real the raising of them both.

Breaking Bread

Had they not recognized him in the breaking of the bread would Jesus still have left them?

Process of Resurrection

Resurrection is not so much a fact as a process. It is a day-to-day and on-going activity accomplishing itself in the overcoming of the dying in ourselves and of the people and things around us. This refutation of deadness, however, does not permit the mere recycling of old life. Coming to life, beginning to be all over requires an entirely new life, a new way of living, something as new as the new day in which it will be breathed and exhausted, making way for what is to come next.

We don't re-live old days but rather re-vitalize the whole of life, just as the resurrected Jesus was unlike the one who had died.

Pain

She carries so much pain, reluctant to let it go, afraid the alternative is hurting those who caused her sorrow, but if she would choose not to offer them pain neither must she keep it. It is alright if no one hurts.

Carpenter's Son

He was only the carpenter's son. They knew his brothers and sisters, and his family lived just down the street. They thought he had no right to wisdom, and wonders should be beyond him. They just couldn't believe and so what they wanted came to be, and it was over. Nothing happened, just like they knew it would.

The Spirit

If you could grab hold and pin it down, would you still call it the Spirit? Its name implies a lack of definition and form. It is the Spirit who offers possibilities or outlines, not going beyond the suggestion of what might be. At the same time the Spirit is Holy, with the same holiness seen in the Father's creative and the Son's redemptive acts.

Potential

At some point his "I'm going to" became "I could have." The plans became excuses. He kept his potential intact.