Maybe I Am Radical

Instead of dreaming radical steps to be taken, why not take them.  There is a liberty inherent in existence enabling our reaching beyond ourselves in fulfillment of who we are.  If to be who I am I must go beyond where I am at, I am free to do so, even if that requires what seem radical steps, steps (or leaps) into what I seem unable to be.

To be satisfied with some things may mean we have lost interest in them

Persistent Victimhood

There are people who have dedicated their lives to hunting Nazis and in the stoking, and apparent enshrining, of their rage seem to have given control to their quarry.  They have remained victims.

The Most Sensible Among Us

Isn't it the crazy that make the most sense?

Exchange

We need someone to hear and respond, acknowledging it was heard and understood, that we are people in a process of exchange.

On the Meaning of Money (And Not Knowing What It's Good For)

Perhaps it comes from talking to Peter.  He is committed to a poverty that occasions growth.  Instead of being without, it allows him to contact what is, touching God and reaching into the depth of himself.  Maybe it is that this year I earned less than I thought I was worth, and less than I needed.  Whatever the reason, I'd been wondering about money.

Money and value are, of course, distinct entities but money for most is a necessity.  It can obscure more essential necessities, and may become addictive so that "need" ceases to relate to survival and becomes instead a function of "want."  Still, when we remove the layers of mammon, the dollar remains a medium by which we secure well-being and provide against our pain.

I realize money, when it is an end in itself, when it plays center stage, is not good.  It is a thing, and should it become more vital than people it has lost the proportionality that ought to be maintained.  Such glorification, the deification of dollars, is not a form of worship most people knowingly adopt.  Instead it is a more gradual approach, one that we see at the end rather than as it occurs.  It is being caught in the acquisition, maintenance or enhancement of useless things and in values whereby possessions become clutching and ownership more important than any reason for having.

That, however, is not my concern.  Instead, it is a realization that making a living gets in the way of living, that essentials are essential and have to be paid for.  Protestations I could make as a priest do not apply so well when there is no congregation to pay for my care.

What I believed about excess wealth or poverty being good for no one is still true.  I still think all have a right to work, to support themselves and to contribute to those in need; and believe there are nations, institutions and individuals whose use of money to gain, consolidate and wield power is evil.  I feel caught between these beliefs and fear I may get caught in a cycle wherein I would let go of some values or compromise some belief.  I suppose too I resent investing time in earning when it is better spent with family or friends, in study or wonder at what I may now not have time to see.  But to spend our time, we need money with which first to buy it.

To call for reorganization of society that would allow time to learn and work, time for being together in earning and in prayer, time too in which we could discuss what is around us, our hopes and our dreams; such a call is too simple a response.  It would raise the question beyond my own need to reply.  Though it might be accurate, it would say nothing to me about myself at this moment.

I have seen the ignorance and suffering poverty brings, the way it steals from one's dignity.  It offers little I would ask my children to share.  Still, I want them to know it is there, a reality to be touched rather than read about.  I want them to understand that people who are without have a right to achieve what others take for granted.  I would like them to feel a unity with those who are without, who may have no means to gain what should be within reach.  I want them to not only see but feel a need to undo what harm poverty has caused, and to do so out of solidarity rather than guilt.

It is knowledge I would not have them gain by experience.  Poverty, unless freely chosen, is not good.  There is no virtue in being hungry or living in decay because there is no alternative.  Nor is endurance a good choice simply because no other is available.

I am wandering from what I asked.  Maybe because I have no answer.  Asking the meaning of money is not to ask about extremes of wealth or poverty.  Neither is my situation.  To be caught up in either is to answer a peripheral question.  While disposition of the earth's wealth is a concern, it is too global, and still I find it hard to focus on me.  To say I must be wary of wealth's entrapment is fair warning, but one I do not need.  To tell myself to maintain clear perspective in discerning our need - recognizing a distinction between what is needed and what is decorative - is a reasonable injunction, but unnecessary.  I am involved with supporting life, not elevating it, and I fear that while I would rather avoid dealing with the issue of money it is there, an unwelcome complication of a far from simple life.

It is an annoyance, an intrusion.  It is, I suppose, what began when God told Adam to begin paying rent on Eden.  Money, paying for things, earning what is required is a component of being.  Not liking it will not make it go away.  Peter's answer is maybe best, at least for him.  Like St. Francis, he is trying to seize life's core and seeing money is not a part of it.  It has made him free and made closer his union with God.  His answer, however, is not my own.  What is, I am not sure.

The Wrong Standard

We unfortunately judge normality using ourselves as the standard.

Saying Mass in Hovels

They were living in hovels and waded in garbage, so he said Mass for them and was surprised that they asked for more.

Most Qualified to Contradict Me

I realize I contradict myself with regularity, that what I say today may differ from what I said yesterday or might say tomorrow, but I am getting used to this arrangement.  If I must be contradicted, I may as well do it myself.  No one else is as qualified, and I am closer to the source of contradiction than anyone else.

Wonders on Demand

Be careful of miracles.  Once you perform one, people will expect the exception to be the rule, that wonders are done on demand.  It is a temptation to which you may also succumb.

Who Are We?

Who are you when you are alone?  Who is it you are apart from everyone else?

Nothing Left But Commentary

He thinks it's all been said, that Thought stopped hundreds of years ago.  That all else has just been commentary.  He really believes we are simply saying the same thing, though in different words.  Sometimes I think he is not listening.  Other times I doubt that he can hear.

Reinterpreting a Rock

The Gospel of the Passion should not come to so abrupt an end.  It should not stop with a rock in front of the tomb.  It should not be an end but a beginning.

A Soul to Love and Cry

Humans are feelings.  People are in this way distinct from all else.  They are - because they have hearts and can express sentiment - different.  But sometimes feeling is beyond us and we can be all else but tender.  Maybe it is fear.  Maybe it is something else, but without a soul to love and cry, without a need to share and enjoy there is no truly human life.

Mom's Birthday

Living In Illness

Illness creates its own society.  You live inside it, as well as in other places.  It is a society with distinct rules and customs, its own language and focus.

Mr. America

I met him today.  His name is Lou, but he could be called "Mister America" as well.  I thought he existed only in textbooks or case studies, but there he was.  He knew that what was different had come from the devil, or worse, the communists.  He was convinced there was a plot and an enemy.  They were coming.  They were almost here.  We had to be ready, and maybe armed.  It was time for solidarity, for uniting against the incursion of "them," though they were clever at disguise, fiendish enough to hide their true nature and purpose.  All the more reason why we had to be on guard, standing up, and shoulder to shoulder, protecting that American Dream and those Christian virtues, saving a nation and church from an evil so ominous that some might even think it good.

He left to get ready.  He went back to Westchester to fight the good fight, even though he was curing the wrong ills and joining the wrong battle.  Enthusiasm seemed willing to replace reason, and conviction far outdid values.

How many Lou's are there?

Nothing Is Wrong

They are looking for ways to say nothing is wrong, but if it is, it was someone else's fault.

In Pursuit of Depth

What is new and startling quickly becomes old and routine, which sends us looking for new newness, a more spectacular display; unless, we can abandon the need to have renewed newness and continued variety.  This would mean pursuit of depth in experience rather than just change from one experience to the next.

Seeing Beyond Knowing

He said she was sleeping.  They knew she was dead.  He asked that they believe what wasn't there, to see beyond what they knew, but they could not do it.  Could they understand after he had raised her to life?  Or did the mystery just get deeper?

What We Remember

Monumental events may be more easily forgotten, more readily overlooked than the usual things that are part of them.  Even more do we recall everyday things.  But most of all, we remember the people with whom we shared both the great and the small occurrences.  It is the people that gave them their value.

Relevance

"Relevance" should mean more than repeating the words of a prophet.

Catharsis #10,001

Today I began a new catharsis, another metanoia, one more reorientation and conversion.  I hope it turns out better than the last ten thousand.

Rethinking Frankenstein, God, and Ourselves

In Mary Shelley's book, Frankenstein, though similar to the film, the portrayal of the monster is not the same.  In the book, he is not an awkward, inarticulate, and rather mismatched hulk groping about and killing.  He does do a bit of killing and there is some groping, but he is also a feeling and needing person who wants to be more than a monster.  In one scene, he confronts his maker and demands recognition.  He asks to be accepted by the hand that formed him.  He feels he has that right.  The ugliness he has is not his own doing, and the dread he causes is not due to himself.

To a degree, we have a similar right.  We can demand the acknowledgment of God.  But God is not our only creator.  We are also creators of each other.  In our relationships - by what we say or do and how we share ourselves with others - we are, for better or worse, continuing the creative process.

Unlike the monster, we have been both recognized and accepted.  We are loved by the one who brought us to be.  We carry God's name and share his life.  It is why we are not monsters, but children.  Our own role in creation, how we bring it about or respond to it, may sometimes be a different story.

What We Can Change

We are willing to have everyone else change, and might even help them to do so.  But, in truth, the only life over which we have such power is our own.

Congratulations, God

Congratulations, God.  Once again, you have succeeded in remaining the inscrutable mystery.

But That's What Love Is

Maybe it would be nice if love didn't hurt, and if there were no pain in wanting.  But if we took the pain out of love, would it still be love?  And if we took the pain from wanting, what would it be?

Trying to See Things as Abraham Did

It is a question to ask about the story of Abraham and Isaac.  Despite the message - that one's faith makes even an absurd and cruel act something of greater value - it is an impossible act to comprehend.  It is always hard to stand in another's place, to look through another's eyes. Harder still when so much time has passed, and customs have changed as has the understanding we have of God.  Still, there is a value in trying to see things as Abraham did.

God is not asking for Abraham's life, a life over which Abraham has control and which he might freely return to God.  Instead, it is the life and future of someone else's.  Has Abraham the right to respond?  Is Isaac his to use in this way?  Maybe in their world he was, though it is hard to see how.  And even if he could, should he? Should Abraham be faithful when the act of faith required the forfeit of his son, or ought there be a law beyond even God that says, "No"?

Were it not our God as well, we might say the Lord's request was indication that he was not a true god, not the father he claimed to be; and here again a question is raised, one involving our faith.  It stops being and Old Testament question as we shift the focus from then to now, from Isaac to Jesus and to the question of sacrifice in general.

If we accept the atonement as the function of Jesus, or see his death as sacrificial, then what does it say of the notion of Father which is central to his preaching?  If Jesus tells us a father does not give stones as bread, or offer serpents to his children seeking fish, then should we believe he asks death of the one he loves the most?  Does it mean the pound of flesh must be his own, or even that one is required?

It leads to questions about the meaning and value of atonement, an idea that is familiar but which may no longer say what we mean about God.  Maybe we can acknowledge that focus and move beyond it to an additional interpretation, seeing his death as the cost of Jesus' faith, a consequence imposed not by the Father, but by those who could not believe, who could not accept what he said and did.  If he dies because of, or at the hands of, fearful people, then fear of truth and resort to the violence that follows are the killing factors, the actions he can forgive from the Cross.

Maybe too it means sacrifice was not what God wanted, not what he needs.  Instead, faithfulness to his message as it is understood may be his interest, and in Resurrection God offers ratification of Jesus' belief and confirms his own faithfulness to the believer.  It would then say death, though painful and without value in itself, becomes important by being overcome, that faith surmounts the worst that unbelief might impose.  In this way, we are saying that dying happens, but believing goes on.

If this explains a part of what happens in Jesus' death, as well as our own, it does not explain Abraham.  To think perhaps he misunderstood is unfair.  Maybe we are left to think his belief differed from ours, that his vision of God was tempered by a world not our own, a world where deities might ask such things.  Hopefully, he learned that day that his God was not like others in this way too.  That instead of death and sacrifice his interest was in love and concern, giving not taking.  In that case, the important part of the story is in putting aside the knife rather than the decision to raise it.

Things happen when they happen. Not before.

Among the Blurs

When I take off my glasses, people become blurs. If they ask at that moment that I define who they are, then that is what they become. Better they question my vision than their reality. Better they define themselves according to what they are seeing. Each person is the expert on himself, and so only he or she knows of what the definition is made.

What Argument is Good For

If you want only to dissipate energy, arguing is fine, but expecting it will be productive beyond that is inviting frustration. It is confusing argument with discussion, and resolution with expression.