When Decisions Are Made But Not Made

If the decision were so easily one way or another, I would make it.  That I am asking people's opinion about it may mean it is already made.  What I want now is to be talked into or out of it.  So, it is made.  It is just not agreed to.

If We Trust People

If we really trust people, we should not insist on approving or disapproving their decisions.

After Cancer

Even after all this time I expect one day to resume the life we left off when the cancer started, that we will realize that part is over, or that it really never was.  It should be that way, since it is what ought to be; but it cannot happen.  Neither can I let it go.

Dying or Living Jesus

Jesus became one with us and did so as completely as he could, even to the point of death.  While we can appreciate and even celebrate an aspect of dying, it is only a part, and given the length of his life and content of his teaching it is maybe a lesser part of the story.  An element of salvation is in the dying, but it is made valid in his rising.  Because Jesus went beyond death, life becomes new and different, to be lived and celebrated out loud.  The anticipation gives way to realization and what was wondered about is.  Jesus is not simply the person who hung on the cross.  Before that event he was the one who preached, who wandered among the people, who developed a sense of himself and of his own faith.  He was the one who shared himself and received what others offered, and beyond the dying he is the one who came up out of death into glory.

We are united with him in the dying.  We are joined also to resurrection into new life and power -- the life of God and the power of his Spirit.  Death seems to be present only so the resurrection may follow.

Too often, however, we take refuge in the suffering.  We are stalled in the dying, overwhelmed by meditation on pain.  The late Jesus is the unfortunate model rather than the risen one.  Without the crucifixion faith would be diminished, but without resurrection it would be nothing at all.  We have to let him come down from the cross.  He is not dead anymore.  To stay united only to his death is to be tied only to the past, to an incomplete event.  Joined to his resurrection, we enter our own present and future, as well as his.

It may have seemed easier when he was hanging there on the cross and perhaps a Jesus who will not stay dead may seem more demanding.  Demand may not be the right word, but if it were he would be so because he would have become more real, more invested in who we are together.  If he is alive he also becomes more easily found, more readily celebrated, in other things and people, in all who share life.

Nothing Can Change

As long as we are saying nothing can change, nothing can change.

"I Am Holy"

God, in Leviticus, has Moses tell the people, "I am holy."  It is an expression of his essence, rather than his activity.  Of all the things he might have said, this was most important -- both for him to say and for them to hear.

The Police and The Clergy

There was a meeting between the Police Department and the clergy.  It was not a bad idea.  People are dying and killing themselves, or they are killing someone else.  There is poverty and pain, no shortage of suffering.  There are places where the work of Police and clergy overlap, and at other junctures they conflict.  Talking seemed a good idea, except their ministers wanted to say they had no places to park their cars and the Police wondered how the clergy could endorse what the Department wanted to do.  There is still every sort of crime and ill.  There was, however, no real endorsement and parking is going to remain a concern.  It was a meeting where just talking had to be seen as a favorable outcome.  To expect more would have been inviting disappointment, anger, or increased depression.

Even If Needs Cannot Be Met

A need is no less real if it cannot be met or fulfilled.

Fault and Blame

Other people may actually be at fault, but after a time is blaming them so very helpful?

Decision Point

In the process of therapy people hopefully come to a point at which choices have to be made, where the insights have to translate into action.  Some do.  For others, the change is maybe too hard or it is not yet time.  What makes the difference?

The Costs of "But..."

They acknowledge the truths, then say, "but..."  They say:

   we should consider peace, but what about them;
   we should be willing to forgive, but what if they think us weak;
   we should be willing to talk, but why won't they offer first;
   we should have fair and consistent policies, but what would it cost;
   we would like to help, but some other time.

The "but" undoes the "should," freeing us from the growth that might be risked.  Too bad.

No System to Explain It All

Is there a system to explain it all, a rule encompassing the whole of life?  Is there a standard, a principle applicable to every situation?  We may wish there were.  It would simplify the process, but life may be too complex.

There are some situations that are fairly clear, where choices are straightforward, with a yes/no option and the consequence of either is clear.  The selection of a response is more automatic, but such situations are increasingly rare, and become more so as additional factors are included.  Instead of being "yes-no," it has become "if this, then that, unless something else intrudes."

Simple answers are too simple, not inclusive enough of even available data or ready choices.  There is still, however, a need to choose, to decide and not only about less significant issues.  Better to say the choices we make are subject to reconsideration should the need arise, or should new information become available, or if we should change in ways that alter our perspective on the question.  An issue's importance is not diminished by a reassessing of its significance; and if we permit an impermanence to choices, making them "just for now," it implies the "just for now" may last indefinitely.

Are You He?

They asked:  Are you he who is to come?  So he told them what he was doing.  He couldn't say either yes or no.  He hadn't answered the question, perhaps because he did not know.

After All This Time

You would think after all this time people would realize there is a better use for time and resources than conflict.

Justifying Life's Rules

If we have no rules, life becomes chaotic.  Having too many, or having ones providing too great a penalty, is to be constricted.  Not having certainty that there are rules at all, or concern they might change, makes life too tentative.  There need to be rules, but they need to justify themselves so there will be less likelihood of their changing.  A proposition may become a rule if it is universal, or almost so -- if it always applies; if it provides a basis for prediction; if it is the same across conditions; and if it applies to most people or most can agree on its reasonableness.

The Image of Galaxies and Ourselves

The image of galaxies long since destroyed is now reaching us.  They no longer are in themselves, but are now becoming real for us.  When they were actual, we were not yet.  So relative is their reality -- real to us, but not to them, and it may be our fate, too:  present as an image of what was.  Even if not actual the image is real, even if its reality belongs now only to the observer.

I can ask that you listen. I cannot insist that you hear.

An Approach to Passive Aggressive People

It does not seem an especially helpful practice investing time in passively aggressive people.  Better perhaps to let them know they are free to deal with life, and whose life it is we are considering.  To try to engage beyond that point is not productive, at least for me.  The door is open on my side, but I don't think I want to pursue any more angry people saying nothing is wrong.

Any Wonder

He thought the Grand Canyon a hole in the ground and thought the ocean just so much water.  He looked at a tree and saw wood, touched the earth and felt dirt.  Is it any wonder he thought God was just an idea, and people only things?

Belief Most Times

Belief may sometimes mean suffering and pain, but most of the time it is things like joy and peace, love and happiness; and those are the characteristics by which it can be identified.  The good things are real. The rest will pass away.

God's Patience

It is a bit silly to become indignant about someone else's failings, especially when God doesn't.

Talking in Absolutes

We talked in such absolutes.  Things either glowed or they were dismal.  Around the corner was either the cataclysm we would welcome and hope others would dread.  Or else there was that new creation, the one that would make others wish they had listened.  We tended to write in archaic and apocalyptic phrases with a lot of exhortation and no little condemnation.  There were only two sides unless we were extolling diversity.  It was all so clear.  It was, of course, true in many ways but it is hard to stay on the ramparts when no one will change them.  When they instead want to walk around, not recognizing them for what we wanted them to be.  We talk no less in absolutes, or do so without the fervor.  I am not sure it is progress.  Maybe it is less without the anger, but it seems to be more.

Beyond Pain

She thought there was a point in pain where the worst had happened and nothing new could make it worse.  There was a liberation in this, a freedom from fear.  It seems true that after some losses there is no more to be lost, and new pain, though real, is at most a revisiting of old pain.  There can be no surpassing it.

Incomplete Conclusions

Since everyone sees the same thing from a different perspective and because all bring to it their expectation and understanding, no conclusion is complete.  Each sees the same thing differently and each time it is seen there will be something new, more to share in the ongoing observation and seeking; and sharing it, while making it even less clear, gives each more to choose from, more to look for when we look again.

Letting Jesus Be Mysterious

Who was Jesus of Nazareth?  What did he mean or want to do?  Sure, he was God's son, saved us and made us holy in his joining of us, and us to him.  He lived, died, and preached a beautiful doctrine.  Is that all there is to know?  These and other things are true, but say so little about the man.  They speak only of facts.  They are historic data and theological judgment, both of which have value, but people are more than what they say or do, even people who are God's sons.

The writers of the Gospels tell us what they think.  Theologians and some mystics are ready with opinions.  Is that enough?  Is it enough to know less about Jesus than about so many lesser people?  Maybe it is, and maybe there is no answer.

Maybe no one can tell us what we might want to know.  Maybe it is that way because he wished it were so.  Or perhaps he did not think we would, or should, be interested in him as he was -- but only in what was said and done.  Maybe he wanted to stand aside from the message lest he obscure it.

Maybe it is unimportant what he was like, or what he looked like.  It may suffice to know that he was, and in some way was all that we wished him to be.  He was prophet, revolutionary, teacher.  A man of prayer, of vision, of dreams and ideas.  He wanted there to be a difference, a newness, and tried to name this new creation.  The specifics of this in each life are not always clear, and might only be further obscured were we to know more about the man.

Were we to know more we might want to model ourselves on him, and that cannot be done.  We are not him, but ourselves.  We cannot become him, only more completely us.  If there is a model available it is found in the message, and once found it can be fitted to the people we are -- a people living, preaching, and trying to understand what was said or done.  But the man is something else.

I doubt we should hope to be or to act as he did, squeezing out lives into what his might have been.  Trying to act as Jesus did is as impossible as trying to talk or look as he did.  We are not Jesus, except in an analogous or spiritual sense.  Any person -- be in you or me or Jesus -- fulfills himself, sanctifies his being -- by being himself.  Better to let Jesus be the mystery he came to be.

Criticism and Solutions

I don't want to hear how wrong the Church has been, or even how wrong it may be now.  Why must we think and act as though criticism were a solution to the Church's problems?

Love That May Not Be Love

Love that remains intellectual may not be love at all.

What Lent Is and Isn't

I doubt God is impressed by denial or penance.  But even if he were, I doubt he would look forward to a Lenten season that is fasting and self-imposed sadness.  It is not a time to see how much we can beat, starve, or humiliate ourselves -- if for no other reason than it would leave us too weak to celebrate Easter.  And maybe Lent is not even some of the positive practices we suggest, especially when they have about them an air of self-defeat.  We are not bad people who needed to feel our lack of worth.  Better to make the celebration of Lent the practice of what Isaiah suggested:  releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke, setting free those oppressed, breaking every yoke, sharing our bread with the hungry, sheltering the homeless, clothing the naked when you see them and not turning your back on your own.

These are not sad and oppressive things denying our Godness, but are instead the love and faith and sharing that should better characterize who we have become through God's sharing with us, his freeing of us to see and value who we have always been.  Such a celebration of Lent, and perhaps of each day, is the furthering of Easter rather than a dreading of our unworthiness of it.

Facts, but Not Belief

There are things tolerable as fact, but which cannot be allowed into belief.

Wishes and Choices

We can have wishes and wants, but not all of them are choices.  Those that are not are not ours to bring about, and to pretend they are, to expend ourselves on anything that is only a wish, is a poor use of us.  The wanting may be fine, but know the limit, investing your time or energy in something more substantive.  If it happens because of what someone else does, or just in a fortuitous way, that is fine and we can be glad even if we cannot take credit for it.  Better to realize we have our choices, even though we might rather have someone else's, and give ourselves to making those choices come true.

Being Rather Than Doing

If doing or accomplishing is the goal there is movement without arrival since each accomplishment is the attainment of an interim objective, the starting point for a new, or continued, accomplishing.  This leaves little room for satisfaction.  If instead, being -- rather than doing -- is the focus, we can allow completeness at every stage of the process.

Time Spent Waiting

For so many life is ended before it is over.  There is time left but no inclination to use it, and so they wait.

Questioning Capability

If you must demonstrate your capability at someone else's expense, were you so capable after all?

Simple Solutions

The advantage of simple solutions is that they are simple, which is unfortunately not always the same as correct.

Overlooking Ourselves

We are in greater danger of overlooking ourselves, and our needs, than we are of neglecting others.  Maybe we think their needs are more easily met, more permissible because not our own.

A Difference

A difference is that I have been observing holidays while you could celebrate them.

Saddling Santa

We have saddled Santa with traditions without much substance, diluting the value of what these new things are proposing to join.  They are the traditions generated by television or by music from rock to Rudolf, an unfair burden for so kindly a gentleman.  An example, perhaps, of our further abuse of the elderly.

The Ministry of Self-Criticism

Our conviction, and our fear, make some choices too easy.  Too quickly can we decide what is right or wrong, what ought to be and what is intolerable.  Our uncertainty lets us hide in some frightful places setting defenses we might never need.  This happens in all aspects of life, but fits least well in our understanding of Church.  For poor reasons we limit roles and deny the value of those with whom we disagree, simplifying positions with which we disagree.  We pretend it is not the role of orthodoxy to resist change, and not the function of all believers to consider the meaning of meanings already understood, wondering what more might be said and how belief might have greater depth.

To be faithful to itself, each aspect of Church must be critical in its appraisal of what it believes and free to question what is offered from any other quarter.  Where we run into problems is when any of us say that ours is the only answer, the only ministry, the single truth.  Resistance to change, a critical appraisal of what is newly proposed is a valid and true ministry.  Moving backward into tradition is as needed as is the consideration of what is on the horizon, an incorporation into faith of what was never before considered or known.

We may wish others were not part, and may try denying a relationship to those with whom we disagree, but denial does not make it so.  No matter the names we call each other or the indictments we offer, each aspect -- whether we call it progressive, conservative, radical, reactionary, or anything else -- is a legitimate and even necessary expression and reasonable formulation of Church.  Each offers a service to the rest, even if it seems no service at all.  A Church in which there were only agreement would eventually nod in boredom as much as it would in agreement, offering less validation than is available in the airing of differences.  We need not want each other, but we do have need of what each can provide.

Difference is a necessary part of any group larger than one (and is perhaps necessary even within that one if he or she is to be whole).  In the offering of differences, consensus can emerge and in that moment in marking of the entity's growth, a line drawn to say here is where we stood today.  It is a line from which some may look forward, and others back.  Here all may say, if only for now, this is where we grow from.

No member of this family has the entirety of the family's heritage or mission.  Even if we would want to avoid this family's reunion, or wish others had stayed away, it is a family made more complete for having us all.  Even if you were uninvited to the reunion you are free to come, entitled to its name, a sharer of its past, its future, and in this very moment.  You own its faults and successes.  At the reunion you may stand only with those who share, and reinforce, your view; and so you will have less to take from it.  It is your choice, but all of us are here and all of us belong no matter in which direction we pull, push, or drag our Church.  It is us.  To be itself it needs what each offers and what each would reject.  It is its fullness when it is all of its parts.

It is a big enough umbrella for all of us to stand under, and will even grow to continue over us as there come to be more of us offering even more to the rest of us.

Why We Need Dreams

In truth they may be no more than windmills, yet we need them and perhaps need them even more.  You see, it is the dream that makes waking a real and living thing.  They are the fire and passion, the hope and power that make us more than dust and smoke, symbols of the death that might otherwise have been.  It is because we have windmills, our visions and dreams, that we can begin to be who we will become and recognize the glory that is now.

The Focus We Need

Considering the number of people telling us what ought to be the focus there are not yet any saying, "Tell us more about poverty."

Then Again

If the publican continues to focus on his unworthiness, he may become as lopsided as the pharisee.

The Same Liturgy

There is a sameness to liturgy that may at times seem comforting in its predictability, but so often it seems but sameness.

Digging Through Old Arguments

They revisit old arguments, rehashing and digging through them as though somewhere amid the resentment and misunderstanding there was something worth finding.  They are like people routing for buried treasure at the dump.  It is unlikely anything is there, but if it is, is it worth the effort required and all that must be dug through before finding it?

Wanting to Walk on Water

No matter that we want to walk on water if the water is unresponsive to our effort and desire.  If you must, you can blame the water for the failure, though acknowledging its nature might make more sense.

Needing to Be Complete

Both were accurate.  The pharisee was better than most.  The publican had sinned.  What robbed the pharisee of justification was his need to compare himself with others.  He was that insecure.  He could not consider himself complete within himself, and so needed to lean on the weakness of others.

Nothing Personal

They accused him of saying he was king.  They would have accused anyone saying such a thing.  They were enraged that he had threatened the temple's destruction.  They would have had the same rage no matter who made what, to them, seemed a threat.  It was less personal a thing than we might think, and it was how they were being faithful to what seemed so essential.

The Door Opens

After knocking on the door and having it open, you need to decide whether you want to go in.  Having sought, you may question if what was found is what you had hoped for.

The New Normal

They are reporting such craziness as though it made perfect sense.  The outrageous has become for them the norm and reality seems so alien, so unwelcoming of them.

Moving Beyond Parenthood

He thought fathers of sons would at some time, if invited, like to move beyond parenthood and become friends, to become equals with their sons; to become someone with whom things could be shared and there be no judgment, no risk.  Maybe it is the same with mothers of daughters, for whom fathers lack the security that might urge them to change roles.

Forward Motion

Saying I have had enough never made it stop.

After the Decision

Decisions are easily made.  Implementing them brings on the problem.

Available Emotions

We have available to us all emotions and inclinations, including anger and even rage.  Having them makes them in that sense natural.  Whether and to what extent we call upon them is a choice.  Availability does not make their appearance necessary.

Stepping into the Stream

As that stream is never the same because it constantly flows, neither is the person stepping into it the same person each time he does so.  He is always new.

Tolerable Situation

He said the situation was intolerable, but because he continues to tolerate it that may not have been the case.

As Choices Change

Choosing opposite things at varying times can make perfect sense, since in the interim we have become different people with differing needs and awareness that asks new questions, or old ones in a different way, from a whole new perspective.

What to Do With Unresolvable Conflicts

There are conflicts that permit no resolution.  They can only become worse.  Like the tar baby, the more we poke at them the more entrapped we become, and what seemed so inviting, so clearly defined and in need of our investigation and probing became a frightful mess.  Better to leave some things alone.  Living around them beats trying to work through them. As you encounter those conflicts, better to remove them from the agenda.  That is the resolution.

The Politics of Choosing

If we make caricatures of the villains what have we done to the heroes we put in opposition to them?  If we simplify the evil, making it so stark, then what is the merit in choosing the other path?  Simply formulated truth permits a too easy choice, one overlooking and undervaluing what is more accurate, if also more complex.  Unless we truly state the picture of what we oppose, we make those villains too foolish to be taken with any seriousness.  Their faults are too prominent to be real, and unless the faults are balanced with some degree of virtue there is no real choice available.  Both the evil and the good, the villains as well as the heroes, are variants of good.  The choice is which is better.  There would be no merit, no value, in choice unless there were some measure of equality, some reason to wonder if the choice were a right one.  If the pharisees are so obviously evil, what is the value in choosing what Jesus offers?  It is true of other things as well.  Political systems, philosophies, moral options.  None is so simply chosen or rejected.  All have merit.  None are really made of straw.

Indeed it may be neater but consistency is not an obligation

Who Is God?

Who or what is God?  If he is, what is he like; if he is not, why then does he seem to be?  The question has been asked so often and so many answers were given, but what did they mean?  Some would say they meant nothing, since an answer was presumed even before the asking began.  The asking, they say, was a framework in which to put a proof for or against the proposition, rather than a response to a possibility.

It is likely there are as many Gods or non-Gods as there are people responding or denying.  But that is them.  What does God mean to me?  God means different things at different times.  There are also times when he seems not even to be.  His face keeps changing and his meaning as well.  Sometimes he seems good and real and very close.  He can make a good deal of sense and be trying hard to say something so terribly important.  Other times, he is gone or never was.  On those days his message is words saying nothing.

It is hard to speak in absolutes about who you do not really know.  it is describing in detail what you have never seen; and God is not so real or visible all of the time.

Some would like to say God is but a projection of the mind, a name given a feeling or idea.  They say he is what we call our need for goodness and justice, an embodiment of what ought to be and source of what we wish were so.  They feel there should be a type of presence, whether it truly is or not.  God in this formulation is a summation of our wishes, be they for holiness, goodness, power, creation, or anything else.  It is an explanation, an answer to the question.  Yet, I am aware of more - a personality rather than just personification, a Godness that is alive and real in more than a symbolic way.  Perhaps what I call awareness is my way of projecting, of fulfilling my need, yet it seems also to be independent of me.  It seems God is.

Seems is a word that fits the question, and beyond it would be hard to go.  To give God less than reality and more than non-being is maybe speculation as unfounded as the response that he is.  And if his being is conjectural, so too are his actions.  The evidence there is as contradictory since in the same day there is enough evidence to say both probably and definitely yes and no.  How God invests in human affairs is at any time arbitrary, benevolent, full, and devoid of meaning.  Whatever is chosen as evidence for either side is well balanced by contradiction.

It may be best to conclude God is because I feel he is, and that he is good because he ought to be.  He is also love and holiness, since I want him to be, or believe that he is so.  More might be said, but like all that has gone before it stands only on faith.  There is no resolution to the question of God, nor perhaps should there be.  The answer may be that God can be sought but never known, felt without being seen, grasped without being held.  Maybe we can simply say that today for me God is.

Categorizing Good and Bad

Everything fits into a category.  It is either good or bad.  If it is what I like, or what I want to agree with, then it is favorable.  If it will not fit, or seems reluctant to, then it is wrong.  There are no nuances, no grayness, no exceptions to the rule.  It is a simple rule, an efficient system.  Of course, it is also quite silly.

A Modern Sin

Did you ever wonder if nationalism might be a sin?

Hungry for Tradition

They have instant traditions.  What happened once should always be.  No matter that it signifies so little.  Unimportant that it was not there yesterday.  If hungry enough, there is little you will not swallow.

The Myth of Strength

There is a myth, the myth of strength.  It says the less we feel the stronger we are.  It says people should show no emotion; no tears, no laughter.  It frowns equally on tenderness and fear.  Because it is myth, it is an attempt to say what is not real.  Despite its lack of reality, it has any number of subscribers.  They think, or have been told, it is what should be and so they try living in the myth, hiding or denying what is.  They think they are being strong when they are being dead.  A myth is a poor trade when we prefer it to life.

A Poor Defense

Stop being angry.  You haven't the need, nor is it that good a defense.

The Illusion of Substance

Television allows us to see but not experience, to look at but not participate in.  It is illusion, not substance, trying to pass itself off as actual.

The Importance of Winning

Winning seemed so important that losing must have had a terrible consequence.

Voices That Need Listening To

Many voices crying out, wanting to say themselves, to speak who they are, shouting what they mean.  They want to be heard, to be shared.  They assault with the realness of their being and all that makes them need to speak.

To listen, rather than only hear, is to let the voices possess you, allowing if not welcoming this intrusion into our silent apartness.  To listen would mean being more than an object hurling back their echo, remaining unmoved by the wailing, shouting, crying, pleading, and demanding.

It might seem easier trying to believe the voices have nothing to say, that they are just noise, that they come from no one, that no human heart gives them birth, that no soul seeks like in their utterance.  If we could believe they were not there, we might be safe.  Yet, the voices keep breaking in, crying and wanting and needing to be heard.

If Only

I hadn't meant to start, but now I think it often, and each time it hurts like the first.  I say, "if only..."  If only you hadn't died.  If only there'd never been cancer.  If only life were fair.

Not Having to Choose

Why, after talking of what is right, must we then talk of what is practical?  Couldn't they sometimes be the same?

Beware

The Gospel is in danger of making sense.

Changed By Words

Having once said I love you, can I then walk away?  Can I pretend it never happened?  Can I say nothing is changed?  These are words I never said before to you, so they are different.  If I say them, I will be different, too.

Ghosts of Old and Young

He said an old man's ghosts are not scary.  They are, unlike those of the young, welcome since they are the friends of our youth and those we have loved along the way.  They are guests in a life made less for loss of their touch.  They are memories, and their gift is in the sharing of a time gone sadly by.  "No," he said, "they do not scare me.  Friends don't do that."

The ghosts of the young are fears of what might be.  Their faces haven't yet the fullness of what has been, and so cannot say there was nothing to be afraid of.

Confusing Activity

Go on.  Jump up and down.  Run in circles.  Make noise.  But don't be deceived.  Activity is not the same as progress.

Poverty and the Church

Poverty is the natural state of the Church and so it cannot associate itself with the poor only in the role of giver, a visitor to that condition.  It has to be poor.  It is where it should live.

Defined By Consumerism

It is unfortunate, but however much he has it can never be enough.  The more is just more, and new has to be better.  He is a consumer devouring the good and useless in a single gulp, attracted to the offerings of almost any store.  He is always scanning the horizon for what might be next, and so cannot focus on - much less appreciate - what is already his.  Once it has left the store, before it is even out of the box, it is old.  No matter the cost its value is diminished, except to say it is owned.  You could call it greed.  You might better name it sadness.

Driving Peace From the Streets

How did they handle the riot?  They surrounded it.  They chased it.  They gassed it and beat it, until finally it gave up and seemed to go away.  But only the external violence was stopped, and then just for now.  On both sides hatred increased, enmity festered, the gap widened as understanding became less possible.  Peace was driven from the street.  Why instead couldn't they listen?  It may have been a different voice in a new wilderness.  Why didn't they ask why it had happened, instead of how?

The Company He Keeps

Jesus, when accused of being a Samaritan and of having a devil, denied only having a devil, finding nothing wrong with being identified with the most despised of people.

Meanings Behind Meanings

Some things, and maybe most, are not all that deep and can be taken at face value.  Searching for meanings behind meanings is not necessarily a productive task.

Someone Else's Rules

As long as he can feel bound by someone else's rules he has no need to make his own.  He can complain.  He gets to feel noble, and all it costs is his soul.

Part of Freedom

Part of freedom is the right to be inconsistent.

When The Television Watches You

He is watching television.  Or maybe the reverse is the case.  Maybe the television watches him, making sure he remains inert and disgruntled.  The boredom leaping from the screen is saying, "I am entertaining and educating you.  I make noise against the silence closing in on you.  I fill the time that frightens you.  I am your only friend, so trust me."  The picture may be of anything.  The voice could say nothing.  What is important is its being there, filling the void.  He is the willing captive of his machine.  Having been seduced by it, time cannot move.  Nor can the silence shout at him.  Besides, it gives him "something to do."  It helps him kill (in the sense of murder) another day.

Getting Stuck on Secret Meanings

The parable of the virgins does not in and of itself make a lot of sense.  It can raise the wrong questions, and it has nothing to do with virginity one way or the other.  In itself, the story might prompt our asking:  why wouldn't the wise ones share their oil (what they did was hardly kind); why was the bridegroom so upset and his anger out of proportion to what was not such a terrible crime; why did the oil seller's store stay open after midnight?

Really, these details and others mean very little.  As with most parables this one is not trying to be an allegory where everything must mean something.  All it wants to say is Jesus is coming back.  We know he will return.  We may not know when but we want to be ready.  That's it.  That's the message and meaning.

Still, we like to find more hidden meanings.  Secrets no one else has seen.  We like finding what is not there, insisting on interpretation of what has no need of it.  We look and search and distort.  We make the oil into grace, the seller into church, or the virgins into celibates.

It can be the same with other aspects of Christianity, and with all of life as well.  We can make it difficult and complex when, like the parable, it doesn't have to be and was never meant to be.

Becoming Each Other

He was 80, and she was nearly.  They were almost too old to be anything but tender.  Yet their love was as real and alive as in those earlier days of passion and fire.  Growing older they had become each other.

Our Best Attempts

We are not unlike John the Baptist.  People asked him, as they do us, who are you and what are you doing.  All he could say is who he was not and what he was not doing.  Still he was trying to do what seemed best, and trying to do it well, even though it was only shouting in the desert.  Even that God could make important.

What I Need From God

Being God, Lord, may be all you have to offer, but some days I wish you could be more since Godness hasn't enough to offer.  It is not what I need you to be.

Innocent Activism

It was a more innocent time.  We thought all we had to do was point out what was wrong or saw what ought to be.  People would thank us for pointing out what they had overlooked and the world would get better.  That was the plan.  It was so simple, so reasonable and fair.  It ought to have worked, but told of injustice most were unmoved.  Hearing of pain and starvation, they let it go on.  They heard what we said but heard other and more insistent voices talking less of concern than of profit, and of change as disruptive or benefitting only the poor.  There is nothing wrong with innocence and it was in a way our strength, but its loss became so much harder.

Alternate Easter

What if he did come down from the cross, and what if they believed as they said they would?  What then?  In what would they be believing?  In someone who didn't have to die, in someone whose word and deeds up to that moment had meant nothing?  And what could he say to them or do, having come down and avoided death for them?  Could he say it all over again, another sermon on a different mount?  But he didn't come down, and they didn't believe.  It was as it had to be.

Listening to Silence

Silence is real and so we cannot fill it with just sound or noise or even voices.  Sometimes it has to be listened to, even if the thought of what it might say is frightening enough to drive us back to mere sound.

Bastards

Lord, why is it the bastards always win, and why do they end up convinced they were right all along?

Fools and Mosquitoes

Asking why God allows some to be such fools is wondering why he made mosquitoes.  No one really knows. We simply hope there is a reason, and hope it is one good enough to justify the annoyance they cause.

When A Law is Just A Law

They brought the woman guilty of adultery.  She had broken the law, and because they had made that law an expression of their relationship to God there could be no doubt she should die.  Violation of the law was violation of God.  It was clear and decided.  Jesus was invited to agree but said no.  He saw the woman was a woman, and the law just a law.

Eternal Principles

Eternal principles may apply only to eternal people.  Something else may be needed for those of us who are more finite.

The Security of Our Trees

In the beginning, when that first gorilla left his tree and tried to be a man, it was a new and strange role. He wasn't sure he could play it.  It would have been easier to stay with the others, but he had taken a step.  He was going to try to be what no one thought he could, or should, be.  He was trying to be different.  The progress was hardly noticeable.  It may even have seemed a step backward.  But because he dared to try, it would someday happen.  He had stopped being an "it" and began to be "he."  Because he stayed on the ground rather than accept the invitation to flee back into the trees, man was born.  There may now be something trying to be born from us, if we will let it.  If we will but leave the security of our trees.

Few things are as simple as we would wish, or as complex as we make them

Savoring the Journey

We may not always know where we are going, but we do know where it began.  We began to be Church at an empty tomb and in the presence of resurrection, assurances that we were on the right path.  There is then less need to say at each step just where we are headed since we know we will get there.  Over time we might be wandering, and can only hope it is an enjoyable meandering and take from it all of the sights to be seen.  We will arrive, and along the way will arrive at the places in between.  Savor these, too.

As Important As Loving God

Loving God is important and necessary, but loving ourselves and other people means at least as much, even if it can be harder to do.

What Not to Do With Buried Treasure

We hear words like goodness and holiness.  We have been told about faith and belief.  People say words and explain their meaning.  But if the words remain words, if the concepts do not become realities it seems a waste of time.  It is starting with buried treasure and then burying it deeper.

Celebration or Separation

Technology forces some of us to live longer.  It then calls them the senior citizens while accusing them of standing in the way of progress simply by being there.  Maybe that is not what is happening.  Maybe there is no accusation involved, but there seems to be.  By making old people, or anyone, a distinct group we are both celebrating and separating them and in this case there seems more isolation than congratulation.

Unnecessary Laws

Laws that are not needed offer no more than guilt, and life founded on guilt deriving from prohibition is not life at all.

What Humility Is Not

Humility is not weakness.  Nor is power the same as strength.

Taking Up Causes

Bleeding for causes does not make them right.  Nor need it even mean you believe in them.

At the Sanhedrin

They brought him to the Sanhedrin accusing him of many things but could convict him only of being himself.  Only when he acknowledged his identity did they condemn him to death.  Accepting himself, saying yes and allowing himself to be the Christ, was the crime.  It was what cost his life, but it was worth the price.  It was better than the other choice, the denial of his person.  Had he said, "No, that's not me.  I said a lot of things, but not that, and anyone who says it's me has not been paying attention," he could have walked away, right back into obscurity and leaving the message behind.  The Pharisees could have had a press conference and they might have shared the podium, but it wasn't that way.

His friend who had followed was asked a similar question.  He was also accused of his identity, but said no.  He denied himself by denying his relationship with Jesus.  He got to walk away, but had to do so in tears.

Preserving Expectations

We are at times reluctant to hear someone speak of himself, afraid what he might say and of who he might reveal, of who he truly is.  We fear he may be different, that he will not conform to that self we painted upon him.  Lest we have to know, we sometimes keep relations at the periphery.  Maybe we can tolerate only our own realities, being on guard against those of someone else.

Understanding Most of All

Though he can seem to demand a lot, God does not expect to receive anything.  He understands who we are, because he is united with us.  Then maybe "demand" is not the correct word.  Maybe instead he asks.  But whatever he does, God also understands and that he does most of all.

The Reasons for Questions

Had people wanted the same answers they would have stopped asking the questions.  Had what was always said sufficed there would be no reason to question again.

Insincere Apologies

A number of people had become apologetic, saying they were sorry for what they did not really think themselves guilty of.  Fortunately, they did not mean it and soon stopped saying it.

Making Mistakes

I have made no shortage of mistakes.  Hopefully, some were made no more than once.

Of Importance to Church

More important to Church than the ability to organize, protest, or even be "charismatic" are holiness, kindness, and goodness.

In Response to Suffering

He told them they would be made to suffer, that they would be put out of the synagogue and chased from town to town.  He did not say their response to persecution is returning the insult.  Jesus did not say excommunicate those who excommunicate you, and if people hurt you be sure to hurt them in return.  Nor did he tell his friends they should refuse to suffer, or even die.

He seems, instead, to say they should allow others, even their persecutors, to be faithful to their belief; to let them response to God as they must, letting them be wrong even if they will be very wrong.

He also tells them to maintain their own conviction, remaining faithful to God as he has revealed himself to them.  He is asking that they believe in what is and trust in what will be.  That these are the true replies to persecution and denial.

What People Offer

He showed me his flowers.  I offered to weed his garden.  I thought I was helping.  I should instead have seen the flowers.  See what people show, not the setting in which they present it.

Limitations of Salvation

They told him he was saved, but because he doubted he had even been lost he felt no need to be grateful for this gift he never wanted.

Learning Alternatives

You might think that what could be learned from pain might be as easily learned in another way.

God's Evolution

For years, God has had to adapt himself to the condition of people.  He has had to be what was needed and he has been it well.  As mankind came to understand itself and its environment, its knowledge of God was modified so he could be for them what was needed in the newly emerging moment.  This is not the same as saying people made God.  It is rather an indication that God is not bound to our formulations, formulations predicated on the human situation rather than on God's nature.  What was said was determined by need, thought and current philosophy; and by acceptance, rejection, modification or incorporation of what had to date been said or believed about the personality of God.

To speak about you as you were a year, two, ten or fifty years ago is not to talk of who you are today.  In like manner, God as he now is, even though he is the same person, is changed and is better known than by what he was once called.  He cannot be sufficiently understood in relation to an older terminology, even when that terminology (and what it sought to convey) still gives indication of part of what we want to express.  We have developed since these notions and formulations were devised, and so has God.  It does not suffice that he be what he used to be, what he was for people in times past.  He is revealing himself now to a new people in a new way.

As the Jewish nation could move away from the prevailing animism and polytheism to an idea of God as one and unique we are moving from some of what used to be said of him.  They may not be false but neither are they essential.  Like the Hebrews, we realize God is capable of what is required by the life situation of his people at any moment in their history.  So he is no longer warrior, or wanderer, or even king.  The terms no longer fit, and because of changes in what the words now convey some may even be contrary to our image and understanding.

He has as well ceased to be mind, idea or something apart.  While they once served to express an aspect, one that a particular culture required, we have no more need of those expressions, nor does God.  The image is changing, as it should. What was so far said sufficed for those who said it, but while while it can be included it is no longer central.  No words will remain adequate, not even our own.  It would be unfair to the dynamism of God were we to try enclosing him in any formula, no matter how time-honored or time-worn.  The mystery is such that we can approach, circle about, and compare it to things we know or believe in other realms.  Each expression is a phase in our finding of God, our naming of his name.

Our Choice

Maybe, at least for a time, we should stop talking and just listen.

Perspectives on a Prophet

He is elusive and mysterious, perhaps without intending to be.  He speaks of Scripture and people become excited.  He is a prophet, a healer, a rabble rouser.  He claims to be no one is quite sure what.  He is a short time with them, but long enough to have confused everything.  Then he goes away.  The people look.  They talk of wonder.  They know there is more.  They yearn for it.

He is that way with us as well, but he comes back.  In the story, he did not stay in Bethany.  Then too he came back, but then it was to die.

Measuring Forever

Every serious commitment is forever, but sometimes forever does not last that long.

Talk Instead of Treatments

They said they could not treat the problem.  There were too many factors involved.  They said it would take time, and money, and a lot more thought to even begin.  Even then the problem might not go away.  They were very apologetic, and kept saying there was a problem here.  We knew that, and had for some time.  We had come for a solution, not another explanation, but again it was ending in talk.

Being Prayed For

When some people offer to pray for me, I wish they wouldn't, especially when they threaten to pray for something important or worthwhile.  Maybe I am afraid their God will answer.  Maybe it is just the words they use.

Who Can Live The Words

We could all say the words and make the gestures, maybe even meaning them, but very few could live them.  They were the ones who got hurt.  They were the ones so few understood.  It was their reality that threatened our complacency, and they were the ones who made it all worthwhile.

An Asset-Based View of Salvation

If salvation is not yet accomplished, there is no assurance that it will be.  Time and energy then must be spent in staying ahead of damnation.  If, instead, we can say salvation is present, that we are saved, then the fear it might not be is unnecessary and we can focus on growth rather than threats of decline.  We can look ahead instead of wonder what may be closing in.

Not New But Still Cherished

They are old men remembering things no longer new, but no less dear for all the years gone by.

Religion's Role

It is not religion's role to make people good.  They are good to begin with.  Instead it is, or should be, to free them from whatever prevents realization of the ability each person has.  It is to tell people of their holiness and value, naming what is rather than what might be.

Two-Way Faith

When we speak of faith, when we say we take a chance on God by believing in him, we should understand that is but half the arrangement.  The other half is God's faith in us, his taking a chance and believing in who we are in ourselves as well as in relation to him.

Becoming the Mask

We are sometimes so afraid of being hurt, afraid someone might take advantage of us, or maybe just recognize us, that we become the mask behind which we hide.

Balloons in Church

There were balloons in the church, and singing.  There were posters, and people embraced.  They talked aloud; they smiled; and at the kiss of peace, they kissed.  Understandable that some might not have recognized it as liturgy.  Sad they did not know it as Church.

The Ministry of Availability

A ministry of availability can be less than exciting, especially when no one comes.

A Philosophy of Belief

Things are what they are believed to be.  This is not the same as what they seem or appear to be.  Granted we deal often with appearance and can judge only on the basis of what seems to be, there are areas where we must step beyond appearance and in that sense transcend the observed and recognized. It is then that we move into religion and other spheres where concern is not only with what is seen, but also with what is seen only by the eyes of faith.

When treating of religious issues or questions, we begin with belief.  That which is believed must be assumed to be.  It is that from which all else derives.  Faith is a foundation rather than an outcome, and whatever is the content of the belief is beyond question.  It is in that sense a higher function than reason, and so can be assumed, even without support of reason, and become the premise of subsequent observation.

The premise of each person may be different, at least in some regard, but that does not make it subject to denial since belief is the given factor, an apparently gratuitous point of departure.  Granted others viewing the same question or phenomenon may come to different conclusions, the difference is not reason to deny the reality or validity of their conclusions, since the belief underlying those conclusions is uniquely theirs.  It would be reasonable to offer alternatives, perhaps those that I have reached based on my own assumptions, but it is not reasonable or legitimate to place another person's beliefs into my categories and so deny them.  To do so suggests a certain insecurity and little more.

Even if a person's supposition is that none are possible, if his belief is that there can be no belief, once accepted it becomes beyond denial.  Nor can it be refuted, except perhaps in theory.  And the need even to offer that level of refutation may speak to limitations in one's own sense of what is.

It is also possible that over time a person may develop, refine, delete, or completely alter their beliefs.  There is freedom to alter the direction or content of thought, and should he find it more in line with his personality as it develops even the basic tenets may change.  This might even be anticipated since people are altered by their experience and must find new understanding as life is less easily understood in terms once used.  Change happens as a result of reflection or as events confront belief over the course of time.  The resultant modification is as legitimate a statement of belief as what it replaces, since it is based presumably on as much conviction.  It is thus made as inviolable.

It can be objected that there remains no objective reality, at least in this sphere.  There are some who might say there never was such a thing; it may be better said that elements of the multiplicity are related even though diverse or opposed.  All are true, yet different.  Since all are inclined in favor of their formulation, and the stronger the faith the more adamant may be the conviction, to each his response is deemed objectively true.  The belief in truth, even if what constitutes it in this instance is ill-defined, is what is commonly held.  If objectivity is important, it is found in the person holding the belief and living by it.

There quite probably is an objective standard that it is not possible to ascertain, except for oneself (in the subjective way that implies), what it is.  We should then conclude as the most reasonable notion that every individual is, to the strength and extent of his belief, constrained to act in accord with that belief and no other.  For him, it is the only truth.

What It Means to Be Wrong

While I may think someone wrong and will freely tell him of his error, it is as true that from his perspective it is I who am wrong and in need of correction.

Anxiety and Illusions

If we take seriously the injunction to put all anxiety aside, then there is no need to hold onto any of it, not even that special thing about which we so love to worry, feeling it identifies us as concerned people or provides assurance that we do have something in common with others.  If St. Paul thought it would have been helpful, he would have said put aside the anxiety you choose not to have, the aspects that are truly not yours.  Hold to and cherish the illusion that by worry you can undo the rest.

Perhaps just a touch of madness is the prerequisite to dedication

When We Love

For Mary, seeing the risen Jesus was not enough.  She wanted also to touch him.  It is that way when we love.  Words and signs are not enough.  And the Lord did not say no; he just said:  not yet.

Accidental Alienation

People do not intend to cut themselves off from one another.  Alienation is not an intentional thing.  It is that sometimes we are afraid and do not know how to be.  Because of our fear we find ourselves alone with ourselves, and not wanting to be.  The fear is real and may have grown out of real threats, but now it is not just happening to us.  It has become us, leaving no room for who we would rather be.

Stations of the Cross

We had Stations of the Cross.  No one came.  We had them simply because we always have.  It was not reason enough.

Elijah's Proof

In the time of Elijah there were many prophets, but not all were true.  Some said they were.  Others thought they were.  But only the man of God could prove he'd been sent.  He alone among the holy men could proclaim God's word with authenticity, making it actual.  Only Elijah could offer more than words.

It is no different now.  Real prophets have all but disappeared, even though some of us like to think we have inherited Elijah's mantle, and others of us wish we could.  But the proof now as then is in actions beyond the words.  By actions I do not mean miracles, since in themselves miracles have little worth.  The actions enlivening our words would be giving, sharing, offering.  They would include loving, caring, hearing, and sometimes suffering too.  The proof is anything making God more than so many facts, idaes and other such things that have no flesh, no blood, no life.

Confusing Constructive and Criticism

They seemed to feel that the more devastating their constructive criticism, the greater its value to the target.  For their gift they awaited the thanks of someone they had hurt.

When Gloria Died

Gloria died.  Who knows why; who might offer an answer?  Maybe God knows, but if he does he is not saying.  It might have been different had she been old.  Her life would then have been ready to be over.  But it had just begun.  She was only twenty.  There was so much to be lived, so much to be offered, so much yet to do and be.  But instead she died, and I don't know why.

Later I asked God again, and I thought he told me this:  she loved life and people.  She didn't want to die.  She had not planned to, but she was not so surprised when it happened, not as unhappy as we might wish she had been.  She just went on being happy in another place, a different way.  She was joy and laughter and love.  She still is.

We are sad because she died, but are better for her having lived.  We are better people and more ourselves for having been loved by her, and for the life shared with her.

Of course, we will cry.  With her death we lost a lot.  But we are going to live and will laugh again.  The question is maybe less why did she die than why she had lived.  She left us, but gave more than a memory of death and sadness.  She gave her life and love which cannot be forgotten.  It cannot die.

Peter's Dream

Had Peter not followed what the dream offered, he would not have dreamed himself out of Herod's prison.

Seeing and Believing

If they thought he could be Elijah, or John, or one of the prophets, then for them he became those identities.  They saw what they saw and made it so.  Though their understanding may have lacked the accuracy of Peter's, for them it was complete and in accord with what they were ready to believe.  To have seen him instead as Messiah or to have made that their confession would have been lacking in faith.  They saw what they saw and believed in accord with that.

The Wrong Dream

He works very hard and is dedicated to what he does, but it annoys him that he must do it alone.  He wants help in carrying the burden of his dream.  When no one asks to, he becomes bitter and angry.  He feels that they are refusing to understand.  He cannot see that it is perhaps the dream that is wrong, unworthy even of his effort.

The Experts in Our Lives

We are free to listen to others, and even take notes.  It is often enough a worthwhile pursuit, but having listened we accept or decline what has been offered, recognizing that while others can be capable consultants in our lives we are the experts.

The Joy of Impracticality

No one should be discouraged from attempting great things simply because they are not practical.  Were they practical they would forfeit their greatness.

The Burden of Belief

They have such cruel and ugly Gods it is a wonder they find any joy in life.  Their belief is such a burdensome thing.  Perhaps they worship as masochists.

Different Values

Our values were so different we could hardly agree on what was good, much less on what would be evil.

Owning Our Misunderstanding

Much of what seems illogical or erroneous seems so because we have not understood it, and so the error - if there is one - and the lack of logic is our own.

The Right to Not Change

They began the meeting saying, "We cannot be influenced by populist ideas...  We cannot listen to new waves or theories."  It was little wonder when they added, "We cannot expect to see much happen."

A Wall is Just A Wall

People paint words and slogans on walls, but the wall is not the words; nor is what is behind the wall what is written on its outside.  Neither are we what has been written or marked upon us.

Don't Call Me Sibling

I never wanted to be called a sibling lest I be required to sibble and wouldn't know how.

The Beard

I grew a beard and became aware of people's inclination to see what they wish to see.  Some looked and pretended it was not there.  It was not growing out of my face, because they did not want it to.  Others seeing it decided if nothing were said it would go away - it would maybe grow inward, disappeared into whence it came.  Others still pointed and laughed, and they were the most real.  They saw and had a name for what they saw.  Scraggly as it seemed, there it was in all its blackness, redness, brownness, and flecks of white.  A reality.  Nor is it only hair we wish to deny.

Questioning Power

I wasn't denying they had the power.  Just questioning their right to use it.

Sympathy for Judas

Why must we be so critical of Judas, attributing to him the worst of intentions, post-dating his designs so that even in his call he was lacking the capacity to respond?  Why do we paint him so darkly since it adds to light either to Jesus or to anyone else?  We have over time allowed the man to become a caricature, a model of evil to share with Pilate, the model of ignorance, a stage where they may have been over their heads, but where they still had a right to be.  When called, Judas had more to recommend him than his weakness.  We would do well to assume he was a basically good and prayerful man, that when they were all sent out he too preached with fervor and cured in wonder.  We would do better saying his presence added to the company he shared rather than seat him at the edge with a dour expression.

It might even be wise to say he left the rest out of his dedication to God, a God he no longer saw in Jesus.  It was a good God, and seemed better than what Jesus was saying, a God more faithful to what Judas thought ought to be.  His despair that leads to death is more the pain at betraying a friend than the loss of a friend.  Perhaps he saw adherence to his faith as the motivation for turning over his friend.  Judas was driven then by a belief unworthy of him, and in that there should be sadness.

Had he just been the way we picture him, it is unlikely the rest would have tolerated him for so long.  He added something but he did not take from the experience what the others thought they saw in it.  If Jesus looked with pity on Peter, he would have cast the same eyes on his other friend's pain.

Relationships and Balance

If Jesus came among us only because of our weakness or need, or because of the presence of sin, would he then be estranged by its absence or by our self-sufficiency and strength?  As in any relationship, the need of only one is not enough to sustain it.  Giving is not sufficient motivation for staying together since it sounds the relationship on weakness and is threatened by, or unbalanced by, the emergence of that other person.  Growth undoes it.  So there must have been something more, something mutual and a basis for growing together, a union not reliant for its definition on continued need, weakness, or sin.

Giving may be okay in therapy or in social services to just meet needs (though even in those settings I am not so terribly sure it suffices), but then when the need has been met or the crisis resolved the relationship ends.  To continue, it would be disrespectful and would foster a less than healthy reliance.  Maybe it can change, becoming something different, but the former reason for being together is over.

Tiring of Complexity

I sometimes wish things were less complex, just a bit simpler.  Some days I can handle only simple explanations.  I will take any answer that will not lead to another question.  I appreciate the need for questions and the unavoidable confusion, but I sometimes tire of living with it.

Love and Trust

It would be silly to say I loved you unless I would trust you as well.

Who Names You

Who people say you are is not significant until to ratify or deny their naming of you.  Until you make it your own it is nothing more than an opinion or a wish.  That is so whether people say, as they did with Jesus, that you are the prophet, the Baptist or a Messiah, or as they do of others when the titles are:  Drunk, crazy person, someone in need of help.

The Limits of Crying

He cries each day but there is no washing away of this pain.

The Costs of Denial

We continue to deny, preferring that long term pain to the difficult choices of now.

Adults' Distress

Adults, it seems, become more distressed for longer periods over less significant things than do children.

Adjusting to Compromise

We can get used to compromise, allowing it to be a way of life even when it steals the meaning life ought to have.

Soul and Body

They worried so much about his soul they hardly noticed his body had died.

Listening to the Alberts

Before anyone else even knew the words, Albert was talking of solar energy.  He understood it, as he did most things, and he said it would work, that it could be the energy of the future and that we could let that future begin almost anytime we choose.  Of course, hardly anyone agreed.  Maybe it was because there was so much invested in other systems, or maybe the newness of the idea made it hard to hear.

It is hardly different for those Alberts of the world whose discovery is God.  They want to but cannot share, since no one will take their gift.  People run from the hearing of this newness, but their reluctance will not make the reality less real.  Like the sun, it continues.  It won't go away.

Clue

When his family thought he was crazy it was maybe a clue he was on the right path.

Be Like Children

He said we should be like children.  I think he meant we should seize and cherish the ability to be surprised and to wonder, to be amazed by the miracles around us, to marvel at discoveries about us, to hold on to without crushing the people and things we see, to experience a world of difference and sameness and newness that is real to our hearts.

God on His Terms

When St. Paul says "put all anxiety away" he is saying a lot about God.  He is saying what we may not always see.  He truly believes there is no need to be afraid, that God has taken that away.  God, he believes, means what he says, that he can be trusted, that he is real and alive, that he is God because he loves.

It can sometimes be hard to believe in this God, to doubt his willingness or need to share.  We can feel safer with him at a distance even if it makes him someone other than he is.  It can seem easier with God only in heaven.  The rules then are clear.

It may be we find it harder to see him as he is because we cannot always say who we will be in relation to him.  Maybe uncertainty made us comfortable with claims of unworthiness or sin.  It defined a situation more easily handled than familiarity.  Despite his wanting to be a friend and lover, we kept him at a distance, out there at the edge of heaven upon his majestic throne.  He wanted to talk of goodness and understanding, telling of love and unity.  Ideas that were hard to hear, harder still to respond to.

God is God, but won't let that come between us.  Maybe when we believe and accept him on his terms, as someone who wants and needs us, when we let him be himself, maybe then Paul's words will ring truer and "God's own peace will stand guard over our hearts and minds, in Christ Jesus, and then there will be no more need to fear."

The Shelf Life of Kings

They were a noble people, the chiefs and kings, rulers of their world until someone told them they were backward, savages in need of civilization, progress, and religion from another age.  In that moment they became nothing at all.  They ceased to be and some even said it was for their own good.

When God Comes

God came to see Adam in the garden.  There was a familiarity that is absent from the burning bush where he visited Moses.  He came to sit with Abraham, and was a guest.  That is lost in the storms over Mout Zion.  He had less need of the noise, the formality and spectacle at some times and with some people.  For Elijah he was there in gentle breezes, not needing the violent winds that seemed to fit Pentecost.  It may not be so, but God seems more present when he comes in quiet.

The Toll of Knowing

The shuttle exploded.  It is a personal loss because we knew the name of one of those aboard.  We had known Gus Grissom's name, and so had a part in that tragedy of nineteen years ago.  Unlike Kent State or My Lai, or all of the tragic things that are on the evening news, this is not the death of unknowns.  It is not anonymous tragedy and so like the killing of the president it takes a different toll on the soul of the nation.

The Way of Kings

Maybe the kings were planning to welcome him into royalty, to ratify his membership in their exclusive club, but it didn't work that way and maybe instead they were invited into a new and deeper form of life.

People need a chance to be wrong, even if they will be very wrong

The Problem With Blind Justice

Their God was so busy being just that he hadn't the time, and perhaps not even the inclination, to be anything else.

Jesus's Choice

Jesus came, I think, to a point at which he knew something would happen, even death.  What makes him who he is, is not that he went ahead just the same.  He said yes when he could have said no.

Running Toward Holiness

Being holy has been difficult, maybe because we have made it so.  Maybe for too long we have defined it in terms of abnegation and rejection, saying no until only the no remained.  It is at best part of an understanding of what holiness might be.

It is essentially a relationship to and a sharing in the holiness that is God's essence.  God is holy, and holy we become by our relationship to him.  God attempts to communicate himself in word, in action, in Jesus most of all.  He is his Spirit, a spirit of holiness and a spirit we share.  Our response to God's offer, our reaching to share his holiness, is in hour hope.  It is less safe than we may wish, and dedication to an uncertain situation.  It is faith.

If we allow the faith to take our flesh, then God can break in and take away some of the fear, replacing it with himself and making uncertainty the basis of our confidence.  Maybe he wants us to know it will sometimes be hard, but not all of the time.  That it has a meaning even then, and we can find it together.  Things need to be what they seem, or what we have made them, because he is with us.  His being, and his being with us, make it all worthwhile.

Holiness is then not a denial, a running away.  Instead it is a running toward.  It becomes affirmation.  We move toward God moving toward us, affirming we will sometimes meet and sometimes join because his love is real, more real than the fear and difficulty we used to cling to.

Sooner vs. Later

Sooner or later things will work out.  Why can't it be sooner?  Why must it always be later?

Resisting Argument

If we allow people to argue, they will.  They are well practiced in it, and have been rehearsing it for years in some cases.  They are determined to resist and are invested in denying whatever you might want to offer.  Whatever it is, it has probably been offered and resisted or argued away before.  As long as there is arguing, the treatment cannot begin.  Our role is not to refute, nor is it too helpful to point out lapses in logic.  We can accept them.  It does not imply agreement, if that was our fear.  It simply means that we are together and willing to share something.  Unlike with argument, we are not saying there must be a winner and a loser.

Acknowledging Negativity

You can acknowledge the presence of negative factors, but there is no need to accord them significance.

Wise Investments

Invest yourself well.  Focus on issues offering satisfaction rather than frustration.

Choices But Not Control

We have choices even if only to ratify, resist, or acknowledge our lack of control over a specific event.

Forgiving Judas

It is so easy to be angered by Judas.  He lends himself to condemnation, but he is what we are all capable of being.  We can all have his fear, despair, mistrust and even his hatred if that is the name for what he felt.  He was disappointed, and maybe felt used.  It wasn't going as he had hoped, and that is a realization familiar to all.  Who he was is an aspect of our potential.  To be Judas is a facet of the beautiful, and very frightening, reality of being people.

Dad - 2 years

Waiting for Blossoms

I would like to think the householder of the parable - having told his gardener to feed the tree and water it, give it another year to bear fruit - would say the same thing next year if it was not yet blossoming.

Confessing What's Good

Maybe we need a new sacrament, one like confession; but instead of reciting sins we could say what is good about us, what we do right, and all the times we have been on God's side.

Fear and Hope and Solzhenitzyn

In the books of Solzhenitzyn there is a character, and sometimes more than one, who is or was in the camps, a man who has been a prisoner.  In that condition he has had to realize survival means most, more even than life.  Day to day is the limit of his future, and sometimes even a day is too long.  Getting by is the mark of success.  It is all he can allow.  He has bread, breath, and shoes on his feet.  Nothin else counts.

As he comes to the end of his sentence, allowing himself to look to an end of time in the camp, he begins to live beyond the moment of thinking a day after the one in which he is.  A slave's blood no longer fills his body, because he can begin to hope and dream.  These are the signs of free men.  Stepping across the barrier of survival, reaching into tomorrow, give life to today.  Being able to see beyond where we are, living inside our dreams, and allowing a horizon beyond which we can see, all these mean more than what is.

Unlike the heroes of these books, we are not bound by wires or walls  If they are there, we have built this camp ourselves.  We have built it of fear, a fear not only of tomorrow but of the us who will live in it.

The Choices Not Had

What there is, is good but what is missing is the choice not to have it, to have instead something else.  Age and illness have limited what might be, making his world a not uncomfortable one, but one that has grown suddenly too small.

Giving Up The Attack

For some time I had been opposing someone I had never met.  I was vilifying his image, or perhaps it was a mirage since it seemed like a person.  Attacking him seemed the thing to do.  But then I met him. He was human, which came as a surprise.  It is true he is not always good, nor is he so good right now. But now I know him and so he is not so easily attacked.  He has offered to negotiate.  He says he wants to try to work it out.  It was easier to attack.  The rules were clearer.

I have to assume he is acting in good faith, though he may not be.  I can hope our militancy forced his negotiation.  Whatever the reason, we have now to set aside the fighting, no matter how dearly we loved it.  We have to try trusting each other, giving one another a chance.  If we don't nothing will happen.  The choice is more hatred.  We tried that.  It made no one any better.

Confusing Work with Boredom

He picked up the papers, moved them around, formed them into neat piles and then into stacks.  He went and got more.  Then it was cards, and files were next.  These were piled, then moved.  In between he filled in, or out, some forms and read one or two.  He had lunch, looked around, and scratched his head.  Then he went home.  Because he was tired, he thought he had been working.  Instead he was bored, but he could not call it that.

The Possibility of Resurrection

Maybe it is the uncertainty of death, the not knowing where it leads or how it ends, that makes something like resurrection a real possibility.

Starting Out Lovable

Mary did not earn immaculate conception.  She did not compete to become mother of God.  She never had to prove her worthiness.  It was always there.  It was always present as a gift, one more expression of God's love.  It is, I think, the same with us.  We do not earn God's love.  We do not prove our lovableness.  We needn't demonstrate worthiness.  Like Mary, it is how we start.  We begin lovable and remain so, no matter what.  We celebrate God's love, rather than achieve it.  He loves us because we are, and for no other reason.  He always has and always will.

No More Telling

They say, "tell him" or "tell her."  If telling were the solution they would have no need of me.  They tried telling before they got here.

Suspicious Homily

The homily beginning with reference to last night's TV news is only slightly less suspect than the one starting, "I was thinking on my way over from the altar..."

The Right Place

It seemed like the right place to be.  It wasn't, because you weren't there.

Violence's Limitations

Even if violence were necessary, it would never be something to be proud of.

Father's Expectations

It is true God is Father, but not one who wants us to remain children.  He expects us to grow up, too.

Having Control

We generally have more control than we think, though it may not be over what we would like or present in the way we may wish.

Fleeing into Divinity

We are all on occasion frightened by our humanity.  So why not the Church as well.  Too bad, of course, that instead of acknowledging and responding to the concern it so often flees into its divine aspect.

Looking for Gomez

To Americans, the name Jesus is reserved to the Lord.  This is not so in Spanish speaking countries where it is freely given to others as well, but true to my background I sometimes found it odd.  One day, I was looking for Gomez and when I knocked a voice from behind the door asked who I wanted to see.  I replied, "Is Jesus there?"

In more than one sense, the answer was obvious.  Of course he was, and if Gomez was not there the other certainly was.  He was in that house and every other.  He is behind every door and in every street.  Sometimes he is hard to find, but he is there.  When he is harder to find, it may mean we should look harder and be more willing to recognize him as he shows who he is.

Risks of Faith

The Gospel message is that choices must be made, and they must be made now.  But examples of the treasure in a field or pearl found at the market may not suffice.  They may be too obvious.  The finder of the treasure and buyer of the pearl knew what they had.  With the kingdom of God there is no such knowledge.  There is only faith.  The believer throws his net hoping to come up with something, but he is never really sure.  He does not know until he has brought it in, and even then he may not really know.

Unlocking Doors

People hide behind locked doors.  They are afraid of each other.  They think they have reason to be, and sometimes they do.  But someday, someone has to open up.  Someone has to come out and take a chance on the rest of us.

Lessons of Naaman

Not a few of us are like Naaman, wanting to do what is elaborate and even ridiculous, when all that is needed are the commonplace responses and honest recognition of what they mean.

Two Sisters' Choices

Jesus visited the two sisters.  One sat at his feet listening while the other worked.  Mary might have sat forever.  Without what Martha was doing all might have starved.  Neither was wrong, but neither was completely right.  Jesus seems to say that although Martha's activity was far from wrong and not unnecessary, it was at that moment less important.  Also that Mary's listening could be just for now.  Neither approach was complete and each only followed itself so that both were going in circles, rather than cycles - cycles that begin with the hearing of God's word, lead into attempts to discern its meaning, and turn it then into action before returning to the source.

Prophesy

Prophesy is not in seeing what is not there, but in understanding what is.

Observations at the Welfare Office

A visit to the Welfare Office:

The office is arranged so that filing cabinets form a corral or enclosure behind which the workers are hidden from the clients, and vice versa.

Staff walk around a lot but seem not to go anywhere, and they talk more to each other than to clients.

The people are simply there.  They are used to being here, resigned to the way it works (or doesn't).  They wander about, looking at each other and sometimes ask questions of clerks who look back as though no one had spoken.

No one admits to being bilingual.  They must be asked a second time.

Periodically, people become indignant, then return to the Daily News.

They seem conditioned to resignation interspersed with half-hearted complaint, expressed to the person next to them on the bench.

The time is oppressive and you will read almost anything to help make it pass.

Seats are arranged in the waiting area so that no one faces anyone else.

All look straight ahead at no one looking back.

There are quite literally mountains of papers and files.  More than an army might read in a millennium, assuming they even wanted to.

Workers engage in discussion about the latest procedure and the most recent change in it.  What may be attempts to facilitate the system seem instead to make it more complex.

Bathrooms are locked.

Every worker must ask his or her supervisor everything.

Supervisors seem most supercilious, and I suspect they carry their lunch in attache cases.

Some workers seem afraid they see the spectre of their past or of who they might have become in the sad and hopeless people outside the corral.  It makes them more angry than compassionate.

Up and down stairs.  Lines to get on lines.  Round and round the halls.  Not allowed on the elevator alone.  Steel chairs and too straight benches.  Staring at heads that stare at heads.

As soon as you leave they will call your name.

The office is decorated with all the latest posters, from the government.

Staff is either quite well dressed or frightfully sloppy.  Either may seem the latest in style.

More often than one should be, people are told to come back tomorrow, only earlier than today.

Just Needing To Be Heard

They sit at the bar or crowd around it.  They seem so desperately in need of someone to listen to their dreams, dreams that may be quite ordinary or without hope of realization, but which to them are very real and above mere importance.  And when they find someone, it is not significant that they cannot listen.  They just have to hear.

Misaligned Theory

There are times when it seems of no value.  Though the idea is right and the theory still makes sense, the practice won't go along.  We could change the theory to meet the practice, but that wouldn't work either.

In Control of Time

Segments of time are as long or short as we say they are.  If we work in units of single events or of years, they begin and end when we say they do, and so we need not carry into the present more than we can handle or less than we want to remember.

The more precise they tried to be, the more obscure they became

What To Be Grateful For

God, I cannot thank you for the pain, but I can be grateful for the love whose absence causes me to hurt.  I cannot be grateful for loss, but I can thank you for sharing it with us.

Coming Home

The prodigal came back with nothing but himself.  It was more than he left with.

It Is Tomorrow

He ran in shouting, "Wake up, it is tomorrow!"  They told him, "Leave quietly, and come back yesterday."

Choosing Judgment Over Action

Instead of helping the Samaritan, we would rather berate the priest and Levite.

Unintended Consequences

He tried so hard not to look foolish that he ended up looking ridiculous.

Be Careful With People

People are not things.  They are flesh and feeling.  They are very, very real and can be hurt.  Be careful.  You are not playing with statistics or case histories.  This is life and it is your responsibility.  It is sacred.  Do not play games with it.

The Poor Box

Someone robbed the poor box.  Since he was probably poor, it really wasn't theft after all.

Sharing in God

We belong to God, not in a sense of being possessed by him, but rather of membership in him, and him of us.  He does not own us.  Instead he shares what he has and who he is, inviting us to do the same.  He partakes of us so that we might be united to his goodness and holiness.  We each become more complete and each then has more to share.

Responsible to Today

Things yet to come are yet to come and mean little beside what already is.  Our response should instead be to today.  Tomorrow will ask a different question

Overrating Sainthood

Maybe we could stop trying to be saints and try instead to be people.  It is a bit more difficult, but also more worthwhile.

Outgrowing Faith

We may spend time forming, or shaping, or molding children without realizing they grow up and so faith remains for so many a childhood thing, another thing to be outgrown and maybe even missed, but it is not given room in their adult lives.

Being Wrong

People have to be given a chance to be wrong even if they might be very wrong.

Being Understood

It is true that I do not always understand God, even though I try to.  I think it suffices that he understands me.

Perceptions

They seemed cruel, even though they were calling it assertiveness.

Persistence and Belief

The blind man sat at the side of the road calling out to David's son.  They asked him to stop, but he only screamed louder.  Because he could not be silenced they brought him to Jesus, who told him to see.  And he did.  His persistence was born of desperation, but also of faith.

Maybe he had cried out to others.  Maybe he had tried silence when told not to shout.  But this time was different and someone heard, and could show he understood.  Endurance and belief finally made a difference.  He could finally see all he had only heard about, and more.

Beyond Mere Existence

Existence is not a subject of celebration, because it is only existence.  It is not quite life but a facsimile, a representation, an almost state.  It reflects, or maybe distorts, what ought to be mirrored.  Yet for many it suffices, perhaps because we are unsure of life.  Unsure what it is, or should be, and afraid to find out.  Life, we may fear, is too great a risk, too much of a challenge.

We share existence with rocks, trees and dirt.  Life is something else and it calls for a truer response.  It is what we share with God.  It may be a frightening and uncertain thing, and it may force a leap into reality a little too real.

But safe as it is, existence will not suffice.  It offers only security.  It is too safe and over sure.  It is too incomplete, too much outside.  It calls for no risk, no change, no humanity.  It compels no honesty and offers only survival as its reward.

What Is Faith

Faith is:  saying yes, denying no, acting on uncertainty, living with doubt, taking a chance, and sometimes it is being hurt.

When Glory Begins

We talk of Jesus returning in glory as though it were to be a sudden event, but maybe instead it is a gradual thing and maybe it has already begun.

Who Is Jesus?

Who is Jesus?  Is he the historic reality, the subject of study, of so much historicizing, philosophizing, theologizing and just plain wonder?  Is he there here and now person, the man in the street, the one we fail to see?  Is he God's son, seated in power, the one returning in glory?  He is probably all of these and more, but what does it all mean?

Trying and Failing and Trying to Figure Out Why

It sometimes seems that attempts to be good, to accomplish greatness, to love life and live by love are destined to fail.  The degree of failure seems in direct proportion to the degree of effort.  In this, God is trying to tell us something.  It is not that we should not try, but just what it is I do not know.

A Human Moment on the Cross

They invited him to come down from the Cross.  Maybe he wanted to and knew it might be their salvation, but he didn't because he couldn't.  The time for miracles, signs and wonders was over.  What he had already said and done had brought him to this point and how he had to want it this way, even though it seemed so hopeless.

He had to believe it was right, that the degradation and pain of this naked suffering was more important.  That his hanging could mean more than his coming down.

He knew he was dying and didn't want to.  It was ending so desperately.  He needed to believe it was what God had asked, that having taken the first step into faith it had to end here, but God, he hoped, could make even this worthwhile.  So he stayed and he suffered and bled, wishing it could be different, yet sure it was more than it seemed.

Inconvenient Facts

We found a fact, a small and maybe less significant one, and as we found it we hid it again, making believe it was never there, hoping our discovery would not be uncovered.  Had it stayed around, it might have endangered the elaborate system we had built, the one that permits no inconsistencies, even though they may be true.

The Risks of Honesty

Are they alienated by our honesty, or by our insistence on it?

Rethinking Solemnity

Today we had a funeral and at the cemetery I was struck by the attitude of the grave diggers, how they ignored the solemnity we had brought to the occasion.  Of course, they had no personal investment.  Their feelings were not tied to the event.  Though respectful, they could, it seemed, include death as part of a joke.  Maybe they were right.  Maybe death is not so serious.  Maybe we, with solemn prayer and faces, were the ones who had not understood.

The Virtue of Poverty

There is no virtue in being poor if it is not freely chosen; nor is being poor a sin.

Forgiving Ingratitude

Had we written the story of the ten lepers, we might have added that the nine had their leprosy restored for their ingratitude.  But that is not how it was.  It's not how God is.  He deals with us from love, overlooking ingratitude, our lack of respect, our lack of response.  He is made no more by our reply, and is no less in its absence.  If this is how God acts with us, maybe we could act the same with one another.  If he has no need of condemnation, maybe we can do without it as well.

Tolerance and Silence

It is easy enough to be tolerant when you have nothing to say.

What God Wanted to Say

For the longest time God had tried to say who he was in relation to everyone else.  While what he said was true, it was only part of what he wanted to tell.  He told stories and gave illustrations.  They agreed and believed but wanted to know more.  They knew he was like a shepherd, or like a king.  They understood he was love, but there was more to see and more to believe.  So a time came for stories to give way to revelation in flesh.  He became man and was like them, as much like them as they were like each other and in this way what had been said and shown was more.  His love became a physical expression, like that of any two people in love whose concern was real, but only in words until they could touch.  Incarnation meant the wonder and beauty of his ardor had blossomed into the embrace of his flesh.

Jesus was what God had wanted to say.  He was what he meant to convey, all the passion, emotion, and fire of which God was capable.  And they understood.  At last, they knew what God was like.  They knew his name and could hold his hand.  He was like they were, and because he was all they were became holier, blending as it did into him.

Nostalgic for Thinking

Are we approaching a time when thinking will again be an acceptable past-time, and philosophy a tolerated way of life?

Prophet or King

Because Jesus could do as the prophet had, because he could multiply bread and feed people, they wanted to make him king.  But because he was a prophet, he knew it would mean nothing so he ran away.  It was foolish for them to think this type of prophet could be their type of king.  They did not see that to make him more would only make him less.

Words Without Meaning

Some days we answer questions no one asked.  Then we solve the problems they never had.  We think we are doing great things when we have all the words but none of the meaning.

What Most Organizations Have

In most organizations, there are far more mouths than there are hands and feet.  Everyone is willing to speak, but no one wants to do anything.  We have plenty of planners.

The Spotlight

The minister could not even let him have death to himself.  Even there, the Church had to be star of the show.

The Question of God

The question of God prompts any number of answers.  The response each of us offers will be adequate for no one else, and for us only for now.  In general, God as he is in and to himself cannot be known.  Although he has given some indication of his nature or cahracter, and while attempting to make himself known through Scripture and events of history, they are only indications.  Even in Jesus there is no definition, none that does away with the essential mystery.  God remains mostly unknown.

The questions we ask of God may only suffice for today, just as questions asked yesterday were right only in that time.  There is now a need to know and so ask something else.  This is so because the perspective from which we examine the question has changed, and so has God.  Neither of us is the same, nor should we be.

We can begin defining him by saying God is, even though we can say so only through faith.  The statement can be supported by no scientific evidence, nor need it be.  It is a faith question, and so is subject to neither proof nor denial.  Assuming, then, that God is, what do we say about him?  It follows (or should) that he is a God concerned with the well-being of creation.  This is the testimony of Scripture, and Jesus who says God should be called Father, someone willing to forgive our past and share our future, wishing us completeness and offering us freedom.

In light, however, of evil we might wonder about his goodness.

My own inclination is to say that God is good, that he intends or desires goodness, but the same is not always true of us.  This is not an adequate response, but it seems true that God created goodness, entrusting it to us, to use as we wish even if it will be misused sometimes.  If we use poorly what is available to us, we are free to do so, and where the evil is beyond even us, then is it God's?  Where it seems to derive from nature, from the nature of creation, then maybe it does.  Maybe it is a part of the system of creation that there are aspects beyond anyone's control, where choices are not available and things simply are, and are to no one's fault or credit - neither ours nor God's.

I usually find myself saying that in spite of the evidence we sometimes say God is good, and he is so because we believe him to be.  As we say he is thought he may not be, we say he is good in the face of suggestions to the contrary.

The same thing occurs when we consider any other attribute or quality.  When we say he is forgiving, real, alive, active in the life of individuals and the process of creation; when we say he is concerned about us and seeks closeness to us, there remains a possibility that this is not so.  Each question begins and ends in faith.  We simply say he is and is acting in a particular way, that he is possessed of certain qualities that add to or define who he is.

There is never proof.  There may be contradictory evidence.  Faith is all.  It is all we have to draw upon and invest in, and is made more real by the propect it may be the wrong answer.  Even if not wrong, it may not be adequate.  Were it adequate all of the time it might then not be faith, since faith must grow and does so only as doubts and new questions arise.

After calming the storm, did Jesus go back to sleep?

Losing and Finding Faith

Their son went to college and they are upset.  They say he lost his faith.  Really, he just lost theirs.  His own he was yet to find.

In Receiving, Giving

Elijah was demanding, asking everything the widow had, but receiving it he supplied more, so that she would have more to give.

When We Live

We can remember past events and anticipate future ones, but we have to live in the moment.

The Salvation of the Church

The Church came thinking it was bringing salvation.  In time, it realized it had come to find its own salvation in this place, and among these people.

The Vulnerability of Names

When Moses first met God, he asked his name.  God replied, "Yahweh," an evasive response meaning, "I am who I am," which conveys the notion, "Don't ask."  Maybe God thought by having his name they might want to possess him.  He did not want them to have that access, but his son was different.  He was named and called.  He sought, rather than hid, an identity.  He tried to move beyond the limit into touchability, accumulating names as though they were titles.  He was Jesus, and Jew, and man.  He became vulnerable, by choice.  We might wonder did he thereby become more God than God had thus far been.