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.