Speaking in Slogans

He has decided that what will not fit on a bumper sticker may not be worth saying.

Getting Better

He agrees it was what was best and that it was, in fact, the only alternative.  He could think of no other way to do it, but then he asked what else there might be since he did not want to do the only thing.  Being better was O.K., but getting there was something else, and that idea of having to be better forever was something else all together.  Talking about it was easy, even exhilarating, but doing it was so far beyond talk, and that was the tough part.

Realization

Trust, it seems, is the hardest part of all.

Laughter and Tears

There are silly and funny things, the things we could only laugh about together.  They are as silly or funny still, but now when I smile I sometimes cry as well.

Make A New Rule

Rather than be upset by changes in the schedule or the occurrence of the unexpected, why not make it the rule that schedules will change and that unexpected things will occur on a regular, but unpredictable, basis.

No Contest

Life is not a contest.  Make it one and you may not win.

Our Contract With Life

There is no need to be afraid of what is supposed to happen.  We may resent how we die, or when, but not that we die.  That was supposed to be.  It is part of our contract with life.

Some Trades

There is no winning in some trades.  Better to know at the outset that second best is the top prize.

The Age of Children

Children are never the right age.  We want them to be older until they are.

Our Shared Problems

We think our problems unique when they are instead unique expressions or formulations of a very common concern, the problems each of us has in our own way, but we are hardly alone in having them.

Life's Curve

Life's shape is like that of the normal curve, bulging in the middle and more placid at its ends.

The Ends of Life

In the middle of life so many things seem so important, and probably they are -- at least some of them.  There is as well a clutter of things to be done, careers to be established or changed, schools coming to an end.  There is family and their care.  So many needs, so little time.  But the ends of life -- its beginning and end -- are less cluttered, more free.  They are times of less care, fewer demands shouting all at once.

At the beginning there is a freedom in reliance on the adults in one's life and a wonder that makes each day so new, unhampered by the sameness and care waiting down the road.  And at the end, while less dramatic, there is also a serenity as we let go, sometimes reluctantly, of what life has been and move within, to greater depths for the lessening of life's breadth.  It is a contemplative time, a time to move out of your body and into your heart.

Childhood Passing

He spoke of the sadness of children's toys set aside, of innocence passing as they become the people they would now be.  It is sad only to those of us who watch.  For those children, leaving childhood is what is supposed to be.  Maybe we find it sad because we, like the toys, are being left more in their past.

No Deeper Meaning

Why must they think there is always a more subtle distinction, a more devious explanation, a really real reason why?  Why is it so difficult to accept the obvious, the most evident, to forego a deeper -- if not a darker -- meaning?

A Narrower Focus

As time goes by our focus narrows.  The global problems we so readily solved no longer seem important.  The universal application is also narrowed and we focus instead upon specific people asking particular questions.  Instead of world hunger, this one hungry person absorbs our compassion and peace as a concept is less important than peace in just one heart.

What Suffering Builds

Suffering builds more fear and sadness than character.

Advertising Ignorance

Seeing some bumper stickers and what is written across some shirts, you could wonder why some people so readily proclaim their ignorance.

A New Age, A New Self

About the time we are at ease being a particular age with a definite role it is time to change, to become a new person with a new age's requirement and role.  If the earlier stage was not satisfying it can be a welcome change.  If it was a more comfortable one the change may be less well received.  Either way, it is time to say goodbye.  A new role, age and self are waiting.

Fewer Resources

With all of the conflicts you might wonder how much of the earth's resources are blown up each day.

A Less Formal Faith

We seem to be becoming much less specific in our religious definition, less inclined to see ourselves as Catholic or Christian.  We are less focused on a specific formulation or particular perspective, as though the approach to God (and God to us) were less significant than is the fact of approaching.  It is a broadening, or deepening, that may rely less on the form than on the fact -- and even "fact" is not so correct an expression since we move inward from fact toward a less specific relationship, a closer union, that is not dependent on formulation.  Fact may be true, but it maintains or establishes a distance -- a formality that is not so necessary.  Formality is associated with things like God's grandeur and our corresponding insignificance.  It may well be fact that God is majestic and that in comparison we are decidedly less, but we are going beyond a religious experience based on comparison; and so while that fact (and others) and even some ceremonies that will embody them might maintain a role or have a function, it is a much less significant one.  All the titles we might have used to magnify God served only to shrink the contribution we would make to whatever we might share.

This is not to deny the truth expressed in any one approach, or to lessen the value of any tradition.  It may instead be the contrast between the specific, with its more narrow and so more intense assessment, and a more general, or more inclusive, sense of God -- which might not note so well the distinctions but offers in its place a greater or fuller realization.  At least so it seems.

Values

How come he thought the discussion on values had ended after he spoke of money?

Trapped

She is trapped, having to be who people blame her for being, and having no foothold in that community that thinks too well of itself to admit her to their company.

The Doubt We Borrow From Others

We may never be entirely without doubt, at least in terms of ourselves.  There will, in significant areas, be concern about whether I am doing it right, am I being me in the way that is best.  There is also the doubt we borrow from others, wondering will they approve of how I am being me.  This latter is the less significant consideration though it can loom quite large, and "them" -- as we fear or as we see them -- can seem to take control.  If that is the case today, then take it back.

Beyond The Facts

As long as the discussion is of fact, there is little concern.  The distress comes along with the interpretation of them.

It Goes Well Until It Doesn't

It goes well until it doesn't; and I'm OK until I'm not.  Those times happen and they happen sometimes so suddenly.  Even after all this time they can hurt so much.

Trusting In People

Even for some of the more devout, religion is not as essential -- particularly as it might be in the expectation of some theologians.  It might be a guide to life, but life it is not, since life for most people is how they live day to day with one another and that is not a speculative process.  It is how they will be within themselves, and for that we look to our hearts rather than to anything else.  Religion is an aspect and might be an almost constant influence, but it is more the script than it is the performance.  This is probably as it needs to be.  In our society and culture it is not as though it could reasonably be otherwise.  And so, when we offer it and proclaim a particular way of being or believing we might trust it will be received as well as it can be and religion will be as much a part of people's lives as it can be for them.  This means too that we will let that be so, trusting in people as we do in God to provide or recognize that we may not be as able to see as we might like, or to belief as we might wish.

We owe nothing to the craziness of our lives

People's Essence

If we begin with the proposition that people are essentially evil we will need mechanisms to monitor and control the appearance of their limitations in daily behavior.  It will mean the multiplying of rules, the avoidance of trust -- since trust is incompatible with control -- and penalties to inflict as we catch them being themselves.  There is no opportunity to relax our vigilance since that fallen nature, their essential limitation, may surface at any moment in any setting.  It is an exhausting prospect, more for the maker of rules, the controller and examiner.  Be it parent, Church, or state, whoever has that role can never rest.  Having the power, or at least claiming it, means having then to use it, applying it or being ready to.

If we decline this proposition there is no need to watch or penalize.  We would need only to celebrate the goodness that arises -- a goodness we would never see if our search were for evil instead.  We could congratulate people on the pursuit of their essence, knowing when they found it they would have hold of something wonderful.

It seems an easy choice.

Just Stop

Should you notice you are acting odd, stop.  Save wondering about why for another time.

The Blind Man's Way

Jesus told the blind man to go his way, but instead he followed.  Being able to see, it had become his way too.

Lesson About Others

It has taken a while to realize I can like some people but let them also do poorly.  It took a bit longer to learn I could dislike others and let them do well.

Overlooking Our Success

Are we so fragile we can overlook successes and define ourselves in terms of what others think could be weakness or incompleteness, and do so without even knowing that might be their thought or only our fear?

Being Present

We cannot celebrate this moment if we are worried into the future or mired in the past.  Whatever either might contain, leave it there.

Out of the Conversation

If you decline the pursuit of people's indignation or lose interest in how they make money, and how much, you may soon be out of the conversation.

Grasping For Inclusion

They try so hard not to be alone but some, no matter how hard they try, are not included while others, being the focus for now, are far less concerned.  They set, rather than follow, the agenda.  But most are struggling, grasping at being part and it sometimes seems no price would be too high if it means they would be included, even if only for a little while.  We say this is an aspect of adolescence, but maybe it never goes away, not entirely.

Sisters Seeking Reassurance

Mary went to visit Elizabeth, and I am sure she did so to be helpful.  But maybe she also wanted to see if that sign mentioned by the angel was actually occurring, if the confirmation of what he had said was really taking place within Elizabeth, and if it was true it could also be true within herself.

Presumption of Sharing

It is presumptuous to expect people referred to therapy will readily share the intimacy of thought and feeling.  Perhaps if they did we should worry more about them.

The Intensity of Response

We can still think the intensity with which we respond is the more essential part, that if we grimace and shout or run very fast in so many circles we are accomplishing something or are seeming to.  Seeming can suffice.

The Need for Status

People require status.  It may, in the eyes of others, appear negative, but he individual -- sometimes with great difficulty and denial -- will maintain a sense that it has meaning, if not always importance.  The investment in status is a large one and the longer or more intensely it is made and defended the more it must be defended.  Status goes quickly beyond a question of what someone might do to become one of who he is.

One More Question

There is always one more question and whether or not we address it may not be so important.

Playing "What If"

There is no end to the game of "what if."  There is no end and very little satisfaction.  About most of it there is nothing to be done.  Even when we think how differently we might have acted, what we instead might have said, the others in this fantasy have, or would have, their own "what ifs" -- ones that might have been no more compatible than they were that first time.  I suppose as long as we can see it as fantasy, as a game, there is no great cost in playing, except a bit of sadness once in awhile.

Prayer and Anxiety

There is a falseness in doing for a purpose other than the doing, and so if I were to pray as a means of avoiding anxiety I should not be surprised were my anxiety instead to increase; or were I to perform some act for the edification of another rather than allowing that act to be only itself.  It might be better seen as deceptive than edifying.

Pursuit of the Spiritual Life

It is all right to pursue a spiritual life, to live within the depth of oneself, without condemning or in any way diminishing the life beyond, the external world.  One is not better for making the other in some way less, or -- worse still -- evil.  What is good only in a comparative sense is not so very good after all.

Ultimate Questions

Most people do not feel obliged to answer ultimate questions.  They are not even inclined to think such questions might exist.  Their lives are not diminished by the lack.  So what does that tell you about your favored past time?

Accepting the Kingdom

It may not be a question of accepting the kingdom as children accept it, but rather accepting the kingdom as we accept children -- recognizing they are innocent and full of wonder, that they can be made to laugh but will sometimes need also to cry, and that they see with a newness that makes life so very clear.  It is perhaps the willingness to believe the best and the ability to be amazed that Jesus also asks us to accept, seeing the kingdom as complete but not yet finished, and its determination to be loved as it loves.

Confirming Our Fears

We are not afraid people will think us less capable, since that would only be a thought.  Rather it is fear they will see the essential inadequacy we think may be there.

Waiting For What's Next

There are times throughout life when nothing is happening.  These can seem either empty or times when we are waiting, preparing or perhaps lying fallow in anticipation of whatever might be next.

Making Nonsense

About the time I think I have it making sense, there is something -- in fact or in memory -- to remind me it is not really that way.  At least not always, and not in some important ways.

The Wonder In Others

He meets people in order to meet them, not to impress them or win them over, or even to overcome them in some competition where winning is only a way to stay ahead of loss.  In this way he has the style of Brother Albert, who shared so much in such simple ways offering such wonderful aspects of God.  The longer I knew Albert, the more I noticed a disinclination to talk about his own life, as though there were nothing to be said on that topic, especially when compared to the wonder he seemed to find in others.

Earning One's Worth

The judge on the radio was saying he wanted to earn as much as did the attorneys who appeared in his courtroom, as though money were the measure of one's significance.  The reward for being a judge is being a judge.  It is the same with other professions where money alone is the measure.  Ballplayers do not measure their ability by how well they play, but by how well they are paid.  Therapists rate their skill by stating what they charge.  It is measuring being by a standard that does not apply.

Misinterpreting the Gospel

Why is it those re-discovering the Gospel seem almost to re-invent its meaning, making it so much more punitive than it was meant to be, so inclusive only of the saved, and seeming so to delight in being within so they can giggle and scoff at those on the outside?

Becoming Ourselves

We gather information so that it can be a resource, and what of it is of value will be incorporated, either now or at another time.  But essentially we are to be developing our own sense of what we will do, basing it upon what we want to share, what expertise in living we will make available.  The aim is not for us to become someone else, and so while we may consider that what others have thought, said, or believed has been important we will be most adept as we become ourselves being us doing this therapy, consulting with this person about his or her life, and helping in their making of reasonable and productive choices.

Life In Reverse

We seem to spend life visiting old scenes, old friendships and lost loves wondering might we have seen them more clearly, appreciated them more, or loved them as they deserved.

Adam's Companion

If God really thought Adam would welcome as his companion a cow or bird, he had a fair amount to learn about this person he had made.

Nearness in Presence

"Rejoice," says St. Paul, "because the Lord is near."  But it is not a nearness in terms of time or of distance.  Instead it is a closeness of presence.  It is the proximity of his being and ours joining, a nearness filled with anticipation, more than were he only near in time or space -- a gap he might close so that we might see or touch each other, but not become one another in the union of his presence and ours.

Crossing Over

Just when, Lord, does it stop being hope and become self-deception?

Anxiety and Expectations

We become most anxious when we have an expectation that is unreasonable.  If we expect ourselves to do what cannot be done it is an unreasonable and unattainable assignment, one at which we can only fail, and in face of that fact anxiety is a reasonable reaction.  The more unreasonable the task, the greater (and more reasonable) is the anxiety we feel.  Better to have expectations that are within our competence.

God's Needs

God does not need to be defended or need our faith in him to be justified.

Truth About Pain

Part of what we can offer is letting people know they need not pretend that pain is really pleasing, good, or satisfying.

Be Here Now

You do not learn all of it, not now or ever.  And, despite your wish that they would, all the world is not waiting to hear or read what you have thought.

Becoming Who We Are

Being grown up can seem much less appealing than the irresponsible acts of childhood or even the fumbling and seemingly foolish ways of adolescence, but to visit them -- or more so, to think these bygone ways are for us to live in -- is to overlook who we are becoming or who we are at this moment.  Childhood is not as carefree as it may seem from here and the invitation is not to a peaceful place; and adolescence is perhaps more distressing than it is foolish, more a place of turmoil than of peace, even for those whose place it is today.

Stop Earning

Unless we feel we deserve and that we do not have to keep earning, there is no sense of ever being anyone on our own.  It would all be striving but never attaining.

Children

Despite what we say there remains a tendency to act as though children were, if not adults (albeit short ones), then very much in training to become adults -- the people we seek to develop rather than the ones who are actually here.

A Feeling to Identify With

He seems more comfortable with his depression than he had been with other feelings.  Although it must be as uncomfortable as he says, it may offer a familiarity he finds comforting and the depression fosters a passivity that may be more in line with his way of being.  It seems self-reinforcing and maybe the depression has become an obligation as well as a reaction.  It is an unhappy home, but having been here so often it is maybe less threatening than other places might be.

There are others settling the same way into their anger.  Maybe each person acquires a favored or characterizing feeling, one upon which they can center and by which they define themselves.  This happens to the detriment of more thorough and satisfying development as individuals and as members of a society that is not really better for their perfecting of this sad or hostile aspect.

No Answers

There are perhaps no answers to really important questions.  They refer to more essential things than words can contain.

On The Journey

Elijah went a day into the desert and thought he had arrived.  God sent a messenger to say he had hardly begun.  Elijah had found a place in which to die.  That was not the point of the journey.

A Roadside Chapel and God's Love

The times I think of what Eucharist should be I recall Mike Higgins offering the cup in consecration at Sabana Grande.  It was a roadside chapel and hardly filled, except with God's love and Michael's offering of what God would have most wanted to be.  A gentle invitation to share in his life as well as his presence, a very welcoming gesture saying that God, in this celebration, was delighted he had come.

Faith But No Joy

She was belting out the hymns and proclaiming those responses as though their being heard was a personal responsibility.  At the sign of peace, I thought her eyes would jump right out with all the intensity of sincerity they were intended to convey.  In between she criticized her child, and for all the noise and despite the mask there seemed no joy in her celebration.

God's Bread

Gold told Moses he would send them bread, but when in the morning it was there on the ground they wondered what it was.  It did not look like bread.  It had not been made as bread was.  It may not even have had the taste of bread, but God is sometimes like that.  Things are not what they seem and words change their meaning with very little notice.

The Child Who Doesn't Fight

There was a child today on the playground, intent upon playing and being involved in what the game should have been.  But every so often his friend would grab him and want to wrestle, as though wrestling were a parallel game, something one did as an interlude -- a way to pretend (but not really make believe) there was a contest or challenge as important as that game where they mostly laughed and where the rules had prevailed.

It was disconcerting to the boy and he seemed not to know how he ought to respond.  Fighting, even if couched as a game, seemed foreign to him.  Watching, I sometimes wished he would pick up his friend and hurl him the length of the playground.  I was also glad it was not in his heart to fight, and in those moments I hoped that fighting would never become a choice he would make.  It can be hard, I thought, to have his sensitivity, especially in those moments when others might rather be more primitive, but it is in that sensitivity that the world will find its future if it is planning to become more than a desert.

Wealthy But Not Rich

People who might not mind being wealthy do not really want the trouble of becoming rich.  It says something favorable about priorities.

Unlikely Heroes

For awhile it looked as though business people -- the lions of Wall Street -- were going to be the heroes of the half-decade, as truckers were for awhile in the seventies.

Faith In Ourselves

Life is a simple process, one into which we invite complications on the assumption that it gives us a measure of importance, or perhaps we cannot easily tolerate the simplicity of it.  We are maybe unwilling to believe it can be this easy, but it is best lived by eliminating the pretense that we have choices we do not have, or that we live lives other than our own.  We should live our lives and make choices in ways that are faithful to ourselves, and trust that other people in their lives will do the same.

Changing

No matter its intensity or duration, change does not occur in the discussion or planning of it.  Change takes place in changing.

We have no debt to the craziness of our lives

Far Within

Far within is where the universe lies.

Holding On To Hurt

If they cannot yet forget the pain they have caused each other, they are not obliged to remember its vividness, stirring up the hurt to fuel their anger.  Things are remembered, acknowledged, and can be allowed to fade even if they will never entirely disappear.  To recall them, to avert the prospect of forgetting, is a different process, one which empowers the hatred, forcing it to the center of the stage where it no longer belongs.  He says, "Don't think I have forgotten."  She says, "Don't you think I ever will."  Perhaps anger is all they feel able to share.  Maybe they think it is all they ever really had, and as they fan the flame time is going by.  It is time contaminated by the hurt, the recrimination and so whatever years remain are now mortgaged to the pain they feel and that they think must be inflicted.  The only saving grace may be the inability to make this rage a legacy, to pass it on as do some nations and peoples who feel the curse must be treasured and enshrined, given to the trust of children in danger, they feel, of loving instead.

Finding Faith In Ourselves

We stand in our way.  The prospect of change is more frightening than is the familiarity of that failure that guarantees our weakness, our incompleteness.  If we let go, we would be as faithful to ourselves, only now to who we can be rather than to whom we may have been, that part that has so far wanted to be the entire self.  If we would become our failings and treasure our limitations, it is perhaps because we have no appreciation of our value, the meaning we have in ourselves and in God.  To hold so tightly to limitation is to lack faith in us, to have been too wary, too frightened to hope.

Being Loved

Don't be so afraid to be loved.

To Fill A Heart

He speaks well but it is as yet only from the fullness of his head.  If ever he can add the fullness of his heart it will ring that much truer.  But it takes time and any number of experiences, plus a measure of pain, to fill a heart.

Starting Over

Starting over again.  It is not a new experience.  It has in fact become routine.  Perhaps it would be better to see starting over as the rule and so be less surprised each time new beginnings are called for.

Losing Time

Time has stopped being so very important.  The future reaches to tomorrow, or maybe a week.  Nothing more than a week ago calls me, unless it is something so very far in the past that it was filled with us together.  Future might in some ways be never.  What is over is often as vital as anything today might offer.

Less Intense

Does less intensity mean greater understanding?

About Things

About the things in life we can ask are they necessary, to what extent do they complete us and to what aspect do they contribute.  If they are not essential, we need not get rid of them but we should know that we could, that we have a choice to do without them.  We would be no less were we to make that choice, and might even more more if it would bring us closer to the center of our being.

Being Right

He not only wants to be right.  He also wants people to agree that he is.  Can't win there since it conditions his choice and minimizes the rightness available.  Better he just be right on his own terms.

Rising Above Nationhood

Nations are not unlike individuals.  The terrorized become terrorists.  The powerless seizing control become as ruthless in their wielding of it.  But neither individuals nor nations have a right to the justifications they offer.  Knowing the cause does not permit our continuing what went wrong.  We can appreciate what it has meant and how the rage developed but containing, stopping, and moving beyond violence are of greater value and provide dignity to who we will become, in spite of what happened before.

Public Judgment

That idea of a general judgment seems so in line with our tradition, so steeped in the power of guilt, a guilt made more powerful for the potential of its being so public.  Intruding on those secret moments, the solitary and hidden weakness rather than the already public crimes, the ones some may not see as crimes at all but tolerable and perhaps applaudable signs of one's cunning and power.

Your Responsibility

If I do not feel responsible for you, it does not mean I am indifferent to your needs.  It means only that I do not feel responsible.

Argument Regret

The conversation, if that is what we would call it, lasted no more than a minute or two but in that time I was offered five arguments if I was willing to have them.  None was over anything significant.  We might have pretended we were engaged in essential points of discussion, exchanged some guilt, talked more loudly than was necessary and for a moment felt more justified than there was reason to.  Better to have declined.

Welcoming Nothingness

Nothingness is not a negative state, nor is emptiness something to avoid.  This being without is instead a goal.  It is the elimination of what is extraneous, the achieving of an equanimity unavailable when life (and ourselves as individuals) are filled with, or obscured by, what would draw us from our more essential being.  So, it is at this point of nothingness that we are in balance and when empty there is no threat to what might be lost since it is not loss after all.

The Choice Not to Correct Someone

If they are wrong, if they are so much less perfect than we want, if they are so lacking in whatever regard, are they made more complete for our telling them so?

No Longer A Crisis

When a crisis regularly occurs it is no longer a crisis.  When you are continually frantic it should stop seeming a surprise.  This is the routine, the normal course of your life.  Better to treat it as such, or to wonder might you still do well on a more even keel.  Being this hectic makes you memorable enough, but it does not increase your significance.  Stop getting ready to jump and you may not need to.

Those Who Should Be Cherished

Life sometimes seems most cruel to those it should cherish, to those who add to its value, who see into its heart.

You Be You

"Be still and know I am God."  Everything else is already taken care of and my being me means you don't have to.  You need not try being God and doing what God would do.  Do instead what makes you most yourself.  Become stillness.  Become quiet, and be at peace.

Small Talk

I haven't enough small talk.  I don't always know that until I am standing around in a crowd.

The Paradoxes of Belief

We are reluctant to pursue the paradoxes of which belief is made.  We would rather it make a sense we can accept rather than offer the contradictions of dying and rising, giving up to possess, and the notion that sharing essential things is the only way to take hold of them.  It would be simpler were things themselves rather than their opposites, if we could live only by living and have only by having, if we could be ourselves as we burrowed deeper rather than when reaching farther.  But if we could do it that way, it would not be belief.

Giving Is The Getting

It is not that you give up everything and then start receiving and continue to receive until to have gotten your hundredfold.  There is no getting some and then getting more, but rather the giving is the getting.  The giving away is the receiving.  It is the whole thing.  No need to worry what to do with the hundredfold.  It is right there.  Grab hold of the nothingness.  It is the entire thing.

Letting Go of Silence

He thinks by his silence to protect them, but from what he is not so sure.  If he began to speak, if he ever started to say whatever it might be, he thinks he might find he'd said that very worst thing and then the hurt would be done, and could not be taken back.  Still it is probably best to do away with this fear of what may not really be so terrible.  It is a kind thought to want to protect, but what has no name may not be so great a threat, and fear of the fear is a more pressing concern.  So, let it go.

Time Goes By

It seems a year gone by is not very long, but a year from now is not worth considering much less planning for.  It is that far away.  Some days, ten or even twenty years ago is almost close enough to touch.  Moments and memories in that time are so vital, so real, while tomorrow offers so little of interest.  There are things long over and friends long dead who touch me with such power, but today -- while it offers its own delights and satisfaction -- is never quite at that level.  It is not fillable with the same intensity or sadness or joy.  I sometimes wonder why this is so, but not very often and less even as time goes by.

Indifference or Hope

Is this indifference or is it better called hope?  Is it faith or do I just not care?

Who Are We

Are we good people who are sometimes wrong, or bad people who are on occasion correct?  What is the defining characteristic?  What establishes the expectation of who we will be?  Which is rule and what is exception to it?

Warning

He was welcomed by the saved, but they treated him as a trophy.  He was then welcomed back among sinners, who knew he was there now to stay.

The Thing About Truth

It is obvious but I was surprised to read we do not own truth.  We accept and can participate in it.  We can act upon it, but truth is not possessed.  Its being does not permit such control.  We can own an opinion or have a thought, but truth is different.

Trying Something New

The trouble with trying something new is you may be successful at it and, even more a danger, you might like it and so will have to either pursue or drop it, knowing there is a cost to either choice.  Of course, when it is time to try that new whatever it may be it is time and so you may as well do it.  Consequence is not the consideration.

Big Birds At The Feeder

The bigger birds arrive at the feeder with so much fluttering and flapping, strutting about in their importance only to look so helpless trying to perch where smaller birds could so easily stand.  Size then only makes them appear so much more frantic.

More Than A Burning Bush

If that bush were only burning, it would not have been something to which Moses needed to attend.

Waking Jesus

They had already decided they were drowning and woke Jesus only to ask if it would bother him.  Some decisions are premature, some questions superfluous.

Outwitting The Animals

He was going hunting.  He said it was to prove himself smarter, or at least more clever, than a wild animal in the forest.  Why this comparison had to be made, and why the answer to the question of smarter was not instead who might be dumber, and why it could be dealt with only by killing I did not ask.  I doubt, however, the challenge had been issued by the animals or that they felt their integrity was at stake in quite the same way.  This year he did not tell me his hunting them was helpful to the animals, that they were better for being fewer, an argument less likely to prove his point about being so much smarter than a deer.

Well, he is back and like last year he did not see any of his rivals, only other potential outwitters of animals.  I guess he will have to go to the supermarket and buy supper from someone who apparently outwitted a cow.

God Is Not In The Wanting

If God is everything, or if everything partakes of God, then in having only God -- in seeking only union with him -- we will have everything without the intrusive desire to also possess them.  By union with God we share in all that shares with him, or with which he shares himself.  Owning things one at a time is a far less appealing alternative.  Wanting to grasp things (or people or even ideas), to incorporate them as my very own is to invite such tragic poverty.

It is in dying that we live, and in letting go that we have.  It is in the dying that death becomes unimportant, and in letting go that possession stops being of value.  We can, by letting go of everything, allow it a freedom to be only itself rather than owned.  Letting go frees us to have in the detached way that God has, a way that encourages thriving rather than stifling and limiting, possessing as my own what I must then keep from belonging to anyone else.

Grasping, excluding others who may also want whatever it is, seems so limiting, so demanding of energy.  In having, we are the ones possessed.  Better to be instead in God, and more fully within myself.

Constraints

Rather than increasing our freedom each concession imposes a new limitation, a constraint upon achieving the fullness of our selves or the union with God of which we are capable.

Waiting for the Raising

There is no question of our being raised on the last day, but between now and then I could do with some raising.  Today, in fact, would be OK.

Gifts in the Giving

To the one who had, more was given.  From him who had little, the little was taken.  In the taking away is there a freeing from its possession, a liberation from fear of its loss, so that now instead of having little he can be all?  Is there also a gift in the giving of more to the one who has less?  If there is, it may be a lesser gift, unless it somehow increases being as well.

God's Kingdom in Us

God may be within each person, but his kingdom is in our midst.  The relationship we share as individuals is what makes us a kingdom.  Coming together makes the plan come to fulfillment.  Sharing with each other what God offers to us one by one is the kingdom.  Coming together turns its coming into arrival.

Indulging A Friend

My friend wanted to tell me how real and powerful evil could be.  He even wanted to personify it, and so we talked of Satan.  Now, I would as soon not have gotten into that since Satan is not for me the reality he seems for my friend.  I would be as pleased to dismiss Satan all together since, while he may offer some explanation of evil, he does so at the expense of more reasonable explanations.  I am uncomfortable with the thought of a power such as this.  It adds nothing to either my faith or my understanding, and should my friend ask do I believe in Satan, do I think him real, I would as soon say no.  But my friend does not ask.  We stay friends and we move on to another question.

Said Out Loud

I sometimes say aloud what I had only intended to think.  I forget people may be listening.  But it is usually what I meant and so while it seems, and indeed may be, eccentric I usually feel no need to call it back.

More or Less

For being more are they but a different kind of less?

A Life to Improve

Other lives seem so inviting.  We readily rush to alter, or improve, them.  The problem is those other lives are not our own.  If you want a life to alter, or improve, work on the one with your name attached.

Being Opinionated

Being opinionated only becomes a problem when you have dopey opinions, a category into which we would place anyone's but out own.

You Are Goodness

We act sometimes as though goodness existed as a separate entity, something outside of and far beyond us; and to approach it would be to leave ourselves, to climb out of our own being and denying who we had become, or who we had always been.  But goodness is not outside, nor is it beyond.  It is instead at the center of our being.  It is the core around which we have developed, the sources as well as the goal of our progression.  It is then a process completed by reaching into rather than fleeing from ourselves.  We are good and always have been.  Do not be afraid to recognize it as your nature.  It is a name to which you can answer, rather than one you can only call.

At The Extremes

Orthodoxy enables more radical ideas.  It provides a secure anchor, a base from which those ideas can progress and a ground to which they can be drawn (at times reluctantly) back, and from which they can again proceed.  The other aspect is that heterodoxy offers the perhaps vicarious exploration that (as reluctantly) draws tradition forward, as much a brake on retrogression as is tradition on an impulsive flight forward.  There may be no need for either end of the spectrum to welcome the presence of the other, though acknowledging the service provided might make co-existing a less trying task.

Risks of Trust

If I would let everyone be who he is I would not feel this burden that never was mine.  It would mean trusting them, but there are few other choices.  But I find it so much easier to trust those about whom I care less, those whose lives do not touch mine.  Even then, it is not a real choice, unless you would chose that anxiety you need not have.

Come aside, not to visit or even renew. Come aside this time to stay.

At the Point of Nothingness

Is it really at the point of nothingness that all is present?  Am I really willing to find out?

Exceptions

Have you too many exceptions?  Change the rule.

Changing More Rather Than Less

When we try to make changes one at a time there is always something undone, an opportunity to focus on the incomplete aspect.  And if that effort is unsuccessful, if the change does not occur, there is a greater likelihood we will give up on that one, and on all other aspects where change is warranted.  No matter how long we have been successful, no matter how many times we have overcome this temptation, the one lapse undoes it all if there is just one change to be considered.  We are then more inclined to give up on growing in this area and in all those others we were going to get to later.

It may be better to instead undertake a lot at once.  There will then be greater opportunity to see success in life, less inclination to give up.  If on this day I am not able to successfully deal with one area, I still have others on which to focus and I can begin again with that area tomorrow, rather than let it go forever.

Humanity

People seem relieved to know we are all so much alike, that while it may be expressed in differing ways each has fears, doubt, weakness as well as virtue and strength.  We each need someone to share, a friend to confide in, a hope that if today has not gone well tomorrow may be better.  We each have an aspect of what all of us sometimes hide.  It is humanity.

The Distance of Divinity

As soon as he says Jesus is one of us, he must qualify it lest we in the sharing somehow diminish who he is as God.  So he says Jesus is human, adding he has all our traits save sin.  He died, but it was for us that he did it.  He sorrowed, but it was as an example for us and if he was angry it was a righteous indignation.  It would be OK to say Jesus is like us and to leave it at that.  To say he shares our life by his living.  There is no need to protect him from us, from the humanness of us all.  Maybe he is instead protecting us.  Maybe in the marking of distinctions he is really preventing our being lost in the distance of divinity.

Why People Chose Darkness

Jesus told Nicodemus that people had loved the darkness and hated the light, but no one loves darkness.  Darkness is more often than not a frightening place, more filled with despair than with any sort of comfort or satisfaction.  If they had not sought the light it was perhaps not shining so brightly or it had not seemed so welcoming.  Or maybe the light had been as threatening as anything else, as hard to understand.

When to Keep to a Cause

The futility of a cause is not reason enough to abandon it, especially when pursuit of it is how we are faithful to ourselves.

Questions and Answers

If you ask the question, you need not answer it as well.  It is not a dialogue if you play both parts.

Lost in the Counting

The problem with money is that it is measurable, and like anything where the more or less of it is so evident we can extend its significance beyond a reasonable point so that more equals better and having is confused with being.  If I have or lack money is not a measure of my goodness, nor is it indicative of success in anything more than acquiring and holding onto money, and if this is so in terms of me it is as true of others.  My assessment of who they are ought not get tangled in what they have, the number of their dollars.  It is hard not to count and think that in the counting we have done something important.

The Decision to Say Nothing

I don't need an answer to every question, an opinion on every topic.  I can add at least as much to some discussions by saying nothing.

Letting Go of Burdens

If I were to let everyone be who he or she is, I would not feel this burden that never was mine.

The Need to Understand

There may be more to understand, but need we understand all of it now?

Snow and Spring

Sights and smells surrendered by snow.
Roads yield where they've broken.
Cars splashing through our street.
It is not quite spring.
     (a first and last gasp of poetry, 1-27-88)

Reinterpreting Abraham and Isaac's Story

The best understanding I could wring from the story of Abraham and Isaac is to see it as an injunction against human sacrifice, a way of saying that if you understand this as God's wish you had not correctly understood.  This, of course, was not what the writer had in mind but then it was a different time, a time when God had something different to say.  Now we hopefully know there is more to parenting than an act of creating and that it would be diminishing to suggest either God or Abraham had been involved in a sacrifice destructive of their own essences.

The Great Paradox

While television feels obliged to offer spectacle, there can be only so many contests of the century and great debates.  Trying to generate that much expectation means there will be a good deal of disappointment coming to your screen.

Being Churchmen

So good at being priests they were so poor at being churchmen.

Belt-Buckling Turning Point

It is not among life's more momentous choices but sometime in your middle years you will have to decide whether to buckle your belt above or below the middle of you.  It is a decision physics forces upon us, another of the things that points out our humanity.  No need to be grateful for the instruction, but like other decisions there is not a reasonable way to pretend it need not be made.

Beware of Logic

We are so used to reason and logic we fail to recognize them as captors rather than as guides.

Letting St. Elsewhere Go

He asked was I planning to save the last episode of "St. Elsewhere."  He said he was, that he had saved the last episode of "M.A.S.H." and of "Hill Street Blues."  He wished there had been a way to save that last "Mary Tyler Moore Show," but then you can't have them all, unless you caught it as a re-run.  I wondered was this the myth of the VCR, and of other things too.  That copying or saving is the same as having.  It suggests that keeping, even of a copy, was somehow important to do.  It was like capturing time, but time is not to be captured and even to look again at those last episodes won't mean the shows are not over.

The last of anything, like any other aspect of it, is available to experience.  It can in its moment be appreciated and even applauded, but then it ends.  It cannot pretend any more newness.  If we would value it, it would be OK to do so just once, and then move on.

No, I won't be recording.  I'll watch it and I will probably miss seeing it, though I lost interest when Dr. Westphal left the show.  When it ends it will be over, as it should be.  The actors will take on other roles.  Thank them if you want for the ones they've been playing.  Know too that he never really was Dr. Westphal beyond this hour in these weeks.

Time to have them as memories, and other things too.  No need to diminish them by pretending to suspend that moment on tape.  Let it be over.  Get on with other aspects of life, and real life as well.

Alpha and Omega

The end time, the culmination, is to be the same as beginning time.  The alpha is the omega.  It is complete in the interpretation where it no longer matters that there be beginning or end.  When we say Jesus is both alpha and omega it is saying he has achieved this, or that he has become that point since it is not achieved -- not in the sense of accomplishing it by dint of one's effort.  It is the achieving of becoming, or is it instead the ceasing to become, an actualization that is a more passive than active process, a state of being content in itself.

Stuck In Facts

Here you are stuck again in your facts, unable to go beyond them, unwilling to speak a new language, one more poetic, and more imaginative.  So afraid are you of losing the ground on which you are so used to standing.  But fact is not the firm ground it seems.  It is more a swamp than it looks.  That firmness, it is grasping you.

Memorable Music

With a few exceptions it seems an era's music is more remembered than are the word of its political leaders.

The Therapist's Role

It is not my job to make you sane.  My role in this is to point out where and how I see you being crazy.

Waiting for That Rainy Day

They are content with survival and put so much away for that rainy day.  It leaves so little for living, and when that rainy day comes -- if ever it does -- they may be too arthritic to go out in it, too old to remember what was being saved or why.

Conversations Without End

Is it true that the more profound the topic, the more intense the discussion, the less interested are we in the outcome?  Are there topics that exist only to be batted about, and were we to resolve them would we miss them?  Do we need sometimes just to talk, to challenge, to debate?

Faith Is

Faith is hoping that what makes no sense can still have meaning.

Prayer Is Not For Asking

If the answer is that it will be according to his will, then why ask.  Why provide input that will not be an influence in the making of decisions.  When the need is real and the request hardly outrageous, when the asking is sincere, it is still all right that there be an answer of no.  This, however, is a response we could hope would justify itself, if it would.  But there is no justifying, no clarification.  Better perhaps that prayer be an expression of acceptance, a ceding of control and declining to wish to understand.  Better to do away with the asking if it is such an unnecessary step.

The Mark of Violence

Each time someone proposes violence as the solution to a problem he acts as though it were a brilliant new alternative rather than a worn and only destructive reply, its different or newness being only in the form of pain or destruction embodied.  It is not revelation.  Instead it is only violence, the same terrible response that marks our inadequacy or the reluctance we have to progress as a people.

Reconciliation Is Transformation

Reconciliation of opposites is not in the combining or blending of them so much as it is the transforming of them to what neither could be alone.

Proof of Healing

Jesus sent the healed leper to offer the required sacrifice.  In that way the priests would know he had been cleansed.  Too be they could not know by just looking.

People and Roles

We can think people exist only in the roles in which we know them, as though they had no being when we are not with them.  No life when not in this house, when away from this classroom, or when they leave this shop.  We may see the lesser aspect of them and think it is all there might ever be.  We may evoke only a very secondary response, a prospect that may not say too much for us, but even were they at their most vital in our company they are still not complete in this one setting.  It might be helpful to even visualize them elsewhere.  Even though that realm is not ours to share, knowing it was helps complete them in our eyes.

Who We Are

To say what we are not is to say nothing about us.

Being Fully In The World

We may need to become better observers of ourselves, looking not only inward at thoughts and feelings, but outward as well, becoming aware of our bodies in the actions they perform (that we even would call our bodies they may suggest some estrangement).  It is saying:  this is me walking and I am this person reaching, touching and taking hold; here I am not only looking out from myself but also being in real contact with what is not me, and the exchange is not only one of ideas.  It is placing ourselves more fully into the world and attaining a better balance with it and integration within ourselves.  So it is not then observation that is needed, but participation -- taking part in who we are.

How to Pray

As you set out to pray, wonder first what God may want to hear.  If you plan to grovel, to talk of unworthiness, ask is it making you someone with something to say.  Is it the voice of someone you would want to hear?  If you want to be elaborate in your praise, know that it becomes ludicrous after a very short time, a more saccharine speech than most want to hear.  If you are intent upon complaining, you might better select one issue than develop a litany of what is wrong, and if your purpose was to ramble ask is your audience as interested in taking this journey as you may be.  Let prayer be honest.  Allow it to treat you as equivalent people, saying briefly what you want heard then seeking in silence what is a better exchange.

Crazy Things

It is not helpful to try making sense of crazy things.  If sense could be made of them, we would not be calling them crazy.

Time for Change

When he had put out the money changers from the temple, people asked Jesus why. That they thought it a reasonable question suggests it was time for a change.

The Trouble With Growing Up

The trouble with growing up is it is so one-directional.  There is no going back, except maybe to visit.  Childhood is a place you cannot belong once you have moved beyond.  This is, I suppose, more a problem for parents than for children.  Parents are not in this process and so can only watch.  Children in growing up are being who they should be.  They are becoming the people they are to be.  Their need is to move forward.  Ours is to let them, to encourage them, but there is no need to like it, not every day.

Present in Joy and Sorrow

If we cannot respond to a person's joy and delight as we can to his pain, we have not recognized him as a person.  It means being as present to the celebrants at Cana's wedding feast as to the mourners at Lazarus' funeral.  Had Jesus only understood sorrow or had he responded only to despair, he would have been virtuous, kind and concerned but less human than we need him to be.

More Is More

It came to me in the third hour of Easter Vigil that very often more is only more.

Belief Is Not An Act of Will

Thomas was not with them, maybe because he was less afraid of the people outside, or maybe his fear was of something else.  Maybe he had been reluctant to stay with the community, wary of its prayerfulness or of the uncertainty of its direction.  When they told him Jesus had been with them they may have been angered or annoyed that he could not respond.  He did not dispute their experience, but it was not his own.

They may not have realized believing is not an act of will, something you can decide to do, even when you want to.  Maybe Thomas wanted to accept what his friends understood, but there was more to it than acknowledging how real had been their experience of Jesus.

Accepting Death

Death, he thought, was not something he would welcome but neither would he mind its coming.  It was not something he needed to fear or run from.  No need to deny its reality, as once he had done; nor need he place himself beyond it as he did when shielded by the invulnerability of youth.  He wished people he loved would not have to be sad.  But that seemed about all.  He had come a very long way.

Letting Go

When are you going to be ready to trust, to really believe there is less need to be in charge?  When will you finally take God at his word?

Beyond Mere Relationships

St. Paul tells us we have already become God's children.  There is no need to worry about that.  It is assured and has occurred in present time.  But there is more, something not yet accomplished, a closer union that was itself beyond hoping for.  What will it be?  Perhaps it is beyond mere relationship and on into real union, incorporation.

An Alternative to Argument

Rather than argue (unless, of course, you find arguing a value in itself) it is better to present facts and offer the conclusions you have drawn from them, permitting others to do the same if that is what they can or wish to do.  Argument is a function of interpretation or derives from predetermined factors, the filters through which fact will be viewed.  To accept the offer of such an argument is to use yourself poorly, and after a short time trying to reconcile some interpretations may lose its value.

Man does not live by bread alone, but it is a consideration

Beyond Sacrifice

Is sacrifice -- the destruction of something -- a reasonable way to show respect; and if once it was, shouldn't we have evolved to a better approach?

Our Distinctions Are Ours

People are not interchangeable.  One cannot be another, doing his job, having his belief, or living his life.  The uniqueness of individuals is essential to them.  No matter how we may try to deny distinctions, they are real, and for the person with them they are either enriching or diminishing of his being.  But they are his.

Almost Right

"Things seem," he said, "to get better.  It begins to look like it really might turn around.  Like it would be all right to hope.  That's when it falls apart."  I wanted to disagree but life can be that way.  It can be almost right, but that is sometimes as far as it goes.

Paul's Names

While Paul was being all those things to all those people, who was he being to himself?  By what name did he call himself, and under which name did God call to him?

A Passive Acceptance

To say he accepted death is not to say he sought it, but rather that Jesus may have been indifferent to it.

When A Rule Is Not A Rule

If a rule has too many exceptions it may be better not to call it a rule.  It has perhaps become instead an inclination, tendency, or suggestion.

Our Choice

If something is not too terribly important is there a need to spend time affirming or denying it?  If affirmation or denial is someone else's need, we may not wish to join them.  Neither should we stand in their way.  We have each our level understanding or perspective.  Hopefully, it is beyond asking what is wrong or right as though we were invested in comparisons.

The Olympics Are Coming

The Olympics are coming and while there is homage paid to the sharing of an experience and the gathering of peoples, the issue quickly turns upon winning, and not only winning but also the beating of someone else.  There will be the counting of medals and defining of 'them vs. us,' the implication not always so implicit that we should win since we are good and they are foreign.  Maybe it cannot be other than it is.  Maybe it is another event unable to limit itself to what might be better.

Mourners' Role

They came to this funeral as they come to them all.  They are here to make sure all the dirges are sung and each tear is wrung from the occasion.  They must keep this resurrection in hand.

Dad - 3 years

Know The Rules

Unless you know the rules it's hard to tell if you're winning or losing.

The Measure of Money

Money is a measurable standard of success though it tends also to limit the definition.  So maybe it is better to think of making money as a measure of money-making ability, which may or may not related to success at living.

How We Should Help

Should we be helping people accommodate to who they are when we might instead assist in their becoming who they might be.

Forgiving the Prodigal Brother

The parable might mean more if it had another verse or two.  It is nice the prodigal's father was not only forgiving but understanding as well.  It is important the son was contrite, accepting of his father's love and reconciliation.  But that was not unexpected.  The father's role, if he is to be a father, is to understand.  Because of who he is and because he loves this young man, he has no other real choices.  Nor could the son do other than accept and cherish his father's forgiveness.

What is missing is a response from his brother.  The brother has no debt.  He must neither forgive nor understand, and as the story ends he has done neither.  Maybe later, maybe in the part that did not get written.  But maybe not.

We are forgiving.  We are understood.  God does that and he does it without end.  He is our Father.  He loves us, and forgiving and trying to understand are parts of what that means.  It is how we define a loving parent.  We and our brothers are the ones who have choices.  With God there is love and it is free, as is his forgiveness.  No need to specifically request it; nor need we be explicit in our gratitude.  It is with each other that a willingness to model our Father, to share his forgiveness and be as willing to understand, become important and complete the story.

Keep It Simple

We want and probably at some points need reformulation of what should remain a simple message.  Unfortunately, the outcome is not always beneficial.  The aid in believing takes on the character of an essence.  Practices develop which seem more vital than they should.  Incorporating them, carrying them out and later having to justify them can detract from the basic and very simple message.  In like manner, we complicate our lives which would be better (or of better quality) if less busy and if we would eliminate what only pretends importance.

Needing to Understand

If you need to understand, you have not understood.

Offering Pain Instead

They asked to sit one at his right, the other at his left.  It was something he could not give.  Instead he offered what was so much more powerful -- his pain.  It could be shared with friends and in being shared might become less.  Pain cannot be understood by the stranger, by the person who cannot feel what it means to you.  In offering it to them, Jesus may have been saying he trusted in their love for him.

Thomas Merton At Peace

I am reluctant to finish the "Asian Journals."  There will then be nothing else for him to say.  This seems the best of Thomas Merton.  It came before he could eliminate its spontaneity in the editing of it into ideas and a structure for which this seems the short hand noted.  There is not the wild enthusiasm of some other things he's written, and in its place there seems a greater faith.  More at peace if less at ease.

Hard to Believe

Why is it so hard to believe in our goodness?

Waiting on Faith

Having seen Jesus, John can say:  This is God's chosen.  In that moment of recognition all he had been and done, everything he had said, made sense.  It became worthwhile, but it was not always that way.  For a very long time there was no recognition, and he had perhaps looked into many faces for some sign.  He had believed there was a reason for what he had been about.  He had prepared himself and the people, but for what he had not known.  He realized he had to, but there had never really been a why.

It was not easy, but faith is like that.  It is believing and acting on what is believed.  Like love, faith means risking.  It is trusting and waiting, and it can be hurting as well.  It is hoping there really is a meaning, that all the searching and looking and trying will end in recognition of the one who makes it make sense.

There has been no seeing, no understanding to be clutched and held up for others to see.  There may be only a feeling that God will work it out, in God's way.  But it is enough.  It has to be, because it is all there is.  So he searched and wondered.  He was being who he was waiting for God to become who he would be, and as God was getting ready to be recognized John waited to be chosen, by God's chosen.

Walls Between Us

Walls between people are built from both sides and so one person cannot take down more than his or her side.

Worry

If you could just stop worrying there would be nothing to worry about.

God's Limitation

God could easily overthrow their kinds, but not Israel's prophets whom he had called.

Death of a Priest

He was when I saw him so very angry and sad.  In some ways he seemed an almost pathetic person.  He was a friend, a very good one.  He had problems and for the moment it seemed the problems might be winning.  Yet, with all that was wrong, an awful lot was so very right.  He was good and holy, concerned with the present moment and the future both of God and of people.  He could be hurt, and he was, but that is part of love.  Some will be saying he died as a young man, and maybe even a wasted man or a wasted priest.  Some will say he was, or could have been, a scandal, an embarrassment, a man somehow unfaithful to his calling.  But some will always say or think such things, and they would speak ill even of the Lord (in fact, I believe some of their predecessors did).

He is dead now.  He was at one time a drunk and apparently he died all alone.  It was not the least of his problems, but problems are not always there to be overcome and some of them have no resolution.  For all that hurt, he was more a priest than many of us there.  His life and from the beginning, I think, his ministry were marked by moments of failure and frustration.  But that, looking back, should have been no surprise; and I wonder why or how the rest of us avoided or denied those issues that occasion resistance and bring on failure or cause frustration to those who will confront them.

His ideas of what should have been, his determination to make God a reality in a Church and community that seemed so indifferent, had to provide rejection.  Had he not known it could end badly he would have been a fool, and that was not the case.  Had he not hoped what surrounded and hurt him would change he would not have been himself.  Like Jesus, his life required rejection.  There was no room for accommodation; and it might have seemed self-defeating, if not destructive, but sometimes there is no alternative.

He was in some ways weak, or just too human.  His sins, if that is what some want to call them, would not stay hidden.  It is over now.  He is dead.  I hope he will be missed and mourned, that maybe even those who would (and they will) say he was wrong might learn that sometimes priesthood is most itself in sorrow.  That security and ease were not in the contract we made with God.  That there is pain in believing and that faith is sometimes a source of anger unto death.

Fear and Consequences

They were so afraid that without the pound of flesh there would be condoning of the crime.

Knowing We Need Others

The prodigal knew enough to know he needed forgiveness.  It was an important first step.  It is recognizing limitations, admitting need, saying that on his own he is incomplete.  It can be hard to say we have needs, that without someone else's understanding and acceptance something is missing, but once said there is an opportunity to be more complete.

Watching The Birds

I have never been so terribly exciting but lately I've thought sitting here, watching the birds, drinking coffee and reading of someone else's adventures could fill a day.  I am pleased to hear that friends have similar aspirations.

After the Flood

The harmony of the garden is finally over after the flood, when plants stop being their food.  People start eating the beasts, who are free now to devour each other.

Putting Aside the Roles

He asked, "Who do they say I am?"  They told him, "You are called Elijah and John.  They say you are the prophet."  And he asked what they had chosen or wished him to be, what name did they suppose.  Because their name for him was his name; he said it was true.  It was telling them:  put aside what they expect; see me as me.  And to them he was saying the same thing:  be who you are, nothing else.  Don't be John or Jeremiah.  Don't be the prophet; don't even be me.  Be yourselves.

Play no roles, even if it is expected or demanded by people who seem to know.  Be done with pretense, no matter who demands it or even if you wish it were so.  As I am, so are you.  Be you completely and well.  No more is asked, needed, or of value.  No more acting.  No role, no part to be played.  Put them aside.  No matter what they seem to add, they have nothing to offer.

God's Gifts

God not only created Adam.  He also planted a garden and gave him his first real suit of clothes.

Being Seen

If we look a the painting and see only the darker parts, we have not seen it.  If we look at our lives and see only what is wrong, we have seen nothing of who we are.

Before You Were Born

Before James was born:

I don't know yet who you are.  I only know you are there.  There is as yet no name to call you.  In a way I have said similar things to God, and like him, I love you and the mystery of you, a mystery that will always be, one that is so secret and will become deeper and also clearer as it is lived.  Today, now that we know you are, we are scared, and hopeful, and thankful, and very happy.  We are these things and many more.  We have waited quite a while.  Some people -- people who think themselves so wise -- say you will change things and be something of a burden, and maybe even a problem.  Out of what passes for wisdom and experience, they glance at our apparently naive joy.  Let them.  It would be as inane to glance back with wisdom of our own.

If you change things, as I hope and expect you will, I am sure it will be to add to our lives without taking from our love, and if you are a burden it is one we have been anxious to carry -- a burden not unlike Augustine's wings of the bird.  As for problems, I suppose were we ever so honest all people are or cause problems.  It is part of our nature, but not the biggest part, not the part we remember as we grow old and it is beyond that wisdom that winks.  At this point, no matter who you are or will become, the future is as unknowable as the wonder that caused you to be and for that, for you, for God who is part of it all, I can only be thankful.  So, my friend, thanks.  We are looking forward to meeting you.  Love made you.  It will sustain us as well, making all of us more for being together.

Unknowable

They thought he knew the secret.  He said he did.  He said he had the answer, but when they asked what it might be he said it could not be told.  It could not be explained because they would never understand.  So they went away.  "Truly he must have it," they said, "If it is such that words are beneath it, it must be true.  It has to be the answer."  It must also remain a secret, and so it did.  He had not explained because he could not.  He had not named it because it had no name, and so it was beyond him as well.  It was beyond or above them all, but he knew that it was and they had thought it might be.  This was a secret unlike any other.  It could not be touched; much less could it be spoken.  Even he who was closest dared not understand, since to understand would mean it was not real.  To explain would be to lie.  To say it was or could ever be grasped would be but pretense.

Beyond The Practical

The practical intrudes.  It seems so real and promises so much.  It appears reasonable, even if reason may not be what we need.  Its oughts and shoulds look just right, so appealing but sometimes so silly as well.  There is reason beyond reason, and beyond the practical is what comes of faith.

How Did God Get to be God?

How did God get to be God?  Did he take a test, pursue a degree, have a friend in the business?  Was there an internship, a political appointment, an ad in the New York Times?  What were his qualifications?  From whom did he get references?  Or was it that no one else applied?  God's role in life is not a job.  It is his being and so any comparison we might offer, any understanding based on our experience, is not so very helpful.

The more you cannot walk away from, the less free you will be

Who God Is

Had God been all the things he is and done even more than he has, had he not been love first and been it most of all, we would have no more need of him than people had of the stone gods so easily toppled and so little missed.

Love Is In the Accepting of It

There are those we would so like to love but what we would offer they cannot accept; and the love they would have for us is such we cannot receive it, not and remain faithful to ourselves.  There is then a terrible stalemate.  Instead of the love we might wish there is to offer, and an outdoing in the force with which we each present it, but no acceptance and so it is not love at all.  It is concern and a wish for something more, something that might be shared.  It is the best that can be, but it is surrounded by so much emptiness.

Simplifying Life

The aim is the simplifying of life, eliminating what is not ours to control.  We may have interest in those things, and express opinions, but most often it must end there.  We would also do well to not consider what others think of us since the thoughts belong to them and -- right or wrong, accurate or not -- they belong to someone else.  We might be more adversely influenced were we to allow our actions to be tailored by what others think, or how they might respond.  Begin, if you can, to narrow your life, trusting others to live their own, to be who they are with all the thoughts, ideas, hopes, and wishes they would hold.

This does not preclude interest in issues of import, but it does mean they are ours in only a limited way.  However, when we join with others our voices are more readily heard, more easily recognized as transcending what any one of us might offer or have control over.  Giving our identity to the group, giving up responsibility for it and specific choices about it, each of us is magnified as we gather into the entirety.  By becoming a group, not needing for now to be individuals, our influence extends well beyond who we might singly be.  In this way we can make wars end and sometimes bring justice into places where it had seemed unable to breathe.

A Man and His Memories

There he is, eating alone or standing at the edge of some crowd, wishing sometimes he might be invited in but alone people are not members, not even when asked to join.  After the kiss of peace, he is no less a stranger.  There is no one to share every day, no one to receive his kiss when Mass is over, or as each day begins and ends.  He greets people or else looks away, and he reads but has no one to tell what he has learned, no one to ask what he thinks.  But it is at meal time, at his table for two where no one else sits, that he seems most forlorn.

I used to see them together, when there might have been as much silence but it had not been so empty.  They had been a family, something you cannot be on your own.  They had gone shopping together, walked to the corner and back sometimes holding hands, laughing at what was perhaps best in memory, a word or recollection tied fast to what was shared so long ago.

I wonder too is he who I might become when time goes farther on.  It is a thought I do not welcome.  It is one I put aside, knowing too that people with memories, those who've been loved, are maybe less alone than they seem.

Being the Messiah

There may have been a time when John wondered might he be the Messiah.  His message was a good one and in line with the promise.  People were coming to hear and recognized in what he said the voice of God.  He had even the right enemies and critics.  Had he wondered there came too a realization that Messiah was someone else's call, and perhaps he was relieved, glad not to have that role since he was better at being who he was and pointing beyond himself as others had done, others who might also have wondered, "Is it I?"

The Search

Knowing what you are looking for increases the likelihood of finding it.

The Kids Are Alright

Had parents an assurance their children would in the end be all right they could be more tolerant of the stages and phases of life through which the children pass.  But that guarantee is unavailable.  It is another instance calling for faith.  There is no need to like having to believe or trust, but there is nothing else.

More Moral Than Spiritual

As a Church we tend, it seems, to be more moral than spiritual, more focused on what is right and (more often) on what might be wrong; and more intellectual than there may be need to be.  Maybe it is because we are then free from looking into our hearts rather than our will; and can focus inside our minds where feeling is not welcome.

Dignity and Sobriety

"When I thought of having that drink," he said, "this was not the one, but this is the one it always comes to."  He was coming off, or hoping at least that he could, a bout he'd had before.  The drink he'd set out to have, the "just this one," was now about a year ago.  There had been less pleasure in it than he had hoped there might be, and less still in the ones that had followed.  It was soon no choice at all, and back to being compulsion.  It had hold of him and held him very tightly.  In no time at all there was no pleasure, and there had never been satisfaction.

It was time to take back his life, to again take up his dignity, recognizing it as his own and remembering how it ends when you reach for "just this one."  Good luck.

The Cost of Life

Life is a gift.  It is free.  There is no need to pay for it.  And if there were, with what would you pay?

At One With the Desert

John, in Mark's gospel, appears in the desert.  He does not go there as Moses had.  Nor is he driven there as Jesus would be.  Instead, he appears as though sprouting up from it, nurtured by its barrenness. It is where he belongs.  He is one with the desert, not a visitor or its captive.  For John it is not penance or preparation.  It is his fulfillment, and he would never fit where others might flourish.

Faithfulness to Faith

We say that to be faithful to our belief we must be just and must be kind.  To be true in living our belief we must seek peace and must bring life to God's love.  Instead of saying "must," it might be better to talk of "having an opportunity," doing away with the sense of obligation.  Faithfulness to faith is fulfilling, not burdensome.

New Heaven and New Earth

In that new heaven and new earth, justice will reside.  It will no longer be just a visitor.

Who We Choose To Be

Deceit and especially the deceiving of ourselves seems such an unsatisfying life.  Perhaps this is why sin and deceit are one and the same:  a denial of ourselves, a distancing from or distorting of who we have real choices to become.

Roles

Do not audition for roles that are unavailable.

Who Answers

I thought I was talking to God until I realized it was me who answered.

If You Are Kind

If you are smart they may call you another Aquinas.  If you are zealous they might say you are another Paul.  If you can preach they might think you are another Chrysostom.  But only if you are kind will they see in you another Christ.

Saying Anything About God

To say anything about God is to at the same time say too much and too little.

Trying to Know the Unknowable

What does it mean that we have so much to say about God, who is really unknowable?  Why do we try so hard to say what can only be an approximation of what might be true, and then only for now, about someone who is so very unlike what we would like to conclude?  I suppose we do it because there is a need to reach beyond where we could be were we only to be reasonable.  We need to because the question of who God is, what he may be like, and of who we might be to each other is more important than other questions more easily answered.

A Word of Caution to the Armchair Radical

You say radical things, proposing such revolutionary ideas, ideas glamorous enough to invite a bit of awe, but not so glamorous as to compel a following.  It is a comfortable role, the armchair radical.  Whatever will you do if someone wants to join this movement, to make it really move?  Be careful what you say lest you be believed.

The Greatest Available Compliment

The greatest available compliment was to say he was simple, meaning he was essential (in contrast to being basic) and lacking in the complication that would pass as sophistication.

Letting Go

If I let you go will you then be gone?  Were that to happen would you be free -- would I be?  I said once you were free to go, but that was when I could no longer hold you.  Is it yet a time when I might mean it?

Look Inward

If the movement is outward, if it only reaches out to gather in what was outside, then it is incomplete.  Instead it has to be inward, increasing awareness of depths within ourselves.  Look within God, see into other people.  There are mysteries as great inside your own soul.

Eyes of Faith

They told him she was dead, to not bother the Master anymore.  They were right unless one looked through eyes of faith.  Her father had looked with pain and fear, but belief as well.  Jesus saw with that same vision, recognizing his pain and sadness, but responding to what ordinary eyes could not see.  The death was then no longer.

Exchanging Chains

If they asked us to help them be free and we offered only to replace the chains of their current pain with ones we would offer, where is the gain?

A Litany of Our Folly

There was another senseless bombing in Ireland, and one in the Near East.  On the same day captives were taken in the Mediterranean and violence erupted in South Africa.  In Central America two wars are reluctant to end, and the president is annoyed by prospects of a peace not fashioned according to the dictates of his fear.  There is concern we may spend less on weapons, for this world and on into space, as though weapons could protect us against our own deceits and rage.  They are headlines, a litany of our folly.  These sadly were yesterday's headlines as well, and last year's.  Sadder still, they may be tomorrow's and might still seem like news in years to come.

A Humble God

We were talking of God, and prayer, and how we might think of him.  God, said John, is very humble, which is fitting for him to be.  It better describes his essence than any number of other things we might say of him.

Wanting Vengeance

They so want vengeance.  They act as though it could be satisfying or were really required.  Vengeance is such a selfish drive.

The Real Self

Fr. Pennington was saying that dying-to-self is dying to a false self so that the real self might be born, so that self might be freed into being.  It is then an opening, expanding rather than ending.

Feeling Anger

The sooner we realize anger is a feeling with legitimacy, but acting upon it has none, the better off we will be.

Endings and Beginnings

When in the earliest days people thought this world's end was at hand they welcomed the prospect, seeing it as the beginning of God's making a new and better world.  Now, the end is something with which we threaten each other, and if it should end through our anger and bombs it could only be an ending.  Nothing could follow.

Cautious Optimism

Dire as the prediction may be we can always say, "It hasn't happened yet"; just as when difficulty arises we say, "We're still here, so that wasn't so bad."  This optimism -- benighted though it may be -- is probably best seen as an asset, though foolishness might better be seen as its name.

Changing The Subject

I do not deny the truth of what he says.  Neither would I make it as important as he seems to.  The accuracy of the proposition is less important than his friendship.  Rather than endanger that, I prefer moving to a new topic.

Meanings Behind Meanings

Answer the question that was asked.  Stay away from meanings behind meanings.

The God In Me

When I stop being me, is it God that I become?  If I expand into God and into unity with myself beyond the limit of me, is it into God that I move?  Is that what is so frightening?  Is it the freedom that God implies that makes me wary of this union?

Keeping Connected to His Contempt

He has a contempt for success, a certain wariness of money-seeking, and even occasions not to do well.  It is as though he might lose some vital aspect, a vestige of what is essential and he would then have no root to what he would so like to believe.  He would be lost among those embodying a value he is afraid to have, a contentment that might rob him of connectedness to poor peoples and lost causes.  It is another aspect of what he calls "keeping the faith."

When Pain Is Praise

The choir was singing as though to inflict pain, yet they saw it as praise; so maybe that is what it became.

Being Annoyed By The Apostles

The boys were annoyed by the story of Ananias and Sapphira, thinking the disciples unfair and more demanding than was right.  It bothered them too that the disciples would be so deceptive, trying to trick Sapphira when they already knew the facts.  Had I wanted to justify the disciples -- and initially I thought I might try -- there was no way they would be willing to think these deaths made sense.  They had decided -- I am pleased to say -- that no matter who you might be or whatever your reason, you do not let people be hurt; and you certainly take no part in the hurting of them.

The apostles might have gotten carried away with their importance or forgotten the example they were to have followed.  Maybe they were thinking things more important than people or had decided that forgiveness had less of a role than it ought.  Whatever the reason, annoyance was the more correct response, as was the realization that even apostles lose sight of what ought to be.

The Importance of Saying No

At times -- even (and perhaps especially) when it is hard to do -- you see it is important to say "no," and in the saying you will be different.  It might be easier to offer instead one more "yes," but it would be unfaithful, and so growing up -- and maybe away -- continues.

Freedom Within You

If you are asking for your freedom, you have not understood that it is within you.  It was to be acknowledged rather than sought.

Models of What Used To Be

We like to think sometimes everything can be saved, but not everything needs to be preserved, at least not in its present state; and so it is progress, even if it may not always seem to be, for some organizations or institutions to give way, to become so different as to stop altogether.  Their salvation (if such be the word) is in becoming what used to be.  They can serve as the model of what used to be, a time when a need was met for that time, but it is a time that is over.

The Example of Others

In all the words attributed to him, Jesus so rarely uses himself as an example of what the believer should become.

No Need for Answers

Because a question is asked must you answer?  Does each ponderous inquiry merit a profound reply?  Would it not be OK to say, "I don't know."

Without Middle Ground

So many are without a middle ground and seem to settle for the least acceptable side, unable or perhaps unwilling to seek or accept as an entitlement the more favorable aspect.  This binary way of life, the forcing of a choice between extremes, allows no moderation, no growth or progress.  The highs are too high and the lows, where most seem to settle, are far too low.  There is no way to merit the one extreme and no way to overcome the other.  Without a middle, the payments on life become terribly expensive.

Decision-Making Made Easy

Having one suit makes it an easy decision what to wear.  Having one set of rules simplifies how we act.  Ethical behavior also eliminates the need to explain to ourselves and to anyone who would ask why we do what we do.

Stop Seeking

Stop seeking and you will truly find.

Contemplation

Where opposites meet, where they begin almost to go beyond themselves and the light is ready to enter into being dark, is that where we want to be?  Is that the goal of contemplation?

Being Healed

Not being cured is still all right.  It does not mean you have not been healed.  The miracle is not in the elimination of your illness but in the achieving of unity with yourself and with God, and yet those who have prayed over you seem so very disappointed and sometimes angry at what they may see as your resistance.  They took it all so personally.  Too bad.

Not Herzog

Like Herzog, we all write letters.  I am, however, getting ready to send mine.

Two Miracles

There are in this story two miracles.  The more obvious one is Jesus giving life to Lazarus.  The more important one is Jesus giving life to God.  By his love for this man, his sadness at his death, the sharing of what his family has felt, Jesus allows God to come alive in truly human ways so that he is no longer recognizable only outside what is or in only in spectacular ways.

Simple Solutions

Simple solutions are not bad, but they are sometimes too simple.

Lacking Conviction

Lacking conviction can sometimes make flexibility that much easier.

Brothers

If you would be your brother's keeper, do not keep too well lest you steal from him his individuality and the value to him of whatever may happen.  Better perhaps to be his caretaker, to care for him and recognize that part of that care is trust that he will be able to keep, and cherish, himself.

Figuring It Out

When you think you have figured it out is when you have missed it all together.

Thomas Wanted to Understand

Thomas could believe, but he also wanted to understand.  Sometimes, and maybe most times, understanding is unavailable and if it were it might only get in the way.

Not A Visit

So impressed were they by what he had done.  God, they said, had visited his people.  It was, however, no visit.  He was here to stay.  We can all tolerate visits.  Whether they are from people we are delighted to see or those whose coming we may have dreaded.  Be they good or bad, visits end.  This was something else and when they realized that, you might wonder what they then thought.

What should we say to whom, and whatever should we do if they answer

Jesus and Crowds

When the crowds appeared Jesus went away, either up into the mountain or out onto the lake.  What about the crowd was so frightening?  Perhaps that he might welcome them for being a crowd, for their crowd's response to a message each must ratify as an individual; maybe it was fear that he might someday be seeking them, judging what he would offer by the size of the crowd who might cheer.  Maybe he went away because he did not know what to say to crowds and could speak only to those who had already followed.  Maybe Jesus needed to be apart from them so that he could listen, rather than always have to speak.

Crowds are only crowds, no matter their size or enthusiasm.  They have a single need or curiosity, and asked to shout, sing, or cry out with one voice they will gladly do so.  But then they go home.  When they do -- when they stop being a crowd -- they have greater value.  Maybe then they could listen, and hear.  It is maybe then that Jesus will begin seeking them.

Standard Questions

If people wanted standard answers, they would ask only standard questions.

Call It Sickness

Call it sickness and it becomes sick.  Say it is yours to cure and you will take it from the person to whom it belongs.  Were you to call it distress or sadness, would you treat it differently?  And if you allowed it to remain with the person whose experience it is, would it change more readily?

Authority

If the question was whether appeals to authority are a final solution, it is not answered by appealing to authority.

Delivering the Junk Mail

What is it like to be that postal worker going miles to deliver that junk mail, knowing it may be in the garbage even before he is off the street?  Its value is not only in its being read.  His role is not to insure the information has been received.  He is the deliverer, the person making possible the choice.  He may not agree with the choice presented and when the same mail comes to his own house he may rush it to the incinerator, but for those he would serve the offer is the issue.

What God Does

God does not lend.  He gives.

A Disarming Message

Bringing their swords and clubs, they hid their fear in one another and shouted what alone they would never say.  They reinforced the importance of being armed against the threat of his message. They made noise through which his truth could not seep.  Were they hoping he would resist, battle in their terms, find swords and shouting to meet their own?  They might have felt justified, but Jesus would not play.  His response did not change nor did his message.  If it were a contest he had won -- but it was more than that.

Unappreciated

Hey, you!  Stop yawning while I am inspiring you.

Choices

People saying they had no choice usually had a choice.

Inclusive Belief

There are some who would like to say that unless you can believe it all -- the essence and what seemed in some instances to derive from it -- then you are not allowed to have any, that you may call yourself something but not a member of this church  This would make belief exclusionary rather than inclusive, a closing-in or collapsing rather than an opening-out onto the world, and it implies more fear than trust, more insecurity than a believing community ought to embody.

It is fortunately only a thought or an opinion and may even modify in time, becoming less doubtful of the ability to share and more secure in its own faith.

The Search

Were you to look on them from outside their community and their faith, the Jews seemed aimless.  But they were wandering.  That was what they were supposed to be doing.  Arriving was not yet in the plan.

Seeing The Giftness

It is only a gift when received as such.  The "giftness" is in both the offer and in the receiving of it.  If I value what I present but it has no meaning or importance to the one to whom I present it, then it is only partially what it should be.  It is no less important, no less prized by me, but it would be unfair to give to someone who cannot see it for what it is to me.  To that person, I would better give something else, if I have it.

Measuring Time

Time is measured in the intervals we select, and days are more easily managed than are eternities.

Saving Jesus from Embarrassment

You could wonder if the groom of Cana knew the wine was running out, or had someone decided to ask in his stead, to save him the embarrassment of knowing he had not planned.  Maybe he did know but was reluctant to approach directly the uninvited guests, Jesus and his disciples, perhaps preferring to avoid embarrassing them.  Maybe going through the caterer and Mary was the least intrusive way of asking might they leave or drink less.

Conscious Choices

Mark overcame his stutter by slowing down his speech and concentrating on each sound, making each a conscious effort and so controlling its production.  It seems therapy should do the same for people, helping them slow down so they might focus on choices rather than feeling a debt to old and ineffective patterns.  It would be making chosen actions really our own, no matter what went before or how long the old pattern seemed to belong.  Then not only life would be mine, but also each event in it.

The Center of Time

He slips now more readily into remembrance, recalling those events somewhere at the center of time, the days happy and full enough to satisfy now.

Years

Age in itself means only that we are old, or young.  It is a quantity of years and says nothing of who we are.  So, being a child does not mean you are cute; that being old means you are wise; that being a particular age means you are anything but that age.  Having more years may mean you have more experiences, or have at least had the opportunity for a greater variety of experience, but it says nothing of whether or how you may have benefited from them.  It may even mean you have over time become more confirmed in your views rather than more open to variation.  Having fewer years could mean you are more aware, more willing to see, less bound to defend what once you thought or said, but youth can also be no more than the measure of one's immaturity.

Salvation As Preservation

The salvation we speak of is not saving from external sources.  It is rather preservation of what is within.  It is recognition, conservation, and the enhancing of our nature or integrity.  The saving is more in maintaining or enhancing, a building up rather than a staving off or driving out.

What Else

There tend to be more alternatives than we are willing to consider and so we come too quickly to the conclusion that either nothing can be done or the solution must be a radical or dramatic one.  The inclination is to be absolute -- absolutely defeated or absolutely fixed in response.  Better to look at the responses we have considered, then ask what else.  What else have we not considered?  What might there be outside our accustomed framework?