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?

Support For Whom?

He says it is supportive therapy.  I think he means it supports his car payment, mortgage, and office expense.  Maybe it is not what he really meant, but it seemed the only benefit.  The client seemed propped up rather than supported, dependent rather than sustained.

Perfecting Our Worst Selves

People seem to want to be best at being themselves, but at times the selves they are being best at is defined in the worst terms and so they perfect a negative.

Life's Principles

In addition to life's rules there should be parameters in which life is conducted, principles applicable to the process -- what are they?  That life is universal and that people are variable in degree rather than kind may be among them.  What are the others?

Your Gift to God

If you thought the gift of self so unworthy of God, why then did you offer it to him?  Let God judge the worthiness.  Believe his acceptance, his delight in what you offer.  Trust you are not a gift he puts in the back of his closet.

Peter and Jesus

Peter was not so sure who the son of man might be, but he had no doubt who he wanted Jesus to be.  The son of man was defined by what others might say, and Jesus by what Peter would believe about him, what he had experienced and how he felt about this man.

The Aim of Therapy

There are still people thinking the aim of the process is the expression of feeling, that people in therapy should be learning to shout their rage and weep their disappointment, when the aim is really understanding and in understanding what is thought, felt or believed having a choice whether to continue, whether or not to respond and if we should decide to express anything, how should it be done.  What expression, if any, is most faithful to us.

Complaining

Do not consider complaining a service.  Whether you are complaining to or about someone, no one is better.  Not them, not you.

Good at Being Old

"I'm so glad," he said, "there's no more need to be young -- especially at my age.  I've finally reached a stage in life where I know the rules.  As a child I felt embarrassed about not being an adult.  In adolescence I tried to hold onto childhood, and did for as long as I could; and so being an adolescent had to wait until I should have started being an adult.  I began adulthood somewhere around thirty, and maybe later, but people my age had by then started wanting to be young instead.  So, while we were the same age we were never contemporaries.  Finally, I've arrived at what I'd been growing toward.  I've become old, and I'm good at it."

I asked if he wouldn't want to be a different age, knowing what he had learned.

"No, sonny.  It takes a lifetime to learn you've had a lifetime of learning.  I don't look back, and seldom look forward.  Instead, I've settled.  I'm old, and doing very well."

Was it all right, I asked, that he was coming to the end.

"Where else should it come to?  Things start, they happen, they end.  Lives too are that way.  I'm not glad to end.  I'm not sad.  I'm just doing what it's time for."

Primitive Communication

If rationality is what differentiates us from other forms of life, why do we so readily resort to more primitive forms of expression?

A Message for the Church

Could we wonder if in its financial difficulties God might be trying to offer the Church a message?

In Church

We seem so often in Church because of obligation, a sense we should be here; but it competes with the realization we come lest we lose touch with what we would like to believe, a feeling that should we stop coming for any length of time we might not come again.  It has less to do with celebration than fear.

Deciding Not to Ask Questions

There was no instruction, no preparation, no Q and A session, nor was there even much of an invitation.  He just said, "Follow me," and Matthew followed as the fishermen had done.  Maybe there was some explanation later, but I doubt it; and there were more Q's than A's would ever be available had they wanted to ask.  Those who would have wanted preparation, who were expecting an introductory statement are maybe still waiting.

Recognizing Faith

Jesus did not cure Bartimeus.  Rather, he announced that faith had saved him, something of which he may not always have been aware and only came to recognize in this moment.  Saving is not done to anyone.  Instead it is acknowledged.

Naming Something Normal

Once we start saying something is normal -- even things like aggression or deceit -- we begin to treat it as such, anticipating its occurence and being surprised by its absence in particular instances.

The Treasure and Pearl

If the field with the treasure and pearl were of such value, it might have been more like God's kingdom had the finder told the current owner what he had overlooked rather than taking it from him, but then it is not an analogy and so there is no need to wonder did the finder later share it.  Were it to be like the kingdom it could not be just enshrined and admired.  It had to be offered or used in some way.  Like the yeast enlivening dough, it would have to increase what surrounded and of which it was a part.  To be unused, to not grow would make it an ornament rather than a treasure.  Were that the case, it would be better left for a more appreciative finder.

Seminary's Valued Truths

Twenty years and more have passed since seminary days and for all that was told to us only two ideas have kept their value.  They are Don Panella's saying that God was present to Elijah in the gentle breeze rather than in the roaring wind; and the gift that Solomon chose was an understanding heart, the gift we should choose as our own since it best defined was priesthood should be.  These remain valued truths.

Philosophy Insurance

We may call this a medical condition until people start carrying philosophy insurance.

Cat Lovers

Odd though it seems, even some very nice people like cats.

Our Potential and Us

We have potential to be or do any number of things, favorable or not, but we are not our potential.

Ratifying Who You Are

People are defined using the characteristics or descriptors they deem most important, or those they ratify or adopt when presented in or by someone else.  Even though other traits may be available, and to others might seem more prominent, the definition is made up of what the individual calls himself, and he will pursue activities enhancing or exemplifying these characteristics (having once said I am this, I will reinforce the notion what by I do and in this sense become who I predicted I would be).

The role of therapy is consideration of alternatives, the re-ordering or re-prioritizing of descriptors, introducing if they be needed alternatives not initially considered and facilitating behaviors consistent with the re-definition.

There is less need to wonder why the initial characteristics were given such prominence.  Only if it will foster the re-ordering is this beneficial.  The other aspect of therapy is the discovery and implementing of life's rules.

The Good and The Bad

It is maybe the best description to say the kingdom is a store from which the householder takes the good and the bad.  He takes them as they are and it would be incomplete without either of them.

Trying to Define Love

What is love?  What means this over-used word?  When we analyze what it is or wonder what has it become, we can further wonder what it should or could ever be besides.  Hopefully, we can at some point say what it will be or mean in relation to us.  It has been used to mean any number of things, some of which are innocuous enough to forego any real meaning or value.

It is applied indiscriminately to a number of things and feelings, perhaps because they at least in part share in what love is.  In so doing, we may detract from what love more truly is, if it is something that can be detracted from.  It is physical and so is shared with other physical beings, giving it an animal quality (which is not a bad thing to have).  It is also emotional, felt within our souls, as much as in our bodies and probably even more.  It has a reasonableness beyond reason, seeming so right and true as to be beyond question.  It is intuitive, but not unreasonable or irrational.  The reality or presence of love can encompass, or at least influence, all other facts of being.

Love is part of everything that is and without it we could never be who we might become.  Sometimes it is much more than just a part of everything, and then it is all of everything, and more.  It is as present in silence as it is in the exuberance of its newness.

It is not mawkish, though sentimental it surely is.  It lacks the harmlessness some would attach to its purity and noble aspect.  It would not be were it an ideal detached from the lives of living people.  Its implications can occasion fear as easily as it offers security in which we might wrap ourselves away from so much we might otherwise dread.  It belongs to and completes people of all ages as it seeps beyond borders or nationality, sex, tradition, and any other gradation or distinction we might offer.  But, this does not answer the question of what it is or what love might be all about.  What is the meaning; where is the definition?  Maybe, there is none.

Maybe love, like us, simply is.  Perhaps this universal feeling and awareness is at the same time too individual a thing to entertain generalization.  It could simply be another of those realities that will not live in our attempts at definition or description.  Does it suffice to say it must be felt, experienced and most of all shared, before it can become more than what we would call it?  Probably so, since it is alive and its life can be only to one who loves.  Maybe we can only be it, but never will define it.

Clever v. Honorable

In the Iran-Contra hearings it seems a matter of the clever vs. the honorable.  Should the appeal of the clever exceed that of the honorable, the country would be in trouble.

Everyday Moments

You can always find someone to share the extremes, either of joy or sadness.  In crisis or celebration, you need not be so alone.  But here is no one to share everyday aspects, to hear or make observations on nothing so profound.  There is no one participating with you in the moments of which life is truly composed, and so they may become the saddest times of all.

Wrong Answers

Why do they always give answers they think you might want to hear?

Sanctifying the World

We were told to sanctify and divinize the world, making all things holy.  It seemed a reasonable goal, but what it meant and how it might be done were at best uncertain.

Arrivals and Departures

The arrival may be anticlimactic.  The traveling toward was the value-charged aspect.  Arriving then has to become a departure as well, a setting out for something else, some place beyond here.

When we need to hide, hiding is what we should be willing to do