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."