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.