A most satisfactory day!

Wonderful grandkid time - all day long!  A very nice bike ride.  A beautiful Louisiana spring day, with comfortable temperatures, low humidity, and a refreshing breeze.  Fun at the park (pix on FB).  A fine dinner together.

This may be an example of the worst sort of scriptural misquote, but "Lord, it is good for us to be here."  Like the apostles, I too wish I could pitch tent and remain upon this "mountaintop."

Constructive effect

The most deep-seated wisdom can be expressed in ways that are bizarre and morally odious.  The truth that something must be done about a wrong committed - that it must be punished or amends be made - can lead to vengeful and sadistic acts.  Lives are made miserable by demands for expiation that cannot be satisfied.  Many people twist their whole lives into a futile effort to make up for some great wrong they did.  Such efforts can have a constructive purpose but a destructive effect." - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus - Death on a Friday Afternoon


So, Fr. Neuhaus, you're saying it isn't just me?  I guess can buy that.  But if you're suggesting that the self-judgment I've carried has been destructive in its effects, I think I may have a quibble with you.

I'm not going to delve too deeply into some of my efforts to make up for my wrongdoing; that is due to a combination of fear over what there is to discover there and the good sense of knowing there are some balances that are best left undisturbed.  Our therapy team was thorough about helping make sure we are mostly equipped to properly manage my tendency in that regard.  There really is only one area they might have overlooked, though they did try to at least give it a cursory examination.  If they reached the wrong conclusion, it was by our insistence.  And if we were all wrong, it is far too late.  But the thing is, I happen to believe that effort has proven most constructive in its effects as well as its purpose.

Worth the trip

April 26, 2010 - Ft. Polk, KY


The greeting I received from my youngest daughter at the visitor's center when she arrived to escort us onto post - as she clung to me, refusing to break our initial embrace, at least until I'd removed all traces of the cursory from my hug and fully returned it in kind - was worth the trip.

Hannah's squeal of delight from the neighbors' yard as she caught sight of us - she'd evidently awakened in the morning upset that we weren't here already, then watched the clock all day, anxiously waiting for it to say 4-0-0, because that's what time we were supposed to get here - followed by the dripping wet hugs we received because she'd been playing in the water, were worth the trip.

Nic's unsolicited, "Grandpa?  Me love you," - transformed in our separation from an aloof toddler to a doting grandson - as I sat playing the guitar, not especially "for him" at that moment, but just the two of us present to one another in the room, was worth the trip.

Even Emma's running past me to get to Grandma, with whom she has spent so much more time and so recognized much more quickly - though later she was the first one to come over to play the guitar with me - along with the excited way she kept waving to us, was worth the trip.

Big Nic's appreciation - in spite of the extensive dental work he'd had done earlier in the day! - of the City Barbecue we brought with us for them - and the Crown Royal we enjoyed together in the evening, were worth the trip.

Hearing Cassie and Nic share about their marriage retreat, and Fireproof, and on them having The Love Dare (though I don't think either of them has started it yet), and her enthusiasm for The 5 Love Languages and their determination to nurture their relationship together, was worth the trip.

What abundant blessings, all in one evening!  Thank you, God!!

All naiveté isn't bad!

The second naiveté is an understanding reached on the far side of critical analysis and thinking.  Having come to recognize that things could theoretically be other than they are, we are brought to the perception that they are as we thought them to be, but on the far side of all our questioning, we know in a way that we did not know it before . . . It is surely part of what Christ meant when he insisted that we must be born again, becoming not again childish but, for the first time, childlike.  Eliot puts it nicely in Little Gidding:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

So it is with sacrifice, and so it is with beginning to understand the cross. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon


I thought I'd reached at this second naiveté years ago.  I'd explored the opposite of faith, and found a great emptiness there.  Then I was touched by God's love, experienced the movement of the Holy Spirit within my soul, and thought there was no going back. But that didn't keep me from failing so spectacularly, and so I suppose I've either been experiencing a "third naiveté" this year, or I needed January's mini-crisis of faith to truly find myself in Christ.

I'm discovering that it is an entirely different and joyful and intimidating thing to put away my self-judgment and start to really thrive in God's love.  There's a big difference between, "Oh, I'm such a worthless sack of excrement, isn't everyone - especially God and most certainly my wife - so great for loving me anyway!" and being able to truly rejoice in who I am in Christ. Perhaps now I can quit demonstrating to myself - albeit in far smaller ways - what a "bad person" I am.

The "intimidating" part is that I no longer have an excuse for shrinking away from becoming the man God dreams for me to be.

Who is in charge?

Last night, Fr. Jim Manning challenged us with a simple question: who is in charge of our lives?  It seems to fit this post of last week.

I see it answered in the lives of those whose difficult circumstances are marked by a mysterious peacefulness: a dear friend whose mother calmly passed away yesterday, spared the end stage Alzheimer's devastation that otherwise loomed; a new sister in the Lord who's had to bury three of her daughters due to cystic fibrosis, sharing her powerful testimony of how our loving God ministered to her and each of her dear girls - and to the doctors and nurses who witnessed it - in their last hours in this world.

I see it answered in different ways in my own life.  Yes, I am learning to follow Jesus enough to share how God has delivered me through even my worst moments.  Yet in doing so there remains unknown ahead of me, and it is still a challenge to trust that God's providence will meet our every need.  Too, I struggle to walk in the grace that I believe my Lord would pour more fully into my life.  I have always undercut that grace.  As if to prove my unspoken, unrecognized certainty that I'm not worthwhile, my decisions have reinforced my  unconscious low opinion of myself, over and over again.  I thought that merely being conscious of my poor self-esteem would be sufficient to keep me from manifesting this pattern in my life and allow me to impose my alleged will on my actions.  But I have decades of practice and habit of not walking fully in grace, and now I begin to see that it takes more, and less.  More: trusting in God to fill my lack; less: gutting it out by my own efforts.

For when I am aware of my vulnerability and weakness, and immediately give myself over to God's sufficiency, in peaceful resignation to him I encounter the solution that I've sought for so long.  In this moment, at least, I am finally free to, simply, be.

But only when I truly allow God to be in charge: more of you, Lord, and less of me.

"He bids me, 'Come, and sleep . . . '"

An old man, whose day is done
lies prostrate in the night.
In his left ear, continual ringing;
His right hears the rhythm of his heart.
Together they sing and pound out
The lamentation of his soul:
Potential forever wasted,
Promise unfulfilled,
Union never achieved,
Choices driven by unknown brokenness,
Dreams abandoned.
The song leaves him yearning.
Yearning.

He knows there is an answer.
On the cross, the only Answer.
The lamentation must die.
Thoughts of potential - die.
Mourning of promise - die.
Longing for union - die.
Regret of choices - die.
Unfruitful dreams - die.
Discordant song - die.
Unfulfilled yearning - die.
The very self - die.
'Til naught remains but the Answer,
For only thus can the man live.

Reading entirely too much into a simple dinner?

I'm trying to figure something out.  Tonight, the mrs. has a 6:45 commitment at church.  So here we are, with dinner finished in plenty of time for her to comfortably get where she needs to be, all because at 5:00 she said "oh, it's time to start the grill . . . "  As a result, the thick-cut chops had plenty of time to get done, and everything else just fell into place from there.

So why does that so rarely seem to work when I have to be somewhere?  Is it because I'm not usually here to actually get things started, or to do the cooking?  I mean, all she really did tonight was observe the time, and since I was home this afternoon I took care of the rest.  But I got the impression that she'd have done it if I hadn't.  This makes me wonder if she has some passive-aggressive thing going on?  Does she resent my being gone a couple evenings each week?  I mean, if it's that easy to work backward from when she has to be somewhere to what time the ball needs to start rolling, what keeps it from happening when I have somewhere to be?

Or are my expectations unreasonable?  After all, as I read over it, this seems to be a pretty selfish post . . .

In whom do I trust?

St. Patrick's cathedral in New York is directly across from Rockefeller Center, and at the entrance to Rockefeller Center is the great sculpture of Atlas holding up the world.  On Good Friday, the doors of the cathedral are opened, and you can see the cross from the street.  Turn in one direction, and there is the mythical Atlas holding up the world; turn in the other, and there is the One broken by the world.  Which image speaks the truth?  Is the world upheld by our godlike strength or by the crucified love of God?  Upon that decision everything, simply everything, turns. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon


I'm often reminded of how often my "trusting God" is really "trusting Tom to make best use of the gifts God has provided."  These two are not nearly the same thing.  The latter is really me playing Atlas, trying to hold up my world by my strength.  Oh, please don't think I'm suggesting that I shouldn't try to make the best use of God's gifts.  But it seems to me that there is a difference between doing so and putting my trust in my ability to do so.

It's very much like the difference between having an abundance of material blessings and putting my trust in those blessings.  If I invest too much of my trust in the roof over my head, then when that structure is threatened in some way I am likely to make the wrong choice about what to do about it.  But if my trust is in God's providence, I know that I will always have someplace to lay my head.  This is why, during the Feast of Booths, the Jewish people were to sleep without an enclosed roof, so that they would be reminded that it is God who provides their security.  With that focus, I can consider what to do about any peril to my residence based on what I believe God would have me do, not on saving my abode at all costs.  (There are, of course, too many more implications to this to mention, but an important one is how I respond to others in need.)

If I am holding up my own world, then when that world begins to crumble on me, I focus my effort on how I can hold things together.  Then I'm more likely to make decisions that aren't in keeping with the person I am called to be.  My security is threatened, and I must defend it.  But if my security is Christ Jesus - well, depending on how you look at it, it either can never be threatened or has already been as crushed as it (he) could ever be!  I need not fear any circumstance.  I need not make a decision that seems "necessary" or "pragmatic" but is in fact a compromise of my person.

So I'm sure I'm not alone in needing to ask myself from time to time: Who's holding up my world?

Freedom!

Overcoming your greatest fear is a wonderful and liberating thing!

Now LOTS of people know, and they (mostly) don't hate me!  (Maybe I offended a few who left without saying so.)  I don't know if I've ever felt more affirmed and appreciated.  A long-time friend looked me in the eye afterward and she said, "Tom, I just want you to know, I love you more than ever."

It was pretty uncomfortable, though, to hear so many people describe my testimony as "courageous."  What I described was the antithesis of courage.  I'm simply describing the good that God has done for me, from a deep sense of gratitude.  That doesn't take courage; faith and trust the size of a mustard seed, maybe.

Yet, as a result, I've receive yet another humbling and precious gift.  It's true: we can never outdo God in generosity!

The Final Word

"It is finished" does not mean that suffering and loss and the rivers of tears are things of the past.  "It is finished" means that they do not have the last word.  It means that love has the last word. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon


As Fr. Neuhaus suggested earlier in his book, it is true for me that the celebration of Easter does not mean that Good Friday is cast behind me.  I simply must finish this wonderful book, and I must not rush through what remains of it!

Love has the last word.  I have seen this borne out in my own life, as my mistakes have been overcome by the love I've received.  My wife, my daughters, my friends who continue to be vessels of priceless treasure to me have brought me to resurrection life.

One of my very most favoritest Christian musicians - Michael Card - did a musical trilogy back in the 80's on the life of Jesus.  He worked backward, so the last album of the trilogy was on the incarnation of Christ.  Its title cut was called The Final Word, based on how St. John refers to Jesus in the prologue to his Gospel: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God . . . And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.  Michael Card says:


 . . . When the Father's wisdom wanted to communicate His love,
He spoke it in one final perfect Word.


He spoke the incarnation, and then so was born the Son.
His final word was Jesus, He needed no other one.
Spoke flesh and blood so He could bleed and make a way Divine.
And so was born the baby who would die to make it mine.


So, the love has the last word, and the final word is Jesus.  Of course!

And as I read this word from the cross, "It is finished," I realize that love has completed what love came to do, reconciling us with love for all time.  All that remains is for us to choose to be reconciled.

A great day

We've been preparing Coming Out of the Desert - a (hopefully) more accessible and less intimidating variation and expansion on the Life in the Spirit Seminars - for a few months now, though it's clear that the groundwork has been laid over several years.  Since January the core team has been praying and fasting and listening and meeting and planning, privileged to participate in whatever work the Lord is doing.  Our hope is that by encouraging people to be open to the gifts of the Spirit in a less confrontive way - and unfortunately, no matter how lovingly presented, the LISS can feel confrontive - we can help them allow God into their lives more fully.

The response so far has been more than double the maximum number of folks that we were planning for, so already for our first meeting last night we were forced from the day chapel into the main sanctuary of the church.  As it turns out, many of the attendees have been very active in church and outreach ministry, and have strong relationships with the Lord already.  But there are also many with real needs, who are deeply thirsting, and all of us can use more growth.  Last night we heard a great talk on God's love, and a very nice lay testimony to follow it up.

Next week I'm on tap to follow up the teaching on salvation with a testimony of what that has meant in my life.  Is it possible to do this without touching - at least obliquely - on just what I've been saved out of?  While this has long since stopped being super-secret, neither is it public knowledge, something that I share regularly or lightly.  A few dozen folks who think they know me would learn something about me very . . . well . . . unpalatable and dark - any adjective less than "shitty" is too polite, really - that they don't suspect.  At least none of those people are newcomers.  Still, I must be sure not to have an agenda of my own with this, neither avoiding my shame nor seeking affirmation for myself.  The only good reason for sharing would be to contrast my darkness against the light of salvation that Christ provides!

Once I have that testimony together I imagine I'll post it here.

The gift of praise

I keep forgetting what a difference the act of praising God makes in my life.  It lifts my spirits, raises my perspective, and puts me back in touch with what I believe.

I'm a bit concerned about the gap between my faith in my heart and in my head at the moment. The gift of praise helps get my heart back where it belongs. But I'm a little cautious now, and dare not investigate too closely where my head has been since Sunday morning liturgy. As I said last week, for me, to believe in Christ is to live, but the converse is this: to not believe depresses me, even brings me uncomfortably close to despair.

My life outside of Christ just isn't anything I want to live ever again.

From light to darkness

It's amazing how one well-intentioned sentence can pluck a man from the midst of Easter joy and plunge him back into the dryness of the desert.

"If you can believe this," Fr. Dave said about the resurrection, "and not everyone can, but if you can believe this," and I don't know if he was pleading with us to believe or, more likely, to grasp the implications of what we say we believe, "it makes all the difference."

A Lent full of reflecting on Christ on the cross had me no longer considering whether I believe or not.  My year had started off with a book - also well-intentioned but not working for me - that knocked me spiritually off balance.  A good friend shared another book that I've been reading and reflecting on ever since.  My eyes back on Christ at last, I'd so immersed in the Triduum that I'd finally forgotten the issue of whether I believe.  After an emotionally and spiritually challenging Lent, I was filled with the joy of Easter, the glorious music and the amazing empty tomb and the bright light of Christ banishing my darkness.

And it all seemed to extinguish in an instant.  I know that many saints have struggled with the silence of God in their lives for prolonged periods, with the darkness of not sensing his presence and having to rely on what they believe rather than what they feel, with questioning whether they truly believe.

I cannot feel my faith right now.  I'm going to try to trust that I will again, and to live what I do not feel.  I'm going to go do some dishes for my wife now.

The mission of Christ

The Church does not have a mission, as though missionary work were one of its programs or projects.  The Church is the mission of Christ, who continues to seek and to save the lost who do not know their story.  Their story is Christ, the way, the truth and the life of all.  The Church does have many programs and projects, some of which she shares with other institutions and communities.  But the proclamation of God's love in Christ is the most important thing the Church does, because it is what she does uniquely.  If the Church did not do this, nobody would.  She does this simply because she is the Church and this is what the Church does.  She does this because she lives and breathes and is sustained in being by God's love in Christ, and love is either shared or lost. 


What we have we are obliged to share.  Others have a right to it, even if they don't know that. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon


If this is what the Church does, it is only so to the degree that it is what I do.  The Church is its members.  I live and breathe and am sustained in being by God's love in Christ.  To know Christ is to live.  For me, to not know Christ would be to despair.  My love for Christ is either shared or lost, and so I sing and pray, play my guitar and write blog posts, send messages of encouragement, talk about the wondrous love that caused the Lord of bliss to lay down his life for me.

Yes, I am obliged to share.  As St. Paul says, The love of Christ compels us.  When we fall in love, we tell our friends, and share the relationship.  Yet as much as we want to share our beloved, for those we love to love and value each other, we don't want them to have the same relationship as we do with our beloved.  But when we have encountered Christ through the Holy Spirit, we want our loved ones to know him as personally and intimately as we do!

This Triduum provides a precious opportunity to connect to my Savior's love, and to share it with those around me.  Each of us has a right to experience the love which Christ has manifest in its fullness in willingly laying down his life.

In the Garden, 2010

Each year I've been blessed to spend an hour (or more, some years) starting around 2 a.m. Good Friday morning in adoration in our Blessed Sacrament chapel.  Our men's group makes sure that someone is there throughout the night, in case anyone wishes to come pray.  For me, it's typically a unique time of special connection with my Lord's suffering and love, and it was this morning, as well.  I usually  end up with several pages of reflections based on what I'm reading and praying, but that wasn't as much the case this morning.  It has been a tumultuous Lent for me personally, and for my wife and I together.  So my prayer time this morning was a closer uniting of the challenges we've tried to face lovingly this season with the far greater ones of my Savior, of getting things more fully into perspective.  Still, there was some written reflection, too (parentheses reflect expansion on the words on my page):

The "cross" which I consider mine to bear, this cup I'm treating as mine to drink?  I could not live without it!  How can that which God has given me - through which God has saved and sustained my life - how could it be a burden?  If I will truly die to myself it will not seem so.

(I then read:)

The way of the Christian life is cruciform.  Jesus did not suffer and die in order that we need not suffer and die, but in order that our suffering and death might be joined to his in redemptive victory . . . The Christian way is not one of avoidance but of participation in the suffering of Christ, which encompasses not only our own suffering but the suffering of the whole world . . . Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his classic The Cost of Discipleship, wrote, "When Jesus calls a man, he calls him to come and die.

To many, this does not sound like good news." - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon

(pretty cool how we get such confirmation when we earnestly seek the Lord.)

(Indeed.  But these words must be seen in the light of my previous post, which I simply didn't develop to completion, another victim of my recent prolificacy.  Perhaps it was also the challenges to which I've alluded above that kept me from getting there yesterday.  That post should have moved onto the joy that abounds when the love we bear for others finally bears fruit.  Our formerly-estranged son-in-law's return to our family, to his wife, and to the church is one of the most tangible recent examples we've seen of this.


As for this morning's reflection, it occurred to me immediately that Jesus invitation must be expressed more completely than this quote from Bonhoeffer, who we must understand was struggling to rouse up complacent Christianity in opposition to the rising influence and evil of the Third Reich.  I'm not criticizing this 20th century martyr in the slightest - whose writings I have not read and who very well may have gone on to make a similar point himself - when I suggest that Jesus would probably say something more complete.  Perhaps, he'd say something like:) "Come and live fully! Come and love completely!  Come and die to yourself, and so live!"

Lord Jesus, for my sake you have borne so much more than I can imagine.  From your cross, your sacrifice, and your death to yourself you have brought forth the ultimate victory!  Holy Spirit, let me be so united with Christ that I see and experience this victory in my life.    My God, break every part of me that you must in order to love through me more fully.

On my knees at the end of my prayer time, this occurred to me: focusing so long and so intently on my past failings and unworthiness, I have in some ways neglected to allow Jesus to be Lord of the remainder of my life.

Death and resurrection

I have said we should not rush to Easter, yet Easter is the necessary presupposition of our contemplating the derelict on the cross.  Apart from Easter, such contemplation would reflect nothing but a morbid, macabre fascination with suffering and death - however "noble" his sacrifice.  Because of Easter, the words from the cross are words of life.  The cross is not merely the bad news before the good news of the resurrection.  Come Easter Sunday, we do not put the suffering and death behind us as though it were no more than a nightmarish prelude to the joy of victory.  No, the cross remains the path of discipleship for those who follow the risen Lord.  It is not as though there are two paths, one the way of the cross and the other the way of resurrection victory.  Rather the resurrection means that the way of the cross is the way of victory.  - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon


I think I hear Fr. Neuhaus saying that just as there can be no resurrection without dying, the purpose of this death is the resurrection.

Maybe that's the point of all death, really.  My father's despairing death.  My sister's tragic death.  My mother's peaceful death.  My eventual death.

That is the point, too, of dying to ourselves, of placing my daughters' and grandchildren's and wife's and neighbors' needs ahead of my own.  The death of my wishes, of my selfish will, somehow conveys the risen Christ.

Proposing the truth

If by "impose" is meant that we try to force people to agree, then we certainly must not impose the gospel.  In an encyclical on mission - Redemptoris Missio (The Mission of the Redeemer) - John Paul II says, "The Church imposes nothing.  She only proposes."  But what she proposes she proposes as the truth. This is basic.  It is so basic that, if we don't understand this, all talk about mission really is no more than arrogance and presumption.  The one who said "I thirst" and received on the hyssop the wine of the new covenant, representing the blood shed and the blood shared by the eucharistic community to which he surrenders his spirit, this one is either Lord of all or he is not Lord at all. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon

Okay, I've posted separately on the significance of this last phrase for me individually.  Fr. Neuhaus isn't saying that unless all acknowledge Jesus as Lord that he isn't Lord at all.  Rather, if we don't all owe Jesus acknowledgement as Lord, very Son of God from before the universe began, then no one does.  

I love Fr. Neuhaus' explanation of the hyssop, and the connection this draws between the blood of the Pesach lamb first applied to the lintels of the Hebrew homes in Egypt, Jesus' physical blood shed for us on the cross, and Jesus' Eucharistic blood now made present for us in the physical guise of wine.  The Jewish understanding of the Passover feast is crucial to seeing how these, once united, can never be truly separated again.  Even today the Jewish people celebrate at each Passover their own delivery from slavery in Egypt, though they are thousands of years removed from that slavery.  Likewise, we do not offer the sacrifice of Christ over and over again.  Rather, we unite ourselves with his sacrifice when we come together for Eucharist, at which time we are present at the first Passover, and at the cross, and at the empty tomb, and at the heavenly banquet which we will one day see in its fullness and of which we now catch only the most fleeting glimpse.

I can't wait until we're not locked into time anymore!  Only then will we see the fullness of what we celebrate.