Pensive

Hello, darkness, my old friend.
I've come to talk with you again
because a vision, softly creeping
left its seeds while I was sleeping,
and the vision that was planted in my brain
still remains within the sound of silence.
                                  - Paul Simon

I didn't exactly have a disturbing dream, but have still awakened in a bit of a melancholy mood this morning, and am not quite sure why.  It isn't from lack of sleep, that's certain.  And it isn't as if I haven't had the most wonderful weekend, so far.  The visit with Aunt Helen has been great; she's such a treasure.  It's as if she has taken up the responsibility for being mom's representative in my life, and I love her all the more for it.  And it was also wonderful to see old parishioners Joe and Frans yesterday, for the first time in ten years.  I can't believe their daughter has finished college and their twin boys are now done with high school.  What a great bunch of kids they have.

Checked Facebook this morning, and saw my young cousin's plea for her only sister's company.  I find I have no ready words of consolation or encouragement to offer her.  We're strangers, practically, and whatever pain she's in clearly requires more than a trite assurance that all will be well.  Instead I find myself momentarily, stupidly jealous that she has a sister to whom she can call out and hear back from.  I need to put that aside; she's clearly in real pain, and at the least I need to offer up a heartfelt prayer for her unknown circumstances.

I have a choice of opportunities to serve this morning.  I find myself evaluating them chiefly in terms of which will fill up more of my day, but it isn't as if I have reason to expect this day to pose any sort of special challenge.  I suppose that I'm uniquely placed to minister in music, and will probably go to our parish Mass this morning as there are plenty of folks who can nail OSB to roof joists at the Habitat house build.  It will give me a chance to pray in advance for Nic and his unit prior to their deployment later in the year, and to offer a prayer of thanksgiving and of repose for those who have given their lives for our freedom.

Then I suppose I'll see what the remains of the day brings.  For now: Lord, you've so blessed me.  Help me to not focus so much on what's going on within me, which inevitably takes my attention off of you.

Letting go

Okay, so this morning I saw a post from a coworker that made me pause for a moment to wonder who she might be referring to.  Within a few seconds I realized that it was patently obvious who she was talking about.  This post didn't involve me or anyone in my life, yet that pause revealed something about me that really saddens me.

The thing is, it's something that I can't do anything more about than I'm already doing.  Agonizing over it won't help matters; in fact, it'd be more likely to make them worse.  So it turns out to be another thing that I just have to let go of.

Somehow.

Conclusion

I thank the late Fr. Neuhaus for giving me such a wealth of material to reflect on, and apologize to those who love him if my ramblings have been less than his excellent musings deserve.

Through Mary he received his humanity, and in receiving his humanity received humanity itself.  Which is to say, through Mary he received us.  In response to the angel's strange announcement, Mary said yes.  But only God knew that it would end up here at Golgotha, that it had to end up here.  For here, in darkness and in death, were to be found the prodigal children who had said no, the prodigal children whom Jesus had come to take home to the Father. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon


Before time began (as if before had any meaning at that point), the eternal Son knows where the choice to become one of us would lead him.   In the eternal present moment that encompasses each moment of past, present, and future, He knows all things simultaneously and completely. In eternity, he sees what we would do to him, how we would reject him two thousand years ago and today and throughout the ages to come.  Yet he also sees how each of us throughout all time would embrace him, how his deliverance would be received by those who love him in return.  And therefore, in an instant that we refer to as the fullness of time, he became a mindless zygote in Mary's womb (preposterous!  Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying,' she said: 'one CAN'T believe impossible things.' 'I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. with thanks to Fr. Dave), with no knowledge of anything at all, locked into experiencing time and life as we do, as he knows he would.  And in his love, he chooses this path for our sake, choosing to receive us through Mary and through the cross, so as to bring us home with him forever.

It's presumptuous of me to quote the end of a book, but we know this story already, so I dare.  Feel free to stop here, if you prefer, and buy the book and read it instead.


To the prodigal children lost in a distant land, to disciples who forsook him and fled, to a thief who believed or maybe took pity and pretended to believe, to those who did not know that what they did they did to God, to the whole bedraggled company of humankind he had abandoned heaven to join, he says: "Come.  Everything is ready now.  In your tears and in your laughter, in your friendship and farewells, in your loves and losses, in what you have been able to do and what you know you will never get done, come, follow me.  We are going home to the waiting Father. " - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon


Sometimes I yearn for this life to be over, to enter into the eternity that awaits me.  For the longest time it was shame - occasionally intense but always pretty much present - that drove this near-despairing, and it was only my love and appreciation for the dear family and friends through whom God has poured his love into my life that kept me from much wallowing there.  Fr. Neuhaus and William Young and a handful of faith-full friends have helped me begin to be set free from that shame, though there may be just a remnant of that habitual feeling that will continue to fade over time.  And yet I sometimes wonder whether it may merely be doubt that causes me to cling to this life's blessings despite it challenges.

Sometimes I wonder if this faith I profess is true, if my experiences of the touch of God are instead merely the product of a touched mind.  I wonder whether the eternity that awaits me is something as wonderful as heaven, as torturous as hell, or as blank as oblivion.  Usually I believe the first, not because I think I'm any more deserving of it than others but because of what Fr. Neuhaus has shared of God's mercy for his beloved. On rare occasions I still wonder about the second possibility, and find that I cannot help but consider the third.

This one thing only I know: the end of this life is the end of time for each of us, and I have no hope beyond the worms save Christ crucified.  Yet, in him, I have abundant hope.  It helps that when I consider the teachings of my faith in the context of eternity, I find it the only consistent explanation for every question in life.  Every other hypothesis leaves more things unanswered than this one does, and requires more faith than I can muster.

So in this Jesus I place my trust, and his story I proclaim with my life.  I strive to follow where he leads, and trust him to carry me where I can never walk on my own: to the home I believe he has prepared for me for all eternity.

Humble obedience through the darkness

It is finished, but it is not over.  The veil between earth and heaven is torn, and faith, following the path that Christ has taken, sees through.  But the faith that sees is in a world still covered by darkness.  The only way to the light is the way he took, the way through the heart of darkness, the way of the cross.  That is where he is to be found; that is where he finds those whom he takes to the Father.  This has always been, and is today, the great offense of Christianity: the cross.  "We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews, and folly to the Gentiles."


A century after Paul, Justin Martyr wrote about how the Christians were mocked for worshiping as divine a crucified man: "They say that our madness consists in the fact that we put a crucified man in second place after the unchangeable and eternal God, the Creator of the world." - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon


Well, St. Justin, they don't bother mocking us for that anymore.  Modern science has delivered us from any need at all of a Creator, so we are now mocked for our minds being too puny and superstitious to abandon such a quaint and unnecessary concept.  After two thousand years, this has become a greater stumbling block than the cross.  And yet this is still the crux of the issue: it is our rejection of God's authority, which seems to make the cross so essential, that causes us to discard the Creator so that we can avoid the judgment we hold ourselves above.  It's important that we who believe not reply to our being mocked by mocking others for their minds being too puny or stubborn to grasp the full complexities and implications of our faith.

The great obstacle to fully proclaiming Christ with my own life doesn't involve any of those things, though.  It is rather my inability to allow my habitual, stubborn areas of disobedience, whatever their sources, to be transformed in the ways that we say should happen when we become a new creation in Christ.  He has delivered me through the depths of my darkest nights; should I not then find myself eager to forsake my self-absorbed whims and seek only my loving Father's will?  Even though it require a great effort of will, shouldn't I always turn away from the world's darkness toward the light of Christ, knowing that the Father's will for me is a far better plan than my own?  Fr. Neuhaus says that faith takes the path that Christ took which, while it may go through the heart of darkness, is ultimately a path of humble obedience.  I fear to find myself worse off than those who reject God outright, as Jesus' harshest words were always for those who proclaimed one thing and lived another.

And yet, there is the matter of where I place my trust.  Is it in my ability to be transformed, or is it in the one who transforms, who has delivered me from death?  We often forget that the goal is to fully accept Christ as our savior, as the one who delivers us from sin and death - both those we turn away from and those we've committed. Rather, we often approach life as if the goal is to not need Christ to save us anymore.

While I must not go so far as to claim that my continued stumblings are a good thing, I must entrust myself fully to him, trusting that the task of my salvation is finished, even if it is not yet over.

Participating in the perfect sacrifice

There is a cosmic back and forth here, a movement to-and-fro, from heaven to earth and back again.  In Christian worship, the body of Christ on the cross is perpetually lifted up by the Body of Christ, the Church, which is itself conducted through the veil to the Holy of Holies, and then returned to earth, renewed in its redemptive mission . . . It is maddeningly wondrous, surpassing our understanding, but no more than one might expect if the greater wonder is true, that earth and heaven are joined in God become man. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus - Death on a Friday Afternoon


It becomes either more or less maddeningly wondrous in light of the previous reflection on eternity.  The reason we pray over and over again, "Almighty God, may your angel take this sacrifice to your altar in heaven.  Then, as we receive from this altar the sacred Body and Blood of your Son, let us be filled with every grace and blessing" (ibid, quoting Eucharistic Prayer 1, English text © ICEL) has to do with what we mean by "this sacrifice."  If we're praying the Mass properly, we are not merely offering the Father the perfect sacrifice of his Son, but also offering our not-so-perfect selves.  The sacrifice of Jesus is finished, but it is not over (ibid); Jesus' has offered himself completely for all eternity, yet it remains for us to fully participate in that sacrifice.  


This idea of the Body of Christ lifting up the body of Christ is spot on.  It is our mission, and our privilege.  As we do so, we become more fully, yet still (in time) imperfectly, the Body of Christ.  We will never reach perfection in this transformation individually or in time.  It will be completed only in communion with the whole Body of Christ, united in him, and only in eternity.  Yet we see wondrous bits of transformation in the lives of those who are truly attempting to walk with Christ with their entire lives. 


This union initiated by God, permitted by Mary's fiat (inspired by God and a gift of his grace to her and to us), manifest in the eternal Word become a human being, brought to fulfillment by Jesus' glorification - which in addition to the events listed by Fr. Neuhaus at the start of the quotation in that previous post, surely must include the outpouring of the Holy Spirit - makes everything else possible.  We're living in time and on earth, yet earth and heaven are united in eternity in Jesus Christ.

Our Advocate against accusation

This was why the Lord had promised to send the Advocate: he was to prepare us as an offering to God.  Like dry flour, which cannot become one lump of dough, one loaf of bread, without moisture, we who are many could not become one in Christ Jesus without the water that comes down from heaven.  And like parched ground, which yields no harvest unless it receives moisture, we who were once like a waterless tree could never lived and borne fruit without this abundant rainfall from above . . . . 


If we are not to be scorched and made unfruitful, we need the dew of God.  Since we have our accuser, we need an Advocate as well. - St. Irenaeus - Against Heresies


Have been concentrating on Fr. Neuhaus' excellent book so far this year rather than the Liturgy of the Hours, but wanted to give some focused thought to the Holy Spirit this morning, on the eve of Pentecost.  It isn't that I've been ignoring the Spirit throughout the season - quite the opposite, with the wonderful variation on the Life in the Spirit Seminars in which I've been blessed to be involved - but I haven't spent so much of my personal prayer time reflecting on our Paraclete.  Even though the first part of what I've quoted forms the bulk and is worthy of reflection on its own merit, I've included it mainly to provide context for what the last portion says, which really struck me this morning.

I've long grasped what the accuser's role at our personal judgment is traditionally understood to be. In that context, Christ, who bore the full penalty for our sins, will be our only defense against the accusations we will undeniably know to be true. "Guilty," I believe I will be compelled to admit, a confession to which I believe I will hear respond that the penalty for my offenses has already been amerced upon him. What a gift!  (BTW, I do not by any means hold to the traditional view that the Father is the harsh judge demanding justice; I tend to expect that we will be the ones judging ourselves so harshly in the infinite light of God's truth, unable to enter into His presence with our sinfulness so plainly before us.)

But we here do not wait for that unknown day to hear the accusations against us.  Each time we are tempted we are reminded of our own past failings, our weakness, our lack of letting ourselves be set apart for God's glorious plan in and through our lives. "You're only human. You're not good enough. No one can do all that is asked of them. Look, you've never had the power to avoid this sin." As Christ will be our Advocate at our final judgment, so we have an Advocate defending us with the greater truth against the daily accusations we experience. We have put on Christ, and received the Holy Spirit, whom St. Paul tells us transforms us all into his own likeness, from one degree of glory to another, and by whom people who have been absorbed by the things of this world become other-worldly in outlook, and cowards become men of great courage. (St. Cyril of Alexandria - a commentary on the Gospel of John)


In what way are we most cowardly? Is it not in shrinking back from all that the Holy Spirit makes possible within us? We reject God's plan for fear of what we'll lose out on along the way. We do not trust in God's love and providence for us. But the Holy Spirit within us answers the accusation of our own shortcomings with the greater truth: we are clothed in Christ, transformed into his presence in the world. He equips us with Spiritual gifts and causes us to bear Spiritual fruit, and as a result we who were able only to fall short are made able by God within us to shine as beacons of His love to all the world.

Eternal truth

The passion, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus are all aspects of his glorification.  Taken together, they complete his mission and vindicate his claims of who he was and who he is. Like us, the disciples were locked into the strict frame of time past, present and future.  From God's perspective, so to speak, all time is present; there is one event of the glorification of the Son. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus - Death on a Friday Afternoon


There have been a handful of precious times when I've felt I've received a glimpse into eternity.  I'll never forget the strongest one: at Mass one Sunday, I felt as if I was present at the Last Supper, and at the cross, and in the room where Jesus first appeared to the disciples after his resurrection, and at every Eucharist that has ever been and ever will be celebrated, and with the countless saints gathered around the throne of grace worshiping for all eternity, all at the same time.  It was a momentary insight into what this eternity might be like, and even thinking back on it leaves me longing to experience it in full.  There have been just a few similar times during prayer that I've had such a sense, but they've been rare.

People suggest that an eternity of "doing nothing but worshiping God" will be eternal boredom.  "I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints; the sinners are much more fun," suggested Billy Joel.  This represents our finite misunderstanding of both eternity and our infinite God.  Heaven will not be sad, boring, or "no fun."

The reality of salvation is definitively settled, but history continues to be cruciform, a way of the cross for pilgrims headed home.  Salvation is "now" and "not yet"; it is a matter of certitude and of seeing in a mirror dimly; it is a present possession and a hope to be worked out with fear and trembling. 


As one might expect from a story centered in the cross point, Christian faith is a crosscutting dynamic that cannot be contained within familiar time frames,  conceptual cages, or psychological definitions of reality . . . We think we have grasped the matter and pinned it down, and then we have to start out all over again, always becoming as little children in our understanding.  The truth is elusive not in order to tease us, but to keep us ever relying not upon our own understanding but upon the One who is the truth. 


Having needed the last four months to work my way through this wonderful book, I won't accuse Fr. Neuhaus of oversimplification here.  Shorthand, maybe.  The truth is elusive because he is infinite and we are finite, and that is why we must rely upon the One who is the infinite truth rather than our own limited understanding.  Only the infinite and the eternal can bring us limited and timebound creatures into communion with the truth.  We cannot aspire in our wildest dreams to get there on our own, for our finite selves cannot dream that big.  But in truth it is only our foolish pride that would long for a truth outside of the perfectly loving truth who does everything possible to draw us into the truth we cannot reach by our own efforts.

Only then does he commend himself, and all of us, into the Father's infinitely loving hands.

I must mention how Fr. Neuhaus' understanding of the "way of the cross" goes so far beyond the perfunctory stations of the cross which are rushed through in many parishes during the season of Lent.  A true reflection on the way of the cross devotion leads to a fuller recognition of our lives in the context of the way.  If you ever get a chance to join Jubilee in praying this devotion in the Dayton area, please take advantage of it.  You'll never think of the "stations" the same way again.

As I draw near to the end of this book, the nuggets on which I wish to reflect follow ever more closely upon each other. I don't know that I'll meet my revised goal of finishing this book and my reflections on it by the end of the Easter season, but of this I am convinced: that artificial time frame doesn't really matter.

The bright side

The cross is not the dark side of which the resurrection is the bright side.  In John's Gospel, Jesus speaks repeatedly of being glorified in his death.  The glory is in having kept faith, in having seen it through to the end, in having surrendered himself in unqualified love to the Father.  This is now, because of him and through him, a human possibility.  The only dark side, for him and for us, would be to turn against the light by setting our will against the will of God. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus - Death on a Friday Afternoon

Our desires are so often in conflict with the revealed will of God, and it is amazing how we will twist our interpretation of God's will to match our own desires.

- A husband in the grip of the "seven year itch" may convince himself that it was never God's will that he should marry the wife with whom he now seems to have so little in common, and that it cannot be God's will that he be chained to her for the rest of his life. Yet once he has committed his own will - his own choices - to God's, he may eventually come to see the utter foolishness and unrivaled pride behind his misjudgment and to treasure the bride whom he once disdained.  The whole episode may then serve as a touchstone of truth in later circumstances.

- Our hearts breaking with helpless love for our children as they suffer from a debilitating or life-threatening medical condition, we may be tempted to grasp at any solution, regardless of its effect on others.  To stay the course, seeking only options for them that also honor the dignity of all people, is a challenge that we often find is beyond us.

- When we see others make choices and commit acts that are hurtful and heinous, it is a challenge for us to simultaneously mourn for both their victims and for their own loss of dignity.  We judge - and treat - them as less than human, as having forfeited any right to any degree of respect.  We let our fear and our revulsion obscure the truth that their own souls are more tormented by their actions than ours are.

- We allow ourselves to disregard the more fundamental needs of others, especially those far from our sight, in our focus on those that are directly before us.

The examples are beyond any individual's ability to recount.  But when we choose to embrace the will of God even when it seems to be calling us to an act that is beyond reason - when a lonely and isolated wife continues to work on her marriage in new ways even when she sees no hope of ever being fulfilled in it; when a terminally ill patient rejects an option that would in fact diminish his remaining dignity; when we forgive one who has done the unforgivable; when we choose to live even though the pain of it seems unbearable and the choice to die would seem to offer immediate relief - the light is always revealed in it.

When I get focused on the darkness and difficulty in my life, I'm often amazed in retrospect at how small the situation really was, and chagrined at how much light I ignored in misdirecting all my attention onto those circumstances rather than on the One on the cross whose light is the answer to all darkness.

A higher call

It could have been otherwise. Had he chosen his own will in the garden, had he on the cross denied God, then he would have turned out not to be the one he claimed to be.  Because his will was perfectly responsive to the will of the Father, he turned out to be the one he claimed to be.  And because he turned out to be who he claimed to be, it turns out that it could not have been otherwise.  He really is the Word of God incarnate, which means one of us.  It follows that the story of Jesus is not about the exploits of a Superman whom we call true God and true man; it is the story about us.  This human stuff of which we are made is capable of living in perfect responsiveness to God.  We know that because it was done in the life, death, and resurrection of a human being named Jesus, and we are his brothers and sisters. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus - Death on a Friday Afternoon


Of course, Fr. Neuhaus is now talking utter nonsense.  He's talking as if we no longer have any excuse for our continued failure to live the holy lives to which this Jesus calls us and into which he delivers us.  "I'm only human!" we protest, believing that in his divinity this is one argument that Christ could never make.  We keep trying to mix his humanity and his divinity all together, and the latter becomes our alibi for not living our own humanity anywhere near as well as he did.

It is as if we keep seeing Christ as a standard we must live up to by our own efforts, and as if we do not really believe ourselves to be inhabited by the very Spirit of God.

And the people I know that are most Christlike in their humanity are the first to protest how unlike him they are.  The nearer we allow God to draw us, the more clearly we see how far we have to go.  And yet our lives become less strained as we more fully we understand that the perfection that God seems to ask of us is a gift he longs for us to receive, a work he wants to complete in us, as opposed to a demand he is imposing on us.

Thy will be done

We are told that the sweat flowed from his brow like great drops of blood as he prayed, "Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me."  Please, please, take it away; let it not be.  Then: "Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done.


"Nevertheless."  The cry in the garden and the cry the next afternoon on the cross catch up, and offer up, everything that happens in between.  This is faith as will: nevertheless, despite everything, to will that God's will be done. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus - Death on a Friday Afternoon


The Lord has never asked of me, nor I suspect could ever ask of anyone, the degree of obedience to the Father's will which he demonstrated by his own life.  Still, there have been times that a degree of obedient trust was required of me and I failed to give it, to my great regret.  Rather than lament, instead of lambasting myself for the things I cannot change, it is better that I take to heart the important lesson: trusting in God's clear plan even (especially!) when I see no way to the goal is in fact the only way to the goal.

Sometimes faith as will is all the faith I have.  Sometimes hope as will is my only hope.  And sometimes love as will is the most important part of love, the means to stay the course.

Sometimes I wish for more than will.  I wish for an avalanche of feeling, to linger in an appreciation room that I've carefully filled with a recognition of all the treasure I've received, rather than a mere broom closet or shoe box.  But even when that's all I have, my will remains.

as expected

Battling Boris

Okay, here's the story from my perspective.  I'm actually pretty thankful for it.

I'd gone to bed around 10, determined to get a full night's sleep ahead of today's early-morning meeting.  Almost right away I realized that "I don't have to get up that early."  I turned over to reset the alarm clock, then noticed that the alarm wasn't even turned on, as I'd awakened before it went off (AGAIN) on Friday morning and shut it off so it wouldn't wake Teri too early.  After setting it for my target wake-up time this morning, I struggled to find a comfortable position in which to fall asleep.  Sometimes lying on my stomach helps me relax more; I don't like to do that for too long as having my arms stretched out over my head like that makes my shoulders sore after a while.  I tried it, though, figuring I'd roll over in a few minutes but soon falling soundly asleep.

I thought I heard and felt Col. Potter - our shih-poo - jump up onto the bed with me, but only unconsciously.  It didn't stir me to roll over, as I needed to by this point.  I eventually became conscious of a larger body than his against me, and of what seemed like sobbing there, and groggily came to the realization that Teri was lying on the covers with her head on my back.  My first emotional response was fear that perhaps something had happened to her dad, but it eventually cut through my fog that she'd been frightened by a spider in the blanket she'd started to cover up with downstairs.  Relieved, and rather surprisingly not annoyed by this arachnophobic interruption of my sleep, I rolled over to allow my shoulders to recover from their prolonged stretch, and assured Teri that it would be okay.  After allowing myself a couple minutes to become more fully alert, I got up and started hunting around for my glasses, which I knew I'd need to find any spider on the dark family room carpeting.  Finding them on the dining room table, I returned to the bedroom for a sandal, something with enough weight to kill a spider the size Teri was describing, but also easily manipulable in case the thing started to scurry away.  Finally well armed against the threatening intruder, I ventured down the stairs, while Teri anxiously sat on them to observe the proceedings, probably to make sure I really took care of the problem.

I saw the spider right away, somewhat surprised it was still on the blanket, black and rather large, just as Teri had indicated.  I wondered why it hadn't sought shelter within the folds of the blanket, which I started to adjust so as to have a clearer shot at it the little beast.  It still didn't move and, figuring it must somehow be dead, that perhaps Teri had killed it in frantically throwing down the blanket, I looked more closely.  It was then that I realized we'd both been duped by a quite arachnid-appearing wad of thread.  I hugged my much-chagrined bride, who to her credit soon recognized the humor of the episode, and after giving myself a few minutes to relax, returned to the restful warmth of my bed for the night.

Entertainment

Please don't misread my willingness to grit out an opportunity to spend time with you as an appreciation for your chosen programming.  It managed not to offend me for 30 minutes.  That's a record.  But it's not "30 minutes and counting," as they ruined it at the end, in about the worst possible way.  "Do I make you happy?  You make me happy.  Let's $&#*!"

And as funny as Betty White may have been in places, watching SNL reminded me why I don't set the DVR for it every week.  The funniest bits were her monologue (in which I heard echoes of Shatner's great and lambasted "you-Trekkies-should-get-a-life-of-your-own" bit from years ago) and the census gags.  Much of the rest fell into the "sexually-suggestive-humor-seems-funnier-than-it-really-is-when-delivered-by-an-88-year-old-woman" category.

Don't over-analyze things

Here's something one shouldn't dwell on for too long: how do self-conscious acts of kindness yield to true selflessness?  I hope to discover this, but am convinced that I won't if I think about it too much.

Here's the rub: we do kind things to please another, yet their reaction pleases us in return, makes us feel proud.  So what's really the driving motivation, the other's pleasure or our own pride?  This is probably a good dynamic to be aware of.  The problem is, it's a bit like The Game (sorry Game-aware readers), which I just learned about the other day: just thinking about it means you've lost (and of course, I've just lost The Game again).  Or it may just be like the watched pot that never boils, how having the lid off of it allows enough energy to escape that it can never overcome its latent heat of vaporization.

This is tangential to Fr. Neuhaus' observation that we seem to know that our own love for God (and by extension, for others) can never be sufficient in quantity or purity, that instead of rooting around in our "rag shop" we need simply unite our meager offering to that of Christ.  The Holy Spirit will make it what it needs to be.  The more obsessed we get with perfecting it on our own, the more it becomes about the opposite of love.

In any case, I need to avoid being too introspective with this . . . Not that I'm prone to introspection, or anything like that.

Perfect love

Between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the joyful consummation is forever.  Their love, which was from before the foundation of the world, is now magnified by the homecoming of all the prodigal children adopted into their love.  Stumbling our way toward home, we worry about the unworthiness of our love, only to discover that it has already been attended to . . . 


To fret about the quality of our love is to miss the point.  Yes, we examine ourselves, confess our failings and pray for the grace to offer our best.  But it will never be good enough, unless with all its flaws it is handed over and taken up into his love for the Father.  Foolishly we rummage through what Yeats calls "the rag and bone shop" of our hearts to find a love that is pure, untouched by self-interest or pretense.  It is an endless and futile search, compounded by complexity the more rigorously it is pursued.  Among the things we give up, among the things we hand over, is that futile search. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus - Death on a Friday Afternoon


I'm now in the home stretch of this book, the last word of Jesus, the final chapter.  How interesting that my reading of this passage coincides with my desire to improve and purify how I love.  Has Fr. Neuhaus  carefully brought me to this point, or has another Author's hand been at work?

Unlike the usual worldly approach to this quest - and my own past ones - I'm not looking for someone I can love better.  (Isn't it sad how often we conclude, if we don't love another as we long to, it is because of a fault in the beloved?) While I'm not so sure I'm seeking anything so self-disinterested as Fr. Neuhaus describes, what I want is to love like I breathe.  Each inspiration of breath brings in the oxygen that saturates my cells with the fuel they need to carry out their function for the good of my body; each expiration carries away that which would poison them.  And when breathing becomes hard, I find a way to do it anyway.

I want my loving to be the same way, just as natural and life-giving and purifying, and just as determined when it needs to be. As much progress as I've made in choosing my beloveds' best interest, there's still too much selfishness in my love.  And while I'm pretty sure this is largely up to me to address, I suppose it is like our love for God: my love for those I love won't ever be good enough - that is, as abundant and pure as I long for it to be and, beyond that, all that God would have his love for them through me become - until I unite it with Christ's love for them, perfected in his commending himself fully into the Father's care.

This book keeps reminding me that focusing too much on myself and my efforts confounds my best intentions.  I must look to Christ.

Undertaking a challenge, finally

I've decided to take on a home improvement project this spring that I've been putting off.  I'm a little intimidated by this, actually.  

Yeah, that's pretty accurate.  If "a little intimidated" usually means "totally terrified."

I've figured out that's the reason I haven't undertaken this project sooner.  

What if I'm not able to do this?

Self-deterministic "grown-ups"

As adopted brothers and sisters of Jesus, we pray to his Father who is now our Father. 


There is the objection that such prayer is infantalizing, a regression to the dependencies of childhood. Grown ups, it is said, do not need the crutch of a "parent figure" to lean on. Good for them.  I once asked an old priest, a famous spiritual director, what he had learned from hearing thousands of confessions.  He had a ready answer: "There are no grown-ups."  There are grown-ups who pretend, and then there are those who have grown up to know the "second naiveté" of our utter dependence.  The Child who was utterly faithful in his utter dependence was given not a crutch to lean on, but a cross to die on. To those whom he calls to be his brothers and sisters he says, "Take up your cross and follow me." Pretending to be grown-up is easier.  One might be well-advised to keep it up, were it not for the truth that the darkness we feared as a child is real; the darkness we feared is but a slight premonition of the darkness from which he cried, and we cry with him, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit." - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus - Death on a Friday Afternoon


I struggle along with everyone else to not be so grown up.  Responsible, certainly, but being grown-up implies a self-sufficiency that will simply never be true for me.  The benefit that comes with it is being able to determine for ourselves what is right and what is wrong, to do what I want, to be able to convince myself that what I want is really what's best, against all evidence to the contrary.   It is this self-determinism for which we long as children.  We're eager for the day when we no longer have homework, when we don't have to heed our parents, when we can do as we wish, when we're grown-ups.

Does anyone have the kind of life they imagined when they were kids?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that I'm trapped in a life in which I don't get to make my own choices.  But I've also seen the results of making choices in ways that aren't bound appropriately, or are limited by my own vision.  It isn't just a matter of considering the effects my decisions have on others; our decisions have effects we can't foresee.


This is why we so need the utter dependence on God which we scorn in our rationalism.  Yes, many have misinterpreted this to imply a license to impose their will on others.  But applied properly, it is rather a way to set appropriate boundaries in my own life, to draw me out of my selfishness and more fully into a life of love.  When I commend my life into my Father's perfectly loving hands, I am freed to give myself fully, without fear of what I may experience in the process.  Though it may be the cross, beyond it lies a resurrection beyond my imagining.

Stubborn

A young monk had been living in a monastery for two years and was at his wits' end because he did not feel that he knew and understood the art of prayer. One day, in a moment of desperation, he approached a very old monk who was sitting by a river which ran through the monastery grounds. The young monk asked the old monk to explain prayer – what it is and how to do it. Immediately, the old monk grabbed the younger by the scruff of the neck and thrust his head underneath the water. The young monk tried with all his strength to break free but was unable to do so. As the old monk intuited that the younger was about to drown, he yanked the younger out of the water. The young monk gasped for breath as he had never done before, at which point the old monk said calmly, “That is prayer, my son. It is the very breath of life. Make time for prayer, even if it is difficult at times, because for our inner selves, it is as important as oxygen for the lungs. Without it, we spiritually die.”

I presume this story is apocryphal.  Still, I'm growing concerned that I don't want God anywhere nearly as desperately as I need to breathe.  There are too many worldly things that I seem to want more, that are more tangible and present to me.

God, nurture in me a greater desire for you, and put to death in me all that chooses other things in your place.

Inanimate objects

We're allowed to hate them, right?