From an interview with Archie, Peyton, and Eli Manning. (Read the interview from Rick Reilly first if you think you're going to want to, because this is the end of it.) This is Archie:
"You know, I said to [Olivia] one night -- I was in bed, reading something about the boys in a magazine -- and I said, 'Honey, we've been married 35 years now. Did you ever, in your wildest dreams, think you and I would have children that would do these amazing things?'
"And she said, 'Archie, very seldom are you in my wildest dreams.'"
I hope that he either made that up or that she was just teasing him. But at the moment I feel luckier than Archie Manning, because after 30 years of marriage my wife and I are still very much in each others' wildest dreams!
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Good Friday Adoration reflection
This reflection was written between 3 and 5 a.m. on Good Friday morning, though not really entered here until April 26 & 27.
Surely it seems to me I must have reflected on this last year, having read Fr. Neuhaus' book. Still, here is where I begin.
The Invitatory: Psalm 95
Today, Listen . . . to the voice of the Lord.
He speaks seven words from the cross today, as well as words in front of Pilate, and the Sanhedrin, and the Father. They form a song of unfathomable love!
Who is it you want? - Jn 18, 4
Jesus asks this of those who come to arrest him. They fall to the ground when he responds to their answer, "Jesus, the Nazorean," by saying, "I AM." Jesus asks us, as well. So who is it that I want? Do I want Jesus, the Nazorean? Or dare I seek Jesus, the Christ, the King, the Son of God? And do I want You, Lord, above all else that I might want? Will I make you ask me again, "Who is it you want?" Do I hear you tolling me: "If I AM the one you want, let these go"? You call me to let go of all else but you!
Do I fall on my face in recognition of your holiness and my unworthiness, and then out of gratitude for your love, which has won my victory over sin and death?
"Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?" - Jn 18, 11
The song which Jubilee uses for the 10th station, Thy Will Be Done, says that Jesus drank our cup of darkness and death. St. John emphasizes the Lord's willing acceptance of this cup, by which he establishes a new covenant. He omits Jesus' agonized pleading, because what matters to the beloved disciple is the choice Jesus makes, and the choice we make in response to him.
"I have spoken publicly to all who would listen. Ask those who heard me when I spoke. They will know what I said." - Jn 18, 20-21
Today - Listen. Then we will know the love which Jesus has spoken. If we but listen, we will hear him! The Psalmist pleads with us not to grow stubborn, not to harden our hearts, yet so often we do. We let our perceptions of reality interfere with hearing what Jesus says.
"If I have spoken wrongly, testify to the wrong. But if not, why hit me?" - Jn 18, 23
Much wrong has been spoken and done by those who claim to follow Jesus. Somtimes we allow these failures to obscure, to muddle the perfect love Jesus speaks. We provide testimony against Jesus' (sometimes alleged) followers, but there is none to be produced against Jesus.
"Do you say this on your own, or have others been telling you about me?" - Jn 18, 34
So often our perceptions of Christ are not from our experience of him, but are from what others tell us about him with their words and actions. Jesus invites us to listen to him, not to simply take the word of others, but to encounter him personally.
"It is you who say I am a King." - Jn 18, 37a
Jesus would distance himself from our preconceptions of him. If we see him as less than he is - and we always do; our minds are too little to grasp him fully - he dismisses our limited perceptions, and encourages us to encounter him more closely.
"The reason I came into this world was to testify to the truth. Anyone who hears the truth hears my voice." - Jn 18, 37b
There's a lot of truth to be heard, and we are rarely willing or able to hear it all. It seems to us that some injustice we perceive is the whole story, that some liberation we desire for others is what they need most. Jesus provides our ultimate liberation - from the warping of receiving God's gifts to us in any way other than as God intends - in the context of a humble relationship with him. God reveals his will for us most fully in Jesus, who set aside every right to lay down his life for his beloved. Yes, he is a king, but one for whom selfless love is more important than his rights, his rightful place. Only when we become more humbly interested in the truth than in our preconceptions of it will we hear Jesus' voice.
"You would have no power over me whatever unless it were granted from above. That is why he who handed me over to you is guilty of the greater sin." - Jn 19, 11
It is when we allege to know Jesus in the context of our relationship with him, yet still judge him in some way, still reject him or some aspect of his message of love and holiness, that we are guilty of the greater sin.
Now to the seven last words, three of which are from St. John's gospel. I need to keep listening to them all:
"Father, forgive them. They know not what they do." - Lk 23, 34
And we don't. We judge and condemn Christ - and his body, the Church - convinced that we we know best. Yet even as we judge and condemn him, he prays for us to be forgiven.
(I will want to expand on this in another post.)
"Today you will be with me in Paradise." - Lk 23, 43
1. No matter our sins or our failings, God's mercy and Christ's sacrifice are greater. When we acknowledge his rightful place, he delivers us into the place he has prepared for us, which we could never enter on our own.
2. Today. There is that word today. It is important for us to remember that the kingdom of God is not just the destination to which we aspire, but our journey as well. The kingdom of God is at hand, and unless we embrace Christ's kingship now we will be ill prepared to enter it fully.
"Behold your son. Behold your mother." - Jn 19, 26-27
Jesus brings us into his family. This includes the responsibility and gift to care for one another's needs, to uplift and support each other, to be committed to one another. It isn't just that Jesus' mother becomes our mother, which is itself a wonderful thing. But likewise Jesus' Father, and all his brothers and sisters, become ours as well. What a gift! But look at what the Body of Christ does for his family: he lays down his life! And this is a wonderful gift and privilege for us, as Christ's body, too.
"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" - Mk 15, 34
Jesus prays the Psalms for a final time, from the cross. As a devout Jew, he doubtless prayed them all the time; they were ingrained in his memory. We pray them, too, usually forgetting that as we do we are praying the very thoughts which Jesus prayed often!
Of the seven last words of Christ, this is the one to which we can most often and most fully relate, and perhaps is the one in which we most fully see Jesus as one of us. Jesus has fully embraced our humanity. In our sin, but especially in our pain, we can feel abandoned by God and utterly alone. Yet we never are. Jesus is our constant companion. He bore this sense of isolation for our sake, and we often find ourselves called to bear our own for the sake of others. When I feel overwhelmed by life, it is my love for those around me that sustains me along my way, just as Jesus' love for the Father and for us sustained him.
"I thirst" - John 19, 28
I've reflected in the past about how Jesus thirsts primarily for us. At the cross, it is clear that this is not for his own sake, but for ours! We allow ourselves to thirst after many things. But the only thirst which is worth our full attention, and which is never denied. is our thirst for God. What about a thirst for freedom, for justice? They become misguided unless rooted in God. Anyone who hears the truth hears Jesus. "Freedom" and "justice" easily devolve into license and vengeance; anyone crying out for justice or freedom out of the context of Jesus will easily go astray.
"It is finished" - Jn 19, 30
In Jubilee's Way of the Cross service, we reflect that Jesus life and mission are finished, yet his body on earth is still called to respond to him and live out his life. We must gird ourselves with the towel and wash others' feet. We must feed the hungry, care for the sick, free those imprisoned - above all, by their own sin. We must lay down our lives, or more accurately, allow Christ to lay down his life through us.
"Into your hands I commend my spirit." - Lk 23, 46
Oh, do we insist on entrusting ourselves only to ourselves! It is only when we truly entrust ourselves to God that we are set free - from our sin, our anxiety, our shortcomings - to live the life of peace and love which the Father dreams of for us. Help me to place myself into your hands, Lord, and trust you to provide for me.
A prophetic word. These are always to be tested against Scripture and the teachings of the Church:
Today, listen to my voice. Hear me speak my love for you. Hear me speak it into existence in you, through you. You are the Body by which I convey my holy love to the world. Today, listen to my voice as I proclaim that you are forgiven, you are loved, you are my family. Do not grow stubborn and put me to the test. Trust in the word of holy love you hear from me. Live according to my plan of loving peace, which far exceeds your own plans. Live in my providence, which overflows your life with abundance that you could never provide for yourself. Live in my forgiveness and love rather than your sin and self-judgment, for I set you free from the bonds that have held you. You are not slaves to sin - you are my precious son, my beloved daughter, and I rejoice in your return home to me.
Surely it seems to me I must have reflected on this last year, having read Fr. Neuhaus' book. Still, here is where I begin.
The Invitatory: Psalm 95
Today, Listen . . . to the voice of the Lord.
He speaks seven words from the cross today, as well as words in front of Pilate, and the Sanhedrin, and the Father. They form a song of unfathomable love!
Who is it you want? - Jn 18, 4
Jesus asks this of those who come to arrest him. They fall to the ground when he responds to their answer, "Jesus, the Nazorean," by saying, "I AM." Jesus asks us, as well. So who is it that I want? Do I want Jesus, the Nazorean? Or dare I seek Jesus, the Christ, the King, the Son of God? And do I want You, Lord, above all else that I might want? Will I make you ask me again, "Who is it you want?" Do I hear you tolling me: "If I AM the one you want, let these go"? You call me to let go of all else but you!
Do I fall on my face in recognition of your holiness and my unworthiness, and then out of gratitude for your love, which has won my victory over sin and death?
"Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?" - Jn 18, 11
The song which Jubilee uses for the 10th station, Thy Will Be Done, says that Jesus drank our cup of darkness and death. St. John emphasizes the Lord's willing acceptance of this cup, by which he establishes a new covenant. He omits Jesus' agonized pleading, because what matters to the beloved disciple is the choice Jesus makes, and the choice we make in response to him.
"I have spoken publicly to all who would listen. Ask those who heard me when I spoke. They will know what I said." - Jn 18, 20-21
Today - Listen. Then we will know the love which Jesus has spoken. If we but listen, we will hear him! The Psalmist pleads with us not to grow stubborn, not to harden our hearts, yet so often we do. We let our perceptions of reality interfere with hearing what Jesus says.
"If I have spoken wrongly, testify to the wrong. But if not, why hit me?" - Jn 18, 23
Much wrong has been spoken and done by those who claim to follow Jesus. Somtimes we allow these failures to obscure, to muddle the perfect love Jesus speaks. We provide testimony against Jesus' (sometimes alleged) followers, but there is none to be produced against Jesus.
"Do you say this on your own, or have others been telling you about me?" - Jn 18, 34
So often our perceptions of Christ are not from our experience of him, but are from what others tell us about him with their words and actions. Jesus invites us to listen to him, not to simply take the word of others, but to encounter him personally.
"It is you who say I am a King." - Jn 18, 37a
Jesus would distance himself from our preconceptions of him. If we see him as less than he is - and we always do; our minds are too little to grasp him fully - he dismisses our limited perceptions, and encourages us to encounter him more closely.
"The reason I came into this world was to testify to the truth. Anyone who hears the truth hears my voice." - Jn 18, 37b
There's a lot of truth to be heard, and we are rarely willing or able to hear it all. It seems to us that some injustice we perceive is the whole story, that some liberation we desire for others is what they need most. Jesus provides our ultimate liberation - from the warping of receiving God's gifts to us in any way other than as God intends - in the context of a humble relationship with him. God reveals his will for us most fully in Jesus, who set aside every right to lay down his life for his beloved. Yes, he is a king, but one for whom selfless love is more important than his rights, his rightful place. Only when we become more humbly interested in the truth than in our preconceptions of it will we hear Jesus' voice.
"You would have no power over me whatever unless it were granted from above. That is why he who handed me over to you is guilty of the greater sin." - Jn 19, 11
It is when we allege to know Jesus in the context of our relationship with him, yet still judge him in some way, still reject him or some aspect of his message of love and holiness, that we are guilty of the greater sin.
Now to the seven last words, three of which are from St. John's gospel. I need to keep listening to them all:
"Father, forgive them. They know not what they do." - Lk 23, 34
And we don't. We judge and condemn Christ - and his body, the Church - convinced that we we know best. Yet even as we judge and condemn him, he prays for us to be forgiven.
(I will want to expand on this in another post.)
"Today you will be with me in Paradise." - Lk 23, 43
1. No matter our sins or our failings, God's mercy and Christ's sacrifice are greater. When we acknowledge his rightful place, he delivers us into the place he has prepared for us, which we could never enter on our own.
2. Today. There is that word today. It is important for us to remember that the kingdom of God is not just the destination to which we aspire, but our journey as well. The kingdom of God is at hand, and unless we embrace Christ's kingship now we will be ill prepared to enter it fully.
"Behold your son. Behold your mother." - Jn 19, 26-27
Jesus brings us into his family. This includes the responsibility and gift to care for one another's needs, to uplift and support each other, to be committed to one another. It isn't just that Jesus' mother becomes our mother, which is itself a wonderful thing. But likewise Jesus' Father, and all his brothers and sisters, become ours as well. What a gift! But look at what the Body of Christ does for his family: he lays down his life! And this is a wonderful gift and privilege for us, as Christ's body, too.
"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" - Mk 15, 34
Jesus prays the Psalms for a final time, from the cross. As a devout Jew, he doubtless prayed them all the time; they were ingrained in his memory. We pray them, too, usually forgetting that as we do we are praying the very thoughts which Jesus prayed often!
Of the seven last words of Christ, this is the one to which we can most often and most fully relate, and perhaps is the one in which we most fully see Jesus as one of us. Jesus has fully embraced our humanity. In our sin, but especially in our pain, we can feel abandoned by God and utterly alone. Yet we never are. Jesus is our constant companion. He bore this sense of isolation for our sake, and we often find ourselves called to bear our own for the sake of others. When I feel overwhelmed by life, it is my love for those around me that sustains me along my way, just as Jesus' love for the Father and for us sustained him.
"I thirst" - John 19, 28
I've reflected in the past about how Jesus thirsts primarily for us. At the cross, it is clear that this is not for his own sake, but for ours! We allow ourselves to thirst after many things. But the only thirst which is worth our full attention, and which is never denied. is our thirst for God. What about a thirst for freedom, for justice? They become misguided unless rooted in God. Anyone who hears the truth hears Jesus. "Freedom" and "justice" easily devolve into license and vengeance; anyone crying out for justice or freedom out of the context of Jesus will easily go astray.
"It is finished" - Jn 19, 30
In Jubilee's Way of the Cross service, we reflect that Jesus life and mission are finished, yet his body on earth is still called to respond to him and live out his life. We must gird ourselves with the towel and wash others' feet. We must feed the hungry, care for the sick, free those imprisoned - above all, by their own sin. We must lay down our lives, or more accurately, allow Christ to lay down his life through us.
"Into your hands I commend my spirit." - Lk 23, 46
Oh, do we insist on entrusting ourselves only to ourselves! It is only when we truly entrust ourselves to God that we are set free - from our sin, our anxiety, our shortcomings - to live the life of peace and love which the Father dreams of for us. Help me to place myself into your hands, Lord, and trust you to provide for me.
A prophetic word. These are always to be tested against Scripture and the teachings of the Church:
Today, listen to my voice. Hear me speak my love for you. Hear me speak it into existence in you, through you. You are the Body by which I convey my holy love to the world. Today, listen to my voice as I proclaim that you are forgiven, you are loved, you are my family. Do not grow stubborn and put me to the test. Trust in the word of holy love you hear from me. Live according to my plan of loving peace, which far exceeds your own plans. Live in my providence, which overflows your life with abundance that you could never provide for yourself. Live in my forgiveness and love rather than your sin and self-judgment, for I set you free from the bonds that have held you. You are not slaves to sin - you are my precious son, my beloved daughter, and I rejoice in your return home to me.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Love Bade Me Welcome
Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew near to me, sweetly questioning
If I lacked anything.
'A guest,' I answered, 'worthy to be here.'
Love said, 'You shall be he.'
'I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
I cannot look on Thee.'
Love took my hand and, smiling, did reply,
'Who made the eyes but I?'
'Truth, Lord, but I have marred them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.'
'And know you not,' says Love, 'who bore the blame?'
'My dear, then I will serve.'
'You must sit down,' says Love, 'and taste my meat.'
So I did sit and eat.
- George Herbert
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew near to me, sweetly questioning
If I lacked anything.
'A guest,' I answered, 'worthy to be here.'
Love said, 'You shall be he.'
'I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
I cannot look on Thee.'
Love took my hand and, smiling, did reply,
'Who made the eyes but I?'
'Truth, Lord, but I have marred them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.'
'And know you not,' says Love, 'who bore the blame?'
'My dear, then I will serve.'
'You must sit down,' says Love, 'and taste my meat.'
So I did sit and eat.
- George Herbert
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Full of nothing
You'd think, of all weekends, this would be the one on which I'd have the least tendency to become self-absorbed. I hope a quiet hour of prayer before the Lord tonight will correct that.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Conscience and the Tree of Knowledge
If good would have come from eating of the Tree of Knowledge, God would not have forbidden it. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon
My full quote for this reflection is quite a bit longer, but I find I must stop after just this much of it and observe how our inner rejection of this one statement reflects our deepest beliefs about God and about ourselves. Don't even the most spiritual of us tend to think this is only mostly true? At best, don't we often tend to really think that some of what God has forbidden is arbitrary, or rooted in the culture of those through whom the scriptures and sacred tradition have been delivered to us? This attitude allows us to take another determined bite of that forbidden fruit.
There is value in considering the sociocultural circumstances under which the various books of scripture were written, but not for the purpose of rejecting its teaching.
Nor, contrary to popular myth, is the fatal knowledge the knowledge of sexuality, although God knows how large is the part of sexuality in glorifying our shame. Yet the fall was not a fall into sexuality. Adam and Eve were created as sexual beings, and the Genesis account leaves no doubt that from the beginning they knew what this meant. - ibid.
If it weren't for our wanting to justify our sexual decisions, we might be less inclined to define good and evil for ourselves. Of course, people do the same thing in all sorts of other areas of life. We think that God is a spoilsport, and our minds regard holiness as the opposite of fun. As a result, our wishes to pursue our own desires without restriction, outside of the ways God lovingly provides for our needs, are an incredibly strong motivation to rebel against our restrictive perception of God, or even to deny God's existence.
The shame came later, when they reached, when they overreached, for a different kind of knowledge. The Hebrew verb "to know," yada, is rich in meanings. In connection with what we call the fall, to know good and evil is to reach for a universal knowledge, to be unbounded by truth as it is presented to us, to aspire to create our own truth. I say we were there in the garden when humanity aspired to "be like gods" by knowing good and evil, by reaching to know the power to define what is good and what is evil.
This page of Genesis is rewritten every day in the living out of the human story. Each of us has been there when we, godlike, decided that we would determine what is good and what is evil-at least for our own lives. - ibid.
Contrary to popular understanding of the role of our conscience, its purpose is not for us to define for ourselves what is good and what is evil. I've written about this in great detail before, though not as well as Fr. Neuhaus. Yes, when it comes right down to it, our conscience determines the decisions we make, and we ourselves are accountable for those decisions. But that inner sense of the morality of our actions is always formed by something. We can either accept what God has revealed through Scripture and the Church, or we will look to some other source - one we think more authoritative, or one more aligned with the way we already think or what we want.
Fr. Neuhaus will soon move on to the idea that our unwillingness to determine good and evil for others - a trend trumpeted as "tolerance" in present times - is an easy escape for us. It's worth recognizing that the payout for that attitude is that we can reject those who would tell us what is right and wrong for us. And it is true that we must exercise caution with regard to whom we heed in this area. Our relativistic society would tell us that the chief sin of the day is to insist on such a thing as absolute good and evil. Yet in our hearts we know there is such a thing. There is - and should be - a difference between tolerance and endorsement.
For all that we may long for more power over our lives, to be more than infinitesimal, ever-so-briefly conscious specks of matter in the vastness of the universe, we reject the one thing that makes us matter most. We'd rather this universe had no creator than accept any stricture upon our own free will. We'd rather scoff at those who are so weak as to need such a construct to overcome their fear of insignificance.
Finally (for this post), this idea that we were (are! All the time, we are!) there in the garden is consistent with the idea that we are at the last supper, at the cross, at the resurrection, and mainly, at the eternal heavenly banquet. I find myself most aware of this when celebrating the Eucharist, but I believe we will find that the eternity for which we are destined will be a celebration of everything at once that we cannot fully fathom while trapped in the flow of time.
My full quote for this reflection is quite a bit longer, but I find I must stop after just this much of it and observe how our inner rejection of this one statement reflects our deepest beliefs about God and about ourselves. Don't even the most spiritual of us tend to think this is only mostly true? At best, don't we often tend to really think that some of what God has forbidden is arbitrary, or rooted in the culture of those through whom the scriptures and sacred tradition have been delivered to us? This attitude allows us to take another determined bite of that forbidden fruit.
There is value in considering the sociocultural circumstances under which the various books of scripture were written, but not for the purpose of rejecting its teaching.
Nor, contrary to popular myth, is the fatal knowledge the knowledge of sexuality, although God knows how large is the part of sexuality in glorifying our shame. Yet the fall was not a fall into sexuality. Adam and Eve were created as sexual beings, and the Genesis account leaves no doubt that from the beginning they knew what this meant. - ibid.
If it weren't for our wanting to justify our sexual decisions, we might be less inclined to define good and evil for ourselves. Of course, people do the same thing in all sorts of other areas of life. We think that God is a spoilsport, and our minds regard holiness as the opposite of fun. As a result, our wishes to pursue our own desires without restriction, outside of the ways God lovingly provides for our needs, are an incredibly strong motivation to rebel against our restrictive perception of God, or even to deny God's existence.
The shame came later, when they reached, when they overreached, for a different kind of knowledge. The Hebrew verb "to know," yada, is rich in meanings. In connection with what we call the fall, to know good and evil is to reach for a universal knowledge, to be unbounded by truth as it is presented to us, to aspire to create our own truth. I say we were there in the garden when humanity aspired to "be like gods" by knowing good and evil, by reaching to know the power to define what is good and what is evil.
This page of Genesis is rewritten every day in the living out of the human story. Each of us has been there when we, godlike, decided that we would determine what is good and what is evil-at least for our own lives. - ibid.
Contrary to popular understanding of the role of our conscience, its purpose is not for us to define for ourselves what is good and what is evil. I've written about this in great detail before, though not as well as Fr. Neuhaus. Yes, when it comes right down to it, our conscience determines the decisions we make, and we ourselves are accountable for those decisions. But that inner sense of the morality of our actions is always formed by something. We can either accept what God has revealed through Scripture and the Church, or we will look to some other source - one we think more authoritative, or one more aligned with the way we already think or what we want.
Fr. Neuhaus will soon move on to the idea that our unwillingness to determine good and evil for others - a trend trumpeted as "tolerance" in present times - is an easy escape for us. It's worth recognizing that the payout for that attitude is that we can reject those who would tell us what is right and wrong for us. And it is true that we must exercise caution with regard to whom we heed in this area. Our relativistic society would tell us that the chief sin of the day is to insist on such a thing as absolute good and evil. Yet in our hearts we know there is such a thing. There is - and should be - a difference between tolerance and endorsement.
For all that we may long for more power over our lives, to be more than infinitesimal, ever-so-briefly conscious specks of matter in the vastness of the universe, we reject the one thing that makes us matter most. We'd rather this universe had no creator than accept any stricture upon our own free will. We'd rather scoff at those who are so weak as to need such a construct to overcome their fear of insignificance.
Finally (for this post), this idea that we were (are! All the time, we are!) there in the garden is consistent with the idea that we are at the last supper, at the cross, at the resurrection, and mainly, at the eternal heavenly banquet. I find myself most aware of this when celebrating the Eucharist, but I believe we will find that the eternity for which we are destined will be a celebration of everything at once that we cannot fully fathom while trapped in the flow of time.
Wednesday, April 06, 2011
A complicated reflection on Simplicity
What we call our higher level of consciousness is but an instance of our calling evil good, of our priding ourselves on the consequences of a catastrophe that is our fall from the knowledge of the good. True knowledge of the good is a way of knowing that is, in the words of Jesus, loving the Lord our God with all our heart and all our soul and all our mind. The reflexive mind, the divided soul, the conflicted heart - these many take to be the marks of maturity and growth. To know the good simply to love the good and do the good because it is self-evidently to be loved and to be done - that is taken to be the mark of those we condescendingly call simple. So it is that sin's injury is declared a benefit, our weakness a strength, and the fall of that dread afternoon a fall up rather than down. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon
Ahh, here we arrive at one of my most persistent ongoing challenges. On the one hand, I say I envy those possessed of simplicity, yet when I encounter someone with this virtue I insist on thinking it quaint. Yet I must also reject the tendency to mistake any particular personality trait or even any exterior practice for godliness. For instance, it is certainly just as possible to be simply worldly as sophisticatedly worldly. So, some reflection related to this particular tendency in me (in us), then some more general observations about what holiness really means and what it doesn't.
I can't help but think of how this sophisticated pride fits in with Fr. Robert Spitzer's concepts of comparative identity versus contributive identity. He observes that many - perhaps most - of us tend to evaluate ourselves by comparison to others. "I'm better at my job than Mike." "I wish I could play the guitar as well as Jimmy." "I'm so glad I'm a better husband than Steve." "My talent isn't as valuable as George's." (Only one of those is a real person.) Likewise, when I become enamored of my complexity, my intelligence, my sophistication, my inner conflict, etc., it is usually by comparison against those whom I consider simple-minded, unintelligent, or not to have been as challenged as I have been. I tell myself that I think or feel or experience life more fully than they do, and what it comes down to is that I'm glad - thankful, even! - that I'm better than them.
The Pharisee's prayer, God, I thank you that I am not like other people (Luke 18, 11a) takes many forms. It's by no means limited to hypocritical religious leaders, intelligentsia, the famous or any other category of successful people you might think of. "Ordinary folk" can be just as disdainful of others, both above and beneath them in any category of social standing, as can the upper crust of society. But I don't want to go too far down that road, lest I find myself thinking that I'm better off by being free from such an approach to life, when I am clearly as enmeshed in it as anyone.
The point is just supposed to be this: if I'm to be less enamored of my own strengths, whatever they might be, I've got to stop finding my identity in terms of whether I am better than some people and, conversely, worse than others. If I'm to be the follower of Christ that I'm called to be, I need to simply follow wherever he leads me and encounter him in whomever I meet along the way. And I am to leave aside any consideration of whether I'm following better or worse than Joe or Sue, or how utterly depraved and horrific others' sins are. I don't need to bother myself with whether Fred or Mary is worth sharing him with, with evaluations of whether someone else's mind is already made up about him or if they're in the right place just now to hear about his love for us. We're called to simply scatter seed and let God worry about the condition of the soil, to cast our nets and let him haul in whatever fish are ready for catching. I find that I'm a whole lot more useful in that when I'm operating in the contributive mindset, allowing God's love for me to define my worth, rather than the comparative.
(Wow, is this one going to wander!)
I've spent way too much of my life evaluating and judging instead of loving. In my insecurity, I used my imagined superiority to others to prop up myself. I say that without self-condemnation; I understand this is a natural tendency of our fallen human condition. But when I stop thinking in terms of what a complex, conflicted, misunderstood person I am, I find a freedom to simply be who God is calling me to be. When I stop needing an image of superiority as a poor excuse for a real self-concept, I find within me a precious child of God, and suddenly discover all around me other wounded, wonderful sons and daughters of his.
When that happens, I find that I no longer need to dispute with God, to stubbornly define for myself what good and evil are in a way that lets me evaluate myself as good and my shortcomings as more tolerable than those of others. Refusing to gorge myself on the fruit of the forbidden tree - to define for myself what good and evil are - I find myself free to share love more simply, and to receive the love of God more fully, both directly and through those around me.
So how is all of this related to living in holiness? And for that matter, what is holiness, and what isn't it? It must be something beyond simply living according to the contributive identity and stopping all the confounded judging. And we've already decided that it is more than mere simplicity, while leaving in place an underlying assumption that simplicity may be an important element of living in holiness.
I come back to Fr. Satish's chief point about prayer in our recent parish mission (rooted in Jesus' teaching about the most important commandment), along with Jesus' example as illustrated in Phil 2. As I consider these together, I see why prideful self-determinism is such an impediment to my walk with God. Prayer must first and foremost grow out of a love relationship with God. Yet this relationship cannot be completely like love between human beings. At first glance it would seem as if there'd be no conflict between embracing our own ideas about right and wrong and the greatest commandment to love God with all we are. After all, in every other relationship, we are responsible to decide for ourselves what is right. But we're not talking about a give-and-take love with an equal, because we are not God's equal. We are made in God's image, but not in equality with God. The chief thing about Jesus' example was that, being God, he didn't cling to that equality. So in the garden of Gethsemani, as he agonizes over the central decision of his human life, he doesn't seem to grapple with the question whether it was right to lay down his life. Setting aside any issue of his own idea of right and wrong, Jesus' knows the Father's will, and simply struggles to submit to it.
And I suppose this gets to the root of what it means to be holy. I need to love God above all else, to trust that doing God's will is always going to make both my life and this world better, and to be willing to do God's will even when it's a struggle to set aside my own. Given that, my personal devotion to prayer and the service of my neighbor that grows out of it fall naturally into place.
I'm feeling pretty frustrated with my ability to articulate my thoughts to represent the arc that was in my head when I started writing this. At the same time, I feel peaceful about this: it's way more important to spend time with the One who has inspired these musings than it is to get every nuance expressed precisely as I wish. Perhaps that starts to get me back to the simplicity that this meandering post purports to seek. As Jesus said: God alone is good.
Ahh, here we arrive at one of my most persistent ongoing challenges. On the one hand, I say I envy those possessed of simplicity, yet when I encounter someone with this virtue I insist on thinking it quaint. Yet I must also reject the tendency to mistake any particular personality trait or even any exterior practice for godliness. For instance, it is certainly just as possible to be simply worldly as sophisticatedly worldly. So, some reflection related to this particular tendency in me (in us), then some more general observations about what holiness really means and what it doesn't.
I can't help but think of how this sophisticated pride fits in with Fr. Robert Spitzer's concepts of comparative identity versus contributive identity. He observes that many - perhaps most - of us tend to evaluate ourselves by comparison to others. "I'm better at my job than Mike." "I wish I could play the guitar as well as Jimmy." "I'm so glad I'm a better husband than Steve." "My talent isn't as valuable as George's." (Only one of those is a real person.) Likewise, when I become enamored of my complexity, my intelligence, my sophistication, my inner conflict, etc., it is usually by comparison against those whom I consider simple-minded, unintelligent, or not to have been as challenged as I have been. I tell myself that I think or feel or experience life more fully than they do, and what it comes down to is that I'm glad - thankful, even! - that I'm better than them.
The Pharisee's prayer, God, I thank you that I am not like other people (Luke 18, 11a) takes many forms. It's by no means limited to hypocritical religious leaders, intelligentsia, the famous or any other category of successful people you might think of. "Ordinary folk" can be just as disdainful of others, both above and beneath them in any category of social standing, as can the upper crust of society. But I don't want to go too far down that road, lest I find myself thinking that I'm better off by being free from such an approach to life, when I am clearly as enmeshed in it as anyone.
The point is just supposed to be this: if I'm to be less enamored of my own strengths, whatever they might be, I've got to stop finding my identity in terms of whether I am better than some people and, conversely, worse than others. If I'm to be the follower of Christ that I'm called to be, I need to simply follow wherever he leads me and encounter him in whomever I meet along the way. And I am to leave aside any consideration of whether I'm following better or worse than Joe or Sue, or how utterly depraved and horrific others' sins are. I don't need to bother myself with whether Fred or Mary is worth sharing him with, with evaluations of whether someone else's mind is already made up about him or if they're in the right place just now to hear about his love for us. We're called to simply scatter seed and let God worry about the condition of the soil, to cast our nets and let him haul in whatever fish are ready for catching. I find that I'm a whole lot more useful in that when I'm operating in the contributive mindset, allowing God's love for me to define my worth, rather than the comparative.
(Wow, is this one going to wander!)
I've spent way too much of my life evaluating and judging instead of loving. In my insecurity, I used my imagined superiority to others to prop up myself. I say that without self-condemnation; I understand this is a natural tendency of our fallen human condition. But when I stop thinking in terms of what a complex, conflicted, misunderstood person I am, I find a freedom to simply be who God is calling me to be. When I stop needing an image of superiority as a poor excuse for a real self-concept, I find within me a precious child of God, and suddenly discover all around me other wounded, wonderful sons and daughters of his.
When that happens, I find that I no longer need to dispute with God, to stubbornly define for myself what good and evil are in a way that lets me evaluate myself as good and my shortcomings as more tolerable than those of others. Refusing to gorge myself on the fruit of the forbidden tree - to define for myself what good and evil are - I find myself free to share love more simply, and to receive the love of God more fully, both directly and through those around me.
So how is all of this related to living in holiness? And for that matter, what is holiness, and what isn't it? It must be something beyond simply living according to the contributive identity and stopping all the confounded judging. And we've already decided that it is more than mere simplicity, while leaving in place an underlying assumption that simplicity may be an important element of living in holiness.
I come back to Fr. Satish's chief point about prayer in our recent parish mission (rooted in Jesus' teaching about the most important commandment), along with Jesus' example as illustrated in Phil 2. As I consider these together, I see why prideful self-determinism is such an impediment to my walk with God. Prayer must first and foremost grow out of a love relationship with God. Yet this relationship cannot be completely like love between human beings. At first glance it would seem as if there'd be no conflict between embracing our own ideas about right and wrong and the greatest commandment to love God with all we are. After all, in every other relationship, we are responsible to decide for ourselves what is right. But we're not talking about a give-and-take love with an equal, because we are not God's equal. We are made in God's image, but not in equality with God. The chief thing about Jesus' example was that, being God, he didn't cling to that equality. So in the garden of Gethsemani, as he agonizes over the central decision of his human life, he doesn't seem to grapple with the question whether it was right to lay down his life. Setting aside any issue of his own idea of right and wrong, Jesus' knows the Father's will, and simply struggles to submit to it.
And I suppose this gets to the root of what it means to be holy. I need to love God above all else, to trust that doing God's will is always going to make both my life and this world better, and to be willing to do God's will even when it's a struggle to set aside my own. Given that, my personal devotion to prayer and the service of my neighbor that grows out of it fall naturally into place.
I'm feeling pretty frustrated with my ability to articulate my thoughts to represent the arc that was in my head when I started writing this. At the same time, I feel peaceful about this: it's way more important to spend time with the One who has inspired these musings than it is to get every nuance expressed precisely as I wish. Perhaps that starts to get me back to the simplicity that this meandering post purports to seek. As Jesus said: God alone is good.
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