Sneaky reference

She had accompanied the glory.  She had been with him in the unsurpassable intimacy of the pregnancy and the birth, an intimacy that none other could ever know. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon


And He walks with me, and He talks with me,
And He tells me I am His own;
And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.

- Charles A. Miles, In the Garden 

I completely missed the allusion to this hymn on my first couple readings of this book.  Maybe someone who has sung this song their whole life rather than the relatively few times I have might have gotten it right away. 

There are a pair of truths here that are mysterious in their contradiction and harmony.  It is true that Mary shared an intimacy with Jesus that is distinctive from what any other may experience with him.  It is also true that no mother, no matter how much she may have experienced maternal intimacy with her own children, has done so with God in the same way that Mary did, and this truth is a thing good for us to marvel over for a while. 

Yet while Mary's intimate relationship with Jesus is the unique result of their mother/son relationship, it is likewise true that no one else can ever know the intimate relationship that each of us are called into in and with him.  Rather than lament that we cannot know Jesus in the same way Mary did - which is not Fr. Neuhaus' point at all - we should immerse ourselves in the intimate relationship with Jesus which is uniquely ours to enter into.  No matter how close another person may be with me and how close that person may be with Jesus, neither of us can have the same relationship with him.  Each person's relationship with God in Christ is different, is unique, because we are each different and unique and God responds to each of us uniquely.  While it is true in one sense that God loves all of us "the same," that is, that God loves no one more or less deeply or greatly than any other, it is also true that he loves each of us as he loves no other, for love is always rooted in the unique characteristics of each lover and each beloved.

Pondering the significance of "Woman, there is your son . . . There is your mother" also means recognizing that the beloved disciple was not Mary's child in the same physical way in which Jesus was, nor are we. But thinking of all the implications that this makes in our relationship with mother whom we gain when we accept Jesus as our brother, and in our relationship with Jesus, and in our resulting familial relationships with each other, is making my under-rested brain hurt, so perhaps I shall return to this later.

Or perhaps it may be best for the reader to consider the implications for themselves.

Passage, continued

I can't seem to recall the specific moment, near the end of the program, that I offered a quiet "thank you" to God for the privilege of proclaiming his love, a response which grows out of the more fundamental privilege of being his adopted son (or daughter).  I never got choked up on Yours is the Kingdom before, though.

As I abide in you - as you live in me - may others see your glory!

What a gift, to be part of such a powerful ministry, but God Himself is the greater gift, and the more deeply we receive him the more we realize this is a gift too great to be kept to ourselves, and yet the act of sharing him becomes another gift, or perhaps more accurately is the means to more fully receive him ourselves.  

It wasn't until later that the emptiness began to take hold.  But I receive this, too, as a participation in every disciples' experience of Christ's passing, knowing that there is no death in him that does not bring a greater resurrection, even if our three days in the tomb can seem to stretch into timeless eternity sometimes. 

I don't know what God is going to do next - even when we have an inkling of what comes next, we rarely know what it truly holds - but I trust it will manifest his glory in some marvelous way.

A passage

Tonight will be bittersweet, and we must be careful.  Jubilee's final Way of the Cross service, the end of my fifth season with the group, has the potential to get focused on the wrong thing.  What we pray about with reflections and songs is more important than the fact that we are concluding this service tonight.  We have shared a great privilege together, and yet the truth we have acknowledged each week of Lent over the years is a far greater privilege.

Christ has delivered us from death, has redeemed our lives with his own!

Today's word

A word I've seen before without knowing its meaning:

atavism - 1a. - recurrence in an organism of a trait or character typical of an ancestral form and usually due to genetic recombination  b. - recurrence of or reversion to a past style, manner, outlook, approach, or activity  2. one that manifests atavism : throwback

Today's word

I knew what today's word meant as soon as I saw it:

zoomorphic - 1. having the form of an animal  2. of, relating to, or being a deity conceived of in animal form or with animal attributes

I was familiar with it's cousin, anthropomorphic.

What E5 means

Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church. - Eph 5, 25.

It has been paraphrased Husbands, go the way of the cross for your wives.


I know that this is not a negative thing, not some burden that we should avoid as much as possible, something we just have to trudge through.  Fr. Neuhaus has reminded us that the way of the cross is the way of glory. It is how we become who we are to be! My license plate says E5 MAN, for crying out loud, as a reminder.

So why can't I remember to stop focusing on my own needs and wishes in our relationship?

Musings, hopefully turned useful

Sometimes I find myself spending entirely too much time considering things like this:

• Am I am the lowest priority in your life?
• Is there any thing in your life, any activity to which you give your time, which matters less to you than taking care of our home and nurturing our life?
• Is there anything that you would just think on your own that it might be nice to move around in your schedule so that we can just spend some quality time together instead?

But this question is more important for me to focus on:

• What do I need to do to be the person I want to be, in the way that best helps us become the couple I want us to be, too?

Two unrelated thoughts in this regard:

1. The corollary to "you can't forgive someone for being who they are," has got to be "you can't expect anyone to change in the ways you wish they would."  Of course, we're all going to change.  The essence of life is change.  "You're not the person I married" has to be the most self-evident statement ever made, even if what we really mean more often is, "You're not the person I thought I married."

While it's true, as Matthew Kelly says, that the essence of Christianity is change, it's a particular type of change that is the core of our faith.  But our journey through time is a series of changes from one moment to the next, with the large ones we focus on being made up of a series of smaller ones that we can't even perceive.  Here's the rub: I can never expect the changes that another accepts and embraces to be the ones I would choose for them, even if my desire to do so isn't chiefly my own self-interest, which I think it too often is for most of us.

2. Suppose a couple has spent decades of their life with one primary strength that has come easily to them and sustained their relationship through turmoil. Even when they have - by choice or circumstance, and mutually or unilaterally - stepped away from that area for a while, it has been a harbor to which they ultimately relished returning.  Everything else good about their relationship has been something that one or the other of them has had to work at, sometimes quite hard. Then suppose that, for reasons completely beyond either of their control, that one strength is taken away from them, very possibly forever.

That thing that has always come so naturally seemed to serve as patching cement for the cracks that have occurred through the years, but maybe it has become so prevalent as to cause them to wonder whether it has become the chief material on which their life is built.  It may then be revealed to have been mere filler, not able to serve as a strong undergirding for their house.  In fact, this is likely if it has been anything other than their commitment to become, each of them, the best version of him- or herself, the reflection of Christ's presence in the world.

If that happens, it seems to me that they'd better both be ready to jump into some serious structural work.  But they should be relieved, and count themselves most fortunate, if some of those areas over which they've previously labored, individually and jointly, have in fact formed a stronger foundation for them than that one area ever was on its own.

Another weird dream

In my dream we were here in Ohio, though the house was the one we stayed in at the NSA Mid-South in Millington.  Herb and Bruce were carrying their golf bags, and asked me if I'd like to join them. (I don't think Bruce even golfs.) I told them I'd be right with them.  Then I played Mille Bournes with the grandkids, finally realizing I was standing up Herb and Bruce.  They were long since gone, but I was highly upset with myself both for missing out on this opportunity and for being rude to my friends.

Sometimes it causes me to tremble

Today's word

hebdomadal \heb-DAH-muh-dul\ - occurring, appearing, or done every week : weekly

Guard your hearts and minds

Am pulling this phrase from St. Paul (Phil 4: 7) completely out of context; I hope God won't be too angry about it.

A young FB friend of mine (oops, I just used that abbreviation without written permission; I suppose that's technically a violation of FB's terms) has liked a couple posts by someone who goes by this handle:

Once you start to dislike someone. Everything they do begins to annoy you.

This is a truth that illustrates why it is so important for a husband and wife to guard their heart and especially their thoughts with regard to each other.  It isn't that this tendency can't be overcome, but it develops a very powerful inertia that it takes a lot of work to counteract.

Strengths and weaknesses

Okay, a friend of mine just posted a link to a video allegedly of a husband and wife in a car discussing a very basic math problem involving velocity, distance, and time.  If it's real, the husband is just as clueless as the wife, though in a completely different way.

I won't post a link to it, because someone has to know what this man doesn't:

• you don't humiliate people
• you especially don't do it publicly
• your particularly don't humiliate your wife on the Internet. 

This couple will not be married long unless something changes drastically to change the husband's attitude toward his wife.

Follow up: my wife and I were discussing this video on Friday night.  I think she thought I was testing her, when what I was really doing was a) bemoaning this husband's attitude, and b) reaffirming that I no longer have such an attitude toward her.  She also thought we'd discussed this video already, which I'd never seen prior to Friday afternoon. 

We all have our strengths and weaknesses.  An emotionally healthy person, who isn't dependent on what Fr. Spitzer calls the comparative identity for his sense of self worth, doesn't build himself up at the expense of the people he loves by demonstrating their weakness. 

Randomness

dishtowels, generic, fabric, kiddies

The results of four random swypes on my phone.  Looking at the first three made me realize they weren't completely random, as I was at least starting around the same place on the screen each time.  Also, it appears that I tend to swype up rather than down from my starting point.

Next bored experiment: turn that into a Google search.

I have better things to do with my lunch time than this.

Today's word

pippin - 1. a crisp tart apple having usually yellow or greenish-yellow skin strongly flushed with red and used especially for cooking  2. a highly admired or very admirable person or thing

I knew the first definition, but not the second.

Strange glory

In John's Gospel, the way of the cross is the way of glory. . . . It is a very strange glory. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon


I've previously posted at considerable length on the relationship between suffering and glory in the context of the marriage covenant. This was a good thing for me to read again. On that occasion I'd just concluded my first season singing with Jubilee; we are now near the end of my fifth, and our last. And this is now my third annual reading of Fr. Neuhaus' excellent book. These two activities have given me many opportunities to reflect on the glory of the cross, yet somehow I am just noticing the intersection of this idea and my former reflections on the link between suffering and glory.

We think of glory as majesty and power, and recognize it in awesome sights and events that take our breath away.  What the cross teaches us is that glory - God's unfathomable glory -  is about something much more impressive. It is unmistakable in the soldier who gives his life in the protection of his comrades. We witness it when a tiny Albanian woman dedicates her life to caring for the poorest and most helpless of India's outcasts.  It can be seen in a mother who perseveres in loving and caring for her children's needs through her husband's service in a foreign country. We're struck by it when a poor family enthusiastically shares their meager provisions with a stranger, or when a citizen jumps into a cold river or runs into a blazing house to rescue a child.  It is manifest as a husband cares for his cancer-stricken wife, or vice versa. We're humbled into silence by it when a victim of violence forgives his or her oppressor. It is present when a parent buries a child.

Maybe it's especially fitting that Fr. Neuhaus opens his reflection on the third word from the cross with this concept, because as Jesus gives his mother to his beloved disciple and to us, and vice versa, we see how we each share in the glory of God as we embrace the suffering of others as our own.

All of these selfless examples and countless others have their root in the glory of God's selfless love poured out for us in the way of the cross. And every amazingly glorious thing in vast creation, from wonders submicroscopic to those astronomical and everything beyond and between, serve only as signs pointing to it.

Faith as a work

We do not presumptuously stride up to the judgment throne confident of being handed the Good Servant Award.  Rather, we throw ourselves on the mercy of God and plead his promises in Christ. It is not like getting a diploma at graduation exercises, the deserved and expected reward for being the good Christians we are.  Least of all is it the expected reward for being the kind of good Christians who are indifferent to the reward. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon


The last sentence is a mild dig at those who insist we'll serve the Lord even if he will ultimately condemn us and yet hold the underlying conviction that surely God will not condemn one who has been so virtuously selfless.  Such might even deign to disdain those who hope for salvation in Christ as their only reward as ultimately being selfish in the eternal perspective.  I don't think I will jump into that fray.

Fr. Neuhaus' real point is that this idea we have that eternity with God is a reward that some will deserve and others won't -  and that the purpose of living as God calls us to is to gain it - has got to go. It all equates to an evaluation of some as better than others, or of at least some others as not as good as me. It's spiritual pride under another guise.

I will not plead that I had faith, for sometimes I was unsure of my faith, and in any case that would be to turn faith into a meritorious work of my own.


Sometimes I hear sermons that turn the humble prayer, "Lord, I believe, help my unbelief," into something more like "You need to believe harder." Pray harder. Work harder. This is the prerequisite to God's power being more observably manifest in our lives, some seem to say. I hear it most often when someone is told that their prayers haven't been answered because they don't have sufficient faith. There's this underlying tone that seems to say, "My faith is stronger than your faith."  It even seems to underlie the cliche, "Let go and let God."  If you're struggling with this, you just need to let go harder!

Maybe I'm prone to chafe against that because I know that I myself don't have the strong faith I'd like to have. But Fr. Neuhaus has already addressed the pitfalls of setting our sight upon our faith rather than upon Christ. It isn't that my faith is sufficient but that God's grace is.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and we -

- we've each been taking our own.

I'm way past tired of being lonely in my own home.  I'm ready to talk about this with you, but think we need to get beyond your current urgent physical issue, whatever it might be.  When we do:

My schedule this week:
Monday: a capella choir rehearsal until 8 pm
Tuesday: prayer group until 9 pm
Wednesday: bell and choir rehearsal, 6-9 pm
Thursday: nothing (taxes? - no)
Friday: The Way of the Cross until 9:30 pm

Your schedule this week:
Monday: The Bachelor until 10:15 pm
Tuesday: Army Wives (Melissa), then Body of Proof?
Wednesday: Criminal Minds, then NCIS leftover from Tuesday?
Thursday: Missing, Gray's (at least you saved PP to watch later)
Friday: The Way of the Cross (if you're feeling up to it); no Blue Bloods because of NCAA tourney; what will you do?

Today's word

oppugn \uh-PYOON\ - 1. to fight against  2. to call into question

I knew it's cousin, impugn, but this one was new to me.

Hope and faith

We must not presume.  We cannot know in advance for ourselves and certainly we cannot know in advance for others.  We cannot presume, however, promises are made, and promises elicit hope, and hope is the form that faith takes in relation to the future. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon


This last phrase may be the most succinct explanation of the relationship between faith and hope that I've ever encountered.  I've heard many people fumble to explain the difference, and when they're done I end up concluding that they've really just described the same thing in two different ways. But this idea that we have faith in what is and hope for what is to come makes great sense.

Of course, we use the word "hope" in many other contexts, too.  I may hope you're having a great day, even if I don't necessarily have faith that you are. Too, I hope that all will be saved, though I don't have faith that all will be so much as that it is possible for God.  While there is a difference of tense between these in the latter example, that isn't the only or biggest difference, so tense cannot be the cut and dry distinction between these theological virtues.  I suppose that what it comes down to is that I have faith in God, in his existence and goodness and love, and hope in what the implications of that belief might be for me and for others.

What do we mean by "free gift," exactly?

It is both unsurprising and unattractive that theologians who fill hell with a massa damnata of sinners are confident of their own salvation . . . 


We are to be hard on ourselves, working out our salvation with fear and trembling, while being generous toward others. Our only hope lies in the mercy of God, and therefore, as Jesus admonishes again and again, we must be merciful to others.  The mercy we give shall be the mercy we receive. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon


A key question for us must be: are there degrees of undeservingness, such that I can presume to withhold - or to hope that God will withhold - grace from someone else, while embracing it for myself?  If I say yes, am I not asserting that I have received God's generosity because I somehow deserve it, or at least deserve it more than the damned?

There seems so much more to say about this, but already I find this presumption too ungainly to stand.

That said, let me temper Fr. Neuhaus' first phrase in the second quotation with the acknowledgment that there are those of us who must learn to cut ourselves some slack while we somehow already manage to be merciful to others.

Today's word(s)

assize - 1a. a judicial inquest. b. an action to be decided by such an inquest, the writ for instituting it, or the verdict or finding rendered by the jury.
2a. the former periodical sessions of the superior courts in English counties for trial of civil and criminal cases —usually used in plural.  b. the time or place of holding such a court, the court itself, or a session of it —usually used in plural

great assize - last judgment

It was clear from the context what Fr. Neuhaus meant by the latter phrase, but I wanted to look it up anyway.

A mourning friend

You know someone considers you a good friend when they tell you a story that makes you want to reach out and hug their inner child.

sigh

Today's word

unbolted - not sifted

A lesson remembered

It was probably a good thing I'd decided what I was going to speak on last night during my 5-7 minute testimony.  I won't say that it was only the story I was sharing that helped keep me on track when I found the house still neglected after work.  Still, when struck by the temptation to pitch a destructive fit when I came home from work to find my house both empty and dirty, the memory of how the Lord delivered me from my temper so long ago immediately arose in my mind. It helped me find a much more peaceful and useful response.

What's the point?

But one hears the objection, "What is the point of being a Christian if, in the end, everyone is saved? People who ask that should listen to themselves. What's the point of being first rather than last in serving the Lord whom you love?What's the point of being found rather than lost? What's the point of knowing the truth rather than living in ignorance? What's the point of being welcomed home by the waiting father instead of languishing by the pig sties? What's the point? The question answers itself."


"Would you like to join us for Thanksgiving dinner?"

"No. I mean, what's the point?  I'm just going to be hungry again in a few hours."

I've encountered people who think like this, though, and previously written about one discussion I overheard that represented that perspective almost exactly. It's sad that so many of us consider Christ as some sort of inclusive club to which we belong and others don't, to which membership is a matter of our effort and merit.

If we lack the burning desire that those who don't belong to him as of yet - our brothers in their distant lands - will come home to their rightful place in him, I have to question whether we've really ever come back to him ourselves.  I think that too many of us think we are saved by, or at least because of, our own goodness. For how could an undeserving sinner who is redeemed in spite of himself claim to know the joy of belonging to Christ without longing for all others to belong to him, too?

A political mini-rant

This Fact Checker article from the Washington Post really disappoints me.  (Well, technically, it's the campaign film that it examines that disappoints me.)  I suppose I shouldn't be the slightest bit surprised, though.  Politicians pull crap like this all the time, purposely presenting a set of circumstances in the way that makes the listener interpret them in the way that best furthers their agenda, even to the point of being willing to present a scenario that is likely to lead the audience to conclusions that completely differ from reality.

I don't have any respect for anyone who does that.  It is a way of lying with the truth, which is a trick of Satan.  In this case, it isn't even a matter of how two reasonable people might interpret the same facts in different ways.

I suppose I understand why the President of the United States could conclude that this issue is important enough to make it okay to mis-present the circumstances of his own mother's death for the sake of those he's trying to help.

But no, a sincere intention does not justify dishonest means. This is basic ethics.

Today's word

sylph - 1. an elemental being in the theory of Paracelsus that inhabits air.  2. a slender graceful woman or girl

Could it be that I'm going to cycle this year?

I actually rode my bike twice this week.  On Thursday evening I rode about 24 miles when I was planning planning on 20, after I ran into a friend about a mile after I turned around.  Then yesterday I did about 22 when I'd been planning on 18 or so; it was just so gorgeous, and it felt so nice to be out.  Of course, the slight push on the way out contributed to that decision, as the mostly southerly wind was also coming just a bit from the west, so the ride back in was not so relaxing!  Still, it was so nice to get out! And I'm not sure, but it could be that the combined mileage was more than I completed in any single week last year.

Update: Was just looking back at my log.  From 2004-2008, I logged over 2000 miles a year.  Since then I've logged 1100, 700, and last year I didn't bother keeping a log but I'm sure I was not over 200 miles.  Just haven't had - or made - the time.

This year is going to be better.

On Saturday mornings when I have nothing to do, I hate my internal alarm.

So the longer-term members of the group want to "go out with a bang."

That idea just doesn't feel right to me.

Multiple

There's a hole in my life


Shadow in my heart
Is tearing me apart
Or maybe it's just something in my stars
. . . 
There's something missing from my life
Cuts me open like a knife
It leaves me vulnerable

- Sting

Goodbye.  I'll miss you.  I miss you already.

Every year on the first weekend of the tournament, I so looked forward to Monday, so we could talk about the proceedings.

Now there is no Monday.

I understand why so many women dread football season.

Today's word

instauration - 1. restoration after decay, lapse, or dilapidation 2. an act of instituting or establishing something

Today's words

volplane \VAHL-playn\- 1. to glide in or as if in an airplane  2a. to descend gradually in controlled flight b. to fly in a glider

chandelle \shan-'del, shäⁿ-\ - an abrupt climbing turn of an airplane in which the momentum of the plane is used to attain a higher rate of climb

The fruits of our labor and God's grace

We have the first fruits, but there are Christians who seem to think that the first fruits are the only fruits. Rather, we might think of the Church as the prolepsis, the preview, of the great harvest that is to be.  Put differently, the Church, which is the body of the risen Christ, is the future of the world. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon


Those who see the flaws of the Church would be taken aback by such an assertion.  It would seem to them to be a threat or a tragedy, not the promise of hope.  Whereas Christ was fully human and fully divine, the Church is rather partly each, so far. But in God's eternal plan, it is to become so much more than it is - as is our personal destiny, too.  We are personally and collectively to be perfected, and Fr. Neuhaus suggests that this process will not be complete until God has fulfilled his promise in Christ of drawing all unto him.

If, in the mercy and mystery of God, people can be saved who have never even heard of Christ, they are still saved only because of Christ, "for there is salvation in no one else." 
Many Christians are embarrassed by this claim.  They are intimidated by a culture that decrees that all truths are equal.  Who are you to claim that you have the truth and others do not?  It is an intimidating question, unless we understand that we do not have  the truth in the sense that it is ours by virtue of having discovered it; we do not have the truth in the sense of it being a possession under our control. The Christian claim is that we have been encountered by the truth revealed by God in Jesus Christ and by his grace we have responded to that encounter by faith. We hope and pray and work for everyone to be so encountered and to so respond. - ibid.


Many fundamentalist and evangelical Christians would likely disagree with initial premise of this passage, yet this has been Catholic teaching for a very long time. The Church does not assume that those who have not converted in this life are condemned to eternity in hell.  Other Christians would rightly point out the danger in avoiding that assumption: it is important that we not work with any less fervor because of our confidence in God's mercy, as we are instruments of the very mercy we have received in our response, our participation and our labor.

It occurred to me that this beautiful, sunny, warm spring day seemed incongruous with my mood.  Upon further thought, so do my many blessings.

I think I may know where this is coming from.  I need to quit spiking my endorphine level so often.  Even if I'm staying away from stimulating images, the mere repeated activity for which I have learned that they are not a prerequisite is quite addictive enough.

Today's words

nugatory - 1. of little or no consequence : trifling, inconsequential  2. having no force : inoperative
caudillo - a Spanish or Latin-American military dictator
mihrab - a niche or chamber in a mosque indicating the direction of Mecca
strathspey - a Scottish dance that is similar to but slower than the reel; also : the music for this dance
facula - any of the bright regions of the sun's photosphere seen most easily near the sun's edge

I love it when a Dictionary Devil puzzle gives me several new words, and when there's a WOTD that I didn't know, too, it's a banner word day!

All I have . . .

Lord, you are greater than all of this!

Help me remember that you are greater than all of this.

Another stripe

I get home from rehearsal, hang up my coat, and go downstairs to kiss you.  You're still feeling lousy, and I hate that you do. There doesn't seem to be anything I can do for you. I ask what you're watching, and it's some movie or other you've found.  I don't mind too much that you made it a priority to go help your friend with sewing today, even though you felt so poorly, or that you basically haven't had anything left after that beyond sitting around watching whatever you've managed to find throughout the afternoon and evening.

I go upstairs and use the bathroom, then come down with my computer bag to sit with you.  That's when you inform me that you're now watching The Bachelor.  "How long?" I ask.  "An hour," you reply, then double check it. "Two hours."  I glumly turn around and walk back upstairs, where we continue our separate lives for another evening.  I can only surmise that there's no room for me in the middle of what you're already dealing with, even though I just want to spend the evening with you.  That's better than thinking that the programs you watch are more important to you than our relationship is. I guess tonight, at least, I should have been more prepared for this, and should take comfort in knowing it's the season finale.

I need to talk with you about all of this, and about finding a path forward that accommodates our disparate sets of needs. I can't do it while you're so sick, though, and I still need a while longer to get my thoughts finished.  I'm close.  I am not at all sanguine that it's going make any difference, but I owe it to myself and to the both of us to try before resigning myself to the status quo.

Because I know how terrible you're feeling, I'm going to stop writing and go clean the kitchen.  Then I'm going to take the trash out, and maybe read a little, and try to get my eyes and my mind on something better.

I should probably have told you at some point that more of my coworkers were let go today.  I just don't know when I could have done that. But because I couldn't find a chance to do that, I ended up dealing with a very hard day by myself, and that made it harder.

The one speaking to you

In answer to the query by the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well, Jesus replies, "I am he; the one speaking to you."  I've always taken this as a simple matter of identification, but am finding myself considering a slightly different meaning to the latter phrase of his response.  After this she goes off and tells her neighbors about him. Was this due to the entire conversation?  I suspect so, but perhaps there was something about his assertion that also causes her to respond in this way.

Having reflected yesterday on this encounter, it is clear that there were strong reasons for this woman to be impressed by the time and interaction that Jesus invested in her, even before he stayed with them for two additional days.  If she was indeed at the well at noon because she was shunned by her neighbors, then perhaps "the one speaking to you" is more than a statement of identifying himself further, a simple follow-up to "I am he."  Perhaps Jesus was saying something like, "See how I am unlike the others in your life.  I know the truth about you, but I do not disdain you as they do.  Rather, I choose to interact with and to value you even though you are an outcast among outcasts.  See how I am unlike the other Jews whom your people have known.  This is the evidence I offer you in support of my assertion that I am the Messiah."  The promised anointed one was to unite the kingdom, so Samaritans would expect to be included.

Maybe the gist of Jesus' response was, "See, by my willingness to engage with you that I am here for all of our people."

Today's word

quietus\kwye-EE-tus\
noun
1 : final settlement (as of a debt)
2 : removal from activity; especially : death
3 : something that quiets or represses

Lean not on your own understanding

Cognitive humility is again in order when we try to think about what happens after death, and how. All our thinking is limited by time and space, but God is not so limited. We think of heaven and hell as "places" because to our limited minds everything has a "hereness" and a "thereness," but it is not so with God. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon


And so we think "in heaven with you" or "in hell without you."  In your presence or apart from you. 


Maybe it's nothing more than eternally together or eternally alone.

Maybe the decision of eternity is whether we shall spend eternal timelessness in fellowship with God and all of creation, including all other intelligence, for which we are created, versus the isolated contemplation every thought on which our own mind is capable of focusing without the company of others. I can see how the latter could be hell.

Therefore it is rightly said that all theology is finally doxology.  That is to say, all analysis and explanation finally dissolves into wonder and praise. - ibid.


I would add an intermediate step of "relationship" before "wonder and praise." For all that we seek to know about God, to gain an understanding in our minds of all that God is, we will ever be unable to.  Ultimately, we either give ourselves to him or we don't.  When we finally do entrust our heart to the One who is love, we discover so much more about him that we could never grasp with our mind alone, and wonder and praise are the inevitable result!

At the well

In a couple hours, since our parish always uses the Gospel reading for the RCIA scrutinies, I am going to hear the gospel that illustrates in a striking and poignant way God's eagerness to meet us where we are. It is easy for us to not grasp the full implications of Jesus speaking this Samaritan woman at Jacob's well in the afternoon, yet it is wondrous on several levels:

•  Just try to imagine what it would be like if Ahmadinejad and Netanyahu each accidentally encountered each other in some chance meeting.  Except Jews and Samaritans were not merely enemies, the former disdained the latter for discarding the purity of the covenant, and the latter had lived under centuries of this attitude. 
• Suppose a socialite wife ran into a known prostitute.  Or, maybe better yet, what if a devoted father finds himself in the grocery store checkout line with a child molester for whom he's just read a predator notification he got in the mail, maybe late at night when the latter was shopping in the faint hope of being able to avoid people.
• How often do we disregard others when we are on our way somewhere that we need to reach at a specific time, and see someone experiencing an inconvenience?

All of these elements are at play in this story, yet Jesus met this scandalous woman exactly where she was, engaged her in a way that overcame both the longstanding cultural hatred between them and her shame, and stayed there for two days despite the fact that he was on his way somewhere else.

It is likely that the Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection of Jesus would never convey God's love for us without these examples from Jesus' life and ministry to illustrate and underscore the reason for them.

. . . continued

But more than merely desiring or hoping, neither of which necessarily have any significant impact on my own actions, I must look to be an instrument by which God somehow might bring it closer to reality.  It isn't that I am responsible for saving anyone else - let alone everyone! - but that I am called to be part of Christ's body in the world.  It is through this body that he now works to bring to completion in the world the work he completed in eternity through his original Paschal journey through death to resurrection.  We haven't gotten to that sixth word of his on the cross, yet, but, "It is finished," obviously cannot mean that everyone whom the Father desires to transform in his love now has been. When I truly accept the gift of grace for myself, it becomes a burden burning in my heart that others will come to know him, as well. And that great compulsion drives me no matter how patently obvious it may appear that some other may not deserve it, if only I am aware that deserving it is never a part of the equation.

Hope for all

Or we might put the question this way: If it is possible that many will be eternally lost and if it is possible that all will be saved, which should we hope for? In view of the command to love all people, must we not hope that in the end all will be saved? Can we love others and not hope that they will be saved? - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon

It isn't fair of me to grab this quote at the end of four pages of eight pages of development of the idea that perhaps none of us will be condemned to hell for all eternity, in which Fr. Neuhaus has addressed biblical passages that suggest otherwise, and others that support our hope.  Yes, "our hope."  I am saved by God's grace, meaning of course that it is completely not a matter of my deserving it.  I can only accept this gift on the terms under which it is offered, under the command to love as I have been loved.  I am saved because God has desired it, and I must desire it for others.  Therefore I hope that all will be saved by God's grace.  I cannot do otherwise.

for original, see commented parts in html view; edited 3/21/14

My darling,

I have something very difficult to share with you, and have been having a hard time finding the right time to do it. Since it's very important to me that I share these feelings and concerns accurately, I decided to write you this letter, to help me ensure that I express what is on my heart and to give you the chance to read it over again if you need to, to glean what you need from it.

I want to start off by telling you how much I love you.  As you read this, it is really important for me that you keep in mind that nothing I'm sharing represents the slightest diminishment of my love for and commitment to you. But I think that I haven't been giving us both the best chance to act in the interest of our mutual happiness, and that's probably been true for a very long time.

Because I have been unhappy and frustrated with our relationship for a very long time.

For the longest time, probably for the first 15 years after I abused Christina, I felt as if I didn't really deserve to be happy, that I should just be grateful: that you still love me and stayed with me, that you gave me the chance to heal and stood by me despite all that I put you and our family through.  I concluded that I should just dedicate myself to loving you regardless of how I might feel. And actually, I still think that most everything in this paragraph so far - everything after the idea that I don't deserve to be happy - is true. I still feel a deep and committed love for you, that runs far deeper than my passing or longer-term emotions.  I am very grateful for your love.

And I know that the last thing in the world you want is for me to be unhappy.

I'm sorry that I have let it become a very long time without expressing myself more plainly, though I feel as if I've tried numerous time over the years to make you aware of some of my frustrations, to little - or only temporary - avail. I'm going to mention a specific area that has been bothering me, but may seem like a minor thing, and you should know that my frustration with us is far deeper than I can convey.

I've been concerned about how much our interests and our motivations take us in very different directions, and I don't always feel as if we're both doing all we can to make our life together better. The way we spend our evenings has been a problem for me, and when I've tried to talk about this with you, I feel as if you've dismissed my concerns.  I believe that time together with you is a true need - for me, at least - to nurture our relationship and grow together.  "You know that I'm addicted to the television," is not a resolution of our conflicting interests; it implies that putting up with this forever is just the cost of loving you for who you are, but more significantly, that you consider this so much a part of who you are that you aren't willing to consider making changes in this area.  That is certainly your right, but it has a negative effect on our relationship that I'm not sure I've managed to convey.  It isn't that I want you to change who you are and what you're interested in, and I never want you to resent time you're spending with me because it's taking you away from what you'd rather be doing.  I also don't want to spend my life separate from you while you indulge your interest in three hours of television programming every. single. night.  I want us to spend more of our lives together, so that they become "our life together" rather than "our lives."  I know that our interests are very different, but over three-plus decades I know we have built more common ground than what we've been living on.  If this is an area that's sacrosanct to you, then I will live with it - for the rest of our lives, even - but I'll never be happy about it.

I should probably share a specific example of when this has been a particularly acute issue for me, so it doesn't just seem as if I'm complaining in general. The day Linda's group was let go from work was really hard for me. I really would have appreciated your company when I got home after a capella choir rehearsal, but you and Melissa were watching The Bachelor together.  You know how that show bothers me, and I wasn't willing to put up with it, but also felt as if I'd be interfering with your wishes for the evening if tried to drag you away from it. Instead of doing either, I chose (yes, I know it was my choice) to lament (again) that you'd rather watch programs you know I hate than spend time with me in the evening.

It may seem as if I'm blaming you for my unhappiness. I don't intend to do that; I know that I'm responsible for my own emotional state. And I'm the one who has let myself be unhappy for most of the last 15 years without giving you the chance for us to work together on being a happy, fulfilled couple.  I'm sure we've developed some habits of relating to each other that we're going to need to learn to let go of.  There are things I've learned about myself that I haven't shared with you fully, because your sense of security has been more important to me than sharing myself fully with you. I want to give you the chance to love me more completely, to love all of me - without indulging me in ways that are unhealthy for us - just as I am trying to do for you.

I think it's likely that we'll need a few sessions with a good marriage counselor to get us there.

Because of where that last sentence falls in this rather long letter, you may think it isn't very central, when it's really the main reason for the whole letter.  I think that this is going to be an important part of our journey forward together.  I know it is a scary prospect, so I'm asking: are you willing to do that with me?

Okay, I think I've said what I need to. I also think it's important to reemphasize some things here at the end.  I love you deeply.  I'm glad to be your husband, and I am committed to loving you for the rest of our lives.  I don't "want out," and there isn't anyone else I wish there was some way for me to be with instead of you.  I just want us both to be happy and fulfilled in our relationship, and it's important to me that you know that I have not been.

Yet I remain yours, forever,

Misunderstood grace

But stay with them for a while, for these questions lead into the mystery of a love that searched out and found such an unlikely soul as Dysmas. It is the same love that found us, and if we don't think that we are equally unlikely candidates for salvation, we have not begun to understand the meaning of grace. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon

With apologies for not even getting past a single sentence in this book between my last entry and this one, but this gets to the root of a major obstacle to our being vessels of grace.  I cannot write about this without also acknowledging Fr. Robert Spitzer, and I've previously written at length about the coincide-ence of these two wonderful approaches to that bring us to the same  point.

We seem to easily internalize the prevalent idea that we're saved because we're good - and the implication that others are not saved because they are evil or, at least, not good, not good enough, not as good as we are - much more easily than the idea that any degree of goodness in us is due to God's grace at work in our lives. We think of our goodness as an attribute that is ours because of our makeup, our personality, our virtue. No matter how much we say that any good thing that is ours is a gift from God, including an exhaustive list of our good traits, we insist on giving ourselves the credit for most of it.

It's easy to see why we feel this way with regard to decisions we make. When we decide not to have an affair, not to steal, to help a stranger, to feed someone who is hungry, to help build someone a home, it is natural - it is in our nature - and it is important to realize that we could have chosen otherwise. And yet, for someone living by grace, it is equally important but not natural that we realize that these decisions we make and efforts we put forth are also God's gift to us, which we accept and receive by choosing to participate in God's grace.

It isn't me. It's grace. Yes, I must choose to participate with it, yet that is still grace.

If I have been saved, I am no more deserving of it than was Dysmas. We think like the laborers in the parable who toiled all day in the field only to receive the same wage as those who started late in the day. The job was a blessing, and while it offends our sense of fairness for another to receive the same reward for far less labor, we've forgotten that God's love is such a great reward that we could never earn it with any amount of labor!

(Of course, St. Dysmas is an easy comparison. Maybe we should choose someone we can all agree was truly and utterly despicable, whose crimes against humankind cannot be denied. If I will not do for an example, perhaps Adolph Hitler or Josef Stalin might. No, I'm not suggesting that any evil I have done was as great as theirs, though it might be true that I should have been better equipped not to do mine.)

And neither am I, because of my failings, less a candidate for salvation, by the same logic. I mustn't take that as freedom to do whatever I want, but rather should find that considering such a gift causes me to want to respond in ways that please the Giver.

Grace means that I accept a love that is greater than I could ever deserve, and freely offer it to everyone else because I recognize it was offered to me freely, as well.

Today's words

diplopia - a disorder of vision in which two images of a single object are seen because of unequal action of the eye muscles — called also double vision

impost - a block, capital, or molding from which an arch springs (see figure, label imp)

ogee - 1. a molding with an S-shaped profile. 2. a pointed arch having on each side a reversed curve near the apex (same link, label 4)

I'd heard of this last, but couldn't remember either meaning.

More unconscious brain weirdness

It was supposed to be the gig at St. Helen, but the space was more like Immaculate Conception. I'd tuned the guitar already, and it was sitting on a stand, ready to go, as we finished rehearsing and went back into the sacristy area to pray. As I walked past it, I heard the tension suddenly release on one of my strings, and knew I had to fix that right away.  So I took it to the side and tuned it up, which seemed to take painfully long.  I finally finished, then went back to the sacristy, from which Jubilee had emerged already to take their places, except for one other tenor who was still struggling with his choir robe. (I don't have the foggiest idea why we were robed. It's a dream.) They were gold metallic monstrosities with black surplices built into them. The other tenor went out to get into place while I fought my robe on.  I then walked as calmly as possible to my place in the choir, where they were already singing the opening piece.  This was an arrangement of Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silent, and even in my dream we'd never sung it together before, but it was apparently in the repertoire from before I'd joined.  The director and another alto were singing words back and forth to each other that weren't in the lyric, trying to communicate with each other and the choir without the audience catching on, though it was plainly audible.  I sat (!) in the open space between them in front, silently because I didn't know the piece, as the director sang - I think to the audience this time - that I was not singing because I didn't know the piece.  The piece had by then moved into an energetic section (again - !) that only someone who knew this arrangement could have participated in.  There was clearly frustration and anger driven by our pre-service routine's interruption by my guitar malfunction.

When the piece was over, the person on my right walked away from the choir to gather herself.  This had been the director earlier in the dream, but was now the other alto, as the director remained on my left with a forced smile.  She apologized to the audience for our out-of-the normal beginning, and explained that we would restart the program properly after we took a few minutes to calm ourselves and enter into the presence of the Lord.  We discussed how the robes were not "us" on our way from the sanctuary area. Apparently we'd started late in the first place, too, as I was concerned about how long the families with children were going to have to be there now.

And then I woke up.

Today's word

arrogate - 1a. to claim or seize without justification. b. to make undue claims to having : assume. 2. to claim on behalf of another : ascribe

A love which cannot be denied?

First Timothy declares that God "desires all to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth." Is it possible that God's purpose will be thwarted? And what might that say about whether God is truly God? Will the sovereignty of God in Christ be forever in dispute?
Admittedly, these are heavy questions. Christians have been debating them for centuries, and we will not here resolve them to everyone's satisfaction, not even to our own. But stay with them for a while, for these questions lead into the mystery of a love that searched out and found such an unlikely soul as Dysmas. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon


I have always rejected the position of apocatastasis until I heard Fr. Neuhaus' explanation in support of it, and even after having done so I can only manage to hope for the sake of my fellow sojourners that it might be true.

It is enough for me to know that God desires in his love for us that we be saved, and to respond to that love by returning it and sharing it as I am led.

Fooling Yourself

"All that matters is that I do my part."

Well, that's certainly what I've needed to focus on, and it still is. Still, by pretending that I didn't need to be concerned about anything else, I've simply kicked the can down the road.  But I probably wasn't ready to pick it up and take care of it until now, anyway, so maybe that's for the best, too.

Neurons at night

Sometimes, maybe often, our dreams don't mean anything, and yet can be so odd or have such timing as to stay with us.

I don't know who the woman was on the other side of the "court;" it didn't appear to be anyone I know in real life.  I'm not sure what was at stake to seem so critical, or why the invitation to hit a few tennis balls to settle it - yes, I conceded, I'd played a little when I was younger - made sense.  Suddenly, we weren't on the tennis court we'd just been sitting by, but we were in a department store. Instead of a standard net, there were a pair of six-foot high screened panels, separated by a couple feet, that I had to serve over.  I double faulted when the second bottle of nail polish (?) I hit didn't clear the second fence.  In another of those dreamish inconguities, this serve was from the ad court, yet made the score love-15. I walked through the "door" cut into the panels to inspect the obstacle I was serving over the top of.  I won the next two points, so was up 30-15 (having just won a service point from the deuce side, as was proper), and starting to feel confident.  Now having just served a tennis ball, I walked through the fences to inspect which line of linoleum floor tiles my second serve bounced on. A group of customers verified it had landed wide, so I was down 30-40 (again having served from the correct side), and was beginning to feel more than slightly nervous about losing whatever was at stake.  I began to hear gently increasing, soothing and familiar strain of music through the PA speakers in the ceiling, and realized it was a little brighter in the room.

The daily alarm on my cell phone was going off.

I'll never know what was going to come next.

What if that really is more important to you?

Today's word

felicitate - 1. to consider happy or fortunate. 2. to offer congratulations to

I've heard the phrase, "Greetings and felicitations," but never paid much attention to what the second half of it meant.

Get back?

If we say that this way of atonement is wrong, we are back in the garden presuming to name right and wrong, good and evil. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon


Our associate pastor, Fr. Satish, gave a really wonderful homily tying together today's three readings from Mass, and they're not exactly related to this thought from Fr. Neuhaus, yet they are.

Fr. Neuhaus has addressed the difficulty some have with the Father demanding the sacrifice of the Son in order to redeem humanity.  I recall the scripture passage that Jesus quotes in Matthew 9, 13: I require mercy, not sacrifice.  Jesus did not die on the cross to satisfy a vengeful God who required it of him. Rather He gave himself freely to this plan of salvation in mercy and love, embraced it as he left the throne of glory to become one of us.  As God did not ultimately demand the sacrifice of Isaac, he accepts - rather than demands - the sacrifice of his son for our redemption.

We insist on naming right and wrong, good and evil, for ourselves.  Perhaps if we stop being so defensive of our own ideas we might find the grace of God more easily and less offensive to us.

An unplanned break

Wow. Three consecutive days with no blog entries. Between work and the Birds, I need to be careful not to get derailed. Not writing isn't itself a problem. Not having read anything that was worth stopping what I was doing right away to write about is a different matter entirely.

Now, it isn't as if I've written nothing at all in those three days.  I did take a little time to start working on something very important.