let the reader beware . . .

. . . that I don't lend pieces of my heart.

I should probably warn people about that sooner.

Realization

I was 37 years old before I was emotionally healthy enough to make effective decisions about relationships.

By then I'd been married for 17 years.

It's worked out pretty well anyway.

Thanks a lot, Kelly

The fear of loneliness is the father of many relationships that never should have been. When we choose to be with someone because we are afraid of being alone, we dishonor ourselves and the other person. - Matthew Kelly, Resisting Happiness

And yet God can take that relationship and turn it into so. very. much. more. than it could have otherwise been.

Last week's post . . .

. . . which I titled Pessimism? was not reflective of my state of mind. Rather, I'd encountered this quote some time ago - as in, months ago - and intended to share some thoughts on it, but hadn't gotten around to it, and didn't want to lose track of it entirely.

I think the quote represents a thoroughly inaccurate understanding of what love really is, unless the author is referring to romantic love, in which case he has described exactly what it ought to be. The illusion that leads us to "fall in love" with another is supposed to yield to something more realistic, and yet as this disillusion occurs and we begin to know the object of our love more thoroughly, the fervor of our initial romance develops into something more beautiful, committed, and enduring.

This happens as we encounter struggles and conflicts in our relationship, and approaching these with an eye toward the beloved's perspective allows us to work through these in ways that build us up together rather than undermining us.

The reason it's important

If the objective of our life was primarily to avoid sin, it wouldn't much matter whether we did it by grace or by brute force of will. (Let us set aside for a moment the impossibility of the latter.)

But it isn't!

So the reason it's important to turn to God when we're feeling weak and vulnerable isn't just to be helped through whatever degree of crisis we might be facing, and the reason for turning to Him when we are feeling strong isn't so that we won't stumble when we're feeling weak.

It's a little like the incredulous question the late Fr. Neuhaus raises in Death on a Friday Afternoon, while he's speculating about whether God's desire for every beloved son and daughter of His to be saved might actually be fulfilled. He talks about those whose response to that possibility is worry about the benefit of walking with the Lord, then, if our destiny ends up being the same, if God's grace really manages to overcome every person's sin. I'm probably paraphrasing his response: What's the point‽ The point is that you get to walk with the Lord!!

No benefit we might think passes us by when we turn away from sin to walk more closely with Him comes anywhere near that of knowing the One who loves us like no other! And no righteous side effect of avoiding sin compares with this joy, either.

There are many who approach faith as if it is primarily about its beneficial effects on society. They are as wrong as those who elevate any other gift of God above the presence of God Himself. The second greatest commandment is important, but there's a Reason it isn't the greatest!

They didn't ask *me*

Just saw a survey indicating that men want independence and strength for their daughters but not in their wives, and that they feel threatened by their wives having successful careers outside the home.

Conforming (phase 2), Jesus Calls His Followers - Arriving to a Decision (step16), session 1

So they have reworked the calendar to remove the specific dates that I was using for a sense of where I wanted to be by Holy Week - which has a step for each day, each with a list of Scripture passages. So either I need to keep track on myy own to work ahead, or I suppose I could just take vacation all that week and be like a monk, praying seven times a day for the whole week. At least I've figured out why I've been having trouble connecting on my wife's computer.

 The first passage for this step is the calling of the first apostles from St. John's gospel, starting at verse 35 through the end of chapter 1.  This account of the calling leaves a very different impression from the synoptic gospels, which can leave one with the impression that Jesus just meets some strangers by the shore and yells at them and they come and follow. By contrast, the callings in St. John's accounts are heavy on introductions. It's likely that one of the first two to whom John the Baptist points out Jesus is St. John himself. Andrew very explicitly brings his brother, and Philip is brought in through his relationship with these brothers.

I find these early encounters marked by a lot of what we expect at the beginning of relationship, questions and discussion that seek to answer the question we so often have of new people we meet: can I trust you?  As he does throughout this gospel, Jesus seems to somehow provide the assurance that each person needs in response to that question.

He does the same for us, too, when we sincerely seek him.

Conforming (phase 2), Three Types of Attitude in Scriptural Case Studies (step14), session 3

He entered Jericho and was passing through. And there was a man named Zacchae'us; he was a chief tax collector, and rich. And he sought to see who Jesus was, but could not, on account of the crowd, because he was small of stature. So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was to pass that way. 

And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, "Zacchae'us, make haste and come down; for I must stay at your house today." 

So he made haste and came down, and received him joyfully. And when they saw it they all murmured, "He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner." 

And Zacchae'us stood and said to the Lord, "Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have defrauded any one of anything, I restore it fourfold."  

And Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of man came to seek and to save the lost." - Lk 19, 1-10

I was wondering what passage they'd use for the third type of attitude. What a perfect choice! I've reflected on Zacchae'us often over the decades, but this gives me a new context for considering his example.

It seems to me that, as is true for so many other aspects of a sincere faith journey, the first requirement we must meet to model this attitude is an understanding of our proper relationship with God in Christ Jesus. So often we approach what God asks of us as if he is something other than a loving Father who always wants what is best for us, and who graciously bestows it on us despite our unworthiness to even be called his sons and daughters. We see God instead as trying to limit our joy by imposing restrictions or obligations on us, and this keeps us from seeking what he truly desires for us in our lives.

I am certain that Zacchae'us was under no delusions regarding his stature within the community (pun intended), and understood what a great privilege it was that Jesus would come to his home. When this is true of us, we tend to receive Jesus joyfully, too! But when we fail to understand what a gift God has given us in adopting us as sons and daughters and delivering us from our sin, everything else we do becomes a struggle in the undercurrent of this denied truth.

We have heard a lot of talk lately about being people of gratitude, and that is very important, but if our first appreciation is not for the most important gift of our unmerited salvation, putting on the proper attitude of humble obedience to God in each thing will be impossible for us.

Conforming (phase 2), Three Types of Attitude toward Possessions (step13), session 3

The first couple is convinced that they should give away the money in order to be free of it, but they never do it actually. They have the mistaken concept that holiness equals radical renounce(ment) but they cannot do it and in consequence they live with a sense of guilt because of the attachment. This couple honestly would like to love God, but their underlying attitude is fear (of) him; they are afraid of a demanding God and find the heights of sanctity too frightening. They live and die remaining in the same situation without resolving the problem and really answering God’s call to them.

The second couple decides beforehand that they should keep the money and use it for good, for example investing it and from the profit regularly give to the poor. They desire to be free of the attachment to the money but in the same time also want to keep it, convinced that they know how to use it for the greater glory of God and how to "save their souls." Also this couple remains in their attachment which they don’t recognize either, they decide without discernment with an attitude of bargaining and a sort of pretense.

The third couple too wants to be free of attachments, but they do not decide immediately either to get rid of the money (or) to keep it. They don’t act without discernment, without seeing how this sum integrates in their life and relationship with God. Their attitude is the abandonment and openness toward God, a childlike trust in him as they try to understand for what he inspires them and what is the better for them. When Jesus in the gospels tells the disciples to become like children, he calls to this attitude of trust and dependence on God: "Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven." (Mt 18:3) . . .  - Step by Step Retreats, step 13

Continuing my focus on non-monetary application from my previous two sessions:

I have attempted both of the first two approaches. In the first decade of our marriage, I was more like the second couple. I was determined to cling to what I knew I needed regardless of the impact it had on my bride and our relationship. If she had a problem with one of my friendships, I considered it "her problem." This created an adversarial relationship between us that tended to both separate me emotionally from my bride and draw me closer to my friend in emotionally unhealthy ways. My refusal to truly trust God to provide for my needs resulted in my determination to provide for them according to my own understanding.

Later I became more like the first couple. Understanding the pitfalls of my previous approach, I became unwilling to enter any friendship with the slightest potential for me to misuse it in that way. There were, of course (well, it's "of course" to people who know me well) good reasons why I overcompensated in this way. Perhaps God has used this period to provide enough distance from the earlier one to break a habit that I might have tended to fall back into. The thing is, when I finally reached the point of being able to find something more like the middle ground, I still had to break some of the old habits.

I think I'm still only beginning to see how to take each friendship as it comes, accepting in each case God's guidance over how to conduct it, being truly sensitive to my bride's needs as well as my own and my friend's, and above all seeking to truly honor and glorify God as I trust him in the conduct of my life. But my remaining attachment to the perceived needs that I am trying to have met, by insistence to God that he isn't providing for me in some way, is a clear indicator that I still have a long way to grow.

I think that, if we were journeying through the exercises together, my wife and I would probably need to focus as much on the financial aspect of this step as we would on the relational one.

To include the obvious conclusion of this step's meditation:

From this point of view, only the third couple goes through a transformation of their desire and reaches freedom from their attachment, while the first two did not change at all or only (temporized) about it. The dynamics of this therapeutic transformation of attitudes can be applied also to the struggles of addicted or neurotic persons with their problems. - ibid.

And I suppose this last sentence probably describes me more accurately than I would like to think.

Conforming (phase 2), Three Types of Attitude toward Possessions (step13), session 2

Imagine that each of the three couples obtains a great sum of money. The way in which they acquired it is honest and morally perfect, but as Ignatius puts it "not entirely as they should have, for the love of God,"  which means that they did not search for it as a result of a proper discernment process. There are many of this kind of thing in our life; we acquired or discovered them before reflecting or even thinking about how it fits in our existence and in our relationship with God. These things are morally perfect, to possess them is honorable and they might be the source of much good, but if not integrated in our love of God they constitute a "part of that wealth that seeks to absolutize itself and therefore become the starting point of true sin." - Step by Step Retreats, step 13

First, a consideration of what either St. Ignatius or Karl Rahner (it's impossible to tell without consulting the referred resource which of these two introduced this concept; for that matter Rahner may have borrowed from someone else) means in using the term "morally perfect."  From context, they clearly can't mean anything like "incorruptible" or "not susceptible to use for sinful purposes."  It appears to mean something more like "a thing that is good so long as it is kept in its proper place." When you think about it, this applies to pretty much every gift God has bestowed on us.

In the previous session I pointed out how my own application of this most urgently needs to focus on something besides wealth and material possessions.

Let us suppose that the couples in our example desire a great spiritual freedom and as they feel the attachment to this money presents an impediment of their goal, they want to free themselves of it . . . -  ibid.

This is where I am only beginning to enter into a deeper recognition that I still need to grow. There have always been ways that I think about my life and my circumstances that I now see represent attachments that reveal, at their core, that I tend to place my trust more in those things than in God to meet my needs. I suppose that, for me, this has always been primarily true of my emotional needs. For many years, this resulted in a tendency to place too high of a priority on certain of my friendships, to the detriment of my relationship with my bride. In some cases this resulted in those other relationships taking on some aspects that should have been reserved for my marriage.  It has only been relatively recently that I have learned not to allow this to happen, and as a result my recent friendships have been more balanced.

Yet I still find myself basically complaining to God that he is not meeting my needs because of the absence of the sort of friendship that I perceive that I "need" to have in my life, as if God has ever truly neglected my needs. So perhaps this present time is itself a gift from God, as much as my recent morally perfect friendships have been, to teach me to trust in him rather than in them.

Reforming (phase 1), Hell and Mercy (step 6), session 7

Maybe I'm already there.

I mean, is my calling really to sit on the sofa and consume banal entertainment and try to find some form of fulfillment in that, for the sake of nurturing our unity? And then to go to bed alone (again) while she partakes of more?

I'm feeling pretty ungrateful this morning for God's abundant gifts. Maybe that is the beginning, at least, of hell.

Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all within me, his holy name.
Bless the LORD, O my soul, and never forget all his benefits.
It is the LORD who forgives all your sins, who heals every one of your ills,
who redeems your life from the grave, who crowns you with mercy and compassion,
who fills your life with good things, renewing your youth like an eagle’s.
The LORD does just deeds, gives full justice to all who are oppressed.
He made known his ways to Moses, and his deeds to the children of Israel.
The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and rich in mercy.
He will not always find fault; nor persist in his anger forever.
He does not treat us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our faults.
For as the heavens are high above the earth, so strong his mercy for those who fear him.
As far as the east is from the west, so far from us does he remove our transgressions.
As a father has compassion on his children, the LORD’s compassion is on those who fear him.
For he knows of what we are made; he remembers that we are dust.
Man, his days are like grass; he flowers like the flower of the field.
The wind blows, and it is no more, and its place never sees it again.
But the mercy of the LORD is everlasting upon those who hold him in fear, 
upon children’s children his justice,
for those who keep his covenant, and remember to fulfill his commands.
The LORD has fixed his throne in heaven, and his kingdom is ruling over all.
Bless the LORD, all you his angels, mighty in power, fulfilling his word, who heed the voice of his word.
Bless the LORD, all his hosts, his servants, who do his will.
Bless the LORD, all his works, in every place where he rules.
Bless the LORD, O my soul! - Ps 103

There are a number of verses herein trying to speak to me; ordinarily I would selectively quote and reflect upon a few of them. Today my dark mood and cold heart seek only to rebut them. I know this Psalm is truth, yet it does not reach through the shroud I have wrapped around myself.

Last night in my bride's frustration I had the good sense to simply offer frequent hugs, which she appreciated. Today I feel certain that there are none that would bring me comfort.

This concludes phase 1. By no means do attribute my foul mood to these Exercises. I know I have my attention in the wrong place despite them, not because of them. I pray that Grace may keep my feet upon the path that I would forsake.

Reforming (phase 1), Hell and Mercy (step 6), session 3

Yesterday I suggested a reflection idea I wanted to come back to, and now I'm going to revisit it even though I really don't want to. It is painful. It feels sad and lonely, and I have no control over it. But there are a number of people I love deeply who are at various stages of cutting me out of their lives, or at least of keeping me at a far greater distance than I wish for.

This feels different from when I was isolated by my own sin. In that case, I knew what I had done wrong warranted the rejection I was receiving. Most of those relationships have been healed over time, much to my surprise. These felt very different from what I imagine hell to be, as I suspect that life in hell includes a high degree of disdain for others' (and God's) opinions that was not a part of my emotional makeup back then. I knew I deserved the isolation I was experiencing, and viewed it as only just. I imagine that God meets even a belated humble recognition of this sort of truth with grace and mercy.

What I feel now for those who are separated from me by their choice is also probably not very like hell, as I believe it to be. I don't think that God condemns people to hell, with the result that people in hell feel as if God is depriving them of what they really want. I think it's more as if hell is like getting what we think we really want and it never satisfying us, because we really want the wrong thing. In fact, I think that God hurts for our sake when we choose to fix upon such objects of our desire, and I think that God feels the pain of our choices more than we have the sense to feel it for ourselves. But the agony of hell is going to be the realization of all of that pain and the insistence that it's still better than humbling ourselves and accepting God's will.

For the mountains may depart
and the hills be removed,
but my steadfast love shall not depart from you,
and my covenant of peace shall not be removed,
says the LORD, who has compassion on you. - Is 54, 10

I pray that God's mercy may indeed prove greater than hell, and that he would bring every one of us to the point that we would choose it.

A poor reason, and some good ones

Some scholars speculate that "Good Friday" comes from "God's Friday," as "good-bye" was originally "God be by you." But it is just as odd that it should be called God's Friday, when it is the day we say good-bye to the glory of God. Wherever its name comes from, let your present moment stay with this day. Stay a while in the eclipse of the light, stay a while with the conquered One. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon

I find myself referring to quotes I've referenced on previous readings of this magnificent book, but in new ways. I've reflected before on the first part of what I've quoted here, but am now really wanting to focus on this latter part; I've only included the first two sentences of this citation because the part I wanted to include refers back to them.

I've been told before by a Catholic adult catechist, almost dismissively, that Catholics do a great job of focusing on Good Friday and a terrible job of truly celebrating Easter. Honoring Fr. Neuhaus' invitation to not rush to the resurrection, I nonetheless find that I am utterly convinced that the reason we're so bad at rejoicing in Jesus' (our) victory is that we are, in fact, just awful at truly entering into all that Good Friday should mean for us. If it were primarily about making us wallow in our guilt then, yes, we would excel at it! If the purpose of our meditation on this day is to make us more neurotic about the terrible thing that we did to Jesus, many of us could stop right now because we have that part down pat! As Jesus told his disciples about being clean, though: But not all. There are definitely some who do not associate enough of their lives with sin that something must be done about. And when I enter into eternity, I pray that I don't find that I am one of them.

But there is so much more about Good Friday for us to enter into than just the surface ideas at which we often stop: that it was my sin and guilt that Jesus bore on the cross so that I could be free from it, that God's love for me is so great that Jesus was willing to do this for me. Please don't think I'm being dismissive of these great tenets of our faith! So many of us have failed to grasp even the surface implications of these glorious truths.

But because God is infinite and eternal and Jesus is God, there is so much more depth to enter into in our reflections on this holy day, more than we can get in a full human lifespan, let alone in the time that most of us spend at the foot of the cross. It will take eternity for us to know it fully, just as to know God fully, in the personal-relationship sense. The purpose of a redeemed soul's prayerful reflection on Good Friday is not to increase our sense of the guilt from which Jesus has set us free, but neither is knowing that we are free from our guilt a good reason to forsake any further reflection.

I find that learning more of the depth and details of this mystery into which we enter (by the Holy Spirit) fills my heart with a greater sense of awe at God's infinite glory as revealed incomparably on the cross. It strengthens my desire to share God's love with those around me who have not chosen (or been able) to immerse themselves in the unfathomable depths of this incomprehensible love. It causes me to marvel at my increased understanding of the infinite vastness and infinitesimal detail of this glorious love. It gets my eyes and thoughts and heart fixed on something - someOne - inexpressibly beyond the limits of my mind.

And it makes me more aware of the utter abandon with which I am called to lay down my own life.

Have a blessed Lent!

The challenge

At our Shrove Tuesday evening prayer, Fr. Dave mentioned one tool that our parish would be making available to help us make a meaningful spiritual pilgrimage this Lent. For several years they have provided something we can keep in our pocket, purse or prominent location to remind us to keep Christ always at the center of our life. In the past it has varied from plastic to metal crosses to, last year, a piece of metal with a short scripture passage on it. This year, he said, they were offering us stones?

He went on to explain that our scriptural focus would be from the third chapter of St. Paul's letter to the Colossians, and began the relevant quote apparently using a slight paraphrase that I haven't been able to find verbatim in any translation: Because you are God's chosen ones, holy and beloved . . . . This phrase alone has incredible implications and is the perfect context for what comes after, which is a list of virtues in which we should clothe ourselves. The exact virtues vary slightly according to the translation. The wording of the text implies that we do not necessarily already have (all of) these as part of our natural makeup, so we must put them on to cover over what is there naturally, just as we choose the clothes we wear. Of course, if we don't have them ourselves, we must pray for God to provide them for us by transforming us in the Holy Spirit.

What the parish had done, then, was to gather thousands of stones and written on each of them with permanent marker one (or more, in some cases) of these virtues. If you're feeling brave, Fr. Dave said, you could ask your family to choose one of these virtues for you to pray for and work on this Lent. Or, you could choose one for yourself that you feel led to pray for. Or you could just trust the Holy Spirit and pick one out at random. I knew right away that I needed to ask my bride to choose a virtue for me.

So this Lent I am praying for the virtue of gentleness. I know she made a really appropriate choice. I've always felt I had a gentle spirit, and yet I have periodically been so impatiently harsh with myself and around my home. For a long time, oddly, I likely kept the outward manifestations of this in check by my self-condemnation. For me, at least, the conscious conviction that I was the scum of the earth had very different behavioral effects than the unconscious belief of that same thing had promoted. The latter drove me to behavioral choices that brought my reality into alignment with my unconscious self-image. The former required no such resolution, so I tended more toward a meek resignation to everything. We could debate whether striving to embrace a healthier self-image has allowed me to indulge more of my natural - or perhaps learned - inclinations to behave in my home in ways as I learned from my angry father, or has reinvoked a lesser degree of the unconscious struggle to resolve the remnants of my self-judgment. Either way, of late I have tended toward indulging my impatience and frustration. As a result, we've had a heartfelt talk or two about how my actions cause her to feel, so the groundwork for her choice of this stone had already been laid.

I pray, Lord, that you will cover over - and even transform the roots of - any volatility that remains in me so that I might reflect you more perfectly.  Plant and nurture in me the virtue of gentleness.

Apropos reading

How odd that this should be the first reading at the mass being offered for my friend's grandmother, when I was also praying for another friend who is struggling with the passing of a loved one at a young age:

On this mountain the LORD of hosts
will provide for all peoples
A feast of rich food and choice wines,
juicy, rich food and pure, choice wines.
On this mountain he will destroy
the veil that veils all peoples,
The web that is woven over all nations;
he will destroy death forever.
The Lord GOD will wipe away
the tears from all faces;
The reproach of his people he will remove
from the whole earth; for the LORD has spoken.

On that day it will be said:
“Behold our God, to whom we looked to save us!
This is the LORD for whom we looked;
let us rejoice and be glad that he has saved us!”
For the hand of the LORD will rest on this mountain. - Is 25, 6-10a

Examples of why

We are on a journey that can be described in various ways, and our belief system makes a profound impact on how we are going to approach it.  If we believe that this life is all there is, then we are on a journey from birth to death, and we need to maximize our experiences of life and love along the way so as to miss out on as little as possible and make the biggest difference that we can.

Christian faith brings some similarities, but profound differences. One similarity can be found in the parable of the talents: we are clearly to make the most of what is entrusted to our care. However, even the "maximizing" that's implied there is very different from that of the previous approach, which tends to be for the benefit of our own experience, glory and posterity.

Considering the differences in believers' vs. unbelievers' understanding of the nature of our journey illustrates even greater differences. Rather than traveling from birth to death, Christians believe the opposite: we're traveling from death to life. This world offers only the former, and we believe that Jesus Christ alone delivers the latter. This provides a completely different scale by which to measure every experience opportunity along our way: will this thing bring me and others closer to eternal life in Christ, or move us further away? We also express the transformation as being from darkness to light; from egocentrism to real, self-sacrificing love; from sinfulness to holiness, from slavery to freedom; from self to the very image of Christ. But however we view the journey, we are to have a clear vision that where we are headed is incomparably better than what we have left behind. This becomes a matter of trusting in God, and the scriptures give us several illustrations of what happens when we long for what is behind us:

When God spared Lot's family from the destruction of Sodom, his wife could not resist the temptation to look back on the home they had left. BTW: now there's a scripture passage that I have a hard time interpreting literally. Still, the image is clear: we must trust in God that the way he sets before us is better than the way we have left.

When the children of Israel grumbled against the Lord and Moses for bringing them out of Egypt because of their lack of food and drink, they were set upon by seraph serpents, from which the Lord delivered them by means of a bronze serpent lifted up on a pole. Jesus himself referred to this as a presaging of his crucifixion. Likewise, the people were chided at Massah and Meribah even as the Lord provided the water they truly needed. (etc.)

Jesus said that whoever sets their hand to the plow and looks back is unfit for the kingdom of heaven.  As a practical guideline: I suppose it's nigh impossible to plow a straight row while looking backwards.

All of these examples illustrate why it is counter-productive -- even useless -- to dwell on the things we've been called to lay down. If we keep score of such things in our relationships, we will impede our loving and growing together. If we cling to parts of ourselves that we are to shed, we will never be transformed beyond ourselves.

"Taboo" relationships

I gave a skeptical cringe when I saw the link for 14 "Taboo Relationships You'll Probably Engage in Eventually," but my curiosity got the best of me. It turned out that ten or eleven of them described relationships that either my wife or I have engaged in, and about three of them described our own.

That didn't make them any less cringe-worthy, mind you.