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

My toe still hurts, but it is better than last week. Hell is not like that.

I am watching as one loved one after another makes choices that are clearly against God's will and (redundantly) not in their own best interest. Perhaps hell has a degree of that. The parable of the rich man and Lazarus suggests as much.

I continue to experience moments of brightness that get me through the frustrations of life. Hell is certainly not like that.

I guess that last maybe leads me (finally!) to something else to reflect on about hell. There have been moments in my life that have had me very close to ultimate despair. I suspect that hell may be eternal ultimate despair. I certainly don't look forward to my darkest moments, so I know I want no part of such a dark eternity.

Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is remitted. - Ps 32, 1

I am indeed abundantly blessed.

Blessed the man to whom the LORD imputes no guilt, in whose spirit is no guile. - Ps 32, 2

This one I'm not so sure about. I'm sure I have previously expressed my admiration for those who are simpler than I perceive myself to be. I know that there is guile in me, thoughts and feelings that I feel I must both suppress and hide for the sake of those whom I love.  I suspect this may be common for people in lifelong relationships, and so I don't take myself too extensively to task for it. Yet I must be guileless before God, who knows my every thought; this is the One with whom I can and must always be my true, honest self.

To you I have acknowledged my sin; my guilt I did not hide.
I said, “I will confess my transgression to the LORD.” And you have forgiven the guilt of my sin. - Ps 32, 5

Yes, God is quick to forgive the contrite sinner. Still my transgressions remain sometimes too dear to me, though, and contrition slow.

So let each faithful one pray to you in the time of need.
The floods of water may reach high, but such a one they shall not reach.
You are a hiding place for me; you keep me safe from distress;
you surround me with cries of deliverance. - Ps 32, 6-7

You are indeed my hiding place, my refuge, O Lord. You have delivered me from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light. Help me to seek it in all things!

Reforming (phase 1), The Principle of Freedom (step 3), session 5

From your dwelling you water the hills;
by your works the earth has its fill.
You make the grass grow for the cattle
and plants to serve mankind’s need.
That he may bring forth bread from the earth
and wine to cheer the heart;
oil, to make faces shine,
and bread to strengthen the heart of man. - Ps 104, 3-15

What might this have to do with the Principle of Freedom? As it relates to our human vocation, it is absolutely essential that I not forget that it is God who provides for my needs. When I am in the midst of circumstances that seem overwhelming or hopeless, I can become intimidated in a way that causes me to turn away from the path to which God is calling me. I think of how long I resisted my initial entry into counseling, even as it became increasingly obvious that I was hurting the people I love most, because I could not see any way out of the hole I had dug for myself. I failed to consider the lilies - okay, I didn't quote that exact verse in this post, but it was part of the reading for that session - and to realize that God will never fail to provide for what we need.

I think this causes us so much anxiety! We agonize over every implication and ramification of each decision we might make, rather than simply making sure that we are not committing sin and trusting God to provide for the details. We forget that God is equally capable of redirecting our steps for us by placing obstacles within our path and of using the steps we take for greater glory than the ones we might have chosen in their stead. We also fail to remember that God is never surprised by any decision we make, as he has already seen us make it.

This scripture speaks directly to where I have been living. I become filled with despair when I begin to think that it is up to me to provide for everything (I think) I need and I can't see any way of doing that.

All of these look to you
to give them their food in due season.
You give it, they gather it up;
you open wide your hand, they are well filled.
You hide your face, they are dismayed;
you take away their breath, they die,
returning to the dust from which they came.
You send forth your spirit, and they are created,
and you renew the face of the earth.
May the glory of the LORD last forever!
May the LORD rejoice in his works!
He looks on the earth and it trembles;
he touches the mountains and they smoke.
I will sing to the LORD all my life,
sing psalms to my God while I live.
May my thoughts be pleasing to him.
I will rejoice in the LORD. - Ps 104, 27-34

What a wonderful song of praise. I always have freedom to fulfill my vocation of glorifying God with my life because God is always supplying my need, even when I don't see my life that way.

Longing

The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. - Ps 23, 1
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. - Ps 51, 10

These words have been in my heart this morning, by the Spirit's grace. They're good words for me to focus on, I think.  Also, this quote:

Do with me, Lord, as you will and know to be best. - St. Philip Neri

And this longer prayer:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. - Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude

With regard to all of these, I know myself well enough to recognize that I often want my own will in full awareness that it isn't God's plan for me.  These prayers are therefore the as-yet-unfulfilled cry of my heart.

An awakening

Keep watch; when the body is asleep nature takes control of us, and what is done is not done by our will but by force, by the impulse of nature. When deep listlessness takes possession of the soul - for example, faintheartedness or melancholy - the enemy overpowers it and makes it do what it does not will. The force of nature, the enemy of the soul, is in control. - St. Ephraem, deacon, from a commentary on the Diatessaron

Also: Isaiah 5, 1-7

Also: Keep God's word in this way. Let it enter into your very being, let it take possession of your desires and your whole way of life. Feed on goodness, and your soul will delight in its richness. Remember to eat your bread, or your heart will wither away. Fill your soul with richness and strength. - St. Bernard, abbot, from a sermon

It occurs to me that I allow many things to substitute for irreplaceable time in God's presence, including some good things like expounding on how what I read applies to my life or interceding for those who are struggling. Both of these examples are important things to do, but must be rooted in quiet time in God's presence lest they become deceptive means of spiritual starvation. It is even possible to read God's word without allowing it to enter into one's being, which takes time and precious silence.

Be still, my soul.

Resting

Restless is the heart until it rests in God. - St. Augustine of Hippo
So I swore in my anger, "They shall not enter into my rest." - Ps 95
. . . do solemnly swear or affirm . . . - Oath of Enlistment

Praying Psalm 95 this morning, upon which I have reflected several times in the past, I came to consider afresh the last verse.  The end of this Psalm always struck me as harsh compared to the rest of it.

This morning I thought about it in a different way.  Perhaps the original sense of this verse was as I have always understood it, and it is probably important to keep in mind the effect that letting our hearts go astray has on the heart of God.  I believe such straying grieves him greatly.  But this morning I'm considering, perhaps along with St. Paul, who wrote at length about entering into the Sabbath rest, that God's "anger" and "swearing" from this verse are not at all as we tend to understand them.  Just as I believe God's "jealousy" is very different from ours, being jealous on our behalf rather than his own, I believe his anger is the same way.  He is angry for our sake, because we lack the sense and insight to be angry for our own, at least in useful ways.  Oh, we get angry with ourselves often enough, but it is too frequently shrouded in a fear of change that causes that anger to perpetuate itself rather than motivate us to grow. Our inability to enter into his rest may not be because God prevents us from entering into it as a punishment for letting our hearts wander.  Rather, in his anger on our behalf God affirms for us the consequences of letting our hearts wander far from him: we cannot enter into his restful presence so long as we allow our hearts to go astray.

There are many ways we do that, and not all of them are inherently sinful.  In fact, I believe that many of the good and important things that are ours to do may end up leading our hearts astray when we falsely believe that any of them are more important than gifting ourselves with adequate time to enter quietly into God's presence.  It's easy for us to believe we don't have time to spend unproductively, but the greater truth is that the most productive thing we can do each day is spend time resting in God's presence, basking in his great glory and boundless love for us.

Perhaps it is about normal for me to get halfway into the Lenten season "by program" before being able to reach a quiet time in which I can rest a little.  But I'm convinced that this norm is not God's plan for me.  Rather, he'd have me not be so busy, so astray with things that I deem so urgent or which appeal to me more, so that I might receive the gift of his rest to empower my daily walk with him.

Hungry

This season of Lent has been too full.  There hasn't been nearly enough emptiness.

It's amazing how even a renewed dedication to regular prayer and reflection can become another thing filling my life, keeping me from entering into the depths of the desert and finding there the spring flowing from the Rock which alone can quench my thirst.

Too, I should be watchful for spiritual snobbishness, be on guard against grasping for an experience rather than a way of walking humbly with the Lord.  I ought not cast aspersions on what God has led me to do thus far.  Let me instead just keep redirecting my attention back to him, knowing that I am not leading myself along this journey, but merely trying to follow where he leads.

From a Christmas sermon of Pope St Leo the Great

Dearly beloved, today our Saviour is born; let us rejoice. Sadness should have no place on the birthday of life. The fear of death has been swallowed up; life brings us joy with the promise of eternal happiness.

So the second sentence above sums up what I was already thinking - how I was judging myself - on Christmas Eve.  I knew that Christ's presence in my life has overcome all the petty things in which I was wrapped up, yet couldn't seem to get beyond them.  Ultimately, the joy of worshiping together finally overcame my frustrations.


In the fullness of time, chosen in the unfathomable depths of God’s wisdom, the Son of God took for himself our common humanity in order to reconcile it with its creator. He came to overthrow the devil, the origin of death, in that very nature by which he (the devil) had overthrown mankind.

And so at the birth of our Lord the angels sing in joy: Glory to God in the highest, and they proclaim peace to men of good will as they see the heavenly Jerusalem being built from all the nations of the world. When the angels on high are so exultant at this marvellous work of God’s goodness, what joy should it not bring to the lowly hearts of men?

The angels' song seems so distant, beyond my reality somewhere.  Sometimes I wish for the opportunity to witness the undeniably miraculous, and in the process I know that I tend to denigrate the circumstantially miraculous which I have experienced.  I sometimes think that it is a matter of my faith not being simple enough - all those who seem to experience this type of encounter seem to be far less complicated than I imagine myself to be.  I envy them, and yet I cling to my own gifts.  "But you should appreciate your own gifts!" you might argue, but it seems to me that there is a difference between appreciating and clinging. The latter has a sense of not being willing to to let go even for the sake of gaining God more fully.  The truth is, I have a hard time praying the prayer of St. Ignatius: Take, Lord, receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will, all I have and call my own.  Intellectually, I know that what I will gain far outweighs what I might lose, yet I still seem to lack the faith to truly return these gifts to the care of the One who gave them in the first place.

Beloved, let us give thanks to God the Father, through his Son, in the Holy Spirit, because in his great love for us he took pity on us, and when we were dead in our sins he brought us to life with Christ, so that in him we might be a new creation. Let us throw off our old nature and all its ways and, as we have come to birth in Christ, let us renounce the works of the flesh.

Christian, remember your dignity, and now that you share in God’s own nature, do not return by sin to your former base condition. Bear in mind who is your head and of whose body you are a member. Do not forget that you have been rescued from the power of darkness and brought into the light of God’s kingdom.

Through the sacrament of baptism you have become a temple of the Holy Spirit. Do not drive away so great a guest by evil conduct and become again a slave to the devil, for your liberty was bought by the blood of Christ.

I often find that, after a grace-filled season such as Advent or Lent, I quickly fall back into a less focused approach to life in the immediate aftermath of the great feasts for which they prepare us. This reading helped me this morning to remember this tendency and to choose better, for one day, at least.

More on breathing (updated)

Following on from my earlier post: 

I love my wife deeply, but with apologies to The Hollies, she cannot be the air that I breathe. I love our daughters, and our grandchildren light up our lives; I love my dear friends with whom I walk through life, but they cannot be the air that I breathe. I could lose all of them; their presence is a blessed circumstance in my life that I cannot fully control. I wouldn't willingly give up any of them, but I mustn't turn them into idols.

Likewise, my job is important for providing for my family, my exercise program takes care of my body, my hobbies keep my mind and body engaged. Yet all of these gifts cannot replace the Giver of them all, who alone can be the air I breathe, and who gives me every other means by which I breathe in his presence.

And there isn't a person in my life for whose sake I would not give up my place in their lives, if it would help them to breathe him in.

And to return to the Hollies, and give them their due: the song doesn't say that she is "the air that I breathe." It says, rather, "All I need is the air that I breathe and to love you."  Since they're obviously singing to a woman, as long as I'm referring to the presence of Christ as the air I breathe, I suppose I wouldn't have a problem with singing this.

Season of longing

I suspect that most of us, myself certainly included, are actually pretty good at longing. It's longing for what we really need that escapes us.

Do I long for happiness, contentment, and the things that I think will deliver those elusive emotions?

Or do I long for the One who alone can fulfill me, and for the interior changes that draw me nearer and allow him to live more fully within me, and thereby find the happiness and contentment for which we tend to long?

Too much introspection . . .

. . .  isn't good for one's emotional health.

Too much dwelling on how I'm feeling, too much feeling entitled to it, keeps me from just being in the moment, from moving on, from making the good decisions that I and the people I love need.  Too much being convinced that I don't have what I need to do what I must keeps me from doing what I must, and causes me to turn to crutches I don't need.  Too much embracing my hurt and brokenness, wrapping myself protectively around it and around my entitlement to it, keeps me from forgiving and from not hurting anymore.

I don't know that there is any point to all of this beyond an indigestion-driven rambling in the middle of the night.  I don't know the degree to which this shoe even fits me anymore.  I just know that fixing my focus on the wrong things, no matter how much I may be right about them, is fruitless.  There isn't any use in being right about or entitled to something that just makes me turn toward  my dark resignation to who I have long since chosen not to be any longer, and away from the strength I need to be who I'm called to be.

There it is.  We cling to our entitlement to our thoughts and feelings as if it is worth something when it isn't, and when clinging to it keeps us from grasping something - some One - who is worth everything, who alone empowers us to be more than we think we are.

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.