A higher call

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


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

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

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

Thy will be done

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


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


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

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

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

as expected

Battling Boris

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

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

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

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

Entertainment

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

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

Don't over-analyze things

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

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

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

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

Perfect love

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


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


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

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

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

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