Considering Evil

The existence of evil is not so much an obstacle to faith in God as a proof of God’s existence, a challenge to turn towards that in which love triumphs over hatred, union over division, and eternal life over death.

Nicholas Berdyaev, Dream and Reality

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I am particularly alarmed at the verbiage in public discourse that conveys evil when faith is needed.  Mind you, the political rhetoric on the Left, in particular, has been most troubling … and it has ratcheted up over time and found allies in what must be a free and fair press and media.

What once was helpful dialogue has turned in time to ideology, division and too often to hatred.

In this is destruction and the foretelling of violence, if it is not halted – unless cooler heads prevail, and voices come to echo faith and wisdom, unity, good will, fellowship, compassion and community.

Let’s pause to consider evil – as our words seem to tell us now that we do not know the measure of evil, its destructive force – its capacity to destroy all in its way, tear down, maim and murder.

Think of this: “Judge, not, that ye be not judged.”  These the words of Christ.

Christ does not say we ought to be silent when evil appears – but rather that we first must judge ourselves before we judge others.

Sadly, I see not much proof of pause in the words of those so quick to accuse others of evil intent and evil acts.  So think again of Christ: “Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote in thy brother’s eye.”  (Matthew 7:5)

Today we are too quick to judge, to claim a moral ground that those who judge and condemn show no evidence of actually occupying.  Nae, what we see is ideological “got-ya” moments – the opportunity to make of morality itself a weapon of evil, a way to advance one’s quest for power, one’s idiocratic ideas and demonstratively discredited ideology.

Yes, evil is being “addressed” by evil.  There can be no greater harm done, no better way to perpetuate division and nudge us closer to more violence and bloodshed, than to hijack morality to advance one’s private desires for gain, superiority, power.  Such conduct is evil itself.

A response to evil must have pure objectives – to correct, to teach, to heal, to build relationship, advance fraternity, community, repair misunderstandings, restore justice, advance love, create a stronger bond with others, with what is right and good and lasting – to grow closer to God and others – while excising us from hatred and the craven desire for power and retribution for one’s real or imagined slights and injuries.

I close with this: those who see themselves as perpetual “victims” are consigning themselves to a life of unhappiness and anger when in their mere but sacred being they are, in reality, sons and daughters of a loving God.

Evil begets evil – until we seek the Good that is above and in us.

Shalom.

 

 

 

Mystic or Nothing at All

“The devout Christian of the future will either be a ‘mystic’ … or he will cease to be anything at all.”

Karl Rahner

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Have you ever asked yourself how Jesus might have experienced life, and faith, and His relationship with The Father?

Our life is more a question of fully experiencing the human and hence divine experience of being a human being than anything else.

Yes, our completion and fullness relies on the full experience of human experience for in that our gift is made for completion – for a joining of mortal and immortal reality.

We are made to know fully – from Aplha to Omega.  In this we enter the Mystery.  There is: Truth, identity and relationship with God and all others, all things.  Therein is contentment, peace, traquility and the absence of fear and doubt, and uncertainty, anger and hostility.  Therein is love – the all surpassing love that is of God, that is God.

But alas, we do not see and opt to divide one from another.  The lesser among us divide so as to control, claim authority, impose narrow views that they alone conjure up or acquire from some favortite figure whose wandering defied God.  Marx comes to mind.

In lesser “gods” is foolishness, conflict, ignorance and illness.

The land is littered with those who foolishly chose ideology over God and doing so they close the mind and heart, and alter all opportunity for wisdom, faith, tranquility, peace, truth, compassion, humility, understanding, the experience of human experience – and the transcendence that is available to all.

Yes, we are an odd lot – given fullness, we seek division and hostility.

It is far better to know how to know than be told what to know.  It is far better to know how to see than be told what to see.  This is the difference between the curse of ideologues and Christ, between the rote “believer,” and one who believes because he sees and knows from the experience God in the experience of human experience.

When we settle into division – the proclaimation of “me,” “me vs. them,”  “us vs. the others” we are the antithesis of fullness in being, we are less than we are made to be, blinded not sighted.  You see we are of the Whole, nothing less.

Shalom.

 

 

Seeing as the Mystic Sees

… it is difficult for churches, government, and leaders to move beyond ego, the desire for control, and public posturing.  Everything divides into oppositions … vested interests pulling against one another.  Truth is no longer possible at this level of conversation.

… you can lead people only as far as you yourself have gone …

Richard Rohr, in The Naked Now

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Richard Rohr writes of two monks of the 11th and 12th century – Hugh of St. Victor monastery in Paris, France, and Richard of the same monastery.  He tells us that these monks wrote that humans have been given three different ways of seeing.  One way arises from the eyes that produce thoughts.  The second way of seeing leads to reason, and to reflection and meditation.  The third way of seeing leads to true understanding and contemplation.

It is the third way of seeing that is the rarest and most evolved.  Whereas the first way of seeing is common, it produces little depth of experience, is more concrete and binds one to the immediate without nuance.  The second way of seeing allows one to relish his or her power to conceive of the material disposition of the world.  Ah, but the third way of seeing allows one to do more – it allows one to “taste” existence, to be in awe before the underlying mystery, coherence, and spaciousness that connects one with everything!

The third way of seeing is seeing as a mystic sees – seeing as God has designed us to see.  This seeing exceeds the senses, does not rest on knowledge and intellect alone – but rather sees in a manner that expands his or her consciousness – and in this is transformed, made whole, lives in and above at the same time, is mortal and immortal, contented, whole and wise in ways that neither the senses nor intellect can offer.

In commenting on this Rohr says “I cannot emphasize strongly enough that the separation and loss of these three necessary eyes is at the basis of much of the short-sight-edness and religious crises in the Western world.”  Hence the above quote that leads into today’s blog.

The view that Rohr shares, Dear Friends, highlights how and why “identity politics” is so destructive, so wrong-headed, so primitive, tribal, hostile, aggressive, hateful and unappetizing.  Those with greater depth of human experience cannot abide that which pits one against another in a death struggle.  We are, after all, not made to be enemies to one another but rather brothers and sisters to one another.

This historic moment requires us to see as the mystic sees.

Shalom.

Chomsky’s Observation

Another attack on a synagogue.  We are paying a horrible price for moving away from faith and religious worship.  It is not the weapon that kills but the cold heart of one who has lost faith.

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American society is now remarkably atomized … The Left has a lot to answer here.  There is a drift toward very fragmenting tendencies among left groups, toward this sort of identity politics.

Noam Chomsky

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When a man of stature who is a Leftist, as Noam Chomsky is, indicates that identity politics is a problem, we had best all think about what precisely identity politics has done.

It has, simply stated – divided people, made neighbors adversaries, made others the target of resentment and hate.  It has turned some to violence – that is people on the Left and the Right.  But even more than that it has diminished vital institutions.  For example, it has crippled the Legislative Branch of the federal government and some state governments – leaving us with inertia, hyper-partisanship and government by executive fiat (yes, “the pen and the phone” unilateral governance).  Such division destroys democracy.

Illustratively, no judicial confirmation process can be anything but a brutal effort at character assassination.  We saw this with the Judge Clarence Thomas hearing years ago and in the recent hearing to confirm the last appointee to the U.S. Supreme Court.  Likewise news has ceased to be journalism and become mere partisanship – losing all sense of fairness and truth in its public presence.

What identity politics does is divide and division is very dangerous as a result.  With division comes hostility, even the provocation of violence as we have seen in the streets, on college campuses and in targeted public confrontations.

In identity politics we are estranged from one another, others are seen as enemies and all things become political – all issues or opinions are a source for disagreement and opposition.  In identity politics lines are drawn and others become the enemy – humility, and humor, and collegiality fade – friendships are lost and little to nothing is accomplished.

Make no mistake a culture of extreme political partisanship and ideology has badly marred religious and educational institutions where in the former age-old beliefs are abandoned and in the latter indoctrination has replaced learning.

In the midst of this – we are a weaker nation.

Take heed – some say we cannot get to genocide without first getting to identity politics.

Form all together one choir, so that, with the symphony of your feelings and having taken the tone from God, you may sing with one voice …

St. Ignatius of Antioch, in Letter to the Ephesians

Shalom.

 

Destroying Blessings We Have

Solo piano on a Sunday afternoon.  Fitting for one of many decades – when Dear Ones are lost to mortal time yet linger in the clouds, and the sky, and the sun and shadows, and the open fields and spring breeze, in the green of it all and in the silence broken only by singular notes of the soloist at play.  

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Books are a storehouses of human ideas.  The three great religions which come from the Middle East centre their practice on a sacred book and indeed are frequently known as Religions of the Book: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Diarmaid MacCullough, in Christianity the First Three Thousand Years

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Our faith is a faith of ideas – ideas that led to Western Civilization, its structures, its culture, its law, the nation state, our respect for individual liberty and for freedom and democracy, trade and the free market, prosperity, greatness in education, in the arts and science, and in human existence itself as it flourished.

MacCullough reminds us the the early centuries of Christianity were spent wrestling with difficult questions, with the understandings of Graeco-Roman philosophy and Judaism.  Further, he reminds us that social and political history is derived from ideas that appear in Judaism and Christianity and in our Greek and Roman forbearers.

The truth of the matter is that social and political history is dominated by theology.  But alas this is something that we scantly recall today.  Now we have those in authority who have no earthly idea of what the Oxford Professor MacCullogh knows so well as one of the world’s leading figures on the history of Christianity.

Now we have among us childish people who wish to tear down what centuries have produced – tear down without an inkling of knowledge of the past as it generously protects us today in our institutions, attitudes, structures, default settings, common language and long-accepted ideas.

Today the ideologues on the Left and the upstart dolts in the appropriately named “genreation x” desire a scorched earth and the destruction of common and critical institutions and relationships such as between man and woman, mother and child, husband and wife, adult and child, as to biological identity and what have you.

Ignorant destruction is NOT a pretty thing.  And its sweeps can occur in far shorter a time than it took to create what will be destroyed. 

Let’s be very plain – those who pursue radical ideas – who advance radical and immediate fundamental change disclose to us that they are not smart enough to manage even the simplest tasks or intellectual activity.  If you doubt this, I recall two simple statements of our most recent past President who boasted that he would “fundamentally change America” and welcomed himself on the public stage by saying “We are the people we have been waiting for.”  Only a man with no accomplishments in his life can lay claim to such nonsense … as in “I’ve done nothing to date – but will undo what many people before me have done at great price … ”

Yes, turn your back on Christianity, and on old white men, and history and free markets and our Constitution, on the liberties it protects, and on this Representative Federalist System of autonomous states and individual freedom and expect barbarism and tribal conflict amid the unjustified destruction and chaos that befalls the anger and ignorance we see and hear now.

Some are odds with who we are and what good its conveys.  Beware.

Shalom.

The Nuance of Life and its Journey

In the long course of my life I have come to realize that the disorder I have encountered is virtually always the product of an unexamined journey, an unexamined life.

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The Lord, your God, has blessed you in all your undertakings; he has been concerned about your journey through this vast desert.

Deut. 2:7

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Journey is one of the great themes in Scripture.  Think of these journeys – the journey of Abraham, of the Jewish people to Egypt or Joseph and Mary to Egypt, Jesus to Jerusalem and St. Peter and St. Paul to Rome.

Our lives are a journey with a lengthy story that attaches to us as each day comes and the weeks, months and years accumulate.  Here is the question: Have you looked at your journey?  Come to understand its elements, what themes the journey has assumed?

Have you grown in self-understanding and done so without being trapped by the trendy ideology of the moment?

Have you sorted your past out in reference to the grand journey narratives of human history?  In short, have you examined your life?  Have you grown in maturity and come to understand the nuisance of life and its journey?  Have you discovered faith in the process and abandoned the contemporary and fleeting discourse that has no historic root – no universal truth and hence little application to life in contemporary secular culture except that in conforming it deceives?

A journey examined is intended to connect you with the length and width and depth of time and the mystery of human existence and its Divine nature.

Shalom.

Observation and Prediction – First, this: the American economy grew 3.2 percent in the first quarter of 2019 even with the shut down of the federal government.  With a smaller, less intrusive government we’d likely have healthy growth year in and year out. 

Second, this: Joe Biden is such a loose-cannon campaigner that his time on the public stage will discredit him and Old Bernie Sanders as both will be deemed, by today’s Democrats, as “old white men” whose time has long since passed.  Conclusion – the Democrat candidate will be younger and more “out there” as to public policy, and “life style.”  Expect division and strange ideas to be spinning it the air – the kind of ideas that will make Donald Trump look “mainstream.”

Lunacy on Parade

“Shall I tell you where the men (and women) are who believe most in themselves? … The men (and women) who really believe in themselves are all in a lunatic asylum.”

G. K. Chesterton, in Orthodoxy

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“Tis quite a thing to see the Democrat/Socialist Party of the Left looking like it has something in common with the thought process of the late Charles Manson.  But alas it seems so.

Where does one start? Well, Joe Biden is a good place.  He was in Boston recently talking to labor union members and claiming that he was one of them – one of the middle class, working men who build this country by their sweat and labor.  Only one problem – Old Joe has never worked a day in his life in a private job.  No, he has been on the government payroll as an elected politician for his entire adult life.  Never had a private pay check – not one … but he is a millionaire-plus.  Lunacy.

Then we have the ever-strange Mad Uncle Bernie who advocates that all imprisoned convicts have the right to vote.  Bernie (another guy with no history of work in the private economy but with accumulated substantial wealth) never says how he will explain this “convicts can vote” idea in the small towns and sparsely populated counties where the prisons are usually situated.  Uncle Bernie never explains what he’ll say when those small towns of 1500, 3000, etc. law-abiding citizens are governed by a town council and mayor who are convicted murders, robbers, sex offenders and the like.  Lunacy.

Then there is Democrat Mayor of New York City who announced yesterday he would present legislation to forbid (or banish) skyscrapers from “The Old Big Apple” because he opines that nothing does more damage to the environment and “global warming” than skyscrapers.  Yes, lunacy.

Then we have the young Congresswomen Cortez (sans an accomplished life in the private economy) who advances the Green New Deal which will (in the name of saving the planet) dismember the American economy by banning all sorts of things like airplanes because they and all other free-market objects and activities are (for her) a central cause of “global warming.”  Lunacy, again.

Then you have the female Democrat candidate for President who slept her way up the political ladder.  With no embarrassment whatsoever she seeks to occupy the Oval Office – becoming the first occupant of said office who has been a dedicated courtesan. How quaint!  Lunacy, again.

Then you have the press/media and activists going somewhat bonkers for the Doogie Howser candidate in the form of young Mayor Pete of South Bend who has a “husband” to accompany him to the White House.  Who among us thinks that his election will strike fear in the hearts of our adversaries?  Lunacy, once more.

Alas there is not time enough to extend the list to the “pretend” Indian Princess and the fellow Democrat presidential candidate who fancies himself Spartacus.  Lunacy.

We have the asylums in plain view, Friends.  Yes, we have an open-air asylum. The residents can be found within the Democrat/Socialist Party of the Left.

More over Venezuela!!!  Here we come.

Shalom.

Christ Jesus or the Posture of Judas?

Holy Saturday

” … You seek Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified.  He has been risen; he is not here.  Behold the place where he laid.”

Mark 16:6

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Jesus was plunged into sorrow, but triumphed over this world and all its vices and deceits.  This said, as a Judeo-Christian culture – how can so many who say they are Christians act as if what Jesus did does not matter today?

Is it not true that if we actually believed would we put so much trust in politics, government, in seeking power, and focus all our efforts on material goods, or destructive pleasures and addictive vices?

Western Culture and this nation will rise or fall in direct proportion to our belief in God and, as Christians, our relationship with Christ Jesus.

Today our faith and traditions and founding propositions are under attack … and for Christians it will be our relation to Christ which will decide the day.  One of our two major political parties and our once reliable press advances perspectives and policies that are hostile to what the West is and the place of God in our lives and public our affairs.

Speak not and act not and you will have assumed the posture of Judas.

Dear God, help us to see the glory of the empty tomb and to act upon that glory each and every day.

Shalom.

The Sweet Dark Comedy of Calamity

calamity – n. 1. a disaster, 2. dire distress

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language

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No indictments from the Special Counsel formerly in search of crimes that would identify President Donald Trump as being in league with Vladimir Putin in order to gain his election as President.

Well isn’t this some mess.  The singular inane two-plus years focus of the Democrat Party and of their hysterical partisans in television news, the print press, the “entertainment” industry, and late night unfunny funny-men has come to not.

Think about this: the collection of failed witch-hunters in the media, in the federal bureaucracy (particularly in the FBI, not-so-just “Justice Department,” “intelligence” services and in the Obama administration) has delivered us to a now-rapidly shrinking Democrat Party of the Left which itself is left with: (1) having wasted millions of dollars to prove nothing, (2) shirked their legislative responsibilities while besmirching the country’s reputation around the world, (3) divided the nation’s citizens like nothing has done since the Civil War, and (4) now hosts presidential candidates and supporters who are of the Socialist-Communist and kook variety.

YEP, THE COMMIE-HUNTERS SUCCESSFULLY FOUND THE DREADED LEFTIST CONSPIRATORS IN THEMSELVES!!!  Ah, the Sweet Dark Comedy of Calamity.  

“We have found the enemy and they are us!”

Talk about Jimmy Breslin’s The Gang Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight.  Here we have a Party with a candidate who honey-mooned in Moscow and a collection of other wanna-bes the flavor of Karl Marx, Lenin, Fidel Castro, Chairman Mao, and Maduro the Venezuelan Dictator.

Apparently finding the Commie-connection necessitated only a glance in the mirror.  Who would have thunk-it?

This mess has about insured the demise of the Democrat Party.

Think about this – the inspiration of this entire witch-hunt was Dame Hillary herself a lady with a host of un-indicted mischief so easily excused by members of the entrenched federal bureaucracy and assisted by what passes as the Washington “legal” community and the-persons-ever-in-waiting among the Beltway political “consulting” class.

Might the swamp be draining itself?

Lots of egg on lots of faces – but more than that permanent damage the likes of which make the Wreck of the Hesperus but a bump in the dark.

All of which leaves us with the words so often heard in the Laurel and Hardy films of yore – “Well, this is a fine mess you got us into, Ollie.”

Shalom.

Faith as Identity #1

Missed posting yesterday.  Stood with a friend in a long anticipated hearing on a complicated and contested legal matter.  Matter “concluded” at long last.

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The theological virtues are above the nature of man, whereas intellectual and moral virtues belong to the nature of man … Therefore the theological virtues should be distinguished … The intellectual and moral virtues perfect the human intellect and appetite in proportion to human nature, but the theological virtues do so supernaturally.

St. Thomas Aquinas, in Theologiae

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If this be so, how can you neglect faith?  If your perfection requires your spiritual development, who would be foolish enough to listen to the endless number of people like Bernie Sanders, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, A.O.C., et al when they speak about anything whatsoever.

Yes, in the present time, there are not many people in politics, news, the celebrity class, academia, the “professions” or what have you who warrant our time or attention.

Let’s face it, we are NOT discreet listeners.  Indeed, we should be.

I often hear others say (in response to some injustice) “how can X or Y let this (the injustice) happen?”  It is, in all honesty, a childish reaction to the world around them and injustice in particular.  It is a question asked by one who does not know what Aquinas and others have talked about for ages … the primacy of faith and perceptions derived from faith are central to all inquiries and understanding of the world we inhabit and those people and events in it.

Mathematicians know this, scientists too.  Those few among us who still muster belief itself and match belief with their intellect and life experience know this as well.  They, as a consequence, do not need to ask of injustices done to innocents and others.

Indeed, the proof of the fundamental role of faith in one’s existence is this: even atheists ask the fundamental question like: “Why this injustice?”

Their question confirms the place of, and need for, faith.  Their question is a faith question.  Their question reflects the insight of Aquinas and many others we ignore and in this make fools of ourselves and anyone of the many who daily listen to the nonsensical “public figures” who do not possess the modest intellect or common sense sufficient to wonder much at all about what they see and what they say.

Alas, following Aquinas and other giants of intellectual, moral and spiritual maturity allows us to be who we are designed to be.

Smarten up, people.  What is eternal is above all that is not.  We consume what is not eternal and this is the central fault you see.

I know except that things perishing and transitory should be spurned and things certain and eternal should be sought.  (Emphasis added.)

St. Augustine, in Soliquia

Just can’t make this any plainer to you, Friends.

Shalom.

Postscript – The contested hearing yesterday was frankly pathetic.  The judge and lawyers were childish in their narrow range of thought and lack of depth of examination or understanding as to the events before them.  It was much like watching people playing “judge” and “lawyer.”  It would have been silly if not so pathetic.  We are sadly ill-bred and in this lies decline and injury to all.  First faith – insight and wisdom follows.