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“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.
… 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.
Holy Thursday
There is an appointed time for everything, and a time for every affair under the heavens.
Ecclesiastes 3:1
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… a time to come and a time to go, a time for laughter and a time for tears, a time to sow and a time to reap, a time to win and a time to lose, a time together and a time to be alone, a time of cold and a time of warmth, a time of doubt and a time of conviction …
But in each time we know Jesus loved – in each day, each hour, each minute – in each event, amid rejection and injustice, in suffering and facing hostility – Jesus loved.
And so this Holy Thursday, the question we asked is this: Do I love as Jesus loved?
Father, grant us the grace to love, to know love deep in our soul – to see love and cherish it, to find in this love our path and the companionship of those who love as Jesus loved. Dear Father, give us leaders who love as Jesus loved … help us be a people who reflect each day the love that Jesus lived.
Shalom.
Just Desserts – The Food Channel now places higher in audience views during prime hours than does CNN. How sweet it is!
The Washington Post, The New Your Times, CNN, the major network television news channels, PBS, NPR, et al are better avoided if you wish to preserve your sanity. Why be dumber than a donut?
The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing that I lack …
Psalm 23:1
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Do you ever ask yourself how did Jesus endure what he did? In this question I suppose it is wise to realize that his strength came from his intimacy with the Father.
Yes, our strength, peace and contentment comes from our intimacy with God our Father. Yet, think about this: what happens when we drift away from God? When a culture divorces itself from God? When God is no longer welcomed in the public square?
In such circumstances whither strength? Courage? Confidence? Hope? Friendship? Community? Family? Love? Peace? Tranquility? Insight? Truth? Wisdom? Certainty?
Do you wish disintegration? Illness? Confusion? Division? Hostility? Destruction? A nation’s decline? Then deny God … and you will gather all these and much more that is injurious. Be certain of this – Western Civilization itself rests on Christianity, Judaism and the belief in God and our relationship with God. And be certain of this as well: there are within and without those who deny God and aim to destroy those who believe in God and nation’s which reflect that belief.
Perhaps the tragic fire at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris is the impetus we need to realize that we in the West are a people whose very existence rests on belief in God and the faith which embodies that belief. Make no mistake in this one thing we are in a very, very serious struggle.
Shalom.
Reclining at table with his disciples, Jesus was deeply troubled and testified, “Amen, amen, I say to you, one of you will betray me.”
John 13:21
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Betrayal. It is hard to imagine anything more disillusioning than violating a relationship.
Think about it, one has a trusted relationship and violates that trust. You can see it in a man who fathers a child but deserts his child and the woman with whom he fathered the child.
Imagine Judas who was mentored by Jesus. Think of what he did. He sat at the table with Jesus and his disciples and took his morsel given at the table and walked away … from Light to Darkness – that is betrayal. Judas choose alienation over sacred loyalty, over friendship, over duty and obligation, over faith, over honesty, over trust, evil over good, his own desires over God.
And then there is Peter. Pledging his loyalty to Jesus, he denied knowing Our Lord three times before the cock would crow. Yes, cowardice got the best of Peter. Yes, for Peter fear dominated faith. Yes, Peter, too, choose alienation. Yes, for Peter trust was abandoned, friendship was dishonored – God denied.
Look about you today. Are we a culture of trust? Or is betrayal more common?
Are we a culture of heroes or betrayers? One in which citizen is alienated from citizen? A culture of unity or division? Is division commonplace? Is it the way of a political party? Do women create division from men? Do father’s desert their children? Men and women divorce one another with ease?
Alienation. Betrayal. Distrust. Hero or coward? Loyal or not? Divisive or unifying? Neighbor or not? Friend or enemy? One alone or many together? God-full or Godless?
Shalom.
I return today to my daily writing after replacing a computer that simply wore out. My recent absence is the longest time I have been away since 2010 when I began Spirlaw. Even while “on vacation” I have met the challenge of a daily blog of living faith in secular culture and so I continue. It is good to be back.
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The most amazing fact about Jesus, unlike almost any other religious founder, is that he found God in disorder and imperfection – and told us that we must do the same or we would never be content on this earth.
Richard Rohr in The Naked Now
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Our faith as Christians is not about our private perfection but rather about out divine union with God shown so clearly in Christ. Yet, we habitually miss this. Yes, even our clerics often miss this. Yes, organizational structure often captures us and defines as by our status and our role in it.
Yes, the material world and its demands on us divide us from our divine union. Yes, our worries in trying to conform to the demands and images of the secular world likewise take us from our divine union. Yes, what is immutable is made mutable in this world and its godless habits and discourse.
Alas, simply knowing that we are born of this divine union is and always will be the one exclusive and all-superior thought to maintain in your head (as it is carried in your heart through this life and the next).
Friends, it is Lent and we sit on the eve of Easter Week. This one thing above any other is to be remembered every day – we live in divine union with our God. From this union we share all things with God and in this union we see with the eyes of faith, as God sees and we know as God knows not as mere intellects but as those with eternal life and everlasting life.
Shalom.
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.
, … Communism is not new. It is, in fact, man’s second oldest faith. Its promise was whispered in the first days of creation under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: “Ye shall be gods” … its force derives from a single vision … The Communist vision is the vision of man without God … (It) restores man to his sovereignty by the simple method of denying God.
Whittaker Chambers, in Witness
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Let’s be clear Social Democrats are simply the prelude to communism.
The trajectory from socialism to communism is likewise simple – grand promises, division and the building of resentment of others, massive government spending on huge, unworkable “programs” that build insurmountable debt and destroy both freedom and productive economic activity of industry, finance and individual and aggregate wealth followed by a draconian tax system and little or no economic growth, the temptation for government to increase the quantity of money and thereby unleashing preposterous inflation and poverty and then a Venezuelan utopia of want, chaos, starvation and totalitarianism.
Make no mistake, when God is denied evil prevails. Without God, freedom does not exist, the soul grows sick and we despair.
If you do not know the story of Whittaker Chambers, you might want to. It is a compelling and painful story, a cold shower – an early wake-up call, a warning issued anew.
Just once I would like to see a TV interviewer ask of the young Congressional Leftists upstarts about Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss, about post-War Communist espionage, about Lenin and his life, about Cuba and its repression and anemic economy, about Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” and its human costs, about the tenets of National Socialism, about Cambodia and Pol Pot.
I’d like to have just one “journalist” ask Bernie Sanders about his work history and failed marriages, about what he means by saying he is a “cultural Jew” or ask Lizzie Warren if she sees how her Indian “gig” is the equivalent of Hollywood celebrities paying others to get their seemingly unaccomplished children into college.
The Democrat Leftist in and out of government get a free ride because we no longer have informed public discussion conducted by learned mature men and women. No, we have in their place members of the Nada Generation – the product of an education system destroyed by government and flush with ideologues not scholars – individually insignificant puppeteers, childish individuals with destruction on their mind and air-bubbles in their “think tank.”
When God is lost all sorts of pathology emerges and wisdom and commonsense fade from view while self-destruction and annihilation present themselves.
God is the far better choice. God is the only choice.
Shalom.
Spirlaw 