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.

 

 

 

On Writing

Every writer I knows has trouble writing.

Joseph Heller

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Gee, that is a problem.  I never have a problem writing.  Maybe I am not a writer.

To me writing is like breathing.  Like seeing.  Like watching the human parade of the morally and spiritually disshoveled with a blithering idiot section (reserved for those with a public presence), each marching out-of-step with one another – and in this I include the upper middle class haughty bourgeiose – the pretenders of affluence, the self-proclaimed “special people” and those of faux status and little humor – the “intellectuals,” the people near the top of the pyramid, the celebrites and the life-long elected – “ahummm” – “public servants” who seem to gain more belly fat with each successive electoral victory – balloning in time to the size of a small banana “republic” or a well-fed water buffalo.

I was born poor.  To this day I have not become a man who looks like he swallowed a small Volkswagon or Toledo, Ohio.

I can still see my feet clearly with no interruption at the waist line.  Poverty, dyslexia betrayal and untimely loss kept me humble – a near failsafe against a culture of being “special.”

As to writing – life has always seemed to me to be hand to hand combat and an hilarious Marx Brothers adventure.  A combination of terror and hysterical laughter.  This – more than an adequate mix for a verbal man such as myself.

Long ago someone said to me – “You write like you speak.”  Ah, that is the answer to the puzzle.

I am who I have always been.  The same eyes looking at variations of the same insanity with rare moments of crystal clear brilliance on our worse and on our best days.

Light and severe dark produce the same product:  I write from this – the combat, the terror, the instinct to fight back, the absurd idiocy and the humanity of it all – delivered outside to reside within until its moment arrives.

The crowd and its antics, like God, write of me – I just transcribe.  Somewhere in my head and heart the notes have been stored, the images kept fresh.

If I am a writer it is all because of what God gave me.  Blame Him.  I write from the gifts of pain and suffering, from cunning and courage – and from the endless laugther at the folly of it … from the surrounding of beauty, heartbreak, sacrifice, heroism, pathos, common injustice, freinds, people who loved me and the uncommon victory that emerges now and again.

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.

 

 

Man Without God & Banana Republics

After trips and computer problems, we are back to a more regaular schedule.  Writing in the morning.  Here we go.

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Man without God is no longer man.

Nicholas Berdyaev, in The End of Our Time

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I write about faith and culture – secular culture in particular, that is: culture hostile to God, culture that “glorifies” not God but man himself and herself.

Our nation was founded on liberty that relies on belief in God and the honor that accrues to those who realize that they have a sacred relationship with their Creator.  As Berdyaev says so simply and accurately: “Man without God is not man.”

The relationship between God, and belief, liberty and the human person is vital to our success, freedom and security.  Yet, alas we see the Democrat Party of the Left acting in opposition to our wellbeing because they do not appreciate and protect our legacy of God-belief-liberty-freedom-success-security.

What we see today in the lawlessness of Congressman Nadler’s attempt to discredit a good man and excellent lawyer in Attorney General William Barr as is expected.  “Expected” you say?  Yes, we have seen this Democrat disregard for law as the product of godlessness and its predictable by-products: chaos and destruction.

For those who question this characterization of the Democrats – I sight an article by Charles Krauthammer in The Washington Post from August 16, 2013 (when it used to be a relatively serious and somewhat reliable newspaper).  The article was entitled “The Lawless Presidency” aimed at Barack Obama and his lawless actions – actions that discredit the U.S. Constitution and show us man shrunken to miniture when he acts without God.

Doctor Krauthammer reports the following – Mr. Obama’s Justice Department unilaterally deviated from federal drug laws so as not to punish otherwise punishable crimes.  Likewise, the Obama administration waived portions of the dubious Obamacare law without any provison of the law allowing this.  He personally directed a “70-plus-percent subsidy for insurance premiums paid by congressman and their personal staffs – under a law that denies subsidies for anyone that well off.”  Likewise he lawlessly suspended a cornerstone of Obamacare “the employer mandate.”

Krauthhammer further reveals that Mr. Obama granted exemptions from the law to preferred businesses, unions, and “other well-lobbied, very special interests.”  Krauthammer also reports Mr. Obama unilaterally eased immigration law and exceeded his authority and gutted the legislative process in doing so.

The point to be made is this: Mr. Obama (a man of no particular achievement or work record) acted unilaterally – acted far outside his lawful authority – and no one protested and no one stopped him.  Congressman Nadler is proceeding in the same manner.

So we come to this: man unrestained and without God is far less than man and the problems he creates are utterly destructive.  A moderately faithful man would know this – alas this is the Democrat Party of the Left today.  No God, no man.

Today Democrats are a lawless and destructive cohort.  Our silence and acquiesence will be our demise.

As Doctor Krauthammer notes acts such as we saw with Mr. Obama (and like we see with the Democrats today) are “banana republic stuff.”

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.

… our first and last act … God’s name

Listening to the Introit of the Catholic Mass.  It brings peace when chanted by monks.  It is a good start to a new day.

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“I AM WHO AM … This is my name forever; this is my title for all generations.”

Exodus 3:14-15

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Some offer this observation – “I am who am” as God’s name is offered not to be said but to mimic or capture the natural rhythm of breathing in and breathing out.  Yes, that God is present in each breathe we take and in this act of existence we are living by breathing God’s name.  The Divine is in our breathing in and out – each action says God’s name.

In breathing we speak God’s name.  Yes, those who claim godlessness decry that reality in their breathing.  Likewise those who claim God is dead prove the opposite by their own act of breathing.

Imagine this subsequent proposition: our first and last act in this mortal existence is to say God’s name in the act of breathing.

Does this not proclaim God’s primacy!  Does this not tell us that God exists and that all our life is centered on that reality whether we choose to accept it or not.

In this mere act of breathing there is no division possible, no gravitas to “identity politics.”  One and the same in each and all.  Known or unknown – we announce God’s name morning to night to morning again – from birth to death.

In this context isn’t so much of what we witness simply silly, needless anxiety and discord … when we are so bonded to the reality of God in our simple act of breathing.

Shalom.

… subject to sin and death …

Happy Easter!!!

“… dying he has destroyed our death, and rising her has restored our life.”

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There is no human life on earth that is not subject to sin and death.  Sin fractures relationships with others and indeed fragments our very self.  Death is “that ubiquitous reaper.”  But Christ changes that default setting that bedevils man and woman, child and adult.

Christ on the Cross redeems each of us from sin and neuters the dread of death, the pain of this mortal exodus.  In Christ we are upright in soul and being – sin does not imprison and death does not threaten.

In Christ we have a whole new existence – human wholeness, spiritual expanse, contentment, strength, truth, humility, certainty amid the unknown, community, friendship everlasting.  In Christ, all troubles teach and insight and wisdom abounds, patience too.

In Christ, love prevails as love is practiced in all manner of life’s encounters.

Imagine a culture in which consciousness of Christ was for each of us – the substance of each daily transaction, each moment, each idle hour, each day month after month, year after year.  Imagine Western Civilization restored to its formative reality – Imagine America and Americans at their historic best – humble, compassionate, brave, sacrificial, honorable, hardworking, strong, independent, dignified, sober, gentle, just, forgiving, confident, grateful for each day and each breath, faithful and kind.

The worm, Friends, is turning.  We have gone too long divided, disgruntled, angry, joyless, self-serving and without Christ.

The truth of the matter is quite simple – we need not “fundamentally alter America.”  Those who think this are mistaken, ignorant of many things – and in need of faith.  For them we might pray.

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.