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It is living in the naked moment, the “sacrament of the present moment,” that will teach us how to actually experience our experiences, whether good, bad, or ugly, and how to let them transform us. Words by themselves will invariably divide the moment; pure present lets it be what it is, as it is.
Richard Rohr, in The Naked Now
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There are many things in our present culture that day by day, hour by hour keep us from the full experience of the human experience. Yes, words can distract and the voices of ideologues always do damage – as do the torrent of visual images present in our lives and relentless intrusion of technology and all things digital taken to extremes.
Life is far simpler. Not all meals need be excessive indulgences that morph us into shapes and sizes heretofore not known in human history.
Fix you eye, and heart and mind on the experience of human experience as known throughout the ages by mystics and peasants alike. Stay in the moment, beware of all the yesterdays in your life and in time that hath come before us … yes, those moments long before your mortal birth and all that awaits you beyond this mortal life … be at peace – angelic peace prevails and sits above all that is digression and divisive, alienating and destructive of self and others.
Shalom.
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3:03 a.m. – how nice it is to awake in the full night of silence to think about faith
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Faith is a backward-looking virtue. It concerns who we are … “the mystical chords of memory.”
Deirdre N. McCloskey, in The Bourgeois Virtues
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In faith you are connected with those who have come before you – with a stream of being that reaches to the very distant past, the sacrifice of others, their fidelity. Their story is our story.
In faith we belong to others – to Saint Peter and Saint John – to Abraham and Martha and Mary and Lazarus … to Aquinas, St. Augustine, to Simon of Cyrene, the men on the road to Emmaus – to centuries of faithful Jews and Christians.
In faith we have identity … a place in a long story that has no end.
In a world too often focused on the immediate, the immaterial, on desire, immersed in anxiety, loneliness, doubt and worry – we have in faith: certainty, confidence, cause, connection, and a call to life.
In faith we have as Aristotle says “another self,” – in faith is solidarity and union with one another now, in the past and in what is to come. In faith we know love – a love that runs to what has come before, what is now, and what will be in all the tomorrows yet to come.
In faith, particular differences do not matter for the faith others possess is the faith we possess. Ethnicity, race, age, social status, wealth and such do not matter to those who share a faith.
The broad identity of faith is the union of belief. We are, in faith, what we believe. Therein is our solace, our identity, our purpose, our meaning, our stability and our happiness.
Shalom.
The more the powerful and independent consciousness becomes, and with it conscious will, the more is the unconscious forced into the background. When this happens, it becomes easily possible for the conscious structure to be detached from the unconscious images.
Richard Wilhelm, in The Secret of the Golden Flower
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To be whole and have psychic health, full development and contentment, our conscious life must be attached to our unconscious life. Without an unconscious life, life and our experience of it is distorted, limited and chaotic.
Indeed, it seems that this is precisely where we are in our country today.
Look at the celebrity and political class and those in control of higher education (the “teaching” intellectuals) and you see not mature and insightful individuals but narrow people full of self-assertion, anger and extreme and destructive notions.
Yes, being stuck in conscious alone is a superficial state of being, a fragmented and unhealthy state of being.
Carl Jung in a 1931 essay noted that the disconnection of consciousness from the unconscious makes for the modern man who Jung identifies as “unhistorical” – that is void of any of the broader lessons of human history.
Jung’s observation might explain the measure of ideas offered and advanced by the American Left today as well as the limited use that can be made of public discourse among those engaged in news reporting and commentary.
I find nothing so much as the separation of conscious and unconsciousness to explain what I see among public personalities, see in the conduct and discourse of the elites. Sadly, this reminds me of the tragic decline in the German culture in the inter-War years.
Disordered development creates great risk for cultures – and a failed education system and rejection of faith makes for increasing the risk of serious error and destruction. And make no mistake religious narratives all over the world instruct us in symbols and metaphors that open us to our unconscious. Ban or undermine religion and we increase our collective and individual danger.
Our individual full psychological and spiritual development is critical, indispensable to our flourishing and survival … and a sign of how far we are from health is evidenced by our reaction to the horrible shooting of people in New Zealand last night. Immediately our public commentators see it as a product of political opinion when it is rather an indication of psychological sickness – disorder all too common to its counterparts around the world.
Shalom.
Understanding someone’s suffering is the best gift you can give another person. Understanding is love’s other name. If you can’t understand you can’t love.
Thich Nhat Hanh, in How to Love
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Hanh is a masterful Buddhist teacher and a monk. His wonderful three book set (How to Love, How to Sit, How to Eat) is a lovely set of wisdom books given me by my Son in a hand-made artist box (which he made) into which these treasures sit so tightly. Yes, they sit on a book shelf within arm’s reach of my bed. It is always good to have Hanh, these books and my Son close to me. Books, art, love and living well and wisely matter greatly to my Son and to me.
Understanding. When we understand another, we take in their story, their existence, their heart, their soul, their doubts and fears, their triumphs and defeats, their hopes and aspirations, their sanctity, their dignity, their challenges, their joys and their sadness, their laughter and their tears. Ah, but our ability to understand depends on our having come to understand ourselves and life as it presents itself to each and all of us.
This for the Christian is the essence of Christ’s admonition to “take up the cross” and follow him. Life is, for all, a challenging journey … in life we find our “Crosses” and our “Crosses” find us … yet in this journey (when it is fully accepted – pains and joys the same) we come to understanding and make of us one capable of love.
Shalom.
1:05 a.m. – an early morning post … writing is like that … especially when you wonder about God and your relationship with Him … Ash Wednesday, March 6, 2019.
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Holiness consist in simply doing God’s will, and being just what God wants you to be.
St. Therese de Lisieux
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The world today is a very troubling place. I often feel overwhelmed by the division and hatred on display here. For me, it is hard to comprehend why others choose to be so selfish, so lacking in patience and humility – so prone to anger and assertion, antagonism, hostility and discontent.
Yes, I ask myself: what is it to be holy in the world that surrounds me? In the chaos, I ask – what can I do to live a holy life day in and day out? How can I sustain a witness for Christ? Find daily contentment? Be in regular relationship with God?
How can I be holy amid the chaos and evil I see, I hear each day?
I believe St. Therese has supplied the answer. We maintain holiness in the world we find today my doing God’s will … by being who God made us to be.
The irony follows. It is NOT our job to change the slant of the axis of the world in order to be holy. No, it is something far simpler that is requires of us, something more fundamental – more intimate, more personal and it is this: do God’s will and be who God made you to be. It is this which provides the access to holiness in a chaotic and godless hour we now occupy.
Do His will and be who he made you to be. This is the path to holiness today and always.
Shalom.
In our time we should emphasize what unites rather than what divides.
Pope John XXIII
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These are the words of Pope John XXIII on his death-bed. I cite them today because they fit so well the circumstances we face now.
There is great division in this land. It seems as if people desire that we be divided, fragmented, at odds with one another … divided and separated from God and faith, self and one another. Today hostility is heightened and friendship diminished.
This brings me to my long-term concern with how one lives one’s faith in a secular culture – now that one is apt to be estranged from spiritual existence in a culture that manifests so much discontent, anger and self-destruction.
My own course has been an attempt to understand both God and culture. To look at our history as a nation and Western Civilization, to see the challenges we face, review our failures and our successes, look closely at our psychological health and development and our nature as spiritual beings.
It follows that my reading encompasses history, philosophy, psychology, theology, mythology, literature and the like. But my inquiry has also experienced and thought about monastics and their ability to live faith and grow spiritually and as healthy humans notwithstanding the shape of the world over many centuries.
What I have come to understand is this: (1) if you wish to live your faith and do so deeply, you need to know how a culture can deter you from faith and your spiritual development, and (2) in seeking to live your faith in a secularized culture, you would be wise to learn from the monastic experience for it has over many years allowed men and women to grow spiritually and in contentment through their separation from the culture at-large, their silence, solitude, study and simple life style.
I might add that if you wish to assist others in finding faith in secular culture it becomes necessary to identify those things in culture which make a healthy spiritual existence quite difficult and those things which incline to foreclose one’s spiritual development and ultimate peace and contentment that daily living of one’s faith allows.
In short, what I am saying is this – to live faith in secular culture – you do well to take an informed assessment of the culture, become familiar with the nature of monastic existence and make use of its framework so you might exist within a secular culture while living fully in your faith. Yes, in this you will be living at an arm’s length or more from the present culture as it is endlessly extended to you in a mass communication and the highly visualized and extensively noisy storm of images and words.
In practical terms it is wise to adopt a monastic disposition in an intrusive secularized culture.
Shalom.
Postscript – In the 1950’s we held the Communists in check when they invaded Korea, would we do less in facing them in our own country?
Tradition consists not only of handling down the dogmatic formulas and liturgical customs from one generation to the next. It means receiving this traditional teaching into ourselves in such a way that it becomes part of us. It must pass through our minds and hearts, become our own, and emerge in our lives as a true revelation of Christ here and now. It is only then that our baptism and the other sacraments achieve their purpose of extending Christ’s presence throughout time and space. Christians are meant to be the continuing revelation of God’s Son through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit who dwells within us. (Emphasis added.)
Thomas Keating, in The Heart of the World
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Our faith is meant to be experienced. To be ingested. Consumed. And employed as the central understanding that governs us, in which all that is encountered is (as a consequence) received and understood.
Yes, we are to live to extend Christ in the present. Is there any doubt that this culture, this nation top to bottom needs Christ today. That our leadership needs Christ, our public discourse needs Christ today? No. None. Nor is there any doubt that each of us is intended to be as Christ would have us be.
Our very being is centered on the reality of God, of Christ. Recall our God says, “I am who am.” God as being in us and in all others and things.
Live your Christian faith – openly, vocally, daily, and fortify all those among you who do.
Shalom.
Shalom.
Listening to the musical legacy of Abbess St. Hildegard von Bigen, 12th Century mystic, writer, diplomat and counselor to Bishops, Kings and Popes. Beautiful.
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Spiritual development is the birthright of every man and woman … the world as a whole tends to neglect and forget the knowledge of how to pursue and live a spiritual life. (Emphasis added.)
Thomas Keating, in The Heart of the World
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Can there be wisdom and leadership without a spiritual component to one’s life? No.
We are more than intellect. We are spiritual beings. Denying this, we are left less intelligent, less human and less healthy – flat and without insight necessary to make wise decisions on complex matters – or any matter.
Contemplation is the way to spiritual development for a contemplative life and life itself is a spiritual experience.
Contemplation leads to the full experience of the human experience. In mass culture or any culture, contemplation requires that one lift himself or herself above the fray of mundane existence which so often captures us moment to moment, hour to hour, day after day – year after year.
Yes, attending to the demands of the world keeps the Christian from the mystery of Christ and the timeless message of the Gospel, and from knowing our self.
There is no full development of the human person without contemplation, no self-examination either – and hence no fullness of being, of human being.
In contemplation, the self is examined and understanding follows, and one is no longer trapped by the errors, follies, divisions, temptations and corruptions of the mundane world and the voices of its most vocal members.
Indeed, does contemplation not require the voiceless silence of solitude! Yes, in contemplation there is a silent respite from all that interrupts our healthy, full development and greatest state of being.
In contemplation, God is real and immanent and those who are disoriented are no longer free to be housed within us. Free – free at last. Thank God Almighty “free at last.”
Shalom.
