You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Relationship’ category.
Dedicated to Friends – and to Butchie, Roger, Giel and Diane
# # #
If you want to be reminded of the love of God, just watch the sunrise.
Jeannette Walls, in Half Broke Horses
+ + +
I am rarely ever unhappy. In this is grace and with grace vision. I see … and I believe.
Never had much trouble believing. It just seemed right … obvious. Think of the sunrise. When your father deserts the family there is still sunrise, and Mama and her strength of soul that is belief.
My sunrises now are of slopping emerald green pastures, purple mountains and, cows and calves gracefully, slowly eating their way down the incline as the pink on the sky fortells of the inevitable Father Sun.
We get all tangled up in ourselves and in a small screen that is our life span when there is an endless unfolding movie and we see it in the sunrise.
Context. We lose it more often than we retain it. Yet, wait – think of lunch with an old friend and his old friends – they are the sunrise and Mama’s strength and belief.
Rest your eyes and heart and soul on sunrise, cows and calves, and pastures and mountains, the sky, Father Sun, friends, Mama, belief, and God. Happiness follows.
Shalom.
Dance me to the children who are asking to be born
Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outgrown
Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn
Dance me to the end of love
Leonard Cohen
+ + +
The poet/songwriter/singer Leonard Cohen gave us truth in verses that spoke of this world and what surpasses its seeming boundaries. He wrote and sang of Love in its presence and its absence, in its triumph and its defeat, in its joy and its pain.
We live, as we always have, in search of this tent of shelter. No less now than yesterday.
Think of the old man who moves slowly alone to his last moments. His being is of memory, longing and certain passage. To the end he wakes and walks alone.
Think too of the children “asking to be born” in a time when choice trumps caring and hearts have been misplaced.
If Cohen’s words do not touch one deeply than a hollow being lives next door, down the street and in the structures where hope is placed but seldom known.
Dance be to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic till I’m gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love
Shalom.
Postscript – I discovered Leonard Cohen when I was a young teen. Met his niece in my graduate education at John Hopkins. Not too many of my peers were familiar with him.
If you have not enjoyed his writing and his songs, I encourage you to become familiar with him especially at this time of public hostility and the harshness we encounter daily.
When darken clouds gather and no soul the meal sufficient fills – the sane among us seek the tent of shelter that is the homeward dove.
God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
Gen 1:26
+ + +
Why did God make us in His image? So we would have the ability to maintain a close personal relationship with Him.
This, Dear Friends, is fundamental to our understanding of ourself and our worth.
Knowing that we are made for relationship with God – we cannot be lonely, or feel insignifcant. But alas, if we forfeit our belief in God and God’s desire for relationship with us – loneliness sets in and multiplies … particularly when we set about to define ourself as being important and set out to establish that which we already can know – that is: that we are important and never without God – hence never alone, never forsaken, nor abandoned.
Think just about this one verse from Scripture. Then watch the daily news and see how many people act out of loneliness – how many seek intimacy in ways that insure their loneliness. Imagine the pain the follows when one relaizes he or she sought intimacy in the most unwise ways while having possessed this right from their creation and birth!!!
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
+ + +
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.
Life demands for its completion and fulfillment a balance between joy and sorrow. But because suffering is … disagreeable, people naturally prefer not to ponder how much fear and sorrow fall to the lot of man. So they speak … about progress and the greatest possible happiness, forgetting happiness … is poisoned if the measure of suffering has not been fulfilled.
Carl Jung, M.D., in Psychotherapy and a Philosophy of Life (Collected Works, Vol. 16)
+ + +
Where are the adults and wisdom figures today? Not in politics. Not in higher education. Not in media. Not in journalism. Not in public life. Not in the law. Surely not in the established bureaucracies of the government. And most assuredly not in entertainment. Not among the Leftists and the whining ideologues, nor among the “professional” advocacy class and the liberals on television or the products of “identity politics.”
Nope, we are short of mature, wise adults.
In large measure this is due to having few people with honestly examined lives. Few who are familiar with human psychology, philosophy, the history of Western Civilization or history itself, few familiar with the Classics of literature, and fewer still who are spiritually developed and hence engaged in faith and guided by a religious narrative.
Super-power notwithstanding, a nation does not survive that is not populated with those who are broadly educated and are humbled by a life in which both joy and sorrow have been experienced.
When I look at the assembled collection of Democrat presidential aspirants I think only of this – “what a motley crew!” Not a one to whom I’d feel comfortable giving a sharpened pencil. Likewise, I prefer not to give attention to anyone in journalism – such is the state of that enterprise today.
So where does this leave one? To the task of independent self-education – becoming familiar with a range of disciplines that instruct as to the collected understanding of the human person for good and ill. And from this base – to the individual life lived to experience and know both joy and sorrow … which renders us sober, grateful, insightful, steady, humble, wise, courageous, faithful and joy-filled.
Alas the miss-mash we see in the nonsense of a secular society stripped of wisdom and insight ought to call us back to common sense, more silence than chatter, and quiet application of life dedicated to proper education and conduct now simply honored in their abandonment.
Shalom.
Happy Easter!!!
“… dying he has destroyed our death, and rising her has restored our life.”
+ + +
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.
The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing that I lack …
Psalm 23:1
+ + +
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
+ + +
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.
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
+ + +
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.
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.
# # #
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
+ + +
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.
Spirlaw 