Compare or Contrast

A positive self-image is very healthy, until you begin to compare and contrast yourself with others.  You cannot prop up your self-image with judgments about others.  If I am sitting in a room feeling positive about my maturity, spiritual development, and then hear someone say something that does not ring true for me, or see someone come into the room who looks/acts differently than me, it is not a time for judgment.  Rather it is a time to reach out to that person.  Don't let them leave the room without saying hello to them at some point, and even welcoming them.  What I see and hear in another person is but a tiny bit of them, and it is only a tiny bit at that moment in their life.  And if they spit in my face, what do I care?  Does my so called self-image depend upon others approving or liking me?  That ain't gonna work! 

Visible

 You can know the depth of a faith community by the level in which they participate, volunteer, take part in, the visible work of the faith community.  Faith is visible, and real, when it is shared in acts of love for one another, for others.  Private faith is the tomb of a community.  A parish fails when it has no active members.  Going to church worship as the level of investment, or putting money into a collection basket won't breathe life into a parish or a community of worship.  Take a lesson from AA.  Meetings flourish or die depending on the level of volunteers to do all the work that makes a meeting.  Meetings are autonomous.  There is no big organization or upper level management to keep things going.  AA wants to be visible though anonymous.  No one volunteers for notoriety.  They had enough of that when they were drunks.  Belief in a higher power does not sustain if one only sits at home reading their spiritual or program literature.  

Initial Spark

 I would like to think that my preaching brings someone to faith, but I doubt it.  Nor does argument convince someone to believe.  Pascal would agree.  Words appeal to the rational mind.  Faith goes deeper than the rational level.  There is a spark of fire that attracts one to a deeper level: the mystery  of God.  This mystery open us to a level we did not know existed when we functioned at only the rational level.  This spark of fire often comes from another person who lives on this level and with whom we suddenly have contact.  Think of reading a book and the author says something that suddenly jolts us, awakens us to the Aha! moment.  We suddenly realize that we had been like a sailboat using only one sail when we had two.  Am I living at this mystery level?  And if so, is it in service to others who are working with only one sail, or even a leaky boat?

Being Oneself

 I was walking around the monastery grounds near our building, just meandering, and saw, off in a corner, all by itself, a singular flower, beautiful in its multicolors, yellow, orange and red.  It could be and is so easily overlooked.  It gets only some early morning sun that comes up over a mountain horizon.  But it is enough, for the flower to become its beautiful self.  The flower does not say, "I will not bloom, unless someone notices me."  It does not say, " Why am I bothering to become my beautiful self in this hidden, out of the way area of bushes and tall grass?" The flower does not need approval or much support to become itself.  It knows it is beautiful and fulfills its purpose to grow where it does.  And today, I noticed it and gave praise to the flower and the God of this creation.  So become your beautiful self no matter who sees you or ignores you.  It is always in season to become who God meant us to be.  Age matters not.  

Insulation

 Is a retreat setting a way of insulation from the post-modern world?  If so, then the retreat fails you.  Insulation can easily support isolation.  Rather a retreat setting is to work on the unitive self, not the ego self.  The unitive self, heart-centered, supported by prayer, silence, reflection, can send one back into the world to be a prophetic voice, life-style, counter sign to the fear-filled frenzy of activity, noise, vacuous consumerism, and various levels of anxiety.  For three years the monastery insulated from Covid, until it didn’t.  But it cannot become an escape from a unitive way among the ordinary life of the post-modern world.  Unitive does not mean everyone notices me, but maybe that they ignore me as long as I don’t ignore anyone.  I don’t fix people.  I am a presence, by first becoming a presence to myself.

Invisible

 One of the beautiful and counter-cultural aspects of monastic life is their care for the elderly.  Not so in the post-modern world.  If you are not a consumer or a productive worker, you can easily be forgotten and ignored.  Or you become a “burden.”  In a monastery and Mother Houses of Religious Orders, the elderly are sacred.  They have acquired wisdom in lifestyle and manner.  They are precious to have around.  They know history.  They know the pratfalls of becoming a monk or nun or sister.  They may become a bit forgetful, but they never forget stories filled with whim, humor and acceptance.  Such a group culture is not filled with prophets.  It is a prophetic community.  

Sabbath

 The Sabbath was given to a free people.  Slaves don’t get a Sabbath.  They don’t get a free day to just be quiet, reflexive, read something that might touch one’s deepest self.  So do you have a Sabbath day?  If so, then you are free.  But going to worship service or reading your bible for an hour, before going off into a frenzy of activity out of perceived need, obligation, or desire to look good is not a Sabbath rest.  Sabbath rest in the modern world is seen as “boredom.”  “Don’t you have something to do?”  You are not very free if Sabbath is the only time you can clean the house.  Maybe we need more prophets who in their lifestyle tell us that we who think we are free, are but slaves.  

Silence

 Why do people flock to monasteries in remote places?  Silence.  They might like the awesome view, the well-prepared and healthy veggie food, but it is the silence that seems to grab them.  The Grand Tetons might be beautiful, but in a group of noisy tourists, cell cameras clicking, the scene loses something, a lot.  Monasteries are vacations from noise, internet, frenzy of sounds.  Even people who seem to get bored with “nothing to do,” are held in the peace of monastic silence.  It is not so much that there is no sound, as that the silence permeates the whole atmosphere.  It can lead to being comfortable in your own skin, even with previous trauma imbedded within you.  What I practice most all day long is silence.  Everything else is a bit here and there, like jogging, reading, singing psalms.  On a subway car, no one is talking, but that is not silence.  You know it when it happens.  It can be startling.  

Direction

 What makes a “spiritual director?”  I think it takes two things, neither of which require an elaborate and expensive diploma.  First, your life is unitive.  You don’t have a “spiritual life,” you have a life that is heart connected to everything you do.  Second, someone asks you for guidance and trusts you.  You don’t get heart connected simply by doing something, like meditation for an hour a day.  What of the twenty three other hours?  When someone says,”I am spiritual” it most often is like someone who says they are a swimmer.  You swim for an hour and it has little to do with the rest of your day.  Swimming does not infiltrate your every action.  There is no such thing as a spiritual life.  There is only life and for most of us it is pretty noisy and divided and ego centered.  With enough fear, insecurity and anxiety to exhaust us every waking day.  If you care what toothpaste you use, are you really free?  I prefer Colgate Total!

Education

 Education, schooling, including higher education was supposed to include the contemplative life.  Why?  Because education was to be all about learning.  Some things we can learn with the mind, but some things, some wisdom, is beyond the mind.  Contemplation is the learning of wisdom that the mind cannot grasp.  But when the medieval church became more concerned about dogma and being correct in mind knowledge, the contemplative began to be de emphasized.  Then came the scientific Age of Enlightenment in which all knowledge had to be proven to the mind, the intellect.  So whenever you say, “I have no time to meditate,” because you have so much else to learn, you are really shortchanging yourself.  Practice daily.  Get an “A”

Paradise

 The Paradise of the spiritual garden, the place where your best self feeds and grows cannot be reached by any journey of steps.  It is a journey made by yearnings.  You yearn to lose this self that has been cobbled together in response to a cultural value system devoid of truth.  You yearn for the truth of yourself.  You lessen your efforts to conform, to be popular, to have more material things.  But you cannot simply yearn.  You need to strip yourself of the old clothes of the ego.  Naked before God, as when you came into this world, you are led, in trust, hope and daily discipline, into the world of spirit, the world of Truth.  You discover yourself.  And you are clothed anew.  

Step Seven

 I humbly pray that God remove the the shortcomings of others.  OK, this might not be the exact wording of step seven, but it is more often, my sentiment.  If only people would shape up and act like I know they should, I would have no resentments.  I would have a good day, happy, joyous and free!  What is the problem with this solution, besides that it does not work?  I forget that people have limitations.  It is part of being human.  Some limitations come from our upbringing, from the same parents, teachers, and environment.  Stuff happens.  Trauma, events, lifestyles, habits, all develop from circumstances.  We are human, and therefore "with limits."  If I stop having expectations, or stop asking people to act a certain way, so I can be happy, then this might be a better step in the right direction.  My happiness is no one else's job, even if they had moments of "correct" behavior.  So maybe I will work on my own shortcomings asking God for help to remove these.  

Father’s Day

 Happy Father’s Day, always the final round of the US Open Golf Tournament.  Some of you, like me, miss our Dad because he has passed away.  But like Vince Scully said, “Don’t be sad that it is over, but be happy that it happened at all.”  We had good Dad’s, flaws and all.  Some of you are sad that you never did have a good Dad or he died so young in your life, that you did not even know him.  Yet you are here because of him.  Your Mom did not have a virgin birth.  Today, if you come across a child, adolescent, or anyone for that matter, but especially the young, be kind, pay attention, make them feel they are worth something.  You never know what is going on inside them on this Father’s Day.  

Glory

 What if suffering for the sake of others, for love of others, is your glory?  Glory as looking and feeling badly, rather than as front cover "People" magazine look.  Or movie star, sports icon, business success or career success look?  The culture wants to look "glorious."  "I feel glorious," one might say.  This is at best, a momentary look.  It passes.  It does not go deep into some permanent glory.  Suffering can be glorious as giving birth, dying on a cross, finishing a demanding and exhausting project for the sake of others even if they don't seem to notice.  This is the glory that goes deep into you. Jesus spoke of being glorified the night before he was to be whipped, spat upon, vilified and crucified.  My life may be unglamorous, but it can still be full of glory.  

Prayer List

Do you have a prayer list?  People for whom you pray on a daily basis? Now you might scoff at such a thing.  Think your prayers are powerless to help someone else?  I have a daily prayer list.  When I pray for this list of people it gets me out of myself and my personal concerns.  I think of others.  I reconnect with them each day as I pray.  Then from time to time, since I recall on a daily basis their situation, I might contact them to ask how they are doing.  Maybe they are lonely at that very moment.  God is at work in inspiring me to make the contact.  Phone, letter, email, Internet, it can all work.  What if people actually heal a little bit faster and better when they know others care about them?  Prayer has lots of power of which I need not know.  But I trust and have hope.  A better way than despair, self-centeredness, and isolation.   Life is a "we" and not a "me."

Let's Try This

 An infant learns to move about from one place to another by crawling.  It is safe.  No falling down.  Baby is close to the ground.  The ground seems solid.  Then one day, it has an instinct or urge for a change that is not so safe.  Stay safely on the ground, crawling?  Or stand up and become bipedal?  The latter decision is not so safe.  It is new and has hazards if one should fall and "go boom."  Baby stands.  Falls.  Stands again, and so on.  So goes the spiritual life.  It is growth from what is known, seemingly safe, to the unknown of a deeper prayer in which you tend to let go of safe and consoling images.  Why?  Because we have a natural instinct to go deeper, but safety, the known, can hold us back from becoming all that we are meant to be.  Crawling?  Isn't that what drunks do after a night on the town, party or simply oblivion in their favorite chair?  

Willingness

 What are you willing to do to stay sober, to not drink?  Nothing but say “No” to a drink?  If so, then you are entering into the world of a “dry drunk.”  You will begin to have lots of negative feelings, moodiness, blaming everything and everyone.  Then you will take a drink, as the old solution to feeling better.  Notice, you “take” a drink.  You are a taker and not a giver.  Well, you do give people a hard time, a bit of your foul moodiness, and opinions.  This is all to take solace in feeling better, for the moment.  But a “giver” in recovery is one who first gives themself to the program of recovery.  Surrender is an act of giving.  You give the mess of your life over to a group and a process, step by step to becoming a person you did not know you could become.  Willingness is the road to becoming a giver.  It will get better.  

The Reward

 When I cook for the monks, can I do it without a desire for a reward, such as a thank you, compliment, or even the meal being tasty?  I think that the contemplative life, if it is sync with the rest of me, tells me to act without a desire for a reward.  Just do it.  Cook because we eat, we get hungry, no one else made available to cook.  Why do I meditate?  For a reward, a good feeling, sense of being special?  No.  I meditate, at least I hope, simply because that is what I do.  My soul/heart hungers for more or less than words and feelings.  God is often absent as “reward” but is still present and feeding me with this unbeknownst presence.  So I pray to pray and cook to cook.  No expectations, except to have responded to the needs of the day.  

Arrogance

 As someone said, “Arrogance is ignorance plus conviction.”  You don’t know what you don’t know.  It is not that you know nothing about a field or work or situation.  It is that you do know something, you learn a few things, but then you think you know more that you really do.  And when the situation gets more complicated, instead of assessing that you are in need of more learning, practice, experience, you simply say, based on past beginner’s knowledge, that you know all you need to know.  You are ignorant but convinced that you know.  If you go to an emergency room beware of interns who have had but a few months of experience.  And bloggers who lack humility.  

The Throne

 The Paulist vocation is quite clear about who I am not.  I am not God.  As a priest, when I preside at mass I sit on what is called the "Presidential Chair."  A bit highfalutin maybe, but it means that I lead the assembly in prayer.  I preside.  OK.  But the chair is not a throne.  I am not God.  I must keep this clearly in my mind and my heart when I am preaching during the mass.  That is why I tend to share something of myself, my life, my own foibles, when I am preaching about the readings.  I don't pronounce from on high what the people are supposed to do.  Rather I tell them how I challenge myself in my own imperfections to live up to the gospel of the day.  Then they can look at their own lives, knowing that they are loved not judged.  Stay off the throne.  God occupies it.  

Confession

 If you are a Catholic and go to confession a lot but feel at peace for only a brief time after each confession, this could be from a defective sense of self.  You emotions are glued to shame and guilt.  Confession only puts a band aid on the wounded self.  I suggest you look at the Incarnation and the Cross.  God did not go through all this in Jesus because you earned it.  God becoming human and suffering a nasty death is not because you are wretched.  You are lovable, but just don't believe it.  You think you do bad things not because you are human, therefore imperfect, but because you are no good.  Shame and guilt confirms your self-opinion.  Confession becomes Catholic deal making.  Though you are no good, you did confess, and so God should take you into heaven, or at least not send you to the really bad place.  You missed the enjoyment of unconditional love.  I seek progress.  Perfection is beyond me.  

Gabby

 I hear tell that God gave everyone a “free will.”  OK, maybe it was free when we got it, but then with bad choices it got broken.  I have a broken will.  I am not free to say yes or no to certain choices.  Some choices, I may still be free but others, no.  A recovering addict is not free to say yes or no to their addiction.  If they “choose” yes to taking into their system their addictive stuff, they are what Gabby Hayes would say, “A goner.”  If you know who Gabby is, then you are really old and probably know what an automat is too.  Getting old is hindered by thinking and acting as if you are free in will, when in fact you are not.  

Gardener

 The Gardener does not grow a certain kind of flower.  The flower does the growing.  The Gardener can create the environment so that the flower can become what it is supposed to be.  The Gardener gives the seed a chance to do what is possible.  I think of God and High Power as the Gardener.  In the early chapters of Genesis God is the Gardener of Paradise.  Adam has the environment, the created world so Adam can become or remain his best self.  Adam and Eve have free will.  Once they chose “MORE” then their free will was broken and they made a decision to become something else.  In recovery, AA has an environment empowered by the HP.  If the drunk participates according to instructions then they gain sobriety.  They are meant to grow into sobriety, but need the nurturing environment of all those sober Gardeners.  My meditation is part of helping me to be me not someone else.  

No Concept

 Just because you do not accept someone else’s concept of God does not make God non-existent.  Nor does your having no emotional sense of God Presence make God non-existent.  You might say, “I don’t believe in your God.”  OK.  You might not need their emotional assurance of their concept.  Just move along without any judgment of their being “delusional.”  Judging someone’s else’s concept of God does not change anything.  If God or when God wants you to have whatever you need, then it will come at the right time, God’s time.  God’s best and deepest sense of Presence if often a sense of absence.  Just ask the mystics. 

Foibles

 If my ego runs my blog, I could be quite articulate, and squeaky clean about the correct life I have always lived.  You would look up to me and want to be/look as good as me.  An ego boost for both of us.  But in fact such a blog may not be as effective as when I admit to my own struggles and mishaps.  I will have fewer readers if I admit to such stuff.  Don't people prefer to follow the wisdom of the perfect?  But it is just not in me to deny my dark side, past, or all too present at times.  So my blog is for the imperfect, struggling person.  We can still have a good day, and it will be absent of fantasy.  Grace has nothing to do if we are perfect.  Delusion has its own problems.  

Alone

Being alone does not have to be the worst thing in your life, though it can be.  You feel all alone, empty, what do you do?  There is the option of suicide or hurting yourself in some way.  Your mind is seemingly cut off from self-preservation.  This alone could be lethal.  But it can also be a salvation.  How?  Well, you feel so badly, but a moment of clarity comes, grace if you will, and you pick up the phone and call someone.  Many a Recovering Addict did just that and went on to have a life much better than they thought possible in the moment of feeling so alone.  I don't want to say I have had this firsthand, because then you would knock me off your pedestal.  It is OK to be an ex-drinker, but an ex-guru too?   

Anuimal Turth

 We look at animals and say, “I am so much smarter and more advanced than they are.”  Really?  Do animals disappoint their Maker by trying to be something they are not?  Is a dog so dumb that it tries to be a Tiger?  No.  A dog knows that it is a dog and so acts like a dog. They never disappoint God who made them. But humans are always disappointing God by trying to be someone they are not.  They try to act like they are a god, or they try to be like someone else instead of being like themselves.  You get a Collie because you want a Collie and not a bulldog.  But we are always trying to become someone of something else even with all our intelligence.  Learn from your pets.  

Money Talks

 The phrase "Money Talks" means that those with the money control the operation.  That is why big business, for instance, responds to the stockholder and not to the worker who makes the product.  Unfortunately, it can be the same way in religious organizations.  The ones who give the big money can control the message.  How?  Oligarchies can run the message and the activity of religious organizations to a great extent.  How?  Charity will prevail, while social justice will simply be called communism or socialism.  There will be rich and poor but a shrinking middle class, if any middle class.  If controlled by the rich, religion will be told to stay out of "politics" which is anything that threatens the wealthy.  In recovery Programs, money does not talk.  AA, for instance, refuses large contributions from anyone.  It keeps close to its steps, traditions and concepts.  It does not do fundraising.  Their hell is an alcoholic death and it is all too real.  Urgency can simplify a lot of things.  

The Model

 Recovery groups are modeled on equality.  That is, members are in service to one another but on an equal footing.  Not so in the Catholic Church which is a hierarchy model where service is often vetted and approved from the top down.  In AA, equality works quite well because it is powered by a "group conscience" decision making based upon God or Higher Power being in charge.  In the group conscience members are asked what they want, what will be most helpful, what do they see as needing change.  This model is not afraid to confront bleeding deacons who think they know all or are especially gifted.  This group conscience model quashes the overblown ego, the insecure person who must lead to feel better about their self-worth.   Some will say, "Yeah, but the Catholic Church model has lasted 2000 years and counting."  Yes, but in AA mediocrity does not stay when faced with the challenges of the Big Book and other approved literature.  You grow or you tend to go.  Simply showing up, as if it were some obligation, will not bring sobriety much less transformation.  

Stones

 If I am going to build something that uses stones, I cannot simply bunch stones together.  The structure will not hold.  I have to cut, polish, chisel, to fit the stones together so that the structure holds.  A church or a sobriety group is made up of people who fit together.  The structure is the people, not the building.  At first, they are rough and unfit for one another.  But in time, with spiritual practice and instruction, the stones will get chiseled, polished, and cut so that they fit together.  You can say, "I am this or that," but such is simply membership, at best.  To become a group, work has to be done on each member.  Unless I am allowing my God to chisel me to size, I am a misfit in whatever organization I say I belong.  

Works

 If someone tells me they are "something" such as an actor, sober, engineer, parent, I will ask them what they do.  And I might watch what they do.  Works, not words define a person.  Even Jesus said to disbelievers, "Look at the works that I do."  If a parent, I ask about family and what you do in the family.  I don't believe people who simply say they are "sober" until I see some action, some works.  Just because you are not drinking at the moment does not make you sober any more than reading about acting or engineering makes you one.  Just because you know how to cook or bake does not make you a cook or a baker.