Deep Root

 Contemplative Prayer is to help us to get to the deep root within that fosters and strengthens a religious commitment.  Someone might say, “I am in Recovery.”  Well, that is a commitment, but many drop out.  Why?  No commitment deep enough, spiritual, to hold them to their commitment.  No meditation.  I am a Catholic.  Any reform that simply changes the rules and practices, or rearranges institutional structures will not hold me.  Many people dropped out when all that took place.  A contemplative life is what will hold me to being a Catholic.  Why?  Because it is not about feeling good, which would be all about me in a subtle way.  Some people like a mass to be a certain way or language because it makes them feel good.  It is not about feeling good in recovery or in church.  It is about deep inner change.  This will hold our commitment.  

Thinking Prayer

 Some people have the sense that prayer is “thinking about God.”  Prayer ultimately begins to change us when we pray as “resting in the presence of God.”  Vocal prayer with all its images and ideas can end up in Illusion and self-absorption.  So what is vocal prayer for?  It is to lead us into resting in the Presence, beyond our images, words and thoughts.  So at some point in your prayer time you stop talking to and thinking about, and just be.  God can do the heavy lifting from there.  Changing you is heavy lifting!

The Searching Way

 The contemplative search is not just a practice or something we do on some timed basis.  It is a way of life.  Saying, “contemplative prayer is a good thing to do, when I have time,” is not a way of life.  A way of life blends in with the gift of each day.  You pray in this manner of silence, solitude and stillness.  You might walk about some in nature, silent and alone, but you are still within, not filled with commotion, plans, or regrets.  And not fantasy.  It is what you do, like eating, bathing and breathing.  The search takes you ever deeper into the previously unknown.  

Awareness

 Contemplation is often thought to be about awareness.  It is not awareness that we can put into words, but we can put it into action outside of the meditation time.  If someone wants to know about this word “contemplation” I tell them that I cannot explain it but I can show them how to meditate.  Awareness is unique to each individual because the awareness comes from some Power, Energy, Source, that becomes apparent in my solitude, silence and stillness.  This Power, God if you will, can peek through nature, created things, but that will not change me for the better.  The awareness comes in the contemplative moment, out of my control, and that is the Source of my becoming my best self.  

Solitude

 Our interior solitude that can develop with meditation practice is a way to forget this false self that seems to guide us along into the mess of our life.  Interior solitude touches and activates a deeper energy that can course through us so we can act in a more loving way.  This deep energy, this spark, is the only thing of value to give someone in love.  Too many times when we say, “I love you,” we mean that you give me something that makes me feel better.  And so when I stop feeling better I will move on to someone else that will give me good feelings.  This is consumer love.  It is an illusion.  

The No Thing

 What is the value of getting to the center of our being?  Well, it has been said that the center is no thing, not an object like flesh or an apple for that matter.  No thing is nothing, yet it exists as our center.  The value of it being no thing is that it cannot be held by illusion or the damages we do ourself in our fears and selfish resentments.  So it has the purity of our very conception into life.  It is that space, power, that can hold the infinite, the spark of our very real self.  Meditation helps this spark to flow through us.  We recover our very being.  

Ourself

 In meditation we are always ourself.  We don’t become someone else simply because we are sitting in silence and stillness.  But we do reveal to ourself deeper levels through this sitting in silent meditation.  We are gradually reaching down, or being taken down into our essence that remains unaware to our thoughts and actions.  As we touch deeper levels of our true self, essence, we will begin, outside of these silent times, to live as a better self.  Thus we begin to share our meditation experience with others in our more active life.  Everyone benefits by our taking time away from everyone.  

The Mirror

 Parents are the first mirror for their infant child. The child begins to know itself from how the parents act, speak, are present to the child.  Self-value can begin to develop.  Likewise, a newcomer to recovery or to a church will perceive themself from signals given by those already in the room or worship space.  If ignored, the newcomer sees themself as low value, an outsider and intrusion and so on.  Welcoming is important.  This is why Recovery meetings are focused on the newcomer.  By showing care and concern and friendship, the “old-timers” allow the newcomer to see value in themself.  The newcomer arrives with very low self-esteem.  They need new mirrors.  I always try to welcome the visitor or newcomer in church and other groups to which I belong.  

An Identity

 Next Friday, my church in Boulder, Sacred heart Of Jesus, will have an Octoberfest.  It is a way to build community.  How? Everyone is invited to come, no charge to show up.  The food will be prepared by some of the community.  It will be shared by all.  You simply buy a ticket to eat the common food.  You sit at big tables rather than small tables where you might be just with a couple of people you know.  Everyone, eating the same food, has something to talk about, the food, prepared by others.  The money from the tickets go to a common cause, including the Octoberfest costs.  If you go to a concert, on the hill, you bring your own food and eat with people you already know.  The music does not get you to know anyone else, new.  Potluck gatherings after church are meant to build community by sharing foods.  The Eucharist does the same thing.  Who knows what you listened to in a meeting or a sermon or the Bible reading.  People space out on my sermons.  But eating is a common experience.  Jesus was pretty smart when he told people to remember him when they ate at the Last Supper.  

Doable

Some of us get upset if we cannot do our specific time frame for a meditation.  We discipline ourself to do say, thirty minutes of meditation.  But then comes the time when for whatever reason, we don’t have our precious thirty minutes.  We get all upset at the “chaos” of the day.  I resolved this by simply praying “doable” minutes.  I do what I can do rather than complain about what I cannot do.  God can adjust.  I am learning to let go of my plans, my program for happiness that day.  I become less selfish and self-centered.  So just do whatever doable minutes you have.  Let go and let God, as the saying goes.  

A Good Meditation

 We too often think of a good meditation as one that has some experience, some good feeling of peace and contentment to it.  But that is pretty much all about me.  Meditation is relationship with Ultimate Reality, God, Power and we are not in control of that.  A good meditation is meant to bring us to humility rather than the desired want for power, honor, and privilege that is associated with our secular culture.  So I just show up with no expectations.  “Good thoughts” are of no particular interest to me.  Feeling good can come or go.  And methods are not magic.  I don’t pay attention to my mind of passing thoughts, or my feelings that come and go.  All this is transient.  The Power will give me what I need as I need it.  How will I know?  I will live a less selfish day.  I will have more compassion.  I will be of service to others without resentment.  

Boulder

 I am in Boulder, Colorado, my home for many a year.  It is Saturday and I will teach as I do each time I am here.  Sunday, I will preside and preach at the 8:00 AM Mass here at Sacred Heart of Jesus Church.  I will see many familiar faces, but hope that someone finds me that I have not seen in a long time, for whom I have been helpful for reasons that even I do not know.  We frequently forget to tell people the good they were in our life at the time, but seem to be able to do it many years later when we run into one another.  The effect goes deeper and thus more lasting with time.  There is a funeral on Monday for Bill Eck, a Bolder Boulder competitor for many a year, among other things.  Like me he wore his running shoes to church.  Funerals are where we see people we have not seen in a long time.  A timely moment to appreciate the living while we are still alive.  

Houston

 When I was first ordained I worked in a parish in Houston, Texas, Aldine, to be more specific.  I was pretty clueless about being a priest, but ignorant of even that truth.  So I did a lot of stuff, trying this and that.  I woke up one morning recently and realized that I am not just an aging priest, but that I have left lasting memories, good ones, in the minds of many young people in that parish.  They are now parents of grown children and maybe even Grand-Parents by now.  But they remember my name and something I did.  Even I don’t remember stuff I did, but they do.  Grace is everywhere.  Never underestimate the impact you are having on someone that is unforgettable and good.  

The Garbage Can

 My first memory of the outside material world was not until I was 4 years old.  Until then, I lived in the spiritual, interior world, without images or change.  I lived in the eternal.  The first memory was of a garbage can under our sink while my mother washed up the dirty dishes.  The material world we value is passing and becomes obsolete sooner or later.  And clean things become dirty. They must be cleaned over and over including the material body.  And all wear out in time.  The interior world is eternal, unchanging, and very real.  Somehow, I have never lost that though I have let the material world tempt me away.  I need to be fed each day with the silence, the stillness, the darkness that is the light.  And do the dishes.  

The Disguise

 Spiritual hunger can wear many disguises.  One disguise is addiction.  Some say addiction is all about fear based life and this can be documented.  But it is also about disguising a spiritual hunger of the lonely, unfulfilled soul.  It is ironic that so many people come into and stay in recovery programs as atheists or agnostics.  Yet, eventually, without a change in any religious perspective, they begin to pray and meditate.  Why?  They have discovered their spiritual hunger which the addiction could not quench.  

Whose Job?

 In a spiritual practice we realize that it is God’s job to run our life.  Why is this so important?  Well, if we don’t have any spiritual practice we tend to let feelings run our life.  That takes away God’s job.  Why do that?  Some people would rather be on the roller coaster of emotions, than to let themselves have any Power or God run their life.  

New Information

 When people come into recovery programs such as AA they hear a lot about drinking too much.  They already know that they drink too much.  That is why they are in the meeting in the first place.  They cannot stop drinking.  What they do not know when they come into the meetings is that their whole life has become unmanageable.  Turns out this is the second part of the first of twelves recovery steps.  Sometimes our perceived problem is only a tip of the iceberg of our difficulties.  This is why we have to get the advice of others who are more advanced.  

The Insight

 I met a woman who related to me two feelings she had.  She was an alcoholic by her own omission.  One feeling is that she felt terribly lonely.  The second feeling is that she felt she was no good.  The second might be more of a judgment as well.  She drank over both of these issues.  She does not drink now, but the feelings can still come up.  Drinking can be arrested in recovery, but feelings cannot be so easily roped in.  A spiritual practice helps us deal with these feelings rather than act on them in some negative way.  Prayer gives us power to accept a feeling and respond to it in an appropriate way.  It is called growing up.  

Pain

 There is pain and then there is pain.  We can have a choice.  Pain one is affliction as in the pain of drinking too much.  Then there is the pain of a discipline, such as a spiritual practice.  Fasting can be part of a spiritual practice.  It can feel painful in the discipline of not eating something you really don’t need anyway such as sugar or bread.  But it is for a better purpose to fast in such as instance.  You can read something slowly or quickly in a spiritual book, or recovery book.  Quickly, you can say you did it, check it off.  But slowly is more painful because you have to pause and let some of what you read sink in.  It is reading with discipline and it might take a lifetime to read the book, but a lifetime changed by the reading.  

What Is The Rush?

 Lately, I let my body wake me rather than the alarm clock.  I generally don’t have to schedule really early morning things.  I am aware, though, of how I can push myself into some mental, emotional schedule that I think is fear based.  If I don’t get up at a certain time, someone will steal our newspaper.  If I don’t go out and run in the early dark, go to the gym, I will be unhealthy and die.  If this or that does not work I have an episode.  And so on.  Where is God in all this?  Bemused, I suspect.  I am trying to be present to the stillness and quiet of the early morning.  This is a gift to me.  Just let God be.  No fear.  

Doorknobs

 Beware of judging atheists.  I remember when one said to me they did not believe in a god. Their god was a doorknob.  I thought that was kind of silly, but then again I witnessed this unbeliever growing into a mature person, being of service to others, not judgmental or resentful of life as it unfolded in people, place and situations.  A whole new life seemed to be opened to this person by their doorknob god.  Then again, doorknobs open doors.  The person found a power that opened a door to a whole new life.  It challenged me, a believer, to look at how I am growing…or not.  

Together And Different

 Two people are sitting in a meeting or group gathering of some sort.  Someone else is talking.  One of them hears the voice of the speaker.  The other listens.  That is a big difference.  Hearing with the ears might give you some information but if your mind is “elsewhere” then the info has no place to nest.  Or you might nest the information yet not be changed in any way by it.  When one listens it is with the heart.  They make use of what they hear.  No judgment because when the heart listens it is for the listener to be open to growth, change, challenge by what they hear.  I can hear a sermon and leave unchanged or I can listen and be touched deeply enough to challenge myself to grow.  I try to read spiritual literature the same way.  

Belonging

 I used to try and make myself feel that I belong.  It was not about actually belonging, but feeling I belong.  The reality often was that I in fact did not belong, but that did not get into my psyche.  If I walked into a room with a lot of people, I might feel I did not belong.  Instead of saying OK and leaving, I would do silly stuff to make myself believe that now I did belong in the room.  The reason I might continue to go to bad-fitting places was because I was not fitting into myself.  Without a spiritual practice, I was an alien to me, my inner self, truer self.  Now I tend to ask myself why I might even think of going to someplace.  To explore something new might be ok, but to try and be someone I am not is a losing situation.  

The Second Drink

 Is the second drink of alcohol for physical reasons, like thirst?  Thirst requires water, not alcohol.  I never remember drinking the second drink for thirst.  I might be thirsty for a beer or want a glass of wine at dinner to complement the food.  But the second of any of this was not to feed the body but to feed the soul.  Alcohol never feeds the soul, the interior spirit with the second glass or bottle or can.  That interior self thirsts and it is only a spiritual practice that can attend to such a thirst.  At least I have found it so.  

Phyllis

Life is at times is so interconnected, and these connections are reminders of my past.  Her name is Phyllis and she follows my blogs some.  Anyhow, I met her during my two years in Chicago.  I think we worked for the same company.  I moved to San Francisco and who do I see working for my next company?  Phyllis.  And she remembered that I had a piano, though I did not play the piano, ever.  It was an impulse buy and I had it for two years, but it was not going to the seminary with me.  I sold it. It was a $500 impulse buy in 1970, a lot of money.  I was not much of a saver in those days.  Though I made thousands of dollars in those five years of working, I had about $300 to my name when I left San Francisco for the seminary back East.  These long time connections, like Phyllis, who is now moving to Colorado, and maybe even Boulder, where I work at times, is a reminder of the chaos of my life at one time.  I am filled with gratitude that I survived.   Thank you Phyllis.  

The Question

People often ask themself, “What do I want to get out of life?”  Or, “What do I want out of life?”  I think maybe a bit change in words can help to answer this.  “What do I put into life?”  It is the giving, the service, the emotional uplift that we give, that helps us get “something out of life,” that is quite worth having.  We seem to get in proportion to what we give.  Lately, I go around to different parishes helping out with sacraments when the pastor is away or has too many commitments at any one time.  I seem to get a lot out of this.  It is ‘meaningful” as one might say.  I don’t sit around being “retired” whatever that might mean.  And I learn a lot about how to get around San Francisco beyond my neighborhood.  Sometimes I just explore on the way home from doing some work.  It all fits into my life.  Maybe I will become my own GPS.   

The Talent

 If you don’t do well in academia, that does not mean you have no talent.  It means you have no vocation for the classroom.  A gift is never developed in a classroom, except maybe the gift for being a good college learner.  You might learn a skill like computer technology or in a blue collar trade you might learn plumbing or electricity.  A gift is discovered once you get the chance to exhibit or need it.  John Vianney was a French priest.  He was a terrible student in the seminary.  Latin was too difficult.  He was poor and thus poorly educated before the seminary.  He barely got ordained and then put into a very small nowhere parish in France.  Good riddance to this dummy!  Except, he discovered a gift for hearing confessions, reading hearts and making suggestions for the sinners.  Trains packed with people began to come to this nowhere place.  His gift would never appear in the seminary.  He could not yet hear confessions as he was not yet ordained.  So you may have yet an undiscovered gift or a discovered one that asks to be used for the betterment of those around you.  I was a mediocre student all through school.  I had no vocation to be a seminarian.  I use very little of what I learned there today in my vocation.  And unlike computer technology, it never goes obsolete.  

Money

 The Bible does not say that money is evil.  Lots of good things can be done with money, good things for people who don’t have money.  The root of evil and class distinction is more about the love of money, rather than money itself.  If you are more talented than others in some field then money can be the reward.  The problem begins when you hoard it more than use it for good.  Savings is fine, but everything has a balance if one is to avoid avarice.  The craving for wealth is like the craving for alcohol.  A little is never enough.  Addiction comes in many varieties.  

Equality

 One of the things that I like about Christianity is that the Incarnation was for everyone.  The rich did not get more than the poor.  That is rare in a a class society like ours.  Holy Communion in the Catholic Church is for everyone equally.  The rich don’t get more Jesus than the poor.  Even in the days when the rich and the poor were seated separately in pews, they received the same Jesus in Holy Communion.  Religion can be the great equalizer when it comes to ritual.  That is one of the reasons I like the Catholic Church.  

Roman Holiday

 You might look at famous and rich people and say, “I wish I had what they have.  I would be so happy.”  Really?  See the 1954 movie, “Roman Holiday,” with Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn.  It got two academy awards and is very good.  Princess Anna has “everything” except the freedom to just do what she wants.  She cannot simply take a Roman holiday and do whatever meets her fancy.  Her days are all scheduled and watched by a multitude of entourage.  If you can spend a day just being free to enjoy this or that, you might be far richer than you think.  

Freedom

 You cannot be generous unless you are free.  If you are locked into, fettered to, “getting what is mine” or “getting all you can get,” then you are not free to ensure that everyone has something, a piece of whatever you think is “all yours.”  I find people go to recovery meetings to stay sober by attending and listening and maybe share in the meeting.  Then they leave.  They do not welcome the newcomer, or spend time asking others if they can be of some help.  They don’t giveaway the sobriety that they have.  Some people hoard more than they really need of things such as food.  They don’t care much for sharing with someone who might be as hungry as they were before they stuffed themself.  You see this at a social event where the food is “free.”  They just keep eating until there is no more of whatever they are eating.  They are prisoners of greed and selfishness.  Generosity, thinking of others is when you know you are free.  

Earthquake

Earthquakes are to wake us up to the reality that we are ultimately not in charge.  We might say, “Why did the Creator make this earth so precarious?”  Well, when you are so self-absorbed, or there is a major conflict, like a war, nothing draws us away from this as a “natural disaster.”  We don’t call it “unnatural,” because it is quite natural to this earth.  A tsunami, that wipes out a whole army on a sea-shore would get our attention.  It certainly stops the fighting for land, power, control and wealth.  The rich build near the sea or on mountain tops.  The view is great…until.  So I remember this in my meditation.  Control is an illusion.  I live in San Francisco.  I have been in one earthquake.  It stopped a lot of pettiness.  It stopped a Wold Series!