Holy Family

Some religious traditions recently celebrated "The Holy Family."  What is that in modern terms?  I think of a Holy Family as the place where you can go and receive love and acceptance without having to earn it.  It would be for me, "Home."  So I ask myself where is my home where I would receive this love and acceptance without having to earn it?  I live in four places and none of them would be "Home," if this were the criterion.  In each place I would be expected to do something or else I would not be so welcomed or guaranteed a room.  I have to work everywhere I go.  That is the expectation.  So the last place that I can recall where I did not have to do anything was when I visited my parents.  That was home for me.  I did not have to do anything.  Everyone else says, "Welcome home," and then there are things I am supposed to do as in work and make money.  I never felt that I was visiting my parents.  Rather I was "home."  So where is your home?

Take Out The Trash

One of the things I like about the Shepherds and the Magi, is that after they had their powerful religious experiences, they went back home to work.  They returned to their lives to do the stuff they were doing, but with maybe a different attitude or sense of things.  They might have talked about their experiences, but they still "took out the garbage" as I like to say.  So many people, clerics included, think that because they have had some "special" encounter with God, dairy chores are beneath them.  They have no time for the daily chores that need taking care of.  The shepherds went back to the fields to care for the sheep.  Sure, they were praising God, but the sheep needed attention. The Magi, went back to their home, to their daily lives.  They might have been changed within, but their daily lives were still "daily" in need of attention.  Today, in many Catholic cultures, it is the Feast of the Epiphany.  I took out the garbage.  Me, a spiritual giant, took out the garbage.  I like to think of the Magi as taking out their garbage.  It was easier for them.  They did not have to recycle.  Did you make your bed up after you got up?  My sister, Jane, abandons her messy bed, for spiritual reading, including this blog, each morning.  I pray for her.

Mass And Energy

I found out that Astrophysicists say that 95% of the total mass and energy content of the universe is dark.  We tend to call it space, the dark between the stars.  We think of it as empty.  That is because we are dummies, or at least I am.  Dark really means that there is stuff in that space, but I cannot see it.  The stuff is invisible to me.  But there is still something there, a lot there.  I experience emptiness, nothingness.  I judge the universe by by experience.  Don't we do the same with the God exists or does not exist question?  We judge on our experience.  People will say that there is no God because they experience nothing.  The universe tells us that the experience of nothing is not nothing.  It is simply our judgment of things from our limited perspective.  With the Epiphany, (The Three Magi) coming up, there is the saying that "in the darkness is a great light."  It just looks like darkness.  If there is a God, why does such an existent hide out in plain sight like that?  I wonder if God knows that when things are way obvious we tend to ignore them.  There is an obvious tree outside?  How much attention does it get from you in your busy self-absorbed day?  No, God hides out from me, so that I have to go deeper into a more contemplative place, letting go of all my important thoughts and ideas, to just sit in the darkness.  Then, surprise!

Virginity

A lot of people think of virginity as having to do solely with physical sex.  A person generally knows when they gave up their virginity, as we say.  But virginity has a much wider and ongoing meaning than physical sex.  It refers to the deeper meaning of spiritual growth.  People on such a path, are trying to keep from falling into or embracing evil, bad behavior, acting out any series of character defects such that it changes us for the worse.  You might think of it as soul virginity, that can be lost but then regained.  Lost by bad behavior and regained by trudging that road of daily spiritual practices.  Each morning, when I wake up, I am a spiritual virgin.  How will I live this day?  Do I have a plan?  If no plan, I will fall before the day is over.  If I do no spiritual practice, including being of some service to others, I might not do anything outrageous this day, but I will be on the way to the outrageous.  There is something cunning about bad behavior and loss of spiritual virginity that day.  You do not always see it coming.  Then suddenly it is upon you.  "What was I thinking?" You might say later.  "Why did I do that?" Or, "I know better."  If you don't make a plan for the spiritual path this day, your shortcomings certainly will.  I have found it so.

Littleness

I don't see why people with big, fat egos, who always want the spotlight to shine on them, would have any interest in the Christmas idea that God would be a baby?  A baby is little.  It is helpless and pretty powerless to do for themselves.  It relies on others for survival.  It needs love.  The ego person is all about power.  If God is the baby in the manger, then Christmas is a celebration of littleness, not bigness.  Those who involve themselves in the Christian religion might want to celebrate and love their own littleness.  This would be so counter to a culture that focuses on empowerment, control, self-reliance, and never pooping in your pants.  Sometimes I get whining about wanting to be noticed as more important, a bigger deal.  Why?  It was not a big issue with God, and I am supposed to be a believer in God and a follower of God tenants. So now I try to focus on the baby in the manger, and say it is OK to be little in the eyes of others, and in my own view of self.  But never poop in my pants.  If I live long enough that too may come!

Eve The Scientist

The first scientist was a woman, Eve.  Why?  She was curious.  She did not stay with the status quo.  She wanted to know more and believed there was more to know.  In traditional religion it seems that there is never more to know.  Religion has tradition.  It tells you all there is to know.  The questions have been asked and answered.  Science does not work that way.  Science is open to the new, to development, to the modern.  The past is aways questioned.  Science says, "I think so, but I am not sure."  Socrates and Einstein said this among countless others.  Eve wanted to taste the apple.  God said no, cased closed.  She says "Why?"  It is human to be plunged into the mystery of uncertainty, to explore.  Religious faith seems to be about certainty.  Is it really faith if it is certainty?  Or does faith seek certainty to avoid fear?  Yes, Eve did have it rough after that, but she also became more of a human being, after she ate the apple.  A lot of people fear becoming more human because it is more painful to grow, to enter into mystery, to know that you don't know.  This is why so many people would rather not get involved in contemplative prayer.  Here you let go of all your intellectual certainty, but you then can enter into the deeper Truth.  There is always more, and less.

New Year Resolutions

It is the first day of a New Year, 2018.  What do many of us do?  We set resolutions or goals for this year.  The goal is clear.  The process, the details are a bit hazy.  We think we will suddenly change our manner, habits, and daily routines, but we do not figure out how nor note why we have these habits in the first place.  What happens?  We slip.  We violate our goal, our new standard of behavior.  We then feel some shame and guilt.  We don't want to feel badly, with this shame and guilt.  So we lower our standards, goals or resolutions.  Shame and guilt gone.  Without a plan, and some help outside of our  own selves, the only way this plan for the New Year will avoid shame and guilt is if we can lower our standards, goals or resolutions faster than we can violate them.  I have found it so.  And those were not very good years.  Happy New Year!  Mine have become so since I stopped trying to do it alone.