Service

Spiritual paths all tend to have a component that includes being helpful, or of service, or of doing good for others.  This is not just about getting things done, or making the world a better place, though these can result.  It is about getting out of ourselves.  Not all service work does this.  At times I might be helpful to others, but it is not to get out of myself, or to stop thinking about me.  At times, it is to be liked for my good deeds, thought well of, or to influence someone's behavior as a result of my "good" deed.  I might do things to become popular, get a promotion, or to simply "look good."  The best service work in spiritual growth is to do something that no one notices or for which you may receive little if any praise.  Try vacuuming when no one is around.  Clean up a mess when no one sees you doing it.  The phrase, "If you want to be first, be the servant of all," refers to the kind of servant who does things no one will praise, but everyone wants or expects to be done, "by someone."  Lots of people go to spiritual talks and seminars run by volunteers.  When they walk in, I wonder how many realize that all those nicely placed chairs might very well have been placed there by the holiest person in the room.  I, ego oriented, prefer to teach.  Oops!  Gotta' go and clean up some mess.    There is always hope for conversion.

The Children

Vested, I waited outside church just before the service was to begin.  I looked across the street to the parking lot.  A little girl, about six, was coming to mass with her family.  Usually she is very quiet, especially in church.  When she saw it was me who would be the priest, she exclaimed, "Fr. Terry.  Yes!" Then she pumped her arms with enthusiasm.  I have a fan.  But it shows to me that children do have spiritual lives that need to be fed. They are interested in God and church, if only someone would speak to them in their language, to their experience, to their way of understanding.  I seem to have a gift of preaching to children.  They listen and remember my Maureen stories.  They get the point.  I talk about the God of their world.  Unfortuanately, this is not the norm.  Children are told to go to church, but they find it hard to relate to the God-language to which they are exposed.  And we wonder why they drift off after Confirmation or whenever they can get away from "having" to go to church with family or school?  No doubt, many stay and are satisfied.  But I am a Paulist priest.  Our focus is on those who live on the periphery, those who feel on the outside, but who have a hunger even they might not know is about the Spirit.  Now if I could only preach deep theology to the adults.

The Princess

Every year my Catholic elementary school had a play, usually with some music and even dancing and singing.  I was never in one, but my sister Maureen was in one that I have never forgotten.  She was to play a beautiful fairy princess, who would appear to sad and lonely children, and show them the way to happiness.  I figured she could never pull this off.  The casting director must have been desperate.  Maureen was the deliverer of sadness and misery in my world.  Witch.  I had to go to the play, since it was a family thing.  I figured Maureen would bomb as a "nice" anything, much less a beautiful fairy princess.  Curtain goes up.  Play goes on.  Maureen sells the role.  She looked beautiful and loving and kind and helpful.  She had a smile that radiated. No frown.  I began to think that maybe underneath the witch there was this beautiful big sister and I lived with her.  I was confused.  My world was unsettled.  When we gathered together with Maureen after the play, I blurted out, "Maureen, you looked beautiful tonight."  She smiled a beautiful smile.  No fangs.  I was still thinking about this later that night as I got ready for bed in my jammies with my teddy bear.  I left my bed and walked over to Maureen's bed where she was sitting filing her claws.  I was not frightened.  She just looked different, not witch-like.  I sat on her bed. She did not push me away.  "Maureen," I said, "I am confused.  Sometimes I get lonely and sad.  Could you be a beautiful fairy princess for me?"  She sat next to me and put her arms around me.  No claws.  "Well little brother," she said, "Anything is possible."

As long as I see only the claws and fangs in others, I will live in my lonely and sad world.  In that world, love is impossible.

Social Virtue

Jane Addams, who founded Hull House, to help the downtrodden, and Gandhi both read the bible and were attracted to the social gospel aspect of it.  This would be issues such as racial justice, equality, housing, and job opportunities.  But neither of them were attracted to "church" because they saw there the mere promotion of "personal virtue," which could avoid all of the social virtue issues important to Gandhi and Addams.  One could go to church regularly, keep commandments and rules of their church, avoid pride, lust, jealousy/envy, gluttony and sloth.  Yet with all that you could avoid caring about the poor, homeless, naked, imprisoned, orphans and widows.  I find that contemplative prayer, if it is authentic, combines both personal and social virtue, and this is one of its challenges as well as its attraction to the "Fulness of the Gospel," as I like to call it.  I have to remind myself that this contemplative silence and stillness is not all about my feeling good.  It is to get me out of my own way, so that I can sense a connection and obligation to those who suffer far more than I do with my little episodes of not getting my own way.

A Vision

One day while I was deep into prayer at the monastery, I had a vision of my sister Maureen.  She was in purgatory.  She did not look too happy, as one would expect of someone in purgatory.  "Sorry you are still in purgatory, Maureen.  Sometimes I pray you will get to heaven.  But you gotta pay for being mean to me."  Maureen retorted, "I am not here because of my sins.  I am here because of yours, you bad boy."  "What, me, bad?"I exclaimed.  "Yes, you bad," answered Maureen.  "But I love you, so when I died, I asked God to let me spend your time in purgatory, so you would not have to come here."  "I don't have to go to purgatory Maureen," I said.  "I am a priest.  We get a free ride to heaven!"  Maureen replied, "That is just a recruiting tool to get you to sign up, the church being desparate for celibate men.  In fact, I will never get out of here because you just keep being bad, and lengthening your purgatory.  My love is getting a bit thin."  "Name my sins!" I demanded.  Maureen then gave me the list.

"When you don't get your own way, you whine."

"Hardly a day goes by that you don't have a bout of self-pity."

"You tell lies about us growing up, and call it a sermon."  

"You buy too many flashy running shoes to show off.  Then you wear them at mass."

"You want to be the center of attention, instead of Jesus."

"If someone criticizes you, you put them on your resentment list and plot revenge."

"You beg all the good cooks in the parish to feed you, telling them you are starving."

"Self. Self. Self!  All about you. I will never get out of here!"

Just then I woke up from this nightmare.  Back to reality.  Wonderful me!

Anonymity

As we age, some of us think, "Who will remember me when I die? Will anyone know I made a difference?"  We think that if we are remembered after we die, or praised for good works while we are alive, we think this shows that we made a difference.  Maybe being remembered or praised is not so special.  Of the twelve Apostles, we know next to nothing about almost all of them, and a few anecdotes about a couple, or a letter or two.  I don't think this is a historical mistake in our record keeping.  God just might want us to do good deeds and not be known or praised for them.  Be anonymous in the life of the Spirit.  Th historical record of Jesus is threadbare, to say the least, outside of the Bible.  In fact, I suspect that the New Testament was written so that people would not forget.  Look at the universe.  Do you see God shouting out?  Science senses that there is something there or here, but "God" or the "Divine" is not a certainty to them.  So don't worry if no one knows your good works.  This may prove you are on the right path.

Being Mortal

Atul Gawande's book, "BeingMortal," is food for much thought.  Medicine can maybe give us better health, or survival.  But what about well-being?  A more contemplative prayer, or any prayer that has a bit of listening or openness to the Divine, is medicine for the soul.  I can have a team of people working on the health of my soul, or spiritual innards.  There is The Spirit, that is the Divine, friends or anam cara's who are on the same journey, and me in my daily practice of giving myself the right dosage of prayer.  Skip the dosage,  or contact with friends and ignore God, and I will be in a whole lot of pain that could affect the body as well.  The days when I skip my spiritual exercise, or dosage of prayer time, or attentiveness to the interior life, are days that go less well for me.  Why pay all my attention to a body that will cease to exist some day, while I ignore the soul that goes on forever?  But in fact I do this ignoring some days.  So I am insane on those days.  My beginning prayer each morning is, "Lord, let me not be insane today."