Primary Purpose

The primary purpose of meditation is not so much to have spiritual visions, feel better, calmer, but rather so that we can do actions that are helpful to others who are in need of help.  But there is more.  Meditation helps us to do good acts, as good people.  Mediation changes us from within, so that we become more consistent in our connection with others.  A person might do a good deed, but maybe for reasons that have little to do with a pure heart.  To gain something or avoid a loss.  It is so sel-serving.  Look at AA for instance.  They meditate in step 11, so that they will be more consistent in step 12, which is to help others, not when it suits them but even in tough times.  If I ignore mediation, I might be nice, helpful, kind and comforting in one instance, and then soon thereafter I am all about me, whining and upset at demands made upon me.  You don’t want me on a day that I ignore the interior life.  I am a monster!

Power To Burn

The Anabaptists had a different idea about baptism than did the all powerful Catholic Church in the 16th Century.  The Anabaptists said that you should make an adult decision for Christ, and be rebaptized then, even if you were baptized as a baby.  You could get burnt at the stake for this as did Dirk Willems, a Dutchman.  Nowadays, if you were to say this you might make people upset.  They may ask you to leave and go elsewhere with your ideas, but they would not burn you at the stake.  Religion is not so powerful and government has protective laws against such stuff.  So I think it a good thing that my church is no longer all powerful in its public sphere.  I like my church to be humble and more into being powerless.  Lots of people and groups have done their best work when admitting to humility and powerlessness.  You can still challenge, encourage and discourage, but do so without being abusive.  

A Wedding Homily

A Wedding Homily On Feast of Most Holy Trinity

One of the bridesmaids wore a tuxedo.  The bride had tattoos.  This is all new to me.  My first thought?  “This is an abomination, an outrage!”  But I have learned in my spiritual practice to ignore first thoughts.  You cannot control them nor are you responsible for them.  Pause.  Don’t act on first thought energy.  What happens next?  Space for Grace.  That pause is the space and grace then goes to work.  My catholicity enters.  Catholic with a small “c” means all, as in everyone.  Jesus came to save all people, not just Jewish men.  Catholic is not a “gated” faith.  You can live in a gated community where you feel safe, secure, and correct, because everyone else is just like you.  But you cannot have a Catholic gated faith.  In Caholic we are all one but not all the same.  The many differences are what make us the best we can be as church.  

But you need to go beyond acceptance of differences.  An atheist can practice acceptance, and they do.  Catholic needs to go into the realm of love, that is, Oneing with others.  Work at becoming one.  How?  Think of salt.  Salt brings out the flavor of whatever it salts, but salt stays salt.  We need to enter into connections with others such that our presence, our love, compassion, care, salts them, so that these other people become the best that God made them to be.  They don’t become more like me nor I more like them.  We become who God made us to be.  Differences in unity.

The Trinity is One God but manifested in three diverse ways.  God is always relational in Love.  God is Love.  This couple today are diverse, but together as one couple they will become holy through and with one another.  But what if first thoughts ruled their lives?  What if when Hector met Katie, he saw freckles, for she is Irish.  What if his first thought is “Freckles!  An abomination.”  He would be the loser if he walked away.

And what if when Spring came and Katie put on a sun dress and Hector saw a tattoo, and said, “Oh no!  My mother will never accept her.”  And so on.  But Katie is not marrying his mother.  So first thoughts did not rule in his encounter with Katie.  

And when Katie found out the limo bus that brought all the male wedding party members to church had gone off without bringing the women, including her, what if her first thought was, “Oh no!  Disaster.  A sign from God that this wedding is not meant to be.  Hector is all wrong for me.”  She did not let such a thought rule her decision to marry though the wedding did start later than planned.  

Hector and Katie will now work on becoming one while still being uniquely gifted people.  They bring diversity to the relationship and mix it all with love, compassion, being good listeners, and becoming all God meant them to be.  For unless we become one we will become none.

The Pygmy

Did you know that at one time the Bronx Zoo kept an African Pygmy as a speciman?  What was that all about.  Eugenics.  The science of the times had this belief in some people being better than other people and some people-looking somethings were not really people.  So whenever you start saying that some people are better or more human or more perfect than others based upon their ethnicity, color or language, you are on a very slippery road.  It is a kind of social Darwinism with the idea that different races represent different levels of evolutionary development.  It will end up in violence.  Religious scriptures challenge this way of thinking, but many a person in the pew or bench, hold to this evolutionary strata system.

The Truth

I believe that one’s idea of truth comes first from experience.  They think their experience to be the truth.  Only later, with other experiences, and listening to others, reading and so on can they come to know a fuller truth.  Example:  why is the Pacific Ocean called “pacific?”  My experience is anything but that, when I look at the ocean on the shores of Northern California.  I would call it almost violent in its power and huge waves pounding against rocks and shoreline.  This is my experience.  Magellan had a vastly different experience.  He discovered the Tierra del Fuego, 400 miles of treacherous currents going around the southern tip of South America.  Windswept rocks and surging seas, currents going every which way.  When he got to the other side, the waters seemed calm in camparison.  So he called it the “Pacific Ocean.”  So be careful when you call your unexamined experience the “Truth.”  My experiences are a rather narrow world.  Ask. Read, Study. Seek.  Humility will be the engine that drives you.

Freedom

Are we really free to do whatever we want?  I hear people say that, "I am free to do whatever I please.  It is a free country."  It is a country which is built on co-existence.  If we all tried for unlimited freedom, we would destroy one another, while not building communities.  Even a hermit in the woods is not free to burn down the forest because the trees get in the way of a view.  Are we really free to cut down a forest, whose trees provide us with photosynthesis to cleanse our air and provide oxygen?  I find that the desire for freedom is tempered by some spiritual practice which moderates our freedom goals.  Monasteries would be an example of giving up one freedom or freedoms for another freedom.  It is more of pick and choose than unlimited freedom.  How does one know what to let go of and what to pick up?  A spiritual practice that gets beyond your thoughts and personal ideas is a way.  Left to our own devices most of us opt for "more" rather than learn to embrace the "less."  Less is often more, and that is not a koan.

The Stranger

To welcome the stranger is to develop a relationship such that our freedom is compromised.  Any relationship will cut into our freedom to do as we please, but especially the stranger.  Spiritual practices seem to say that we should welcome the stranger.  I see it in the Bible for instance.  But not all of us want such a mutual dependence that this relationship brings. For instance,  the mother pregnant with new life is a dependent relationship that changes both the mother and the baby in utero, or fetus if you prefer.  The life in the womb is a stranger.  You have not fully met.  You have expectations or fears, anxieties, hopes, disappointments, whatever, so this is the "stranger" aspect of new relationship.  The infant in the womb is a "being from" as someone said, and is very dependent upon the "from."  It is oriented toward the mother.  The woman is a "being for" the infant, fetus in the womb, and even her body changes and takes away some freedom of movement and shape.  This being from and for one another compromises one's freedom. If the baby is brought to term it will practice lots of freedom but will still be dependent and so not completely free.  A new person in your life limits your freedom, or else it won't be much of a relationship.  If you value freedom above all else, it will affect, limit, destroy relationships.  My initial reaction to strangers is to want to pull away or go away.  I have learned to overcome it better now and have enjoyed some really good opportunities to grow.  Unlimited freedom does not work for me.  It appeals to my lesser self.