Mental Prayer talk

 here is the suture site for my talk last Saturday on Mental Prayer

https://youtu.be/9yL9Cb-I4pc

Loser

 HOMILY NOTES

FR. TERRY RYAN, CSP

MATTHEW 16: 21-27

AUGUST 30, 2020

I came to the monastery to become a Spiritual Giant.  instead I found out that I am a loser.  I am like Peter.  Why did Jesus give Peter two keys in last week’s Gospel when he made Peter the head of the Church?  Two? Yes, whenever you see pictures of Peter with keys there are always two.  Jesus is seen giving him two.  The Pope’s insignia has two keys on it.  So why two?  Well, why do you have duplicate keys to things?  Because you will lose one at some point.  We are imperfect people.  We lose things such as keys.  Being human we will lose heath, our minds, our balance, our loved ones, and maybe a job or two, and for some addicts, even their sanity.  Jesus knew that Peter was imperfect and so he gave Peter two keys.  Peter is a “loser.”  But Peter does not know this yet.

He joined up with Jesus for the same reasons that many of us get into something or some relationship.  We think it will make us happy or solve some problem in our life.  Guys like me come to the monastery to be happy and free of difficulties, and find deep prayer that we read about.  The hardships we hear about are kind of magical.  We are tough and can handle it.  People get married, have children, get jobs, move somewhere to be happy.  Initially, it is often somewhat self-centered and Peter is self-centered.

For the first time, in today’s Gospel, Jesus says the happy times must give way to suffering and let go of this good life and good times.  But Peter is so bonded to self that he thinks his job is to protect God with the two keys of power he has been given.  Well, Jesus reminds him and his friends, that they are going to have to stop thinking along simply human terms and get with this new Way of giving up self-focused happiness.  

Jesus trusts that Peter will do this eventually, after Peter hits a bottom of denial and abandons Jesus to save his own skin.  

What will be the turnaround for Peter?  He will find, down the road, a deep inner connection with Jesus that holds Peter even when times are tough.  In meditation circles we call this “The Prayer of the Heart.”  It is deeper than words or pious thoughts, and way beyond catechism answers as to who is Jesus.  the Risen Christ came to Peter and fed his heart.  Peter could no longer just walk away.  He was held by this deep connection and well aware of it.  Eventually, Peter would take up his cross for the sake of the relationship with the Risen Christ.  This is what holds us in any relationship or decision.  We give up that life idea of happiness being all about me, and go through some tough and dark times, all because we realize we have a deep “Heart” connection with whatever or whomever we have chosen.  It can be the difference in a monk who stays a few years and then moves on, or a monk who stays the course.  So I must lose old ideas of the magic monastery, and do what? Surrender. 

From The Heart

It is a benefit to someone to do a good action.  But the one who does the good action will not be changed for the better unless that action coms from the heart.  So you can ask yourself why you did this good thing?  Maybe it was to get or avoid something.  It could be about survival which is quite good because dead you cannot change at all.  But some of the good we do is to look good or at least not to look so bad in the eyes of others.  We might want something from a partner, so we do a nice thing and hope we get what we want.  See how so much of this motive is about self?  But when we act from the heart, selflessly, lovingly, without any expectation, then we are acting from the heart and this is what will change us.  The other person or the situation may remain unchanged.  We are not in charge of the results as it affect others.  Ours is to act from the heart.  

Sitting In A Pew

At some point, if one is growing in their spiritual life, sitting in the pew is not going to be enough.  You will feel an urge to go deeper than words, rituals, communal gatherings and such.  But how few will follow that urge.  So few people take me up on the contemplative path.  It reminds me of a famous bible story of Jesus walking on water.  It is stormy weather and the disciples are rocking in the boat at sea.  Jesus is not in the boat.  He is walking on the water.  One of the guys in the boat, and only one, Peter, wants a closer relationship with Jesus than in that rocky boat in a storm.  Think of Covid as the storm.  Jesus invites him to get out of the boat.  Peter does and for a moment walks on water.  A moment of deep intimacy, but he gets afraid.  It is all so new and he begins to sink.  Jesus takes him by the hand and indicates trust, not doubt, will keep him on the water, and not in it.  Contemplative prayer is not scary if you have trust and are willing to try it on a daily basis.  It becomes the prayer of walking on the water.

Educated

I recently read Tara Westover's memoir, Educated.  I found it very moving, eye-opening and challenging.  It amazes me how we are formed and bonded by family relationships as we are growing up.  We develop in this bond an identity.  If we hold to this identity we will be loved by family.  But what if the identity we are given is not who we really are inside, and as we grow up we begin to sense a split.  Tara's loyalty to family guaranteed love, and a place to call home.  But such loyalty came at the price of not becoming who she was meant to be.  I find that even now, as I sense some kind of shift in my life, the relationships I have, may not be open to the shift.  People tend to want us to remain the same because change affects relationships.  Sometimes I find myself trying to be what others want or expect, but it invariably rubs up against "becoming."  People ask, "When are we going to get back to...?" as if I am going back to whatever, simply because that is where and how they know me.  I found the book very powerful.  

Change

It is easy for the monastery to become simply a change of address.  That is what it was when I summered here for the past 17 summers.  But I am staying longer now and I want it to be more than a change of address.  If I run back to Boulder for this and that, or live a somewhat similar pace of life here as anywhere else, then the only change is my address.  So I find myself eliminating a lot of my "internet time."  At first, I was weary of missing something.  But I have come to realize that I am not in a monastery to stay informed about the world out there.  Most of it I do not need to know being in a monastery.  Nor do I have to act right away because someone wants something.  Nor do I need to be anywhere near the center of any attention.  It seems silly, if not a lie, to talk about things I do not much practice, like silence and solitude.  I am not here to get away, or to escape, or to be safe.  I am here because I think that this is where God wants me now for whatever reason.  It is still summer so I have not been stretched in terms of time at the monastery, but I have been stretched as to what I do with the time I now have on a daily basis.  These are waters upon which I have not yet sailed.   

Your Day

Someone said that God gives us each day prepared for us by God.  Our day, in God’s plan, has no “too muches” or “not enoughs” in it.  I like that idea.  Each day is my day and there is a plan.  The problem is that I do not get the plan figured out and then the day comes to an end.  I spend the day trying to do “my plan” and it might not match up with God’s plan.  True, there can be disasters and terrible things that I cannot control, but more often I am all about getting what I want done such that it drains me.  The day does not feel like a gift.  It does not feel like my day.  So I try to meditate early in the day to get a glimpse of how to follow God’s plan for me.  MY plan for me is usually flawed by my character defects.  My best days are when I do meditate and don’t try to do too much of everything.  My plans usually require more than 24 hours.  How long does your day have to be to get all done according to your plan?

The Light

We are all the same, human beings, but we are all different too.  The Impressionist painters taught us that.  Monet would paint the same scene but at different times of the day.  Why? Because the light changed how things looked.  Tree at early morning looked one way and completely different, though a tree still, by noon.  The same with flowers.  Light changed colors of things.  Spirituality is about light.  Buddha has “En light enment.”  People of the book have God/Allah as Light.  Christians have the ‘Light of Christ.”  On our path we need to know community, and individuality.  We are part of one another as human beings. We have a responsibility to connect in a common endeavor.  We see this in globalization, Coronavirus pandemic, economic interests, and just getting along.  But no two people are alike.  This is how the spiritual light affects each one of us.  We have to find our true self, in the Light that shines on us.  So don’t try to make one person be a clone to others, or groups.  Kids are always trying to fit into groups.  OK. They are kids.  But once they begin to question “group think” and probe their own identity, I think they might do well to get some community support, in family, true friends, school and religion.

Lifestyle Silence

Some people think that I have taken up a radical lifestyle of a monk in a monastery.  Well, I live in a monastery but am by no means a monk.  This allows me to connect monastic life with your non-monastic life.  Take silence.  We  here are not silent all the time.  We do not make a vow of silence.  The Rule of Benedict calls for taciturnity.  This means we refrain from speaking sometimes.  It is an inclination not to speak.  Certainly we all have times when we know that we could have said less or said nothing in a situation.  So this will allow us to hear the voice of God?  Unfortunately, no.  It will allow you to hear the orchestra that is playing inside your head.  It is your inner orchestra and not outside sounds that are preventing you from hearing God.  We find we are always mumbling inside our head about likes/dislikes, not getting what we want, judgments of others, their limitations, and our resentments.  That is a pretty sizable orchestra inside our head.  Solution? I continue to do what I do, which is to refrain from unnecessary talking.  I now catch myself earlier in this interior monologue which allows me to focus more on letting it go and shift to  thoughts of God or thinking about God, or my blessings., or prayer for someone else.  It is also easier to move into your meditations where you don’t have to spend time and energy disconnecting from your interior orchestra.  You don’t have to be a monk to practice this.  

Sermons

I have heard many a sermon that I judged to be worthless, only to find out afterwards that someone said, “The homily was wonderful.”  In other words, the homily/sermon may not have spoken to me but it did speak to someone else’s need that day.  It is the same with speaker meetings where someone says something that I think is boring or not for me, only to find out after, that it spoke to someone else’s need in that meeting room.  So I have stopped judging, or at least tried to be more positive after I have pridefully judged another’s words or share.  So you may be reading my blogs and saying, “This man is an idiot.”  Well, you may have something there, but what you consider heresy, idiocy, or nonsense, might be just what someone else needs to hear that day.  So I continue to write these blogs, even if sometimes I think they are mediocre, because someone always says it is just what they needed that day.  So don’t let the fear of judgment hold you back from saying something.  You never know.  It might be just what one person needs to hear at that moment.  

The Right Path

In spiritual traditions there is a Right Path.  In Christianity it is called The “Kingdom of God” or the “Kingdom.”  Jesus gives some ideas about what this is and how to respond.  In one example he uses the mustard seed, a tiny seed planted in a field of food crop.  The framer did not plant it.  It is a weed, a nuisance to the farmer’s plan for a pristine crop.  So in this case, God’s plans don’t mesh with our plans.  This is the cross for believers in these scriptures.  God initiates and believers accept and work with it.  It is the path that is given us.  The right path is given.  We stumble upon it while planning something else.  The second example is the woman who mixes flour and leaven together so that the dough will rise to make bread.  In this example we participate in the kingdom.  We cooperate with God’s plans.  Our will is necessary in conformity to God’s will.  God’s will may be the leaven and our’s is the flour.  Flour without leaven is not going to rise.  It is like finding the right path and actually taking it.  So there are believers who are resentful that their God does not give them what they want to fulfill their plans, and there are others who discover a way, but waver abut taking it since it seems “inconvenient” and there are others who participate, willingly doing something to mix the kingdom, the right path, into the world of wanderers.  

Virginity

OMG!  Mary, the mother of Jesus, may have had a bunch of children and not been a perpetual virgin.  Is that a deal breaker for Catholics? I hope not.  Jesus would have had brothers and sisters.  He was the oldest, so he had to learn a lot about giving up of his time and interests, to take care of those bratty little siblings.  That would make him even more esteemed in my mind.  And are we not talking now about the need for “replacement” births for our ethnic groups? If every woman had only one child, we would have gone extinct before I got here.  But above all this, I don’t think of my spiritual growth as connected to Mary and virginity.  What I admire and strive for is her willingness not to give up sex but to give up her own will for God’s will, even when she did not comprehend all that was going on.  She “pondered” rather than understood.  God made her an offer and she said, “OK. I am all in.”  Big time trust and surrender.  I once knew virginity, but it never made me a better person.  I am still open to knowing surrender that will make me a better person.  I am pondering.  

Waking Up

We often think of ourselves as people who have a physical and a spiritual component.  Greek philosophy referred to it as Body and Soul.  I buy this.  When I first wake up in the morning, it is my body that awakens.  I think about stuff for the day, how I might ache in my bones and muscles, some resentment unresolved, and so on.  My soul, or inner spirit does not wake up with my body.  It wakes up when I meditate, ponder some spiritual readings, open my heart in a prayer of listening.  Then my soul awakes and with it the agenda of my body shifts.  I become less about me and getting my ego wants accomplished, and more about the how and what of my day.  What I want is tempered by what the Presence wants.  So I tend to mediate early rather than later in the day by which time I have messed up running on body energy only.  

Servants

Many believers of Western Religions, People of the Book, will admit, if asked, that they are servants of their God.  But when I ask some of these “servants” what they do in their prayer, there seems to be a common theme.  They ask their God for stuff, for themselves or for others.  But I recall a Bible verse in which a young prophet says to God, Speak Lord, your servant is listening.  It seems that many a modern believer in their prayer says, Listen Lord, your servant is speaking.  So I try to do the listening first.  It sometimes changes my asking.  

The Treasure

In Buddhism, Enlightenment can be searched for by a practitioner of meditation, or it can be stumbled upon by someone doing no practice of meditation.  You think this unfair? Well, Jesus said the same thing in his parables.  One person stumbles upon a treasure hidden in a field.  Another person is a pearl merchant who finds a pearl of great price.  So maybe you are hoping you will be the one who does not have to work for enlightenment or the Kingdom, but get it anyway?  Read the rest of Buddha and Jesus.  No matter how you come upon the gift, your response makes all the difference.  The teaching says that success is not in the finding but in the response.  You sell all you have to obtain the gift you have discovered.  No matter your search efforts, it will always be gift.  Only joy will make you give up all for enlightenment or the kingdom of God.  Greed, fear, and attraction to passing desires and the superficial will never allow you to become what the gift offers to you.  So some of us would rather not search at all.  The finding has too great a price.  

The Puzzle

At some point in my life I realized that I had become a puzzle.  Not a puzzle as in something to figure out, but a puzzle as in pieces that I tried to fit together to make a presentable and "whole" picture of me for others to see.  Each piece of me came from some experience, place, relationship and I worked to put them together to try and make sense of my life as well as to look like a "whole" to the world.  But I was more "hole" than "whole."  This is what happens when popular culture, or group think forms the pieces of our life, or my life at least.  The clothes, hair style, popular places to hang out, the right job, car, town to live in, so much stuff and things, all were pieces.  I was where so many people wanted to be and doing what many wanted to do, job and lifestyle, but the enticing puzzle picture was not me.  Becoming a puzzle is nots o bad if it leads you to finding out it is not you.  Then what?  I started to take safe risks, doing something new and different.  But I was building another puzzle, a more me puzzle, but still a puzzle of this and that.  To leave San Francisco and the Cow Hollow neighborhood in which I lived, for a seminary in D.C. was a safe risk. One does not change overnight, or at least not this one.  Eventually, I realized I had to stop trying to fit pieces together to make the "new ME."  I began to let go of the controls.  I let go of looking good, being important, making sense of my life.  So here I am, a work in progress.  Are you a puzzle all put together or still building?  It may be necessary for now, people relying on you and all, but know that it is not really all there is.  We are never too old or too young to stop making the puzzle and let in a Love beyond all understanding.  

Convenient Is Not A Stretch

I remember when I thought my self a bit "Spiritual."  Someone reminded me that it meant I looked in interesting and convenient places for my spiritual life.  A regular worship schedule, a religion, a spiritual director, were either interesting but not convenient or convenient but not interesting.  I might go to an interesting camping site, woodland hike, or mountain vista where I could drive practically to the top.  Ah, here is God, I might say, but then go home unchanged except for the photo pictures on my camera role.  What saved me was the inconvenient notion that "there is more."  It was not until I got a bit separated from the interesting and convenient, that I began to move out of myself.  Which means what?  I began to surrender, not because I liked it, but because I had run out of options on my merry go round in spiritual dabbling.  A sprinkling of desperation helped.  One does not get onto the road of transformation while fully enjoying a self-imploded, delusional life.  A couple of things I pass on from my path.  Boredom is not all bad.  Enthusiasm passes, but discipline must rarely pass.  You will get what you need, but not what you thought you wanted.  Your imagination and thoughts about "Whoever God" are just stops along the way.  Knowing gets you nowhere important.  Loving is the energy that moves you along the dark path.  

Unchanged Moves

I moved a few times always looking for a change.  I did experience change, but not the one I needed.  I moved from my NY home to a job in Chicago.  New place, new people, new things to do, were all change.  After two years, I wanted another change.  I moved to San Francisco and had the same changes.  I lived in Lake Tahoe area for part of my three years in California.  More change.  But it was not enough.  So I moved to the East Coast and the Paulist Fathers and that was a lot of change.  But in all this change, the one constant was me.  I was what needed to change, and it took me lots of moves to finally decide that place, job, and people were not going to change me.  I needed a spiritual not a physical solution.  In all the moves I had made I never got into the surrender of myself to anyone or anything.  I held on to old patterns, the familiar.  But when the familiar collapsed, I was left with a radical solution.  I had to change.  I did not know how.  The spiritual solution is one of surrender to a process, power, something beyond my control and comfort zone.  In the end, I had no comfort zone, so it was a bit easier to try something radical and different.  I stayed in the same place and yet everything seemed to change as I worked on me with the help of other people who knew a path of surrender, and action.  Enough for this blog.  Beware when you consider physical moves.  They won't fulfill everything and sometimes very little.  

Little By Little

There is the saying, "life is sometimes hard by the yard, but a cinch by the inch."  Very optimistic, and a lot of truth in it.  Don't try to do too much all at once.  A new exercise program would reveal this truth.  You cannot get into shape in one day.  It took you a while to get out of shape, so it will take a while to get into shape.  Do a little each day.  In a new spiritual path, don't try to do all you read about at once.  Do a little each day.  But do something each day, not a lot every few days or a little once a week.  A cinch by the inch still requires some discipline.  If you lack discipline or patience then you might look at this lack of inventory tools in your life and seek how you can be disciplined on a daily basis.  So I try to do something each day to develop discipline and consistency.  Trust that the process will work out in time.  

God Has My Back

I am in a place that seems a good fit for me now.  A monastery!  OMG, who'd thought.  But if I had married my life now would not be this good fit.  But God has my back, even when I think I am God-Abandoned.  The three young ladies I thought I might marry all dumped me.  Obviously, they were smart. I would not have been good husband/partner material.  I was good looking.  After that it was all downhill. So good things can come from what seems like disaster.  Think of the coronavirus now.  It is a disaster, but good things will come from it for many of the survivors, both physical and economic survivors.  Like what?  People will realize that do not have to go to an office to work.  Cities will stop building skyscrapers because the ones we have will be full of empty office space.   Many children will learn that they do not have to go to a school to learn, and my even learn better on their own, and at their own pace, or with an online mentor.  There will be less highway rush hour traffic, and just less traffic as people won't be going somewhere, like work or school.  This along with fewer planes in the air, will clean up the air.  Many people will discover how to work their oven and read a cookbook, bake and cook.  And some people will discover that living hermit-like is not so bad, and they will think about becoming a monk, especially if they would not make a very good marriage partner.   There are a bunch of bad things that will happen with this virus, so it is a mixed bag.  Be safe and look for a bright side.  The bad shows up right away.  The hidden, good, comes later.  

Traffic Light Asceticism

I read something about Traffic Light Aceticism in Vincent Pizzuto's writing.  He says something I know all too well.  A yellow light means "go faster."  The asceticism is that instead of thinking about your own agenda of where you are trying to go for what purpose, and your own impatience with traffic or other drivers, you begin to think about others and their safety based upon you slowing down for a stop when you see a yellow light.  It is a way to develop love for the stranger.  It gives me a better connect with others.  The inclination to put my agenda first, before all else, separates me from others.  My choices affect others.  This is a way to set me up to abandon self-preoccupation and be more open to social justice issues, the sufferings of others who may be strangers to me.  This is an asceticism to change you if not someone else.  I have seen people who are very selfish, self-centered, but get involved in "causes" to change the world.  Neither they nor the world changes for the better.  So start small, with your own little world.  "Slow down, you move too fast.  You got to make the morning last! "  Quiz...who did that song? Hint.  It was a male duo and they were childhood friends from NYC.   

Doubt

 HOMILY NOTES

FR. TERRY RYAN, CSP

PETER WALKS ON WATER

AUGUST 11, 2020

Yesterday I dealt with the guys in the boat.  So now a look at Peter.  Maybe some of you are like him.  He has a big ego but is full of fear.  Often, people with big egos are full of fear.  They go together.  Big ego development is to hide the reality that you live a fear based life.  A smaller ego, humility, honesty, surrender of your will to God are such things that might deal with big ego.  But for Peter, those are not options.  His belief is based upon satisfying his big ego.  He is a partner with Jesus because it gets Peter want Peter wants.  He would call it faith.  

I know lots of dropout Christians who left because they did not get want they wanted.  They had faith>asked God for help>suffered loss>had doubt in God’s Power, existence, or caring> dropped out.  Doubt was the deal breaker.  The problem with Peter is that he does not know Peter.  So he has faith that he can walk on water if Jesus says so.  Why does Jesus tell this blowhard to get out of the boat?  I suspect it is to teach Peter about Peter.  

Sure enough Peter gets out of the boat and does walk on water.  Then fear takes over.  Peter now doubts and begins to sink.  He is losing his life.  “Help,” he prays and Jesus saves him from drowning.  Jesus knew that Peter was a doubter behind his faith.  Jesus asks, “Why did you doubt, oh you of little faith?”  He poses the question, not so much so that Peter will stop doubting but that Peter will see himself as he truly is, more flawed than he thought.

It could shine a light on big ego, and fear-based life, if not now, later, after he denies Jesus in the courtyard of Jesus’ trial.  

So, are you a believer now because you get what you want?

Walk On Water

 HOMILY NOTES

FR. TERRY RYAN, CSP

MATTHEW 14: 22-33

AUGUST 9, 2020

This is the famous story of Jesus walking on water and Peter, his disciple leader, trying to walk on water.  I look at the guys in the boat and ask which one of them are you or me? 

Disciple One is so scared that he does not even know Peter is climbing out of the boat, walking on water, and then drowning.  Disciple One is all about himself and his fears.  He wants someone to fix his life.  The boat is tossed about in a big storm.  There is no place in him at the moment to connect to anyone’s else’s dilemma.  

Disciple Two see Peter get out of the boat and starts to murmur to himself or anyone nearby, “Oh there goes Peter.  He thinks he is such a big deal.  He is full of himself.  I hope he drowns.  Serves him right.”  Disciple Two is jealous of another’s status, and wishes him failure.  He ignore Peter’s success at walking a few steps on water, and takes some pleasure in Peter falling into the drink.  This fellow’s wounded ego prevents him from connecting to Peter in any helpful way.  

Disciple Three is a worrier and takes no chances, so he is scared about being in a sinking ship.  But he tries to dissuade Peter from taking such a chance.  So he does connect but not such that he would put himself out to save Peter.  “I could drown too!” he thinks.  He has the kind of faith in Jesus that is more dogmatic but not such depth that this disciple would surrender to   the will of Jesus or God.  He has a trust issue.  A lot of people with dogmatic faith, care about the world but play it close to the vest when it comes to taking a chance in helping another person.   

Disciple Four does not hold Peter back, but is ready to assist should things go wrong.  When they go wrong for Peter, this fellow grabs an oar and tries to reach Peter.  No can do.  He is ready to jump in and risk his life to try and save Peter.  But Jesus holds out his hand and all is well as Peter is kept from drowning.  So disciple four is most like Christ.  Christians are supposed to be like Christ.  So which one are you?  And maybe the one who would risk his life here is Judas.  But you have already judged him.  Work on yourself.

Helping Others

One of the best gifts you can give to another person is to work on yourself.  So often I hear, "I have no time for this meditation stuff.  I have work to do."  Or, "I need to be helping others and not sitting around meditating."  What I have found is that people who do not work on themselves, ferret out their shortcomings, their needs for success, power, control, esteem, and self-centered fears, are really less help to others because their motives for "helping" are so dysfunctional.  If we work on ourselves then I believe that we bring a better self to the service of others.  So in this Covid time of social distancing, staying at home, it need not be "useless" in terms of being out there to fix the world.  We can have more time to work on spiritual viruses that denude us of being our better self.  When we do a service for another, we don't just do the service, the task, we bring ourselves into the encounter.  If you were looking for a job interview you would clean up the outsides.  Well, cleaning up the insides is a job too.  I am not in this monastery being of zero service to the hurting world out there.  I am working on me and then practicing it with the monastic community.  I have a lot of work to do...on me.  How about you?

Cumbersome Clothes

Why do monks where those cumbersome clothes with voluminous sleeves, too much fabric, hoods and what not?  The answer is practical though not obvious.  Their clothes are designed for a practical purpose. What? So that it is hard to move around when they are sitting, and hard to walk fast when they are walking.  A monk is supposed to be sitting still in chapel and not fidgeting about.  A monk is not supposed to be in a hurry when walking about the monastery.  A slower pace might open the monk to be present to the present moment and not so impatient about "what is next" on the agenda.  The agenda is love of God and fellow monk, not about task functionality.  If you went to Catholic schools, way back when, you might remember the nuns and all the clothes they wore.  It was not so much about suffering, though maybe a little, but about not moving around so much in chapel or when walking.  But wow, were they quick if you were being bad and trying to escape.  Forget mercy!  Justice was our due.  Just kidding.  They loved us.  

Deep Roots

What I need during Covid times is a deep root system of heart that I nourish on a daily basis.  This is where I best communicate with God, though to an outsider I am just sitting in a chair and doing nothing.  Think of a tree that is healthy in a stressful environment.  How?  Well, it is not so much what is going on around the tree above ground, but what is going on underground in the tree root world.  Here the tree is communicating with sources of life, soil, water, other tree roots, though above ground all seems like chaos.  Deep, silent, still, solitude meditation is where I get to my spiritual rootedness in the God of my understanding or beyond my understanding.  It is where I am nourished so that I can respond to chaos around me in my daily life,  things not going my way, my plans not working out, my will getting stepped on and so forth.  Without a spiritual rootedness in practice I don't know how anyone responds well and sanely to this modern world of virus invasion.  Sometimes I think that trees are saner than people.  

Shallow Soil

If you plant something in a soil that is a bit rocky, what ever you plant may rise quite quickly and you will congratulate yourself on your farming or gardening skills.  Then it dies just as quickly.  What happened?  Well, the soil lacked much depth, so the seed did not have the possibility of going to deep root itself.  So it did what it could do which is the bloom upwards, live a little and then poof.  It is a great metaphor for one who is abandoning or surrendering themselves to some spiritual process, program, Power, God.  They feel so good, so relieved and seem to begin to blossom, that is change, quite suddenly. Wow, isn't this surrender thing great!  Instead of smooth sailing from then on, the hard work now begins.  The hard work is the spiritual seed going deep into a person so as to blossom later, deeper and better.  The initial good feeling passes.  The person wishes for the euphoria of that first surrender feeling.  Why is it so hard after the surrender?  If you believe in a personal God, is not this God happy with surrender?  Yes, but.  The "but" is that this world is full of one day, one week, one month surrender people.  I am a great example.  So I doubt God is impressed.  The hard work is that your God takes you seriously, and patiently begins to reveal all the mess of what gets in the way of growing up.  Surrender makes you fell better for the moment, but it does not change you.  That takes time and patience and effort.  Prayer might be very scattered, dull, and other people might seem even worse than when you actively judged them in the past.  Things are not going your way.  All this is part of the surrender seed going deep into you so that your change will be more permanent.   We all have deep rich soil.  Just got to get through the thorns, rocks and such.  

The God Phase

Many people go through a religious phase where they find God things/religion to be attractive or fascinating.  It makes them feel good.  It is not like a drug which makes you feel good, but then becomes addictive.  The God phase generally passes if one does not cultivate it.  Such people are more about feeling good, and anything that is boring, tedious, out of fashion tends to lose their interest.  Spiritual things require a daily maintenance of prayer and kindness, compassion for tedious people, and all this is too much effort  for someone who simply wants to feel good.  At the monastery I do not look for one great day of feeling good after another.  I wake up grateful for the gift of the day, do my routines, be of service, read, cook, bake, some manual labor, and so forth.  My goal is to be faithful to this community and its daily prayers.  The results are not up to me.  God stuff is not about results of which I have no control.  It is about showing up faithfully...as in discipline.  "Being in the mood" has no use here.  

Lost

Do you ever say to yourself, “I feel so lost!”  At times I feel just that way.  So what to do?  Well, if I feel lost, the best thing is to not move around a lot.  Stay put and be found.  This is what meditation is all about, or the idea of silence and solitude.  It is to keep me from feeling lost, and allow me to be found by a Power that knows the Way for me to go.  I am not the solution.  I can only put the solution into effect with help from a spiritual source.  I often use this principle when I find something that I know someone has left, dropped, forgotten to take with them.  I don’t move it.  The owner usually figures out where they might have left their glasses, umbrella, car keys.  If it is something with an ID, then yes, I can contact the person and tell them where I am keeping their item, usually a purse or wallet.  My God will find me, if I want to be found.  I wait...patiently, for direction.  

Taciturn

HOMILY NOTES

FR. TERRY RYAN, CSP

MATTHEW 14: 13-21

AUGUST 2, 2020

Why is this gospel referred to as “Multiplication of loaves and fishes,” since the word, “multiply” never occurs in any of the six versions of this story in the bible?  To focus on what Jesus is doing, is to get us off the hook about our need to change.  If it is about Jesus’ action then we simply say he is God and this is what God does, and I cannot do that.  God’s action is not the miracle to concern us.  The miracle is that the disciples gave up all their food.  Whether they wanted to do it or not is not important at this point.  They acted.  Action comes before conversion or change.  

Recall what people did five months ago when we began to stay in place as a response to the Covid-19 virus.  Many people ran to the store and bought toilet paper beyond their needs.  It was their response to fear, anxiety, and the sense that it is everyone take care of themselves.  There was no communal sense of one person’s action affecting badly another person.  It was hoarding.  Fear does that.  The disciples of Jesus have the same mentality.  They see a disaster developing.  They don’t want to share their meagre supplies.  They have the attitude that everyone is on their own.  That is why their solution is to send everyone away shopping for themselves.  

Notice, Jesus does not at first ask them to give up all their food.  He says they should give “some” of what they have.  No way for these disciples.  They hide behind their selfish solution.  Then Jesus ups the bar and asks for all their food.  Gulp!  This is the miracle.  They gave it to him, reluctantly, I suspect, and with lots of anxiety.  But they did it.  Don’t wait for good motives to do good things.  

I think about this is terms of “silence.”  In the Benedictine Rule, the Latin word often translated into “silence” in English, really means “taciturn.”  What is that?  Taciturn means that you refrain from speaking or saying something, that does not need to be said.  We could all do this a couple of times a day for starters.  What happens?  You allow for a little more silence to enter your life, and the life of the person to whom you were about to speak.  Will we find God with this extra silence each day?  No.  What we will begin to find is that we spend an enormous times talking to ourselves each day.  We find that our mind is an orchestra of thoughts that do not cease.  We have noisy insides.  No wonder many of us speak so much!    With these moments of silence building up each day we may get to reflect on our mind-filled situation.  We may begin to work on it, but most likely we come to realize we cannot stop all this clatter by ourself.  We need God, and this brings us to humility, a good thing.  With God we come to know why we are anxious and why we act it out.  Of course, some people did need a lot of toilet paper for a specific situation, but not all across the country in all the grocery stores.  This is all unreflected and powerful fear acting out.  

Back to the disciples.  They each get a wicker basket full.  It is to help them grow.  Learn to give it away, to share, to sense that we are all in this life together, not everyone for themselves.  And it could be that the basket is full of all their thoughts that need to be emptied out from burdening them into isolation or whatever brings them down.  If we can see our motives for any of our bad behavior and how such feelings control us, we might be able, with God’s help, to let go and connect with one another.  And that will be the Kingdom of God in our midst. 

Imposed Limits

A very good friend of mine died recently in a city about 220 miles from where I am now living.  I always thought of being the one to do her funeral.  But Covid has changed a lot of my plans and my sense of identity.  I thought of myself as that priest who would do things for people in ways that other priests might not.  I thought of how I can fit into what you want in terms of weddings, funerals, and baptisms for instance.  Well, I am out of that manner of being a priest in the new coronavirus age.  Just before we all knew how pandemic this Covid thing is, I flew to New York in the dead of winter to do a funeral and burial for the mother of a good friend of mine.  This was me.  The "was" is operative now.  I am a monk in the mountains of Snowmass, Colorado, blogging and zoom teaching.  I don't think I have hugged anyone in over 4 months.  I see none of my city friends.  It bothers me a lot that I cannot be available to do the funerals for friends, but I have learned that acceptance keeps me sane.  

Weak Harvest

The harvest in my church is rather scarce these days in USA.  Not a whole lot of people are trying to get into the Catholic Church.  Ironically, the laborers are many.  There are plenty of priests in the populated areas to take care of the parishes that are far from full.  Covid will pass, but the message a lot of these guys have does not connect to the secular world in which people live.  I am not saying people are disinterested in things spiritual or heartfelt, just that the messenger is out of touch.  I try to keep this in mind when doing my zoom preaching.  I cannot even see faces so I have to imagine a person out there in zoom land, and what is their hunger.  Can I respond to it, be in their shoes, or slippers as the case may be?  What too many messengers do is tell you what they think you need to hear.  They are sort of prepackaged and that does not nourish but a few.  My blog readers let me know what touches them.  And when I get little response I figure that blog helped no one.  I am always learning which is good for a messenger.