Halloween

 Happy Halloween!  Before I think about wearing a  mask today and trick or treating, I ask myself, "Terry, have you been wearing a mask lately?"  Why?  I need to check on my spiritual progress on a daily basis and Halloween gives me a reminder that hiding behind dishonesty about who I am, is wearing a mask that does me no good.  I might wear a mask because I don't know who I really am.  OK.  Then work on that.  Or I might wear a mask because I want to please someone, or get something or avoid something.  It is hard enough becoming myself, so why make it worse by trying to become someone else, who I cannot ever become.  Today, I will practice honesty with me.  Be who God made me to be, not who someone else wants me to be.  And don't be afraid to be me.  It is scarier to be someone else.  

Within

 I don’t have to run off to find a sacred place whee my God dwells.  I have an inner chapel where God dwells.  All I need to do is sit in silence and solitude.  Wait. Ignore thoughts.  Don’t talk.  Many people run to outside holy places, what they consider holy places and talk to their spiritual power.  Save gas and time.  “Be where you are,” is what someone told me.  So I sit here in front of a nice fire, in the early morning darkness, silent and still.  My inner chapel awaits me.  Call it whatever you will, soul, spiritual innards.  It goes where I go, too often ignored.  

WS

 I am watching, somewhat, the World Series.  If you don’t know what that is, let it be.  You probably have interests of which I am clueless.  I am not in the monastery now praying for my wretched soul, because of the Bronx.  It is the fault of the Bronx.  I grew up in the mid-20th century, the age of the New York Yankees, the New York Giants, and the Brooklyn Dodgers.  One or another of these teams was in the World Series, playing for the baseball Championship each October during my time in the Bronx.  I did pray a lot then, that my team would win.  The monastery has no TV our Radio.  This is good except in October.  I thought this year that the Giants or Yankees would be in the World Series.  But neither could win the one game they needed to win and were eliminated.  So now I watch teams from Houston and Atlanta, neither of which are my teams, but it is still the World Series and I am on the West Coast time zone, the best for sports watching.  So I am at Sea Ranch, California with the ocean waves crashing against the shores, jogging along the cliff path, the monastery 1200 miles away.  If I am losing my soul, I am reliving my youthful memories from the Bronx.  And wearing a Yankees baseball cap.  My sister has my Giants baseball cap.  The monks are praying for me.  

Clean Up

 I came to San Francisco for some Paulist meetings and to clean up my room.  The meetings were meant to simplify our Paulist lives by becoming re-focused on where and how we are going as a community with a plan.  The room cleanup was to simplify my life by having less “stuff,” and to give away things to people who could better use them than me.  Both the meetings and the clean-up went well.  My room looks a bit more tidy and less like a storage bin.  Clothes went to the poor.  Memorabilia went to relatives.  The attic got pretty emptied out. Lots of garbage cans filled or recycled.  I am not finished decluttering nor are the Paulists finished with meetings and planning.  Life is ongoing to de-clutter and get re-focused.  Otherwise, we are too busy tripping over the same stuff time and again.  

Sea Ranch

 Well, I arrived at Sea Ranch, CA this afternoon, driving through rain most of the way.  We do not complain about rain in California or Colorado for that matter.  We have had many inches of it out here in the last couple of days.  We never rejoiced when it rained when I was growing up in mid-20th century.  How times have changed, and I have to change with it.  I used to moan when it rained and ruined my plans based upon sunny skies.  I have seen far too many sunny skies of late, and now rejoice when it rains.  A lot of life seems to be lived successfully and happily if we can adjust to what is given and what is taken away.  Only the truly self-centered would moan over a rainy day in the Western part of this country.  I must remind myself to adjust to what each day gives me.  And take short showers.  

Behavior Change

If you ever sought or settled for a change in behavior, what were you motives?  An athlete in training or a scholar in study for a degree will change their behavior to help meet their goals.  On the other hand, an addict will change their goals to meet their behavior, so said an addict. I know I am addicted to something, if I keep changing my goals because I cannot give up my addiction.  If my addiction is perhaps fear, inescapable fear, I will change my goals because I cannot seem to shake the energy of fear.  I get into a rut, that which I know, because it gives me some comfort zone.  A monastery has routines which help in living together.  But if the routines become ruts, then we tend to live under the same roof but separately.  To become available to another person in the moment would take the rut person out of their rut.  So they would not be of service.  Each day I ask myself, "Is this a routine of discipline for growth, or is it a rut of isolation?"  Not always easy to know.  

My Opinion

Someone reminded me that no one wants to hear his opinion until they ask for it.  How true this has been in my own life.  Any number of times, I have given my opinion on something without anyone asking, and they simply changed the subject or made as if I had not said anything.  No response to my opinion.  So I try not to give my opinion until someone asks for it.  It is only my ego that believes people are interested in what I think.  Often, I say, “I suggest,” or “You might want to think about…” but if I sound like the law or rule, I get ignored either in their non-response or their non-action to what I say they need to do.  The way I live my life often speaks for itself, both for good and bad.   

Magnifying

Someone said that they have a magnifying mind.  I do too!  Without a spiritual practice, I will magnify the faults of everyone around me, plus all of the situations out of my control, which are most situations in my life.  I judge something or someone as bad and then I make it worse.  And if only they would shape up and do right by me, then I would be happy.  This is my insanity road.  It is not a safe place and really goes nowhere.  Now, when I do have a spiritual practice, I magnify the good I see in others.  I believe my God Power has a magnifying mind for seeing goodness in me and others.  I can see with the gaze of God Eyes, if I let go of control of the world, and of results in prayer.  God has my back.   I need consistency in a daily spiritual practice.  BB 416

Priority

Someone said that the most important thing he did each day is to not take a drink of alcohol.  But left to his own willpower he would fail to do this.  So he needed some other power and for him that power is God as he came to believe.  So his  weakness is really his strength, since it brought him onto a spiritual path of prayer and service to others.  The being of service energy comes because you stop judging others, whining about stuff, and building resentments or worries about stuff you cannot control and is none of your business anyway.  Not drinking has become a pretty good life, much better than what it was before.  BB 416 

Control

 I tend to try and control the outside environment so that my insides will be comfortable and at peace.  Wrong.  I have mice in my car, and have caught 13 as of this Blog.  I found myself worrying about the mice ruining my car while I hopelessly attempted to sit in quiet prayer.  I thought, "If I can get rid of the mice, then I can pray in peace. " Duh!  Yes, I can set traps and such, but what happened to turning it over to God, with some trust?  Faith in God power and trust go out the window when I cannot solve something according to my schedule.  I have come to realize that I need to work on my insides, my internal environment, in mediation and reading.  Then I will be able to let go of the outside environment and leave that to God Power.  BB 413 

Mix Up

 Some people equate religion and spirituality, such that they drop all spiritual practice.  Religions are different one from another.  But spirituality is the same no matter what path you take.  Spirituality is about becoming yourself, not someone else.  Each of us is a unique creation, a unique person given our gifts and talents.  Unique does not mean perfect.  A spiritual practice is to diminish the imperfect and strengthen, discover, put into practice the unique gift that is yourself.  I am a Catholic, but I don't try so hard to be a good Catholic fit.  I am not sure I know what that is, since there seems to be so many variations in the practice.  But I try to be a good Terry Ryan.  I have, through a spiritual practice, gotten to know who that is when at my best.  No one else can be a good Terry Ryan.  Daily meditation, being of service, reading from wise teachers, all keep me on that path.  

What To Look For

 As someone pointed out, there is a difference between comparing and identifying.  I tend to compare.  I look for differences between myself and others.  That is, I look for how I am better than they are.  I look at all their faults, to make a good resentment list.  Not a happy way through the day.  It is better, as a saner person pointed out, to identify with people.  That is, how I am like others.  Identify with their faults that I also have.  I am not trying to look better than others in my thinking, but to change my thinking, attitude and response to situations so that I become a better person.  It is impossible to change others.  Sometimes, in my comparisons with others, it is impossible to change me for the better.  

Lost Mind

I always feel relief when I gather with people who have lost a lot more than I had in the past.  I say, "Thank God, I did not have it that bad!"  But lest I have a sense of superiority, I have been reminded that we all had one think in common that we lost...our minds.  Even today I must be vigilant that my mind, which I found shattered, and now pierced together, does not wander off in some direction maybe new, maybe familiar, but lost none the less.  If I can stay tethered to God, my Power connection, my mind will be on the right path.   

Geographic Thinking

I used to say about my long past, that my thinking was not very clear or sane then for that matter.  So then I began to say, in my "spiritual growth" that I no longer think that old way.  Oh?  I have found that though I no longer think like I used to, I am often thinking just as fuzzy, but with different thoughts.  I make geographic moves from one bad way of thinking to another.  So each day I say a prayer of gratitude that I do not think like I used to, but then ask for guidance so that I think sanely, rather than just differently.   

Stunned

 A friend of my father's came to my ordination in 1977.  He took camera pictures and some time later gave them to my parents.  They were slides and we had no slide projector.  The slides sat around in my parents' home and then they gave them to me and I buried them somewhere in my archives.  Recently, I told a friend about these slides and she said she would make them into photos.  I just received them from her in the mail.  My parents and grandmother are smiling.  The Cardinal is smiling.  My classmates are smiling.  Me?  No smile.  I think I must have been stunned or in shock at the whole event...me a priest?  I was so uncomfortable in my own skin.  And I thought I would now change the world as a priest?  I was delusional with an illusion but did not know it at the time.  I needed to change me first.  Still working on it.  

I Left My Heart

 I am in San Francisco at the moment, staying in "my" room here at our Paulist Rectory, next to Old St. Mary's Church.  I am not here much, so my status is "Attached to the house."  I have a place when I come here.  I am giving lots of things away such as clothes and electronics.  A fellow I know here takes my pile of things and distributes them to those who could use good clothes.  I have too much stuff that I don't seem to wear or use.  This fellow does not have much money either, but he knows which poor person could use what.  I came across an old transistor, portable radio.  It is worth $$$ to antiques dealers.  I gave it to this fellow who may never have seen such an electronic radio like this.  I hope he gets lots of $$$ for it.  San Francisco is warm and sunny now.  That will change soon of course.  But while it is like this, with few people and few cars out on the streets, due to Covid, it is quite a pleasant place to be.  Monastery?  What Monastery?  I am weak.  

Soul-Breathing

 I like this suggestion: prayer is the breath of the soul.  Even if you don't believe in soul stuff, prayer has something to do with our insides.  You might get enough sleep, exercise, proper diet, so your body is in good space, and yet you have resentments, unease, suicidal thoughts, feelings of alienation and so on.  The body is in good shape, so where is this coming from?  We have an insides, that exercise, diet and sleep do not sufficiently reach.  The lungs breathe, but an inner depth is suffocating from lack of meditation.  I practice the meditation to exercise the soul, let it breathe in the Spirit Power.  

A Joiner

Some people are simply not by nature, joiners.  They don't do groups.  They do a lot of stuff alone even if it makes them unhappy or non-productive.  An example would be people who drink alone.  They want to stop,  or cut back, but alone, they cannot.   Well, something seems to need to change.  They cannot control drinking so that stays.  But they can walk into a meeting, become a joiner, of other people who are doing what they cannot do alone, stop drinking.  There are times to be alone, but there are times to not be alone, otherwise, time runs out all too fast.  

Dependent

 If I am dependent on how other people act for my happiness, I will be a rather unhappy person.  People around me have their own agendas and my happiness is not their priority.  To break this dependency connection I need to concentrate on my side of the street.  Work on my stuff.  Why do I need their actions to make me happy?  Is it a control thing?  Ego?  Each day I examine my innards to make sure I am not harboring resentments about how others act.  My happiness is my job, not theirs.  

Interior

I know people who do exterior penances, called ascesis, and it can beat up the body.  I try to avoid that.  Rather, someone suggested that I do "Interior Humility" as a way for spiritual growth and becoming the best me I can be.  So I try to do things for others without complaining. I might do a task that someone else could do, but they don't.  I might cook for others who never bother to learn how to cook.  The important thing in being of service is not so much what or how I do it, as what attitude I bring to the task or effort.  Am I doing it with resentment or love?  Am I looking for compliments or is the work of service sufficient to fill me?  Sometimes I feel like Cinderella with the two step-sisters.  OK.  It can be a feeling.  I don't control my feelings.  They just pop up.  What do I do with them, if anything?  Recognize, accept, detach, and love.  Then even I enjoy the work I do for others.  

Busy

 I did not know that I was lonely in High School or College because I was busy.  Classes were followed by team running practice.  Summers I commuted to Manhattan to work, so the days had not a lot of "free" time.  Weekends usually had an event or if not much, it was summer.  But when I got out of school, with no team running, I began to have that dis-ease with time on my hands.  I did not so much identify it as loneliness.  Rather, I just found ways to escape it.  Eventually escape solutions became the problem.  I am thankful that I did not do marriage as a solution.  With help, I have been able to identify dis-ease and do something about it that is constructive, and works on my insides as well.  I may never become free of loneliness, but I can become free of its domination and escapes that destroy.  How about you?

Ticket

We all have a one way ticket to the graveyard, but for a while I was on the express train.  It was a fast life, sometimes thrilling, fast-paced and generally unhealthy in mind and body.  I found a spiritual practice that slowed me down.  Now my ticket is on a local with frequent stops for the inner journey that recognizes the beauty of what goes on in the quiet and seemingly stillness around me  within me.  I make stops to be of service, maybe as part of a solution.  I used to be the problem, but blamed people and places that went by so quickly.  When I say, "I have no time for me or you," I am back on the express to the graveyard.  

Letting Go

I am trying to declutter and downsize my life by cleaning out and getting rid of "stuff" in my rooms.  I am doing OK so far.  I still have to downsize my San Francisco room.  But someone said that it is a lot easier to abandon possessions (give thing away, or trash) than it is to abandon ourselves.  I have found this to be so.  I cannot seem to let go of the parts of me that no longer serve my well, if they ever did.  How about you? 

Vaccination

 I think of meditation as my daily vaccination.  Left to my own devices and power, my life is emotionally and mentally out of wack.  I easily drift into spiritual illnesses of all kinds, revealed in bad behavior and messy thinking.  So I get my daily vaccination filled with spiritual content.  I become compassionate, understanding, accepting, of service to others, loving and kind, for instance.  It is amazing what a daily dose can do.  And the vaccination is not experimental.  It has been proven for thousands of years to work successfully.  Less whining and more loving.  

The Saint

 I try to see the saint in another person, while they might see only the sinner, or failure, or inadequacy in themselves.  Example: someone cooks and things don't turn out as tasty as they thought it would be or hoped it would be.  They see themselves as hopeless in the kitchen.  But I see the saint because they are trying to serve others in cooking.  They are thinking about others besides themselves.  I see someone in recovery, their recent lives shattered, and they think themselves hopeless or horrible and a failure at life.  Then they go and help another suffering person.  I see the saint.  I try to keep this in mind when I end my meditation time.  My mind was all scattered with thoughts holding onto me.  I judge myself a mess.  But my God sees the saint.  I showed up, did I not?

Sameness

 It seems that people prefer to live in neighborhoods where everyone else is like them.  Their idea of safety might be a factor.  But I liked the neighborhood where I grew up because we had all kinds of people with very different types of work.  We had blue collar, and white collar, stay at home and go to office moms.  We had the mailman and the fireman and the TV producer.  So I did not look down my nose at anyone as being less than me because of their work or lifestyle.  This can be the downside of suburban sameness, or city sameness for that matter.  The tendency can arise to judge people because they are different than your lifestyle.  

Trellis

 HOMILY NOTES

FR. TERRY RYAN, CSP

MARK 10: 2-16

OCTOBER 3, 2021

I have lived in a community of men since 1972.  I have never lived alone since that time.  The Rule of St. Benedict is helping me to make some shifts in my life, as I live it here in this monastery.  For many years I thought that I would be happier if the people with whom I lived would shape up and act the way they should in the house we shared.  My contentment was based upon their behavior at home.  I have come to realize that they are exactly the way they are supposed to be for me.  Why?  Because I am the one who is supposed to change.  Like what?  Like tolerance, compassion, acceptance, kindness,  non-judgment, being of service to them and maybe even love.  

I am supposed to live with people not so we all become the same, but that so we each become our best selves living in community.  Think of a trellis, an image given to me by someone.  The trellis is like the Rule of Benedict.  It holds us together.  But each vine works its way up the trellis as it grows.  Each vine is different but all connected to the trellis with a common root in Jesus Christ.  

Eve is equal to Adam but not the same as Adam.  They are supposed to become their best selves in the relationship of union.  They are not supposed to become the same as one another.  In Jesus’ time, men could be rid of their wives if the wife did not act the way the man wanted for his own happiness.  Jesus says no.  And he takes a child to himself to say that everyone is important and no one is inconsequential, or less than others.  Everyone gets a say.  No one is ignored.  No hierarchy.  

Let us be of service to one another’s growth and not our own ego, or program for happiness. 

Finding God

 If I think I cannot find God, someone said that I should slow down and get off my beaten track, my routines and ruts, and busyness.  Think of this image given to me: you walk, not ride, down a road you rarely travel because it seems inconsequential for yours plans.  It seems like a lonely road, lightly traveled by anyone.  You come upon a shack or old house with a table out front and a sign that you note because you are not in a hurry and open to whatever appears.  The sign says, “God here.”  You go and sit at the table and wait, in quiet silence with no agenda, no hurry.  God shows up.  So if you say you are having trouble finding God in your routines, in your holy buildings, and usual prayers, busy getting things done, then maybe you need to be open to adventure.  God is not bound by our programs for certainty and happiness.  

The Mirror

 When I look in the mirror do I see the face of God?  No.  I see a mess, which is why I do no more than a quick glance when necessary, except when I shave.  So I guess I really don’t believe my Jewish Bible that says I am made in the image and likeness of God.  My Church says this too.  Ok, I believe in my head like I would believe an article of a Creed.  It does not affect my behavior.  To look at my face and see only problems, and not God, is to be self-absorbed.  It is all about me, isolated from anyone else.  But if I could just see with the heart that behind this face is the image of God trying to shine through, then it might affect behavior, which is what faith is suppose to do.  How Behavior?  Well, if I saw God in me, then it means God is in the face of everyone else who I see.  This would stymie my tendency to judgment of others.  It would affect my tendency to indifference about other people who are “different.”  So I will try to take a deeper and slower look into that mirror, and maybe into the mirror of my heart, in stillness and quiet.  

Caged

 For Catholics, the holy communion wafer is God.  We put God into the tabernacle after mass, until we need it again.  Unfortunately, for many of us, it is our way of "storing" God.  When you store some food, you are putting it into a safe place until you need it.  You have the control.  The food sits and does nothing until needed.  Catholics go and visit church and chapel because there is a tabernacle there where God is "stored."  We find God where we put the host when we last needed it.  I try not to get too caught up in this because God cannot be stored.  God is free to be everywhere, and is mystery, beyond concepts.  I still sit in the monastery chapel and visit with God in the tabernacle, but this is more of a comfort that helps me to focus on sitting in quiet and stillness, waiting upon the mystery that is within and around me.  I let go of a need for certainty, and fall into trust, sometimes slowly and sometimes quickly.  

Upbringing

 I had a wonderful upbringing in the Catholic Church of my boyhood in the Bronx.  I did not know at that time that our church building was only supposed to be the basement of the main church that would be built atop of it.  As a child, my church was big enough for me.  I loved being an altar boy and knew all the priests.  I did funerals, weddings, incense and knew the Latin by heart.  But we moved to the suburbs and I drifted away from being an altar boy, and did not connect much with the priests.  Daily mass became only Sunday obligations.  Now and again I would go and sit in an empty church by myself in College.  After college I just drifted off.  No faith crisis.  Just a lack of faith practice or prayer or God anything.  In Chicago, the nearby Cathedral was undergoing constructive repairs, so mass was in a funeral home.  I rarely went.  I had memories, but they were but fumes of spirituality.  I partied harder and worshipped less.  But my Power, God, never let me go.  So I have to frequently now ask, “What do you want of me?”  The answer seems to be “Everything.”  I have never been good at a split life, Party/Pray.  I am best being all in.  The partying was taking me all out.