Disguised Hiddenness

 Some people say that meditation is just doing nothing.  But this is not true.  Meditation is quite active.  It is probing for the disguised hiddenness of God.  It is so much more than looking for the God of your understanding.  This is not physics or a search for proofs.  The hiddenness keeps God “unknown,” but not absent.  A concept which is beyond understanding but then God is not a concept.  God is Love.  We probe by waiting which to the mind is counter intuitive.  Thus, the hiddenness of God.  Lot of trust is needed and patience to sit in meditation, not trying to make anything “happen.”  At times, the Presence may be experienced, but never understood by the mind.  So what is the point?  You become your Self and not an imitation of what your mind tells you to be.  

Exposition

 I like what we call in my church, “Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament.”  What?  Well, the round white wafer is displayed in a glass case for all to look at in church/chapel to help in prayer and faith.  I find a lot of silence and solitude at this time.  It is meditative.  But it can have a downside.  It can lead to and support “spectator faith.”  It can become sitting on the sidelines of world and neighborhood problems.  It can become a devotion of escape rather than respite from being involved in the problems to which Jesus referred.  What problems?  Read Chapter 25 of Matthew’s Gospel.  Or step twelve in an Addiction Recovery Program.  Step eleven is prayer.  Step Twelve is what ought to follow if we are going to stay in spiritual balance.  Recovery has a purpose beyond feeling happy, joyous and free.  

Short Term Enthusiasm

 The Apostle referred to as the “Doubting Thomas” reminds me of a lot of people who come to the monastery for retreat.  At the end of the retreat they are all fired up, like Thomas, who said in John 11:16, “Let us go die with him,” in reference to following Jesus heroically.  For a while the retreatant is fired up, but then stuff happens, the unexpected, that messes with their plans for following Jesus.  They end up clueless in trust, and courage.  They lose their way, and as Thomas says in John 14:5, a few chapters later, “Master, we do not know where you are going, how can we know the way?”  Without constancy in prayer, we all end up with a question, going nowhere.  Retreats are good but it is the daily dose that sustains us.  

My God

 I hear people say, “I have a God of my own understanding.”  Oh yeah?  Such a person is sitting in an office or wherever, preoccupied with something “important” to their ego.  The phone rings or someone knocks on the door, or stands in front of your door, desk, table.  They are not expected.  They want something.  You don’t want to be bothered.  You are preoccupied with important stuff to fill your sense of self.  You dismiss the person, say no abruptly, tell them you have no time.  They fuss but you are adamant.  They go away.  Oh. That was God, in disguise from the one you understand.  God does not have to submit to your god-image.  Anytime you are selfish, self centered and easily dismissive of others’ need, you have no God except the myth of your convenient understanding.  

Chosen Future

 Do we not define ourselves by our chosen future, our plans for the day or week?  You get up in the morning with a plan.  But stuff happens over which you do not have control.  Your plans come to ruins or serious interruption.  Your goals go out the window.  Why get angry?  Maybe you are not your plans.  Anger generally does not fix your plans for the day or future.  Someone got sick.  The car broke down.  Someone did not show up as “planned.”  Weather cancelled travel.  Why does your life have to be in ruins because your plans are derailed?  To live life on life’s terms is acceptance of what is.  Frantic, you never do the next right thing.  Just notice your breathing.  Let it slow down.  It is OK in those moments to do nothing, when action will only make things worse.  

Nothing Is Just A Feeling

 I hear people say, “ I went to holy communion, but got nothing out of it.”  What they mean is that they did not feel anything differently after receiving communion.  No consolations.  It is kind of like saying, “Thank you” when you did not feel you got anything.  Feelings are way too much the focus in any love relationship, human or divine.  When I receive communion I am giving God pleasure.  What?  God as I understand God, wants to give me unconditional love.  I don’t have to feel it to receive it.  Communion is a selfless act of giving someone else, God in this case, pleasure.  Few people get into anything to be selfless.  Think of making love to someone who loves you.  You may not “get anything” that is, a good feeling, but they are giving you their love, all of it.  God is not a one night stand.  

Belief

 A lot of people think that faith comes as a gift or from reading about religion or theology or whatever it is that requires a certain leap.  But I tend to agree with those who say, “Obey first and then faith can follow.”  Action precedes belief.  It is so in recovery programs.  You can read all you want about steps, history, testimonials but none of these things will get anyone sober.  They have to act, or “do the steps” with a guide person.  Religion is the same.  You cannot think your way into religion, or watch believers in their worship actions.  You cannot think about being selfless, as if that would make you selfless.  You leap into action first.  Action fulfills a void inside the person.  Action gets us out of ruts.  Was it not action that led to bad or meaningless behavior, a sense of isolation and emptiness?  So action in hope of change may take you into a new direction.  Hope might well precede action and faith.  

Holiness

 What is holiness?  I think that it is becoming who you are meant to be.  So many holy card pictures show us a colorful, but lacking in human qualities, persons who are declared saints.  I believe that there are far more undeclared saints who have become so because they became what God made them to be.  We tend to think of holy people as those who spend all their time in chapels, looking up at something, kneeling in ecstasy.  Well, if everyone were like that, not much would get done.  We think of saints as "nice," waiting for God to do all the heavy lifting.  But God is up against some very willful, selfish and greedy people who have no interest in God's plans.  So saints sometimes have to be pushy, willful, cajoling, indefatigable, in order to get through all that darkness.  Nice can at times be cowardliness covered over.  

The Calendar

 Teresa of Avila, a big time mystic in Catholic circles, is said to have died on October 15, 1582.  So that is her feast day.  But she did not die on October 15.  She died on October 5.  Well, what happened to those ten days?  They got erased, just like that.  Seems my Catholic Church is responsible for the Western Calendar, and its upkeep, called the "Gregorian Calendar," after a Pope of that name.  This calendar could not keep up with real time of sun and moon and earth spin.  So, over the centuries of our calendar, we gradually fell behind by 10 days.  Slow calendar.  Fast earth.  My church can be very practical, and does not like to fall behind.  It has ways of catching up.  So we dropped ten days, just like that!  Erased.  And it was just at that time that Teresa died.  OK for dying dates.  You are gone.  But what happened if you were born during those ten days?  Worse than Leap Year, which you get back every four years.  Anyway, we are falling behind again.  

Grace At Work

People tell me, "I have given up on sacraments.  I don't get anything out of them."  Upon inquiry, I learn that this means the going to Holy Communion in the Catholic experience, does nothing to make them feel good, or appeal to their mental faculties.  I am bemused.  Sacraments don't bother to stop and work on anyone's feelings or mental thoughts.  The body takes communion into itself, feels it, at that level, but then the sacrament immediately goes to where all power to change takes place, the heart.   Heart=deep, beyond thoughts and feelings and imagination.  That communion is about change, deep change, and no one ever had deep change from something they felt or thought.  You read or hear something, and really feel the enthusiasm.  "This will change my life!" you say.  And then it passes and you are still the same mediocre self.  "Feeling it" is a lot safer than transformation.  

Joy

 So your meditation is dry, tedious, no warm fuzzy feelings.  Does this mean that it is worthless?  No.  Why not change the reason you meditate?  Meditate to give God joy!  Your good feelings are not necessary for you or God.  Desire for good feelings, sense of peace and contentment, is really still on the realm of self.  Your prayer is all about you feeling better.  It is a subtle form of selfishness.  Meditation is not about you getting something but rather becoming something.  God is at work in your prayer, so not to worry.  Your life will change for the better, with patience and trust.  If you are in recovery and meditate to feel better, then you have traded in one addiction for another.  That is why you practiced your debilitating addiction, to feel better.  Feelings are optional in recovery.  Selfless service is not.  

Person

 The “I” of an individual is not the same as the “I” of a person. What? An individual has separate clear cut boundaries.  This would fit into an identification on a driver license and a social security number.  An individual need have no relation with anyone else to be an individual.  “Person” on the other hand is relational.  Person does not exist without a connection or bond to someone else.  Their “I” of person is relational, and therefore not separate unto itself as would be an individual.  The Trinity of God in Christianity is not three separate gods, or individuals, but rather three relationships that make for One.  Marriage would be relational within two persons.  The two are no longer two but one.  If either tries to hold onto their “individuality” their separateness, bad things and misery are down the road.  Individuals all share one thing, loneliness.  

Another Aspect

 My Christianity has had long bouts with trying to have power, control, and domination.  It can come across as "I am right and everyone else is not so right."  It can be practical in its organization to get visible results.  My religion is certainly big and visible and does a lot of good stuff.  So who am I to argue?  But there is another aspect of my Christianity that is not so front and center.  The interior, the silent and the contemplative has a long history and is making a comeback over the last several decades.  It is less buried in monasteries and old out of print books.  My religion gets its depth when it listens in silence to the still, small voice of the Holy Spirit.  The Paulist Fathers, of whom I am an unworthy member, relies on the direction of the Holy Spirit.  Such direction has no need to dominate.  Don't underestimate the power of silence and solitude.  

In Plain Sight

I need to work on "being in plain sight."  A friend said to me that she did not believe in God because she could not find any God anywhere in her life.  God is hidden.  Even the mystics say that.  If I were God, I would not be so hidden.  The problem is not that God is hidden, but that God wants to be seen through ME!  Oops.  I have bouts of bad behavior that comes from stinking thinking.  Maybe if I were to abandon myself to God, take a few steps on a daily basis, read some things that challenge my spiritual indifference, I would become a someone who reveals the God I am supposed to believe in.  Attitude, selfless action, acceptance, tolerance, patience and the list could go on.  One of the best ways for me to serve a doubter is by the way I live my life around them. 

Bury It

Some of us have rituals, routines, habits, that do nothing but try to bury anxiety.   We do the same routines over and over again, because anxiety does not die.  It simply gets avoided for a while.  So we go to the gym, watch some entertainment, drink, drug, make love, and for a moment we don't "feel" anxious.  Then we do, as anxiety shovels its way back up into our central concern.  So that it does not become all invasive, I tend to note that I have this anxious feeling, and maybe a reason for it, or not, and just take time to rest in silence and solitude, putting the anxiety to one side.  I note my breathing.  Slow down.  Whatever the problem or the anxiety, it will be there later if it needs to be.  Afterwards, I may get a solution, or the anxiety simply went away.  Sometimes, I have found, anxiety is a call to prayer.  Or maybe just make a call to a friend who might be on a spiritual path.  

Either Way

 God has two ways of teaching: blessings and lessons.  So when something happens and it does not feel like a blessing in my life, then maybe it is a lesson.  I did not get my way.  Things did not go as planned.  Does God hate me?  Or maybe there is no God?  I have come to realize that it is a lesson from God, the Teacher.  Become a student.  How does a student learn?  Listen.  Reflect.  Ask questions maybe.  And action.  Put the lesson into action and see what happens.  Sometimes the action is to not do something, to avoid a behavior that is dysfunctional.  You got drunk and wrecked your car?  You ask God, or complain to God, "Why did you not keep the car from being wrecked?"  Well, maybe there is a lesson here.  And you are still around to learn it.  

Holy Energy

 I once worked as a volunteer in a Welfare Hotel, all single rooms with poor, elderly, debilitated residents.  Someone volunteered me.  So I was way over my head in this work, with little enthusiasm once I saw the misery that I could not "fix."  The social workers all seemed to be under-enthused.  It was a depressing scene.  I had no particular spiritual life at the time.  No real prayer practice or steps to growth.  At  the end of the day I just wanted a drink.  Escape.  But I have come to experience volunteers who never seemed to lose their enthusiasm or at least their decision to act on behalf of the poor.  What was their secret?   Their secret was in plain site.  They had a religion, a spiritual practice on a daily basis that sustained them.  They did not rely on initial ideals, or a false sense that they would fix the world by sheer effort.  When they walked away, it was not for a drink, but for meditation or adoration or spiritual reading.  No oblivion for them.  

The Buck

 I don't think the spiritual path flourishes simply by meditation, regardless of the discipline.  It requires a response of service, recognizing a need and responding with action.  Some people who say they meditate, ignore a lot of mess around them, or if the notice it, might say something like, "Who is supposed to do this?"  It never occurs to them to step up and do the task that needs doing.  This is referred to as "passing the buck."  Action is really a small act of love, even if we are not "feeling" it at the moment.  One of the changes that comes from a spiritual practice of prayerful meditation is that we do things we might not really want to do, but need doing.  

Tough Days

 I find it easier to be good when I feel good, and when things are going my way, in a good way.  When I get my way because I am being selfish, then it is not a good day.  But what about the bad days?  Such days can go from bad to worse very easily.  And I am not even being selfish.  Just that stuff happens.  Then you don't want to be around me.  So I have to work hard on myself and my attitude on these days or moments in these bad days, as I call them.  First, recognize that things are not going well, but don't act it out on others.  Why should I multiply bad days around me?  Then I try some gratitude for what I do have, which is often a lot of overlooked things at that moment.  And if I have the option, walk away for awhile and be just with me.  Breathe easily.  Stretch.  Be with myself in quiet.  Things often pass, or at least are less overwhelming.  Sometimes I call someone just to say how I feel.  

Why Get Up

 In the Book of Tobit, in the Hebrew Scriptures, both Tobit and Sarah want to die.  It is in Chapter 3.  They are both having a miserable life, and people are making fun of them.  They ask God to take them.  So, I asked myself, "What is my reason for getting up in the morning?"  If it is to go to the bathroom or because I am hungry, then I don't have much of a life.  I try to get up with some gratitude and then purpose for the day.  Nourish my heart/soul.  Be of service to others.  Try to make the world around me, including others, to be a better place because I am sharing it.  There is the going to work, and there is going to work with a meaningful purpose.  How are you going to be at work?  Grumpy?  Resentful?  Whining?  If so, then maybe staying in bed is the best thing you can do for others.  Try gratitude to snap you out of it.  Works for me.  

The Exit Door

Pope Francis has asked my church to become a 'Listening Church."  This is difficult for an organization that is run from top down.  Not much listening in such a structure.  Nor can any organization ask questions unless it is willing to listen and dialogue.  Most of what comes from the clerical branch is self-professed knowledge, dogma and rules.  And lots of young people are exiting.  It is a conundrum to ask them why they left since they are no longer around to ask.  So the church speaks to the emptying pews by emphasizing "Real Presence" in the Eucharist.  The ones in the pews already believe in Real Presence of Jesus in the Holy Communion.   Or if those remaining are a bit skeptical or doubtful about such a dogma, no one bothers to ask why?  No dialogue.  You cannot evangelize if you won't listen or dialogue.  You have to listen to other person's stories.  I like hanging out with those who have gone out the door.  Great stories.   

Hostility

Hostility that remains buried within us can do us great damage, even destroy us.  It needs to come out and be faced honestly.  That is why when we have a practice of deep meditation, we often find such negative stuff coming up and ask ourselves why we are having these feelings if we are practicing this prayer?  Because the Power of God with whom we are in a more conscious contact is bringing this stuff up so we can look at it with some sanity.  We can see our side of the street, the fears we have, the hurts from past situations and so on. We see all the blaming we do.  We see how we blame and judge people today for stuff that happened in our past.  The healing begins to take place.  So don't expect meditation to bring you into an instant zone of "Ah" moments.  No transformation comes unless we face our demons with a power greater than ourself.   

Hidden Gifts

Do you feel sorry for Hellen Keller?  She was blind and deaf from a childhood fever.  She got help and did not wallow in her situation, the cards that were dealt her.  She did not feel sorry for herself.  She was led to discover how words, not heard or seen, awakened her soul.  She believed she had an inner spiritual life.  In the darkness of her blindness she was not distracted from seeing the Light, her God of love.  No TV or video to distract her.  In the silence of her deafness, she could better hear the still, small voice of God.  So if you have some problems that are not going to go away, maybe a different perspective is in order.  An alcoholic will always be one, but they can do something about that.  Today, I will not feel sorry for myself.  Too many possibilities are before me.  

The Bloom

 I was once like a blooming flower in outward appearance.  Ah youth!  But now I am past full blooming.  Like a flower, it does not last long.  Life is short.  Rather than get depressed, I like the idea of making peace with diminishment.  Someone said that diminishment is a quieting process.  Maybe that is why some people get noisier as they age.  They don’t accept life on life’s terms.  In a spiritual practice, we act on this acceptance.  We begin to surrender.  Like what?  Like stuff, all the stuff in the garage, closet, basement, attic.  We stop trying to do all things young.  Stop doing too much.  Easy does it becomes more of a reality.  We listen better.  We give opinions only if asked and admit when we have no clue.  We accept forgetfulness.  We are alive though.  We still have some purpose today.  Live.  But let live.  

Patches

 I like the image of being a patch.  All patches are different, but they can be woven/sewn together to make something useful to others.  It could be a blanket/quilt or a stuffed toy.  This says that difference does not mean separation.  Nor do you try to minimize the difference.  Different is just different, but can be connected to make a world, maybe a child’s world a better place.  God is the weaver.  For that matter the Creator made the world full of differences, but sees some connection.  Spiritual growth sees the connection.  Others see only the differences and toss patches into the garbage as useless scraps of material.  Nothing is useless to God.  My daily spiritual practice is a “mending.”  God is mending me.  Love is a stitching action.  Left to my own devices I can easily come apart.  Blog readers, we are all patches woven together.  I like that!

Conversion

 What is this “action of the Holy Spirit” in Christian contemplative practice?  It is about conversion.  Conversion is painful, which is why we might allude any gifts or actions of the Holy Spirit.  In the Bible there are seven gifts of the Holy Spirit but none of them come easily.  It takes work, patience and humility. Why?  Conversion begins with self-knowledge.  Not delusional ego-focused, fear-denying knowledge.  It is more like doing the twelve steps of recovery programs.  This is why many don’t do the steps.  Too self-revealing.  The Holy Spirit works best in a deep meditation practice.  Faults we might see without such prayer, but the depth of why the faults takes the gift of patience and practice.  With the revelation that most of our difficulties are of our own making, we become humble.  Ego is downgraded.  Then comes a depth of repentance plus a sense of the powerlessness to change on our own steam.  We surrender.  Then we try to make the world a better place.  

Belief

 When the Buddhists say they do not believe in God, I think it means that they do not believe in what we call God.  In the West, we objectify God as something, person, separate from us.  Buddhists are not about such duality, nor are Western mystics.  A deep contemplative practice reveals non-duality.  All is One.  Even when I say, “God is within me,” it can conjure up in an Eastern contemplative the idea of a little God walking around in the depth of my heart waiting for my attention.  Dialogue is difficult but love and acceptance of one another is not.  Some people differ with one another and the result is they hate the other and load up to destroy one another.  Trying to crush out differences is not the way of the contemplative.  I try to keep this in mind as I live in a world of differences.  

Happy

 I hope that you can enjoy a happy 4th of July today.  I am in San Francisco at the moment preparing for a reunion with my two sisters.  The three of us have not been together since way before Covid.  I am happy that we all have the freedom to travel within and out of this country.  We can all go to mass together and practice our religion.  We can talk about so many issues, with differing points of view and not worry about being reported to secret police, or liquidated.  I try to keep  our many freedoms in mind, as San Francisco is losing stores to economic stress.  My favorite bookstore just closed.  But when it was opened it was free to sell whatever it wanted, as it was a private bookseller store, not corporate.  So I hope you keep things in balance and have a good 4th of July.  

Courage

 I need courage to live a culture of encounter in communion.  I tend to the safer culture of judgment.  People are not all like me.  I tend to bond with like, and keep a distance from not like.  But I have come to realize that my world had become very small and confining when I kept only to Terry-type people.  It was safe and comforting, but shallow in growth.  Timidly, I approach the "other" the Frankenstein monster.  I ask about them.  I try to listen.  Be still my heart.  Then my mind says, "Oh, you are way different than me!"  But I keep my feet planted, facing the person.  Cowardice fights with courage within me.  But I keep responding to them with interest and they keep talking.  Then a miracle.  I actually become interested.  It is the encounter in communion.  What a bigger and more interesting world it is.  So many differences, and yet not so distant from one another.  

Tatters

 I often come to God in prayer with the tatters of my shortcomings.  My struggles, at that moment, seem to eclipse my good deeds.  Humility comes when I submit my scars to God.  I don't hide them behind my back, as if God cannot see back there.  Grace, God's love, becomes like a match that sparks the logs of my mess, and enkindles a fire in me.  The tatters seem to burn up, and peace comes upon me.  It is a restful peace that will better serves others. It is a sense of being happy, joyous and free.  I had nothing to give at that moment, but the seemingly heavy load of my mess.  God then did the heavy lifting.  That is God's job, not mine.  My job? Respond in love and service.  

Encounter

I hope that my prayer life develops into a spirituality of encounter.   Not one of confrontation or of a put down.  I think of the Visitation scene between two pregnant women, in Gospel of Luke 1: 39-56.  One woman is way beyond the normal age for pregnancy and the other with child but not with husband.  The young one does not say to the old one, "Wow, you will be way too old for that kid when it becomes a teenager.  You will look like a grandma!"  The older one does not say to the younger, "Wow, is your life a mess, pregnant out of wedlock."  Rather they welcome and support one another, accepting and celebrating their respective situations.  They respect and listen to one another.  Neither is looking for a "solution."  Being a support to one another in a loving relationship of service is the spirituality of encounter.