A Good Man

 As we get on with our goals, I suggest a movie I recently saw on the TV.  It is billed as a “Christmas Movie,” but I think the point of it is quite profound for any season.  The title I believe is “The Good Man,” or “A Good Man.”  The financier has everything he wants, in power, control and money.  He left his girlfriend to get all this over a 13 year period.  But a kind of angel comes along, and he is sent back into what his life would have been about if he had married that young lady 13 years ago.  It all takes place on Christmas Eve.  Married to her, he has two children, is a tire salesman, and goes through what he sees as the family grind.  He knows his old life, but cannot seem to get it back.  This is the spell he is under.  What he comes to realize is that in this family situation, he is needed to sacrifice a lot of himself for others, including walking the dog at night and early morning.  They live in a house in New Jersey.  A 22 year mortgage remains.  In all this he discovers that he is loved and can be loving.  He now wants this life and not his old one.  But he wakes up and is back to his real life of rich and powerful, but without his love.  He goes and finds his girlfriend he dumped.  I cannot go on.  I am crying.  What would be your choice?  See the movie.  

The Effect

 I was watching the movie, “It’s A Wonderful Life” during the Christmas season.  It reminded me that when you are down about life and is it worth living, think about all the people you have affected in a positive way just by being alive.  It is a spiritual attitude as the movie shows with the angel Clarence.  We needs God’s help sometimes to see the positive in our life.  When I am thinking that my faults make me not much of a priest, I have to remember this movie.  Think about that yourself in your own life.  

Separation

 Separation of church and state is very important.  It keeps us from killing, or punishing those who are not of our tribe of belief.  The Founding Fathers knew this from religious wars in Europe.  Martyrs are created from religious disagreements.  You may still have a visceral dislike for people from another religion but it is against the law to punish them in the many usual ways they were punished or even killed in Europe.  Unfortunately, the same Founding Fathers did not have the same view of race, skin color or ethnicity.  You could enslave or lynch a person of black skin.  You can discriminate in various ways against ethnic groups that is harder to do with religious differences.  Even today, it is easier, more acceptable for a Catholic to live next door to a Protestant than for a black person to live next door to a white person.  Religion does not so much affect property value as does skin color or place of origin.  Christmas and Hanukkah were both celebrated on the same day in 2024, December 25.  No one got upset.  

A Cave

 Why was Jesus born in a cave and not in a nice house? Well, way before religions, God was first a creator of nature.  All nature hides the existence of the creator.  God is present to persons who are open to those moments when creation presents us with Presence, as in an awesome experience.  A cave is part of God’s creation.  A house is human creation.  So the creator prefers to come into what the creator made.  God is comfortable in nature.  Are you?  Take a slow walk in a park or any outdoor nature scene and maybe there you will discover something.  Just be open.  

Outsider

 If you ever feel like an outsider to God or any spiritual source, take a look at the nativity story in Christianity and Jesus.  Who were the first persons to whom the birth of Jesus was announced?  Outsiders.  Those cute shepherds were living out in the fields.  They were the poor, underclass, and dirty.  They were on the bottom of social ladders.  The next group were the Magi who were not even believers in Judaism.  But they were searchers.  So searching can be better than believing.  They knew that Jesus was a king, but that did not make them jump into any religion.  Search and be open to surprises.  God hides in plain sight.  

Coincidence

 Coincidence is God at work anonymously.  I was sitting at lunch with a priest.  I said I will be living more consistently in San Francisco after the new year.  He asked if I might help in his parish.  It is about as far away from where I live in San Francisco and still be in the city.  Six plus miles in a city like this is a long way away in time of travel.  So I went home and decided to get on a trolley and see how long it took for me to get there.  Something in me said my sitting with him at table and his asking me, was not a simple coincidence.  So I took the trolley to his church.  I knocked on the office door.  The woman who opened it said, when I introduced myself, she had just gotten off the phone calling me to do some masses.  I am meant to be at that parish for reasons that will become apparent down the road.  God has a plan.  I stumble into it now and again.  Stumble along into yours.  

The Call

 Each of us has a purpose in life, a reason we were created.  To find and live that purpose is the way to a full life, and a happier one.  It requires some trust that the creator, force or power that brought us about is at work when things don’t seem to be going our way.  Your vocation or call in life is not about getting your will, but in becoming your best self in spite of self-will.  Each day the call is lived out, matures and even shifts some, but it is the same you.  It requires some humility.  Your call does not make you perfect, but it does make you whole.  You are not all-powerful, so you need some humility.  Calls come with imperfection.  We accept our limitations.  We are human.  We can wear out, get sick, but that does not lessen or cancel the call.  It means we adjust, recalibrate and move on with the help of God the creator to live out the call.  

Holy Work

 Some of us think that if we do good work it will make us holy believers.  Well, atheists can do good work just like the believer, so do they get holy too?  No one gets holy by the work they do, but you can make the work holy by doing it.  Say what?  The work and way we do it responds to the holiness of a person.  Holiness begins with prayer and not work.  Prayer can be private or communal or both.  So we need to learn to pray in a way that changes us for the better, that is, makes us less selfish, whiny, irritable and controlling.  Prayer makes holy and then the work that results is done in a certain manner or attitude.  How is that? Well, meditate and you will discover it.  

Sentimental Stuff

 I notice that many people in my church are very taken up with sentimental devotionalism.  It makes them feel good and thus think feeling good is feeling close to God.  Maybe not.  It is close to one’s feelings and imagination for sure.  But it seems to me that God is beyond or beneath all that.  The level of prayer experience that ends in sentimental devotion does not change us on any deep level.  I know people who were in AA recovery and told me how good it made them feel.  The next day they drank.  Feelings can change moods but not hearts.  This is why I lean to mystical prayer.  It can be dry and boring.  Only love can make us continue.  God wants to be loved for God’s own self.  So what if a lot of mysteries that pointed to God have been debunked by modern science.  Assurances are gone and we are left with mystery.  God is in the darkness.  Be in your cave instead of always seeking one more well-decorated church building.  Jesus was born in a cave.  A baby.  No power.  A lot of work for Mom and Dad.  God is hidden to feelings so don’t worship your imagination.  Trust.  The ordeal by fire will change you.  

Me

 Me and My are words that imprison us.  These two words lock us around ourself.  Think of how many relationships you built up that start out with you talking about me and my.  No one is interested in making friends or spending a lot of time with someone else who just wants to talk about themself.  People who listen to others talking about themselves get paid to do it and for a good reason.  If someone, not paid, listens to you moan all the time about you, they generally get to feel sorry or pity you.  But they don’t become your close friend.  You become too much work for them.  So the next time you contact someone ask yourself if you started out with your problems.  If you are in AA you need a sponsor.  Bu life well-lived needs friendship and intimacy.  Hugging yourself all the time won’t do this.  

Swimming

 Anyone who learns to swim knows what it is like to swim first in insecurity and doubt.  “I don’t know how.”  “ I will drown.”  “I am frightened.”  But at some point they overcome all this by effort.  They get into the water and let go.  It is the letting go and flailing around that begins the process of swimming.  You let go.  you do it badly and with great effort.  Then you swim.  It all begins with insecurity and doubt.  Much in life is like that, learning to swim.  We lack fins, and gill, and fish tails.  But it is not so much lack that keeps us from accomplishments, as it is the fear that comes with insecurity and doubt.  So admit that you have these feelings.  Then just go for it.  You may do it badly at first.  In time and effort you will wonder what the fuss was all about.  

Flux

When people lose the ability to do something successfully, they see themselves in decline or at a loss.  But life is not a zero sum game.  Life is a series of recalibrations or flux.  We change rather than lose.  If you “lose” the ability to drink alcohol successfully, you have the opportunity to gain so much else in recovery.  If you lose a physical ability in one area, you recalibrate and gain agility in another area.  If you cannot see as well as you used to you learn to recalibrate the other senses in your life of flux.  It took time to do something in your past.  If you can no longer do that something, then you now have time to do something else.  We recalibrate to learn new skills and new enjoyments.  Life is a series of transitions.   

Hide And Seek

 Old people remember the game we played in the streets as kids.  It was called “Hide and Seek.”   You would try to hide somewhere so that the kid picked to find you, would not find you.  There was a goal, a spot on the street, or a tree, that decided who won.  If you could get to that spot before the searcher found and tagged you, then you won.  If not, the searcher or goalie won.  Meditation is like that in a way.  You hide, not from someone, but from your own surface self, of plans, ego, feelings, thoughts, and imaginations.  You hide behind desolation and darkness.  And God, Power, is the searcher.  The heart wants to be found,  The ego wants to get somewhere, a good feeling, a sense of success, a profound thought in meditation, as the goal.  Seek that and you will not be found by the God who dwells in that same secret desolation.  The heart wants to be found and the ego fights being found.  Wait and trust in your darkness and desolation.  God is there.  You will discover that your hidden place is a God place too.  

Desolation

 Meditation is about making a choice to do and relate, in spite of the desolation that comes with it.  Meditation strips away good feelings at times, because good feelings are simply that, good feelings, the emotional level.  Change takes place when we go through the desolation to a deeper place within the heart.  It is all about love.  You cannot love someone simply on emotional feelings.  They come and go.  And you cannot love someone unless it is a choice.  Covid left many people in silence and solitude, but it was forced and not chosen.  That was a forced desolation, not a chosen one.  Meditation is a choice each day.  Yes there will be good feelings, but they pass.  At some point, if we’re persist, we are taken, by a power beyond and within us, to a deeper place that seems all dark and empty.  Judge not.  It is really a door to transformation.  

Batteries

 Our spiritual batteries will go dead if we have too much activity without enough prayer and meditation.  Meditation is like when you have some device on the recharger.  Nothing seems to be going on that you can see.  The device just sits there while you wait for it to power up to 100%. In mediation you just sit there, seemingly inactive to anyone who might see you.  But you are recharging your spiritual batteries so that you can function sanely in the world.  100% spiritual recharge means that you will be more about doing the next right thing and less about selfishness and egocentricity to include fear, anxiety, restlessness and irritability.  You recharge your body with sleep.  Recharge your heart with meditation.  

The Future

 Don’t feel too sorry for older people, the elderly, if you will.  We are living our future.  We are not anxious about the future or fearful of what might happen.  It is happening now.  So we tend to live in the now, not so anxious about what will happen to the planet, the economy, or income.  We have achieved our sobriety about what we can do and what we cannot do.  We are maintenance people.  And we have wisdom as our gift to others.  We have been “there.”  So we pray for the young people.  They have much to learn, mistakes to make and a fraught future to live.  We pray that they will experience things that are wonderful, but which we will not be around for.  Let them think they grew up in the best of times as we think we did.  I grew up in the Bronx in the 1940s and 50s.  Just lucky I guess.  

Exhausting Self

 What we accept has a lot to do with what we expect.  If expectations are unreasonable then we will have acceptance issues.  So I pray for sanity, to be right-sized about expectations.  I have limitations that come with age and lack of certain talents.  So I don’t try to amass what is beyond me.  I don’t exhaust myself in fruitless efforts.  I think of younger people, applying for one thing or another, be it job, school, a team sport, trying to amass accomplishments so as to “win.”  Wh helps them to work on realistic expectations?  It must be exhausting, so much competition to get something or obtain something.  It can be exhilarating too, but a right balanced is needed.  I pray for this each morning.  I call it my prayer for sanity.  

Silence

 There is silence and there is silence.  The silence and solitude that was imposed on us by covid was oppressive.  A silence that comes from an inner energy of the heart is fulfilling.  I think we all need silence, but not if it is forced.  Telling a class of students to be silent does not do much for the interior life of the heart.  I have to remember that if I talk an about silence as a good thing some people will be turned off because they have bad memories from covid imposed aloneness.  Imposed silence only makes people want to go onto their cell phone or computers.  So I tend to read something first so that I am drawn into a more meditative space.  It keeps me off my cell phone.  

MOM

 My Mom was a great shopper and she liked to shop for the bargains but always good stuff.  Yesterday my sister, Jane, and I were in a big Sacramento mall.  We came across an Apple computer store.  I had no interest in anything there, but Jane said, “ Why not go in and see if they have sales?”  Now, I think this was Mom working through Jane to get me into the store.  I asked about key pads to see if they had a sale on the iPad keypad that costs $349.  No sale on that but one of the clerks said that they had other key pads over on a wall that do not connect to the iPad as my $349 one does.  He showed me a $99 keypad that is very small and light for travel.  I never knew they sold these.  You don’t know what you don’t know.  So I bought one as a Christmas present to myself.  Now I can go on the road and not have to carry a heavy keypad for my iPad.  Maybe it even works for my phone.  But the point is, Mom is still at work and she has been dead for over 20 years.  I still pray to her, and she comes through.  God at work.  

Malls

 Malls are the cathedrals of shopping.  I like cathedrals and malls.  I am a priest who likes to shop.  I have my Mom’s genes.  There is so much to see in a really big mall and cathedral.  I walk slowly through them and take it all in.  Now you ask what is so spiritual about a mall?  Well, God is everywhere and anonymous.  Where is God in the mall?  Shopping. God does not reject the consumer society but rather works through it to help people to see that the brief happiness that comes with a buy is not going to fill them up.  Plus, God might be enjoying them enjoying their brief happiness.  Another thing I like about malls is that I get to watch and reflect on the people.  I do this in churches too.  Then I pray that each person I see will come to know this Power that works in all of us.  I sit in a comfortable place in the food court of the mall and meditate too.  Then top it all off with some pizza.  No place is beyond finding God.  

Dwelling Less

 How do you dwell less on the negative?  Acceptance helps me. It helps me to not overreact to situations. It helps me to be more realistic. I am not the center of anyone’s world. So I don’t fantasize my plans and goals. I spend less time trying to please people and this gives me more time and energy for the important relationships in my life.  And to do blogs.  A few people wake up and check my blog. So for this I am grateful.  My important readers. 😇

The Shaped Heart

 I feel for high school students who apply to a college. “What do they think of me?”  Too much of this can begin to shape a young person’s heart. So I try to be positive about young people, encouraging them to be who God made them to be. Trying to be who someone else wants you to be or you think they want you to be, can stifle one’s natural, but not yet developed gifts.  College is where you are supposed to flower. I was a terrible, non-conformist seminarian. A lot of it was immaturity, but I did discover gifts I did not know I had. I think it is why I relate well to young people.  Or at least they say, “You get us.”

Outsourced

 The question, “Are you happy?” Is often outsourced to others.  It is good to ask yourself how important the opinions of others controls your happiness.  What if I preached what I thought was a solid homily, that I got across a certain idea, and no one said anything as they left church.  Would that affect my happiness?  I suspect it would, but maybe I am shallow. So I try to wake up and make my gratitude list, before I go into the world of my ministry. Gratitude for what I have keeps me balanced. 

Centered

 It is very difficult for a high school student and even a college student to have any centered-ness. They are pushed to thinking about and pursuing what and how is next. They cannot just be in the present moment in stillness. So much to do to get to whatever next level. It becomes a life mixture of ambition, fear and anxiety. Life becomes too busy with ambition so as to gather up successes, finish assignments and get the “to do” list checked off.  The contemplative, meditative life can only come after the crash or the sudden revelation that living in the future has no future that feeds the hungry heart. 

Generosity

 How many times do you begin your sentences with the word “my” when talking to others, or in your imaginary conversations.  I have gotten into this with medical and insurance issues. The relationships with others is becoming all about me and “my” problems, sufferings, injustices.”  Or sometimes “my” is about seeking greater glory and recognition.  Where is the generosity in my life?  Where is the interest in how someone else is doing or feeling?  There is never enough about me, so there is no room for the crosses or joys of others. Why would I want to hear about the joys and successes or difficulties of others if  MY focus is on ME?  Enough about me!

Celebrity

 There is the celebrity culture and we can all fall into it. I do.  It is generally full of pride and some fear.  You are dependent on what others are saying or thinking about you.  This can be me in the pulpit. I might say something really stupid or not in keeping with what people might want to hear. I could preach outside their comfort zone.  Or I could try to be popular, beloved. All this is celebrity culture. Fear and pride rule.  This makes the preaching all about me and not about a Power working through me.  I used to preach about my big sister Maureen so that people would like me and feel sorry for my being the suffering little brother. They all loved Maureen. So now I preach fire and damnation.  Now the people talk about me. I guess that is celebrity of sorts.  Fragile egos are heavy weights to bear. 

Anger

 What does anger do to you or for you?  It might take more out of you than it puts into you. For a moment you might feel relief from whatever was bubbling up. But then comes the damaged relationship, the guilt, remorse, and shame. Maybe loss of job or reputation. So when you feel anger rising up ask yourself what is the price?  Who else suffers?  There are ways to express anger that gets it out but does not do damage beyond the expression. My gym has a punching bag. Get the anger out but not at someone else’s or your own expense. 

Loss

 A loss is not always a loss. That is, it can be a “repositioning” as someone said.  If you lose keys you may have to get a new set. But what if you lose strength or agility due to injury or age?  You can remain depressed or angry or whine about this. Or you can reposition your life, adjust, to doing things in a new or different way. Maybe you use muscles you now need to overcome the parts that don’t work so well anymore. Or if you lose one of your senses you develop another to compensate somewhat. If I don’t run, then maybe I walk more?  Someone who loses the ability to drink safely can reposition themselves to enjoy sobriety. Loss can have gains, new vistas. 

Second Self

There is the true self and the false self.  But there is also a “second self.”  Stuff happens in life, especially if we live long enough.  I cannot run anymore because of hip and tendinitis.   But I can walk at a good pace.  When walking I get to look around and see things that I used to miss when I ran.  Running I had to always look down at the ground so I would not trip over something.  When I walk in Boulder I can go downtown and see all the Christmas lights.  The same in San Francisco.  People who cannot see very well learn to hear better and sense things around them better than when they had more perfect sight.  Plus, gratitude is quite possible when we lose some physical aspect to our life.  After the complaining and whining, we learn to appreciate what we do have.  Sober people don’t miss alcohol.  They are full of gratitude for what they do have and new possibilities afforded them in their new way of life.  

Communion

 For me, the word “communion” refers to all being the same.  You don’t have much of a community if it is focused on differences, better and worse, rich and poor, skin color or language.  That is why I like my religion.  It has the word communion.  It means, in part, that everyone receives same host, no matter whatever outer differences may appear.  My religion is less capitalistic in attitude.  People can sit wherever they want.  No red-lining.  All receive the host at a particular time.  No one gets more God than someone else.  It is the same in a recovery meeting.  Recovery is the great equalizer.  No one is better than someone else.  Mass and meetings can keep one right-sized.  

New Year

 Today is a “Happy New Year” refrain that fills the air around me.  Well, what will make it happy?  A little more being present in the morning to the present time, and not jumping ahead to planning the future, while skipping the present.  Before I make a lot of resolutions, I want to make sure that this day begins a series of “being in the present” in the morning before I run off to living in the future.  A future is a mess if not grounded in the present moment.  Happy New Year!