Saint Making

The Catholic Church is about to name Junipero Serra a saint.  He founded a bunch of Catholic missions in California before it was California., and introduced Christianity through these missions.  They are visited by many tourists to this day.  The Native American population takes issue with his canonization.  Serra traveled with the conquistadores.  They say he was part of the enslavement of the people and spread disease that wiped many of them out.  What struck me was that his defense said "he must be judged in the context of his time."  Say what?  I did not think saints were judged in context.  They did extraordinary good or they did not.  They lived quite exemplary lives or they did not.  If we want to start judging in the context of their times, Alexander VI, the Borgia Renaissance Pope did a lot of good things "for his time."  So did other renaissance popes but they will never be made saints.  They did some not so good things too.

Fairy Tales

In the Fairy Tales written in the Middle Ages and the time of Inquisition, elder women are always the witches, and the young beauty is the heroine.  The elderly woman is pictured as wrinkled, stooped over and ugly.  She is full of evil.  it is the time of "witch' burning.  It is a time when the wisdom of the elder woman is being devalued by male power and control.  Wisdom is in the institution and tradition, whereas the wise elder woman questions a lot of accepted practices.  She has the wisdom of years to pass on, but this threatens power structures not of their making.  The wisdom of years helps these women to see through those rules and customs that are more about control than growth.  In the fairy tale the elder woman is full of faults such as greed and jealousy.  She is destructive of goodness.  The young beauty is full of goodness though naive.  The solution for the young girl is often the handsome prince, the young male power who comes to save her.  The Wizard of Oz is a bit more modern with the good and bad witch, though the good witch is prettier than the bad witch.  The bad witch did get the Oscar though!  Age is not all about dying and losing.  It can be about gaining wisdom, but a wisdom that can be threatening to some.

Archbishop Romero

He was shot while saying mass in El Salvador during the was there.  He championed the poor and challenged an economic and social situation that did not help the great disparity between rich and poor which was at the base of the war in the first place.  His death was around 1980.  Thirty five years later he is finally declared the obvious, a martyr.  Some people might say that he was not a martyr because he did not die for the faith.  No?  When did the faith ever defend the few rich against the many poor?  I do not find this disparity defended in the bible.  Romero followed Jesus.  They both were killed by the power structure.  I wonder if the El Salvador wealthy tried to prevent him being declared a martyr?  It would be a quick road to sainthood for Romero and an embarrassment for the rich.  I guess you can ask them.  They are probably skiing at Aspen and Vail.

Andrea Carlo Ferrari

He was the Bishop of Milan, and died in 1921.  He was very much like Jorge Broglio, Francis I.  He was considered to be Pope material but he did not get elected in 1903.  Instead, Pius X got elected.  Pius was against the modern world and its new thinking.  Ferrari was not.  Their relationship cooled.  Pius got canonized, while Ferrari had to wait until 1987 to even become "Blessed."  Such is the politics of it all.  There but for Ferrari, I grew up in a fear based, medieval church, that did not care much to embrace the 20th century.  Saint John XXIII tried to open the windows of a stuffy church, but there were many Pius X types who tried to close it after he died.  I am enjoying Francis I, surrounded by so many anti-modernists.  There was a time when "pure" church meant you were ready to die for what you believed.  It got watered down to out of date rules, pomp and a good ole boys club.  The Holy Spirit is still at work though.  Keep the faith.

Angry At No God?

I know people that say God does not exist.  They get angry at talk or belief in God.  Why get angry about something you don't think exists?  What I often find is that these people believed in a God who was supposed to make the world "right."  The world is a mess, or their world is a mess, so God is not doing the job.  They are angry at God.  Then they move to "God does not exist."  But they stay angry.  I agree.  Their God does not exist.  That God never existed.  They need a fixer upper God and are angry that they don't have one.  It is a much harder work to figure out why God does not fix up the world if God is Love.  Many people don't want to do this hard work.  It takes a lot of silence, stillness, reading, meditation, and they just cannot be bothered.  So they stay angry at what they say does not exist.

Become You

When Jesus said, "Come, follow me," he did not mean become like Jesus.  He meant become all you were made to be.  Become the true you.  Jesus became all he was made to be.  You are not Jesus, except in moments of grandiosity.  Institutional religion says its people have to become like Jesus.  Institutions are about control.  If you become all you are meant to be you might not keep all the infantile rules made to control you.  That was Jesus' problem too.  So if you become who God made you to be, beware of institutions.  They may see you as the enemy.  That becomes your cross.  

Colonoscopy Spirituality

One does not usually connect the spiritual life with a colonoscopy procedure.  I did.  It happened this way.  The nurse said I had good veins but she could not get the needle to stay in the vein.  She took it out, stopped the bleeding and then did a second needle that took in a second vein.  By now I was getting a little dizzy.  She left.  I got very dizzy and hit the emergency button.  I thought triage showed up!  Fluid bag, oxygen in the nose, test for blood sugar, and heart rate.  I missed my slot for a colonoscopy I think, because they left me in the holding room for quite a while, though they came to check up.  So I got a chance to meditate, pray some verbal prayers and review my spiritual life.  I did not have any polyps.   My God seems to be everywhere.