2/19/20 Aisling

 Dreams.

Dreams are an integral part of Celtic Spirituality. Dreams are twins, dreams that come by day are visions. Both are gateways into the divine, places we can't visit without imagination, places we must visit to work on those things we can't approach consciously.

Dream and Vision. Aisling augus Fís

I rarely remember my dreams more than an instant after I wake up. Even if I were to have pen and paper next to the bed, the dreams would be gone before I could turn on the light and blink my vision into focus. I don't mean to imply I don't dream because I do and I am aware every morning I experienced dreams during the night. I can often times remember a topic or theme but the details are simply missing. 

I would like to think I am having dreams we hear about in popular culture. Would it not be grand to wake in the morning to the vivid memory of standing knee deep in a river and casting a fly to a large willing fish? How about a dream of watching the sun melt in the western horizon leaving behind a glassy orange, gold and yellow cast on waves lapping at the edge of the world? How about to young again and to be standing hand in hand with your best girl gazing out off a towering cliff that is being pounded by angry waves driven by a now spent Hurricane. 

Those aren't the kind of dreams I have. Mine tend to arise out of replaying a conflict at work that might not have actually happened but just might. Another topic is somehow trying to still find closure on relationships that ended 40 or 50 years ago with people I never think about in the daylight. How about the crazy ones like you get an email wondering why you are not attending a class you registered for and, oh by the way, you have to pass the class to graduate. Those are not the kind of dreams I would chose if I could control the process but those are the dreams that are chosen for me because dream time is the only time my bullheaded ego will allow God and the Holy spirit to dig up buried conflicts I need to resolve. There are times I wake up so frightened that I can't face getting out of bed but I have no recollection of what scared me. Other times I am so angry I often catch myself trying to continue whatever argument I dreamt of with my poor wife even though she probably wasn't even in the dream. 

Dreams have a twin companion that visit us by day. We call dreams that visit during wakefulness day dreams but that does not give them justice and the common understanding of day dreams is they are the past times of lazy people who are slow to step up what is needed in the moment. Let's call them visions because often that is what they are and they can be as much sent by God as are dreams. I have lots of visions. Too many, sometimes. 

Rather than chase that thought lets came back around to why dreams are important spiritually. 

Numbers 12:6
He said, “Listen to my words: “When there is a prophet among you, I, the LORD, reveal myself to them in visions, I speak to them in dreams.

We know God chooses to speak to us during dreams or visions. Why? Because we are defenseless and we become willing to go where we are lead, to see what is shown us and to year what is told to us. The ego can't get in the way. 

As men, husbands and fathers, the best example of God coming to us in dreams is in the example of Joseph. An angel came to him and first spoke of God's will that he accept Mary and again when he was told to carry Mary and Jesus to Egypt and a third time when he was told in a dream it was time to come back to Israel. 

Think also when Elijah was called by the Lord.

1st Kings 19

Then the LORD said: Go out and stand on the mountain before the LORD; the LORD will pass by. There was a strong and violent wind rending the mountains and crushing rocks before the LORD—but the LORD was not in the wind; after the wind, an earthquake—but the LORD was not in the earthquake; after the earthquake, fire—but the LORD was not in the fire; after the fire, a light silent sound.

When he heard this, Elijah hid his face in his cloak and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. A voice said to him, Why are you here, Elijah?

Why was he there? Because he was without direction and did not now what was expected next of him. He was caught in threshold, unable to go back but uncertain where to go next. In this vision God engages him in way that caused him to listen and then gave him direction. God, through the vision, gave Elijah what he needed go forth through threshold from where he was to where he was meant to be. So it was with Joseph and so it is with us. 

As I look back and reflect the times when I have stood on a threshold uncertain, frightened, and confused, it was only after extended time in prayer that allowed me see with some clarity the choices before and to discern between what most likely was the will of God and what might have been my own will. It was only the quiet, protected place where my ego could not enter that it became possible to step forward. I have learned this through the experience of having chosen wrongly and then having to correct course. 

I want to finish with a quote and then a poem from John O'Donohue who had a great insight in to the human presence. Often times I can think deeply on a subject and then later look to see what John might have had to say about the revelation I uncovered only to find he said what I wanted to see with a prose made of honey and insight. This comes from "To Bless the Space Between Us":

It remains the dream of every life to realize itself, to reach out and lift itself up to greater heights. A life that continues to remain on the safe side of its own habits and repetitions, that never engages with the risk of its own possibility remains an unlived life. There is within each heart a hidden voice that calls out for freedom and creativity. We often linger for years in spaces that are too small and shabby for the grandeur of our spirit. yet experience always remains faithful to us. If lived truthfully and generously, it will always guide us toward the real pastures.

Looking back along life’s journey, you come to see how each of the central phases of your life began at a decisive threshold where you left one way of being and entered another. A threshold where you left one way of being and entered another. A threshold is not simply an accidental line that happens to separate one region from another. It is an intense frontier that divides a world of feeling from another. Often the threshold becomes clearly visible once you have crossed it. Crossing can often mean the total loss of all you enjoyed while on the other side it becomes a dividing live between the past and the future. More often than not the reason you cannot return to where you were is that you have changed, you are no longer the one who crossed over.

How profound is that? We can't return because we were not longer the person who crossed over. I also thing it is true that once we reach the threshold we have changed already, it is why we traveled to that point. 

Finally this also from the same book: 

For longing ~John O’Donohue

Blessed be the longing that brought you here
And quickens your soul with wonder.

May you have the courage to listen to the voice of desire
That disturbs you when you have settled for something safe.

May you have the wisdom to enter generously into your own unease
To discover the new direction your longing wants you to take.

May the forms of your belonging–in love, creativity, and friendship–
Be equal to the grandeur and the call of your soul.

May the one you long for long for you.

May your dreams gradually reveal the destination of your desire.

May a secret Providence guide your thought and nurture your feeling.

May your mind inhabit your life with the sureness with which your body inhabits the world.

May your heart never be haunted by ghost structures of old damage.

May you come to accept your longing as divine urgency.

May you know the urgency with which God longs for you.

When we bless someone, we activate the holy spirit to come into the presence of the indwelling spirit of both ourselves and those whom we bless.

When we bless, the blessing is gifted back to us and so we all share in the power of the spirit. Thanks be to God.

Cobhsaíocht

Isaiah 30:21

And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left.

Last week we introduced the spiritual concept of Thresholds. Today it is time to think about transitions, something inevitable when you pass through a thresholds.

When I get home from work, my tendency is to rush around like I am looking for a lost set of keys. On the trip hope I will more likely than not thought out a plan of what I will do and then the minute I step foot out of the vehicle. I walk down to the box to see if there is mail to be picked up. I don't know why I bother, my wife will have picked up the mail when she was home for lunch at least 95 percent of the time and then takes it to work with her rather than bringing it back in the house before she goes back to work. Still, I check, hoping I will be surprised to find the mail is still in the box? Why? I have no idea. It is rare to get anything interesting delivered by post anyway.

After checking the mail, I will gather my bag and whatever else needs to come back in the house. In rapid succession I:
Check out the bird feeders
If the cat does not meet me at the door, I look around to make sure she has gotten locked in somewhere.
I take off my jacket and hang it up.
Going into the bedroom I change from day clothes to after work clothes and then lay out my clothes for the next day.
I refill the CPAP tank and take my evening medication regimen.

The list continues but I think I made the point. I have a routine and it is almost as if I am trying to shave seconds from the time needed as if I were in a race.

This kind of behavior is in direct contrast to one of the basic creeds of Benedictine life which is to move gracefully and with intention from one activity to the other so as to not miss the grace available in the moments of passage. Slow down, I have to sometimes shout at myself, there are no deadlines to be met, only intentions to fulfill.

What intentions? Let's pause for a minute to talk about them.

The Latin word Statio comes from the Rule of St. Benedict and it means to be stable or stationary.. There is work to be done, things that need to be accomplished but the they need to be completed through stable, not rushed or awkward movement. Have you ever watched how Monks file into the choir for prayer liturgies or how a priest moves around in the sanctuary? Slowly. Deliberately. Gracefully. Peacefully. Compare how confident a senior server seems when compared to an edgy nervous youngster in their first months. I have been working 43 years and yet I come home from work like I was shot out of a cannon. For that matter it might be how I come to work as well.

What has statio have to do with Thresholds? When it is time to cross through, it is better to be stable than hurried, deliberate rather hurried, confident rather than frightened.

Ok. There it is again. The fear thing. Thresholds terrify because they are really nothing more than gentle words to describe a change that may or not be gentle. Thresholds of a day tend to be pretty peaceful. Thresholds that led to a change in the direction and character life are not as simple.

I have come to recognize 4 major stages life which are marked with certainty. First is the transition from being at home to going to school. The second stage, school, lasts until the education phase of life is largely complete. The third stage is our vocational life which is really the defining time of our life because it will determine how the fourth and final stage of life will play. I have yet to come up with a good name for the fourth stage. The obvious answer is retirement but is more complex than that. It would be too morbid to think of as the waiting period for before death. With respect to myself, I hope it is an avocational stage when I will be able to do the things I have longed to do in greater measure such as reading, writing, service, teaching, traveling and so on.

As the time to pass through the threshold suddenly looms after a lifetime of anticipation, I find myself being both driven forward by a desire to be done with a career that has never been fulfilling but has been successful, at least in some ways of thinking about it and yet the sheer fear of the unknown of what awaits pushes me back against the relenting winds driving me forward.

I have of late developed the practice of integrating a way of creating a space of grace where I can consider a threshold before either stampeding through hell bent for an outcome or freezing up in fear until the share force of the weight of decision shoves me through.

Here is the list of steps, first in Irish.

Sos
Machnamh
Gui
Gniomhu

Now English

Pause
Reflect
Pray
Act

The hardest part of the process is to actually pause when the momentum of life is shoving you forward. It takes practice and the need to be kind to yourself when you fail to pause first but there is a distinct benefit to making the effort. I have been finding peace and calm when making decisions and my outlook for the future has brightened and is brightening.

When frazzled, spending time in the Wisdom books can be a comfort. Consider this. 

Proverbs 3:5-6

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.

Tairseacha

On a recent January Sunday morning I arose well before the dawn, made a pot of coffee and Lori settled down for our early morning prayer, meditation and contemplation time. She reads random selections from the Bible and I pray the Hours. She then spends some time in meditation, and I engage in the first novice steps of Centering prayer.

I have always been drawn to times of change in the rhythm of the day. During the winter I will pull open the drapes even though it might still be pitch black as though it were in the dead of night. As the hour unfolds, I try to watch the gradual shift from darkness into light. The shift of colors is something watch, and I find myself disappointed some days when there are clouds enough to block the sunrise but not enough to bring out the ambient glow of the early day that come when there is a thick overcast sky.

On this day, there has been a heavy frost even though the temperature had not dropped more than a degree or two below freezing. Hoar frost clung to the myriad of branches of my beloved tree and on all of the other shrubs in my sight around the yard. I thought it curious how the frost seemed to gather light that was still just a promise to come and allowed it to glitter light gray against a dark blue and black backdrop. The sky was jet black which promised a clearing sky by daylight although I could not see stars through the pane glass windows.

I had filled the feeders with peanuts and cubes hoping the corvids might come to visit. Strangely enough they seem to have slowed down the visits to my feeders and when they do come they rarely consume everything except for the loose peanuts I might spread on the ground. As I finished up prayer I noted the dawn had begun to slip in and their flittering shadows zipping and pausing the through the tree limbs. I noticed the feeders were spinning and swinging as if they had been hit by some invisible force. The corvids, crows who have been hit and miss since the onset of winter, ever faithful magpies and my frisky smaller jays materialized out of the dark to literally buzz the feeders. They remained coal black in the predawn light, even the blue jays were still without any other color, not even gray yet. I had never experienced visitors to the feeders before first light but here they were dive bombing the feeders light fighter planes buzzed ships during the war. A constellation of frozen shards and crystals showered down from the tree, knocked loose by the fervent flights of the birds darting through the branches to steal a turn at the feeders. 

They continued to fly sorties against the food stores until well after dawn and were still raiding the feeders as we left for church. I felt more at peace than I had for months.

The story and lessons I learned that day are too broad and too deep to convey all at once in once setting so I will break this telling into three parts with just few comments about the direction of journey.

I have long been fascinated by the theology and Spirituality of the Celts and I have become nothing less than a disciple of Irish poet John O'Donohue because of the way his words can awake the unknowable and unseen in a human to suddenly feel a connection with is known and can be seen.

All of life is spent in a threshold where we are caught in perpetual coming and going. No matter where we stand, we are always on the verge of step into what is to become. There is no resting, only brief pauses while we catch our breath and consider where our next foot fall will land. In this year, I am standing threshold of a crucible as I move from a lifelong vocation into the next lands of avocations. Every second there is another hope and the next a fear that is followed by fear and then comfort of something precious to come into play.

Thus says the Lord:

Stand at the crossroads, and look,
And ask for the ancient paths,
Where the go way lies; and walk in it,
And find rest for your souls.
-Jeremiah 6:16

Crossroads are decision points and the pondering of which direction to go places us in a threshold where we not only must choose whether to retreat, remain or proceed forward but to also choose the way we will go forth. It is a near certainty that to be on the threshold means there is no option to turn back nor is there any hope of remaining in place. The winds of life only blow us ahead of themselves and we can never do more than pause until we are too exhausted to resist and have to the forces of life push us onward.

Jeremiah, speaking to the ancient Hebrews warned to stand in the threshold and consider carefully which way to go. What are the ancient paths? We can look to our faith history and understand what they are and where to find them. Don’t choose as Cain did and throw himself down a road of betrayal. Choose as David did, seek forgiveness and for the wisdom to make right decisions. The message to us is to choose the path the Lord has planned for us. The trip will be far simpler but not always easy.

Take this passage and make of it a personal Lectio Divina this week. What is God trying to teach you as you study the versus? Don’t just take what I have said as being the full truth for that is a cape you must make for yourself.

My blessing this week? May you find rest for your soul.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Gl1bECIx0E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGXrKaFt8EE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ec77ClWz1g0

Who Is Your Goliath?

First Samuel 17
David spoke to Saul:

 “Let your majesty not lose courage. I am at your service to go and fight this Philistine.” But Saul answered David, “You cannot go up against this Philistine and fight with him, for you are only a youth, while he has been a warrior from his youth.” David continued: “The LORD, who delivered me from the claws of the lion and the bear, will also keep me safe from the clutches of this Philistine.” Saul answered David, “Go! the LORD will be with you.” Then, staff in hand, David selected five smooth stones from the wadi and put them in the pocket of his shepherd’s bag. With his sling also ready to hand, he approached the Philistine. With his shield bearer marching before him, the Philistine also advanced closer and closer to David. When he had sized David up, and seen that he was youthful, and ruddy, and handsome in appearance, the Philistine held David in contempt. The Philistine said to David, “Am I a dog that you come against me with a staff? Then the Philistine cursed David by his gods and said to him, “Come here to me, and I will leave your flesh for the birds of the air and the beasts of the field.” David answered him: “You come against me with sword and spear and scimitar, but I come against you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel that you have insulted. Today the LORD shall deliver you into my hand; I will strike you down and cut off your head. This very day I will leave your corpse and the corpses of the Philistine army for the birds of the air and the beasts of the field; thus the whole land shall learn that Israel has a God. All this multitude, too, shall learn that it is not by sword or spear that the LORD saves. For the battle is the LORD’s and he shall deliver you into our hands.” The Philistine then moved to meet David at close quarters, while David ran quickly toward the battle line in the direction of the Philistine. David put his hand into the bag and took out a stone, hurled it with the sling, and struck the Philistine on the forehead. The stone embedded itself in his brow, and he fell prostrate on the ground. Thus David overcame the Philistine with sling and stone; he struck the Philistine mortally, and did it without a sword. Then David ran and stood over him; with the Philistine’s own sword which he drew from its sheath he dispatched him and cut off his head.
Hmmm. Familiar story, I should say. Who did not know how this was going to end? Of course this one of stories from the Hebrew Testament that is more cultural than religious. We see references to underdogs taking on overwhelming odds only to come out on top because of the righteousness of their cause every day. Marvel Comics is based upon that very idea. With faith and a stone, good will trump evil. One of the fun things about growing Methodist was the opportunity to go to Sunday School on a weekly basis. By the age of 10 I was well steeped in the stories from the Hebrew testament. Moses in the basket saved by the princess. Joshua blowing the horn and walls of Jericho fell down. Samson and Delilah, it looked grim for a second and then he pulled to walls down to smite the bad guys. Noah and the Ark. Let's be honest here. The Hebrew Testament makes for pretty interesting reading if you don't give a hoot about the faith lessons they are intended to be rather than historical records.

The rub, however, is we know that the good guy with bravery up the wazoo and absolute conviction in his values which propels into the breech does not always win. Sometimes bad guys take the day. If we look first at Goliath, consider how many lives he took in previous battles with the Hebrews. There was a history of confrontation in which the hero's were struck down by the dozens. Think of the Charge of Light Brigade. How about the Alamo? As long as we are in Israel, how about Masada? There is more recent example that I keep thinking about where the success of one righteous man would have changed the course of History. In July 1944, Claus Von Stauffenberg had a grand idea about ending the war. He would carry a bomb in a briefcase into a meeting with Hitler and then kill Hitler with the bomb. The plot was nearly perfect except Hitler sat on the other side of pillar from the bomb and was protected from the blast. Just think of the lives that would have been saved both on and off the battlefield and in the camps. Von Stauffenberg was convinced the war was going to be lost because of the successful landing at Normandy and he wanted to save Germany the protracted destruction he knew was going to continue. Hitler lived. The war continued and nearly 5 thousand were executed for real or imagined participation in the conspiracy. 

What does this all mean for us today? To not rely on faith when it is time to confront something evil or destructed to your well being? Of course not. After all, the good guys eventually won the war and put Hitler and his gang in the ground, except for the ones who got a way to live out their lives as janitors in places like Winnetka Illinois. 

Our battles are not just about politics, power, riches or influence. They are about who we are as people, how we see the world and interact with others all while trying to operate under the expectation we honor the will of God and to live in accordance with his plans for us. 

Coming back around to David and Goliath, there is something for us to learn today. We are all locked in combat just as David was with Goliath. Our very spiritual existence is at stake. As one who is plagued by fear, I need to carefully some rocks for spiritual warfare and prepare to hit the enemy head on. I have a Goliath to engage, confront and overcome. My Goliath wells up from inside me. He is me, he is my ego. The rocks are tools I need to protect the person I wish to become from the person whom I might become if my aim is not true.

A hallmark of RSD (rejection sympathetic dysmorphia) is the speed with which the symptoms can strike. One minute I am bebopping along and the next I will have been engulfed with negative emotions because somehow my fragile self esteem took a hit. In recent months I learned that humility is the bag that holds the weapons I need to defend myself and those I love from the baseless reactions that can redefine a day that was good into a day of conflict.

I have a bucket of rocks to sling at Goliath and some days I bonk with more that other times the stones just sail by him. The point is there is not just one grand defining moment when Goliath takes it in the forehead, goes down and the battle is over. Every morning, Goliath gets back to his feet before I can get close enough to end the struggle forever. Every day I have to drag the bucket of stones up to confront him and have the courage to make the first throw. That first throw, however, can be overwhelming and can require effort that I can muster. The problem, you see, is I have to want to take on my ego, to knock him down so I can prevail even just for a moment. The problem is harder than you think. Sometimes is just to easy and familiar to wallow in the anger and hurt than it is to take the Herculean first step toward recovery. On those days Goliath wins and what is lost is not just my attitude but my relationships with people who are beyond measure in value to me are hurt as well.

If I can just make up my mind and gin up my courage to take a look at the hurt to see if it is real, the image of Goliath fades and the sound of his taunts becomes lost in the breeze of the spirit. This imagery came to me at Mass this past Sunday. When the time for Eucharist arrived, I realized that the bad guys have already lost because of the surrender of life offered by Jesus. In the end, good will prevail. Today, however, evil still has power over us on an individual basis just as Goliath clearly had the advantage over David. We can lose battles but with faith we will never lose the war. We will overcome if we believe we will. That what God wants for us and it should be what we want for each other. 

As we close, I offer this question for you to ponder. Who is your Goliath?

From Where I Stand - Looking Back on the Reboot

In two days time I will be 14 months out from what I called a "reboot" and I will also be 12 years out since I was reborn with a second chance at life.

When I "rebooted" a year ago, I cataloged a long list of things I wanted to cultivate. The results, as I look back over the year are mixed. Some changes have taken and have been a success. I have broken or, at least, weakened my attachment to things. The need to consume, to acquire or to buy has diminished to a mere shadow of the past. It is not completely banished, there is more to be done, but, if anything, the desire for material things is continuing to shrink. Good.

As I read over my journal entries, I see noble and well considered intentions to make wholesale changes to be a better man, husband, father, friend and so on but what I don't see is any intention to put all these things to God and to give God input into what he wanted me to become. The problem is I was focused on labels, names that people can call me that point to me being a good, honorable and God fearing man. I was completely focused on externals, on how the world sees me but not how I see myself when I ask the question, God what is your will for me. My false self was still in charge even though my true self was kicking at the door to escape and grow into what I was meant to be.

The year has been both awesome and awful. The arrival of Jane marks the high point and a new leaving off place as we, Lori and I, think and marvel into our future.

It has been an awful year for my ego but I have to add the mistreatment my ego encountered has been long overdue. It is time for that miserable thorn in my side to be vanquished. I have seen in dramatic clarity the havoc the false self I mistakenly nourished has caused. A I result I have embraced an immense amount of pain, sorrow and regret but I am slowly coming to understand while the misery is real because the things damaged are not real but are simply constructs by mind of a small boy who was only attempting to frame a sense of understanding of the world and his part in it.

How curious it is that an imagined hurt suffered by an imagined belief about myself can be so persistently painful for so long and lingers on after the false self has been found to be a traitor and enemy of the true self.

As I look back over the years since I came in from the dark, it is readily clear this past year has been the most, hmm, what is the right word? Actually there might not be a word but it will take several. Much has been revealed. More has been learned. Even more has been experienced.

Let's see. I found myself experiencing a real crises of identity. After a lifetime of being willing to step to be a leader and suddenly found myself questioning why I was motivated to seek something that often ended up making me miserable because of the stress caused by a mismatch of ability and demands. When you see yourself as a leader, a manager or a motivator, it is hard to recognize who is looking back at me in the mirror now that I am no longer in that role. What's more, I found myself questioning what I what to be a part of much less being a leader in that thing whether it is at work, in the church or elsewhere.

I acquired some new labels. ADD and RSD. We now understand that things like ADD are not black and white but fall on a spectrum. I clearly have some things that fall on the spectrum but RSD also seems to be something that as a spectrum. RSD? Rejection Sympathetic Dysmorphia. In layman's terms, I am overly sensitive and "get my feelings hurt too easily." What should either be so minimal as to not register can flare me up into a major hurt and I either withdraw as far as I can get or lash out at someone, usually my wife but sometimes at co-workers or family. When it happens, it happens just a when a balloon bursts or a gunshot goes off. The lag time between trigger and response is so fast that I can't even see it coming. I don't even have a needle in my fingers or a gun in my hand when I trigger yet the force of the blast can be bewildering.

I learned some other things. I am an Enneagram type 6 which means I was born to live in fear and anxiety about virtually aspect of life. I wake up in the morning like an antelope on the prairie and within seconds I am often in full fight/flight mode so I have to wonder if it is time to start running or just put my head down and use my horns to take on whatever might be threatening me. The trouble is there is nothing real to fight or even to run from and it hard to respond to a figment of my imagination.

Also, it was revealed that I am an MBTI ISFJ. There are lots of good things about ISFJ and Type 6 but a common theme is that I am sensitive to push back, confrontation and criticism. Nothing revealed was particularly surprising even though several common areas all validate who I am and how I react to the world.

The reality, however, is that as interesting as of these discoveries might be, they really don't matter. If I have thoroughly understood the overarching message, my personality is just that, personality. What does matter is how well I can develop the skill to separate external factors which I might think impact my ego or self-esteem. The notion that what other people think of me is, bluntly, none of business. The only thing that matters is the opinion of God and the fact he loves all of us unconditionally has been pounded into my head on a daily basis for at least the year and on a frequent basis for the preceding decades back to when I reached the age of reason, whatever that is.

The hardest message for me to accept in the AA big book is the statement that if am disturbed, not matter the reason, the problem is with me but not anything or anyone else. It is not that I spend the day being vigilant for slights or insults, but there is nothing I like more than to feel entitled to good old fashioned self-righteous anger if I have been wronged. My default is to seek to always be right. After all if I am not right, I must be wrong and what use am I if I am wrong. My whole sense of worth is balanced on that narrow, wobbly rail and I tend to fall off of it more than I can stay balanced on it. One peculiar aspect of a relationship I have a with a co-worker is she gets no value out of me if I am right because being right robs her of the ability to tease me, something that we both like, as confounding a notion as that might be.

The need to be right is not good for any relationship, however, when all focus is on focus is on being right instead of being motivated to do the right thing. Being right and doing the right thing are not always lined up. In fact they can be mutually exclusive if I lose sight of the fact that the most important response to anything is to first be kind. I consider myself to be a kind person but being right can pervert that impulse as quickly as striking a match.

The thing about the reboot is that no ground once taken remains forever taken. At any minute of any day, the ground can be to slide like sand turned to slurry by a sudden storm. About the time I decide to say I am just going to sit here for a while and watch the clouds float by, I get hit but an unexpected rain that sends me scurrying for cover while cursing the heavens. This is not a good program for happiness. 

Still, if I were to have to offer a definitive response to the question of whether I am better off today than I was 14 months ago my swift and unswerving answer is yes. Without the silly uproar created by a dramatic plan to reboot the reboot, I intend to keep growing. I have to. The alternative might levy a cost I can't bear to cover. No might here. The alternative would separate me from what I hold most dear. 

Today was not so good. Neither was yesterday nor the day before but none of them bear resemblance to the misery of only 14 months ago. Tomorrow will be better but if not tomorrow than one day this week and we will be off in the right direction again. 

Advent Week Four

There is one school of thought that the Christmas actually extends even beyond the Baptism of the Lord up to the Presentation of the Lord on February 2 so I can weakly argue we can still talk about Christmas. No matter if it is still Christmas or not, we can always talk about the focus of Week 4, Love. When would it not be a good time to talk about Love?

Even so, we are just now taking a breath with the first week of Ordinary times so this whole discussion might feel anticlimactic. When we realize that Lent is steaming in on us in just another 6 weeks, we might even further consider it is too late to take up this topic. Too bad. We are going to take it up anyway.

Why? The message of love we hear at Christmas is timeless and eternal but how we understand love changed completely with the birth of Jesus. The Hebrew people preached, lived and believed the God of Abraham, Isaac and Moses was a God who loved beyond all measure but it was a love of God for his people. There was missing part for us, the thing that makes God's love personal for us. In the person and divinity of Jesus, we as humans can relate to the nature of God even if it is far beyond our ability to understand.

The thing that has always puzzled me is how Jesus taught us to love. Yes, he told us to love on another. He challenged us to love God and devote ourselves completely to Gospel. What brought the message of love home, however, is found as much in what he did as what he said. In the miracles we saw the love expressed in a way that made it real. Even if we can dismiss the miracles as being something reserved for the divine, look how he related to the Samaritan woman. What keeps us from offering the same message of love? How about when he simply said, let the one without sin cast the first stone? How about the exchange with woman at the table when she requested he look past her foreign status.

Love is not a noun or a passive verb, it is an action word. To love means to act in a way that wills the good of another as Thomas Aquinas taught. I have been educated recently about how the service that flows from love really works. It is not just about feeding the poor or caring for the sick. For me it is much more close up and personal. I work in a job where I communicate with people who have been injured on the job. Instead of just robotically delivering a product or doing my job by rote, I can remind myself of the humanity of every single person I come into contact every hour of the day and that no matter the circumstances, I can do my job with love even if the message I have to communicate is not what the listener wants to here. I can treat my co-workers with love and charity, giving them of what I have which is sometimes more than I can begin to imagine is inside me to share

This causes me to reflect back over the past 40 years. Have I always acted with love guiding my actions? Hardly. That is not to say I have continually failed to be kind and understanding but sometimes the people who needed it most from me where the same ones I was most reluctant to treat with kindness and empathy.

In recent months, we have been hitting this spirituality thing pretty hard and we have dealt with difficult and complex emotions and relationships. Let's face it, I have been hitting myself and the rest of you with a hammer on weekly basis trying to understand the nature of fear, faith and trust which should all be centered on the Lord and not on our own weaknesses and insecurities. Also, humility has been a recurring theme I have been jabbing myself and the rest of us in the ribs about on a weekly basis. While we have to be ever mindful of our nature, we also need to look beyond the narrow confines of ourselves and look to the rewards we have for being believers with faith and trust.

In looking back over the Advent and Christmas season, I am filled with something I can only call wonder. Not wonder as I wonder but wonder as in awe.  There are no boundaries to wonder, we can just let ourselves go and trust that it ok to just open our eyes and hearts and take it all in. The decorations, the music, the gatherings, the giving and receiving and the amazement we have at what happened 2000 years ago when the word was made flesh and God become incarnate in our world. Wonder creates room for gladness, appreciation, gratitude and a renewed faith in ourselves, the world, our place in the world and the Trinitarian God is in and through it all.

Wonder is one of the greatest gifts of God given us because of his love for us. He did not have to create beauty when function is all matters for the world to go around and around. He did not have to give us the ability to appreciate beauty but he did. In coming weeks we will come back to wonder from time to time  as way of reminding us to just be sometimes because when we do that, we will always be in his presence.

Today, look up at the sky. Take note of the clouds and watch them for a moment so you might hear the song they are singing to you. Wonder and beauty. We can trust in God for those these things.

Next week we will move to the next step of wonder when we look at the 4 elements of creation in Celtic Spirituality.

Now I am going to give you all some homework. Take the sheet of paper I am passing out and write this down:

I experienced the wonder of God last week when I (fill in the blank)

Oh, and I also want you to work Love into your observation.

Faces of Fear - Another Face Appears: Mark 6:45-52

After the five thousand had eaten and were satisfied, Jesus made his disciples get into the boat and precede him to the other side toward Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. And when he had taken leave of them, he went off to the mountain to pray. When it was evening, the boat was far out on the sea and he was alone on shore. Then he saw that they were tossed about while rowing, for the wind was against them. About the fourth watch of the night, he came toward them walking on the sea. He meant to pass by them. But when they saw him walking on the sea, they thought it was a ghost and cried out. They had all seen him and were terrified. But at once he spoke with them, "Take courage, it is I, do not be afraid!" He got into the boat with them and the wind died down. They were completely astounded. They had not understood the incident of the loaves. On the contrary, their hearts were hardened.

As 2019 came to an end, I returned to the previous reflections on fear we shared and I spent some time wondering if we had explored enough of the darkened nooks and crannies of fear to have some assurance the topic of fear received a thorough enough examination. As I re-read the previous explored the previous posts, I felt I had a sense of closure, not that fear won't always be ready for more attention. Something had been left unsaid so I needed to open the lid and take another look in the barrel.

As has long been my custom, I like to keep an eye on the Wednesday daily readings and in doing so I found, purely by happenstance, today's reading in the lectionary. Since there are no coincidences in this world, I decided to spend some time pulling the passage apart. The general theme is, of course, is fear. I quickly realized there was something more in this passage than we found in prior readings, something much more powerful and right on point.

Let's start with setting the stage. The previous reading, in the style of Mark, breathlessly and with great urgency told the story of the feeding of the five thousand, something that clearly warranted telling with dramatic flair since it was a miracle that happened in plain sight of thousands.

Consider first the crowd. Here they were, sitting in rows jammed side by side on a hill overlooking the water. They heard teachings the likes of which they had never heard of proclaimed with confidence, authority and power. What they heard was nothing less than revolutionary. As the day grew late, they grew hungry so a wondrous rabbi worked a miracle that brings the story of the Hanukkah to mind right in front of them. Just as one day's oil somehow lasted for 8 days, food enough for only for a dozen became a meal for the multitudes. Would they not expect more from this unknown master after seeing what they saw? If I were in the crowd, I certainly would have expected to crown him a king so he could open a can of whoopy on the Roman overlords. The Lord spoke of love and salvation. They heard that but somehow turned the words into a call for rebellion and that is not what the Lord in mind at all. Not even close.

Consider next the disciples. They had seen miracles before but the miracles were small in terms of the number of people who were impacted or witnessed the event. This was big, huge beyond any possible understanding and it happened right in front of them. Not just that, they took part in the miracle as they distributed fish and bread from an un-exhaustible supply. It is almost the exact same thing we experience as Eucharistic ministers. If I were present I might have been doing a Carlton dance and high fiving the other guys, boasting noisily about this righteous dude we were hooked up with. A display of power like they encountered had to have been life altering. It should have been life altering but when we read this passage further I have to wonder it was.

We learn that Jesus made the disciples get in a boat and precede him over the water about 5 miles away to Bethsaida. Why? No doubt it was to keep them away from the 5 thousand who might have gone from well fed to being well stirred up with an eye toward causing rebellion. It makes sense. Get them in a boat and get them the heck out of there. Keep in mind some of the guys were fisherman so they knew a thing or two about boats and how to make them move.

As for Jesus himself, he went off to the mountain to pray. Doing so would have also allow him to escape the potentially dangerous crowds but to also seek communion with the Father. This is something we see over and over again throughout the ministry of Jesus. He immerses himself teaching, preaching and drawing multitudes to himself and then withdrawing into silence, solitude and stillness to renew and recharge with new energy granted from the Father. While this is a topic to explore for another day, is this not an example for us? Contemplation and prayer is not intended to create only more of contemplation and prayer but is, instead a call to action. This flies contrary to my current desire to simply melt deeper into the silence of mysticism.

I want to take a pause for a moment in the narrative to dream up the reality of the moment for disciples as the night unfolded. We read, "When it was evening, the boat was far out on the sea and he was alone on shore." Is this not our greatest fear? To be far out to sea being tossed about by winds and waves we can only see when they break over the bow of our oh so tiny boat? How alone they must have felt even if they were in the company of others. I would have wondered how we got in a place of such peril. As an act of obedience I got in a boat to follow what should have been a simple request, row from here over to there. As an experienced sailor, I would have not been worried at all. But then when the waves kicked up so high the shore disappeared from sight, I would not have just been terrified but also infuriated that obedience was rewarded with the horror of going down with a capsized boat.

I could stop right there and ponder that moment for a long, long time. In fact, I have I have wrestled with and been paralyzed by the twin dragons of fear and anger. It is a story I know so well I can tell it from memory and also tell it in a way that will make you believe the story is your own too. Perhaps it is. But this place should not be the end of the story, there is more to come. Fear and anger can be overcome by the sure and certain knowledge that there is no storm so great our Lord can't see us through to the other side.

Take a breath so we can continue.

Ok. Let's go at it again.

Then he saw that they were tossed about while rowing, for the wind was against them. About the fourth watch of the night, he came toward them walking on the sea.

As is always the case, He sees us first and knows our needs before we can open our minds to the possibility He will deliver us from our perils even if it may be in ways we can't predict or even comprehend when deliverance arrives. Remember the Father in the Prodigal Son story? He saw his son coming from far away and ran out to greet him. Here Jesus as the second face of the Holy Trinity walked on water out to meet the disciples.

Next we read the most perplexing sentence in the whole passage, "He meant to pass by them."

He MEANT to pass them by? What! Our Lord, our Savior, means to pass us by at the exact time we need him most? How can this be? Is He going to let us go to wrack and ruin a second time? As I work on this further, I find myself turning back to the Prodigal Son. What is the very next thing that happens after the father runs out to the greet the son?

Something so subtle we can just take in the words and move on without a second thought but it is of huge significance. The son reaches out to him in sorrow and grief for his horrific sins against the father. What happens next could never happen without the actions of the son to speak out in supplication. Only because the son spoke first, the father could then embrace the son with love and gift grace on the son, returning him to a place of honor in the family. The son asked the father for help. The father responded to the request.

So does the Lord pass them by and leave them to their own efforts unaided? No. The disciples call out in terror because even though they plainly see Jesus, they don't recognize him and think he is a ghost. That might seem normal enough. After all who would ever expect to see a man walking on water in the midst of the turmoil of a storm. I would not nor would you but does that let any of us, even the disciples off the hook? No. The passage begins with the feeding of the 5 thousand, a miracle they participated in as it happened. Why would it be so difficult to expect a man who could work a miracle of with loaves and fishes not also be able to whip a little calm into a little old storm? Rather than taking them to task for the lack of faith and recognition, he comforted them by saying something that should be familiar to us all. He said, "Take courage, it is I." In reality what he said, "I am." Remember when Moses asked God what he should tell the people of Israel when they asked who spoke to him and God said , "Tell them, I am."

"I am."

"Fear not. I am."

We know this. We believe this but we cannot, or at least I, cannot live it.

We fear. The passage reads that rather then understand the message of the loaves and fishes, we miss the point. Our hearts are hardened. Every day, in every different way we can fall prey to fear, the kind of fear that leads to awe and the desire to embrace but fear as in terror that causes us to recoil, to turn away, to separate and that is when we sin. We next repent and we are forgiven and for a moment, or for a day we relax, and live in peace and with a little glimpse of joy that awaits us.

Inevitably we get in the boat and row into the night and a great storm falls on us and we are struck with panic, anxiety and concern. If we ask for help, the night will yield to the day, the storm will pass and we will offer gratitude. We must offer gratitude. It is all we have to offer back as thanks for the gifts from the great I am.

Because I live with fear as an integral part of myself and is my motivation to find comfort in the Lord, fear will be with me always. It is my cross. For others of you, you bear the same burden. The rest of you give comfort to those of us who turn away from the path before us because we don't know what awaits. It is why we live in community, in communion, to serve each other. Fear drives me to speak out about what threatens me, to give it an name that I might give it to the Lord and let Him relieve the fear. My words are intended to be a blessing for you who hear them. My strength comes from my weakness. Take my hand and let us share strength and weakness that one might conquer the other. Let's sing a joyful song of delivery even if is only for that one single moment or day.

Let us love and serve the Lord through our love and service to each other.

Remember. "Fear not, I am."