Lin Wilder's Blog, page 25

The Real Competition is for Souls- Super Apostles

Geometry of the Soul series two. Arrangement of human profile and abstract elements on the subject of spirituality science creativity and human mindThe real competition is for souls

I have read and heard St. Paul’s exhortation to the Corinthians numerous times. I speak of the passage referring to the “super Apostles.” But had always assumed that St. Paul referred to some of the original twelve, (Including Mathias.) After listening to Fr. Alphonse Van Guilder’s homily for Thursday of this past week, however, I realized that St. Paul was not referring to Peter, James, Andrew or any of the original disciples.

Instead, the Super Apostles that Paul spoke of were those who changed Christ’s message to suit their own agendas.

…But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning,
your thoughts may be corrupted
from a sincere and pure commitment to Christ. For if someone comes and preaches another Jesus than the one we preached,
or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received
or a different gospel from the one you accepted,
you put up with it well enough.
For I think that I am not in any way inferior to these “superapostles.”
Even if I am untrained in speaking, I am not so in knowledge;
in every way we have made this plain to you in all things…

St Paul: Letter to the Corinthians

Super Apostles

We need only to open our eyes to see public figures, secular and relgious alike, unapologetically changing God’s Law, His Commandments and His Gospel. Religious controvesies of a stunning variety are playing out among local, national and worldwide politics and throughout all churches and their hierarchies. We tend to assume that these heresies are new and more heinous. St Paul reminds us that there is nothing new to ostensible religious leaders shaping Christ to fit into their predesigned mold.

I find that fact perversely consoling. inTarsus, the Manhattan of the ancient world, exposed him to a wide variety of pagan practices. He knew the depths to which any of us can fall- Baal was adored, often through the blood of infants. Just like today although we have changed his name.

Fr. Alphonse expanded on the notion of super apostles with his statement that “the real competition is for souls.” In our marketing saturated world, politically correct world, we . Or at its worst, iust money, power and branding.

But no, the bottom line is that everything we do, or don’t do, each choice made, even the most trivial, has eternal consequence.

What do we fill up our minds and hearts with?

Is there anything- or Anyone- we are willing to die for?

Thinking about all of this brings back another homily by another priest. About the Hallmark Card lyricist, Jessican Powers…a Carmelite nun. Yes, you read it right, the Hallmark Card lyricist was a Carmelite nun.

Child, have none told you? God is in your Soul!

Remember her?

Probably not these exquisite mystical poems like these last two stanzas of the Garments of God.

He is clothed in the robes of His mercy, voluminous garments
not velvet or silk and affable to the touch,
but fabric strong for a frantic hand to clutch,
and I hold to it fast with the fingers of my will.
Here is my cry of faith, my deep avowal
to the Divinity that I am dust.

Here is the loud profession of my trust.
I will not go abroad
to the hills of speech or the hinterlands of music
a crier to walk in my soul where all is still.
I have this potent prayer through good or ill:
here in the dark I clutch the garments of God

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The Talkative Man is not Stable on the Earth

Bla bla seamless pattern, different hand lettering words with yellow speech bubbles. Buzz concept, chat background. Vector repeated texture.The talkative man is not stable on the earth

Thi phrase is from the extensive treatment of humility by St. Benedict. Chapter seven, the reading for this past Monday, June 7 was:

The ninth degree of humility
is that a monk restrain his tongue and keep silence,
not speaking until he is questioned.
For the Scripture shows
that “in much speaking there is no escape from sin” (Prov. 10:19)
and that “the talkative man is not stable on the earth” (Ps. 139:12).

When I read it last Monday morning, the words echoed in my mind and have not left.

Augmented and amplified by its antecedent: “in much speaking there is no escape from sin.”

St. Benedict, father of monasticism, lived in the fifth century. Like all Oblates of St. Benedict, I have vowed to follow his rule written for us “ordinary people.” Just so, I read a portion each day.

One would presume-wrongly, obviously,

that we humans had better control of our tongues back in the ancient days, would we not? Howver, just a moment of reflection reveals where it began, right? During the prelapsarian (great word, isn’t it?) time in the Garden of Eden, there was no need for words, just the echoes of eden.

The divine silence broken by …”and he said to the woman: ‘Did God really say, You must not eat…?””

Excuse the non-sequitor, back to Benedict.

As a young, wealthy nobleman, Benedict was sent to Rome to study, but recoiled from the depravity and licentiousness he found in the great city of Rome, circa 500 AD. When he fled to Enfide, most likely, he had no intention of becoming a monk or of writing prescriptions for living life, for ordinary people in search of peace. One that would be called, The Rule of St. Benedict.

Let us do what the Prophet says:
“I said, ‘I will guard my ways,
that I may not sin with my tongue.
I have set a guard to my mouth.’
I was mute and was humbled,
and kept silence even from good things” (Ps. 38:2-3).
Here the Prophet shows
that if the spirit of silence ought to lead us at times
to refrain even from good speech,
so much the more ought the punishment for sin
make us avoid evil words.

‘Sinning with my tongue’- or in these days of the lure of tweets,Face Book and the thousands of other ways to opine- with my written word…isn’t that a bit over the top?

A little too binding?

Why is Benedict so emphatic about the dire need for silence? About the risk of giving free reign to our thoughts?

Brother Jerome Leo is a Benedictine monk who pens daily online reflections on the daily readings of the Rule. The monk’s meditation on the reading from the rule emanates from years of work-the hardest work of all: taming that pesky ruler: our ego.

Here’s Brother Jerome Leo’s hard- won wisdom on these questions:

We don’t want our focus
scattered, because our work is to be looking at the very unlovely things
in our deepest self that distraction helps us deny or ignore. We have a
lifelong self-scrutiny and that requires a lot of dumping the stuff people
generally employ to avoid such truthful self-confrontation.

Even boredom- another reason we add noise- can be trotted out under
its old monastic name of “accidie” and teach us lots. In the desert of
boredom, one can confront the lackluster self! No wonder we don’t like it!

An old/ new resolution: the next time I feel compelled to jump in with my opinion or give advice, recall why the Oracle at Delphi considered Socrates the wisest man who ever lived:

“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” 

Socrates is often accused of sophistry because of remarks like this one.

But is it?

true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing – ancient Greek philosopher Socrates quote printed on grunge vintage cardboard

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Ever Think About People From Your Past?

.Time to go written on road. Selective focus. TonedEver think about people from your past?

Well, sure, we all do.

Especially teachers or professors who changed our lives.

Or bosses we were privileged to work for.

And, of course, those rare friendships lost through a move, or a divorce, or some kind of disagreement which could not be resolved.

But I had never heard of thinking about people from your past as “good spritual practice” until listening to Fr. Alphonse Guilder‘s homily for Wednesday’s daily mass.

Fr. Alphonse was speaking of the reading from Tobit: the one detailing Angel Raphael’s restoration of Tobit’s sight and exorcism of Sarah’s demon so that she can finally consummate her marriage.

Please forgive a brief aside about the Book of Tobit. When Martin Luther translated the Bible into German, he grouped seven books together and classified them as “Apochrypha.” Luther descibed them as “books which are not held equal to the Sacred Scriptures and yet are useful and good for reading.” Sometime later during the Reformation, Luther’s last eight words were dropped by the Protestants, thus depriving them of Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, and I & II Maccabees. In my mind, a significant loss. In case you would like to read the seven page book of Tobit, here it is.

Admittedly, Tobit is unusual-maybe even weird.

But jam-packed with large dollops of wisdom, ergo Fr. Alphonse’s homily. While I have written before about my love of the Old Testament, the book of Tobit stretches me. Especially when reading that the loss of Tobit’s sight was due to bird droppings.

Yuck.

But that was Tuesday’s reading, Wednesday’s details the miraculous healing by the Angel Raphael of these two righteous people: Tobit and young Sarah. We know the cause of Tobit’s blindness and learn that young Sarah is childless because she is possessed by the demon Asmodeus. The demon has murdered each of Sarah’s seven husbands before they have intercourse.

Like I said, maybe even weird.

But Fr. Alphonse’s point was the angel sent by God to aid His two suffering servants. And the fact that angels sent by God may appear in human form. Ergo, ever think about people from your past?

A teacher who carved out the time to listen when you were afraid you were losing your mind?

“IT’S A BURDEN BUT also a blessing to walk away from the faith of your childhood and family. You are one of the rare few who will one day find a faith which is your own, not the religion of others but uniquely yours… more important than any other thing in life, perhaps one you would be willing to die for.”

The speaker taught Freshman English to night-school students at Hunter College in New York City, where I worked nights full-time and attended college part-time. I do not remember his name. He wrote poetry under a pseudonym for the New York Times, stood on the top of his desk while portraying Falstaff and saved my life one night after class.

I have no idea what impelled my twenty-one-year-old chaotic self to ask my English teacher for help. Or what prevented him from begging off to go home to his undoubtedly waiting family at nine-thirty that April evening after a very long day of teaching. But he did not do that. Rather, he led me into his office, sat down behind his desk and peered kindly at me. Before I could get more than a few words out, the deluge of tears prevented any coherent conversation for five minutes, at least so it seems in my memory.

We sat in his tiny colorless basement office while I collected myself enough to be able to explain why I was there, crying my heart out, in front of a virtual stranger. Patiently, he listened to a tale of a young woman from a small Massachusetts town who had moved to New York City to work nights in a cardiac ICU while in pursuit of ‘wisdom’ at college. Who no longer believed in Jesus. Or religion. Who could no longer call herself a Christian. Who had failed in multiple attempts to explain the awful day she sat in a pew at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine Episcopal Church on Easter Sunday with friends. Hung over, barely able to focus on walking, never mind prayer…

But faith is like any habit. It must be exercised and must grow through prayer, study and a personal relationship with Christ. I knew nothing about any of these things. Yet, stupidly, I had never reckoned for this abyss.

My confusion, loneliness, and devastation were profound. I felt like I was going crazy. Until I heard these words. Heard him- this college professor- say that he too had left the faith of his childhood. That he had been Jewish but stopped believing and, like me, could no longer attend synagogue because it was hypocrisy, he could not bear the pretense….

Finding the Narrow Path

Or a stranger who showed up precisely at the time you desperately needed help?Or even an injury or betrayal from a friend you see now was in your best interest?Recalling people from our past is good spiritual practice.

Just in case the invitation to read the PDF of the Book of Tobit did not entice, here are a few more points about the wisdom contained in this brief book. The angel Raphael appears to Tobit and his son as a man. Because he has done so much for them, they want to pay him for all that he has done.

How does Raphael reply?

…“I will now tell you the whole truth;
I will conceal nothing at all from you.
I have already said to you,
‘A king’s secret it is prudent to keep,
but the works of God are to be made known with due honor.’
I can now tell you that when you, Tobit, and Sarah prayed, 
it was I who presented and read the record of your prayer
before the Glory of the Lord;
and I did the same thing when you used to bury the dead.
When you did not hesitate to get up
and leave your dinner in order to go and bury the dead,
I was sent to put you to the test.
At the same time, however,
God commissioned me to heal you and your daughter-in-law Sarah.
I am Raphael, one of the seven angels
who enter and serve before the Glory of the Lord.”

“So now get up from the ground and praise God.
Behold, I am about to ascend to him who sent me;
write down all these things that have happened to you.”

The Book of Tobit

Months and dates shown on a calendar whilst turning the pages

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It’s Memorial Day Weekend- Shouldn’t We Think About the Cost of Freedom?

Happy Memorial Day background. National american holiday illustration. Vector Memorial day greeting cardIt’s Memorial Day Weekend

Traditionally, Memorial Day opens the gates to summer: barbeques, beaches and bathing suits, concerts. But this holiday (holy day) is so much more than summer fun. Since we are obligated to honor those countless men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice, shouldn’t we think about the cost of freedom? It’s Memorial Day weekend.

Memorial Day’s beginning was, fittingly, during the Civil War. According to the Library of Congress, southern women decorated the graves of dead soldiers long before the war’s end. June 1, 1861 may be the first such grave to be decorated in Warrenton, Virginia. In fact though, more than twenty-five cities lay claim to being the originator of Memorial Day or Decoration Day.

So, yes. Amidst the hamburgers, ribs, chips and beer, maybe we can fit in reflection and honor to those men and women who died for this country of ours.

On that note, it is impossible to ponder those who gave their lives for the American ideal without returning to the origin: the Civil War knowing full well we cannot do that.

No writer’s vivid imagination can approach even a conception of those four blood-soaked years for those who lived and died in them.

But one man did. He wrote, prayed, and spoke

With characteristic brevity.

Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysberg Address seems, at least momentarily, to plunge deeply through the woke inanity of these current days. Sobering us up with words whose heft need no superlatives, emoticons or modifiers.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

—Abraham Lincoln

A new birth of freedom…

It’s Memorial Day Weekend- Shouldn’t we think about the cost of freedom?

Indeed.

To do so, we must define it. Webster defines freedom as the “state of being at liberty rather than in confinement or physical restraint.” The majority of us-liberal, conservative, and progressive alike, would accept that definition. But since secularism has taken hold of our government and courts, the American conception notion of freedom has been uncoupled from Judeo-Christian law and morality.

The finest explanation of that fact and its horrific consequences is in a speech given by then Attorney General William Barr at Notre Dame Law School. A speech which was castigated by secular and religious pundits alike. A speech I liked so much that I read it six times.

Now seven.

It’s Memorial Day Weekend-Shouldn’t we think about the cost of freedom?

Barr’s opening words beg for reflection:

“In his renowned 1785 pamphlet, “Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments,” James Madison described religious liberty as “a right towards men” but “a duty towards the Creator,” and a “duty….precedent both in order of time and degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society.”

It has been over 230 years since that small group of colonial lawyers led a revolution and launched what they viewed as a great experiment, establishing a society fundamentally different than those that had gone before.

They crafted a magnificent charter of freedom – the United States Constitution – which provides for limited government, while leaving “the People” broadly at liberty to pursue our lives both as individuals and through free associations.

This quantum leap in liberty has been the mainspring of unprecedented human progress, not only for Americans, but for people around the world…

Attorney General Remarks

It’s a long speech but jam-packed with excellent points

In an article written two years ago, I selected a few of Barr’s comprehensive and I think, brilliant analysis. (the italics are mine.)

Here they are again.

The framers of the constitution ” never thought the main danger to the republic came from external foes. The central question was whether, over the long haul, we could handle freedom. The question was whether the citizens in such a free society could maintain the moral discipline and virtue necessary for the survival of free institutions. Edmund Burke summed up this point in his typically colorful language.“Men are qualified for civil liberty, in exact proportion to their disposition to put chains upon their appetites…. Society cannot exist unless a controlling power be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”So the Founders decided to take a gamble. They called it a great experiment.They would leave “the People” broad liberty, limit the coercive power of the government, and place their trust in self-discipline and the virtue of the American people.In the words of Madison, “We have staked our future on the ability of each of us to govern ourselves…”This is really what was meant by “self-government.” It did not mean primarily the mechanics by which we select a representative legislative body. It referred to the capacity of each individual to restrain and govern themselves.In short, in the Framers’ view, free government was only suitable and sustainable for a religious people – a people who recognized that there was a transcendent moral order antecedent to both the state and man-made law and who had the discipline to control themselves according to those enduring principles.As John Adams put it, “We have no government armed with the power which is capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.”Barr explicity details the consequences of secularism

in our society, specifically the family. And then to the ‘state solutions’, excellent material but too extensive to repost in this piece. Instead, when reflecting on those so-called solutions, I think of Job’s (the Liturgy of the Hours Reading for Friday) reply to his friend Zophar’s claim that the source of all Job’s suffering is sin:

Doubtless you are the voice of the people

And when you die, wisdom will die with you!

I can reflect as deeply as ever you can,

in no way am I inferior to you.

And who, for that matter has not observed as much?

A man becomes a laughing stock to his friends

if he cries to God and expects as answer.

The blameless innocent incurs only mockery….

With him are strength and prudence

the misled and the misleaders are his.

He sends counselors away barefoot,

and of judges he makes fools,

He siliences the trusted advisor,

and takes discretion from the aged.

Barr’s entire speech is worth a read, if you would like to do so, click here:

It’s Memorial Day Weekend- Shouldn’t We Think About the Cost of Freedom?

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Thinking About Heaven and Hell- And the New York Times

Two gates to heaven and hell. Choice concept.Thinking about heaven and hell

Today is Pentecost. This day marks the end of fifty days of joyous liturgical celebration of death’s destruction by Jesus when the Father raised Him from the dead. It follows seven days after the Great Sunday or Jesus’ ascension into heaven. And commerorates the descent of the Holy Spirit “in tongues of flame” upon the disciples.

The Spirit, Jesus explains, could not be released until He ascends into heaven and takes his seat at the right hand of the Father.

I will send the Paraclete who will teach you all things.

The Gospel readings for this week consist of Jesus preparing to leave these men.

“I pray not only for these,
but also for those who will believe in me through their word,
so that they may all be one,
as you, Father, are in me and I in you,
that they also may be in us,
that the world may believe that you sent me.
And I have given them the glory you gave me,
so that they may be one, as we are one,
I in them and you in me,
that they may be brought to perfection as one,
that the world may know that you sent me,
and that you loved them even as you loved me.
Father, they are your gift to me…”

He is saying good-bye.

After fifty days of appearing to them, Always asking, “Do you have anything to eat?” I am not spirit, not a ghost. Commanding Thomas to “put his hands” into the holes in his hands, feet and side, “You see and touch Thomas..”The Christ has shown the apostles that He whom they saw crucifed has been resurrected. The historical evidence of these facts can be denied only by the blind and foolish.This Pentecost conjures up thoughts of death:

My own. Followed swiftly by thinking about heaven and hell.

It’s inescapable, isn’t it?

Despite the fact that our current culture loudly trumpets secularism, we think-and talk- about death more than we like to admit. By the way, to make sure I understood the meaning of the word secular, I looked it up.

It is defined as, “a system of political or social philosophy that rejects all forms of worship or religious faith.”

A most fitting defintion of 21st century America, overflowing with the blind and foolish.

And yet, we do worry about death. In fact, a cursory look at much of the individual and global response to Covid 19 makes the statement, “terrified by the thought of our death” valid.

Why would that be?

Unless, we fear what happens afterward?

Where do we go after we die?

Well, there are just three choices, right?

So pick one.

Nowhere- I cease existing.Heaven (more likely, Purgatory).Hell.

For an increasing number of people in the world, the first option has gained popularity. For decades now, the magnificent cathedrals in Europe and the United Kingdom have devolved to being mostly museums. Over ten years ago, I was astounded to see the long lines of tourists waiting to get inside to “Il Duomo” the Cathedral of Florence. Following the 7am mass, the Italian priest had insisted on showing his two American Catholic tourists around the incredibly beautiful Cathedral.

Including those areas prohibited to the tourists, like under the Dome.

This is a church! Go to mass!

It has taken us longer to catch up with Europe but we’re getting there.

Logically, a belief in heaven necessitates a corresponding belief in hell. But that is apparently not the case. A 2008 Pew Research study of 35,000 people found 74% of Americans believe there is a heaven, but less than 60% believe in hell. For increasing numbers of us believers, the notion of hell-even of purgatory- does not conform to their notion of a loving God. Despite our weekly recitation of the Apostle’s Creed.

Curious, isn’t it?

The long marriage between atheism and intellectuals seems sadly secure:

Theologians and philosophers talk about “the problem of evil,” and the hygienic phrase itself bespeaks a certain distance from extreme suffering, the view from a life inside the charmed circle. They mean the classic difficulty of how we justify the existence of suffering and iniquity with belief in a God who created us, who loves us, and who providentially manages the world. The term for this justification is “theodicy,” which nowadays seems a very old-fashioned exercise in turning around and around the stripped screw of theological scholastics. 

Holiday in Hellmouth

How does “and the New York Times fit in?”

Well, I’m a writer. So when I decided to write this piece called “Thinking About Heaven and Hell,” the first thing I did was an online search.

What have others’ said on the subject? The basic first step when writing about a topic- any subject at all.

The first piece that popped up was a NY Times article called, A Case for Hell.

Huh?

I clicked on A Case for Hell, read the first couple of paragraphs and liked it, a lot. But, since I stopped reading the NY Times years ago, I had to pay to read the entire article. Annoyed, I paid the $4.00 ( $1.00/week.) I will spare you the long list of reasons that I gave up my decades long tradition of reading the Sunday New York Times.

Hint: One of them was not provocative, discriminating, and well-reseached articles on Christianity.

My investment paid off. I found a writer I had never heard of: Russ Douthat, his A Case for Hell is the source for the information in the preceding paragraphs. Douthat is an intriging young man: an excellent writer, prolific and with a most interesting perspective:

But the more important factor in hell’s eclipse, perhaps, is a peculiar paradox of modernity. As our lives have grown longer and more comfortable, our sense of outrage at human suffering — its scope, and its apparent randomness — has grown sharper as well. The argument that a good deity couldn’t have made a world so rife with cruelty is a staple of atheist polemic, and every natural disaster inspires a round of soul-searching over how to reconcile God’s omnipotence with human anguish.

A Case for Hell

This guy is not just interesting but hopeful. A quick glance at his books,Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class and Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics feel like conversations I have had. If only with myself.

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Even Perhaps Grope for Him and Find Him

Drowning handSt. Paul is speaking to the Athenians

Probably because I spent time in Athens during a long-ago ten-day journey to Greece, St. Paul’s speech to the Athenians always pierces through my skull to ping around in my head. This past Wednesday, his words cut more deeply than usual. Plunging deeply into my heart and psyche, they leave red streaks. Just so does my memory of sitting alone in the Acopolis of Athens become so vivid that it feels like yesterday.

He made from one the whole human race
to dwell on the entire surface of the earth,
and he fixed the ordered seasons and the boundaries of their regions,
so that people might seek God,
even perhaps grope for him and find him, (italics mine)
though indeed he is not far from any one of us.

The apostle’s phrase applies to all of us. One might naturally think that the Apostle is speaking only to non-believers, but with just a few moments reflection, we understand that these words apply to each of us. Even perhaps grope for him and find him… so readily do we forget that indeed he is not far from any of us.

Whether believers or not, sometimes, all we can do is here in the dark, clutch the garments of God.

The memory of that day I sat alone in the Acropolis,

is intensely powerful because I sat for a long time watching tourists taking pictures of the ruins. We were from all over the world. Those taking the most photos happened to be the Japanese but as I sat watching, I was impressed by the similarity of the poses. Regardless of nationality, a man or a woman perched on one of the ruined steps or walls with a broad grin.

The longer I watched, the sadder I became: even perhaps grope for him and find him. As a kid college student, ancient Greece personified all that was true and noble in humanity. I had no faith in God, and so for me, the sole source of truth and wisdom was man. Watching my fellow tourists treat the Acroplis like precisely what it is, a crumbling monument to the past, hollowed me out.

It had been decades since I was that atheistic college kid but I remained worlds away from faith, from Him who is Truth.

In fact, it was on that journey that I began to write something other than nonfiction: poetry.

Dry tears well up in this faraway land
where ancient
Lives and loves loom in dusty ruins
of cities
Where truth feels just a breath away
If still
Enough to sense the presence of wiser
men who
Knew these human hopes for just places of
knowledge who
Embraced a land emblazoned by goddesses
and God
Known deeply in the heart’s core through
work and
Study of self which seeks only this faith,
belonging
To a grander vision than this or that particular
life, yes
One which serves in small and homely ways
partaking
In daily obedience of vows made sacred
by use
Known only to voices which breathe whispery puffs
of truth

St Paul writes, “You Athenians,

I see in every respect that you are very religious. For as I walked around, looking carefully at your shrines, I even discovered an altar called, “To an Unkown God.” What you unknowingly worship I declare to you.

From what we read in the Acts of the Apostles, St. Paul’s talk was not long. He would have known that it would not take many words. Hearts would either be aroused or not. Paul’s job was not to answer questions but rather to bring to consciousness what was hidden in the hearts of his listeners. Even perhaps grope for him and find him.

He uses an interesting phrase, “God has overlooked the time of ignorance” before he says it:

but now he demands that all people everywhere repent
because he has established a day on which he will ‘judge the world
with justice’ through a man he has appointed,
and he has provided confirmation for all
by raising him from the dead.”

When they heard about resurrection of the dead,
some began to scoff, but others said,
“We should like to hear you on this some other time.”
And so Paul left them

Did they know?

Did those who said they would “like to hear from you some other time” know there may not be another?

We think we have all the time in the world to decide, but do we?

…”God moves us in order to make the beginning of duty, easy. If we do not attend, He ceases to move us…if you will not turn to God now with a warm heart, you wll hereafter be obliged to do so (if you do so at all) with a cold heart-which is much harder. God keep you from this!”

God’s Commandments Not Burdensome-St. John Cardinal Henry Newman

In my first historical novel that journey to Greece reappears.

As does “To an unknown God.” I boldly paraphrased St Paul:

“The Jews demand a sign and the Greeks look for wisdom. Your prayer and inscription on this shrine, To an Unknown God, show your hunger for the truth of the One True God.” At my sharp inhalation of breath, Quintillus clasped my hand hard. The crowd was indeed huge…

It was late spring when my new husband and I made the journey, and the valley was still lush and green, dotted with wildflowers of all colors. The effect was a vivid tapestry that seemed miraculous after the arid, rocky limestone land we had just traversed. I could not deny the beauty of the Temple to Artemis and Apollo. Its uniquely pleasing Greek architecture was evident in the gigantic curving columns that seemed to reach to the heavens.

Quintillus pointed to a gigantic shrine crowned by the words, To an Unknown God. It overlooked one of the two rivers that poured into the Sacred Spring. The stone was beautiful, rainbow-hued marble that the setting sun had lit on fire.

“Lucius.”

It was little more than a breath, but Quintillus nodded. This stunning spot was my late husband’s burial place, his grave marked by a simple and profound testament to the God he had tried so hard to defend. I knew there could be no monument naming him. Any identification of the Governor of Judea would invite desecration of the worst sort.

I, Claudia

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The Labor of Obedience

the labor of obedienceThe labor of obedience:

For many years, the word obedience served as a lightning rod to me. The concept connoted all that I disliked about being female: Powerlessness, submissiveness, conformance, passivity and… 

And yet, feminism offered no viable solution. Fundamentally, feminists blamed men for whatever ailed us and seemed fixed on adopting the role of victim, seeking redress in legislation and our culture of euphemisms.

But then I became a Christian Catholic and a few years later, an Oblate of St. Benedict. And that word, like so many others in the vocabulary of faith became something I embraced; at times, admittedly with gritted teeth. I began to see why it is called the labor of obedience.

It’s work. Perhaps the toughest I’ve ever done. And continue to do, each and every day, more often than not, failing.

Like understanding what it actually means to be true to the vow I made when marrying my husband: Intentionally I vowed to “love, honor, and obey.”

Easy to say when all is prosecco and roses

But excructiating when he asks something of me that feels impossible. Those are the times I forget that obedience means to hear because my focus is what I think I cannot do or must have, hence frequently misunderstanding his request.

One of our Oblate commitments is praying the Liturgy of the Hours three times each day-in the morning, evening and night. A practice which introduces us to the psalms, or the “gymnasium of the soul.” From the turbulence of the fourth century, the words of St. Ambrose serve as balm for my and maybe your woke-battered twenty-first- century psyche, heart and soul.

History instructs us, the law teaches us, prophecy foretells, correction punishes, morality persuades; but the book of psalms goes further than all these. It is medicine for our spiritual health. Whoever reads it will find in it a medicine to cure the wounds caused by his own particular passions. Whoever studies it deeply will find it a kind of gymnasium open for all souls to use, where the different psalms are like different exercises set out before him. In that gymnasium, in that stadium of virtue, he can choose the exercises that will train him best to win the victor’s crown.  If someone wants to study the deeds of our ancestors and imitate the best of them, he can find a single psalm that contains the whole of their history, a complete treasury of past memories in just one short reading.  If someone wants to study the law and find out what gives it its force (it is the bond of love, for whoever loves his neighbour has fulfilled the law) let him read in the psalms how love led one man to undergo great dangers to wipe out the shame of his entire people; and this triumph of virtue will lead him to recognise the great things that love can do.  And as for the power of prophecy – what can I say? Other prophets spoke in riddles. To the psalmist alone, it seems, God promised openly and clearly that the Lord Jesus would be born of his seed: I promise that your own son will succeed you on the throne.  Thus in the book of psalms Jesus is not only born for us: he also accepts his saving passion, he dies, he rises from the dead, he ascends into heaven, he sits at the Father’s right hand. The Psalmist announced what no other prophet had dared to say, that which was later preached by the Lord himself in the Gospel.

We lay Oblates read through the brief Rule of Benedict three times each year.

Benedict calls his rule one fit for ‘ordinary people.’ Perhaps what is most surprising to those new to the rule is what it does not include. Written during the end of the Roman Empire, Benedict’s rule is striking for its absence of physical mortifications which were so prevalent among monastics of the time. In fact, many commentators, emphasize the gentleness with which Benedict addresses the physical needs of his monks like sleep and hygiene. At a time when the body was considered merely a dead weight imprisoning the soul, Benedict’s attention to it and the other matters of daily life like pots and pans stop us in our tracks.

Serving to remind each one of us all that the smallest, the most trivial of acts can be holy.

If…

we will it so.

The labor of obedience.

The five hundred or so word prologue to Benedict’s seventy-three chapters or rules is among the most beautifully written letters to she who seeks God ever written. The prose is lyrical, the words animated and seem to saturate the heart from the very first word: Listen.

Perhaps I had been told that the Latin root of obey meant ‘give ear to’ but like so many words, the meaning of obey has been corrupted. Only after years of ‘doing it my way’ was I able to open myself to hear the beauty and more, the wisdom behind Benedict and all those who have sought the Truth.

LI S T E N  carefully, my child,
to your master’s precepts,
and incline the ear of your heart (Prov. 4:20).
Receive willingly and carry out effectively
your loving father’s advice,
that by the labor of obedience
you may return to Him
from whom you had departed by the sloth of disobedience.

As with so many works which point us to wisdom and therefore, Christ,

certain phrases of very familiar passages acquire muscle and seem to shout upon rereading. The power of Benedict’s words in this first paragraph does just that despite the numerous times we read these poetic words:

To you, therefore, my words are now addressed,
whoever you may be,
who are renouncing your own will
to do battle under the Lord Christ, the true King,
and are taking up the strong, bright weapons of obedience.

One cannot help but visualize a loving father leaning down to comfort, console and love his small child as the father prepares to instruct the child in the ways of wisdom.

St. Benedict ends the Prologue (read here for the Prolgue and Rule in entirety) with these words:

But if a certain strictness results from the dictates of equity
for the amendment of vices or the preservation of charity,
do not be at once dismayed and fly from the way of salvation,
whose entrance cannot but be narrow (Matt. 7:14).
For as we advance in the religious life and in faith,
our hearts expand (Italics mine)
and we run the way of God’s commandments
with unspeakable sweetness of love (Ps. 118:32).
Thus, never departing from His school,
but persevering in the monastery according to His teaching
until death,
we may by patience share in the sufferings of Christ (1 Peter 4:13)
and deserve to have a share also in His kingdom.

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We Stiff-Necked People: Hearts and Ears Uncircumcised

Moses and the Brazen SerpentWe stiff-necked people: hearts and ears uncircumcised

The reading for the April 13th daily mass was from the Gospel of John. The passage begins, “Jesus said to Nicodemus, “You must be born from above.” The wind blows where it wills and you can hear the sound it makes, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” And ends with, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of God be lifted up so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”

In his homily, Fr. John Farao, focused on Jesus’ last statement. When they left Egypt, Fr. John said, “the Israelites surely did not expect to be gone for forty years. Maybe a long weekend or a couple of weeks, but not forty years.

So the people spoke against God and Moses: “Why have you brought us up from Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we are disgusted with this miserable food. Then the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died.

Numbers21-5

The priest recalled the reason that Moses lifted up the serpent: the snakes. Fr. John speaks softly, but he emphasized the word “snakes” almost hissing it as he described their state of mind in the Book of Numbers.

“Do you know the origin of the phrase stiff-necked?” the priest asked.

I did not. And when he explained at first was dumbfounded. But then…Yes, of course! Those who refused to look up died.

Three weeks later I recall the powerful sense of looking in a mirror, at a reflection of us, all 7 billons of us-upon pondering that Gospel reading and the priest’s meditation on it.

How many times do we read the complaints? Throughout Exodus, Deuteronomy and Numbers,

Why did you make us come up from Egypt, to bring us into this wretched place? It is not a place of grain or figs or vines or pomegranates, nor is there water to drink!”

Despite all the miracles:

walking through dry land in the miiddle of the sea, eating the bread of angels,drinking water from a rock, seven nations destroyed so that Isreal could inhabit the promised land.

Hence the Lord punishes them, sends deadly snakes everywhere, biting and many people dying…precisely like now.

Suicides, depression, pervasive fear rarely witnessed. We stiff-necked people are carefully nourished by the experts. Those men and women empowered by us to assure that we continue to look down.

Asking the age old question: Is it possible for the Lord to prepare a table in the desert?

Suicide concept. Depressed young man looking down at his shoe and contemplating suicide. On the edge of a bridge with river below.

Here’s a reminder of the Lord’s reply to Moses’ intercession for the terrified, repentant Israelites: Then the LORD said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent, and put it on a flag pole; and it shall come about, that everyone who is bitten, and looks at it, will live.”

“Stiff-necked originates from refusing to look up…to bend the neck and look up.”

Just like the Israelites, we forget his mercy and permit our faith to grow cold.

Our intellects cast out this loving Father who sent His Only Begotten Son to save the world, not to condemn it. Hearts and ears uncircumcised, refusing to look up.

In a recent post, Are You the Only One Who Does Not Know?, I pondered that strange meeting on the road to Emmaus. Men who had lived with him for three years could not recognize the Lord as he walked and talked beside them.

He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?

Can any of us understand the power of the human will?

It is the will of man that makes him more like his Creator. In the human will I placed part of My immensity and power, and giving it the place of honor, I constituted it queen of man’s entire being, and the repository of all of his acts….In one instant, it can will a thousand goods and a thousand evils. The will makes man’s thoughts fly up to heaven or to the farthest places deep into the abyss. Man may be prevented from [externally] operating, seeing, or speaking, but he is always capable of doing all of these in his will.

Whatever man does or wants, forms an act that forms an act that remains deposited within his will. Oh how the will can be expanded! How many goods or evils it can contain! This is why, among all things, I desire the will of man, for once I acquire this, I acquire everything- the fortress is conquered!

Luisa Piccarreta

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Ode to Shadow-I Can’t Stay Any Longer

I can’t stay any longer photo Shadow from 2008Ode to Shadow-I can’t stay any longer

John was watching our boy panting, lurching because his back legs barely support him, yet incapable of stopping the relentless pacing that exhausted and caused him intense pain. And then John said, “I can’t stay any longer, I’ve stayed as long as I could.”

A wholly perfect translation of this past Monday morning when Shadow let us know it was time.

You think you’re ready.

You see the fur whitening, energy dropping, diminishing interest in eating. Then the confusion, ataxia, muscle wasting which create a perfect storm of misery. You tell yourself that he won’t be here much longer. Especially during the times that it looks as if he is really dying. Now.

And believe you are ready for him to go. Repeating it to one another will prepare you. Like last Sunday night. Shadow was so miserable that neither John nor I could figure out ways to help him, settle him down. Despite a double dose of sedatives. Finally he just collapsed.

So I texted our and Shadow’s good friend, Elizabeth to cancel our planned early Monday morning Avila beach walk.Those beach walks which kept him with us for another few months longer, I am confident. Shadow loved those walks, he was transformed when we got on the beach: his gait normalized, no stumbling or lurching. Animated, tail wagging, smiling at the people and the children just like here.

Ode to Shadow Photo by ElizabethBut, of course, we were not ready. Maybe we never would have been.

Since we all got a little sleep Sunday night, by Monday morning, Shadow seemed a little better. Not much, but a little. Maybe it was the ginormous helpings of Wagu beef and most of a filet that John had cooked for him Sunday night. And that miraculously Shadow had eaten every last bite.

We looked at our dog, and then at one another…”Do we really want to do this?” No! Of course we don’t want to kill this dog!

“Okay, he loves the beach, let’s get him down there and see how he responds.”

Great, a plan: ode to Shadow.

These are the things Shadow loved in order:

People.Especially little ones.Other dogsAnd far below the first three, food

We got to Avila Beach early enough that the dogs can race around off leash. Seymour, naturally, could barely contain himself.

“I can race!”

Shadow and Seymour far right at Avila Beach Photo-Elizabeth’s

Shadow and I walked down the paved walkway to the beach that Elizabeth and I found a few weeks ago. Shadow and stairs have disliked one another for many years now.

Within five minutes, he looked happy. His gait straightened out and he was smiling. Astonished, John exclaimed, “We want to give him the needle?” But unlike every other time on the beach, the spurt of health and vitality did not last. Within another couple of minutes, Shadow lowered his head against John’s leg. Leaning.

He never leaned.

“Thank you for bringing me here. But I am so very tired.”

I can’t stay any longer.

The staff at the Primary Care Hospital could not have been kinder or more accomodating. We had an appointment within two hours after making the call. And yes, we could go in with him. When we arrived, we were led through the rear door where there was a good-sized grassy lawn enclosure with a brightly striped blanket lying on it. Next to it was a table with two kinds of dog treats and a box of tissues.

Shadow never got to see much grass in northern Nevada where he lived most of his nineteen or so years on this planet. Up there, it’s crushed granite. So when we walked him out there, he had to have thought, “Grass?” “Really?” “Wow!”

Because I sure did.

Once I got down on the grass, Shadow mostly collapsed next to me. Finally, I think, that brave, noble heart accepted that I have stayed as long as I could. But I cannot stay any longer.

The panting stopped.

Heart rate slowed.

By the time the veterinarian, Dr. Bennett, came out to meet us and look at the way his leg was crumpled under him, he was just about unconscious. When she straightened out that leg, he never moved. Never knew she was there.

And he never felt the needles.

I am ever so grateful that this truly splendid creature picked our house.

That he decided, after being invited in by many neighbors, no, “I’m going to pledge my troth with those people in that gray house.”

“I will help their big, injured red dobie. He’s sad, lonely, and in pain, I can help him.”

“Then when he has to leave, I’m going to watch out for the dobie puppy they will get next.”

“I will guard him, and then grieve with them when he has to leave, too.”

“Along the way, I will teach them lessons about life, happiness, and joy.”

“And okay, I’ll accept that crazy Seymour into our pack.”

“I lose a part of my heart with the loss of each dog. And when my next dog gifts me with a piece of his heart, I know that another piece of my heart will be buried with him when he dies. Maybe someday my heart will be transformed into these pieces- these gifts- and finally create a heart filled only with generosity and love, like that of a dog.”

My Friend Rache’s Dog Houdini Died in January.

Thank you for all these wonderful pictures, Elizabeth. This one a perfect ode to Shadow- I can’t stay any longer.

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The Death of A Monarch- Prince Philip

Queen Loses Her ‘Strength and Stay’ as Prince Philip Dies | theTrumpet.comthetrumpet.coThe Death of a Monarch

The late consort of Queen Elizabeth II was a paradigm of the Age of Stoicism.

That statement in Francis Phillips’ article, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, grabbed me. Enough to write this week’s piece about the late husband of the Queen of England. It’s that phase, “a paradigm of the age of stoicism” which made me curious enough to ponder the death of a monarch. More on stoicism later.

But first some background.

An anglophile I am not.

But like most of us, a British accent gets my attention. Somehow the accent confers more knowledge, distinction and worldiness than does ours. It functions as an honorific.

Sometimes merited, sometimes not.

Here’s an example of one of the merited. I was just getting to know the British friend Adele who invited us to come home to England with her and her husband for Christmas. After speaking with her about a recent weekend camping trip in the Texas hill country, I asked Adele,

“Have you ever been camping?”

“No, never in Texas, only in Kenya and Mozambique.”

Said with a straight face and that classy British accent.

Phillips’ article reads almost like a eulogy for Prince Philip

For years typecast by the press as a bluff, gaffe-prone, ex-naval officer who enjoyed the sport of rich men such as polo, or caricatured in films such as The Queen, we are slowly discovering the extraordinary range of his interests and charitable work and – no doubt a surprise to many –  his thoughtful, highly intelligent, enquiring mind.

Prince Philip

Perhaps one of the reasons I wanted to spend time thinking and writing about the life and death of this man was the evident and unabashed emotion in the jounalist’s piece: Admiration, pride, affection, wistfulness and melancholy. We see tremendous surges of emotion in the media and hear them in coversations; rarely though, are they of this type.

While staying with Adele and her family, I got to watch the Queen’s televised Christmas address to her citizens and observe the attention and respect the Queen was afforded by the family we were staying with. They listened to her. As are, I imagine, many British citizens paying attention to their media on the death of a monarch. Perhaps, like journalist Phillips, deeply moved by the revelation of such self-effacement in the highest circles of aristocracy.

We Americans insist that we have no royaly, no “class” but, of course, we do. Our hierarchy and class systems are just more baldly-or boldly-founded on money than is theirs.

The age of stoicism

Phillips writes that “Looking back at his long life – almost a century, though it is certain he would have heartily disliked the attention that such a milestone would have brought him – I would characterise Prince Philip and his wartime generation as exemplifying an “Age of Stoicism”, but one of fortitude rather than resignation. He was impatient with those who wanted him to feel sorry for himself at the vicissitudes of his upbringing. “I just got on with it,” he would reply.”

Before I lived with Pontius Pilate and Saul of Tarsus for over two years, I may have made the mistake of categorizing stoicism as resignation. In truth, however, the appeal of the self-control inherent in Stoicism is timeless. And is therefore attracting many of our twenty-first century minds.

The stoic philosphers, Zeno, Cleanthes, Heraclites would have been well-known to Pilate and Saul.

I considered what my teacher had reminded me of. Cleanthes had been ridiculed by all the other students of the Stoa. He was penniless, with a stocky, “un-Greek” physique— a slow learner whose ability to think had perhaps been affected by blows to the head during wrestling. It was his passion for learning philosophy and internalizing its wisdom that had allowed him to defy the odds. Looking up at my tutor, still grinning, I quoted the Stoic philosopher: “‘ Steel your sensibilities, so that life shall hurt you as little as possible.’”

Pylenor nodded approvingly. With the wisdom that comes only with age, I understand now that I am indebted to my father for his insistence that I become a fluent speaker, reader, and writer of both Greek and Latin. In the course of my philosophical studies with Pylenor, I came to see that my anger and resentment toward my father was my choice. Although I was still very young, I understood what Epictetus meant when he wrote that neither criticism nor praise is, in itself, bad or good. Each is neutral in value, imposed from without, and therefore, not within our control. I came to see that, while I could not control either the criticism or the praise leveled at me, I could curb my own response to it.

That realization felt incredibly liberating to my young self. Once I’d achieved a sense of freedom from the weight of others’ opinions, I resolved to accomplish the primary goal of the Stoic: Equanimity in the face of all things, whether good or evil. I would will myself to see all things as morally neutral. Aside, of course, from the Law.

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