John Janaro's Blog, page 193

A Collage of Music

Have I been making some music lately?

Though I couldn't blame anyone for being skeptical, I have in fact been working on a little bit of music in these days.


I am definitely making instrumental collages

Violence or Prayer

The heart has no boundaries.
Yet here we are, in this moment, in the midst of things that are limited.
If we try to grasp things and stretch them so that they correspond to the scope of our hearts, we will distort them and ultimately tear them apart.

This is the source of violence.

But if we act with the recognition that there is something more, that the goodness of things points to something and promises something that we do not see and cannot attain by our own power, then we act with receptivity, with a need and a question that opens us up to something or Someone who corresponds to our boundless hearts.

This is the seed of prayer.

Jesus Invites Us to Receive a "Good Measure"

Jesus said, "Stop judging and you will not be judged.Stop condemning and you will not be condemned.
Forgive and you will be forgiven.
Give and gifts will be given to you;
a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing,
will be poured into your lap.
For the measure with which you measure
will in return be measured out to you."

~Luke 6:37-38

I like to think I'm one of the people who don't "judge" or "condemn," but too often I'm just someone who wants to be "neutral" and disengaged. I don't want to cause trouble for myself or anyone else.
I want to be nice. I want to avoid controversy. I want to be left alone.
And this is exactly what I get. The walls I put up are very convincing. Everyone "respects" them. But behind those walls I am left alone.
I am left alone.
Often I really do think my misery is my own fault. Though perhaps I ought not to judge or condemn myself either. God alone judges, and even as he searches out our hidden faults, he also knows all the complex circumstances that constrain us and that can diminish somewhat our culpability.

This world, with its unprecedented and ongoing multiplication of so many kinds of power, smashes and breaks people in the places where they are vulnerable. It's a world of constant mental strain, and those who cannot keep up with the pace of its relentless, absorbing expansion of forces—or at least manage the stress—must shift through the wreckage it leaves behind in themselves.

I know this well enough. It's another more authentic reason why I don't want to be too hard on any person, and I suppose I should include myself. All these external pressures, along with my own weakness, overwhelm me on so many levels. I am more than vulnerable and sick. I am traumatized.
But I do not put this forth as a sufficient excuse. I also know that I am a sinner. I throw myself upon the mercy of God.
Many of us are traumatized. We are all desperate and busy building walls around ourselves. Isolation is the order of the day. And isolation can take various forms.
We can be alone by ourselves, as intellectuals who analyze everything and commit to nothing. Or we can be alone "together" behind the fortress walls of our tribes—our illusory substitutes for commitment and community—bound together by violence and fear and the desire to make war on others.
Jesus says "stop judging" and "stop condemning," but at the same time he says, "Give..." which is akin to the exhortation to love, to suffer for the sake of justice, to lose ourselves for his sake so that we might truly find ourselves.
But he does not only exhort us. He draws us on the path that he himself has made through the cross to the resurrection.
Perhaps the closest step in this journey for each one of us is expressed in the words of this text that echo the Lord's Prayer: "Forgive and you will be forgiven." Every time we pray the prayer Jesus gave us, we implore God our Father for the fulfillment of all reality and of our own lives: for our daily bread, for his will, for deliverance from evil, for the coming of his kingdom.
In the midst of these pleadings, we make one petition in explicit relation to our own conduct: "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us."
The call to forgive others appears to be laden with psychological associations that can seem crushing insofar as we have been deeply hurt by others. But there is no simple formula for expressing how the psychological and emotional profile of forgiveness should play itself out in a person's subjective experience. Wherever we may feel ourselves to be, we can only turn to God and beg him to empower us to give him what he asks of us.
God always loves us first. He wants to heal us and to open our hearts to receive his forgiveness and share it with others. Jesus came for forgiveness of sins. He came with the readiness to pour out a good measure, an overflowing love by which we might love him and one another.
He promises that good measure, and even now he prompts us to ask him to change us, to make us capable of receiving it, to be freed for the outpouring of forgiveness. He will show us the way and he will carry us on his shoulders.
"Ask and you will receive."

I'm an Old Patchy Garden on a Ruined Estate

I am growing old. And I am like an old patchy garden on a ruined estate.

The layout is grand, but the walls are broken down. Weeds are everywhere. I have been tended at the edges, and there are bright blooming new flowers and bushes (brought from all over the world). The gaps are filled in by artificial foliage.

This is all for show, really. Most of it is fake.

It looks good to people who drive by the outskirts, people who drive fast.

Inside the garden the paths that are still left are scarcely visible. All the rows that were meant for the cultivation of delicate things are overrun with wild grasses and the crude but tenacious plants that can grow anywhere.

Other parts are barren, blighted by invasive weeds and plagues of insects, or dried up in exhausted unnourished soil. Yet another section is flooded into swampland and reeks of stagnant water and dead leaves.

There are places, nonetheless, where roses still grow. The bushes are rarely pruned, and so the roses are wild. But they have not lost their beauty.

A few of the great old trees survive, spreading shade in their spots and vitality beneath their soil. They nurture mosses and vines and clover and the hardy things of the forest that no one notices, but that break through the ground and reach up in search of the sun.

And there are flowers. Small and simple, pale and common, large and strange flowers in different places. Some look misshapen or half-dead, struggling against a polluted atmosphere. Half-dead, but also half-alive.

And they are flowers. They are alive. They have their own beauty.

I am an old patchy spoiled garden on a ruined estate—and the years have made a wreck of me, a wasteland.

But the sun still shines, the rains fall, and even now, a few new things are born from the earth.

There are new things and old things that still grow.

Day of Prayer and Fasting for Peace

Pope Francis has proposed that today be voluntarily observed as a day of prayer and fasting for peace, especially for the central African countries of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan .

Both of these places are enduring protracted political instability, the effects of civil war, and ongoing humanitarian crises of gigantic proportions.

He invites all people of good will to join him in this appeal to God and self-sacrifice, to solidarity and compassion toward these suffering human beings in central Africa and though out the world.

I'm sure even people of "not-so-good-will" can join in too. The proportions of what's going on here are so enormous and catastrophic—everybody, just bring whatever you can to the table!

Click below to learn more:

Voluntary Day of Prayer and Fasting

Situation in Democratic Republic of Congo

Situation in South Sudan

The Rock

There is some serious rock in the region of Caesarea Philippi.. When Jesus went into the region of Caesarea Philippi
he asked his disciples,
"Who do people say that the Son of Man is?"
They replied, "Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah,
still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets."
He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?"
Simon Peter said in reply,
"You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."
Jesus said to him in reply, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah.
For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.
And so I say to you, you are Peter,
and upon this rock I will build my Church,
and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.
I will give you the keys to the Kingdom of heaven.
Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven;
and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."
~Matthew 16:13-19

Rolling Country

Any time of year, any kind of weather, I just can't help loving this rolling country!

Shenandoah Valley, Virginia.❤️

Unpredictable Changes: Life is Full of Them

Reepicheep the cat doesn't seem to mind summer in February.

The Grace and Freedom of Life in the Spirit

In the first days of Lent, we are exhorted to prayer, fasting, and works of mercy, justice, charity, and compassion.

At the same time, we are reminded that our very capacity to do good and the value of all our good actions are themselves his gifts to us and his work through us in the world.

He is the Creator and Lord, which means also that he is ever the origin, sustenance, and fulfillment of love. He creates us as persons endowed with freedom and sustains us in being at every moment.

Moreover, the gift of his grace in Jesus Christ raises us up beyond ourselves to a participation in his infinite life and love, a "divinized" existence that is fulfilled in our eternal destiny, but that begins even in the here-and-now: in the ordinary circumstances, joys, responsibilities, and sufferings of this life on earth.

This is life in the Spirit, the path along which we are called to grow to full maturity in Christ, and to help one another in living this vocation. Our freedom is empowered by the gift of his grace, and our actions of sacrifice and love sustained by it.

It is true that we must cooperate with grace. When God our Creator and Redeemer works "in" our freedom, he doesn't take its place. Rather, he makes our personal freedom more free, more profoundly our own, just as in creating us he gives us (really) to ourselves.

To live in the Spirit—to live and act by the grace of God—is to live in freedom, to grow toward becoming the fullness of the unique person he is calling us to be with him and with our brothers and sisters forever.

Still, freedom cannot be forced. God wants to empower us to choose and attain happiness, to love him and share in his life. But he doesn't compel us to respond to him, adhere to him, or stay with him. We can ignore his call of love; he won't force us to journey with him on the road he has prepared for our happiness and fulfillment.

But we cannot make ourselves happy by our own power. All good comes from God. Without him we cannot be whole and good; we cannot be happy. Let us therefore turn to him and trust in the grace and love that he surrounds us with all through our lives.

This Collect prayer from the second day of the Lenten season expresses well our recognition of our total dependence on the grace and mercy of the God who loves us and wants to bring us to our fulfillment in his image and likeness:

         "Prompt our actions with your inspiration,
         we pray, O Lord,
         and further them with your constant help,
         that all we do may always begin from you
         and by you be brought to completion.
         Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
         who lives and reigns with you in the unity
         of the Holy Spirit,
         one God, for ever and ever."

The Coming Brightness