Our Trees

The Christian symbol of faith is the crucifix that gloriously becomes an empty cross. Christians tend to avoid this first part to our detriment, because we can not get to empty crosses without hanging on them. A Christian education, with letters behind a name, does not necessary make a disciple. However, it does assist in a framework where sacrifice, experience and divine relationship can be identified with.

God seems to meet His disciples, in their experience, where we tend to listen; in pain. In one of my favorite films, The Princess Bride a statement is made, “life is pain; anyone telling you any different is trying to sell you something.” This is where our Christian experienced rubber tires meet the hot concrete of life. It is what we do with what Christ did for us, and what we do in walking through our own crucifixion that reveals what we truly believe. There are no short cuts to heaven; it has to flow through, “Your Will Be Done.”

In saying the Lord’s Prayer, we are challenged to believe it. When a Christian sees Christ’s crucifixion there is no way to go but through it or run from it. It is in His pain that we have strength for ours, because He has shown us that only through His wounds does our heaven await. When hanging on a tree it becomes ours. It might not have been chosen, but now we have been nailed to it. Sometimes going through it is the answer, because it is the only choice we have. Christians sometimes only can have faith on our tree, because God did on His.

When God Is Enough

“At a time when you did not know God, you became slaves to things that by nature are not gods; but now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and destitute elemental powers? Do you want to be slaves to them, all over again?” (Galatians 4: 8-9)

Have you ever noticed that most of our spiritual struggle comes from a constant desire to avoid the void? We reject God as being enough for us, in the multiple empty moments of life, reaching for something we think will satisfy. The void is there and needs to be faced because, within it, we are found and healed. Bono says, “home is where the hurt is.” There is wisdom in this.

Thousands of moments of God as enough or not, are chosen within the day by the disciple. The current one is what we are called to, through God’s grace, to bridge the gap between a discontentment with and relationship with God. It is only this moment that matters. This desire to fill the void is spiritual language not to be feared, it is a calling back the soul to dwell satisfied with the divine. In God’s own satisfaction, between the Trinity, is where we are taught and find our selves.

The spiritual lesson, to be learned here, is that our being slaves to God helps eliminate a growing tendency to be slaves to things that “by nature, are not gods.” We are made for submission and inclusion into Something beyond ourselves, for we can only get so far, only spiritually feeding off tangible humanity. From what well do we chose to drink in this desert?

Once a person becomes a slave to God, they are the freest born, because that person has learned that God is their Source and can be the Only Giver. Nothing can completely give that “by nature are not gods.” As the saying goes “do not hang your hat on what can not support the weight.” The soul allowing God within reduces spiritual friction and has the freedom to stretch into eternity, yet is freed to become solidified here as God roots His kingdom. Internal dialogue, listening, and letting God be enough, has the habit of making what is the shadow of a man; a man. For man can only be as strong as what supports him.

Seeing Indistinctly

“At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known.” (1 Corinthians 13:12)

We can only know if we allow ourselves to be known. God asks us to open up to Him in such a personal way that for the great majority of us this is extremely uncomfortable. There is something real near, we can feel it and it is only seen indistinctly. The Spirit is reaching out and the more we allow it into us, the more we seem to have capacity within. We are the partial people, that continue to battle for openness to God that will not leave us alone, in a world that celebrates being closed and strong. So much around us has taught to guard, so God is always like a child saying “come out I want to play.”

A friend of mine’s father killed her mother (his wife) and himself recently. He took a gun to her head and his pulling the trigger. What could I do but hold her and let her know I was there. She did not need spiritual philosophy but relationship; a relationship built on a real person that was not afraid in the dark cold night to hug and hold. There were no answers, just allowing openness to know and be known. That is why the Christian God is personal, because everything else fails in comparison for the human. We are material, which is where God meets His people. What He made us of He became, what we needed He gave.

Over 300,000 people died and millions displaced in Southeast Asia from a wave. An adjustment in the earths crust changed everything in the region. Saint and sinner were washed away together, with no discrimination given by the wave to the baby in the crib. How can a Christian have faith after everyone and everything they have known has been washed away? The answer is you can not, if there is faith, it has to come from and depend on what is outside and above fragile humanity easily be compromised by water. One reason Christians can claim to see is because they have learned the failure of there own eyes. We see indistinctly and have had to learn to allow ourselves to be known by and rely on the only One that can.

Humility to Human

One of the foundations to any legitimate Christian spirituality is humility. A false humility thinks less of self, the true version thinks more. True humility teaches that creatures can only improve by what makes it, growing only in “eating bread from heaven.” In Christian humility believers not only realize the ego must get out of the way for charity, but learn by getting out of the way they are given a divine strength to run in resolution to what is beyond. Humility, sub-servant externally becomes one of the greatest of internal spiritual actions, towards spiritual maturity beyond the self.

We can learn how to live this humility from saints, humans like us. What has made them saintly is a grace, grasp and resolve that they live best when they are not the point. A saint has come to realize they are just little icon of what made them. Saints are wisely open to others, even when multiple souls advise that living in this world has proven the demand for self protection. This is one reason why the saints are effective; their external openness to smallest becomes giant among the masses of ego. Their openness to smallness allows room and training for the great spiritual work given to them. It is their humility, accepting the mess of themselves and human experience that becomes a spiritual life truly lived. Case in point, St. Francis of Assisi embraced, reluctantly at first, humility knowing it was the only way open to spiritual life:

“In the Incarnation, Francis [St. Francis of Assisi] saw that becoming human was the basis for humanity. In embracing our humanness, Jesus did not cling to being God. This choice was the epitome of humility. In so choosing, Jesus could accept everything to which human nature is prone, even death. This image of Christ as seen on the cross became an essential component of Francis’ new self. Like Jesus, humility for Francis meant not to cling to anything or appropriate any goods, titles, honors or position. It meant to be servant to all, even inanimate creatures. It meant generosity of spirit and generosity of heart, the willingness to let all others be first. It meant obedience to all, being subject to all, just like Jesus, the Word made flesh, who did not cling to honor, status or power. In recognizing his true self in this image, Francis embraced the essence of his being and the realization that he needed nothing else to give him worth.” (Roch Niemier, O.F.M. St. Anthony Messenger, Oct. 2006 p. 19-20.)

As with St. Francis, the saint opens to God’s help, humble enough to be filled up, after the rejection of many things lesser. The saint has learned God fills and protects the soul, even as the same time the saint accepts they will “be fed and trampled on”. Saints have gained enough humility to believe that only God creates their value, His value through them is to overflow into this dangerous world. God has devised one of many plans to feed His ego ridden children, if they will not feed on Him, He will burn evil out of the hearts of man, even if He allows them to feed on their saintly bothers and sisters. This world demands in its’ weakness, security and substance. Saints have enough humility and confidence to knell to be sacrificed for egos, if need be, for they were there once as well. These saints have become so human that they are transformed into something new, not a losing of humanity, but fulfilling the human to possess less shadow from the fall.

Humility can do that, humility becomes the tool to power Christian self-realization. The question is do we want, in humility, to participate in the hard work to ourselves? The hope that we have is that what Godly humility starts can be brought to completion in man by a Godly grace. God creates man so like a man was to be made, that hell shutters at the power.

The Suffering Christian

“The Son of God suffered unto the death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like His.” (George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons, First Series)

We should lack trust in a God only of the Sun that has not experienced death of His Son. For the human experience has so much to do with pain and suffering. The cross however gives the divine legitimacy for relationship, not that God needed approval, but that God’s actions demonstrated solidarity with His creation. The struggles in this life will never go away, so He decided neither would He.

Easter is the climax of reality and the ultimate purpose of the suffering Christ. We have a God that refuses to leave us; a cross is a small thing indeed to get between His children and the Maker of Life. Yet, He refuses in some way to come off the cross when we are still on it. Christ’s suffering and how we participate in this is the only way we can get to the Easter resurrection hope. He is specifically on this side to make way on the other. Easter resurrection joy only comes through the suffering Christ; the darkness gives way to light because it simply is inadequate.

In the end we realize how frail this physical world is compared to what is beyond. The images of Pope John Paul II sitting in his chair during his last Easter with us, his head leaning on the crucifix, can not easily escape memory. We learn from suffering and it is through others that God speaks. A Pole influenced human hearts and nations because he first allowed God to change his own. John Paul II’s participating goal in history was not John Paul II; he knew we are only to reflect what is beyond, moons only reflect the rays of the sun. The Pope’s Christian authenticity in suffering was the direct result of daily allowing himself to be icon of the One that he served, the One that also suffered in humanity.

“The Son of God suffered unto the death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like His.” Recently we have been reminded, in a very public way, that suffering allowed transforms the disciple and can lead to a deeper purpose and meaning beyond it. Easter resurrection, joy and hope are the direct result of first Christ’s death. The life that is being created in us will only be completed when our “sufferings might be like His,” when we reflect what has created us has power over death. What has created humanity believes in humanity.

Progress

“Deny self and embrace Christ” is a concept that is descriptive of an idea that is becoming increasingly counter- cultural. Modern values have become increasingly identified with denial of a community that then asks devoid of relationships for the self to be grounded. The self needs a learned history, with critically thinking and the importance of other perspectives. The avoidance of self revealing community and personal reflection has produced a people that have the illusion that they can progress without attachments, without others.

An emphasis on secular personal progress and upward mobility reveals its’ underlying weakness. For secular personal progress to develop one must continue to move away from community.

On the contrary, Christians have another vision modeled on God Himself and encourages individuals to revisit what they are standing or are not standing on. Christian thought demands reflection and community to implant the transformation of self, into the community of God. For Christian progress always first springs and refreshing from the unchanging Lover: Creator of the Soul. Christian movement is always based on a true understanding of self-actualization that moves the self closer to where it came from: God.

Jesus has given the example for healthy progress over and over again. “And after he [Jesus] had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone.” (Matthew 14: 23) For Jesus, all mission and relationship were founded on His relation with His Father. He knew to be a true mover here on earth He had to be silenced from heaven. Open space and time is never wasted with God; this time has been preciously given to learn the language of eternity for earthly benefit. Personal progress is born within prayerful retreat with a Trinity.

Love Correctly Directed

God is love is foundational Christian belief. Christians see this love as a Person (the Christ), from which this Person uses Himself as the language to His creation. What better language could God use than Christ to us as material beings? It is our life-long mission to take love as it is divinely given from Christ; listening to God maintaining a conversation to us and others through Himself. It is the lack of comprehension and use of divine love correctly demonstrated between the Trinity that at the same degree we loose our human characteristics to love as His children. When a love is correctly directed its’ fruit is sweat and all relationship with it at ease.

C.S. Lewis believes there are four categories of this love: Storge (Affection), Philia (Friendship), Eros (Sexual) and Agape (Charity). One has to step into these worlds of love carefully, not because they are wrong but just the opposite; they are so divinely right. One loves a dog (affection), one loves a friend (friendship), one loves a wife or husband (sexual) and one is loved by God unselfishly and we learning to love back unselfishly (charity). These are our love worlds of great adventure to where God reveals Himself. Jesus said “I come to bring you life.” We can not expect this life without embracing fully the I, the Person of Love. More we settle for love and life lite results more into the death of love in our lives.

John Paul II called our Western culture “the culture of death.” This statement, in part, reflects rejection of divine love and/or a refusal of considering it. The modern and progressive view of love can be found in the fruit of its’ mortal users, wishing to change it to image oneself, making oneself god and goal. If the loves are warped in our culture it is not that God that is love has changed, but mortal users with greater regularity changing relationship with God wishing to now mirror themselves. Who God is in ones life is the foundation from which all the love longed for is ultimately fruitful or dies on the vine.

The Christian perspective of love provides another alternative; love is not to image its’ moral user, but its’ divine Giver. It is a divine language that is designed to communicate what God is and who we are within Him. We can only love correctly when we have been correctly loved. We can only be love to others when we are not the point: pointing to its’ Source.

The Liturgy of Life

As Christian maturity develops there should be the realization in the significance of norm and ordinary; for this is where the great majority of human experience is spent. It is the weak Christian indeed that only feeds on spectacle and spiritual highs. It is the beauty of the constant seasons, morning mist off the lake and the recognizing smile in the face of the infant that constantly reveals something of God: present.

By walking, not running through our day’s routine is one way we can learn to open up ourselves and reflect on the theology of God with us, not just God out there some where when great attention is given. That is why the repetition of the Mass is so important to the Catholic; it is the participation in the everyday of life where God is with us now. So what is God trying to reveal in this repetitive space and time? The sun rises and sets time and again, revealing that we as Christians are like our Father: “partakers of the divine nature” now. This divine nature is not put on like an altar boy’s robe when entering the stone church for Mass then taken off when exiting. God continues deep transformation in our nature within the norm of Monday. We are His children to the market place; transmitters of His divine nature behind the computer and store counter in relationship.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states in paragraph 460:
“The Word became flesh to make us "partakers of the divine nature": "For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God." "For the Son of God became man so that we might become God." "The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods."

The Eastern Catholic and Orthodox Churches have a more developed theology of this “partakers of the divine nature” in living this liturgy of life than in the West. The West need embrace this correct Christian identity more within a secular culture that has a tendency to separate the human from divine, wishing an anemic and compartmental religion. Western man wishes control, even of God. The mystery and power of the Christian faith IS threatening: divine transforms humanity that will then transform environment.

This Christian mystery of being “partakers of the divine nature” makes the man become a man and woman become woman. He will not make man and woman look like they wish but only like He IS. The question is how bad, or in this case how good, does one wish to co-operate with the divine? The result transforms, for the liturgy of our daily life reveals what we worship. Sometimes Monday can reveal more of a man than Sunday.

Joy From A Child

Nietzsche once said, "If Christians wish us to believe in their Redeemer why don't they look a little more redeemed?" He is absolutely correct in his thinking, to a point. If our “Redeemedness” doesn’t transfer into daily living there is something missing. A crucial element that might be missing is joy; joy that permeates all we do and all that is done to us.

There are people that get so “rapped” up in the presents of the Christmas season that they forget it is not even their birthday being celebrated. There are others where the memories of past Christmas freeze the present. Some will not celebrate Christmas at all because December 25, before it was Christianized, was pagan and will not even think of bringing in an evergreen from out of the cold. They can not see the forest for the tree. The tree in their mind has taken over the carols, egg nog and the manger. In all these cases Nietzsche would be accurate.

Christ brings joy of redemption. There should be hope and celebration in a new beginning through the Redeemer. A true Christmas proves Nietzsche wrong on all levels because it will translate into a spring-time of joy that will last long after the New Year. In the Loin, Witch and the Wardrobe C. S. Lewis refers to a land that is “always winter but never Christmas.” The exterior weather of ice and snow gives us a chance to focus on the interior warmth of Christmas that should be there as Christians.

Starting in high school, long before becoming Catholic, there was a fascination with the Midnight Mass. It was the chilled darkness outside and lights within that brought me to understanding much about what the season can be. Knelling beneath the lights, stone alter, and manger I was able to see the child again, the joy that brings me again to realize a Divine Child can and does change the man in this season and in the next.

This Christmas season it is a prayer that we should all be able to have the joy of knelling closer to the manger. May the lights on the trees above burn in our hearts continually. May the Child in the manger remind us that it is not just the season that can bring joy but an embrace of the Childs Smile and Life in the middle of winter that creates the season.

Joy to the world
The Lord has come
Let earth receive their King
Let every heart prepare Him room
Let heaven and nature sing (3X)

Joy and Diet

On the journey of Lent one learns to see what really is. As least they are invited to. When something is given up it leaves space that needs to be filled. What is chosen to be put there for Lent should be designed to create more freedom for growth of the Christian soul. There is a confrontation of what one feeds on in this live and what God wants you to feed on. “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God” Matt. 4:4 (NAB) Either He provides or He does not. There are rumors that He does. Everyone is talking and has an opinion on the matter.

It is during Lent that one sees that what is right in front of them is what they have desired and crossed mountains wishing to touch. God desires our diet to be on Him, for He knows anything else will burden and can someday kill. The shadows of our mountains in life seem to hide that God journeys right next to His children, feeding along the way, like a mother robin feeding her chick back into the nest. He is not calling us to cross these mountains alone, just turn next to us where He is, which is sometimes with fear the greatest of distances.

Lent can only be joyous when one can celebrate the clarity of God being eaten as enough. If He is not, Lent forces the issue of why He is not. This darkness between, caused by our sin, not only is the space between but a way to entering His light and joy. God is not far in the darkness and to reach out is not failure but wisdom. If we can not see maybe the one that made us can? God is not even asking for full believe, only that we realize that there is only so many times a person hits their head against a wall in the dark before they ask for directions. It is the failures, if we let them, which push us into His direction by sure need. Holding His hand is from experience and wisdom; ones that don not have not met the wall or enjoy eating brick. For we should all be getting tired of brick. There is only so many ways one can fix it for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

In a World of Half Loves

In Benedict XVI timely new encyclical Deus Caritas Est (“God is Love”) he explores how the misunderstanding and/or rejection of true love have created enormous damage to the human’s true vocation. In number six of the first part titled “The Unity of Love in Creation and in Salvation History” the Holy Father proclaims “searching” love . . .which involves a real discovery of the other, moving beyond the selfish character. . . Love now becomes concern and care for the other. No longer is it self-seeking, a sinking in the intoxication of the happiness; instead it seeks to good of the beloved: it becomes renunciation and it is ready, and even willing, for sacrifice.”

Sacrificial love, love not goaled in, “a sinking in the intoxication of the happiness,” reveals the substance of the love. It is the land one learns to walk into and stand on in a journey of becoming more than one thought they could ever be. There have never been substitutes for the real thing, because nothing than the original satisfies once it has been realized. To love as God does isn’t really giving up of self, it is sacrifice in its’ true sense by “giving into” the original intent that the self was molded for: “the good of the beloved.” Sacrifice is then necessary to finding the true nature of love, it becomes not only bearable, but fulfilling because the goal of Godly love is reward in full. God DOES and CAN move us beyond our limits of self absorption and, in a turn of events, brings us into His “self absorption” that brings life. He draws us out of us, which left unmoved like a stream, which if not continual infused with Him, will poison. He knows we can not be left to ourselves, and will draw us into His flowing living waters: Himself.

This healthy sacrifice on the way to love should bring us to our knees, because that is the best human posture for “a real discovery of the other.” Our attention must be continually refocused off of ourselves; Christ in washing the feet of His disciples knew this in teaching us “the vocabulary of love.” As humans, what has been passed down, experienced, and participated in, creates our “vocabulary in love,” which is complete or not. That is why the Church is so important in bring us back to “ourselves” based on the Lover and not relying on “personal experience,” but a collective away from self that leaves room for God to be heard. The greater sin distorts love within us and culture, the greater the Church, with each other, is needed to heal into having a correct vocabulary for love.

We are ever increasingly bogged down in false vocabulary where only a gleam of the Word has been taken in. From this we have produced a world of half loves, for the fruit it produces is very bitter indeed. God is Love, and His love brings life, this has always been the orthodox Christian testing of its’ true nature. To the core that is what God is, Love that brings Life. When love doesn’t bring life something is misplaced in an attempt to live it. It is a daily decision and struggle for the Christian to consciously be brave enough to embrace the full and awesome reality of Love that God has for us or its’ halves we are tempted to settle for. Once divided, away from the source, these halves will continue into smaller and warped versions of the real thing. The sacrifice of continually embracing Love in its fullness and not settling for the pieces is not easy. This however, is the sacrifice in taking the quickest road to God and ourselves.

Growing Up

There was a quote by Chili Davis that is memorable: “Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.” This truth of not escaping our human physical death is ever before us. We have resorted to a “youth culture” in America wishing to avoid reality for as long a possible. What we are called as Christians and what we have some control of is the level that we “grow up.” The great Christian spiritual masters tell us over and over again that it is not through “sophisticated values” in this world that Christ brings us to spiritual maturity, but He teaches us His perspective by “being like children,” in the middle of an adult world. We as children are called to be “wise as a serpent and gentile as a dove,” and asked to remember that “the last will be first.” It is only after learning to be His child that He will help us “grow up” in a way considered “foolish” to others. Our Church just might benefit by having more wise children and less tactical adults peering out from their glasses. Because it is a child that continues to depend and be more open to His Father’s leading.

Christ turns this world and ours upside down, He can because He is the only one that can make it right again. A few questions: Is our souls as Christians maturing in His childness, becoming more open to Him and others? Do we spiritually look more like Christ now than yesterday? This growth can only happen if our priorities are a maturing within humanity that is only found in being a little Christ. The Christian song writer and singer Rich Mullins once described this process as “growing young.”

John Paul II has renewed a wonderful conversation in the Church in His “Theology of the Body.” He reminds Christian children that we are not Gnostics that reject a spirituality of the physical in our search, for we are taught to embrace our physical growth through the context of the soul within the body. Our human fragility reveals the soul, not being trapped in the body, but called to proclaim from the body the reality of the soul.

Lucifer hates this fact that Christ’s children have the ability to physically multiply and these children can grow up: disciples. One of the greatest fears evil has is that these measly children will believe their Father and wish to grow up to be just like Him, some might, with His help learn how to rule. One of the last things Rich Mullins said on earth was, “look, I look like Jesus.” Now this is a child’s soul living dangerously and what Christ calls growing up.

Eyes of the Heart

“May the eyes of your hearts be enlightened, that you may know what is the hope that belongs to his call, what are the riches of glory in his inheritance among the holy ones . . .” (Ephesians 1:18)

It is autumn and the tree’s leaves are turning into beautiful colors. Being physical beings we operate in and recognize the value of this physical world, which reveals God’s magnificent creation. We must however, as we take pleasure in creation with the senses, connect this gift with the superior non-seen creation that is fixed to it. Only a little is revealed.

A door open to this non-seen creation as St. Paul says is to develop “eyes of the heart” to God beyond what we can grasp. Eyes of the heart build our faith in our Maker, His plan and relationship with us where the senses are only the beginning.

The teachable physical world can only be understood in a spiritual framework. Not that we separate the physical from the spiritual, on the contrary, it is fully ingrained but just the tip of what humans are readily aware of. We must always remember that we as humans are “icons” here of the living God. He wishes to develop us into a complete humanity, Himself. It is only starting here. There are other lands we can experience Him, where He can teach, love us and where we can learn to love each other within. Our eyes are to become His, our hearts to become His.

Cross My Heart

We are in a life-long process of deprogramming our souls, exposed to a sinful and bitter world. If we let our environment, it can rob us from true living. We can’t avoid the fact that our human experiences have had great influence on what has formed our perceptive. By way of perspective, God often reaches out to guide us into His by showing us Himself on a cross. Christ didn’t let the cross define him here, but He knew He had to hang on it anyway. He knew that it was the path given by God to redeem every human soul, for He knew what was beyond it. He is teaching His children that crosses that aren’t picked up will only drag us down until we go back for them.

Allowing a person, family, or community not to pick up their crosses is not doing anyone a favor. God is like the loving Father that insists that when His child wrecked the car, either by their fault or not, has to drive it home. They have to drive home if they are ever going to learn what it means to get behind the wheel again. Spiritually, if we can’t confront what is in front of us, there is no way around it.

God, as a loving Father has a way of getting our attention by stopping a walk with us, in a way, and standing next to the cross that we have tried to pass. He knows His child isn’t going anywhere, of spiritual significance, if they don’t go back and pick it up. Remember He said “My burden is light.” Maybe part of what He meant was that “if you think it is heavy now with me, wait until you try it on your own.” It sometimes takes a lifetime, if we are lucky, to get to the point that we allow God’s perspective of crosses to become the way to our heart. It is the picking them up and climbing on them in this world, that not only brings hope of life in the next, but freedom to live with them in the here and now.

The cross if carried is freedom with God. The cross if left at the side of the road can kill you and others that follow.

Be Still

“Be still and know that I am God.” Ps. 46:10

Being still is one of the greatest disciplines in Christendom. In our age we have been greatly weakened by its lack of exercise. We have allowed today’s opportunities to become curses, resembling a greedy boy stuffing more strawberries into his mouth than what can be put in the pale. He soon forgets what strawberries taste like, not satisfied and sickened by the sight of them. It is hard to be stilled in an age that promotes the next desire as the goal, when the one being held is never fully experienced.

The Christian that refuses to be stilled turns into a pasty weakling that wishes not to be disrupted along the Samaritan Road. It is in being open to souls in time that we are satisfied and learn our purpose for movement: relationship. The callused, sun baked and dirt stained hands of the Carpenter knows one must be stilled to be any help to the traveler and have any hope for connection. For a relationship with man, God will still man, to save him and continues to save him by getting in the way.

One of the greatest miracles needed in our cynical age are hearts allowing passage and inconvenience. The alternative is collaboration with Hell, the greatest promoter of safety and ease. Hell has learned that if a soul has learned to be moved, they are that much closer to learning to move those mountains. Hell is the most perversely ordered and secure place that is, for there the heart has chosen one unbending direction: back into self, ridding any remains of a divine recklessness love.

“Be still and know that I am God.” The Almighty wishes to still us so we distinguish more clearly between shadow and substance, knowing firm ground is needed for the unpleasant and dirty work on the soul. He is after all the Carpenter that molds us now for what is to come, to be used and useful.

When a Christian is crucified with his Master he has been limited, stilled, bloodied, strip naked and broken under the sun. Following his Master, he has learned in this unique relationship to believe in and live in this moment which becomes the real gate into the next, even beyond the grave. A soul that has been so stilled in the shadows has linked with the Divine who has power to put mountains into the sea and more importantly Hell.

Be Not Afraid

Probably one of the greatest themes that John Paul II is famous for is “BE NOT AFRAID.” It was these words that rang through church bells and many minds as the world celebrated a great life. With this classic phrase from Christ he called all to live it in front of a skeptical age. From the very beginning of his public ministry it was as if he dared Christians to live their faith and not be transformed. He dared the rest of the world to not notice when it was accomplished.

John Paul II’s personal witness day in and day out in the public consciences was an example to the consequences of what God does when just one person says Yes to Christ the Truth, over and over and over again. “Be not afraid” wasn’t just a pipe dream, but becomes the key to a life lived to its’ fullness. He desired to say Yes to Christ in everything and this Yes allowed God’s love and power to flow effectively through him, in such a dramatic way, that made the most secular stopped in their tracks.

The personal recollections of a life, the documentaries, the commentators lined up in a Rome square to try to understand this life that so many were touched by. What does this mean and how did this happen that the greatest of us isn’t pointing to himself, but to someone else that lived two thousand year ago? People where jumping over each other to comment regarding the largest funeral in human history and to the largest event ever watched at two billion people. What created such response?

This Polish man after all was just one man, and maybe this was the key to the mission that he was called to teach us to emulate; a true holiness and wholeness in the fragmented world. He taught man to be man again. A true modern man that has learned you have to denying the innovation that you can separate truth from living. He understood that truth is attainable and humans can only become more so through a relationship with the Divine. He demonstrated time and again that every person is made in the Image of God and is more valuable than your 401K. In a world where the battle between men and women in the West has reached the crisis point, he reminded us that it is though giving to each other that happiness is reached. The Holy Father asked us to reflect on the danger of man without God, that only leads to self-destruction and it was nations and philosophies that couldn’t stand the weight.

“Be not afraid” is what he set out to teach through Christ. He asked the Church to live up to what they have always believed for two Mililani without fear. In general, the Holy Father didn’t say anything new, just with a deeper knowledge, to help Christendom negotiate how to live it more fully in an increasingly secular age. What he did do that was unique to our time is that he refused to change Christian Truth “to fit the times.” Maybe that is why so many youth flocked to the Holy Father, answering the challenge of a new generation of Christians to reflect and pray. He put the Orthodox case before them, and after they lived and saw the values that the secular culture provided asked if they as men and women were more fulfilled? What the “world” offered didn’t satisfy, yet many did not hesitate to travel the world to meet, listen, and pray with this man. He refused to leave the youth of the Church as children and challenged them which made them love him even more. It was personal; they actually felt loved in his presents to the point of tears. The former Polish actor revealed of an interpersonal relationship with God and others on an international stage this age has not seen.

“Be not afraid” in loving each person as Christ transformed a Polish priest before our eyes as an international example of how with our Yes to Christ can transform us as well. He is great was found in again and again pointed us to Christ. The Holy Father showed us how to be human, even when afraid, especial when afraid.

Ashes

Ash Wednesday starts the season of Lent where we are reminded that we will be returned to the ground. “Dust to dust and ashes to ashes” and it is our life in between where the fight for our soul occurs.

It can become clearer experiencing an Ash Wednesday service when the ashes are put on the forehead in the shape of a cross. Death is waiting and this is implicit in a season of penance. The whole Christian experience has proven that one has to allow the soul to die to them selves if they are going to live in Christ. This is where so many progressive Christians drop by the wayside. “What, Christian’s have to sacrifice?” This time of ashes is the forty days in the wilderness where God speaks and we shouldn’t. He has the right to remind us what He did for us on a cross and we have the obligation to try not to look away at His crucifixion and His call to take up our own.

Christian life can not be understood without Christian death. This season of ashes doesn’t validate a Christian faith as morbid, but on the contrary it is a faith that understands it has its’ climax in the rising only after it has its’ death. This is one of the key problems with and lack of power in progressive Christianity that refuses self-denial. It is only through our death that we get to our life; there are no spiritual short cuts. The Christian realization of life and death with in our soul should humble us to the core. We are dangerous; to ourselves and to both camps. All of humanity walks the edge where death and life can overtake in an instant. Ashes on the forehead are put there to help remind us to allow a reverence to sink within our soul.

These forty days in a death wilderness is where we more profoundly learn just what it means to take up our cross and hang there next to our Savior. It is painful, but it also is what perfects the Christian by permitting its’ own death. A fantastic King’s ransom has been paid for our life; the Prince was required. Ashes are just a manifestation of Christendom realizing it and trying not to look away.

Are We Weak Enough?

At a conference titled “The Passion of the Christ: The Joy of Suffering!” one of the Sisters of Life said something that impacted me. She said “I am not strong enough, but I am weak enough.” Most of us believe we have to be strong enough through our suffering, be competent and contained at all times. Our struggles and suffering is something that has to be overcome and/or get over.

The Christian response to suffering is not the cultures; we know of original sin and our own, that only Christ can bring meaning and purpose through struggle. We are suffering our own passion, on the way to wholeness. Christians are not fools, searching for pain, but we are asked by the Lord to let Him, our Joy, help us take up our cross when there is no other way.

Simon from Cyrene was made to help carry Jesus’ cross when Jesus physically could not, there was no other way. The Creator of the Universe needed, in His humanity, a man from Cyrene to help Him get to His crucifixion: the path given by God to make the world anew. This lesson applies to us in the same way; we are asked to be weak enough to let God help us carry what has been given us, when there is no other way. “I am not strong enough, but I am weak enough” is an attitude taught by God to us, so that we try to leave room for Him to put on His shoulders what we can not, for we have learned there is no other way.

There was a prayer said at the conference that I hope we can say today and everyday:

Lord, I can not
You must
I am yours
Show me the way

A Kingdom Wanted: No King Need Apply

In the book titled Abandonment to Divine Providence by Jean-Pierre De Caussade the author says “If we wish to enjoy an abundance of blessings we have only one thing to do: purify our hearts by emptying them of all desire for created things and surrender ourselves wholly to God.” What is it about the nature of blessings that causes great pain when they are misused? Could it be that it is our failure as humans to have the ability to hold these holy blessings correctly, that helps us realize aspects of the Holy from where they come from? Is it really in our self-surrender that God calls a fertile self? The King’s children do ask many questions.

If this is true, many of us have become experts on emptiness knowing the values and blessings our King gives, but living in great frustration in not being able to incorporate them wholly into our lives.

Part of the Christian secret to blessings correctly lived is that the King’s blessings can’t be hoarded when received, but they are to be opened up and lived through. When the soul gladly receives the order, friendship, protection and gifts of the King, but doesn’t even try to open them up and live with them correctly is like putting a sign on one’s heart: A Kingdom Wanted: No King Need Apply. If you and I desire Kingdom benefits, we better be ready to be Kingdom servants; God’s children of a real promise.

If God moves the only way we know we are truly connected to Him is if we bend to what He is. The alterative is breaking against the greatest liberal within and greatest conservative externally the human will ever come into contact with. Our weakness with blessings can have a positive side; it allows flexibility for growth of the soul in either direction. What becomes more important is the soul is learning to lean on that which is then shape it.

God’s blessings enlighten who God is. Living through those blessings enlightens a world to what He is making in us and can do for them as well. Very rarely will a Kingdom fall when the King is good and the citizens remember just how good He really is. The heart cries for a king. A kingdom is wanted and the King continues to apply for the job.

A Fish Out Of Water

We can not improve on Christ and His Church, for it is through Christ and His Church that the Christian is improved. It is an arrogant people and culture that believe God can be boxed and packaged. It is a false present from the ego, for the ego. A God that is limited to being practical is very small indeed. With that said, the Almighty has chosen time and time again to meet His children in their experience. The Christian God knows that His children, on the way to authenticity and healing, will walk all over Him. He has made it clear as a Father, He can take it.

Christ was in the Jordan, in the wilderness, at the marriage feast, next to the tomb of Lazarus, on the cross and transformed at Easter, for He went where we would experience Him. He wished to be in to transform. He refuses to hesitate and runs to where we are. He does not wait for us to get it right before drawing close. “I call You Friend.” Time and time again He is not afraid to be the doormat, if that is what it takes to be near His child. He has made it clear as a Father, it is worth it.

Christian orthodoxy believes God entered our world to transform it. The divine furnace that forged the universe is and can continue to forge us. His transforming love and sacrifice when He entered our world are extremely hard to ignore. History was changed for the secular; souls were transformed for the believer. Someone who knew this intimately would be Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Her theology can be debated, but even the secular take notice of the authentic relationship of knelling with others. A relationship that says, “What can I do for you, even if there is no way you can or will be able to do for me,” changes our definition of relationship and authenticity. She had external experience.

There are real results when allowing God to be God, the mysterious lover. The first is we improve and are freed by His rush to embrace. He rubs off on us with gracious joy and a greater sense that we His child, an icon of Him self. The divine furnace continues to forge on our ability to shine through. The Eastern Church calls this “divinization.” The second is that we learn to love deeper with a greater spectrum of love, when we thought not possible. The beauty and mystery of this is that it was not! He changes again our definitions of the possible and moves us from our experience by putting us into His, Him self.

It is from our experience from within Him that we learn that getting up to love again is much more valuable than our falling in the calculation of divine arithmetic. We are taught to love with a love that is beyond. From a life and cross one Divine Yes broke into pieces the entire No’s of hell. Evil could not calculate against such great odds; neither can we.

This is why Christian orthodoxy transforms, because it does not rest on the fragile, surface experience and pop philosophy of the moment. The Source is divine, not human, when the divine mystery is embraced it forms the greatest “icons” humanity has ever seen. Orthodoxy opens us up to the realization of this “divinization” and “iconic” process within us, God can and will change us when we experience Him on His ground. St. Catherine of Siena once said, “If you are who you should be, you will set the world ablaze.”

We can not improve on Christ and His Church, for a Christian to believe otherwise is like a fish telling the ocean “let me show you a thing or two,” as it flaps around on dry sand. The Church is the ocean from which we breathe, like a pregnant mother breathes for her child. The Trinity carried Mary in a special way, so Mary could carry God who entered our experience in humanity. Our experience of Him is the greatest when we allow ourselves to be incorporated into His Body, Him self, His experience, and breathe in from the Breathe of God.

Sabbath

What do we think about the concept of Sabbath and how do we apply it today as Christians? To a boy that grew up in a defined Seventh-Day Adventist culture, I think of sun-down Friday night to sun-down Saturday night ceasing. The command was to cease from all activity that is not for the benefit of spiritual renewal. Growing up in a SDA culture instilled in me specific memories of how this can be applied in nature walks, Bible study, naps, visits to the lonely, potluck lunches within community to end with sun-down vespers on the beach. This was my first memories of “Sabbath’s sacred space and time.” Even though some of SDA’s applications and theology was rejected, as an adult the Sabbath has stayed as a piece to the foundation for developing my Christian identity.

Now as a Catholic, we recognize this Christian truth has always remained in the Church and has always called to rest in the fight against our human tendency for self-absorption. If God believes it was essential in “the perfect garden,” how much more needed in “the sin desert?” Tools for holiness become that more essential to free from the decaying presence of sin to freshen an opening to God’s graceful relationship and rest. Maybe just maybe, the things we think that are important today are not that important for today? Sabbath helps us align with God’s priorities, moving us from our own, when misdirected, calling to us to redeem and reawaken to the potential of sacred rest for our souls.

The soul in Sabbath should become increasingly more attracted to the concept of Christian “divinization;” where man has the ability to become more like the divine that has made him. The kicker here is that with the freedom given to embrace is also the ability not to embrace what has made him, to embrace everything else that is weaker. The Sabbath is moment placed after moment to stop man in his tracts, to see his great potential for Christ-centered divinization now. Sabbath calls him to conversation with God and away from what weakness has been embraced that does not allow true rest. His conversation now teaches faithful ceasing that will produce very soon faithful action. In the Sabbath is God’s tool that teaches man to rest and trust by allowing man to more fully observe Him at work.

To Sea and Sword

Every analogy is limited, recognizing the restrictions with comparison; the soul can resemble a ship built for sea. Both passage and docking are needed if a ship is to be a ship. The Christian soul entering God is similar to a boat’s voyage and entering new harbor that often is not what it seems. Once through this narrow port of Christ rests a greater body of water, continuing into an ever increasing expansion, just beyond His interior. What joy when first discovered! The soul sails effortlessly within this water of God, just off His pier, like a boy skimming the surface in a sailboat with his father. Soon this preparation is made use within in mysticism or/and the world of evangelization, but always putting out deeper into the sea, into the wind, to return time and again.

If one wishes only harmony in Christian life, they have navigated into a nightmare. The Christian professes a Savior that was crucified by His own creation. Some of our Lord’s last words on this earth were “Father, why have you forsaken me?” This is hardly a faith that does not experience distress where we thought harbor. Logic and theology give glimpses, but the mystical reality of Christian belief is fully revealed within suffering. Suffering exposes motive, ability, and the soul’s tolerance for Light. With this said, God has not given His children to a masochistic longing for adversity, but knowing hardship fully, has given His children the capacity to live life in the midst, not numbed by waves of incident and bitter cold. Sometimes He awakes to calm waves, sometimes His children as the ship threatens to breaks up to go down.

Our Father continues to urge the soul to continue the journey into the deep, and then return back to the harbor, for there are no shortcuts for a soul nor seaman. Jesus said, “I have come to give you life and have it abundantly,” yet He is also our model for crucifixion. The Christian mystery is that the disciple can not live his existence, to its abundance honestly, without negotiating its waves. Without waves one rarely awakes to the need and power of God that can move beyond storms. One can train near the pier, but it is another thing all together in the swells with no land in sight. Of course, God’s “quite still voice” is not limited to storm, being heard on the return home near the hearth. However, in the storm attention is alerted, reminding again what is at stake, building the disciple’s skill to sense a present God.

Author, J.R.R. Tolkien envisioned in his The Lord of the Rings a superb instance of a noble fellowship that learned why the journey had to occur; the Shire and Middle Earth were worth the fight. They came to appreciate the simple joys of beer, pipe and salted pork with friends and the trivialness that things can become for those that have not put to sea and sword. Christians must experience the sea to maintain sea worthy, to continue spiritual relevance, for once not used for sea become museums for shipping or firewood. With other vessels looking for True port, our sails need to be present, seen on the horizon, until Light can be made to the shoreline.

Mary’s Yes

What does it mean to be fully human? This is one of the great answers we as humans seek or at lease should be. To the Christian, in this search, the great number of scholars and artists in this tradition stop to reflect on a little Jewish maiden as the model. After reflection, the Incarnation of God through Mary, Jesus’ mother is defiantly unique, differing from other religions. The human is confronted and incorporated by God in a very extraordinary way. This overwhelming belief is the basis for many dusty books in a seminary’s library. They were written from generation after generations encounter with arch angels, a miracle baby, blood, cross, tragedy and triumph. God got human with humanity, born and breathing life across the pages of our story.

God chose to continue relationship with humanity not exclusively “over there” as in the Temple, but also setting up Temple within humanity with Mary’s affirmative reaction to God paving way. This is why the Catholic/Orthodox views Mary, Jesus’ mother as the ideal example of how to allow God, the Holy Spirit within us. For the Catholic/Orthodox, God’s redemption story can not be alienated from Mary’s reply. God chose to enter the human family through her, “the first Christian,” who is activity teaching Christians that follow how to connect and relate to God within.

There are three major theological points here that Christians profess: (1) God initiated (2) Mary did allow God within and (3) God did enter Mary. God is not an ogre, His character revealed an insistence on Mary’s ‘Yes’ before He brought forth His Son. God rose up and entered a “New Eve” to pave way for a “New Adam.” Humanity would never be the same.

This Catholic/Orthodox concept of how God prepared and utilized Mary has always had less to do with Mary, than what God has done through His Son. Mary, the humblest creature would insist on this. It should also be said, that it is hard to ovoid her affirmative and submissive reaction to God’s initiative action within the plan for human salvation. The focus always is on God when Elizabeth professes of Mary “blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” Thus, Mary becomes the most dramatic example of what we do now influences generations to come. “Mary, the Mother of God” was given the opportunity to give birth to God’s humanity, because prior God paved way in allowing her to miraculously possess “Yes” to God.

What it means to be fully human from the Christian point of view is this co-operation with God. God creating humanity in the Image and Likeness of Himself has resulted in our true self being revealed within the Divine. This is why Christianity is the most positive of faiths, for we are continually participating in the renewal of a response to Love, the Almighty that initiates. This is a painful process as our hearts lean towards sin but pray to learn again the divine language of “Yes.” It is painful, but always produces the fullest human revealing our real home within God’s heart.