Tag: Spirituality

Posted on

Incarnation and Resurrection

Too often incarnation and resurrection are just words and thoughts that are too abstract for most of us to get a handle on. For Franciscans the incarnation is about the primacy of Christ. The universe exists for Christ not Christ existing for the universe. The universe and therefore all creation is for Christ. It’s not for man to defile but to give glory. Those among us who see a dichotomy between man and the universe are those who might see its defilement as desirable. There are some Catholics who got very upset because they saw a picture of someone urinating on Christ. But each and everyday we climb into our car and tool down the road we are urinating on Christ. We are defiling creation and eventually all sin has a price and ours is about to get exacted and at a tremendous cost. Perhaps we will pay with our lives and our civilization.

A conversation with my daughter yesterday let me hear how a sensitive young person sees the future. She thinks it’s too late and perhaps it is, but then again maybe there is hope of a resurrection. I hope that’s the case.

Posted on

Thank you

My wife’s surgery went well today and she was very grateful for the many prayers offered on her behalf. She’s on the road to recovery. My father-in-law’s surgery did not provide such good news. He has cancer which we hope is treatable. Please pray him if you are of a mind to do so.  This has been a very busy month and I have not had time to write much, but my thoughts have been about this blog. I have been reading a great deal lately and much of it on Kindle. One of my latest reads has been, “A Hidden Wholeness,” by Parker Palmer. I enthusiastically recommend it to you.

Posted on

Waking up

I’m in the process of waking up. It’s a journey and not a destination. I’ll never be fully awake but I hope that I continue to awaken to the reality of the world that has been created for all of us. This isn’t the Madison Avenue marketing world or the world as described on the evening news. This is the world that St. Francis of Assisi awakened to. This world that I’m waking up to is found in the space between thoughts. It’s found in the darkness between stars.

Spirituality means waking up. Most people, even though they don’t know it, are asleep. They’re born asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep, they die in their sleep without ever waking up. They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing that we call human existence. You know, all mystics -Catholic, Christian, non-Christian, no matter what their theology, no matter what their religion — are unanimous on one thing: that all is well, all is well. Though everything is a mess, all is well. Strange paradox, to be sure. But, tragically, most people never get to see that all is well because they are asleep. They are having a nightmare. — Anthony de Mello, S.J.

Read more by Anthony de Mello here.

Posted on

What is a contemplative?

Last Saturday my son asked my wife and I if we could define mysticism. I did my best but it’s like trying to define what strawberries taste like to someone who’s never tasted one.  This morning I decided to give one of my extra books to our school library but before I did, I looked inside one last time to see any notes I may have left. I found a note on page 81 of “The Illuminated Life: Monastic Wisdom for Seekers of Light,” by Joan Chittister, OSB.

To be a contemplative we must become converted to the consciousness that makes us one with the universe, in tune with the cosmic voice of God. We must become aware of the sacred in every single element of life. We must bring beauty to birth in a poor and plastic world. We must restore the human community. We must grow in concert with God who is within.  We must be healers in a harsh society. We must become all those things that are the ground of contemplation, the fruits of contemplation, the end of contemplation.

Posted on

Wholeness

Religion is about ritual, about morals, about systems of thought, all of them good, but all of them incomplete. Spirituality is about coming to consciousness of the sacred. It is in that consciousness that perspective comes, that peace comes. It is in that consciousness that a person comes to wholeness. –p.16, Illuminated Life–Joan Chittister, OSB

Posted on

Angels in our midst

I was on Route 1 nearing the turn for Mt. Irenaeus when suddenly I spotted three deer entering the roadway about a tenth mile ahead. One looked normal and the other two looked different. From a distance they almost looked like fawns, but then as I got closer I realized that two of the deer were albino. I have never seen anything like that, but here on Sunday morning as I neared Mt. Irenaeus I saw three deer. Continue reading “Angels in our midst”

Posted on

Third Jesus

A couple of days ago I spied a title at Changing Hands bookstore that invited me to pick it up. On the bookshelf was a book written by Deepak Chopra. It’s title, “The Third Jesus,” really captivated me. I read a few paragraphs and put it down. Yesterday, while visiting the Franciscan Renewal Center in Scottsdale I saw the book again. This time it was in the center’s bookstore. After I got back to my sisters home, I mentioned to my hosts that wanted to return to Changing Hands and get the book.   Little did I know that later in the afternoon, my Mom would drive over to the store and pick it up for me. Continue reading “Third Jesus”

Posted on

Listen to the rain

A couple of nights ago I woke up to the sound of rain and I thought of Thomas Merton. Whenever it rains I think of Merton.

I came up here [to his hermitage] from the monastery last night, sloshing through the cornfield, said Vespers, and put some oatmeal on the Coleman stove for supper. It boiled over while I was listening to the rain and toasting a piece of bread at the log fire. The night became very dark. The rain surrounded the whole cabin with its enormous virginal myth, a whole world of meaning, of secrecy, of silence, of rumor. Think of it: all that speech pouring down, selling nothing, judging nobody, drenching the thick mulch of dead leaves, soaking the trees, filling the gullies and crannies of the wood with water, washing out the places where men have stripped the hillside! What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone, in the forest, at night, cherished by this wonderful, unintelligible, perfectly innocent speech, the most comforting speech in the world, the talk that rain makes by itself all over the ridges, and the talk of the watercourses everywhere in the hollows!
Nobody started it, nobody is going to stop it. It will talk as long as it wants, this rain. As long as it talks I am going to listen.–Thomas Merton. “Rain and the Rhinocerous” in Raids on the Unspeakable. New York: New Directions Publishing Co., 1964: 9-10.

Posted on

So unlike your Christ

I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ.–Gandhi

Earlier in the week I wrote about an archbishop’s decision to withhold a sacramental rite from a politician got me to thinking again about some of the apparent contradictions between the prophetic church and the pathetic church. Continue reading “So unlike your Christ”

Posted on

No communion for you..

The Archbishop of St. Louis has stooped to a new low in threatening Rudy Giuliani with “no communion,” because of his stance on abortion. That really doesn’t strike me as something Jesus would do. Communion for most Christians even nominal ones is a sacramental rite and it was never meant as a reward and or punishment. I guess this just goes to show that even bishops can do dumb things. I’m not a supporter of Mr. Giuliani either but I think it shows some real shortsighted thinking on the part of the church and the archbishop. If communion really is the body of Christ and I believe it is, doesn’t that hold some hope as a change agent in Mr. Giuliani’s life? I think it does. In the first Eucharist even Judas receives communion and I think that’s the standard that Jesus set.