Monday Meditation, December 27, 2010

What can we say in the awesome experience of the Incarnation of God?

For this week, let's reflect on the words of three Wise Persons:

From the 2^nd Century:

“The Son of God became a human being so that humans might become sons and daughters of God.”

--St. Ireneaus

From the 20^th Century:

"We are all called to be contemplatives in the heart of the world -- by seeking the face of God in everything, everyone, everywhere, all the time, and [God's] hand in every happening; seeing and adoring the presence of Jesus, especially in the lowly appearance of bread, and in the distressing disguise of the poor."

--Mother Teresa

From the 21^st Century:

The Word did not become a philosophy, a theory, or a concept to be discussed, debated, or pondered.  The Word became a Person to be followed, to be enjoyed, and to be loved.

--Roy Lessin

Monday Meditation, October 4th

Mary Oliver, one of my favorite modern-day poets, often takes my breath away with her poetic insights.

 

To live in this world

 

 you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

 

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

 

Today is the Feast of St. Francis, and I can hear him saying about her message, "Well, of course, what do you think I was always talking about?"

 

For a more complete meditative moment, read her poem here: http://www.panhala.net/Archive/In_Blackwater_Woods.html

Turn on your computer speakers!

 

Happy Autumn,

Monday Meditation, Sep 20, 2010

The Book Title That Changed My Life
Several years ago I came across a book title that had a more profound effect on my life than I could have imagined.  For a long time, I didn't read the book; but I kept it in my office where I could see the cover.  The title?  How Come Every Time I Get Stabbed in the Back My Fingerprints Are on the Knife? 


For me, that book title names the biggest obstacle to our continued spiritual growth: We have a well-developed habit of looking outside ourselves at the sins and transgressions of others. And we tend to think of God as being "out there" somewhere rather than being present in each person.  In an attempt to avoid what we don't like or can't accept in ourselves, we look "out there" to find someone else we can blame.  Psychologists named this phenomenon projection,  but our spiritual forebears knew and recognized it for centuries.


Jesus used the "splinter in the other person's eye, plank in my eye" metaphor to name this fixation. This scapegoating seems to be rampant in our time and our society. It's those politicians or political activists who are to blame; it's the Muslims who are at the root of our troubles; it's all those illegal immigrants...; it's the bankers, and on and on.


What do you suppose would happen if everyone followed the example of our great saints--and our Savior--who wasted no time glaring at the sins of others?


Blessings for the week,
Bob

The "Let's Imagine it's Monday" Meditation

The Gospel messages in these "ordinary" times are pointed calls to what it means to be a follower of Christ (all from Gospel of Luke):
Aug 8:   Be watchful and awake
Aug 15: He has cast the mighty down from their thrones
Aug 22: Enter through the narrow gate (apparently with NO "baggage"!)
Aug 29: Go and take the lowest place
Sep 5:   Renounce all your possessions [to be] my disciple

I feel like crying out, "Give me a break for a minute!"  But notice the cadence and "the call":  we don't need all the "stuff" that we accumulate; and that includes our mental stuff.

As the wonderful English mystic, Evelyn Underhill, puts it:

"We mostly spend our lives conjugating three verbs: to Want, to Have, and to Do. Craving, clutching, and fussing on the material, political, social, emotional, intellectual---even on the religious plane---we are kept in perpetual unrest; forgetting that none of these verbs has any significance, except in so far as they are transcended and included in the fundamental verb "to be"…Being, not wanting, having, and doing, is the essence of a spiritual life.


Let's carry that message in our hearts this week.

Monday Meditation, August 30, 2010

The mathematics of religion.
It may be time for many of us modern Christians to go back to school.
We seem to have mixed up the mathematics of religion in our culture.
The "talk on the street" in modern American society would lead a person to conclude that religion is about multiplication and division.  We want to multiply our assets, to expand our holdings, to grow our business, to claim the riches we think we deserve.  We spend a lot of time focused on  what divides us.  We have superb arguments about why our religion is best--and why "those folks" may not deserve heaven.

When Jesus came, He changed the equation.  He taught us that life in the Kingdom is about addition and subtraction.  We are continually called to see others as being added to those chosen for the kingdom: the Pharisees and Presbyterians; the Samaritans and the Seventh Day Adventists;  the Buddhists, Baptists, and B'nai B'rith; the Mennonites, Muslims and Methodists.
And we are called to subtract our sense of self-importance, our insistence that we have the correct political view, our need to be "right" rather than to be united with others, our self-assuredness that we "deserve" God's blessings more than someone who is not like us.

For a great refresher in remedial math re-read the Sunday Gospel: Luke 14:1, 7-14.
And let's hold in our hearts the Responsorial Refrain from Psalm 68: God, in your goodness, you have made a home for the poor.

In the Sunday Gospel reading for Luke, we heard:

"...And people will come from the east and the west
and from the north and the south
and will recline at table in the kingdom of God."

(Luke 13)

What a feast!  Everybody is invited.  Who knows who will come?  God knows, and that's enough.  We need not spend one minute trying to decide who is worthy of the Kingdom--because no one is worthy of heaven. We can't earn it; but we can accept our place at the Divine dining table because of the gift of Christ's passion, death and resurrection.

We can't understand it from our personal sense of the historical Jesus of Nazareth.

It is the Cosmic Christ--the crucified, then resurrected and transfigured Son of Man/Son of God who will accomplish this grand design of salvation.

If you want to fill your heart and soul this week, go to Dogmatic Constitution of the Church (Lumen Gentium) and read the first part of Chapter II (On the People of God), starting with Paragraph 9.  Here's your link:  http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html

Blessings for the week,

Bob