Where Is Your Heart Pointed?

November 9, 2020

We watched a dramatization of an Agatha Christie Miss Marple story last night. The sub-plot behind the main plot of uncovering the murder mystery concerned the decision of a beautiful young woman who must choose a husband from between a man who does foolish things out of a deep love for her or a man who is a political climber, member of Parliament who has not the capacity for love.

She, of course, chooses love.

The Desert Father, Abba Poeman (the Shepherd), once said, “Do not give your heart to that which does not satisfy your heart.”

We are in the aftermath of a hard-fought, yet strange, election season in the USA. Some who won are not positive they won all they hoped to win. Many who lost are mired in bitterness and despair.

If you give your heart to politics, you are doomed like Sisyphus to cycles of elation and despair.

Giving your heart to God is “like a rock”, stable, secure, dependable.

Life will provide you with plenty of cycles of up and down. God is always there to stabilize. Daily disciplines focus your heart firmly on that which never changes.

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Humans Haven’t Progressed Too Far

November 6, 2020

There was a cigarette advertisement (if American, are you old enough to remember those?) in the 70s that tried to play off the idea that women had progressed a long way in society–“You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby” they proclaimed saying women deserved their own brand of death-in-a-package.

I’m currently reading in Augustine of Hippo. He talks of his teen years in what we’d call University.

These studies of mine also, which were considered perfectly respectable, were designed to fit me for the law so that I might gain a great name in a profession where those who deceive most people have the biggest reputations.

Augustine, Confessions

In America, as well as in many countries of the world, we have come through a season of political campaigning and elections. Sometimes we get the feeling that 2020 resembles 380.

Although Augustine did turn his considerable rhetorical abilities into working for good, so it is possible to change.

Augustine was discussing his past, the time prior to his focus on God. This is part of personal awareness, when we can look back and see where we were deficient and sinners. Then we can see where we’ve grown and where there is still room for growth.

Only when we see can we understand that we are not yet model citizens in the City of God.

A French psychologist once taught a phrase to repeat, “Every day, in every way, I’m getting better and better.”

When we think we’ve arrived at our best, then we’ve turned those powers of deception upon ourselves. Augustine saw it 1,600 years ago. Ancient writing dating back 4,000 years also contain the same warning. It seems we either train to deceive others, or we are professionals at deceiving ourselves.

Coming to awareness brings us one step closer to living with-God.

Have we come a long way? Well, yes, and no.

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God Is With Us If We But Look

November 5, 2020

I’m currently reading again in the book of Daniel. I do not read it because of interest in future-telling. I know that some have woven fantastic and captivating stories about some future end-of-times. That’s not a new phenomenon, by the way.

No, once again I am captivated by stories of how a group of four friends, captured as teens, taken away to a foreign land, taught the language and culture of the foreign people, continued to live with God in the face of occasional grave danger.

The king has a dream. Won’t tell anyone what it was, but he wants an interpretation. His wise men tell him it cannot be done. The king says, then kill all of them. Daniel and his buddies learn about their imminent demise, turn to God, and God tells Daniel the dream and interpretation.

Tattletales tell on the three friends, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and the king orders them burned alive. When the king looks into the furnace, he sees four men. God is with them. They walked out unharmed.

The king gets mad a Daniel. Has him thrown into a cage with a hungry lion. God is seen with Daniel, and he walks out.

There are more–but do you get the drift. They live with God, and God lives with them.

Richard J. Foster called it the “with-God” life.

God takes care of his part. It requires awareness on our part. Even while administering a vast empire, Daniel had a rhythm to life of withdrawing three times a day to connect intentionally with God. Jesus also had a rhythm to his life of withdrawing to connect intentionally with God.

What about us?

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Vocation

November 4, 2020

No, not vacation, something we all need right now. Rather, vocation refers to the work you do, your career, how you devote your skills and talents. My introduction to the word was in high school. There was a course of study called Vocational Agriculture. It was for the farm kids who were going to go into the family farming business.

I went to college and studied lots of things. Then I was introduced again to the word when I taught 7th grade at a Catholic school. Not being Catholic, I had to pick up on the specific meaning of the word as they used it back then–namely (I think) showing the kids the opportunities for “vocation” meaning becoming a priest, brother, or sister.

Most of us get a job of some kind and perhaps it becomes a career of some kind. Do we think beyond that? Like those Catholic kids I taught, are we encouraged to consider what God might want us to do with our time, skill, talent?

I saw this thought in today’s readings:

Vocation is not evoked by your bundle of need and desire. Vocation is what God wants from you whereby your life is transformed into a consequence of God’s redemption of the world. Look no further than Jesus’s disciples – remarkably mediocre, untalented, lackluster yokels – to see that innate talent or inner yearning has less to do with vocation than God’s thing for redeeming lives by assigning us something to do for God.

Especially American Baby Boomers, but also many people in the world, think about how much money we can make, or how much power we can exert over others, or retiring to a lifestyle of wealthy leisure such as portrayed in countless movies and TV shows.

But no, someday God will call us to account for our use of his gifts. It’s not to late to discover and go.

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The Joy of Sinning

November 3, 2020

The Apostle Paul writing some of his most poignant thoughts talked of how he gets upset with himself when he does what he doesn’t want to do and doesn’t do what he wants.

Augustine (au-GUS-tin, the city in Florida is au-gus-TEEN) of Hippo wrote in his Confessions about a time when at age 16 (the brains of 16-year-old boys were just as undeveloped in 360 as 2020) when he and a group of other boys stole a large quantity of pears and then wound up just throwing them to the pigs. He was puzzling why he did it.

The real pleasure was simply in doing something that was not allowed.

Sometimes I think I’m like Augustine where I can suddenly remember seemingly every stupid thing I’ve done like that. People thought I was a good boy–I wasn’t. At least, not always.

That carries over even until today, I fear.

Often when I read current news, I have the feeling that there are many in our society who are acting out that same inner drive toward sin–the pleasure lies in the knowledge that it is not allowed.

Augustine mourns that he did not know God when he was 16, and he wishes that he would have. I bet most of us are in that same boat.

But today is a new day. Life will put before us this very day opportunities to do things not allowed yet pleasing to our hearts. Or–we could pause, re-focus, calm down, and derive pleasure from being part of the Kingdom of God.

We can pick up Paul’s challenge and sometimes do what we know we should as Jesus-followers.

Posted in Attitude, Disciplines, Sin | 2 Comments »

Maintaining Focus and Equanimity

November 2, 2020

Sometimes I lose track of special days and holidays when I sit in meditation. But something reminded me that today is the Eve of the Election in the USA. Without a memory of our history and listening only to candidates and media, you would think this is an unprecedented election. It isn’t.

It might be instructive to check out the 1850s and the rise of the Know Nothing Party. I was taught as a young student that the party got its name from adherents answering “I don’t know” to questions about the party, its leaders, its tenants, and so forth. This party was an attempt to organize American Protestants mobilizing anti-Catholic (by implication anti-immigration), anti-black people, American nativism, and so forth.

Yes, today the election is bitter, divisive, as are almost all elections. Although not all involve strident language as much.

St. Anselm of Canterbury, who lived in another wild time from about 1033–1109, offers some good advice for Americans this week and for everyone at every time, “Flee for a while from your tasks, hide yourself for a little space from the turmoil of your thoughts. Come, cast aside your burdensome cares, and put aside your laborious  pursuits. For a little while give your time to God, and rest in him for a little while. Enter into the inner chamber of your mind, shut out all things save God and whatever may aid you in seeking God; and having barred the door of your chamber, seek him.”

I do not allow myself to dwell on the hype and divisiveness. I acknowledge its existence. It is not my foundation. Seeking God in quiet is my foundation.

Oh, and I’ve already voted. And donated money. I’ve done what I should and can. Now to focus on what I need to do for today.

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Discipline Restrains Dissipation

October 30, 2020

Augustine of Hippo wrote in his Confessions about how difficult were his Greek studies when a student. He wrote many times of the cruelty of his teachers who were quick to strike him with ruler or rod when he did not apply himself diligently or learn quickly enough.

With the freedom of curiosity, he thoroughly learned Latin, the everyday language of his time. Later when he appreciated Greek literature, he pondered why he hated learning it so much. He blamed his teachers.

Still later as he looked back on his life he realized a couple of things from this episode: “…free curiosity is a more powerful aid to the learning of languages than a forced discipline. Yet this discipline restrains the dissipation of that freedom.”

He then points to God’s laws as a discipline that prevents his straying into the dissipation of an excess of freedom.

Similarly the men who wrote the documents that formed the USA were concerned even back in the 1780s that people would forget that responsibility and discipline are a necessary complement to freedom.

We have teachers and preachers and politicians who perhaps veer too far toward discipline and adolescents in their 20s and 30s who still try to live too much into freedom without the balance of discipline.

Each of us must seek and find that balance of freedom and curiosity with discipline and responsibility.

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The Unbounded Joy of Discovery

October 29, 2020

Anne Lamott–Try walking around with a child who’s going, “Wow, wow! Look at that dirty dog! Look at that burned-down house! Look at that red sky!” And the child points and you look, and you see, and you start going, “Wow! Look at that huge crazy hedge! Look at that teeny little baby! Look at the scary dark cloud!” I think this is how we are supposed to be in the world – present and in awe.

I love hanging out with little ones. Often at family reunions that’s where you’ll find me. I’m bored listening to talk about people who aren’t there. I love the joy in play and the joy in discovery of these new humans.

Life could well consist of keeping that spirit alive as we pass through school with its memorization, and our 20s and 30s and 40s while we are striving to find a place in society, and in our 60s and 70s as we have time to be with the children again.

We could cast our sails with Einstein and DaVinci and others who maintained a joy of discovery into old age.

Look! Wow! Did you see that cool caterpillar? Or the seeds that stick to you while you walk in the fields in the fall? Or the birds soaring above the lake?

It’s a wonderful world there for the experiencing.

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Rest For the Journey

October 28, 2020

Madeleine L’Engle remarked, “Sometimes the very walls of our churches separate us from God and each other. In our various naves and sanctuaries we are safely separated from those outside, from other denominations, other religions, separated from the poor, the ugly, the dying.…The house of God is not a safe place. It is a cross where time and eternity meet, and where we are – or should be – challenged to live more vulnerably, more interdependently.”

A popular bumper-sticker theology of the recent past—Churches are a hospital for sinners, not a clubhouse for saints.

I’m “attending” one of those modern churches—”a rock concert followed by a TED Talk.” But this one also has many ministries that reach out to poor people, prisoners, people in need in the US and in many locations in the world.

It’s not there yet, but it is attempting to be the place that sends people out equipped and encouraged to spread God’s love.

It’s OK to meet with people you like and sing some songs and pray together and be taught. But that is not where things begin and end. It’s an oasis for rest along the journey.

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Trust That God Is In Control

October 27, 2020

Anne Lamott told this story, “I heard an old man speak once, someone who had been sober for fifty years, a very prominent doctor. He said that he’d finally figured out a few years ago that his profound sense of control, in the world and over his life, is another addiction and a total illusion. He said that when he sees little kids sitting in the back seat of cars, in those car seats that have steering wheels, with grim expressions of concentration on their faces, clearly convinced that their efforts are causing the car to do whatever it is doing, he thinks of himself and his relationship with God: God who drives along silently, gently amused, in the real driver’s seat.”

Some of us have personalities that love control. We all know the control-freak bosses and teachers. They drive people like me, who are more of an independent type, crazy. These people, aka micro-managers, trust no one else to do a good job and tell us what and how to do everything. I can imagine them telling God the things he got wrong when he invented the universe.

Some people give up control. They let other people control their lives. They live in fear that they will be trampled by chaos, but they do not feel up to the responsibility and power to grab the reins and guide those horses. They look for someone strong to grab control.

One group won’t let God be in control; the other group doesn’t trust that God is in control.

God, however, doesn’t care what we think. He did start this whole thing moving and knows where it’s going. Trust that.

Posted in Disciplines | 2 Comments »

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