A TRANSPARENT WORLD

The protagonist in Andrew Greeley’s The Bishop and the Beggar Girl of St. Germain makes this astute observation at the end of the novel: “Bishop Blackie, we are so blind and deaf. The world is transparent. God is everywhere whispering to us, talking to us, shouting at us. Usually we do not hear. Sometimes we do. Then we know everything is grace.”

The world is transparent and we are blind. We look but do not see; or if we see, we refuse to believe what we see because we don’t want to see what we see. Why? Because we will have to change the way we think and act. We are not only blind; we are also deaf. God is constantly calling out to us to see God’s presence in our lives, in everything around us and, most importantly, inside us.

What we fail to understand is that because we are children of God, God is part of us just as we are part of our parents and our children are part of us. Is it any wonder that, as we grow older, we say to ourselves, “I’m talking just like my Mom (or Dad)”? It’s in the genes. God is in our genes and there is nothing we can do about it. And isn’t that all grace somehow in some way?

As my Mom used to say about her Mom when asked by my wife why she never spoke badly about someone while, at the same time tapping her shoulder: “My Mother is sitting there.” In the same way, God is sitting on our shoulder, constantly whispering in our ear, reminding us to open our eyes and ears and see what She (Greeley’s often pronoun for God) is saying to us.

We used to tell our kids when they were teenagers and off to somewhere, “Don’t do anything you would be embarrassed to tell us about when you got home.” For the most part, they heard us, but not always and usually to their later chagrin, having to live with the consequences of their actions and, worse yet, having to fess up to us about their foolishness. Been there. Done that.

Still there. Still doing that even at my advanced age and understanding. And if I may be so bold, I think I can say that in this life in this world, there are no exceptions. As we grow older, we become more and more aware of God’s presence in our lives, more open to listening to God speaking to us. And yet. And yet we still do not listen. We still do not see. Even worse, we refuse to do so because what we see and hear will force us to do that which we would rather not do.

But when we see God’s presence, when we hear God’s words, when we live out our faith as we know we should, we are graced. There is grace in everything and everyone because everything and everyone is of God. We have experienced that grace everyday even as we so often take it for granted. May we see even more clearly to be even more graced.

POWER, SUCCESS AND HAPPINESS VS. PEACE, LOVE AND JOY

If we listen to the pundits, what seems to be the driving forces in our lives or should be, is the attainment of power, the feeling of success and finding happiness. It also seems that one leads to the other. One cannot be happy if one is not successful. And on cannot be successful if one is not in power somehow in some way. Power leads to success and power and success lead to happiness.

On the surface, that seems logical and it probably is from a secular standpoint. People in power are successful in their given vocations, whatever those vocations may be, from CEOs in business, to presidents of universities in education, to bishops in religion. They have power and are successful and thus, we presume and assume, happy. Whether they are or are not happy is up for grabs. We’d have to ask them. If they said they were not, we, as secularists, would have to wonder why. That’s the world we live in.

But we also live in another world, not a competing world, but a world that looks at life being more than striving for power, success and happiness. We see life being about peace, love and joy. We desire peace of mind, love of the other, joy in simply being alive. What we know is that peace, love and joy do not bring power, success and happiness nor do power, success and happiness bring peace, love and joy.

Power in and of itself does not bring peace of mind. The powerful person is always on the lookout for someone more powerful to come along and take away that power. On the way to power and success one often acts in very unloving ways. In fact, it is almost a rule that one has to step on and step over others to gain success and power. And then there is happiness. How does one define it? Are we ever totally happy or do we constantly strive for more and better to be happier than we are now?

On the other hand, no amount of power and success can bring internal peace because they are inherently averse to peace. When we are at peace with ourselves, our life as it is, we are able to give ourselves in love and are able to be loved. And when we are loved and loving, we find joy in simply being alive. That does not mean that one cannot be a person in power. It simply means that striving for power and maintaining it can be so consuming that finding peace of mind, being open to love and being joyful is difficult if not, at times, seemingly impossible.

Given in the world we live, it almost seems, sadly enough, that we only find peace and love and joy as we grow older, when the pursuit of power, success and happiness has lost its charm and driving force. But at least we have found it or are on our way to finding it. We’ll probably never we be totally at peace, always open to love and being loved, filled with Godly joy. And maybe that’s good. It’s something to look forward to each day. What can be more rewarding than a peaceful day, a loving relationship and the joy that that brings?

LIVING SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN

We live with the unknown. We were born sometime in the past and our journey in this life will end sometime in the future. We know when we were born, when the journey began. We do not know when we will die, when the journey will end. Between then and now is filled with the unknown, totally unknown, and that can be and often is disconcerting, very disconcerting.

We live from one moment to the next not knowing what the next moment will bring. We make plans for the day or the week, plans to go out to dinner, take a vacation, go to work or school or whatever and do not know if any of these plans will actually come to fruition, but we make them anyway. We have to. We have no choice. But that is life living somewhere in between birth and death.

Our responsibility is to use the time we have left to the best of our ability, living one day at a time, one moment at a time. And we do without hardly ever thinking about it. It’s what we do as a human being. It’s all we can do and all we are expected to do. That does not mean we do not think about when our life will end or about how it will end. It simply means that we do not think such thoughts until it does seem like our life here on earth is nearing its end.

It also means that we should take time, every once in a while, to examine how we are living our lives in the somewhere in between time we have been given by God. What have we learned from our past life: our mistakes and failures, our successes and triumphs? We can’t do-overs or un-does. We can only learn from them and try in the time to come not to do what we should not do and do what we should do. Just doing that can often be difficult enough given our human proclivity of not learning from our mistakes as well or as often as we should.

The truth is that living in the in between times is really an adventure for which the past has been a prelude and a teaching and learning experience, or at least it should have been. And like all adventures it will have its ups and downs, failures and successes. But it will only be an adventure if we understand it as one. That does not mean that very day is going to be exciting or even uplifting. It does mean that we look forward to the day wondering what that day will bring and living it as fully and faithfully as we can.

That is all we can do of course. As we grow older our body limits what we can do even as our mind tries to convince us that we can do what we did twenty years ago. And when we tried to act twenty years younger, our body lets us know what a fool we were. Pain, probably fortunately, is sometimes the only way we seem to learn.

The truth is that living in between birth and death is a gift we have been given. How we use that gift is up to us.

FOLLOW ME

When Jesus began his ministry, he walked up to those he wanted to train as his disciples and simply said, “Follow me” and they did. Just like that, according to the Gospels. They dropped everything and everyone – including job, family and probably even friends, all of whom thought they were crazy – and followed him. And, if the truth be told, they probably would agree: they were indeed crazy.

Why? Who knows why? They surely didn’t. There was just something about Jesus, certainly something very special, that propelled them into making the decision to follow Jesus. And my guess is that over the three years they spent with him, going where he was going, watching what he did, listening to everything he said, they still often wondered what in the name of God they were doing. But they continued on.

Sound familiar? We’ve all been there and still are. Somewhere along the line we decided that following Jesus is what we wanted to do, the way we wanted to live our lives. Yes, our following would be different than Peter’s or John’s following, but it would still be following Jesus, living the life he was leading and teaching us to live. And, like them, there have been times, probably many, when we wondered why we were doing this, but we carry on, as they did.

What we have learned over the years is that following Jesus did not necessarily take us to where we wanted to go because often we just did not want to go there. What it did was take us to where we were wanted, where we were needed. And where we were wanted and needed is where we really did want to go. Of course, we only discover that truth, like the disciples did back then, in hindsight. And for that we were, in reflection, thankful and so were those who needed us at that time.

What we have also learned, in reflection, is that there have been times when we refused to go where we were needed because the demands were more than we were willing to fulfill or thought we would be able to fulfill. We were probably wrong because what we learned during those times when the demands placed on us were indeed difficult, we were given all we needed to fulfill them.

Following Jesus was never meant to be easy, as the cross serves as an eternal reminder. But that is our calling, our vocation. Why Jesus called us to follow him may demand an answer, but the answer doesn’t matter. Jesus just did and we still are, sometimes kicking and screaming and telling ourselves that we must be crazy because it certainly looks crazy to others and even feels crazy to us.

So be it! We have been called to follow Jesus and go where he wants us to go and where we are needed. Our reward? Well, if we were looking for a reward, we wouldn’t have followed in the first place.

WE CAN NEVER NAIL JESUS DOWN

No pun intended, but that is the truth: much as we would like to, we can never nail Jesus down. Jesus comes into our lives almost unexpectedly and almost equally uninvited. In hindsight we would rather have him pass us by and go bother someone else. We already have enough on our plates and don’t want or need any more. Even so, here comes Jesus knocking on our door.

He knocks on our door, presents us with a problem he needs us to address and simply moves on. He doesn’t give us any insight on how to respond. He just expects us to respond. He rarely, very rarely, stays long enough for us to nail him down as to what we should do next. And even then, we only have a general outline as to what is to be demanded of us.

Such is the life of a believer. We know that life because we’ve lived that life. Fortunately, those knocks don’t come that often, a least the hard and loud knocks, the ones we cannot avoid or ignore. Of course, once we have answered the door and have learned what Jesus wants us to do and he walks away, then it is up to us how or if we will respond. Jesus never forces us to do what we don’t want to do even as we know that is what we should do if we are to be faithful.

What we do know and, again, what we have experienced and learned, is that if we answer Jesus’ knock, he will give us whatever tools and whatever strength we need to do what has to be done. Always has and always will. That does not mean that we would not like a better recipe on how to handle the situation because we would. Who wouldn’t? Who wouldn’t want to know how and what to do?

But it doesn’t work that way, does it? The truth is, for the most part we know what to do and have the tools, or can find the tools, to accomplish what needs to be done. The hard part is not the answering of the door. The hard part is the doing because it will always cost us something – financially, spiritually, physically. How high the cost is what we are concerned about.

Jesus totally understands. He knew the cost of what was being asked of him before he started off on his journey. And he knew that in the end he may have to go it alone, that no one could help him do what was going to be demanded of him. He even tried to get out of it, asking if there might be a way out. There was none. And so he went to the cross and did what he had to do.

The same is true for us. Those knocks on the door usually, always, demand some sort of cross for us to bear. Like Jesus, we try to find a way to pass that cross off on someone else. But we can’t. It is ours to bear. Unlike Jesus, we didn’t and won’t have to bear that cross alone. We had and have a community of faith to help us, thanks be to God.