FAITH

The writer of Hebrews makes this observation about faith: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”  (Hebrews 11:1) “Blessed assurance”, as one of those old Gospel hymns reminds us. And it is blessed to have such assurance in our lives.

Faith, in and of itself, is not knowledge but it is as close to knowledge as one can get. We do not know for certain if the sun will come up tomorrow. We believe it will and so we live accordingly. We do not know for certain if we will be alive at the end of the week, but we believe we will and so live accordingly. Most of us do not know how electricity works, but we believe that when we turn the light switch on, the light will respond accordingly – unless the bulb is burned out.

Whether we realize it or not, whether atheist, agnostic or believer, we live most of our life based on faith rather than sure and certain knowledge. We know and understand very much, to be sure, but there is so much more we do not know both about the present and the future. We are finite, fallible, limited human beings who must rely on faith or else we would not dare get out of bed in the morning.

The reason for all this, of course, is that we are not God, again, whether we believe in God or not. Faith is the operative force in our lives. It is the basis for all that we do. Without faith we would be unable to love another. Without faith we would be unable to dream about the future. Without faith life itself would not only not be worth living, it would be unlivable.

Faith problems arise only when our faith is put to the test, which, thankfully, is not all that often. Of course, on the other hand, when our faith is put to the test, it is usually about something that is traumatic: a love gone sour, a job gone south, a dream gone away. It is those moments when our faith in God, in others and even in ourselves is tested that we find ourselves so out of sync that we do not know where to turn.

And yet, it is in precisely those moments that we turn to the only one to whom we can turn, the one in whom we must place our trust: God. When there is a crisis of faith because of some form of betrayal of trust, it is only our faith that keeps us from falling completely apart. Our faith in God holds us together when our faith in everything else has deserted us.

If all this is true, as I believe it is, then we must do all we can to strengthen and increase our faith: faith in others, faith in ourselves and especially our faith in God. Faith is a gift; and as with any gift, if we do not use it, we lose it. If we do not cultivate it, it will not flourish. It will wither and perhaps even die. We neglect our faith to our own peril. We are attentive to it for our own protection.

May we always be thankful for the gift of faith, never take it for granted and live it to the fullest each and every day.

A LONG TALK WITH MYSELF

If you are like me, there are times when you come to the conclusion that what you need to do is put everything else aside, find a quiet corner off someplace where you will not be disturbed and have a long talk with yourself. We go from one day to the next doing what we normally do without ever giving any real attention to what we are doing or why. We’re just doing what we usually do.

That is not to say that there is something wrong or even awry with what we are doing or even our life itself. We simply get so wound up in our daily existence that we take for granted that what we are doing is fine and dandy and even our very personal being as well. There are no big issues that consume our waking moments. Life is what it is. We’re comfortable with it. No need to worry.

But then there comes that nagging feeling that we need to take stock with ourselves, our life, our being. So we make the time and find the place and start to have a serious conversation with ourself about our life. We start off in deep thought and self-reflection but then find ourself drifting off into La La Land somewhere else and not really listening to what we had to say to ourself.

The problem, I think, is not that we truly do not want to have a serious conversation with ourself. We do want that. Our problem is that we don’t seem to have the ability any more to concentrate on any conversation, ours of anyone else’s, that takes longer than seven minutes. We need a commercial break even with ourself and we take it. We will get back to that serious conversation, we tell ourself, and leave the room.

The art of conversation, real conversation, seems to be lost. We don’t even talk anymore. We text and tweet thinking that that is real conversation when it is only on the surface. If I have the phone in my hand to text someone, why don’t I just call that person and communicate voice to voice? Texting is so much easier, I know, especially if we know that the person we want to have a conversation with has the proclivity to make a short conversation into a half-hour experience, which, of course, may not be all that bad.

Maybe there is a solution to not being able to have those conversations with ourself. Maybe we should text ourself and ask a question about our life and how it is going and then have to reply to that question. The issue will at least be staring us in the face and hopefully force us to think about what we want to say before we respond. Maybe we won’t get that deep into the conversation and maybe we won’t stay with it for very long – seven minutes – but we can keep the conversation going by not deleting the text.

I don’t know. Just some thoughts. What I do know is that we all need to have some serious and honest conversations with ourselves about who we are, what we believe and why, what we do and why. If you don’t believe me, just watch the news.

WHAT DO WE REALLY NEED?

Back in the day, way back in the day, I remember overhearing a conversation between two mothers both of whom and whose families I knew. One was talking about her son whom she said was trying to find himself. My first cynical thought was that I didn’t know he was lost, but I really knew what she meant. He was at a stage in his young life where he really did not know who he was or even what he needed. And he was not alone.

I remembered that conversation while Arlena and I were watching Disney’s The Princess and the Frog. (By the way, there tends to be a lot of good theology in Disney animations and you don’t have to dig too deeply to find it.) There was a line in one of the songs that said something like this: “You need to know who you are before you know what you need.” Isn’t that the truth?

We know there is much that we tend to want and almost believe that we need. As we are unpacking from our move, we are discovering that we have a lot of things we thought we needed but actually wanted but really did not need in the first place. Our wants and our needs got mixed up in the moment. Now Goodwill and the Vietnam Vets are becoming the beneficiaries of our non-necessities.

If there is any consolation in this, and there is very little to be honest, we are not alone. Is the issue that, like the young man in the conversation, we’re still trying to find out who we are so that we can honestly discern between wants and needs or do we ever find out who we are so that we go through life searching for an elusive answer to one of life’s fundamental questions?

Is the real life-question “Who am I?” And is there an answer? Well, there had better be. And there is. I am a priest, a husband, a father, a grandfather for starters. I could add to the list. But who am I essentially? Is there a word that envelopes each and every one of these other words that I use to describe myself? And when I find that word, will it tell me not only who I am but also what I need?

The answer for me is “yes”. And that word that describes all of me is “Christian.” What kind of Christian I am and how I live out my Christian faith aside, it still tells me all that I need to know about what my needs are. The one need I have, the one need any one of us has who claims the name “Christian” is to make certain all my words and actions are loving, loving and serving the other first and foremost.

No matter what our vocation is at the moment – priest, student, husband, wife, child, boss, etc. – everything we say and do is to be said and done in a loving and serving manner. Until we come to that understanding about our life, we are still trying to find ourselves. Finding out who we are (Christian) helps us know what we need in living out the moment. We will be given whatever we need, but we have to live it day by day.

BEST FOOT FORWARD

Growing up we have all probably been encouraged when going out into the world to “put our best foot forward.” Sounded like a good idea. If we always did the best we could, always showed the best side of ourselves, we would make it in this world, whatever “make it” meant to us back then or to those encouraging us to look good to the world and all whom we would encounter in our journey through life.

Over the years we have tried to live out those words that sounded very wise – and they still are. The only problem is that in always trying to put our best foot forward we often fell flat on or face. We tried to do or best, or at least tried to do what we thought was expected of us, and we came up short, sometimes very short. And sometimes trying to do our best turned into a disaster.

We may have even been tempted to give up trying because we could never please everyone, because it seemed that there was always someone who found fault with our efforts even when we did the very best we could. The truth is that we have never stopped trying to do our best because we are personally never satisfied with anything less than the best we can do even if someone else could do it better – and probably did.

We stumble and fall when trying to put our best foot forward whenever we try to be more than we are and do more than we possibly can. We all have limitations. No one is all-powerful. No one has all the skills for every conceivable situation. No one. And so when we find ourselves in places where we would rather not be because the situation demands more of us than we can possibly do, if we try to pretend we can handle it, we wind up falling flat on our faces.

Putting our best foot forward demands that we are honest with ourselves about both our gifts and our limitations. It demands that we are honest and humble enough to admit that what is being asked of us is beyond us, beyond our ability to make an even adequate response. Putting our best foot forward in such instances means walking away rather than making the situation worse than it may already be.

My guess is that we have all been there. We have offered to lend a hand when the hand we offered was not capable of doing anything but making a mess of what was going on at the time. We offered the hand because we thought it was the right thing to do because, well, we’re supposed to help, are we not? No, we are not. Not when the help we offer won’t really help at all.

What happened, of course, is that we have learned the hard way. That advice early on in our lives took time to both root and to understand. We still, at times, walk into a situation when we should walk away because the best foot forward is sometimes, in reality, a backward step away.

WE HAVE THE WHOLE WORLD IN OUR HANDS

In one of our Eucharistic Prayers the celebrant says, on behalf of all of us: “You formed us in your own image, giving the whole world into our care, so that in obedience to you, our Creator, we might rule and serve all your creatures.” In other words, we, you and I, together and separately, have the whole world in our hands. Yes, I know, in the old spiritual we sing about God that “He’s got [bad grammar] the whole world in his hands.” And God does, of course.

But God has handed most of the control over this world to us, into our care. It is now up to us – and has always been so – to do the best we can in this world. We are to rule and serve everyone, every creature, at the same time. How we rule and serve will determine what this world looks like and what it will become, as it always has. This world today is the product of how those who came before us ruled and served.

We are in control. We rule. We serve. We rule and serve as one. The problem has been and continues to be that often when we rule, how we rule turns out to be self-serving rather than other-serving. When we are in charge of whatever we are in charge, do our actions serve us first and foremost or do they serve others first and foremost and who will reap the good or the bad from how we have ruled, from how we used our power?

That’s a touch question is it not? We know that power corrupts because power is intoxicating, very much so. There comes a high in holding power over someone or something. And it is so easy to revel in that power and then to abuse it, to use it to serve self rather than to serve those over whom we have that power. We see it constantly in our political system – no party being exempt. We see it throughout society throughout our world, and from time immemorial to boot.

Perhaps that is why the church in its wisdom and grace reminds us in that prayer of what our responsibilities are. To be honest, I’ve said that prayer hundreds of times and it was only the last time I said it that I actually heard those words in such a way that they almost made me stop in my tracks. They’ve haunted me ever since. They have forced me to stop and reflect upon the tremendous responsibility that is mine as an individual and all of us together have in being obedient to our God who has given this world over to us to shape and form.

Ruling and serving together. When we separate them, we have two classes: the rulers and the servers. But when those in charge rule to serve others, they are served as well. We know we get more joy and pleasure out of doing for others than when we use others to serve us, to give us pleasure. The temptation is always there to abuse the power and authority given to us by God and there are times when we succumb to that temptation. The world is in the mess it is in because of the abuse of power. I am partially guilty. We all are. It’s time to begin cleaning up the mess by being rulers who serve. That’s all of us.

AS SEEN ON TV

Wouldn’t it be interesting if for one twenty-four-hour day for one full week our personal life was secretly videoed and that at the end of the week the video was given to us for our eyes only? We could plug it into our VCR and watch. What would we see on the TV? What would what we see tell us about our life? Would we be proud or humbled? Would we be embarrassed and ashamed? What?

I began to wonder in this way as I was unpacking my books after our move, putting them in my bookcases and coming across Parker Palmer’s Let Your Life Speak. It’s a little volume he wrote almost twenty years ago but still resonates with me after all these years. Our life does speak whether we are aware of that truth or not. Think of the secret video. Whatever is on that tape speaks about who we are, about our values, about our faith, about our being.

Our life speaks about us and there is nothing we can do to prevent it. One of Parker’s points, in fact, the main one, is for us to be so in control of our life – what we say and what we do, and how we say and do – so that we are truly saying by our words and actions what we as faithful Christians want our life to say about us to anyone who crosses our path.

That is no easy task. In fact, it is a life-long journey in trying to become what we know we should be because we never, ever really get there. One of the reasons we do not is that, if you are like me, most of my days are humdrum and for the most part on most of those days I hardly reflect on how my life speaks to others or even the fact that it actually does. I go from day to day just going on and on.

That says a lot about me and, if you are like me, about ourselves in particular and our world in general. As Christians we are to be role models to others about what Jesus taught and what we say we believe. We know that but, again, are barely conscious of that reality on a day-to-day, let alone a moment-to-moment basis. We blithely give our life permission to say things about what it means to be a Christian when what we are saying is not that Christian.

Our responsibility is to be in charge of what our life is saying to others, even to ourselves. Perhaps the reason why we are so unaware of the fact that we are actually saying something by the way we live is that we hardly ever take the time to reflect on just what that life is saying in the first place. That would be one good reason to have our life videoed. Then we could actually see what our life is saying.

That isn’t going to happen, of course. That might be good. Sadly, if you are like me, we would be too embarrassed by what we see: a person who is unaware of the responsibility to let our life speak as Jesus would have us speak, as we would have it speak.

SLOWING DOWN

Not too long ago my younger brother, who will remain nameless to prevent further ignominy, decided he needed a generator just in case his home lost power. So he went to The Home Depot, found the section containing said generator, and pulled it off the shelf immediately tearing his rotator cuff and a few other parts of his shoulder. He is now presently recovering from surgery to repair the damage.

There was an even greater damage in that foolish act, one to his ego. He thought he was 45 instead of 70. Our Mom, in her 80’s, used to look into the bathroom mirror and ask “Who is that old lady staring back at me?” Our bodies age much faster than do our minds, if we are so blessed. Yes, yes, yes, she was and we were thankful she remained sharp as a tack almost till the time she died at 96+. My 97-year-old mother-in-law? We can’t get anything past her either, thankful as we are.

Slowing down in body is part of aging. A friend of mine said to me years ago, “I feel like a 36-year-old with chronic fatigue syndrome.” So how did he live a happy and contented life? He did by pacing himself, realizing his limitations before they got him into trouble (unlike my brother). And mostly, he did so by being thankful he had lived a long and full life knowing that it was all grace – and had been for years – from here on in.

We live in a society, in a world, that is, for the most part, always in a hurry. It is more than slowing down and smelling the roses. It is about understanding that God gave and continues to give us this life as along as God so chooses to do so, and to relish and revel in it to the best of our ability. That means, in the words of an old song, “Slow down, you move too fast. You’ve got to make the moment last.”

Easier said than done, of course, especially because of the unseen and often intangible forces that are behind us pushing us to get moving – and the faster the better. But it can be done. It needs to be done. And it is not just for us older people. Everyone needs to slow down, perhaps especially the young, who seem to have boundless energy and no boundaries and thus get into more trouble that they should. We elders know that from personal experience.

No one knew this and was more aware of this need to slow down than Jesus. He was always being pushed to do more and move farther to meet all those needs others had of him. But he could not meet those needs if he first did not take care of himself, physically, mentally, spiritually. That’s why he always took the time to do so.

We are no different. And, again, age makes no difference. We all have the need to slow down, rest and reflect, not just to prevent us from trying to lift something we should never have tried in the first place, but simply to reflect on how well we are fulfilling and living out our present vocation, whatever that happens to be.