Righting Christmas Wrongs

Well, it's over. The Christmas good times are a memory, the New Year's revels are still to come and all that's left are the exchanges of the mistakes under the tree. The size smalls which were too large and the size larges that were too small will be tossed onto the Clearance rack and gift cards will purchase what the wearer really wanted instead. Because of the Blizzard of 2010, the swap was delayed while the roads were cleared, but it was only a temporary pause. Everything wrong will soon be made right back at the malls.

What will remain in the hearts of those who celebrated, though, are the memories of that which wasn't under the tree: the relationships that got strengthened or weakened during the "I'll Be Home for Christmas" moments. What we choose to retain about the holidays is as much our decision now as the reality of our interactions last week. We can focus on any slights or failed expectations or we can let go of judgments and pray for inner peace.

For me, the holiday was wonderful, but not everyone in the world had a Hallmark experience. The resulting temptation to nurse those wounded feelings is really, really strong in all of us. Love, the scripture says, does not "brood over injury," but the mind doesn't easily give up its anger at being hurt. We want to distance ourselves and protect ourselves, and, at the same time, we also hope that this distance causes another some pain in return. We create a somewhat illusionary sense of control over them by not being open to reconciliation.

There's no better way, however, to continue feeling emotional pain than to continue to hold a grudge. The pain is ever present because the person is ever present in his/her worst moments. Holding onto that picture guarantees that we will never be free and that inner peace will always be just out of our grasp. Giving the hurt to God and praying for inner peace will lead to far more happiness than agonizing over the hurt in a desperate attempt to understand it. In most cases, we never will.

Peace should be the end we seek. The Christmas cards we all received expressed many wishes for it, but only we can choose to embrace it as our goal. The alternative is life as a victim of the carelessness of others or the care-less-ness of others, but the outcome is the same: darkness and pain for ourselves.

Walk in the Light, St. John tells us. St. Paul tells us how: Love does not brood over injury.

sons of God

It's not often that there's music during a homily, but last night we heard a couple of clips as the Deacon spoke about the coming of Emmanuel. We heard Michael Card sing about Joseph's doubt as he faced into his role as foster father of Jesus. It's called Joseph's Song:

How can a man be father to the Son of God
Lord for all my life I've been a simple carpenter
How can I raise a king, How can I raise a king

He looks so small, His face and hands so fair
And when He cries the sun just seems to disappear
But when He laughs it shines again

What struck me about these words is the utter familiarity of them. What father or mother has not looked at the baby just birthed and not said, "Dear God, how can I raise this miracle so that the pure love I see here does not disappear?"

The prospect of parenthood is overwhelming in those early days (and not only then!). The real nature of the call that we all have is so clear and the baby's innocence is so apparent that the overwhelming responsibility seems almost too much to bear.

Joseph's song speaks of the Son of God, but we could sing the same words because we all are a son of God or a daughter of God. The words during the Baptismal rite of anointing pray that As Christ was anointed Priest, Prophet, and King, so may you live always as a member of his body, sharing everlasting life.We all have a share in the kingship of Christ.

How can any of us raise a king? How can any of us raise a son of God? How can any of us raise a daughter of God?

Only by God's grace can we be the parents we want to be when that little one is placed into our arms at birth. We see pure, accepting love and we want to be pure, giving love in return.

Too soon, though, our own needs - legitimate needs - come to the fore and the love the child must learn is how to function as a member of a family in which others must be considered. Adapting to these needs prepares a child to live in the wider world where there will be a demand for his or her time, gifts and resources. This is Love's cycle: the child as gift becomes a gift to others.

All of us grownups are sons and daughters of God, too. May we look at each other as we honor Christmas this season and remember that the King dwells within us! Together, let us usher in the Kingdom.

Access Denied

I tried to use Microsoft Access today and I couldn't get it to do what I wanted it to do. Access Denied.

As I thought about it, I realized that relationships are often like that. So often, we approach a person, do the human version of point and click, and the results aren't what we expect. It's like a program that doesn't open or has bad data or freezes up or sends out the blue screen of death. Access Denied.

With a computer, very often rebooting clears the buffer and sets things aright: Turn off the machine, turn it on again and voila!, problem solved and back to work. With people, it isn't as easy. When we are locked out of another's inner self, there isn't any switch that will wipe the slate clean and allow us to begin again.

People keep, as the Bible calls it, a "record of wrongs" in a way that a Mac or PC do not. The words of past conversations aren't deleted; they are a shadow on the page of the present and the hurt they might have caused leaves a mark, not an empty white space.

My field is communication, so one would think that I could hardly argue with people sharing their issues in the name of honesty and authenticity. I believe in the power of openness to heal, reassure or change a relationship. What I do have a problem with, however, is honesty without charity, with emotional dumping rather than a search for mutual understanding.

Healing one's own hurt only occurs when the search for it treads lightly on the feelings of the other involved. People get defensive when told that they have made a mistake or handled something badly. Awakening this self protective instinct is to shut down any desire on their part to reach out to the one who has just mauled the heart. Hurt begets hurt, not healing.

So, it is in our ultimate self interest to care about the feelings of someone who has hurt us deeply, but only God can give us enough grace to even ask for the desire to be so inclined. To do the loving thing requires persistence in prayer that God would change our perspective to see the whole picture and not just our version of it. Otherwise, the equivalent of a pop up screen appears on the relationship: Access Denied.

A Piece of Myself

A host of people ran through my mind today as I was praying in church. Not just relatives and friends, current and past, but all the people around me came alive as I thought about their illnesses, their heartaches and their needs. I was overwhelmed by a deep concern for each of them and my heart was filled with a compassionate longing that God would give them healing, provision, an awareness of grace and  hope for the future.

It suddenly occurred to me that if I could be so moved - even about people I barely know - God's heart must be infinitely more concerned than mine. If I, who have so many limitations and inadequacies, could feel love, what must our completely perfect and all loving God feel for each of us? Can God ever feel happiness when creation suffers so much? Jesus wept over the dead Lazarus; is it the Father's tears over you and me that water the earth?

In my spirit, God seemed to answer my question: in response to all the pain, I tear out my heart and give you a piece of myself. As I looked around, I saw each of us filled with a piece of God. God sends us to bring healing and restoration to the hurting people who come our way. God uses us and gives us the wherewithal to do the job.

This morning, God gave me a new awareness of what it means to be filled the Spirit. You are and I am - and the world will be if we share the love within us.

The Moment Passes

The gears of many relationships advance like a  steady watch until, for want of some lubrication or cleaning, they begin to slow and malfunction. Their sprockets no longer mesh neatly and are no longer in sync. Misunderstandings happen; hurt is deep. Without some attention, like the watch, the relationship will halt completely.

Attention, however, is not always forthcoming. To many, making up seems harder than breaking up and separation is the more tempting choice. The prospect of trying to repair the broken relationship appears to be worse than simply putting it aside.

Why is making up so hard to do? Perhaps it's because, in the hurt of the moment, we can't imagine anything worse. The pain of regret and complete rejection hasn't been tasted yet. Neil Sedaka illustrated this with two versions of his hit song Breaking Up is Hard to Do.

The first recording was a high energy, youthful rock and roll number that he did in 1962. It sounded confident and brash. The singer did a remake in 1976. Same words, same music, but a much slower tempo. This time it was poignant and rueful - the cry of a now too wise lover who really knew the pain of the solitude that was to come.

There is a moment when hurt has not yet created a rut in our brains and healing is easier. Hurt and anger that sticks around for awhile, waiting for the right time or the less painful time or for the other to make the first move, tends to move in and take over. Each person has more time to misunderstand and more time to savor the hurt. That outcome is seldom good.

Healing is better than brokenness; now is better than later. "Don't let the sun go down on your anger," says St. Paul in his letter to the Ephesians. Let us pray for each other that we would have the grace to not let the moment pass.

In the Groove

Where do your thoughts go when you're unoccupied and non productive? In other words, what do you think about when you're brushing your teeth?

If there's been a recent hurt in your life, you might spend a lot of time licking your wounds and rehashing the issue over and over. Whether it is physical or emotional, pain seems to do that. It calls attention to itself and it's hard to avoid thinking about the pain, the circumstances that produced it and the ways in which we might escape it. Undirected thought seems to get sucked into the pain morass pretty quickly. It's important, though, to try mightily to escape.

Emotional pain can become such a preoccupation that it produces a kind of groove in our brains and ultimately, it's difficult to get out of the pathway. We get stuck and the world becomes a very dark place. This kind of depression needs some kind of external kick to force it out of the groove and into another path. Better to not spend much time in reliving painful memories in the first place.

I've concluded that God is the only answer to those inward journeys that lead nowhere good. In trying to "get over" the hurt, we carve it more deeply into our psyches by analyzing it, rehearsing it and feeling the pain over and over.

Developing a "mantra" that lifts the memory to God and asks for inner peace is the first step towards genuine healing. Deliberately thinking about something else is the second. We can't give the thought any more house room than the second it takes to recognize it.

The world will take on the images that are the most familiar to us. Spend a lot of time with violent media and we run the risk of seeing everything through that lens. Concentrate on the ways that others have let us down and we lose confidence that there are those who won't.

Where we take our wandering thoughts makes a difference. St. Paul gives some good advice:

Whatever is true, honorable, right; whatever is pure, lovely or commendable; if there is any excellence, and if there anything worthy of praise, think on these things.

Merry Christmas

Love came in the mail yesterday. A smile came, too, and great curiosity and a very thankful heart. God laid it on someone's spirit to send us an anonymous check for $1000. In the envelope was a strip of paper with the message, "Merry Christmas."

In this season of gift giving, this is a pretty spectacular gift.What is more important than the money, however, is the heart that sent it. It overflowed with love and out came some money, too.

Love should be the reason for all gift giving; however, love is a sentiment that may get lost in this frantic season of tit for tat gifting. In our capitalistic culture, parity becomes the big issue and this is sad because the very nature of "gift" is that there are no expectations attached. Gifts are pieces of one's heart; they are a way to make seeable what is only feelable within us all. Gifts are love made visible.

The outcome of true gifts is out of our control. Our responsibility is to respond to God's leading and give; what the other does with our gift is between them and God. The gift to givers is the joy of knowing that they cared about someone else and added to the love and pleasure in the world.

The adage that it is "more blessed to give than receive" requires good givers, but it also requires good receivers who see the gift as the blessing that it is. Paul and I can't give back to the person who sent us the check yesterday; we can only pray for him or her and praise God for initiating the generosity. We must accept the gift of love without having to have earned it or return it. Our joy is the gift we give back, not something that comes in a box.

God's love is pure gift. The response that gives God the most joy is when we accept this love and give joy and thankfulness in return. Some of us have a hard time with that. We know we don't deserve God's love and so we loathe ourselves, we deny ourselves and we implore God to have mercy while all God wants to do is hold us, love us and reassure us. Sometimes we are too busy telling God that we are not worthy to experience the love God offers.

I wonder if God feels as we did many years ago when we invited someone who was new in town to stay with us while he looked for a place to live. We wanted to give him friendship and he treated us like a hotel. He wouldn't eat with us and he tried to give us money when he moved out. I know that he thought he was doing the right thing by not "bothering" us with his presence and paying his way so that he was not in our debt, but what we offered was treated like an economic transaction and not the gift that it was.

Merry Christmas is the message from our generous anonymous friend and it is a fitting one. The gift of the Babe, the gift of the Savior, the gift of the ever present Spirit of God living within us is simply that: gift. In our eagerness to be good givers this Season, may we not forget to be the most open of receivers as well.

Out of Bounds

The crime dramas that fill the schedule of evening TV are well crafted studies of people doing horrific things. We don't need fiction, however, to tell us that people are capable of great evil. The news outlets, particularly lately, carry stories of real life violence that are every bit as gruesome as what the best screen writers can produce.

When I hear these accounts or read historical records of cruelty and brutality, I am tempted to give up my view that people are good. The evidence is all too clear that we can't count on all people to behave rationally or kindly.

However, I think that the operative word here is all people. By far, most of the people we encounter are nothing to be afraid of and we do society a disservice if we see rapists and murderers waiting around every corner. This kind of distrust creates an atmosphere that encourages the very thing we fear: a lack of love in our relationships with others.

When people feel threatened or abandoned, disliked or disrespected, the desire to relate well to others disappears. This is as true of our neighbor nations on this planet as it is of the gang member or criminal. This is a situation that is under our control. It is the attitude of the trying-to-be-good people that determines the kind of society we live in, not that of the sour grapes in the bunch. There are more of us than there are of them.

I think that the antisocial behavior in our midst will flourish if we continue to create the kind of conditions that encourage it. If someone has enough anger against a perceived enemy, then cruelty will seem justified. Our job is to value each person so much that this kind of anger doesn't have a chance to grow.

This is an extraordinary task because, though environment plays a large role in antisocial behavior, it does not account for everything. DNA researchers have found that variations of a particular gene are related to aggressive behavior in men. Only large doses of love and early therapeutic guidance can mitigate an inborn tendency.

So far, not enough research has been done on the so-called "warrior gene." Its influence must spark a deep discussion among all societies, given the implications for our approaches to punishment, rehabilitation and beliefs about the nature of humankind.

To some, preemptive strikes against those with the suspect variation might seem tempting, but we must make sure that the rights of individuals or whole ethnic groups aren't taken away simply because of the possibility that he or she might one day be out of bounds. This discovery should, however, put to rest the idea that all of us are born evil. Some of us simply are born more aggressive than others.

In the most satisfying of TV crime shows, the perp is found, sentenced to a long prison term and the cops celebrate with a beer and a cheer. In reality, we know that courtrooms are sometimes unjust, jail is a revolving door and the situations that fostered antisocial attitudes are there waiting for the ex-con to return. We can live in fear of this reality or create a new one by fixing the problems in our relationships and economic conditions that awaken desires for domination or revenge in anyone, warrior or not.

This sounds difficult, but I like the idea that I can do something about the headlines and not just wring my hands in desperate fear.

Against All Odds

The Norfolk pine that I wrote about in a previous post never recovered from its experience in the crowded dish garden. On Thanksgiving Day, I laid the shriveled, brittle remains under some bushes in the back yard.

Just as I was musing over the importance of environment to proper growth, I came across another tree while I out doing some errands on Black Friday. Underneath an overpass, in the tiniest of cracks in the sidewalk, was a healthy tree/weed that was flourishing in spite of the concrete that covered its roots and shut out the sun. This was no "proper environment," and yet its will to live is strong enough that this plant is making it in a way that the Norfolk pine could not, despite its Miracle Gro potting soil and fancy container.

What is it that makes some of us able to survive the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" as Hamlet put it, and others bend to varying degrees under the pressure?

Virgil might have part of the answer and he even carries the plant analogy as bit further when he wrote: "as the twig is bent, so the tree inclines." Whether or not we view ourselves as loved from the outset is crucial to our ability to withstand life and its struggles.

So, were the Beatles right when they sang "All you need is Love"? Yes and No. Lack of enough love or the right kind of love - most particularly when we are very young - colors our perception of life and fills us with fear.

It is also true, however, that in many cases, we are given love that we don't understand or can't appreciate and we go thirsty while surrounded by wells. Maybe our bucket is too big to fit down the shaft or maybe it's too small to hold much when we bring it up, but the love that is offered and the love that we need aren't a good match.

Genetics plays a part in this mismatch, but some of the effects of even this preconditioning can be softened, if each of us would lay aside our own conception of how to love and adapt to the unique needs of others, instead. Too often we set up ourselves as the arbiter of what another should see as a loving action and get hurt if they misinterpret what we've said or done.

Meaning lies with the receiver and the love that we offer must be put into the "language" that the other understands. When others cry out for love, it shouldn't matter whether or not we think the cry is justified. The need is there and it is up to us to try to fill their bucket and not tell them that they should get a different container.

I could go and uproot the plant along the highway - and probably save it from the City landscape crew - but I won't. For the moment, it is getting all that it needs and in my attempt to make decisions for it, I would probably wind up giving it the wrong kind of love.

Apparently, it likes concrete.

Thanks and Praise

Today is an amazing day. The rhythm of life has paused in the United States so that people may gather and give thanks. The thanks are wrapped in a package of f's: friends, family, food and football. Through them all, we celebrate life.

For some, though, there's another f that characterizes the day: forgotten. Maybe it's the prisoner or the homeless or the odd relative; maybe it's God or some obligation or an old acquaintence that each New Year's Eve we pledge to remember. If we try hard enough, these can be brought to mind. For many more of us, however, the forgetting goes even deeper and is much harder to rectify: we have forgotten who we are.

When I was growing up, I was convinced that I was worth nothing. As the years have passed, however, I have discovered that to my Creator, I am worth everything. To my Savior, I was important enough that He came, died and rose so that I would live in hope and not fear. To the Spirit, if I am willing, I am an instrument of peace and an ambassador of reconciliation.

I have realized that I am not special and yet I am completely special because we all are precious in God's sight. This is the wonder of our existence: God shows no partiality. We can't earn God's love and we can't lose it either. If God's love were conditional, then God wouldn't be perfect Love, but He is. Who we are is worthy of wonder: we are the offspring of God. We are made in God's image. We are filled with God's presence. That presence becomes more and more evident as we let it transform us.

That each of us is wonderful in God's eyes leaves me full of wonder. For this, I give thanks and praise.

Breathing Room

Several months ago, we received a dish garden from some friends. It is very large and full of plants - 10 of them - and they are all tall and leafy. Yesterday, I noticed that the Norfolk pine in the middle was shriveled. Its branches were parallel to its trunk and it was clearly dying. No wonder, I thought. In its constricted space, there was no room for its branches to spread out and grow. It had no room to breathe. I transplanted the squished tree into its own pot and I hope that it is not too late for it to recover.

I see a lesson for us in the story of the tree.

Many people try desperately to make the most of the situation that they are in. They pray, they grit their teeth, and they rationalize every which way about all the possible purposes for the pain that they are in. They live in what a Saint called "holy darkness" and accept it as the price of being human. I suggest that sometimes the holiest thing we can do is to fight the pain and search for the options that bring us peace. The holiest thing for the rest of us is not to judge others when they do.

The adage that was so popular a couple of decades ago, "Bloom where you are planted," isn't always a good idea to try to do. The Norfolk pine was never going to bloom because what it needed to be a Norfolk pine was not available to it where it was. No wishing on anyone's part was going to provide the space for its branches to grow the way they are supposed to grow because someone planted it too close to other plants. To live, it needed to move and find a spot more suitable to what it is called to be: a tree with long arms that reach out in all directions. It is its birthright to be planted in a place that will allow it to grow. Something got in its way.

In the same way, humans have a birthright, too. We are called to be truly human. We are called to make the most of who we are, to use our enormous creativity and capabilities, to love and be loved. We are made for happiness or it wouldn't be such a deep desire within us. I wish we really believed this, but the Church of the Cross often trumps the Church of the Resurrection. Sometimes we get in our own way by being too fearful or too timid; sometimes others get us off track by being too directive or unloving and sometimes we become the rock in another's stream.

Jesus said "I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly;" the Psalmist counsels, "Seek peace and pursue it." St Paul tells the Colossians that we are called to peace. If our destiny were to live a boring or narrow life, we would have been made differently, but as it is, we are complex creatures placed in a world of beauty and not just utility. We are made to experience Life to its full and to become what God has called us to be - a people who love ourselves and others as deeply.

God does not toy with us, try our patience or send us trouble. When it comes, the God of Light calls us out of darkness. The God of Hope calls us out of pain. The God of Love has carved us on the palms of His hands.

Be Still

I spent much of yesterday afternoon in 1985, watching a couple of hours of family video which resurrected people long dead and put me in touch with a Christmas long forgotten. Music, presents, decorations, and several nativity layouts got me thinking about the holiday season that is now upon us. The holidays put pressure on us all to celebrate with too much of everything and it often winds up showing us that we don't have enough of anything. Money, time, and creativity all disappear in a frenzy of activity designed to make memories last for a lifetime.

Joy is a laudable goal and this isn't going to be one of those "how to survive the holidays" tirades that suggest that we retire from the cultural madness, go green and save the greenbacks. Rather it's a call to be still in the midst of it all, so that we can remember the uniqueness of the moment and remember the people who touch our lives and the God who lives now and not just the baby who came 2000 years ago.

In looking at the video, it was obvious that people grow up, they change, they move on and disappear. We can't stop the metamorphosis, but what we can do is preserve the experience by infusing each shared moment with God's presence. Even if we don't remember the details, by conversing with God, even briefly, while interacting with others, we have transformed the moment and allowed God to use it for purposes beyond our awareness.

When we bring God into all that we do, think and say, we create, as did a monk who lived in the 1600's, heaven on earth for ourselves. What we await in the future, Brother Lawrence experienced in the present by doing all for God and allowing God to fill each moment with a different perspective, a new insight or simply the experience of God's presence. It was all there for the asking.

I think that we can ask, too, because God shows no partiality. We can birth Christ through a song, a party or a piece of sticky tape on a package all year long. Done with love and an openness to the Holy Spirit, all of our activities are transformational if we bring God into them. It is not just a matter of lifting the day to God in prayer at its start and then going about our business. It is taking the hand of God and walking out into the world as a couple, ready to accomplish all that occurs and conferring with each other as the minutes pass.

Not easy to remember to do, this is the kind of stillness that no Christmas rush can take away.

Not Separate; Very Equal

I've come across a number of life stories recently that speak of the incredible pain of loss, whether it be by death, divorce or estrangement. It's a wonder that some people are able to make it out of bed each morning and put one foot in front of the other. The pain is deep - so deep that it has confirmed for me, once again, the oneness of the human race. We think we are separate individuals, but when we are torn from another, the unity between us becomes vivid in its intensity. We are all connected; we are all strings in a giant web of life.

When disunity or loss occurs in the web of relationships, something physical as well as emotional seems to take place. We hurt; we cry; we mourn until a "scab" begins to grow and cover the wound. Until some scar tissue grows, the cut is gaping and just about anything causes it to open and bleed once again.

The Christian Church compares itself to the Body of Christ. This a good metaphor for the kind of phenomenon that I am describing, but I think that it has become so hackneyed that people don't really buy into it. It's hard to envision myself as an arm or a leg, but as part of a vast network of interconnecting links? Yes, that's easier to comprehend, particularly in the age of the Internet. It wasn't called the World Wide Web by accident.

When I look at a spider web, I am always struck by the gossamer nature of the connections. However, when I try to break the web, it is incredibly strong. It sticks together, even when lying in tangles. Some kind of glue covers all the parts and it is thicker in some places than in others. Humanity is like that.

Humanity's "glue" is Love and perhaps visualizing Love as something tangible might remove it from the world of romance and make it more accessible as something we can create. Each day we have the opportunity to put glue on our connections to the people who touch our lives. Whether we choose to do so or not, our decision affects these people and their connections to the people who touch their lives and the people who touch their lives and the people who... - you get the picture. Merely holding them in prayer can put another layer on the joints and actually taking loving action puts a huge deposit of glue on our linkages.

A spider web has another lesson for me, as well. It is symmetrical. No one part is any better - or less needed -  than another. Humanity is like that, too. We'd like to think, perhaps, that some people are expendable or rotten or not even a part of the whole, but God created each of us and we are all equal in His sight. Hard as it might be to fathom, God loves us all, even those we dislike ourselves. Some of us God cries over, but no one does God abandon.

There are many choices of glue on the store shelves, from those that are easily removable to those that are a permanent bond. It would be nice if there were a sudden run on Gorilla Glue.

A Mary Mind

I came across a poem the other day that was on a plaque in my mother's kitchen. It starts out "Lord of all pots and pans and things..." and this first line was all I could ever remember. Because of the wonders of the Internet, I found the entire prayer and was struck by this verse: "Although I must have Martha's hands, I have a Mary mind." St. James couldn't have said it better.

So much of the argument between the Catholic and Protestant churches has centered around the faith/works debate. How are we justified? The Letter of James chapter 2 maintains that we show our faith through our works. St. Paul asserts in Romans 8 - and many other places - that we are justified by faith apart from the law. I have come to conclude that we will never know until our death and that, in actuality, there is no difference. As Romans says later in chapter 14, whether we live or die, we are the Lord's and our lives should reflect that truth. Both Martha and Mary did that.

Mary sat at the feet of Jesus while Martha was busy with the serving. Two things seems clear: Mary had the courage to do what was culturally uncommon and she was interested in what Jesus was teaching. So, the Mary mind is characterized by a lack of attachment to convention and an openness to a new understanding of God's relationship with humanity.

In creating a distinction between Martha and Mary, however, we do Martha's hands a disservice. She was not left out of the spiritual picture. When Jesus went to see the sisters after their brother Lazarus died, it is Martha who is on record as saying "I have come to believe that you are the Messiah, the One who is to come into the world." It is Martha who says with faith, "Even now, I know that God will give you whatever you ask." What an extraordinary statement. When Martha defies the evidence of her senses and the teachings of her rabbis and looks to Jesus to make a different reality for her, she exhibits the same courage and openness that Mary did. She had a Mary mind.

So can we.

Tree Climbing

What's the difference between penance and repentance? Just a few letters, but they are a world apart. The one is imposed from without and the other springs from within; the one is punishment and the other is response. This makes a difference when considering the story of Jesus and Zaccheus.

Jesus had approached the tree in which Zaccheus was sitting and told him: "Come down, for today I want to stay at your house." The onlookers grumbled that Jesus was choosing to enter the house of a sinner, a political collaborator with the Romans. It would be like Jesus passing up the chance to visit the Vatican and going to dine with Osama Bin Laden. This unexpected favor, however, changed Zaccheus' life.

The priest who was giving a talk on the story of Jesus and Zaccheus got it wrong when he called the tax collector's promise to give away half of his possessions to the poor a "penance." Jesus never laid an order on Zaccheus to do anything. It was his own joy at the love and acceptance that Jesus showed him that caused Zaccheus to want to share his wealth and return any money - with interest! - that he might have extorted.

Zaccheus overflowed with love for others because Jesus showed love for him. He wanted to change his ways - to repent - for the ways in which he had been unloving. This was not a self imposed chastisement for what he had done. He had seen Love in action and this gave rise to love within his own heart. He wanted to be as compassionate to others as Jesus was to him.

It is significant that changing his life was not a condition that Jesus set up before He would dine at the house of Zaccheus. Zaccheus had done nothing except clamber into a tree in order that he might see better. That was all it took for Jesus to defy convention and bring salvation to this man's house.

This is a good reminder that we are all accepted by a God who searches us out to give us unconditional love. God will go against the prevailing grain of religious expectations, if need be, to bring all the created into relationship with Him. Our job is to love others with such compassion that, in response, they go looking for a tree.

His Chalice

There's a hymn that we sing at church that contains the phrase, "here we will drink the wine of compassion." While the lyric refers to the Communion Cup, I think that we limit ourselves if that's all we see.  It is the nature of compassion to overflow - it isn't something that we can keep to ourselves. So, while this prayer acknowledges that we will be touched by Divine tenderness when we drink the Cup, it is only so that we may, in turn, become a Chalice through which the people in our lives taste the compassion of God.

To be compassionate is to understand another's need and meet it, to be supportive and not judgmental, to be lenient, empathetic and full of mercy. All of this is what we hope for from our God; all of this is what God hopes we offer to one another. Jesus said "love one another as I have loved you." How did Jesus love? He supplied bread for the five thousand and wine for the wedding guests; He healed the blind and the lame and comforted the sorrowing by raising the dead; He absolved the woman at the well, the woman caught in adultery, Zaccheus and Matthew the tax collectors and forgave all of humanity at His death on the cross. This is what it means to love as Jesus loved.

This is a seemingly impossible task except that through the Holy Spirit who lives within us we receive the very gifts that we are to pass on to others. Galatians tells us that the presence of God brings with it love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. We are not asked to do anything more than pass on what we have already received by grace. If we find our personal well running dry at times, all we have to do is ask for more.

I like the idea of being called to be a Chalice and quenching another's thirst for understanding and consideration. To be a cold glass of water on a hot day - how cool is that!

Light Overpowers Darkness

I watched the story of the rescue of the Chilean miners on NOVA last night.  It was inspiring, but what really struck me was the the thought of living in darkness for 17 days before they made contact with the world again.

Theirs was a physical darkness not of their own making, but there is a psychic darkness, too, which we often make for ourselves. It can be just as debilitating and requires just as much courage.

When our thoughts focus on what is lacking - lack of love, lack of money, lack of opportunities - we are focusing on the darkness. When we immerse ourselves in what is light - love for others even in their weakness, love for ourselves as God's beloved, love for God as our bulwark for the future  - we fill ourselves with light. This Light will overcome the darkness.

Shine a flashlight in a corner and all that's there becomes visible - nothing can escape the power of the light. Jesus said, "I am light of the world." Filling our thoughts with Jesus - with God - leaves no room for the dark to kill our hope and to smother our love. We are able then to fill the world of others with Love and Light as well.

There can be no darkness where there is light. The miners had to bring their own inner light to their situation when their artificial light failed. They succeeded admirably. "Love never fails" is true because love is more powerful than hate just as light is more powerful than darkness. Would that each person we meet say of us: "You light up my life" just as the miners did when all was darkness.

Behind an SUV

At one point as I was out and about today, I was stuck in traffic behind a massive SUV and I couldn't see a thing beyond it. I had no way of knowing how far the line of stopped cars extended, whether or not there was a traffic signal coming up or why things were slow in the first place. All I could do was follow. It's a frustrating feeling and I've done my share of complaining about these behemoths of the road that take away my ability to see ahead and prepare for what's coming.

As I moved slowly along, it occurred to me that what I was experiencing was a perfect metaphor for the spiritual life: We can't see beyond the present and the only way to survive is to keep our eyes on the leader. On the highway, it was the SUV; on the heavenly journey, it is God.

Jesus said "I go before you to prepare a place for you, so that where I am you might be also." Our task is follow Him closely so that we wind up in the proper room of the mansion that He was describing to His apostles. Jesus is the SUV ahead of us, tall enough to see over the tops of cars, with eyesight good enough to avoid the pot holes and with enough skill to navigate through the construction zones and traffic cones safely.

If we keep our eyes on His bumper and brake lights, then we can expect to reach our destination. It's not the way we might have planned the trip, but it's guaranteed to be the best way. His yoke is easy - His burden light - and His SUV has four wheel drive that takes the changing terrain like a champ.

Higher Power

There are 32 different definitions of the word power in the online dictionary that I use at http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/power. Each one adds another nuance to its meaning: Power is capacity, energy, authority and strength, but it is also a name that we give to that which is greater than ourselves.

Our Higher Power, as the twelve step programs refer to what I would call God, comprises all of those 32 shades of meaning and more besides because power is not just something that God has, but it is God's essence - it is something that God is. God is Power just as God is Love.

The Catholic Church, at the moment, is becoming more awed by God's Power than God's Love. The new translation of the prayers of the liturgy recalls more the experience of the people of Moses' time who were told not to touch the mountain of God lest they die, than the example of Jesus who allowed a woman - a woman! -  to pour oil over head and wash his feet with her tears.

This ambivalence about the nature of God, however, is not peculiar to the Catholic church. Throughout history, religion has see-sawed between honoring the majesty and power of God and accepting God's nearness and care for us all. Jesus went to the cross because of His insistence that the Father heard Him and loved Him and was One with Him.

This might be purely a philosophical debate except that when we err on the side of distance, we deprive ourselves of the Power to live life to the full. When we believe that it is up to us to solve our own problems, we guarantee that the outcome will be puny. When we hand our problems to our Higher Power, God "can do more than we can ask or imagine," as St. Paul promises in Ephesians.

God's "out of the box" approach to all that concerns us shouldn't be surprising. If medical science can use electricity to rearrange our brain's thinking patterns and relieve depression, how much more can the God who created the Universe bring new awarenesses and opportunities into our lives? Far from giving up or giving in, asking God to take over our fears and concerns is an opening up to possibilities far beyond our control.

Let go; let God is a contemporary way of saying what was told to the Psalmist: "Be still and know that I... am...GOD. Thank God!

Double Vision

Have you heard the joke about the adherents of the various faith traditions reaching Heaven and being surprised to find that they are not the only ones there? We will all probably find people whom we might not have expected to see. This raises one potential drawback to living forever: we get to live with all these others who are living forever, too. If we haven't gotten along with them in life, how are we going to get along with them in death?

Eventually, we will all come face to face with those with whom we have been at odds. Nothing will be hidden because there are no barriers in Heaven. We must all be one, just as Jesus prayed that we be. That is the joy of Heaven: there is no separateness; there is complete unity.

If we are estranged or full of hatred or non acceptance or even if we are simply people who have harbored non-loving thoughts about others, these attitudes will have to change in order for Heaven to be Heaven - the abode of Love. Non-lovers will be changed by the grace of God, but God won't run roughshod over our will. The opportunity for reconciliation will be ours to choose or not.

I don't think this will be a private experience. Our non-loving relationships will have to change and that takes two. What we thought about the individuals whose lives interacted with ours will be evident to them and to us and must be healed. I sometimes think how mortified I will be when people know what I might have thought about their behavior during my life.  What is it that God will show us so that we become capable of embracing the loving response? What explanation, excuse or insight will overwhelm our former attitude of judgment?

We can pray for God's grace to be there then or we can choose to ask for the grace to change our perceptions now. This calls for double vision: to see the people in our life as we know them now and to also see the image of facing them at some future point when what we have said and done and thought will be evident to us both. I think I'd rather ask for God's grace to alter my vision now than wait for eternity. If we all did, we might bring Heaven a lot closer a whole lot faster.

Memories

I didn't think I was a collector. I'm the one who visits the thrift store with bags and bags of household goods because I can't stand crammed closets and disorderly shelves. The refrigerator that I like best is the one with the empty shelves, not the one bulging with food and leftovers. What I have faced into recently, though, is that I am a collector after all. I collect memories.

In cleaning out the attic last week, I found our son's First Communion suit, his cub scout uniform, his boy scout uniform, his band jacket, his morterboard, every stuffed animal he'd ever had and the sweater set that my grandmother had knitted for him as a baby. Not to mention every report card and scrap of paper that spoke of his love, every love letter my husband ever wrote and dozens of art works that have hung in our home of 40 years. Yes, I collect memories and what memories they are.

Our scriptures are like that. They are our memories of our encounters with God. Some of these memories are  clear, some are foggy, but they are a record of the moments when people were touched by something beyond themselves and they said, "I must remember this."

Sometimes what the scriptures record doesn't seem worth recalling because the stories speak of cruelty and bloodthirsty revenge.  The punishing and judgmental God of the Hebrew scriptures and the Book of Revelation is not one who is easily loved and it takes a lot of faith to get past this image and find the God who saves us by grace. Some of what the Christian church has chosen to remember, on the face of it, we might really be better off forgetting.

Memory, however, serves a purpose. It provides a context through which we are able to examine our choices and how these choices played out in our lives and the lives of those who have gone before us. However, I believe that we should be retelling some of these early stories of our relationship with God more to remind us of who we have been than to reveal who God supposedly is.

We have been a people so limited in our understanding of reality that we sometimes made God into the worst of ourselves in order to elevate our own responses and excuse them. The Islamic extremists are still doing it today. We shake our heads over their misguided interpretation of God's will, but, to be fair, the Hebrew scriptures depict much of the same kind of violence, allegedly sanctioned or even demanded, by God.

Our collected spiritual memories reveal our progressive understanding of the nature of God, culminating in the gospel of John where we discover the God who is Love residing within us. Because of this awareness, we are changed and we see our non-loving responses for what they are: the places within us where we haven't made room for God.

As a collection of memories, the Bible is something of a mystery. We may have misconstrued over the years why our forebears wrote down some of the stories, just as I looked in wonder at some of the things I had saved in the attic. We shouldn't be afraid, though, to look at what is written through the lens of our enlightened understanding and say: "don't ever think like this again."

There Is No Time In God

When I was little, I asked my parents where I had been before I was born and they told me that I had come from "God's pocket." It's a wonderful image, really, as well as being a clever way to avoid the "where do babies come from?" question that they didn't wish to address. The idea that I had a life with God before my life here on earth has been with me ever since.

Jesus said that He had come from God and that He was returning to God. I believe that we can say that, too. In a different form, we have all lived forever and in a different form, we will continue to live forever. I suppose you could call this "pre-existence" which is a Platonic notion, not a Christian one, but the scripture suggests that our souls have always lived, too. God tells the prophet Jeremiah "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you." In Ephesians, Paul says that "He chose us in Him before the foundations of the world." My point is that God does not live in time; therefore, our existence has no beginning and no end for Him. It is all one. We live in time and are limited by its unfolding, but God is what the catechism calls, "omnipresent," that is, God is everywhere and in all times - past, present and to come.

Interesting theology, but does this have a bearing on how we live out our relationship with God? I believe that it does because we can bring the God of the present into our lives of the past and ask that God heal the wounds that occurred. It isn't the "past" to God, only to us. Whatever the moment, whether it be a mistake or a sin, a hurt or a heartbreak, God can enter in and change the consequences. How else can Romans promise that "Everything happens for the good for those who love the Lord?" When we bring God into every moment of our lives, our lives change.

Guilt, worry, fear and regret are the product of a mindset that believes that "what's done is done and cannot be undone." However, nothing is final with God. With God, "all things are new" because God is like a time traveler, appearing in and out of our existence as we make Him present. Our God is not limited. Only we can make Him so.

The Root of All Evil

The Scripture says that the love of money is the root of all evil. It has struck me recently that money certainly plays a part, but that its pursuit has a deeper base: the fear of being without it. It is what money can save us from that is its attraction and why it becomes the focus of so much prayer and effort. Poverty, hunger, inconvenience and ill health are all alleviated by money and so the desire for it has the potential of squashing a concern for others and ruining relationships.

In actuality though, it is fear, not the love of money, that is at  the root of all evil. Abraham Maslow constructed his Hierarchy of Needs in 1943 as a way of explaining human motivation. Fear pervades each rung. Our most basic needs are bodily - food, water and sleep. Until these are met, people are a threat because they stand in the way of our own existence. We want to alleviate the fear of our own imminent death.

The next step in the hierarchy is our need for Safety. We cannot enjoy what we have until we are sure that we will not be harmed in the process of enjoying it. Once that is accomplished, there is a need for Love and Belonging. We fear being alone. After people are welcomed into our lives, there is a need for their Esteem. We fear being abandoned.

Finally, there is what he called Self Actualization which is our quest for knowledge and personal achievement. This is closely related to the need to be seen as worthwhile, but this need also relates to our desire to feel equipped to handle all the dangers that might come at us in life.

Thus, fear is the driver behind our needs and fear is the explanation of the behaviors that mar our relationships. Fear is misery, not iniquity. Fear needs healing, not judgment.

Genesis tells us that Adam and Eve hid from God because they were afraid. St. John's gospel tells us that God is the answer to our fears, not their punisher: "Perfect love casts out fear." Where God is, there is no room for fear. God's light outshines any darkness. So, if we are afraid, it is because we are not letting God into the problem.

 Likewise, our quest to become more perfect lovers ourselves will be more successful if we put aside our fear of others and see the God within them instead. Jesus said the Law could be summed up in two sentences: Love God. Love your neighbor. What He also said makes the first two possible: Fear not.

Hands Off

Perhaps it’s only natural to want to complete a task, to see it through from start to finish. At least it is for me. I get such satisfaction from accomplishing things. It’s like putting a big check against the Bucket List of life: another wish taken care of, another task crossed off. When the finale is delayed, however, I am suspended in mid air, as if hit by an eternal pause button and frozen on a large screen TV, arm upraised, mouth half open and body poised for action.

Prayer is one of those open ended events that doesn’t have a clear cut ending. We often see bits and pieces of the answer, but the whole picture is usually murky and our part is the only thing illuminated. God uses us to advance an outcome, but doesn’t usually explain the game plan or show us where we fit into its unfolding. We are caught in mid stride when the ball is thrown to someone else and we must wait until the play call is back in our section of the field - if it ever is. This is a difficult feeling to process.

God uses each of us - to say, to do, to pray whatever is needed at the moment, but we may not have the final word. All we can hope is that we played our part well and set up the next step in the process. We are not responsible for the outcome, just the ongoing of it. And yes, this is a difficult feeling to process.

There's an optical illusion plaque in our house that when looked at correctly spells out J-E-S-U-S. I was looking at it the other night when apparently I moved my eyes from the foreground to the background and Jesus disappeared. Isn't that a good metaphor for what happens in prayer? At times, God can seem so present and then at others, so absent. My experience with the hidden word reminded me that unless I keep my eyes focused on God, God will seem to be gone from my life.

It is so easy to lose focus when the answer to prayer seems to be delayed. Because nothing seems to be happening, our eyes wander and we feel so small, our problem appears to be so large and God seems so disinterested. Perhaps the answer is being worked out elsewhere and our only task is to keep our eyes focused on Jesus and believe in His love.

J-E-S-U-S. The Word is always there. Where are we?

Old Clothes

I found some old clothes yesterday that I had carefully boxed up and stored in the garage. I remember doing it because I was in one of my "throw it all out" phases and yet I couldn't let these go. The skirts have hand painted designs and I wore them incessantly. I'm not sure why I stopped, just that I did, but I couldn't part with them either.

I tried them on today and they didn't feel right. It wasn't that they didn't fit because they did. Perhaps it's that I no longer fit them. I think I've moved on and though my body has remained the same, my spirit has not. That "old feeling" wasn't there.

This happens in our spiritual lives, too. Suddenly a prayer ritual becomes stale or a new understanding comes about and changes our point of view about who God is or who we are in God. To try to remain in the same place spiritually is to go backwards and stifle the move of the Spirit. As Jesus said, new wine is put into new wine skins, otherwise the fermenting wine will burst the old skins.

The Holy Spirit is a powerful force, continually breaking into our preconceived ideas if we are open to it and revealing God in a fresh way. Scriptures we've read dozens of times may take on a different meaning or we see new possibilities in the standard doctrine. We have the choice of moving into uncharted waters or remaining on the shore, of trying to hang the old clothes in the closet again or making room for a new style.

Some of the mainstream churches seem frantically to be trying to recapture the past while many of  the faithful apparently are hearing from God in ways that are inclusive and empowering.This fermenting wine is stretching the old skins. We can only pray: "Lord, send forth you Spirit and renew the face of the earth."

The Secret of Success

What is the secret of success? I'll share it with you if you promise to tell everybody :)

Show Up.
Show Up On Time.
Show Up On Time and Ready to Work.

I wish I could say that these maxims are original with me, but they are ones that I heard from a business executive who gives talks to high school students. In his experience, most of the people who come to him looking for work fail one or more of his basic principles and, he says, will go nowhere in their careers. I would add this: they will go nowhere in life.

Show Up. It sounds so simple, but what does it really mean? People can be somewhere physically, but miles away in their thoughts and attitude. In relationships, showing up means being present to the other, whether that person be a spouse, a friend or even God. Everything we do is affected by our involvement: Prayer can be a ritual or an encounter; sex can be an act or a joining of hearts; a meal can feed the body or it can feed the soul as well. Showing up means actively searching for the other and experiencing unity.

Show Up On Time. "Time passed is never found again." This proverb is thought to be about diligence, but it's really about delicacy. It is about sensing the moment and taking advantage of the rightness of the fit at that time. In an ideal world, relationships would always be like the gears of a watch with each sprocket fitting neatly into the others. Ours, however, is not an ideal world and we have to be on the lookout for the moment when it is our chance to mesh and not clash. 

Show Up On Time and Ready to Work. The executive wanted his high schoolers to come prepared with tools in hand, bodies primed and minds on the goal of the day. Relationships require the same amount of zeal. Our mission is to become One. This was the prayer of Jesus at the Last Supper: "That they may be one as you, Father, are in me and I in you...". Unity of this sort takes vigilance because it doesn't happen easily. We must be constantly sending out vibes of loving openness that encourage a like minded response from those we meet throughout  the day.

See you on the job.

The Problem With Martha

I've always been somewhat miffed by the gospel story of Martha and Mary. They have a houseful of guests and Mary isn't being any help at all. When Martha asks Jesus to tell Mary to help her, Jesus takes the burdens of hospitality very lightly and chides her: "Mary, He says, "has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her."

Tonight, however, I realized something. One can be hospitable without being loving and if that's the case, then one has served food, but not changed the world. I was impatient with one of the guests at my home tonight and complained to some people present - including her - and it didn't make for the best night for either of us.

St. Paul maintains that everything should be done with love. He tells us in 1Corinthians that even if he gave away all his possessions to the poor, if he didn't do it lovingly, it would not profit him at all. My impatience affected the amount of love that was in my home tonight and maybe that was what Jesus was telling Martha: Mary was making her guest feel loved and all Martha was doing was filling his stomach. It was her attitude, not her chores, that was the real issue.

The business of each of us is to create a bow wave of loving kindness that will tilt the world away from judgment and towards acceptance. This was Mary's "better part" and what Martha had to learn when Jesus came to her house. It's what I had to learn to learn tonight, as well.

The odor of...?

There is a story that we have always found funny about a fitful sleeper who seemed to do his best thinking in the middle of the night. Trouble was, he could never remember these blasts of insight when he woke up in the morning. Finally, he put a pad and pen on the table next to his bed and when he had what he thought was an especially brilliant thought one night, he wrote it down. In the light of day, this is what he read: The whole universe is permeated with the odor of turpentine. So much for clarity at 3am.

However, something I read in 2 Corinthians the other day has brought that story to mind and given me pause. The verse says that "we are the odor of Christ." Scholars believe that St. Paul is comparing Christians to the incense that burned in the Temple and that is undoubtedly the original intention, but I've had another thought that uses the metaphor of the joke I just related.

What if the universe really were filled with the odor of turpentine because we who seek to wipe away the faults of others from our mind are using its equivalent on our memories? When unforgiveness attempts to paint pictures of our emotional hurt and inner pain on our psyches, we choose to use spiritual turpentine to clean up the mess.

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us...

Pass the turpentine, please.

Afraid to be Free

The dog next door lives in a crate. He's a big dog and it's a tall crate, but...it's a crate. Not unusual these days. People have been convinced by "them" that dogs feel protected in this cramped space. From my perspective, though, it's an odd trend. Now that zoo keepers have realized the necessity of letting animals out of their cages and into free spaces for roaming, domestic animals have been "rescued" from their meanderings through the house and yard and put into crates.

People, too, seem to be choosing confinement for themselves, whether it be of the physical or intellectual variety. Children are not permitted to go anywhere without supervision; the elderly are more and more being watched by electronic devices that chart their every move. There are "women only" taxies in cities worldwide in order to protect females from groping hands and cameras on street corners that record faces and track behavior.

All of this oversight started benignly; those with a long memory know where it can lead. Women who fought the "gentlemen only" clubs and drawing room chit chat for the right to mingle with men will be dismayed by those who wish to be protectively separated again. The burqua does that quite well, doesn't it? Electronic surveillance of the frail sounds caring until it is misused and more and more people seem to conveniently fall under that description. The night raids of Latin American death squads cleared the streets of criminals, right?

Hunkering down is taking place in the Church, as well. The open windows of the Second Vatican Council are gradually being shut as the hierarchy looks to the past to combat the messiness of the present. Fundamentalists of all stripes are gaining in popularity because they offer a set of rules to follow that allow little freedom of interpretation. The new capabilities and knowledge unearthed by scientists are seen as frightening and disruptive and these, they believe, must be rejected.

Jesus tells Nicodemus that the "people preferred darkness to light...". I think this is true today, not because "their works were evil" as Jesus explained then, but because today we are afraid. We are afraid to make a spiritual decision because in doing so we might make a mistake. We are afraid to be physically free because we are afraid we won't be able to protect ourselves. We see ourselves as puny, defenseless victims in a scary and dangerous world. While technology is enlarging our vision and expanding our outreach, we are retreating into our homes and shrinking the world, instead.

I think this is because we don't focus on who we really are: We are made in the image of God, with enormous brain power and great physical endurance. We marvel at what people are capable of in the midst of an emergency, but, we often fail to remember that this power is latent within us all the time. It is the power of God which we can harness when He and we walk in step together. Light overcomes the darkness.

The Psalms have many images that I find troubling, but the one thing that is evident is that David knows that God is with him and he is therefore a victor. Jesus says that "the Truth shall make you free." The Truth is, that as St Paul says in Romans 8, "we are more than conquerers through Christ who strengthens us."

The Jews worship standing up, with arms and faces raised to heaven. The Evangelicals do the same, with loud cries of "Halleluah!" and praises to the God "who makes all things new." The liturgical churches in the United States, however, are still on kneelers, with heads bowed and spirits hushed.

Freedom is a choice that has risks, but if we are living our lives in concert with the Holy Spirit, we should be able to use all our faculities and all our capabilities. It's time we walked out of Plato's cave and embraced the potential of life.

A White Elephant

A "white elephant" is a gift that is more trouble than it is worth. Asian kings used to give the animal to those who had fallen out of favor and the care and feeding of  the sacred beast would drain the recipient of all his resources.

English kings did the same thing when "honoring" a friend with a visit from the royal Court and overstaying their welcome. The cost of this hospitality ruined the host and removed him as a threat.

A "white elephant" can be a gift that is intended to be a burden or it can be one that starts out innocently enough, but through the law of unintended consequences becomes deadweight. Such is the case with a timeshare that we have inherited. It will be hard to sell and will continue to need repair and maintenance forever.

Relationships can become white elephants too. For whatever reason, the outlay in terms of emotional or economic expenditure is more than the payback and the situation becomes untenable.  A job can be a white elephant when it appears at first to be a great opportunity, but then demands too much from family commitments. Addictions are another area where the high of drugs or food or sex is intoxicating at the start, but then deteriorates into a drive whose costs are dear.

White elephants can arrive in our lives through any number of avenues, but, what does one do about an ongoing burden that seems to offer little benefit?

Walking away from it is one option. This has its own consequences in terms of liability and reputation and in relationships, of course, the hurt to the parties involved. It rarely results  in a peaceful spirit, but instead is a wound begging for closure. In the case of addiction, merely walking away is a solution not possible to the millions under its power. The process takes enormous inner strength.

Trying to change the circumstances is another option. Perhaps getting others to share the load, involving counselors or rearranging priorities could help to lessen the onerous nature of the situation. Not all situations are under our control, however.

Accepting the circumstances is yet another possibility, but the stress of living a life of gritted teeth can become its own problem. Acceptance is truly life giving only when there is peace about it. So this third way out is actually a way in - into ourselves and into the personhood of God. Somehow, we must allow God into the situation. If we do, we will be bringing Love into it and Love changes every perspective. "Purify my understanding" is a prayer whose answer might surprise us. We may even come to see the "burden" as a gift.

Looking back now on an illness that was a side effect of a medication I needed, I realize that if I hadn't been sidelined for a couple of years, there would not have been the time to spend in spiritual reflection. I would have had a full time job and not had the freedom to become involved in in Eleanor's life when she came to Virginia. My priorities would have been different when my grandchildren were born.

Examining our perspective with an open mind and heart gives God room to broaden our capacity to love. In the process, we may find that our white elephant is a sacred beast after all.

Chocolate Covered Strawberries

There's a shop about an hour's drive from here that makes the most wonderful chocolate covered strawberries. The chocolate is sweet, but not too sweet. The strawberries are moist and when I bite into them the juice runs down my chin. Can you taste them yet? I can.

I was supposed to have one today, but I've got a cold and the trip didn't seem wise. So, here I am, thinking about chocolate covered strawberries, writing about chocolate covered strawberries and missing them intensely. Ah, the power of memory.

Perhaps memory plays more of a part in our lives than I've really thought about before. Maybe it's the memory of fleeting good times that keep us involved with people or behaviors that we would be better off forgetting. Conversely, it's probably good memories that cement our relationships with those who are a gift. I suppose it's the memory of bad times that keep us mired in unforgiveness and hurt. At the same time, it is memory that keeps us from repeating the same mistakes. Dead people live on in our memory and, as Alzheimer's patients exemplify, living ones are as good as dead if memory fails.

In actuality, then, who we are is the sum of our memories and what we choose to remember or forget. St. Ignatius, at the end of his Spiritual Exercises, makes a point of putting memory under the control of God:

Receive, O Lord, all my liberty. Take my memory, my understanding, and my entire will. Whatsoever I have or hold, You have given me; I give it all back to You and surrender it wholly to be governed by your will. Give me only your love and your grace, and I am rich enough and ask for nothing more.' (Spiritual Exercises, #234)

Theologians have written reams of pages that enlighten our understanding and much about surrendering our will, but there's not been too much focus on memory. Considering how it affects our perception of life, however, maybe that's a bit misguided. How we remember another person, what we remember of our interpersonal interactions and which mental paths we consistently walk in our quiet moments determine whether we are positive people or negative, wounded people or whole.

What do the Christian scriptures say we should remember?

Remember if your brother has something against you and rectify it. Remember the five loaves and how many baskets were gathered and have faith. Remember the words of the Lord Jesus. Remember Lot's wife and don't look back. Remember the poor. Remember those in prison. Remember the predictions of the holy prophets...apostles and the commandments of the Lord. Remember what you have received and heard.

There's nothing about remembering any of the times when people did not meet our expectations.

God chooses what to remember as well. He throws our sins "as far as the east is from the west" and says, "I will remember them no more." His memory is flawless, however, when it comes to His love for each of us. God is at his most awesome when He tells the prophet Isaiah, "I will never forget you. See, I have carved you on the palm of my hands." It was when Jesus stretched out those hands for the hammer and nails that the figurative became literal and the mystical became physical. That's a good thing to remember.

Ashes to ???

We buried Eleanor in her Florida crypt last weekend, right next to Dad whose body has been resting there for 12 years. In matching caskets, their remains await a transformation, while their spirits live with God. What are they waiting for? To be "swept up into the air" with Christ, says 1Thessalonians. To be "clothed with immortality..." says 1Corinthians. There isn't anything more specific than that. That the spirit lives is a given, but how the remains are resurrected is a mystery.

We are to receive glorified bodies. Like Jesus who still could point to the nail marks to prove to the apostles that "it is I, myself," we will bear some resemblance to ourselves, but also like him, we will be as unrecognizable as he was to the disciples on the road to Emmaus. St. Paul discusses these issues in 1 Cor 15. He reminds us that just as the grain of wheat that is sown does not resemble the body that it becomes, what we will be is not what we are now. To that, most of us would say, Hallelujah!, but still, it is a curious question.

I think that the bodies are not going to be particularly corporeal. I think, instead, that we are to become light. Those who have seen heavenly figures describe them as "robed in light as with a cloak" (Psalm 104). In the Transfiguration, the clothes of Jesus are described as being more dazzling than any bleach on earth could make them. He says of himself that He is the Light of the World. The first epistle of John declares that "In him, there is no darkness at all." Therefore, there can be no darkness - us - around him either because light dispels the darkness. We have been called, as 1Peter reveals, "into his marvelous light."

How does this happen? Just as our spirits are turned into unconditional Love through a process of inner awareness and behavioral change throughout our lives, perhaps our bodies have a transformational process to undergo as well. What we see as physical "crosses" to bear, may be like the shedding of self that our spirits undergo.

We know that our bodies naturally fall apart, if by no other action than aging, and that they lose their resiliency. Maybe as they become more malleable, they are more receptive to becoming transparent and light filled. It's an odd concept, but our bodies and souls are joined in life, so if the one must become spiritually mature, does it follow that the other must undergo some kind of maturation as well?

Some spiritual movements have rejected the body and seen it as an impediment to holiness. Others have exalted it almost to the exclusion of the spirit. As with so many ideas, the answer must lie somewhere in the middle. Our bodies can be used by God just as God uses our work, entertainment and worship to help us see His hand. We are saved, body and soul, for eternal life.

This notion that the body has its own part to play in the salvation drama gives me more respect for this "tent" that has given me any number of problems over the years. I wonder how I can help it prepare to let the light shine through?