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?

The Abundant Life

In John 10:10, Jesus says "I came that they may have life and have it more abundantly." What a marvelous thought: Jesus did not come so that we may suffer and die for Him, but that He might suffer and die for us so that we might have life and have it, as some translations attest, to the full.

What does that mean? To my mind, it means that we can trust in God's goodness. We can trust in God's great love and know that He will do everything that the most loving person on earth would do and then some. We can trust that God does not will our suffering or illness - Jesus went around healing, not once telling anyone to "offer it up." We can trust in God's power and have no need to be afraid.

This is not a message we hear very often from the pulpit. Most clergy preach the church of the Cross much more often than the church of the Resurrection. Yet, the sole reason for the journey to the cross was to reveal the good news of the resurrected life. Oh death, where is thy sting? Oh grave, where is thy victory?

We are saved to new life - to my mind, that is the "good news." There isn't a precise definition in the scriptures. It is merely described as what the disciples brought to Jews and Gentiles and in the process overturned the world.

The gospel has to be more than some message of solace that helps one to bear the trials of this "vale of tears" as one Marian prayer implores. While helpful, this kind of message would not create such a dramatic awareness that people gladly went to their deaths rather than deny it. No, the gospel had to be something truly magnificent - real "good news."

My "good news" is that God loves us and offers eternal life to anyone who asks - not on our merit, but on his graciousness alone - and that we are filled with God's Spirit who gives us "power, love and self control" as Paul reminds Timothy. To complete this abundant life, he tells the Ephesians that we are filled with "every spiritual blessing in the heavens." This is really good news.

So much is made these days about the effect belief has on our ability to accomplish tasks or overcome obstacles. Maybe if more of us unleashed our faith and believed that it would actually make a difference in our world, we would see more of the abundant life. As the Psalmist says, "I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living." I would add, not only the land of the dead.

Diamonds or Rhinestones?

This is a test. Which of the gems pictured here are diamonds worth thousands and which are paste worth about $40 bucks?

The woman who appeared on Antiques Roadshow couldn't tell and neither could the people who sold them to her at less than ten dollars a piece. One shiny thing at a yard sale is just as good another, right?

Actually, in this case, the shiny thing in the top row center was worth between five and seven thousand dollars and the double circle pin next to it would fetch a mere $25. Not all shiny things are created equal.

We could say the same thing about people. So often, we make value judgments about those who pass through our lives, marking some as diamonds and others as the equivalent of rhinestones - all fluff and no stuff.  How many times have we missed the real deal?

The one who doesn't make mistakes is the God who sees us all as diamonds - even those who are pretty roughed up and unrecognizable. We'd like to think that some of us are more loved by God than others - particularly now when so much terror surrounds us. Surely God can't love them, can He? Certainly not as much as He loves us, anyway, right?

But yes, God does because Love is...well, Love. Love that isn't unconditional isn't Love, but an imperfect form of Love. God is perfection and, therefore, God is the Perfect Lover of all God created.

 If just one person on the earth can say "I forgive" or "I love" in the most heinous of circumstances, then so can God. We know that there have been many such individuals who have been able to do so - some call them saints; some call them mom or dad. Surely neither can out-love God.

I am convinced that you are a diamond. Are you?

Expectations

On the road to Emmaus, some disciples of Jesus meet a stranger who appears to have no knowledge of the events of the Passion. They explain how Jesus had been crucified and according to the testimony of some women, was alive, adding "we were hoping that he would be the one to redeem Israel...". Jesus, for that is who the stranger was, says "How foolish you are. How slow of heart to believe all the prophets spoke..."

Lack of belief is hardly what those of the time would think was their problem. They had a very clear idea of what the prophets "spoke" and the crucifixion itself was the result of their belief that Jesus did not fulfill the scriptural predictions. They believed very strongly; what Jesus was saying is that were also believing wrongly.

How often do our expectations get in the way of what God wants to do in our lives? We believe that God "should" act in certain ways and if God doesn't, we are disappointed. "We were hoping..." but our expectations were not met and so we complain. We do the same with other people. We set up expectations of those in our lives and they are judged against this standard. They constantly audition for the part of best lover or friend and often fail.

What if it is we who are failing? What if it is we who are foolish and slow to believe?

What if the function of our personal encounters is to be a chance for us to learn to love others as they are and not as how we wish they would be?

It may all come down to Acceptance. Perhaps acceptance frees another to honor who they are themselves and gives them, in turn, the love that they need to be able to accept others the way they are. Perhaps love is a circle that starts with one person setting aside expectations and receiving another with openness.

My head argues with this notion because it seems to imply approval of some behaviors which simply cannot be condoned. There are lines one cannot allow others to cross and still remain a safe and compassionate society.

I think that part of that answer lies with St. Augustine: "with love for mankind and hatred of sin..." or, as Mohandas Ghandi put it, "hate the sin, not the sinner."

As for the part that is simply annoyance and not sin, maybe praying for the grace not to be bothered is more likely to bear fruit than asking that another live up to whatever it is that "we had been hoping...".

Show Up For Life

There's a lot that's wrong about our world right now. We could work ourselves into a state of anxiety over the political Left or Right or Extreme, the environment, the clothes people are wearing - or rather not wearing - the lack of interest in God or the vacuousness of wanting a big house or a trip to Fiji.

It's enough to paralyze anyone.


However, it has always been that way. As Ecclesiastes tells us, there is nothing new under the sun. As the song writer tells us, the words change, but the melody lingers on. This is a road that others have walked; these are situations that other cultures have faced and God has been there for countless numbers who have found meaning in something outside themselves.
 
Maybe that's why I enjoy reading history. Maybe that's why the Boomers are suddenly interested in genealogy and antiques. It reinforces the awareness that we are not alone. It is not all up to us. Not only should we trust people over 30, but maybe those three or four times that number have better answers.
 
Good ideas, but it is easy to get stuck in this kind of thinking. The past seems safer because we can see how it all turned out. Therefore, the new is distrusted and we cling to the familiar. Change becomes the enemy.
 
This too bad because God doesn't run in place and neither should we.
 
Each day the Holy Spirit offers new wisdom and new perspectives if we are open and willing to listen. God tells Isaiah in chapter 49, "See, I am doing a new thing. Will you not take note of it? I will make a way in the wasteland and rivers in the dry country." This doesn't sound so farcical when we consider that 6 million year old seashells have been found in the California desert.
 
Today does not have to be like yesterday. Today offers new possibilities because the Holy Spirit lives in us and has given us "every spiritual blessing under the heavens" - if we believe it. Life offers a clean slate if we are willing to consider that as St. Paul writes in Galatians, "it is not I who live, but Christ who lives within me." Nothing is too big for God to handle.
 
What new thing will there be to take note of today?

Where is God?

There's a Bald Eagle in our vicinity - probably a juvenile given the constant cries we hear. Its parents are obviously around, too, but I've never seen anyone of them. I know they are all powerful creatures  - very large birds - but all I know of their presence is the thin cry coming from somewhere in the trees.

I wonder if our experience of God is like that. All of us sometimes wonder Where is God? when we're in some situation that we want changed. Why isn't God more responsive?

All of this leads me to ask: how would we recognize God's hand if He were actually doing something to answer our prayer? God has to work through humans who either respond to His promptings or not. God is not going to take over a person's will and force it to His, even if we pray a hundred times a day for an outcome. God will, however, constantly nudge those He wants to respond in order to answer a prayer.

His is those thin cries we hear - or don't hear - that represent a powerful, though unseen presence. Our ears are more or less attuned to God's frequency, so it often takes a long time to bring about a desired result. Sometimes I hear the Bald Eagle cry and other times I'm so absorbed in what I'm doing that I hear nothing at all. So, in like manner, I may be missing God's nudge that would set in motion the answer to someone else's prayer. Or, someone else may be tuned out so that my prayer is hindered and my hope thwarted. Yet, I know God continues to transmit. Perhaps we can raise the volume if we join our loving thoughts with those of God so that it's harder to ignore the nudge.

Maybe that's why we pray: to lend our loving voice to the voice of God so that the nudge becomes more recognizable. If I joined my voice to that of the eagle, it would be louder and my neighbors would not be able to tune it out so easily. If my husband joined in, it would be louder still, and if the whole block lent their voices, the eagle's cries would reach to the next subdivision.

God gets the blame for a lot of "unanswered" prayer, but if we all join in prayer for the others involved in an outcome - if two or more are gathered there I am among them - if we don't give up hope, and if we trust in God's love for us, the loving answer will eventually appear. To be in unity - loving unity -  is our strength. That kind of love cannot fail.

Where Are you From?

I've been struck in the last few days by something that Jesus says in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 13. It's within the story about striving to enter the kingdom through the narrow gate. People are knocking and Jesus has the master of the house saying "I do not know where you are from." They reply, "We ate and drank in your company and you taught in our streets." He says once more: "I do not know where you are from. Depart from me, you evil doers!"

How does this fit in with the God, who, in chapter 14, prepares a Great Feast and makes the people come in from the high ways and byways when there is still room at the table? Or the father who sees the Prodigal Son "who is still a long way off" and runs to embrace him? There are many such examples in the gospels, the most obvious being the gift of Jesus Himself, where the openness of the kingdom is made clear. So, what does Jesus mean here when He asks, "where are you from" as the password to enter eternal life?

In the Hebrew scriptures, there is an incident in the book of Judges where the question is used to ferret out spies because a non-resident would not be able to pronounce the word of the town correctly. I wonder if that is the issue here. In Jesus' story, the people don't answer His question directly. They fudge. They leave the master to draw the unspoken connection between him and themselves. And so the gate is closed.

One could think that the parable is about God's rejection of humanity. I think it's more a parable about humanity's own self destruction. The problem is that these people couldn't speak the language of Heaven. They couldn't pronounce love.

Heaven is the perfection of all that we have ever known - and I imagine a lot that we've never even considered. It is pure love. If we haven't learned enough of the language of love in our lifetime, we won't understand what's going on when we get there. Perhaps this is what the Catholic concept of purgatory is all about, though it's not been described in a very helpful way. Perhaps it is that moment of change when we choose to become love instead of what is not love.

If we look at the gospels as a whole, and Jesus' life in particular, it seems clear that God is not into punishment so much as restoration. That's the goal. Our life on earth is a process of finding ourselves more and more in love with God, of discovering who God is and not just what others have said about Him.

The master in the story says "I do not know where you are from." And our answer is...

What Do We Choose To See?

 I came across a question yesterday while preparing a workshop: what will happen when we think more about what is right with other people than what is wrong? Today, I found the same thought in another place: we decide what we want to see before we see it.

The same can said for attaching motives to someone else's mistakes. Attribution Theory maintains that generally we will conclude that another's misjudgment or error is due to some kind of character flaw, but we excuse ourselves by blaming circumstances. For example, someone else is late because they are thoughtless, but we are late because of heavy traffic. Of course, we should have made allowances for the possibility of a longer commute, but that's usually not the way we choose to see it.

Would that we were as kind to others as we are to ourselves! Whether we choose to focus on guilt - and we all have many reasons to be angry or hurt at the people who touch our lives - or a more benign explanation for their actions is up to us. Only the Holy Spirit can give us the strength to choose a loving response, but we must be willing to ask.

For today, I ask!

The Spirit of God

God lives within us!

This is a basic tenant of Judeo-Christian thought, but how many times do we look to the God "out there" and not to the evidence of God's presence within us and those we meet?

We carry God to every place we go, to every relationship we have. We can see with God's eyes in those situations or use our own. How does God see? What does God see?

The God who is Love does not see guilt, but fear. The God who is Love does not see wickedness, but woundedness. This is a far cry from what we see from our own perspective of neediness. We see other people as not meeting our needs or as actively standing in the way of our accomplishing that which would make us happy. Therefore, we judge. Therefore, they are guilty.

We project our own judgmental personality onto God as well and live in fear of punishment for that which is not up to the standard of perfection. We have a hard time forgiving ourselves and so have a harder time when asked to forgive others. All is caught up in a cycle of accusation and defense, of grief and hope.

God, however, holds out the prospect of a different kind of perspective if we but turn and access the power within us. Because we have the Spirit living within us, Galatians tells us, we have "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control." This is who we are. How we see ourselves is up to us.

It is our choice to focus on the lacks within us or to live in the belief that there is a trove of power and goodness at our disposal. Using God's eyes to see others with love and ourselves with gentleness gives us access to the peace we crave.

Many of us want to work for God - our prayer has been of the "you have no feet but mine" variety.  How willing are we to say to God "I have no eyes but yours?"

Where's the Power?

I went to Mass tonight and and as I was praying after Communion, I recalled a line from 2 Timothy: "... they make a pretense of religion but deny its power."

All of us had just received the power of God in the bread and wine of Eucharist and yet none of us seemed changed in the slightest. Heads bowed or faces raised, we were probably reciting the same list of requests we always have and expecting nothing out of the ordinary to happen. Ho hum - just received Jesus Christ into my body and oh, by the way, where are we going for dinner?

Why isn't the United States turned upside down after a quarter of its population touches the Divine each week? Why isn't the world different when more than 2 billion Christians take some sort of Communion each week?

I don't think the issue lies with God's willingness to usher in the Kingdom. I think we have lost an awareness of the magnitude of the power that we say we believe in: God lives within us! What's more, this God loves us -  unconditionally - and will bring about His will if we let Him.

In the movie Star Wars, Luke Skywalker is trained by a spiritual master to use the power of The Force to raise his downed aircraft from the swamp. His efforts are half hearted and fruitless. To illustrate the power at Luke's disposal, Yoda calls upon the Force within himself to accomplish the feat. As the giant X wing fighter rises out of the muck covered with mud and plant life, Luke shakes his head in wonderment and says,  "I don't believe it!" Yoda closes his eyes sadly and replies, "That is why you fail."

The ancient world was changed by a group of uneducated fisherman who "cast down the mighty from their thrones and lifted up the lowly" as Mary attests in the Magnificat.

What would happen if we really expected our God to make a difference?

My Grace Is Sufficient

How can it be that "my strength is made perfect in weakness"? (2 Cor 12:9).

It is Jesus who is speaking about the strength he offers, but it applies to me: it is when I am weak that I am strong. Few of us want to be weak, however. Like Invictus, we believe that we can be the "master of my fate" and conquer as Nelson Mandela did who used the lines as inspiration during his imprisonment on Robben Island. It worked for him, didn't it?

And yet, it didn't really. At least not in the way we ordinarily interpret the words. What worked for him was endurance and faith. He fought injustice but wouldn't become dispirited when he couldn't see the victory. What he and the poet had control over was the "unconquerable soul," not the changing - or in his case, unchanging - circumstances of daily life. Mandela had faith in his own goodness and dignity and the rightness of his cause...and faith in the power of love, not hate.

"Love never fails," 1 Corinthians:13 tells us. God is love, so God never fails. This is where the weakness triumphs. When I put God in charge of the situation, I choose to be strong - and not foolishly headstrong -  and recognize that someone more capable than I will do a better job.

St. Paul wanted God to remove a "thorn" from his life and was told that "my grace is sufficient." The victory in this instance was the ability to endure the process, not escape from it. Perhaps it's a bit like birth: the process is unavoidable if the outcome is to be successful.

God tells the prophet Zechariah (4:6)"not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit" will the Temple be rebuilt. The psalmist David counsels that "God takes...delight...(in) those who await his faithful care." (Psalm 147) St. Peter reassures us that "His divine power gives us everything we need..e"(2Peter 1:3) St. Paul promises that "my God shall supply all your need out of his riches...) Philippians 4:19

In my weakness, that's a blank check that I want to take to the bank.

Do Not be Afraid

"Do not be afraid."

 How many times Jesus said this! "It is I, do not be afraid." Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom." "Do not be afraid. Just have faith and she will be saved."

"Just have faith."

Faith in...what? Faith that if we step aside and allow a power greater than ourselves to enter into a situation, we then align it with the most loving outcome that only our most loving God can foresee.

The scripture says that "perfect love casts out fear." God is perfection; God is perfect love. So, where God is, there can be no fear. My job is to get out of the way and make room for God - to expel the fear in my mind and fill it with God instead. If my head concentrates on fear or anger or regret or anything else that is not love, there is no room for God to operate.

Ruminating over the negatives of a situation simply creates a "beaten path" that leads nowhere good. It only leads back to my limited understanding and my very human solutions. If it really is the Father's good  pleasure to give me the kingdom, then all I have to do is accept and not direct, trust and not give in to fear.

If only that were easy....