Reflection for Friday-Saturday, October 30 - 31

The fierce-faced preacher took his place in the pulpit. The people braced themselves, thinking that they’d be subjected to a strong dose of “fire and brimstone.”

But the preacher surprised them. He didn’t speak of condemnation, or judgment, or hell. He spoke about heaven. He spoke about something so good and true and beautiful that it made those people begin to want heaven, to want it so badly that they became aware of just how far from heaven their lives really were, and they became aware of just how much was going on in their lives which would make heaven impossible for them to bear.

That week, long lines formed at the confessional. Miracles were taking place: people who had settled into complacency, people who had not taken an honest and sincere look at their lives, were moved to confess, to speak about things which they had been shrugging off for literally a life-time before that day.

Nothing will separate us from God

Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. (Saint Paul to the Romans, 8:31-39)

Nothing.

Again, I say it: nothing.

Not our sins, nor our weakness, nor our failings, nor our crimes, nor our lack of faith, nor our discouragement, nor anything else that is within you that you believe stands as an obstacle between you and God’s love.

God is greater than your barriers, than your doubt, than your forgetfulness, than your settling for mediocrity, than your obstinate and total resistance.

One thing is dangerous: the belief or insistence that you are going to solve the problem that is your life without God. But even then, God has ways of working things out so that you eventually come to your senses. It might take a lifetime, but for God a lifetime is as brief as a snap of the fingers. And God will let you suffer until you reach a point where you finally cry out, “O God, help me!” And then the miracle begins all over again.

And it doesn’t help to proclaim that you are an atheist. The atheist also has faith: he believes in Not-God. But even Not-God is God, and he will reach through, and he will continue to love and bless the atheist with anything and everything that keeps him close even if he refuses to believe.

Some people are so fed up with religion (for very good reasons, mind you) that they want nothing to do with church or ritual. (The miracle is that some of us still cling to church and ritual despite everything.) But for those who cannot, God draws them through another attraction or path.

Nothing can separate us from the love of God.

Nothing within you; nothing outside of you.

Be at peace.

The struggle to "let go"

We all struggle against something that deep down inside we realize that we need to “lose” in our lives, to set aside, to get free from. We struggle with such matters for years, perhaps, until it is suddenly and mysteriously time for us to let go. (God’s time is the best time of all.)

I remember when it came time for me to quit smoking, so let me use that as an example. At that time, one of the things that discouraged me was the fear that life as I knew it was coming to an end, and I couldn’t imagine what that would be like or how it would be possible. After all, I didn’t know how to live as a non-smoker.

The truth of the matter, however, is that once we are committed to letting go of something, and have asked God for help, we discover a new way of living that is so much better than the former way of life that we can’t understand why we waited so long in the first place. And so, my friends, if at this time you find you are being called to lose something in your life, ask God for miraculous help to let it go. You will find far more than you are losing.

Let the feeling pass

The same theme came up in several sources I’ve been reading and hearing today. I’ll present them to you hear, and hope that you will weave them together in a way which is most helpful to you. Remember to take what resonates with you and leave the rest behind for now:

 From the Imitation of Christ: All of us are subject to a constant flow of changing feelings, and what we need to do is arise above them and keep our eyes on Christ and our hearts on the goal which awaits us.

From the Letter of Paul to the Romans: I consider that the sufferings of this present time are as compared to the glory to be revealed for us. (Rom 8:18)

From the martyred Oscar Romero: . . . the glorification that we’ll one day be given, superior to all the pains and sufferings that can be felt on this earth. . . I knew a man who was being tortured: as he suffered, he said ‘The hope I have and the glory I await are greater than this suffering.’   Recorded in Give Us This Day in the reflection for October 27, 2015.

From mindfulness training (which we have spoken about in several previous reflections): Consider that  You are not your feelings. You are the one who has the feelings which continually arise and pass through you if you do not attach yourself to them.

From Thomas Keating, O.C.S.O.: “Once you disidentify with your feelings, you know that you can change them. You are not your feelings.” “It is important to keep reminding [ourselves] to face the truth of our feelings without identifying with them, acting them out, or objectifying them and blaming them on other people.” Divine Mercy and Addiction, pp. 26-27.

Getting back on track

I will be away for a few days. The next reflection will be on October 27.

He is searching for God. He has a good prayer life, leads a reflective life, and surrounds himself with loving, supportive friends who support him in his quest.

And yet there are times when he gets disconnected from the Source of all peace and happiness, and begins going after things which will ultimately fail to satisfy. At times he falls prey to the illusion that <this> or <that> really matter at lot more than they really do. These times of dis-connection open a gate within him and he becomes prone to disappointment, regret, jealousy, envy, judging others, the urge to control his reality or that of others. He experiences feelings which are far from the peace and happiness he seeks. During these times he becomes like a fool playing with what is toxic, what is treacherous, and, ultimately, what fails to satisfy.

                                 

When he was younger, this dis-connection was the norm and not the exception—that is, until God reached out and touched him and “made his footsteps firm.”  St. Paul called him back to spiritual reality: ”. . . what profit did you get then from the things of which you are now ashamed.” (Romans 6:21)

Now things are different. He still gets dis-connected from time to time, but he has found a remedy: he simply things of times when he has said, done or thought things which brought him inner joy. And reflecting on these things, the shadows are dissolved in the light of Christ.

Thus restored, he gives thanks. To the God who is love.

You are not your thoughts

You are not your thoughts.

When I was teaching, I would write that sentence on the board on the first day of class. I would say nothing about it at all and yet, invariably, as the semester went on, students would gradually reach a point where they understood what it meant, and they would realize just how true it is.

Have you reached that point yet in your own spiritual development—the point where you understand that thoughts are things that enter into your mind and then pass through you if you let them.

You are not your thoughts. You are the one who has thoughts.

Here is another challenge to accept or reject: your thoughts are not necessarily true. All you need to is look at the current political drama being played out in our country right now to see what harm and chaos results when people who have thoughts assume their thoughts are true.

Humility requires that we place our thoughts on “hold.” Humility guides us to ask questions, “What if these thoughts I’m thinking aren’t necessarily true?” “What if others hold thoughts that are different from mine—might it be that their thoughts are closer to the truth than mine are?”

Humility requires us to hold our thoughts up to the light of faith, to the thoughts and teachings of our God and his Christ, to see if there be anything in our thoughts which need to be corrected, or challenged or purified? Remember that the Lord has said,

“My thoughts are not your thoughts. My ways are not your ways.

For as the heavens are high above the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways,

and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9)

Don’t let one of your thoughts, particularly if it be troublesome, take hold of you and drag you away from yourself and your peace. Look at the things you are most passionate about, and examine your thoughts. You might be surprised what this will lead you to.

And, for what they’re worth, those are my thoughts on this subject.

This reflection is a continuation of the one I posted on August 14. You can find it on my blog or on my facebook page.

The Paradox of Autumn

Autumn is a beautiful season. Autumn is a season of death. All around us, the world is ablaze in color. Color which is the result of dying. Many of us find it hard to think of death and beauty at the same time, and yet that is what is happening. Parker Palmer calls it a great paradox, this blending of opposites which must be held in the spirit at the same time: death/life, beauty/corruptibility, color/darkness.

Deep truth is not found in either/or thinking, but rather in the paradox both/and.

Our faith is filled with such paradoxes. Think of the paradox that begins the Requiem Mass: We are baptized into Christ’s death so that we might rise with him to new life.

Autumn is also a season when seeds are scattered and will bear fruit in times to come. Again we can think of our faith: the seed falls to the ground and dies so that will bear much fruit. The death of Christ inaugurates a time of un-ending life.

We can also think of our own lives, of those times when we have been called to suffer little (or great) deaths which themselves gave way to new promises, new horizons and new fruits. I’ll let Parker Palmer have the last word here:

“In retrospect, I can see in my own life what I could not see at the time—how the job I lost helped me find work I needed to do, how the ‘road closed’ sign turned me toward terrain I needed to travel, how losses that felt irredeemable forced me to discern meanings I needed to know. On the surface, it seemed that life was lessening, but silently and lavishly the seeds of new life were always being sown.”  (Let Your Life Speak, p. 99)