At retreat last week, Shannon had us all spend one hour doing some sort of service. We had been talking a bit about the scene in which Jesus washes His disciples’ feet, and how had they ultimately refused for that to happen, they totally missed the point of what He was all about. Without them being able to receive that from Jesus, and receiving it both on a literal physical level and knowing what it felt like emotionally for that to happen, they wouldn’t have been able to follow the next command of continuing to wash one another’s feet. Practically speaking, it was pretty gross thing to do. But after being on the receiving end of it, they had a more real motivation to follow that command. Jesus didn’t give them this random command to go wash people’s feet, but first had his disciples receive it, so that they could go out authentically.
So following that, Shannon challenged us each to spend the next hour serving someone(s). Initially I think I was like…ummm, here? What can I possibly do in one room with 50 other Christians all trying to serve one another? So as a group we started, somewhat awkwardly, to think of ways to serve one another. Some people wrote cards, gave massages, taught others something, listened, prayed, cleaned, talked…etc. I think the list of things to do was surprisingly long, at least for me, after about 15 minutes of time doing that. But it created an interesting atmosphere, because after a while, we all realized that for the service to actually ‘work,’ people had to receive from those around them. And when there are about 50 people in a room, relatively limited in their potential acts of service due to time and place, pretty much everyone had to receive from someone else, in that hour, in addition to serving.
And it caught me off guard when my initial response to that receiving was ‘no, this is my time for serving, i’m not allowed to receive now.’ So then God was like, ‘well Stef, you missed the point too.’ It isn’t possible to serve in a room full of people not willing to receive. And it makes the service frustrating. And I feel like that might be how our relationship with God is a lot of the time. Like we’ll receive up to a certain point, and then feel like, ok, you’ve given me enough, I have to give back.
The setting for that hour was one that modeled I think how I would picture the phrase ‘heaven on earth’ lived out. The service was creative, thoughtful, communal, unifying, loving, and sometimes not how I think we typically picture ‘service.’ So what I mean by that….you know that feeling of joy you get when you give a friend a present or card or something that you’re really excited for them to open and see?
And I think I question often if that feeling belongs in acts of service…if it means I’m doing it for myself, to get those feelings. And sometimes I think that’s true for everyone- we’ve all got hidden motivations and impurities in our actions a lot of the time. But this hour was good to remind me that someone else receiving my service, and me allowing myself to be excited for them, or happy that they liked it, is often me allowing myself to receive their service to me of receiving. So…allowing them to serve me by receiving their joy that came about because I tried to serve them. I don’t know if that came out right. But let’s face it, we like to make people happy, and that isn’t a bad thing. And so following that, it is then necessary to receive from other people, to allow them to have that felling of joy so that ultimately, that receiving from others serves them. And yeah, like anything, that can and does get distorted. But in that hour, it felt right, and it was very cool to feel service and receiving come together, and see them coexist not only within the same hour, but sometimes in the same few minutes. And that’s what I think helped define friendship with God and with people for me.
And in the world of non-retreat-time, it is really easy to get overwhelmed by the needs of the people we see. Actually, it is really possible to get overwhelmed by the needs of 50 Christians in a room for an hour also. And that really clearly reminded me that that feeling of overwhelmingness (that a word?) can overpower the original reason for service- that it isn’t to meet the needs of everyone and lift them up, but to seek and follow through with ways of serving that lift up Jesus, imitate Him, and create a spirit of service that lasts when there is overwhelming need, when the service isn’t overtly fun, when it’s risky, when it’s hard, when it’s washing someone’s gross and dirty feet.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Thursday, January 17, 2008
The Great Depression
when you hear that phrase, The Great Depression, what do you think of?
some words that come to mind: crash, 1929, dust bowl, unemployment, poverty...etc.
I'm taking an English seminar this semester on The Great Depression. Authors write about it with such emotion and passion, exlaiming the terrors of those years and blessing the future with hope that such years will never be seen again. T.S. Eliot in his poems goes as far as to suggest that it might have been better if everyone had just started off poor and then they wouldn't have had to go through the pain of losing their possessions and livlihood during the Depression.
Well, guess what? Those years are here again. They have been here for many years. Though I guess that depends on how you define "here." There are people who have lived in their own "Great Depression" for years, for their whole life. Heck, there are countries that have lived that. Sure, there are lots of reasons that the American Great Depression was unique, and it deserves a place in history books. Older folks who think back to the depression still shudder when they think about the hardship endured then. Where are the poeple shuddering for the hardship going on in the inner cities now? In countries whose modern histories could be labeled "The Great Depression?"
"It's not the same," we say, "because that country isn't America or those people aren't really a part of America. They were never the great sophisticated and industrious country that we were so therefore their current situation isn't as much of a downfall. They're used to it. It's just another one of the differences between America and other places. They're supposed to be downtrodden and we're supposed to be a superpower. That's how the world works."
America had less than 30 years of 'depression' and we have a whole genre of literature to go along with it. We have classes and textbooks about it. What if those years of depression were multiplied by 10 and then 10 again, and again, until they took up the span of a country's post-colonial history. There are millions in America who have felt and lived the emotion and hardship of the Great Depression for their whole lives. They've been jobless, hit by unfortunate circumstances, forced to move around, and sure, sometimes they've made some bad choices. But haven't we all? Why don't my bad choices affect me the way the bad choices of minority groups or poor people's do?
Jesus tells us to love our neighbor, and the command stretches us to consider who our neighbor is, ultimatlely expanding our body of "easy neighbors." What would it look like if our country took on that challenge? We would be able to say then, that the Great Depression is "here" because it is with our neighbors, whom we love. Our Great Depression looks puny compared to what millions go through every day. That is not meant to minimize the American Depression, but rather to maximize all of the others. What would countries like Rwanda or Darfur give to be able to say they just had two decades of Depression but then pulled out of it. Not everyone has the luxury of being able to look back in history and pinpoint the beginning and end of the 'bad years.' Poverty, I think, comes from the inability to do that. From the inability to look back on your life and see clear turning points and change. In daily life a lack of money translates into a lack of options, which is perhaps a more accurate defintion of poverty. Without options, it's hard to have distinct change or turning points.
Let's think life as a wheel with six spokes. The outer rim of the wheel represents wholeness, adequacy, "enough." Simply the condition of having one's actual needs met. The six spokes would be: economics, health, learning, environment [and what it provides for you...often a living], social/sociopolitical, and spiritual. Each of those spokes deserves it's own paragraph [that'll come in the next post]. I believe God cares about each of these spokes. This model would work...except the spiritual spoke is a part of all of the others.
At its very core, poverty is a mind-set that goes far beyond the tragic circumstances. It is the cruel, destructive message that gets whispered into the ear of millions by the enemy Satan himself: "Give up! You don't matter. Nobody cares about you. Look around you: Things are terrible. Always have been, always will be. Think back. Your grandfather was a failure. Your parents couldn't protect or take care of you. Now it's your turn. You, too, wil fail. So just give up!"
"Unless there is an intervension of love and hope, these seeds of apathy lead inevitably downward to an even lowe rdeath sentence called fatalism The very word stinks of death. It is the bottom- aslow as a human being can sink. When the human spirit becomes truly fatalistic, it is almost impossible to retrieve. This is complete and utter poverty, the end of the road."
-Why doesn't Poverty just go away?
some words that come to mind: crash, 1929, dust bowl, unemployment, poverty...etc.
I'm taking an English seminar this semester on The Great Depression. Authors write about it with such emotion and passion, exlaiming the terrors of those years and blessing the future with hope that such years will never be seen again. T.S. Eliot in his poems goes as far as to suggest that it might have been better if everyone had just started off poor and then they wouldn't have had to go through the pain of losing their possessions and livlihood during the Depression.
Well, guess what? Those years are here again. They have been here for many years. Though I guess that depends on how you define "here." There are people who have lived in their own "Great Depression" for years, for their whole life. Heck, there are countries that have lived that. Sure, there are lots of reasons that the American Great Depression was unique, and it deserves a place in history books. Older folks who think back to the depression still shudder when they think about the hardship endured then. Where are the poeple shuddering for the hardship going on in the inner cities now? In countries whose modern histories could be labeled "The Great Depression?"
"It's not the same," we say, "because that country isn't America or those people aren't really a part of America. They were never the great sophisticated and industrious country that we were so therefore their current situation isn't as much of a downfall. They're used to it. It's just another one of the differences between America and other places. They're supposed to be downtrodden and we're supposed to be a superpower. That's how the world works."
America had less than 30 years of 'depression' and we have a whole genre of literature to go along with it. We have classes and textbooks about it. What if those years of depression were multiplied by 10 and then 10 again, and again, until they took up the span of a country's post-colonial history. There are millions in America who have felt and lived the emotion and hardship of the Great Depression for their whole lives. They've been jobless, hit by unfortunate circumstances, forced to move around, and sure, sometimes they've made some bad choices. But haven't we all? Why don't my bad choices affect me the way the bad choices of minority groups or poor people's do?
Jesus tells us to love our neighbor, and the command stretches us to consider who our neighbor is, ultimatlely expanding our body of "easy neighbors." What would it look like if our country took on that challenge? We would be able to say then, that the Great Depression is "here" because it is with our neighbors, whom we love. Our Great Depression looks puny compared to what millions go through every day. That is not meant to minimize the American Depression, but rather to maximize all of the others. What would countries like Rwanda or Darfur give to be able to say they just had two decades of Depression but then pulled out of it. Not everyone has the luxury of being able to look back in history and pinpoint the beginning and end of the 'bad years.' Poverty, I think, comes from the inability to do that. From the inability to look back on your life and see clear turning points and change. In daily life a lack of money translates into a lack of options, which is perhaps a more accurate defintion of poverty. Without options, it's hard to have distinct change or turning points.
Let's think life as a wheel with six spokes. The outer rim of the wheel represents wholeness, adequacy, "enough." Simply the condition of having one's actual needs met. The six spokes would be: economics, health, learning, environment [and what it provides for you...often a living], social/sociopolitical, and spiritual. Each of those spokes deserves it's own paragraph [that'll come in the next post]. I believe God cares about each of these spokes. This model would work...except the spiritual spoke is a part of all of the others.
At its very core, poverty is a mind-set that goes far beyond the tragic circumstances. It is the cruel, destructive message that gets whispered into the ear of millions by the enemy Satan himself: "Give up! You don't matter. Nobody cares about you. Look around you: Things are terrible. Always have been, always will be. Think back. Your grandfather was a failure. Your parents couldn't protect or take care of you. Now it's your turn. You, too, wil fail. So just give up!"
"Unless there is an intervension of love and hope, these seeds of apathy lead inevitably downward to an even lowe rdeath sentence called fatalism The very word stinks of death. It is the bottom- aslow as a human being can sink. When the human spirit becomes truly fatalistic, it is almost impossible to retrieve. This is complete and utter poverty, the end of the road."
-Why doesn't Poverty just go away?
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Top Ten ways to get thrown out of chemistry lab
10. Pretend an electron got stuck in your ear, and insist on describing the sound to others.
9. Give a cup of liquid nitrogen to a classmate and ask, "Does this taste funny to you?"
8. Consistently write three atoms of potassium as "KKK."
7. Mutter repeatedly, "Not again... not again... not again."
6. When it's very quiet, suddenly cry out, "My eyes!"
5. Deny the existence of chemicals.
4. Begin pronouncing everything your immigrant lab instructor says exactly the way he/she says it.
3. Casually walk to the front of the room and urinate in a beaker.
2. Pop a paper bag at the crucial moment when the professor is about to pour the sulfuric acid
1. Show up with a 55-gallon drum of fertilizer and express an interest in federal buildings.
ok, so these may not be from some amazing piece of literature...haha...but they ARE a part of my new hall decorations :)
9. Give a cup of liquid nitrogen to a classmate and ask, "Does this taste funny to you?"
8. Consistently write three atoms of potassium as "KKK."
7. Mutter repeatedly, "Not again... not again... not again."
6. When it's very quiet, suddenly cry out, "My eyes!"
5. Deny the existence of chemicals.
4. Begin pronouncing everything your immigrant lab instructor says exactly the way he/she says it.
3. Casually walk to the front of the room and urinate in a beaker.
2. Pop a paper bag at the crucial moment when the professor is about to pour the sulfuric acid
1. Show up with a 55-gallon drum of fertilizer and express an interest in federal buildings.
ok, so these may not be from some amazing piece of literature...haha...but they ARE a part of my new hall decorations :)
Monday, January 14, 2008
To a God Unknown
To a God Unknown: John Steinbeck
[the whole book is good...here's the epigraph]
He is hte giver of breath, and strength is his gift
The high Gods revere his commandments
Hi sshadow is life, his shadow is death;
Who is He to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
Through His might He became lord of the living
and glittering world
And he rules the world and the men and the beasts
Who is He to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
From His strength the mountains take being, and
the sea, they say,
And the distant river;
And these are his body and his two arms.
Who is He to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
He made the sky and the earth, and His will
fixed their places,
Yet they look to Him and tremble.
The risen sun shines forth over Him.
Who is He to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
He looked over the waters which stored His power
and gendered the sacrifice
He is God over Gods.
Who is He to whome we shall offer our sacrifice?
May He not hurt us, He who made earth,
Who made the sky and the shining sea?
Who is the God to whom we shall offer sacrifice.
~Veda
[the whole book is good...here's the epigraph]
He is hte giver of breath, and strength is his gift
The high Gods revere his commandments
Hi sshadow is life, his shadow is death;
Who is He to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
Through His might He became lord of the living
and glittering world
And he rules the world and the men and the beasts
Who is He to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
From His strength the mountains take being, and
the sea, they say,
And the distant river;
And these are his body and his two arms.
Who is He to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
He made the sky and the earth, and His will
fixed their places,
Yet they look to Him and tremble.
The risen sun shines forth over Him.
Who is He to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
He looked over the waters which stored His power
and gendered the sacrifice
He is God over Gods.
Who is He to whome we shall offer our sacrifice?
May He not hurt us, He who made earth,
Who made the sky and the shining sea?
Who is the God to whom we shall offer sacrifice.
~Veda
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Too Small To Ignore
Too Small To Ignore- Why the Least of These Matters Most: Dr. Wess Stafford
"I learned in my childhood in Africa that a child may be born in poverty, but poverty is never born in a child. The worst aspects of poverty are not the deplorable outward conditions but rather the erosion and eventual destruction of hope and therefore dreams. When a child gives up hope, dreams are forever shattered. With lost dreams goes the potential and ultimate impact that a child might have had."
"The word community is more than just a gray sociological descriptor. It is a God term, designed by the Creator of children to water their souls and enhance their spirits as they grow. To ignore this is to sow seeds of dysfunction and future trauma. To welcome the young into the center of our lives is to enrich not only them but ourselves as well."
"Americans spend more for garbage bags each year than 90 of the world's 210 countries spend for everything!"
"God's kingdom deserves excellence. It just doesn't need the conquest of anyone except Satan...competition should be our servant, a mere tool to drive us toward excellence."
"An even greater challenge is to receive graciously, especially from the hands of the poor. The Scriptures teach that it is more blessed to give than to receive. In my experience, it is also easier to give than to receive. We in the developed world are generally very awkward about it. If there is one great pearl I have witnessed in my years of ministry among the poor, it is their ability to be truly and joyfully grateful."
"Any response to the needs of the poor certainly involves money somewhere along the line. But it is not the cure-all by any means. Billions have been spent by governments and nonprofit organizations alike to relieve poverty. At the time my family and I just returned to America, President Lyndon Johnson was aggressively pushing a national "War on Poverty." It did some good, but it certainly didn't solve the problem forever. Today, forty years later, one of every six American children still lives below the poverty line.
Worldwide, it is more like one out of overy two. Think about that for a minute. This gobe, with all its resources and efforts at getting organized to meet the need, still fails to provide adequately for almost half of its precious little ones. On the test of caring for the next generations, we're scoring a lowly 54 percent, which wil get you an F at any school."
"Unless there is an intervention of love and hope, these seeds of apathy lead inevitably downward to an eve nlower death sentence called fatalism. The very word stinks of death. It is the bottom- as low as a human being can sink. When the human spirit becomes truly fatalistic, it is almost impossible to retrieve. This is complete and utter poverty, the end of the road."
"I learned in my childhood in Africa that a child may be born in poverty, but poverty is never born in a child. The worst aspects of poverty are not the deplorable outward conditions but rather the erosion and eventual destruction of hope and therefore dreams. When a child gives up hope, dreams are forever shattered. With lost dreams goes the potential and ultimate impact that a child might have had."
"The word community is more than just a gray sociological descriptor. It is a God term, designed by the Creator of children to water their souls and enhance their spirits as they grow. To ignore this is to sow seeds of dysfunction and future trauma. To welcome the young into the center of our lives is to enrich not only them but ourselves as well."
"Americans spend more for garbage bags each year than 90 of the world's 210 countries spend for everything!"
"God's kingdom deserves excellence. It just doesn't need the conquest of anyone except Satan...competition should be our servant, a mere tool to drive us toward excellence."
"An even greater challenge is to receive graciously, especially from the hands of the poor. The Scriptures teach that it is more blessed to give than to receive. In my experience, it is also easier to give than to receive. We in the developed world are generally very awkward about it. If there is one great pearl I have witnessed in my years of ministry among the poor, it is their ability to be truly and joyfully grateful."
"Any response to the needs of the poor certainly involves money somewhere along the line. But it is not the cure-all by any means. Billions have been spent by governments and nonprofit organizations alike to relieve poverty. At the time my family and I just returned to America, President Lyndon Johnson was aggressively pushing a national "War on Poverty." It did some good, but it certainly didn't solve the problem forever. Today, forty years later, one of every six American children still lives below the poverty line.
Worldwide, it is more like one out of overy two. Think about that for a minute. This gobe, with all its resources and efforts at getting organized to meet the need, still fails to provide adequately for almost half of its precious little ones. On the test of caring for the next generations, we're scoring a lowly 54 percent, which wil get you an F at any school."
"Unless there is an intervention of love and hope, these seeds of apathy lead inevitably downward to an eve nlower death sentence called fatalism. The very word stinks of death. It is the bottom- as low as a human being can sink. When the human spirit becomes truly fatalistic, it is almost impossible to retrieve. This is complete and utter poverty, the end of the road."
Contemplation in a World of Action. Part 3 [final]
Contemplation in a World of Action: Thomas Merton
"Where am I going to look for the world first if not in myself?"
"If I had no choice about the age in which I was to live, I nevertheless have a choice about the attitude I take and about the way and the extent of my participation in its living ongoing events. To choose the world is not then merely a pious admission that the world is acceptable because it comes from the hand of God. It is first of alll an acceptance of a task and a vocation in the world, in history and in time: in my time, which is the present. To choose the world is to choose to do the work I am capable of doing, in collaboration with my brother, to make the world better, more free, more just, more liable, more human."
"The great problem of our time is not to formulate clear answers to neat theoretical questions but to tackle the self destructive alienation of man in a society dedicated in theory to human values and in practice to the pursuit of power for its own sake."
"He who attempts to act and do things for others or for the world without deepening his own self-understanding, freedom, integrity, and capacity to love will not have anything to give others. He will communicate to them nothing but the contagion of his own obsessions, his aggressiveness, his ego-centered ambitions, his delusions about ends and means, his doctrinaire prejudices and ideas. There is nothing more tragic in the modern world than the misuse of power and action to which men are driven by their own Faustian misunderstandings and misapprehensions. We have more power at our disposal today than we have ever had, and yet we are more alienated nad estranged from the inner ground of meaning and of love than we have ever been."
"If our prayer is a deep and grace-inspired desire for newness of life- and not the mere blind attachment to what has always been familiar nad "safe"-God will act in us and through us to renew the Chuch by preparing, i nprayer, what we cannot yet imagine or understand. In this way our prayer and faith today will be oriented toward the future which we ourselves may never see fully realize on earth."
"Prayer is freedom and affirmation growing out of thingness into love. Prayer is the flowering of our inmost freedom, in response to the Word of God. Prayer is not only dialogue with God: it is the communion of our freedom with his ultimate freedom, his infinite spirit. It is the elevation of our limited freedom into hte infinite freedom of the divine spirit, and of the divine love."
"You who are read this are yourselves studying possibilities of renewal. Let me encourage you as a brother to forget about other people who are supposed to help you do it. Do it yourself with the help of the Holy Spirit. Find out what you are really looking for in the spiritual life. What are you seeking? Are you seeking security or are you seeking God? Are you seeking pleasant experiences or are you seeking truth?"
"But we always have to remember that all problems are illusory without some basis of natural maturity and a natural human growth. It is very important to stress these natural values. We must constantly emphasize the importance of growing up. Needless to say, we must not go to the other extreme and make everything an intense psychological problem. There are real religious problems which are not just psychological proglems; but they may be more rare than we realize. Many religious are just not mature enough to have an authentic religious crisis!"
"We get so involved in all these intellectual and abstract discussions that we forget the basic- this call of God's love to us, urging us to love him in return and to open our hearts to him and to give him our hearts so that he may fill them with love and faith. So let us then do this. Let us pray for faith, let us pray for an increase of faith and give ourselves, totally, completely, and with perfect confidence, to the God who loves us and calls us to his love."
"Where am I going to look for the world first if not in myself?"
"If I had no choice about the age in which I was to live, I nevertheless have a choice about the attitude I take and about the way and the extent of my participation in its living ongoing events. To choose the world is not then merely a pious admission that the world is acceptable because it comes from the hand of God. It is first of alll an acceptance of a task and a vocation in the world, in history and in time: in my time, which is the present. To choose the world is to choose to do the work I am capable of doing, in collaboration with my brother, to make the world better, more free, more just, more liable, more human."
"The great problem of our time is not to formulate clear answers to neat theoretical questions but to tackle the self destructive alienation of man in a society dedicated in theory to human values and in practice to the pursuit of power for its own sake."
"He who attempts to act and do things for others or for the world without deepening his own self-understanding, freedom, integrity, and capacity to love will not have anything to give others. He will communicate to them nothing but the contagion of his own obsessions, his aggressiveness, his ego-centered ambitions, his delusions about ends and means, his doctrinaire prejudices and ideas. There is nothing more tragic in the modern world than the misuse of power and action to which men are driven by their own Faustian misunderstandings and misapprehensions. We have more power at our disposal today than we have ever had, and yet we are more alienated nad estranged from the inner ground of meaning and of love than we have ever been."
"If our prayer is a deep and grace-inspired desire for newness of life- and not the mere blind attachment to what has always been familiar nad "safe"-God will act in us and through us to renew the Chuch by preparing, i nprayer, what we cannot yet imagine or understand. In this way our prayer and faith today will be oriented toward the future which we ourselves may never see fully realize on earth."
"Prayer is freedom and affirmation growing out of thingness into love. Prayer is the flowering of our inmost freedom, in response to the Word of God. Prayer is not only dialogue with God: it is the communion of our freedom with his ultimate freedom, his infinite spirit. It is the elevation of our limited freedom into hte infinite freedom of the divine spirit, and of the divine love."
"You who are read this are yourselves studying possibilities of renewal. Let me encourage you as a brother to forget about other people who are supposed to help you do it. Do it yourself with the help of the Holy Spirit. Find out what you are really looking for in the spiritual life. What are you seeking? Are you seeking security or are you seeking God? Are you seeking pleasant experiences or are you seeking truth?"
"But we always have to remember that all problems are illusory without some basis of natural maturity and a natural human growth. It is very important to stress these natural values. We must constantly emphasize the importance of growing up. Needless to say, we must not go to the other extreme and make everything an intense psychological problem. There are real religious problems which are not just psychological proglems; but they may be more rare than we realize. Many religious are just not mature enough to have an authentic religious crisis!"
"We get so involved in all these intellectual and abstract discussions that we forget the basic- this call of God's love to us, urging us to love him in return and to open our hearts to him and to give him our hearts so that he may fill them with love and faith. So let us then do this. Let us pray for faith, let us pray for an increase of faith and give ourselves, totally, completely, and with perfect confidence, to the God who loves us and calls us to his love."
Monday, January 7, 2008
Contemplation in a World of Action, Part 2
Contemplation in a World of Action: Thomas Merton
"Man has a responsibility to his own time, not as if he could seem to stand outside it and donate various spiritual and material benefits to it from a position of compassionate distance, but man has a responsibility to find himself where he is, namely in his own proper time and in his place, in the history to which he belongs and to which he must inevitably contribute either his resopnses or his evasions, either truth adn act or slogan and gesture."
"It would prehaps be more truly monastic to say that the monk who is effectively liberated from the servitudes and confusions of "the world" in its negative and sterile sense ought to be enabled by that very fact to be more truly present to his world and to his tie by love, by compassion, by understanding, by tolerance, by a deep and Christlike hope."
"We would not seek God unless he were not already " in us," and to go "beyond ourselves" is just to find the inner ground of our being where he is present to us as our creative source, as the fount of redemptive light and grace."
"The real function of discipine is not to provide us with maps but to sharpen our own sense of direction so that when we really get going we can travel without maps."
"Obedience then becomes an expression of hte new life and the new creation which restores the simplicity and peace of paradise to a communal life in whcih each is the servant of all, and each finds fulfillment in a meaningful service of love that is inspired and vivified by the presence of Christ in his Spirit. Obedience is in truth a dialogue between two responsibilities- that of thesubject and that of the superior- and i ncarrying out his superior's command the subject cannot allow himself to abdicate moral responsibility and act as a mere utensil. It is also a dialogue between two forms of service."
"Humility, poverty, and love. It is by this spirit of apostolic renunciation that the monk, in spite of his essential solitude, can be open to the needs and to the anguish of hte world and hence exercise his apostolate which is above all the apostolate of understanding and of compassion."
"Is the contemplative life to be considered a state of interior recollection and an affective absorption in God considered as Infinite Love, or is it a resopnse to the concrete Word of God manifesting to us his will and his love not only for ourselves as individuals but for the whole family of man redeemed by the Cross of Christ...Is the cloistered life merely to escape from the troubles and conflicts of the world to a condition of security and peace in which we "rest" and "taste" the consolations of intimacy with God? Or does it mean sharing the anguish and hope of a world in crisis in which millions struggle for the barest essentials of human existence?"
"Openness works two ways. On both sides there is giving and receiving. The result is, or should be, a real increase of charity, a greater love of the conteplative for the world created and redeemed by God, a greater love of the noncloistered person for God, found and experienced more deeply in temporary contact with the cloister."
"What people seek today is not so much the organized, predigested routine of conferences and exercises, but an opportunity to be quiet, to reflect, and to discuss in informal, spontaneous and friendly encounters the things they have on their minds."
"Man has a responsibility to his own time, not as if he could seem to stand outside it and donate various spiritual and material benefits to it from a position of compassionate distance, but man has a responsibility to find himself where he is, namely in his own proper time and in his place, in the history to which he belongs and to which he must inevitably contribute either his resopnses or his evasions, either truth adn act or slogan and gesture."
"It would prehaps be more truly monastic to say that the monk who is effectively liberated from the servitudes and confusions of "the world" in its negative and sterile sense ought to be enabled by that very fact to be more truly present to his world and to his tie by love, by compassion, by understanding, by tolerance, by a deep and Christlike hope."
"We would not seek God unless he were not already " in us," and to go "beyond ourselves" is just to find the inner ground of our being where he is present to us as our creative source, as the fount of redemptive light and grace."
"The real function of discipine is not to provide us with maps but to sharpen our own sense of direction so that when we really get going we can travel without maps."
"Obedience then becomes an expression of hte new life and the new creation which restores the simplicity and peace of paradise to a communal life in whcih each is the servant of all, and each finds fulfillment in a meaningful service of love that is inspired and vivified by the presence of Christ in his Spirit. Obedience is in truth a dialogue between two responsibilities- that of thesubject and that of the superior- and i ncarrying out his superior's command the subject cannot allow himself to abdicate moral responsibility and act as a mere utensil. It is also a dialogue between two forms of service."
"Humility, poverty, and love. It is by this spirit of apostolic renunciation that the monk, in spite of his essential solitude, can be open to the needs and to the anguish of hte world and hence exercise his apostolate which is above all the apostolate of understanding and of compassion."
"Is the contemplative life to be considered a state of interior recollection and an affective absorption in God considered as Infinite Love, or is it a resopnse to the concrete Word of God manifesting to us his will and his love not only for ourselves as individuals but for the whole family of man redeemed by the Cross of Christ...Is the cloistered life merely to escape from the troubles and conflicts of the world to a condition of security and peace in which we "rest" and "taste" the consolations of intimacy with God? Or does it mean sharing the anguish and hope of a world in crisis in which millions struggle for the barest essentials of human existence?"
"Openness works two ways. On both sides there is giving and receiving. The result is, or should be, a real increase of charity, a greater love of the conteplative for the world created and redeemed by God, a greater love of the noncloistered person for God, found and experienced more deeply in temporary contact with the cloister."
"What people seek today is not so much the organized, predigested routine of conferences and exercises, but an opportunity to be quiet, to reflect, and to discuss in informal, spontaneous and friendly encounters the things they have on their minds."
Contemplation in a World of Action, Part 1
Contemplation In a World of Action: Thomas Merton
“Togetherness is not community. To love our brother we must first respect him in his own authentic reality, and we cannot do this if we have not attained to a basic self-respect and mature identity ourselves. Are our efforts to be more “communal” and to be more of a “family” really genuine or are they only new ways to be intolerant of the solitude and integrity of the individual person? Are we simply trying to submerge and absorb him and keep him from finding an identity that might express itself in dissent and in a desire for greater solitude? Are we simply trying to guard against his entering a “desert” of questioning and paradox that will disturb our own complacencies?”
“Do not be impatient and do not be afraid. Do not imagine that everything depends on some instant magic transformation of constitutions and of laws. You already have what you need right in your hands! You have the grace of your vocation and of your love. No earthly situation has ever been ideal. God does not need an ideal situation in order to carry out his work in our hearts If we do what we can with the means and grace at our disposal, if we sincerely take advantage of our genuine opportunities, the Spirit will be there and his love will not fail us. Our liberation, our solitude, our vision, our understanding and our salvation do not depend on anything remote from us or beyond our reach. Grace has been given us along with our god desires. What is needed is the faith to accept it and the energy to put our faith to work in situations that may not seem to us to be promising. The Holy Spirit will do the rest.”
“But the goal of human freedom, peace, and unity is not unchristian in itself. On the contrary it stems from the New Testament idea of freedom before God, the freedom of the sons of God, the dignity of man redeemed in Christ and man’s vocation to work out historically, in harmony and love, the redemption of the whole world in Christ. Hence these characteristic modern aspirations should represent no special difficulty to us. We should be able to “save” and “redeem” those aspirations which are authentically germane to Christianity even though buried in a matrix of atheism.”
“Critics have also noted the American fear of loneliness. Individual identity is sacrificed in an effort to stay close to the herd, to be no different from others in thought, feeling, or action. To stand aside, to be alone, is to assert a personal identity which refuses to be submerged. Society will not tolerate this. Innumerable social features are designed to prevent it. Yet one of the surest signs of the resolution of the identity crisis is an increased capacity for being alone, for being responsible for oneself. The gradual process that will end in perfect identity involves an awareness of the fact that there are decisions in life and aspects of life’s struggle that a person must face alone. Here is the paradox: the more richly a person lives, the more lonely, in a sense, he becomes. And as a person, in this formative isolation, becomes more able to appreciate the moods and feelings of others, he also becomes more able to have meaningful relationships with them. But the unwritten code of our national culture prohibits aloneness, and this is the second causative factor for a prolonged identity crisis: the obstacles our society imposes to prevent personal reflection.”
“Perhaps our problem consists in wanting to have problems and consequently creating them out of nothing in order to seek solutions! It seems to me that we are now becoming self-consciously and naively “modern.” Hastily and uncritically adjusting any and every formula that seems to fit the new situation, without “changing our minds” in any deeper sense. Basically our trouble remains the same: an obsession with questions and answers, with problems and solutions, with momentous decisions and even with “identity” raised to the level of a kind of absolute.”
“To choose a value that is questioned and doubted is to place oneself in the position of being doubted. The mature person is able to assume this risk.”
“Our first task is to be fully human and to enable the youth of our time to find themselves and develop as men and sons of God. There is no need for a community of religious robots without minds, without hearts, without ideas, and without faces. It is this mindless alienation that characterizes “the world” and life in the world. Monastic spirituality today must be a personalistic and Christian humanism that seeks and saves man’s intimate truth, his personal identity, in order to consecrate it entirely to God.”
“It is true that “times have changed,” but are they not rather the “times” of the “world?” The truth is one and eternal. It does not change."
“Togetherness is not community. To love our brother we must first respect him in his own authentic reality, and we cannot do this if we have not attained to a basic self-respect and mature identity ourselves. Are our efforts to be more “communal” and to be more of a “family” really genuine or are they only new ways to be intolerant of the solitude and integrity of the individual person? Are we simply trying to submerge and absorb him and keep him from finding an identity that might express itself in dissent and in a desire for greater solitude? Are we simply trying to guard against his entering a “desert” of questioning and paradox that will disturb our own complacencies?”
“Do not be impatient and do not be afraid. Do not imagine that everything depends on some instant magic transformation of constitutions and of laws. You already have what you need right in your hands! You have the grace of your vocation and of your love. No earthly situation has ever been ideal. God does not need an ideal situation in order to carry out his work in our hearts If we do what we can with the means and grace at our disposal, if we sincerely take advantage of our genuine opportunities, the Spirit will be there and his love will not fail us. Our liberation, our solitude, our vision, our understanding and our salvation do not depend on anything remote from us or beyond our reach. Grace has been given us along with our god desires. What is needed is the faith to accept it and the energy to put our faith to work in situations that may not seem to us to be promising. The Holy Spirit will do the rest.”
“But the goal of human freedom, peace, and unity is not unchristian in itself. On the contrary it stems from the New Testament idea of freedom before God, the freedom of the sons of God, the dignity of man redeemed in Christ and man’s vocation to work out historically, in harmony and love, the redemption of the whole world in Christ. Hence these characteristic modern aspirations should represent no special difficulty to us. We should be able to “save” and “redeem” those aspirations which are authentically germane to Christianity even though buried in a matrix of atheism.”
“Critics have also noted the American fear of loneliness. Individual identity is sacrificed in an effort to stay close to the herd, to be no different from others in thought, feeling, or action. To stand aside, to be alone, is to assert a personal identity which refuses to be submerged. Society will not tolerate this. Innumerable social features are designed to prevent it. Yet one of the surest signs of the resolution of the identity crisis is an increased capacity for being alone, for being responsible for oneself. The gradual process that will end in perfect identity involves an awareness of the fact that there are decisions in life and aspects of life’s struggle that a person must face alone. Here is the paradox: the more richly a person lives, the more lonely, in a sense, he becomes. And as a person, in this formative isolation, becomes more able to appreciate the moods and feelings of others, he also becomes more able to have meaningful relationships with them. But the unwritten code of our national culture prohibits aloneness, and this is the second causative factor for a prolonged identity crisis: the obstacles our society imposes to prevent personal reflection.”
“Perhaps our problem consists in wanting to have problems and consequently creating them out of nothing in order to seek solutions! It seems to me that we are now becoming self-consciously and naively “modern.” Hastily and uncritically adjusting any and every formula that seems to fit the new situation, without “changing our minds” in any deeper sense. Basically our trouble remains the same: an obsession with questions and answers, with problems and solutions, with momentous decisions and even with “identity” raised to the level of a kind of absolute.”
“To choose a value that is questioned and doubted is to place oneself in the position of being doubted. The mature person is able to assume this risk.”
“Our first task is to be fully human and to enable the youth of our time to find themselves and develop as men and sons of God. There is no need for a community of religious robots without minds, without hearts, without ideas, and without faces. It is this mindless alienation that characterizes “the world” and life in the world. Monastic spirituality today must be a personalistic and Christian humanism that seeks and saves man’s intimate truth, his personal identity, in order to consecrate it entirely to God.”
“It is true that “times have changed,” but are they not rather the “times” of the “world?” The truth is one and eternal. It does not change."
Augustine's Christmas sermon
Sermons to the People: Augustine of Hippo
My dearly beloved Brothers and Sisters in Christ! Here we are at midnight. Candles all around. You’re my children of light tonight, adopted tots in the kindergarten of the Lord! Have I got good news for you this holy eve! It’s from the Psalmist! Rejoice in the Lord! Raise bold, laudacious sounds as only the just can do! Yes yes, you already know what I’m going to say, but hear it anyway with a kind and open ear.
First off, come to love the things you believe!
Then speak out about the things you love!
Yes, we’re celebrating this anniversary day. Christ is born! God of the Father! A human being from a human mother! From the immortality of the Father- from the virginity of a mother. From the Father comes the Principle of Life- from His mother, the end of death!
Yes, my Brothers and Sisters, it’s the Angelic Voice we hear today! A rousing ovation! A feathery fluttering! The Savior came to save us today! What meaning can all this angelistic activity possibly have for us? The angels are His heavenly messengers; we’re His carrier pigeons. Ambrosia aplenty for them; manna galore for us.
A question arises. Just what was that heavenly fare? The Evangelist John had the answer.
“In the beginning was the Word…and the Word was made Flesh, and dwelled among us.” Whose Word? The Father Himself. What Word? The Son Himself. Never the One without the Other.
For humankind to eat the Bread of Angels, the Creator of Angels baked a loaf, the Loaf of Loaves; that’s to say, He was made man. He nudges the stars, but nurses from the breast.
Truth has sprung from the earth, or so the Psalmist has sung. Christ is born of the flesh- and that’s what we’ll sing today! We prayerfully presume we’re the Songs of God. Why? Because we’ve received the power to be such. For your sake the Timeless Cause of time has become a temporal effect Himself. Because of you, my dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, the Founder of the World has made His appearance in the flesh. Because of you the Creator has become a creature. Now I know you find this hard to believe, so I ask you to believe something else first. God was made man so that He could make men into gods. Without losing a slip of what He was, He wanted to become what He’d made. That’s to say, He made what He already was. How? By adding human nature to Divine Nature without at the same time losing His Divine Nature in that human nature.
When the Wordiness of an Other-worldly God revealed itself as a worldly if worldless tot, and when the Word of God let out, if not the Wisdom of God, then an unholy howl, that’s when we’re talking about the Birthday of the Lord. The Scholars in the East read the Divine Event in the skies. The Shepherds in the hills heard the Angelic Voices. We get the word today, the anniversary of the event, in the solemnity of our celebration. In it we refer to the Psalmist’s prophecy: Truth has sprung from the earth, and Justice has looked down from Heaven. The Truth that holds the world together with rugged hands has sprung from the earth so that He may be held by His mother’s lacy fingers. The Truth that overflows the Heavens’ banks has sprung from the earth so that it may lie within the friendly confines of a manger.
Where did “peace on earth” come from? From the Truth that sprang from the earth; that’s to say, from Christ who was born of the flesh.
The Lord has made all things, and yet He takes His stand among the very things He’s made. He’s the Revealer of His father, and at the same time He’s the Creator of His mother. He’s the Word of God before there were timepieces; He’s the Word made flesh who stoped the clock when He was made flesh. He made the sun with His own hands, and yet He Himself was made under the light and heat of the sun. He remains with His Father, and yet He goes forth from His mother. He’s the Creator of the heavens and the earth; and yet He takes His own rise under the heavens and the earth. As God He has more Wisdom than He can mouth, and yet as a babe He hasn’t enough mouth to utter the Wisdom He knows. His divinity isn’t underwhelmed by His humanity, nor is His humanity overwhelmed by His divinity. He didn’t abandon His divine agenda when He picked up His carpenter’s tools. He didn’t stop holding His universe together with His might arms while He was trying to catch flies with His baby fingers. He put on the clumsiness of the flesh when He entered the Virgin’s womb, and yet His movement throughout the universe wasn’t hampered by the baggy pants. He didn’t take away the food of Wisdom from the Angels while He was supplying us with the sweetness of the Lord.
Let’s stroll in the light of His aura!
Let’s rejoice in His presence!
Let’s be truly glad He’s here with us today, of all days!
My dearly beloved Brothers and Sisters in Christ! Here we are at midnight. Candles all around. You’re my children of light tonight, adopted tots in the kindergarten of the Lord! Have I got good news for you this holy eve! It’s from the Psalmist! Rejoice in the Lord! Raise bold, laudacious sounds as only the just can do! Yes yes, you already know what I’m going to say, but hear it anyway with a kind and open ear.
First off, come to love the things you believe!
Then speak out about the things you love!
Yes, we’re celebrating this anniversary day. Christ is born! God of the Father! A human being from a human mother! From the immortality of the Father- from the virginity of a mother. From the Father comes the Principle of Life- from His mother, the end of death!
Yes, my Brothers and Sisters, it’s the Angelic Voice we hear today! A rousing ovation! A feathery fluttering! The Savior came to save us today! What meaning can all this angelistic activity possibly have for us? The angels are His heavenly messengers; we’re His carrier pigeons. Ambrosia aplenty for them; manna galore for us.
A question arises. Just what was that heavenly fare? The Evangelist John had the answer.
“In the beginning was the Word…and the Word was made Flesh, and dwelled among us.” Whose Word? The Father Himself. What Word? The Son Himself. Never the One without the Other.
For humankind to eat the Bread of Angels, the Creator of Angels baked a loaf, the Loaf of Loaves; that’s to say, He was made man. He nudges the stars, but nurses from the breast.
Truth has sprung from the earth, or so the Psalmist has sung. Christ is born of the flesh- and that’s what we’ll sing today! We prayerfully presume we’re the Songs of God. Why? Because we’ve received the power to be such. For your sake the Timeless Cause of time has become a temporal effect Himself. Because of you, my dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, the Founder of the World has made His appearance in the flesh. Because of you the Creator has become a creature. Now I know you find this hard to believe, so I ask you to believe something else first. God was made man so that He could make men into gods. Without losing a slip of what He was, He wanted to become what He’d made. That’s to say, He made what He already was. How? By adding human nature to Divine Nature without at the same time losing His Divine Nature in that human nature.
When the Wordiness of an Other-worldly God revealed itself as a worldly if worldless tot, and when the Word of God let out, if not the Wisdom of God, then an unholy howl, that’s when we’re talking about the Birthday of the Lord. The Scholars in the East read the Divine Event in the skies. The Shepherds in the hills heard the Angelic Voices. We get the word today, the anniversary of the event, in the solemnity of our celebration. In it we refer to the Psalmist’s prophecy: Truth has sprung from the earth, and Justice has looked down from Heaven. The Truth that holds the world together with rugged hands has sprung from the earth so that He may be held by His mother’s lacy fingers. The Truth that overflows the Heavens’ banks has sprung from the earth so that it may lie within the friendly confines of a manger.
Where did “peace on earth” come from? From the Truth that sprang from the earth; that’s to say, from Christ who was born of the flesh.
The Lord has made all things, and yet He takes His stand among the very things He’s made. He’s the Revealer of His father, and at the same time He’s the Creator of His mother. He’s the Word of God before there were timepieces; He’s the Word made flesh who stoped the clock when He was made flesh. He made the sun with His own hands, and yet He Himself was made under the light and heat of the sun. He remains with His Father, and yet He goes forth from His mother. He’s the Creator of the heavens and the earth; and yet He takes His own rise under the heavens and the earth. As God He has more Wisdom than He can mouth, and yet as a babe He hasn’t enough mouth to utter the Wisdom He knows. His divinity isn’t underwhelmed by His humanity, nor is His humanity overwhelmed by His divinity. He didn’t abandon His divine agenda when He picked up His carpenter’s tools. He didn’t stop holding His universe together with His might arms while He was trying to catch flies with His baby fingers. He put on the clumsiness of the flesh when He entered the Virgin’s womb, and yet His movement throughout the universe wasn’t hampered by the baggy pants. He didn’t take away the food of Wisdom from the Angels while He was supplying us with the sweetness of the Lord.
Let’s stroll in the light of His aura!
Let’s rejoice in His presence!
Let’s be truly glad He’s here with us today, of all days!
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