Hello & Goodbye

I return to this blog to complete a piece of unfinished business and to wrap up this particular chapter of my journey. First, I have re-posted below the introduction to the unfinished Faith Development section. I did intend to publish a series of posts on this material after its initial deletion, but that did not happen for the same reason I never completed the section in the first place: it just made no sense outside the classroom, and as much as I might like to take you there that is no longer my place. However, it also felt wrong to take something away and then replace it with nothing. So I restore what was deleted, trusting that it will make sense to someone else.

And with that, my work here is done. This project was necessary for a time, for my own sake if nothing else, but it is not a forever sort of thing. And that's ok, perhaps even good. I will continue to share my pilgrimage on Twitter and I invite you to follow me there. Either way, thank you for joining me on this stretch of the path.

"So now, we find ourselves at a new crossroads, you to go one way, and I another. Maybe our paths will cross again; maybe they won’t be too far apart; maybe not. And yet you will still travel with me and I with you, because in our hearts, in our spirits, we have become one. Such was the gift of this journey; such is the gift of love. So travel well my friend. Know that I am with you always. I love you."

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The ideas and lessons offered here are based upon the curriculum that I created during my ten years teaching religion in a Catholic high school. The purpose of that course was always about exploring the questions, not passing along the answers. That is a journey I still want to walk, with whoever wants to join me.

What "Faith Development" is not:

• Creating a ten point action plan to accomplish the seven steps to spiritual success.
• Having to get a graduate degree to understand what Jesus meant when he said "love one another as I have loved you."
• Tapping into the secret knowledge of the universe by unlocking some vague, obscure prophecy.
• Esoteric pseudo-mysticism and/or psycho-babble.
• Trying to figure out the loopholes in "love one another as I have loved you."
• Empowering the cosmic consciousness in order to get in touch with your inner Christ.
• Following the latest celebrity endorsed, flavor-of-the-month guru currently riding the talk show circuit promoting his/her best selling whatever.
• Refusing to ask questions because Father/Bishop/Pope knows best.
• Sending $1,000 to the televangelist who really needs it "now, right now, don't wait, you know the Holy Spirit wants you to do it."
• Other assorted spiritual crap designed by hipsters and/or the "I'm more pious than you" crowd to sell books, seminars, videos, crystals, statues, string, beads, medallions, water, etc.

What "Faith Development" is:

• Understanding and embracing something very real: love.
• Asking tough questions and struggling to come up with honest answers.
• Genuinely listening to the voice of God within yourself.
• Being real with God, oneself, and others.
• Being open to truth, wherever and however it presents itself, but most especially as paradox.

When it comes to spirituality, we seem to delight in making things more complicated than they need to be. It's similar to all those expensive gadgets we buy to make our lives easier, but that actually do just the opposite. Simple does not mean superficial. Complexity does not equal depth.

My version of faith development starts with two very basic questions:

• What do I believe?
• How will I live?

Captive Art

Summer is here! And along with it, the season of family vacations to theme parks near and far. For those of you planning a trip to one of the SeaWorld parks, I hope you will take the time to watch, or re-watch, "Blackfish" before your departure.

The documentary challenges the propriety of keeping killer whales (orcas) in captivity by examining the life of one particular orca, Tilikum, and the multiple human fatalities associated with him. It was made without the cooperation of SeaWorld, so in fairness you should also read their response. However, please do not get bogged down in the technicalities of marine science or filmmaking. For there are larger questions at stake here, as theologian Beth Haile has written about:

The film encourages us to reexamine our commitment to non-human animals and ask whether what we are committed to is the well-being of the animal itself, or the human that loves the animal … We need to stretch ourselves beyond a narrow anthropocentrism that sees all of creation existing for the purpose of humans … Orcas do not need humans to glorify God and live out the purpose of their existence. In fact, human concerns may be precisely what is standing in the way of true flourishing for orcas.

"The greatest lie, the greatest scam of our lives is that this world was created for us, for our pleasure and enjoyment, for our dominance. What stupid, arrogant animals we are. We were created for it. We are simply the audience. What would true art be without an audience? Only in this work, the artist painted us inside the canvas. We are art and audience all at the same time. We are part of the grandest work ever created, ever dreamed."

Am I trying to guilt you into boycotting SeaWorld? No. I have been there in the past, and may well go back in the future. But if we do visit, let us do so with open eyes and humble hearts. Yes, we are here to admire the artwork, but none of it belongs to us. And if things had gone slightly different over the millennia, perhaps Tilikum and his kin would be the audience and we would be the pieces on display. Just how entertaining or informative would life in a cage, or a bathtub, be then?

Easter Greetings

I hope that life has treated you well during these many weeks of Lent. As for myself, it has been an interesting journey. I needed that time of silence. And now I need to start speaking again. But not because I have something to say. No, I emerge from this time of silence with a renewed sense that I am merely a messenger, a prophet if you will, who has been charged with telling someone else's story.

Do I have a plan for this new and improved version of my mission? Sure. But like the other plans from the past twelve months, it will change, and probably soon. So rather than make some big announcement for which I will feel foolish in a few weeks, I'm just going to get back to work, trusting that you are there to listen to the story.

Lenten Silence

Over the last year, I have written a few times about being drawn to sacred silence. And now finally, I have decided to really listen to those divine murmurings. I am going to take a break from blogging this Lent. I need to spend it in prayer and reflection, not the chaotic agony of composing the right sentences and paragraphs.

My plan is to resume posting on Easter Sunday; subject, of course, to someone else's plans. In the meantime, here is a little of what I will be reflecting upon:

"I am present with you always. I take many forms, but it is always me. Sometimes I come to teach, but mostly I come to simply enjoy the wonder of our creation. There is so much to revel in, but it mostly goes unappreciated. Every element is a stroke of our brush upon the canvas of life. It all has meaning and purpose. So why are you too busy to notice? Why are you so anguished? Life unfolds as it should. Stop and enjoy the process ... that is why you are here, that is why you were created.

Why do you babble so much about me? So much time and energy, for what purpose? What more is there to understand about us than love? You think too much and feel too little. You talk too much and love too little. It is the curse of your consciousness. You can see enough to open the door, but not enough to find your way through it. Close your eyes and the path will be illuminated soon enough."

May we all have a most blessed and illuminating Lent!

The High We Seek

Prompted by actor Philip Seymour Hoffman's death, the Los Angeles Times published an article earlier this week about the "surge in heroin use" throughout the country. One particular quote, from a recovering addict, stood out to me immediately.

Bottom line, it presents your consciousness with another reality that at times is so amazing that if you have the power to visit it every day without destroying your life, you would.

I have heard such descriptions before. I know that many of our brothers and sisters rationalize drug use because the high seems so "spiritual" to them. But this is a false spirituality; one that always leads to destruction and chaos of some sort, and one that is wholly unnecessary. For the "high" we seek is ours for the taking at any moment, no intoxicants required. And it never destroys a thing, quite the opposite.

"You know it is true. You've felt it in your heart, in your soul. It's that little piece of you that gets caught up in the drama of life, the drama of nature, the drama of history. That feeling in the back of your throat that you are part of something that you can't quite grasp and yet you know is there. That just makes you want to cry because it's so big and bold and beautiful. That makes you want to scream out in joy and ecstasy, thanksgiving and praise for being a part of it."

"It feels like you're standing still and the whole world is rushing by at mach one. Your adrenaline is pumping so hard you have to scream out for joy and laugh hysterically like an insane person. It's a feeling of such intensity, that it seems like you have an orchestra in your head, building up to a grand crescendo, then crashing down like a tsunami, washing away every impurity in your soul and leaving you awestruck as if seeing for the first time."

"In that moment, in that very moment, whether it lasts a second or a lifetime, you know that you have touched the face of the divine."

"One gaze into the face of god changes your whole outlook on life; opens doors to places in this universe unimaginable before."

"A word like love can never fully contain your essence, but it will have to do, for you are warm and sublimely wonderful love. You radiate in birth and death, in moans of pleasure and cries of agony, in our happiness and our pain, in the hidden moments of beings we are too proud and stubborn to truly see. You radiate from every particle of creation; for every one of them is an act of love. I feel this every moment and it overwhelms me. It pushes me to the brink of sanity and I am not sure I want to step back. I cannot escape you, and I do not want to."

Is there anything more amazing than coming face to face with your Parent? Could any reality be more true or more wonderful than the view through their eyes? May you too be so blessed as to find yourself trapped in their embrace.

The Senseless Destruction of War

A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

Martin Luther King Jr., "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence"

This was probably not among the most frequently used MLK quotes on Monday, but it should have been. As I have asserted several times, war is the most asinine of human behaviors. And yet we seem incapable of abandoning it, so sure are we that violence can solve our problems. Now to be fair, it does excel at giving that impression, at least momentarily, but those victories never last long. So insanely, we try, try again.

To make matters worse, too many of us refuse to question the purposes for which so many of our brothers and sisters have died. Most recently, a television journalist had the gall to voice his unease with the seeming senselessness of American casualties in Afghanistan while on-air. The outrage was swift and silly; a shining example of our "support the troops" mentality in action, with its mindless cliches and chest-thumping antics more appropriate to devoted sports fans cheering on their favorite team. Sadly, this incident was also an example of denial at its worst and deadliest.

Every war death is senseless, because each is a product of our failure to find better ways of settling differences. Living in denial about this truth might bring us temporary comfort, but it also ensures more destruction and more death.

And not only through the occurrence of future wars. Our insistence that violence can solve big problems inevitably leads us into believing that it can solve personal ones as well. Which is how a silly personal dispute in a movie theater turns deadly. And why too many children choose to express their rage with a gun. And, it must be said on this anniversary of Roe v. Wade, one of the hidden reasons behind so many of us being convinced that abortion is a reasonable solution. We are surrounded by symptoms of the spiritual death of which King warned us. Why do we not heed them?

"It is past time that we recognize this family of the One, this fellowship of the One. They are tired of us ignoring, neglecting, and tarnishing it. This family is our Creator's greatest gift to us and we spit upon it constantly. Enough!"

"Our brother calls us to love, love God, love your neighbor, love. How hard is that? What are you afraid of? If he was willing to die to love you, what’s your excuse for not loving those you fail to understand, those you despise, those you hate?"

How many of our siblings must die before we finally say "Enough!"?

Listening to Death

Over the last few weeks, I have been moved by the sad, strange tale of Jahi McMath. Last weekend, the county coroner issued a death certificate for her, then released her body into her family's care while they wait for a miracle. Are they delusional, or simply following our communal hatred of death to its logical endgame?

Death is our enemy, the ultimate enemy, and it must be fought at all costs. Or so we tell ourselves. And yet it always manages to win. Despite our grand medical ingenuity, death finds a way. We will no doubt cure cancer someday, and before the celebrations have even begun, we will find ourselves battling some new dreaded disease. Death always finds a way. So perhaps it is time to stop fighting and start listening.

"But what of that which you fear most: death? Yes, the end will come, not just for you, but for this world as a whole. Do not be afraid, for this is a great joy. It is not an end, just part of the process of life. That is not just good, it is wonderful."

Death is neither punishment nor reward, but merely a doorway to something else. We can attempt to block that passage, but then we really would be delusional.

So rest in peace, dear Jahi. May your travels be truly wonderful.

Let Us Begin, Again

Let us begin, brothers, to serve the Lord God – for up until now, we have done little or nothing.

Francis of Assisi spoke these words not at the beginning of his ministry, but near its end. They are not a statement of faux humility or harsh self-criticism. Rather, they tell us that doing God's will is a constant process of renewal.

This blog was created to be a means of promoting a new divine revelation. After I left teaching, however, it somehow morphed into a way for me to continue my classroom ministry. Perhaps such a development was natural, but it was also misguided. I have not been given a divine curriculum to share with you, nor have I been called to create one. My years as a teacher were wonderful; I was able to do good things. But it is time to let go of that experience, as God has other things for me to do.

"I will sing your praises. I will be your voice. I will be your prophet. I will be whoever you wish me to be. Not my will, but yours be done. I am yours."

On a practical level, this means a few modifications are necessary:

• The Faith Development pages have been deleted. They were my most direct attempts at creating an online version of my old course. I failed to complete them, because that kind of systematic approach to faith made no sense outside the confines of my old classroom. I plan to repost some of the content as a series of reflections, not lessons, during Lent.

• The Monthly Reading Links posts have been discontinued. They began to feel like a set of reading assignments. And too many of the selections were merely interesting or educational, rather than truly illuminating. While I will continue to share articles within posts and via Twitter, I plan to be a bit more discriminating with my recommendations from now on.

• And I have resumed publishing posts on a weekly basis. The plan is to do so on Wednesdays, but as this post demonstrates, that plan is subject to the whims of divine inspiration and human bewilderment.

In my first post nearly two years ago, I wrote that I was not exactly sure where this blog would go, but that it was an adventure I needed to undertake. That is still very much the case today. It is a truth both maddening and glorious. So let us begin this adventure once again, for up until now, we have barely gone anywhere.

Christmas Silence

Once again, I tried to come up with something profound. And once again, God told me to shut up. Or maybe that's just the message they want me to deliver.

Let go of the tumult of this day. At least for a few moments, indulge in sacred silence. Quiet your mind, that you might hear your God whispering sweet nothings into your heart. We are, after all, celebrating them coming to us. So let them!

May you have a most joyful and fruitful Christmas!

The Choice to Love

Earlier this week, I watched an ESPN documentary about how Nelson Mandela used the sport of rugby as a tool to promote reconciliation and unity in post-apartheid South Africa. What struck me most was not Mandela's actions, but that so many of his fellow countrymen chose to follow his lead. They did not have to after all. It would have been understandable, perhaps even justifiable, for them to remain stuck in their anger and fear. But instead, whether reluctantly or eagerly, they chose to love.

We have spent the last few weeks celebrating Nelson Mandela, as we should have. But let us also take the time to celebrate those ordinary South Africans who chose to love their neighbor rather than fight them. Even better, let us emulate them.

"Yes, this path will be terrifying. It is uncertain and full of risk. But we owe it to our family to embark upon the journey. It is who we are and why we were created: to love our family, all of it."

Monthly Reading Links

"We met Rafael's battered body in Capulín, El Salvador, where the dusty road out of the parish of Chirilagua reached its highest and widest point … Not too many days before, a young and vibrant Rafael had passed by this very spot, eager for a new life of promise in El Norte. But on this day, weighed down by hearts heavy with grief, we gathered together as a parish family to meet the 'hearse,' a beat-up old pickup truck that would bring home our young friend's lifeless remains."

Rafael's Story

Lisa Marie Belz, America

"I sat and stared at the words. I knew that if I could find time in my busy life to read this prayer every day, it would make a difference … As I folded towels, I re-read the words that had touched me so deeply. And in doing so, I found my answer! I quickly found some tacks and hung the prayer over my washing machine. And thus began a ritual, which I would follow for years, of praying this prayer every time I did the laundry."

Next to Godliness

Susan Erschen, America

"I feel a strong sense of almost palindromic symmetry of what I experienced. A six-hour flight brought me to the [International Space] Station in May. Six hours ago I was still on board. Now I am back. Nothing has changed – nothing will ever be the same."

Symmetry

Luca Parmitano, European Space Agency

"I never wanted a big wedding. I never wanted to wear a white dress or throw a bouquet. And when we took that out of it, when we realized we wanted a marriage more than we wanted a wedding, what was stopping us? Why couldn't we do it that Friday night?"

So, why did she elope?

Taylor Jenkins Reid, Los Angeles Times

"When newspapers report on human suffering, they suggest we should care. When they demonize the same people, they suggest that maybe we don't have to, and when they focus on the status of material goods rather than that suffering, they suggest property is more important than people."

Typhoon Haiyan and the language of disaster

Rebecca Solnit, Los Angeles Times

Follow me on Twitter, @jwbidwell, for additional reading recommendations.

The Gift of Ordinary Time

At the high school where I used to teach, we held a brief prayer service for the seniors just before the graduation ceremony. As the senior-year religion teacher, I was always given the opportunity to speak. And each year, I began my remarks by sharing a few excerpts from one of the first articles they had been assigned to read:

The ancient Christian church described days of the liturgical year that were not feast days – the Mondays and Wednesdays of our lives … as belonging to "Ordinary Time." The liturgy of Ordinary Time is unchanging; prayers are always the same.

On a secular American calendar, Sept. 10 [2001] belongs irretrievably to ordinary time … It was a day for errands and sluggish freeway traffic and paying bills and running late …

I think of late summer evening descending across America on Sept. 10, I imagine televisions lighting windows and telephone conversations filling the night …

I summon Thornton Wilder, the playwright who was one of the greatest inventors of America because he portrayed ordinary time for the stage. His play "Our Town" is about what happens in an American town on an ordinary day, very much like Sept. 10 …

Emily, a young woman, recently deceased, yearns to revisit the living. She is cautioned by Mrs. Gibbs, a neighbor, long dead, to "… choose an unimportant day. Choose the least important day of your life. It will be important enough." …

There is much to learn about America from the boredom, the freedoms, the mundane achievements and routine pleasures of … Sept. 10 …

This is what Emily learned in the end of "Our Town." …

"I didn't realize. So, all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back – up the hill – to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look. Good-bye; Good-bye, world. Good-bye, Grover's Corners … Mama and Papa. Goodbye to clocks ticking … and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new ironed dresses and hot baths … and sleeping and waking up …"

Richard Rodriguez, "The Day Before", Los Angeles Times

My final, and perhaps most important, lesson to my students, on their final and most exciting day of high school, was to encourage them to recognize and celebrate the grace they received from the most boring and routine moments of the last four years of their lives. I offer this same lesson today, with Thanksgiving on the horizon and the start of another Advent close behind. It is so easy to ignore the gift of Ordinary Time, especially when we find ourselves face to face with the grand and the glorious, but to surrender to that temptation is to miss the point entirely.

"Look out your window … What do you see? Trees, hills, grass, concrete, metal bars, trash, crap, and all the other debris of modern life? No, you see something wonderful, something magical and wondrous … You see our reason for existence, our life's work and mission: to be a song of praise about life itself. Our grand and glorious purpose on earth: simply to be here, right here, right now."

We were created to be living witnesses to the truth that nothing is mundane. So let us proclaim that each and every day is the most wonderful time of the year.

Monthly Reading Links

"To be prophets of life is to demonstrate God's uniquely personal love for every human life. If we can understand God's love for the least among us – for the poor, the vulnerable, the unborn, or the disabled – we can understand his love for all of us. If we can witness to the dignity of disabled lives, we're likely to witness deeply to all human dignity. Our dignity is rooted not in what we can do, but in how much God loves us."

Fulfilling Our Prophetic Mission

James Conley, First Things

"Sissy Goodwin is out shopping … He walks through a mall, a linebacker-sized figure in a pink skirt, lacy yellow blouse and five-o'clock shadow; a gold lamé purse slung over his shoulder and a white bow affixed to his receding gray hair. The 67-year-old college science instructor looks straight ahead, ignoring the stares and the catcalls … Back in the car, the object of such scorn puts on pink sunglasses adorned with a tiny red plastic bow. 'I got them in Reno,' he says. 'Aren't they cool?'"

He's tough enough to be a Sissy in Wyoming

John Glionna, Los Angeles Times

"I felt selfish for finding love when the man I once knew as my dad was disappearing, and for thinking about my future when my stepmother's own true love was receding into the past. But with every visit to New Mexico – barbecuing burgers, chopping firewood, shoveling snow off the roof – David stitched himself deeper into our lives. Every time he left, I missed him more."

Alzheimer's bittersweet tangle of love, loss and timing

Tanya Ward Goodman, Los Angeles Times

"The easy way to look at TOMS is to praise their charitable work. The harder, more troubling way … is to acknowledge [TOMS] as an example of how corporations have assumed work most often associated with self-identified religious organizations: building community, engaging in charity, and cultivating morals … So it is worthwhile to risk looking behind the appeal of charity to the transformed meaning of consumer spending … that occurs in the background."

TOMS Shoes and the Spiritual Politics of Neoliberalism

Lucia Hulsether, Religion & Politics

"When I remember that Blue Ridge panhandler, I always end up thinking of Lazarus and the rich man. The story is a very disturbing parable … There is none of the information we like to have when deciding when or even whether to hand a dollar to someone. We know only that [the rich man] ate sumptuously and dressed well, and that Lazarus was hungry and sick, with no one but dogs to bathe his lesions. That is all we are told of the two men and that, Jesus seems to say, is all we need to know."

Lazarus at Blue Ridge

Russell Saltzman, First Things

"Like a Third Testament, the changes of the natural world … reveal God's unfolding work of creation. This book of nature, with its seasonal chapter headings, surprises me with each go-around. More than any other, the chapter on autumn stirs the mind and heart to higher things – look how few pages remain! Autumn reminds us that this created beauty is ours, but only for a little while longer."

Autumn Is Ours, But for a While

Joe Simmons, The Jesuit Post

"According to the New Mexico Chile Association, about 78,000 tons of chile were harvested in New Mexico in 2012 – a crop worth about $65 million … The people who pick it, however, barely eke out a living, and some of them can't even afford their own lodging. Sin Fronteras Organizing Project's shelter in El Paso, Texas, opened in 1995 to house farmworkers who don't earn enough to rent an apartment."

The Chile Harvest

Joseph Sorrentino, Commonweal

Follow me on Twitter, @jwbidwell, for additional reading recommendations.

Listening to Francis

It's been a little over a month since the big interview with Pope Francis was released to the world. And in that time, a mountain of spin and hype has been produced, from which the following comment is perhaps the greatest nugget of truth:

Breaking – Francis said something and most people are convinced it proves them right!

Sometimes, we really just need to sit down, shut up, and simply listen to the wisdom and experience of our siblings. This was one of those times. Unfortunately, it seems that most of us are so hell-bent on advancing our various agendas that listening to the pope took a back seat to mining his words for ammunition. Corporate religion thrives, because we continuously choose proof texts over grace. What is wrong with us?

Of course, who am I to talk. If I hadn't been quite so determined to write something profound about the interview, maybe this post would have been published on time. But giving up on that goal would have required meditating more than I care to on Francis' warning about "the lurking danger of living in a laboratory." What is wrong with me?

Yes, the act of listening, especially to someone like Pope Francis, is a grave threat to one's peace of mind. It's much safer to focus on proof texting.

Monthly Reading Links

"As it's come to be understood in the 21st century, the papacy is really an impossible job. A pope is expected to be the CEO of a global religious organization, a political heavyweight, an intellectual giant, and a media rock star, not to mention a living saint … Yet at his six-month mark … Pope Francis is drawing better reviews on those five scores than anyone might reasonably have anticipated back on March 13."

Francis at the six-month mark seems a force of nature

John Allen, National Catholic Reporter

"It was on this day … 120 years ago, that Swami Vivekananda created a sensation by his address to the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago … In retrospect it seems to have been one of those pivotal moments that brought a possible hope vividly before the eyes of people in that era of a slowing dawning global society … Noting this does not take away from the sorrow of 9/11/2001, but it does remind us that violence is neither the beginning or end of our human destiny."

9/11/1893: A Day of Interreligious Hope

Francis Clooney, America

"Somewhere in there, between the physical and virtual clutter, we are losing the ordinary qualities of home – the solitude to recollect, the time for families to talk … We are losing the 'nothing much' that is home. The room for tumult and quiet, for passing the time with friends, for the ordinary pleasures of a day well lived."

An American dilemma: Your clutter or your life

Howard Mansfield, Los Angeles Times

"In an old cemetery, where few headstones have been added since the '50s, a large crowd gathered … for a memorial that was 65 years in the making … 'Today we are here to right a wrong,' said Fresno Roman Catholic Bishop Armando X. Ochoa."

'Deportees' who died in 1948 plane crash finally have names

Diana Marcum, Los Angeles Times

"As citizens of the United States (indeed, of the world) continue to debate the morality and legality of strikes in Syria, I find myself thinking through the arguments for and against, and reflecting on them in the light of faith … In many ways the conflict I feel in my discernment is represented in this old photograph." [Of the author's grandfather, a "realist", interviewing Dorothy Day, a pacifist, in 1940.]

What would Dorothy Day say?

Emily Reimer-Barry, Catholic Moral Theology

"And so it is, as I remember my parents on their Yahrzeit, that I have come to the conclusion that perhaps God did not hide His face from them after all during the years of the Shoah. Perhaps it was a divine spirit within them that enabled them to survive with their humanity intact. And perhaps it is to that God that we should be addressing our prayers during these Days of Awe and throughout the year."

The Days of Awe and the years of horror

Menachem Rosensaft, The Washington Post

"Any one of these falls would have been enough. Yet God grants us a hundred or more in one place! It is too much… too much to take in, too much to ever hope to make a return, too much to do anything but fall down in worship … In the midst of such insane, awe-inspiring generosity, I prayed: 'Thank you. I accept.' The response I heard was the booming, raucous belly laugh of God as the falls crashed around me; the laugh of a delighted giver who simply cannot or will not stop giving."

It Would Have Been Enough

Chris Schroeder, The Jesuit Post

Follow me on Twitter, @jwbidwell, for additional reading recommendations.

A Delicious Madness

One of the joys of experiencing a good TV show or book for the second or third time is that familiar lines arrive with new depth and meaning. Such has been the case for me recently as my wife and I have watched "Battlestar Galactica" and my thoughts have dwelt on a particular quote whose truth has become strikingly apparent:

To know the face of God is to know madness.

"I open my eyes and I see you … I close my eyes and I hear you … I cannot escape you; but why would I want to? You are beauty, glory, joy, ecstasy, and the shiver up my spine when I feel your touch upon my soul … You radiate in birth and death, in moans of pleasure and cries of agony, in our happiness and our pain … I feel this every moment and it overwhelms me. It pushes me to the brink of sanity and I am not sure I want to step back. I cannot escape you, and I do not want to."

This is not the faith of corporate religion or conventional wisdom. They prattle on about it being sensible and normal. They associate it with tradition, conservatism, and order. What fools we all are! The Church tells us that God became human, so that we could become God. Is that sensible or normal? What sort of order could possibly come from encouraging humans to take in the view from our Parent's eyes?

"From your perspective, you see love and hate, good and evil, right and wrong. I see what is and what will be, and what I see is love and good, always."

Ever since I embarked on this journey, I feel like I have been falling deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole. I lived with this revelation for so many years, but only started to live it after freeing it from its cage in my head. Each day, my vision becomes more and more wonderfully disoriented. And each day, the human perspective seems sillier and more superficial. Perhaps that is why I have such a difficult time finding the right words for this blog; for I am tasked with translating sacred murmurings into a language from which I find myself increasingly disconnected. But how could it be any other way?

"In that moment, in that very moment, whether it lasts a second or a lifetime, you know that you have touched the face of the divine. Whatever name you want to call him or her or it, you have touched that face and you will never be the same. Nothing will ever be the same again. You may try to bury the image, pretend it doesn't exist, but there it will be, forever and ever. Always lingering, always waiting, always hoping."

"I cannot escape you, and I never will. Thank you my friend."

Will you join me in this most delicious madness?

Monthly Reading Links

"Each recent pope has had a catchphrase that represents his core emphasis … For Francis, his signature idea is mercy. Over and over again, he emphasizes God's endless capacity to forgive, insisting what the world needs to hear from the church above all today is a message of compassion."

The one word to describe Pope Francis' papacy to date

John Allen, National Catholic Reporter

"Often conversations about racism and white privilege get stalemated because people are uncomfortable with the implications of complicity or guilt. Why are we so afraid of being uncomfortable? For me, avoiding this discomfort is impossible. What I learned from my grandfather's lived response to [Martin Luther King]'s challenge is a vision that proactively sought justice. His faith pushed him to name and relinquish the privilege of a situation he didn't create, but that perpetuated injustice."

The Promise and Challenge of Already but Not Yet

Meghan Clark, Catholic Moral Theology

"It is telling how sensitive some people are to this possible implication of the gospels, that our entire economic system – or at least many of the taken-for-granted behaviors of those with wealth – might be under judgment and contrary to God's will. It SOUNDS like the Pope is condemning our mainstream agreement that progress means ever-greater social wealth and innovative gadgets, just as it SOUNDS like Jesus' story of building bigger barns and kicking back to eat, drink, and be merry might be challenging our pretentions to houses and resort-lifestyles in retirement. But, eek, that CAN'T be."

Consumerism no, capitalism yes?

David Cloutier, Catholic Moral Theology

"'She's saying she's sorry,' the social worker who was with us translated. 'She said she's really, really sorry.' As I listened to 25 years of shame spill from somewhere deep inside her, it was impossible not to break down with her. 'I missed you,' she said. 'I've never forgotten you.' I would not cry again during my 3 1/2-hour meeting with my biological mother. But in those moments I cried because I understood the depth of her pain – and I knew I was helping to relieve it."

An adopted son discovers more than he expected in return to South Korea

Matt Stevens, Los Angeles Times

"On his cartoon blog Zen Pencils, Gavin Aung Than turns inspirational quotes into comic strips. For his newest strip, he illustrated a quote from Bill Watterson's 1990 speech at Kenyon College in the style of Calvin and Hobbes, which Than considers 'the greatest comic strip of all time.'"

Very Good Advice From Bill Watterson, in Comic Strip Form

Gavin Aung Than, Slate

"On the Catalyst, the initial experience is one of 'dislocation' and 'disorientation'. The ship is beautifully appointed, but it is impossible to ignore the fact that it is 15 people (11 passengers + 4 crew) on a 75 foot boat … Over the week, though, I learned how important dislocation and disorientation were to the overall experience. By forcing me to shed my comforts – the quiet home of just my wife and I and the dogs; control over my schedule, and my meals; the Internet to fill unscheduled time; unlimited bathroom access – I was nudged into something more valuable than distraction: 'engagement.'"

A Really Great Thing I Hope to Do Again

John Warner, Inside Higher Ed

"These women have taught me, but not in the fashion my catchphrases had led me to expect. They offered no insight into how the poor are veiled images of Jesus. No lessons on how I could learn from their simplicity. They offered me instead a more basic lesson: how I, a guest, ought to esteem my hosts."

Stop Talking about the Poor

Joe Wotawa, The Jesuit Post

Follow me on Twitter, @jwbidwell, for additional reading recommendations.

The Real Guru

The guru you are looking for is inside of you.

This is the central teaching of Sri Kumaré. He is the subject of a recent documentary that I watched a few weeks ago. He is also a complete fraud, sort of.

Kumaré's real name is Vikram Gandhi, a filmmaker who grew up in New Jersey in a devout Hindu family, but who had long struggled with faith. Skeptical of the sincerity of the gurus stoking America's infatuation with Indian spirituality, especially yoga, Gandhi set off with a camera to find out "if these spiritual leaders were for real or just full of it." He found only the latter, which inspired a new direction for his project. Gandhi himself would become a guru, the ultimate proof that "spiritual leaders are just illusions."

And so Kumaré is born, along with a collection of non-sensical sayings, symbols, yoga poses, and meditations. Devoted disciples soon follow. On the surface, it seems like an exercise in humiliation and mockery. As the experiment progresses, however, it becomes clear that Gandhi-Kumaré has actual truth to teach.

The guru you are looking for is inside of you.

"Do not listen to the preachers and prophets because they tell you that you should. Do not follow a teacher because you are afraid to be on your own. If you believe the message to be true in your heart, then listen to the messenger. If not, reject him, whomever or whatever he may be. Trust yourself. Trust your heart. She will not fail you. Believe in your own goodness, in your own loveliness. For that is what you are. Love and goodness brought to life. Turn your eyes inward, and you will see it is true."

God dwells within each of us. Some may be more aware of this reality than others, but that is not a sign of superior knowledge, just the randomness of grace. And while we can and should learn from such people, there is only one true teacher. Whatever the title, whether ordained or self-appointed, everyone else is a mere messenger.

God dwells within each of us. We already possess all the wisdom we will ever need. The messenger is simply there to remind us of that wisdom and to urge us to use it. Lust or pride may drive some to seek more power. Laziness or insecurity may prompt us to give it to them. But none of that changes the basic truth.

God dwells within each of us. Or "the guru you are looking for is inside of you."

And here is where we get to laugh at the divine joke. God chose the skeptic, the fraud, the phony guru to be their truest messenger, to remind us that we are all kumaré.

Monthly Reading Links

"Fifteen years ago, Ruett and Rhonda Foster were grieving parents in a courtroom. Their 7-year-old son Evan had been shot and killed by a gang member … Three young men were convicted and sent to prison. And the Fosters began performing their own sort of penance, making regular visits to local youth prisons, reaching out to troubled young men … They are still making those visits."

Heeding cries for help from discarded, disconnected young men

Sandy Banks, Los Angeles Times

"For his high school prom in 1942, Robert Clement bought a white orchid corsage in a fancy plastic box. He gave it to a female staff member who organized the dance. Others would think it was a kind gesture, that he was just a considerate young man. In truth, Clement didn't have anyone else to give it to. He liked boys. And he couldn't take a boy to the prom. Especially not seven decades ago in a small town."

Gay and lesbian couples finally get their prom night

Hailey Branson-Potts, Los Angeles Times

"It is time to drop the labels. They are lazy, inaccurate and often unjust. They push people away rather than draw them into conversation. They allow us to live in a fantasy world where we don't have to be confronted with the real positions of real people who may force us to look at a situation which is more complex that we would like it to be. Dealing with that complexity is difficult, messy and even risky – but it is a requirement of intellectual honesty and solidarity."

Real People, Real Positions … and Dropping the Labels

Charles Camosy, Catholic Moral Theology

"The first 'Thanksgiving' was not celebrated by the Pilgrims … It was celebrated by Spanish missionary priests a half-century earlier … The history we have been told – the history of the winners – is not untrue. But it is biased and incomplete … Without the rest of the American story, we are left with a distorted idea of American identity and national culture. And at certain moments in American history, this incomplete sense of American identity has led to grave injustices."

Our forgotten historia

Jose Gomez, New York Post

"One special thing about me is that I have Down syndrome … Some people think that because I have Down syndrome I can't do what other people can do. But that is not true. Everyone can share their talents … God loves me because God made me. He made me just the way I am, and he loves me just the way I am."

Everything I Can Do

Joey Kane, America Magazine

"Sometimes a police officer would find me in a state of what is termed 'camping' by the city's anti-camping ordinance … Sometimes the officers were polite, sometimes they were rude, but always they added, 'It's against the law.' As if I didn't know. As if I could do something about it. The hardships and insecurity of homelessness couldn't dampen my spirit as much as the humiliation that my city hated me. They must have hated me, since I was denied shelter and yet forbidden to live without shelter."

Why homelessness shouldn't be a crime

Paula Lomazzi, U.S. Catholic

"I end up dismissing the love shown to me because I'm too busy waiting for the moment to become a perfect, heart-shaped peg, and to slot itself in, just so. So I end up holding out, expecting love to come later in some deep, soul-bearing conversation. This can't be what extraordinary looks like, I think. But it can."

Holding Out for What’s Special

Keith Maczkiewicz, The Jesuit Post

Follow me on Twitter, @jwbidwell, for additional reading recommendations.

Revised Publishing Schedule

Starting now and continuing at least until the end of the year, this blog will be published twice per month, on the first and third Wednesdays, rather than weekly. The monthly reading list remains and will serve as the first post, followed by a topical essay for the second. Extra posts may be published to commemorate major holidays.

There are a number of reasons for this change, but primarily I am trying to listen to that part of me that is being drawn to sacred silence. With divine revelation, less is usually more. And I am just trying to be attentive to that truth.