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?

Why Am I Still A Catholic?

Given my assertions about the "True Church" last week, why do I continue to identify myself as a Catholic? The revelation I am called to share does not always mesh with the Church's doctrines and teachings. In so many ways, it would be sensible to part company. But there is something that continues to draw me to the Church. I know that God still desires for our paths to be intertwined.

Jesus is my role model in this task of reconciling the seemingly incompatible. He was born a Jew, lived as a Jew, and died a Jew. His purpose was to serve God and he did this as a Jew. Yes, his words and actions were often unorthodox for the Judaism of his time, but he never claimed to be anything other than a faithful Jew. Hence all of the stupid bumper stickers proclaiming "My boss is a Jewish carpenter."

And yet, Jesus' followers say that he intended to create a new religion separate from Judaism. While this might seem like wishful thinking on the Church's part, it is also easy to recognize Christianity as the logical extension of Jesus' teachings. Even if you deny him the omniscience of God, it is hard to believe that Jesus had no clue as to the path his apostles would take after his death.

So for better or worse, Christianity, not Judaism, is the family that Jesus left behind. And while none of the branches of the Christian family are the True Church, the one that most aspires to embrace God's family in all of its messy, chaotic, and thoroughly catholic glory, is the Catholic Church. Yes, I was born and raised in the faith, but this assessment is not the result of blind allegiance. Like most cradle Catholics, I am all too aware of the Church's many disappointments. Despite these flaws, however, it is still the best manifestation of God's family that I know.

And the place where I see this most clearly is the Communion of Saints, a teaching that insists that wherever we are going, we can only get there by traveling together. This truth is also the subject for a set of tapestries that hang in the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels here in Los Angeles. What I love about them is that they depict the saints mingled together, ancient and new, famous and ordinary, regardless of “official” status. These tapestries, and the Truth they depict, tell me that the Catholic Church is something far greater and grander than an organization run by the Vatican.

"Family is not religion, but something far more powerful. It is not an organization to join, but a fellowship to accept. It is who we are at our very core. Family is birth, death, and all the joy and tragedy in between. We may run from it at moments, but we will never truly be apart from it."

Catholicism is the family that chose me in baptism, and that I chose in confirmation. The Church may be a dysfunctional family, but abandoning it won't make it any better, nor would doing so sever its ties to my mind, heart, and soul.

Again, I look to Jesus, who never abandoned his Jewishness. It was essential to his faithfulness to God's family, and yet he birthed something that is not Judaism. I cannot begin to imagine what the revelation I am called to share will produce. But I know that if I am to remain faithful to the family, I must continue to embrace my Catholicity.

Goals & Outcomes

What am I trying to do here? As I discern my immediate future, this question looms large. There is a part of me that longs for clear answers. This is the me that dreads trying to explain all of this to family, friends, and especially co-workers. The world we live in demands that we make specific goals regarding career, family, finances, etc. We are expected to produce very tangible outcomes.

Life would be so much easier if I had something to sell. Who wants the truth for free when you can own the secret to the mysteries of whatever from some guy on an infomercial? I'm not trying to become some self-help guru or cult leader, nor is this about founding a new religion or spiritual movement. I'm just some guy who's been entrusted with a piece of information and an obligation to share it. So are thousands of other morons on the internet. Why am I so special?

The reality is that I'm not. This is not and never will be about me or what I want. As I wrote on the Ash Wednesday post on the "Good News" blog, "My life does not belong to me; it's just on loan from the real owner. What I do in life matters not a bit if I fail to follow God's will." I exist to share what God has revealed; they've never promised that anyone would listen, nor does that really matter. I'm not sure I'll ever understand why our Parent chose me to deliver a message, but they did and that is that.

Part of me wishes I could do this as a hobby, be a part-time prophet. I could write my blogs, then go about my day and blend in with everyone else. That, however, would just be an attempt to make this convenient for me. There may not be a concrete goal, but I know that whatever I'm doing here is just the start. As for outcomes, I haven't got a clue; fortunately, those are under someone else's control.

There is a quote from Francis of Assisi that I use on each of my websites: “Who are You, my dearest God? And what am I but Your useless servant.”

This is who I am and who I aspire to be.

The Voice of God

What makes me so special that God chose to speak with me? The truth is that I am not special, just willing to listen. God talks to all of us, every moment of the day, but few actually listen. Traditional religion might point to the conditions of modern life as the prime explanation for this. I say that religion is as much the problem as the solution. Traditional religion is a creature of rules and systems. As much as they might talk about following your conscience, they also expect that conscience to conform to their creeds and customs. After all, if this was something you could do on your own, how could they earn a living? What need would society have to pay for all the institutions to discern God's will? But we cannot let their fears about losing control or losing their livelihoods stop us from claiming what is really our birthright. God is our Parent. We don't need a middleman to talk to our Parent.

So does this mean that whatever feels good is God's voice? Trust me, most of what God tells me doesn't make me feel good, and it certainly hasn't made my life easier. The saying that ignorance is bliss has a lot of truth to it. And yet everything that God says brings me joy, because that is the nature of truth: joy. I know that where God is leading me is a place of love, goodness, and truth, even if it is difficult and costly. Perhaps the paradoxes of life are God's purest language.

Our ability to communicate with God does not depend on the amount of talismans we possess or the amount of time we spend in worship. You cannot meditate your way into the mind of God. What is required is an openness and desire to see. A willingness to look for God's words, especially in the places that we really do not want to look. This isn't to say that the former activities are useless. They are tools that may advance our readiness to hear, but they are not the means of communication itself. Again, God is our Parent, not our overlord. There is no need for ritual and formality. We can speak with them plainly and simply.

My purpose in life, as little as I have discerned of it, is to encourage others to speak to God in such a direct manner. It is not just the mystics who are called to have this kind of relationship with God; it is all of us. We are all that special.