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!

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.

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?

True Freedom

Perhaps the deepest moral challenge to the United States, not only for this year but for years to come, is the ethical form of radical narcissism … when human judgment cannot see beyond its own exercise of freedom and exercises that freedom in isolation from the other.

John Kavanaugh, "Autonomous Individualism", America

Freedom as the right to say and do whatever I want. Freedom as the right to ignore any or all demands you make of me. Freedom as the fantasy of perfect autonomy. Is that the freedom we are celebrating this Independence Day?

Six years have come and gone since Kavanaugh wrote those words and the fantasy is as challenging as ever. Why? Because we continue to believe that freedom is about prioritizing the individual ahead of the family. How many of our brothers and sisters must sacrifice themselves for us before we finally get how backwards that notion is? Why do we refuse to see the truth revealed in our family's founding story?

So why did you come to be? … We needed to share ourselves … You call it love. To us, it is simply our way of being. We do not know how to stop sharing ourselves. We must expand and give love. We cannot be any other way.

We are free to join in our Parent's way, or not. No other freedom matters.

Fighting Off Silence

Since the beginning of May, my weekly posts have been late more often than they've been on time. Whenever I sit down to write lately, it feels like a chorus of adults from a Charlie Brown TV special has taken up residence in my mind. There's a whole mess of reasons for this, but here's the only one worth mentioning:

"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."

Sometimes, it feels like a sick joke. God has given me these words to share. And yet the most profound truth they reveal is the beauty of human silence. I am drawn to that beauty more and more each day, even as my sense of duty pulses stronger and more urgently in my very bones. It's my own personal paradox to endure and enjoy.

But grace is like that, isn't it?

Traveling On

Dumbledore smiled at [Harry]. "We are in King's Cross, you say? I think that if you decided not to go back, you would be able to … let's say … board a train."

"And where would it take me?"

"On," said Dumbledore simply.

J. K. Rowling, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows", Page 722

We celebrate the Ascension of Jesus this week. Many a pastor will no doubt wrestle with where that train is going to take us. And as you sit there in your pew, ask yourself if any truer description has ever been uttered than "On"? I suppose it all comes down to another simple question: Do we trust they who built the railroad?

But of course you ask: “Where will I go?” Does it matter? To you, I suppose it does, but the answer will not satisfy what you want. You want a place, a destination. This we cannot give, because it is like trying to assign a place to us. We are everywhere and nowhere, every moment. Do you think it will be any different for you?

Forsaking the Masquerade

Another late post. Another week where the planned topic crumbles, because it turns out to be nothing more than "ripped from the headlines" garbage. Another opportunity to forsake the meaningless noise in favor of something wonderful.

Two unrelated articles: a Washington Post feature on three peace activists who broke in to a nuclear weapons facility to stage a protest; a First Things commentary on our brave new digital world's desire to turn a profit from doing good. Two unrelated sets of people and causes, yet the latter offers up the key that allows me to make sense out of my discomfort with the former: "hype masquerading as idealism".

I know, how churlish of me. After all, I should admire those who risk death to call us to peace, especially an elderly nun. And yet, and yet … At the end of the day, what have those activists achieved, other than getting a security guard fired and the government to spend more money on protection for the very arsenal they denounced. As I wrote three weeks ago, we insanely chase a peace we will never catch, because the peace within our grasp demands things that are just too frightening to comprehend.

"Hype masquerading as idealism." It happens when we forget that after all the swords are turned into plowshares we can still kill one another with the farm tools. It happens when we forget that our lust for profit has caused much of the misery we are trying to alleviate with our good. It happens when we leave the fallout from our noble intentions as a mess for someone else to clean up. It happens when we are so eager to play a part in building our chosen utopia that we fail to see the fully constructed Kingdom in our midst. It happens far more often than we care to admit.

"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."

We are an impatient species. We believe that love involves action. It is a dangerous combination, because oftentimes the action that love demands is internal, not external, especially in those moments when our animal instincts and our peers are urging us to hurry up and do something already. So what will we choose to unleash: a whirlwind or a gentle breeze? And whose guidance will we choose to trust?

Love & Good

No more hurting people. Peace

Martin Richard wrote these words for a school project many months ago. And almost immediately after the young boy's death at the Boston Marathon, his words went viral on social media, as a sort of collective plea for a world free of violence. A noble desire, but one that will continue to go unfulfilled. Why? Because we are not willing to do what it takes to make such words and hopes into reality.

But to you who hear I say, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.

Luke 6:27-28

These are words we do not want to hear, especially right now. Love those who made bombs to maim and kill? Show them mercy and compassion? Bless them and pray for them? Yes, that is what we are called to do, for it is the only remedy that will work.

"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?"

I shared similar thoughts after Aurora and Newtown. I will do so again after the next community suffers from our love of violence, and the one after that, and so on. I am under no illusion that anyone will actually listen; we've ignored Jesus for two thousand years after all. But truth is truth, whether we want to hear it or not.

Yes, love is stronger than hate, and good will triumph over evil in the end. Many of us have spoken of these truths since Monday. But they are not magic talismans to ward off the bogeyman. Jesus had to die, brutally, before the Easter we are in the midst of celebrating could happen. Living that Truth requires a whole other vantage point.

"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."

Are we willing to embrace that kind of love and good? Are we willing to go wherever they demand we go? Even if that means loving those who killed Martin Richard?

Birds & Wildflowers

I find myself at a loss for words today. I have plenty of topics and ideas to write about, but they all feel trivial right now. We scurry around day after day trying to build … what exactly? In my mind, I keep hearing Jesus speaking about how God takes care of the birds and the wildflowers, so we can trust God to take care of us as well. But we don't trust, so we scurry and build instead. And I am no better than the rest, babbling on and on when it's all so simple. What exactly am I trying to build?

"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."

There is something breathtakingly wonderful surrounding us. If birds and wildflowers can trust in it, why can't we? Stop building, close your eyes, and see.

Martyrdom Lessons

But he understood at last what Dumbledore had been trying to tell him. It was, he thought, the difference between being dragged into the arena to face a battle to the death and walking into the arena with your head held high. Some people, perhaps, would say that there was little to choose between the two ways, but Dumbledore knew -- and so do I, thought Harry, with a rush of fierce pride, and so did my parents -- that there was all the difference in the world.

J. K. Rowling, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince", Page 512

As I read this passage a couple of months ago, my thoughts turned to the story of the martyrdom of Saints Perpetua and Felicitas, whose feast day we celebrate tomorrow. We are told that these two women, along with their fellow martyrs, "marched from the prison to the amphitheatre joyfully as though they were going to heaven, with calm faces, trembling, if at all, with joy rather than fear." Such was their spirit in facing death that Perpetua actually "took the trembling hand of the young gladiator and guided it to her throat." What are we supposed to make of such behavior?

For one thing, we have cheapened martyrdom. Too quickly and too easily do we cry persecution, too often simply because we have not gotten our way. As David Gibson remarked, "Ah, the joys of being a martyr who is in no danger. Doesn't get any better than that." Whatever else martyrdom is, it is not cheap or easy.

There should be something confounding about people like Perpetua and Felicitas. It's one thing to grimly do your duty while fighting the good fight. But to go to your death not just willingly, but joyfully, even gleefully? We use every means at our disposal to cling to very the last second of life. And yet here we have the young and vibrant, with children and friends to live for, welcoming death like a lover.

When we look at self-sacrificial love, most of us focus on the sacrifice. All the martyr sees is love. And they know that death is no match for love.

"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."

Saints Perpetua and Felicitas, pray for us.

Harry Potter and the Simplicity of Love

Pearls of Wisdom from Professor Albus Dumbledore

1. Humans do have a knack of choosing precisely those things that are worst for them.
2. It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.
3. The consequences of our actions are always so complicated, so diverse, that predicting the future is a very difficult business indeed.
4. We are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided.
5. Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young.
6. Once again, Lord Voldemort fails to grasp that there are much more terrible things than physical injury.
7. Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?

My wife and I finished re-reading the "Harry Potter" series earlier this week. And once again, I was captivated by how much the novels teach about the truth of life, love, and, yes, even God. In an odd sort of way, they also mirror the journey of faith: what starts out as a children's story becomes, in the end, a very adult affair.

For "Harry Potter" does not preach about the sappy love of greeting cards or the misty love of self-help gurus. No, it unflinchingly tells us that self-sacrificial love is the most powerful magic of all. It drills that message into us with the deaths of Regulus, James, Lily, Albus, Dobby, Severus, and so many others. And then it asks us to feel pride as we accompany Harry through the forest and stand watch while he allows Voldemort to cast the Killing Curse without a fight. As someone else once said, "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends."

And speaking of Jesus, it has never been lost on me that the wizards and witches in "Harry Potter" celebrate Christmas and Easter just like their Muggle neighbors. God is never mentioned by name, but there he is nonetheless, hiding in plain sight. We could dismiss this presence as meaningless background scenery, or we could take it as sly evidence of a Presence that is the source of love and magic alike.

"For us, there is simply our way of being, which is a path of great power. This power takes many forms, but it always produces what we desire."

Many will scoff at the idea of a children's book about magic being a font of theological wisdom, but I think God delights in showing up in unexpected places. Besides, what good is Truth if you need a doctorate to understand it? It seems to me that our Parent wants to converse with all of us, not just those in graduate school. "Harry Potter" is a great reminder that the Gospel isn't so complex after all.

"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?"

On a side note, I am once again publishing on Friday instead of Wednesday. I fear this is not going to be an easy Lent for me. But perhaps that is a not such a bad thing. For as J. K. Rowling has so admirably shown us, the most difficult path to a destination is sometimes the only one that will actually get us there.

1.   J. K. Rowling, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone", Page 297

2.   J. K. Rowling, "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets", Page 333

3.   J. K. Rowling, "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban", Page 426

4.   J. K. Rowling, "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire", Page 723

5.   J. K. Rowling, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix", Page 826

6.   J. K. Rowling, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince", Page 559

7.   J. K. Rowling, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows", Page 723

Silent Awe

Several days ago, I went for a walk around sunset. It was one of those rainy days in Southern California where the sky is full of dark clouds, but then these patches of bright blue break through. Misty clouds hung low upon the foothills. The air was cold and crisp. Everything had this golden tinge from the sunset. And it was all I could do to not drop to my knees in the street and weep in praise and thanksgiving.

"Look out your window. It doesn’t matter which one. They all will do. 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.

... What you see is a gift. A gift more precious than anything, ANYTHING that has or ever will be imagined by human intelligence. You see our reason for existence, our life’s work and mission: to be a song of praise about life itself.

... 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.

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."

"But we talk too much. It makes it all seem so trivial. Just let us be who we are. Just let yourself be. It will be enough."

Sometimes, silent awe is enough.

Abortion, Fear, & Love

Yesterday was the fortieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade. It was a day full of editorials and essays, voices on all sides of the abortion debate shouting to be heard. If there's one thing we should be sure of after forty years, it's that none of them have found the solution. Legal or not, abortions will happen, women will suffer, and babies will die, all because of fear. Fear of judgment; fear of abandonment; fear of failure; fear of all the unknowns. A fear that cannot be cured by lawyers, or doctors, or politicians, or even well-meaninged activists. A fear only dissolved by an embrace. An embrace that says I will help you, I respect you, I forgive you, I love you. So maybe it's time for us to shut up, just shut up for a while, and embrace all those who fear, and simply love them.

"There is more love in every atom, every molecule than in all the romances ever conceived. We are the song of life, of love, of a mother and father who made us by sheer force of will. So much of life is a paradox, but it is there that we find God the most. It is there, in the confusion and that mess that we must dwell. It is there that we experience true beauty, true joy."

"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."

Resolutions

Follow God's will.

That is my resolution this year, and it is the only one worth making. It may seem hard, but it's actually pretty simple. We know what God asks of us; our greed, vanity, lust, and violence are forms of denial, not ignorance. And living in denial is exhausting and depressing. I'm tired of it. Aren't you?

"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."

The End

"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."

Will the world end this Friday? Does it really matter? Either way, the dance of life and love will continue. So who cares what form it takes?

"Let the dance of life carry you far away from this corner of the universe. Journey to planets and places unimaginable. Watch a star be born, then turn around and watch another die. Touch a planet and give it the spark of life. Let yourself be the creator, just as you were created. Forge your children of the stars into a sword of love on the anvil of tragedy and sorrow. Let them fall horribly, knowing that they must learn to run on their own.

Now follow me back to our little planet. See it for what it is: a jeweled marble in the playground of the universe. Watch it spin wildly for eons, until our sun dozes to sleep, and we fade into the night. Laugh at the divine humor of it. Life and death on the grandest scale."

A New Direction, An Eternal Faith

Last Friday, my intention was to write about Donald Spoto's biography of Francis of Assisi "Reluctant Saint" in honor of the saint's feast the day before. Obviously, that didn't happen. Once again, the right words refused to come, for I have lost my way.

This blog was never supposed to be a "blog." It is a tool to promote a revelation, no more, no less. But then I decided to expand the content and somehow it morphed into being like all of the other religion blogs out there that endlessly talk over one another. It cannot be that, because that can never convey a revelation that is inherently simple.

"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."

Fittingly, my need to make a course correction with this blog takes place on the eve of the opening of the Year of Faith, which is "an opportunity for Catholics to experience a conversion - to turn back to Jesus and enter into a deeper relationship with him." This idea of conversion is also a key theme in Spoto's book:

The life of Francis of Assisi and the journey of his progress toward God had meant accepting a series of corrections and simplifications, a refining of his understanding about what God had wanted of him. We might even say that Francis had constantly to revise what he believed would honor God. Hence Francis's conversion was the work of a lifetime, with all its autumns and winters; it was not the achievement of an afternoon in springtime.

Life and faith is a journey, and not always an easy one. But why? If faith is just about believing the right things, being able to say the creed without your fingers crossed or fervently proclaiming that Jesus is your lord and savior, then how does that demand a journey? Well, here's one piece of the puzzle:

Take the earliest gospel, which is probably Mark. Right after Jesus’ baptism, Jesus goes out to proclaim his message: “The kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the Good News.”

I am consistently asking my students, “What’s the good news?” It’s not that Jesus died and came back, because this is only the first chapter. He hasn’t yet mentioned the passion. Nobody knows he’s going to die. The good news has to be something else.

So the good news has to be what you get from the parables. The good news has to be the Sermon on the Mount. The good news has to be the healings, which show care for people in the community.

The good news is that everyone is part of the family. It doesn’t matter what your income level is. That’s even true of sinners and tax collectors, people who have removed themselves from the common welfare by working for the occupation government, disrupting the sense of community by stealing, or destroying marriage by committing adultery. Jesus says, “You know what? You’ve got a role in this community, too.”

That’s not belief; that’s action. It is reconciliation, and it’s family values in their best form possible.

Amy-Jill Levine, "A Jewish take on Jesus", U.S. Catholic

And here's a second:

Catholic stories are incarnational, they speak of God incarnate in the human condition at Christmas time and God going down to the valley of death with us and returning alive with us on Easter. They speak of a community of the followers of Jesus bonding with one another to pass on the heritage which is formed by the stories. The doctrines are latent in the stories. Both are necessary, but the stories come first. Alas, for much of which passes for Catholic religious education, the stories are discarded in favor of the doctrines. All the Trinitarian and Christological controversies in the early Church, as important as they may be, do not have the appeal or the value of the image of Madonna and Child.

... It is worth noting that it took four centuries to make the doctrine reasonably precise while the story was there at the beginning. Both require one another, but it is the story that appeals to the total human. It is the beauty of the story which holds Catholics to their heritage.

Andrew Greeley, "Why I’m Still A Catholic"

It's about relationship, from the beginning of our story as humans to the foundation of the Church, it's always been about relationships.

"You are my child. More than that, you are myself. We are one, linked forever. What you feel, I feel. What I know, you know. We are love incarnate. We are life."

"You are my sibling. We are family. This is the essential truth of life. It is the only moral truth that really matters."

Faith is a relationship, not only with God but with all of our siblings alive and dead, and relationships are always journeys. Faith is not defined by the stretches when we stay on the path, but by how we deal with the potholes along the way, and how we respond to getting lost. Faith is not found in a moment or a year, but only through a lifetime.

And what of my faith? Where is my journey headed now? Spoto's book gave me a quote from Francis that I use on all of my websites: "Who are You, my dearest God? And what am I but Your useless servant."

This is a sublime prayer, not the expression of a philosophical inquiry about the nature of God and the self. It faces with absolute gravity the idea that God is utterly unknowable - as is the deepest truth of one's own life. But it is also, by the very fact of being addressed to God, a statement of unreserved conviction about the supreme reality of God, Who brings sense out of Francis's own emptiness and absurdity, his uselessness.

It is the prayer of a man who has felt God's touch and just wants to be obedient to that call. It is my prayer, and the only destination worth traveling to.

"Into Great Silence" (2005)

Yes, I missed another Wednesday post. I was planning to write something on politics, but the words just wouldn't come. Sometimes it feels like there is just too much noise in the world, especially on the internet. What good does it do?

"Into Great Silence" is a movie about a place, the Grande Chartreuse monastery of the Carthusian order, where the noise is consciously left behind in order to draw close to all that really matters. The documentary opens with the passage from the First Book of Kings where God appears to Elijah not as a mighty wind, earthquake, or fire, but as "a light silent sound." Fittingly, it contains none of commentary and analysis typical of documentaries. Instead, we simply spend nearly three hours experiencing the lives of these monks. It is not a life most of us would choose to live, but we should be grateful that some do, bearing witness to the truth that lies beyond the noise.

"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."

Check out this movie on Catholic News Service, IMDb, Wikipedia, or YouTube.

"Learning To Fly", Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

So I started out for God knows where; I guess I'll know when I get there.

Life, faith, trust, love ... all of it is a journey without a set route or destination. It's part of the beauty of existence. And "Learning To Fly" by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers is the perfect soundtrack for journeys of all kinds.

"Life unfolds as it should. Stop and enjoy the process ... that is why you are here, that is why you were created."

Check out this song on Wikipedia, YouTube, or Amazon.

God's Plan

"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."

To God, there is meaning and purpose in everything, including tragedy. Whether in the form of a massacre in Colorado or a single death on the streets of Los Angeles, every woe that we experience is part of the grand and beautiful tapestry that is life. This is a difficult truth, which is why we so rarely understand it.

A recent example of our cluelessness in this regard came from George Zimmerman, who in an interview with Fox News on the shooting of Trayvon Martin said, "I feel that it was all God’s plan, and for me to second-guess it or judge it ..."

The key word in the revelation is "perspective." God gets the macro viewpoint; ours is just the micro version. We can glimpse the whole design, but we cannot live within that vision. Our minds are not made to handle it. We need to sort our thoughts and actions into "love and hate, good and evil, right and wrong." Such judgments do not deny the truth of this revelation; they help us to approach it with a sense of humility. Otherwise, we are liable to mistake our pinhole for God's panorama.

Which is exactly what Zimmerman did. In the interview, he said that he does not regret his actions that led to the fatal confrontation, nor would he change them. He is a fool. Regret and shame keep us honest when we replace God's will with our own. Violence is an ugly evil, even if we find ways to justify and excuse it. It always leaves a stain on one's soul. Yes, God's grace will bring glory from the depths of evil. But we also have a role to play. Does God's plan work because of us, or in spite of us?

Visions of Heaven

The Church celebrates the Ascension of Jesus this week, so there are bound to be plenty of sermons about heaven today. This subject was also the cover story for Time magazine's Easter weekend issue. The article reviewed multiple competing Christian interpretations, starting with the recent book Heaven Is for Real. The story told in this book is hard to believe, but its appeal is not hard to understand. As the book's website describes, it provides "comfort and assurance."

When it comes to the after-life, our desire to make the unknown known is completely natural. In many ways, it is the driving force behind religion. We need our visions of heaven. As the Time article says, "one's vision of paradise shapes how one lives." But no matter how tantalizing that vision is, it will never be more than a fool's errand.

"Of course you ask: 'Where will I go?' Does it matter? To you, I suppose it does, but the answer will not satisfy what you want. You want a place, a destination. This we cannot give, because it is like trying to assign a place to us. We are everywhere and nowhere, every moment. Do you think it will be any different for you?"