Treasure These Days

We have been experiencing a beautiful fall in central Montana, with much sunshine, mild temperatures, and a spectacular display of colors in nature. My genuine hope for all of us is that despite our busy schedules, we are taking generous time to observe and to enjoy nature’s display. It is too easy to watch TV or to spend excessive time indoors. These days of “Golden Summer” are fleeting, and we know well what to expect in coming months. Not to enjoy the beauty of nature is to allow the days of our lives to pass away without being truly awake. 

“Give back to Caesar what is Caesar, and to God what is God’s.” And what is God’s? Not a part of who we are and what we have, but our entire life, our whole mind, body, soul.  A highly signifiant and enjoyable way to give ourselves back to God is to let go of busyness and take time to walk in God’s creation. As one walks on trails, paths, or even sidewalks, one is a creature among creatures, dwarfed by majestic trees displaying colors as they prepare for winter’s chill. What good would it do to give God some money or even some of our talents, but withhold our entire mind and heart—who we are? Essential to giving back to God is to give thanks, to be appreciative of His creative beauty as well as His love in giving us Christ. Enjoying beauty lifts us up and presents us to God presenting Himself to us through nature’s beauty.  

Moses and I have been take walks almost daily to see and to absorb something of creation’s beauty. Enjoying beauty is a self-transcendent activity. Nearly always I carry my camera, photograph, make a few needed adjustments, and then post some of these images on our parish website, www.beltcatholic.com. Photography is a labor of love, and a fruit of walking and meditating on what we see, hear, smell, touch. (Moses, too, is busy taking in sights and smells, and responding to the p-mail he reads.) Walking itself can be a form of meditation, if we seek to be open to reality as it presents itself, and let the truth and beauty of reality break into consciousness, freeing us from excessive self-preoccupation. If we walk and merely daydream or allow our worries to flood us, we lose the meditative benefit of walking. And although any form of production—even one’s art—can become less than loving openness to reality, I have found that the act of concentrating my mind to photograph, to “do my art,” makes me more attentive to the world beyond me, not less so. Whatever lifts up our attention from our self-contained, self-constrained worlds is good and refreshing. Walking with an open mind is a loving form of prayer in the true sense. 

Hence, in walking and photographing, I experience the truth of the Psalmist’s words: “He refreshes my soul.” We cannot perfect ourselves, renew ourselves, refresh ourselves.  Openness to divine Presence alone can bring us peace, joy, refreshment of spirit.  Each of us needs to climb out of our little worlds, our usual routines, and walk outside with grateful hearts.

The Grin That Stole My Worries

Several days ago I had lunch in a local cafe with one of the Catholic faithful who lives in the area, and whom I have gotten to know over the years through our common ministry. John is in his early eighties, and from our conversations appears to be quite wealthy, having been heavily invested in U.S. equity and bond markets for some 60 years. He lives frugally, however, driving a late model Chevy, not a Lexus or Mercedes, either of which he could easily afford. Anyway, in our recent conversation we were discussing how we live. John mentioned that he rarely ate much for lunch, or for dinner. “What about breakfast?” I asked. John said, “Oh, I eat a good breakfast. On Mondays and Tuesdays, my wife and I have cereal. On Wednesdays, she cooks us an omelet. On Thursdays and Fridays, cereal. On Saturdays and Sundays, we eat bacon and waffles.” Rather surprised by the scheduled meals—contrasting utterly to my style of eating—I asked, “Why follow such a strict schedule?  Is it by your doing, or your wife’s?  “I guess it is my way” he said.  And so I asked, “Well, why do you follow such a strict schedule?” John beamed, grinning broadly, and said, “I do not like change.”
His response, and the evident delight he took in his stance and in telling it to me, caused me to wonder. Does not John know that life always involves change, whether we like it or not? He is a very good man, respectable, solid, prudent, intelligent, and still in apparently good health into his 80’s. And I realized that I do not always like changes that come into my life, but they come anyway, and often major changes come unexpectedly—as when my beloved Zoe developed cancer and died just two weeks after diagnosis. That change was very painful. No, some changes I do not like at all, but they come.

Here is the good news. John’s broad and sun-shine grin offered with the words, “I do not like change,” caused me to reflect and realize that I need not be afraid of changes coming in my life. And why not? Because I have experienced again and again how even painful and unwanted changes have provided opportunities for further growth, for good changes in my life. My confidence—even joy—is not in not liking change, but in trusting that the One we call “God” is so good and powerful that He brings good into one’s life through most painful and unwanted changes. Such indeed will be death, when you and I will experience the truth of the Apostle’s words, “Death is swallowed up in victory.” 

Most of my worries come from fear of changes—haunting fears that bad things can happen to me. But John’s grin reminds me of the more profound truth: Despite some bad events, and seeming failures in my life, good has resulted. I do not smile because I do not like change (and have a good life as things are), but because I trust the One who keeps opening windows in my life as doors get closed. Admittedly, I am borrowing from the Dutch writer, Corrie ten Boom, who wrote words to the effect that “God never closes a door without opening a window.” In yielding to worries, one is distrusting the wisdom and goodness of God, in whom all things exist, and whose mind “steers all things through all things,” if I may quote the early Greek philosopher, Heracleitos.

Although none of us sees tomorrow, or knows what the future holds, when we worry we are failing to remember and to trust the all-good Creator. Change comes, and it may hurt--temporarily. But in and through these changes, new opportunities open up, if we will but exercise trust and lovingly press forward into the new life unfolding before us. In God alone nothing is lost, and all changes prepare for a more delightful union.

Forces That Nourish And Disintegrate The Soul: Exploratory Thoughts

(Part II follows immediately after this post) A human being may find himself or herself going through a period of being “troubled,” or “disturbed.” Perhaps one’s nights become occupied by disturbing dreams and thoughts. The person may not know clearly what is happening, although they do not feel right, and may become quite exhausted in the process. In direct terms, one has not sufficiently been communing with God—or to use more popular language, one has not been “praying” to the degree needed for mental and spiritual health. As a consequence of not being grounded in God, one shows signs of mental disintegration. Without active participation in the divine, one becomes (varying with time and circumstances in life): anxious, depressed, angry, worried, self-absorbed, obsessed, lustful, grief-stricken, embittered, and so on. The mind/soul not open to, and immersed in, the divine ground disintegrates under unpleasant weight of its own psychic forces. These negative powers (such as anxiety and depression) are centrifugal forces in the soul, dissipating or exhausting the psyche’s energies. The Apostle Paul writes: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”  Or, in a more literal translation from the Greek (assuming my translation to be accurate): “I am strong through the (one) empowering me.” In the context of Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, chapter 4, the one experienced as strengthening him is what he terms “Christ.” In other words, Paul experiences an inner strengthening of his psyche through the presence of Christ in him. If one thinks he or she “has faith,” but does not experience inner strengthening by the divine (however conceived), then one should suspect that his or her “faith” is mere credal belief. Real faith brings the soul into real contact with the living God. Credal beliefs at best fill the mind with images of what one believes may be true, but does not know through experience, and does not seek to know through genuine self-abandoning faith. What is at work in the Apostle Paul’s experience of Christ strengthening him? Faith as trust effecting union with Christ (the Divine) grounds psychic forces, strengthens them, recharges them. “Faith working through love” is a flow from the divinely-centered psyche outward into action, service, compassion, love, reverence, and so on. Some attitudes dissipate the psyche’s energies, and opposed attitudes concentrate the psyche’s energies. Put more correctly, based on nature: whereas some attitudes and responses to the fullness of reality ground, concentrate, refresh the inner resources of the soul or psyche, the opposite attitudes dissipate or squander these resources. Genuine faith (fides caritate formata) is the most effect means of grounding, ordering, restoring the human psychic forces to “sharing in the divine nature.” Why does trust concentrate the psyche’s energies? Faith as trust grounds the psyche in that which is, in the creative power at work in all things, causing them to be, moving them towards fulfillment; and we call this creative power “God.” Forces or powers such as depression, anxiety, ill-will, hatred are negative or destructive forces, as they dissipate, spend, squander the psyche’s resources. How so?  How does worry, for example, squander psychic energy? Worries remove the mind’s focus from what is (reality: divine, human, material) and spends the energies imagining what might be, or what seems to be. Futuristic illusions have the same effect as anxious worries: they exhaust the mind and its energies, spending them on what is not now, but on what one wishes or fears could be in the future. One could say that futuristic illusions—“dreams” of what could be—are forms of anxiety projected into an imagined future.  In any case, speculations about what could be, or what once was, remove the psyche from the all-nourishing present—the Now, the “Kingdom of God”—and fragment it into imagined realities. In exploring psychic processes, it is ever good to suspend one’s thinking, and return to the truth of direct experience. For in the realm of psychic, spiritual, or mental processes, truth is what one concretely experiences. So one can ask himself or herself:  Right now, is my mind grounding in the divine, or dissipating into speculative “realities”? Am I attuned to the truth of what is, or to opinions about what might be, or might have been?  If right now one’s soul felt troubled or worried by various thoughts (such as, “how can I afford to live?”), what should one do to overcome anxious, dissipating thoughts? Return to the truth of reality, so well symbolized as the I AM that spoke to Moses out of the burning bush. Compared to the I AM, what are these various worries and thoughts but specks of dust, as it were? Worries are mere dross before the consuming fire of I AM. In less poetic words, in the experience of the I AM—openness, trust, love, wonder, awe—anxious and disturbing thoughts are relaxed, let go, abandoned, transcended. In active trust in that which truly is (the I AM WHO AM), the mind feels refreshed, at peace, safe, nourished. Anxious thoughts dissipate and wear down the human person; trust and wonder refresh and build up into Christ. Every human being, having the same “nature” or way of being in the world, works the same way. Each of us is preserved, strengthened, refreshed through living contact with the Divine ground; and each of us is spent or wasted in futile speculations, worries, daydreams. Whatever grounds the psyche in reality is good and life-affirming; whatever dissipates the psyche is destructive and to be avoided. Hence, meditation—Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, for examples—preserve and nourish; daydreaming, worrying, playing “what if” games, and so on—spend and disintegrate the soul’s resources. Immersion in genuine beauty refreshes; trash music or pornographic images waste the soul. So one may ask: How, then, to ground myself on the divine ground? How to become refreshed by the refreshing source? “Turn and be saved,” in the language of the Israelite prophets, or “Turn to Me and live.” In the words of some mystics, “Return to the center.”  Why not now?

They Come In (Part II)

In stark contrast to the good and friendly spirits of deceased loved ones, which one experiences suddenly and unexpectedly from time to time, other forces come in, uninvited, and undesired. Consider a possibility: As the time for going to bed draws near, one is dimly apprehensive, because they come in, night after night, as you sleep. They cannot be grasped, known, or seen clearly. Nor does one know if they are spirits, thoughts, feelings, memories, or some combination of various psychic and spiritual forces. What one knows is the effects they have upon the soul:  they leave one troubled, disturbed, restless. And they do so, not when one is awake and more or less alert, and able to deal with them. On the contrary, they come in when one is not paying attention, not conscious, but in a mental state of sleep-consciousness.

What are these forces that disturb the soul as one sleeps? Or is one actually asleep? Are you asleep, dreaming that you are being disturbed, or are you awake, and being disturbed by forces beyond your mental and spiritual grasp? To the best of my knowledge, they come in as one sleeps; and if one wakes in the night, they seek to continue the unpleasant conversation-battle as one is in a semi-conscious, semi-awake state. One can choose: If this waking up occurs again, rather than try to return to sleep, or try to dismiss the troubling forces, one can arise and seek to be as alert, as awake, as one can be, “watching and praying.”

They come in, uninvited. So one may say to oneself something like this: Fully awake, I shall invite them in for a conversation, and call upon the Almighty, the all-good One, to assist in the examination. But they may be like death in Bergman’s “Seventh Seal,” that cheated at the game of chess by misplacing a piece in the chess game of life. I shall invite them in, as St. Anthony of the desert invited the devil into his cave, to dialogue with him. I must arise, keep alert, and enter into a dialogue with as much light and peace as possible. “Evil loves to hide,” so I shall speak with them in the light. If I try to avoid these unseen critters, they gain all the more power over me.

What are these “critters”? Who are these nocturnal visitors that bring not peace and sweet sleep, but restless dreams and some sense that one doing combat in the night, as one seeks to sleep? What are these forces?

Who are you? Are they parts of me, parts of you? Are they more or less forgotten parts of one’s psyche? Are they memories, past events, persons with whom we have an incomplete, imperfect, even troubling relationship? Are they spirits from a darker world than the mind knows? Or are these visitors perhaps sent by dark forces to torment us? Are they in some sense purgatorial fires, a foretaste of hell if one does not rather surrender to the all-good? If they are purifying the soul, then they are purgatorial.  My own sense is that they are not intentionally purgatorial, or leading one into the bliss of divine union; rather, they are forces of resistance to divine Presence. They are, as it were, temptations not to rely on the all-good, who is available even in sleep to all who but call on Him. Or they are residues of our failures to draw fully on the power of the Good.

What I sense is that these visitors are memories, unresolved conflicts, less than noble responses to others, or to the trials of life. They are indeed parts of oneself, parts that are actively yet hiddenly resisting a full and loving surrender to the all-good God. They arise when the soul is not yet beatified, made supremely happy, fully at home in God. They are, perhaps, part of oneself that are not fully integrated into the conscious life one has chosen. They are evidence of incompletion, imperfection, even the unsaintly—or at the extreme, the demonic—in oneself.  These forces are in me and of me, myself not truly brought into “the Kingdom of God,” not baptized into Christ, not fully immersed in divinity.

So the soul is indeed in-between the rule of God, the Kingdom of God, and the rule of one’s ego, one’s fleeting and even destructive self. True or not? The soul not fully in God is gnawed on by its own forces resisting divine victory, which is the deification of the human being, becoming truly and wholly one with Christ. One wants it both ways: God and self.

Is this true? Who are these nocturnal visitors? Desires, thoughts, memories, actions not truly in accord with one’s being-in-Christ. They are more active in semi-consciousness because one does not overcome them sufficiently when conscious. A primary purpose of meditation is to overcome these forces of oneself contrary to God in the light of divine Presence.  In meditation, “the bottom of the soul comes up,” and one feels, sees, experiences the battle of self-forces against divine love. Meditation is the condition of being wakefully purified and brought into union. If this is true, it makes sense to sit still in meditation before sleeping, before “turning in for the night,” so that one can indeed confront these dark forces of oneself in the divine light by the holy Spirit. Again, I must ask, Why not now?

Ah, I sit quietly, and immediately begin to fall asleep. “The spirit is indeed willing, but the flesh is weak.” One becomes stronger by resisting the pull to sleep, and sitting as alert as possible in the light of divine presence, now.

"I Can Do All Things Through Christ Who Strengthens Me"

It is true and beneficial to keep in mind that none of us “has arrived,” no one is perfect, no one is always doing God’s will. We are all wayfarers, being moved into the Kingdom of God by divine grace and by our free response. That “Kingdom” is God’s Presence here and now. To forget that each of us is incomplete, imperfect, a wayfarer, strongly encourages us to become overly demanding of others, and usually to expect more than they can give or do. The challenge is to keep the high standard of God’s will, of His law, and of right reason, and yet understand our human weaknesses and limitations. “What I want is mercy, not sacrifice.”

The Apostle Paul had high hopes for his disciples and fellow Christians, and yet clearly understood the constant need for divine grace, divine empowerment, to live Christ faithfully. During these two weeks in October, we hear at Mass brief selections from the fourth chapter of Paul’s profound Letter to the Philippians. It is one of the books of the Bible that I would heartily recommend for each and all of us to study and to learn, to think about, to take to heart, to apply to one’s life. Rather than set down abstract norms, the Apostle provides practical spiritual advice for us, as we journey home into God.

Today we hear the Apostle Paul’s answer to human anxiety, to worrying.  “Have no anxiety about anything, but by prayer with thanksgiving” surrender to God, and then “the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” Clear words, solid advise, difficult to do only if we resist, preferring to worry rather than to pray. Note that the kind of prayer that overcomes anxiety—and is not just another form of worry—is offered with thanksgiving, and with the loving surrender of oneself to the all-good God. It is very easy to know if our prayer is genuine: Do we experience God’s peace, our union with Christ, rather than remain trapped in our own troubled mind? Whereas anxiety or worry are forms of self-concern, self-centered life, interior peace comes only to a person open to, responsive to, the divine Presence. As the divine flows in, our troubled minds are stilled, a truth pictured in Christ calming the waves of the lake. The lake of our souls becomes still, tranquil, reflecting sun and moon—God’s glory, rather than ourselves.

St. Paul offers us another spiritual gem on the second Sunday of October:  “I can do all things in Him [Christ] who strengthens me.” One simple sentence, but utterly rich if taken to heart. In my early youth I read a book by a Protestant preacher named Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, The Power of Positive Thinking. The one point I remember is the effective use he made from this simple verse from Philippians. These words are to be learned, and often repeated in one’s mind to still the wayward heart, to bring one greater peace, allowing God’s free and powerful presence to flow in: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”  Living well is a constant burden. Each human being needs interior strengthening. Our faith-union with Christ Jesus will offer us this strength if and only if we accept it. Such acceptance begins with hearing that God’s grace is available, and letting God’s peaceful presence in, trustingly.