Putting on the Brakes

God speaks in the silence of the heart, and we listen. And then we speak to God from the fullness of our heart, and God listens. And this listening and this speaking is what prayer is meant to be…

– Mother Teresa

I’m feeling the lack of quiet in my life these last few weeks. Just too busy, not putting on the brakes when I know I should, or maybe it’s more a turning of the wheel into the Silence more often. So here’s an old formula for building the Quiet Inside, and what to do when you get there: Remember when you’re feeling Life is pushing you too fast, just slow down and rush….. that’s R-U-S-H.

R-EST your senses. Close your eyes!
– Slow down!
– Be attentive to your breathing

U-NPACK your heart, lay it on the altar
– Read the Book of Your Life with God
– Read the Book His Life in the Gospels
– Or just relax and look at the pictures!

S-ILENCE
– Do nothing but breathe
– Listen for your heartbeat
– Listen for His heartbeat
– See if the rhythms match

H-OLY SPIRIT come! Remember that He prays in, with & for you!

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

Starved for Beauty

When they told him this, Ransom at last understood why mythology was what it was – gleams of celestial strength and beauty falling on a jungle of filth and imbecility. – Perelandra, C.S. Lewis

How often have you found yourself out at a movie or watching the television, perhaps just flipping through channels in the hopes of finding “something good,” and you actually find it?

Does it grab you? Is it like the sensation C.S. Lewis describes above? A new power descends and lifts you up… a fragrance you once knew and loved returns and floods your mind? For me, it seems so often I stumble through the media with boots on, wading through the equivalent of sewage, and then fresh water comes in like a stream from the mountains. And I know I’ve found the Good Stuff…

Shawshank Redemption is good stuff. It’s the film based on a Stephen King novella (he sold the movie rights for $1 to writer/director Frank Darabont): a heart-wrenching work with themes of endurance in the midst of suffering, hoping against hope, and the heart’s yearning for beauty and freedom.

There’s a scene I love where Andy Dufresne, the falsely accused prisoner, sneaks into the warden’s office and blasts a Mozart aria on the record player. He sets it in front of the microphone so that the music pours through the loudspeakers, soaring over the prison like the hymn of angels. The tough, grey-faced men in the yard all lift up their heads and listen, as innocent and open again as children. For so long they have been in darkness, now a light from some “undiscovered country” dawns.

Morgan Freeman plays the character Red, a kind of narrator throughout the movie. He remembers the scene: “I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don’t want to know. Some things are better left unsaid. I’d like to think they were singing about something so beautiful it can’t be expressed in words, and it makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a grey place dares to dream. It was as if some beautiful bird had flapped into our drab little cage and made these walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.“

We know beauty when we see it, hear it, taste or touch it. We are made for beauty, and beauty is clean, pure, and good. Beauty is a gift. It’s really what the human heart craves more than anything. I firmly believe that deep down, in this culture so full of noise and distraction, greed and grasping, madness and materialism, we all pine for the fresh water of Beauty to wash over us. And it’s out there, in a million different places. As the Bible says, “Open wide your mouth and I will fill it.” Like little birds we can turn to our Lord and let Him feed us.

Pope Benedict just published his letter for the 41st World Communications Day. In it he said “Beauty, a kind of mirror of the divine, inspires and vivifies young hearts and minds, while ugliness and coarseness have a depressing impact on attitudes and behaviour… Media education should be positive. Children exposed to what is aesthetically and morally excellent are helped to develop appreciation, prudence and the skills of discernment.”

He continues; “Any trend to produce programs and products – including animated films and video games – which in the name of entertainment exalt violence and portray anti-social behaviour or the trivialization of human sexuality is a perversion, all the more repulsive when these programs are directed at children and adolescents…”

Above all, God wants to give us beauty, truth, and goodness. He is the very fullness of all three! And the Church desires to share with us a vision of human dignity! We are made for eternity, and for housing within us eternal truths! Like a mother, the Church knows what is best for us and she lays out a table of rich food and drink; this banquet of beauty, truth, and goodness is the meal that will really satisfy us! Much (by no means all) of what the media culture has been offering us is junk food, fast food. Let’s try and shut down the pipes that are pouring the wrong stuff into our nice, clean living rooms. Let’s turn to the rich and ever-growing, overflowing streams of Beauty that are coming from so many directions; art, music, poetry, prayer. What a rich history we have in the Church! Looking to Her, we never need to go hungry.

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Looking for that aria that was played in Shawshank Redemption?
Here is the opera in it’s entirety.
And here’s the single aria on iTunes.

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

Search Engine for the Catholic Catechism

What a treasure the CCC is! I’ve always loved the power in the prologue:

God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength. He calls together all men, scattered and divided by sin, into the unity of his family, the Church. To accomplish this, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son as Redeemer and Saviour. In his Son and through him, he invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life.

Thanks to the Knights of Columbus, we can now perform a lightning fast word or topic search through the entire Catechism of the Catholic Church. Check it out at this link –
http://www.kofc.org/publications/cis/catechism/index.cfm

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

Dave Wilcox

Found a sweet video of Dave doing a Musicfest in Canada. Since there’s a Canadian David Wilcox, he doesn’t often go north… it’s just too confusing! But here he is, invited up anyway according to the host. And the clip of him singing is one of my favorites: Get On… so enjoy!

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

View the Great Isaiah Scroll

“For thus said the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel: By waiting and by calm you shall be saved, in quiet and in trust your strength lies. But this you did not wish.”

The Great Isaiah Scroll was found in the Dead Sea Caves in 1947 and it is dated at around 200 BC. This is the oldest copy of Isaiah known to exist. Get an up close and personal view of the Great Isaiah Scroll by clicking here

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

A Brief History of the Middle East

Who has conquered the Middle East over the course of world events? See 5000 years of history in 90 seconds! Visit the home of this map at http://www.mapsofwar.com

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

Education in Beauty

Pope Benedict XVI posted his address for the World Day of Communication. He mentioned a favorite theme of mine; that of educating the young in truth, beauty, and goodness.
Check out the article at www.zenit.org

Full text of letter is at the Vatican site here.

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

The Wedding Singer and Divine Intimacy

How close do you want to be with God?

I guess it depends on where we are in this sometimes amazing, often confusing, maybe mundane or heart-wrenching journey of life. I think in the beginning that question can send a little shiver up the back of our necks. Intimacy with God? Yikes. God is just a Big Person, and we’re like little kids in the Principal’s office. Intimacy isn’t in the vocabulary yet.

As we mature and “find ourselves,” maybe we see God differently. But we’re afraid that He will take over, take all of me, in the relationship. “Be all demanding and stuff.” What about my freedom, my personality, my style? Will there be anything left in me but a bland sort of niceness? Will God just pour “holiness” into the mold of my being while the flavor that is me slowly dissipates?

“Oh, yeah. He used to be so much fun. Then he became…. a Christian.”

I think in our American culture, so focused on ME that we forget about the OTHER, the idea of becoming holy somehow feels like an affront to our freedom. In our minds, becoming holy could even connote becoming less human. Closeness with God equates with far-ness from fun.

Now if all we’ve got is this skewed vision, I would affirm those fears. I didn’t want to give in when I first heard the Divine Whisper, slipping through the scenes of Luke Skywalker watching the suns set, or in the mystical melodies of John Williams, or the sculptured and ethereal beauties of the Sistine Chapel. For the above reasons and for more, I was a little nervous about leaping into the arms of this unearthly Love. Does this resonate with anyone?

I think through fear of losing ourselves in a relationship with God, we then fail to really give ourselves fully to anyone. We end up stagnating in a pool of doubt, giving part of hearts but not all, or worse, we go through relationships grasping instead of trusting that love will be given.

In those classic lines from the film The Wedding Singer… We give up on this idea of selfless love. Robbie decides to live footloose and fancy free like Sammy:

Robbie: “That’s it, man, starting right now, me and you are going to be free and happy the rest of our lives!”

But then a person gets to wondering if there’s more to this highway than just my way.

Sammy: “I’m not happy. I’m miserable.”

Robbie: “Wha – what?”

Sammy: “See… I grew up idolizing guys like Fonzie and Vinnie Barbarino because they got a lot of chicks. You know what happened to Fonzie and Vinnie Barbarino?”

Robbie: “Yeah, I read that Fonzie wants to be a director and Barbarino, I think… the mechanical bull movie? I didn’t see it yet.”

Sammy: “Their shows got canceled. Because no one wants to see a fifty-year-old guy hitting on chicks.”

Robbie: “So what are you saying?”

Sammy: “What I’m saying is all I really want is someone to hold me and tell me that everything is going to be all right.”

There it is.

Read Scripture. All He wants is to gather us in like a mother hen gathers her chicks. Who made the love we want afterall? Who set it swirling into time and space, tumbling straight into the world from the mystical Heart of the Trinity?

When we’re quiet and alone, we can get those deep thoughts. You might come up with an answer that sounds like the one Augustine whispered to himself way back in the 4th century (the human heart never changes). “The deepest desire of my heart is to see another and to be seen by that other person.”

So we can let Him in. In fact, if we want to really know love, we must let Him in. And then when we hear a gospel like today’s, we can smile:

“The mother of Jesus and his brothers arrived at the house. Standing outside, they sent word to Jesus and called him. A crowd seated around him told him, “Your mother and your brothers and your sisters are outside asking for you.” But he said to them in reply, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking around at those seated in the circle he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”
– Mark 3:31-35

Imagine being one of those people gathered around Him, in the dusky twilight of the Judean hills, when those words of Divine Intimacy first fell from His lips… When Love Divine breathed through our biology, and we could touch theology!

Today, I am invited into this circle. I too can sit before Him, in the light of this Face; the face of the man who entered into our human family to lift us up to His Divine Family. That Family is my true home, that Love is my destiny. Come Lord Jesus…

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

On Snowflakes and Beyoncé

“How full of the creative genius is the air in which these are generated! I should hardly admire more if real stars fell and lodged on my coat.”
– Henry David Thoreau

Ken Libbrecht, professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology, is a snowflake expert. He’s taken phenomenal photographs of actual snow crystals and flakes, even creating a “Field Guide to Snowflakes” that showcases these miniature masterpieces. On his website, www.snowcrystals.com, he basically affirms the old saying that no two snowflakes are exactly alike. But let’s let Ken speak for himself!

“The number of possible ways of making a complex snowflake is staggeringly large. To see just how much so, consider a simpler question – how many ways can you arrange 15 books on your bookshelf? Well, there’s 15 choices for the first book, 14 for the second, 13 for the third, etc. Multiply it out and there are over a trillion ways to arrange just 15 books. With a hundred books, the number of possible arrangements goes up to just under 10 to the 158th power (that’s a 1 followed by 158 zeros). That number is about 1070 times larger than the total number of atoms in the entire universe!”

Ken, that’s AWESOME!

“Now when you look at a complex snow crystal, you can often pick out a hundred separate features if you look closely. Since all those features could have grown differently, or ended up in slightly different places, the math is similar to that with the books. Thus the number of ways to make a complex snow crystal is absolutely huge. And thus it’s unlikely that any two complex snow crystals, out of all those made over the entire history of the planet, have ever looked completely alike.”

And now, a seeming digression…

Don’t you love it when a catchy tune gets stuck in your head for the entire day and you CANNOT seem to shake it? Maybe it’s the theme from the Andy Griffith Show, or Beverly Hills Cop, or that Empire Carpet commercial? And then you feel compelled to tell a friend like you’re the Ancient Mariner and they say “AAAGHHH!! Nooo! Get that albatross away from me!!” and BLAM! You’ve spread the maddening melody and the beat goes on…

Enter Beyoncé and her infernal song Irreplaceable.

Played out, played to death, crammed down our ears a hundred times a day. You must not know about me, You must not know about me…. AAAGGGHHH!!!!! It’s a catchy tune, granted. But it’s got issues. Let’s lend an ear to the lyrics:

“You must not know about me, You must not know about me
I could have another you in a minute, matter fact he’ll be here in a minute… “

Ouch. As William Congreve once said, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned!” (I thought it was Shakespeare too, but it actually comes from a play called the “The Mourning Bride” (1697). Thanks Mr. Internet!)

“I can have another you by tomorrow, So don’t you ever for a second get to thinking you’re irreplaceable.”

Now Beyoncé’s song is filling the airwaves (#1 on iTunes for weeks). The lyrics of this song have an angst that we can all recognize in our culture; it points to the ongoing war between men and women, the battle between love and lust, the dichotomy of seeing others as a gift or choosing rather to grasp at them as if they were objects just meant to sate our own selfish desires. Now in light of these battle scars, I would affirm Beyoncé’s reaction in the song. If the woman has been abused or objectified in the relationship, she should jump ship and get out of the situation. The problem is, she jumped right past the lifeboat that carries us into the sea of seeing people as persons, and she turns around and treats men as objects herself! “I won’t lose a wink of sleep ’cause the truth of the matter is replacing you is so easy…” What are we, vacuum cleaners? Washing machines? The truth is, we are not replaceable. We are not pleasure machines that can be exchanged when the pleasure dries up.

The truth is, we are like snowflakes. Each of us is unrepeatable. Every one of us is, in fact, irreplaceable. And yes, even when we fall for the lies of our culture, becoming just a face in a crowd, selling out our virtue for the quick and easy, becoming a number instead of that New Creation Christ calls us to be, we are still, deep in our being, utterly and inviolably unique and irreplaceable. There will never be another you.

As Pope Benedict XVI said in his inaugural homily “We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.”

And Pope John Paul II sang this truth as well when he wrote “The human person is a unique composite – a unity of spirit and matter, soul and body, fashioned in the image of God and destined to live forever. Every human life is sacred, because every human person is sacred.”

So don’t you ever for a second get to thinking you’re NOT irreplaceable.

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

Pipe Dream: A feast for the eyes and ears!

Just stumbled on this at Steve Ray’s blog and was happily amazed. Enjoy!

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org