Open Up and Say "Awe"

“Entrances to holiness are everywhere. The possibility of ascent is all the time. Even at unlikely times and through unlikely places.”

– Bamidbar Rabba

Our little boy is captivated by absolutely everything. He is nine months old; his little eyes are brand new, his tiny ears are brand new, and his little soul is like a sponge absorbing EVERYTHING.

We watch in amazement as the little nuances of sunlight on a wall capture his attention, or the corners and colors of his toy blocks become like the facets of a diamond in his hands. The other day, he amused himself with a plastic cup for about 15 minutes, turning it over and over again in his fingers, crinkling it, bending it, chewing on it. It was hilarious too watch, and humbling at the same time. Humbling that something so ordinary could capture his attention for so long…

Our little boy is teaching us as parents, with our 30 something eyes and ears and hearts, to see everything as if fresh from the Hands of God. These are the days of living wonder for him… and for us.

THE BIG PICTURE

Catholics are back in “Ordinary Time,” liturgically speaking, but beware… this is just when the most extraordinary things can happen. With the coming of the Holy Spirit, I think we’re given the power to see things in their true light, finally.

Our boy is still dripping with the waters of Baptism; he can see. But with the gift of the Spirit, we too can “see.” Finally, the veil of mediocrity, of ennui, of agenda, or mere utility (only seeing a thing as a thing for our use) is pulled away. The Spirit is our Divine Physician making a house call, inviting us to open up our mouths and say “awe.” To be captivated again. Behold! The world is full of gratuitous beauty! Faces, places, colors, sounds take on all the freshness which they had for us when we were young and the world was new.

Further, we can with the gift of the Holy Spirit go into those places we once feared the most; the inner depths of our own hearts, those locked rooms, those shadowlands that we thought we’re unapproachable by anyone, including ourselves, let alone God. Now, He whispers, let’s “lower our nets for a catch.” And He says, “Fear not,” reminding us that we are truly called to be like little children, and that He Who Is Our Father will take us into those places by the Hand.

May God grant us “old heads” the grace to become little again. To rediscover everything, to see every object and every subject, every thing and every person as a gift from the Hands of the Father. From the ordinary and mundane to the extraordinary and sublime…

“To see the miraculous within the ordinary is the mark of highest wisdom.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Hooked

I’m sure we’ve all had movie moments that stick with us; scenes that combined character, catharsis, music and meaning into an unstoppable force that broke into our world and suddenly, lifted us up into theirs. Like modern parables, a great Truth was conveyed in a story and it bypassed our security systems. “Hey,” we whisper to ourselves, “that’s about me…”

I’ve been hooked on the above scene from Hook for years now. In the movie, Robin Williams plays a much older, stressed, and well dressed Peter Pan; a Peter Pan who has forgotten who he is and subsequently become a merger and acquisitions lawyer (crazy, I know). He’s married to Wendy’s granddaughter and now his kids have been captured by the infamous Captain Hook.

The scene above is Peter’s great awakening. At first we find him utterly confused, ripped from the “real” world of comfort and security into a fantastic place of dreams and magic. But what does he do? How can he live? All is wild and blazingly bright in this world, so unlike the foggy gray and ease and comfort of the world he came from.

The Lost Boys (those perpetual and unsupervised 5th graders) cannot fathom that this is their fearless leader, trembling as he is with fear before them in his suit pants. What’s a suit?

A line is drawn by the new leader of the Lost Boys, and Peter stands alone on the other side. Then, dramatically, one little boy crosses over the line, into his fear. He takes Peter by the hand, pulls him down to his level, and touches his face. Pushing and pulling at his cheeks, peering into his eyes, the Little Boy is searching for the truly Lost Boy, Peter Pan. Robin Williams in this scene, manipulated like silly putty in the hands of a Child, cannot help but smile. A light breaks through his weary eyes and suddenly the Child before him whispers “Oh there you are Peter!” The music swells, the Boys rush to Peter’s side and all begin the process of rediscovery with him. Eventually, after a long training period, Peter learns again how to fly.

Inspirations, insights… how does this speak to me?

I am lost. I need to be found again. I need the Christ Child to take me by the hand and pull me down to His level, to that place of humility, of smallness. I need Him to touch me and to push aside the worry and the anxiety and the sin and the weakness. I need Him to cross over that line and believe in me. And if I let Him have His way with me, I will hear those words “There you are Billy!”

And by His Grace I will learn again just how to FLY!

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

Put THIS in Your Stimulus Package

I have a great idea for a Stimulus Package that will save us $800 billion dollars. Get this…. It’s called the Love Your Neighbor and Quit Being Greedy Action Plan.

Here’s how it works:

– In all of your decisions, don’t make profit, expansion, progress, or power the end. Use them as a means to another end…

– and that end is, get this… people. Us. Men and women.

It’s a crazy idea, I know, but I got to thinking that the most precious resource, the greatest asset, the golden fire that makes the world go ’round is actually NOT money. It’s people and a passion for people – men and women and children, in all of their manifold appearances of poverty, sickness, oppression, beauty, talent, gifts and contributions.

So the fuel to drive this Stimulus Package, whose end would not be spending but the idea of giving for the revitalization of men and women and families who are the living stones that make up businesses, factories, and corporations, would be… Love.

Yes, it’s a little old school, a little archaic. But give it a whirl and you’ll be amazed at how much a little of that love your neighbor stuff can carry you, and carry others.

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

Survey Says….

Yesterday’s gospel reading from Matthew 16 contained one of my favorite dialogues in all of the New Testament. For me, it’s like one of those “grasshopper” moments from Kung Fu.

A great mystery is encountered, and questions like fingers fumble their way through the mind’s knot. Possible answers start to unravel and shimmer on the surface of the soul, each inviting one to take hold of them. But which train of thought carries the precious cargo of the Truth?

THE QUESTION: “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”

Jesus, the Master Teacher, leads them into the Mystery. He doesn’t blast a trumpet, pass out literature, get a lush campaign going to get everybody to follow Him. He just lives… exists… each day, preaching and teaching and walking and breathing, being Who He Is in utter simplicity. And those miracles aren’t like flashy fireworks you know. Read the gospels. They fall from His fingertips so nonchalantly. No airs, just His actions. Wasn’t this all prophesied anyway?

This is how Jesus begins His “campaign.” Not very conventional, eh? And then He invites some feedback. The first Gallup poll. How incredible, how humble, how disarming is it that He wants to know what we think of Him? This could be the beginning of a beautiful relationship! And He wants us to take a really good look at what He’s saying and doing, He wants us to get to know Him so we can give an informed answer when it’s time to vote.

I know that for us today, the invitation still stands (it always has and always will, until the curtain falls in the western sky). Now all we have to do is sit down for a little while each day and read the gospels to illuminate our minds, to experience what He said and did ourselves (because He is still doing it). May we discover in this sincere quest for the truth what so many others have found…

Simon Peter said in reply, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

Yes, Grasshopper, you have chosen… wisely!

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

Diary of a Former Atheist – Tonight’s Radio Guest

Tonight on the Heart of Things Radio Show, I have the privilege of interviewing Jennifer from “Et Tu?” – You can listen live via internet radio here.

If you are a blogger or a reader of blogs in Catholic circles, you may have heard of this wonderful wife and mother who has been chronicling her journey from atheism into the Catholic Faith over the past two years. With humor and deep insight, she unpacks the journey into God and the deepening of the life of faith, facilitates lengthy discussion threads, and occasionally addresses the presence of scorpions in the life of her household. Tune in tonight at 5pm EST!

ABOUT JEN (taken from “Et Tu?”)

I’m 31, married, and have three children ages three and under. I have a background as a web designer/developer but am now Director of Chaos Management for my household. I was an atheist my entire life until around age 26 — I never once considered the possibility that God might exist, not even as a child. I saw no absolutely no proof for God’s existence and couldn’t imagine how a person could believe in an unseen deity. Around the time my first child was born I started to think that maybe I should take another look at the question of God. Upon investigation I was shocked — really, really shocked — to find that Christianity had some compelling data points in its favor. I came to a dry intellectual belief in God but didn’t know what to do from there. To make a long story short, my husband and I both converted to Catholicism in 2007 and today I am thrilled beyond words to be a Christian.

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For more of Jen’s posts and a general introduction, click here.

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

Automated Confessionals?

Here’s a ridiculous and very funny video… and yes, I’m stalling. It’s been so busy I need time for some real meat and potatoes posts! In the meantime, ponder the potential of… AUTOMATED CONFESSIONALS!

“Confession heals, confession justifies, confession grants pardon of sin. All hope consists in confession. In confession there is a chance for mercy. Believe it firmly. Do not doubt, do not hesitate, never despair of the mercy of God. Hope and have confidence in confession.”
– St. Isidore of Seville

“God gave Himself to you: give yourself to God.”
– Blessed Robert Southwell

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

God Sleeps in the Womb of the Earth

Yesterday Christ died. He said “It is finished,” and He gave up His spirit. The great Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the Alpha and the Omega, the Morning Star was Himself extinguished by the Darkness.

So now we wait, and weep, and wonder. Has Death won? Is faith just a futile attempt to hold off the inevitable night, like a match lit for a brief moment, surrounded by impenetrable shadow, for a few seconds of illumination, until all is night? We wonder if there’s more. We wait, we watch, like Mary by the tomb.

I see her sitting there, still stunned by the events of that Dark Friday, a whole cut into her heart, scraped clean. Open hands, cupped, lying on her lap, still breathing out the sweet smell of myrhh and oils from the Jewish burial custom. She stares blankly over the distance between the shade of an olive tree and the Roman guards moving about their watch, mumbling in a language she doesn’t know. She is there keeping vigil, but she is not there. She is nowhere, she is no one. Her thoughts can only find rest on a few random phrases of His, like a bird alighting on swaying reeds.

“Destroy this temple…. And I will raise it up.”
“Just as the seed falls to the earth and dies, so must the Son of Man….”
“I am the Resurrection and the Life…”

But then the winds of memory and sorrow and unspeakable torture blow through her mind again, and the bird of her heart must fly away, for this wind is too strong. After all, she saw His broken body, washed those wounds with His Mother. She saw the marks, the gaping hole in His chest. “It is finished,” she whispers to the wind. And her tears drop into the dusty earth.

But Holy Saturday is a day pregnant with possibility….

“Just as the seed falls to the earth and dies, so must the Son of Man….”

Yesterday, Words that can remake the world were spoken, dropped from the mouth of Jesus like seeds full of paradoxical promise. They were spoken the night before as well, at a supper His heart longed to celebrate. These Words convey to the human heart the very secret of human life, the way to the truth of who we are and what we can become. These Words and only these Words, like a magic spell, can rebuild the shattered Dream of Eden, and create a Civilization of Life and Love. These Words have unspeakable power in them.

“This is My Body, given up for you…. Take and eat, take and drink.”

To the barren fields of fallen man, the God-Man has given His body as grain. To the earth that has shared in our sorrow, drink. Where thorns and thistles grew now the seed in the blood of Jesus flows. In the dark womb of the earth, He lies broken, sleeps, and germinates, sending out the small, green shoots of promise…And with Mary, we watch and wait for Morning.

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

The Wound of Our Indifference

The other day a student of mine asked “What do you think would happen if Jesus came back today? Would people still follow him?” We had a little discussion about it, and this poem popped into my head. I first stumbled onto it through a tape I had of Bishop Fulton Sheen; he read it in the middle of a talk he was giving.

Indifference
by G. A. Studdert-Kennedy

When Jesus came to Golgotha,
They hanged Him on a tree,
They drove great nails through hands and feet,
And made a Calvary.
They crowned Him with a crown of thorns,
Red were His wounds and deep,
For those were crude and cruel days,
And human flesh was cheap.

When Jesus came to Birmingham
They simply passed Him by,
They never hurt a hair of Him,
They only let Him die;
For men have grown more tender,
And they would not give Him pain,
They only just passed down the street,
And left Him in the rain.

Still Jesus cried, ‘Forgive them,
For they know not what they do!
And still it rained the winter rain
That drenched Him through and through;
The crowd went home and left the streets
Without a soul to see,
And Jesus crouched against a wall
And cried for Calvary.

What a profoundly sad reality it is that today we have become so indifferent. So blaise. So removed from “encounters” that could bring us life. “No thanks… I’m fine. I don’t know… nuthin’…. I don’t care… either way…. whatever.”

Ugh…

There’s a passage in Revelation (I think) where God mourns this luke-warmness… “Would that you were hot or cold….” We’re like Cream of Wheat these days that has sat on a shelf just a few minutes too long. In the immortal words of John Cougar Mellencamp, it’s “beige to beige…. that’s all there is these days.” The culture’s practice of “safe s_x” (and how sad is it that I have to bleep that so it can bypass certain filters) has turned into a contraceptive life in general! Contracepted relationships and endeavors, across the boards we hold back and do not commit with all of the heart and blood and passion that makes us human. So Jesus longs for Calvary, where there was passion and blood and heart…. His Sacred Heart.

If we saw Him would we pass Him by? He is right beside you now, and down the street and in the house and on the train.

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

Faults and Flames and Forgiveness

I normally start my mornings at Malvern Prep with daily Mass (and I feel it when I don’t). Typically, there are about six or seven of us, sometimes just three, with Fr. Baker offering up the Perfect Prayer. With such a small number of people, it’s sometimes kind of “weird” giving the responses at Mass… you know what I mean?

Once in awhile you miss your cue, or a word is off, or your mind wanders and sometimes slips up without the blanket of hundreds of other voices covering over your own.

“…and also with you.” (easy)

“… thanks be to God.” (piece of cake)

“May the Lord accept this sacrifice at your hands, for the praise (glory?) and glory (praise?) of His Name, uh, for our good and … for the good? of all His (the) Church… I think.” (dang it)

One of the awkwardly beautiful parts of this daily Mass of sometimes just four souls (and all of Heaven of course, smiling at us in our awkwardness) is the Lamb of God sequence. I was contemplating it the other day. It was just before the Fire of Love descended from Heaven to consume our sins and set a flame like Prometheus in our hearts through the Eucharist, that me, Gary, and Fran said, three times…

Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, grant us peace…

Three guys saying this three times in a big, mostly empty, chapel first thing in the morning. Sometimes it’s muffled, sometimes robotic. But the other day it zapped me.

There’s a scene from the movie Good Will Hunting where the therapist (Robin Williams) says something three times (and then keeps saying it) to the wounded soul of Will Hunting (Matt Damon). “It’s not your fault,” he whispers.

To this tough on the outside torn on the inside young man, abused as a youth, he speaks these words again and again:

It’s not your fault.
It’s not your fault.
It’s not your fault.

And Will Hunting, at first, says simply “I know.”

Then it gets awkward. The good doctor, himself a wounded healer, keeps saying it… It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault. Resisting at first, then angry, Will finally collapses in his arms as the terrible weight of guilt and shame and rage and bitterness at the abuse he suffered as a child breaks over him like salty waves. It’s a heart-breaking and beautiful scene.

Back to the Lamb of God…

Here, the tides have turned. Standing there in the chapel, we come to a realization that it is, in fact, our fault. It’s because of me and my family tree that Love was crucified on a tree. And we need to own that fact. That’s why every Mass starts off with the penitential rite. I have sinned! I messed up! Throughout my life I’ve added many a sour note to the symphony of God’s original plan, and sometimes it’s led many a fellow musician into discord and dissonance. So we take the time to look at this scribbled parchment and we turn it over to the Master Composer. And get this…. He rewrites it all…. using our notes (I love how He does that!). They are transformed, washed clean in the blood of the Lamb in a beautiful paradoxical spin cycle that can only be done by the Whirlwind of Love that is the Trinity. He takes away the sour notes of the world, the wounds and weeping and grants us peace. “By our very wounds we are healed,” so the Talmud tells us.

It’s unbelievable. I think that’s why we need to say it three times…. he takes away our sins, and the sins of the world. He grants us peace. And we collapse into His Heart at the great and intimate encounter that is the Eucharist… and every morning we get to stand in that Flame of Love, to consume and be consumed, and all our faults and failings become the kindling for that Fire of Mercy.

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

Take a Hike

“Moses does not encounter the living God at the mall. He finds Him (or is found by Him) somewhere out in the deserts of Sinai, a long way from the comforts of Egypt… Where did the great prophet Elijah go to recover his strength? To the wild. As did John the Baptist, and his cousin, Jesus, Who is led by the Spirit into the wilderness.”

– John Eldredge

I think our ancestors in the faith were natural hikers, minus the fleece caps, “sport-grip” water bottles, and Velcro bootstraps (I bet they would’ve loved Velcro though). They were simply in their element under a star-crowded sky. The smell of a wood fire, the rich, damp earth, the swell of the grapevine, the crush of grain between the fingertips, the smell of wool, thin air rocky climbs up craggy hills, sand and rock and the salt sea: all these were not extravagances for them. It was simply life. And everything became their teacher.

But when is the last time we walked on grass? Touched the cool bark of a tree, moved off of the beaten path, got our shoes muddy? We can move about an entire day from concrete to asphalt, linoleum to the plush carpets of our living rooms and never once touch the earth. In the words of one of my freshmen students, “What up wit ‘dat?”

If the earth is a kind of sacrament (and it is), and every living thing both its own reality and a glimmer of a mystery in the Mind of God (and they are, from flowers to rivers, our bodies to the swirling galaxies) then this distance we create is a kind of blockade, isn’t it? We are closing our hearts to the fruitfulness of that (lower case) sacramental life. God comes to greet us in the wild, in the desert, in the stillness of the morning and the dark blanket of the night, and we close the door in the middle of His “hello.”

“Arise, my beloved, my beautiful one, and come! For see, the winter is past, the rains are over and gone.”

“Uh, but I’m not dressed for it. Actually, I’m kinda busy right now. I have… a meeting.”

As Thoreau said, we need the tonic of wilderness. We need the desert desperately. We’ve grown soft like jelly and we’ve forgotten where we come from, and where we’re going. We’ve settled into this world as the Hebrews did in Egypt, so that even when freedom calls, we prefer slavery. We need the same antidote to the poison of sin; detoxification, rehabilitation, the stripping away of superfluities. We need to take a hike.

Enter Lent…

OK, so we can’t pack up and head to Sinai, or the Sahara, or the wilds of Northern Maine (dang it), but we can enter Lent. We can get up early and walk, pray, sit in the stillness as the morning pours liquid gold on the world and listen…. There is as much if not more of a wilderness in the hollow of our hearts that needs exploring, and we’ve crammed it full of busyness and noise and “responsibilities.”

Lent is about finding our hearts again in that wilderness, and it’s often only in the wilderness that we can find them. In the cold clear light, in the arid places, in the quiet stretch of the mind apart from the noise and haste of civilization. Lent is about being driven out of our comfortability, into the mud and briars and wild tangled vines and into the woods where the hermit thrush sings and mystery moves in shadow.

So let today be the first step into that desert… unplugged, stripped, silent, watchful. What mysteries will be revealed? What signs will we see? What superfluities will we let go of on this journey? And where will we find ourselves in 40 days?

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