Desert Flowers

In alluding to the loneliness that one experiences in the desert, one might ask, “Loneliness? Whom do you miss? Whom do you need? Why do you need them? Is not God everywhere? It is here that He may possibly be found!”
I think a better term for the experience of the solitary life is alone-ness, not loneliness. The solitary life, whether spent alone or among people, is a life of learning to be content in all circumstances. The barren scape of the desert does not necessarily attract. It more likely repels. It is not visually appealing, nor are there other distractions to take up one’s time such as are found in the peopled world. Many people run from the desert, but the pilgrim learns to embrace it. The pilgrim purveys the landscape, searching and searching: a whirlwind miles away, a lone coyote, a delicate spot of color. He seeks something else, turning his eyes from the colorless void to the prayer book in his hands. He lowers his gaze to the small yellow bloom emerging on the spiny nest of the barrel cactus.  He appreciates the fractaled, unpredictable shape of a branchy cholla. It is not pretty here, it is not ordered, nor is it comfortable. But perhaps it can become so.

To be alive, to be breathing, to be able to make choices no matter where you are placed: what a concept! Moreso, what gifts has God bestowed upon this place? What particular gift has He given you in this place? Can we take time to find out?

The desert produces exquisite flowers, but few people ever see them. Blessed are you if you do see them.

Hubble in Space

I have thought often of this forthcoming God. He is like light, ever coming, ever emitting himself. The Hubble Space telescope, recently worked on by several astronauts so that it will continue producing photographs for another five years, has given us glimpses of light coming across many billions of miles to our eyes. A new telescope will be put into space at the end of Hubble‘s usefulness, and it will be placed one million miles from earth. Its visual clarity should be greatly improved over even the Hubble’s, since its placement will be so far from earth’s distorting atmosphere. One scientist said the taking of these photographs through telescopes is like time travel, and the telescopes are like the time travelers. It is expected that light, billions of years old, will be recorded by the new space telescope. That light, which has traveled at 186,000 miles per second for these billions of years, is light that was emitted near the what is thought to be the origin of the universe. Perhaps light from the original theoretical “big bang” will be measured. Needless to say, these ideas are mind-boggling. Much of what we see in space may not even be there any more, but it is useless to conjecture, since it is impossible to apprehend what is happening so many light years away. It is as if space must bend back on itself in order to accommodate these huge expanses of time and distance. Perhaps what happened 6 billion years ago is not so far away from us in time and space., and we are fooled into thinking that what occurred billions of years ago is occurring at this time also. Kind of reminds you of heaven… everything is in the now… time is no longer existent. It is suspended in light.

The Law

It is thought about some early cultures that often it was the most powerful, and sometimes the most ruthless, who ruled. It makes sense; when men vied for power over family tribes and the greatest hunters or the strongest survived, fear and violence kept people in line, and the leaders held onto their posts with an iron hand. Eventually laws were developed by the likes of Hammurabi to limit and control bad behavior and bring forms of mercy and justice to society. This law was supposed to be above the power of the leader; even he was supposed to abide by it. Unless, of course, he didn’t.... more power and force. Still happens today. Manmade laws do not always win the respect of other men. Men can argue ad infinitum on one point or another, justifying any dictum. The wonderful beautiful idea/ideal of Judaism for the world was that the law was no longer negotiable, nor was it able to be changed, because it didn’t come from man: It came from outside himself, it came from above. THE ALIEN GOD SPOKE THE LAW. The Ten Commandments are to this day as viable as they were three thousand years ago. This law was for everyone, and made every man equal under it. No despot, no king, so tax collector was above it, nor could a person manipulate it. It was the ideal, the perfect, the unattainable, it was everything God hoped mankind would strive for, and receive from Him. Christians believe Jesus perfectly fulfilled this law, and so was the type of the perfect lamb of the Jews, slain for our sins. God fulfilled the law, coming to us from outside time, into our time, into our world, to be the means through His Son by which we attain perfection, through His blood.

Poustinia

In my early years as a young Christian I came across a paperback book called Poustinia in a used bookstore. The word looked intriguing. What was poustinia? The book proved fascinating; it described a very curious religious phenomenon from Russia that defies description in American culture. Catherine De Hoeck Dougherty, a former Baroness in Czarist Russia, fled to America as a result of the Communist Revolution and eventually came to work with the poor in Harlem. She wrote several books, but Poustinia was her best known. The word poustinia is derived from the Russian word for desert, and has come to mean a spiritual place of simplicity and separation from the world, with only God as one’s companion.

Catherine described the life of the poustinik in Russia. Poustiniks were persons called by God to live singly in a village, devoting themselves to prayer, spiritual direction and service to the needy. They lived in small huts with little in the way of material goods except for a Bible, a crucifix, and perhaps some prayer books. They spent their mornings in prayer and their afternoons in service. They were an integral part of the community and it appeared unquestionable that they were respected and revered. Generally widowed or never married, they often went on pilgrimage to search for the village that would welcome them in.

Poustinia was the spiritual place from which the poustinik served, but it was also the place where the poustinik lived physically. It was the cabin, and it was “poustinia,” the place of prayer and service.

In my newborn Christian enthusiasm I loved the idea of being a poustinik. To live in a simple house on the corner in one’s community, prayerful, serving, seeking nothing more than loving God and serving one’s neighbor, was a lay ministry sanspareil. It imitated the monastic life in that one’s town was a monastery and everyone in it a brother or sister. And isn’t there truth in that? Could our little neighborhoods and small towns be modern venues for poustinias?

Sometimes I wonder if there are already poustinias in my little town. Are there some warriors hidden among us, who keep us surrounded in prayer, whose generous gifts of service are done in anonymity? I think I can name a few, whose loving, hidden lives shine like little stars.

I hope and imagine that many people will be seeking a much simpler life, as change comes to America, as the frenetic pace of acquisition slows down along with the economy. Perhaps more people will realize that our materialistic rampages have turned to dust, and that true joy can best be found in faith, family, and nature, the less expensive but infinitely more valuable aspects of the American lifestyle.

I hope this year is full of spiritual blessing for you and that our faith deepens and strengthens in Christ.

Jen

Belief in the Resurrection

It is claimed by every believing Christian that Jesus was resurrected. But I wonder if many people think about this term for what it is and what it implies.
We believe Jesus was resurrected. We believe that he died, completely and in truth, and came back to life: He died on a cross, was taken down by his friends and placed in a tomb. The tomb was shut and guarded. On the third day, it was reported that the stone that covered the tomb was rolled away, that He was no longer there. His friends entered the tomb and found His burial cloths laying there, his body gone. It would be so easy to believe that there were lies surrounding the story of resurrection, especially in this jaded world. But we must not look at the resurrection with those eyes. We must place ourselves in the position of innocence, susceptible to miracles. Jesus actually came back to life after being dead for three days. The witnesses of his death knew he was dead; but to find his body gone, to learn He had visited several of them separately that day of His disappearance, then to be visited by him in a room whose door was locked, these strange impossibilities were converging into a fact that fulfilled every word He had uttered to them when they had been with him, the fact of His resurrection. He bore the five wounds, and His body could not be touched “because I have not yet ascended to my Father,” Jesus appeared to the disciples many times in the next fifty days before His final departure when He promised to send The Comforter, the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, one great truth, one simple unarguable fact is that these witnesses to all that happened wrote stories about it, long long accounts of all that they could remember, and in the end, stated that there was so much more to be told it could not all be written; for the world could not contain it.
We can rationalize in our modern sensibilities these witnesses were acting out of fear of the Roman authorities, that they were so hooked into their cult that they lost all sense of reason and reality, or that they were so far into the new faith that they felt compelled to promote it with lies after Christ died by writing letters and creeds, filling in the gaps in the story. But none of these explanations have ever been supported, even by the most skeptical critics. Furthermore, at Pentecost people began receiving power as further evidence of Christ’s post-death existence. The New Testament is many things, but most clearly it is the testimony of many people who saw Jesus physically, bodily, after he had died and been taken down from the cross, after He had been put in the tomb. The entire Bible is the Testament to this central, earth shattering reality.
These old old issues, whether or not He had truly died, whether He had come around after three days and was actually just revived, even to the two eternal arguments that one, He was never here in body, but only spirit, or two, that He was only a man, and His body was taken from the tomb and hidden, continue to this day. Resurrection to many just cannot be possible. The idea of an eternal heaven where spirits live with God is too fantastical. It implies too much that on this earth we cannot see or prove.
But the idea of resurrection, the fact of it, leads us to wonderful conclusions. If we are to be resurrected, then we need not fear death. If this life is eternal, then we know we will never lose forever our loved ones. If there is resurrection, then we can make the ultimate sacrifice for others. Life is a continuum through the death experience. We see beyond the pale, our perspective is changed completely. We have hope. Love becomes other-centered, and does not turn back onto ourselves. We follow the example of the One who made the sacrifice for us.
Resurrection means that death is not the end. There is something else, invisible to us here on earth, that we attain after our life here is over. Jesus is the only historical figure ever to have come back to life after dying, except for Lazarus, who came back at Jesus’ beckoning. Jesus had power over death, and it now has no sting.
My niece said a while back, “ Aunt Jen, I found out something I had never known before. I did not know that Jesus was divine - He was God’s son! That He was God!!” She had been in church all her life…. I said to her, “Yes, honey, that is the stumbling block for many, and that is the cornerstone of the faith!“

Belief

Sometimes as I am going about my life I stop. “Wait a minute!” I say, like Cher in the movie Moonstruck. “Wait a minute, snap out of it!” And I go over it again. Suddenly I realize that as a Christian I have to believe that there was a man come 2000 years ago who conquered death and was resurrected. How in the earthly world could that be? I have to believe that this man was born of a virgin girl, died on a cross and came back to life. I have to believe that after His resurrection he visited his friends, showing them his wounds, teaching them the gospel. I have to believe that in the early years of the church when the priest raised the bread and wine, he consecrated the elements into the actual body and blood of Christ. He still does today.

And then I think, “Do I believe this? How can I?” I am a normal human being. It all seems so impossible, if not foolish, ridiculous.

I then struggle with this belief, having accustomed myself to being in the physical world where things like this just cannot be. These mysteries are not scientifically provable. I never see dead people. Nor angels. I have bought the tale hook, line and sinker, for life, and yet there is very little evidence that it is true, and it is unlike me to believe anything is true that cannot be proven. Furthermore, the belief includes so much more. Angels filled the sky with song the night He was born. Astrologers followed a special star to his birthplace. King Herod murdered every firstborn child under the age of two soon after he was born, causing his parents’ flight into Egypt. He raised a man dead four days to life. He fed five thousand, not including women and children, with a few loaves and fishes. Twice. He descended into hell during the three days he was dead, and released souls from captivity. Hell? Souls captive?

I have to believe here is a heaven where souls pass after death. He came from there. And I have to believe that heaven is a whole big world out there - beyond the pale. Mary His mother is crowned its queen . She prays for us; the saints in heaven pray for us. He prays for us. They are our family, watching over us, a cloud of witnesses. Many of our own earthly families are there, praying for us. Our own prayers rise like incense to the very altar of God, heard and answered in heaven. This impossibly invisible world of angels, saints, the Holy Family and the Holy Trinity I have to believe in. Yet I have never seen one angel.

And yes, agnostic friends, I do not HAVE to believe…But I do, because He manifested Himself unto me so that the ineffable became real, the impossible became the normal, and the unseen became the seen.

Sometimes months and years pass by and I see certain prayers are not answered. But each day there are may unasked-for things that God does do for me: I see my children happy, working hard and resting in their faith. I see their children grow and thrive and speak the words of God. My husband is everything to me. Words of the Bible speak to me at just the right moment, friends call at just the right moment, I swerve to miss a deer at just the right moment.. I breathe. I see. I hear. I am thankful and filled with a glorious peace.

And so my soul soars to that great spirit who is everywhere, and says, “ How can I not believe?”

Preferences

I heard a quote on EWTN"S program "Journey Home" this week. A Norwegian Catholic priest, in giving his testimony as to how he became a Christian, said, "I found that I began to prefer God's words to human words."  I had always loved to read and discover beautiful ideas in my reading, but when I began to read the Bible, when words in this book began to jump out at me, telling me what was going in the depths of my soul, I realized no earthly book could ever have this kind of power. There was Spirit behind this book. I had read great books before, and they were stimulating to my intellect. But this book stimulated the very depths of my existence. No one on this earth could know what this Bible was telling me. It nailed directly on the head my innermost feelings, desires, thoughts, attitudes, fears, worries, whatever was going on in me; these words touched me.
Why not give it a try? Read this book. What can you lose?  But I believe that if you try reading it, say the book of Ephesians, or the Gospel of John,  and read it until you experience it, you will never want to put it down. God bless... Jen

Lament

Last fall a year ago Jan and I and some parishioners from our church attended a small retreat in the hills above our small town. It was beautiful and isolated there, a nice getaway. On the second day of the retreat a Scripture of the day was read which soon took on personal as well as global meaning for me.


I was asked to read the Saturday morning prayer from the Old Testament, Lamentations chapter 5, verses 1-22. I stood up to read the long selection and about halfway through, very suddenly, I choked up. The words I was reading were beginning to take on a life of their own. They were being directed from somewhere else, deep within me. And they flowed out of my mouth attached to deep sorrow for my own sins. My mind seemed to descend to my heart, as I took on the message as my own. The scripture was a lamentation for the Jewish people, and as I continued to read I also began to think of two Jewish women I had met the week before, while they visited our town on a bicycle trip. They were artists with whom I had immediately connected, and I invited them to my home. We shared our spiritual journeys, and I was blessed by their beautiful and meaningful Judaic creations, which we viewed on the internet. My reading became a prayer for them.

The experience I had reading from Lamentations was powerful. I felt sorrow for all that the Jewish people have been through for so long. I felt the heart of the Jewish people, as the words of Lamentations, with spirit and meaning, expressed the essence of what repentance truly is.

A couple of weeks later the financial institutions of the US basically crumbled. As frightening and awful as it was, in some ways I rejoiced, as I saw the consequences of vice and greed come to fruition. I have felt that we have reaped our reward for our sin. We in America have been so focused on material pursuits that we have not sought or heeded spiritual help. On so many fronts around the world we have ignored the cries of the suffering, and left it to others (or to no one) to feed the hungry and dispossessed. We have left our faith behind for the gods of wealth, power, and the tangible physical world. As people lose their homes, jobs, retirement accounts, all they have worked for, due to greed on many levels and in many parts of society, we see Congressmen scrambling to “fix” the problem. The words of Lamentations ring prophetically, as if a bleak future is upon us: “Our inheritance has passed to aliens, our homes to barbarians.” From the highest paid corporate chairman to the blue collar worker at the bottom of the rung, all of us have had our minds on nothing but more, more, more… and this is our nation’s sin. We have filled our lives with goods and disregarded our souls. Even eight months later, as word came through television’s pulpit that “we have reached the bottom, now things will begin to get better,” I cringed. There had not been enough time. The object of this downturn has less to do with our things than it does with our hearts.

Repentance is disregarded when life is easy. We are too busy to be bothered, or we dare to think we must be right with Him because we are blessed. We ignore the needy while in pursuit of our next toy or experience. Repentance, if is exists at all, comes as grace at the table, or a superficial assessment of ourselves that ignores the depth of our corruption. In good times, our repentance is cursory; and we continue to be blessed. Yet fears and anxiety do set in, because there is that innate knowledge that life just does not play out like this. Someone always pays the piper, and the balance sheet must be kept. No, even in good times, repentance, like the repentance in Lamentations, must be wholly engulfing. It must be a deep and utter sorrow for one’s actions and inactions, a sorrow that cleanses and empties a person completely, making one available for the seed of forgiveness that enters the heart. The Lord often warned the Israelites even during times of plenty to “put the plow to their hearts…” That message has not changed. We can ask that the Lord put the plow to our own hearts. The horror that Lamentations prophesies, were it laid on us in its entirety, would be unfathomable to our modern existence. Yet it is the horror of many people who live on this planet, and we need to see that such desolation is entirely possible here, too. We are our brothers’ keepers, and we need to incorporate that message into our hearts. We need to be diligent and watchful, prepared in an instant to give testimony and to help our neighbors. Maybe life is not tearing us up yet, but God can keep us real, if we ask Him. Therefore, repent of your sins, to the depths of your heart.

God Comes

These are places my mind goes when I think of the expanse of the universe. But I love to think about God as Light, coming to us eternally, and this metaphor is Scriptural. I believe God has left us physical truths that mirror His existence. The Universe as a metaphor for eternity, the Shroud as the evidence of Jesus’ physical reality and resurrection, the Eucharist as evidence of Christ’s promise “I will be with you always, even to the end of the age.”


The Judeo-Christian God is the One who comes to us, not the one invented by us, although we have a tendency to ascribe things to God that are very limiting and more reflections of ourselves than actuality. Many writers have spoken of this phenomenon, that God came to us, that we did not discover Him or make Him up. Carlo Carretto’s book, “The God Who Comes,” deals with this reality. God is ever coming, unstoppable, infusing, light shining in darkness, immutable, source of himself, ever existing and ever the truth of existence, that spirit that we do not control. He came, He is coming, He will come again. We imperfect beings, if we knew and could comprehend God‘s nature, would open ourselves so much more readily to this forthcoming God, but we don’t recognize Him in our fallen nature, we are uncomprehending in His light, we cannot see the perfection of the beautific vision. And without that knowledge, we are lost and confused, selfish, power-hungry, murdering, awash with sin. We see that there is something greater than ourselves, as manifested in nature, space, and even the changing seasons and rebirth in spring. We have the natural capacity to recognize there is beauty and mystery in our world, and we can acknowledge them with thankful hearts.
It is the perfection of God that calls us to accountability, because in that perfection, in that omnipresence and omnipotence there is something greater, and something to measure up against. Day-to-day we think ourselves the masters of this world, but that little place of doubt in our hearts, that little place of wonder, of awe, of incompleteness, and of mystery reminds us we are not. The honest person recognizes and accepts this place, and even yearns to fill it, to be complete, to have peace in His soul.

And it is the coming of God himself that brings mercy in the form of the perfect man Jesus and in the bestowal of he Holy Spirit. Jesus is the form God took to come to us and show us the Father, and He is the Spirit that fills us with himself..

The Scripture says, God’s mercy brings repentance. This coming God does not stand in His perfection as someone to be feared, but as a spirit of love. Thus the discovery of God brings relief to the soul. The fear that we live in without Him is completely alleviated when we receive Him. And it never returns, because He abides with us always. This knowledge that God is not like man, who is untrustworthy and capricious, is such a discovery, that the relief and peace it brings and then continues to bring throughout one’s life drops us to our knees in submission and love. Love submits to love.