chaplaintom's Space

And, even More Prayer

I have often heard it said that God always answers prayers; it's just that sometimes God says, "no". The truth is that God always says, "yes". But, it may not be the yes we want to hear. God always says, "Yes, I love you unconditionally and yes, I am always at your side".

The Nobel Laureate, Elie Weissel wrote about his time in the concentrations camps in Germany during WWII. On occassion, the gurads forced all the prisoners to walk past a gallows where several men and one boy were hanged. In the line, one man was heard to ask, "Where is God in all this?" Another man, possibly a rabbi, replied, "God is up there, with them".

God is always "up there" with those who are suffering, who are oppressed, who lack justice. Prayer is our conduit into the mind of God. Oswald Chambers in his popular book of devotions, My Utmost for His Highest, wrote, "The purpose of God is not to answer our prayers, but by our prayers we come to discern the mind of God, and this is revealed in John XVII. There is one prayer God must answer, that is the prayer of Jesus-'that they may be one, even as We are one'...Some of us are far off it, and yet God will not leave us alone until we are one with Him..."

Apart from Oswald's 19th century language, the point is that prayer is always answered by God who wants us to be one with the transcendant One.

Let's continue to explore prayer together. 

More Prayer Less Wishful Thinking

Centuries ago, prayer was generally accompanied with sacrifices. Ancient societies on both sides of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans petitioned the deities with sacrifices. Often these were human sacrifices. It was as if the gods had to be appeased in order for them to respond positively to their worshippers' wants and needs. The Canaanite deity, Moloch that required the sacrifice of the first born comes to mind. It was as if the deity's good will had to be earned.

Christians believe that the only sacrifice that God requires is a contrite heart. During the Eucharist we pray that the sacrifice of the body and blood of the Messiah would be a wholly and sugfficient sacrifice for the sins of the world. This is God's sacrifice and not our own to which we refer.

What is it, then that we seek when we pray?  Is it the presence of God in the person of the Holy Spirit? Do we want God on our side?  Lots of warring factions claim that God is on their side. Sometimes we pray that God would give victory to some sports team or another. I really don't think that God takes sides, not even for Notre Dame. [Sorry Sixers, Phillies, Flyers and Eagles fans]

Do we seek guidance or healing or support or encouragement or comfort? All these are appropriate for petitions. Yet, all of these grow out of our regular communication with the Almighty. I do not mean that we direct God by our prayers. It seems as if we try to do that sometimes. No; God knows the cries of our hearts. We focus our hearts together with other peoples' hearts and souls by means of prayer. We are greater than the sum of our individual petetions. God gathers us into a community of faith. In that gathered community our prayers are magnified.

I will explore prayer a little more tomorrow. Peace.

Maybe We're Doing it Wrong

I can't tell you the number of times people have told me that they have given up on their faith, because that for which they prayed did not come to fruition. "I prayed and prayed for [fill in the blank] but God abandoned me."

Maybe we are missingt the point of prayer. Contrary to popular opinion, praying is not bringing a shopping list to God or a list of demands. One rabbi once told me that if all we did was asy, "thanks" it would be enough. I have told that to people and some of them have told me that it is a "cop-out" and doesn't help them at all. I suppose if what you expect from prayer is to have your own wished fulfilled, then it is a cop-out. I mean I really would like God to make it stop raining so my Great Dane that is afraid of rain could go outside and I could get to be at night, but I don't expect that God would make it stop raining.

Perhaps the Buddhists are on target with meditation. We mighty call it, "centering prayer". There is a sense of peace through meditative prayer, which becomes second nature when we keep the daily office, (a series of prayers at specific time sduring the day and night). One of the things that Muslims, Christians and Jews have in common is regiularly scheduled times for prayers. Regularity seems to make a difference on our practice of meditative prayer.

I find that when I get off schedule or find some nefarious reason to skip the daily office or if I get frustrated and cast aside the prayers, especially compline, the last prayers of the day for Christians, my equanimity is disturbed and I respond negatively physically as well as spiritually.

So let us try an experiment. Try to pray regularly for a week without asking for anything except forgiveness and a changed heart. See if your attitude changes and your frustration level goes down.

Another View of Eternity

Did you ever feel as did Sir Arthur Sullivan of Gilbert and Sullivan fame that even had we two days for every one that God has gramted us that we would not complete all the things we desire to complete?

We will always leave things undone. That is the nature of life. The work goes on whatever we have accomplished; there will always be more. We do not have eternity to accomplish all that we have set to do in this world. It does not magtter what our view of eternity might be. We do not have it to do as we wish. Even should we believe that we have eternity of rebirth, we don't remember, according to those that believe in reincarnation, so we can't pick up where we left off, (pardin the bad grammar).

An interesting alternate view is that which is contained within Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. It has to do with time. Most of us view time lineally; that is to say, that time unrolls in a direct manner. One moment follows another in a straightforward way, day after day. We grow old within time.  We die and either we end our existence or we live eternally in the Kingdom of Heaven. According to Einstein's theory, time is not like that.

In that realm, time is fluid. It is not linear at all. Time is a dimiension, in Einstein's theory, much as length and width.  We also live within that dimension not linearly, but, (and here my knowledge of the theory shows its age, having studied in more than 40 years ago when particle physics was all the rage), in all times all at the instant. That is to say; we live in many parallel moments.

Do you see the implications? We exist at all times. Eternity is now and always, physically as well as theologically.

It is definitely another view. Eternity is not merely theoretical, but something to be studied by means of mathematical and physical theory.

Not coincidentally, Einstein spent his last years concerned with theology, (he did live next to the seminary at Princeton and was seen walking through the seminary campus. I have a picture of him walking by teh original callroom/dormatory).

We will not exhaust eternity, (by deffinition), we can only live there.

Mortality/Immortality Continued

In Christian religious circles we talk a lot about immortality. Oddly enough, we don't spend an equal amount of time on our mortality. We dwell, but don't dwell on death. We do not really ask what death really is. We don't ask why it comes to all of us, (it does, really...as my mother used to say; "None of us is getting out of this alive").

It leads me to ask a question. Is our obsession with immortality just a sign of our fear of death? We don't understand death well. We do not have witnesses that die, come back and witness their experience, (and, no, those that experience "clinical death" and return do not really experience death).

We do know that death is inevitable and necessary. If nothing ever died, the world would be a very crowded place with the vast amount of space probably filled with bugs. Growth requires death and yet we still fear it. Is our obsession with immortality nothing more than a coping mechanism?

Some civilizations such as that of ancient Egypt were ordered around immortality. Their economy was centered on the business of the afterlife to a certain extent. And, to tell the truth, much of our practice of Christianity centers on life after death, so much so that occassionally we miss the nuances of life before death.

Wasn't part of the Christian message growing beyond our fear of death? I thought that Christians were freed of thsoe fears so that we could focus on following the Rabbi Jesus' dorections to love each other.

What do you think?

For Whom Does the Bell Toll?

When a Pope dies, a particular bell in Vatican city tolls. Following that, other bells in Rome start to toll as well. There was a Dorthy Sayres, Peter Whimsey story, "The Nine Tailors" in which a particular church bell in rural England tolled nine times at the death of a man. Women got a different bell, I think.

Few of us have our passing marked in such a dignified manner, nor do we have official mourning periods such as the Pope's "noverdial" or none days of offficial ceremonial mourning. Most of us die relatively quietly and most of us in privacy if not obscurity.BUt, whether we die alone or in grand ceremonial splendor, we are all equal in death. A;ll of us come in to the world naked and helpless and that is how we exist the world as well, even if we are the Pope.

I have been thinking about mortality this week, (probably because of a thirsday physician's appoinment). For some people, death is just another stop along the way of Samsara or the wheel of reincarnation. For others, it is a stop along the way of everlasting life in the Kingdom fo Heaven. For others, death is the end, whether they think of death as ultimate release or final exit. None of us knows for a certainty where we ultimately stop.

Sometimes people get depressed when the consider their own demise. Some peopple get so depressed when they receive a terminal diagnosis that they committ suicide, thius exercising what they believe is teh ultimate control.

This is a big subject, one that I cannot exhaust in one blog to be sure. I think that I would like to explore this in some depth for the next few days, (except Sunday). Please feel free to jump in with your thoughts.

Suffering Revisited

The problem of suffering has been with us for a very long time. Bart Ehrmann calls it, "God's problem", the point being for those who blame God for sufferimg, "Why should I believe in God when God does not prevent bad things from happening?" I guess that it si a reasonable question if you are looking for the base cause of suffering. That is always going to be a fruitless search unless one takes teh Buddhist attitude that suffering results from attachment.

The root caus eof suffering is really us. Don't get me wrong; most of us don't casue our own pain, nor do many of us start wars or economic downturns, which amny people conside the casue of suffering. That is not it at all.

It is a little like "relativity". Modern children may feel as if a television set's breakdown is a tragedy, and yet, only a few decades ago very few people even had a televsion set. Our car breaks down and we feel lost. Yet, 100 years ago it was rare for anyone to drive an automobile.

Or, as Mel Brooks might have said; "If you fall in a manhole, it's comedy; when I break a fingernail, it's a tragedy".

Suffering has to do with perception. We perceive thyat we suffer; therefore, we suffer. But, don't look for a theophany to illumine any reason for that suffering.I have explored the concept of suffering, but I want to do it in an interactive way that does not become a kind of Hallmark exercise in which we seek teh "silver lining" or the reasons for suffering. There is no reason; suffering is irational, because we don't earn the suffering or the pain, (not exactly the same thing).

What do you think? Warning: No aphorisms or homely rationale allowed.

Nostalgia

Nostalgia is a warm feeling about things that happened in the past, which we generally view through the lens of selective memory. Sentiment is a warm feeling about something that may never have been. Why else would men have sentimental feelings about the years during which they fought wars? We tend to be sentimental about things that happened in our youth even if those things were less than ideal, because we were young and strong and filled with the promise of the future.

Society is much the same way. For example; people get all sentimental about the past rural, agricultural economy in America, which has been largely gone for many decades. I read that only between one and two percent of our people are farmers today. We wax nostalgic about the family farm nonetheless. 

I thought about that today since it is St. Isadore's day in the Western Christian calendar. Isidore is the patron Saint of farmers, (as well as the city of Madrid). Now, I used to breed horses years ago and I do miss it and often get nostalgic about it, (forgetting the kicks, bites, strikes, falls and attendent injuries). On the other hand, nostalgia does not help me grow spiritually. It may even block spiritual growth.

Our religious institutions also get stymied by nostalgia. So many people want things the way the used to be when they were younger that they miss the fact that things could grow better when we are open to growing spiritually.

I think this may be the reason that some spiritual leaders such as teh Dalai Lama and others tell us that our spiritual growth cannot be left to others.

You see, other kinds of develoipment and invention can go on wothout us. Our material work can be continued by other people. However, our spiritual growth and development cannot be continued by others. we have to be relentless in our pursuit of our own growth by being open continually to growing in teh light of the Transcendant.

Peace.

A Troubling Theophany

On teh Western Christian calendar this thursday, 17 May, is considered to be Ascension Day. According to Christian Scripture, (Acts 1 and the 2nd century addition to Mark's Gospel Account), this commemorates the day that Jesus, who Chritsians proclaim the Messiah, ascended physically to heaven.

This is a kind of troubling theophany or manifestation of divinity common among pagan deities and a few prophets suich as Elijah and teh apocryphal Enoch, but uncommon in teh common era.

We are hard pressed to explain such a thing and yet it is an element of the faith for millions of people. That is, of course, the point. It is a matter of faith, which for Christians confirm the deity of Jesus of Nazareth.

You cannot expect to explain a matter of faith. Faith is, perhaps, the greatest mystery of all, because it is beyond reason. Faith is a metter not to be justified even though manyt centuries of apologists have attempted to do just that.

One of my alma maters is offering a new graduate course in apologetics, (at a discount at that), but I wonder who is intended to benefit by the course work.

Faith requires no reason and reason will never lead to faith. Those who are seeking meaning in life won't be swayed by a classical Greek apologia and doubters will not be swayed by cogent raitionale. In a way, apologetics is a sort of hubris or arrongance, which purports to prove the unprovable and somehow do a better job of proving God's existence than God can do.

Is the Ascension really troubling? No, not to me, because God does not need me to prove that God exists or that God loved the world enough to be incarnate for our sakes. The whole point of teh Ascension story is to give confidence, not to proove anything. 

Patience...Now

I have been reading A Flash of Lightning in the Dark of Night by teh Dalai Lama, which my wife found in a used book store. One of the topics that Gyatso, (the Dalai Lama), adresses is "patience". It is a subject that most Americans, including me, really need to address.

We are an impatient society. If you doubt it, just drive anywhere on Route 95 in the Northeast corridor.  We put a primium on those who can multi-task and we lack any ability t wait for anything. Again, if you dount it, just watch the news on the night after Thanksgiving. There is almost always a feature story about someone getting trampled to death when teh doors open on a store that has set a 5:00AM opening t ime.

Impatience is a trap. IOt puts us at a disadvantage economically as well as internationally. We don't see beyond the next quarterly report in our businesses and we don't see beyond the next year politically while our adversaries are looking generations ahead.

However, the real disadvantage to our impatience lies socially. Impatience is really the ultimate selfishness.

When we lack patience with someone else, we are saying that our agenda at any given moment is more important than theirs.

When we are impatient, we cannot wait to let anything development, not even our relationships. Our attention span lasts only 30 seconds, so we miss the nuances of building friendships as well as our growth in faith. We can't wait on the Lord, because we want some advantage to ourselves now. we want to "bottom line" even in matters of faith.

Patience allows our relationships to grow and blossom, even our relationship with teh transcendant. You and I need to be able to find patience even in the middle of the most impatient society in history. How? Perhaps we can find it in meditation or in centering prayer or even in davening or chanting, but find it we must for our soul's health.