Humanity

As I write this I must constantly remind myself of my humanity. I must accept myself for who I am and hope that each day I become a little better. I must accept that I am a sinner and that each day I must ask for forgiveness. As a creative person I after some deep examination enjoy the synthesis of the varied elements of my life. Each day offers an opportunity to learn something new, to imagine something in a completely different way, to listen to a conversation with a new awareness.

There is no way for me to turn off this gift. One of the first things that I learned in school was that life is repetition; day follows night; winter, spring, summer, autumn. I also learned that simplicity is often more enjoyable than complexity. Life is better unglossed. We are better when we allow ourselves to live lives filled with prayer, hope, humility, charity, mercy and love.

Recently I picked up my Breviary, skimmed through some of the pages. I said the Compline. Afterwards I felt at peace.

There is a part of me that enjoys silence, that enjoys the peculiar atmosphere of walking on a crowded street, noticing other pedestrians, noticing dogs on leashes, noticing bicycles, noticing the homeless man offering to shine shoes, noticing this and so much more, noticing this and saying an incomplete prayer as I continue to my destination. This incomplete prayer is a snap shot, of hope and praise captured by my eyes and heart and offered to God.

I wish that I could say that each time I leave my building that I approach the world this way. I do not. The fragments of my life involves a lot of running around, racing to this event, racing to that restaurant. Often I am only focused on my destination or should I bring wine or did I lock my door.

It is important for me to remember my humanity and try to remember that everyone deserves to be treated with compassion and mercy. Each day we hear stories about all types of contemptuous violence in this world. Somehow we can not escape crime. We can not escape all types of cruelties. We may not be the immediate victim, but we are all victimized by the individual acts and all the thoughts that lead to the acts. How people justify and rationalize all types of evil actions can not be ignored.

We live in a time when our judgement can easily be clouded and confused by omissions, half-truths, and lies. We live in a time where expediency is valued more than anything else. We live in a time where God’s mercy and compassion are needed more than ever.

We must always remember to pray, to ask for God’s guidance.

Humanity often needs and inspires conversation; conversation often needs and inspires silence.

As Christians hopefully, we allow ourselves a little times to examine our daily thoughts and deeds and a little time for prayer and reflection.

unexpected

In 2005, I journeyed to an Atlantic Coast beach town toward the end of the great August exhibition known as summer vacation. I am not fond of the beach or too much sunlight: moonlight reflecting on the water at midnight did make me think of Yeats and Arnold; the sunrise did encourage my mind to create some terse, tense text detailed silliness about creation with a hint of glossy, glib science fiction jargon; and somewhere in the gallery of my mind stretched a desire for goodness, justice, mercy, hundreds of unsaid, unasked prayers like sand beneath my feet, like sea grass protected in small patches to be seen, to be remembered. And each time I heard the waves crash, now looking back, it seemed as if that trip was an allusion, in part, to the nursery rhymes and Bible verses from my youth – the causeway of sound memory recitations about Job and the Whale, Miss Lucy, This little light, that were preserved in order to give safe passage to continuity and reason across my swampy gray matter for a lifetime.

Unexpectedly, after the Atlantic Beach trip whenever I would look at some of the photographs of the water or the sunrise over the water my thoughts were also accompanied by a longing, a yearning new yet familiar. Unexpectedly – because I had previously made many statements of faith, civility, propriety, and common sense partially based and formed on a particular Midwestern Catholic thought, so much that I felt more Catholic than the lapsed Catholics that one frequently meets at dinner parties, the theater, smart cocktail parties, poetry readings, art gallery openings of new or emerging artists. My own life was presented to me, an incomplete work, without passion, without purpose exhibited with a trendy colorful retro unglossed sheen of silent, resilient innocence, the innocence of compartmentalization and separation. How awful to view my life, as if it appeared on a single sheet of glossy card stock, folded into three panels, like a simple brochure. I could not decide upon a title. I could not decide upon the text which would describe my life. There was just the image of the water, and the sun at dawn. My mind was infatuated with the horizon, the horizon energized thoughts of faith and hope. The simplicity and repetitions of hope and love (as seen in the images from my camera), combined with the mise en scène, gave the canvas of my growing faith a peculiar perspective: part discernment, part situation comedy–

I like the simplicity of holding my camera,
the simplicity of focusing the lens on flowers in a basket, or playing cards dropped in the gutter near the corner of a busy street.
I like common definitions and uncommon allegories, allusions, and alliteration that provides life and art with a gentle, unexpected twist.
I choose colors and the horizon because they do the job of inspiring hope.
My life is about applying hope in the wide world, applying love in the wide world, and remembering that once upon a time everyone believed that the world was flat.
My life, my hope is not modern, nor is it anxious.
It is the laying down of ancient questions, ancient hopes, ancient prayers and trusting in the mysterious and the practical moments of prayer and faith.

Culture

After several cloudy, rainy mornings, there was a beautiful sunrise today.

As a Catholic, I no longer have any desire to be sophisticated in the manners and sentiments of the moment. I no longer have any desire to accept the malnourishing sophistry that is so widely promoted and accepted by our society. I no longer have any desire to be perpetually distrusting of my neighbors, perpetually ready for battle against loved ones, perpetually scabrous because of fear, jealousy, or lust.

As a Catholic, I must navigate this imperfect culture, learning and retaining only that which encourages a relationship with God. I must remember the commandments.

At the core of our culture is leisure. We must rest, relax. To feel good about ourselves as individuals we must purchase new assorted accessories, drink and eat all types of things, both healthy and unhealthy, accept the rules of consumerism in thought and action. And this is just the tip of the hype. Our culture encourages us to be passive, not to think, not to challenge ideas. Our culture isolates us from the people around us, each other, and our loved ones.

As much as we cling to technology, there is something bizarre about all the benefits of technology contain latent dangers. I have various pieces of technology which I try to use appropriately. I understand the purposes of my computer and I use it for those reasons. My computer is primarily a writing and visual media assembling tool. But, there are moments when I am tempted to stray from my formula.

Our society wants us to stray, encourages us to stray, empowers us to stray. Our society is an enabler.

Depending on who you read, what philosophy that you accept, which psychological argument you accept everything in our society is simultaneously abstract, concrete, obscure, exaggerated, and unconscious. Great meaning can be attached to eating, walking, sleeping, rolling our eyes. Our lives can be reduced to conflicting truths, impulses, and learned thoughts from philosophy or psychiatry or sociology.

Modern American life is often viewed as one never-ending commercial break, filled with a multitude of ideas and images. Our culture is the condensation and corruption of love, mercy, hope, and compassion. Our society wants us to be on the curb or the sofa watching the parade, not marching in it.

Christianity asks us to join the parade, to trust God, to remember the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, to follow in his footsteps in both thought and action. Christianity asks us to accept the mysteries of creation and faith in our daily lives. Christianity asks us to allow spontaneity into our hearts and minds as we go about our lives and encounter those who are needy, homeless.

Being Catholic means keeping life simple, respecting the environment, loving my neighbors and myself. It means working to be spiritual, to have humility, charity, mercy, patience, compassion guide our lives.

Mercy?

The text of the Gospels offer comfort to us. As Christians we must always remember and always believe one thing: that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever; and, therefore, what he did when he lived and walked on earth, he continues doing now, and will continue till the end of time. If we allow our hearts to accept and proclaim this, and look at our Lord's actions when he taught us how to pray and how to love one another as recipes, formulas, roadmaps as it were, for our journey toward eternal life and God’s love and mercy, then each verse in the gospels can enlighten us, and guide us toward goodness and love. We, however, must encourage our minds to be open, understanding, calm.

I believe that each day the need for Jesus increases in the world whenever I hear about any violence between men. I often imagine Jesus walking on Connecticut Avenue around five-thirty on a Wednesday afternoon in early October. Some people would stare and point at him; some would either text or call their friends and explain who they saw; and some would follow him and listen to each word that he spoke.

The city is wild with anxiety. I often wonder what happened to to compassion and mercy. I often look into the faces of other pedestrians. Sometimes I smile and offer a polite salutation. Sometimes I am running around trying to both remember the wild forest of this city.

And I am learning many things, finding many new unanswered questions. I am content not knowing all of the answers. I am content uncovering questions.

And, what kind of person am I, would I recognize God's mercy in my life? Would I share God’s love and compassion with my neighbors?

Christianity offers not only a solution, but an endless question and an endless challenge leading us toward goodness and eternal life. Each day a new question forms within my head, some of the questions are spoken, still others are never spoken. Christianity strives to improve our humanity.

Remember to allow yourself to be silent. Endeavor to listen patiently and to learn obediently. Help your heart to develop a honest eloquence. Christianity requires patience, obedience, silence and prayer.

And prayer is always needed.

Vocabulary

I am worried about my declining vocabulary. In ordinary day to day conversation I probably use less than a handful of words; in written communication, I use even less. Today, I shall begin with beautiful generalizations and what used to be called twenty-five cent words but now due to inflation and other societal abnormalities are known as five dollar words.

Yesterday, during a friendly morning interrogation about life, sacrifice, and duty, I was asked where did I see myself in two years. My first instinctive rocket-acellerating response which flashed in my brain and anesthetized all other thought was “In two years I want to be doing something that is good. I want to be doing something to help people, performing some service for God. I don’t have an action plan yet. I want to formulate a response that reflects modernity’s heterogeneity’s need for God’s mercy and grace.” Luckily I never shared this jumbled bit of confusion.

Off and on for the rest of the day, my mind was subjected to many similar vague but good intentioned etherizations. I could not protest. I could only search for distractions. How concentric modern thought is! How circuitous modern avoidance is! How circumlocutory modern dialogue is! I searched for a sense of equilibrium.

We live in a time of anarchical bargaining. Social responsibility and social morality have been locked outside. Everything is permissible, everything is allowed except good common sense. Some people seem to wallow and flourish in the modern cultural imperialism of angst, nihilism, and preemptive strikes. Populism no longer rules; it just waits to take polls.

And I exist within this world of rhetorical questions in conflict, this world of rheumatic fever and mother’s apron strings delusions. Every tongue has a wound; every dream was savagely punctured; every heart tells tales out of the operating room, before the surgery begins. I listen to the stories about Thucydides on the Potomac, Nobel Prize preferences, naturalism, consumerism, fascism, Admiral Horatio Nelson, Ponce de Leon, Robinson Crusoe, Jane Addams, demonstrative adjectives, Betty Friedan, genetic engineering, Bourbon kings, perfectibility of man, skepticism, and take-home pay.

Sometimes I can not respond coherently in complete sentences. I force some little sound from my throat which hopefully is appropriate to the situation.

And so all I can do is pray and suggest that they pray.

Outside I can hear the hiss as automobiles drive through the puddles in the alley. And my telephone rings. I remember yesterday’s friendly morning interrogation about where did I see myself in two years. In two years I want to pray more than I am praying today.

In All Things

Discernment, in its most liberal analytical-sense, is a search for expression of the life of the spirit of man creating an alliance with the intellect. Without the alliance and encouragement of the spiritual, the intellect creates only thought; and superficial thought, whatever be the subject with which it deals, is neither satisfying nor nurturing, in its flickering existence. For example, verses from the Psalms, Proverbs, the Pentateuch, and the Acts of the Apostles, do assist in properly guiding my discernment. (By "an alliance with the spirit" I would be understood to mean the entire conversation of the emotional, the intellectual, and the thoughts not governed by the conscious mind which flash in mind and which are sometimes described as instinct, intuition; these do allow our hearts to be susceptible or impressible, to be sympathetic, to be gentle; in short, that mysterious quest of a lucky man by and through which he yearns for a special guidance and learns that his education is incomplete. All his relationships begin and end with the essential desire to find the Holy Spirit in all things, including himself. The spirit is phenomenal, inspires a refined cognizance beyond our usual senses.)

The grandeur of this personal journey is the result of a careful and complex joining of several personal traditions, or desires. Hope and love of God are essential: the journey is a movement toward the Trinity following the strands that run through both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible which contain both the commandments and lessons. (I am conveniently illuminated with flashes of insight into individual Bible verses.) Each verse brings to my discernment its own characteristics, its own theological opinion--a rich variety of interpretation that my sympathetic mind will labor to comprehend and apply to my life. The verses sometimes inspire prayers, knowledge. Discernment is concrete, creative. It creates a narrative, a theological approach, a deepening faith, and an appreciation of virtue, service and God. And I want to discard the superficial distractions and restlessness. And I want to live a life of goodness, justice, service, sacrifice and love for both God and for all mankind.

However, even this brief description of my thoughts on discernment is an over-simplification, for it is a synthesis of ideas from various sources. The fact is that this journey although from one perspective is individual but it incorporates the love, hope, and prayers of the Church community. My discernment allows me to be a collector of wisdom and an reciter of verses and prayers. My narrative is made up of many disparate anecdotes, poems, slogans that have been re-interrpretted, and given new definitions, old meanings within the context of searching for my life's purpose, my vocation.

Fear and Doubt

There is a little bit of fear and doubt which accompanies each decision, creating questions, creating conflicts.

I have lived a good comfortable life filled with the usual intrigue, comedy, regret. I have no complaints about my life as I have lived. There are one or two things I would like to change if given the chance.

I have been wrestling with writing these simple words for a little while. Fear can be a formidable opponent.

I sit here thinking and then revising my thoughts.

Outside there is a fine, soft rain, barely perceptible to my ears. I began to plan the day’s activities. I wanted to walk outside, look at the November sky, go to Mass.

The rain became harder and harder. My mind shifted its focus. Confession became important and I tried to decide when I would be able to go. The rain became softer and softer. I know that I am human. I just want to be better than I am. I want to live a life of service, of sacrifice, and of love.

Considering a vocation is a gift from God. It is a moment when all the noise of our lives can be turned off. It is a moment when there is no need for diversion. It is a moment when there is no need for distraction. It is a moment of silence. It is a moment of reflection. It is a moment of prayer.

Silence scares many people. Some people need perpetual insistent noise of the loud music, the television, the telephone conversations. Some people are confused by immorality because of all the images that are displayed in our society. Our culture is a haphazard collection of freedoms twisted and stretched to encourage and to protect immorality. Neither God nor goodness is at the center of our culture. Responsibility is often forgotten. At the center of our society is a steady beat, is the sound of emptiness, loneliness, despair. At the center of our culture is noise encouraging violence, encouraging immorality, encouraging sadness.

Rejecting the noise is difficult. A little fear and a little doubt precede many thoughts and actions. Our confidence and strength arrives when we are able to turn down the volume on the noise and listen to the sound of the fine rain, falling softly, falling gently.