Death

 Given the comments I had from people last week I thought I would talk about death this week.  [ this will not be a morbid blog I promise.]  This topic does flow from endings and I talked about my own Dad's death last week.  

Let's face it, western society doesn't know what to do about death.  We value youth, energy and new ideas.  TV hawks products to make us look and feel young, tablets and diets to make us live longer.  No one talks about aging gracefully, learning from people who have "been there" and how to live better not longer.    So what does our friend Lao Tzu have to say?

This is a powerful quote that frankly doesn't need much from me.  

For Christians death is a portal to new life.  How can we not be happy for the person who died; particularly if they were suffering?  It is an ending so we mourn for us like I spoke about last week.  As a matter of fact there was an article in America magazine last month by Kerry Weber that laid out a perfect way to celebrate a funeral experience.   The wake is where you celebrate the life of the person. [ This is as far as society often gets.]  The Mass is where you celebrate the new life of the person.  The burial is where we grieve in the moment for our loss of the person here on earth.  I thought it was a great way to look at a funeral.  [ We substituted reception for wake for my Dad I guess without realizing it.] 

So to wrap up, death is sad, but really, it is sad for those of us left behind; as it is an ending.  But it is also a beginning in a number of ways as I spoke about last week.  Life is a gift and we need to cherish it but death is also part of the process and we need to understand that they are inexplicably connected on one thread.     
 

Endings

So lent is over and we are into the Easter season.  For the next 50 days we will pivot to "Wisdom Wednesdays".  We should have ample time during the week for comments and even discussion.  Check here every week for deep thoughts, who knows maybe they will even be wise once or twice!

So I went to a retirement party over the weekend and that got me thinking about things ending.  This particular couple is ready to go but it will still be sad for the co workers he is leaving behind. I thought of my departure from my civilian job.  Even though I had trained folks well for it everyone was still sad.  I thought of my Dad's death two years on now.  I was very happy for him but sad for me.    I thought about the disciples after Jesus died.  All their hopes for a better world shattered. These were all moments where a way of life was ending, and that is always somewhat sad. 

So many of you know I like to read Lao Tzu, the founder of Zen.  Thomas Merton actually introduced me to this great thinker.  So I wondered if Lao had any snappy quotes that would teach me about sad endings.

   

So let's take a look at this.  While leaving my job was sad for everyone, it allowed several others to step up and take on new responsibilities.  Folks learned they could do things that I always knew they could and it has given multiple people a chance to shine.  My Dad's death gave me a new appreciation for living in the moment and led me to start really planning on retiring. It has allowed me to get to know my Mom in a different way and allowed me to grow in my relationship with her. Finally, Jesus' death conquered death for all of us and made us sons and daughters of God.  Clearly these things aren't evident at the moment, but with time we come to understand.    

So while Lao was way before Christianity he knew that God had our back. So if you are faced with a moment where something is ending, take time to grieve;  things will be different.  But while we might not see it in the moment, if we trust God it really will work out. New Beginnings disguise themselves as painful endings.

 

Pax

 

Joe  

Day 43 Easter Sunday!

 Happy Easter or Passover everyone, we made it!  I posted everyday during lent once I started.  A couple were pretty weak but hopefully you have found several that have been helpful.  So what about Thomas Merton?  Well yesterday he gave us the roadmap to freedom.  His brother does get baptized and has first communion.  He then leaves the next day.  Merton gets several letters from him postmarked England.  Merton finishes his first year and professes vows.  During Holy Week of 1943 his brother is killed on a mission to Germany.  Merton feels he finally did something useful for his brother by getting him baptized and now prays for him constantly.  There is an epilogue which has two main points.  I will save these for later posts.  But the first paragraph of the epilogue is a great place to end our lenten journey:

Day unto day uttereth speech.  The clouds change. The seasons pass over our woods and fields in their slow and regular procession, and time is gone before you are aware of it.  pg 407

So ends the season of lent and the Easter season begins.  Did you have a good lent?  Will you have a great Easter?  The choice is ours to make anew every second, every minute and every day.  For we have a merciful God but our time on earth does end before we are aware and God will ask us, "Did you try to move the world closer to Me each day?"

My prayer today, Lord, help me move the world closer to you today.   Amen   

Pax

Joe  

 

PS  Thanks for reading.  I will try to continue this blog though not at this pace.  I will shoot for posting on "Wisdom Wednesdays".  We won't always be discussing Merton and it won't always be religious but it will always be spiritual.  We can try comments again as well as with a slower pace it should work better.

Thanks and Happy Easter and Have a Great Passover! 

Day 42 A roadmap to freedom

I hope you have a very Holy Saturday!  Thomas continues his novitiate year.  His brother has joined the Royal Canadian Air Force and trained to be a bomber pilot.  He visits Thomas for a week before he goes off to war.  Thomas asks him if he wants to be baptized and he says yes.  So Thomas goes about spinning him up on Catholicism in one week in the hopes that the Church will baptism him.  He states that his brother doesn't want a lot of abstract ideas, just the plain truths so Thomas teaches him all he knows in 4 days and ends up more exhausted than if he had worked in the fields.  They talk about their lives growing up and Thomas writes:

Was there any possibility of happiness without faith?  Without some principle that transcended everything we had ever known?    pg 396

And then Thomas breaks down how it all works.  He writes:

I spoke about faith.  By the gift of faith, you touch God, you enter into contact with His very substance and reality, in darkness: because nothing accessible, nothing comprehensible to our sense and reason can grasp His essence as it is in itself.  But faith transcends all these limitations, and does so without labor: for it is God Who reveals Himself to us, and all that is required of us is the humility to accept His revelation, accept it on the conditions under which it comes to us: from the lips of men.

When that contact is established, God gives us sanctifying grace: His own life, the power to love Him, the power to overcome all weaknesses and limitations of our blind souls and to serve Him and control our crazy and rebellious flesh.

"Once you have grace", I said to him, "you are free, Without it, you cannot help doing the things you know you should not do, and that you know you don't really want to do.  But once you have grace, you are free.   pg 397

As I meditated on this it all is very Zen. We can't really know God due to our human limitations that is why it must take faith.    And we come to learn about God from each other.  We talked about how we can learn God's will by talking to others.  The second paragraph then follows nicely.  Once we have contact with God and believe in Him we are ready to accept at least many of the graces that He  showers down on us. These graces give us the strength and courage to due God's will, not our own.  And then the third paragraph tells us that once we are doing God's will we are truly free. We are free from the piddly things that tie us down in this world and are free to become what God wants us to be.  Quite a paradox isn't it?  I liken this to a roadmap to freedom.  

My prayer today Lord, thank you for the gift of faith, thank you for your sanctifying grace.  Help me continue to grow with your graces and work on my weakness and limitations.  Help me to move the world closer to you each day until I am truly free.  Amen

Pax

Joe 

Day 41 Good Friday

 Fitting for Good Friday I had another migraine.  I also had patients scheduled at the free clinic.  Talk about a holy grind!  I pushed through all my patients but felt terrible the rest of the day.  No Merton, no meditation.  The dog is still getting better.  I apologize yet again.

My prayer today, Lord thank you for giving me the strength to do what I had to do today.  I knew you would.  Amen

Pax

 

Joe

Day 40 True Freedom

 Day 40!  You think we would be done with Lent but the Church doesn't count the Sundays.  I wonder if Jesus took Sunday's off when He was in the desert?  

I digress, and another digression, it appears my dog will be okay!  Apparently he has an infection of the intestine and not an abdomen riddled with tumor; God be praised!  Thank you Dad and St Francis for your prayers.  

 [ Warning, the above picture is old, both of us are a lot greyer now, I am on the left.]

Back to Thomas since I have electricity!   He talks about his time as a novice at the abbey.  Nothing too spell binding here except that when he arrives at the abbey the Monk who greets him asks, "This time have you come to stay?" He replies, "Yes, Brother if you'll pray for me."  And the monk replies,

"That's what I have been doing, praying for you." 

I would like to go back to something Thomas writes about how he felt on the way to the abbey.  When he wasn't sure if he would be accepted, if he would end up in the army or what exactly would happen.  He writes:

I was free. I had recovered my liberty. I belonged to God, not to myself: and to belong to Him is to be free, free of all the anxieties and worries and sorrows that belong to this earth, and the love of the things that are in it. What was the difference between one place and another, one habit and another, if your life belonged to God, and if you placed yourself completely in His hands?  The only thing that mattered was the fact of the sacrifice, the essential dedication of one's self, one's will.  The rest was only accidental.  pg 370

 I suspect I could spend all of lent on this paragraph.  This is akin to Loyola's surrendering of the will to God.  But it isn't that simple is it?  We can't just sit around giving ourselves to God [ even if we could]  because we have to love one another.  Dealing with "one another" is often stressful.  Remember the "holy grind" from the beginning of lent?  

To keep this post from being 25 pages we will concentrate on one aspect of the human experience in light of the above paragraph.  My dog is very ill.  Ideally I am not concerned because God has it under control.  " Not a sparrow falls to the ground without God knowing," and all that... Loyola would tell me to pray for whatever will bring greater glory to God.  That is great but I have a relationship with my dog which is also a good thing.   And God has asked us to pray for what we want.  So I think I did okay, I prayed for my desired outcome and enlisted St Francis and my Dad but realized that God had it under control and if Turner died that it was okay.  I will grade myself out as a B.

My prayer for today, Lord, thank you for hearing my prayer for my dog.  Help me to better realize that "Your ways" are not the world's ways and "Your thoughts" are not the world's thoughts.  Help me trust in you even more fully.  And again, Thanks.  Amen

Pax

 

Joe       

Day 39 Not a great day

 Sorry to be making excuses but my electrical power was out most of the day so we had to deal with that.  On top of that my dog is sick and I fear he is dying.  My friend Fran recently lost her dog and I think we are next. I will spare you my medical analysis but he has required frequent trips out today.  Now I realize that my house wasn't bombed, no person died and no one was unfairly incarcerated.  I have much to be thankful for and I am not complaining.  I am just letting everyone know why I didn't get my reading done today!  

My prayer for today Lord, thank you for the gift of electricity which I missed most of today. Also, I realize there are way more important things for you than my 14 year old dog, but if you could grant him a remarkable recovery I would be really grateful. St Francis and my Dad, you both loved animals and you think Turner is pretty cool, if you could ask God to grant him a recovery I would appreciate it.  Amen

Pax

Joe