February 2016 Thoughts...

…’Tis the best of times, and the worst of times…

The glow of the Christmas season is celebrated one more time on Candlemas Day…a short taste of Ordinary Time, and before we know it, we are summoned into the Lenten desert.

Lent means springtime. As the people who are God’s own, this season of the soul invites us to till the soil of our personal soul-garden, so that the wonder of what has been planted in us in baptism can grow.

I’m going to suggest this “tilling” is like a spring tune-up of our consciousness. There are four steps.

·        First, notice things. Be very present to what is going on with you at this moment. Be attentive to people, and to situations. This is a real discipline!

·        Second, question everything…with compassion. That means your doctor, your mayor, and yes, your politicians and your newscasts. Find out if they are a good reliable source of truth.

·        Third, be slow to make a judgment, when you have a hunch you may not have all the facts. Hold off. That too is a discipline.

·        And Finally, make choices and go into action only when you are convinced it is the most loving thing to do.

Your Lenten prayer, fasting, and generosity can be first on the list for this “tilling” of your personal garden. Your nightly question? “How does your garden grow?”

                                                *****

Jesus, gentle Gardener, hand me the tools to clear my soul of whatever gets in the way of the new life you want to bring forth in me. Teach me to gather the rubbish and trash, and recycle it into whatever fertilizer I need. Plant in me the order and discipline that makes tilling the soil of my busy consciousness a joy. Help me to foster the gifts you have given, and warm them with your own Sonshine. Water me with the life-giving flow of your Spirit, refreshing in me what I’ve overlooked or forgotten. Draw me close to yourself in your prayer and fasting that I might know you as always present in my life. I ask this for the sake of your holy Name, Jesus, and that might be a Word of life wherever I walk. Amen.

Celebration Time!

The Dominicans and the Jubilee of Mercy

It’s Anniversary time. We’re 800 years old! It’s a time for looking back at what has been, and looking forward for what can be. It’s also a time for reclaiming who we are and what we are all about. For Dominicans that means being something first, then doing something. We are the Holy Preaching. We don’t just imitate the Word of God. We identify with it. We are first of all a word of hope, then of joy, then of peace. We are worded women and men, and in this celebration year we are also called to be a word of mercy. How so?

Dominicans walk a tightrope. (This image comes from Edward Schillebeeckx, OP.) We walk through history with a balance pole. On each end is a pail. One pail holds the Gospels, the Documents of the Church, and the Creeds. In the other we carry the New York Times, the Economist, the Science News, and the New Internationalist. If we let either go, we fall off the tightrope. Because we identify with the Incarnate Word, we are people of the both/and, not people of the either/or. We look for the truth wherever it may be found, even in the enemy, and we honor it. We live a spiritual act of mercy. We instruct the ignorant, and the first object of our outreach of mercy is ourselves. Our study is our penance, our daily asceticism. It prepares us to sow the Word we identify with, to give it away so there is always room for more. Thus we are mendicants. We are beggars. The Jubilee has begun – may our minds, our mouths, our hands overflow with mercy.

Mater Misericordiae...

"...Mater Misericordiae..."
"Mother of Mercy..." How often these words have crossed our lips when reciting the "Hail, Holy Queen." In this Year of Jubilee of Mercy perhaps it is time to ask what we mean by this title that we give to the Mother of God. Miseri: the poor ones; Cordiae: of the heart. She is heartsick for the poor miserable ones.
How and why is Mary the Mother of Mercy? Pope Francis tells us in his letter on Mercy (Misericordiae Vultus, The Face of Mercy) that Jesus is the face of mercy. So Jesus is heartsick too. It would be a challenging reflection to ponder that dear face being formed in the womb of Mary, his mother. In fact, he delighted in spending nine months confined in that small space, no larger than a man's fist...he, the God of the cosmos. He delights being intimately united with small things, so I guess you and I have a chance. Mary is the former and shaper of the human face of God's own mercy shown to us so we can see it, and share it...
Next, he nurses from her, drawing the strength to grow his tiny hands and feet. With them he will heal, restore, comfort, and finally die of self-giving merciful love. She has provided the very human means for our redemption. She will agonize with him as he lives it out. We will too as we watch the nightly news...
The Word-made-Flesh sits upon her lap as on a throne. She is the Seat of Wisdom. The very Word of the Father, the Wisdom-Engineer, the One who shaped the cosmos, tossed out the stars, appeared in the burning bush, and parted the Red Sea...the One who rules as King over all human history and its unfolding, carefully and wisely working with and around human freedom to bring about the dream-plan of his Father, that One sits upon her lap and plays patty-cake on her cheeks. He outstretches his pudgy arms to you, to me...wanting to draw you in, to plant kisses all over your face, and seems oblivious to any stupid thing we've ever done. We too?

Yes, indeed...she is Mater Misericordiae...
Star of the new evangelization,
help us to bear radiant witness to communion,
service, ardent and generous faith,
justice and love of the poor,
that the joy of the gospel
may reach to the ends of the earth,
illuminating even the fringes of our world.
Mother of the living Gospel,
wellspring of happiness for God's little ones,
pray for us.
Amen, Alleluia!
    

Advent 2015

“My Soul Longs for you…

…like a dry and weary land without water.” (Ps. 63) We live always in Advent. We marvel at him who has come in history and who will come finally in majesty. Most of all we marvel at him who is always coming to meet us in the mystery of our common human encounters. History, Mystery, and Majesty. The deep desire of this holy season of the Church Year is a heart-hunger springing from our woundedness, our sense of powerlessness, our craving for genuine peace. We might do well to ponder the image given us for this season of our longing. It is the image of a helpless child. Indeed. Is this an appropriate image for the God of the universe to offer us as we open this Jubilee Year of Mercy, this 800^th Anniversary Year of the Dominican Order dedicated to the proclamation of the Word of God? Couldn’t God have managed something more spectacular?

You want spectacular? Bear with me. We are given a God who thinks small. God begins there because we are small. We are a speck of dust in a massive universe. So God begins small, a tiny thing growing in a woman’s womb for nine months. By the Spirit’s power this little thing is clothed with humanness drawn from his mother’s DNA (our same stuff, by the way). God thinks it’s wonderful. Something for the hair follicle here, something for the pelvic bone there. A gentle quiet becoming, day by day, no teeth and blind eyes at birth. Take a long loving look. What is he, the silent Word, telling us about ourselves? We too begin small. We inch along, becoming ourselves all our lifelong. Even more, he is with us in the process, on the way. Maybe it’s just what we need to hear…especially on the dark days.

                                                                        *****

Outlandish Lord! Between desert and city land – Imagine! A barn – and the steamy, rough company of asses created by a tiny pudgy hand.  Child! You throw a star, you suck your thumb, and wise men come. You nestle down among us in our alley ways. Deceitful loveliness: Content with shepherds’ gaze and bloodied infants’ praise alike. Grasp my hand, you little tyke. Free me from the clutches of my fearful clutching ways. Let me worship you in peeking, touching, playing, and on your foolish, babbling saying let me linger. Infant! Who has got who around whose baby finger? (Tad Dunne)

Dominicans Entering the Jubilee Year of Mercy

Mercy, Mercy, Mercy…

We are women and men of the Word. We do not just imitate Jesus, the Incarnate Word in our flesh. No, we identify with the Incarnate Word. So how are we to enter this Jubilee Year of Mercy? We find a clue in Francis’ letter opening the Jubilee year, a celebration which is corresponding with the 800^th Anniversary Celebration of the Dominican Order. In Misericordiae Vultus (The Face of Mercy), Francis opens his letter with “Jesus is the face of Mercy.” This means more than meets the eye. Mercy is compassion when it goes out to one who in no way deserves it. So, if Jesus is the face of mercy, this means he is the most accurate revelation of the true nature of God. Jesus is the revelation of the Father. Now each of us has our own images of God from childhood. The God keeping black marks…the judging God… But then we look at Jesus and we see a God bouncing children on his lap, a God hanging on a tree with arms outstretched to welcome us home when we have put him there. Perhaps our first resolve in this new year of Mercy can be to sit down and check on our long-held image of God. Perhaps we need to climb into the lap of God and rest against his heart. Then comes the hard work: How do we become a people of mercy?

Axiel Shifts in Culture

Ancient Cosmological Period: Dawn of Human Consciousness; animist nature worship: the sacred identified with nature.

First Axiel Shift (750 BCE to approx. 250 BCE, peaking about 500 BCE across cultures with Confucius, Zoroaster, Socrates, the Jewish Prophets, etc. and the emergence of primitive science.)

     - The shift from animist nature worship (fire, air, water, earth characterized by ritualistic magic)  to ethical                awareness, character and ethical norms manifest in organized religion and religious law.

     - The shift to primitive science and the resulting distinction of nature from the divine.

     - The momentum toward idolatry of human reason (Enlightenment: approx.1750 through the modernist                     movement of the early 20th century) through World War I and II, and the military scientism of Hiroshima and         Auschwitz.

Second Axiel Shift (From Psychological Awakening to the present; the shift to philosophical interiority.)

      - God is dead; rejection of the return to medieval integration.

     

      - Post Modern Relativism still in place; no objective truth.

     

      - Rejection of Science as absolute due to our capacity for self- destruction and Modernism as reductionist.

     

      - The turn to the psychological and consciousness analysis.

     

      - The potential for the emergence of a new notion of God as operative within consciousness and all of nature.          (a Third Shift?)

Art as Sacramental

Art is a sensate window into mystery...both human and divine. As such a window, it plays a sacramental role, opening us up to mystery as it plays in our human struggle and as it points to something beyond time/space.

The Incarnation is our model. The Christ looks at us through human eyes, and veils the Divine Word. He teaches us to take seriously our own humanness, and shows us how our human struggle can be a window revealing to us the Divine at work in our very concrete human lives.

The human Jesus was an inclusive welcomer. He was a nurturer, an encourager, a healer, a forgiver, a wild lover, a shepherd-leader. He is not dead. In his risen life, by power of His Spirit he continues to be all these things. Now he invites us into the act. Baptism makes us inclusive welcomers. To be a bigot goes against our baptism. He invites us to nourish one another, so he becomes our Eucharistic food to make this possible. He continues to strengthen and encourage us through his Spirit, enabling us to do the same for others through Confirmation. He continues to forgive, and asks to forgive as we are forgiven. He heals still in Anointing, and asks us to do likewise. He pours himself out in love, and asks his married folks to do likewise. He washes feet, and calls us to lead by serving.

Art is sacramental because it reveals this sacramental dynamic in images, form, movement, and sound. Art is a window through which we are grasped by the struggle that is the paschal mystery in our sensate humanness. Art helps us to be fully redeemed.