An open letter to my 16 year old Granddaughters
As I write this, one of you is 6 years and one of you is 6 months old. What possible advice or guidance can an old man give about a future he is unable to imagine? Well, as to advice, as a 16 year old girl, avoid all 16 year old boys. As a recovering 16 year old I can tell you they are up to no good! And for that matter 17 and 18 year old boys are even worse.
As to guidance through life, I can tell you only one thing of importance. God thinks you are the most wonderful, special, gifted creation of all time. But that’s not a miracle. Your parents feel the same way about you. So do I, so do your Grandmothers. The miracle comes later.
Now I know you have heard all about God’s love from your earliest moments. It is on billboards, and in books and all around us. We all know it, we just don’t believe it. If we did we would behave in a different way. Maybe this very simple example will help explain what I mean.
When I first learned to drive, I was taught to always look in the rearview mirror before pulling out into traffic. Dad must have told me that 500 times, I wrote it on the driving test; I could tell anyone who asked, “Look before pulling out.” I knew it, I just didn’t believe it.
Then one early morning along route 23 in Windom Township, I jumped into my car, never glanced in the mirror and pulled out in front of a tractor trailer. Only through the great skills of the truck driver do either of you exist. For the next 45 years I never failed to check the mirror before pulling out. I had gone from knowing to believing. When I believed, I behaved differently, I understood differently.
When you truly understand God loves you, you see things through a whole new set of eyes. For the first 60 years of life, I lived in fear. What if I couldn’t pay the bills? What if these people didn’t like me? What if I made a mistake, what if I didn’t get invited or got lost or didn’t know what to say? Often I was so scared, my mind left my body and I just stood there totally mute. And I was my own worst critic. Nothing I did was good enough. I wasn’t a good enough son, or husband or teacher or father or friend or person.
Then, for a lot of good reasons, most my own fault, I reached a very dark place. And perhaps because I was totally defeated, God was able to work miracles within me and I came to not just know that God loved me, but to believe God loved me.
The world began to look different. If God loved me, I was good enough. And more importantly, so was everyone and everything else, even the people I was mad at, or I didn’t like. And all the lizards and snakes and insects and crawly things that I had avoided, were good enough, because God thought they were.
And that is the great miracle of God! God feels the same way about every part and every molecule of his creation. He loves the fluffy little kitten, but he also loves the rat. He loves the poor suffering child, but he loves the virus that caused the suffering. If God feels that way about everything in his creation, how would I dare not feel the same?
Something else looks different as well. You will hear again and again when something is unexplainable that, “It is part of God’s plan.”If all the above is real and God is perfect love, then it is also true that God does not send hurricanes or childhood cancers or horrible family fights to his beloved children in order to teach them some lesson. Horrible things are the product of nature, or unlucky genes or our own human stupidity.
But God does use those things to work great wonders. As you age, you will be amazed at how many times great displays of love and compassion and healing come from great tragedies. Love, forgiveness, compassion and healing is God among us. Anything else is not God. Voices , no matter how loud or compelling, that proclaim God, but promote separation, judgment, hurt or punishment are not of God.
For now that is more than enough. Put this letter aside, and go and find your parents and tell them that just like God, you love them and appreciate everything they do for you. Even chasing those 16 year old boys away!
Monday, January 24, 2011
Thursday, January 20, 2011
The following is a quote from Rhichard Rhor's daily meditation blog. I find it impossible to say it better, so I'll cheat a little.
"Ken Wilbur says that he believes the function of religion is to grease the wheels of history so that we can move toward non-dual consciousness, or what I would call the contemplative mind. Quite simply, we are supposed to move toward love. Mature religion;s function is to make us capable of compassion, mercy, forgiveness, nonviolence and care for others. When religion is not creating people who can reconcile things, heal things, and absorb contradictions, - then religion isn't doing its job. "
It seems so often the rituals of religion become the religion. We exist to serve the forms, not the forms existing to serve us. How many honest souls in search of truth have been mislead into thinking they had found it, because they could recite every prayer or made every observance, but they had missed the most important words in the Gospels? Over and over, it says something to the effect, if you believe you are righteous and holy, but hold hate in your heart you are neither righteous or holy. You can not serve two masters. You will serve love or fear, but not both and not one at one moment and another at another moment. And being human, fear is the much more powerful, which is why constant, daily conversion is so needed.
"Ken Wilbur says that he believes the function of religion is to grease the wheels of history so that we can move toward non-dual consciousness, or what I would call the contemplative mind. Quite simply, we are supposed to move toward love. Mature religion;s function is to make us capable of compassion, mercy, forgiveness, nonviolence and care for others. When religion is not creating people who can reconcile things, heal things, and absorb contradictions, - then religion isn't doing its job. "
It seems so often the rituals of religion become the religion. We exist to serve the forms, not the forms existing to serve us. How many honest souls in search of truth have been mislead into thinking they had found it, because they could recite every prayer or made every observance, but they had missed the most important words in the Gospels? Over and over, it says something to the effect, if you believe you are righteous and holy, but hold hate in your heart you are neither righteous or holy. You can not serve two masters. You will serve love or fear, but not both and not one at one moment and another at another moment. And being human, fear is the much more powerful, which is why constant, daily conversion is so needed.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
And so Christmas is back in the box, the baby sleeps and perhaps some of the peace and good will remains. This is both the saddest time of year and the most hopeful. Perhaps when the boxes open next year, real pace will have replaced the possibility of peace.
The resolutions have been made, and for the most part broken. This will not be the year I lose 20 pounds, nor will it be the year I bench press 180. Those are dreams of the past, but this year I might walk 1000 miles, I might do more exercise with less weight. Perhaps Yoga becomes more than an annoying duty.
Perhaps this will be the year I achieve a miniscule part of the spiritual growth I need. Perhaps this will be the year I grow slightly more patient, the year I become less sure I know the answer. Perhaps this will be the year I finally put cancer to rest.
Perhaps this is the year I learn to be present and to accept what is, to live totally in this moment and to release nothing but joy and healing and peace.
And just maybe this will be the year one foot moves closer to the Kingdom of Heaven, while the other remains rooted in the Kingdom of Man.
The resolutions have been made, and for the most part broken. This will not be the year I lose 20 pounds, nor will it be the year I bench press 180. Those are dreams of the past, but this year I might walk 1000 miles, I might do more exercise with less weight. Perhaps Yoga becomes more than an annoying duty.
Perhaps this will be the year I achieve a miniscule part of the spiritual growth I need. Perhaps this will be the year I grow slightly more patient, the year I become less sure I know the answer. Perhaps this will be the year I finally put cancer to rest.
Perhaps this is the year I learn to be present and to accept what is, to live totally in this moment and to release nothing but joy and healing and peace.
And just maybe this will be the year one foot moves closer to the Kingdom of Heaven, while the other remains rooted in the Kingdom of Man.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
On Becoming Franciscan
Numerous people have asked me what the Tau Cross I now wear signifies. I explain it is a mark of being a member of the Secular Order of Franciscans, and that it marks those wearing it as belonging to God. On a deep level I have chosen to live out the Gospel Message as best I see it.
While I am explaining this, I listen to myself and the answer always leaves me unsatisfied. Don’t we all belong to God?? Don’t most of us try and live out the Gospel? Of course!! Is it really necessary to join a group to accomplish this?
For two months I have spent much of my writing time trying to compose a coherent explanation for why I made a decision to join the Franciscans. All I produced was lots of recycling. The problem was that I was describing an event, as if it were a single moment with a before and an after. Like a wedding. I was not married and then after December 21, 1968 I was. But there is a gigantic difference between a wedding and a marriage.
When I asked Kathryn to marry me, there were lots of reasons. I liked her ---- for some silly reason she seemed to like me, and she was really attractive. Most of all, I thought moving through life with this person would be “cool”. 42 years ago I would have used the word love instead of like, but 42 years later I realize the person I was, had no idea what real love was. Love grows and deepens with work and shared joys and shared suffering until the point is reached where there is no way to tell where you end and the other person begins.
It would be wonderful to be able to “go it alone”, to seek and find “the inner self”, the soul by myself. But I have discovered I am like the wheat seed that falls on good ground and flourishes, only to be overcome by weeds. By joining a group with the same goals, I have other people to keep me growing, weed free. Part of Franciscan teaching, is that conversion is daily, that each and every day is a new chance to grow closer to God. And that growth is always paradoxical.
Francis and Clare took vows of poverty, but it was not money they were giving up, but power. They choose to accept complete powerlessness, and in so doing became incredibly powerful. They choose what most people would see as a dour, confined life and became joyful and free. By seeing God in every part of creation, they were free to see God in themselves.
We all agree we are part of the body of Christ. But most people see themselves as the Aorta, or the brain stem, or something viewed as “important.” But if we are a complete body, someone has to be the toenail. On the surface, that seems like a disgusting picture, but anyone who has damaged or lost a toenail understands how taken for granted this body part is, until it is lost. What I most love about Francis and Clare was their total willingness to be the toenail of the body of Christ, if that was what was required. And to do it with total Joy.
I believe that becoming Franciscan is like being married. The wedding was good, but the journey was wonderful. C. S. Lewis always talked about putting on the cloak of Christ. Some mornings it slips on easily, some mornings it is a struggle. Then one morning they reach for the cloak and it is not there. They search until they realize they cannot find it because they never took it off.
Numerous people have asked me what the Tau Cross I now wear signifies. I explain it is a mark of being a member of the Secular Order of Franciscans, and that it marks those wearing it as belonging to God. On a deep level I have chosen to live out the Gospel Message as best I see it.
While I am explaining this, I listen to myself and the answer always leaves me unsatisfied. Don’t we all belong to God?? Don’t most of us try and live out the Gospel? Of course!! Is it really necessary to join a group to accomplish this?
For two months I have spent much of my writing time trying to compose a coherent explanation for why I made a decision to join the Franciscans. All I produced was lots of recycling. The problem was that I was describing an event, as if it were a single moment with a before and an after. Like a wedding. I was not married and then after December 21, 1968 I was. But there is a gigantic difference between a wedding and a marriage.
When I asked Kathryn to marry me, there were lots of reasons. I liked her ---- for some silly reason she seemed to like me, and she was really attractive. Most of all, I thought moving through life with this person would be “cool”. 42 years ago I would have used the word love instead of like, but 42 years later I realize the person I was, had no idea what real love was. Love grows and deepens with work and shared joys and shared suffering until the point is reached where there is no way to tell where you end and the other person begins.
It would be wonderful to be able to “go it alone”, to seek and find “the inner self”, the soul by myself. But I have discovered I am like the wheat seed that falls on good ground and flourishes, only to be overcome by weeds. By joining a group with the same goals, I have other people to keep me growing, weed free. Part of Franciscan teaching, is that conversion is daily, that each and every day is a new chance to grow closer to God. And that growth is always paradoxical.
Francis and Clare took vows of poverty, but it was not money they were giving up, but power. They choose to accept complete powerlessness, and in so doing became incredibly powerful. They choose what most people would see as a dour, confined life and became joyful and free. By seeing God in every part of creation, they were free to see God in themselves.
We all agree we are part of the body of Christ. But most people see themselves as the Aorta, or the brain stem, or something viewed as “important.” But if we are a complete body, someone has to be the toenail. On the surface, that seems like a disgusting picture, but anyone who has damaged or lost a toenail understands how taken for granted this body part is, until it is lost. What I most love about Francis and Clare was their total willingness to be the toenail of the body of Christ, if that was what was required. And to do it with total Joy.
I believe that becoming Franciscan is like being married. The wedding was good, but the journey was wonderful. C. S. Lewis always talked about putting on the cloak of Christ. Some mornings it slips on easily, some mornings it is a struggle. Then one morning they reach for the cloak and it is not there. They search until they realize they cannot find it because they never took it off.
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