Let’s make Some Deals

Recovering from the throes of the election is like recovering from a hangover. As we engaged wholeheartedly in the process because some of us were so fearful of where Romney, Ryan and Randian views on rugged individualism would lead us as a people, I kept telling myself, “This too shall pass but probably like a kidney stone!”

Now, it is over and our task is to try to restore a trace of civility to our life together. In Christ there are no red-blue distinctions. We are one in what Paul and the church aptly describe as the Body of Christ-the body of the risen, cosmic Christ who has overcome sin and death, and all categories that divide. In the kin-dom proclaimed by Jesus and already present to us and among us, there is no Jew nor Greek, gay or straight, Muslim or Christian, male or female, red or blue. We are all one in the Risen Christ! The command is quite simple, “Love one another as I have loved you.” Continue reading

All Saints, GreenFaith, Care for Creation

As I envision the 144,000 (symbolic number for a very large group of people from every nation—12,000 for each of the 12 tribes plus 1000 equals a large number) marked with the seal of God’s loving protection, I realize they have survived the great persecution. They will be led to life-giving waters.

This week we have been dealing with the power of death-dealing and destructive waters. I am not one who believes that a God who is up there and out reaches down to array nature’s forces to cleanse and chastise us. I do believe that nature, like the empire, strikes back. Our failure to care for creation and admit responsibility for the destructiveness of climate change sets in motion forces, such as increased ocean temperatures which increase the fury of hurricanes, which do indeed strike back. Continue reading

Greed Lectio for 10_22

[I have decided that writing notes as I do lectio divina helps me to stay focused—most of the time. Anyway I will post these when I can especially if you find my ramblings helpful.]

Ephesians 2

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh[a] and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. 4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Continue reading

Amos Challenges Us

Amos 5 is spot on. Like Israel in Amos’ day, we have wandered far from God’s ways. We worship at the shrines of consumerism, power over others and their resources, military might, greed, rugged to hell with the 99% rugged Randian individualism, and abusive political power. Political candidates assure those living in hunger, want and poverty that good things will trickle down to them. Amos says rubbish to all this:

So seek God and live! You don’t want to end up

with nothing to show for your life

But a pile of ashes, a house burned to the ground.

For God will send just such a fire,

and the firefighters will show up too late.

Woe to you who turn justice to vinegar

and stomp righteousness into the mud.

Do you realize where you are? You’re in a cosmos

star-flung with constellations by God,

A world God wakes up each morning

and puts to bed each night.

God dips water from the ocean

and gives the land a drink.

God, God-revealed, does all this.

And he can destroy it as easily as make it.

He can turn this vast wonder into total waste.

People hate this kind of talk.

Raw truth is never popular. Continue reading

Wet Me

[Hildegard of Bingen, 12th century German mystic, now saint and doctor of the church, called Christ the Green Man. This poem explores some of the implications of this statement.]

                        Wet Me

Creator God, wet me and green me.

Wet me in baptismal waters.

Green me in the veridity of your Spirit.

You, THE Christ, are THE Green Man.

You are the greening vine.

I AM the blossoming branch.

Creation flaring from the Cosmic Womb

Of  the Father-Mother, Creator God.

Life emerging and greening

Followed by death and rebirth

Of the Christ-Green-Man

Renewing all that is.

The Divine Spark fires deep down.

New life rises from the death cocoon.

Butterfly me!

Wet me!

Green me!

Heal me!

 © J. Patrick Mahon, 2012

Faith as Relationship

Commenting on the Synod of Bishops in Rome, John Allen writes:

Though it’s still early, we already have a candidate for the greatest sense of irony at the Synod of Bishops: Archbishop Luis Antonio Tagle of Manila in the Philippines, who’s widely considered one of the rising stars among the Asian bishops.

As already noted, the early stages of a synod are formed largely by a tidal wave of speech-making. Yet Tagle had the temerity to float a truly novel idea, especially in that context, as one of the keys to successful evangelization: Silence. Continue reading

Hildegard–Justice and Compassion

I am reading Matthew Fox’s new book, Hildegard of Bingen: A Saint for Our Times and I highly recommend it.  Hildegard (b. 1098) now joins Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila, and Therese of Lisieux as a doctor in the church. I agree with Matt Fox. If the pope and his curia really understood Hildegard, they never would have elevated her to sainthood—maybe this is why it took eight centuries!

Hildegard wrote, drew mandalas, composed beautiful music (Listen to her Spiritus Sanctus http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJEfyZSvg5c), and spoke truth to power, both secular and ecclesiastical leaders. Her writings indicate that she is indeed a saint for our time, truly a saint for our nation in 2012 amid the turmoil of a hotly contested election. Continue reading

The Cosmic Christ

I read an inspiring reflection today on seeing Jesus in our lives (http://onlineministries.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/100612.html). Of  late, I have not been one to slip into the Jesus as my personal savior stream. I am more inclined toward, “Jesus then. Christ now.” The Cosmic Christ is a power in the cosmos working toward good.

The risen Christ takes on a cosmic dimension which I am coming to embrace more and more as I read Matt Fox’s Hildegard of Bingen: A Saint for our Times. [Hildegard now joins Catherine of Sienna and the two T[h]eresas as a doctor in the church.] The cosmic includes the personal but takes us far beyond the personal as Holy Wisdom connects us with creation and the cosmos. Wisdom is the goddess at work before the dawn of creation. Eventually we came to understand that the Holy Spirit, hovering over the primordial foam, is the Wisdom of the Godhead. Continue reading

In Praise–St. Francis

            Feast of St. Francis

Blessed be you, Creator of the cosmos.

All life, all being has flared forth from You,

Father God-Mother God, natura naturans.

All being shares in Your stardust.

Hydrogen became the building block

As the cosmos expanded into billions of galaxies.

All praise and glory be to You.

Your Light (doxa-glory) is the inscape of all created being.

Brother Sun chants Your praises

From the dawning of day to the twilight of dusk

While Sister Moon and the stars light the dark night.

Let us be spiritual warriors strong as trees.

Trees praise you just by being trees.

Flowers speak softly of Your glory.

The sun shines on the good and bad alike.

And the rain follows suit.

Let all seas, rivers and lakes praise You.

Let the fish of the waters praise You.

Let mountains and glaciers praise You.

Let volcanos spew forth Your praises.

Let hummingbirds show Your glory.

Let all birds sing Your praises.

As they awake dawn asking permission to be.

Let the coyotes howl Your praises.

Let me too proclaim Your glory and majesty.

Let all men and women sing Your glory

We are the lyres and harps of Your loving kindness.

We praise You by being what we are

And by becoming more than what we are.

Inspire us to care for Your creation.

Let us join the Incarnate Word-Hagia Sophia

Dancing joyfully before the dawn of creation.

Let us be live burning offerings to Your doxa.

Thank You Father Francis,

Hildegard of Bingen and Thomas Merton,

You teach us to sing and dance

The grandeur of God.

© J. Patrick Mahon, 2012

Existentialism and Faith

“Naked I came forth from my mother’s womb,

and naked shall I go back again.

The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away;

blessed be the name of the LORD!”

Job was quietly going about his luxurious life when God took Satan up on his challenge. In one fell swoop Job lost everything–cattle, sheep, camels and all who tended them as well as his entire family. This is a tragedy of epic proportions as the author tries to delve the depths of life and sin.

I have been teaching a class in the Institute of Continuing Learning at nearby Young Harris College as well as two sessions on Paul, John and Mary in Ephesus in adult formation at church. The latter led to side discussions on the roles of women in the early church as well as the re-emergence of the feminine divine. Now I have some time to post on a more regular basis.

Reading Job in the light of my class on Sartre and Camus has led me to conclude that Job may have been an early existentialist. Look at the passage above. Also consider the Sartrean nature of the following:

Obliterate the day I was born.

    Blank out the night I was conceived!

Let it be a black hole in space.

    May God above forget it ever happened.

    Erase it from the books!

May the day of my birth be buried in deep darkness,

    shrouded by the fog,

    swallowed by the night.

And the night of my conception—the devil take it!

Later in the same chapter (3) Job says:

What’s the point of life when it doesn’t make sense,

    when God blocks all the roads to meaning?

24-26 “Instead of bread I get groans for my supper,

    then leave the table and vomit my anguish.

The worst of my fears has come true,

    what I’ve dreaded most has happened.

My repose is shattered, my peace destroyed.

    No rest for me, ever—death has invaded life.

“Vomit my anguish” took us right back to Sartre’s novel, Nausea.

Then I stumbled upon a piece of wisdom literature, Ecclesiastes 1 and 2:

These are the words of the Quester, David’s son and king in Jerusalem

Smoke, nothing but smoke. [That’s what the Quester says.]

    There’s nothing to anything—it’s all smoke.

What’s there to show for a lifetime of work,

    a lifetime of working your fingers to the bone?

One generation goes its way, the next one arrives,

    but nothing changes—it’s business as usual for old

        planet earth.

The sun comes up and the sun goes down,

    then does it again, and again—the same old round.

. . .

Then I took a good look at everything I’d done, looked at all the sweat and hard work. But when I looked, I saw nothing but smoke. Smoke and spitting into the wind. There was nothing to any of it. Nothing.

There is being and nothingness in the Bible. Life is seen at times as absurd, lacking in any meaning.

Merton, the mystic, was an existential monk who understood that God was to be found in his own lived experience, not in formulated creeds and orthodoxy. Like the atheistic existentialists, Merton embraced the nothingness of existence; however, like Job in the first passage cited, Merton found hope and meaning in his own nothingness:

At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our mind or the brutalities of our will.  This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us.  It is, so to speak, His name written in us.  As our poverty, as our indigence, as our dependence, as our son-ship, it is like a pure diamond blazing with the invisible light of heaven.  It is in everybody.  And if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely.  I have no program for this seeing; is it only given.  But the Gate of Heaven is everywhere. (Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander)

Like Job, he could say, “Blessed be God” regardless of what was happening in his life. Merton was ever aware of God’s presence as he lived out his call to be conformed to the image of God within which was his face before he was born. Amid angst, alienation, commodification of stuff in a materialistic world and despair, Merton grounded his hope in the incarnate One who emptied himself (kenosis) in loving:

To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that love is the reason for my existence, for God is love. Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my name.