Broken and Shared: Food, Dignity, and the Poor on Los Angeles’ Skid Row

Posted on December 29, 2011 by pat

Jesus in the Bread Lines, Fritz Eichenberg, 1950

This is the way we may know that we are in union with him:
whoever claims to abide in him ought to walk just as [Jesus] walked.

Whoever says he is in the light,
yet hates his brother, is still in the darkness.
Whoever loves his brother remains in the light,
and there is nothing in him to cause a fall.
Whoever hates his brother is in darkness;
he walks in darkness
and does not know where he is going
because the darkness has blinded his eyes. (1 John)

The author of 1 John cuts to the chase. If we claim to live in Christ, we ought to walk as he walked. It all comes down to how we treat our brothers and sisters in Christ. It really is about how we treat the least among us. Continue reading →

God’s Grandeur, Deep Down Freshness

Posted on December 27, 2011 by pat

Frosted Spider Web

Everything that God made is good. And as one medieval mystic liked to say, Every created thing is a Word of God. To those who can see, every created thing, living or inanimate, speaks of God and the Creator. Few poets have expressed this as well as the English Jesuit, Gerard Manley Hopkins. “There lives the dearest freshness deep down things” and “The world is charged with the grandeur of God”. (http://livingspace.sacredspace.ie/C1227R/)

John’s Gospel does not contain an infancy narrative. Rather, John the Mystic wants to place the Christ as pre-existent “in the beginning” and dancing the dance of life as creation flares forth from the Living One. The Christ is God made flesh and incarnate among us. The Cosmic Christ lives in us and in the Cosmos as the Life Force, the Energy which propels life toward the Omega Point which is Christ in his fullness.

The Christ is not up there and out there because up there and out here no longer makes sense in a universe of billions of galaxies. Just recently NASA scientists discovered earth-liker planets beyond our galaxy. Galileo lives! Continue reading →

ChristPower, ChristLife, ChristLove, ChristLight–A Christmas Reflection.

Posted on December 22, 2011 by pat

ChristLight

I started reading Bishop Spong when I too could no longer conceive of God as a being up there and out there who occasionally dabbled in human events. ChristPower is a collection of poems based on his sermons. One sermon is his traditional Christmas sermon. What follows is my understanding of ChristPower—Christ incarnate among us and in the cosmos today.

ChristPower, ChristLife, ChristLove, ChristLight—

Meager attempts to describe the indescribable—

The Living God defies all description and definition.

Yet, ChristPower, ChristLife, ChristLove, ChristLight

Is the driving energy pulse of the cosmos

As the Living One flares forth in the stardust

That evolved over time into conscious life. Continue reading →

Song of Songs – Passionate Love

Posted on December 21, 2011 by pat

My Lover Is Leaping and Bounding over Mountains

Song of Songs 2

8 Listen! My beloved!

Look! Here he comes,

leaping across the mountains,

bounding over the hills.

9 My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag.

Look! There he stands behind our wall,

gazing through the windows,

peering through the lattice.

10 My beloved spoke and said to me,

“Arise, my darling,

my beautiful one, come with me.

11 See! The winter is past;

the rains are over and gone.

12 Flowers appear on the earth;

the season of singing has come,

the cooing of doves

is heard in our land.

13 The fig tree forms its early fruit;

the blossoming vines spread their fragrance.

He is mine; I am his.

he browses among the lilies. Continue reading →

Light Amid Darkness

Posted on December 20, 2011 by pat

Morning Light

Winter Solstice

All of us greet you in the spirit of this blest Solstice season that invites us to see in the dark, to sing in the night, songs to enlighten us on our way.

May we learn the wisdom of this time, of letting go, of drawing in, of making room for the future to be born and borne anew; of looking deeply into the winter skies – star-studded and aflame – to see the stuff of our own incarnation, and remember we are made of Light. (Sr. Kathleen Deignan and Schola Ministries)

We are stardust. We are light. Continue reading →

Christmas

Posted on December 17, 2011 by pat

A Merry and a Blessed Christmas to All

Christmas is not about opening presents but rather about opening ourselves to the Presence.

Peace, Justice, Shalom, and PTSD

Posted on December 14, 2011 by pat

Dew Fell like Gentle Rain

I am the LORD, there is no other;
I form the light, and create the darkness,
I make well-being and create woe;
I, the LORD, do all these things.
Let justice descend, O heavens, like dew from above,
like gentle rain let the skies drop it down.
Let the earth open and salvation bud forth;
let justice also spring up!
I, the LORD, have created this. (Is. 45)

The Irish Jesuits have web sites called Sacred Space (http://www.sacredspace.ie/) and Living Space (http://livingspace.sacredspace.ie/). Living Space is a repository of commentaries on the daily scripture readings from the Catholic lectionary. In my opinion, these commentaries have much more substance than many of the sites we encounter when we want to pray the daily scriptures. Continue reading →

Greedy Banksters

Posted on December 11, 2011 by pat

Another Glorious Mountain Sunset

Isaiah wrote: “For I the LORD love justice, I hate robbery and wrongdoing;” Isaiah also promises that the captives and oppressed will be set free. Most of all, Isaiah proclaims a year of jubilee debt relief where all things will be restored to their rightful owners. This latter promise is often overlooked by capitalists, even capitalists who proclaim to be Christians. These promises do, however, comprise Jesus’ inaugural address and we need to ponder them seriously.

Justice is about right order and God has a thing about justice and right order. In the scriptures the Living God and Jesus constantly talk about restoring justice. It is the primal Gospel value.

We live in troubled times. Banks have failed. Nations are on the brink of bankruptcy. Justice is nowhere to be found. Continue reading →

True Religion

Posted on December 10, 2011 by pat

Panorama Winter Sunset N. GA Mountains, c. J.P. Mahon 2011

Thus says the LORD, your redeemer,

the Holy One of Israel:

I, the LORD, your God,

teach you what is for your good,

and lead you on the way you should go.

If you would hearken to my commandments,

your prosperity would be like a river,

and your vindication like the waves of the sea;

Your descendants would be like the sand,

and those born of your stock like its grains,

Their name never cut off

or blotted out from my presence. (Is. 48:17-19)

Isaiah reminds us of the two chief characteristics of religion. First, religion requires our adherence to certain doctrines. Isaiah has God teaching us what is good for us. Creeds summarize the doctrines. Second, faith is about conforming behavior. God will lead us on “the way we should go.” If we do good our “prosperity will be like a river.” And as today’s psalm says in essence, if you do these things you will prosper. It does not take long to fall into domination systems where thought and behavior is controlled top down. Continue reading →

The Good News, Justice, and the Tar Sands XL Pipeline

Posted on December 4, 2011 by pat

Mendenhall Glacier

“But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.”

Paul waits. As the parousia seems to be delayed, he is becoming more patient. He is waiting for the Cosmic Christ, the Risen One, who will bring all things to completion—a new heaven and a new earth. Paul senses that the Creator is flaring forth and that the cosmos is evolving into what it already is—a new heaven and a new earth. It is far from perfect when Paul writes but he sees it coming. Continue reading →