From my journal...

From my journal, April 2008:

Nirvana playing as the background music in the airport (Newark). Everything is co-opted. Everything is sold. Everything succumbs to the cancer that is capitalism.

Later--from the plane:

Indescribable cool richness of the blue-black night sky fading into burning reds at the horizon and the flat black of the land broken with the occasional glitter of scattered city lights...

nibbling at the difference between true and false religion...

False religion is to love God as ideal more than God as God reveals himself in the world:

• in the story of his relationship to Israel, his life in Christ and in the Church;
• in the sacraments;
• in creation in general;
• and especially in other human beings.

It is religion that forgets the last especially that makes possible things like terrorism, genocide, war and cruelty of all kinds(and I'm not just talking about Islam--we Christians are experts at this).

True religion sees the divine image already present, however hidden, in the imperfect human being and also recognizes that love cannot wait for or even seek to create perfection--the perfect object for our love--but must begin already in our imperfections (like God did with us sinners) and must be willing to risk loving the subject (which, this side of the Kingdom, is alwasy a risk precisely in his/her impredictability, fallen humanity, etc.)

...no words...

Barnes and Noble in Union Square... amazing philosophy section. New York City is an amazing city for reading. I suppose for writing, too.

Also--the sense that we're together even if we're not talking. Just being there together. In the subway, in the "Beyond Cafe," on the street. Even in a city with so much movement and activity one can learn something about prayer. The most important and most difficult thing about prayer is learning to just be with God. But its sort of like just being with people on the subway. So much communication. But no words...

LIFE

The thing that keeps grabbing me... the reality that keeps reaching out to claim me is LIFE.

Here I am in Madison Square Park, near the north edge looking downtown, the top of the Flat Iron Building poking out from behind the trees in front of me... rollerbladers zipping by, young girls with feet dangling in the water of the pool, lamp-posts lying quietly in wait for the sun to set, pigeons eyeing me with demanding eyes, the sounds of children laughing in the playground to my left, a young couple sitting at a cafe table at the edge of the pool reading, occaisionally to each other, people in suits, people in shorts, beautiful people of all shapes and sizes and hues--LIFE!

[Even as I write this across my path comes an older, gay man, head shaved with a Franciscan beard, skinny legs and less skinny belly, in black tennis shoes (no socks), black jean shorts, a black t-shirt with a faded logo I can't read and black leather-boy suspenders with chrome studs, with great pride and affection leading a beautiful grey medium haired cat on a leash... perfect! And across the pool, a young woman, blond, in a sun dress, legs shining white in the sunlight, surveys the scene with some intensity. He is alive... she is alive--and God is glorified in their living...]

And I rejoice in this gift of God... I rejoice in this many splendored world that God has created... I give thanks for it...

And as I become convinced that THIS... recognizing it, pointing it out, helping others to see it, blessing it... is what the Christian life is about... I wonder if I'm missing something essential.

Is it also the Church's job to point out how creation falls short of LIFE? How we, in countless ways, work against the Life of the World (see A. Schmemann)? How even the LIFE in the scene I describe there is so much working against that same LIFE? What is our role? Social justice is such a small thing next to this glorious vision of life. But so might pastoral care seem and I am sure that's part of the Church's mission.

What is our role here? Whatever it is, though it may be more, it is certainly not less than recognizing God as the source of this rich, abundant LIFE... and giving thanks to God for it.

Reasons to stop reading theology #1

The things I want (need?) to say I can't say in a way that anyone else can understand.

What I can say in a way that people can understand isn't worth saying.

immediate--direct...

The idea is that people want worship that is immediate--direct. And the claim is that the Mass is somehow disconnected (to our lives, culture, whatever)--that it needs interpretation.

But is that really true?

The Mass, it seems to me, is direct. It is immediate. It needs no interpretation. What could be more direct than

1. gathering
2. hearing and responding to the Word
3. sharing a meal (and receiving that Word made flesh in that meal) and
4. going out into the world to be what we've just received?

Maybe we need to eliminate clutter and silliness, but the Mass is direct. It is immediate.

Hard News...

From my journal in January 2008:

Clay Aiken has the nerve to complain about (the apparently fluffy/personal) questions Newsweek is asking him because he thought Newsweek was a hard news magazine. Hel-lo! How much of a hard news magazine can they be if they're interviewing Clay Aiken?