Let Freedom Ring

One Ring to rule them all,

One Ring to find them,

One Ring to bring them all

and in the darkness bind them.

Most modern readers will recognize the reference to the opening scenes of the movie trilogy The Lord of the Rings.

It occurs to me that the One Ring stands for the "self".  For that which each of us holds most dear.  Each of the rings that are given to the rulers of middle earth contain in themselves the powers that allow them to rule Middle Earth - these are like the natural and inherited gifts that those rulers have.  But there is a twist - using the rings makes you subject to the One Ring that belongs on the finger of the dark lord Sauron.   

I have heard it said that J.R.R. Tolkein loathed the concept of allegory, but there seems to be at least an analogy here to the concept of self.  Each of us has certain natural gifts that we can use to our advantage, to aid in our "rule" on behalf of our self.  But when we place value on the natural gifts in themselves, when we "use" them, we are going to come under the power and influence of the real "dark lord" - Satan - that we face.  The only hope we have of destroying the One Ring, that is, the power of our self love, is to cast the One Ring into the fire of Mount Doom - namely to make a sacrifice of self.   The cross is the symbol for Christians of making that self-sacrifice. 

But the One Ring cannot be destroyed. "Not with 10,000 men could you do this." says Boromir, the great warrior.

When I was a graduate student in college, I had the opportunity to study under one of the "full" (meaning not an associate) professors in my department.  I had a very high regard for this man. He was powerfully intelligent, driven and of a generally positive demeanor.  He was also a naturally inquisitive person and loved anecdotal stories about other areas of research happening at the University.  This was a way to get "brownie points" with him - bring up some new finding from another department on campus - the Medical School perhaps, or Physics department, etc. - and engage him in an intelligent conversation.  I realized that in his company, I found myself in the same position as many rookie quarterbacks in the NFL.  Up until to that point, I had considered myself intellectually gifted - but now I was in the "big leagues".  I used to say that I was just intelligent enough to recognize, concretely and specifically, the ways in which this man was more intelligent than me.   I never did venture to try to bring up something to impress him since I knew he would ask questions that I couldn't answer.  

 

In retrospect, it occurs to me that while my professor was fond of knowledge in general, I never heard any discussion of morality or even philosophy for that matter.  I had the sense (although this was never actually said...) that this professor would have been non-plussed had the issue of morality been raised in a positive fashion.  Mind you, I don't think his response would have been shrill: "I don't want your pompous morality shoved in my face" like many other college-type folks of lesser intellectual stature.  Rather, I speculate that he would have stopped short, cocked his head, scratched his chin, raised his eyebrows and said something like: "Is there something meaningful that can be said about morality?".  

It seems to me that all men want to be free, but most are unwilling.  To "want to be free" is fairly easy - it consists of saying "Oh, I wish I didn't have all these bills to pay.  I wish I didn't have all these responsibilities.  I wish I could just ride down the highway on my motorcycle, etc. and just get away" and then just staring off into the distance.  Every man in every time and place does this. 

But willing to be free is another matter altogether.  It goes beyond a wistful feeling in the heart and engages the full faculties of a person and says:  "I am going to do the due diligence to make sure that all the bases are covered in my life AND in the society I am part of.  I am going to honor the commitments that pertain to me.  I am not going to rely on someone else to clean up after my mess.  I am even willing to go so far as to clean up after other people's messes." 

Willing to be free requires self-sacrifice.   In many instances, it will require total self-sacrifice. The hymns of our nation feature this idea:

"O say, does that Star Spangled Banner yet wave, O'er the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave?"

"Who more than self, their country loved and mercy more than life."

Notice the first one is phrased as a question.

When I was a kid, I recall hearing older people speak on a regular basis about the freedom we have in America.  I remember that the Fourth of July was a fun holiday (with fireworks and decorations, etc.), but it wasn't frivolous.  It was altogether different from something like Halloween.   The older generation spoke of freedom with reverence.  They were remembering, without exactly saying so, the self-sacrifices (their own, but especially those of others) that went with the freedom. 

I don't hear this anymore. 

"Much of what once was is now lost, for none now live who remember it..."

This line, also from the Lord of the Rings, follows the opening lines above.  The scene from the movie shows how the Ring, after being struck off of the finger of Sauron in combat, is lost along with the very knowledge of its existence.  This ignorance seems to be bliss, and it is, for a time. But then it comes back.

One meaningful thing that can be said about morality is that it puts the hearts of men in touch with the concept of self-sacrifice.  In the absence of morality there is "precious" little to stop a complete abandonment of the concept of self-sacrifice in the hearts of men.  And in the loss of the notion and way of self-sacrifice, many commitments will be broken, many messes will be made and there will be a great need to "clean up" after the selfish souls.   

Ironically, in the very place where knowledge is sought so diligently by such gifted people working tirelessly, the knowledge of the inherent fallen nature of man, of the reality of sin, is lost.  None now live who remember it.   A "shadow" spreads from hell, covering our institutions, and robbing our words and actions of their meaning.  College is the time when the "self" is most fully given reign in the lives of young people - is it necessary to expound?  And with this wanton exercise of self, we follow in the footsteps of the Nazgul, the ring-wraiths, neither living nor dead.  

Bound in the darkness.

The good news is that the power of the One Ring has been defeated.  Not destroyed or obliterated, but defeated.  There is the potential to rise above the self, to make a self-sacrifice. There are footsteps to follow on Mount Doom, a path has been made.  It can be done.   It has been done.   

Freedom and self-sacrifice - "...go together like a horse and carriage, this I tell you brother, you can't have one without the other."

  

The Transubstatiantors

I am a relatively new user of YouTube (just got high-speed internet at home) and, as with anything new that I do, I have to "overdo it" at first until I get it out of my system.  So I have been watching YouTube videos - a lot of them - all the while trying to steer clear of things I shouldn't be seeing (read: pornographic sex - there's lots of it on YouTube).

Somehow I recently stumbled across a section on YouTube with "trailers" for upcoming movies  and the trailer for the sequel "The Transformers, Part 2 - The Fallen" was featured.  Since it didn't seem to be too racy, I watched it.  Now, I haven't seen the original Transformers movie, but I do have at least a passing familiarity of what the original cartoon had been about (good robots that turn into cars, etc. fighting bad robots that turn into other things).  I can still hear the old cartoon theme song (sung in robot voice...) "The Transformers, more than meets the eye.  The Transformers, robots in disguise...".   As I was watching this on YouTube I was struck, all of a sudden, by the name of the bad guys - namely, the "Decepticons".   This word seems somehow familiar to me so I am thinking it must have been the name of the bad guys in the original TV cartoon series too.  It's a great name for a villain, combining the word "deception" with "icon" (image).  The bad guys thus present a "false image".  The sense of this in the Transformers movie has to do with their ability to "transform" (i.e. change shape) no doubt, but it called to my mind some Decepticons of a more sinister mien.

With all of the attention I give on these pages to spiritual darkness, the idea that the devil is the "deceiver" and the "father of lies" is chilling.  It's bad enough that mankind can't access God through our intellect, or our senses, but rather is consigned to spiritual darkness, a la the Dark Night of the Soul.   But to have the demons actively seeking to deceive us at the same time, with eternal consequences, is just messed up.  I read once somewhere (I think in C.S. Lewis "The Screwtape Letters"...) that the devil's favorite moment is to see the look on the face of sinners when they land in hell.  

Again, that is just messed up.  

It also occurs to me that the word "mercy", another of those over-used, under-defined church words, takes on an entirely different meaning in light of the sensual and spiritual darkness we labor under and the active war of deception that is being waged against us by the dark spirits.  Mercy, in this fuller context, means anything that tends to free us from the deception we are under.  In plain english, anything that helps us to see that we need God.   And that could mean pain, or loss, or failure, or broken dreams or a broken heart.  

Now, all of those things hurt.  They are the type of things that make people (at least people like me...) say "God, how could you let this happen?"  But they are also times when people do cry out to God for help and that is exactly what is needed.  So, in a profound way, these things are "merciful" even though they may hurt bad.  

So, what exactly do we mean when we pray "Lord have mercy" in mass?   Do we mean "Lord, hurt me bad so that I am more dependent on you?"   No, that doesn't quite seem right.  How about instead, "Lord, help me to wake up to how desperately I need you, at least for this one day.  Help me to remember what other people have sacrificed in following you.  Shine a spotlight on these problems of mine that seem, so strongly, as if they will be the end of me.  Let me see their shadows cast against the wall of death that my life is headed toward."  

This is a wild concept.  This idea of "pain as mercy" is crazy talk to the modern ear - or as the bible would say, "foolishness" to Greeks and "a stumbling block" to the Jews.  Yet, somehow, the Apostles, who had been given great light from the Master himself, were able to literally rejoice when they were beaten. 

I am not "there" yet.  Frankly, I don't see how I would ever get "there" - but as the Lord has thus far been able to help me to come to a deeper understanding (at least) of the profundity of my own spiritual and intellectual darkness, I think it is wise for me to just say that it may also be possible for the Lord to bring me to a point where I can rejoice in my sufferings, even though I can't see how right now.  

Grace please?

Senseless Devotion

I like to think up catchy titles for these blogs and it was shortly after a recent visit to the Basilica of St. Mary (in Minneapolis) that I came up with the title for this one.  The intended meaning is that our faith and devotion to Jesus Christ is NOT sensed - that is to say, it is not something experienced by any of our physical senses.  This probably doesn't come as a surprise to anyone, but I think it bears repeating to better take it to heart.  

The inspiration for this post was a funny, silent little exchange I had with another person.  Now the Basilica is right in downtown Minneapolis and there is a fairly eclectic crowd that hangs out there on weekdays.  There are homeless people in need of help, there are art students sketching out the architecture on easels, there are tourists with cameras looking all around, and then there are people like me who are there to pray.  There are signs everywhere reminding people that the Basilica is a place for prayer and that silence is to be observed, so everyone sort of shuffles around without making much eye contact, trying to keep quiet.  

This time, I happened to be there to pray the Stations of the Cross.   I do this in the traditional way - meaning I physically walk around the outer perimeter of the church, where the station plaques are mounted, and I stop to genuflect, read a meditation from my prayer book and pray silently in front of each station.   Of course, I like it best when no one else is there and I have the whole church to myself, but I'm to the point now where I don't get too self-conscious if people stare at me while I'm doing this.  On this occasion, as I am on station eight or nine (out of fourteen), this guy is walking towards me with his head down.  I am standing still, reading a meditation, and he doesn't notice me standing there.  As I drop to one knee to genuflect, my movement startles him slightly and he recoils, not quite sure what I am doing.   I nod my head to him and keep on with what I am doing.  He proceeds to stare at me.  He then turns his whole body to looks at the wall where I am facing the station plaque.  Now, on the wall there are all kinds of inscribed placards, stained glass windows and paintings besides the little plaque for the station of the cross.  He looks back at me and then looks at the wall again trying to figure out what I am genuflecting in front of.   It occurred to me that the guy was probably wondering "What does he see that I don't see?"  He then gives me a little look like I am crazy and moves along.  

It's so natural to want to meet the world with our senses - how else are we supposed to meet it?  For people who are deprived of one or more of those senses (sight, hearing, etc.) we see it as a poverty.   The historical artwork that presents the story of Jesus Christ to us, out of reverence, always puts "highlights" around the figure of Jesus - a halo, sunlight shining down from above, angels adoring from on high.   But the day that Christ died, as he hung on the cross, there was nothing to see.  I imagine the centurion might have looked at the Apostle John standing with Mary at the foot of the cross the same way the guy in the Basilica looked at me. "What does he see that I don't see".  Of course, the answer to that question is:  nothing.  We walk by faith and not by sight.  

The greatest of our "senseless" mysteries of the Catholic faith is the Eucharist, the very body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ, a "sacrament" wherein we are associated with the saving work of Jesus Christ.  He is our paschal lamb, our passover meal that protects on the night of the destroying angel.   

Thomas Aquinas, the great philosopher of the Catholic Church, wrote a great poem about this "senseless" aspect of faith in Christ - it's called the "Adoro te Devote" (Latin words you see painted on the wall in many Churches...).  I thought I'd like to share it...

I devoutly adore you, O hidden God,

Truly hidden beneath these appearances.

My whole heart submits to you,

And in contemplating you,

It surrenders itself completely.

Sight, touch, taste are all deceived

In their judgment of you,

But hearing suffices firmly to believe.

I believe all that the Son of God has spoken;

There is nothing truer than this word of truth.

On the cross only the divinity was hidden,

But here the humanity is also hidden.

I believe and confess both,

And ask for what the repentant thief asked.

I do not see the wounds as Thomas did,

But I confess that you are my God.

Make me believe more and more in you,

Hope in you, and love you.

O memorial of our Lord's death!

Living bread that gives life to man,

Grant my soul to live on you,

And always to savor your sweetness.

Lord Jesus, Good Pelican,

wash me clean with your blood,

One drop of which can free

the entire world of all its sins.

Jesus, whom now I see hidden,

I ask you to fulfill what I so desire:

That on seeing you face to face,

I may be happy in seeing your glory. Amen

Consolation Prize

The Church is presently in the midst of its annual novena - as in THE NOVENA - the "nine" days between the Ascension of the Lord Jesus and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. I have been participating in the prayer in my usual manner (i.e. start two days late with strong intentions to do the rest, get too busy, miss another day or two, almost give up, feel guilty and then do one more day, resolve to do better next year...).

Since the title of this blog is "Indwelling Trinity", I was hoping to go "long" on the Holy Spirit - maybe read "The Interior Castle" and really have something to say.

But, alas, no.

Instead, I was struck by one title of the Holy Spirit - "the Consoler". I really haven't understood this title - it seems vaguely like it means that the Holy Spirit is the One makes us feel better when we are sad or some such.

But this week, indeed this Novena, it occurred to me that the Holy Spirit is the Consoler because He is WITH US. This was the consolation the Apostles were looking for - as in "There goes Jesus up into the sky - now all we have to do is make disciples of all nations". What a consolation when God returns, God the Holy Spirit, and enters them in the visible form of "tongues" of fire. I am always struck by the dichotomy of Moses encounter on Mount Sinai, where the people are terrified and have to stay away from the Divine Presence even from the foot of the mountain where God is, and the Holy Spirit which enters right into the Apostles. Of course, this is not to say that Jesus is not with us or that God the Father is not in us, but the Holy Spirit brings Divine Indwelling. What a consolation that presence must also have been for the Martyrs or those crushed under the heels of the world, the poor and the downtrodden. They have the Holy Spirit in them, which is what they ultimately need.

May the Holy Spirit strengthen me to live this truth in my life.

Thanks be to God.

Light Inaccessible

As I look back on it now, it seems that I have done a lot of posts about "spiritual darkness" - about the "darkness" of our physical senses in regards to perceiving ultimate reality, and the inevitable  "dark night of the soul" experience that happens as we use our wills to try to live in conformity with God's will against our senses.

In "light" of this it only seems appropriate that, in this Easter season, I would write something about "light", as opposed to darkness.   After all, isn't that what it's really all about?

Light, heaven, God.  These all go together.  

The problem I have in trying to write about these is to be able to "back up" far enough to get a sense of the big picture.    With heaven it is sort of like looking at the ocean - from the shore, you see water, but you don't really have a sense of what you are looking at.

At times I think my conception of heaven is so poor that it's embarassing.  It's somehow a hodge-podge of things I have seen in cartoons, sitcoms and movies.   With verses like "eye has not seen, ear has not heard", I'm probably not alone in this regard.

The theology books say that the main "deal" about heaven is something called the "beatific vision".  This is one of those things where I nod my head yes and say "OK" while looking around the room and thinking to myself "everyone else knows what that means except me".  The fact is, I don't think anyone knows what the beatific vision is - not necessarily that there was never anyone who knew or that it is unknown to the human race, but rather that this isn't exactly the sort of thing you can take a class on somewhere.  The silly thing is that most churches seem to treat this topic as if it's something that we are all well versed in - sort of like the way everyone refers to the "big questions" in life, as if we all know what those are and have put a lot of thought into them, even though I have never heard of a high school class entitled "big questions".  I haven't heard of it at any college I know of either. 

The theology books go on to say that the beatific vision is a "face to face" encounter with God - meaning THE GOD.   But this doesn't help my mental conception very much - when I try to picture a "face to face" encounter, I pathetically imagine that God's face will be a lot bigger than mine and that He is emanating all kind of light and our noses are touching ("Yes, OK" ...nodding...everyone else in the room is getting this and I'm not getting it...).  

I read a book recently that said that the "face to face" part means that we are knowing God directly, not thought any sort of intermediary, as must always be the case in this life.  OK, fine, but what does it mean to "know God"?  Well, for one thing, God is the source of existence itself, so if you "know God face to face", one byproduct would seem to be that you automatically know about all of creation (although "knowing" all of creation doesn't mean you know all of God).    It's my understanding that, in the beatific vision, you don't even need to ask God (speech in this case serving as an intermediary), rather your mind is "plugged in" directly - like "high-speed heaven-internet".  This is the "light inaccessible" to us here below.   

But the part of heaven that I most wonder about is the "eternal rest".  To be satisfied at last.  To desire nothing more, to have no fear of future problems, to be at peace with a peace no one can take from you.    It somehow seems that you must already have the beatific vision to even conceive of what this eternal rest is.  The intermediaries of speech and language that we are so dependent on in this life can not capture it to allow it to be conveyed to us.  If our senses in this world are so much darkness, the beatific vision in the converse - whatever is wrong here, somehow corrected there.   The actions of those who have experienced beatific vision, albeit in fleeting glimpses, cast into relief a shadow of this ultimate reality for us to wonder at - St. Thomas Aquinas comes to my mind, who, after having an experience of the beatific vision, said to burn all of his writings, or St. Stephen who was stoned to death with a smile on his face.  The traditional word used for Christians entering this state at the end of faithful living has been "triumph".    

The "triumph of Nate Clyde" - may I live to see it.  

 

Gimme' some water...

(Props to Eddie Money )

Reading the Book of Exodus this morning and really marvelling at the spiritual ideas presented. In the past, when reading Exodus, I have always somehow gotten hung-up on trying to picture (and understand) the plagues that the Lord sends against the Pharaoh and Egyptians - what was the darkness that you could "feel"? What's the difference between the gnats and the flies? Did the Nile really look (and smell?) like blood? Why could the Egyptians dig next to the Nile and still find water if the Nile was blood? Finally - how can the Egyptians do the same thing as Moses did - what was up with that?

This morning, though, I went in a different direction. After a recent bout in our house with Strep throat, which notably featured my wife and I both sick at the same time (for the first time...), I found that I started to get filled with a very negative attitude - it seems to fit to say that I was tempted to "grumble against the Lord" - at least a little bit. My thoughts were a confused jumble - "Does God want us all to die?" "Is it a good thing that we don't have a family support structure here locally?" "If this religion is all about "embracing the cross", I'm never going to make it!"

As I read the account of the Exodus, the words on the lips of the Israelites seemed to fit well in my mouth - "Did you lead us out here to die?" "In Egypt, at least, we had food!" "We're doomed, the Egyptians are coming!". In each case, they must be utterly dependent on God - or die. It's humbling to know that the words of the Israelites could be my words - likely WOULD be my words in a setting as extreme as the Exodus (allowing for the grace of God of course....).

I am somehow cross-correlating this to what I have been reading in The Dark Night of the Soul - the Exodus story certainly seems to qualify as a "Dark Night of the Senses" - the book is filled with stories like the Israelites at Meribah where there is no water - followed by another story where their food has run out (God sends the Manna and the Quail to feed them), followed by battles where they are outnumbered. As I have noted in a previous post, there is always this cry "Why did you bring us out here? We were better in Egypt!". It seems to me that the Dark Night of the Senses is not primarily an intellectual experience, it's a sense experience. "The desert" is the spiritual term for life lived (in a certain sense) "against" the physical senses.

And, in response to their "hardening their hearts", they are sentenced to "wander" in the desert. It's bad enough to pass through the desert on the way to something better, but to just "wander"...

Wow.

I find it so fascinating that it doesn't seem wrong to say that all of our physical senses - sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell - are all "darkness" as regards ultimate reality. In fact, it seems to me that it's not just darkness, but distorted light - bad information as opposed to no information at all.

This is where "grace" is so important. Grace is a word that I have heard on the lips of so many people that it is almost robbed of meaning. Functionally, I could define grace as "the word Protestants use most". But in light of this Dark Night idea, grace could be defined as "that which enables us to live through the Dark Night of the Senses" - since it's a Dark Night, grace, by definition, is not sensed. The most evidence compelling evidence I see of its existence is other people's lives lived right in front of me clearly under the influence of it. A significant component of my spiritual life consists in listening to stories of people who made it through the desert, through the Dark Night, not the least of which are the Israelites of the Exodus.

Here is where I begin to catch a glimpse of how awesome the Christian gospel is. We are not following a pillar of cloud and flame, but a God so committed to forgiveness so as to be render himself powerless against us when we ask for it. Even Peter, who "failed" the test, is gathered up again, indeed "carried through" the desert.

I have no faith that I will never grumble (I've lived long enough to know myself...), but I can have faith that I will be carried through even if I do.

Thanks be to God.

Disconnected Statues

In an earlier post, I wrote about my experience with statues in the Catholic church in contrast to some headless mannequins at the shopping mall.

Recently it has occurred to me that the Catholic church has no monopoly on the use of statues in America. I am referring, of course to the many civil monuments that include the use of statues (war memorials, historical figures, local leaders, etc.) that dot our American landscape - Lincoln's monument and the statue of the marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima to name just a few - plus countless thousands of others with more localized significance.

It sometimes seems to me that, in these times, these civil monuments are succeeding at everything except their intended purpose - namely to call to the mind of the observer some remembrance of the noble character or deeds of the one depicted. Rare is the case where, after I go up close to read an inscription at the base of a statue monument, that I have ever even heard of the subject represented, let alone have any qualitative sense of their spirit or what they were about. Oddly, enough, this is particularly true with respect to statues that depict people of local significance. This is so odd to me. It's kind of like all the lines in the Old Testament that we moderns considering "boring". Do we have any sense of the human effort that the scribes and monks put into copying those verses over and over, by hand and candlelight, so that they could be successfully handed down to bore us? They weren't just Xeroxing. There was no "clipboard". Why would somebody go to that trouble? Why don't we even seem to have a sense that there was trouble gone to?

In regards to these civil monuments, I sometimes feel like I someone in possession of a very finely crafted leather-bound book written in a language they can't read: I open the cover and see the all the beautifully scripted foreign characters inside. I close it again and think "Well, I have no idea what this says, but look how pretty the writing is! Look at the binding! What a beautiful cover! Oh, it must be a very important book to be made so well!"

These statues are for me little more than "mannequins of history" - trying in vain to get me to buy that which has been draped on them - as I stroll by with no more interest than a casual shopper.

My ignorance of history, especially local history, seems at times like an impenetrable fog that denies me the gift that was intended for me by the ones who erected these civil monuments. I am reduced to looking at the style of the clothing and the posture to see if I can intuit something of what is supposed to be conveyed. "Boy, that General so-and-so sure looks stern. I bet he wasn't somebody to mess with." or "Why did men always wear those goofy looking knickers back in the day?" or "Maybe I should wear a goatee like that?".

All of this has given me a sense that there is somehow a warping in my identify. I am something like a plant that is tried to grow by flinging its first roots as far as it possibly could. My identify is gaggle of "furthest reaches" and I am not rooted in the soil over which my center is actually physically situated. I am somehow more connected to things further away than things close at hand. I am more influenced by things thousands of years ago than things 100 years ago.

Weirdest of all, I feel like the only one looking at the statues....

Kosher Alternatives

Some time ago (it was in the summer) I was on an errand to get some meat to barbecue for dinner. I don't recall exactly why, but I was on foot and in a hurry (meaning: kids were hungry). I was high-tailing it for the local "big-name" grocery store near our house. On the way I passed a Jewish deli that I have walked by a million times. On this day I thought to myself - "Hey, they've got meat in here and it'll save me a lot of time to just go here and run back home". So I went inside and asked if they had any brats. The man behind the counter, clearly an orthodox Jew, said "I've got kosher hot dogs that are to die for! How many do you want?". I bought a half dozen, thanked him and went out of the door with a smile on my face.

It wasn't until I was half way home again that it occurred to me how stupid it was for me to ask an orthodox Jew if he was selling pork sausages.

What I remember about it was that the guy didn't bat an eye at my question. He just proposed, in a very positive manner, a kosher alternative to what I had asked for. He didn't correct me, or remind me that Jews don't eat pork, or take offense at the insensitivity of my question. The result was that I left his store feeling that I had bought something even better than brats - kosher hot dogs (turns out they were actually pretty good...). I would have no hesitation about going back there again to buy something else - not because the kosher hot dogs are that good, but because of the welcome I felt from the man behind the counter and his willingness to share, in a positive way, his particular culture and life.

In all honesty, I am not this way about the particulars of my culture and life and I wish I was.

Too often, with the particular Catholic things that I do - natural family planning, not eating meat on Fridays, reverence for the Eucharist, praying the Rosary, etc. - there is a tendency for me to hide these things away as if they are offensive to other people. It is likely the case that, at least on occasion, because this is how I act about these things, I have inadvertently "taught" other people to react to these things, about which they would otherwise have no pre-conceived notions, as if they were things that drive us apart. The analogy for the deli would be for the man to say "No, no brats here, we sell food for orthodox Jews only, is that what you want?".

Ironically, this isn't what I intend, but in honesty, it is what I sometimes do.

I wish I had more of the spirit of the man in the Jewish deli - if someone comes to me asking about contraception, I propose the "kosher" alternative - natural family planning - "It's the best!". Worried about your kids sexual behavior? I've got books on chastity! How many do you want? Life got you down? Are you suffering and not sure what it all means? I've got Jesus Christ truly present in the Eucharist - Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity - in the Adoration Chapel!

"It's to die for!"

Dark Knights and Dragons

A recurring nightmare I have had recently takes the form of me being helplessly sucked into storm sewer during a flood. I am scratching the walls trying to stop myself from being drawn in but the force of the water pushes me on. In my dream, I feel some sense of the panic that would accompany such an ordeal. As I am drawn further and further down I begin to sense that I am doomed - no one will be able to reach me as far as I am going. Finally, I come to a point of constriction of the pipe and I am pinned in utter darkness with the water rising all around me and it is then that I have this overwhelming sense of fear that this is where my life will end - alone and in the dark. This is it. There is no hope. About then is when I wake up and have a tremendous feeling of consolation that I am actually safe in my bed.

Life at times seems to me to have the form of this nightmare - at times I feel alone, drawn along by a torrent of water that takes me further and further down. The teaching of Jesus Christ is that the world that is presented to our senses is a "veil". Sight, hearing, feeling, taste and smell cannot access ultimate reality. To do so, we would need a "sixth sense", but this is nowhere promised us. Lacking this sixth sense we are "in darkness". In fact it seems to me to be worse than this - we are more accurately " in dangerous darkness". A recent trip to the emergency room for one of our little ones brought home to me the darkness of the senses. My mind was saying "I know you are with me God, I know you are hearing my prayers. I know that everything is going to work out no matter what. Even if this child were to die (albeit a remote possibility in this particular case, but somthing that goes through my mind nevertheless...), indeed especially if this little one were to die, things work out, but all of my senses are telling me I can't handle it and that this is the end of the line. Please God, heal my child."

I'm thankful to report, Bubby was okay.

I have also recently found this idea of our human sensual darkness developed quiet elegantly (my surprise at this resulting only from my ignorance...) in the book "The Dark Night of the Soul". Written by St. John of the Cross, a contemplative Carmelite Monk living during the time of the Catholic Counter-Reformation movement, the book describes both in detail, and with a first hand familiarity, the process of human beings rising to encounter the Divine. But the path described may not be what we want to hear. Especially not the modern ear.

St. John refers to this process of coming into union with the Divine as a "Dark Night" and it is a reference to the veiled darkness our senses have in regards to higher things. A key point made in the book that jumped out to me is that fasting, prayers, almsgiving and all the traditional practices of religion, while not without value, are not the ultimate path to God, because inevitably they arise from our own motives and remain under our control. The ultimate path to God is to abandon one's self to what comes in life and to find the will of God in it. There is another book, "Abandonment to Divine Providence", that makes a compelling objective case for the sublimity of this method, but St. John is concerned with the human experience of the process and the description is challenging.

Ironically, I wound up picking this book up in the Eucharistic Adoration chapel one Friday morning just after Christmas when I went up there to cover a Children's Adoration hour that is hosted by our Parish. With me in the Chapel at the same time was a mother with her four young children. This day, she had her hands full with her charges. I don't remember exactly why, but I was struggling with my own journey as a parent that morning and had come to pray specifically without the kids so I could settle down.

What unfolded next makes me chuckle. As I was reading in the Dark Night of the Soul things like this:

"This night, whereby we mean contemplation, produces in the spiritually minded two sorts of darkness or purgations, answering to the two parts of man, that is to say, the sensitive and spiritual. And thus, the first night or sensitive purgation is that wherein the soul purges and strips herself naked of all things of sense, by conforming the senses to the spirit; and the next is, the spiritual night or purgation, wherein the soul purges and denudes herself of all mental activity, by conforming and disposing the intellect for the union of love with God. The sensitive is usual and happens to many, and it is of these beginners, that we shall treat first. The spiritual purgation is gone through by very few, and those only who have been proved and tried, and of these we shall treat afterwards. The first night or purgation is bitter and terrible to the sense. The second transcends all description, because it is exceeding fearsome for the spirit..."

Literally, at the same time as I am reading this, I am hearing the woman's exasperation with her children behind me. I realized that she was having the exact same feeling I was having and had come to get away from. I don't know why this is, but nothing seems to make it easier to struggle with my kids than to watch someone else struggle with theirs. At one point I casually turned around and saw that she was holding the two "middle" ones (probably ages 3 and 4) physically apart trying to stop a fight as I saw behind her that the 1-year old was eating a blue marker (and had been for some time given the amount of blue I saw in his mouth...). When I whispered the fact to her attention she let out this exasperated groan and "lost it", went into "drill instructor mode" which caused all of the kids to snap to attention. Since I relate quite readily to the sentiment, I turned back around and didn't look again. After the kids were under control I heard her plop back down in a chair and I knew exactly what she was thinking (been there...).

That's when it occurred to me - parenting is my entry into the Dark Night of the Sense - not just in terms of the small, exasperating challenges, but also the big, scary ones like middle-of-the-night trips to the E.R. Parenting is not under my control, but is rather about a surrender to what God has in store for me. And my response to the particular challenges I am faced with is process whereby my soul is "purged and stripped naked of all things of sense, by conforming the senses to the spirit."

I don't know if I am able to write this blog adequately to convey the full sense of what I am experiencing. Somehow, in the ordinariness of my life as a parent, I have gained a small experiential insight into one of the greatest of the spiritual classics that treats of the loftiest of topics, namely salvation and eternal life.

That just blows me away.

Debbie Does Destruction

Recently I have noted a significant rise in the popularity of the "Extreme Fighting" shows, UFC and the like. I admit that, as a martial arts hobbyist, I have followed these things myself, in the past, since their modern origin in the early 1990's (I remember watching UFC #1 when it first came out). The early exhibitions had an element of "testing" the various martial arts styles against one another - pitting Brazilian Ju-Jitsu against Muay-Thai kickboxing, etc, to see who was the "Ultimate Fighting Champion". However, the bouts were often not well matched in terms of the competitors' physical abilities and they tended to either result in a immediate knockout or to wind up in the much-dreaded, boring, stalemate on the ground.

Since those early days, a considerable evolution in no-holds barred fighting competitions has occurred - indeed a new, synthesized and entirely pragmatic "Mixed Martial Arts" fighting style has arisen along with a class of competitors, drawn from the ranks of ex-collegiate All-American wrestlers, Brazilian jujitsu champions, Japanese shoot fighters and anybody else with the "guts" to take that sort of beating, whose sole "occupation", as it were, is to train full-time to beat other people up. This phenomenon has seemingly hit a marketing gold streak, meeting some sort of need in American popular culture that has lain dormant since the demise of professional boxing in the wake of the rise and fall of Mike Tyson.

In the early days of the extreme fighting shows, they were always "Pay per View" and I noted that they tended to be presented with one of two tones. The first, characteristic of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, presented the fights in a sporting motif, under bright lights, with clean cut commentators in brightly colored sports coats talking through the technical aspects of the match and a referee in a striped shirt. The second, examples of which escape me now, tended to present the event in the terms of a quasi-street fight, complete with heavy metal music (anything by "Rage Against the Machine" could be counted on as a standard...), a barbie-doll shaped ring girl (wearing a bikini that made you wonder exactly why she bothered to wear anything at all) strutting around with a "Round" card, a raucous crowd and a dark arena. There was something ominous about these "darker" exhibitions. The emphasis was less on technique and far more on seeing somebody get "beat up" (somehow a stronger term for that seems more appropriate but I'll hold off...).

In the most recent packaging of the extreme fighting consumable, I see a blending of the two styles into something that is trying to approximate the tone of professional boxing. There is theater - ring girls, heavy metal, etc., but it is somewhat toned down to make it easier to the masses to consume. And there is emphasis on technique, which has far greater traction now due to the higher level of expertise of the fighters and the commonality of the Mixed Martial Arts style.

Yet, for some reason, the idea has come into my mind that there is something about this no holds barred fighting phenomenon that is akin to pornography.

Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary explains that the word "pornography" comes from the Greek pornographos meaning "the writing of harlots" and defines it as "the depiction of erotic behavior intended to cause sexual excitement". Well, with that definition, my thesis doesn't get far.

However, there is an interesting quote (I've been unable to find exactly who said it - I'm guessing JPII) that the problem with pornography is not that it shows too much, but rather that it doesn't show enough, meaning, specifically, that it deliberately fails to show the personhood of the people involved. Notice, that with pornography, we never care WHO the people are - We never ask, for example, "whose son is that in that threesome"? Whose sister are we seeing bent double? The whole thing functions on the depersonalization of the participants.

Herein lies the latent "pornographic" element of the full contact fighting. With the rise of one after another of these chiseled, highly trained competitors, the personality of each individual tends to get lost and it becomes less and less about who they are (as in "Whose son's body is that laid out on that mat after taking a kick to head?") and more and more exclusively about what they can do. All Star wrestling has been approximating this sort of thing for a long time, but there is a real difference between the two. All Star wrestling is like people acting out pornography with their clothes on. Extreme fighting is like hard core pornography.

I think this is relevant because many people who would never dream of having bunch of guys over to their house to watch the latest hard core porn film in a group, will gladly invite a bunch of guys over to watch a man get hit so hard in head that his body assumes that (unfortunately, by now...) all too familiar rigid form on the mat and cheer for it.

I was surprised to learn that it is the official teaching of the Catholic church (sorry I don't have a reference) that any competition, of any sort, which has as part of its objective, to do damage to a human being, is intrinsically evil. My surprise with this comes because professional boxing falls under this heading - the point of professional boxing is to knock the other guy out, which is doing damage to his body. I grew up watching professional boxing and never had any sense that anything was wrong. It's fine line of course - the point of professional football isn't to hurt people, it's to tackle them, but it's silly to think that damage isn't being done. It's also interesting that the evil of this is not waived by the consent of the competitors or their goodwill toward each other. It does not make it okay if the two full contact fighters stand up and say "good job" and hug each other after beating each other down, anymore than a woman working in the hard core porn industry telling us that she is happy doing what she does makes hard core porn okay.

Of course, the final form of this will be a unholy marriage of the two (porn & violence) - indeed it doesn't take a great deal of imagination to see that it would take a deliberate act of the will to prevent these two from coming together. The same crowd that wants to see these fights wouldn't blink at incorporating hard core porn - they'd cheer all the more, buy more beer and even more money would be made. Following that, you could take volunteers from the full contact fighters who would be willing to fight with weapons to the death - and you'd get some and this would be even more of a spectacle.

It's all been done before.