This Ignatian Life » Paul’s Posts

True Stories in Prayer

plickteig — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 03:57:32 +0000

I would love to say that by this point in my Jesuit formation, I have become a master discerner. The truth of that matter is that I am still learning how to live with my own consciousness. It is sometimes so easy to tell when someone else is being whipped around by the dark spirit. However, when it comes to myself, there are times when I just cannot see what is happening until I am up to my neck in negativity. The following is a paraphrase of a brief exchange that occurred some time ago.

Seriously? Seriously?? Again with the anger and frustration. Yes. Thanks, Ignatius. I am seriously confused and baffled…by my own idiocy…right now! I am glad I asked for the “grace.” Ugh. Hello? Is there anyone up there listening to this? Yeah. I didn’t think so. What am I doing anyway, sitting here talking to myself like a freakin idiot…stupid voodoo religion piety.

Uh…Paul?

I swear to God…

Alright brother…eeeeasy. Take a breath. That’s it. What just happened? Weren’t you just in consolation a couple of minutes ago? Seriously – you were sitting there in total peace thinking about how many good things are in your life. You even made note of a couple of things that you used to think of as “sucking” that had recently shifted. You had an experience of gratitude that was totally unforced and completely suffused your perception of reality with peace. You also had an inexplicable sense of love for the people in your life. What happened?

Well…I was thinking about my life and how much I appreciate the people in it, and then I started thinking about the place I do ministry; I was having all of these ideas about how I could interact in a new way with some people there, which was great because I have been wondering about them. I saw how our relationship had changed and how glad I was that things were different. Then I started thinking about all of the work I have been putting in. Then I realized how much work still had to be done and I started wondering how I would do it. I felt a little angry that I had so much to do. Then I wondered if that was selfish of me, or if other people were being selfish. Then the ideas that I was having about how to interact with others started to seem kind of stilted, like they might not work. Then I realized that there were a lot of things in my life – a lot of people – who I had difficulty with. Then the whole situation started looking impossible. I mean, how was I going to accomplish anything? Why do I even bother? Why do things never change? Why am I dealing with the same issues and the same people after months of working on this and praying with it? Does prayer even work? Why am I sitting here talking to myself? Seriously…what does it even mean to “talk to God?” It is not like the voice of God ever sounds any different from whatever other voice is in my head. Then I just got annoyed with the whole thing – the prayer, the work, the life. Aiagh!

Ok…so can you figure out which spirit that was and how it started to work? Do you see when the shift occurred? Do you see how your perception of grace was shifted to create unrest? At what point did your conscience and awareness of your own shortcoming begin to convince you of your inability, which led you to believe in the ultimate futility of the venture? Where did you begin listening to that voice that created fear instead of the one that was bringing peace and a sense of love? How do you come to know the difference between those two voices? How do you learn to discern better the shift when it occurs?

It is no secret that when we are in a good space, there is the tendency for internal backlash. Ignatius warns that the evil spirit might enter in and attempt to subvert our awareness of grace. Another interpretation is that anytime the ego is pushed outside of its place of comfort it tends to retract due to the uncertainty caused by new cares and concerns that the new awareness brings to mind. However one conceptualizes the experience, it is necessary to be aware that there is often a force working against us when we are in places of consolation. For myself, the tendency is to start to pick apart, piece by piece, the things that lead me to consolation, telling myself that I am being careful and insightful. If I let it go, this spirit of distortion starts to attack whatever I happen to be thinking of, quickly finding fault in the best of things. The result can range anywhere from being in a “bad mood” to entering into a more prolonged period of agitation and frustration.

Luckily, there are a number of ways to deal with these movements of the spirit. In this case, I was reminded that the consolation I had experienced was real consolation, and that it was likely that I had somehow been sidetracked – the spirit of darkness was obscuring the goodness that had been so evident a short time before. When I came to realize this, my recourse was to sit for a while in prayer, just resting in the awareness that these thoughts would pass. I returned to the place of previous consolation and allowed my awareness to slowly shift back to a place of equilibrium.

So why did I have so much difficulty understanding what was occurring when it was happening? While it might be easy to pick out spirits when we are really looking for them, it strikes me that when I am in my day-to-day routine I am not always in discernment mode. I mean, I have done the reading and sat through the classes on discernment, but in general practice, when I am not being graded, that is when the capacity to discern is really tested. Learning how to recognize the movements of spirits, Holy and otherwise, in the midst of my day is what it is all about. Will I ever become a master discerner? I would like to hope so. The longer I am around, however, the more I am beginning to suspect that it is a skill we never master, only learn to practice better.

Spirit of Wisdom

plickteig — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 07:19:24 +0000

Ignatius left his sword before a statue of the Virgin, however, his transformation was not instantaneous. He had to learn how to live. Over many years he struggled to come to terms with what his symbolic gesture was intended to reveal. He went from noble, to beggar, to pariah, to crazy-man on campus. He eventually made friends, but he was neither the most affable nor appreciated of young Catholic thinkers (see: inquisition). In time, however, he learned how to live in a new way that allowed what he believed in his heart to be revealed in his actions. He gained understanding. He gained wisdom.

Some say that Wisdom only comes with learning how to live with love in the midst of difficult circumstances. This is a hard truth for many of us because it reminds us that the one problem we all share, our inability to understand how to live with one another, cannot be addressed in any way but through our experience. We have to learn how to live with one another. No merely symbolic action will suffice to create the change in our lives that we desire. Words and gestures give us something visible to hold onto, but they are nothing if they are not experienced in our hearts.

Wisdom is a mix of love and understanding that only comes with time. Wisdom cannot be extracted with machines from the earth, or mapped out with a set of instructions; we become aware of it as we learn how to love even when faced with the hardest choices of our lives. Wisdom is more than a set of tools or rules. It must be pulled from the depths of our experience as creatures, living in uncertainty, clinging to our belief in the goodness of God.

There are really own two questions that I ever ask: God, how are you loving me, and how have I been loving you? From these two questions come of a slew of others: Was I open to the kindness that was offered to me today? Have I learned to care for others? Do I seek to understand others even when it’s difficult, even when they bother me? Am I willing to face hardship and misery as I encounter it in my own life, in my doubts about God, humanity and my own nature? Lord…How do I love when I hurt? How can I be forgiving when I am so angry? How can I live with creativity when I see so much destruction? How do I live a life of integrity when it seems so difficult and so few seem to value it? How do I acknowledge both the fact that I am called to serve you, my God, but I am, too, a sinner? All of these questions are about loving and being loved. How I handle these questions, whether I honestly grapple with who I am, what I desire, and what I desire to desire, tells me who my true God is.

I like to think that when Ignatius was laying down his sword, it was not just a symbolic act of fidelity, but revelatory of his movement away from weapons, both exterior and interior, that were harming his relationships with God and others. The act, in itself, would have meant nothing if Ignatius had not learned to live in another way. His prayers, thereafter, were not an assertion of the way he lived, but they way he desired to live. He sought in his own heart to be wholly faithful to God, without counting the cost, heeding the wounds, seeking for rest, or asking for any reward except for knowing that he did God’s will. He sought these things not because he did them well already, but because they were an articulation of what he desired in the depths of his soul. He had to grow into these words. He had to learn how to live his desires. Like Ignatius, I am still learning how to love. I am still growing into wisdom. In this way, each prayer is a reminder not only of who I am, but who it is that I desire to become.

Watch What You Eat

Trinity

plickteig — Mon, 31 May 2010 05:05:31 +0000

Where do we begin? How do we speak of you?

We say that Jesus is the Son, eternally begotten from the Father. We are still not sure how this works. We say that the Father and the Son are analogous terms, used to describe something of the nature of God and how God relates to humanity. These terms, though, speak of things that are in eternity. We do not understand eternity. We might recognize that eternity is not forever, that it is a state of being outside of time, but all that we know has been revealed in time. Time is limited. Humans are limited. We use terms to describe what we perceive and what we believe has been revealed, but the words are lacking. So, we are not sure what it means to say that the Son became human. We do not understand the Christ’s divinity – any more than we understand eternity. Instead, we only accept that the ultimate truth is something that we can ponder. The words we use are intended to stretch our perception and make us aware of what might be.

The Holy Spirit, which I believe is present and loving us even now, will have to wait for another post. What has been continuing to enthrall me lately is the experience of God and humanity. Human experience is, after all, something that we can account for. Our experience with the source of being we call God, and our accounts of the human Jesus, they lead us to a worldly experience. Even when our encounter with God is described in supernatural terms, the words are still human terms. It is the humanity of Jesus that enthralls me. It is the ways that he was described that draw me into contemplation of him. I can believe that there was a man named Jesus. He was born of woman. He had the same muddy beginning as us. At the same time, there was something about the way he was that set him apart. This difference was so powerful that people intentionally spoke of him in terms that were different from the ways that they spoke of others.

The words that people used to speak of their experience with Jesus were not the same glowing variety as used to describe mythological gods or ancient heroes. He was not the mighty, yellow-haired Achilles or the courageous Odysseus performing feats of strength and daring. His greatness did not reveal itself in an ascendance to worldly power or with righteousness rewarded by material wealth, like the heroic David or the stalwart Job. In fact, it was just the opposite. His miraculous feats gave others strength. His power healed those who were injured. His ascendance to power was without reward and without acclaim. He was great because he served and cared for others; he shared in their struggles and rejoiced with their return to wholeness. He did not pursue titles, and when they were given, he demurred. He looked at his life, even when speaking of his Father, not as the right to do as he saw fit, but as the choice to do as he thought the Father saw fit.

I sometimes wonder what prompted the author of John to write, “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the Word was God.” These passages are some of my favorite in the bible, some of the first that I came to believe, and some of the first that led my mind into a new way of thinking. Still, I do not know what they mean. The words we have for Jesus cannot adequately describe his divinity – only what people have experienced of his humanity as it related to divinity. The way of Jesus was different from other people’s ways. How Jesus revealed God was different than what people expected. He defied categorization. He was something other. Perhaps since people did not understand this, they gave him names that described just how “other” they perceived him to be; these title came not from his likeness to God (which they did not and could not know), but came from a way of being that was so unlike what humans had experienced that he must be somehow divine. And so they say, he was like us in all things but sin. That he was born of a virgin and became man.

At the same time, perhaps it was that he allowed people to experience something of their own call to divinity, too, that he was able to open people up to their experience of relationship with God, present in their lives, in a new way. I like the idea that Jesus was a bridge, both God and human, introducing the grace of the divine into human existence. Was the way Jesus experienced the divine different from what we can experience? I am not so sure that it was. I mean, obviously, his union with God, to the extent that he was God, cannot be known to any of us. However, much of what Jesus experienced of God was a human experience of God, and that can somehow be understood. It has been posited that Jesus, sharing in human ignorance, might have come to know the fullness of his nature over time. Perhaps, then, like Jesus, we can come to know something of the fullness of our nature, even as we live in the flesh. We can come to experience the love of God and give that love to others, just like Jesus did. We can offer ourselves to the possibility of transformation through the contemplation of his life. We can commit ourselves to pondering the meaning of the confusing words used to describe him. We can learn better how to perceive the intersection of the human and divine. Recognizing him creates a space of grace where we can come to understand, if not the eternal nature of the Son, at least how divinity looks when it is fully human and bound in time.

The Creed

plickteig — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 02:22:53 +0000

I once had an instructor who remarked, “Whoever heard of someone entering the Catholic Church because of the Nicene Creed?” My difficulty with this statement at the time was that I had returned to the Church specifically because I had found, articulated in the Creed, something about the mystery of God revealed in terms that spoke to my heart. In this instructor’s comment I recognized that something felt wrong. After some thought, I was able to articulate the sense that a sort of caricature was being drawn. There are those who “feel” their relationship with God. Then there are those who think about God. It was as though my instructor was saying that the two were not only separate, but that “feeling” was somehow more important than “thinking about” God. In my professor’s eyes, the statements found in the Creed spoke to people who were attempting to formulate proofs for the existence of God, rather than attempting to know God in their hearts. Though I could not articulate it at the time, intuitively, I knew otherwise.

It is easy for the modern reader to forget that we read the Creed, and indeed early Christian authors in general, through centuries of experience and development of dogma. Perhaps we do not always think of these things the way that early Christians did. We forget to ask why the formulation of the Creed emerged and how it might have affected the lives of the people who developed it. The Creed did not simply spring from someone’s mind and onto a piece of paper. The ideas were argued over, struggled with and refined. The words describe the experience of those who were coming to terms with basic questions about God the Father, who Jesus is, and how the Holy Spirit was being revealed to them. They were passed along through the centuries because there were no better words available. For early Christian writers these were not just matters of the intellect, but matters that were intimately connected to their relationship with God.

As I think about the Creed now, I realize how dependent I am upon the words it contains to help ground my own perception. Statements about the Father, Son and Holy Spirit describe both what I have come to believe through scripture, but also something about my experience of God. I trust there is one God, but I also know that what I understand of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit can appear to be three very different realities. How, then, do I account for these experiences and pieces of revelation while still maintaining belief in the One? Why do I sometimes pray to God, sometimes to Jesus, and sometimes with the Holy Spirit? Why do I feel like certain prayers, with certain Persons of the Trinity, are more appropriate at certain times? I know that this mystery is touching my heart, but how can I describe the nature of that mystery? In this way, the statements of the Creed speak to me as emerging out of a sort of theoretical mysticism that I have not always recognized. These thoughts have to do with how I understand salvation and are an attempt to describe my relationship to God: the Creator, the Sanctifier, the Redeemer, the One and the Three. The words of the Creed help root me and guide me. They give me something a little more tangible to hold onto as I attempt to articulate what is ultimately ineffable.

As we race through the Creed at mass, saying the words by rote, do we remember it took years for the thoughts that our lips are forming to emerge from the heart of Christianity? Who Jesus Christ is continues to be a mystery to Christians. How the Holy Spirit is present is nearly impossible to relate to those who do not believe. None of us are born knowing how to talk about God; we have to learn how to articulate our experience. The words we choose change the ways that we see God at work. The Creed’s words, when carefully considered, help us in this. They speak to the heart of faith by causing us to name our belief and wrestle with the ways that the understanding of our tradition is articulated. The words of the Creed can help still the mind and give a person the sense that there is more to their understanding of God than meets the eye. The Creed offers no easy answers, even though the statements are easy enough to say. Rather than letting this be a stumbling block, however, if we give ourselves to the possibility of wrapping our minds around the words, we might find that the words will enrapture us. Instead of rushing thoughtlessly through the dogmatic tenets of the Creed, we can choose to roll the thoughts over in our minds, allowing them to lead us to a different type of awareness.

Like the early thinkers in the Church, our sense of being Christian can join the spiritual to the theoretical, the intellectual to the emotional. The Creed is not void of affect; it was formed out of affect. In our thoughtful recitation of the Creed every week we are reminded, again and again, that God is always more than humans can comprehend, and that how we think about God ultimately affects our perception of our relationships, with the Father, the Son, and with everyone else. While the intellect and the affect are hardly the same, there is a very specific connection between the two, and we can choose to allow reason to merge with emotion and find light in the eternal mystery. If we believe what we say, the way that we think will ultimately affect how we process what we feel. We can connect our intellect to our hearts, and come to recognize that even in our inadequate statements of belief, there is something of a truth that, while defying logic, somehow expands our understanding and broadens our awareness of our relationship with God.

…in all things but sin.

plickteig — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 00:54:23 +0000

How human do we dare to make him? Did he smell funny when he was a kid? Did he get cranky when he was hungry? Did he ever get preoccupied by play and forget to come home for dinner? Did he ever stand in awe of a sunset or wonder why God made ants? What about at 15 when he was awash in hormones and his frontal lobe was not fully developed? Did he ever forget what he was supposed to do? Did he break things because he was too excited to think about what he was doing? How did he feel about girls? How did he feel about boys? Did he ever hurt people by accident? Did he ever forget what he was trying to say, only to remember after he had said something that might have been better left unsaid?

What did he see when he read the temple scrolls? Did he wonder why the people begged for a king to rule their nation when God had told them that judges were all that they needed? Did he feel his own heart stir as God sent the people prophet after prophet, calling them back to the covenant and to intimacy with Him? Did he immediately and explicitly know how to respond to the questions of Job? Did he wonder at the Beauty of Bathsheba, or contemplate the splendor of Solomon? Were the strange, sometimes conflicting elements of the books of Wisdom a mystery to him? Did he recognize people in his own village in the accounts he read? Could he see his neighbors wandering in their own deserts, with hardening hearts, growing weak in spirit?

Was he drawn into deeper awareness that he was the Messiah? Was he living a conscious articulation of something he already and always knew, or was it a surprise? Did he struggle with that articulation? Was it hard for him to admit because he did not want to presume too much? Did he know it and try to hide it even as a child? Did he have to learn he needed to hide it? Was he born knowing how to do miracles? Did he make mistakes sometimes (how many tries before he healed the blind man who saw people like walking trees?)? Did he know the little girl would rise? Why did he weep at the tomb of Lazarus? Did know how to handle mobs, or did he have to think on his feet? When he met the woman about to be stoned, was he buying time by writing in the sand?

Did he have foreknowledge of all that was to come or was he an intuitive of unsurpassed ability? Did he know who would betray him from the start or did he learn it as time wore on? Did he feel sadness for his betrayer? Was his knowledge of Peter’s denial a hunch? Did he know how he was going to die? Did he think that there was a chance it could be avoided? Was he hoping for the end to come as he was being flogged? What did he think about as he carried his cross up the hill? Was he sad that his mother had to see him in that state? Did he pass out at any point? Was it hope that led him up that hill? Was it love?

If Jesus is like us in all things but sin, what did this mean for us? Did Christ think like you? Did he pray like you? Would he see the same things as you, if he were in your place now, staring out from behind your eyes? Was his awareness like yours when you feel the presence of God, when you are aware and certain? When he talked about being one with the Father, even if his awareness was complete and total, was awareness of God sufficient for him to not feel pain? Can anyone avoid suffering? Loss of love? Weeping? Joy? How human was he? How much a part of God are we? Where does God consciousness begin and regular consciousness end? Are we unrolling the scroll as we go just like he had to? Are we coming into awareness of God in our lives like a son, or daughter, of God?

Photo: “Andy at Sunset” by “Gary Simmons” from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)

Hear I AM

plickteig — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 23:16:36 +0000

What am I looking for? Is it love? Acceptance? Understanding? Purpose? What words do I put on the thing or experience that I think will help me feel like I am doing my part in this world? Is there a word? I am not sure that I have any answers that have not been covered at least 10,000 times by minds more nimble than mine. Words…words…words…

I have felt inarticulate as of late. I have been traveling for the last six weeks, never staying in one place for more than ten days, occasionally waking up and forgetting where I am. To be sure, I have had beautiful experiences with family and friends. I have seen the sun set over mountains, on plains (in planes), and rise over pine trees and frozen hills. I am grateful for the experience. I have experienced conversations in cultures (both in the US and outside) that have opened my eyes in new ways. The thing is, I cannot really say much about them. I do not know what to say. They have not had time to settle. I have not had time to process. I do not have the words available. Further, looking at the news of the world and seeing murder, mayhem and madness floating alongside stories of beauty and grace, I do not know how to feel.

Culture shock, mixing with the mental and emotional saturation of the holidays, the glut of food, family, friends and foreigners, leaves me just feeling worn. I feel like hibernating. I feel like sinking into the sluggishness of the season. I know I think things and that I feel something. I am just not sure it matters if I say what. I mean really, is it necessary to say anything? Is it necessary to try to muddle through the mental slog and describe the sediment of some sentiment? Is there any articulation that will actually help matters?

I am not so sure. In fact, maybe articulation is what I want to avoid.

My real desire, see, is to let myself drift into a quiet place away from the noise and hullabaloo of the next big entertainment event (Grammy’s Superbowl, Olympics, Oscars) and listen.

Thank God Lent is coming.

These are the desert days for me. These are the days when I want to go out into the barren land and learn to listen again to the voices of my soul. I do not want to avoid the World so much as I want to remember how to listen to it. I want to remember how to hold the events of my day along side the events of the world and let them coexist. I need to remember how to let go of the desire to do and give into the awareness of “I AM.” I want to remember the voice of the one crying out in the desert. I want to remember how to let myself be moved again and respond once more as a child of God.

Watch What You Eat

plickteig — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 07:55:09 +0000

For better or for worse, media cultivates our imaginations. Our minds feed on a symbolic language of images mixed with emotion and intellectual content. Things like news programs, sitcoms, and newspaper articles work to impart information in a particular context, shaping our perception of how that symbolic language is used. Language needs a context and perception is always about perspective (ours, theirs, neutral, biased, whatever). Whenever we perceive anything, our imaginations are actively engaged in the act of association, working within a context and perspective to make sense of the world. In regular conversation there is the opportunity for give and take where two people can come to understand each others’ perspectives. The thing about media, though, is that there is no dialogue. We are told something without the opportunity to respond in a way that has much effect. We are taken along for the ride without any effort on our part. After a while, we begin to absorb the perspective of the “text” we are engaging, but the form of the text itself remains unchanged. Whether we choose to internalize it and make the perspective of that form of media our own is an entirely different matter. We can ask the Holy Spirit into our experience of media in hopes of understanding how we might grow through our consumption of it.

I have no idea how many virtues I have been introduced to by various forms of media. Books, movies, art and television shape my own wants and desires (for material goods, to seek a loving partner or not, to find a fulfilling job, to seek strong friendships, etc) in ways I have only just started to comprehend. Likewise, it has informed my understanding of things like courage, love, hope and honor. This is both good and bad. It is good in so far as ideas and images have allowed me to see in new ways. At the same time, there are other things I have witnessed that I might now wish I never had seen at all.

I want to live a good life. I understand this to mean that I want to be loving and kind. Oftentimes these virtues require other virtues like patience, hope, and trust. The problem is that these virtues cannot simply be downloaded and internalized without a constant process of reflection and action and a willingness to respond to grace. No matter how many times I see examples of love on a screen, I still need to learn how to live love in my own relationships. Since my relationships with people are dynamic and always changing, there is rarely a set way for me to act. I need to keep looking at my friendships in new ways, taking into account my own desires, perceptions, and needs as well as trying to understand the other person’s. This is especially difficult when I either do not like that other person’s desires and perception or when I misunderstand it. This is where prayer comes in.

The Holy Spirit works with what it has to work with. The images I put into my head, the things I fill my mind with, this is some of the language the Holy Spirit speaks to me through. Rather than simply accepting the thoughts and ideas placed in my mind by various sources of media, I need to reflect on how they affect my perception. In prayer I can consider all of the images presented to me by various forms of media and notice how they affect my own desires. I can learn to understand thoughts that appear to be good, and others that stand in opposition to the good. Asking the Spirit of love and compassion into my understanding of media seems somehow just as important as asking the Spirit to be present in my relationships because my perception of wants and desires affects my relationships. The life of a Christian is one of thought, word and deed. These things are interconnected. The media I consume plays a major part in informing my perspective, and if I am not asking the Spirit into my understanding of what I see, I am cutting myself off from the potential for transformation. Prayer allows me to consider my entire life, relationships and perception of the world (real or imagined), as a place where the Holy Spirit is working to transform creation at all times.

The Words I Long to Hear

plickteig — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 06:40:08 +0000

And into this world, a child was born.

I think of this, at this time of year, and I allow myself to be renewed. I remember now. I remember that there was a person who lived, whose words were love, who gave himself to kindness, even to death. I remember, there was a person who spoke about the troubles of the world, and rather than feel powerless, he felt all power – but it was not the power the world seeks. It was the power of care for others, concern for the least among us, and concern for the cares of the people I love. He talked about forgiveness – that I am forgiven, and that I can seek to forgive. He talked about loving, not just the people who love me, but the people who hate me as well. He talked about letting go of my desire for material treasure, and seeking, instead, treasure that would not corrupt.

I ask myself…

It is Christmas time…

Do you know where your savior is? Is he in the manger? Is he in the temple? Is he around the table? Is he on the cross?

(don’t look in the tomb, you won’t find him there)

Do you see the person sitting next to you? Do you see the people whose messages are in you “inbox?” Do you see the people sitting at the light next to you? No. None of them are your Savior. They can reveal Him, though. Christ is being born at all times, in them, in you, in the world.

Do you hear the good news?

Do you hear that voice underneath the radio, below the hum of your computer, beneath the sound of the rain, just under the ringing in your ears, in the ebb of your breath? There is a space within us all where we can know the Messiah. Is it her, the voice of proverbial Wisdom? Perhaps once your house has been all stilled (thank you John of the Cross), the voice of the One you seek will call you to meet Him. Or as Theresa of Avila describes, the voice of the kind King is calling you always to come a little further into the castle, to a place near the center, where you can sit in one another’s presence. There is a place where you can “behold God, beholding you, and smiling” and it is not far.

I rest.

Know he is being born in you. His love helps you forgive. His love helps you understand the hurt, and learn to love again. His love helps you continue on, through heartbreak and loss. His love gives you the freedom to celebrate with joy. His love gives you strength to effect change, to spread peace, to carry the message he professed in his sermon on the mount, as he reclined at table, from the top of Golgotha, and on the road to Emmaus. The change in the world that you long to see, his love will help you be that change. He is in you, being born in you. Let yourself listen for the words you long to hear.

What?

plickteig — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 18:38:24 +0000

The Balloon Boy, John and Kate, various opinionated “news” entertainers’ recent remarks, these things are occupying my mental airspace. I want to be informed about current events and aware of what is going on in the world, but at some point I find myself getting distracted by the ever-shifting opinions and angles of news providers. It is not so much the lack of value, but of understanding which items have value. With so many feeds and not enough mental bandwidth, there are times when my brain has trouble loading a new page that might help me make sense of the small part of the world that I inhabit. Likewise, sometimes when I sit in prayer and find myself distracted by all of the images and emotions moving within me, it seems that there is so much spiritual noise that I can’t dial in on the static free voice of the Spirit. Somehow, though, I am learning that I can ask for help finding the value amidst so many distracting voices.

There are two basic types of interior noise that generally seem to be at work. With the first type, I get distracted from what I desire in my “heart of hearts” and focus on what will give me fleeting satisfaction in the here and now. Various impulses, ranging from moral judgment to flights of fantasy, can feed my desire to be loved, or right, or appreciated, or just plain peaceful. Alas, as the saying goes, “painted cakes do not satisfy.” The trouble with these thoughts is that they rely on the theory that I might feel differently if only the events in my life were different. When my mind returns after such a head-trip, I find myself feeling somehow emptier, wishing for more substance than the temporary satisfaction of my spiritual sweet tooth can provide. With the second, I find myself distracted by a world of problems that I must solve (ranging from school assignments, to relationships) and, if they cannot be solved, I buy into the idea that these things are at least worth worrying about. These distractions enter my consciousness via my own personal news feed, delivered with the “spin” of an insider, someone who knows what will get me going. It is like having my own personal editorial voice that oscillates between Keith Olbermann and Glen Beck (neither one worth listening too, but God knows how I love to hear what they will say). Again, I can find myself returning to my awareness of the present with a feeling of agitation and incompleteness.

Both of these types of distraction can be at play, and both can be equally detrimental to my capacity to recognize the work of the Spirit. As Jesus said, “May peace be with you.” It is peace we are offered, peace in the midst of events and thoughts that do more to lead us away from it, than move us towards it. As I have come to realize, however, both of these distracting movements can be brought to God in prayer. There is nothing in my mind that cannot be somehow transformed. My imagination, my desires, while created as part of the goodness that I am, are always in need or redirection and shaping so they I might live with more compassion and caring, and less fear and self-centeredness. So, I ask the Spirit into my heart while in the midst of conflict, whatever it might be. As for ways I pray, it does not necessarily matter what words I use, so long as I am and addressing my distraction and asking for the presence of the Eternal One.

“Lord God, you know my heart, you understand my fears, teach me how you are calling me to live through this.”
“Jesus, I am distracted by work, let me set it aside and sit at your feet, just for now, so that I might know of your love for me.”
“Blessed mother, teach me how you might hold this desire, so that I might hear your Son calling me to something more.”

Then I listen. When distractions come back, I consecrate them again, asking the Spirit to lead me into new awareness. While the shift is seldom immediate, I have felt a change in the way I hold on to the thoughts that distract me from Grace. As I bring them before the Lord, I am drawn into a deeper sense of union. Somehow, I am given a new way of living and thinking about the world I am in.

Photo: “Head of noise” by “MGCamacho” from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)

Where Do You Draw the Line

plickteig — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 07:00:22 +0000

I have recently started studying Theology again. In the course of my reading this week I came across an article about Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day. These two, founders of the Catholic Worker Movement, were often accused of being socialists, communists, anarchists, and agitators. What struck me about the article was not that people living 60 and 70 years ago were still using the same labels to incriminate others as they are today (though I did find that fascinating). Rather, I was struck by the simple, dogged determination of two people who, it can be argued, helped change the way that our nation looks at the issue of homelessness and human dignity. What’s more, their mission was not to make everybody become an affiliate of radical ideology bent on destroying society, though this is what they were accused of. Instead, they desired to spread the gospel.

Peter and Dorothy believed that their mission was to give life to the words of scripture. It was one thing for them to express their faith by going to church and receiving the sacraments, but they came to believe that there was a necessary connection between the table around which we celebrate Eucharist, and the table of human fellowship. Their critique was simple – the Church certainly had the goods with regard to doctrine and revelation of the faith. However, many Catholics was sorely lacking in their expression of that faith with regard to the care and concern we give to the poor, or those people that we deem undesirable for whatever reason (lazy, ignorant, immoral, etc.). If Christianity is about finding ways to draw people into communion, then both Dorothy and Peter believed there was a definite rift between words and deeds, and it was their hope to be able to bridge that gap. Thus, the two were about dialogue and resistance. The dialogue occurred between people with differing ideologies both inside and outside of the Church. Resistance was offered against those within the Church who neglected what is now termed the “preferential option for the poor,” and those outside of the Church who supported social structures and ways of life that limited a true expression of human dignity and compassion. Their mission was about care for others and they went to great lengths to embody this care.

While this breakdown is somewhat simplistic, what strikes me about the nature of our faith is that the rituals, dogma and doctrine are all oriented towards drawing us into a deeper relationship with God and, through that experience, into a greater sense of care for our neighbor. Dorothy and Peter were radical, to be sure, but the rationale of their radical deeds was to care for those in need as members of the Body of Christ. They catechized those who were ignorant. They helped people find work and food. They protested injustice and worked, personally, with those that were deemed undesirable. They did use methods that created conflict and agitation, and it is even true that their words were somehow similar to those of the era’s more radical political movements. Similar, though, is hardly the same, especially when one considers that the nature of the “radical ideology” that they professed was not about limiting the human person, but attempting to allow all people to have a sense of the dignity that social connectedness and material security can encourage. While their methods were categorized according to the social theory of the day, these categories were limited because they did not allow for the infinite capacity of God’s Spirit to be at work. After all, it was not only about money and community, but offering all people a sense of shared dignity as children of God. Truly, it was only the Spirit of God that would enable such deeds to be a success.

This leads me to the realization that sharing with others, caring for all people, is a choice. However, as a Christian it is the choice that I am asked to make. If I take seriously the truth that we are all part of the body of Christ, and that Christ is present in all people, I see many ways that I care for people, and ways that people care for me. However, I also see the way I draw lines between myself and others. I see the “other” and I see my desires and I say, “God, I will do this much for that person, but no more.” While some of this is healthy (I do need to eat, sleep, and reflect on experience, etc.) I find that the deeper I go into my understanding of God’s presence in my life, the more I have to consider moving the line. When I draw a line and say “I will do this for you, God, but no more!” I feel God standing just on the other side saying in a gentle way “Just a little further. You need a rest? Sure. When you are ready. But I want you to continue.” This is what I see in Peter, Dorothy, and many, if not all, saints. It is not that they began great, but that they were willing to continue growing. They continued to move the line. And to be honest, their example frightens me. They were radical. However, what made them radical was not just the ideology (which we have all heard in scripture and expressed in prayer a thousand times), but their willingness to act on it in a way that moved them outside of the boundaries they, and culture, had become comfortable with, into a place of deeper union with God.

Photo: “lines in the sand…” by Mateo from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)

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Jesus between 12 and 30

plickteig — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 22:56:41 +0000

At 12, when his parents find him at the Temple, Jesus shows that he knows he’s the Son of God.

At 30, when he is baptized in the Jordan, Jesus also knows that he’s the brother of all humanity, and he’s ready to face profound temptations.

I like to contemplate, with my imagination, the span of Jesus’ life between those two key moments. Something happened during that time which can explain the difference between Jesus’ first Passover feast in Jerusalem (in the Temple among the doctors, provoking admiration with his intelligence) and his last one (washing the feet of his disciples like a servant, and transforming the ritual meal into a saving gift of self… and about to be crucified outside the city walls). It seems that during that time, Jesus grew in his inner “downward mobility”; he advanced on his path of humility which is punctuated by the Incarnation and the Cross. Surely, the walk back home to Nazareth, after the embarrassment of being scolded by his parents in front of the Temple doctors he’d been talking to, was an important part of this path of humility for the young Messiah. Jesus may have been of “legal age” as an adult in his time, but Mary and Joseph knew he still had a lot of growing up to do (“in wisdom, in stature and in grace”). Clearly, Jesus’ understanding of his own identity and vocation deepens during these years. Perhaps the most important difference, for us at least, is that he identifies with the Messianic identity not of the political king, but of the servant who suffers in solidarity, from Deutero-Isaiah. Jesus identifies with us, with the humanity that we share with him. This is the Jesus who tells his disciples “You give them something to eat,” because all and any people in the crowd are “our” people and we can’t just send them away to fend for themselves. This is the Jesus whose invitation to grow in holiness is at once an invitation to accept fully my humanity. This is the Jesus who makes genuine friendships with different kinds of people, the Jesus who feels compassion for sinners and who lets himself be surprised by a Syro-Phoenician woman. This is the Jesus who saves.

I have long been anxious to “do my part” for the world, to finally be able to work and give and teach and serve, no-holds-barred. But God is showing me, in these long years of Jesuit formation, that I still have a lot of growing up to do. I still have a lot of inner “downward mobility” to do if I want to keep following the humble Lord who makes himself a servant and a brother to all. And so as I move on now to theology studies, my next stage of formation, I will keep asking our Lord to grant me inner knowledge of him, that I may better love and serve him.

Photo: “Baptism of Christ (Detail)” by “Sacred Destinations” from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)

Spirit of Wisdom

What You Will

plickteig — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 05:05:35 +0000

Sometime in my early twenties I began believing the idea that God’s Will can be known. The problem, of course, was that I did not really have an idea of what God’s will was for me. I mean, I understood the idea that I was supposed to love people, sure. But at the same time, since God knew my heart, he also knew how I really felt about the people in my life. He knew how pissed off I got at certain times and how judgmental I got at others. He also knew that, even when I prayed for people who agitated me, I still tended to fly off the handle more often than not. So, I looked for other ways to express my faith that relied more on the concrete acts I could perform rather than I how I felt about doing them. I became a diligent worker and learned how to shut my mouth, believing that tiring myself with hard labor and biting my tongue were sufficient expressions of goodness. I learned how to reason through theological arguments to prove the existence of God and cultivated talents that helped me with articulating these ideas in ways that others could hear. All the while, I was still searching for God’s will for me.

Recently I was thinking about the story of Ignatius and the donkey. The story goes that Ignatius was traveling along when he met a Moor traveling in the same direction. As they traveled together they began to talk, but over the course of the conversation the Moor made a remark about the mother of Jesus that somehow failed to recognize the blessed nature of Ignatius’ favorite lady. When the conversation ended and the Moor continued on ahead, Ignatius started to wonder whether or not he should kill the other man in chivalric defense of his lady. When Ignatius noticed that there was a fork in the road ahead and that the Moor had already taken one path, he decided that the ass would choose for him: if the animal followed the Moor, Ignatius would kill him, but if the donkey chose the other path, Ignatius would let the man go. Luckily, the ass chose the path away from the Moor, saving the life of the man and possibly the eternal life of Ignatius. Ignatius had left his decision up to the choice of an animal, taking a chance that could have had disastrous results. Instead of murder, however, Ignatius moved along the path to Manresa where he began learning how to discern the difference between the movements of the Holy Spirit from those of the other variety.

What catches my attention is that this story says a lot about how terribly our desires to serve God can be expressed and also about how God can still work with us where we are. On one hand Ignatius was drawn by his sense of the “good” to perform a bold expression of his willingness to serve God. The scary part, though, is that even while Ignatius’ desire could have been called good, the expression of this desire was still entrenched in the former knight’s old way of thinking about service. His own interior life, his sense of love and desire to care for others, was so undeveloped that he considered the act of murder a legitimate way to “defend” the honor of the blessed mother. In my own search for knowledge of God’s Will for me, I too have sought out single, magnificent acts that might “serve” God. While I have never considered murder, the problem is that I am sometimes misled into thinking that my own sense of right can be administered at the expense of another. Sometimes I ignore others when they were speaking because I think they are just being selfish with their words by using my precious time. At other times I might speak harshly to people whom I profess to love, calling it a revelation of a hard truth that they need to hear. Even though the desires might be good (we all need personal time and a kind word of concern is sometimes a necessity), the acts come to nothing if I am hurting people who are in need of grace.

Fortunately, God works with us where we are. Going back to my experience of following Jesus in my early twenties, there was one day when I asked a mentor what he thought God’s will for me was. He said, in a soft, raspy voice with a look that I will never forget, “God’s will for you is the same as it is for everybody else: to serve, share, hope and believe.” This was hardly the answer I was looking for. I was hoping that he would have some grand insight about the nature of my talents and how they might be used. It took me years to realize how right he was and that his words were not about a single act, but a way of living each an every act. If I settle for single acts that dramatically express the will of God, the chances are that I will be stymied. If I am always looking for something I can do to boldly proclaim the kingdom, I am putting the cart before the horse (or, yes, in this case, ass). Instead, I want my life to be a series of small events that cultivate a way of life, seeing God’s small movements in every part of my day. That way, when I am moved to act, my desire is not about me proving my allegiance to God or my bold willingness to do what must be done, but rather about living a life so firmly rooted in care for others, that I will be drawn down the path towards the Greater Goodness of God.

Spirit of Wisdom

Putting On A New Life

plickteig — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 08:13:56 +0000

I got a new suit when I took vows as a Jesuit. I want to say that it was not that big of a deal, but it was. See, when we entered the novitiate, we received a small stipend once a month and we had to keep track of all our expenses on this little piece of paper. At the end of the month that little piece of paper would be handed in to the Minister, along with whatever money we had left over, and we would receive another stipend. Our superiors always told us that we were to keep track of our expenditures so that we could become better “stewards of resources.” In my mind, though, I was always a little convinced that I was being tested. There was this little blank space on the last line of our expense sheet that asked how much money the novice would be returning that month. That was the test. A seemingly innocuous little line was devised to reveal whether or not I was truly attuned to the practice of poverty. Since I usually spent all of my money, I often felt that I had been tested and found lacking in this particular virtue. Regardless, despite my shortcomings, by the end of the novitiate I was “approved” for vows. This approval was underlined by the fact that I was entrusted with the money I would need to buy a black suit. I made a mental note that when I bought that suit, I would buy something that was good quality, but also relatively inexpensive. I wanted something that would last, that would show how much I knew about what would be required of this life.

Since I planned on having this suit until I was ordained, for a good ten years, I was careful about choosing a “classic” cut. This idea was placed in my mind by something I had heard an older scholastic say while commenting on life as a Regent. He said that his own vow suit still fit, almost. Unfortunately, he had spent a little too much time eating things he shouldn’t and even a little more time sitting in front of the TV to relax after a 14 hour day, rather than going to the gym to work out. As a result, he had recently experienced more than a little difficulty securing various buttons. Nevertheless, he would work these pounds off at some point and, by the time ordination rolled around, he would be back in the same condition he was when he took first vows. This struck me because I had gained about thirty pounds since entering the novitiate (all within the first three months). What would happen once I took vows? Would I fit the garment that was being cut for me? I wanted this suit to last because that would prove something. I would make a good choice. I would show that I could be a good steward. I would prove that I was worthy of the suit.

Over the next six years I began to live life as a vowed religious. As time wore on, I carried my Jesuit suit with me from place to place, taking it out now and again when duty called. The thing is, while I was very active in various ministerial roles, there was seldom any need to wear the suit I had taken such care to purchase. Soon, I started to realize that while the suit was in decent condition, it was cut in a style that no longer seemed appropriate. This was especially disappointing because, when I bought it, I had not realized that even seemingly “classic” suits might tend to become a little thinner here, and a little wider there. So, while I had thought at one point that the suit was the perfect cut, my ideas about the ideal suit had changed. Then something else happened: I tried on the suit one day and it no longer fit. It was not a weight issue because, first of all, I weighed only a few pounds more than I had as a novice and, second, the real problem was that the suit had become too baggy in the waist and smaller in the shoulders. Again, the suit did not change, it was in great shape, but I was in better shape. Somehow, as I lived my life as a Jesuit, the garment that I bought and believed would accompany me for years, no longer fit.

Light-hearted comments about novitiate expenditures and black garments aside, my understanding of what it is to live as a companion of Jesus is something like that suit. At some point I made a choice to put on my life in Christ. I had an idea of what that life should look like, and I gave myself to it, allowing myself to be formed by the choices and desires that would allow me to wear it well. It was an ideal, cut from my desire to become a good man, shaped by my shortcomings, and held together by my hope in Christ. In the back of my mind I was always measuring myself against that ideal, but even though the basic idea of what it is to live that life never really changed (I still long to be a kind, creative, caring person), my appreciation for how it all fits together failed to remain the same. In Christ I continue to outgrow old ways of thinking. In Jesus, I find that the ideas I have about how to live as a Christian are constantly being replaced, pushed aside in favor of more appropriate ways to live out that call. In this way, the thing I thought was ideal becomes a strangely limited expression of my desire to live, love, and serve as an agent of God, and I find that every day becomes an opportunity to put on a new life in Christ.

Photo: “Buckman Coats 3” by “conorwithonen” from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cmogle/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

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Just Words

plickteig — Fri, 22 May 2009 15:09:53 +0000

A number of years ago I came to believe in an absolute kind of way that God Is and that all things exist through Him. Prior to this time, I had believed in a God, sort of. I was somewhat conscientious and observant of my own selective moral code. That is, while I sometimes did the things that I considered morally relevant in the Church’s teaching, I usually did what I thought I could get away with. I went to Church and I said the words. I knew the prayers well enough that I could occupy my eyes and mind with other things. I mouthed them like magical incantations that would somehow bring good things to me as long as I said them like I meant them. While I would sometimes reflect on the esoteric bits of terminology in the mass, more often than not, I would tune them out. They were just words. However, in one moment I came to believe in the God of Judeo-Christian history, the God professed by my parents, the God of a faith that I was sometimes at odds with and confused by (with rules that I found nearly impossible to observe), and everything changed. From that day on, I began to search for meaning in the words, for evidence, first in arguments, then in stories, then in practices of prayer and various spiritual traditions. It was this movement, finding the Spirit that scripture pointed to, that allowed me to understand there was more to our faith than just words.

Words have often been a stumbling block in my understanding of the Faith. For instance, I am not sure when I decided that it was OK for me to talk about Jesus, but it took a while. I am also not sure how I came to the point where I was willing to identify myself as a Christian without being embarrassed to say the word out loud. Even today I am still not one to talk about “my own personal Jesus” or claim that Jesus has “saved” and “delivered” me. Claiming that I know the person of Jesus, not to mention what he would do in a particular situation, makes me nervous. As for being “saved” and “delivered,” well, while I have hope in salvation, I do not have certitude. I mean, while I am certainly not the person I was before I began practicing Christianity in earnest, I find that my tendency to choose to do things that are short-sighted and self-serving still persists. I still need deliverance. Truly, to paraphrase a well-known quote, I am a sinner called to serve. I claim Jesus because I desire to follow, know and love the Christ, not because I have suddenly become a saint. I desire the good, because I recognize in myself a tendency to do otherwise. I live in hope of the resurrection. I live in hope of salvation. These things, they are all bigger than the words we use to describe them. Words alone do not do the Truth justice.

I have known fools, braggarts, drunks, philanderers, liars, thieves, drug-dealers and prostitutes, and I have seen grace in them as they have been transformed, learning to live, and love, in other ways. I have known people who chose to act with kindness and gentleness when they had every “right” to choose anger and vindictive deeds as their way of life. What’s more, others have known me as a failure, and they have still offered me kindness. I have hurt those who I claimed to love, and been amazed by their forgiveness. When I have said harsh things, I have been shown gentleness by complete strangers, and the times when my own belligerence might have been on display, I have been gently corrected. In these interactions, I have been taught another way of living with and loving the people who enter my life. In this way, the message of Christ had less to do with mere words, and more to do with the living witness to the Gospel of compassion and grace. Sometimes words were the tools people used to convey their experience of God, but more often than not it was the way they followed their mighty words with even mightier deeds that revealed their belief and trust in the faith they professed.

Why do I claim Christ? Is it because I choose to believe in the words of scripture like a child does a fairy tale? No. It is because in other’s deeds I have witnessed the graces that the words we profess attempt to describe. These deeds, in turn, have given me the hope and desire to live my own life in a new way. The longer I claim to follow Christ, the more I recognize that it is not what I say, but what I do that matters more. Over time, the words of scripture slowly changed me by changing the way I lived my life. As my familiarity with the words of scripture grows, so does my passion for living them out. I can imagine myself living in them. I can sense the Spirit dwelling in me. Christ was the Word made flesh, and the words that passed through history to change my mind that fateful day so many years ago were not mere syllables to be repeated in endless recitations of prayers in mass. Rather, those words (revelations of the true Word) allowed me to glimpse a way of life that could only truly be witnessed by becoming flesh in me. I know the arguments and I can philosophize all I want, but unless I love, do acts of mercy, and forgive others when I feel wronged, then there is little good words can do. The Word must live in me. By allowing the Spirit of God, sent by Christ, into my heart to enliven my own deeds, I allow Love to speak more loudly than words alone ever could.

Photo: “Just Words” by dbwalker from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)

The Son of Man

plickteig — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 22:13:26 +0000

In contemplation, I was sitting at the last supper. I was Judas and I was angry. I turned to Jesus and began a conversation.

“Where is the kingdom you speak of? We are supposed to have a change of heart? Well, I have changed my life for you, but I am still the same man that I was. I still need food to eat and money to spend. I am still looking for detachment from the things of “this world” and trying to store up my other treasure in the place where dust and moth don’t corrode, but when I go to make a withdrawal there is nothing there. In truth, the only really “amazing” thing that you have done is to talk more than it seems is humanly possible.”

“Judas, look around you. Do you see your friends eating? Do you remember where they came from? Do you remember what they had to give up? Do you remember that they had families and jobs? I have told you that they will be rewarded. They will enter the Kingdom of God. But it is not just about what you do, it is about having a change of heart. It is about being reborn!”

“How? With what? All you do is talk about the kingdom. Well we are still oppressed and we still have to scrape for our meals, but not you. You have friends who will sacrifice because they hope that what you offer is the good. You have people who believe in you! So, you might live without a roof, but you have a home wherever you go because the people you “shepherd” are stupidly willing to bear hardship out of their hope in deliverance of some kind. You promise deliverance, but the recipients are few and we still feel pain. Jesus, I have begged for you, I have been mocked because of you, and I have served you and your ministry! I share meals and money with my brothers and I wait for you to show us what this special surprise you have in store for us is. Where is the revelation of the promise you have made? ‘It will come when it comes,’ you say. ‘Things must happen before that happens.’”

At this point Jesus looked at me and I realized that I felt shame. I was ashamed to be Judas, even in contemplation, and I was ashamed to feel anger at Him, the one I should love. I was so concerned about the appearance of things. On the surface, the stories as I was reading them failed to address the simple fact that living with other people brings pain. So what if the Bible appears to indicate that Jesus is the triumph of the Spirit of Truth, the Spirit of God. We say that he is always present, now, and always offering the goodness of God to us. How could that be taken seriously? How could we believe that all of these “deep” scriptural truths matter when the reality of suffering is still so present in the World? Even then, the pain of existence could not be explained away with a couple of stories about miraculous healings and, these days, the resurrection sounds just like any number of other stories I have read over the years. Is Jesus different? How so? How can I claim to follow what I cannot explain? How can I care for others when it does not seem that I have been wholly healed? I want to see the kingdom, but I see suffering in the world and I am often unable to give as much as I feel I need to. I want something hard and concrete that I can point to. I do not want stories of a resurrection and healing miracles. I want a lived experience of the power of the Spirit to astound the Pharisees (or those who I think are like them). In some ways I want to be a Pharisee, to prove my allegiance and wear my godliness on my sleeve where everyone who doubts can see.

Even though I was ashamed to be Judas, I had started to understand something about myself through him. My contemplation continued, but this time I watched as the events began to unfold. When Judas came with the guards, he walked up to Jesus and kissed him. As Jesus asked his question, Judas recognized the tone. It was the voice that Jesus used when he was about to reveal some magnificent lesson. Judas wanted Jesus to do just that. Jesus had promised the kingdom, and would now have to act. Judas had Jesus right where he wanted him. Proof would be forth coming.

Judas failed to recognize the nature of the life he had been given. Judas desired the physical promises of the Kingdom but, because he only saw the flesh of the man and his human limitations, he could not experience the Spirit of the Christ. The deeds of Jesus did not measure up against the wayward disciple’s expectation of the messiah and, as a result, Judas did not understand how he was being called to repentance and transformation. Since he could not recognize the Spirit of the Christ, rather than merely betraying one man, Judas rejected both the possibility that he was being called to share in the life of his teacher as well as the possibility that all things can be made new. He would not find life beyond his current suffering and he would not live to see the resurrection.

In these thoughts, I came to realize that what I was choosing to believe was not a myth about miracles and magnificent words, but rather a hope in transformation and trust that I would learn to be a man of patient compassion. It is not so much that I know for a fact that Jesus did anything, but that I believe, through our faith in him, that people are given the opportunity to experience a grace that transforms, strengthens, heals, and inspires us with love and wisdom. More importantly, I remember that I am not a Christian because I am prone to kindness, patience, and all those other holy things. Rather, I am like Judas. I want proof and when Jesus fails to be the kind of Messiah I expect, I am suddenly ready to betray him. But unlike the man who hung himself in despair all those years ago, I have found myself near the foot of the cross and come to understand something else. I have trusted that God’s grace is present even when I do not understand how. I have lived through suffering and doubt and come to see the resurrection. In the resurrection, I have found hope in transformation, and come to believe that, indeed, all things will be made new.

Photo: “Kiss of Judas * Giotto di Bondone” by Carla 216 from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)

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Found in the Temple.

plickteig — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 01:21:34 +0000

This morning in mass I sat behind a young family with two boys. The father and one boy sat near the aisle while the mother held the younger boy on her lap. As the mass progressed, I saw her occasionally stroking her boy’s back and, when sitting, letting him press his face to hers. The action seemed mostly without thought, revealing an almost unconscious connection, the sharing of space between a mother and child. As the mass wore on, and as the boy became more restless, he began to physically distance himself from his mom and pull at his father’s hand. When he was ignored, the boy then began to occupy the space between his parents, tugging back and forth on fingers and clothes until his mother once again came into his physical space. This time her face was not smiling, though not unkind, and she whispered something that got him to sit more quietly for the next five minutes. As he sat between them with his head down, he touched neither of them. I could not see his face, so I cannot guess what he felt. He dwelt, seemingly disconnected from his parents, with mere inches on either side, in a space that had been created for him.

At times in my life I have turned to God and felt the grace of mercy blessing my own face with kisses. I have known the warm embrace of friends and family that removed all sense of fear and longing. I have felt the space between my loved ones diminish, and drawn close enough to sense the tips of the Spirit’s wings brushing each of our hearts, for one moment knowing our souls were free. I have sat with my eyes on God, in silence, listening as something beyond images and words emerged from beneath the waves of my own consciousness, leaving me with a physical sense of creation’s warm expansiveness, golden, eternal and glorious. These moments are about openness and freedom. There is give and take, interaction and a willingness to listen and let my natural response be enough. In these moments, not only am I loved, I feel as though I am love.

Then life happens.

I think to myself, as I begin to feel the pining ache that accompanies the limitations of my senses, “I have not had enough.” I get restless with my life, the same work, the same faces, and all the same things. I feel my body, with its needs, and sometimes wish for something more than mere satisfaction. I desire to be filled full. I want to be occupied and entertained. I want the attention of friends to tickle me with tales I fancy. I want to dress up my life in words and sentiments that do not resemble the gross reality of my mundane perception. I want to feel something other than what I feel, and see something other than what I see. So, I attempt to make my own world. I try to take myself out of the present by letting my body feel something extraordinary or allowing my mind to make my experience fit as I think it should. I try to manipulate daily events so I can do what I want. I try to escape the need to interact with others in an open way, and focus on my way. When this happens, it is not long before I find myself feeling disconnected from the people in my life.

What happened to the life I was living before?

During these times it is like I have become so preoccupied by my physical world that I can no longer relate to God. It know that God is present, but I cannot seem to connect as I did before. Rather than opening myself up by listening and responding, allowing myself to be in relationship with God and his people, my life becomes all about what I want to do and say. I sometimes feel like that boy I saw in mass, overzealous in my desire to interact, not recognizing that while there are times when play and distractions are ok, there are also times when I need to sit and be still. I see this boy, and there I am, between my Mother and Father, told to sit, to stop moving around, and to let go of my desires for a moment.

The difficulty for me during these days of lent has been allowing myself time to sit in the temple of my own spirit. While the source of creation and joy exists at all times and is so near to me that the smallest of spiritual movements would allow me to connect with it, I do not know how to respond. It is then that I need to be told to withdraw to a space created for me by the One who loves me best. I do not need to sit for an eternity, just long enough. When I finally stop listening to all of my appetites, those sharp edged, erratic voices that get me riled up, I can hear the quiet, persistent voice of God telling me what my heart truly desires. I can think about how I choose to act and interact with the people in my life. I certainly see my sin, but I also see that I am being moved by grace towards a way of life that is more whole and more open. By letting some desires pass, I soon remember that there is a sense of equilibrium that leads towards a growing freedom and willingness for interaction. When all is said and done, after taking my time to reflect and reconnect, I will then rise in a new way. Like the boy when he left mass, with a skip in his feet and his hand in his mom’s, I will rise and walk from my place of worship with my hand in the hand of God.

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Vocation

plickteig — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 22:56:42 +0000

I was given the opportunity recently to write a letter to my Provincial asking to be sent on to Theology, the final phase of formation before ordination. When I decided to write “the letter” it was not because I felt certain that I am called to be a priest. What led to my decision was not a sense of clarity with regard to my vocation or a sure and unwavering desire burning within me. Rather, the reasons I felt called to continue on in formation were much more simple.

First, when I review my last eight years, there is not a single thing that I would have rather been doing with my time. Saying this, it helps to recognize that I have had more pain, heartbreak and anguish in the last eight years of my life than I did in all the years leading up to my entrance into the Society. I have come to understand that constantly being pushed to one’s limits intellectually and emotionally is a difficult thing. Likewise, being thrown into other cultures with people I may or may not enjoy, and then being challenged to remain charitable even when it seems impossible to give any more, is really, really hard. I have felt the prick of a million and one barbed words shot from the mouths of people making claims that I might be too liberal, or too conservative, or too critical or too lax in my ethical and moral interpretations. I have been made fun of for being too stupid to realize that God does not exist, and derided again for saying that the first ten chapters of Genesis are not based in fact. I have spent hours listening to people explain to me what is wrong with the Church and its sexist patriarchy (and then trying to help me understand how little I know because I am a man). I have had people tell me that to follow Christ by living as a priest is actually a perversion of my true nature (again, this was because I am a man, but the rationale was rooted in the ideas that, first, it is impossible for men to live without “sowing their seeds,” and second, it is nearly impossible to live well and to know love unless one is married with children). In a similar vein, I also know what it is like to move every few years, to let go of family and friends, to let go of relationships that I spent a lifetime building, and then be told that I do not really know what love is. To be clear, these occurrences were neither isolated nor rare. Eight years is a long time, though, and I am grateful to acknowledge that this is not all I experienced.

In all of the struggles, I was becoming a better follower of Christ. I do not say this out of piety or because I am trying to please. I say it because I have come to realize that learning to love with the love of God is the only thing that sustains, or will ever sustain me. I have been lucky enough to be loved by the people I have met along the way. Jesuits and lay people alike have offered care at every stage of formation, and for every difficult situation or conversation, I can think of at least one revelation of God’s grace. For every struggle to learn patience and kindness there was also a triumph of the Spirit, if not in the actual outcome of an event, then the lesson learned from it. I was challenged, but I came to understand something about my limitations and strengths. I failed, but I learned how to forgive, be forgiven, and make amends. I learned something of who I was and what I could do to care a little better for the people in my life. I have become kinder, stronger, more loving, more giving, more capable of receiving, and ultimately, more fully aware of humanity.

This brings me to my second reason for writing “the letter.” It is not so much that I am certain I have the aptitude to be a great priest, or that I am truly called to life as a minister of the Sacraments. It is that, all things being equal, I still desire to follow Christ and to learn more about what it means to follow Jesus in this way. I still want to be formed by these vows. It is not that there is nothing else I would rather be doing, but that there is nothing else that really holds my attention in the same way. Of all the struggles I could have, I have come to desire this one. It is not that I want to be a public representative of the faith, but that I am becoming willing to accept the sometimes hurtful scrutiny and also the anonymous, undeserved kindness that comes with taking on a public role. To be sure, there are things in living as a companion of Jesus, allowing myself to be formed by the vows of poverty, obedience and chastity that continue to frighten me. Fortunately, the grace of being asked to share in the lives of so many faithful, caring families, friends, and strangers, continues to reveal how the Spirit of God lives in and loves through Christ’s people here on Earth.

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I Can’t Believe the News Today…

plickteig — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 16:19:08 +0000

I met Tony one night when he was working behind the front-desk of a dorm. We talked about U2. At the time, he was the only person I had met who actually cared to know more useless information about that band than I did. Over time we became good friends, and I got to learn a little something about where he came from. Tony was born and spent his early years in Lebanon. The youngest son of a Christian family, Tony’s original name was “Wael” – a name chosen because it spoke to both Muslim and Christian sensibilities. Prior to coming to the US, Wael and his family lived in downtown Beirut during the war years of the early 80s. I remembered seeing images on television of that war when I was a child and at night, before bed, praying for the people who I saw. I understood little then, only that there was pain and that when I saw the images I was afraid. I recognize now that I was praying for people like Tony, people not bound by religious or political affiliation, but rather, people who desired peace and an opportunity to flourish. Anyway, I received a message about something that was posted by Tony on Facebook the other day. When I read it I asked him if I could show it around. I took out the opening and the closing of the letter, but I kept most of it in tact to preserve his voice. I am posting it here, not because I am trying to take a side in any particular war, but because I want to offer a reflection about all war. Thanks for the taking the time to read it.

It’s not often that I talk of my experiences growing up during the civil war in Lebanon. Mostly it’s because friends do not ask me about it and I don’t want to divulge information that many may find upsetting. Sometimes it’s because the memories I live with still haunt me to this day and some are too painful to dwell on; it is those memories that have guided my conscience, my understanding of the world, and the path I have dedicated myself to professionally. Allow me to share some of my memories, not to glorify what I went through, but to try and give insight into what so many are living, and dying through as you read this.

We spent so much time in hallways and stairwells. Days and weeks would go by with no running water, no electricity, and no phones. My extended family lived on the other side of the Green Line during the war, on the Christian side of Beirut. When the fighting would start we had no communication with them and wouldn’t know if they were okay until after the fighting stopped. Sometimes, the fighting would start while my father was at work in the hospital and we would have little or no contact with him for days. As a result, everyone in our building in Beirut cared for each other as family, regardless of religion or political affiliation. We stayed mostly in the stairwells between the 3rd and 4th floors though my family lived in an apartment on the 7th floor of 8. Stay in the basement and if a rocket hit the building and it collapsed around you, you’d have no chance of being dug out if you managed to survive the blast. Stay in the stairwells higher in the building and you risk stray bullets and rocket propelled grenades. I used to collect the bullets we would find in our pock marked apartment; it was once set on fire during the Israeli invasion of 1982 from stray RPG shells.

While sitting in the stairwells, we would sing songs, play cards, and try to listen to the old radio my dad kept by him for news of an end to the fighting and a resumption of “normal” life. The bombs kept falling, day and night, and the gunfire was constant. In the early days of the war, the bombs would make a high-pitched whistle as they fell. A feeling of dread would creep over me as I wondered where the bomb would fall when the whistling stopped. If the building shook and my body reverberated from the concussion, a feeling of relief would totally overwhelm me. As the war went on and newer bombs were used, I wouldn’t hear anything. I simply felt one bomb land after another. Slowly, the realization that you wouldn’t hear death coming drives you to the brink of insanity. I would get jumpy and anxious through these battles and every moment lived through was a moment won. Those euphoric feelings were short lived, not just because the bombs kept falling but because I would begin to remember that since the bomb didn’t land on me, it landed somewhere else. And the likelihood always was that someone was under it when it hit.

I used to play a game with my neighbor where we would try to pick out how many different types of guns were being fired through the cacophony of sounds. I remember as a child that these games kept my mind busy and helped me cope with the paralyzing fear. There was always a constant worry, the horror of realizing that any and all of us could die at any moment and there was nothing we could do about it. At night, I would cry myself to sleep under blankets and covers. Sometimes, I would crawl under whatever furniture I could find and sob until my tears dried up and the emotional exhaustion would put me to sleep. Many nights, someone would hold me tight and gently stroke my forehead until I was calm enough to sleep. I remember it being so hard to rest at all. In the lulls of gunfire and explosions, I would sometimes hear people screaming in the night. Calling for loved ones, calling for help. Of all the things I experienced in those years, perhaps that is what has stayed with me. Hearing people call for help and knowing there is nothing I can do for them. Knowing there is nothing anyone can do for them.

When the immediate fighting would stop and we could resume our lives, I remember walking through the streets of downtown Beirut and seeing dead and bloodied bodies. My mother would try her best to shield me from witnessing this but there was only so much she could do in a war zone. My father is a physician and when my mother and I would go to the hospital to see him we would pass women in the street who had lost everything (including limbs and appendages) and would beg me, a five year old child, for money and mercy. Sometimes the women would be carrying dead babies; refusing to accept that their child is gone they would sway back and forth sobbing, holding the corpse in one hand, the other outstretched to passers by. I remember passing men with crude bandages around missing limbs, blood flowing from their wounds onto the street and mixing with the dirt and grime of the city. They would stare at me with vacant eyes. The kind of soulless stare I never thought a living thing could muster. Literally broken and defeated, these people would simply gaze out into the crowds, many not even bothering to beg.

If the schools were open, I would go and live as normal a childhood as was possible given the circumstances. School was canceled because of the fighting on a regular basis. There were tragedies. One my best friend’s uncle was killed while driving his ambulance to the hospital filled with wounded civilians. He was always so nice to us and once let us climb into the ambulance and play in it. After he died, I remember seeing the ambulance in the lower level of the hospital garage, bloodstained and full of bullet holes.

It never ceased to amaze me how much more damage the city would take after every battle. Buildings became unrecognizable with parts of them completely hollowed out and riddled with bullet holes. Most times I would see families living on the different floors of those hollowed out buildings, trying to go about their daily routines as if a wall wasn’t missing from their living room leaving them exposed for all to see. It was all so surreal that if you stood in one spot staring long enough, you’d almost think you were watching a television show. I often wondered how these people survived day in and day out. What did they do to keep warm at night? How did they cook their food? How did they deal with a constant lack of running water and electricity? At least we would only endure that for a few weeks at a time.

When he was still very young, Tony and his family left Lebanon and came to the US. He grew up in South Dakota, where he went to a regular school and lived in an average neighborhood. He experienced peace and quiet in a way that he never had before. He has been back to Lebanon since, and his family is proud of him for what he accomplished when he came to the US. At the same time, to this day, he still feels a sense of guilt because he grew up “safe” (because he was one of the people who did not die or get maimed). What amazes me about this is not the lingering effect that surviving a war can have on the psyche of a human being, but that he mentions a sense of guilt for living in a way that most of us think is our birth right. How often have I heard it said that “those people will always be at war?” I wonder if there will ever be a way for all of us to recognize ourselves in the faces of a different “type” of people. I am not sure. But I continue to pray for places in the world where there is war, where families die and boys become soldiers. I also pray for places where ideology, prejudice and apathy blind some human beings to the plight of others, whether it be on the other side of some imaginary line, or in another part of the world. May God help us all.

Photo: “ain’t gonna study war no more?” by ratterrell from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)

The Words I Long to Hear

Christmas As It Is

plickteig — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 22:13:11 +0000

I am tired of hearing the phrase “remember the reason for the season.” I find it kind of funny when Christian’s focus their “righteous outrage” on stores who fail to say “Merry Christmas.” I think that our attempts to “de-commodify” this holiday through protest or by using pithy phrases is, quite possibly, the exact wrong way to go about raising awareness (unless we want to raise the awareness that some Christians can be pains in the ass). In truth, I like that I get to open a couple of presents because even if they usually do turn out to be the wrong size, or color, or style, or all three, I usually get something that I like, at least a little. Besides, I am learning that, especially with this holiday, it really is the thought that counts. My understanding of the holiday has changed as I have come to realize that there are other things in my own life that I would rather focus on. When I was a kid, I used to look forward to Christmas because it meant eggnog and the smell of pine trees. The thing is, while I still like to sit in the dark and look at the twinkling lights of a tree, these days eggnog makes me a little sick. My tastes have changed as I have gotten older and, while some parts of my youthful celebration of Christmas turned out to be perennial and evergreen, at some point I came to realize that the holiday had become too artificially sweet.

Advent is, after all, a season of transition. This is the time of darkness, when the light leaves our lives before it begins its slow return. This season balances hope against fear, sets life against death, and celebrates God’s grace made present now, here. In this season, I look back on my year and I see the good and the bad, and take stock of sin and grace. I see there is hope for me even after rejecting someone’s love for me, or failing to share my love with others. I know my own darkness (the muddiness of selfish desires, the corruptibility of my own impulses), and the constant struggle to bring life into this world, can be very painful. I remember my death and know that I will someday dry up and blow away. I feel life, though, with its desires and hopes urging me towards some unseen end. I am aware that I often have no idea what I am doing, where I am going, how I will get there, when it will end, and that I am always looking for something that will help me understand. I am aware that I am flesh and that God’s word lives and moves in me. I am aware that I am not altogether worthy of his presence, but that I am made worthy by the Presence in me. With Advent, I can experience the grace of my hopes for a fuller, more grace-filled (and graceful) expression of who I am in relationship to others. I then see that God’s word is in me, is transforming me, is leading me in a constant state of transition. I see that we are all being transformed by the experience of Christ in our lives. This broken world was a wreck long before shopping malls and secularized holidays, and even when we solve our current problems, more problems will emerge. Still, even as I see the darkness, I know the sun will return. Without the long stillness of the advent season, there is no Christmas.

I know we have heard it before, but let’s hear it again: Christmas is not about things. This time, though, I know that I can hear it without feeling like people are telling me what I should be doing on Christmas. I want this season to be about the celebration of light overcoming darkness, the ebb-and-flow of life and death, and the celebration of God’s movement in me emerging into the world. I can choose to focus, not just on the joy of Christ, but also on the pain of being that Jesus took part in. I can recognize myself in the long darkness, begging for light to break the chilled grip of death. I can find ways to celebrate the goodness that is born into my family or by my friends, even in the midst of the many disappointments that entered into our lives this year. I can do something that provides a sense of life’s goodness, the goodness of the incarnation of the Spirit that we all share. I know, now, that we are all created beings, people who had no hand in our own creation, and that we are all alive, now, together. I know that we need one another, that we are members of the same body, that we are all people bearing the word of God. I see that there is a way to share in the experience of loving others, even the people I do not really want to love. I do not have to force myself into having a great time in the “hap, hap, happiest season of all.” Rather, I can just be silent, look to the life I have been given, and wait as the light begins to emerge once more.

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Atheism

plickteig — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 23:42:59 +0000

According to GC 34, Jesuits have been asked to fight atheism. I find this difficult. I see professed Christians, and then I see people who profess no religion, but claim the good in their hearts as their guide. When comparing what I see of many Christians and non-Christians, I am not altogether stunned by the difference in the “ethical quality life.” In truth, with very little work the practice of many Christians can come off seeming far more like a superstitious adherence to ritual accompanied by an arbitrarily applied attentiveness to moral law than it does an ordered expression of the “True faith.” It leads me to ask: What is it that makes us part of the tradition passed on in the Catholic church if not our ability to rationally explain the reasons we choose to act coupled with the capacity to give an experiential account of the passion we feel for Christ in our hearts. Is this not what we inherited from the writers of the New Testament? Is this not part of the tradition of great thinkers and mystics that have been with us from generation to generation? Theresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Teresa of Liseux, and Robert Ballarmine, to name a few, are each exceptional not only for their minds, but for their expression of love for Christ. Our minds are only there to help us express and create a mental framework for the lived love of Christ that we experience here on Earth. We are nothing if we are unable to express love: Intellect is nothing, wisdom and power are nothing, and even our free will is nothing if we do not Love.

I believe that many of us rely on stale arguments that have no stake in our hearts. Mind you, these arguments are not stale because they are poor, but rather they are stale because they are not lived out in our hearts. Instead, we deny intellect and rely on half-formed expressions of care that end when we get bored with trying to “figure it out.” We Catholics talk big, and when it comes to making large statements to sway voters, we are out there with the best of them, giving shout-outs against wars (which the conservative Catholics call unpatriotic socialism) and against abortion (which the liberal Catholics call fascistically legislative morality). The most recent election notwithstanding, for much of the last fifty years I would like to think that, with regard to her public statements, the Church’s epistles have done a decent job expressing our faith to the world. Unfortunately, we may have done a poor job of receiving them and attempting to live them out. Many people I know do not wrestle with reading church teaching, but instead just take someone else’s word for it. In times like these, this often means that we allow fearful interpretations, limited expressions of orthodoxy and systematic nay-saying to be our guide. There has been a return to ignoring the balance between intellect and emotion, and we have as a result a discrepancy between our professed faith and the faith we put into action.

I want to believe that the Church is into teaching Catholics how to think and develop their consciences by, first, explaining what different theologians think and then using actual events to illustrate the situation. What appears to be occurring, however, is that the same backbiting excuses for dialogue that we find present in politics are making their way into Christian dialogue. Just as words like “socialist,” “conservative,” and “liberal” have taken on absurd meanings that feed into gross stereotypes (and are seemingly akin to declarations of war in the political arena), so have like-concepts entered into religious dialogue. We are told to accept the common interpretations of our political parties with regard to economics, war and sex without understanding what the Church teaches. Many of us do not read the Church’s teachings or adequately understand them. So rather than entering into thoughtful dialogue rooted in love for one another and for creation, we do what we are told and then level accusations at others who do not do as we do. We are finding divisions where there should be none, and ignoring opportunities for solidarity. We are failing to think with one another because we have forgotten to care for one another. In the end we are left scrapping over caricatures of policies and events that hardly resemble the actual thing.

The adage is “taste and see” not “eat this or else.” We remember that the goodness of being Christian should be self-evident. This part of the teaching, at least, is not some cosmic riddle: love one another. Arguments over orthodoxy and politics will not save us, but rather our expression of love. We are not forced into acting in one way or another, but rather, once we understand, we actively choose to do the good. Until we actually choose to do the good, until we internalize care for one another and live out of compassion, we are just professing a truth we do not really believe and giving false witness in world already filled with confusion and lies. Explanations of a loving God are ignored and arguments for morality fall flat because they are backed up by aggression, not love. At the end of the day then, the argument against religion is made stronger because, with so much internal strife, we find it impossible to express the love that it is our mission to relate to the entire world.

Where Do You Draw the Line