Berith - Covenant

“You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will obey my voice and keep my berith, you shall be my own possession among all the peoples; for all the earth is mine. And you shall belong to the realm of my royal lordship as the first who are at the right hand of the king and as a consecrated people.” (Ex 19.4-6a)

This is the covenant God will make with Israel.

Balthasar makes two points about this covenant.

“And the manner in which this divine ‘I’ addresses and lays hold of the people that stand before him at the mountain of God shows two things: first, the fact that this living God enters upon a relationship with this crowd of human persons in a special manner that sets a mark of distinction upon them, is in an elemental manner … pure one-sided grace. Second [this relationship]… lays claim to them in a total and unconditional way: what is at stake here is not something that is merely ‘interior’ and ‘ethical’ or ‘cultic’ but at the same time the whole external, ‘legal’ and ‘political’ existence of the group.”

He goes on to make the point that this idea of an all-encompassing covenant that includes the ethical as well as the spiritual aspects of their lives was not a radical idea for the Israelites. Their cultic leaders were their political leaders as well. We have lost this idea. We have made our spiritual lives divorced from our political lives. We are fearful of religious expression in the public square. Living a life of conviction and integrity, the desire to form a community that is able to live in accord with their beliefs, is frowned upon and labeled intolerant. We now live in a place and time when we cannot take pride in the mark of distinction God has graciously bestowed on us without being ostracized.

Our more radical Muslim brothers and sisters take this idea of an all-encompassing relationship with God to violent extremes and thereby give it a bad name. The more modern and moderate Muslim reformers are struggling as well. They are attempting to come to terms with the modern world and still hold on to their belief that their God is what drives their entire life and this adherence to God in all aspects is the integrity God asks in response to his covenant with us.

This we have in common with them.

This post has taken an entirely different path than when I began writing it.

God's Initiative

As part of my Balthasar project I’ve recently started Volume 6 of “The Glory of the Lord” the topic of which is the Old Covenant. The following is from Chapter C.2.


“When Moses begged that he might see God’s glory, God hid him in the cleft of the rock and passed by him, crying out ‘Yahweh’ Yahweh, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness’ (Ex 34.6) In this experience, Moses was permitted to see the glory of God ‘from the rear’ as it passed man by. The entire disclosure of God is grace …. When grace is bestowed on Israel, it receives thereby access to God, a place beside him and the right to dwell there. But the primary meaning of grace must be, not that God bestows on the creature, from the far distance of his heaven … but rather that he bends down to the earth and raises man up to himself, making space for him in God’s own realm …. Israel is familiar with a number of words that paraphrase this inexpressibly mysterious process; these all approach the same mystery from various sides ….”

I find the idea very moving that God humbles himself by coming down to the level of his creature so that the creature can be elevated to God’s realm. I know Christ did the same, but, the Israelites came to this revelation thousands of years before Christ. I remember playing with my kids. In order to get into their world I had to get down on the floor and zoom, zoom with the toy cars just like they did, drink the pretend tea and eat the pretend cookies and color the pictures pretending it was hard to stay inside the lines. God’s actions can be compared to this I suppose though the comparison falls short. Yet, the thought of God’s initiative never fails to provide me with a sense of being comfortable in my faith.

Von Balthasar goes on to describe the Hebrew words used in the OT to describe the God revealed to the Israelites:

Berith – Covenant

Chesed, chen, rachamim – kindness, favor, mercy

Sedek, sedaka – right conduct in faithfulness

Mishpat – right [action] which effects salvation

Emeth, emuna – proved excellence (confidence in the action of God)

Shalom – pacified realm of salvation

The "Key" to Christianity

Christian life is paradoxical. How to live in the world and out of it at the same time? How to understand Christ as God and man? Sacraments as in this world and giving grace from another?

Secular logic doesn't apply here. A unique event requires its own form of logic. I read a good example of how to imagine the logic of Christianity, of paradox.

"'There is no logic to the shape of a key. Its logic is: It turns the lock.' In terms of worldly logic, the christological confession will always take on the structure of paradox, because it has established its own norms of rationality internal to the confession." From a review of Edward Oakes' book Infinity Dwindled to Infancy, written by Dale M. Coulter, in March issue of First Things.

The key to the paradox of Christianity is that it works; love opens the door to life.

Listen to England Dan and John Ford Coley's "Love Is the Answer"

Ashes

Ashes symbolize our bodily mortality, and prompt us to focus on the life of our spiritual being. Mortification and humility. Still, humus is the material of life, and our bodies are with us for the duration of our earthly journey. As a friend said to me recently, "I look at my hand and think, you've been with me for 56 years!" We agreed that, while that number may be impressive, it pales compared to the millenia of humans who have gone before us. Our little space of time on the stage of life, and the ashes we will become, should prompt us to take delight in the "now," knowing that our future lies in another place. As Sam Cooke sings, let's sing till Jesus calls us home!

Listen to Sam Cooke sing "Until Jesus Calls Me Home"

Listen to Chet Atkins, "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms"

Listen to "Nearer My God To Thee"

Listen to Jerry Reed, "A Thing Called Love"

Sailing with the Wind

I had the good fortune to sail on the Gulf of Mexico this past weekend in my brother-in-law's sailboat. (What's better than owning a sailboat? Having a brother-in-law own it!) After trolling out of Tampa Bay into the Gulf he unfurled the sails on the 60 foot mast and turned off the motor. There was immediate quiet as the boat skimmed across the quiet green water, about 26 feet deep. The wind's power kept us moving at from 3 to 7 knots. We turned on the auto pilot and sat back and gazed out at the beautiful, endless expanse of water.

I thought, what a wonderful metaphor for the clean, pure, silent power of faith.

Listen to Chet Atkins, "Sails"; another version of "Sails"

Listen to Andy Williams' "Sail Along Silvery Moon"

Failing into Love: A Better Life

Suffering seems to have the effect of burning away all that is unimportant, bringing to the fore the essentials in life. At least that's the reaction I had to the fine film A Better Life. It's a love story about an undocumented Mexican in LA trying to support his 16 year old son, who, with his mother gone, wonders why he was born into this rat race of a world.

Seeing his father's suffering brings home the essential point: that he lives because of his father's love. And he understands this only after he sees his father's suffering -- his loss of a truck that would bring him to a better life, his failed efforts to recover it, his ultimate failure and deportation. Only when he sees his father through compassionate eyes, turning away from his own wants and expectations, does he come to appreciate his dad's love for him, his love for his dad. The physical distance caused by deportation symbolizes their spiritual closeness. The boy now knows why he is born, knows "a better life."

I experience this against my own background of lack of love. Julian Carron, in the article I mentioned yesterday, "Christ Is Something That is Happening To Me Now," observes:

There is a kind of drifting away from Christ, except in particular moments. What I mean is that there is a drifting away from Christ except when we set ourselves to pray.

I sense my own distance from God being narrowed through compassion, through entering into the suffering of others, and into my own suffering. As James Danaher observes in Contemplative Prayer, ch. 8, "What we need is a theology that maximizes our experience of forgiveness, and for that purpose, contemplative prayer is ideally suited."

In prayer we can experience God's great compassion for the sufferings we see about us, and experience ourselves. This "failing into love" is the better way of life, I believe.

Ask Me About My Son!

My wife and I had chewed our finger nails down to the nub. Waiting . . . waiting . . . no answer. Then finally the news: a letter in the mail saying, "Congratulations, you've been accepted into medical school." Hooray! We couldn't be happier for our son Rob, after waiting for what seemed like months for this word.

I felt like climbing to the rooftop and shouting the news to the neighborhood. (Hey, the world wide web is even better!) I told everyone I met. I wanted to put on a sandwich board reading, "Ask me about my son!"

I'm about as proud as pink of our son. In our (unbiased!) mind, Rob deserved to be accepted because he has been working hard in school for many years -- ever since 4th grade at St. Michael school when his teacher, Ms. Wallgat "turned him around" and turned him on to pleasure of learning.

On reflection, I realize how nice it is to feel proud of one's child. How special that child is. And if I feel that way about my son Rob, shouldn't I feel the same about each of my kids? After all, each is so unique, so uniquely gifted, such a gift to our family and to the world in which he or she lives. And so I'm led and challenged to think of (and love) each child just as ardently as I do my soon-to-be medical student. And isn't that our challenge with regard to each person we know or meet? Isn't that recognizing Christ in each person?

According to philosopher Harry Frankfurt, "Among relationships between humans, the love of parents for their infants or small children is the species of caring that comes closest to offering recognizably pure instances of love." The Reasons of Love, at p. 43. I can add that, based on present evidence, there is no reason to love one's adult children any less! And I'm going to look for evidence to make sure I continue to do so.

Listen to John Lennon, "Beautiful Boy"

Listen to Gary Allen, "Tough Little Boys"

Listen to Anita Baker, "You Bring Me Joy"

Love: Forever Young, Only Just Begun

My wife and I are turning 60 this year, and her birthday is coming up soon. I am working on a short video commemorating that event. I have been spending time collating pictures of her when she was a little girl and growing up, pictures of her life before I knew her. And of course, there are pictures that bring back memories of my first meeting her in college, of our falling in love, our marriage, and our life together raising our children. I conclude in the video that my wife has been a faithful and loving wife for 40 years. What more could a husband want? (Sometimes my wife needs to remind me how good I have it!)

The experience of making the video has been great, because it has brought back to me why we got married in the first place -- our experience of falling in love, of getting to know one another, of wanting to be together, of planning a future together. And that experience, occurring as it did in the early 1970's, may at times have gotten lost in the shuffle as the years marched by. But bringing it back into the present -- remembering how much I loved my wife -- helps me to realize how much I love her still, and to appreciate the insight that "love is always young" -- it needn't ever grow old. In fact, as Shakespeare said in Sonnet 116, "love is not love which alters when it alteration finds." Love is only truly love when it is forever young.

Another way of putting this is that love is always novel, always new. But novelty isn't when something different happens, it's when something desirable happens again. (See Carron's article cited below, at p. v) What is desirable? That which corresponds to the needs of my heart. And what does my heart need? What every heart needs: love that recognizes me as lovable, as wanted, as desired, as good. I can give this love to my wife in a special way, and she to me. I can "recognize" others by loving them as well, my friends and those in need, and I look for love from them too. This "command" of love finds its source and motivation in God's love for us: Love each other as I have loved you (Jn. 13:34). We live this command of love only in the present, because we need, each moment, our heart's desire. Thus is true love always novel, in the present tense, "forever young," and "only just begun."

For more on love's being always "now," always youthful, see Julian Carron, "Christ Is Something That is Happening to Me Now," at pp. vii and viii, from Traces. ("[L]ike [] falling in love, [Christianity as an event] "does not indicate merely something that happened . . . but what awakens the present, defines the present, gives content to the present, makes possible the present. [Experience] is given to us now . . . a hand that offers now . . . a face that comes forward now. . . . Nothing exists outside this ‘now’! Our ‘I’ cannot be moved, aroused, changed, unless by something contemporaneous – an event.'")

Listen to Rod Stewart, "Forever Young"

Listen to Carpenters, "We've Only Just Begun"

Love's Joy

Valentine's Day prompts reflections on the meaning of love against a background of the recent controversy over our government's effort to promote free birth control for all women, and the Catholic Church's negative reaction.

Here is a letter to the editor of this week's Commonweal (Feb. 24, 2012):

I have my own story relating to birth control in the 1950s and ’60s. I married in ’52 at the age of twenty-one. My first child was born in December ’53, the second in January ’55 (thirteen months later), the third in October ’56 and the fourth in April ’60. Yes, we practiced the rhythm method, but no one would believe me when I said I thought I ovulated twice a month. One obstetrician insisted I’d been so careful that if I was pregnant, it must be a miracle! Well, I was and it was not.

When the fourth child was around three years old, I went to confession at my local parish and struck gold. The priest listened carefully to my story: I was risking divorce if I had another child; my husband didn’t even dare look at me, I got pregnant so easily. Then there were the fights, the money worries, etc. At the end of my litany, this kind, intelligent man said to me: “It’s a matter between you and God alone, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.” I thanked him profusely, called my close friend who was in a similar situation, and together we headed to our doctors for the Pill.

But a lot of damage had been done and, even though our marriage survived till my husband’s death last April, it was never what it might have been if the church had not interfered with the sexual aspect of our lives.

I thought of my own mother, Roberta, and her 11 children. I would have made it through the gauntlet laid down by the letter writer, but not some of my younger siblings. Luckily, unlike the letter writer, my mom didn't use the occasion of the availability of "the pill" in the early sixties to jump on the bandwagon touting liberation from moms' slavery to having children. As a result, I have several siblings I wouldn't want to live without: Becky, Kenny and Gordon.

I have my mom's (and dad's) love to thank for that, which I know also crucially includes her faith that God would not, as she puts it, "give me anything I couldn't handle." The results are in for both families, the letter writer's and my own, and I for one am going to pin my hopes on my mom's constant and faith-filled love. I'm certainly happier for it in my brothers and sisters! And I also thank the Church for teaching this truth, though so many "liberated" men and women, like the letter writer, and now our own government, are deadly certain it's unacceptable "interference" in a woman's "choice." Yes, I do agree it is all about choice.

I also humor myself in believing that St. Valentine would probably agree with me. Happy holiday, all true lovers!

Listen to Fritz Kreisler's "Love's Joy"

Listen to Joe Cocker, "You Are So Beautiful"

Listen to Louis Armstrong, "What a Wonderful World"

Where are Today's lepers?

In this Sunday's gospel (6th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B), Jesus heals a leper. Who are today's lepers?

The so-called "modern" world is characterized by a kind of blindness in which what exists is seen as as imperfections of an ideal, which is only the true "real." Examples: a "true" democracy is one in which each person has an "equal" vote. A "real" woman is the beauty I see in a glossy magazine. A true line is perfectly straight. A ring is 'really" a circle. "[S]omehow the 'reality' of the ring seems to be the circle, and the 'reality' of the coal-burning locomotive seems to be the ideally efficient steam engine." Sokolowski, "Exact Science and the World," p. 159 in Pictures, Quotations, and Distinctions.

The purpose of this kind of looking is to see the world with more precision, which enhances our ability of technological manipulation and control. As Harvey C. Mansfield observes, "For human purposes nature needs to be supplied with more exactness than it has by itself." (quoted in Sokolowski, Phenomenology of the Human Person, p. 113.)

The result is that the flesh and blood world we experience is turned into an "apparent" world, less real than the "scientific" world of ideal objects. "The mind that is fascinated by exact essences and oblivious of how they have come about considers the appearances in the lived world as merely subjective views which are to be discounted in a final description of what is and of how things are." Sokolowski, "Exact Science and the World," op. cit. at p. 161. The subjective is "just your opinion," and can be sloughed off, rationalized away, since it isn't "really real."

I thought of this in reading about a talk given by Mary O'Callaghan, who has five children, the youngest a down syndrome child. She observed that 90 percent of Down syndrome children are now aborted, as a result of more generally available pre-natal screening. Yet, she observes, we are doing nothing to "cure or prevent Down syndrome" by eliminating babies with the disorder. They will continue to be conceived. This is a dirty little secret of a eugenics mindset.

Ms. O'Callaghan counsels that "Parents should be assisted to see their unborn children as children, rather than the list of symptoms which doctors often present today without offering treatment. The informational materials that doctors give with this diagnosis should include pictures and stories of children with various difficult diagnoses within a familial context." She called this a "radical approach" to prenatal diagnosis, centered on showing parents and doctors the humanity of the unborn child, regardless of disability."

"In the context of a loving family," she said, "You would not see a child with a life-altering illness. Instead, you would see a child with breathtaking beauty, surrounded by love." Quoted from p. 11 of Ethics and Culture, Winter 2012 bulletin.

A Down Syndrome baby, one of today's lepers, is a victim of our blindness to what is real. We "see" such a baby as "defective," better off dead, because we imagine that a "real" baby is a bouncing baby boy, an "ideal" specimen, living in an ideal family, etc. Thus we rationalize abortion. We need the treatment suggested by Dr. O'Callaghan to remove our cataracts. The baby in the womb is the real one, not our idea of a perfect baby. Ultimately, as she says, it takes love to accomplish this, surrounding the other with love. It is not technology that will save us, but love. Love sees the leper as one of us, and we "heal" him by including him in our family.

Listen to Stevie Wonder, "Isn't She Lovely"

Whitney: "I want to dance with somebody who loves me."

How wonderful life is, and yet how crushing! We ride the crest of the wave and then get pummelled when it rolls over us. Ups and downs. And the downs can hit the skids, slam on a cement floor.

And yet life goes on. How to get up when life gets you down? Do we cry into a black emptiness, or is there a god who can save us? Drugs and addiction. The euphoria of life. How do we reach equilibrium?

Call on God, call on friends. As Whitney says in "Greatest Love of All," find your strength in love!

Listen to Bill Withers' "Lean on Me"

Listen to Whitney Houston, "I Will Always Love You"

Listen to Whitney Houston, "I Want to Run To You"

Listen to Whitney Houston, "Greatest Love of All"

Listen to Whitney Houston, "I Want to Dance With Somebody"

Grandma's Hands

Today's gospel reading (Mark 8:1-10) tells of Jesus' feeding a hungry crowd of 4,000 from seven loaves and a few fishes. The metaphorical meaning of this gospel is God's generosity, his desire to fill all hearts with good.

I had a touching experience of this this week when an employee came to me asking for assistance concerning her 16-year old grandson who is estranged from his father and living with grandma (our employee) for protection. The trouble began when he was expelled from high school for a drug violation, and after an argument with his father, was kicked out of the house. More, dad quit paying for his son's home schooling. Now on the horizon was a court hearing on the drug charges -- luckily her son has passed all the court-required tests -- and grandma was anxious.

She and I talked about options. Maybe he could move in with his other grandmother in Michigan and continue his schooling. Maybe he could go to an alternative school. (I spoke to a friend of mine, a school law attorney, who suggested this.) Maybe he could reconcile with his folks. Maybe he could come in to work with grandmother, and be under her supervision during the day here. Maybe his other grandmother could check in on him on Skype three times during the day. (Our employee has two jobs, so can't exercise the kind of constant supervision that would be desirable.)

Armed with these brainstorming alternatives, she went on her way and started checking things out. A day or two later she reported back on what she had found out. She also told me that she had discussed the options with the child's family therapist, who told her that he should "give her half his income" for all the work she did in exploring options for caring for the boy. The boy's grandmother beamed with pride. I told her, "You've done good!" Tears came to her eyes. Her initial anxiety had been replaced with the confidence of knowing that things were not hopeless. It now looked like solutions would be found.

The boy's grandmother's generosity with her time bore much fruit: her hands harvested a cornucopia of "manna" to see her grandson through his current hardships.

Listen to Bill Withers' "Grandma's Hands"

Listen to Anne Murray, "True Love" (by Cole Porter)

Listen to the Young Rascals, "How Can I Be Sure?"

Listen to Bee Gees' "Too Much Heaven"

Love's Dark Side

It's fine to talk about the power, the euphoria, the joy of loving. But in real life, the defects in loving, the dark side of love, are much more up close and personal. That is, sin usually prevails over love. What are these defects: Thomas Aquinas catalogues them in his treatise on charity: hatred, sloth, envy, discord, contention, schism, war, strife, sedition, and scandal. And that list is just the start! The Betrayal of Charity, Matthew Levering, p. 2.

And so the "heavy lifting" of love is really the work of overcoming love's defects in our lives. This requires repentance, self-sacrifice and asking for forgiveness. If the root of all sin is pride, its antidote is humility and repentance, displacement from the pedestal of power. Of course, that is just what we don't want to accept. We are all about loving feelings, but what about when love requires stepping back, refraining from touching, accepting the fact when the good of the loved one is not consonant with our desire?

The blessings we find in this hard work are nevertheless divine. As Pope Benedict said in Deus Caritas Est, "Love is 'divine' because it comes from God and unites us to God; through this unifying process it makes us a 'we' which transcends our divisions and makes us one, until in the end God is 'all in all' (1 Cor 15:28)." As Levering observes, Christ promised to those who love him that he (and his father) "will come to him and make our home with him" (John 14:23). Ibid.

Love is more about what we let go of or give up than what we grasp or get. Rather than engage, love often means me we must disengage. Let go of the dark sides of love: jealousy, envy, contention, desire for control, desire to be "right," desire for the last word. But what we give up, we get back in a unity that is divine.

Listen to the Bee Gees "How Deep Is Your Love?"

Love's Eternal "Adieu"

The search for certitude is a search for truth, which is eternal. And so if I only find myself in love, as Augustine and Jean Luc Marion believe, there is an eternal dimension in that discovery. Jean Luc Marion believes that love is comprehensible only if it includes a promise that this moment is for all time. "Le Phenomene Erotique," Eoin Cassidy, in Givenness and God, at p. 211. My identity as a lover is in some way marked by this desire for eternity.

The proper living out of this desire is in fidelity. Marion notes that the "interior logic of erotic love presupposes 'a long and profound fidelity -- nothing less than eternity.'" Ibid. The final horizon of man's existence is thus not death, as Heidegger believed, but a covenant of eternal fidelity.

Marion asks, can this covenant be fulfilled? "By its very nature, Marion argues, erotic love is in constant need of re-creation" which seems to contradict the desire for a durable/visible relationship. Marion first suggests that this need for durability/visibility can be met only by a third person -- an infant who gives witness to this covenant. But even this witness can be lost. So Marion introduces the concept of anticipation: "I am able to fulfill myself as a lover, but only 'because I am able to love at each moment as if it is for eternity' (PE,322), in the light of eternity (sub specie aeternitatis)." Ibid.

Lovers truly love when they love with the eternal in mind, literally to "make this moment last forever." Marion says, "The lovers fulfill their covenant in the adieu - in the passage to God, whom they summon as their last witness, their first witness, the one who never leaves and never lies." God is the "eternally faithful witness to the covenant of love, [who] saves the pledge by rendering it durable and definitely visible." Ibid.

True love's bond, its covenant, is founded in God's eternal, faithful love. We celebrate that in our religious ceremonies of marriage, and try to live it in fidelity to our marriage partners -- each day trying to mirror God's faithfulness in our human dimension.

God's witness to love, his ground and faithfulness of love, also supports our love of friends and even enemies. According to Augustine, ordered love is not exclusive, but inclusive -- a love that generously includes a third. Ibid, 214. That "third" is first God, and then our neighbor:

Blessed are those who love you, O God, and love their friends in you and their enemies for your sake. They alone will never lose those who are dear to them for they love them in one who is never lost, in God.

It is God's love that supports our own, for our spouses, family, friends, and even enemies. This "eternal" faithfulness enables us to be faithful to our loved ones, who are all around us.

Listen to Journey, "Faithfully"

Listen to Glenn Medeiros, "Nothing's Gonna Change My Love For You"

Listen to Engelbert Humperdinck, "Eternally"

Listen to Petula Clark, "Eternally"

Listen to Engelbert Humperdinck, "From Here to Eternity"

Listen to Petula Clark, "I Will Wait For You"

Forgiving As the Central Meaning of Christianity

I watched a good film recently titled ESL: English as a Second Language. It's a story about two young Hispanics in the U.S., one an illegal new arrival, with no knowledge of English, and a wife back in Mexico. The second, a second generation Latina, is mixed up and self-destructive. Her domineering parents expect her to go to law school because she's smart, but she doesn't want to, and treads a self-destructive path to avoid it.

The young man, after sleeping on the street, is hired to dance in a tenderloin district, and starts making lots of money titillating lecherous young and middle-aged women. The girl's destructive lifestyle gets her pregnant, and her poor relationship with mom and dad lead to an abortion.

Life spirals downward for both. They get to know one another in an ESL class where she's a teacher's aide, serving out a drunk driving sentence in a diversionary program. He is trying to improve his job prospects by learning English. They console each other in mutual misery: he by accompanying her to her abortion appointment, she by caring for him after he attacks and is beaten by his employer.

What appears to be a sure road to perdition takes a turn for the better. How? Essentially, through forgiveness. The girl's parents decide to forgive her abortion and love her despite their disappointment. They decide to accept her decision not to go to law school, and to teach ESL. She helps the young man when he is beaten up, and encourages him to return to Mexico to his wife and expected son. The film ends positively with the boy leaving for home, and the girl making plans to spend time with her mother.

The key to the better outcome was the forgiveness shown to their daughter by her parents.

According to James P. Danaher (Contemplative Prayer, p. 78), "Christianity is all about restoring relationships through forgiveness." We're mistaken if we think God loves better those who are more moral. God, according to Danaher, wants, more than anything, to heal relationships. That's why he forgives all sins, including all of ours!

Christianity begins with God's forgiveness of us and then extends, by Christ's command to love one another, to our forgiveness of the ones who have harmed, offended, or disappointed us. "This is the most essential aspect of the Christian life, and it is what makes real Christianity so unappealing to most of us. For that reason, true followers of Jesus are rare."

"They are so rare that Mark Twain once quipped, 'The Christian religion was a great idea, too bad no one ever tried it.' Indeed, we all fall short of the kind of forgiveness to which Jesus calls us. That, however, puts us in the strangely blessed position of continually seeking forgiveness for our own lack of forgiveness, the receiving of which, ever so slowly, does make us more forgiving."

When we humbly recognize our own wholesale need for forgiveness, and repent, we are closer to becoming able to forgive those we disdain or hate for having harmed us.

This is a radical move because it is opposite to what we would normally choose: to answer taunt with taunt, blow with blow. But Christianity's "out of the box" thinking is literally a matter of life and death for all in need of forgiveness (as the boy and girl's experience in the movie shows), and we all are more or less in that predicament. To pretend otherwise is blindness and pride. The antidote to the poison of sin is to experience, through prayer and repentance, God's forgiveness of our own great sinfulness, allowing us to grow in our willingness to forgive others.

That, according to Danaher, is what "following Christ" is about. I can think of more than a few areas of my own life where I could put it to practice. Whether I am willing to is the question. I had better pray about it.

Listen to Sara McLachlan sing "Forgiveness"

Listen to Jason Aldean, "Don't Give Up On Me"

Listen to Pretenders, "I'll Stand By You"

Listen to Michael Ruff, "I Love You More Than You Will Ever Know"

Listen to Bon Jovi "I'll Be There For You"

Listen to Nazareth, "Love Hurts"

Listen to Air Supply, "All Out of Love"

Listen to Air Supply, "Making Love Out of Nothing At All"

Listen to Air Supply, "Lost in Love"

Humbling the Restless Heart

Augustine believes in desire. The "restless heart" is what moves us to search for a god to fill us. Don't I know that desire, and I know it is a good thing, almost scary in its power, but making one feel alive. I instinctively know that desire needs to be purified, humbled, so that it forms me to follow the right path to God. But it shouldn't be extinguished.

"As suggested by the opening lines of the Confessions, Augustine is in no doubt about the importance of the gift of a restless heart. For him, it opens the path of desire that alone can lead both to self-understanding and to God. As the above suggests, it is a path trodden only by those who are humble." "The Phenomene Erotique: Augustinian Resonances in Marion's Phenomenlogy," Eoin Cassidy, in Givenness and God - Questions of Jean Luc Marion, p. 205.

Humility is openness to the good of the other in desire, the tempering of that desire by the good. This "openness" to the good of the other is a "distance" that helps our focus -- allows us to actually see that good and to receive it as a gift. The benevolence of love is thus closely connected to grace and giftedness, which is what desire seeks.

"[A] core feature of the Christian understanding [is] that all love is first and foremost received as a gift. [] 'This is the love I mean: not our love for God, but God's love for us.' 1John4:8-10. The gift of love enables us to love." Ibid, p. 218.

Openness to the good of another in desire -- goodness being so closely connected with God -- delights and excites desire. Love brings about more love. "Desire grows in and through the gift of God's love -- a gift that instills delight and engenders desire. Likewise, friendship is seen in the context of a gift that awakens desire." Ibid.

Bottom line: In desire humbly seek the good of the other to gain your heart's desire.

Listen to "Under Your Spell" by Desire.

Listen to "Colorless Sky" by Desire.

Listen to "From a Distance" by Bette Midler

Listen to "The Rose" by Bette Midler

Living in God's Forgiveness

What is it about 'Jesus' revelation' (see last post) that is so beautiful, that could make one fall in love with him?

The core message of the bible, says Danaher, is God's mercy and forgiveness. We are all great sinners, thinks Danaher, and our chief sin is our forgetfulness of God. It's consequences are the sins we know so well, the behaviors that actively take us out of God's presence. The beauty of the Christian message is that God so loves us, so wants our re-unification with him, that he will forgive our slights, our sins. Unlike a human lover, God overlooks our sins, as Christ forgave those who crucified him, in order to "get us back." He is the Father, running out to meet his prodigal son, so happy he is returning, so full of joy.

This quality, says Danaher, is truly "super human." We are not capable of it, or are, slightly, with the grace of God. But the good news is that this grace is accessible in a God who loves and wants us, who values and cares for us, who invites us and caresses us with his compassion and mercy.

We find this God through prayer, which is but another word for the presence of God. God wants so much more of us than "good behavior." He wants that, but he wants us, wants to be with us, because he loves us more than any human could love another.

To bask in God's love, Jesus' love, is what life is all about, for it is falling in love with a God who loves us more than anything we do wrong. All of our human loves, imperfect as they are, are an arrow pointing us to the perfect love that is ours by right, through the wonder of being God's children. We find it by turning back to God's presence, in prayer, and receiving ourself, and every other good thing, in his gentle and perfect gift of love.

Listen to "I Don't Know How to Love Him" from Jesus Christ Superstar

Listen to U2 "Grace"

Listen to U2 "Beautiful Day"

Listen to "I Can't Fight This Feeling Anymore" REO Speedwagon

Listen to "Keep on Lovin You" REO Speedwagon

Listen to "Come Sail Away" Styx

Listen to "Carry on My Wayward Son" Kansas

Listen to "Livin on a Prayer" Bon Jovi

The Supreme Lover

James Danaher, in his book Contemplative Prayer (p.14), quotes Ortega y Gasset's comment that "falling in love, initially, is no more than this: attention abnormally fastened upon another person." (quoted from his book On Love.)

Danaher thinks attention is what we most desire from the one who loves us. "The affection children desire from their parents largely involves attention . . . Even the love that exists between friends requires that we are capable of fixing our attention upon our friend, and if [our] friend is unwilling to give us her attention, we feel may have been mistaken in considering her a friend."

Unfortunately, Danaher thinks, human beings are not very good at fixing our attention on anything for very long. "Because of this, we are a constant disappointment to those who desire our love. If we understand love in terms of attention, then . . . the vast majority of human beings make poor lovers. We are often disappointed by, and a disappointment to, those we love most."

There is hope. "God's omnipresent and omniscient nature makes him the supreme lover and the only one who can truly satisfy our desire for the kind of attention that human beings always fail to provide one another. God is one whose 'eyes will be open' and his 'ears attentive' (2 Chron. 7:15, NIV), and 'like an eagle that stirs up its nest and hovers over its young' (Deut. 32:10-11, NIV), he will attend to us as the 'apple of his eye' (Zech 2:8, NIV).

Danaher observes that "[s]adly, many people never experience [God's] presence and spend lives oblivious of the attention he extends toward us. That is because we only experience his presence in prayer. We may associate prayer with words or ideas about God, but prayer is ultimately about our awareness of God being present and attentive to us. Whenever we are aware of God's presence, we are in a state of prayer; and whenever we are not aware of his presence, we are not in prayer, regardless of the words we may be mumbling. Furthermore, it is only when prayer becomes such an experience that we realize the love that our parents, spouses, and friends were so unable to supply. Prayer is the ultimate blessing God has for us, since nothing compares to the experience of his presence." Ibid, p. 15-16.

Danaher says, "Most people never really fall in love with God. They may say that they love God, but they are certainly not in love with God. God is not in all of their thoughts nor do they sense a constant need to fix their thoughts upon him, as only lovers do. For most of us, our attention is always on the distractions and not on God." Ibid., p.106.

"We get to the place of perfect love -- that place of being in love with God -- not by obedience to God's commands out of fear of hell and the promise of heaven, but by beholding the beauty of the God that Jesus reveals. Augustine called it the beatific vision, and it is only that vision of just how beautiful the Jesus revelation is that really brings us into the deep love-relationship with God that is prayer. Without the beatific vision that is the Jesus revelation, we may develop a contemplative practice of being present, but unless we fall in love, we are doing it out of our own discipline and not out of the in love relationship to which God calls us.

"Most of us are not ready for either an in love relationship with God or deep prayer, so we settle for obeying and serving God but pull up short of being in love with him. We do not like the sense of being out of control that comes with being in love, so we never really allow the beatific vision of the gospel to seduce us. We guard our hearts, and keep God at a distance, but without falling in love with God, we can never give him the kind of attention that both love and prayer require. Without falling in love with God, prayer will never be the constant returning of our attention to the God that possesses our consciousness as only a lover can." Ibid.

Listen to "You are So Beautiful" by Joe Cocker

Listen to "Stairway to Heaven", Led Zepplin

Listen to "Clair de Lune" Debussy

Listen to Amy Grant and Michael Smith, 'Thy Word is a Lamp Unto My Feet'

Listen to "Think of Me," by Andrew Lloyd Webber

Listen the Platters sing "Only You."

Joining in Consecration

Jean Luc Marion, in a commentary on vanity in The Erotic Phenomenon, scotches the idea that one can confer dignity on oneself. "It is not the certainty of my existence that I require; rather, it is the assurance of my significance or my value." Eoin Cassidy, "Le phenomene erotique: Augustinian Resonances in Marion's Phenomenology of Love," in Givenness and God, (Fordham: 2005), at pp. 206-07.

"I can love myself because I receive assurance from somewhere else -- I discover myself lovable through the gift or the call of another.

"In a reflection that [] looks towards Levinas, Marion draws a phrase from Isaiah 6:8, 'Here I am (me voici), to highlight the manner in which significance is mutually given in word or in silence. The only assurance that I want or need is love -- the assurance of my dignity as a lover. This assurance is both received and given in the 'me voici' that surges forth as a pledge of eternal love. In and through this pledge or covenant, the 'I' or the ego is actually reborn as lover and beloved. In a manner of speaking, I receive my significance the moment the other consecrates me as a lover -- a consecration that finds its articulation in the exclamation, 'Come!'

"The questions that this issue brings to the surface are nothing less that those of self-identity. Marion contends [] that only a question that [] brings to the surface issues of value and purpose - is adequate to sketch the appropriate contours of self-identity. Such a question is 'Does anyone love me?' Thus Marion concurs with Augustine that only within the framework of love can one legitimately ask, 'Who am I'?" Ibid.

"In placing empasis on the other and, indeed, the otherness of the other, this question exposes the vulnerability, the lack of certainty, that marks the human situation, and acknowledges the truth of the insight that self-identity and, indeed, self-love is something that is received rather than achieved. . . it is [] the other, who is the ultimate guardian of my identity."

To my friend, thank you for "consecrating" me with the touch of your friendship! In discovering more, in love, who I am, may I better hear God's call to dwell in Love, and to consecrate my own others . . . including you . . . in the care, concern, forgiveness and joy (among so many other attributes) that love excites.

Listen to George Winston, "Peace"

Listen to George Winston, "Night"

Listen to George Winston, "Love Echoes in the Pine Hills"

Listen to George Winston, "December"

Listen to George Winston, "Hummingbird"

Listen to George Winston, "Thanksgiving"

Listen to George Winston, "Living Without You"

Listen to "Looking Through the Eyes of Love," sung by Regine Valesquez

Desperate for Love?

My Japanese friend emailed me after a six year hiatus. I reminded her that six years before she had terminated our email conversations by saying, "It is not proper for a married man to communicate with a single (divorced) woman." Now, living again in Japan, she said she "had come back to me."

I am happy she contacted me again. I told her about my life, about my love for my wife, about my Christian faith, which, I observed, is all about love. (She is not Christian.) I hyperlinked the Leonard Cohen song, Dance Me to the End of Love.

She asked me, "Why are you so desperate for love?" At first I reacted by quibbling, saying I had love in my life, so how could I be desperate for it? But as I thought more about her question, I realized she was right. I am desperate (i.e. hopeless) without love, longing for love. And this is my condition in life, whether I know it or not. Sometimes I do know it, and then I feel my yearning, as for an elixir.

My friend believes there is more to life than love. But for me, love does seem to me to be all there is, what everything boils down to. It is all about love. I thank my non-Christian friend for prompting this insight. And I want to keep trying to learn love's lessons, to find the assurance that love gives. For to look at the world through the eyes of love, and to be so looked at, to be so touched, is to stave off desperation, to breathe life, to find the meaning of life. Such a love, through seeing, forgiving, heals the broken heart, which is the only meaning for us humans.

Listen to "I want to Know What Love is" by Foreigners

Listen to "Ain't No Cure for Love" by Leonard Cohen

Listen to "All You Need Is Love" by the Beatles.

Listen to "To Love Somebody" by the Beegees

Listen to "How Do You Heal a Broken Heart?" by the Beegees

Listen to "Our Love, Don't Throw It All Away" by the Beegees

Listen to "How Deep Is Your Love?" by the Beegees

Listen to "Stand By Me", by Ben E. King and the Drifters

Listen to "A Thousand Kisses Deep" by Leonard Cohen

Listen to "I Need To Be In Love" by the Carpenters

Listen to "I Miss You Like Crazy," sung by Natalie Cole.

Listen to "Miracle" by Celine Dion

Read the Bishops' Letter on Love and Marriage.