Eleven Simple Words

I heard on NPR's religion program this morning a counselor who said that based on his many years of experience, there are just 11 words that are key in living.  They are: "Please forgive me." "I forgive you." "Thank You." and "I love you."  He observed that when life is shaken up -- when we are toppled out of our roles -- which might occur before dying or upon learning of a mortal illness (but hopefully more often than this!)-- only relationships really matter any more.  And these words help to mend and maintain relationships.

Real lovemaking is to practice these 11 words!

Flesh and Blood

In yesterday's gospel (Jn 6:52-59), Jesus tells those quarreling about his message, "unless you eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you."  The commentator (Living With Christ, p. 135) observes that when we say "flesh and blood" we refer to someone's real presence, his complete presence.

Jesus gives himself to us "flesh and blood," meaning completely.  To be present to another is to love; to love is to make of oneself a present.  To lose oneself in love, to find oneself in love, and to do so completely, totally, is the noblest human desire.  Friedrich Schlegel said that human beings are characterized by a "terrible unsatisfied desire to soar into infinity, a feverish longing to break through the narrow bonds of individuality." (Quoted in Inventing the Individual, Larry H. Peer, Ed., in an article by Diane Long Hoeveler, at p. 7.)  It is a desire to overcome incompleteness, to complete oneself in an "other."

To realize a desire requires flesh and blood.  Simone Weil noted,"[h]uman nature is so constituted that any desire of the soul, in so far as it has not passed through the flesh by means of action and attitudes which correspond to it, has no reality in the soul.  It is only there as a phantom." (Cited in Ordering Love, David L. Schindler, at p. 280.)

The Eucharist, then, is Jesus' invitation to me, in flesh and blood, to imitate him in giving myself, flesh and blood, body and soul, completely, in love, "in remembrance of me," to others.  In acts of love, I live, in Christ's love for me.

Listen to "Taste and See" 

A Lovely Way to Overcome Loneliness

In Hope Against Hope, at 98-99, Elie Wiesel comments on what he calls God's loneliness:

"God, only God, is alone.  By definition.  Human beings are not alone.  They have other human beings.  But whom does God have?  God is condemned to be alone.  It is true that God has us, but this is not the same.  We human beings are not God.  What I am thinking of here is God's tragedy.  If a human being no longer wants to live, he or she commits suicide.  God cannot kill himself.  Therefore we should have sympathy for God, compassion for God.  This is an old Hassidic idea: compassion for God."

It is an intriguing idea that I have something that God wants and values in my relationship with Him.

How do we love God?  Wiesel thinks it is through other people.  "One person alone is not close to God.  In order to be close to God that person must be close to another person.  There are many ways of relating to their people. . . . I am absolutely convinced that God is to be found in a simple human relationship.  We have few certainties, but this is one of them:  When two people love one another, God is there.  God is present when people are present to and for one another in a human way.  God does not say, 'Your life belongs to me.'  God says, 'Your life belongs to your neighbor.'"

Listen to the Beatles' "With a Little Help from my Friends."

Breaking Free of Contrariety

To live is to be awake.  But to distinguish between the apparent real and the real real, the apparent good and the real good, is the challenge.  How do we know the difference?  "Human beings are at grips with a contrariety between their desires and their reason, between their perception of the immediate, the product of their sense knowledge, and their apprehension of the future, which their intellect enables them to foresee." Thomas De Koninck, "Metaphysics and Ultimate Questions," in Logos, Spring 2012, at 48.

"Only insofar as we can overcome the yoke of contrariety can we direct ourselves toward goodness.  Freedom means liberation from contrariety; the words point the way: luo (to loose or release), eleutheroo (to make free), liberare (to liberate). . . . If the human mind were not itself above contrariety, we should never be able to determine ourselves to one or the other opposite, to choose knowingly and freely.   Hence Dante could write: 'The greatest gift which God in His bounty bestowed in creating, and the most conformed to His own goodness and that which He most prizes, was the freedom of the will, with which the creatures that have intelligence, they all and they alone, were and are endowed. The Divine Comedy, Paradiso V 19:23. "

And so I can choose the good, and be free, if my intellect, my conscience -- above contrariety --  is given reign in my life, over my actions, my impulses.  Then I am free . . . free to choose and live the good!  It is in discipline, self-mastery that I master the melody of life.  Practice makes perfect!

Listen to Mozart, Piano concerto No. 21 in C major.

At The Root of Courage

Is there a relationship between humility and courage?  It seems so.  In today's first reading, Peter counsels, "Clothe yourselves with humility in your dealings with one another. . . . Cast all your worries on [God] because he cares for you.  Be sober and vigilant.  Your opponent the Devil is prowling around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.  Resist him . . ."  1 Pt. 5:5.

Humility sees truly and by it one accepts one's true (lowly) position vis-a-vis the Almighty.  Humility opens one to letting God's will prevail. Debilitating fear is caused by uncertainty and anxiety over the future.  The humble person isn't uncertain.  He knows God will prevail.  With God as "enforcer", even the Devil can be vanquished!  Why, isn't he a more formidable foe than Frank Miller?  And the hero's courage reverberates to those around him, so they don't cut and run.

This principle ties in with the gospel from Mark 16:15.  Jesus said to his disciples, "Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature."  To do so takes courage, and courage grows out of the humus of humility.  

Listen to Tex Ritter sing the High Noon's "Don't Forsake Me Oh My Darlin".

Revelation in a Desecrated World?

Roger Scruton in his book The Face of God distinguishes between the world of objects, in which science has the final say, and the world of "I" and "Thou", the only world in which humans can live a meaningful life. God can be found only in that world. Kafka observed, you can't talk about God (in the world of science), but you can talk to Him (in the personal world, the world in which human beings actually live).

The trouble is, Scruton thinks, the world of science and technology dominates, and is gradually erasing the world of the personal. Why? It offers "easier" living where sacrifice and suffering -- which are intensely personal -- are eliminated or ignored in favor of consumer-oriented self-satisfaction and shallow titillation. The result is a world of bodies, a desacralized world where God is banished, people are used, and the human face, and meaning itself, blur and fade away.
 
Can one re-discover the sacred in a world of materiality and objects? Scruton thinks that Christianity offers the best remaining insight into how to do so. He writes (at p. 172 of his The Face of God):

"The Christian God is agape, and even in a world that has launched itself on the path of desecration, he can show himself in the sacrificial acts of individual people, when they set aside the call of self-interest and act for others' sake. Acts of self-sacrifice appear in the world of objects and causes as revelations: the I that gives itself opens a window in the scheme of things through which we glimpse the light beyond - the I AM that spoke to Moses." (emphasis added) And the "I AM" who was incarnated in Jesus.

The love that matters, argues Scruton, is agape, for it is God's gift to us, a grace. We acknowledge this gift when we share it with others. Agape love expresses itself in self-sacrifice and alleviation of suffering of others and acceptance of our own suffering. It is the sign of God's presence in the world. (Eros, though essential, is fraught with temptation and consequences that are damaging for individual lovers and society.) Science can't comprehend agape, for it is a world apart, but we humans cannot live without it.

Agape potentially is found everywhere in our so-called secular world. It is found whenever persons act out of kindness, generosity, and self-sacrifice, and when they offer up their suffering for a greater good. When they do this, love erupts into the secular world as a revelation of the sacred, the human response to God's love for us revealed in the incarnation, death and resurrection of His son Jesus.

Can the Face of God be Seen?

In today's gospel, Jesus appears post-resurrection to his disciples, who are startled and disturbed.  He invites them to feel his wounds, to see that he is real and alive in this world.  The issue for all of us latter so-called disciples of Jesus, is, how can we see (experience) Jesus alive in our lives?

In his book, The Face of God, based on his 2010 Gifford Lectures, Roger Scruton addresses the age-old desire to see the face of God.  He points out that the Hebrew scriptures are replete with this theme.  (E.g. Ps. 13: "How long wilt thou hide thy face from me?") Man's yearning for God, Christians believe, has been fulfilled in Jesus, in his life, death and resurrected life.

But the face of God has disappeared for many in the post-modern world.  I can't do justice to his book in a short blog entry, but I would like to quote the conclusion of his book in connection with the theme of today's gospel.

"So what and where is the face of God for the one who believes in his real presence among us?  The answer is that we encounter this presence everywhere, in all that suffers and renounces for another's sake.  Things with a face are illuminated by the subjectivity that shines in them, and which spreads around them a halo of prohibitions.  When someone enters the moment of sacrifice, throwing away what is most precious, even life itself, for the sake of another, then we encounter the supreme moment of gift.  This is an act in which the I appears completely.  It is also a revelation.  In sacrifice and renunciation the I makes of its own being a gift, and thereby shows us that being is a gift.  In the moment of sacrifice people come face to face with God, who is present too in those places where sorrow has left its mark or 'prayer has been valid.'

"We should not be surprised, therefore, if God is so rarely encountered now.  The consumer culture is one without sacrifices; easy entertainment distracts us from our metaphysical loneliness.  The rearranging of the world as an object of appetite obscures its meaning as a gift.  The defacing of eros and the loss of rites of passage eliminate the old conception of human life as an adventure within the community and an offering to others.  It is inevitable, therefore, that moments of sacred awe should be rare among us.  And it is surely this, rather than the arguments of the atheists, that has led to the decline of religion.  Our world contained many openings onto the transcendental;  but they have been blocked by waste.  You may think that this does not matter  -- that mankind has had enough of sacred mysteries and their well-known dangers.  But I think we are none of us at ease with the result.  Our disenchanted life is, to use the Socratic idom, 'not a life for a human being'.  By remaking human beings and their habitat as objects to consume rather than subjects to revere we invite the degradation of both.  Postmodern people will deny that their disquiet at these things has a religious meaning.  But I hope that my argument has gone some way to showing that they are wrong."

Where do we see the face of God?  In the wounds of Christ, as today's gospel shows.  That is, in the suffering of others and our sacrificial response.

Listen to "The Face of Love" by Sanctus Real:

Listen to "Face of Love" by Miranda Cosgrove.

Listen to "The Face of Love" by Jewel

Ordinary People

There is no doubt that our Pope, Benedict XVI, has a deep spiritual sense that can provide insights into our faith that would be hard for the average Catholic in the pew to discern. Our time spent with his book, Jesus of Nazareth has been well spent.Yet, we average Catholics are faced daily with the culture we live in and are continually facing the challenge of reconciling our faith with the culture we live in. This is not an easy task. Below Eamon Duffy considers only one of the issues we confront daily.

 

 

The shrinking of Catholic institutions is clearly part and parcel of a much broader unsettlement within Western society. It is not merely Catholic marriages, for example, which are in decline, but, it would seem, the institution of marriage itself. The moral pattern imposed by the church (slowly and with enormous difficulty) on European sexual behavior and family structure from the early Middle Ages onwards seems now to be collapsing. Later than most of the rest of the churches of the West, the Catholic Church is increasingly confronted with the need to evolve a modus vivendi with these apparently inexorable social trends, which can be lived by ordinary people with integrity. Marriage is above everything else a social institution, and if the church is not to decline into being a sect for the saintly, ordinary Catholic couples cannot realistically be expected to live lives untouched by the social and sexual expectations and mores of the culture as a whole. The tragically large and growing number of Catholics in irregular unions is both an indicator of the way in which the values of society shape the lives and perceptions of Christians and also, in pastoral terms, a ticking time bomb, which by one means or another is going to have to be defused if it is not to decimate the Catholic community and, more importantly, deprive thousands of people of the sacramental support and light they need.

-Eamon Duffy, Unfinished, journey: The Church 40 Years after Vatican II, Essays for John Wilkins

 

 

In her anthology of essays Being Catholic Now, Kerry Kennedy provides us with insights into the way some prominent people view the Catholic faith. There are some who have rejected Catholicism, some who have embraced it and some who love it but have their criticisms. In some cases they provide their solution the the query: What is the modus vivendi with which we Catholics can deal with these relentless social trends? We average Catholics do not have the intellectual where with all of Pope Benedict, but we are called to meet this challenge.

 

 

In May and June our group will look at some of these essays by prominent people. We can critcize or concur with them. There is no excuse though for ignoring the issues. Look to the bulletin board in the narthex for what we will be reading. and email me for a copy of the readings at robandmar5@sbcglobal.net .

Believers? Thomas and Nicodemus

Belief/faith is depicted in the scriptural readings this week, starting with Thomas' journey from doubt to fervent belief, to Nicodemus' vacillating faith, and the reminder today that Christ comes because of God's love for us, not to condemn, but to save. We are asked to believe in Him.

The scriptural commentary I read noted that the word "belief" derives from an old word "lief" meaning love. So belief is connected with love, as are all other important values! John 3:16 ("God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son . . .") conveys that God loves us, and asks us in return for "belief" in that love, meaning that we are to respond in love to God's love. Belief is the proper return we make (in love) to love. Love is the coin of the realm, God's realm that is made of love and lives on love. And so belief is a recognition of God's love, and a grateful response in love: forgiveness in response to hatred; compassion in response to coldness; a helping hand to the limping.

As Nicodemus was a "creature of the shadows" (Living With Christ, April 2012, p. 91), and as Thomas emerged out of his doubt into fervent faith ("My Lord and my God!"), we are called to move into fervent faith in action, into belief acted out in love.

Listen to Phil Ochs, "Ballad of the Carpenter"

Freedom's Road

I attended a talk given by philosopher Giovanni Maddalena on Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate. For those who don't know this author and his masterpiece, see the Wikipedia article here. According to the Soviet censors, this novel had to be suppressed (it was) because to release it would have been "as bad as dropping an atom bomb" on Soviet society.

Why? Dr. Maddalena explained the novel's main theme as the meaning of freedom. Grossman was initially a loyal Communist Party member and successful Soviet writer. But over the years he changed his views about the Soviet political and social system. Not only did his act of writing, because he sought the truth, cause reflection and awakening, Grossman's own morally checkered life prompted soul-searcing. When the Germans invaded the Ukraine in 1942, Grossman, a Jew, failed to save his mother before the Einsatzgruppen murdered her (and so many others). And, after the war, Grossman did not have the moral stamina to resist pressure to sign an anti-Jewish screed in the "Jewish plot" fomented by Stalin shortly before his death.

Grossman decided to write a novel that dealt with reality -- how people really are -- not how they are according to Soviet ideology. This perspective got his novel confiscated by the censors when he finished it in 1961. Since Grossman died of cancer in 1964, he never saw the novel published. It was smuggled out of the Soviet Union and first published in Russian in Switzerland in 1981, and much later into other languages, including English.

The immediate setting of the novel is the cataclysmic battle between the German and Soviet forces at the Battle of Stalingrad. But the larger setting includes the Nazi death camps and the political struggles and turmoil throughout the Soviet Union and its territories.

According to Maddalena, the book articulates four levels or degrees of human freedom. Freedom in its first dimension is expressed in the human desire to be free from domination. Freedom is experienced in the appreciation of one's human faculties to reason and to imagine ideals free of oppression. Such freedom is possible because the "eternal" has the ability to shine through the blackness of tyranny into the human soul.

In the novel, this freedom was found only in losing, not winning, military battles. The Germans found freedom when the shackles of the ideological world view that enslaved them were broken, which occurred only when they began to lose the war. The Soviets likewise found freedom in being overcome (initially) by the Germans. Reeling and off-balance, they threw off the bonds of Soviet military ideology and battled as they were in reality, revealing strength and creativity.

Freedom is experienced, thinks Maddalena, at a second, higher level when a human being is able to express himself. Since human beings are relational, they can only be who they are in dialogue. Conversation, interaction with the world and human beings, is necessary for freedom. Ideology, says Grossman, snuffs out conversation. The ideologue treats a part as the whole, and in doing so eschews expressing himself of herself. Only the partial truth is expressed. This is slavery, which the Soviet system preferred. Grossman's book, depicting free expression, was anathema to such a regime, an "atom bomb."

Freedom is even richer, says Grossman, for it includes the expression of truth. In Grossman's world, truth and falsity were constant bedfellows, consisting of what you observed, and the meaning Soviet ideology assigned to it. Grossman insisted that truth is one. It cannot contradict itself. And you cannot be free unless you can know and express that one truth.

One begins to appreciate truth in silence. Things appear there. A passage in the book depicts the silence appearing out of a lapse in shooting. The tick-tock of a clock was suddenly noticeable; crickets chirped, water dripped . . . Things began to appear as what they were. Truth can be spotted when the ambient noise, which includes the noise of ideology, fades into silence.

Another sign of this third level of freedom -- a freedom that touches truth -- is the occurrence of "random acts of kindness." Freedom is experienced when a human being is capable of acting contrary to expectations. Since expectations are often imposed by ideology, a free act is often seen as irrational. Grossman gives the example of a woman who, instead of attacking a fallen and starving German soldier, offered him a loaf of bread. This seemingly irrational spurt of kindness shows that, for Grossman, the human being is capable of recognizing the humanity of man, and acting out of goodness in this recognition, despite ideological expectations. In such acts freedom to be true is seen.

And still, for Grossman, there is a higher, a fourth level of freedom. This is realized when the human being immerses himself in asking the perennial questions about existence: not only questions relating to the day-to-day, but questions concerning nature and science, and our origin and destiny. Asking essentially unanswerable questions leads the human being into the presence of being itself, which is mystery. The questions, being asked, lead us outside of our ability to control, and into a realm of humility, dependence and acceptance. This is freedom in its highest realization for we are no longer living life in accordance with our own will, but according to a higher one, a higher "fate."

Ultimately, freedom is about opening a space in which we can be who we are. Who we can be is described by the degrees of freedom that we embody: freedom from domination, freedom to express ourselves, to be truthful, and to dwell with the ultimate, if unanswerable, questions of existence.

Today we face the same struggle as Grossman faced in his day to be free in a culture punctured by ideological warfare. How can we realize freedom? That question, when asked of Dr. Maddalena, like the questions that characterize the highest level of freedom mentioned earlier, received no direct answer from him. But can I suggest that the signposts along freedom's road may be found in Life and Fate?

Greater than Love?

To walk along Jesus' way, His way, takes more than love. It takes faith. Faith is the willingness to let go and walk along Jesus' way. Thus, David G. Benner, Spirituality and the Awakening Self, at 67:

It is striking that for all the emphasis Jesus placed on love, he praised faith even more than love. 'Your faith has saved you,' he tells us in Luke 8:48. Faith transforms us because faith is a readiness to let go and take the next step -- even when it isn't clear where you will be putting your foot down. It is daring to allow yourself to be still and face your inner demons, or step over the edge when nothing but the abyss seems to be below. You no longer need to hold on because you know that Someone is holding on to you!

In this sense, faith is a "yes" that is prior to a "no". In the world of our bodies, the physical world, it is a gesture of trust (not simply an intellectual assent). "No" is all that we are unwilling to leave, but "no" is also the inner lining of the "yes", for the "yes" allows us to say "no," to leave for a better place along the road, along the way of Christ.

And I read recently that the word "belief" is from the old word "lief", which stands for love.  So belief, faith, ultimately derives from love.

And it seems that the faith that Jesus praises also includes love, for isn't it love that motivates the trust that is the inner dynamic of faith?

Listen to "Shepherd Me O God" (Marty Haugen)

Listen to "I'll Walk With God" (Russell Watson)

Listen to "Walking With God"

I Did It My (Your) Way!

Our associate pastor, Fr. Mark, commented on the second reading this Easter morning, Col.3:1-4: "If then you were raised with Christ, seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Think of what is above, not of what is on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory."

Fr. Mark pointed out that there really are only two ways of living: "my way" or His way. My way is the default; His way is something we have to choose. Why choose His way? As the letter implies, Christ's way leads to fullness and joy and eternal life. My way ends in the wayside of death.

And so, I choose this Easter to say, "Lord, may I make Your way, my way, my way, Your way."

Happy Easter!

Listen to Susan Boyle, "Make Me a Channel of Your Peace"

Listen to "Take and Eat" (sung at mass today)

Lyrics:

Take and eat; take and eat: this is my body given up for you. Take and drink; take and drink: this is my blood given up for you.
1. I am the Word that spoke and light was made; I am the seed that died to be re-born; I am the bread that comes from heaven above; I am the vine that fills your cup with joy.
2. I am the way that leads the exile home; I am the truth that sets the captive free; I am the life that raises up the dead; I am your peace, true peace my gift to you.
3. I am the Lamb that takes away your sin; I am the gate that guards you night and day; You are my flock; you know the shepherd's voice; You are my own; your ransom is my blood.
4. I am the cornerstone that God has laid; A chosen stone and precious in his eyes; You are God's dwelling place, on me you rest; Like living stones, a temple for God's praise.
5. I am the light that came into the world; I am the light that darkness cannot hide; I am the morning star that never sets; Lift up your face, in you my light will shine.
6. I am the first and last, the Living One; I am the Lord who died that you might live; I am the bridegroom, this my wedding song; You are my bride, come to the marriage feast.
Listen to "You are Mine"

Were You There?

I attended the way of the cross sponsored by Communion and Liberation in Chicago on Friday, starting from the Daley Plaza and proceeding to other venues, including the Chicago River, Water Tower and Holy Name Cathedral. At each stop we read the passion story, sang songs, and heard a reflection on the passion.

What stopped me was the last sentence in a passage by Luigi Giussani (from his Meditations on the Rosary) about Jesus' prayers in the Garden of Gethsemani. "Abba, Father, all things are possible to you. Take this cup away from me, but not what I will but what you will." (Mark14:36)

Giussani writes, "'Take away this condition, Father, take away this condition.' Must I say this? But it is precisely for this that I have come to this hour!' Thus I can say at the end, 'Father, glorify Your name, which I do not comprehend. Father, glorify Your name in front of which I stand in fear and trembling, in obedience, that is to say, love. My life is Your plan, it is Your will."

"How many times will we have to reread this passage in order to identify with the most lucid and fascinating instant in which the consciousness of the Man-Christ, Jesus, expressed itself. We can come upon this by surprise, from its deepest recesses to the highest peaks of His example of love for Being, of respect for the objectivity of Being, of love for His origin and His destiny, and for the contents of the plan of time, of history.

"'Father, if possible, let me not die; however, not my will but Your will be done.' this is the supreme application of our acknowledgment of Mystery, adhering to the Man-Christ kneeling and sweating blood from the pores of His skin in His agony in Gethsemane. The condition for being true in a relationship is sacrifice."

The last sentence especially struck me. Jesus remained true to his relationship with his Father, and through his Father, with all of us, but at what a cost! And what is our calling, as Christians, but to pray that we may also remain true, like Jesus, in our own relationship with our Father, and through Him, to remain true in our relationships with our loved others?

But sacrifice? Yes, to maintain love relationships based on truth, to "hang in" when times are tough, sacrifice may be needed, will be needed. Are we willing to sacrifice? Thus will the truth out.

Listen to Tatiana "Where You There When They Crucified My Lord?"

Same by Johnny Cash and the Carter Sisters

Same by "Willie Nelson"

Willie Nelson, "Just a Little Walk With Jesus"

Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash "Family Bible"

The Bandoneon Player

When I was a kid, I took 8 years of accordion lessons. Why accordion? Coming from a family with a German ancestry, we had inherited a 12-bass accordion, so, naturally, that was the musical instrument to learn.

Now, years later, as a lapsed accordionist, I sometimes wonder at my failure to continue playing. Maybe it was socially unacceptable (uncool) to play accordion in the suburbs. Maybe I had no talent? Maybe both? To some extent, all this is tongue-in-cheek, but it does raise some important questions about human fulfillment. To what extent should we embrace our circumstances of life and develop them, and to what extent reject them in favor of some other endeavor with a higher social cachet? How does one fulfill one's individuality?

The issue is raised in Carlo Strenger's The Fear of Insignificance. Strenger is an Israeli psychologist. He writes (at pp. 87 ff) of the experience of Astor Piazzolla, who, when a youngster, partly because of his father's nostalgia for Argentina in New York, took up the bandonion and played tango in his teens in New York, actually making a living doing so. A meeting with Arthur Rubinstein led to his taking up classical composing, and later, at age 32, he got a scholarship with famed composer, conductor and teacher Nadia Boulanger. Boulanger took a look at his portfolio of classical compositions, but told him, I don't see Piazzolla in these. Where is he? Piazzolla rather shamedly confessed that he really just played the bandonion at cabarets. She asked him to play. When he did, she exclaimed, "You idot, that's Piazzolla!" He says, "And I took all the music I composed, ten years of my life, and sent it to hell in two seconds."

Piazzolla went on to become a legendary bandonion player and composer. While he spent years trying to become a classical composer and musician, this was someone other than who he was. Only when he abandoned this effort could he become who he really was.

Strenger writes, "Nadia Boulanger did something tremendous for him: she helped him to realize that he could never become a full-fledged composer if he remained disconnected from the musical traditions that had shaped him. This was the moment when Piazzolla ceased to shape himself along the image of composers that he admired. He began the process of active self-acceptance, the process in which self-knowledge is used to start shaping individuality that is truly ours and not a persona externally imposed on our natural propensities." Ibid at 88.

To me this ties in with the idea that God makes each person unique and wants him or her to develop his or her individual talents. Don't try to be someone else. Be yourself. God loves you as YOU! But many of us don't have the courage to be ourselves. And Strenger advises that to accomplish that requires you to be able to look at yourself, learn from others about yourself, be disciplined, and be able to withstand the psychic pain that comes from an unromantic look at who you are. We need courage, but also faith that we are worthwhile, that God made us to be something good. And that goodness includes our upbringing, and the formative influences it had on us.

So, shall I start practicing my accordion again? (Maybe only when everyone has left the house!)

Listen to Astor Piazzolla's "Oblivion"

Listen to Astor Piazzolla's "Libertango"

Listen to Astor Piazzolla's "Milonga del angel"

Listen to Las Rositas, "Eletrotango"

Listen to the Gotan Project, "Mi Confesion"

Listen to La Cumparsita

Love's Beautiful Jewel

A new face at Spanish-English class, Sat. mornings at St. Paul Lutheran. Her name is Anna. Somewhat careworn but wanting to improve her English.

I asked her about herself and her family. She talked about her four children, including twin girls. One was "bad" and had a child out of wedlock and gave her up for foster care. She doesn't get along with Anna because she complains that she raised her too strictly. She won't let her daughter reside with the child's grandparents for that and other reasons. So Anna and her husband don't get to see her.

Anna said she has suffered so much in worry over her daughter and granddaughter, and that now, somewhat in exhaustion, she is telling herself that she needs to move on. She is trying to earn her GED and wants next to study pharmacology.

Anna lives in Downers Grove near the Jewel on 63rd Street. When she said "Jewel," it came out as "azul" (blue), and so I stopped and corrected her. A"j" sound, not a "z" sound. She asked me if I knew what jewel means in Spanish. Joya, she explained. Sounds like joy. She smiled. I didn't notice a diamond on her finger (though she said she is married). I said, Anna, I think your smile is as beautiful as a jewel! Her smile deepened.

I have prayed that God show me what love means, how He intends me to love. One mode of love is compassion -- the sharing of another person's suffering and joy. Intensely personal, it is sharing the warmth of a smile, the depth of human suffering. I told Anna, God must be crying over all the suffering of humanity. We agreed. On my way home I cried with joy and grief, for Anna, and for the suffering world, whom God loves so much, so much more than I can love. It seemed a moment when God allowed me to glimpse of what it means to love, how God loves, and what a cross of grief Jesus carries as he walks His way this pre-Easter day, toward Golgotha.

Those minutes with Anna tore in two a curtain that separated two human beings, revealing the closeness that comes from seeing another person, sharing her life and concerns, and helping her feel joy in being recognized as valuable and lovely. Her responsive smile rewarded me as sunhine through clouds, as a sparkling jewel.

Listen to Foreigner, "I Want to Know What Love is" sung by Tina Arena.

Listen to "Smile" by Nat King Cole.

Bantioche! Thank You!

My message to St. Michael school children at Mass on April 4, 2012:

Shanshaquil! La cab’a Tom Olp.

Hello! My name is Tom Olp

Ani Lacab’a? What is your name?

Barr Qual Kot? Where do you live?

Well, if you are confused, imagine how we felt hearing villagers speak Kekchi to us in Semachaca, Guatemala!

We traveled to Guatemala from Chicago a week ago Sunday, flying direct from Chicago to Guatemala City, a four hour flight in the middle of the night, then riding in a microbus for six hours to Rio Dulce (Spanish words for Sweet River), and finally, on Monday morning, enduring a two hour back jarring ride in the bed of a pick up truck to reach Semachaca, high in the mountains.

The road was barely passible, and rutted with the recent rains. But luckily for us, not a drop of rain fell on us during the three days we were there.

We brought our tents, but didn’t have to use them, for we found a large dormitory-like room to sleep in. All 15 of us fit into it, and slept on thin mats provided for our use. We cooked our own meals in a large comedor, or dining room/kitchen.

What did we do while we were there? We worked on the medical clinic that we planned for, that you helped pay for through your contributions. We went swimming in the nearby river, and we visited with the locals we met.

There are thirty two (32) villages within a 4 or 5 hour walk from Semachaca. The road ends near Semachaca so everyone from other villages WALKS to Semachaca or rides a horse. Why do they want to come to Semachaca?

Because the parish Semachaca is in -- San Antonio de Padua in Rio Dulce – two hours away, where Padre Javier is the pastor, is building a “Centro,” a community center, which will include a medical clinic, and meeting rooms where the villages will be able to gather to discuss matters of interest to them. Like how to grow corn that will produce fatter ears. What other crops might be good money makers. (Right now Cardemon is a big cash crop. People in the middle east, Saudi Arabia, drink cardemon like coffee.) And how to raise healthier kids.

Right now there is no doctor in Semachaca or in ANY of the other 32 villages in that area. Imagine having no doctor in town! And no pharmacy where you can get aspirin and prescriptions. In Semachaca now, someone who gets sick either suffers through the illness at home, or travels 3 to 5 hours to get to a hospital – assuming they can even get a ride. Since there are no roads, there are no cars. People either walk or ride horses. We saw plenty of pack animals while we were there.

We did what we came for in Semachaca – we started framing in the medical clinic building for windows. And we watched workers install solar panels so the entire center will have permanent electricity. The solar panels power batteries during the day, which then energize the lights at night. Before the panels, expensive gas generators had to be used to power lights. Now electrical energy is cheaper. Your contributions made this happen. We also saw workers complete the first flush toilets in Semachaca. All others are outhouses. We joked to the villagers that we were sure the toilets worked, since we were the first to use them!

On Wednesday, we had mass with the paster, Padre Javier, from the parish of Saint Anthony of Padua, Rio Dulce. You may remember Padre Javier from his visit to the Spanish classes here at St. Michael last September. The entire community turned out at mass, packing the salon to say thank you to Saint Michael for our care and involvement in their lives. Few other foreigners have ever visited Semachaca.

Our psalm today, Psalm 69, reads:

See, you lowly ones,

And be glad;

You who seek God,

May your hearts be merry!

For the Lord hears the poor,

And his own who are in bonds

He spurns not.

Semachaca, a village of about 50 families, is home to many of these “lowly ones” spoken of in the psalm. The families there have no indoor plumbing, electric lights, paved roads, medical care, pharmacies, supermarkets, 7-11’s, McDonald’s, railroads, restaurants, street lights, refrigerators, automobiles, air conditioners . . . Well, I could go on and on.

But on Wednesday, one week ago, the hearts of those in Semachaca were merry, as the Psalm promises, for our mass was said under lights newly powered by solar panels, and the medical clinic next door was becoming a reality. The Lord is hearing these “lowly ones” in Semachaca, thanks, in part, to us.

And of course, we also felt blessed to visit that community, to see the moms with their colorful huipils and skirts, their children around them, with their husbands and fathers and mothers, singing and praying with us at a Catholic mass.

Who was God blessing? Not only the community of Semachaca, but St. Michael’s too, and not only those of us who were there, but all of you whom we represented there. I said a few words at that mass too, translated from English into Spanish and then into Kekchi. I said, “Not only do we want to help you build a medical clinic because we recognize how important accessible medical care is to any family, in Semachaca and here in Wheaton, Illinois, but we also wanted to come and meet YOU, to be with YOU and to help YOU build something -- a medical clinic -- that is so important to you. “To be with you,” in the way that Christ came to be with us, living with us, and suffering with us, ultimately in his passion and death, for which we give thanks this week.

Christ asks us to suffer a little to “be with” our neighbors, to lower ourselves a little to help them, to love them by raising them up as we are able. By making ourselves “lowly,” by expending our time and resources for others, we can help to raise up our neighbors and to make them -- and us – as the Psalm says, merry! Then we are all the “lowly” raised up! That is our Christian calling, the command of love that is given to us as an invitation against the background of God’s wonderful love for us, a God who so loved us that he sent his Son to be with us, and who raised us up with him in his death and Easter resurrection. We experienced that love at first hand in Semachaca!

At mass in Semachaca I thanked the community there for being friends with St. Michael’s, and so I thank you for your generous response of friendship to our central American neighbors, a response that is, as I speak, raising up a medical clinic in Semachaca and with it the health and happiness of the people who live there. This, I believe, is how we share in God’s wonderful work of love, the love that is the core and fruit of our Christian faith.

As the Kekchi say in Semachaca:

“Bantioche!” Thank you!

And I say: “Uss”, which means Yes, and Good!

And, as we said to our friends in Semachaca, “Until we meet again, may God bless you and keep you. . .

“Cuamba!” Goodbye!

Hear some Kekchi choral songs.

Listen to ancient mayan music.

Thanks America!

Back from Guatemala, one "processes" or reflects, a secondary experience that gives meaning to the primary one. The strangeness of other ways of living that reveal at the same time the sameness of all peoples in basic needs and nature, comes home to me. And coming home is such a joy, because for a moment I don't take for granted all of the blessings I usually forget to be thankful for: electricity, pure water, working toilets, paved roads, clean clothes, access to healthcare. . .

And so one reflection on life in a third world country is of the blessings of our life in the United States. And of how to keep those blessings actively in mind. I am reminded of a statement of George Grant, "Two Theological Languages," quoted in Vol. 2 of Collected Works, p. 60 (and on the frontspiece of Ordering Love, David L. Schindler:

To put the matter in language not easy for moderns, . . . Christianity [is at its center] concerned with grace. Grace simply means that the great things of our existing are given us, not made by us and finally not to be understood as arbitrary accidents. Our making takes place within an ultimate givenness. However difficult it is for all of us to affirm that life is a gift, it is an assertion primal to Christianity. Through the vicissitudes of life -- the tragedies, the outrages, the passions, the disciplines and madnesses of everyday existence -- to be a Christian is the attempt to learn the substance of that assertion."

Coming back to the U.S. helps me appreciate the gifts of living in this country. And being in Guatemala, our Central American neighbor, helps me appreciate the gifts in living that the people there enjoy: family, community, faith and meaning, and the ability to struggle for life's betterment. These are gifts that we have in common as human beings, and gifts we can share and give each other, as friends.

Thank you, America, North and Central, for being here for me! And, thank you Lord!

Listen to Ray Boltz, "Thank You, Lord"

Listen to Bob Marley, "Thank You, Lord"

Listen to Walter Hawkins, "Thank You Lord"