Reflection for September 4, 2011

God would never make it as a CPA.

At the end of James Joyce’s short story “Grace” a congregation of Dublin gentlemen has gathered in the Jesuit Church in Gardiner Street to attend a retreat service led by an imposing preacher named Fr. Purdon. The men were mostly dressed in black, relieved here and there by tweeds. They included mostly commercial people, city clerks, moneylenders, even the owner of three pawnbroker shops – men of business (some with alcohol problems). The text chosen by the preacher was Luke 16:8: For the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light. Wherefore make unto yourselves friends out of the Mammon of iniquity.

The preacher went on to say that this text was a text for business and professional men – like his congregation. He said he was there in the pulpit for no terrifying purpose (he wasn’t there to scare them into virtue) but as a man of the world, familiar with money, speaking to his fellow men. And so, even as they believed in tallying and verifying their accounts in every point, so they should rectify their accounts in this and that, balance discrepancies and come out even with God. (A celestial version of the Income Tax?)

That’s a smart way of getting through to commercial fellows; it talks their language. But if accountability is Fr. Purdon’s take on the Gospel, it doesn’t quite measure up to God’s way with us in September’s Gospel readings. There we hear Peter ask, “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive? As many as seven times?” And Jesus answers, “Not seven times but seventy-seven times.”

He then tells of a king who wrote off a cheating servant’s debt out of compassion only to hear that this same servant squeezed the last drachma out of a person indebted to him. Rigid accounting despite experienced generosity! “All right,” says the king. “If you insist on a strict quid pro quo way of life, you shall henceforth live under the torture of a relentlessly quid pro quo concept of God – a creed without grace, compassion, forgiveness.

Then there’s that other parable in which a landowner hires early birds at $10 dollars an hour. In the course of the day he hires others at noon, three, five . . . When eleven hours are up he pays the early birds their $110 but grants a full day’s pay to the latecomers as well. That’s bad accounting. In a world of exact accounting some get more and others get less – which helps maintain the caste systems of history. But all the parable tries to do is introduce largesse, magnanimity into our world – making it more human, more divine. Of course we say such largesse is excessive, disruptive of an orderly commercial life – except when it’s you and me – when it comes to moral discrepancies – who need, who welcome such graciousness.

So again, would God pass a course in accounting? He’d probably be expelled – as in fact he so often is in our world of relentless, impersonal (yet often ineffective) quid pro quo accounting, a world always preoccupied with debt, ignorant of grace.

Reflection for August 28, 2011

But then it becomes like fire burning in my heart . . .” (Jeremiah 20:7-9)

We live in an age when many an intellectual dismisses religion as “pure myth” meaning untrue. They go even farther and claim there is no meaning to life – we are as pretty and as fragile and meaningless as the butterflies that last a season or so and then dissolve into atoms. Some of these intellectuals are depressed about this – but steel themselves to make the most out of the time allowed us. Other intellectuals rejoice over such a meaningless world because it relieves them of bearing the burden of taxing creeds that – in their opinion – deprive us of the “freedom” to enjoy the here and now – fleeting though it may be.

Of course we ourselves hold on to our ancient creed, our faith, our hope that this world, that our lives do have meaning. The Bible is loaded with episodes and poetry and of course the presence of Jesus and people like St. Paul who tell us about where we come from and where we are going – and the truth about what handicaps us (like greed, pride, sloth, fear). And beyond the Bible there are the poets, people like Dante, Shakespeare, the great stories of our culture that reach confidently toward a happy ending to our lives, our universe.

Indeed, one of my favorite writers nowadays – named George Steiner – argues that underlying the material world we live in is a kind of musical composer who endows all creation with meaning – and inspires every human work of art, music, poetry, theology, even those everyday hopeful conversations we have that demonstrate how much more we are than “nothing at all” – as the cynics would have us believe. Indeed, Steiner uses the metaphor of the “visitor” – that from behind or beneath every story, every parable, every proverb, symphony or even folk song we encounter, every wish we wish there is someone knocking at our door, wanting to become a enduring tenant within our soul, our very body.

And given this faith, what should be our response to such knocking – sometimes a quiet tapping? Steiner says – courtesy! We should read things, hear things, study events in our lives, in the Bible and the world around us with courtesy – which means seriousness, taking our time, postponing the haste that has us running from pillar to post, running away from that deeper meaning that can make our lives more profound, more real. Which – as usual – reminds me of a poem by Walter de la Mare called “The Listeners”: “Is there anybody there?” said the Traveller, / Knocking on the moonlit door; / . . . And he smote upon the door again a second time; / “Is there anybody there?” he said. / But no one descended to the Traveller; / No head from the leaf-fringed sill / Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes, / Where he stood perplexed and still. / . . . “Tell them I came, and no one answered, / That I kept my word,” he said. / . . . Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup, / And the sound of iron on stone, / And how the silence surged softly backward, / When the plunging hoofs were gone.

Do you sometimes feel your life is meaningless, this world is meaningless? Maybe you should show more courtesy toward that knocking on your door that resonates from every biblical event, every worthwhile work of art, every kind word you come upon.

Reflection for July 31, 2011

O, what a fall was there, my countrymen! / Then I, and you, and all of us fell down.

In Graham Greene’s 1958 novel Our Man in Havana a British citizen named Mr. Wormold is invited to the hotel room of a man named Hawthorne (a member of the British Secret Service). Wormold runs a not very prosperous vacuum cleaner shop in Havana – and so he becomes interested in a proposition made to him by Hawthorne to become the Secret Service spy in Havana – working under the cover of his shop. Wormold is reluctant, he’s not into politics – but he could use the generous salary offered by Hawthorne. To prepare for his clandestine work he is first given a copy of Charles Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare – designed for children – which retells the plot of Shakespeare’s plays in plain English, thus freeing the child from the archaic and demanding language (and thought) of Shakespeare himself.

When Wormold asks Hawthorne why he needs this book, Hawthorne says it’s to be used as a codebook. All Wormold has to do when he sends “secret” information to London is to choose a page and a line randomly from which to encode a message – and simply let Wormold know the page and line number. Other intricacies to confuse potential counterspies include the elimination of personal names. In so far as Hawthorne is known within the spy network as 59200, henceforth Wormold will be known as 59200/5 and Wormold’s future agents will be known as 59200/5/1, 59200/5//2 and so on. In other words Wormold by joining the Secret Service (for a better income) crosses over from the language of business, of vacuum cleaner sales into the obscure discourse of espionage which remains impersonal, digital, designed to communicate only to a few cryptologists in England.

One could say that in modern times we have all made a similar cross over from common sense discourse to a language universe characterized by tweets, microblogging, no more than 140 characters to a screen, 40% of which discourse has been classified as pointless babble. Are these signs of a declining culture? Language has been the repository of our most treasured, motivating human ideas, poetry, wisdom – yet of late so much of public and private discourse has none of the discipline of – for instance - the real language of Shakespeare, which by the way seems easily understood by even the uneducated listener.

I mean let’s look at Shakespeare’s play “Julius Caesar” out of all his masterpieces. Listen simply to some classic phrases like Caesar’s remark: Let me have men about me that are fat / . . . Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look. / He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous. Or consider Portia’s complaint to her distracted husband Brutus: Dwell I but in the suburbs of your good pleasure? Then there is Caesar’s response to concerns about his safety: Cowards die many times before their deaths; / The valiant never taste of death but once. Then there is Brutus’ reaction to the anger of Cassius: There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats; / For I am arm’d so strong in honesty / That they pass me by as the idle wind. And here is Brutus again: There is a tide in the affairs of men / Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; / Omitted, all the voyage of their life / Is bound in shallows and in miseries. / On such a full sea are we now afloat,
 / And we must take the current when it serves / 
Or lose our ventures.

Taking Brutus’ words out of their context in the play, should they not be spoken to every young man and woman starting out in life – to catch the tide of discourse our biblical writers and our Shakespeares caught and thus avoid the shallows and consequent misery of our contemporary world?

Reflection for July 24, 2011

You don’t mess with Mother Nature

Our parish matriarch, Lillian Garrison Sanders, died this week, having reached close to 100 years of age. I call her our matriarch because, if for nothing else, a grandmother of 14, the great grandmother of 23 and the great, great grandmother of 3 and a woman remembered by her family as the “glue” that keeps them together deserves the title of matriarch. But to be a matriarch means a lot more than being the fountainhead of so many descendants. It has to do with being a dominant woman, self-possessed and of long experience who feels subordinate to no one but God alone and even then there may arise some differences of opinion! As I reflect back, there was something about Lillian akin to my probably faulty memory of a Land o’ Lakes butter commercial of many years ago in which a goddess, appalled at the thought of anyone using oleo-margarine, says amid thunder and lightning, “You don’t mess with Mother Nature.”

Or better still, I like to locate her within the grand tradition of the matriarchs of the Bible. For instance, with Eve to begin with. I can’t help but feel that Lillian, if she were with Adam in the Garden of Eden, would have bridled, like Eve, at God’s command not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. I can hear her saying to Adam, “Why not? Who’s he to tell us what to eat and not to eat? Here! It’s quite tasty. Give it a try.” Of course she got them thrown out of the Garden of Eden for disobedience but they did leave with their eyes wide open and the whole of sacred history unfolded from that “happy fault”.

And then there was Rebecca, the patriarch Isaac’s wife. The rules of a masculine dominated society in those days required that the firstborn son be heir to the father’s wealth and in this case to God’s promise of a blessed destiny. And what happens? Rebecca gives birth to twins; Esau emerging first and then Jacob. So by law it’s Esau who inherits the destiny of God’s chosen one. But Esau grows up a hippie, shaggy, tattooed, the head of a motorcycle gang - hardly worthy of his privileged status. So what does the matriarch Rebecca do? When it’s time for old Jacob to ritually pass on God’s blessing to his oldest son, Rebecca dresses up Jacob, the gentler, civilized son, in rough skins, makes him kneel before blind Jacob and thus usurp Esau’s primacy. Jacob of course is scared, hesitant, fears being discovered and cursed instead of blessed. But Rebecca, in the tradition of our biblical matriarchs, says, “Snap out of it. If there is any fall out, I’ll take the impact. As for you, just get on with it.” Regardless of the established rules of the game, a self-possessed, insightful, dominant woman diverts the history of the world in a way that led to Christ. We could go on to talk of Judith and Esther who successfully took matters into their own hands, fully confident that they were agents of God’s doing.

In that context I see a lot that resembles Lillian. Notes given me by her son recall how in the early days of St. Leo’s parish, Lillian “instructed the new priest on how to do things”! I myself remember her often, as she “presided” at Mass from her usual perch in the front pew, talking back to Monsignor O’Hare as he ad libbed from the altar. On one occasion she was invited to speak on some anniversary and instead of doing so from the lectern, placed her cane on the altar and did so from there, even turning to exchange remarks with the visiting bishop. The notes also remember her as “the unofficial funeral director of St. Leo’s, telling people when to stand and when to kneel.”

An obituary, of course, should focus, I suppose, on the biographical data of the deceased. But in Lillian’s case I think it important to place her among the stalwart women of our tradition – to bring out the true stature of her presence among us.

Reflection for July 17, 2011

And the Beat Goes On

(1991)

Edgar Allan Poe was fascinated with premature burials, with characters who felt some need to bury people alive. For instance, there’s the story entitled “The Cask of Amontillado” in which, for some past slight, Montresor invites Fortunato to descend to his cellar to sample a special wine. There Montresor chains his guest to the back wall of an alcove and slowly seals up the opening with masonry. “I forced the last stone into its position; I plastered it up. In pace requiescat. ” Then there’s the character Roderick in “The Fall of the House of Usher” who prematurely entombs his twin sister in a basement vault, only to hear the vault’s iron door clang open; to hear her footsteps on the stairs; to behold her standing enshrouded upon the threshold of his study!

And then there’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”. Of all the movies and plays I’ve seen in my lifetime, my high school’s dramatization of that Poe tale remains memorable to me - particularly its special effects. You know the story. The main character couldn’t stand the presence of an old man who shared his house. “One of his eyes,” he complains, “resembled that of a vulture - a pale blue eye. Whenever it fell on me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees I made up my mind to rid myself of the eye forever.” So he did away with the old fellow, took up the floorboards, deposited the corpse and “replaced the boards so cleverly, so cunningly, that no human eye . . . could have detected anything wrong.” No sooner had he finished the task than three policemen knocked at his door responding to a neighbor’s report of a scream during the night. “I bade them search - search well,” he says, for he was quite confident no trace of the deed would be found. Except that, while he conversed with the police, a low, dull, quick sound began to pulsate throughout the room.

This is where our special effects crew riveted the audience’s attention. From a low, barely perceptible thump, thump, thump, thump to an ever-louder THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP the buried heart crescendoed throughout the theatre - while the main character became increasingly mad! “O God! what could I do? I foamed - I raved - I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise continually increased. I felt that I must scream!”

Beyond mere entertainment, Poe had a far deeper intent in telling such stories. Some think he was anticipating modern materialism’s effort over the past two hundred years to bury both God and the human heart - to evaluate everything in terms of “profitability” and to repress such things as conscience and sentiment as romantic nonsense - to bury them well beneath the floor boards of our psyche so as not to impede “progress”. But note how in most of these stories the beat goes on! The buried person revives, even as God and the human heart will revive, no matter how much a cynical society would stifle their influence.

In such stories Poe stands well within our Gospel tradition, which pivots upon another premature burial - the attempt of a totalitarian Empire to entomb Christ, only to be foiled by his resurrection on the third day. And what was Christ’s resurrection but overture to our own resurrection every time Christ summons us (as he summoned Lazarus from his tomb) to emerge from all that would suffocate our bigness of mind and heart. Could it be that, consciously or unconsciously, all those Poe stories were ultimately influenced by passages from our biblical heritage like: “You were buried with him in baptism, . . . you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God who raised Christ from the dead.”

Reflection for July 10, 2011

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary . . . . Part 2

Since we are still within the octave of July 4^th, Independence Day, I’d like to stretch the thoughts offered last Sunday about the dilemma facing the founding fathers in early July 1776. Last week we mentioned the logic followed by John Dickinson for NOT signing the declaration – cogent reasons for remaining within the British Empire. His reasons did not prevail because his fellow members of Congress had already been influenced by another list of reasons, quite logical, laid out by Tom Paine in the same year. I won’t go into all of them; just offer a taste:

1. It was absurd for an island like Britain to rule a continent like America.

2. America was no longer British; its population was already composed of people from all over Europe.

3. Remaining a part of Britain would only drag America into unnecessary European wars . . . and so on.

What I’m saying is that the members of Congress were faced with the logic of Dickinson (don’t sign) and the logic of Paine (sign). But was logic enough to do the trick? Does mere reasoning get us anywhere? Look at Hamlet: to be or not to be! Both options lead us to a fork in the road where we might be stuck – either/or; should I or shouldn’t I. After all the founding fathers were children of what we call the Age of Reason. One was not to be moved by fantasies, gambles, emotions, old myths. As far as the Bible being a motivator, the Age of Reason had dismantled that for over a century. A rational person couldn’t be motivated by such a book of fairy tales. I mean Thomas Jefferson produced a version of the Gospels that left out all the miracles, virgin birth, walking on water . . . He felt the only useful stuff in the ancient book was the Sermon of the Mount, the ethical, quasi-rational content.

And yet I think the reason the founding fathers got past any indecision, the fork in the road proffered to them by Dickinson on the one hand and Paine on the other, was a glimmer, a vestige, a trace of our civilization’s biblical heritage. They felt (and did not just think) that in declaring independence they were riding upon the wave of what they blandly called “providence” – they clung to the idea of a Creator, as in: We hold these truths to be self evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Our biblical heritage insists that history has a destination and, still sensing that, these men felt the declaration of independence to be a step toward that destiny, the improvement, the salvation (if you will) of the world.

But what I ask is: How much more profoundly would they have been moved to overcome that rational fork in the road, if they had not only been moved by a bland notion of “providence” but had let their imaginations be exposed to the graphic drama, the poetry of Scripture as in God’s call to Abraham to leave his father’s house to go to the land he would show him; God’s call to Moses to confront an earlier King George III to demand liberty, then cross a sea and wilderness en route to a Promised Land; Jesus’ constant invitation to “Come, follow me”; his challenge made to Peter to walk on water – contrary to all common sense, all logic?

In the long run, it is not reason, logic alone that moves our will to act. It is our drama, stories, especially our longstanding biblical story that appeals to the whole of our mind and imagination, our whole being, to cross one horizon after another – with faith, hope and even love. The Bible teaches us that history, collective and individual, has a meaning, that we are en route to a maturity that encompasses freedom and justice and even grace. In that context July 4^th indeed becomes something to sing about.

Reflection for July 3, 2011

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary . . .

It being the 4^th of July weekend, I picked up our home volume (VIII) of the History of the United States written by George Bancroft way back in 1863. I wanted to review all the reasons Pennsylvania’s delegate John Dickinson gave for NOT declaring Independence in 1776. By July 2^nd of that year all 13 colonies had allowed their delegates to support the declaration, even though the revolution was not going too well. An American army had been thwarted in Canada and even more threatening, a British fleet had arrived outside New York harbor, landing 32,000 hardened soldiers on Staten Island – and Washington’s army was still a hardly organized militia.

So Dickinson had good reason to be cautious. Indeed, his reluctance to sign made sense:

1. A declaration of independence would not add one soldier or any amount of supply to the small and poorly equipped American army.

2. To win in the field we would need experienced allies, like France and Spain with whom we had hardly begun to negotiate.

3. And why would they gamble on us in our present state of unreadiness, with no real victories to speak of?

4. And do we really want to lose our privileged place in Britain’s

world wide commercial empire?

5. If we break with England we may only unify against us British public opinion, much of which is now sympathetic to our grievances.

6. Indeed a declaration of independence will alienate many of our own countrymen.

7. Is it prudent to declare independence when the various governments of our states differ in so many ways? Don’t we need some uniformity, a constitution before we launch out into the unknown?

8. What about the boundaries of the thirteen states - as we advance west? Won’t there be competition, some expanding and others confined - without some rules of the game after we leave Britain behind? Will we end up at war with one another?

Obviously Dickinson was a man of logic. Impetuosity in the midst of vast uncertainties hardly seemed the right course to take. Like many down through history he used reason to erode the enthusiasm of his peers. He absented himself from signing the declaration. True, he contributed to the revolution in other ways and eventually helped frame the Constitution – but he anticipated he would forfeit the esteem of his countrymen when he wrote, "My conduct . . . , I expect will give the finishing blow to my once too great and . . . now too diminished popularity."

All of which reminds me of the early Church in the Acts of the Apostles – when the original disciples of Jesus still were a hesitant bunch, attending services at the Temple, requiring that Gentile converts go through the hoops required to be Jewish first – when almost out of nowhere came St. Paul to snap them out of their tentative selves – to see that the time was ripe, that the Church must be a universal community where neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female distinctions should prevail – for all were one in Christ. Indeed, may we not say that in some way the 4^th of July was triggered by the Gospel movement of long ago?