Why is the Dog Happier???

St. Thomas Aquinas tells us that good signifies “perfect being” and evil signifies “the privation of perfect being”1, so when a thing lacks a perfection it ought to have, we perceive the deficiency as an evil. When something is just how it ought to be we call this “good”.

The dog is happy living in the present moment, just being with “the pack”, even if the pack consists of only the dog and his master. This is “perfection” for the mind of a dog. The human is besieged with worldly thoughts; he is not content just being in the present moment. Being a child of God made in the image and likeness of God does not satisfy, even if this “Good News” is made clear to him as a Christian. The intellect dimmed by original and personal sin is obsessed with earthly thoughts and is easily distracted from the source of true happiness. This is an evil or a “privation of perfection” for the human mind.

We could speak of our lives in terms of two aspects, secular and spiritual. Our secular side refers to all the practical and worldly things we deal with and learn about to help us function in our communities, homes, and jobs. We need to pay attention to secular things. The spiritual side is about the Good, the Beautiful and the True and the meaning behind it all. If we get these last things right, the rest of life falls into place. Our spiritual life needs to be foremost in our mind.

Where do your idle thoughts go? What would happen if you put God at the absolute center of your thoughts? What we think ultimately translates to what we do. Since the intellect informs the will, we would end up doing the will of God. We would experience peace, become centered and "detached". Our spinning mind would no longer control us; no longer exhaust us.

In the end only one thing is necessary. It is the “one thing” spoken of at the house of Mary & Martha in Luke 10:38-42. Martha might think that she or Mary could love God above all other things and at the same time be constantly preoccupied with worldly things, but Jesus made it clear that she could not do both perfectly; imperfectly she could, but not perfectly.

It is the nature of the secular life to begin and end in our lifetime. Not so, however, of the spiritual life; it begins in this life, but lasts without end. The best is truly yet to come. As the Lord said to Martha, it is the part that shall never be taken away; because that perfect moment of being which can begin for us here will last without end in heaven.

“God wants us to live in the moment because we can only sanctify the present moment. We can’t change the past or control the future. The chance to do good or bad resides in the right here, right now.”2

1. St. Thomas Aquinas, Aquinas’s Shorter Summa (Manchester: Sophia Institute Press, 2002), p. 125.
2. Karee Santos and Manuel Santos, The Four Keys To Everlasting Love (Ave Maria Press, 2016), e-book, p. 15.

For the Lonely

Some may feel more loneliness than joy during the Holiday Season. Thanksgiving to New Years can be just a series of obstacles to get through for a whole host of reasons. Perhaps the absence of something or someone haunts us like a ghost of Christmas past. The hustle & bustle of the season can also show us how a crowd can be the loneliest place.

For any believer who feels this way, this brief reflection might help…

“Any experience of being left alone, disregarded, forgotten – if it does not isolate the soul and make it retreat inwardly – invites a recognition. Our unimportance to others can combine with a fruitful realization. The more we disappear from the attention of others the more we are watched by God in a different manner.”

– Fr. Donald Haggerty

Our fallen nature tends to make us dissatisfied with God and what He gives us; always seeking something “other than God” when he has already given us himself. Emmanuel means "God is with us", so we are never truly alone. Theologically, we can say that God is so “with us” that he holds our being continually in existence. If God were to stop thinking about us or to stop loving us, we would lapse into nothingness, but how can one internalize that kind of closeness? Perhaps a mirror can help.

When you stand in front of a mirror, what do you see? You see your image & likeness. If you leave the mirror even for an instant, what happens to your image & likeness? It ceases to exist! You “being” in front of the mirror continually holds your image & likeness in existence. So God is right there, continually holding us and constantly sustaining us as we journey through the holidays or anytime.

“And behold, I am with you always” (Matthew 28:20).

 

Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.

 

Gregorian Chants vs. Secular Rants

It stands to reason that any secular music that openly and proudly sings the praises of mortal sin (or any sin) is something to be avoided entirely, but what of popular music whose lyrics and rhythms are seemingly harmless?

I recently finished The Seven Story Mountain by Thomas Merton; a fascinating autobiography of a man that went from Atheist to Trappist in the first half of the 20th century. The book made a brief mention of music that gave me pause. The author described the austere warmth of Gregorian Chant. He describes it as something glowing, like a living flame which draws you within yourself. Here you are lulled into a peace and recollection and where you find God. This is why some never grow tired of it. Perhaps this is also why some can’t stand it.

In sharp contrast, Merton described other types of music that seem to do the opposite. They wear you out by making cheap demands on your sensibilities, toying with your soul so to speak. Once your feelings are drawn-out in the open, the devil, together with the vulgarity of your own corrupt nature & imagination, can get at you with their blades and cut you to pieces.

Thomas Merton
Trappist Monk
1915 - 1968

This is about where I paused in the book and recalled certain songs or types of popular music that may contain nothing objectively wrong, but somehow drew me out of myself in a bad way, to a place where peace is disturbed and God is forgotten. Impetuous rhythms can take up residence in the mind without any conscious effort on our part. Vulgar or perhaps just senseless lyrics repeat in our heads over and over. This makes it all the easier to lose God, and if God is lost, what will boogie-on-in to fill the void?

Is that what a fox says? Really?

Prayer, simply put, is directing one’s life toward God and I’ve heard it said that he who sings “well” prays twice. If this is the case, perhaps he who sings “badly” directs his life away from God twice as fast as he who does not sing at all. Certainly, listening to morally neutral music is not objectively wrong, but maybe having ear buds in your head all day long is. Just like eating candy, moderation and temperance is in order with an awareness of its effects. Perhaps with music, just like with anything else, we should ask ourselves now and then, “Is this bringing me closer to union with God or further away?”

The Tree of Being

There is theology that says if God were to stop loving you or thinking of you for one instant, you would cease to exist. This is difficult to comprehend since we may think of God as puppet maker, and we His puppets.

A puppet maker will make a puppet (or a clay man) and do what he wishes with it. If he leaves it alone and forgets it, the puppet surly continues to exist, although it may be rather unanimated. This kind of thinking is based on human imagination, and the limits of our imagination impose limits to reality which are not really there, for God is being itself and continually holds everything in existence; makes sense considering He calls Himself “I AM” (see Exodus 3:14).

 

Analogies are most helpful…

When you stand in front of a mirror, what do you see? You see your image & likeness. If you leave the mirror even for an instant, what happens to your image & likeness? It ceases to exist! You “being” in front of the mirror continually holds your image & likeness in existence.

Fr. Spitzer gives a more complete analogy in his book “New Proofs for the Existence of God” with something called the Tree of Being. The Tree of Being relates to the more formal concept of Simplicity. What is simpler (or less restricted) is more capable of being in unity with what is more complex (more restricted) and God is infinitely simple. How can God be “simple” and how can something simpler help hold something more complex in existence? Just think of a cat.

Ø  What makes a cat act like a cat?

Its cells; if the cat’s cells stopped acting like cells, the cat can’t really be a cat and would cease to exist.

Ø  What makes the cells act like cells?

The molecules; if the molecules stopped acting like molecules, the cells can’t really be cells and they would cease exists.

Ø  What makes the molecules act like molecules?

The atoms; if the atoms stopped acting like atoms, the molecules can’t really be molecules and they would cease to exist.

And so it goes…

Ø  What makes the atoms act like atoms? The protons.

Ø  What makes protons act like protons? Quarks.

Ø  What makes quarks act like quarks? The most fundamental conditions (time? space? energy?)

Ø  What makes the most fundamental conditions act like the most fundamental conditions? A unifying field (UFT)?

Ø  What would make a unifying field act like a unifying field, and where does this end?!

It ends at the top of the Tree of Being. Logic demands that it end with one thing that needs nothing else to “act” for its own existence; one unconditioned reality that would be infinitely simple, and therefore completely unrestricted, and therefore unifying in all things.

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE:

It is said that God has “no parts” when referring to His simplicity. If there are no parts, then nothing can be added or taken away, not even knowledge, power or love.

God is at the top of the Tree of Being and if He were to stop “acting” with regard to us, we could not be. God acts through His will and intellect and the action of the will is “to love” and the action of the intellect “to know”. So as we said on the onset, if God were to stop loving you or thinking of you for one instant, you would cease to exist. If God stops acting (loving/knowing), we stop being.

Given all this, it should come to no surprise that humans seek things that are simple, unifying and ordered to their proper end like love, truth, goodness and beauty; all these things flow down from the top of the tree. We seek well-being and so we journey on in hope, focused on the tree top, moving towards the oneness and simplicity of God. As we journey we can take confidence that His being is with us, continually holding us and constantly sustaining us. For it is written…“And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).

 

The Cloud of Unknowing

Two Catholic Men & a Blog
Reading Chair/Time Machine

Reading books from centuries ago may be the closest thing to time travel we have, especially the kind of non-fiction where the author is sharing an experience or trying to teach you something. One can imagine going back in time to learn, or the author coming forward in time to teach, or some amazing rendezvous in-between. If reading Catholic classics, it’s a great reminder of the communion of saints. The saints are alive and in God’s presence as are we, except we cannot yet see God face to face, never the less, we are together in a sense.

 

Reading The Interior Castle by St. Therese of Avila (AD 1577), The Compendium of Theology by St. Thomas Aquinas (AD 1273) and Confessions by St. Augustine (AD 397) are examples of when I’ve had this sense of learning right at the feet of the masters, especially when stumbling upon a paragraph like this one from Confessions Book I. “To whom am I narrating this? Not to you, my God, but to my own kind in your presence – to that small part of the human race who may chance to come upon these writings. And to what end? That I and all who read them may understand what depths there are from which we are to cry to you.” Think about it; reading Confessions from AD 397 in the year 2012 is like someone reading this post in the year 3627! It boggles the mind!


Star Date 3627.0

No book could give a more direct communication from the past than the very first sentence of a book called The Cloud of Unknowing; a contemplative classic written by an anonymous English monk during the late 1300’s. The Cloud of Unknowing is a metaphor for a privation of knowing that stands between us and God. The monk speaks of “the exercise” which can help one to “smite upon that thick cloud of unknowing with a sharp dart of longing love.” In modern Catholic language I think one could interpret “the exercise” as Centering Prayer.

The Cloud of Unknowing

Here is the opening sentence that immediately got my attention (to say the least) “To you, whoever you are, who may have this book in your possession, whether as owner or custodian or barrow: I lay this charge upon you and implore you with all the power and force that the bond of charity can command.” He goes on to basically say that the book is only for those who are sincere about following Christ in BOTH the active and contemplative life.

This brings me to what I actually would like to share. The unknown mystic from the past speaks of our spiritual life in terms of two parts, the active life and the contemplative life, both of which have two levels, a high and a low. The low active life consists of good & honest corporal works mercy and charity. The high active life AND the low contemplative life both involve spiritual meditations. The high contemplative life happens in the cloud of unknowing with a loving impulse and gaze into the simple being of God.  All of this is described in three levels of good, better and best. Whenever a “best” is proclaimed it normally demands that at least two things precede it, a “good” and a “better”.

A visual would be most helpful at this point:

 

It would be wrong and a hindrance for someone engaged in contemplative life to turn their mind to outward corporal works during meditation. This may sound dismissive of outward corporal works, but the 14th century monk reminds his reader that only one thing is necessary.  It is the “one thing” spoken of at the house of Mary & Martha (see Luke 10:38-42). Martha might think that she or Mary could love and praise God above all other business and at the same time be busy about the many things of this life, but Jesus made it clear to her that she could not serve both perfectly; imperfectly she could, but not perfectly.

It is the nature of the active life to begin and end in our lifetime. Not so, however, of the contemplative life; it begins in this life, but lasts without end. The “best” is truly yet to come. As The Lord said to Martha, it is the part that shall NEVER be taken away, because that perfect moment of love which begins here shall last without end in the bliss of heaven.

 

I’ll close with the monks own words in the book’s last paragraph:

“Farewell, spiritual friend, in God’s blessing and mine. And I beseech almighty God that true peace, sane counsel, and spiritual comfort in God with abundance of grace always be with you, and all those who on earth love God. Amen”

The Stages of Learning

I’m certified to teach a course in logic (troubleshooting/decision making) for a Global 500 company. I’m often struck by how the logic process we use helps me in the area of Faith & Reason. Part of the course introduction covers a learning process expressed in four stages that you’ll be hard pressed to find in any teaching handbooks, so you’re in for a rare treat with some serious spiritual connections. Let’s take a ride!

Stage 1: Unconscious Incompetence (I don’t know that I don’t know)

When my oldest daughter was six she was learning to ride a bike with no training wheels. My youngest daughter, who was three at the time, wanted to ride her big sister’s bike too. She asked me to put her on the bike. She would have gladly let me push her down the driveway and she would have crashed. She did not know…that she did not know how to ride a bike.

This can apply to the spiritual life as well. Your secular eye is working fine, but your spiritual eye is firmly shut (see post The Weak Eye). You were never taught spiritual things. You can make no sense of it; you have no sense of it and you do not care. Although your degree of guilt is less than one who knows, you will still receive some lashes from the master (see Luke 12:47-48). Ignorance is no excuse. Falling off a bike will hurt just the same whether one knows how to ride or not; whether one understands the danger or not. Have you ever met someone that doesn’t understand enough to be embarrassed? This too is unconscious incompetence.

Stage 2: Conscious Incompetence (I know that I don’t know)

Let’s say I did send my three year old careening down the driveway on the bike to crash and then I asked, “Would you like to try that again?” She would now say, “No!” At that point she would know that she does not know how to ride a bike.

Spiritually, you may know that you are living more for yourself than for God. Sin is essentially a refusal to let God have His way in your life and you have a sense that you’re doing this. You know deep down you are more interested in what you want (an agenda) than what is right or what is true. You know you fall short, but don’t know what to do about it. You know that you don’t know. Unfortunately, it often it takes a hard crash in life to get to stage 2.

Stage 3: Conscious Competence (I know, but I need to concentrate)

Let’s go back to my oldest daughter when she first learned to ride the bike. She could clearly ride, but had difficulty starting and stopping by herself. She had to concentrate; any crack or bump in the sidewalk would send her to the ground. Turning sharp corners was a problem. Any kind of obstacle was a problem. She also did not steer very straight, often falling in the grass. No matter; she still kept trying.

So too can be the spiritual life. You succumb to habitual sin. Even small obstacles or annoyances can throw you off the spiritual path, but you persist and keep getting back up to ride further on your journey. You strive for holiness. You know what to do, but it’s a struggle and you need to stay focused.

Stage 4: Unconscious Competence (I just do it naturally)

My older son has been riding a bike for years. He is by no means perfect and could still fall when careless, however, he does not think about the mechanics of riding a bike any longer. He just hops on and takes off.

The spiritual life becomes more contemplative. You know who you are and where you are going, although you must not be careless. You have an awareness of God’s presence everywhere, almost all the time. The will is strong and the intellect is clear. Prayer requires fewer words, but more time. Virtue grows leaving little room for vice. The glory of God is seen in YOU being fully alive......Ride on!

Become unconsciously competent.

               

Centering Prayer and God's Embrace

We received hundreds of hits from the National Catholic Register when they recently linked their website to The Weak Eye post, so I wanted to write a follow-up.

One of the comments on the post was from a Dispensing Optician who mentioned that a patch is often used to cover a strong eye in order to help a weak eye "catch-up". She went on to explain that when our secular eye seems to be dominating with its many colorful distractions, we should sometimes cover it up and try to see purely through the eye of faith. This is a perfect segue into something called Centering Prayer as a way to close or quiet our physical self (body & mind) for the sake of our spiritual self (soul).

We often give ourselves up to vain and wandering thoughts that toss our mind here and there, wearing down the soul and the body, wasting our time and strength. This prayer style strongly relates to Psalm 46:10 which tells us to “be still and know I am God”. I read this verse as more of a command than a suggestion.

To learn more about Centering Prayer, I recommend a book called Open Mind, Open Heart by Thomas Keating or go to the Contemplative Outreach Website. In April 2011 I was privileged to have an article I wrote call God’s Embrace published in their e-newsletter:

God’s Embrace

I’ve been practicing Centering Prayer since early 2008; up until then most of my prayer could be described as some reflection on God, but mostly trying to talk to God in terms of thanksgiving, praise, contrition, or petition. I was never really satisfied with speaking or reading formal prayers.

At some point I picked up on the idea that we should talk less and listen more. I was also intrigued with Psalm 46:10 “be still and know I am God”. But how does one listen? What do we listen for? How can we be still? Physical stillness during prayer seemed like common sense, but being mentally still never crossed my mind (no pun intended). Still waters run deep, but my prayer life before Centering Prayer may have been described as a babbling brook, kind of shallow.

Around this time, a member of my men’s group described Centering Prayer and contemplative prayer during a group session. He described a way of just being still with both body and mind in God’s presence. One learns how to surrender and let go of the things we hold on to, even thoughts, feelings and emotions. In this prayer, God can infuse gifts into you or work in you beneath your level of awareness, simply because you are still and open to His presence. It sounded like something I was seeking for years, but didn't know it.

My first attempts at Centering Prayer resulted in overwhelming feelings of peace difficult to describe. I was pretty impressed. I would very much look forward to the next prayer session in order to get those feelings back again. Since I was basically doing nothing, physically or mentally, I concluded that the source of what was happening had to be outside of myself. After a while, these intense feelings of peace subsided. I thought I was doing something wrong, but I understood better after reading Thomas Keating’s Open Mind, Open Heart where it says “True lovers want to be loved for themselves more than for their embraces. So it is with God. He wants to be loved for His own sake, for who He is, beyond the experiences of absence and presence.”

Of the three signs from St. John of the Cross to help one identify if one is being called by God to this prayer form, I most relate to the third one, which describes a positive attraction or taking pleasure in being alone with God, without making any particular meditation. I’ve had feelings like this since I was a boy. I can recall just wanting to be alone, outside, peacefully reflecting on God and nature. Other kids would find me and ask me to play. When I refused, they asked “Aren’t you bored?” As a young boy that could not describe just wanting to be in “The Presence”, I responded in the only way I knew how. I answered, “I like being bored”. You might imagine the laughter that was had at my expense.

I still like “being bored”, although an awareness of God’s presence cannot be boring. Since we know a tree by its fruits, I could not say Centering Prayer has had any real meaning unless fruits were evident. In my everyday life, I’ve had a heighted awareness of both the presence of God as well as my own sin. I’m more able to let go of negative thoughts, feeling and emotions, even something as simple as a bad mood.

I’m often struck by how paradoxical Centering Prayer can be. It is the simplest thing in terms of just being still, but unbelievably difficult to not engage any thoughts for a significant amount of time. Once deep in the silence of the prayer, however, I would describe it as an experience of God’s embrace.  To use an analogy, imagine what it is like to be hugged by someone close to you; it’s an exterior experience. Now try to imagine if someone could actually hug you from the inside, if that is even possible to imagine. To date, it’s the best metaphor I can think of.