Fencing Bear at Prayer

"The right arm of the Most High, which threw open the doors of the Divinity to most holy Mary, continued to enrich and adorn at the expense of his infinite attributes this most pure spirit and virginal body which He had chosen as his tabernacle, as his temple, and as the holy city of his habitation.  And the heavenly Lady, engulfed in this vastness of the Divinity, winged her flight day by day farther away from earthly things, and transformed Herself more and more into a heavenly being, discovering ever new sacraments in the Most High.  For as He is the infinite Object of desire, although the appetite is satiated with that which is received, always more remains to be desired and understood.  Not all the hierarchies of the angels, nor all men together, have attained such preferment in blessings, mysteries and sacraments as this Princess attained, especially as regards those due to Her as Mother of the Creator. "On the third day of preparation at which I have now arrived,...

"In order to proceed with a dignity befitting Himself, God prepared most holy Mary in a singular manner during the nine days immediately preceding this mystery, and allowed the river of his Divinity to rush impetuously forth (Psalm 45:5) to inundate this City of God with its floods.  He communicated such great graces and gifts and favors, that I am struck dumb by the perception of what has been made known to me concerning this miracle, and my lowliness is filled with dread at even the mention of what I understood.  For the tongue, the pen, and all the faculties of a creature fall far below any possibility of revealing such incomprehensible sacraments.  Therefore I wish it to be understood, that all I say here is only an insignificant shadow of the smallest part of these wonders and ineffable prodigies, which are not at all to be encompassed by our limited words, but only by the power divine, which I do not possess." --Mary of Agreda, The Mystical City of God: The Incarn...

"In the eighth chapter of the Proverbs, Wisdom says of Itself, that It was present in the Creation, ordering all things conjointly with the Almighty (Prov. 8, 30).  And I said above that this Wisdom is the incarnate Word, who with his most holy Mother was present, in spirit, when God resolved upon the creation of the whole world ; for in that instant the Son was not only coexistent in divine essence with the Father and the Holy Spirit, but also the human nature, which He was to assume, was foreseen and conceived as the prototype of all works in the divine mind of the Father.  Conjointly with Him was also foreseen as present the human nature of his most holy Mother, who was to conceive Him in her most pure womb.  In these two Persons were foreseen all his works , so that on account of Them (speaking in a human way) He overlooked all that could offend Him in the conduct of the men and angels that were to fall; for the conduct of the latter was an inducement rather to desist...

I have another theory. Here it is: God is God because He is our Creator, not just because He is "divine" (read, more powerful than we are). Even more important, we are called to worship Him because He loves us; indeed, loves us so much that He became one of us and died out of love because it was so painful for Him that we, His creatures, not love Him. God made this. Okay, I know. It is not perhaps the most original observation--it is in the Creed, after all--but it is one of those things that suddenly strikes you afresh and then changes everything about how you see the world. Think about it. Why should we worship God? Because He is all-powerful? Because He knows everything? Because He could crush us like bugs? No, although it sometimes seems that this is why some would say we should. But this is to worship God as a bully, not as a Maker Who Loves Us. God is not a bully, however much some would like to feel that He is (and so either idolize or reject Him). God love...

I have a theory. Let's call it "God is glucose." Or "sweet," if you prefer. It's been just over four months that I have been keeping myself (as well as I can count) to 25 net carbs or fewer a day. I've lost I don't know how much weight and gone from not being able to fit into my size 12 stretchy jeans to needing to buy a new pair of 8s. (My goal is still the size 6s that I have from the last time I was my ideal weight, but I threw out all of the 8s that I had in last summer's decluttering, so I needed something to wear in the meantime other than my now-too-big 10s.) I am feeling not just less heavy but (every so often) almost positively thin (it comes and goes; my thighs are still quite heavy, but my waist is nearly firm). Even better, I find myself able to move on the strip in ways that I had thought I had lost forever along with my (relative) youth. When I look in the mirror, my face looks like my real face again (not the slightly puf...

"This may seem the greatest paradox of all.  The most liberating act of free, unconditional grace demands that the recipient give up control of his or her life.  Is that a contradiction?  No, not if you remember the points of Chapters 3 and 9.  We are not in control of our lives.  We are all living for something and we are controlled by that, the true lord of our lives.  If it is not God, it will endlessly oppress us.  It is only grace that frees us from the slavery of self that lurks even in the middle of morality and religion .  Grace is only a threat to the illusion that we are free, autonomous selves, living life as we choose. "The gospel makes it possible to have such a radically different life.  Christians, however, often fail to make use of the resources of the gospel to lives the lives they are capable of in Christ.  It is critical for anyone reading this book to recognize this fundamental difference between the gospel ["salv...

This is bad.  I have been asked to preach at our university chapel in a couple of weeks, and I am feeling somewhat panicked about what I am going to say.  I know what I should be doing, thanks to Prof. Boice : writing a little something every day, rather than waiting until the last minute--say, the Saturday afternoon before--and writing whatever comes to me at that moment in a binge.  But. But just the thought of doing a little bit of work now and then tomorrow and the next day, in the kind of brief, daily sessions that Prof. Boice recommends, is making me even more anxious than the thought of trying to come up with 1,300 words in a single session.  Which I know I could.  I often do, writing pieces for my blog.  Indeed, I like sitting down, writing for an hour or so, and being able to post whatever it is that I've written right then.  It isn't always brilliant, but occasionally, it's not bad.  Plus, I get to practice writing regularly, which is ...

" We are able to represent the mystery of divine providence as intelligible to us in any way at all only insofar as we can represent it in the form of a narrative --for history is, as it were, the narratival refraction of the divine eternity, as a single source of light might be refracted in the multiplicity of fragments of glass.  Time is eternity shattered into fragments that we can piece together again only one after another in sequence as best we may.  What is one in itself, a single willing of love emerging from the divine simplicity, can be perceived by us only in the time-bound fragmentations of historical succession in some way linked into a narrative.  Moreover, this narrative is not one we can be told or tell as if from a position outside it, for we are internal to the story we tell, we are being told by it as we attempt to tell it.  Perforce, the eternal knowledge and love that made all things out of love--the Trinity--is for us a narrative : and the near...

I don't believe it.  I saw him die three days ago .  Nobody comes back from the dead, not after three days.  I won't believe it unless I see him again, alive, in body, and can put my fingers in his hands and feet and side . It's easier for me to believe that he was God incarnate than it is that he died, really truly died, and then came back to life.  And it is easier for me to believe that he died and came back to life than that this means I will. Give me a break.  We all die, every one of us, and that's that.  Sure, there are all those stories about people coming back from the dead, but those were just little excursions of the soul, not true death.  Not the kind of death that has maggots eating away at your entrails.  Not the kind of death you die after the medical examiner finishes her autopsy.  Or after a soldier puts a sword through your side. They did something with his body, that's the only explanation I can think of.  But wh...

God is dead, and we have killed Him, but with our virtue more so than our vice. We have killed Him with our efficiency. We have killed Him with our dedication to our jobs. We have killed Him with our responsibilities. We have killed Him with our perpetual busyness. We have killed Him every time we refused to stop to talk because we were late for an appointment. We have killed Him every time we promised to be in touch soon. We have killed Him because we were trying to stay on schedule. We have killed Him with our calendars. We have killed Him by always planning for tomorrow. We have killed Him because there simply wasn't time.

"My people, what have I done to you? or how have I afflicted you? Answer me! "Because I led you from the land of Egypt, you have prepared a cross for your Savior. "Because I led you through the desert for forty years, fed you with manna, and led you into a land exceedingly good, you have prepared a cross for your Savior. "What more should I have done for you that I have not done?  For I planted you, my most precious vineyard, and you have become exceedingly bitter to me; for in my thirst you gave me vinegar to drink, and with a lance you have pierced the side of your Savior. "I gave you a beautiful planet on which to live, filled with animals and plants to feed you and help you, and you have imprisoned them, tortured them, forced them to live in cages and to reproduce as if they were machines, murdered them without compassion or thanks, and turned them into things to be bought and sold. "I gave you beautiful bodies in which to live and reason wit...

It should feel more meaningful.  For the first time in my life, I have kept a Lenten fast.  Six weeks plus a day or so (I started early) on 20-25 net carbs a day.  I've lost about two inches in my waist, likewise two in my bust, and (probably, it depends on how I measure) two in my hips as well.  I've learned to think about food in a wholly different way, as something nourishing for my body rather than as a drug for my mind.  I can recognize carb cravings now for what they are (a cry for help), and I know that I can survive without stuffing my emotions full of sugars and starch (although, full disclosure, those Atkins peanut butter bars really come in handy at the end of a long day).  And I look forward to the day when I can fit into my skinny jeans not with longing, but simply as a matter of course.  One day, I will simply be a different size. And that, it would seem to be, is that.  No great drama.  No great crises of self-realization whe...

As a vegetarian, it always seemed to me that Cain got a bum rap (Genesis 4:2-16).  There he was, a "tiller of the ground," bringing to the Lord an offering of the "fruit of the ground," while Abel, a "keeper of sheep," brought "of the firstlings of his flock and of his fat portions."  "And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard." Which, understandably, pissed Cain off ("So Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell"), at which the Lord said to Cain: "Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen?  If you do well, will you not be accepted?  And if you do not do well, sin is couching at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it."  And so, still incensed, Cain invited his brother Abel to go out into the field with him, where he killed him.  At which the Lord set this punishment upon Cain, that when he tilled the ground, it should no longer ...

"The turn to experience [in mainline and evangelical Protestantism] is a failure because it's based on a misunderstanding of how experience actually works.  Focusing on your experience waters down your experience, because experience feeds on what it experiences, just as love feeds on news of the Beloved.  We can use the same picture to illustrate this point as in chapter 9.  In Christian faith, your experience is like the arrow on side A of the picture.  It's the verb in a sentence like 'I believe in Christ.'  The arrow is aimed at Christ, just as the verb is 'aimed' at its grammatical object, which is Christ.  Very significantly, it is not aimed at itself, which is why on side B, what the person on side A is experiencing, the arrow, disappears.  That is to say, the experience of faith is not about faith or experience but about Christ.   We don't believe in our experience, we believe in him.  So Christian faith and the experience that comes ...

"By way of conclusion, it will be well to draw the reader's attention to the inherent limitations of the philosophical principle of order in theology.  Philosophy is reckoned as quite a high card in theology: let us call it the jack, the fourth-highest card the pack possesses.  This card can be trumped by three other cards.  First, it can be trumped by the king, which is divine revelation itself.  Obviously, if a philosophical principle of order is tending in some way to distort revelation or leads to our leaving out of count things that are manifestly important to the faith of the Church, then the king will trump the jack.  But in between the king and the jack is the queen.  Between divine revelation and the philosophical principle of order in theology there is always some theological principle of order.  As I mentioned in the course of roughing out a definition of theology, no one theology can ever present divine revelation in its totality.   It...

I tried to find out who originally wrote this exemplum, but as it seems to be widespread on the web, I suppose it is okay to quote is as I found it here : "Author Unknown."  It is the best description I have seen of what I have been trying to learn about paying attention as a way of practicing for prayer.  It all depends on how to read you read the rock.  For me, it is almost everything: my fencing, my scholarly work, trying to "fix" myself psychologically and spiritually, you name it.  But what if, after all, the point is pushing the rock, not making it move? A man was sleeping at night in his cabin when suddenly his room filled with light and the Savior appeared. The Lord told the man he had work for him to do, and showed him a large rock in front of his cabin. The Lord explained that the man was to push against the rock with all his might. This the man did, day after day. For many years he toiled from sun up to sun down, his shoulders set squarely against th...

"3. But as regards the idea thus privately entertained by yourself in such efforts, I would not have you to be disturbed by the consideration that you have often appeared to yourself to be delivering a poor and wearisome discourse. For it may very well be the case that the matter has not so presented itself to the person whom you were trying to instruct, but that what you were uttering seemed to you to be unworthy of the ears of others, simply because it was your own earnest desire that there should be something better to listen to. Indeed with me, too, it is almost always the fact that my speech displeases myself. For I am covetous of something better, the possession of which I frequently enjoy within me before I commence to body it forth in intelligible words: and then when my capacities of expression prove inferior to my inner apprehensions, I grieve over the inability which my tongue has betrayed in answering to my heart. For it is my wish that he who hears me should have t...

"The key to a Christian conception of studies is the realization that prayer consists of attention .  It is the orientation of all the attention of which the soul is capable toward God.  The quality of attention counts for much in the quality of prayer.  Warmth of heart cannot make up for it. "The highest part of the attention only makes contact with God, when prayer is intense and pure enough for such a contact to be established; but the whole attention is turned toward God. "Of course school exercises only develop a lower kind of attention.  Nevertheless, they are extremely effective in increasing the power of attention that will be available at the time of prayer, on condition that they are carried out with a view to this purpose and this purpose alone. "Although people seem to be unaware of it today, the development of the faculty of attention forms the real object and almost the sole interest of studies .  Most school tasks have a certain intrinsic in...

I'm sorry, I can't write this any other way.  I am sick to death of people ( white people , enlightened seekers, well-meaning agnostics who were scarred by the experiences of growing up in less than forgiving communities) bleating about how they dislike "organized religion."  As if they know the first thing about what it means to participate in a tradition or belong to a Church. There, I said it.  Now stone me.  But, first, listen for a moment.  Please.  Because maybe, just maybe what Krishnamurti so famously told the Theosophists when they hoped to recognize him as the World Teacher wasn't the whole of the story about what it means to be a Church.  Maybe there is a point to participating in a tradition, a community of worship, following others in the journey of life. No, I can tell you aren't listening, don't want to listen, know that what I am going to say will make you frustrated and upset.  You don't want to be told what to think--nor do ...