Okay Whitewave wants to know 5 things about me!  I, like Whitewave, have never been tagged for anything...up until now.

Okay here goes...

1)  I can quote too many lines of Jesco White's Dancing Outlaw video.

2)  I use to play piano as a boy, and I haven't regretted not playing as much as my mom told me I would when I quit!

3)  I have a secret desire to become a monk.

4)  I ran cross country in high school.  (I wanted a letterman's jacket, and everyone who tried out for long distance running made the team!)

5) I was studying to be a chemical engineer before I went to Bible College.

One Step Forward Two Steps Back

[Listening to: "Fine Line" - Paul McCartney - Chaos And Creation In The Backyard]

The saga never ends. My friend was back in the ICU in a neighboring town today. He just got released Monday and decided not to go to the rehab program. One day later, he's back in the same boat. His heartbeat was at 15/minute this morning. The ICU team got his heart to 40/minute and discharged him because of lack of insurance. The doctor told him one more drink, one more pill and he would be dead. He has permanent heart damage now and is extremely fragile. What do you do? I got on my computer tonight and hit itunes and this song popped up: Fine Line. I know this is deeper than a simple decision for him, but the words are haunting as I listen to them. Come home brother, come home and stay... Fine Line (Paul McCartney) There is a fine line Between recklessness and courage It's about time You understood which road to take It's a fine line And your decision makes a difference Get it wrong you'll be making a big mistake Come home brother all is forgiven We all cried when you were driven away Come home brother everything is better Everything is better when you come home and stay Whatever's more important to you You've gotta choose what you want to do Whatever's more important to be Well that's the view that you got to see There is a long way Between chaos and creation If you don't say Which one of these you're going to choose It's a long way And if every contradiction seems the same It's a game that you're bound to lose Come home brother all is forgiven We all cried when you were driven away Come home brother everything is better Everything is better when you come home and stay Come on back Come on back Come on back to me (It's a fine line It's a fine line) Whatever's more important to you (It's a fine line) You've gotta choose what you want to do (It's a fine line) Whatever's more important to be (It's a fine line) Well that's the view that you got to see (It's a fine line It's a fine line It's a fine line It's a fine line, ooh It's a fine line It's a fine line)

From Keating, Thomas. Invitation to Love. 1992. pp 98-99.

In the purification of faith from human props, we may experience rejection by the group from whom we have been drawing our human, religious, or spiritual identity. There may be a breakup with our spiritual director or with people on whom we depended for spiritual development and for meaning in life. Our idea of the spiritual journey and the means we should use to pursue it, and our ideas of our vocations, the Church, Jesus Christ even God himself may be shattered. This experience is reflected in the great personages of scripture like Job, Moses, Joseph, Mary, and Jesus himself....Job, according to the biblical story, was a model of perfection and admired by everyone in his time. In the course of a few days, his property, family, reputation, and even his bodily health were swept away. What kind of God is this who permits or sends such tragedy into the lives of his friends? Job complained bitterly about his pitiful condition. But would he have learned who God is unless he had gone through the shattering experiences that brought to an end his naïve conception of how God functions? The greatest fruit of the night of spirit is the disposition that is willing to accept God on his own terms. As a result, one allows God to be God without knowing who or what that is.

Total self-surrender and abandonment grow mightily, though in a manner hidden from us, in the night of spirit. The divine light is so pure that it is imperceptible to any of our faculties. According to John of the Cross, pure faith is a ray of darkness. Since there is no consolation or reassurance from God and since the props on which we used to rely have all been taken away, this surrender may be a moment of existential doubt and dread in the extreme. If we can let God be whoever God is and accept whatever he is doing, an invincible trust emerges. Such trust is not based on our good deeds, roles, or anything else. We begin to be content with God's infinite mercy. Divine love is infused in the seedbed of total submission and self-surrender and brings us through the night of spirit...

Amazingly, Eric has pulled through.  I got to talk to him for about 30 minutes tonight.  He's still in ICU, but he's now conscious and over the critical stage.   He told me he plans to go to a rehab center in California around the first of the week when he gets released from the hospital.  Thanks again for all the prayers and positive energy you've sent his way!

Thank you all for your messages and prayers for me and for Eric.  I'm doing better, and Eric continues to hold on fighting for his life.  Last night I attended my centering prayer group.  It was a good place for me to be in regards to coping with Eric's hospitalization.  I debated going, and I'm so glad I did.

On the way home, I listened to a podcast of the PBS show Bill Moyers on Faith & Reason.  Mary Gordon made a profound statement that I thought deeply about:

I think that we have to be able to endure living in torment. And if there is some point to the consolation of religious life, it is a consolation in torment that we have to look at the suffering of the world and be tormented by it. If we were complacent by it, that would be a gross insensitivity. But there has to be a love and beauty that is a consolation beyond our torment. So I think we always have to go back and forth between torment and consolation. And I think that's why I like a religious vocabulary is that it suggests that restlessness, that going back and forth between two poles, which will eventually, in some way we don't understand, end up in rest.

I definitely look upon Eric and his suffering with torment.  I've oscillated between torment and consolation several times, and after centering prayer last night, I came to a place of peaceful rest.

At the end of the show, Mary made a comment about her mother who had suffered from Alzheimer's disease:

BILL MOYERS: What did you learn from your mother's Alzheimer's?

MARY GORDON: One of the most important things I learned is the limits of my own ability to change the world; that all my love and my imagination and my effort were able to accomplish nothing for her. Nothing I did made anything any better. And that I had to love her as one of the living dead. It also taught me that there are many, many things worse than death. And that's actually quite helpful.

BILL MOYERS: How so?

MARY GORDON: Because you don't have to be so afraid of death. You can see death as a release. And you can see the mercy of death in some ways.

I do not like tonight.  My eyes are burning, and my fingers are limp on the keyboard.  My heart is apathetic, angry, broken, sad, very tired.  My friend and parishioner is lying in an ICU hospital room fighting for his life.  ODed.  I want to curse through my quivering lips.  I just got back from visiting him and the only intelligible thing I could understand was  when I told him I'd be by tomorrow to check on him he whispered, "I won't be here tomorrow."  And reality is that he may very well not be.  Tears rolled down his face as he twitched and coughed and moaned.  He died in my car three years ago as I rushed him to the ER.  I've seen him in ICU 3 times since then.  How do I pray for him tonight?  I can't.  The Spirit will have to through these groans in my stomach and throat.  I hate this.  God I hate this.  Why was he kicked to the curb as a boy?  Why did he suffer so much then?  Why does it have to continue now again and again and again?  He' tried and tried and tried to beat this only to be beaten down harder and harder by it.  This doesn't make sense.  I hate this.

I got the call to the hospital tonight right after I emailed these words to a new Zaadz friend earlier tonight:

I've felt like Teresa of Avila who made these words to God after being thrown from her carriage into the mud, "If this is how you treat your friends, no wonder you have so few!"

This quote has taken a drastically new meaning for me tonight.  If you would, remember my friend Eric.

Last night, during group Lectio Divina, I began to rest with the phrase "we are children."  The Passage we used was Romans 8:14-18.  During the second stage of our practice, I began to contemplate that phrase, and images of children flooded my mind.  Their innocence and spark of divinity was overwhelming in that moment. I noticed in that moment of silence I was observing each child and infant in a state of equality.  Every child was beautiful.  There were no "first impressions," no subconscious judgments.

As the last reading of the passage was given, when I heard the word Abba, Aramaic for Daddy, I knew what my weekly response to the word would be.  This week, I'm thinking of and addressing God as Daddy while I view myself as a child in His sight.  It seems a bit odd.  I began last night by praying for forgiveness and help to overcome the cultural conditioning that makes this task feel irreverent.

This morning, as I tore the page for yesterday off my desk calendar, I was greeted with this quote:  The timpanist plays upon a living being.  The stars are bursting with their messages: Turn to a child for the star's announcement. ~Robert Aitken  Can I turn to the inner child and hear one of their messages this week?  Or maybe that little girl sliding on her belly under the church pews last night has a sermon for me...

Daddy bless us each and every one!

I'm in love with the new book feature zBooks here at Zaadz!  It's neat to see what books other people are reading and find ones that might be of interest to me.

Wanna take a look at my bookshelf?

Thanks Zaadz team!

Yesterday, I had the TV on and someone was talking about Quantum Physics, which caused something to dawn on me. The nature of matter is primarily empty space. If I remember my high school science correctly, about 99.9999% of an atom is empty space. This web page seeks to give a little perspective on the distance between a proton and its electron in a Hydrogen atom. It's an eleven mile wide web page! Kinda neat (It downloads fast, BTW). What struck me as interesting is how esoteric religious thought speaks of seeking emptiness, which come to find out is patterned after the reality we live in. Another interesting thing is that this reality is consistently "misinterpreted" every day of our lives. By that I mean we perceive that a solid is a "solid", when in actuality, if we were able to look closely enough, we would see that that it's over 99% empty space. Just an interesting observation and comparison I hadn't noticed before.

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At the first of this month, I went to Swanee, TN to the University of the South for a Contemplative Outreach 8-Day Silent Retreat at St. Mary's Retreat Center.  Here is a link to some of the photos I took during the retreat.

This was one of the most powerful experiences I have ever had.  I had been practicing CP fairly regularly for over a year by myself, but sharing the discipline in complete silence with about 25 other people was an amazing phenomenon.

 We watched a few Father Thomas Keating videos while we were there, and I really began to understand some of the foundational premises for the practice as a result.  His description of the true self and the false self was very good.

Not only was the event itself special for me, but I got to share it with a very special friend.  My college English professor.  Dr. C is a great spiritual friend of mine.  He pushed me harder than anyone else during my college days back in the early 90's.  14 years later, I consider him the closest spiritual friend I have.  He introduced me to CP back in Oct. 2004 when I was going through a tough spiritual stage in my journey (A Dark Night of the Soul Experience).  He encouraged me to try this discipline for a few weeks and see how I liked it.  I've been doing it ever since.  Thanks R.