An Apologia

September 18, 1996

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a column (August 30, 1996) about aloneness and family which argued that God meant the words: “It is not good to be alone” not just psychologically, but also morally and in terms of human maturity. In essence, I suggested that when we are alone, free from the demands and challenges that come from family and community, it is easier to become selfish and give ourselves over to our addictions. I stated, among other things, that living alone can be morally dangerous.

There was a very strong reaction, most of it negative, to that piece. I have received a good number of letters, many of which pained me – not because they were critical of what I had written but because, from them, I realized how much my words have caused pain in some peoples’ lives. I realize now, unfortunately after the fact, that what I wrote in that article was open to considerable misunderstanding. So, by way of apology, let me try to clarify what I tried to say there … even if that is not what the words said to everyone:

First of all, the title itself (Selfishness and Solitude) already sent out the wrong signal, suggesting to some that solitude is perhaps a form of selfishness. The choice of title was not mine and it was never my intention to suggest that it is more selfish to be in solitude than in family, especially since, properly understood, solitude and family are not in opposition to each other, enemies, but two states which positively feed and enhance each other. To be in true solitude is to be in family.

Carlo Carretto, the great spiritual writer, once spent a prolonged period of time living by himself in the desert. When he returned to Italy to visit his mother, he realized that she was more contemplative than he was, even though because of her duties as a mother she rarely had any quiet or prayer time. The conclusion he drew was not that there was anything wrong with what he was doing in solitude, but rather that there was something very right about what his mother was doing in giving herself over to her family in such a way that she had no time left for the type of solitude which he was living. In essence, in that fated column, I was trying to say the same thing: There is nothing wrong with solitude – but there is something eminently right about giving yourself over to the demands, duties, and challenges that flow from family and commitment.

One woman wrote to me, pained and upset by what I had written, protesting that she had just spent her wedding anniversary alone – deserted by her husband and geographically separated from her children. Her protest: “How can it be wrong to be alone, especially when I didn’t even choose to be alone? How can you be so cruel as to suggest that it is?”

Her pain caused me pain and, to her and to others like her, I sincerely apologize: I am sorry that my words were heard in this sense. That was not their intent. In fact, their aim was exactly the opposite. They were meant to challenge those who do positively choose to live alone, namely, those who refuse to make or keep commitments because they want the freedom, privacy, and aloneness to do their own thing. My words were meant as a challenge to people, like her ex-husband, who abandon commitments to spouses, families, and relatives precisely to be “alone” for purposes that their families would not exactly judge as good.

There are different ways of being alone. The woman whose words I just quoted feels the emotional pain of being physically alone and she admits that it is not good. But it is not morally wrong to be alone in this way. In fact, lived out creatively, this kind of loneliness can give birth to compassion and an understanding that is not given to others.

But that is not the kind of aloneness of which I was speaking. There is an aloneness which is dangerous and which inevitably spawns selfishness. To offer just a couple of examples: The person who abandons his or her spouse and family so as to be free from them and “alone” in order to pursue somebody or something else is living dangerously. His or her being alone is not a good thing, morally. The same is true for the addict, irrespective of the particular addiction. Invariably he or she is looking to be alone so as to have the freedom and the privacy to attend to the addiction. This, obviously, is not good.

In these cases, however, the person is positively choosing to be alone, looking to be alone, and resentful of any spouse, family member, or commitment that stands in his or her way. It is this person who needs, again, to be challenged by God’s words: “It is not good to be alone!”

Why it’s not Good to be Alone

September 16, 1996

“It is not good to be alone”—not just in terms of emotional loneliness but also in terms of healthy human and moral growth.

“The human being needs a helpmate.” Those words, attributed to God just before the creation of Eve, are meant as an antidote to the pain of human loneliness and inconsummation. That is evident.

At the deepest level of everything, from atomic particles through men and women, there is an archetypal primal imperative that says something can be whole only if it has two mutually complementary principles, one female and the other male. No one male or group of males or one female or group of females can do away with loneliness the way that a man and a woman, united, can. The uniting of gender is constitutive of nature itself. Marriage lies at the root of everything.

But that is not the only reason that it is not good to be alone. There is another kind of aloneness that is perhaps less emotionally painful but probably more dangerous. It is also not good to be alone for reasons that have to do with human maturity and morality. Simply put, when I am alone it is often a lot easier to be selfish, immature, given over to addictions and blind to the needs of others.

Recently a colleague shared with me this story: He was working with a seminarian in spiritual direction and was trying to help him discern whether he should be in the seminary. He asked the young man: “Why do you want to be a priest?”

The answer he received both disappointed and astonished him. The young man gave this as his reason: “I grew up in a large family and I never had anything of my own. I had to share everything—room, food, television, stereo, visitors and even my parents’ affection. As a celibate, I will have the private space and the privacy that I’ve wanted all these years. My life will be my own!”

It is hard to think of a worse reason to want to become a priest.

I use this story not to suggest that all, or even many, seminarians think this way or that there is anything wrong with celibacy. This example is in fact quite atypical in terms of the reasons why, normally, people choose to make a vow of celibacy. Unfortunately, it is not as uncommon in terms of a practical attitude that pervades contemporary life and infects nearly all of us. As abhorrent as this young man’s motivation might seem on the surface, there is a good amount of him in each of us.

We may not state the issue as crassly as he did, but we too, all of us, have a similar itch for privacy, for control, for ownership, to have things exclusively for ourselves, and to decide things all on our own. We also want our own space and the power to control things around us—and to walk in and out on others on our own terms. Family and community life today are struggling for exactly those reasons.

It is dangerous to be alone, dangerous because, when we are alone, we do not have to adjust ourselves to another’s rhythm, another’s needs and another’s demands. It is then a lot easier to grow selfish. That is why for an adult person, being celibate or single or childless can be dangerous.

The danger is not so much that one will be more lonely than somebody who is married and has children, It is rather that, alone, free from the demands that a marriage partner and children, family, place on us we are dangerously free to have things too much our own way. When we are alone there are too few conscriptive forces pressuring us to maturity.

The opposite is true in a good marriage and a good family. What happens there is that the needs, demands and rhythms of others, our partner and our children, force us to constantly give of ourselves and to move beyond our own needs and demands. In community life, unless one lives it unhealthily, we come to maturity by conscription.

Thus, for example, the demands of children are a school of unselfishness for the parents. What that means is that after 30 or so years of not being able to turn around without somebody, your kids, demanding something of you, you become pretty practised in altruism. Most parents mature primarily because their children force them to do so.

It is also not good to be alone for moral reasons. It is no accident that we like to be alone when we act out in relation to our addictions. All alcoholics crave privacy, as do those who have drug, sex or gambling addictions. Bad morality doesn’t want an audience. Nobody watches pornography with his family!

It is not good to be alone. Everyone needs a helpmate . . . not just to not be lonely but also to be mature and moral.

It Is Not Good To Be Alone

August 21, 1996

It is not good to be alone – not just in terms of emotional loneliness but also in terms of healthy human and moral growth.

The human being needs a helpmate. Those words, attributed to God just before the creation of Eve, are meant as an antidote to the pain of human loneliness and inconsummation. That is evident. At the deepest level of everything, from atomic particles through men and women, there is an archetypal primal imperative that says something can be whole only if it has two mutually complementary principles, one female and the other male. No one male or group of males or one female or group of females can do away with loneliness the way that a man and a women, united, can. The uniting of gender is constitutive of nature itself. Marriage lies at the root of everything.

Recently a colleague shared with me this story: He was working with a seminarian in spiritual direction and was trying to help him discern as to whether he should be in the seminary. He asked the young man: “Why do you want to be a priest?” The answer he received both disappointed and astonished him. The young man gave this as his reason: “I grew up in a large family and I never had anything of my own. I had to share everything – room, food, television, stereo, visitors, and even my parents’ affection. As a celibate, I will have the private space and the privacy that I’ve wanted all these years. My life will be my own!” It is hard to think of a worse reason to want to become a priest.

We may not state the issue as crassly as he did, but we too, all of us, have a similar itch for privacy, for control, for ownership, to have things exclusively for ourselves, and to decide things all on our own. We also want our own space and the power to control things around us – and to walk in and out on others on our own terms. Family and community life today are struggling for exactly those reasons.

It is dangerous to be alone, dangerous because, when we are alone, we do not have to adjust ourselves to another’s rhythm, another’s needs, and another’s demands. It is then a lot easier to grow selfish. That is why, for an adult person, being celibate or single or childless can be dangerous. The danger is not so much that one will be lonelier than somebody who is married and has children. It is rather that, alone, free from the demands that a marriage partner and children, family, place on us we are dangerously free to have things too much our own way. When we are alone there are too few conscriptive forces pressuring us to maturity.

The opposite is true in a good marriage and a good family. What happens there is that the needs, demands, and rhythms of others, our partner and our children, force us to constantly give of ourselves and to move beyond our own needs and demands. In community life, unless one lives it unhealthily, we come to maturity by conscription. Thus, for example, the demands of children are a school of unselfishness for the parents. What that means is that after thirty or so years of not being able to turn around without somebody, your kids, demanding something of you, you become pretty practiced in altruism. Most parents mature primarily because their children force them to do so.

It is also not good to be alone for moral reasons. It is no accident that we like to be alone when we act out in relation to our addictions. All alcoholics crave privacy, as do those who have drug, sex, or gambling addictions. Bad morality doesn’t want an audience. Nobody watches pornography with his family!

It is not good to be alone. Everyone needs a helpmate … not just to not be lonely but also be to mature and moral.

Moral Artists

August 14, 1996

A real artist could never paint a moustache on the Mona Lisa. Only somebody dangerously naive or ignorant in the area of aesthetics could do such a thing. But no artist could, his or her sensitivity is too fine. The connection to the area of aesthetics is too deep and too personal for an artist to ever deface a masterpiece. To do that would be tantamount to self-violation. For this reason, too, artists are very much personally saddened whenever a beautiful work of art is defaced. For an artist, simply because he or she is an artist, there are certain taboos.

It is important to understand this, not just so that we are more sensitive to the value of art, but also because this principle has important parallels in other areas. Just as there are artists in the realm of aesthetics, so too there are artists in the area of morality. They too are unable to paint a moustache on the Mona Lisa. Likewise, they too are deeply and personally saddened whenever a certain beauty is violated and, like their artist cousins, they also live with certain taboos.

One important reason that we need to understand this is because there are many hurtful misunderstandings about how we assess some people morally. What is at issue here is the seeming moral inhibitions and timidities that some people have and how this situation is often not honoured by others. Thus, for example, all of us know certain people (or perhaps you are one of those persons yourself) who, for all their lives, have, in certain moral areas, been timid, inhibited, afraid to make a serious mistake, unable to ever really let go or get drunk (in both the real and figurative sense of that term), or are unable to do all kinds of things that, seemingly, everyone else has no problem in doing.

Too often we, their families and friends, judge and brand them as timid, uptight, frigid, and rigid. All too often too they are the object of both a certain ridicule (since in our society this kind of inhibition is seen as the opposite of freedom) and pity (“The poor thing, so uptight, unable to enjoy life!”)

Let me give you an example: A friend of mine fits this description: Married, the mother of two children, in her mid forties, she is seen by most everyone around her, including at times her husband and family, as morally uptight (“Our Mother Theresa!”). Looked at very superficially, she would seem to merit the title. Raised in a devout religious home, she has never, in any essential way, strayed from that path. Simply put, she has broken some minor rules here and there, but there has always been something inside of her that stopped her from ever breaking any of the major rules. And it hasn’t been through lack of opportunity. Opportunities for religious and sexual infidelity abounded. She has been tempted and yet never succumbed.

Why? Was it timidity or virtue that prevented her from acting out? Is she naive or full of wisdom? Is she to be pitied for being un-free or envied for living out her convictions?

In today’s moral and intellectual climate, most people understand her hesitancy negatively, namely, as a frigidity and lack of nerve. Few see her as truly adult in virtue. More commonly she is viewed as lacking nerve, as being uptight, as using religious and moral principle to rationalize a timidity and rigidity. Few persons, I suspect, have any appreciation whatever of her moral complexity, her struggle, and the cost of her fidelity. Fewer people still understand what lies at the deep root of her seeming inhibition.

What does? Timidity, lack of nerve, an incapacity to let go? Surely. But why? That’s the deeper question. I know her well enough to know that, in her case, the hesitation comes not from lack of nerve or opportunity. Virtue by conscription, by timidity, by naiveté? No, hers’ is the hesitation of the artist who will not, and existentially cannot paint a moustache on the Mona Lisa. She is a moral artist who cannot violate certain things in the moral order any more than an artist can take a crowbar to Michelangelo’s Pieta. She’s not morally timid. She’s morally sensitive. There is a difference.

Some years ago, Polish psychiatrist, Casmir Dabrowski, wrote a book which he entitled: Psychoneurosis Is Not An Illness. In rough, the thesis was that too often those of us who are not very sensitive are the reason why sensitive persons have to struggle so much in this world. Artists, whether in the aesthetic or the moral area, can vouch for this. And the rest of us? We might well want to check on just how often we have been painting a moustache on the Mona Lisa.

What Defines A Practicing Catholic?

August 7, 1996

Several years ago, a Catholic school board, frustrated because some of its teachers were no longer attending church regularly while others were flaunting the church’s teaching regarding living together before marriage, decided to tighten its hiring policies. They tried to implement a policy which demanded that any teachers hired in the future would be “practicing Catholics”. They ran into a hornet’s nest.

Immediately there was a wave of counterchallenge: What precisely constitutes a practicing Catholic Who defines this? Is the old criterion – you must go to mass every Sunday and obey the Church’s teaching on sexuality and marriage – not simply reflective of a bias? What about somebody who does practice in the old sense but has no sense whatever of social justice or who lacks fundamental charity? Is he or she more of a practicing Catholic than somebody who is committed to justice but does not go to church every Sunday? Is somebody who obeys the letter of the law regarding the sixth commandment but abuses power more Catholic than the person who is gentle and nurturing but is living with someone he or she is not married to? What constitutes practice of a faith?

What does? This is not just a theoretical item. More and more, various Catholic institutions and organizations, from school boards to parish councils, must make very concrete decisions based upon how they view this question: Who should be allowed to teach in a Catholic school? Who should be permitted on a parish council? Who should be allowed to do ministry within the church? By what criteria do we decide these questions?

For Catholics in the recent past, things were more clear: A practicing Catholic, when the concept was boiled down to its lowest common denominator, was somebody who attended mass every Sunday (save when excused for grave reasons) and was not publicly at odds with the church’s teaching regarding dogma and morals. Anyone who did not meet those criteria would, ordinarily, not be allowed to teach in a Catholic school, serve on a church board, or do any public ministry in the church. Today, as the questions just raised highlight, things are not so clear. All kinds of questions are being raised that suggest that the old way of viewing this biases things too much in one direction.

So what does constitute a practicing Catholic?

The question is not a simple one. First off, it must be admitted that no one, save God, is fully a practicing Catholic. All of us fail in some aspects to live the faith; everyone has gaps in his or her faith practice. Thus, strictly speaking, none of us can ever claim fully to be practicing our faith. However, beyond that necessary and important confession of ambiguity, not all is vague. There are some essential components to Roman Catholicism that can be named and thus, at some point, one can define what constitutes the practice of that faith.

The essential components of Roman Catholicism are:

Full initiation into the community.
Regular participation in the Eucharist within the local community, including within that a sensitivity to the liturgical rhythm of the church’s life. This component is so emphasized because, as Roman Catholics, we are a Eucharistic community, that is, our primary gathering is around the Eucharist.
A life of prayer and private morality.
A commitment to social teachings of the church.
A sense of responsibility for ministry and leadership within the church, including the financial.
A concern for the universal church – its unity, its spread, and its maintenance.
A concern and respect for public forum within the community; that is, negatively, not being a source of scandal.

Given those essentials, what constitutes a practicing Catholic?

Classically, as we saw, it has meant that one attended mass regularly (every Sunday) and was not at odds with the public forum of the church regarding morals or dogma, namely, one was not causing scandal. This definition, while not ideal, does contain within itself the important essentials and should be retained as the minimum high jump bar.

The definition of a practicing Catholic must go further: A practicing Catholic is a fully initiated member of the community who participates regularly within the Sunday Eucharist and participates as well in the prayer life (both public and private), the social action, the ministry and leadership, and the missionary concerns of the church. As well, he or she should not be at variance in the public forum vis-à-vis major doctrinal or moral teachings of the church.

Now, even allowing for the fact that only God practices the faith perfectly, to do public ministry within the church, be it teaching or serving on a church board, one should, minimally at least, meet this criterion.

Listening To Your Widows

July 31, 1996

A few years ago, I had a friend who, like Nicodemus with Jesus, would come to me at night. This scene though wasn’t quite as pastoral as the biblical one. Mostly my friend came to drink and complain.

This was his issue: Publicly he was a very respected and successful man, in a position of authority with a number of persons working under him. To these, his employees, he was the penultimate nice guy. He doted on them and felt very good about himself because of this. This was, in fact, his pride. In his own eyes, because of the way he treated his employees and because of their subsequent affection for him, he was the most generous and kindly man on earth. He told me: “There isn’t one of them, my employees, who wouldn’t give me the shirt off his or her back. I’ve been good to everyone of them.”

His problem wasn’t there. It was at home with his family. He had a drinking problem and all the inconsistencies that come with that. Simply put, he was never as nice at home as he was at the office and his wife and kids were not nearly as adoring and generous with their praise as were his employees. His family loved him, but saw his weaknesses and suffered greatly from them. Hence, by them, he was constantly challenged, either by their direct comments to him about his inconsistencies or by their angry avoidance of him. This embittered him greatly. Here is how he would generally put things to me:

Everyone likes me, except my family. I suspect that it’s because they can’t deal with my popularity. I go to the office and there isn’t one person there who isn’t indebted to me, whom I haven’t helped specially. We have a good atmosphere there. We laugh a lot and I’m appreciated. Then I go home … well, everything changes! Half the time everyone is avoiding me. If I’m upstairs, they’re all downstairs; if I’m downstairs, they’re all upstairs. They’re forever on my case about one thing or another. If I come home late a couple of times or miss a family thing I said I’d be there for it’s as if committed murder in public. I am fed up with it, being the leper at home, just because I miss the odd thing. They don’t love and appreciate me like the folks do at the office. I’m not asking for much at home, just a little understanding!”

A nice guy at office and an angry alcoholic at home! He didn’t see the glaring inconsistency. For him, the problem was simply that his wife and children were not as appreciative of him as they should be and as he deserved.

Jesus once told a very similar story: Once upon a time there was a judge in a certain town. He was well respected by everyone and, in public, people used to bring out gifts and give them to him because, obviously, he had been good to them. Everyone respected him, except one widow to whom he hadn’t given justice. She hounded him, demanding her just due. For a long time he avoided her and was irritated by her demands. Finally, he said to himself: “I fear neither God nor man, but if I don’t give her justice she will hound me to death!” He gave her her due.

That parable has a double meaning. On the one hand, it is a parable about prayer. With it, Jesus tries to teach us that we should persevere in prayer: God is the judge and we are the widow. Wear God out and eventually God will give us what we ask for. But the parable is intended in a second way too: We are the judge and God is the widow. God’s voice for us is particularly clear in the widows, in the hounders, in the poor, in those people who are not so impressed with our public persona. Simply put, one of God’s important voices for us is to be heard in the persons who irritate us the most; for example, in that one particular person we would most like to avoid in life. In Christ’s view of things God is both the one being asked and the one who is doing the asking. God is hounded and God hounds.

The moral of all this, then, is that we are asked to hear God’s voice in the persons who upset us, that is, in those people who, for whatever reason, are not very impressed with us. Usually that is the people we live with. Obviously, the principle breaks down when that voice is an abusive one. The gospel does not ask us to let ourselves be abused, but it does ask us to make an option for the poor and that option, like the house of God itself, has many surprising rooms, some of which are not very romantic or much to our liking.

Thus, beware of the voice that humbles you: It might just be one of God’s widows, puncturing your persona, and calling you to justice and honesty.

The Worst Kind Of Poverty

July 23, 1996

In a recent novel, Love, Again, Doris Lessing, with her usual genius, paints a picture of the soul of a late middle-aged woman, Sarah Durham, as she, Sarah, spends a summer painfully infatuated with a man young enough to be her grandson.

The love is hopeless, of course, and it brings Sarah nothing but heartache and restlessness. And it is surprising too for she is the epitome of maturity and common sense and has, for more than twenty years since the death of her husband, felt herself beyond the tears that come with these kinds of falling in love.

The story builds this way: Sarah, a widow and grandmother, is a successful theatre writer and producer. Her productions appear, among other places, in London’s prestigious West End. Working in theatre, she naturally spends a lot of time with young and very attractive actors, of both sexes. The atmosphere exudes sex, but, for a good number of years after her husband’s death, Sarah appears immune. She seems quietly content with a celibacy which is, in fact, partly an extended fidelity to her late husband. This celibacy, while leaving her sexless by some definitions of that word, spares her the heartache that is so often the flipside of the ecstasy of falling in love.

All this changes one summer when, already in late middle age and quite confident that she is beyond teenage type crushes, she helps produce a play about a tragic young French woman named, Julie Vairon. Julie, like her namesake, Juliet, of “Romeo and Juliet”, lives life in the pain of unrequited love and dies for love. The combination of Julie, the atmosphere of love she rouses, and a young American actor of startling good looks, overcomes Sarah. She falls in love with a man young enough to be her grandson. It is all very hopeless and all very painful and it sets loose in Sarah pains she has not experienced since she was a very young girl … and it sets loose in Lessing a series of reflections about the phenomenology of love and sex that the great analysts of the world can only envy.

At one point, Lessing paints for us a picture of what it feels like to be too old for a love one desperately wants. Her reflection produces a rich vein for meditation:

From this central thought or area led several paths, and one of them was to the fact that the fate of us all, to get old, or even to grow older, is one so cruel that while we spend every energy in trying to avert or postpone it, we in fact seldom allow the realization to strike home sharp and cold: from being this – and she looked around at the young people – one becomes this, a husk without colour, above all without the luster, the shine. And I, Sarah Durham, sitting here tonight surrounded mostly by the young (or people who seem young to me), am in exactly the same situation as the innumerable people of the world who are ugly, deformed, or crippled, or who have horrible skin disorders. Or who lack that mysterious thing sex appeal. Millions spend their lives behind ugly masks, longing for the simplicities of love known to attractive people. There is now no difference between me and those people barred from love, but this is the first time it has been brought home to me that all my youth I was in a privileged class sexually but never thought about it or what it must mean not to be. Yet no matter how unfeeling or callous one is when young, everyone, but everyone, will learn what it is to be in a desert of deprivation, and it is just as well, travelling so fast towards old age, that we don’t know it. (Love, Again, pp. 140-141.)

What Lessing describes here is one of the worst types of poverty known, the poverty of being sexually unattractive, of being unable to enjoy all the aspects of love that are known to other people. And this poverty brings with it a special kind of shame. Many are the women or men who takes a certain pride in an honest type of economic poverty. Nobody takes pride in being unattractive, particularly in a society that deifies the physical and identifies being sexual with having sex. Today sexual unattractiveness is perhaps the most painful and shameful of all poverties. Those in the sexual underclass are the new, and unprotected, outcasts: “Geeks”, “Nerds”, “Slobs” these are the slurs against the poor that nobody censures.

Today, just as the generations before us, we tend to interpret pretty selectively Christ’s challenge to make a preferential option for the poor. Invariably as we open our eyes to the formerly unseen pain of one group we close our eyes to the poverty of another. But … the poor will inherit the kingdom and, today in our culture, the poorest of the poor are those who have been ostracized sexually. It is time we said as much.

Dreaming With Others

July 17, 1996

What you dream alone remains a dream, what you dream with others can become a reality. Edward Schillebeeckx coined this phrase as a way of expressing the important truth that effective compassion is a collective endeavour. Private charity, be it ever so generous, is, in the end, not fully effective. Let me try to explain this by way of an example:

I belong to a religious order, the Oblates of Mary Immaculate. A couple of years ago, we had a General Chapter which brought together Oblates from around the world. The intent of any General Chapter is, of course, renewal. So we met and agonized: What could we do to renew ourselves so that, through our presence and ministries, Christ would be more present in the world?

At one stage, we were put into small groups and each group was asked the same question: Given the situation in the world and the church today, what, singularly, should we do so as to try to be more effective missionaries of God’s love and compassion? In the end, all of us came to one answer, and it was not the answer we had imagined prior to deep prayer and common reflection.

Our answer? We came to realize that if we would want to be more effective instruments of God’s love, we must be more together in community, linked more strongly to each other, living out more selflessly the truth that where enough people of goodwill are together in one mind and body an effective compassion can occur. We realized too why presently we, like so many others, are often ineffective. We have good private sentiments, good individual talents, and good individual energies, but unless we are linked and acting as one body we are no larger, no more powerful, and no more effective than each of our own small persons. Alone you can make a splash, but not a difference. Great individual charism, and even heroic acts, not fully given over to community, are like the fireworks at a festival, a stunning spectacle, a distraction from the ordinary, but everyone goes home to life as it was before. Nothing changes.

What has the power to change life is community, the type of community that the New Testament describes. Alone we can do effective private charity, but we can do little to change the overall situation; alone our individual talents and gifts are often more the instruments of self-aggrandizement and the objects of jealousy than they are gifts for the betterment and joy of the whole; and alone we generally watch the evening news with a lot of discouragement at our own helplessness.

When we watch the evening news and see all that is wrong in our world, the feeling that comes over most of us is one of helplessness. What can I do to change any of this? We go to bed discouraged and a bit guilt-ridden. I should be doing more, but, concretely, what can I do?

Why do we feel so helpless and discouraged? Because we are watching the news alone … and alone we cannot do much. That is the point; alone we are in fact quite helpless.

Now, speaking figuratively, imagine that a parish would watch the news together. They would still be pretty helpless, but they could more than one individual. Next, imagine that a whole diocese would watch the news together. They would still not have it in their power to change all that is wrong with the world, but they could do a lot more than any individual parish. Then, suppose all the churches of a country would watch the news together. They would still be unable to fully change the moral, social, and economic forces that perpetuate hate and chaos, but they could do much more than any one individual diocese. Finally, imagine, (and what an image of Christ’s Kingdom this is!) that all the churches in the whole world would watch the news together. This body could effect the change that is needed; it could bring about an effective compassion in the world.

The truth that needs to be added is that until this happens, until all the churches of the world do watch the news together, we will be unable, effectively, to bring about love and peace on this planet. Effective compassion is collective. What we dream alone remains a dream, but what we dream with others can become a reality. Why?

Because private sentiment is not enough. Watching the news alone leaves us helpless and guilt-ridden. Our helplessness lies in our individuality. Alone we are no larger or more powerful than our individual talents. No one person, working alone, can change this world. A community, living a common ideal, can. Community, and community alone, can make our dreams come true.

Secrets of the Kingdom

July 10, 1996

He was a disappointment to his dad, that’s for sure. After all, his dad had spent three hundred dollars, just for his uniform. Then there were other expenses: Fees to enroll him in the soccer program, costs for driving him to various places for games, and all kinds of nickel and diming that had to be done. The money alone was enough, but there were other things too.

Pride, for one. His dad was one of the coaches. His son had let the team down. And why? For no decent reason: for lack of concentration, for being a scatterbrain, for making what grownups called a “mental error”. Christopher wasn’t so sure what a mental error was since he was only six, but, driving home in the car, he was sure of one thing, his father was pretty mad at him.

He was only six and so the particulars of what exactly had happened were already fading. He hadn’t been paying attention anyway, but now because everyone seemed so angry, he had to think about it. So in the icy silence of the car he tried to patch it back together.

The evening had started out okay. He’d come home from school and his mum had made him a snack. He’d stayed around in the kitchen for a while, getting under her feet, because after being gone all day he wanted to be in the room with her, even if she was forever telling him to go outside. Finally his dad came home. He loved his dad too, except when his dad was angry.

His dad had ruffled his hair, reminded him of the game, and called him “tiger”. His dad always called him that before a game and he liked it. After supper he’d put on his uniform. He knew it was expensive because it looked so nice and because he had overheard his mum and dad arguing about it, with his mum saying that it was overdone to pay three hundred dollars for a kid’s uniform and his dad saying back that sports were important. He didn’t like the argument, but he did like the uniform.

His dad teased him all the way to the school ground, even though his mum was along in the car: “You’re gonna pop some goals tonight, tiger! Play with your head up. Remember what I told you about staying in position and not just stupidly chasing the ball. Let the other kids be stupid. You play like your dad! Make me proud!” Christopher liked it when his dad teased him like that. Mum didn’t say much, but he knew she would be watching him too and she’d told him how great he looked in his uniform.

He couldn’t remember so clearly the first part of the game. He hadn’t scored. He remembered all the parents jumping and screaming every time there was a goal scored and they hadn’t jumped and screamed for him, though his dad had screamed at him once because he had started to chase the ball like kids who play stupidly do. His dad had talked to him about that at the break but, by then, he was pretty tired and, really, would have liked to go home. But the game was only half over and he still had to take his turn playing goalkeeper.

It was then, when he was in goal, that it went wrong. It was here that he wasn’t paying attention. The ball had been at the other end and he was tired. It was like he was all-alone on the field when he saw the young gopher poke his head up, not three feet away. The gopher didn’t move so he began slowly to crawl towards it. He had never been that close to a wild animal and his heart beat wildly. The gopher didn’t move. He could almost touch it! His eyes and the gopher’s locked and held. It was magic. He forgot about everything.

Then he heard the shouting: “Christopher! Christopher! Look up! Get with it! Pay attention! There’s a breakaway! Get up!” All that shouting scared the gopher. Their eyes let go and the gopher disappeared and it was too late. The ball was in the net and everyone was yelling at him. But he was still glancing at the gopher hole, hoping to meet a pair of eyes.

His dad was pretty mad. There wasn’t any teasing in car going home. His mum looked like she wanted to say something, something soft, to break the silence, but she was quiet too: “You are a disgrace to your uniform!” was what his dad had said. But Christopher wasn’t thinking about his uniform or about how much it cost. He was thinking that it would be nice if mum said something, and he was thinking too about the gopher and its eyes and how he would imagine that when he went to sleep.

Jesus said: “I thank you, Father, Lord of Heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the clever and have revealed them to mere children.”

Beyond Liberal And Conservative

July 2, 1996

More and more, it is becoming clear that we need to move beyond the categories of liberal and conservative. Simply put, both have shown themselves to be dysfunctional in terms of trying to help lead us beyond the problems that beset us. Both are too narrow and too selective in terms of the morality they espouse, the loyalties they embrace, and the ways within which they dispense their sympathies to be the basis for anything other than what we already have. At the end of the day, neither has the width or depth to merit the label Catholic.

Nowhere is this more evident than in our moral discourse, especially in our attempts at dialogue about private morality, that is, about such areas as abortion, sex, marriage, homosexuality, and the like. The conservative and the liberal, each in his way, invites us to a certain narrowness and intolerance.

The liberal does this by being intolerant of the ideal, of moral principle. Crassly put, liberal ideology tells us that if the majority of people do not, or cannot, keep a commandment, well … then we should change the commandment. What possible sense does it make, it is asked, to have a moral precept that the majority of people do not accept? How can the church claim to be compassionate and in touch with the suffering and needs of people, if it makes them feel guilty for not keeping certain commandments in which they no longer believe? How can the church be so out of touch, so ivory tower, in its morality so as to ignore the sensus fidelium in these crucial moral areas? Ironically, the liberal is pretty reluctant to apply this same kind of reasoning to the social encyclicals.

Conservative intolerance generally puts on a crasser face. To illustrate this with a typical example, allow me to recount an incident: Several years ago, immediately after a talk that I gave, a man who challenged me. He approached me as I left the stage, angry, bitter. He attacked me with words to this effect: “Father, I can’t believe the wishy-washy bunk you’ve just given. That’s not the church’s teaching! Why don’t you put things as you’re supposed to put them: Tell people what the law is … and if they can’t take it, they should walk!” The reasoning here is pretty clear, and simple: The written rules of the church, the commandments and canon law, are the benchmarks. You either measure up or you do not. If you do not measure up, you leave the church or, at very least, assume some kind of penitential or second-class role within it. Ironically, too, like his liberal counterpart, the conservative is not eager to apply that same criterion when it comes to the social teachings of the church.

Now perhaps these are caricatures, indicative only of the extreme and are not really typical. Few liberals and conservatives would identify with the positions. That may be true, but good caricatures distort in the same way in which art distorts, namely, by highlighting an essential form that ultimately gives shape to the picture but is not always so consciously clear. Hence, what these caricatures do is highlight what is narrow and dangerous in both liberal and conservative ideologies, at least as these pertain to moral discourse. Neither is really tolerant, compassionate, and wide enough to reflect the charity and catholicity of Jesus Christ.

Both the liberal and the conservative, in the end, are fundamentalists because each, albeit in her own way, on the basis of good intention, vastly oversimplifies things. The conservative does it by canonizing the commandments and the law in such a way that they, and they alone, become the criteria of genuine religiosity and sincerity. There is not sufficient allowance made, however, for those who, for whatever reason, find themselves unable to live these precepts. The liberal oversimplifies things in the other direction. For him, the existential ability, or lack of it, to keep certain moral precepts by the majority of the people becomes the criterion for whether or not those precepts should be retained or not. Each is narrow, one in the name of orthodoxy, the other in the name of compassion.

Neither, however, approaches things as Jesus did. Jesus was neither a liberal nor a conservative. His loyalties were less selective and his embrace was much wider. Thus, he refused to bring down an ideal just because the majority of people rejected it. At the same time, however, he refused to condemn those who could not live that ideal. For him, genuine compassion lies in doing both, retaining an ideal and in walking with those who cannot keep it. Thinking this way got him into a lot of trouble … but nobody could ever accuse him of loving too selectively.

Fidelity Not Success

June 12, 1996

Shortly after the Gulf War in 1991, I heard a radio interview with Jim Wallis, the founder of “Sojourners”. Wallis had had some reservations about how the USA resolved that particular situation, especially about the scope of its military action and the number of deaths that resulted. He had made his protest public. This particular interview was not very sympathetic to towards his view, nor towards him.

At one stage, the interviewer said something to this effect: “This time you and the others who protested the war have to admit that you were wrong. Look at how the people as a whole overwhelmingly endorsed the USA action!” Wallis’ response: “We weren’t wrong. We just lost! There’s a difference between losing and being wrong. Morality isn’t about winning or success. It’s about fidelity.”

He is right. Morality is about fidelity not success.

Both in his words and in his life, Jesus taught this. In fact, the three temptations he faces, at least in Luke’s Gospel, centre precisely on this. The devil tempts him to choose success over fidelity. How so?

In Luke’s Gospel the temptations are set up in this way: Before going into the desert to fast and pray, Jesus lets himself be baptized by John in the Jordan. When he comes out of the water, after his baptism, the heavens open and a voice from heaven says: “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well-pleased.”

At his baptism, Jesus hears his father’s voice telling him that he is blessed, loved, precious to God. It is precisely from this voice and from that message that the devil will, as we will see, tempt Jesus to stray. What is the devil’s ploy?

After being baptized, Jesus goes into the desert where he fasts for 40 days. After that time, scripture says, he is hungry. Part of what is meant here is obvious, he is hungry physically, pure and simple. But there is a subtler meaning to this hunger as well: At this point in his life, Jesus is empty, not just hungry, he is empty, with an emptiness which makes him vulnerable.

It is in the context of this emptiness and vulnerability that the devil says to him: “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” Jesus answers: “One does not live by bread alone.”

What, in essence, is contained in this exchange? Simply put, the devil is telling Jesus: “You believe that you are specially loved by God? How can you be God’s loved one and yet be empty? How can you be loved, yet hungry? How can you be God’s beloved, if you are unfulfilled? And Jesus answers: “I can be loved and still hungry; blessed and still empty; precious to God and still unfulfilled.”

In Jesus’ mind, there is no incompatibility between being blessed yet empty, between experiencing oneself as loved by God and yet being hungry and unfulfilled.

The devil’s second temptation works the same motif: He shows Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and tells him that these will all be given to him if he agrees to worship satan. In brief, he is challenging Jesus: “How can you believe that you are blessed, God’s loved one, if you do not have the glories of the world?” Jesus’ reply, when distilled from it original language, in effect says: “I can be precious to God and deeply blessed and not have the glories of the world! Absence of earthly glory and God’s blessing are not incompatible.”

Finally the devil plays a last card: “If you are God’s special one, throw yourself off of the temple and force God to catch you. If God considers you special, let him prove it, let him treat you as special!” Gerald Vann, the great spiritual author, once paraphrased Jesus response to this challenge in words similar to these: “Why should I ask God to treat me specially. I’m a human being … I can walk down like everyone else! I am not looking for separation from ordinary humanity.”

We have not been as successful as Jesus in resisting the temptation to identify fidelity to God with success in the eyes of the world. In a culture which too easily identifies morality with winning it is becoming ever harder for us to believe that we are special and loved by God – even when we are hungry, empty, unfulfilled and losing in the eyes of the world.

The Prayer of a College Student

June 5, 1996

Lord, God, I’m praying from my heart, not from my knees, with unspoken words, not with formulas. Hear this prayer that my parents can never know of. You read the heart, read what’s inside my restlessness and desire.

I’m not sure who I am any more. I am glad that my parents don’t know what’s going on in my life. If they did, I’m afraid of what they might think …

Me … the girl who was once so proud of being the first altar server in our parish. Me, who taught the kids at the children’s liturgy, who helped out summers at the parish camp, who was the first high school student to help out in the RCIA, who used to help organize all the church activities for other young people, who once went to mass everyday … now so confused, unsure, unglued, morally in no man’s land, uncertain sometimes whether she even believes in God! If my parents knew!

I’ve travelled a long ways from them, a long ways from the rosary we used to say together every night and from my mother’s warnings about the dangers in the world. Yes, I used to pray on my own. I used to really believe what I’d been taught. There was a time, not that long ago, when I felt very close to God. I can still see the plaque that hangs on the wall just over our family’s table: The Family that Prays Together, Stays Together. Lately, we haven’t been praying together, nor exactly staying together … because I’m the one who’s staying away.

I don’t know how that all happens. I don’t even know whether I am mixed-up or whether, for the first time, my eyes are really open. I know this: I’m no longer sure what’s right or what’s wrong. When I first came here to university, things were clear. I went to mass almost every day, I prayed every day, I was idealistic about love and sex. I really believed (and God how my mum had drilled it into me!) that sex was something sacred and that our bodies were temples of the Holy Spirit and that we were meant to wait until marriage before having sex. Well all of that seems pretty naive just right now. Everything has changed.

And it’s changed all over! In the theology classes I was taking they questioned everything. Most of what I held as true and precious was subject to ridicule. In our Christian Morality class virtually everyone agreed that the church was backwards regarding sex and that premarital sex was good as long as there was love and commitment there. As well, everyone seemed to think that the Pope was backward and fundamentalistic and when I shared that I still prayed the rosary some actually laughed at me. That was the last time I said the rosary!

Then to top it all, one night at the residence, my roommate brought her boyfriend into our room and they made love all night, as if I wasn’t even there! My small-town eyes were opened. That was a year ago. Now, I’m not much different with my own boyfriend.

I went home for Christmas and went to church with my family … and I wanted to cry. I don’t know whether they’re naive and I’m mixed up or whether the church has made them uptight and I’m the one who’s seeing the light. I really don’t know. The tug of my parents’ faith, the faith I had when I was little, still pulls me. So I sat in church, restless, bored, angry, confused, and not sure of anything.

When I came back, I went to see one of the Chaplains here at university and he told me that maybe God wants my confusion, that maybe God is leading me to a more adult faith … but, this doesn’t feel like faith. It feels like something else and I am not sure what that something else is. I’m not sure any more what’s virtue and what’s being uptight. I’m not sure whether I was virtuous before and am screwed up now or whether I was screwed up before and am virtuous now. I really don’t know. You, Jesus, need to read what’s in my heart.

Jesus, you are the God of my parents, the God I prayed to when I was little, and you’re the God of my confusion and infidelities too. I’m so restless all the time, so much is churning inside of me. Lately, there have been times when I just wanted to chuck it all and go back home if it would make me feel like a felt when I was little, except I know that I wouldn’t stay there very long. I’d be restless all over again.

Jesus, take my confusion, my restlessness, my pain, my doubts, even my infidelities. Hang onto me because I feel myself slipping away from you.

A Lord’s Prayer For Justice

May 22, 1996

In the world’s schema of things, survival of the fittest is the rule. In God’s schema, survival of the weakest is the rule. God always stands on the side of the weak and it is there, among the weak, that we find God.

Given the truth of that, let me risk a commentary on the Lord’s Prayer:

Our Father … who always stands with the weak, the powerless, the poor, the abandoned, the sick, the aged, the very young, the unborn, and those who, by victim of circumstance, bear the heat of the day.

Who art in heaven … where everything will be reversed, where the first will be last and the last will be first, but where all will be well and every manner of being will be well.

Hallowed by thy name … may we always acknowledge your holiness, respecting that your ways are not our ways, your standards are not our standards. May the reverence we give your name pull us out of the narcissism, selfishness, and paranoia that prevents us from seeing the pain of our neighbour.

Your kingdom come … help us to create a world where, beyond our own needs and hurts, we will do justice, love tenderly, and walk humbly with you and each other.

Your will be done … open our freedom to let you in so that the complete mutuality that characterizes your life might flow through our veins and thus the life that we help generate may radiate your equal love for all and your special love for the poor.

On earth as in heaven … may the work of our hands, the temples and structures we build in this world, reflect the temple and the structure of your glory so that the joy, graciousness, tenderness, and justice of heaven will show forth within all of our structures on earth.

Give … life and love to us and help us to see always everything as gift. Help us to know that nothing comes to us by right and that we must give because we have been given to. Help us realize that we must give to the poor, not because they need it, but because our own health depends upon our giving to them.

Us … the truly plural us. Give not just to our own but to everyone, including those who are very different than the narrow us. Give your gifts to all of us equally.

This day … not tomorrow. Do not let us push things off into some indefinite future so that we can continue to live justified lives in the face of injustice because we can use present philosophical, political, economic, logistic, and practical difficulties as an excuse for inactivity.

Our daily bread … so that each person in the world my have enough food, enough clean water, enough clean air, adequate health care, and sufficient access to education so as to have the sustenance for a healthy life. Teach us to give from our sustenance and not just from our surplus.

And forgive us our trespasses … forgive us our blindness towards our neighbour, our obsessive self-preoccupation, our racism, our sexism, and our incurable propensity to worry only about ourselves and our own. Forgive us our capacity to watch the evening news and do nothing about it.

As we forgive those who trespass against us … help us to forgive those who victimize us. Help us to mellow out in spirit, to not grow bitter with age, to forgive the imperfect parents and systems that wounded, cursed, and ignored us.

And do not put us to the test … do not judge us only by whether we have fed the hungry, given clothing to the naked, visited the sick, or tried to mend the systems that victimized the poor. Spare us this test for none of us can stand before this gospel scrutiny. Give us, instead, more days to mend our ways, our selfishness, and our systems.

But deliver us from evil … that is, from the blindness that lets us continue to participate in anonymous systems within which we need not see who gets less as we get more.

Amen.

Faults After Initial Conversion

May 15, 1996

Many of the classical spiritual treatises have a curious layout. They begin with a challenge, telling us how to live our lives in a better way. Then, usually already in the very next chapter, they chronicle all the faults we will then have, precisely because we have converted and begun to live as they have prescribed. Strange as it sounds, conversion brings with it a whole series of new faults.

Ruth Burrows, for example, begins her fine treatise, Guidelines for Mystical Prayer, by setting out a paradigm for conversion and then, immediately after, telling us all the new faults we will acquire if we do actually convert. John of the Cross develops his books in a similar way, immediately after each major challenge, he details what faults we will have when we begin to take that challenge seriously.

It seems nothing comes pure, even virtue. This side of eternity, everything has its shadow side. A more sophisticated intolerance inevitably accompanies virtue. Our friends, of course, already know all of this! They don’t need John of the Cross or Ruth Burrows to tell them that our deepening conversions so often make us intolerable. Many is the frustrated spouse, family member, colleague, or friend who painfully puts up with the righteousness of our rightness.

It is because of this, our proclivity to inflate with intolerance even as we fill with virtue, that the great spiritual authors also tell us that the capacity for genuine self-criticism is the litmus test of maturity. To be healthy means, precisely, to be healthily self-critical. Failure in this area is an infallible sign of immaturity.

If this is true, and I believe it is, then we would be wise today to write a spirituality of criticism, for both liberals and conservatives, along the lines of the classical treatises. The first chapter of such a book would lay out the positive challenge. The next chapter, though, would be entitled: Faults of those who have taken this seriously! It would have to be a long chapter, with one section for liberals and another for conservatives. Allow me, here, in a bit of a playful manner. to suggest what might go into this second chapter:

What are my faults, if I am a sincere liberal who has indeed taken seriously the gospel challenge to be prophetic?

With my liberal consciousness will come, as naturally as smoke follows fire, an arrogance. Consciously or unconsciously, I will consider myself enlightened – and those who disagree with me as more ignorant and less sensitive than I. Hence, I will use the phrase “a raised consciousness” and apply it to myself and my own without for a second realizing how absolutely arrogant that is.

As a liberal, too, I will posture open-mindedness, but then dispense that empathy on everyone, except one group. Against my conservative foes, I am allowed, in the name of open-mindedness, to be a bigot. My empathy, espoused as universal, is allowed one blind spot. From this stance, too, I am allowed to be positively gleeful at the demise of some of the major (conservative) institutions that once formed the glue of community – heterosexual monogamy, marriage, family.

Prophecy is a virtue. Liberals bring that virtue into the world. But gift of that virtue is often written off because of “the faults of those who have taken prophecy seriously”.

What are my faults if I am a sincere conservative who is truly concerned with being faithful to the tradition?

Like my liberal counterpart, I am also arrogant. Mine, however, is not an intellectual arrogance. I know my liberal sister or brother is better educated than I, but she or he is not as good, as faithful, as prayerful, and as moral (in the real deep sense) as I am. And that knowledge, that I, alone, am truly faithful, that I, alone, carry Christ’s moral loneliness, gives me permission to be angry, to abuse power (of course, only to be helpful!), and to by-pass some elementary laws of charity. Thus, I am a loving, Christ-faithful, prayerful person … who can, in the name of the gospel, be mean, unjust, and bitter.

Conservativism too is a virtue – and a much needed one. Conservatives keep society and the church from ultimately disintegrating, but that virtue too can most often be ignored precisely because of “the faults of those who have taken fidelity to the tradition seriously”.

Flowers And The Rich Young Man

May 8, 1996

When he was fifty years old, William Butler Yeats penned this reflection on aging:

My fiftieth year had come and gone,

I sat, a solitary man,

In a crowded London shop,

An open book and empty cup

On the marble tabletop.

While on the shop and street I gazed

My body of a sudden blazed

And twenty minutes more or less

It seemed, so great my happiness,

That I was blessed and could bless.

This poem, especially its last line, is the statement of a mature, generative person. To be mature is to be able to give off life and to be a principle of blessing.

But what does this mean? How does one give off life and be a principle of blessing and how is this the essence of maturity and generativity?

An image can be useful here. Imagine a flower: As a seedling and budding young flower it is, in a manner of speaking, essentially selfish. At this stage, it is primarily consumed with taking things into itself, with its own growth. That remains true until it reaches the stage just past its bloom. At that point, it begins to die and in that movement it gives off its seed and is then consumed with giving itself away. It becomes generative at the precise moment when it begins to die and its capacity to give its seed is directly contingent upon its own death.

There are myriad lessons in that about maturity, mature love, mature sexuality, and mature growth. In that movement from seedling to young plant to bloom to giving off seed in death we see nature’s paradigm for maturity and generativity. In a flower, when full maturity is reached, life becomes consumed in giving itself away, at the cost of its own death.

In a flower, though, all of this is conscriptive, blind raw forces in the hardwiring of things relentlessly spinning themselves out. There are no choices made. As human beings we have another option, to give off our seed without dying, to let go of our seed with our bloom still intact. But this makes for some things that nature never intended: adults still consumed with taking things in, adults still obsessed with their own growth; boy fathers, girl mothers, child adults, puerile teachers, self-seeking authorities, abusive clergy, and parents who are still so caught up in the search for their own bloom so as to be unable to give off their lives for their children.

No one can truly bless another without dying. That’s what makes a blessing so powerful. Nature prescribes that. The flowers know it. Generativity depends upon a willingness to die, to let go of both the search for one’s bloom and of that bloom itself.

You see that in blessing adults: good mothers, fathers, teachers, clergy, mentors, uncles, aunts, and friends of all kinds. These, the generative adults, do not look like Peter Pan or Tinkerbell (who look like children), nor do they look like movie stars or athletes or those superb physically conditioned specimens that have just showered and walked out of the exercise club (who symbolize the bloom). No. Blessing adults, of both genders, are recognized by their stretch marks, their scars, their physical waning, and by the very fact that they are dying and their lives are no longer consumed with, precisely, trying to create and hang on to their own bloom.

In the Gospels, when Jesus challenges the rich young man to sell all that he has and give the money to the poor and come and follow him, the young man does not respond because what Jesus was asking of him, to let go of his riches, meant exactly that he would have to let go of his bloom. He was most sincere, but he could not do what Jesus asked. He wanted still to give his seed without dying, to become generative with his bloom still intact. He went away sad.

Flowers go away, but they don’t go away sad. They bless the earth, first with their bloom and then with their seed. Unlike the rich young man, in their maturity they sacrifice their bloom to give out all they have.

Innate in nature lies a lesson: Don’t give off your seed if your primary concern is still your own bloom.

Wasn’t It Necessary

April 24, 1996

Wasn’t it necessary that the Christ should so suffer …?” That doesn’t fit the myth.

There is a popular myth that warms the heart. It speaks of justice and vindication and is the stuff of great legends. In it, we separate the great heroes and heroines from lesser mortals.

It runs something like this: Evil stalks the earth, intimidating the good. There is invariably a bad man, a bully, who remains unchallenged because it seems nobody is strong enough to stand up to him. He has his way for a long time. Who can oppose him? But there lives someone, the true hero (a male in the classical legend), who, while actually being stronger than the bad man, for reasons that are not yet clear, puts up with the bully and accepts from him every kind of insult and humiliation. Nobody understands why and the hero’s reticence to act is seen as a sign of weakness. The bully is strong and the hero is weak. But, at the end of the day, the hero has his vindication. The time comes when the evil man pushes him too far and then, long after lesser mortals would have acted, he stands up, assumes his full strength, and completely humiliates and annihilates the evil man. Moreover his final vindication is not just the humiliation of his enemy but the recognition by the people that he, the seemingly weak one, was the strong one all along.

You see this, for example, in countless films. The ultimate cowboy movie, Shane, works precisely this theme: Alan Ladd is the strong, silent type. His quiet strength is seen as weakness, until the bad guys push him too far. When he finally is goaded into fighting, he proves the strongest of them all. More recently, Kenny Rogers sold millions of copies with a hit recording, The Coward of the County, a song about a man who was considered a coward by everyone, until one day the bad men pushed him too far and he proved that he was, underneath his shy, weak exterior, the strongest of all.

There is something inside us that would like to see Christ in this sentimental way: the reluctant hero, The Coward of the County, Shane, the strongest man of all who is reticent about using his muscle … until he is pushed too far!

What is interesting however is that Christ never used his muscle in this way, even when he was pushed too far! No amount of goading, humiliation, accusations of cowardice and weakness (“If you are the Son of God, come off of that cross!”) turned him into that hero of myth who warms our hearts with a last minute vindication, proving that he was all the while superior. Jesus does not suddenly, after one final insult, turn upon his enemies and say: “That’s enough! I’ve had enough! Now you will find out who’s strong and who is a coward!”

His death didn’t warm any hearts and his vindication, the resurrection, initially didn’t either. Even his closest apostles didn’t understand. They, like us, wanted him to be that great hero, the Shane of Israel, who shows his power at the last moment and muscles his enemies into submission. Thus, even after the resurrection, when his disciples met him on the road to Emmaus, they were still lamenting about a story that didn’t end like Shane or like The Coward of the County.

Their hero had died without flexing his muscles, without showing at the end that he was the stronger. Now he was trying to explain it to them: “Wasn’t it necessary to suffer like that, to not use the world’s muscle power, to not confuse the ways of God with the ways of humanity?”

They hadn’t understood him earlier when he had said the same thing about the misunderstanding of older brother of the prodigal son: “Wasn’t it necessary that we should celebrate because your younger brother was dead and now he is alive.”

Yes, isn’t it necessary that God should love so lavishly? Isn’t it necessary that a God who is love beyond all measure and understanding should give himself over that freely? Isn’t it necessary that if you give yourself over freely, and mean it, you will sweat blood in a garden? Isn’t it necessary that fathers and mothers who truly love their children should have to put up with so much? Isn’t it necessary that God should not be as defensive as human beings, even when pushed by evil? Isn’t it necessary that God should approach us in vulnerability rather than muscle us into submission? And yes, isn’t it necessary that the power of God be tied to a wisdom, a love, and a patience that runs considerably deeper than our adolescent and sentimental understanding of it?