What is philosophy?

An interview with Fr. Marie-Dominique Philippe, O.P., the founder of the Community of St. John.  These words continue to rock my world.

St. Augustine of Hippo: On Praying Continually

Re: “An Argument from Analogy”.

Mediocrity (A Confession)

I have been living an experience of near-total mediocrity (sub-optimality in a word coined by a friend of mine).  Something has to change.

More on this later.

Corrections, Clarifications

I just wanted to talk a little more about the previous two posts.

As for “Do you really want to live forever?”: I didn’t mean for it to sound so bleak. In fact, I see it as a strong confession of hope (that’s why the last paragraph was last). What’s important is understanding our need, our brokenness, our grief at the brokenness of the world, of our friends, even our existential alienation from God, from each other, from our own selves, from the world we find ourself in.* Then we can truly understand just what Christ came to redeem (everything that is broken), and begin to live as if he is actually able to do it. That is, we can open ourselves to his actually doing it, here and now. The experience of the beginning of his redemption here and now is one thing that gives hope for complete fulfillment in Heaven.

As for “An Argument from Analogy”: This reflection was prompted by a conversation with a friend about whether it’s possible to pray too much to the detriment of schoolwork or any other kind of life’s work (and what God thinks of this). I still think that answer is yes, it’s possible to “pray too much,” and God really wants you out doing your life’s work (though not neglecting prayer altogether) and not in the church all day (unless you’re a Carthusian or something). However, I think I expressed this yes too strongly, and steamrolled some subtleties, or pretty much all of them. St. Paul does say to “pray always” after all.

I have recently been trying to come to terms with my not-so-stellar performance as an undergrad, and that certainly contributed to my overly harsh reaction against “praying too much” in that post. More about this later, perhaps.

* Yes, this is called Original Sin, if you’re wondering, although Merton points out that that has become something of a cliche, and therefore hollow and meaningless, even off-putting, unless truly understood. “Original Sin, oh, Adam and Eve broke some rule about fruit in the garden, and thanks to them we’re all messed up.” …

Do you really want to live forever?

I was thinking today (at Mass, during the Eucharistic Prayer), “I don’t want to live forever.”

That is, I don’t want to live forever in my current state of brokenness. That would simply be terrible. (Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell you the ways I feel broken right now.)

The question is, What is broken that makes me not want to live forever? This is what Christ came to make right.

The experience on earth of redemption, of my true self being more and more bought back, and the certain hope of the fulfillment of redemption, for me these are reasons to want to live forever.

An Argument from Analogy

Say you like playing football with your dad. Or being read to by him. But he has to go to work, and you have to go to school. But he still loves you even when you’re not with him. And it pleases him when you do well at school.

Say you like praying a lot. You like talking to your Father, and hearing from Him. But you have to go to work, or go to school. He still loves you, even when you feel like you’re not with Him; even then He is with you. Indeed, He is the ground of your existence and nature, and of that of everything you encounter. And praying is not the only way to love Him. It pleases Him when we live our humanity deeply: learning well, working well, playing well too.

Music Videos

Merry Christmas everybody! Looks like Santa brought some things you might like to watch and hear. Brian Gordon used his digital camera to record me playing some songs on November 14 at the Green Street Cafe. These videos have been up for a while, but I am posting them now due to forgetfulness and the fact that I don’t have an Internet connection in my apartment.

Bob Dylan’s Beard by Jeff Tweedy of Wilco (Seen above.) (This song is also known as Bob Dylan’s 49th Beard.)

Chicago by Sufjan Stevens

The Baseball Song by Me

These last two are on Facebook, and you have to have a Facebook account to view them. You might also need to be my “Facebook Friend.” Maybe we can bug Brian to put them all on Facebook and YouTube, but he says they take a long time to upload. I thank him for doing this at all.

Hermitage

[I wrote this some weeks or months ago, early on in my one-bedroom apartment adventure; for posterity's sake, I publish it now. A study of what happens when you don't "do what you know is right" (see the previous entry "Prophets at Table").]

I picked up reading The Seven-Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton again (among other books; I’ve been reading a lot more lately, thanks be to God). In it he describes a summer where he and two of his friends rented a house away from the city, and how, in retrospect, they should have lived as if it were a hermitage of sorts, a place where they could ardently seek God away from noise and distraction. Instead, they all set about writing novels on their typewriters and engaging in frivolous pursuits in the city.

At the same time, I have been feeling the call to live more conciously and deliberately in the presence of God. Living alone makes absolutely clear that choosing this path is at once very simple and extremely difficult. On the one hand, I have absolutely no interruptions from other people to distract me from a particular course of action or prayer. At the same time, I have to face myself and my deep weaknesses directly many times a day, and I find myself often succumbing to the “old man”–choosing to “do whatever” rather than what I sense to be right and better–and not choosing the narrow, more difficult road which, by faith, I know would be better for me and everybody else. I don’t even have an Internet connection or a television in my apartment, thanks be to God. On the other hand, reading the News-Gazette (delivered on a free two-week trial subscription) for the better part of an hour or two is a convenient way to pass time so I don’t have to choose to make the most of an uncomfortably large amount of free time. I have to face myself and my deep weaknesses directly many times a day, and I find myself often succumbing to the “old man”–choosing to “do whatever” rather than what I sense to be right and better–and not choosing the narrow, more difficult road which, by faith, I know would be better for me and everybody else. When not distracting myself from what I know I should be doing, I often find myself in some state of frustration, not present to the moment.

I recall the weekend I spent in June with the Community of St. John in Princeville, IL: how everything was prayerful, from rising in the morning and hurrying to Lauds, to breakfast in silence and dishes in silence and Midday Prayer and Holy Mass and Lunch with spiritual reading aloud and dishes in silence, lost in wonder at the sun in the trees out the window and grateful for the icon of the Virgin and Child hanging from the spice rack. . .

And then I watch myself realize too late that I will be leaving too late for 12:10 Mass at Holy Cross after I cook eggs (10:45) for second breakfast after I woke up early (7:00) and had a nice prayerful walk and ate cereal and went back to bed (8:30) since I went to bed at 1:30 that morning and as I count my tip money (11:15-11:45) before I go the the credit union (hopefully before Mass) and look for my paycheck and the notecards with my job history so I can fill out other job applications later on in the day and leave my apartment without my car keys and start cussing since it’s 12:10 by the time I start the car and in my angry blindness miss both Prairie and Elm streets to turn to get to Holy Cross and realize that I’m in no state of recollection to go to Mass (I had begun to realize this at about 12:03 when I finally was almost ready to leave and had rising blood pressure since I could never find anything that I needed when I needed it, since some things are still in boxes and my financial records are in a few piles strewn about)

I realize that it’s going to take more than thoughtfully placed icons and a holy water font by the door to make my new apartment a hermitage. At Ron and Rosie’s wedding, a friend asked my why I wasn’t praying as seriously and consistently as I said I knew I should be. I told him that there was too much disorder in my life. “Cut it out,” he said.

Prophets at Table

A few weeks ago I waited on a couple at the restaurant I work at. I thought I heard the woman respond, “Blessed,” to my question, “How are you doing today?” I moved right on and took their order, wondering slightly if they were Christian.

It was a slow time of day, and as I dropped the check she asked what I was studying and I explained my situation (“. . . figuring things out. . .”) and how I had recently begun substitute teaching and was on the list for subs at the Catholic high school in town (though I haven’t been there to “teach” yet). Turns out that they, though some form of Protestant themselves, sent their kids to the Catholic high school.

She told me two things: First, she could see the “love in my eyes” and said perhaps I could do much good as a role model for Catholic high schoolers. Interestingly enough, a woman on some “Prophetic Encouragement Team”–not sure which church–told me at a healing prayer service that she sensed in me a strong anointing for youth ministry (she walked up out of the blue).

Second, you don’t have to figure everything out right away (this is standard fare when in these conversations), but, rather, just do what you know is right.  This was how God called his prophets, she added, while they were in the midst of doing what they knew to be right (shepherding, etc.).

This criterion, do what you know is right,  is simple and very effective when tried. And the simple things are the most difficult.

Brilliance

Some weeks ago, I read a few pages of C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man. In light of such brilliant prose, I am thinking that this page should be called “No Clue How to Write,” instead of its present title. Therefore, I am moving this operation to http://blogzoar.wordpress.com/