A Day Worthy of Friday

Two big events today: one, I went to have skin flaps cut off of me; the other was the arrival of the publication Spiritual Life. I love this publication, a quarterly, and the new copy always goes into my pew at St. Vincent, so I can use it for spiritual reading and lectio. Oh, and there is a third piece of joy, I'm having some brandy given to me by "A" monk. It is very tasty and very powerful. In one paragraph I have combine skin flaps, Spiritual Life, and very good brandy. And now you are asking what does this all have to do with anything?

It is the flow of life, taken one moment at a time. There is no special connection between anything in the first paragraph except they were things that brighten my day and evening. The more I settle into the routine of silence, praying and reading, the more each moment, and event, of the day becomes something to celebrate. My doctor is a pleasure to be with, and I hated seeing those skin flaps every morning in the mirror. The new Spiritual Life has an El Greco Jesus on the front, and I could look at that for hours and never cease thinking, praying, or even seeing new things in it.

The brandy? Well, even hermits have a Friday night from time to time. No, I will not get drunk, but as Br. Christian says, "having a little bit is harder than having none at all." This is not really a challenge for me as drinking never has been a favorite activity of mine. However, I can't help remembering the psalm, "and wine to cheer [our]man's heart."

What did I learn today? Well, that yesterday was a waste of my energy, that I sinned by giving in to the anger, not by being angry, but giving in to it; that to turn, even for a moment, my eyes from God is to lose my bearings, to no longer see the path as clear as before. Today was and still is dedicated to finding God in each moment, each skin flap cut off, each new edition of my favorite spiritual publication, and the gift of brandy "to cheer [my] heart."

Trials of Church

Today I forgot that the church is the body of the faithful from the lowliest layman, all the way up to the Pope. The Church is not the hierarchy, although they are part of it, but only in so far as they are individual Christians. The Church is also an institution, and that is a human affair, filled with human beings, some more holy than others, and some just ambitious and down right nasty. Yet, Pope John XXIII was at the top of that institution, and him I venerate and love.

The hardest lesson for me to learn is that my life with God is not wrapped up in any other thing outside of my hermitage. The second hardest lesson is that the Roman Catholic Church is not something I can do anything about, I cannot change it, I cannot make it work this way, or that way: in other words, I am not in control, and that is the way God has placed my life. The "I" of Stephen is not in control. Yes, there are things in the church which disgust me to my core. There is no reason to list them here, because I will no longer rehearse my troubles, especially those that are not my affair, in my mind, or here, or under any circumstances.

This tremendous upset today caused me to write a letter and send it to three priest and three laymen. What on earth was I thinking? What can they do about the condition of anything? Much less the church?

My pray tonight is to remember and remind myself daily, that what is not in front of my eyes, or given to me for prayer, is not something I should or shall, think about. All is worth praying about, but nothing is worth being unfaithful to God, by getting all in an uproar over what some bishop did to X person. It is a distraction from God. Right here on this very blog I said that God required of me my total, undivided attention, at every moment. How can I do that when I'm all atwitter about some issue that I can't do a thing about.

Really, this has been a valuable day. I have learned that this vocation requires a great deal of detachment from events -- except for prayer. All events are good for prayer. No event is worth taking my mind from God.

Pray for me, as I pray for all of you.

Say the prayers

The one thing I hold to as a law is to never stop saying the prayers. When everything falls apart, and it does, often, there is always the regularity of life held in place by the prayers. Whether your book is open or not hardly matters, so long as you say the prayers. This is the secret to all spiritual endeavors, but it is the one most often ignored.

All it takes is a little frustration, a rough patch in life, and the prayers go right out the window. In my past that is how things worked; now, that is not an option. I am bound on two fronts. First, the Lay Cistercians of Gethsemani binds me by the Plan of life. Second, my life as a hermit in discernment. Taken together, prayer is the very cement of my existence. The time is not wasted, even when I sit silently for long periods without uttering a word by mouth, or thought.

As the layers of false self are removed, I am healed even in pain by the prayers, and am left with one less voice vying for my attention when it is time to still the mind. Imagine that, the pain of facing the unreality creates a space of silence. This may not strike you as incredible, but to me it is something to set off the fireworks. Even when I'm angry, or upset, or aroused in an inappropriate way, I have the grace to clear my mind and let God work to order that which is disordered within me.

If nothing else remember this: Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner. It is the Jesus prayer. There is no more powerful prayer in all Christian history. Wordy prayers waste time, the Jesus prayer protects the soul, causes unclean spirits to flee, and settles deep into the heart.

May God lead us all into everlasting life.

Tempting temptations

Just when you think it's safe, that is when you must be on guard. Temptation is a danger because one thinks "Oh, surely now I am safe," but that turns out to be a lie, and we know whom the Father of Lies really is. It is easy to say "God is tempting me," but that too is a lie.

Temptation, like heresy, is alluring because it is close to the truth, it makes perfect sense, yet in one way or another, veers dangerously from the truth. So is the way with temptation, we think that we have become immune to this or to that temptation only to find that we are more vulnerable to it today than we were six months ago!

We say, "But it is love"

Or, "Just one bite"

Again, "Just this once."

Trapped! You have crossed the line, fallen into the grip of the temptation and it will surely drag you down. Hobbes was wrong, the State is no the many armed monster, it is temptation with its many arms that drags you down, destroys your self esteem, and sets you back three months in your own eyes.

The only way to save ourselves, and I quote Gary, the Cosmic Hobo: To plunge our broken, imperfect selves daily into the renewing waters of his love.

Pentecost!

My hermit mentor, if there is such at thing, when told how hard things had been for me, got excited! He said,"then you are entering into the mystery now. The powerful force of Love from the Holy Spirit comes to us, but after it's worked it's way through all the layers of our mind-junk, what reaches us is just a trickle." So all the layers ripped off of me, allow the Holy Spirit more deep within me.

Today at Mass I began to think of that after having received communion, and with the Body of the Lord within me, I prayed that the Holy Spirit might cut through everything, no matter how intense or painful the experience, because nothing on earth is more worthwhile to me than to be with God as intimately as possible. Then I remembered a quote torn from my daily missal:

God wishes to be asked, God wishes to be forced, God wishes, in a certain manner; to be overcome by our prayer." Pope St. Gregory, The Great

With the memory of that quote came a wedge of Love that felt as if it were pushing through into my head. It was not unpleasant, in fact, quite the opposite, it was awe inspiring. I pray that Christ will continue to drive this stake of Love through my layer of sin, decay, resistance, and pride, until it reach so powerfully into my in most being, that I weep for the sheer beauty and joy of it. Amen. Alleluia.

He led them forth from darkness and gloom
and broke their chains to pieces.

Thankfully, Psalm 107:14 was in the Office of Readings today. I needed to see it. As my readers know, of late I have been struggling with a number of issues -- and that is because God helps us to remove layer after layer of false self before the wound is fully healed -- and as I prayed the Office of Readings, this verse jumped out at me, and all but slapped me in the face.

Is that the verse that cuts between joint and marrow? Is this where those who have hears should hear? Look at the verse very carefully, God leads us from dripping darkness and then breaks our chains. Yes, that is available to us, but...but who uses it? Do you dare use it? If we are led out into the light and no longer under bondage then we have to take responsibility and live gratefully in the light of Christ.

It is much easier to stay in the chains of ignorance, never seeking too closely what the Spirit is telling us, or hiding behind our dogmas, and personal agendas, than to step out and have our chains drop from our bodies and the scales from our eyes and the goop out of our ears.

It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God. And, I can't wait to push forward to those hands, knowing that my life will never be the same again. What is there currently in my life, aside from family and friends, that makes a hill of beans? Without my relationship with Christ then I'm am empty shell going through the motions of living. The hermit's path is the only way for me to find that life. Every path imaginable I have followed. Way after way others found their niche, while I did not find mine, until at long last I found solitude and silence.

Following the Cistercian Charism as best I can has also helped me find my way to this sacred silence. How? Conversion of life. The trick was that when I began conversion of life, it brought me here, to right now.

Music is Prayer Too

Sun in Cloudy Days

ON the heels of the humility/pride battle, which will continue the rest of my life I imagine, came the blatant sight of my non-productivity. Meaning, I have nothing meaningful to do with my time. Yes, I write here, and work on the Formation Book, but I'm in a stasis.

(Do you now see what I mean when I say that the layers of false self are ripped off before a scab can begin to form?)

Okay, switch viewpoint now. An elderly person in a nursing home, or in their own home, shut in, unable to get up and work because of physical pain, or they just cannot get up, and they are suffering from the uselessness of non-productivity. They sit an wait for death. If they have faith, they pray. Television and telemarketers are their only contact with the outside world, unless a neighbor comes to see them. They too are in stasis, and they suffer in it beyond our imaginings. People might ask me why do I not visit and do the good that needs doing? I can only answer because God has not called me to that apostolate. God points out the pinned down nature of stasis, and those who suffer in it, and commands me to add them to my awareness, and prayers.

My awareness is expanding exponentially. Five years ago I would have said I was going insane, now I realize I am becoming sane. The worse it seems, the more clearly I do see. My awareness is hoping to inspire others to take on the work of visiting the lonely, the shut in, etc..

My job is to pray for it to happen, for inspiration for others, for vocations to priesthood and religious life.

So why sun in cloudy days? God has allowed me a respite to take in the last few days, to assimilate the lessons, and to breathe a little more secure in my vocation. And, of course, to be ready when the next layer is ripped off!

Continuing

The previous post was me at a low, or at least I thought it was a low. After talking with a couple of monks I respect, they have suggested acknowledging my failings in humility is actually the first step on the path of humility. Even though it feels like layers of skin ripped off my body, I'm moved to say, "the wages of sin are death." Lack of humility brought about a kind of death in me, a death of ego, self-delusion, the showboat that is/was, me, and each one had to be ripped away so the healing power of grace could begin to work in me.

The Battle of Solitude

No, solitude is not a battle, although there are many battles that come with solitude, and one of those is the battle against asserting Me over You; the battle to not need supremacy. In short, the battle of humility. When the realization hits that absolutely nothing in this world is any of my business, as one of the late monks of Gethsemani so aptly noted, the battle begins inside of me to assert my selfhood against it.

Yes, that's right, I try to battle against humility. You see, I have a great love of being right, being the "I told you so" guy, and of always looking good. I like to know best, and to be the law-giver. I has appeared at least five times so far in this paragraph, and that is the problem. I. I am the problem. When do "I" stop and let God Be? That is an excellent question, and one that God is pounding me with day and night.

I am the problem in my own life. It isn't other people, or noise, or silence, or singing and dancing in the streets, it is my own need to be approved, right, applauded, over-loved -- those are my problems. Yet what am I to do with such things if not turn them over to God? Again and again I find myself saying "here I am what do you want me to do?" The answer tonight seems to be a flow of images where I get what I want and am allowed to see how perfectly dreadful such experience would make me.

Here is an analogy of the spiritual life as I'm experiencing it: God has a big 1950s Cadillac; the first movement is God revs up the engine, puts it in drive and runs over me breaking all my bones. The second movement: God puts it in reverse and back over me ripping off the top layer of skin. The first movement teach the dependence upon God alone, and the second is the beginning of meeting myself -- really meeting myself, and facing each layer of ego and sin as it is peeled back.

To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

I've been thinking about this verse a lot lately, probably because I have a thorn in my flesh too. No, I do not have "surpassingly great revelations." but I do have a calling that is rather unique, and the thorn in my side keeps me on target. What the target is, is the total focus of all my energies on God. This thorn does a very good job of reminding me how totally without help I am if I turn away from dependence upon the grace of Christ.

Truthfully, it is every aspect of my life which is weakness made manifest: my spine, my overblown personality, my struggle with anger, etc., and on and on until even it must weary God as well as man, at least that's how Isaiah said it. T

There is absolutely nothing wrong with admitting I have sins that are greater than I, that must be purified through Christ's grace, because it is only the truth due to my humanity. We are all struggling with sin, in one form or another. When I say sin I'm not talking about murder, rape or child molestation, as horrible as those things are, what I am talking about is failure to guard the thoughts, failure to hold the tongue, failure from turning away from the appearance of sin. It is the sin of smallness that ravages more hearts than the huge sins of murder, rape and child abuse/molestation, for there are far fewer who do not do those things, than those who do.

Jesus said just looking at a woman and desiring her is committing adultery with her in your heart. Yes, it's that deep. That is what guarding ones thoughts is all about. An heart not at rest is ready to burst into the flames of anger at any moment.

As I sit in my house, and in my oratory, or at this computer, or early in the morning in the silence and darkness, I see how every aspect of my being is undergoing a tremendous, if not terrifying, transformation. Things are changing that I would not have changed, and, things are changing that I could not have changed. There is a deeper level of self knowledge that frightens me, while simultaneously blessing me. And to think, I signed up for this not even knowing the magnitude of what I was doing. Another hermit warned me that I was embarking on a journey like none before, and I'm only now glimpsing the wildness and glory of that truth.

When it is only me, there is no escaping me. Think about that! If it were only you, could you bear it? It is an awesome thing to fall into the hands of the Living God.

Emma Kirkby - An Evening Hymn - Henry Purcell

Evening Is Upon Us

Evening prayers have been recited, the candles are extinguished, and yet I know that before very long I will be back in the prayer room to do Intercession. While having my pain shot this morning, my mother commented that "there is so much pain in the world." This is a theme that has haunted me for years now: all the pain in the world requires almost constant prayer. The people to do it are those of us who have given our lives over to God's control, then it is the duty of every Christian.

The Flaget Pain Center is always a rich vein of prayer, obviously because it is a pain center. On another level you see those who accompany those in tremendous pain and you can see the pain in their faces too. A beloved spouse or child is in pain, and you are in pain, too.

The most popular question people ask when they find out you are a hermit is, what do you do? They are surprised to find out that I can still live as I do, only without all the trappings of daily life that are available to people outside. Greater seclusion allows me to feel the pain of those around me, those I encounter during the day, and even those I do not know, but their suffering calls out to me in some strange way. That can be disconcerting until you realize that it is the pain of others that you sense, and not something within yourself.

My spiritual director gave me a golden piece of advice that all of you should remember: never take others pain as your own, always offer it to God, for it is not yours, and it only plays into your vanity of thinking how very much like God you are.

Shocking words! When you or I pray for others we must realize it is not our doing that God does or does not help someone else, it is ours to pray and allow God to work, and take the credit.

The sun is low and the other posting has the evening hymn.

Year One of Three to Hermit

Yes, I am taking the plunge, have spoken with the Archbishop, and am on a three year plan to vows. During the three years I will continue to live where I am, and do what I do. The Liturgy of the Hours, daily Mass, Rosary at least twice a day, etc., and I'm not even convinced those are the really important parts of eremitic life. It is starting to appear that the most important part of this life is to be present to God at every waking moment.

Let that sink in a little -- present to God at every waking moment. When the vocation began to call, expectations were absent, because I had no idea what to expect. Let me tell you, what to expect, at least a this point, is to greet the overwhelming need to be in the presence of God at ever moment. And that is very intimidating! You see, one expects that they will beseech God for presence, not be required to be in the presence of God every breath you take!

Another thing I've met is loneliness. Yes, the plain old lonelies. This is less intimidating that living as a presence to God at every moment, but it is a bit on the bothersome side, after all, I am human. When computer play didn't work, and TV didn't work, and books didn't work, I did the only thing left -- enter my prayer room, which I call the Oratory of the Holy Family, by the way, and lay the loneliness out to God with the words "what do you want from me?"

And you know what? God was like a hot knife through the butter of loneliness.

This is enough for now. I process slowly.