Thinking about the expensive oil that the woman used on Jesus (worth how much in terms of feeding the poor?), which he permitted and praised, and the herd of swine, belonging to the Gadarene herdsmen (worth how much to their livelihood?), which Jesus permissively sent over the cliff into the sea.

In both instances Jesus sees the marginal person: the good and prophetic deed performed by the woman, and the healing and salvation of the possessed man.

One thing is clearly demonstrable about God's way of creating, his way of working: He does not calculate.

God does not calculate. He does not play that game.

Love It

Love going to the Dollar Store, that last twilight outlet of the store rows, closest to the train tracks. 25 nifty brushes for 3 bucks. You pay that and more - far more - for just one brush at the art store or some ostentatious online Rusky outfit. "But, but!" LOL. Trust me - it's not so much the brush - though sometimes it is (especially with egg tempera) - it's how you use it. You can paint with just about anything. You have to bend that fork. In fact, it's the same with the fine brushes too - it's how you use them. The quality of an instrument does not subsume its proper and most fruitful use. It is the other way around. I love that arts and crafts section and the whole store with its Snickers and Mars bars doppelgangers. It's a place to dream in. Maybe it conjures that old A-Team feeling in me. Going to the Dollar Store is so Chestertonian.

A little forest was torn up to build some boring sports complex/ice arena. While the immediate ruins lie, amid the mud and unearthed roots, greenfast starts again; even saplings come, as the site hangs briefly in suspension.

That is an image of time: the lowly green coming on between the wreckage without bewailing, as if no venerable forest was destroyed in a day. That is the quickness the forest had all along, when one would have called the forest old.

This is why certain memories can seem older and further away than others, though sequentially they are not ordered so. The event of one memory will seem far away which happened at a more recent date, while one that is sequentially older seems more recent: because there are certain points in time - like a time of crisis or a time of particular peace - that are an aggregation of previous points of time. This aggregation reveals those old memories in a new way, rather than making all those memories older. And the only time this happens is in the present.

It shows that we are born of suffering, and more often than not, we die from pleasure, or at least pleasure passes, and passing, becomes old. A time of trial though sends one bounding away from that point in time at a certain soaring rate, plumb into the present, which puts recent memories further away than older memories, while the older ones gain a newness.

While people like to say that time flows, the truer statement is that time aggregates.

One of the deepest things that T.S. Eliot wrote: "The past is about to happen."

The crucifixion that took place on Calvary is present on the altar when the consecration of the bread and wine takes place. No pious posturing necessary: you are present at Calvary and the Last Supper. This is the Bread of Life. This, and only this, truly fills you, moves, animates, brings joy and peace to you, beyond all understanding. And not for a moment only, but for your lifelong journey that is your life.

The power of absolution, the washing away of your sins, in a concrete moment in time, the forgiveness that Christ already won for you applied now in the present, after which you are a new creation, is the light in which you see your sins and past truly - in the soothing consolation of God's absolution.

I remember once driving with my Dad along some country road and I imagined in the forests we were passing, two companions walking. One of them was a priest, and at certain points, the man would make confession to the priest, and they would then carry on, till again, they would stop and the man would yet again make confession; over logs and creeks and around trees, they went forward as new creations, until yet again they would stop and the man would again make confession, and so on, and on; and every time they stopped, all time previous aggregated, and then unfolded as they went forward; and this never became tired to them.

On the contrary, their going forward like this was the very healing of time itself.

Great words from the Holy Father

I say this not to scare you, but simply to say that our life is today: now or never. I think of this: tomorrow will be the eternal tomorrow that never sets, with the Lord forever – if I am true to this day; and the question that I put to you is the same the Holy Spirit is putting to all of us, i.e. 'How ought I to live, this day?'

'Today' is played out in our hearts. Are our hearts opened to the Lord? To me it always strikes me when I find an older person – often priests or nuns – who tell me, 'Father, pray for my final perseverance' – 'But, you did well all your life long, all the days of your 'today' are in the service of the Lord, and still you are afraid?' 'No, no, my life has not yet waned: I want to live it fully, I pray that the day arrives full, full, with a heart strong in faith, and not ruined by sin, vices, corruption.'

Today does not repeat itself: this is life – and the heart, the open heart, open to the Lord, not closed, not hard, not hardened, not without faith, not perverted, not deceived by sin. The Lord has met so many of these, who had closed their hearts: the doctors of the law, all these people who persecuted Him, put Him to the test to convict Him – and in the end they managed to do it. We go home with these two words only: how is my 'today'? The sunset can be today, this day or many days later. But how are you, my today, in the presence of the Lord? And how is my heart? Is it open? Is it firm in the faith? Is it led by the Lord? With these two questions we ask the Lord for the grace to which each of us needs. --Pope Francis, Homily 1/12/17

Blog Post

One of the things it seems one never gets around to squaring with - to facing and pinning down and rejecting - is this notion that at some point in the future one will attain in this world to some kind of perfect timeless satisfaction and peace and prosperity (often so modestly envisioned). Whatever it may be called subjectively from person to person, the notion can objectively be stated in the negative: that at some point in this earthly life one will no longer face upheaval.

The modern world - our western culture - is geared towards the propagation of this lie of false security, of false life. It can be summed in this phrase: a life that is absent of transformation. This is ultimately why physically healthy people kill themselves. There may be other reasons involved, but the ultimate ticket that decides a suicide is the continued absence of transformation - which is a persistent absence that our modern culture forces upon us and drums into our minds, incessantly.

Faced with this ongoing blockage by our culture that tells us in varied ways that we are complete and self-sufficient purely observing individuals, we don't find the freedom of hating our sins, of hating being atrophied by them in the stale dust of decades of our old self. When you live, you see that life is its own intrinsic deepening. The mystery of life deepens. That is not just a personal view; that is what happens; that is life: its mystery deepens. When the opposite happens we know on some fundamental level that something is off, something is wrong. What is wrong is one's self - in conjunction with being told damn lies all of one's life.

We sense this, but lacking understanding, we are prone to say that it is the quashing of individuality. We fail to see the paradox. We lack individuality to the extent that we are robbed of transformation. When we are not being transformed, we are not ourselves. The more loudly one proclaims one's individuality, in myriad forms, the more nightmarish becomes one's state of lost identity.

This is why people who are diagnosed with terminal cancer can live in the present and be living realists, while some people who have nothing of that sort and whose lives are quite cushioned can hardly get out of bed in the morning.

There is only one true transformation: Jesus Christ in the Sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church.

You cannot get yourself to die, and this is why people have anxiety. You can get yourself to die with Jesus. It is He in His mercy that allows you to die in Him. It is the only way you can get yourself to die.

This has nothing to do with "eastern nihilism". It has everything to do with the absolute truth that Jesus is Life. Life to the full and brimming over: the living water.

Which transforms.

And often when He transforms us, we have made ourselves too large (and loud) to see the transformation.