Bless

Someone told me that in high school the janitor once reprimanded him in the hallway over something stupid he was doing. That he would get chastised in such a way infuriated him, for whatever reason (certainly not because he was never chastised at home - on the contrary), and he nursed the adolescent fire of his anger over it.

A couple weeks later the janitor was driving along a rural road; ahead of him the wheels of a dump truck kicked up one of those small sized manhole covers - approximately seven inches in diameter and half as thick - and it went through the janitor's windshield and took his head off.

Not too long after this, again getting reprimanded in the hallway, this time by the principal, he fell to brooding resentment, burning with anger. Exactly a week later the principal died in his sleep.

He told me that after this, he never again got angry. Of course, he did not mean that he never again felt the emotion of anger, but that he never again chose to nurse a grudge or stew in resentment. And I believed him.

Whether he actually believed that his wrath cursed the two adult men and caused their deaths or not is beside the point, for what is certain and beyond coincidence, and what caused him to change (or more accurately, to grow up), is that he saw the ultimate end of his anger in their untimely deaths - and it made him afraid. It put fear and the dread of sin in his heart. He turned away from it.

Strangely, one of the things that causes people to get angry at other people is that they care too much about what other people think of them. This produces a mockery of social interaction wherein people place the worth of their dignity at the whims of fickle human nature in others, seeking confirmation in their apparent lights.

It reminds me how little resentment is based in truth, in reality. In fact, to resent is to insist upon a falsehood: that the you who is demanding this recompensation in whatever form, is the real you. When in fact, that you is a shadow of yourself. I am not intoning Jung. I simply mean the self that is unreal, that is not who you really are, like a shadow.

When you bless people, you grow. When you nurse a grudge, which is to say, when you entertain a curse, you do nothing but hurt yourself, as you shrink into the state of the Inadequate Midget. Which in turn, does nothing but cause more resentment.

Why do you shrink or diminish when you curse? Simply in that you have allowed yourself to become a person who curses, or who interiorly entertains cursing's kissing cousin, resentment.

Why do you grow when you bless? Because God blesses. Cursing is the Devil's business.

Immediately what comes to mind is the image of someone pietistically suppressing anger and pretending to have good feelings towards others. But really to choose to bless instead of curse is extremely practical. It is to remain in, or be released into, the joyful pain of reality; while insisting on resentment is the endless mental anguish of a fantasy world.

It is about getting your will straight, and sticking to it, and making your sticking to it the prayer, the potential cause, however small, of other people's blessings and not bad happening to them, and letting that ride roughshod over the piping voice of insecurity, or the outraged voice resenting disrespect, or the worrywart voice of being seen falsely.

If anger, brooding, resentment, bitterness, really starts choking you, say out loud, as prayer, and say it out loud, "Oh God, I don't want to be this person! Please bless..." It's about getting out of yourself, using the intent to pray for others as the key that gains you that refreshing exit. Leave the Spirit of the World which seeks to remove and tarnish your dignity making you think you need to please other people in order to have true worth.

Your prayer becomes: whatever it is I want others to recognize in me - namely my dignity and inherent worth - I put away, in your hands God, for that is yours; I won't bother with that, and anyways I am wretched without you, and moreover, I should earn their spite for my sins; and anyways they don't even know me that well, and instead I ask blessings for them and abundance in good things and health and well-being, length of days and increase to their gifts, holiness of life and conversion from sin.

And that should be our prayer for everyone all the time.

As for any who would bring up the cursing of the barren fig tree, or the litany of denunciations that Jesus leveled against the Pharisees as though that might be an "Au contraire, Mr. Stilwell" - well, actually, take it up with Jesus who asked the forgiveness of those who were torturing and killing him, because He came down to die for them that they would have life in abundance.

"But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire." --Matthew 5:22

 "Bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you." --Luke 6:28

"When Solomon grew old his wives swayed his heart to other gods; and his heart was not wholly with Yahweh his God as his father David's had been." --First Kings 11:4

Hand from gurney

...that calls for another way of living

Hardly anyone talks about Fukushima

Each and every day 300-400 tons of radioactive water - extremely radioactive water if one takes into consideration the measurements of radiation that are being taken at a proximate distance to the radioactive core - have gone into the Pacific over the past 6 years - probably more. That's water into the radioactive core and around it and then into the ocean.

And that's the sea water they've been pumping everyday. That doesn't include the unknowable amount of groundwater. The nuclear site sits on a large aquifer. There was full meltdown. The radioactive fuel has breached containment. It has been burning down into the groundwater at an unimaginable temperature.

And that doesn't include the above-ground highly radioactive water that they're storing in more and more rinky-dink storage tanks, one or some of which have already started leaking.

It's not like an oil spill. It's not like heavy metal contamination. It doesn't "dissipate" in the ocean. It's on the atomic level. It gets into the generative cycles of all life, concentrating on the atomic level. Of all places, the ocean is the worst place for it to go.

Fukushima is going to be the rudist awakening mankind has faced. And practically no one in the mainstream media is reporting on it. All the official pronouncements coming from TEPCO and others in Japan are a joke.

Over the next few years I think - and dread - it's all going to start rolling out. It already is. We're going to hear as normative speak, news anchors telling us about the boiling and dying of the Pacific and the radiation of the west coast.

The kind of stupidity that has been going on is the kind that has to be purposeful and enforced.

"If present trends continue, this century may well witness extraordinary climate change and an unprecedented destruction of ecosystems, with serious consequences for all of us." --Pope Francis, Laudato si


"The earth , our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth." --Pope Francis


"Everything is connected" --Pope Francis

Fukushima is the sleeping giant

"The Japanese government has lied about the seriousness of Fukushima at every significant step in the process, and likely continues to do so." --Bill Still

I agree

The one who suffers most

So much work goes into sinning. It is a horrible labour because it is fed and fueled with the division of one's soul. One might entertain the notion of freedom from the commandments in order to commit sin, like it would be a reprieve; or one imagines freedom is just a general state of doing what you want; but one is a dupe to think that one will be free in sin.

Sin demands all-consuming toil; it demands your soul be divided; and divided ever more insanely without rhyme or reason. The toil is not necessarily a toil that one can ascertain as such, in the sense of seeing yourself positively labouring at something. Often it is a toil of quiet negation that robs the soul of its freedom. When the whip and prod of this slavery are at their quietest, they are at their worst, they are at their highest command. The most lethargic and laid-back assumptions soaking in a hottub and cloud of marijuana smoke, answering every impulse to repent with, "The Dude abides", or some such, has in it a horrible fortitude toiling at sin.

More work goes into regressing than into progressing. The work here is the division of the soul, whereas in the most strenuous work of progress in holiness, in union with Christ, the soul is yet somehow still at rest, for it is whole. How many sins are committed by Christians because they allow the general sadness and boredom and noise of the world, in the ordinary minutes, to make them forget the victory that Christ has won in them? How many sin because they forget to smile?

The very word "comfort" implies its unattainability, or rather its absurdity; thus to live in it extravagantly or persistently (that is to say, always choosing comfort over and above anything else) implies a life of deep alienation, of a position of very deep discomfort with life, because one has to service the comfort that one wishes to have or sustain. Go to any mall. Look at the faces. Comfort is one of the coldest words in the English language. Borrowing money at compounding interest is just such a great metaphor for the labour of sin, until you realize that it is, or can be, a literal carrier of it. It is no metaphor at all.

Thomas Merton wrote:

“The more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers most.” 

We're familiar with the terminology about slavery to sin. Yet don't we tend to think about that slavery as something static? Today the term "slavery" is so ubiquitous with the political and ideological that it has lost its keen verb sense, such as when we say "to slave away", as well as simply its original legal sense. Still less do we think about the underlying assumption that mediated the legality of slave-trading: that the slave was to do work for someone. You wanted a slave that could work. No one wanted to own a person because they just wanted to own a person.

St. Paul talks about "the wages of sin". Slavery is to toil away, as your fate, for someone's other benefit. "Slavery of sin" does not just imply that one is in chains; it implies a grueling, soul-sapping toil - every second that goes by. Where slaving for someone as in the slave-trade (which is by no means dead today) was a fate, and you toiled until you died, the toil of the slavery of sin is exponential in demanding your dissipation and division.

He makes springs pour water into the ravines;
    it flows between the mountains.
They give water to all the beasts of the field;
    the wild donkeys quench their thirst.
The birds of the sky nest by the waters;
    they sing among the branches.
He waters the mountains from his upper chambers;
    the land is satisfied by the fruit of his work.
He makes grass grow for the cattle,
    and plants for people to cultivate—
    bringing forth food from the earth:
wine that gladdens human hearts,
    oil to make their faces shine,
    and bread that sustains their hearts.
The trees of the Lord are well watered,
    the cedars of Lebanon that he planted.
There the birds make their nests;
    the stork has its home in the junipers.
The high mountains belong to the wild goats;
    the crags are a refuge for the hyrax.
 

He made the moon to mark the seasons,
    and the sun knows when to go down.

You bring darkness, it becomes night,
    and all the beasts of the forest prowl.

The lions roar for their prey
    and seek their food from God.

The sun rises, and they steal away;
    they return and lie down in their dens.

Then people go out to their work,
    to their labor until evening.

--Psalm 104, 10-23

"Resting on an air mattress, on a big lazy lake

of my own subjective desires." --Bishop Robert Barron.





Last night at Mass I had a moment in which I felt quietly and powerfully - not for the first time - that quickness, that haste, that hinge, that total hairpin turn in the conversion of St. Paul. Who in using their imagination and empathy, combined with the reflection of their own conversion experience (which is never finished in this valley of tears), can't picture what it would have been like, even just a little, for Saul?

"What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them SKYBALON, that I may gain Christ..."

Look up "skybalon", by the way.

He said WHAT!

“I prefer a church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security.” --Pope Francis

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

Is watching Game of Thrones a mortal sin?

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

2354  Pornography consists in removing real or simulated sexual acts from the intimacy of the partners, in order to display them deliberately to third parties. It offends against chastity because it perverts the conjugal act, the intimate giving of spouses to each other. It does grave injury to the dignity of its participants (actors, vendors, the public), since each one becomes an object of base pleasure and illicit profit for others. It immerses all who are involved in the illusion of a fantasy world. It is a grave offense. Civil authorities should prevent the production and distribution of pornographic materials.

The pornography of Alessandro Serenelli's time was basically the sort of stuff that sailors would have pinned up beside their bunks. It was a major influence and corruption in his life. He lost his mind to it.

What would he say of the material in Game of Thrones? People call it "soft porn" because it gets compared to the "hardcore" stuff on the internet. Yet Game of Thrones is totally hardcore in comparison to the pornography of Serenelli's time (from what I've read in descriptions about the show).

Isn't it interesting, the relativistic sliding scales we use in order to immediately excuse ourselves?

I was thinking about this because I just read this article at StAR about Game of Thrones.

Seems the majority of Catholic news services,

be they a television network or some blog, are unreliable and untrustworthy - at least when it concerns Pope Francis. Kind of like the mainstream media. The commentators of these Catholic social media sites and networks sow confusion by their impromptu statements.

"Arroyo really should be sued for slander."

Exactly.

Catholic in Brooklyn has a most excellent post on the statements made by Pope Francis concerning marriage. Really, it's amazing to see the difference between what the Holy Father actually said and the cut and paste canards that the news outlets/blogs/apostolates feed their readers, listeners and viewers.

Update: here's another good article.

Sometimes I think the greatest stretch of belief for people today has to do with the most basic realization and acceptance that the problems, the darkness, the confusions in their lives, stem from very specific decisions they made and very specific things they more or less immersed themselves in, either in the not-too-distant past, or way back once upon a time. Things that appear to them as little things. They cannot even make the connection when these decisions are occurring in the present.

To realize that:

--no, it is not that you have problems/struggles with lust which causes or weakens you to look at pornography, but that you have problems with lust precisely because you are looking at pornography/reading pornographic material - or more specifically, because you made a decision at one point to look at pornography/read pornographic material. You became its sowing bed, its slave; there is no "struggle" in fact; and the materialization of your decision in conjunction with that material is so actual and so real that even after you stop looking at those images, they will continue for some while to emerge in your mind and influence your very body;

--that the things you do, say, think, look at, read, hear, go toward incarnating in this world, beginning with the world of your own heart, either light or darkness, good or evil, which gives birth to fruit according to its own kind, and this becomes concrete, evidential, actual in your own life and the lives of others;

--and that no one is exempt from this inevitable transpiration in which the decision of the will becomes actual fruition;

For many people today, to see that this basic transpiration in their personal lives is for real - like realizing how venial sin can lead to mortal sin, and the way mortal sin produces spiritual death, which leads to a plethora of rotten fruits - strikes them like they just saw a wooly mammoth or a sabre-toothed tiger jump out of the woods. Like they saw something living and breathing and all-too-real from an age they never experienced; and in a sense they didn't experience it, for they were blind at the time.

Some of it comes, to my thinking, from a sort of gluttonous appetite for enjoying one's own problems - I almost want to say one's own cliches; a sort of anti-confession that serves to aggregate the filth around one as a sort of concentration of loose coal into impervious diamond. Which stems from atomization of the individual - or simply put, individualism.

This is one of the reasons why I'm wary of the seemingly intellectually vigorous discussion about 50 Shades of Grey like it was some kind of amazing phenomenon come down to us from the remotest regions of the cosmic world. Suddenly it's an incarnation of a culture sick for the alpha male, and it's like Walter White, and blah, blah, blah - and no, it has to do with Islam which means "submit" and blah, blah, blah - and no, it has to do with generations that were never disciplined as children and now they're seeking it out in sick and twisted ways and blah, blah, blah.

Yes, are you enjoying it?

It somehow also reminds me of an article written by a priest that I read a while back. He described how a husband was talking to him about his temper. Referring to his bad temper, the husband said, "I guess it's just the cross that I have to bear."

To which the priest said, "Well, no, actually. It's a cross your wife has to bear."

Enjoying it?

All of this - do not doubt for a second - is costing somebody something, somewhere, at some time, in some way.

And the cost ain't enjoyable.