Weekly Reflection 122709AD

Sunday, December 27, 2009AD

Holy Family Sunday

The Light of Christmas

Many years ago, Julie Andrews sang about how “the hills are alive with the sound of music.” We paraphrase her words “The (Byram) Hills are alive with the sound of music (and the Light of Christmas.”

However, as beautiful as our area is as we proclaim the birth of the Messiah, we can paraphrase again in a prayer, “The (Byram) Hills are alive with Spirit of Christmas.” How can we give greater meaning to these words?

Really, really try with the Help of Jesus during the days of Christmas leading into the New Year of the Lord, 2010, to adopt in your personal dealings with one another an alternate worldview, the alternate consciousness, the alternate universe of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Try to subscribe to the values of the Kingdom proclaimed by the Newborn. In personal dealings with family, friends and neighbors, do the best you can (with Jesus’ Help) to be one who tries to build an immediate God- centered world freer of violence, cruelty, hunger, injustice and inequality. Try to believe and behave that, indeed, Christ Jesus is in you and you are in Christ Jesus. St Paul and St John teach us this throughout the years. If we did take the Presence of Christ seriously within our deepest DNA, then, it becomes easier to, at least, try to share and implement Jesus’ alternate worldview in our dealings with others.

In the world in which we live, the alternate Worldview or Universe offered by Jesus is a refreshing and vivifying antidote. Our Western culture (on both sides of the Atlantic) has been characterized as narcissistic (so self-centred that concern for others becomes an impossibility) as pragmatic (so goal-oriented that whatever works becomes a moral guideline) and as frenetic (so driven by a pursuit of things that the pursuit of Transcendence becomes a waste of time and energy). It is impossible, on one’s own, to respond to a basic human question, “What are you really seeking?

The Prince of Peace offers advice (and Energy, viz., the Holy Spirit) to implement this alternate reality. 1) He teaches us that God is always with us, on good days as well as days not so good. (Hard to believe, but since each day is a gift from God (which is why we call it the Present), there can be no such thing as a bad day. 2) He teaches us that tough things do happen (and a middle-class lifestyle cannot prevent it totally), but that Everything works for the good for those who love God. He teaches us that God (not Ego or We-go) is the Centre of the Universe. There is no need to be a control freak because God is in control and God is a God of Life, a God of Mystery (both knowable and unknowable at the same time), a God of Reality, and a God of Love, the God of Now. 3) He teaches us that our life is not about us, but that we are about Life and death and Life in Christ forever. Words cannot describe it, but the believer intuits the Truth. The Paschal Mystery of death and re-birth permeates our existence and the very existence of the Universe.

During Advent, good people basically expressed, in many ways, the fact that they could not slow down and pay attention to the Coming of Christ now and in the future. In essence, our frenetic pace is saying, “Don’t bother me right now with God-talk, I am too busy getting ready for Christmas.” However, just as it is always Advent, a season of waiting for the Lord because we pray, “Maranatha” (Come Lord, Jesus,) so also it is always Christmas because we celebrate “Emmanuel” , (God is with us now (in Christ Jesus.)) Our Christmas carol sadly becomes, “O Come, All ye Breatheless.”

In essence, all people live in what is called liminal space, threshold space. We are always in an in-between time. Transcendence is always present. However, it is only when one adverts to Transcendence that one experiences that Transcendence. Christians are the ones who are supposed to realize that such is the case and demonstrate our realization in our religious behavior. (In this case, religion reverts to its etymological root, re- ligere – to bind together.) We try to make a coherent view or reality out of our basic attitude to life.

In a sense it is most appropriate that we consider the in-between nature, the both – and nature, the paradoxical relationship between Advent and Christmas. Christ is always coming, but Christ is already here. As we near a new calendar year, it is fitting that we designate the custom of affixing the initials A.D. to dating correspondence and checks, etc. (Recall that A.D. means “Anno Domini”, Year of the Lord (Jesus)). If you want it or not, it is always a Year of the Lord Jesus.

If we truly believed and acted on THE Divine Indwelling as well as Jesus’ Three Noble Truths, then, it becomes easier for us to adopt His alternate Reality or Worldview or Universe. Then, it becomes easier to implement in a small immediate way a world freer of violence, hunger, cruelty, injustice and inequality. Try it and see. The Light and Spirit of Christmas will shine in Byram Hills and maybe, a wider world as well. 122709AD jfq

Weekly Reflection 122009AD

Sunday, December 20, 2009AD

Fourth Sunday of Advent

(Sunday of the Virgin Birth)

Maria -- Mater et Magistra

Several years ago, a made-for TV movie, entitled “Mary” appeared on Sunday night television. The producer of the movie was the late Eunice Kennedy Shriver, mother-in-law of the Governor of California!! It was a fine movie, but it did not receive the praise that it deserved.

The movie depicts Jesus’ life, told through a mother’s perspective, her reminiscing about Her Son. Indeed, the Mother of Jesus must have reminisced a great deal. Like all mothers, she collected happy and sad memories.

For example, the movie depicted Mary’s telling Jesus the story of the Good Samaritan as a bedtime story. Mary comments on the story to Jesus that a Samaritan, characterized by most people, as an outsider, is the one who responds to the mugging victim when the victim’s own landsmen, the priest and Levite, pass him by for fear of violation of ritual purification prescriptions.

“Values are caught, not taught”. What values would Jesus pick up from Mary and His foster father, St Joseph?

1) Jesus would have caught Mary’s belief in the dignity of the human person. All of us are created in the image and likeness of God, with no exceptions.

2) Jesus would have caught Mary’s belief in the primacy of family and community as the non-violent socializing force for good that should be stressed whenever.

3) Jesus would have caught Mary’s belief that humans are born both with rights and responsibilities. We stress our rights; we should stress our responsibilities in response to these rights.

4) Jesus would have caught Mary’s belief that God loves all people, but has a bias for the bottom. Today, folks call it the preferential option for the poor.

5) Jesus would have caught Mary’s belief that workers (at that time, probably 95% + of the population were tenent farmers) have the right to be treated humanely with a decent wage.

6) Jesus would have caught Mary’s belief that there is a solidarity that must be lived with all our sisters and brothers. (That is what we all are in God’s eyes!)

7) Jesus would have caught Mary’s respect for the environment and see it as part of the heritage to be passed on to future generations. (She would have been following events in Copenhagen.)

All this would have raised hackles of a system that did not see things just that way. Someone might even end up crucified as a subversive of the Pax Romana because of talk of a Kingdom of the God of Life.

Both Joseph and Mary must have taught Jesus about the stories of the Hebrew Scriptures. They naturally recalled the basic principle, stressed in every Catholic baptismal liturgy. “Parents are the first teachers of their children in the ways of faith and hope. May they be the best of teachers, bearing witness to their faith and hope by what they say and do in Christ Jesus Our Lord.” Mary must have been a great mother and teacher (Mater et Magistra). Look how her Son turned out.

Even now, Jewish people tend to think communally. They thought in terms of the family, clan, tribe, rather than nation-state. (We are finding out today the hard way that many in the Mid East still do.) Nevertheless, the prophet Micah offers God’s challenge to each individual Jew, “Do the right, love the good and walk humbly with your God each day.” (Mi 6.8) We cannot make the world perfect, only God can do that. Still, we can make our own worlds better. And we will be held responsible for what we do or do not do.

Today, Micah’s idea of personal responsibility gets qualified despite the fact that we praise our “rugged individualism” as a cultural value. 1) We offer excuses of nature and/or nurture factors in why we really are not responsible for things. 2) We buy into the bigness of “structural sin”. Since large institutions get away with so much, why can’t I? 3) We are affected by the Mainsream-syndrome, dominated by mass media –driven materialism and middle class values. Why change?

Today, Micah proclaims that YHWH is faithful and that from Bethlehem (the least), the town of David, would come a leader to shepherd the people. We believe that the leader did appear. We celebrate his mother and his foster father this weekend. They did a great job teaching the Christ Child through their efforts to do the right, love the good and walk humbly with YHWH each day. With God’s Help, let us drive to do the same with our children and family during this Christmas Season during which we celebrate the Christ Quantum as God’s constant irreversible breakthrough. God happens, God is born in the strangest places, (aka the Galilee Principle), closer than we know. Venite adoremus!!!! 122009ADjfq

Weekly Reflection 121309AD

Sunday, December 13, 2009AD

Advent Sunday, III

(Gaudete Sunday)

Not Quite the Kook!!

Once again, St John the Baptist (aka Jack the Dipper) challenges audiences, then and now. He continues his role as the “Warm-up Act” or the Precursor (Forerunner) of the Main Event, our Messiah.

It is important to recall that the Baptist was preparing not for the birth of a baby. (Jesus was born thirty years before this Gospel scene.) It was an adult Christ that he anticipated.

The Dipper has been described as an apocalyptic, viz., “fire and brimstone” preacher who used strong language to confront his audience. It is no small thing to call people a brood of vipers. Recall, as well, that the hearers were the folks who bothered to go to the banks of the Jordan to hear this counter-cultural figure. Most (then and now??) said, “Don’t complicate my life with your Godtalk! I’m too busy with important things. What did the Baptist think of those who couldn’t be bothered making the journey to be told to snap out of it, to smell God’s coffee and to get a (new) life (style). His response, should he have heard their laments might have been, “Whether you like it or not, God is coming.”

Yet, his challenges are rather simple. Or are they? He tells the crowds to share with one another, whether it is an new jacket or extra food. It is just the Golden Rule in concrete circumstances. If one needed extra clothing or food, one hopes that another with extra would share. Yet, sadly, folks have to be reminded of that 2,000 years after the Baptist made his pitch. Thank God, so many in Armonk respond so wonderfully and generously.John’s message was about a re-adjustment in basic thoughts and attitudes, as a non-negotiable. John’s message was about an ethical adjustment in one’s behavior, if one’s priorities had become dysfunctional and/or aberrant when the name of the game becomes security, popularity and control at all costs.

John’s message is that God cares much about what is happening in the world and is about to take definitive action to ameliorate our addictions, compulsions, enmeshments through the arrival of Someone Who would clean up the mess that began in the Garden of Eden with the sin of arrogance committed by our first parents.

Imagine falling for the temptation that “you, too, can be like God”.

That was, in essence, the sin of the System, viz., to control reality to one’s advantage. The System feels that we are living in the best of all possible worlds. The System feels that anyone who is reasonable would want to live in the System that we set up and that there is something wrong with someone who would challenge the System. Because the System controls reality, it feels that it can change the rules to benefit the System. Should someone disagree, then something needs to be done. (This is what happened to John, Jesus and countless others since, then and now.) Adam and Eve still live in many ways in their descendents, when you think of it!! It is the challenges hurled at the soldiers and the tax collectors that scripture scholars have focused special attention. The Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus, who wrote later in the first century, that King Herod had John arrested because “others were listening to John’s message.” Some conjecture that John was winning hearers among the soldiery and the tax collaborators who propped up Herod’s oppressive system of institutional violence. What would have happened if his agents of institutional terrorism (mercenary soldiers) and his tax farmers who cheated people realized the errors of their ways? The Baptist might have had more listeners than we imagined.

Today, the Baptist might challenge a compulsed society. Several years ago, Ann Wilson Shafe, a sociologist, wrote a book entitled, When Society Becomes an Addict. She wrote that Western civilization had become addicted to the “System”. We know that things are not the way they should be. We know deep down in our minds and hearts, that a world in which 2% of people own 50% of the land in the world that something is wrong. We know that billions of people do not have proper diet or medical care. We know that something is happening to our very environment that by 2040AD, Arctic ice may disappear each summer. Small island nations are3 pleading their cause in Copenhagen this weekend because they wonder of the future of their nations. We know that war is obsolete as an apt means of conflict resolution and yet, we tolerate sending other people’s children and parents to risk death for questionable causes.

The Baptist’s cry might have shaken up a few more folks than we thought. John’s comments on Herod’s unusual marital arrangements notwithstanding, more might have been going on than we realize. Maybe, more snapped out of it then, smelled God’s coffee and got a new life style.

With God’s Help, in Christ Jesus’ alternate universe, the World Order of the God of Life, Jesus’ lenses, Christ consciousness, the Kingdom, others still can do so. Imagine!! 121309AD jfq

Weekly Reflection 120609AD

Sunday, Dec 6, 2009AD

Advent Sunday, II

He’s Back!!

Jack the Dipper is back at the River Jordan. We meet John the Baptist on these Sundays of Advent as we continue, with God’s Help, to prepare the Way for the Lord.

He should generate now, as then, a lightning rod of response. However, we tame such religious figures because the “Word of the Lord came to John in the wilderness.” Such as John force us to face ourselves if we listen to them.

He was a challenge then and should remain a challenge now. He did not go to Rome or Jerusalem to proclaim his message of metanoia , viz., snapping out of the Systemic Big Lie and realigning ourselves on the Way that God wants us to travel. He wants us to welcome the One Who follows. John offers the chance to see that we need to snap out of it, to be realigned and to live as God wants.

Sociologists have said that human behavior is mimetic. We don’t want to be left out of the crowd. We accept almost unquestioningly the conventional wisdom of culture. We allow others to determine who and/or what is important and/or desirable and unimportant and/or undesirable. Hence, if we participate in a culture that accepts unchallenged what is fed to it because everyone else does as well, then, the sociologists are correct. Indeed, we become “sheeple.”

In addition, sociologists tell us that human tend to be conscious of “in crowd/out crowd.” With whom do we not identify? Do we use ethnicity, race, religion, socio-economic class as determinants of those with whom we associate or emulate.

This tendency to distinguish “in crowd” and “out crowd” can be sadly coupled with a propensity to violence and vengeance , presented in the Cain and Abel story. Those with whom we do not identify might tend, perhaps, to be less human. We might treat them differently than others.

If we have recognize anything of ourselves in the three observations of the sociologists, then we need to listen to Jack the Dipper and “snap out of it.” 1) We do not have to go along with conventional wisdom. 2) Our particular cultural story collapses into the Human Story. 3) We need to stop the downward spiral of violence. (events, this past week, sadly notwithstanding!!)

The System (the “City of Man”, named by St Augustine) has created a dysfunctional system that so many buy into and idolize. Many years ago, sociologist, Anne Wilson Shafe, wrote a book, “When Society Becomes an Addict.”As one can gather from its title, the book never became a best seller. She warned that the System had become addicted to the System. We half-sense that we cannot keep living as we live forever (be it economically, environmentally or energy-wise.). However, most folks feel that we cannot make adequate adjustments. Also, most folks ask “Why should we do so when our behavioral changes would be merely a drop in the bucket?”

The Baby Jesus would grow into the serious and challenging adult who asks, “What does it profit a person if one gains the whole world and suffers the loss of one’s soul in the process?” In the words of Robert DiNiro, Armonk culture might ask, “Jesus, are You talking to me?”

We need God’s System, Jesus’ System, God’s City, a “Kingdom of God – consciousness”. God is triumphant – even now, but not yet. John the Baptist was Jesus’ advance man out in the Jordan. Each of us needs to say, repeatedly, in the words of Archbishop Dolan, “I need a Savior”. We need to repeat, “There is only one God and it ain’t me or us!!”

It is an invitation to snap out of a dysfunctional worldview into a worldview endorsed by the Creator of the Universe and the Creator’s Son Incarnate. However, there is a vital first step introduced by St John the Baptist in Luke’s Gospel. Into human history, calculable by imperial and religious dates, John’s call to snap out of it is predicated on our acceptance of the fact that we even need to snap out of it. How can we snap out of a dysfunctional worldview when we don’t even realize that we live in one? Christ came in history; someday, He will come in majesty. Even now, everyday, He comes in Mystery. The only difficulty is that some many good people get caught up in the ratrace of the System. Sadly, the big question becomes “What am I getting for Christmas?”, not “how can I respond to God’s daily call to transcendence?” One theologian recently said, “Sadly, our longing for things is a mask for our longing for God.” The return of Jack the Dipper is a necessary wake-up call. 120609AD jfq