Biography

May172017

A new mindset

This latest struggle slips into the reality of an arrogance and negativity in my mindset, the need to be right, at the deepest core opinionated. There was a nurse caring for me in the emergency room who made a strong impression. His kindness and concern astounded me. I understood it was an aspect lacking within my interior. I trended toward one who attempts to be right rather than compassionate. First, I intellectualize, forming judgements, attempting to identify deeper meanings, establishing personal dogma, before simply being kind. Walking through the amazing University Hospital near the Case Western campus, the breathtaking architecture and setting produced a sense of awe. I felt connected to those around me, understanding I was truly abandoning an analytical mind.

Walking home from the hospital campus on a sunny day, I meandered through the historic Cleveland Heights neighborhood, admiring the homes and gardens. It amazes me how friendly and sociable the people are in this neighborhood. There is always a smile and a wave for a passerby. The sense of community is authentic. The significant other and I recently took a walk through the gorgeous neighborhood and I was a bit stunned that she was approaching woman asking them about their gardens, walking right up to their porches. The response was always an enthusiastic sharing. There is a cultured willingness to engage others openly and kindly, abandoning judgement and the constant maneuvering to be right.

The significant other brings that endearing charm into my life: kindness, gentleness, attentiveness, commitment and concern before judgement. I am positive it is why God has put her in my life. I am being asked to recognize and remove my arrogant need to be right. I was recently driving listening to EWTN, hearing the woman go on and on about the absurdity of millennial ‘snowflakes’, their weakness of personality in demanding their ‘safe spaces’, the intellectual foolishness of using words like ‘microaggressions’, when I comprehended that was me, always viewing the world with the need to be right. Respectfully to the EWTN broadcaster, I understood I have to let go of such ways.

Nietzsche identified a fundamental human flaw as laziness. I think society has advanced to the degree that over exertion, trying too hard, has become a human  flaw. Opinions, ideas, feelings, and thoughts are taken extremely serious with the majority putting an intense effort in developing and presenting their positions. There will not be a lacking in those willing to engage in battle. For me, I must remove any vestige of an opinionated mind. My spiritual goal is called to advance to a core being centered in kindness and gentleness, open and willing to be wrong, rejecting judgment and proclamations. I must take myself less serious in order to move closer to God.

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Apr172017

Post Easter Vacation

Mary statue Rosary Cathedral, many prayers and travails here.

Today is the end of a meaningful Easter vacation, a subtle advancement in peace of mind and contentment with life. The first night, Wednesday of Holy Week, the significant other and I traveled to Toledo to enjoy a memorable Tenebrae service at the Rosary Cathedral. In all of my religious explorations, I have never experienced anything on par with the Toledo diocese’s expression of the pre-Triduum prayer ceremony. Toledo’s elaborate Cathedral, Spanish Plateresque architectural style honoring its sister city in Spain, was packed. We arrived over a half hour early and already the church was half filled. The solemn ceremony involves the individual extinguishing of fifteen candles after the respective reciting of Psalms, hymns, and readings from Lamentations; including choir singing wafting down from hidden lofty chambers—the ceremony ends in darkness and a dramatic roll played upon a Timpani drum. It was a powerful opening to a shared Easter vacation. I expressed to the significant other the desire to meet a gentleman involved in the cathedral’s administration. When we arrived in the late afternoon to take photos, there the man was walking in the parking lot, leading a band of school children. The conversation was a delight. Hopefully, he will pursue his longing to visit St Paul’s Shrine. We picked up my mother for the event, meeting my brother at the cathedral. Spending the first night of vacation with my mother, a grandnephew who is the child of a single mother, and my mother’s dog proved profound in the experience of familial charity. The rest of the Easter vacation’s religious celebrations would be conducted at St Paul’s Shrine. Last Super Thursday, we participated in the washing of feet, a blessing with Father Roger cleansing and kissing. Good Friday included a communion ceremony and the Stations of the Cross. Saturday presented an Easter Vigil Mass, and Sunday Easter Mass followed by baked goods and coffee. Everything coalesced into a manifestation of gratitude, joy, and exultation. Good Friday morning proved significant with a return to my basketball buddies. The significant other came along, sharing lunch with the gentleman, enamored with their maturity and fellowship. Several of my basketball buddies were not in attendance as a sponsored trip to New Zealand, a tournament in the exotic locale providing their Easter amusement. It warmed my heart to witness the significant other genuinely thrilled to share the men’s company. Texts from the basketball buddies following the lunch, expressing elation for meeting the significant other, proved the matter must not remain a onetime deal. I felt blessed to share the friendship of Cliff, an eighty-seven year old man who still participates in the full court games. Easter Sunday with my family, celebrated at my sister’s abundant home, proved worthy in furthering the bond with the significant other. Children were everywhere, in most part due to a newly arrived Toledo family who joined my sister’s church. The family of six boys under the age of nine provided plenty of energy to the event. The father/husband engaged with interesting conversation regarding his childhood in Louisiana, and intimate knowledge of New Orleans.

I move beyond Easter of 2017 with peace in my mind and heart, content while contrite. During the upcoming Memorial Day weekend in May, the significant other and I will explore further deepening of our relationship with a workshop retreat at a Carmelite Monastery in Niagara, Ontario Canada, enjoying Niagara Falls during the time. The workshop will be a daylong session of meetings and discussions on the topic of falling in love. ‘Thy Will be done’, yet my desired intent aims toward a romantic advancement centered within the Church. On the backburner, a September trip to Spain, accompanying my mother to her homeland, is being suggested and processed. I reflect upon this year’s Holy Week vacation with remembrance of the struggles immediately following Christmas of this liturgical year. I am convinced the struggles announced the end of my recovery years. Oddly, the explosion concretized the fact the recovery world no longer possesses a viable means of enrichment. The relapse was not significant for the happening; rather its importance signifies the end of an immersion in recovery world entanglement. It is done. I owe nobody, and to stay attached or involved in any regard is improper. Everything about the recovery world is abolished and removed. There is no doubt it is the will of God. I eliminated a haunting $1,500 debt from my Indiana years, liberating in its eradication, another sign that everything from my recovery years is obliterated. The religious life lingers in allurement, yet the normalizing through romantic commitment and the overcoming of personal issues stands supreme as a personal vocation, a call to mature stabilization. It will be whole heartedly and singularly pursued. My prayer life broadens alone at the Shrine, amassing hidden treasure. That comes easy. I need no one in that regard, nor do I answer to others. Within the maturity of making an authentic attempt toward a Catholic romantic relationship, an exercising of familial commitment, devotion, and sacrifice, my life fits comfortably; soothing and freeing as with the sporting of a loose garment. I have conducted quite a bit of work and expense in establishing my temporary home as a relaxed, refined, place of residency. It has worked to establish a heightened sense of significance to my private time; escalating with film appreciation (Bergman’s ‘Fanny and Alexander’ and Tarkovsky’s ‘Nostalghlia’ notable), reading, writing, and significant other cuddling time. I am writing fiction once again, encouraged by my Cuban political science professor friend to pursue academic efforts at John Carrol University. Innovatively, life appears to be opening up, inviting me in. I came across two words I explored in a recently posted poem: centrifugal and centripetal.

“The difference between centripetal and centrifugal force has to do with different ‘frames of reference,’ that is, different viewpoints from which you measure something,” according to Andrew A. Ganse, a research physicist at the University of Washington. If you are observing a rotating system from the outside, you see an inward centripetal force acting to constrain the rotating body to a circular path. However, if you are part of the rotating system, you experience an apparent centrifugal force pushing you away from the center of the circle, even though what you are actually feeling is the inward centripetal force that is keeping you from literally going off on a tangent.”

I will end with what I feel is a particular recent blessing. A fox has moved into my life, making its home upon my neighbor’s garage, meandering about my backyard daily. I am enamored with the beautiful creature, drawn in by its sense of peace and lazy living. I am mesmerized when I am able to sit at the window watching it calmly pass the time of day. God is good and all giving.

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Mar132017

Sunday within Lent

Saint Panteleimon the martyr and healer.

In the entry room, Silvester looked at Arseny, questioning.  Arseny knew that look very well but had not seen it before on a child.  He could not fathom what he should say to a child who wore that look. 

Things look bad, you know (Arseny turned away).  I feel pained that I cannot save her.

But you saved the princess, said the boy.  Save her, too. 

Everything is in God’s hand. 

You know, for God, it would be such an easy thing to heal her.  It is very simple, Arseny.  Let us pray to Him together. 

Let us.  But I do not want you to blame Him if she dies anyway.  Remember: she is likely to die. 

You want us to ask Him but not believe that He will grant this for us? 

Arseny kissed the boy on the forehead. 

No.  Of course not. 

Arseny made a bed for Silvester in the entryway and said, you will sleep here. 

Yes, but we will pray first, said Silvester. 

Arseny went to the room and brought out the icons of the Savior, His Virgin Mother, and the great martyr and healer Panteleimon.  He took to dippers off a shelf and put the icons in their place.  He and the boy knelt.  They prayed for a long time.  When Arseny finished reciting prayers to the Savior, Silvester tugged at his sleeve. 

Wait, I want to say it in my own words.  (He pressed his forehead to the floor, which made his voice sound more muffled.)  Lord, let my mother live.  I need nothing else in the world.  At all.  I will give thanks to you for centuries.  You know, after all, that if she dies I will be left all alone.  (He looked out from under his arm at the savior.)  With no help. 

Silvester did not fear for himself when he informed the Savior of these possible consequences: he thought of his mother and chose the weightiest argument in favor of her return to health.  He hoped he could not be refused.  And Arseny saw that.  He believed the Savior saw it, too. 

Then they prayed to the Mother of God.  Arseny glanced back when he did not hear Silvester’s voice.  Still kneeling, Silvester slept, leaning against a storage chest.  Arseny carefully carried him to the bed and prayed, now alone, to the healer Panteleimon.  At around midnight, he went in to begin taking care of Kesniya.  Eugene Vodolazkin ‘Laurus’

A review of the novel from The American Conservative by Rob Dreher

Last night, after midnight, I read the last lines of Laurus, a newly translated Russian novel by Eugene Vodolazkin, and thought it surely must be the most perfect ending ever. There is no way it could have ended any more perfectly or profoundly. And then I did what I have done nearly every time I’ve put this astonishing novel down over the last few days: I picked up my chotki (prayer rope) and prayed, as I was first taught to do in an Orthodox parish in the Russian tradition.

What kind of novel makes you want to enter into contemplative prayer after reading from its pages? I’ve never heard of one. But Laurus is that kind of novel. It induces an awareness of the radical enchantment of the world, and of the grandeur of the soul’s journey through this life toward God. It is so strange and mystical and … well, to call a novel “holy” is too much, but Laurus conjures on every page an awareness of holiness that is without precedence in my experience as a reader. Holiness illuminates this novel like an icon lamp.

A simple strange novel reviewed well.  The Russian influence continues to pervade my life.  Visiting the Lakewood Library, accompanied by the significant other, we happenstanced upon a musical show of a Russian folk musician, Oleg Kruglyakov, playing his balalaika.  The delightful man of simple charming disposition astounded with his skill upon the peasant three stringed instrument.  Wonderfully entertained, we sat mesmerized by the stories of Russia, the instrument, and the background of the songs Oleg played. The show complimented the powerful sacred performance of The Passion of John we witnessed the previous evening by the Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hasll.  Unfortunately, Oleg’s piano partner from Cleveland Heights was not there for the afternoon performance, although he did have taped accompaniment with her.  I spoke with the amiable man after the performance, sharing my new found love of Russian smoked salmon with him.  He vows to visit the Cleveland Heights Russian deli and meet his countrymen I praised so highly.  Enjoy the video, this man is a treasure, embodying the simple, while profound, heartwarming depth I am encountering in the novel Laurus.

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Mar112017

Saturday afternoon

Saturday morning relaxing, bed lounging reading: Archbishop Charles Chaput’s ‘Strangers in a Strange Land: Living the Catholic Faith in a Post-Christian World’ and Eugene Vodolazkin’s ‘Laurus’, while holding close upon the covers a short collection on Silence from a conference held by Camaldolese Hermits in Bloomingdale, Ohio.  A scriptural quote from the back of the hermit book: The Lord is good to those who expect Him, to the soul that seeketh Him.  It is good to wait in silence for the salvation of the Lord.  It is good for a man to bear the yoke in his youth.  Let him sit in solitude and silence, when He has laid it upon him.  Let him put his mouth to the dust.  There may yet be hope.  Lamentations 3:25-29.  The Laurus novel is a strange Russian story of a young boy growing in medieval times.  Prone to superstition, a lack of scientific knowledge, religious misunderstanding, as well as religious fervor, a keen mind, and pestilence, the orphan boy is raised and taught by his grandfather, a healer familiar with herbs and traditional ways of confronting physical ailments.  The grandfather is advised by an elder monk to take up his abode next to the local cemetery.  Due to the plague and an abundance of empty homes, the obedient grandfather/healer lays claim to a comfortable home bordering the cemetery, a rail fence the only thing between the home and the resting place of the deceased.  Advancing in companionship, love, and learning, the boy loses his grandfather as he grows into his teenage years.  Without his grandfather, the boy understands he is alone in the world, grappling while accepting.  Neighbors—patients and friends, offer the boy their home, yet he refuses, comprehending he could never abandon his grandfather’s home for it has become his home.  It is his grounding point upon the earth.  There is no place else he could go.  He instinctively and efficiently takes over his grandfather’s role as a healer, making a reputation for himself for having comforting hands, the ability to lay his hands upon people and ease their burdens.  I am locked into the novel at place where the solitary boy growing into a man has gotten himself stuck in a serious conundrum.  A ragged fellow orphan entered his world.  One night, desperate eyes emerged from the dark forest begging for food.  The boy offered the soft voice the comfort of his home, as well as food, yet the girl’s voice refused, warning him her village was wiped out by the plague.  She explained she was not worthy to enter anyone’s home, and even more if others learned she entered his home it would be condemned.  She warned him if others knew who she was she would be killed and her body burned.  She begged the boy to leave the food beyond the edge of his fire so she could retrieve it unseen and disappear.  The boy immediately walked to the girl and brought her to his fire, recognizing she was a small famished red head child.  He took the girl into his home, allowing her to bath, and afterwards feeding her, unable to take himself away from her once she fell asleep with food remaining before her.  Putting her to bed upon a wooden bench, the boy sat with the sleeping girl, and while sleeping she brought him into her embrace.  The boy fell asleep next to her, waking to the moist touch of tears.  Awake, the girl was staring at him, crying.  Blushing, he tried to remove himself from her, yet she protested, telling him he was all she had.  Fearfully, the boy would take the girl into his grandfather’s home, hiding her from everyone lest they discover her origin.  An unrelenting panic subtly overwhelmed his waking moments that he would lose his girl.  He shunned the church, the receiving of communion, becoming distant and absent minded in his duties as a healer, convinced he could not share with anyone the love of his life.  I have reached a point in the simple fictional story in which the girl has become pregnant, urging the boy to take her as his wife.  The boy declares he loves her above all things, that she is already his wife.  For the first time, the girl challenges him, declaring that his secret and possessive love is not enough.  She wanted to be his wife before God, the church, and all people.  The Russian story blends in well with my recent immersion within Russian culture, now evolving with the branching out of the Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr, immersed within his film ‘The Turin Horse’, a strange tale breaking off from the incident of Nietzsche falling into madness after an encounter with a peasant man beating his horse.  The film is a brutal tale of existence, a metaphysical blustery visual meditation on the harshness of life for a father and his obedient daughter.  The father is the owner and thrasher of the horse that ignited the curse of madness onto Nietzsche.  The story reflected upon my mind the Biblical old woman raising her grandson who Elijah came upon begging food.  “As surely as the LORD your God lives,” she replied, “I don’t have any bread–only a handful of flour in a jar and a little olive oil in a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son, that we may eat it–and die.”  Elijah would compassionately be moved, endlessly filling the woman’s jars with bread and oil, saving her son.  The reading time and musing time comes conveniently through the blessing of no work for two days.  Following a Saturday early morning Mass and Holy Hour at St Dominic.  A prayer from the session:

O Eucharist, source of charity made present at every Mass, form me into your image and into the image of your saints.
Open in my soul, “in spirit and truth,” a real and unfathomable love that seeks to grasp your sacrifice.
May I see in your sacrifice love, and may I respond to it in love.
May I not only know love, but may I begin to love as you love.
May I walk along the path of love that you have set before me, the path of progress, of development, of deep and strong growth.
May I see in your Eucharistic presence my most authentic and deepest Christian vocation of perfecting the image and likeness I was meant to be like, the image and likeness of you O Lord.
Help me to be a sign of unity and a bond of charity in a world so hostile, cold, and distant.
O sacrament of love, help me to fulfill the commandment of love of God and neighbor.
O Eucharist, source of charity made present at every Mass, form me into your image and the image of your saints.
Amen.

The woman orchestrating the Holy Hour establishes herself as a blessing; a distant, silent, beautiful woman providing companionship.  Her smile and nod of the head is properly invigorating, a sharing worthy to look forward to once a week.  It is enough.  I left work last night feeling confident, humble and proud.  I received an hourly raise of seventy-five cents last week, retroactive to the start of the year.  Providing nourishing pride, I am comprehending I am worth the money, standing behind my performance and who I am.  Something transforms inside, grace providing, allowing a strength within the lack of clarity regarding the future.  The significant other, although the term is used respectively and tenderly, is returning as a companion.  I am proud of her.  Over the last two weeks she conducted a Master Cleanse, fasting for ten plus days, demonstrating discipline and the corresponding consequences.  Furthermore, a brutal honesty emerged allowing a bottoming out, a confrontation of a momentous personal shortcoming demanding reparation.  Without the acknowledgement of hitting a bottom, we are only prone to fall deeper into another bottom.  There are always bottoms beneath every bottom.  We can spend a lifetime descending to lower and lower bottoms.  The only thing bottomless is death.  I am honored to assist in her immense progress, inspired by her acquired devotion to Our Lady Undoer of Knots.  A comforting companion, able to share in enriching entertainment, she has attained tickets through her employment for the Cleveland Orchestra tonight at Severance Hall, a performance of Bach’s ‘St John Passion’, with a preceding lecture on the work.  Our first experience at Severance Hall proved a meditative splendor with the enjoyment of the choral and musical piece ‘Sabet Mater’.  I expect nothing the less this evening.  Regarding companionship, the erroneous thought was placed before me that my recent struggle was to be a means of stagnation and the continuation of destructive ways.  Unable to even confront, weary of debating on levels that continually prove fruitless, I trust in patience and the grace of love to penetrate unknown regions.  Where there has been a shattering of trust, commitment, and devotion, the wreckage and ruin are only emptiness calling for the imagination to dally within nonsense.  I will only receive frustration pursuing.  When there was never the formation of trust, commitment, and devotion—a selfish void filling—when such holy things were properly laid before one, when these virtues were never advanced upon, rejected and refused, it is only obvious a delusion and inability to receive grace exist.  Regarding the latest, when there is such a misconception of truth, a severe lack of insight, a clear demonstration one cannot be open and willing—desiring to see through the eyes of God, then everything seems futile, an inevitable clash awaiting.  When grace is not providing understanding, sincerity is not enough.

Bella Tarr ‘The Turin Horse’

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Mar052017

The Carpenters

Interesting Saturday evening rekindling a friendship, a significant other comfortably sharing a quaint, unexpectedly gifted, night of entertainment.  We ventured to the University of Akron’s Edwin J. Thomas Performing Arts Hall to enjoy a night of tribute to the seventies phenomenally successful brother and sister duo The Carpenters.  Helen Welch, a charismatic English woman, put the show together, performing with a passion and devotion to a singer who greatly influenced her professional career.  The backing band of piano, drums, bass, and lead guitar struck enthusiastically upon proficiency and youthful zest.  We met Helen’s dignified husband manning a booth offering CDs before the show.  Waiting at the ticket booth, I overhead a woman mentioning she had a Groupon providing a discount of $10 per ticket.  I stepped out of line, investigating the savings, only to be disappointed to find the deal could no longer be purchased.  I made my way back to the ticket booth, finding no line and a surprise.  The ticket seller pushed two tickets at me, explaining they were just dropped off with the instructions to give them to the next purchaser.  Unclear regarding details, I told the seller I did not have that much cash, intending to use a credit card to purchase tickets.  I thought she offered a discounted cash deal.  She said no, they are yours if you want them.  I smiled, sharing my joy of saving fifty dollars with the significant other.  The show proved fascinating, excellent in performance.  I found myself reflecting on the influence of Karen Carpenter upon my childhood.  The woman’s voice hypnotized me as a child, soothing and drawing me into reflections upon romance and female companionship.  There was something wholesome, old-fashioned, and out-of-place.  Amidst the attraction, Karen was an embarrassment compared to the rebellious rock-n-roll influences attracting my childish attention.  It was a secret passion and mystery to listen as closely as I could to Karen Carpenter sing.  Helen Welch, aside from entrancing renditions, also provided biographical information on the Carpenters.  I felt she made an erroneous remark when she commented that when she first saw Karen singing ‘Rainy Days and Mondays’ she was stunned how young Karen was.  Helen was convinced it was not possible for someone so young and pretty to sing so authentically of suffering.  It was Karin’s talent alone providing such depth to the song.  I am convinced she misunderstood, underestimating human potential under the influence of grace.  Karin was a young woman of immense and intense humility, aware on an inner level that can only be attributed to grace.  There was something she was able to convey coming from the depth of her being, something she would never be able to apply to her life.  Her heart had something weighty to say that her life could not embrace.  Establishing unprecedented success as a singer, she never saw herself as a singer growing up.  Her brother convinced her to sing.  She was so shy and introverted they had to ply her out from hiding, pulling her away from the obstruction of her drum kit.  It was her desire to sing while playing concealed amongst her drums.  Exploding onto massive worldly success, her handlers and brother, who became addicted to Quaaludes, forced a horrendous schedule of constant touring.  Stripped of a personal life, she was truly a shy goofy girl deprived of the love she could so beautifully sing and define for others.  Her life was a tragedy and amidst tragedy God reigns supreme, interiorly influencing toward a greater love.  I have no doubt, openly admitting to a bit of romanticism, that the longing for love, the awareness of sorrow was graced upon the interior life of Karen during the tenderness of youth.  She was a young lady living with an abandoned heart; desperate, helpless, and alone on the spiritual level.  Under the roasting glare of the spotlight, she remained hidden.  God would foresee the terror of a soul longing so deeply for love, unrequited and alone upon the deepest levels—a woman who would starve herself to the point of death at the age of thirty-two.  What agony, confusion, and pain she must have known, while the grandeur of fame and riches meant nothing to her.  Detached upon a destructive and suicidal path, God had to be working on her to bring her to the understanding of genuine and everlasting love.  In her song, ‘I Need To Be In Love’, she sadly sings:

The hardest thing I’ve ever done is keep believing
There’s someone in this crazy world for me
The way that people come and go through temporary lives
My chance could come and I might never know

I used to say “No promises, let’s keep it simple”
But freedom only helps you say goodbye
It took a while for me to learn that nothing comes for free
The price I paid is high enough for me

I know I need to be in love
I know I’ve wasted too much time
I know I ask perfection of a quite imperfect world

And fool enough to think that’s what I’ll find

So here I am with pockets full of good intentions
But none of them will comfort me tonight
I’m wide awake at 4 a.m. without a friend in sight
I’m hanging on a hope but I’m all right

No Karin you were not alright.  Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more…God was calling you through the madness, drawing you into a deeper mystery, crucifying you through worldly success and the lacking of that what you held dearest.  God never allowed you to enjoy love, even within a failed marriage, holding you negligent in order to enfold you within an eternal love.  I pray it is not just my thoughts dallying in romance.

“Goodbye To Love”

I’ll say goodbye to love
No one ever cared if I should live or die
Time and time again the chance for love
has passed me by
And all I know of love
is how to live without it
I just can’t seem to find it.

So I’ve made my mind up I must live
my life alone
And though it’s not the easy way
I guess I’ve always known
I’d say goodbye to love.

There are no tomorrows for this heart of mine
Surely time will lose these bitter memories

And I’ll find that there is someone to believe in
And to live for something I could live for.

All the years of useless search
Have finally reached an end
Loneliness and empty days will be my
only friend
From this day love is forgotten
I’ll go on as best I can.

What lies in the future
is a mystery to us all
No one can predict the wheel of fortune
as it falls
There may come a time when I will see that
I’ve been wrong
But for now this is my song.

And it’s goodbye to love

‘ll say goodbye to love.

An enjoyable night of entertainment, light hearted and delightful in experience, while underneath a deeper mystery lingers. Karen every lyric you sing, I envision you aiming your words toward the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  It is interesting her brother Richard would marry a woman named Mary, enjoying five beautiful children.

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Feb272017

Alone within the body of Christ

Today I encountered a sparsely attended Mass, quiet afterwards, properness settling into worship. Yesterday’s bustle of celebration and socializing proved rewarding, yet within today’s aloneness and silence before the Eucharist my heart easily recognized where it draws its strength. During Mass, the religious sister sat close, behind and to the left, providing consecrated fellowship. My mind and heart felt peace from the festivities, thrilling in conversation, comfortable with mature companionship, and the icing on the cake being the Cuban poet/political science professor enthusiastically expounding on the Battle of Lepanto, Cervantes losing an arm, and the relevance of the Rosary. God is good and all giving, illuminating and enlightening. Tomorrow morning will be breakfast with the Russians, and the purchasing of another chunk of smoked salmon. An amusingly antagonizing priest, a liberal priest prone to poking and prodding the spiritual life of parishioners, one whose homilies usually center upon the failings of those who think they are the most committed to Christ, recently stressed the importance of finding God within all those who are in, have been, and will be in our lives. God has placed them there for precise reasons and to shun them, thinking we can go to God alone and within the depth of our prayer life is a grave mistake. A prayer: Father, I honor the Sacred Heart of Your Son. Brutally corrupted by my deeds, yet symbol of love’s triumph, pledge to all that I am called to be. Teach me to see Christ in all the lives that I touch, and to offer to My Lord living worship through love filled service to my brothers and sisters. I ask this through Christ Our Lord. Amen.

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Feb202017

Trust in God

There are reasons for posting this letter, as of now an undelivered letter.  The reasons will be held silent.  A trust in God is requested for those reading.

MAY THE LORD GIVE YOU HIS PEACE!

I have found myself contemplating this letter during prayer time before the Eucharist.  I am settling my life into a concentration upon accumulating cash in order to become debt free, worldly responsible and able to completely dedicate my life to prayer.  Presenting a timetable, I foresee at least a year, no more than two, regarding the financial endeavor.  I am focused upon a Carthusian community in Vermont, Charter House of the Transfiguration, a splendid mountaintop monastery.  The community proved inspiring during a recent visit, their charism fitting nicely.  They offered the vocation of a Donate, one who lives the Carthusian life, yet does not swear consecrated vows.  The terms were dictated by my advanced age of fifty-three years.  They are in aging community in need of assistance with manual labor.  The contemplative life graced with work endearing, caring for a mountain abode and its forest, appeals on the natural and spiritual level.  I will schedule another visit for the summer, extending at least a week.  The one aspect of their life a bit disconcerting is the lack of Eucharistic Adoration, a spiritual exercise fundamental to my established ways.  For the last two years, I have been exploring monasteries, also experiencing the Maronite Monks of Adoration in Massachusetts.  There is no possibility of exploring life with the community as they are strict on age limitations, convinced proper formation is not possible for one advanced in age.  Abbot William, an American founder of the Lebanese centered Church, has established quite a charming monastery calling forth the ideal type of contemplative life as I envision it.  Yet if one thing life has taught me, in my advanced years, is that my vision is not always acute.  I am convinced I must decrease in order for God to provide the proper increase.

During prayer at St Paul Shrine, the realization arose that I experienced a wonderful prayer life with the Franciscan Brothers Minor.  The community prayer always proved profound, the twice daily Adoration stellar in effect.  While visiting the Maronites, I met a man originally from Cleveland that I came to name John the Hermit.  We have continued in conversation, discussing many things, one of them being his short experience discerning with the Franciscan Brothers Minor.  He is far from a perfect man, yet his insight and commitment to a religious life has produced a fruitful mind.  We agreed the prayer life inspired greatly, while he informed me the community was becoming involved in brothers embracing the hermit life.  I have remotely stayed in tune with the Franciscan Brothers Minor, watching videos produced by the community, noticeably coming to mind the Marian series and the exhilarating adventure in Costa Rica.  Whose heart could not be lifted when comprehending the Franciscan Brothers Minor ventured into prophecy and the fulfillment of a two-hundred-and-fifty-year promise?

I would like to address the complexity of my departing and episodes after this time.  I returned for an apology to Father David Mary, yet there is more to be said.  I have grown immensely in self-awareness since my time of parting.  One of the things I have grown to understand about myself is a fierce anger brewing within me throughout my life.  I have been hard on myself, as well as others; inner-turmoil staining my adult life and thus bizarre and unstable behavior.  The outer man never came close to living up to the faith, hope, and charity of the inner man.  I have worked with a therapist extensively here in Cleveland, and I was working with a spiritual director.  We have drifted apart, yet as I move forward, I will approach the priest once again if the call demands.  I am committed to daily Mass, still centering myself at St Paul Shrine in Cleveland, a blessed cloistered community of Poor Clares dedicated to the Eucharist.  The sisters, and tending Capuchins, are deeply bonded in my prayer and social life.  This coming Sunday will be the birthday celebration of Father Roger, a Tanzanian priest who I have witnessed, experiencing his welcoming to the United States, and in the ensuing years establishing a solid priest to lay person relationship.  I am humbled, proud, and honored to cater his fiftieth birthday party at the Shrine, a gathering in which Father Roger will share slides of his family and hometown he procured during a summer visit.  He is a humble, quiet, simple priest, sound in formation, genuine in maturity; an effective priest penetrating in his spiritual direction.  Father Roger will serve as an excellent reference.  Today after Mass, I supplied him with written information, providing guidance toward the new video series ‘The Service of Authority and Obedience’, suggesting the lectures by Father David Mary, Brother Joseph Maria, and Brother Fidelis Maria.  I will have much more to say about Brother Fidelis’ presentation.

I am confident of my personal development, patient with myself, while brutally honest in appraisal.  There will be no emotional apologies, nor heart rending promises.  I am who I am and with the ugly comes some good.  God must be trusted.  The anger I feel is dissipating more and more from my life.  I am a work in progress.  The self-knowledge shapes what I have come to see as my charism, the refinement of myself through prayer and obedience.  I recall once, Father David Mary conceding that I could enjoy a life with the friars without becoming a speaker, relinquishing the idea I would ever be able to lecture or inspire with spoken words.  To him it was shrouded with possible disappointment for his extroverted ways could not fashion a religious life without being an impressive personality to others.  Judgmental and vindictive as I was, I thought NO that is not my call to be a public speaker, a celebrity in my own mind.  God calls me to a contemplative life of prayer—that is without a doubt.  In fact, life with the Brothers Minor exhausted me as I was not ready for all the evangelizing and socializing.  Psychologically there was too much healing to be conducted.  Our lady Undoer of Knots had her hands full with me.  Her novena has become a regular routine within my efforts toward peace.  I was not ready for the public life the Brothers Minor placed me within.  The Carthusian way of life appeals profoundly; wooing my heart with words such as the greatest spiritual gift we can give one another is silence.  Yet where I only found conflict and judgement within the community of Brothers Minor, negating the fact the prayer life created an inner presence I have never come close to duplicating, I turn my focus upon Brother Pio, soon to be Father Pio.  I always sensed there was extreme grace forming his life, combined with the natural passion, dedication and discipline that would allow him to excel in the religious life.  I was always convinced he was going about his formation impressively.  I contrast my failures with his success, witnessing and learning.  Where I saw such a stark black and white contrast, unwilling to concede or make peace with the extroverted life, I now submit to grace.  I have no desire or call to do great things, or to be an impressive personality.  I admire the fact the Carthusians, an order producing holy anonymous religious men, are proud of the fact that never once did a Carthusian rise to the papal office.  That takes mature contemplation to comprehend.  It is an order dedicated to not doing great things, and this is a call difficult to embrace; the exercising of a deep trust in God, while not conceding to the heresy of the Quietist.  I reflect upon the words of Brother Pio in his lecture in the ‘Service to Authority and Obedience’ that a holy life calls forth action, that to stop at contemplation is not completing the mission.  Anyway, I am convinced the act of non-doing, silence and a simple hidden life of anonymity, labor, and prayer—the life of St Joseph, cannot be discounted as improper action.  However, it is not a matter of me being right, rather an opening of myself to Divine Will.  I seek a community to allow further development on an inner and outer level, also understanding I am older and set in ways I do not even comprehend.  The Maronite vocational director stressed this nicely in his explanation that the formation they sought to instill within a man was not conducive to one advanced in age.

I would like to end this video focusing on the lecture of Brother Fidelis.  First though admitting to personal weakness.  There was a part of me, the cynical neurotic individual seeking the worst in others, who started viewing the videos with the wicked intent of exposing selfishness and incompleteness, individuals focused upon themselves rather than a greater glory—a preoccupation with reputation, an obsession upon legacy, the pursuit of one’s self—a lack of penetrating self-knowledge.  Through repeated viewings, it was myself who was deconstructed and broke down.  There was no doubt of authenticity.  It became obvious the Holy Spirit was working through the Brothers Minor, gracing immense wisdom and knowledge—attained through committed proper study and preparation, and the gifted means to articulate the message.  I listened to Brother Fidelis’ lecture while driving to communal Adoration prayer at St Paul Shrine on Saturday afternoon, already having conducted an early morning Mass and splendid Holy Hour at St Dominic church in Shaker Heights. It was an unseasonably warm day, the sun shining bright, perfect driving weather.  Starting about the twenty-fourth minute of the lecture, traveling upon the highway, a dreamlike sharpened sensitivity overcame me as Brother Fidelis words pierced and penetrated. I knew God wanted me to hear these words, to comprehend them, and be open to them, BE OPENED—EPHPHATHA, to take them in and process them for the sake of strengthening. Condemnation, or trivial knowledge amassing, was NOT the point.  Within love and healing, God graced an awareness these words were important to my future.  The underdeveloped male he quoted Dr Conrad Baars identifying was the story of my life. I accept this, understanding God has been lifting me through this throughout the last decade.  I have been and am working on an undeveloped psychological state of being, an emotionally deprived individual, for whatever reasons, a man lacking the ability to receive affirmation.  I am convinced grace is the key to unlocking, rather than a deep personal analysis and deep preoccupation with self-dissection.  Possibly trivial yet I believe not, I would like to comment that Brother Fidelis seemed to point to the authoritarian structure of the Church, since the Enlightenment, as the critical factor in deforming men, specifically priest, yet I am convinced by this time the men have already been psychologically formed.  The psychology of an individual is established during the formative years as a child and teenage years.  Possibly, he is saying the strict and individual stifling manner of the Church’s in forming priest was not able to provide the proper means of healing priest raised in the modern world.  The important thing I drew out of the revelation is that with the advancement of time, the passing of years within an ever-increasing secular, materialistic, and pop culture oriented world, men are enduring severe psychological trauma.  Men of all walks and ranks are being psychologically damaged.  In regard to living a holy and happy life the results are devastating.  I was moved when Brother Fidelis pointed out that many of the under-developed priest who managed to perform their duties could not engage as joyful, deeply fulfilled men.  Interiorly, something was amiss, distance and coldness presented when interacting.

I witness my father, the son of a German union truck driving alcoholic, a volatile bombastic man.  He suffered through the separation of his parents around the age of three, moving with his critically ill mother to an idyllic Ohio farm of his maternal grandparents, only to be ripped from the farm once his mother died and my grandfather showed up claiming custody with his new young wife.  A horrible custody battle would ensue.  May God rest his soul, my father, a good and loving man, proper in heart, yet brutal in temper, was inflicted with an internal rage.  Those raised as his children would assimilate the pent-up anger erupting during private moments as normal behavior.  Underdeveloped men are becoming more and more prevalent, while becoming prolific—fathers raising sons, as well as priest tending to the flock of Christ.  The sins of the father are unconsciously inherited.  I, myself, have raised a son, comprehending I have done damage, yet God is good and all giving.  Only through grace has my son become a good man, an engineer with a master’s degree, capable and growing in experience in his professional life, while sober, moral, and conscientious in his personal life.  Spiritually, he observes, trending toward an open mind, the embracing of teachings focused upon individual transformation, the name Eckhart Tolle he mentions often.  I am proud of my son, grateful for the glory of God.  My mind goes to the words of Brother Fidelis identifying the proper lesson of a superior teaching obedience.  The superior must, in order to be efficacious, ‘teach the obedient one to be conscious of his existence, leaving the anonymity of the technical secular world, to know themselves as they are, to be known as a unique individual created in the image and likeness of God, to be esteemed and loved’.  I truly feel my call is to become a psychologically developed man, able to love God according to the grace endowed thus joyfully share that love with his fellow man, breaking the bonds of personal imperfections and the effects of being raised and living within the Culture of the Provisional—a world committed to self-pursuit, misguided comfort and ease: the childish ways of man.

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