Sunsets through church windows produce little visions!!

The Angel on the Creche


The Sun in My Office



Sanctuary Light

Henri Nouwen on “Ministry”

One of the things I like to say is that if you are living in communion with God and in community with people you cannot do other than minister. Ministry is not something you do next. I have a terribly hard time with ministry as something that consists of techniques you have to apply. Ministry is the overflow of your love for God and for your fellow human beings. Someone said to me, “ministry is when two people toast their glasses of wine and something splashes over. Ministry is the extra. The question is not, “How do I bring all of these people to Jesus, or how do I make these people believe, or how do I now do the hard work of ministry?”

Jesus never did much ministry. Jesus spoke what his heart was full of. And anybody who touched him was healed. He didn’t sit people down and diagnose them, or say to them, I can help you but I can’t help you.” People touched him and were healed. He was even wondering what was happening. You cannot but minister if you are in communion with God and in community with other people. People want to know where your energy comes from. They get the overflow. It’s not something that requires professional credentials. Ministry isn’t something you do for certain hours during the day and then you come home and relax. Who knows? Ministry might happen while you are relaxing.

…The whole incarnation thing, God-with-us, Emmanuel, is first of all being with people… Ministry is being with the sick, the dying, being with people wherever they are, whatever their problems.

That is the mystery of ministry. You can’t solve the world’s problems, but you can be with people.


(“Parting Words”)

"O Sacrum Convivium" by Messiaen

Original Latin (punctuation from Liber Usualis)

O sacrum convivium!
in quo Christus sumitur:
recolitur memoria passionis ejus:
mens impletur gratia:
et futurae gloriae nobis pignus datur.
Alleluia.

Translation of original Latin

O sacred banquet!
in which Christ is received,
the memory of his Passion is renewed,
the mind is filled with grace,
and a pledge of future glory to us is given.
Alleluia.

Mobile#2: "The Invasion of Light"

A piano composition for Advent, 2008.

The Coming Invasion

"Somewhere between the darkness and the light. That is where we are as Christians. And not just at Advent time, but at all times. Somewhere between the fact of darkness and the hope of light. That is who we are.

'Advent' means 'coming' of course, and the promise of Advent is that what is coming is an unimaginable invasion. The mythology of our age has to do with flying saucers and invasions from outer space, and that is unimaginable enough. But what is upon us now is even more so--- a close encounter not of the third kind but of a different kind altogether. An invasion of holiness.That is what Advent is about."

---Frederick Buechner

Watch and Wait

"Watch". That is the last word of today's Gospel for the First Sunday of Advent. As November turns to December, I am watching the evening rain turn to snow.

Wait.The cliche in the Midwest: "If you don't like the weather, just wait." I believe that is the message as seasons, both calendar and liturgical---physical and spiritual--- change and move on: times are always changing, nothing stays the same.

We talk much of the cycle of the seasons ("the circle game") and compare it to a carousel. But we never return to where we were. Neither the earth nor its creatures are the same as one year, or ten years, or a century ago. Some changes we attempt to fashion ourselves, usually at the expense of great energy and frustration. The profound changes are the ones that come to us unannounced, as the Gospel says, in the night. Watch!

Wait! But not passively, but with attention to the signs and symbols around us. {In between the passing clouds tonight, the moon, Venus, and Jupiter are forming a rare triangle in the sky.)Watch!



Yes, the seasons form a circle. But it is not a carousel, but more like a helix, a circular staircase. Always moving, but both up and down?

We breath Advent in. We breath Advent out. We wait. We watch.

The Sweet Season

This illustration graphically depicts the meaning of Advent. Again and again Christ is portrayed in the liturgy as the rising Sun. The comparison is a good one, for there is nothing that can quite equal the power of the sun's rays to quicken, warm, and bless. Man, whether considered individually or collectively, is represented by the city of Jerusalem (to which he is often compared), which awaits its Redeemer and will reach the zenith of its development only on His arrival. Mary is represented as the lily because of her Immaculate Conception, as the morning star out of which rises the Sun of Justice, and as the one who crushes the head of the serpent.

Rossini's "Petite Messe": " Kyrie" and "Agnus Dei"

Gioachino Rossini's Petite Messe Solennelle was written in 1863, "the last", the composer called it, "of my pêchés de vieillesse" (sins of old age).

The witty composer, who produced little for public hearing during his long retirement at Passy, prefaced his mass—characterized, apocryphally by Napoleon III, as neither little nor solemn, nor particularly liturgical— with the words

"Good God—behold completed this poor little Mass—is it indeed sacred music [la musique sacrée] that I have just written, or merely some damned music [la sacré musique]? You know well, I was born for comic opera. Little science, a little heart, that is all. So may you be blessed, and grant me Paradise!"




At first listen, i dismissed it as a curiosity, but I've grown to enjoy the complete mass. I also like how unpretentious the piece is compared to other "sacred" compositions of the time. Much like Rossini's attempt at bargaining for "Paradise."
[note: if you're buying it, make sure you get the non-orchestra arrangement.]

Sometimes you wonder,e.g. the "Crucifixus", whether Rossini knew or cared what the words meant. But other moments are precious, like this "Agnus Dei"

Autumn, and there's a leaving in the air

I thank you God for this most amazing day,
for the leaping greenly spirits of trees,
and for the blue dream of sky
and for everything which is natural,
which is infinite,
which is
yes..

e.e. cummings

Spring has its hundred flowers,
Autumn its moon,
Summer has its cooling breezes,
Winter its snow.
If you allow no idle concerns
To weigh on your heart,
Your whole life will be one
Perennial good season.




...from The Golden Age of Zen

Buddha envisions.
Abraham embraces.
Mohammad inscribes.
Christ embodies.

The "Day of the Dead" Altar at St. Nick's

The people of my past walk beside me, not behind me,
singing their songs to remind me
of who I was and what I once called home---
to point me to the future that is mine alone.
They stay not far away.
But it's up to me to control
the hold they have on my soul.


There is something fitting and more than coincidental that this year we turn the clocks back, in recognition of increasing hours of darkness, on the feast of All Souls, or "Dia de los Muertos." The whole "hallowed eve" rite,I am told, had to do with entering the "dark half" of the year. The Celts who depended so much on knowledge of seasons, paid great reverence to light and darkness. In the morning, the men would doff their caps to the rising sun, and in the evening the ladies would bend a knee to the moon on the horizon.
As the great Welshman Dylan Thomas urged, "Rage! Rage against the dying of the light!"

In our age we have done everything we can to push back darkness... ugly artificial lights are everywhere, in a kind of florescent purgatory, we being the poor souls, afraid of the dark.

The Body is Womb to the Soul

After a lot of reading and a lot of quiet time, I've started to put down in words how I feel about things. This is the first installment.

The Womb

“You do not have a soul.
You are a soul. You have a body.”
------C. S. Lewis

The body is the womb of the soul.
What could be simpler?
Death is the birthing of the soul.
Okay, maybe a little too simple.
But suppose we lived by that premise;
Would we put the care and well being of the soul
At the top of our list?

Or would we continue behavior detrimental to this growing being?
(e.g. War
e.g Insincerity
e.g. ignorance
e.g. Anger
e.g lack of compassion )

My actions affect the growth of my soul.
So I must continually ask,
“What are my intentions?”
Greed or Generosity?
Hate or Love?
Delusion or Wisdom?
Joy or Bitterness?

“What will be the effect of my actions?”
Even if well-intentioned, will I do harm or “further harm”?
Will I merely say what others want to hear?
Will I make promises that cannot be kept?

The task of this life---- and it can be a pleasant one -----
is to nurture and prepare the soul for the next step,
the birthing of the soul into a next reality.

Maybe reality is a multi-layered onion---
different existences sometimes intersecting.


What I love about “God” is god is not necessarily or always, but maybe sometimes, a person. God is life-source and life force. I live my life feeling that “heaven” is not a space that I might go to, but the unity and harmony that underlies and connects everything. Even Jesus states that the kingdom of heaven is inside us and among us. Heaven is among us now and evolving along with us.

I don’t live thinking a punishing hell awaits anyone, although detours along the soul’s journey----e.g. having to learn the same lessons over and over again--- could delay us, if our souls are not ready to continue.

Because we are all souls, and to the extent that we recognize each other as souls, we seem to share common instincts or spiritual drives. These are themes that have appeared throughout history in all forms of Literature, Art, and Music, as well as most religions:


We are aware that our bodies and “this life” are finite, but also sense that, as souls, we are infinite.

We feel a unity, a commonality, a bond, with the rest of creation. We feel we are “all in this together,” and try to treat each other as we would be treated. At the same time, we feel a separateness, an alienation from others. We feel we are “on our own.”

We feel a completeness, but also a “homesickness for a place we’ve never been.” We have a natural feeling of lost innocence and a drive to move forward to revisit that innocence.

These drives seem to be opposed to each other. What’s more, we usually feel these conflicting instincts at the same time.

At times, I feel more alienation than community, resentment and anger instead of generosity and good will. I keep working to balance things out.

I have not been too occupied with the details and dogmas of particular religious
groups. Frederick Buechner reminds us that the details don’t matter. Whether no one saw the Resurrection or a million did, whether the nativity happened one way or another, doesn’t matter… Christ is being resurrected everyday in each of us. He is being born everyday. Mary, and all of us, are being asked to bring Christ into the world everyday. Instead of looking backward and saying “How did this happen?”, it might be better to ask, “How is this happening now?”

As a missionary sister recently told me, “There’s The Old Testament and The New Testament, but just as important, there’s The Now Testament”.


Quite simply----and what could be simpler than a children’s song?------what I’ve been thinking about is in the song, “Happy Soul”, which I wrote for my grand-nephew and is posted below:

Happy Soul

A "children's song" for Andrew "Happy Soul" Martin

The most beautiful people are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.



Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

"To love it, and be glad to belong to it..."

“In every truth the opposite is equally true. For example, a truth can only be expressed and enveloped in words if it is one-sided. Everything that is thought and expressed in words is one-sided, only half the truth; it all lacks totality, completeness, unity…
But the world around us is never one-sided. Never is a man wholly a saint or a sinner.

The world is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment; every sin already carries grace within it, all small children are potential old men, all sucklings have death within them, all dying people----eternal life.
It is not possible to see how far another is on the way.

Therefore it seems to me that everything that exists is good---- death as well as life, sin as well as holiness, wisdom as well as folly. Everything is necessary.

I learned through my body and soul that it was necessary for me to sin, that I needed lust, that I had to strive for property, and experience nausea and the depths of despair in order to learn not to resist them, in order to learn to love the world, and no longer compare it with some kind of imaginary world, some imaginary vision of perfection, but to leave it as it is, to love it and be glad to belong to it.”

----------------From "Siddhartha" by Herman Hesse

40 Hours at St. Nicholas of Tolentine

photographs by Fr. Roger Corrales Diaz

"Our hearts are heavens
And our eyes are light-years deep,
Sounding Your will, Your peace, in its unbounded fathoms:
Oh balance all our turning orbits,
Upon the center and level of Your holy love:
Then lock our souls forever in the nucleus of its Law."


----Thomas Merton



[painting: Jasper Johns, "The Diver"]

Prayers by the Lake - XIX - by St. Nikolai of Zicha

XIX

Amidst the racket and ridicule of people my prayer rises toward You, O my King and my Kingdom. Prayer is incense, that ceaselessly censes my soul and raises it toward You, and draws You toward her.

Stoop down, my King, so that I may whisper to You my most precious secret, my most secret prayer, my most prayerful desire. You are the object of all my prayers, all my searching. I seek nothing except You, truly, only You.

What could I seek from You, that would not separate me from You? Should I seek to be Lord over a few stars, instead of reigning as Lord with You over all the stars?

Should I seek to be first among men? How shameful it would be fore me, when You would seat me at the last place at Your table!1

Should I seek for millions of human mouths to praise me? How horrible it would be for me, when all those mouths are filled with earth.2

Should I seek to be surrounded by the most precious ob¬jects from the entire world? How humiliating it would be for me for those objects to outlast me and be glistening even as earthen darkness fills my eyes!3

Should I seek for You not to separate me from my friends? Ah separate me, O Lord, separate me from my friends as soon as possible, because they are the thickest wall between You and me.

“Why should we pray,” say my neighbors, “when God does not hear our prayers?” But I say to them: “Your prayer is not prayer, but peddling merchandise. You do not pray to God to give you God but Satan. Therefore, the Wisdom of heaven does not accept the prayers from your tongue.”

“Why should we pray,” grumble my neighbors, “when God knows what we need beforehand?” But I sadly answer them: “That is true, God knows–that you need nothing except Him alone. At the door of your soul He is waiting to come in.4 Through prayer the doors are opened for the entrance of the majestic King. Does not one of you say to the other at your door: ‘Please enter’?

“God does not seek glory for Himself but for you. All the worlds in the universe can add nothing to His glory, much less can you. Your prayer is a glorification of you, not of God. Fullness and mercy are to be found in Him. All the good words that you direct to Him in prayer, return to you twofold.”

O my illustrious King and my God, to You alone I bow down and pray. Flood into me, as a raging stream into thirsty sand. Just flood me with Yourself, life-giving Water; then grass will easily grow in the sand and white lambs will graze in the grass.

Just flood into my parched soul, my Life and my Salvation.

Herman Hesse, on "Trees"

"For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the forces of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals it’s death wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk, in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal tress grow.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought. I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.

A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labour is holy. Out of this trust I live.

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one’s suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts. Trees have long thoughts, long breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness."

Flowers for God

by Fr Sergei Fudel (1901-77), married Russian priest, bearer of light and love for the Church during and beyond his years in prison and exile at the hands of the Communist régime:

People who believe in God in their own way, yet do not believe in the Church, often say, "Does God really need all this ritual? Why do we have to have all these formalities? We only need love, beauty, and humaneness." A man, on his way to the woman he loves, seeing flowers, buys them or picks them and brings them to her, never stopping to think whether this is a formality or not. Yet this is the very concept of church ritual.

Love for God gives birth to the beauty and humanity of the ritual, which we lay, like flowers, at the feet of God. Faith is love, and the essence of Christianity is to be in love with God and to feel that the Church is His body which has remained with us and lives with us on earth. This feeling expresses itself in actions which we call ritual.

However, if only external and dead action remains, then such action will be sterile and self-deceptive, not only in Christianity but in any sphere of human life, even in science. This truth should be clear to everyone.

Formalism and sanctimoniousness is not Christianity. Each one of us has to move along this long and narrow way from non-Christianity to Christianity, from artificial flowers to live ones.

"In a world full of so much ugliness, liturgy should be a rest for the soul, a repose where the soul can breathe.

Beauty is not aestheticism. It is not an aim in itself. It is a glimpse of God's glory. We shouldn't stay with a glimpse . . . because people are thirsting for beauty and for what they rightly feel is behind beauty: the glory of God revealed to us.

Heaven opens in liturgy. Beauty in liturgy costs time, love, care, commitment. We must take time for preparing the liturgy, looking for the beauty of the flowers, the songs, the space, the incense, the candles. All this has nothing to do with pure aestheticism, but it is an expression of love.

The faithful can tell whether or not there is the love of God in a church. My experience is that wherever you have a beautiful liturgy, people come. People are attracted, and rightly. We should not say that this is only a superficial attraction.

Beauty is one way to God. It should never be separated from goodness and truth. Beauty without goodness is not beauty; so love for the poor has to be cultivated together with love for beauty -- and, of course, with love for the truth."

-----Cardinal Schonborn

Mathis Gruenwald

I'm taking a break from all my verbalizing, to show some images. Gruenwald(1480-1528) is justifiably remembered for his rather "grue-some" depiction of Christ's crucifixion. These two images I find quite powerful: "The Resurrection"(above) and "The Agony of St. Anthony"(below.)



(extra credit: do you know how St. Anthony is linked to L.S.D.? Clue: "St. Anthony's Fire.")

As a child rests in its mother's arms, so I rest in you...

A Psalm of Darkness, Silence and Despair

"I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry"

Hear that lonesome whippoorwill?
He sounds too blue to fly.
The midnight train is whining low:
I'm so lonesome I could cry.

I've never seen a night so long,
When time goes crawling by.
The moon just went behind a cloud,
To hide its face and cry.

Did you ever see a Robin weep,
When leaves begin to die?
That means he's lost his will to live.
I'm so lonesome I could cry.

The silence of a falling star,
Lights up a purple sky.
And as I wonder where you are,
I'm so lonesome I could cry.
I'm so lonesome I could cry.


By Hank Williams, noted psalmist, performer, and martyr for his faith

the line, "...the silence of a falling star lights up a purple sky..." is pure gold!!

A Time to Listen

"Psalms are answering the God who has addressed us. God’s word precedes these words: the prayers don’t seek God, they respond to the God who seeks us.

Presumptuous prayer speaks to God without first listening... You cannot breath out what you have not first breathed in."

----Eugene H. Peterson

In about a month, we will have another "40 Hours Eucharistic Celebration" at our church. You might remember that last year we decided to revive this ancient practice that fell by the wayside in recent times. With the consecrated host(we call it "Jesus") enshrined on the altar for all to see, it is a time for some group prayer, but mostly individual, private, quiet prayer. We keep the church open day and night for 40 hours
and encourage people to stop in for quiet prayer whatever the time.



During this next month I hope to have people consider silent prayer. Our congregation is a talkative, group-oriented bunch, and some think meditative prayer is only for monasteries. So don't be surprised if I use this space to collect thoughts on this.

"Be still and know that I am God."

"I will come to you in the silence."

There was a quote somewhere about the ultimate in contemplative prayer: to be able to hear God listening to us.

The website for the celebration is stnicksfortyhours.blogspot.com and I hope to post some of the group prayers
in mp3 form so you can listen in -------or just be silent with yourself!!

"Abandon the search for God and the creation and other matters of a similar sort. Look for him by taking yourself as the starting point. Learn who it is within you that makes everything his own and says, "My God, my mind, my thought, my soul, my body." Learn the source of sorrow, joy, love, hate. Learn how it happens that one watches without willing, loves without willing. If you carefully investigate these matters, you will find him in yourself."

Hippolytus (c.170-c.236)
quoted in "A History of God" by Karen Armstrong

Karen Armstrong: "A Charter for Compassion"

What religion was supposed to be about, and why it should be spread around the world (21 minutes.)



As she accepts her 2008 TED Prize, author and scholar Karen Armstrong talks about how the Abrahamic religions -- Islam, Judaism, Christianity -- have been diverted from the moral purpose they share to foster compassion. But Armstrong has seen a yearning to change this fact. People want to be religious, she says; we should act to help make religion a force for harmony. She asks the TED community to help her build a Charter for Compassion -- to help restore the Golden Rule as the central global religious doctrine.

Words Needed for Today and the Future

"The history of the church is littered with the shells and remnants of purist and separatist movements, as is the world. From Babel to Utopia, from the Zealots to the Taliban, from the House of Shammai to the Sanctified Brethren — such efforts to lift and separate more often fall and dissipate. The church will always be a hospital for sinners, a field strewn with weeds and wheat; it is not the task of one sinner to judge another, nor the task of anyone to weed the field. We are instead called to grow and bear fruit — and it is the fruit that will be gathered in the harvest, not the stalks, be they weed or wheat."

Tobias Haller (BSG) is the vicar of St. James Episcopal Church, Fordham. The above quote is taken from his excellent blog, "In a Godward Direction", which really takes one inside the divisions of the Anglican community. Tobias is also responsible for the "Nunc Dimittis" music and video that you can link on this page on your left.

Who I Pray For

Sometimes while doing what I call praying, after remembering those near and dear, living and deceased, as well as praying for a world of cruelty coming apart at the seams, and, of course, loading up on personal needs and desires, I just sit quietly for awhile, and passing images of people appear.

I.
Early one Saturday morning before dawn, I was leaving my building to go to work. Walking through the lobby, I saw through the glass front door two young men walking by, looking behind them and laughing----sneering, really. Nothing special, I thought, just refugees from the four o’clock bars. I see a bunch of them every Saturday morning.

Stepping out onto the sidewalk, I looked first to my right and then to my left. There I saw a woman in her early twenties, bent over the sidewalk, picking up clothes and other personal belongings that someone had thrown into the street from a window up above, and putting them into the backseat of her car that had the motor idling.

She looked up and saw me looking at her---for just an instant--- then we both averted our eyes. Fortunately for her discomfort and mine, my cab came quickly. But her eye contact, like an electrical charge, stayed with me the rest of the day.

Even though it was more than twenty years ago, I went through the same low point, coming “home” to find my belongings out on the street. I know the embarrassment, the humiliation, the anger, the sadness---all the while knowing the neighbors and strangers passing are watching the whole scene. I will never forget that moment and neither will she.

II.

Several years ago, a girl who had been a student in our grade school for the entire eight years and was in her freshman year in high school, suffered a heart seizure and died while jogging in her gym class: Just fourteen years old and gone. The pastor and I officiated at the wake at the funeral home, the ritual that begins the process of saying good bye to a loved one and, hopefully, helping with a bit of healing.

Standing up in front by the casket, the priest prayed and read from scripture, while I chanted psalms of the wisdom and mercy of God’s providence. The family, seated in the first row, huddled closely together, attempting to be strong for each other. At the end of the row, next to the family, sat a thin, fragile girl, also a freshman, who was the deceased’s best friend-----judging from the fact that the two were in nearly every photo in the collage at the funeral parlor, life-long friends. She was devastated and literally shaking. We made eye contact ever so briefly. She had the look of a frightened, trapped fawn or young rabbit, perhaps. The next day, at the funeral, she sat at the end of the first pew with the family, right next to the casket. Fourteen years old and your very best friend is taken from you.

I think of that young girl often, wondering if she’s managed to put her life back together and what she thinks of the wisdom of God.

"There must be always remaining in every life, some place for the singing of angels, some place for that which in itself is breathless and beautiful."


Howard Thurman

Now Playing!!!:

My new psalm for solo voice on Thom P. Miller Music

Matter Matters

“In the beginning was the Word,” writes John in the prologue to his gospel. And all things have come into being through the word… It is not as if the elements of the universe are fashioned out of a neutral substance. It is not as if creation is set afire from afar. The matter of life comes forth directly from the womb of God’s being… The whiteness of the moon, the wildness of the wind, the moisture of the fecund earth is the glow and wildness and moisture of God now. It is the very stuff of God’s being of which we and creation are made.”

J. Phillip Newell
“Christ of the Celts”

The Gull, The Kite, and Joe Gula

This morning I was sitting on the rocks by Lake Michigan, phasing in and out of some kind of praying. I watched a gull float by---what an easy metaphor for the brain to use when considering the spirit.
Behind me, on the grassy area of the park, a young couple was laughing, trying to get a kite up in to the wind. I remembered my friend Joe Gula, deceased now several years, who had an annual kite-flying party for relatives and friends of all ages, complete with awards and prizes and certificates for everyone for some kind of achievement or another.

As I thought of him, with the kite in the air and the gull hovering nearby, I wondered if I had somehow "contacted" or "awakened" the spirit of Joe. I know this is stretching it,( and I agree with George Carlin, who passed away the other day, that it would be a lousy eternity for the dead to have to lie around watching the living all the time),but I also somehow believe that what made Joe "Joe"---- how his eyes lit up when a young nephew or niece got their kite airborne for the first time---did not die with the body or ceased to exist.

Recently I watched a video on memory and the brain. It showed the mind making all sorts of electical connections in different hemispheres of the brain to summon up images and emotions and information needed to "remember"----- just the way the circuit board of a computer gathers data, even though we didn't know these things about the brain when the computer was designed. (One could say humans intuitively designed computers in our image, without even knowing it. Tell me again in whose image was creation made?)

Is it not possible that the gull and the kite and Joe Gula lit up more than just the connections in my mind, but perhaps coinciding switches in another level?
Just asking...

Hello, Joe. Look at that kite!

"Happy are those who shall see you,
and those who have fallen asleep in love,
for we too shall have life."

Don't Lose It.

Cleaning House (or at least clearing a path to the door)

We've been sorting through and cleaning out the old family house. If you are familiar with this process, you know that at times you have more of a mess on your hands than you started with. My prayer life and spiritual thinking has reached that point. What a mess! I stand, as it were, in the middle of the muddle, not knowing what to do first. I wanted to address some basic issues of belief, but more and more issues came out of the cupboards and closets of my religious upbringing.

I am reminded of a poster I had in my dorm room in college that said,"When you are up to your butt in alligators, it's difficult to remind yourself that your original objective was to drain the swamp."

But some thoughts have come to the forefront:

The holy presence of "God" and "heaven" and the "communion of saints" is inside us and around us NOW--- not up in the sky, or far away, waiting for us in some future time. It has something to do with the life and light all of us creatures
have in common and share, and when we acknowledge this common bond we are closer to "God" and "Holiness."

Alot of this clutter comes when I try to decide if the Spirit is this or another thing that people say it is, when,as I wrote earlier,God can be all of those things or none or something entirely different. My thinking tends to become clearer when I decide to Let God be God. Let God define God. Isn't that what we pray in the "Our Father": "thy kingdom come, thy will be done..." In other words,"Go ahead. Be God."

Because we humans have been given, or have deveopled, a self-awareness, we have a capability and a responsibilty to examine the intentions of our actions and the outcome of our behavior. INSTANT KARMA!

There's also alot of boxes marked "dopey dogmas" and "Theologians covering their butts" and a huge crate devoted to "imagined sins, original and not so" that are unnecessary baggage and are ready for the dumpster.

At Last, A New Psalm!

Thom's Psalms #10 mixed voices

"Waves of Grace"

"Waves of Grace"
(Thom’s Psalm #10)
To the Educational Community of St. Nicholas of Tolentine
(so full of Grace.)

Grace is the energy needed for miracles;
Grace flows from gratitude, so thank the Lord.

Be grateful, be gracious to those whom we must look after,
Be graceful, be grateful, and serve all with joy and laughter.
For where there is laughter, miracles are close by.
Gratias Tibi! Miracles are close by!

Grace is the energy needed for miracles;
Grace flows from gratitude, so thank the Lord.

Seldom we see the miracles all around us, that surround us.
But gracefully does God move, and quietly does God speak.

So blessings on you, sons and daughters of God,
The world is full of grace.
Blest is the one whom you bring to the world,
Jesus Christ.
Gloria Tibi! The kingdom of God is near!

Grace is the energy needed for miracles;
Grace flows from gratitude, so thank the Lord


Mariagnes Menden, Soprano

Thom P. Miller
June, 2008

"Welcome to your soul. You have an infinite number of new messages."

I believe that faith is a series of questions not a set of answers. People who were upset at Mother Teresa's last book in which she was open about the doubts and questions in her spiritual life, were missing a very important point: doubt is a strong component of faith.

But I can't just say, "I doubt it", or "Who can know?" and leave it at that. It is important to search our souls and study our environment for insight and meaning. Humans---it would appear out of all creatures---- have self-awareness and consciousness. There must be a reason.

As Rabbi Heischel said: "Man is the messenger who has forgotten the message." I have this feeling that my soul has "call waiting", and I need to retrieve those messages.

I'm hesitant about stating to others my spiritual beliefs. First, I can’t prove I’m right and neither can they, so why involve ourselves in “un-edifying” conversations? Second, and more troubling to me, is that people should know what I believe by the way I live.

When I first considered that, it stopped me cold. If I went up to people who I interact with regularly but have never discussed religion with, and asked them,
"Judging from how I act and live my life, what would you say are my beliefs?", what would they answer and how happy would I be with the responses?

If I say I believe in a God who loves the poor, why aren’t I doing more about the shameful poverty in my own city, on my own street? If I claim God in present in nature, why do I allow it to be so mistreated? If I say my God is one of charity and concern and healing, why do I treat people with impatience, disdain and disrespect?

In the old days this used to be called "examination of conscience". I think I'd better check in with my soul. There's a call waiting.

"The New Outline of Your Body..."

"Give us grace in our changing day
to stand by the temple that is the present church,
the noisome temple,
the sometimes scandalised temple that is the present church,
listening sometime to what again seems mumbo jumbo.
Make it our custom to go
till the new outline of your body for our day
becomes visible in our midst."

---------George Macleod (1895-1991)
Founder of the modern-day Iona Community

Corpus Christi