Buechner Quote on the "Company of Saints"

At the Altar Table the overweight parson is doing something or other with the bread as his assistant stands by with the wine. In the pews, the congregation sits more or less patiently waiting to get into the act. The church is quiet. Outside, a bird starts singing. It’s nothing special, only a handful of notes angling out in different directions. Then a pause. Then a trill or two. A chirp. It is just warming up for the business of the day, but it is enough.

The parson and his assistant and the usual scattering of senior citizens, parents, teenagers are not alone in whatever they think they’re doing. Maybe that is what the bird is there to remind them. In its own slapdash way the bird has a part in it too. Not to mention “Angels and Archangels and all the company of heaven” if the prayer book is to be believed. Maybe we should believe it. Angels and Archangels. Cherubim and seraphim. They are all in the act together. It must look a little like the great jeu de son et lumière at Versailles when all the fountains are turned on at once and the night is ablaze with fireworks. It must sound a little like the last movement of Beethoven’s Choral Symphony or the Atlantic in a gale.

And “all the company of heaven” means everybody we ever loved and lost, including the ones we didn’t know we loved until we lost them or didn’t love at all. It means people we never heard of. It means everybody who ever did – or at some unimaginable time in the future ever will – come together at something like this table in search of something like what is offered at it.

Whatever other reasons we have for coming to such a place, if we come also to give each other our love and to give God our love, then together with Gabriel and Michael, and the fat parson, and Sebastian pierced with arrows, and the old lady whose teeth don’t fit, and Teresa in her ecstasy, we are the communion of saints’. – Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark: An ABC Theologized (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988), 30–1.

“Money is numbers and numbers never end. If it takes money to be happy, your search for happiness will never end.”

Bob Marle

To sing is to begin a sentence
like “I want to get well.
I am not born for nothing
and neither are you:
Heaven never wept
over nothing."


~ Thomas Merton
from an untitled poem

I believe in Thich Nhat Hanh's theory of inter-being. I believe we are transformations of the energy of the universe. I don't believe in a god as a puppeteer. The universe is like the sea, we are the drips, and life and death is like the waves. When our body dies, our energy goes back to the sea. So death is an illusion.

"Nature to a saint is sacramental, If we are children of God, we have a tremendous treasure in Nature. In every wind that blows, in every night and day of the year, in every sign of the sky, in every blossoming and in every withering of the earth, there is a real coming of God to us if we will simply use our starved imagination to realize it."------- Oswald Chambers



"All my life has been a relearning to pray---- a letting go of the incantational magic, petition, and the vain repetition "Me Lord, me," instead watching attentively for the light that burns at the center of every star, every cell, every living creature, every human heart."------Chet Raymo

[Cited in tthe book"Water, Wind, Earth and Fire" by Christine Valters Paintner

Man begins in zoology
He is the saddest animal
He drives a big red car
Called anxiety
He dreams at night
Of riding all the elevators
Lost in the halls
He never finds the right door

Man is the saddest animal
A flake-eater in the morning
A milk drinker
He fills his skin with coffee
And loses patience
With the rest of the species

He draws his sin on the wall
On all the ads in all the subways
He draws mustaches on all the women
Because he cannot find his joy
Except in zoology

Whenever he goes to the phone
To call joy
He gets the wrong number

Therefore he likes weapons
He knows all guns
By their right names
He droves a big black Cadillac
Called death

Now he is putting anxiety
Into space
He flies his worries
All around Venus
But is does him no good

In space where for a long time
There was only emptiness
He drives a big white globe
Called death

Now dear children you have learned
The first lesson about man
Answer your test

"Man is the saddest animal
He begins in zoology
And gets lost
In his own bad news."


.
~ Thomas Merton
from The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton

A Pueblo Indian Prayer

Hold On...



Hold on to what is good,
even if it's a handful of earth.

Hold on to what you believe,
even if it's a tree that stands by itself.

Hold on to what you must do,
even if it's a long way from here.

Hold on to your life,
even if it's easier to let go.

Hold on to my hand,
even if I've gone away from you.

I came across this Franciscan blessing/benediction, and the words just spoke to my heart as an encouragement of what I want and should be praying for, seeking, and desiring in my own life. I so much want to follow God’s heart for justice, live for Him, and live out what this blessing speaks about. I hope you too will be encouraged by the words of this blessing…



May God bless you with a restless discomfort

about easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships,

so that you may seek truth boldly and love deep within your heart.



May God bless you with holy anger

at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people,

so that you may tirelessly work for justice, freedom, and peace among all people.



May God bless you with the gift of tears

to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, or the loss of all that they cherish,

so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and transform their pain into joy.



May God bless you with enough foolishness

to believe that you really can make a difference in this world,

so that you are able, with God’s grace, to do what others claim cannot be done.



Here is a slightly different version of the blessing…



May God bless us with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships, so that we may live deep within our hearts.

May God bless us with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that we may work for justice, freedom, and peace.

May God bless us with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, hunger, and war, so that we may reach out our hands to comfort them and turn their pain into joy.

And may God bless us with enough foolishness to believe that we can make a difference in this world, so that we can do what others claim cannot be done, to bring justice and kindness to all our children and the poor

The sea is everything.

It covers seven tenths of the terrestrial globe.

Its breath is pure and healthy.

It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely,
for he feels life stirring on all sides.

The sea is only the embodiment of a supernatural and
wonderful existence.

It is nothing but love and emotion;
it is the Living Infinite.


~ Jules Verne

Faith exists only where it is possible to doubt.

Merton's Epiphany

In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut,
in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly
overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people,
that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien
to one another even though we were total strangers.

It was like waking from a dream of separateness,
of spurious self-isolation in a special world,
the world of renunciation and supposed holiness.

This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was
such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud.

I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which
God Himself became incarnate.

As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could
overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are.
And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained.

There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around
shining like the sun.

At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched
by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs
entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes
of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind
or the brutalities of our own will.

This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is
the pure glory of God in us.

It is so to speak his name written in us … like a pure diamond,
blazing with the invisible light of heaven.

It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions
of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that
would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely.

I have no program for this seeing. It is only given.
But the gate of heaven is everywhere.


~ Thomas Merton
Shining Like The Sun

. . . when you die, you are grieved by all the atoms
of which you were composed.

They hung together for years,
whether in sheets of skin or communities of spleen.

With your death they do not die.

Instead, they part ways, moving off in their separate directions,
mourning the loss of a special time they shared together,

haunted by the feeling that they were once playing parts in
something larger than themselves, something that had its own life,

something they can hardly put a finger on.


~ David Eagleman

Say What?

"For me it is the Virgin birth, the Incarnation, the Resurrection which are the true laws of the flesh and the physical. Death, decay, destruction are the suspension of these laws."

-----Flannery O'Connor
(Cited in "Things Seen and Unseen" by Lawrence S. Cunningham)