SpiritMatters Monthly September 2010

From Ghoulies and Ghosties,

And Long-Leggedy Beasties,

And things that go Bump in the Night,

Good Lord, Deliver us.

 

The earth doesn’t spin perfectly around the sun; it wobbles. Sometimes the Northern Hemisphere is pointed toward the sun, sometimes the Southern. Our seasons of spring, summer, fall and winter are the direct result of this cosmic hokey pokey that our planet does on its annual dance around the sun. The September equinox marks a transition and for those of us in the Northern hemisphere, it means that our days will be getting increasingly shorter for the next few months. As much as I love the fall with its cooler temperatures and beautiful color, I must admit that I find the decreasing daylight to be a bit of a bummer. In the ancient and medieval world, losing daylight was far a far more threatening reality than it is to us. With electricity and artificial light we are able to control our environment in ways that people a few generations ago could never have imagined, but without such conveniences the fall can appear much more sinister indeed: Increasing cold, increasing disease, and increasing crime as the long, dark night provides cover for all manner of illicit activity. We often fear things that lurk in the shadows: the unseen and unexpected creatures and villains that leap out at us unexpectedly. It is no accident that a festival like Halloween comes at such a time in the year when it seems like the darkness has the upper hand; when the night is longer and we can see less of what is going on around us. But while we spend so much time worrying about things that we cannot see, faith is there to remind us that not every invisible force is a foe: in fact, we are told that in the realm of the unseen there are more powerful creatures fighting for us than against us.

 

A few days after the official transition from summer to fall (the autumnal equinox or September 23) comes a feast that at one time was of great importance and a holy day of obligation: the Feast of Saint Michael the Archangel. This festival is sometimes referred to as Michaelmass or the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels, and it celebrates a figure that is referred to in the Hebrew, Christian and Islamic Scriptures. Michael’s image is easily recognizable as he is traditionally depicted much differently than any other angel: we usually see Michael armored for battle with a sword in one hand and a serpent under his foot. This is no blushing cherub with a halo; this is a soldier and it’s for this reason that Michael is the patron of police officers and members of the armed services, but Michael is meant to be more than just a medal worn around the neck for good luck. Michael should remind us that in the midst of our daily anxieties, when we are worried about all the things lurking in shadows that seem bent of destroying us, that there are also forces working to protect us as well and often they are equally unseen. While in art we often see angels depicted as being bright, glorious and a bit showy, making dramatic announcements or blowing a trumpet; the reality seems to be that more often than not angels work behind the scenes with little or no credit.

 

Perhaps the Feast of Saint Michael comes at a very opportune time for those of us in this part of the world. As the night gets longer we can choose to become increasingly afraid of every bump in the night; terrified of the dangers that are hiding just beyond our sight; or we can go to sleep and rest easy, believing that regardless of what may be trying to get us, there is a force far more powerful that is determined to save us.

Blessings,

Fr. Kevin

SpiritMatters Monthly July 2010

Martha, Martha

 

I am very busy these days. I have more work to do with less help and less time. I have too much paperwork; too many appointments and too many meetings to go to. When I get home there is housework to do, yard work to do, social and family obligations, church services, etc. I could continue to go on about how busy I am but you probably wouldn’t have time to read it, because you’re busy too. It’s a funny little irony that while talking about how busy we are sometimes makes us feel special; it actually proves that we are just like everyone else. The fact is that we all have busy lives, but nonetheless our “busy-ness” is one of the first excuses we all (myself included) grab for whenever we are trying to justify why we didn’t do something: I was just too busy; there aren’t enough hours in the day; I didn’t have the time… Let’s face it, being too busy is a tired excuse and we should put it to rest. Being busy has nothing to do with our modern world either: humans have more free time now than at any previous point in our history. Why then are we all so task-oriented? Perhaps it’s because being task-oriented is sometimes easier than being people oriented. Our jobs and chores demand our time and skill, but little else: “busy work” does not place the same emotional demands on us that “people work” does. It can be very easy, especially when working in the healthcare or service industries, to see other people as more occasions for work, and not as human beings with emotional and spiritual needs just like you and me. It can be convenient to make people into objects: to turn them into numbers, or DRGs or food trays, but doing so not only cheats them of the respect they deserve, it also cheats us of the rewards that come with knowing and serving other people. No matter how much time and emotion you put into your work, it will never love you back and it will never thank you. Only people can do that.

 

There is a familiar story in the Gospel of Luke which has Jesus visiting the home of two sisters: Martha and Mary. While Mary was content to sit at Jesus’ feet and listen to him, Martha was totally preoccupied with all of the various chores associated with house guests. When Martha complained to Jesus that her sister wasn’t helping her he responded by saying: “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.” I think we all have a tendency to become worried and distracted by the many tasks in our lives. Our “busy-ness” pulls us further and further away from being present with and to our fellow human beings. Mary chooses the better part because she chooses to be in the moment with Jesus, fully present to him. Mary doesn’t see this visitor as merely another mouth to feed or more work to be done, she sees him as a blessing in her life that deserves her full attention. While so much of what we work for in life ultimately proves to be momentary and fleeting, the time that we spend with others is never wasted, because those memories and experiences can never be taken from us.

We all have work to do, some of it very important and necessary work indeed, but our work should draw us closer to the people in our lives and the people we serve; it shouldn’t distract us from them. I will probably continue to be busy for the foreseeable future; so will you. But being busy is much more tolerable when you are constantly reminded of who and what you are working for. The work we do has so much more meaning when it has a human face.

Blessings,

Fr. Kevin

 

SpiritMatters Monthly June 2010

A child said “What is the grass?” fetching it to me with full hands;

How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.

 

A few years back there was a trend in this country of grocers selling ‘corn-fed beef’ as a premium item. A couple high-end retail outlets sprang up to distribute this supposedly superior meat to those willing to pay for it. While corn-fed beef is still available and quite prevalent in many supermarkets it is no longer as prized as it once was and now ‘grass-fed beef’ is considered the preferred choice. Why did this trend shift? The answer is surprisingly simple:

 

Have you ever seen a cow shuck corn?

 

The answer is obviously ‘No,’ because cows aren’t naturally designed to eat corn. Cows are designed to eat grass. Corn actually makes cows sick and feedlots compensate by giving their cows antibiotics and other drugs. The organic food movement has brought attention to the negative effects that our attempts at “improving” much of our food have had on our health and the health of our environment. In our struggle to find a better cow feed we overlooked the solution that was right under our feet: grass.

 

In the 1300s a Franciscan friar by the name of William of Ockham proposed that the simplest solution is usually the best one. Scientists refer to this as Ockham’s Razor. We humans have a tendency to complicate things more than necessary: not just with our food, but in our daily life and work. We make our lives harder than they need to be. Maybe we are restless or ambitious; maybe we are so distracted by our own complex lives that we fail to see the beauty in simplicity. Humans are extremely smart, and yet we constantly find ourselves outwitted by nature.

 

Manhattan is a complex world of new experiences and pleasures and one can find just about every conceivable sort of entertainment on that island, but pick any sunny June day and what do you find hundreds of thousands of New York City residents looking for?: a patch of grass. Whether it’s the Sheep Meadow in Central Park or the Christopher Street Pier, people flock to find a temporary spot on the grass. We may not always think about it, but it is amazing how restorative living grass can be when we spend so much of our lives on dead concrete.

 

Walt Whitman was fascinated with grass. He looked at grass and saw not just a simple plant, but a sign that the earth was alive. In his poem “Song of Myself” Walt writes:

 

What do you think has become of the young and old men?

And what do you think has become of the women and children?

 

They are alive and well somewhere,

The smallest sprout shows there really is no death,

And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,

And ceased the moment life appeared.

 

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,

And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

 

This summer as we are moving the lawn, sunbathing, playing sports or picnicking, may we see beneath our feet a sign of our world’s life and our creator’s power…and may we be fed by it.

Blessings,

Fr. Kevin

SpiritMatters Monthly May 2010

This mystery of Love be sung,

In every age, by every tongue.

 

Every year at 5a.m. on May the 1^st a very unique tradition takes place in the University town of Oxford, England. That morning, known as May Morning, the choir from the chapel of Magdalen College (pronounced “Maudlin”) climbs to the top of its medieval bell tower and sings a hymn to the rising sun. This tradition dates back at least 500 years and is now the occasion for great revelry and festivities in the street below Magdalen College tower.

 

 Not many colleges or universities can point to traditions that are over 500 years old, but every school has traditions that it clings to with an almost religious zeal. So often the world thinks of young people as being anti-establishment or anti-tradition, but take a walk on any college campus and you are sure to find scores of young adults eagerly participating in traditions that range from the mundane to the bizarre. In New Haven, Connecticut there is a statue in the middle of Yale University’s old campus with a golden toe, polished by being constantly rubbed by students for good luck; at Dartmouth University the winter’s first snowfall each year is celebrated by a snowball fight on the college green; this year almost every college and high school commencement ceremony will begin with the familiar tune “Pomp and Circumstance.” When life is filled with change and turmoil, as the lives of many young adults are, it can be very reassuring to have something stable and dependable to hold on to. Perhaps it is for this reason that it is common to refer to our school as our “alma mater,” which is Latin for “nourishing mother.”

 

Our schools, like our mothers, should protect us, build us up, and give us the skills we need to survive in a tumultuous and changing world. We also refer to “mother church” for much the same reason: because it is there as a reliable source of love and encouragement when the rest of the world is more fickle with its affections. Our mothers’ are responsible for teaching us many of the traditions that we turn to for comfort later in life. Whether our traditions are taught to us by mother school, mother church, or our real mother, they are our connection to the past and our legacy to the future. The Church remembers three special mothers this month: Mary, Elizabeth and Monica. For catholics, the month of May is dedicated to the Virgin Mary (arguably the most famous mother of all) and the Feast of the Visitation recalls her visit to the home of her cousin Elizabeth, who was soon to become a mother herself. One wonders what traditions and what elements of character these two women transmitted to their sons. We often talk about the “fathers” of the Church, people like Saint Augustine of Hippo, who spilt ink and sometimes blood defending the faith, but the fact that Augustine was a Christian at all is directly the result of the persistence of his mother Monica. Receiving out faith at the hands of our mothers is not just a Christian phenomenon either: in the Jewish tradition, one is considered Jewish if they are born to a Jewish mother. Like our traditions, our mothers connect us to the past and give birth to our future; they are a reminder that we are not floating alone in some soulless cosmos, but are connected physically, emotionally and spiritually to the world around us. The Magdalen College choir sings an ancient song on May Morning, which gives thanks to the Holy Trinity for the gift of the Eucharist, which in Christian theology fills us with God’s life; may we too give thanks this May for the sources of life and love in our own lives.

Blessings,

Fr. Kevin

SpiritMatters Monthly April 2010

Rejoice and sing now, all the round earth,

Bright with a glorious splendor,

For darkness has been vanquished by our eternal King.

I began last April’s column with a quote from T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland.” This year I am inspired again by Eliot, who writes in his poem “Little Gidding”:

 

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.

 

Here we are at the beginning of April and the beginning of Spring, a time when we like to celebrate new life, the warmth of longer days and the beauty of new flowers that seem to be blooming everywhere, and yet, I can’t help but feel that this April may feel more like an end for some than a beginning. Some endings are welcome. I, for one, am ready for Lent to be over and I could do without the cold weather for a while, but some endings are much harder to bear. Whether it is the end of a career, a relationship, or a life, it can be incredibly difficult at times to remain optimistic and hopeful when something that has given our life great meaning is now coming to an end.

For most Christians, the first three days of April this year coincide with what is called the Sacred Triduum, or the three holy days: Maundy (or Holy) Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. For Christians these days are focused on the contemplation of the end: specifically the end of the life of Jesus of Nazareth: his last supper (Thursday), his execution (Friday), and the liminal time of mourning and waiting for what was coming next (Saturday). For the followers of Jesus, those three days represented not only the death of someone that they truly loved, but also the death of their hopes and dreams for what he would do in their own life. Looking back on the event 2000 years later, we can see that what was at first seen as the end of one life, was also the beginning of something far more powerful and greater.

 

The end is where we start from. The future can be such an unknown and scary thing sometimes; the past which may not have always been happy, is at least familiar to us. But life never allows us to remain forever the same: our careers change, our relationships change and our bodies change. The challenge of faith is to see in all these changes not just an end, but also a new beginning. Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote that: “All that I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all that I have not seen.” The Easter Vigil, which is a service that many Christians participate in on Saturday night, consists of many readings which retell stories of miracles and grace from the Judeo-Christian scriptures. It is easier to have faith in the future, if we can remind ourselves of how we have experienced God’s grace in the past.

In your own life, what sorrowful endings turned out to be blessed beginnings? When has an unwanted or unfortunate change brought about something truly wonderful? I can recall many times in my life when God has placed me where I needed to be, not exactly where I wanted to be. Each time the change may have been difficult, and even painful, but ultimately I can look back and see in every ending the beginning of something new.

The Easter Vigil service begins in total darkness, which is appropriate since after a dramatic change or loss in our lives we may feel lost or in the dark, just as those first followers of Jesus did, but it doesn’t end that way; it ends in total and glorious light, symbolic of the hope that our lives do not end in darkness, but rather, in the light of something new and wonderful. May you be blessed by the ability to see in every ending, the seeds of a new beginning.

 

Rejoice and be glad now, Mother Church,

And let your holy courts, in radiant light,

Resound with the praises of your people.

 

Blessings,

Fr. Kevin

SpiritMatters Monthly March 2010

I bind unto myself the power,

Of the great love of cherubim….

March 17^th is a day that lives in infamy for most Americans. It is a day that, regardless of their ethnic heritage, Americans revel in everything Irish: Irish food, Irish music, and in particular, Irish Beer. Our modern celebration of St. Paddy’s Day has about as much to do with Saint Patrick of Ireland as Valentine’s Day has to do with Saint Valentine. In Ireland, March 17^th is regarded as a holy day of obligation, wherein the faithful are expected to go to church to give thanks for this their country’s patron saint, but in America the celebration takes on a much more secular nature. What is amusing to me, is that Saint Patrick, whose feast day is now used for celebrating Irish cultural and national pride, was in fact (drumroll please)…BRITISH! The great irony of Saint Patrick’s Day, is that just as so many of the revelers in the streets on March 17^th haven’t got a drop of Irish blood in their veins, neither did the man in whose name they are celebrating.

Saint Patrick was born around the year 390 in Northern Britain and when he was in his early teens he was captured by a band of Irish slave-raiders, taken to Ireland and forced to serve the Irish as a slave for many years. Eventually Patrick escaped and returned to Britain, where he was later ordained as a priest and as a bishop, but freedom was not enough for Patrick. Patrick had a vision that compelled him to do something with his new found freedom. What did he do? He returned to Ireland, to the place where he had been enslaved and sought to minister to those very same people that had once held him captive.

Patrick’s story is one of the greatest examples of the power of forgiveness. Saint Patrick didn’t return to Ireland seeking revenge or restitution, he sought reconciliation and he got it. Kings flocked to Patrick; people followed him about all over the countryside; legends were formed and tales of miraculous deeds began to spread. What is unfortunate though is that while the little miracles brought Patrick fame, the biggest miracle in his life was largely overlooked. Patrick’s faith was the most important thing in his life; it was the greatest treasure he had, and he chose to offer that not to his friends or family or even to his own countrymen; he chose to offer it to his enemies, the same people that had once persecuted him. Patrick did one of the hardest things for any human to do: he forgave his enemies. Now that is truly a miracle.

Anyone well versed in modern Irish history knows just how much animosity there is between England and Ireland and this animosity exists for good reason. People always have good reasons to resent their enemies, otherwise they wouldn’t be enemies. Saint Patrick had many reasons to resent and hate his Irish overlords, but he found a force more powerful than reason: love. Love compels us to do the most unreasonable things sometimes, like forgiving those who have hurt us.

I for one intend to celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day, not because I have Irish ancestors, but because his life is a reminder that cultural and national pride should never come before our love for our fellow man. Remember that, like Patrick of Ireland, the person who has the most to teach you about who you are just might come from the enemy camp.

Blessings,

Fr. Kevin

SpiritMatters Monthly February 2010

Dust thou art,

And unto dust shalt thou return.

A couple weeks ago I was walking through Union Square when I happened upon a young man putting the final touches upon a huge sand mandala that he had made on the sidewalk. Sand mandalas are a Tibetan Buddhist tradition whereby colored sand is used to create a large circle or wheel with extremely intricate designs within it. I have seen sand mandalas made several times. The first time was by a team of Buddhist monks that spent an entire week painstakingly placing sand grain by grain into the pattern. It is amazing to see just how careful the monks are with their work and sand mandalas are usually amazing works of art, but they are not merely art. This is a beautiful creation with an important lesson to teach. As soon as the sand mandala is finished it may be ritually blessed and then, much to the horror of many onlookers, it is swept away. Sand mandalas are meant to be an object of great beauty for only a moment and their destruction emphasizes the Buddhist belief in the transitory nature of the material world. The used sand is scooped up and poured into a nearby river never to be used again. Regardless of how beautiful or complicated this piece of art appears, its creator always reminds us that it is made from the same stuff we sweep off our floors everyday: sand. After looking at the young man’s mandala for a few moments, I went on about my business. By the time I had returned from getting a cup of coffee at a nearby café, the mandala was gone, with scarcely a trace that it had ever been there at all.
Of course, you don’t have to be a Buddhist to recognize that the material world is fleeting. Every year millions of Christians mark their foreheads with ashes as both a sign of penitence and as solemn reminder of their mortality. The ashes are all that remain of the palm branches from Palm Sunday the previous year. The palm branches, which to Christians are a reminder of Jesus of Nazareth’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, are completely burned until there is nothing left but carbon. This carbon is then pressed upon a person’s head with the memorable words: “remember that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.” It is a stark reminder that human life, no matter how complex or intricate it may be, can like that sand mandala be swept away in a moment.
The sand and the ashes are not just meant to remind us that life is short though: for the Tibetan Buddhist the sand designs are meant to portray eternal spiritual realities and the pouring of the sand into the water is meant to bring healing and blessing into this world, for the Christian the ashes are a sign of belief in an eternal world beyond this physical one and they are a reminder that what we do in this temporary world matters in that eternal one. Both the sand and the ashes are physical symbols of an important spiritual truth: life is about more than the stuff it is made out of. Beautiful things may fade away, or be swept away, but beauty never can. May we be able to appreciate the beautiful things in our life, but never lose sight of the true eternal beauty which lies behind them.