Organic untidiness

Today's date had no particular significance, but Kirstin's memory was so strong and I felt the grief so acutely that I wondered briefly if I would be overwhelmed by it. I don't know if it is ironic or a contradiction or whatever, but although I have never seriously doubted the existence of God, I have often battled with faith in the afterlife for myself. You could argue I suppose that the possibility of doubt is a necesssary element for the existence of faith... I don't know?

When I was down in Canberra, I wondered what my uneasiness at the city was and perhaps on one level, the city was too perfect, too ordered and thereby not beautiful. Canberra is a planned city. Planned by human beings and ordered to a tee, but it somehow lacks the beauty of a Cape Town or a Sydney. Man's constructs are always somehow poor imitations of God's. So a neat patio shade is cooler than the direct sun, but not as cool as the shade of the 'messy' tree with its random leaves that allow for a breeze. While we try in our vanity to construct a perfect social world that tolerates and promotes all evils in the name of human freedom, we end up with a legal system that teaches tolerance of and independance from each other. It is a system that seperates us by destroying our accountability to each other and thereby undermines the morality that connects us. It promotes indifference to the actions of the other and contradicts the very foundation of love which is care for the other. Legislation is a poor substitute for morality. When our spirit / soul, however you choose to define it, recognises a pattern that underlies a seemingly unrelated conflagaration, it is that, that suddenly resonates within us. Art, like creation, may be deliberate and ordered when it is being created, but the order is intrinsic not extrinsic and its very nature that defies intellectual / quantification or description, somehow communicates meaningfully and deeply with our humanity. Even though our life experience and backgrounds may be completely different, this is testament to our shared human nature. The randomness and spontanaiety within which beauty is most often found, is an unexpected that delights the soul. It is the difference between contrived intellectual constructs and Creation. The one reveals nothing about either the builder or the observer. The second reveals both the Creator and the one who encounters Him.

Indifference or hate vs love?

Amidst our search for a parish to settle down for the next year, Carmen and I are trying to balance our need for spiritual care and nourishment with the desire to minister in some way and join the parish that we could most be of benefit to. Apart from that little 'admin'task, I am struck by how Godless this place seems to be. Not evil as I would view some parts of Europe. But Godless in their indifference. That theory to which I have always subscribed on an intellectual level: that the opposite of love is not hate but indifference, will be tested for me here in reality. My gut reaction and this is only a knee jerk reaction, is that perhaps I was wrong. When people are indifferent, at least they can be won over by an event / example of a person's life that shows them or puts into relief the emptiness of their lives. Whereaas hatred on the other hand, creates a wall or more accurately blinds people to truth and hardens the heart. I don't know? It seems such a huge effort is needed to first break down that wall before inner conversion can begin. I don't know if I can choose yet which is the lesser of 2 evils? I only know that God's presence seems to burn more starkly in relief against evil than negelectful indifference. Indifference somehow seems more hopeless in its 'passionlessness.' Not sure?

Preaching

Society today really does not like been reminded of when they are doing evil, like shipping off jobs to third world countries so that they can exploit them unseen to maximise profits, killing babies or old people. They say Christians, or the Church when they criticise these evil deeds and the evil people that do them are being judgemental. But it is the duty of the leadership of our Church to do so and our task as well in the exercise of our ministry even as laity and we share in the work entrusted to the ministerial priesthood and those entrusted to their care. Perhaps one of the the best models of this ministry that I have seen is in Psalm 50. I runs around 10 paragraphs and 8 of those lays out the necessary ongoing conversion and correct order of the Christian sinner's ministry and then in 2 paragraphs demonstrates that although this process is always ongoing, our own sinfulness as ministers should not paralyse us to confront the evil and evil doers in the world. This is because we are not presenting ourselves as the model for the way our world should be, but God. This imago Dei is fundamental to both the Old and New Testaments: We are called to love because we have been loved first. I think it is a beautiful and rich model for the priesthood, diaconate and even lay ministries. I have not included the whole psalm here, but the core verses to give the gist:

Have mercy on me, God in your kindness.
In your compassion blot out my offence.
O wash me more and more from my guilt
and cleanse me from my sin.

My offences truly I know them;
my sin is always before me.
Against you, you alone have I sinned;
what is evil in your sight I have done.

Indeed you love truth in the heart;
then in the secret of my heart teach me wisdom.
O purify me then I shall be clean;
O wash me I shall be whiter then snow.

A pure heart create for me, O God,
put a steadfast spirit within me.
Do not cast me away from your presence,
nor deprive me of your holy spirit.

Give me again the joy of your help;
with a spirit of fervour sustain me,
that I may teach transgressors your ways
and sinners may return to you.

O rescue me, God my helper,
and my tongue shall ring out your goodness.
O lord, open my lips
and my mouth shall declare your praise.

The Christian paradox

In my other blog, I wrote about how on the loss of Kirstin, we stood in raw grief before the God who had given her life and then claimed her back and it occurred to me that to an unbeliever, that must really come across as odd. It is a paradox, no getting away from it, but it is not a contradiction. Many writers have spoken about pride been at the source of all sin and our response, as human as it is, in the face of death is no different. We ask why? Assuming for a minute that there was an answer we could fully understand, what does that do? Does it comfort us? Does it undo the tragedy? Does it restore anything at all? No. But it gives us a sense of control. Most human events of significance prompt the questions: How did this happen? and then: Why did this happen? And often a host of people saying: We will get to the bottom of this! We will ensure it will not happen again! And this is a good thing - safety measures are put into place and prevent unnecessary future tragedies. But at its most basic, it is an attempt to control the future. So when death comes and we, as humans are faced with an event we cannot control or prevent, we flounder around and get angry. Perhaps we even think: 'if I was God, I would've done this or that.' We almost cannot stand knowing our own impotency. And yet it is not only useful, it is a necessary element of our Christian humility that we know this part of ourselves - our utter dependency. Yes we are Spirit-filled, etc. but all of this power comes from God within, not from within our own selves. And so surrender becomes a prayer of letting God be God. The prophet Habakkuk in that well known canticle really put it starkly and challenges us by his example:

For even though the fig does not blossom,
nor fruit grow on the vine,
even though the olive crop fail,
and fields produce no harvest,
even though flocks vanish from the folds
and stalls stand empty of cattle,
Yet I will rejoice in the Lord
and exult in God my Saviour.
The Lord my God is my strength.
(Habakkuk 3)

Background

Perhaps before I reflect on some ethical issues, I should give a few indicators of sentiments that have informed my position with regards to the post modernist world that rather simplistically abdicates responsibility for ethical deliberation. The Princeton sociologist, Robert Wuthnow has said of his fellow Americans, though it could have been said of any other first world society: that they piece together their faith like a patch work quilt. In his book, Choosing the Good, Dennis Hollinger also makes the telling comment that Church members increasingly focus on experience, as opposed to coherent systems of meaning, and borrow from traditions that are frequently at odds with their own community's tradition. He quotes Alasdair MacIntyre from After Virtue who accurately referred to the current cultural state of moral discourse as emotivism. Hollinger goes on to deal with 2 of the most thorny irritants: the Great Virtue of Tolerance and what he terms the Triumph of the Therapeutic. The reason I mention this is that I have found it almost impossible to discuss any contemporary moral issue within society without first addressing these two insiduous and bankrupt notions that are the fallback for the great mass of the unthinking. Their usefulness extends only as a response to the equally imbecilic cover-all, antithetical little gem so favoured by - though not exclusive to - those with a fundamentalist bent: 'What would Jesus do?'
And so it has been my experience that those most viciously critical of the fundamentalist Christians and their 'ilk' are themsleves the most fundamentalist examples of walking, talking post modernist cliches.
I will deal with the first issue of Tolerance in my next blog.

The Art of Loving

Recent reports on CNN suggest that the wholesale abandonment of Christian values in the US by those in public life, continues apace. Those in positions of political power, ala the New York governor, are scrambling to find the most politically expedient way to survive and are now flip flopping on the issue of homosexual ‘marriage’. They plan to accord homosexual civil unions the full status that is accorded to normal marriages. They have typically tried to dodge the issue with the ‘let’s move beyond this debate’, which of course, attempts to divert attention and / or mute any rational analyses of the moral turpitude of their position. This debate has proved divisive, most strangely amongst Christians and even Catholics for some reason. The intolerance of the liberal media to opposing views has, frankly, approached something akin to the most fascist totalitarian regimes of the last century, but guilt must also be apportioned to those who have used the issue to direct a cruel bigotry towards those who find themselves afflicted with this disorder. The Church’s position is crystal clear and I will outline it in some detail in my next blog, but I have always found the commentary by Erich Fromm , a Jewish secular humanist to be eerily close to the Catholic position, so before I lay dogma before the issue, I thought I would open discussion on this disorder with the views as expressed in his book, The Art of Loving:
The male-female polarity is also the basis for interpersonal creativity. This is obvious biologically in the fact that the union of sperm and ovum is the basis for the birth of a child. But in the purely psychic realm it is not different; in the love between man and woman, each of them is reborn. (The homosexual deviation is a failure to attain this polarised union, and thus the homosexual suffers from the pain of never-resolved separateness, a failure, however, which he shares with the average heterosexual who cannot love.)

Universality

One of the most awesome things about being a Catholic, is that wherever you go in the world and whatever the language, when you attend Mass, you can follow it. The liturgical seasons are the same, etc. When you travel, you really get a sense of the universality of the Church as a diverse and incredibly rich Body of Christ. When I visited Notre Dame Cathedral a couple of years ago, I, as a South African, went to confession in the French capital to a Ugandan priest! On this weekend past, I went with my wife to another Christian faith community for a baptism which was done in the context of their regular Sunday service. It was Palm Sunday and yet the pastor never mentioned it; he had his own message and focus. That of course is his perogative, but more and more, I am noticing that non-Catholic and even evangelical communities are adopting some of the liturgies and seasonal celebrations of the Catholic church - like Lent, to name one example. It speaks to a unity of worship which effects the unity it symbolises - much as the shared rituals / traditions / memories of a family bind that family. It is a different and more sustainable approach than that of communities built around the cult of a particular pastor. This catholicity / universality is a profound treasure of the Church and is expressed so eloquently in the hymn: 'The day thou gavest..'

We thank thee that thy Church unsleeping,
While earth rolls onward into light,
Through all the world her watch is keeping,
And rests not now by day or night.

As over continent and island
The dawn leads on another day,
The voice of prayer is never silent,
Nor dies the strain of praise away.

The sun that bids us rest is waking
Our brethren 'neath the western sky,
And hour by hour fresh lips are making
Thy wondrous doings heard on high.