The View Up Here

 In no particular order: 1. God is not "the universe" nor is the universe God. God is a personal being who is defined as Love and who has revealed himself as Trinitarian: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This community of Love begets all of creation and all life. The "universe" doesn't create itself, nor does it reward you for being a good egg or making a vision board in your home office. 2. Putting man at the center of everything and relegating everything to man's thought is tantamount to declaring war on reality. "I think, therefore I am" (the foundational battle cry of rationalism and the un-deification of the Western World) means we create ourselves and our reality, which we do not, and that the human power to understand and manipulate the created world is the Ultimate Supreme (i.e. who needs a God and all those pesky morals?). The power of the mind to understand is posited as the only marker of humanness. Rather, "I exist, therefore I think...

Dear Friends and Family, Please pray for the repose of the soul of Br. Justin Young, OSB. He died suddenly on Wednesday, April 4, from a brain hemorrhage. Also please keep in your prayers his family members, brother monks of Mount Saviour Monastery (Elmira), and all the Oblates and many friends of Br. Justin and the Monastery.  Brother Justin was a dear friend of mine and of many others who sought his deep prayerfulness, winning smile, outrageous laugh, and constant thoughtfulness. He was the Porter at Mount Saviour, greeting guests and preparing their morning meals for them. He also did a hundred other things of which I'm not even sure. He was a creative and a mystic at heart, and that's how our bond developed. He often sought me out after Mass and gave me some little encouragement, prayer, or intuition that had come to him regarding my own spiritual journey. I will treasure always a copy of St. Francis de Sales' Introduction to the Devout Life that Br. Justin ga...

Well you can't very well write about Good Friday and not write about Easter! I spent the weekend with a good friend in Binghamton, so am just getting around to writing a bit tonight. On my drive back from Binghamton, this prayer entered my heart: "Lord, let me see myself in the Light of Your Resurrection." Our ideas about our lives and our very personhood are too often determined by others, when the only Person who can speak who we are is God. A God who knows the realities of human existence, but who offers the final Word - LIFE. There is joy, humility and peace here. The joy of knowing that humanity is resurrected in Christ, and that by His stripes, I am healed.  I went to Easter Sunday Mass at my friend's church, and although I knew no one else besides my friend, I felt totally at home and welcomed. People had friendly faces and friendly spirits (oh that it were so in every Catholic parish!). But it soon became clear that we chose to sit near a family with ...

An quick update on discernment and life in general... In a nutshell, last week I found out that I need another root canal. I don't mind telling you I was angry as all get out. Root canals are a little piece of hell on earth as far as I'm concerned. Then this week I was informed that NYS Medicaid will not pay for it. Instead of being (rightfully) outraged at socialized medicine that won't pay for something as necessary as a root canal, I am trying instead to be grateful that Medicaid paid for the routine exam and cleaning so that I didn't walk around with a face full of infection for months without knowing it. In any case, my options are: pay OOP, get the tooth pulled, or take a chance on antibiotics killing the infection. I'm going with the first option, but I do not have regular work because since moving back to NYS, I've been making a whole lot of space and time for traveling to discern with various communities. I have been relying with immense gratit...

Easter Sunday has come and gone, but the joy of living in the Risen Christ is ever alive, ever new, ever potent. Lent of 2015 was centered in the theme of surrender  for me. Now in the Easter season, I am praying for the grace to surrender in joy.  In our world, I think the idea of surrender has unfortunate connotations of failure, giving up, walking away. In reality, as a Christian, it means giving over all I am, all I fear, all I desire; it means handing off to Christ all that is broken and damaged in me, as well as all that is beautiful in me - that which God created. It also means letting God be God in my life (a theme I write about frequently on this blog), and not letting myself become discouraged by my mistakes, my falls, my sins. As St. Paul has urged us, we are to persevere. It doesn't matter what I am, in a sense - broken, sinful, sad, etc. - because what really matters is that Jesus has paid the ultimate price for my redemption, and He wants me to live in Him, ...

http://soul-h2o.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Resurrection I really had meant to write more here during Holy Week, but it just didn't end up happening that way. I had taken a day off from work to give me 5 entire days off, and I ended up sleeping for 2 of those days, and then the rest of the time, my heart was full and focused on the Lord, alone. What a blessing, what a way of life! Coming back to one of my jobs this week has been a shock to the system, as it were, and of course next week, both jobs will be in force, so I'm a little nervous about how my system will respond. Silence, stillness, quiet adoration and prayer... these are the ways that let me thrive. The Lord has showered me with blessings and new insights and understandings that have taken deep root, and they are in essence over shadowing and pushing out the old weeds of fear, anxiety and pride. Slowly, He works in my heart and mind and spirit to show me that I am precious to Him, that my life has meaning ...

On the first day of week, after Jesus had been crucified and laid in a tomb, Mary Magdalene arrives early, before dawn, to the tomb where he lay. She finds the stone of the tomb entrance rolled away, the blessed body of her Rabbi gone. She is distraught. She runs and tells Peter and John. They come back to the tomb with her and verify that it is, indeed, empty. Then they go away. But Mary, she stays. She stays and weeps. I completely understand this. When my mother died, I didn't want to be apart from her, even at the funeral home, where I stood next to the casket the entire time, even at the grave, when I didn't want to leave after the service was over. I wanted to stay and be still, to mourn and cry, and to be near her. There is something visceral about this experience, when the connection to the deceased is so strong that separation feels like an impossibility, and there is a sense of massive disorientation, like this person isn't truly gone, somehow. Mary turns...

Pope Francis expressed far more eloquently than I did in my last post the Good News of the Living God. That's fitting, I suppose, seeing as he's the Pope and all. Full text of Pope Francis’s homily at the Easter Vigil | CatholicHerald.co.uk Pope Francis processes into St Peter's Basilica for Easter Vigil 2013 (AP) Dear Brothers and Sisters, 1. In the Gospel of this radiant night of the Easter Vigil, we first meet the women who go the tomb of Jesus with spices to anoint his body (cf. Lk 24:1-3). They go to perform an act of compassion, a traditional act of affection and love for a dear departed person, just as we would. They had followed Jesus, they had listened to his words, they had felt understood by him in their dignity and they had accompanied him to the very end, to Calvary and to the moment when he was taken down from the cross. We can imagine their feelings as they make their way to the tomb: a certain sadness, sorrow that Jesus had left them, he had died...

Ah, there it is. The first "Zombie Jesus" post in my Fb feed this Easter. Every year, even before I came back to God, I would cringe at those stupid, tasteless jokes. This year, I sort of dreaded seeing them, to be honest. Apparently some folks still think it’s good fun to ridicule other people’s beliefs as the butt of insulting jokes. But hey, it’s okay ‘cause we have this thing called free speech, an aspect of free will. So whatever. I’m jus’ sayin’… But that’s not my main point. My main point is this: I'd actually like to borrow this insulting joke and turn it around. Consider that it is actually a reality, not a joke, only in reverse. And mind you, this is from a Christian perspective, so I don't expect everyone to agree. Here's what I'm saying: we are the zombies without the Resurrection – literally the walking dead – stumbling in a hazy twilight from our own self-absorbed, self-righteous, yes, sinful, state. Before you get your back up about that...

Today I'd like to share a reflection from the Sisters of Notre Dame. I've been receiving weekly Lenten Reflections from them on email, and today's meditation for Palm Sunday is especially moving for me. My prayer is that I, all of us, can unconditionally say 'Yes' to what God has prepared for us in our lives, just as Yeshua Messiah did, trusting that our greater good is always in God's mind, even when we cannot see it ourselves. "Hosanna to the Son of David; blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord." (Mt. 21.9) With these words in song or chant Catholics around the world will process into the Church on Palm Sunday waving palm branches which have been liturgically blessed as "sacramentals." The increase in church-going folks on this day, demonstrates how Catholics like to get their palms but more, how this Sunday transitions us from Lent into Holy Week and to a closer focus on the Passion of Christ. What we recall...