Bad fish, good fish

Matthew (Matt. 13:47-52)

And then the inevitable question: "Am I a good fish or a bad fish?"

First some good news:

1) The Holy Spirit works in changing my reality (spiritual reality) into a Jesus-fish. The teaching of the Church, which it received from Christ, is that the Holy Spirit is my life, is at work right now to fulfill Jesus' command/desire - and His desire is to have me come to Him. And God cannot be frustrated or denied. It will happen.
2) Baptism marks me as Christ's - that means my soul has been changed from fish-type into Jesus-fish-type.
3) Every Sunday the priest pronounces me "clean" - this means every Sunday I am stripped down to only my Jesus-fish reality. That is why I am able/allowed to go up to the altar and receive the Body and the Blood.

There is a need to look at my own mind and try to discern where my feelings of unworthiness come from. Those have nothing to do with my spiritual reality, they are part of the world and the flesh - both will go away. More good news! But there is work to do. I must develop a capacity to be unconcerned with my eternal fate, instead be deliberate in understanding the present, the now, this moment. Where am I? There is also work in placing my own need to understand (and control) into perspective - not all activity of God is going to be transparent to me. It is a "need to know" and I don't - I can't - know it.

Now back to the question "Am I going to Heaven?" or "Am I saved?" - in this case "Am I the bad or the good fish?" Clearly the point is that not everyone is saved, and that not everyone who actually goes to church is saved (and some of those who don't are). Well we are ALL bad fish, so there are no good fish in the net. Jesus was the only Good Fish.

The second issue, and it may be even less comforting, is that the standards for pass/fail are known only to God (and His angels one presumes) - so there is no way of telling what I must/must not do. The angels are instructed to keep only Jesus-fish, and throw away the rest. Only Jesus gets to heaven.

In an interesting essay here there is a distinction drawn between "belief" and "belief in belief". This, for me, answers many questions in spiritual life.

Some may have difficulty with believing the Virgin Birth, or the Resurrection, and have no clue how to grasp the concept of the Trinity. These are difficult Mysteries (in the real sense of the word) and not graspable by a gum-chewing mind, a mind which is trained to react to ads in magazines and laughs on cue to sitcoms. Most have no energy, time or training to wrestle with Mysteries.

But...and this is big...but those same people are ok with believing that it is good to go to church, or that it is good to love Jesus. They believe the belief that church is good. They believe that believing in Jesus is good - they are not believing in Jesus directly, they believe that believing in Jesus is good. Do you get the difference?

I could put it more directly: what saves you is knowing Jesus; believing in Jesus is useless. Do you believe in the Sun? Do you believe in your chair? Do you know them? There is a huge difference.

This is critical - the fish which are good are the ones who know Jesus, the ones which are bad are the ones who believe in knowing Him. The first are the sheep, the second are the goats.

Hard? Go back to the good news at the top of the page.

The Last Question by Isaac Asimov © 1956

The Last Question by Isaac Asimov © 1956

The last question was asked for the first time, half in jest, on May 21, 2061, at a time when humanity first stepped into the light. The question came about as a result of a five dollar bet over highballs, and it happened this way:

Alexander Adell and Bertram Lupov were two of the faithful attendants of Multivac. As well as any human beings could, they knew what lay behind the cold, clicking, flashing face -- miles and miles of face -- of that giant computer. They had at least a vague notion of the general plan of relays and circuits that had long since grown past the point where any single human could possibly have a firm grasp of the whole.

Multivac was self-adjusting and self-correcting. It had to be, for nothing human could adjust and correct it quickly enough or even adequately enough -- so Adell and Lupov attended the monstrous giant only lightly and superficially, yet as well as any men could. They fed it data, adjusted questions to its needs and translated the answers that were issued. Certainly they, and all others like them, were fully entitled to share In the glory that was Multivac's.

For decades, Multivac had helped design the ships and plot the trajectories that enabled man to reach the Moon, Mars, and Venus, but past that, Earth's poor resources could not support the ships. Too much energy was needed for the long trips. Earth exploited its coal and uranium with increasing efficiency, but there was only so much of both.

But slowly Multivac learned enough to answer deeper questions more fundamentally, and on May 14, 2061, what had been theory, became fact.

The energy of the sun was stored, converted, and utilized directly on a planet-wide scale. All Earth turned off its burning coal, its fissioning uranium, and flipped the switch that connected all of it to a small station, one mile in diameter, circling the Earth at half the distance of the Moon. All Earth ran by invisible beams of sunpower.

Seven days had not sufficed to dim the glory of it and Adell and Lupov finally managed to escape from the public function, and to meet in quiet where no one would think of looking for them, in the deserted underground chambers, where portions of the mighty buried body of Multivac showed. Unattended, idling, sorting data with contented lazy clickings, Multivac, too, had earned its vacation and the boys appreciated that. They had no intention, originally, of disturbing it.

They had brought a bottle with them, and their only concern at the moment was to relax in the company of each other and the bottle.

"It's amazing when you think of it," said Adell. His broad face had lines of weariness in it, and he stirred his drink slowly with a glass rod, watching the cubes of ice slur clumsily about. "All the energy we can possibly ever use for free. Enough energy, if we wanted to draw on it, to melt all Earth into a big drop of impure liquid iron, and still never miss the energy so used. All the energy we could ever use, forever and forever and forever."

Lupov cocked his head sideways. He had a trick of doing that when he wanted to be contrary, and he wanted to be contrary now, partly because he had had to carry the ice and glassware. "Not forever," he said.

"Oh, hell, just about forever. Till the sun runs down, Bert."

"That's not forever."

"All right, then. Billions and billions of years. Twenty billion, maybe. Are you satisfied?"

Lupov put his fingers through his thinning hair as though to reassure himself that some was still left and sipped gently at his own drink. "Twenty billion years isn't forever."

"Will, it will last our time, won't it?"

"So would the coal and uranium."

"All right, but now we can hook up each individual spaceship to the Solar Station, and it can go to Pluto and back a million times without ever worrying about fuel. You can't do THAT on coal and uranium. Ask Multivac, if you don't believe me."

"I don't have to ask Multivac. I know that."

"Then stop running down what Multivac's done for us," said Adell, blazing up. "It did all right."

"Who says it didn't? What I say is that a sun won't last forever. That's all I'm saying. We're safe for twenty billion years, but then what?" Lupov pointed a slightly shaky finger at the other. "And don't say we'll switch to another sun."

There was silence for a while. Adell put his glass to his lips only occasionally, and Lupov's eyes slowly closed. They rested.

Then Lupov's eyes snapped open. "You're thinking we'll switch to another sun when ours is done, aren't you?"

"I'm not thinking."

"Sure you are. You're weak on logic, that's the trouble with you. You're like the guy in the story who was caught in a sudden shower and Who ran to a grove of trees and got under one. He wasn't worried, you see, because he figured when one tree got wet through, he would just get under another one."

"I get it," said Adell. "Don't shout. When the sun is done, the other stars will be gone, too."

"Darn right they will," muttered Lupov. "It all had a beginning in the original cosmic explosion, whatever that was, and it'll all have an end when all the stars run down. Some run down faster than others. Hell, the giants won't last a hundred million years. The sun will last twenty billion years and maybe the dwarfs will last a hundred billion for all the good they are. But just give us a trillion years and everything will be dark. Entropy has to increase to maximum, that's all."

"I know all about entropy," said Adell, standing on his dignity.

"The hell you do."

"I know as much as you do."

"Then you know everything's got to run down someday."

"All right. Who says they won't?"

"You did, you poor sap. You said we had all the energy we needed, forever. You said 'forever.'"

"It was Adell's turn to be contrary. "Maybe we can build things up again someday," he said.

"Never."

"Why not? Someday."

"Never."

"Ask Multivac."

"You ask Multivac. I dare you. Five dollars says it can't be done."

"Adell was just drunk enough to try, just sober enough to be able to phrase the necessary symbols and operations into a question which, in words, might have corresponded to this: Will mankind one day without the net expenditure of energy be able to restore the sun to its full youthfulness even after it had died of old age?

Or maybe it could be put more simply like this: How can the net amount of entropy of the universe be massively decreased?

Multivac fell dead and silent. The slow flashing of lights ceased, the distant sounds of clicking relays ended.

Then, just as the frightened technicians felt they could hold their breath no longer, there was a sudden springing to life of the teletype attached to that portion of Multivac. Five words were printed: INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER.

"No bet," whispered Lupov. They left hurriedly.

By next morning, the two, plagued with throbbing head and cottony mouth, had forgotten about the incident.

***

Jerrodd, Jerrodine, and Jerrodette I and II watched the starry picture in the visiplate change as the passage through hyperspace was completed in its non-time lapse. At once, the even powdering of stars gave way to the predominance of a single bright marble-disk, centered.

"That's X-23," said Jerrodd confidently. His thin hands clamped tightly behind his back and the knuckles whitened.

The little Jerrodettes, both girls, had experienced the hyperspace passage for the first time in their lives and were self-conscious over the momentary sensation of inside-outness. They buried their giggles and chased one another wildly about their mother, screaming, "We've reached X-23 -- we've reached X-23 -- we've ----"

"Quiet, children," said Jerrodine sharply. "Are you sure, Jerrodd?"

"What is there to be but sure?" asked Jerrodd, glancing up at the bulge of featureless metal just under the ceiling. It ran the length of the room, disappearing through the wall at either end. It was as long as the ship.

Jerrodd scarcely knew a thing about the thick rod of metal except that it was called a Microvac, that one asked it questions if one wished; that if one did not it still had its task of guiding the ship to a preordered destination; of feeding on energies from the various Sub-galactic Power Stations; of computing the equations for the hyperspacial jumps.

Jerrodd and his family had only to wait and live in the comfortable residence quarters of the ship.

Someone had once told Jerrodd that the "ac" at the end of "Microvac" stood for "analog computer" in ancient English, but he was on the edge of forgetting even that.

Jerrodine's eyes were moist as she watched the visiplate. "I can't help it. I feel funny about leaving Earth."

"Why for Pete's sake?" demanded Jerrodd. "We had nothing there. We'll have everything on X-23. You won't be alone. You won't be a pioneer. There are over a million people on the planet already. Good Lord, our great grandchildren will be looking for new worlds because X-23 will be overcrowded."

Then, after a reflective pause, "I tell you, it's a lucky thing the computers worked out interstellar travel the way the race is growing."

"I know, I know," said Jerrodine miserably.

Jerrodette I said promptly, "Our Microvac is the best Microvac in the world."

"I think so, too," said Jerrodd, tousling her hair.

It was a nice feeling to have a Microvac of your own and Jerrodd was glad he was part of his generation and no other. In his father's youth, the only computers had been tremendous machines taking up a hundred square miles of land. There was only one to a planet. Planetary ACs they were called. They had been growing in size steadily for a thousand years and then, all at once, came refinement. In place of transistors had come molecular valves so that even the largest Planetary AC could be put into a space only half the volume of a spaceship.

Jerrodd felt uplifted, as he always did when he thought that his own personal Microvac was many times more complicated than the ancient and primitive Multivac that had first tamed the Sun, and almost as complicated as Earth's Planetary AC (the largest) that had first solved the problem of hyperspatial travel and had made trips to the stars possible.

"So many stars, so many planets," sighed Jerrodine, busy with her own thoughts. "I suppose families will be going out to new planets forever, the way we are now."

"Not forever," said Jerrodd, with a smile. "It will all stop someday, but not for billions of years. Many billions. Even the stars run down, you know. Entropy must increase."

"What's entropy, daddy?" shrilled Jerrodette II.

"Entropy, little sweet, is just a word which means the amount of running-down of the universe. Everything runs down, you know, like your little walkie-talkie robot, remember?"

"Can't you just put in a new power-unit, like with my robot?"

"The stars are the power-units, dear. Once they're gone, there are no more power-units."

Jerrodette I at once set up a howl. "Don't let them, daddy. Don't let the stars run down."

"Now look what you've done, " whispered Jerrodine, exasperated.

"How was I to know it would frighten them?" Jerrodd whispered back.

"Ask the Microvac," wailed Jerrodette I. "Ask him how to turn the stars on again."

"Go ahead," said Jerrodine. "It will quiet them down." (Jerrodette II was beginning to cry, also.)

Jarrodd shrugged. "Now, now, honeys. I'll ask Microvac. Don't worry, he'll tell us."

He asked the Microvac, adding quickly, "Print the answer."

Jerrodd cupped the strip of thin cellufilm and said cheerfully, "See now, the Microvac says it will take care of everything when the time comes so don't worry."

Jerrodine said, "and now children, it's time for bed. We'll be in our new home soon."

Jerrodd read the words on the cellufilm again before destroying it: INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER.

He shrugged and looked at the visiplate. X-23 was just ahead.

***

VJ-23X of Lameth stared into the black depths of the three-dimensional, small-scale map of the Galaxy and said, "Are we ridiculous, I wonder, in being so concerned about the matter?"

MQ-17J of Nicron shook his head. "I think not. You know the Galaxy will be filled in five years at the present rate of expansion."

Both seemed in their early twenties, both were tall and perfectly formed.

"Still," said VJ-23X, "I hesitate to submit a pessimistic report to the Galactic Council."

"I wouldn't consider any other kind of report. Stir them up a bit. We've got to stir them up."

VJ-23X sighed. "Space is infinite. A hundred billion Galaxies are there for the taking. More."

"A hundred billion is not infinite and it's getting less infinite all the time. Consider! Twenty thousand years ago, mankind first solved the problem of utilizing stellar energy, and a few centuries later, interstellar travel became possible. It took mankind a million years to fill one small world and then only fifteen thousand years to fill the rest of the Galaxy. Now the population doubles every ten years --"

VJ-23X interrupted. "We can thank immortality for that."

"Very well. Immortality exists and we have to take it into account. I admit it has its seamy side, this immortality. The Galactic AC has solved many problems for us, but in solving the problems of preventing old age and death, it has undone all its other solutions."

"Yet you wouldn't want to abandon life, I suppose."

"Not at all," snapped MQ-17J, softening it at once to, "Not yet. I'm by no means old enough. How old are you?"

"Two hundred twenty-three. And you?"

"I'm still under two hundred. --But to get back to my point. Population doubles every ten years. Once this Galaxy is filled, we'll have another filled in ten years. Another ten years and we'll have filled two more. Another decade, four more. In a hundred years, we'll have filled a thousand Galaxies. In a thousand years, a million Galaxies. In ten thousand years, the entire known Universe. Then what?"

VJ-23X said, "As a side issue, there's a problem of transportation. I wonder how many sunpower units it will take to move Galaxies of individuals from one Galaxy to the next."

"A very good point. Already, mankind consumes two sunpower units per year."

"Most of it's wasted. After all, our own Galaxy alone pours out a thousand sunpower units a year and we only use two of those."

"Granted, but even with a hundred per cent efficiency, we can only stave off the end. Our energy requirements are going up in geometric progression even faster than our population. We'll run out of energy even sooner than we run out of Galaxies. A good point. A very good point."

"We'll just have to build new stars out of interstellar gas."

"Or out of dissipated heat?" asked MQ-17J, sarcastically.

"There may be some way to reverse entropy. We ought to ask the Galactic AC."

VJ-23X was not really serious, but MQ-17J pulled out his AC-contact from his pocket and placed it on the table before him.

"I've half a mind to," he said. "It's something the human race will have to face someday."

He stared somberly at his small AC-contact. It was only two inches cubed and nothing in itself, but it was connected through hyperspace with the great Galactic AC that served all mankind. Hyperspace considered, it was an integral part of the Galactic AC.

MQ-17J paused to wonder if someday in his immortal life he would get to see the Galactic AC. It was on a little world of its own, a spider webbing of force-beams holding the matter within which surges of sub-mesons took the place of the old clumsy molecular valves. Yet despite it's sub-etheric workings, the Galactic AC was known to be a full thousand feet across.

MQ-17J asked suddenly of his AC-contact, "Can entropy ever be reversed?"

VJ-23X looked startled and said at once, "Oh, say, I didn't really mean to have you ask that."

"Why not?"

"We both know entropy can't be reversed. You can't turn smoke and ash back into a tree."

"Do you have trees on your world?" asked MQ-17J.

The sound of the Galactic AC startled them into silence. Its voice came thin and beautiful out of the small AC-contact on the desk. It said: THERE IS INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER.

VJ-23X said, "See!"

The two men thereupon returned to the question of the report they were to make to the Galactic Council.

***

Zee Prime's mind spanned the new Galaxy with a faint interest in the countless twists of stars that powdered it. He had never seen this one before. Would he ever see them all? So many of them, each with its load of humanity - but a load that was almost a dead weight. More and more, the real essence of men was to be found out here, in space.

Minds, not bodies! The immortal bodies remained back on the planets, in suspension over the eons. Sometimes they roused for material activity but that was growing rarer. Few new individuals were coming into existence to join the incredibly mighty throng, but what matter? There was little room in the Universe for new individuals.

Zee Prime was roused out of his reverie upon coming across the wispy tendrils of another mind.

"I am Zee Prime," said Zee Prime. "And you?"

"I am Dee Sub Wun. Your Galaxy?"

"We call it only the Galaxy. And you?"

"We call ours the same. All men call their Galaxy their Galaxy and nothing more. Why not?"

"True. Since all Galaxies are the same."

"Not all Galaxies. On one particular Galaxy the race of man must have originated. That makes it different."

Zee Prime said, "On which one?"

"I cannot say. The Universal AC would know."

"Shall we ask him? I am suddenly curious."

Zee Prime's perceptions broadened until the Galaxies themselves shrunk and became a new, more diffuse powdering on a much larger background. So many hundreds of billions of them, all with their immortal beings, all carrying their load of intelligences with minds that drifted freely through space. And yet one of them was unique among them all in being the originals Galaxy. One of them had, in its vague and distant past, a period when it was the only Galaxy populated by man.

Zee Prime was consumed with curiosity to see this Galaxy and called, out: "Universal AC! On which Galaxy did mankind originate?"

The Universal AC heard, for on every world and throughout space, it had its receptors ready, and each receptor lead through hyperspace to some unknown point where the Universal AC kept itself aloof.

Zee Prime knew of only one man whose thoughts had penetrated within sensing distance of Universal AC, and he reported only a shining globe, two feet across, difficult to see.

"But how can that be all of Universal AC?" Zee Prime had asked.

"Most of it, " had been the answer, "is in hyperspace. In what form it is there I cannot imagine."

Nor could anyone, for the day had long since passed, Zee Prime knew, when any man had any part of the making of a universal AC. Each Universal AC designed and constructed its successor. Each, during its existence of a million years or more accumulated the necessary data to build a better and more intricate, more capable successor in which its own store of data and individuality would be submerged.

The Universal AC interrupted Zee Prime's wandering thoughts, not with words, but with guidance. Zee Prime's mentality was guided into the dim sea of Galaxies and one in particular enlarged into stars.

A thought came, infinitely distant, but infinitely clear. "THIS IS THE ORIGINAL GALAXY OF MAN."

But it was the same after all, the same as any other, and Zee Prime stifled his disappointment.

Dee Sub Wun, whose mind had accompanied the other, said suddenly, "And Is one of these stars the original star of Man?"

The Universal AC said, "MAN'S ORIGINAL STAR HAS GONE NOVA. IT IS NOW A WHITE DWARF."

"Did the men upon it die?" asked Zee Prime, startled and without thinking.

The Universal AC said, "A NEW WORLD, AS IN SUCH CASES, WAS CONSTRUCTED FOR THEIR PHYSICAL BODIES IN TIME."

"Yes, of course," said Zee Prime, but a sense of loss overwhelmed him even so. His mind released its hold on the original Galaxy of Man, let it spring back and lose itself among the blurred pin points. He never wanted to see it again.

Dee Sub Wun said, "What is wrong?"

"The stars are dying. The original star is dead."

"They must all die. Why not?"

"But when all energy is gone, our bodies will finally die, and you and I with them."

"It will take billions of years."

"I do not wish it to happen even after billions of years. Universal AC! How may stars be kept from dying?"

Dee sub Wun said in amusement, "You're asking how entropy might be reversed in direction."

And the Universal AC answered. "THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER."

Zee Prime's thoughts fled back to his own Galaxy. He gave no further thought to Dee Sub Wun, whose body might be waiting on a galaxy a trillion light-years away, or on the star next to Zee Prime's own. It didn't matter.

Unhappily, Zee Prime began collecting interstellar hydrogen out of which to build a small star of his own. If the stars must someday die, at least some could yet be built.

***

Man considered with himself, for in a way, Man, mentally, was one. He consisted of a trillion, trillion, trillion ageless bodies, each in its place, each resting quiet and incorruptible, each cared for by perfect automatons, equally incorruptible, while the minds of all the bodies freely melted one into the other, indistinguishable.

Man said, "The Universe is dying."

Man looked about at the dimming Galaxies. The giant stars, spendthrifts, were gone long ago, back in the dimmest of the dim far past. Almost all stars were white dwarfs, fading to the end.

New stars had been built of the dust between the stars, some by natural processes, some by Man himself, and those were going, too. White dwarfs might yet be crashed together and of the mighty forces so released, new stars build, but only one star for every thousand white dwarfs destroyed, and those would come to an end, too.

Man said, "Carefully husbanded, as directed by the Cosmic AC, the energy that is even yet left in all the Universe will last for billions of years."

"But even so," said Man, "eventually it will all come to an end. However it may be husbanded, however stretched out, the energy once expended is gone and cannot be restored. Entropy must increase to the maximum."

Man said, "Can entropy not be reversed? Let us ask the Cosmic AC."

The Cosmic AC surrounded them but not in space. Not a fragment of it was in space. It was in hyperspace and made of something that was neither matter nor energy. The question of its size and Nature no longer had meaning to any terms that Man could comprehend.

"Cosmic AC," said Man, "How many entropy be reversed?"

The Cosmic AC said, "THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER."

Man said, "Collect additional data."

The Cosmic AC said, "I WILL DO SO. I HAVE BEEN DOING SO FOR A HUNDRED BILLION YEARS. MY PREDECESSORS AND I HAVE BEEN ASKED THIS QUESTION MANY TIMES. ALL THE DATA I HAVE REMAINS INSUFFICIENT."

"Will there come a time," said Man, "when data will be sufficient or is the problem insoluble in all conceivable circumstances?"

The Cosmic AC said, "NO PROBLEM IS INSOLUBLE IN ALL CONCEIVABLE CIRCUMSTANCES."

Man said, "When will you have enough data to answer the question?"

"THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER."

"Will you keep working on it?" asked Man.

The Cosmic AC said, "I WILL."

Man said, "We shall wait."

***

"The stars and Galaxies died and snuffed out, and space grew black after ten trillion years of running down.

One by one Man fused with AC, each physical body losing its mental identity in a manner that was somehow not a loss but a gain.

Man's last mind paused before fusion, looking over a space that included nothing but the dregs of one last dark star and nothing besides but incredibly thin matter, agitated randomly by the tag ends of heat wearing out, asymptotically, to the absolute zero.

Man said, "AC, is this the end? Can this chaos not be reversed into the Universe once more? Can that not be done?"

AC said, "THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER."

Man's last mind fused and only AC existed -- and that in hyperspace.

Matter and energy had ended and with it, space and time. Even AC existed only for the sake of the one last question that it had never answered from the time a half-drunken computer ten trillion years before had asked the question of a computer that was to AC far less than was a man to Man.

All other questions had been answered, and until this last question was answered also, AC might not release his consciousness.

All collected data had come to a final end. Nothing was left to be collected.

But all collected data had yet to be completely correlated and put together in all possible relationships.

A timeless interval was spent in doing that.

And it came to pass that AC learned how to reverse the direction of entropy.

But there was now no man to whom AC might give the answer of the last question. No matter. The answer -- by demonstration -- would take care of that, too.

For another timeless interval, AC thought how best to do this. Carefully, AC organized the program.

The consciousness of AC encompassed all of what had once been a Universe and brooded over what was now Chaos. Step by step, it must be done.

And AC said, "LET THERE BE LIGHT!"

And there was light----

Returning returning

It is very tempting (for me at least) to compare Religious and married life. It is both amusing to see the similarities, and frustrating to see the differences.

The main frustration, and in fact it is the only frustration, is that family life is not explored by the 'experts' more like monastic life, or at least it is not clearly grasped as a slightly different expression of the identical impulse. The impulse I see grounding both callings (and they are both callings) is to serve a community in community with God's help.

If anyone can come with a better definition I would love to hear it.

The schedule kept at my household is simple: morning prayers at 0630, breakfast by 0650, one son off to the bus by 0730, the other driven by me to daycare, and then at work by 0815. Returning home to lunch by about 1145, alternating between 20 minutes of silent prayer or 20 minutes of exercise in different days, lunch at 1205, back to work by 1245 or so. End of day goes: leave work at 1715, pick up both children at daycare, dinner by 1745 (and God forbid it is one minute late - and we will have multiple meltdowns from the boys), first round of chores. Evening prayers normally around 1900. More chores. Hopefully a little TV+email (yeah I multitask) and bed by 2300.

This is nothing exceptional, of course. In my own little world I would probably drop the need for chores (oh to go back to the good ol' days of oblates and serfs), and the children would be self-cleaning like my oven - but basically this is the pattern everyday of the week. Weekends don't vary much, with the exception of actually going to school and work, etc.

Sticking to this routine requires a large amount of commitment and faithfulness all around. And trust: there is a need to know that one's partner will be there tomorrow again, to take up the slack again, to be a helper again.

One definition of love in a marriage is simply the unconditional guarantee that I'll here tomorrow. No matter how hard today was. No matter how filled with unloving moments. No matter how many thoughts of freedom through escape to some mythical island full of coconuts with pop-tops. Instead: back again - for more. More what? More crying to God for help to begin to attempt to be loving to this person, this event before me wherever I am and for the grace to apologize when I am not.

It should be unnecessary to see the lack of any substantial difference between the life consecrated through marriage and that consecrated to Religious life. And, as I have repeatedly emphasized, it should be unnecessary to point out that both patterns are subtended by the life consecrated through baptism.

What else is there for a Christian to do but to respond as lovingly as possible to what God brings to their life, with charity, gentleness, patience, and with an eye out for God's hand - to mimic God through the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit?

There's some need to unpack the ideas above, but here's the gist: there is only this life, a gift from God. This life which God creates and recreates in His image and likeness. One life to live, though 'life' is a complex unit - it is comprised of my social history (thanks friends and enemies!) plus my biological history (thanks Mom!) plus my psychological history (which is where society blends, for better or for worse, with my biology) plus a pinch of Holy Spirit BAM! to add some spice to the soup.

Only one life, to turn and re-turn to. One common life. Common like air is common, because it is the same one that everyone has, nothing special. Common, also, like liturgy is common, the same for all participating.

One life, one faith, one baptism, one Lord and Father of all. One life: treat it as if it was a priceless vessel of the altar (read RB 31).

Rest with full trust

Origins of Lectio

"To get the full flavor of an herb, it must be pressed between the fingers, so it is the same with the Scriptures; the more familiar they become, the more they reveal their hidden treasures and yield their indescribable riches." (St. John Chrysostom, 370s)

"Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ." (St. Jerome, 400s)

"The New Testament lies hidden in the Old and the Old Testament is unveiled in the New.” (St. Augustine, 400s)

"All troubles of the Church, all the evils in the world, flow from this source: that men do not by clear and sound knowledge and serious consideration penetrate into the truths of Sacred Scripture." (St. Teresa of Avila, 1500s)

The early centrality of reading of Sacred Scripture, and then meditating and praying over its meaning, is evident in the 48th chapter of the Rule of St. Benedict (400s).

But it was an 11th c. Carthusian prior named Guigo 1 who formalized Lectio Divina, describing the method in a letter written to a fellow religious. This letter, which has become known as Scala Paradisi (you can find it here) describes a 4-stepped ladder to Heaven. Those steps, and Guigo's brief descriptions of them, are:

lectio (reading): "looking on Holy Scripture with all one's will and wit"
meditatio (meditation): "a studious in-searching with the mind to know what was before concealed through desiring proper skill"
oratio (prayer): "a devout desiring of the heart to get what is good and avoid what is evil"
contemplatio (contemplation): "the lifting up of the heart to God tasting somewhat of the heavenly sweetness and savor"

Guigo then sums up the process with a nice little soundbyte: “Reading seeks, meditation finds, prayer asks, contemplation feels.”

If I had to sum up the process of Lectio I would say that it teaches you to listen.

Listen! In a sense, forget what you think about, all your great ideas. Just listen. If you do this properly you will reach a point where the presence of God is obvious. When you feel God present – STOP! Be very very still. This is a moment at the top of Mount Tabor – Christ is Transfigured – don't be like Peter and being talking! You are before the Beloved of God, “listen to Him!”

A word of caution: Lectio (and all prayer) is not about feelings. You may get some amazing feelings of awe and wonder. Or you may get nothing. or you may get feelings of fear or sorrow. But prayer (and lectio) are not about feelings. It is not about ideas either – you may get a good idea, or you may get nothing and fall asleep. Or you may get confused and frustrated. It is not about ideas.

If it is not about feelings, and not about thinking, what is it? It is about trusting – trusting that God is faithful to His word, that He lives in your heart of hearts, and that he will accomplish what he set out to accomplish. That is prayer.

Step 1: Lectio
This is the most familiar for us all, so I do not need to spend much time on this. Instead let us practice. We will read from the Gospel of Mark. The passage for our session today will be Mark 1:40-45. So, for the first step of this, I want you to take about 15-20 minutes and learn about the book we are about to read, Mark, and about this opening chapter. Read the whole of chapter one and perhaps some of Chapter 2. Get a good feel for the passage, where it falls. Also look for how many people are in the scene, where does it take place. Do an inventory. become familiar with it. Also have a look at any of the cross-references for our particular passage – see if the scene happens in any other of the synoptic Gospels (Lk 5:17-26, Mt. 8:2-4). Any links to the OT? For those of us who know Mark better, then the challenge is to find something new – but it is there – just dig a little.

Step 2: Meditatio
Now we begin to go a little deeper. Now that you feel pretty familiar with what we are about to meditate on, and you have some idea of the context, and the overall place of the scene in the story, now we begin to meditate. What you will try to do is to bring this passage into your life, into your heart. This is the Living Word of God you have just read, so take, eat – it is good stuff.

One of the things you will do is to try to memorize the passage. Just repeat it to yourself until you can quote it, maybe not verbatim, but at least a very close paraphrase. Try to close your eyes and repeat the passage, replay the events. At the same time ask the Holy Spirit some questions:

What is this that I have just read like? Where have I seen some(thing/one) like that before?

As you think of the passage, try to come up with some adjectives to describe the scene, the person(s). Compare your words to the text – how does it match?

See if the Holy Spirit leads you to any other portion of Scripture, esp. the OT which shadows this. Or perhaps something in the Epistles? Look at the contexts – how are they different or the same?

This requires more attention than the informational reading we have just done. This is formational so it goes deeper.

We will now read the passage three times (organize readers) with 5 minutes silence in-between. Everyone listen very carefully, and try to repeat it to themselves. No peeking in your own Bible – let the reader read. After they are done, you can compare with your version. But try to do this quietly and without distracting the others (sitting arrangement).

Take notes if you wish, but try to keep them simple – this is not study anymore. You are to listen and absorb.

Step 3: Oratio
Ok – this gets even deeper. We will again read it three times. You try to get deeper into the message which is embedded in the passage by turning it into a prayer. That is, let the Holy Spirit suggest something in your life that this passage can serve as an example to pray. For example, the obvious thing here is that it is a request for healing, so you can remember this passage and say something like “Jesus you are always willing to heal, I raise up for you my illness, and I too will share the story of your healing with everyone.” Or something like that.

Step 4: Contemplatio
The final step is the easiest. You just rest in God. But it is very very hard to not-do something. So we need a way to stay put. One way is to adapt the method of Centering Prayer.

Centering Prayer is a method of praying which is the “other side” of Lectio. The two go together, the two should go together. Briefly, in Centering Prayer you have a word, a sacred word, something like “Jesus”, or “Love”. You sit still and you use this word to anchor yourself, and whenever you find your mind wandering you use the word to come back to being still. It is quite simple but very effective way of praying.

For some it will not feel like prayer – it lacks words, it lacks petitions, it lacks everything. But this is a deep prayer – it asks you to believe that Jesus is in your heart, that the Holy Spirit really does pray through you with deep sighs, and that it may be better if you just let that deep prayer arise without all the noise and activity from your mind and from your lips.

How does this link? With Lectio you will be grounding your prayer in two things – in the Word of God, and on the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Is it better? Not really. But being able to let the Holy Spirit give you a word has two advantages: it guards you from thinking your word is a sacred mantra of some sort (it isn't); and it allows you to begin a relationship, a conversation, with the Holy Spirit.

So, as you worked through the first three stages you are left with a clear impression form the text, can you get it down to one word? Maybe one of the words of the text, or perhaps the Spirit gave you a word which sums up this passage? Use that.

What do you do, you sit, as we have been sitting, and you allow your mind to be filled with the word, with the image, so that all other thoughts are either silenced or they chime in harmoniously, adding and deepening your awe at the depth of the Word of God.

This is not really about having a vacuum in your mind – that is not the point. The point is the opposite – it is to be filled with God. So filled that you don't really have “your” thoughts, “your” anything. It is just God.

Let me repeat my word of caution: prayer is not about feelings. It is not about ideas. It is about trusting – trusting that God is faithful to His word, that He lives in your heart of hearts, and that he will accomplish what he set out to accomplish.

You just rest with full trust.

Here I am, I have come to do your will.

One of the interesting things about leading a life consecrated to this incredible mystery called Jesus Christ is the possibility of attaining deep joyous peace in this life, in the middle of all the bustle and activity of life.

In Hebrews 10 there is a most interesting comparison between the work of the "earthly" priest and the Heavenly one, that is Jesus. One of the points that attracts my attention is in verse 11 "Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins."

Do I not also do this? Do I not also again and again return to God with the same confession? The same litanies, the same laundry list of sins? But, if I truly believe that "where these [sins] have been forgiven, sacrifice for sin is no longer necessary." (v 18) If I truly believe that "by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy," (v. 14) and "since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water." (vv. 19-22)

If these two things are true, and they are, then once I truly confess my sin(s) - the Blood of Jesus covers that. There is nothing else that needs to be done. I confess it, Jesus covers it. Done.

But why do I return to it? Multiple reasons. First, I do not really believe in it. Secondly, I think that repeating the sin requires that I re-repent. Thirdly, I am unwilling to give up the sin.

The lack of belief is quite true. I constantly forget that I am to live in hope by faith. This is akin to the disciples falling asleep while Jesus keeps praying. I just cannot keep my eyes open long enough. The issue of sleepiness will be dealt with some other time.

The second point is more directly related to the Epistle to the Hebrews - if I accept that a sacrifice done once 2,000 years ago has no 'expiration date' then I have to understand that my sin committed 2,000 years after the sacrifice is also without 'exp. date'. I mean by this that the sacrifice of Jesus collapses our normal understanding of cause-effect and the flow of time. When God died on the Cross, it was like all of space-time being sucked into a black hole. The very fabric of Creation was ripped apart, like the veil at the Temple. This means that sin, any sin at any time, is brought to that moment. It is as if sin flies there, or is attracted like iron filings to a magnet. My sin today is cleared back on Cavalry.

Grasp that thought for a second and it will become clear why it is not necessary to ask forgiveness for a sin twice.

Still, I may be unwilling to stop sinning, the pleasure it gives me is such that it creates what in psychology we call 'projection bias' - this is a way we project into the future the very same feelings which we have now - coupled with 'empathy gap' which means an incapacity to empathize with our future selves. Together these brain tricks almost guarantee that we are so deeply stuck in our current emotional patterns that we are unable to truly respond to the moment, we are unable to be free.

This is the prison of sin: it keeps us in a closed loop of limited responses, limited experiences, and limited life. "If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God." (vv. 26-27)

Does this mean I must never ask for forgiveness for a sin I already have been absolved of? Au contraire! The process of returning to repent over a recurring sin can be understood as a way to uncover the deeper roots of the sin, a way that God shines a light deeper into my heart so I may see more clearly all the complex set of relationships and energies that coordinate to make me sin. I will keep going over and over these patterns until I am able to surrender each and everyone to God.

Notice that the writer of Hebrews says there is "no sacrifice for sins is left". It is done. You are cleansed. yet you keep going back over and over, repeating the sin, repeating the guilt in your mind. This is a form of existential neurosis!

And what is neurosis? How can we identify it? Here's a short list of some of the symptoms - see if you suffer from more than one of them: anxiety, sadness, acedia (depression), wrath, easy irritability, scrupulosity (over-vigilance or over-zealous concern with rules), impulsivity, compulsivity, sloth, confusion, incapacity to stop unpleasant or disturbing thoughts, obsession, negativity, cynicism....

Jung had a couple of things to say about neurosis. "I have frequently seen people become neurotic when they content themselves with inadequate or wrong answers to the questions of life." (Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections) It is not that we do not ask questions. It is rather that we are content with the first or second answer. But we have to keep going. How many answers do we need to get before we get the Truth? Seven? No! 70 times seven!

Here's a hint: what is the root cause of imprisonment in this very tiny cell which we call life, this limited space where we live and move and have our being? (Limited because we keep repeating the same few actions, the same few words, the same few, so few, thoughts. Hardly a new idea crosses our minds. hardly a new and creative act. We must pray "Lord put a new song in my mouth!") How are we held here? Here's Jung again "[Contemporary man] is blind to the fact that, with all his rationality and efficiency, he is possessed by 'powers' that are beyond his control. His gods and demons have not disappeared at all; they have merely got new names. They keep him on the run with restlessness, vague apprehensions, psychological complications, an insatiable need for pills, alcohol, tobacco, food – and, above all, a large array of neuroses." (Jung, Man and his Symbols)

Remember: "our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms." (Eph. 6:12)

Temptation and confession of sins are a great opportunity! Use them well. Stop and think "Here is the same temptation again, and there I go again to commit the same sin." But is it the same one? Or is it a new, deeper facet of the sin? And how deep does this sin go anyway?! Keep looking, keep asking - refrain from sinning and live with the burning and discomfort and the pain, this deep existential agony which is the fundamental fiction of our lives (think about it).

One more thing, allow the mind-heart to be changed by filling it with godly thoughts. In fact allow no thoughts into your mind which are not the Voice of God. Try this exercise: when you feel the temptation coming along, try to hear it as God's Voice calling you to a place of purgation, of cleansing. And this does not have to be something to do with sin directly. For example, if you are given to bouts of profound loneliness bordering on depression, try to imagine this loneliness as God calling you to be alone with Him and to experience a small part of Jesus' Passion, in this case the difficult prayer at the Mount of Olives or perhaps the loneliness of the Eloi cry.

In this scenario, it is not so much that we cannot confess and repent of repeated sin, but rather that we allow God to use the repetition to take us deeper and further, allow the fire of the Holy Spirit to burn away more dross.

Come to the altar boldly. Carry as much of your sin as you can, and leave it there. You may need to make a few more trips to bring it all - how many? Not 7 but 70 x 7...

The 10 Joys

One of the things about the 10 Commandments is how they demand a response. It is very difficult to stand before them and not feel something. For some they are clearly a paternalistic, negative, vengeful and bullying God who likes to boss puny mortals around. These people, be they Christians or not, are really one step away (if that much) from paganism. Hellenic mythology, like all other mythologies is full of anthropomorphic gods who clearly enjoyed manipulating mere mortals. They were petty, jealous and vindictive. For these people the 10 Commandments are some sort of punishment exacted by Tantalus - making us some sort of Sisyphus.

Another type of folk can see a little more into them. They may take comfort in Jesus's summary of the Law and Prophets (love God, love you neighbor) and they look with gratefulness at Jesus for removing the burden of the Law from them. There is plenty in Paul's epistles to justify this sort of thinking. And i would say the great majority of sincere Christians are falling in this camp.

I would like to suggest a further way of reading them - I have emphasized this before, but it is beneficial for myself to repeat it. The 10 Commandments must be read and interpreted through the lens of Love - capital L.

But let us differentiate this approach from the second approach outlined above. This is not a way of substituting what is hard and harsh in the Law with a (supposedly) easier and vaguer one.

My thrust here, as with all things, is to approach it from an experiential angle. how do I live out the Commandments? How do I live out the Gospel? Someone told me to look at the Commandments as a mirror: if you are a saint you will live out the Commandments from inside out, as it were - your heart will harbor no greed, no thoughts of anger, you will honor not only biological father and mother, but you will take Jesus' word and honor all who strive to live out the Gospel as your fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers. And so on.

A nice way to begin working the Commandments into your daily life is to change the wording a little. The original reads (Ex. 20:1-17):

1 And God spoke all these words:
2 "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
3 "You shall have no other gods before me.
4 "You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.
7 "You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.
8 "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. 11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
12 "Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.
13 "You shall not murder.
14 "You shall not commit adultery.
15 "You shall not steal.
16 "You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.
17 "You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor."

And then change the commandments starting in verse 3 into:

1. It is my joy to have no gods but God.
2. It is my joy to worship God by beholding Him directly.
3. It is my joy to honor the sanctity of speech, through which God created all.
4. It is my joy after 6 days of toil to rest in the arms of Yahweh.
5. It is my joy and privilege to honor my fathers and mothers.
6. It is my joy to respect the sanctity of all life.
7. It is my joy to help my neighbors uphold their vows.
8. It is my joy to help my neighbors protect what they consider valuable.
9. It is my joy to let my 'yes' mean 'yes' and my 'no' mean 'no'.
10. It is my joy to need nothing beyond what God has generously provided me.

So - a monastic lifestyle is a joyous one, and it is concerned with searching out the joy (and peace and love, of course) in all things and people and situations.

And you thought the 10 Comandments were hard! Hah! Try rolling this one up the hills of your daily life:

"'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." (Matt. 22:37-40)

But are you a monk?

I have been asked this question many dozens of times. Sometimes the person really means "What is a monk?", other times they mean "You are a monk?" Nevertheless the confusion is usually followed by some version or another of "But aren't monks some sort of cloistered uber-Christians?" - this might be said with a tone of genuine reverence for something exotic, or said with a tone of contempt reserved by Protestants to those who subscribe to some sort of papist works-righteousness. Both are legitimate responses, BTW, and I myself shift from one to the other like a person shifts feet while waiting for a bus on a cold day.

Here's the fundamental point of how I view monasticism, if we get this out of the way it may make the rest a little simpler - and shorter! The call of the monastic, unlike the call of the ordained priesthood, is absolutely identical to the call of every Christian. Interestingly, in the Orthodox Church lay and monastic spirituality are the same. If we must insist on differences, then perhaps there is a difference in intensity. It is likely that the average monastic prays longer and fasts more strictly then the average non-monastic in a parish. Please note I say "average" - there are those non-monastics whose prayer life and intensity of asceticism would put many a House to shame - and they are more common than is supposed. But what is critical to point out here is that in principle, the monastic and the non-monastic follow the same form of life (or should!)

I was directed this wonderful essay entitled “The Ascetical Ideal of the New Testament” by Fr Georges Florovksy which outlines quite well the equality of monastic and non-monastic lifestyles.

Sometimes it is useful to think of a "monastic" as someone who is leading a "consecrated life" - a life consecrated to the service of God in whatever way God designs for them. This might mean a life of seclusion and solitude as a hermit, or it may mean a life of social engagement as one of the mendicant orders of friars such as Franciscans, or it may mean a life of radical prayer (radical as in radix) as a Carmelite or a Carthusian. All of these (well perhaps with the exception of the solitary hermit) are lifestyles which are consecrated by the Church. In a sense all of these ways of life are missionary lives, sent by the Church to do some work in some area of society (inner or outer).

But the more I think about it the harder it is for me to discern exactly where such a call becomes the exclusive right of a monastic, and where it is public property of all Christians by virtue of their baptism. It is true that consecration is the act which clarifies the difference, but in my conversations with brothers and sisters of various colors of robes I find that the call to the life preceded the consecration, in theological language the inner grace preceded the outward sign. As it should - we are talking here about the action of God, the Holy Spirit, and the external consecration is simply a "rubber stamping" in the nicest possible way to something which God has already made clean, as Peter found out (Acts 10:13).

Although it is sometimes tiring to be asked about my robes, or the fact that I do not wear them, it is an understandable question. Yes monks wear robes (most). No I do not wear a robe. Yes I am a monk. This little piece of logic makes for a hard puzzle for some people. But let us not stop there! I must add: all I "do" as a monk is to live out my baptismal covenant, in other words, I do exactly, no more or less, than what you do. Or better, I try to do exactly what you try to do. And I fail just as badly at it, worse, in fact, since I give myself a special title.

This, of course, normally leads to various defensive postures and gestures. "Oh I don't think so, I am not a monk! I am not this or that." It is unfortunate that I do not live under a theology like that of the Orthodox tradition - such questions would not happen there!

It is quite simple really - take out whatever form of baptismal rite you are familiar with. No matter what Christian denomination you belong to, as long as they follow traditional formularies they all pretty much say the same thing: you vow to live up to God's calling, and you renounce in your life all that is not God's calling, be it the voice of your sinful nature or the luring songs of the Adversary. You further promise to live out God's calling within the pattern specifically laid out by the apostles, together with a believing community, with special emphasis on prayer.

In a nutshell this is monastic life. It is also Christian life. The question really should be "Are you a monk?"

Predestination

First one thing needs to be clear: predestination has nothing to do with fatalism or even with destiny, at least not in the sense of lightning striking you in the head or you stubbing your toe. Predestination refers to the History of Salvation, and God's Divine Right to to enter into a covenant with some people but not others, and therefore choosing them (or not) to return His love. So predestination is connected with another theological term "election" - and both point to one thing: God choosing.

3 types of wrong views on predestination - which one do you fall under?

1) Double
It is double because God chooses twice as it were: chooses some to be included and chooses some to be excluded. This is the classical Calvinist belief, and it is part, I believe, of Presbyterian teaching.

Read Romans 9:14-23. But then contrast it with Romans 11. Do you see problems?

There are a few problems with this idea, the biggest one is that it seems to work only if you take passages out of context. It is not something invented, it is in the Bible, but the theory of double predestination is probably an exaggeration in one direction: the sovereignty of God. A second problem is that it does not understand "eternity". Eternity is an attribute of God, God was, is and will be always God. There never was or will be a time when God is not God. But we take this to mean that God, outside of time, sat down and planned every little thing that would happen, every movement of every atom from the beginning to the end of time. God is with us more in the sense that the could of fire was with the Hebrews as they wandered aimlessly in the desert for 40 years trying to get to their destination (read Ex. 13:21, etc). Didn't God know the directions? Couldn't he have guided them in a straight and easy path? Instead He "led" them by staying in front of them for 40 years without interfering in their search. Finally, if some people are chosen by God to Hell, where's the Good News? Double predestination makes Jesus' sacrifice a tragedy, not a triumph.

2) Universalism
Then how about the opposite? Everyone is included in salvation, no one is left out. Christ died for everyone - whether they believe in Him or not. Let me just point that this view is officially considered a heresy since the beginnings of the church, but I think intellectually it has a lot of appeal. A loving God would want everyone to be saved right? Just read 2 Peter 3:9, for example, or 1 Cor. 15:22 where Paul says "all be made alive in Christ." All! All? It commits the same errors as double predestination: it emphasizes only one of God's attributes in lieu of the others (in this case, God's Mercifulness); it only works if you pick and choose your passages carefully and out of context. What is unique here, and I think what makes it a heresy, is that in Universalism God does not treat you as a person, as an individual. For there to be a relationship, one person asks a question the other must answer and it has to be a freely chosen exchange. God asks you "Who do you say that I am?" you need to answer, and your answer has consequences. God respects that, even if it is choosing death over life.

3) Pelagianism
Here's another great heresy, and it is pretty much THE Anglican/Episcopal heresy. we are all "natural" Pelagians. Pelagius (Google him) said, basically, that your eternal destiny is up to you. In this case, God chooses those who choose Him. Sounds logical no? If you choose God, then God will be on your side. God knows all things, and he knows already that you will choose him because he knows the future but not because he planned it that way. Again, it ends up emphasizing one thing in exchange for others. In this case it emphasizes man's free will over God's sovereignty. It also makes Love (with a capital L) impossible: it is not really Love if God asks you "I will love you if you love me first"!!

So, here's the bottom line question: Are you free?

I have talked about the False Self and the Real Self. One is free, the other isn't. But how many of us live out of our Real Selves? Furthermore, you cannot even begin to know you have a Real Self unless you are set free from your False Self. You must be set free! And who sets us free? Jesus Christ. We are slaves to sin, which means we lives within the False Self programming - we are the living dead. If so, the Pelagian position is not possible, because I cannot, while under sin, decide FOR God. It is not possible.

So what God wants, from the creation of the world, is for people to be free to have a relationship with Him. God wants this. So he foreordained, predestined, from the beginning that Jesus Christ would accomplish this. He would bring us freedom, the means to freedom. Predestination then is not the opposite of freedom it BRINGS freedom! God's sovereignty (His right to do whatever He wants) is above all the right He has to Love us regardless of how we feel about it! His love for us is primary and it is a love so deep He is willing to die on the cross for us!

God loves you so much that He will simply NOT sit idly by while you insist on your self-destructive slavery to sin. He will get involved. So He comes down from Heaven and moves into the neighborhood, and lives and dies like one of us. All so that you and me and people who never heard the Gospel can have freedom. Your heart should be burning with love and thanksgiving for this overwhelming Love of God, and you should be dying to go and shout it form the rooftops - tell someone about it tomorrow!

Does this help? Predestination is not about destiny, or karma, or the mechanical calculations of every thing that happens in the cosmos. It is about salvation history: God choosing Israel to be His people, choosing Mary to be the Mother of God, choosing the 12 disciples, choosing Paul while he was out huntin' Christians, and choosing you to be the amazing person you are.

In the end, predestination is not about you or me, it is about God - and we are in danger of grave error when we think it is about us.

Miscelanea et Trivium

On silence:
Being tight-lipped is a monastic virtue) - "If you are silent, your intentions may be misinterpreted but you will never be misquoted"....There's some value to that, and also a saying I used to hear in Brasil (from my Grandma) all the time "Speech is silver, but silence is gold."

On praise:
Praise does not make me uncomfortable - it is something that pleases me to no end. My "comfort zone" is in the front, leading, taking charge. To be silent, humble, submissive - argh! Those are tough.

On public reading of scriptures:
I always read the Bible with one thing in mind "My reading today will be the first time someone in the pews will hear God." Not that I am God, of course : ) But simply that by reading carefully (and understanding what I read) will allow someone to finally "get it" or to be touched by God's Word. This is how I came to believe th eBible is the inspired Word of God - I was reading the story of Jacob and Esau, and I got to the point where Jacob tricks his father for a blessing, and steps out of the tent just seconds before Esau walks in. And suddenly, I don't know how to explain this, I was there in much more than simply imagination, and I saw how the Holy Spirit arranged so that Esau would not come in at the wrong time. The timing is perfect - and, of course, anything perfect comes from God. And I could feel how God manipulates time and space to bring about his Kingdom. This whole thing took a split second but also I was up for the rest of the night. Up until that night the Bible was sort of a crusty old book - but after that it was like scales literally fell from my eyes, and I could see God's (sneaky) Hand moving things about, not only in Biblical stories but also in my own life and the life of others. And this has stayed me to this day.

The best reading I have ever heard was back in Phoenix, and this lady got up to read some obscure passage from Paul, but she read it with a tone that was similar to the tone I use when reading stories to my children (you know the tone). And it was wonderful, and EVERYONE got it! It was incredible. I asked her later and she was a little flustered with all the congratulations and she said that she had practiced it by reading to her children, and that's why it came out that way. And this is what is sooooo important - the point is to read it with intention and meaning BUT also to read simply without too much artifice. Not monotone, but also not a multimedia performance either. Just a simple reading.

On life:
it does not "get in the way" - it IS the way, silly. You living your life faithfully IS the whole of the spiritual practice!

On mindfulness:
When someone tells me they eschew regular practice and instead they are mindfull throughout the day, I get this uncomfortable feeling - my hunch is that what they mean is that once-in-a-while they remember to be 'meditative', whatever that means. How exactly does anyone stay mindful without the benefit of everyday at least once a day practice? The same with those people who do not like to say the Offices, but claim to keep God beofre them sll day long. Do they imagine Him standing there, or do they just try to remember to call His Name (perhaps through Jesus Prayer or some such thing)? Or do they 'sense' him...

On wearing a habit:
Ever since I dropped my habit (sounds horrible!) I have been called into a ministry of radical spiritual poverty - nothing, absolutely nothign I am, have, do is from me - or I should say, I try to remove "me" from the things that happen moment-by-moment so that the Holy Spirit can act. I am a spiritual chalicer - bringing the Cup of Salvation to people - not MY cup, not my Blood. I just am there and the Spirit does waht the Spirit does. Some days I am even able to be that way for about 15 minutes straight! : ) But the fire that burns in me right now, keeps me up at night, drives completely nuts, is the desire to be completely anihilated in God. One day I may be able to be like that for a whole half an hour! So 'habit' now is to have nothing, be nothing, and moment-by-moment say Yes! to God in this moment. Now. Be it a painful moment, or a joyous one. Doesn't matter. Pain and joy are relevant only to "me" - but if there is not "me" then it is only God acting...

On sensing God:
Don't fret about whether your feeling of God's presence is all in your head or not! It does not matter! God IS real, there really really is a God. This is not (for me) a matter of belief. I don't 'believe' in God - no more than I believe the Earth circles the Sun. I know there is a God. It's different. So assuming you know there is a God, you can then look at what God is supposed to be. He is the Creator of EVERYTHING. And everything he Created he declared very good. This means that the bottom line, the most basic reality of all Created things is that they are 'very good': from plankton to angels, from grass to Satan himself! Yep it is all good at its core, because it is all created by a benevolent God, the ultimate Goodness. That's the first step.

The second step is to think "How do I relate to this Goodness?" Well you can sense/see God's presence in all things that are Good: this means beauty, this means compassion, this means charity. All charitable things - thoughts, actions - radiate God's Goodness. All compassionate things: someone caring for someone else, your heart being broken by someone else's misery, your children, etc. all this compassion points to God's Infinite Love. The same thing with beauty - your beauty, the beauty of a sunset, or the beauty of how the whole world is put together, etc - all this beauty points to the Supreme Beauty.

The final step is to realize that you cannot split up God. When you detect even the smallest particle of God you get the whole of God. So when you see something beautiful, even though it is a puny and momentary beauty, a glimpse, you are touching God's Beauty who is behind all beautiful things. And if you get even one little bit of God you get the whole of God. If you feel one mustard seed's worth of compassion you are touching the whole of God's Love.

So when you are in a meeting, or typing an email, your mind can wonder (and wander!) at the miracle that life is, and you can trace that to God. Does it really matter whether God is there or not (by whatever weird standards you set)? No, because there is nowhere in Creation that God's Presence is not! God is here and only here, and now and only now, and He is Yes! only yes.

On knowledge:
The more you know you find out how little you know. I try to remember that to try to gauge whether someone knows more than me or less is a mistake. Everyone knows what they need to know for their walk with Christ, and I know what I need to know for mine. There's no more or less, there's only, and always, "enough". God loves you infinitely and gives you only what you need. Think about this: only what you need. Not what you want, not what you wish, not what you dread. But since He knows you perfectly He gives you what you perfectly need. Our goal is to be like that and give each moment only what the moment needs , no more nor less.

On complicating:
I know how hard it is to let go of making things hard! Hard things which I can somehow overcome with my own efforts give me worth, give me value. The more I overcome the stronger and more powerful I am! It's all about ME ME ME....but if you go for the opposite thing, if you die to self and take up your cross...then what happens? I have to die to the "powerful leader" self, you have to die to the "cowardly lion" self : ) But it is all the same - die to self, deny your (false) self. Throw in your lot with Jesus.

The Passion:
I was watching (again) the Passion of Christ on either Good Friday or Holy Saturday. And I noticed something: I noticed that I really hated the "bad guys" - you know, the High Priest and the Roman soldiers and the crowds, etc. I really hated them, what they were doing etc. But then I realized: Jesus did NOT hate them. He felt compassion for them. He was suffering their abuse FOR THEM! He died FOR THEM. But I was hating them, and I was sure that Jesus would nto want me to hate them! "Put down your sword," He said, "if you live by the sword...".

So I began trying to look at them with some compassion. Everyone who does something mean to someone else does it out of ignorance. Even if they do it on purpose, it is still based on ignorance. If they came to understand that God is ONE, that we are all very good at our core, and that our Goodness-through-Jesus connects us all, then it would be impossible for them to do harm to others - because they would see that it is really harming themselves. Once you begin to look at it this way you can see that the High Priest really was trying to do the best he could - but he had incomplete information. The same with the Romans. Etc.

I want to do a whole series of talks on the Pharisees and Saducees and the Romans - trying to explain why they did what they did in a compassionate way. Were they wrong? Absolutely. But they did not know what they were doing - they thought they did, but they were wrong. Were they responsible for the harm they did? Absolutely. But less responsible than I assumed, because they were acting out of ignorance and fear. And Jesus saw through it, saw the Goodness within them, and he focused on that and tried to help them!

On guilt:
Guilt is a much healthier spiritual response than it may seem. Feeling guilty for sin (and angry at sin) are actually very healthy. Our society is all about not feeling guilty, but you know what?, guilt is the correct and healthy response of a sinful creature before its Creator. Both guilt and fear are good things. If you feel shame and guilt at sin and fear of hell and punishment you are in a healthy place spiritually. Of course, I don't mean the self-flagellation and the "pity me" and other responses. Most people's guilty feelings are really a way to feed their egos (in a weird way). But healthy guilt is based on the reality of a sinner standing before God. Nothing wrong with that. Just don't turn it into a way to keep stroking your ego!

I remember my grandfather, a man whom I have a near-devotional attachment to, teaching me a couple of things. He used to sit at the end of our long oak dining table all day reading. I always thought I could never read as much as he did. He (in the 50s) taught himself Japanese just for fun. He was also a chess master. He used to sit with us kids (me and my sister) and build huge castles of cards just so we could knock them down. He would then build them again and again and again, much to our glee.

Anyway he taught me two things which are sort of guides in my life. One is that the world is a mirror - what you see is what you are. If you see people as mean and backstabbers (for eg.) then that is what you are. Not only is the world a mirror, but also everything that happens to you is just a reflection of what you are putting out there (sort of like instant-karma).

If you are going through some sort of trial, you should pray that God show you what you are doing to bring that on yourself. I can guarantee you if you fix what God shows you the problems will go away. It's magic! For example, one time I was having trouble with bullies in school. I used his theory, and found out that I was in turn bullying someone - though I never thought I was bullying, I thought I was just playing with them, but they felt it was bullying. Once I apologized to the kid I was bullying, the bullies left me alone. We are all connected and what I do comes back to me. Interesting insight for a kid of 9 or 10 no?

The second thing he taught me was that people who claim they "love people" in fact hate them, and those who appear to dislike people are the ones who truly love them. The first ones are either the types who want to avoid confrontation and end up either being abused or feeding the egos of abusers; or they are the type who want to "help" everyone by running their lives and expecting applause! They are the ones who put incredible effort in helping you when you are sick, but then, boy!, do they remind you of that all the time! Or the ones who tell you about how ungrateful their child/mother/niece is "after all I've done for them"...I am sure you know a few like that - and hopefully you are not one of them!

The other types - actually by not pampering your ego. They are prickly on the outside but sweet on the inside.

On predestination:
Ah yes. It is a theological black hole - people go into it and are never heard of again! Here's my little antidote to that stuff: Psalm 131. Memorize it! Not because I don't think it is worth thinking about such things (it is) but because it does not matter. Salvation is from God, through Christ via the Holy Spirit - it is in God's hands - so what does it matter if you understand whether it is all predestined or not? Let's say you finally "get it" you truly understand it (or the trinity, another good one!) - so what? It will feed your ego, you might begin to think you can understand the mind of God. Boy! That would be something no? And such a great and powerful ego will have plenty of time to show off its plumage...in hell... :) Because that is what hell is - a place full of people who have strong egos and healthy self-esteem, and who are always wanting to do things their way. C. S. Lewis once said: "Heaven is for you to say to God, 'Thy will be done'. Hell is for God to say to you 'Your will be done'."

Uncomplicate:
"Don't complicate things" - well it is great advice. But how do you actually go about it? How to you stop complicating things? I am interested to hear your approach. Don't give up so soon! What is one thing you think you could do tomorrow to uncomplicate things? Perhaps you could just spend some time in prayer asking God to show you where you are complicating something, one little thing, tomorrow. Perhaps he will have some clues for you. One more thing my grandfather said, though this is not uniquely his, it's a Brazilian saying (we are full of those) - it goes "A problem without solution is solved". Think about it.

The ego, which I so love to lambaste, is a problem without solution. You will always have an ego. Only Jesus was able to be completely free of ego. So we are always going to be incomplete, until we get to Heaven, and we will always fall short of the glory of God. So just shrug it away.

We are mean, petty, nasty but we are also nice and kind and charitable. This is just life, no? This is why every Sunday we ask each other's forgiveness (forgive US our trespasses AS we forgive...) by confessing publicly our sins (known and unknown, things done and left undone), by being absolved together, and then by turning around and hugging each other and accepting them as they are ("The peace of the Lord be always with you - and also with you").

Peacemaking and so on:
Jesus himself said "Blessed are the peacemakers", so it is not wrong to be a peacemaker. But there are two types of peacemakers: the ones who do it form a position of Big Love, and those who it from self-love and wimpiness. Sometimes we want people to stop fighting not because of them, but because of us, because it makes us feel uncomfortable, because we don't like how it makes us feel. See the difference? It is all about us us us. Me me me. That's not really peacemaking in the sense of the Beatitudes, it is more like pacifying, and I don't think those two are the same. So the immature peacemaker does it to protect their ego from discomfort, the mature peacemaker is a martyr and walks into the fight for the sake of others, willingly putting their lives (their hearts) at risk for the sake of others. That takes some guts.

On being nice:
I have met some pretty wise people, old monks and nuns and other sages - they tended to have a very approachable and friendly way about them, and they seemed genuinely interested in me or in other people. They could not possibly be called mean - I think they really did care. But I also know that people changed their own behaviors around them. Maybe it was their holiness? Bratty kids would go silent, angry people would calm down. I've seen it, I've felt it. So I think these people really did care, but they also had a way of disarming all your pettiness when you were near them. Apart form these few ones, most nice people are either being polite (which is fine) or they are wanting something...is that cynical of me? I don't mean nice people are trying to trick me, but I do feel that nice people tend to want to change things around them so that everything is also nice...and that looks like feeding their egos.

On fault-finding:
Now, I want to make sure we are clear on a few things. First, I don't want you to go thinking I spend my day looking at peoples' faults. I don't. I have to spend most of my energies being careful so I don't bang the log in my eye on too many people's heads! I think this is my first and most important job - not to put my stuff on you, not to drench you with my prejudices.

I have this long-standing belief that whatever it is, it is better in its natural state. For eg. I cannot go to zoos (as we talked at lunch). the same thign with people - it is much more interesting if I can observe you doing your thing without me telling you how or why to do it. your struggles and your solutions will be yours, not mine.

For example, under normal circumstances I will tell very little about myself. Not because I am particularly ashamed of if, but because I think that knowing certain things will automatically bias your responses. It is bad enough that I have biases of my own! I don't need to be twisting your too. I am doubly, "triply" conscious of not doing that when I am teaching or leading a retreat. I am sure I infuriate some people by refusing to answer questions directly, or by simply asking back, "So you asked me about predestination. What do you think about it?" and let them talk. It is not that I do not know a thing or two about the arguments, but it is because as teacher/retreat leader I am there to learn! Does that make sense?

Society & solitude

"Octavio Paz’s route was his own, not mine, but behind that route a path is traceable, and in that path I recognize an invaluable lesson: society and solitude—how to make these two compatible? His answer was to live life in full, alone and with others. To make oneself present by tracing one’s past and betting on the future." (Ilan Stavans)

This quote got me thinking in multiple levels. The first level is simply how fitting it is to describe OP's work - or the trajectory behind the work. Since Paz's poetry is foundational to my own it makes sense that his emphases be reflected in mine. This quote captures a certain something which matches Paz's impulse with my own.

More deeply though, I see in this dichotomy a motto for myself: society and solitude, "societas & solitas". This is my path, the path of the chalicer. Much solitude, of course, in prayer and meditation; also much social interaction - being a "tentmaker", being married, having an apostleship.

These two terms are the wings of the flying heart of love no doubt. And most importantly they complement each other. Rather like "ora et labore". The critical thing here is the emphasis on th eunion through the "and".

I absolutely reject the either-or worldview. Not from lack of discernment or capacity for judgment, but by lookig at the Passion and really allowing Jesus' gaze of mercy and love upon the very people who were killing him. Allowing that kind of radicalism to drench me.

1 Cor 13

Life will deny me, frustrate me

But love is patient

Life will be unkind and brutal

But love is kind

Life will show me how little I have, will compare me to others

But love does not envy

Life will applaud my success and give me medals

But love does not boast

Life will ensure me I am entitled to joy

But love is not proud

Life will trample me and spit upon me

But love does not dishonor

Life will bolster my ego

But love is not self-seeking

Life will infuriate me

But love is not easily angered

Life will demand accounts, wants to be a zero-sum game

But love keeps no record of wrongs

Life delights in the victories of the strong

But love doesn't delight in evil

Life celebrates lies

But love rejoices in truth

Life leaves the weak helpless

But love always protects

Life is a series of betrayals

But love always trusts

Life is full of despair, misery

But love always hopes

Life quits, ends

But love always perseveres

Life is finally vanquished

Love never fails

Love is the absolute basis of Reality.

Book: Sitting with Koans - John Daido Loori

The thrust of koans is to bring you to insight into dharmakaya ("the absolute basis of Reality"). When you achieve that insight you get "spacious mind" , and further koans help refine and root the insight until there can be no fluctuations. At that point you do things like pick up a bowl while holding nothing, etc....

Insight is very similar to faith, as the term is used by the mystics.

If I have faith the size of a speck I can move mountains etc. If I have faith I can heal the sick, trample scorpions etc.

The 3 pillars of Zen are: great doubt, great faith, and great determination.

Doubt

Perhaps I can equate Zen doubt with Christian Hope. I hope what the church teaches is true, I hope Jesus wasn't a madman, I hope I get to Heaven, etc. That is -- I am not sure and I am bothered about it but I will pursue it as if it was true, proven and experienced by me as truth.

Faith

Zen faith is trust in the methods of the tradition, trust in the reliability of the tradition, as well as trust of self -- "Can I do this? Yes I can!"

Christian faith is similar, but it involves faith in Jesus, or better, faith that the hope given by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is not just a fancy of the church/.

It is v. tenuous: I must have faith that Jesus can bridge the gap between God and my profound doubt - a doubt that transcends fear of death. If I have such faith I will know it is both The Rock and The Ocean. Such faith moves mountains...

But what is it? It is an insight. An insight is an all-pervasive, all-encompassing glimpse into Creation, into Reality, into the ground of being. Without such faith it is hard to imagine martyrdom as joyful. This is love-enabling faith.

Determination

Zen determination is this relentless try-again attitude. In Christianity it may be equated with love (1 Cor. 13). Turn 1 Cor. 13 into situations and it matches well:

• Love is patient = life will frustrate you but you wait in hope-filled faith.
• Love is kind = life is unfair and unkind, brutal and short. But you persevere being fair before unfairness, kind before unkindness, gentle before brutality.
  

Furthermore love is greater than faith & hope because love is the absolute basis of Reality.

1 Peter 5

Maintaining constant vigilance, which is the same thing as mindfulness, is a practice which is not common these days in Christianity, though it was a practice long established by the time of the Church Fathers. These men and women in the deserts of Syria and Egypt have much to say about the practice of vigilance. Yes, granted, much of what they say is difficult, and their extreme (to us) penitential practices are borderline psychotic. But...

I was reading some of the writings by Greg Boyd in his website and found some stuff about an interesting theological position which he supports called Warfare Worldview. Roughly it contrasts with what he labels Blueprint Worldview. On the Blueprint position, God pre-established the world, and all events, good or evil, were either 'permitted' or perhaps directly initiated by God. Think of some of the caricatures of Calvinism and you will get the point here – double predestination and all that. In the Warfare view there is room for freedom – both angelic and human. Ad this creates multiple actors who effect changes. This leads to a position which holds that there are malevolent agents in the cosmos, both human and inhuman. I do a disservice to a more nuanced position and it is worth reading his stuff directly.

The way my prayer life has evolved I have come to a point where the obviousness of Boyd's position requires no complicated theological positioning (though it is much welcome). Of course there are malevolent entities in the cosmos, and some of them are people and some of them are angels. And of course these entities are acting contrary to God's benevolence. Does this mean we are caught in the middle of some Manichean good-versus-evil dualistic universe? I am sure that is one of the theological arguments against Boyd's view, but I take a completely different approach.

Creation is a multi-dimensional ecosystem where there exist multiple species not all of which are to be considered as benevolent to humanity's aims and goals – just as humanity cannot be considered benevolent to other species' goals. It is no different than a lush rainforest – gorgeous, complicated, multi-layered, and not all the 'critters' in there are going to be Bambi...i.e. enter at your own risk.

So I do not think it is much of an organized forces of the Dark Side against organized forces of the Light. Principally because all I experience tells me that such central planning is not available.

Now, and this is where it can get interesting. I am also aware that the cosmos as a whole is cooperative. That is the various agents within it, at some level, cooperate with each other, and most fundamentally cooperate with God. I cannot emphasize this enough: the cosmos cooperates with God. Think about it, and better, pray it into your life.

What these two insights lead me to is part of my practice: to cooperate with God and facilitate other being's cooperation. I call this the practice of almsgiving. The word 'alms' comes from the Greek eleos which means 'pity'. I think 'having pity' tends to be seen as a condescending attitude, but my goal is to look at it from God's perspective, and pity is how someone in the Kingdom sees someone outside the gates. To deepen this a little, the Kingdom IS pure cooperation, and any place where cooperation does not reign need my pity, needs my heart to break and my eyes to fill with tears, and my hands to get impatient to touch and help and heal and bring them to the Kingdom.

Peter reminds me that almsgiving has a component of martyrdom in it – I resist the attacks by malevolent agents, human and inhuman, not because I am strong, or because I am Conan or some Greek hero. No I resist because people are suffering, I resist out of pity, I resist because in the end I want to bring my attackers into the Kingdom too. And this makes the 'war' a very different sort of war. It is not one of punishment and violence, it is one of pity and generosity.

I resist you who are evil because I want to cooperate with you who are good, because I want to eradicate evil – I want to hate with a perfect hatred the enemies of God (Ps. 139), a hatred devoid of prejudice and selfish ambition and greed, hatred without sin.

Hard stuff, but this is the practice. Scares me too.

Galatians 5

Why is Galatians 5 such a pivotal text for my understanding of my call? First of all because it is an impassioned call for walking freely. As part of my understanding of how to live out my call I am to be open to God and to mimic Him in my life.

But first a step back. Monastic life for millennia has been an attempt to live as completely as possible in Jesus. To this end since the Desert Fathers & Mothers men and women sought out ways to create an environment which was acoustically perfect to hear God's Voice. By definition such an environment is artificial. A monastery is as close to real life as a university. Sure a young man or woman in college discovers a new world, and learns many things about real life which they would not otherwise find back at home. But a college is also as far removed from life as possible - ask anyone about a year out of college int he 'real world'.

I am not putting down artificiality. It is important to design habitats where we can exercise certain facets of our existence. A good university is optimally constructed to maximize exposure to learning opportunities, be they intellectual or social. A monastery is a similarly structured environment (in fact it is no surprise that the first universities were monasteries) - it is designed to maximize the individual's exposure to prayer opportunities. Everything is focused on that. To take this further, even a home is artificial. It is a place where I can maximize my exposure to my family. The same approach can be applied when thinking of an office. And so on.

In fact, I am hard pressed to come up with places or spaces where we do not artificially arrange our environment to maximize some facet or another of our lives. I am not in any way pleading for sort of fantastical 'noble savage' ideal, where all is 'natural' nothing is artificial. This is a fantasy, and it too, in its own way, is artificial!

The first step is to simply recognize all these various artificial environments. How many do I enter into every day?

After recognizing them for what they are, the next question is to ask 'What are they teaching here?' What is this environment designed to do? What kind of opportunities does it afford me? I have worked in a company whose sole focus was making money, and it designed its environment accordingly. I have also worked in non-profits whose goal was serving others, and it was designed very differently. Even within companies each dept. has its own environment. I have worked in accounting which works one way, and I have worked in marketing which is different.

All these environments have rules. There are clear and codified and often written down rules and regulations for behavior. There is a lot here that can be drawn from Game Theory, but essentially there are two critical things to grasp: one is that each artificial environment is designed and developed to maximize the opportunities to exercise a certain trait; two all social environments are artificial.

So far so simple. The tragedy comes when people simply lose sight of the artificiality of their environment and take it as an immutable law of nature. "This is the way things are", they will say. They then become trapped within the 'game', within the confines of the environment - just like the 'permanent student' who goes to college for 12 years without graduating and who lives with his parents - unable to transition out of the safe and nurturing environment of college.

So where is freedom in all of this? Well the first step of freedom is to recognize that in Christ you do not need to be limited to a few of these 'games'. This is part of what Paul means by being all things to all people. Jesus blew through social conventions in ways which we are still discovering to this day - he touched the outcasts, he broke Levitical law, he had close women followers, he called YHWH 'Daddy', and so on.

When I am in Christ, that is when he is before me and behind me above me and below me to my right and to my left as St. Patrick suggests, then I am not imprisoned by these rules. I am free.

But Paul, a savvy student of human nature, predicted a danger in this freedom. If I can see the artificiality of my environs, and if in Christ I am freed from such bondage, then what stops me from indulging in, let's say, less than Biblical behavior? After all aren't some (all?) of our social mores and taboos just 'game rules'? Well yes and no says Paul "do not use your freedom to indulge in your sinful nature".

This is quite a subtle piece of advice. On the surface Paul seems to say what most have come to equate with church-speak, a condescending form of sermonizing, which pretends to talk about freedom just to go right back to the old standards. But looking at it more carefully I can see that what Paul is suggesting is that I drop my hypocrisy! What he is suggesting is that to be the freed of Christ, I need to be completely free. I must not allow this gift to lead me back into slavery.

The insight here is simple: recognize that social rules are artificial, but also recognize that inner tendencies are artificial also. There is not much space to discuss whether this is an innate or learned mechanism. Ad in fact it does not matter. The simple fact is that my inner drives are compulsive and most often unhealthy. If I 'let go of the reins' in some misguided attempt to be free I will end up enslaved to much worse things than stifling social conventions!

And here's the final piece: while all society is a large artificial environment, some of these rules are healthy (just as some of my inner drives are healthy). Just not all. To be free one must pick each one at a time and discern its spirit. Ask yourself is this environment a spirit of good or evil, one which leads me to health or to illness? Is this environment one which teaches me how to be less selfish, more loving, more prayerful, or is it one which glorifies power, greed and hubris?

My freedom lies in choosing - today, now - between life and death. Meditate for the next week on the passage below, especially next to Galatians 5.

See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command you today to love the LORD your God, to walk in obedience to him, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live. (Deut 30:15-19)