Giving Nature

Some of last year's potatoes are coming up in the middle of my spinach beds. I've transplanted them and expect to get some new potatoes this year. Volunteer squash and tomatoes inevitably come up in the compost. Abundance is more the nature of nature than scarcity, and it only takes a small handful of seeds to get things growing. 

Which is to say that there is still so much vitality --creativity, energy, experience in the American work force that with some adjustments and scrounging, we can weather this thing. 

This economic downturn is teaching me to become a really mature responsible adult (age 48) and not fall prey to catastrophic thinking. I'm finally learning to see that even if it's only 1/8th full, the glass is still not empty.

Response to your Sola Scriptura Apologia

An old  friend asked me to justify myself in light of my faith.  I don't know that I satisfied the request, but I don't think the request itself was all that fair.  Anyway, I did write something which I thought I'd share up here, just to see how it looks framed, from a distance.  

Well, I’m sure I’ll be a disappointment to you, as I am not inclined to pamphleteering, nor am I wanting to exchange blows over the source and path to divine love.  So what I have written here is my personal approach to God.  It’s based on how I live my life.  I am a confirmed Roman Catholic, and I participate in the mass, and often write the prayers of the faithful.  I am also a practicing Quaker, as I have found that most of the precepts of Quakerism are consistent with my Catholic experience.  The Catholic Church being catholic gives a lot of room for varieties of religious expression, and in Philadelphia the Qua-tholic approach is more common than elsewhere. 

 So we read the Bible to help us to embody the incarnation of Christ in our being, just as we receive the Eucharist and share in the sacraments which are powerful and effective bearers of Grace.  We are the recipient of this Grace, and we are all given an equal capacity to receive and reflect that Grace.  We may not all reflect or transmit it with equal clarity, and sadly, some of us can’t seem to reflect it at all due to the horrors of past experience or abject depravity.  Nevertheless, planted within us all is the seed of the light which can spark and kindle and grow. 

And I don’t believe that God’s work was finished in the moment some 2000 years ago when Jesus left this life.  God is still at work among us, freed and available to all in the form we call the Holy Spirit.  That work is reflected in the great tradition of church teaching and develops into a consistent pattern that is integrated and cogent.  But beyond scripture and tradition there is also the teaching of the conscience.  I accept as a semantic question whether the conscience and the inner light are one.  I don’t claim to have an answer to that, and I don’t think Robert Barclay or William Penn succeeded in their effort to answer that question either.  But as it is an open question, it gives one an opening for pondering the presence of God in the present moment. 

There are so many ways to open to God’s Grace.  By reading the scriptures; pondering the example of love, sweetness and generosity which we found in Jesus, in the Blessed Mother, in the lives of the many named Saints and the lives of the many Saints we know and have living among us; and by opening our lives and the lives of others to the power of God’s grace through the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, and by opening ourselves to each other and to the healing of God’s grace, we are witness to God moving among us. 

And in the interplay of our lives in the world and the working of Grace among us, there is new understanding.  New images are developed which help us to know and understand more about God’s love for us.  I love the experience of knowing more about God by opening my inner imagination to the ways I feel the Spirit moving in my life.  It’s a rich tapestry that renews itself as needed.  And more than just informing my own inner life, this approach helps me work better in the world.  – I believe that my life journey is a better example of God’s love because of this process of imaging and understanding how I am loved. 

I should say that I am keenly aware that there is a real danger in exposing oneself so openly to the workings of the world and nature.  It takes careful attention and discernment not to be swallowed up by the wilder aspect of natural faith.  But then again, it is more likely in our society that people will be so numbed by their worship of the false gods of wealth, prestige or control that few are at risk of falling prey to the perils of natural religion.  – There have been occasions when the power of all that is feels like it might overwhelm me, and at those times I have consulted with elders in my faith community, priests in the church and a spiritual director. 

So that’s it, at least in part.  It’s not very rigorous I suppose, but mine is a personal and intimate experience of Christ, and I am deeply grateful for it. I know it’s not for most, but that’s nothing new.  I don’t know why I’ve gone the way that I’ve gone, but I have no evidence that I am on the wrong path, and so I’ll continue to carry on in this way.  

Later I’m sure I’ll kick myself for the things I’ve left out, but so be it.

Thoughts while playing Spider Solitaire

I like to play Spider Solitaire, though I don’t let myself play for long periods of time.  Still, I start a game –always it’s at the most difficult level rather than one of the simpler versions with two suits or even one.  No, I dive right in to the game at its hardest.

The other day my son, 14, observed me playing and asked “How many times have you beaten it?”  I told him that in 5 years of playing, probably two or three games a day, I’d won perhaps 15 times.  “Why don’t you do it at an easier level? Why on earth would you want to loose all the time?” – I don’t want to play the easier levels.  I’m really not in it to win, I explain slowly.

He looks at me with the look I see so often anymore. He’s sure his mother is certifiably mad, but he’s not going to say anything, just keep a close eye on things and see how it develops.  Perhaps this will motivate him to eventually learn to cook dinner or do his own laundry?

But I digress…

Over time I have come to see that it is not “beating the game” which matters to me, but rather, I’m fascinated by how the facts of one round have impact on the many rounds (dealing of cards) that follow.  A small bump, putting a 6 of hearts atop a 7 of spades in the first round, will become an enormous problem by the fourth round when you need the 7 of spades to join the three spade runs you have sitting there, which you’ve worked so hard to achieve, hopeful that another the missing 7 would turn up in the cards to come, or that a 7 of hearts would show up elsewhere and allow you to free that languishing 6 of hearts.

But these efforts seldom come to fruition, and by the 6^th or 7^th round, you’ve made a pigs pie of the whole effort.  There are jacks carelessly strewn over 3’s and 8’s thrown away beneath unmovable Kings.  The disaster happens as if in slow motion, and while it’s mildly reversible—one can always hit “ to undo a move, or all the moves of a round – the hard facts of the previous rounds are now written in stone.  There is no reversing the work of the previous round.

To see the historical nature of the disaster seems to settle something in my middle-aged brain.  Spider Solitaire is beginning to give me some perspective on the playing field of life.  Things happen, some are reversible, some are fixed and unchanging.  We work around them, trying our best for a good outcome—but the results are usually less than stellar, generally half-baked at best. 

As if I’m watching the possibilities of my own life fade away, I see the dazzling potential of a three card same suit run get lost beneath the rubble of subsequent rounds.  The potential is there, but how to bring it to fruition?  And so many past mis-steps are irreversible.  Just as in friendships and work relationships, the harsh words and angry blow ups continue to reverberate, long after words of apology have been spoken. 

And can a good end be achieved out of this mess of a hand I’ve created for myself?  By all probability the chances are unfavorable, but still I will try.  Who knows, perhaps the dazzling fireworks display might still be mine at the end of the day.  My hope now is to make the best of whichever new cards come my way, and to make peace with the missteps I’ve made along the way.  

Shalom.