I continue to pray for the families who lost loved ones last Monday.  It has been exactly one week since I discovered the news on CNN, and my mind and heart have been buzzing with a multitude of thoughts and emotions.  As a Hokie, I was deeply moved by the convocation and the community/team spirit that emerged.  I got chills as I watched and listened, realizing the power of community to heal.

But even in the midst of this amazing display of community, I recognize that there is something much deeper that we need in order to walk through grief.  We need hope.

Among the many things written on the tragedy, I have really appreciated JR Woodward’s thoughts on hope and the in-between-day.

I received an interesting article from my friend Sandy today.  Thanks Sandy!  This was written by John Chrysostom in AD392 and called “Christmas Homily.”

“What more shall I say of this mystery? I see a carpenter and a manger, an infant and swaddling clothes, a virgin giving birth without the necessaries of life, nothing but poverty and complete destitution. Have you ever seen wealth in such great penury? How could he who was rich have become, for our sake, so poor that he had neither bed nor bedding but was laid in a manger? O immeasurable wealth concealed in poverty! He lies in a manger, yet he rocks the whole world. He is bound with swaddling bands, yet he breaks the bonds of sin. Before he could speak he taught the wise men and converted them.”

Sunday December 3rd marks the beginning of the Advent season.  I have been reminded in a number of ways that this season is essentially about hope.  J.R. Woodward put some great words to this on his blog; “Hope is a wish for life to be better than it is, the imagination to look beyond the bad to the good that can be, and the faith to believe that the good you imagine and wish for is actually possible.”  This is what Jesus is about, bringing justice, life, and hope.  Advent is a season of hoping in the one who will eventually make things right.

“Stories need time (and so do we).” 

“Stories cannot happen in an instant.  They need room–temporal, psychological, metaphysical–to unfold.  Stories relate action “over time.”  Because stories happen over time, there is the chance for change, on the part both of characters and of readers.  This links stories to hope.  Things can be different than they presently are or seem doomed to become.  And we, if we enter into the story and allow it to make its appeal, can be changed too.  And sometimes we wil be changed by the story of a character who refused to change.”

“The power of an imagined end, and it literally can only be imagined, lies in its ability to influence present choices.  Most characters, in life and in fiction, have some notion, however hazy or unarticulated, of what would constitute a successful life for them.  They have an idea of how they would like to “end up.”  That idea, that imagined end, can be as powerful as anything in the given of beginnings in determining the direction of our lives.”

-Daniel Taylor, professor of Literature and Writing at Bethel College, “In Praise of Stories”

 Picture ‘endless’ originally uploaded by antimethod on flickr

“Hope empties our hands in order that we may work with them.” 

I’ve been thinking about the issue of hope lately.  There are many ways to think about it, but I have particularly enjoyed some of Thomas Merton’s thoughts on the topic of hope, in this world, in society, in family, through struggle, through joy, with friends, with myself, with God.  Here’s some of his thoughts related to hope:

“When we do not desire the things of this world for their own sake, we begin to see them as they are.”

“Supernatural hope is the virtue that strips us of all things in order to give us possession of all things.”

“Therefore, to live in hope is to live in poverty having nothing.  And yet, if we abandon ourselves to economy of Divine Providence, we have everything we hope for.”

“Hope deprives us of everything that is not God, in order that all things may serve their true purpose as means to bring us to God.”

“Hope empties our hands in order that we may work with them.”

“We can either love God because we hope for something from Him, or we can hope in Him knowing that He loves us.  Sometimes we begin with the first kind of hope and grow into the second.”

“Those who abandon everything in order to seek God know well that He is the God of the poor.”

“Peace lies in the acceptance of truth.”  -Brennan Manning, Abba’s Child

If you’re able, take a moment to watch this slideshow from stoneth.  It’s an amazing glimpse into the faces of poverty.  Click here.

“Man’s first faculty is forgetting.”  -Albert Camus

“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”  -G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Where the Echoes Stop

by Erwin Raphael McManus

I want to stand where the echoes stop.
Far past where sound has abandoned thought.
Where silence reigns over redundancy.
Where once well said is more than enough.

I want to stand where the echoes stop.
Where words must be born to be heard.
Where speech is a gift and not a curse.
Where there is more of the unique and less of the mundane.

I want to stand where the echoes stop.
Where meaning is rescued from noise…
Where conviction replaces thoughtless repetition…
Where what everyone is saying surrenders to what needs to be said.

I want to stand where the echoes stop.
Where the shouting of the masses falls silent to the whisper of the one…
Where the voice of the majority submits to the voice of reason…
Where “they” do not exist; but “we” do.

I want to stand where the echoes stop.
Where substance overthrows the superficial…
Where courage conquers compliance and conformity…
Where words do not travel farther than the person who speaks them.

I want to stand where the echoes stop.
Where I only say what I believe.
Where I only repeat what changes me.
Where empty words finally rest in peace.

I want to stand where the echoes stop.

“Be still and know that I am God…” -Psalm 46:10a

Yesterday evening, I took Laura and the boys up to Visegrad (35 minutes away) to explore a new hiking trail.  We found a trail map, then we found the trail and started hiking around the top of Mogyoróhegy.  After 20 minutes, the trail opened up into a grassy field on top of the mountain….it overlooked the Danube river and a couple mountain ranges in the distance.  Sweet.  There aren’t any huge mountains in our area, but this was still a spectacular view. 

We walked out into the field, and Laura and I just stood there taking in the view with an occasional deep sigh of enjoyment.  The kids were running circles around us, and we were just soaking in the view.

I find that there are some activities, some forms of “doing” that create in me a greater sense of “being.”  They cultivate in me a greater ability “to see” and a greater awareness of who I am, who I am not, the quality of my inner-life, my own “something-ness” or “nothing-ness,” my ability to be “human” or my tendency toward “dis-humanity.” 

There are some ways of “doing” that point toward (or flow out of) my “being.”  Hiking to this grassy field took some time and effort.  But it led to a grassy field.  Or was it my desire for something like a grassy field that produced the time and effort needed to hike?

Tom and I recently read through The Way of the Heart by one of my favorite Catholic authors, Henri Nouwen.  I’ll paraphrase some of his thoughts: 

“Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self.  The world has distorted the idea of solitude.  It has come to mean privacy, a place where I can’t be bothered, or a place to recharge our batteries.  Solitude, however, is not a private therapeutic place.  It is a place of conversion, a place where the old self dies and the new self is born.  It is the furnace in which transformation takes place.”

Solitude, for me, is indeed a way of “doing” that points to “being.”  It is not merely a place of absence, but rather it is a presence.  It’s a place where I become present to my real self, to my real motivations, to the world around me, to God, and to myself in God.  It is a place where the heart of stone is turned into a heart of flesh.  It is the painful, liberating, and joyful process of confronting my own nothingness and “dis-humanity” in the embracing, grace-filled presence of God.  It is a place of becoming.

I’m definitely in a stage of life where there is never enough quiet with three little wild animals running circles around me all the time.  I do love it though.  But even in the midst of a busy, noisy life, there is a way of BEING silent enough and still enough to let go of illusions and become truly present. 

In general, I find this interesting tension/balance/harmony/disharmony between my “doing” and my “being.”  We live in cultures (even religious cultures) of “shoulds” and “musts,” and our actions are often more reflective of who society says I am than who I really am (or who I really could be, or who I am created to be).  Every culture has their own unique way of communicating the Japanese saying, “the raised nail must be hammered down.”  And thus, it is easy for us to manufacture a “false self,” a self who is ready to live and die for the expectations, approval, acceptance, popularity, power, success, and respect of the society in which we live. 

“Being” and “doing.”  I can see myself in a mirror.  My soul can see itself in the mirror of its activity.  But the activity is just a reflection, not the real thing.  In fact, the reflection is usually a distortion of our “real” being.  I guess there is a danger of falling prey to the “reflections” or illusions.  World religions and philosophies seem to agree on one simple point, that humans and humanity, as they usually exist and act, do not reflect what they were created to BE. 

Jesus was full of metaphors related to a person’s inward and outward realities.  He compared the quality and health of a tree to the fruit which it produces.  He compared religious hypocrisy and legalism to people who only wash the outside of their dishes and bowls.  “First clean the inside of the cup and the dish, so that the outside may become clean also,” he said.  And one of the more potent metaphors is found in his warning against becoming “whitewashed tombs,” beautiful and appealing on the outside yet full of death on the inside.

“Every time you make a choice you are turning the control part of you, that part that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, you are slowly turning this control thing either into a heavenly creature or a hellish one.” - C.S. Lewis