On Leaping

Now, I know that two weeks ago I'd said I had returned to blogging. Unfortunately, I've been lax. Oh, Discipline, why are we not yet friends? Anywise, here's my thought for the week:

Most everyone has a cool cousin, someone super awesome at all times. Mine is a great out-doorsy type: he's rock climbed in Patagonia, ridden his bike down the Western seaboard, rafted the Grand Canyon several times, and led Outward Bound wilderness excursions for 50 days at a time. He told me story a while ago about a visit to Guatemala. He was backpacking around Latin America and visiting all the places I wasn't cool enough to see when I was down there for a month that same summer. One of the places he went was a system of caverns.

There are tour guides who take groups of people through these caves by candlelight. In places they wade through water, there are all sorts of creeping things about, and they squeeze through tight cracks and such.

Well that looks neat.

Cave spiders? Not so much.

At any rate, he said that they got to one point where the guide gathered them all together and had them blow out their candles so that they were in complete darkness. Then the guide took them each one by one to a place in the dark and said "Jump." He didn't say jump over or jump through or jump up or jump down. He just said "Jump." So my cousin jumped. He said it felt like he fell 8 or 10 feet and landed in water, which sucked him under and shot him into a river outside the cave.

I think about this story all the time. When I heard it, my first thought was, 'Isn't that a lot like faith?' We're lead to a place in the dark and we hear a voice we do not know say "Jump," and we're faced with a choice: to trust that voice without any assurance or vision of where it will lead, or to back away and stay in the dark, where it isn't comfortable, but at least we can feel the ground. What do we allow to rule our lives? Trust or fear?

They say that priests preach first to themselves, and it strikes me how much this story touches the nerve of one of my many habitual sins, which is to try to understand everything before committing, in the attempt to control all possible outcomes. If I can just see and understand all ends, I can choose correctly. It is a perpetual failure of mine to believe that I can choose my way to Heaven. But this thought neglects the leaping that is fundamental to the life of faith.

Goodbye, cruel world! (Why hello, nice ocean!)

Why is leaping fundamental to faith? Because it takes the ground out from under us. It is the surrender of the attempt at control. There will always be times that we meet with mystery, with our finitude, and need to make a choice, trusting in God's grace more than our own lights. That's why I've titled this entry "On Leaping," not "On the Leap." Despite what some of our beloved separated brothers and sisters may insist, there is no definitive personal proclamation of faith. Yes, you will leap, definitively, and then you will find that you must leap again. And again. And again. This is the life of faith, and if we continue to place our toes at the edge and trust that voice, it will be the life of growing in sanctity. Why? Because sanctity is nothing more than giving over our authority and control, and acknowledging Christ as the Lord of our hearts. Which is really the most freeing thing possible, because for such were we made. There is no freedom possible except the freedom for which we were made, which is the freedom to love. Anything less than love is a binding, a backing away from that edge, and a desire to remain in the dark where we can at least feel the walls, even if we can't see. And love itself will always be a leap in the dark, a trusting in the Mystery who is another person. So we need to ask ourselves: are we leaping?

On Love in a Free-Market Economy

My many and most humble apologies for my long absence from the Interwebosphere. I have emerged from the writing cave, with a first draft turned in and a second percolating away merrily. Happy Easter Week to you all and I pray that it is a most blessed time for you! My sister and 4-year-old nephew have been staying with me for the past two weeks, which has been awesome, but has cut into blog-time, on top of which I've unwisely added a nasty head-cold. But all said and done, I am returned. Now back to the thought provoking!

Being, as I am, a simple American, I have grown up with certain ideas. Hard work pays off. If I pay for a service, I have a right to receive it. 'Networking' is part of my vocabulary in the sense of making connections with people who will be able to help me achieve my goals. The ultimate dream is to retire early, with a respectable (read: large) sum of money and bum around, allowing myself all the experiences that work (read: responsibility) has kept me from having all these years.

What's that, ringing phones? I can't hear you from out here on my freaking windsurfing board. Perhaps you could leave me a  message? I'm sure I'll get back to you as soon as fun stops being fun.

These ideas are great! The only problem is that they're all about me. Not that I'm so terrible to think about (I mean, I have been working out... well, not really), but also not the best. That is, these sorts of ideas may help to form me in "succeeding" in American society, but they ultimately point back to me. All the goals formed by these ideas will be based on my thoughts, my opinions, my desires, and especially an 'economic' view of relationships. That is, if I give you something, I expect and deserve something in return.
This is a fine model when applied to business (the basis of it, in fact), but when applied to relationships, it's not so helpful. In fact, it's probably the easiest and fastest way to frustration and despair.

I LOVE YOU MONEY DOG WHY WON'T YOU PLAY WITH ME???

Why? Because unfortunately for folks like me with analytical minds and an eye toward the mathematical, when math is applied to love, it dies. Well, one or the other must die: either the math must go or the love will.  Here's what I mean by 'relationship math': doing things in order to be loved. Now first, please do not take me to mean that a relationship is not give-and-take. Of course it is. But a loving relationship is give-and-take precisely because both parties are giving, and they take what the other has given in humility, not because they have earned it. Something that is earned is payment, but love is always a gift.

What it comes down to in the end is control. If we believe that we deserve the love we are given, it must be a result of something we have done, that is, it again points back to us. If we can do something in order to receive love, then we are ultimately in control and love is not a matter of gift, but of receipt.

A few years ago, I went to a cousin of mine's high school play (they were doing one-acts that the students had written). In one of them, depicting a first date, the boy leans in for a kiss just after dinner. The girl, surprised, says, "What are you doing?!" The boy responds, "Well, I just bought you dinner, so I figured..." Wrong idea, son. That ain't love.

Here is where this all becomes rather terrifying: when this is applied to God, we can get caught up in the arithmetic of it all, making up a spreadsheet, with what we've done right on one side and what we've done wrong on the other. Then we spend our days in frustration trying to make the good side outweigh the bad side. 'This is a good act, but how good is it? Is it enough?' 'This was a bad act, but how bad? How many of my good acts does it cancel out?' This will leave us in one of two places: if we are like Flannery O'Connor's Misfit in "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," we'll be filled with anger and frustration:

"I said long ago, you get you a signature and sign everything you do and keep a copy of it. Then you'll know what you done and you can hold up the crime to the punishment and see do they match and in the end you'll have something to prove you ain't been treated right. I call myself The Misfit," he said, "because I can't make what all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment."

On the other hand, we can be filled with despair because we can see that nothing we do is enough to earn God's love. But this is as it should be. Nothing we can do is enough to earn God's love because God's love cannot be earned. It is gift. Realizing that it is not dependent on our actions means that all control is taken away from us; it is ultimately an act of humility to accept God's love because it is given to us in abundance, completely without our ability to control. Love is the antithesis of control. Love bursts the thought that we are self-sufficient and capable of ordering our world according to our own desires and powers. Love confronts us with what-is-not-ourselves, or it is not love.
Now, I do not mean to argue that our actions are meaningless - of course our actions have great meaning, especially when they are genuine expressions of our personhood. But it is not that we act in a good way in order to be loved by God. Rather we act good (we are good) in response to the fact that we are already loved. John O'Donnell, SJ, wrote a book on Hans Urs von Balthasar's theology, and in one chapter he wrote,

"Those who begin to love perforce cease to worry about their own happiness, are no longer concerned with merit, and even forget about heaven for themselves. Their whole being is caught up in the fact that everything is gift."

This may sound silly, but when we love, even salvation no longer matters. If salvation is the primary goal of our actions, this will devolve into that arithmetic that kills love. This is the point of saying that the goal of faith is not an event or a destination, but a person, Jesus Christ. It is not that we are striving simply to enter the heavenly realm

ROAD TRIP!!!!

Rather, we are striving to encounter and be caught up in the love of Jesus, in the Holy Spirit, through the power of God the Father. This was the insight of St. Therese, who promised to "spend her Heaven doing good on earth." Why? Because she longed to be with Christ, who is present with us here and now. I think when we fall into a "Heaven's my destination" type of mindset, we think that we get to check out and leave this world behind. But it's not about escape, it's not about rejecting this world, it's not even about reward - it's about submission, about allowing ourselves to be loved, which means giving up control, being humble before the blast of God's love, and loving in response. But do not despair. The math went out the door with the Cross.

"Our sins are as a drop of water, flung into the furnace of God's love."