March 22, 2003

• Weekend Thoughts

  
  

  Has this not been a strange week?  My mother's recovery continues to bless us.  She is due to have her medications adjusted on Monday, so I'm going to hang around in Arkansas until next weekend.  Then I'll be heading back for my second Spring in Indiana.  The television is filled with adrenaline charged announcements by reporters on scene in Kuwait and Iraq.  I've mourned with a family who learned that their loved one perished in the desert via the network broadcasts.  I've cried with relief at the sight of those long lines of men who surrendered to the invasion force at their first opportunity.  I've prayed with a woman I've known for 30 years, I used to babysit her children when I was in high school.  Now one of those children is a pilot flying a Blackhawk helicopter.  And perhaps the worst insult on top of injury, the NCAA Basketball tournament (go team!) pre-empted CSI on Thursday. 

  
  

  Even though I just finished it a few weeks ago, I brought Brennan Manning's book Ruthless Trust for a second reading.  I first heard of the Ragamuffin several years ago, but didn't pick up my first volume of his work until last Fall.  Describing Manning's work to someone who hasn't read him, it's difficult to know what to say first.  He's different.  I highly recommend him to anyone walking the spritual path.  So rather than giving you a sales pitch, I think I'll let him speak for himself.

  
  

  Pundits have long maintained that the only person more arrogant than a newly certified physician is a newly ordained priest.  At the age to twenty-nine, with the holy oils of ordination still wet on my hands, I sallied forth to teach theology at the university level.  Exuding a brisk air of professional enthusiasm and a uffocating spirit of hubris, I expostulated so brilliantly on the mystery of God that after one semester, there was no mystery left.  When I heard an elderly and saintly friar in the monastery comment, "The older I get, the less I understand about God."  I assumed that it was his sincere attempt at modesty.  Secretly, however, I pitied his shallowness. 

  
  

  . . . speak to me sitting on a curbstone along General Meyer Avenue here in New Orleans.  I am intoxicated after a relapse with alcolhol.  My clothes are in tatters; I reek with rancid body odor; I am unshaven.  My face and belly are bloated, my eyes bloodshot.  I am clutching a fifth of Smirnoff vodka -- only a few ounces left.  My marriage is collapsing, my friends are near despair, and my honor is broken.  My brain is scrambled, my mind a junkyard of broken promises, failed dreams, unkept resolutions. 
       Fifty yards behind me is hte detox center of F Edward Herbert hospital.  As I take the last swig, I shudder at the pain and heartache I have caused.  Going to A A meetings, working the Twelve Steps, talking to my sponsor, reading the Big Book, praying -- these have all worked for others.  Why have they not worked for me? ... When I wake up the next morning, I learn that two staff members had come our on the avenue and carried me into detox. 

  
  

  Placing my security in my resume, I always felt the need to read another book, listen to another tape, make another retreat.  Whenever I heard the words, "Blessed are those who know they are broken" I thought, "Hell, that blessing was for publicans and prostitutes who did not have my track record of unstinting service to the Kingdom of God!"

  
  

  ... a friend allows me to be myself, thoughtful one moment and silly the next.  Between us, trust grows.  If a word of fraternal correction is needed, the friend offers it directly, but the pained expression on his face tells me how difficult the reproof is for him.  Yet he has the courage to tell me something unpleasant but necessary.  Something others should tell me but do not.  (They renege for fear that I will not like them anymore.  Their emotional equilibrium is more important to them than my spiritual growth.)

  
  

  This man writes beautifully about the glory of God.  He describes the compassion of our Abba, (literally 'daddy').  He carries us high into the realms of theology and adoration.  But the only way he's able to convince me to take that journey is by revealing himself in brutal strokes to be exactly as weak and needy as I am.  For a long time I bristled when I heard someone quote Karl Marx "religion is for the weak."  Then I pitied those who don't know they are weak.  Now I pity myself for the days that I forget that I'm weak.  Brennan Manning never forgets that he's weak.  I listen to him.

  
  

  The effects of "beholding God" -- that is contemplating the glory of the Lord -- are profound and far-reaching ... The aptitude to appreciate the grandeur of divine Reality, born of te brush with [glory], takes pride of place and begets an Isaiah-like spirit of speechless humiility and breathless amazement at the overpowering splendor of God.  After the encounter, a Christian will resonate to the words of [Jewish philosopher] Abraham Heschel on his deathbed when he said to his friend, "Sam, never once in my life did I ask God for success or wisdom or power or fame.  I asked for wonder, and he gave it to me." 

  • 2:16 pm
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