A Total Failure

I read a story the other day about a guy named John Pierpont who died in 1866.  He finally died as a lowly office clerk with the government in D.C. with a long string of personal defeats finally breaking his heart.

He started strong, graduating from Yale (which his grandfather founded).  He decided he wanted to go into education.  As it turns out, he was a failure as a teacher.  He was too easy on his students.

So he got a law degree to become a lawyer.   He was too generous with his clients and never pursued those cases that brought good fees.

He then decided to be a dry merchant.  He failed at that too.  He kept giving credit to customers and not charging enough for his goods to make a profit.

During this time he took up poetry.  He was actually published a few times but never collected many royalties, so he considered himself a failure as a poet.

And so he decided to become a minister, went to Harvard Divinity School and was ordained a minister of the Hollis Street Church in Boston.   But he became a bit too vocal about prohibition against slavery which upset some of his congregation.  He was forced to resign.  He was a failure as a minister.

So John decided to get into politics.  He was nominated as the Abolition Party candidate for governor.  He lost.  He then ran for congress with the Free Soil Party.  He lost again.  He was a failure as a politician.

The Civil War came along and he volunteered as a chaplain.  At 76, he couldn't keep up so after two weeks he was forced to quit.  He couldn't even make it as a chaplain.

He finished out the last five years of his life as a menial file clerk with the Treasury Department.  He wasn't very good at that either.  His heart wasn't into it.

John Pierpont died a failure.  He accomplished nothing he set out to do or be.  On a small memorial stone over his grave the words read:  POET PREACHER PHILOSOPHER PHILANTHRIPIST.

Like most of our lives, it takes perspective to see the purpose in our suffering, or to see success in what felt like a life of failure.  John's commitments to social justice, his active engagement of the great issues of his time, and his desire to serve were all marks of a life well lived.  Looking back, education was reformed, legal processes were improved, credit laws were changed, and slavery was abolished.  And John, in a small way, was involved in all of it.  God used him, and his failures for his purposes.

Every year in December, all of us celebrate John's success.  We carry in our hearts and minds a life long memorial to him.  It's a song.  Not about Santa Claus or angels.  It's a simple song about the joy of whizzing through the cold dark winter's gloom in a sleigh pulled by a horse, with friends laughing all the way.

John Pierpont wrote Jingle Bells.

"To write a song that stands for the simplest of joys, to write a song that three or four hundred million people around the world know, a song about something they've never done, but can imagine, a song that every one of us large and small can hoot out the moment the cord is struck on the piano, and the cord is struck in our spirit, well that's not failure!  One snowy afternoon in a deep winter, John Pierpont penned the words as a small gift to his family and friends and congregation and in doing so he left a permanent gift for Christmas, the best kind, not the one under the tree, but the invisible, invincible one of joy."

Who knows what fingerprint you are leaving on this world of ours?  Some of us might at times see our lives as insignificant, or maybe that we are failures.  Don't lose faith.  God has an elaborate orchestra of which you are playing a part.  If you make sure you are "in tune" with His will, in time, you will hear the song.

Rhythm

Who are you waiting for?

“Despite gun-toting armies and companies raping the environment - children are born into our torn and twisted world everyday, … and each one brings the renewed message that God has not lost faith in mankind.” - Johann Christoph Arnold, author and social advocate for children

As I’ve matured, I’ve grown to appreciate the Franciscans’ emphasis on the incarnation, God becoming human in the enfleshment of Jesus is a big deal, perhaps bigger than Easter. (St. Francis popularized Christmas.) C.S. Lewis expressed there would be no Easter without the incarnation. Unfortunately, with commercialism consuming the Christmas season we fail to ponder the significance of this event, our stories and God working through them.

I think too many folks begin their spiritual journey indoctrinated with ‘original sin,’ rather than beginning with ‘original blessing.’ In Genesis, “God created it, and it was good” is stated six times and concludes with “indeed it was very good.” This is when God launched the manifestation of himself in the first act of creation joining matter and spirit as one.

“The real light which gives light to every man was coming into the world.” - John 1:9

God materialized our universe from an unfathomable burst of Light 14 billion years ago in the Big Bang, an event that continues expanding beyond mankind’s imagination. Light is composed of two fields acting simultaneously, the magnetic field and the electric field; hence the essence of electromagnetic waves or light. The two fields are always in phase, in other words, like waves, they peak and trough in unison at identical instances. However, the two waves travel perpendicular to each other. Light ceases to exist if either field is removed.

Similarly, in creation, humanity is the union of the spiritual and the material. It’s our essence in nature. To separate one from the other fundamentally destroys what it is to be human. We live in a culture that favors separation encouraging dualism. I caution against this separation in our personal lives. Unfortunately, we encourage this separation when we downplay Jesus’ humanity and fixate on his divinity destroying his essence instead of … recognizing the synthesis Jesus lived and shared, … the same synthesis we’re invited to live and share.

In an unprecedented case 2000 years ago, God took human form, … a face, a body, a personality, a heart … in Jesus. Many people think God incarnated in Jesus was God’s plan to come and fix a messed up world … and that didn’t happen. Despite the divinity in creation, the world remained a mess when Jesus left this earth. Because of today’s messy world, many folks surrender their spiritual component of life for … you can name several substitutions, excuses, distractions! But for many others, we learned, God was not the punitive, sometimes petty God He was portrayed to be in the Old Testament. True God wants the best for us modeling simplicity, non-violence, forgiveness, healing, inclusivity, use of talents, love …. all qualities we are called to exercise.

Too one-dimensional as I see it, is that many see Jesus as only divine while they see themselves as only material. People develop the attitude, “Oh sure, Jesus could heal … because he was divine. We can’t do that.”

Ah, but we can! We are called to heal and much more!

“As you go, make this proclamation: ‘The Kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, drive out demons. Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.” - Matthew 10: 7-8

If we can’t put the divine and physical together in Him, we can’t put it together in ourselves nor will we put it together in others. We are brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, children of the Kingdom of God, both divine and fleshy, a living paradox, just as Jesus was. We are gifts from Him and to one another. We are in the story, not outside it!

“Jesus is the standing icon of the entire spiritual journey from start to finish: divine conception, ordinary life, moments of enlightenment (such as Jesus’ baptism, Peter’s confession, and Jesus’ transfiguration), works of love and healing, rejection, death, resurrection, and ascension. That is not just Jesus; it is true for all of us.” Richard Rohr OFM author and Franciscan

The mystery of the Advent season is the paradox of matter and spirit as one! Francis taught others to imitate our Lord, to walk in His footsteps … to love … to act not to just worship His divinity. To realize the miraculous in the laws of nature, to find God at work in our lives and the lives of others, we must reflect on our stories. Consider a biographical sketch of your children’s births. Do you see common threads? Do you find extensions of the stories lived by our Lord? Advent is a time to ponder with excitement, engagement, anticipation as our young Mother Mary did in a manger. Cherish them in the quiet of your hearts, in the spirit of your families, and in the body of your communities.

The Nativity “pulls you inside of a universal story, and it lodges in the unconscious where it is not subject to the brutalities of your intellect or will. … the map of Jesus’ life is the map of Everyman and Everywoman: divine conception, ordinary life, betrayal, abandonment, rejection, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension. In the end, it all comes full circle, and we return where we started, but now transformed” - Thomas Merton OSB, author and Benedictine monk

Light looked down and saw darkness.

“I will go there,” said light.
Peace looked down and saw war.
“I will go there,” said peace.
Love looked down and saw hatred.
“I will go there,” said love.

So he,
the Lord of Light,
the Prince of Peace,
the King of Love,
came down and crept in beside us.

-Rev. John Bell, Iona Community

O come, O come, Emmanuel!

THE DAILY PRACTICE OF PRAYER

by Fred Vilbig

Everything in our spiritual life really needs to begin and end with prayer. That is one of the reasons why the articles I wrote this year have focused on prayer.

Prayer should be our loving response to the call of God Who is love. But we have to quiet ourselves and the world around us to hear that gentle, tiny whisper in our souls, which is God. Our prayer can be simple like the “Jesus Prayer.” We should try to understand and tune into the prayer, Jesus gave us, the “Our Father.” To grow closer to Jesus, we should pray the prayers that Jesus prayed, the Psalms. We should ask for help from His mother, Mary, and His friends, the Saints. We should make our prayer real through fasting and abstinence. And we should join in the greatest prayer we have, the Mass, as often as we can.

But how can we put this into daily practice?

The Power of Weakness

As I write this, I’m laid up in bed. Achilles surgery and shattered bone spur removal has left me immobile and on pretty serious pain medicine. The meds and laying around for a few weeks have caused my diverticulitis to act up and now I have an infection with a fever that produces crazy stressful dreams or total insomnia.

I thought this was going to be a simple outpatient snip. I guess the fever and migraines from the infection help me not notice the pain in my foot. I have never had surgery before. Heck, I’ve never had a broken bone or even a cavity. I’ve always just taken my body for granted. It just does what its supposed to do and I don’t really think about it. Yes, I’m noticing that I’m a bit more sore in the morning then when I was in my 20s and 30s, and I’ve had a flu or two, but I’ve never really been down and out like this. I can see how it can get depressing for people. You start to get frustrated and feel helpless. The simplest things are now the biggest events of the day.

However, in my moment of self pity, I realize a few important things. First, I can offer my suffering up. Our faith teaches us that someone else can receive grace from my struggles. As I pray for this, my agony doesn’t seem pointless. The sheer idea lifts my spirits and takes me another step toward recovery. I’ve also realized what great love and support I have around me with my family. I’ve always known that Lisa has a black belt in nurturing, but it’s been amazing to see my daughters join in. I watch as they bring me jello, or ice, or rub lotion on my feet, that they are not doing this out of obligation. They are doing it out of love. You can tell they enjoy it. I never really realized how trying to be the tough guy that didn’t need help from anyone, was prohibiting the experience of serving, and blocking the love those around me need to express.

I also realize that my big, important job isn’t that big or important. Closing another contract and hitting our sales targets don’t seem so important at 3am when you can't sleep and your head is throbbing. Oh, and things seem to run just fine without me standing in a panic watching over everything. God is offering me another lesson in faith. That I should put my heart into my work, but let Him worry about the outcome. Early this morning I heard the birds chirping outside. I'm usually not up at this hour, and I didn't know they sing in total darkness, before the sun rises. Before the sun rises. They don’t fly in a panic, calling a meeting with the other birds about what to do if the sun doesn’t come up today. They start their song, knowing that it will rise. They believe. I think of the small farming community that was suffering a long drought. They gathered in the church to pray for rain but only one kid brought an umbrella. That’s the kind of faith I need.

So I’m encouraged. I know that even if I’m not running around, taking care of all my worldly responsibilities, things will be ok. I don’t have to be a superhero at home or at work. Offer it up, let those you love help, and have faith that you are in His hands.