Quaerere Deum

Oh that today you would listen to His word!
Psalm 95

Listen carefully, my son to the Master's instructions and attend to them with the ear of your heart.
Rule of Saint Benedict

That is the constant conumdrum--how to listen, not talk. Spiritual advisors give us libraries full of advice on practice and piety--words to say. Occasionally we get a hint of how to listen. The Zen masters gave more listening advice that Western spiritual experts (says she, muttering).

Here's one from Magnificat: "Deaf though we may be to the Word of God, God never ceases to send us messengers..." The skeptic wonders, where are they in my life? Jeremiah, are you there? The believer acknowledges that the scripture sits unopened on the desk, and on the table. The writer goes on, however. "...homilies, hymns, prayers, persons, events, experiences--to break through our deafness that we might hear and live." The skeptic again wonders how we know which of the many people and events--and prayers, homilies and hymns--are the ones we should listen to.

Perhaps the answer is all of them.

Memorial Day (or, Mourning Again)

I went about mourning as though for my friend or brother. I bowed my head in grief as though weeping for my mother.

Psalm 35:13-15

Here's to those fallen in battle, may we revere their memory always. Here's to the mangled and maim who come back to us, they deserve our care and thanks.

Here, also, is tribute and respect to the living dead, the walking wounded, the ones who left their life on a battlefield somewhere, and filled out the rest of their days in a kind of grey half life, never quite the husbands or fathers they were before, never living the lives they would have led. Long before modern psychology named it PTSD they were among us.

Here, above all, is a salute to those who got back husband, brother, friend, father but never really got him back. I weep for my mother.

Mourning

For my days are vanishing like smoke
my bones burn away like a fire.
My heart is withered like the grass.
Psalm 102

April 4

There are losses that can never be replaced. Sadness and loss can swamp you unexpectedly long after you thought you were healed. Are you letting God down?

There are losses that make you acutely aware of your own failures. There is death, and there is the failure to give life. Can you refuse God's forgiveness and healing?

April, always April. "Breeding flowers in a dead land." MLK died April 4, 1968. Many perished in Xenia April 4, 1974, and one died a distance away at the same time. All deaths are equal in God's eyes. All life is from him. Can you refuse life?

No. Before you there is life and death. Choose life, with all its cyclic pain and rebirth, joy and sorrow, death and resurrection.

It's the blight that man was born for. It is Margaret that you mourn for. (cummings)

Rest

On my bed I remember you. On you I muse through the night.
Psalm 63

When I cannot sleep and there appears to be no reason for it, I want to shout, "What do you want from me?" Rude to God--good going!

In the "watches of the night" the words of Augustine, "Our hearts are restless til they rest in You," take on new meaning. Restless indeed, in every sense of the word--lacking in rest, restlessly moving, restless legs, restless mind.

In him is our safety, our rest, our security, but my mind can't always convince my body. Strung out from lack of sleep, piety and contemplation escape me. All I can do is repeat rote prayers. When the rosary is finished, all I can seek oblivion in cable TV (truely awful in the wee hours of the night) or the Internet (brain numbing, particularly the games). Productive work is not an option at that point. So I throw myself on his mercy and pray for a cure--or for morning.

I will lay down in peace, and sleep comes at once, for you alone, Lord, make me dwell in safety.
Psalm 4

Guarding the City

Unless the LORD build the house, they labor in vain who build. Unless the LORD guard the city, in vain does the guard keep watch.

It is vain for you to rise early and put off your rest at night, To eat bread earned by hard toil-- all this God gives to his beloved in sleep. Psalm 127

Father Manning says to apply to prayer the same planning and scheduling I apply to work. Ah, but what about the fact that I already suffer from the delusion that all this planning means that I'm in control. Of course I'm not, but that isn't an excuse to shrug off discipline. He's right, of course, and even if I didn't think so I would do it this week as he instructed.

When my life is out of order, the first thing that needs to be brought in line is regularity in prayer. Not soaring passion. Not flashes of divine fire (though, if you're listening God, I wouldn't object to those either). Simple regularity. The first job in life is to show up for it.