On Sloth

 

Sloth is a creature known for its sleepiness. If your metabolism, like my greyhound or your sloth, makes you nap 20 hours per day, are you still slow for the 4 hours you spend awoke? The sloth is slow no matter what time of day. The greyhound is exceeding fast.

The slow sloth got its name, meaning ‘laziness’ in 1749, named for one of the seven deadly sins, called in Latin acedia. Lacking energy (or care) to read your Scriptures, pray your prayers, or care your cares, is what Pope Francis calls a ‘dangerous temptation’ to find ‘disgust’ in everything you do. How does this differ from clinical depression? Possibly in the four hours you can choose to use. The signs of the times are showing how each conscious being must seek the way to mend the world. The simplest may be the most effective. Gospel means news: it was hard enough to know who’s telling the truth in Pilate’s day. Is it not slothful not to check? Look around. Is silence false witness? Silence is no witness. Is no witness false witness? Is fantasy, entertainment, conspiracy theories, propaganda? Be fast chasing what God loves: justice, mercy, humility and truth.

On Gluttony

 

Lent, and a sugarless season. How much could we wish to eat? Places under siege suffer starvation, while who even knows whether prisoners and captives are fed? In times of dire unrelenting conflicts, abundance is unreachably far. Is scarcity, not gluttony, the sin? The concept of gluttony is based upon glut: filled to excess, not only more than you need but more than you can contain.

 A man walked into St Peter’s Bookroom where I worked; he said not to bother the priests, but perhaps as someone from the church I could answer a question about prayer. Is God frustrated or angry at so many pleas? I said was a parent angry when the toddler kept pouring out questions: “Why?” “Are we there yet?” God knows our limited understandings, our big emotions. God knows about us. We Christians, I said, know two things about God. God is good; God is love. Is not love patient, or kind? I said Jesus taught the way of prayer: “Do you know it? ‘Give us this day…’”  “Our daily bread,” he replied. “Keep it simple,” I offered. Pray as you must. Daily bread is daily. Not too little; not too much.

On Racism

Change begins with confession. And one must be careful not to be proud while confessing. I grew up in the USA, which in case you need telling is one of the most racist countries on earth. This produces a stain on the soul, I mean here the white soul, so deep it blends into the bones; to my dismay the utmost scrubbing fails to take it out. However conscious I think I’m being, I still find marks in unexpected places. Things I say and think bring me regret and shame; a continual process of awareness and repentance, meanwhile hurting others.

To which of the vices, (often a failure of virtues), does racism belong? Pride, as a sin, believes that one is better than others; Greed assumes a right to the possessions of others. The first vice of racism is thus a failure of justice, the virtue that returns to everything that which belongs to it. The second is a failure of wisdom (prudence), that assures a right relation to reality. Racism is a wrong relation: since all are God’s creation, no one can be better or more honourable than another. As all are washed in Christ’s blood, all may confess. 

On Wellingness

You can’t be weller than well; that treats health as an asset. The physician isn’t for the well, but the sick. Seeking to be weller than all the others, you keep it for yourself, like the Pharisee who kept all the commandments and thought his soul was well. The doctor diagnosed him: he was sick as.

Ignatius calls the welling up of tears a consolation. For what must we be consoled? For our weakness, frailty, helplessness in face of the devastations of this world. It happens without us. Sometimes we cause it; sometimes it is caused. Where is the earliest cause? The prime vice is greed, though the ancients thought envy the worst of the lot. As a child I didn’t understand what’s meant by coveting, or why forbid it, what’s it doing in the Decalogue? It underlies so many evils. Land, and its resources; family advancement and security; national supremacy; peace and stability; grace and beauty. All to be attained and enjoyed by me and not by thee. Wellness: the earthly paradise. Can you envy another’s peace? Oh, yes. Wellingness: the welling up of compassion, remorse, justice, redress. Even tears. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. 

On Gathering Stones

It’s not what you did, it’s who you are. That’s why I find the virtues so suggestive. The classical virtues, prudence (reasonableness), fortitude, justice, temperance (moderation), form a practice, or what’s called a way. Prudence is a right relationship to reality. It tells you when courage is courage, not recklessness. Fortitude, more than courage, has endurance and longevity, like a mongoose confronting a snake. Justice returns to everything that which belongs to it (consider the depth of that), and temperance literally tempers behaviour, particularly greed. Each of these words has further meanings, evoking volumes of interpretation over the ages.

Who you are determines what you are. You can be the right person in the right place at the right time, or the wrong person in similar circumstances. You can be praised for wrong behaviour or condemned for right behaviour. There’s nothing objective here. Who you are is what you are. Observe that the mongoose, by nature’s grace, is free of snake toxins. By contrast, vices are actually boring: arrogance, envy, greed. Who wants to live there? The cardinal virtues are a kind of medicine, a way out. Activate your inner Mongoose. A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together. 

On the Last Things

 

There is no Heaven above. Heaven surrounds us in the most literal sense, and so does Hell. Alive on this precious sphere rotating amid the exploding stars we imagine vertical space: ladders; ascendents; as above, so below. Where were you, when the worlds were formed? They’re still forming.

Advent: Heaven, Hell, Death, Judgement. The Kingdom of Heaven is within us. Why do the nations furiously rage together? Why, inflicting hell on earth? We might find God’s judgement more just than our own. Not yet Christmas bells.

Funeral bells tolling for departed souls; so many. Each person leaving everything, everyone. “This night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?” I count seven friends lost in as many months, as bellringers prepare to ring in the New Year. I go to the cemetery to place flowers for family now in the realm of the ancestors; the communion of saints: so many. All ages. Now in the hands of God. As we rush towards the coming of Our Saviour, we understand we need to be saved. The Jews say of the dead, “May his memory be for a blessing.” Have you so lived?

On All Saints and All Souls

 

Allhallowtide. Staging the passages of grief in the season of diminishment, sensing the presence of the dead among us. It mirrors the Easter Triduum of Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Resurrection Sunday.

Halloween, now a children’s costume party, invokes the ghosts that accompany the living:  months, years, decades after a death. Ghosts of the mind bringing fresh torrents of sorrow. It’s suitable that children, symbols of new life, be given food that pacifies ghosts.

All Saints celebrates those of exceptional holiness, whether they are closer to God, or God is closer to them: perhaps it’s a mutual embrace. Saints are guides through the wilderness of grief, making sacred the way before us. St. John of the Cross, for example, illuminates The Dark Night of the Soul.

All Souls means you, me, him, her, they, and them. All sinners, all forgiven. This is a terrifying thought, Christ embracing the whole world.  Who should not be forgiven? It’s a warm feeling, and a cold thought.

I’ve known six deaths in less than six months this year, some close, some distant. Ghosts of the past are constant companions. The Holy Land is currently a field of deaths. Dear God, Hallowed be Thy Name.