​Dear friends of Ed,

A long time friend and spiritual companion of Ed's, Fr. Mark Mertes (a fellow priest in the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas), delivered the following homily at the Mass of Christian Burial held on Friday, April 8th, at St. Joseph Carmelite Church in Leavenworth, KS. Ed had personally asked of Mark this favor...and Mark was indeed the perfect person.​

​                            Don’t Just Believe in the Resurrection, Have One!     
 
So, here we are, remembering our spiritual companion Ed, artist, whimsical, colorful, creative, joy-filled, provocative, hopeful, mystical, grounded, on and on I could go. Maybe it’s best to use his words. Ed was:
 
A Passionate Troubadour for love, a Sundancer, a Gabriel bringing Good News, encouraging us Planetary Pilgrims to Pray All Ways, to embrace Secular Sanctity and offer up our Prayers of the Domestic Church (these days as Psalms for Zero Gravity), that is the Prayers of the Servants of God. Yes, a Holy Fool, a Mad Hatter he delighted in Magic Lanterns and Feathers on the Wind, Ethiopian Tattoo Shops and The Pursuit of the Great White Rabbit. He unlocked mysteries with Twelve and One Half Keys, he offered spiritual remedies in his Lenten Pharmacy, he proposed solutions in his Great Escape Manual, he inspired in his Quest for the Flaming Pearl. Ed guided us through the Lenten Labyrinth as we make our way to the Mountain of God; just check your Pilgrim’s and Hermit’s Almanac and your Book of Wonders for directions. OK, Ed was a bit of a Hobo on a Honeymoon, a Little Orphan Angela. He was a Christmas Eve Storyteller. A friend, always a friend, he wrote notes, Prayer Notes, he wrote Letters to Exodus Christians; Ed was steadfastly Chasing Joy, even as he was Pilate’s Prisoner…. His Pilgrimage Way of the Cross found its fulfillment in this past Holy Week.
 
The past Good Friday Ed visited graves at St. Joseph of the Valley Cemetery as was his recent custom. On Easter Monday Ed fell in the garage. Tom found him 20 minutes later. Ed looked at Tom with a gaze of child-like wonder and then closed his eyes. Thus began a six-day process of letting go of his human life; perhaps working through the question “If I let go and fall from here, will anyone catch me?” (Pilate’s Prisoner, p. 253) This past Sunday Ed offered the same words as his Master, “O God, into your hands I commend my Spirit.” And Ed as we know him “disappeared as he was swallowed by the great abyss, for when the Light comes, the lamp of life is extinguished.” (Pilates Prisoner, p. 253). Ed is gone, and Ed is not gone. Ed is absent, and Ed is present. Like our Master and Lord, Jesus, teaches, “Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” (John 11.26). So how does our friend Ed live on?
 
As someone who spent his life in service of the revolution of Jesus Christ, the revolution of Love!
 
Vatican II was the modern vanguard of this Revolution, and Ed was devoted to its passion to share Jesus’ never ending revolutionary life and love. “The source of my belief that there is life after death is that love is stronger than death. The more you love someone, the more you desire never ever to be separated from her or him, even by death…. While there are many things I doubt, I have no doubt that God is love. (Pilate’s Prisoner, p. 224)
 
There are many Ed Hays stories about how he shared God’s love and joy: a Hayden Chaplain wandering the halls with a dancing cane, initiating and animating liturgy committees at Christ the King and Assumption and Holton and Mayetta, wandering the world on his 1971 sabbatical, living the big dream of the Forest of Peace and the communal life, offering mercy in the State Penitentiary. Ed had a passion for synthesizing so many mysteries under the big tent that is our Catholic Church. As a revolutionary, he spoke Vatican II’s language that defined the Church as a compassionate institution which struggles for social justice, racial and sexual equality, peace and just wages for workers (see Letters to Exodus Christians, p. 124), a Church which creates “Full, conscious and active participation in the Liturgy,” (Sancrosanctum Concilium, a church that celebrates that we “are a holy nation, a royal priesthood, a people set apart (1 Peter 2.9).” Ed enfleshed the truth of Gaudium et Spes (1), that “The joys and hopes, the grief and anguish of the people of our time, especially those who are poor or afflicted, are the joys and hopes, the grief and anguish, of the followers of Christ as well.”
 
And Ed understood that the “people of our time” means everyone, women, gay persons, clerics who feel called to marriage, seekers of other faiths, those divorced and remarried, those cast off by institutions. Ed followed Jesus’ path to the margins lovingly and absolutely.
 
Ed, the revolutionary, also respected the institution of the Church. Ed was a faithful son of the Church.
 
Ed promised obedience to and served under Archbishops Hunkeler, Strecker, Keleher and Naumann. He lived his ministerial priesthood with grace and passion, knowing that it blossomed from his baptismal priesthood of all believers. All throughout his priesthood he kept up with countless brother priests, religious, other clergy, lay leaders, here and abroad; always engaged in conversation, seeking, supporting, encouraging. He has been both a treasure for our diocese and perhaps a thorn in the side for some. Ever pragmatic, Ed wasn’t afraid to name the shortcomings of Holy Mother Church. I recall him telling me once “Holy Mother Church???!!!!. She makes her way through history sleeping with kings and princes; she’s wrapped in the beautifully colorful scarf of the gospel. She saunters through the ages with the Truth in one pocket and scandal in the other.”
 
Occasionally I was surprised by Ed’s devotion to the church. Once, in 1992, after I had participated in a somewhat “experimental” liturgy at the Heartland Conference, Archbishop Strecker called me into his office. He was livid at what I had done. When I recounted the meeting to Ed, he said, “Well of course he’s mad at you—that’s his job, and your job is to accept this gift of correction that he has given you.” (Ed helped me get a degree from the U of M, the University of Mistakes!)
 
Ed believed in the Sacrament of NOW.
 
At Shantivanam in each room there was a folder with an encouragement to go out and enjoy the walks and ponds and woods, and perhaps take a Dragonfly walk; that is, do nothing. Ed taught us to cultivate secular sanctity, an appreciation for the moment that we are in, whether that moment is a graced backyard encounter, waiting in a doctor’s office, changing a diaper, going to the restroom, a moment of physical intimacy, the graced moment of a liturgy, or simply being still. Ed wrote prayers and reflections on every aspect of human daily living reminding us that it is all amazing! All is grace! As a spiritual director/companion, Ed accompanied countless persons. For me, Ed always celebrated what was going on and then used the “stuff” of my life to point a way forward, a challenging way.
           
Ed, and you, and I live in this Loving NOW of God’s grace.
 
At Shantivanam the nights were long and star-lit, or simply dark. I recall laying in the stone circle looking up at the stars, waiting for a shooting star, feeling the wind rising up from the valley to the south. There is nothing quite as vast as a prairie night. Ed helped me understand that the Milky Way I was looking at was really my peering outward through the edge of the galaxy, peering out into ancient history, looking at light that began coming our way thousands or tens of thousands of years ago. We are peering into the mystery that Jesus Christ made possible for us, that in our vastness, our minute-ness, we are intimately loved, valued, cared for, eternally! It is the inward gaze of prayer. We are gazing into the mystery of NOW. Gazing outward into the Beloved Community assembled where Ed and Jane and Joe and yes, Mother Angelica, walk hand in hand, each grateful for the gifts the other brings; gazing outward to the Beloved Community where Jesus and Pilate and Magdalen and Therese are friends, and at the same time we are gazing upon the Beloved Community here on earth, at the beauty of what we are as God’s beloved, at the beauty of what we can be when we live Jesus’ revolutionary love now.
 
We can be a Beloved Community where lifelong Catholics and brand new seekers raise their hands in praise, a Beloved Community where restorationists and Vatican II warriors unite in praise of God, where immigrants and trumpists sit down at a common table, where homophobes and LGBT activists unite in gestures of love and care for the common good…. This is the mystery of who we are and Ed lives in this same Mystery of Divine Love which gathers us today. The Miracle of Love, the miracle of NOW which unfolds within and without the institution, it is the Miracle of Life, to which we commend our Brother Ed. So it is, so may it be!

Dear old and new friends,

     Good Friday honors the death day of Jesus, and on that day we are forced to ponder what we typically try to deny, our own death. We live but a short span of days, and it is our common belief that the day of our death ends all of them, so no wonder we try to deny its ugly reality. Christians revere the image of the cross, a paradoxical sign of the power of repulsive evil and also the triumph of life over death. Among the countless meanings of the symbol of the cross is the End; so it is used to mark grave sites. Traditionally tomb stones have two dates, the deceased’s birth date and the death date…but something is missing! Following the death date there needs to be those legendary words of the Saturday afternoon matinee movies that ended with the hero or heroine in a hopeless situation: “To be continued!”

     This Good Friday consider that Teilhard de Chardin taught the need of new religious symbols, rituals and prayers that embrace our new understanding of the influence of evolution, quantum physics and our place in an ever-expanding cosmos. I propose one new radical change…abandon the cross of Calvary and replace it with Jesus nailed to an old large door! Pause and take a few moments to create in your mind this new image of Cavalry; envision on top of that barren hilltop is a 15-foot-tall, 8-foot-wide, old weathered door to which is nailed the dying Jesus of Nazareth.

     A door symbolizes passing from one state to another. Doors open to the mysterious and are an invitation to dare to voyage into the beyond. Death is integral to ongoing evolution and its doorway to new life. Easter celebrates that death releases us from our human limitations to experience the freedom of the unlimited, unrestrained boundless new existence with an entirely innovative relationship to Life and the entire star staggering cosmos. This new Easter existence is beyond the feeble comprehension of our small human minds. Only our imaginations can create a teeny glimmer of the utter magnificence of this new life of living in communion with everyone and everything. Each of us this moment is an unfinished creation awaiting the process of being fully created into our personal Good Friday and Easter.

     On our fateful day, like the dying Jesus we will plunge into oneness in the Mystery of Life, God, with all the earth and the cosmos of billions of galaxies. Mark and Matthew in their passions stories relate the last human words of Jesus as he died, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” John has Jesus declare the end of his mission, “It is finished.” Luke has the last words of the dying Jesus, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”

     I propose new final words of the dying Jesus! His last words were the very same as those of Elizabeth Kubler Ross. She was a Swiss-American psychiatrist and famous pioneer in her work on death and dying. When asked where she was going when she died she said, “I’m going out dancing among the galaxies.”

Dear old and new friends,

     The roar we hear when we place a seashell next to our ear is not the ocean but rather the sound of blood surging through the veins in our ear…that’s a fact. Another fact is when we stop getting thirsty that’s when we need to drink more water because when the human body is dehydrated its thirst mechanism shuts off!

Your soul acts similar to the body. When you don’t feel any need to pray is the reason because your soul is dehydrated and its spiritual thirst mechanism has shut down? You’re confusing me, you say. I don’t understand why I should even feel a need for more prayer when daily I say my morning and night prayers, pray before meals and go to church every Sunday. How can my soul be dehydrated? And besides, who ever heard of a thirsty soul?

     The mysteries of our soul are better pondered by poets than priests, so I quote the 17th century English poet and playwright, Ben Jonson, “The thirst that from the soul doth rise doth ask a drink divine.” We will never quench the thirst of our souls by simply going to divine wells like churches, shrines or cathedrals. While these are holy places, they are more reminders of the 10,000 holy fountains surrounding us.

     Our soul thirsts for the Divine in the beautiful, in harmonic melody, creativity, and awesome astonishment. When you see an apple tree or a springtime magnolia in full bloom, don’t rush on to some appointment; stop and drink in deeply that stunning natural beauty. Do the same with an insignificant, budding yellow-headed dandelion growing out of a crack in your concrete driveway. You say, “But I live in the middle of the asphalt and concrete of the city.” To quench your soul’s thirst, go on a pilgrimage to the closest park full of living springs or to an art museum to make the stations of creative wonder prayerfully moving from painting to painting. Step inside an empty darkened church and quietly sit, absorbing its ambience. Let your soul soak in the echoes of silent meditations and prayers, the great pipe organ previously performing Bach’s soul-stirring Fugue in C minor, inhale the smells of candle wax and incense. Then with your soul staggering drunk from these inebriating moments descend the steps and return to your daily life.

     Next week is Holy Week, and on Good Friday John’s Gospel gives our soul craving a voice as on the cross the dying Jesus says, “I thirst.” Saying prayers, regardless how many or how often, can too easily be simply saying words. Going to church can be a physical action that fulfills an obligation but leaves your soul dry as the Sahara. However, praying and attending religious rituals where you invest each one with as much love and devotion as possible can satisfy your thirsty soul.

     If you find these spiritual exercises difficult, remember the old Danish proverb, “Pray to God in the storm, but keep on rowing.”

Dear old and new friends,
 
     The earth’s population is now estimated at over 7 billion and projected to be 9.2 billion by 2050. Scientists using telescope data calculate there are more than 100 billion earth-like planets outside our solar system in our Milky Way galaxy alone. The next few coming years most likely will see scientific confirmation of the existence of another earth like ours. Today consider how catastrophic would be news of such a discovery, how our concept of the world’s significance would shrink, and of the cataclysmic effects on religion…and the Bible’s infallible beliefs about creation and even God! Since the consequences are so shattering, we don’t like to speculate on other possible earths in the Milky Way or that there are over 7 billion other people on our planet. Such thoughts only would shrink us to some teensy weensy microscopic insignificance.
 
     We are able to normally go about our daily lives feeling good about ourselves because the world we live in isn’t the size of planet Earth. Each of us lives in a world composed of an intimate circle of family and friends whom we know and think we are important, and more significantly, lovable. Sadly, in our crowded faceless society there are loners who live as outsiders suffering psychological problems and feeling isolated, powerless, and of no value. High powered guns empower the emotionally frail who attempt to become famous by their mass murders at some Mall, saying to themselves, “Now the world will know I exist!”
  
     If only each of us knew—and believed—we are not some historic accidents! We each enter this world with a purpose; each one of us is important since we individually bring a unique work-purpose into this world. While at an early age we can desire to be famous or renowned for our great wealth, it most likely will not be our purpose in life. Whatever work or purpose is ours, even if we do not become famous, that task is never something common or mediocre but an uninspiring life work or vocation.
 
     What is or was your purpose? For some you are midway in living out your purpose, for others like seniors your purpose of parenting might be continuing on but on another higher level. Some purposes are for brief periods of your life, for others they are lifelong. If after some reflection you find that you are still searching for yours, know it can appear at any time or anyplace as this story by British author Donald Nicholl shows.
 
     Nicholl tells the story of a man lying desperately ill in a hospital, almost out of his mind with terror and confusion caused by the drugs he was taking. In the midst of his painful darkness he hears a voice in the corridor outside his room that kept repeating over and over, “I’m so bloody lonely, I could cry!” It was the voice of an old miner who was in a hospital for the first time in his life and had been left alone in his wheelchair in the corridor. Then the man, while deep in his own pit of suffering, hearing over and over the old miner’s grief-stricken cries, said, “I’ll go out and sit by him if it is the last thing I do!” He struggled to get out of his bed and went to sit beside the old miner, and two things happened. The old miner was no longer fearfully alone, and man felt liberated from the terror of his sickness.

Dear old and new friends,

     Americans of means are diligent to eat healthy foods, and grocery store shelves are loaded with all variety of food options displaying large labels that read Natural. Yet to date there are no regulations regarding what can be labeled as natural. So a fine reading of the labels on products is necessary to avoid unhealthy foods with lots of fat, added sweeteners and artificial coloring or additives.

     Would it not be wise to also be seriously concerned about what is in the creed or creeds in which we believe? A remarkable reality is that your daily life reflects what you believe; yes, be you an atheist, agnostic or a believer! Among the variety of today’s creeds are: I believe the goal in life is to get rich…or to be successful…or that being prosperous is a sign of God’s blessings. The creed of the majority of Christian believers is the Apostles Creed which is typically recited robotically without asking if one honestly believes all that is being proclaimed. Catechism doctrines are useful teaching ways to explain countless centuries of accumulated beliefs, but they shouldn’t eclipse an original, natural creed.

     A “natural creed” contains no dogmatic assertions, morality laws or stale old beliefs of former ages. What kind of creed doesn’t contain dogmatic beliefs? Albert Einstein, himself an agnostic, gives us a clue when he said, “The most beautiful emotion is the mysterious. To sense that behind everything we experience there is something that the mind cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly; this is religiousness. Those who cannot wonder and stand in awe are as good as dead.” A natural creed is a primitive response to mystery, to that which is better than us and bigger than anything outside of us, that’s so good we don’t even have a name for it. Experiences of such awesome mysteries would include a star-studded night sky, feeling the mesmerizing power of ocean tides, being in love, and the uniqueness of a human face, even one’s own.

     The religion of a “natural creed” is simply an indestructible living trust in a personal God. Its morality is a personal response to being loved by a gift-giving God applied to all situations. A natural creed’s prayer is not futile SOS attempts to contact God but living aware/awake and responding to the abiding Holy Presence in everything. Its credo is that the Kingdom of God is here, not in heaven. Eternal Life isn’t something to come in the future, it has already begun for us. Surely, such a wonderful natural belief is free of doubts and uncertainties. No, since doubt and faith are two sides of the same human experience.

     This being the mid-point in this Springtime of the Spirit, consider setting aside a sufficient period of time to look honestly at how you live your daily life. Since it mirrors your creed of beliefs you can see what you really, truly believe.

Dear old and new friends,

     This time of the year a bare wooden cross perhaps draped with purple cloth is the central image in Protestant churches, while in Catholic ones it is a cross with the dead Jesus on it—a crucifix. Both of these crosses present us with a crux, a problem. Historically during Christianity’s first thousand years neither one of these crosses was seen! In place of the cross of death, a cross of the victory of life over death, a beautiful artwork in silver or gold, embedded with jewels and precious stones, was venerated.

     The crux of the cross is that art images have enormous influencing power, or they once did. Today our eyes are numbed blind to images, their power diluted because we are daily saturated in a tsunami of images on television, in magazines and newspapers. It has been said that we now see in a day, or even in a few hours, more images than someone in the 12th century saw in their entire lifetime! To see an image of art then required being inside a church, whose walls offered fresco painted images that taught the viewer theology, scripture and the splendor of the resurrection.

     The last decades of the first millennium a new religious image appeared. The earliest surviving crucifix is the Gero Cross of 970 which is a carved oak, full life-size image of the dead Jesus nailed to a cross. Rapidly, such life-size crucifixes spread across Europe becoming increasingly more and more grotesque and bloody. The Emperor Charlemagne then decreed these full-scale crucifixes be placed at the center of all worship places in an effort to unify his kingdom by convincingly converting his Saxon subjects baptized by the sword (Of note: Zealous Charlemagne also decreed that anyone who ate meat in Lent merited the death sentence!)

     These new crucifixes proclaimed a new spirituality of suffering, death and a fear of hell, and asked the logical question, “Who was responsible for this horrendous crime?” Preachers provided the answer using fiery, agonizing images of hell. “You Saxons are guilty! You have murdered the Lord of Life by your sins!” That guilt-laden explanation lingers in today’s sermons and pious devotion, and it haunts with culpability those who looked upon crucifixes. Words from authority figures appear toothless, yet all words are living art images possessing incredible power, especially when repeated over and over and over, which is the secret of propaganda.

     In 1095 Pope Urban II initiated the First Crusade, calling European warriors to take up the sword and wear the cross as their symbol to wage a holy war against Islamic forces holding Jerusalem, and against all unbelievers. The pope commissioned Peter the Hermit to preach the Crusade through France and Germany. His preaching on Good Friday in Cologne, Germany called upon the crusaders to force Jews to repent of murdering Christ and accept baptism at the point of the sword. Cologne’s subsequent slaughter of Jewish men, women and children was the first Christian pogrom against Jews. It is estimated that before turning east to the Holy Land the Crusaders killed approximately ten thousand Jews in Germany alone, where previously for centuries Jews and Christians had lived peacefully side by side. Peter’s diatribe of vicious hate speech against the Jewish people spread quickly across Europe, repeated by other preachers who created exaggerated bloody, gruesome accounts of Jesus’ death. The Jews had now replaced Christians and their sins as the new culprits guilty of Christ’s death.

     Instead of the cross as a symbol of Christ’s sacrifice for our sins, or of him as the scapegoat carrying humanity’s sins away to his death, recall that God is love. As the Spirit drove Jesus into the desert so the Spirit of Love drove him to Calvary’s cross. The cross isn’t about sin or guilt, but about God’s love. The theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar says the first crucifixion took place in the heart of God as a total self-emptying in unconditional love to become one with all humanity and creation. That first crucifixion showed the helplessness and vulnerability of God’s love. The cross is an Icon-image of evolution where suffering and death are essential for the birth of new life. Theologian Ilia Delio says that the cross is about the wildness of Divine Love that’s stronger than death. Sadly, we eclipse its atomic energy by domesticating it when we use it as a decoration and by a lack of prayerful awareness when making the Sign of the Cross on ourselves. An old Russian saying is that you can tell the depth of faith of another by how she or he makes the sign of the cross.

     In this reflection we have also considered the power of words like those used in hate speech towards the Jews. Words are more than just sounds. Words create vibrant living art images in the mind. Words like weapons can kill and injure, so our Teacher taught us derogatory remarks about others are equal to murder and merit the fires of Gehenna. The many centuries of insulting Jews by hate speech and derogatory jokes led ultimately to the deaths of millions in the Nazi Holocaust. Be vigilant of your words. Beware of echoing those whose vivid speech condemns abortion. Wash out your ears after hearing anti-Muslim, anti-police, anti-immigration and anti-racial black or white speech. When tempted to use any negative speech, pause and then obscurely make on your closed lips a small sign of the cross.

                       
                                             And God stepped out on space,
                                             And he looked around and said,
                                             “I’m lonely…
                                             I’ll make me a world.”
                                                         -- God’s Trombones by James Weldon Johnson
                       
Dear old and new friends,

     Forty days is a long time to be all alone in the desert. Did Nazareth’s stone mason/carpenter after thirty some years of cramped close village life taste there the acidic bitterness of loneliness? Solitary confinement today is considered the harshest punishment, just a notch above capital punishment. So why did God’s Spirit drive him into the desert for forty days when today scientists equate the health effects of loneliness to that of smoking 22 cigarettes a day?

     Modern loneliness doesn’t require retreating to a desert or being estranged from others. Paradoxically it is found in public gatherings, happy social events, Sunday church worship and hectic work sites. You can encounter it in loveless marriages, the staffs and residents of nursing homes and senior care facilities, in the homes of the elderly and infirm who live alone, and surprisingly by those with a microphone standing before large audiences. As John Lennon and Paul McCartney sang in the Beatles’ song Eleanor Rigby, “All the lonely people, where do they all come from?”

     Loneliness is the new black plague in spite of television’s endless display of us being always happy people, smiling with perfect white teeth, selling this or that—but that isn’t us! America psychologists tell us we are in the midst of widespread psychological depression. This “epidemic,” according to psychologist Dr. Martin Seligman, has gone hand in hand with the loss of psychological and spiritual guidance. There is a nostalgic longing for the wise neighbor at whose kitchen table we once could confidently unload our inner feelings. People hunger for someone who will listen to them with no personal benefit except to wish them well. Ironically, flooded with an array of hi-tech message devices, people cannot find anyone willing to genuinely listen with only his or her welfare in mind.

     Looking for a personal mission in life requiring no special education? Consider becoming a listener. Sounds simple, but it isn’t. It requires not giving advice (which we all love to do), not judging and simply the ironclad patience of listening. You can minister anywhere. When encountering anyone—stranger or friend— carefully look at her/his eyes for the dullness of loneness’s lack of joy. Then say a few words invested with sincere caring to them with the hope of rescuing them at least for a brief time of being frozen in isolation.
 
                                               A Spirituality of Solitude

     Seriously consider adding to your spiritual practices time in solitude. Turn off all your hi-tech gadgets and phone, and just be alone in silence. Self-imposed isolation is frightening. So let the Spirit “drive” you into it confident that it is a holy place. The Spirit drove Jesus into the desert for 40 days, and the same Spirit drove Buddha to a Bo Tree, there to sit alone for an extended period of intense contemplation. For both of them their solitary times ended with enlightenment, and each began to teach and minister to others. What gift is hidden in our dread of silent solitude that we try to fill up with music or worthless entertainment. Is it the same gift that Buddha and Jesus discovered? Neither spoke of what it was, but their lives loudly proclaimed it.

     Perhaps Mark Twain may have given us a hint in his observation, “Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anyone….” (And I will add…or to themselves.) Could it be if truly sufficient time spent, not counted in minutes per day but in a true solitude, one is liberated from life’ s distracting three-ring circus of frivolous triviality so that very slowly one’s moon turns its dark side towards us? Once that happens its darkness and all that is secreted in it could be lovingly embraced and converted.

     Or in their long solitude did Buddha and Jesus slowly descended down into their underworld of the Unconscious, symbolized by the dark side of the moon? We each have such a subterranean consciousness which is not some reservoir of animal drives; rather it is the unexamined reside of our earliest training and feelings about ourselves and the world. It is unexamined since as small children we weren’t old enough to make judgments of the behaviors of our parents or the influences of our home environment that were influencing us. Yet in each of us that unconscious contains the deep motives of our adult behavior and the drives that determine our conduct. So we are blessed when we attempt to confront that hidden inner consciousness that can lead to conversion, real growth and the self-assurance to become whom we were destined to be.

Dear believing, doubting and non-believing friends,

     Hearts, hearts and more hearts are everywhere you look these days, so if you got ashes today don’t let them float down and blind your eyes to Valentine’s Day, only days away. Valentine’s Feast of Lovers and Friends is an ideal companion to Ash Wednesday’s annual launching of Lent’s season of reform. But why do I need to be reformed? “I go to church every Sunday, leaving an offering of 10% of my income; I pray before meals and twice daily, read scripture every morning and am a volunteer at the soup kitchen—and I keep all the commandments!

     Really, you keep “all” the commandments? For Jews and for Jesus, the Great Commandment isn’t one of the famous Ten, rather “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your strength.” (Deut: 6, 5; Matt. 22:37) To test if we keep that commandment you and I need the Italian Dr. Santorio’s 1602 invention of the thermoscope, what we call a thermometer. We each need a heart-thermometer to give us the degree of our love’s fervor for our Beloved Creator and to measure the degree of the heat of our love for those dearest to us. If your thermometer numbers feel off a degree or two, you’re fortunate that the annual season of reform that begins today provides you with 40 days to rekindle and stoke up the fires of your love.

     After recovering from falling in love we all tend to love moderately within limits, not with great passion. We do so logically to insure our beloved’s death will not drive us mad. Marriage with its routine and sameness also lessens the once explosive fires of love and causes a lack of frequent gratitude and loving gestures and expressions. Marriage vows are necessary since we physically quickly change, and our once passionate love over time cools down until it is as lukewarm as today’s ashes. In the case of seniors, their once fascinating youthful love over the decades matures into an infallible ironclad companionship. Older lovers of God, after years of intimacy, experience that same confident calm love of companionship with their Beloved Lord.

     Unfortunately, believers deceive themselves that fidelity to the laws of God and the church, along with Sunday worship, suffices for love. Non-believers and halfhearted ones don’t hate God but experience the opposite of love which isn’t hate, but apathy. When it comes to Divine matters they are indifferent, uninterested and, when forced to attend church, are bored. The temperature of their relationship with God is lukewarm. Also in failing marriages and love affairs any love left is likewise lukewarm.
​
     If fifty percent of American marriages end up dead in divorce, one wonders what percentage of God-human love relationships end up the same way? The Good News is if your heart thermometer measures your love of God as tepid, even if you are a doubter it can be re-enkindled. Surprisingly, enkindled love is conducive to enkindling belief, which is really Good News since it is healthy to deny the existence of some Gods we were taught existed.

     One answer to how God looks upon the degree of your love is found in the book of Revelation 3: 15: “I know that you are neither cold nor hot…So because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.” Those are the acidic hateful words of a god of whom you should be an atheist! It is healthy and holy to be a non-believer of that Revelation spokesperson, like several other false gods who are found in the “Good Book”…but who don’t really exist!

     For half-hearted or devout believers, here are some suggestions. Begin to say aloud frequently throughout the day, “I love you, God.” When you experience a love gift from the Divine One like escaping some accident or finding some forgotten hidden money, say, “Thank you. I love you, God.” As you drift off to sleep as a final prayer of the day, “I love you, God…or Lord…or my Beloved.” Review your life and your talents, personal gifts you’ve been given, or a marriage partner or children, and see them all as individual love gifts to you from your Beloved God.

     Regardless what you may hear from the pulpit or read in the Bible, God believes in you, even if you don’t believe in him/her. God’s love for you is always unconditional, more passionate than any human love; no matter if your love is nonexistent or only lukewarm.

                   Happy romancing your Valentine lover and your Divine Beloved!

Dear old and new friends,

     Today’s marriage vows have remained unchanged for centuries except from the relatively recent historic deletion of the bride’s vow to “obey.” However, those vows need to evolve. Some readers may stop here saying, “I’m not married, so this reflection doesn’t apply to me.” But please read on because marriage is only the introduction to this reflection which is about your tomorrow. The conventional marriage vows today conclude with “…in sickness and health until death do us part” or “…all the days of my life.”

     Love before marriage wasn’t even considered a reality until the 18th century. Today’s acceptance of marriage as a sexually exclusive, romantic union between one man and one woman is a rather recent historic development. Today half of all American marriages end not by death but by divorce…and there are those who fall in love and live as life partners without ever being married. Realistically that pledge of “until death do us part” is the desired ideal and could be compared to the rings on a tree that grow yearly. A happy loveship (more intimate than friendship) lived with loving fidelity, affection and care grows daily into much more than “until death do us part.”

     That “much more” is expressed in a possible new four-word ending to our marriage vows promising love “…in sickness, health and death for all eternity.” The theologian Diarmuid O’ Murchu recalls author Michael Talbot’s words, “We are, as the aborigines say, just learning how to survive in infinity.” In addition, he says, “At this stage of our human evolution the human mind can scarcely grasp the notion of the infinite.” He then challenges us by saying the most controversial principle of quantum theology is, “The concepts of beginning and end, along with the theological notions of resurrection and reincarnation are invoked as dominate myths to help us humans make sense of our infinite destiny in an infinite universe.”

     We have been taught God is eternal, without a beginning or end, and it seems heretical to conceive of ourselves in the same way, but the new quantum physics dares us to do so. We proclaim that the Christian God is love, and so that love surely shares in the Divine’s infinity. To daily attempt to live with the conviction that you will live forever radically transforms how you view today’s daily little hangnail irritations. Marvelously, you don’t have to create some great masterpiece to become immortal.

     As we struggle with this new conception of personal infinity may we find support in Woody Allen, the American film actor, director and writer. He has been acclaimed a genius by the French and praised by Americans as one of the greatest film directors of modern times. Allen himself is more lighthearted: “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work, I want to achieve it through not dying!”