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Acrobatically Escaping Waiting

2/26/2014

Acrobatically Escaping Waiting

Dear old and new friends,

    A lyric from a song of the British rock band Queen goes: “I want it all, I want it all, I want it all and I want it now.” It captures youth’s impatience and—whatever our age—our need for swiftness and no delay. We want the red light to turn green for us right now, our computer to instantly turn on or our headache to go away the split second after we take a pill. Red light runners and those who elbow ahead of you in the grocery store lane all want it—now! People can’t wait until after they have died, they want to know what happens after they die—now. These are only a few of literally hundreds of irritations we experience when made to wait.

    Compulsory waiting is a more excruciating torture than any ever used by the Spanish Inquisition. Yet being disturbed when made to wait is like being irritated by a mirage since an unreal illusion is the cause of your suffering. Liberation from thinking that you can own time is the beginning of being patient, along with the question, when forced to wait for anything or on anyone, whose time is being wasted? Logically your answer would be mine!

    Danger/Beware: that innocent personal pronoun is as dangerous as an IED (improvised explosive device, or roadside bomb, that detonates upon contact)! “My or mine” are claims of possession that aren’t real when attached to what can’t actually be owned—health or time. Whenever anything labeled “mine” is threatened or taken away, you can explode like an IED in anger or irritation. Timepieces shouldn’t enslave you since they’re only artificial and arbitrary measurements of eternity. And eternity isn’t endless, future time, it’s no time!

    Liberation begins with the conviction that you can’t own time, and then by striving to “consciously” live in a new dimension—eternity. The hourglass of eternity is empty; it’s a timepiece with the blank face of no-time which means you’re free, never late or too early! I guarantee you if each time you look at any clock or your wristwatch and you see eternity, it will radically transform you and how you respond to life’s rollercoaster, unexpected, abrupt and frightening ups and downs.

    Next Wednesday begins Lent. Resolving to be more patient and view time differently can be a great Lenten work! “What?” scream old-timer Catholics. “Lent should be penitential!” Don’t worry; it will be since this Lenten resolution will demand you live by clock time even as you try also to live in eternity.

    Acrobatically walking that razor’s edge, simultaneously balancing time and no time, will either drive you crazy—or make you a saint!

Unspeakable Language

2/19/2014

Unspeakable Language

Dear old and new friends,

    “Americans unfortunately can only speak with their mouths” is a humorous observation of foreigners, often emphasized by “Tie an Italian’s hands behind his back, and he’s speechless.” Other than the sign language of the hearing impaired, rarely do Americans use their hands to communicate.

    I recall a true and pathetic story I once heard from a doctor about a young couple who brought to him their baby who was dying. After questioning them he discovered this highly educated, young couple, wishing not to spoil their newborn infant, had decided never to pick up, carry, or even touch their baby, even when it cried. The task of changing his diaper was “clinically” performed so there was minimal touching of their baby. Shaking his head the physician said, “Your baby will be dead soon unless you give him over to me.” The parents agreed, and the physician took the small infant across town to an Italian mother of a large family. He presented her with the infant saying, “Here, please take this baby! Just love him since he is dying from not being touched!” The happy ending, as you’ve guessed, is that the “handled” baby lived and thrived.

    A recent report on touch revealed that during a certain period of time Latin Americans touched over 110 times, Americans two times and the British—never! Our personalities and how we interact with others relates back to how we personally were touched or handled. Young or old, love’s language of touching says, “You are loved, you belong, you are wanted,” all which inspire self-confidence and self-worth. Touch has magical powers to speak the unspeakable and to impart forgiveness and acceptance. The impact of touch is so direct because we are encapsulated in a sensitive skin-covered body that unconsciously responds to being touched with loving affection or in anger. Regrettably, there are those living among us “who are out of touch with reality,” and sadly those “who are out of touch with loving.”

    The red roses of last week’s Valentine’s Day by today have wilted and the Belgian chocolates have been eaten, so do “something touching” for those you love today—and every day. Strive when expressing appreciation or affection to frequently use the wordless language of touch. A gentle hand on an arm, an affectionate hug or embrace, even a kiss blown across the room has the power to reaffirm an aged love and to heal a wounded one.

    No one is a prisoner of the past or any culture! Reformation is a perpetual possibility! Begin yours by busting out of your stiff North American cocoon and become more Latin American—and discover you are more fully human.

Have an Erotic Valentine's Day

2/12/2014

Have an Erotic Valentine's Day

Dear old and new friends,

    The King of Valentine’s Day is Cupid, the Roman god of love, depicted as a chubby naked child with a bow and arrows. So perilous are his arrows it was believed anyone pierced by one would fall in love with the first person they encountered! The Greek god of love was also a youth or child called Eros from which came the name for sexual love.

    Valentine’s Day is a Fiesta of friends and lovers of all ages—and of all kinds of love. The hub of God’s message to us is love, and outward from it radiates our duties: care of the poor, being a promoter of justice and a peace maker, personal prayer and treating any stranger as your neighbor. Since duties of loving come from God, we would be wrong to presume they call for spiritual love. We are not angelic spirits; we are humans in whose bodies God has implanted natural urges such as Eros, physical sexual love. Eastern Orthodox Bishop Kallistos Ware says, “Eros, understood as physical, sexual love, is an important aspect of Christian love….”

    (I’ve interrupted this quotation so you can pause to ponder that last powerful sentence         by slowly rereading it. Now, this master of Eastern Orthodox spirituality continues….)

    “We shouldn’t make a sharp contrast between Eros, meaning sexual love, and agape, meaning Christian love,” says Bishop Ware. “Eros and agape are two aspects of a single reality.”

    Unfortunately, over the centuries Christianity has condemned erotic love as evil and sinful except in marriage. Our humanity suffers grave damage attempting to suffocate our divinely implanted sexual drive undergirding all our love. Those with religious promises of chastity, or those of advanced age, should never repress their erotic sexuality, but transform it. The exotic in our loving of one another, family and friends is wholesomely transformed into affectionate “doing” in myriad ways. As says the old wedding text, “What God has joined together, let no man put asunder.” So rejoice in Eros and Agape’s holy union.

    Scripture professor and pastor, Father Roger Karban has gifted us with a truly refreshing meaning of “holy.” He says scripturally holy doesn’t mean pious or sanctimonious, but other or different! A holy person isn’t one who is always praying but rather constantly acting differently than the rest of the crowd. A holy lover is one who loves unconventionally, and the gods Cupid and Eros are excellent examples of unique loving since they often are shown blindfolded!

    The Teacher implies we should be blindfolded lovers who ignore another’s church/religion or politics and who love regardless of the other’s beauty or repulsive face and body. Blindness gives a heightened sense of hearing, so self-blinded lovers hear the inaudible, excruciating wailing of those longing to be loved…and respond.

    Pretend on Valentine’s Day, and in the days thereafter, to be blindfolded so you can stumble around sightlessly as an undiscriminating, erotically saintly lover.

An Expensive, Yet Priceless Valentine's Gift

2/5/2014

An Expensive, Yet Priceless Valentine's Gift

Dear old and new friends,

    Wise lovers are already searching for the perfect gift to give on the 14th for Valentine’s Day. While flower, chocolate and jewelry merchants are eager to provide that present, I have a suggestion of a magnificent gift for the person you love. While wonderful, it’s expensive…yet paradoxically it’s free.

    “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity,” wrote Simone Weil—to that I add, “And the best gift you can give to anyone (especially someone you love) is being attentive to what they are saying and, as best you can, to the feelings behind their words. Being fully attentive to what another is saying sounds easy, but in reality it is expensive! You must exert all your energy to bring your ever-roaming mind to a silent stand still. Until we attempt to concentrate we are unaware how our mind is constantly somewhere else then where we are. A common complaint about attentiveness is being distracted while praying, as this folk tale shows.

    Once a holy man was riding his donkey down the road to the village, and walking beside him guiding the donkey was his newest young disciple. After a while the disciple asked, “I notice Master how peaceful you look; what are you thinking about that makes you so peaceful?” The old man smiled, “I’m not thinking about anything!” The disciple replied, “I wish also to be that peaceful so I will join you and think about nothing.” The old holy man smiled, “Ah lad, that’s not easy to do. However, if you can think of nothing else for the space of praying one Our Father, I’ll give you this donkey of mine.” Eagerly, the disciple said, “I accept,” and began softly praying the Lord’s Prayer. Upon reaching “Give us this day our bread…,” he stopped and asked, “Will I also get the saddle?”

    Regardless if you are praying or visiting with another, we are habitually inattentive. The good news is that habits can be broken! Consider using Valentine’s Day as the ideal lover’s day to break your old bad habits by beginning to be fully attentive in performing the unimportant minor tasks of life until that simple practice becomes habitual.

    Unaware to us, everything in recent years has been speeding up around us as if trying to keep pace with our ever-escalating technology. So today, except for those in nursing homes, we all suffer a severe scarcity of time! Being always short of time encourages us not to waste it by doing only one thing at a time. Simultaneous multitasking causes us to do none of the tasks well, and sadly results in the radical erosion of being attentive to anyone or anything!

    Daily give the fullness of your attention to everything you do, and by doing this discover that you’ve been gifted with an enormously enlarged experience of life.

Acrobatically Escaping Waiting

Acrobatically Escaping Waiting

Unspeakable Language

Unspeakable Language

Have an Erotic Valentine's Day

Have an Erotic Valentine's Day

An Expensive, Yet Priceless Valentine's Gift

An Expensive, Yet Priceless Valentine's Gift

Edward Hays

The Haystack

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