Monday Morning Meditation #108: Be Careful What You Love

A little late in posting today. I pressed the wrong button, "Update blogger," and instantly my whole world changed. I have now had to spend more time than I had planned -- including a letter of complaint to Google for the instant user unfriendliness of blogger, at least in the learning of the new design -- exploring how to get the new features to do the things I am used to and need the program to do. Finally, after all that, I have actually figured out most of the new design and have decided that I like it. I just wish I could have come to like it on my own terms and not have to experience it by surprise. (At least, I am a hands-on learner!)

Back to Hosea, literally. I only inched forward by a few verses and am still finding lessons for today's in the mistakes of the past. (I suppose that is important, given the saying that those who don't learn from history are bound to repeat it.) This week's special verse is 9:10:

¹⁰ “When I found Israel,
   it was like finding grapes in the desert;
when I saw your ancestors,
   it was like seeing the early fruit on the fig tree.
But when they came to Baal Peor,
   they consecrated themselves to that shameful idol
   and became as vile as the thing they loved.

Reading: Hosea 9: 10

Meditation: I think we have all seen the dark side of love when we love whom and what we should not. Alcoholism, drug addictions, theft, crimes, and the like proceed from a dark love. There are lighter forms of dark love as well. Anything that pulls us away from the sublime and into the profane is a form of dark love -- light addictions (shopping, eating, etc.), spending so much time in playing lesser human games that we forget to spend time in sublime play with God, hanging out with pals at the mall or the local bar rather than lingering in any spot with our Greater Companion.

God has given us 24 hours a day. In addition to prayer, some of that time we need to work; some of it we need to sleep; some of it we need to use to help others; some of it we need to spend in human companionship and play. All of that is fine and given to us, but none of it need to take us away from God, who can be present to us in all of it, not just in the formal prayer time.

God will, in fact, be present to us in all of it if God is Whom we love. If we do not follow in the path of the Israelis and fall in love over and over with Baal (or any modern representation of Baal, which can be anything other than God).

Contemplation: That is far as I can go with you this Monday morning. I now retire to private prayer to praise God for His incredible patience for all of us who stray and stray again. I will ask forgiveness for any time I have loved anything or anyone more than God, even for a fleeting moment. I will also ask God to increase my ability to love in general and the godhead in specific. Then I will move on to contemplation, my favorite part of the day, letting God take over the direction in which my relationship with Him moves.

I will leave you now to your prayer and contemplation. First, though, I would like to bring to your attention a Monday morning prayer post that you might enjoy:

Fr. Austin Fleming, priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and pastor in Concord, Massachusetts, posts a prayer each Monday morning that he calls "Monday Morning Offering." I enjoy his prayers very much. I think you also will find them inspirational. He has graciously given me permission to include a link to his blog on my Monday Morning Meditation posts. (During the week, he also posts great homilies and other thoughtful discussions. I enjoy reading those, too, as do readers of this blog who have taken the stroll over to his blog.)

For additional inspiration throughout the week, I would point out two sets of blogs: (1) the list of devotional blogs on my sidebar and (2) my blogroll, where I am following a number of inspirational priests and writers about spiritual matters. I learn so very much from all these people. I highly recommend them to you.

Four Days

Last weekend, as I have mentioned in a few blog posts in passing, I was blessed to be able to attend a four-day retreat at St. Francis Retreat Center (SFRC) in San Juan Bautista, California. I spend a lot of time at SFRC since it is not far from where I live. I attend First Fridays there, participate in center-led retreats, and contribute to the center on a regular basis. (The center burned down in 2006, and for the next three years, every penny that was collected mattered. The beautiful new center opened in 2009. Until then retreats were held in mobile buildings. As with so many other things in life, good came from bad. Were it not for the fire, in which no one got hurt, the friars and community would not likely have built a new center for quite some time, if at all. In that rebuilding I have also been able to participate, relying on God to help me keep a rather surprising financial contribution: for details see The Journey Is More Important Than the Destination.)

This particular retreat was different. It was conducted by the priest who leads our contemplative prayer group. It was the first time I had ever spent so much time in silence. After all, I am an extrovert. Silence does not come naturally. I even talk to birds and squirrels!

The silence, however, was exactly what I needed to finish off a week that had gone from frenetic to tranquil, thanks to God answering my wail while in Washington to return home and be able to spend the entire retreat in retreat activities. Until the day before the retreat I had been unable to arrange for a timely arrival for Thursday evening (my plane was supposed to arrive from Washington, DC late in the afternoon) and unable to get the full day off on Friday (I had a mandatory meeting Friday afternoon). When I begged God, however, to bring me back home and back to Him, suddenly flights were cancelled, requirements were changed, and even the mandatory meeting was postponed. Amazingly, I had the entire retreat time off, all four days.

I consider these four days God's gift to me. God certainly spoils me! (But I hope He does not stop because I like it!)

Monday Morning Meditation #78: We Don't Need a Reason to Obey God

I hope you all had a beautiful, happy, and hopeful Easter. It is a bit difficult to return to the dark and despairing prophecies of Jeremiah after the joyful way in which the Easter triduum ends. Nonetheless, that is the reading in which I am soaked at the moment, both in my Bible Studies class and in my regular reading. Actually, I am not repelled by these prophecies; rather, I feel a good deal of compassion for Jeremiah. I can imagine how difficult being a prophet of God under such conditions was for him, given some of the difficult but far more modest taskings I have been given; yet, Jeremiah did as asked. In the chapter I read this morning, God told Jeremiah to buy a linen belt, put it around his waist, and not to let it touch water. Then God told him to take the belt to Perath, hide it there in a crevice in the rocks. After some time, God told Jeremiah to retrieve the belt. When Jeremiah did so, he found it ruined. Then God said:

"9 'In the same way I will ruin the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem.
10 These wicked people, who refuse to listen to my words, who follow the stubbornness of their hearts and go after other gods to serve and worship them, will be like this belt—completely useless!
11 For as a belt is bound around the waist, so I bound all the people of Israel and all the people of Judah to me,’ declares the LORD, ‘to be my people for my renown and praise and honor. But they have not listened.’"

Reading: Jeremiah 13: 1-11.

Meditation: I can imagine how disconcerted with God's first, second, and third set of instructions Jeremiah might have been. Buy a belt, wear it, and keep it dry? Whatever for? Why a belt? What was the purpose of wearing it? But Jeremiah did not question; he simply bought and wore the belt. But then, take the belt to Perath and bury it? That was even more strange a command. Why should he do that? What was the purpose of burying the belt? Once again, though, as strange and senseless as the command may have seemed to be, Jeremiah did as asked. Ultimately, he did find out why God wanted him to do this. Not everyone does find out the reason, but the doing of the tasking is important whether or not we know why.

Some of you may know the story of how God told Beth Moore, when she was at an airport, to brush the hair of a man with straggly hair in a wheelchair. (If you have not read the story, you can find it here: Beth Moore's Airport OA...Revisited.) She did not want to do it, but she did do it. Just as Jeremiah did as asked, as have a number of other prophets, no matter how odd the request it sounded or how embarrassing or difficult for them -- and, the important thing in both the case of the linen belt (Jeremiah) and the hair brush (Moore), is that the request made no sense to them, but they did it, anyway, assuming/trusting that God had reasons that they did not need to know.

I have personally experienced this disconcernment when asked by God to do something that I have found to be awkward or embarrassing with no understandable reason as to why it should be do. Like Jeremiah and Moore, however, I have found myself doing as asked. In one of the more embarrassing taskings, I had to ask an employee by email about the condition of his soul! (Keep in mind that I work for an organization that insists on separation of work and religion.) Like Jeremiah and Moore, I had no idea why I was supposed to do this. Like both of them, in this case, I did find out the reason although there are times that I don't. I have learned that it is not important for me to know why God wants me to do something. It is only important that I do it. Developing a level of comfort with not knowing has taken many lessons from God. I am glad I was blessed with those lessons for now obedience alone brings me much pleasure.

Contemplation: That is far as I can go with you this Monday morning. I now retire to private prayer to thank God for entrusting me with one or another task, to promise to act without needing to know why, and to ask for more opportunities to serve God and His people. Then I will move on to contemplation, my favorite part of the day, letting God take over the direction in which my relationship with Him moves.

I will leave you now to your prayer and contemplation. First, though, I would like to bring to your attention a Monday morning prayer post that you might enjoy:

Fr. Austin Fleming, priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and pastor in Concord, Massachusetts, posts a prayer each Monday morning that he calls "Monday Morning Offering." I enjoy his prayers very much. I think you also will find them inspirational. He has graciously given me permission to include a link to his blog on my Monday Morning Meditation posts. (During the week, he also posts great homilies and other thoughtful discussions. I enjoy reading those, too, as do readers of this blog who have taken the stroll over to his blog.)

For additional inspiration throughout the week, I would point out two sets of blogs: (1) the list of devotional blogs on my sidebar and (2) my blogroll, where I am following a number of inspirational priests and writers about spiritual matters. I learn so very much from all these people. I highly recommend them to you.

Merry Christmas! God Bless All!

Since I do not blog on Sundays, I will post a Christmas message tonight, Christmas eve. Plans? With all the kids having flown from the nest a decade ago, Donnie and I will be having our Christmas eve dinner at a local Chinese restaurant, run by Korean, prior to midnight Mass, which is at 10:30 this evening. (It finishes at midnight, so the name is not entirely misleading.)

As he does every year, Finnegan, our priest's black cat, has wandered from the cold into the warmth of the manger. Both he, and Sula, our parish's white cat, take turns sleeping in the manger. Sometimes they share it.

Sharing warm Christmas wishes with all! May God bless each one of you tomorrow and all days of this happy season!

Was My Father a Bad Man?

The question is a serious one and not a rhetorical one. I hope that some readers can shed light on something that has puzzled me ever since the book, The Da Vinci Code, was published. It was brought back into focus for me today when I read some literature about Our Lady of Good Success, the Venerable Mother Mariana de Jesus Torres. The literature stated that, according to Mother Mariana, "Our Lady prophesied that at the end of the 19th century and especially in the 20th century Satan would reign almost completely by the means of the Masonic sect."

Wikipedia shows the Masons in a different light, as a social organization. I cannot summarize the whole article here for it is quite long, but you can read it for yourself: Freemasonry. Apparently, people who were considered good and moral and all that wonderful kind of stuff, like George Washington, were members of the Masons. Where I grew up in Maine and New Hampshire, the Masons were considered to be community leaders with good morals. Most attended church. From the Wikipedia article, the central statement for me was the following: "Freemasonry's central preoccupations remain charitable work within a local or wider community, moral uprightness (in most cases requiring a belief in a Supreme Being) as well as the development and maintenance of fraternal friendship – as James Anderson's Constitutions originally urged – amongst brethren."

So, I don't get it. My father was a Mason. Was he a bad man? Does anyone know?

Day of Flowers

At work, we have some training programs, some of them quite long, that I oversee -- well, ultimately oversee. There are a few layers of supervision between me and those programs. In spite of those layers, I continue a practice that I began 20 years ago when I was a dean. At every graduation, I give flowers to the teaching team. I don't care whether the students did well in the course; I don't care if the students were happy with the course. These issues will come up later in program reviews and making changes is the responsibility of the immediate supervisors who are responsible for these programs. The flowers I give are for the effort, to let the teachers in these programs know that I notice and I care.

The teachers love these flowers and look forward to them. I usually send them with a handwritten "congratulations" note. If I can take them to the teaching team personally, I do, but far too often I am tied up and cannot. So, I send them via my admin assistant. No matter how the flowers are delivered, the teachers are also grateful. You would think that I had given each a significant award, but no, they are just a few fragrant flowers. Even the male teachers like them. They have become such an important part of the graduation process that I have my admin assistant purchase them for me if I am traveling and will be missing graduation.

Today was graduation. I was not traveling, so I was able to attend and give closing remarks. Closing remarks are always easy. The best closing remarks are brief. I know that. The graduation is essentially over, and I certainly don't want to stand between the graduates and their parties. So, today, as always, I kept my remarks brief. Then I had a chance to interact with the teachers and their graduates. Some of the families were present, as well.

So, it was a good day. (Not all days are quite so pleasant.) We celebrated the good efforts of teachers and their students. The teachers smiled with pleasure at their flowers. And then I went on walkabout.

Walkabout is one of my management practices (when I am in town). I take about an hour and talk to as many employees as I can. I usually concentrate on one section at a time and ultimately over a month or two I reach nearly everyone. I always take cookies with me. The sugarfree kind because so many of our employees are diabetic. Living in the Middle East taught me to take a gift when I call on people. It is not the cookies that matter; it is the attention. I was able to make it through two sections on walkabout this afternoon and yet have time not to hurry any one conversation. Oh, I enjoy the walkabouts as much as my employees do. I also learn a lot. People volunteer all kinds of information when they have a cookie in hand!

So, today was just one of those days, one of those good days! To make it even more perfect, I was even able to catch noon Mass at a small church near my office. I hope that you all had as happy a day today as I did, and if not, I will pray for a perfect tomorrow for all of you!

What happened to the Blest Atheist (blog, that is)?

I got caught by surprise by Google's lack of tech support and trickery in domain registration. I decided that since it was about time that Blest Atheist had a name change, given that it now has been four years since my conversion, the timing was right not to go along with the Google-GoDaddy scheme for moving registration to GoDaddy at nine times the original cost. Others have screamed about being held hostage in order to get their website back. I don't like being held hostage and found a way around that. I could have retained the blog title but not the URL, so it seemed fitting to change both.

I will, over time, move all the BA posts here. There are nearly 300 posts, so that will take some time. Please be patient as I work on it. Unfortunately, I cannot access the comments.

I apologize for any inconvenience that causes or has caused readers and followers of Blest Atheist. I thank all those who have followed Blest Atheist and will contact each individually with this information.