April 2016 – Journeying Into Mystery

Loving one another in a dualistic world – a reflection on John 13

“When Judas had left them, Jesus said,
‘Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him.
If God is glorified in him,
God will also glorify him in himself,
and God will glorify him at once.
My children, I will be with you only a little while longer.
I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.
This is how all will know that you are my disciples,
if you have love for one another.’” (John 13: 31-33a, 34-35)

At the time John’s gospel was written, there existed within human society a dualistic way of looking at life. This dualism shows up in John’s gospel more than the other synoptic gospels. From the opening lines of the Prologue throughout the entirety of John’s gospel, one is asked to ascertain whether one is to be either be a child of the light or a child of darkness. It is clear that only those who choose to follow Jesus become children of the light, while those who do not, dwell as progeny of darkness.

Dualism in the world of humanity has not changed greatly over the passing years. The duality or polarity of humanity continues to rear itself around us. There always seems to be an ultimatum of “either you are with us or against us!” This is played out in the polarization we find in politics, in business , and in religion, especially within the more fundamentalistic segments of world religions.

In hearing this gospel, one might consider the great commandment to “love one another as I have loved you” as part of a dualistic ultimatum on the part of Jesus. However, it is far from it. The dualism that is in the world is not derived from love, especially the love that Jesus commands. The love of which Jesus speaks is derived from the love that flows from God who created all of humanity. Jesus’ love is all inclusive of humanity. The dualism that is in our world is derived from the exclusivity of human hatred.

When we look at all the things that we “hate”, it is generally because someone or some organization or thing is in opposition to a personally held conviction that is exclusive to us. Don’t we just hate it when someone is in disagreement with one of our positions? This is especially true of those positions we might consider “sacred cows” (Mark Twain had a saying, “sacred cows” make the best hamburger.)

Hatred is something exclusively human. It wells up from within us. When our exclusive world view is threatened or denied by others, we draw lines in the sand, daring those who oppose us to step over them. Hate is all about us, not about those who are not in agreement with us. Whether that “hate” is mere aggravation on the mild side of the spectrum, or that spiral descent into dark rage on the extreme end of the spectrum, it is always about us and the exclusive world we have built around ourselves. It is from human created hatred that all the dualism and polarity of society is derived and in turn destroys relationships within the community.

The love about which Jesus speaks and commands his disciples to live is all about inclusivity. Jesus’ love extends beyond the love he has for his disciples. Jesus loves Judas, who at the very moment Jesus is speaking, is betraying Jesus to those who will eventually harm him and kill him. Jesus is loving those human beings who will torture him and execute him. Jesus does not love exclusively. Rather, Jesus loves inclusively.

In our society today, in which people find it far easier to reach for a revolver and shoot someone rather than engage in constructive, respectful debate and dialogue, the commandment to love one another as I have loved you, is more challenging to the disciple of Jesus than ever.

To love one another as Jesus commands us, is to live courageously one’s faith as a disciple of Jesus. To love as Jesus loved is to divest ourselves of all weapons of human construct in our arsenal, lethal or otherwise. It is not martial arts that disciples of Jesus must study. As our sensei, Jesus instructs us today as he did the disciples in this Last Supper discourse, to arm ourselves only with the all inclusive weapon of love.

As St. Paul writes in his first letter to the Corinthians, “If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, [love] is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. If there are prophecies, they will be brought to nothing; if tongues, they will cease; if knowledge, it will be brought to nothing. For we know partially and we prophesy partially, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things. At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known. So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” (1 Cor 13: 1-12)

Are we willing as disciples of Jesus to lay down our lives in love not only for our friends but our enemies as well, or, as St. Paul writes, are we merely only noisy gongs? The gospel challenges us to make a choice today. Will we love inclusively or hate exclusively? The choice is ours.

Upon hearing about the death of Dave Waite

My expectations in blogging are not harboring some delusion of affecting a change in the earth’s rotation or saving the universe. I approach this blog as a way of relating my particular passage through life. As the psalmists note poetically, time goes by quickly and all life quickly blooms and then, as quickly, fades. The blog is a way of letting the world see one’s blooms before they droop and then drop to the earth. In a less poetic and more cynical analogy, it is a bit akin to a dog marking territory, letting the rest of the animal kingdom know who has passed by.

We all have stories and those stories are important. As I recall from a theology class from the distant past, the understanding of eternal life from the theology of orthodox Judaism, is to so fully live life and achieve much in life so that the stories about your life will continue to circulate far into the future. While not the original intention behind the composing of the Psalm Offerings, in a way, posting those music compositions and noting for whom they are dedicated is a way of noting the important story of those lives who have passed into the fullness of God’s Reign, and the importance of those whose lives are still in the being of becoming.

It was with a mixture of both excitement and then sadness to hear about my friend Dave Waite from his widow, Gerda. Gerda, in great kindness, commented on the music dedicated to Dave (Psalm Offering 4, Opus 4), and informed me that Dave passed away in 2004. Dave, as I had noted in the comment about him on that blog, was larger than life, gregarious with a capital G, and living the gift God gave him fully and fearlessly. Dave, as all of us do, had his Achilles heel, but what a remarkable man he was.

I remember the very first autobiographical story that Dave related to me as we were rehearsing the opera, The Elixir of Love. We were sitting in a room on the lower level of O’Shaughnessy Music Building on the campus of the College of St. Catherine’s. The room was a very small lounge with a couple of stuffed chairs and some classroom chairs and a coca-cola vending machine, the only room, I must add, on that level that did not have a practice piano in it.

Dave talked about his mom, who had died when he was in junior high. Upon his mother’s death, his dad, a Presbyterian minister, thought it best that Dave spend some time on his Uncle’s farm, while his dad tended to those things that needed to be settled when a love one dies. It was the winter, and Dave’s uncle had a prized stud bull which had a rather sour disposition toward most homo sapiens. Dave and his cousin liked to rile the bull up by throwing frozen cow turds at the bull. One day, while his uncle was in town, they riled the bull so greatly that the bull chased them across the field. They sought to escape the bull and possibly great harm by running across a frozen pond. When the bull’s hooves hit the frozen surface he legs went in all four directions, belly flopping on the surface of the pond. Unable to get up, the bull got even angrier. Knowing that the bull was the prize stud for the farm, and fearing the wrath of his uncle, the two boys decided it would be a far better fate to be mauled by the bull then mauled by the uncle. They tried and tried to get the bull up on his feet, but to no avail. Then finally backed a tractor up to the pond, hooked an old rusty chain around the back of the tractor to the hind quarters of the bull and pulled the bull off the pond. In doing so, they damaged the bull’s most prized and valuable private parts. His uncle upon looking at the bull thought the wounds were due to getting hung up on some barb wire. The boys never told the uncle exactly what happened. All Dave related that was in the Spring, when his uncle sent the bull out to mate with cows who were in heat, the bull could not perform his primary function. Dave said the memory that lingered in his mind was the sight of the unperforming bull being chased across the pasture by very single-minded cows in heat. Alas, the bull ended up being hamburger on somebody’s plate.

The second story that Dave related to me had a similar agricultural bent to it. Dave for a semester or two studied voice at the Toronto Conservatory of Music. His voice professor, whose name I cannot remember, sang in the Metropolitan Opera. His voice professor also ran a dairy farm when he was not engaged singing for the Met. Dave was at his voice professor’s farm for voice lessons when two men from the Met came to negotiate a contract for the professor to sing with the opera for another season. Upon arriving at the farm, the professor’s wife directed them to the barn where the professor was engaged in milking cows. These two business men, in expensive $700 suits (remember this was back in 1970 or so) went down to the barn where they found the professor in his overalls busily milking his cows. As they talked, the professor told them not to stand behind this one particular cow, because the cow had the scours (a rather explosive diarrhea condition). The two men ignored the warning of the professor. When the cow started to fidget as the professor was milking her, he slapped her on the rear end to which the cow responded by literally showering the two men in their expensive business suits in liquid cow manure. The shower was so profuse that Dave said you could see where they had stood by the outline on the wall behind them. Dave said, covered in cow crap, they ran up to the house clean up but the professor’s wife stopped them at the door, made them undress on the porch, put their clothes in a plastic bag, and gave them coveralls to wear back into the city. Apparently, this did not have a negative affect on his professor’s singing for the Met that season.

Dave was a very gifted storyteller, and we heard many a great story from Dave during the production of that opera. I had the joy of hearing many more for some years afterward. I do miss him and wish him the blessings of the greatest story that can be related, the fullness of his life with God today.

For my beautiful Ruth – Psalm Offering 3 Opus 6 for piano

Ruthie and I out on a date in 1969.

I have been blessed to have my beloved Ruth in my life from 1969 to the present. There is no other person who embodies God’s love greater than she. Is it any wonder I have written so much music dedicated to her, and volumes of poetry?

The primary melody of this Psalm Offering was originally a song I wrote for our wedding in 1974. Diane Strafelda, a good friend and a voice major in music from the College of St. Catherine, sang it at our wedding. While the original setting of that music has long been lost, I have never forgotten the primary part of that melody. The melody was inspired by an aria entitled, “Dido’s Lament”, from the Baroque opera Dido and Aeneas, written by the English composer, Henry Purcell. I was tremendously moved when I heard that aria for the first time. As a young man, deeply in love and filled with grand illusions, I sought out to compose a melody as deeply moving as Purcell’s aria. Ah, the folly of youth! The song may have lacked, however, the primary melody was still very good.

I had been thinking about resetting that melody in piano music for over a year. With nothing but a dim memory of Diane’s voice singing that song, I recomposed it in this piano setting for my beautiful Ruth. The bare bones of that melody is all that remains from the wedding song. The variations on that melody and the middle section are all newly composed.

Overall, it expresses in music my relationship with Ruth over the past 45 years. Ah, mythic love. First there was Dido and Aeneas, then Tristan and Isolde, and now, Ruth and Bob. The primary melody retains the great passion I have had for Ruth. In the first part of the song (A), the primary meldoy starts simply in the lower register like one lover expressing his love to his intended. It is restated in the higher register, his lover reciprocating his affection than moves into a secondary melody where the couples love for each grows until the primary melody returns in chordal octaves, a passionate expression of love consummated then peace as the lovers begin life together.

The middle section of the song (B) is the dance of the couple as they work, have children, raise their children, and the demands of life attempts to pull them in all directions. However, in the midst of the hustle and bustle of that dance, the love and the passion the couple has does not fade as the primary melody (A) is joined into the dance.

The song concludes to a simple restatement of the love that began many years before, intact, and filled with nothing but gratitude of a life together.

Good Shepherd Calling – A Homily for the 4th Sunday in Easter

For the first part of my childhood, my family lived in Chicago. It was always an exciting time for my brother and sister and I when our parents would take us to downtown Chicago, especially during the weeks leading up to Christmas. Marshall Fields was a huge department store filled with all sorts of exotic sights and smells. I would suppose for most who are young, the experience I had of Marshall Fields department store would be like going to the Mall of America for the very first time. There was so much to see and so much of it just filled a kid like me with wonder. The overwhelming scents coming from the perfume counter area alone could nearly knock a person out. However, for a five year old kid, the best part of that department store at Christmas was the vast area devoted only to toys.

The toy section consisted of aisles upon aisles of toys of all kinds. A kid could wander the toy section of the store for several hours and never see the entirety of what was displayed there. I remember as a five year old kid being mesmerized by all that was on display. After being in the toy section for a while, my mother told me it was time to leave and follow her and go look for clothes. Ugh! There is nothing more boring in the world for a 5 year old kid than to go shopping for clothes. I heard my mother’s voice, but the Siren’s call of the toys was stronger. They called out to me, “Come back, come back!” I made like I was following my mother, and then circled back into the toy section.

After some time had passed, I thought I had better go and find my mother. What I had not counted on in my great plan was that in a store as big and vast as Marshall Fields filled with busy Christmas shoppers, all who were at least 2 or 3 feet taller than I, trying to find my mother in that huge crowd was going to be impossible. I wandered around calling for my mother. “Mom, where are you?” I called out. It hadn’t occurred to me that there was more than one woman who answered to the name, “Mom.” I couldn’t see her anywhere and I was getting very scared. I was lost in a huge store, in a huge city, surrounded by grownups, and had no way of knowing how I was ever going to get home to my family.

What I didn’t know was my mother missed me right away and knew exactly where I was. She decided that a good lesson in obedience needed to be taught, and withdrew from me, keeping me in eyesight, but letting me sweat out my huge mistake. When I was on the verge of panic, she finally answered my call, and I ran to her. I was so very grateful and hugged her waist tightly (remember I was a little kid, then). For the rest of the day I was so close to her, you would swear I was stuck to her with super glue.

On any given day, we listen to many voices. Do we pay attention to the voice of the Good Shepherd who calls out to us? In that department store many years ago, instead of listening to my mother, I chose to listen to the voices of all those toys beckoning to me. The sight and the sounds of all those toys bedazzled me luring me further and further from my mother to the point that I became completely lost, alone in a vast crowd of people, and scared to death. Just as I ignored the voice of my mother telling me to follow her in that department store, do we tend to shut out the voice of the Good Shepherd and follow other voices? And at those times when we do so, do we also find ourselves lost and scared?

There are many voices in the world luring us away from Jesus. There is the vast wasteland of imagined wealth that beckons to us, promising us riches and fame and security. There are those who hold themselves up as political Messiahs making all sorts of promises, promises based on nothing but air, with no guarantee of fulfillment. There are the voices of self-gratification, promising to titillate all of our senses, all of it just another fantasy among many, and no more. All of these voices invade our lives through television commercials, radio, emails, the vast world wide web, all telling us what to do and how to live. Where is the Good Shepherd amidst all of this noise, this cacophony of sound?

Like a mother keeping an eye on her lost, disobedient son, Jesus is always near, ready to call out and save us as we get lost. In the midst of the chaos and panic of our lives, Jesus calls for us to just turn around. As we do so, we find that he has been there all along just waiting for us to find him. All we can do then is to embrace him in gratitude, and be thankful to be safe and sound once more.

Jesus is the only sure thing in our lives, the only sure thing on which we can count. The rest of the world is just all smoke and mirrors and nothing more. Just as a mother loves her children to death and never abandons them, so Jesus does not abandon us even if we abandon him, for we are precious in the heart of our loving God. It is the hand of God who created us in love and shaped us, and who has given us to the care of the beloved, Jesus, who is the Son of God, the Good Shepherd. As the beloved of our God, Jesus offers us more than what the world can offer us. Jesus gives to us eternal life and happiness. All we need to do is to listen to his voice and follow him.

Homily for the 3rd Sunday in Easter, Year C

Painting: Christ of St. John of the Cross (Salvador Dali)

Several Sundays ago while I was assisting Fr. Kevin at Mass, a little girl of 4 or 5 years of age and her dad approached me as I distributed Holy Communion. The little girl had her arms folded over her chest wanting a blessing. I extended my left hand over her and said, “May God bless you and keep you!” She looked at my extended hand and then in a joyful gesture, giggled and high fived me, slapping my hand, saying, “Alright!” At first, I was startled and then amused, as was her dad. I thought to myself, “If only all people approached Holy Communion with the same joy and excitement as this little girl!”

In all of the scripture readings for today we hear similar expressions of joy. In the Acts of the Apostles, the apostles left the Sanhedrin, “rejoicing that they had been found worthy to suffer dishonor for the sake of the name [of Jesus].” In Revelations, we hear all living creatures and the elders joyfully crying out, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches, wisdom and strength, honor and glory and blessing.” In the John’s Gospel account, the disciple rejoiced when they recognized the risen Jesus on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias. Then the Gospel writer tells us that Jesus takes Peter aside and says to him, “Amen, amen, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” Then the Gospel writer concludes, “Jesus said this signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God.’”

In all of these readings there is an association of unbridled joy to suffering and death. Joy is not the normal emotional state we generally associate with suffering and death. In the Gospel, Jesus talks about Peter glorifying God by dying. How is there any glory in dying? We usually associate misery, pain and grieving to suffering and death but not joy.

Each and every one of us has experienced some kind of suffering in our lives. Our suffering may be physical from an illness or some kind of injury. The death of a loved one, the broken relationships that occur in divorce, the breaking off of a long term romantic relationship or a friendship with someone significant, depression, the loss of employment or of a home can bring upon us great emotional and spiritual pain and suffering. But why do the scripture writers insist on associating joy with suffering?

Ordinarily, I think we would all think a person rather sadistic who would find joy in all this kind of suffering. The difficulty we encounter in suffering is that we can get so stuck in our suffering, that we dwell in it and make it an end unto itself. We wonder why God is punishing us. What have we done that God is punishing us with such suffering? What the scriptures tell us today is that human suffering is not permanent, rather it is temporary, a process through which we must pass in order to find true and complete joy. This is what the Paschal Mystery of Jesus teaches us.

In order for the joy in the Resurrection to occur, Jesus had to first experience being betrayed and abandoned by his most trusted followers, tortured, beaten and executed. Jesus had to pass through his passion and death in order to experience the joy of the Resurrection. You and I would not have the joy of receiving the Body and Blood of Jesus in Holy Communion had not Jesus first suffered and died, then rose from the dead. We reap the benefits of Jesus’ passion, death and resurrection every time we receive Holy Communion.

We find meaning and purpose to our human suffering in the Paschal Mystery of Jesus. In his letter to the Romans, St. Paul writes that In our baptism we have been united to Jesus and have suffered and died with him. However, we also have been resurrected with him. Our union with Jesus is so intimate and close that in our own suffering we share in his suffering. In our sharing of his suffering, our suffering takes on the redemptive quality of his. As Jesus had to pass through his suffering to reach the resurrection, our suffering, too, is only temporary. Our suffering is not a permanent state, but a temporary condition through which we must pass to reach our ultimate joy, our own resurrection.

When the time comes when our ultimate suffering occurs and our human bodies wear out and die, we will not remain dead. We will rise from the dead. This is why we sing following the consecration at Mass, “When we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim your death Lord Jesus, until you come again in glory.” When we receive the Body and Blood of Jesus in Holy Communion, our suffering and our death are united to his redemptive suffering, death and resurrection, until it is no longer necessary when Jesus returns in glory.

None of us need to seek out suffering or death. These all come our way eventually. However, when we do find ourselves in the throes of suffering, let us not get stuck in it. Let us not dwell on our suffering as permanent. Rather let us look beyond the suffering we are experiencing to the joy that awaits us. When we do so, the anticipation of that joy will help sustain us.

As the apostles left the Sanhedrin in joy for having suffered for the sake of Jesus, as the Lamb who was slain received all power, riches, and glory, and as Peter would give glory to God in his own suffering and death, may we find within our own suffering the promise of God’s joy, that same joy that filled that little girl when she high fived me at communion several weeks ago.

PEACE BE WITH YOU – A reflection on the Gospel of John from the Second Sunday of Easter

“The Incredulity of Saint Thomas” – Hendrick ter Brugghen (artist)

“Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’” Imagine for a moment how desperately the disciples of Jesus were in need of peace. Their beloved leader, who only did that which was good, was brutally arrested, tortured and then executed. They fled in fear from the time of his arrest and were petrified that the Jewish religious authorities who had engineered the death of Jesus would do the same to them. The taste of fear was on their lips and weighed heavy in their hearts. On top of this fear was the equally heavy weight of their cowardice, their own betrayal of the one they loved. Which was the heavier weight, I wonder, their fear of a reprisal from the Jewish religious authorities, or their own cowardice?

That Easter Sunday night after having heard with some incredulity of Jesus’ body missing from the tomb, first from Mary Magdalene, and then Simon Peter and the Beloved Disciple, Jesus suddenly appears in their midst. He bestows upon them his peace, not once but twice. Imbued within his peace is also his reconciliation with them. They find the weight of their betrayal lifted from their hearts. They find the burden of their cowardice removed from their spirit. Then, in one great gesture of love, Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit upon them. As the air from his mouth washes over them, they receive the power to bring that same peace to others in conflict.

As we look around the church on this Sunday morning at those gathered with us, how many of us upon hearing this post-resurrection account from the Gospel of John are truly in desperate need for a state of peace in our lives? How many of us have come to Mass with a doctor’s grim diagnosis of an illness we have still ringing in our ears? How many of us have come to Mass straight from a hospital emergency room in which a loved one is being treated? How many of us have come to Mass from a domestic violent relationship? How many of us have come to Mass reeling from the news of a death of a loved one? How many of us have come to Mass after being up all night with a sick child? How many of us are present at Mass knowing that we have just been laid off from their job, or we are running out of unemployment insurance and do not know how we are to pay for food, and the other necessities of life? How many of us are in the middle of a foreclosure on their home and do not know where we will be living? How desperate we are in need of the peace that Jesus bestows upon the apostles!

If we expect the peace of Jesus to immediately remove all the conflict and all the stressors from our lives, like the pass of a magician’s magic wand, we will be sorely disappointed. Rather, the peace of Jesus is a state of being. The peace of Jesus permeates the space around us and the space within us. The peace of Jesus permeates our minds, our hearts, the very cells within our bodies. The peace of Jesus does not remove all that conflicts us, ails us, or frightens us, but fills us with the knowledge that as we face all these in our lives we do not do so alone. We face all these struggles with Jesus. This is perhaps best expressed in what has come to be known as “The Serenity Prayer,” attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr.

God, give me grace to accept with serenity

the things that cannot be changed,

Courage to change the things

which should be changed,

and the Wisdom to distinguish

the one from the other.

Living one day at a time,

Enjoying one moment at a time,

Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,

Taking, as Jesus did,

This sinful world as it is,

Not as I would have it,

Trusting that You will make all things right,

If I surrender to Your will,

So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,

And supremely happy with You forever in the next.

Amen.

May we invite within ourselves that peace with which Jesus offers to us, and embrace it.

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