Baltimore Riots - A Warning to America, a Warning to All Humanity

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

                                         ― Marianne Williamson

                 “An immortal soul is beyond all price. There is no trouble too great, no humiliation too deep, no suffering too severe, no love too strong, no labor too hard, no expense too large, but that it is worth it, if it is spent in an effort to win a soul for God.”

                                            - Author Unknown

           

            There is something that tears at the very heart of me when I see American teens emptying out of their public schools and then rioting in our streets - teens from public schools leaving their “educational facilities” and then robbing, looting, destroying property, and all the while attacking and assaulting police in the process.

            What’s happening in this country? Or should the question rather be: “What’s not happening in this country?” To cut to the chase here, are these students in Baltimore public schools, or in public schools anywhere in America, being taught the substance of the Marianne Williamson quote above? What is that the substance and foundational core of that quote? It is that you are a child of God made in His image, with a soul therefore of inestimable value - a soul therefore with power beyond measure because it is capable of making manifest in this world the Glory of God that is within it.

            This is what is not being taught in the public schools of this country. This is what is not happening in this country. The young today in the USA do not know their inherent dignity as children of God made in His image, the inestimable value of a soul that has the power to mirror the divine in this world. There is no limit to God. So also, there is no limit to a soul made in His image. There is no limit to how high that soul can reach, no limit to how far that soul can go on a journey to excellence for love.

            When liberal minded educators today remove such teachings from our public schools because of their biblical basis, tragedy happens. When they forbid the teaching of such foundational truth, spurn such core values like a student’s dignity as a child of God made in His image, the stage is set for societal collapse. It becomes only a matter of time before the disturbing images from Baltimore begin to spread like a disease throughout our country, before the moral and spiritual decadence those images represent become the norm throughout our nation.     

            But where educators and professors do teach this foundational truth, the biblical concept of a student’s dignity as a child of God, amazing events happen, even miracles happen. People’s lives are transformed, elevated to the heights of the extraordinary, to the heights of excellence. I think of such real life miracle stories as those captured in films like “Stand and Deliver”, “Coach Carter”, “Freedom Writers”, “Miracle”, and “Dead Poets Society”.

            In each of these films an educator or a coach dares to think differently, to think “outside the box” of what the liberal agenda allows or what a godless curriculum demands. The educators in each of these films build their teaching efforts upon the biblical truth of human dignity (Gen. 1:26-27): that their students are children of God made in His image. They respect this inherent dignity of each and every one of their students. Accordingly, they set goals and expectations that “raise the bar”, that summon their students to reach for a level of academic and athletic performance representing nothing less than consummate excellence.

            The results are phenomenal. In each of these movies – save one (“Dead Poets”) - the stories told are based on real life accounts. Each film narrates a tale of incredible events that unfold in the lives of students taught their inherent dignity; in the lives of students called to high expectations – called to reach for dreams, goals, and noble aspirations only capable of a soul made in the divine image.

            In essence, each film simply tells story of students realizing their innate dignity – of students realizing their “power beyond measure” in the pursuit of the extraordinary (So Professor Keating’s term in “Dead Poets”), the “uncommon” (Herb Brooks term in “Miracle”), the outstanding, the prodigious, the arcane; of realizing the inestimable value of their lives and their souls in the actual achievement of works indicative of nothing less than consummate excellence, even genius.

            So America, wake up! Our educational efforts with youth today are doomed as long as our schools exclude from the public forum all reference to God, His word, and biblical values. That word and those values have been throughout our history the basis of our law and the bedrock and foundation upon which our society stands. But now we are building our future on sand, and as such our posterity will only “inherit the wind”.

            Even now, all-pervasive throughout our land is a generation of youth that no longer understands the power and potential of a human being made in God’s image. In fact, in our society’s darkness attitudes toward human life have gone deeper and deeper into the night. Turning from the Light of God, it is a society sick and blind that sees human life as cheap, not good enough; that treats the child of God as trash and not treasure, as a piece of junk and not as the jewel they are in the eyes of Christ, as a piece of cheap glass and not as the diamond they are in the heart of the Father.

            Given the rejection God and Heaven widespread throughout America today, our society already sees, feels, and experiences what the lost souls feel in the torment of Dante’s Inferno – that they are “no one”, and therefore expendable, disposable. How many among us feel nothing less than this today? How many in fact feel that they are disenfranchised, cast out, forsaken; or, that their life is cheap, of little worth, easily to be left out or discarded? What else can one feel in a society that yawns in the face of abortion, in a society that stands silent in the face of ISIS slaughter, in a society obsessed with violence in its media, amusements, and movies?

            But there is something else among us that one can know and feel. In schools where the teaching of God and His Christ are honored, there is something else that people still experience in most dramatic ways. Students in particular still experience their inestimable value and dignity, the transforming power of the human soul made in God’s image. It is “power beyond measure”, a power within every person that impels us to reach for and achieve brilliance, beauty, wisdom, ethereal truth, love like only God can love. It is Power, a Spirit within, that exalts each of us to the heights of the divine; a Power, A Spirit, that like a “wind beneath our wings” enables us to climb the sky and perch on mountain peaks – all toward the end, the goal, the dream, that each of us can do what we were born to do: reflect in our own unique way the Glory of God within us all.                

              

The Tree House in the Moonlight, or: The Wealth Only God C an Give

                 

             Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God…Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know from where it comes or to where it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

- John. 3:5,7

            Then turning to His disciples He said privately, “Blessed are the eyes which see what you see! For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.”

-Luke. 10:23-24

            The tree house is way up on a hill in the woods behind my family’s home. Built high up the trunk of an old and mighty oak over twenty years ago, the tree house though unfinished still stands tall and proud today. Its open view of the fields and meadow beyond the edge of the forest below remains as majestic and magnificent as ever.

            To get to the tree house my sons and I built a switchback trail up the hill. Tim was in the fourth grade at the time. Pat was in 7^th. The tree house is not at all that far into the woods, requiring perhaps a little more than a hundred steps to reach it. It is a climb that even now in my twilight years I can handle, and more than my family knows I will often climb the path to that awesome house in the tree. I do so because the house is holy site to me. It is a place where the Lord taught me ever so clearly and powerfully what a blessed man I am – blessed with the wealth that only God can give.

            I remember so well the night of Grace when I received that teaching. It happened sixteen years ago. Tim was nine by then. Pat was 12. It was July 31^st, the Feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola. It was a most beautiful summer night. The moon was full, and there wasn’t a cloud in the starlit sky. There was a soft and cool summer breeze blowing steadily through the trees in the forest. The wind was moist and refreshing, coming from the south and east, therefore blowing inland with ocean air from the Atlantic only an hour away.

            It was later in the evening, around 10:00 PM, when through open windows I could hear the sound of the summer winds blowing through the leaves of the forest trees. The sound was tantalizing, alluring, exciting, even enchanting. I went out to our back deck where I could clearly look up the hill into the forest, directly toward the house in the midst of the trees moving in the winds.

           

            It was then that I first noticed the awesome sight that added to the refreshing breeze rustling through the leaves. As the leaves swayed in the wind they literally sparkled in the moonlight. The forest seemed alive with bright little specks of spraying light – reflected moonlight that shined off the leaves, as with sounds like excited children, they seemed to sway and swing in the summer winds.

            I got a flashlight and headed out into the forest. I had to go up to the house in the trees. As I climbed I turned off the flashlight. The forest was so full of scintillating moonlight filtering down from the leaves that I did not need any light of my own.

            I prayed as I walked. The presence of God was so palpable. His Spirit and Love seemed to permeate the woods and the wind. I felt no fear in the darkness. The Lord was with me.

            I reached the tree house. Climbing the ladder, I lifted myself from the forest floor into the tree above. Soon I was sitting in the unfinished home high up the oak tree; and like that tree and all the trees around I was swaying in the currents of the wind.

            I sat in the solitary chair we had in the house. It was the only one we had taken the time to carry up there from our home below. It was a sturdy chair and comfortable – easy to rock in it too. It was also high enough that I could look out the wide openings in the wall frames, openings for spacious windows that would give awesome views toward scenery on every side.

            As the tree house was unfinished, with only the side frames up and no completed walls or roof sections, so the breezes blowing through the trees also moved easily through the house. Their speed as they brushed by me was unimpeded, and their refreshing coolness unabated in any way.

            I sat there and prayed in what seemed to be a mystical setting. I prayed my own original version of the Jesus prayer: “Jesus and Mary, I love you…” Over and over one says those words with deep and calming breathes – the names of “Jesus and Mary” invoked while in haling; “I love you…” on the exhale. Even as the Bible tells us, to invoke the Divine Name of Jesus is to summon His Presence. And already on this night I could say with the Apostle John, that I was experiencing His Risen Life present in power to my own life – “the Word of Life…which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands, was made manifest” to me. His Love was so alive in the winds, in the scintillating moonlight radiating off leaves swaying in the summer breeze, His Life so completely permeating His creation with nothing less than Real Presence.

            While I prayed I looked out beyond the forest from high in my perch toward the open meadow behind our home. At times I would gaze at the full moon, and the silver glow moving out from its center and filling the night sky. And with every breeze I gazed at the leaves moving in the wind, sparkling with reflected moonlight. At all times I felt God’s Presence, as if all creation this night was breathing with the Spirit of His Love.

            Now there was a rustling heard down below, a movement through the leaves on the path leading up the hill to the house in the trees. It was Tim, my nine year old fourth grader. Though after 11:00 PM, he was moving up the hill in the dark without a flashlight. Did he know that Dad was in the tree house? I think he did. But still he called up to me, “Dad, you up there?” and I assured him that I was.  

            Tim climbed up the ladder and entered the tree house frame. Then he laid down on the treated deck wood floor right beside me to my left. With arms arched back behind his head, he gazed up at the moon through the trees.

            We didn’t talk much. It was enough for him to be there with his Dad. It was enough for me too just to share the beauty and power of this night with my son – above all though to share the sense of the Spirit of God so alive in the light and wind. In fact, once Tim came I understand that something very important had been missing from the power of this night – the chance to share the Love and Joy which was anointing me. Is it ever enough for us to have Jesus only for ourselves? Or in the encounter of His Love, are we not driven irresistibly to share Him with others? I think of the excitement of the Apostles who upon meeting Jesus, rushed to share Him with friends and family.

            Now there was another sound of rumbling from down below, moving ever closer and closer up the path to the house in the trees. It was Patrick, my twelve year old seventh grader. Without a word he came all the way up the path in the dark, and joined Tim and I in our perch high up in the huge old oak.

            Following Tim’s lead, he also laid down to my right on the floor boards beside me. Then he too focused on the trees branches above, moving in rhythm with the breezes of summer. In silence now all three of us watched with awe as the leaves sparkled with reflected moonlight, as they swayed and vibrated in the currents of the wind.

            So there we were. Now past midnight, then past 1:00 AM… We were drawn into the enchantment of a night forest all aglow with scintillating moonlight, so alive with wind, Spirit, Presence. Hours went by like minutes. Like Peter before the transfigured Christ, we wanted to stay before this feast of Joy, Love, Peace; Spirit, Power, Freedom. Like Peter, we did not want to come down from our little mountain. We did not want this moment in time to end.

            After 2:00 AM my sons and I left the house in the trees and climbed back down the hill to our home below. His Joy was in us and our Joy was full – the Joy and Peace of the Love only God can give. That Love had touched us and filled us in a most extraordinary way this night. Yet for myself, there was more than that. I realized that a blinding Light of illumination had come over me this night, anointed me if you will. I was coming down from my own Mount of the Transfiguration with a new knowledge, a new wisdom. From this night on I knew for certain the Grace, Gift and Blessing which the Lord bestows upon the believer. I now had eyes to see what many prophets and kings wanted to see but could not. Really, I was made to know by the Spirit this night the magnitude of the wealth which filled my life, wealth which money can’t buy and only God can give.

            The wealth only God can give… There on the hill, in the house in the trees I had felt it, and not only in the Glory of His Love which filled the forest and which fills all of creation. I had felt it most of all in the love of my son to my left, in the love of my son to my right. I had felt that wealth at the thought of my wife’s love and the whole of my family’s love, my family safe, secure, asleep in our home below – and all of this love enhanced and energized by His Love Present in power to our love as well. Thus, I had felt the wealth of God most of all in the Church present to me.

            Up there high on the hill, in a house high up the old oak tree, I had felt a true foreshadowing of the communion of Saints sharing in the Triune Life of God. I had seen a glimpse, looked upon and touched something of the breadth, the length, the height and depth of that Love known only to those filled with all the fullness of God - known only to those filled with a Love which reaches out from a Sacred Heart pierced and broken for us, and a Love which then draws us to Himself.         

Easter Joy! "I Am Who Am" Ever Present To You

Easter Joy! “I Am Who Am” Ever Present to You

“God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”

-John 3:16

“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.”

- Philippians 2:5-8

            The Joy of the Easter Season continues; so also the Easter meditation on the Divine Love revealed to us in Jesus – a Love made visible with fullness and power on the Cross, a Love still with us in the Spirit of the Risen Christ, and a Love that awaits us in the Heaven to come where with ecstatic Joy we will experience that Love completely in God’s presence, unveiled in all its Glory.

            It is, as St. Paul says, a Love beyond all that we can ask or imagine possible, a Love beyond what we dare to dream real. When I read those awesome words from Philippians about Jesus emptying Himself of Divinity, I am truly amazed. In fact Paul tells us of a Love that is unimaginable, unfathomable – of a Love that is Grace and Mercy beyond belief.

            What was it like to surrender all that Heaven is – for Jesus to empty Himself of all that He knew as God in order to become flesh and dwell among us? I think first of the magnificent scene from “Lord of The Rings” when Arwen unveils the magnitude of her love for Aragorn. Under the silver light of a moonlit sky in Rivendell, she surrenders her immortality as an Elf out of love for Aragorn, someone from the world of mortal men. Her words, especially against the backdrop of that beautiful scene, are beyond inspiring. They graphically capture the magnificence of the love expressed in the Browning Poem, “How Do I Love Thee”, “let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach when feeling out of sight for the ends of being and Divine Life.”

            So also is the love radiating from the words of Arwen when she gives up her immortality for Aragorn: “I would rather share one lifetime with you than face all the ages of this world alone. I choose a mortal life. It is mine to give to whom I will, like my heart.” Amazing! Yet isn’t that what Jesus says to us through His Incarnation? Precisely!

            One might say, “Well, you have to keep in mind that Jesus knew He was God. He knew that He would rise again and return with us to the Father.” However that is true, it is still the case that Jesus as fully man and fully mortal, embraced the Cross and His own death as any and all men must face it – as events that terminate one’s earthly life. Somehow in a way no less than how you or I have to face death, Jesus embraced His Passion and Death as all mortals do. He truly risked having only one lifetime with humanity rather than enduring all of eternity without us. And with His humanity He offered His Life and ended His Life for a Dream: to save us and bring us back home to the Heart of God.

            Like it must be for all Christians, it was for Jesus as well. As He faced suffering and death, He like us had to believe and hope that the Spirit of the Father would raise Him back to Life. He like us had to embrace death believing that by the Power of God with Him and in Him, he would rise again and return to the Father. He had to believe as well that Risen and Glorified he could by the Power of the Spirit draw us also to Himself - bring us also with Him into that world beyond our world, and thus achieve His Dream of having us with Him forever.

            Such was and is the awesome love of Christ for us. And no one should water it down by somehow saying that Jesus was God and thus didn’t really go through His passion and Death as we do. The believer must not say that or believe that! It undermines the magnitude of Jesus incredible Love. It minimizes the  magnificence of the world seeing in the flesh a Love like only God can love.

            Does the “agony in the Garden” of Gethsemane not teach us anything? “And His sweat became as drops of blood falling to the ground…” Jesus, the “Word made flesh”, fully embraced mortality by becoming one of us. He faced the crucifixion and death to come exactly as all mortals do. Credit to Jesus then the same courage of love that we credit to the saints empowered by the Spirit and operating under the impulse of Grace. Jesus in His humanity was strengthened by the Father in the same way as we are strengthened by Him. “As the living Father has sent me, and as I live because of Him, so he who eats me shall live because of me.” (Jn. 6:57)

            Yes, Jesus has the Power to lay down His life, and the Power to take it up again, but this Power He received from His Father. (Jn. 10:17-18) And in a way that is exactly as all mortals must experience, Jesus had to believe that Power at work in Him would raise Him on the third day.

            How if Jesus was fully man could it not be for Him as it needs to be for us? Consider how it is for us and all humanity. In a way that is nothing less than real and transforming that same Spirit and Power is at work in us that was at work in Jesus. Under the impulse of that Spirit, the person of Faith is exalted to the heights of courage for truth, justice, and love. A Spirit and Love like only God can love takes hold of the human heart open to God. And like St. Paul we have to believe that same Spirit of the Father now at work in us can raise us from the dead even as it did Christ. “If the Spirit of Him Who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He Who raised Jesus from the dead will give Life to your mortal bodies also through His Spirit which dwells in you.” (Rom. 8:11)  

            Yet is it so difficult to believe that Jesus in His humanity had to undergo the same experience of Faith as Paul, Mary, the saints, and us? Let Jesus be fully human! Jesus in the fullness of His humanity also had to believe! He had to believe that the Life, Spirit and Power that He had drawn forth from the Father would raise Him as well.

            Failing to see this we detract so much from the courage of Christ’s Love, from a Love so much more than we can ask or imagine possible, from a Love like only God can love. Let the full stature and measure of His heroic Love touch us and reduce us to tears of Joy even as the heroic love of any man of courage.

            I am reminded of a story of such heroic love that occurred only a few years ago. During the full fury of Hurricane Sandy a policeman rescued a person from the surf on the coast of New Jersey. The person was being carried out to sea by the waves of a rip tide driven to rage by hundred mile an hour winds. The police officer went into the surf to save the person and he did.

            I’ll never forget the film of the news interview with the officer after the rescue. As he spoke he was literally trembling, as if shaken by a fear – an “agony” if you will – that shot right through him. He spoke of how he really thought he was going to die as he went into the raging surf. In fact, he was incredulous that he was still alive. As a Christian the policeman could believe in his resurrection to life upon death, but his only certitude of that reality was the certitude of Faith.

            Yet for Jesus also in the fullness of his humanity there was only the certitude of Faith. On Calvary Jesus went into the raging surf to save us, and in doing so fully embraced the reality of death, the end and termination of his earthly life. He embraced his “choice” at the moment of the Incarnation: “I would rather share one lifetime with my children, than face all the ages of eternity without them.” It was the Power of the Father that gave Jesus the fulfillment of His Dream: to raise Him and us from the dead, and to have us with Him in His Father’s house forever.                    

AN EASTER PRAYER FOR YOU

That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in Love, may have power to comprehend with all the Saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth of that Love, power to know the Love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you might be filled with all the fullness of God…

That you may know that Love which no eye has seen, nor ear heard, that it has never even entered into the heart of a human being to conceive as possible… This God will reveal to you through His Spirit…

- Thoughts based on St. Paul, Eph. 3:17-19, and 1Cor. 2: