If You Know What A Ciborium Is - Read On!

I went on a pilgrimage yesterday. You see, Fr Aidan was taken ill on his way to say Mass in a nearby village, so Sylvana and I, both Ministers of Communion, took Jesus to our sister- congregation.  I drove, Sylvana cradled the ciborium and we enjoyed a time of solemn joy in the presence of God.

These are rare moments - those of allowing the privilege of faith bring me close to 'Other'. They are also indescribable, so I'll not try.  Not today anyway.

Our duty discharged, and with an empty ciborium, Sylvana and I used the journey back to talk.

I have to be careful. Sylvana is a 'cradle Catholic' and would be shocked at some of what I think and say and do. I strive to be authentic, without stirring the pot. Cowardice? Consideration? About 60/40. Maybe 70/30.

Sylvana is a truly good woman, which I most certainly am not,. She is French, born in Marseilles, raised in Egypt, and has a heart that embraces the world. She has a fundamentalist attitude to the scriptures that, if unchallenged by her heart, can be troublesome. I always come away from conversations with Sylvana worrying that I may, in order to keep the peace, have compromised my principles. I do right to worry.

So as an act if penance, I copy below Fr Richard Rohr's meditation for today, which often seems to be saying just what I want to say. So- for the Sylvanas everywhere:

Seven Underlying Themes: Richard Rohr's Teachings

“Fundamentalism”Misses the Fundamental

My dear friend, Dr. Gerald May, made a distinction years ago that I have found myself using frequently. He says spirituality is not to encourage willfulness, but in fact willingness. Spirituality creates willing people who let go of their need to be first, to be right, to be saved, to be superior, and to define themselves as better than other people. That game is over and gone; and if you haven’t come to the willing level—“not my will but Thy will be done” as Jesus says (Matthew 26:39)—then I think the Bible will almost always be misused.
I would like to say that the goal in general is to be serious about the Scriptures. We have often substituted being literal with being serious, and they are not the same! (Read that a second time, please). The point I would like to make is that literalism is not to take the text seriously at all! Pure literalism in fact avoids the real impact, the real message.Literalism is the lowest and least level of meaning in a spiritual text. Willful people use Scripture literally when it serves their purposes, and they use it ‘figuratively’ when it gets in the way of their cultural biases; willing people let the Scriptures change them instead of using them to change others.

A Different Kind of Cowardice

Waiting for our street friends to arrive for coffee and pasties, I idly picked up a pamphlet, put out by  a fellow- Missioner, on Intelligent Design. A mess of pottage, a curate's egg, a load of cobblers, describe it as you may, it's a potent mix of poor theology and worse science.

 I am ashamed of my cowardice. I left it unchallenged.

Some of my best friends are fundamentalist Christians, convinced that God created the Universe a few thousand years ago by an interventionalist, simplistic process that got everything here, as it is, in six days, period.

Why, knowing this is nonsense, flying in the face of biblical texts and scientific discovery, do I keep quiet?

What's the point of arguing the point? Those wedded to creationism, rather than intimate with the Creator, will not be persuaded by any argument I put forward, but this is just an excuse.

I start with a disadvantage. These friends had trouble accepting that I, as a Roman Catholic, could possibly call myself a Christian at all. I have problems with this myself, from time to time, when reactionaries in my church do something stupid, but I stand firm. You see, the Roman Church is capable of humility, and of learning from it's mistakes. Some of which are hardly excusable, so I'm not going to try, among them, censoring Galileo.

Galileo was recently rehabilitated. Recently! Truly! Better late than never, GG!

So, bible bashers, why do I believe my position as a a 'believer' in evolution by national selection, is compatible with my Christian faith?

What does the bible actually say? Well, firstly, only that God rested on the seventh day - not that he retired... Secondly, in God's own words:

Genesis 1:24, 26 God said, “Let the land produce all kinds of living creatures. Let there be livestock, and creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals. Let there be all kinds of them.” And that’s exactly what happened. " (NIV translation)

" Let the land produce.... " a succinct description of evolution, if you ask me, and a remarkable insight for a Bronze Age culture.

The Catholic Church has, nowadays, a sensible view of science. Rather than oppose it, the church engages with it. Many great scientists are Catholic - some, like Fr George V Coyne, director of  the Vatican Observatory in Arizona, are priests. I expect, if you're celibate, you have the time and the energy to get doctorates in theology AND astrophysics...

I don't agree with all church positions, especially on human reproduction, but  I think Fr George has this right:

“God in his infinite freedom continuously creates a world which reflects that freedom at all levels of the evolutionary process to greater and greater complexity. God lets the world be what it will be in its continuous evolution. He does not intervene, but rather allows, participates, loves.”

Why don't I tell my friends hooked on Intelligent Design that I think they're stupid? Because they're my friends, I guess.

Soul Food

Sometimes I give myself over to thoughts that have little to do with being a diplodocus - which, in truth, was just a passing fancy - and I think about The Meaning Of Life. Now if I'd found The Key, or even A Clue, I'd be raking it in, having written A Book and I'd be fronting a tv programme asking you for lots of money.

Keyless  and clueless then, with barely the audacity to expect you to read any more of this, I offer Fr Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation, and my take on it:

Conservatives look for absolute truth; liberals look for something “real” and authentic. Spouses look for a marriage that will last “’til death do us part.”  Believers look for a God who never fails them; scientists look for a universal theory. They are all on the same quest. We are all looking for an immortal diamond: something utterly reliable, something loyal and true, something we can always depend on, something unforgettable and shining.

There is an invitation and an offer for all of these groups from John’s very short Second Letter, when he writes: “There is a truth that lives within us that will be with us forever” (2 John 2). But most of us know very little about this, so we end up as St. Augustine admits in hisConfessions: “Late have I loved you, Beauty so very ancient and so ever new. Late have I loved you! You were within, but I was without.”

(Www.cacradicalgrace.org)

Jacob wrestled with God and got a limp and a new name for his trouble (Israel: ' Struggles with God')

I think the writer of Exodus was on to something, and Fr Richard is holding a torch to it -  this 'journey out of certainty 'doesn't feel like a walk in the park, it feels like mud wrestling.

You're in there to get hurt (which you will) and when you think you have grasped something, it's as likely to slip out of your grasp as not.

I think for fifty years and more, I avoided the fight. Who wouldn't? Certainty is safer. Makes no demands... And it seems to me, as it did to St Augustin, St Catherine of Siena, and others who got it, that the fight isn't with anyone else, or found anywhere else, it's with myself. Within not without! That's it.

So take the 'mystery of suffering' . As I tried not to in conversation with a friend last week. Why does God allow suffering? Who knows? We'll  never know. The quest in the question is, 'Why do I allow suffering? Why do you?

Struggle with THAT, and you'll know you walk with a limp too.