Thou Shalt Meditate Therein

Joshua 1:8-9

This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.

Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the LORD thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.

 

To some, the Bible is interesting as an example of world literature or morally educational like a mythological fairytale – but it is not sacred.  Even as professed Christians, we can merely read the Bible, our eyes skimming over the surface print words, paying Scripture a kind of civil service with no engaging respect, no investment of self – no reverence for the sacred.  Any treatment of the Bible in these ways – as literature, mythology, or textbook – is an ideal way to get lost.  We will become blind, ridiculous, or wearily dry, unless we truly engage in the Bible by lovingly holding the Bible in its entirety as sacred.  It is not enough to memorize, recite, or enforce the laws therein, we must hold sacred Scripture as sacred, living and breathing the life of God through the forms of human beings, the earthen vessels of human words becoming sacred themselves by being touched by the living water, fire, of the Divine.

 

I’m afraid that I don’t hold the Bible as truly sacred.  I am not eager to delve within its pages, to explore every corner and curve.  I will let the divinely inspired words into my ears or eyes and into my mind, but, too often, I agitate them around in my mind, trying to wring something out of them with my own spin – and I don’t let them into my heart.  It isn’t that I close my heart to them, but rather that my mind keeps them so busy that they don’t have a chance to drip down and touch, with liquid fire, the core of my soul.  I need to not only open my ears and my eyes, but also to open the door of my mind wide so that I may stand aside and let the Word of God fully enter, with Divinity’s own timing, while I receive, in stillness and silence, deeply, deeply into my heart of hearts.  To meditate in wonder rather than in wording, to spread out in the sacred abode in which God and I dwell alone and bask in His voicing… then I am truly nourished by the Word of God, watered and fed and lit up from within, and I grow healthy and strong in the Word, blossoming forth and stepping into biblical reality, naked and unafraid.

 

Thanks be to God.

Christina Chase

Root in Ourselves

Mark 4:16-17

And these are they likewise which are sown on stony ground; who, when they have heard the word, immediately receive it with gladness;

And have no root in themselves, and so endure but for a time: afterward, when affliction or persecution ariseth for the word's sake, immediately they are offended.

 

On the surface of things,

bright lights and sounds flash

and skip about from here to there;

We dance in the nightclub,

compelled by the beat,

poses and pulses in the moment.

On waking,

our bones are heavy, our mindss complain,

and the sun knifes right through us;

We’re befuddled,

our guts heave,

we can’t find our shoes.

 

We walk through the day and life happens around us, life happens to us,

and we let it as we skip about on the surface of things,

never stopping,

never looking up and past our skins,

waiting for the bright flashes, the driving sounds, the entertainment

upon which we bounce around, giddy and greedy, until we are sick,

and only then do we pause and use the stillness and silence as a jumpstart back

into the non-boring world.

Because we won’t be bored…

We won’t let life dig deeply into us where truth might take root.

We won’t be submerged into the depth of stillness and silence

to the place where the core of our being is welled in Mystery.

 

Make me feel good, we say.  Entertain me.  Everything else push away like a blur.

We don’t ponder, don’t choose, don’t dig deep and plant ourselves in the depth of reality,

where we will know rain and cold and heat and pain, growing

roots that will endlessly satisfy our deep, inner longing

for Truth though we feel It will break us – we won’t let Truth break through

and expose our feelings for fools,

the nightclub a game to deaden the soul.

 

Surviving on the surface, on the high points of feeling,

we barren ourselves of life, of full reality.

We react.

But, we don’t live.

Christina Chase

Due Benevolence

1 Corinthians 7:2-3

Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.

Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence: and likewise also the wife unto the husband.

 

What kind of and how much benevolence is due to your husband?  To your wife?  Or, for that matter, to anyone with whom you have contact today?  Benevolent is God, ever loving and ever giving, and it is in God’s image that we are created.  We love because God first loved us and we are called by Christ Jesus, God Incarnate, to love one another as He loves us: with due benevolence.  All benevolence is due to God and, as every human being is created in the image of God, we are to render benevolence unto everyone in our lives.

Every relationship into which we enter is a sacred relationship, because it is through our relationships that we commune with God.  “Whatever you do for the least of my brethren,” says the Lord, “you do for me.”  This truth can be seen clearly in the relationship of a husband and wife – and it can be distorted most easily in this relationship as well.

For a man is willing to lay down his bodily life for the woman he truly loves (as in the provider and protector of her and her offspring) and a woman is willing to give the entirety of her body to the man she truly loves (as in the developer and nurturer of him and his offspring).  So we are all called to be for one another.  Christ assumed human nature and then laid down his life for us, his blood was shed and his body given up for us, so that we may be redeemed.  Through his love, we are able to be transformed, transcending mere earthly existence, and lifted up into divine life, life that never ends.  Through marriage, too, the man and the woman are able to be transformed, transcending complementary bodily forms, and lifted up into the life of the soul in communion with divine love.  Supporting one another as equals, respectful and responsible in their commitment to one another, their lives are benevolent gifts to the other, willing to sacrifice themselves for the other’s good in everyday life – this is how all the children of God are meant to live with one another, for this is how God so loves us through Christ Jesus.

Yet… marriage can also show us how not to live.  A marriage that is not true marriage, that is not a self-sacrificing gift of love and generosity, can show the selfishness and even cruelty of human beings.  When a man unites with a woman, not for the sake of unity and divine love, but for the sake of his own pleasure, he renders the woman into an object to be used and even abused by him.  “Domestic violence”, as a term, is not powerful enough to truly describe the depravity, the sin, in this relationship.  The desecration of a most sacred bond, belittling and disfiguring an image of God in the person of someone for whom love has been professed, is beyond violent.  It’s an evil that spreads beyond the domicile, infecting the family and the world with selfish cruelty.  And this profanity is not only seen in physical abuse, but also in any abuse that treats a woman or a man as a useful object for one’s own whims.  If no legal crime is ever committed in a marriage, crimes against God’s love can still be perpetrated, when a wife or husband fails to truly love the other and to sacrifice for the other’s good.  Likewise, when any of us looks upon another human being only in terms of usefulness, we profane God’s image.  Whenever we fail to give of ourselves in loving service for another’s good, we fail to live in God’s love.  Whenever we treat our own bodies as mere instruments of pleasure, for ourselves and even for others, we desecrate our true identities and fall into the self-centered life of ignorant belittlement and drunken despair.

Benevolence is what is needed.  A benevolent God allows us to choose freely in order that we may love truly and receive fully the benevolent gifts of love from one another and from Eternal God, now and forever.
                                                                                                Christina Chase

The Desire of Our Soul

Isaiah 26:8-9

Yea, in the way of thy judgments, O LORD, have we waited for thee; the desire of our soul is to thy name, and to the remembrance of thee.

With my soul have I desired thee in the night; yea, with my spirit within me will I seek thee early: for when thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.

We are sojourners in the world.  The earth is our home, and yet, it lacks permanence; there is something in the way of fulfillment that is lacking.  We wander and we wonder, insatiated, knowing that there is something more, sensing that there is something missing from the world, something for which our spirits yearn, for which our hearts were made.  It’s a nice life, most of the time, well-stocked with pretty and pleasant things, able to get our hearts racing.  But, though the engines rev and roar, the earthly destinations, gained, are unfulfilling.  Our hearts do not quiet in peaceful, replete rest.  We know that this is not all, this racing and gaining that which is lost inevitably.  In the dust and mold of relentless revolving, all things of the world are lost.  Only that for which our spirits truly thirst, only that for which our hearts deeply hunger, can ever satisfy our human longing.  And, so, we are sojourners in this world of dust and mold and cares for what is able to be grabbed.  All hands must weaken, all fingers must loose, all beautiful faces, textures, smiles, tears, must dissolve into the dust from which they were formed.  But, the soul… the soul alive in every human person, the soul, vibrant and vital, must live, must ever exist and perpetually love… and so love what is perpetual, what is permanent and ever alive, that which is living and breathing through the lovely eyes, the beloved smiles, the breath and tears of every life, that for which our spirits yearn, for which our hearts are made, that something more that is no thing of this world, that something who is a someone, the Infinite, Eternal One, the Holy, Immortal One, Life giving life to us, living through us, our ultimate source and our ultimate destination – our home.

It is a lovely world and it is good to be alive in it when we know that through it lives the fullness of life – the fullness of truth, the fullness of love, the fullness of joy – glimpsed by us when we seek the best and richest fruits imported here by Love.

Chosen to Be Last

Matthew 20:16

So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen.

 

In nearly 2000 years of history, how many popes has the Catholic Church had?  On Wednesday, March 13, in the year of our Lord 2013, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires, was chosen by his fellow Cardinals to be the 267^th Pope.  Billions of people have been called to be Christians, tens of thousands of men have been called to the priesthood, hundreds have been called to be Cardinals, but very few indeed have been chosen to be the Bishop of Rome, the visible head of the Catholic Church.

The election by the Conclave of Cardinals is more personal than political, as all of the Cardinals hold the same beliefs on major issues of Church teaching, both theological and moral.  They were looking more for the right person for the sacred role than for the right policy.  I’m sure all would agree that a younger Pope would have been preferred, but even something like age can’t hold deciding weight in the election of St. Peter’s successor.  It seems fairly certain that the Cardinals were looking for a man who would be a global figure and one that would not fall into the same-old same-old daily governance of the Vatican.  A man of sound theology, humble and sincere, a man of spiritual strength and integrity, of personal piety and devotion to Christ with a commitment to the least of Christ’s brothers and sisters, a man who can see clearly through to the heart of the matter and hold onto what is most important – that seems to be what the conclave found in electing Cardinal Bergoglio to the papacy.  Let us hope so.  Our first proof of this being reality was in the new Pope’s choosing of his papal name: Francis, as in St. Francis of Assisi, a man in love with Christ, committed to a life of personal poverty in loving service to the poor.

For it is only when we put ourselves last that we are able to put first things first in life and live in the Divine Order.  When “looking out for number one” is understood to be looking out for Christ – and by Christ to understand every human being, all created in the divine image and sanctified by Christ – then, and only then, can a person have his priorities straight.  We see this most strikingly when that person has the sacred responsibility of leadership, especially leadership of the Church.  Be he a local pastor or the Supreme Pontiff, he must be able to get on his knees in true humility and wash the feet of those who would serve him.  He must be able to see God Godself in the eyes of the homeless person riddled with disease, in the heart of a feebleminded adult or deformed child, and in the suffering of an addict or prisoner of any kind.  Unless we can recognize God in the least of those among us, we can never hope to see the face of the Divine in eternity.  Unless we can truly love the outwardly unlovable, we can never experience the inner reality of divine love itself.  Unless we are willing to kiss the leper’s sores, we will always live in fear and loneliness.  This is the Christian epiphany, this is the key that opens the portal of God.  And no man should be called the Vicar of Christ unless he has stooped low and emptied himself of himself in order to fit through the door.

God, please, bless Pope Francis.  And bless us all.

 

Happy

Psalms 144:15

Happy is that people, that is in such a case: yea, happy is that people, whose God is the LORD.

 

Happiness.  What is it?  What does it feel like?  How do you get it?  How do you keep it?  How do you multiply it?  How do you give it to others?  Well…

Is happiness an it, like some commodity in which we want to trade?  If we say that happiness is a feeling… is it merely this?  A biological response of brain chemicals or hormones to some stimuli and nothing more?  I don’t know.  Surely, we do experience happy feelings.  But, when we really think about life and what true happiness is, what we are thinking about is something deeper, more satisfying and longer lasting.  Something beyond pleasant feelings, beyond pleasure itself.

So, what then?  In Scripture we hear, “… happy is that people, whose God is the LORD.”  This immediately strikes my ears as a little funny, as though it is saying that those who are happy are those whose God is God.  What other God would we have?  To the modern Judeo-Christian, or Muslim, the idea of there being gods from which to choose is not only foreign, it’s ridiculous.  And, yet, of course, religiously speaking, other people of the world do choose some other god to worship, believing in the existence of more than one.  Though we may call these gods false gods, they can direct followers, even just as mere symbols, toward the One True God and even draw them closer to Him.  But… what about our own false gods?

What do you worship?  What do you adore above everything and everyone else?  Money?  Fame?  Possessions?  Your romantic partner?  Your children?  Your body?  Fun?  Pleasure?  Your idea of what happiness is?  Sometimes, I think, we put happiness itself up on a pedestal, we set it up as the highest goal and supreme purpose of life.  And all the other things, and even people, that I mentioned, are merely ways of achieving this goal.  We will leave our jobs, we’ll break up our relationships, we will even risk our lives, all for our idea of happiness, without ever really knowing what happiness itself actually is.

What if we put first things first?  You may ask, what is first in the order of life?  Isn’t it happiness?  No.  First in the order of life is the origin of life, the Source of Life.  Life itself would not exist without this Uncaused Cause, this Uncreated Creator, this Unmoved Mover, who is the Author of life.  Who this is is “the ultimate reality that everyone calls God.”  (St. Thomas Aquinas.)  Unless we put the Source of Life first in our lives – unless I put God first in my life, my life will always be out of order.  And I can’t be truly happy if I’m out of order, because, surely, the goodness that our idea of happiness represents can’t truly flow in me and through me if I’m out of order.  That’s why you can’t get candy from a vending machine that’s out of whack.

Thinking about this, I do wonder… what does it mean to put God first in my life?  Practically speaking, I’m not entirely sure.  But, it must mean that my God is God.  In keeping the First Commandment, I must do as God directs: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”  (Exodus 20:3)  And that doesn’t mean that because I’m a Christian, or a Jew, or a Muslim, that I don’t have to worry about ever breaking this Commandment.  If my main ambition is not to do God’s will in this life and to be united with God forever in the life after death, then I am falling miserably short of the First Commandment.  Yep, I’m sinning.  And this is not just bad because I broke a rule.  It’s bad because it’s falling short of my own true happiness.  The reason that it’s bad, the reason that it’s a rule at all, is because my true happiness, the full realization of my true identity, the point of my whole life, lies in being united with the Source of Life.  If I’m living my life, spending time and energy in the worshiping and adoring of things that are not God, then I’m missing the whole point of my existence and going through life ignorant, crippled, blind, deaf and dumb.  I cannot be fully myself and live the fullness of my life without knowing that God is above everything and everyone and that the highest goal and ultimate purpose of my life is to truly love Him and receive His love.

God is to be adored even above my own sense of happiness.  By sense of happiness, I mean that ideal I hold in my mind of pleasure and pleasant feelings.  God wants us to be happy and putting Him first doesn’t mean that we won’t ever have pleasure or pleasant feelings in our lives.  It doesn’t mean that we won’t have people that love us or that we can’t have good health or good jobs.  But, putting God first does mean that when we aren’t experiencing pleasure or pleasant feelings – when we are even experiencing pain, sorrow and grief – when we are betrayed, abandoned or ridiculed by the people we love, when we are diseased or disabled, when we are unemployed or having to suffer through a miserable job, we lose nothing in the way of our goals and our purpose.  Our happiness lies in identifying with God as our Creator and uniting our will with His.  Nothing on earth, and nothing in Hell, can destroy this happiness if we don’t let it.  If we TRULY love God, then we know that He Truly loves us through all of the earthly experiences that come our way, through all the people that we encounter in our lives.  But, we have to look and we have to listen.  We have to remember that the First Commandment in the list of the 10 Commandments is the same as what Jesus said is the first Commandment: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind” – and the second is in keeping with the first – “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  (Luke 10:27)

To live in divine love, then, is the goal and purpose of life – is happiness itself.  Not merely loving the pleasant feeling, or love for the sake of the pleasure it can bring, but eternal love that is willing to sacrifice and suffer, knowing that all things eternal are happy things: true love, the human soul, divine grace, God.

Christina Chase

Always for You

2 Thessalonians 1:3

We are bound to thank God always for you, brethren, as it is meet, because that your faith groweth exceedingly, and the charity of every one of you all toward each other aboundeth;

 

Someone who is close to me associates with people of great faith and meets with them regularly to share and discuss matters of faith.  When he is with them, he says that he feels that his faith is so very little and he wonders what he’s doing with them.  He just isn’t where they are.  When he has voiced his feeling to the others, they have tried to console him by saying that everyone is at a different place in the journey.  But, I don’t think he feels consoled.  And I think that it isn’t so much because he desires the faith that they have, but because he doesn’t even really feel this desire.  His wife told him that, perhaps, the importance of his meeting with these people lies in what he can do for them.  He can listen and ask questions, which, often, is what other people need the most.  And, as he doesn’t want to tell tales of his own, he can be an even better listener.

 

This understanding is an essential one to me.  It’s the understanding that we don’t always do things that directly benefit ourselves.  Sometimes, we do what we do, we go where we go, we are where we are, for the benefit of others.  In our world, the most asked silent question seems to be, “What’s in it for me?”  People in our society are encouraged to “look out for number one”.  But, at what cost?  If we concentrate too much on ourselves, we are bound to either get caught in our faults and failings and pulled down into into the trap of self-doubt and self-loathing or get ensnared by our accomplishments and sucked into the insatiateness of pride and greed.  However, if we think of ourselves in service for others, our failings will lessen and our truly valuable accomplishments increase as we are safeguarded from the pitfalls of self-pity and arrogance – which may be one and the same.

 

Of course, this improvement isn’t one that can be measured, it may not even be recognized by others or even ourselves, but it is, nonetheless, real.  By employing our talents, gifts and strengths for the benefit of others, we are actually engaging in a healthy evaluation of our own self-worth.  By sympathizing with those who are faltering, we must recognize our own weaknesses and, in the act of helping the other through, learn forgiveness for them and for ourselves.  And, sometimes, we will find ourselves in the service of those who are held to be our superiors: bosses, parents, clients, or friends who are more advanced in a particular area then we are.  In these situations, in these relationships, we can find that the little things that we do, the things that even seem menial, are helpful and beneficial, for no amount of service, even service rendered in weakness, is too small. 

 

This is not a utilitarian understanding, an idea that a person’s worth lies solely in what that person can do for society.  Rather, it is a wholesome understanding, the knowledge that a person’s worth lies in the person’s entirety.  For, the severely disabled and utterly dependent daughter of a mother and father in their late 60s may only seem like a burden and a drain upon them.  But, if, say, the father felt like he would always be a spiritual turkey among eagles sometimes experiences a deep sense of love, tender caring and generosity of spirit when he is helping his daughter then, perhaps, she, as helpless and useless as she may seem, has brought him closer to divine charity and divine trust – closer to God – than any understanding of theology or attractive prayer of thanksgiving directly addressing God could do.  And the crippled young woman may wonder (and she has) “What’s in it for me?”  But, she is so filled with gratitude, bound to thank God for abounding love, that, perhaps, her faith will grow exceedingly.

Christina Chase

With Grace

Colossians 3:16 KJV

 

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.

 [This verse was taken from YouVersion.com, which I received, out of the blue, through an email that a friend sent to me.  The unexpectedness of the email inspired me to use the verse as my random Scripture.]

When we experience something good, something that brings us great joy, we want to share it with the people that we love.  Sometimes, it is simply the good feeling itself that we want to share.  Unfortunately, our instinct of generosity isn’t always met with appreciative reception.  Our loved one may have experienced something not so good and, so, may be experiencing sadness or anger.  Our joyful sharing is an annoying irritant to them, for what they want from us is not an account of the great thing that happened to us, but, rather, a listening ear that will receive their tales of bitter distress or a comforting shoulder to support their sobbings.  We, in the midst of our good feeling, will either continue to be generous and give them what they need, with our joy quietly in our hearts giving us strength, or we will resent the fact that they don’t want to share our joy and, irritated and annoyed by their bad humor, will turn away from them before our good feeling disappears or stay and be angered at them for taking away our joy.  How often have I, indeed, let the latter happen?  They say that misery loves company and sometimes it certainly does seem that people in foul moods will not rest until others around them, especially those who seem to be happy, feel miserable, too.

 

There are times, however, when I am able to continue my generous instinct and allow my joy, quietly kept in my heart, to guide me in kindness toward my suffering loved one.  These times are rare, I admit.  They happen when my joy is of a certain quality… or, perhaps we could say, when my joy is from a particular source.  When I am experiencing good feelings from something that is truly good, that goodness is not so easily broken.  That goodness not only washes over me, but also takes root within me, yielding forth more goodness.  What do I mean?  Well, if I’m happy because I just scored off the charts in an online game and I want to happily tell the news to my mother, only to find that she is preoccupied with her irritation at finding something undone that she had asked another person to do, then I will, seemingly nine times out of ten, become irritated with her irritation and admonish her for being so angry and unforgiving.  The other time out of that ten, I will turn around and go away from her, leaving her in her misery while I delight in my delight in my room by myself.  It is extremely rare for me to stay and listen to her kindly in these moments, because my joy is not safeguarded in my heart and able to give me wisdom.  It is a selfish kind of joy that, perhaps, doesn’t even deserve the name of joy.  A simple pleasure, indeed, but a self-centered one that is dependent upon “good feelings” and not goodness itself.  And, let’s face it, part of my wanting to share my happiness was also to share my success – that is, to brag about my cleverness and have her praise me, too.  Not receiving this ego-stroke from her, I get upset or I walk away.

 

If I’m in a very good place on that day that I achieve my high score, however, then I am more apt to be patient and kind.  If there is a deeper joy already in my heart that has nothing to do with the online game, then I can easily set aside my little moment of vainglory because I will recognize it as vainglory, as just a silly trifle in comparison to the deeper joy dwelling in my heart.  And from the depth of that true joy, I can draw up the sympathy and love that my mother needs and be a good listener.  Yes, I will lose the thrilling rush of excitement at my woo hoo achievement, but I will be no less joyful because of the loss.  Indeed, I may very well experience a deeper and richer sense of goodness, love and, therefore, joy in my heart that is springing up and active in my living relationship with another human being.  My gentleness in that moment might even be recognized by me as the simple and tender flower of divine grace, planted in the very core of my being by a loving God.  Christ teaches us that love is patient and kind, forbearing and forgiving, and ready to selflessly give in sacrifice for the other.  With this knowledge, we are able to live in faith, devoting ourselves to all that is good, true, and beautiful, while keeping the faith and praising God in the face of all that is miserable, false, and ugly, transforming these things in our love, which is of and from God.  For, when we encounter other persons in their anger, frustration or grieving, we are meant to share their burden and, through love – patience, understanding, and the generosity of a truly joyful heart – help them to see what is truly good and to lovingly repair what is truly broken.  Only with this deep sense of goodness, this song of grace in our hearts, can we ever truly be of help to anyone – can we ever truly be joyful, with the joy that has no end.

At the Beautiful Gate

Acts 3:6-10

Then Peter said, Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk.

And he took him by the right hand, and lifted him up: and immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength.

And he leaping up stood, and walked, and entered with them into the temple, walking, and leaping, and praising God.

And all the people saw him walking and praising God:

And they knew that it was he which sat for alms at the Beautiful gate of the temple: and they were filled with wonder and amazement at that which had happened unto him.

 

 Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee:

The light of the sun, golden heat, a haven of blue and green,

warm brown fur in leafy nest beside a clear, sparkling stream.

 

Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee:

My hand to take yours and lift you up, my own body

for your strength, my very blood that you may be free.

 

Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee:

Endless pools welling up to quench your deepest thirsting,

dry, barren life revitalized, with fresh rising song bursting.

 

Silver and gold have I also none; but such as I have give I to Thee:

Praising wonder and awe at your Majesty, willing hands to do your Charity,

strengthened bones and replenished heart leaping with your Glory.

 

Christina Chase