Asleep at the wheel

Ah, lives of men! When prosperous they glitter…
Like a fair picture; when misfortune comes –
A wet sponge at one blow has blurred the painting.
Aeschylus

If you’ve ever had to drive when you were tired, exhausted, medicated…
while fighting to keep your eyes open, with both hands on the wheel,
then maybe you can begin to visualize a mental image of the current
state of our Western Civilization.

Drowsy and nodding off at the wheel while on a precarious and treacherous drive.

We’ve lowered the windows so the wind can rouse us,
We’ve turned the radio on and up in order to alert our senses,
We’ve downed energy drinks and copious amounts of caffeine all in hopes of pressing on to our
goal and destination….yet it is to no avail

For our fatigue will overtake us before we can arrive safely…

Such is our journey of naiveté.

Upon reading the following two stories offered and shared by fellow bloggers,
each who happen to be ardent defenders of the faith, I was suddenly struck by that
mental image of Western Civilization being sadly asleep at the wheel.

We are being lead astray by those who work to squeeze The Divine from our existence.
In the name of all things worldly…
perfection,
unity,
tolerance,
and yes,
naiveté
or perhaps it should be more like ignorance…

In the pursuit of naming ourselves demigods, we are on a one way drive to our own demise.

A World Without God -6 statements in Sally Phillips’ BBC doc that show us where we’re heading

http://www.maozisrael.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=11531#1

For I know my transgressions,
And my sin is ever before me.
Psalm 51:3

Twisted

And finally I twist my heart round again, so that the bad is on the outside and the good is on the inside, and keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would so like to be, and could be, if there weren’t any other people living in the world.
Anne Frank

(one of cookie’s pumpkins / Julie Cook / 2013)

When I was still in the classroom and it was time for me to introduce our ceramic, better known as clay, unit, I’d first demonstrate how best to “wedge” the clay. Simply put, that’s the process of working out the tiny air pockets that get caught in a ball of clay. If the air bubbles are allowed to stay in the clay, as it’s being formed, there is a very good chance that the final piece being fired in the kiln would either severely crack, or worse, explode. When trapped air is heated it expands, and in the case of the clay, the expansion is obviously outward… causing catastrophic results for a pot being fired.

Wedging the clay is very similar to the kneading of bread. While I was in college, my ceramics instructor was a visiting professor from the University of Tennessee. This particular professor had been trained in the traditionally rich Asian ceramic school of study and he in turn taught us similar based techniques. One of those techniques was a particular way to wedge the clay— the Japanese Spiral Technique.

This particular technique allowed one to work the clay from the inside out… manipulating the clay and hands, twisting and rolling, working the clay into a spiraled ball. Pretty much guaranteeing that the air pockets were worked out of the clay. One piece of clay full of the air pockets, being fired in a loaded kiln, put everyone’s piece in jeopardy. If one piece “blew up” —it could possibly damage any piece sitting in close proximity—resulting in very unhappy students. Wedging was stressed to the utmost.

So when I read today’s quote by Anne Frank, about twisting her heart round, so that the bad is on the outside and the good on the inside, I couldn’t help but think of wedging and of the Japanese Spiral Technique. How nice it would be if it were so easy to twist our bad out from deep down, twisting it outward pulling the good inward toward our soul. Simply sloughing off the bad and being full of the good.

She speaks of trying to become the person who she would like to be, the person she could be–whether anyone else existed or not. Anne was between 13 to 15 years old when she wrote those words. She was suppose to have had a lifetime ahead of the her to work on becoming that very special person she sought to be.

I am almost 54 years old—I have been privileged to have that lifetime that was stolen from Anne. I am still not that person that I wish to be. There has always been a part of me that yearned to be like one of the Desert Fathers, or in my case, Mothers—being one who sought solitude away from society allowing myself to focus solely on my relationship to and with God. No worldly distraction.

How I so often push my time with God to the wayside as something else just seems so much more pressing….trivial things. I sadly allow the here and now to overshadow the Divine….
“I’ll get to it in a minute. I’ll read the day’s Divine Office in a minute, after I put the wash in the dryer, after I feed the cats, after I make the bed, after I take my shower, after I post the day’s blog, after I answer the phone, when I get back from the store, when I get back from Dad’s, after I start supper, after I do the dishes…once I put my head to my pillow…..tomorrow, I will do it tomorrow….”

Seven times a day I praise you for your righteous laws (Psalm 119:164 NIV) But I don’t do that. Why don’t I do that? We are told we should do that. Seven times a day…

To learn the perfection of prayer and worship. To go deep within to that inner sanctum where there is that piece of the Divine–so deep in my very core that I am not even aware that it is there. It is in this deep core sanctuary where the Holy Spirit resides waiting for me to go within to commune with the Divine.

And yet there is the desire to serve….service to others. To demonstrate the Divine by offering kindness, compassion, help, comfort, nourishment, shelter…a ministry of aid and compassion, of doing…

Have I done enough? No. I don’t think so. I know not. There is still so much to do. Just turn on the news—there is so much that needs to be done for this humanity of ours.

Prayers for the school’s this week who witnessed the senseless loss of life in the throws of, once again, needless violence.
Prayers for Sparks Middle School in Nevada and prayers for Danvers High School in Massachusetts.
Prayers for the teachers, the students and the families who now ask those painful questions of why.
Prayers for our Nation as our allies today now question our “friendship” and find that our trust has been broken.
Prayers for the skewed beliefs and of our extreme obsession with materialism, or our obsession over Hollywood and sensationalism media, for those who we look to as role models who cannot even lead themselves, for and what both Blessed Mother Teresa and John Paul II called our culture of Death……

No, I am not done—much twisting, wedging and woking remains of the moving out the bad to move in the good. Just like the potter, I need to work the clay of my heart. Wedging a little more until it is right.

The lonely persimmon: a tale of the Creator and the created

“We must become so alone, so utterly alone, that we withdraw into our innermost self. It is a way of bitter suffering. But then our solitude is overcome, we are no longer alone, for we find that our innermost self is the spirit, that it is God, the indivisible. And suddenly we find ourselves in the midst of the world, yet undisturbed by its multiplicity, for our innermost soul we know ourselves to be one with all being.”
― Hermann Hesse

I was out walking yesterday when I spied a lone persimmon hanging from a rather sad looking example of a persimmon tree. I can’t say that I’ve ever eaten a persimmon but I know they usually sell them this time of year in the grocery store. This poor tree had nary a leaf and only one fruit to show for its labors.

There once was a large persimmon tree at the corner of our street when I was growing up. I hated that this was the location for our school bus stop because when the overripe persimmons fell, that meant we stepped on them. Do you know what squashed persimmons look like stuck all on the bottom of ones’ school shoes…only to be tracked in to school and somehow wend up smeared on the bottom of the cubby of my desk…those big ol seeds in that nasty sticky goo.

No wonder I’ve never tasted one before with such memories. And let’s just say that when you’re out walking in the woods, you can always tell, how shall I put this delicately, what the possums have been eating… and trust me, it’s always persimmons.
That pretty much sums up my recollection of persimmons.

Yet seeing this single lone little fruit on a shabby little tree in the middle of a rather barren spot in the middle of no where, did stir something unsettling deep down in my little ol soul. Just something about seeing the single fruit on more of a stick than a tree, there for no one in particular to see… let alone eat—I had a twinge of sadness.

I know I know, some fortunate little bird or bug will be happy at some point, or more likely it will be a lucky possum who happens by the very day, or more likely the very night, when the persimmon decides to fall to the ground—which is Nature’s wonderful way of taking care of Nature…..

Yet there was just something truly a bit sad about the single persimmon or maybe there was something that reminded me of what it was to simply be all a lone–just something that left me feeling uncomfortable…all this from this single little piece of fruit hanging as a solitary reminder of what it is to be lonely—all of which left me a trifle bit unsettled.

Loneliness can be a very scary thing. It is something we all experience at some time or another. It can happen when we are actually surrounded by people–family and friends or when we seemingly feel abandoned by those we love; it is not simply relegated and waiting for us at 2 in the morning when we find ourselves lost and stranded—either literally or metaphorically.

It is in the midst of our loneliness that we can finally be open to and get a small glimpse of the light of the Divine which resides deep in our inner core. No surrounding noise, no distraction, no constant din of activity to keep our attentions diverted. It is at this empty time when we may finally move inward in order to see what is so much greater than ourselves.

And yet so many of us seem so utterly afraid of being alone. We do everything and anything in our power in order to avoid it. We exert tremendous energy fighting being alone. Our society has placed such negative connotations to what it is to be alone—it has become almost a social stigma. It is uncomfortable and most often dreaded. We run as fast as we can away from loneliness and anything associated with what is means to be alone…turning on and up the television, the radio, calling as many people as we know, refusing to be with only ourselves. And yet that is where the Creator waits for the created…in the void of silence.

It is the Trappist monk, Thomas Merton who reminds us of what awaits for us in the silence of loneliness…..“Yet it is in this loneliness that the deepest activities begin. It is here that you discover act without motion, labor that is profound repose, vision in obscurity, and, beyond all desire, a fulfillment whose limits extend to infinity.

Dare to be alone, to be silent…be not afraid of silence or of the singleness of existence. It is in this loneliness and singleness that you, the created, can meet what it is we all so very much long for, a glimpse of the Divine, the Creator.