STICKY DOORKNOBS

What religion are you?

   This past weekend I was forced to stay at home during the recovery process and during my time convalescing, my cable and internet provider decided it would disrupt my service and therefore scramble my life. And so for parts of three days, I was without what I had hoped to have to sustain me during my time down.
   No internet. No email. No college football Saturday afternoon. Heck, God has such a great sense of humor that he decided to pull the plug on me during the one game of the Cowboys' abysmal year that they looked outstanding.
   Yep ... I couldn’t watch it.
   By the time Monday got here, I was pleading with the cable company in as civil a manner as I could to ... just ... fix it ... today. I didn’t care what it took, but I knew that if they weren’t there that morning, I was going to begin calling them every 30 minutes until I saw a bucket truck in the alley. Good for them that they put me atop their priority list. They did not want to have to deal with a wounded writer who had been without contact with the outside world for almost three days.
   I thought maybe the isolation experience would lead me into quiet times and conversations that I might not otherwise have but I found instead that simply because I could not have my cable and my internet and my outside world contact I simply wanted it all that much more. Interestingly enough, when it was restored Monday morning, I didn’t even turn on the TV. But I did burn up the wifi lines for a few hours catching up with all that had to be done.
   I did learn some things during my cessation from all things virtual:
-- Ken Burns’ "Baseball: The Tenth Inning” is another riveting example of why he is the king of all documentarians.
-- I actually like George W Bush a lot. His new book “Decision Points” has made for some good reading about his West Texas roots and it has been fun getting to know him better.
-- And I am finding the PBS documentary “God in America” to be both fascinating and maddening at the same time. If the first two episodes are any indication, the show will roast and baste the Catholic Church although it is simply retelling history. I hope that is not the case with the rest of the installments, but I don’t see much escape from it.
   When not deriding the church for its sins of the past (and no doubt ultimately for its sins of the present), it has left me with a fascinating look into colonial America and the religions of the early settlers.
   But even before America was settled, it was occupied by Native Americans who had religious ideas of their own. The Catholic Church was not kind to those Native Americans and in return, the natives were not much better to the Catholics.
   Throughout my recovery process, I am left with one 30-second snippet of dialogue that came within “God in America’s” first five minutes. The words are those of a man named Porter Swentzell, who the show’s producers refer to simply as a Santa Clara Pueblo. Although a young man, his ancestors have no doubt left him with a keen understanding of faith, spirituality and religion. And what he spoke in those first five minutes of the documentary I cannot shake, probably mostly due to my internet and cable being taken from me. I don’t like what Porter said about me. So with his words and hopefully a dash of my own self-discipline I can make some changes as to what I consider vital in my life.
   “Our whole world around us is our religion,” Swentzell said. “Our way of life is our religion. The way we behave toward one another, and towards others, is our religion. The very moment we wake up in the morning until we go to bed and even when we sleep, that's our religion.”
   What is your religion?

 

Holy Week. Holy Thursday. Service.

  The late Randy Pausch, known for his "Last Lecture" series and book both of which he worked tirelessly on after hearing the news of his terminal cancer, quoted a friend, Jon Snoddy. "If you wait long enough, people will surprise and impress you. People will show you their good side. Just keep waiting. It will come out."

  We've likely all had similar experiences as the one I had a couple of months ago.

   I went to visit a friend at a local kitchen for those less fortunate and was surprised to find a man I'd known for years. He had a ladle in his hand and he was dipping up servings for those who came in for lunch that day.

   You think you know a person.

   And then you walk into a soup kitchen.

   I've known this man for 20 years and have socialized with him on a number of occasions. Not once has he ever mentioned his service to the poor. Never. I told a mutual friend what I had seen and he, too, was shocked to learn that this man was involved in such a giving pursuit. Not that he's a bad guy, he's not. Not at all. But ... you think you know a person.

   I spoke briefly to my friend and talked to him about his help. He had no nuggets of inspiration that would in any way enhance, heaven forbid, any blog entry or newspaper article that might be fashioned in his honor one day. He's not a man of many words when it comes to service to others and he didn't give me some answer about having to do this before he dies, or because it is in the giving that you receive or simply because it's the right thing to do. He just kept on working and dipping. He can talk to you about baseball all day, but you won't hear him talk about what he does when nobody in the business world is watching him.

   He might not have had much to say, but the people at the kitchen knew him. Called him by name even. And when he was out of the room briefly, another person walked to the head of the line and asked where he was. So he's known. By those he serves. But he doesn't have to be known in other, "bigger" ways.

   And that's really what it should be all about, isn't it? That's the way it's supposed to be done. Without fanfare. No shouting from the rooftops or banging of the chest. God knows, and that's really all you need. 

   Today is Holy Thursday. It is the day when many Christians recall the humble servant leadership of Jesus Christ and how he gathered his disciples just hours before his crucifixion and washed their feet. For my spiritual buck, it is among the Top 10 most moving moments in Christianity; one of the most memorable stories in the Bible. Jesus, the King of the Jews, the Son of God, proves he is not your everyday run of the mill king by getting on his knees and washing other people's feet.  It is a tradition still carried out in many churches today -- there will be many foot washing services throughout Midland tonight -- and it is a wondrous thing to behold. No expectations. No bragging. Just simply serving others in the name of holiness and selflessness.

   Doing good without expecting anything in return. The sincerest form of service to others.

   What Would Jesus Do?

   Just that.

Holy Week

To be filled, you must first be empty.

Faith like a child comes alive on Christmas

The late good Rev. Tom Kelley, who died five years ago this February, always likened the sound of crying children in church to the sound of God. Fr. Tom had no cry room at his church. They were welcome, one and all. With his thinking in mind, God was everywhere at the Children's Christmas Mass at our church Thursday night. It is maybe the one Mass of the year when crying kids can make church goers smile and actually enhance the message of the faith and the goodness and the innocence of children and the message of the season. Easy for me to say, you may be thinking, since none of the cranky little ones were anywhere near where I was sitting on Christmas Eve.

Children's Christmas services, regardless the denomination, are beautiful in their simplicity and their message of hope. This year, the young people involved in the presentation of the Christmas story at St. Ann's focused on the symbols of the season: the star, the crown, the manger, the angel, the sheep and the cross.

The Christian faith boils down to these six symbols, symbols also represented through the words in a brief but powerful passage in our creed:

For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit
he was born of the Virgin Mary,
and was made man.

In a book I am reading about structure in writing, the author tells a story of how his young son simplifies the story of Robin Hood: Robin Hood went riding. A bad guy came. They fought. He won.

Not much of a story without the further elements that make it the historical work of fiction that it would become. But still, it captures the basic structure of the story.

Much the same type of structural simplification can be applied to the Christian faith in the last verse of the gospel standard, "Go Tell It On The Mountain":

Down in a lonely manger
the humble Christ was born,
and God sent our salvation
that blessed Christmas morn.

It's a simple message that remains simple -- unless we make something of it. Leave those words alone and they tell the story of Christ's birth in a stable. But act on those words, apply them to your life, and only then does their meaning become so much more to us, one and all.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Today is the Epiphany ...

.... and if we did it the way they did it in the beginning, we would be giving our gifts today, 12 days after the birth of Baby Jesus. The tradition of the Church says that today is the day the Magi arrived in Bethlehem to present the Christ child with gold, frankensence and myrrh. It is the 12th day of Christmas. Merry Christmas everyone. Only 354 more shopping days (leap year) til Christmas Day 2008.

Footprint of God certainly found in values and institutions founded by Christianity

After recent ambushes on Christians by the likes of atheists Christopher Hitchens (who finds fault with Mother Teresa of all people) and Richard Dawkins (who says handing down faith to children is tantamount to child abuse), both of whom believe that being Christian is little more than being "stupid," it was a pleasure to sit in a room Tuesday night and have some adult conversation on the matter of belief vs. non-belief.  Though much of the discussion was far too complex to shoehorn into a single blog entry written by someone who is far from a scientist or a theologian, there were a number of points made by Midland theologian Norbert Dickman in a presentation Tuesday night worth sharing.

Quoting extensively author Dinesh D'Souza's book "What's So Great About Christianity?," Dickman paid close attention to D'Souza's chapters on the values and institutions of Christianity which, both author and presenter contend, offer strong cases not only for the proof of God, but that Christianity is certainly the preferred value system when compared to atheism, points made clearer from a historical perspective:

• D'Souza noted that Roman and Greek multi-theism and citizen failure to adhere to the state's belief system was considered treason and atheistic; Christianity brought forth the notion of one God, above and beyond the state's practices. The idea of limited government, D'Souza noted, was also a Christian ideal.
• Christianity gave voice and humanness to the lower classes. In fact under Christ, "the last shall become the first."
• At a time when procreation and care of the young was the responsibility of the state, marriages were arranged and the sole purpose of families was procreation. Christianity swept in, making heterosexual, monogamous love the norm and giving choice to people about romantic love and marriage. Christians, too, hold that each person has a partner selected for us by God.
• Christianity has provided the world with servant leadership, capitalism (where monasteries demonstrated strong citizen work ethics), compassion and human dignity itself, a concept that non-believer Frederich Nietzche called "the prototype of all theories of equal rights. "In ancient Greece and Rome, human life had very little value, women occupied an inferior position and men did as they pleased, as exemplified by adultery and divorce, which were apparently common. The nature of the quality of human beings led to the abolition of slavery, the movement for democracy and an international doctrine of human rights," Dickman contended.
• Christianity has provided for the concept of  a "just war" as well as higher education; monasteries became the centers of learning and the Church established the first universities.

Dickman notes that while these virtues don't alone prove the existence of God, "a strong argument can be made that if you remove the Christian foundation, the values will also go."

Dickman, moving toward his conclusion, cited the logic behind Paschal's Wager, a theorem likely familiar to many atheists, that shows why common sense dictates that it is infinitely preferable to believe rather than not:

• You live as though God exists.
  • If God exists, you go to heaven: your gain is infinite.
  • If God does not exist, you gain nothing and lose nothing.

• You live as though God does not exist.
  • If God exists, you go to hell: your loss is infinite.
  • If God does not exist, you gain nothing & lose nothing.

It really is as simple as putting two and two together.

More and more today, Dickman closed, "Books making the case against God seem to be multiplying and becoming more strident and absolute with the turn of each page. Though no one can prove or disprove the existence of God our history reveals the unmistakable footprint of something greater than man."

Christ as spouse? What does Mother Teresa mean exactly?

One of the things I found most refreshing in talking to former First Baptist Church pastor Dr. Jim Denison last week, aside from his overall character and his genuine interest and concern in whatever the topic, was his grasping of Catholicism's many traditions and practices.

Dr. Denison, now pastor of teaching at Dallas' Park Cities Baptist Church, was able to cut through a lot of speculation and get directly to the root of one of the most important points of "Come Be My Light," the recently-published book of Mother Teresa's letters she wrote to her confessors during her lengthy crisis of faith.

Catholic sisters, nuns, or as they are often called in the church today, 'women religious," often refer to Christ as their spouse, in the same way it is said that a priest is married to the church. All a person need do to understand this concept is realize there is more than one definition of the word spouse, just as there are multiple definitions of the word marriage.

It is in that  concept of Christ being Mother Teresa's spouse that it is easier to understand the pain that this incredible nun experienced in the gutters of Calcutta during her "long dark night."

Although the definition of spouse in this instance is different than it is when applied to man and woman, the pain that Mother Teresa felt for Christ's death is the same as a woman feels for her husband when he is ill. When I was hospitalized with heart problems, my wife took care and worried over me and sincerely and almost literally felt the same pain as did I. When I have a migraine, my wife hurts with me. Dr. Denison concurred, saying, "When my wife hurts, we are drawn closer than at any other time." Anyone with a good marriage is keenly aware of that kindred spirit when the soul or body is in turmoil.

"Part of the ministry of the Catholic Church is to pray and intercede and share others' sufferings," Dr. Denison said. "After struggling for years with spiritual darkness, one of her confessors suggested that her darkness was perhaps a way she could share the message of Christ. "

Mother Teresa pleaded with her confessors not to make public her private letters. It's likely, however, that she never regarded herself as an eventual saint. There is certainly a very valid argument to be made in favor of releasing her letters to further Mother Teresa's cause for sainthood, which was the very reason behind the releasing of the book.

Yet, the bigger reason for the book's release, despite Mother Teresa's wishes, is that those who edited it and read it saw in it the potential it has to change lives. Denison and other great contemporary Christian thinkers today say that "Come Be My Light" could one day be considered one of the most important spiritual books ever written.

And of Mother Teresa, should she one day reach the level of sainthood, there is much speculation that she will likely become a patron saint of doubt, or suffering, or maybe both; two characteristics that, by virtue of this book's publication, stand to grow in importance in understanding the complete picture of individual faith journeys.

Doubt is a part of a person's journey -- and maybe "Come Be My Light" will show that questioning God's existence is OK. As Dr. Denison pointed out in our last post, doubting the existence of God is done because you have faith not because you lack it. And it goes to further an individual's faith in God. It seldom diminishes it.

If you have real faith and question it, it returns, often even stronger. If you lack faith and then doubt what faith you do have, it likely doesn't return, because you may have never had it in the first place.

Should Mother Teresa achieve sainthood, Catholics would have a patron saint to intercede for them for suffering or when they experience doubts. Establishment of such an honor on those bases would be a wonderful and needed addition to the pantheon of worthy saints already honored.

Jim Denison on Mother Teresa: The stronger your faith the more likely you'll have doubts

  I talked to a man today about Mother Teresa's  "Come Be My Light," the recently-published collection of the the late Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu's private writings to her confessors. I had read some of the man's thoughts on the Internet and I wanted to speak in depth with him about the meaning of the writings which Mother Teresa had so strongly petitioned not to be made public.

   During our conversation,  the man told me that 'Come Be My Light' teaches us to be realistic about our spiritual strugggles and doubts -- "If Mother Teresa could experience them, then so could we," he said. "The stronger your faith," he added, "the more likely you will be subjected to attack by doubt."

   What struck me most during our conversation, though, was this: "I have been grateful for Catholicism across the years. I'm grateful for the Church's traditions and for its liturgy. Much of my own spiritual formation has come from reading Catholic authors such as Henri Nouwen."

  This man who so highly praised "Come Be My Light," who is so taken with Mother Teresa and her intimate relationship with Christ, and who is thankful for Catholicism and what it has meant to him over the years is Dr. Jim Denison, Pastor of Teaching at Park Cities Baptist Church in Dallas. And lest I forget: from 1988-94, Pastor at  First Baptist Church of Midland.

  Denison is the real deal; someone who feels he can learn from anyone -- regardless who they are or where they attend church -- and is gifted with the ability to teach as many people who will listen. And plenty do listen. Seven years ago, when he was on vacation during the Christmas holidays, Dr. Denison told me he began writing a spiritual journal. One thing led to another and someone mentioned to him that he should make his writings available to a wider audience. So he placed an item in the Park Cities church bulletin and asked members to sign up if they were interested. In a matter of days, 500 had sent in their email address. That was the year 2000. Today, GodIssues is subscribed to by 10,000 and church research shows it is forwarded an additional 20,000-30,000 times a day.

   Wow. That is using new media to the fullest.

  Denison said there was never any outside marketing or promotion to spread the word about GodIssues.

  Denison's email journal usually arrives in my box about 8 every morning. He begins each day by noting something from the headlines of a major national news agency, and he will often tie in the stories of the day with a spiritual reflection. The messages of this Baptist preacher cut across denominational boundaries, tear down close-mindedness and simply spread the Gospel and how we can learn from it, all of us, regardless how we fill in our "Religious Affiliation" blanks. After all, that's how God intended it, isn't it? God's word is God's word. The churches that followed and the denominations that were formed were all created by merely mortal (and mostly well-intentioned)men.

  I am and have always been passionate about the need to learn from people of all faiths. My Christian way of practicing and yours may be different, but neither of us are wrong. You may have an altar call every week and I may confess my sins to a priest and enjoy the smell of incense during Advent, but neither of us are wrong. Your preacher may stand behind a crystal pulpit and my priest may genuflect behind an altar, but both of us do it the way which best suits us. We are both practicing as we have been taught by those who came before us and we are both working toward a common eternity. Were we all to practice this way of thinking instead of just saying we practice it, we'd live in a better America.

    Jim Denison lives what he preaches. He spent almost an entire month of GodIssues focusing on Mother Teresa's book, a period of time which shows me just how important its contents are and how we can all learn from it. As he says, the book is not a quick fix, it is not pop spirituality, not "Seven Ways to Make Yourself Happy" stuff. Reading it is not unlike reading the text of a conversation between Christ and Mother Teresa. And it is easy to see just why spiritual leaders of many faiths today say that it could eventually go down as one of the most influential spiritual books ever written.

  Next: More about "Come Be My Light," and more thoughts from Jim Denison, who says hi to everyone in Midland, by the way.

Subscribe to GodIssues by visiting GodIssues.org. Visit Denison's Web site at GodIssues.com.

   

   

They forgot one: Thou Shalt Not drive and Text at the Same Time

Last week, the Vatican released its "10 Commandments for Drivers." It doesn't matter what faith you are or if you even have faith, following said rules of the road ain't such a bad idea.

'Course, Vaticaners have never driven in Midland or they would've released this list a few centuies ago:

1. You shall not kill.

2. The road shall be for you a means of communion between people and not of mortal harm.

3. Courtesy, uprightness and prudence will help you deal with unforeseen events.

4. Be charitable and help your neighbor in need, especially victims of accidents.

5. Cars shall not be for you an expression of power and domination and an occasion of sin.

6. Charitably convince the young and not so young not to drive when they are not in a fitting condition to do so.

7. Support the families of accident victims.

8. Bring guilty motorists and their victims together, at the appropriate time, so that they can undergo the liberating experience of forgiveness.

9. On the road, protect the more vulnerable party.

10. Feel responsible toward others.

To see the story that goes with the list, visit www.catholicnews.com

Unparalleled bravery in the face of a coming death

I asked my high school religious education class last week what they would do if they knew they had just one week to live. Would they travel? Feel sorry for themselves? Get everything in order? Or simply spend time with family and friends?

Not surprisingly, most of them said they'd spend time huddled with family and friends. There was no whisking away to Hawaii or Europe for a last minute feel-good trip. For the most part, cloaking themselves with those they love is what they consider important with limited time.

And as they have so often, their answers impressed me.

I then asked them if they remembered how Christ spent his last days before a death he knew was coming. Certainly he prepared emotionally and spiritually as best he could for his indescribable torture and crucifixion. There was no weekend in the Garden of Eden before he journeyed to Calvary and was nailed to the cross. No feeling sorry for himself. He did have supper with his friends prior to the final events, but not all of them would stick with him till the end, of course. In fact, not a lot of people were on his side that last week. His mother never did leave him, though, and she provided him what comfort she could as he stumbled courageously toward Golgotha, bleeding and with a heavy wooden cross draped over his back, no doubt scraping and bruising and cutting him.

Thinking about how Christ spent his last days -- specifically not running from death but being accepting of his fate and developing an undefinable courage it must have taken -- makes me look at his final steps in a whole different way this year. No pity, no All-About-Me attitude. No tropical island vacations. Just acceptance of the fact. He knew the score; he knew what was important in the Bigger Picture scenario. And he was brave in a way no one else can ever understand. And through his death and in the way he handled it, he left us not only with invaluable lessons about not only how to live life, but about how to die.

How would you spend your final days?