"Must I write?" (A question to ask myself)

This afternoon I stopped by a local coffee house on my lunch break and ran into Casey, a local artist I regularly see around my city. He is also an entreprenuer. He talked to me about how he decided to go into business for himself in ways that could support his family (wife and two children) and fulfill what he feels is his "calling." I told him how much I admired such commitment. We talked for awhile and he told me about the times when things get tough and how one has to just push through them with faith, creativity, and determination. The conversation left me with hope and the knowledge that I had some "soul-searching" to do and some commitments to make.

Call it confirmation, but later this afternoon, I paid a visit to the website of another local artist I admire. On his website he wrote a journal entry about his recent decision to live intentionally and focus exclusively on producing music which means that he would also be forced to let go of a majority of other commitments he had picked up in recent years. In his journal entry he cited a passage from the writings of Ranier Maria Rilke that had a profound impact on his thinking during this transitional phase of his life. Rilke's words also resonated with me as I go through my own risky period of transition and growth.

Yes, quiet time is needed to figure these things out.
Yes, risks are involved in such decisions.
Yes, we must listen to that voice deep within us.
Yes, we must find an answer and build our lives around it.

Ranier Maria Rilke writes,

"This above all-ask yourself
in the stillest hour of the night: must I write?
Delve yourself for a deep answer.
And if this should be affirmative,
if you may meet this earnest question
with a strong and simple "I must,"
then build your life according to this necessity;
your life even into its most indifferent and slightest hour
must be a sign of this urge, and a testimony to it.
Then draw near to Nature.
Then try, like some first human being,
to say what you see and experience and love and lose."

POEM: "Witness"

I wrote this poem right before New Year Eve's 2007. It's one of the few poems I have written in the past few years so it contains alot of ideas that I wanted to "unpack." I've performed it a couple of times throughout my city at various coffee shops and churches. It was inspired by what I have come to see as one of the best witnesses to the world about the message of Jesus: a transformed life that is marked by compassion for those who suffer and struggle.

Behold and bear witness
to systems designed to victimize the blind.
What will it take to fix this?

Prayer, yes…
but prayer alone
is like living off air alone.

You see,
whether you’re conservative or liberal,
whether you read the Bible critical or take it literal
the hardest part is making it physical
Let the Gospel become flesh
and challenge the rulers who build their empires
with the blood of the same people they consider inferior and invisible

Pardon the interruption,
but the human heart is filled with so much corruption
we’ve got hearts of stone, even my own
I can feel that the war is on en mi corazón
Evil still sits on the throne.
No one’s good but God alone.

And that’s enough to make me suspicious.
We're like sheep sent to live with the wolves,
the vulnerable amongst the vicious
Not violent, but not silent when facing the evils of men
The dark side of imagination and free-will, the evil within
Who’s our worst enemy?
Is it really an invisible demon wearing a devilish grin,
or is it our own selfish and hard heart
willing to do whatever to win?

Look at Pharaoh
Now, who took an arrow, shot us and got us
willing to rape, kill and cheat for things we don't need
Exploiting our sisters and brothers,
selling our souls and sacrificing their lives
on the altar of greed.
Halt the stampede!
Where will this road lead?
And what kind of seed do we expect to start bloomin'
when we demonize God’s children
and treat them like they’re less than human?

When we raise our children to become mindless consumers,
mere cogs and gears, in a machine
that profits off of our insecurities, addictions and fears
Fears of each other and of the unknown
Take the cover off of this syndrome
and fight the temptation to become bitter and heartless

Lord, deliver us from the evil that haunts us
I pray that we never get too used to the darkness
or get so used to wickedness and injustice
that we eventually become their accomplice
If the Spirit of God blows where it wishes,
then I pray it breathes new life into my conscience
I'm just an artist trying my hardest
to plant my seeds of light for the harvest

Lord, make us wise as serpents,
so we can detect lies with discernment
Make us harmless as doves,
armed with Your love
On a rescue mission, fishin’ in these dark waters
on the lookout for
prodigal sons and fathers,
lost mothers and daughters
Little boys
living and dying by the weapons of violence
Little girls
believing the lie that they’re only good for their sexual talents
This world is off balance and it’s time to break silence
with a witness…that this is…

going to take a miracle
like feeding thousands
with a few loaves and fishes
when we've got people in need of housing
food, clothes and dishes
Victims with wounds so deep
that they need to be healed with more than stitches
People need hope, ya’ll…
more than four-leaf clover wishes

Because corrupt corporations and governments
aren’t run by monsters
They’re supported by everyday people, like us
just going about our everyday business
desensitized to the crimes that we witness
God forgive us,
for not asking questions
or investigating the fruits of our labor
Who does it effect?
Who does it hurt?
Who does it endanger?

God forgive us,
for being more concerned with a pay raise
and what looks good on our résumés
meanwhile we treat Your children and Your creations
like strays and throwaways
I pray for better days
Help us find a way out of this maze

where dreams can die in a child's head
because they’re malnutritious
because they’re not being fed,
hopelessness blinding their vision
where children idolize killers and criminal-minded magicians
who can take a pocket full of stones (drugs)
and turn them into bread,
then turn that bread into homes
and turn those same homes into haunted houses
where the living dead roam.

At midnight,
junkies and addicts turn into zombies and wicked witches
casting spells on themselves
and manipulating their own families to get their fixes
Imprisoned in their own personal hell,
like a prison cell
locked from the inside when the key is right in front of them
but their disease just keeps on numbing' them…
And we ask: “Jesus! What can be done for them?”
What can we do?
How can we help?

Well,
we can’t hide behind stained glass windows and white fences,
We’ve got to get in the trenches,
we can't just be critics that boo from the benches
We’ve got a choice, we can either build up walls or build bridges
Get involved or die with good intentions

Yes, we’re sinners but we don’t plan to surrender
Let’s bring the truth to the center
and tell the whole story so the people remember
A witness…that this is…not the Creator’s intent
but a witness…that this is…a call for us all to repent.

God’s Image and the gods we Imagine

I think we invent our own Gods. I say this partly because we all worship something, be it a person, a material thing, a spiritual being or an ideal of how we think life should be. The Book of Genesis says that God made man and woman in God’s image. But could it also be possible that throughout the ages these same men and women have created our own images of God? We see this happen in both the Bible and in world history. And I do it too. Most people who believe in God come up with metaphors to explain how we understand God. But it gets tricky when we start to literalize these metaphors and create worldviews out of them. To paraphrase a point made by author Karen Armstrong, this gets dangerous because we make images of God where God likes who or what we like and hates who or what we hate. If we can throw God’s name on it, then we can justify almost anything we want to do…whether it be God’s will or not.

We also see this happen with Jesus. For nearly 2,000 years many of us have created images of Jesus that fit within our personal agendas. Can’t you imagine what the toy aisles at department stores would look like if they carried the following action-figures? Collect them all. You’ve got your Camp-Counselor Jesus, your Sugar Daddy Jesus, your Prayer Warrior Jesus, your Hippie Jesus, your Beatnik Jesus, your Dreadlocked Jesus, your Blue-Eyed Jesus, your Civil Rights Jesus, your Gun-Toting Jesus, your Rock Star Jesus, your Stained Glass Jesus, your Fire & Brimstone Jesus, your Bible-Thumping Jesus (complete with his church suit), and your Hollywood Jesus (who speaks with a British accent).

Will the real Jesus please stand up? Or should I say “rise up?” And may we seek to know God and follow Jesus in the way that they are and not how we want them to be.

The simple way of Brother Herman

Two weeks ago I was in Houston, Texas, with my wife and daughter attending a Cajun cookout in honor of my wife's cousin's high school graduation. While I was socializing with people who gathered for the celebration I had a conversation with one of my uncle-in-law’s relatives- an African-American Catholic friar known as Brother Herman. Brother Herman is a minister and a professor of Spanish who lives in a monastery with other friars in New Orleans. He was among those who survived Hurricane Katrina and the flood that it brought about in New Orleans. We talked for a while about the effect of the flood on his city and his vocation as a language professor. But our longest discussion was about faith.

He told me about what drew him into ministry and I told him about the experiences that led me to enroll in seminary. We talked about the current Pope and the offense he caused in his recent visit to Latin America when he praised the Portuguese missionaries for bringing civilization to people of Latin America (In response to this, Brother Herman said, "Civilization was there before those colonial-minded missionaries ever landed on shore...and so was God"). He told me about the mystic bent Pope John Paul II took as he got older in regards to the idea that there may be other paths to God. He encouraged me in my theological studies and advised me to keep a critical eye and to engage in a respectful critique of other faiths as well as my own. I asked him about his personal prayer life and he told me how he maintains his communion with God by attending Mass, taking communion and spending time in prayer every morning. We discussed how important it is for humans to really seek an ongoing and thriving connection to God and to not allow for rituals to lose their meaning because of routine.

We then shared our understandings of ministry and evangelism. He reminded me that ministry (a word so commonly and carelessly thrown around and attached to anything church-related) is really just another word for “service” and that ministry is not limited to the roles of priests, preachers and chaplains. He noted that while many feel called to such professional roles, those are not the only opportunities for service that exist in God’s kingdom. He said that we are all ministers in the sense that we all can be of service by using our gifts and abilities to help others. To illustrate this point, he told me a personal story of how he had low self-esteem until a priest helped him discover his own gift for languages by teaching him how to speak Spanish when he was 13 years old. Young Herman went through school, got better grades and honed his language skills until he became a language professor himself. He told me that he now lives out his ministry in and out of the classroom by "treating people nice" and "showing hospitality to them."

He shared his opinion on evangelism by saying, "I don’t believe that it is our place as Catholics to make other people Catholic. I believe our mission as Catholics is to do what Catholics do...serve others." His words we so simple yet they summed up what I've been trying to articulate for quite some time now. Years ago, I used to think that having witty answers to a skeptic’s questions was the best way to convince an unbeliever that the gospel was true. Nowadays, I find myself leaning towards the belief that our most effective and faithful witness to the world might be our everyday acts of service, hospitality, compassion and kindness. This is the witness that I think truly moves people to connect with God and others. MaybeI'm going too far in making it an either/or type of situation, but I at least want to do more to incorporate the latter approach in my relationships with others.

Ultimately, my conversation with Brother Herman left me to wonder: Perhaps our goal shouldn't be to pressure others to follow Jesus, but to do what a follower of Jesus does in the Spirit by which Jesus did it. A way of life where we do good for others - not as a means of getting a heavenly reward or avoiding an eternal punishment- but because that is what we do as followers of Jesus.

I wonder: Could the gospel really be that simple? Yep. Simple enough for a child to understand it and apply it.

A Time of Separation

Right now, my Bible and I are temporarily separated. I needed some space. I still spend a lot of time thinking about the things she’s taught me and I might occasionally check on her from time to time, but we don’t spend time together like we used to. And lately I haven't felt the need to. I thought it would be best for us to become strangers so that we could get reacquainted and understand each other better. So now we are starting over without all the unrealistic expectations of each other.

Our separation was not totally unexpected. I had a feeling this would happen eventually. I just felt like there was more to her than what I wanted her to be. And I didn’t think it was fair to confine her to my unrealistic expectations.When I first met her, I wanted her to be pure, perfect, faultless, honest, and trustworthy. And in doing so I made her my idol- which is dangerous. Though they meant well, the people who introduced me to her didn’t tell me the whole story about how she came to be who she was. But, honestly, I probably couldn’t have handled the truth about her back then. I can barely handle it now.

Over a year and a half ago, I began to find out things about her that concerned me. I came across some negative rumors about her background, the things she has said, the many places she has been, and the people she has been with. I wanted to know what others had to say about her, especially those who had also had strong relationships with her in the past. I wanted to get advice from those who had been through some tough times with her and who could also see her faults. I wanted hear from those who had been betrayed by her broken promises. I wanted to know how they managed to live with her despite her shortcomings.

As it turns out, she wasn’t as pure as I was led to believe. But perhaps she didn’t need to be. We were both human. If I had flaws, why couldn’t she? I came to realize that even though she was “God-breathed” (like me) she was also human creation (like me), complete with her own limitations, prejudices, emotions, and contradictions. And if she and I were to be in a serious, long-term, committed relationship then I would have to embrace her with all of her complexities and shortcomings in order to move forward.

I used to be one of those who placed her up on a pedestal of perfection, worshipping her like a god and promising to be faithful to her above all the others who were competing for my attention. I was one of those people who couldn’t imagine spending a day without her by my side. While I respect such a romantic approach and those who use it, I knew that approach wouldn’t be enough for me. I craved a deeper relationship but I didn’t want to be naïve. I wanted to be realistic because I knew that this woman had some issues that were a little more complicated.

You see, she’s seen a lot of violence in her lifetime. She has been abused by many and some have even gotten into harsh arguments and bloody disputes over her. She’s felt the pain of being ignored because a lot of the people she has been with in the past wouldn’t let her share her story. Most of them didn’t want to hear what she had to say or take the time to understand where she’s coming from. They didn’t want to listen to her talk about the difficult topics and the unforgettable traumas. They just wanted her to be their trophy.

I don’t think we can ever go back to how it used to be. We’re too far gone. While I’ve seen many people benefit from her wisdom, I’ve also seen too many people who have been hurt because of her words. And I don’t know if I can trust everything she says without being a little critical. You see, she talks a lot about the “good news” but many of her ideas aren’t faithful to it. And no matter what she or anyone else says…she is not God. Many people are afraid to tell her when she’s wrong, but she’s human and she has made some mistakes too.

While there are things I love about her there are also some things that really disturb me. But I’m learning to accept her and to deal with her as she is and not how I want her to be. As you can see, we’re long past the honeymoon phase. Nowadays, we are facing the really complicated question that lies at the heart of a committed relationship: How do you accept each other’s shortcomings and move on?

It’s going to take time to work through all of this. When we talk now, which is rarely, she leaves me with more questions than answers. But maybe that’s OK. I may never know all of the mysteries contained within her, but I would rather struggle with who she really is than live with a false idea of who I want her to be.

Loving Imaginary People

“The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image.
Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.”
--Thomas Merton

It is so easy to love people that don’t exist. Do you know what I mean? I’m referring to those abstract, vague, submissive, glossy, harmless people that we think of when we use words like “humanity” and “humankind.” These are the people I think of when I talk about loving both my neighbor and my enemy. They don’t bother me and don’t demand anything of me. They don’t argue with me and they appreciate everything I do for them at my own convenience. These individuals embody all the ideals that we would like to be true about our fellow human beings. These are the people you have in mind when you buy gifts for others or write a check for a charity. And these types are quite easy to trust and forgive.

When I was a kid, I had two imaginary friends because they were so easy to get along with. As an adult, I excel at loving these kinds of people. These individuals are the frequent targets of my prayers, concerns and good deeds. This is mainly because they are far easier to deal with than those smelly, irritable, apathetic, offensive, bothersome, hypocritical, hyper-sensitive, and unfaithful creatures called humans.

And that’s the sad part. These people don't exist.

You see, I am an idealist and my idealism often fools me into believing that love is easy to apply. But then reality sets in and I realize that while “love” is a feather of a word it also carries a heavy demand. Real people disappoint you and are often disappointed by you. Real people hold grudges and are often the targets of our own vengeful imaginations. Real people have keen memories of your mistakes and often come down with a severe case of selective amnesia when it comes to recognizing your virtues. These real people are the ones we ignore and then turn around and get upset with when they don't support us in our time of need. As you can see, real people make for a pretty frustrating bunch of weirdos. But the thing is these real people are just…like…me. I often find those qualities that I find most irritating in others are the same irritable qualities I discover in myself. Why is that?

Here is the paradox that I struggle with constantly. I love people that don’t exist and I suck when it comes to loving the ones that do. It takes too much energy and requires a level of attention that I would rather reserve for my own interests. Real people always call when I’m involved in something else. They always have a problem they are dealing with. They always need something. You can never satisfy them. They are too clingy and needy. Why do they act so selfishly sometimes and why do they bother with me when I am so often a jerk towards them?

Spirit of God, help me to let go of imaginary people and help me to dig deep and use my energy and patience to show sincere love to real people despite their shortcomings, inconveniences, and faults.