Читать книгу Chronicle of a Silence Endured - Guido da Verona - Страница 5

Judge not, that you be not judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.

-Matthew 7:1 NIV

Right before his mother’s eyes, almost as if overnight, our hero suddenly started to take on the look of his father. A common occurrence was when he would catch his mother staring at him from across the bright living room, not saying anything.

She would then announce, “Amazing, amazing how much like your father you are. You have his eyes…how they change color in the sun…how much of his character you have already.”

Then she would walk over, sit right next to him and cup his hands in hers, and caressing them and looking down on them she would say,

“…and you have his hands too…”

There was concern in her voice.

But that was of no consequence, or better said, of little consequence in light of the more urgent matters that, according to mom, needed to be addressed with our hero.

Mom finally got sick and tired of seeing her son coming in at least once a week all beat up from school. She did not go to the school to file a formal complaint, nor did she make any calls to the principal’s office. Oh no. No rescue efforts of that sort here. Her just-turned 10 year-old son was going to learn how to stick up for himself against his bullies. He was going to learn how to fight back. This present state of affairs was completely unacceptable, and mom was not about to let her sisters, living only a few neighborhoods away, know that unlike their sons his age, her son was a pushover, a weakling, a coward. Besides, he needed to be with other boys his own age, and to stop hanging around the house with his sisters wanting to cry. He needed to make new and happy friends in a safe environment where he would be taught some lessons of life by exemplary men and other boys his age.

Judo would supply just that environment.

Our hero learned sit-ups and push-ups. He learned the low block and the high block. He learned the technique of footwork and grappling. He learned to take his opponent to the ground and pin him into submission. He made new friends who had smiling faces and who were tough. His Judo teacher was a charismatic young man in his early thirties who attended medical school and had a great sense of humor. He took our hero under his wing, giving him plenty of opportunities and pats on the back to build up his shaken confidence and, making sure to not cause harm, strategically, jokingly pointed out his weaknesses.

On this one particular day, a rainstorm was blowing outside during class, and the master said to our hero,

“You are going to have to gain some weight before a big wind comes and blows you back to Colombia!”

It made everyone in the dojo laugh, including our hero.

And although it was not easy at first for our hero to lose his anxiety and over-worry about performing in social situations, where his embarrassment and potential failures and weaknesses could be seen and judged by all, and although he still cried alone from time to time, and although there was great distress at the start of this new performance-based environment and over the need to be accepted, the flooding waters of pain and fear did indeed slowly recede, as he learned to accept that sometimes fights are lost, and that it was ‘ok’ to make mistakes, because you always lived to fight another day, and the boy with the green belt who beat him that day was not necessarily an enemy, but rather an opponent-friend and teacher too. And what was more; one’s integrity and self-worth are not necessarily damaged in losing. Our hero learned to learn from his mistakes, to improve, and to appreciate sweat all over his uniform, and to smile in the face of physical pain. It was the start of the gluing back, the rebuilding, of his fractured ego.

And it now seemed not all opportunities to build better social skills had been altogether lost.

The fateful day came when our hero was again confronted by his bully after school. The usual crowd was there. When the fist was made and then launched towards him, our hero side-stepped without hesitation and, with unprecedented calm, grabbed the flying wrist with the left hand and blew a devastating punch to the nose with the right. How simple. It was all about focus and stillness; so little of it felt physical.

And that was the end of the bullying....for good. Back at home later that day, he told no one. God favors those who prepare, after all, or does He not?

The Lord will fight for you, and you shall hold your peace.

-Exodus 14:14 NIV

Mom had finally seen the change in her son that was quite positive and long awaited. So, she also took it upon herself to take her 3 children to confession each and every Saturday and to mass each and every Sunday.

“My children”, she thought to herself, “may well not have much in their physical world. I may not be able to give them all I want to give them and all that they deserve. But I will be damned if I don’t give them their faith. I can make them rich in faith. I must make them rich in faith, so that they can understand, as they one day will, that anything can be faced in this life as long as you have faith. We will all pray together every night. We are Catholics.”

“Bless me Father, for I have sinned.”

“Yes, son, I am listening.”

“This week I got into a fight with my sister, Rose, and I called her ‘stupid’ and ugly’.

“Go on, son.”

“And I had a bad thought about my teacher when she yelled at me in front of the class when it wasn’t even my fault, it was Francisco’s, and I wished something bad to happen to her.”

“Yes…I see.”

“And I threw a snowball at a car with a friend of mine when it was storming this week. And the man stopped the car and got out and chased us into the grocery store where we had run to hide, and he pulled our ears and hair and yelled at us.”

“Is there anything else?”

…..

……….

“I had bad thoughts.”

…..

“What sort of bad thoughts?”

“The really bad kind.”

“Come now son, there is absolutely nothing bad that is going to happen for telling me. Remember that God’s son was also human, and He is all loving and all forgiving.”

“I, uh………I wondered what a woman looks like naked.”

“Anything else son?”

“That’s all I can remember father. I’m so sorry for it all.”

“Excellent son….well done. This is a good confession. Ok, you need to remember that your sisters are always to be respected. You are their protector as the man of the house.”

“Protector.”

That word again, mentioned in secret darkness again, caused our hero to break into a sudden sweat.

The priest continued,

“If you get into a fight with your sisters, you have to walk away and try not to hurt them with either your words or hands. And in school, if you have a classmate that is getting you in trouble, then you need to distance yourself from him. You are there to learn. I’m sure you learned now that throwing snowballs at cars is not worth it. It’s also very dangerous and you can cause an accident where people can get very seriously hurt and you can get into a lot of trouble. And finally, for your penance, I want you to say five Our Fathers and five Hail Mary’s. Now repeat the Act of Contrition with me…”

Sunday mass always took place in the same church.

Wreaking Havoc in Favoritism and Separatism

How is religion different from spirituality?

Is there a difference between the two, and if so, how is it determined?

One of the ways I view religion is as a series of boats on the edge of a lake. You are standing on that edge but wish to get to the other side. You choose your boat and row yourself to the other side, then get off and continue on your walk. Religion is the boat that gets you to the other side, to your place of grace with your own God.

Yet one of the major problems I see with many of the religious however, is that somewhere in their journey to the other side of the lake, the attitude is adopted that their boat is the other side; they don’t see that the boat is only an instrument, a vehicle in their spiritual journey. It is not a destination, and that is why religion carries so much potential to upset and let down many of its followers.

Allow me to challenge here on purpose.

The question is one of attachment. In other words, what difference can it possibly make that you are inside say, a green boat, and while rowing you look over to the sides and find others rowing in their red, blue, and orange boats. And so, you point your self-righteous, indignant, and accusatory finger at the other brothers and sisters in their boats, who are just as well-intentioned, just as God-fearing and as motivated as you (and perhaps might be even more so). But you will not have it that way, will you. You believe that your boat is superior and that it entitles you to accuse others of using the wrong-color boat!

On what charge do you make that claim?

Ego:

Erase

God

Out.

Many religious people who are concerned more with attendance and ritual than with spiritual connectedness with God would benefit from the thinking of spiritual leaders, like Gandhi, who teach that if God is being praised, if it leads to a closer personal relationship with Him, there is no such thing as the wrong boat. If the majority of the religious did this, if they stopped to think more objectively about their own beliefs by simply stepping outside of themselves, the only thing that would then matter is that we all as a human species get to the same destination on the other side of the lake irrespective of what is used to get there.

What is more, spiritual persons are free spirits, and thus experience God in a much more direct way, in a way that transcends the ritual and doctrine of organized religion. These souls cannot care less about the color of their boat, not because of indifference towards religion in general, but because they are simply detached from boats altogether. The spiritual understand that religion by itself does not have all the answers, nor does it necessarily lead to contentment - nor personal salvation.

Think of Jesus walking on the water towards his disciples who are tormented by the sight from the inside of their fishing boat. Think about how they were not able to immediately recognize Him. Think about Peter at first crouching in fear then stepping out of the boat, trembling, upon the invitation of Jesus. That is how the miracle of walking on water happened for Peter – by a conscious decision to step out of the boat with a spirit of surrender for his well-being. First, you must unlearn what you have been taught; your preconceived notions of what is and is not right or wrong, what should be and should not be, behind you.

Jehovah’s Witnesses, Protestants, Baptists, Pentecostals, Islamics, Jews, Hindus, Adventists, Catholics, and all the rest.

Does God care about boats?

Is not a boat used to praise God still a man-made thing?

What makes any boat greater than anyone else’s? What great secrets or understandings does one boat hold about God and the Gospels that is above all the other boats? Who knows God better than who?

Just as you don’t understand what the life-breath does in the fetus inside a pregnant woman’s womb, so you can’t understand the work of God, who makes everything happen.

-Ecclesiastes 11:5 NIV

This is the ultimate in the human knowledge of God – to know that we do not know God.

-St. Thomas Aquinas

We do not know God because we cannot think like Him.

People hurt each other immeasurably (as they always have and will) in making a permanent home out of that boat in their tiny little hearts and minds – what they don’t know better. There is no justification for fear, lack of faith, pride, and the inability to believe without seeing. Ego. I say without seeing because once you do see through the eyes of spirituality, detachment, you do not need to measure or compare yourself to anyone or anything. You are you, and they are they, and competition becomes contribution. And that is the real measure that is needed to tell if someone has truly arrived to the other side of the lake; when they finally break free of the conditioning that dictates for them who and what God is, or who and what they are in life.

…the belief in God is frequently exploited to justify self serving causes, and religion is often the vehicle used to defend and rationalize otherwise indefensible behavior. In most cases it is not the religion that is to blame, it is its interpretation …spirituality…serves as a prerequisite for all values that are measurable.

-Nicholas R. Lessa

An imperfect, creaking, leaking, dysfunctional boat; if anyone challenges or questions it, it’s off to war. Do we really think that we are reinventing the proverbial wheel by comparing, then despairing, and then killing? Man has been reinventing the religious wheel for thousands of years all to no avail at all. A quick glance at the state of the majority of religious institutions today will affirm how much progress, or lack thereof, has been made.

Question: Is there such a thing as a justifiable war?

How about a winnable war?

Given all the good that religious institutions do, the more that people identify with them, the more attached to them they grow. And, as the attachment closes more and more mental and spiritual doors, which is the nature of attachment, the more arrogant, the more belligerent, the more insecure grows the mindset, and the more punishment, betrayal, secrecy and even war become viable solutions to the world’s problems. Religion then becomes radicalized. It’s a magnificent phenomenon actually. I challenge you to look at the state of the world today and then claim that religious institutions have not failed in making mankind more spiritual, more detached from all the material.

This mysterious element is not naturally born out of religion or religious institutions by themselves, but rather rises like a storm within the heart of anyone who turns their religious practices and doctrines into a twisted thing.

Anthony De Mello brilliantly explains:

You are a sleeping scientist. You mean you understand what Jesus Christ is and you don’t know who you are? How do you know that you have understood Jesus Christ? Who is the person doing the understanding? Find that out first…It’s because we haven’t understood this that we’ve got all these stupid religious people involved in all these stupid religious wars – Muslims fighting against Jews, Protestants fighting Catholics, and all the rest of that rubbish. They don’t know who they are, because if they did, there wouldn’t be wars.

The questions man needs to ask himself are these:

“Is God in my heart?”

“Is my Church divisive and exclusive, or is it inclusive?”

Be careful, because saying that your doors are open to all is not the same as inviting or being inviting to all. You can say to a friend, “Feel free to come by any time, my doors are always open.” Or you can say something that rings of a true invitation, “Why don’t you come over tomorrow, I will prepare a meal for you.”

“Am I over-preoccupied with the sins and personal histories of others? Do I believe that human beings are only worth the sum total of their sins? Am I racist? Am I homophobic? Am I misogynistic? Am I bitter and narrow-minded? Do I have a loud, ignorant, and cursing tongue?

The only reason people curse (and everyone is guilty of this) is because they lack the vocabulary to say what they mean at that moment, and it is also a sign for a lack of prayer. Yet, if we were so well versed in our holier-than-thou religion, we should have a rather extended vocabulary with which to express ourselves, should we not?

Do I make sure all my good acts in and out of church are performed in public for all to see?”

And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.

-Matthew 6:5 NIV

Spirituality, similarly, possesses its own mysterious element; the element of detachment which, by contrast, transforms itself into humble service – and so it gets involved with people in the street who are begging for money, who have lost their faith, who are plagued with the cancer of loneliness, who have been outcast by their families, who are homeless, who are substance addicted, who suffer mental and physical anguish in the remote corners of streets, bus stations and hospitals with no one to hold their hand. Spirituality races towards those who have not yet forgiven and who have bitterness in their hearts, yet seek acceptance, love, forgiveness, and knowledge. Spirituality is impervious to racism, classism, favoritism, separatism, sexual orientation, religious background, and the like.

Spirituality is too busy doing right with right-mindedness to be counting the numbers of, and measuring the gravities of a neighbor’s sins. It is only concerned with the good, the health, the justice, and healing of the world. Spirituality is the archaeologist who digs down deep to find meaning and purpose for all who seek it, whether they may deserve it or not. Spirituality is the absence of judgment and self-righteousness. Spirituality is the carrying on of the example of Jesus.

So, where organized religion may seek to add, to divert, to make complex, spirituality seeks to subtract, to focus, and to simplify, in order to gain ground in understanding and compassion. It discovers more by removing than it ever could by adding. And where religion is a practice, spirituality is a personality trait; it is a way of being in the world.

Anthony De Mello continues:

An openness to the truth, no matter what the consequences, no matter where it leads you and when you don’t even know where it’s going to lead you. That’s faith. Not belief, but faith. Your beliefs give you a lot of security, but faith is insecurity…and mind you, being open does not mean being gullible…you’ve got to challenge everything…but challenge it from an attitude of openness.

Spirituality understands all too well that since we cannot know God, the words contained in the bible are a mere hint. They are an array of magnificent colors used to describe in very limited fashion what God is. They are not meant to be clung to for dear life, for salvation, and declare wars over, or for you to get on its shoulders and call yourself tall above your brothers and sisters.

The words in the bible are not a concrete thing, and there inlies the real danger and problem.

Religion, by definition, takes God and places Him inside a book, or a cathedral, where He can be observed, monitored, read. The process now simply becomes one of behavioral conditioning, where the religious control and respond to their environment, reinforcing the wanted behaviors so that they may be repeated and passed on as tradition and ritual, and punishing the unwanted behaviors accordingly, so that they may be discontinued. Free thinking souls are viewed as a menace, and therefore do not belong to the ‘faith’, or what is worse, are accused of being against God Himself.

Think about that for a minute.

How stupid to concretize words, biblical or not.

If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.

-Romans 10, 9-10 NIV

Words have always been and always will be an area of danger for humankind, especially these days where it seems anything said can potentially end careers. The verses in the bible are only a means for the truth of God to be expressed – they are not truth in and of themselves. So if one is not careful it can alienate from spirituality, and make paranoid in its sense of obligation to have to explain everything away.

Spirituality, by default, does not and cannot; its hands are free of all that mess and what happens as a result is inevitable – it embraces another mess - the messiness of life, but from a much different perspective. It seeks to join and to be joined. Where religion may try to find redemption in, for example, the counting of rosary beads, spirituality seeks redemption in direct action with the souls of the world. Now, is there anything wrong with praying the rosary? Of course not. But if that practice does not move you to right action, both in and out of your home and church, you are assuredly wasting your time.

Pay attention to how many religious people, to a large degree, like to wear their very expensive religious pendants and medals around their necks, on their fingers, and on their clothes for all to see, admire, recognize and respect. It is as if one is either part of the class, the team, or one is not. Suppose for a moment what would happen if one were to strip these polished metals and stones away. It is not too far to figure that many would not even know what to do with themselves, and the result would be, among other things, pressing malignance and uncontrolled anger. And that is a very serious problem to have – to attach so much of your connection to God through such material things. To worship objects, property, and not what they symbolize, that is exactly what the devil wants.

Spirituality has no such needs, fears or wants. It simply hangs its head low in humble strength and walks barefoot if it must into the dark night of the soul for 40 days to talk with God.

Our hero, he does not yet have the words to expand upon it for himself, but a priest once sat him on his lap and said to him succinctly,

“…listen to me carefully...do not believe in people, not even the pope himself, or the Vatican. True faith will have that you believe in God and God only, who alone is unchangeable.”

And that is why humanity needs so much more than the words of the bible to tackle the problems of today. Humanity requires not just spiritual leadership and renewal in and out of churches, synagogues and cathedrals - it requires scientific thinking too. It requires ethics. It requires compassion in the streets. It requires research and technology.

It requires real-world solutions.

And it requires the instruments engineered to help get us to a place of greater peace and harmony with one another. Otherwise what’s the use? In essence, it requires the Spirit of Truth. And Jesus is the incarnation of that spirit. Jesus’ words and method of teaching varied according to whom He was teaching at that moment. He was and is balanced. He is right minded.

How much our woundedness and blind arrogance is costing us!

In that same year, mom motivated and even pushed her son to become an altar boy, making it as though he did not have a choice or say in the matter. But that pushing did not bother him, because he was excited about being a member of something so meaningful, so spirit-filled, and so positively close to God. She did not need to push that hard. His sisters were to become lectors. And so, after a few weeks of training, our hero was presiding in mass right beside the priest. And it was a source of personal joy, pride and confidence.

The priests and church administrators and Sunday school teachers and assistants and choir members he met during this episode of his life were many. It appeared everyone met our hero and his family with legitimate smiles. Conversations seemed authentic, and actual work around the Church was getting done. A priest coming to the apartment for coffee and discussion was commonplace. Our hero relished these visits, rushing to open the door the moment they knocked, and insisting to make the coffee for them. He would then sit right next to them and feel like a grown-up discussing ‘very important things’.

“Remember now,” the priest who would one day marry him said, “that no matter what anyone tries to do to you in this world they will never be able to take your mind away from you. Your mind is your own possession and you can make it do whatever you want. There is hard work and responsibility in that. So study hard. Be intelligent. And of course, never ever forget there is someone who loves you very much watching over you at all times.”

For our hero, there was an admirable quality about the way priests moved about in the world, in the way they led the mass, in the way they communicated with others. It was a time when our hero saw how well accepted priests were in most societies, how needed by their community, and how well they seemed to handle it all.

But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.

-1 Peter 2:9 NIV

One day after Sunday mass, back inside the rectory and alone, were our hero and the young priest with the trimmed black beard and glasses. They were changing out of their garments. In a quick moment the priest looked down and over. He asked quizzically,

“And you there! What do you want to be when you grow up?”

Our hero answered without the least hesitation,

“I am going to be a priest.”

Laughing to himself with surprise and nodding in approval, the young priest now turned his body completely to face the little enthusiastic boy,

“Oh, is that so?”

“Yes.” Our hero was standing at attention.

“And tell me, what do you know about being a priest?”

“Umm…I know they help people a lot and that they can’t have sex and that makes them pure, and that they are really close to God and that is where I want to be. I want to be really close to God just like you are.”

“Ah, yes indeed! You are right! But only Jesus is pure. All the rest of us have original sin. But did you know that there is a lot more to it than that?”

“Well……I’m sure……there….has to be.”

Our hero was beginning to feel embarrassed about the way he had just answered.

“For starters, you have to go to school for a long time where you learn the bible and many more things about God and our Church, but in a very deep way. For that, you get placed in what is called a seminary. You live and work and study there for years with your brothers and teachers before you can even become a priest. There is a lot of sacrifice involved - more than just sex.” Then the young priest shifted in his stance, as if to start a new conversation, “Do you know what the word sacrifice means, little one?”

Our hero had heard the word so many times before, but he did not move to speak.

“Sacrifice means to offer yourself for Christ. To give yourself completely to the Church the same way He did, to love it with your life until the day you die.”

Dare to be different; save your energy for the really important things like contemplation of the topsy-turvy mystery of faith, where death is life, and darkness is light. The Church exists to be an agency of the reign of God, the disturbing, challenging God of Job and Hebrews. In this upside down world, power is humility, and status takes the form of a servant. This alone is the way of the Lord.

-Alan Le Grys

The Expository Times

Over the course of the next several months, and then years, as our hero grew into his teens, in slow and progressive fashion, something had started to go awry in our hero’s home with his mom and sisters. It was like a slow-moving freight-train; thousands of tons of steel humming forward at a steady pace, yet nothing you put in its way could slow it down, or much less stop it.

It was a partly sunny sky where dark clouds had ominously developed into thick, giant water-filled balls in the sky, and all that could be done was watch in fear and in awe of the great storm that was rising.

A Simple Contemplation on

the Delicate Envy of Angels

In my mind, an angel is a self-sufficient entity.

It is unfamiliar with co-dependence and the long,

bitter suffering of a lost love. It does not ponder

first-hand as a member of the human race the

infinite mysteries that surround life on this earth.

Can an angel feel what us humans feel in our

laughter, in our affection, in rain falling on our

skin, in our injury, our countless injustices,

in our anxious understanding that we will all

die someday, stripped even from our own

name? When an angel looks down from heaven,

might it feel a sense of envy because perhaps

it does not know how beautiful it is to suffer

with joy, how honorable to love one’s enemy,

how inexplicable the experience of an embrace or

the ultimate test of our God, as He, in a

cruel mystery before death, removes Himself

from our precious, beating heart?