Good Morning Digitial Neighbors! Happy Friday ADD Irregulars & WSN Provisioners of Padre's, Friends & Refugees at the Report and PHAM & Misfits roaming about at Phetasy! Good Morning to all you Conversants, Lurkers and Wanderers as the day gets underway the weekend unfolds.
I've been going for morning rides in the new car and enjoying either music or silence as learn its various controls (it is clearly smarter than I am) and reap the benefit of seeing wildlife in these early hours. Many racoons, possums, and deer with occasional guest appearances by foxes, armadillos, owls and other creepy crawlers mark my drives.
Changes are coming and I will begin the process of preparing to conclude this assignment and prepare for a new one. My rides are a good time to meditate on all the goodness I have experienced in my decade here. I have so much gratitude for the blessings of this assignment. I have loved every place I have been assigned as a priest and have done my best to serve each parish. I do my best to take each parish as it is and not compare it to other ones I have served. It is not always easy, but it is the fairest one can be as they move from one assignment to another.
I have never been happier in my ministry than at IHM. I suspect I will be using this space to share some of my interior ruminations as I experience this current chapter of my life. The happiness of this community makes me hopeful than I will be able to share the same gifts of my ministry and person in the new assignment as I have at this current one. Of course I will have to filter comments and exercise tact in the new assignment, unfiltered Tom is usually reserved for this space and the people who really known me well.
Unfiltered Tom usually has to do battle with the preconceived ideas that people have of clergy, and priests in particular. While holiness (that elusive dancer and slippery mystery) is the most important aspect of my life, I am not a person of traditional piety. I like piety and love seeing it in the lives of the faithful, but I am too knee-deep in the hoo-doo to maintain a level of piety typical of my vocation. Piety & holiness are related but different realities. Piety is not naïve, and one should not think that pious persons are simpletons (some are, but never exclusively - simpletons exist everywhere.)
Holiness can incorporate piety, but does not depend upon piety to be real. Holiness, that elusive dancer, is what draws us to the Luminous and to our neighbor. The Good Book gives us some primers in what it can look like in the lived experience of faithful Jews & Christians. The Divine invites us to seek His/Their Will and actually give a crap about our neighbors, the real ones, the ones in front of us, the ones we rub elbows with on a daily basis. Those interactions, Divine & Neighborly are the stuff of holiness.
One of the real savings graces of holiness is that those who are really holy often do not know it. Their focus become so other centric that they spend little time thinking about themselves. I have encountered many holy souls, many of whom are not active Disciples or professed worshippers of the Divine. Their genuine concern for discernible truths and authentic help of neighbor are the touchstones of holiness. It comes in many forms and can bud forth in unexpected lives and situations. It is one of the surprises of the Divine that goodness is far from limited to just Believers. Believers, Disciples, Seekers ought to be about holiness, but many things complicate, corrupt and confuse that experience for many.
Sorry about that aside, I do tend to ramble. Anyway, I am always me, but I do have filters and tact mindware so that I do not scandalize those unaccustomed to me. It is not always a success, I have been lectured by some over the years on how I ought to act. SCREW THEM, er. . . . I mean God bless them. 😉I try to be mindful of my audience. Gentle souls do not need to shocked for the sake of shocking while at the same time a little nudging on the understanding of authenticity and holiness is good for us all.
Thanks for the morning read, have a great weekend my digital neighbors!
Today marks the three hundred and thirtieth birthday of the Frenchman François-Marie Arouet, better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire (1694-1778).
Born into a bourgeois family during the reign of Louis XIV, the “Sun King” (r. 1643-1715), Voltaire suffered tragedy at a young age when his mother died. Never close with his father or brother, Voltaire exhibited a rebellious attitude toward authority from his youth. His brilliant mind was fostered in the care of the Society of Jesus, who introduced him to the joys of literature and theater. Despite his later criticisms against the Church, Voltaire, throughout his life, fondly recalled his dedicated Jesuit teachers.
Although he spent time as a civil servant in the French embassy to the Hague, Voltaire’s main love was writing—an endeavor where he excelled in various genres, including poetry, which led to his appointment as the royal court poet for King Louis XV. Widely recognized as one of the greatest French writers, and even hyperbolically referred to by ...
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XIII
The Proud Minister
One day there came into the Garden a man in torn clothes badly bruised and cut, who said to the Lover, “In the name of the Beloved I demand your help.”
So the Lover and the Disciple let him in and dressed his wounds and prepared the best of the vegetables from the Garden for him to eat. When his wounds had been dressed and he had eaten and rested the Lover asked him how he had fallen into this plight, to which the man replied, “I was Minister of the Beloved in a city near this place, where I preached His gospel and expounded His doctrine to the people. I pointed out to them how their sins had made them wholly hateful to the Beloved and how therefore they were utterly beyond the range of His love and He would condemn them to eternal torments, whereon some fell into despair and wept bitterly but many were angry. One day the magistrates called me before them and begged me to leave the city and preach elsewhere for they said I had made many people so angry and desperate that they feared there might be a riot and they might not be able to protect me but that I might suffer some injury. I, however, very zealous for the Beloved and believing that the magistrates only feared that their own sins might be proclaimed, preached the more vehemently, denounced the magistrates and made it abundantly clear that the whole wicked city was foredoomed to eternal punishment by the just provision of the Beloved. Whereon a mob, stirred up no doubt by the corrupt and venal magistrates, fell upon me with sticks and stones, nearly killing me and driving me out of the city in the state in which I came to you.”
“My friend,” said the Lover, “this was not a good deed of yours, for besides denying the unfathomable compassion of the Beloved, you have by your obstinacy caused these people to commit a grievous sin, and this cannot be pleasing to the Beloved, that through you who profess to be His minister the people should become worse. Surely you remember that He Himself said, ‘If they persecute you in one city flee to another.’”
Therefore the man was very angry, and cursing the Lover, said, “I see that I have had a very false report of you and I do not believe that you are a servant of the Beloved at all. When I came to you so injured for the Beloved’s sake you set before me only herbs and fruits although the garden is full of birds which you could have killed to make me a worthy meal. I shall proclaim everywhere that you are no true servant of the Beloved but a mere falterer who dares not suffer in the cause of the Beloved. Be sure that you are foreordained to eternal torments who suffer nothing here.”
For the man was so blinded by his own pride that he could not perceive the scars on the hands and feet and the brows of the Lover nor how the cloth beneath the armpits of his tunic was dyed with a red dye. So he went out of the Garden cursing and shouting.
But the Lover looked sad and said, “A man like this does much harm to the cause of the Beloved, for by thus speaking falsely about the Beloved he may bring men to fear Him but none to love Him, and by love alone can any man approach the Beloved.”
