Christian Reflection On Labor Day

A Christian Response to Labor Day:

I think we should be grateful for our particuar place, which we should feel is a part of our embodiment, and thus our vocation. But we must also critique our penchant for war as a country and the deification of patriots, labor unions and inalienable rights. We should remember that we are creatures, and that labor day is also a call to remember our labors unto God, to steward creation, and to take care of a world which is very good.

A christian engagement of labor day should i think also remember workers, in all countries and concern itself with remembering the struggles put forth to make the world we live in one that comes at sometimes no cost to us but high costs to them. We should remember that what we call labor here is in many cases built on the intensely difficult struggles of others and that our country has reached success through stepping on other countries along the way.

I think that a Chrisitan engagement of labor day remembers that this country we find ourselves in was built in part by slaves, and by the power of people breaking their backs for the institution called industry, by children in factories, and men starving during the great depression.

Further, it remembers that the place of that memory is not as an idealistic ancestor worship but sees labor as part of embodiment and what it means to be created as a human being. It remembers the Labor of God, both in Creation and the cross as labors of love and generosity.

Labor day for Christians means remembering that while we participate in the American narrative, and we do so as Americans, it is only secondarily to our lives as Christians. We are inescapably American, and while we love this country, it is a penultimate love, it cannot claim our total allegiance, not in its stories or its collective memory. We . I further think that labor day can help us reflect on our labors as a church body, while remembering that our lives as Christians are told by another story.

This year, Labor day falls on the monday after the 23rd sunday of ordinary time. And for the church the liturgical color is green, it is a reminder of growth, and for me a reminder of our expectation that a new day is rising and has already risen, and a new world is coming yet is already here. It is a reminder of the coming future and its already present place among us at the Lord’s table where we gather to meet new creation.

It is the feast day of St. Regina who was a martyr, according to what we know of her from some sources. According to these sources

“She was born in the 3rd century in Alise, the ancient Alesia where two hundred years earlier Vercingetorix had fought so valiantly against Caesar. Her mother died at her birth, and her father, a prominent pagan citizen, entrusted the child to a Christian nurse who baptized her…In 251, at the age of fifteen, she attracted the eye of a man called Olybrius, the prefect of Gaul, who determined to have her as his wife. He sent for the girl and discovered that she was of noble race and of the Christian Faith. Chagrined, he attempted to have her deny her faith, but the saintly maiden resolutely refused and also spurned his proposal of marriage. Thereupon, Olybrius had her thrown into prison.”

Her Symbols include: Shepherdesses, Against poverty, impoverishment,torture victims.

What we should do with these things in this particular year is remember where we are at as a country, and what her life can remind us of. While we are in recession, or coming out of one, whatever the case is, we can remember those who are less forutnate than we are. We can remember those who are oppressed, we can remember martyrs who like St. Regina have suffered for the faith. We can remember the internally displaced refugees, and those who are laboring to liberate them, we can remember the labors of those working for peace, and the labors of those who are our neighbors. We can remember the workers without jobs, the people who will not be celebrating today, the people who have no labor to set themselves to, the families concerned about their tomorrow.

We can remember them and pray for them, we can be Christians and offer them a better allegiance, a better society, and a better hope, the Christian hope that What God The Father has done for Jesus, He will do for all of us at the appointed time. That our hope and our labors towards that hope are not in vain but are worth the work which we put into them, because that work will be caught up into God and recreated to justify all things finally at the end of all things.

We can take this time to reflect as well, on the readings for today, and see what they mean, and how they challenge us to encounter Jesus Christ and give up ourselves and embrace Him and only Him.

Reading 1
Col 1:24–2:3

Brothers and sisters:
I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake,
and in my flesh I am filling up
what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ
on behalf of his Body, which is the Church,
of which I am a minister
in accordance with God’s stewardship given to me
to bring to completion for you the word of God,
the mystery hidden from ages and from generations past.
But now it has been manifested to his holy ones,
to whom God chose to make known the riches of the glory
of this mystery among the Gentiles;
it is Christ in you, the hope for glory.
It is he whom we proclaim,
admonishing everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom,
that we may present everyone perfect in Christ.
For this I labor and struggle,
in accord with the exercise of his power working within me.

For I want you to know how great a struggle I am having for you
and for those in Laodicea
and all who have not seen me face to face,
that their hearts may be encouraged
as they are brought together in love,
to have all the richness of assured understanding,
for the knowledge of the mystery of God, Christ,
in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

Responsorial Psalm
Ps 62:6-7, 9

R. (8) In God is my safety and my glory.
Only in God be at rest, my soul,
for from him comes my hope.
He only is my rock and my salvation,
my stronghold; I shall not be disturbed.
R. In God is my safety and my glory.
Trust in him at all times, O my people!
Pour out your hearts before him;
God is our refuge!
R. In God is my safety and my glory.

Gospel
Lk 6:6-11

On a certain sabbath Jesus went into the synagogue and taught,
and there was a man there whose right hand was withered.
The scribes and the Pharisees watched him closely
to see if he would cure on the sabbath
so that they might discover a reason to accuse him.
But he realized their intentions
and said to the man with the withered hand,
“Come up and stand before us.”
And he rose and stood there.
Then Jesus said to them,
“I ask you, is it lawful to do good on the sabbath
rather than to do evil,
to save life rather than to destroy it?”
Looking around at them all, he then said to him,
“Stretch out your hand.”
He did so and his hand was restored.
But they became enraged
and discussed together what they might do to Jesus.

Today’s Collect is:
Almighty God, every good thing comes from you. Fill our hearts with love for you, increase our faith, and by your constant care protect the good you have given us. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

-Quotes on St. Regina Taken from http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/liturgicalyear/calendar/day.cfm

Can I just get this off my chest?

 

I dunno, going to the monastery this break really really fucked with me, head and body, mind and spirit. I feel like i’ve had a few too many screwdrivers and none of it was worth the drinking.

 

But I also feel like I got drunk on something substantial, and am inebriated with longing to return to the simple and unburdened life of the monastic way. Forsaking all things, and living a life in service to God and the world through prayer.

 

It was a challenging experience and I’m not sure I was able to really appreciate it fully because of the emotional baggage I carried with me there that i needed to sort through before i could find any semblance of rest. I haven’t slept well since that first night there. I did all my crying on the way over there, and was just exhausted by the end of the first night.

 

I feel like a shell of a person some nights, and i feel as if since i returned i’ve been living half aware and half exhausted, and fully guilty.

 

I don’t feel like I’m at all present in or even really observing my life. I feel as if all my energy is going towards incessant worrying and all i can do is sit back and wait until my whole world comes crashing down around me. I am honestly afraid, i’m afraid of what I’ll do with myself. Afraid of what she means to me. Afraid of what I mean to myself. Afraid that I’m falling too comfortably into orthodoxy and receding into mother church for the comforts of her ability to supply those answers which I need without being brave enough to seek them on my own. Afraid that I’m not devoted enough to Mary, and simultanesouly afraid I’m too devoted.

 

I’m afraid i’m too flirtatious, but not manly enough. I’m afraid that i am a shell of what it means to be a man even though i love it when she touches my beard.

 

I am restless and in awe at my own ability to choose failure and defeat when sometimes i’ve so clearly reached after success and managed to grasp it. I feel i have fallen in some inexplicable way and become disoriented in the midst of my sudden lucidity about myself and the world.

 

I’m not at all sure what to do with myself, and my once glorious intents have fallen to the wayside as I consider what i mean, and what my existence means.

 

I’m afraid to reach out and just be, i’m afraid to move on, afraid to hold on. I don’t know what the hell to do and i’m everywhere surrounded by fears, and undergoing the sufferings of love, those tender sufferings that wound most truly.

 

My eyes are swollen with restlessness, and my mind is awake in ever increasing streams of inaccessible consciousness.

 

What am I?

 

Who am I?

 

I am not sure how i would even begin to address these questions, or make satisfactory expiation for the blood they require in seeking an answer.

 

I am not as adventurous as I once thought myself to be, and feel as if I carry this unpronounceable weight of duty and devotion.

 

And I feel the part of the unloved child in the midst of all this. This is not a plea for attention, just the reality of me. I feel as if whether i am present or absent makes no difference to most. I feel like I am unlovely and awkward, the boy who wants to be beautiful, the man who longs to be told he is special to someone, somewhere.

 

My relationship with my mom has fallen into a deadening ritual of hellos and goodbyes that are interspersed with short polite withdrawn conversations. She can feel the change in me, i feel it in myself, and I am not aware of if there is a way to make peace. I am questioning my draw towards orthodoxy and wondering if it is out of childish fear, or out of an acknowledgement of truth in fullness that is drawing me.

 

I feel my own death impending, looming, but simultaneously endlessly distant.

 

I hate being the accomplished student. I feel as if I’m nothing else. I wish that Eli was more than just a paper writer, more than a name on the lips of the inquisitive or the disgusted. I wish Eli was the name on the lips of a lover, of a friend calling to check up on me, a name in the back of a mind, at the heart of a pleasant memory. I feel like everywhere i go i leave death and tragedy in my wake, and where it’s not there yet, it will be.

 

I feel overcommitted and under-appreciated, overtaxed and underpaid, mostly aloof even though I long so badly to be connected.

 

As I sit here I make a plea to have a simple life, i wish i could walk away from all of this, say fuck the world and go back to the monastery, back to the simple life.

 

I wish that was my calling. I’m tired of feeling like i’m part of something bigger than myself. I get this feeling like i’m being moved towards something tangible, solid, practical, all-encompassing and “destined” for me. But I hate that feeling sometimes.

 

It’s a wonderful excitement that helps me taste adventure, but I hate feeling this inevitable pull towards something I’d rather walk away from. I would rather just be empty, free of all commitments, devotions, positions, titles.

 

I hate this uncertainty.

 

I wish I was the whispered blessing on a lover’s lips, instead i’m the bane of a middle aged republican history teacher. 

 

I am not what I once was, i’m not an artist anymore. I’m barely a theologian. It all feels like pretend, and I don’t know where the fuck i lost myself, but I feel like i’m barely present here and now.

 

I am hurt and frustrated by unspeakable things that I wish I could take back, change, undo, avoid involvement in, and just never have been a part of. I wish that I could dump all the exteriors and retreat into a life of private faith, just the simple piety of a man trying to live a life as best he can for himself and maybe a family. Farm life in Ireland or something, just raw, and connected to the earth.
For more that I try to be a man, i feel like academics strip that from me. I want simplicity, but the academic circles force me into the realm of speculation on language and definitions, i just want to eat a steak with my hands.

 

Fuck me….

 

I don’t know what i want i’m uncertain on almost every level and feel wretched and terribly lost.

 

I feel like a little boy who doesn’t know how to begin to address coming out of his mother’s skirt and into the world at large.

 

I may be a pillar of boldness on the surface, but my shyness lurks underneath, and I feel the implications of my reservations, of the dignities that I hold onto.

 

I try to let them go, but I feel as if when i do they might be misinterpreted as romantic endeavors. I’m not trying to start anything with anyone. These dignities, these wants, these reservations and self restrictions, these ascetic choices that aren’t beneficial to anyone, these empty formalities that are further away from self actualized manhood than anything else. But I feel as if i look a certain way to the world.

 

I am not trying to fill some sort of empty gap with mockeries and jesting, I wish I had a connection. I wish i could bear my whole heart, and that someone would care enough to listen, to open up too.

 

I’ve hurt too many people along the way, ridiculed too many innocents, broken too many hearts, and confounded too many hopes and aspirations. I am the dark mirror which reflects back only the past, only broken hearts and weeping faces, bleeding eyes and broken places.

 

I am wandering the world in silence and I feel as if I need to scream. No night has ever been this dark, and for some reason though I feel this is one of the darkest nights of my life, I feel simultaneously that this is not the worst i’ve faced though it certainly feels like it in an indirect way. See, I don’t have a manifest panic,it’s more like a resignation to the darkness, that just treats the darkness as a trite formality.

 

i don’t know why that is, because I feel totally abandoned, and maybe this is me being able to meet God in the situation, maybe it’s just numbness, 

 

I can’t be sure.

 

So I wait, and wrestle with these questions in my mind, and let them sweep over me in over growing concentric circles of consciousness.

 

I guess that is all I really have to say, not a pretty poem, or a well crafted internal monologue, just a blurt, with a feeling of emptiness still not sated in the end.

Why Sexuality Matters

My Dialogue with Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body: An assertion on why purity is important.

Just recently I’ve been thinking a lot about sexuality, purity and wholeness. In recent dialouges with with fellow students, professors friends and colleagues it has come to my attention that while I have a basic idea of what I believe about sexuality and the body, I’ve not spent much time developing or writing on it much, and this was surprising to me considering how sacred my theology of the body has become. So today i wanted to spend some time in thought about my person, your person and why sexuality matters.

So, first of all, what is the body? Here i’m gonna lay out an assertion of the human person according to what I believe the scriptures are telling us and several interrelated theories on being. From there we’ll talk about being and practical theology and finally conclude with the importance of sexuality to human identity, and ultimately why sexuality matters.

For a long time I’ve been disturbed by the question of what happens at marriage that inherently changes something, how is it that before a ring almost everything is off limits and then by a simple token everything is ok? What difference can a ritual make in ontologically shifting something from one place to another? Is marriage really that important in uniting two persons into one flesh, or is it a formality with pretty metaphors?

So, to answer my own question about marriage and the ontology of such a union, it is my belief that what has happened is in our conception of being when we lost the idea of being in communion we took a shift from the idea of communion as a necessary element of being. To be a person is to be a being-in-relationship, and therefore to necessitate a constant dialogue between an internal and external self-hood.

Sartre shows us in his Being and Nothingness that in reality man is never being in itself as for example a rock is. A rock simply is, but we as people lack being-in-itself because being-in-itself lacks consciousness. We are being for itself and thus lack definite being and are forced to create our being out of nothingness. And as foray into dimension theory and the propositions of time purported by H.G. Wells, if anything lacks duration it cannot be said to exist. Humans therefore are not and cannot be static being or inherently and diametrically dualistic beings, for change affects people in time and therefore their being is dynamic in that when viewed in 4 dimensions height, length, depth, and duration being is never in itself, but in relation to time, space, objects and other objects of being to discern and develop our own being.

This dynamic selfhood is the consciousness that we have of ourselves being aware of things outside ourselves and our idea of the perceptions with which we interact with the world. This, not even this is static since our perceptions change, ideas develop, and over time this self matures, corrupts, decays, grows, evolves, becomes more self aware, less self aware, directed, misdirected and always interactive. The self as relates to other objects in both time and space, in memory, and perception outside the internal perception of what we believe to be ourselves. Sartre helps us do away away with Kant’s dualism of noumena and phenomena, showing us that there is no ungraspable appearance behind things but rather only things in themselves as they appear.

 

The external self constitutes the internal self because that self is projected onto the external world and receives its selfhood back from the dialogue between the projection and reception of meaning. The internal self is not an objective reality but exists as interpreted through our perception of self that emerges through interaction with those things that we have relationality with in the world outside our physical bodies. In Sartre’s idea the for-itself of being makes of the world a blank canvas onto which it projects its being, and in marriage, to get back to the topic at hand, there is a mutual imprint of being which allows both giving and reception of being through mutual imprintedness.

Hopefully I have done some justice to what I believe Sartre is saying.

Marriage is the mystery by which human being becomes truly alive, it is sacramental, holy, and relational. The thing that changes is not the world, but our perception of self, from the myself which we are so involved in in our day to the ourself which is become myself. Therefore as we search for being in the world, the world reaches us through the eyes of another such that as we explore out for ourselves, the meaning of ourselves is presented to us in another. The other becomes the I and vice versa such that the other person is a mirror of ourselves as we explore identity through the perceptions and reflections brought out in the living interlocution of being. So that when we are called to love one another, as we do in marriage, we find our self consciousness should be caught up in neighbor consciousness. The I and Thou becomes the We that is You and the You that is the mirror of myself. 

So how does all this preliminary dialogue take us back to the matter of sexuality?

Let’s begin with an assertion by the brilliant and moving theology of the body by Pope John Paul II:

 

It seems that the second narrative of creation has assigned to man “from the beginning” the function of the one who, above all, receives the gift (cf. especially Gn 2:23). “From the beginning” the woman is entrusted to his eyes, to his consciousness, to his sensitivity, to his heart. On the other hand, he must, in a way, ensure the same process of the exchange of the gift, the mutual interpenetration of giving and receiving as a gift. Precisely through its reciprocity, it creates a real communion of persons.

 

Giving and receiving is perichoretic, it is interpenetrational and dynamic between the two persons of the union making it sacred. The being of two persons becomes completely mysterious in that they become not absorbed in one another, nor annihilated in the other, but having substance in the other each person is a mirror to which the other looks for that penetrating substantiality. The giving is within both parties and the reception is within both parties. The man in the garden received the woman and looked upon her, being given over to him not in the sense of her reduction to object but in the sense of his embrace of her, his reception of her is in itself a giving. In her being received she is also receiving.

 

The man is enriched not only through her, who gives him her own person and femininity, but also through the gift of himself. The man’s giving of himself, in response to that of the woman, enriches himself. It manifests the specific essence of his masculinity which, through the reality of the body and of sex, reaches the deep recesses of the “possession of self.”…At the same time he is received as a gift by the woman, in the revelation of the interior spiritual essence of his masculinity, together with the whole truth of his body and sex. Accepted in this way, he is enriched through this acceptance and welcoming of the gift of his own masculinity. Subsequently, this acceptance, in which the man finds himself again through the sincere gift of himself, becomes in him the source of a new and deeper enrichment of the woman. The exchange is mutual. In it the reciprocal effects of the sincere gift and of the finding oneself again are revealed and grow.

 

It is in giving oneself to the other that the other becomes the mirror through which the self truly develops. The union of marriage sanctifies ontologically what already occurs naturally, and in their giving to each other, they are enriched. Marriage is an invitation to love one’s neighbor, to care for one another and to stand for one another.

So, in short what’s all this talk mean to me? I’ll tell you.

This body is sacred, it is baptized into the already resurrected body of Christ, my person is intimately connected with Christ, through the eucharist, and through the Spirit of life which animated Christ back to life and raised him from the dead. This body has been marked and sealed as a sacrament of the eschaton. Therefore when considering the integrity of the body, it is necessary that I should consider my person an extension of the literal body of Christ which is sacred.

Therefore as a sacramental entity this body and the bodies of my fellow humans are sacred, bearing in them the image of God, the image of Christ. Unity before marriage is not about merely disregarding a tradition, it is a violation of the spirit which animates us all, who is within us and gives us life. It is a violation of being reflecting onto another and being reflected on in such a way that the mirror formed in mutual union is never expunged and the connection is formed, because it has to do not strictly with an unimportant ritual but with the notion and condition of being itself is adultery an inadequate resolution.

To quote liberally someone, I believe it was C.S. Lewis, who said that the person who lusts does not love too much it is that the person loves too little to truly love at all.

In short, those are my thoughts for today. I hope that someone wanted to hear that. I know I’m not done with this topic, but thanks for tuning in.

Also, I realize i didn’t follow my basic outline at the start, sorry for those of you who expected better. whatever.

eli

Sex Changes and The Light of Humanity

Quirky title. thought so. But anyways, don’t let it throw you.

What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
- John 1

In Him was life…and that life was the light of humanity, that light shines on….

I’m not going to go into a super deep reflection or anything, I just, i think that as I go through my day, I’m trying to remind myself of the significance of all of this, and what God means for reality as a unified whole.

In Christ is life, that life is our light, I can’t give a commentary that decrypts the message, other than, He has brought life into being. My own life, redeemed, as I’ve been talking to my friends from years ago this week, I realize that in Him I have found life. That life has brought me out of suffering in the past, has brought me suffering in the present, has changed me, has given me light.

There is darkness. . .screw the darkness. The light for humanity that is found in the life manifested in Christ shines on. There is no reason to allow depression to choke out hope, no reason to let doubt steal my sanity, to let fear steal my humanity.

I’m thinking that while it’s easy to doubt, it’s not mine. It doesn’t belong to me.

It leaves you feeling pretty hollow
It might be nice to look at
Don’t forget you’re stuck with it tomorrow

- Dresden Dolls “Sex Changes”

It’s ok to struggle, St. Peter says that we all shall, and we do. Life is composed of interludes of suffering and rest. But to give up, as they say it leaves you feeling pretty hollow. And there’s everything that comes with that tomorrow.

There is love in this beating heart, there is hope in these tired hands, and they are weary, but determined, to look to Christ for strength.

Thanks For Tuning In,

Thanks to:

- The Dresden Dolls

To My Mother

In honor of the up and coming Mother’s Day 2008, I would like to write a special thank you to my own mother, a woman of faith whose life illuminates my own. I am grateful for the love evidenced in her life, and the beauty of her person, and since I am far, I keep you near in my heart. I feel as if your love and dedication to being a good mother has helped form me into the man I continue developing into. I dedicate this page to you, and honor you.

In honor of a wonderful woman, within whose love everything has place to become itself, as in CS Lewis’ The Great Divorce, mother, you cultivate and nurture into life even those things which are dead. Your love gives place for all things to flourish, may you continue to live such a wonderful expression of the sacred heart of Our Lord.

Blessed are you mother, from whom love flows in abundance,

Blessed are you woman, giver of life, expression of Our Lady unto Christ,

Blessed are you mother, from which I drew my life,

I honor the life I have been given as a sacrifice unto Our Lord,

May you live Forever in His Presence

May you be honored greatly for your unseen, unknown works,

Blessed are you, Woman of God, for your heart is bountiful in mercy

Thank you for your forgiveness,

Thank you for your endless love

Such as only a mother can give

May you be Blessed, not only today, but forever

Such as is the will of the Triune Lord

In the Name of The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit

Amen.