Enjoying The Lyrid Meteor Shower Under Humbling Monastic Skies

Last night the Lyrid meteor shower was expected to peak around 10:30 p.m.  A little after 10 p.m., I headed out of my cell to see if I could spot any shooting stars.  As I was closing the gate to the garden of my cell, I looked up and saw a meteor streaking across the sky.  Given the narrow bit of sky that's in range of sight from that path between the rows of monastic cells, I figured something like, "Wow, if I saw one right away, in that small bit of sky, maybe there are a lot of them."  

I continued and went off the path, and in the direction of the driveway.  After a couple hundred feet, I stopped and looked up.  The sky was quite clear.  As I was standing there facing the firmament, I considered that we're tiny human beings, on only one planet, orbiting a relatively small star amidst hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy, amongst hundreds of billions of galaxies.  Recalling our insignificance, the challenges we face are brought into perspective.

Witnessing the unfathomably large expanse above, I witnessed a meteor racing through the darkness.  As is the case the vast majority of the time, it streaked out and disappeared.  However, it called to mind a previous instance when I was watching a meteor shower and a dot suddenly appeared, not moving, but getting much brighter, and then suddenly winking out.  Back then I realized that what I had seen was a meteor heading right at me.

Recalling that memory of merciful deliverance from utter annihilation, once again I received several nourishing reminders.  Whatever we are presently enduring, it could be worse.  Right now the coronavirus threatens our physical health, is killing some of us, putting others of us in intensive care units, depriving us of financial income, and restricting us from traveling.  Yet, thanks be to God, a giant meteor has not hurtled into our atmosphere and wreaked widespread carnage.  Earlier this year there were multiple instances when very large meteors came relatively close to us but sped by with no physical impacts.

However, if we so choose, we can let these reminders of our littleness, fragility and precariousness have significant spiritual impacts upon us.  We can welcome these messengers from the wider realm of the universe so that they may teach us humility.  If they help us to be humble, then we can take a further step and turn toward God.  If we meditate on these matters, we can come to find that, in the midst of what we currently see as misfortune, we have limitless reason to thank, adore and praise God.  Amen.  

Give Thanks Always

Recently I was walking along a path here at the hermitage.  About one hundred feet ahead of me I saw a deer, who seemed to notice me at roughly the same time.  He pranced swiftly, yet apparently with little effort, for he was gracefully moving and smoothly advancing in his path.  After a moment I realized that he was heading toward a brick wall, about four feet high.  For a person running such a wall as this would be an obstacle.  Yet I knew this buck would have no trouble scaling this wall.  In light of how it would be so difficult for a human being, I knew it would be remarkable, this physical feat I was about to behold.  Without breaking its stride, the deer leapt in a single bound up onto the grassy ground which began at the top of the wall.  In this seamless motion he continued taking his flowing steps.  I was grateful to God for such beauty in his creatures.  

With a bit more time, however, I meditated further upon what we have from God, namely, everything that is, which consequently includes much which seems less pleasant.  We see creatures which we do not appreciate as much.  We hear how others suffer.  We ourselves feel pain.  Do we thank God when we look upon things which are not our favorites?  Are we thanking God when we are undergoing tribulations?  Everything we encounter and experience presents an opportunity to draw closer to God.  When we feel challenged, we are called to grow, to become more than we have been.  We may, indeed often we do, wish to avoid such challenges, but to do so is often to turn from the invitation to evolve and, with God's help, to become capable of more than we had thought possible.  

When we let God work through us, He displays marvelous creations through us... yet often we choose to remain in our suffering rather than embrace it so that through it God can transform us into something wonderful.  Even under excruciating conditions, we are offered chances in which we can choose to learn.  Lessons await us in circumstances which seem dark and pointless.  Although at such times in our lives, little seems to make sense, at such junctures, if we can recognize and embrace the invitations for growth, wondrous landscape lies ahead beyond what initially seems to be too much for us.  

If we take such leaps of faith in God, after a time, we come to realize that through the trials we have been enduring, and the attendant pain we have been feeling, God has been calling us to be more than we have been.  We rest in the comfort of this reassuring knowledge, having been helped to see that He loves us as a Father and as a Mother, blessing us at all times, displaying wonderful sights in front of us at certain points, and at others depriving us of comforts.  As a parent is at times tender and at other times stern, so God is with us, presenting us with circumstances which are all gifts, which are to be for our benefit.*

Once we realize that God not only is with us always, but ceaselessly waits for us, patiently, and guides us for our benefit, even when it does not seem at first to be so, with time we will come to be more and more grateful to Him.**  Knowing that He works all things for our good, we come to thank Him more and more often.***  Under more and more types of situations, we render Him more and more praise and thanksgiving.  Eventually we should be thanking Him always for everything.****  Thus rejoice always.*****  This is Heaven.  

* Hebrews 12:3-11.  
** Matthew 28:20.
*** Romans 8:28. 
**** Ephesians 5:20. 
***** Philippians 4:4. 

From Here To There

Some people probably think I am insane.  I voluntarily left my well-paying job as an attorney.  By the time I left that job, every year I was accruing five weeks of vacation time.  We also got more than a half dozen holidays off every year.  I haven’t yet mentioned that we also got the week between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day off.  As you might expect, the job had excellent benefits.  I was under relatively little stress at that job.  I even felt somewhat of a sense of fulfillment in that position.  As I insinuated at the beginning, there are people who likely think I am crazy. 

          However, I was just not happy.  I was not deriving enough satisfaction out of my work.  Later, I would conclude that I had not been sufficiently nourishing my soul in that employment.  At the time, I could not articulate specifically what my vocation was; I just knew I was not doing what I was supposed to be doing. 

          Accordingly, I left my job as a lawyer.  I got accepted into the Peace Corps.  I moved to Morocco. 

          Rather than spend significant time here describing my tenure as a Peace Corps Volunteer and my time in Morocco, I refer you to the blog I maintained when I was a Peace Corps Volunteer (see the link at the side of this webpage).  For present purposes, I merely offer a couple of pieces of information.  I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the field of Youth Development.  I taught English as a second language to Moroccan youths and otherwise helped them become more well-rounded individuals. 

While I spent a significant amount of time working, I also had a great deal of spare time.  I passed much of my free time reading.  As my time in Morocco progressed, I read more and more spiritual books.  I read the entire Bible.  I slowly savored “The Imitation of Christ” by Thomas a Kempis.  I read works of Thomas Merton. 

I also read about spiritual disciplines, namely, solitude yet also spiritual community, as well as serving others, living simply, praying, studying God’s Word, meditating upon it and submitting to God.  I noted that these practices were all tendencies I had been developing in Morocco, and that I hoped to retain them in whatever endeavor I next undertook. 

Soon after I read about the spiritual disciplines, I read Thomas Merton’s autobiography, “The Seven Storey Mountain.”  I realized that as a monk, Merton spent time in spiritual community as well as in solitude, and that he was serving others, was living a simple lifestyle, and was praying, and was reading The Word and was studying and meditating upon It.  He was trying to submit to God as much as he could.  I suddenly wondered, “Has God been calling me to be a monk?” 

In Morocco, I often thought about what I would do once I returned to the U.S.  I had been thinking that I wanted to use my skills to help people, so that I would be serving God, and doing what He wanted me to do.  Indeed, a vocation is the job or occupation to which God calls a person.  I hadn’t realized that in trying to determine what my next undertaking would be, I had been trying to discern my vocation.  I had been trying to figure out what particular work and lifestyle God had in mind for me. 

I had found that silence and solitude had been quite helpful as I discerned my vocation.  In my discernment, I had spent much time in prayer, much as contemplative monks do.  Some people might think of contemplative monks as escaping from the world.  Contemplative monks do not seek to shut out the world and never again have contact with the world.  Rather, they seek to share the fruits of their contemplative life with those who do not live in the monastery. 

Indeed, people come here to the hermitage sometimes only for part of the day, at times coming only for Mass.  Others come and often stay overnight here at the hermitage.  They come to enjoy the silence.  They clear their heads.  Have you ever made a bad decision?  Have you wished that you took more time to more carefully and calmly consider what you were doing?  We aim to help people sit in silence and stillness so that they make bring the fruits of such contemplation back into the rest of their lives. 

In the silence and the solitude I had had in Morocco, I found that I was better able to listen to God.  Yet back then, when I was so often in such a quiet space, alone, I was not aware what God, or even I, was doing in such a place.  Rather, I was not aware what God was doing in me, how He was transforming me and gently guiding me with the Holy Spirit. 

Although it seemed like a mystery as my life was unfolding, now, looking back, it seems obvious.  God was helping me evolve so that I would be happier.  God wants us to be happy in simply being ourselves.  We are to do what we are good at doing.  We are to meet the world’s needs.  We are to serve God and our neighbor.  However, in receiving this message, we are being directed in a way contradictory to what the world often tells us.  The world leads us to believe, and unfortunately, we do often erroneously convince ourselves, that we need to buy this particular thing, we need to have this other thing, we need to look a certain way.  Unfortunately, many of these messages are trying to deceive us into following illusions, and also unfortunately, we follow many of these misleading messages.  We will not have any of these possessions with us once we arrive on the other side of the divide between this life and the next.  Therefore, the question is raised: Do we even possess any of it?  In the material sense, in this life, yes, we can legally own property.  Yet we won’t own it in eternity.  All we have eternally are our souls, are our spirits.  We do well when we tend well to the spirits of ourselves and others. 

You might think of acting well now with a view to the next life as analogous to planning prudently for retirement.  People manage the income they have coming in now so that they will enjoy their retirement later.  All the more important it is to conduct oneself well now so as to later be living in eternal life.  That’s what God wants.  And in getting there, he wants us to be happy along the way. 

True happiness is far easier to achieve than it appears.  We are called to listen to God and to obey God.  In so doing, we gain freedom.  We are set free from things, no longer enslaved to them.  We are liberated from all which draws us away from Him. 

The prophet Isaiah proclaimed

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,

because the Lord has anointed me;

He has sent me to bring good news to the afflicted,

to bind up the brokenhearted,

To proclaim liberty to the captives,

release to the prisoners[.]  Isaiah 61:1-2.

Jesus explained that He was making that Scripture passage come true as He was reading it one day in the synagogue.  Luke 4:16-21.  Jesus shows us The Way, and tells us the good news, which brings us back to God.  God calls us to our vocations so that we will become more ourselves.  In setting aside work, activities and lifestyles which, for many of us, do not bring us true happiness, we set ourselves free; we are no longer prisoners to the illusions which society demands us to impose upon ourselves.  When we accept the vocations to which God is calling us, we are no longer captives to the lives we were never meant to live.  When we open our hearts, we become who God has always intended us to be.  We are then truly, profoundly happy.