Love Your Heaven (don’t chase others)

What is Heaven? It is life lived in the presence of God by doing His will. The Catholic teaching is that Heaven begins in this life at baptism. To test our faith, God remains partially veiled to us in this life whereas in the next He will fully reveal Himself. Nevertheless, in a real way, Heaven begins now, when we live in His presence and busy ourselves with whatever He asks.

For each person, God puts together a unique set of circumstances in this life that will be Heaven for them. This is their vocation, how God calls them to labor on His behalf and where He will meet them and make them super abundant in virtue and the fruits of the Holy Spirit. We all have different temperaments, hopes, dreams, and opportunities. God is putting it all together and waiting for us to step into that blessed space of Heaven for us (e.g. our vocation). When God puts something together we will notice two things:

1. organic, a flow. There will be some things that will “just flow” organically, on a natural and supernatural level for each of us. There are so many things we take for granted about ourselves, but we are all more uniquely gifted than we realize. The truth is that we have our own way of doing things, and there are certain activities that we assume other people could easily do, but we actually do well and other people would do them less effectively. Those activities and pastimes are “a good fit” even if they challenge us. We can try pursuing another lifestyle, but we will find that there is a lifestyle that just flows and works somehow. It just works and feels right. This is a sign of a vocation.
   2. Fruitful. God makes some things fruitful in our lives and not others. God opens some doors and not others. He makes different things fruitful in our lives and opens different doors for each of us. What worked great for us may not be beneficial for another person based on the different ways that God makes our lives fruitful.
   

   Where there is an organic flow and we are fruitful, is our vocation and Heaven for us. That is the little corner of the Kingdom of Heaven that God has tasked us with and called us to grow and care for. There are as many different vocations, or Heavens, as there are people. We have each been formed and capacitated to serve and thrive in different ways.
   
   

   One of the most tempting and toxic things we can do is “grass is greener” towards the success and well being of another person. They do something well that is our highest idea of fulfillment and achievement. We look at ourselves and ask, “why didn’t I achieve that?” or “why doesn’t my life look that way?” We may try, from sheer will power, to create the life we think we should have in imitation of the other person. If it worked so well for them and is so fulfilling for them, then we want it for ourselves. We try to claim someone else’s Heaven and make it our own.
   

   While it’s true that we can and should be inspired by others, we should keep it to emulating their virtues, and not trying to replicate the actual circumstances of their lives. According to the Bible, human beings make plans, but God guides their steps (Proverbs 16:19). God is providential over circumstances. It is not for us to create our circumstances from scratch. God gets to decide what He wants to shape each of us into. He is the potter, and we are the clay (Isaiah 64:8). We don’t get to choose where God will meet us and prosper us. This is another way of saying that we don’t get to choose what will be Heaven for us. It is foolish to go chasing after someone else’s Heaven, or think that we can architect any particular Heaven for ourselves from sheer will power.
   What  keeps us chasing other people’s Heaven is sometimes FOMO, fear of missing out because we don’t understand what Heaven is. We think it is a particilar place or destination. We don’t understand that it is fundamentally a relationship with God, and an optimal state of being that flows from that. When we understand this, we will give ourselves full permission to rest in that place that Heaven is for us. We don’t have to be thrown off by the fact that Heaven is different for someone else. If wonderful things are happening “over there,” that is no threat to our Heaven. There is no need to abandon what we’re doing in case it’s even better elsewhere. It won’t be better: our best is our vocation, what God has put together uniquely for us. Our job is to thrive where God plants us. Mysteriously, this requires some discipline. 
   

   God decides what will be Heaven for us, and we can choose to embrace that and step into it, or not. In many ways, this is an extension of the moral choices God asks us to make. Heaven is a place of holiness, as summed up by the Beatitudes and the Ten Commandments. We can choose to live or not live virtuously, but that does nothing to change what Heaven is. Heaven will always be what it is, and to enter it, I have to conform myself to what It is. The same is true of our vocation. There is a path to Heaven, our vocation, which God has willed for each of us. We can choose to accept or not accept it, but that will not change the truth about our vocation. Our vocation, Heaven on earth for us, will always be what it is. It’s up to us to accept it and conform our lives to it.

Mass: The Invisible Made Visible

Signs

In the Catholic tradition, every concrete thing is a sign and symbol revealing an invisible truth. A family isn't just a family (father, mother, children); they are a sign of the Trinity (God the Father, Son, Holy Spirit). Marriage isn't just two people uniting on the basis of mutual attraction; it is a sign of Christ's eternal marriage to His bride, the Church. A meal isn't just something tasty we share with friends and family; it is a sign of Communion, the holy meal of immortality.

God intended for creation to be a sign. We are meant to move from the tangible to the intangible, the concrete to the abstract. All of life can be "read" in this way.

At any given moment, so many things are happening to me. It mostly seems mundane, and yet mysteriously purposeful. People come and go. Opportunities present themselves, doors close. I feel inspired to try this or that. In spite of my best efforts, trials come and not everything is within my control.

What is the invisible, ultimate reality constantly at play beyond what I can see? When I sense greater forces at work, what are they?

The standard religious response to this would be, "God." His Providence, etc. But can we flesh that out? Can we draw back the veil?

Eden and Heaven

I think yes, and I believe the mass is the key. Before we can understand the significance of the mass, however, we must first understand Eden and Heaven.

First, Eden.

In the Bible, we read that in the beginning, somewhere between metaphor and reality, there was a sacred garden in Eden. It was a place of flowing waters, bejeweled rivers, trees and wildlife, a Tree of Life, and an Eternal-Life giving fruit from said tree. It was also a place of free choice and the possibility to choose God, or not to choose God. Before our first parents rejected God, it was a time of harmony: within man, between man and God, and between human beings. Everything "worked" because the love of God animated and harmonized every aspect of reality.

Then, Heaven.

In the Book of Revelation, we read of another realm in conversation with our own. Angels travel back and forth between this realm and hours, carrying our prayers to God and shaping world events in accordance with His designs. There is a Lamb of God, an altar, candles, gold, and incense. God is adored by a multitude of martyrs in white robes. There is praise and singing, the reading aloud of the Word from a scroll, and a moment of silence to acknowledge what is unspeakable.

The Mass

In light of these definitions of Eden and Heaven, let's see if anything sounds familiar.

Imagine stepping inside a Catholic church...

One's first instinct would be to speak in hushed tones; for some, this is a sacred space. There is water; a baptismal font may be quietly flowing, or at least there may be various fixtures filled with water in which people dunk their fingers and bless themselves. Stained glass glistens like gemstones above us, and if we are in a cathedral, there will likely be foliage and animals carved into the stonework. Distantly, we see a crucifix, a man hanging on a tree. We have heard the strange custom of eating and drinking something called Communion (eternal-life giving food?) Are we in Eden?

Mass begins. Ahead, is the throne-altar, attended to by deacons in white robes. Candles flicker, and incense may be burning. The choir sings the Gloria, a lector reads the Word of God. Following the homily, there is silence to acknowledge what is unspeakable. Like martyrs, the faithful make an offering of their lives to God in acclamation after acclamation. Have we stepped into Heaven?

My answer to both questions is yes! In the mass, Eden is restored and Heaven is revealed and made present. We really do experience Eden, or Earth set right, Earth as it was meant to be (ordered to God). We really do step into the realm of Revelation, or Heaven. The great surprise is that they are experienced together, as one and the same thing.

The Union of the Physical and the Spiritual

In God's plan, Heaven and Earth are meant for each other. The Book of Revelation describes God coming down from Heaven to dwell with His people at the end of time. The Nicene Creed reminds us that we await a New Heavens, and a New Earth. Although we fail to reflect adequately upon it, Heaven will not be as otherworldly as we imagine. It is of the faith that we will be resurrected and live on a new, renewed earth. The difference is that we will "see" God with the eyes of our hearts completely and perfectly, even as we dwell on this earth. In the final analysis, Heaven will be like Eden, only Eden brought to a greater degree of grandeur than it was before the Fall.

Understood in this light, Earth (and all of creation, including us!) is destined for glory. Heaven and Earth will be one and the same reality. 

Yet, in our sin and ignorance, we struggle to unite the two. We are suspicious of the spiritual (Heaven), as though it will sabotage the joys of the physical (Earth). We are suspicious of the physical (Earth), assuming that it is too base in comparison to the spiritual (Heaven). Yet, it is God's will that Heaven and Earth be united, at the end of time. The incarnation of Christ was a foretaste of this blessed union. In His very person, He united the divine (spiritual) and human (physical).

We the baptized are living, walking first fruits of this Earth/Heaven marriage. The Holy Trinity lives in our hearts, therefore Heaven dwells in our physical bodies. In our very beings, the union of the two has already taken place.

Heaven is Earth redeemed. It starts with us, with the redemption of our bodies into temples of the Holy Spirit by virtue of our baptism. It then extends to our little corner of creation, which we set right under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. We might as well say that we already live in Heaven, though we will experience it with more perfection and intensity after death. We can rightly say that our lives, homes, and workspaces are Heaven because we have sanctified them by our stewardship and they are now ordered to God.

Everyday Heaven

Heaven looks surprisingly everyday, doesn't it? It is simply life lived in union with the Holy Spirit. As our life flows by, the greatest tragedy is to see nothing particularly extraordinary in it. We try to "make it," hungry for achievement and pleasures in the hope that we will be enough. We intuit that we are here for a purpose and we are. But we too easily succumb to ideas of greatness that are easier for the human mind and ego to visualize: all that impresses, all that sounds good, all that looks good. 

But just as Jesus's life was hidden to Israel, so is the purpose of our life--Jesus in us--hidden. As we go about our day to day, making phone calls, finishing projects, fixing this, putting food on the table, helping a loved one, we may not see that we are God's heavenly, helping hands. The extraordinary and heavenly is hidden in the ordinary and earthly events of our lives.

We struggle so much to unite the two in our minds. We have a tendency to think of our messy, imperfect lives as "mere Earth." Heaven is distant, imperfect, unattainable. But the truth is that, for the baptized, Heaven is now. And it will continue to intensify in us and in our lives as we die to sin and grow in the Holy Spirit.

The Mass as Seeing

The mass is an exercise in "seeing" reality as both physical and spiritual, Eden and Heaven. All of the trappings of Eden and Revelation are present, and yet. Maybe the lector is your neighbor. You've driven past this parish for years. The homily was a bit long, will mass really end by 11:00am because you need to be somewhere....

Yet, as everyday Catholics celebrate the mass, they are acting in concert with the Heavenly mass. They are doing so in a sacred space, Earth redeemed. If they have the eyes to see it, they are in Heaven. And they have a solemn obligation to bring Heaven into their homes, workplaces, and communities. The mass invites us to entertain the mystery of the divine amidst the everyday, where we least expect it to be.

The Divine is often less otherworldly than we expect it to be. No one recognized Joseph and Mary for anything special. The Son of God was almost born outside, roadside for lack of anywhere to stay. When He came forward in the synagogue in Nazareth and read from Isaiah, citing Himself as the fulfillment of Israel's hopes, the people could only say one thing, "Isn't that (just) Joseph and Mary's son?" Much of the Bible reads like genealogical lists, wars, migrations, and marriages made. Yet, God is present in all of those things, using those things to further His Kingdom.

The challenge of the spiritual life is not escaping reality, it's seeing divine purposes in everyday reality, where we least expect them to be. The hardest thing is not to levitate to somewhere else, it's to give the ordinary extraordinary dignity.

Next time we attend mass, may we remember that we are stepping into Heaven, and that this Heaven is meant to overflow into our daily lives.

St. Lucy, pray for us that we may "see"!

A Litany

God in the start

God in the end

God from beginning

To completion

Through and through

God's work

God's will

God's love

God's life

In me

God's strength

God's patience

God's joy

God's vision

God's passion

God's mercy

God's provision

Lord

Lord of my life

Lord of my thoughts

Lord of my dreams

Lord of my desires

Lord of my hopes

Lord of my relationships

I asked my Lord

What it's all about

He answered:

Us

You and Me,

Me, and you

Our mutual life in 

Time

Our mutual life in 

Eternity

The existence we share

Now

and

Forever

Poem ~ A Constant Heart

Here it is

All the willpower and

muscle

I need to

fight for you

my love:

my constant heart

Not grown overnight

My gift to you

Seasons return

The tides ebb and flow

But there is nothing

inevitable 

about the human heart

A constant heart is a sword 

that pierces the enemy

mortally

A constant heart is 

a book of truth

filled with 

life's answers

A constant heart

sees you

Beneath your worst surface

A constant heart

Always retrieves

the good lost

and

protects

the good gained

Shifting hearts

Are sea changes

Lives set adrift

Shipwrecks on the rocks

Shifting hearts

are death

They poison 

What is green, and growing,

And could be

Every good thing starts out

in infancy

Weak and vulnerable,

Unfit to survive

Life or death,

a gamble

Into this uncertainty,

I give you 

my constancy

I give you my constant heart

On Friendship

What is the greatest pleasure?

When I was younger, I might have said being in love, eating chocolate, a quiet afternoon with nothing to do but read or walk my dog, or a day trip to Carmel.

I still love all of those things.

But now, after years of weathering the ups and downs of life, I might say a meeting of the minds.

The greatest sorrow of my life has been parting ways with people I love because we disagree over the fundamentals of life. I am not referring to a legitimate range of opinion when it comes to religion, politics, artistic taste, and lifestyles. However, beneath the contrasts that make any relationship vibrant, there must be an underlying mystery of truth, goodness, and beauty, that all parties are committed to in their varied ways.

In the classical tradition, I believe that truth, goodness, and beauty are real and objective things. I don't fully understand them, and that's why I'm interested in talking to you. You don't fully understand them, and that's why I hope you are interested in talking to me. Collectively, I hope we bring together the best of our diverse ideas in a wise synthesis. Hopefully, this capacitates us to build happier families and communities, renew our social structures, rescue our environment, and improve the quality of our civilization.

This meeting of the minds is friendship. 

In friendship, we step into a shared space of desiring the same things. In desiring the same things, we have a shared vision. I imagine Dante's Paradiso, with all the saints an angels sharing in the vision of God. In that shared vision, their hearts and minds are in sync. This seeing is not about biological vision. It is about seeing and possessing with the heart. Because we are not created to function in solitude, our joy is not complete until the seeing and possession of what we love is a mutual, shared experience.

I like to imagine that every time I chat with a friend, we step into Dante's Paradiso. Together, in the shared moment of talking about matters great and small, in our shared journey towards the true, good, and beautiful, we mutually possess what is most dear to our hearts. In knowing that you see what I love, my possession of that thing because more sure. In you knowing that I see what you love, your possession of that thing becomes more sure. In the mutual back and forth of a shared vision, our seeing and possession are amplified and made real.

Such is the joy of friendship.

At a certain point in life, we all have to grow up. We must begin to see a greater vision of life and move towards it, otherwise we will die intellectually and spiritually. With time we will understand that this journey is the great struggle of our life. We will realize how deeply we need others to help us articulate our vision and pursue it. We will understand how miserable we are pursuing this vision on our own. Indeed, we will find that we can't do it on our own. Other pleasures will not exactly fall by the wayside, but they will be demoted in the hierarchy of goods. Friendship will ascend ever higher in our estimation of what is most valuable.

Is it possible that the value of friendship is an index of personal development?

If we define personal development as awakening to the great ideas of life and maturing in our ability to share in them in union with others, then yes, most definitely. We can say that the value of friendship is an index of personal development. The more we value friendship, the more mature we have become.

Our culture will try to sell us short when it comes to friendship. Friendship is merely about "having fun" with others, or that it is merely about belonging to a group or being around other bodies. Or, far worse, it is an ego-based attempt at conquering and maintaining connections that make us feel important and powerful. All of these ideas of friendship fall so far short of what it actually is: mutual accompaniment in the shared pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty.

But then perhaps that's because we have abandoned our commitment to truth, goodness, and beauty. Perhaps our collective focus has shifted to other things: sex, food, a big house, looking good, and being impressive. Being comfortable for the sake of being comfortable. Being important for the sake of being important.

Hopefully we are striving for more from life than those things. But sadly, we will lose friends along the way when and if they choose to build their lives around those things. There will come a point when we must part ways because the meeting of the minds (and wills) is lost. And though it is not what we want, the friendship falls by the wayside. The loss can not be helped because friendship is having a shared teleology.

There may come a time when we lose so many friends that we start paying attention. All is not well. There are competing visions of life and the best one doesn't always win out. Perhaps some friends will return once they experience the disillusionment of other life paths. Others may not. But we treasure those who join with us in common cause. We fight for those friends. Other good things become less and less important. When all has been stripped away: youth, success, wealth, popularity. What will remain? What will we prize above all? Our friends.

And, when this life ends. May we step into Dante's Paradiso. With our friends.

Poem ~ Unfinished

Again, tomorrow

Unfinished

The perpetual doing of the thing

I love.

I do not want to conquer it

And so I am happy 

That it has bound me

to itself

By forever evading

my grasp

I will never possess 

it

How happy I am!

For I love to pursue it

And do it

Again and again.

How content I am 

In its infinitude

And in my nothingness

In comparison.

Poem ~ Intimacy

 All of my achievements

Every excellence I attain

Mean nothing

If they don't in some way

Draw me closer to you and to us.

There is nothing that I want more than

Intimacy

That word means different things in

Different contexts

And in all of them,

It is meaningful and beautiful.

It is the water and the sun

To a budding plant

The color in our cheeks

The air we breathe

The laughter that makes the time pass

And makes it worthwhile.

Separation is literally nothingness

And if anything creates

Any disparity between us

I reject it as a curse with my whole being.

Most abhorrent 

Is to be above you

Because I love you

And I want to relate to you

give to you

build you up

I am more concerned for your well being 

Than I am for my own.

There is nothing that can tempt me

I can not be bought for any price

There is no honor that can lure me

And no pleasure

There is only the 

Supreme joy

Of our togetherness

A togetherness

I prize above all

treasures.

Poem ~ I Am Not an Independent Person

 I am not an independent person

I am strong and committed to my vision

But I am not an independent person.

I am unique and unrepeatable

My thoughts are my own

As your thoughts are your own

But I am not an independent person.

Sometimes I turn right

When you turn left

But that doesn't make me an independent person

It means that between us

We covered at least two directions

Hopefully other people went forwards

And backwards

Zigged and zagged

And everything in between!

I died a little

when you left

And I wasn't fully alive

Until I met you

And I'm still looking for 

You, and you, and you

To make my world an

Ever expanding one

Because I am not an independent person.

I didn't know who I was 

Until I stepped into our shared space

And I saw the ripple effect 

My impact

Came as a surprise

But without you,

It never would have happened

Because I am not an independent person.

All of you and everyone I will ever meet

Will call me by a different name

Sister

Daughter

Cousin

Niece

Student

Friend

Lover

Acquaintance

But apart from you, those names are meaningless

And I'm not sure of my identity

Because I am not an independent person.

Ideas are written down on paper

Or typed up on websites

Which is nice

But anyone can write anything.

What's true is what lives and breathes

Walks, speaks, acts

The person right in front of me

The heartbeat, flesh, and blood

I can choose to welcome or ignore

The one who really did it

I can not refute you

You, the incontrovertible proof

Of every idea that you live.

Connection 

How the ideas bounce

Back and forth

And your joy overflows

Becoming mine,

And mine yours,

That flow is life.

The saddest thing

Was the party I went to

When no one was there

Because I am not an independent person

And the surgery

I could not perform on myself

Because I am not an independent person

The poem I wrote

That no one read

Because I am not an independent person

All the love I had to give

And no one to receive it

Because I am not an independent person

There is a horror

It is an empty space

Where we are not found

And to think that I pushed you away

To get to where I was going

To where?

The idiocy of it all.

Because I am not an independent person.

Poem ~ A Very Young Love

 How very young is this love

How unexpected

How capable of becoming something

or nothing at all!

It needs so much

All that we can give it

It needs to know what time to come home

A number to call if something goes wrong

Food in the fridge

And the porch light left on.

It needs time for talking

A word of warning

It needs to know where the boundaries are.

And then,

It needs a lot of encouragement

And time for itself

To find its own legs,

Make some mistakes

Above all, it needs to stay close to 

its start

That first burst of joy,

That shared moment of delight

Too good to be true,

Undeniably right!

It needs music, and laughter, and good friends

Ideas that inspire

A heart that is open

And never grows tired.

If it has all those things

It might live through the night.

How very young is this love.

Poem ~ Friendship

Friendship

My thoughts are yours,

And yours are mine in an 

endless back and forth

But perhaps the best part 

is that you have made me 

real

Everything I am and I love

Exists outside of me in you

And speaks back to me through you

So that as I interact with you,

I interact with myself

In the concrete world of the 

real

In which I long to 

be.

Only you could make me

real

in this way.

Before, I was 

lost 

in my thoughts.

But now those thoughts

have a place and a name 

in you

as we go 

back and forth

in the now of this moment.

How wondrous you are to me

How necessary you are

How I need you

To be fully alive

And to exist substantially

How unsurpassed is this reciprocity

Joy of joys

How I roamed the world over

Hungry for this

face to face

my friend.

Poem ~ Re-creation

 Renewal

The act of continually affirming through 

Reenactment

Perpetuating

The thing that must never end 

In time

Again and again.

I am the one

It starts anew again 

With me

Or,

It can end

With my failure to have faith

That the miraculous calls out to 

Every moment.

I believe in the value of what we are doing

And so

I will do it again and again

And I will continue to do so

With all of my being.

Nothing is new

But everything must be 

re-presented

Yes, we have done it before

But it must be done again

I will participate

In the continued

re-creation

Of everything that

Makes my heart beat.

Poem ~ The Beginning

 It has begun

A little push, pull, or whisper

Something started

What laughter

What a surprise!

I did the thing I never thought I'd do

I am becoming the person I never thought I would be,

But always was.

And yet, it has only just begun.

You started it,

I rolled with it,

What will it become?

The way my life has suddenly changed

And so has yours

Because now we're really seeing

And tomorrow will be different 

If we stay with this.

Everything is possible

If we lift it up and let it go

The moment we are acting in,

How awkward I can be,

And how awkward you are,

But we are not all that is 

We are not everything that is happening right now

And my living fully with you now

Is the greatest act of faith I can do in this moment.

I love you.

Poem ~ The Surprise

Don't focus on what we say

Words can be misleading

Don't focus on what we do, the seeming 

Nothing-there of it all

There is a hidden treasure within

There is!

Look more closely, 

But above all, 

Listen.

You'll have to get quiet

You might have to get lost for awhile

Do not listen to the others

Do not listen to yourself

The answer isn't anything you already know,

So your own thoughts will get in the way.

Look for a surprise

Look for the unexpected things that makes you

Smile

Look for the thing that you disliked at first,

So certain it wasn't for you

But it actually is.

Open up, just a little

Make room, allow for a crack

In the smile that 

Just happens

There will be a stealth takeover

A little seed of joy that went 

Unnoticed

But can grow into something mighty 

If you let it

There is relaxation in the 

Surrender

The joy in a full glass of wine

The best thing is that you never once

Thought of it, or sought it out.

That's how you know

God sent it.

Poem ~ To the Man Who Left

Stop and do not return

Unless your love

Could write me a song

Or send up a prayer

Because I am as dear to you

As your deepest hopes and childhood dreams,

The wisdom you have gained in maturity

When you persevered

After a broken heart

And fought for what is true and good.

Your honor

Your aspirations

So tender towards me in my flaws

But seeing 

Everything

In what God is doing 

And will do.

If not, then I beg you

Stop.

Stop, and do not return.

Poem ~ Your Presence is the Joy of My Heart

To God, to a friend.....

I am happy simply because you are here

My only care is being where you are not

Your presence is the joy of my heart.

To abide in your friendship is my deepest prayer

You are worth every battle fought

I am happy simply because you are here.

You are my treasure

The life in me that can not be achieved or bought

Your presence is the joy of my heart.

I used to think the world was cruel and unfair

It is, but you are not

I am happy simply because you are here.

I live without need and fear

You are the prize

Your presence is the joy of my heart.

Though sorrows may find me,

I cling to you my rock

I am happy simply because you are here

Your presence is the joy of my heart

Poem ~ The Peace Wall, Berkeley

All of my dreams coexisting in one moment

Sunshine drenches a free space where eternal notes never stop ringing

Children sing their purest aspirations and someone's doing cartwheels across the grass

I never thought the vision could be so clear and so real, in spite of the trash and the tent where you live but somehow here we are, more than existing in the same space: we are sharing the same sun.

I guess none of it mattered at all, or not all that much, did it?

Because we're still here, and I don't know about you, but this is the happiest moment of my life

I hope you carry your boombox with you wherever you go and make everyone who hears you a little uncomfortable with your taste

The magnolia tree will always be ours and no one can own the sky

They said we'd never last, but how is this for an afternoon?

As for me, I've found all I ever wanted and more

I will try to carry this peace in my heart, wherever I go.

Poem: The One Made Just for You

 I thank God for the mercy that you've shown me

You'll find a pearl within when love is ripe

I'm growing into the one made just for you.

You saw all of me at once in Spring

The whole of me and who I'd be in time

I thank God for the mercy that you've shown me.

You can hear the words that I'm not saying

You alone can read between my lines

I'm growing into the one made just for you.

My love is gentle as a lamb's and so adoring

Your kindness overflows and gives me life

I thank God for the mercy that you've shown me.

The music stopped, but here we are still dancing

You hold me in your arms to my surprise

I'm growing into the one made just for you.

Let's raise a glass and laugh at what is blooming

You used to think that I was not your type

I thank God for the mercy that you've shown me

I'm growing into the one made just for you.

Poem: When Lovers Love No More

 The no you choose wounds me to the core

The leaves that twirl around the cafe fade

How sad it is when lovers love no more.

We once were bound by an invisible cord

Your presence turned a starless night to day

The no you choose wounds me to the core.

The mystery encircling us is torn

Eyes that used to see have lost the way

How sad it is when lovers love no more.

The wine has stopped that used to flow

The turtledove has lost her given mate

The no you choose wounds me to the core.

I waited for you to walk through the door

A nighttime city street to send you my way

How sad it is when lovers love no more.

The gondoliers will sing, whatever for?

The kindness of the muses is betrayed

The no you choose wounds me to the core

How sad it is when lovers love no more.

Poem: I Love Another More Than Myself

 I love another more than myself

Yes, how wondrous we were then

My heart broke free of its bony cage.

Saints transfixed by a heavenly gaze

A love that evades my humble pen

I love another more than myself.

Eyes that ask if I will stay

When I was not the one who left

My heart broke free of its bony cage.

You'd think that I'd make someone pay

You'd think that I'd avenge the theft, but

I love another more than myself.

My soul can breathe each waking day

With joy I cry and remember when

My heart broke free of its bony cage.

You punctured what was rough and decayed

You ripped, and a little lamb, I bled

I love another more than myself

My heart broke free of its bony cage.

Theological ~ Head verses Heart

There are many different ways of describing the interior of a human being, different language we can use, as well as philosophical and theological language. There is also the difference between modern and ancient terminology.

When modern, secular people speak of the interior, they think of the brain that "thinks" and the heart as the seat of emotion and desire. This is not far off of the Thomistic, philosophical system which speaks of an intellect and will (seat of desire). However, Thomism sees these as faculties of an immortal soul, not mere biological phenomena.

There is also the ancient Hebrew idea of the heart. The heart is the innermost core of the person. We can think of the mind as the heart thinking, desires as the heart desiring, etc. The Hebrew idea of the heart would encompasses the Thomistic idea of intellect and will without emphasizing the distinctions to be made between the two.

Let's be honest; the deep relationship between heart and head is indeed mysterious, perhaps a taste of the Trinitarian mystery itself. Our internal life is one of the many things God has created wherein we can make distinctions, but not fundamentally separate (e.g. three Persons, one God). There are different ways of trying to describe this mystery, and they can all be useful. The Thomistic system is better at helping us make distinctions (e.g. three Persons), while the holistic Hebrew idea is better at helping us ponder the interdependence of the parts (e.g. One God). The modern secular idea is basically Thomism, but missing a supernatural horizon.

When we ask which should lead out, heart or head, it depends on the terminology you are using, the paradigm you are thinking within, and what you mean by that question.

If you mean by that question, "what is most profound in a human being, their intellectual capacity or their capacity to love?," the authentically Catholic answer would be love. To clarify, when I speak of love here,, I am using it in the broad modern sense of our ability to both desire and commit to things. This idea of love wins out in both a Hebraic and Thomistic worldview. It also makes sense to us moderns on an intuitive level. Somehow, we know deep down that life is about loving and connecting, not just knowing things.

If you mean by that question, "does emotion or reason lead out?," then that is a different question. In that case, the heart is defined as a mere organ of emotional reactions, and not a profound link to the transcendent. The authentically Catholic answer in this case, is that reason should rule our emotional reactions. Rightly understood, however, it does this to serve the heart. God and His plans are always greater than what we can understand with our minds. Our hearts are the place where God whispers deep mysteries to us that would be otherwise incomprehensible. Right reason always upholds the voice of God as the sole absolute, and ponders the language of the heart to ensure that God's voice is heard rightly and upheld. Meanwhile, right reason guides our emotional reactions to serve the deepest purposes of our hearts. The distinction must be made between our emotional reactions, and the deep loves God plants in our hearts. They are not the same thing. Reason helps us to order our emotional and thought life so that the most profound purposes in our hearts are respected and pursued.

To summarize, within a Catholic worldview, the head rules the heart in the sense of reason guiding our emotional reactions and examining all of the internal movements of thought, emotions, and desires happening within us. However, the head submits to the heart in the sense of reason serving the hearts deepest purposes: reason exists to help us know, choose, and love God and to abide in His mysterious plan for our lives. When God calls us into a mystery, it is eminently reasonable to following Him into it. Right reason does not demand to understand everything. Rather, it ensures that whatever we choose, including blind faith, surrender, and risk-taking, are done for the glory of God.

How do emotions fit into this? If we are fully alive in love, then we are fully alive in God, and our every human faculty is correspondingly vibrant. Healthy, loving hearts emote vibrantly. Emotions give us the energy to pursue what God wants for us, and avoid what He does not want for us. Insofar as emotions are thought of as Holy Desires, e.g. the sacred point of contact between what God wants for us and what we find ourselves wanting, then reason does well to listen to what our emotions have to say.

So, we have three ideas of the heart:

1) The heart as the privileged place of encounter between God and self, where we choose God, and hear His voice

2) The heart as a catchall expression to sum up our emotional lives on a natural level

3) The heart as the seat of holy, Godly desires

Depending on how you define the heart, you will answer the question of heart verses head differently. 

If 1), then heart leads.

If 2), then head leads.

If 3), then Heart leads.

Therefore, in common parlance, it works best to say, "the heart leads," because more often than not, when people speak of the heart, they are intuitively thinking of it in the sense of 1) or 3). The head leads if we are speaking only of emotions in a general sense, or on a natural level.

A final thought. The question of heart verses head introduces a dichotomy into how we think of our internal lives which is not truly Catholic. In truth, what we think impacts our feelings and desires. Our feelings and desires impact our thoughts. Everything is interrelated. And everything is impacted and in conversation with the voice of God in our hearts. It attests to the Trinitarian mystery of man's internal life that we can and must respect the differences between heart and head, without fundamentally dividing them. Perhaps, in the final analysis, we can not rightly put into words how to "put it all together." Rather, through lived experience and intuition, we somehow know the time and place for each.

Theological ~ The Contentment of Abiding

"Abide in me"

What is most beautiful about Jesus's choice of word here, to abide? In particular, I would like to focus on how "abiding" emphasizes the gift already received. Jesus does not say, "do this or that" and then you will have me, he says, "have me, then stay with me."

The order here is important. Too often in life, we focus on everything we must do before we can have the thing. Every achievement seems to impose demands upon us: obtaining the goal is conditional upon our efforts.

Yet, this is not how grace works. God gives Himself to us first. He initiates every good thing in our lives--every goal, dream, relationship, and capacity for love and service is a gift from Him. Our job is to follow those prompts, and grow the gift. 

Paul said, "I no longer live, but Christ in me."

First, what was crucified in him? The old life of craving, striving, and straining after the endlessly distant horizons of achievement, power, pleasure, wealth, control, and so on. The idol sits off at a distance and demands blood before it will answer the prayer, which it never does. The idol dangles love conditionally, which it ultimately refuses to give.

In contrast, God loves us lavishly on the front end. He never withholds His love, His peace, His joy. He is never distant, but always close. In the story of the prodigal son, the father initiates reconciliation by running first to the returning son. In the same way, God runs to meet us right where we are. The only thing that stops Him is our "no." Yet, as soon as we open up ourselves to him, just as with the returning prodigal, the whole feast is ours.

Abiding strikes the perfect balance between contemplation and action, God and me. When I abide, I receive the gift, whole and complete. God gets the glory, I simply receive what He gives. Yet, I must keep my heart open and docile to what God gives. God gives me people to love and care for. He gives me a daily routine to be faithful to. He invites me to spend time with Him one on one in prayer and contemplative activities. God, who is love, enflames my heart with love of others and creation. This drives me outward. Yet, it starts with a flame God inspires.

When undertaking anything in life, we should ask ourselves:

Is there an emptiness inside me that I am trying to fill up? Do I feel that I am deficient, or that my life is deficient? Do I think that other peoples lives matter more than my own? If so, God is not with me, because in God there is completion, joy, and peace.

Or, am I starting this activity or undertaking with a sense of being rewarded already? Is the process mysteriously satisfying? Although there may be much to do, do I somehow feel that I've already arrived? These are signs that God is with me in the doing of the thing. When I act with God, I abide in the gift received.