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‘There’s always something!’
From the Catholic Register - Toronto | Written by Fr. Ron Rolheiser
Wednesday, 13 June 2012 09:19

Fr. Ron Rolheiser
Ronald Rolheiser, a Roman Catholic priest and member of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, is president of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas. He is a community-builder, lecturer and writer. His books are popular throughout the English-speaking world and his weekly column is carried by more than seventy newspapers worldwide. Fr. Rolheiser can be reached at his website, www.ronrolheiser.com.

A friend of mine jokingly says that when she dies she wants this epitaph on her gravestone: There was always something!

And there always is. All of us appreciate her frustration. Invariably, there’s always something, big or small, that casts a shadow and somehow keeps us from fully entering the present moment and appreciating its richness. There is always some anxiety, some worry about something that we should have done or should be doing, some unpaid bill, some concern about what we need to face tomorrow, some lingering heartache, some concern about our health or the health of another, some hurt that is still burning or some longing for someone who is absent that mitigates our joy. There’s always something, some loss, some hurt, some jealousy, some obsession or some headache, that is forever draining the present moment of its joy.

Henri Nouwen once gave a very simple, poignant expression to this: “Our life,” he writes, “is a time in which sadness and joy kiss each other at every moment. There is a quality of sadness that pervades all the moments of our life. It seems that there is no such thing as a clearcut pure joy, but that even in the most happy moments of our existence we sense a tinge of sadness. In every satisfaction, there is an awareness of limitations. In every success, there is the fear of jealousy. Behind every smile, there is a tear. In every embrace, there is loneliness. In every friendship, there is distance. And in all forms of light, there is the knowledge of surrounding darkness.” There’s always something!

Jesus had His own way of expressing this. There is an incident recorded in the Gospels wherein Peter approaches Jesus and asks Him what reward a disciple will receive for following Him. Jesus replies that anyone who gives up father, mother, spouse, children, house or land in order to be His disciple will receive these back (mothers, spouses, children, houses, lands) one hundred times over. But then He adds a rather unwelcome clause: “though not without tribulation.” There will always be something — some stress, some jealousy, some persecution — which can wipe out both the recognition and the enjoyment of the hundredfold. In effect, what Jesus is saying is that we can have everything — and enjoy nothing! Why? Because there will always be something impaling itself into the present moment that can cause us to lose perspective and thus lose the richness and joy inside of our own lives.

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus specifies what that something often is, namely, jealousy. We can have everything and enjoy nothing because we are jealous of what other people have. How true. How often do we denigrate our own lives and talents, failing to see and savour their richness, because we would like to be someone else, someone rich and famous, someone set apart. Our lives are rich, but we are not content within them because we would want what someone else has.

There is a rich literature today, both within religious and secular circles, that tries to challenge us to not let our anxieties, heartaches, jealousies and worries block us from entering fully into the present moment. Most of that literature is good since it formulates the right challenge. Sometimes, however, some of these authors give us the impression that, if you focus your attention and work hard at a few techniques, this is an easy thing to do. It’s not. Entering into the present moment, truly entering it without being waylaid by our own heartaches and headaches, is one of the most difficult psychological and spiritual tasks in all of life.

Our lives are rich, and that is true for all of us, not just for the rich and famous. At the height of his fame, the poet Rainer Marie Rilke received a letter from a young man, complaining that he wanted to be a poet but was handicapped because he lived in a small town where nothing exciting or noteworthy ever happened. Rilke wrote back to him and told him that if his life seemed poor to him then he probably wasn’t a poet after all because he couldn’t pick up the riches of his own life. Every person’s experience is the stuff of poetry. There are no lives that aren’t rich; but most of us are blocked from entering into the richness of our own lives and can never appreciate the hundredfold ... because there’s always something.

The challenge is to be present to the richness inside of our own lives, and that means learning to celebrate the temporary, the imperfect. That means learning how to go to the great banquet that lies at the heart of life, even while our lives are not yet fully healthy and complete. And part of that means accepting too how difficult this is, enjoying the times when we do get there, forgiving ourselves for mostly falling short, and having an epitaph engraved for ourselves that reads: There was always something!

Humans have the capacity to be healed
http://wcr.ab.ca/Columns/OpinionsStories/tabid/70/entryid/2623/Default.aspx
Posted @ 6/12/2012, | Kathleen Giffin | Posted in Western Catholic Reporter
Nativity of St. John the Baptist – June 24, 2012
Isaiah 49.1-6 | Psalm 139 | Acts 13.22-26 | Luke 1.57-66, 80

June 18, 2012: Unlike most years, this year we celebrate the liturgy for the Birth of John the Baptist on a Sunday. John holds a unique place in our salvation story; he was the chosen one who, in so many ways, prepared the way for Jesus' ministry.

While his conception and birth are both remarkable, I have always been most interested in the adult man who so completely gave himself to his mission. Marshall McLuhan's axiom, "The medium is the message" certainly applies to John.

Beginning from the Visitation, when John leapt in the womb in recognition of the presence of Jesus, he lived his life as both the herald of God's advent into the world and the one who readied the hearts of his listeners to receive the good news of our redemption.

His message of repentance brings us the challenge: "How do we give ourselves fully to the truth of God's love; how do we co-operate with God's saving grace by a radical change of heart?"

As a counsellor, I am acutely aware of the fundamental difficulty in overcoming the consequences of our own sin and the wrongs done to us. Sometimes repentance is not enough to change our lives; an act of the will and sincere sorrow may not create sufficient freedom to surrender ourselves to love.

Yet we are never asked by God to do something that is impossible. So there is a way through the wilderness of suffering and difficulty in our lives.

The Psalm for this Sunday alludes to that way: "You knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made." The way is found in the nature of who we are. One fundamental characteristic of the human person is the capacity for, healing. If we cut ourselves, or break a bone, all that is required is to provide the proper conditions to support healing and the tissue knits together, the bone mends stronger than before.

The same is true for our mental tears and breaks. Our mind does heal, our heart does mend, so long as we give ourselves the environment that fosters restoration. Time doesn't heal everything, but the healing capacity within the human person does move us to health over time; the key is to provide the healing environment.

It is also true for our spiritual ills. We are fundamentally designed so that the wounds that are the result of our own sin and the sin of others are healed as we live in a way that facilitates that natural process.

This way of living has long been expressed in the wisdom of the Church. It is a life of commitment to the four pillars of sacraments, prayer, service, community.

When we choose this way of life, and discipline ourselves to follow it even in our brokenness and weakness, we are preparing the way of the Lord, we are making straight a path in the wilderness for God to come and accomplish his purposes within us.

(Kathleen Giffin kgif@telus.net)

Gaspar Tamas on The Failure of Liberal Democracy
See video : http://ww3.tvo.org/video/167943/gaspar-tamas-failure-liberal-democracy

Hungarian philosopher, Gaspar Tamas,on The Failure of Liberal Democracy in Eastern Europe and Everywhere Else. His lecture was delivered at the Munk School of Global Affairs on September 20, 2011

How do we revitalize our democracy?
Former Hungarian politician criticizes our current political order, gives us a few pointers
Excerpts from: http://www.thenewspaper.ca/the-news/item/584-how-do-we-revitalize-our-democracy

The lecture opened with the question: “What is the precondition for any kind of liberal democracy?” The answer, according to Tamás, is the belief in the idea of the common good…... Everyone needs to get why the common good matters and why their political system is working toward achieving that.

Without this moral principle, we’ve got a big problem. “If the principle is massively doubted or delegitimized”, Tamás continued, “then we can’t have liberal democracy.” Tamás proved this point by drawing on the example of liberal democracies in Eastern Europe. He witnessed the trials of constructing and implementing this new political system in Hungary during his time as an elected politician, in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s.

Structural failings, both economically and socially also played their part. Tamás detailed the ways in which Eastern Europe wasn’t prepared for the realities of liberal democracy. It possessed neither the economic and social preconditions of the classical models (think Europe, turn of the 19th century) nor the individualistic, chaotic and competitive nature of late capitalism as seen in the west today.

Tamás then brought the crisis of East Europe at the collapse of the USSR back into the larger discussion of the state of liberal democracy of our times. He argued that today, those key features of early western liberal democracies are also conspicuously absent. With the rights and privileges of citizens, particularly the marginalized – the old, the poor, the sick and immigrants – shrinking, we are witnessing the decline of late capitalism and its corresponding cultural crisis. Based on our political action, or more accurately, inaction, we no longer believe in egalitarianism or more broadly speaking, a common good.

The question follows: what can we do?
Tamás sees two possible paths: attack offensively or rally to the defense. Those in the first camp would venture to create a new society (dare I say, revolution?). The second camp would refuse to be bullied and force the powers that be to respect liberal democracy. That means no more restrictions to freedom of religion, the press, or any other basic human right.