Soulful Muse

Life‘s  Spiritual twists and turns

What kind of God would ask a father to kill his son. Abraham and Isaac, always a confusing story and confession of faith for us. But, is it not only the event but the context that makes all the difference? Events come and go, but the context of our life lives within us our entire life. Sounds baffling? It shouldn’t be. It’s life’s twists and turns that make up and help us define our lives.

God asks Hosea to marry a prostitute. Ummm, interesting of our Creator to do that. How about the command to lie on your side for over a year to prophesy the fall of Jerusalem. (Ezekiel)

That’s nothing. How about planning the perfect wedding, exchanging vows on the shores of Lake Michigan. Beautiful Saturday afternoon, 4:30, Sheboygan. Except no one reminded us about the winds that time of day as sands fills our clothes and hair. We hurry to a hallway to exchange those sacred vows because the ballroom wasn’t ready yet. The couple always now has a ready-made story to tell their friends.

Then there’s that misnamed story, “The Prodigal Son.” It’s not about the crazy, wild kid; it’s about the crazy, enduring love of the dad. Kill the fatted calf for the son who took half of your inheritance? An inheritance he wasn’t entitled to? So much for retiring at Alexian Village.

Speaking of the calf. There’s a lamb in the Abraham/Isaac story. More twists and turns. In the Christian tradition, the entire Bible points to Jesus, which is especially true of Abraham/Isaac. ‘This passage is like a lock,” one author writes. “Jesus is the key that unlocks it for us. Think about the parallels between this story and the story of Jesus. Both Isaac and Jesus are ‘beloved sons’ who have been long-awaited and are born in miraculous circumstances. Both sons carry the wood that is to be the instrument of their deaths on their backs. In both cases, the father leads the son, and the son obediently follows toward his own death. God provides the sacrifice, which Abraham says will be a lamb. Jesus was also an innocent son who went willingly up the mountain to be crucified.” “Lamb of God,” anyone?

There’s your quick crash course in lived Biblical Theology. Having lunch with a good friend, she tells me that the void of her husband’s death, after over forty years of marriage, is filled now with her young grandchildren. Her second bedroom is filled with toys and dolls for their often overnight visits. Twists and turns, or is it turns and twists? Sometimes, I get confused.

We still sillingly (I know it’s not a word, but it’s my new Christian word); we still sillingly believe in this linear trip through life. “A leads to B” which soon will become “C.” If you say that when you’re twenty, then I will understand you. If you’re over forty, then you should know better. Those “A’s” and “B’s” can be loaded with a whole bunch of “Z’s.” Good and bad “Z.” It’s called a surprise when you’re happy. It’s called a shock when unhappy. In faith, it is all wrapped up in the mystery and understood as best as you can. 

Surprise, shock, and mystery.

What about what’s-his-name who spent three days in the belly of a whale? Nice way to spend a weekend, don’t you think? Or, does it connect Christ’s three hours of death on the cross and his three days in the tomb. Or, is it Lent’s three pillars of praying, fasting, and almsgiving? Gee, I’m not sure about measuring life’s time, but I’m entirely convinced in living and honoring my crazy, meaningful Christian life of faith.

St. Thomas Aquinas wrote in his song, “What are senses fail to fathom, let us grasp through faith’s consent.” I love that verse.

One personal caution when you leave church today. The expression, “there’s always a reason” works for missing and dismissing the context of your life. 

There is not always a reason. We can have a multitude of reasons mulling through our controlling mind attempting to figure out the this or the that… We may even settle upon one reason and then carry it around constantly for decades and proudly tell all our friends about our one reason – when all the time there was no reason or reasonable reason…reason only raises the question of why, which is a stupid question to ask yourself in the first place… the most asked question of and about Jesus? It is never the why, or the how, or the when,… It is always who… Who are you Jesus? And so in faith, the question for ourselves is who is Jesus for us? Who are we because of Jesus?

And, we can all argue for hours about the expression of “it’s God will” but again it misses and is completely absent of our involvement. God is not the wizard behind the curtain pulling levers of light and smoke … and I don’t own a pair of ruby slippers.

I’m confident that all of you have human episodes that profoundly contain a spiritual relationship. A spiritual message. I hope many of those episodes were and are full of pure surprises, numbing shocks, because both provide a learning, humbling and maturing experience. 

Isn’t it true that life‘s unexpected twists and unannounced turns turn out to make us better persons, in giving up that so-called sacred control that we hold onto so very tightly and allow newly revealed, actual sacred, holy insights to take root and then blossom. 

Events become beneficial when lived within a life context. Place those events within a spiritual connection to our Creator and then watch how the life’s miracle slowly but surely become an even holier and a more exciting “life worth living,” as Fulton Sheen called it. 

Well, how about this one? A barely teenage girl is honored as not only the mother of our Savior but turns out to be God’s mom. 

seven gifts of the Holy Spirit

“For the Spirit scrutinizes everything, even the depths of God.”  St. Paul

Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Fortitude, Knowledge, Piety, Fear/Awe of the Lord

St. Peter thought he’d hit the nail on the head when giving Jesus the number seven for forgiving others. Boy, was he wrong. Yet, if we hit the number seven, then we’re still doing pretty well. As believers, we are always imperfectly perfect. However, Jesus sets the bar pretty high with his “seventy times seven” command.

Yet, there are seven days in a week despite the number the Beatles sang about.

In the list of Catholic holidays, Pentecost has got to be right up there after Christmas. Christmas brings new life to our broken world and Pentecost gives us seven gifts to keep that new life alive. Instead of calling them gifts, I think a more powerful word is seven tools. Tools are meant to be used. The Holy Spirit gives each of us seven special tools that are used in any circumstance, situation; whether distressing or joyful.

Seven contains the number three of the heavens and soul with the number four of the earth and body. Hence, the term “Seventh Heaven.” Guess how many colors there are in a rainbow?

Christ does not leave us on our own. Yet, Christ does leave us on our own. He ascends from here and tells us to patiently wait in the Upper Room for further travel instructions. Yet. I love that word “yet” because it gives us all an escape clause, a way around, or from this mystery of life. How easy it is for us to leave that “Upper Room” and roam around so proudly on our own wits? Roaming without the Holy Spirit’s tools.

When added, the opposite sides of a dice always equal the number seven. I have no idea what that means but aren’t you glad you came to Church today?

Wisdom. The last sentence in the Serenity Prayer. Grant me the wisdom to know the difference between what I can and cannot do. That’s a Divine revelation never to be achieved on our own.

Understanding. Understanding that we will never reach a true understanding without the Holy Spirit’s other two friends. We see glimmers and glimpses of understanding but never the absolutes that contemporary zealots brag about.

Our lives are the imperfect perfection of perfection. That’s our daunting Christian task. Seven may solve a temporary predicament, but extending it beyond that number makes it God-like. Making it, as the Church tells us, “the working of the Holy Spirit.” And, I also add, making it the best of us.

King Solomon’s temple took seven years to build; every seven years is considered a holy year in the Hebrew Torah; Israelites during the battle of Jericho were told that marching around the walls of the city “those many” times would ensure their victory; in Jewish tradition, the deceased are mourned for how many days; in the Christian tradition there are seven deadly sins. Gee, I wonder how many sacraments there are in the Catholic Church.

Counsel helps us differentiate between right and wrong. This is best, and only, done within a communal setting. Doing this in your own selfish private world may very lead to numerous mishaps and disappointments.

Fortitude. My favorite of the spiritually lucky seven. Simply defined, providing necessary courage and endurance. How many times have we relied on fortitude to see us through how much of life’s stuff?

We remain in that Upper Room until those seven tools, I mean gifts, take a firm hold within us. Then, those seven become the bedrock that Jesus, the Christ, promised us. Christ didn’t abandon us. He’s empowering us along with His Father’s assistance, as the Church says, “through the working of the Holy Spirit.” Hence, that imperfectly perfect number is rubbed on our foreheads with chrism at Confirmation and then renewed each time we turn to prayer or seek out during Mass.

What number of years causes an itch in a marriage? And, how many little, friendly friends surrounded Snow White?

Knowledge. Help us all to know God better. And, what better way to know God better than through each other. It’s called the Body of Christ. Regardless, how difficult it may seem at times or how rewarding it helps and assists us during other times.

The best of the seven for last? Piety and Fear, Awe of the Lord in earlier translations. A sacred reverence and open and sincere obedience to our Creator. The last two are the anchor or bedrock of the others. You always begin and end with these two. The others are grace filled virtues sandwiched in between. 

What a better spiritual diet to chew on, swallow and digest for every single moment, circumstance, situation, dilemma and predicament. 

So, perhaps I was wrong in calling these gifts tools when, indeed, they are heavenly food. And much easier to digest than manna or locust, even if laced with wild honey. 

Oh, I forgot. Paul Simon sang, there are how many ways to leave a lover? Boy, was he wrong. It’s minus forty-three.

We go to sleep at night filled with an abundance of worries and fears and then awake to a new day filled with hope and joy….thinking or feeling “Behold.”

On a cold, windy January morning with the snow accumulating and accumulating and a 10-year-old wakes up with a brand new red Christmas sled waiting for him in the garage… And an 80 year-old wakes up on that same brisk January morning and looks out at all the messy falling white stuff… Guess the word pops into both their heads?

What a beautifully colorful, strong word. It’s a sentence in itself. Just saying that one word writes a complete paragraph. We don’t hear it said in the middle or the end of a sentence. Using an exclamation point is not only redundant, but dumb. 

“Behold” has to be the first word to express something wonderful, scary, or a feeling needing to say that one word – “Behold.”

“The curtain’s been lifted.” The gift has been unwrapped. A baby has been born. A long life is given over to eternal life. The end of the movie is not what you expected.  Your surgery with the odds against you is successful.  That restless night awakens you to a beautiful sunrise.  

What was not known is now known. In faith, it also means embracing the unknown while the unknown remains a mystery. “Behold.” It startles you to say it and it startles those around you to hear it. 

It certainly is the only word those healed lepers, those unmuted, the sorrowful and the lonely, those with solvable quandaries, felt whether said or not. 

So, go ahead. On your next elderly birthday, before your feet hit the floor in the morning, you now know the spiritually impacted word to begin that new year. Yell it out, “Behold.”

Do you say “this” or do you say “behold”? This is your dinner bill,” says the server. Because you see, using “this” at a cheap restaurant makes perfect sense. At a fancy restaurant, however, the server would accurately proclaim, “Behold, here’s your dinner bill.” Car repairs? “This” or “Behold?” You be the judge.

It’s a relatively new word used in the Catholic Mass, replacing the word (ready for this!) That’s the word – “This.” Sound like a good change from this unchanging Church? When the priest raises the host and chalice which word best captures and holds your breath, “Behold” or “This”? No vote needed.
John the Baptist says it to all of us – both in his time and now during our time, “behold.” Mary can’t think of a better word to announce her pending birth. (I think just seeing a wide-winged angel barely fitting and standing in your living room talking to you alarms you enough to hear that word in your head and heart. 

A strong prayer is always offered both humbly and also empowering. That’s the definition of that word that I won’t bore you with by saying it again. It reminds us and alerts us to remember the Giver of this feast called life. Then our Creator empowers us to face any difficulty with the peaceful presence of God in our lives.

A peaceful and restful sleep awaits us because of the power of that one word. Our tomorrow is now the new endeavor of a new day lived within that believable one word.

Underused? You bet. Felt? You bet. I’ve never used it myself in conversation, and I’m confident none of you have. As the adage goes, “use it in a sentence today, and it will surely be your own.” That’s your homework assignment.

Proudly use that one word sometime today and see what happens. Whatever the content, it will truly move and empower you and then inspire or awaken those who hear it.

“This and that” is the boring response when asked, “What did you do today.” “Behold” is the epiphany presented to you at how many moments in your life and “beheld” is what you tightly clung to your entire life.