crucifixion = resurrection transcript

I have been writing a little bit about this theme of the crucifixion and the resurrection being the same thing. The crucifixion and the resurrection being the same thing. And I’m not going to try to give some kind of context for this discussion, some kind of theological context, because frankly, I think that those of us who give a shit about this kind of thing know that what I’m talking about. This idea of being crucified and yet not giving up. Not giving up, and by that I mean not a, I want to continue to live, I want to continue to be crucified, but in a sense that there is this interior voice, this interior voice that that keeps telling us the next right thing to do if I use I guess I will allow that kind of crude jargon in to this conversation but this presence this um you know as I always say in these meditations it’s the same thing that the christian tradition the catholic tradition has been talking about for thousands of years so as I said before if you think I’m crazy you’re right and so was saint paul and so was every other christian they actually tried to follow jesus as well as jesus himself he was crazy We’re all crazy and we’re so crazy the world crucifies us. But because we know that Jesus was crucified, because we know that if they did it to Jesus, they’ll do it to anybody. If this world will crucify Jesus, they will crucify anybody. And just to make sure that we didn’t miss that, Jesus tells us, “A servant is not greater than his master.” The Bible and the Christian tradition are very clear that the only way to be sane, the only way to find joy, is to surrender. And that means being crucified. And for some people, that meant literal crucifixion, like the apostles, like many of the apostles. I think there are some modern saints who were crucified too. I don’t know. Certainly there have been a lot of martyrs of different types, people that actually gave their life in blood rather than deny Christ. And why do the martyrs not deny Christ? Because they can’t. They literally can’t. Christ is so, for saints, it’s like a saint has already been crucified. He’s already been crucified, either by vows or by circumstances or both. A saint has learned to surrender. A saint’s circumstances… In many cases, I would say, have given him no other option than to surrender. Have given her no other option to surrender. Have given them no other option but to surrender. They have been put in such a box that there’s no way out. And either you turn to nihilism or you turn to the Spirit. And many, and I’m not saying I’m a saint, would prefer nihilism. Not in the sense of any kind of external action. But it would be such a relief to just be able to say, none of it matters. I’m going to go play video games and do what I have to do. Go to my job, you know, make money, whatever. Distract myself. There’s endless distractions in our society. Dive in. But for some of us, we’ve been put into a box that is so severe that we have to go deeper. And the Spirit is there. Not the Spirit that’s talked about in churches, but and in books god knows they’re not in books or it’s not in books I mean the spirit can use books and by books I mean those published in nashville by christian publishers actually I think I’d probably if I had to if I saw a christian book that was published by a secular press I don’t know what that word secular really means anymore I know some theologians think about make a lot of fuss over it but if I saw a christian book that was published by major publisher and they were purely out to make money with no disregard for any type of charitable or spiritual intent. I would trust that more than a lot of these publishers that claim to be doing the Lord’s work but are actually just another profit machine. And you might say, what’s wrong with profit? Well, I’m not going to get distracted by that. The issue here is that crucifixion and resurrection are the same thing because When Christ is on the cross, he’s demonstrating what this world does to people, even to the perfect person. This world will crucify the perfect person. So he’s removing the shame. He’s removing the blame. He’s removing the surprise. He’s saying, this is what happens when you follow me. And by following him, he doesn’t mean being an egomaniac. He means this is the way to peace. The way that Jesus lives is the way to be sane in this world. And I’ve written lots and lots about that. But what I’m talking about now is that when he’s on the cross, he’s not only revealing what the world is doing, but by his doing that, he’s taking the burden off of us. He’s taking the surprise away from us. We’re not surprised when we’re crucified. If they crucified Jesus, if they crucified Jesus, then good Lord, then at least I’m not anywhere near what Jesus is in terms of compassion and wisdom like Jesus. If there’s anybody in the world that should not have been crucified, it’s Jesus. And yet they crucified Jesus. They being the state and the religious establishment. That’s who crucified Jesus. Oh, and the regular everyday people were standing by. They weren’t willing to speak up because they just wanted to keep their comfortable positions and not make waves. Because it was scary. It would have been scary to make waves by protesting against Jesus’ crucifixion. Just like it’s scary to make waves… when you protest against ICE or any type of tyranny, any type of injustice. So Jesus in his life, in his flesh, in his ripped up bloody flesh, he exposed the end that comes to people that are living rightly. And so by doing that, he is also revealing that you’re right. The world’s wrong. We know Jesus is right, and so we know that what the world did to him is wrong. We know that the power, you know, the idea that power and money, you know, might makes right, we know that when we look at the cross, that cannot be true. You cannot look at the cross and say that using power unjustly is justified. Not because of some rule, not because of some concept, but because his very crucifixion exposes the absurdity, the evil. It says, it’s like a big black eye. It’s like a big punch in the face to conventional wisdom. Everything that everybody says is right. Don’t, you know, go along, get along. You know, don’t make waves. Keep your head down. You know, it’s all for a greater good. You know, whatever it is. You know, we become numb to it. Children recognize it. We become numb to it. And the crucifixion says… Wake up. Like, look. It’s not even wake up. It’s like, holy shit, what happened? Like, they did that to Jesus, too? I mean, really? Like, so it’s just, the crucifixion itself is just like a rubbernecking moment. Like, you’re just dumbstruck. You know, you’re just like, your mouth is hanging open. You know, it’s like the producers, Mel Brooks, the producers, when they’re doing that parody of Hitler, right? And the audience has just got their mouth hanging open. That’s a comedic version of what I’m talking about. It just stops you in your tracks. And somehow in some mysterious way, I’ve been dancing around this because I’ve been thinking about how to connect the dots linearly. But somehow in some mysterious way, just seeing Christ and seeing what they did to him And the impact that has, the permanent impact. Christ, we have a dead man on a tree. I keep writing about that. A dead man on a tree. Well, what difference does it make? Well, it’s not just any dead man, although Christ is fully human and he came in the most humble circumstances. That’s what the Christmas stories are about. But it’s like he’s utterly humble and yet utterly perfect. And yet this is what the world did to him. And in some mysterious way, just seeing that and seeing the solidarity and having the walls drop down. And you’re just there and you’re just looking at Jesus. And the love, the love that is just gushing forth as the Bible talks about his side was pierced and water flowed from it. And that was actually considered the baptism of the first saint. His name escapes me, unfortunately. St. Dismas, I think. Dismas. And that whole, you know, Dismas was the first Christian saint. He was baptized by Jesus himself. When Dismas said, remember me when you come into your kingdom. and jesus was was he was literally you know a lance was put into his side and the water spilled forth and we can we we also become baptized you know sacramentally and please god do not get distracted with all these ridiculous debates about what baptism actually is some kind of metaphysical blah blah blah like that’s the menu we’re talking about the food you know like it’s like Dismas was baptized. We can be baptized. The early churches, I’m told, would actually have people in white robes, or maybe they went down naked or something, but they literally were under the water and were brought up from the water. And so we get to behold that same crucifixion, and we get to be baptized just like St. Dismas was. St. Dismas said, Remember me when you come to your kingdom. And Christ says, you know, this day you’ll be with me in paradise. And he’s baptized with the water. And we’re baptized and our baptism is sacramentally, we’re sacramentally baptized. And that, to me, one of the main things about the sacraments, especially for someone who likes to think, is that the sacraments are physical. Water, wine, bread, holy oil, water. I’m not saying that holy oil is the same level as the other ones, but it just comes to mind because we do anointing with oil in our church. I don’t mean this crudely, but it’s almost like chapstick. One of the priests or one of the deacons has a… This is an Anglican church. They have a little special container that has a ring on it. They anoint us with oil, but it’s not like they’re pouring oil on our head. Although that’s great too, but… The point is it’s physical. It’s not in our head. It’s in our head. It’s in our heart. But it’s more than that. And that’s one of the things that makes Christianity so outlandish is that it’s literally God breaking into the universe physically. Like it’s the most non-intellectual thing possible. It’s literally a baby in a manger. It’s literally a dead man on a tree. But in his dying, he brings life because we see what the world did to him. And we become physically attached to that in the Eucharist and in baptism. And somehow, in some mysterious way, we are physically united with Christ and his death. And we come out the other side. We come out the other side emotionally united. even though I use that word all the time, but I don’t even think it’s even, I don’t think existential even captures it. I mean, existential is the term, at least as I use it, to capture life in this world that we’re thrown into without our consent. But somehow, somehow by being united to Christ, by looking at the crucifix, and by recognizing that they did this to Jesus, and then we realize, oh, they’re doing it to us too. They’re doing it to us too. And we become bonded to Christ and love and his love. And then we’re in that state that the Eastern Catholic saint, whose name is escaping me, ah, what’s his name? Anyway, there’s this Catholic saint, and I don’t think he’s saying anything new, but he’s talking about a realm that you go into. It’s a prayer realm. It’s a, you know, a I hate to use that word mystic because it always gets messed up and people get confused about it and it’s made to be into this kind of esoteric thing, this kind of private club for church nerds and intellectuals. That’s not what it is. But there’s a way in which St. Charbel, St. Charbel, that’s his name, and he talks about, he says it much more eloquently than I can remember it, but basically you’ve got two choices here. You’ve got drudging through life, moment by moment, day by day, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, Waiting for Godot. It’s a series of meaningless events, which is like being in prison existentially in this life. But there’s a way through prayer and through bonding with God that you’re in this kind of timeless realm. It’s not something you think up or gin up. It’s something that comes to us. One of the things I’ve learned from Catholic spirituality is that, you know, consolation, as they call it, comes from God. Desolation comes from God, too, by his absence. And God knows what we need. We’re his beloved children that he was willing to use. God was willing to let his only son be executed brutally by his enemies in order to prove to his enemies that he wants us to be his children. And so, You have, although there is a sense in the Gospel of John that we’re always his children from the very beginning, and that’s true too. You can only push a metaphor so far. But it’s not a metaphor. That’s the thing. It’s literal. Like, it’s literal flesh and blood. Like, God wants us to be his children. We are his children. In the sense of that Dominican who used Wittgenstein as his basis, or he wrote that book, I can’t think of the name of the guy. [Herb McCabe] He’s in my writing, though. But it’s this idea that we’re already forgiven. If we would just look at God and say, you’re already forgiven. We’re like, oh, we’re already forgiven. We don’t have to keep lambasting ourselves and shaming ourselves and worrying. We just have to look at God. He’s like, oh, you’re already forgiven. That’s what forgiveness is. When we look at God, we realize we already were forgiven. And God tried to make it so painfully clear. It’s like, that’s what the crucifixion is. It’s like, God loves us so much. Like, He’s willing to endure this. And if they do this to Him, we shouldn’t be surprised if they do it to us. And somehow that realization, that joy, that crucifixion is also a resurrection. Because Christ, in His crucifixion, is already demonstrating the victory of Easter. He’s already demonstrated the victory of Easter even as he’s crucified. And he’s bringing us into victory even while we’re crucified. And so for those of us who have situations that don’t change, that are hellish every day, the pain never goes away in this life. Well, we actually get closer to the resurrection. We get closer to Easter because we’re actually on the cross with Christ every day. And that is actually where Easter begins. Easter begins on the cross. Easter doesn’t begin on the third day. That narrative is important, obviously. But for those of us that are really in the pit, that are in despair, that are being crucified, you know, there is no third day for us because every day is a crucifixion for us. It’s not like we’re crucified and then we can be buried and then we can be raised. It’s like every day we’re crucified. But as Thomas Hopko says, the deeper the knowledge, the deeper the suffering. And that means that we have deeper knowledge because we have deeper suffering. And Christ is on the cross. And by his being on the cross, he is already defeating death. It’s like turning the other cheek. Turning the other cheek doesn’t mean be nice. Turning the other cheek means I have so much interior freedom that you can strike me and I can have what I call peace. confrontational non-violence, aggressive non-violence. So it’s like, you strike me on one cheek, you’re like, well, I’m going to turn the other cheek. It’s like, strike me there too, because you can’t do anything to me because I’m free. I’m free. I have internal freedom, interior freedom, because this world crucifies me and it crucified Jesus too. And if it crucified Jesus, that means that If I’m doing something right, I shouldn’t be surprised by being crucified as well. And I don’t have to worry about all the details because I can look at Christ on the cross and I can become part of his sacramental body. I can partake in, I can eat his flesh, drink his blood, be baptized by him. and I’m part of him. I’m eating his flesh. I’m becoming one with him. They’re doing the same thing to Jesus that they’re doing to me. And Jesus is in the trenches with us, and he’s in the trenches. He’s so close to us in the trenches that he’s literally like we become him. He becomes us. And the thing is that that power, that cosmic power, that begotten of the Father before all ages, like Jesus cannot be killed. There’s that old fishhook story that I like to tell that goes back to the ancient Christian thinking. And it’s like, you know, the devil has all the people held hostage in hell. And he says, okay, yeah, if you give me Jesus, your son, then I’ll let them all go. And so Jesus says, here I am. You can take me. You can take me, the devil. Jesus says, you can take me. You can take me and just let my people go out of hell. And then Satan does it and he gets tricked. He bites on the fishhook of Jesus’ divinity. He’s blown up. He’s killed. Because that’s the thing. You can’t kill Jesus. Now, we’re mortal. We are sustained every moment by God’s love. And that’s the love that guides us. That’s the love that God’s always guiding us. And that we have to learn to listen to Him. And we all listen in different ways. And we listen in different ways at different times. And there are a bunch of hucksters out there that are trying to profit off of that because it’s hard and mysterious, but not mysterious in the sense of being esoteric or intellectual, but just it’s new. You know, it’s like almost like you buy a new pair of shoes. It’s mysterious because you never worn before, you know, um, Unless you go to Foot Locker in the 1980s and they’re already there for you to try on. But in these days, you just order them off of Zappos and they come. You try them on for the first time. And it’s a mystery. This is the same thing. It’s like trying on a new pair of shoes. It just turns out that the pair of shoes you’re trying on is the Alpha and the Omega, the one that was before and the one that was after. Christ cannot be killed. That’s what the whole two natures thing is all about. He’s fully God and fully man. It’s like, he’s fully man, And I used to get tied up on the child, there’s like the Oriental Orthodox that are supposedly, the whole idea of Christ nature is being tuned to man and God. It seems like it was, I was watching a Joker movie Joker clips from the Batman movie today, and there was the Two-Face guy that, you know, the mayor that got… The prosecutor that, you know, became a bad guy because half his face got acid poured on it. You know, the Two-Face character in Batman. Like, you know, I think sometimes… the Christology kind of seems like that. It kind of seems like, well, Jesus is half man, half God. Well, that’s not it. He’s fully God and fully man. Well, it’s a mystery. You know, you can do gymnastics all day long about that. You know, I’d rather watch Johnny Carson reruns. I mean, it’s the same thing. To me, it’s not about the intellectual gymnastics. The gymnastics are there when they need to be there to keep the bullshit out. You know, it’s like a guardrail to keep wacko, you know, weird stuff out. But But the thing is, it’s like enter that mystery, enter that mystery. And so when you get there, when you’re there with Christ on the cross, you see that there was no way the world was ever going to fuck up this thing. You know, because Christ is still God. That’s the kicker. He’s still, yes, he’s 100% man, but yes, he’s 100% God too. And yes, that manifested itself in the Easter story. And there are a million different ways to interpret that. from the most fundamentalist to the most abstract liberal, even though I hate those terms, there’s all kinds of Easter story analysis. I’ve written about that. We can talk about that another time. The point is I’m talking about on the cross, in the trenches, when we’re being crucified, when we’re not going to have an Easter because every day is a crucifixion, including Easter, it’s a crucifixion. But in that crucifixion, behind all the fuss, Behind all the blood, or in all the blood, is the fact that Jesus Christ is divine. And so the world overplayed its hand big time, big time. They crucified God. God died, but he’s God. And so in some mysterious way, he’s like, tricked you. Like, you overplayed your hand. The devil overplayed his hand. The world overplayed its hand. Because Christ is God, and that’s what caused the resurrection, is Christ’s godness, his divinity. And, you know, we talk about the Father raised him from the dead. You know, the Father, you know, that Jesus didn’t walk out of the dead, metaphorically walk out of the tomb on his own, you know, or literally whatever. But it’s like, that’s the thing. That divinity… That thing that was before all ages, it’s in the cross. It’s not like when Christ was on the cross, it didn’t mean he still wasn’t divine. And you can interpret the cross as some kind of metaphorical, existential expression of love that is divine. But I’m talking about hardcore, not fundamentalist, but hardcore, mystical, and not in a weird way, but sacramental. in a physical way, in a real way. You know, in a real way, Christ is and was and always will be God. And so even when he was on the cross, he was God. And so when we’re on the cross and we are united to Christ, we also become God. That’s what the theosis tradition is all about. And I know that sounds crazy to some people, but there’s that whole saying, like, you know, God became man so man can become God. Sometimes they make the second God lowercase. That’s Eastern Orthodox, you know, coffee talk, you know? But it’s like we become so wrapped up in Christ’s divinity by being crucified ourself while he’s being crucified Himself. And we’re eating his flesh and drinking his blood. It’s like we become him. He becomes us. We become unified. And so that is resurrection. Being united with Christ is resurrection. And, you know, I keep saying the same thing a million different ways. But I think what I’m coming back to is this fact that this world crucifies us. It crucified Christ. But when they crucified Christ, they overplayed their hand because Jesus… Just look at the Gospel of John. Look at any of the books that John wrote or his people wrote or whatever. I don’t care about all this stupid academic debate. So did he really write it or was it his community that wrote it? It doesn’t matter. It’s in the Scriptures. It’s stuck around for 2,000 years. It works. So, and I can give a more sophisticated reply than that, but it doesn’t matter. The point is, you know, in a lot of ways, I think the Gospel of John, I’ve written about this and it still blows my mind, but like, The Gospel of John and the letters of Paul, they’re all talking about the same thing that the synoptic Gospels were talking about, that Matthew, Mark, and Luke were talking about. But they’re doing things with the significance. I mean, I think that John’s letter, I’m sorry, John’s gospel is about, you know, it’s about what’s happening, but it starts to take in the sacramental, the spiritual, the reality, like the significance of it. It’s like it’s just, you know, and I’ve written a whole little blog post about it, but the gospel of John just blows your mind, you know. But, you know, there’s no discontinuity there. I’ve resolved that discontinuity in my mind. The same with Paul’s letters. They’re all talking about the same thing. They just do it in different ways. I call Paul’s letters a double shot, like a double espresso. I never actually had a double espresso, but I think that my understanding is that it’s like a coffee that’s concentrated and doubled up or whatever. But anyway, the point is that the crucifixion and the resurrection, for us, that are in the pit all the time. They are the same thing because Christ was always divine and they were always overplaying  their hand. And Jesus told us what was going to happen after the crucifixion. He told Peter what was going to happen. He told him he’d be raised. He was. And what I’m saying is that he didn’t stop becoming God on the cross. And his godness is what allowed him to be resurrected again. And we can, in prayer, in contemplation, as St. Charbel says in ways that I can’t really remember exactly how he said it, but somehow we can enter that timeless nature of the crucifixion. We can look at an icon, we can pray, we can read the Bible, whatever. We can think about Christ on the cross. We can pray the rosary, and we can enter into that. We can let that absorb us. I mean, Christians, I think, it’s fair to say, are pretty obsessed about Christ on the cross. And the real reason of that is because when we get absorbed into the cross, we get absorbed into Christ. And Christ is God. And it shows, it gives us a way, it gives us a way to unite our brokenness, our woundedness, our suffering to Christ, who is also suffering, but is also God. And so if you are literally uniting yourself to Christ on the cross, you’re uniting yourself to God who cannot be killed. Or perhaps better said, you’re uniting yourself to God on the cross who is also divine. And that divinity is going to be what resurrects him literally, physically on Easter. However you interpret that. And it’s almost like you’re getting a front row seat. You’re being crucified with Christ so much. that you’re literally dying with him. And so you’re going to rise with him. It’s like you get a front row seat because you’re so crucified with Christ that you get to go for the whole ride. You’re not somebody that just passed by and looked at the cross and said, oh, that’s too bad. And then like, oh, they raised from the dead. Whoa. You know, three days later, whoa. You’re like, no, you’re being crucified with Christ real time in a timeless sense, in a way that this is what St. Charbel talks about is like, The drip, drip, drip of everyday life, like when you get into this position where you’re so consumed with the cross and you’re uniting all of your suffering to it, your day-to-day grind, when you’re doing that, you’re entering into a space that is transcendent. Not in the airy-fairy, cloud-in-the-mountain sense, but transcendent in the sense of, I’m changing a dirty diaper on a nine-year-old because she has disabilities and I’ll be doing this for the rest of my life, but That’s a form of crucifixion. And that gets me closer to Christ. As I said before, there’s nothing the SOBs can do to us anymore. Because the more they crucify us, the more they fire us, the more they make fun of us, the more they overcharge us, the more they do whatever the hell they do to us. I’m not defending bad things. I’m saying that If this shit is happening to us, we can latch it on to Christ. We can let it drive us closer to the cross, drive us closer to Christ, make us closer to Christ. And so the more shit they do to us, the closer to Christ we are, the closer to the crucifixion we are. The closer to the crucifixion we are, that means the closer we are to Christ. That means the closer we are to Christ as man and as God. And so we get to ride the whole way. We get to be crucified right along with him. And we get to be close to that same divinity that also raised him, even if it’s in the form of the Father. And I’m not going to get into gymnastics about the Trinity. And that’s why I can say that the crucifixion and the resurrection are the same thing. Because the crucifixion is the root of the resurrection. And so I don’t want to, I could spin off some more abstract thoughts about it and quasi-poetic thoughts about it, but I don’t want to muddy the waters any more than they’re already muddied. But I’m just saying to those of us who live in hell, who live in existential hell, we don’t have to wait for Easter to get to existential heaven. In fact, we never get to Easter, not in a chronological way. We don’t get to Easter in a chronological way. We’ll get to Easter in a prayerful way, I want to say, a timeless way. We accessed the resurrected Christ. What is the resurrection? It means they crucified Christ, but he’s still alive. And they’re crucifying us, and we’re still alive. And we’re alive because we’re loved by the one who was uncreated and can never die, even when they’re crucified. So for those of us who are crucified every day, we also have Easter every day. And that’s the mystery of Christianity. And by listening to this, if any of this makes any sense at all, I’m not saying this solves all your problems or my problems. By definition, it doesn’t do that because you’re being crucified. I’m being crucified. Being crucified is the furthest thing you could possibly get from problem solving. But what it is, is turning the other cheek with your whole life. And not in the sense of being nice, but it’s in the sense of like, Oh, you hit me on one cheek? Hit me on the other cheek. See how that works for you. Because I’m being held by the one that can’t be destroyed, even by a crucifixion. So I’m already living Easter. I’m already being resurrected while I’m being crucified, just like Jesus.

No exit, no answer.

[00:08] When I was in college studying philosophy, I remember that an academic, I think he was a professor as well, at another school came to visit the philosophy department at my school.

[00:31] And I remember that one of the things he said at the beginning of his remarks is that he was going to make his presentation and his position more firm and concrete. Those were not the words he used, but I don’t know what words to use,

[00:58] but he was going to make his position more firm and confident in his presentation than his own view might be. And in my verbal vomit, my intention is always to survive. And I dictate my thoughts in the hope that somehow others could derive some benefit

[01:55] from them. But I’m not here, of course, to proselytize or preach. And if I do have any hint of that, it is only because I want to share what has helped me so much to live as a human in what I believe is hell. I believe that life is hell and that until one

[02:47] faces this fact, either through circumstances or through inquiry, although I suspect that difficult circumstances are always the catalyst for the journey. In fact, thinking about a speech that Thomas Hopko gave to some seminary graduates, which is online

[03:25] to view, thinking about that speech, it appears that everyone gets crucified. Everyone experiences life as hell. Everyone has a crisis point, at least repentance. And it’s actually cringing,

[04:06] cringeworthy to go through how popular Christianity talks about repentance. I cringe at just thinking about it, so I can’t even go into it. But suffice it to say that when we’re

[04:35] crucified, we are given a vision, not a mystical ecstatic vision, but a vision of the pit, a vision of hell. We recognize that the dreams that we had

[04:56] cannot be fulfilled, and/or if they are fulfilled, that they’re fulfilled partially. And we realize that even if our dreams were filled completely, that we would still be utterly miserable. I think

[05:20] one of the reasons why Jesus says that the gate is narrow and while few find the kingdom, few find peace, is twofold. Number one, it’s very painful.

[05:40] It’s very deflating. It’s tragic. It’s crushing to recognize the true predicament of being human, how nothing will satisfy us. And again, I’m thinking of evangelical talking points like, there’s a God-shaped hole in your heart. It just makes me cringe. I’m not

[06:13] even going to get into that because it’s such a knockoff, such a counterfeit, such a distraction from the seriousness of the human condition. We don’t need goddamn bumper stickers. We don’t need

[06:32] five-point programs. We don’t need silly books published in Nashville that tell us what the answer is. The first thing we have to do is wake up. And wake up has been used

[06:56] by a teacher that blended Eastern spirituality with Christian spirituality named Anthony DeMello. And I used to binge watch Anthony DeMello a million years ago, and I’m glad I did,

[07:12] but I do agree with the Vatican’s assessment of his work. He used to use that term wake up all the time, and I don’t find it helpful. I don’t find it helpful. But I do believe that the default conclusion after being alive for 47 years, almost 48 years,

[07:49] I do believe that the default conclusion that you have to have if you’re paying attention, if you’re not drowning yourself in drugs and alcohol and Hallmark movies and endless activity and climbing

[08:04] the ladder not to provide for yourself. By the way, I recently stated in a conversation that I am managing my career not because I’m trying to self-actualize or get an ego trip. I mean,

[08:27] there is an element of self-actualization in the sense that I want to do things that I’m in a self-actualization in the sense that I want to do things that I’m suited for, but I manage my career because that’s what it takes to survive, not to get an accolade. Although surviving usually results in accolades because that’s the kind of performance it takes to keep a job.

[08:51] And of course, there’s a lot of conflict between Christ’s kingdom and working for corporations, and there’s no way to resolve that. I’ve written about that scenario in other places, but life is hell. It’s one thing after another. There’s always a crisis. There’s always a fire

[09:11] to put out. If you don’t live in that situation, good for you, you know? And I had been reflecting on the Buddha yesterday. And as I reflected on it, I thought, you know, the Buddha, the Buddhist way

[09:27] is just a symptom of the overall structure. In my understanding of Buddhism, to really become enlightened, you have to become a monk. And so you are rejecting family life, you’re rejecting work,

[09:44] you’re begging, you have a beggar’s bowl, and you spend most of your time either doing manual labor with a mindful spirit or you are meditating. And I got a lot of,

[10:00] I’m glad that I spent two or three years engaging deeply with Buddhism. I think it can serve a purpose in terms of kind of a backdrop to Christianity that shows, that gives prominence

[10:17] to some differences between Buddhism and Christianity, which can be helpful in understanding our own tradition. But Buddhism, especially in its popular form,

[10:30] I don’t think that popular Buddhism in the United States could actually lead to any enlightenment. I think that one thing it has going for it is that a lot of the cultural baggage was stripped away

[10:45] because the baggage in, you know, Tibet is different from the baggage here. And in the transmission, it probably lost Tibetan baggage, but I’m sure it’ll gain baggage over here pretty quickly including the corporatization

[11:02] of meditation as mindfulness and these paid apps and this is not unique to Buddhism by the way I find it horrifying that there’s actually a Catholic app that is backed by venture capital

[11:22] if that’s not the money changers in the temple I don’t know what is so anyway but back to this idea that life is hell. There’s a tradition in philosophy called pessimism, philosophical pessimism.

[11:44] And it actually reminded me today of another philosophical school from ancient times called hedonism. Now, when you say hedonism today, that typically brings up images of luxury life and lavish meals and fancy houses and living it up for pleasure. But as I was taught in college, classical hedonism was about maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain. And so they talked about what I call the hangover effect.

[12:23] So if you go out and indulge yourself in lots of pleasures and indulgences and parties and wine, women, and song and liquor and who knows what else, fast cars, whatever it might be, the pain that results

[12:42] from that indulgence, that series of indulgences, outweighs the pleasure. And so to maximize pleasure in the hedonist tradition, as classically understood, essentially made you live like a monk.

[13:02] And in passing, I just observed that this is also what Buddhism leads to. My understanding of Buddhism’s teaching to regular people is do the best you can, don’t do this, don’t do this, and hope for a better afterlife, hope for a better reincarnation.

[13:24] But these tools, being a Buddhist and being a hedonist, don’t work in the real world. They are an abdication of duty. They are an opting out of the human condition. And in some ways, maybe that’s

[13:45] not a bad idea. I think St. Paul talked along those lines when he said he was speaking for himself and not for Christ. When he talked about given the current circumstances, people should not get married, not have children. It was going to be tough because you could live for God,

[14:02] but if you had a wife, you’d live for your wife and God, and you’d have a divided You live for your wife and God. You have a divided mentality or whatever. And I don’t have any regrets. You know, I don’t think that the single life was for me. But suffice it to say that I don’t think Buddhism or hedonism or anything else is a solution to the fact that life is hell.

[14:27] Life is very hard. And it’s not just intellectually hard. It’s like physically hard, at least for me, with a special needs daughter and obesity and unemployment and illness and the list goes on. I can’t just think my way

[14:51] out of it. I have recently discovered a source of entertainment watching Johnny Carson shows on YouTube. But if I do too much of that at night, then I end up not getting enough sleep,

[15:09] which has a host of negative consequences. So I’m stuck. We’re all stuck. And as I’ve said before, again, we’re talking intellectually and we’re not talking about, you know, danger of self-harm or anything like that.

[15:24] But I say that those who do commit suicide, which I think is usually a mental health issue, not a philosophical issue. But all I’m saying about that is there’s no guarantee that whatever, if nothing comes after or something comes after, there’s no guarantee that whatever comes after suicide is any better.

[15:44] And given my experience of life, I would think it probably is worse because everything gets worse. We get old, we get crickety or crackety or whatever you want to call it. It just keeps getting worse. For me, I have to change diapers on a nine-year-old. I’ll be changing diapers on

[16:03] another human being for the rest of my life because my daughter has Angelman syndrome. And again, to me, that’s not something to be, I’m not surprised by that. I’m not offended by that. I’m not surprised by interviewing for a job and not getting a job. I’m not surprised by

[16:23] getting what should have been the most stable job ever and getting fired even though I was doing a great  job. Like that is my default experience. One crucifixion after another. And so this is where I come back to the professor who came to the college. And I’m saying this now because

[16:51] what I’m about to say is not necessarily what I believe. I don’t know yet. I don’t know if I believe this yet, but I’m processing it out loud. And the processing that I’m doing is saying that I am not a

[17:24] philosophical pessimist, but I would like to be. I would like to be able to say, life’s a bitch, then you die, full stop, end of story, go play some video games. But I can’t shake the presence of Christ. I wrote a line one time that said something along the lines

[17:51] of, I still have hope, dammit. And I think some people, most people, at least the AI bots, took that as this defiant, like, I’m going to maintain hope despite all costs, rah, rah, rah.

[18:05] And maybe that’s a good thing for people to read that, you know, see my stuff. But I was saying, there’s still hope, dammit.  Like, I can’t get rid of this goddamn hope. And partly I think it’s my fault, quote unquote, because I earnestly sought God for years and years and years. And I believe that I found Him,

[18:31] that He found me. And that’s a whole other discussion about what that looks like and all that stuff. It’s nothing spectacular. It’s just, I feel a presence of God and I feel him directing me what to do. And it’s mysterious and it doesn’t really make any sense in terms of normal categories.

[18:51] But it’s regular. It’s nothing exciting. It’s the same thing that has been mapped out in the Christian tradition for thousands of years. You know, but I sought that. I sought God. And what I found is that unfortunately I got what I was looking for in God,

[19:09] but it’s not what I thought I needed. It’s not what I wanted. I have that still small voice, as God says in the Old Testament. The same spirit of St. Joseph who does what he’s told. That’s what I’m living in. I have this still small voice and I can’t get rid of it. I have hope

[19:32] whether or not I want to. And frankly, I think I’m in so deep that I would have to just go through it. I can’t go out. It’s a one-way street. It’s like one of those, you know, when you go into a federal building that’s really secure. At least when I was doing this with a boss 20 years ago,

[19:50] they would have these big spiky things that stuck out of the ground where you were driving your car into the booth. And if you go forward, everything’s fine. But if you were to back up, it’ll slash your tires. And that’s kind of where I feel I am. And I don’t think slashing

[20:12] my tires would help me at all. I feel like I’m stuck. There’s no way out. There’s no exit. Just like that play. We’re all stuck in an unchained world, a disenchanted world or whatever. But yet I have the presence of Christ.

[20:31] I have the presence of God. And it’s just enough to keep me going forward even when I’m exhausted. And that is incredibly frustrating in a lot of ways because I would like to just be able to say, hey, God is dead. It’s all on us. We have to make something out of life, whatever we want it to be.

[21:14] but I don’t have that luxury. I am haunted by God. In fact, I’m not just haunted by God. I am being held by God. And it’s incredibly frustrating. It’s incredibly frustrating to be loved by God because he wants all of me and he wants me to do things for Him.

–

[00:01] He wants me to do things for him. And again, I’m not talking about grand visions. I’m talking about signal graces, as the Catholics would say, or just my intuition. It’s just enough to keep me engaged. And it feels sometimes like a hamster wheel, but it’s not a hamster wheel.

[00:29] I see the progression. I see the connections. I wrote a post one time about Easter, and it was called Why Easter is Not a Tragedy. And my proposition was that given that life is hell, anything that would continue this life into eternity is by definition a tragedy because it is an extension of hell for eternity.

[01:01] And that just sounded awful to me. And I said, look, you know, I can’t imagine that any part of my life that is eternalized would not turn into hell. Because everything that I’ve ever experienced in life eventually turns to hell. Because everything that I’ve ever experienced in life eventually turns to hell. And so I said

[01:22] to myself, I can’t imagine anything that has anything about me in it. Anything about who I am and what I’ve experienced. Anything that’s eternalized is hell, by definition. And that

[01:39] means Easter’s a tragedy because you’re just eternalizing existential hell. But the conclusion I got to was that I have to trust Christ. I don’t have any conception of how life after death could be anything but hell,

[02:00] but I have trusted Christ in crises over and over, and he’s always come through in his own way. And by the way, this is why Christ says, blessed are the poor, because theirs is the kingdom of God or whatever, because they’re closer to this reality, because their life is more hellish,

[02:33] more precarious, more dependent on Christ, less oftentimes distracted by intellectual gymnastics. So the point of all this is that life is hell. There’s no escape. There’s no guarantee that what comes after this, if anything, is going to be any better.

[02:57] Anything that does not recognize that life is hell is a distraction, is a drug. And yet I found Christ. And yes, I understand that joy can come mingled with pain. To me, it would have to come mingled with pain. I can’t imagine just pure joy, that even if I did have pure joy, it would not last, and it would just create more pain because of its absence.

[03:32] We have the word of the cross. We have the word of the cross. That’s what St. Paul writes about. And it doesn’t give us an answer. It doesn’t give us an intellectual answer. And I’ve said before that an intellectual answer is not an answer.

[03:52] An intellectual answer that tries to explain in words why life is so hell, hellish, and why God created it. That would be worse than the hell itself. And so what we have is we have a dead

[04:09] man on a tree. We have a dead man on a tree, which is the word of the cross. And Christ is the word. His life is the word. And so what we have is solidarity. We have the solidarity of God.

[04:30] God is in the trenches with us. He’s not forgotten us. And in a lot of ways, I think maybe we should borrow a page from the Buddhists and not try to explain everything. I’ve written a lot about why explanation is a distraction. A refusal to face facts.

[04:47] It’s much easier to think about theology and the theology of the cross than it is to face the fact that humans belittledly, graphically gashed flesh and drained blood and complete violence and utter disrespect of any kind of humanity,

[05:09] tortured to death by lashing our Lord, scourging him, making fun of him, mocking him, putting a crown of thorns on his head and mocking him, paying false homage to him,

[05:26] and having him drag the cross up to the Calvary Hill where he fell over and over, and they compelled somebody to help carry it, Simon of Cyrene. It was so bad that it was only the Romans

[05:41] that actually realized he needed somebody to help carry the cross. His own people did not. His own people had betrayed him. He was crucified naked, nails pounded in. Nails pounded into his hip, to his ankle bone. You can look at a picture on

[06:05] Wikipedia about somebody that was crucified around the time of Jesus and see how he had the nail went through the ankle bone. It was the most painful looking thing I’ve ever seen. I sometimes talk about the cross as a lynching tree or an electric chair or gas asphyxiation.

[06:25] to try to jolt myself out of just looking at the cross as a symbol. But really, in fact, the cross is much more painful than any of those things. And so that is what Christ experienced. He experienced the worst type of crucifixion possible, both in terms of physical pain, physical exhaustion, and shame.

[06:52] And so that’s what we have. We have the God-man who is in the trenches with us, and we have his promise of something later that is better. That’s all we have. We have the hellish existence that we live in,

[07:21] and we are offered many… That’s what we have. We have hellish life, and we’re offered all kinds of distractions and achievements and enticements. Just talk to a retired person about their career.

[07:47] It’s all vanished. Just look at your own career. Think about your job three years ago, what you accomplished. It doesn’t matter anymore. At least it doesn’t matter for me. And so again, all we have, the only thing we have is hellish life, the hellish condition of being human.

[08:09] And some people see it and some people don’t. It can be explained to some people and they get it. Others, they refuse it. They haven’t been crucified yet. And I’m not going around proselytizing. I’m just processing my own experience, but some of us realize it. Some of us are so

[08:33] completely crucified that we recognize that there’s no walking on the sunny side of the street to quote Willie Nelson’s Stardust album. There is no sunny side of the street, and if it is, it’s just

[08:56] enticement. So all we have is the hellish world. There’s no escape. There’s no guarantee that whatever comes after is any better. We have responsibilities we cannot shirk, special needs children, typical children, family,

[09:21] caregiving, aging relatives, whatever it might be. Buddhism, for all its wisdom, is just a structured opt-out, as is Western Christian monasticism, as is any monasticism, as is, you know, well, in a

[09:42] slightly different category, Western Buddhism is just another product. It’s a product I’ve consumed a few times for about three years, and it was helpful, but there’s no escape. That’s why my model is Saint Joseph, as I’ve said many

[09:58] times before. Saint Joseph does what he’s supposed to do and doesn’t do any more, and he’s faithful. And to me, the only thing we have is the word of the cross. We have Jesus Christ, the God-man,

[10:20] who has entered this world in order to heal it. And he can be the source of a voice, a small, not a verbal voice, but a small, still small intuition. We’re not even guaranteed that.

[10:37] But as Peter said in the Bible, where else can we go? And so there’s this hope. And I cannot embrace philosophical pessimism because I have this hope. And frankly, the hope pisses me off sometimes because I would like to just say,

[10:58] life’s a bitch, then you die, and go play video games. Actually, video games are not my thing. And I would still have to take care of my family, obviously. But no, I have this hope. And it doesn’t tell me. I’ve interviewed for three jobs this week. I’m unemployed, despite having made supposedly

[11:21] wise decisions about my job situations. But I’m unemployed through no fault of my own. I have great references everywhere I’ve ever worked. And I had three good job interviews this week, and one of them already told me no. And I don’t know what’s going to happen to the

[11:41] other two. And, you know, the voice doesn’t tell me, well, you’re going to get this one, so relax. It tells me just what I need to know, just in time. And sometimes I’ve rejoiced in that because I realized that if I knew too much ahead of time, it would have been too overwhelming. But sometimes

[11:59] it feels like God is holding back. Sometimes it feels like God is playing cat and mouse. Sometimes it feels like God is playing hide the ball. Sometimes it feels like God is trying to manipulate me or to, you know, to toy with me. And I understand being in the dark night of the soul and the wilderness

[12:18] and being formed, you know, but, you know, I feel like I’m coming out of the wilderness and yet I’m still in this limbo. And I’ve learned to live in the limbo, but it’s still very frustrating. I’ve tried to have peace, but unfortunately I can’t just grab things and start making things happen.

[12:40] It doesn’t work that way. I have to respond. I have to be led by the Spirit. And my circumstances are so insane that I don’t really have any other options because even if I wanted to try to project manage God’s will, I don’t have the time and energy to do it. I just

[12:59] have to listen. So unfortunately, I’d like to be a pessimist, but I can’t. It’s not that simple. The voice of God, unfortunately, will not let me go. And when I say unfortunately, I’m getting back to that part of the beginning of this meditation where I’m wondering if I really believe this.

[13:28] Do I really believe that the salvation of Christ is a tragedy? I think it’s more realistic. It’s more nuanced than just everything sucks, although it feels like everything sucks all the time. And so that’s what I’m left with. I’m left with a still small voice guiding me step by step,

[14:00] and I’m left with promise of Christ that whatever comes after this is going to be better. And that’s all I have. Any other explanation, offering, whatever, whether it’s from Thomas

[14:18] Aquinas or whether it’s from the guy at the bowling alley trying to pimp bowling tickets or I shouldn’t say that because everybody’s trying to make a living. I think actually the bowling guys are probably more have cleaner hands than I do or than I will have if I get back into the

[14:46] marketplace again. But yeah, I don’t think Buddhism works anywhere. I don’t think that it especially doesn’t work in drive-by contexts in Western civilization. And I don’t think, um, I think that the best we can do

[15:05] is participate in Christ’s suffering, attach our suffering to his suffering, and wait, and we don’t get an answer. The only answer is a dead man on a tree.

Why Suffering Doesn’t Disqualify Theological Witness—It Often Demands It

Why Suffering Doesn’t Disqualify Theological Witness—It Often Demands It

I recently had a conversation with an interlocutor about my theological writing. They were genuinely concerned. I write about faith as drowning in a whirlpool, constantly grabbing for the lifeline of Christ. I write in fragments, repetitions, urgent dictations between crises. I admit to despair, to inability to imagine any happy future, to clinging to God even while angry at Him.

Their verdict: this is suffering being theologized. Stabilize first, then reflect. Your pain is real, but it’s distorting your theology. You need to get your life together before you can write about God.

I want to be clear from the start: what follows are survival notes, not systematic theology. They’re provisional, meant to provoke dialogue, not pronounce final truths. I’m writing from inside the whirlpool, not from the safety of the shore. These are field notes from the depths, offered as witness and invitation to conversation—not as doctrine.

But I think my interlocutor fundamentally misunderstands how Christian theology has always worked.

The Tradition of Theology from the Depths

Open the Psalms. Half of them are people crying out from pits, surrounded by enemies, drowning in chaos. David doesn’t write systematic theology from a place of spiritual stability. He writes from caves, from fugitive life, from the raw edge of survival. “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.”

Job doesn’t lose his theological credibility when disaster strips everything away. His friends—comfortable, healthy, offering tidy explanations—are the ones God rebukes. Job, sitting in ashes, scraping his sores, is the one who “spoke rightly” about God.

Paul writes his most profound theology while dealing with a “thorn in the flesh” (whatever that was—chronic illness, persecution, psychological torment). He doesn’t wait until it’s resolved. He writes: “God’s power is perfected in weakness.” That’s not a coping mechanism—that’s revelation that came through the suffering, not despite it.

The desert fathers fled to brutal landscapes specifically because comfort seemed spiritually dangerous. They trusted the stripping away of ease more than they trusted abundance.

Mother Teresa—now Saint Teresa of Calcutta—experienced decades of spiritual darkness, what she called an absence of God’s felt presence. She didn’t stop serving. She said she wasn’t worthy to serve the suffering poor, that they were closer to Christ than she was.

The Cross as the Ultimate Proof

Here’s the thing about Christianity: when God shows up in human flesh, the world crucifies him.

That’s not a bug. That’s the revelation.

The cross isn’t a tragic detour on the way to resurrection. It’s the unveiling of what this world does to perfect love. It’s what reality looks like when you strip away the anesthesia.

If we only theologize from positions of health, stability, and comfort, we miss what the cross teaches. We risk building a faith that only works for the fortunate—and that’s not the gospel. The gospel is for the sick, the mourning, the persecuted, the ones crying out from depths.

What I’m Not Saying

I’m not romanticizing suffering. I’m not claiming pain is holiness or that struggle gives special insight. I’m not suggesting people should refuse help or healing.

The Christian tradition has always blessed healing—medicine, therapy, friendship, rest—as part of God’s provision. Grace comes in many forms.

I’m also not claiming suffering is the only reality or that resurrection is impossible. And this distinction matters: I’m not saying resurrection is false or that God’s promise is a lie. I’m saying I can’t imagine what resurrection looks like from where I stand—and that’s precisely the point.

Hope, by definition, is something I can’t manufacture or anticipate. If I could “gin up” a happy ending in my own strength, it wouldn’t be hope. It would be fantasy or projection.

No eye has seen, no ear has heard what God has prepared. That’s not just poetry—it’s the structure of Christian hope. We trust the promise, not our ability to picture it.

What I Am Saying

The whirlpool is real. The constant grabbing for the lifeline is real. And that’s not a failure of faith—it’s what faith is for many people.

Kallistos Ware describes faith as a spiral staircase, ascending upward. That always struck me as too neat. My experience is more like quicksand, more like drowning. You don’t climb—you cling. You grab the lifeline again and again, not because you’re making progress but because letting go means going under.

That’s not just my psychology. That’s the Psalms. That’s lament. That’s the cry from the cross itself: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

The question isn’t whether suffering distorts theology. The question is whether we’re willing to do theology from inside suffering or only from positions of resolution and comfort.

Why Easter Is Not a Tragedy (Even When I Can’t Imagine It)

I wrote a piece recently asking: why is Easter not a tragedy? If life is suffering, if human existence is this grinding crucifixion, how could any continuation of existence be anything but more tragedy?

I can’t answer that from my own experience. Anything I try to imagine—any “happy ending” I conjure—feels hollow, contrived, drugged with distraction. My experience tells me continuation equals more suffering. Period.

So here’s where faith comes in: not as explanation, but as trust.

Easter is shocking. Resurrection is rupture—something that breaks into reality from outside, not something that emerges naturally from within. Christ doesn’t climb out of the tomb through heroic effort. The Father raises him. It’s God’s act, not ours.

That’s the only way resurrection doesn’t become tragedy—if it’s genuinely new, something we couldn’t manufacture or anticipate. If I could imagine it, it would just be my projections. And my projections, shaped by this broken world, would inevitably be tragic.

So I trust. Not because I feel hopeful. Not because I can picture the happy ending. But because the God who has walked with me through crucifixion after crucifixion tells me He’s making something new. And if He says it’s victory, I believe Him—not because my experience confirms it, but because He’s proven trustworthy in the depths.

The Apophatic Thread

There’s a tradition in Christianity called apophatic theology—the theology of negation. You don’t say what God is; you say what God is not. You approach the divine by naming what it isn’t, clearing away false projections.

I think hope works the same way.

I can’t tell you what resurrection will be like. I can tell you it won’t be what I imagine, because my imagination is shaped by this crucifying world. I can’t make myself feel hopeful by picturing heaven. Any heaven I picture would be hell in disguise—just this world with better PR.

So I clear away the projections. I refuse the “happy ending” talk that feels like denial. I sit with the reality: this world crucifies. Suffering is real. Despair is real.

And then I say: Christ meets me here. In this. Not after I’ve climbed out. Not once I’m stable. Here. In the whirlpool. In the pit.

That’s where the lifeline drops. That’s where faith happens.

Why This Matters (Especially for the Church)

If we say “stabilize first, then theologize,” we create a faith that only works for the stable. We build churches where you have to be okay before you’re allowed to speak about God.

But the biblical witness is full of people who weren’t okay. Prophets in exile. Apostles in prison. Jesus himself, crying out from the cross.

The danger isn’t that people theologize from suffering. The danger is when we only hear from the comfortable—and then wonder why the gospel sounds hollow to those who are drowning.

On Repetition

My writing is messy. It’s repetitive. It’s dictated between crises, unpolished, often raw. I call it “verbal vomit.” It circles the same core insight again and again: Christ meets us in weakness. Pain is the doorway. Surrender is the only posture that works.

I’m aware this repetition does several things at once:

Liturgical repetition — like the Jesus Prayer or the rosary, where the same words gain depth through rhythm and practice. Sometimes repeating the truth is how we learn to live it.

Pedagogical repetition — circling back to reinforce a core concept with new examples and contexts. The same truth applied to unemployment looks different than when applied to grief or institutional church wounds.

Compulsive repetition — honestly, I’m still metabolizing this insight. I haven’t “moved on” because I’m still living it. I’m still in the whirlpool, still grabbing the lifeline.

Maybe it’s all three. But it’s also honest.

I’m not claiming to have it figured out. I’m claiming that those in the depths have something essential to say about God. And that the cross—where God himself cries out in abandonment—proves that suffering doesn’t disqualify witness.

It often demands it.

A Note to Readers

If you’re looking for systematic theology, polished apologetics, or reassuring answers, this probably isn’t for you.

If you’re drowning—if you’re burned out on church, traumatized by religious language, desperate rather than curious—these are survival notes. They’re not doctrine. They’re not final. They’re field notes from someone clinging to the lifeline, hoping it holds. They’re offered as witness and invitation to conversation, not as the last word.

I can’t promise you resurrection will make sense. I can’t even picture it. But I can tell you the One holding the lifeline has been faithful so far. Even when it felt like He was the source of the drowning, He was also the one keeping me afloat.

That’s not much. But it’s real.

And in the whirlpool, real is all we’ve got.

Damn Sr. Vassa. That was a good one.

NOT GETTING WHAT YOU LONG FOR

(Tuesday, October 22)

“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side…” (Lk 16: 19-23)

The “rich man” in this parable has no name, while the “poor man” is dignified with a name, Lazarus. Why? Because Lazarus has an identity, having become himself, and self-aware, through his “hunger” that he “longed to satisfy,” but couldn’t, as he lacked the friends and resources to do so; that is to say, through recognizing his human powerlessness. Lazarus has become himself, the “somebody” alive to God that he was meant to be, by slowly dying to the things and people that he longed for in this life. Conversely, the “rich man,” who never “longed” or wanted for anything, because he “feasted sumptuously every day” of his life, never got to know himself, or to become himself, through any painful recognition of what he lacked, because he never lacked anything and just took it all for granted. That’s why he is nameless in this parable.

Let me take pause today and be grateful for the things I have longed for, but was not given, because the “not” getting what I wanted has helped me understand where I’m meant to be, and who I am, in God’s eyes. I have been denied certain things and certain people that did not “fit” with me, even if I wanted them or their friendship, and this has, at times, been painful. But through it all, I am guided to become who I am, in God’s loving vision and purpose for me. O Lord, “lead us not into temptation,” amidst any of our wants and longings, “but deliver us” to be with You, where we are meant to be, according to Your vision and purpose.

The Crucifixion as Existential Fish Hook

One of the oldest (and probably the oldest) ways to understand the significance of what Jesus did on the cross is the fish hook theory:  Adam and Eve and humanity were held prisoner in hell by Satan.  God agreed to give Jesus Christ to Satan in exchange for getting Adam and Eve, et al. out of Satan’s hell.  Satan took the bait, but he bit on the fish hook of Jesus’ divinity which was so bright and powerful that it exploded hell with its brightness.

When I experience hell in everyday life, it comes in the existential form of shame, intimidation, threats, traps, deceptions, fears, et al.  When I contemplate the torture of the cross that Jesus endured in order to demonstrate the depth of His love for me, I can allow **that Love, His Love** to explode that existential hell (fear, shame, threats, etc.)–rather than any futile attempt to do it myself.  Whatever the hell happens, whatever the hell they do to me–I have the divine love of Jesus Christ which will explode anything that this world throws against me, either in this life or the next–and knowing that can make this life a little more like heaven day by day as I try to stay close to Him.