Resurrecting Chicago

Eagle rising above it all. (photo credit: Rise-a-mui)

I saw a bald eagle down at the Illinois River this morning.  It was soaring on wind currents like a huge, dark kite against the hazy blue sky. This regal bird was gliding elegantly, without effort, over the river when it suddenly dove and then swooped up in a kind of salute over the river with white tail feathers lit up by the sun.   What a graceful performance!

Grace is as difficult to define as love.  But, like love, I’ll know grace when I see it.

In my college days,  I attended a concert by Artur Rubinstein. He was alone on the stage playing his Steinway. His hands danced across the keys and produced wonderful sounds that fell on my ears like gentle rain on a dry field. I soaked it up.

At the end of the announced program, Rubinstein turned from the piano bench, looked out at us and softly asked what we would like to hear.   He heard a shout out for “Moonlight Sonata.” In peaceful silence he began to play Beethoven’s score.  I actually felt like I was at Rubenstein’s shoulder watching and listening to him play.  He was so graceful that we all were blessed.

Graceful Fingers. (photo credit: Decrand)

Some people walk with grace in their life’s journey. Their body seems to glide as they ease their steps along their path. Sometimes, even the more awkward of us can do something gracefully. You do something that’s done with class, integrity, proportion. Your graceful moment touches the rest of us with beauty.  Think of a young man holding his newborn daughter, cradling her with love. It’s a graceful moment. 

Remember when we were children and we were taught about grace?   The Catholic Church taught  us (and still teaches) that there are several kinds of grace.  We all need the first one: “sanctifying grace,” the love of God dwelling  richly in our hearts. It makes you holy, even sacred. At the moment of your Baptism you are sanctified because God’s presence becomes alive within you. You are supremely graced.

Another kind of grace is “actual grace:” the blessings that waft down on us each day, like the blessing that helps you when you pray silently an “I-need-help” prayer and you get that help. Actual grace is sometimes called “helping grace.”

Did you ever have someone tell you that your presence made them feel blessed? I hope so. I think that grace is all around us, like sunshine breaking through the clouds. We just have to be aware and recognize it when it comes. This kind of grace helps us get on with life. But, there are also moments when God touches your heart and stops you. He grabs you by the shoulder and turns you to look at something awesome, He asks you to listen carefully to something amazing.  And, as you look or listen, a silent “wow” graces your day. 

(Illustration by FiKretK) Our culture’s song of of greed.  

This morning I  decided to go McDonalds for the first time in probably two years. I was looking for a bacon-egg-and cheese  biscuit breakfast.  The ordering lane was open. Good! No line! I pulled in.

The brightly lit menu displayed  tasty, mouth-watering options like egg muffins with bacon or sausage, even pancake selections. But, wait! There were no prices next to any of the offerings. Got to be there somewhere. How much do I have to shell out for my biscuit breakfast?  Is it cheaper to order a meal or should I order my biscuit and drink separately?

I looked again.  The menu displayed different breakfast options but no prices.   Vast areas of the menu-board showed empty space where prices used to be listed. That way you don’t get to make a choice based on cost,.

I immediately smelled corporate bad breath. What a ploy! The customer will not be given any indication of price.  Whatever they want, they’ll have to pay for it and price should not enter into the decision.

A voiced popped out of the speaker asking me what I wanted. I ordered a breakfast biscuit and a drink.  Nearly eight dollars. And the breakfast sandwich was no longer topped with a pad of butter. I gulped down the dry biscuit with instant scrambled egg, sub-American cheese and a pasty breakfast sausage and a Coke….yes, a Coke.  But what I couldn’t swallow was the corporate greed that came with my breakfast.

I like vows. I made perpetual vows in the Church when I was twenty-two. From this moment on, I vow that I will not enter another McDonald’s again. I’ll make my own breakfast at home.

Is there no end to McDonald’s corporate greed and the culture of Mammon it represents? Withholding info which a customer needs to make a decision is a form of deception devised by the corporate men and women who eat their breakfasts in Hilton Hotel dining rooms.

I’m just as offended by Mickey D’s gambit as I was when ten years ago I was trying to order a drink at a nice restaurant but when I asked the waiter where the prices were he said, “Oh, we don’t list those.” I did not order a drink.

If you are reading this and thought that it was going to be a nice post on prayer or Holy Communion. I’m sorry, it’s not.  I dislike being deceived.

Deception looks the same anywhere. In corporations like McDonald’s  the tactics involve hiding or masking the truth and let customers believe what they want to as long as the corporation makes money. The principle they use is: “Greed is good!”  My Faith says the opposite.  I remember what Jesus said in Luke 12:15: “Watch out! Be on your guard against all forms of greed.” And, St. Paul who knew something of the human heart reminded Timothy (and us) that “The love of money is the root of all evil.” (I Timothy 6:10)

I have a can of Pillsbury biscuits and some eggs, a pound of bacon and cheese slices in the fridge. Next time, I’ll make my own bacon-egg-and cheese biscuit, a spitting image of McDonald’s product and avoid spending,,. eh ,,.how much?

It’s a squirrelly morning. I know what it’s thinking.

The creation story plays out each morning as I sit on my porch, listening and watching.

“And God said: Let there be light! And there was light.”

At dawn, in my neighborhood, birds wake-up chirping and singing while they search out something to eat from the bounty of God’s good earth. Do they have to be so frisky so early in the morning? I’m shuffling and foggy this morning as I grab the container of seed and open my porch door.

I’m fairly certain that the birds flitting around my deck think that I am God. Who else would feed them personally each morning?

I’m listening to cardinals fluting their melodies sharply and loudly; the house sparrows scrambling around in their own language of cheeps and twitters; plus, whistles and melodious racket from the throats of a dozen other species and soft, harp-like melodies  of  a house wren plus the annoying twangs of red-winged blackbirds. I hear the whoosh of wings, again and again this morning.

I watch as the Mourning Dove arrives with a descending melodious gargle. It stays on my porch and somehow with that long slender beak consumes the bird seed I put out on the flat railing of my deck. 

Then there’s my opening battle with the squirrels. The pair across the street live in a huge oak tree and have two little ones scurrying around with them.  Two adults make a home in the Japanese Maple in my front yard. This morning those two are scavenging crumbs from a discarded McDonald’s wrapper.

Those across the street are digging up last years acorns and squirreling around  the garbage cans which dot our street each Tuesday morning. Their life is foraging and keeping watch over their little ones. Both families also climb up to my deck and chow down the seeds that I’ve put out for the sparrows.

This is the creation story which renews itself each day. God did not wind up the clock of the universe and just put it in motion and then leave.  He is here awakening these living things with a deep down freshness that AI will never understand. Even the leaves of the bushes across the street look ready to take part in this new morning.  The light reveals their shades of green as they flutter with each soft breeze.

Each living thing is a universe of purpose and activity. Each sparrow, each cardinal, each squirrel is a new creation, every day.  And, you and I are privileged to be witnesses of the creation of God’s new day.

Don’t worry! Be happy! – A monk’s secret prayer Life.

Being aware of the presence of God throughout the entire day is the secret of living fully the Christian life. And the key to that life is listening (watching, too). 

If you get a chance, read Brother Lawrence’s “The Practice of the Presence of God.” Direct. Powerful. Beautiful. Brother Lawrence was always happy because he experienced God within him. To Brother Lawrence somberness was the enemy of true prayer. If you know that the Lord is with you, you live joyfully –no matter what!

You and I know that there is no photograph of Jesus. None of the authors of the New Testament describe him.  How do you grasp in a single image the fluidity of a person’s face, the gait, the gestures that ID someone? You can’t do it, so the evangelists did not try.

Even during Jesus’ lifetime, he left no physical impression.  Jesus could walk right by someone who should have known him from hearing him preach but few got close enough to recognize Him. The two discouraged disciples walking back to their own town seven miles from Jerusalem on Easter Sunday did not recognize him when as a stranger he joined their conversation about the suffering Messiah betrayed and crucified who was supposed to be the one who would redeem Israel (Luke),

I think that they did not recognize him because they didn’t expect him. We walk away from the grave of a loved one and the thought doesn’t enter our mind that we’d ever see that person again. The two disciples knew Jesus was dead and with Him died the hopes of the disciples.

If we Christians would just watch for Him and listen for him and if we stayed aware of his Resurrection, we could be more aware of his presence. One way is to be attentive to the needs of the poor. “As long as you did it for he least of my brethren you did it to me” (Mt 25:3-46). Our Faith teaches us to recognize Jesus in the poor.

Another gospel teaching urges us to simply stop and listen for Him at any time during the day. Jesus promised that he would be with us all days until the end of Time (Mt 29:20).

Don’t we believe Him? Don’t we expect Him?

J

The Teton Mountains seen from Jackson Hole, Wyoming. . (photo by author)

A year after I was ordained, I found myself driving to Grand Teton National Park just South of Yellowstone to spend time doing research at the New York Zoological Society’s summer station at the University of Wyoming in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Don’t be impressed. I wasn’t doing doctoral work,  I simply needed to do a research project in animal behavior to complete my master’s degree in Biology.

“What?  But, you’re a priest! Why would you be studying wildlife in Wyoming?”

Among our ministries, we Resurrectionists run schools and colleges. Like Jesuits and Franciscans ,    my congregation is an “active community.” Along with religious and catechetical subjects, we also teach secular subjects like Latin and Greek, History and Biology. We believe all truth, all knowledge leads to the wonder of God.

You, also, need to know that I am a flat-lander, Chicago born.  Although I’d spent summers in the Ozark mountains, they are really just hills as in “Them thar hills!” I had never seen a real mountain.

I was going to pass the summer in the Rocky Mountains studying several species of birds which live in a valley surrounded by mountains. The summers are short up there so I needed to arrive before the start of Spring.

It was early May and a frigid night when I arrived at the research station on a on a rainy dark night with the temperature dropping. Snow was predicted. It was pitch dark when I arrived except for my car lights and the flashlight which helped me get around.

When I pulled up to the camp, I saw an envelope taped to the gate. It contained a note telling me where my cabin was and a key that opened the gate and the door to my cabin. The flashlight lit my way until I found cabin sixteen.

I’d driven nearly ten hours that day through storms in Colorado and Wyoming. I was beat. There must have been  mountains but I couldn’t see them.  It was overcast and rainy all day. I got into my sleeping bag and settled in for the night, totally unaware of my surroundings. And, I was alone.

I awoke the next morning to bright light shining through my cabin window. I could see that it had snowed maybe 6 or 8 inches. I dressed and opened a can of coke. I put on my shoes and prepared to check out where I was. I opened the door and the sight took my breath away. There, glistening and gigantic were the Teton Mountains covered in fresh snow.  The unexpected scene awed me in its silent immensity. Beauty and wonder filled my soul.

I’ve prayed the opening line of Psalm 121 for most of my life: “I lift up my eyes to the mountains from whence comes my help.” But that morning those words poured out of my heart.

Bishop Barron says that the quickest way to insight into God is the way of beauty. In beauty and wonder  we can discover the existence of God. We also begin to grasp how wonderful he must be.

I’m sure you have experienced wonder, even awe at an unexpected moment in your life.  Maybe like me you saw a mountain, or a flower blooming, or met someone who completely captivated you. You were stunned by beauty. Your being opened in wonder. It was an amazing kind of grace that suddenly and unsuspectedly fell on you, as it did on me that May morning when I saw mountains for the first time.

r

It’s the Sunday morning after Jesus was hung on the cross and died. There had been no time to prepare the body for proper burial so He was kept in a secure tomb until after the Sabbath. The Sabbath rest was strictly observed – no work. And, so, Jesus’s body was placed in a temporary crypt belonging to Joseph of Arimathea.

Mary Magdalen arrived at the tomb early Sunday morning, planning to prepare the body for permanent burial. She sees the stone that had sealed the tomb rolled back and thinks that the body had been moved or worse, stolen. She hurries back to tell the apostles. Peter and John run to the sepulcher and find the tomb, empty. They are stunned.  There is no body and the burial wrappings are neatly folded on a ledge. They return to tell the other disciples this startling news.

The disciples listen and are in great confusion, sad and angry that someone did this. It’s a desecration. Meanwhile Mary Magdalen starts to hurry back to the burial site and on the way she encounters Jesus. Then she returns to the place where the disciples were hiding with further news: “I have seen the Lord!”

Some of the disciples began to remember what Jesus had told them on the night of the Last Supper:
“Set your troubled hearts at rest. Trust God. Trust also in me. I am going to leave you but I go to prepare a place for you that where I am you also will be.” None of them understood what he was saying then, but now it’s as if they can hear his words echoing from the rocky walls of the sepulcher: “Trust Me.”

Those words are meant for us, too. “Trust me!” Trust Him to guide you when you need that the most. When bad things happen an when you are afraid and when your hope is crumbling. When your soul is cold and empty. When you look inside your heart and listen and find only stillness.  Then remember His words: “Trust Me.”

And, wait for the “third day.”

The Seven Stars of the Big Dipper. (Wikipedia,)

When I was about fifteen years old, I was on a long night-time car ride from Chicago to the Northern Wisconsin town of Eau Claire.  There was very little traffic at that time of night. My uncle was driving  and other than our headlight beams, it was pitch dark and after  a couple of hours our conversation drifted to silence.

Soon I was slouched up front dozing. It had been a long day. After a while, I  opened my eyes and there it was. I didn’t have to move my head. Looking through the windshield, I saw a grouping of stars that I’d heard about  but never seen.  When I saw the formation, I knew immediately what it was: “The Big Dipper!”

I grew up in Chicago where even on clear nights, just a few stars were visible. The ambient light of the big city washes out the clarity of the night sky. Now, unmistakably hung there in the Wisconsin sky was a wonder, a surprise design left for me to discover.

I didn’t impose it. The Big Dipper spread out before me like a gift or grace from God.  It was just a wonder there for me to to recognize.  Sure, I know the Creator did not manage the arrangement of these particular stars so that I could discern a water scoop. “The Big Dipper” is one name for a pattern we think we see in the night sky. Other cultures, the Greeks, for example, call it “The Seven Oxen.”

Ever since that night the magnificence of the stars stays with me. It was years later in the Missouri Ozarks that I lay down in an open field on a clear night and saw the Milky Way for the first time, the myriad of stars sprinkled from one end of the sky to the other. Wonder and surprise flooded my heart, again. And, I wondered how people could say that there is no God.

A farmworker. (US Agriculture Dept. public domain)

When I served in rural Michigan in the middle years of my priesthood, I rented a quaint, white farm-house next to a field of blueberry bushes. Each year from mid-summer until late August, those cultivated bushes yielded their sweet harvest,  Some mornings, I’d pick a handful of berries from the closest bush, drop them into my bowl of Cheerios and add some milk.  I can testify that the tangy sweetness of those purple berries added a zest to my morning wake-up routine.

Because I belong to a religious community, the Congregation of the Resurrection, I was trained in social ministry. We are priests and brothers who teach in schools, do various kinds of social work and organize missionary apostolates.  My apostolate included working in medicine along with the ministry of priesthood. That’s why I was in Michigan attending to patients in a federal rural health clinic.  During the week I treated patients with physical ailments and on Sundays I celebrated the Eucharist for the farmworkers in their own chapel and fellowship complex.

Before  I served in Michigan, I never paid much attention to farm workers. Though many times and in many places, I’d noticed them working in the fields but, I’m embarrassed to say, I had looked right through them. I saw them but didn’t pay them any mind. To middle class folks like me, the poor are those you read about not those you know.

It was a different story when I watched from my kitchen window as the men and women in long sleeved shirts and jeans with reed baskets hung over their necks picked blueberries, collected them and carried them to a truck parked in the middle of the field. They were bent over nimbly snatching the blueberries from the bushes on days so hot and humid that all A.C.s were running full blast in homes in our small town.

One morning I looked outside and the workers were all gone, and  their camp abandoned because the “LA MIGRA” (ICE) had been called (by whom?) and had arrested some of them as illegal immigrants.   The rest had fled. The blueberries languished in the field.

Soon after  I began this ministry, I got into an argument at a public meeting because I told the locals that their youth (white and middle class) would not pick the berries because it was backbreaking work and hot in those fields.  One farmer was furious with me because he didn’t want to hear me say that about local young people.  Nevertheless, I think he knew that I was right. 

But, I’m not going to criticize those farmers, I’m going to talk about my own prejudices.

Many times, I saw workers bent over in the fields, snipping “pickles” (cucumbers) from vines or, on ladders collecting apples and gathering all the other fruits and vegetables that we have available in our supermarkets.  I saw them but looked through them as if they did not exist, I guess, because they were not important to me. Besides, they were Mexicans, spoke Spanish and were not going to stay longer than they were needed for the harvest.

The Gospel is very real. At the clinic, I  treated these workers for skin infections, especially “la hierba” (poison ivy), various orthopedic injuries and gastric issues, among many illnesses.. I learned that migrant workers  lived together under cramped conditions in camps, There were families with children, sure. However, many were single men, young men who slept on the floor with seven or eight others in trailers. The work day was from sun-up to sundown. Average wage was about $13 an hour.  After paying for their food and housing, they’d send what was left to their families in Mexico.

Jesus urged us to sell what we have, give it to the poor and then follow Him. In the beatitudes he said the poor would be blessed with the kingdom of heaven some day. I think differently now about migrant workers and the other people who have to scramble for the basics of life. I can’t look through them anymore because I know Jesus is looking right at me now to do the right thing.

As for the racial stain on my own soul, I hang my head as I remember this scripture: “The foreigners among you must be treated as your native born.  Love them as yourself for you were foreigners in Egypt.  I am the Lord your God.” (Leviticus 19:34)

Angels (Alexas Photos)

At the corner of State and Madison in the heart of Chicago’s downtown, on a one-way street, two lanes of  cars were paused and ready to go as the pedestrian light turned from green to cautionary yellow. The crowd that was surging across the street in front of the cars held back when the light turned yellow.  But, thinking that I could make it, I started to cross anyway.  Heck, I was young and thought: “I can beat these cars!” 

In the instant that I made an intention movement to go for it, an arm from the left flung itself across my chest like a stop gate at a railroad crossing.  It was the guy next to me. In the next second the light turned green and the cars roared forward across the pedestrian white lines where I would have been, had that guy not stopped me. 

I quickly turned to look at him. “Nice suit,” I thought. He looked disgustedly at me and growled: “DUH YA WANNA BE A STATISTIC?!” The tone was pure Chicagoese.

Ah, I love Chicago.  Where could you hear such a succinct way of getting across a point?  The point being: I was just about to fling myself in front of two lanes of cars with drivers anxious to score a first out of the pack, a dicey decision that could have cost m my life.

 I never saw that guy again and I can’t remember what he looked like except that he had on a brown business suit and was probably on his way home after a long day at the office. The guy knew immediately that I was unfamiliar with the fundamentals of crossing a busy street in downtown Chicago so he stuck his arm out and issued those memorable words.

I think he was an angel. I know that he didn’t look like one but, what do angels look like?  Divine intervention swooped down, a life changing moment occurred, and I’m still alive fifty years later. I don’t think it was a coincidence. No, I don’t know what angels look like but that Chicagoan acted like one. He touched me and called out an immanent danger.

I think God often sends an angel in the form of a human who is there at a defining moment in life. Think of a time when your life was in jeopardy and someone pulled you out of the way.  You were about ready to make an awfully bad decision and someone intervened. It could have been just a human rescuer or, just maybe, it was your guardian angel or an anonymous angelic messanger.

Remember the scene in the film “It’s a Wonderful Life,” when James Stewart’s character jumps off a bridge and a pudgy old man pulls him out of the water? They end up in a bar where the unlikely rescuer identifies himself as an angel on a mission “to get my wings.” Stewart looks directly at the smiling old gent and says sadly: “Angel…? You look like the kind of angel I’d get!”

I wonder if my guardian angel sometimes wears a brown business suit? By the way, have you thought about what your guardian angel looks like? Or, any angel, for that matter.

The following scripture verse reminds me that God has angelic options: “For He will give His angels charge over you, to keep you in all your ways.”  (Psalm 91:11) 

Our galaxy, The Milky Way. (Image by StockDrop)

Recently someone asked me about the passage in Second Corinthians where St. Paul refers to a “third heaven.” (II Cor. 12:4). It got me thinking: What in the world does “third heaven” mean? (Pun intended.)

Somewhere in my theological training we must have talked about a “third heaven,” but, I confess that I don’t remember the explanation. I’ve had to spend some time, searching out the ways we talk about heaven.

Here’s what I’ve come up with:

The first heaven is what I see when I look up during daylight.  It’s partly cloudy as I look up at this morning’s sky. The clouds are gray wispy streaks across a light blue background. But I know that there is more to it than that. Look up, according to legend and you may see angels sitting on a cloud or two. The bible says that the heavens declare the glory of God.

The second heaven is what I see at night when I look up.   It’s the Milky Way, and beyond our galaxy, outer space. But, it’s also the moon on a clear night. It’s wonder for astronomers and the realm of fate for astrologers.

The third heaven is the place that I know is “up there” but beyond the heaven of day, and the heaven of night.  The third heaven is the domain of God.  When we pray and have an extraordinary experience like Paul had, that’s the third heaven. No, you can’t see the third heaven by looking up.  You have to look inside your own universe, the awareness within you that can conceive of the divine.  

So, the third heaven is the place — whether in the body or out of the body– you are taken up into God’s presence. It is the place that our Lord refers to when he tells the thief at His right: “This day you will be with Me in paradise.”

The third heaven is not beyond the second, it’s within. It is the realm of divine truth, and hope and love. It is the new heavens and the new earth. “Eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor has it entered into anyone’s heart, the things God has prepared for those who love Him”.( I Cor 2:9)  Looking up doesn’t help as St. Paul makes clear.  He didn’t know where he was or how he was seeing, But, he was taken up to the third heaven and had a real experience of being with God.

The Third Heaven, then, is not way out there beyond the cosmos. If you want to discover the third heaven, look deep beyond the darkness within for Christ’s light shining there. Find it and just maybe He’ll invite you in for the experience of a lifetime.