third.street

ThirdStreet Oratory /Perhaps There's Still Time

2009-02-18T21:24:00.003-06:00

Pope St. Leo the Great who reigned for 21 years in the mid-5^th century wrote: “The Lord’s passion is prolonged until the end of the world.”

As long as there exists in this world a single tear on the cheek of one of his “little ones”, our risen Lord Jesus Christ continues to bear our human grief, and by so doing, sorrows with us.

As long as there exists in this world the impoverishment of one of his “little ones”, our risen Lord Jesus Christ continues to pray for “our daily bread”, and by so doing, hungers with us.

As long as there exists in this world the injury of one of his “little ones”, our risen Lord Jesus Christ continues to heal us with the medicine of mercy, and by so doing, suffers with us.

Is any human being so well off, so insulated from ordinary experience, so estranged from his own heart that he can say truthfully, I’ve never cried, I’ve never known loss, I’ve never been hurt? In the name of heaven, then, why do so many Christians attempt to carry their sorrows, impoverishment and injuries alone and apart from the Body of Christ?

When the Church prays the Stations of the Cross, all members of the Body of Christ pray these words for Christ:

“Come, all you who pass by the way, look and see whether there is any suffering like my suffering. At this I weep, my eyes run with tears: far from me are all who could console me, far away are any who might revive me.” [Lam 1:12,16]

Our Lord Jesus Christ suffers for you, and he suffers your holding back from him. Perhaps there is still time for you to pause, reflect and surrender your whole heart to our crucified Lord. If you sincerely desire to console Jesus, to revive him in the midst of his suffering for you, then bring him your tears, your hunger and your distress. And let him heal you! “The Spirit is the witness, because the Spirit is the truth!” [1Jn 5:7]

Entrust yourself to the Good Physician whose clinic is the Church, whose office is the Cross, whose license is the Gospel, and whose medicine of mercy is his Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. The Lord himself has given you life by the blood and water which flowed from his side as he hung upon the cross: “Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God.” [1Jn 4:7]

Third Street /Human Ecology /Risk & Reward

2009-01-11T19:38:00.006-06:00

When a person is overly-protected, he or she cannot grow. Deprived of the possibilities—the opportunities—of risk and responsibility, one’s chances of maturing are slim.

I cannot discover who I am as long as who you are has me bubble-wrapped and boxed-up with strapping tape. How can I discover my own personhood in your attic? Or on the wall of your museum?

Truth brings with it the reality of risk and responsibility. If a person hides from the truth as one would flee a home-invader, his chances of growing in faith decrease as the darkness of his mind and heart increases.

Take away the tension associated with risk—the tension between rest and exertion, success and failure, solidarity and individualism, good and evil—and I cannot live. How would my heart beat? How could I breathe? How can I think? How can I freely love?

The uncivilized and obscene excess of over-protection is a tyranny which justifies its existence on the grounds that power determines personhood. Violent and degraded men put on government like a sock puppet.

The sock puppet speaks and moves as if it is a person. Men and women of good will—who really are persons but are told they are not—are made to idolize the sock puppet that covers the iron fist of decadent leaders.

Equally uncivilized and obscene is one’s denial of another’s self-determination. Rather than tolerate a community’s right to possess received Truth and to freely experience the risk and responsibility that such truth imposes, violent and spiritless men wage war.

They kill on the pretense of saving lives. They destroy communities and nations in the name of healing. The sock puppet’s trigger finger fires a missile launcher. It pushes the buttons inside a black box.

What fails to grow and mature in human beings who are deprived of the meaningful experience of risk and responsibility in the light of Truth is precisely their humaneness.

Persons who do not grow and mature morph into the frightening—and frankly disgusting—phenomenon of children living inside grown-up bodies. By being overly-protected, these people are conditioned to shun risk and responsibility.

They fear the Truth. To escape these realities, they resort to uproar and violent provocation or by fleeing the tension and taking refuge in self-distraction. Their inhumaneness emerges as hyper-individualism. They are lazy. They rationalize failure. They perceive the good as lighter shades of evil.

And the worst evil manifests itself in persons who are ruled by an abnormal and ungoverned compulsion to keep moving, make noise and hoard things while, at the same time, feeling a toxic revulsion for other human beings.

This profound disruption of the fragile and complex human ecology of personhood and relationships is the precondition for wide-spread and pathological sickness—the profound dis-ease human societies have come to know as tyranny and war.

It is a poverty that human beings are taught to perceive each other as dispensable aggregates of human tissue and data while, at the same time, falling over themselves to award animals the status of personhood—the very thing which men and women (mostly men) seem to understand least of all.

Your blog writer suggests that the stampede to brand animals as persons ought to be deferred for a few years until human beings prove their mutual good will by eradicating tyranny and war among their own species.

After all, what animal today wants to find himself on the front lines fighting a guerilla war in Afghanistan or in Somalia? (More to the point, what happiness could any animal possibly enjoy were it truly aware that Pol Pot had embraced it, calling it friend and brother?)

Very young children often are shocked by the realization that human beings other than themselves are persons in their own right whose needs at a particular moment are equally if not more pressing than those of the precocious child.

Herein lies humanity’s hope—that the socio-scientific disciplines may come to acknowledge that faith, hope, and love are foundational to the larger periodic table of spiritual elements absolutely essential for a balanced ecology of human relationships.

Somewhere along the line, human families, neighborhoods, cities and nations must reacquaint themselves with received Truth, moving beyond mere research--which formulates so many questions it can never answer--to accepting the risk and responsibility of faith and belief.

Should the day arrive when we human beings are less enamored of doing things to, for and against each other and more disposed toward doing things through, with and in each other, then we just might discover something new.

Our respect for human personhood and our reverence of humaneness may point us precisely to that which represents the greatest of all risk, responsibility and reward—the compelling existence and personhood of the One whom God has revealed to us as his very own self.

Third Street /Fathers, Families & the Future

2009-01-11T17:07:00.003-06:00

Anthropologists are fond of observing, rather coldly, that a father is not essential to his child’s survival after it is conceived. Should a father be serving in the military in Iraq, to use one example, neither his presence or his life is required for the birth and survival of his child.

No one will argue that this and other depressing scenarios are impossible, but the plain fact of the matter is that these scenarios are exceptions and not the norm of human life. The enduring and positive presence of a father is crucial for the survival and prosperity of the entire family.

The presence of the father is the first of two absolute necessities which are the guarantors of a family’s psychological and spiritual well-being and maturity. The second guarantor is his life-long bond to the mother of his children in the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony.

Why does a child need a father for his or her spiritual well-being? Leaving some room for mystery, we first would venture to say, “So goes the father, so goes the family”. Without doubt, a father’s example before his children is exceptionally powerful whether for good or ill.

A father protects his family and provides for it. He mediates his children’s gradual independence from the immediate family and self-sufficiency in the world. He provides a solid example of work moderated by leisure, love protected by respect, and inspiration governed by authority.

With this in mind, a family’s long-term loyalty to a holy way of life and habit of faithful religious observance is entirely dependent on the father’s very personal and unfailing example.

A father’s refusal to lead and guide strongly in the practice of religion actually may deal a mortal blow to the stability, maturity and longevity of the core relationships of his family. A father’s laziness and indifference to God and to the Church may compromise the well-being of his children long after they have left his home.

A father should lead and guide his family strongly in faith by the being the best example of faith. The mother of his children should not have to bear the burden of faithful witness alone.

More than ever these days, men who are fathers are called upon to share the raising of children and share the domestic responsibilities of the home. This is a good thing and is the occasion for being schooled in the virtue of humility.

But remember this fathers: As your active presence in your family’s life is vital, your presence in the gathered Church—the Family of Faith—is equally as vital.

ThirdStreet /"We Need a Song to Sing"

2008-12-14T14:42:00.003-06:00

“We need a song to sing, a message of hope and cheer.

We need a love which transcends time and space.

Our hearts seek the knowledge that amidst all the clamor

and clutter of life, there is Someone who cares.

Jesus is God's message of deliverance given to us.

He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

He is Emmanuel, God with us. He is God's message of love.

With the angels and shepherds and all God's children we sing,

‘Jesus is born. Joy to the world!’”

3rd Street Ecology /No Toxic Dumps

2008-12-07T20:50:00.025-06:00

People who assume don't think. If you assume you can slipstream from this world to the next carrying a boatload of sins, expecting to offload them at the dock of heaven because someone died on a cross, you're not thinking.

Heaven’s ecology is not going to be fouled by a toxic dump of sins--yours or anyone else’s--at the foot of God’s throne. If God shows you mercy at the moment of your personal judgement and intends you to share life with him forever, but you are carrying unreconciled sins and have done little or no penance on earth, then you’re going to have to take your sins somewhere else and deal with them before you come back.

That somewhere else is purgatory, a cleanup site where your soul is going to have to be scoured clean of debris and become presentable before you can sit down at heaven’s banquet table.

The saints of heaven are persons reconciled to God on earth. What are the good works of the elect? They are gold, silver and precious stones. What are sins but wood, hay and straw? And the fire (of purgatory) will test what sort of work each one has done. If any man's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

As surely as heaven exists for perfect souls to praise God, there is a purgatory for imperfect souls whose unreconciled sins are the lumber, hay and straw that will be used to fuel the fire that purifies them.

3rd Street Oratory /For Starters

2008-12-07T19:09:00.013-06:00

Here’s what being a follower of Jesus Christ does not mean: It does not mean your choosing a celebrity gospelizer whose long-running engagement is so profitable that he erected his own theater of entertainment expressly so that you can sit passively in his audience and watch his show.

It does not mean that you are regaled occasionally with Bible stories about people other than yourself doing their moral and ethical duty. It does not mean crowd therapy or buying products.

It does not mean cohabitation, multiple marriages, abortion, dumping human remains over dirt, television glamour, absolving your own sins, and no-showing on the Lord’s Day.

So what does being a faithful follower of Jesus Christ really mean? For starters, it means a Church whose pastor, taking the last place, leads his congregation to Christ so that Christ can lead them to the Father.

It means your living all TEN Commandments consciously and enthusiastically. It means that you remain chaste and celibate until you exchange your marriage vows at the altar of the Church.

It means that you would rather perish than betray your spouse by adultery. It means that you reverence all who die in the peace of Christ, that you will arrange for them to receive a proper religious funeral service in the Church and burial in consecrated ground.

It means your being humane, that you respect the lives and dignity of all human beings from the unborn to the natural end of life. It means your being reconciled with God and neighbor at all times and making this the very heart of your worship in the Church and your life in the world.

Being a faithful follower of Jesus Christ means that your food is doing will of the Father who sent Jesus and to accomplish his work. This means then, that a faithful follower of Christ will do these things and more:

Feed the hungry. Give a cup of cold water to the thirsty. Shelter the homeless. Clothe the naked. Visit the sick. Visit the imprisoned. Bury the dead reverently in consecrated ground.

More? Yes, there is more. You will: Correct the sinner. Instruct those who are ignorant of Christ. Counsel those whose faith is weak. Comfort the sorrowing. Bear wrongs patiently. Forgive all injuries. Pray for the living and the dead.

Go out into the world to do these things and live a holy way of life. Take up your own cross and follow the God-Man who carried his. Be worthy of him.

3rdStreet Present Tense /The Hero Pt III /The Hero Rises Up

2008-12-07T17:36:00.005-06:00

The greatest enemy of the hero is intentional mediocrity. The danger of mediocrity is two-fold. It dissolves and therefore relativizes the hierarchy of truth, thereby transmogrifying truth into opinion. The process of mediocrity is completed when opinion accepts as its content fiction.

If all human thought and activity is relative and boiled in the tin cup of mediocrity, and any admission of man’s fallen nature is blurred or altogether rejected, and contemporary human violence is merely a remnant of the primordial human food chain, there would exist no need for heroes or lives lived heroically. But this is flatly not the case.

Critics may impugn a hero using the vocabulary of their own torpor and emptiness of spirit, but they are powerless to deny the existence of good and evil, the hierarchy of truth, that humanity is enthralled and sometimes overcome by evil, and the incontestable fact that these basic observations are proven by the sheer weight of human crime, violence and murder in the most advanced societies.

A person may act heroically in the face of danger even when the threat is a catastrophic natural event such as a flood or an earthquake. But such a person is a hero of the hour, not of his age. In contrast, the hero of the age emerges--we may say, rises up--precisely to oppose a catastrophic evil initiated and executed not by natural forces but by human beings themselves.

Man’s inhumanity to man is not the result of bad sociology and inadequate therapy but actually a willful participation in evil, that is to say, to remove the conscious restraint that severely governs the tendency resident in every human heart to commit wrong against another--to laugh at someone else’s tears, to crush the health and well-being of others whom he despises, or to obliterate human lives, tribes and even nations.

A hero is not self-reliant in the sense of being a loner who defines himself by his estrangement from his community. To the contrary, a hero is dependent on the community in which he was raised and educated. It is precisely the intersection where the continuity of shared belief and values encounters the anarchic powers arrayed to destroy it that the hero emerges to secure for his community an opportunity to renew itself, reaffirm its purpose, and move forward.

The hero’s fight is never the impulse to strike back at boredom, still less to step beyond the good. His rising up is precisely to oppose forces or enemies which threatens his community or his nation with irreversible decline or outright extinction. A hero may quickly emerge and respond to the latter as when tyranny comes suddenly and with a great shock. Far more difficult to grasp for ordinary citizen and hero alike is creeping tyranny, the kind that entrenches itself slowly over a much longer period of time.

All these aforementioned things constitute a hero. If this description is incomplete, it is not because of an inherent or fatal flaw in the role of the hero but rather the inadequacy of the essayist. Or perhaps, irony. We may say that irony is the abrupt and astonishing reversal of human expectations.

We admire the hero, yes, but are we saying that the possession of the aforementioned attributes is so exceptional among men as to be rare, indeed found only within the hero? May we not expect to find the attributes of the hero to be common among ordinary decent men everywhere? Indeed, we cannot speak of the bond between the hero and his enthusiasts as shared unless we acknowledge their mutual participation in the heroic attributes.

The transformational dynamic is this. It’s not that the hero’s extraordinary accomplishment imposes values and beliefs on those who follow his exploits attentively. Rather, the hero’s example affirms the excellence already present in their hearts. The heroic exploit stirs the mind and awakens the heroic spirit in the human heart. Yes, the man, the young man, and fathers everywhere need to cultivate a heroic approach to ordinary life such that, if all or most were renown for the courage of their convictions and an unfailing will to do good, heroes would be superfluous. Imagine, if heroes in ordinary life were superabundant, extraordinary heroes would not be needed. Would that this were true!

The ordinary man is not likely destined to be a hero, for extraordinariness implies that true heroes are few and far between. Nevertheless, we need this sort of person everywhere. You want him to be your next door neighbor, the man in every home on your block, your boss, the leaders of your community, the soldier in your military. You want your teenaged son to have someone stir his heroic imagination.

You want men of integrity everywhere, sharing the vocabulary of hard work, the common good, life-affirming values, the traditional family. You want them working, building creating and sustaining. You want them ready for any need, contingency or emergency.

You want to know that from among decent men everywhere, ordinary heroes, that one will step up and galvanize his community, his city, and his nation in an extraordinary way--to defend the good, that is to say, the ideas that form the truth of human goodness known by men and women of good will everywhere, in every time, and in every place.

We would like to think that every generation is worthy of providing a singular individual who possesses, by the persuasive power of ideas and courageous personal example, the leadership ability to galvanize a defeated people, weary of battle and disillusioned in spirit, to go where they would otherwise not go, and to accomplish what otherwise they felt they could do. The heroic man stands on the cusp of the supernatural. In the name of his cause, his people, and decent human beings, he opposes the overlord futility with all his might and its vassal dread of the future.

You want to know that effecting moral and ethical leadership of a nation, an army, an alliance, has its origins in the good of the most basic unit of human society--the family. Many heroes are unknown, but those who are known have changed the course of human history. These are men who have stood against a tide of evil in their generation, a collective of vile interests which threatened the just welfare of human beings everywhere--not merely those within the reach of powerful weaponry but many others within the reach of their corrupt ideas and values.

Admittedly, all heroes are flawed as are the people they inspire. We do not say may be flawed because it is impossible for human beings by nature to be capable of perpetual nobility, grace and perfect intentions. Were a man’s life known by others to be virtually perfect, this would refer to the historical record. Unknown would be the scope of his intentions and most private thoughts.

Also unknown would be his response to the most trying circumstances, the extent to which he is willing to make personal sacrifice, the limit of his endurance, the extent to which he is willing and able to absorb the most withering criticism from the very persons whose interests he is defending. A hero may know personally only a relative few of the many he has pledge to defend.

That a man’s words and deeds are heroic while his flaws are merely human is proved by his willingness to publicly name his friends, and if necessary, to lay down his life for them. Certainly, he knows them as friends because of their mutual and shared understanding of the common good. Whether this shared understanding is consciously expressed and reiterated or intuitive and presumed is not fully known or even necessarily relevant. This may seem unacceptably haphazard, even dangerous, but it must be remembered that there is no school for heroes.

This is not to say that schools are irrelevant in the end. Actually the contrary is true. Schools should exist, not for the purpose of students discovering who they are--as if this is either the concern or the mission of seven year olds--but for communicating--and we mean instilling--core truths affirming the humaneness of human beings of good will everywhere, virtues affirming the nobility and excellence of human character, and values specific to the identity and well-being of the nation.

If your essayist could ask a hero to speak for himself, what might he say about his great strength, courage or ability? What would he say about his achievements, great deeds and noble qualities? Or about being a role model or ideal for others? Perhaps this thought is not too far out of line. After some sort of respectful silence, the hero of his own generation would say, I am a useless servant who has only done his duty. (Part 3 of 3.)

3rdStreet \School of Truth

2008-11-25T15:16:00.002-06:00

Discovering Truth is like climbing a mountain. We do not invent either as we ascend. The ascent to Truth begins by the comforting lamplight of Natural Law. The summit of Truth is attained in the brilliant sunlight of Divine Revelation. It is the ascent to Truth that brings wisdom. It is at the summit of Truth where we encounter God.

3rdStreet Present Tense /The Hero Pt II /The Heroic Spirit

2008-11-22T22:05:00.017-06:00

The person whose life is a series of promos publicizing who he is scorns the idea of God and eternity. He has no use for either; if he has to die to get to them, they're not worth having. God and eternity is an insider's joke for the self-referenced techno-modern maven of brand-identification and suspicion. Death, the ultimate redline, can be ignored like an irritating brother-in-law.

The 21st century techno-modern colossus stands astride the portals of conspicuous entertainment and consumption. He luxuriates in his disdain and haughty contempt of objective truth or authority higher than himself. In reality, however, he is a parasite busily sucking the meaning out of good and evil. He covers himself with shiny fictions manufactured from his favorite spin factories. Pure gold is uninformed shrill opinion. Base lead is dull and boring truth.

The modern man recoils from the thought that his humanity is flawed, his nature fallen. The real offense is not my own defects (or evil), he blathers, but rather your refusal to recognize my genius. Offenses which cannot be flicked away he answers with rage and revenge. In the end, everyone is a threat to him--including his parents. Their first acts of aggression were his conception and birth.

The anti-hero is a coward and a fraud. He deludes himself by imagining that everything beautiful in the world is a signpost pointing to him. He believes he is what the world has been waiting for. He is the master of mind over matter--the world and all things in it exist for the express purpose of validating him. The sure proof of his mastery over reality? His haughty disgust for reason, the thing that makes human experience-hence one's own humanity--intelligible.

He flatters himself with his own contempt. His disdain does not arise from measurable excellence, still less from a life's work and accomplishment. His ignorant vanity is the consequence of a soft life arrogantly lived. It is the base emotion of a patently self-absorbed person unconquerable by reason, unable to distinguish fact from perception, and convinced that predatory selfishness is a form of justice. His is the triumph of mediocrity.

Is all human thought and activity relative and meant to be stewed in a tin pot? Are we forced to admit that man’s fallen nature is irrelevant or altogether fabricated? Is contemporary human violence merely a remnant of the primordial human food chain? If one answers yes to any of these questions, then mediocrity is entrenched and no need exists for heroes or lives lived heroically.

However, if we are not destined to kowtow to a squalid and depressingly popular mediocrity, and subsisting, in the words of Theodore Roosevelt, “with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat”, then enough room remains for excellence, the heroic spirit and one more hero.

Is it possible that men and women in this generation still possess the will and capacity to “dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure”? [Roosevelt] In short, if heroism is possible, and heroes even now are emerging in this “gray twilight”, who might they be? What constitutes a hero?

A hero is an ordinary man who undertakes to meet an extraordinary challenge. He does not exploit his unusual experiences for profit or notoriety. He is loathe to write about “heroism” as a subject for fear of self-referencing and self-indulgence.

Who is qualified to write on the subject of the hero? Certainly not this writer. Why, then, is this essayist doing precisely that? Because we all have heroes whom we admire. Quite properly, there is a personal bond between the admirer and the hero who has earned our recognition. We look for an opportunity to express our gratitude.

Apart from ordinary citizens, heroes could not exist. And the admirer will always know more about his hero than his hero ever will know about him. It would be no exagerration to say that a hero and those whose lives he changes by his personal courage form an enduring, even intimate bond.

Clearly a shared understanding, shared values and beliefs, and a shared vocabulary exist between a hero and those who look up to him. A few moments of honest reflection affirms that the admirer of a hero can have something to say about him and the subject of heroism. A hero is a man whose personal courage and intellectual integrity has a transformational effect on the people of his generation. It is a not improbable that the same heroic spirit can be shared by an extraordinary individual and the people of his nation.

The greatest enemy of the hero is intentional mediocrity. Far from being a passive place marker in the market of human behavioral transactgions, mediocrity threatens the human person's understanding of self and the faculty of reason. Mediocrity dissolves and therefore relativizes the hierarchy of truth. It presents truth as fantasy. The metastasis of mediocrity is complete when the human intellect, starved of knowledge (and wisdom), wearies of pretense and accepts as its content egregious lies.

Critics will impugn a hero using the vocabulary of their own torpor and emptiness of spirit. Yet they are powerless to deny the existence of good and evil or the hierarchy of truth. Whatever form and intensity their stupidity takes on, they cannot alter the fact that humanity is enthralled and all too often overcome by evil. Nor can they talk away the massive evidence of human criminal conduct, corruption, violence and murder in the most advanced societies.

At the end of the day, the fact that all human communities seek out heroes affirms man's enduring conviction that good and evil exist and, moreover the good must triumph over evil. A hero is someone who fights against wrong whether it is in the realm of thought, deeds or witness. He fights for those who--in the mind of the society which embraces him--are deserving of his care and protection. “Those” in need may be few but more often are the many. The hero of the few may soon be forgotten. The hero of many will be remembered for a generation or longer. (Part 2 of 3.)

3rdStreet Zoology /Pattern of Behavior

2008-11-22T21:29:00.011-06:00

In first days following a zebra’s birth, the baby’s mother will not allow the foal to look at another zebra in the herd, even the stallion standing guard nearby. Should any curious zebra step into view, the birth mother interposes her body between the visitor and her vulnerable youngster.

Considering that zebra harems may number a dozen or more, this task can be exhausting for a female which has just given birth. Only in this way, however, can the young foal know for certain who its birth mother is. Most remarkable is the fact that the baby zebra desperately needs to imprint the pattern of its mother’s unique stripes in its brain and learn to recognize her voice and scent.

This window of receptivity in the baby’s consciousness is open only for a few hours. If the baby zebra and its mother are distracted from completing this urgent task, the baby will fail to recognize its mother among the herd population. The adult stallion and other females in the herd will tire of the baby zebra’s pleadings and eventually drive it away.

Confused and disoriented, a young foal becomes a stranger to the herd, facing starvation and attack by predators. A baby zebra, if it is to flourish in the wild, must recognize the stripe pattern of its birth mother. From the moment of its birth, it will struggle. If successful in finding food and surviving predation, a young zebra will be attracted to a third imperative—procreation. The dance of the stripes will be performed once more.

3rdStreet Ecology /Interior Environment

2008-11-22T14:31:00.003-06:00

"Making your unknown known is the important thing--and keeping the unknown always beyond you. Catching, crystalizing your simpler clearer vision of life--only to see it turn stale compared to what you vaguely feel ahead--that you must always keep working to grasp." [Georgia O'Keefe Time Nov 20 1989]

3rdStreet Present Tense /The Hero Pt I /Age of Selfishness

2008-11-17T21:25:00.011-06:00

And if you have not been faithful in that which is another's who will give you that which is your own? This saying illustrates the truth that the lesser points to the greater. If you are diligent and dependable in a small matter at work, for example, your supervisor will know that you are capable of handling more responsibility.

The term "ladder of success" refers to the dynamic of lesser ascending to greater. The story is familiar. A fellow starts work for a large company in the mail room. One day he becomes CEO of the firm. Why? All along the way he was productive with his assigned tasks, showed eagerness to learn and take on more, handled difficult situations in the clutch, respected the rules of the workplace, matured with each level he attained, accepted the goals of the company, and knew who he was working for.

Serious students know that the lesser points to the greater and not the other way around. Everything in the world is hierarchical. Knowledge, therefore, is hierarchical because it takes on the attributes of the world it describes. The word hierarchy may be analogous to a ladder. The "ladder of success" is the well-known "food chain". At the bottom of the ladder are primitive little creatures such protozoa and plankton.

At the top are the magnificent species such as the eagle, the bear, the whale and man. Creatures on one level of the food chain by and large devour creatures on levels lower than the one they happen to occupy. Each level, therefore, serves as a food source for the level above.

Only a further moment is needed to realize that chemistry—the "central science" connecting astronomy, physics, biology, geology etc.—is hierarchical. Atoms, molecules, crystals and other aggregates of matter combine hierarchically to regulate energy in living beings or break down the composition of inanimate objects.

The question is still before us: "And if you have not been faithful in that which is another's who will give you that which is your own?" [Lk 16:12] Using the examples above, how may we answer this? Fairly simply, it seems. Fail to show up at work and you get fired. Fail to study and you flunk. Fail to be careful with elements and compounds and you blow yourself up. You lose what is "your own"—your job, your degree, your life.

Countless other examples of the lesser pointing to the greater exist. To expect a harvest, ou must weed your garden. To reach the peak of a mountain, you must train hard with the right gear. To sail around the world, you need to navigate by reading charts and instruments, plotting your course, knowing north, south, east and west.

Nevertheless, it seems to be a law of contemporary culture that merit--in the sense of productivity, deeds, achievement--is no longer the gold standard for admiration and recognition. A person, so it goes, should be rewarded for existing, in other words for being who he is. Who he is is not royalty, the scion of a wealthy family, the descendent of a revolutionary war family or the last speaker of a tribe’s indigenous language.

Who he is expects, even demands, recognition for barely acknowledging you, careening in and out of your home or workplace, and condescending to let you support him. This is the fellow who thinks he’s doing you a favor when you hire him. He deserves pay increases and promotions because he knows who he is. His sense of superiority informs him that he could not be mediocre if he tried. His perceptions of you, the workplace, school, his parents and many other adults are streamed to you as pay-for-view content.

You are boss because he permits you. He believes himself to be equal to any boss, the owner of the company, his teacher, his parents and you. He is in your life precisely to tell you how to live, how to run your business, what to teach your class. His presence is a reminder that while you should emulate him, you will never rise to his level. For all this, he concludes that you are obligated nevertheless to give him attention, congratulations, and adulation. When you need help, he is not to be found. He is busily constructing who he is.

His mental powers dissolve all hierarchies and meritocracies. Nothing is left but a circle and point. He’s the point. He is the quality of the circle. There is no need for him to strive or arrive. He’s already here. Ask him to work, to accomplish anything, to go out of his way, and you’ve interrupted his true vocation of self-discovery. Dare to criticize him in the least way, and he will punish you by press releases and sabotage. Dismiss him and receive a summons to the court of his choice.

Is this an exaggeration? Perhaps. Yet it is more true than not. The age that rewards mediocrity has lost all appreciation for the heroic. When individuals learn to expect extraordinary recognition for ordinary effort, the vocabulary--the very thought of nobility and worthy accomplishment becomes irrelevant.

Perversely, heroic accomplishment is perceived as ostentatious, arrogant and unwanted by tolerant, inclusive, accepting and open people who perceive life as a nomadic journey from one activity station to another, content to be funded by a tolerant parental institution.

The true celebrity of this generation is the anti-hero who rejects order, social norms, stability, sacrifice, service. He rejects fashion by dressing--expensively--in slob couture. He rejects thoughtful reflection in favor of cursing and withering criticism.

His is the literature of noise, commercials, simulated violence, entertainment and distraction. Take away his entertainment devices and web browser, he is mindless and immobile. (Part 1 of 3.)

3rdStreet Ecology /The Interior Environment

2008-11-09T21:14:00.006-06:00

"Faith enfolds, reason upholds, understanding beholds." [Gilbert of Hoyland+ 1172 AD]

3rdStreet THEN AND NOW /Watch, Hat and Scissors

2008-11-09T18:51:00.022-06:00

This is a story of a son who found the courage to right a thirty-five year wrong. He sought forgiveness from his father without the certainty that he would receive it. . .

My flight originated in Houston. On my plane ticket were the letters M-A-F, the aeronautic symbol for my destination. Midland, Texas, my home town. Midland sits on the Edwards Plateau, a flat semi-arid West Texas prairie known for its cattle, oil and cotton. The week would pass quickly, or so I thought.

I expected the usual disconnect, the peevish twitch of entering 1220 W. Golf Course Road after an overly-long absence. The old adolescent—aging but never perceived as mature—had come home. To step through the front door of my boyhood home—largely unchanged since the time of my youth—meant entering a living diorama filled with relics and memories. Awkward and self-conscious, I felt guilty for being detached from the things once so lovely to me and now irrelevant.

In spite of the long days, the week vanished quickly. I wanted to talk to my dad; what I had to say wouldn’t be easy. Worse was the prospect of hauling all the old baggage back to Houston. My unspoken thoughts have been in storage for thirty-five years. I had to clear the stuff out. But I got a break. A big break on Friday. My father said, LET’S GO TO LUNCH! He liked brisket, and he’d grown attached recently to a small barbeque house called the Flying Baron. I never heard of the Flying Baron. It was owned by an Air Force vet which made sense.

On the porch of his house, my father gave me his truck keys with a ceremonial flourish. I was to drive his pride and joy, a tan 1985 Ford Lariat F150. Though he no longer drove his pickup—he said his license was yanked by a Department of Public Safety officer who had it in for him—he carried his truck keys as if he did. I carried a wad of raw feelings.

As a kid, my father towered over me. When I say towered, I mean being intimidated by his iron will and stern personality. I suspect this was the case with most boys of my generation. Our fathers won World War II. To the end of his life, my dad was a sovereign patriarch. His home was his castle. He ruled over the affairs of his family.

One of my father’s rules: The son walks into the Flying Baron, the father follows. The counter help looked up as we came in. Well, look who’s here! Howdy Mr. Barker! Who you got with you? Barker. The old epithet still hounded me. I was That Dick Barker, the constant disappointment of his parents, the one who left home, had to do things his way.

Sometimes, a fellow will try to sort out just what he got from each side. My mother gave me something spiritual, I guess. My dad dumped into me his stubbornness and gumption. And probably regretted it for more years than he could remember. I used my stubbornness and gumption as weapons against him. When I got to high school, my father knew me as a formidable adversary. What we said to each other was forced; what we did was confrontational.

At its lowest point, I imagined that an old-fashioned fist-fight in the backyard would be a positive development. But squaring off against R.W. Barker was out of the question. Mrs. Walker, my world history teacher, taught me about Ghandi’s passive resistance to British rule in colonial India. I imported passive resistance into West Texas. The more my father told me what to do and how to do it, the more I did the opposite. I answered him in single-syllable words. I sang songs in my head when he talked to me.

Except for the unalterable fact that we were father and son, our relationship didn’t produce a lot of day-to-day satisfaction. It would take many more years, before I admitted that my father wasn’t profoundly selfish or ignorant of things that mattered. He did what he did, because he loved his wife and children. He did what he did, because fathers were supposed to. He loved us. He knew best. He decided things for us, because he loved us and knew what was best for us. Then and now, I suppose that’s debatable.

My youthful eyes, to be sure, were not accustomed to looking at the jagged horizons of a Great Depression followed by brutal world war. Looking back at my teenage years, I realize that few boys are capable of discerning whether they’re being guided or manipulated by their fathers. Very few boys can possibly understand why distressful experiences are necessary in life, especially in the life of a young man. How distress in the present can bring a guy to contentment in the future is a mystery. To teenage boys, it doesn’t make sense. They can’t see it. I didn’t see it.

My father loved me very much. He loved me, because I was his oldest son. When I was little, he tucked me into bed each night. He sat on my bed—this was as horizontal as our relationship would ever be—and regaled me with Stephen Foster “Swanee River” songs. One night he didn’t come in to sit on my bed or sing off-key to me. I missed my father greatly, but I didn’t ask him to come back and sing. In my adolescent years, I often thought about the night my dad didn’t come in to give me his personal Lights out! I admit it was a hard separation for me. It affected me more than his death at 92 years.

The old Good Nights stood in sharp relief against my father’s harsh reliance on the hierarchical character of our relationship. I suppose it had something to do with a father’s natural fear that his would turn bad. The 1960’s were hard years for independent oil men in West Texas. My dad, an ex-Navy officer and ex-company man with Phillips Petroleum believed in two philosophical principles: propriety and obedience. Robert Walter Barker was Chief Petty Officer. His non-reflective and invincible conviction that he was in the right impelled him to micro-manage every aspect of my life. Richard Edward Barker’s apprentice rank meant, Shoulders back! Chin out! Stomach in! Feet together! Yes sir!

Of course he knew best; he was 36 years my senior. But I chafed against his cold, hard-fisted efficiency and inaccessible knowledge. Was I wanting my father to be my friend? No, not at all. And for right reasons. A father was supposed to be a father. But my father locked away his personal side. After the singing stopped, he shared it only once thereafter. I saw my father in the role of a father. I didn’t share the life of the man himself. But I never stopped calling him Daddy when he stopped singing to me.

The day after graduation, I threw my gown and mortar board down and packed my belongings. My philosophical principals were Go to the university. Escape Midland. In 1967, any high school senior who was normal wanted to escape. My father drilled me for four years. The day you graduate from high school is the last day I’m responsible for you. You better have a job and a place to live. The flip side? If you disgrace the family name, don’t ever come back.

I had a habit of coming home twice a year, sometimes for a few days, often less. Call it stubbornness and gumption. Call it compulsion. However I wished the opposite, I couldn’t shake the sense of duty and loyalty my father drilled into me. A son’s duty is to visit his parents. A son’s duty is to pay his respects. Most of the time, however, any nostalgic feelings I started with evaporated on the road. The auld lang syne, a sour lemon, didn't have a drop of juice in it.

For my father, lacking the vocabulary of love and relationship, small gestures were obliged to bear the weight of great meaning. These signs demanded careful discernment. On that Friday, headed for barbeque, my father handed me his truck keys. The handing-over of the keys signified his good will and benevolence. Driving his truck to the Flying Baron was a small, but significant point on the compass. The passing of the years had changed us. The eightyish old man and the fortyish unmarried young man, had attained some kind of parity along the way.

Back to Friday and the Flying Baron. I turned back to hold the heavy door open for my father. Dressed in a shirt and tie—always—and wearing polished boots—always, he walked with small, determined steps to the cafeteria-style serving line. He removed his elegant, beaver felt Stetson hat, a 10X with a full saddle row crease, and bantered with the kitchen help in his formal, ceremonious way. He ordered his meal with pomp and flourish. I guess my father’s old battleship bearing was decommissioned. He took on a more gracious, tolerant personality.

Yet he remained acutely conscious of his frailty and deafness, and to compensate, invoked excessive formality—even grandiloquence—pretending to hear what people said to him. He would nod and gesture officiously: We do what we want to do! Anybody can spend money! Don’t look back, just look straight ahead! WHATS ON THE MENU? So the serving attendant's muted question—Do you want barbeque sauce?—was a minefield of potential embarrassment. I leaned over to one of dad’s hearing aides and said, She wants to know if you want barbeque sauce. He stood there stiffly, acting as though I hadn’t prompted him. YES! he said loudly, and for emphasis, PUT SOME ON! He made a circle with his right outstretched index finger and then stabbed it forward for emphasis.

The restaurant was packed and very loud. I couldn’t see how this was going to work. After what seemed a long time—ordering was typically an ordeal—we made it to a booth. The restaurant wasn’t highly regarded for its formica table tops and Naugahyde benches. It’s pride and joy were the vintage World War II model airplanes dangling from the ceiling. Tethered by fishing line, they bobbed back and forth back in the turbulence of the swamp cooler.

Our booth was surrounded by the downtown crowd of oil men on lunch break. Like my old man, these young men liked to wear pressed short-sleeved shirts, bold ties and shiny cowboy boots. They spoke and moved with energy—as my father once did—each of them regaling the others about mineral rights, pump jacks, and production over-rides. Only one older fellow at the Flying Baron knew my dad and called him by name. I supposed the rest were newcomers to the business, part of the corporate influx of the feverish 1970’s and ‘80’s. I had other things on my mind, not oil, cattle and cotton.

I’ll get to the point. In 1959, when I was eleven, I did a wicked thing that hurt my daddy very much. I lied about it then, and my father blamed my two brothers. And I let him. Now, I knew this prosaic BBQ joint represented just about my last chance to tell my dad what happened 35 years ago. If I didn’t tell him now, another year of silence would condemn me for good.

For thirty-five years, I was afraid. I was afraid to tell the truth. I couldn't look at my father without being hosed by shame and doubt. For many years, I thought our conflicted relationship couldn’t bear the weight of this truth or many others for that matter. I worried that if my father was unwilling or unable to forgive me, I could never know peace. I was afraid of sacrificing my sacrificing my vulnerability to him. Most of all, I was afraid to face myself. I was more comfortable in the role of a son than being one.

My dad and I ate in silence for a few minutes, letting the boisterous conversation around us mask our unease. Our shouting to one another broke the silence. We weren’t mad. It was about the pepper. PASS THE PEPPER! WHAT?? PASS THE PEPPER!!! My father, almost totally deaf, despised his hearing aides. I did, too. For my father to hear a single word, I had to scream, to out-shout the entire lunch crowd at the Flying Baron.

There was no protecting our privacy. My dad’s old crony and all those newcomers could hear every word we shouted. A few made no effort to hide their annoyance. I made no effort to hide the unbearable heat. The barbeque beef in my sandwich was dry and tasteless; I was eating far too quickly. Finally, I had enough. I no longer cared who listened to what I had to say. Come hell or high water, this would be my last day to warehouse unfinished business. So I swallowed my raw sensibilities, leaned forward, and shouted DAD, THERE’S SOMETHING I NEED TO TELL YOU!

Actually I was screaming. I glanced around, nervous. Every guy in this lunch wagon had ears the size of a satellite dish—tuning in a strong signal. Dad, eating his sandwich with great solemnity, finally said Okay. DO YOU REMEMBER THE TWO POCKET WATCHES THAT YOU INHERITED FROM GRANDPA? THE ONES YOU KEPT IN YOUR DRESSER DRAWER? Silence. WHAT?? I shouted my question again word for word. They heard me at the steam tables. They heard me in the restroom. I KEPT WHERE?? IN YOUR DRESSER DRAWER! There was a long pause. The restaurant was silent. YES, he said slowly, I DO. Another pause. WELL, I JUST WANTED YOU TO KNOW I WAS THE ONE WHO TOOK THEM. Oh, he said. I STOLE THEM WHEN I WAS IN FIFTH GRADE. I GAVE THEM TO TWO KIDS I KNEW SO THEY’D BE MY FRIENDS.

The Flying Baron turned into a church. The first painful words of my confession were like a locomotive pulling a long line of heavy freight cars behind it. But they got easier. Suddenly, I was no longer shouting. I didn’t neet to. I lied to you about it at the time, and I've lived this lie all these years. It was the worst thing I've ever done in my life. I just want you to know that I'm very, very sorry, and I'd give anything to be able to give them back to you now. I knew—without words—that by asking for my dad’s pardon, I’d have to accept the consequences. I had to place myself into his hands. I had to say, I ask for your forgiveness.

We rested for a while which was good. My overwrought soul needed a breather. And it was bad, because I had reopened a longstanding hurt of an 82 year old man. Admitting to my father the theft of his most cherished possessions gave me no consolation. I was thirty-five years too late. My father deserved, even in his old age, to know about those gold pocket watches. Even if it wasn’t what he wanted to hear.

When he was a kid, an ugly fire destroyed his childhood home. Very few things survived. When a frame house burns, you just grab what’s next to you and get out fast. Dan Edward Barker got out with his pocket watches and his family. Those watches were just about all he had. They were tangible proof of his family’s history. They were silent witnesses to the hard reality of Oklahoma dust bowl farming.

The watches were like my grandpa, solid, dependable and hard-working. Necessary and useful products in their day, people now collect old watches as things of beauty. My father deserved better than the shabby pick-pocket of his beloved watches. He deserved better than going for 35 years knowing that none of his children ever owned up to stealing them. The joy of giving them to his own children or grandchildren had been stolen. I know what happened to the Stephen Foster songs. They disappeared with the gold watches.

That dad could’ve forgotten about the theft was inconceivable. Because he couldn’t easily speak about his father, these timepieces expressed the inexpressible. Against a counterpoint of oil and gas shop-talk and hard looks at the Flying Baron, I humbled myself before my father. Bob Barker was entitled to be wrathful. The role of a father certainly allowed for it. After all, a gold pocket watch feels good in the hand, like a handshake. It’s alive. It makes a unique sound. Carefully preserved, a cherished watch will move and sound just like it did when a guy’s father wore it and held it in his own rough, calloused hands.

Eventually dad broke the deafening silence. Well, I'm glad you told me. I always wondered. A long, very long pause followed. Dick, I want you to know the watches don't mean anything to me. You do. He shoved a bowl of cherry cobbler over to me—HERE, HAVE SOME!!—another grandiloquent gesture of take-charge control. He was always pushing food. We sat quietly for some time, absorbed in our own thoughts, eating tiny bites of cobbler from the same dish. By now, the FLYING BARRON was mostly empty. Just as I thought we were about to leave, dad began to speak about his father. Rarely did he ever talk about his father. I could see my grandpa Dan Edward in my mind—-an austere, grim Oklahoma farmer who died without being reconciled to his only living son.

When my daddy died, my father said in his formal way, I brought his old black hat home with me. And I brought back a pair of long, black, steel scissors, too. The old heavy kind. You might remember that hat. I've got a picture of him wearing it branding calves. It was a tall hat with a round top. He never put creases in it. I kept that hat and the scissors for a while, in the trunk of my car. Kept them there a couple of years. On the way to the ranch one time, I don't remember when, I pulled off the highway, near Santa Fe. I followed the Colorado River up into a box canyon. I was by myself that day. I parked the car near the bank of the river, in the shade of a tree.

I took my daddy's hat and that old pair of big scissors with me and sat on a big rock next to the river. It was still a good hat, but it showed the wearing of many years. Did you know that he had only two hats in his whole lifetime? I was with him part of the first and all of the second. I took those black scissors and cut that hat up into little pieces. I dropped them one by one in the water, watching them float off down the river. It took a long time. And then I threw the scissors in the water. My daddy was in that hat. I sent him off down the river, down the river into the sea. That hat is still traveling, it’s still traveling. And if any pieces are yet snagged in the river somewhere, they’ll catch up with his hat sooner or later. I put to rest what others should not disturb.

In telling this story, my father avoided saying anything personal about my grandpa. This came as no surprise. I’ve never known the true nature of their conflict or why they hardened to the end. Perhaps they were a father and son who depended on stalemate to continue any relationship at all. But my father’s story wasn’t about knowledge—even intimate family secrets. It was about bringing the burden of his past to a place of rest. And then moving on. His was the story of a crucial moment in life when a man gives up the artifacts of unfinished business.

More important, in my father’s eyes, than the pain and mystery of a father-son relationship, is the solemn, personal ritual of forgiveness. And it was a ritual. In those moments, listening to my dad, I became aware that love and forgiveness are not theoretical or best expressed with emotions and flowery words. Love and forgiveness are like exquisite machinery. They’re alive when they are moving. They’re meant to run, to work, to be experienced fully in the doing of them.

Men need signs and symbols of remembrance—some of us more than others—to articulate past relationships and a lifetime of memories. How else could anything ordinary—a memento, a keepsake—be transformed into the sacred objects of an intensely private rite of forgiveness? We take what we’re given. As icons of our father-son relationship, my father and I were given a watch, a hat and scissors. As I looked across the table, I grew acutely aware of my dad's fragility, conscious that age is the great leveler and perhaps the last vital opportunity for a man to humble himself before God.

Certainly estrangement ages the soul. Asking for forgiveness keeps the soul youthful; it keeps hope and confidence alive. With few words and profound feeling, my father broke the power of an unpleasant memory throttling me in its fierce grip. My dad said I put to rest what others should not disturb. Yet he went back to the past to touch it, like a priest, to bring its healing message to the present as a medicine for my festering wound. I call it a miracle. Though he probably didn’t realize it, my father conferred a lasting spiritual blessing on our father and son relationship. And perhaps, absolving my embarrassed and overdue confession, he received a blessing for the hard knocks he had from Dan Edward Barker, my grandpa.

Moving on is a proof of reconciliation. Together, my dad and I got up from an old hurt and moved on. We were graced by God to be tender-hearted to each other at a pivotal moment in our relationship and, in the remaining years of his life, a little more space existed in each of our hearts to love each other. Without realizing it, my father taught me that forgiveness is not dependent upon whether the other person is willing or able to grant us pardon at a convenient time.

That forgiveness and peace can be realized between two persons—even when the death of the other makes face-to-face reconciliation impossible—is a proof of God. Certainly God doesn’t guarantee us the consolation of hearing I forgive you from someone we’ve offended. But a man can seek forgiveness for the sake of his own heart, his own family, his own future. We trust that God rewards a poor soul’s solemn act of atonement with grace enough for the penitent and the person for whom forgiveness seems impossible. The act of seeking forgiveness is like winding an old pocket watch. It’s supposed to be done, for the sake of good order. It keeps our future alive and our inner spiritual works ticking. Any watch that keeps good time is a thing of beauty.

My father took his time arranging his hat and coat. At the cash register, he paid for our meal with exact change. He was in total control. Flourishing a bundle of ones and fives, he slowly and carefully snapped off two crisp bills. Then he pulled an old stunt—decades old—obliging the cashier to chase the coins he plunked down one by one on the countertop. Through the doorway of the Flying Baron, he sighted his truck. Glancing at me, he confirmed the whereabouts of his keys. Then he raised his chin, squared his shoulders, and stepped onto the sidewalk. He put on his Stetson hat. If I remember correctly, that style of hat is called the Open Road.

3rdStreet HEAVY INDUSTRY /Entrusted, Not Surrendered

2008-10-30T17:36:00.025-05:00

The source of a minister’s holiness is Christ. Not only must the minister's goodness inspire the people, but the minister’s own salvation depends upon it. He preaches the Kingdom of God, not the compromise of God.

The Letter of Peter advises shepherds to be worthy of God's calling: "Tend the flock of God that is your charge, not by constraint but willingly, not for shameful gain but eagerly, not as domineering over those in your charge but being examples to the flock. Therefore, a pastor’s relationship with his congregation should be that of a loving father who enjoys the friendship of his grown children.

Lest shepherds of the Lord’s flock become discouraged by their own sinful human nature and lose heart, the Lord consoles them with the knowledge that their apostolate finds its origin in his mercy. And when the chief Shepherd appears, you will obtain the unfading crown of glory." [cf. 1Pet 5:2-4]

The apostle Paul warned those who would undertake the preaching apostolate. Empty words and flattery, showmanship and entertainment are deadly to the Gospel message. The Gospel and the mysteries of salvation are the property of God. Christ has entrusted the liturgy to the custody of the universal Church. Both Gospel and liturgy are entrusted, not surrendered.

God.Write: Preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and in teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths. As for you, always be steady, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. [2Tim 4:2-5]

calibration.test: "When I am frightened by what I am to you, then I am consoled by what I am with you. To you I am the bishop, with you I am a Christian. The first is an office, the second a grace; the first a danger, the second salvation." [Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 340]

cutting.tool: The shepherd should feast on the Gospel; he should not devour his flock. He should pray on his knees, not prey on the weakest members of his congregation. He should practice his faith, not practice upon the lay faithful.

3rdStreet Primary Care /Make His Experience Your Own

2008-10-30T10:54:00.019-05:00

Is it an act of justice to end the life of a sick person because you can’t comprehend his suffering? If you really desire natural justice, take his place in the sick bed and take his suffering into your own body. But I can’t, you answer. I understand. Then commit your beloved’s life and death into God's hands. And go, suffer your loved one’s experience as your own in the dark night of prayer. Take his suffering into your soul. Intercede for him. Entrust his life to God in your own spiritual agony. Love him in life's helplessness. This is supernatural justice—not a sentence of death but a word of life, not as you want but as God wants.

God.Write: And when I passed by you, and saw you weltering in your blood, I said to you in your blood, "Live". [Eze 16:6]

street.words: Hospital is to hospitality as healing is to welcoming.

streetCLEANER /Remnant or Multitude?

2008-10-29T17:06:00.066-05:00

Some people claim there are only a small number of true believers. They claim most people sitting in a Church are Christian in name only. They say God has a secret Church and it's not yours. Only one or two here or there belong to God's secret Church. God alone knows. You don't. They call this secret group the remnant. Only the remnant will go to heaven.

Count on this. The guy who thumps on you is sure he belongs to the remnant. He's not sure about you. When Jesus comes back, he says, the name-only Christians will be left behind. For what? To be tortured and to thank God for it. If not, to die and burn.

This is his take on the tribulation. The secret believer escapes in the remnant. Humanity is crushed in the tribulation. When will the tribulation happen? Oh, he says, it'll start next year, in 3 years, 10 years, at the end of the decade. One thing's for sure. It won't happen today at 12 noon.

Do the math. From 4 millennia of salvation history, Jesus' sacrifice on the cross, 2 millennia of Christianity, and 100+ billion human beings, only 200 people will make it to heaven. What is this? Science fiction? Space colony? What?

It's not heaven. It's a moonscape. A moonscape is not a theology of grace but a theology of evil. The deity in this wilderness is not God but a back-stabber. You can't see me, but I'm going to get you. All of you. If it's not God, who is it? It's twisted human opinion.

What does the theology of grace say? God is generous. Grace is generous. Heaven is generous. Heaven is not now and never will be a clique or cabal. Heaven is now and always will be a multitude. The number 144,000 mentioned in Revelation 7:4 is 12 multiplied by 12. The biblical number 12 is a way of saying totality, fullness, and completeness according to God. Go look for yourself.

Twelve times twelve means a number that no human mind can count or comprehend--the total, full and complete tribes of Israel's children. The number 144,000 is followed by another multitude: "After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no man could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, 'Salvation belongs to our God who sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb!'" [Rev 7:9-10] Remnant? Hardly.

3rd.degree: What's "theology"?
street.wise: The purposeful contemplation of God in prayer and study.

GodWrite 1: For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. [2Pet 1:16]
GodWrite 2: For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me; when you seek me with all your heart, I will be found by you, says the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile. [Jer 29:11-14]

(3rdStreet >> TALK) whoa.

3rdStreet Oratory /Prayer Is No Soft Chair

2008-10-28T00:07:00.029-05:00

CHRISTIAN PRAYER is not diving into a soft chair for a moment to catalogue the day’s activities and chart the peaks and valleys of your emotions. Rather, you start by asking the Holy Spirit to form your prayer into the likeness of Christ the merciful and faithful high priest.

YOU PRAY when having abandoned the noise of the day, you undertake the work of contemplating God’s ideas, loving them, and obeying them to your utmost. Ask God for wisdom to understand that all his ideas really are just one idea, one Truth, one Person--Our Lord Jesus Christ through whom all things were made. [cf. Jn 1:1-3]

PRAYER IS the summit of all worthy human ideas, indeed the knowledge that all good things lead to one thing--Jesus Christ. He is worth dying for in this life and living with eternally in the next. So pray fervently to spread the fragrance of the knowledge of God everywhere"! [2Cor 2:14]

3rdWord /Getting the Drop on Self-Reflection

2008-10-27T10:59:00.041-05:00

I yanked a hard left into the visceral underworld of a freeway interchange. In the shadowy u-turn, I glimpsed a wide-eyed pigeon squatting on the low concrete divider inches away from the wheels of my truck.

First impression--That pigeon is odd. Far from the safety of a high wire or window ledge, it was spread out on the cement. Comfortably. Second impression, It's a she. As if sitting on a nest and warming eggs, "she" calmly pecked about at imaginary twigs and grit. Last impression--The bird can't fly. I cleared the u-turn and careened into the feeder lane under the white noon sun.

Pigeons eat, sleep, fly, perch, preen, crap in the air and breed. They're not clever, they take refuge on high ledges, they'll get the drop on you. What struck me, however, was the force of the bird’s natural aplomb. The pigeon, plopped on the pavement, projected complete confidence and poise. It portrayed perfect equilibrium in the midst of howling traffic, appalling road noise, honking, speed freaks, screeching tires, heat and dust.

I couldn't help but impute some category of the universal to this particular bird and its strange posture. By characterizing it as EveryPigeon, I formalized my impressions. Using allegory, one can rescue a pathetic figure from folly and elevate it to the level of prototype or symbol. Who was the pathetic figure being elevated--me or the pigeon?

Self-reflection is a uniquely human attribute, the possession of this faculty implying that human beings should be good at concentrating on ideas apart from other persons and mere things. Reflection on the past is like scrutinizing one's complexion before the mirror. We view the past with some detachment, sometimes embarrassment.

The sacredness of memory is never more apparent than in its tragic loss. Talk to the amnesiac who by losing his memory has lost his identity as well. He longs to retrieve the data of his own biography in the hope of discovering his identity and history as well. Whatever one might say about recognition and memory, a constant theme emerges from the lives of human beings: No one wants to live below his proper spiritual level.

It’s not enough to remember a memory. One has to enter it, cautiously and respectfully, experiencing the tension between self-deception and self-reflection.

If one is self-deceiving, his examination of memory will be self-conscious and manipulative. In fact, it won’t be self-reflection at all. Absent objectivity, he will not be able to reconcile his conflicted humanity with the demands of humaneness. He will troll his idealized past foolishly hoping to validate his corrupted present. His memories will betray him. He will see in them the reflection of an ambivalent person confusing heroism for parasitism and reason for emotion.

If one is self-reflective, he will examine his memories objectively, situating them in the context of personhood and community. Self-reflection is good for its own sake. It requires a fairly high degree of intensity and therefore is most beneficial in an atmosphere of silence. A human being is at his best when he is engaged in thoughtful consideration of his life.

He takes a memory in his consciousness, sometimes personally chosen, other times put before him, and turns it over, feeling it, conserving its form and shape. He looks at it directly and from different perspectives. Who am I? What is the meaning of my life? Who am I to others? How will I be remembered? Intuiting from nature that the lesser leads to the greater, he will ask, What lies beyond death?

The pigeon's odd performance afforded me a small opportunity to reflect on the capacity of living creatures to live harmoniously in their surroundings, peacefully pursuing the hard-wired scripts called instinct, making choices within the limitations of their intellectual processors and, at the end of the day, finding rest.

Human beings are irresistably compelled to interpret. Significantly, self-reflection invokes the metaphysical in the sense that it contextualizes mere memories and even the procession of time, offering splendid possibilities for the integration of art and science, faith and reason. It is through the human capacity for self-reflection and contextualizing that we perceive God’s enduring recognition of us as individuals.

In the main, human beings everywhere accomplish the ordinary things of life with the same kind of breathtaking aplomb observed in a relentlessly common gray-brown pigeon sitting on concrete in a storm of traffic. Should we perhaps become discouraged at all the hubbub about us, dissatisfied with the past and anxious about the future, we might reflect on the impressive fact that, in order to survive, a pigeon must reconcile itself to an alien environment of mortar, steel and glass.

Would that human beings could--encompassed by brick and stone, so devoted to glass and steel and plastic--more easily withdraw from the unnatural uproar and turmoil of urban living, to seek the surpassing peace which comes from honest and thoughtful self-reflection. I will send you a pigeon if you need one.